#but we know that women tend to take on male ideals in male-dominated spaces

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

That documentary American Nightmare is crazy. Like imagine being the victims of something like that and everyone from the media to police to the FBI are like, damn, that is crazy. So crazy it didn't happen. You're lying, you killed her--oh...She turned up alive...Uh...She's lying. Wait, uh...oops. Never mind. This other cop who actually bothered to do her job and talked to all the women other cops ignored caught the guy. Um...anyway you're both alive and not in jail so we're just gonna pretend this never happened. I mean it's not like we could have known; there was a movie where the lady set everything up and was lying! How can you expect us to have actually investigated what was reported to us?

At least that one reporter had a conscience. And he actually did forward the emails he got to the police, so, y'know, he at least was doing his job. It's funny how when something like this happens, the people who did the least, all things considered, are the ones to step up and be like, yeah, I fucked up, and the ones who made blunder after blunder from sheer laziness and their own tunnel vision are just like no comment, that didn't happen, and our internal investigation found no wrong-doing on the part of us.

[simplysnipes]

Considerations for Black Men

Improve Your Self-Image

How Many of Us Do Not Achieve More, Because We Believe We Deserve Less? How Many of Us Do Not Ask For That Raise or Managerial Position We Deserve Because We Are Worried That We Will Fail. How Many of Us Do Not Get Out of That Bad Relationship Because We Do Not Think We Can’t Attract The Women We Want. How Many of Us Do Not Stand Up For Ourselves When We Are Aware of Situations & People That Use Our Talents But Do Not Reciprocate Equally.

All of Us.

Let’s Start To Reprogram The Ideas That We Have of Ourselves. The Limits We Subconsciously Place On Ourselves. Destroy The Thoughts of People In The Past That Discouraged You or That Girl Who Called You Ugly In Middle School [FCUK YOU MEGAN!!]. Or The Society That Tells You Because You Are A “Black Male,” You Are Prone To Criminality, High Blood Pressure, Laziness & Toxic Masculinity.

Let’s Destroy It All. Because “The Enemy” Wins If We Destroy Ourselves For Them.

Say Less

“You Have Two Ears & One Mouth. Use Them Proportionately”

You Will Be Amazed At What You Learn When You Sit Back & Observe When You Are Interacting With People. Next Time You Are In A Conversation, Don’t Wait For Your Turn To Speak. Ingest What The Other Person Is Actually Saying. Refrain From Dominating The Talking Space. Allow Others To Voice Their Opinions First & Then Retort.

Find Your Purpose

Are You Dissatisfied? Do You Have A Feeling of Stagnation In Your Life? Do You Constantly Feel Stressed, Lost, Confused & Depressed? Would You Like A Different Job? More Money? A Better Physique or A Lover That You Feel Complements You? Finding Your Life‘s Purpose Will Solve All of That And More.

Since We Live In A Capitalist System That Requires You To Slave.. I Mean Work To Live. Your Purpose Should Consist of What You Love. It Can Also Be A Thing That You Would Like To Monetize. The Reason Why You Should Create An Industry Based On What You Love Instead of What You Would Tolerate As A Career Is Because The Average Person Spends About 2,000 Hours Per Year At A Job They Hate. But If You Love What You Do. Most Days It Will Be Pleasure To Work Than A Pain. And Where Love Resides. Money, Creativity, Wonderful Experiences & Amazing People Will Be Waiting.

Simplify Your Life

A Lot of Us Have Too Many Things That Require Our Attention. The More Things That Your Mind Is Attached Too. The Less You Will Be Able To Think Clearly & Be At Peace. The Key Is To Prioritize Things By Importance: [1] What Is Adding Value To My Life/ Happiness. [2] What Detracts Value From My Life/ Happiness.

Live With Purpose

No More Meandering Around Aimlessly Throughout Life, Allowing Things To Happen To You, Instead of For You. In Order To Create An Existence Full of Substance. It Is Great Idea To Move, Act And Think In An Organized Fashion. The Change Does Not Have To Be Radical. It Can Be As Simple As Writing A Short List of Things You Would Like To Achieve. Then Writing Small Daily Goals That Are Needed For Its Attainment.

Acquiring A Harmonious Masculine Spirit

A Man With A Harmonious Masculine Spirit Believes In Justice. This Is A Man Who Is In Harmony With Himself, His Environment, His Woman & Other Men In His Tribe. A Man With A Harmonious Spirit Will Not Start Unnecessary Turmoil With People But Will Have The Courage To Stand Up For His Ideals And Come To Blows If Necessary. A Man With A Harmonious Spirits Uses Logic To Solve His Issues & Is Not Easily Influenced By The Opinions of Others. 

A Man With A Harmonious Spirit Does Not Make Excuses, But Does Whatever He Can To Provide & Protect His Family At All Costs. A Man With A Harmonious Spirit Will Seek Council With His Feminine Counterpart. Though He May Not Take Her Advice. He Will Let Her Know That Her Thoughts And Contributions Are Valuable To Him. A Man Was A Harmonious Spirit Will Not Bring Shame To Himself His Family Name And Especially His Woman.

Stop Making Excuses

“Action Cures Insecurity”

There Is Nothing More Unattractive Than A Man Who Constantly Creates Excuses For Why His Life Is A Certain Way. With The Availability of Resources, Information And Relatively Inexpensive Labor. A Man Can Achieve Anything He So Desires If He Is Brave Enough To Risk It All To Achieve It.

The God Force Does Not Bless Those Who Will Not Help Themselves. Making Excuses & Complaining About Where You Are Disrupts Your Internal Light & Sends Negative Signals To Your Subconscious Mind That You Are In Fact A Loser And Not A Warrior. That Mentality Sabotages Good Things From Coming To You And Also Good People From Wanting To Collaborate With You.

Save Time, Money & Resources

“Man Makes The Money. Money Does Not Make The Man”

Money Is Not Real. Money Does Not Define You. Money Cannot Make You Happy. Money Is Essentially A Tool For Survival. And With That Knowledge You Can Assess Your Attachment To It And Choose To Either Chase It In A Hectic Fashion. Or Earn It Wisely And Let It Chase You.

“A Man Who Dares To Waste One Hour of Time Has Not Discovered The Value of Life.” - Charles Darwin

Time Is Significant Because It Only Goes In One Direction. Forward. Time In Relation To Man Is Important Because We Will Not Live Forever. So We Must Make Great Use of The Time That We Have. We May Feel As Though There Is Not Enough Hours In A Day To Get What We Need Accomplished. But Guess What!! Everyone Has The Same 24 Hours To Operate In. So It Is Imperative That We Use Our Time Wisely. If You Track Your Daily Habits Hour To Hour. Within A Week I Guarantee You Can Find At Least 20 Hours of Dead Space Where You Are Not Occupying It With Any Meaningful Acts.

“There Is Nothing You Need That You Do Not Already Have” - James Baldwin

A Debilitating Mentality That A Lot of Us Men Have Adopted Is Waiting For Someone or Something Outside of Our Own Ability To Aid Us Before We Take Any Action Toward A Goal. Let’s Take Fitness For Example. I Know You Have Probably Heard (Or Said) “I Wish I Had A Car, Or Lived Close To A Gym. Because Then I Would Be In Shape.” Fitness First Starts In The Mind. A Lack of Resources Is Rarely The Problem. A Strong Creative Mind Could Create Opportunities To Figure Out Ways To Get What You Desire. “The Ultimate Resource Is Resourcefulness.”

Work With What You Already Have

When A Man Is In A Righteous State of Mind. He Is Hellbent On Self-Improvement & The Improvement of His Surroundings. But As We Are Improving. We Tend To Look At The Achievements of “Better Men” And We Make Unfair Comparisons of Where We Are In Life.

This Act Is Unfair And Counterproductive Is Because Not Every Man Gets The Same Breaks. The Lord Blesses Each One of Us With A Specific Skill, Attribute, And Set of Circumstances That Is Unique To Our Spirit. With The Intent of It Growing Us In Ways That Will Help Our Family And Our Environment At Large.

So Instead of Looking Externally At What Others Are Great In & Where You “Think” You Are Lacking. Pay Attention To What You Are Blessed With And Improve Upon Those Strengths.

Refrain From Dealing With Toxic Women

“No Man Hath It In Gis Power To Over-Rule The Deceitfulness of A Women” -Marguerite of Navarre

We All Have Personally Experienced or Know The Story of A Brother Well On His Way To Success But Was Derailed Because He Selected The Wrong Companion In His Life. And The Key Is He! Selected The Wrong Companion. On The Road To Enlightenment, Self-Preservation & Self-Healing Adding A Woman Who Is A Liability And Not An Asset Can Cause Irreparable Damage To Your Life, Your Finance, Business & Your Reputation.

When A Righteous Man Selects A Woman. He Is A Essentially Bringing Her Into His World. Into His Lifestyle. As Men, We Are Natural Fixers. We Function As Problem Solvers And We Live To Protect Our Women From Harm. If A Woman Has A Lot of Reoccurring Negative Issues That She Brings Into The Courtship. It’s Going To Be YOUR Issue. And Your Life’s Purpose Will Be Derailed Because The Time You Should Be Spending On Your Purpose. You Will Divert It To The Problems of The Said Woman.

