The United States of America is only one of two countries that has not approved and accepted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The other is South Sudan, which has already begun the ratification process.
Among other things, the CRC ensures children under the age of 18 have the right to life, identity and name, education, freedom of expression, equal opportunity, healthcare, psychological recovery, cultural sensitivities for minority/indigenous groups, and access to information [x].
The lack of the CRC in the USA is part of the reason why it is okay to send children to abusive “camps” that attack their identity as LGBTQ+ minorities, enroll them in private schools that intentionally deny students opportunities to learn about science (particularly anatomy and sexuality), and sign away their children’s rights to the state.
It is also why juveniles in the USA can be sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole, a legal implications that particularly affects people of color, especially Black and Latinx children.
The CRC also specifies that children should not be disciplined in a manner that is considered abusive, and the USA therefore does not regulate the “discipline” occurring in homes of at-risk children, even when it qualifies as mental or emotional abuse.
Due to the lack of the CRC, children can be relocated against their will (eg, deportation/trafficking) to potentially dangerous and life-threatening places, can be separated from their parents, or can be kept in isolation.
Basically, the United States, which claims to be a great champion of human rights, has consistently refused to ratify or even introduce the bill to ratify the Convention of the Rights of the Child.
Update on this (2016): USA is now the only country not to ratify the CRC. [x]
Over half of public school students are poor enough to qualify for lunch subsidies, and almost half of black children under the age of six are living in poverty. [x]
The US is one of two “developed” country with the lowest standards for child well-being (Romania is the other). [x]
16 million kids live in poverty and 138 thousand kids are homeless (2013-2015). [x]
Homelessness in children has increased by 60% in the past 6 years. [x]
In 2001, 325,000 children were at risk for becoming victims of sexual exploitation in the United States. [x]
Of all sex trafficking victims in the USA: 17% are underage girls and 10% are underage boys. [x]
Category: General
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do you want to know something?? I always wondered what the hell kind of hairstyle the Ancient Egyptians were trying to portray with depictions like these
and this
until I did my hair this morning and
oh
welp
you can take the noses off our statues but until you find a way to take Egypt out of Africa we’re still going to find ourselves
I’m reblogging this post without all the salty, racist commentary because I’m sick of looking at it. please spread this around again in its pure form for posterity.
What’s funny is that white people thought they were hats/crowns ????
ESIUQRAM
Here’s a really good post about this.
And here’s some pictures of the Afar people, who still live on the horn of Africa today.
Cool, huh?
Beautiful
People thought it was Hats and Crowns? How could they not see hair?
The same reason archaeologists, upon finding a woman’s skeleton in the grave of a famous Roman gladiator, immediately wondered where the gladiator’s skeleton was: Old Straight White Man™ brand denial.
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Okay, this is in incredibly petty nitpick, but: if you’re writing a fantasy setting with same-sex marriage, a same-sex noble or royal couple typically would not have titles of the same rank – e.g., a prince and a prince, or two queens.
It depends on which system of ranking you use, of course (there are several), but in most systems there’s actually a rule covering this scenario: in the event that a consort’s courtesy title being of the same rank as their spouse’s would potentially create confusion over who holds the title by right and who by courtesy, the consort instead receives the next-highest title on the ladder.
So the husband of a prince would be a duke; the wife of a queen, a princess; and so forth.
(You actually see this rule in practice in the United Kingdom, albeit not in the context of a same-sex marriage; the Queen’s husband is styled a prince because if he were a king, folks might get confused about which of them was the reigning monarch.)
The only common situation where you’d expect to see, for example, two queens in the same marriage is if the reigning monarchs of two different realms married each other – and even then, you’d more likely end up with a complicated arrangement where each party is technically a princess of the other’s realm in addition to being queen of her own.
You’ve gotta keep it nice and unambiguous who’s actually in charge!
Okay, I’ve received a whole lot of asks about this post, so I’m going to cover all of the responses in one go:
1. The system described above is, admittedly, merely one of the most common. Other historically popular alternatives include:
- The consort’s courtesy title is of the same rank as their spouse’s, with “-consort” appended to it: prince and prince-consort, queen and queen-consort, etc. This is how, e.g., present-day Monaco does it.
- The consort is simply styled Lord or Lady So-and-so, and receives no specific title. I can’t think of any country that still does it this way, off the top of my head, but historically it was a thing.
(Naturally, your setting needn’t adhere to any of these, but it would be highly irregular for it to lack some mechanism for clarifying the chain of command.)
2. The reason why the consort of a prince is historically a princess even though those titles are the same rank is basically sexism. This can go a couple of ways:
- In many realms, there was no such thing as being a princess by right; the daughter of a monarch would be styled Lady So-and-so and receive no specific title, so the only way to be a princess was to marry a prince.
