"No, what I’ve said in a sense suggests that they’re not, in that you can be a good leftist and thinker of the anti-capitalist movement without being particularly indebted to Marxism. I wouldn’t lean too heavily on the need for Marx to be right, though it’s true I suppose that Marxism has been the mainstream anti-capitalist critique within the left. What strikes me is the dramatic way the situation has changed since, say, the turn of the Millennium. At the turn of the Millennium, history was supposedly over. Capitalism was in a peculiarly confident and arrogant phase. And then, from the fall of the World Trade Centre onwards, there has been the so-called War against Terror, the enormous capitalist crisis, the Arab Spring, societies like Greece teetering on the brink of radical change, a majority of American youth saying they prefer socialism to capitalism. Nobody could have predicted that ten years ago. So I think that what’s brought Marxism or at least socialism back on the agenda is of course the capitalist crisis. It’s not because people have suddenly started reading Marx or a new generation of leftists has spontaneously emerged. It’s that crisis always makes a system visible, it always makes its limits visible, and systems don’t normally like that, and therefore people are able to cast a new critical eye on them."

Terry Eagleton responding to the question, “Do you think at this point in history “Marxism”, “communism”, “socialism”, “leftism” are basically interchangeable? Would you insist on sharp distinctions?”

Barker, Alexander and Niven, Alex. “An Interview with Terry Eagleton.” The Oxonian Review. 4 June 2012. Web. 4 June 2012. [source] h/t: ayjay)

I’m very fond of the final three sentences.

(via thenoobyorker)

(via thenoobyorker)

Fertility, Gender, Sterilisation, Womanhood →

spiffyrock21:

“i don’t hate homosexuals, i just don’t think that they should—”

(via historicalslut)

Anonymous asked: 41

Last time I was insulted, and what it was about:

I don’t really get insulted by my peers/friends, as far as I can remember. (I have a terrible memory, though.) We have really intense discussions a lot, but I think I’m very lucky that these are people that I agree with on a lot of things or that are not assholes about stuff we disagree on.

An instance of insult that’s coming to mind has to do with my parents. They arranged that my mother would come to Princeton two weekends ago to help me pack up and then drive back home with my stuff. However, I wanted to stay on campus for the next week until finals period was over, to be able to spend the most possible amount of time with my friends, and then I could go straight from Princeton to Punta Cana for Dead Week with my graduating friends. My father, though, said that it would be inconsiderate of me to tell my mother to come to Princeton, pack up my stuff, and then drive home alone; I didn’t understand him putting that emotional valence on it, because I just viewed it as my mother doing what needed to be done, whereas my parents tend to view everything as this give-and-take power balance of obligation and duty.

Anyway, so finally, after much back-and-forth about me not wanting to come home with my mother and be at home for that week, I had nothing else to say. So my father said, “Okay then, can I get a confirmation from you that if your mother goes to Princeton and helps you pack your stuff, you will then drive with her back home?”

I was really taken aback by this. On a superficial level, I understand why he said it: communication between me and my parents has gotten to the point where no implications or assumptions can be taken for granted, or else miscommunications happen and shit blows up in our faces.

But hearing him ask that felt like he thought I was … conniving! Like he thought I was going to accept the plan that my mother would come up here (which has the implicit understanding that I would then return home with her), and then when she got here, I would be like, “LOL J/K I’m going to stay here and not go home with you.” That would be a bitch move! Does he really think that little of me, that I’m that selfish? (Well, they both think I’m selfish, so I guess in their minds, they don’t know the limits to my selfishness.)

I suppose it’s difficult because I don’t like not being trusted when I try so hard to be straightforward and upfront about things and just generally not be an asshole, but then again, I talk about how I never really know when people are being real with what they say, so how can I expect people to be sure of what’s going on when dealing with me?

My skin is recovering from four days in the Dominican Republic.

But last night (final night of Reunions), I was enjoying talking to this guy I just met, and he ended up inviting me to go home with him.

It’s nice to know people still think I’m attractive even when I look like I have leprosy.

(I ended up turning him down, though, partially out of self-consciousness.)

Stephanie Georgopulos: i like my body, ee cummings →

omgstephlol:

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which I will
again and again and…

"The whole “men initiate, women wait around” plan is bullshit. Newsflash: men who are shy, insecure, or afraid of rejection exist. They are not bad people. Many of them make awesome boyfriends. It’s also fucked to tell women that their sole recourse, if they want to date a dude, is to look pretty in his general direction. Instead of taking away women’s power and making men fit a role that they may not be comfortable with, why don’t we let people who like initiating initiate and people who don’t like initiating not initiate?"

Fuck Off Tracy McMillan — The Good Men Project (via sexisnottheenemy)

THIS!

Of the three women I’ve been intimate with so far, 2 initiated things with me, and I see nothing wrong with that. I suck at initiating.

(via forumgamer)

(via historicalslut)

"We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don’t
grow on trees, like in the old days. So where
does one find love? When you’re sixteen it’s easy,
like being unleashed with a credit card
in a department store of kisses. There’s the first kiss.
The sloppy kiss. The peck.
The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we
shouldn’t be doing this kiss. The but your lips
taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.
The I wish you’d quit smoking kiss.
The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad
sometimes kiss. The I know
your tongue like the back of my hand kiss. As you get
older, kisses become scarce. You’ll be driving
home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road,
with its purple thumb out. If you
were younger, you’d pull over, slide open the mouth’s
red door just to see how it fits. Oh where
does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile.
Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.
Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss.
Now what? Don’t invite the kiss over
and answer the door in your underwear. It’ll get suspicious
and stare at your toes. Don’t water the kiss with whiskey.
It’ll turn bright pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters,
but in the morning it’ll be ashamed and sneak out of
your body without saying good-bye,
and you’ll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left
on the inside of your mouth. You must
nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it
illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest
and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a
special beach. Place it on the tongue’s pillow,
then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath
a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.
But one kiss levitates above all the others. The
intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss.
The I’ll love you through a brick wall kiss.
Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones."

— Jeffrey McDaniel, “The Archipelago of Kisses” (via atomiclanterns)

AGH.

(via omgstephlol)

eastafrodite:

“I only believe in abortions in cases of rape.”

Can we take a second to analyze this statement?

If you were truly “pro-life”, you would value the fetus no matter what circumstance it was conceived through. What you’re actually more concerned with is whether or not the pregnant person’s sex life abides by your personal set of morals.

(via historicalslut)

Misandric heterophobic race traitor.: Why I hate it when other white people say the phrase: "I'm not racist" →

dead-dog-fred:

Because I still am one. Because it never goes away. Because as a white person, I have absorbed messages for my entire life that I am better than the majority of people on earth, I have absorbed messages telling me that the only lives worth caring about are the ones belonging…