sometimes the guys at my school say things and i can feel my vagina fusing shut
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”
Indulgently, I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.” —
Isaac Asimov (via skinnybaras)
Anyone who takes the meaning of IQ tests with anything but a shipping tanker sized pile of salt should at the very least read Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man (preferably the revised edition so you can get his complete decimation of the racist, sexist tripe that is The Bell Curve). As one example for the kind of bias that tends to be built into these tests, the IQ tests used by the US army in the early 20th century (whose results were later used by others to argue that immigrants and people of color where innately less intelligent than their native-born white counterparts) included a “complete-a-picture” section were:
early items might be defended as sufficiently universal: adding a mouth to a face or an ear to a rabbit. But later items required a rivet in a pocket knife, a filmamet in a light bulb, a horn on a phonograph, a net on a tennis court, and a ball in a bowler’s hand (marked wrong… if an examinee drew the ball in the alley, for you can tell from the bowler’s posture that he has not released the ball). Franz Boas, an early critic, told the tale of a Sicilian recruit who added a crucifix where it always appeared in his native land to a house without a chimney. He was marked wrong.
Ask yourself: if you grew up in a rural region without access to electricity, how the fuck are you supposed to look at a drawing of a clear eggplant shaped object with a bit of metal on the narrow end and know you’re supposed to draw a curly piece of wire in the middle of it? And how the fuck is this supposed to accurately reflect on your abilities to process and apply a range of different types of information?
(via slipstreamborne)
(via slipstreamborne)
If you laugh at jokes about raping people I will laugh at my fist punching your throat because sure it’s violent and demeaning but I think it’s funny so why aren’t you laughing get off the floor and stop whining I am trying to assert that my desire to make a joke out of your traumatic experience is more important than your pain it’s called Freedom of Speech read a book.
(via bunei)
Quick little doodle of Claire from Questionable Content while I was working on a bigger piece- just needed to step away and paint something a little more mindless to freshen up my hand.
Holy shit that is beautiful :o
(via jephjacques)
… He is making some very good points.
One of the best mom moments in TV history. I wish more parents knew how important it is to validate their children’s feelings.
I feel the same about you darling
On the other hand, this is a mom who doesn’t seem concerned that her husband tries to strangle their son on a regular basis.
I’ve been laughing at this for 50 years
each note is another year i will be laughing at this
(via krawps)
Ball point doodle of Jade fixing JadeBot.
Ball point doodle
doodle
(via krawps)
Science!
what the fuck is this science bullshit
Fuckin’, chemistry, and physics, and all that good shit.
(via satorikomeiji-archivelol)
So today in class a wasp flew into our room and was sitting on the ceiling and instead of just killing it with a ruler or book or something mY TEACHER SET IT ON FIRE