eenzijdig:

when kristin chang said godhood is just like girlhood: a begging to be believed or when laurie penny said it’s no surprise that so many women and girls have control issues around their bodies or when fiona apple said there’s no hope for women or when elana dykewomon said almost every woman i have ever met has a secret belief that she is just on the edge of madness or when carolyn gage said you can terrorize her with her own body and then she will torture herself or when angela carter said i often felt like a female impersonator or when leslie feinberg said i don’t feel like a man trapped in a woman’s body i just feel trapped

iashvee:

geminigeek:

dendritic-trees:

elodieunderglass:

oh. ohhhhhhhhh. oh nooooooooooooooo

[A mom and baby otter are floating together. The baby otter is sleeping on his mom’s tummy so he’s still all dry and fluffy.  She keeps giving him little otter kisses.]

Now this is quality content.

my heart feels so warm seeing this

spooniestrong:

cutlerydeficient:

howling-fucking-fantods:

escavel:

sopphistries:

tittyrants:

fire-lord-frowny:

It really, REALLY bothers me when I hear people frame climate change and other environmental crises as something that everyday, average-ass people are responsible for, and not corporations and entire governments. 

Like literally, how can a regular-ass person ~opt out~ of all damaging behaviors while still being able to function in society? 

You literally can’t. 

The future of our planet is not down to whether or not someone recycles their water bottle. 

It’s down to whether or not governments and corporations decide to quit sucking up all our resources and poisoning the earth with reckless abandon. 

I mean obviously people should still live as cleanly and as sustainably as they can manage where they are and with what they have, but like. THAT isn’t the major issue. 

govts and corporations have deliberately put the onus on yr individual choices so the system can continue being as destructive/profitable

God bless this post this pisses me off so much

Also this hyper-individualist shift of responsibility is largely an American thing and consumerism is framed as a solution- e.g., buy more shit that’s sustainable! That’ll fix the problem (buy a new, green water bottle! buy a new, green car! buy a new, green whatever-the-fuck that’ll just ultimately produce more waste)!

I took a course in sustainable engineering.

The professor mentioned that even if every private individual in the world were to conserve resources and the environment the ol’ Jimmy Carter way- by turning down the thermostat, recycling your glass and plastics and metals, cut down on luxuries, take shorter showers, etc., it would only get us 10% of the way to where we need to be in order to avoid global catastrophic climate change.

The vast majority of freshwater use is from industry and agriculture. http://www.worldometers.info/water/ 

The vast majority of CO2 emissions is from industrial and electrical generation sites and associated vehicles. http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.html

Private individuals hardly make a dent, even in ideal conditions.

Thank you.

Extra important note for spoonies. Please don’t feel bad for needing disposable medical equipment, pill bottles, long showers, micro fiber blankets, packaged pre-made food, straws, paper plates etc. You’re not individually ruining the environment, you’re doing the best you can while taking care of yourself. The blame is on corporations.

And now this ridiculous straw ban nonsense. They FEEL like they’re accomplishing something so that’s all that matters. And they simply don’t care or don’t believe disabled voices.

leviathan-supersystem:

robotlyra:

leviathan-supersystem:

many an edgelord has observed that morality is purely a human creation, and has thus concluded that it must be fake, and lame, etc.

this, of course, misses the whole point- morality is social technology.

imagine a prehistoric community of hunter-gatherers. they’re doing decently for themselves but they have a problem- conflicts in the community keep escalating to violence, even killing. so a moral edict is created- “do not spill blood”- and people following this edict helps to keep conflicts from spiraling out of control, increasing the overall welfare of the community. decades go by, and with the help of the social technology of morality, the hunter-gather community has settled down, developed agriculture, and formed a small early city.

then someone in the community figures out how to drain poison from snakebites, or some other early form of surgery- and a problem emerges, because according to the moral edict, this practice is banned, since it spills blood.

so an underground develops, of people using these banned practices. and the society struggles to stamp this out, and the underground surgeons struggle against this repression- until as a result of the struggle, it is realized that the moral edict is flawed, and is preventing well-being, rather than encouraging it. so the moral edict is revised to “do not spill blood involuntarily,” legalizing surgery, and further improving the well-being of the community.

through this process- a dialectic between hegemony and counter-hegemony, an alchemical process of the conjunction of opposites- the social technology of morality is refined and improved.

both moral realism and moral nihilism stymie this process. we must not fall into the trap of thinking morality is One Definite Unchanging Thing. and we also must not fall into the trap of thinking morality is Fake And Lame And Nothing Matters.

we must remember that morality is social technology, which must be continually revised and rectified, through a repeating process of revolutionary struggle.

Human Morality as the Operating System for the Computer that is Mankind: makes it easier to function understandably, but does best when we upgrade it every so often.

^good metaphor