sharpestscalpel:

thesneakyfox:

revealmyselfinvincible:

teratomarty:

artisanscribbles:

thepuppymastermind:

Me consuming media dealing with werewolves: “okay but if you’re gonna lock yourself in that basement during your transformation have you thought of including some enrichment?? How about a treat ball or a frozen Kong?? What are your thoughts on sniffing out treats”

Good god the rampant destruction makes so much more sense now! The wolf has no mental stimulation so its starts destroying things because its BORED.

This is such a good idea!

Also, remember to protein load to avoid ravening. Beef, chicken, fish- whatever, just LOTS OF IT. The change takes a lot out of you, and the wolf will go out hunting for it if you don’t provide. Don’t bother with tofu. It’s no good trying to be a vegetarian by day if you’re a humanitarian by night.

A tired puppy is a good puppy.

Are we going to ignore the fact that @teratomarty just referred to a creature that eats humans as a “humanitarian”?

@carlamlee RELEVANT TO YOUR INTERESTS

In the 1960′s Legally a woman couldn’t

bounding-heart:

hex-len:

bumbling-wordsmith:

memcjo:

systlin:

rivergst:

casper-the-friendly-being:

toooldforthissh–stuff:

shatterpath:

hedwig-dordt:

drst:

gehayi:

galacticdrift:

spikesjojo:

  1. Open a bank account or get a credit card without signed permission from her father or hr husband.
  2. Serve on a jury – because it might inconvenience the family not to have the woman at home being her husband’s helpmate.
  3. Obtain any form of birth control without her husband’s permission. You had to be married, and your hub and had to agree to postpone having children.
  4. Get an Ivy League education.
    Ivy League schools were men’s colleges ntil the 70′s and 80′s. When
    they opened their doors to women it was agree that women went there for
    their MRS. Degee.
  5. Experience equality in the workplace: Kennedy’s
    Commission on the Status of Women produced a report in 1963 that
    revealed, among other things, that women earned 59 cents for every
    dollar that men earned and were kept out of the more lucrative
    professional positions.
  6. Keep her job if she was pregnant.Until the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978, women were regularly fired from their workplace for being pregnant.
  7. Refuse to have sex with her husband.The mid 70s saw most states recognize marital rape and in 1993 it became criminalized
    in all 50 states. Nevertheless, marital rape is still often treated
    differently to other forms of rape in some states even today.
  8. Get a divorce with some degree of ease.Before the No Fault Divorce
    law in 1969, spouses had to show the faults of the other party, such as
    adultery, and could easily be overturned by recrimination.
  9. Have a legal abortion in most states.The Roe v. Wade case in 1973 protected a woman’s right to abortion until viability.
  10. Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment.

    According to The Week, the first time a court recognized office sexual harassment as grounds for legal action was in 1977.

  11. Play college sports
    Title IX of the  Education
    Amendments of protects people from discrimination  based
    on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal
    financial  assistance

    It was nt until this statute that colleges had teams for women’s sports

  12. Apply for men’s Jobs  
    The EEOC rules that
    sex-segregated help wanted ads in newspapers are illegal.  This ruling
    is upheld in 1973 by the Supreme Court, opening the way for women to
    apply for higher-paying jobs hitherto open only to men.

This is why we needed feminism – this is why we know that feminism works

I just want to reiterate this stuff, because I legit get the feeling there are a lot of younger women for whom it hasn’t really sunk in what it is today’s GOP is actively trying to return to.

Did you go to a good college? Shame on you, you took a college placement that could have gone to a man who deserves and needs it to support or prepare for his wife & children. But if you really must attend college, well, some men like that, you can still get married if you focus on finding the right man.

Got a job? Why? A man could be doing that job. You should be at home caring for a family. You shouldn’t be taking that job away from a man who needs it (see college, above). You definitely don’t have a career – you’ll be pregnant and raising children soon, so no need to worry about promoting you.

This shit was within living memory

I’M A MILLENIAL and my mother was in the second class that allowed women at an Ivy League school.

