This is called being intersex, by the way! There are tons of sex variations and PMDS is one of them. I’m not sure why the entire post goes on without saying who we are.
Also the tags aren’t wrong, but the fact it focuses on trans/cis women when the post is about intersex men feels just a bit weird. Intersex people are so erased and we’re constantly brought up as proof the gender binary doesn’t exist, without actually being named or explicitly fought for. Like it isn’t wrong but it wouldn’t feel as inconsiderate if we got actual love.
So yeah. Intersex people exist! Please don’t forget us, and stick up for us too!
[Image IDs: Image #1-3: Series of tweets from verified user Vagina Museum (@/ vagina_museum) on Feb 21, 2023 reading: In 2014, a 70 year old cis man who had fathered four children went to hospital in Kashmir with an inguinal hernia. Everything about him and his life had so far been ordinary - except that the hernia turned out to be his uterus with an ovarian tube and broad ligament.
The man had the expected genotype of a cis man: 46XY. He had a cryptorchidism (an undescended testis) on one side, which affects about 1% of people. Everything external abut him was expected - except that he had a uterus, ovarian tube, and broad ligament.
The man has Persistent Müllerian Duct Syndrome (PMDS). This is a natural variation. Usually, if an embryo is developing as male, a hormone called anti Müllerian hormone is released.
The hormone prevents the development of Müllerian ducts, the tubes which eventually develop into the gynaecological internal anatomy. In PMDS, not enough of this hormone is released.
PDMS is considered quite rare, although in order to diagnose it, doctors need to use medical imaging, which isn’t usually done to people without symptoms, and can be entirely unaffordable to do at all in global majority countries.
The 70 year old father of four isn’t the only man who has discovered a uterus late in life! Last year, a 67 year old father of three from Kosovo went into hospital with a hernia and discovered the swelling was in fact a uterus, ovarian tube and an ovary
In 2011, a 35 year old father of two from India went to hospital with severe stomach pain. Imaging revealed that he had a uterus, two ovarian tubes, two ovaries and the upper part of a vagina.
In 2021, a father of one from the USA went to hospital with abdominal pain. The source of the pain was a tumor on his testis- but he also had a uterus, ovarian tubes, cervix and upper vagina.
In all of these cases - many other case studies of cis men who have discovered they have uteruses, the anatomy was found by accident, because everything else seemed “normal enough”.
You can read the case study of the 70 year old father of four here. Warning: it includes photos of his uterus.
Link preview for scienceDirect.com Hysterectomy in a male? A rare case report Persistent Mullerian duct syndrome is a rare form of male pseudo-hermaphroditism characterized …
Image #4 Tumblr tag from orpheuscas reading: #re: there is no definition of ‘woman’ that includes all cisgender women and excludes all others /End IDs]
can i be truly honest? i severely dislike the “homeless and mentally ill people are actually more well-behaved and respectful than regular patrons” narrative because it’s simultaneously unhelpful and castigates the people who are not “easy” to deal with.
it also essentializes two problems when you’re in a position of authority over these types of people. the first is that, in spite of their hardship, they’re normal people, who have just as much ability to perform correctly in an institution or public area when expected to. in reality, hunger, addiction, psychosis, abuse, etc. all run rampant in these populations and it’s ignorant at best and deeply unkind at worst to assume that these factors wouldn’t alter their behavior in observable and unpalatable ways.
second, it also necessitates that homeless/mentally ill people receive the same level of patience, sympathy, compassion, etc. as a “normal” person because all wrongdoing is based on their character, circumstances be damned. social disorganization often creates a cascading domino effect that will make normally well-behaved people act in antisocial or otherwise disorderly ways. should we neglect these people because of this? i think it’s unhelpful to suggest that these people deserve equitable treatment and leads to, again, the worst cases receiving the most neglect.
anecdotally, i work in a city facility that gets a lot of homeless people. i have been yelled at, been insulted, been told i am the antichrist, and a whole myriad of other things i wouldn’t let regulars do or say to me. why? because the way you respond to someone in one of the worst phases of their life is with firm patience, not a platitude of equality.
