I Am Only Made of Words

I was quoted in Teen Vogue:

The same goes for Twilight. Now that everyone has started back on the series (or started it for the first time), people are now writing up a form of revisionist history that claims people only disliked that series because they hated women rather than… the rest of it. Like the way female characters are written or the recurring “trope” of Confederate vampires.

Of course, misogyny fueled some of the criticism with people negatively comparing Edward and the rest of the Cullen Clan to everyone from Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Spike to Wesley Snipes’ Blade. But that wasn’t the entire story. Retroactively claiming all criticism of Twilight and its fandom as sourced solely from some misogynistic anti-fandom, erases the valid criticisms of other marginalized people.

End imperial exploitation. End neocolonialism. End settler colonialism and capitalism.

Canada has a nice public image because it hides behind it’s big brother US. But Canada is the home of some of the largest extractive industries in the world which violate indigenous people, lands and global south.

im really not trying to be mean here but this one tag from a reblog just so colossally missed the point i cant let it go unacknowledged

the whole message of this post is that the clothes are being made regardless of whether anybody is going to be purchasing them. they’re made in sweatshops, shipped to the other side of the globe, put on racks in thousands of stores, and whatever doesn’t sell is dumped in the fucking desert to make room on those racks for the next shipment.

what she means: I like to know the bare bones and the major plot points before I start writing, but figure out the details as I go along

https://t.co/tQNM37KsB0

With Encanto now on Disney+ many people might want a bag like Mirabel's, so instead of buying from companies that mass produce, buy mochilas from the wayuu who make these types of bags by hands! (the prices are in Columbian pesos).

wayuurs.com

tutiendawayuu.com

I don't care what country you're from. No country is completely magically free of any danger to or from your cat. Indoor outdoor cats may be the norm there, but that doesn't mean it's safe. If your indoor outdoor cat made it to old age, congrats it's an outlier. As a vet tech both in general practice and in a shelter I see what happens to most indoor outdoor cats regularly. I have photos I can share, and stories.

You will not change my mind.

I will die on this hill.

You’re fourteen and you’re reading Larry Niven’s “The Protector” because it’s your father’s favorite book and you like your father and you think he has good taste and the creature on the cover of the book looks interesting and you want to know what it’s about. And in it the female character does something better than the male character - because she’s been doing it her whole life and he’s only just learned - and he gets mad that she’s better at it than him. And you don’t understand why he would be mad about that, because, logically, she’d be better at it than him. She’s done it more. And he’s got a picture of a woman painted on the inside of his spacesuit, like a pinup girl, and it bothers you.

But you’re fourteen and you don’t know how to put this into words.

And then you’re fifteen and you’re reading “Orphans of the Sky” because it’s by a famous sci-fi author and it’s about a lost generation ship and how cool is that?!? but the women on the ship aren’t given a name until they’re married and you spend more time wondering what people call those women up until their marriage than you do focusing on the rest of the story. Even though this tidbit of information has nothing to do with the plot line of the story and is only brought up once in passing.

But it’s a random thing to get worked up about in an otherwise all right book.

Then you’re sixteen and you read “Dune” because your brother gave it to you for Christmas and it’s one of those books you have to read to earn your geek card. You spend an entire afternoon arguing over who is the main character - Paul or Jessica. And the more you contend Jessica, the more he says Paul, and you can’t make him see how the real hero is her. And you love Chani cause she’s tough and good with a knife, but at the end of the day, her killing Paul’s challengers is just a way to degrade them because those weenies lost to a girl.

Then you’re seventeen and you don’t want to read “Stranger in a Strange Land” after the first seventy pages because something about it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. All of this talk of water-brothers. You can’t even pin it down.

And then you’re eighteen and you’ve given up on classic sci-fi, but that doesn’t stop your brother or your father from trying to get you to read more.

Even when you bring them the books and bring them the passages and show them how the authors didn’t treat women like people.

Your brother says, “Well, that was because of the time it was written in.”

You get all worked up because these men couldn’t imagine a world in which women were equal, in which women were empowered and intelligent and literate and capable. 

You tell him - this, this is science fiction. This is all about imagining the world that could be and they couldn’t stand back long enough and dare to imagine how, not only technology would grow in time, but society would grow. 

But he blows you off because he can’t understand how it feels to be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen and desperately wanting to like the books your father likes, because your father has good taste, and being unable to, because most of those books tell you that you’re not a full person in ways that are too subtle to put into words. It’s all cognitive dissonance: a little like a song played a bit out of tempo - enough that you recognize it’s off, but not enough to pin down what exactly is wrong.

And then one day you’re twenty-two and studying sociology and some kind teacher finally gives you the words to explain all those little feelings that built and penned around inside of you for years.

It’s like the world clicking into place.