We Speak For Earth
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ikenbot CWL -
mohandasgandhi Mohandas Gandhi -
realcleverscience Real Clever Science -
socialuprooting Social Uprooting -
abstractnerd Abstract Nerd -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
In many societies, marriage is a celebrated institution signifying a union between two adults and the beginning of their future together. Unfortunately, millions of girls still suffer from a vastly different marriage experience every year. Worldwide, many brides are still children, not even teenagers. So young are some girls that they hold onto their toys during the wedding ceremony. Usually these girls become mothers in their early teens, while they are still children themselves. The practice can result in profound negative consequences for the girls, their families and their entire communities.
Too Young to Wed, a multimedia partnership between the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and premier photo agency VII, seeks to raise awareness of the practice and ultimately, to end it.While the global launch of the TOO YOUNG TO WED exhibition at the United Nations in New York was a heartfelt success, the project and the campaign supported by UNFPA and VII continues to raise awareness about child marriage and urge policymakers to enact and enforce laws that will end the practice forever. The work has only just begun.
Follow the stories and get involved at: www.TooYoungToWed.org
(via nickturse)
Bad-Ass Female Scientists: Lynn Margulis
“ I don’t consider my ideas controversial. I consider them right.”
Biologist Lynn Margulis died on November 22nd. She stood out from her colleagues in that she would have extended evolutionary studies nearly four billion years back in time. Her major work was in cell evolution, in which the great event was the appearance of the eukaryotic, or nucleated, cell — the cell upon which all larger life-forms are based. Nearly forty-five years ago, she argued for its symbiotic origin: that it arose by associations of different kinds of bacteria. Her ideas were generally either ignored or ridiculed when she first proposed them; symbiosis in cell evolution is now considered one of the great scientific breakthroughs.
Margulis was also a champion of the Gaia hypothesis, an idea developed in the 1970s by the free lance British atmospheric chemist James E. Lovelock. The Gaia hypothesis states that the atmosphere and surface sediments of the planet Earth form a self- regulating physiological system — Earth’s surface is alive. The strong version of the hypothesis, which has been widely criticized by the biological establishment, holds that the earth itself is a self-regulating organism; Margulis subscribed to a weaker version, seeing the planet as an integrated self- regulating ecosystem. She was criticized for succumbing to what George Williams called the “God-is good” syndrome, as evidenced by her adoption of metaphors of symbiosis in nature. She was, in turn, an outspoken critic of mainstream evolutionary biologists for what she saw as a failure to adequately consider the importance of chemistry and microbiology in evolution.
I first met her in the late 80’s and in 1994 interviewed her for my book The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (1995). Below, in remembrance, please see her chapter, “Gaia is a Tough Bitch”. One of the compelling features of The Third Culture was that I invited each of the participants to comment about the others. In this regard, the end of the following chapter has comments on Margulis and her work by Daniel C. Dennett, the late George C. Williams, W. Daniel Hillis, Lee Smolin, Marvin Minsky, Richard Dawkins, and the late Francisco Varela. Interesting stuff.
As I wrote in the introduction to the first part of the book (Part I: The Evolutionary Idea): “The principal debates are concerned with the mechanism of speciation; whether natural selection operates at the level of the gene, the organism, or the species, or all three; and also with the relative importance of other factors, such as natural catastrophes.” These very public debates were concerned with ideas represented by George C. Williams and Richard Dawkins on one side and Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge on the other side. Not for Lynn Margulis. All the above scientists were wrong because evolutionary studies needed to begin four billion years back in time. And she was not shy about expressing her opinions. Her in-your-face, take-no-prisoners stance was pugnacious and tenacious. She was impossible. She was wonderful. — John Brockman
“Gaia is a tough bitch.” L. Margulis
Save Me Not Second Base
As Breast Cancer Awareness Month draws to a close I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and a lot of waffling over whether I should get involved with a debatable issue. But one of the things you learn in the School of Humanities is that rhetoric is open for critique.
Go on. Save the boobies. Save the tatas. Save second base. Raise money. Sell wristbands. Base entire campaigns around a secondary, sexualized sex characteristic used pars pro toto for womanhood. You’ll get away with it.
