- Set up webcam in your roommate’s dorm in the hopes of catching him in the act of having intimate relations with a man, then telling your friends all about it in a “Eeeew, look, he’s GAY!” manner, leading your roommate to kill himself by jumping off a bridge: sentenced to 30…
Fear is why these men “officially” investigate Girl Scouts while perversely shielding child rapists. It’s why they obsess over your “purity.” It’s why they segregate you in public and private spaces. It’s why they instruct girls and boys that girls’ bodies are either shameful and dirty or sacred and belonging to men. Fear motivates them to teach that you pollute others by your very nature. It makes them intent on making sure you stay home and not be fully engaged in the world. It leads them to sanction marriages of 8-year-olds to old men. It convinces them that rape and its consequences are a “gift from God.” It’s why they empower others to stone you to death and disfigure you with acid.
Even “beating the gay” out of children, especially boys who are “more like” you, is aimed at you. Because if boys are “more like girls,” something these men believe is fundamentally inferior, then you can be “more like boys.” That causes ambiguity and destroys their carefully defined hierarchies and that is intolerable to them.
Fear is why they insist there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Don’t believe them. Fear is why they want you to cover your body. There is nothing wrong with your body, and your body is not to blame. Whether you chose to expose your body or to cover it up, consider the degree to which either choice is defined by a reduction of your character to narrow sexuality by a culture that refuses to hold men accountable for their actions and requires you to either radically display ourself for men’s pleasure or withdraw from the world and be held in reserve. Either way, ask who is defining your worth and by what measure. Fear is why they tell you you are so different from boys. You, and the boys you know, understand that your bodies are different, but that you are far more alike than dissimilar. Threatened, insecure, adult men say otherwise. Don’t give in. Even if you’re quiet. The differences these religious authorities exaggerate are simply pillars of oppression used to teach boys and girls that women’s subjugation is “natural” and “divine.” Reject them and their ideas.
(via randomactsofchaos)
A timely piece:
In all these law enforcement schemes the alleged terrorist masterminds end up seeming, when the full story comes out, unable to terrorize their way out of a paper bag without law enforcement tutelage. (“They teach you how to make all this stuff out of simple household items,” one of the kids says on a recording quoted in the FBI affidavit about a book he has just discovered, The Anarchist Cookbook. Someone asks him how much it says explosives cost. “I’m not sure,” he responds, “I just downloaded it last night.”) It’s a perfect example of how post-9/11 fear made law enforcement tactics seem acceptable that were previously beyond the pale. Previously, however, the targets have been Muslims; now they’re white kids from Ohio. And maybe you could argue that this is acceptable, if the feds were actually acting out of a good-faith assessment of what threats are imminent and which are not. But that’s not what they’re doing at all. Instead, they are arrogating to themselves a downright Orwellian power – the power to deploy the might of the State to shape a fundamental narrative about which ideas Americans must be most scared of, and which ones they should not fear much at all, independent of the relative objective dangerousness of the people who hold those ideas.
(via randomactsofchaos)
![thedailywhat:
Weekend Read: Carlos DeLuna was convicted of murdering Wanda Lopez in a February 1983 robbery in Corpus Christi.
DeLuna was executed by lethal injection in December 1989.
DeLuna was innocent.
[atlantic]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m48qi8D2rm1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
Weekend Read: Carlos DeLuna was convicted of murdering Wanda Lopez in a February 1983 robbery in Corpus Christi.
DeLuna was executed by lethal injection in December 1989.
DeLuna was innocent.
[atlantic]
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton of D.C. received 89 percent of the vote in her last election, yet anti-choice lawmakers refused to allow her to testify on a bill that specifically targets women in D.C.
This is another Sandra Fluke moment.
Oh, look, DC women being used as a political pawn by fucking assholes WHO DON’T LIVE HERE.
I PAY MY FUCKING TAXES, I WANT MY FUCKING REPRESENTATION.
(via randomactsofchaos)
Remember the housing meltdown ? Tough to forget isn’t it. The formula for the housing boom and bust was simple. A lot of easy money being lent to buyers who couldn’t afford the money they were borrowing. That money was then spent on homes with the expectation that the price of the home would go up and it could easily be flipped or refinanced at a profit. Who cares if you couldn’t afford the loan. As long as prices kept on going up, everyone was happy. And prices kept on going up. And as long as pricing kept on going up real estate agents kept on selling homes and finding money for buyers. Until the easy money stopped. When easy money stopped, buyers couldn’t sell. They couldn’t refinance. First sales slowed, then prices started falling and then the housing bubble burst. Housing prices crashed. We know the rest of the story. We are still mired in the consequences. Can someone please explain to me how what is happening in higher education is any different ?
(via randomactsofchaos)
About half of our world-leading prison population is in jail for non-violent drug offenses. Americans have also been arrested for handing out free food in a park. Mothers in Ohio and Connecticut were jailed for enrolling their kids in out-of-district schools. As of 2003 in California there were 344 individuals serving sentences of 25 years or more for shoplifting as a third offense, in many cases after two non-violent offenses.
How does the market deal with this steady tide of petty crime? It strives for more. The new trend of private prisons is dependent on maintaining a sizable prison population to guarantee profits, with no incentive for rehabilitation.
As the number of inmates has surged, the people who devastated countless American lives “get out of jail free.” The savings and loan fraud cost the nation between $300 billion and $500 billion, about 100 times more than the total cost of burglaries in 2010. The financial system bailout has already cost the country $3 trillion. Goldman Sachs packaged bad debt, sold it under a different name, persuaded ratings services to label it AAA, and then bet against their own financial creation by selling it short. Other firms accused of fraud and insider trading were Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, Bank of America, Countrywide Financial, and Wells Fargo. The New York Times reported in 2008 that the Justice Department had postponed the bribery or fraud prosecutions of over 50 corporations, choosing instead to enter into agreements involving fines and ‘monitoring’ periods.
(via violentopinions)
Last weekend, Melissa examined the case against Marissa Alexander, the Jacksonville mother of three who fired a single bullet into her kitchen ceiling two years ago to warn her husband, Rico Gray, against continuing his physical attack on her. Gray, who reacted in violent anger after discovering that Alexander texted pictures of their newborn child to her ex-husband,spoke out earlier this week in an interview with TheLoop21:
“Personally, I wish she would have taken the three years,” Gray said. “I don’t wish 20 years on no one.”
He’s referring to the plea deal that Alexander reportedly turned down, a deal that took into account Gray’s history of violence. Alexander presumably cast that deal aside because she genuinely believed that she was standing her ground — both figuratively, and legally. But Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” castle-doctrine law somehow didn’t apply to her, despite the fact that her case appears to fit the statute to a T.
She was convicted of three counts of aggravated assault in a matter of minutes — and today, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison, a sentence she will appeal…
(Source: drunkonstevphen, via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)
Congress is super-duper rich
CNNMoney created this graphic based on the Center for Responsive Politics’ congressional wealth research.
Members of Congress are much richer than you and me.
With a median net worth of $878,500, Democratic lawmakers were actually worth more than nine times the typical American household in 2010. Not bad for the party that positions itself as the defender of the middle class.
And 21 congressional Democrats have average assets of more than $10 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which analyzed politicians’ financial disclosure forms.
Oh and also: The 10 richest members of Congress voted 100% to extend the Bush tax cuts.
