“As soon as teenage girls start to profess love for something, everyone else becomes totally dismissive of it. Teenage girls are open season for the cruelest bullying that our society can dream up. Everyone’s vicious to them. They’re vicious to each other. Hell, they’re even vicious to themselves. It’s terrible.

“So if teenage girls have something that they love, isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t it better for them to find some words they believe in, words like the ‘fire-proof and fearless’ lyrics that Jacqui wrote? Isn’t it better for them to put those words on their arm in a tattoo than for them to cut gashes in that same skin? Shouldn’t we be grateful when teenage girls love our work? Shouldn’t that be a fucking honor?

“It’s used as the cheapest, easiest test of crap, isn’t it? If teenage girls love a movie, a book, a band, then it’s immediately classified as mediocre shit. Well, I’m not going to stand for that. Someone needs to treat them like they’re precious, and if nobody else is ready to step up, I guess it’s up to us to put them on the path to recognizing that about themselves.”

a character from The Devil’s Mixtape.  (via valjeans)

Every now and then, something comes along on your dash that opens your eyes and makes you question assumptions you didn’t even realize you were making.

This former teenage girl fell in love with Rush, RPGs, Russian literature, ancient history, sci fi flicks, and Led Zeppelin. I’d say she had pretty good taste. So why have I always defaulted to marginalizing or dismissing the tastes of other teenage girls? Why have I always counted the large teenage female presence in fandom as a black mark against it, or at least something that needs to be explained or surmounted for older fans to participate or engage? Why have I assumed that teenage girls as a whole are incapable of critical analysis or meaningful engagement with the same media that I enjoy, when it was the critical analysis and meaningful engagement of a teenage girl that got me into much of the same media I enjoy now?

Wow. Talk about not even recognizing the patriarchy at work.

(via sabrea)