Esoterica
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This work by Mikki Kendall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 
 
 
scandarella: albinwonderland: “”Excuse me,” she asked. “Can I buy you a coffee?”        It was a nice surprise. Most people don’t buy me cups of coffee, and I was just sitting at the Starbucks trying to plot my novel. So it was kind of charming, to have a cute girl offer to buy me a free drink. I told her sure. She brought me a nice iced chai, and sat down next to me, and then asked, “So have you heard about Jesus?”        Now, as it turns out, I’m a Christian, so I’m not opposed to Jesus -– but it was a little disappointing to realize this drink wasn’t done out of niceness, but as a sort of recruiting tool. Maybe I’d have been into a religious discussion if she’d said, “Hey, let’s have a philosophical talk,” but as it was, I felt a little betrayed. So I said that I wasn’t interested, as politely as I could (for I was sipping a delicious drink), and returned to my plotting.The next day, another girl: “Hey, can I buy you a coffee?”        This time, I was trying to work out a difficult programming solution in my mind, and she asked me at exactly the right moment to have all of my thoughts collapse like a house of cards. “Are you just going to ask me about Jesus?”        ”Oh, no,” she said, reassuring me. “It’s just that I think you’re cute.” And she was kind of pretty.“…all right,” I said, guardedly. She bought the coffee. Sat down at my table.        ”But if you were wondering about Jesus…” she said earnestly, and I ejected her from my table. I kept the drink, though. It seemed cruel, but she had been stupid enough to buy it for me even though I didn’t want it.        Over the next week, it just got worse. Two or three times a day I’d be deep in thought, trying to focus on this tangled plotting that I needed to resolve, and some woman would tap me on the shoulder to offer me a cup of coffee. I couldn’t concentrate, because sometimes they were very insistent: “You sure you don’t want a coffee, sweetie?” they’d ask, sometimes lurking over me after I’d refused them, just in case I changed my mind. Sometimes they just bought the coffee for me anyway, without even asking me if I wanted it, plopping themselves across the table from me and yammering on about being saved.        It was affecting my concentration. I started to tense up at the Starbucks, waiting for the next Jesus freak’s interruption. If it was a regular thing, like an hourly interruption, then maybe I could have worked around it, but it was erratic. Some days, I’d have four or five at once, other days I’d be blissedly free of interruption. But I had to be continually braced for the next hand on my shoulder, knowing that no matter what I was doing they’d be bursting into my personal space. I wrote less, my programs were buggier.        My friends couldn’t understand my upset. “Dude,” they told me. “You never have to pay for coffee again in your life! You’ve got it made! Do you know how much money you’re saving?”        ”But I don’t want to talk to these people,” I said.        ”You’ve talked about God with us before,” they replied. “Sometimes, we’ll stay up until two, three in the morning discussing the nature of heaven and hell. You dig philosophy, Ferrett. If you like talking about that shit with us, then why not with them?”        ”Because they’re just one-note and don’t really care what I have to say,” I said.        ”Just try ‘em, man. Some of them are cute. Maybe some of them actually want to date you!”        ”I guess,” I said. “But how do I know which ones are genuine without having to talk to a bunch of phonies?”        Eventually, it got to the point where I started bringing friends with me for cover, so I wouldn’t get interrupted. That didn’t work, either –- while it helped, the more aggressive proselytizers would interrupt me in mid-sentence to ask me if I wanted a drink. Suddenly, the Starbucks wasn’t fun anymore -– it wasn’t a place to hang out, but a place where I’d just constantly be bugged by attention I didn’t want. And the guys who weren’t getting free drinks were calling me stuck-up, jealous that I was getting all these free drinks and not even wanting them.        So I stopped going.        Okay. Clearly, that didn’t happen. But I’m trying to prove a point here.        One of the things that guys don’t get is why women don’t like to be hit on. As a guy, when you get hit on, even if it’s a clumsy attempt, it’s generally a very rare and remarkable event –- it puts a spring in your step, even if you’re not particularly attracted to the woman, because as an average-looking guy, scarcity of compliments is the norm. So if a girl catcalls you and goes, “Nice butt!” and appears to be serious, there’s often this sort of strange pride. Hey, that doesn’t happen often, she must really be into me.        So a lot of guys have this unspoken attitude of, “I wish I’d be harassed.” And they don’t get why women are so angry when hey, I was just trying to be nice, why you gotta be so mean?        Thing is, when it’s not scarce, then even the nicest act starts to get annoying. Because you don’t get to control when people are quote-unquote “nice” to you, and it happens all the time, and you know there’s always a hidden cost behind it. You start to question people’s niceness, because they’re not doing it to be kind, they’re doing it because they want something from you. And maybe, yes, that’s something you like to give to certain people, but definitely not to everyone, and almost certainly not to the kind of guy who’s certain you’re going to give it to him if he just bugs you enough.        Harassment isn’t once. Harassment comes from a lifetime of dealing with people constantly doing things to you, whether you wanted them or not, at random intervals. You learn not to trust people. And what might have been pleasant, once, as an isolated incident, starts to feel pretty oppressive when it’s something you deal with on a weekly basis. It changes you, and then guys call you bitchy when you don’t feel like playing along and pretending this is just about the coffee.        But I think most of ‘em would feel the same were the tables turned. So please. Think about what you’re spouting.” Article by Ferret Steinmetz, posted on Jezebel. Omg, this is the motherfucker behind the Open Source Boob Project. Which Jezebel covered when it happened. I didn’t read their article…just saw it on google. The irony of THIS motherfucker writing this article.  This feels like a Hugo Schwyzer kind of bait and switch to me. An abuser, a violator of women’s space, a “nice guy” who didn’t see how fucking CREATING that environment was NOT okay, who wrote about it gleefully as fuck on the internet is now on a (not really but OSTENSIBLY, quasi) feminist website preaching to…who, exactly? Women? Who already know this shit? Without examining his own behavior in this article, or disclosing that information?  I don’t need THIS motherfucker telling me that “nice guys” can hurt women. If he wants to tell MEN, then get to it. But women don’t fucking NEED you, although I have no doubt the ladies at Jezebel are fawning all over him right now.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcdcml8IMr1qaplv3o1_1280.png

