Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Honestly I feel sort of ridiculously lucky re: potential ships in the upcoming Star Wars movies, and I’m realizing that it’s possibly just me?  But LET ME LAY THIS OUT FOR YOU.

MOST LIKELY: Finn/Rey.  These two children are cute as shit.  They’re just so damn excited about the world and the universe and green and the Force and each other.  Finn is all star-eyes and bear hugs, and Rey is all toothy grins and fierce protection.  It’s fucking precious.  Sit with me and think about Rey coming back from Fuckety Nowhere to find Finn recovered from his injuries and learning how to be Resistance, and she bounces off the Falcon and runs up to him and throws her arms around his neck for a hug like they did in Starkiller, and when she pulls away she holds onto one of his hands and they smile at each other like the adorable little fucks they are.  BONUS: interracial relationship between a white woman and a black man, which is still something that’s considered more than a little taboo.  Racism is a thing guys, and it’s SO IMPORTANT that representation of this sort of relationship be in the media, especially in such a big-name franchise as Star Wars.  Finn is affectionate, self-determining, and allowed to show emotions like fear and anxiety without any in-narrative penalties, and that is NOVEL, unfortunately.  And Rey is…well, Rey.  Come on, guys, I want to be Rey when I grow up and I’m sure you do too.  She’s able to be the hero, and not in the sense a lot of us are familiar with: there’s no assault, no rape, nothing like that.  She just finds a droid, and then she finds a lightsaber, and then she has the Force, and then she fights for the people she cares about, which is the same way that Luke became a hero.  No one criticizes her for being female.  THIS WOULD BE A GREAT COUPLE.

SECOND MOST LIKELY: Finn/Poe.  The jaCKET?  That is all?  No, seriously, though, this would be a great ship: the dashing pilot and the rogue Stormtrooper.  The entire base would ship it.  Poe would shout down anyone who talked about Finn being a spy, and Finn would learn Droid to talk to BB-8, Poe’s best friend.  This would be a ship with a lot of teasing smiles and laughing, arms around shoulders and warm support.  It would be about Finn learning to be an independent person and Poe welcoming someone new into his family.  BONUS: interracial gay relationship between a Guatemalan man and a black man, which is a little taboo in a different way.  Homophobia is a thing guys, and it’s SO IMPORTANT that representation of this sort of relationship be in the media, especially in cuh a big-name franchise as Star Wars.  Finn is everything I described above, and Poe is dashing, confident, intelligent, skilled…and caring toward his squadron, kind to a stranger, and respectful toward women, including those who have authority over him like Leia (insert battle hymn about the greatness of General Leia here).  Poe is a whole other thing from the standard cocky bastard of a pilot we know from movies and TV.  And please sign me right on up for this new type of dashing heroic gentleman, I am on this bullet train to a brighter future and you should be too.  THIS WOULD ALSO BE A GREAT COUPLE.

OTHER MORE UNLIKELY COUPLES: The Damerons (Finn/Poe/Rey).  It would be great for all of the reasons above, with the addition of the Poe-Rey dynamic of, I imagine, “Look at how beautiful and powerful and glorious this girl is” from Poe’s angle and “You are nice to me and handsome and I’m not sure what to do with any of that” from Rey’s.  Technically the best of all worlds (interracial! everyone is bi except possibly Rey!), but unlikely because, well, it’s a threesome, and that renders it frankly improbable for Hollywood to make it a thing.

And of course, THE ONE PAIRING I’M NOT EXCITED ABOUT: Kylo/Rey.  Um.  No.  Not least because things are looking like she’s going to be Rey Skywalker and that makes them EITHER first cousins OR siblings, depending on which twin is Rey’s parent, and yes, Luke and Leia were almost a thing, but let’s just take a hard line on No Incest this go-round, shall we?  But also because that would, I think, be wildly unhealthy unless they pulled off some sort of miracle.  And because honestly my main interest in a redemption arc for Kylo is the one that is Entirely For Leia’s Benefit, and I’ve read enough stories about poor damaged boys whose actions weren’t their fault at all being saved from themselves by the purity of love and…like…give the man the dignity of his own choices, okay?  I can feel sorry for Kylo because of the way he’s so clearly been manipulated and groomed by Snoke, but unless there’s evidence of actual legitimate mind control it’s still his choice to side with the Dark.  I have a lot of firm opinions about human dignity and free will and even though he’s currently a spectacular bastard, Kylo Ren still has free will and he has exercised it and as a human being he deserves to have his choices recognized as his own.

