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May 10 2012
When I went to Europe
I have to start off by saying it was a tough decision to make. I’ve never left my my friends and family to embark on a journey to a place where I knew no one. But my world as I knew it was too tiny and there’s so much out there I didn’t know of.
I visited Europe last month and stayed in this place next to what they call the Eiffel Tower. I loved it. such a strange architecture to symbolize the exotic beauty and power of its people. With my small backpack and my Nikon D7000 camera, I set off futher to explore Europe.
I took pictures along the way. there was a Tomato Festival going on at the time and I managed to get tickets to see a Bull Fighting! The sight was alarming and facinating all at once- a sport to symbolise the raw energy and passion that European people had were shown through this bull fighting. Beautiful!
I went to a shelter and saw some homeless people begging on the streets. It is such a shame how enriched, yet, so poor Europeans are. My heart weeps for Europeans; their courage and strength to survive is inspiring.
There were loud music playing and people in the streets all looking happy and joyful because they were celebrating ‘OktoberFest’, a day to mark their love of beer and to show that even Europeans have good things to celebrate in life to distract from their everyday pain. I was aware of my privilege so I asked to join this festival incase I upset the natives. What a blast!
I took so many pictures (will post on Facebook later) of the children dancing and smiling but some elders complained about this, they didn’t seem comfortable with a complete stranger touching their young children and taking photos of them to later put on the internet.
I suppose to them, I am a stranger in the midst but it was so joyful having pictures to show back home of my experiences! I am sure they won’t mind in the end. And the children were such wonders! They were so curious about my clothes (I don’t think Europeans have ever seen Nigerian clothes in their life, it must have been so strange for them to view my own culture! It just reminded me of how deprived they were)
After I stopped at the Leaning Tower of Pisa (a great art of their sort!) I went back to Arba Airport near Helsinki (after I spent a day at Trafalgar Square, pics coming soon) and borded my flight back home, having grown up a little from viewing European Life.
I am currently saving up to get a tatto of Europe on my shoulder , with a love heart located at the center to represent Belguim. As the Europeans say:
Τα καλά πράγματα έρχεται σε εκείνους που περιμένουν
Peace my friends <3
ohemgee what a beautiful story guise~~
Wow, what an amazing experience. I’m so glad you brought some culture to those poor deprived people!
thank you, with a little hope, we can make a difference
because
we all bleed red
UK aid helps to fund forced sterilisation of India's poor
“Money from the Department for International Development has helped pay for a controversial programme that has led to miscarriages and even deaths after botched operations”
…
Activists say that it is India’s poor – and particularly tribal people – who are most frequently targeted and who are most vulnerable to pressure to be sterilised.”
This is seriously not okay.
As Holly said in her reproductive rights video, “if we’re to call ourselves a pro-choice movement, surely we must include the struggles of people who wish to have children but cannot due to the Government’s discrimination against disabilities, ethnicities, class and gender.”
What can we do about this?
is ugh an emotion
because I seem to feel it a lot
Argentina JUST PASSED a groundbreaking gender identity bill!!!
From now on, people will be able to change the name and gender on their ID without needing psychiatric permission or any body modifications. Furthermore, anyone who does want hormones or surgery will be able to access them for free through the public and private health system.
It was passed unanimously today by the Senate :-D
[TW for sexual harassment, apologism]
This one is very serious, guys:
I came upon these two on the sidewalk. They were having a conversation. “Excuse me,” I said, addressing the girl: “I’m sorry to interrupt, but is there anyway I can take your photo?”
“Why would you want my photo?” she asked.
“Because you look beautiful,” I said. And she did. She was Sudanese. There is a very distinct beauty among people from the Sudan, and she was filled up with it. Suddenly the man cut in:
“I was just telling her she was beautiful,” he said.Naively, I assumed I had just walked up on one stranger giving a compliment to another. I wanted to capture the moment. “Let me take your photograph together,” I said. The man seemed reluctant, he started smiling nervously and inching away. But the girl called him back.
“Come take a picture with me,” she said. Encouraged by her attention, he returned. She put her arm around him, and I took the photo.
As I examined the photos on my camera, the man started whispering to the girl. She answered him in a loud voice: “I told you! I’m not that kind of girl.” She seemed agitated now. Finally sensing that I had misread the situation, I stepped between them. The man began hurrying down the sidewalk.
When the man left, the girl’s demeanor changed completely. She seemed shaken. Her eyes were tearing up. “He just offered me five hundred dollars to go out with him,” she said. “And then when I said ‘no,’ he offered me one thousand. Why does this always happen to me?”
“It happens a lot?” I asked.