Righteous Masculine Energy Is Hot. Fiery. It Leads. It Directs. It Protects. It Has A Will To Improve The Wellbeing of Itself & Environment Though Its Own Will. Righteous Feminine Energy Is Cool. It Is Passive. It’s Loving. It’s Nurturing. It Has A Creative Faculty. It Enhances The Masculine Imperative. Both Energy’s Have Their Strengths. But Were Essentially Made To Complement Each Other.

In Today’s Time Due To Social Engineering, Western Liberal Media, Soy Based Diets, The Absence of Righteous Masculine & Feminine Parents. Modern Men Will Encounter Women Who Have A Higher Than Normal Amount of Masculine Energy, As Well As An Addiction To Recreational Drugs. Lack of Financial Resources & Moderate To Extreme Mental Issues. This Energy Will Inhibit A Man’s Ability Need To Lead, Act As A Companion To The Woman Common or Feel As If He Has A Place In The Woman’s Life.

(Ways Of Identifying A Damaged Woman Coming Soon)

Learn Something New Weekly

As Quickly As Technology & Techniques To Live A Better Life Are Being Created. The Ability To Consume Information & Use It Toward A Meaningful Goal Is Power. If You Are Not Constantly Learning. Your Skills Are Declining And Like The Dinosaurs You Will Inevitably Become Extinct.

Fasting

The Most Common Definition For Fasting Is: “The Willing Abstinence or Reduction From Some or All Food, Drink, or Both, For A Period of Time.” Though Rapid Consumption of Food Is An Issue For Some. There Are Other Other Habits That We Practice That Can Have Destructive Effects When Done In Excess: Binge T.V. Watching, Daily Consumption of Alcohol, Casual Sex With Multiple Partners, Daily Use of Recreational Drugs, Excessive Use of Social Media, Impulse Spending & Pornography.

Excessive Exposure To These Low Vibratory Vices Are Dangerous To The Body, Spirit & Subconscious Mind. Place A Cap On Your Daily Intake. Or Go For Long Stretches Without The Use of Them To Ensure That These Things Are Not Influencing You In a Negative Way.

Lastly

Stop Thirsting After Women!!!!!!!

Fellas In 2019 We Really Need To Stop With The Thirst. There’s Nothing More Unattractive To Women (And Men) Than A Thirsty A$$ Dude. When People See A Man Who Can Not Control His Libido. That Shows A Lack of Self Control & Maturity. I See Too Many of Us Out In The World Being Controlled By The Organ That Is Between Our Legs. We Have Bastardized Sex Into Something As Insignificant As A Physical Act, When Sexual Energy Exchange Was Created For So Much More.

The Essence of Sex Is One of, If Not The Most Powerful Tool That We Have At Our Disposal. Expressing That Sex In Immature & Toxic Ways Can Only Lead To Your Destruction. The Transmutation of Sexual Energy Toward A Purposeful Goal Can Create Civilizations.

Signs Of Thirst

-Stalking

-Sliding In Dm Unwarranted

-Sending Unsolicited D!Ck Pics

-Aggressively Engaging Females That Don’t Want To Be Approached On The Street

-Lewd & Obscene Comments On A Woman’s Social Media Profile

-ETC

Validation/ Worship of The Female Body In Those Ways Creates The Monsters That We Do Not Like To Deal With: Conceded Women, Emotionally Guarded Women, IG Models Selling Flat Belly Tea & Gold-Diggers.

In Order To Attain The Women That You Want. It Does Not Require A Lot of Money, or Material Items. You Don’t Even Have To Look Like Idris Elba. All You Have To Have Is Confidence, Social Capital And A Mouthpiece Good Enough To Hold A Basic Conversation. And Both Are Not Hard To Attain.

If You Haven Yet Noticed F$ck Boys Are Messing It Up For All of Us. There’s A Correct Way And An It Incorrect Way To Get A Woman’s Attention. There’s Too Many of Us Not Playing The Game Correctly & Not Policing Our Brothers Who Are Going About It The Wrong Way

It’s Time To Level Up Fellas.

Peace And Be Well

Your Bruv Nes

[lordendsavior]

Harry Styles is a faithful disciple of silence. He rarely does interviews, and when he does he speaks with charm and cheek while avoiding any nuggets of actual information that could be described as revealing. Until he started doing press around his debut solo album this spring, giving him various bits of artwork and magazine covers to screengrab, his Instagram looked like an A-Level photography project—full of dramatically monochrome shots of infrastructure and food. His Twitter timeline is essentially a corkboard littered with messages expressing thanks to his fans, structured like love letters from a husband in the trenches—"See you soon. Love. H."

In our climate of oversharing, his withholding nature may conveniently double up as a watertight marketing tactic, creating a shroud of mystery that's inherently desirable (what's he wearing today? What's he eating for breakfast? What does he do when he's not making scheduled public appearances?). But for him, it's more than that – "When I go home, I feel like the same person I was at school," he told Rolling Stone earlier this year, "You can't expect to keep that if you show everything."

This is why you don't often see Harry Styles among the names that frequent the daily aggregated news cycle of and Person Says Thing > The Thing is Outrageous! > Actually, The Thing Is Very Nuanced > Ugh, Someone Has Said Something Else Now. He has, to paraphrase someone he once dated, removed himself from the narrative. But, at the same time, Styles has created a narrative that exists just between him and his fans. Simply put: he cares about them, very sincerely and very unabashedly. Which isn't unusual—Lady Gaga is a perfect example of the often very intimate way fandom culture works today—but Harry Styles is muse to such a vast number of teenage girls, a demographic whose interests and opinions are rarely taken seriously by music critics or society at large, that his respect for them takes on a different meaning. It's a relationship best summarized by the following quote from Styles in that Rolling Stone interview: "Who's to say that young girls who like pop music—short for popular, right?—have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy? That's not up to you to say." He goes on: "Teenage-girl fans—they don't lie. If they like you, they're there. They don't act 'too cool.' They like you, and they tell you. Which is sick."

This was also the defining characteristic of One Direction's relationship with their fandom. They knew exactly who elevated them from bronze winners of a generic talent contest to global superstardom, they knew exactly who kept them there, and in return they gave them what they wanted. In the wake of their split, journalist Anna Leszkiewicz described One Direction as "a towering monument to the power of teenage girls."

It would have been both a strange and fairly stupid move for Styles to abandon that relationship moving into his solo career, but if anything he seems to have doubled down. He still doesn't say a great deal to the press, save for the endless shouts of appreciation for the people who make his life possible—namely, his fans and faves (artists like Stevie Nicks, to whom Harry Styles owes much of its inspiration)—but over time he's fostered a channel of trust that means his shows have become as close to a safe space as is possible for young girls to get as far as experiencing live music is concerned.

Harry Styles is currently touring Europe. He passed through London last weekend, with fans arriving to camp outside Hammersmith's Eventim Apollo in west London as early as Tuesday. Approaching the venue on Sunday evening, the area outside is deserted. It looks like a Glastonbury camping zone on clean-up day. Duvets are draped over the empty barriers; the floor is littered with foil blankets and carrier bags full of empty sandwich boxes and crisp packets; Pride Flags and Black Lives Matter placards have been taped in place like calls to arms. Everyone is already inside, obviously, and has been for ages. There are about 50 girls camping across the road on a patch of grass underneath Hammersmith flyover so they can be first in line for tomorrow's show. To arrive on time to a Harry Styles show is akin to missing it.

As for inside the venue, you can hardly see the stage for the number of LGBTQ Pride and Black Lives Matter signs held aloft by the audience. In Manchester, people also held up the city's bee symbol. The "I love you"s and "Marry me"s stereotypically associated with teen girl fandom are still very much there in spirit, but their articulation has taken on an actively political tone. The rainbow, the striking black and white of the BLM logo, the Manchester bee—all are symbols of support shared widely on social media, where pop fanbases tend to be most active, exemplifying a generational shift in consciousness towards social awareness. Here, they're brandished less a show of resistance and more as a celebration. People feel comfortable expressing themselves this way because they know everyone in the room is already on their side.

Styles has spoken generally about equality in the press before ("Most of the stuff that hurts me about what's going on at the moment is not politics, it's fundamentals," he told Rolling Stone. "Equal rights. For everyone, all races, sexes, everything"), but it's what he says at his shows, addressing people directly, that means the most to those who care the most. Throughout the night he encourages people to be "whoever you want to be in this room" and continually thanks them "from the bottom of my heart." Someone throws a Pride Flag on stage and he holds it with both hands above his head and runs back and forth across the stage. Someone else throws a French flag and he does the same. Someone else throws a bit of tinsel and he drapes it around his shoulders like a stole.

The room is full of groups of teenage girls hugging each other, hugging people they didn't know, turning to ask the people behind them if they could see alright. Anyone crammed towards the front has been there from the second the doors opened, denying themselves water or a sit-down so they could be as close to their idol as possible. The show had to be stopped twice to help two girls who fainted in the pit. Harry calmly asked people to take a step back, repeatedly checked if everyone was okay and spoke soothingly about looking after one another. He played "Kiwi" twice because it's what the fans wanted, though not without a bit of showmanship ("if you want us to play it again you're going to have to scream louder than that").

