OMG MY 17 YEAR OLD COUSIN HAS A BUNCH OF HIS FRIENDS OVER RIGHT NOW AND I COULD HEAR THEM LISTENING TO FERGALICIOUS AND SINGING SO I BANGED ON THE WALL AND SHOUTED “I CAN HEAR YOU GUYS” AND THEN ONE OF THEM GOES “SHIT WHY DIDNT YOU SAY SHE WAS HOME” AND THEN ANOTHER ONE WAS LIKE “NO ITS A PART OF OUR VIDEO GAME” AND THEN ANOTHER ONE SHOUTS “DUDE WHY THE FUCK WOULD FERGALICIOUS BE IN A VIDEO GAME” IM CRYING
“THIS PICTURE WILL NOT CHANGE THE WORLD, BUT I STILL NEED FEMINISM AND I’M GOING TO REALLY, REALLY TELL YOU WHY”:
-Because I got called a whore for wearing a short plaid skirt when I was 10
-and because when Nujood Ali from Yemen was 10 she got divorced
-Because black girls’ names became my classmates’ favorite “joke” when I was 11
-and because when an 11-year-old girl in Texas was raped by 18 men the New York Times wrote of how the girl “dressed older than her age”
-Because I started counting calories when I was 14
-and because when Malala Yousafzai was 14 she was shot in the head for trying to go to school
-Because I heard a boy greet a girl with “hey slut” today at age 16 -and because when a 16-year-old girl in Steubenville, Ohio was filmed being raped by two boys at a party while unconscious the CNN reporters talked about how tragic it was because the rapists had such bright futures as athletes
-Because I will have to watch my drink at all bars and parties when I am 22
-and because when CeCe McDonald was 22 she was sentenced to 41 months in prison for defending herself against a man who screamed transphobic, racist insults at her and then slashed her face with a bottle
-Because no matter what age I am the biggest threat to men will still be heart disease, and the biggest threat to women will still be men.
-Because it is not just about me, because it is not just about anger, because it is not just a JOKE, because it is not just about “hating men,” because it is not just about girls with vaginas, because it is not just about ending “slut”, because it is not just about white straight girls in Rookie magazine, because it is not just about writing on backs, because it is not just about the fact that gay men are “fags” but lesbians are “hot,” because it is not just about pictures of thin white girls being the only google image results for the search phrase “beautiful women”, because it is not just about writing signs, because it is not just about what she was wearing or how many times she said yes before she changed her answer to no, because misogyny is not just about one thing and feminism is not just about one thing and it is not just “a trend” and it will not “happen” in just one way.
-And because yes. It is about equality for EVERYONE, but first and foremost it needs to be about equality for girls, because they are not treated equally to men, in every single sense, and you are not going to take feminism away from me and call me bossy/hostile/aggressive and make this about yourself or make it into a joke, because truth be told, I’m not joking and I’m tired of explaining. If you want to call yourself a feminist, you work hard to spread feminism, you do not turn this into a contest of whose struggle is greater and constantly demand to know what you can get out of feminism personally. Feminism is not just about you, or me, it is about everyone. If you’re male and you’re tired of men being stereotyped as hyper-masculine, soulless, sexist, inherent leader-tyrant creatures, then go out and prove the patriarchy wrong and fight for girls, like someone with a soul who believes in equality would. Then, yes, feminism will be about everyone.
i feel the strong urge to print this out and hand out copies to everyone i meet to spread the word on feminism and rape culture bc i couldnt word it this well without becoming overly angry and giving up
so sometimes i think about harry potter being in the aurors and like
he’d never really thought about child protective services, muggle or otherwise, cause it’d never been relevant, right? like when he was a miserable kid he just thought that was what it was like being an orphan. but then he sees cases come through the department where parents are murdered and there’s kids sitting in their waiting room with copies of the quibbler and water waiting while an auror sits down with a family tree and tries to find whatever relatives this kid might have in the wizarding world, going back maybe even five generations to find anyone living and vaguely related to this child to drop them off with
and he goes to shit apartments in diagon alley after noise complaints and finds children who are black and blue with hexed, bleeding skin who insist they were just playing with a weasley’s wizard wheeze, no really mr. potter
and he thinks about how merope gaunt stumbled into a muggle orphanage and left them a child who would grow up learning fear was the key to harmony, and becoming a god meant safety
and really, how was the headmaster of a school the person who made the call about where he ended up, how was the system so haphazard that a man who wouldn’t be part of his life for another ten years got to make the biggest decision of his life
harry thinks about his cupboard
and then harry potter sits down with hermione and ron and neville (cause of course neville would want a stake in this) and says, “we need to change the wizarding world again.”
While the media’s portrayal of Pakistan reduces the country’s 179.2 million people to broad-brush stereotypes, the reality is quite different. Here are images that show a side to Pakistan that goes beyond the headlines.
