Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
When I was training to be a battered women’s advocate, my supervisor said something that really blew my mind:
“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”
Any now whenever anyone in my life, either a friend or a client, frustrates me, disappoints me, or pisses me off, I just tell myself They are doing their best. Their best isn’t that great today, but I have days where my best isn’t that great either.
I have a friend who’s a journalist. She’s ridiculously awesome and I really want to name her because everyone should know just how awesome she is, but this isn’t a time where it feels wise to reveal the political thoughts expressed by a journalist in private, at least not without her permission.
The day before I saw her last week, I’d locked myself out of Facebook and Twitter. I’d been forced to realise the psychological harm they were doing me outweighed any political good my frantic clicktivism could possibly be accomplishing. My brother had called, on my sister-in-law’s instructions. “R. says you’re tweeting and facebooking constantly about politics,” he said. “She said ‘call your sister, I don’t think she’s doing well.’”
“I’m okay, probably,” I’d told him.
“I don’t think you are,” he said.
I felt a little better, though not by much, by the time I met my friend for lunch. She was shaken, she said. Democracy was falling apart. I muttered weakly that perhaps it wasn’t quite that bad. She said she’d rather act now than hope for the best.
I agreed. But act how?
She said she was getting onto the board of various charities. She was writing about the best way to report on extremism, avoiding the terrible false equivalencies of the “he said/she said” approach which has blighted our discourse with such ghastly effect.
I said I was supporting the Stop Funding Hate campaign. Giving to Planned Parenthood and ACLU over there, refugee charities over here. Writing letters. Trying to think of useful ways to get involved in local politics.
“You know what you should do,” she said.
No, I really didn’t.
“Write novels,” she said.
I told her that in the days after the election I felt as if art had been revealed as an empty joke. An indulgence we could no longer afford. As if I would never be able to justify doing it again. What we were even going to write now? Flimsy, tinselly distractions from ghastly reality? Or sharp-eyed, unflinching commentary that no one except the already-convinced would ever read? What was the point of art?
“No, no!” she said. “Art is what will save us.”
“But it hasn’t,” I wanted to scream. We tried and tried. We’ve filled the world with our stories, our songs – we’ve tried so hard to make our stories better - with diverse casts and empathy and hope – and it’s not enough; no one’s saying it was perfect, or that the attempt was anywhere close to finished. But we were trying. And now look.
It is so important, she told me, that there is art already made and due to come out in the coming year that embodies the opposite of this. Diverse, progressive stories, that are not going to go untold whatever happens.
I’d had in my mind two quotes. Peter Cook, on Germany’s satirical clubs of the thirties “that did so much to prevent the rise of Hitler.”
And Kurt Vonnegut:
“During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we’ve ever been in - and which we lost - every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.“
But if they hadn’t been there? I thought, looking at my friend. Who was fierce and bright-eyed and smiling. Those useless satirists and artists and musicians pouring their spirits into their art and watching it land on the floor of history like that dropped custard pie? What if there was nothing to look back on in those times but a culture in militaristic lockstep, or perhaps worse, slumped in dead-eyed indifference? After those years-long nightmares, what would there have been to wake up to? Maybe it was absurd to find the thought more chilling than the reality of what had happened, to feel that it would have been an international death of the soul, but .. still …
If artists couldn’t prevent disaster, could they at least preserve something precious from being lost while it endured? If they hadn’t stopped a single war, had they at least kept the rot from penetrating the human culture unchallenged?
It’s not enough. It’s not enough.
“Write novels,” said my friend stubbornly. “Write novels.”
And for those of us who’re doing it anyway: there is no more important time to be found at our posts, doing our jobs: spitting in Entropy’s eye and making more goddamn art.
This is a post aimed at me and other people who constantly fall into guilt spirals over all the things they can’t do, and feel they should somehow magically be able to do anyway.
For me, and for the others, this is a gentle reminder:
- Posts asking for monetary donations are speaking to people who have money. Not your broke ass, still worrying how to buy food next month.
- Posts asking you to care about [extreme injustice of the day] are speaking to people who have energy to care. Not you, hanging onto your sanity by the fingernails.
And, most importantly: posts telling you that you are horrible/cheap/awful/rude/unworthy/unlikable if you don’t pay/reblog/signal boost/care? Those posts can fucking die in a fire.