It's also worth noting that, although it was ostensibly The Harry Styles Show, five of the ten people onstage are women. As well as a female drummer and keyboardist playing in his own band, he's being supported by MUNA—a goth-pop trio from LA whose music communicates the emotional disarray of sexuality and relationships, as well as heavier topics like assault, through a specifically queer lens. On stage in Hammersmith this weekend, they repeatedly acknowledged the marginalised communities present within the crowd, providing reassurance that—in this room, at least—they are seen and heard. There are, sadly, so many awful reasons to feel unsafe at any show, but in light of the Manchester Arena bombing, pop shows now carry a particularly horrific association that lingers in the back of your mind and can make you inadvertently take note of the emergency exits. Rather than avoiding it, guitarist/vocalist Naomi McPherson addresses the elephant in the room and reminds people how brave they are for being here at all. Singer Katie Gavin introduces their single "I Know A Place"—essentially the San Junipero episode of Black Mirror as a song—by describing it as their imagining of an ideal world we should be working towards. "I know a place we can run / Where everyone gonna lay down their weapon," Gavin sings over a dancey four-to-the-floor beat, "Don't you be afraid of love and affection."

For all the talk of inclusivity and equal rights often thrown around within subcultural communities like punk, hardcore and indie—predominantly male-dominated spaces that can't seem to go a day without someone in a band being called out as abusive—it strikes me as significant that this is one of the few shows I've ever been to where I've not felt threatened by anyone in the room. And it's not because I am, at 5 feet 3 inches, one of the largest people in this one. It's because Harry Styles supports his fans' politics while they really live it, and as a result his shows have become a place for people to celebrate being whoever they are. The diversity of the room itself speaks to that. He's cheering just as much for his fans as they are for him.

Pop music is accessible and available in ways that more subcultural music isn't, but this dynamic doesn't just present itself anywhere. Justin Bieber shows, ecstatic as they may be, are not largely comprised of kids shouting down racism while overtly celebrating their queerness. Pop, like all music, can often be a form of escapism—a way to forget yourself, especially if being yourself can mean facing a multitude of hardships. The actual content of Harry Styles' music isn't anywhere near political but, because of the way his fans engage with him and each other, his shows inherently are.

Obviously, anything can happen anywhere and anytime. Harry Styles' name on the front of a building can't guarantee the absolute safety of everyone in it. But it does foster a world away from our current one; a world that feels less oppressive and more like MUNA's "I Know A Place." I can't imagine how valuable it is for teenagers to experience that—even if it's just for a night.

[super-queer-hannibal-obsession]

The M/M Shipping Thing: Misogyny, the Male Gaze, and Feminist and Queer Representation

Follow up post to this one, here. Read this to see my thoughts on the importance of allowing women to see men through a lens where male sexuality is something to be celebrated, not feared. Seems like a lot of people can relate to this, and I just love talking about it so have some more of my thoughts.

First of all, it’s a numbers game…

Going off of this point by @colt-kun which I’ve copied and pasted here. This gives a great overview of a purely statistical analysis of why m/m ships are more common.  

“There’s also the sheer numbers to take into account.

Take the first Avengers movie as an example (because frankly its one of the few recent blockbusters with two female speaking roles). Two females, Black Widow and Maria. Then eight males, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, Hulk, Loki, Fury, Coulson.

Not counting polyships/selfships for ease of math, and using the characters cisgender identities bc that is what they are largely seen as (no disrespect meant to any trans/nb interpretations)

Possible f/m ships: 16 (35.5%) Possible f/f ships: 1 (2.2%) Possible m/m ships: 28 (62.2%)

That’s not even accounting for screentime, character chemistry, interaction times, etc. thats just the NUMBERS.

When there’s a large disparity in character gender then yeah, you’re going to see a heavy inclination to m/m ships because that’s really ALL THATS POSSIBLE. The fans have a natural desire for more story and romances, they want to world build and AU. We’ve done that since stories were first told.

So of COURSE you’re going to see a lot of women - of all sexual orientations - leaning towards m/m pairings because when there’s only potatoes at the buffet… you eat the potatoes. Think of all the shows an movies with only one female character in a cast of men. Is it really difficult to see WHY there’s a lot of m/m ships there?”

Mainstream media is male-centered and male-dominated.

Going beyond just the numbers the fact is that in the majority of popular films and TV shows many of the female characters aren’t well-rounded or on screen as much as most of the men. There is a tendency for women to be the secondary characters or maybe to have one main female character. This makes it hard to really relate to and invest in a lot of the female characters out there. Not that people don’t, but it’s not going to attract a huge following.

Take Supernatural (low hanging fruit I know) where even if there are a large number of women that appear throughout the series, there aren’t many that stick around(and let’s not even go there with all of the deaths and how sexist that is right now ha)or interact with each other in a way that would lead to a lot of shipping. Even in my lovely Hannibal fandom, the Marlana ship which people love and people write for just isn’t going to have as much of a following just based on the fact that they aren’t the main characters. And Marlana is a good example of a w/w ship where they aren’t objectified, don’t die, and still it’s a secondary focus. There obviously are some exceptions, but they are few and far between.

The Male Gaze:

Also, women (and any gender that isn’t cismale) are trained to see film through the male perspective. Film and TV is usually shot with the male gaze, so women learn to see through this lens. We grow up learning to empathize and put ourselves in the shoes of male protagonists because otherwise we would have very little media to enjoy. I think this is part of why it’s natural for women to ship m/m ships. I also think that shipping men and sexualizing them can be a subversion of the male gaze and is an empowering way to flip that script for many women.

We could go into a whole other discussion on internalized misogyny and patriarchal culture and why there are some not so great reasons women might gravitate towards m/m ships, but I think it’s important to see all the reasons why this is and to not demonize women for doing something that makes sense both statistically, sociologically, and psychologically, etc.

Men rarely have to put themselves in the shoes of women in film. So, I do feel like there is a difference between straight dudes watching lesbian porn and women who thoughtfully engage in a m/m ship. You can’t ignore the gender politics at play and how these factors interact. In an ideal world, people of all genders and sexualities could enjoy bodies without all the baggage of sexism and homophobia, but sadly that’s not our world.

This famous, awesome thread really sums it up:

Disclaimer:

I do think there are women who fetishize and act awful when it comes to m/m ships. (I also realize there are lots of other intersections at work in film such as race and class that I’m not really addressing.) Especially those who don’t do any of the emotional or intellectual work around the history of the queer community and who don’t engage in activism of that sort. Plus, if you are a straight woman who loves and supports gay male ships but you’re grossed out by queer women or you’re objectifying actual queer men in your life, it’s time to check yourself and stop that.

Homoerotic Subtext:

Also, women, and queer people across the board, have been trained to read subtextual clues like pros. Women are especially adept at reading into stories since they are so rarely represented in positive ways. Queer people do this, too. It makes sense that women, especially queer women, would pick up on interactions that have homoerotic subtext easily. And, since film is male dominated, it is much more likely the subtext will be between two men. Also, let’s just face it, the history of film is male centered and homo eroticism is a big part of it, and it’s usually about good looking white dudes. The LGBT community itself still has a long way to go in portraying and magnifying people of all genders and sexualities more equally.

The weight of the male gaze on queer women.

There’s also the problem of objectification. I like to write, read, and see fan art about w/w ships, but there’s always that weight of feeling like you’re objectifying women all over again and feeling unsure about it. Honestly, I think that many of us in fandom should probably do what we can to write more femslash and write original queer female characters, but there are a lot of reasons why these ships aren’t as popular as m/m ships. There’s a lot of baggage around portraying women and female sexuality. And lesbian sex is so objectified that it can be a minefield to navigate even when(once in a blue moon) a good f/f ship opportunity comes along. But, even with that, there are some thriving ships such as Korrasami and Clexa(oh look another queer woman is dead. This is why we can’t have nice things). Queer women do celebrate and create fandom around good w/w ships when we get the chance. 

Misogyny and Mocking Fandom:

Lastly, and I’ve read lots on this before so this is just my take, people tend to demonize fandom and m/m shipping because it is something that is driven by women, mainly made by women, and made mostly for other women (and nonbinary folks, too).

Even in the LGBT+ community, there is a lot of misogyny. Cis gay white men are the face of that movement, and they often don’t realize the sexism that is still alive and well in the community. It’s easy for people to laugh at, mock, and critique shipping because it is very much a space not created by men. I also think it’s easy for some privileged gay men to point out perceived injustice but not realize the sexism inherent in what they are saying.

Fandom is very much a place where women explore their sexuality and can enjoy seeing men being acted upon, not just being the actors. It’s no surprise that women are intrigued by the sexual politics of queer men given the messages about being penetrated and being acted on that women get all the time. Analyzing sexual dynamics through a m/m relationship makes a lot of sense psychologically as it isn’t tied to a male/female gender dynamic in the same way. I think it’s a very natural way for women to see sexuality , and things like dominance and submission, as a personal preference and the beauty and excitement of different ways of expressing sexuality.

People like to enjoy women’s work while also mocking it.

Also, I know many queer men who enjoy m/m smut, fan art, etc. from fandoms where I’m sure that 90 percent of the work is being produced by people who aren’t cisgay men, and are very likely people who identify as women. So, while I know that some queer men are cool with it and some aren’t cool with it, I think it’s important to keep in mind that many of them are benefiting and enjoying from the work that female driven fandom is creating.

