– The film “Sucker Punch” had a sex scene between a male and female where the female character was in control of her own sexuality.
– The MPAA would only allow it after it was edited to look like the girl wasn’t into it and the guy was taking advantage of her.
– Note that if the sex scene had been kept as originally planned and filmed, then the film would have been given an “R” rating – but with the guy taking advantage it was a PG-13.
– The director didn’t want to send that message so he just cut it completely.
If that doesn’t say something about the media and women/female sexuality then I don’t know what will.
The actress who played said female character, Emily Browning, stated:
“I had a very tame and mild love scene with Jon Hamm. It was like heavy breathing and making out. It was hardly a sex scene… I think that it’s great for this young girl to actually take control of her own sexuality. Well, the MPAA doesn’t like that. They don’t think a girl should ever be in control of her own sexuality because they’re from the Stone Age.
I don’t know what the fuck is going on and I will openly criticize it, happily. So essentially, they got Zack to edit the scene and make it look less like she’s into it. And Zack said he edited it down to the point where it looked like he was taking advantage of her. That’s the only way he could get a PG-13 (rating) and he said, ‘I don’t want to send that message.’ So they cut the scene!
I’m torn. I want an ‘R’ (rating) because we can get a lot of cool scenes into it, but then I like the idea of younger girls being able to see it.”
Actually there’s a great documentary from about ten years ago called ‘This Film Is Not Yet Rated’ and they go into depth about the strangeness and the sexism surrounding the MPAA, in an interview for the documentary, the director of the LGBT film, ‘But I’m A Cheerleader’ complains that her was slapped with an NC-17 (which means no one under 17 can see the film, period) initially partially because of a scene where the main character is masturbating over her clothes, but ‘American Pie’ was already rated R (meaning anyone under 17 can see it if accompanied by someone of age) and the freaking TRAILERS showed the main character masturbating into an apple pie with his pants and underwear clearly between his ankles. There’s a later segment where they show multiple side by side comparisons of scenes of masturbating characters in films rated R vs rated NC-17, and only consistent difference was that R films featured men getting off and the NC-17 ones showed women doing the same. Similar angles, similar elements surrounding each scene, but one was a woman so NC-17!
Another great bit from the documentary, was that multiple films were slapped with NC-17 because they had sex scenes where a woman’s face was shown while she orgasmed, and the MPAA insisted these scenes were shown too long and were therefore “offensive.” You can’t make this shit up people
Okay so here’s the thing. I love dogs. Dogs are amazing wonderful creatures. But we have to stop acting like dogs are perfect, or safe to be around every one and every thing.
I just watched a gif of a man walking his dog when they came upon kittens. The dog immediately lunged – only to have the mother cat barrel in and scare the dog off. I was furious, because the owner sat and watched as his dog lunged at a kitten – and had to be beaten off of it by its mother.
In the comments people were discussing it, saying “That dog just wanted to play! He wasn’t going to actually *hurt* the kitten!”
And I’d really like us to stop this.
“He just wants to say hi,”
“he’s just trying to play”
are two phrases commonly said by people who do not understand their dogs behavior, and make excuses for them.
That dog did not want to play. When dogs want to play, they change their body language and start using different behavior – most obviously the play bow. They sniff first, and get introductions out of the way. If your dog lunges for something the moment they set its eyes on it – they do not want to play. Just imagine, if you were a kid who had never met someone before and they just straight up attacked you. That would be different from someone walking up and saying “hey, do you wanna play/wrestle?”
And here’s the thing. There’s nothing wrong with that dog, it just should not be allowed around animals smaller than it. Cats, hamsters, rabbits, hedgehogs, even toy breeds of dogs, I wouldn’t consider safe. And thats OK! You can have a perfectly happy life with your dog never harming any animals as long as you know this and make sure to pay attention. But if that dog harms a kitten or other small animal, I blame the owner, who should have known better.
We have to be responsible owners and know our dogs. And as people, we need to stop making excuses for other animals and instead do our best to make sure everyone in the situation is safe, not just the dog who “just wants to play” or “was just trying to say hi”, while barreling straight for something.
