Stop asking little girls if they have boyfriends
Stop referring to the boys that little girls are friends with as their “little boyfriends”
Stop telling little girls they’re going to have boyfriends or be “boy crazy”
Stop raising children on heteronormativity and let them be children
Additionally: 1. It’s not funny 2. It’s not cute 3. You are embarrassing them 4. You are completely disregarding them when they tell you “no” and you insist
Stop doing the same to little boys too.
They are not “a little lady’s man.”
Don’t excuse him picking on a girl as him having a crush. Correct the behavior and stop treating it like it’s cute and normal.
Also stop insisting little boys have crushes on significantly older women. It’s gross.
Just let kids be kids.
Also, if a child has a crush, don’t keep referring to it over and over for months on end. They grow. They change. They don’t want you harping on the fact that they used to have a crush on someone who’s now just a friend, or an enemy or someone who they just see in the halls. Leave it be. You’re embarassing them.
Boys and girls can be close without having to be in a “relationship” or “together”
Teach them to be nice to eachother. Don’t force the girlfriend/boyfriend status just because they’re close. Let people be friends!!! Let them live their life without constantly being asked about their personal relationship or forced into one because you think it to be so.
Platonic relationships exist.
And teach them that they don’t need a significant other if they don’t want one. Don’t force it upon them.
I have never supported Trump. I just don’t support bullshit stories and exaggerations about him. He does enough stupid shit, no need to make things up.
Refuting falsehoods is not the same thing as supporting him, damn
Thank
Like it’s actually the fact that I don’t support him which makes me so determined that he is called out for the specific things he does and not the nonsense he doesn’t.
I follow a lot of awesome vegans and a lot of vegan posts pop up on my dash. I’M NOT GETTING INTO AN ARGUMENT ABOUT VEGANISM WITH ANYONE. THAT’S NOT WHAT THIS IS ABOUT. I just feel like I need to address a trend I see pretty frequently:
Anthropomorphism of farm animals.
This is DANGEROUS, for both the animals and the people who believe what’s being said about these animals.
For example, cows.
For obvious reasons the images of cows in posts talking about how cows aren’t dumb, unfeeling hamburgers in waiting are generally like this:
And usually they’re accompanied by talk of how they can be trained, how they have best friends (which is actually true!) and how sweet they can be.
On the other side, there are posts like this going around
Thing is, cows do not cry tears like humans do. In fact, there are a lot of posts claiming to present animals weeping like humans do (and not always by vegans). In fact watery discharge can be a sign of early eye infections in cattle. Claiming they’re tears of sadness normalizes signs of ill health as normal animal emotions. This is also I why I get so worked up over people saying a stressed out dog with its lips pulled back is ‘smiling and happy’.
All of these posts combine to make the popular perception of cows something they’re absolutely not and is very dangerous for people with their hearts in the right place looking to help the world out.
Cows are dangerous. I feel like I shouldn’t have to tell people that a thousand pound animal is dangerous, but I do. Not the people I see on my dash, but actual people looking to interact with actual cows (I work with them). Yes, they can be lovely and docile when socialized and handled correctly and consistently but if you have no way of knowing the cows background you have no way of knowing their temperament. If you decide to volunteer at cattle rescues, this will very likely be the case. Moreover, well socialized and docile cattle ARE STILL DANGEROUS AS FUCK. Even the most tame animals can lash out if in pain, under stress or “out of nowhere” (read: lashing out because from their judgement of a situation in makes sense to them, but you misread their judgement). So you get things like this:
With the huge emphasis on docile cows who are good, loving, devoted mothers it’s understandable someone would want to give her a calming and congratulatory stroke after giving birth.
That cow could have killed her.
This is obviously dangerous for humans but it’s also dangerous for cows. Aggressive animals are often euthanized, no matter what provoked the aggression and it also inflates statistics that could be used as a counter argument to veganism.
The same sort of thing happens to pigs.
The vegan info posts about pigs tend to use images like this:
Cute, eh? The posts also talk about how intelligent these animals are and how they can be kept as pets. Who wouldn’t want one? Usually people who look into pigs as pets look into ‘mini’ pigs or ‘micro’ pigs. Pigs that will stay small forever. Except even ‘mini’ pigs can grow to a hundred pounds in size and they’re STRONG. I say ‘mini’ because sometimes people are duped into buying regular piglets that are claimed to be fully grown.
Which brings me back to warning anyone who wants to volunteer at a pig rescue that pigs. are. huge. People mislead into thinking they’re not will likely not keep and care for their little pig once it’s not so little and I don’t know anyone who would/could keep a 500 lb hog in their home and/or backyard.
