Marguerite Bennett's Blog, page 35
August 26, 2017
genetic-freak:
because-blackgirls-duh:
The whole notion of being docile around a police officer is...
The whole notion of being docile around a police officer is an utterly terrifying norm. This isn’t the fucking hunger games. Citizens don’t need to be sweet to you, especially when you’re fucking wrong and they know their rights. They shouldn’t have to cower and fear and put their tails in between their thighs because the police academy has a tendency to accept shit heads who need to make up for their dominance complex.
Not to stomp all over this post or anything, but I got pulled over in Los Angeles in 2009. It was after a concert. The police tried to say I squealed my tires at them, which I definitely did not do, don’t know how to do, and besides the fact I had no music on and my windows rolled down so I absolutely knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I did not do it. As a result, I was calm and relaxed, I wasn’t afraid. And it absolutely perplexed them, one of them even got angry and started to yell at me. They kept insisting I must be drunk, I kept saying, “Give me the test then,” but it seemed like that was the last thing they wanted to do. Until finally, one of them was getting so irate that his partner separated him from me, and gave me the test. Finally, I was dismissed, and the arguably nicer (though not by much) officer said to me, “Can I ask you a question? Why aren’t you afraid of us? I think my friend is upset because you’re not afraid of us and usually people are.” And I said, “If I haven’t done anything wrong, why should I be afraid?”
But after that, it sat with me, that they expected me to be afraid, and they wanted me to be afraid, and it sat with me that they completely made up a reason to pull me over. Since then actually, I’m much more afraid of cops than I ever was before that moment.
"A few months back, I was asked to participate in a debate on the topic of whether men should have to..."
I think he said that women should offer to pay half, knowing they’ll probably be turned down. I said, well, sometimes — but what if the other person invited you someplace really expensive? What if you agreed to a date with the guy and he spent an hour saying crazy racist shit to you and you felt like you couldn’t escape? This is what led to our real disagreement.
The male debater felt strongly that if a woman wasn’t interested in a second date, she should say so on the spot. If the man says, “Let’s do this again sometime,” the woman shouldn’t say, “Sure, great,” and then back out later. I said that that was a nice ideal, but that he should keep in mind that most women spent most of their lives living in low-level fear of physical aggression from men. I think about avoiding rape (or other violence) every time I walk home from the subway, every time there’s an unexpected knock at the door, and certainly every time I piss off an unhinged man. So, if I were on a date with a man who I felt was unbalanced, creepy, overly aggressive, or possibly violent, and he asked if I wanted to “do this again sometime,” I would say whatever I felt would avoid conflict. And then I would leave, wait awhile, and hope that letting him down politely a few days later would avoid his finding me and turning my skin into an overcoat.
The male debater was furious that I had even brought this up. He felt that the threat of violence against women was irrelevant, and that I was playing some kind of “rape card” as a debate trick. He got angrier and angrier as we argued. I also got angrier and angrier, although I worked hard to keep speaking in a calm and considered way. He was shouting and cutting me off when I tried to speak. I pointed out that the debater himself was displaying exactly the sort of behavior that would make me very uncomfortable on a date. THAT made him livid.
He then called me “passive-aggressive.”
I was genuinely taken aback. “Actually,” I said, “I call this ‘behaving myself.’” It’s a lot of work to stay calm when you’re just as furious as the other person, and that other person is shouting at you. I felt that I was acting like a grownup — at some emotional cost to myself — and I wanted credit, not insults, for being able to speak in a normal tone of voice when I was having to explain things like, “We can’t tell who the rapists are before they turn violent, so sometimes we have to be cautious with men who do not intend to harm us.””
- Bullish Life: When Men Get Too Emotional To Have A Rational Argument (via brutereason)
August 25, 2017
ysera:
Since there’s OP didn’t include a caption, here are some...
Since there’s OP didn’t include a caption, here are some links to fundraisers to help our tribe! Thank you!
Navajo Relief Fund:
Navajo Water Project: https://www.navajowaterproject.org/
NavajoYES (youth organization): http://www.navajoyes.org/donate/
mkay-thats-cool-too:
trollitics:
never thought i’d see the day...
never thought i’d see the day where tiki torches had to dissociate from neo-nazis
what a time to be alive
I never thought I’d see the day where tiki torches did a better job at dissociating from neo-nazis then the man leading my country.
sashayed:
This one time I went to an address by the American ambassador to the UK and he said he...
This one time I went to an address by the American ambassador to the UK and he said he does this exercise with British students where he gives them index cards and asks them to write things on one side that frustrate/scare them about America, and on the other side things that inspire them about America, and he said when his office collected them the most-written concepts on the frustration side were like “guns, violence, racism” and the inspiration side was overwhelmingly “NASA”
me @ my body: perhaps... since it's summer... you could sleep without the blanket?
my body: interesting thought! interesting thought. but no
ourvaluedcustomers:
Neighborhood feud. My wife and I have a...
Neighborhood feud. My wife and I have a United Federation of Planets flag hanging on our house. My neighbors just hung a Klingon flag on theirs.
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