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“I would be happy to defend you ladies,” Duke said with a shine in his eyes. Every man on earth thinks his dick is magic. Alex could hear Roxanne saying it in her head the day they had met.

― Meg Elison, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

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A man goes out on the beach and sees that it is covered with starfish that have washed up in the tide. A little boy is walking along, picking them up and throwing them back into the water. “What are you doing, son?” the man asks. “You see how many starfish there are? You’ll never make a difference.” The boy paused thoughtfully, and picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean. “It sure made a difference to that one,” he said.

― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

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"Why do men feel threatened by women?" I asked a male friend of mine. So this male friend of mine, who does by the way exist, conveniently entered into the following dialogue. "I mean," I said, "men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power." "They're afraid women will laugh at them," he said. "Undercut their world view." Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, "Why do women feel threatened by men?" "They're afraid of being killed," they said.

Atwood, Margaret, Writing the Male Character (1982) (reprinted in Second Words: Selected Critical Prose from a Hagey Lecture on February 9, 1982, at the University of Waterloo)

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Just last Sunday reverend Norton went on and on about the trespasses of Eve. Pounding his fist on the pulpit, his face all red and puffed up as he spit to the side between the words original and sin. While he talked at good length about the evils of temptation and the curse Eve had brought upon all women, he never mentioned the stink of it. I never imagined that " the women's tithe for the civilized world" would smell so rusted, so bitter.

The Birth House by Ami McKay

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I was 10, and do you know what they got me? *Malibu* Barbie.

Debbie Jellinsky Addams Family Values

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Dilbert comic Scott Adams wrote last month that we live in a matriarchy because, ‘access to sex is strictly controlled by the woman.’ Meaning that you don’t get to have sex with someone unless they want to have sex with you, which if we say it without any gender pronouns sounds completely reasonable. You don’t get to share someone’s sandwich unless they want to share their sandwich with you, and that’s not a form of oppression either. You probably learned that in kindergarten. But if you assume that sex with a female body is a right that heterosexual men have, then women are just these crazy illegitimate gatekeepers always trying to get in between you and your rights. Which means you have failed to recognize that women are people, and perhaps that comes from the books and movies you have—and haven’t—been exposed to, as well as the direct inculcation of the people and systems around you.

Rebecca Solnit (via digital-femme)

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Undated if I'd really gotten my ribs removed, I would have been busy sucking my own dick on the wonder years  instead of chasing Winnie Cooper. besides, I wouldn't have sucked other peoples dicks on stage, either. I would have been sucking my own. Plus, who really has time to be killing puppies when you can be sucking your own dick? I think I'm gonna call a surgeon in the morning.

The Long Hard Road Out of Hell Book by Marilyn Manson and Neil Strauss

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How movies teach manhood - Colin Stokes

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Cats are like witches. They don’t fight to kill, but to win. There is a difference. There’s no point in killing an opponent. That way, they won’t know they’ve lost, and to be a real winner you have to have an opponent who is beaten and knows it. There’s no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure.

Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

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You may not think spanking is wrong, but if you believe you have a right to spank your child hard and find a good excuse to do it, thats abuse. Spanking has extremely negative lasting effects (see box in following page) Not only does it create many problems, but it has no documented positive effects. It may scare your child into stopping the unwanted behavior - at least while he's in your presence. But it does not create learning. Here's why. When you try to force good behavior by spanking, you stop the growth of the good-judgment part of a child's brain, the prefrontal cortex. Because spanking creates fear, your child responds from the most primal part of his brain, the flight or fight part. He's just trying to avoid pain, rather than beginning to think through  where his action might lead and understand the impact on another person. These understandings don't fully form till early adulthood, but you want to be building the pathways for them as early as possible. Spanking doesn't support a child's overall healthy emotional and mental development. If you hit your child, you cannot shape his behavior without breaking his spirit.