In conclusion:

Once again, it’s important to not be a homophobic, fetishizing, clueless person. I see instances of problematic behavior and thinking among women who ship men together often, and it’s a problem and needs to be called out when it happens. But, for all that is holy, stop acting like all of these women are gross, homophobic fetishizers and look at all the reasons why m/m shipping is such a phenomenon. I always think being self-critical and analytical is important. It’s also good to listen to different perspectives because these are intersectional issues with valid discussions to be had.

Sorry this was so long. I really could go on and on, and this is what happens when I miss writing feminist/queer theory papers. ;)

[loudlytransparenttrash]

College Feminists And Their Perversion Of Education

Feminists don’t like when people call themselves anti-feminists because feminists have been successful in equating feminism with support for equality, so to say you’re anti-feminist seems to suggest you are opposed to equality. But if feminism was ever about the equality of the sexes it emphatically no longer is. 

Feminism today is about special privileges and advantages for women and special exemptions from responsibility. So as a woman I am happy to go against feminism because I object to an ideology and practice that sets one standard for women supposedly because we are victims and one harshly punitive standard for men supposedly because they are privileged. 

I also object to anyone giving false information about my safety and odds of being raped and what I am and aren’t capable of. All fair minded people should object to unjust double standards. The hypocrisy and double standards of today’s feminist movement deserves to be exposed and denounced. 

There are many aspects that I find wrong with modern feminism but I usually tend to focus on feminism in college and the impact it is having on the young men and women on campus. My first concern is the irrationality that has overtaken academic feminism. It promotes the idea that women’s feelings are more important than objective reality or the search for truth. Victimhood and feelings now trumps fact, argument and debate. 

According to the Feminist Worldview women must never be made to feel unsafe, not just physically but emotionally and psychologically. They must never be “triggered” (their word, not mine) or made to think about things that challenge their view of themselves as permanently innocent victims. In a feminist world women are always to be believed and always be spoken of in sympathy. 

Although the idea of protecting women sounds admirable, it has become a potent weapon to intimidate anyone who fails to toe the party line on feminist’s wide range of ideologies. In colleges, feminist students believe they have the right to silence others who have opposing views because it makes them feel unsafe and at risk of triggering PTSD (again, their words, not mine.) 

Their silencing methods have spread all throughout colleges and universities and it is fast making it almost impossible for anyone to challenge any facet of feminist dogma which is a disaster for academic debate and learning. At Harvard Law, professors can’t even teach a class regarding rape or sexual assault laws as it's too much for students to emotionally cope with. 

They are actively shutting down speakers from attending campus and giving lectures on “controversial” topics and demonizing and attacking anyone who wishes to listen to an opposing perspective. Professors are receiving onslaughts of demands from students to be more accommodating to their feelings and if they don’t, the students - often successfully - protest for their resignation or to be fired. This is the regressive victimhood that feminism is successfully spreading every day.

My second concern is the near total disregard for the problems and experiences of male students. Men in colleges are told in no uncertain terms that they are uniquely guilty, prone to violence and responsible for war, inequality, rape, domestic violence, pedophilia, sexual harassment, “hetero-patriarchal-capitalistic domination” and all that is wrong in society. A young man entering into college today soon learns that he is a second class citizen in terms of having less rights, financial aid, freedom of inquiry and social support.

His female colleagues enter into a pro-woman campus culture where they gain these immediate advantages and see positive images of women, everything from advertising campaigns to course textbooks. Women students outnumber their male peers by a significant margin, they are taught by pro-feminist teachers dedicated to female success, they are provided with women only spaces with sometimes kindergarten-like surroundings.

They can take advantage of a plethora of special scholarships and bursaries for female students only, they can access feminist counselling if they so desire, they are encouraged to write feminist pieces, instructed on righteous indignation against the wrongs done to women throughout history along with a multitude of other ways they are told that their experiences and concerns matter at the college.

On the other hand a male student has a very different experience. He will likely have to attend a gender sensitivity and anti-violence workshop at the beginning of his first year where he will be lectured about his tendencies for sexual predation. If he is studying in the humanities or social sciences he faces the prospect of having most or even all of his classes taught from a prospective that denigrates the actions and achievements of men. 

Some or many of his teachers may often believe men too often dominate class discussions and should be discouraged from setting a competitive or adversarial tone. Particularly if the man challenges the feminist party line, he will often be told that his “maleness” prevents him from understanding or even having the right to speak. Women on the other hand are never told their “femaleness” prevents them from understanding or voicing an opinion of men.

A young man will learn that if he is allowed to speak without harsh criticism, he will need to soften his comments with apologetic admission of his male privilege. He will learn there are women only spaces where he must not intrude and female sensitivities that he must not offend. If he wishes to write a paper about men’s achievements or problems, it is likely he will be discouraged to do so or he will encounter an instructor who will not even believe in its legitimacy.

Although men are a minority in many of the courses at college he will not find any special scholarships or bursaries to redress the gender imbalance. If he tries to form a men’s issues club or wishes to meet with other men in a male only space to discuss his experiences as a man, he will be refused and told he is a misogynist, that his presence on campus is a threat to women and that the final word on gender has already been determined by feminists and he should shut up and listen to women’s accounts and demands. I wish any of this was even a slight exaggeration.

My third concern is that the result of the oversensitivity to women’s feelings and the indifference to men’s, a host of asymmetrical and unjust polices have been put in place on college campuses, many of which not only sideline men and restrict their right to self-expression but threaten their well-being and livelihoods. Most shockingly perhaps, a zero tolerance policy for what is called sexual misconduct of even the most trivial kinds such as a crude Facebook post or a sexual joke. 

A manic expansion of the understanding of what constitutes as rape now result in much public press beatings about male violence and harsh retribution against individual male students. Young men who engage in what they thought was consensual sex can find themselves accused of rape because of stringent and bizarre new affirmative consent polices. Instead of letting the police and courts deal with such accusations as they should, most colleges have set up in-house “judicial panels” to investigate charges of sexual assault or harassment. 

These panels are made up of members of the college community with no legal training. The accused is routinely denied the right to counsel, the right to know what evidence is brought against him, the right to know his accuser and other fundamental legal guarantees. These in-house panels have serious power. Men face expulsion, a permanent blotch on their academic records, indelible stains on their reputation and in many cases the end of their career dreams even when like in many high profile cases the accusations turns out to be complete fabrication. 

When lies about rape culture statistics are spread throughout campus and the demands that women must immediately be believed is not helping anybody. It’s almost inconceivable that this is happening now in a system that once prided itself on such principles as the presumption of innocence before guilt is proven. In the name of making the college seen as a safe space, we are absolving women of responsibility for their actions and severely compromising the legal rights and freedoms of men.

Where it will end is anybody’s guess but it is clear the feminist agenda is incompatible with the academic ideal of truth and the social ideal of justice for all, which means everyone. The obsession on campus with female trauma and male aggression, the constant harping on the need to promote women, pander to women and provide endless undeserved reparations. 

None of this should have a platform on college campuses today. College feminism is not only a distraction from the pursuit of education but is a serious impediment for mostly young women. They are coming out of university dumber and more pampered than when they went in. They are leaving in debt, completely unprepared for the real world, they are riddled with phobia and paranoia after being lied to about rape statistics and their oppression and they walk out with no skills or credible qualifications. It's about time our colleges took a stand against this corruption and infantilization.

[trinhhungthin]

Is definitely Tinder A real Hookup App?

They are consequently notified of any fits, the place both folks swiped proper on a single another’s information. Thus, users can soon look at lots of of native available singles and solve with a quickly swipe with their finger as long as they’re fascinated or not. Grindr is the biggest seeing app just for the LGBTQ community. For free, Grindr offers geo-located profiles web-site and get swipe and message so as to meet up.

The web site provides high grade on-line marriage services. Very low buyer-oriented guide group that is certainly ever out there to help buyers discover matches. Matchtruly continues to be dominating the internet dating organization for the last ten years.

Bravodate. com Review

We all https://over40datingsites.net/charmerly-review/ happen to be strict within person privateness, the communications that are supplied are protected is just readable to the users. This pair of research provide us with a windowpane into the causes of Tinder users, even so ultimately it truly is onerous to generalize the findings. ?nternet site pointed out, the precise courting and hookup encounters of the 2 samples of individuals differed substantially.

Match really courting site realizes that interaction is vital in internet courting. Apart from the positioning producing matches can be, people also want to communicate.

For the uninformed, Tinder is known as a cell romantic relationship app that enables customers to discover other real love in their geographic space. They will may then begin taking a look at pictures of other users who also match how old they are, gender, and placement specifications. Users swipe proper if you think they like what they find and swipe remaining if they don’t.

Charmerly: Internet dating profiles

It is where everyone wanting to seek out genuine love goes. Dating online could be challenging, and it is for this reason that many persons get disappointed with online dating sites and notify others how bad it really is.

While many across the internet relationship sites and software are free, a lot of value cash to sign up, or perhaps provide paid premiums that permit meant for added bonus deals and solutions. Is it value paying extra for premium companies on courting applications? Well, some assume it can be value that to acquire that extra boost on your profile, although others tend to be than content getting their very own free swipes. We on top of that know hardly any in regards to the lengthy-term prospects of Tinder-initiated interactions. What does the long run maintain designed for Tinder and users?

