I find it fascinating that people who choose not to have children are generally assumed to feel really strongly about not having children (or even to feel really strongly against children, anyone’s children, in general). I am probably not going to have children, not because I REALLY REALLY HATE the idea of having children, but because I don’t really really love it. Out of all the major decisions I will make in my life, this one is the only irreversible one. I can sell a house, quit a job, divorce a spouse, whatever. I cannot unhave a child. I cannot opt out of being a parent once I become a parent. I can’t even take a step back for the sake of self-care or whatever, or else my child will suffer.
So for me, having children is fuck yes or not at all. The default will be to remain childfree. Having children should be an opt-in decision, not an opt-out one. Until/unless I develop really strong feelings about wanting to have children, I won’t have them, even if that means I never end up having them at all.
As a mother, I really wish more people gave having children this kind of clear contemplation and thought. It’s an irreversible decision. Too many people don’t understand that.
A few months ago, you said I looked “objectively really hot, actually, you’re definitely the hot one of us.” I laughed and thanked you because we have the kind of relationship that allows for that kind of banter. Your phrasing amused me. I took a little bow.
You asked me why girls get upset when guys comment on their bodies, and wondered why my reaction to you was different than, say, a girl’s reaction to a random guy on the street. Why I was mildly flattered, instead of scared or angry. You honestly didn’t understand, and wanted to know.
I tried explaining, but I think I left you more confused than I found you.
I have a better explanation now.
The first time I can remember a guy staring at my boobs, I was in eighth grade. I didn’t even notice; I was still a kid and was largely oblivious to such things. My dad, however,didnotice, and started glaring at the twentysomething stranger ogling his thirteen-year-old.
I couldmaybehave passed for fifteen back then. There was no way anyone would have mistaken me for an adult. That wasn’t the issue, though. To that guy, it wasn’t about who I was or how old I was. I was a set of boobs to him, not a person, certainly not a child.
My experience is pretty common. Girls start getting unwanted attention at a young age, and it happens for the rest of our lives. Men yell things at us on the street and invade our personal space on the bus or trolley when there are plenty of other seats. They try to look up our skirts when we sit down. They don’t listen when we try to rebuff them. We see reports of yet another girl raped on her way home last weekend, another woman whose body was found in a ditch. We’re told not to go out alone at night, to take someone with us even if we’re only driving to the store or the library or the gas station. We’re told to carry our keys like weapons, to park in the lot instead of the structure because it’s better to get rained on than raped and murdered. We’re told not to walk alone even during the day. We’re told close friends might rape us if they’ve had a bit to drink because they’re men, that it’s wrong, but it happens sometimes and we should be on our guard.
Imagine hearing that from the age of five. Imagine being told from childhood that men are more likely to hurt you than women are. Imagine knowing that, though you might be smart and well-trained, men will almost always be bigger and stronger than you, and you wouldn’t be able to beat most of them in a full-on fight. I can best my brother at arm-wrestling, yeah, but that doesn’t have many practical applications.
Now imagine that one of the people you’ve been taught to regard as a threat to your body says he wants your body. If he really does, you’ll have a hard time stopping him, and people will treat you as an object lesson for others, like you’d done something wrong for “letting” him hurt you. They’ll ask why you didn’t do more to protect yourself, why you wore that dress, or walked into the parking lot at that time, or talked to that person. Why you went out after dark or flirted with someone at a party.
I’m not saying all men are awful. I’m saying that decent men should be the norm, but there are a lot of men who aren’t, and who make us feel unsafe in our normal lives. We can’t tell the difference between decent people and potential rapists by looking.
What you said to me was meant as a compliment, and I took it as such. That’s because I’ve known you since we were kids, and I know you didn’t mean any harm. We have the kind of relationship where words like yours are appropriate, and you’ve never strayed outside the bounds of what’s okay. I don’t have that kind of relationship with the car full of drunken guys I walked past on the way home from D&D last weekend.
Girls get upset when guys comment on their bodies because we’re being treated like sources of pleasure, not people. We get angry because we can’t go about our business without having to worry about sexual predation. We get scared because, when it comes down to it, if a guy tried to act on his shouts of “Hey baby, nice tits, keep it up” we probably wouldn’t be able to stop him, and some would blame us.