“All the time,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m getting emotional. I just can’t go out of my house without this kind of thing happening. I have a son. I’m a mother. I would never degrade myself like that. I just don’t understand why this keeps happening.”
“Do you mind if I tell this story?” I asked.
“Please,” she said. “Tell it.”Let’s hope this man, and all men, realize the emotional damage they are inflicting on the women they try to buy. In the meantime, feel free to SHARE.*
*With this man being an Orthodox Jew, I hope that all long-time followers of HONY would by now have realized the high respect I hold for the Orthodox Jewish community as a whole.
After reading some of the discussion about this photo on the HONY fb page I cannot express how absolutely disgusted and frustrated I am by the public reaction. The public outcry was so much that Brandon (the man behind HONY) took the photo down and followed it up with some positive photos of Jewish men and their opinions of the post. One photo caption chanted on about virtue and suppositions, blah, blah, blahbitty fucking blah.
To put it shortly, an overwhelming majority of the reactions are in defense of this man and harshly criticized Brandon for posting this story. Many people both inside and outside of the Jewish community have rallied behind this man, claiming that we don’t know the whole story, that this woman could be lying, that it was wrong of Brandon to expose this man.
To that I have this to say: SHUT THE FUCK UP! So one of yours got caught out there on some slimey shit? Get over it! Everyone’s so busy being worried about this man’s privacy and how this photo will affect him and his family, but very few people stopped to consider the feelings of this woman. Very few stopped to support her and think about the trials she faces, the trauma she must suffer.
When it comes to Black women’s suffering, people seldom give a fuck. Where are all the follow up pictures of Black women sharing their mantras? hmmmm?
HONY had the opportunity to take a stance, to allow this woman the platform to tell her story, and although that is what I believe he set out to do initially, by deleting the post on FB (thank God for Tumblr) Brandon effectively worked to silence her voice… yet again. Something Black woman have had to suffer with for far too long: people constantly attempting to silence our voices and our stories. I will reblog this every time I see it!
THANK YOU JESUS CHRIST FOR MAKING THIS POST BECAUSE YES
Just reblogging because this story needs to be heard. Because it really happened. HONY saw it happen, even though they were convinced that they didn’t by somebody just wanting to cover up what the fucking creep did.
And BW of NY, if this HONY fucker comes up and wants a photo of you, REFUSE HIS ASS AND TELL HIM EXACTLY WHY. Fuck him getting fame off of using us like toilet paper!
This. THIS THIS THIS
Accidental philosphy
“ And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives. ”— Audre Lorde, ‘The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action’ (1978). (via daydreams-of-a-matriarchist)
“ Slut” is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say “yes”. “Friendzone” is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say “no”. ”— (via buildingmosaicsoutoflife)
May 09 2012
The Woman Socialism Forgot
‘The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves’.
Who said that? Marx? He did say it, but the original quote in fact belongs to early nineteenth century French socialist feminist Flora Tristan. It’s ok, I’d never heard of her until this week either. Wait, no, that’s not ok. Flora Tristan also wrote about the need for an international Worker’s Union before Marx. She wrote about the intersectionality of class and gender struggle before Marx. And, which is more than can be said for most utopian socialists, she went on a Tour de France in 1843, a year before her death from typhus, to galvanise the workers into organisation and action. Workers inspired by her visit went on strike at the Toulon arsenal in 1845. This was a woman who got things done, and written down for posterity to record, and about whom you could go your entire academic career hanging out with Marxists and Leftists and Socialists and Feminists and never hear anything about.
Here’s a popular slogan you’ll hear in those circles: ‘No feminism without socialism, no socialism without feminism’. Here’s a disclaimer to that slogan: ‘No socialist feminism without the acknowledgement of women’s contribution to the development of Marxist theory and, equally importantly, the redress of the invisibility this female contribution has suffered, allowing Marxism to become a male dominated, and therefore often alienating, field of study and practice, which has too often held or seemed to hold, that feminism should wait for socialism, even though no advance can be made towards an international socialist state if over half the membership of that state are left behind to have their oppression generously lifted at a later date by the newly benign oppressor’. And of course, no socialist feminism would mean ‘no socialism’. I’ve often wondered what’s been holding us back.
Below are some links to Flora Tristan’s work. I’m struck by the unofficial quality of the sites where it is available, and the scarcity of even those sites. I’m also struck by the fact that what is easily accessible all pertains to specifically women’s issues; a symptom of the fact that women are still seen as derivative or tangential.
If any one reads this and finds more, better, links, please send them my way!
On the specific need for the emancipation of women for the emancipation of all humanity (strange how that is still a radical notion; we are half the people, people!)
