( X )

embroidery from peacockandpinecones my friends and I have been losing our minds over all morning.

Evelyn and Philip open rp

I would like to bring attention to the new “Liked by” feature that is at the moment flying under the radar while everyone freaks out about Tumblr Live. Basically, everyone knows what posts you liked, and they randomly appear on followers’ dashboards. This will inevitably lead to drama and bloodshed I just know it

Hmmm in your dashboard preferences do you have “Include stuff in your orbit” and “Include "Based On Your Likes!"” switched to off? If not, turn them off and restart your app/refresh your dash. If that doesn’t fix it let me know.

Medium

What I Learned Watching a Co-Worker Get Forced Out

Corporate Glossary: every Friday, learn the secret meaning of common corporate words

“They’re trying to discharge her constructively. Do you know what Constructive Discharge means?” She asked.

As soon as I heard the term ‘Constructive Discharge,’ I knew I’d never seen it on a vocabulary quiz.

“No. What does it mean?” I asked.

She explained.

“Constructive discharge is a fancy way of saying “being forced out.” It’s not good. And if you’re not a lawyer or in human resources, you’ll probably learn what it means when it’s happening to you.”

“Oh my God. I’ve seen this my entire career and never knew it even had a name.” I thought.

You’ve seen constructive Discharge too. You may have experienced it. We’ve all made choices to avoid it.

Constructive discharge defined

“We can’t fire you, but we’ll make you so miserable you’ll quit, and then we won’t have to pay your unemployment.”

Then there’s the textbook definition:

“A constructive discharge occurs when your employer has made working conditions unbearable, forcing you to resign.”

Or as one person put it.

“I didn’t get handed a pink slip, but when you’re not wanted, people have a way of letting you know.”

HR isn’t always the secret police.

Employees aren’t always victims of evil-doers.

However, employers push employees out all the time to maintain and protect the, “We didn’t do anything wrong, YOU did,” power structure.

Constructive Discharge looks like this:

— Meeting invitations slow to a trickle, and you’re excluded from emails and generally looped out of what’s going on.

— People stop talking to you or stop talking when you walk in.

— Your emails don’t get answers, or they arrive too late to be of value.

— Suddenly, your work is not good enough, though nothing about your work has changed.

— Reviews, once good or even glowing, are now mediocre or bad.

— Instead of a bonus, you get a Performance Improvement Plan.

— Warnings and write-ups start so they can justify your eventual termination with documentation of your “poor performance”

— Your work, clients, assignments go away, or they overwhelm you with work.

— The words “Set up to fail” were practically invented to describe this scenario.

Constructive Discharge is illegal

It isn’t easy to prove you’re a target, and it’s even more challenging if you don’t even know constructive discharge is a real thing.

If you’ve ever experienced this and don’t fully understand what’s happening to you beyond knowing you’re in the process of being excommunicated, it can be hell. It’s not uncommon for the experience to leave long-lasting scars.

Talk to anyone who’s ever been through it. They’ll tell you.

Knowing constructive discharge exists and how it’s used gives you power to predict what’s coming and to protect yourself.

Seeing the endgame helps you in two ways.

You know what to expect. Having a sense of what’s coming next is enormously empowering. You can go on the offensive and protect yourself. Constructive discharge works to crush your ego, making you feel you did something wrong and deserve this treatment.

Without strategy, you end up being a miserable pawn in your employer’s endgame.

Remember, they’re almost certainly building a case to fire you in the event the hellscape they create for you doesn’t persuade you to quit.

If you’re getting pushed out, and you know what to look for you can prove constructive discharge and you can get unemployment benefits, be released from payback obligations on a signing bonus, and protect your mental health.

You’re not crazy, incompetent, or a failure. This is real and it’s carefully executed to leave you holding the bag and feeling like you did something wrong.

If they force you out, in addition to feeling horrible, you lose your paycheck, benefits health insurance, and possibly owe them money.

Ok just for curiosity reasons

I genuinely hate to say this but please reblog if you hit the like button for a larger sample size thank you <3

Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate your social and cultural historiography. While I'm familiar with English and French Monasticism from 1300 onward, my focus was on clerical life and theology having contemporaneous context is really helpful. Your explanations are also clear and funny, which I appreciate as well. I haven't gotten too far into your studies yet but do you have any knowledge of European Muslims outside of the O.E.?

Aha, I am afraid I don’t actually know what you mean by “outside of the O.E.” (this is on me for not being a Cool Kid, no doubt, but there you have it). However, if you mean Muslims in medieval Europe, medieval Europe’s perception of/interaction with Muslims, how this changed in the late medieval/early modern period, and where these sites of contact were most likely to happen: yes, I absolutely have all of that! (Edit: @codenamefinlandia kindly suggested that this might mean outside the Ottoman Empire, which I doubtless should have thought of, but I hope this is indeed what you mean? In which case, yes, the below resources will be very helpful for you in exploring the European Muslim presence well before the Ottomans.)

