maymay:

Voodoo Tiki Tequila uses date rape and rape culture to sell liquor. One of my friends sent this to me along with the following commentary:

So, apparently the guys at Voodoo Tiki Tequila think date rape is a cute thing to make ads about. Please share and react.

My letter to the marketing division:

Dear Sir or Madame;

I’m writing in regards to your ad in the April 2012 Harvard Lampoon on page 24. The ad depicts the feet of two people who are implied to be naked and the slogan “The Only Tequila Classified as a Weapon by Bachelors Worldwide”. Getting a girl drunk enough that she has sex with you when you know she wouldn’t have sex with you otherwise is called rape. I find the fact that your product appears to be recommending the use of your product to rape women disgusting. I would like to hope that this is simply a terribly faux pas. Please issue a public apology for this appalling ad. Until you do, I will continue to share this image with my friends and recommend that they do not purchase your product.

Sincerely,
Arielle Kubie
Middletown, CT

The email address, should you care to write your own letter, is Marketing@voodootiki.com.

The creator of Voodoo Tiki Tequila is John Taddeo, who is @JTCompany on Twitter. If you don’t have the energy to write a whole letter, send that person a tweet telling them advertising of this nature is unacceptable. (Other ways to contact John Taddeo include emailing them personally at JT@JohnTaddeo.com, calling them directly at (561) 702-6478, or sending a snail mail letter to 3907 North Federal Highway, Pompano Beach, FL. 33064. If you’re on Facebook, you can also write a complaint with a link to this post on Voodoo Tiki Tequila’s Facebook page.)

The image, by the way, is a stock photo whose creator apparently pictured red “so it can be used to support AIDS cause.” Voodoo Tiki Tequila isn’t a brand that seems to care about craftsmanship or originality, just profit. If on that fact alone, I would not purchase their product. Given their advertising, I encourage everyone to boycott it entirely.

If this product were any good, they wouldn’t need sexism to sell it.

shoofle:

What do you do when you’re feeling cripplingly dysphoric?

Write long depressing blog posts and cry.

Anyone have any better advice for shoof, though?

linguafandom:

I was in a class today of undergraduate students. They did an exercise where they listened to a recording of two voices (from this project) reading the same statement. The professor then asked the students to answer a series of questions about the speakers, based completely on their accents.

The chart above contains their answers. 

Take a look at the guessed occupation and social class for either speaker. They assume the young Chinese woman is a student, but the guess about the slightly older Latino man’s occupation? A factory worker from Mexico. 

Look, when descriptivists talk about language variation, this is the place they’re coming from. To this group of middle-class, white, educated students in a classroom, just the sound of someone’s voice suggests all these harmful social stigmas. 

When we try to stop people from making judgments about others’ language use, this is why. This man could very well have been a factory worker, and he might have been from Mexico (although a student well-versed in Latino dialects said she was almost positive he wasn’t from Central America).

The point is—the assumption was made based on his voice alone that he was a lower-class factory worker. Assumptions like this are made every day about someone’s language use. And that’s why we fight for language equality. It’s not about saying nonstandard forms are better, it’s about saying they’re just as valid.

nixvisceral:

I really wish there was an easy and succinct way to explain or preface the statement “I felt shitty when you did this thing” in such a way that it is clear that I am NOT saying:

• What you did was wrong
• You did not have a good reason(s) for what you did
• I blame you for my…

Will spare the full text again, but this is a really smart answer to the same thing I just replied to. The space rule sounds like a good idea, for the same reason as the thing I linked in the previous post.

One thing I’d add is that if you’re upset about something that normally wouldn’t bother you because you’re having an unrelatedly shitty day, you can say that last part explicitly. I have definitely told someone “I’m really tired right now, so if I’m touchy it’s not because of you.” I find that, if they’re feeling up to supporting me, they’ll treat me a little more gently after hearing that, and know not to engage or take it personally if I’m having trouble keeping my shit together. On the other hand, if they’re not feeling good either, saying it out loud is a heads up that we need to address some basic needs before we start taking out the bad moods on each other.

nixvisceral:

I really wish there was an easy and succinct way to explain or preface the statement “I felt shitty when you did this thing” in such a way that it is clear that I am NOT saying:

• What you did was wrong
• You did not have a good reason(s) for what you did
• I blame you for my shitty feelings
• I am judging you for what you did
• The solution is for you never to do that thing again

Sometimes ALL I need to say is just “I feel shitty and need support around this emotion from this thing” and maybe find some way to resolve the situation and state needs, without it turning into a blame-battle or guilt-fest. However, especially with cyclically-upsetting interactions (something upsets you and your upset reaction upsets me, etc) it’s really difficult to navigate that without the person expressing shitty feelings upsetting or getting shut down by the other.

Any insights?

Maybe something like this? Adjust as needed for applicability, of course.

“I want to talk about this, but I need to work through my initial reaction first—I’m feeling (sad/hurt/angry/frustrated) and that’s making it hard to have a productive conversation. Can you please (reassure me of x/give me a hug/back off for a little bit/acknowledge how I’m feeling)?”

