I just recently saw one of those “Here’s a list of all the fucked up things PETA has done” posts. In the notes, I see people saying things like “If you really want to help, donate to or volunteer at your local animal shelter!” Don’t get me wrong, donating to or volunteering at an animal shelter is a wonderful thing to do. However, I noticed that… this was the only solution mentioned in the comments.
I’m starting to notice a pattern here. These people legitimately have no idea that animal rights involves more than just pets… and, ironically, it makes them part of the overall problem.
Non-vegans, stop pretending like you give a damn about animal rights, because you don’t. Stop speaking about animal rights as if you know what the fuck you’re talking about, because clearly you don’t. You only care about pets, and only about helping animals when it benefits you. You all treat animal rights like some hobby you get to do on the weekend and pat yourself on the back for, but as vegans, we are living it every day.
You don’t get to criticize PETA for being a harmful organization and feel good about yourself while you’re a part of the very system they were founded to fight against. Bottom line.
“Stop pretending like you give a damn about animal rights.”
Who the fuck here is pretending to be in favor of animal rights? Animal rights is bullshit!
Consider this: those people are saying to donate and volunteer for local humane societies instead of other things because the main issue with PeTA is that they’re a so-called “animal shelter” that kills over 90% of animals in their care. This is why they’re talking about shelters! It’s on topic!
Animal rights is horrible and they don’t actually do anything to better animals. It’s ironic that you’re preaching at people for not caring about animals or treating animals like a hobby for volunteering at shelters when in the same breath you’re defending an organisation that actively harms animals.
So what do you do for animals then @opinionatedvegan? Instead of just talking about things you have no idea about, complaining about an industry you have know nothing about, defending a horrible harmful organisation bent on making $$ off pretending to care about animals and somehow convincing yourself that being a vegan is somehow “helping animals”.
As someone who has first hand experience and education in the agricultural industry, as well as has read all the scientific research behind it and has basic understanding of how a global industry works in general. I can tell you with absolute certainty that being vegan does literally nothing for livestock. A person volunteering once a week at a shelter does more good for animals then a vegan does in a lifetime.
If you actually wanted to help improve the life and welfare of livestock I’d look into actually being involved in animal welfare organisations that push for better stricter legislation.
But what do I know about this. I’m only a zoologist majoring in conservation and planning to do my Mres in honey bee behaviour and hopefully in the future study my PhD on Australian native bee species. I also am active in the Australian scientific community; assisting with research on emu’s, small native mammals, mange on wombats, and most currently helping create a database on all the information we know about alpine invertebrates found around the world in the last 25 years. I also volunteer (when I can, I’m obviously pretty busy) at an animal shelter.
Discouraging people from helping at shelters, when that’s usually the only thing they might be able to do, is frankly stupid. Shelters are a good way to help animals and it’s always rewarding.
There’s loads of other volunteering people can get involved with; especially when it comes to native / wildlife but this is often more difficult to get into, if you don’t have any qualifications. Hence why most people tend to help out at shelters.
Another big way to help is to get involved in animal welfare organisations.
Now there’s a huge difference between animal rights and animal welfare. Animal rights are groups like peta and vegan organisations that push an agenda as well as make money off people. Animal welfare organisations are properly regulated groups and are non-for-profit. They also have important roles in creating government legislation or laws in order to better the treatment of animals and are also often on ethics committees (these are committees that view animal ethics forms submitted by scientists, to ensure that animals within research are treated without cruelty).
Furthermore some animal rights groups are even labelled as domestic terrorist organisations and are often involved in vandalizing and terrorizing people and property. As well as “rescuing” or “saving” animals only to end up killing them or having them worse off.
The biggest difference between animal rights and welfare is simple. Animal rights believe that animals should be completely equal under the law as humans; this means they get the same rights ect. (this is obviously ridiculous), while animal welfare ensure the proper treatment and care of animals.
In short, don’t give a fuck about animal rights, give a fuck about animal welfare!