scandarella:

albinwonderland:

“”Excuse me,” she asked. “Can I buy you a coffee?”

       It was a nice surprise. Most people don’t buy me cups of coffee, and I was just sitting at the Starbucks trying to plot my novel. So it was kind of charming, to have a cute girl offer to buy me a free drink. I told her sure. She brought me a nice iced chai, and sat down next to me, and then asked, “So have you heard about Jesus?”

       Now, as it turns out, I’m a Christian, so I’m not opposed to Jesus -– but it was a little disappointing to realize this drink wasn’t done out of niceness, but as a sort of recruiting tool. Maybe I’d have been into a religious discussion if she’d said, “Hey, let’s have a philosophical talk,” but as it was, I felt a little betrayed. So I said that I wasn’t interested, as politely as I could (for I was sipping a delicious drink), and returned to my plotting.
The next day, another girl: “Hey, can I buy you a coffee?”

       This time, I was trying to work out a difficult programming solution in my mind, and she asked me at exactly the right moment to have all of my thoughts collapse like a house of cards. “Are you just going to ask me about Jesus?”

       ”Oh, no,” she said, reassuring me. “It’s just that I think you’re cute.” And she was kind of pretty.
“…all right,” I said, guardedly. She bought the coffee. Sat down at my table.

       ”But if you were wondering about Jesus…” she said earnestly, and I ejected her from my table. I kept the drink, though. It seemed cruel, but she had been stupid enough to buy it for me even though I didn’t want it.

