I’m Not Sure I’d Want To Do That To Mothman.

I just realized that I forgot to post yesterday!  I had it planned out and just ... spaced.

Anyway, now that I'm done beating up myself (with e. e. cumming’s help), I'm ready to take on the world.  If you're sequestered, this may be a good time to add some color to your life!  Yesterday’s poem was I Shall Paint My Nails Red by Carole Satyamurti.

For today's poem, if painting your nails isn't acting out enough, try some Dangerous Coats by Sharon Owens.

If your library doesn't have the diverse books you want and you're comfortable talking with (usually very friendly and helpful) people, you can also talk with someone on staff. In addition to the purchase recommendation form, they may have an agreement with other libraries to borrow the books from them for you. This helps two libraries! Your local library learns that more people want diverse books, so they are more likely to buy them in the future. The other library gets check-outs, so they know people are reading their diverse books.

If you don't have time to read, look for diverse audiobooks, CDs, and DVDs! If it's hard for you to get to the library, look at their website or call/email them. They may have pickup lockers in different areas of town or even a delivery service. They probably have eBooks, eAudiobooks, and/or streaming music and movies that you can check out from home.

Friendly reminder that if you talk about how representation is important and how there's not enough diverse media, I implore you to seek out the media that already exists. And if you live in an area with a public library, go to see if they're available at your public library. And then go check them out.

As a librarian, it is demoralizing to see how low the circulation statistics are on lgbt+ books and books by BIPOC authors. I include them in displays and readers advisory, but people still don't check them out as much. Libraries only have a finite amount of resources, including space. We don't get a book then keep it forever. If not enough people check it out, we have to get rid of it to make room for more books. And when James Patterson Book #69 gets checked out 30 times in one year and cool, subversive Sci fi novel with a Black trans woman main character has never been checked out once, the librarian (me) has to make a hard decision.

If you're looking for something tangible and easy to do this pride month, look for lgbt+ books (there are millions of lists online that you can find. It's easier than it's ever been to find diverse books) and check them out from your library.

No time to read? Look for a short story or poetry anthology and just read as much as you have time for. Or just check out a book cus it looks interesting and read as much as you can. We have movies too.

As cool as it would be for me to just keep the books I want and get rid of the ones I don't, I have to listen to the community on matters of collection development. And the community tells me what books they want by checking them out and leaving the ones they don't want on the shelf.

If you think this doesn't apply to you because you live in a progressive area and obviously the books are being checked out, you're wrong. I once worked in a community with a large lgbt population. Those books were not getting checked out. If you want to tell me you live in a conservative area and your library doesn't have any diverse books, you are legally obligated to check the catalog before replying to this post. I currently work in a conservative community and we have lgbt+ and bipoc books. And if you still cannot find any, you are legally obligated to see if your library has a collection request form that patrons can fill out before replying to this post.

Woo-hoo!  We need more of this in real life, for all types of denying someone’s identity.

MOGAI peeps protecting MOGAI peeps 2k15

(I would have added more but I ran out of puns)

Canada geese are weird.  On the one hand, they’ll stand up to huge, scary animals.  On the other hand, I’ve seen a whole flock take off when a single small dog runs at them.

This is the Goose of Outrageous Self Assuredness.  Take from her example, her ludicrous and excellent poise in the face of bullying, and be confident in your place, your course, your equal validity.

I don’t know whether someone had the most amazing timing or great skills with Photoshop, but this looks cool either way.

what a cat

I like the video (especially the puppies!), and I can definitely see where they’re going with emulating sexy girl videos.  However, in addition to having a much wider variety of cuteness, most of these guys are waaaaay overdressed for a sexy girl video.

This post on the desexualisation of men made me think of this Charli XCX video.

Charli XCX directed this with Sarah McColgan, and asked the boys in question to do “all the sexy things that girls usually do in videos”. They include Riz Ahmed (this is the source of those gifs of him with a big pink teddy bear), Stormzy, Josh Ostrovsky (aka thefatjewish), Tom Daley, Jay Park and more - full list here. It is pink and fluffy and female gaze-y, and everybody looks happy.

It also has a much, much more inclusive idea of cuteness than sexy girl videos, and doesn’t dehumanise its subjects. Which is lovely, but underlines that when men are treated as objects of desire, they’re much more likely to keep a sense of agency.

This is incredibly frightening.  In addition to the definition of domestic violence, the definitions of stalking (old vs. new) and sexual assault (old vs. new) were changed between December 2017 and April 2018.

The Trump Administration Quietly Changed the Definition of Domestic Violence and We Have No Idea What For

It is too early to assess the full impact of the change.

Without fanfare or even notice, the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women made significant changes to its definition of domestic violence in April. The Obama-era definition was expansive, vetted by experts including the National Center for Victims of Crime and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The Trump administration’s definition is substantially more limited and less informed, effectively denying the experiences of victims of abuse by attempting to cast domestic violence as an exclusively criminal concern.

The previous definition included critical components of the phenomenon that experts recognize as domestic abuse—a pattern of deliberate behavior, the dynamics of power and control, and behaviors that encompass physical or sexual violence as well as forms of emotional, economic, or psychological abuse. But in the Trump Justice Department, only harms that constitute a felony or misdemeanor crime may be called domestic violence. So, for example, a woman whose partner isolates her from her family and friends, monitors her every move, belittles and berates her, or denies her access to money to support herself and her children is not a victim of domestic violence in the eyes of Trump’s Department of Justice. This makes no sense for an office charged with funding and implementing solutions to the problem of domestic violence rather than merely prosecuting individual abusers

read more

My most popular tweet right now is about welcoming intersex, nb, and ace/aro people into pride. Let’s get it going on here, too.

REBLOG IF YOU FEEL THAT INTERSEX, NB, AND ACE/ARO PEOPLE SHOULD BE WELCOMED AT PRIDE, BELONG AT PRIDE, ETC

If you’re in the US, see if your local library has Hoopla!  They carry all five seasons of Leverage with no ads.

Hoopla is an online service libraries can provide.  The library pays for each thing people check out on Hoopla, so there is a limit to how much you can check out each month.  It’s completely free to you with no ads though.  You can watch on your browser or through Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, or a bunch of other devices.

If you’re willing to go with physical media, your local library may have Leverage DVDs that you can check out, if they don’t have Hoopla or you want to binge faster.

Any chance you know where I can watch the first season of leverage? i know its on hulu but i really cant afford to drop the money it wants for the subscription, and im having no luck finding working streams for some reason. I really want to get into it

It used to be on Netflix but then it disappeared... It is on Amazon, but it’s only free with ads if you have Amazon Prime. And there are...captioning issues... But! If captioning isn’t a concern and you have Amazon Prime, you can watch it on there, which is what I did (though captions were definitely a concern and I sent a lot of peeved complaints in).

Aside from that, tubi appears to have Leverage available to watch free? I swear I saw a post going around a while ago where folks could watch Leverage free and with bonus stuff from the creators... But I don’t know where I saw it and who reblogged it...

Anyone else have advice as to where to watch Leverage? Help an anon get into this absolutely amazing show!!

Thank you!!

I know so much of the pre-election messaging is like VOTE!!! VOTE!!! IF YOU DON’T VOTE YOU’RE A MONSTER!! and that can get tiring after so many elections. So I want to take a moment after this election to say: so many of you clearly did get out and vote, despite not always having the most inspiring options, and with SO much on the line 18-29 year olds specifically helped win some of the most important and impactful races across America. So from one of the many “just vote” scolds on the internet: thank you!!