teachers who complain about grading work
are you fucking kidding me.
no.
no you sit the fuck down.
LET ME EXPLAIN YOU A THING
do you know how hard it is to be a teacher in the current economy? do you know what it’s like to frantically prepare students for standardized tests that contain literally nothing you feel like they need to learn but you have to ensure that they score well on them otherwise not only could you lose your job but also the school could lose funding
which means that funding for resources like
- subsidized lunches
- computers for the lab
- the fucking librarian’s fucking salary
could dry up?
do you know what it would be like to be hired expecting twenty children in a class but then half of your colleagues get fired so you suddenly have forty children in a class? and then if you’re an average middle or high school teacher you have five or six or sometimes seven classes?
yeah in case you can’t do math because you were too busy making fun of your teacher to pay attention, that’s 200 or 240 or fucking 280 students. and at least 75% of them turn in every assignment. and then you have to grade them, knowing that if you don’t assign x amount of papers your class could get audited and, unless you have tenure (which some teachers now don’t get until seven years after they have the job - that’s SEVEN FUCKING YEARS OF NOT KNOWING IF YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE A JOB THE FOLLOWING YEAR) you could lose your job if the administration doesn’t find your class adequate?
also, on top of grading papers, some districts require teacher regularly undergo retraining for students with disabilities, students with english as a second language, sexual assault counseling, bullying prevention, and community relations? and they’re supposed to do all of this on an average salary of $45,000 a year (which is only slightly more than one year of university, aka in order to pay for their undergrad student loans plus their grad school loans they would have to do nothing but pay down loans with their salaries for six fucking years and not buy food or shelter)?
also, side note: teachers do not ever “get the summer off.” they’re planning the shit out of the school year, and attending training days, and researching ways to make their teaching more effective, and handling panicking parents whose students will be entering their classes next year. “summer off” my ass. teachers work as hard during the summer as they do during the school year.
people on this website complain about being stressed out for a lot of things - some serious, some not.
but imagine the stress of having in your care the education of over two hundred people while paying off an astronomical debt to do an often thankless job
AND THEN GIVE ME SOME PISSANT MEME OF A CRYING GIRL YOU FUCKERS
Throw me over your shoulder and carry me off to Valhalla you viking goddess.
suddenly people care about female weightlifting because they see an athlete online that they are sexually attracted to. Because she is petite and blonde, everyone is going wild for her. Her name is Samantha Wright, by the way, she is a person, and a serious weight lifter. You should also know about other women in this sport, from around the world and not just focus on this one woman.
Meet Karnam Malleswari of India, Olympic weight lifting champion, FIRST WOMAN FROM INDIA TO EVER WIN AN OLYMPIC MEDAL.
Meet Zhou Lulu, female weight lifter for China, who shattered world lifting records in her category.
Meet Holley Mangold, American weight lifting competitor. She didn’t win gold, but she is also an amazing athlete and just because she is not petite or marketably attractive does not mean she should be overlooked or forgotten.
Lastly, here is Zoe Smith. She got a lot of flack for “looking like a bloke” and being “too muscular” and she fought back:
“…We don’t lift weights in order to look hot, especially for the likes of men like that. What makes them think that we even WANT them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we’re flattered. But if you don’t, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place, and what makes you think we actually give a toss that you, personally, do not find us attractive? What do you want us to do? Shall we stop weightlifting, amend our diet in order to completely get rid of our ‘manly’ muscles, and become housewives in the sheer hope that one day you will look more favourably upon us and we might actually have a shot with you?! Cause you are clearly the kindest, most attractive type of man to grace the earth with your presence.
“Oh but wait, you aren’t. This may be shocking to you, but we actually would rather be attractive to people who aren’t closed-minded and ignorant. Crazy, eh?! We, as any women with an ounce of self-confidence would, prefer our men to be confident enough in themselves to not feel emasculated by the fact that we aren’t weak and feeble.“If you lust after a female athlete, that’s cool, no one’s stopping you and you certainly aren’t alone. But you could at least appreciate the actual skill and dedication that goes behind these kinds of sports, and understand that these women aren’t doing it for your approval or to look good. They are athletes as much as their male counterparts, and they could probably fuck you up if they wanted to.
Eliz. Warren wants to cut student interest rates to near zero
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has introduced her first piece of legislation. It’s called the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act, and would reduce the rate students pay on federally-subsidized student loans for one year, from 3.4% to 0.75%.
Without congressional action, on July 1 the rate is set to double from 3.4% to 6.8%.
Warren brings up an interesting point – her bill simply asks students to pay the same rates that big banks pay for borrowing.
She’s literally just asking if college grads can get the same deal as bank CEOs. The exact same interest rate. Not even a bailout or anything fancy (pipe dreams!) - just the same interest rate.
