my favourite thing ever in the history of this universe is the misogyny speech. i love it. i love it so much.
for those who don’t know what the misogyny speech is: australia’s PM julia gillard was our first female prime minister and was bullied relentlessly throughout her career by sexist politicians saying that as a woman she was unfit to lead. and then. then. one day, julia gillard snapped.
the resulting three-minute speech, known simply as the ‘misogyny speech’ in australia, was possibly the most epic smackdown seen in australian political history, surpassed only by “i wanna do you slowly”. it was incredible. students memorised it and marched through the streets yelling it. a national australian choir arranged it as a five-harmony piece. even hillary clinton went out of her way to meet julia gillard and tell her how fucking awesome the misogyny speech was.
i, personally, have the misogyny speech memorised. because i live in tony abbott’s electorate, and my dream of dreams is to see him at the shops one day and follow him while yelling it.
the misogyny speech: as australian as vegemite.
may the op one day fulfil their dream of dreams
it’s long but honestly every second is worth it the whole speech is incredibly inspirational
“that’s a direct quote by the leader of the opposition so I suggest those groaning take it up with him” Julia Gillard was taking no more shit what an inspiration
just in case anyone was thinking about bombing trump tower or lighting it on fire or something, how about instead you throw paint balloons at the ground floor windows every day
just every single day forever
because cleaning off the paint then becomes a 24/7 job that is super obvious to everyone in the vicinity
and the trumples will freak the fuck out and act like it’s the same as bombing the fucking thing, which is hilarious and embarrassing for everyone else
it will be demanded that the police make it staaaaaaaahp like it’s this huge goddamn deal and the police will be like oh my god stop wasting my time this is excruciating
plus it’s really easy to just have different people do it at different times of day and if you do get caught oh well it’s a misdemeanor vandalism charge, pay a fine and go home
tell me you can’t find 365 people who would cop to a vandalism fine for the privilege of driving merkin von bankrupt absolutely batshit with impotent fury
just an idea
…this is really good, dude. i LIKE it.
“Don’t think of it as criminal, think of it as putting the window washer’s kids through college.”
additional suggestion: the paint should be pink, and glittery. nothing horrifies bigoted men more than their macho status objects being CONTAMINATED by NASTY AWFUL NO GOOD SCARY GROSS FEMME COOTIES. taking danglord turnip’s big metal monument and smearing the girliest possible paintjob across its bottom would be particularly distressing to the guys we wanna distress, while not at all bothering anyone else.
Im just. imagining. As the weeks go on and theres more demand to catch the vandals, stakeouts are happening and the pressure is on. Cop McGee is sitting in the car watching the building with a cold cup of coffee and a warbling radio filled with a WHOLE lot of interesting feedback- car chases they’d rather be doing. The clock is ticking, the vandals haven’t hit yet. Were they going to miss a day? Just the luck of Cop McGee.
Then it happens. A loud splat. There it is… a pink splotch. But smaller than normal, and nobody was running. IN fact there wasn’t anyone near the building just at that moment…. what?
SPLAT SPLAT
Then it begins raining. Paint balls- but from where. Cop McGee whirls around in their seat looking for a perp. Nothing. SPLAT SPLAT. Where is it coming from? what’s happening??
Paint Ball Snipers. It’s Paint Ball Snipers.
Next day someone comes in with a drone hooked up to about eight cans of spray paint rigged to open fire once in range. It’s a swirling, flying disk of feminine justice.
Then there’s the donation of Stuart Semple’s Pinkest Pink pigment that’s released in clouds all over the block on a day fresh after the rain when the walls are all still wet.
As much as I’d like to burn the place to the ground, I actually like this idea far more.
Someone punches a nazi and now people are screaming and crying about how we need to use our words and that violence doesn’t solve anything.
But then Shia Labeouf does nothing but yell at a nazi that had the audacity to show his ugly ass face and spout pro-white bullshit on his live stream, and now ya’ll are calling him a bully? Are you really gonna defend LITERAL NAZIS in 2017?? What the fuck is up????
If you think a Jewish man standing up for himself against a nazi is bullying, block and unfollow me right the fuck now.
