March 2012
useful link: clear out your google history →
arduinna.dreamwidth.org
Tomorrow google’s going to make your data a whole lot more public. This post will help you take back some of that privacy. :|
“On Saturday, February 18, 2012, the Frederick Douglass Foundation of New York presented the first Spirit of Freedom award to Jada Williams, a 13-year old city of Rochester student. Miss Williams wrote an essay on her impressions of Frederick Douglass’ first autobiography the Narrative of the Life. This was part of an essay contest, but her essay was never entered. It offended her teachers so much that, after harassment from teachers and school administrators at School #3, Miss Williams was forced to leave the school. We at the Frederick Douglass Foundation honored her because her essay actually demonstrates that she understood the autobiography, even though it might seem a bit esoteric to most 13-year olds. In her essay, she quotes part of the scene where Douglass’ slave master catches his wife teaching then slave Frederick to read. During a speech about how he would be useless as a slave if he were able to read, Mr. Auld, the slave master, castigated his wife. Miss Williams quoted Douglass quoting Mr. Auld: “If you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there will be no keeping him. It will forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.” Miss Williams personalized this to her own situation. She reflected on how the “white teachers” do not have enough control of the classroom to successfully teach the minority students in Rochester. While she herself is more literate than most, due to her own perseverance and diligence, she sees the fact that so many of the other “so-called ‘unteachable’” students aren’t learning to read as a form of modern-day slavery. Their illiteracy holds them back in society. Her call to action was then in her summary: “A grand price was paid in order for us to be where we are today; but in my mind we should be a lot further, so again I encourage the white teachers to instruct and I encourage my people to not just be a student, but become a learner.” This offended her English teacher so much…”
Wow.
Read and reblog!!
“this offended her English teacher so much that the teacher copied the essay for other teachers and for the Principal. After that, Miss Williams’ mother and father started receiving phone calls from numerous teachers, all claiming that their daughter is “angry.” Miss Williams, mostly a straight-A student, started receiving very low grades, and she was kicked out of class for laughing and threatened with in-school suspension.
There were several meetings with teachers and administrators, but all failed to answer Miss Williams’ mother’s questions. The teachers refused to show her the tests and work that she had supposedly performed so poorly on. Instead, the teachers and administrators branded her a problem. Unable to take anymore of the persecution, they pulled her from School #3. Wanting to try another school, they were quickly informed that that school was filled and told to try “this school.” During her first day at this new school, she witnessed four fights, and other students asked her if she was put here because she fights too much. Long story short, they took an exceptional student, with the radical idea that kids should learn to read, and put her in a school of throwaway students who are even more unmanageable than the average student in her previous school. To protect their daughter, her parents have had to remove her from school, and her mother has had to quit her job so she can take care of Miss Williams. To date, the administrators of School #3 have refused to release her records, even though she no longer attends the school, and they have repeatedly given her mother the run around. We at the Frederick Douglass Foundation have contacted school administrators in regards to this situation and have also been told to hit the pavement.
That’s what we intend to do. If this school will sacrifice the welfare of an above-average student whose essay, that they asked her to write, they find offensive, we intend to make everyone aware of this monstrous injustice. The school has a job, and it is not doing it. We would like as many folks as possible to call the Principal of School #3 and complain about this injustice. Her name is Miss Connie Wehner, and she can be reached at (585) 454-3525. This treatment of Jada Williams cannot stand.
See Video of Jada reading her Essay Here
Read Related Blog posts Here, Here and Here”——-
wow wow wow i am just
omfg
wow
this country. i cant anymore.
This just fucking breaks my heart. And while I don’t question similar things happen in other schools, this level of fuckery is something that would only happen in upstate NY.
They have almost zero oversight in those upstate schools and aren’t bound by a lot of the same shit that city schools are caught up with. My mom works North of the city, but not in upstate upstate, and even there it’s a fucking mess.
Because apparently this needs to be said again
Dear NTs/allistics:
Please please please please please please PLEASE stop painting our lives as pity parties solely because we’re autistic. The state of being autistic in and of itself doesn’t warrant pity. Trust us, we’re not miserable because we’re autistic.
