June 2011
56 posts
May 2011
58 posts
My little sister is 11 years old. We adopted her from China when she was 18 months old. She was born with many disabilities. She is deaf, has spinabifida, was born with a cleft lip and palette. She can't go to the bathroom normally. She had a hole in her heart. And will be bound to a wheelchair her whole life. But there is nothing wrong with her brain. She knows that people stare, she knows everything that goes on. We were in the car and she gave me her iPod and said "play this, it's my favorite song." The song? 'Born This Way' by Lady Gaga. Thank you Gaga for making her feel beautiful.
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A rape culture is a culture of intimidation. It keeps women afraid of being attacked and so it keeps women confined in the range of their behavior. That fear makes a women censor her behavior - her speech, her way of dressing, her actions. It undermines her confidence in her ability to be independent. The necessity to be mindful of one’s behavior at all times is far more than annoying. Women’s lives are unnecessarily constricted.
As a society, this one issue hampers the best efforts of half our population. It costs us heavily in lost initiative and in emotional energy stolen from other, more creative thoughts.
” —Emilie Buchwald, “Raising Girls for the 21st Century” in Transforming a Rape Culture, ed. by E. Buchewald, P. Fletcher and M. Roth, Milkweed Editions, 1993. (via loveyourchaos)Plastic bags are better than paper bags for the environment. The manufacturing process that makes paper bags requires far more energy than that which produces plastic. Recycling paper bags takes more energy than recycling plastic, and paper bags take up more space in a landfill. Because landfills are usually airtight beneath the surface, paper and plastic are equally bad at biodegrading.
