Conceding to Kismet

if there is one thing radicals/progressives/liberals have failed to get right in the new age

navigatethestream:

its the notion of boycotts

you wanna know why the bus boycotts of the civil rights movement were so successful?

because an alternative black run transportation system was created for those who couldn’t walk to work or whatever they had to go

they didn’t just tell people “oh the bus enforces racist policies so don’t take it and FUCK if you can’t get to work on time or where you need to be!” 

they said “hey you’re paying to get on the bus and not even being given a seat let alone being ejected if a white passenger needs your seat. here’s a potentially better alternative where you pay to sit down and get to where you need to go” 

all this “boycott Target, Walmart, Monsanto owned companies” comes from a notion of boycott located in the politic of privileged white people

and that’s why they are largely unsuccessful

its why Obama just gave Monsanto the green light to commit even more fuckery to your food

its the reason why cooperation are considered people

its the reason why Walmart is allowed to usurp safety and labor regulations in their factories, and underpay their American workers

because you say “don’t spend your money there” and that’s the end of the story 

you expect people to locate their survival in a politic of “abstaining from unethical choices”

and then from there those unethical choices are somehow supposed to magically disappear. when really only a small percentage of people are able to boycott so many things

there wouldn’t be a movement located around the “99%” if 99% of people could really afford to stop shopping at the unethical places and stop buying the unethical brands

good luck with your hocus pocus activist logic 

(via eshusplayground)

nextyearsgirl:

“Agree to disagree” is white guy speak for “I understand you have an opinion but unfortunately, me.”

(via eshusplayground)

Why Do Men Keep Putting Me in the Girlfriend-Zone?

secretarysbreakroom:

literaryreference:

You know how it is, right, ladies? You know a guy for a while. You hang out with him. You do fun things with him—play video games, watch movies, go hiking, go to concerts. You invite him to your parties. You listen to his problems. You do all this because you think he wants to be your friend.

But then, then comes the fateful moment where you find out that all this time, he’s only seen you as a potential girlfriend. And then if you turn him down, he may never speak to you again. This has happened to me time after time: I hit it off with a guy, and, for all that I’ve been burned in the past, I start to think that this one might actually care about me as a person. And then he asks me on a date.

I tell him how much I enjoy his company, how much I value his friendship. I tell him that I really want to be his friend and to continue hanging out with him and talking about our favorite books or exploring new restaurants or making fun of avant-garde theatre productions. But he rejects me. He doesn’t answer my calls or e-mails; if we’d been making plans to do something before this fateful incident, these plans mysteriously fail to materialize. (This is why I never did get around to seeing the Hunger Games movie. Not to name any names, but thanks a lot, Tom.) Later, when I run into him at social events, our conversations are awkward and lukewarm. This is because the moment we met, he put me in the girlfriend-zone, and now he can’t see me as friend material.

I must say that I find this really unfair. I mean, I’m a nice girl. I have a lot to offer as a friend, like not being a douchebag and stuff. But males just don’t want to be friends with nice girls like me. They can’t help it, I guess; it’s just how they’re wired, biologically. Evolution conditioned our male hominid ancestors to seek nice girls as mates and form friendship bonds only with the other dudes that they hunted mammoths with. It’s true—I know this because I studied hominids in my fifth-grade science class.

So what’s the answer? Should I take up mammoth-hunting in an attempt to appeal to the friendship centers of men’s primal lizardbrains? Should I keep making guy “friends” and then prevent them from making a move on me by subtly undermining their self-confidence? Should I just give up on those manipulative, game-playing, two-faced bastards once and for all? I don’t know. I mean, I’d really like to have a true friendship with a guy someday, but it’s so hard to trust and respect them when they never say what they mean—and you never know when you might be relegated to the girlfriend-zone.

Lawd, all kinds of yes to this!

(via eshusplayground)

News flash: Touching/knowing/being within 50 feet of a Black person doesn’t make the shit you did not racist.

(Source: sourcedumal, via eshusplayground)