Not that this isn’t cute, but this was a silly choice? As a Ph.D. Scientist, Banner knows better than that. The brain is not a muscle. It’s made of neurons, not muscle cells.
Surya Bonaly, world renowned French skater whose trademark move is her backflip, where she only lands on one blade in order to keep the move legal. She’s amazing!
Yoooooo
it always amuses me when I remember the ice skating community banned this phenomanal move because a black person literally had raised the bar and white people were too bitter to do better so they banned a move that would add progress to the sport.
and then she raised the bar again
someone make this into a movie. fuck it, i’ll do it
ok ok so every time this post shows up on my dash, i get a little miffed because it presents this narrative that isn’t consistent with reality. it misrepresents surya’s career. first, there seems to be this implication that the isu banned the backflip because surya was the first skater to perform the backflip, and they didn’t like that because she’s black.
i mean, surya did not pioneer the backflip. she herself stated that her coach suggested that she start doing backflips on ice because of a skater named norbert schramm who was performing them in europe at the time. scott cramer pulled off 10,032 backflips over the course of his career, and he retired seven years before surya even began competing. surya is THE FIRST AND ONLY skater in history to perform a backflip and land on one skate in competition, but the most important part of it wasn’t the feat itself but WHY SHE DID IT.
and ok, the first person to successfully do a backflip on ice was skippy baxter in an ice show in the 1940s. there has only been one legal backflip performed in actual competition by terry kubicka in 1976. immediately after he pulled it off, the isu banned the move from competitions. please note that yes, terry kubicka was a white male figure skater. and for context, surya was born in 1973. i sincerely doubt that the isu was banning the backflip because of a THREE-YEAR-OLD.
the isu had very good non-racism related reasons for banning the backflip because well, figure skating is fucking hard. i think we frequently underestimate just how difficult it is because of how easy they make it look. i mean top figure skaters are still working on consistently landing quad jumps in competition. it’s so easy to flub a jump and get injured, and it’s super common for skaters to spend huge chunks of the off season not training because they’ve injured themselves.
SO DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA JUST HOW FUCKING DANGEROUS IT WOULD BE IF BACKFLIPS WERE ALLOWED IN COMPETITIVE SKATING???? if you mess this move up, you’re not just going to break an ankle or fuck up your muscles, you’d break your neck on the ice. you could FUCKING DIE. and this is by no means the first or last move to get banned by the isu for being too dangerous. (the one that comes to mind is the head banger death spiral because seriously what a name).
the reason why this is just so upsetting to me is because i feel like you guys are really simplifying surya’s narrative. yes, surya was a FUCKING BADASS. LIKE HER FIRST SEASON IN SENIOR COMPETITIONS, SHE LANDED A BACKFLIP DURING PRACTICE RIGHT IN FRONT OF MIDORI ITO, THE FAVORITE FOR THE 1992 OLYMPICS. IN THE SAME COMPETITION, SHE BECAME THE ONLY WOMAN TO EVER ATTEMPT A QUAD TOE LOOP IN COMPETITION, and the first time anyone had even successfully pulled that off was a mere three years earlier.
and yes, surya had to deal with A LOT of racism. because of her skin color and her build and her athleticism and her style, she didn’t fit into the “ice princess”. they pegged her as a rebel, and they treated her as such. the judges were constantly nitpicking her skating style and criticizing her artistry because she wasn’t this light and graceful skater that they thought female figure skaters should be. (black ballerinas suffer from the same plight). she was constantly pushing the boundaries, but she consistently got lower scores than her white counterparts. and despite that, she was A THREE-TIME WORLD SILVER MEDALIST, A FIVE-TIME EUROPEAN CHAMPION, AND A NINE-TIME FRENCH NATIONAL CHAMPION.
in the 1994 world championships, surya’s final score tied for first place with yuka sato’s. it came down to a tiebreaker vote, and the judges picked yuka because she fit in better with the ice princess image. surya knew why she the judges didnt pick her. during the awards ceremony, she refused to step onto the medals podium and took off the silver medal. she was crying, and the crowd was booing at her.
the 1998 olympics was going to be surya’s last hurrah. she knew that the 97-98 season would be her last. when the judges gave her a low score on her short program for surprise surprise racist reasons, she knew that there was no way that she could win.
so surya decided to make a point.