ANYWAY.  My point here is that no matter what you ship hardest, it needs to be recognized that either of the two most likely ships to happen will be almost groundbreaking in the representation they’ll offer.  I will make no judgements and fight no wars about what kind of representation is ‘most important’ because, you know what, it’s ALL important.  It matters that kids see interracial relationships on the big screen, presented as grand sweeping romances rather than comedy or tragedy.  It matters that kids see gay relationships that way.  It is important that teenagers and adults and children look at the characters they love and see themselves there, see the people they love there, see their friendships and relationships there.  Duking it out about who is more oppressed and therefore more deserving of that representation lessens us as people.  You, as a person reading this, deserve to see yourself in a character, in a hero, and so do the other people on the street, friends, strangers, enemies.

I want us to have it all, guys.  I want you to have everything: trans characters who are fierce and strong, women who can save galaxies, men who can be gentle and emotional and heroic, gay and lesbian romances full of light and laughter, racial diversity because, hey, when your copilot is covered in ten inches of hair what’s a little melanin between friends.  I want you to have ace characters with adoring husbands and wives, nonbinary characters and genderfluid characters whose friends would die for them no matter what their pronouns are today and vice versa, aro characters with badass spaceships full of loyal crew they love, characters with ADHD and autism and schizophrenia and depression going out to save the world with the people who care about them, physically disabled characters with blasters concealed in their prosthetics or souped up hoverchairs.  ALL OF IT.  And this movie series isn’t going to give us all that, because all of that is…it’s a lot to ask, and I know it, but I want it anyway.  But this movie is virtually guaranteed to give us something, some starting point, and you know what?  I’m ready to take what I can get while I work on finding a way to give you guys everything.

Mulan means a lot to me, okay

When I was a little kid, Disney’s Mulan was one of my very favorite movies (between that and my unwavering love for Robin Hood, a lot of my current personality traits should be easy to guess).  And there were a lot of reasons, not least of which are:

a) the gorgeous animation (the avalanche, the smoke, the fire, it’s just so incredible);

b) the music (LET’S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS); and

c) Mulan, come on guys, it’s a girl who cheats her way into the army and becomes a hero even when no one–not even herself–believes in her, you had to know that was going to be my JAM.

But…like…it was also one of my favorite love stories (I also really love Beauty and the Beast, which will get its own rant someday), which I recently discovered is not a standard opinion.  A lot of people spend a lot of time making smart remarks about Shang’s gay crisis.  And…this might have just been me, but the change between Ping/Mulan never struck me as the pertinent part of the relationship.  I figured that, yeah, Shang was 100% Here For That even though Ping was his subordinate and therefore off-limits.  And then I figured that Shang was still 100% Here For That after watching Mulan dismantle a palace and light a warlord on fire, with the added bonus that she wasn’t his subordinate.  So my assessment was that Shang was in love with the person, the earnest but slightly awkward person who almost flunked out of the army and specializes in haphazard plans based on blowing shit up and looks startled whenever people like them.  And since he was in love with the person, his anger was because that person lied to him, not because that person had a different set of bits than he’d originally assumed, and his interest was in the person, not in their face or their clothes.

And that meant a lot to me as a kid for reasons that I wasn’t really sure how to articulate.

