Kitty Tsui

i’ve been saying this to myself this morning and i’m going to say it to you in case you need to hear it: you are not here to be physically attractive. that is not your purpose. you are here to learn new things and be kind to people and listen to your favorite music and pet cute dogs and read big books and drink good coffee. you are here to see beauty in the world and create it when you can’t find any. you are not here to impress people with how you look.

Don’t Miss These 7 Spectacular Sights Of The Summer Sky

“The summer skies are there every years to offer us a respite from the hardship of our daily lives, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, they remain one of the few sights that almost all of us still have some opportunity to take in. On a clear night, overhead, an enormous but brilliant collections of stars known as the Summer Triangle dominates the skies this month. If you head outside and attempt to view any of the transient sights out there — the Moon, Comet NEOWISE, the planets, the meteor shower, etc. — take some time and enjoy these deep-sky objects, too.

The night sky is always out there for anyone curious to explore it. Even with the ever-increasing number of satellites and the (sometimes severe) light-pollution that we all must reckon with, these natural wonders are just as intrinsically spectacular as they’ve ever been. Turn your telescope or binoculars up at any or all of these seven objects, and you’ll be looking years, centuries, or even millennia back in time, from giant collections of stars to a preview of our own Sun’s death. The Universe, when you see it for yourself, never disappoints.”

Have you been going out to see the Moon at night? How about Comet NEOWISE? Maybe Jupiter and Saturn? Or perhaps you’re planning on viewing next week’s Perseid meteor shower? While you’re out there, take a glance towards the heavens and notice that giant “triangle” overhead. Inside it, there are seven spectacular sights that any telescope or pair of binoculars can reveal to you.

Even if you have no experience with telescopes at all, these seven objects are well within your reach. Here’s how to view them for yourself.

Body Neutrality for Females with Dysphoria:

Are you dysphoric? Are you sick of body positivity? Are you female? Here are some affirmations that you can try out to counteract your negative internal monologue.

Whenever you think a negative/dysphoric thought, tell yourself one of these affirmations. If it feels corny or dumb, that’s a good sign. It means you’re challenging your brain’s self-hatred. You are redirecting your brain and challenging your usual thought patterns.

General body:

My body allows me to perform the tasks I need to survive

My body is worthy of respect

This form is the product of years of human evolution

Uterus:

Thank you uterus, for providing structural integrity and support to my bladder, bowel, pelvic bones and organs

Period:

Cramps are temporary

Periods are a natural, normal biological function

Ovaries:

Thank you ovaries, for helping me regulate hormones and stay healthy

Feel free to add any that you come up with!

Gender non-conforming women are so cool!

Butch lesbians are awesome!

Stag/tomcat bi women are rad!

GNC straight women are dope!

All women who subvert femininity are doing good work just being themselves! You’re all wonderful valuable women!

Keep up the good work just doing you! Thanks for your presence in making gnc women visible!

anti femininity post

benefits to:

not wearing makeup

able to rub eyes

can sleep in later in the morning since you dont have to waste time applying it

dont spend mad money

no need to constantly check if the makeup is still in place

clean, healthy skin

can fall asleep without worrying about taking it off

can cry or be in the rain or at the beach or pool without worrying about making running

can eat without worrying about lipstick on teeth or food

no need to carry it around and reapply throughout the day

no hair stuck in lipgloss

no scary things near the eyes

no need to dedicate hours of time to learning about and perfecting makeup skills

can rub face in blankets, pets, pillows, friends, family, lovers without worrying about it smudging off or on them

not wearing heels

feet dont hurt

can run around

able to climb on stuff

no need to worry about breaking the heel or having to replace pieces

feet wont get stuck in mud, grates, sand, etc

no blisters

never have to take shoes off after wearing them for too long because theyre painful

no damage to leg, ankle, and spine muscles

no hurting ankles from tripping or stumbling

no callouses

having short hair

keeps you cool

easy to style

no need to spend $$$ on styling products

no need to worry about straighteners, curlers, etc

easy to wash

dries quickly

shows your face

cheap haircuts

no need to always have a ponytail holder on your wrist at all times

no long hair to knot, get caught in stuff, or fly in your face

not removing hair

no razor burn or cutting yourself shaving

no painful waxing

keeps you warm

soft and fuzzy

being a beautiful mature adult woman

natural pheromones (nice if you have a lover)

shorter showers

no more making razor companies rich

no more being self conscious about stubble

for pubic hair, helps with friction during sex which makes it less rough and painful

also pubic hair— keeps out bacteria and lowers the risk of STIs

no ingrown hairs

Feel free to add!!!

Our planet seen from Saturn, captured by the Cassini spacecraft

Image credit: NASA 

NGC 346 is an open cluster with associated nebula located in the Small Magellanic Cloud that appears in the constellation Tucana. 

Image credit: NASA/Hubble

Female figurine from the Hohle Fels cave near Stuttgart, about 35,000 years old. Interpreted as a pornographic pin-up.

