with love, mimi.

showslow: Mark McEvoy, Five words

Sat, 18 May 2013 11:19:23 -0400

showslow:

Mark McEvoy, Five words

29. October - 4. November 2012

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:30:46 -0400

29. October - 4. November 2012

kaeghoro: / 31 – group yoga sucker punch /

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:38:52 -0400

kaeghoro:

/ 31 – group yoga sucker punch /

8. October - 14. October 2012

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:30:56 -0400

8. October - 14. October 2012

Jay Gatsby was black: an explanation

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:59:36 -0400

stevebuscreaming:

So let me explain this theory for those of you who haven’t heard it before already.

The Great Gatsby is a story of a man that makes his fortune bootlegging and throws countless magnificent parties all in hopes of attracting the attention of his old flame Daisy.

But it’s really a story about insurmountable class barriers. Daisy will never be with Gatsby, no matter how much she claims to love him. No matter how hard Gatsby tries, he will always be stuck on West Egg, only able to admire the ‘green light’ of upper class american romanticism from afar.

Themes of insurmountable class barriers permeate the entire novel right from some of the famous opening lines:

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

And so here’s the theory:

Jay Gatsby was black, passing for white (“High yellow”)

Lower class vs upper class. Old money vs new money. East Egg vs West Egg. White vs black. Don’t believe me?

Early in the novel, Daisy’s beau Tom goes on a full fledged rant about the oncoming threat of the rise of the black race in society

Another reference to race is made when Nick and Gatsby pass by a limo driven by a white chauffeur with “three modish negroes”

Numerous references are made to Gatsby’s notably dark skintone in comparison to Daisy’s lighter skintone

“I would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York. That was comprehensible. But young men didn’t— at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn’t— drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound.”

Not only was the insurmountable barrier between him and Daisy one of class and upbringing, but also one of race.

What we take for granted as Gatsby’s whiteness is actually a omission of detail rather than a specific indicator that he was white.

From the article Was Gatsby Black?

Thompson adds, “When I ask people what basis there is for Gatsby being white, I get silence. I have asked students, colleagues. They don’t know. They cannot give me any evidence to back up the speculation. And why haven’t people made this argument so far?”

Of course as with any theory or reading of a classic text, there’s room for disagreement:

Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli has one answer. “Because it’s mishigas! If Fitzgerald wanted to write about blacks, it wouldn’t have taken 75 years to figure it out. If that’s what Fitzgerald wanted, he would have made it perfectly clear in April 1925. Great works of literature are not fodder for guessing games. This kind of thing is bad for literature, bad for Fitzgerald, bad for ‘The Great Gatsby’ and bad for students who get exposed to this kind of guessing game.”

But why shouldn’t we play a guessing game with it? We don’t have Fitzgerald around to verify any of these details so why not have a bit of fun with the text? It’s a very modern reading of the text and it makes it not only more relatable but more heartbreaking.

Everyone has their own reasons why they can’t be with their own Daisy.

Why shouldn’t Gatsby be black? And why can’t he really be with Daisy?

In this discussion about whether or not Beethoven was black, the point is made:

Another tight question along these lines: Was Jay Gatsby black? Again, it’s probably not literally the case (as Fitzgerald intended it) –- but what’s much more interesting is everyone’s utter inability to take it seriously as a legitimate reading of the text, which it is.

"The big deal comes in when homeless people are being exploited to prove a point. Many homeless..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:10:22 -0400

“The big deal comes in when homeless people are being exploited to prove a point. Many homeless people are already widely disenfranchised and lacking a platform to be heard or to get access to the resources they need. By attempting to make a brand look bad by associating it with homelessness, the message is that homeless people are so gross, dirty, shameful (insert negative attribute here) that by associating the brand with these types of people, we are really making the brand look shitty, because these people are so shitty! get it? It’s all such a laugh! This type of “activism” is a farce. It contributes to and propagates a culture wherein homeless people can be used as props to further an agenda.”

- Why Fitch the Homeless is a Really Bad Idea (via brute-reason)

kamayami: th3skinny: magicalorphanboy: bronzebasilisk: ryunwo...

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:03:19 -0400

kamayami:

th3skinny:

magicalorphanboy:

bronzebasilisk:

ryunwoofie:

sonneillonv:

autumn-and-eve:

erinsmomma:

How can someone stand behind abortion, when you have a life inside of you that God created for you? How can you say that this life isn’t worth it? If you can’t take care of the baby for whatever circumstances than there is always adoption available to couples who can’t conceive, but still want the joy of being parents. OPEN YOUR EYES! God has bigger plans for us all that we don’t even realize the picture.