- In realms where women could hold titles by right, typically a masculine title was informally presumed to outrank its feminine counterpart. So, e.g., kings outrank queens, princes outrank princesses, etc.
In either case, no ambiguity exists.
(Interestingly, this suggests that in a more egalitarian setting where masculine titles are not presumed to outrank their feminine counterparts, or vice versa, you’d need to explicitly disambiguate rankings even outside the context of same-sex marriages. Food for thought!)
3. It would also be possible to have two kings or two queens in the same marriage without multiple realms being involved in the case of a true co-monarchy. However, true co-monarchies are highly irregular and, from a political standpoint, immensely complicated affairs. If you’re planning on writing one of those, be prepared to do your research!
4. The next rank down from “countess” is either “viscountess” or “baroness”, depending on which peerage system you’re using.
(Yes, that last one actually came up multiple times. Apparently there are a lot of stories about gay countesses out there!)
I’d like to argue with this, but I can’t.
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Abroadland
I didn’t think that moving to the US was going to be transformative in many ways. I mean, you take yourself with you wherever you go, and that broadly means taking your problems with you. There were some things I hoped it would change for the better. The destruction of the NHS, for example, is now distant enough that I feel sad about it, but I don’t feel the screaming despair. And I get home from my nursing shifts tired, not completely exhausted and demoralized.
Let me make clear, I loved my workplace. I loved the NHS and working the Emergency Department – I worked with some of the most incredibly talented and committed nurses and doctors that I could ever hope to work with. But the word challenging doesn’t even begin to cover it. The number of moments when I left work thinking “No, today is the day I’ll be struck off”. I would make life and death decisions, I would weigh the risks and then choose the slightly less risky option. I would walk a tightrope between stress and exhaustion.
And being in a job where I actually get to sit down, where I get to take break and eat my food, where I can take a breather… despite my inexperience in the US. Despite the fact that I’m still finding my way around. Despite all of that, I get more sanity than I had for years. So whilst I watch the conservative party dismember the NHS and gift its severed limbs to their mates, I can do it with a bit more detachment. It’s still heartbreaking, but I can cope better now it’s not my own heart that’s being shattered daily.
So that’s nice. And the space is wonderful. Driving home I get to see the glowing evergreen forests, and sometimes it’s so utterly incredibly beautiful that I want to cry.
I kind of expected that too. I knew it was a beautiful place. I knew that there was a danger that my commute to work would be a struggle not just because of the time, but because I’d just want to disappear into the landscape. I’d want to let the light wash over me and lie in the woodland smelling the pine needles.
What I didn’t expect is the vague but unnerving existential sense of loss. I should have, because I’ve read hitchhiker. And I’ve often thought of the ancient Arcturan Proverb “However fast the body travels, the soul travels at the speed of an Arcturan Mega-Camel.” As Adams pointed out – this would mean, in these days of hyperspace and improbability drive, that most people’s souls are wandering unprotected in deep space in a state of some confusion; and this would account for a lot of things.
At the moment I certainly feel like my soul is meandering around the west coast of the UK, or perhaps somewhere into the Atlantic, and being very very confused. Whilst sometimes I miss the UK with an almost fierce sadness, what I miss most is my mum, friends and family, Bristol, the Lake District and Amaravati. I miss the centuries of built environment crammed layer upon layer, ill fitting and incomplete, jostling each other, interrupting each other like unruly children. 60s towerblock by Victorian terrace by medieval wall. The US doesn’t do that, at least not on this coast. The Native American cultures, didn’t, at least as far as I know, throw up such vast monuments to themselves. And those centuries of building have left Britain with an adoration for things past.
Sometimes it’s really frustrating, but the angular functionality and general lack of preservation of anything not immediately seen as beautiful or meeting current requirements here is hard to get my head around.
And some stuff isn’t even that clear cut. Like… before I came out I had a real look at myself. I introspected quite thoroughly, because, lets be honest, I had spent years denying myself. I spent years denying everything about me. So when I finally started to work towards dealing with my issues and working out who I was, it took a long time. A long time and a lot of thought. And I thought I’d kind of taken myself back to the very components that built me, and reassembled myself pretty carefully. There’s a degree of brokenness, because it turned out that actually the bits don’t all fit together very well, and some stuff is definitely hodged back together in a very bodgy way. But all-in-all I was pretty happy with the self-that I built. But when I did that I didn’t really realize that it was built on a foundation of Britishness. The wonderful Professor Elemental says it very well:
“So if you’re down with the Brits then make some noise
But if you’d rather not, that’s fine
We’re inventive, accepting, eccentric
And yes, I suppose we’re a bit bizarre”And suddenly I find myself not only the archetype for British, which as I was always weird, even by British standards, is kind of an odd situation, but I’m also questioning who and what I am if I’m not living in Britain. Am I still really British? I mean, what am I now?
