sofriel:

The first immigrants to Europe arrived thousands of years ago from central Asia. Most pre-contact Europeans lived together in small villages. Because the continent was very crowded, their lives were ruled by strict hierarchies within the family and outside it to control resources. Europe was highly multi-ethnic, and most tribes were ruled by hereditary leaders who commanded the majority “commoners.” These groups were engaged in near constant warfare.

Pre-contact Europeans wore clothing made of natural materials such as animal skin and plant and animal-based textiles. Women wore long dresses and covered their hair, and men wore tunics and leggings. Both men and women liked to wear jewelry made from precious stones and metals as a sign of status. Before contact, Europeans had very poor diets. Most people were farmers and grew wheat and vegetables and raised cows and sheep to eat. They rarely washed themselves, and had many diseases because they often let their animals live with them. Religion infused every part of Europeans’ lives.

Europeans believed in one supreme deity, a father figure, who they believed was made of three parts, and they particularly worshiped the deity’s son. They claimed that their god had given humans domination over the earth. They built elaborate temples to him and performed ceremonies in which they ate crackers and drank wine and believed it was the body and blood of their god, who would provide them with entrance into a wondrous afterlife called heaven when they died. Many wars were fought over disagreements about the details of this religion, each group believing their interpretation was the right one that should be spread across the land.

Now imagine that is part of a textbook that has entire chapters on the Mississippian polities of the 1200s and a detailed account of the diplomatic situation of the southeastern provinces in the 1400s and 1500s, an enormous section that goes through the history of the rise of the Triple Alliance in Mexico and goes through the rule of each tlatoani and their policies, the heritage of Teotihuacan and its legacy in later Mesoamerican politics, elaborate descriptions of the trade routes that connected and drove various nations in North America. Long explanations of the rise of various religious movements such as the calumet ceremony and Midewiwin, and how they affected political agendas and artistic trends. Pages and pages and pages going through the past thousand years of American history century by century.

And these three paragraphs are the only mention of European history before the year 1500.

(via roachpatrol)

togekissies:

firefly20ffm:

sometimes i see fanart that has a good message but….the characters they use to deliver that message make no sense with the topic??

i get that you can draw art of whatever for your own enjoyment and you’re more likely to use your faves for venting, etc….but sometimes it takes away from the message and is completely ill fitting to the characters

#luisa talks about fandoms #sorry i just saw this thing that was #using dirk and roxy to vent about society’s views on gender-specific clothing styles #like i’m sure they’d both agree with the message but #everything roxy has worn in canon (skirts and leggings- frilly off the shoulder dress- lady scientist dress/lab coat) has been generally ‘fe #’feminine’ #and roxy is actually kind of shitty at dealing w/ binary stuff #not even getting started on how the fanart chose to have dirk in a japanese school girl outfit #ok if you got dirk in a dress then i doubt he’d give a shit either way #but fandom’s obession with having (specifically!!) dirk in dresses when there is literally no basis other than #’HAHA ANIME HAHA GAY = CROSSDRESSING JAPANASE SCHOOL GIRL OUTFITS’ #is pretty skeevy #if you want a character who says ‘fuck you gender norms’ why not idk jane or jake #who like mustaches and short shorts respectively #or most of the trolls actually? #we even saw a few of the troll boys in dresses in the mini-strife #but yeah stereotyping/feteshizing a gay character is probably not helping your case if you claim to be against society’s gender views #js

yes yes yes a thousand times yes

Read More

(via mozaikmage)

makingfists:

It’s like this…

You’re fourteen and you’re reading Larry Niven’s “The Protector” because it’s your father’s favorite book and you like your father and you think he has good taste and the creature on the cover of the book looks interesting and you want to know what it’s about. And in it the female character does something better than the male character - because she’s been doing it her whole life and he’s only just learned - and he gets mad that she’s better at it than him. And you don’t understand why he would be mad about that, because, logically, she’d be better at it than him. She’s done it more. And he’s got a picture of a woman painted on the inside of his spacesuit, like a pinup girl, and it bothers you.

But you’re fourteen and you don’t know how to put this into words.

And then you’re fifteen and you’re reading “Orphans of the Sky” because it’s by a famous sci-fi author and it’s about a lost generation ship and how cool is that?!? but the women on the ship aren’t given a name until they’re married and you spend more time wondering what people call those women up until their marriage than you do focusing on the rest of the story. Even though this tidbit of information has nothing to do with the plot line of the story and is only brought up once in passing.

But it’s a random thing to get worked up about in an otherwise all right book.

Then you’re sixteen and you read “Dune” because your brother gave it to you for Christmas and it’s one of those books you have to read to earn your geek card. You spend an entire afternoon arguing over who is the main character - Paul or Jessica. And the more you contend Jessica, the more he says Paul, and you can’t make him see how the real hero is her. And you love Chani cause she’s tough and good with a knife, but at the end of the day, her killing Paul’s challengers is just a way to degrade them because those weenies lost to a girl.