The reason why anxiety and depression rates are so high for people on the spectrum, and the reason I so constantly bemoan how life can be pretty tough for us, is because of how our peers in school and during adulthood - our neurotypical peers - treat us as outsiders; as people different from them. This can some in a lot of forms, from exclusion and ostracization, to bullying and harassment, and, yes, to treating them as objects of pity rather than people.
Want to make an autistic person happy? Get to know them and accept them for who they are and quit assuming shit. Don’t assume we’re ~sad and lonely~ or that we’re ~closer to God~ or any of that stereotypical crap until you get to know us. That girl you met in the group home may not be sad or lonely at all, and more likely than not, your autistic little brother is a regular kid who just wants to do his own thing and eat popsicles or whatever it is little kids do. Think more about how to change the attitudes of people around us than how to change us, because trust us, we have no choice but to be changed to some degree, and you guys need to pick up the slack a bit, okay?
I’m just going to reblog this one, too. <3
Dear people who think autism should be cured.
I don’t want to be ‘cured’. Ever. I am fine as I am. Yes, my autism causes me a fuckton of problems. It really does. I am bullied, I am taken advantage of, people try and hug me if I go non-verbal, I am stared at if I don’t suppress the urge to stim and walk on tiptoes… it makes my life incredibly hard. Actually, that’s not right. It’s not really the autism that causes the bulk of the problems. It’s allistic people and the way they react.
I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t autistic. It’s an intrinsic part of who I am and how I live. And trying to ‘cure’ us all or find a genetic cause to breed us out of existence? That’s just eugenics and it’s fucking scary. Let us live. Sure, those who need help to make THEIR lives easier should get all the help they can. But only for their benefit. Not so allistic people feel more comfortable around them.
Sincerely,
An actual autistic person.
^^ So much this.
Cosigned.
“when people get mad at other people saying that something they did was racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever
I don’t get it
it’s like
If you were hanging out with your friend and your friend turns to you and says “hey I don’t know if you noticed but you just stepped on my foot, can you please stop”, I am guessing most people would say “oh man, I’m sorry” and maybe watch where they were walking a little better
You probably would NOT:
yell at your friend for accusing you of stepping on their foot
deny that you had stepped on your friend’s foot
argue with your friend over how you step on everyone’s feet equally, so it shouldn’t matter
insist that you didn’t step on their foot that hard, so it couldn’t have hurt them
get offended over the implication that the way you walk is wrong
say “okay, but what about MY foot?”
step on your friend’s foot more to show how it isn’t even a big deal and nobody cares about people stepping on each other’s feet anymore
reference that one time when your friend stepped on YOUR foot and you didn’t complain
tell them you didn’t mean to do it, so you’re not responsible for stepping on their foot
deny that your friend has a foot
and I mean sometimes the person isn’t even a friend or someone you know but that doesn’t matter, don’t fucking step on people” —tooth&nail: (via wewantrevolutiongirlstylenow)
I don’t get it
it’s like
If you were hanging out with your friend and your friend turns to you and says “hey I don’t know if you noticed but you just stepped on my foot, can you please stop”, I am guessing most people would say “oh man, I’m sorry” and maybe watch where they were walking a little better
You probably would NOT:
yell at your friend for accusing you of stepping on their foot
deny that you had stepped on your friend’s foot
argue with your friend over how you step on everyone’s feet equally, so it shouldn’t matter
insist that you didn’t step on their foot that hard, so it couldn’t have hurt them
get offended over the implication that the way you walk is wrong
say “okay, but what about MY foot?”
step on your friend’s foot more to show how it isn’t even a big deal and nobody cares about people stepping on each other’s feet anymore
reference that one time when your friend stepped on YOUR foot and you didn’t complain
tell them you didn’t mean to do it, so you’re not responsible for stepping on their foot
deny that your friend has a foot
and I mean sometimes the person isn’t even a friend or someone you know but that doesn’t matter, don’t fucking step on people” —tooth&nail: (via wewantrevolutiongirlstylenow)
February 2012
Guide to rape apologists
**Trigger Warning** Rape apologists, rape naysayers, rape deniers
Mr. What About The Men
“The real problem here is all these false rape accusations that are destroying our society! 90 million men are falsely accused of rape every second! A woman just has to sort of mumble a word starting with ‘r’ and a man instantly gets a life sentence! There are no instances on record of a woman actually being raped!”