Men who are alive today either personally remember shit like this or have parents/family who have raised them into thinking this was the way America functioned back in the blissful Good Old Days. There are literally dudes in the GOP old enough to remember when it was like this and yearn for those days to return.

When people talk about resisting conservativism and the GOP, we’re not just talking about whether the wage gap is a myth or not. We’re talking about whether women even have the fundamental right to exist as individuals, to run their own households and compete for jobs and be considered on an equal footing with men in any arena at all in the first place.

I was a child in the 1960s, a teenager in the 1970s, a young adult in the 1980s.
This is what it was like:

When I was growing up, it was considered unfortunate if a girl was good at sports. Girls were not allowed in Little League. Girls’ teams didn’t exist in high school, except at all-girls’ high schools. Boys played sports, and girls were the cheerleaders.

People used to ask me as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be a brain surgeon or the first woman justice on the Supreme Court. Everyone told me it was impossible–those just weren’t realistic goals for a girl–the latter, especially, because you couldn’t trust women to judge fairly and rationally, after all.

In the 1960s and 1970s, all women were identified by their marital status, even in arrest reports and obituaries. In elementary school, my science teacher referred to Pierre Curie as DOCTOR Curie and Marie Curie as MRS. Curie…because, as he put it, “she was just his wife.” (Both had doctorates and both were Nobel prize winners, so you would think that both would be accorded respect.)

Companies could and did require women to wear dresses and skirts. Failure to do could and did get women fired. And it was legal. It was also legal to fire women for getting married or getting pregnant. The rationale was that a woman who was married or who had a child had no business working; that was what her husband was for. Aetna Insurance, the biggest insurance company in America, fired women for all of the above.

A man could rape his wife. Legally. I can remember being twelve years old and reading about legal experts actually debating whether or not a man could actually be said to coerce his wife into having sex. This was a serious debate in 1974.

The debate about marital rape came up in my law school, too, in 1984. Could a woman be raped by her husband? The guys all said no–a woman got married, so she was consenting to sex at all times. So I turned it around. I asked them if, since a man had gotten married, that meant that his wife could shove a dildo or a stick or something up his ass any time she wanted to for HER sexual pleasure.

(Hey, I thought it was reasonable. If one gender was legally entitled to force sex on the other, then obviously the reverse should also be true.)

The male law students didn’t like the idea. Interestingly, they commented that being treated like that would make them feel like a woman.

My reaction was, “Thank you for proving my point…”

The concept of date rape, when first proposed, was considered laughable. If a woman went out on a date, the argument of legal experts ran, sexual consent was implied. Even more sickening was the fact that in some states–even in the early 1980s–a man could rape his daughter…and it was no worse than a misdemeanor.

Women taking self-defense classes in the 1970s and 1980s were frequently described in books and on TV as “cute.” The implication was that it was absurd for a woman to attempt to defend herself, but wasn’t it just adorable for her to try?

I was expressly forbidden to take computer classes in junior and senior years of high school–1978-79 and 1979-80–because, as the principal told me, “Only boys have to know that kind of thing. You girls are going to get married, and you won’t use it.”

When I was in college–from 1980 to 1984–there were no womens’ studies. The idea hadn’t occurred in many places because the presumption was that there was nothing TO study. My history professor–a man who had a doctorate in history–informed me quite seriously that women had never produced a noted painter, sculptor, composer, architect or scientist because…wait for it…womens’ brains were too small.

(He was very surprised when I came up with a list of fifty women gifted in the arts and science, most of whom he had never heard of before.)

When Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro as a running mate in 1984, the press hailed it as a disaster. What would happen, they asked fearfully, if Mondale died and Ferraro became president? What if an international crisis arose and she was menstruating? She could push the nuclear button in a fit of PMS! It would be the end of the WORLD!!

…No, they WEREN’T kidding.

On the surface, things are very different now than they were when I was a child, a teen and a young adult. But I’m afraid that people now do not realize what it was like then. I’ve read a lot of posts from young women who say that they are not feminists. If the only exposure to feminism they have is the work of extremists, I cannot blame them overmuch.