I wrote briefly about Muslims in my Historical People of Color in Europe post, including in the context of the crusades, their long-term settlements in medieval Spain and Italy, and the relationships of the Muslim empires with Elizabethan England. There are, as you might expect, many studies focusing on Muslim-Christian contacts in medieval Europe and in the wider medieval world, of which the crusades are probably the best-known example. Below follows a selection of some reading material which might be helpful:

Sea of the Caliphs: The Mediterranean in the Medieval Islamic World by Christophe Picard (this is about medieval Islamic trade in the Mediterranean, as it says on the tin, starting in the 7th century with the original Muslim conquests, and focuses on its role in cultural contacts between Muslims and Christians of southern and eastern Europe)

The Arab Influence in Medieval Europe, ed. Dionisius A. Agios and Richard Hitchcock (a collection of essays about Arabic influence on medieval Europe, this one doesn’t have any e-version so you might need to consult a university library)

The Muslims of Medieval Italy by Alex Metcalfe (examines the rise and fall of the Islamic presence in southern Italy and Sicily between about 800--1300, and how this was transformed into a frontier of cultural contact, exchange, and conflict alike)

Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100--1450, by Suzanne Conklin Akbari (examines how the Islamic world was depicted in the ‘high’ medieval era, and the developments of some of these Orientalist images in the 19th century and onward)

Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages by John V. Tolan (in something of the same vein as the above; he has written another book called Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination which focuses more on the semiotic, literary, and narrative construction of the “othered Muslim”).

Muslim and Christian Contact in the Middle Ages: A Reader, ed. Jarbel Rodriguez (a GREAT book with multiple types of examples, primary sources, regions, and types of contact between Muslims and Christians from the seventh through the fifteenth century, including Byzantine, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian authors of the time period)

Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c. 1050--1614, by Brian Catlos (another book which I really need to read more of, focusing on medieval Muslims who actually lived IN Europe, including in Spain, Italy, Hungary, the Balkans/Eastern Europe, and other places).

The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment, by Alexander Bevilacqua (studies how the study/approach to Islam changed i the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and how many Enlightenment scholars learned Arabic and read Islamic texts)

As Catlos says in Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom: “In fact, the Muslims of medieval Europe included substantial communities scattered right across the Latin-dominated Mediterranean, from the Atlantic coast to the Transjordan, as well as in Central and Eastern Europe. In some areas they survived for only a century or two, whereas in others they persevered for well over five hundred years. They did not live as isolated enclaves, they were not uniformly poor, and were not necessarily subject to systematic repression; rather, they comprised diverse communities and dynamic societies that played an important role in the formation of what would eventually emerge a modern European culture and society.” In other words, while we’ve discussed before that medieval Europe was never uniformly white and never uniformly Christian, people tend to think that Jews were the only other religion that lived permanently in Europe. While Italy, Iberia, and the Balkans maintained the most enduring Muslim communities, that was not the only place they lived, and they were not merely merchants passing through without settling (though there was plenty of interreligious trade). We’ve discussed before how Yusuf/Joe would not necessarily always be a surprising or unexpected sight in Europe, and how people there would be a lot more used to him than you might expect. So: yes, Islam was always embedded in the fabric of medieval Europe, both as enemies during the crusades and as long-term citizens and communities at home.

Bonus: have some work on queer medieval and early modern Muslims, because reasons!

Sahar Amer, ‘Medieval Arab Lesbians and Lesbian-like Women’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 18 (2009), 215-236

Sahar Amer, Crossing Borders: Love between Women in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)

Samar Habib, Arabo-Islamic Texts on Female Homosexuality, 850--1780 A.D. (Teneo Press, 2009)

Samar Habib, Female Homosexuality in the Middle East: Histories and Representations (London: Routledge, 2007)

Samar Habib, Islam and Homosexuality (Praeger, 2010)

E. J. Hernández Peña, ‘Reclaiming Alterity: Strangeness and the Queering of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Spain’, Theology & Sexuality, 22 (2016) 42-56

Gregory S. Hutcheson, ‘The Sodomitic Moor: Queerness in the Narrative of Reconquista’, in Queering the Middle Ages, ed. by Glen Burger and Steven F. Kruger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 99-122.

Gregory S. Hutcheson et al., eds., Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999)

Scott Alan Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflections on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims (Oneworld Publications, 2010)

Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature (New York: New York University Press, 1997)

Anyway. Let me know if you want me to expand on any of these topics in more detail, and I hope some of these resources are helpful!

just a reminder - do NOT boycott streaming services or not watch new things. the unions have not called for one for a reason. for one, it affects residual payments, which as minimal as those currently are, actors are still getting them during this time, and for two, studios will use lack of viewership as an excuse to cancel shows because you are showing them there is no demand. it deeply affects the industry the writers and actors stand to come back to once the strike is over

Iceland is fucking bizarre my name change made the news