Just because you love your dog doesn’t mean its not aggressive in specific situations. Doesn’t mean its safe for all to be around. Doesn’t mean its incapable of fault.
so it starts with predatory recruitment. military recruiters visit high schools and sometimes even middle schools to normalize the idea that joining the military is no different from going to college. almost none of those kids can actually join, but they try to sell them on it anyway with talk of how cool it’ll be and what a badass it’ll turn you into, and stuff like that. the army even has even put out three T-rated video games about army life since 2007, the most recent in 2015.
it gets even more intense in high school, when they start contacting kids directly. when you take the SAT and ACT, your information automatically gets sent to recruiters and they start sending you recruitment literature that blends in really well with the letters you’re getting from colleges suggesting you apply.
then, once people are old enough to actually join up, the recruitment pitch shifts to more tangible offers with little to no intention of ever following through. one of the biggest selling points is the G.I. Bill, but it comes with a whole host of terms and conditions that no one ever mentions, which often results in the benefits being mostly (or even completely) unusable for a lot of people, with just under half of servicemembers ending up using any of it at all.
they also recruit heavily based on the idea that your time in the military will translate into work experience and make it easier to find a job when you get out, but most military equivalents to civilian jobs deal with highly specialized equipment that makes the experience irrelevant, and you don’t get any certifications or equivalencies.
another big draw is Tricare, which is, quite simply, the best insurance in the world. What they don’t tell you is that your dependents get a shitty knockoff, and you also get kicked over to that shitty knockoff as soon as they determine that whatever’s wrong means you won’t be returning to active duty. they want to protect their investment as long as it can fight for them, but beyond that, you can go fuck yourself. and that’s to say nothing of the nightmare that is the VA, which is infamous for multiple-month wait times for even basic care, which is very often poor quality when you eventually do get it.
once you’ve actually joined, a few things happen that the recruiter never mentioned. first and foremost, you’ve entered into a contract with the united states government, which means that any breach of that contract is a federal felony. in other words, everything in this post from here on out is 100% completely and totally unavoidable without utterly fucking up your life.
the second is that you are now subject to two entire sets of laws that, most likely, you had no idea existed until just now. lots of those laws are standard federal law that only applies to military personnel (title 10, mostly), but the rest are called the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). a lot of the ucmj is pretty straightforward stuff that you’d expect, like “it’s a crime to disobey orders” (Article 92) and the like, but there’s a ton of general conduct laws as well. for example Article 88 – Contempt Toward Officials, which says:
Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
in other words, if you’re an officer it is literally a crime to criticize the government, even in private and even if you’re not in uniform. more generally, though, all military personnel have their political activity severely restricted by a combination of articles 10, 2, and 18 of us code, DOD directives, and military regulations. from this article, here’s a list of some things that you’re not allowed to do if you’re in the military:
Participate in partisan political fundraising activities, rallies, conventions (including making speeches in the course thereof), management of campaigns, or debates, either on one’s own behalf or on that of another, without respect to uniform or inference or appearance of official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement. Participation includes more than mere attendance as a spectator.
Use official authority or influence to interfere with an election, affect the course or outcome of an election, solicit votes for a particular candidate or issue, or require or solicit political contributions from others.
Allow or cause to be published partisan political articles, letters, or endorsements signed or written by the member that solicits votes for or against a partisan political party, candidate, or cause. However, letters to the editor are allowed.
Serve in any official capacity with or be listed as a sponsor of a partisan political club.
Speak before a partisan political gathering, including any gathering that promotes a partisan political party, candidate, or cause.
Participate in any radio, television, or other program or group discussion as an advocate for or against a partisan political party, candidate, or cause.
Conduct a political opinion survey under the auspices of a partisan political club or group or distribute partisan political literature.
Perform clerical or other duties for a partisan political committee or candidate during a campaign, on an election day, or after an election day during the process of closing out a campaign.
Solicit or otherwise engage in fundraising activities in Federal offices or facilities, including military reservations, for any political cause or candidate.
March or ride in a partisan political parade.
Display a large political sign, banner, or poster (as distinguished from a bumper sticker) on a private vehicle.
Display a partisan political sign, poster, banner, or similar device visible to the public at one’s residence on a military installation, even if that residence is part of a privatized housing development.
Participate in any organized effort to provide voters with transportation to the polls if the effort is organized by or associated with a partisan political party, cause, or candidate.
Sell tickets for or otherwise actively promote partisan political dinners and similar fundraising events.
Attend partisan political events as an official representative of the Armed Forces, except as a member of a joint Armed Forces color guard at the opening ceremonies of the national conventions of the Republican, Democratic, or other political parties recognized by the Federal Elections Committee or as otherwise authorized by the Secretary concerned.
Make a campaign contribution to, or receive or solicit (on one’s own behalf) a campaign contribution from, any other member of the Armed Forces on active duty.