Here’s the thing.  I am conventionally fairly attractive, through a combination of good genes and good fortune, and I recognize the inherent advantage that entails.  I’m not a show-stopper or anything, but my features are symmetrical and my skin is usually clear and…well, to be honest, the triple-D cup size means that the rest of that stuff almost doesn’t matter.  My shoulders are too broad to look like a pinup and I’m too short to look leggy and curvaceous and I’m too curvy to be ‘petite’, but I did okay on the physical end of the spectrum.  I could probably understand if someone came up and asked to buy me a drink or something.  I consistently cannot understand when someone shows interest, romantic or otherwise, in me once I’ve opened my mouth.  You know the running joke of ‘well I’m not stopping traffic but at least I have a good personality’?  Yeah, my assessment of myself is the exact opposite.  None of my self-esteem issues related to the way I look, they’re all about the person who lives under my skin.

And Mulan is pretty, she’s lovely, no one questions that, she doesn’t ever seem to question that.  But she always looks surprised when people like her, and she tries so hard to act the way people expect her to act, and she looks ready to take punishment for acting outside the expectations, even when she’s been killing armies and slaying warlords and saving emperors.  I like to think she’s like me: she knows the skin is pretty, but she’s terrified that the person underneath isn’t lovable.  And then she goes to the army and breaks laws and dishonors her family.  And she makes friends who risk their lives for that person, and she gains respect for that person, and Shang falls in love with that person, and it’s all done on that person’s merits, whether you want to call that person Mulan or Ping or whatever, not on the merits of how pretty her face is or how busty she is or how elegant or well-mannered she can act.

And…that meant a lot to me as a scared, damaged kid.  It means a lot to me, now, currently, in my differently scared, differently damaged almost-adult self.  I probably haven’t made a lot of sense here, come to think of it.  If you persevered all the way to the end, I tip my hat to you.

Funny Story (Not Really)

So funny story.  I hear people tell me that I’m excessively paranoid a lot of the time–mostly guys, but the reason I’m making this post is because of a conversation I recently had with a woman who’s been friends with my dad a long time.  I love my dad a lot and he’s mostly pretty on top of his shit (he’s also going to therapy to get more on top of his shit, so PROPS for that, Dad), and this woman (we’ll call her Janie) is nice enough.  She has a daughter who’s just starting high school and a son who’ll be in college next year.  I was talking with her about my college experience and she asked if I went to parties and stuff.  I don’t.  At all.  I told her as much and she asked me why, and I said because I’m busy, because I’m an introvert, because of any of a number of reasons, and I finished the list by admitting that I don’t trust a lot of the guys on my campus.

She asked why.

I hemmed and hawwed and said ‘uh’ a lot, and then I told her that my campus of four hundred people had five sexual assault cases last semester alone.  My freshman year there were at least two people outright expelled for it.

Janie, mother of a teenaged boy about to go into college and a teenaged girl just going into high school and already growing up into a stunner, wrote it off by saying “well, most of them must have been misconceptions; you know, it’s easy to miscommunicate when romance is involved; I’m sure there were a lot of overreactions and morning-after regrets.”  I stared at her for a moment and went “Actually, one of the reports last semester was mine, and I know two of the other people who filed them.  It’s usually pretty obvious when someone’s trying to force the point.”  I gave her a summary of what happened to me (look, it’s a long story, some dude came over to watch a movie with my roommate and me and the day ended with him pinning me to the floor while I jammed my thumb into his throat and my roommate helped pull him off) and she kept at it, talking about how I had probably just given him mixed signals, how people probably didn’t listen when I told them not to touch me because I go from zero to sixty real quick (if I say ‘stop touching me’ and you don’t, my next statement will be ‘stop touching me or I’ll break your finger,’ and I expect people to thereafter stop touching me).

And all I could think was “My god, you’re raising a daughter, I’m so scared for her right now.”

I’ve become aware of late that I’m a statistical outlier, whether it’s from poor luck or because I attract a certain kind of trouble or because I act a certain way.  Most girls don’t have five (six depending on how you reckon it) assaults committed against them by their eighteenth birthday.  I hope to God that Janie’s daughter is as lucky as Janie evidently has been, that she’ll never know how terrifying it is to know that the person holding your down is twice your size, or that if you scream for help no one will believe you (fun fact, no one except my parents believed me four times out of five).  I hope that she never asks herself “do I grab my roommate’s switchblade and go outside and check on that freshman sitting outside in the dark, or do I go get an RD because that’s a very tall young man.”  I hope she lives a safe enough life that she never finds herself sitting there in the aftermath of violence, whether it’s just an unwelcome hand groping her thigh or something much worse, and wonders to herself who the hell will believe me.