The problem w writing fiction is that you’ll be like tee-hee I’m going to write a story about a fucked up little scenario that’s got nothing to do with anything in real life, just some pure messed up nonsense, and then you finish it and take a step back and go aw rats I made a metaphor again
I understand that museums have to be dark because light can destroy fragile artifacts. That said, I’m always afraid to walk around the blind corners because what if there is a skeleton
Okay yes sometimes there’s a skeleton, I understand how museums work. But I mean what if it gets me
You’ve heard of Earth is space australia now get ready for: Earth is the space Amazon Rainforest. Aliens land on Earth and they are losing their goddamn minds because every square inch of the ground is absolutely PACKED with life like there are hundreds of species just in this one site, there are winged animals flying through the sky and multiple colonies of sophisticated social insects just in the shadow of their ship, this ONE ROCK is covered in MULTIPLE SPECIES OF ORGANISMS that are themselves MULTIPLE ORGANISMS LIVING SYMBIOTICALLY, the tall, woody autotrophs look so different from each other because they’re…holy shit that’s like 5, 6, 7???? different species on this one site???
they start talking to a human and the human is like “haha yeah that’s a crow!” and the alien researcher is like “you called it a ‘bird’ earlier, is that a different name?” and the human is like “oh a crow is just one species of bird, there’s like, 10 others out there”
“On this planet?”
“No, in the back yard right now.”
imagine aliens that come from a tidally locked planet where only a thin band of the planet is habitable, or a planet life was only able to develop in small areas at the poles, or in the few pools of liquid water on the planet’s surface, or just in isolated areas where geologic activity causes geysers and springs, visiting Earth. They seem completely unprepared for the shock of realizing that Earth’s continents appear green because the continents are absolutely covered with green organisms.
The alien biologists are so uncomfortable because there are certain protocols for maintaining certain distances from life signatures to avoid harming unfamiliar organisms, and groves of plant like autotrophs and pools where aquatic life dwells are carefully protected and respected, with very important rules for approach
On Earth, the inhabitants are just. Playing and walking LITERALLY STEPPING ON CARPETS OF ORGANISMS the whole time. the aliens are like “it doesn’t hurt them??? Can’t you just…move them to a place where you don’t have to step on them?” and the humans are like “no of course not, grasses evolved to tolerate being stepped on, and besides, more plants would grow there if we tried to move the existing ones”
It then must be explained that humans would need to regularly spray poisons on the ground to prevent any given area of bare soil from filling up with plant life, and that “regularly” means “multiple times within a single solar cycle.” And that the poisons stop working within a few decades because the plants evolve to resist them that fast.
Human: yeah solar is the dominant energy source these days but some of the recent solar farm projects are pretty controversial because they’re in reclaimed strip mining sites that others argue should be restored as best as we can to their previous ecological state
Alien: I don’t understand…why would you not place the solar farms in an area of the planet with no existing ecosystem?
Human: …what?
Alien: You have rather sophisticated protective gear and have done some space exploration, surely you could establish them in an area of the planet to which life is not yet adapted?
Human: …there isn’t one.
Alien: …what do you mean there isn’t one
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ’DON’T KNOW’ HOW MANY SPECIES THERE ARE”
“Our biologists would love to collaborate with your Earth scientists to draw up a definitive listing of Earth species and resolve any inconsistencies in the records.”
“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. Only 25% of Earth’s species have been formally described, at most.”
“that’s…that’s most of them.”
“Yes?”
“Well…I suppose the ocean trenches and abyssal plains must be difficult for you to reach…where did you have to travel for your discoveries?”
“Travel? I moved here to Alabama in the first place to study its aquatic ecosystems. The crayfish I discovered live in that creek I showed you earlier.”
“Too bad you couldn’t have come here a few thousand years ago, humanity has really been doing a number on our diversity of species. Some say it might be the next great extinction.”
“Wait. I believe this is something your language refers to as needing 'unpacking.’ The current biodiversity represents a historical low point?”
“Well, a local minimum, as the math people say. But yeah, I think there was some recovery after the Younger Dryas about ten thousand years ago, but for every new species humanity creates intentionally or unintentionally, tens or hundreds have been wiped out. We’re not proud of this.”
