223 posts
Latest Posts by rachelcarrot - Page 2
Some messages left by queer Palestinians who face annihilation by the Israeli government in their retaliation against Hamas. The Israeli government has dropped thousand of bombs, leveled streets, cut off water, gas, and electricity, bombed hospitals, ambulances, mandated evacuation and then bomb evacuees. Innocent people are dying in the mass.
There is no need for this government to employ these acts of collective punishment. The same logic that is used to condemn the acts of Hamas, should be used to condemn the actions of the Israeli government. No one deserves to slaughtered and dehumanized.
And keep in mind, that this terror is not unusual for the Palestinian people, and this is another horrific event in a decades long oppression and apartheid.
every so often im struck by the memory of one of my college professors getting very angry with our class (art history of pompeii 250) because when she excitedly detailed the ingenious roman invention of heated floors in bathhouses via hearths in small crawlspaces, we asked who was tending the fires. she said "oh, slaves i suppose. but that isnt the point". and we said that it actually very much was the point. she had just told us that in roman society there were dozens of people, maybe hundreds, who spent every day of their enslaved lives crawling in cramped, hot, smoky tunnels to light fires to warm pools of water (which they were not allowed to swim in). how could that not be the point?
she wanted us to focus on the art, on the innovation of heated plumbing, on the tiles and decorations of the bathhouses, and all we wanted to do was learn more about the people under the floors. and she didn't know anything more about that. in fact, she said she thought we were focusing too much on superfluous details.
it feels almost hokey to put too fine a point on the idea im getting at here but i will anyway: There are a lot of people who are still under the floors. all these beautiful, convenient, brilliant innovations of modern society (think fast fashion, chatgpt, uber, doordash) are still powered by people working in inhumane, untenable conditions.
the people who run these systems want you to focus on the good - who doesnt love warm water? - but if anything is going to improve or change in our lifetimes, you need to examine these things with an attentive, critical, and empathetic eye. and for fucks sake stop ordering from amazon
Do you think Bella is a strong or a weak female protagonist?
You've hit my word vomit button/one of my pet peeves, anon, in that I utterly despise breaking down female characters by being "strong" or "weak".
Because almost always it breaks down to this idea that there's only a certain type of woman that's legitimate and, curiously enough, it's a woman who takes on traditionally male characteristics or bucks feminine trappings.
There has been a long run of female characters caring about boys, makeup, clothes, fashion, things that are "girly" are made fun of or seen as weaker or lesser.
See Lavender Brown and Parvati in Harry Potter, ruthlessly mocked in comparison to Hermione Granger our more masculine acting golden girl who cares about sensible things like her studies.
It's a lot of Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?
Where it really gets bad for me though is female characters described as weak are usually described as such for daring to be trapped in situations they cannot easily escape or having mental health issues difficult to cope with.
Cinderella is weak because she is abused by her relatives and lives in poverty and her one chance at escaping this is a dance. This is why we get modern interpretations of Cinderella where she tells us she can leave the house any time she pleases, because she's strong and independent, she just chooses not to for some reason. But the important thing is she could leave, because she's proactive!
Wendy from the film version of The Shining is weak because she's horrified at trying to hit her abusive and insane husband with a baseball bat in a truly terrifying situation.
In the case of Bella Swan, she despises herself entirely and a strong woman would never do that!
It's supposed to be empowering, but what it feels like instead is it's promoting the unintentional message that Strong Women (TM) would never get themselves into a bad situation where they feel trapped and or hopeless, they never have debilitating mental health conditions like depression or even suffer from low self-esteem.
To pull another Harry Potter reference, Dumbledore tells Harry that Merope is a weak woman, compared to his own mother Lily, for doing something as presumptuous as dying in childbirth. Because you see, only weak women do something as silly as die when having babies.
To make a long rant short: this isn't even an argument I subscribe to.
to put it simply, the right people will get you. you will not have to fight for breadcrumbs of love. you will not have to beg for attention. the right people will love you freely and easily, and will carve out space in their life for you. the right people will check up on you on your bad days & laugh with you on your good. you will find friends who embrace every part of you, and who will push you to grow. someday, any trace of those who hurt you will be filled with warmth from those who never will.
The EU is doing a big survey for LGBTQ people who live in the EU about how it is for them right now. That's the kind of survey that's used for official reports and for laws so it's super important that it has as many people taking it as possible. You can take it in every EU language. (You can change the language in the top right corner) Share it with your friends!
https://www.lgbtiqsurvey.eu/lgbtiq
I’d best be seeing that anti JKR energy for this twilight show too bc Smeyer continuing to profit off the Quileute tribe is not cute
The LGBTQ community has seen controversy regarding acceptance of different groups (bisexual and transgender individuals have sometimes been marginalized by the larger community), but the term LGBT has been a positive symbol of inclusion and reflects the embrace of different identities and that we’re stronger together and need each other. While there are differences, we all face many of the same challenges from broader society.
In the 1960′s, in wider society the meaning of the word gay transitioned from ‘happy’ or ‘carefree’ to predominantly mean ‘homosexual’ as they adopted the word as was used by homosexual men, except that society also used it as an umbrella term that meant anyone who wasn’t cisgender or heterosexual. The wider queer community embraced the word ‘gay’ as a mark of pride.