Volunteer at shelters, get involved in animal welfare!, get involved in conservation efforts (important ones not pandas or other charismatic megafauna) even if that means just donating, fight for better government legislation for the environment and animals, support your local farmers and bee keepers!
I’m now have my degree in zoology and am now half-way through my Mres degree, studying neruoethology in honeybees and I still 100% stand behind this.
I absolutely agree with everything @zoologicallyobsessed says here. Also, I absolutely disagree with everything a particular opinionated vegan says.
Ready for a plot twist? I’ve been vegan for so long I have to do math to answer “So how long have you been vegan?” Which is not a question I have to answer often because I purposefully remain in the vegan closet to avoid being associated with misinformed idealists with superiority complexes and an incomplete understanding of how the world actually works.
And I get it, I drank the peta kookaid when I was an outcast teen who had never met another vegetarian before, and I was an officer for the animal rights group at college in the early 2000s. So, as much as zoologicallyobsessed knows the ag industry from the inside, I know the “animal rights” industry (and YES it IS an industry) from the inside. I had friends who interned at peta, like, actually knew the people running the org. They are a bunch of heartless thieves who couldn’t give fewer craps about animals, and most of peta’s board (at the time, probably still is) wasn’t even vegetarian. Basically everything coming out of peta is propaganda.
Want to know what good being vegan does for the animals, from the perspective of a veteran vegan? It doesn’t. Being vegan is a personal choice, often one available only to those with considerable privilege. It confers no moral superiority over people who actually do something that actually helps actual animals, regardless of what that person chooses to eat for dinner. If you want to help animals? You have to do something.
I love animals. I love nature. I love the environment. So I volunteer hundreds of hours a year with organizations focusing on conservation and environmental stewardship. I go out into the community and give lectures on how insects are absolutely essential to healthy ecosystems. I contribute to citizen science projects tracking the effects of climate change on habitat and population distribution.
Did you know that hunters were instrumental in conservation and the development of the endangered species act? Or that without the funds received from the sale of fishing and hunting licenses, many state parks wouldn’t be able to stay open?
You can eat or not eat whatever you want, but if you want to make an impact on animal suffering, yelling at people on tumblr is not where I would personally start.
Secondly, we grow it very inefficiently. We could very easily increase the food yield of a given area of land by building a greenhouse on it (which also reduces water loss) and using poly-cultures instead of mono-cultures; the reason our preferred method is open-air mono-culture farms, which are susceptible to erosion and blight and requires a god-awful amount of water to stay hydrated, is that labor is expensive and land is cheap.
In fact, if we took it even further–growing our food in carbon dioxide-rich environments lit with artificial lighting 24 hours a day (or at least at night)–you only need 1-2000 square feet of farmland per person. Admittedly, you pretty much have to have fusion power for this to be an environmentally and economically viable option, but still; the point is, we could easily condense our environmental footprint by a shit-ton (and even more options will be available in the future) without decreasing our population one iota.
“There is still a maximum carrying capacity the planet has.”
Indeed there is. And do you know what that carrying capacity is? It’s ten trillion. And the cut off isn’t space or resources–it’s waste heat. The things we’d have to do to get there aren’t exactly the sort of things we could do overnight–hell, we don’t actually know how to fusion yet–but they’re all well within the realm of the physically possible.
We’re all going to die because the rich are selfish and their cronies are too.
the greatest skill a woman can learn for herself is self reliance
to clarify … so many strong women in my life rely on men. that dependence is dangerous. ladies here are some good ref resources I’ve found helpful on my journey towards self reliance
this list is in no way comprehensive feel free to add on
a lot of ‘man things’ are a lot easier than you think they are. especially considering the fact that most of these things when buying the parts come with directions on the packaging that men usually don’t even look at (and often end up doing it wrong because they were taught by fathers who also did not look at the packaging).
like i recently had to change my car battery and freaked out cause i thought id electrocute myself but turns out new batteries come with directions and its the easiest shit in the world so long as you can lift the damn thing.
so yeah, ladies dont ever feel like a man is a necessity for life, you can do this shit on your own its easier than you think!