Ideal Hookup apps are since the name advises is a significant platform for lonely hearts of varied period teams to search out love on the web. Here we now have presented varied software by which lonely hearts discover their dates on the web by filtering out the choices and make the love happen.

Bumble is the internet dating app just where ladies need to make the key transfer in heterosexual connections. When two individuals of opposite love-making match in Bumble, the sweetheart has to personal message first.

When two people of invert sex match on Bumble, the girl needs to message first of all.

For free, Tinder presents the common swipe remaining or proper and personal message your complements.

Tinder helped popularized dating apps and began the swiping happening.

Bumble certainly is the relationship application where women should associated with first transfer in heterosexual relationships.

Tinder helped popularized going out with apps and began the swiping trend. For free, Tinder presents the normal swipping left or right and message your suits.

The free Bumble unit is similar to Tinder and offers swipes and messaging. When you have the funds for the extra Bumble Boost access, users can easily see those that’ve swiped right to them, and that additionally expands matches another 24 hours, and presents to be able to rematch with expired links. Are some apps more want to lead to lengthy-time period relationship than others? A new review by Consumers’ Research inspected how many people end up with relationships from marriage apps, and which ones have probably one of the most. They on top of that looked at harassment charges (fifty seven % of girls compared to 21 l. c of males have got skilled it), shorter romantic relationships, and got an over-all concept of whoms utilizing programs.

On the market seeing that 1995, Meet is among the first relationship offerings. Its program has a strong online group, and operates occasions and journeys that will help you connect to singles locally. There are free of charge and paid out subscriptions, but you will want to register with enjoy the various features that presents plus the assorted search filters. Match provides a program for every kind of singles, which makes it clear why is utilized by more than 30 mil folks during 24 international locations.

Is Charmerly a reliable dating site?

We have become not assured that Charmerly is a reliable dating web page. Its account quality is questionable and the services will be overpriced. The data shown on the card can be an estimate. We all use thirdparty analitical equipment to quantify our metrics.

Sign up for Bravodate

The web page also supplies translation companies to make interaction environment friendly. Executives at romance apps similar to Match, Zoosk, and Bumble anticipate big spikes within their app’s usage on the primary Weekend of January annually.

But this is simply not true, because LoveFort is an excellent platform that was created to support singles to discover a associate for human relationships. This site has plenty of options that can help your website link extra interesting and complete. You can become a person of this program free of charge and start your search rapidly when compared with13623 few minutes.

The post Is definitely Tinder A real Hookup App? appeared first on LUẬT NHÀ ĐẤT.

[hasansonsuzceliktas]

The Creative Power of Being a Female

The two poles of creation and existence, the masculine and feminine, are seen in all planes of existence. The emergence and continuation of life depend on the cooperative union of the masculine and feminine powers. Without this union, nothing emerges. Throughout history, examples of this union have been expressed using different symbols and conveyed in the folk tales of various traditions. Symbols such as earth and sky, water and fire, night and day, yin and yang, Adam and Eve, and protons and electrons are essentiallytelling us about the masculine and the feminine. These are the “positive” and “negative” forces that are inherent to existence. Of course, when we talk about positive and negative, our minds tend to associate the positive with good things and the negative with bad things. However, creation is only possible when these two forces are in balance. Therefore, creation emerged only through the cooperation of these two polar opposites, the masculine and feminine forces, and this balance is intertwined with all aspects of our lives. Despite appearing to be opposing forces, they are actually two sides of the inseparable whole of existence. One could not exist without the other. Our modern civilization tends to emphasize the masculine force through its mostly patriarchic societies. The imbalances in the world, and our civilization’s march to the brink of collapse in many ways, are due to a lack of balance between the masculine and feminine forces, with the scales being heavily weighted in favor of the masculine force. New technologies are developed without proper balance, and Mother Nature’s delicate balance is disturbed, because society overly emphasizes masculine qualities and mentalities. Most of the problems we suffer today come from the masculine force becoming increasingly dominant and consequently disrupting the natural balance. Yet when we look at nature and the cosmos, the masculine and feminine forces are in a perfect equilibrium. After all, this state of perfect equilibrium allows the continuation of existence. If we delve into the atomic level, we see how the structure of matter is based on the balance between masculine and feminine forces. Likewise, in sexual reproduction, life continues through the balance between men and women and their masculine and feminine forces. Looking at the level of the psyche or the spiritual, we see the “masculine” and “feminine” forces that were called “animus” and “anima” by Jung. These two very different energies exist in both men and women, ideally in balance. Of course, the “masculine” tends to dominate in men and the “feminine” in women, and this is all natural, but it’s important to have a certain balance. When not balanced, a dominant “masculine” in a woman brings out the character of a “ball-busting woman,” while an excess of the “feminine” in a man brings out an “effeminate” character. The ideal situation, of course, is for the masculine and feminine sides to be balanced in everyone, regardless of gender. Keeping this in mind, I would now like to talk about the creative aspect of the “feminine” force. My aim is to show you that femininity is not exclusive to women. Men should also develop their feminine sides, because they will become more creative. Of course, when seen from a wider perspective, these are nothing but symbols, but it is a fact that the feminine side of  existence is a significant part of creativity. In feminine creativity, the female part contributes a piece of herself to the creation and feeds her fetus with her own blood. The masculine force contributes as well, but he does not give up something of himself. The female nurtures her offspring with food she produces herself, allowing the baby to develop. These examples in nature demonstrate the self-sacrifice and true creativity of the female as she contributes to the creation. This is why we think of creativity as a “feminine” quality. Of course, it’s impossible to leave the masculine force out of the equation. However, the masculine force has an advantage in terms of “power,” while the feminine force has the advantage of “creativity.” We all know the saying, “Men make houses; women make homes.” This succinctly expresses the creative and constructive qualities of the feminine force. What’s more, as more men get in touch with the “feminine” force within themselves, they too will become more creative and constructive. When a person balances the masculine and feminine energies inside and acknowledges them both, it means he or she has become whole. When this wholeness is reached, everything is all right. The problems people experience are mostly caused by them repressing or rejecting one of their two inner sides. The suppressed side becomes a “shadow,” and we then start projecting  it to others. We start to say things like, “Look at how emotional that woman is!” or “Look at how rude and mean this man is!” The annoyance we feel when we face such traits is due to the masculine or feminine side that we suppressed within ourselves. Therefore, when we make peace with the situation and integrate both of our sides, things become much easier. However, this integration takes time and may require some specific exercises. The contribution of the masculine force to creation is momentary. The male’s intervention simply involves fertilizing the egg, but nurturing and caring for the egg after fertilization is left to the female force. In nature, there are many examples of this. When we focus on mental creativity, we see the same feminine and masculine forces at work here. In this case, the masculine force starts the action, let’s say by bringing up an idea. The feminine force subsequently nurtures and grows this idea, because every creative idea goes through an incubation process. All creative geniuses begin with a germ of an idea and then incubate it. The feminine force effectively dominates this process by nurturing and growing this idea until it becomes just like a comely pearl in the dark waters. Afterwards, the “masculine” force brags about what he created, just like the average family guy does. When we study the lives of all the creative geniuses, especially the male ones, we see how their feminine sides were very strong. They are creative because they utilize their “right brain” very well. Sometimes their feminine sides may become too prominent, so they may display a female character in a psycho-sexual sense. This is a pathological state, of course, but keep in mind that creativity needs the feminine force to be in the greater extent. Every manifested object needs an empty space to exist within. Without emptiness, nothing can exist. So, we may take the existing matter as masculine and the emptiness as feminine. Nothing can exist without emptiness. Likewise, we always need a certain emptiness for creativity to fill. For ideas to pop into our minds, again we need emptiness. Without it, we cannot create anything. And this emptiness is the symbol of the feminine force. Usually we focus on what already exists and ignore the empty spaces where objects do not yet exist. However, we should remember that a huge proportion of every atom is empty space, just miniscule particles moving in the emptiness. That is why all geniuses create emptiness in their minds, and as they create things for this empty space, they do it using the power of emptiness. You cannot create something without empty space. This is another example of how important the feminine force is. Our civilization has conditioned a society that emphasizes the qualities of the left brain, such as consumerism. This imbalance has led to the masculine qualities becoming more dominant while also suppressing the feminine qualities, hence the imbalances. With such an arrangement, even the women have become more male-like to fit in. The new period we are about to enter is a time for rebalancing the masculine and feminine forces and restoring the feminine creativity to its rightful place. The state of unity that will come from this integration will form the basic reality of humanity’s new era. There are so many things to talk about when dealing with masculine and feminine forces, but for the time being, I will stop here and leave the rest to your imagination. Read the full article

[wanderlearn-blog1]

How Much You Need To Expect You'll Pay For A Good home decor

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Considerations To Know About hairstyle

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[ladyonly01-blog]

STANDARD INDIAN BRIDAL JEWELLERY FOR BENGALI BRIDES@leix.su

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Amulets, talismans and relics utilised as neck jewelry are believed to defend and give luck to their owners as the turtle’s difficult shell among Native American people used to protection and symbolizing perseverance. Merchandise can be bought in retail shops nationwide, at , and at the groundbreaking HBO retail hub, the HBO Shop®, positioned at 42nd and 6th Avenue in New York City. Italian jewelry utilized to dominate the planet markets, but its industry share has shrunk because early 2000 as lower expense rivals from India, China and Turkey sophisticated. Such benefits enable sterling silver be utilized for several functions besides jewelry. This certain brand jewelry is identified as a trendy approach to give a finishing touch to be capable to all your clothing. The center has ongoing negotiations with several other retailers, which includes Wal-Mart Stores Inc. By 200 BC, China was differentiating in between brass and bronze, and in 300 AD, Germany and the Netherlands became well recognized in Europe for their brass. Organic materials, such as wood, horn and bone, are also available for plug jewelry.

