the multigender and nonbinary communities NEED to get better at listening to intersex people. intersex people are not “biologically nonbinary”. intersex people do not exist as a gotcha for debates about gender and sex. not all intersex people are “both” male and female. non-intersex people can’t identify as intergender. please consider us when you talk about your identities
“But only 2% of the population is intersex. It’s not that common. Why should we reframe or perception of gender for intersex people?”
Completely ignoring the fact that empathy exists. You do realize that 2% of the population in the medical field is considered very common, yes?
2% of children and 0.5% of adults have a peanut allergy and that’s so common that they have entire rules around in in public spaces.
0.24-1% of the population has Rheumatoid arthritis. That’s an eighth to a half of the number of intersex people!
1-2% of people are estimated to have autism, and that’s considered a common condition.
0.1%-2.6% of people will get melanoma in their life time, and that’s considered common.
1.2% of people have epilepsy and that’s considered common.
Completely ignoring statistics like 6% of women have PCOS (which is a condition that can fall under the intersex umbrella). 2% of the population in the medical field is considered a common condition, and ergo by medical terms intersex is in itself common.
I don’t think you realize how big 2% is. That’s 2 in 100 people. If you walk into 3 fully filled classrooms (when I was in school a full classroom was 40 students). Chances are you just saw 2 intersex kids and didn’t even know it.
So yeah. I think intersex is common enough to include in our discussions around gender and how transphobic rules affects intersex people.
Reading about how intersex athletes have been treated is so fucking horrible. The countless lies and human rights violations. The discrimination and how it’s ruined the lives of so many people is so awful. There has been no apologies from any athletics comptetions or organizations. They have blood on their hands. Just a tw for intersexism and mental health issues and suicide in the next paragraph because it can get pretty heavy.
Annet Negesa, who was a middle distance runner. She was suddenly barred from competing due to her hormones. No one told her why. She was then told she needed to take medication to lower her testosterone, then what she was told was switched. She was lied to about a surgery that she was told was like an injection and would let her compete again. She woke up with scars and had had a gonadectomy. That violation of basic human rights and medical ethics combined with inadequate postsurgical care basically ended her career. She deserves justice. She deserves apologies from the Olympics and everyone single doctor who was involved in it, and compensation and the promise that it should never have happened and will never happen again. She. Needs. Justice.
Pratima Gaonkar needs justice. She was a rising track and field star. After forced sex verificatiom she killed herself. The way media and news treated her after her death was disgusting. She deserves and needs justice. Her family deserves justice.
Santhi Soundarajan had her medals stripped and was treated as an outcast after forced sex verification showed she had androgen insensitivity syndrome. She was treated as an outcast, her gender was mocked. She’s spoken out about how much discrimination she’s faced, and how badly she’s been treated. She now works as a coach, but was barred from competing. She deserves justice.
Caster Semenya deserves justice. Francine Niyonsaba deserves justice. Margaret Wambui deserves justice. Barbra Banda deserves justice. Beatrice Masilingi and Christine Mboma deserve justice.
The racism and intersexism and horrible human rights violations and medical abuse these women have faced for the supposed crime of being intersex and good at a sport is horrible. They deserve justice, but the organizations that perpetuate these atrocities don’t seem to care. It’s so fucking horrible.
A few years ago I went to pick up a woman I met on OKCupid for a date, and a friend of hers was there. They kind of over-explained “Oh, she just showed up to say hi” and there was a vague nervousness in the air that even my autistic ass was picking up on. Her friend was playing conspicuously with her phone. I went “Ah, the safety. Need to get a picture?”
Dead silence for about a second and a half, then the friend took a picture, looked at my date, and said “Have fun” and walked out the door.
(I would ordinarily have been clueless, but I’d just been asked to be the safety the previous night.)
My advice to male-presenting folks: recognize that this not your problem. By which I mean, this sort of security check isn’t a problem for you. It doesn’t hurt you. You aren’t being insulted or disrespected. And if you treat it like what it is– a reasonable adaptation to an unreasonable situation– and just roll with it, your dates will be more comfortable, and you will have a better time as a result.
The same applies to phone calls mid-date. Let them answer the damn phone without drama.
They aren’t accusing you of being a dangerous person. The very fact that they are willing to go on a goddamn date with you means that they have extended a certain level of trust. But the fact remains that there isn’t really a way to distinguish between “a man who isn’t dangerous” and “a man who knows how to behave like he’s not dangerous.”
there isn’t really a way to distinguish between “a man who isn’t dangerous” and “a man who knows how to behave like he’s not dangerous.”
Caption: STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND TAKE ONE MOMENT TO SIGN ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PETITIONS OF THE ICJ CASE AGAINST ISRAEL.
Once you have done that SHARE to all you know!
We all need to get these witnesses to the ICJ. We need the world outside the online sphere to hear their voices, their humanity, their testimony. Together we can make this happen.
Decided to say fuck it to my congestion. Closed myself in the guest bathroom, blocked out all ventilation, turned my massive humidifier on full blast and ran myself the hottest bath i can stand.