I have 3 older brothers, as well as my dad, tell me a thousand times that there were things I couldn’t do, and then I found out why.
They refused to look at directions, and struggled for ages over something, pooling opinions on the matter and drawing from Dad’s life experience or “figuring out” a way for the thing to work. And then anytime something weird happens they claim “it has a trick to it” that I just wouldn’t understand because I didn’t go through the work they did to get the thing half-working.
Until I tried it myself. After reading the directions. 10 minutes later I had the thing working perfectly, all the bells and whistles too, and fully understanding how those extra bits work.
But then! Because they did not understand the thing or how it was supposed to work properly they assumed I BROKE IT, and refused to let me use it again. This also furthered their idea that I, the only baby girl, should not handle such Manly Tasks™.
Do you understand? Because the men spend eons trying to rebuild the wheel and failed, they assume there’s no other way better than their own, thus the task must be impossible. They couldn’t even fathom the idea that the instructions, let alone a GIRL CHILD, could ever do it better.
Farming systems need to fit into their natural and social environment. Sometimes we describe this as a socio-ecological niche.
Caption;
In a minute.
So, taking it that you said you live in
Arizona and “your family has a farm in Chihuahua,” A quick
congratulations are in order. You’re an absentee landowner! You’re
right at the peak of farming’s social pyramid. Living the dream.
So you probably don’t participate in
the day-to-day management, you just collect checks. Pretty common
situation for absentee landlords. From that distance, it’s
understandable that you have a poor grasp on water, land, and how
they play out in various types of agriculture.
But let’s take a step back.
Lots of cultures have used low or no
meat diets. The Ganges valley, ancient Egypt, China, much of early
Europe, ect.
Notice anything in common there?
They’re all very, very wet. Plants that
are edible for humans grow readily.
They also had intense hierarchies where
elites could just tell the lower classes they weren’t allowed to eat
meat-whether via religious teachings, custom, or just straight-up
economic exploitation to where animal protein was unattainable. But
that’s a whole different discussion.
On the other hand, lots of cultures
have used mostly or all animal diets.
E.G. The Bedouin, Mongols, Maasai,
Inuit, ect.
What do these have in common? They’re
in places that are either very dry or very cold. Either the plants
that grow are very sparse & tough, or none at all.
Humans can only digest specific types
of plant matter. We need tender stems, leaves & fruit; enlarged
seeds, or energy storing roots.
The entire rest of the plant is
inedible for us. Stalk, branch, dry leaves, ect.
And without intense irrigation, the only plants that grow in dry areas are entirely made of things
that humans can’t digest. They’re almost entirely cellulose. Tough
stalks, fibrous leaves covered in wax and hair, thorns, ect.
That’s why we call these areas ‘scrub’.
The only use humans can make of the natural vegetation is to scrub
pots.
But…cows, sheep, goats, horses,
bison, deer, camels & other ruminants can digest all of it.
That’s what those 3 and 4 chambered
stomachs are for. These animals GI tracts are fermentation chambers
full of microflora that break long, tough cellulose molecules down
into sugars and fatty acids that the cow can use.
We can’t do that. We eat straw, we just
poop out straw.
That’s why people living in deserts,
scrub & dry grasslands aren’t vegetarian. They’d starve. They
kept close to the animals that can digest what grows there;
ruminants.
(The oceanic food chain that Inuit &
other maritime peoples are looped into is a whole ‘nother
discussion.)
Failure to recognize the role of local
environment in diet is a major oversight in the vegetarian community
at large, so again, no personal blame here.
Traditional vegetarian societies are
trotted out to showcase that low/no meat diets are possible. But it’s
done w/o recognition as to why ‘those particular’ societies did it,
and others did not.
Paying attention to local environment
is a huge part of sustainability, and yet sustainability movements
don’t always do so well at that.