I wish that I could tell them what feminism was like when it was new–when the dream of legal equality was just a dream, and hadn’t even begun to come true. When “woman’s work” was a sneer–and an overt putdown. When people tut-tutted over bright and athletic girls with the words, “Really, it’s a shame she’s not a boy.” That lack of feminism wasn’t all men opening doors and picking up checks. A lot of it was an attitude of patronizing contempt that hasn’t entirely died out, but which has become less publicly acceptable.

I wish I could make them feel what it was like…when grown men were called “men” and grown women were “girls.”

Know your history.

So this, too, is what they mean saying “make America great again” and/or the good old days.

REBLOG FOREVER.

I am 70. I remember all those things. I was a student nurse from 64 to 67 and we were not permitted to “finish” a bed bath on a male or insert a catheter in a male. Seeing male genitals might cause us “harm” or upset our delicate sensibilities. Imagine when we graduated and were “thrown” to the wolves. Imagine if you were a male patient who had to be the first to be “practiced” on by a graduate nurse. (Ha!) At the school I attended no student nurse could be married. Only one school in my city (Atlanta) would even admit married women and Male Nurses weren’t even thought of. What man would want to be a nurse when he could be a Doctor. In all my training I only remember 3 or 4 Women who were Doctor’s and a very few, (less than 5 or 6) female interns or residents (and this was a teaching hospital) and most of those were OB/Gyns and one was a pediatrician.

When I graduated and was going to get married I wanted to go on birth control pills. You needed to be on them for a least one cycle before they were effective. I won’t go into what hoops I had to jump through to get a prescription from my Dr. (a man, natch) but when i went to the drug store to get the prescription filled I ended up having to get my future husband to “accompany” me so the pharmacist “interview” him and see if it was okay with him for me to be on the pill.

Even when we went to get a marriage license I had to get my Father’s signature and we had to go before a Judge because I was not yet 21 (I was 20 and 9 months).

I could go on and on, getting a credit card in MY name, etc., but I will tell you that WE MUST RESIST.

The number of people I know who romanticize gender inequality is frankly terrifying. A world never existed in which the lives of women were simplified by benevolent men who saw to her every want and need. That was not a thing. A world never existed in which women were all ladies, men were all gentlemen, & everything was some great big cishet fairytale. Feminists aren’t a bunch of upstarts who want to destroy a perfectly wholesome and non-harmful system. Just…look at history. Look at the posts above. We. Must. Resist..

About 8: The State of New York only added No-Fault Divorce as an option in 2010 (!!!)

I want to repeat here. 

This is what they mean, when they say “Old-fashioned values”

When conservatives start waxing lyrical about the ‘good old days’, this is what they mean. They are fully aware how much things blew for women, and they would like to return to that. 

This is so important. Young women need to understand the struggle that came before. I am begging everyone who is a US citizen and over 18 to register to VOTE and VOTE!!!

If you’re just scrolling past, please stop to read this. It’s long, but it’s so important.

READ THIS

And feminists of earlier generations are the one who fought to change things. Baby Boomers even. Think of that if you’re ever tempted call an older woman a dinosaur or shout at her to sit down and shut up.

They’re Not ‘In Love,’ Denver Zoo Says As Petition To Keep Polar Bears Together Gains Support

why-animals-do-the-thing:

Here’s a fun misinformation campaign going on about the Denver Zoo’s announced polar bear moves, courtesy of a misunderstanding of polar bear behavior PETA perpetuated last spring. 

In mid-October, the Denver Zoo announced that their two resident polar bears, Cranbeary and Lee, would be moving to other AZA-accredited institutions. This reasons for this move are two-fold: to facilitate the Species Survival Plan conservation breeding program for polar bears, and so that Denver can begin work on remodeling their bear habitats. The polar bear population within American zoos is very small – only 44 animals – and has a lot of older individuals, so it’s really important for the sustainability of that program that bears of reproductive age are with partners with whom they’re producing cubs. Cranbeary and Lee have both been at Denver for six years, but have never had cubs – so they’ve been paired up with bears at other facilities with whom they’re a good genetic match. After their departure, the polar bear exhibit will be home to the zoo’s grizzly bears while funds are raised for the construction of a new, modern polar bear habitat. 

