Pessimistic realism

“Never again” doesn’t apply to us, for what has been done to Syria has never been done before. Our tragic fate is to be the modern age’s “never before.”

Never before has the world been able to observe - in real time - the destruction of a nation and the extermination of a people who dared to demand freedom. Never before has a civilian population been filmed under attack with Scud missiles, barrel bombs and chemical weapons by its “own” illegitimate authorities. Never before have starvation sieges and old-fashioned barbaric massacres been so documented as they happened. Never before has mass torture been so evidenced. And never before has the world’s indifferent silence been so loud, save for perfunctory condemnations and erasable red lines.

Indeed, never before has the mightiest superpower the world has ever known shamelessly pretended to be impotent, and never before has it had the temerity of falsely pleading with the Syrian people’s executioners for grace and mercy, the same grace and mercy it denied Syrians by rejecting their desperate appeals for protection.

Never again? You mean never before. Hell of a legacy.

and then she raised the bar again 

i mean, surya did not pioneer the backflip. she herself stated that her coach suggested that she start doing backflips on ice because of a skater named norbert schramm who was performing them in europe at the time. scott cramer pulled off 10,032 backflips over the course of his career, and he retired seven years before surya even began competing. surya is THE FIRST AND ONLY skater in history to perform a backflip and land on one skate in competition, but the most important part of it wasn’t the feat itself but WHY SHE DID IT. 

and ok, the first person to successfully do a backflip on ice was skippy baxter in an ice show in the 1940s. there has only been one legal backflip performed in actual competition by terry kubicka in 1976. immediately after he pulled it off, the isu banned the move from competitions. please note that yes, terry kubicka was a white male figure skater. and for context, surya was born in 1973. i sincerely doubt that the isu was banning the backflip because of a THREE-YEAR-OLD. 

the isu had very good non-racism related reasons for banning the backflip because well, figure skating is fucking hard. i think we frequently underestimate just how difficult it is because of how easy they make it look. i mean top figure skaters are still working on consistently landing quad jumps in competition. it’s so easy to flub a jump and get injured, and it’s super common for skaters to spend huge chunks of the off season not training because they’ve injured themselves.

SO DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA JUST HOW FUCKING DANGEROUS IT WOULD BE IF BACKFLIPS WERE ALLOWED IN COMPETITIVE SKATING???? if you mess this move up, you’re not just going to break an ankle or fuck up your muscles, you’d break your neck on the ice. you could FUCKING DIE. and this is by no means the first or last move to get banned by the isu for being too dangerous. (the one that comes to mind is the head banger death spiral because seriously what a name).

the reason why this is just so upsetting to me is because i feel like you guys are really simplifying surya’s narrative. yes, surya was a FUCKING BADASS. LIKE HER FIRST SEASON IN SENIOR COMPETITIONS, SHE LANDED A BACKFLIP DURING PRACTICE RIGHT IN FRONT OF MIDORI ITO, THE FAVORITE FOR THE 1992 OLYMPICS. IN THE SAME COMPETITION, SHE BECAME THE ONLY WOMAN TO EVER ATTEMPT A QUAD TOE LOOP IN COMPETITION, and the first time anyone had even successfully pulled that off was a mere three years earlier. 

and yes, surya had to deal with A LOT of racism. because of her skin color and her build and her athleticism and her style, she didn’t fit into the “ice princess”. they pegged her as a rebel, and they treated her as such. the judges were constantly nitpicking her skating style and criticizing her artistry because she wasn’t this light and graceful skater that they thought female figure skaters should be. (black ballerinas suffer from the same plight). she was constantly pushing the boundaries, but she consistently got lower scores than her white counterparts. and despite that, she was A THREE-TIME WORLD SILVER MEDALIST, A FIVE-TIME EUROPEAN CHAMPION, AND A NINE-TIME FRENCH NATIONAL CHAMPION.

in the 1994 world championships, surya’s final score tied for first place with yuka sato’s. it came down to a tiebreaker vote, and the judges picked yuka because she fit in better with the ice princess image. surya knew why she the judges didnt pick her. during the awards ceremony, she refused to step onto the medals podium and took off the silver medal. she was crying, and the crowd was booing at her.