But most of all, I hope that, in the event she’s ever in the position I’ve been in, or worse, her mother doesn’t fucking tell her she’s overreacting and making shit up.

JESUS SHIT, WOMAN.

bopeep:

*has never been in a fight in my life* listen. i will beat ur ass

Me: *has never lost a fight in my life* Listen, I will beat your ass.

Them: *sees that I am five-nothing, curvy, and female* 

Them: Yeah, right.  

Them: *continues touching me*

Them: *freaks out when I almost break their wrist*

Me: Listen, I told you I would beat your ass.

(via a-idontevenknow-thing)

get-your-ass-in-the-impala:

smurflewis:

gaysfinest:

Don’t tell your daughter that when a boy is mean or rude to her it’s because he has a crush on her. Don’t teach her that abuse is a sign of love.

My mom always taught me yell or fight back. Boys would be mean and I would yell back. I would get my ass pinched and I would smack them as hard as I could.

Who alway got in trouble? Me.

They would call my mother and she always came in and lectures my teachers and threatened to sue for making her miss work and treating me poorly.

She always taught my brothers to respect women. The only fights my brothers ever got in was defending women from someone else.

The school tried to call my father once instead of my mother on us. He came in in his full preacher outfit (being a preacher and all) and gave them an entire sermon on what would Jesus day of he was called in. They decided dealing with my mom was better.

I think my favorite story of this is when some kid snapped my bra and I turned around, didn’t even think about it, and punched that little motherfucker right in the nose.

So naturally, I end up in the principal’s office, refusing to apologize. 

“He shouldn’t have put his hands on me and I wouldn’t have hit him!” That’s the only thing I was saying.

These people had the unfortunate luck of catching my dad at home, instead of my mom. So he comes fucking sauntering in there, like he’s Clint fucking Eastwood in some western movie and looks at me. 

“Melissa, did you punch him?” 

“Yes.” I said. 

“Why?” 

“Because he snapped my bra strap.” 

And he turns his squinty eyed glare to the principal and says, “You’re telling me my daughter is in trouble because that squirrely looking kid put his hands on her and she chose to defend herself? That’s what you are saying to me.” 

“Well, sir-” The man kind of stuttered because my dad is kind of intimidating in the quiet sort of way that kind of whispers in the back of your mind that this person could be dangerous. “Melissa did make it physical.” 

“No. That kid put his hands on my daughter. Are you saying my daughter cannot defend herself when some boy decides to put hands on her? Is that what you are teaching my girl?” 

I didn’t get suspended that day.  

^^YOU.  YES.  I LOVE YOU.  LET’S TELL THESE STORIES.

Let me tell you a little story about the time I learned what boys could do.  Let me tell you about when I was in fourth grade and a boy cornered my skinny underdeveloped ass at recess, day after day, and grabbed my thigh to cop a feel while he threatened to break it, under the eye of the teacher.  Let me tell you about how I was too damaged-confused-inept to know that sex and violence could go hand in hand, but went home and cried anyway because I knew a threat when I felt it.  Let me tell you about how my mother hugged me tight and promised that I was worth something, and then sat me down and said ‘Baby bear, you do what you have to do,’ said ‘Baby bear, if he puts his hands on you and you feel scared, you make him take his hands off.’  Let me tell you about how one day I reached my limit and punched him in the face, shaking so hard my teeth chattered.  Let me tell you about how the teacher, the woman who had seen what he did every day, shouted at me for attacking him and marched me down to the principal’s office while the boy went to the nurse.  Let me tell you about how I got detention and a sentence to the prison of the school counselor for ‘anger management issues’ while the boy wandered around without a single bruise.  Let me tell you about how I got a handwritten death threat in my backpack, in the boy’s handwriting, and how the principal and the teachers did nothing while my parents fought for me and I raged and checked window locks and signed up for martial arts.  Let me tell you about how my child-self, abused physically and emotionally by her extended family, blamed herself for everything, everything, everything, and how the counselor taught me that it was my fault, taught me to torture myself with guilt over using violence.

