Playing Academic

Nope! I’m pretty sure that gender, while occasionally convenient, is a wholly human invention. Like pants. Pants can be extremely useful! They come in different styles—jeans are pants, so are capris, and slacks, and skinny jeans, and this variety is all equally and wonderfully pants, and despite this I nevertheless prefer pants to skirts, but no one could suggest that pants are an innate quality of human nature or the universe as a whole.

This is the first page of Island Book, coming in 2019 from First Second Books.

At that time, as she tells it, the vanguard of women’s advancement was on her side. Go West, young woman! Get out there and seek your fortune. Dance all night and flirt with strangers – and if you want to do more than flirt, that’s no one’s business but yours. Ambient “everything is terrible and you’ll definitely get raped” messages were a relic of her Catholic parents and the associated Old Guard. They were framed, explicitly, as regressive, as part of the patriarchal structures that kept women’s heads down and their hands busy with housework. Defying them was what young Boomer womanhood was all about.

I count myself as very lucky to have had the safety and comfort I've had in my life, and in this way I am privileged in both the thankful and political senses of that word. I'm trying to weigh that while watching my response to this post, and don't think I'll have a firm view for quite some time.

Still, this is disrupting thought-patterns of mine that could probably use some disruption, and is helping me develop language for orthogonal thoughts I've been slowly working into language.

Found from various places online:

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

Angela Y. Davis - Are Prisons Obsolete?

Angela Y. Davis - Race, Women, and Class

The Communist Manifesto - Marx and Engels

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf

Critical Race Theory: An Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic

The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America- Robert M. Entman and Andrew Rojecki

Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism - bell hooks

Feminism is for Everybody - bell hooks

outlaw culture - bell hooks

Faces at the Bottom of the Well - Derrick Bell

Sex, Power, and Consent - Anastasia Powell

I am Your Sister - Audre Lorde

Patricia Hill Collins - Black Feminist Thought

Gender Trouble - Judith Butler

Four books by Frantz Fanon

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

Medical Apartheid - Harriet Washington

Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory  - edited by Michael Warner

Colonialism/Postcolonialism - Ania Loomba

Discipline and Punish - Michel Foucault

The Gloria Anzaldua Reader

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher

This Bridge Called by Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa

What is Cultural Studies? - John Storey

Cultural Theory and Popular Culture - John Storey

The Disability Studies Reader

Michel Foucault - Interviews and Other Writings

Michel Foucault - The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3 

Michel Foucault - The Archeology of Knowledge

This blog also has a lot more.

we are the Cows

and wen the sky

haf sent its chylde

from clouds up high

down to our playce

of field and grayne

we say well come

The peepl tell me All the tym I’m farr too yuck With too much slym

But I think Werm Is gud to be. I find a styck

🚨 The internet needs you 🚨

You’re up again, Tumblr. 

Back in 2015 you demanded that the FCC adopt strict net neutrality rules and establish a free and open internet. And you won. 

That should’ve been the end of it. But apparently not.

The new head of the FCC wants to undo the net neutrality protections you fought so hard for.

His proposed changes open the door to your web traffic being slowed down, or even blocked altogether. You could be forced to pay extra to use your favorite apps. You could even be prevented from getting news from the sources you trust.

Title II protects consumers and democracy by ensuring all voices can be heard.

You know the drill. Here’s what to do:

The FCC is taking comments from the public, and dearfcc.org is making it as simple as possible for you to make your voice heard.

Go there now 👉 dearfcc.org ✌️

You’ll just need to provide a name, an address, and then say a little bit about why rolling back Title II protections is a bad idea. If you’re not quite sure what to write, here’s something to get you started:

I’m writing to urge you to keep our Open Internet rules based on Title II in place. Without them, we could lose the internet as we know it.

The proposed changes to FCC rules would allow fast lanes for sites that pay, and force everyone else into slow lanes. We’ve already seen access to streaming services like Netflix, popular games like League of Legends, and communication platforms like FaceTime slowed down, or even blocked. Conditions like this hurt businesses large and small, and penalize the users who patronize them. 

The changes also open the door to unfair taxes on internet users, and could also make it harder for blogs, nonprofits, artists, and others who can’t pay up to have their voices heard.

