Sidetracks - May 25, 2013

[helloladies]

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

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➝ I've done it. I've started watching Supernatural again and this time I'm all-in. I've just finished Season 5, and I'm full of conflicted feelings and have an emotional hangover. I've spent most of the time yelling in capslock at justira, who responds to my screaming by sending me links that don't help (except for how they help the pain and suffering I'm going through while at the same time making all my emotions 9,000 times stronger). Unlike everyone else who's been in Supernatural fandom forever and living with these fuckers since 2005, I'm probably getting off easy. But it doesn't feel easy. I'm addicted to supernatural shows about pretty boys with 99 problems and now I'm hooked even though so much of the writing and presentation is borked. laksdlajsdkljasdlaldflll;;;; (Also, Rose, I am sorry. I think we always knew this day would come. ;_____;)

➝ Hey, is there anyone out there who hasn't read Kameron Hurley's awesome essay, 'We Have Always Fought': Challenging the 'Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative?

➝ Yahoo bought tumblr! My immediate reaction was a lurking sense of dread. Aja wrote a nice article about buying a product and buying a culture, which is really incisive since the party line about the purchase seems to suggest that Yahoo believes by purchasing the product they're also going to acquire the built in culture that's developed; you'd think they'd have learned by now that's not true.

You will never get a fan to care more about clothes, cars, shoes, or household products than they do about whether Sterek is going to happen on Teen Wolf.

I laughed out loud. ILU AJA.

➝ Speaking of Teen Wolf (which returns in June — PREPARE FOR FEELINGS), I found a great article via metanews, Why I need bisexual!Stiles.

Seeing people being accepting of bisexuals (especially Male bisexuals, who many people, gay and straight, seem to think are as rare as unicorns) is just as important as seeing people being accepting of homosexuals.

➝ It's a toss up as to whether or not I am going to love Now You See Me or the press featuring Jesse Eisenberg for Now You See Me more (spoiler: probably the press because Jesse Eisenberg is awkward and flawless).

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➝ Lots of political links from me this week. First of all, a very good point about why the immigrants-as-scroungers narrative is so convenient for politicians:

David Cameron's speech, and his new policies — if they are even implemented — won't help any British people; they'll just result in useless spending on measures to catch cheats that don't exist. What they will do, of course, is harm immigrants. They will mean more kids telling you to go back to your own country at school, more kids refusing to talk to or sit next to the foreigners in their class, more kids who see hatred justified and celebrated. They will mean more racist attacks, more immigrants beaten up, spat at, racially abused; more immigrants stabbed or beaten to death.

But perhaps what's most disappointing about Cameron's speech isn't that it will potentially increase racism against immigrants, or that it is full of lies about us. In fact, his speech told a deeper kind of lie: that poverty, unemployment and inadequate public services are immigrants' fault, and that tackling immigration is the way to tackle those things. This is a very convenient lie for politicians who don't really want to reduce poverty: it means that they can pretend to care about working class people, while not implementing any policies that will really improve their lives. David Cameron is increasing taxes, curbing pay, failing to create jobs, cutting public services, firing public sector workers and cutting tax credits and benefits; within two years, the majority of British children will be living below the breadline.

➝ A recent study shows that attitudes towards poverty have been shifting even among left-leaning voters: "The report says there is a 'general trend' where the public accepts that individual characteristics rather than societal issues cause poverty." This kind of shift towards individual blame, which I've noticed in regards to more than just poverty, is pretty high up on my mental list of Things That Worry Me.

➝ Ben Goldacre on the auctioning of internships:

Internships like these are bad at the best of times. As I’ve written before, on the topic of full time 6 month internships, these actively exacerbate social inequality in the professions by giving a leg up to those who can afford to pay.

➝ Think Progress on how slut-shaming affects dress codes:

Rape culture is also evident in the attitudes that lead school administrators to treat young girls’ bodies as inherently “distracting” to the boys who simply can’t control themselves. That approach to gender roles simply encourages our youth to assume that sexual crimes must have something to do with women’s “suggestive” clothes or behavior, rather than teaching them that every individual is responsible for respecting others’ bodily autonomy.

Yep.

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➝ The chance to sleepover at the Natural History Museum costs as much holiday to Europe this year, but it sounds great. If you have enough money then I advise you just go do it and come tell me about it. I promise to be 99% excited for you and only 1% jealous.