Shanice Octavia McBean, 19, Philosophy undergraduate.
"I love standing outside, on my own, contemplating the immense beauty of nature. The silent air is amazing to listen to with all its peace and tranquillity. But I don’t mind the occasional tweet of a bird mid-flight, or the wistful rustling of winds through trees. Or even a single car passing by or a mother calling to her child; reminding me of the presence of humanity. It doesn’t make me feel like an external observer of the beauty of nature: it reminds me that I am nature…"
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Inna Babaeva
Harden. Splash. Harden. Splash.
yeah, that’s pretty sexual… =|
(Source: belugabearcow)
I love when I understand a political comic.
That’s when you know they got their point across. Loud. And. Clear. =P
(Source: americawakiewakie)
Women don’t have to:
outofthekitchenandintothearmy:
- be thin
- have a vagina
- give birth
- cook for you
- have long hair
- wear makeup
- have sex with you
- be feminine
- be graceful
- shave
- diet
- be fashionable
- wear pink
- love men
- be the media’s idea of perfection
- listen to your bullshit
(Source: catofwinterfell)
A racist white woman in a skin-tight white dress stands with a headdress made to mimick war bonnets. Text reads, “I am a racist white girl stealing sacred objects from cultures I am privileged over. I am also presenting a hypersexualized image of native women, with additional use of Eurocentric ultra-thin beauty ideals. I am contributing to the rape and sexual assaults on native women daily. I am disrespecting cultures whose genocide I benefit from. I AM THE FACE OF WHITE FEMALE PRIVILEGE.”
I get the point this is trying to make, but this isn’t the way to educate people or prevent further offensive behavior.
If you say that I should be nicer to white racists, you clearly don’t actually understand my point.
Nice? No no no. Racism is racism, and it needs to be addressed. If someone is going to be blatantly racist, I’m never going to be “nice” about it. However, from what I’ve seen of people, I notice they tend to listen when you make the effort to explain that what they did was wrong, and WHY it was wrong, rather than immediately chastising them. Most of these girls take this photos thinking that they are “artsy.” They don’t realize what they are doing is offensive, and it’s culturally appropriative. Most of them have never heard the term “cultural appropriation” (from my experience). That’s why I make the effort to explain the concept, and it typically works better than immediately boiling over with rage at their ignorance. (Once again, this is just from my experience).
I mean, think of it this way: You find a cookie. You decide to eat said cookie. Someone comes up to you and immediately starts yelling “THAT’S MY COOKIE, HOW DARE YOU EAT MY COOKIE, RACE-BASED PRIVILEGE GRAHHHH”
You would probably feel confused, and a bit offended (not that being offended at someone’s criticism of your racism matters—racism isn’t justifiable).
However, if someone explained to you, “You took my cookie as your own without stopping to consider you might be taking it away from the source. I am offended.”
You might listen, and you would be more likely to think about your actions in the future.
So yes, be angry. You don’t have to be kind. But I think it’s best to use anger in a constructive way, in order to educate people. Right?Excuse me, did you a) compare racism to taking cookies, and b) tell me how I should handle racism ON MY OWN BLOG?
Guess what, white people are sometimes calmer, because they’re not angry at racism because racism is good for them.
Get the fuck off here and go read Derailing for Dummies.
SIDE NOTE: GRINGAS PLEASE COME COLLECT YOUR WAYWARD COUSIN.
Of course cookies and racism are unrelated, I was just trying to create an example for the sake of discussion. (To be specific, the “cookie” thing was a metaphor to the girl in the photo taking the headdress from the source without consideration). I’m not telling you how to handle racism on your own blog, I was just voicing an opinion and trying to start a healthy discussion. (I’m not trying to shove my beliefs down your throat, I was actually asking for your input/your opinion, since you seem well-informed on the subject). Now, assuming that I’m sitting here enjoying the perks of racism is a pretty nasty assumption. In fact, basing this on my race in general is pretty nasty, especially since you’re anti-racist. All I can gather from the response you just gave me is “I’m right, and my opinion is the only opinion that matters. End of discussion.” Correct me if I’m wrong.
andtheysayromanceisdead: You started out wrong and continued on to become consistently more wrong. You started by lecturing a Person of Color on how to fight racism, which is a thing you’ve never experienced and have absolutely no conception of whatsoever. These are not facets of a ‘healthy discussion’, these are facets of a white person believing that their less-informed opinion (one not based in experience) was more important than the lived experience and justified responses of a Person of Color who has to spend their entire life dealing with racist assclarinets like you.