We can also fall short by failing to
recognize that for dry regions, the bottleneck in productivity isn’t
land, it’s water.
As an absentee landowner, you may or
may not be aware of how much irrigation water it takes to grow
vegetables in a desert. Math time.
Let’s start w. cows. Best figures for
cow carrying capacity in landscape similar to Chihuahua are for dry
part of CO. Double that for Chihuahua’s longer growing season, and 10
cows would need about 73 acres to live on (wild scrub w no
irrigation.)
Cool, so we don’t have to irrigate to
feed those cows. All we have to do is give them drinking water. How
much? A cow needs about 18.5 gal/day, so 10 of them for a year would
need about 67,000 gallons.
67,000 gallons is a decent amount of
water.
Now let’s look at how much it takes to
grow vegetables on that same land.
Most plant crops need about an
acre-inch of water per week.
For the non-farmers and absentee
landlords following along, an acre-inch is just how much water it
takes to cover an acre of land 1” deep.
It’s about 27,000 gallons.
An acre of crops needs that every
single week.
Chihuahua’s got this amazing long
growing season. So let’s say a veggie, grain, soybean or other plant
protein farm in Chihuahua’s got crops in the ground 40 weeks out of
the year.
73 acres x 40 weeks x 27,000
gallons/week = 79 MILLION gallons of water.
That’s a thousand times more water.
It takes a thousand times more water to
grow an acre of crops for human consumption, than it takes to grow an
acre of cow on wild range.
Again, as an absentee farm owner you
may or may not be aware already. But for audience at home, most of
Chihuahua’s irrigation water comes from the Rio Conchos.
The river’s drying up so hard that it’s
the subject of a dedicated WWF preservation project.
“But that’s not a fair comparison. An
acre of crops can feed 10x as many people as an acre of cattle.”
Exactly. A crop-only diet can feed 10x
as many people. But it takes 1000x as much water.
In places where there’s limited land
and a surplus of water, it makes a lot of sense to optimize for land,
so there, grow & eat crops.
And in places where there’s a lot of
land and limited water, it makes sense to optimize for water, So
there, grow & eat ruminants.
It’s really interesting to me that the
conversation around vegetarianism & the environment is so
strongly centered on assumptions that every place in the world is on
the limited land/surplus plan.
You know what region that describes
really well? Northwestern Europe.
In many ways, viewing low/no meat diets
as the One True Sustainable Way is very much a vestige of
colonialism. It found a farmway that works really well in NW Europe,
assumed it must be universal, and tries to apply it to places where
it absolutely does not pencil out.
What a nice accessible description of a very important perspective! Now obviously not all of it can apply to every biome or social niche (a key problem with factory farming is the emphasis on forcibly terraforming land to suit the needs of cows – this is, among other things, lethal to the local ecology) but such a vividly painted picture of the nuance of food networks and the relationships between humans and our ecology. The reason I think it’s important to reblog it is that it begins to introduce people to that nuance, that concept of a complex ecology that we still belong to, in which current trends and moral judgments are …. barely a scratch on the surface, the equivalent of buying a different flavour of potato chips.
That’s basically it, the current discourse we have around food is at the level of what flavour of potato chips is Best For The World (And Grants Me The Most Imaginary Performance Points When I Purchase It) and we get people fighting over what colour packet they think everyone else should buy. But they’re all the same Walkers brand potato chips in the same bag, they just have different levels of artificial flavouring and slightly different colours on the front. We ought to raise each other up to the level of interrogating potato chips, asking why we are consuming a single brand, teaching each other to make our own, learning about different relationships other people can have with chips, seeking and supporting other brands, learning about other ways to use potatoes, pressuring the big producers to make better global choices. forcibly changing the fashion so that the disposable crinkly packets become passé and unmarketable, and everyone insists on having them packaged in sustainable recyclable paper. That’s the difference between the discourse we have and the discourse we could be having.
I would love to see us bringing this depth and nuance to all of our discussions about food.