TL;DR: Posts asking for shit you are not physically or mentally able to give?
In the U.S., more than 130 Native American languages are endangered, and some are spoken by only a handful of people. Marie Wilcox is the last fluent speaker of the Wukchumni language. At 81 years ...
The dictionary took seven years. Marie worked on it constantly, sometimes until late at night, writing down remembered words on scraps of paper and typing them up slowly and carefully. Now she and her daughter hold weekly Wukchumni language classes, and she’s recording an audio version of the dictionary with her grandson.
The video and accompanying high school lesson plan seem like a decent introduction to language revitalization, although I’d add a small preemptive caution: I’ve heard from people involved in language revitalization that many aren’t too fond of death metaphors like “dying”, “disappearing”, “extinct”, “saving”, and so on. Words like “endangered”, “struggling”, “precarious”, “sleeping”, and “revitalizing” emphasize the agency of the communities involved, even in the case where a language is brought back into speech from writings and recordings.
Reblogging again because stuff like this is so important. Please watch the video–it’s so amazing and heart felt.
This is amazing.
Yep, talking about a language in terms of “dying” or “disappering” isnt helpful and creates a false sense of inevitability, which is the last thing u need for successful revitalization. Also it fucking hurts those who speak it because that language is alive in them right now - Not Dead.
I grew up believing that women had contributed nothing to the world until the 1960′s. So once I became a feminist I started collecting information on women in history, and here’s my collection so far, in no particular order.
Lepa Svetozara Radić (1925–1943) was a partisan executed at the age of 17 for shooting at German soldiers during WW2. As her captors tied the noose around her neck, they offered her a way out of the gallows by revealing her comrades and leaders identities. She responded that she was not a traitor to her people and they would reveal themselves when they avenged her death. She was the youngest winner of the Order of the People’s Hero of Yugoslavia, awarded in 1951
23 year old Phyllis Latour Doyle was British spy who parachuted into occupied Normandy in 1944 on a reconnaissance mission in preparation for D-day. She relayed 135 secret messages before France was finally liberated.
Catherine Leroy, War Photographer starting with the Vietnam war. She was taken a prisoner of war. When released she continued to be a war photographer until her death in 2006.
Lieutenant Pavlichenko was a Ukrainian sniper in WWII, with a total of 309 kills, including 36 enemy snipers. After being wounded, she toured the US to promote friendship between the two countries, and was called ‘fat’ by one of her interviewers, which she found rather amusing.
Johanna Hannie “Jannetje” Schaft was born in Haarlem. She studied in Amsterdam had many Jewish friends. During WWII she aided many people who were hiding from the Germans and began working in resistance movements. She helped to assassinate two nazis. She was later captured and executed. Her last words were “I shoot better than you.”.
Nancy wake was a resistance spy in WWII, and was so hated by the Germans that at one point she was their most wanted person with a price of 5 million francs on her head. During one of her missions, while parachuting into occupied France, her parachute became tangled in a tree. A french agent commented that he wished that all trees would bear such beautiful fruit, to which she replied “Don’t give me any of that French shit!”, and later that evening she killed a German sentry with her bare hands.
After her husband was killed in WWII, Violette Szabo began working for the resistance. In her work, she helped to sabotage a railroad and passed along secret information. She was captured and executed at a concentration camp at age 23.
Grace Hopper was a computer scientist who invented the first ever compiler. Her invention makes every single computer program you use possible.
Mona Louise Parsons was a member of an informal resistance group in the Netherlands during WWII. After her resistance network was infiltrated, she was captured and was the first Canadian woman to be imprisoned by the Nazis. She was originally sentenced to death by firing squad, but the sentence was lowered to hard lard labor in a prison camp. She escaped.
Simone Segouin was a Parisian rebel who killed an unknown number of Germans and captured 25 with the aid of her submachine gun. She was present at the liberation of Paris and was later awarded the ‘croix de guerre’.
Mary Edwards Walker is the only woman to have ever won an American Medal of Honor. She earned it for her work as a surgeon during the Civil War. It was revoked in 1917, but she wore it until hear death two years later. It was restored posthumously.
Italian neuroscientist won a Nobel Prize for her discovery of nerve growth factor. She died aged 103.