As soon as this move was announced, a petition showed up on Care2 (a non-profit petition platform that helps animal rights campaigns with their media strategies, and makes money by selling the contact information of petition signers to various groups – including PETA) saying that splitting up the bears was immoral… because they were in love. What’s more, that petition demanded that the bears be removed from the zoo population and sent to a sanctuary to live out their lives in each other’s company. But there’s a problem with that: polar bears are solitary, and Cranbeary and Lee are not “bonded.” Polar bears are naturally only social with other adult members of their species during the breeding season – maybe a month out of each year. The cute photos that populate the Care2 petition, as well as news releases about the move, were all taken during that short window. Just as the bears wouldn’t want to be near each other the rest of the time if they were in the wild, the zoo manages them as solitary animals and gives them space from each other the rest of the year. Denver zoo’s director of communications also noted publicly that the bears aren’t even getting along for the full breeding season: “Cranbeary has been losing interest in Lee even before that period ends, Kubie [said], noting that she ‘starts getting pretty agitated with Lee.’” 

So where did this idea of “bonded” polar bears in zoos come from? It was certainly popularized in April of last year, when a polar bear at SeaWorld Orlando died shortly after the zoo’s other female polar bear was transferred to another facility for breeding purposes. PETA’s vice president made public comment that the solitary female polar bear remaining at SeaWorld had lost all hope, given up, and died “of a broken heart.” This pseudo-scientific interpretation was then repeated internationally by news sources, and only a few bothered to include the AZA’s statement on the incident – none of them actually interviewed wild polar bear researchers to ascertain if there was any veracity to the claim. Some of it might be due to history, too –  for a long time it was common practice in American zoos to house adult polar bears together year round – until research started indicating that they were avoiding each other, and would prefer to be more solitary except during breeding seasons.

Because of the Care2 petition and all of the other animal liberation organizations voices that have boosted their message, there are now hundreds of thousands of people who believe that naturally solitary bears maintain emotional “friendships” with each other similar to those of humans. They’ve been convinced that sending these two polar bears to a sanctuary to “keep them together forever” is better for their welfare than keeping them within an accredited zoo program. There’s actually no information in the short petition about the behavioral, medical, and physiological needs of polar bears in human care, and how a sanctuary would be able to fulfill them better than an AZA-accredited zoo. (Instead, it repeats claims about stereotypical behavior and ignores the body of published, peer-reviewed research by the zoo world that informs polar bear habitat design and management programs.) they’d b

here’s no sanctuary specified in the petition, probably because it’s hard to tell if there’s a sanctuary in the United States would be able to provide an appropriate habitat or care for for polar bears. Given that Care2 is openly and frequently anti-zoo, it’s much more likely that this petition was created with the intention of further increasing anti-zoo sentiments among the public (when the zoo chooses not to remove genetically valuable animal from a conservation breeding program and send them to facilities whose quality of care it cannot guarantee) rather than actually improve the welfare of Cranbeary and Lee. 

TL;DR Animal rights groups and the petition sites that support them are spreading incorrect information about bears to further their anti-zoo agenda and to try to remove animals from zoo conservation breeding programs. 

They’re Not ‘In Love,’ Denver Zoo Says As Petition To Keep Polar Bears Together Gains Support

I could not find a peanut-free recipe for Flying Jacob, which is too bad, because it strikes me as very much along the lines of “Things we try to convince Same to cook.”

gallusrostromegalus:

copperbadge:

Me: Well, most recipes that use peanuts can use almonds instead, in one way or another. I’ll google Flying Jacob for myself!

Google and Wikipedia:

Me: I wonder if I can pretend I never got this ask.

Hey check out the entire process, the Wiki Entry does NOT do the whole thing justice.

