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Because when I was 13 years old, I was sent home for my tank top straps being a little too thin, but a boy could wear a Cool Story babe, Go Make Me A Sandwich shirt and not be looked at twice. Because when I was 17 and I told a guy “No” and the next day the word tease was painted on my locker. Because when I was 18 and just wanted to be friends, I was a bitch. Because I feel the need to say “I have a boyfriend” instead of “No” because guys respect other men more than they would ever respect me. Because society screams “don’t get raped” instead of “don’t rape” Because I am scared to walk alone at 10 PM Because being beautiful is the most important thing I’ll ever do. Because when I wear my favorite skirt “I’m asking for it” Because the song Blurred Lines exists Because no means no no matter how you fucking spin it Because a girl was drugged and raped with a beer bottle, and the boys who did it are out on bail. Because I owe you nothing Because pepper spray is a gift I receive yearly. Because I am asked if I have a boyfriend more than I am asked about my mental health Because my clothes say more about my consent then my mouth does. Because the wage gap exists Because “not all men are like that” is said way too often ENOUGH ARE Because I feel the need to say “I’m not a feminist but…” Because I’m writing this fucking piece

When you ask why I’m angry? (via brennanat)

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What is Television? Pt. 2

What is television? According to Google, television is “a system for transmitting visual images and sound that are reproduced on screens, chiefly used to broadcast programs for entertainment, information, and education,” all of which are correct, but even if we know the fundamentals behind what “television” is, if you were to ask anyone what they thought television is to them, you wouldn’t get a true answer. Another question to ask would be, what is television becoming?

When the first television was shown at the San Francisco fair in 1927, everyone was amazed at the thought; now, everyone is amazed if someone doesn’t own a TV or streaming network. Television has been a huge hit in society, and even more so with the non-traditional television streaming networks such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Video as these streaming networks are quickly becoming the new definition of television.

Streaming networks are slowly but surely making their way to the top of the most watch “television,” but is it really television? Originally, when I thought of television, I thought of sitting down in my living room, or bedroom by myself or with family or friends and watch a show that aired on broadcast networks. That was my original way of watching television, but now, my only way of watching my favorite shows, is over Netflix; a streaming site. Only being able to watch “television” on my laptop has really made me rethink what I believe television is, as well as what television will become in the coming years. For me, watching television is a way of relaxing after a long day, and sometimes just a way to get some friends and family together for a few hours and just share a moment of common interests over a show.

While television is mainly used for entertainment, there are other uses for it such as information, education, and news. Each of these can all be classified as television, even if they aren’t entertainment, but has our current society become too dependent on television solely for our entertainment? These days, most families will sit their children down in front of a TV, put on some kids show, and leave them to occupy themselves, but is that actually the best thing to do? Sure, most kids shows are educational for the child, but not as much as it could be with the child's trusted parent there to back up what the figures on the screen are telling them. To reaffirm what a child sees is to help them learn and memorize, but to have them sit alone, is just to occupy their time and keep them busy for the span of the episode. With streaming, those shows can go on for hours until you either turn them off, the child falls asleep, or until you’ve run out of episodes to watch.

Streaming is a way of constantly getting the shows you want without commercials, and being able to watch it all day, everyday, as many times as you want, with a minimal monthly fee, and most people are choosing this way rather than traditional television. It also helps streaming sites that people are able to stream their shows from their TVs, computers, tablets, phones, and just about any other electronic device with a screen and internet connection. For those kids who grew up watching television rather than playing outside, streaming sites are an extension of their childhood in a way, but also a way of learning. “...We didn't have many books in our house and it was television which imbued me with - and to a large extent satisfied - my thirst for knowledge” (Alex Graham,The Guardian, 1 ). 