And, like with cows, they are DANGEROUS.
And, unlike cows, they are not herbivores.
PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KILLED AND EATEN BY PIGS. Yes, eaten. One could argue that this happens when pigs aren’t well socialized and habituated with humans, but if you’re working with a pig you don’t know you have no guarantee that they’re tame.
I could go on, but cows and pigs are the animals I see most represented in these posts (chickens too, but they pose less of a threat, unless you count avian flu) and another thing I see very frequently are cute pictures and videos and cows, pigs, and chickens interacting with dogs. If you’re under the impression that these animals are sweet and docile and your dog is also sweet, what could go wrong?
A lot.
Odds are your animals will not be used to interacting with an animal of that species and these animals ‘languages’ don’t always translate! Animals get things mixed up all the time! The most common one I’ve seen is a dog misreading a cat’s irritated swishy tail as a wagging ‘I want to play!’ tail. Claws to the face aren’t fun, but attacked by a large animal? Possibly deadly. Dogs do not comprehend size and strength and potential for an aggressive strike in the same way that we do. That’s why you end up with things like this:
Again, that dog could’ve easily died OR MIGHT HAVE DIED LATER.
This little trooper was kicked by a cow
Projecting your feelings and ideas onto an animal can potentially kill them. Again, if you have the opportunity to work with these animals KEEP YOUR OWN ANIMALS AWAY.
All of these things remind me very much of the people who claim wolves are nothing but big puppies, or who cohabitant snakes so they don’t get ‘lonely’.
You can’t love and advocate for the protection of an animal when you only love and advocate for the protection of your fantasy of that animal because when real animals fall short of that, real animals get hurt.
Horses, cows, and pigs are big. Respect their size. Horses, cows, and pigs ALL have the potential to become aggressive. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Respect their potential to become aggressive.
Thank you,
Signed, a person who is sick to fucking death of watching adults assume every farm animal I work with has the personality of a bowl of whipped cream and the patience of a saint and encourage their children to interact with them as such. That’s how animal “attacks” happen, that’s how lifetime fears and hatreds are born.
This was actually featured on r/tumblrinaction as a piece of Sanity Sunday. Very excellent write up with good examples. I think it’s important that humans don’t project their own ideals and fantasies onto animals for exactly the reasons you listed here.
New Scientist- good headline, explains exactly what was found, doesn’t sensationalize Cosmos- ok headline- “bizarre” kinda clickbaity, but hey, it IS bizarre- it’s got this really neat symbiotic sulfur-eating bacteria that lives in its gills and a tiny digestive system- and yes, it was found in the Philippines Popular Science:
If you’re a science writer, then act like it. Calling a harmless shipworm a “horrifying nightmare monster” is irresponsible. It’s not a monster, it’s just a worm. And it’s not a new species, either. Linnaeus described the thing in 1735. It’s just that this was the first live specimen ever found.
Science faces enough challenges in communication. One of the biggest problems is that scientific writing is often inaccessible and jargony to people who don’t know the specific lingo. Popular science writing online can help to change that, but not through clickbait and not through trying to gross people out. Don’t scare people away from embracing discovery for clicks on Facebook.
So many people on tumblr complain about having no friends but then they reblog shit like
“If your friend doesn’t respond to your every text immediately they are not your friend”
and “A true friend would never value themselves over your sanity. Friends who ‘need space’ away from your mental health issue are TO X I C”
and “if someone doesn’t drop everything to help you when you’re in need, congrats, you just found out who your fake friend is”
and it’s like…this is why.
You had friends and then shat on them with your fucked up abusive standards.
congratulations on shutting down every mentally ill person who NEEDS this kind of attention to survive and telling us we dont deserve friends for the way our brains fuck us up and tell us that if they dont do just the smallest things they hate us and wantus to die and dont want to be our friends
i hate nts
You’re friends world doesn’t revolve around you. Honestly your response is one of the most selfish things I’ve read.
You need to realize that your mental illness can be toxic and harmful to your friends, that it can be controlling and poisonous. That your friends world doesn’t just revolve around you.