EDIT
jinxedinks added: Her name was Rita Levi-Montalcini. She was jewish, and so from 1938 until the end of the fascist regime in Italy she was forbidden from working at university. She set up a makeshift lab in her bedroom and continued with her research throughout the war.
A snapshot of the women of color in the woman’s army corps on Staten Island
This is an ongoing project of mine, and I’ll update this as much as I can (It’s not all WWII stuff, I’ve got separate folders for separate achievements).
File this under: The History I Wish I’d Been Taught As A Little Girl
Part 2
Annie Jump Cannon was an american astronomer and, in addition to possibly having one of the best names in history, was co-creator of one of the first scientific classification systems of stars, based on temperature.
Melba Roy Moutan was a Harvard educated mathematician who led a team of mathematicians at NASA, nicknamed ‘Computers’ for their number processing prowess.
Joyce Jacobson Kaufman was a chemist who developed the concept of conformational topology, and studied at Johns Hopkins University before it officially allowed women entry in 1970.
Vera Rubin is an astronomer and has co-authored 114 peer reviewed papers. She specializes in the study of dark matter and galaxy rotation rates.
Mary Sherman Morgan was a rocket scientist who invented hydyne, a liquid fuel that powered the USA’s Jupiter C-rocket.
Chien-Siung Wu was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, as well as experimental radioactive studies. She was the first woman to become president of the American Physical Society.
Mildred Catherine Rebstock was the first person to synthesize the antibiotic chloromycetin.
Ruby Hirose was a chemist who conducted vital research about an infant paralysis vaccine.
Hattie Elizabeth Alexander was a pediatrician and microbiologist who developed a remedy for Haemophilus influenzae, and conducted vital research on antibiotic resistance.
Marie Tharp was a scientist who mapped the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and provided proof of continental drift.
Mae Jamison is an astronaut who holds a degree in chemical engineering from Stanford University and was the first black woman in space.
Ada Lovelace was a mathematician and considered to be the world’s first computer programmer.
Patricia E Bath is ophthalmologist and the inventor of the Laserphaco Probe, which is used to treat cataracts.
Barbara McClintock won a Nobel prize for her discovery that genes could move in and between chromosomes.
That’s it for now, part three will be on its way. (Josephine Baker was requested in the first installment, just know I did not forget her! She’s in a different folder, titled ‘famous people you didn’t know were complete badasses, and she, along with Hedy Lamar and Audrey Hepburn will be in the next installment :) )
Part 3
Josephine Baker, though today remembered for her dancing, singing, and larger than life personality, actually played a significant role in WWII. She joined Women’s Auxiliary of the Free French Air Force, got her pilot’s license in 1933, and by 1944 she raised 3,143,000 francs for the war effort. She entertained the troops, which was a doubly whammy of justice. She refused to entertain segregated troops, so the French military was forced to integrate the troops for all her performances. She also smuggled secret messages in her music across countless borders.
Audrey Hepburn is known as one of the most beautiful and talent actresses of the 1950′s, but her contributions to the world started far before her first film and continued until well after her cinematic heyday. In WWII stricken Austria, Audrey, then an aspiring ballerina, would give secret ballet performances to raise money for the Austrian resistance. She even helped smuggle secret messages for the resistance. On one such occasion, she was stopped by an enemy soldier. He asked her what she was doing and she, pretending not to understand, presented him with a bouquet of wildflowers she’d been absentmindedly picking. She was let go and the message was delivered safely. It was her experience in the war which would later prompt her to become one of the founders of UNICEF.
Hedy Lamarr was an actress well known for her piercing gaze and deadpan wit. What she’s less known for is being a brilliant mathematician who invented the frequency hopping spread spectrum. Without her invention, we wouldn’t have bluetooth or wifi.
Ching Shih was one of the world’s most successful pirates. At the death of her (pirate) husband, the former prostitute took command of his ships and started her pirating career. At the height of her career she commanded 1800 ships and more than 80,000 male and female pirates. She became powerful enough to challenge every empire’s naval forces in the world and her Red Flag Fleet was feared from the Chinese coast to Malaysia. Unable to defeat her, the Chinese government caved and offered her amnesty. She surprised everyone by taking it and became one of the few pirates in history to retire. She also took care of her crew even after her retirement; most of Ching’s pirates were pardoned. She died a respectable millionaire.