Let me tell you a little story about the time when I realized that violence is sometimes the only answer you have.  Let me tell you about when I was eleven in a tiny town in Montana, and I’d been fighting with an older boy for months.  Let me tell you about how he made me feel like a rabbit facing a fox, or about how his two sisters, both over six years his senior, were terrified of him, or about how his parents couldn’t control him.  Let me tell you about how I admitted, shamefaced, to my parents that I just couldn’t stand to be in a room with him, and my mother sat me down again, and this time she said things like “Stay with witnesses” and “Don’t be afraid to run” and “Go for the throat, for the nose, for the balls” and “Get him on the ground” and “Be brutal.”  Let me tell you about how he caught me alone in a room and pinned me to a wall and kissed me hard, and how I slipped out under his arm and ran like the hounds of hell were nipping at my heels, straight into a room full of adults.  Let me tell you about how he caught me anyway, yanked me around and punched me in the stomach.  Let me tell you about how I answered his punch with my own, one-two-three, nose-groin-chokehold, and forced him to the ground as he gasped for air.  Let me tell you about how I shook with adrenaline this time and how his sisters thanked me and cried with relief and how I held my chin high.

Let me tell you about the eighteen-year-old who decided he was dating me when I was fourteen, hands all over me at a summer festival, and when I punched him he laughed at me for playing ‘hard to get.’  Let me tell you about the two boys in high school who harassed me for two years, who made me so worried I brought a knife to school, who only stopped when I slammed one of them into a table for touching me, pinning him by the throat as I described what I would do to him if he tried again.  Let me tell you about the boy just this year who attacked me in my own dorm room, pinned me to my roommate’s bed and forced his tongue into my mouth, his hand down my shirt and under my bra, and how I jammed my thumb so hard into his trachea he choked, and how he called his assault a ‘romantic gesture’.

Let me tell you about ‘boys will be boys.’  Let me tell you about ‘ignore them and they’ll go away.’  Let me tell you about ‘there’s never a reason for violence.’  Let me tell you about ‘You should never hurt someone, no matter what they did to you.’  Let me tell you about ‘he must have a crush on you.’  Let me tell you about ‘why didn’t you tell a teacher.’

Let me tell you.

And then you tell me.

(via adelindschade)

A random guy paid me a compliment and why it was okay

caseywolfe07:

thegirlwhowillforeverwait:

sassyspn:

So, in starbucks today, a random guy came up to my and told me I was very pretty and nice eyes.

And, as a feminist, I was okay with it.

Because he did it correctly.

He stood four feet away from me and started out with “excuse me” and waited until I nodded before approaching. He then introduced himself and we shook hands and then he gave a compliment and went on his way.

He didnt catcall. He didnt harass. He didnt use inappropriate language. He asked for permission.

Take note, gentlemen.

i just loved the fact that he actually WAITED for her CONSENT

BEFORE approaching her

and not only that

he didn’t sexualize her

i mean

finally, someone gets it

To the morons that say it can’t be done.  Mmhmm…  We aren’t saying we don’t like compliments.  We’re saying we don’t like being harressed, we don’t like being cat-called, we don’t like to be treated like we’re an object…

A very nice veteran and I had a nice conversation before I went into the store to do my shopping (he was selling things for a veteran charity), and when I came out he gave me a faux rose and told me how it made his day to talk to a very nice and pretty young lady.  This my dears is a gentleman.  This made my day.  I still have this flower about four years later.  DO IT RIGHT.

And approaching someone politely and introducing yourself is so important.