       Over the next week, it just got worse. Two or three times a day I’d be deep in thought, trying to focus on this tangled plotting that I needed to resolve, and some woman would tap me on the shoulder to offer me a cup of coffee. I couldn’t concentrate, because sometimes they were very insistent: “You sure you don’t want a coffee, sweetie?” they’d ask, sometimes lurking over me after I’d refused them, just in case I changed my mind. Sometimes they just bought the coffee for me anyway, without even asking me if I wanted it, plopping themselves across the table from me and yammering on about being saved.

       It was affecting my concentration. I started to tense up at the Starbucks, waiting for the next Jesus freak’s interruption. If it was a regular thing, like an hourly interruption, then maybe I could have worked around it, but it was erratic. Some days, I’d have four or five at once, other days I’d be blissedly free of interruption. But I had to be continually braced for the next hand on my shoulder, knowing that no matter what I was doing they’d be bursting into my personal space. I wrote less, my programs were buggier.

       My friends couldn’t understand my upset. “Dude,” they told me. “You never have to pay for coffee again in your life! You’ve got it made! Do you know how much money you’re saving?”

       ”But I don’t want to talk to these people,” I said.

       ”You’ve talked about God with us before,” they replied. “Sometimes, we’ll stay up until two, three in the morning discussing the nature of heaven and hell. You dig philosophy, Ferrett. If you like talking about that shit with us, then why not with them?”

       ”Because they’re just one-note and don’t really care what I have to say,” I said.

       ”Just try ‘em, man. Some of them are cute. Maybe some of them actually want to date you!”

       ”I guess,” I said. “But how do I know which ones are genuine without having to talk to a bunch of phonies?”

       Eventually, it got to the point where I started bringing friends with me for cover, so I wouldn’t get interrupted. That didn’t work, either –- while it helped, the more aggressive proselytizers would interrupt me in mid-sentence to ask me if I wanted a drink. Suddenly, the Starbucks wasn’t fun anymore -– it wasn’t a place to hang out, but a place where I’d just constantly be bugged by attention I didn’t want. And the guys who weren’t getting free drinks were calling me stuck-up, jealous that I was getting all these free drinks and not even wanting them.

       So I stopped going.

       Okay. Clearly, that didn’t happen. But I’m trying to prove a point here.

       One of the things that guys don’t get is why women don’t like to be hit on. As a guy, when you get hit on, even if it’s a clumsy attempt, it’s generally a very rare and remarkable event –- it puts a spring in your step, even if you’re not particularly attracted to the woman, because as an average-looking guy, scarcity of compliments is the norm. So if a girl catcalls you and goes, “Nice butt!” and appears to be serious, there’s often this sort of strange pride. Hey, that doesn’t happen often, she must really be into me.

       So a lot of guys have this unspoken attitude of, “I wish I’d be harassed.” And they don’t get why women are so angry when hey, I was just trying to be nice, why you gotta be so mean?

       Thing is, when it’s not scarce, then even the nicest act starts to get annoying. Because you don’t get to control when people are quote-unquote “nice” to you, and it happens all the time, and you know there’s always a hidden cost behind it. You start to question people’s niceness, because they’re not doing it to be kind, they’re doing it because they want something from you. And maybe, yes, that’s something you like to give to certain people, but definitely not to everyone, and almost certainly not to the kind of guy who’s certain you’re going to give it to him if he just bugs you enough.

       Harassment isn’t once. Harassment comes from a lifetime of dealing with people constantly doing things to you, whether you wanted them or not, at random intervals. You learn not to trust people. And what might have been pleasant, once, as an isolated incident, starts to feel pretty oppressive when it’s something you deal with on a weekly basis. It changes you, and then guys call you bitchy when you don’t feel like playing along and pretending this is just about the coffee.

       But I think most of ‘em would feel the same were the tables turned. So please. Think about what you’re spouting.”

Article by Ferret Steinmetz, posted on Jezebel.

Omg, this is the motherfucker behind the Open Source Boob Project. Which Jezebel covered when it happened. I didn’t read their article…just saw it on google.

The irony of THIS motherfucker writing this article. 