While there are more than just a few streaming services, Netflix is the  more well known and talked about streaming service. Even though Netflix costs slightly more (Honorof,1) than the others, they offer a great choice of shows and movies that the other services don’t, and while Hulu has more variety, more people choose Netflix. A subscription with Hulu may grant you access to its large library of shows, and variety of genres that Netflix is lacking, but Netflix is known to give shows a chance when they were turned down by everyone else, and a lot of the time, those shows become huge hits. Whether it’s giving new shows a chance or creating their own shows, Netflix has seemingly taken the lead for streaming services and doesn’t seem like it’s going to allow any of the other services anywhere near it and while Hulu is giving Netflix a run for its money, Amazon Video is as well.

Amazon Video is considered  a third runner in the race, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t get the recognition it deserves as a higher streaming service. Even if Amazon isn’t as popular as Netflix, it is slowly catching up, but it’s still behind. If I were to say which is a better streaming service, I would say Netflix, and apparently so would others. While both Netflix and Amazon each have their own aspects that make them better (Marshall and Pino, 1) than the other, Netflix seems like an over all better choice.

As streaming services are becoming more popular while traditional television slowly gets pushed into the background of this generation and the next, it seems that the question the population asks themselves is, why they would watch their shows on the TV when they can just watch them on their phones or computers via streaming without commercials, and companies are realizing this. The farther streaming comes along, the more television companies will try to attract viewers without many results. While Netflix’s views and subscriptions continue to rise, broadcast television is on the decrease in views, this is partially due to how much money Netflix is willing to spend on original content (Carnette, 1) and how they are willing to take chances with first time shows. While broadcast television has guidelines and structures they have to follow, subscription streaming services don’t have to follow those same guidelines, so streamers like Netflix can take advantage of that, by allowing shows broadcast couldn’t air onto their streams. “Netflix used its leading position in its legacy subscription business to quickly develop scale in the streaming business. The company had fewer than 9 million subscribers in 2008, when it began offering video streaming directly to the TV for its existing customers” (Knee, J. A. (2011))

Traditional television is still around, but it’s slowly fading into the previous generation. As time passes and technology becomes more advanced, streaming is slowly becoming the new definition of modern day television. Although streaming is taking over as our main way of watching our favorite shows whenever we want, the question of “what is television” is still there. The new modern day definition of television is quickly becoming what we stream from subscription services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video. With our technology continuing to advance, streaming is bound to become what we know as television, even if it’s not shown on a standard TV.

Works Cited:

Knee, J. A. (2011). Why Content Isn't King: How Netflix became America's biggest video service—much to the astonishment of media executives and investors. Atlantic, 308(1), 34-38.

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TW for dating abuse

“Some of the most dumb and dangerous stereotypes that some girls have about boys… 

[Note to readers: I REALLY don’t like the girl-blaming lead in here - where did these “dumb stereotypes girls have” come from? Consistent cultural messaging from parents, peers, church, academic culture and pop culture that enforces and reinforces these gender myths and stereotypes. But the list below is important, so I’m sharing. -PF]

× Boys are naturally more sexually aggressive and have a higher sex drive than girls × Boys don’t really care about romance, all they want is sex × Boys can’t really control their feelings or their sexual urges × Boys should be in control in relationships × Boys who are a bit jealous or overly-protective just really care a lot × Boys believe that they should “Treat ‘em mean, to keep 'em keen”.

All of these stereotypes are dangerous because they provide an easy excuse for boys to hurt and use their girlfriends. And not only are they dangerous, they’re just plain wrong.

The truth is…

√ There’s no evidence to suggest men’s sexual desire is any greater than women’s - in fact research has found levels of desire between the sexes is pretty well matched. √ Guys fall in love, and into romantic relationships, just as hard as girls do. √ Anyone - male or female - who tells you they can’t control their feelings or urges is probably making excuses for acting like a douche. √ If one person is 'in control’ of the relationship, it’s probably not a great relationship. √ Displays of jealousy and 'over-protectiveness’ are NOT signs of affection - they’re signs of insecurity and not being able to deal with, well, life. √ The only reason people quote the “Treat 'em mean…" crap is because they haven’t figured out how to “Treat 'em right”.