It’s all about as hard as I kind of expected, and at the same time way harder in person.
Kathryn mentioned she’d seen a blog post by Naomi Hattaway talking about the effects of living abroad, and whilst I’m no-where near where I’m sure she’s at, with her triangle-self, I suspect I’ll rapidly get there.
Anyhow, so that’s partly why the quiet on here, recently. Because I don’t really know what I’m doing in my head, and some of that needs to be resolved through wittering like this, and some of it needs to be resolved through just quietly thinking. And some of it, apparently, through repairing random electrical devices. This whole uncertainty of self is, I think, is part of my recent spree of electrical repair. It harks back to a childhood activity, something I used to do with my dad. And that makes me feel a bit more like me, perhaps. Less untethered from existence.
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So my amazing gal pal @luiza2theletter surprised me with an incredible Silas Handbook in its printed version (and handsewn by herself, must I say)
For the past year we’ve been talking about many things including carmilla and its whole universe around the series. One day, casually talking to each other she told me about her idea of a personal project involving a handbook about Silas (one of JP’s belongings and a necessary iten for a student at Silas)
She created all the textual part and the design herself, and I helped her proofread it all.
As you can see, it looks like a book from the 19th century with its yellowed pages and stains from unknown substances. Besides, there are mystical symbols and deets that probably summon a demon or two.
All in all @carmillaseries is a great series that not only brought such a wonderful world with amazing people behind that but also brought people together. People that if it wasn’t for the show would have never met their friends and/or significant others.
p.s: to my surprise I didn’t know she was going to give me the 1st printed version of it. at all. and she gave it to me right as I was leaving, after we’d spent the weekend together
holy shiza! This is incredible, @luiza2theletter!
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today at work i let someone into a dressing room and they said “thanks” and half of me tried to say “you’re welcome” and the other half tried to say “no problem” and i ended up saying “your problem”
this post had me in tears
I was hoping the notes would be full of similar stories, but they’re not, so I’ll add my story for anyone else looking for more laughs:
I had to go to a library to pay a fee and I was practicing in the car between “I have to pay a fine” and “I have to pay a fee” and I walked in and firmly stated “I have to pee” and slapped a five dollar bill on the counter (the fee was like ten cents), and walked out. This was like three years ago and I still haven’t been back,
My friend was driving and we were almost past our turnoff so I tried to say “quick” and “fast” at the same time and I ended up screaming “QUACK” which ended up with him judging me very hard and missing the turn
Recently someone in class asked me how I was doing and I started off saying I was good but switched to I’m okay in the middle and ended up saying “I’m gay.”
Which, while kind of accurate, was not what I meant to announce to my classmate.
This Halloween I was handing out candy and a child said “trick or treat” and I smiled gave them their candy and apparently my mouth betrayed me and I said “Merry Christmas” and proceeded to sit down and look up to the sky for answers while their mother laughed at me :)))))
I was switching between “Bye Deanna” and “Goodbye” and I ended up saying “Go Die”
Sometimes I try to say “I fucking love you” but it comes out in the wrong order and then everyone’s uncomfortable.
When I first started my coffee shop job, I was still getting used to greeting customers as they came in the door. A man walked in, and in the jumble of trying to say, “How are you doing?” and “What’s up?” I ended up demanding “What are you doing here?!”
something really cool happened once at the office and i started to say “i’m so amazed” but halfway through my mind changed to “that’s really amazing” and i just ended up saying “i’m really so amazing”
one time i was out in the woods in the spring when the birds were just beginning to come out again and i went to say “i’m so pumped for the birds” and “i’m so hyped for the birds” and instead i said “i’m so humped for birds”
i once got stuck between saying fuck off and fight me so ended up screaming fuck me at my ex
one time at subway i tried asking for a six inch sub, but for some reason i was considering saying “half foot sub” and i ended up asking for a half inch sub, and not realizing what i had asked for until the guy behind the counter repeated it twice. I now have a deep and powerful fear of subway shops.
Several years ago, I went into a music store to buy a Dominant-brand string for my violin, and I asked the guy behind the counter for a “dominatrix G-string.” Never went back. Switched brands.
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why are men so scared of tampons?
I love the transphobia in the comments too. ‘MEN DON’T NEED TO UNDERSTAND MENSTRUATION.’
Oh really? How about the dudes who menstruate?
Also ffs, get over it. I don’t need to understand fucking football the way that it should be important for someone to understand the basic biological processes of my body. At least enough to know ‘get this fucking brand, and my wife/enbyfriend tends to have back cramps so she might appreciate the heating pad to put behind her on her chair… ‘
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I got the PT assistant dude instead of the primary physical therapist lady today, and I was very good and did not make any incredibly awkward bondage jokes when he added therabands around my knees and ankles for some of the exercises.
No one every appreciates how well behaved I am.