But first save the people they’re attached to.
I like the messages displayed here a lot more.
Still pretty up in arms myself about the shirt so many people, including females (I wasn’t surprised with the men who backed it), were protecting. Gross. There are more creative, all inclusive and thoughtful ways to promote breast cancer awareness and sexualizing it with the use of terms people use when they’re planning on fucking is not a respectful way to go about it. Second base implies a third and a home, so save second base so we can get to home cause y’know that’s as creative as we can get when it comes to women amirite or what? Ya’ll are classy as fuck huh?
We’ve all been in the position where someone we’re close to says something wildly offensive - this article looks at ways to mitigate those situations in a way that keeps your relationships intact while not letting racism, sexism, homophobia, and prejudice in general slide.
So guys this is what might go down (chances are high): My boss at the tattoo shop and I have been in talks about setting up my own limited-time art gallery/show with my drawings. We were thinking of setting a cheap admission and do it at the shop.
We’d scan, clean via photoshop and blow it out into bigger proportions. It would probably happen in about a month while I rework on the sketches we’re putting up. But an awesome idea occurred to me… so as many of you who have been following up on my artwork know, I love drawing women. It’s literally my specialty and I feel (as well as my boss) that when I get awesome at tattooing, people will want me drawing women on them or designing something for them that has women in it.
But back to my idea, I figured, why not up the ante and challenge myself as an artist and draw women that aren’t society’s idea of sexy and desired. I want them to represent the diversity within the Earth’s female population. I can use my first ladies (the traditionally sexy ones) and present them as society’s idea of what beautiful is, as well as my artistic perception from before I got into feminism to after I got into it, which will be represented by my more broader, accepting, and diverse vision of women.
So in short, I want to center this showing around the diversity of women, and my evolution as an unaware privileged male whom objectified women and set unfair bars for the idea of beauty to someone who’s aware of the problems of machismo and patriarchy. I want ideas from you guys as to what kind of girls you’d like to see drawn in my style. Thick, chubby, frizzy hair, curly hair, really skinny, whatever you got in mind. I want to see what I can do with that.
If I fail then at least I tried and knew for sure I couldn’t do it. But we’ll see, this isn’t exactly the most favorite of subjects up here in washington heights (which you could pretty much call machismopolis). If I get enough support I’ll do it for sure and I’ll even let people, women, whomever, some space on a separate sheet of paper for them to write anonymous accounts of their experience within this culture that embraces patriarchy so openly and feverishly.
Be creative with the women you’d like to see on the diverse perception side of the show. And if you’re in the NY area or can easily come, then you’d better come support or else!
trigger warning: molestation, victim blaming, misogyny
I’ve been avoiding makiny this post for so long out of fear, but I’m done being silenced.
As some of you know, Derek (socialistscum) came to visit me over the summer. We had been “internet dating” up until that point, so we were expecting his trip to be incredible. Instead, it was a horrible failure. He ended his trip a week earlier than planned, bashed me on his blog for ruining his trip, and supposedly moved on, heroically not holding any grudges against me. The reality of the situation couldn’t be further from the truth.
While Derek was here, he was imposing, pushy, creepy, and manipulative. He touched me without my consent throughout the entire trip. I told him multiple times, including as soon as we saw each other for the first time, that I didn’t feel comfortable with him and that I didn’t think we could be sexual. In spite of this, he still touched me. I literally froze up when he did things to me, clenching my muscles and barely moving, but he didn’t stop. He touched me without my consent pretty much every day for the entire trip.
Derek maintained a controlling and threatening environment in order to continue molesting me without extreme resistance. He used “nice guy” rhetoric to try to guilt me into accepting his advances and to be even more sexual with him. He complained about how he came so far out to see me and got extremely grumpy and annoyed when I didn’t return his affections. He was overbearing, watching my computer screen, following me when I would just get up to get a glass of water, etc.
He also made my roommate extremely uncomfortable. After knowing her for all of two days, he talked to her about how horny he was and how annoyed he was that I wasn’t putting out for him. She was very upset and told me not to leave her alone again.
