Tree Branch
Tulip
Ever wonder why I’m on a feminist rampage?
Because the media reacts like this when we’re less than perfect. Because our emotional range gets stunted and limited.
Because so many aspects of our culture normalize rape on a subconscious level.
Because Kansas and Arizona pass bills that allows the beliefs of a doctor or pharmacist to trump the health of a woman. And because fetuses are becoming increasingly more important than the woman carrying them.
Because a state representative can compare a woman giving birth to livestock.
Because legislature that criminalizes pregnancy and abortion are being forced into discussion again and again.
Because the rest of the world wants to know why American women aren’t angrier.
Because of bills that limit the time frame of my choices.
Because for some reason, religion is a legitimate reason to interfere in my uterus.
Because the Protect Life Act even exists.
Because women who miscarry or lose their babies are being charged with murder.
Because a woman who tried to commit suicide while pregnant was jailed and charged with feticide.
Because mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasound probes are legally defined as rape.
Because ectogenesis technology could further remove birthing rights from a mother.
Because programs like this even have to exist.
Because birth control is suddenly a religious issue. Because women can be fired for using birth control as a contraceptive. Because the benefits of no-cost or inexpensive birth control are overlooked. Because ignorance necessitates posts like this.
Because again and again, organizations like the Medicaid Woman’s Health Program are seen as unnecessary. Because even the Susan G. Komen Foundation tried to stop funding Planned Parenthood. And if you think we’re past that, think again.
Because America ranks among a very small number of countries that don’t have paid, mandatory pregnancy leave. In fact, women routinely get forced out of their jobs for being pregnant.
Because public discourse from men like Rush Limbaugh is insulting and misogynistic and goes mostly unpunished.
Because the U.S. Military has some of the highest rape rates and most reprehensible policies for dealing with them.
Because women are bitches for saying no and sluts for saying yes. Because we are valued by how many or few cocks have been in our vaginas.
Because this is normal.
Because I don’t know a single woman who has not been harassed, derided, assaulted. Because I know many women and girls who have been raped. Because I’ve seen the long term, life long repercussions of sexual abuse.
Don’t tell me there isn’t a war on women. And don’t tell me the economy is more important than this. This barely scratches the surface.
Repeat after Soraya Chemaly: I am a woman and I have these human rights. The right to life. The right to privacy. The right to freedom. The right to bodily integrity. The right to decide when and how I reproduce.
It is impossible for me to read the news anymore without fucking breaking down in tears. I don’t see how anyone, with any sense of reason or justice or fairness, with a good heart—or, hell, any heart at all—wouldn’t react in the same way. There doesn’t seem to be any other logical response to this sort of hatred and malevolence.
Source: extantecstasy
FIGS
1. So, you eat the apple instead of the fig. What kind of fool are you? Apples tend toward mush. Apples are often nothing close to as delectable as apples appear. Nevertheless. You choose the apple, despite the millions upon millions of figs that hang fat and succulent from every fig tree. The thing about figs: They aren’t pretty. They look like pods, like cocoons, like something you wouldn’t want to bite, though you might at any moment decide to raise up your conveniently bare foot and squish one between your toes. You ignore the fuckers. You eat the apple, and then—
2. Goddamnit, literally. You find yourself Naked. Nude. Bare. You’ve never noticed it before, because it’s never been a problem before. This despite the scrabbling over rocks. Despite tree bark. Despite the scraping of delicate bits of your body upon same. You’ve never noticed the naked before, despite the snakes in the garden and the bare feet and the whole of Eden laid out around you like some sort of bizarro theme park, until: Whammo. You bite the apple, and you’re screwed. You’re naked, and all there is, all there is to cover up the dripping, embarrassing excess of desire is this: a fig leaf.