This feels like a Hugo Schwyzer kind of bait and switch to me. An abuser, a violator of women’s space, a “nice guy” who didn’t see how fucking CREATING that environment was NOT okay, who wrote about it gleefully as fuck on the internet is now on a (not really but OSTENSIBLY, quasi) feminist website preaching to…who, exactly? Women? Who already know this shit? Without examining his own behavior in this article, or disclosing that information? 

I don’t need THIS motherfucker telling me that “nice guys” can hurt women. If he wants to tell MEN, then get to it. But women don’t fucking NEED you, although I have no doubt the ladies at Jezebel are fawning all over him right now.

 
 

more on the white washing of “victim blaming”

strugglingtobeheard:

hiphopcheerleader:

so im reading this one essay “On the Issue of Roles” written by toni cade bambara. she says in referring to the black woman being stereotyped within the black community, “one who needs constant protection and guidance, for she has a lascivious nature that must be curbed.”

& i start thinking, is black femininity really framed in this way? as one who needs protection? & if so, who is doing the protecting? is it being done at all? this is part of what ill be focusing on in my graduate thesis, where do black womyn go after we’ve experienced sexual violence? what do we do? who do we turn to? are there systems in place within the community to help us? & since some (if not all or most) of us do a shitty of making space for trans/intersex womyn & checking our privilege, are there any resources within the community for black trans/intersex womyn survivors? do they feel safe with us? what are the differences & similarities there with regard to coping mechanisms? & what can we do to facilitate these spaces??

& then on the point of guidance. who is guiding black womyn & girls besides ourselves? & even when we guide each other, we still sometimes police each other. we police each other for a lot of reasons, because some of us dont want to recognize the other’s humanity cuz then you’d have to deal with your own humanity & how its been taken from you on a whole bunch of different levels. or we police each other in an effort to pass on skills that we feel have kept us out of harm’s way & kept us alive, like slut shaming for example. slut shaming in the black community is this effort for black womyn to attempt to achieve cis, able bodied, thin white femininity in the best way we know how, even though i believe some of us refuse to acknowledge that this is denied to us on institutional and structural levels. but even deeper, its knowing either consciously or subconsciously that being white & achieving white femininity has privileges that black [trans/intersex] womyn & girls arent afforded. 

i think this is why terms like ghetto, ratchet, ugly, bitch, ho are all god things to reclaim. at least for me personally. its about being counter to and not complicit with being forced into a box of white femininity. i also like to reimagine the term “lady” for myself. i call myself a lady no matter what specific behavior i might be referring to. or dainty. or elegant. or fragile. or femme. or innocent. like im all the things that i want to be whether i’ve been told i was that & it was supposed to be a bad thing because im black or i was denied that because im black but i know that i can and do still embody it. its revolutionary to repurpose those terms for ourselves & for our own self determination(s).

there’s been no general, concerted effort on the part of black men to protect the sexual honor, innocence, fragility of those black womyn & girls who [choose to] embody that. nor has there been any mass efforts to reinstate or preserve self determination or bodily autonomy for black womyn & girls. its an either or thing. either youre a virgin & you get chastised for that while not embodying white femininity. or youre sexually active, promiscuous, ho, slut whatever & you get trashed for that in various ways which can include being made to believe that being raped is a result of that. & i believe those in the latter situation get it a lot rougher.

but THERE IS a concerted effort to police black womyn’s sexuality as a way to plead to the larger society that we’re not ALL hypersexual ho’s & that we deserve respect. therefore, black womyn are asked to be anti-sex, to bend for the purpose of everyone else but ourselves. again.

but all this to say, that mainstream feminism does a shitty job of articulating why the concept of victim blaming isnt just a one size fits all paradigm. its involves race too & its faulty as fuck to white wash it.