Girls get upset because we’d much rather be seen as people, not just bodies.
I recently saw a video of a young woman talking about all of the reasons our generation, the Millennials, sucks and that’s she’s sorry for what we’ve become. Here is my, a fellow Millennial, response:
You say we’re just ‘existing’ and not ‘contributing anything to society.’ The oldest Millennial is 34, the youngest is 12, we haven’t had time to contribute anything yet. We’re trying to survive in a world that no other generation has had to grow up in, with a tanked economy and most of our childhood hearing nothing but war in the Middle East on the news while also being profoundly connected. We didn’t do that.
You say we’re no longer polite, we don’t say ‘no, sir’ or ‘no ma’am’ anymore and we no longer hold the door open for our elders or women. We also don’t expect low-paid workers to break their backs for us, or at yell at them when they make a mistake, like my 60-year-old grandfather does. We say ‘no problem’ when there’s a mistake in order, and politely stand by while the 40-something-year-old soccer mom huffs and rolls her eyes as the new girl struggles to punch in the correct code.
You say our music objectifies women and glorifies drugs and criminals. There has been no significant change from the songs that were once sung or the singers who sang them. Many of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s performers were drug addicts, womanizers, and criminals in their own right. Elvis Presley was child abuser, John Lennon raped his many girlfriends and most of the music I grew up listening, which was 80’s rock, were performed by habitual drug abusers. Let’s not pretend like human nature took a drastic turn when 1983 rolled around.
You say we cuss to prove a point. We, as a generation, have learned it’s not the words we fucking use, it’s the passion in them that we care about. As a generation, we’ve become more interested in politics and the world around us, cursing is minor problem when we consider the political climate the older generation has plunged us into.
You say we use ‘bae’ to describe the ones we love. Bae, originally, means ‘before anyone else’ which is incredibly romantic in my opinion. Bae is also hardly ever taken seriously, it’s a jokey way to talk about someone you love. Language changes, I doubt people were happy when we changed ‘wherefore’ into ‘why.’ The greatest injustice we can do to our language and culture is not allow it to evolve and grow with us.
You say we idolize people like Kim Kardashian and shame people like Tim Tebow. Kim Kardashian is a business woman who had a private video she made with a lover illegally revealed. Instead of fading into obscurity, she stood tall and did not let the sexual shaming she endured stop her and now runs a multi-million dollar industry, is married to one of the richest men in the world, and had two beautiful children. Tim Tebow is a Christian who was criticized by a few people for praying in an open stadium while most people just wanted to see a game.
You say we’re lazy and entitled, we want to make a lot of money and get a free education but we’re not willing to put in the work. We are not lazy. I cannot tell you how many people I meet who have gone to school full time while working a part or even full-time job just to make ends meet. We’re not entitled, we’re bitter. In the 70’s, you could work a part time job over the summer and pay your way through four years of school because tuition was $400, now just to walk in the door of your local community college you need to drop $14,000. We have kids who aren’t even old enough to drink, yet are already $20,000 deep in debt. Debt that won’t go away because even filing for bankruptcy won’t erase it. And even with that education, there’s no guarantee you’ll find something in your field. I have a friend who has a degree in microbiology and she’s making $9 an hour selling $15 candles. I have another friend who has a masters in Sport Psychology and Counseling. She’s a bartender. My parents bought a three bedroom house in the suburbs in the late 90’s while my generation is imagining apartments with breezy windows and trying to get enough money to get food while we scrounge up less than $8 a week.
You say we spend more time online making friends and less time building relationships and our relationship’s appearance on Facebook is more important than building the foundation that relationship is based on. We are a generation that is profoundly connected and no other generation has seen this before. We have more opportunities to meet people from all over the world and better chances to understand other worldviews and lifestyles. Being able to stay home and talk to people over the internet is cheaper and more relaxing than having to force yourself to interact with people in public settings after a long day of minimum wage labor. The people I talk to more over the internet are people I have been friends with for years. It’s easier to talk about the day’s events over Skype or Facebook Messenger than arrange a day to meet in person when you have conflicting schedules. I truly don’t believe most people care what others think of their friendship or how their relationships ‘look’ on social media. Most often what you are calling ‘our relationship’s appearance on Facebook’ are documented and searchable memories.
