Every So Often Im Struck By The Memory Of One Of My College Professors Getting Very Angry With Our Class

every so often im struck by the memory of one of my college professors getting very angry with our class (art history of pompeii 250) because when she excitedly detailed the ingenious roman invention of heated floors in bathhouses via hearths in small crawlspaces, we asked who was tending the fires. she said "oh, slaves i suppose. but that isnt the point". and we said that it actually very much was the point. she had just told us that in roman society there were dozens of people, maybe hundreds, who spent every day of their enslaved lives crawling in cramped, hot, smoky tunnels to light fires to warm pools of water (which they were not allowed to swim in). how could that not be the point?

she wanted us to focus on the art, on the innovation of heated plumbing, on the tiles and decorations of the bathhouses, and all we wanted to do was learn more about the people under the floors. and she didn't know anything more about that. in fact, she said she thought we were focusing too much on superfluous details.

it feels almost hokey to put too fine a point on the idea im getting at here but i will anyway: There are a lot of people who are still under the floors. all these beautiful, convenient, brilliant innovations of modern society (think fast fashion, chatgpt, uber, doordash) are still powered by people working in inhumane, untenable conditions.

the people who run these systems want you to focus on the good - who doesnt love warm water? - but if anything is going to improve or change in our lifetimes, you need to examine these things with an attentive, critical, and empathetic eye. and for fucks sake stop ordering from amazon

More Posts from Rachelcarrot and Others

4 years ago

it’s time to look at some photos of pikas carrying plants and flowers in their mouths

It’s Time To Look At Some Photos Of Pikas Carrying Plants And Flowers In Their Mouths
It’s Time To Look At Some Photos Of Pikas Carrying Plants And Flowers In Their Mouths
It’s Time To Look At Some Photos Of Pikas Carrying Plants And Flowers In Their Mouths
It’s Time To Look At Some Photos Of Pikas Carrying Plants And Flowers In Their Mouths
3 years ago

Just a message to all my fellow writers for 2022:

You're all doing amazing whether you write a lot or not, your mind is such a beautiful and equally horrifying place, the stories and characters inside it are so fucking interesting. We NEED you and your story, we need you because every story makes the world a little brighter. Please keep up the daydreaming, the scribbling in notebooks, the hours and hours of reading, the endless talks with yourself. Your fantasy is like not other, so don't even think about giving up. No story can give an unnamed feeling, an unspoken atmosphere like yours does, and as long there's just a thought of it in your mind, a slight spark of it, it lives somewhere, it waits for you. You will leave a mark here since you're creating, endlessly and effortlessly, passionately and even with all the beautiful doubts in your mind, you don't stop. It makes you human, and oh, all the pain and the love can be beautiful, you know that. Keep it up. Keep writing.

4 years ago

A cute dog AND One Direction? Consider me interested.

Everyone tryna steal my girl. 

(Source)


Tags
4 years ago

#tw: rape #rape # tw: sexual assault

When I was 13 years old and curious about sex and love, I asked my mom if she had had sex before marrying my father (of whom she is still married to, and has been since before I was born). She said that that wasn’t really a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. I said ‘sure it is, you’ve either had sex before him, or you haven’t’. She brought me onto the couch and sat me down and told me about the boy she liked when she was young and how one night she snuck into his house while his parents were gone and they were kissing and he said they should have sex and she said that she wanted to save sex for marriage and he laughed and basically took all her clothes off and he raped her and as my mom was telling the story she cried and this was the second time I had ever seen my mom cry. She was 12 when it happened.

In grade 8 I got a call from my friend in the middle of the night and she was drunk in the park crying and told me that she went out that night with some other friends and they drank a little and her guy “friend” starting flirting and yes she laughed at first but then he tried to pull her shirt over her head and she pulled away and he ripped her shirt and it was her favourite shirt and then he pushed her to her knees and HIS BEST FRIEND HELD HER JAW OPEN WHILE HE FACE FUCKED HER. And so I went to the park and picked her up and took her home and slept in her bed with her except we didn’t sleep because she just cried and her mouth bled and this was four years ago but I still have to be the one to bring her items to the till it the cashier is a man, and she still has anxiety attacks and she’ll get a rash all over her body and I just want to kill those boys but instead they are still walking around. And I’m in the bathroom with her, dabbing at her skin with a warm cloth until it returns to its regular colour.

And in grade 9 one of my closest friends was kinda seeing this boy and so they hung out one night and then she said that she really had to be getting back home and he said that she wasn’t going anywhere until she gave him what he wanted and he parked the car and took off her clothes and she said no and he ignored her and so she laid in the backseat totally limp and just cried and it wasn’t even sex, he just masterbated by using her body instead of his hand and she came to school the next day with vodka in her water bottle and she drank all day and I had to fight her to get the alcohol away from her and she just cried and threw up and I skipped class while I held her hair back and that same boy texted me a month later, asking if I ever wanted to hangout sometime.

And in that same year my very best friend who has never even kissed a boy, confessed to me that when she was 9 years old, her 12 year old cousin made her give him a hand job and he told her that was what cousins do and he gave her a chocolate bar afterwards and she told me that he probably doesn’t even remember it but that it’s something that she’ll never have the luxury of forgetting.

