With foam please...

here is jennifer lawrence in 1995

Thats right!

Permission to be a bad ass. Nod.

He looks back at the guy like, “SEE THAT? SHE SAID YES. YOU’RE SO FUCKED.”

In Sparta, women could own land and were considered citizens. THAT IS A HUGE BIG FUCKING DEAL. Why? Because that was RARE AS FUCK and there are lots of places TODAY where women don’t even get that much.

Divorce was totally fine, and a woman could expect to keep her own wealth and get custody of the kids because paternal lineage wasn’t very important. And it didn’t make her a pariah! She could totally remarry, no big deal at all.

Spartan women participated in some fuckin’ badass sporting events, too. And because they were expected to be as physically fit as the Spartan menfolk (who all had to serve compulsory military duties, btw, and couldn’t marry until they finished them at thirty) they didn’t have time for lots of swishy dresses. So they wore notoriously short skirts. According to some accounts, their thighs were visible at all times. HOLY SHIT. 

Also, In Sparta men only got their names on their graves if they died in battle. And women? Women only got their names on their graves if they died in childbirth. THE SPARTANS COMPARED CHILDBIRTH TO FUCKING BATTLE AND IT WAS VIEWED AS A GODDAMN BADASS AND HONORABLE WAY TO GO OUT.

Plus the women could marry whomever they pleased and the men weren’t allowed to live with the women in their house until she said so. And they were tough in Sparta but also all about family. To have male offspring was good luck, to have female offspring was an honour. 

This part of the movie was true; King Leonidas really did kill a man because he insulted his wife and he always ensured that he had his wife’s approval. And while Leonidas was away in battle she did rule Sparta on her own. 

There’s a lot of evidence of women being super hardcore warriors, either protecting the homestead while the men went viking, or even going viking themselves. (Viking is actually a verb, the act of going on raid.)

They also had divorce, which involved the woman getting together her posse and declaring that she divorced her husband three times - first at the entry to her property, second at the door of her house, and finally at the foot of her marriage bed. After that, she was no longer married to the dude, and could take all of the property she brought to the marriage and leave, usually to return to her parent’s home, but often also to marry some other guy.

…

The moral of this story is that patriarchy doesn’t just effect our present, but also our view of the past. Think that women have been oppressed across all cultures, throughout history? Wrong! Women have been kickass equals for millennia, but it is always the goal of oppressors to rewrite the past so they can use it to support their lifestyle in the present. 

This is a mature female spider of the Nephila genus. I’m not sure the exact species, but members of this genus are also known as “golden silk orb weavers.” Their yellow-orange silk can be used to make golden cloth, like in this tapestry.

The bite of a Nephila isn’t serious. Wikipedia describes the worst case scenario - localized pain or a more severe allergic reaction - but most bitten will only experience a little itching. Like any spider, they only bite in self defense or when forcibly pressed against skin, and these big females are especially docile. I’ve held a related species on two occasions, they don’t scare very easily.

They’re so laid back, in fact, and so insistent on remaining in the same web, that these are the spiders some cultures have used as mosquito guards, deliberately setting them up to spin webs in open windows or over the top of a baby’s crib.

Don’t tell me that Gender Fluid is a lie. Don’t tell me that Gender Fluid is just a phase. Don’t tell me that Gender Fluid is childish.

I live and breath my gender fluidity. I proudly stand within the Gender Queers in support of a new, gender variant society.

Gender is the seed that has sprouted into the discriminatory, bigoted & bland society we live in. When you dig down deep into the issues surrounding the world right now it all comes back to one tiny little fuck up. The idea that biological sex somehow determines the gender roll of individuals is a lie. In fact, gender rolls is a lie. Just because I identify as gender fluid does not mean that I must uphold any societal expectation, associated with gender fluidity.

Plain and simple, I plan on having two children. I will not teach my little boy to “be a man.” I will not teach my little girl what it means to “be a woman.” Instead, i’ll teach my children to just simply be good people. Because a society full of good people makes for a better life than a society full of classified, judgmental, opinionated and shallow people.

Thank you, Elliott Alexzander