the 1998 olympics was going to be surya’s last hurrah. she knew that the 97-98 season would be her last. when the judges gave her a low score on her short program for surprise surprise racist reasons, she knew that there was no way that she could win. 

so surya decided to make a point. 

she hadn’t planned to do this from the start because she knew that the move was illegal and doing it could get her disqualified, but after seeing her short program score, surya basically on the spot decided to replace the triple in her free skate with the backflip landing on one skate. she hadn’t been training for this move specifically, she just pulled it off right then and there on the olympic stage. and while the backflip was banned for being too dangerous, another reason for it to be banned was because the skater would land on both skates, and jumps are always landed with one skate.

surya pulling off this banned move was basically her last FUCK YOU to the judges because they’d been screwing her over since the start of her career. she was challenging them by making a previously illegal move technically legal. the judges didn’t disqualify her, but they didn’t accept the move as legal either, and they deducted points from her score, so surya placed 10th overall. BUT THAT DIDNT MATTER. when surya finished her program, she turned her back on the judges (a huge no-no because it is highly disrespectful) because she didn’t care about their opinion at this point. SHE’D MADE HISTORY. their decision wouldn’t change that.

(surya performs the backflip at 3:28)

How women prepare for first dates

Bonus: How men prepare for first dates:

Wow. WOW. Look at all these sheltered people and their internalized misogyny.

The point isn’t, “NOT ALL MEN ARE OUT TO GET YOU.”

The point is, “WE HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING A NICE GUY FROM A SERIAL KILLER.”

It’s not like they fucking wear nametags, okay? Moreover, the most awful people with the worst intentions often put on the nicest face or deliberately make themselves seem harmless and likeable, to lull potential victims into a false sense of security. (Read up on Ted Bundy sometime. It’s horrifying shit. Or read any thread on the “Let’s Not Meet” subreddit.)

In order to protect ourselves, we are forced to assume the worst of every man we meet, because statistically speaking, the biggest danger to women…IS MEN. Saying “not all men are out to get you, you’re just being paranoid” is like saying “not every car you ride in is going to crash, so buckling your seatbealt is stupid.”

When dealing with an unknown situation, in the absence of absolute proof of safety, exercising a little extra caution can be the difference between life and death. Shaming women for being what you may view as overly cautious is every bit as horrid as blaming them if something goes wrong later on.

And refusing to go to a secluded location with a complete stranger without letting someone know where you’re going, who you’re with, and how to find you is just common street sense, whether you’re on a date or just going out for business or social purposes.

If your life has been so sheltered (or your coping skills so incredible) that you see no need to distrust strangers or worry about the potential for violence, you should thank your lucky stars.

And you should also be aware that just because it hasn’t happened to you or anyone you know does not mean that it doesn’t happen.

Lemme say that louder for the people in the back.

in 1989 on december 6th a 25 year old male entered the École Polytechnique de Montréal, an engineering school, with the intent to “fight feminism”. he made his way into a classroom and separated the male and female students, called the 9 women “a bunch of feminists” and shot the women, killing 6 of them. he advanced through the hallways, went into the cafeteria, another classroom, his only targets were women. at the end of it he killed 14 women, injured 10 other women, and injured 4 men all in under twenty minutes before turning the gun on himself. in his suicide note, this man claimed political motives and also blamed feminists for ruining his life which included a list of 19 women that he labeled as feminists and wanted kill.

december 6th in canada is known as National Day of Rememberance and Action on Violence Against Women where flags are flown at half-mast, a moment of silence is encouraged to be observed, and a white ribbon to be worn.

the victims names:

Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student

Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student

Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student

Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student

Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student

Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student

Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department

Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student

Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student

Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student

Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student

Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student

Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student

Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student

[a lot of this is from memory so if its inaccurate don’t hesitate to correct me so people have the most accurate knowledge of residential schools and how disgusting they were. @allthecanadianpolitics probably has more information and facts so dont take this as absolute]

its aboriginal history month fuckers so strap in to learn some dark shit. Now remembered that residential schools went on from 1831-1996

tw: sexual assault/rape, physical abuse [ask me to tag any more]

Imagine being forcibly taken from your home, taken away to a place you don’t know where people are speaking in a language you don’t know, and the minute you try to say anything in your native tongue to ask what’s going on, you’re told its wrong and what you’ve learned, what you heritage is, is a disgrace to society. That’s what happened pretty much all of the residential schools. There might be some outliers but as a whole, it was a shitty thing. How it’s shitty will be proven as you read. 