I had a friend like that once. She had her mental instabilities and she suffered from depression and things like that and so she came to me because I was her friend. I tried to be THAT friend. Whenever she would text or call me, I would be there to to talk to her, to give her advice no matter how busy i was, and i was BUSY. I genuinely wanted to help her through her problems and i felt guilty for wanting to put my academics over her. But in school she would often complain that she had absolutely no friends, as if I didn’t exist. I tried to understand though, that sometimes it may FEEL like you don’t have anyone I suppose, so I stuck with her so she wouldn’t feel alone. I wish I saw it then, but it was just tip of the iceberg. She was manipulating me. She would tell me secrets, and make me promise to never tell another soul. And I didn’t, cause I cared. Come to find out she went and told the whole school herself, saying the same thing to each person “promise not to tell anyone, you’re the only one I can trust”. I would tell her to go seek professional help because she was hurting herself and getting into all sorts of trouble. But she would say the same thing “I can’t, you’re the only one I can trust.” Almost every night we would talk over Facebook and she would constantly reaffirm our friendship, saying “you’re my friend, right?” almost the same way, every day, and I would always say the same thing “yes”. This went on for about 2 years. It got to the point that I would hide my online status on facebook when I saw that she was online. I was going through hardships of my own and when I would go to her about it, she would quickly dismiss it and go on about HER problems. She would come to me with her problems, I would tell her how to solve them, she would totally disregard everything I told her and get herself into trouble again, and come crying to me for the same answers to the same problems and repeat the cycle over and over again. I would be up at midnight writing college essays, filling out college applications, looking for scholarships, and she would call me complaining about the same problems that I had given her the solutions to countless times. But I would drop everything and go through the whole spiel again, because I tried to be THAT friend. The friend that those people want. The one that would put their whole life on halt for their friends. And it did a toll on me, both physically and mentally. I got no sleep or mental rest because I was basically juggling her problems, on top of my own, as well as school preparing for college. Every time she sensed I was sort of backing out she would bring up the fact that she would kill herself or that I was the one and only friend she had (which wasn’t true). It was my mom who finally told me to distance myself from her, because she could see how badly this kind of relationship was affecting me, and she had been in a similar one herself, so she recognized the signs. My dad, a Star Trek fan, called people like that Klingons because they literally cling on to you and feed off of the attention you give them. I’m not knocking people with mental disabilities or depression or anything like that, because they are serious. But don’t treat your friends like your 24/7 therapists or psychiatrists. We cannot put our whole lives on hold, jeopardize our future for you. Even therapists tell their patients “no I can’t speak with you today” or “you have to schedule an appointment, you can’t just call whenever you want”. And it’s not to be selfish. I thought it was selfish of me to prioritize my health or education over my friend who needed my help. But I realized, I’m not a therapist, and I have to look out for myself too.
We totally get it—you’re so inspired by movies like Finding Dory or a visit to an aquarium that now you want your own Dory or Nemo.
Keeping a fish can help you learn about caring for live animals and gain respect for aquatic life, but there’s a lot more to it than just fish + water + plants + food = aquarium.
Because we love fishes just like you do, here are some important things to think about first:
Fishes are live animals, and caring for an animal’s life and habitat is a serious responsibility and time commitment. Hey, we need a college degree to work at the Aquarium with saltwater fishes, invertebrates and complicated aquarium life support systems!
Do your homework! Fishes can live for several years, and will need care all during that time. Do your homework first. Take time to learn the needs of a particular species of fish or fishes, and what’s involved in maintaining a living aquatic ecosystem at home.
Bigger is not always better. Different species of fishes need different sizes of tanks. Food, water quality, size of tank, water volume and lighting are all requirements you need to consider when choosing a fish. Time for more homework!
Start simple. Saltwater fishes and aquariums can sometimes be more complicated than freshwater, but both require daily care and maintenance. A blue tang like Dory can be very difficult to keep, but there are other marine fishes that are easier. Many freshwater fishes, like some goldfish species, can be great for the beginner. Yep, more homework!
Buddy up! Ask a parent, sibling or friend to help you with your project. (Caring for animals is a good way to spend time with people, too.) Never capture a fish in the wild and bring it home. Instead, work with a reputable aquarium dealer who can help you set up a relatively easy-to-maintain system, and recommend a fish that best suits your interest—and skills.
Take the time to learn the ropes. See if this is something you want to stick with before you advance to more complex systems and fishes. If you get stuck, be kind and find a good home for your fishy pet. Don’t “release” it into a river or the ocean! It probably won’t survive, and if it does, can spread parasites and diseases to native fishes.
Remember, visiting your local aquarium is a great way to see and learn more about your favorite furry, feathered and finned friends!
(Note: Thank you for all of the thoughtful feedback on the subject of home aquariums. This is a complex topic so we wanted to share more of our thoughts.)
PiraticOctopus 