“In general terms, black women survivors of violence exist within a dominant conceptual space that make it difficult for them to easily occupy the status of “victim.”  Some of these reactions were described by many feminist bloggers as classic “victim blaming” which does not necessarily require a particular racialized context in order to proliferate.” 

like, if black womyn are not “victim” blamed in the normative/white sense of the phrase because we are not seen as victims, because we are denied the privileges associated with white femininity (no harm can be done to us because we are not REAL womyn, instead we are STRONG BLACK WOMYN incapable of hurt, pain, frailty, & weakness & because we are constantly being stepped on in this society for everyone BUT us) then “victim blaming” assumes that woman is white, middle class, cis and able bodied because they are the only ones constructed as eternal victims.

it is particularly difficult for black men to see black womyn as victims (even when black men are the perpetrators as in cases of intra-racial violence) since largely black womyn are stereotyped as emasculating & castrating of black men. & since a lot of black men endorse victorian sexual ideals & believe black womyn’s rightful place is at the back. there may have also been efforts to silence black womyn about our/their experiences of intra racial violence, in an effort to “save the race” and continue the “real” and “more important” fight for civil rights.

slut shaming for black womyn is used within the community to convince black womyn to endorse victorian sexual ideals to ask for respect from larger society & to ask for protection for black womyn. while victim blaming in the ”white community” doesnt bear the weight of stereotypes & general the need for protection. 

this is a really good post and i would love to think about it more and discuss but not tonight.

I want to discuss it, but maybe not on Tumblr. This is one of those areas where I know the intrusion of white feminists & random derailers will only upset and hurt us.

(Source: afrafemme)

 
 
As in previous years, Blacks were the most commonly targeted racial group in 2010, with 271 incidents. Although this racial group represented approximately 2.5% of the Canadian population (Statistics Canada 2008b),10 hate crimes committed against Blacks accounted for approximately 20% of the total number of hate crimes and 39% of those motivated by race or ethnicity.
source (via biyuti)
 
 

Not-cool things to do, bro… Part 1

big-wired:

karnythia:

spastasmagoria:

stoya:

I can actually remember every time a person at a convention or trade show has touched me inappropriately. My first year at the Venus Fair in Berlin there was a man who shoved two of his fingers into my panty-covered vagina. It was really fast, like he was standing there one second and the next I was trying to figure out how the gusset of my underwear had ended up *in* my vulva. There was a man in Texas who rather violently squeezed my ass while we were taking a picture and then laughed at how I’d “squealed like a piglet”. Seriously. I’m kind of disappointed by how much of a stereotype he was. At AVN this year, a guy grabbed my forearm while I was walking from the elevators to Digital Playground’s booth. He let go when I punched him in the testicle area. There’s an average of three people per convention who try the more subtle approach of sliding their hand a *bit* too far down my back when I stand next to them for a photo. Every single one of them apologizes when I gently put their hand back where it belongs and ask them to remember that I am not a blow up doll. 

The above paragraph is absolutely nothing, NOTHING, compared to what it’s like to be a girl or woman walking around in public in broad daylight. With dirty hair up in a ponytail or bun, no makeup, and baggy clothing on. With headphones in, sitting in a coffee shop or on the subway with your nose in a book, or talking on the phone. 

Men have followed me down the street poking me in what one can only assume is an attempt to get my attention. Men have grabbed the cord to my headphones and ripped them out of my ears. Multiple times. Men have grabbed parts of my body, or my coat or purse strap. Twice, when I was transporting my Lyra (the three foot metal hoop/circus apparatus I do aerial work on) they have grabbed the hoop and refused to let go until I threatened to kick them. They’ve blocked me into corners on mostly empty subway cars, followed me for blocks and then stood outside whatever shop I duck into for absurd amounts of time. They stop their cars in the middle of the crosswalk to stare and yell things out of the window. Years ago, in Philadelphia, one man walked around my neighborhood asking people if they knew where this blue-haired white girl lived because he wanted to return her phone. Fortunately my neighbors were too smart for that trick.

