daily reminder to TV writers:

ethiopienne:

• black women are not your scapegoats
• black women are not your mammies
• black women are not your chocolate divas
• black women are not your sassy accessories
• black women are not your comic relief
• black women are not your exotic temptresses
• black women are not your laughingstock
• black women are not your rhetorical tools

black women exist independently of your gaze.

(via sexgenderbody)

ladysaviours:

you know what would be cool? a show about, like, vigilante Victorian prostitutes hunting down Jack the Ripper.

(via winneganfake)

electrikfeather:

thenightisland:

i love how the american media frets over showing lgbt characters on tv shows and then the bbc makes a tv show where the main character is literally an omnisexual immortal alien who eventually turns into a giant disembodied face and no one gives a fuck

(via winifredjay)

Issues you may have if you use the term “friend zone”

alisoninsweden:

You see friendship as a consolation prize to be avoided
You don’t value developing connections with other people unless there is something else in it for you. You pretend to pursue friendships with people for what it might get you instead of genuinely pursuing friendships with people because you like them. You drop people from your life as soon as it becomes apparent that they aren’t useful to you, without consideration for their feelings or motivations. You don’t actually like anybody.

You see friendship as gendered
You believe the trope that it is impossible for men and women to be friends without sexual tension, which requires a heteronormative worldview and the belief that any man would gladly have sex with any woman if he could. When in a relationship, you forbid your partner to have any friends of your gender, because you believe they would only be after sex. You dislike and distrust other members of your own gender because you assume their thought processes are similar to yours, even though you paradoxically claim to be “different from all those others.”

You believe that mainstream romantic comedy movies are a good model for how relationships should work
You think that relationships should work by meeting someone you initially dislike, arguing with them a lot, and eventually ending up together. You think that male-female friendships should work by listening faux-sympathetically to the other person while they complain about their obviously unsuitable partners, after which you will eventually be rewarded with the prize of getting together with them when they realize that you are nice, the obviously unsuitable partners weren’t nice, and they finally understand that the perfect person, you, has been there all this time. You think that a no means that you should be persistent and keep making inappropriate, stalkerish grand gestures until eventually the no turns into a yes and you end up together.

You feel entitled to sex
You see no point in interacting with people of your preferred gender at all unless sex is a possibility. You do not bother interacting with people of your preferred gender if you find them physically unattractive or if you know they are married or otherwise taken. You push boundaries of friends who have already said no to sex under the assumption that you can get them to change their minds if you stick around and keep trying. You make inappropriate sexual comments to friends and try to play it off as if you were just kidding, but you weren’t just kidding. You believe that you don’t get as much sex as other people do because you’re “too nice.”

You insist that it’s not about sex, but it is
When questioned about your motivations, you make a big deal about how it’s not about sex, it’s about a relationship. You see that as a much more noble goal than “just sex.” However, when offered a relationship that includes some romantic elements but no sex, you constantly push for sex. If that person has sex with someone other than you, you complain that it isn’t fair.

You compare yourself to others a lot
You frequently point out how you are a more suitable partner than your friend’s current partner, as well as other people in general, mainly because you are nicer. You consider yourself a better listener, smarter, more helpful, more civilized, and nicer, much nicer. Did you mention nicer? You list things you’ve done for your friend sometimes as if adding up the things you’ll be able to exchange for sex eventually. You point out that your friend’s partner hasn’t done as many helpful things as you have.

You complain a lot
Besides being too nice, you figure that your shortcomings are that you’re shy, socially awkward, and not enough of a stereotypical representative of your gender. You actually see stereotypical representatives of your gender as bad, but you recognize that such people get more action than you do, and it isn’t fair. None of this is fair. It isn’t fair that you’re too shy to demand the sex that you know you deserve. It isn’t fair that the people you’re attracted to engage in such poor partner selection. It isn’t fair that you invest time and energy into these friendships and all you get back is friendship.

I like how she said “issues you may have”, since I’ve seen these manifest in different proportions and distributions in different people, including myself from time to time. More so when I was younger. I think that’s a good point about the movies - the scripts we’re exposed to growing up are the ones we automatically use to make sense of our lives and boy howdy are the available scripts lacking mature, appropriate communication modeling.

Violent media.

teratocybernetics:

wolvensnothere:

Every time there’s a shooting, we come back around to this tired talking point of “Are Violent Video Games To Blame?!” Because there were violent games in the shooter’s library. Because they were known to play any video games At All. Like playing Risk causes wars, right?

Listen, this vision of “violent media” as a unidirectional influence on culture and behaviour is one that is so fundamentally misguided and lopsided that it would be laughable to even suggest discussing, except that it’s frankly terrifying how many people still believe it. Violent videogames alter the mood of susceptible individuals? What of the fact that the culture in which those individuals live Constantly Reinforces the acceptability of that violence, while simultaneously damning “inappropriate” expressions thereof? What of the idea that Violent PEOPLE will often seek out access to entertainment that Is Itself Violent, and that this does not mean that EVERYONE who plays the aforementioned games Is Themself Violent? Some Birds Are Black; Not All Black Things Are Birds.

Look. I know you all want yes or no answers, clear blocks reading “DANGER! DO NOT ALLOW!” or “ALWAYS BE SURE TO DO…!” but there is NUANCE here. There are multipe vectors of influence, when it comes to media and behaviour, and one of the most key is how Culture influences what we Create and Expect, even as what we create influences our expectations of culture.

We keep talking about people being influenced by media, or “having problems,” or “being violent,” as if this is the only direction of impression. We are a violent culture, and that violence is repressed and improperly sublimated, such that it mingles with any emotional and mental health issues, and it all errupts at once. Let’s talk about the roots of the problems and the availability of the mechanisms Of those erruptions.

Absent that, just pointing at the media, and saying “get rid of that and everything will be fine” is like saying “if I stop you from coughing, then I’ll have cured your pneumonia.” It’s asinine & completely misguided. You’re still sick and you may be dying. It’s just that now you can more easily ignore the fact of it.

I’ll consider agreeing with blame-the-media when we start addressing how we treat violence in media versus how we treat things like, say, nudity.

DVD behind-the-scenes footage; The man wrote this up on his phone.

(via winneganfake)