Realised I’ve been through three schools and they’ve all been shitholes and I hated the three of them.

Nearly over now. Just exams to go.

gtfothinspo:

infinitetransit:

1. Realise all aesthetic choices are subjective.
2. Realise that they might think they look sexy as fuck.
3. Remove yourself from the vicinity until you’ve learned to get over your fatphobia/transphobia/misogyny/racism or combination of those.

4. Look back at them with refreshed eyes and realize how sexy they look.

meowgon:

scienceandrollerskates:

Today, I made some calming manatees, but most of them are the wrong size to go on the site.

Oh well. Would you like them?

oh it’s me…

i am a comforting sea cow

andythenerd:

friendzoning-ninja:

Certain videos and pictures of trans* activists using the “die cis scum” phrase have gone viral (ugh, I hate that phrase) around SJ-apathetic places like 4chan, Reddit, etc. Maybe it’s a good thing they’re being exposed to different types of people, but there is one thing that really bothers me: people’s first exposure to the term/prefix “cis*” is going to be having it used as an insult.

People are going to associate “cis*” with a negative meaning, not see it as the neutral term it should be.

This is a problem, because people have been working a long time to have this recognized as the neutral counterpart to “trans*”. It’s extremely vexing to see people use the term as a joke and associate it with SJA sloganeering. Hopefully the trend doesn’t last long.

That’s the problem with being a deliberately ignored minority: since we’re being ignored deliberately, we’ll be given attention deliberately as well. It’s no coincidence that everyone is paying attention to “die cis scum” who previously had no intention of spending 2 seconds thinking about trans* issues. It’s not just that they passively don’t want to pay attention to us, it’s that they actively want to continue to not care about us. As the gatekeepers for public attention, they give us two options:

1. We can beg and plead for compassion and mercy till our faces turn blue and still be ignored.
2. We can become angry and have people focus on that anger to the exclusion of the message behind it.

This is not on us. Trans* people are not to blame. Any efforts to pick apart each others’ strategy which ignore the harsh reality of those 2 options above is completely missing the point. We cannot “win” this game by attempting to play by the rules, because it’s rigged. We need to turn the criticism toward where it belongs, on the cis-supremacist agenda.

The bolded. (I didn’t do the bolding.)

becauseiamawoman:

goldenphoenixgirl:

Becauseiamawoman said: Rape culture may be somewhat related to an unwillingness to confront sexual realities and a culture that also glorifies violence, but a more accurate definition would be something along the lines of a culture where sexual assault and rape are not only common, but excused, accepted, and/or tolerated by the practices and norms of the culture. All of these things are definitly connected, and rape culture may not actually be the best term to use (although I cannot think of a better term), but I definitely do not believe that rape is a side effect of not confronting sexual realities. That would also mean that rape is largely about sex, and it very often is not. 

TRUE, especially that last part. Rape is usually not about “sex,” it’s about power and control. 

oh hey, there I am.

theanimalblog:

One of a trio of Japanese macaques (snow monkey) that were born at Highland Wildlife Park in Scotland.  Picture: Jon-Paul Orsi/Highland Wildlife Park/PA

freedominwickedness:

It is a complete red herring for AFAB trans* people to claim that they’ve been called “tr***y” or “sh*****e”, because no one has ever seriously argued that AFAB trans* people are never, ever called these things. The argument is that the use of these terms against AFABs is incidental, whereas the use of these terms against AMAB trans* people is pervasive, systemic, and violent.

It is long past time that AFAB trans* people sat down and acknowledged that they are simply not subjected to anything which even remotely resembles the treatment of AMAB trans* people in Western society. Look at the numbers — even the most generally privileged AMABs (white, binary, passable) are murdered much more often than the least generally privileged AFABs (POC, nonbinary, nonpassing), and it’s flat out open season on the lives of less privileged AMABs.

nobody-nowhere:

[TW: abuse]

I hate it when people say that it’s wrong, unhealthy, unproductive, etc. to “hold onto” feelings of anger and resentment and bitterness.

It’s so shaming. Anger is a healthy emotion. I have every right to feel anger when people hurt or abuse me. I do feel angry sometimes. I can either express that anger in a healthy and direct way, or I can push down my anger, tell myself that being angry is wrong, tell myself I’m not angry, tell the people who hurt me that I’m not angry, and take my anger out on myself through self-destructive coping mechanisms.