And in grade 10 I knew a girl who invited her best friend over to watch Disney movies and then he started to put his hands down her pants and she said no but she is 130lbs and he is 220lbs and he called her a tease while she tried to fight him but he used one hand to hold her down, and the other to put inside of her and i was the one to push her inside of a classroom and stand in front of her while calling the police when he showed up at our school looking for her and she was so damn scared.

And a few months later I skipped class and was in the car with a guy who i had had unprotected sex with in the past while under the influence of cocaine but this time I was sober and I insisted we use a condom but he told me he couldn’t feel anything while the condom was on so he ripped it off and I said I refused to have unprotected sex again and so he just grabbed me and forced himself into my mouth and I was crying and he pulled me onto him and I just came saying “stop” over and over like a broken record but he must’ve heard something different because he went until he came and I just sat naked in the backseat while he drove me back to the school and said “we should do this again sometime”. And I had five showers that night and I scratched at my skin so hard to try and rip his fingerprints off of me, I still have the scars.

And I found out soon afterwards that that same guy had raped a classmate of mine, 5 months earlier and she told me about how he brought her McDonald’s first, and how he said they could take things slow and she told me about how he didn’t listen to her either. And he goes to our school and so after she told me about her incident and I told her about mine, we decided to report it to the police and the trial is currently still going on and he told people about it, except in his version we are just “asking for attention” and all his friends talk about how bad they feel for him. As if HE is the one that still wakes up screaming. As if HE felt like his skin no longer was beautiful, no longer belonged to him. And I held her in my arms as she bawled after giving the police her statement. And she did the same for me.

And I met a woman a year ago in a paint store and she had a service dog and I asked what the dog was for and it turns out that she had been so brutally raped and abused in her life, that the dog is literally trained to keep men away from her.

And I’m so FUCKING SICK AND TIRED OF THIS WORLD WE ARE LIVING IN. How many rape victims eyes have I already looked into? How many more will I? And how many more friends will I hold while they shake? Because I don’t know how many more I can take. And who the fuck still has the nerve to make rape jokes? And… Something just has to change. Please, someone just start being that change.

-16 year old girl

6 years ago

I need to prove a point to my school

Reblog if you believe that sexual predators should be punished, no matter their sexuality

4 years ago

“Our sweet rescue baby Ruby Jane, comforting one of my foster kitties as he’s getting a bath❤️ It’s the sweetest. Enjoy!“

Video/caption by Stephanie Vice - SPCA Florida

8 years ago

Well, you’ll break his heart and he’ll break yours. But you won’t forget each other, even if one day you walk past him and neither of you acknowledges it. That’s the thing about first loves, you never forget them, they are the only person who gets your whole untouched heart. They get all the love you’ve saved up for this moment and they get to keep it forever. You may never speak again but you can guarantee that you can still picture his eyes looking into yours as he said those three words, the way he kissed you afterwards and couldn’t stop repeating those words over and over until you were both too tired to speak. However you’ll also always remember the last time he said those three words, and told you that he was going to come back for you, the way he made you believe that a happy ending did exist for both of you. Those memories will come back to you in waves, all the firsts and all the lasts, the good and the bad, but what’s important is the fact that your first love is just that, the first but not the last.

from me to you (via gemmarambles)

2 years ago
rachelcarrot - Untitled
9 years ago

“why do you have a problem with Simon becoming a shadowhunter at the end?”

oh boy. oh man. let’s do this.

The Mortal Instruments book series has a variety of very interesting parallels that sort of portray real life problems in a fantasy world, which is a good way of educating people on subconscious level about how repulsing some of the discrimination nowadays is. 

Yes, I am talking about racism, I am talking about sexism, misogyny, homophobia, unhealthy parent/child relationship, rape and abuse, manipulation- all things wrong in our society.

Take the shadowhunters/downworlders concept. A privileged community, considering itself superior to a group of minorities: a blatant, clear example of racism, which is being called out and fought against.  

That sounds good and what’s even better, one of the main characters (armed with the privileges of being white, male, heterosexual) becomes a downworlder and suddenly, he is apart of a minority too, and it does nothing to change or lessen the values he represents. 

Why, do tell me, was it necessary to not only break every single working rule of the Shadowhunters Chronicles fantasy world and come up with half-assed excuses to not only stop him from being apart of a minority, but also make him apart of the privileged community?

What’s the point of representing the fight for equality 6 whole books if at the end of the day, it is going to be proved that you are not valid if you’re not a certain thing. What’s the point of saying “Downworlders are not less than Shadowhutners” if your’e going to make a downworlder into a shadowhunter so that he is as privileged as they come? What was wrong with Downworlder Simon? Why was he any less than Shadowhunter Simon, if equality is something you root for?

Magnus and Alec were denied their happy ending: their chance to grow old together because if Magnus gave up his immortality, he would die of old age. Following the same logic, Simon should have died without his immortality, because he’s technically a vampire, an undead creature. The author went to poorly explained lengths to keep him alive and make him a Shadowhunter. Why couldn’t Magnus become mortal and stay alive in the exact same sequence is still a mystery. This is not even the case. 

The case is- I do understand that these are cassandra’s characters and she’s free to do to their fate whatever she pleases, but my point is that this plot twist is completely unnecessary and doesn’t really make sense. It literally went against everything she tried to make her books into. 

4 years ago
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