lettersiarrange:

i know commercials make it seem romantic to “surprise” your partner with a major life/financial decision (like a puppy or a car) but it’s a very bad idea

you shouldn’t be making any major decisions that affect your partner without consulting them first!

don’t forget that the reason why surprise proposals became a Thing is because the diamond industry figured out that men will spend more money on a ring if the woman isn’t involved

companies don’t care about your relationship, they care about you spending as much as possible

plus, imagine how much more fun you’d have picking out the perfect puppy with your partner or going with them to the car dealership and letting them pick out their favorite color/model. suddenly a gift filled with uncertainty (what if’s too much commitment for them? what if they wanted a really specific type? what if they hate it?) becomes a fun bonding opportunity where they get to choose exactly what they want and you get to see their joy throughout every part of the process

tl;dr don’t make any long term decisions that involve your partner without involving them, regardless of the occasion

vladtheunfollower:

“Multiculturalism is a politically normative version of the
anthropological notion of cultural relativism premised on the view
“that all cultures are equally valid.” The postmodern version of the
multiculturalist critique assumes that the speaker takes their own
culture and its values to be valid, and criticizes other cultures from
the standpoint of their own. Feminism, however, questions the
cultural validity of subordinating women to men anywhere.
Feminism does not assume that “other” cultures are to be measured
against the validity of their own, because feminism does not assume
that anyone’s culture, including their own, is valid. How could we?
Defenses of local differences, as they are called, are often simply a
defense of male power in its local guise. Male power virtually always
appears in local guises; one might hazard that there are nothing but
local guises for male power. The fact that they are local does not
improve them.”

— Points Against Postmodernism | By Catharine A. MacKinnon

Quand je m’éveillai, pour reprendre ma lecture, il est impossible que je n’aie eu deux certitudes aveuglantes comme deux éclairs : je savais désormais quel écrivain j’aurais aimé être et je savais dès lors et jusqu’à ma mort que je vivrais amoureux d’Emma Bovary.

Mario Vargas Llosa, L’Orgie perpétuelle (via epicene-street-light)