I love DPS, very much; but, I want see a new version of it. Part of me wants to see an all girls version of it, where instead of Whitman and Thoreau it’s Dickinson and Wollstonecraft (Mary Shelley’s mother). I want victorian era girls sneaking out at night and gathering around an oil lamp to talk about Wuthering Heights. I want to see these girls doing what they can to get the education they deserve. I want a happy ending for these girls. They deserve so much.
But another part of me wants a happy, gay ending for Dead Poets Society.
it’s all a myth, what people tell him - that your spirit lives on after you die. it’s not true, it can’t be.
it’s been 29 years since neil died. he’s gone, that’s it. gone forever.
sometimes when todd wants to escape - or distract himself, really, when he starts sinking too low - he’ll read poetry out on the beach. his house is right along the edge of it, so it’s easy enough to take a chair out onto the sand and let the bright sunshine, warm sand, and cool ocean breeze carry him away from reality.
once, though, he sets everything up outside, only to realize it’s a bit warmer than he had thought, causing him to leave his book on his chair as he heads back inside for something to drink.
he returns a few moments later with a cold bottle of water, only to find his book had been blown open by the wind. but despite the continued breeze todd still feels against his skin, the pages only flutter a little, otherwise staying as is. shaking his head, he walks over, picking up the book and looking down at what it’s open to.
“come my darling,
it is never too late
to begin
our love again.
-atticus”
just after todd finishes reading the poem, he feels a faint pressure on his shoulder, as if someone’s hand were there. a moment later, a breeze blows by - a small one, like a wisp of breath on his cheek, followed by the softest of touches. todd brushes his fingers against his cheek afterwards, wondering if he imagined the action, or if he actually felt it.
a strong breeze hits his hands, where he still clutches the book, and he loosens his grip, letting the pages turn on their own, only to stop on another page, where just the last stanza of another poem is printed, the rest on the previous page.
“i burned so long so quiet
you must have wondered
if i loved you back.
i did. i did.
i do.
- annelyse gelman”
tears well up in todd’s eyes now, and he blinks a few times to get rid of them, only for one to slip down his cheek.
“i love you too,” he says, to no one and someone. another soft breath-like breeze hits his cheek, a feather-light touch, and he knows he’s been heard.
todd anderson does not believe in ghosts, but maybe, just maybe, neil perry is still out there, waiting to reunite with his first, true love.
freud: EVERY dude wants to fuck his mom and and EVERY girl wants to fuck her dad and also wants to be a man secretly
men: WOW!!!!!!!!!
“In the 1890s, when Freud was in the dawn of his career, he was struck by how many of his female patients were revealing childhood incest victimization to him. Freud concluded that child sexual abuse was one of the major causes of emotional disturbances in adult women and wrote a brilliant and humane paper called “The Aetiology of Hysteria.” However, rather than receiving acclaim from his colleagues for his ground-breaking insights, Freud met with scorn. He was ridiculed for believing that men of excellent reputation (most of his patients came from upstanding homes) could be perpetrators of incest. Within a few years, Freud buckled under this heavy pressure and recanted his conclusions. In their place he proposed the “Oedipus complex,” which became the foundation of modern psychology. According to this theory any young girl actually desires sexual contact with her father, because she wants to compete with her mother to be the most special person in his life. Freud used this construct to conclude that the episodes of incestuous abuse his clients had revealed to him had never taken place; they were simply fantasies of events the women had wished for when they were children and that the women had come to believe were real. This construct started a hundred-year history in the mental health field of blaming victims for the abuse perpetrated on them and outright discrediting of women’s and children’s reports of mistreatment by men.”
— Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
“My body, my choice” only makes sense when someone else’s life isn’t at stake.
Fun fact: If my younger sister was in a car accident and desperately needed a blood transfusion to live, and I was the only person on Earth who could donate blood to save her, and even though donating blood is a relatively easy, safe, and quick procedure no one can force me to give blood. Yes, even to save the life of a fully grown person, it would be ILLEGAL to FORCE me to donate blood if I didn’t want to.
See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this….cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon.
Like, we can’t even take LIFE SAVING organs from CORPSES unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy.
To tell people that they MUST sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what YOU view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died.
You’re asking people who can become pregnant to accept less bodily autonomy than we grant to dead bodies.
reblogging for commentary
But, assuming the mother wasn’t raped, the choice to HAVE a baby and risk sacrificing their “bodily autonomy” is a choice that the mother made. YOu don’t have to have sex with someone. Cases of rape aside, it isn’t ethical to say abortion is justified. The unborn baby has rights, too.
First point: Bodily autonomy can be preserved, even if another life is dependent on it. See again the example about the blood donation.
And here’s another point: When you say that “rape is the exception” you betray something FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN about your own argument.
Because a fetus produced from sexual assault is biologically NO DIFFERENT than a fetus produced from consensual sex. No difference at all.
If one is alive, so is the other. If one is a person, so is the other. If one has a soul, then so does the other. If one is a little blessing that happened for a reason and must be protected, then so is the other.
When you say that “Rape is the exception” what you betray is this: It isn’t about a life. This isn’t about the little soul sitting inside some person’s womb, because if it was you wouldn’t care about HOW it got there, only that it is a little life that needs protecting.
When you say “rape is the exception” what you say is this: You are treating pregnancy as a punishment. You are PUNISHING people who have had CONSENSUAL SEX but don’t want to go through a pregnancy. People who DARED to have consensual sex without the goal of procreation in mind, and this is their “consequence.”
And that is gross.
^ THIS. This is this this THIS THIS THIS. THIS!!!!!
This is probably the strongest and well worded/supported argument for abortion that I have ever read.