I have some issues with men I don’t know very well interacting with me.  But one of my most cherished memories–the one I go back to when I’m having a terrible day or when I decide that men are all pure evil–is of this time I was working at a drink stand at a festival.  I looked like a goddamn mess, dressed in a bright green stock volunteer shirt after three hours standing in a food tent.  This guy, a few years older than me, came up to me, introduced himself, remarked that he worked on one of the rides up the hill, and asked if he could have a coffee.  He talked to me like a competent adult, helped me clean up his coffee like a champ when I was a clumsy-ass fucker and knocked it over, told me a few jokes at his own expense to make me feel better after the coffee thing, and then went “You know, I just wanted to tell you that you really made my day.”  And I’m awkward as hell, so I kind of laughed and went “You must need better days.”  I expected him to chuckle and leave it at that, so imagine my surprise when instead he looked genuinely upset and protested “No, really, I came down here for coffee and instead I met a great girl.”  He remarked on how smart and funny he thought I was and added that I was so gorgeous I even made the volunteer shirt look good.  He asked me out, I had to say no because I was about to leave for college, and he just shrugged, smiled, and said “Take it as a compliment then, beautiful.”  I never saw him again, and he probably doesn’t remember that I exist, never mind imagining for a second how much that meant to me, someone with four sexual assaults under my belt by that point.  He was complimentary, funny, well-mannered, and above all he was respectful.  At no point did I feel threatened by him or his interest, nor did I ever feel like he would become angry or violent when I turned him down.

That was two years ago.

If I ever have kids, or my friends ever have kids, that’s the story I’m going to tell them when they ask what a good guy acts like.  Not a nice guy–a GOOD one.

(Source: whatifwedidnt, via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

theduchess666 asked: How does a Christian hate the race their messiah came from lol

treesoutofchimneys:

comradebutterfly:

jizzfrosti:

badger-actual:

guns-n-beauty:

badger-actual:

artwench:

proudblackconservative:

butterflyinblack:

Jesus was Syrian, not a Jew.

And I said fire…to the site…Watch it burn because… Nothing is right….

In what universe was Jesus a Syrian? Good grief…

….Jesus was a Rabbi, how was he NOT Jewish?

He was “the king of the Jews”….wtf

People are idiots.

dude was born IN BETHLEHEM 

I was born on a ship in the sea, doesn’t make me a fish!

Well fish aren’t usually born on ships….

HOLY HELL I AM THE CRY.  HELLO KIND PEOPLE WHO HAVE PROTESTED THE IDIOCY ABOVE, PLEASE ALLOW ME TO DO A LITTLE RANT.

Okay.  Hi.  I am a Christian (please hold your tomatoes until the end of the post).  My father is a minister (of the Congregationalist denomination if that means anything to you).  My mother was raised Catholic (and she was pretty shitty at it to be honest, possibly because she is fabulously bisexual).  I chose my religion myself at the age of seven, making an informed decision to convert from Judaism to Chrisitanity, and my family has always held tolerance and understanding of other religions as a capital priority (like, you wanna talk Hinduism or Taoism or Islam, hit me up, I know some stuff and I always like learning more stuff).  But more pertinently, all three of us are extremely well educated in the Christian religion.

SO.  ABOUT JESUS.

