Perilous Times For Political Cartoonists

I love how this looks. More than that, it highlights an insidious trend. Political cartoonists keep my brain from exploding… they deserve better.

claytoonz

Donald Trump is hosting a “social media summit” today at the White House. This morning, he tweeted, “A big subject today at the White House Social Media Summit will be the tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practiced by certain companies. We will not let them get away with it much longer. The Fake News Media will also be there, but for a limited period.”

So, Trump is having a tantrum over “bias” and “discrimination” but he’s only invited people who are extremely friendly to him and he’s going to shut out the press. Also, not invited are representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Conservatives don’t get irony or hypocrisy.

Trump and other conservatives claim their voices are suppressed on social media. Basically, they scream suppression whenever one of their racist posts, personal attacks, or lies are removed. This is a very popular conspiracy theory among those who believe they’re…

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9 Black Character Stereotypes to Avoid in Your Writing

Writers Anon - Taunton's Writing Group

Congratulations, you’re writing a story with a diverse set of characters. This is a great thing and needs to be supported. A fear of political correctness mustn’t stop writers from creating characters from other races, religions or walks of life. Writing from beyond your own experience takes a little bit more thought and work, but that’s our job, right?

The first step to writing non-white characters is understanding the mistakes of the past. So here’s my checklist for avoiding the most common black character stereotypes:

1. Angry Black Woman/man: This character is often angry for no reason and there for comic effect. We get the pursed lipped, finger clicking, head wobbling ‘sassy’ black woman, who bursts into the scene and then disappears after we’ve finished laughing. The haranguing wife/mother/grandmother all feature. Then the black man is the loud, swearing, angry figure, who may seem violent and threatening. The angry black person…

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Dear White Authors: Here’s Why You Suck at Writing POC

Coco by Monthly Press

Lately in my writer’s groups and circles I’ve been seeing a lot of white writers saying that they feel as though they can’t write POC, or it will be inherently seen as offensive. They bemoan POC as being controlling and over sensitive, or even rightfully concerned, but that it shouldn’t be that way. White authors, they posit, shouldn’t have to fear that their work will be taken the wrong way. They didn’t  mean it that way. They are really trying, or they’ll just only write white people then. The story I see is they’re told by friends, editors, etc. that they shouldn’t write POC as a white person. How goddamn un-American blah blah blah. The funny thing is if they looked around plenty of white folk are writing great and enjoyable POC characters that are praised on the page and screen. So what gives? Why can they write POC and…

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Truth or Consequences

Things Carla Loves

The other night, I re-watched a powerful episode of Doctor Who. (Major Doctor Who fan. If you don’t believe me, you clearly haven’t seen my Instagram.)

In this particular episode, The Zygon Invension, (it’s a two-parter, with The Zygon Invasion being the first one, but I’m focusing on the second part for this post) the Zygons, an alien race capable of replicating human faces (meaning, they can become anyone), has decided to seek war against humanity. Well, that’s not entirely true. Some Zygons want to invade and destroy Earth, and, to quote Bender: “Kill all humans”.

Most of the Zygons want to continue living on Earth in peace. They enjoy their human ‘counterparts’ and human lives. They don’t want a war; they want peace. They don’t want humans to die; they have grown to love and respect humanity.

However, one of the Zygons who has (SPOILER ALERT!) taken Clara’s identity…

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No Soap For you

As a Jewish person, I whole-heartedly support calling them what they are – concentration camps.

claytoonz

The accusation that detention centers holding migrant children are concentration camps doesn’t necessarily mean they’re being compared to Nazi death camps. But, there are definitely some soap Nazis among Customs and Border Protection.

In fact, this week, the Trump administration went to court to argue that migrant children detained at the U.S.-Mexico border do not require basic hygiene products like soap and toothbrushes in order to be held in “safe and sanitary” conditions. Hell, they even argued that forcing minors to sleep on cold concrete floors in crowded cells, CELLS, with low temperatures also fulfilled the “safe and sanitary” requirement.

News broke this week that there are not enough diapers for the babies currently held by the Trump administration (which would make sense if the big orange baby requires them all). Also, children are being forced to care for toddlers. There are toddlers sitting around in urine-soaked onesies. There is…

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Ask A Teacher (Parent Edition): My Child Says They Are Depressed. What Can I Do To Help Them?

Things Carla Loves

First off, thank you for being the kind of parent who is willing to proactively address their child’s mental health. Too often, for varying reasons, parents don’t want to admit their child is mentally unwell: Sometimes this is because they’re afraid of how this will be reflected on them (i.e. “That mother must be awful if their child is depressed”, and before you act like that’s unreasonable, let’s look at every single time a parent is destroyed for a tragic accident that has befallen their child. Even if it’s something that’s as random as the toddler who was killed at Disneyland, people often love to pile on about what they would’ve done and how the parents were definitely at fault, because that’s the last thing grieving parents need); sometimes they’re afraid of what the mental diagnosis is; perhaps they don’t believe in mental illnesses and have the “toxic positivity” mentality…

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Friendship breakups 1 of 2

Relationships of any kind can be abusive. It can be just as hard to “break up” with a friend as it is to end a romantic relationship.

You deserve respect & support from all the people in your life. ❤

Lolsys Library

*So I was going to write a really long post, but I thought that it may bore people to read my point of view. So I’m going to write it in two parts. One talking about a basis of where I’m coming from with friendship break ups. The other will be about how to spot if you’re in a toxic friendship and how to get out of it. Purely from my personal experience*

I was replying to an answer on Quora (Quora is fabulous by the way). Someone asked the question about how do you know when your relationship/partner is toxic. I started off by saying that I think they already knew the answer. Normally I would respond with just that. However, since the other people who answered were about how wonderful their partners are…

I decided to talk about how the hardest, but most toxic relationships I have…

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Isn’t That How Equality Works?

Things Carla Loves

In relation to yesterday’s ranty post, this picture was also posted in response to my comment (reason? I’m not sure. A lot of things were posted in response to my comment about feminism. If you missed yesterday’s post, you can find it here: She’s A Bitch).

This picture, in particular, really bugged me. In fact, it infuriated me. I didn’t respond to the commenter because, well, trolls. And I figured he’d be too obtuse to get it … and I’d be giving him the exact reaction he wanted.

To me, this picture’s comment does have a point – one that I’ve mentioned many times before – that men can be sexually assaulted.

However, let’s be fair and realistic; it’s not that common for a woman to get a man drunk (and/or spike his drink) with the sole intention of raping him. Even if Josie did really want to have…

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She’s A Bitch

Things Carla Loves

When I was younger, I didn’t really understand what feminism was, or what it stood for. However, through inspirational women, inspirational teachers and influential readings, it became quite clear to me early on that I was a feminist. I think, when I was younger, I thought that feminism meant I couldn’t shave my legs or underarms, dress like a girl, and needed to ‘burn my bra’ and, with those negative stereotypes in mind, I couldn’t support that.

Later, of course, I learnt that they were just negative (and misguided) stereotypes of feminism, often portrayed by sexist and misogynistic men (and women who, like me at the time, didn’t know better). I learnt, instead, that feminism wasn’t just about women’s rights, but men’s, too. I learnt that while things weren’t even close to being equal for women, in many ways, men were in the same boat. I learnt that feminism was…

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