This is such an unfamiliar combination of flavors and textures I can’t even begin to guess what it it’s actually like to eat.

File under ‘either awesome or absolutely vile’, I think.  

ahdorablepsycho:

jhameia:

savanaugh:

savanaugh:

if you are a man who had sex with a woman, and she became pregnant, and decided to abort, she does not “owe” you any say in the decision. all you did was bust a 10 second nut and suddenly you get a decisive say in whether or not she goes through 9 months of insanity and a painful expensive labour cause YOU want the kid? fuck off. your role in the creation of that fetus is minimal at best. if you really, genuinely wanted a child with her, you would have PLANNED for the conception of a child with that woman BEFORE y’all fucked. stop giving me that shit about “both of them created it together so they get equal say in the matter!” NO a man ejaculated and THAT’S IT, everything else regarding conception is on the woman’s body, she gets the final say in whether or not she’ll carry to term, NOT you. go adopt one of the 250,000 children in foster care waiting for someone to love them if you want a kid that fucking badly.

all pro lifers can fuck off my post please I still stand by this 100%

remember that reddit post with the dude who insisted his gf carry the baby to term and she left the baby with him and fucked right off and was faithfully paying child support but he still bitched about how his life was ruined bc he expected her to stay with him bc of the child despite her repeatedly stated intentions otherwise

That’s exactly the intention when they say they want the baby. They don’t want the baby by itself, they want what they assume will come with the baby which is the mother, and trapping anyone into parenthood is terrible.

dsudis:

earthdeep:

thelibrarina:

just wait until all the ao3 antis find out about

libraries

the fuck libraries u going to op

like, u know there is a degree of moderation there, right? someone has to order the books to stock in the library. a library that lets any old creep stash their hastily scribbled shota pwp in between the shelves is a library that’s going to be shut down p quick. by the police. for providing ppl with child porn. (and yes if a picture of a tree or a description of a tree can make someone experience a tree, then the same can be said about a picture or description of a child in a sexual situation ffs)

I mean there’s like a million other logistical differences, and idk who checks erotica out of a library, but hey ppl can be wild abt these things

Hooboy. Well, as a librarian who has worked in many varieties of libraries, let me… try to… respond to this from a library and librarian perspective.

(photograph from the interior of the Library of Congress)

1) It is true that libraries have a process to go through for accepting materials, and that there is a degree of selectivity involved–this is because libraries have limited budgets, limited physical space, and limited staff to process and manage materials. 

So, yes, any random junk written and left in the library would be thrown out. Not because the library would be concerned about its liability if anyone should see it; because we like to keep the library clean and organized, and leaving stuff on the shelf is not how we add things to the collection (how would they get CATALOGUED and LABELED???) And, of course, any adult attempting to show pornography (or, say, themselves) to actual children would be Removed From The Library because this would involve actual children being harmed by an actual adult in direct contact with them. Police do not shut down the libraries where this happens. They arrest the people harming the children.

Meanwhile, libraries spend VAST SUMS OF MONEY and ENDLESS STAFF HOURS to keep copies of Fifty Shades of Gray on the shelves where children actually can find them quite readily (and have them checked out on their library cards if mom’s has too many fines). Same with Last Tango in Paris and Flowers in the Attic and Year’s Best Erotica collections. (And Bibles, which get stolen at a ridiculous pace. I don’t know why, we were just forever having to order more of them.)

In an online space, which has effectively unlimited space, where adding new material costs nothing, and where the process of organizing that material and making it available is fully automated and what labor is involved is taken on by the contributing author, literally none of those constraints apply, so more content is more content! It’s catalogued and labeled as soon as it’s posted! It cannot be misshelved. Perfect!

