Cast your soul to the sea

I'll let you in on something awesome: The more girlblorbos you become obsessed with, the more the barrier between you and being invested in female characters breaks down. That's why conservatives hate representation in the first place. And obviously fandom isn't activism, but I think you should examine how you interact with art, and fight the biases you bring to it. I think it's good for you to do that.

That's not even it. A lot of people can put a lot of effort into beautiful fanwork, can research so much history the tiniest of details for one sentence of their fics! Ask them to put that effort into caring about a character of color or a female character and suddenly it's just not possible.

La force de continuer à vivre - Collage sur Vinyle

"In cuneiform, the word ‘midwife’ is written with three logographic signs – or signs that stand for whole words – meaning ‘woman’, ‘inside’ or ‘womb’, and ‘to know’. Midwives, in other words, were women who knew the inside. Their role had both medical and mythological import. Clay tablets that record medical instructions often feature midwives, like one reddish tablet unearthed from an ancient library in Assur written down in the early first millennium BCE. A lengthy collection of prescriptions for a challenging birth combines spells and medicine. It reads like an instruction manual, explaining how to mix and apply salves and oils, and how to massage the pregnant woman’s abdomen to help move labour along. (...)

Women didn’t just treat illnesses and processes specific to other women; they also served as ancient GPs. Some of the earliest records of female physicians appear in clay tablets from the third millennium BCE, including even their names. Dubildamu may not have used a stethoscope 4,500 years ago, but she is listed in an accounting tablet as an azu munus, which in Sumerian means ‘female physician’. A few centuries later, a woman called Ubartum also carried her proverbial medical bag to visit so many patients that her name appears in no fewer than fifty documents. (Incidentally, Ubartum’s brother was also a physician who was married to a princess, the daughter of King Shulgi.) Women continued to work as physicians throughout the region’s long history, and they may have even composed and used medical texts, including one clay tablet written in the early second millennium BCE to assist with childbirth."

"People back then always married young it's natural!!!" Every single 1800s guide I've ever met casually mentions that, of course, you really shouldn't get married before you're at least 20, and waiting until 25 is usually better.

Or, like. Okay here's a long segment:

Just firmly going "it is crazy sexist to blame The Wife for overspending when thirty seconds of asking questions will immediately establish that her husband was outright lying to her about how much money they had. Talk to your wife like a normal person."

Or--okay, here. A section on being honest and not writing love letters in secret, because that's usually a good sign that there's something untoward going on....

....except that he then immediately acknowledges that sometimes, the reason you're hiding this from your parents is that your parents suck. That there are parents who frankly have not earned the right to approve or disapprove of your partner.

"Men and women being friends with each other is literally normal. Don't be a controlling freak."

"If you have to abuse a child to keep order in your classroom then you're a bad teacher."

He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"

"What?"

He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"

"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."

Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.

rascvjetana romantika pod Zadarskim trešnjama.

New poem.