Okay non-European tumblr, I’m gonna explain to you why ‘white’ isn’t as simple here as it is in the rest of the world
– Shades of white in Europe range from ‘freshly fallen snow’ to ‘I am frequently mistaken as being from the Middle East’
– White European is a thing. When you fill out a form, under ethnicity, there are several options for white; white British, white European, white other. Because people make that distinction
– There are Europeans who don’t class their ethnicity as their skin colour, but as their nationality. I have family who don’t think of themselves as white, they just think of themselves as Italian and don’t really give much thought to their skin colour
– People here in Britain always question if darker skinned white Europeans are ‘actually white’. I get it a lot myself. My response is always ‘well I’m not anything else, so obviously I must be’
– Despite being white, a lot of Europeans from Italy, Greece, Spain etc, don’t feel white in the traditional sense. We’re not white like white British people. We’re not white like white Americans. We’re our own white. White British is one thing. White Italian is another thing. White Greek is another, etc
– Which is why we have this notion here in Europe of ‘nationality over race’. Being white isn’t as important as where you’re from
– So this really only becomes an issue if you’re an immigrant
– So being white in Europe doesn’t save you from racial discrimination, because sure, you’re technically white, but you’re not white white. Not the right white
– Here in England, Europeans with really blatantly foreign names, such as myself, find it more difficult to get job interviews, because they take one look at our name and don’t bother reading the rest of the CV. A guy I know was actually told by his boss to reduce the pile of CVs he had by ‘chucking away any with a name you can’t fucking pronounce’
– And then even when you do get an interview, half the time you walk into the joint several shades darker than everyone else and feel like you’ve walked into the ‘Swedish supermodel’ clubhouse and you just know you’re not getting hired
This is all basic stuff and it’s very much taken for granted here. Race and ethnicity are not as clear cut, so it can be very confusing for non-Europeans to wrap their heads around. Which is fine. But I implore you to stay in your lane, because when you say things like ‘no white person anywhere in the world ever knows what it’s like to face racial discrimination’, it’s really fucking offensive to all of the European immigrants who are denied jobs, harassed by the police and beaten by racists, because foreign is foreign to these people, and they don’t give a shit if you’re technically white. So when you mean white American, say white American.
This doesn’t just apply to “darker skin” Europeans either (which I’m sure some Americans would argue are POC for some reason or other). Try being slavic in Western Europe. Hell, try being Sinti or Roma in any part of Europe.
Especially in the UK you can be as white as you like but if you aren’t from Britain (or in some cases just England) then you face discrimination. It really isn’t that clear cut in Europe and it drives me mad when people say white people can’t experience racism because that’s such a US-centric idea.
And if you’re from anywhere in South-East Europe then you should prepare for your country to be slandered in every UK paper. Seriously, you can’t turn on the news, go on the internet, read a newspaper, without being told how Romanian, Ukrainian, Polish people are a drain on the UK’s resources and they should be banned from the country. And guess what?
(That’s Mila Kunis. She was born in the Ukraine.)
(Sebastian Stan. From Constanta, Romania.)
(Mia Wasikowska, from Poland)
(Nina Dobrev, who was born in Bulgaria.)
They are white! Just because they are white, it doesn’t mean people from their countries cannot face horrible discrimination, and it doesn’t mean that they can’t be constantly told that they don’t work as hard as people from Western Europe, and that they don’t deserve basic human rights.
So just before you force your ignorance onto people who don’t hold the same views as you due to where they live operating in a different way, just remember that not everybody lives in America.
Here it is guys, the post that finally puts what I’ve been trying to say for far too long into words!
…I didn’t know Sebastian Stan was Romanian.
But as somebody who has lived in England and the US, I can vouch for all of this. The race issues in Europe and the race issues in the US are not the same.
For the last few years, there has been an awful backlash against immigrants from Poland, with some of the same language used that Americans use about “Mexicans” (By which, half the time, they mean anyone from south of the US/Mexico border).
It’s worth understanding that
1. Racism and discrimination are everywhere.
2. They don’t take the same form everywhere.
I have lived in England for over 10 years now, and can confirm all of the above. As soon as I open my mouth people can tell, of course, that I was not born and raised British.
I was yelled at in the street because a lady thought I was Polish. People have pushed their chairs into my parents and insulted them in a restaurant because they were recognised as Germans.
Being white is not that cut and dry over here.
And being “socially” white as opposed to just pale skinned evolves over time. I mean, there have been times in America when Irish and Italian people have not been considered “white”.