The question keeps coming up, “why don’t queer slash fans care more about canonical queer characters.”
It’s the “Did you stop beating your wife” of fandom questions. It’s leading. It’s reductionist.
There is the obvious answer — Queer fans are people, and people in general care more about main characters most directly influential to the main storyline of any tv show, book, movie, etc. The vast majority of queer characters are minor characters crammed in for politically correct purposes, without any real character development. The few that do get actual development are usually still not central to the plot of the show. I often feel when people ask me this question that they are essentially asking me, “Why aren’t you grateful for table scraps?”
Uhm.
Because I’m not a fucking dog?
The few cases in which queer characters do get to be main characters central to the plot, the story usually revolves entirely around their queerness. And when I say queerness I mean gayness. Because let’s face it, no one in the media takes bisexuality seriously.
With precious few notable exceptions in niche genres, all the bisexuals on television are women. This is because the media doesn’t take female sexuality seriously. This is because the media doesn’t take women seriously. The media is going to keep dismissing bisexuality for as long as bisexuality is coded female only.
.
People in Teen Wolf ask, “Why aren’t you more invested in Danny? Why aren’t you fighting for him to have more backstory and more plotlines.”
As a media consumer and a pragmatist, the logic of this question is completely backwards. “Why aren’t you invested in a character that lacks flaws, motivation, depth, and for that matter anything else that might make you invested in said character? Isn’t it your moral duty as a queer/woman/POC to base all your character preferences on how similar a character’s minority status is to your own?”
I feel like the people asking these questions are asking me to choose what emotions I feel based on ideals. They’re asking me to choose between being a feminist/poc activist/queer advocate and being human.
.
I think of High School musical, whose entire fandom following both slash and het ships a multiracial pairing. Not out of moral duty, but because the POC in that movie series are well written and central to the plot.
.
Often when a show has a lot of race/sex/gender diverse cast you will hear white/cis/het people complain that the show is “trying too hard” to be diverse.
The fact is, oftentimes minority characters do seem awkwardly placed in a storyline, for the sole purpose of being politically correct. And they do feel out of place and unnecessary. And the problem isn’t that the show creators are “trying too hard.”
They’re not trying hard enough. They thought it was enough to slap on a few characters haphazardly, without fully integrating them into the storyline.
.I think people need to focus more on how women/poc/queer characters are represented, instead of just focusing on how many.
.
No one seems to ask why lesbians read/write m/m slash.
I’ve met a lot of lesbians who read/write m/m slash.
People like to assume that slash is purely voyeurism and than compare it to “straight men watching mainstream lesbian porn.” That comparison is pure bullshit. Accusing lesbian/bisexual women of voyeuristically fetishizing gay male porn, for that matter accusing women of fetishizing men in general is like accusing black affirmative action advocates of reverse racism.
Anyone can be a bigot, but racism is bigotry + power. Sexism is bigotry+power. Transmisogyny (prejudice by cisgendered people towards transgendered/genderqueer people) is bigotry+power. Monosexism (prejudice by people attracted to one gender towards people attracted to more than one gender) is bigotry+power.
There’s a whole conversation that needs to be had, about slash as escapism, rather than voyeurism. About allegories. Not in this post. Maybe later. I have a post in the works.
Junot Diaz on Men Who Write About Women
- The Atlantic: It sounds like you're saying that literary "talent" doesn't inoculate a writer—especially a male writer—from making gross, false misjudgments about gender. You'd think being a great writer would give you empathy and the ability to understand people who are unlike you—whether we're talking about gender or another category. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
- Junot Diaz: I think that unless you are actively, consciously working against the gravitational pull of the culture, you will predictably, thematically, create these sort of fucked-up representations. Without fail. The only way not to do them is to admit to yourself [that] you're fucked up, admit to yourself that you're not good at this shit, and to be conscious in the way that you create these characters. It's so funny what people call inspiration. I have so many young writers who're like, "Well I was inspired. This was my story." And I'm like, "OK. Sir, your inspiration for your stories is like every other male's inspiration for their stories: that the female is only in there to provide sexual service." There comes a time when this mythical inspiration is exposed for doing exactly what it's truthfully doing: to underscore and reinforce cultural structures, or I'd say, cultural asymmetry.
The discovery of cyanide in Tylenol capsules occurred in the weeks of October 1982.
The existence of the poisoned capsules, all found in the Chicago area, was first reported on October 1. The New York Times wrote a story on the Tylenol scare every day for the entire month of October and produced twenty-three more pieces in the two months after that.
Within days of the discovery of what proved to be the only cyanide-laced capsules, the Food and Drug Administration issued orders removing the drugs from store shelves across the country. Federal, state, and local authorities were immediately on hand to coordinate efforts in states thousands of miles from where the tampered boxes appeared. No action was too extreme and no expense too great, they insisted, to save lives.