2) This is not to say that no physical library has handwritten erotica in its collection somewhere. Many, many libraries collect rare local works such as self-published zines, and unique items like the personal papers of notable people (San Jose State University, for instance, holds the papers of the Kensington Ladies’ Erotica Society; The University of Iowa Zine Collection includes fanfic zines with erotic content; UCLA has the personal papers of Anais Nin), and doubtless some of these zines and personal papers include erotica. Because this handwritten material would be unique and its value would be presumed to lie mainly in the fact of its authorship, it would be properly collected, not in a library, but in an archive or special collection, where some archivist would dutifully folder it and make a note of what it was so future visitors to the collection could readily access it. 

The main goal there would be to protect the material, not the person who might potentially view the material.

I worked in a public library which had an extensive collection of Playboy on microfilm, for instance. We kept it behind a desk where it had to be requested and checked out with a library card before it could be viewed. This was partly to prevent children viewing material inappropriate for their age–just as, say, the AO3 clearly marks adult material as such–but mainly to prevent vandalism of the material by people who disapproved of it. Several of the images on the film had been damaged by people trying to scratch them out; for the safety of the microfilm, we restricted access to it. This is also why the AO3 doesn’t allow people who dislike a fic to force it to be taken down.

This is also why most libraries celebrate Banned Books Week by eagerly higlighting works which people have ATTEMPTED to force to be removed from libraries–including work like Lolita, which is read by many as a titillating pedophile love affair. Librarians are not celebrating Lolita. They are celebrating the principle that they will not be stopped from collecting materials of interest and making them available to readers.

3) From your description of a library where children can freely access anything on the shelves, you seem to have only one conception of a library–a public library with open stacks, or perhaps a school library. There are, in fact, many kinds of libraries, with academic libraries being the most obvious foil to your description. 

In an academic or university library, all authorized users of the library are adults who take adult responsibility for what they find in the library, much like when adult internet users indicate on a website that they are choosing to view adult content. 

When I worked in a university library, I asked one of the librarians what do when a guy was sitting at a computer very obviously watching porn while a young woman, sitting next to him doing something text-based, seemed like she might be uncomfortable. I was told in no uncertain terms that the library’s policy was to relocate the person who was uncomfortable. The library was a repository of information and a place to access information: any kind of information, including the erotic. Under no circumstances would we curtail a library user’s access to that information. 

(Unless he got his own actual dick out where people could see it, then we could call the campus police. Because, again: actual humans directly involved.)

4) I just want you to know that these exist:

Harvard Film Archive Collection: Erotica

Outfest UCLA Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation

Kiney Institute Collections at Indiana University

Duke University Library Erotica Collection, 1940s-1960s (”An archive of original illustrations, sketchbooks, and erotic stories, depicting transgressive sex acts including (but not limited to) lesbian and heterosexual sex, incest, pedophilia, sadomassochistic behavior, and copulation with objects as varied as sex toys, produce, and household appliances. The stories and illustrations appear to be the work of a single individual, with nearly all narrative told from a female’s point of view. Also includes some amateur pornographic photography and magazine clippings.”)

stilesisbiles:

stilesisbiles:

rebelrouge:

stilesisbiles:

Anyway, Bob Marshall is a disgusting anti-LGBTQ bigot who has made life hell for LGBTQ+ people in Virginia since I was a kid, and this year Danica Roem, a trans woman, is running against him. 

Bob Marshall has been running anti-trans TV ads against her and sending out transphobic mailers (content warning: misgendering, transphobia.)

I know Danica Roem winning is a long shot but it would mean a great deal to me if she even came remotely close, as a bi/trans Virginian who’s dealt with Bob Marshall’s homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic shit for years.

So please, if you’re in Virginia (whether you’re in Bob Marshall’s district or not) vote in the 2017 state election

You’re the greatest OP!

Also:

She’s a seasoned investigative journalist for the local newspaper, who’s spent the last decade on the beat getting to know the problems of the district shes running for. Danica Roem is the most uniquely qualified person for Bob Marshall’s legislative seat because she knows, almost academically, exactly what’s wrong and how to fix it for the district. 

