Keeping things the way they are because that’s just how you’re familiar with them is problematic, due to most everyone in comic fiction being a white, cis-gendered guy. It’s not an overtly racist distinction you’re making, which is why you seem to feel you’ve come to it without prejudicial racial bias (“similar conclusions can be reached by different arguments”), but it actually IS racist by way of exclusion. “Don’t do something directly racist, but also just keep things how they’ve always been” is racist [and heteronormative, and sexist, and cis-sexist, and so on] because “how things have always been” are white, cis-gendered, and male. Therefore, you prefer things to stay white, cis-gendered, and male. The world has changed, but you want these characters to persist as vestiges of an outdated, slanted view of society.

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nanner:

tesseralharmonics:

the2ndsaint:

pati79:

jadelyn:

sonneillonv:

autumn-and-eve:

erinsmomma:

How can someone stand behind abortion, when you have a life inside of you that God created for you? How can you say that this life isn’t worth it? If you can’t take care of the baby for whatever circumstances than there is always adoption available to couples who can’t conceive, but still want the joy of being parents. OPEN YOUR EYES! God has bigger plans for us all that we don’t even realize the picture.

Excuse me but it appears your baby is actually upside down
Did you take Sex Ed freshman year because babies come out headfirst

Hi, OP!  As someone who was given up for adoption, allow me to call bullshit on your little post there!  You see, when I was adopted, I was a white-skinned, healthy, neurotypical infant, which basically put me at the top of the list, right underneath white-skinned, healthy, neurotypical MALE infants!  There’s only one kind of infant people wanted to adopt more than me!  I was SOOO lucky!  But if you actually bothered to look at the information readily available on the interwebs, you would be aware that the majority of people who are forced to rely on abortion for family planning are poor people and people of color.  Of course, those two demographics intersect, thanks to the institutionalized racism of our society!  Neat huh?!

Of course, even babies of color are not in high demand with couples looking to adopt.  Many who do want to adopt outside their race choose to go outside the country, where laws are less strict and the process is often less expensive.  Of course, most of the infants adopted this way are obtained in unscrupulous fashion, but who cares about that when you’re saving a little Korean or African baby from the horrible fate of growing up in Korea or Africa???  And all those children who have birth defects, are born with diseases or disabilities, or have other issues… WELL.  Who wants to invest that kind of expense and time?  Why would you adopt someone broken, LOLOL?!

Granted, there are some wonderful people who understand the system a little better, and make it a point to try and give POC and disabled children a good home.  But they make up a very small fraction of potential adopters!  This difference in supply and demand leaves a lot of children stuck in the foster system, where their chances of being adopted diminish with every passing year, and their chances of being physically or sexually abused INCREASE!  Isn’t that wonderful?

And of course, we haven’t even talked about the person who is giving birth to the baby!  I know you probably think pregnancy is a wonderful, happy time, and for some people it is, but it is also one of the greatest health risks a person can take. I love my son very much, and from the day I found out I was pregnant with him, I wanted him!  But I also nearly died giving birth to him.  You see, I had pre-eclampsia, the most commonly fatal birth complication in the world.  My blood pressure was 180 over 130!  At twenty-two years old, I was actually headed for a stroke, hah hah!  How funny is that?  And all it took was missing a single pre-natal appointment during which my blood pressure rose to dangerous levels and my body tried to kill both me and my son.  Those seizures sure were fun, as was the emergency c-section performed without anesthetic!  And being chained down while the operation was performed, because I was delirious and wouldn’t stop trying to fight off the doctors, that was a BLAST!  It was great for my husband too, since he almost lost his wife and child in just forty-five minutes.  You can imagine how thrilled he is at the prospect of me ever getting pregnant again.  Babies are certainly cute, but pregnancy can have massive health complications, and I know it’s such a bummer, but they are PERMANENT.  :(  My abdominal muscles never recovered from being hacked through with a scalpel, and the flood of hormones caused by late pregnancy have changed things from heartburn (never used to have it, now, all the time!) to my emotional reactions (I cry when I see pictures of kittens now.  I used to be tough).  These are changes I did not ask for, cannot control, and cannot fix!  And many people go through worse!  I know, right?  Unbelievable, but go look up the word ‘episiotomy’ and then look up ‘birth rape’ and I’m afraid you’ll find some stuff that just isn’t very shiny.  Plus, the studies actually show that people who carry a baby to term, give birth, then give it up for adoption suffer HIGHER rates of post-pregnancy complications like post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis, general depression, and other mental health issues.  Adoption actually isn’t good for the person giving birth at all!

