A Polite Melody @a-polite-melody - Tumblr Blog

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It’s legitimately triggering to me, getting people begging for money in my inbox. Especially the ways which some of them do it.

“$20-30 may not seem like much to you”

Oh??? You know my financial situation???

Fuck off.

If anyone’s curious why I basically never answer asks, it’s because my inbox is full of landmines for triggering stuff surrounding financial insecurity and I cannot handle it, and it only gets added to day by day with what are almost certainly 99% scams which are hoping to prey upon my empathy.

#the only asks I end up really responding to are ones I catch in my general notes #about me #my post #please fucking stop #not that my making this post and pinning it is going to change anything #(especially because there’s so many scams in and among some maybe possibly verifiable people)#but one can dream

sollun-tea

I don't know if anyone has heard of the Trans Period Pride situation that happened a short while ago, but it has shown me why advocacy is important for all of us and how we are affected in different ways within the community.

Fo those who do not know, there was an event organizaed in Boston called Trans Period Pride which was made to give resources and information to those within the community who bleed. It was supposed to help give advice and care to transmasc folks, nonbinary folks and trans men while being inclusive and supportive of trans folks.

But Fox news and other conservatives caught wind of it and got extremely upset to the point the organizers having to cancel the initial event (they ended up rescheduling it). Why? Because they assumed it was for trans women, and got upset about trans women "claiming to bleed and have periods". Mind you, in no way did the organizers hint that this event was catered towards trans women, but because conservatives can't use their brains and their phones to function properly, they assumed it was an event for trans women.

On one hand, there's clear blatant transmisogyny and transphobia directed at trans women. When ever people see trans, the only thing they know or care much for are trans women and transfems, they direct all their hate at them which is the horrible impact of hypervisibility. People choose not to care for or understand trans folks, and only latch on to what they don't like.

On the other hand, there's anti-transmasculinity, transphobia and erasure directed at nonbinary folks and trans men. Because many of these people didn't even realize trans men existed in the first place, didn't care to know and went ahead and nearly caused the removal of an event that could benefit the lives of transmasculine people and trans men. Some of these people DID know we existed and still hated the fact that we "co-opted" their experience as cis women. Some mentioned us only as a tool to further attack trans women. And all this behaviour ended in them harassing the organizers. I'm glad they still decided to schedule the event, but there are instances like this where they don't put it back up. And tras men/transmascs/nonbinary folks who have limited support or information on things like this have little to nowhere to go that would accept them.

This is an example of what discrimination can look like for the trans folks within the community; trans women and transfems get attacked at the forefront which leads to harm, harassment public surveillance, and even death. Anyone else gets treated the same while being stripped from access to support and care, and ignored when struggling as a result by folks both in and out of the community. And at times we even have overlapping experiences, but erasure and dismissal is far too prevalent in transmasc's/ trans men's spaces and nonbinary ones too.

And I'm glad that there's been a growing conversation on the erasure of transmascs and trans men in advocacy, in the community, and in media. We need to center trans women in the advocacy of trans rights, we also need to center trans men and nonbinary folks as well because we are all being horribly impacted by this in different ways, under different stats.

This really is a time to come together and fight, and to remember each and everyone of us are important in this conversation.

this-is-trans-joy

I didn’t realise this had to be said until I came across a reel of someone in hospital but dear GOD if you’re in London during this heatwave do not swim in the fucking Thames PLEASE do not even touch the Thames I can name like five different ways you will be violently killed just off the top of my head STAY AWAY FROM THE THAMES and for that matter stay away from lakes/rivers in general and stick to safe, supervised areas of water such as swimming pools because the heat isn’t worth the risk of drowning, strong currents, harmful microbes, cardiac arrest with no help in sight etc. etc. PLEASE stay safe in this weather, especially if you’re not used to it!!

