Oh and sorry if you ever message me or inbox me. Im just strictly on mobile and have always had problems accessing messages and conversations to reply to. And I never update anything lol.
Some notes: 1. the electrical system was designed by engineering undergrads who were working as interns. 2. because it is illegal to take passengers on an unclassed experimental submersible, they called the passengers “mission specialists” & instead of buying tickets they made donations. 3. the satellite beacon was held onto the outside of the sub with zip ties. 4. when Lochridge (the whistleblower) quit, Stockton Rush asked HIS FINANCE DIRECTOR if she wanted to be the pilot and she was like “sir I am an accountant” and the experience of having her boss ask his accountant to be the pilot made her so freaked out that she ALSO quit the company 5. the carbon fiber used to make the hull was bought from a deep discount from Boeing because it was past its expiry date for use in airplanes
What’s the big deal with a Jewish man being cast as Superman? I’ll tell you!
The character was created by two Jewish men, which isn’t an uncommon origin for most classic characters. Comic books were seen as a lesser art form compared to other jobs in the arts, so the majority of creators at the time were Jewish. The creators of Superman wanted to go in to advertising initially, but struggled to find jobs in the industry (a post I’ve made about this here).
It’s incredibly important context that Superman was created by two Jewish men during World War II. There were many Americans who were ambivalent at best and actively supportive at worst of the Nazi party. Antisemitism was massively present in America at the time.
Superman is a positive Jewish symbol. Kal-El is a name derived from Hebrew. His story is easily read as a Moses allegory. Jewish folklore is written all over his origins— the strength of Samson and the protection of the Golem (specifically as portrayed in the Jewish made film The Golem according to one of his creators). If you think of his creators his story becomes that much richer. He feels the need to change his name to fit in, which was incredibly common for Jewish authors in the comic industry. He struggles with being partially assimilated, between two identities that can feel conflicting. His story is a reflection of the Jewish experience.
Comic books are Jewish-American art. They are fundamentally a reflection of our culture and history. Movie adaptations have a habit of never casting Jewish actors or erasing Jewish characters completely. Having a Jewish actor get to step in to the role of one of the most recognizable and iconic Jewish creations is incredibly precious to many (including me).
Yes. Yes I am. And you can ask literally any marginalized man and they will tell you American Patriarchy hates them, too, specifically because they are being men in the “wrong way”.
Like fuck, this is feminism 101.
Edit: it’s non-radfem feminism 101.
Just look at the way that manosphere wierdos talk in reference to other men: they are competitors to be dominated either socially or with explicit violence. The whole grift is built on selling men the idea that they can climb their way to the top of the pile
^^^ This. It’s like a pyramid scheme of abuse. “If you throw fifteen men under the bus and convince five of your friends to throw fifteen other men under the bus, you can Win at Patriarchy, we promise!”
I can’t agree enough with this, and it’s something more and more men are speaking up about, even if our voices aren’t being heard.
Man box culture, as some call it, starts when we’re young. It’s pervasive - the competition to be a real “man” as defined by violence, dominance, and this absolutely fucked up concept of emotional detachment. It’s a raw struggle to not appear weak, and it starts with how adult men treat male children - the toxic values they instill, sometimes with words and sometimes with fists. And even if you grow up in a less toxic and more loving environment, you’re never really free from it. Your male role models, male adults like teachers and such, but especially male friends who are your age, all get caught up in this toxic system of abuse. And “real men” don’t have emotions, right? So you have to bottle all that up rather than understanding any of it because it’s *weakness.* All of that tends to come out in the one emotional state that men allow each other to display: anger. Shit, by the time most boys reach high school, they’ve been struggling against each other for years. All that hate, that anger, that uncontrollable rage? That’s been taught to them long before teenage testosterone hits. And by that time, it’s gotten worse because the patriarchy has defined how “real men” see and treat women. Underneath everything is this deep, deep fear of failing and becoming the weak punching bag. There’s so much shame to it all.
It isn’t always like this for every boy growing up, but no one is left unaware of its existence. And the only true way to stop it begins when we are young.
This is fucking heartbreaking.