At the end of the first week, I was crippled with fear. I felt dirty, used, small, and scared. I couldn’t stand being around him, but I couldn’t leave him alone at my house with my roommate. I couldn’t handle it anymore, so I stupidly agreed to front the cash for him to get an early flight home, which he is now refusing to pay me back for.
Derek’s responses after he got home did as much, if not more, damage than his actions at my house. He blamed me entirely for what happened. He constructed some story about how our relationship didn’t work out because I didn’t try hard enough.
After I called him out on what he had done, he was initially apologetic. He called me, crying his eyes out, saying he never meant to hurt me, he felt so bad, etc. Once he discovered that I wasn’t going to crawl back to his arms, though, his already blatant misogyny came tearing through. He completely denied that he had done anything wrong, claiming that I should have somehow been more clear that I didn’t want him to touch me, which is typical rapist logic. (I’m not sure how “I’m not comfortable being with you romantically or sexually” and then flinching and tensing at contact doesn’t make that clear.) He admitted to some things but said I was at fault for them, then turned around and denied that he did them all together. He claimed I made it up because I loved being a victim (because every woman just dreams of being molested by someone they trust). I’m not sure what his story will be when he replies to his, but I am sure it will be completely different from all of the other stories he’s given me about what happened.
Although I know some will claim that this is out of character for Derek, it really is not. He has been misogynistic, creepy, overbearing, and all around a shitty ally many, many times in the past. I’m sure many of you have been contacted by him asking for naked pictures/videos (especially if you’re a sex worker), or being very affectionate and lovey-dovey despite barely knowing him, or just being very sexual without gauging your interest in hearing about his sex life. And even if he just did these things to me when we first started talking, that behavior isn’t excusable.
He has advocated for violence against women (link, analysis, analysis 2), he has used pictures of women as trophies of his masculinity, deflecting criticism with bro quips like “you’re just jealous girls this hot won’t hang out with you” (I tried looking for links to this, but it looks like he deleted those posts), he has called an Afghan woman a “drone” (link), and he threatens women who call him out (link). These are all very recent occurrences, too.
Derek is a creepy older man who manipulates people on the internet to give himself an ego boost. He fools people into thinking he’s a great anarchist comrade and feminist ally, throwing around academic language and buzz words to construct himself as a radical activist. In reality, he literally does nothing but sit around his parents’ house smoking weed and blogging. His only hiatus from that was to come to my house to molest me and creep out my roommate.
Part of my fear of posting this is that Derek is very good at manipulation. He fooled me into thinking he was some awesome anarcho feminist for seven months. He’s able to deflect very serious call outs of his misogyny by lying about what he did, joking around, making up a new story, threatening his accusers into silence, or just deleting his posts. There also seems to be a group of “famous” bloggers that Derek is a part of that defend each other without question, as well. I didn’t want to make a post, have him deflect it, and then have even more victim blaming shit thrown on me. I wasn’t sure I could handle it.
But you know what? I’m sick of seeing my sisters drool over men who secretly have their boots to their faces. I’m sick of sitting quietly horrified, replaying traumatic experiences in my head, while my abusers get to live their lives carefree. I’m sick of being bashed for being a victim by the very people who claim to fight against victim blaming. I’m sick of watching molesters and misogynists get praised for feminist commentary that they stole from less popular women bloggers. I’m sick of getting fucked over worse by “feminist” men than by overtly sexist men. And most of all, I’m fucking sick of being treated like an object for radical and non-radical men alike to play with when they’re bored.
Derek molested me. He engaged in victim blaming in order to ease his guilt and silence me. He threatens women, he objectifies them, he is overbearing with sexual advances, and he is just all around a piece of shit. He deserves what any misogynistic abuser, molester, or rapist deserves. There are plenty more of him hiding in our midst, both in real life and on tumblr, and I don’t want to be afraid of them anymore.
Derek Osika, Derek Christopher Osika, who lives in Gainesville, Florida, is a molester. He also coerced underage girls into sending him naked pictures of themselves, making him a pedophile and a child abuser.
Damn that’s some fucked up shit.
Ahh, the old “I’m gonna show how inferior women are and always were by noting how conditions and cultural norms have always been against their favor and progression which is a sure indication that they are weak” lolque?
