pervocracy:

I may have mentioned this before, but I have a weird obsession with reading bureaucratic PDFs.  Sometimes because they describe an interesting or sinister reality behind the itemized-and-regulated calm, sometimes just because it’s my thing. Here’s some random ones I’ve been enjoying lately:

Requirements for flower displays used in the Olympics – “The species cannot be associated with any sadness or death message in any country or culture”

Behavioral profiles of orcas at Sea World – “Please be advised that this whale was involved in the accidental drowning of a trainer at Sealand of the Pacific in 1991 and involved in an incident with a guest in his pool at 1999 at SWF.”

(”involved in an incident” is highly euphemistic; the guest was found dead with orca tooth marks all over him)

Contract for appearing on “The Bachelorette” – “Such hidden cameras, if any, shall not be positioned to intentionally capture images of you urinating or defecating in the bathroom”

“Inmate Religious Beliefs And Practices” – An attempt by the Federal Bureau Of Prisons to describe the major religions of the world to prison officials.  Very long, somewhat disorganized, but filled with the fascinating tension that comes from someone sincerely trying to explain holy rituals to a person whose job is keeping humans in cages.

inkskinned:

istayinthedark:

inkskinned:

When you write the rules in violence, don’t be surprised when the gentle respond in kind.

What the fuck is this even supposed to mean

thank you for asking. it is a direct response to the right-wing movement’s “keep the peace” rhetoric that suffices every page of “minion memes are funny” facebook. it is a direct response to the incredibly, incredibly ignorant demand that those who are being oppressed simply deal with it. 

black people are being shot for being black by a militant police. millions of dollars pour into arming individuals who report domestic violence rates of two to four times larger than the general population. when black children are arrested for attending pool parties, the police officers are given the benefit of the doubt because “blue lives matter.” black children are not given any benefit. they are told to sit down and shut up and be un-violent, with the promise that if they are a peaceful people, they’ll be slaughtered someplace less public. when a man kneels, this is seen as offensive and degenerate. but police officers committing felonies is “just how it is.”

school children are being killed because individuals love a tool more than they love the incoming generation. despite the fact we know, as an open fact, that the NRA buys politicians, we are told to sit on our hands and just buy a gun if we don’t feel safe around them. the american schooling system is entirely built to be classist and currently forces college grads who didn’t die into a system of debt that ensures little to no upwards mobility for many students, ensuring the creation of a lower class that is indebted to the higher class. students are assured that Miss betsy deVil has their best interests at heart while she absolutely annihilates every chance they’ve got. 

women speaking out about sexual assault get silenced so much that it takes forty women saying “yes, he does this, it happened to me” before someone is actually charged with assault. we literally live in a world where “incel” is a real thing women have to watch out for; a community set around the idea that men are owed a woman as a reward. these men and other men kill women for rejecting them. women are assured if they stop dressing like sluts and started giving these good honest men a chance, we would be hurt so much more delicately, without the man feeling nearly so close to guilty.

two years ago was the pulse shooting, where a latinx gay community was targeted, yet nobody talked about it on tv. instead every news caster pretended to be reeling: “what could he have wanted possibly.” this world, this america, this land-of-the-free, has gay/trans “panic defense” as a legal precedent in which i can be murdered if a straight person perceives an “unwanted homosexual advance”. i will not be around to defend myself, because i will be dead. i am assured that if i want to be upset about these things, i can just take my cake to another bakery. that it’s someone’s right to discriminate against me, because apparently freedom of speech covers bigotry.

a pedophile and white nationalist is not in prison but instead running for congress, even despite his online admittances about his desire for sexual violence (tw: don’t read his posts unless you want to vomit). i’m assured no one will vote for him, but just look at who our president is. they told me “no one will vote for him” too.

we have been told backwards and forwards and upside down that everything we do is violent. that our peaceful protests are riots. that our legal demands are taking away from real problems. that we are not being good, that the violence enacted upon us isn’t really violence, it’s just The Way It Is. They quote MLK to us while they step on our necks. the anger we have is always too much, too loud, too valid. it Upsets The Peace.

i’m saying: you made the game. you set it up and played. you made sure we were always, always, always losing.

you don’t get to be surprised when we return what you gave us. you don’t get to cry “hate begets hate” instead of stopping the original bigotry in the first place. you don’t get to say it’s not fair! when you’re the ones who made it unfair to begin with. you don’t get to turn the other cheek to nazis but call anti-nazis a disgrace while whining and keening you’re not actually a racist. you don’t get to ban abortion for the “sake of the children” and then turn your nose because people are protesting children in cages. you don’t get to wring your hands now that people are punching nazis rather than sitting them down and letting them have a say. i’m saying you made the fucking rules!!

we just figured out how to play.