They say I have a sweet ass, nice tits, a real pretty dress. They say I’m their future wife, or I’d look good with their dick in my mouth. They try (and probably succeed at times) to take pictures down my shirt. They ask if they can get my number, they ask where I live, why I’m not smiling, why my boyfriend lets me walk around by myself. Then they ask why I’m such a bitch, if my pussy is made of ice. They say that they never do this, as though I’ve somehow driven them to inappropriate behavior and deserve it. They say they’re just having fun, trying to pay me a compliment. Pretty frequently they get mean, slipping into a loud tourettes-like chant of bitch-whore-cunt-slut.

Before you try to tell me that it’s because I take my clothes off for a living, let me tell you that this started way before I was 18. Let me tell you that every single woman I know has at least one truly terrifying story of street harassment and a whole bunch of other stories that are merely insulting or annoying. Let me remind you that in a room of pornography fans, who have actually seen me with a dick in my mouth and who can buy a replica of my vagina in a can or box, I am treated with far more respect than I am walking down the street.

It’s just fun and games, u guise. They don’t mean anything by it. Why’re you being so uptight? :/

Tell me again about street harassment & how rare it is. Tell me how these incidents are isolated. Or read the dozens of posts like this one that I see damned near daily & get that this happens often & it is a problem.

God damn, there’s a fucklot wrong with our society for this kind of stuff to be common place.

I was volunteering at the Calgary Expo this past year and on the second night, me and some friends from Edmonton went out to eat. This included a lady from the Middle East who was an artist at the convention with her own table.

So after supper was eaten and alcohol was drank, we all went back to our hotels, and the artist and I came across an attendee of the convention. Dude was a touch loud and enthusiastic, but was otherwise okay.

I bet you can imagine where THIS is going. >_<

On the train, I was listening to some music so I didn’t notice at first that as soon as he discovered the artist had her own table, he sat his butt down by her, squeezing into her personal space as she was reading on her phone and listening to music with big headphones on.

I glanced over and saw him slap her on the shoulder to get her attention, and she glanced up at him and then at me, and then I ran interference as she told him that I was a volunteer.

I kept him busy the rest of that train ride and then escorted the artist off the train when we hit out stop. I SHOULD have laid into him, but at least I kept him off of her.

The fact remains was that he was deeply disrespectful of her, her personal space, and dismissive of her rather open body language that she did not want to talk with him. She should not have had to foist him off on me, but that simply saying “No, I’m tired and I want to read” or just “No, leave me alone” should have been enough.

That’s ultimately what male privilege is, that women owe you their time no matter what they’re doing, and if they don’t give it, then something’s wrong with them.

 
 

On Street Harassment, Victim Blaming & Life in My Skin

It’s funny in a horrifying I might start crying kind of way to think about how many times I’ve experienced extreme sexism/misogyny from perfect strangers. I’m always boggled at how willing people are to excuse their behavior & claim I should have been nicer, or that they’re sick and don’t know any better. I remember a guy tried to grab me on an empty train car in high school, I kicked the shit out of him & ran like hell. For a host of reasons I was afraid to tell my parents about what happened, but when I told some friends about it the next day I remember a girl I only kind of knew shutting down the victim blaming comments by saying “Girls get raped on the train.” and that the way she said it was so *knowing* you know? I never asked for her story. She didn’t offer it either. But then I was already a survivor so I guess I didn’t need it to understand.

Fast forward a few years from that age & I can tell you a dozen more “extreme” stories that happened in between, but the ones that stick out most all have a theme of me being engaged in my life when misogyny dropped in for a visit. There was the guy in Germany who tried to trap me in a dark tunnel with his car (I jumped on the hood & ran like my life depended on it, maybe it did) and there was no conversation between us. He yelled at me in German from a moving car then drove around to bar my way. There was the guy that followed me home from the store one night telling me that he could be a rapist. He didn’t speak to me in the store & our conversation outside consisted of me walking past him & him yelling at me that I was a stuck up bitch. The guy that called me everything but a child of God, because I wouldn’t buy his CD came at me on a bus & no one (including his friend) said shit to stop him. Or the group of men who surrounded me while I was walking with my child that had to be backed off by a neighbor with a gun.