You say our idea of what we believe in is going on Facebook and posting a status on Facebook. Not everyone can join in with the crowds of protesters. It’s easy to see what others have to say through the comments and argue back without the threat of violence. And when this generation does organize events to stand up for ourselves, it’s met with childish name-calling or being reduced to a ‘riot.’
You say we believe the number of follows we have reflects who we are as a person. It’s nice knowing there’s 20 or 50 or maybe even 100 people who care what you have to say or think. We live in an age where we can and will be heard.
You say we don’t respect our elders, that we don’t respect our country. Our elders grew up in one of the greatest economic booms in history and in turn made it the worst economic situation since the 1930’s all while blaming kids who were only five at the time for it. We stand on our flag because it means nothing, it’s a pretty banner for an ugly lie. We’re a country that says you can make it if you just work hard enough while, in the end, that will almost never happen. We’re a country that becomes irate at the idea of 20-something college kids standing on some canvas dyed red, white, and blue but seem to shrug off the millions of homeless, disabled veterans.
You say we’re more divided than ever before. Ever before what? When black folk couldn’t drink from the same fountain as white folk? When women couldn’t vote? When white southerners fought for the idea that they could keep black people as slaves? We’re a generation that is done with injustice and when you fight for social change, you will divide people.
You say everything that was frowned up is celebrated. What does that mean? We frowned up gay marriage. We frowned upon wives being able to say no to sex with their husbands. We frowned up interracial marriage. We frowned up black folk being allowed to go to school with white folk. We frowned upon women being allowed to vote. Are those things not worth celebrating?
You say nothing has value in our generation, that we take advantage of everything. We value friendship more, we value the fists of change, we value social justice and family and the right to marry those we love. We value the right to be yourself, wholly and fully. We value the right to choose and we value the idea of fighting what you believe in, even when everyone older than you is telling you you’re what’s wrong with the country.
You say we have more opportunities to succeed than those before but we don’t ‘appreciate’ them. We are a bitter generation. You can finance a boat for 3.9% but you have to pay back college tuition plus 8.9%. We may have more opportunities but those opportunities cost money we don’t have.
You say you can see why we’re called ‘Generation,’ but we’re not Generation Y, we’re Millennials and we do feel entitled. We were promised a strong economy and inexpensive education. We had the world in our hands and we were going to make it better. And it was ripped away from us because of incompetent rulers, illegal wars, and greedy corporations and we get blamed for it. Crime has gone down, abortion and unintended pregnancy has lowered, people are living longer, people are more educated, people are less likely to die from violent crime or diseases, yet my generation is touted as the worst generation and for what? Crimes that we’re accused of that happened before we could even wipe our own ass? We were raised better, and we were raised in a society that treated, and continues to treat, us like garbage. And we are done. We are not sorry, we did nothing wrong.
This post is trash. TRASH. Why is this picture getting spread around like it’s something to be proud of. I’m getting super fed up with forensic anthropology and anthropology in general being used to bolster ignorant political beliefs that have absolutely no basis in reality. So everyone sit down and listen the f*ck up because I’m going to make this sh*t crystal clear.
First of all, OP, congratualations on labeling someone trying to send a positive, uplifting message as “stupid” in a pathetic and cringe-worthy attempt to make yourself look like some kind of martyred intellectual edgelord. First of all, where in the hell did you “major in” forensic anthropology? I’ve literally never encountered a university in the States (or overseas for that matter) that offers a major in forensic anth for undergrads. So, let’s be serious, you probably took a class or two in the subject and maybe got a minor or concentration in it, and somehow feel qualified to make a bold and supremely idiotic statement about some sh*t you clearly don’t have a solid grasp of.