Excuse me but it appears your baby is actually upside down
Did you take Sex Ed freshman year because babies come out headfirst

Hi, OP! As someone who was given up for adoption, allow me to call bullshit on your little post there! You see, when I was adopted, I was a white-skinned, healthy, neurotypical infant, which basically put me at the top of the list, right underneath white-skinned, healthy, neurotypical MALE infants! There’s only one kind of infant people wanted to adopt more than me! I was SOOO lucky! But if you actually bothered to look at the information readily available on the interwebs, you would be aware that the majority of people who are forced to rely on abortion for family planning are poor people and people of color. Of course, those two demographics intersect, thanks to the institutionalized racism of our society! Neat huh?!

Of course, even babies of color are not in high demand with couples looking to adopt. Many who do want to adopt outside their race choose to go outside the country, where laws are less strict and the process is often less expensive. Of course, most of the infants adopted this way are obtained in unscrupulous fashion, but who cares about that when you’re saving a little Korean or African baby from the horrible fate of growing up in Korea or Africa??? And all those children who have birth defects, are born with diseases or disabilities, or have other issues… WELL. Who wants to invest that kind of expense and time? Why would you adopt someone broken, LOLOL?!

Granted, there are some wonderful people who understand the system a little better, and make it a point to try and give POC and disabled children a good home. But they make up a very small fraction of potential adopters! This difference in supply and demand leaves a lot of children stuck in the foster system, where their chances of being adopted diminish with every passing year, and their chances of being physically or sexually abused INCREASE! Isn’t that wonderful?

And of course, we haven’t even talked about the person who is giving birth to the baby! I know you probably think pregnancy is a wonderful, happy time, and for some people it is, but it is also one of the greatest health risks a person can take. I love my son very much, and from the day I found out I was pregnant with him, I wanted him! But I also nearly died giving birth to him. You see, I had pre-eclampsia, the most commonly fatal birth complication in the world. My blood pressure was 180 over 130! At twenty-two years old, I was actually headed for a stroke, hah hah! How funny is that? And all it took was missing a single pre-natal appointment during which my blood pressure rose to dangerous levels and my body tried to kill both me and my son. Those seizures sure were fun, as was the emergency c-section performed without anesthetic! And being chained down while the operation was performed, because I was delirious and wouldn’t stop trying to fight off the doctors, that was a BLAST! It was great for my husband too, since he almost lost his wife and child in just forty-five minutes. You can imagine how thrilled he is at the prospect of me ever getting pregnant again. Babies are certainly cute, but pregnancy can have massive health complications, and I know it’s such a bummer, but they are PERMANENT. :( My abdominal muscles never recovered from being hacked through with a scalpel, and the flood of hormones caused by late pregnancy have changed things from heartburn (never used to have it, now, all the time!) to my emotional reactions (I cry when I see pictures of kittens now. I used to be tough). These are changes I did not ask for, cannot control, and cannot fix! And many people go through worse! I know, right? Unbelievable, but go look up the word ‘episiotomy’ and then look up ‘birth rape’ and I’m afraid you’ll find some stuff that just isn’t very shiny. Plus, the studies actually show that people who carry a baby to term, give birth, then give it up for adoption suffer HIGHER rates of post-pregnancy complications like post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis, general depression, and other mental health issues. Adoption actually isn’t good for the person giving birth at all!

I’m afraid the picture you chose to use there is also pretty disingenuous. I know, I know, it seems like nitpicking. I’m not trying to be mean! :( But that picture shows a fully developed, viable infant, and most abortions are performed when the fetus isn’t even a fetus - it’s a blastocyst. That’s just a clump of cells. Seriously! You can totally find pictures on the interwebs and they’re not even gross, LOLOL! Later-term abortions are usually performed because of health complications, though some of our intrepid state legislators are trying to change all that! They care so much about people who are pregnant, you see, that they want to force them to carry dead or dying fetuses inside them until their body either becomes infected while it rots in their tummies (this is called sepsis, and it makes people very sick, and can even kill them!), or forces it out naturally in a gush of blood and fluids! Isn’t that so caring of them? I’m so glad they’re around to make those decisions for me! And if a pregnant person is not allowed to terminate an unviable fetus, in some states, they have to carry the child to term, give birth to it, and then watch it die in their arms because its lungs weren’t developed, or its brain formed outside its skull, or any of a million possible birth defects that will kill you just as quick as lickity-split! Isn’t that wild?! Of course, these people go through terrible grief, and as I mentioned, some of them may get sick and die from not being able to abort dead or dying fetuses. But I guess that’s just A-okay with you, huh?