Read the full piece here

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Another Trump rally, more trouble

U.S. presidential candidate and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump took his stump speech to California Thursday and delighted his conservative, mostly white audience at the Orange County Fairgrounds by blaming illegal immigrants for a spike in murders and other violent crime and again vowing again to build a wall on the US-Mexican border.

Outside the venue, hundreds of Latinos chanted “build a wall around Trump” and “dump the Trump,” forming human barricades to block the Fairgrounds’ exits – leading to clashes with Trump supporters and police.

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Woman who defied 300 neo-Nazis at rally speaks of anger

“It was an impulse. I was so angry, I just went out into the street,” says Tess Asplund about why she raised her fist against the leadership of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) in Borlänge, central Sweden. “I was thinking: hell no, they can’t march here! I had this adrenaline. No Nazi is going to march here. It’s not okay.”

Photograph: David Lagerlöf/Expo/TT News Agency/Press Association Images

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Providing higher education to all sectors of a nation’s population means confronting social inequalities deeply rooted in history, culture and economic structure that influence an individual’s ability to compete.

Trends in Global Higher Education: Tracking an Academic Revolution, Executive Summary, page v, 2009 (via enquestion)

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what a culture we live in. we are swimming in an ocean of information and drowning in ignorance.

(via sadisticmarionette)

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Is today’s television the same as it was before?

When television first arrived, there were minimal programs you could watch only if you were even lucky enough to own a TV at that point, but compared to today’s television where there are hundreds of channels with nothing to watch, things don’t seem that different. For our society, television was a huge success, and it still is, but have we gotten predictable? As new channels show up, new shows are aired, more news is being reported, has it all just been repeating over the years? We get shows about cowboys, procedural cop shows, hospital situation shows, apocalyptic/zombie scenario movie/shows after another, all different in some way, but mainly the same. Even after all this time, show producers mainly care about views and ratings as opposed to the genuine enjoyment the viewers receive from the shows they watch. Could the same be said about news? After watching the 1976 movie “Network”, I noticed that news programs are all relatively the same now as they were back then, especially in the ways they produce the shows, and how one of the top priorities isn’t getting news to the people, but rather making sure their views and rating are high enough, and seeing how much money they are capable of making. All shows will of course want their ratings and views to go up, and are willing to do just about anything to achieve it. Anyone who watched the movie “Network” would notice the strong similarities between the movie-verse and our television networks today, and can tell that the movie, while not only showing what actually happens behind the scenes, but was almost seemingly able to predict what our television would be like today, almost 40 years later.

The movie “Network” has a strong showing of just how far network studios are willing to go if it means keeping their shows up and running for a long time to come. While our studios may not go as far as killing someone, they are not past exploiting someone or something for their own personal gain, but then again, isn’t that just human nature?

Within the movie, the character Howard Baele, a news anchor, is the representation of how the media will take control of someone’s life, (sometimes without them even knowing) and use their hardships/problems to help themselves. Howard was struggling through a mental break, and while his friend and co-worker Max wants to help him, the station uses Howard’s mental break for their own. They give him a segment of the show, and let him ramble to his heart's content, and while he goes on about the hardships of the world and the unjust corruptions, the station plots in the background on how they can further use him. Howard is shown as the representation of how media will take control of someone/something for their own use by showing the news station “giving into his whims” and allowing him to speak about whatever he pleases because they realized his outrageous ramblings were getting them more views and higher ratings, but when they notice things getting bad for them, they decide to kill Howard while he’s on air, by using a known terrorist group to do the killing for them as to not get their names or involvement known.

How does this connect with today’s TV? Well, the answer is simple, every station will do anything they can (within legal limits) to keep their stations on the higher end of TV, but even news is “showbiz” and will sometimes overthrow themselves by trying to gain higher ground then they are able to. News stations live by a “code” of reality and truth, but how can something be reality when it’s scripted to an extent? In a way, news can be related to “reality TV” buy the way it’s scripted and goes about doing things, but the aspects of truth, and important news they share is where the actual reality comes through. The article “Ethical 'Reality': A Proposed Code For Producers To Live By” talks about reality TV shows, but when you think about it, the article can be somewhat related to news stations as well. 