Secondly, according to you, it’s a “fact” that “men and women” and the “various races” (holy sh*t, you really said that) have “different bones”. Sis, I am literally in physical pain reading this dumb sh*t. You know that no two humans have “different bones”, right? We all have the same 206 elements. Do genetics and environment and health influence the MORPHOLOGY of those bones? Absolutely. But those morphological differences are often so subtle that it requires years of training to surmise the difference. And NO ONE in the field uses the phrase “man or woman” to describe sex estimation… Sis, come on. If you want to play fake forensic anth expert then at least get your sh*t straight and google some terminology. The best a forensic anthropologist can do is make an estimate of BIOLOGICAL SEX. Sex does not equal gender. We would NEVER make an estimate about gender from the bones. And, to top it off, there is not a SINGLE sex estimation method in the field that has 100% accuracy. Because, guess what, even biological sex isn’t always binary. But if you were an actual scientist, you’d know that, wouldn’t you sweaty (: If you wanna fight me on this my research is in pubic bone morphology and sex estimation so I will happily eviscerate you if given the chance.
And if you had ever written an actual forensic anthropology report, you would be aware that the process in no way involves a prediction of “race”. We merely use a select number of morphological and metrical anaylses to make a tentative estimate of “ancestry”. Essentially, which ancestral population that person likely descended from based on the presence of skeletal traits that are prevalent amongst a certain gene pool. Race is a word that has social implications but is not used in forensic anth at all. So congratulations, you played yourself.
I’m so sick of these pseudointellectuals trying to twist scientific research to support some stupid political or ideological agenda. Nazism, racism, and eugenics all have their origins deeply intertwined with physical anthropology for this exact reason. White anatomists stole skeletons and conducted craniometric analyses on indigenous populations and used ethno and theocentric ideologies to support their wars, colonization, oppression, and destruction of any non-white populations. So anyone who claims to be an anthropologist and chooses to make dumb statements like OP here should really take a hard look at themselves and maybe read up on the history of the field, because you sound like the scientists that Hitler had on payroll.
If you’re looking for some proof of racial, sexual, or intellectual superiority in bones, it doesn’t exist. Plain and simple. I’m not gonna sit here and equivocate with people who wanna do dumb sh*t like say “ohhhh, but men and women DO have different pelvises! Africans DO have different skulls! blah blah blah”. Nah, cause it’s not true. We all have the same bones, the same muscle attachments, the same skeletal architecture… you don’t get to exploit the fact that their are MINUTE morphological differences based on what chromosomes or genes you have to attempt and make an argument for some dumb “everything is binary” perspective while claiming to be a scientist. If you have a problem with someone trying to make the point that we should look past phenotypes and strive for equality then you are a sh*tty person, plain and simple.
Also, OP’s scathing tone about sociocultural anth really paints a nice picture of her narrow worldview, like somehow forensics is a “harder” science than other anth subfields. You can’t do one without the other, and if you actually knew forensic anth, you would’ve chosen a different set of words.
Oh, and her whole class calling her a “Nazi” DEFINITELY happened. 1000% real story. Tag yourself, I’m the professor.
If anyone wants to argue with me on this, then please come at me, because it is 2017 and we have a fascist in the white house and I am 1000% not here for anyone using this field as justification for racist, sexist, or transphobic ideologies. OP was clearly butthurt that someone called her out on her alternative facts and of course the hordes of vaping, alt-right, energy drink chugging, neck-bearded, reddit crawling dungeon trolls use this nonsense to justify their bigotry. So, if you wanna be a racist or a transphobe or a misogynist, the peer-reviewed SCIENCE AND DATA WILL NOT BE THERE FOR YOU. SO FIGHT ME.
And whatever idiotic blog posted the comment above me, stop calling everyone a “snowflake” for disagreeing with you when you can’t even handle the fact that your skeleton looks identical to people with different skin colors. You don’t even see the irony in your statement, do you, you absolute freaking garbage person. “Liberals want multiple genders to feel SPECIAL AND UNIQUE, what a bunch of SNOWFLAKES. Meanwhile I somehow think my pasty white pock-marked flesh, susceptibility to melanoma, deficient grasp of even a single language, reddit account, and complete lack of contributions to the world makes me genetically superior to a different demographic of people.” Y’all make me sick. I’m out.