Basically, I think before you suggest adoption as a universal alternative, you should actually go do some research on adoption. And before you condemn abortion, you should do some research on abortions - not the stuff your church is giving you, the stuff the real doctors are saying. Go to Planned Parenthood (if they haven’t all been closed down, ROFLMAO!) and request whatever information they have on the process, the statistics of who has abortions and why… and actually, all of that is on the interwebs! Isn’t technology AMAZING?

And in closing, since I’ve been asked this question many times and I know it’s coming? Yes, I realize I am here talking to you because I was not aborted. But the thing is, if my mother had chosen abortion, I wouldn’t know the difference, so it wouldn’t matter to me. And if she decided that choice was best for her, then that choice would have been best for her, and I would never want to take that choice away from her. As it is, since I was given up for adoption, and since I have seen the statistics on how badly people who give their children up for adoption suffer, I have spent much of my adult life worrying about her, whether she’s healthy, whether she’s okay, and feeling that if she did suffer from any of the common post-birth symptoms, it is at least partially my fault, even though she made that decision on her own. Which is silly, I know, but at some point, all children have to stare down the consequences of their parents’ having them. For some, that’s poverty. For others, a life-time of their parents struggling to treat and care for a severe illness or disability. For others, it’s wondering if their mother ever got over giving them away, and wishing you could reach out and assure her that it’s okay, she doesn’t have to be haunted.

May your birth control never fail!

Pro.

Sonneillonv deserves a mother fucking standing ovation here.

Slow clap.

Don’t care if this is OT for my blog.

I wanted to add that many adults who want to adopt can’t for several reasons. They can be denied because they’re a single parent, because they have a criminal history, even because they work too many hours and won’t be home enough. Reputable adoption agencies conduct lengthy screening processes including home studies. They require several letters of recommendation. And adoption costs A LOT of money. It’s a fallacy to believe that for every child eligible for adoption, there’s just a family waiting to scoop them up and save them. In reality, the majority of these children will end up in foster care (or worse — homeless, sold to sex traffickers and child traffickers). Giving birth to child you will not raise means there’s a very real possibility that your child will be shuffled around to different abusive homes until they age out or run away. This issue is not black and white, so don’t pretend like it is.

- A fellow adoptee

Beautiful.

1. October - 7. October 2012

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:31:03 -0400

1. October - 7. October 2012

24. September - 30. September 2012

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:30:37 -0400

24. September - 30. September 2012

kaeghoro: / 20 / brndnwrbt series

Tue, 14 May 2013 15:41:30 -0400

kaeghoro:

/ 20 /
brndnwrbt series

17. September - 23. September 2012

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:30:47 -0400

17. September - 23. September 2012

10. September - 16. September 2012

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:31:04 -0400

10. September - 16. September 2012

verliebt-darin-verliebt-zu-sein: believedinourdreams: Mein...

Sun, 12 May 2013 13:30:18 -0400

verliebt-darin-verliebt-zu-sein:

believedinourdreams:

Mein Lieblingsbuch

Was ist das für ein Buch?

autostraddle: memewhore: pleatedjeans: Depression Part 2 by...

Sun, 12 May 2013 10:41:44 -0400

autostraddle:

memewhore:

pleatedjeans:

Depression Part 2 by Hyperbole and a Half is the most important thing you’ll read all day.

My life.

This

13. August - 19. August 2012

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:30:52 -0400

13. August - 19. August 2012

2headedsnake: Igor Karash

Sat, 11 May 2013 12:45:26 -0400

2headedsnake:

Igor Karash

6. August - 12. August 2012

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:30:45 -0400

6. August - 12. August 2012

fuckyeahfeminists: Really, though. How does keeping people...

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:01:42 -0400

fuckyeahfeminists:

Really, though. How does keeping people captive for a decade, raping them repeatedly, and doing other inhumane acts to women not already guarantee maximum punishment?

nprmusic: pitchfork: It’s official: 8% of Americans are not...

Fri, 10 May 2013 12:02:07 -0400

nprmusic:

pitchfork:

It’s official: 8% of Americans are not sure if they’ve been to the club.

Think pieces in 5, 3, 2…

30. July - 5. August 2012

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:30:36 -0400

30. July - 5. August 2012