she hadn’t planned to do this from the start because she knew that the move was illegal and doing it could get her disqualified, but after seeing her short program score, surya basically on the spot decided to replace the triple in her free skate with the backflip landing on one skate. she hadn’t been training for this move specifically, she just pulled it off right then and there on the olympic stage. and while the backflip was banned for being too dangerous, another reason for it to be banned was because the skater would land on both skates, and jumps are always landed with one skate.
surya pulling off this banned move was basically her last FUCK YOU to the judges because they’d been screwing her over since the start of her career. she was challenging them by making a previously illegal move technically legal. the judges didn’t disqualify her, but they didn’t accept the move as legal either, and they deducted points from her score, so surya placed 10th overall. BUT THAT DIDNT MATTER. when surya finished her program, she turned her back on the judges (a huge no-no because it is highly disrespectful) because she didn’t care about their opinion at this point. SHE’D MADE HISTORY. their decision wouldn’t change that.
OH MAN I remember my sister and I standing up and cheering and hooting, and mum was a bit like, “Well that was disrespectful…” And then we reminded her of the Yuko situation and then all three of us were like, oh yeah, no, go out a badass in front of those assholes.
Some guy today mentioned he was in a band to me and I watched him get visibly uncomfortable when I didn’t ask him anything about it. He kept trying to bring the conversation around to his band and I wasn’t budging.
POWER MOVE: Complete and utter disinterest in men’s obsession with their own mediocrity
Harold is a douche. He talks too loudly at dinner parties and hogs the conversation, making sure the topic is always himself and what he’s done. He chews with his mouth open. You hate him. So one day you decide you’ve had enough. Knowing he’ll be at a certain dinner party on K street, you grab a pistol, crash the dinner party, walk around until you see him, and shoot him in the face.
You have just committed first-degree murder.
Second-Degree Murder:
Not premeditated. Still bad.
Harold is a douche. You are at a dinner party with him. Seeing him coming toward you from behind a potted plant, you try to avoid him, but he is too fast.
“Say,” says Harold, “have you heard about my new yacht?”
“I do not care about your new yacht, Harold,” you say politely.
“Course you don’t,” says Harold. “You couldn’t afford it even if you saved up every paycheck you earned for the next thirty years.”
Enough is enough. Even though you had no intentions of committing violence prior to this very second, you have been provoked beyond all reason. You reach into your pocket, where you happen to have been keeping your trusty pistol, haul off and shoot Harold in the face.
You have just committed second-degree murder.
Voluntary Manslaughter:
When someone’s actions provoke you into killing them, but the homicide is too much of an overreaction to be justified by self-defense.
You are at a dinner party with Harold. You are holding a martini glass and trying to ignore him. He hip-checks you, causing you to stumble and spill your drink. You pull out your pistol and shoot him in the face.
You have just committed voluntary manslaughter.
Involuntary Manslaughter:
Typically homicide through criminal negligence, though not always.
At the dinner party with Harold, you are showing off your beautiful new pistol. Someone asks anxiously if it is loaded. You insist that it is not. However, while you are flourishing it magnificently, the pistol – which was loaded, surprise! – goes off and shoots Harold in the face.
You have just committed involuntary manslaughter.
Now here’s where things get a little blurry:
Harold is not well-liked. The entire town hates Harold. In fact, so many people have Harold that the prosecutor knows they will never get a conviction against you for killing Harold. Instead of trying to get a jury to vote guilty on first-degree murder, the prosecutor comes to your lawyer and offers to lessen your sentence. If you agree to plead guilty to aggravated assault with a firearm, the prosecutor will not proceed with any homicide charges, and will help convince the judge to issue a lighter sentence.
Your lawyer bargains the prosecutor down to simple battery.
Even though that’s not the crime you actually committed, you might end up convicted of a lesser crime for a lighter sentence due to plea bargaining, which is where the lawyers get together and have you plead guilty to a lesser crime, to save themselves the hassle of a trial.
Note: if there are any lawyers out there, feel free to add specifics on how plea bargaining works – I’m actually not clear on the details. The example is, obviously, an exaggeration.
According to Japanese media, Tokyo Medical University has allegedly been systematically decreasing the scores of female applicants since 2011, after the number of successful female applicants jumped to 40 percent in 2010.
An unnamed university official told the Yomiuri Shimbun that the university believed accepting more male students would help solve the university hospital’s doctor shortage because female doctors would inevitably drop out of the workforce after they get married and give birth to children.