I’ve seen a bunch of people in the notes concerned (like I was) of comparisons of members of the lgbt to dogs: but upon visiting their website I was reassured that they monitor a variety of content, including (but not limited to):
THIS IS A GOOD SITE
I just wanna reblog this here and point out that this is actually a site I use a lot.
Im not one of those who get like overly upset by passing of dogs in movies, but growing up in a family where we had to put down a lot of dogs ourselves that we loved very dearly, it does break the immersion for me, which ruin movies.
The thing about how women in comics used to be drawn and sometimes are still drawn, you can only really understand the difference between an action girl being forced into unrealistic sexual, sensual positions, and an actual strong and well posed, empowering but still sexy female character, when you see what it looks like to have male characters depicted in overtly sensual poses
And I’m not talking about the Hawkeye Initiative or any given parody
I actually want to draw a comparison using art by Kevin Wada
Kevin Wada is a proud part of the LGBTQ+ community and he has this unique ability to sexualize mainstream male heroes without it looking like a parody. He draws covers for multiple big comic companies and his style reminiscent of old fashion magazines, drawn largely in traditional watercolor, has made him a stalwart of the industry.
He also draws a lot of naked Bucky Barnes.
Anyway, I want to talk about how interesting his art is, the difference between his power poses and his sexy poses for male and female characters.
A typical power pose for a male comics character would look like this
Whereas every so often with female heroes you get something like this
Not all the time, of course, but it happens and it happens in the wrong places. You wouldn’t be posing like a cover model in the middle of a battle, you really wouldn’t.
But when it comes to Wada and male and female characters, the difference is pretty clear.
When he draws male characters, they more often look like this
Sensual, in a pose you wouldn’t usually see a big, muscular hero doing. If not that, then playful, sexy, for looking at, but nothing about their anatomy overly exaggerated
How he draws women is also very clearly different from many other artists, from sexy pose to power pose.
Still posing for the camera, still to be looked at, but very, very different from how we’ve seen female characters portrayed in mainstream comics in the past.
And I guess it’s really just a matter of variety? Objectification in art is a long time debate and appears everywhere always, but for all that we can argue about its impact on popular media, there are a few things I know for sure:
1) having a female character pose like a playboy cover girl in the middle of a battle scene is just Bad Art and y’all need to find better references
2) female power poses will never look quite as right as when they’re drawn by people who know the value of expressing personality through pose (it’s basic animation principles and some artists still need to learn it) and who actually know what a female character’s personality beyond “sexy”
3) Iron Man or Batman posing like they’re about to beat somebody up is 100% not the same as a fashion drawing by Kevin Wada where a Typical Beefy Action Guy gets to pose like a flirty pretty boy
4) the MCU films have figured out the value of pandering to female audiences by sexually objectifying all their male action heroes while simultaneously appealing to the male demographic’s action movie power fantasy. Quoting Chris Hemsworth and Taika Waititi: “I’m not a piece of meat” “Uh, yes you are.”
They definitely struck some kind of balance there.
Also, more important than this entire post: y’all should follow @kevinwada on Tumblr and give him love because his art is divine and his talent beyond words
every single negative stereotype about women was dreamt up by men who were projecting. fight me about it.
“women can’t drive”
It is so well known that women are better and safer drivers than men that OUR CAR INSURANCE RATES ARE LOWER. Women get into fewer accidents, get fewer DUIs, and receive fewer speeding tickets than men.
“women never shut up”
Several scientific studies have shown that not only do men talk more than women, they also think that women have been talking for much longer than they actually have. Men interrupt and talk over women, dominate conversations, and still think women talk too much.
“women are shallow”
Lol next
“my wife is my ball and chain lmao”
Multiple studies have shown that marriage between men and women: Increases male lifespan, decreases female lifespan Decreases male depression rates, increases female depression rates Decreases male stress levels, increases female stress levels Increases male health and happiness, decreases female health and happiness Increases a man’s chance of getting a raise or promotion, decreases a woman’s chances of getting a raise or promotion
“women are too emotional”
Men love to say this about women after hurting them, in order to shift the blame and dismiss their feelings in one go. In reality, women are taught to hold our tongues and control ourselves quite literally from birth. We’re taught to put men’s needs and wants ahead of our own emotions regardless of the personal cost. Men are taught to do more or less whatever the fuck they want to women. Men take their emotions out on women while women are expected to shove theirs down.