“Network” shows a great deal in what TV stations do, but there are many ways you could relate the same issues shown in the movie, to real aspects our society is dealing with today. For example, presidential elections are just a way for politicians to appeal to our needs and wants through words rather than actions, and most times, those words are scripted and will never be spoken about again. Political debates are a way for the nation to see two sides arguing about what they believe to be right and what they believe will help, but who knows if what they are saying is actually their opinion or the work of a scriptwriter who’s paid to make them look good in front of the nation? In the end, anything shown on television is in someway or another just a way to use and appeal to others so that they can make themselves look better, but is that really all there is to it? 

With the watching habits of today’s Americans steadily rising, what are we getting out of television? According to EW, the most watch broadcast show in 2014/15 was Sunday night Football, and while the most watched show is about sports, children are growing up watching TV rather than going outside and being adventurous, learning by experiencing, or really spending quality time with their families outside. Most American families have based their lives around a television, whether it’s in their kitchen as dinner entertainment, or in their living rooms, the flow of the average household is centered around the TV, rather than each other and I believe this is a growing problem in our society. 

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The growth of media and future possibilities

Throughout the years, it has become apparent that media is having an effect on our society; whether those effects are good or bad, it doesn’t matter. As media grows, our connections with others get stronger, more diverse, and information is able to spread farther and faster than ever before. From word of mouth, to flyers, to newspapers, radio, television, internet, and social media, our forms of media have rapidly grown over the years and will in turn continue to grow as time goes on and society continues to progress. Within the last few years, social media has become a large part of our society, and how we connect, but social media has largely taken off with the younger generation due to their exposure to different media types and having been apart of the rapidly increasing media/technology within a few short years. Even though social media has taken off quickly and has grown rapidly, some think it may die down once something new comes along, just like how the newspapers died down when the internet became a better way of finding out the news both local and nation/worldwide, but I believe that social media will be around for a long time to come. I believe that with technology growing as it is and people becoming more adapt with the ability to communicate and connect with others they wouldn’t have been able to before, that social media will continue to grow with society as a whole. 

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Michelle Wolf discusses the end of New York’s controversial tax on tampons and the taboo surrounding periods and the word “vagina.”

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“The actress and United Nations ambassador said in Interview magazine that filming the Harry Potter movies led her to notice gender inequality. The article featured a conversation between Watson and fellow feminist actress Geena Davis. In it, Watson told Davis, “When I did Harry Potter, the ratio was more often than not, at the very least, one-third female, two-thirds male.” She then read research from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and learned that Hollywood had a huge gender problem. And once you notice sexism in the entertainment industry, "You start seeing it everywhere,” she said. “It’s so much bigger.”

Read the full piece here 

More Emma Watson posts on Profeminist

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What Is The Importance Of A Fandom In Today’s Television?

Ever since the invention of television and the release of tv shows and tv series, there have been fandoms known as “media fandoms”. “Fandom’s” have been around for centuries, but the form that we know of today is considered a “media fandom” which is the type of fandom that came around with television, but incorporate books, tv shows, movies, people and anything someone could be considered a fan of that is considered a part of media. Although there are many categories and definitions of fandoms, most fall under the umbrella term of media fandom. One of the first fandoms was the Sherlock Holmes “fanbase” where readers of the books back when the book series first made an appearence in 1887, would enjoy the books tales of the detective.

In today’s society where you can watch “television” on almost any media platform at any given time, fandoms have grown over time. Over the years, fandoms have become a form of a secondary family where people who share interests and their love of a book, movie, show, etc. will come together. Fans from all over the country will gather at conventions and share their love of their fandom within a large group of people. For as irrelevant and extreme as this may sound, these fans show their support in the most drastic ways, but still support the content of their fandom. For example, some tv show fandoms would be Docter Who, Sherlock, The Walking Dead, One Tree Hill, Firefly, Supernatural, and many, many more.

