This is written at a 5th grade level, and is intended to be read by kids from approximately age 9-14, but can provide a useful, shorter summary of gender issues for anyone. It discusses how and why to stop bullying, and why it’s important to respect people’s stated gender identities and pronouns.
It is intended to be copied to a handout for kids, with names inserted at appropriate places in the “who to ask for help” section.
It goes into less detail than the document intended for teachers.
@zahnie i am kind of mad tbh bc now i keep thinking about that leverage/batman crossover and it’s ridiculous. they’re using a charity gala as a way to get into the manor. eliot immediately pegs alfred for former mi6, but he can’t figure out what the fuck bruce’s deal is. something about the way he stands or the way he watches the room or his shoulders or something. “is it not distinctive enough?” “oh, it’s distinctive as hell, i just don’t know what it is”. let’s say it’s older bruce so hardison has to get into a hacker fight with tim. sophie can’t grift bc there are too many rich people who’d recognize her in attendance. parker can’t infiltrate the catering service because they run that shit tighter than the white house (WHY is he so paranoid about his CATERERS what the HELL i’ve seen BANKS less lax about tracking employees than this) so she has to pretend to be a model. that backfires so fast because bruce is so nice and wants to know if she’s okay bc she seems uncomfortable. parker is thrilled when she discovers the house is full of secret passages but that also ends poorly when she turns a corner and bruce is standing there like “hey there, you seem lost”. he’s still wearing the tux and drinking his champagne. he helpfully guides her to the bathroom since she is having such trouble finding it. eliot has a tense standoff with alfred bc this is wayne manor alfred and that means he is like an older, british eliot who’ll shoot a motherfucker. hardison and tim get distracted playing wow together and it isn’t clear exactly how that happened. there has to be at least one scene where eliot and bruce are fighting and the rest of the team just watches instead of doing anything useful because it’s actually kind of really hot. they don’t even really hurt each other so it’s fine. probably fine. just let them keep pinning each other to the floor for a while, it’s fine. bruce has a lot of helpful critiques for nate’s plan that nate does not appreciate. the obvious thing is that they figure out he’s batman but it’s kind of funnier if they don’t and just think bruce wayne is an inexplicable bamf. they’ve all learned a valuable lesson about judging people based on appearances. bruce flirts with sophie and nate pretends not to be bitter about it but he gazes out at the gotham skyline and broods. it’s just what happens when you’re in gotham. it’s a very broodworthy skyline. make fun of batman all you want but you look out at that skyline and try not to brood. you can’t. even superman broods. i mean, he looks like he’s brooding. he’s usually trying to remember if he left the oven on because every time he decides to make himself a nice dinner a supervillain attacks and four hours later his baked ziti is charcoal. it still counts as brooding. nate never stood a chance.
“Parker, if he so much as gives you a bad feeling I want you to get the hell out of there as fast as you can.”
“What?” Parker looked back over her shoulder at the man currently adorned with three blondes, five brunettes, and a redhead. “Why?”
“Something’s not right,” Eliot said, which wasn’t an explanation at all.
“Think you can maybe give us a little more to go on than that?” Nate asked, the kind of sardonic authority that was easy to pull off when he wasn’t even in the building.
“No,” Eliot snapped. “I don’t know what the hell it is, I just know it’s bad news.” MI6 in the way he held his champagne and CIA in the way he stood and a soldier in his shoulders and Interpol in the way he looked around the room – no, CIA again – no, FBI – League of Assassins? Obviously not that, couldn’t have been that, so what exactly was it that had him wanting to grab Parker and get the hell out? If he could get closer he might be able to tell, the mezzanine might as well have been a different building entirely for all the good it did him. All forest, no trees.
“Not distinctive enough?” Hardison asked, but it wasn’t a real question.
“Too distinctive,” Eliot answered, even though he knew Hardison didn’t actually care. “I’ve just never seen it before.”
“If you’ll pardon the intrusion, sir,” said a voice not in Eliot’s ear, and he did not make it obvious how he stiffened at the address. Eliot turned, let harmless confusion and interest soften his face.
The butler, the one he’d seen before. Pennyworth. That familiar combination of MI6 and Interpol, muddied with domestic service but present all the same.
“May I have your name?” the butler asked, his hair was white but his eyes were sharp.
Mr. Pennyworth exuded serene amusement. “So sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid you’re not Mr. Easton.”
“Don’t try to deny it,” Sophie said in Eliot’s ear before he could respond. “He couldn’t make it so he told you to come.”
“You caught me,” Eliot said, sheepish. “Turned out he had some kind of a family thing, said I could use his invite. Didn’t think anyone’d notice if I used his name. He’ll be flattered you remember him.”
It was unclear if Pennyworth bought this story, as placid as before. “I don’t, actually,” he said. “But I’ve always made it a point to examine the guest lists personally. If there were meant to be a former green beret in attendance, I would know about it.”
Eliot was, for the most fleeting of moments, stunned.
The butler smiled. It was not kind. “The way you watch the crowd,” he explained. “It’s very distinctive.”
Eliot froze. He frowned. His brow furrowed.
If Hardison laughed any harder, he was going to hurt himself.
Fun fact: According to Greek legend there was a famous prostitute who managed to avoid a death sentence by showing the judges her boobs and arguing that it would be a crime against the Gods to destroy something so beautiful.
Before you ask, yes there are paintings of this. And yes, they’re amazing.
No, but this is one of my absolute favorite bits of history!
The courtesan named was named Phryne and she was indeed a renowned beauty, and was indeed was put on trial for a capital crime. And yes, the sum of her defense consisted of her stripping in court (helped by her lover/defendant) and asking the jury (all males) if they were prepared to destroy this.
But this is actually a very interesting case of Values Dissonance – the capital crime she was accused of was blasphemy. In Ancient Greek society, exceptional beauty was a sign of favor from the gods, and they took the idea that beauty indicated goodness with great seriousness. They even called their nobles Kaloi k’Agathoi, “the Beautiful and the Good.”
So by showing off her great physical beauty, Phryne was being very clever indeed, her argument essentially being “How could I possibly commit blasphemy if the gods have given me this body?“
If you’ve ever had questions about Catholicism, here are all your answers as described by me, a Bad Catholic:
Yes, we totally think the wine turns to blood
but not, like, blood in our reality. like, blood in Plato’s cave
so yes, that makes us creepy vampires
but no, we can’t explain it
There’s a bunch of stuff we can’t explain, but we gotta believe in them anyway, so we just call them “mysteries” and move on
mysteries include the blood thing, the virgin birth thing, and the three-for-the-price-of-one God thing
every time I think of the mysteries of faith, I hear Geoffrey Rush say “It’s a mystery” like he did in Shakespeare in Love
(I’d like to briefly mention here that the Immaculate Conception doesn’t refer to Mary getting knocked up with Jesus. The IC was actually her mom Anne.)
(but Mary did have a virgin birth)
(because mysteries)
For a while there was a good chance that it wasn’t going to be a father-son-and-holy-ghost situation
the Council of Nicea in 325 was basically a big fan con trying to pin down what was canon versus fanon
St. Nicholas punched out a guy, and so his side got to win the debate
no really Santa got put in jail for assault and then apparently angels totes appeared and busted him out
Other religions think we’re weird for praying to Mary and the saints as well as to God-and-Co.
answer 1: Mary is one of the saints, and what the saints all have in common is that they were (mostly) real people who did (mostly) real stuff and are definitely now chilling with God. so they kind of know how it is for us folk, and they can handle the minor human problems while God, like, makes sure gravity keeps working or something
answer 2: we kept all the small household gods, yes we did
Things the Inquisition has, on record, worried about:
Thank you this has been Lessons in Catholicism from a Bad Catholic
see the way i was taught was that we were like asking the saints to “intercede on our behalf” like gods secretaries, like, “hey mister saint anthony sir guy buddy, can i call u tony? also i know god is busy and all but like i cant find my damn keys no offense so could you maybe ask god if he could like, make them un lost, becuz i am late for work and this is kindof a problem.”
Yes this is probably a more accurate answer regarding saints.
Important things to know:
Saint histories are called hagiographies
sometimes, when you’re a kid, you get given these books full of saints and their histories, often with pictures
the pictures are usually either the saint staring up at God or angels idk, or it’s super gruesome pictures of the shit they went through in life
Awesome saints to know:
This is Saint Agnes. She got her tits cut off, and wants everyone to remember that really specifically
This is Saint Sebastian, who got tied to a tree and stuck full of arrows. He is the sexiest of our saints.
This is Saint Christina the Astonishing, who apparently isn’t real, but I call bullshit on that because after a near-death experience she couldn’t stand people anymore and went to really outrageous lengths to avoid them, thereby making her the patron saint of tumblr
Saints will have multiple things they’re “in charge of”
these things are almost always ironic and/or sometimes hilarious in combination
St. Agnes, for instance, is the patron saint of breast cancer (not hilarious)
St. Margaret of Antioch, who totally kicked her way out of dragon (WHO WAS SATAN), is the patron saint of childbirth. and explosives. and maybe also Monty Python, I’m not ruling it out
sometimes saints are the patrons of multiple things that make no sense at all
St Anne, mother of Mary and total spoiler of baby Jesus, is the saint of miners, mothers, equestrians, cabinet makers, homemakers, stablemen, French-Canadian voyageurs, and sailors
Kimchi and Justice 