“The Earliest Pornography” says Science Now, describing the 35,000 year old ivory figurine that’s been dug up in a cave near Stuttgart. The tiny statuette is of a female with exaggerated breasts and vulva. According to Paul Mellars, one of the archaeologist twits who commented on the find for Nature, this makes the figurine “pornographic.” Nature is even titling its article, “Prehistoric Pin Up.” It’s the Venus of Willendorf double standard all over again. Ancient figures of naked pregnant women are interpreted by smirking male archaeologists as pornography, while equally sexualized images of men are assumed to depict gods or shamans. Or even hunters or warriors. Funny, huh?

Consider: phallic images from the Paleolithic are at least 28,000 years old. Neolithic cultures all over the world seemed to have a thing for sculptures with enormous erect phalluses. Ancient civilizations were awash in images of male genitalia, from the Indian lingam to the Egyptian benben to the Greek herm. The Romans even painted phalluses on their doors and wore phallic charms around their necks.

Ithyphallic figure from Lascaux, about 17,000 years old. Interpreted as a shaman.

But nobody ever interprets this ancient phallic imagery as pornography. Instead, it’s understood to indicate reverence for male sexual potency. No one, for example, has ever suggested that the Lascaux cave dude was a pin-up; he’s assumed to be a shaman. The ithyphallic figurines from the Neolithic — and there are many — are interpreted as gods. And everyone knows that the phalluses of ancient India and Egypt and Greece and Rome represented awesome divine powers of fertility and protection. Yet an ancient figurine of a nude woman — a life-giving woman, with her vulva ready to bring forth a new human being, and her milk-filled breasts ready to nourish that being — is interpreted as pornography. Just something for a man to whack off to. It’s not as if there’s no other context in which to interpret the figure. After all, the European Paleolithic is chock full of pregnant-looking female statuettes that are quite similar to this one. By the time we get to the Neolithic, the naked pregnant female is enthroned with lions at her feet, and it’s clear that people are worshipping some kind of female god.

Yet in the Science Now article, the archaeologist who found the figurine is talking about pornographic pin-ups: “I showed it to a male colleague, and his response was, ‘Nothing’s changed in 40,000 years.’” That sentence needs to be bronzed and hung up on a plaque somewhere, because you couldn’t ask for a better demonstration of the classic fallacy of reading the present into the past. The archaeologist assumes the artist who created the figurine was male; why? He assumes the motive was lust; why? Because that’s all he knows. To his mind, the image of a naked woman with big breasts and exposed vulva can only mean one thing: porn! Porn made by men, for men! And so he assumes, without questioning his assumptions, that the image must have meant the same thing 35,000 years ago. No other mental categories for “naked woman” are available to him. His mind is a closed box. This has been the central flaw of anthropology for as long there’s been anthropology. And even before: the English invaders of North America thought the Iroquois chiefs had concubines who accompanied them everywhere, because they had no other mental categories to account for well-dressed, important-looking women sitting in a council house. It’s the same fallacy that bedevils archaeologists who dig up male skeletons with fancy beads and conclude that the society was male dominant (because powerful people wear jewelry!), and at another site dig up female skeletons with fancy beads and conclude that this society, too, was male dominant (because women have to dress up as sex objects and trophy wives!). Male dominance is all they can imagine. And so no matter what they dig up, they interpret it to fit their mental model. It’s the fallacy that also drives evolutionary psychology, the central premise of which is that human beings in the African Pleistocene had exactly the same values, beliefs, prejudices, power struggles, goals, and needs as the middle-class white professors and students in a graduate psychology lab in modern-day Santa Barbara, California. And that these same factors are universal and unchanged and true for all time.

Hohle Fels phallus, about 28,000 years old. Interpreted as a symbolic object and …flint knapper. Yes.

That’s not science; it’s circular, self-serving propaganda. This little figurine from Hohle Fels, for example, is going to be used as “proof” that pornography is ancient and natural. I guarantee it. Having been interpreted by pornsick male archaeologists as pornography because that’s all they know, the statuette will now be trotted out by every every psycho and male supremacist on the planet as “proof” that pornography is eternal, that male dominance is how it’s supposed to be, and that feminists are crazy so shut the fuck up. Look for it in Steven Pinker’s next book. ***

P.S. My own completely speculative guess on the figurine is that it might be connected to childbirth rituals. Notice the engraved marks and slashes; that’s a motif that continues for thousands of years on these little female figurines. No one knows what they mean, but they meant something. They’re not just random cut marks. Someone put a great deal of work into this sculpture. Given that childbirth was incredibly risky for Paleolithic women, they must have prayed their hearts out for help and protection in that time. I can imagine an elder female shaman or artist carving this potent little figure, and propping it up somewhere as a focus for those prayers.

On the other hand, it is possible that it has nothing to do with childbearing or sexual behavior at all. The breasts and vulva may simply indicate who the figure is: the female god. Think of how Christ is always depicted with a beard, which is a male sexual characteristic, even though Christ isn’t about male sexuality. The beard is just a marker. Or, given the figurine’s exaggerated breasts, it may have something to do with sustenance: milk, food, nourishment.

The notion that some dude carved this thing to whack off to — when he was surrounded by women who probably weren’t wearing much in the way of clothes anyway — is laughable.

Pynk 🌸