Any activity that may be reasonably viewed as directly or indirectly associating the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security (in the case of the Coast Guard) or any component of these Departments with a partisan political activity or is otherwise contrary to the spirit and intention of this Directive shall be avoided.
most of that list comes from DoD Directive 1344.10 (full text here) and while there’s plenty of stuff you can do, politically, but almost all of it requires you to be either anonymous or passive about it. so now it’s illegal for you to do anything substantial toward changing policy in any way, and possibly also to even so much as complain about the president or call congress incompetent.
so now that you’ve been properly restricted (and remember, the only way out of this without a felony is with a DD214 (discharge paperwork)) you’re put to work. on the surface, it seems like any other job, but there’s subtle differences. for one thing, literally every person who’s gotten more raises than you is your boss and you have to do whatever they tell you unless it conflicts with what someone who’s gotten even more raises than them already told you to do.
your orders can also be literally anything that’s not illegal. if your boss at starbucks tells you to always stand on one foot while you work the register, you might do it for like an hour or two, but then you’d stop bothering and if your boss got upset about it then that would be unreasonable. if your CO tells you to always say the pledge of allegiance in Farsi, then it’s your responsibility to learn how to say it in Farsi and always do so until that CO or someone above them give you permission to say it in english again, and if you don’t, that’s a crime.
what that means is that if you get assigned to recruitment duty, you can and will be ordered to look and sound excited about being in the military as you tell 13 year olds they should join up after high school, and you will legally have to do it.
and all of this is without even mentioning the missions. combat, and the act of killing another human being, are traumatizing even in the most ideal of situations. if someone breaks into your home to attack you and you push them back and something heavy falls on them and kills them, that’s still a traumatic experience for you. even legitimate wars for good reasons against enemies that really do need to be stopped are horrifying experiences for everyone involved.
but when the war is bullshit and most of the casualties are civilians and you know all this and aren’t even allowed to say anything about it, let alone do anything about it? that combines with combat to royally fuck a person up.
this is the part where everyone who’s read this far gets ready to jump down my throat about how the people being bombed are the real victims and not the people dropping the bombs, so let me remind you that this anon was in response to a post i made that started with the words “The US Military is […] evil” and that im not in any way trying to say that the troops get the worst of it, just that they are being used and abused by the system.
because remember, those troops have been groomed to be recruited since they were five years old and asked their parents why they got veterans day off from kindergarten, and have been pursued more and more actively all the way up through high school. the military lured them in, is chewing them up, and will spit them out when it’s done with them without giving one single fuck about them.
and no matter how you cut it, that describes a victim.
Important post. I’m reliably told that security clearances are also a gilded cage – to the extent that sometimes I’ve wondered whether Trump is picking people who can’t be cleared on purpose so they won’t be as thoroughly monitored.
Yeah, recruitment campaigns are actively aimed at kids from poor communities. Which often means disproportionately communities of color. They prey on the people that don’t have a hope for college or networking or any sort of leg into a career. They tell impoverished kids that the military is a future, it is a career, it’s on the go training with good pay and requires no experience. And if they ended up not liking it? Well now they have all this experience and the GI bill to fall back on when they’ve served out their contract, so win-win, right?
When you’re other option is a life of wage slave Hell, it’s a proposition even those with the most rigorous moral opposition have a hard time saying no to. Much like prison industrial system, the military industry is built on the backs of this country’s desperate and disenfranchised.
Update on That Guy. I think his 13 gallon with 2 clowns and a damsel and a goby and margarita snails might have crashed??
He deleted all posts about it and has completely redone the tank??
Like I feel bad for the fish but It looks like he’s just doing corals this time so I’m happy about that. Hopefully he’s learned his lesson
Actually I think this is a different tank
still doesn’t explain why he deleted everything and also stopped commenting on stuff that i say
I hope he’s planning a ton more live rock, saltwater tanks (especially small ones) need lots of rockwork that’s already colonized or can easily be colonized by assorted bacteria. You want, minimum, a half pound of rock per gallon of water.
I can’t. Every single sentence in this could not be more wrong if the author deliberately set out to be the wrongest person in wrongville. I just.
I don’t care what else might be useful in this book, if your introduction is as fundamentally incorrect as this, the reliability of everything else you’ve ever said and that your editor has ever touched is immediately thrown into question.
I… that is… such bullshit. Wool and silk are arguably the easiest fibers to dye. Cotton’s a stone bitch to color. (Let’s not even get into ‘change clothes irregularly’, that’s bullshit too.)
I know, right?? Protein fibres suck up dye like no-one’s business; it’s cellulose that hates it.
And as for the others… linen bedsheets, bitch. And linen and silk woven so finely as to be practically transparent. And I’d like to take my records of inventories with 100+ linen shifts for one person, because of multiple-changes-per-day, and shove them up his grant.