The modern fight for queer rights is considered to have begun with The Stonewall Riots in 1969 and was called the Gay Liberation Movement and the Gay Rights Movement.
The acronym GLB surfaced around this time to also include Lesbian and Bisexual people who felt “gay” wasn’t inclusive of their identities.
Early in the gay rights movement, gay men were largely the ones running the show and there was a focus on men’s issues. Lesbians were unhappy that gay men dominated the leadership and ignored their needs and the feminist fight. As a result, lesbians tended to focus their attention on the Women’s Rights Movement which was happening at the same time. This dominance by gay men was seen as yet one more example of patriarchy and sexism.
In the 1970′s, sexism and homophobia existed in more virulent forms and those biases against lesbians also made it hard for them to find their voices within women’s liberation movements. Betty Friedan, the founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), commented that lesbians were a “lavender menace” that threatened the political efficacy of the organization and of feminism and many women felt including lesbians was a detriment.
In the 80s and 90s, a huge portion of gay men were suffering from AIDS while the lesbian community was largely unaffected. Lesbians helped gay men with medical care and were a massive part of the activism surrounding the gay community and AIDS. This willingness to support gay men in their time of need sparked a closer, more supportive relationship between both groups, and the gay community became more receptive to feminist ideals and goals.
Approaching the 1990′s it was clear that GLB referred to sexual identity and wasn’t inclusive of gender identity and T should be added, especially since trans activist have long been at the forefront of the community’s fight for rights and acceptance, from Stonewall onward. Some argued that T should not be added, but many gay, lesbian and bisexual people pointed out that they also transgress established gender norms and therefore the GLB acronym should include gender identities and they pushed to include T in the acronym.
GLBT became LGBT as a way to honor the tremendous work the lesbian community did during the AIDS crisis.
Towards the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, movements took place to add additional letters to the acronym to recognize Intersex, Asexual, Aromantic, Agender, and others. As the acronym grew to LGBTIQ, LGBTQIA, LGBTQIAA, many complained this was becoming unwieldy and started using a ‘+’ to show LGBT aren’t the only identities in the community and this became more common, whether as LGBT+ or LGBTQ+.
In the 2010′s, the process of reclaiming the word “queer” that began in the 1980′s was largely accomplished. In the 2020′s the LGBTQ+ acronym is used less often as Queer is becoming the more common term to represent the community.
it's really disappointing how people's critique of jkr starts and ends with her transphobia, and they completely ignore her blatant antisemitism, racism, homophobia, slavery apologism, sympathy for the wizard nazis, (the wizard nazi incel) snape's redemption, the villain of fantastic beasts trying to stop the holocaust, and the new game literally being a rehash of the blood libel myth.
This shall not be forgotten. ❤🥺
Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.
Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.
(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)
Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.
All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.
I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.
Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.
And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.
Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.
I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.
Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.
No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.
They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.
This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.
In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.
At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.
I think the least we can do is remember them for it.
there actually is a right side in the dance and that side is the blacks. i don’t care about your ‘everyone is equally bad you’re not meant to root for anyone’ take that you copied from incel podcasters because you’re unable to comprehend the story on your own. it does not matter how much you hide behind ‘theyre both bad bcs theyre monarchs and feudalism is bad’, everyone knows you don’t really mean it since you don’t have the same energy for stannis or any other monarch/feudal lord that you stan. the reality is that you think rhaenyra should have given up her claim to the throne and go be a tradwife popping out sons for some lord but you can’t say that out loud without sounding like a misogynist (that you are anyway). so instead you hide behind fake neutrality and suddenly are a staunch opponent of feudalism while of course only scrutinizing rhaenyra and her side, ignoring that all of their questionable acts are in response to the greens instigating a civil war that wouldn’t have happened if rhaenyra was a man. blood and cheese wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for aemond chasing 13 yo peace envoy lucerys on the biggest dragon in the world and luke wouldn’t be there if aegon wasn’t unlawfully crowned on the basis of thinking having a dick makes you inherently better fit to rule.
the root of the war has always been misogyny and if you’re a decent person you’d think that usurping someone on the basis of them being a woman & scrutinizing her sex life as a justification is bad. sadly most of you don’t think that and believe in earnest that she deserved to see her three sons die and be violently murdered bcs she dared to spread her legs for someone else than her gay husband. but yeah sure let’s reduce it all to who’s your favorite war criminal.
Cute kitties
Dear whoever is reading this: I wish you a life full of warmth and happiness and love. I hope you’re okay. And if you aren’t now, you will be.
hey do you think you could expand a bit on separating the art from the artist? clearly you’ve done it with jk rowling but what are your thoughts on it as a general idea?
Okay, but you’re not going to like the answer.
Here’s the truth: you can’t separate the art from the artist. Not entirely. HP Lovecraft was an incredibly talented, but much more incredibly racist man. It would nice to say you don’t agree with his views but you can enjoy his works without that leaking in but.... well, I’m afraid that would be misunderstanding his books entirely.