Sophie School was an active member of the White Rose non-violent resistance group in WWII Germany. In 1943 she, along with her brother and the rest of the White Rose were arrested for passing out leaflets encouraging passive resistance. She and her brother were beheaded by guillotine just a few hours later. Her last words were “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”
(Written by Emporer-of-nerds) Constance Markievicz (was a) Very important figure in the Irish independence movement, first woman elected to the British House of Commons, and one of the first women to hold a cabinet position in government (Minister for Labour of the Irish Republic (which was a short-lived revolutionary state predating the current Ireland/Éire))!
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English ambassador to Turkey in the early 1700s, and documented her experience carefully. When she saw the Turkish perform an early method of small-pox vaccination, she urgently wrote home. She is responsible for the first variolation small-pox vaccinations in Europe.
Marie Curie is fairly well known. Unfortunately she’s often known as the ‘assistant’ to her husband. She was a pioneering physicist and chemist, who’s work with radiation was groundbreaking. She was the first woman to win a Nobel prize and the only one to win one in two fields for her discovery of polonium and uranium. It’s also notable that she was the first woman in Europe to receive a doctorate degree. Her discoveries made the x-ray machine possible, and Curie immediately put it to work. She invented a small, mobile type of x-ray machine and worked with her daughter at casualty collection points in WWI, using the machine to locate shrapnel and bullets in wounded soldiers. She died of pernicious anemia, a result of years of radioactive exposure. Many of her notebooks are still too radioactive to be read.
Margherita Hack was an Italian astrophysicist and became administrator of the Trieste Astronomical Observatory, bringing it to renowned respect and fame. She was a prolific science writer and was awarded the Targa Giuseppe Piazzi for the scientific research, and later the Cortina Ulisse Prize for scientific dissemination. Asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named in her honor.
(This installment was a little all over the place as far as achievements go, and short, since it was mostly requests! Hypatia of Alexandria was also requested but she, along with Sappho and others, are getting their own installment. The next installment will center around women of the literary world!)
Great respect for this!
Note that there were many many more, both before and after photography was invented.
Don’t ever let some fuckboy tell you that women just cleaned and cooked until very recently.
I feel like I want, like, amazing, huge portraits painted of all these women in the finest fine art oils, and for them to adorn hallowed halls everywhere.
So can we like…start normalizing the idea that not everyone dates or has their first boyfriend/girlfriend in junior high or high school?
There are plenty of people who go into college with little to no dating experience. There are tons of people who go into college having not had their first kiss yet. It’s not wrong; everyone experiences things at a different pace, and that’s okay. Don’t feel pressured into doing things you’re not comfortable with at the time just because you feel like you have to fill some sort of “quota.”
Two months ago, I was trying to grab some tampons at a 7/11-type store in Wisconsin. I was zoning out over my choices when I noticed another person in the aisle with me.
She was wearing a hijab, and was probably in her twenties or so.
We were the only people in the store except for the white guy behind the counter.
And then another dude walked in, a beardy, white 40-something.
I was ready to buy my shit and leave but i just stood there, watching that old dude.
The midwest is such a shitshow i swear to god and I just couldn’t leave until that girl left too. I don’t know these men. I wasn’t going to leave the only other woman there, alone at night, with those two white men. Especially not a woman in a hijab.
I loitered and waited til she got her shit and left. I wandered to the front so I could watch her drive away.
I think in the next 4 years or more, if you haven’t already, you better start watching. Don’t leave people alone. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t assume anyone is safe. Don’t believe you’re being paranoid. It’s our duty to watch.
Trust no one.
Don’t become complacent just because you are in an area that is considered progressive or liberal, either. Hate crimes happen in solidly blue states every day.
In the next couple days / weeks / always, I’d like to remind people to check the sources and dates of articles they’re sharing/reblogging. Misinformation spreads via clickbait titles on disreputable/non-news sites, or old articles with relevant titles but out-of-date information.
This is, at best, extremely frustrating and at worst, very very dangerous. There are people out there, for whatever reason, who are taking advantage of public sentiment and creating false news stories that play to our worst fears. Every time you share a false news story, you make it less likely that people will believe the real ones that come after them.
Please check your sources. Don’t help spread misinformation.
