Adam Hills destroys Joan Rivers for her Adele comments.
I used to think I was getting away with something.
“Girls don’t count,” I’d say, running my fingers up her arm at the bar. “Don’t you know that?”
We both had boyfriends. Long-term boyfriends. Mine had introduced me to the concept.
“I wouldn’t feel threatened,” he’d say. “I know they could never compete.”
He meant that a woman, no matter how attached I got, could never “steal” me away from him. He meant that he’d only care about male penetration, about “sex” in the most typical terms. I was young and I didn’t value myself and I hadn’t been taught a lot about feminism or how relationships should work. I said nothing, because I wanted it to be true.
_____
We went on a date, she and I. We saw a movie and then she came over and we drank wine and watched TV and hooked up on the couch and fell asleep. We were drunk and we laughed. I held her.
The next morning, he was angry.
“I thought girls didn’t count,” I said.
“Yeah, but you like, went on a date,” he said.
“We saw a movie,” I replied. “She has a boyfriend.”
“It was a date,” he said. He was irritated.
_____
“How many people have you been with?,” they all ask, adding: “Girls don’t count.”
_____
These girls. I remember them. They happened. They were there with me. They had red hair and bright red lipstick and they wore Boston Red Sox hoodies and they loved Russian literature and they had big, wily pet dogs and they spent the night.
I talked to them at parties or met them in the dorms freshman year or they were friends of friends who stroked my hair and said, “I just think everyone’s a little bit bisexual, don’t you?”
I loved them. They were real and they shared themselves with me and we spent time together at thrift shops and in classes and at bars and at friends’ dinner parties. We held hands while other couples passed around a joint. We buried our faces in each other’s soft necks under the covers. These were relationships. These were people I was with.
“I want us to be monogamous,” men say. “But you know, obviously girls don’t count.”
_____
When did you first have sex?
It depends on what you mean. There was a girl in high school.
No, I mean your virginity. When did you lose it?
Oh.
_____
He is masturbating. I ask, “What do you want?” He says, “Tell me about when you were with your ex-girlfriend.”
Later, I say my ex-boyfriend’s name when telling a story about last year and he tells me, “You know, I could stand to hear less about him.”
_____
“I just think you’ll end up with a man in the end,” he says when we’re walking to a bar.
“That’s presumptuous,” I reply.
“I just feel like you will.”
“Because you’re threatened?”
“What?”
“Because it threatens you to know that I could one day not need a dick. That, god forbid, a woman who could end up with either actually chooses to disregard your precious penis.”
“Hey, take it easy. I was just giving you relationship advice.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
At the bar, our friends wonder why we aren’t speaking. Even he is confused by what happened. He doesn’t know what he did wrong.
_____
For a long time, I said nothing. Because if they thought it wasn’t cheating, who was I to argue? I had freedom. I was getting one over on them. I was winning.
They were real. They were real and they counted. They’re not shadows among the men I saw. But I wanted them to be. I wanted to avoid the consequences, to avoid thinking, to avoid wondering what it meant. These men, they told me what it meant: it meant nothing.
And I told other women this fallacy. I moved in to kiss their necks and ears and said, “Girls don’t count, don’t you know?”
And later, they counted. And later, I knew.
Hi. These are some pictures of my butt that I’ve posted on my blog. I just wanted to clear some stuff up about them. I have stopped posting them in the past because I was dating someone who 1) didn’t want other people seeing my butt and 2) was embarrassed that I would post them.
Here’s the most basic way I can say what I’m thinking.
Here’s what these pictures DON’T mean:
- I want to have sex with you.
- I want your attention.
- I want sexual attention.
- I have issues with self esteem.
- I have no self-respect.
- I have “daddy issues”.
- I will have sex with you no matter who you are.
- I am unintelligent and vapid.
Here’s what these pictures DO mean:
- The human body is beautiful.
- I have a butt.
- It’s a good butt.
- I’m proud of it.
- Here’s a picture of it.
- That’s it.
- Nothing else.
- Just a butt.
Here’s what these pictures say about me:
- Nothing.
Here’s what pisses me off:
- People who think that showing your body equates to a lack of self-respect or says something about your sexual activity.
- People who think that this justifies receiving fucked up and creepy anonymous messages of harassment.
- People who think that seeing a picture of my butt says anything about my personality, my mind, my soul, etc.
- People who say they back up feminism and body positiveness, but if their girlfriend, or a girl they were interested in, posted a picture of their body on the internet they would suddenly “lose respect” for them.
- People who think naked bodies = sex.
- People who say things like “Do you think you’ll ever get a boyfriend if you’re posting those pictures?”, “I thought you weren’t posting those pictures anymore, haha.”, or “Why would someone date you when they can just look at your blog for those pictures?”
- People who say those things and then ask me to send them pictures of my body. Fuck you.
Here’s what (I think) you should do:
- Stop leaving hateful anonymous messages.
- Stop using words like “slut” and “whore”.
- Stop having double standards.
- Stop assuming things about people.
- Stop being hateful.
- Be kind, be gentle, be respectful.
- Keep scrolling down your dashboard.
- Keep your shitty thoughts to yourself.
- Love yourself.