One of my friends in law school once opened up to me and a few other people in our mixed-gender friend group that he didn’t really have friends before he knew us, even though he thought he did. We sort of nodded like, yeah man, we’re glad you’re our friend too, sorry people back in your home town were shitty – and he stopped us like, no, you don’t understand. He told us that he thought he had friends, and that those people thought that they were his friends – but that his all-male small-town social circle constantly hurled abuse at each other, and that they all thought that that was normal. He told us that he used to go out partying with them, and whereas when we’d go out, we’d talk each other up – like, man, nice shirt, love what you did with your hair, I bet chicks are gonna dig it, etc. – back in his old circle of friends? All they’d ever do before going out was talk each other down. You’re dressed worse than your friends? You look like trash. You’re dressed better than your friends? Why do you care so much about you’re appearance, are you gay? You’re dressed exactly the same as your friends? Wow, look at this loser copying other people’s look. You could never win, you could never even break even, and you were expected to not only put up with this, but to participate, because that sort of normalized constant stream of verbal abuse was the main way that you and other men your age socialized. He literally did not realize that men could have actual, real friendships – with women, sure, but also with other men – until he met us, because to him, the act of hanging out with people who you weren’t dating was so deeply intertwined with toxic competitive expectations that he flat out didn’t know that there was a different way to be until he moved halfway across the country for law school in his late 20s.
It’s incredibly fucked up, and men should be able to talk about what a patriarchal culture like that does to them without being silenced.
it seems so strange to me that the only people it is socially acceptable to live with (once you reach a certain stage in life) are sexual partners? like why can’t i live with my best friend? why can’t i raise a child with them? why do i need to have sex with someone in order to live with them? why do we put certain relationships on a pedestal? why don’t we value non-sexual relationships enough? why do life partners always have to be sexual partners?
My grandmother and grandfather more or less adopted my grandmother’s best friend back in the 50s. After my grandfather died (before I was born, back in 1968 or so) they continued to keep house together, platonic best friends, and they hung together until they died, a few months apart, in 2007.
It’s quite recently, as far as I can tell, that living arrangements like that have stopped being regarded as normal.
It’s absolutely a new thing to find this stuff weird, and it has a lot to do with media pretending that the nuclear family and marriage are the only reasons to live with other people.
I’ve lived in a 3 adult household my whole life. My parents and their best friend. This was never weird to me, even though everyone my age thought it was because the media never portrayed these kinds of housing arrangements. As far as i was concerned, I just had an extra non-blood parent.
According to my parents, it was very common in the 70′s-80′s to buy houses with your friends, because it was financially smart to do so (so long as you were certain they were close friends who wouldn’t fall out with you and fuck everything up). Houses and house payments are much more manageable when you split the bills 3-4 ways instead of just two.
Millenials aren’t the first to think it’s a great idea to just shack up with friends. That’s housemating without the hastle of living with strangers. It’s still a good idea to shack up with people you’ve known a long time so you know how you’ll get on living together, but still. In the current economy, it’s pretty much now our only option for affording anything.
I think, and I’m not researched on this, but I think conservatives probably tried to suppress images of non-nuclear families because they likely thought it would encourage ideas of polygamy, polyamory, open sexual relationships with or without marriage, as well as other relationship types they thought of as un-christian or unsavoury. I could be wrong, but that shit wouldn’t surprise me.
(And i want to make a note that there’s also a disturbing amount of asexual denial around that makes people go ‘if they’re living together they HAVE to be banging because why wouldn’t they?’ and that shit both creeps me out and annoys me no end. People can be in relationships without sex. People can live together without sex. Sex is not the be-all and end-all and people being taught to think it is really need to stop).
Don’t let the media fool you into believing you can only live with a sexual partner or blood family. Someone somewhere has an agenda for making these seem abnormal, when really it’s just practical.
A lot of people acted like it was super weird when two of my brothers decided to move states with me when I started my postdoc. I got really used to giving a little canned speech about it because it seemed to bewilder people so much. (Their leases happened to be up! We could share rent! They wanted to try somewhere new!)
The notable exception was my grandma, who was just like, “oh, yes, when we were young my sister and I decided to move cross-country together and it was lovely.”
More of this kind of thing for everyone, pls.
The implication that close sibling relationships must also be a warning sign for incest also peeves me off; what kind of society are we living in anyway
Having a multi-adult household unit also just makes a shit-ton of sense, tbh. Much easier to split not only the bills, but also the housework and child-rearing responsibilities. Communal living ftw.
It’s also super a capitalism thing.
With only two working-age people in the house, it’s very difficult to make ends meet without one of them (or increasingly, these days, both of them) working away the vast majority of their waking hours to earn enough money to support the household. The other person, if they aren’t also working similar hours, is there to support that working person, full time, with unpaid labour.
The end result of this is that nobody has any time or energy to spend together properly, and they just end up tired and miserable and shackled to their work, throwing money at their problems because it’s all they can do. It’s very easy to convince tired, miserable people to spend their money in the ways you want them to, and it’s also very easy to manipulate and oppress people who don’t have the energy or the means to fight for their rights. Convince a whole nation that this is the way the world is supposed to work, and you’ll be well away.
Death to the cancerous myth of the nuclear family.
this is exactly the type of thing us aros and aces are referring to when we talk about amatonormativity