It’s like he assumes that without cotton we also wouldn’t have, like, modern inventions and techniques? “Wool is hard to clean” I mean yeah you have to use Woolite on the gentle cycle and air dry but that’s not that much harder than using normal detergent
wool being excellent to dye is its other great selling poin besides warmth- which is why ‘black sheep’ became a derogatory term, as black wool could not be dyed and thus was worth less as it would only ever be dark grey
historical perspective on the fabric alternate reality he proposes- linen was durable but not easy to dye, but you largely didnt care as it was undergarments or bedsheets where you wont be publicly showing off the linens- who other then nobility cares if their bedsheets are vibrantly colored? the reason you wore linen undergarments is that they breathe and protect you from any itchyness (wool that had been properly treated by a fuller {one of the worst jobs in history} would not have been very itchy either) of thick wool clothings and to keep you from getting sweaty or stinky, not to show off your bright red skivvies. linen is still freaking awesome, its comfortable, durable, breathes. i wish i had linen undies instead of cotton ones that get stretched out and threadbare after a few months. i wish i had linen and wool shirt options instead of only paper thin cotton shirts
the statement that sheep would require all the land ever- the deal with livestock through human history is that not all land is created equal, and livestock is how you used the areas that were sub-par. the fertile land you farmed crops, but there is far far more land thats unsuited for vegetables but grows grass just fine, as we cant eat the grass we set out animals like cows and sheep that CAN eat the grass and let them go wild chewin their cud and poopin on the ground while the humans are busy ploughing and harvesting on the more valuable land; allowing the ungulates to convert that grass into usable products like wool, cheese, meat, leather. there’s reasons some areas are covered with sheep and cows EVEN TODAY- either its not usable as croplands or the population nearby is so low that you couldn’t effectively organize labor to exploit farming. new zealand and australia have absurd numbers of sheep for this reason- the land is either too sparse, hilly, or remote, but wool can be exported for profit just fine. however areas like iowa and california have very few sheep as the land is better suited for grain and seasonal vegetables and using it for grazing would be less effective
further the statement that wool and linen are more labor intensive then cotton- theres a reason the cotton industry historically relied on slavery when wool and linen were historically a cottage industry people did in their spare time while being a full time farmer. you let a sheep out on the lawn to do its own thing, it grows the wool, once a year you shave it and spin it into thread- it produces more sheep and tasty mutton as well. linnen is made from flax plants, which are harvested with a sickle and then left in some water to rot for a week, split open, and the fibers inside spun into thread- teams up well with beekeeping as flax produces huge fields of beautiful flowers. in both the hard work is done by animals and a pond, not human hands. cotton however required you to not only plant it but spend time to pick individual bolls off of the flowering buds after it went to seed in the summer sun one at a time instead of mowing with a scythe like flax in an afternoon, which then had to have someone pick all the seeds out of each boll individually before spinning, theres no side product and it depletes the soil like a sonovabitch
pictured- super easy, giving a sheep a haircut would be so much worse right? im sure the man on a horse with a whip and gun is there to make sure everyone is having a good time
and finally the primary dumb part of the highlighted segment- the
assumption that if cotton didnt exist you would sleep on a pile of
straw. what? is this talking today or talking medieval times again? flipping NEOLITHIC folks were bright enough to lay a blanket on top of their straw pile before they took a nap on it. even back
when straw beds were common you didnt lay on the straw, the straw was a
filling for a leather or canvas bag so that you didnt get poked, and even then chances are pretty good you stuffed your bed with
feathers because if theres something an agrarian society has more then
enough of its poultry. if you are talking today i challenge you to go to
a matress store and find a cotton filled bed- theyre filled with
springs or foam, and for all points and purposes the foam is just a high
tech version of straw that doesn’t rot. that, and any modern mattress
is synthetic fiber to combat body odor and sweat absorption
this is not how beds work
these pre-cotton folk seem to be pretty comfortable, even if they hadnt invented perspective yet. as there is no crown im pretty sure they werent importing their fabrics from india or egypt
oh, look, pre-cotton comfortable underwear, soft sheets, and a bed that looks excessively comfortable with no straw or furs in sight
a world without cotton isnt a world without soap either jackass
My brother saved this document and everytime he gets angry at our neighbours for being loud he prints it to their wireless printer and you can hear the wife shout “Why the fuck would you print this AGAIN?!” to her son.
every time we serve chicken at work i think of this post
1. If you were wondering, you can type the numbers in the works cited into google and they appear to be medical journal articles about using medical imaging to detect and diagnose a rare form of Gastritis.
2. Please enjoy the offical powerpoint presentation of this paper at an academic conference by the original author, complete with Q&A:
THIS IS GOLD
oh m god please watch the video it’s some of the most contagious laughter on the planet
When I saw this cross my dash tonight, I smiled and thought “yess, the chicken chicken chicken post, I get to reblog it again and inflict it on all of the people that have followed me since last time”, and then I scrolled down more and to my utter delight there was A VIDEO, needless to say my night has been made
I HAVE NOT SEEN THE CHICKEN VIDEO IN TEN DAMN YEARS HOLY SHIT
STILL FUNNY
The bell
The last question
The woman howling in laughter 90% of the time
It’s all beautiful
It’s all
So beautiful
I love that he was absolutely 100% prepared for a question in chickenese.
BettSplendens Tumblr Evac 