[katrinratto]

Essential Facts and Statistics Every Entrepreneur Must Know

Starting a business can be terrifying.

Many startup myths threaten to hold back even the best-intentioned entrepreneurs.

The statistics don’t do much for confidence: 20 percent of new companies fail in their first year, and only 50 percent survive through their fifth year.

In spite of those sobering numbers, today, there are close to 400 million entrepreneurs worldwide.

Many people looking to start a business hesitate because they’re don’t know what it will take to get started. They wonder, for example:

What percentage of entrepreneurs are successful?

What is the average age of an entrepreneur when they start a business?

What is the job outlook for an entrepreneur?

What is the average salary of an entrepreneur?

How often do new businesses fail?

What is the main reason that entrepreneurs fail?

Let’s look at the essential facts and statistics to help you understand what being an entrepreneur really looks like, how you can increase your chances of success, and what you can expect once you start living that startup life.

We’ve curated important statistics and separated them into five categories:

General facts and statistics

What are the best locations to start a business?

Where does the funding come from?

The profile of the average entrepreneur

Living the startup life

1. General Facts and Statistics

How many new businesses fail?

A little more than 50 percent of startups fail in the first four years. 19 percent of startups fail because of too much competition, and another 18 percent fail because of pricing or cost issues.

You’ll want to do everything you can to foster the success of your new business.

Start by making sure you build a great business brand, including a strong business name and a memorable logo design.

As we explained in Powerful Branding Lessons From The World’s Best Brands:

A brand is the sum total of the experience your customers and customer prospects have with your company.

A strong brand communicates what your company does, how it does it, and at the same time, establishes trust and credibility with your prospects and customers.

Your company’s brand is, in many ways, its personality.

Your brand lives in everyday interactions your company has with its prospects and customers, including the images you share, the messages you post on your website, the content of your marketing materials, your presentations and booths at conferences, and your posts on social networks.

While the failure rates for new startups are high, business failure rates are actually in a pattern of long-term decline. According to Entrepreneur, the rate that entrepreneurs in the US have failed has fallen by 30 percent since 1977.

If you’re looking for some thriving industries, consider:

Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR),

Medical Marijuana,

Financial Technology, and

Biotechnology.

  2. Ideal locations to start a business

Where can you find cities with great environments to foster startup success?

The United States provides a phenomenal environment for promoting startup ecosystems, ranking 1st out of 138 countries using the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index.

In fact, 6.02 percent of the US adult population owns their own business as their primary source of income.

Not sure where in the US to start your business?

We’re partial to Chicago.

Chicago is home to many successful startups, including crowdspring,

Chicago boasts a thriving startup scene, an incredible 10 times a return on investment, and pretty outstanding hot dogs.

KPMG’s survey backs us up, with more than 800 tech leaders ranking it in the top ten tech innovation hubs worldwide.

Beyond Chicago, there are many other great cities in the US for startups and entrepreneurs.

For a nearby global perspective, Canada has rated the 7th best country in the world to start a business by Business Insider. Take a look at five of Canada’s best startup cities.

If you’re feeling especially restless and adventuresome, embrace your inner globetrotter. Here are 11 cities worldwide where startups are flourishing.

  What if you can’t afford the rent?

Not sure you can afford an office in one of these fantastic, but expensive, cities?

Consider a coworking space.

Co-working spaces tend to provide businesses with savings up to 30 percent, which can be huge savings for new companies with a lot of expenses to contend with. Such spaces offer a great solution for affordable office space and for networking.

At the end of 2017, nearly 1.2 million people all over the globe had spent time working from a co-working space. Co-working spaces have grown an impressive 89 percent in the last 12 months, and 300 percent since 2010.

Here’s a good look at coworking spaces in Chicago.

3. Where does the funding come from?

80 percent of entrepreneurs funded their business out of pocket.

The remaining 20 percent?

Ah, the kindness of strangers… or Mom, Dad, and Aunt Susan. These entrepreneurs benefited from the generosity of family, a bank, or interested investors.

  The profile of the average entrepreneur

What does the average entrepreneur look like?

It’s typical to picture the “average” entrepreneur as a twenty-something, but this is a myth.

According to a First Round survey, the number of startup founders in their twenties falls somewhere around 20 percent. A paltry 3 percent are between the ages of 21 and 25.

Founders of the companies with the highest growth clocked in with an average age of 45.

Also contrary to the popular myth, the average entrepreneur isn’t an unwashed college dropout living in his parents’ basement.

While it is true that 51.6 percent of businesses started out running from someone’s home, many of those entrepreneurs were well educated.

39 percent of business owners have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

In a survey run by the Kauffman Foundation, 95 percent of the business founders surveyed had at least a bachelor’s degree, and 47 percent had even more advanced degrees.

Stay in school if you want to be successful.

When you think of an entrepreneur, you probably picture a man, right?

While startups are still dominated by male entrepreneurs, women are starting to grow their presence.

In fact, it’s a great time to be a female entrepreneur.

While only 40 percent of new entrepreneurs in the United States are women, the rates of female entrepreneurship are increasing. At an average of 10 percent across 51 different economies, the growth rate for women as entrepreneurs hit ten percent, higher than the comparative five percent growth rate for men.

For more about this, read about 5 key traits that make women successful entrepreneurs.

  Does having experience matter?

Company founders were 125 percent more successful if they had worked previously in a similar industry as their new companies.

Tellingly, when 51 percent of entrepreneurs were asked, “What’s the best way to learn more about entrepreneurship?” they answered with a decisive “Start a company.”

Entrepreneurs who began their careers working for someone else before venturing out on their own benefited significantly from their industry experience. Armed with experience as the best teacher, these entrepreneurs had about a 30 percent chance of success in their business venture.

Compare that to the first-time business owners with a comparatively meager 18 percent chance of success, and you might want to sit things out until you get to know how the industry sausage is made.

Don’t beat yourself up if you do try and fail, though. Entrepreneurs with previous failures increase their chance of success the next time 20 percent.

What should you study to be an entrepreneur?

An entrepreneurship education might mean an actual entrepreneurship degree.

You might find more versatility – and more interest – in a broader category of business education. The well-rounded approach might better prepare you for the challenges you’re bound to face in an entrepreneurial career.

While no straightforward path in education will lead you to startup success, a business-related degree can’t hurt. Combine any education with something directly related to your field.

For instance, if you want to open a restaurant, having some kind of hospitality training is essential.

If you’re looking to create an app for the financial tech world, having education in finance and technology is pretty important.

For an idea of where to start, take a look into any of the following:

Business management

Business analytics

Economics

Accounting

Marketing

IT/Software Engineering/UX or UI Design

International business

Hospitality management

Looking to improve your education level to strengthen your odds of success, but not sure you have the time to travel all the way to your nearest university?

There are many online programs that can help you improve your business skills.

  4. Living the startup life

Being an entrepreneur isn’t easy, and it takes a certain personality type to truly be successful.

Problem-solving, self-discipline, and flexibility are all critical components of successful entrepreneurs, and will come in handy when tackling the challenges – and rewards – of the startup life.

What is the average annual salary of an entrepreneur?

According to a study from American Express OPEN, the average entrepreneur pays himself or herself an annual salary of $68,000. According to the same study, 15 percent of entrepreneurs feel that they need to work a second job to help make ends meet.

The core takeaway is there may not be a big payoff at the beginning, but things can still come up roses with more effort and time.

But the hours are good, right?

A survey of hundreds of entrepreneurs revealed:

19 percent work 60+ hours per week,

30 percent work 50-59 hours per week,

33 percent work 40-49 hours per week,

14 percent work 30-39 hours per week, and

5 percent work less than 30 hours per week.

The upside of this is that 73 percent of the businesspeople surveyed said their hours were more flexible now than when they worked for someone else.

The long hours don’t necessarily mean that you’ll be working without breaks, based on the survey results. The same survey found that when it came down to vacations:

44 percent take 16 vacation days or more each year,

26 percent take 11 to 15 vacation days,

19 percent take 6 to 10 vacation days,

11 percent take 1 to 5 vacation days, and

2 percent never take any vacation days.

That last 2 percent may be burning the midnight oil just a little too intensely, but the stereotype of the endlessly hustling entrepreneur is a hard one to shake for some.

Based on these numbers, the idea that a startup will take as many hours as you can give it seems to hold true.

This attitude is changing, however, as people start to push back on the idea that you need to continually be on the move to succeed. Many entrepreneurs have stepped back and reevaluated their attitudes towards work. Johnathan Goodman wrote about this for Entrepreneur.com:

As entrepreneurs with so many hats to wear and fires to put out, it’s all too easy to get pulled in multiple directions and lose sight of what’s truly important and what’s not. It took me a long time to realize that “hustling” every day didn’t get me to where I wanted to be any faster. So, I stopped the hustle, prioritized the most important areas of work and spent my spare time on things that make me happy. The result? More success in business and a higher quality of life.