3. The fig leaf is not even close to large enough.
4. Thrown out of Eden, and wearing a backless fig leaf, you meander around the world, singing several unsuccessful songs. Don’t sit under the apple tree, with anyone else but me causes jeers from your partner, who thinks you’re a jerk. An attempt at a cheerful carol: Bring us some figgy pudding,and bring it right here, meets with sarcastic comments on the state of your mutual sartorial affairs and the statement whose fault is this? That would be yours, for the apple, for the idiotic apple, though it wasn’t you who took the first bite, now was it? You only said these words, innocent words, really, because remember? You were innocent. Wouldn’t that be good, that apple, so juicy, so bright? That was all you said. You didn’t say EAT IT NOW. You didn’t hold his mouth open and make him. He was the one who gobbled his fruit like an eel, all teeth. You only had the one bite. Now, of course, an hour later, you have regrets. Would that it had stuck in your throat, would that a few nice dwarves would be even now on the way to gently lift you from your glass coffin and carry you home, away from your partner, the blameful, the wretch whom you never actually liked anyway. Never mind the whole idea of your birth. Never mind that you were made from a floating rib. A spare rib, he says, a spare rib in sauce, and flips over so as not to spoon you.
5. A few centuries pass. All the naked statues get their tumescences covered by plaster and marble and ebony fig leaves sculpted by tiny hammers and tiny chisels in workshops all over the Mediterranean. It doesn’t make you happy.
6. Still, of the figs, you have no particular feeling. Your partner eats them all day, stuffs them oozing into his mouth like he’s starving. You march on beside him, era in, era out. You’ve gone pagan. He’s gone diabetic. You hand him bitter greens, dandelions, first blowing onetwothree for clocks, for wishes. You say, Eat This Now. The greens were never bitter, before. You refer to Before as though it were paradise. Friends laugh. They don’t understand that you’re speaking entirely without metaphor: Before, when we were in Paradise is really what you mean when you’re gnashing your teeth over radicchio and endive. They used to be so sweet, so sweet, so heart-breakingly sweet.
7. You try to redefine your relationship. There is no definition. You adjust your leaf for the last time, and then you leave.
8. He follows you, the apple-eater, the asshole.
9. You adjust your leaf and leave again. You leave for ten million years and he always follows you, saying my rib, you’re my rib and also singing, annoyingly, tie a yellow ribbon round the old fig tree, clutching at where his heart might be, had he a heart. Had he not lost you your paradise. You stand beneath a fig tree, and shake it. You cry I would have eaten you instead. I would have eaten you whole.
10. But you didn’t, he says, and laughs.
Source: mariadahvanaheadley
Actually I suspect you can skip the first 8 if you just do the last one.
Shit. The first 8 are the only ones I’ve got…
Source: incidentalcomics.com
So congratulations, North Carolina. Last night, you struck a decisive blow for loneliness. And tonight, as you go to sleep beside your heterosexual life mate, you can rest assured that all across your great state, a gay man or lesbian woman is crying themselves to sleep in solitude and making your relationship stronger with each tear.
(via neil-gaiman)
Source: inothernews
Atheists aren’t angry because we’re selfish, or bitter, or joyless. Atheists are angry because we have compassion. Atheists are angry because we have a sense of justice. Atheists are angry because we see millions of people being terribly harmed by religion, and our hearts go out to them, and we feel motivated to do something about it.
Source: mols
I, personally, have a cunt. Sometimes it’s “flaps” or “twat,” but, most of the time, it’s my cunt. Cunt is a proper, old, historic, strong word. I like that my fire escape also doubles up as the most potent swearword in the English language. Yeah. That’s how powerful it is, guys. If I tell you what I’ve got down there, old ladies and clerics might faint. I like how shocked people are when you say “cunt.” It’s like I have a nuclear bomb in my pants, or a mad tiger, or a gun.
…In a culture where nearly everything female is still seen as squeam-inducing and/or weak—menstruation, menopause, just the sheer, simple act of calling someone “a girl”—I love that “cunt” stands, on its own, as the supreme, unvanquishable word. It has almost mystic resonance. It is a cunt—we all KNOW it’ a cunt—but we can’t call it a cunt. We can’t say the actual word. It’s too powerful.
Source: maggieblueberry
Why do so many boys grow out their armpit hair? What are they trying to prove?
Source: the-cunt-crystal
I’ve been thinking…
It’s never quite sat well with me when men are more religious than women. It just feels off. I don’t know. I guess I just expect men to be more rational and logical and to know better than to believe in all of that nonsense—because that’s what society says that their gender dictates.
But when women are fervently religious, well… it makes sense in my brain. Because I suppose I just don’t expect as much from them. They gossip and watch soap operas and/or other bad (i.e. reality) TV, and being religious on top of that is just an obvious next step.
And these are my hypocritical, sexist thoughts at the moment…
Also, is it bad that I equate going to church with watching Jersey Shore?