I’m afraid the picture you chose to use there is also pretty disingenuous.  I know, I know, it seems like nitpicking.  I’m not trying to be mean!  :(  But that picture shows a fully developed, viable infant, and most abortions are performed when the fetus isn’t even a fetus - it’s a blastocyst.  That’s just a clump of cells.  Seriously! You can totally find pictures on the interwebs and they’re not even gross, LOLOL!  Later-term abortions are usually performed because of health complications, though some of our intrepid state legislators are trying to change all that!  They care so much about people who are pregnant, you see, that they want to force them to carry dead or dying fetuses inside them until their body either becomes infected while it rots in their tummies (this is called sepsis, and it makes people very sick, and can even kill them!), or forces it out naturally in a gush of blood and fluids!  Isn’t that so caring of them?  I’m so glad they’re around to make those decisions for me!  And if a pregnant person is not allowed to terminate an unviable fetus, in some states, they have to carry the child to term, give birth to it, and then watch it die in their arms because its lungs weren’t developed, or its brain formed outside its skull, or any of a million possible birth defects that will kill you just as quick as lickity-split!  Isn’t that wild?!  Of course, these people go through terrible grief, and as I mentioned, some of them may get sick and die from not being able to abort dead or dying fetuses.  But I guess that’s just A-okay with you, huh?

Basically, I think before you suggest adoption as a universal alternative, you should actually go do some research on adoption.  And before you condemn abortion, you should do some research on abortions - not the stuff your church is giving you, the stuff the real doctors are saying.  Go to Planned Parenthood (if they haven’t all been closed down, ROFLMAO!) and request whatever information they have on the process, the statistics of who has abortions and why… and actually, all of that is on the interwebs!  Isn’t technology AMAZING?

And in closing, since I’ve been asked this question many times and I know it’s coming?  Yes, I realize I am here talking to you because I was not aborted.  But the thing is, if my mother had chosen abortion, I wouldn’t know the difference, so it wouldn’t matter to me.  And if she decided that choice was best for her, then that choice would have been best for her, and I would never want to take that choice away from her.  As it is, since I was given up for adoption, and since I have seen the statistics on how badly people who give their children up for adoption suffer, I have spent much of my adult life worrying about her, whether she’s healthy, whether she’s okay, and feeling that if she did suffer from any of the common post-birth symptoms, it is at least partially my fault, even though she made that decision on her own.  Which is silly, I know, but at some point, all children have to stare down the consequences of their parents’ having them.  For some, that’s poverty.  For others, a life-time of their parents struggling to treat and care for a severe illness or disability.  For others, it’s wondering if their mother ever got over giving them away, and wishing you could reach out and assure her that it’s okay, she doesn’t have to be haunted.

May your birth control never fail!

(via newton-pulsifer)

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informate:

From the Pew Hispanic Center:

When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity

Nearly four decades after the United States government mandated the use of the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” to categorize Americans who trace their roots to Spanish-speaking countries, a new nationwide survey of Hispanic adults finds that these terms still haven’t been fully embraced by Hispanics themselves. A majority (51%) say they most often identify themselves by their family’s country of origin; just 24% say they prefer a pan-ethnic label.

Moreover, by a ratio of more than two-to-one (69% versus 29%), survey respondents say that the more than 50 million Latinos in the U.S. have many different cultures rather than a shared common culture. Respondents do, however, express a strong, shared connection to the Spanish language. More than eight-in-ten (82%) Latino adults say they speak Spanish, and nearly all (95%) say it is important for future generations to continue to do so.

Hispanics are also divided over how much of a common identity they share with other Americans. About half (47%) say they consider themselves to be very different from the typical American. And just one-in-five (21%) say they use the term “American” most often to describe their identity. On these two measures, U.S.-born Hispanics (who now make up 48% of Hispanic adults in the country) express a stronger sense of affinity with other Americans and America than do immigrant Hispanics.

The survey finds that, regardless of where they were born, large majorities of Latinos say that life in the U.S. is better than in their family’s country of origin. Also, nearly nine-in-ten (87%) say it is important for immigrant Hispanics to learn English in order to succeed in the U.S.

This report explores Latinos’ attitudes about their identity, including race; their language usage patterns; their core values; and their views about the U.S. and their families’ country of origin. It is based on findings from a national bilingual survey of 1,220 Hispanic adults conducted Nov. 9 through Dec. 7, 2011, by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

The report, “When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity,” authored by Paul Taylor, Director, Pew Hispanic Center, Mark Hugo Lopez, Associate Director, Pew Hispanic Center, Jessica Hamar Martínez, Research Associate, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, and Gabriel Velasco, Research Analyst, Pew Hispanic Center, is available at the Pew Hispanic Center’s website, www.pewhispanic.org.

The Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, is a nonpartisan, non-advocacy research organization based in Washington, D.C. and is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

(via joeyliebgott)

Today is the anniversary of the beginning of Syria’s revolution. So far eight to nine thousand people have been killed and countless wounded. 230,000 have fled their homes. The opposition has planned rallies to mark the day, although the Syrian army is bolstering its presence in opposition strongholds, making it difficult. Activist Adel El-Omari said: “It is clear that they have tightened the siege because they are worried about what people will do for the anniversary.”

One of the latest pieces of news out of Syria is the revelation of the contents of the Assads’ emails, as obtained by the Guardian. There are several thousand of them, revealing the Assads’ lives of casual luxury, ordering apps off iTunes while their country erupts.

Photos: Homs. Feb 15th. Satellite photo/AP, Idlib. Feb 26th. Rodrigo Abd/AP, Bab Tudmor, Homs. Feb 25th. Stringer/AFP, Idlib. March 10th. Rodrigo Abd/AP, Al-Qusayr. Feb 24th. Alessio Romenzi for TIME.

[Al Jazeera, AP, Guardian]

(via valjeans)

To all those who don’t think the rape joke was a problem, or rape jokes are a problem.

I get it, you’re a decent guy. I can even believe it. You’ve never raped anybody. You would NEVER rape anybody. You’re upset that all these feminists are trying to accuse you of doing something or connect you to doing something that, as far as you’re concerned, you’ve never done and would never condone.

And they’ve told you about triggers, and PTSD, and how one in six women is a survivor, and you get it. You do. But you can’t let every time someone gets all upset get in the way of you having a good time, right?

So fine. If all those arguments aren’t going anything for you, let me tell you this. And I tell you this because I genuinely believe you mean it when you say you don’t want to hurt anybody, and you don’t see the harm, and that it’s important to you to do your best to be a decent and good person. And I genuinely believe you when you say you would never associate with a rapist and you think rape really is a very bad thing.

Because this is why I refuse to take rape jokes sitting down-

6% of college age men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word “rape” isn’t used in the description of the act.

6% of Penny Arcade’s target demographic will admit to actually being rapists when asked.

A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?

Rapists do.

They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.

Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.

If one in twenty guys is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, really cool guy, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can’t tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. It’s not like they announce themselves.

But, here’s the thing. It’s very likely that in some of these interactions with these guys, at some point or another someone told a rape joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they didn’t mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed.

And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed?

That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.

You. The rapist’s comrade.

And if that doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach, if that doesn’t make you want to throw up, if that doesn’t disturb you or bother you or make you feel like maybe you should at least consider not participating in that kind of humor anymore…

Well, maybe you aren’t as opposed to rapists as you claim.

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paperbackmountain:

panstransanddoctorwhofans:

• Depression Hotline: 1-630-482-9696
• Suicide Hotline: 1-800-784-8433, 1-800-273-8255
• LifeLine: 1-800-273-8255
• Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386
• Sexuality Support: 1-800-246-7743
• Eating Disorders Hotline: 1-847-831-3438
• Rape and Sexual Assault: 1-800-656-4673
• Grief Support: 1-650-321-5272
• Runaway: 1-800-843-5200, 1-800-843-5678, 1-800-621-4000
• Exhale: After Abortion Hotline/Pro-Voice: 1-866-439-4253
• I know that a lot of these hotlines don’t deal with self-harm in particular and that self-harm doesn’t always lead to suicide, but it is still harm and you can find help from these places for a variety of things. Self-harm doesn’t just start or stop. There is help and there are people to listen. I promise.

UK Numbers

• SupportLine Telephone Helpline- 020 8554 9004
• B-eat (Beat Eating Disorders)- 0845 634 1414
• National Centre for Eating Disorders- 01372 469 493
• First Steps to Freedom (Anxiety problems including anorexia and bulimia)- 0845 120 2916
• OCD Action- 0845 3906232
• Aware Defeat Depression- 08451 202961
• Breathing Space Scotland (Helpline for young men 12-40 years who are experiencing difficulties and unhappiness)- 0800 83 85 87
• CALL Community Advice and Listening Line (Wales)- 0800 132737
• Childline- 0800 1111
• Depression Alliance- 0845 123 2320
• Depression Alliance Scotland- 0845 123 2320
• Get Connected- 0808 808 4994
• Manic Depression Fellowship- 0845 634 0540

(via newton-pulsifer)

Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you’re alone, if you’re with a stranger, if you’re in a group, if you’re in a group of strangers, if it’s dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you’re carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you’re wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who’s around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who’s at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn’t follow all the rules it’s your fault.

IS THERE SUCH THING AS “REVERSE RACISM”?

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.