I had a great conversation with Carlos this morning on the way to school, where we talked about privilege (the word of the week apparently) and why people get so insulted by the term. 

I felt like I needed to address this here as well. I’ve said countless times now that persons of privilege cannot help being privileged. It does not make you a bad person. But to deny your privilege is ignorant.

And secondly, I’m sorry but I am not going to feel bad for you. Above is a trigger-heavy social experiment of what it’s like to be on the other side of racism (white blue eyed people are separated from a group and treated as most people of color are treated on a perpetual basis, for a brief period of time.) And to quote the woman running this experiment:

“I cannot waste my tears for a white woman who knows that this is temporary…. I save my sympathy and my empathy for those who go through this every day of their lives….”

To all those men who don’t think the rape jokes are a problem:

oforganon:

(via)
This post in particular is addressed to men, not because women don’t rape and women don’t make/laugh at rape jokes and not because men can’t be raped, but because, by nature of the existing gender disparity, men are in a unique position to be taken seriously when they raise objections to casual language and humor regarding rape. Men are also in a unique position to prove to rapists and douchebags that not all men rape or take rape lightly by being able to embody living proof of that fact.

I get it—you’re a decent guy. I can even believe it. You’ve never raped anybody. You would NEVER rape anybody. You’re upset that all these feminists are trying to accuse you of doing something, or connect you to doing something, that, as far as you’re concerned, you’ve never done and would never condone. 

And they’ve told you about triggers, and PTSD, and how one in six women is a survivor, and you get it. You do. But you can’t let every time someone gets all upset get in the way of you having a good time, right? Especially when it doesn’t mean anything. Rape jokes have never made YOU go out and rape someone. They never would; they never could. You just don’t see how it matters.

I’m going to tell you how it does matter. And I tell you this because I genuinely believe you mean it when you say you don’t want to hurt anybody, and that it’s important to you to do your best to be a decent and good person, and that you don’t see the harm. And I genuinely believe you when you say you would never associate with a rapist and you think rape really is a very bad thing. 

Here is why I refuse to take rape jokes sitting down…

Because 6% of college-aged men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word “rape” isn’t used in the description of the act—and that’s the conservative estimate. Other sources double that number (pdf). 

A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?

Rapists do. 

They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again. 

Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.

If one in twenty guys (or more) is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, in a pick-up game of basketball, at a bar, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can’t tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. It’s not like they announce themselves. 

But, here’s the thing. It’s very likely that in some of these interactions with these guys, at some point or another, someone told a rape joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they didn’t mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed. 

Or maybe you didn’t laugh. Maybe it just wasn’t a very funny joke. So maybe you just didn’t say anything at all. 

And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed? When you were silent?

That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades. 

You. The rapist’s comrade. 

And if that doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach, if that doesn’t make you want to throw up, if that doesn’t disturb you or bother you or make you feel like maybe you should at least consider not participating in that kind of humor anymore, not abiding it in your presence, not greeting it with silence…

Well, maybe you aren’t as opposed to rapists as you claim. 

——————————————————-
Note: A quick and simple rule for language and behavior if you want to be a decent person: Ask yourself, who is more likely to be made to feel comfortable around me based on whatever I’m about to say/do? Rape survivors? Or rapists? Who is more likely to be made to feel uncomfortable? If you’re doing something that is more likely to make rapists feel comfortable and/or rape survivors feel uncomfortable, then don’t do it!

<source link>  - by timemachineyeah

When you say to a person of color “When I see you, I don’t see you as black! I just see everybody the same.” People,think about that. You don’t have the right to say to a person “I do not see you as you are,I want to see you as I would be more comfortable seeing you.

The hard thing is this: get ready, because more is coming. SOPA is simply a reversion of COICA, which was purposed last year, which did not pass. And all of this goes back to the failure of the DMCA to disallow sharing as a technical means. And the DMCA goes back to the Audio Home Recording Act, which horrified those industries. Because the whole business of actually suggesting that someone is breaking the law and then gathering evidence and proving that, that turns out to be really inconvenient. “We’d prefer not to do that,” says the content industries. And what they want is not to have to do that. They don’t want legal distinctions between legal and illegal sharing. They just want the sharing to go away.

PIPA and SOPA are not oddities, they’re not anomalies, they’re not events. They’re the next turn of this particular screw, which has been going on 20 years now. And if we defeat these, as I hope we do, more is coming. Because until we convince Congress that the way to deal with copyright violation is the way copyright violation was dealt with with Napster, with YouTube, which is to have a trial with all the presentation of evidence and the hashing out of facts and the assessment of remedies that goes on in democratic societies. That’s the way to handle this.