That’s basically all I wanted to say for now, I’m sure I’ll end up thinking of more things but this has been a massive post about being body positive and loving the way you look and not letting shitty people get you down.
Learn something. Read this post.
Yes, yes yes. Take notes, ass holes.
I suggest all females watch this.
*i suggest all humans watch this.
If you haven’t watched this yet, you really should.
This is a must, girls and boys.
I agree that everyone should watch this. This is one of the few videos on female representation in the media that at least tries to point out that the way females are represented has a negative effect on everyone, not just women.
I love that this`touches also on how media affects men, but wow. Stereotypes are perpetuated by television more than in reality, and they are so skewed because they have to be provocative or funny or any number of things that aren’t complete or real enough.
This affects not only women and men, but race, gays and lesbians, trans people, all people.
We all struggle against what we are supposed to be, what we are told we should be, and yet when positions in media and PR change, the image doesn’t. Because people get those positions by conforming to that image, and breaking out risks loss.
This is why it is so hard for anyone to be who they really are, because they are so busy being what other’s expect so as not to be harassed for not being what they are supposed to be.
Oh man, Geena Davis. I love her with all -y heart.
All my followers should watch this video
Everyone needs to watch this and see how harmful misrepresentation and perpetuating harmful stereotypes are not just to a minority group, but to everyone.
Only by adapting a new way of thinking, by treating everyone equally, and even eroding gender roles, can we influence our peers and perpetuate something good.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
A thousand times, Yes.
Watch the entire thing. Totally worth it.
seriously let me tell you something about teenagers (particularly teenage girls)
there is a fucking television program entitled “i hate my teenage daughter”
and you fucking sit there and judge these young people going through hormonal and social and mental hell
while you make tv shows and parenting blogs about how fucking awful they are?
do you know what teenage girls REALLY are?
they’re fucking WORLDS of potential bursting out at the seams
in all their taylor swift worshipping, converse wearing, dollar store lip gloss glory
they are our fucking precious future and they barely even get a voice
because…they listen to pop music and read for fun and laugh loudly all the time in public, how very dare they
so fucking excuse me if i think it’s counter-productive to shame people for liking one direction or gossip girl or whatever the fuck
they are teetering on the precipice of adulthood and they experience an epiphany every minute
teenage girls are allowed to like things
they are allowed to figure their shit out and make mistakes and shame on you and all of us for forgetting that they could teach us a thing or two about enthusiasm and horror and disgust and delight
One of the saddest photos I’ve ever seen :(
you—uncultured—swine: A mother sits beside her newborn calf. She can see him, she can smell him, her body is already making the milk she craves to feed him, but she is prevented from nursing him.
Her time with him is brief as he will be taken and killed so that her milk can be consumed by humans. She will grieve the loss, and the next loss and the next and the next.
The dairy industry is without compassion for the misery and suffering of the millions of animals it exploits.
Please, don’t support this industry.I never realized how nasty these industries are, until now. :(
Are you guys serious? That calf is being weaned, because it’s time for her to be separated from her mother, it’s a gentle form on weaning, they can still see and smell each other, but can’t touch each other. Rather than cold turkey ripped away from mother and herd. That calf will then go into a herd of other calves that get raised till yearlings, these are dairy cows, unless it’s a bull it won’t be killed, and even then it’s highly unlikely. It’ll go into production. If you euthanize all the calves, your business won’t be continuing very long. And Seriously? Are you a fucking idiot? A cow does only produce milk when a calf is born. Cows are milked two or three times a day, all year round. Oh and milking is cruel? You numbskull, if the cow isn’t milked as much as she needs to be, it gets painful. The more grain they eat, the more milk is produced. If she doesn’t get milked, her udder will get too heavy and start to ache. She won’t be able to lay down or get comfortable. Not to mention if it’s left, she can get infections like mastitis. Not fun. Also, dairy farms have whole herds of dry cows. Those are the girls that aren’t milking for whatever reason, so they get a break and go out to pasture. Keeping the cows happy and comfortable and least stressed is the priority of dairy farms, because the happier the cow, the more milk she produces. They get water beds. And you’re telling me that’s cruel? This is all coming from an animal rights activist, and a person strongly against factory farming. Wanna know something? The majority of dairy farms are not factory farms. They’re family owned. All the milk goes to a co op and sold from a major company. I’ve done my research on this, and spent a lot of time on dairy farms. You, my friend are ignorant. Do some research. you—uncultured—swine, it’s a fitting URL.
my cousin runs a dairy farm. i spent a lot of time there as a kid. his animals are happy and relaxed. they’re friendly; they like and trust people. the cows aren’t kept away from their calves forever, just during the weaning process. they spend most of their time chilling in the pasture eating grass, or in a clean warm barn chewing their cud. my cousin pampers his cows more than a lot of people pamper their pets. not just because he’s a decent guy — though he is — but because healthy, happy cows give more and better milk, and that’s how he makes his living.
treating farm animals well is good business. and it exasperates the hell out of me to see ignorant kids painting farmers as animal-torturers just because some PETA nutjob showed them a photo of some awful thing once — a photo that was most likely taken by the police that shut the bad farm down.
how low as people do we have to stoop
letting young broccolis bleed in the soup?
untie your beans!
uncage your tomatoes!
let potted plants free!
don’t mash that potato!
