How much does Saudi Arabia hate women? So much so that 15 girls died in a school fire in Mecca in 2002, after “morality police” barred them from fleeing the burning building — and kept firefighters from rescuing them — because the girls were not wearing headscarves and cloaks required in public. And nothing happened. No one was put on trial. Parents were silenced.
“There’s a great quote from Joss Whedon wherein an interviewer asks him, “Why do you feel the need to write such strong female characters?” and Whedon responds, “Because you’re still asking me that question.” It is extremely important for young women to have positive portrayals of themselves because entertainment shapes our thinking, no matter how much we deny it. This was confirmed for me last year when I had a conversation about Disney princesses with a friend who is a woman of color – growing up, all the Disney princesses were white, so she never felt like she could be like those ladies, because none of them looked like her. That’s why it’s a big deal that we have a black man as President. That’s why it’s important for casts in movies to feature more realistic women (and people of color, as well as LGBT folks!). When people see themselves represented in media in a realistic manner, it affirms their own identities. And that’s ultimately a good thing.”
— Dianna Anderson (via azspot)
(Source: femburton)
“Marriage has taken various forms in different eras and cultures. According to biblical accounts, Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines and slaves. Sexual fidelity was not expected of men; the Israeli prohibition against adultery applied only to married or betrothed women. David’s sin with Bathsheba was because she was married, not because he was. He was encroaching on another man’s property, which was a violation of Biblical law — even for a king. According to Jay Michealson of Religious Dispatches, “In biblical society, when you conquered another city, tribe, or nation, the victorious men would ‘win’ their defeated foes’ wives as part of the spoils. … if a man died, his younger brother would have to marry his widow and produce heirs with her who would be considered the older brother’s descendants.” Those were the “traditional family values” of that day. There were even laws governing the proper treatment of the first wife, should a man decide to take a second one — customs from more or less the same era as the oft-cited Leviticus passage. Mitt Romney’s claim that marriage has been between one man and one woman for 3,000 years (an odd assertion for the great-grandson of a man with five wives), is about as historically accurate as “The Flintstones” cartoon.”
— W. Hunter Roberts (via andrewbaggott)
“The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others — who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something people with courage can do without.
To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals with one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.
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— Joan Didion on self-respect (via theastonishingpost)
(Source: brainpickings.org)
Another Typewriter poem. No re-dos. I Love that.
