ninja-librarian:

aspiringwarriorlibrarian:

geekandmisandry:

Also how can Arthur Conan Doyle write a character like Irene Adler 1891 and have her 1. Outsmart Sherlock Holmes and get away with it and 2. Be in no way a damsel or love interest to Sherlock.. But every modern retelling not only has her be a sexual /love interest character but she is posed as being very very smart… But never smart enough to just outwit him, get away with it and move on? Women can be smart, sure, but no one is allowed to be smarter than Sherlock.

It’s been over 120 years and Irene is, at her best, never as decently treated as the original.

Arthur Conan Doyle: Here’s a story about male insecurity where the police underestimate her for being a woman and feel the need to get her because she’s a woman and Sherlock is ultimately beaten by a woman and in a bit of character development accepts it and acknowledges her intellect.

Sherlock fans: Uh no way Sherlock is smart Sherlock is so so smart she must have used her feminine wiles or her sexy things or her love to undermine him but he gets her in the end i feel a strange catharsis at changing this ending but I’m sure Doyle always meant to be this way, it just feels right.

Half of the reason that Adler was able to out-wit Holmes was because Holmes was too narrow-minded. Holmes is smart and has knowledge of many subjects, but he also strongly relies on social order and norms to solve crimes. He’s even says in A Scandal in Bohemia that:

“When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to thing which she values most. It is a
perfectly overpowering impulse, and I have more than once taken advantage of it
… A married woman grabs at her baby; an unmarried one reaches for her jewel-box.”

Holmes uses this social norm and order to stage an attack and find out where Adler hid the photo in her house. He drops his guard and is so proud of himself because he knew that this would work, he knew that if he created disorder,  “natural” order would attempt to counteract that disorder.

Adler defies those social orders and norms: she is an untitled American woman who earned her own money through a career as an opera star, instead of relying on a husband or family to have financial security; she outwitted Holmes because she cross-dressed and indicated that she frequently did so, allowing her to have a lot more freedom roaming around London on her own terms, and her stage career aided that so that she could act like a man easily; and she didn’t care one bit about her reputation or being a “pure” woman, had several boyfriends, and was known for being an “adventuress”. More importantly, she had the ability to defy those social norms while simultaneously being able to present herself as the ideal respectable and under-estimable Victorian-era woman.

Adler literally defeats Holmes by dressing in drag then happily goes off with her new husband whom she loves very much. And Holmes respects that and is thoroughly impressed. Not only does he respect that, he realizes that he was on the wrong side of things, that he shouldn’t have agreed to take on the case for the King of Bohemia. This is the exchange that follows after Holmes, Watson and the King read Adler’s letter.

“Would she not have made an admirable queen?
Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?”

“From what I have seen of the
lady she seems indeed to be on a very different level to your Majesty,” said
Holmes coldly

Holmes takes Adler’s side and realizes that the photograph is her protection from the King, not something she intended to use as a weapon against him. Adler never exploited the King to get what she wanted, only kept it as a safeguard of her own happiness. She made sure she had a way of ensuring that she alone guided her future.

Irene Adler is “the woman” to Sherlock Holmes, not because she was sexy or he was in love with her. She was a reminder that real life doesn’t always follow what social norms and order are to be expected, that people shouldn’t be taken on face value or respected just because of their title or apparent respectability and ability to follow social order and norms, and that there are two sides to every story.

Take a lesson from Sherlock Holmes, people. Doyle knew what he was doing. If we’re going to keep making him roll over in his grave from creating Sherlock Holmes media, please, at least respect him and Irene Adler.

antifainternational:

sourcedumal:

guapet:

so my brother was telling me about this human resources certification he attended a while ago. in a panel, the panelist asked a bunch of people in attendance, “who here knows if an applicant for a job is right for it in under 60 seconds?”

hands shot up around the room, people smug about their ability to “weed out the riff-raff” when it came to hiring for their fortune 500.

“you should all be fired and probably in jail,” they said, waiting for the whole room to get uncomfortable, then continued, “because the only things you can really learn about a human being in under 60 seconds are all things that are fueled by prejudices and biases covered by american law. so now, i will teach you how to stop being racist, sexist, judgmental assholes and hire people that will better your company of employ.”

I need this to be force taught at all companies

This is a good example of why study after study after study has shown that discrimination against racialized people looking for work is very real.  Oh, and don’t get too smug if you’re not in the USA – similar studies have shown that the same shit happens in Canada, Germany, the UK,
Sweden  – basically in every country you can think of. 

marauders4evr:

brother-asleep:

tilthat:

TIL of Rosemary Kennedy. Rosemary grew into a rebellious teen so she was given a lobotomy and turned into a vegetable. During the surgery, she was asked to sing “God Bless America”, which the Doctors used to determine how deep they should cut – “when she began to become incoherent, they stopped.”

via ift.tt

You ever read some shit so evil it kinda pumps the brakes on the rest of your day?