This approach may not work for everyone trying to start a business, but it’s worth considering. We’ve examined entrepreneur health and wellness before, and work-life balance is a vital part of that.

Even so, you should prepare yourself for long hours. It’s unlikely that you’ll see a short-term payoff until your business gets off the ground.

If you’re looking to improve your mindset and your capacity to put your head down and get it done, check out How Self-Discipline Can Unlock Your Business Success to strengthen your self-discipline skills.

  Wrapping up

As you’ve seen, the road an entrepreneur travels on is rarely paved with gold, but with effort, discipline, a well thought out business plan, and a little bit of luck, you may find your way.

No matter what direction you may go, knowing the numbers and being prepared is a critical part of success.

But there’s one thing more important than being prepared. As Simon Sinek said, “dream big. Start small. But most of all, start.”

Are you ready to launch your startup or take your existing one to the next level? Our team of over 210,000 creatives is ready and waiting to handle your business’s logo design, web design, and more – everything you need to build a great brand. And, our outstanding customer service team is available to guide you through the whole process. Get started now and request a free, no obligation design consultation with one of our design experts today. Check out these case studies to read about how crowdspring’s talented creatives have helped other startups get noticed.

from http://bit.ly/2KmCUCS

[gamergirlsexperience-blog]

The Dickwolves Controversy: Everything you need to know and why it’s important

Let me first start by saying that I was not initially offended by the original Dickwolves comic. The comic strip created by Penny Arcade’s, Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins, titled The Sixth Slave did not trigger any feelings of victimization for me, nor did I initially think someone could be hurt by this comic if it exists in a vacuum. The problem lies in that fact that Penny Arcade and their comic strip do not exist in a vacuum.  Their media is visited by over 3.5 million people per day and is absorbed by a society that does not treat rape as seriously as it ought too. Krahulik and Holkins media is constantly digested by a culture rife with jokes about rape which normalize and effectively minimize the severity of rape, thus perpetuate a rape culture. The goal of this paper is to catalogue the events of the Dickwolves controversy, in order to discuss why the comic itself is not the problem. Rather, the problem lies in the hyper-gendered atmosphere of hegemonic masculinity that permeates the digital gaming world in which the comic exists.

Before proceeding with the Dickwolves cases, which Anastasia Salter contends, "highlights how the hyper masculine discourse encourages the overt privileging of masculinity over femininity and discourages women from engaging in gendered discourse within the community," let me first present a definition of hegemonic masculinity that I believe encompasses all media:

Hegemonic masculinity is about the winning and holding of power and the formation (and destruction) of social groups in that process. In this sense, it is importantly about the ways in which the ruling class establishes and maintains its domination. The ability to impose a definition of the situation, to set the terms in which events are understood and issues discussed, to formulate ideals and define morality is an essential part of this process. Hegemony involves persuasion of the greater part of the population, particularly through the media, and the organization of social institutions in ways that appear ‘natural,’ ‘ordinary,’ ‘normal.’ The state, through punishment for non-conformity, is crucially involved in this negotiation and enforcement (Donaldson, 645).

The world of digital gaming substantiates hegemonic masculinity through patterns of exclusion toward women, who are continually presented with background roles to support or deter the ultimate completion of a man's heroic quest. While the public identity of gaming originally stemmed from an outsider group mentality, "their in-group dynamics have expanded upon women-hostile concepts of masculinity within the larger social sphere. This discourse, as amplified across social networks and in public online spaces, allows for extreme and virulent lashing out against those who are perceived as others, most notably women"(Salter, 402).  When a prominent female blogger spoke up to say she found a comic strip poking fun at a commonly used gameplay mechanic which made a rape joke to be hurtful, an extreme and virulent lashing out is exactly what she received.

On August 11, 2010, the webcomic and blogging website, Penny Arcade published a comic which features a (white, male) slave begging to be rescued by another character. The slave pleads, "Hero! Please take me with you! Release me from this hell unending! Every morning, we are roused by savage blows. Every night, we are raped to sleep by the dickwolves!" The hero then reports to the slave, "I only need to save five slaves. Alright? Quest complete." The prisoner objects, "But…." Only to have the hero interrupt him to say, "Hey, pal. Don’t make this weird."

The comic which takes place in a setting that resembles World of Warcraft, drawn by Krahulik and written by Holkins was uploaded, according to Penny Arcade, to comment on the silly conundrum in games like WoW in which you often receive quests to, "kill ten of these bad people" or "save five prisoners." Because the game has millions of players, these quests are effectively undone as soon as you complete one so that other players can do their good deeds too. Additionally, the absurdity of only meeting the quota outlined by the quest does not lend itself to reality. The comic was an effort to, “point out the absurd morality of the average MMO where you are actually forced to help some people and ignore others in the same situation" (Gabe, 2013).

Immediately people began to express displeasure with the joke. The most prominent response, written by Shaker Milli A. on Shakerville, the progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, and social justice, cites a myriad of reasons the comic was inappropriate and insensitive. Specifically, Shaker called out Penny Arcade for not providing a warning they were making a joke about rape. Without any warning rape survivors who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder- and who might not necessarily feel like seeing a rape joke mixed in with their usual dose of video-game satire run the risk of being triggered (Myers, 2011). Additional problems that Shaker brings up from the comic include: 1) Rape is not part of the game, so for the slave to explicitly state that he is being raped is meant as a "humorous" exaggeration. 2) A slave being raped is a real thing that happens every day, and is not a humorous subject to joke about. 3)Because rape survivors exist among us, and after being victimized by rapists, they are revictimized by a society that treats even real rape like a joke. They are forced to live in a culture where rape victims are often doubted, mocked, and insulted openly not just in satire (Shaker, 2010).

Shaker further condones the comic because rape jokes can trigger some survivors of sexual violence. Additionally, clarifying that being triggered "does not mean "being upset" or "being offended" or "being angry," or any other euphemism people who roll their eyes long-sufferingly in the direction of trigger warnings tend to imagine it to mean. Being triggered has a very specific meaning that relates to evoking a physical and/or emotional response to a survived trauma" (Shaker, 2010).  Being triggered may forced someone to experience anything from a brief moment of dizziness, to a shortness of breath and a racing pulse, to a full-blown panic attack. Moreover, jokes that normalize and effectively minimize the severity of rape, only prove to perpetuate rape culture.

Remarkably, rather than apologize or ignore the blogs post and hand full of offended emails, the authors of the comic with the released a new comic that “reframed the argument (of the critiques), suggesting that the only possible protest to the joke was the idea that it encouraged rape, rather than any underlying message of sexual violence or hostility” (Salter, 406).

The response comic released on August 13, 2010 , featured a bemused-looking Tycho addressing the audience directly announcing that if, "It's possible you read our cartoon, and became a rapist as a direct result. If you're raping someone right now, stop. Apologize. And leave. Go, and rape no more" (Krahulik and Holkins, 2010).

The sarcastic follow-up comic attempts to use the fundamental tools of rape apologia ("you're just humorless; you're oversensitive; you just don't get it") to argue they are not a rape apologist (McEwan, 2010). In a world where the primary means in which rape is normalized is humor, I can not make sense of why Krahulik and Holkins responded in this way.

On the same day of the response comics release, Melissa McEwan added to the Shakerville blog with a post titled, Survivors are So Sensitive. In this post she outlines the strategies that defenders of rape jokes typically employ: 1.) Misrepresenting critics' primary objection as the assertion that rape jokes "create" rapists and/or "cause" rape. 2.) Summarily treating that idea as absurd. 3.) Concluding that critics are thus hypersensitive reactionaries with no legitimate critique. Her outline essentially summarizes the Penny Arcade response, but then goes further to explain why these defense strategies are ludicrous. Starting with misrepresentation of critique as, "your rape joke will directly cause someone to go out and commit a rape." McEwan proclaim that the idea is absurd, which is exactly why it's so appealing to defenders of rape jokes to deliberately misrepresent critics' arguments in such a fashion. Furthermore, "the rape culture is a collection of narratives and beliefs that service the existence of endemic sexual violence in myriad ways, from overt exhortations to commit sexual violence to subtle discouragements against prosecution and conviction for crimes of sexual violence. The rape joke, by virtue of its ubiquity, prominently serves as a tool of normalization and diminishment"(McEwan, 2010). What's more, the comic is making an explicitly hostile mockery of the readers’ right to be offended, which thus fails to foster any legitimate forum for discussion.

The duo continued to create controversy through October 2010, when Krahulik cavalierly drew a dickwolf (a wolf with veiny penises where its legs and tail should be) during their "Make-A-Strip" panel appearance at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. Even so, what finally drove Krahulik and Holkin's PAX away from its perception as safe space for everyone, was creation and sale of Team DickWolf T-shirts on their online store. The shirts, which were designed to look like sports fans attire with the words “Penny Expo” and “Dickwolves” flanked across a growling blue wolf’s head, only served to "reinforce the hyper masculine associations of the Dickwolves by adopting a signifier of athletic masculinity"(Salter, 2015). Additionally, considering that the Dickwolves were introduced to society as rapists, the shirts implicitly suggest a team-spirit endorsement of rape as a joke, if not as an outright action (Salter, 2015).