In the meantime, the hard thing to do is to be ready. Because that’s the real message of PIPA and SOPA. Time Warner has called and they want us all back on the couch, just consuming — not producing, not sharing — and we should say, “No.”

For every friend or girlfriend who would dare question my behavior, there were literally hundreds of others who acquiesce to the ways of us men, making it easy for me to ignore the legitimate cries of feminists.

Anonymous asked: My friends all have the same sense of humor that grates on my nerves, where they think its okay to say racist and sexist shit all the time because they're not "actually" like that. Whenever I call them out on it, I just get brushed with an "I know, I don't actually think that, I have black friends, I respect women, etc" and make me feel like I killed the mood. You're way better at articulating yourself when it comes to these things so... is there anything you think I could say that is better?

panasonicyouth:

Honestly, this still works for me most of the time, at least in a sense to shame people into silence and make them feel embarrassed. The key to this is stating this completely deadpan. The next time a friend of yours makes a racist or sexist joke, look them straight in the eye and say, “I don’t get it. What do you mean?”

You may eventually get the same result if someone is that thick, but as they struggle to explain their joke and the only option left for them is “Sometimes black people are different,” or “Women are totally emotional,” they might suddenly stop talking because they’ve had to spell out their own gross behavior. It’s REAL satisfying to watch it happen, by the way.

However, there comes a time when it becomes too much, especially if you yourself are one of the members of a group your friends joke about. I have had this happen too, where white friends or straight friends were making jokes about Mexicans or being gay and no matter how many times I brought up how uncomfortable it made me feel, they kept going.

Cut ‘em out of your life. You don’t need that kind of toxicity around you, and I’m a big supporter of the idea that we need to keep our mental well-being (in terms of our own happiness and self-worth) as a priority in our lives when we can. It’s okay to say to yourself and others, “I can’t be around you any longer.” That took me so long to accept! So now I just surround myself with AWESOME people who are AWESOME ALL THE TIME, and I feel a whole lot better about things.

IN REBLOGGABLE FORMAT. My sourcing panic has now subsided.

haydenandcara:

Hayden and Cara Do Stuff: NaNoWriMo.

Day Twenty-Two: The Essential Guide To Blankets

In which Hayden espouses the societal need for blankets.

You watch this right now and laugh! Because Hayden is hysterical and THIS IS IMPORTANT.

"Slavery was in the past! Get over it!"

godwantsyoutotouchyourselfbabe:

That’s like saying “Gay people don’t get the death penalty now! Get over it!”

Slavery was a part of oppression for people of colour, it was not the sum total of oppression for people of colour. Simply changing one aspect of the law does not suddenly mean an oppressed group is no longer oppressed. Oppression doesn’t just happen through the law, it happens through every aspect of society.

Telling people of colour to “get over” something and silencing them is a form of oppression. Stop it.

The Education Continuum WARNER CHILCOTTED

In which John explains the education continuum and why math and literature both help us understand the universe in surprisingly similar ways.

JOHN GREEN FOR ALL OF THE AWARDS. 

BREAKING NEWS: The New York Times reports that Mayor Michael Bloomberg may force protesters from Zuccotti Park -- effectively evicting Occupy Wall Street.

truth-has-a-liberal-bias:

We have less than 24 hours to stop it — please sign emergency petition:

http://act.boldprogressives.org/sign/petition_defend_ows/?rd=1&source=e1-wall-fin&t=2&referring_akid=5496.55870.5b4WGa

“Mayor Bloomberg: Respect First Amendment rights. Don’t try to evict Occupy Wall Street.”

Bloomberg is claiming the eviction is “temporary” for “cleaning” the park — the exact excuse used to permanently end prior protests.

Even if the protesters return, they may have to follow ridiculous new rules like “No sleeping bags” — completely undercutting the permanent occupation that is raising the nation’s awareness of corporate greed.

We need a national groundswell immediately. This petition will be delivered by our friends at MoveOn to Mayor Bloomberg at City Hall tonight.

Over 100,000 people signed this emergency petition in the last couple hours. It will be delivered to Bloomberg tonight — please sign:

http://act.boldprogressives.org/sign/petition_defend_ows/?rd=1&source=e1-wall-fin&t=2&referring_akid=5496.55870.5b4WGa

Thanks for being a bold progressive.

— Neil Sroka, Kristiane Skolmen, Adam Green, Stephanie Taylor, Forrest Brown, and the PCCC team

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