“We will need time to digest this, to the point I’m afraid to ask the next question: NEXT great extinction?”
“Yeah, I forget how many there’ve been total, and there’s some arguing over how bad it has to get before it really counts. A comet or meteor strike 65 million years ago wiped out the majority of life…the majority of species or even genera…there’s entire classes of life we didn’t know ever existed until we found their fossils a few hundred years ago. And then there’s the Permian, when a good chunk of a continent erupted and I think we lost…ninety percent of all species? Maybe more? I’d have to look it up. There was also a mass extinction that just happened because all the continents got pushed together and apparently that was bad for life on land and in the sea. You’re looking a little faint…do you need to sit down?”
“But…even a single great extinction has always meant the end of life above the unicellular level, on every world we’ve visited. This planet has evolved complex incredibly ramified life repeatedly despite three mass extinction events?”
“I wanna say…five?”
A Deathworld is scary. A Lifeworld is fucking terrifying.
i think one of my favourite parts of gravity falls is just. soos in general. a different show would probably have a character like that- y’know, a fat guy who’s in that early-20s age where nobody wants to acknowledge that nobody knows what they’re doing but they’re not a kid anymore so they’re no longer part of the “marketable demographic” for kids, i think a lot of other shows would make him the punching bag or the butt of jokes or portray him as weird or creepy or a failiure. but no, soos is genuinely a big part of the heart of the show. he’s allowed to be a bit of a dork, and have a non-standard path in life- it’s treated as part of the quirks that make him lovable! the twins think he’s super cool, he’s smart, funny, genuine, kind- and when he gets his own episode in soos and the real girl, his issues with talking to people are just treated as so much more HUMAN than i’m used to for characters in his demographic. it’s really sweet. and i’m glad they do that. i really like soos.
It’s disturbing how a successful attack in the eyes of a Zionist depends on how many civilians have been murdered, or how many residential buildings have been destroyed.
it is genuinely bewildering to me that adult human beings do not know this but if you are mean to people they will not like you. like tbh they are probably also not going to like you if you are mean to other people but they are definitely not going to like you if you are mean to them. it doesn’t matter if you are funny or if you can use r/aita rules to prove that you are in the right. people simply do not enjoy being treated like shit.
listen. i crave criticism and honesty more than anyone. it’s how we get better. but i’m not gonna lie, cheering on a friend while they gush about their own creative project for an hour, then bringing up yours and only getting back “oh, they already did that in [show you’ve heard of but never knew the plot of]”? that really fucking hurts
Had a very fun memory of when I was a kid and used plastic straws as a chewing stim toy before we even knew i was autistic, we just thought it was a good adhd focus thing since it worked.
All the teachers knew and understood why I had the straw and never yelled at me for it, and the other kids had no idea why but they just knew, “oh he needs that straw” and didn’t question it.
One day in second grade, we had a sub. She was new to the school and as she was giving us the activity while we sat on the floor (i dont remember the activity just that it was a floor activity) she saw my straw and went, “dont chew on things like that!” And scolded me in front of the class, taking my straw from me.
I of course didn’t do anything cause she was an authority figure and I couldn’t break the rule of defying authority figures so i just sat in disappointment, immediately feeling distressed cause my stim toy was taken from me.
The class was dead silent until one of them went, “miss- he needs that actually.” And then another one piped up, “yeah! He has one every day! It’s important he chews on it!”
None of them understood WHY i had it, but they respected that it was important
I got my straw back :3 and that was the best memory of accommodation from my classmates ive ever known
I understand that tall men are our POV characters, but surely being like a foot taller than everyone around them would have some occasional consequences
When I was like 7 I got this little rubber fetus that was being handed out by pro-life people at a concert. For like 10 years he was my stress ball I would chew on him or throw him at the wall and watch him bounce around. But he started to decay so put him in this prescription bottle and now I just pretend he’s a test tube baby
Hypothetical scenario: someone is on Ao3, looking for fanfiction to read. This person only speaks/reads English, and they set the language filter to only show fics written in English.