The schools were run by churches and the teachers and priests would be the people in charge. The government made it mandatory for all children from 5-18 and there were actually fines if you didn’t take your child to there. The closest reserve to me is Eskasoni [esk-a-zon-ee] and the residential school for Nova Scotia was Shuebanacadi [shoe-ban-ak-a-dee] and that’s like a four hour drive. 

The thing that is so horrendous about residential schools is the amount of abuse that went on there. If they dared say a single word in their native language they’d get beaten. Everything was in English too btw so the little kids talked in their native tongue yet were beaten and degraded for it when that’s the only language they know. They were forced to talk and act like they had grown up in British high society and if they dared pray to anything but God from the bible, they’d be beat. Even if some people said they were never a victim of any abuse, they were still told that they were bad, worthless, and basically terrible all because they dared to be native. 

It was a very common practice for priests to just fucking walk into the dorms and abuse these kids. There’s a story where a girl had a baby and when she gave birth, one of the nuns handed it to a girl and said, “Throw it in the incinerator.” And this young native girl, like 14-15, had just given birth only to have her kid thrown into the fucking furnace because they didn’t want it to get out that this girl got pregnant because she was raped by a priest. Yet it was so common that if you ask anybody that has a relative, they’ll most likely say that relative was abused. And the government didn’t care. A lot of the schools were over populated and people were malnourished from the bad food yet the government pushed it off to the side even though they’re the ones that paid for this entire thing. 

The food, clothing, and housing they were given was terrible. Like the guys were awoken at like five in the morning to stoke the furnaces and get the school warmer while the girls were woken and forced to make bread and help prepare things for breakfast. But the breakfast was made with the oats no store could sell because they were so old and gross. And a lot of the kids grew up with foods from the land like berries, meats, vegetables and weren’t used to European foods with bread, grains, etc. This food made them sick and the kids didn’t know it was food either so it was a culture shock being forced to eat this food that didn’t even look good. 

And then they went to classes where they were forced to forget their heritage, what they grew up with. Most kids didn’t even remember their parents when they were finally let out because they were taken at such a young age. Its not like it was even easy to transition too because today, if a family or person wants to leave a reserve, they loose all of their rights of not paying taxes, getting money from the government, etc and it was no better back then as reserves were actually the only place a native person could go and have full rights. But these kids had been through so much in the residential schools that made them think that practicing any part of their culture was barbaric, wrong, immoral and they’d be damned to Hell if they practiced any. So there was no way they could actually communicate with their tribe and family members, the only connection they had had to this world probably. 

Over 3000 kids were killed in these schools. That’s a bullshit number because those were the documented cases. A lot of the times the schools didn’t have to say a kid died because of the fact the government gave the schools full reign. The schools could preform human experimentation on the kids and people would fucking roll with it. There are actual reports of when a kid got sick with an extremely viral  So a lot more kids than 3000 died in those schools but that’s the official record. 

Residential schools are the reason a lot of Native culture has been fucking destroyed. A lot of languages were lost because all the kids in the reserves were taken and forced to assimilate into British culture so they didn’t remember anything of their native language. So a lot of traditions died with the elders and parents of the community. And it’s a damn tragedy because if you don’t have traditions or beliefs from your culture, what do you believe in? You were taught that anything but God was wrong yet you have all of these stories about your own gods to share that were lost with the elders. 

All in all, the residential schools were a fucking tragedy and i am appalled at the fact a lot of people don’t talk about it outside of Canadian history considering the last school was closed 20 years ago. There are 30 year olds that had to go to those schools that probably suffered some sort of effect from it. And yet, I hear my parents saying, “why should we pay for native people to buy alcohol and waste our tax money for something our ancestors did”. My parents were both alive when the schools were in the thick of their abuse. And they still think it was so long ago. 20 years might feel like an eternity but I think we can spare tax dollars to help whole communities that got fucked over from these schools. 

The mohawk institute also was a farm and required the children to provide manual labour in raising animals and produce, which they never get to dully enjoy as they were malnourished on oatmeal. Because of that the school was known as the Mush-hole by first nation survivors.