You are victim blaming, completely ignorant, a racist apologist who believes that cultural appropriation isn’t blatant racism, you’re entirely wrong, and your white privilege isn’t an excuse for your ignorance or your racism. Neither is Headdressy McWhiteSupremacist’s up there^^^
Hmm.
Disclaimer: I’m British-American. And I’m of African decent; as are the rest of my family from goodness knows how long ago.
In real life not raging at people and trying to reason with them has, for me personally, worked better at getting this sort of message accross. However, online we need the sarcasm, rage and satire because online it works.
The moment we admit that consciousness is the conext in which any discussion of values makes sense, we must admit that there are facts to be known about how the experience of conscious creatures can change. Human and animal well-being are natural phenomena.
Sam Harris
It’s something I’m writing personally, indepdent of class and will hopefully get in published in a undergraduate magazine/journal. :)
My motivation for this being it is a widespread view within secularism that morality is based on individualistic sentiments and that without divine authority objective morality is impossible and morality as a whole lacks meaning.
It’s clear this is dangerous: it validates the actions of the terrorist, the homophobe, the serial killer and completely invalidates all the efforts of people trying to move equality and freedom forward in our society. I am certainly uncomfortable with this and have realised that subjective morality is one theory: it’s not the be all and end all. Woop! :D
I used to think subjective. I used to accept that without God, there was no way to tell other societies and peoples that their behaviour was either right or wrong.
I have since discarded this view. For two reasons: it’s wrong and it’s dangerous.
It’s wrong because we need to distinguish between absolute morality and objective morality. Nobody can ever have absolute morality. Not even the religious. They can claim they can, but given the relativity of religious morality world-wide and over the centuries they have no claim to absolute morality.
Objective morality, on the other hand, is a different story. For me, having objective morality this means in any given situation one can say, with conviction and aiming at truth, what is right or wrong. Objective means representing facts and I think there are some facts about morality.
Now why do I think there are facts about morality? :) Well, I’m currently writing a paper about this very issue and I’m so far on 2000 words and nowhere near finished, so I won’t be able to explain fully here why I think there are facts about morality. Although I can point to my inspiration of this view: Sam Harris (The Moral Landscape) - my system is not his, they differ in many many respects. But my system was inspired by his.
Given how we have constructed the concept of morality and its general defintion we can derive facts about morality. Of course this is contingent on the definition of morality we provide, but this type of criticism is inept as it holds for everything. Maths is contingent on the axioms we have arbitrarily created, but few would say maths was, resultingly, subjective.
This all probably makes little sense but in summary: given the concept of morality what it means to be moral - this concept being universal - we can say a lot, objectively, about morality i.e. the definition of behaving morally is to behave correctly, ‘goodly’, increase well being, survival etc. it seems to me a logical contradiction to say behaving morally can decrease well being. the purpose of behaving morally seems to me - intuitively and necessarily - to involve the concept of well being. if, then, there are facts to say about well being, there are facts to say about behaving morally and thus by negation, immorally.
This is all very vague, I’m sorry. I’m writing on this topic at the moment and it’s hard for me to try and account for all the objections people throw at me for this view in one tumblr post. But when I finish the paper and send it out, I will also publish it on tumblr. That way I can clearly answer this. But in short, yes, I think morality can be objective. Not absolute, but objective :) x
(Source: fuckyeahsex)
BREAKING NEWS
Common sense reveals that there is no correlation between self-respect and whether or not you show your tits on the internet or how many people you sleep with.
(Source: s1utever)