Please leave the existing existing net neutrality rules based on Title II in place.

Thank you!

If you need more ammo, feel free to quote these experts from our net neutrality Issue Time. TechCrunch and Battle for the Net also have some good starters.

ALL OF THESE GIFS ARE ONE MAN

THE SINGULAR BUSTER KEATON

WHILE FILMING THE GENERAL

HE SNAPPED HIS NECK ON THE RAILROAD TIES AND WENT HOME AND ICED HIS BODY

AND CAME BACK FOR WORK THE NEXT DAY

HE ONCE GOT HIS HIP RIPPED OUT OF ITS SOCKET BY A MALFUNCTIONING ELEVATOR AND WAS DISAPPOINTED WITH HIMSELF FOR BEING INJURED

HE ONCE HAD TO FALL 100 FEET DOWN A WATERFALL INTO A NET

A STUNTMAN TESTED IT AND BROKE BOTH LEGS AND DISLOCATED HIS SHOULDER

BUSTER DID THE STUNT ANYWAY AND LANDED WITHOUT A SCRATCH

IN ‘THE HIGH DIVE’

BUSTER DID A TRICK DIVE THROUGH A CARDBOARD DECK THAT WAS CAMOUFLAGED TO LOOK LIKE THE REAL DECK

ONLY HE COULDN’T TELL FROM 100 FEET UP WHERE THE CARDBOARD STOPPED AND THE REAL DECK STARTED AND THERE WAS ONLY LIKE A THREE FOOT MARGIN FOR ERROR

AND WHEN HE HESITATED A SUDDEN BREEZE LITERALLY KNOCKED HIM OFF THE DIVING BOARD AND HE HAD TO JUMP ANYWAY

AND HE MISSED THE REAL DECK BY LESS THAN A FOOT BUT HE MADE IT

IN THE SECOND GIF HE’S RECREATING SOMETHING THAT THE ACTUAL GENERAL PURSUERS HAD TO DO IN THE CIVIL WAR

IF HE MISSES THAT TIE

THE TRAIN WILL BE DERAILED AND HE WILL DIE IN THE EXPLOSION

IN THE THIRD GIF AN ENTIRE HOUSE IS FALLING HE HAS ONE TAKE AND IF HE HAS NOT DONE THE CALCULATIONS CORRECTLY HE WILL BE CRUSHED

HE HAS AN INCH-WIDE MARGIN ON EACH SIDE

AND THE HOUSE LITERALLY BRUSHES HIS LEFT SHOULDER ON THE WAY DOWN

YOU CAN SEE HIS LEFT ARM JUMP BECAUSE HE’S FLINCHING FROM THE PAIN

THAT LAST GIF

HE WAS SUPPOSED TO MAKE THAT JUMP

HE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO FALL AND THEY HADNT PLANNED FOR IT

BUT HE SURVIVED

BUSTER KEATON SURVIVED 100% OF THINGS THAT WOULD HAVE KILLED LESSER MEN INCLUDING WWI, TORNADOS, HOUSEFIRES, ALCOHOLISM, BROKEN NETS, CRUSHING DEPRESSION, THE DEPRESSION ITSELF, THE MCCARTHY WITCHHUNTS, THE END OF SILENT CINEMA, AND ABOUT 900 MORE OF THE STUNTS YOU SEE ABOVE

BUSTER LIVED TO BE 70 YEARS OLD

FATHERED LIKE FOUR KIDS AND EIGHT GRANDKIDS

HE CAME OUT THE OTHER SIDE OF ALL THAT

THINKING THAT LIFE WAS GOOD AND PEOPLE WERE WONDERFUL

BUSTER KEATON IS NOT JUST A STUNTMAN

THEY WERE ACROBATS.

THEY TOOK BABY BUSTER UP HIGH IN THE AIR WITH THEM.

THEY DROPPED HIM.

LUCKILY SOMEONE WHO WAS STANDING UNDER THEM CAUGHT BABY BUSTER.

THAT MAN WAS HARRY HOUDINI. 

HARRY HOUDINI SAVED BUSTER KEATON’S LIFE.