Consider, for a second, that Lovecraft’s works were horror stories about extradimensional creatures having mutant children with humans; they were about invasions from distant aliens; they were about the purity of quaint, white, American towns being tainted. Now consider how this may have all been influenced by the fact that he just simply despised anybody who wasn’t white. Consider how his opinions on “mixing the races” might feed into this; consider why being unable to maintain the “purity” of white Americans was the scariest thing of all to him.
This extends to Rowling too.
I would love to say we can just acknowledge that she is an awful, racist, antisemitic, transphobic person and then say “but at least her books are good,” because, well, they are, aren’t they? I would say so, for sure. But to suggest that one can separate her from them is.... ridiculous, and it’s an insult to fans, can know and do better.
Consider why an antisemitic woman wrote about a species of goblins who live among us, but who for the most part keep to themselves and are maybe a little discriminated against on an individual level, but also hold all the cards, all the money, run the banks.
Consider why a racist woman would write about a species of slaves who loved being enslaved, who enjoyed working for no pay, and cleaning up after humans, with the only small caveat of that they didn’t want to be beaten. Imagine that only the most radical of their species wanted to be free, and he still spent the rest of his life working for no pay and helping out a little white boy and his friends wherever he could. Consider why the only person in the story who thought they should be free, that they should have rights, was treated as an overzealous joke, who was acting against the wishes of those slaves who really LOVE being enslaved. Consider that Rowling went on to say that she kind of considers that girl to be black, now.
Consider why JK Rowling, an open and proud transphobe, wrote Rita Skeeter as having a large square jaw, thick “manly” hands, and dressing incredibly gaudily with the most obvious fake nails and fake teeth and fake hair and fake everything. Consider why a woman who tweets about how trans women are “foxes pretending to be hens to get in the hen house” might write this Rita Skeeter character to then illegally transform her body in order to spy on children.
Harry Potter is full of Rowling’s bigotry, start to finish. Not even tangentially, like, “oh the goblins are bad, Rita Skeeter is bad, the house elves are bad, but most of it’s good!” because the deeper you dig and the longer you think the more you realise the entire story is based on her prejudices.
Harry Potter pretends to be an aracial story about found family, but if that were true, why are Harry’s distant ancestors important to who he is today even in the seventh book? Why does Harry have to live with his cousin and aunt and uncle? Because magic inherently prefers blood ties. Whilst Rowling was writing a story that seemed to say, “your heritage is not that important and doesn’t make you better than others” she was still writing a story about a boy who got all of his money through his bloodline, who was protected by living with his bloodline, no matter how evil, who was uniquely able to stop Voldemort because his bloodline passed down the invisibility cloak for generations and generations. Any step Harry takes he is compared to his perfect parents who were exactly like him — he looks just like his father, but he has his mother’s eyes, you know! — consider WHY a woman who is racist might’ve written a story like this. A story that on its surface, condemns a blood caste, but still in every step it takes, validates the idea that blood is thicker than water, and your geneological origin is what makes you special.
You can enjoy Harry Pottwr, of course you can. There are fantastic parts. I love a small group of teenagers deciding to become anarchist rebels and train to fight against fascism in secret. I love the murder mystery plots, I love how the series tells kids that it’s a good thing to be brave, and a good thing to fight injustice, and a good thing to challenge the government. But I cannot separate it from its author because it is such a product of its author. All of the structures of the world, the way things work in the universe, are drenched in Rowling’s beliefs, her bigotries. Of course they are: she made them.
Again. This doesn’t mean you cannot enjoy it. But I think we are past the day where we can pretend that disavowing a bigoted author is enough, and that that somehow separates the text from its bigotry. I think we are past the day where we can pretend that Harry Potter isn’t a deeply, inherently bigoted piece of media. Even the bits we love. I think we are beyond the day where we can truthfully pretend to separate it from her, because she is present through all of it. We MUST recognise its flaws. We MUST admit that she is in every part of it.
Have you never imagined yourself… on the Iron Throne? (insp)
Happy birthday, Werner!
The chronicle of the monk Herbert of Reichenau for the year 1021 ends “My brother Werner was born on November 1.“
1021 was not an uneventful year. The emperor began a campaign into Italy. Illustrious abbots died. There was an earthquake. But Herbert took the time to note, at the end of the year, that his brother was born.
Of such acts of tenderness is history made.
[image ID: Text reading Texas State Aquarium staff stated that the animals have been getting a little restless. One of the employees had an idea to let some of the land animals spend time with some of the sea animals, and it has worked out brilliantly.
Putting the sloths near the dolphins was the biggest surprise of all. The dolphins are absolutely delighted with the sloths, and the sloths, normally very quiet animals, have been squeaking replies back to the dolphins for hours at a time. Who would have guessed these two species would be such a great match?
There is a photo of two dolphins in a large pool, their heads peeking out above the water to look at a brown sloth, who is hanging on a branch. End ID]
Friendship with sun started
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Please scroll quietly
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“Friendly husky affectionately thanking a firefighter who helped them out after the pupper managed to get stuck on a roof”
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