Vixen Gold

Art and Fear- David Bayles and Ted Orland (via qweety)

Perfection is intimidating.  I think most artists blocks come from the fear of creating something imperfect.

(via buttastic)

putting it even more simply: just make shit. eventually it’ll be good shit. maybe most of it will just be shit! but you can’t make good shit if you’re not making a lot of shit.

GET EXCITED AND MAKE THINGS.

Ceramicist & Artist:

so, that “stop devaluing feminized work post”

nice idea and all

but the thing is, as soon as a decent number of women enter any field, it becomes “feminized,” and it becomes devalued.

as women enter a field in greater number, people become less willing to pay for it, the respect for it drops, and it’s seen as less of a big deal. it’s not about the job- it’s about the number of women in the job.

observe what happened with biology. it’s STEM, sure, but anyone in a male-dominated science will sneer at the idea of it being ‘for real,’ nevermind that everyone sure took it more seriously when it was a male dominated field. so has happened with scores of other areas; nursing comes to mind

so the thing is, it’s not the work or the job that has to be uplifted and seen as more respectable. it will never work out, until people start seeing women as respectable

Personal anecdote time!  I’m in a biology graduate program.  An acquaintance wanted to introduce some guy to me because his son was thinking about becoming an undergrad science major.  When he found out I was in the biology department, he grinned and said, “Well, I guess that’s kind of related to science.”

I gave him what I hope was an icy look and said, “Isn’t it strange how men outside the field started saying that right around the time biology majors shifted from mostly male to mostly female?”

pleasure, in the fun late-capitalism hellhole of present-day america, is treated like a luxury.  it’s expensive.  it’s frivolous.  it’s guilty.  if we want to eat ice cream out of the carton and be socially acceptable at the same time, we’d better have earned that ice cream.  maybe by like running a marathon or getting dumped by an asshole.  if we’re going to duck into the corner store and buy fresh flowers, it’s because we’ve had a hard week, not because flowers are nice.  we can take a day off work, but only if we’re sick.  we have to suffer before we’re allowed extra kindness.

in this equation pleasure is optional (irresponsible, even), except when it’s a balm for suffering.

however!  we need pleasure to live.  a life without nice feelings in it is like a diet with no vitamins in it.  it’ll make you sick and eventually it’ll kill you.  we know this because people with depression stop feeling pleasure, and they often kill themselves.  left untreated, depression is a fatal disease.

pleasure is not optional.  pleasure is not a luxury.  without it, we die.  that is literally the opposite of a luxury.

because pleasure is treated like a luxury, and priced accordingly, it is fucking hard to get.  it’s hard to take time to relax and see loved ones when corporations aren’t required to offer paid vacation.  it’s hard to buy that special face scrub or art print or pretty yarn when it costs $35 and student loans are breathing down your neck.  so pleasure gets saved up for when things are really bad.  pleasure gets budgeted.  pleasure, once again, becomes something we have to earn by abstaining and hurting and gritting our teeth.

do this to people long enough and pleasure becomes potently associated with guilt.  this thing we need desperately to stay alive is suddenly something we can’t seek out without looking over our shoulder and wondering if we’re allowed to have it.

that’s why it’s so important that we talk about self care, and tell ourselves and each other that it is okay to do things that feel good.  it is necessary to do things that feel good.  we have to uncouple suffering and pleasure, because the idea that we have to earn feeling good by first feeling bad is monstrous and wrong.

“There’s a monster in my closet!” “Yes. She loves the smell of the laundry detergent I use, and she’s busy trying to organize your shoes.”

“There’s a monster under the stairs!” “Yes. She collects spiders and he makes sure you don’t trip while going to get water.”

“There’s a monster right outside my window!” “Yes. He’s pulling weeds from the garden and protecting us from burglars.”

“There’s a monster behind the couch!” “Yes. He’s eating all the crumbs you left behind and hiding pennies in the cushions.”

You called us insane and crazy. two ableist slurs. lots of us /are/ mentally ill. and you said we aren’t normal when it’s perfectally normal to be mentally ill or disabled. 

Writing a historical novel means knowing how far they can travel on a horse, This is good info right here.