How many times exactly does someone have to be insulted, harassed, or terrorized before the conversation can be about the person who accosted them & not about what else they could have done? Should have done? How many incidents (all with different people, different settings, different responses) does it take before the discussion is about ways to stop the harassers & not ways to respond to them so that they maybe, possibly, if you’re lucky won’t escalate? When do we talk about the culture that not only permits these behaviors, but encourages them & punishes victims for being wary of new people after years of bad experiences? When do we talk about why women are cautioned to be nice, to be patient, to be careful, but never told it is okay to say no & mean it without fear of repercussions? Oh right, those are all hard topics for hard days & folks would rather blame victims than address problems.

 
 

arielnietzsche:

Mob ‘lynching’ of Palestinian minors marks rise of Zionist extremism

On Friday four Palestinian teenagers were mobbed by 50 Israelis of similar age who were prowling the streets of Jerusalem shouting “Death to Arabs” and “Arabs, Arabs,” looking for Palestinians to beat. Disturbingly, during the Zion Square attack Israeli authorities said around 100 witnesses stood by and watched as one victim, Jamal Julani, was kicked as he laid on the ground unconscious. The violence only stopped after police intervened.

Nir Hasson detailed the assault in Haaretz through quotes from a witness’ Facebook page:

‘When one of the Palestinian youths fell to the floor, the youths continued to hit him in the head, he lost consciousness, his eyes rolled, his angled head twitched, and then those who were kicking him fled and the rest gathered in a circle around, with some still shouting with hate in their eyes.’

‘When two volunteers [from local charities] went into the circle, they tried to perform CPR and the mass of youths standing around started to say resentfully that we are resuscitating an Arab, and when they passed near us and saw that the rest of the volunteers were shocked, they asked why we were so in shock, he is an Arab. When we returned to the area after some time had passed, and the site was marked as a murder scene, and police were there with the cousin of the victim who tried to reenact what happened, two youths stood there who did not understand why we wanted to give a bottle of water to the cousin of the victim who was transferred to hospital in critical condition, he is an Arab, and they don’t need to walk around in the center of the city, and they deserve it, because this way they will finally be afraid,’ she added.

‘Children aged 15-18 are killing a child their own age with their own hands. Really with their own hands. Children who’s hearts were unmoved when they beat to death a boy their age who lay writhing on the floor,’ she wrote.


Haaretz then reported on Sunday the Israel police escalated their initial assessment of a “brawl” to a “lynching.” In addition, four additional suspects, between the ages of 13 and 15, were arrested.

The mob attack came just a day after a firebomb was hurled at a taxi transporting a Palestinian family of six, including two children, and weeks after settlers planted a car bomb in a Palestinian village near Ramallah. The explosions come in the context of the highest rates of settler violence in the past five years, according to a report by the Jerusalem Fund. In 2011 alone, there were 10 “price tag,” arson attacks on Palestinians.

Noting the increase in Jewish Israeli violence against non-Jews, the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) published a fact-sheet linking the attempted lynching to the recent wave of mob violence against African migrants:

In May 2012, a wave of anti-African racism and violence, including physical assaults and a string of arson attacks, hit Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel, fueled by inflammatory statements made about asylum seekers by Israeli politicians including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Eli Yishai.

IMEU’s report, titled “A Culture of Impunity: Violence Against Non-Jews in Israel & the Occupied Territories,” points to an unspoken government acceptance of settler attacks on Palestinians as some of the incitement originated from members of the Israeli Knesset and state-funded rabbinical authorities. Settler rabbi, Dov Lior is described as a patron radical whose:

salary is paid by the Israeli government told a conference that Arabs are ‘wolves,’ ‘savages,’ and ‘evil camel riders.’ Earlier in 2011, he warned Jewish women against marrying non-Jewish women, stating: ‘Gentile sperm leads to barbaric offspring.’
Friday’s mob violence seem to indicate the Israeli hard-right’s incendiary political discourse has paved the way for extremist Jewish violence, all will the tacit support of the state of Israel.