The source also said that women doctors are “more unwanted” in the surgical department, where working hours are irregular and emergency operations occur.
The source added that it was commonly accepted in the surgical department that “it takes three women to serve as one man.”
Why is everyone surprised in the notes, Japan has been sexist since forever
Yeah, Japan is super sexist. When I was staying with a host family in Osaka, I went to a woman’s college for Japanese and English classes. The female students asked us questions about life in the US, and a bunch of questions were about how American men treated us. Like, what would we do if a man cut in line in front of us and then ignored us if we protested because we were women. We told them we’ve never experienced that. I don’t even know how I would react. Punch the guy in the face? I dunno. But in Japan, that happens to these women all the time. The other problem is clear to anyone who takes the Japanese subway. There are signs everywhere telling women and girls to raise their hands and shout if a guy gropes them on the train. It happens ALL THE TIME, apparently. There are other examples of sexism, of course. Like why parasite singles exist (women know that if they get married, they’ll be expected to have a kid and not have a job). Sexism in Japan is real and a lot more overt.
JK and idol culture, police not giving a shit about female victims of crimes (rape, stalking etc.), single mother being called “sluts” not matter the circumstances of their situation and being forced into poverty by refusing to give them actual well paid jobs, lack of maternity and paternity leaves, overall forcing women to stay at home by penalising two income households and giving bonuses to married men with stay at home wives, sexualization of children, especially young girls etc. These are just few of the problems that the country has
Japan is a beautiful country with a lot of culture and everything, but I hate when people just glorify it and hide behind the “cultural differences” barrier to justify its messed up shit, especially when the government itself literally does not give two shits about their citizens and problems that they face, especially for women, who apparently are treated like third class citizens.
What they did at that University should be illegal in the first place, but they are women so of course no one cares.
They can’t even admit their crimes against women in World War 2 you expect them to be enlightened now?
Now I’m curious, what’d they do?
I’m going to assume this is a serious question, because the lack of education in America (and probably most western nations) on Asian history – and ESPECIALLY the atrocities committed by Japan in WWII – is just totally shameful.
Here is the Wikipedia article on Japan’s crimes in Nanjing, China, specifically:
I’m not tagging this because I wouldn’t even know where to begin, but here’s your content warning: all the major triggers you can think of are probably going to show up; if you have any military PTSD, or are triggered by sexual violence, be prepared for that
Edit: went and added tags, but they’re incomplete, fair warning.
I was trying to get away from society’s problems and just have fun looking through Tumblr shitposts, fanarts and fanfics of my favorite Tumblr artists/writers, and the occasional baby animals vines until I came across an old forgotten fandom I really like a few months ago
I thought to myself, “Hey, these comics are pretty good, dunno why I haven’t been keeping track of all this back then-” I go through posts on Tumblr, and realize the hell I’ve unleashed the moment I realized why I stopped
Politics that I neither care nor want to know about were the first things I saw, and I immediately just NYOOMED outta there. Nope. No. Please. Not on my happy rainbow sunshine train. I just got back from a bad day and I just wanna keep seeing comics of these two pet sweethearts interacting like family. I get that the guy’s a Trump Supporter, okay, I get it, and I don’t support Trump, but please, let me just enjoy these two furballs that make me smile whenever I’m sad
Bro they’re not actually a trump supporter. That got debunked a little while ago. The twitter account with the #MAGA stuff does NOT belong to the Pixie & Brutus artist – if it did, they would have linked to their Instagram. One of their followers messaged them to ask if that was their Twitter; it wasn’t, and they have no affiliation with Trump. You can relax and enjoy the content.
According to Japanese media, Tokyo Medical University has allegedly been systematically decreasing the scores of female applicants since 2011, after the number of successful female applicants jumped to 40 percent in 2010.
An unnamed university official told the Yomiuri Shimbun that the university believed accepting more male students would help solve the university hospital’s doctor shortage because female doctors would inevitably drop out of the workforce after they get married and give birth to children.
The source also said that women doctors are “more unwanted” in the surgical department, where working hours are irregular and emergency operations occur.
The source added that it was commonly accepted in the surgical department that “it takes three women to serve as one man.”