I could go on and on but I don’t really think I need to.
Omfg apparently it’s normal/common for survivors to get triggered when doing yoga and exercise routines??? I thought I was just fucking weird
Things that contribute to this (summarized & paraphrased from my session)
being aware of your body which is a site of trauma can make alarm bells go off
Any routine that includes commands (e.g. “now stretch your hands up” or “now breathe in”) can be a trigger
Any routine that includes pain, especially that includes just swallowing pain (“feel the burn! Keep going”)
Any yoga that involves “letting go” or “relaxing” or “spreading out” is a lowering of defenses, a vulnerability, and can feel unsafe
In general the emotions associated with forcing yourself to go through a physical act that feels uncomfortable because you’re “supposed to enjoy it” or because you feel like it’s an obligation
The feeling of not being able to stop at any point, of feeling pressure to going through a whole routine, feels like a loss of autonomy
As a fitness instructor, I felt like weighing in a little. closet-keys has all good points, but that first bullet is a little more complicated.
The human body stores stress and trauma in the body as muscle tension. If you’ve ever clenched your teeth at the sound of a triggering word, or felt your shoulders shoot up to your ears during a flashback, that’s this concept in action. Intense trauma or prolonged stress can make a muscle group really, really tense and tight all the time, especially areas like the shoulders, hips, and chest.
Of course, these areas are EXACTLY where yoga often focuses on opening. So just as psychological events trigger certain muscle groups, the working and stretching of certain muscle groups can bring up feelings of panic and anxiety by association.
It’s very common for people to panic or even start spontaneously crying in intense fitness classes. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s 100% happened to me. It’s really important to work with it, just like in therapy. To identify the cause and relax into the exercise in order to un-train that tension.
Fun fact: people who have a hard time with verbal communication often have tight jaws AND tight hips. Next time you stretch your hips or exercise them, see if your jaw clenches. It’s fascinating.
GeraldStanley was acquitted last night of murdering Colten Boushie. Yet another slain native person who has received no justice. Who in being a victim was posthumously painted as a villain in order for the all-white jury to let his white murderer get away with it.
hey just a little addition because finally people are starting to realize how fucking awful white people are when it comes to native issues:
natives are twice as likely to experience rape/sexual assault compared to all other races. (source)
and according to the CDC, natives are killed in police encounters at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group. and native deaths are likely underreported.
not only this, but we also have very little resources to help about this. natives and native issues are absurdly hyperinvisible when it comes to representation and press. we can’t speak up for ourselves and instead are forced to watch as white “activists” speak up for us and grossly misrepresent us.
if you want to help, follow native social medias. follow native news sources, donate to reservations. get informed and give us back our voice
What this trite imagery misses out on is the fact that kintsukuroi requires a lot of work to repair a piece like that. It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, a great deal of investment. Sometimes parts of the original are damaged beyond repair, and you have to instead painstakingly create entirely new ones.
It’s still not the same. Maybe it’s something more beautiful. But it’s not the fact that it broke that makes it beautiful. It’s the work put into it. It’s the fact that people made the effort to salvage it, because it was worth salvaging, because it was important enough to salvage. It’s the care that makes the beauty.
An apology can’t always fix what has been broken. That doesn’t mean it’s not irreparable, sometimes you can go on to rebuild and repair. But it won’t ever be the same as it was again.
I really appreciate this addition because I’ve always hated the “more beautiful for having been broken” thing. Being broken sucks and I hate all those tragic romantic sensitivities that try to make it what it’s not. These pieces are beautiful because they’re repaired with effort put in to making them shine.
lav3nderwolftumblr 
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