Point one: Syrian?  The fuck?  First of all, that has nothing to do with whether or not he was Jewish, technically Syrians were permitted to marry into Hebrew families even though it wasn’t frequent, just by sheer virtue of it being a big fucking planet even now that we have cars and trains and planes.  Gotta bring in new blood, after all, or the inbreeding would have been scary shit.  Scarier than it usually was in small, poorly traveled villages.  ANYWAY.  Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, who was a descendant of the tree of Jesse (that’s King David’s father for anyone not up on their Biblical begats) as per Isaiah 11:1.  That’s a very Hebrew bloodline on both sides, as Mary’s cousin was Elizabeth, a woman married to a powerful rabbi, Zachariah—they didn’t make Jews with less-than-stellar Hebraic bloodlines rabbis.  And your spouse’s bloodline was considered as a part of yours.  BUT THAT PART ASIDE.  Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth.  Where is Nazareth, you ask?  Well, currently, it’s the largest city in Northen Israel, but two thousand years ago it was sort of a backwater (‘Nathaniel said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”’ John 1:46); think of it, basically, as the Jersey of 30-ish BC Israel—now imagine getting told that the Messiah was born on the Jersey Shore.  Here is the Wikipedia page for Nazareth.  (Also it’s primarily Muslim, which I did not know but probably would have figured out if it wasn’t fuck-all-thirty in the morning, and is known as the Arab capital of Israel, which is pretty interesting).  But Jesus wasn’t really born there, so….  True, he was born in Bethlehem, as anyone with any religious familiarity (or working ears around Christmas time) should be aware.  Where is Bethlehem, the City of David (that’s still King David)?  Well, actually, it’s in Palistine at the moment.  But the thing about two thousand years is that it’s a long time for borders to move around and also, hey, when you’re under the thumb of the Roman Empire (what up, Herod, killed any sons lately?), little things like country borders get blurry.  The thing is that it was considered an Israelite city at the time of Jesus’ birth (remember, folks, the Israelites were a wandering people long before they put their name on a country).  Here is the Wikipedia page for Bethlehem.  Okay?  Can we at least agree that neither of these things were in Syria?

Point two: Jesus.  Was.  Jewish.  Let’s have a brief tour through the New Testament to prove this point, and it will only be the most cursory wander because, as I mentioned above, it’s fuck-all-thirty in the morning and I have class in a few hours.  There’s Luke 2:41-52 (x), more commonly known as the Finding in the Temple.  Quick recap: Mary and Joseph (two Jews) brought li’l twelve-year-old Jesus to Jerusalem (a primarily Jewish city at the time) for the Passover (a major Jewish holiday) and the kid went missing, took them three days to find him because it’s a big fucking city and also because poetic license, turns out he’s been in the Temple (a Jewish temple) lecturing the teachers (Jewish rabbis) about Jewish law.  Jesus is identified many, many times as ‘Teacher’ by both his disciples and by others—in fact, out of 90 times he’s addressed directly, 60 of them are with the title ‘teacher’—and the thing that doesn’t come across in the English is that, in the original Biblical Hebrew (what up, Dad, thanks for those lectures while you were in seminary), that translates to rabbi.  As in.  You know.  A rabbi.  They’re literally meant to be teachers, the word means teacher.  I am not citing sources for all these occasions because there are too fucking many.  The Last Supper (x), which you might be familiar with as the reason Maundy or Holy Thursday if you’re Christian, it’s the one with the whole breaking of the bread and pouring of the wine (the first Communion/Eucharist, this is my body, yadda yadda yadda, you know the shpiel), was a Passover Seder.  It says so here, here, here, and here, if you feel the need for Scriptural support.  AND.  As someone so kindly mentioned above, I would like to point my final supporting argument at Matthew 27:37 (HERE in every translation ever).  ”And above his head they placed his accusation: Here is Jesus, King of the Jews.”  You may be familiar with this as ‘INRI’ in statues and paintings of the Crucifixion.  Summary: Jesus was fucking Jewish.  Jesus fucking Christ, people, no pun intended.

Point three: why do some Christians hate Jews?  I don’t know.  Having been on both sides of that exchange—I was Jewish until my decision to convert and I still carry many of the traditions close to my heart—I can tell you that it sucks from every angle.  I’ve never understood it.  When I was younger, it was largely because I saw the logical progression of ‘Jesus was Jewish, therefore Christians should honor and celebrate their culturally Jewish heritage even if they aren’t Jews themselves.’  I try to celebrate all of the High Holidays in at least some small manner, to remind myself and to keep the memory of the yenta who taught me (sadly now deceased; shalom, Eloise) alive—it’s Purim and I’m going to be subjecting my roommate Adler to some stories and songs and cookies.  But also because of Luke 10:27 (x).  You might be familiar with the last half of it.  The gist is that Jesus tells a man, a teacher in the Temple, to abandon all the meticulous rules of the Torah for the simple rule of “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”  To me, it has always seemed that someone who calls themselves a Christian should follow the only rule Jesus ever.  Fucking.  Laid.  Down.  (Looking at you, Westboro Baptist, looking right the fuck at you.)  Jesus never says ‘slay the unbeliever’ or ‘do not lie with someone of the same gender’ or ‘do not have an abortion’ or any of that shit.  

