#its always did you ever say the f slur when you were in primary school because if so you are a danger to society

[launh]

Oh my god I don't have good and fancy words for it but I'm so tired of the fucking polarisation spiral. The whole 'those people and these people and their stupid barbaric selfish people and our good intelligent kind people'. The fucking separation of it all - "I won't do politics unless that guy stops being a politician, I don't want to play until the playing field is fair, I don't want to vote until those people stop voting". Oh my god!! Who do you think has the power to make the playing field fair!!! That's you baby!!! Are you really truly any better than 'those people' who stereotype and judge others? Of course you can disagree with someone, of course you can dislike a politician and their views and of course you can dislike it when someone agrees with those views. And of course you can dislike spending time with a group of people because of their views! But dismissing an entire group of people as barbaric and stupid and not worth your time and even subhuman (?!) because of their views? Be serious. How will that ever fucking help. Do you think separating the good people from the bad people has ever resulted in anything good at all ever? You know what helps? Talking to each other. Finding common ground. Good, you both like baking. Good, you both live on the same street. Good, you both like the name Ruth. Or fucking whatever. And then go from there. Try to maybe listen and understand each other for once. I'm not talking about forgiving people who plan on taking away your human rights or who would rather see you dead. Obviously. I'm not saying you should find the nearest 'bad person' and befriend them. Obviously. But take a good look at yourself pleasseeeeee. What do you mean 'bad person'? If you believe hatred is taught, have you ever caught yourself believing in the innate evil of a trump supporter, have you ever considered them beyond saving? If you believe empathy is human, have you ever checked if your thoughts still mean the same, does "i hate men" still carry the same value, do you still look at men the same way you did before you started saying that? Do you catch yourself stripping away hobbies and feelings and meaningful relationships from 'those' people, do you consider yourself above them? Do you praise and celebrate when people change for the better or do you hold on to what they used to do and put all your focus on what they still need to learn? A homophobe might meet a gay man and consider him one of the good ones, and that's a good start. That's not the end but it's a good fucking start. If your politics are in-group/out-group politics you are not helping and you do not have the interest of your fellow people at heart. If your beliefs have pushed you to the point you hate a certain group so much you think it's better if they're dead? I'm asking you to think about that a little, okay? Maybe go outside. Talk to people. Jesus christ.

[merthurnarlie]

"I stand motionless in front of the mirror, deliberately taking off each item of clothing and inspecting the bare flesh it exposes. Never had I paid much attention to what it felt to expose myself and assess each acute part of my body on an emotional level. Every marking or scarred tissue, a story to tell. A chemical burn in the shape of a capital ‘F’ on my right hand - a reminder of a science experiment gone wrong when the girl I had a crush on foolishly dumped too much amount of ceroxide into the beaker. Or the sharp, raised white line drawn across my knee from an overzealous soccer tackle. Or the seasonal freckles that invade my cheeks during summer - a constant reminder of my father that had passed just sixteen months after my birth. My body tells the story of my life. A map of my self-discovery. My body - my physicality - has both protected me and isolated me. As a child, primary school was unkind to me. Growing up in a small country town where coming from a mixed-race family was alien, the racial taunts were abundant, and my thick black hair and my dark complexion were a dead giveaway that I was different, let alone my proud Filipino mother. Emotionally too weak to deal with the racial slurs, my body responded and became my savior. I learned to use my physicality as a means of defense. I was the kid so puffed up with bravado and aggression, yet so full of pain. And I carried this big posture all throughout high school, making sure I was the biggest, strongest, and angriest as a device to ward off the would-be tormentors. Bruce Lee and Arnold Schwarzenegger hung on my wall - my inspiration to keep up the the facade of the alpha male. My heroes. My idols. Both strong and indestructible, if there was a problem, it was resolved with a clenched fist. I subscribed to this mentality, and it served its purpose through my schooling years. However, when it came to dealing with the real issues that laid beneath my skin, I found it was the very same aggression that protected me that now hindered me. In retrospect, I was never happy with my body. And I’m still not. I always felt uncomfortable in the changing room after P.E. at school, or on swimming sports days. I would look at the other boys running around with their shirts off, absolutely oblivious to the discomfort that I was feeling. I recall a time when I was about eleven or so, and it was a sweltering summer’s day. I had found the $1.80 I needed to enter the local pool on my mother’s dresser, so I stole it, and I ran as fast as my stumpy little legs could handle, all the way to the pool. My friends were there already, their shirts off, reclining, eating their Twisties, and the sun was drawing their shadows on the wet concrete. And all my excitement seemed to just reel up inside of me, like a horse pulling up a jump that was just too big or too far for it. And I didn’t want to take my shirt off. I was ashamed of what hid underneath it. And a great lump curled up in my throat and my shame screamed at me to leave the pool - to leave my friends. I conceded to the voices in my head, and I gave my friends a thin excuse and I slowly scuffed my way back home. And I still live with that shame. My body is the story of my life, or so I thought. I began acting at university. I didn’t know why, I just knew that I loved it. Nowadays, my reasons for the choice are much clearer. Acting, for me, is the ultimate escapism. It’s a chance to have a completely out-of-body experience, and maybe it’s a chance for me to escape the unexplained shame. Yet, it isn’t. Mentally and emotionally, I may be able to transcend who I am, but physically I can’t. And this became glaringly obvious to me when I began working in the film and television industry. I act because I love the art, so when I began professional work, the thought of my face, my body, my story becoming a commercial quantity never came to mind. Then, all of a sudden, my body became a product you could view nightly on national television. My body was no longer subject to my own thoughts - it was now a topic of the public forum. And - this sounds horribly vain, but I’ll just keep going - out of my own curiosity, or vanity, I began to read the reviews of my work. Yet, when it came to the comments, it was all about what I looked like. I found images of me on websites, rating my body out of ten, with usually comments ranging from “Yes, I would fuck him,” or “No, I wouldn’t go near him with a ten foot pole and the look of him makes my skin crawl.” And I can say that the scared little boy at the pool was now terrified. Arnold and Bruce Lee now loomed over me once again, but this time, they didn’t instill me with strength - rather, they instilled me with a sense of inadequacy. What I should look like, that I needed a six pack, or I need biceps bigger than I’d ever require. It was the first time that I guess I’d been exposed to sexual objectification, and I wasn’t the only male at my work feeling it. There was pressure on the guys on the show to look a certain way, and it was rarely talked about. We all suffered in our own silence, and the gossip rags and the papers labelled us as girl-crazy, sex symbols, whatever - and the publicity, which is a compulsory requirement, turned us into pinup boys for schoolgirls. And all the media fueled the fire of sexual objectification. And here I was, stuck in the middle of it, wishing I��d never stole my mother’s $1.80. But nowadays, I’ve reconciled with the fact that it is part of my job to look a certain way, to attain a certain physique. However, this realization hasn’t helped reconcile my own issues of self-perception. If anything, it’s complicated it further. All the attention from the media made me question my own worth - did I get the opportunity to work in the film and television industry based on my talent or hard work, or was it just simply because of the way I looked? When I was asked to speak about the topic of my body, I tried to collect my experiences surrounding my body and what it meant to me, and while I was doing so, it became clear to me that the topic of body and body image for me is intrinsically linked to identity. My body is a map of my self-discovery, but does that mean I’m comfortable in my own skin? Of course not. And I don’t think I’ll ever be. But it’s a journey that’s really exciting to take." - Bob Morley