I think that being out of touch with my feelings of anger, resentment, bitterness, betrayal, and so forth is a big part of why I’m feeling stuck in my recovery. If I still feel emotionally detached from my abuse, how can I process it in a healthy way and heal from it?

My abuser(s) deny me the right to feeling angry or hurt when they abuse me. I will not accept that in my recovery. I want to stop denying my anger. I want to be able to feel anger in a way that is safe to me. People who are not okay with that are not a healthy influence in my life, and I have the right to distance myself from them.

Emotions are not “right” or “wrong.” They just are.

obscureone:

queerio19:

dearcissexism:

The next time you criticize nonbinaries for their “preferred pronouns”, remember that YOU have preferred pronouns too.

Yours are just deemed “legitimate” by society.

YES, THIS FOREVER. dear mom, you needed to be reminded of this when you said “well, is it a two-way street??” when I corrected you about my partner’s pronouns (and that was with binary pronouns). your pronoun preference is ALWAYS respected all the time by everyone all day long.

the number of times i’ve tried to explain this to my mother… 

oogishkamaanisee:

We need to have a little talk about the ideology of terra nullius. I see a lot of people using some form of it when discussing Indigenous rights, and even if unintentional, it is wildly problematic.

Basically, terra nullius is the idea that the land, Turtle Island, was essentially empty. But wait, weren’t there millions of peoples here in hundreds or even thousands of diverse nations and empires? But, according to the colonizers, motivated by the desire for our resources, Indigenous peoples didn’t have a concept of property rights so the land is still empty and available for colonizers. This idea is founded on a false dichotomy between “civilized” and “savage”. As we all know, Indigenous peoples are obviously savages, so we can’t understand any forms of ownership, so we can’t own or have rights to land, which is absolutely essential to the existence of some nations. 

So if you’re going to use terra nullius, explicitly or implicitly, as an argument you’re a white supremacist colonial piece of shit. Terra nullius is an outdated, racist, incorrect concept that has already been rejected but is, unfortunately, still the foundation of Canadian sovereignty. Indigenous peoples in Canada weren’t conquered, but made treaties and yet most of the land was swallowed up anyways because apparently we’re too uncivilized to know that the land is ours. 

it’s ridiculous that this even needs to be said. 

tigermisu:

there needs to be a ‘im so sorry let me hug u’ button because liking someones sad posts just makes it seem like im a sadist

kiriamaya:

as-cool-as-i-am:

missvoltairine:

pomme-poire-peche:

*applause* It’s a fundamentally capitalist discourse, in a way, that we as activists have this responsibility to make ourselves productive, our worth is determined by our productivity, and any impedances to this productivity must be dealt with, and on our own time/with our own energy/with our own resources.

What gets me is that so many of the people I know who are really into, like… I’ve started calling it “self care evangelism” because I’m a bitch - defend their positions by being like “well self care is important because it’s CAPITALISTIC to not make room for self-care, because THE STATE and CAPITALISM are what push people to work themselves to exhaustion with no time for themselves!”

like

no

I mean yes capitalism and the state do that! It is a problem, though, when peoples’ response to that is, “WELL THEN MAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF ANYWAY BECAUSE THAT’S GOOD SELF CARE!”

Just… okay, fine, I’ll do that when you do all my housework,  homework, when you make sure my rent is paid, oh and my phone bills, they’re pretty high because of all the long-distance calls back home to where I’m supporting my family (sometimes financially) through crisis, you should probably also take that on, too.

THEN I will gladly buy myself some fucking bubble bath.

OR you could acknowledge that we as a “community” (and I use the term loosely because I have issues with that term too but w/e that’s another post) are responsible to some degree for one another and that we contribute to each other’s mental state and not just… fucking dismiss anyone who is having legit issues as “needing to do self-care” or “not doing enough self-care”, or protect abusers in the name of their “self-care”. Because my problems with self-care discourse go beyond the consumeristic nature of it - the “oh just go buy yourself some nice tea and take some time off work” - and have a lot to do with the collective disengagement inherent in expecting people to deal with things like being arrested, beaten, etc, etc on your own and if you don’t then you are a bad activist

It really puts the lie to the myth of the “activist community” when people thing of activist self-care in individualistic terms like that, is what I’m saying. I MEAN: NOT TO SAY THAT PEOPLE AREN’T ULTIMATELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR OWN SHIT. BECAUSE WE ARE. But when someone withdraws from a group or particular campaign or whatever because of “burnout” - it’s because the group or campaign has failed them, in a way, too. We NEED to be able to keep each other going, as activists.