^^^^^
Full offence but if you took anthropology and came out with an understanding like OP then lol you did not understand anthropology. Talk to an anthropologist who knows their stuff.
And secondly, if you think that your scientific interpretations are ever 100% watertight, or that you will ever have enough evidence to ‘prove’ whatever theory you have, or that taxonomies are natural and not the product of human creation – Then you do not understand science. Go back to the basics. Understanding what science is is crucial to doing, consuming, and producing science.
Dreadlocks are a kind of lock pattern for hair that is very curly. A lock pattern is where the hair twists around and “locks” together.
Black people pretty much exclusively have the tightness of curl needed for a dreadlock pattern, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other lock pattern hairstyles (such as a peyot, the sidelocks worn by various Jewish groups).
So like “Goldilocks” was named after how her hair took a “lock pattern”, but those locks would be comparatively loose.
This is hair with a looser curl in a lock pattern
Hair with a tighter curl in a lock pattern (Dreadlocks)
Straight hair that has been matted
What’s the difference between the last two?
► Dreadlocks are twisted together neatly, mats are tangled in knots.
► Dreadlocks are healthy hair that can be washed, mats are damaged and often non washable without risking mold.
► Dreads take effort and skill to apply, mats are the product of active destruction and neglect of hair.
► Dreads can be removed. Mats require cutting and shaving.
Now from a cultural standpoint, it’s also shit. Dreadlocks are a symbol on many different levels of Black culture, unity, and resistance to white assimilation. To take them is an act of furthering white assimilation and an act of casual racism.
Especially given that tropes about white hippies with “dreadlocks” have affected how people react to black people with dreadlocks.
So from a practical standpoint we can’t and from an ethical standpoint we shouldn’t.
for all the whites that ignored everything in this post
“…from a practical standpoint you can’t and from an ethical standpoint you shouldn’t.”
FROM A PRACTICAL STANDPOINT YOU CAN’T AND FROM AND ETHICAL STANDPOINT YOU SHOULDN’T!!!
Wow 🙌🏾
Great explanation.
Okay but it should be the persons choice to do what they want with their hair, regardless of race. And before u hit me with that cultural appropriation bs, i bet y’all have dyed ur hair before. That comes from a tradition in ancient egypt so is technically, cultural appropriation.
Just let white ppl have dreads if they want.
I never said “don’t”. I said “you shouldn’t” and also most white people are incapable because of the shape their hair takes.
Also cultural appropriation applies to living groups usually in relationship to a culture that has more institutional power than themselves making the appropriation of cultural artifacts a weapon for the assimilation of that group.
Dreads are symbolic, this is why they are cultural. They have been assigned meaning, namely as a symbol of black identity and liberation. White people have taken the form and removed its meaning. This is the real crime, not the use of forms from other cultures but their removal from meaning.
HEY remember in WWII when Jewish people were fleeing Germany and the USA put a quota on how many Jewish immigrants they would accept because they were worried there were too many Jewish people coming over to the USA???
Reminder that the USA has always been fucking garbage to immigrants and basic humanity
Okay, here’s the problem with the idea that oppressed groups can “alienate allies” by not being nice enough:
You shouldn’t be an ally because oppressed groups are nice to you. You should be an ally because you believe they deserve basic human rights. Hearing “I hate men” shouldn’t make men stop being feminist. Hearing “fuck white people” shouldn’t make white people stop opposing racism.
Your opposition to oppression should be moral, and immovable. Your belief that all humans should be treated with equal respect shouldn’t be conditional based on whether or not individual people are nice to you.
im a bad person who thinks bad thoughts like ‘ew what is that girl wearing’ and then remember that im supposed to be positive about all things and then think ‘no she can wear what she wants, fuck what other people say damn girl u look fabulous’ and im just a teeny bit hypocritical tbh
I was always taught by my mother, That the first thought that goes through your mind is what you have been conditioned to think. What you think next defines who you are.
lav3nderwolftumblr 
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