Do you think this is an act of cultural or language erasure?
this website is so difficult to explain to people…how do i explain that commanding your scarab beetle around is an accepted and well-received posting style?
you don't actually get to cry "ally yourself with trans women" while actively talking over trans women whose traumatic experiences with transmisogyny are wildly ignored in favor of how hard transmisogyny is on the cis women. like why don't trans women get to say privilege plays into how much transmisogyny affects people?
do we not characterize white privilege as being what protects white americans from the systematic racism that permeates the US?
again, what is the preferred way you would have us refer to that privilege? because I am right here telling you that privilege is a part of the construct of tme/tma but you don't really care that trans women are more affected.
like it's crazy that you seem to think my problem is with the transvestigation playing out against a cis woman and not the way everyone pays attention when it happens to cis women but ignores the rampant transmisogyny when it happens to a trans woman. like you don't even pause to look at why there were no trans women at the olympics to transvestigate in the first place so they turned to the next marginalized option, intersex and women of color, when discussing how trans women deserve better.
Hi I'm the trans woman I deserve better from you specifically
To be completely honest this is looking less and less like a good faith discussion and more and more like you simply accusing me of stuff I didn’t say.
You say I am actively talking over trans women. How so? How is “we need to address transmisogyny at its root if we want things to be better” ignoring the plight of trans women?
How is it that I have *repeatedly* acknowledged that there is privilege there, and yet apparently I am ignoring it?
if you want to use the race example: white privilege exists. Racism also affects white people. If white people want to stop being affected by racism (welfare regulations, the war on drugs, low income housing, social programs for community aid, to name a few) then maybe they should ally themselves with people of color because the root of what’s causing issues with these things is racism. That doesn’t mean white privilege doesn’t exist just because a system of oppression affects everyone under said system. It doesn’t even mean that the primary target has changed. It’s just what makes this a system rather than an individual occurrence.
Never once have I said that cis women are more affected and, in fact, in followup posts I have stated that it *is* quite annoying that people have only been talking about this because this year’s Olympics included approximately 0 out trans women. I have been saying that this was the clear end result, once they were rid of the trans women they’d go for whatever cis women they could feasibly get away with, and this time it seems they overplayed their hand.
Castor Semenya is a cis woman who only found out that she is intersex due to being transvestigated. She is, by definition, TME. Except she’s not, is she, considering the same rules that apply to trans women apply to her. That’s why I brought her up! And- correct me if I’m wrong- but out trans women still competed after she was forced to leave the Olympic running. That is why I’m saying that things maybe are not quite so clear cut as “have” and “have not”, because I can point to an example of someone that the definition labels as “has privilege” that according to Olympic ruling bodies no longer counts as a woman either despite being afab TME cis.
If you want to continue to put words in my mouth, then we’re out of things to say to each other, and it becomes clear that this was never intended to be a good faith discussion in the first place.
You say you deserve better.
What do you want, that you would consider better? What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?
Because I have said the things you’re claiming I don’t say, several times now, each in response to both your asks and the original discussions.
I am asking how someone is exempt from systemic oppression.
A system affects *everyone* because it is built into the very structure of society. You *cannot* be exempt from a system unless you exist wholly outside of that system, and currently there is no existence outside of transmisogynistic systems. This is what I mean when I say this is fairly basic civil rights, intersectional, feminist theory. This is not new. This is taken directly from one of many equity and equality projects trying to undo harmful systems *such as racism and transmisogyny*.
The fact that I log into tumblr and state literally the most lukewarm basic ass social movement theory broadly used and accepted by countless groups including groups intended to help with the very problems being discussed, and somehow that’s enough to label me as an enemy, is absolutely fucking bonkers.
