Randomly Curated

noraleah:

Birthday/hometown twin for the win. 

In 1933, F. Scott Fitzgerald ended a letter to his 11-year-old daughter, Scottie, with the following:

Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship

Things not to worry about: 

Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions

Things to think about: 

What am I really aiming at? 
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:

(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them? 
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it? 

With dearest love,

Daddy

(via pinkhotel: listsofnote.com: emphasisadded)

pile:

This is great!!!

In a cement-walled room at the end of a rutted road in the rural Indian district of Bhiwani, a teenage girl named Lado sits in a shaft of sunlight and talks confidently about her future. “I want to be a math teacher,” says the 17-year-old, her printed green scarf falling on to her lap. “I tell my parents, ‘Do whatever you want, but educate me. Let me go to school.’”

Welcome to the front lines of the fight to stop child marriage in a country where nearly half of all girls wed before age 18. The weapon of choice: cash.

Lado is part of an innovative program called Apni Beti Apni Dhan, or Our Daughters, Our Wealth. Launched in 1994 by the northern state of Haryana, the program gives poor families 500 rupees ($11, the equivalent of less than half a week’s pay) when a daughter is born, and also deposits money into a savings account. If the girl turns 18 unwed, she is eligible to redeem the bond, worth 25,000 rupees (roughly $500, or one third of an average yearly income). The earliest of the program’s approximately 150,000 enrolleesturn 18 next year, offering a rare chance to study whether the program offers a solution other states—and countries—can use.

Whether it can be tied directly to Apni Beti or not, child marriage is on the decline in Haryana, which saw an 18 percent drop in the practice between 1992 and 2006. Haryana community workers say that thus far none of the program’s beneficiaries have been married off by their parents, who know of the program’s promised payout. The girls must sign for the bond, but it is likely their parents will have control of it because of social norms, and most of the girls say they want their parents to use it for their education anyway.

Must read!

feministdisney:

tw: abuse

theprincesstype:

If you’re a feminist and you want equal rights, then you do not complain when a man hits you. I do not approve of domestic abuse, but you can’t complain about a man hitting you, if you want to be considered an equal. You either fully believe in equality or you accept men and women are different.

the choice is yours. I will lose respect for you if you believe both genders should be equal unless a man hits you and you complain.

this is ridiculous and potentially harmful information to give out- we can’t be for equality unless we accept people abusing us??  I will give out some better tips.

1) if someone hits you, you hit them back

2) if this is not possible, you tell someone they are hitting you

3) this is why we have a legal system in most countries that will punish you for ASSAULT no matter if you’re a man/woman no matter if you’re hitting a man/woman

4) Hitting and abusing people is wrong and we should not stick up for it even if you want to because you don’t like feminists.

5) this person apparently edited it after I posted it to say they are a feminist and would hit men if they hit her because she believes in total equality.  So for #5 I would like to point out that not everyone is equally capable of sticking up for themselves in an abusive situation.   It’s really erasing to just say that any woman- or person in general- who doesn’t stick up for themselves and hit back is “less for equality than you are.”  Sometimes women- people in general- are less strong than their fighting counterpart, yes.   Sometimes if your opponent is a better fighter than you are, it doesn’t make sense to engage them even more.   Most times it’s not as easy as “a guy punches you on the subway so you punch him back.”  In most cases of domestic abuse there is usually an uneven power structure at play.   Sometimes the victims is financially reliant on the abuser.   Sometimes, in the cases of immigrant couples, the victim doesn’t understand the country’s legal system well enough to know how to protect themselves by using it.  In many abusive situations, the victims have become isolated from their circles of friends and family, which makes it more difficult for them to break out of the cycle of abuse.

glad I could clear up that feminist conundrum since it seemed to be baffling some people there. 

“I do not approve of domestic abuse, but you can’t complain about a man hitting you”

Quite honestly, that is a disgusting thing to say.   I know what you’re trying to do- you’re just trying to make some sort of catch 22 situation for feminists- but think about what impact such a statement can have on people, non-feminists and feminists alike, who are victims of domestic abuse or might be in the future.    You ABSOLUTELY can complain, but it’s attitudes like this that can feed into exactly why some people DON’T complain.  

Abuse isn’t something we should just “disapprove of” in the way you disapprove of kids wearing their boots in the kitchen.   Abuse is something we have to wholeheartedly be against and help those whom have been/are/will be victimized by it.   Using words like “(I do not) approve” and “complain” diminish the reality of the situation.   Complaining is what you do when someone pinches you when your mom isn’t looking.   

The idea that you “won’t respect someone” if they “complain” about being abused?   Seriously, think about what you’re saying here.   Words have power.  That’s a seriously fucked up thing to say to anyone, feminist or not.

I like this…