Jo Frost's Toddler Rules: Your 5-Step Guide to Shaping Proper Behavior By Jo Frost

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A Letter from a Shelter Manager - anonymous in North Carolina I think our society needs a huge “Wake-up” call. As a shelter manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all…a view from the inside if you will. First off, all of you breeders/sellers should be made to work in the “back” of an animal shelter for just one day. Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don’t even know. That puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my shelter when it’s not a cute little puppy anymore. So how would you feel if you knew that there’s about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the shelter it is going to be dumped at? Purebred or not! About 50% of all of the dogs that are “owner surrenders” or “strays”, that come into my shelter are purebred dogs. The most common excuses I hear are; “We are moving and we can’t take our dog (or cat).” Really? Where are you moving too that doesn’t allow pets? Or they say “The dog got bigger than we thought it would”. How big did you think a German Shepherd would get? “We don’t have time for her”. Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs! “She’s tearing up our yard”. How about making her a part of your family? They always tell me “We just don’t want to have to stress about finding a place for her we know she’ll get adopted, she’s a good dog”. Odds are your pet won’t get adopted & how stressful do you think being in a shelter is? Well, let me tell you, your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off. Sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn’t full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy. If it sniffles, it dies. Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room with about 25 other barking or crying animals. It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps. It will be depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it. If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers in that day to take him/her for a walk. If I don’t, your pet won’t get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose. If your dog is big, black or any of the “Bully” breeds (pit bull, rottie, mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door. Those dogs just don’t get adopted. It doesn’t matter how ‘sweet’ or 'well behaved’ they are. If your dog doesn’t get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed. If the shelter isn’t full and your dog is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed it may get a stay of execution, but not for long . Most dogs get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression. Even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment. If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because shelters just don’t have the funds to pay for even a $100 treatment. Here’s a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being “put-down”. First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash. They always look like they think they are going for a walk happy, wagging their tails. Until they get to “The Room”, every one of them freaks out and puts on the brakes when we get to the door. It must smell like death or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there, it’s strange, but it happens with every one of them. Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 vet techs depending on the size and how freaked out they are. Then a euthanasia tech or a vet will start the process. They will find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose of the “pink stuff”. Hopefully your pet doesn’t panic from being restrained and jerk. I’ve seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood and been deafened by the yelps and screams. They all don’t just “go to sleep”, sometimes they spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves. When it all ends, your pets corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer in the back with all of the other animals that were killed waiting to be picked up like garbage. What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? Rendered into pet food? You’ll never know and it probably won’t even cross your mind. It was just an animal and you can always buy another one, right? I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can’t get the pictures out of your head I deal with everyday on the way home from work. I hate my job, I hate that it exists & I hate that it will always be there unless you people make some changes and realize that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter. Between 9 and 11 MILLION animals die every year in shelters and only you can stop it. I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes. My point to all of this DON’T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE! Hate me if you want to. The truth hurts and reality is what it is. I just hope I maybe changed one persons mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a shelter, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my shelter and say “I saw this and it made me want to adopt”. THAT WOULD MAKE IT WORTH IT. How to find a true No Kill shelter or rescue group: http://www.examiner.com/dog-rescue-in-national/how-to-find-a-true-no-kill-shelter-or-rescue-group

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Our society needs criminals like Wolfgang Priklopil in order to give a face to the evil that lives within and to split it off from ... It needs the images of cellar dungeons so as not to have to see the many homes in which violence rears its conformist, bourgeois head. Society uses the victims of sensational cases such as mine in order to divest itself of the responsibility for the many nameless victims of daily crimes, victims nobody helps – even when they ask for help.

Natascha Kampusch, 3,096 Days

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what your doing is flavoring the oil. The oil is going to saturate the your dish and if its not flavored, your dish will taste of grease and failure.

Dirt Candy: A Cookbook: Flavor-Forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant by Amanda Cohen (Author), Ryan Dunlavey (Author), Grady Hendrix (Author)

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From my desultory readings, in fact, I was dutifully edified that cats over the ages have probably been the most exploited and mistreated of all animals

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"Cats, like analysts, pick up on things, share insights." She again looked challengingly at me: "I learned to reconsider the characteristics of the person who was met with disdain by Abou. Sometimes Abou uncovered features I'd missed and I found I didn't care for this person either."

My Cat, Spit McGee

Willie Morris

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my favorite part, hands down, was when the Von Trapp children bid farewell to party-goers with their song "so long farewell" from the stairway of their Austrian manner. As an adult, I now now see what a terrible example this is for children. It teaches them that adults will be charmed by long, protracted musical goodbyes. In fact, all of the sound of music inspired a childhood's worth of my misguided behavior, where I believed people would always be excited to hear me sing.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) Mindy Kaling 2011

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Slow and steady wins the race, till truth and talent claim their place.

B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories