sarahkurosawa:

Keiko Fukuda Shihan passed away yesterday at the age of 99. She was the last surviving student of the founder of judo, Jigoro Kano, and the highest ranking female judoka in history. She was promoted to 10th dan (degree) black belt just last year, a rank that at the time was held only by 3 other people, all men living in Japan. Fukuda Shihan left her homeland and refused marriage to achieve her dreams of training in judo, constantly battling gender discrimination which kept her from being promoted as quickly as men less skilled than her. “As far as I know, no one has lived their life completely for judo as I have.”

sokkasass:

#ugh when people call katara weepy and overemotional i just can’t deal #people play the ~strong female character~ card without actually knowing what makes a strong female character #because katara’s tears and emotions are real and justified and honestly i can’t think of a single time in this gif set where i wouldn’t b… #e crying too if i was in her position #it’s okay to show emotion and it’s not healthy not to and no one can be expected to handle every situation in their life with complete grace #and katara’s strong because she makes her own decisions and stands for what she believes in #she can dedicate herself and give up her life for what she believes in and supports everyone she loves #and she can do all of that and let her emotions take over #because katara’s actions are so driven by her emotions and her hopes #katara’s empathy makes her who she is and honestly fuck off if you think that makes her ~weak

cue hallelujah chorus for this commentary 

and for this beautiful gifset to be honest

clambistro:

reclaimingthebraziliantag:

Rio Carnaval Parade of Série A.

Ariadna Thalia da Silva Arantes, first trans woman ever to be the upfront Queen of Bateria at an official Carnaval Parade. She was representing the Escola de Samba Unidos de Vila Santa Tereza.

Mod note: And she rocked it!!!

She looks like a mermaid queen (✿ ♥‿♥)

blackamazon:

facebooksexism:

breewriteswords:

pleatedjeans:

The mayor of Mississauga, Canada is a badass. via

Hazel McCallion, everbody.

92 years old,

34 years in office,

$0 in debt

$700 million in reserve

Eight prime ministers

One truck.

But women aren’t strong leaders… OH WAIT.

Now I’m sure somebody’s gonna tell me something but

• supports a Palestinian state
• supports Aids CHarities
• told her city well if we cant get money y’all need to pay taxes and maintains a 76 approval rating
• nick named Hurricane Hazel
• and is so boss lady that she don’t run she’ tells  folks to give that money to charity

thecivilwarparlor:

Cathay Williams - Became the first and the only known female Buffalo Soldier. Enlisting in the US Regular Army 1866 at St. Louis, Missouri for a three year engagement, passing herself off as a man.

She is the first African American female to enlist, and the only documented to serve in the United States Army posing as a man under the pseudonym, William Cathay.

 Williams travelled with the 8th Indiana, accompanying the soldiers on their marches through Arkansas, Louisiana, and Georgia. She was present at the Battle of Pea Ridge and the Red River Campaign. At one time she was transferred to Little Rock, where she would have seen uniformed African-American men serving as soldiers, which may have inspired her own interest in military service. Later, Williams was transferred to Washington, D.C., where she served with General Philip Sheridan’s command. When the war ended, Williams was working at Jefferson Barracks.

The exact date of Williams’ death is unknown, but it is assumed she died shortly after being denied a pension, probably sometime in 1892. Her simple grave marker would have been made of wood and deteriorated long ago. Thus her final resting place is now unknown.

tiny-vessels 

Before and during - This journey has been so much more of a mental challenge than a physical one. I went from being a couch potato who never worked out to a gym rat who is in the gym at least 1 hour a day, 6 days a week. Tumblr has been my biggest motivation and inspiration, and I really don’t think I would have come this far without all of the support and positivity that I have found on here. I used to have a “goal weight,” but I have found that the scale lies, and I now measure my success through measuring tape, photos, and body fat v. muscle percentage. My goal is to just be as healthy and fit as I can possibly be! Believe me when I say that if I can do this, you can do anything if you put your mind and your heart into it!

guerrillafeminism:

During WWII, Irena Sendler, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive.

Irena smuggled Jewish infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried. She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck, for larger kids.

Irena kept a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.

The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

Ultimately, she was caught, however, and the Nazi’s broke both of her legs and arms and beat her severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she had smuggled out, in a glass jar that she buried under a tree in her back yard.

After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and tried to reunite the families.

Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

In 2007 Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected. Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming. 

In MEMORIAL - 65 YEARS LATER

andrewfishman:

Marina Abramović, “Rhythm 0,” 1974

Marina Abramović is best known for her performance pieces, in which she tries to explore what is possible for an artist to do in the name of art.  Her best known piece was the recent “The Artist Is Present,” in which she sat motionless for 736.5 hours over the course of three months, inviting visitors to sit opposite her and make eye contact for as long as they wanted.  So many people began spontaneously crying across from her that blogs and Facebook groups were set up for those people.  

Her bravest piece, however, is my favorite.  This piece was primarily a trust exercise, in which she told viewers she would not move for six hours no matter what they did to her.  She placed 72 objects one could use in pleasing or destructive ways, ranging from flowers and a feather boa to a knife and a loaded pistol, on a table near her and invited the viewers to use them on her however they wanted. 

Initially, Abramović said, viewers were peaceful and timid, but it escalated to violence quickly.  “The experience I learned was that … if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed… I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.”

This piece revealed something terrible about humanity, similar to what Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment or Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiment, both of which also proved how readily people will harm one another under unusual circumstances. 

This performance showed just how easy it is to dehumanize a person who doesn’t fight back, and is particularly powerful because it defies what we think we know about ourselves.  I’m certain the no one reading this believes the people around him/her capable of doing such things to another human being, but this performance proves otherwise.   

jesuslizardjournal:

kissing-monsters:

apiphile:

sexxxisbeautiful:

pizzagrrrl:

Peggielene Bartels, A.K.A. King Peggy, is currently the King of Otuam, Ghana. She was chosen to be one of only three female kings in Ghana, and when she discovered that male chauvinists wanted her to only be a figurehead, she said: “They were treating me like I am a second-class citizen because I am a woman. I said, ‘Hell no, you’re not going to do this to a woman!’” When she encountered corruption and the threat of embezzlement to the royal funds, she declared “I’m going to squeeze their balls so hard their eyes pop!”

King Peggy has maintained her work in Ghana’s embassy in Washington, D.C. while making education affordable in Otuam, installing borehead wells to produce clean drinking water, enforcing incarceration laws to deal with domestic violence, replenishing the royal coffers by taxing Otuam’s fishing industry to improve life in the village, and appointing three women to her council.

“Nobody should tell you, ‘You’re a woman, you can’t do it,’” she insists. “You can do it. Be ready to accept it when the calling comes.”

Quoted from the Spring/Summer 2012 issue of Ms. Magazine.

What a beautiful badass woman.

King Peggy has been on my blog before but this is my goddamn blog and I will have King Peggy on here twice if I want.

MORE FEMALE KINGS.

Long live the king.

“Many men and women consider very muscular women to be ‘gross’ or ‘unappealing’… That stigma is why it’s so shocking to see Abbou in a cosmetics ad: she’s styled and photographed in a way that glamourizes her and highlights her beauty and her femininity, but the ad also does not camouflage or attempt to minimize her incredible body.”

link

worldpaintings:

Igor Belkovsky (b. 1962)

Bather, oil on canvas, 130 x 70 cm, private collection.

Igor Belkovsky is a Russian painter, member of Painters Creative Union of Russia and International Painters Confederation. His paintings are in art galleries and private collections of 17 countries of the world, among which the USA, France, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy.

worldpaintings:

Ilya Repin

Portrait of Chuguev resident S.L. Lyubitskaya, 1877, oil on canvas.

Ilya Repin was a leading Russian painter of the Peredvizhniki artistic school. His realistic works expressed great psychological depth and exposed the tensions within the existing social order.

you can feel a life-like intensity in the eyes with this one

stophatingyourbody:

When I was younger, I vowed that I would never have a relationship with another disabled person. Certainly until I was about 17, I was kind of “in the closet” about disability. I knew I had one – heck, I got my first motorised wheelchair when I was 2½ – but I did my very best not to acknowledge it. I didn’t hang out with other disabled people (ew!) and I would certainly have never entertained the prospect of a relationship with one.

In fact, teenage-me thought that if I could snag myself a non-disabled boyfriend, that meant I’d made it. I’d win the battle to just be “a normal person” like everyone else. I’d blend seamlessly into the crowd and wheel off into the sunset with my perfectly-proportioned prince.

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