This is my enclosure. I live here now. I have recreated the water cycle in a matter of minutes and can finally breathe.
Meet Ricky (also responds to Frumpkin, Adem, and the Goodest Boy in the World):
ALT
If you are a cat owner, live in/near North Carolina, and are willing to make a drive, this sweet boy wants to be your new best friend! He’s very affectionate, takes a pet no problem:
ALT
He is fixed, around 5 years old (best guess), and extremely friendly towards people and other cats. Our cats love him but we are tragically at cat-pacity for our lease. Definitely a former inside kitty who would be very happy in a home with another cat. I cannot vouch for his behavior around dogs but I think he would be alright with older kids who are familiar with cats. Tolerates being picked up, good “soft paw” play etiquette, and is coming around to being a lap cat.
Interested? PLEASE message/shoot me an ask for more information! I really want to give this little guy the home he deserves and get another kitty off the streets. Non-NC residents PLEASE signal boost and let your friends know! Let’s get this guy adopted!
the multigender and nonbinary communities NEED to get better at listening to intersex people. intersex people are not “biologically nonbinary”. intersex people do not exist as a gotcha for debates about gender and sex. not all intersex people are “both” male and female. non-intersex people can’t identify as intergender. please consider us when you talk about your identities
I fucking hate when people say stuff like this. Especially when it’s on a generally good post with valuable information. On the one hand I want to share that information because it could genuinely help someone; on the other, I don’t want to spread this type of guilt-tripping and shaming and potentially trigger someone else like me. It’s a lose-lose situation. No matter what I do, I am going to feel guilty. No matter what I do, I will feel like a terrible person. It sucks and I just wish people would stop doing this. I know it’s shocking, but it is actually possible to make an important and useful post without guilting everyone that sees it into sharing.
[Image description. Various images with text. The text reads, you have no excuse to not reblog this. I don’t care what your blog theme is! Reblog to save a life! Don’t you dare fucking scroll past. Everyone needs to reblog this, idc what your excuse is this is important. Not reblogging is a moral failure! It’s mandatory! End image description.]
My communications teacher told me this, and I think it applies here:
“If you accuse someone, expect that they will immediately retaliate. We’re wired to growl back if someone growls first.”
When posts say, “you have no excuse,” the most common first thought will be something along the lines of “well maybe I do!” By framing the need to reblog as an accusation if one doesn’t, it actually drives away the otherwise passive audience that would’ve reblogged the post.
A much more successful addition to a post is something along the lines of “It would really help me/the cause out if you reblogged!” With this phrasing, it makes the passive audience feel more inclined to reblog because they will feel like they are helping you/the cause. So, it benefits both the audience and the cause
“If you accuse someone, expect that they will immediately retaliate. We’re wired to growl back if someone growls first.”
THIS THIS THIS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW THIS!
If you start with fighting words, don’t be surprised when you get a fight.
The problem with Victor Frankenstein isn’t that he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. The problem with Victor Frankenstein is that he’s exactly as smart as he thinks he is in one very specific area, and he just expects that to automatically translate to every other area of his life and is taken completely by surprise every single time it doesn’t.
follow-up to an old comic of mine to share how transition care changed my life
i dunno if there’s any comforting thing i can say to trans people painfully waiting for transition care - or being denied care - right now, but i hope you hang in there and know there’s hope for a better future
more than any other calvin and hobbes strip this one stays lodged in my consciousness
oof yeah, i get why, but i also feel its a shame no one has mentioned the follow-up strips, cause like.
^ this moment right here. calvin and his dad being like, emotionally mature and talking it through, like. i feel like this interaction formed the blueprint for a lot of how we deal with interpersonal conflict and anxiety n shit. and then finding a compromise, a way to work with a curious but clumsy kid and a dad with expensive toys its like. idk, its good
[ begin id: a black and white panel from the Calvin and Hobbes comic series. The panel shows Calvin sitting in his desk at school, with one hand braced on the desk and the other raised into a fist as he leans forward, shouting “I got 75% of the answers correct, and in today’s society, doing something 75% right is outstanding! If government and industry were 75% competent, we’d be ecstatic!” / end id ]
Bugtober 2023 - Day 1 - Aphid Hey, guess what! It’s Wednesday, November 1st! That means that I’ll now be showing off this year’s Bugtober comics every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until I’m all done!
I’m just about finished with Day 15, but since Day 15’s comic won’t be coming out until…December 4th, I’ve still got some wiggle room to finish all of them.
Anyway, this comic is absolutely, absolutely inspired by that one scene in Fullmetal Alchemist where Al tries to sneak all of these kitties inside of his suit of armor.
“we need less sanitized queer stories” yall keep saying fucking she-ra romanticizes abuse. you couldnt possibly handle less sanitized queer stories
“we need less sanitized queer stories” youre the one saying the locked tomb series is bad because you dont like the prose. based off of a quote from goodreads of all places. that was dialogue, not even the actual prose.
people keep reblogging only the first half of the post when the addition was the original post. ok
girl help. 4k notes
“she-ra fumbled its message” no! crucially, it didnt! it had the same message as the original she-ra show, which is “this lady is a superhero and is going to do superhero things like save the planet” and she did do that!
