One of the things on Tumblr that is giving me unreasonable stress is this tendency for “radical” “feminist” blogs to insist that very small boys are capable of sexual violence and to insist that they, the adult teachers of those small boys, are victimized by them. This post is an especially intense example where the actions of boys that should raise red flags that these boys are being abused, instead cause people to insist that young boys are oppressors and sexually violent.
One of the more disturbing examples of psychological bias that anyone working in education equity has to deal with is the particular kind of gendered-racism that white women teachers express towards black and latino boys. In particular, the tendency for white female teachers to perceive black and latino boys as being uniquely sexually threatening from a ridiculously young age. You see it in pre-school suspension rates, where misbehaving 3 and 4 year olds are described as “rapey”. It is a factor in people ignoring sexual abuse that young black and latino children of any gender experience.
Ascribing those kinds of sexually violent beliefs to incredibly young children is not just a wild, scientology-esque rejection of how child development works, but it above all something that only happens to some children and, for those children, being perceived as tiny rapists before they can write their name is not the result of some edgy radical feminist opinions, it’s just the way that racism is going to hurt the before they can even write their names.
Velimir Khlebnikov, from Collected Poems & Selected Writings; “Everland,”
“Ice Cave” by Georgia O’Keeffe and a photograph of an ice cave.
yeah Georgia? that’s an ice cave ? that’s a god damn ice cave? that’s the only thing you intended to paint? that’s it? just an ice cave?
i am an idiot sometimes but sometimes i am an idiot to be funny you know? for the joke. and i want people to know the difference. sometimes my actions are purposeful. sometimes i think. i want you to know that. even when i am just being a regular idiot i choose to say things knowing i am an idiot. i am the chooser of my own fate. i am the god of my own reality.
“I don’t know why we take our worst moods so much more seriously than our best, crediting depression with more clarity than euphoria. We dismiss peak moments and passionate love affairs as an ephemeral chemical buzz, just endorphins or hormones, but accept those 3 a.m. bouts of despair as unsentimental insights into the truth of our lives.”— Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing (via dieinmanhattan)
this is like seeing a friend for the first time in years
#pmmm