In 1975, Jackie Tonawanda filed a suit against the New York State Athletic Commission, demanding that women be allowed to get pro boxing licenses. She won the suit, paving the way for women’s boxing today. Tonawanda would become the first woman to fight at Madison Square Garden where she knocked out her male opponent in just the second round.

Sharing this here too

I do not usually make posts like this but recently I have seen a lot of content on Instagram, Twitter and I think tiktok too misunderstanding the meaning of intrusive thoughts, which may cause people experiencing them to be upset.

I have tried to shortly explain the difference of impulsive and intrusive and hope it will help people to understand and use the words correctly.

Reblogs are very much appreciated!

Blue Plumbago

a reminder that your advocacy for ending the occupation of Palestine should also extend to advocating for Indigenous and First Nations peoples' liberation in your own country. The anti-colonial struggle is a global one. Show up for Indigenous people everywhere you can because we are under occupation almost everywhere. Not to mention the Zionist occupation is supported almost exclusively by the colonial world powers. Your advocacy for the liberation for Palestine must go hand in hand with advocacy for First Nations liberation and Land Back.

On March 28, 1975, Marion Bermudez caused headlines after entering an AAU Golden Gloves Competition and defeating her male opponent. She was then barred from participating in further Golden Gloves events, but Bermudez went on to become a #1 ranked World Featherweight in women’s boxing.

Reblog to scare a terf :3

call me ignorant but i genuinely don’t understand why sports have to be split up by gender.

me after traumadumping:

I can relate to that! I'm an ex baptist, I grew up believing in eternal torment for nonbelievers & 'heretics' and thinking that the bible is objective truth and should not be questioned. I'm nowadays a religious pluralist, and I feel so much closer to God(s) / the higher power now that I don't view spirituality through the narrow, blurry lens of religious fundamentalism. Conservative religion is restrictive, controlling and ironically pulls you away from true & healthy spirituality.

i find it funny how evangelicals will claim that deconstruction invariably draws you away from God. meanwhile my own deconstruction has left me feeling closer to God than all those years in the evangelical church ever did. 🥴

Progressive & inclusive Christians I love you 💙

Progressive & inclusive Muslims I love you 💜

Progressive & inclusive Jews I love you 💚

Progressive, inclusive & accepting religious people in general I love and cherish you ❤💞❤

Have a blessed day/night!

I was called “an abomination” for being disabled

**ableism trigger warning**

Today I was scrolling through Instagram and I noticed that a girl I used to know back in elementary school had posted graphic photos of dying animals along with a caption that essentially said that anyone who eats any animal products is evil. Her intention, clearly, was to shame anyone who doesn’t make the same dietary choices as her. I’m always bothered when I see posts like this, because I recognize the ableism inherent in these sorts of broad shaming statements. They all rely on the idea that everyone is capable of becoming vegan, and often when people with these beliefs are questioned they will stand behind the idea that “anyone can find a vegan way to meet their nutritional needs.” But that simply isn’t true. There are a wide variety of disabilities, allergies, intolerances, etc., that can prevent a person from safely eating a vegan or vegetarian diet.

I myself am someone who, because of my disabilities, is unable to survive on a vegan or vegetarian diet. Not only do I have specific nutritional deficiencies due to poor stomach absorption, I also have a condition that severely limits the foods I can eat. This condition arose because back when I was an infant, my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome caused severe acid reflux which made eating a painful experience. As a result, my brain formed negative associations with food, and these negative associations led to the development of Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. ARFID is a condition in which people experience both mental and physical aversions to food, often lack a normal appetite, and can have their gag reflex activated simply by tasting or even smelling a food that isn’t on their “safe” list. The condition is largely subconscious, making it very difficult to control and not something a person could just “get over” or “push through.” We have very real physical reactions to foods outside of our usually tiny “safe” lists.

On another day I might not have bothered to comment on the post my acquaintance made, but today I was already feeling sensitive. My best friend in the world, who also has ARFID, is currently away at an event and is going through hell in part because she is faced with group meals comprised of foods she can’t eat. So knowing how much this wonderful, amazing friend of mine is suffering right now because of ARFID, I couldn’t stand to see someone ignorant of the condition imply that people, like my best friend and I, who eat meat and cheese are all terrible people. So I commented and politely told the person who made the post that she might want to avoid making broad shaming statements because they can be harmful to disabled people who have no choice but to consume animal products.

The next thing I knew, she was private messaging me and calling me a liar, saying that anyone could go vegan and demanding I provide sources stating the opposite. I complied and provided 9 separate scholarly sources discussing various issues like allergies, chronic illnesses which can cause zinc deficiencies (a deficiency which can be worsened by excessive vegetable consumption), studies that show that veganism worsens IBS, and of course I provided information on ARFID as well. The girl, who likely didn’t even read the sources, made it pretty clear she didn’t believe me. I’ll let the screenshots tell the next part of the story.

The things she said to me in this conversation were perhaps the cruelest and most dehumanizing things that I have ever had said directly to me. By calling me an abomination and telling me not to have kids so that I don’t pass on my “bad genes,” she essentially told me that she believed I am less than human and that people like me shouldn’t exist. The fact that in 2019 there are still people who think it is okay to say this sort of thing to disabled people is revolting. This faux-progressive girl would likely never say this sort of thing to a member of another minority group, would never imply that they were abominations, but she sees no issue in saying that same thing to a disabled person.