(Source: jayaprada)

 
 
tw for violent images & discussion of violence

feministorwomanist:

mehreenkasana:

Photographers who didn’t step in to help

What’s it like to witness a mob attack, a starving child or the aftermath of a bomb, and take a photograph instead of stopping to help? As two journalists are under fire for recording rather than intervening in a sex attack in India, Guardian asks people who know.

A very tough debate between ethical responsibility and photography. What would you do?

if you think taking a picture is more important than helping people and especially if you are taking a photograph of someone’s pain specifically so you can profit off of it (why else do photographers take pictures, esp. in circumstances like these?) then you are a despicable human being. full stop. honestly the fact that someone could even be able to get their camera out in situations like this and then not even help. like even after taking their precious fucking picture, you deserve every ounce of guilt you might be able to feel over this.

 
 

(content warning: violence to children) And now of course, all these dunderheads on Facebook are going “WELL WHY DID THEY TAKE A 3-MONTH-OLD TO A MIDNIGHT SHOWING ANYWAY?”

cabell:

karnythia:

cabell:

Like the parents should have predicted that the midnight showing was going to get SHOT UP and responsibly left their baby at home accordingly.

Also complaints about taking the baby to a film rated PG-13.  Like, I get that there are people who take babies to movies inappropriately (baby is known fusser or babbler, etc.), but I would wager that almost everyone who takes their baby to a midnight showing does so with the expectation that the baby will sleep through it.  Because many babies do—my parents took me to movies until I was 18 months old and I slept through ALL of them.  They used to take me to parties and stick my car seat in the corner—ditto.

Ugh. Facebook fucks.

3 month olds aren’t exactly notorious for being awake at that age no matter where they are so I’ve never understood why people think they should stay inside all the time.

Right?!  AJ was on her nursing strike at three months so going ANYWHERE was a huge anxiety-inducing production for us, but that’s NOT a normal situation with a three-month-old.  Unsurprisingly, all these Facebook assholes basically think whatever their baby or two did/do should generalize to the entire population of babies everywhere.

At 3 months both of my kids were having growth spurts. As long as a boob was present they were content no matter where they were.

 
 

(content warning: violence to children) And now of course, all these dunderheads on Facebook are going “WELL WHY DID THEY TAKE A 3-MONTH-OLD TO A MIDNIGHT SHOWING ANYWAY?”

cabell:

Like the parents should have predicted that the midnight showing was going to get SHOT UP and responsibly left their baby at home accordingly.

Also complaints about taking the baby to a film rated PG-13.  Like, I get that there are people who take babies to movies inappropriately (baby is known fusser or babbler, etc.), but I would wager that almost everyone who takes their baby to a midnight showing does so with the expectation that the baby will sleep through it.  Because many babies do—my parents took me to movies until I was 18 months old and I slept through ALL of them.  They used to take me to parties and stick my car seat in the corner—ditto.

Ugh. Facebook fucks.

3 month olds aren’t exactly notorious for being awake at that age no matter where they are so I’ve never understood why people think they should stay inside all the time.

 
 
For some reason, it is entirely OK for a strange man I don’t know to approach me in the street and tell me he’d like to violently stick his hard cock in my anus. If I turned around and say, spat on him or stabbed his eye out with a fork, this would not be OK. Moreover, if I tried to press charges, I have the stinking suspicion that without a physical assault my complaint wouldn’t be taken entirely seriously. And yet the same man gets caught taking a piss in a public place and he’s a sexual offender in the eyes of the law. ARE FERAL LANEWAYS AND BRICK WALLS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WOMEN?

Kat George, Things I Wish Were Not OK But Are Definitely OK (via shoshkablob)

Sometimes even with physical assault, the cops don’t take complaints seriously. Basically if a woman is making the complaint, it will not be taken seriously.

(via paleotrees)

 
 
 
 
 
 
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