“oh but catra never apologized for what she did and they just let her join the good guys” thats a perfectly normal thing in childrens media, and the only reason yallre calling it out is because its queer and you want the perfect unproblematic queer media to exist. except that even if it did you would all find ways to nitpick it, which is the whole point of this post!
Also, notably, she did apologize. They just think it wasn’t good enough.
They absolutely could not handle more nuanced media.
Did you guys know the “Sickos” artist made a Sicko thats a WGA screenwriter on strike (said comic artist is a The Onion satirist comic artist and his name is Stan Kelly)
[ID: The first is an image of Canada and Mexico with the United States edited out that reads “Oh thank god it was just a dream”. The second image is an image of North America with all lands labelled with the names of the tribes living on them that reads “Oh thank god it was just a dream”.]
here is a REALLY detailed hq map of indigenous american nations if you’re interested (you are.)
and alaska. and hawai'i.
This is actually the most important thing I’ve seen this year
Both first images I’m seeing have been replaced with those “Removed for violating Tumblr’s community guidelines” placeholders.
I heard this metaphor growing up, and in my case, it backfired supremely, because I went out into my neighbor’s backyard where a rose bush was growing, and the one I tested had like 30 petals (it was yellow, but definitely a rose of some kind), and as a very logical lass, I came to the conclusion that you could have premarital sex AT LEAST ten times before your future husband would even notice something was up. Moral of the story? Test your metaphors on the weirdest and most neurodivergent child you know before writing your weird religious propaganda.
As a florist I also find this hilarious too because you pretty much always need to remove four or five guard petals from a rose before incorporating it into an arrangement. If I actually handed someone a “virgin rose” they would inevitably complain about the quality because the outer petals of a rose are almost always bruised, torn, or sometimes even rotted. Not to mention the roses you can buy are the product of almost a thousand years of selective breeding and therefore not very natural themselves.
So like, be an untouched flower I guess but don’t show us all the natural blemishes that come with that?
What I’m hearing is that fucking four or five times before marriage improves your appearance and clears your skin
got told at lunch “you feel like Tumblr Incarnate” and i had to tell them i’ve been here for 13 years and counting. i was here three years before dashcon happened. i saw the mishapocalypse. i survived the gigapause. i’ve been here longer than the shoelaces post. i’ve been here since it was hipsters versus fandom and i played both sides extensively by overdoing the sepia filters on everything and making my own flashing galaxy gif edits for my fandom posts. i’m every tumblr. it’s all in me
Oh ancient one what wisdom do you hold?
99% of callout posts are bullshit and just petty personal drama someone is escalating to get even on a grudge. do not engage with these, do not freelance as a cop
DNIs do not work. accept this. internalize that people you don’t like will see your posts and engage with them. this is unavoidable and the sooner you make peace with it the freer your mind will be. block the freaks and don’t sweat the small stuff
building a tight knit circle of fellow weirdos who vibe with your particular quirks and taste is infinitely more rewarding and sustainable than chasing the biggest numbers
don’t respond to bad-faith arguments or bad takes; just block people, blacklist tags, filter post content, and move on. don’t feed the trolls (or the bigots)
don’t hate-follow
don’t tag your hate (ex. if you’re posting about how much you hate a ship, don’t tag it as that ship, etc.)
don’t feel obligated to keep following someone who posts stuff that upsets/depresses/angers/bores you just because you know them really well, or because you’re mutuals, or because you used to like what they post. following is nothing personal and neither is unfollowing
op doesn’t know you; avoid parasocial relationships
don’t pick fights or reblog posts just to disagree/argue
I know the US government acts like a corporation but it’s not.
Not voting isn’t the same as a boycott. Because you can’t bankrupt a government by not voting. All you get by not voting is less control over what the money is doing.
The money comes from taxes, not voting. Abstaining from voting does nothing to reduce the governments ability to get money and spend it on shit.
So yes, sometimes you vote to reduce harm because not voting WILL NOT REDUCE HARM.
It’s not a boycot. Abstaining doesn’t take power from the government. It just reduces the number of people they feel answerable to.
Not only do they not give a shit if you don’t vote it’s precisely what the most sadistic ones are hoping for.
it’s kinda comforting to me when my friends are a little annoying or longwinded or abrasive or tired and inarticulate, or they don’t do the exact politest thing in every interaction, and stuff, because I know I’m sometimes annoying, or take up a more than my share of conversational space, or forget to ask them questions, etc etc, and… like, I’m always working to be nice to my friends and to get better and better at friend-ing, but it just makes me feel more human about it :}
anyway I love you friends plz know I’m not counting, in fact I feel great affection toward you even (especially) when conversations go less than Perfectly Ideal
I’m not proud to say it but this line from a 60 year old detective novel made me re-think some things about friendship