the dodo might hold the crown as the most famous extinct animal, and granted, they deserve it. they were the first species that humans acknowledged they had led to the extinction of. that’s a really significant title! but comparatively speaking, the death of a species of fat flightless pigeon with no natural predator on a tiny island isn’t half as horrifying as what happened to passenger pigeons.
the sheer scale at which these birds existed, and their subsequent extinction, is something i cannot wrap my head around. i know what happened – i’ve read novels upon novels about this, i’ve seen the pictures, i know all the details, but the more i think about it the more i realise i can’t possibly process it to its fullest extent because i wasn’t there. i didn’t live through that. i’ll never be able to fully understand how sudden it was.
these birds were over 5 billion strong at their peak. when they travelled, they allegedly blacked out the sun for thirty minutes at a time. they formed rivers in the sky, and there’s art and record of this from dozens of people. it wasn’t just one person’s poetic interpretation. these birds existed in an overwhelming quantity, and no doubt because of that that people took them for granted.
they were plentiful. they were obnoxiously plentiful, and yet humans took them out so cleanly and quickly and efficiently that from this species, from this five billion-strong species, we have only a single picture of a passenger pigeon squab.
these birds faded out of existence in the span of someone’s lifetime.
And now you know why we have the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It’s not to inconvenience those who whine when you can’t keep a crow feather you found on the ground or a taxidermy owl without papers at an antique shop. It’s because by the time the law was passed in 1918 the commercial hunting of birds was so incredibly destructive that it was already to late for several species, and many others were on the brink.
We have a HUGE abundance of wildlife compared to how many places in the US were by the turn of the 20th century. Not just birds, but mammals and other species. From the MBTA of 1918 to the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940, all of these and more are there to keep us from doing the same damned thing we did before. Only now we have SO MANY MORE PEOPLE who are sucking up even more habitat and other resources wildlife need.
Hey there US friends! If you’re voting using these machines (Hart eSlate) or similar ones right now or in the near future, make sure that the machine has NOT changed your ballot before casting it, ‘k? It’s apparently an already known problem, and has been for years, but has never been fixed.
I’d apologize for all the “get your ass out there and vote” reblogs, but as a disabled (queer) woman who can’t vote yet due to my migrant status, I’m relying on others to do the right thing and use their vote on November 6th to get out there and turn this train wreck into a rescue mission.
And allow me to make it abundantly clear, if you are able to vote in this election and you choose not to for false equivalency “but they’re all the saaaaame” nonsense, you are complicit in the evil that is about to unfold, and I’ll see you in hell.
I am in a liberal county in California. It’s overwhelmingly Democratic. My vote for senate might not “matter,” but I don’t care.
I’m still voting. Why?
Because “down-ticket” votes matter, too.
Look into your school board. They set the textbooks that set the tone for your region. They educate future voters. They matter. Look into the city level, and county level. They set local ordinances that can change things. Look into your state propositions, those can make a huge difference. Look at your representatives. Even if you can’t vote someone out of office, vote against them if they’re a piece of shit. Make them realize they’re not loved.
Fuck.
People fought and died for our right to vote.
It’s a right. It’s a responsibility.
VOTE.
I don’t care if you hate the system. I hate it, too. I don’t care if you’re “only voting for the lesser evil” they’re still less evil. I don’t care if you want a revolution. Vote, and then get back to planning that revolution.
VOTE.
Here’s what a nice older hippie I used to work with told me:
She said that when her daughter turned eighteen and complained that “voting doesn’t matter anyway”, she looked at her child and she said in her firm Mom Voice
“Even if you don’t vote, you go to that polling site and you go and stand in that voting booth. You show up out of respect for everyone who has ever fought to give you that right that you want to throw away.”
fuck every democrat who says the issue of trans rights is a “distraction.” fuck every single liberal who say that the threat of stripping every trans person of legal recognition is a red herring or a losing issue and if we focus on it too long we’ll throw the election. we’re talking about human rights, access to medical care, sex education, discrimination, citizenship, and a whole lot else, for millions of people.
trans people aren’t a “distraction.” we’re human beings. the fact that so many liberals turn their backs on trans people is fucking despicable.
Okay…but this, right here? This is exactly what the Republican party wants. Young voters turning against the Democratic party and either not voting at all, or voting in favor of some third party candidate that has literally zero chance of pulling in enough votes to win. They want division among the ranks. They want to split our vote.
In political terms, calling something a ‘distraction’ means it’s a distraction tactic, not that the issue itself isn’t important. The Republican party has a very longstanding history of dropping hints of major policy changes right before big elections in the hopes of getting the “hot-headed liberals” all fired up about it so we start bickering among ourselves. They deliberately drop issues that they know are hot-button topics because these are the topics that have the potential to be the most divisive.
They’re awful but they’re not dumb. They know trans rights is an issue that could potentially split the democratic vote. It’s an issue that’s very heavily weighted toward the younger side of the party, which again, was a deliberate move on their part. If they can convinced you that the “big bad Democrats don’t care about you little trans and nonbinary kids so why bother,” then they’ve effectively won the election in a walk because the democrats went in divided–again.
