ohboyitstara

“doing adult things” = almost always a euphemism for sexy stuff (when other people say it)

Basically the word “adult” or “grown up” was used to condescend to us and exclude us. And what made a person an adult was treated as inherent.

Then we got older and tripped into what actually doing adulthood meant and came to find that

1. The people who were supposed to explain to us how this worked had completely failed to do so

2. They had done so in such a way that was meant to protect their authority while also (possibly inadvertently) barring us from the experiences and skills that would’ve helped us transition into adulthood better.

3. There is no inherent authority that comes with adulthood. The adults around us were talking out of their ass. Adult is a verb, not a noun. It’s not an inherent source of authority, it’s a thing you work at daily and you have to maintain it.

And what’s more the same people who lorded their age over us, telling us repeatedly we’d suddenly come to agree with them with age, completely failed to cede any of that authority or power even as some millennials are now staring down 40. So clearly “adulthood” is a game you’re trying to play to control us, even now. Fuck that. We’re not playing.

Honestly that some in Gen Z find it irritating is fine by me. If they think it sounds juvenile, that’s because it is. It is specifically useful in that it breaks the illusion of adults being better than kids. When kids are like, “you sound absurd. You’re in your thirties” I’m like, yeah kid. That’s the thing. Being an “adult” never stops being absurd. If it makes me sound like the mundanities of my life are all a performance that has nothing to do with my actual age or ability, good. That’s why I say it. I’m glad you’re growing up knowing that age isn’t an inherent door to authority. I’m glad you’re growing up thinking “fuck, these adults ten years older than me don’t act grown up at all.” That’s what we want. That’s we call it “adulting”, instead of claiming adulthood as part of us.

Maybe if your gen is lucky you will feel more appropriate claiming your adulthood without caveats. Maybe your definitions of adulthood are more versatile, so you won’t feel barred from the signifiers you’d need to feel like an adult. Maybe you’ll have a better launching pad. Maybe you’ll always hate we call it “adulting”. That’s okay. I hope you get better than we did. But I’m still gonna call it adulting.

Things aren’t over quite yet: Both Georgia Senate races are headed to a January 2021 runoff that could decide Senate control.

This is where we are: Democrats (including the 2 independent senators Sanders and King) currently hold 48 seats. Republicans currently hold 50 seats.

If Democrats gain the 2 seats from the runoffs (Ossoff and Warnock) we will be able to TIE the Senate 50-50. In which case, Kamala Harris, the VP, will tie-break votes in favor of the Democrats, therefore giving us a “majority” in the Senate.

I cannot stress enough how important this is for Democrats. We need to get both Ossoff and Warnock in, otherwise Biden will have a very difficult time getting anything done in office over the next 4 years.

FOR GEORGIA VOTERS:

MARK YOUR CALENDARS. The federal runoff election date (aka for the Senate seats) is JANUARY 5, 2021! (State and local runoffs are held December 1, 2020!)

Request an absentee ballot by NOVEMBER 18, 2020. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT FOR EVERYONE, EVEN IF YOU VOTED IN THE GENERAL ELECTION. For those who voted absentee in the General Election, you will NOT be automatically sent another absentee ballot for the runoff if you don’t make a separate request for one! Your prior absentee ballot request for the General Election does not apply to the runoff!

Register to vote for the runoff by DECEMBER 7, 2020.

Early voting for the runoff will begin on DECEMBER 14, 2020. (Please get your ballots in before the Jan. 5 deadline, and try to drop off your ballots instead of mailing them in when it gets very close. For info on in-person voting on election day, check here.)

Check your voting status, track your ballot, find polling locations, verify your mail-in application status, and more HERE.

Are you 17 years old but will be 18 by JANUARY 5, 2021? You are eligible to vote in the runoffs!

If you’re a college student coming from another state who is currently living on-campus or off-campus in Georgia, you can register to vote in the Georgia runoffs. (Go here, here and here for more info about this.)

Go here to find the contact info of your county’s board of registrar’s office. Contact them to discuss the voting options available to you!

Check the official Georgia website for more runoff election information. 