Then you’re seventeen and you don’t want to read “Stranger in a Strange Land” after the first seventy pages because something about it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. All of this talk of water-brothers. You can’t even pin it down.

And then you’re eighteen and you’ve given up on classic sci-fi, but that doesn’t stop your brother or your father from trying to get you to read more.

Even when you bring them the books and bring them the passages and show them how the authors didn’t treat women like people.

Your brother says, “Well, that was because of the time it was written in.”

You get all worked up because these men couldn’t imagine a world in which women were equal, in which women were empowered and intelligent and literate and capable. 

You tell him - this, this is science fiction. This is all about imagining the world that could be and they couldn’t stand back long enough and dare to imagine how, not only technology would grow in time, but society would grow. 

But he blows you off because he can’t understand how it feels to be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen and desperately wanting to like the books your father likes, because your father has good taste, and being unable to, because most of those books tell you that you’re not a full person in ways that are too subtle to put into words. It’s all cognitive dissonance: a little like a song played a bit out of tempo - enough that you recognize it’s off, but not enough to pin down what exactly is wrong.

And then one day you’re twenty-two and studying sociology and some kind teacher finally gives you the words to explain all those little feelings that built and penned around inside of you for years.

It’s like the world clicking into place. 

And that’s something your brother never had to struggle with.

(via roachpatrol)

maladicts:

“trying too hard to be diverse/inclusive” is such a bullshit complaint. you get people sneering at a show (or movie or book or OH NO someone’s headcanon) that isn’t all 100% straight white dudes, rolling their eyes at ~the PC police~, talking over marginalized people and their experiences, etc. there were a bunch of posts along that line of thought in the elementary tag a while ago. I’ve thought a lot about it and it’s still……..bullshit.

like?? oh no? some people in the world are making an active attempt to include PoC and queer people and trans* people in media and stories and stuff instead of lazily sticking to the same old repetitive straight-white-cis-dudebro-bromance formula? how is this a bad thing what is the problem here

are you blogging your complaints from some magical alternate universe with a surplus of queer women of color in every important role ever? do you have too many well-written trans* lead characters in your super popular BBC shows? (also is your strange mirror universe technologically advanced enough to create some kind of universe-crossing portal machine)

what are you criticizing when you say something is “trying to hard to be diverse”? is it the idea of effort? the idea that queer people/trans* people/PoC exist? (and exist outside of narratives that serve to place straight white cis protagonists on a pedestal while teaching said protag a mystical lesson about ~different walks of life~?) are you under the impression that the world is full of white people and that everyone else is a minority because oh boy lemme tell you that is not even close to being mathematically correct?? or is that you feel the only stories worth telling are white ones?

also for all your rainbow puking gifs and declarations of “SO GAY!!” whenever two white male characters glance vaguely in each other’s directions, you seem to have the idea that queer people are but fleeting metaphorical unicorns existing on an unearthly plane, summoned hither-thither by the whims of straight fans. this honor, of course, is reserved solely for white cis dudes you can imagine fucking each other, as the idea of, say, a queer trans* WoC would just be too much in comparison to your very tasteful and subtle t-shirt about how “SOME CONSULTING DETECTIVES MARRY ARMY DOCTORS!” right

like we get a lot of lip service from people about how more representation of “”“”minorities”“”“” would be great, but when you get right down to it, what a lot of ~allies~ really want is the bare minimum of possible representation that won’t make them too uncomfortable or make them think too hard about their own prejudices, that will create the illusion of challenging oppression in society, the kind that will expend the least amount of effort from themselves but will earn them the maximum amount of masturbatory applause

and when we actually do get some well-written representation, you either shit all over it or say “well isn’t that nice! aren’t we nice to let you have this one single character? now let’s get back to making straight white characters, you know, the normal kind!” so when you say something is “too diverse” or “trying too hard”, what you’re saying really is that you want complacency and passive behavior, you want wacky side characters and fetishized cliches, you want “”“”minorities”“” to keep their mouths shut unless they have something nice to say about the bones you throw them when you’re feeling charitable, you want to take away their history and desires and anger

it all becomes about how the stories of PoC and queer and trans* people can be made about you, how they can accommodate you, how they can entertain you, and you’re all so busy patting yourselves on the back for faking being a decent human being so well that you’d rather patronize and dismiss the concerns of real life marginalized people than consider how much of a giant shining asshole you are

(via longardeaux)

tunaka:

you see it fundamentally changes a character to interpret them as trans* but grimdark!rule 63!demon!catboy! aus are fine and acceptable

(via roachpatrol)

(via chaotic-awesome)

(via novyymir)

(via staying-alive-is-so-boring)