Look, the democratic party isn’t perfect. Not by a long shot. But it’s literally the only party that has a snowball’s chance in hell at overtaking the republican majority right now. If we as trans and nonbinary individuals ever want our identities respected and protected, it’s the only party that’s going to be able to get us there, because it’s the party going in the direction we need to go. If you want to vote in favor of our rights, then vote Democrat. No number of videos with pennies is going to change the fact that right now, in this political climate, third party candidates are not going to have enough power to effect the changes we want.
Warning against something being a distraction doesn’t mean “don’t look at it or worry about it,” it means, “hey, I know this is majorly upsetting, and absolutely something needs to be done, but don’t let it divide us.” It’s literally because the issue is so important that democrats are warning against it as a distraction tactic–if we want to prevent that kind of change from happening under republican rule, we have to keep our heads and not let them keep us from voting as a unified party.
Please don’t let the political rhetoric make you think that the democratic party isn’t going to be fighting for us and our rights. That’s kind of exactly what the Republican party wants you to think. It’s a division tactic. Don’t fall for it.
The Republican party has a very longstanding history of dropping hints of major policy changes right before big elections in the hopes of getting the “hot-headed liberals” all fired up about it so we start bickering among ourselves.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS
I’ve been voting since 1998. This is what they do every single election.
Wait but what are the democrats doing about this again?
Well, they can’t do jack shit unless they get a majority in either the House or the Senate, preferably both.
But in case you forgot, Democrats made it legal for trans people to change their gender on their passports. Democrats lifted the ban on trans people in the military that had been in place since the 1960s. Democrats have nominated a trans woman for Governor of Vermont.
STOP WITH THE “BOTH PARTIES ARE THE SAME” RHETORIC!
Are Democrats doing enough? Probably not. But they’ve done something and unlike Republicans aren’t trying to actively roll back the things they have done.
Every Republican is a little hall-monitor-ass wuss. Jesus, this guy didn’t get shoved into nearly enough lockers as a kid.
Like honestly, this is the most earnest, cute, delightfully juvenile, fun-for-the-whole-family, non-partisan sign vandalism I’ve ever seen. Who could possibly be mad at this? This fucking roaster is fuming mad about “political violence”. It’s fucking hilarious.
Democrats everywhere finding pipe bombs in their mailboxes but googly eyes are political violence.
Acephobia in the LGBT+ Community from the documentary (A)sexuality.
It is just…so fucking weird how threatened people feel when it comes to Asexuality. I still can’t wrap my mind around it.
I’m so happy this post is being reblogged by LBGT+ people who aren’t asexual. I keep on reading posts by non-ace LGBT+ people of support to the ace community, and of being stunned by this reaction by a movement which should know better than to judge. AND THAT MAKES THIS ACE SO FREAKING HAPPY. The woman in the first photo expresses my sentiment. I know I belong in the queer/LGBTQIA movement. I want to belong. But I just don’t know if I’m welcome. I’m so happy that there are so many people on Tumblr who do not fall into the catagory of outright refusal of asexuality.
I know not a lot of people understand asexuality. And I know there’s confusion about it, about our experiences, and about how we fit in the movement. But let’s talk about this. Let’s have this conversation.
I mostly don’t delve into the ace tags, but I hear there’s a lot of ace-hate that and I really don’t get it. I don’t understand how asexuality is threatening.
You know what I (as a queer ace-spectrum person) find most threatening? Getting unwanted sexual unwanted advances from both queer and straight people. I’ve gotten them from people of all spectrums and it always makes me profoundly uncomfortable, and often unsafe. It just boggles my mind how people are upset by the concept of asexuality. That’s like getting really mad at someone who isn’t hungry. What’s the point? Just shut up eat your own sandwich. (And stop chewing on me.)
Wow, the fuck the people in those images.
Nobody has the right to disrespect anybody else’s sense of self. It may not be for, you but that does not give you the right to be an asshole.
We really need to push more for LGBTQIA+ to be a standard,instead of just LGBT, especially considering that even the B and T are already invisible in much of the community.
Not supporting some of us = not supporting all of us.
Not supporting some of us = not supporting all of us.
It really, really does bear repeating.
I couldn’t be further from ace, but for serious.
If we’re not in this together, we’re not in this at all.
This makes me so angry. I have friends who are ace, and they are just as much a part of the queer community as I am.
We need to embrace asexuality and treat it with the respect that it deserves.
I heart the non-aces who reblog this so hard. ❤ Thank you friends.
Woke up to this. If you are unaware, Nationalist is code word for Nazi. White Nationalists are Nazis with a different name. They are for “ethnic cleansing” which means Genocide. Nazi announces he is a Nazi.
And he wants to get rid of trans/non-binary folks. The same thing first happened back then when Nazis took down the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Science of Sexuality). They had so much data about trans folks in general and Nazis burnt it down with all the records and data. This is how a fascist regime starts.
wupacing 