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/at/tristan_text.html
On the exploitation of prostitutes ad a symptom of women’s dependence on men: http://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/awrm/doc8.htm
Where I found out that the quote at the beginning of this article is hers: http://www.zcommunications.org/opening-comments-for-debate-with-socialist-perspective-representing-parecon-by-tom-wetzel
Where I found out about the Toulon arsenal strike: http://www.ohio.edu/chastain/rz/tristan.htm
fascinating. i have my reading cut out for me!
“— Curious Georgiana (via thenewwomensmovement)I know I’ve told this story before, but my abusive ex refused to let me take birth control. I was on the pill until he found them in my purse.
I went to the Student Health Center—they were completely unhelpful, choosing to lecture me about the importance of safe sex (recommending condoms) instead of actually listening to my problem.
Then I went to Planned Parenthood. The Nurse Practitioner took one look at my fading bruises and stopped the exam. She called in the doctor. The doctor came in and simply asked me: “Are you ready to leave him?” When I denied that I was being abused, she didn’t argue with me. She just asked me what I needed. I said I need a birth control method that my boyfriend couldn’t detect. She recommended a few options and we decided on Depo.
When I told her that my boyfriend read my emails and listened to my phone messages and was known to follow me, she suggested to do the Depo injections at off hours when the clinic was normally closed. She made a note in my chart and instructed the front desk never to leave messages for me—instead, she programmed her personal cell phone number into my phone under the name “Nora”. She told me she would call me to schedule my appointments; she wouldn’t leave a message, but I should call her back when I was able to.
And that was it. No judgment. No lecture. She walked me to the door and told me to call her day or night if I needed anything. That she lived 5 blocks from campus and would come get me. That I wasn’t alone. That she just wanted me to be safe.
I never called her to come to my rescue. But I have no doubt that she would have come if I had called. She kept me on Depo for a year, giving me those monthly injections in secret, helping me prevent a desperately unwanted pregnancy.
I cannot thank Planned Parenthood enough for the work they do.
”
Just because he likes boys does not mean he’s flamboyant.Just because she likes girls does not mean she’s butch.
Don’t stereotype.
subsequently if a guy is flamboyant it does not mean theyre gay
and if a girl acts like butch that does not mean shes a lesbian
not enough notes
May 08 2012
I miss VHSs
This one is very serious, guys:
I came upon these two on the sidewalk. They were having a conversation. “Excuse me,” I said, addressing the girl: “I’m sorry to interrupt, but is there anyway I can take your photo?”
“Why would you want my photo?” she asked.
“Because you look beautiful,” I said. And she did. She was Sudanese. There is a very distinct beauty among people from the Sudan, and she was filled up with it. Suddenly the man cut in:
“I was just telling her she was beautiful,” he said.Naively, I assumed I had just walked up on one stranger giving a compliment to another. I wanted to capture the moment. “Let me take your photograph together,” I said. The man seemed reluctant, he started smiling nervously and inching away. But the girl called him back.
“Come take a picture with me,” she said. Encouraged by her attention, he returned. She put her arm around him, and I took the photo.
As I examined the photos on my camera, the man started whispering to the girl. She answered him in a loud voice: “I told you! I’m not that kind of girl.” She seemed agitated now. Finally sensing that I had misread the situation, I stepped between them. The man began hurrying down the sidewalk.
When the man left, the girl’s demeanor changed completely. She seemed shaken. Her eyes were tearing up. “He just offered me five hundred dollars to go out with him,” she said. “And then when I said ‘no,’ he offered me one thousand. Why does this always happen to me?”
“It happens a lot?” I asked.
“All the time,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m getting emotional. I just can’t go out of my house without this kind of thing happening. I have a son. I’m a mother. I would never degrade myself like that. I just don’t understand why this keeps happening.”
“Do you mind if I tell this story?” I asked.
“Please,” she said. “Tell it.”Let’s hope this man, and all men, realize the emotional damage they are inflicting on the women they try to buy. In the meantime, feel free to SHARE.*
*With this man being an Orthodox Jew, I hope that all long-time followers of HONY would by now have realized the high respect I hold for the Orthodox Jewish community as a whole.
Also she is gorgeous. o-o
i do love it when my case makes itself without me needing to say much more. :)
Ahh I haven’t been weeping in a corner half inarticulate over the accumulation of things like this nope
Not at all
i have been assumed to be “for sale” everywhere ive gone as well. :/
Bookmark
or its probably because I haven’t been posting much lately
but that is cos I spilled vodka on my keyboard so typing without on-screen keyboard is prebgt5bgt5nhy6 fuckinhy6bgt5 difficulbgt5
May 07 2012
More establishments should do this!!
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