In the end, the millions of dollars for Tylenol investigations yielded little beyond the probability that some lone crackpot had tampered with a few boxes of the pain reliever. No more cases of poisoning occurred beyond the first handful reported in early October. Altogether, seven people died from the cyanide-laced capsules.
By comparison, 634 Americans had been stricken with AIDS by October 5, 1982. Of these, 260 were dead. There was no rush to spend money, mobilize public health officials, or issue regulations that might save lives.
In New York City, where half the nation’s AIDS cases resided, the New York Times had written only three stories about the epidemic in 1981 and three more stories in all of 1982. None made the front page. Indeed, one could have lived in New York, or in most of the United States for that matter, and not even have been aware from the daily newspapers that an epidemic was happening, even while government doctors themselves were predicting that the scourge would wipe out the lives of tens of thousands.
Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking soundbites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, ‘that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about ‘The Basketball Diaries’?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machinegun?”
The obscure 1995 Leonardo DiCaprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.
The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. Kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”
In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, “The NBC Nightly News” and other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them.
The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.
Why you should care that the Supreme Court just voted against human rights
Today the Supreme Court voted 9-0 against human rights in a case you might not have heard of, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. You might not care! But here’s why you should:
- THE LAW THEY CIRCUMSCRIBED IS ONE OF THE FEW WAYS WE COULD ADDRESS FOREIGN HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES in our system. What does that mean? It means that if someone came to the US from danger abroad - say, a journalist nearly tortured to death, or the family of a slain activist, or a community fired upon by an oil company - they could look for justice in our courts. They didn’t often find it, but there was the possibility of recognition of what they suffered. There were no criminal prosecutions, but there was civil redress: money (usually a negligible amount), but more importantly a finding by a court that what they endured was real. Today, the Court took that away.
A List of “Men’s Rights” Issues That Feminism Is Already Working On
Feminists do not want you to lose custody of your children. The assumption that women are naturally better caregivers is part of patriarchy.
Feminists do not like commercials in which bumbling dads mess up the laundry and competent wives have to bustle in and fix it. The assumption that women are naturally better housekeepers is part of patriarchy.
Feminists do not want you to have to make alimony payments. Alimony is set up to combat the fact that women have been historically expected to prioritize domestic duties over professional goals, thus minimizing their earning potential if their “traditional” marriages end. The assumption that wives should make babies instead of money is part of patriarchy.
Feminists do not want anyone to get raped in prison. Permissiveness and jokes about prison rape are part of rape culture, which is part of patriarchy.
Feminists do not want anyone to be falsely accused of rape. False rape accusations discredit rape victims, which reinforces rape culture, which is part of patriarchy.
Feminists do not want you to be lonely and we do not hate “nice guys.” The idea that certain people are inherently more valuable than other people because of superficial physical attributes is part of patriarchy.
Feminists do not want you to have to pay for dinner. We want the opportunity to achieve financial success on par with men in any field we choose (and are qualified for), and the fact that we currently don’t is part of patriarchy. The idea that men should coddle and provide for women, and/or purchase their affections in romantic contexts, is condescending and damaging and part of patriarchy.
Feminists do not want you to be maimed or killed in industrial accidents, or toil in coal mines while we do cushy secretarial work and various yarn-themed activities. The fact that women have long been shut out of dangerous industrial jobs (by men, by the way) is part of patriarchy.
Feminists do not want you to commit suicide. Any pressures and expectations that lower the quality of life of either gender are part of patriarchy. The fact that depression is characterized as an effeminate weakness, making men less likely to seek treatment, is part of patriarchy.
Feminists do not want you to be viewed with suspicion when you take your child to the park (men frequently insist that this is a serious issue, so I will take them at their word). The assumption that men are insatiable sexual animals, combined with the idea that it’s unnatural for men to care for children, is part of patriarchy.
Feminists do not want you to be drafted and then die in a war while we stay home and iron stuff. The idea that women are too weak to fight or too delicate to function in a military setting is part of patriarchy.
Feminists do not want women to escape prosecution on legitimate domestic violence charges, nor do we want men to be ridiculed for being raped or abused. The idea that women are naturally gentle and compliant and that victimhood is inherently feminine is part of patriarchy.
Feminists hate patriarchy. We do not hate you.
If you really care about those issues as passionately as you say you do, you should be thanking feminists, because feminism is a social movement actively dedicated to dismantling every single one of them. The fact that you blame feminists—your allies—for problems against which they have been struggling for decades suggests that supporting men isn’t nearly as important to you as resenting women. We care about your problems a lot. Could you try caring about ours?