During the last nine months, She’s focused her campaign on local issues:
-fixing Route 28 by replacing traffic lights with overpasses throughout Centreville and replacing the traffic light at Orchard Bridge Drive with a flyover in Yorkshire;
-bringing high-paying jobs to Innovation Park by finding a cost-effective way to extend the VRE westward from Broad Run to Gainesville with a stop at Innovation to make the area more marketable;
-raising teacher pay in Prince William County and Manassas Park so it’s not the lowest in Northern Virginia;
-expanding Medicaid to 3,700 uninsured residents of the 13th District who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line; and
-making Virginia a more inclusive commonwealth, so welcome everyone no matter what they look like, where they come from, how they worship or who they love.

She was also born in the district, Bob Marshall is from maryland and made his way down to virginia to set up his demented operation.

Meanwhile Marshall is the same guy who said that birth defects where god’s punishment for women who have abortions , and he pretty much hasn’t done anything remarkable for his district while in office.

Marshall is a cartoon villain, and if you can help Danica in any way it would be wonderful!

You can donate, she takes any amount you can give. 

Or you could come volunteer and knock doors if you are in the area, its not as daunting as it sounds (and this is coming from an introvert.)

But please please please if you are in manassas park or prince william county in Virginia do not forget to vote on November 7th, and bring a valid photo ID!

PS: she’s also in a metal band called Cab Ride Home

REMINDER: AGAINST SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE ODDS, DANICA ROEM WON!

Think of this next time someone tells you your vote ‘doesn’t matter’.

Reminder: The US midterm elections will will mostly be held on Tuesday, November 6, 2018. Register here.

Another reminder, with the midterms only a few days away. 

Check your registration and find your polling place here.

working-class-vegan:

smitethepatriarchy:

rubyvroom:

all-hail-gale:

merak-zoran:

seconddoubt:

left-reminders:

calliope-lalonde:

someone: so what do you think is the solution to homelessness?

me, socialist:

Let homeless people occupy peopleless homes, build houses for use rather than exchange, 3D print comfortable houses in a day, convert corporate skyscrapers into housing and commercial malls into publicly-accessible community centers with living commons and entertainment

When you say it to people and they break

“But the money? … we can’t just? But, Money? We can’t just… help… people? Can we? The Money. We can’t just help people? Like that? We can’t just? Money?”

There’s more to it than free real estate.

A massive portion of homeless people are mentally ill, and many of those illnesses aren’t being treated. Homeless people who have been on the streets and had their illnesses untreated for most of their lives aren’t going to adjust super well to suddenly having a place to live.

We need to build safety nets. We need social workers and mental health care professionals to help the homeless.

Every person deserves a roof and health care. Those two things need to go hand in hand.

The Housing First model of dealing with homelessness does exactly this. But actually when homeless people with mental illness or drug dependencies get into housing they start to do a lot better. Yes there are safety nets and things to work on after but it starts with housing. Homeless shelters right now aren’t doing enough because they either limit stays or make it so that drug addicts aren’t allowed to stay there at all. Obviously they’re still helping people but the Housing First model would actually help a lot more people long term and even be cheaper for the government in the long run. Unfortunately I don’t have sources but if someone can add them that’d be great.

Here’s one small study where they directly compared Housing First and Treatment First populations and found that Housing First did better. 

Here’s another study doing the same with mental illness. 

General health has also been found to improve with housing assistance.

Some models of Housing First appear to be more successful than others. This is an interesting study comparing various formats with different features including emphasis on harm reduction, case worker interactions, and scattered-site versus project-based housing. They conclude that which model will work best depends on a person’s profile, health status, substance history, etc.  

Honestly the unmitigated gall of saying that homeless people wouldn’t “adjust well” to the safety, comfort, dryness, and stability of the basic need that is reliable shelter because they’re mentally ill, like, could you possibly find a way to insult and step on two marginalized groups at once more?

This is exactly why I’ve come to believe that mental illness has a lot more to do with environment and material security than people realize. Yeah, genetics and brain chemicals, but what triggered those genetic markers, what atrophied the channels in the brain for healthy transmission of brain chemicals? Stress of living in a capitalist nightmare just might be the answer.