What do you want me to say? What is acceptable enough for you? Because it’s looking like a game of moving goalposts to me.
once my brother was in a disney store and he saw a child pick up a mickey mouse toy and his thing is he does voices so he said “oh my god put me down” in a mickey mouse voice and the kid threw it across the store and then he had to run away from the store like “What have i done”
there’s a sesame street themed section of seaworld and he would go behind the mascots there and do the character’s voices and then watch the mascots panic because they’re not supposed to speak in costume
A software tester walks into a bar. Runs into a bar. Crawls into a bar. Dances into a bar. Flies into a bar. Jumps into a bar. And orders: a beer. 2 beers. O beers. 99999999 beers. a lizard in a beer glass. -1 beer. “qwertyuiop” beers. Testing complete. A real customer walks into the bar and turns on a screen reader. The bar goes up in flames.
got called into the living room because “they’re talking about something you’ll like on tv” and it was a documentary about arsenic poisoning
feels worth mentioning that my response to this was to yell “POISONS??? :D :D :D” and sprint into the room like a dog that’s just been told it’s time for a walk
my opinion on tipping is if it is how the servers make a living then yeah you should tip. if you don’t want to you can always just not go to the establishment in question. how is there so much debate here? it’s not a fair system for anyone but it exists at the moment regardless of approval
literally i’ll never understand the logic
[Image ID: Tumblr tags reading: #i dont understand why someone who says the business is abusing its servers by underpaying them #continues to go to the establishment but doesn’t tip #like your solution is to only give the money to the abusive workplace? interesting /End ID]
i think we as a society need to use cell phones/laptops/cars/backpacks to flesh out characters
like. a character has a cracked phone screen and a dozen stickers and a glittery case and a photo of their dog as a background. that says so much
or a character has a completely plain phone with no decorations and a default home screen and all the contacts are people’s first names with no profile photos. except for one contact which is a stupid nickname and a shot of someone taken at a very unflattering angle. you know?
or cars!!! someone who has a disgusting car, with trash everywhere and mud caking the seats, but the passenger seat is always clean, because someone else always cleans it for them.
this has potential to become a blorbo post so now i want everyone to describe what they think their blorbo’s phone/laptop/car/backpack looks like in the tags because i like reading these things
The number of people in the notes of this being like “lol i’m the motorist” with 0 sense of shame or self awareness is crazy. You should all get your licenses taken away
me when other people tag me in things: this person??? thought about me???? i’m so flattered??????? 🥺💕🥺💕🥺💕🥺💕
me when i consider tagging someone in a post: i am annoying!!!! i am overstepping every single boundary!!!! i am making an absolute fool out of myself!!!!!!
[The artist, putting a simple cake next to a much fancier one: “Aw man, that guy’s cake is way better than mine.” The Audience, gleefully holding up a knife and fork “HOLY SHIT! TWO CAKES!”]
so we don’t have AC at work, just these huge ceiling fans all over the place. and i remember the first few weeks i was there i’d look up at them and be like. damn, those are some big ass fans. and then one day i looked up at one that wasn’t moving and. you’ll never guess what they’re called
Some day I want to see a sci-fi production where the Nerd spouts twenty seconds of impenetrable technobabble, and the Salt-of-the-Earth Audience Identification Character is just like “well, shoot – it sounds obvious when you put it that way”, and proceeds with the plan without ever demanding a plain English explanation for the benefit of the audience.
(Over the course of the series it becomes a running gag that the
Audience Identification Character perfectly understands
technobabble, though they don’t speak it themselves. There are recurring
exchanges to the effect of “you know, the thingy with the bit on
top” “you mean the [something with an implausible number of syllables]?”
“exactly!”)
Okay yes but this is literally what trying to do science in a multilingual lab is like.
Nobody can FUCKING REMEMBER the english word for the machine so it gets called the “microbial tilt-o-hurl” or the “germ carousel” and then everyone looks at you because english is YOUR first language, remembering english vocabulary is your department, and you can’t do anything because you’ve been trying to explain the difference in english notation between fractions and ratios for half an hour and you just yell “it’s the one in the left corner that beeps!”
the reverse of the second thing was done in Thor 2 and it’s one of my fav things in any movie ever!
Actual conversation I’ve had:
“Go get me the thicc boi”
“You mean the Erlenmeyer flask?”
“No, the sexy one”
“Volumetric flask.”
“Yeah, that fucker.”
THE SEXY THICC BOI
The best part about this is when you have a household object you use for some obtuse laboratory purpose but your colleagues don’t know the English word for it so they use a technical description.
“Can you hand me the box with the static dischargers?”