Courtney Stanton, a project manager for Boston-based game developer DINO Interactive, a rape survivor, feminist, and advocate for marginalized groups in the game industry, critiqued the Dickwolves shirt, citing specifically that "the idea of being in a room full of mostly men, where some of those men are wearing it, feels like a threat against me. Penny Arcade has gone out of its way to make sure that the floor of PAX East is no longer a safe space for me"(Myers, 2011). Stanton suggesting that the intention of the shirts was in part to create an atmosphere of hostility at the upcoming Penny Arcade Expo declared she would be boycotting PAX East where she had been asked to speak on a panel. Just two days after Stanton's critique the T-shirts were removed from the Penny Arcade store.  Unforeseeably, after the shirts disappeared from the Penny Arcade store Stanton's post went viral and within a few days had hundreds of comments and tens of thousands of hits.

Stanton and other rape survivors were then viciously harassed repeatedly on Twitter, blogs, and forums all over the internet for their role in taking down the t-shirts. Dickwolves advocates created Twitter handles like "@teamrape, @DickWolvington, and @rapefatchicks (that last one using Krahulik's dickwolf drawing from PAX Prime as an icon), and used these accounts to post pictures of mutilated women, to demand that Stanton provide "proof" that she had been raped, and to track down a police station near her house to report her rape for her"(Myers, 2011). These fans of Dickwolves stated that their reason for wanting to wear the t-shirts was the right of free speech. In an interview, Stanton commented on the harassment noting, "it stopped being people who would have read my blog anyway and disagreed with me. It became people who thought that I should be dismembered and all of my limbs should be raped. Which was, literally, a suggestion that I got. And that's where I think the reasonable debate kind of took a dip"(Myers, 2011).

While many members of the community stood fortified behind the cartoonists, doubling down on the idea that they were not specifically trying to alienate women audiences, yet should have the right to make rape jokes, many indeed harassed those who voiced Penny Arcade critiques (Salter & Blodgett, 2012). All the while, Krahulik and Holkins remained silent.

The furthered hostile othering of Stanton and similar female activists in the male-dominated space of gaming was only finally alluded too by Krahulik and Holkins when an unfunny threat on his family convinced him to call out his alleged supporters for their behavior. A tweet comprised on Feb 2, 2011, by Twitter user, @ghostpostin, "A Funney Joke: Go to Mike Krahulik / @cwgabriel's house, Literally Murder His Wife and Child #jokes #funny #murderwolves."

Although, Stanton and similar users had been enduring far worse for months, the tweet finally caused the duo to break their long silence. In a post titled "Okay that's enough," Krahulik wrote:

We have people on both sides of this ridiculous argument making death threats and worse. Kara was certainly upset to see someone mention on Twitter last night that it would be funny to come to my house and murder my wife and children. I know there are people who see themselves as being on our side that have made equally disgusting comments in the other direction. I want to make it very clear that I do not approve of this kind of bullshit (Myers, 2011).

On that same day, Holkins wrote in a long post titled "On the matter of Dickwolves:"

If I haven’t been seen to discuss The Matter Of Dickwolves, this is the reason why.  I’m not entirely certain that a conversation is possible.  This isn’t mere cynicism - this is a fully rational assessment of the situation.  The perspectives in play, the lenses, are too different: one side believes that not according the issue of rape the proper respect fuels a kind of perverse, perpetual engine called rape culture.  There is a vast, specific lexicon and hundreds of tacit assumptions that gird it.  The other side (that’s me, but not just me) believes that when it comes to expression nothing is off the table.  It is the creator’s prerogative to create something - even something grotesque - out of anything they can find. The fact of the matter is that the strip that started all this is about how empty, amoral, and borderline vile electronic heroism actually is.  When I look at it now, it’s hard to imagine the chaos this comic stands at the center of….As I said, so much of this happened because I assumed that a genuine dialogue was impossible.  Maybe I was wrong.  It’s certainly happened before. But I am who I am, in the end; the comics I make are the result of my damage.  I can’t put it any more succinctly than that (Holkins, 2011).

The mistake I think, Holkins and Krahulik, made was that they did not provide any warning that the contents of their comic strip involved a commentary involving rape. Additionally, they were extremely insensitive to rape victims in their response comic, by essentially telling the victims the only plausible justification they could have for getting mad, is that the comic encourages rape, which of course it does not. What the comic and its response does facilitate, however, is a culture where rape is humored, effectively normalizing rape and minimizing it severity.

More specifically, Holkins and Krahulik erred when they failed to exposed/acknowledge the public dialogue created by the Dickwolves supporters. The Dickwolves supporters diminished the role of women within the discussion, by focusing more upon silencing and undermining their objections than actually addressing them. Women who spoke out against Holkins and Krahulik were belittled, verbally assaulted, and harassed from many areas within the gaming public. From the explicit creation of the T-shirt to oppose female voices, who felt threated by it connotations, to the reduction or removal of PAX and other public forums as a safe space for women to participate in public discussions around gaming. Dickwolves supports deliberately continued to reframe the discussion to avoid common ground, so that women, or feminine supporters, were made to feel ostracized and unwelcome within the bounds of spaces owned by dominant public, males. Any perceived transgressions to change the hyper masculine identity of Penny Arcade and its dominance of the space were met with hostility, from death threats to images of mutilated women in an effort to move feminists away from their space.

The rage we see expressed by the threatened individuals and groups seems to be based on at least two factors: sexism (as well as racist, homophobic and ageist) beliefs about the abilities of female players, and fears about the changing nature of the game industry. For the sexist threatened individuals, we need more documentation of the extent of those activities and analysis of what responses or actions tend to mitigate or eliminate their issues. I would call for more traditional research studies that not only document the prevalence of hate speech, but that seek out and investigate those who engage in such practices, to see how and why they do so.

For those individuals that fear the changing nature of the game industry; such as the growth of casual and social games, which are often targeted to women and fear that means that fewer budgets and development teams will be focused on traditional titles and genres such as First Person Shooters and Action games. What is needed here is more in-depth, critical research examining how players understand and utilize: how they make sense of the wider game industry universe, how they conceptualize their choices, and who is controlling those choices.

But you see, any community that is built upon commercial success and shared consumerism cannot afford to alienate members of its general audience. Hardcore gaming identity resists the incursion of casual and female gamers because sexualizing women, harassing, and objectifying them is a form of dominance, and it is a form of dominance that simultaneously shuts women out or makes them less meaningful then men. It isn’t until a greater number of individuals within the hardcore gaming public begin to address their adoption of a hyper masculine discourse that true progress will occur.

This discussion could have been started by Holkins and Krahulik. Because the issue of rape and how it is treated by feminists and non-feminist, to be a feminist issue- would be a great place to start a discourse on the gendering rape issue. Gendering rape inherently confuses the issue and I think Holkins and Krahulik knew this. The rape victim in this comic was intentionally a man, because even Holkins and Krahulik knew that if the slave in the comic was a female, no one would be able to laugh. After all a woman in distress is just meant to be saved, as video games have been teaching us for decades in games like Mario, Legend of Zelda, and so on. The comedy of the comic, however, is rooted in the image of a man in distress, begging to be saved in a world that stems from the kind of anxious, performance-based masculinity that pervades the gaming community as a whole. 

References

Consalvo, M. (2012). Confronting Toxic Gamer Culture: A Challenge for Feminist Game Studies Scholars. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 1. doi:10.7264/N33X84KH

Dill, Karen E., Brian P. Brown, and Michael A. Collins. “Effects of Exposure to Sex-stereotyped Video Game Characters on Tolerance of Sexual Harassment.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44.5 (2008) 1402-1408. EBSCO. Web. 16 Sept. 2015.

Donaldson, Mike. “What Is Hegemonic Masculinity?” Theory and Society 22.5 (1993): 643–657. Web. 7 Feb. 2013.

“GAMBIT: Hate Speech Project.” GAMBIT: Hate Speech Project. Comparative Media Studies at MIT, 10 Mar. 2011. Web. 23 Sept. 2015.

Hayes, E. TECHTRENDS TECH TRENDS (2005) 49: 23. doi:10.1007/BF02763686

Holkins, Jerry. "On the matter of Dickwolves" Penny Arcade. Web.  3 Feb. 2011. 

Johnson, Lauren. "Women and the Video Gaming Community" THE SCHOLARLY JOURNAL OF NORTH HENNEPIN COMMUNITY COLLEGE. Web. Mar. 2016.

Krahulik, Mike. "Some Clarification - Gabe" Penny Arcade. Web.  5 Sept. 2013.

McEwan, Melissa. "Survivors are So Sensitive" Shakesville. Web. 13 Aug. 2010.

Myers, Mady. "Gaming, Rape Culture, and how I stopped reading Penny Arcade" The Phoenix . Web. 7 Mar. 2011.

Salter, Anastasia, and Bridget Blodgett. “Hypermasculinity & Dickwolves: The Contentious Role of Women in the New Gaming Public.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 1 September 2010. Web. 9 Sept. 2015.

Shaker, Milli A., "Rape is Hilarious, Part 53 in an ongoing series - feminist blog that called them out" Shakesville. Web. 12 Aug.  2010.