Within the Supernatural fandom, fans are as close as family, even those who have not met each other. Letters are sent to the cast and crew of the show to show their love of the series, fanfiction is written, fan art is drawn, shirts are made, ect. There’s a mutual respect and appreciation between fans and the cast members. Cast members created campaigns (such as Jared Padalecki’s Always Keep Fighting and Misha Collins and Jensen Ackles You Are Not Alone campaigns)  to help support the fans who are struggling in anyway, and fans pick it up and run with it, taking the loving support and spreading it, even to non fans.

Even though fans can be any race, gender, sex, or age, a vast majority seem to be female fans who love their fandoms, according to Time. Seeing as how a majority of actors are attractive males, it really is no surprise that females are the large majority of fans, even though that’s not the only reason they watch a show or a movie, read a book, listen to a band or take part in a fandom. Many women actually enjoy the story-line, plot-line, song lyrics or just the general appreciation of a group of people, while some only take part in these “fandoms” to seem interesting to others.

The importance of a fandom in today’s television is that a fan base can help keep a show going, or it can potentially destroy it, but often times, shows are kept on air due to popular demands of the fandom. 

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What is Television?

Over the years, television has become such a major part of our society's day-to-day lives that most families have more than one TV in their homes. When I think of the word “television” in the context of present day technology, I think of sitting down and watching a show or movie on the TV, a phone, tablet, or laptop either with my family, friends, or just by myself. The meaning of the word television has changed drastically over the years since its invention that now, it is still considered to be watching television even when it’s not on a TV.

Television is considered a form of entertainment for all ages, and I believe that it always will be, no matter how much it changes in the coming years. Even though it is considered to be a form of entertainment, it is also considered a form of escape and distraction from the stress of our daily lives. As I get older, I have come to realize that the medium of television changes with the growth of our societies, but the overall understanding of what television is stays the same. 

Through the years of its invention, television has had countless programs aired and then watched by families in their homes. Each program is different, but may have the same plot as a previous or currently aired show, but is television defined by these programs? In my opinion, television is just television, no matter what you watch on it, or what it’s watched on. 

The television set has changed so much over the course of its existence, one way being its size, another being how much power is ran through its smaller frame. The televisions themselves were originally large and bulky, then they started to be built smaller, and now they are thinner with larger screens to give you the feeling of a theater in your homes. Even though we now have these flat-screen TV’s in our living rooms, a large portion of this generation tend to lean towards watching their TV shows on their laptops or phones, mainly because of the easy access they have to these devices while they are outside of their homes. 

Most television shows are viewed over paid subscriptions such as Netflix or Hulu which allow the viewer to watch their favorite shows as many times as they like whenever they want with a small monthly fee to the subscription providers. These subscription sources are just another source of television, and the manner in which they are watch does not really matter as long as the device it is being played on supports the subscription and the providers are paid; in the end it’s still considered television.  Some shows whether they be aired or subscription make their episodes to be around 15 minutes while others make them to be roughly 45-50 minutes each, but no matter the length a show is a show and if the content of the show is good enough, viewers will continue to watch no matter what the source. 

At the end of a long day, most people want to relax and maybe watch a few episodes of their favorite show, whether it be in front of a TV or a computer, or even laying in bed and watching it on their phones or tablets, television is still television no matter what platform its being viewed on. 

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Technology is without a doubt a huge part of our society, and our daily lives, so what does this say about our future? Technology and the many devices associated with it are almost always within arm’s reach, and we have essentially become dependent on these devices. With this next generation, technology and communication though media will be so integrated into their lives, the vast majority will not know what it’s like to not have that capability at their disposal. Communication though media has become such a large piece of our everyday lives, that others around you will think you’re crazy if you don’t have these ties though social networking. If we look back and see how far our technological advancements have come, we can only imagine what the future has in store for us. Through these advancements, we have been able to speak to someone across the globe without having to leave the comfort of our own living room; we have been able to hold important meetings with those who could not attend, through video calls. Social media is another way that technology connects us, and with it, we can create more ideas that will better our tech-savvy future. 

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Watch: The end of this video will make you sick.