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"Poverty is not simply having no money — it is isolation, vulnerability, humiliation and mistrust. It is not being able to differentiate between employers and exploiters and abusers. It is contempt for the simplistic illusion of meritocracy — the idea that what we get is what we work for. It is knowing that your mother, with her arthritic joints and her maddening insomnia and her post-traumatic stress disordered heart, goes to work until two in the morning waiting tables for less than minimum wage, or pushes a janitor’s cart and cleans the shit-filled toilets of polished professionals. It is entering a room full of people and seeing not only individual people, but violent systems and stark divisions. It is the violence of untreated mental illness exacerbated by the fact that reality, from some vantage points, really does resemble a psychotic nightmare. It is the violence of abuse and assault which is ignored or minimized by police officers, social services, and courts of law. Poverty is conflict. And for poor kids lucky enough to have the chance to “move up,” it is the conflict between remaining oppressed or collaborating with the oppressor."
Megan Lee (via sociolab)
(Source: docs.google.com, via thechocolatebrigade)
(Source: wolf-teeth, via figgums)
George R.R. Martin on writing women
- George Stroumboulopoulos: There's one thing that's interesting about your books. I noticed that you write women really well and really different. Where does that come from?
- George R.R. Martin: You know, I've always considered women to be people.
"But when we dramatize teenage sexuality by focusing only on its risks, we don’t give young people the tools to mature into sexually and emotionally healthy adults who we hope will one day find themselves in loving, committed, intimate, sexual relationships. It is also important to note that there are many valuable life lessons for youth to learn in the context of intimate relationships: communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, and developing partnerships. However well-intentioned, messages like “teens cannot control their raging hormones,” “boys just want one thing,” or “sex can ruin your life” don’t make for healthy conversations between parents and children."
PREACH!
Illuminate Blog » Talking to Teens about Sex (via riotandremember)
(via thechocolatebrigade)
This resonates with me.
(via etiquetteforalady)
[TW: rape] When I was 16, I had a fake I.D. and decided to go to a gay bar by myself because some friends bailed on me. While there, an older gentleman bought me a drink. He wasn’t a creeper, and he definitely wasn’t unattractive. I accepted the drink and began talking to him. No big deal. As the hour progressed, I felt myself feeling strange. I mentioned that I felt like I had a headache, and this guy helped guide me out of the bar. As we were walking down the street, the thought of, ‘Oh god, he’s drugged me, I’m going to die’ came to my head. I tried to get away, but I was so drugged up that I could barely walk, let alone speak. It also didn’t help that I had really large ‘goth’ platform shoes because I was going through a phase. Anyway, this guy brought me to his suv and began undressing me. As a final act of defiance, I hit him over the head with my platform shoe. He then punched me, and I remember thinking, ‘Why don’t they ever give workshops to gay guys about being victims of rape too?’ While I was as careful as possible, I never saw the guy slip something in the drink. I even watched the bar tender make the drink. Anyway, I lied there completely paralyzed while this pervert was lubing up. I locked eyes with his for a moment, and that’s when it happened. A very large and angry drag queen opened the door of the vehicle and beat the shit out of my attempted rapist. She and her other drag friends helped dress and care for me while the police arrived. I was saved by a group of guardian drag queens. They were basically the modern day ‘angels from heaven.’
God bless drag queens.
(Source: b-random, via thechocolatebrigade)
"I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game."
Toni Morrison (via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity)
(Source: queergiftedblack, via thechocolatebrigade)
(Source: grvnge, via barefoot-traveller)
"A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic."
Carl Sagan (via thechocolatebrigade)
"People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The future is an apathetic void, of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past."
Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