Are you fucking ready for this knowledge? To my exasperated followers, give me a break, I haven’t given a good historical rant about her in a few months. Also who the hell uses the word ‘vegetable’ anymore? Yeah, I’m taking over this post. Here we go:

Rosemary Kennedy was JFK’s sister. Joseph Kennedy manipulated his children for years, always wanting them to be the picturesque family to help gain political traction. “Oh, they’re so pretty, oh, they’re so well-behaved, oh, they’re the definition of family ideals” that stuff.

For the most part, the rest of the Kennedy children obliged.

Rosemary?

Rosemary left her boarding school to go on dates.

…Yeah. Yeah, that was it. Rosemary left the boarding school and went on dates. That was her “rebellious nature”. She was a tad bit clumsy, she might have actually had borderline Asperger’s due to her inability to pick up on social cues, and she left her boarding school to go on dates with boys. That last one pissed off Joseph so that, by the time Rosemary was twenty-three (the above cruce post makes it seem like she was a teenager but no, she was twenty-three, I’m not saying this to diminish anything, I’m saying that she was a fully-grown adult and still under her father’s manipulations), he took her to Walter Jackson Freeman without consulting his wife. If you haven’t been privy to any of my rants, Walter Jackson Freeman was a man who used icepicks and knives to cut into people’s heads, chopping off pieces of their brain, a process known as the frontal lobotomy. Icepicks. The things you used to chip ice. Icepicks. Although I’m pretty sure he used a kitchen knife on Rosemary because, you know, that’s so much better. Anywho, not only was she forced into the operation, not only was she forced to sing God Bless America, but she was forced to say The Lord’s Prayer. The. Lord’s. Prayer. Until. She. Couldn’t. Because. They. Paralyzed. Her.

Joseph was so disgusted by her new state (you know, because she was paralyzed) that he sent her to a far-off asylum where she remained for decades. When JFK ran for his presidency and was asked about the whereabouts of his sister, he said that she was away, teaching and/or studying.

Nobody visited Rosemary for decades.

Nobody visited Rosemary for decades.

When her mother finally visited, Rosemary lunged at her in anger and had to be sedated. Her mother’s response? You ready for this? I mean, seriously, are you ready? Like I know what you’re thinking: “Mate, you just went into a rant by memory (yeah, I’m typing this all by memory) about a woman whose brain was hacked up using a butter knife so that she wouldn’t embarrass her family during their political campaign, only for that woman to become paralyzed and institutionalized without visitors for decades, what the fuck can be worse than that?” Seriously though, brace yourselves.

When Rose Kennedy saw her daughter for the first time in decades (after Rosemary was institutionalized as a result of Joseph’s severe medical abuse), when Rose saw her…her first concern…was that she was fat.

Like I said, I wrote this all from memory, but have a bundle of sources confirming everything:

http://people.com/books/untold-story-of-rosemary-kennedy-and-her-disastrous-lobotomy/

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/books/review/rosemary-the-hidden-kennedy-daughter-by-kate-clifford-larson.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3225863/Rose-Kennedy-obsessed-daughter-Rosemary-s-weight-lobotomy.html

sodomymcscurvylegs:

bisexualgambit:

cykelops:

paradisemantis:

cykelops:

64bitwar:

cykelops:

straight people mad at “gays only event” jokes like they dont restrict blood donations, hotels, schools, jobs, and adoption. Zzzzzzzzzz

yeah but that’s to keep blood clean you’re just tryna exclude people to be rude

Straight people aren’t doing any restrictions for blood donations because of your sexuality, they restrict donation based on your participation in anal sex regardless of orientation. That is what they ask you, they don’t ask if you’re gay they ask if you have engaged in or regularly engage in anal sex because it has a higher rate of transferring the kinds of communicable diseases they can’t accept in blood samples. So everyone, not just the gays, who fucks people in the butt is not donating blood.

Literally what the fuck are you talking about?

SO Y’ALL CAN JUST TALK WITHOUT USING LITERALLY FACTS NOW??? THAT’S REALLY COOL ZXDFCGVHBJNK

Anyway here are the real ass facts:

-It is 100% a ban on MSM blood…. Not that “its about all anal sex” bullshit…. That is how it has been since 1985 when the FDA put a ban on anyone that had “participated in MSM sexual contact since 1975″ 

-This regulation was changed to just a 12 month deferral which is still honestly bullshit (this includes long term relationships) Here is what the Current blood donor questionaire looks like

-What does this mean for blood donation? It means 360,000 otherwise eligible donors cannot donate. That is 615,000 pints of blood that could save the lives of 1 million people, unable to donate because of sexual orientation and/or sexual conduct (x)

-The real kicker in this ban is that the Red Cross (the leader in blood donation/blood drive) screens all blood that is donated for infectious diseases before it is admitted to blood banks (x)

-The FDA’s ban on MSM blood is doing off more harm than good. I have friends who have been put into uncomfortable and even dangerous situations because of Blood Drives, friends who have been outed because of people asking for blood donations, and even in it’s broadest sense, the Blood Ban promotes homophobia and serophobia and a deadly combination of the two. 

TL;DR: Before you talk about the blood ban (whether you support it, are against it, whatever) Know what you’re saying because it affects real people in very real ways. 

Imagine living in the year 2018 and thinking that blood donation restrictions on gay men are anything other than outright homophobia. The Straights are WILD!