Ms. Tough Girl
“If women would learn martial arts—70-year-olds and women with disabilities can do this if they put their minds to it, darnit—and carry weapons everywhere, no one would ever get raped! All you have to do is be ready to threaten your own friends and lovers with lethal force at any moment, any anyone who can’t do that must be weak or something.”
Mr. Model Victims Only Please
“The victim was no angel herself. If you look at her record, she’s been arrested several times, she’s a single mother, and she’s living on welfare. So it’s not like she was some innocent little virgin beforehand. None of this makes it right, but I’m just saying, let’s not overreact like a good woman got ruined.”
Ms. Fashion Police
“Did you hear what she was wearing? I’m sorry but that’s just not common sense. If you go out looking like a piece of meat, you have to expect you’ll get treated like a piece of meat.”
Mr. I’m Not Blaming Her But It’s Her Fault
“Rape is never the victim’s fault, of course. But I just want people to admit that she has some responsibility. That she maybe played a part in it. That in an alternate universe where she’d done things differently and she lived in a steel Battlemech wearing a chastity belt, she wouldn’t have gotten raped, and she did make the choice to not use a Battlemech. I just need people to acknowledge that.”
Ms. Couples Therapy
“I dunno, seems to me like they both made mistakes. Maybe he just wasn’t reading her signals, or maybe she wasn’t communicating clearly to him. A lot can get caught up in an emotional moment like that and I bet they both feel really bad right now.”
Mr. Offensive And/Or Baffling Metaphor
“Look, if you walk down a dark alley with a wallet stuffed full of money, sure it’s still a crime when you get mugged, but what if the mugger is just trying to feed his family because he was laid off by an evil solicitor and the ghost showed him a lone crutch leaning in the corner?”
Ms. CSI
“If you put the pieces together, her story just doesn’t wash. She claims that he ripped her pants off, but her pants have a button fly. Ha! And she waited a whole forty minutes after the supposed rape to call the police—who would do that?”
Mr. Troll
“lol bitch deserved it loooollll”
Ms. You Don’t Just Get To Decide Whether You Consent
“She was seen earlier in the night drinking with this guy, talking to him, and even making out with him! And then she went up to his apartment! What did she think would happen? No one ever goes to a guy’s apartment unless they’re consenting to every sex act he could possibly want.”
Mr. How Do I Not Rape Someone It Is So Difficult
“I just don’t understand how to tell if someone is ‘consenting’ or not. What if she secretly decides she doesn’t like it—am I a rapist then? What if she changes her mind midway through? Or afterwards? It’s impossible to know what women want, so how am I supposed to know if they want to have sex with me or not?”
Ms. Traditional Values
“You know, back when women dressed modestly and simply didn’t go out drinking with strangers or going home with people they’d just met, this sort of thing didn’t happen.”
Mr. This Wouldn’t Happen If Women Would Just Fuck Me Already
“This sort of thing is inevitable when women constantly act as gatekeepers and doom beta males to a life of frustration and loneliness. Of course rape is horrible, but the pent-up rage felt by men cast aside just because they weren’t billionaire underwear models has to express itself somehow.”
Ms. Avoid The R-Word
“Wow, that is just not cool. Having sex under those circumstances—I mean, treating a girl like that—you know, being inappropriate with her—is a totally insensitive and downright mean thing to do.”(Source: the Pervocracy)
dear parents of people with autism
the moment you decide to ignore a callout about your ableism because autistic voices aren’t as important as non-autistic voices in the cause of autism awareness, you are no longer advocating for people with special needs.
at all.
