So true. Everyone who posts about Jennifer’s Body on here legally required to watch one other Karyn Kusama film by the end of the week and you better choose The Invitation
ive been to a lot of protests in my life and a thing that a lot of people dont understand is that a protest is a threat. its a large group of people saying “we are being nice now, but you must understand that if we stop being nice we have the power to cause you Problems”.
so everyone saying that protests have to be more polite or follow accepted rules is missing the entire point. the point of a protest is not to say “we disagree with you”, they already know that. the point of a protest is to make it clear that if they continue to do things you disagree with, you will burn down their house.
now this wont stop them because theyre stupid and arrogant and believe themselves to be beyond consequence. so here’s the really important thing and that’s that after they do it anyway, you have to burn down their house
I cannot stress this e-fucking-nough. My great-grandmother – hell, most of my whole family – were on the civil rights marches. The fact they had to be so peaceful was because everything done during those protests was breaking the law. None of it was legal, none of it was nice.
She told me this:
“Understand – to many white people in the US, seeing that many Black people gathered together in one place would have been shocking. It’s easy to bully a family in a town. A bit harder, but bullying a community is still possible. But over a million Black people marching upon the Capital would have had the same effect on every single White person watching. They would know what Black people were REALLY saying behind the hymns and the march.
‘Imagine what would happen if we were angry.’
“White people were terrified of those marches. And there were supposed to be afraid. Of course they were gonna push back – they have the guns, they can make up new laws on the fly. They have all the power in the world, literally – and still, nothing scared them more than a million Black people on the march. Protests stopped working when White people were no longer afraid.”
“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe, and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” — James Baldwin
“I know I’ve told this story before, but my abusive ex refused to let me take birth control. I was on the pill until he found them in my purse. I went to the Student Health Center—they were completely unhelpful, choosing to lecture me about the importance of safe sex (recommending condoms) instead of actually listening to my problem. Then I went to Planned Parenthood. The Nurse Practitioner took one look at my fading bruises and stopped the exam. She called in the doctor. The doctor came in and simply asked me: “Are you ready to leave him?” When I denied that I was being abused, she didn’t argue with me. She just asked me what I needed. I said I need a birth control method that my boyfriend couldn’t detect. She recommended a few options and we decided on Depo. When I told her that my boyfriend read my emails and listened to my phone messages and was known to follow me, she suggested to do the Depo injections at off hours when the clinic was normally closed. She made a note in my chart and instructed the front desk never to leave messages for me—instead, she programmed her personal cell phone number into my phone under the name “Nora”. She told me she would call me to schedule my appointments; she wouldn’t leave a message, but I should call her back when I was able to. And that was it. No judgment. No lecture. She walked me to the door and told me to call her day or night if I needed anything. That she lived 5 blocks from campus and would come get me. That I wasn’t alone. That she just wanted me to be safe. I never called her to come to my rescue. But I have no doubt that she would have come if I had called. She kept me on Depo for a year, giving me those monthly injections in secret, helping me prevent a desperately unwanted pregnancy. I cannot thank Planned Parenthood enough for the work they do.”
I know I’ve reblogged this before, but it bears re-reblogging (?). This is how you respond to abuse, this is how you give people control over their bodies/uteruses, this is how you act as a generally non-judgmental and compassionate person. I love this story so fucking much.
When I was a kid, my folks basically told me I was a hobbit. I cherish the memory of them reading all these books to me–and I turned around and read them to my little siblings and eventually to my partner! I’ve drawn and painted a lot for The Hobbit but never The Lord of the Rings, and this ECCC seemed like the right time to debut one!
“And I don’t think anybody should feel bad if they get diagnosed with a mental illness, ’cause it’s just information about you that helps you to know how to take better care of yourself.
“Being bipolar, there’s nothing wrong with it. Being bipolar is like not knowing how to swim. It might be embarrassing to tell people, and it might be hard to take you certain places. But they have arm floaties. And if you just take your arm floaties, you can go wherever the hell you want.
“And I know some of you are like, ‘But Taylor, what if people judge me for taking arm floaties?’ Well, those people don’t care if you live or die, so maybe who cares? Maybe fuck those people a little. I don’t know.”