FOR NON-GEORGIA VOTERS WHO WANT TO HELP:

DONATING

For those who can’t vote in Georgia, but still want to help with the Senate runoffs somehow, please consider donating to the following and/or encouraging your friends and family to do so:

Stacey Abrams/Fair Fight - https://fairfight.com or https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fair-fight-1

Jon Ossoff - https://electjon.com or https://secure.actblue.com/donate/jon-ossoff-1

Raphael Warnock - https://warnockforgeorgia.com or https://secure.actblue.com/donate/warnock-for-georgia-1

The amount of money the GOP is going to spend on this election will be staggering, so even a dollar helps. If you’re not able to donate, even just sharing this with others makes a big difference!

VOLUNTEERING

If you can donate your time instead of money, please consider volunteering.

Begin at this volunteer from home spreadsheet! This is continuously updated with the latest volunteering opportunities!

If you are in or near Georgia, help voters cure their ballots!

You can also start making calls for Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff wherever you are!

Phone bank or text bank with Fair Fight!

And you can write postcards from anywhere at any time!

Letter writing starts soon too! Look here or here to learn more!

Want to donate but you’re not in the US? Try an organization like Spread the Vote!

Email Fair Fight/Stacey Abrams at [email protected] and indicate your interest to volunteer for the Georgia Senate runoffs!

/r/VoteDEM is also a great resource! It is a subreddit dedicated to promoting and helping elect downballot Democratic candidates all across the US.

Share the infographic below!

More good sources of volunteering opportunities, including opportunities to volunteer directly with/for Ossoff’s and Warnock’s teams can be found at the Read More at the bottom of this post.

If anyone has more helpful info, please reblog and add it or contact me. Info in this post will be updated, so please check the notes and reblog the latest version of this post if possible.

Finally, if you can’t vote, donate, or volunteer, please reblog and share this via Facebook, Instagram, etc. Everything helps. Thank you!

We can do this. We can flip the Senate and take back the next 4 years.

[Colour photograph of Winona LaDuk speaking. She is wearing traditional clothing and there is another indigenous person sitting next to her.]

if your post about racism has the words “my fellow white people” or other similar phrasings, then that’s a sign that maaaybe you should just sit back and listen to people of color instead.

posts with the phrase “my fellow white people” often have one key element. the word “we”. “we need to do better”, “we need to speak up”, “we need to understand this”. audiences are a lot more likely to listen if the argument comes with the word “we”, since it identifies a common group between the audience and the speaker. the problem here is that this commonality is whiteness. by stating the word “we”, you establish an “us”, which comes with a “them”. and that “them” is people of color.

there’s a sense of alienation i feel every time i see a post speaking about how “fellow white people, we need to not be racist”. in a post like this, i, a person of color, have been effectively been excluded from a discussion about racism. and just like that, people of color become the subject of a dialogue between white people, and nothing more. quite frankly, it should be enough to just listen to people of color when they say it the first time around. every time you make a post about your “fellow whites”, you encourage a white person’s habit of not listening to people of color, of only caring when a white person says it. why should a white person have to listen to a person of color’s nuanced discussion on racial issues, when there’s another white person saying a more simplified version of that topic in a way that’s easier for them to digest? it all comes down to a white person’s unwillingness to empathize with people of color.

as nice as simple might sound, it is your responsibility as a white person to at least try to understand when people of color speak about racism. a surface-level understanding of racism is not going to help you properly confront the racist biases that have been instilled in all of us since childhood. it’ll only give you a cookie cutter view of the world, where everything is as easy as “racism is bad”, and your duty as a white person is as simple as realizing that you have white privilege. it shields you from the reality that racism is a gruesome institution that starts to erode the psyche of people of color the moment we enter this world. it’s a reality that people of color have no option but to experience personally, so the least you could do is try to understand what we have to say about it.

“Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus

“Celebration” by Kool & the Gang

“Fuck Donald Trump” by dropz

“Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” by Steam

“We Are the Champions” by Queen

“Dancing in the Street” by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas

“Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People (which is especially petty and hilarious because Trump used “Y.M.C.A.” as his campaign theme song)

“Philadelphia Freedom” by Elton John

“Hit the Road Jack” by Ray Charles

Reasons I love Megan Denise Fox.