“I’ve made it very clear that even though i’m born female in this society that I don’t go to or perform in any space that is titled ‘women born women only.’ I am very happy to go to a space that says ‘all women welcome’ because then it is drawing like a magnet all those who self identify, who want to be in women’s spaces, and I feel like all people who are oppressed or discriminated against in this society have a right to get together y’know whether that be a third world caucus or it be a women’s dance, whatever it is. But, I think that when you begin to set a policy that defines who’s gonna be a women, and police the boundaries of it, then it’s not only a threat to everyone who doesn’t fit that, y’know ‘gee her feet are kind of big, her voice is kinda low, look at that beard growth, what do you think about that one’ it sets up a unhealthy atmosphere. Who’s pure enough to decide who’s woman enough? And I think also that it reverts back to a biological definition of women, which, biological determinism, it’s always been the club used against women! You can’t suddenly lift that up as a liberating weapon. I think that that kind of definition ‘women born women, that we’re all women, that we have identical experiences, it’s innate,’ is a setback to the women’s movement. I have always said that the only time I’d go into a space that had been ‘women born women only’ is when I could go together with my transexual sisters”
— Leslie Feinberg, when asked about Mich Fest in this interview
honestly one of my favourite under utilized things in the magical girl genre are “in action” transformations seen from the outside
these are so cool to me!!!
I JUST REALIZED I FORGOT ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVOURITE EXAMPLES:
i had a friend who called these “drive through henshins” and i thought that was the coolest term
And this is why I get mad when i see people mocking Henshin Sequences regarding how long they last and why don’t the bad guys just shoot them while they’re twirling and such bah blah blah.
So sometimes I see bros on the internet talk about how women couldn’t have worn armor historically, because it was too heavy for them.
Here is a picture of me wearing armor when I was a nerdy 14-year-old girl who was about 5 feet tall and weighed less than 95 pounds. I sometimes wore it for 6 hours straight in summer heat, and I would run and turn summersaults in it for fun.
And before you start asking: this was authentic full steel plate with a padded arming doublet underneath. It weighed so much that I couldn’t carry the plastic tub it was stored in on my own. It was heavy. But once I was wearing it I just felt like I was being hugged or wrapped up in a really heavy blanket. That’s how armor works. The whole point is that the weight is distributed across your whole body, and your whole body can lift a huge amount. It has nothing to do with how strong you are or how much you can bench.
So if you think women are too weak to wear armor, you are wrong on so many levels. It does not even matter if you believe in your little misogynistic heart that all women are defined by their physical inferiority when compared to men, because you are also just wrong about how armor works. Even skinny teen girls can wear armor just fine. Everyone can wear armor.
Similar concept is firefighting turnout gear. It’s heavy before you add the SCBA/Scott pack. But once it’s on and the weight is evenly distributed then it’s easier to move around in.
monster factory gave us many iconic moments but one of the most underappreciated ones is the time griffin searched for his family on the sims 4 character database.
This is apparently the Brooke Swan Car. I struggled to find a primary source to explain it, but the Vintage and Classic Car Club of India and this article in the Telegraph seem pretty confident that it is an actual object and not a fevered dream, and they agree that the swan head had glowing eyes and could spurt hot water from its beak, in order to clear people away from the streets ahead of the car.
The Vintage and Classic Car Club of India has a passage that powerfully evokes the emotions of this car more effectively than I ever could:
The amber lighiting of the car, glowed dissonantly in the dark, coupling
the level of un-comfortableness with the multi-note Gabriel exhaust
horn and an hot water spray in the swan’s beak that enabled the
chauffeur to clear passage through Calcutta’s crowded streets.
And the Telegraph adds an extra dollop of detail:
It was in the fashionable Maidan Park, where Calcutta’s elite promenaded
in their carriages and cars every afternoon, that Scotty displayed the
Swan Car’s most outrageous feature. A dump valve inside the car dropped
splats of whitewash on to the road from the Swan’s rear end – just to
make it more lifelike.
Apparently a keyboard in the back allowed the owner to “play chords and bugle calls” on the horn. TOOT TOOT MOTHERFUCKERS.
You’ll know it’s Mad Max time when I come tooling and screaming my way towards your home in this car, wreathed in blasts of steam, menacingly honking “In the Hall of the Mountain King” out of a rubber horn concealed in a carved swan head, and artistically shitting paint everywhere. I’ll peel to a halt in front of you and say “Can you play the keyboard” in a sexy way, possibly looking over my cool aviator sunglasses. It doesn’t matter if you say “yes” or “no,” I’ll just look at you approvingly and say, “Get in.” You’ll leave your life behind and climb in and just smash the keyboard in a cacophony of magnificent toots, while we drive off through the apocalypse and into the better world.
Exodus from the blue hellsite 