It’s literally “Don’t be a dickhead.”  

That’s all.

(The tomato throwing can now commence.)

nextyearsgirl:

“I’m not vaccinating my kids because they’ll build up immunity naturally anyway”

HEY, THIS IS IMPORTANT.  I WILL TRY TO BE CLEAR AND CONCISE.

Whooping cough (pertussis) is making a comeback, largely because people tend to be unaware of the fact that the vaccine OR natural immunity only last for seven years.  Now, if you’re relatively healthy, have no pre-existing respiratory conditions (including asthma, folks), and are between sixteen and, oh, forty-five, then whooping cough is probably just going to be a pain in the ass–you’ll cough for a while, it’ll be uncomfortable, but you’ll probably be fine, because your immune system will eventually crush it.

IF YOU DO NOT FIT ALL THREE OF THOSE CONDITIONS, WHOOPING COUGH WILL PROBABLY FUCK YOU UP REALLY BAD.  LIKE, POTENTIALLY LETHAL BAD.  Remember, folks, whooping cough used to be a major killer.  I do not fuck around with this sort of thing.

Story time: once upon a time, Moran was a sickly little baby who lived with a bunch of other people in a commune (forgive my parents their trusting youth, they are now appropriately cynical of everyone and everything).  Naturally, these alternative hippie people didn’t like getting their asses vaccinated.  Moran, being an infant, had a limit on what vaccinations she could get.  So when one of the people in the commune got a persistent cough, Moran ended up with whooping cough at ten months old.  

Now, let me be clear, I had a serious proclivity to being extremely sick.  It wasn’t genetic or even inherent to my body (my immune system is actually superior to most people’s, probably because I was sick so much), it was a result of the environment, but obviously my pediatrician was more interested in keeping me alive in the short term than exposing me to possibly hazardous or weakening bacteria, even in the form of vaccinations.  So even if I’d been old enough, I probably wouldn’t have been vaccinated, because my immune system was so crippled that it would have been very problematic.  I got whooping cough anyway, and the thing about whooping cough is, well, the treatments can be rough, and in my situation I couldn’t have withstood them.  And they don’t always work.

Let me hit you with a few numbers.  Thirty percent.  Three-zero.  Losing thirty percent of your body weight (assuming that you’re not obese) is lethal.  Whooping cough is a massive drain on your body’s resources, and on top of that it’s hard to eat through the coughing fits.

L'il Baby Moran dropped twenty-five percent of her body weight in four weeks.  An infant who had no genetic disorders or exceptional health problems that wouldn’t have been resolved by a move into a better constructed non-commune almost died of this very preventable disease.  Less than twenty years ago.  Currently, I am very healthy, although I still tend to get respiratory issues more than anything else, but it took not weeks, not months, but years to regain that weight loss because it was so extreme.  I am also highly allergic to the new TDaP (tetanus, diptheria, and pertussis) vaccine; it causes me to spike a massive fever and hallucinate vividly horrifying images for forty-eight hours.  Yes, I did find that out by testing it, and for a while we thought I would be at risk for all three permanently, because I couldn’t handle the newest shot.  I still get vaccinated for those diseases (with an earlier form of the shot, so there’s no major reaction) to protect myself and others.  

So let’s just be clear here: you might think that your kids will get natural immunity to this sort of thing and be fine.  But you might also risk their death.  Herd immunity aside (although for fuck’s sake, get vaccinated even if all three of those conditions I mentioned earlier are true for you, because you’ll be protecting other people who can’t get the shot, and those three conditions are no guarantee that you’ll be fine), you will actually literally risk your child’s life.  Their life, not their comfort or their mood.  Their life.

That makes you a bad parent by any definition.  

Protect yourself, protect your friends, protect your children.  Get vaccinated.

(via adelindschade)