D’you know about the William James zone? TL;DR: When you’re upset, your brain and rest-of-body can get into a physical feedback loop that makes it hard to let go of negative feelings even when the reason for them has passed. Knowing that and paying attention to it can help you consciously break the loop, or at least be more forgiving of yourself/each other when you get into it.

Also, remember that if both of you are in places where you need support and neither of you is feeling up to giving it, it’s totally legit to point out that fact, step back for a breather, and come back to the conversation when you’re both feeling stronger.

I dunno, I feel like a poser giving this kind of advice, especially to someone who’s already familiar with NVC and therefore probably knows at least as much as I do about these things. But whether or not this is useful, I hope you guys find a way to work out what you need to.

<3

birdandmoon:

I’m completely in love with Weird Bug Lady’s Etsy shop. She makes plush critters like bugs, fossil trilobites, snakes… what’s not to love?

This is a plush version of a tardigrade, or water bear. These tiny critters can survive

• on top of Himalayan mountains and 4000 meters under the sea
• without water for ten years
• being frozen or boiled
• being jetted into space

Pick yourself up one of these tough little critters!

OMG. <3 <3 <3

praying-semantist:

(explanation at Language Log)

:DDDDD

bone-map:

by Raven Kaldera

” ‘Sometimes,’ the woman speaker said to her rapt audience, ‘we just have to draw a line between male and female.’ Her sincerity was apparent. Everyone in the room could feel it. It made them trust her. It made me sick.

I knew I was going to have to stand up and challenge her, and I knew I could do it in one of any number of ways. I could tell her I have a medical condition (congenital adrenal hyperplasia), that I’m the sort of person they used to call a hermaphrodite back in the olden days (like the 1950s), but that now we call ourselves intersexuals. I could tell her that I was raised as a girl and now live socially as a man, that I’ve seen both sides of the line and know its transience, its fragility, its vagueness. I could order her to define male and female and man and woman and then tear down her definitions. I could argue with her on the field of reason, but I didn’t.

First of all, I knew her objections weren’t stemming from any reasonable space. She was scared, plain and simple. Scared of finding penises in her restroom and testosterone in her girlfriends and probably a lot of other things too. No matter what I said, I probably wouldn’t change her mind, because I wouldn’t be addressing her fears- fears that were, in a sense, reasonable. After all, we are advocating an entire renovation of the gender system. We may disagree on what it should look like, but we’re pretty much in favor of bringing on the drills and chisels. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise; it insults the intelligence of the frightened masses. Yes, what you fear is true. And you know what? You’ll live.

Second, I’m not just a medical condition. I’m a mythical beast. I know because when I was 10 years old, I found the word for what I am in a book of Greek myths and it said so. Two years later, when I hit puberty and grew breasts and facial hair, saw my hips spread and heard my voice crack, bled and got erect, I knew it was true. They said it was a myth, but here I am- a unicorn, a dragon, a monster, a piece of magic let loose on the world. Your reality gives ground before my undeniably solid presence. And I’m a heyoka, a sacred trickster, on top of it all.

So I grabbed the femme friend sitting next to me and hissed in an intense undertone, “Eyebrow pencil! I need eyebrow pencil! Now!” Coming from someone dressed as butchly as I was, it took her aback, and she fumbled through her purse as if I’d insisted that poison gas had been let loose in the building and I needed her lipstick to counteract its effects. She hurriedly handed me a brown stick, which I promptly used to draw a dotted line from my hairline to my chest. I’d have drawn farther, but I didn’t want to open my shirt and show off my hairy breasts just yet. Then I pulled my knife out of my pocket and walked up to the female speaker who was still holding forth on the value of women’s and men’s spaces.

She saw me, and her eyes widened. With that weird face paint and the knife, I suspect she took me for some kind of crazy coming to stab her. I indicated the dotted line drawn on my face. “Here’s your line,” I said. “Here’s your line between male and female.” Then I opened the knife and held it out to her, hilt first. “Put your money where your mouth is.”

She looked stricken, horrified, then turned and ran from the room. I don’t know what was actually going through her mind, but I know people took her aside later and told her about me, about who and what I am. I hope she got it. I hope she finally understood that whenever a line is drawn, it passes through someone’s flesh.”

… I kind of want to dye my hair to match this shirt I just bought. Or else a little deeper/brighter. One of the interesting side effects of changing from IDing as female to IDing as genderqueer is that things our culture codes as feminine are actually more comfortable for me than they were before. I think it’s because I no longer feel like I should be acting femme—if I want to explore it, I can, on my own terms. It became playful.

On which note, I like this outfit. (I’m also wearing new jeans, tight-fitting in the thigh and a little looser in the calf.) I feel pretty, but not femme. Just … me, and also pretty. It’s nice. :)

humansofnewyork:

“I design costumes.”
“What’s the coolest costume you’ve ever designed?”
“Has to be the break dancing polar bear.”

Oh my god I love your hair. Mmm longhawks. I want my hair to get that long and be either a color like that or a similarly bright shade of pink. Actually …