I’m lucky that this didn’t have too bad of an impact on my mental health because I’ve been a part of the disability activism community long enough to have grown to accept and embrace my disabilities. I understand that they are part of what makes me who I am, and while I still have days where I hate them and feel sad about them, overall I try to love them because if I didn’t have them then I wouldn’t be me. I try to remind myself every day that there is no “right way” to be a person, and that I don’t need to conform to arbitrary abled standards in order to be successful and happy.

But still, seeing this was a bit of a punch to the gut because it cut straight to the insecurities I had back before I began to love myself. I used to wonder if maybe I was too “broken” to exist, and used to think that my family would have been better off if I’d never been born. I know better now, but those thoughts still haunt me at times. I showed the girl’s messages to my parents a few hours after I got them, and it was heartbreaking to watch my mother tear up. “I feel the same as I did when you used to come home from school and ask me why kids were bullying you,” she said, “I want to have an explanation but I really don’t know. I really don’t understand how someone could say something this cruel to you.”

I really hope that anyone who sees this will reblog it, I really want this girl’s terrible words to be seen. Because ableism is not going to end until people are held accountable for it in the same way they are held accountable for other forms of discrimination.

When I made this post just ten days ago, it was about mass graves discovered at Al Shifa hospital and now we have learned that the same had happened at Nasser hospital in Gaza. The same genocidal pattern: a hospital is put under siege, patients and medical staff are abducted, tortured and buried in mass graves.

But to build on the last point I wanted to bring attention to in the previous post, it is very crucial to also keep in mind is that the Palestinian Civil Defence have reported that Israel had deliberately concealed the identities of those it killed and buried in these mass graves. Close to 400 bodies have been buried in these mass graves, 58% of the recovered bodies have not been identified.

In a press conference, a spokesperson of the civil defence in Gaza said that Israel had intentionally disfigured the bodies postmortem in order to remove any identifying markers such as birthmarks. He also mentioned that they suspect that the bodies have been placed in body bags that expedited the decomposition process, destroying any possibility of them being identified.

One of the main and only ways families have been able to identify the bodies of their loved ones is through the clothes they remember them wearing the last time they saw them. I saw a video of a mother identifying her son by his striped jacket. You can see the grief mixed with relief that she will be able to give her son proper burial.

Remember when months ago I said that to be identified and buried in Gaza has become a luxury? This is very much still the case.

i think its so funny that alumni from schools like harvard and columbia that were there during the protests in the 60s-80s are expressing support for students currently protesting against the genocide in palestine, and random zionists that were NOT at these protests in the 60s-80s have the never ending audacity to tell these alumni "well thats different, what you protested was good and what they're protesting is bad." as if protesters against the vietnam war and apartheid south africa were not also demonized, arrested, brutalized, and even killed for their activism. history only remembers them fondly after the damage has already been done.

Sudan still desperately needs aid--it needs a lot of things, but it is approaching a dangerous point with famine and mass death due to hunger imminent.

These are the kinds of headlines we're getting now:

Here's an ongoing fundraiser:

I linked it before, to help with Ramadan, but it's an ongoing initiative, the need has not stopped.

I picked this gofundme because it's been boosted by people I trust and you can see pictures online of the food they've provided, e.g.:

But I also picked this because you can see the amount of donations. It's 2pm ET on Saturday, April 20th right now? For the next week, whatever's donated, I'll match for a total up to $2,000 (we'll say 2,750 CAD, since the gofundme is in Canadian dollars).

You don't have to send me a receipt, I just ask that you donate and boost.

Oof, I didn't think about that when I reblogged this. Adults can be groomed too, I totally agree with you. Thank you for correcting me (and op)!

if i have to see someone use the word “grooming” one more time in an incorrect way i’m going to start throwing things. like YES this person had an inappropriate relationship with this other person. YES this person was abusive and manipulative. YES this person seemed creepily obsessed with this other person. etc etc etc. but that doesn’t automatically equal grooming !!! abuse isn’t necessarily grooming, stalking isn’t necessarily grooming, even pedophilia isn’t necessary grooming ! grooming refers to a SPECIFIC PATTERN OF BEHAVIOR that predatory adults will use on children before actually abusing them in order to normalize and suppress the abuse beforehand! it’s specifically nonviolent and is used to make the predator harder to get caught, to get the victim to trust and fear them, and to normalize said inappropriate behavior before it actually happens. i cannot fucking stand what the internet has done to this term. if you’re talking about domestic abuse, use the word domestic abuse. if you’re talking about rape, use the word rape. if you’re talking about stalking, use the word stalking. if you’re talking about straight up pedophilia, use that word. this is one of those words i’m putting on the shelf until the internet knows how to use it properly

if i have to see someone use the word “grooming” one more time in an incorrect way i’m going to start throwing things. like YES this person had an inappropriate relationship with this other person. YES this person was abusive and manipulative. YES this person seemed creepily obsessed with this other person. etc etc etc. but that doesn’t automatically equal grooming !!! abuse isn’t necessarily grooming, stalking isn’t necessarily grooming, even pedophilia isn’t necessary grooming ! grooming refers to a SPECIFIC PATTERN OF BEHAVIOR that predatory adults will use on children before actually abusing them in order to normalize and suppress the abuse beforehand! it’s specifically nonviolent and is used to make the predator harder to get caught, to get the victim to trust and fear them, and to normalize said inappropriate behavior before it actually happens. i cannot fucking stand what the internet has done to this term. if you’re talking about domestic abuse, use the word domestic abuse. if you’re talking about rape, use the word rape. if you’re talking about stalking, use the word stalking. if you’re talking about straight up pedophilia, use that word. this is one of those words i’m putting on the shelf until the internet knows how to use it properly

aint this the fucken truth

oh yeah forgot to post these guys

for when you're definitely very normal about Things