“All of this adds up to the fourth myth of the Lolita Effect: that violence against women is sexy. Images of violence against women are pervasive: on billboards, in magazines, on television. A magazine ad for the upscale Dolce and Gabbana clothing line features a man having sex with a woman, while other men stand around watching. The scene implies a gang rape. The models in the ad are beautiful, and they look intense and turned on. The woman does not appear to be afraid. The gang rape is implicitly justified. An ad for Cesare Paciotti shoes shows a man stepping on a beautiful, red-lipsticked woman’s face. An ad for Radeon gaming software depicts a topless young woman with the product’s name branded on her back: the brand is red and raw. When I show these images in my classes, the students say they are ‘sexy’. I ask them to imagine a puppy, or a little boy, in these situations: they are shocked. The images of violence are arousing only when the violence is aimed at girls. The debates about sex and violence in the media have always hanged on the issue of causality: the media, it is widely argued, don’t cause people to go out and perpetrate violence. That’s true. Audiences don’t watch something in the media and then run out and imitate it immediately. Media influences are far more subtle and gradual than any simplistic ‘imitation theory’ could explain. While the media may not cause our behaviors, they are culture mythmakers: they supply us, socially, with ideas and scripts that seep into our consciousness over time, especially when the myths are constantly recircuclated in various forms. They accentuate certain aspects of social life and underplay others. They are a part of a larger culture in which these myths are already at work, making it possible for the myths to find fertile ground in which to take root and flourish. They can reinforce certain social patterns and trends, and invalidate others. They can gradually and insidiously shape our ways of thinking, our notions of what is normal and what is deviant, and our acceptance of behaviors and ideas that we see normalized on television, in films, and in other forms of popular culture. The myths are sugarcoated: they are aesthetically appealing, emotionally addictive, and framed as cutting-edge and subversive. But violence against women is neither edgy nor subversive: the violent abuse of women has been around for a long time. It’s important to recognize that media-generated sexual violence against girls highlights and perpetuates a well-established system of brutalization.”
— The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It by Meenakshi Gigi Durham, PH.D,, Chapter Five: The Fourth Myth – Violence is Sexy (pp. 148-149).
This white boy came over a month ago and asked why my pillow was shiny. I told him it was satin, because I need a satin case to maintain my natural hairstyle overnight.
This past weekend I stayed over at his house after a party because it was too late to go back to Manhattan, and when I got in bed I noticed that one of his pillowcases was satin.
I asked him why a white, nearly bald man needed a satin pillowcase and he said he bought it for me, in case I needed to sleep over sometime. He didn’t want me to ruin my hair on cotton.
I kissed the ever-loving shit out of him.
That’s how you show a brown girl you care.
Update: he’s my boyfriend. our 1 year anniversary is coming up next month.
New Update: We had our two year anniversary on August 9th.
We also have moved in together.
As we went through his stuff for the move, we found the last of those pillowcases he bought for me in 2015.
we talk a lot about how cis lesbians dont wanna date trans girls but why dont we unpack how yall cis gays wouldnt even be caught in a mile radius near a trans dude
lets revisit this ladies
yes, let’s talk about this because i’m sick of cis gay dudes asking my boyfriend if he minds or say he’s only okay with it cause he’s bi. i’m sick of them saying shit like “i’d never be able to do that to myself” and “even if he’s a boy he has, you know…girl parts…” or whatever. not to mention the amount of gay dudes who hit on me when i was passing only to find out i’m trans and laugh it off like they were joking or, worse, react with utter disgust. cis gays are just as capable of being transphobic as cis lesbians and the fact that people are only calling out women is kind of telling. a lot of gay men won’t even entertain the possibility of dating a trans man and their “reasons” are just excuses wrapped up in transphobia and, at times, misogyny. the community gives cis gay men a lot of free passes for their bigotry and i’m sick of it. we should really talk about this.
Shout out to people like me who have parents who are loving but are black holes of emotional labor… It took me a long time to realize that it’s okay to have mixed feelings about your parents, about your relationship with them.
Sometimes parents can love you but be somewhat toxic to you and your growth, and that’s a very hard realization to come to if you, like me, grew up extremely close to them.
Sometimes parents can love you genuinely but lack emotional maturity, forcing you to perform disproportionate amounts of emotional labor. Some parents manifest symptoms of their mental illness in ways that are toxic to your mental illness.
Some parents, like mine, try so hard to be good parents but fall back on habits of emotional manipulation because they haven’t processed their own traumas and are modeling behavior they grew up with. That doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, and it’s okay to feel exhausted and hurt when they betray you. You don’t have to forgive every mistake.
I want you to know that it’s okay to protect yourself, to need some space apart from them. The love you have for your parents is still valid, and you are making the right decision.
Placing a safe emotional distance between myself and my parents has been one of the most difficult, heartbreaking processes I’ve ever gone through… it hurts to try to curb the strength of your own natural empathy around people you love. It feels disingenuous to your heart’s natural state.
But I promise you, you are not hard-hearted or ungrateful, and you are not abandoning them. You are making a decision about your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
I know what it’s like in that confusing grey area of love mixed with guilt and anxiety, of exhaustion and quasi-manipulation and unreciprocated emotional labor, and I promise you, you are not alone.
In the penguin habitat at an aquarium in Sydney, Australia, love is in the air.
The newest penguin couple here are named Sphen and Magic, and the two males are about to take the leap into parenthood.
Sea Life Sydney Aquarium said they became inseparable before breeding season, “constantly seen waddling around and going for swims together.”
There’s a reason gentoo penguins have been called “one of the more romantic seabirds in the animal kingdom,” as Oceana explains, and it comes down to their nesting habits.
The species constructs nests out of pebbles, and according to Oceana, “individual pebbles may be shared between potential mates beforehand as a sign that they are interested in becoming a breeding pair.”
The couple, which have become known as Sphengic, have now gathered more pebbles than any other penguin pair at the aquarium.
The aquarium says their caretakers initially gave them a “dummy egg to allow them to practice incubating and develop their skills.”
It says it quickly became clear they were “absolute naturals,” which prompted the caretakers to give them a real egg from another pair of penguins that had two in their nest.
bongdanceking 