Why is everyone surprised in the notes, Japan has been sexist since forever
Yeah, Japan is super sexist. When I was staying with a host family in Osaka, I went to a woman’s college for Japanese and English classes. The female students asked us questions about life in the US, and a bunch of questions were about how American men treated us. Like, what would we do if a man cut in line in front of us and then ignored us if we protested because we were women. We told them we’ve never experienced that. I don’t even know how I would react. Punch the guy in the face? I dunno. But in Japan, that happens to these women all the time. The other problem is clear to anyone who takes the Japanese subway. There are signs everywhere telling women and girls to raise their hands and shout if a guy gropes them on the train. It happens ALL THE TIME, apparently. There are other examples of sexism, of course. Like why parasite singles exist (women know that if they get married, they’ll be expected to have a kid and not have a job). Sexism in Japan is real and a lot more overt.
JK and idol culture, police not giving a shit about female victims of crimes (rape, stalking etc.), single mother being called “sluts” not matter the circumstances of their situation and being forced into poverty by refusing to give them actual well paid jobs, lack of maternity and paternity leaves, overall forcing women to stay at home by penalising two income households and giving bonuses to married men with stay at home wives, sexualization of children, especially young girls etc. These are just few of the problems that the country has
Japan is a beautiful country with a lot of culture and everything, but I hate when people just glorify it and hide behind the “cultural differences” barrier to justify its messed up shit, especially when the government itself literally does not give two shits about their citizens and problems that they face, especially for women, who apparently are treated like third class citizens.
What they did at that University should be illegal in the first place, but they are women so of course no one cares.
They can’t even admit their crimes against women in World War 2 you expect them to be enlightened now?
Now I’m curious, what’d they do?
I’m going to assume this is a serious question, because the lack of education in America (and probably most western nations) on Asian history – and ESPECIALLY the atrocities committed by Japan in WWII – is just totally shameful.
Here is the Wikipedia article on Japan’s crimes in Nanjing, China, specifically:
I’m not tagging this because I wouldn’t even know where to begin, but here’s your content warning: all the major triggers you can think of are probably going to show up; if you have any military PTSD, or are triggered by sexual violence, be prepared for that
According to Japanese media, Tokyo Medical University has allegedly been systematically decreasing the scores of female applicants since 2011, after the number of successful female applicants jumped to 40 percent in 2010.
An unnamed university official told the Yomiuri Shimbun that the university believed accepting more male students would help solve the university hospital’s doctor shortage because female doctors would inevitably drop out of the workforce after they get married and give birth to children.
The source also said that women doctors are “more unwanted” in the surgical department, where working hours are irregular and emergency operations occur.
The source added that it was commonly accepted in the surgical department that “it takes three women to serve as one man.”
Why is everyone surprised in the notes, Japan has been sexist since forever
Yeah, Japan is super sexist. When I was staying with a host family in Osaka, I went to a woman’s college for Japanese and English classes. The female students asked us questions about life in the US, and a bunch of questions were about how American men treated us. Like, what would we do if a man cut in line in front of us and then ignored us if we protested because we were women. We told them we’ve never experienced that. I don’t even know how I would react. Punch the guy in the face? I dunno. But in Japan, that happens to these women all the time. The other problem is clear to anyone who takes the Japanese subway. There are signs everywhere telling women and girls to raise their hands and shout if a guy gropes them on the train. It happens ALL THE TIME, apparently. There are other examples of sexism, of course. Like why parasite singles exist (women know that if they get married, they’ll be expected to have a kid and not have a job). Sexism in Japan is real and a lot more overt.
JK and idol culture, police not giving a shit about female victims of crimes (rape, stalking etc.), single mother being called “sluts” not matter the circumstances of their situation and being forced into poverty by refusing to give them actual well paid jobs, lack of maternity and paternity leaves, overall forcing women to stay at home by penalising two income households and giving bonuses to married men with stay at home wives, sexualization of children, especially young girls etc. These are just few of the problems that the country has
Japan is a beautiful country with a lot of culture and everything, but I hate when people just glorify it and hide behind the “cultural differences” barrier to justify its messed up shit, especially when the government itself literally does not give two shits about their citizens and problems that they face, especially for women, who apparently are treated like third class citizens.
What they did at that University should be illegal in the first place, but they are women so of course no one cares.
They can’t even admit their crimes against women in World War 2 you expect them to be enlightened now?
Now I’m curious, what’d they do?
Holy shit, are you serious?
Also, their war crimes in WWII were so much worse than just “crimes against women”, though there was plenty of that, too.
NineofShades 