Romania

For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.

No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morning’s live 3-D reenactment of “Invasion of AstroMonster.” This is what they’d say repeatedly:

“You know! Boys will be boys!” 

“He’s just going through a phase!”

“He’s such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!”

“Oh my god! Girls and boys are SO different!”

“He. Just. Can’t. Help himself!”

I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, “What red-blooded boy wouldn’t knock it down?”

She built a beautiful, glittery castle in a public space.

It was so tempting.

He just couldn’t control himself and, being a boy, had violent inclinations.

She had to keep her building safe.

Her consent didn’t matter. Besides, it’s not like she made a big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasn’t a “legitimate” knocking over if she didn’t throw a tantrum.

His desire — for power, destruction, control, whatever- - was understandable.

Maybe she “shouldn’t have gone to preschool” at all. OR, better if she just kept her building activities to home.

I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t “get raped” and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of “don’t rape.”

Not once did his parents talk to him about invading another person’s space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning.  How much of the boy’s behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the “rules” his parents kept repeating?

There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did it his mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasn’t much fun for him, but he did not do it again.

There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up.

Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”

The “overarching attitudinal characteristic” of abusive men is entitlement

Okay, I found a quote from an interview with Ian McKellen. “The actor who’s starred as Magneto in the X-Men films also said he signed on for the films after director Bryan Singer explained to him that the mutant superheroes serve as an allegory for the gay community.”

(Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jaimieetkin/ian-mckellen-ellen-page-living-in-the-closet?utm_term=.qnjmMjMDk#.tnRQzZzVg )

“ezra miller is going to be the first lgbt+ person to play a superhero!!”

i mean yes he’s going to be the first to get a solo movie but

baby ginny sitting herself down in professor lupin’s office hours with her eyebrows furrowed and lupin’s like “shit” bc ginny is an excellent student and very observant and contrary and less likely to take shit than even hermione granger and is rather reminiscent of other red-haired gryffindor women he has known

“i know you’re a werewolf,” she blurts

“oh?” he says though he is thinking shit shit shit shit shit

“yes, and I don’t care,” she says forcefully

“oh?” he says again, though he is carefully not feeling anything

“yeah, I know what it’s like to be possessed by something evil. it doesn’t make you evil,” she says

(Am I doing this right?)

Of course we should consider people innocent until proven guilty, but that doesn’t mean that we should ignore the victim. If someone says “So-and-so raped me,” that’s significant evidence that so-and-so raped them. People making false rape accusations are extremely rare.

In most crimes, if someone says they were the victim of a crime committed by another specific person, we believe the victim. Yet somehow, when it comes to rape, suddenly we assume the victim is lying.

@theshynekotaru : What evidence would you consider sufficient, if the eyewitness evidence of the victim isn’t enough for you?

Toby Turner aka Tobuscus

There’s been allegations about him and I just want to say that it’s still innocent until proven guilty not guilty until proven innocent. Rape claims can ruin someones life and unfortunately there’s been so many people who have lied about being raped by friends or strangers, and even famous people that yes people are cautious as hell.

It happened with Yammimash, Pewdiepie, Markiplier, Basically, Lui, and many many others.

People can make false allegations so it’s best to get the FULL story, from all sides, before just jumping onto the victims side or the accused side.

Some peopel have found evidence that the girl may not have been where she claimed to be during one of the dates and other people close to Toby have come out in support of him and others in support fo the supposed victim.

We don’t have enough evidence to convict him fully and we don’t have evidence to prove him innocent either.

Do NOT just jump to conclusions with rape allegations there needs to be provided proof that isn’t just text messages or tweets as they can easily be faked by hundreds of various free softwares online.

I do not understand this “male privilege" bullshit.

What. Fucking. Privileges. Do. Men. Have.???????

Name them. I swear, I challenge you to name these “male privileges" and be able to prove them. 

Come on, I fucking dare you. 

Name them!

George Lucas: if you make gay stuff about my characters I'll sue you

*3 decades later*

George Lucas: *sells Star Wars*

Oscar Isaac: Poe is in love with Finn

Carrie Fisher: Obi-Wan Kenobi is bisexual

Mark Hamill: Luke's sexuality is never addressed in the movies, also he could be trans and even if he isn't he supports trans people because all Jedi do

So I looked at his wiki page, and I was going to say this was Photoshopped because that phrase wasn’t on there, but then I looked at the revision history and, well,

So apparently yes, until 11:37 PM last night, the wiki page for Anthony Ramos referred to him as a “pure angel bean 10/10.”

who did it

WHO DID IT

The case is called West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette, if you’re interested.

Reblog if you were the kid in class who didn’t stand for The Pledge of Allegiance.