For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.
No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morning’s live 3-D reenactment of “Invasion of AstroMonster.” This is what they’d say repeatedly:
“You know! Boys will be boys!”
“He’s just going through a phase!”
“He’s such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!”
“Oh my god! Girls and boys are SO different!”
“He. Just. Can’t. Help himself!”
I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, “What red-blooded boy wouldn’t knock it down?”
She built a beautiful, glittery castle in a public space.
It was so tempting.
He just couldn’t control himself and, being a boy, had violent inclinations.
She had to keep her building safe.
Her consent didn’t matter. Besides, it’s not like she made a big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasn’t a “legitimate” knocking over if she didn’t throw a tantrum.
His desire — for power, destruction, control, whatever- - was understandable.
Maybe she “shouldn’t have gone to preschool” at all. OR, better if she just kept her building activities to home.
I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t “get raped” and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of “don’t rape.”
Not once did his parents talk to him about invading another person’s space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning. How much of the boy’s behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the “rules” his parents kept repeating?
There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did it his mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasn’t much fun for him, but he did not do it again.
There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up.
Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”
The “overarching attitudinal characteristic” of abusive men is entitlement.
welp
and if any of you white people respond with “wait but I didn’t do that. that was in the past”
i need you to check your privilege
and then drink bleach if you think your hands aren’t dirty
They’re not.
Guilt doesn’t transfer from generation to generation. I am not magically accountable for something my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather MIGHT have done. Also;
>social justice blogger
>telling people to kill themselvesI love that there’s a blog called “this is white culture” that is solely devoted to bad things white people did, not their cultures at all. So I guess I can make a blog called “this is black culture” and post gang and crime records and that’s 100% okay. Or “this is Muslim culture” and make it all about terrorism.
But wait, you cry. Not all black people are criminals and not all Muslims are terrorists. That’s unfair! And racist!
WELL GOLLY GEE DO YOU THINK SO? Because saying that all white people are responsible for the Atlantic slave trade sounds pretty racist to me, given that, you know, that was between the African slaveholders and the British and Americans and had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my ancestors, who were incredibly poor farmers and serfs from Ireland and Lithuania who had to flee to America at around the turn of the century (by which time slavery had already been abolished in the US) because they were being treated like slaves. Even if they had been living in America at the time when slavery was legal they wouldn’t have been able to afford a slave; in fact they probably would have been working with them in the fields and treated about the same, since the first slaves in America were actually white serfs. But please, tell me more about how dirty my hands are because of circumstances surrounding my birth that I could not control and continue to treat me differently based on the color of my skin without actually knowing anything about my heritage, I’m sure that isn’t racist at all!
So, in the middle of everything today, we ran across a hellaciously distressed momma mallard and a bunch of her baby ducks that had fallen down a sewer grate. Another guy was already trying to fish them out, so my friend and I called animal control before we tried to fish the rest of them out. When Animal Control got there, we had all of them out and the mother duck quacking very happily. I was surprised - none of us got snapped at or hurt. I was even holding onto a bag at one point that had all of them in it and she just watched me.
I love how the duck is perched on the guy’s butt
I’M SO HAPPY
So. I just had to break into my own house due to having locked myself out without the key.
It’s one of those times where I’m glad I always forget to lock my bedroom window. And one of the few times I’m glad that I’m so damn small.
#Prayers #Repost from @gcode2222 “If you see her please call the number 404-503-5848 or hit @robinhoodmills” via @InstaReposts
SIGNAL BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOST!!!! Help Bring her home!
Boost!!!
Boost. This is my home.
This should have 5K notes.
Oh wow. How great it is that the last two digits of the number is FUCKING COVERED BY A DAMN REPOST WATERMARK.
S. Ross Browne
Ummm…I am so VERY into this right now!
But Black people in period or fantasy settings totally makes the stories unreal.
Also holy shit I love these.
How come I don’t run across this stuff regularly?
Because of racism and the retroactive erasure of POC in Medieval Europe. Pretty much the same reason you almost never see these works of art either unless you’re already looking for them:
um yes
Gymnosomata, commonly known as Sea Angels. An apt name- the sea angels are the ethereal, translucent, fluttering angels of the sea.
In hard scientific terms, they’re small swimming sea slugs, but we’ll pass over that for now and just admire how delicately beautiful these wonderful creatures are.
Awww… :3
Blackmore’s Night - Journeyman (Vandraren)
One of my personal favorite songs from this band. I just love the melody so very much.
Many years I’ve been away from home
I have faced too many battles
Hours here upon the endless road
Have left me bruised and battered
I have heard the secrets of the streets,
But I keep them to myself
On display, but here inside my soul
Like a trophy on a shelf
Hand upon my heart I know
The moon will light my way
Ohh my friend, the winding road
Will the life of a journeyman never change?
‘Round a corner, down a narrow trail,
My boots are wearing thin
I can feel the heat upon my back
The sun against my skin
Far away I could have sworn I heard
The ringing of a bell
Through the miles you know it’s hard to tell
When it’s you against yourself
Hand upon my heart I know
The moon will light my way
Ohh my friend, the winding road
Will the life of a journeyman never change?
None of us will ever know
What lies around the bend
All the world becomes your home
On a road that never ends
(2x) Hand upon my heart I know
The moon will light my way
Ohh my friend, the winding road
Will the life of a journeyman never change?(Interval)
(2x) Hand upon my heart I know
The moon will light my way
Ohh my friend, the winding road
Will the life of a journeyman never change?