A term I am exploring is “community care” - I’d really like to start up some kind of community care group or collective, of folks who can help other folks in our vague “community” with stuff like running errands, doing chores, or just idk, hanging out so people don’t feel isolated or whatever.

*SO* glad this discussion is happening.

[TW: sexual harassment, rape culture]

I remember when I was 16 I used to volunteer at this nonprofit where sexual harassment of teenage girls was rampant—like, happening every other shift if not every shift—and common knowledge. And while everyone agreed that it was “bad,” the attitude was very much that NO structural changes needed to be made in response to it and that any stress caused by the harassment should just be dealt with through the victim’s “self-care.”

Looking back I’m completely floored. Like, why didn’t anyone make it so that I could opt out of working with older men (who were 99.99% of the perps but only ~40% of the people you were expected to interact with)?? Why didn’t the adults and teenage boys get taught how to support a co-worker who was dealing with a sexual harassment? Why were so many of them allowed to victim-blame or yell at us for our “complicity?” Why didn’t someone tell me how to recognize red flags or that I was allowed to assert boundaries? Why was it a rule that you were being “rude” to someone who crossed small boundaries and that you had to wait for something “big” (like an assault) to happen before the administration would support your decision to disengage? Why was an institutional violence being passed off as my individual problem?

I’m sure there are organizations that use the phrase “self-care” in ways that are legitimate. But mostly—at least on an institutional level—I think that the “self-care paradigm” is about—exactly—it’s about shirking collective responsibility, de-centering issues of oppression, and then putting the onus on the oppressed person to clean up the mess made by the organization as a whole.

Wow. This is… you know what, I’m not sure what to say, and so I’ll hold my tongue until I am sure. Really good points and food for thought, though.

seppin:

it’s so simple to not do majorly problematic shit

we all fuck up

that’s life

i don’t mind sending a polite message to someone who’d identified themselves as someone who would like to be notified if they overstep (for the record, i am one of these people - seriously, call me out if you even think there’s a hint i’m being gross) 

i do mind when it’s obvious that you think that you’re the center of the world and your words or actions don’t hurt people and i have to fight you tooth and nail to get you to see why you’re wrong

here’s some basic ideas to start

• don’t erase peoples’ identities
• don’t try to define someone’s identity for them
• don’t use slurs that aren’t yours to reclaim 
• don’t make rape jokes or victim-blame 
• don’t say racist shit
• don’t say heterosexist shit
• don’t say cissexist shit
• don’t say ableist shit
• don’t say -ist shit at all 

• do be open-minded to that other people may have experiences radically different than your own 
• do trigger warn when discussing potentially triggering material (list of common triggers here)
• do listen when someone tells you that you are hurting them, and then take that new knowledge and change. swallow your pride, admit that you were wrong and then avoid making the same mistake. 
• do understand that minority groups need spaces where they can feel safe, and that this means that, for example, on their blogs, they might rant against the majority group. understand that they’re probably not talking about you, and if you automatically assume they are, it’s probably because you’re part of the problem. 
• do call out shit you know is problematic when you see it being done by other people
• do be aware of your privilege. on this site the idea of privilege seems to have developed a bad name and people get offended when being told they’re privileged, but having privilege isn’t necessarily a bad thing. you can’t control it. all it means is that you have privileges in society that others do not. understand this, and keep it in mind when discussing minority issues. 
• do understand that you might be unable to understand something. that’s okay. do your best, and if it’s something you can’t get, be respectful even without understanding. 
• do understand that minorities are not obligated to be your yahoo answers. i personally am happy to answer questions, but let’s say one day i hypothetically don’t feel up to talking about something? do avoid getting angry and demanding, do understand that minorities spend their lives trying to justify their existence and rights, do try to do outside research and do work on being comfortable with the idea that you might not get the full story that day.