“In the late 80s and early 90s there was a vocal group of radical feminists who believed that pornography inherently harms women, not just in its production but also in its consumption…
These anti-pornography feminists teamed up with the religious right and managed to get anti-porn laws passed. In particular, a law was passed in Canada preventing the importation of “obscene” material”..
….
Guess what was seized first? “The Joy of Gay Sex” and the like. Guess what businesses started finding all their shipments seized or delayed – sexually explicit or not – to the point where they were being put out of business? Gay bookstores. Guess what wasn’t seized at all? Mainstream porn made for straight men…..
Here’s the key point: Strossen is a legal scholar who’s looked at a lot of attempts at censorship, and you know what she found happened every time? When you try to censor pornography, even in the interests of protecting vulnerable people, that censorship will be applied first, and hardest, against the people who are most vulnerable.They won’t come for actual abusers, they’ll come for the abused, and prevent them from accessing resources, education, talking to each other, creating art to express themselves, or organising against those who are actually causing harm.
This is old, old business, we’ve seen it more than once before, and it never goes the way the antis think it will. Censorship is a tool that gives power to abusers and lets them inflict more harm on those who are abused, vulnerable and discriminated against. Don’t fall for it.
Water is wet,the research is done toconfirm that water is wet, and some jerks out there are still going around saying that this time it’s different, our new authoritarianism is OK, don’t mind the screaming disenfranchised LGBTQ+ people!
Let’s circulate this post far and wide. People should know the consequences of what they’re doing.
“We want the museum to understand that the moai are our family, not just rocks. For us [the statue] is a brother; but for them it is a souvenir or an attraction,” said Anakena Manutomatoma, who serves on the island’s development commission. “Once eyes are added to the statues, an energy is breathed into the moai and they become the living embodiment of ancestors whose role is to protect us.”
isnt the point of a museum to preserve history though? id prefer something be in a controlled environment than outside in the elements.
The moai have been standing JUST fine in the open in the island for literal centuries. Believe it or not, the Rapa Nui are NOT stupid; they know their island, how to live in it, and what materials and treatment to those materials do or do not last in the island they’ve called their home for ages. The moai are MADE to be “outside in the elements”.
And preserved for whom? I’m sure my ancestors wouldn’t feel it’s preservation to have a LIVING piece of their culture stolen by colonizers and kept away from them all this fucking long when I assure you, no one asked for their permission to take it in the first place.
That’s not fucking “preserving”, that’s just fucking stealing.
The Negros scops owl (Otus nigrorum) is an owl, endemic to the Philippines, belonging to the family of the typical owls Strigidae. Negros scops owls prey at night on insects. They live alone or in monogamous pairs. They breed throughout the year, laying clutches of 1–2 eggs. They nest in trees holes of forests of the Philippine lowlands. They are found on the island of Negros. They were formerly classified as a subspecies of the Philippine scops owl.
A popular post I’ve seen on my dash a few times now, rewritten by me so as not to perpetuate abuse myths and technophobia:
If you want to meet in meatspace someone you met online, you can ask them to video chat to make sure they are who they say they are. If they’re unable or unwilling to video chat, you can ask them to voice chat and/or send selfies of them doing a highly specific, unusual thing, such as holding up three fingers.
Perhaps more important than the above is meeting in a public place, such as a public park or a coffee shop. Genuinely looking a certain way or being of a certain demographic doesn’t guarantee that a person isn’t out to harm you, but meeting in a public place gives you a chance to look at a person’s body language, etc. before putting yourself in a potentially vulnerable situation like being alone with them. It’s also often a good idea to bring along another person.
If the other person is offended by your taking safety measures, you should steer clear of them altogether. People who don’t think much of your small boundaries aren’t likely to respect your large boundaries.
As you know, we live in a horribly ageist society, and young people have more reason to be cautious than older people. But this advice is relevant to people of any age. Even people 30+ regularly take all of these precautions when meeting up with internet friends.
Some people on the internet are looking for people to harm, so please, only put yourself in situations you feel good about, and don’t hesitate to bail if you’re feeling uneasy. At the same time, remember that you’re far more likely to be abused or harmed by someone who has a close in-person relationship with you, particularly someone you depend on for something (e.g. housing) or someone you can’t get away from, such as a classmate if schooling is compulsory for you. Being alarmist about how “strangers from the internet might be rapists and serial killers!” feeds into abuse myths that cover for and excuse the far more common and dangerous typical abuse situations.
Lastly, I want to say that, particularly if you’re a young person, you might be getting a lot of these alarmist messages. People who don’t have a lot of experience with new technology are often afraid of it, and furthermore, we live in a culture that discourages young people from consensual friendships, and steers them toward the kind of abuse-prone relationships I described above. You might be feeling the urge to forgo safety measures in order to underscore the ridiculousness of this alarmism. That’s understandable, but I just want to say that these are just ordinary safety measures you can use to make you and others more comfortable and safe. They aren’t proof that online communication is less real than offline communication, or evidence for abuse myths. Hell, you probably take analogous measures when getting to know people in meatspace, without even thinking twice about it.
Trust your gut, seek out people who respect your boundaries, and stay safe.
my philosophy is “nothing an individual can do could possibly be worse for the environment than major corporations dumping tons of pollutants into the atmosphere every day but also don’t just toss shit on the ground you idiot have some manners”
“The biggest advantage of being a human and not a mandrill is that we can signal sexual availability by writing emo poetry on DeviantArt instead of shoving our neon red asses in girls’ faces.”
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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