The evil stepmother is a fixture in European fairy tales because the stepmother was very much a fixture in early European society–mortality in childbirth was very high, and it wasn’t unusual for a father to suddenly find himself alone with multiple mouths to feed. So he remarried and brought another woman into the house, and eventually they had yet more children, thus changing the power dynamics of inheritance in the household in a way that had very little to do with inherent, archetypal evil and everything to do with social expectation and pressure. What was a woman to do when she remarried into a family and had to act as mother to her husband’s children as well as her own, in a time when economic prosperity was a magical dream for most? Would she think of killing her husband’s children so that her own children might therefore inherit and thrive? […] Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the fear that stepmothers (or stepfathers) might do this kind of thing was very real, and it was that fear–fed by the socioeconomic pressures felt by the growing urban class–that fed the stories.
We see this also with the stories passed around in France–fairies who swoop in to save the day when women themselves can’t do so; romantic tales of young girls who marry beasts as a balm to those young ladies facing arranged marriages to older, distant dukes. We see this with the removal of fairies and insertion of religion into the German tales. Fairy tales, in short, are not created in a vacuum. As with all stories, they change and bend both with and in response to culture.
— Amanda Leduc, Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space
oh yeah have i ever told yall of the academic war i have been an unwilling soilder in for the past two years
okay SO. i have two professors that both teach this one subject, but different classes. they have different last names, so i didnt know this at first and espically since they are academic RIVELS at my school, but they are MARRIED. but for the past 8 years they have been in an academic WAR of geospatical sciences data. more accurately, the raster vs vector data debate. i am personally on the side of “both have their pros and cons and can be utalizied to the utmost efficency” but both professors are like, DEADLOCKED in insistanting one is better then the other
so, professor A is my mentor. i like him a lot, and he was the main person that taught me the most abotu Eris and ArcGIS. professor B is a professor i had one for class, and shes nice and knows a lot of little tricks about Eris programming but mostly relies on arcMAP because shes the raster data professor.
and THESE MOTHERFUCKERS. have written no less then 30 papers that is basically like a “re: re: re: re: re: re: vector data is better then raster fuck you” but like, Professionally. and they leave stupid notes in the footnotes that read “Reguardless of Professor A’s opinions reguarding the efficency of Vector data, Raster data has a more efficant polygon computing rate and is the most commonly used program on interplantaring mapping” and its HILARIOUS
ive read all of their papers, and its basically like reading an email chain between a married couple arguing over the colors of the kitchen backsplash for their new home. its HILARIOUS. but obviously, because of their differnet last names and because they act like they HATE each other, NOT VERY MANY PEOPLE REALIZES THEYRE MARRIED
until like LAST WEEK
professor B publishes a paper that casually drops the word “husband”
and obviously all the students are like “oh i didnt know u were married!” because we read that shit like how white suburban mothers read People Magazine
and shes like “yeah, its Professor A”
and we all FLIPPED. THE FUCK. OUT
we thought the framed picture of the two of them on professor A’s desk was ironic because hes that type of guy
like, you gotta undestand. these two have gotten into YELLING matches in hallways. these two refuse to go onto trips with each other. but apparently they have a system where they quite LITERALLY leave all of their work at work and drive home in seperate cars and literally NEVER mention work at home. it is SO funny
I think that we as a society should get more comfortable with the idea that sometimes our friends will be attracted to us and sometimes we will be attracted to our friends and nothing needs to come of that.
You don’t have to date. You don’t have to stop being friends. You can just keep hanging out. Self control and respect exists.
And sometimes you will date your friend and figure out that your dynamic worked better when you were friends. And then you can go back to being friends. It’s really quite simple. Mature and cool, even.
To break down rape culture, we need to stop teaching people that men can’t help themselves; they absolutely can look for enthusiastic consent, and they must. This is absolute bare minimum decent human being behaviour.Â
Also, if you stop teaching people that “men can’t help themselves” it tends to go hand in hand with teaching the fact that no, men do not “always want it”– which in turn is beneficial for those men who might themselves be assaulted, regardless of the rapist’s gender. Enthusiastic, mindful consent applies to everyone.
Fun fact: if you know your feline body language, you’ll notice that the lynx is deferring to the housecat. As far as these two are concerned, the housecat is the higher-ranking cat.