I do take some small, cold, bitter satisfaction in one thing, and that’s the fact that Trump is going to be absolutely fucking miserable for the next four years.
He’s an entertainer and an attention whore, not a public servant. He wants to be on TV and in front of crowds, not actually working a difficult, grueling, stressful job he can’t opt out of. He’s going to have to sit through SO many meetings, be forced to read SO many briefings, get shoehorned into serious business all day every day, without crowds to perform for, and he’s going to hate Every. Single. Minute.
And then, when he doesn’t deliver on his promises, when he doesn’t build the wall or create jobs or make people rich, when it becomes clear how incompetent and buffoonish he is, the country and all his supporters will turn on him. They’re gonna start blaming him for everything, and those crowds that cheered for him are going to start booing. He’ll be humiliated at every turn, and leave office with the lowest approval rating ever, and he’ll be universally despised.
Because if he’d lost to Hillary, he would have played the martyr forever, called everything rigged, and had a cushy gig on Fox News complaining every day about how he would have done it better. But now he’s going to have to actually WORK, he’s going to be forced to deal with RESPONSIBILITIES, while surrounded by people who hate him and don’t respect him, people vastly more intelligent and competent than him, and he will be exposed as a loser. And then, we’ll fire him. He’ll go down as the worst president in history. And he’ll have no one to blame but himself.
I know this isn’t much against the fear of what’s going to happen, but friends, hear me. We are going to make Donald Trump’s life a living nightmare, and I for one take immense pleasure from that.
Does this mean “Thanks, Trump” is going to be the new “Thanks, Obama”?
He’s also going to learn that, even with Republican majorities in Congress, and even with all that work he will have to presumably put into the job, being the President still isn’t going to be like being a CEO (recall: George W. Bush had a majority in both houses for his first six years, Obama had a majority in both for his first two years).
The things a President wants to get done are not going to happen quickly or easily, if at all. Passing important legislation is complicated and boring and lengthy. Even signed legislation can take a while to be enacted and is then always subject to appeals and challenges (recall the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate ultimately having to go before the Supreme Court).
The Constitution will not allow for a lot of Trump’s more horrific ideas to ever get close to reality (this ACLU piece written before the election breaks it down better than I ever could). His Supreme Court nominee has to be approved. His cabinet members have to be approved. Just about everything needs to be approved. And even with majorities in Congress, that’s far from a swift guarantee.
There are checks and balances. We lived through 8 years of Bush (including those first six I mention), followed by the economy collapsing; there are more vigilant eyes and ears watching now than there have ever been. The likelihood of a Trump administration getting away with shit without a drawn-out, bloody fight is slim. Especially when you remember that he’s facing a civil RICO trial at the end of this month plus numerous more lawsuits that have yet to be settled. Especially when you remember that he has no law degree, no political science degree, and has never held a political office of any kind. Especially when you remember that he lost the popular vote. His cabinet and staff will not be filled with the best and brightest because he alienated so many of them, even in his own party.
And most importantly, one or both of the House and the Senate could be flipped in 2018.
We’re all scared and worried and rightfully so. And the people who voted for Trump are as much a daily threat as Trump himself could hope to be. But this President’s only got two years before his legislative legs can be cut off. Two years from right now.
Learn who your representatives are, at every level. Figure out how to get in touch with them and get in touch with them, repeatedly. Relentlessly. It doesn’t matter if they’re Republican or Democrat or Independent. You don’t have to wait for some terrible Trumpish idea to get going in Congress – you can write to them about restoring the Voting Rights Act or preserving the Affordable Care Act or protecting LGBTQ rights or fighting climate change right now. These people do not have a job without you. You’re younger than them. The future matters more to you. I’ve seen the working life of a Congressman up close and let me tell you: you can reach them (surprisingly easily, actually). You can get through to them. You can put a face to these issues and you never let them forget it. Be relentless. Be memorable. If they ignore you or forget you, you let everybody know about it. We have the platforms to easily and quickly tell others. Let relevant activist groups know. Let the whole fucking world know.
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” – President Obama
This is the post. This is the one giving me the most hope. This is the one turning most of my sadness (not all, lord knows I will never be rid of all of the sad) in to vindictiveness, into bitter action, into spite. Into action.
sparksoffandommagic 