the-elf-witch-from-space

I love how humans are all like "NO we polluted our water! Do not swim in nature, swim in the approved chemical containers"

this-is-trans-joy

The undercurrent from the Thames is so strong it will literally drown you get your annoying ass tags off my post

this-is-trans-joy

Also, a lot of people have misunderstood this post as me saying that all lakes and rivers are bad to swim in, as opposed to the fact that there is currently a heatwave in a country that is not used to high heat and the risk of getting into complications or having a cardiac arrest while swimming with no lifeguard around is a huge cause of heat-related deaths in the UK. Seven people have already drowned in the past week. I’m not interested in “wow people in the UK are so soft everyone should swim in lakes” tags anymore because you’re missing the point.

lastoneout

You guys need to recognize that the push to treat ace and aro discourse as stupid infighting that never left tumblr is indeed a manifestation of the continued erasure and devaluing of asexuality, aromanticism, and and ace and aro lives in an effort to pretend that the people who did it weren't part of a reactionary hate movement that completely decimated two entire marginalized communities both on and offline.

Like I try to be nice about this but I have seen SO many fucking people being like "lol yeah ace/aro discourse was one thing" and that is deliberate erasure of real and important queer history in service of dodging blame on the parties that did this who, for the most part, never fucking apologized or owned up to it, or, in the case of a few blogs I still see going around, clearly still stand by all of it and just hope you don't point that out, and ofc, no one ever fucking does.

Stop downplaying the absolute fucking devastation the queer community did to ace and aro people and our communities. If owning it makes you uncomfortable, good, go make it right, and start by not fucking lying about what happened, thanks.

lastoneout

Everyone will think I'm crazy, but I cannot stress that an atrocity was done to ace and aro people, and we never got so much as a fucking apology.

lastoneout

I do want to say if you got caught up in this I don't hate you, especially if you learned and changed, because like most reactionary hate movements ace/aro discourse was always presented as righteous and fun, and also it was EVERYWHERE and the people stirring shit were very well articulated. A lot of us were teenagers joining queer spaces for the first time ever and we wanted to belong and sometimes that means hating who the people who already belong tell you to hate. I get why people fell for it, I came close a few times myself when I was at my lowest and most desperate to feel like I belonged again. I get it.

I can't offer forgiveness or absolution to everyone, but you don't need me to forgive you to forgive yourself and move on, and I do think most of the people who got caught up in it have more than earned moving on.

However, what I want is for everyone to stop downplaying it. Don't call it stupid infighting, don't go "ace stuff was one thing but this with trans men is too far" don't claim it didn't leave tumblr or the internet, own how bad it was. If you were there you know, and your history is valuable, so even when it sucks please be honest about what happened. This part of queer history should not be forgotten, and especially not for the people who never really changed and have an interest in making sure everyone thinks this was just some silly infighting.

That's what I ask, do right by us, don't let us be erased again.

Especially because when you forget, when you downplay it, you downplay what's happened with truscum shit, with biphobia, and now with trans masc exclusion. You downplay it and you disguise that it's the same people saying the same things about a new group. I found out about the rise in trans man/masc exclusion because I saw someone saying that trans men are collateral damage secondary to the real targets of transphobia, trans women, and I immediately knew the person saying it was a shithead I should NEVER trust because that is exactly what they said about bi and ace and aro people. Word for word.

You do those who were hurt a disservice when you downplay what happened, but you also make our spaces less safe because if we pretend what happened didn't we can't stop it when it starts again.

And it always starts again.

lastoneout

Reblogging again after seeing YET ANOTHER person say ace/aro discourse wasn't mainstream and didn't leave the internet. People got kicked out of irl queer spaces behind this, stop fucking lying about what happened. At this point more someone pushes the "ace/aro discourse was bad but not mainstream/offline/as bad as what's happening now with [xyz group]" the more I think you have a vested interest in making it out to be not a big deal and that doesn't say anything good about you.

Like y'all claim to be against oppression olympics, but you're still engaging with it every single time you say anything even remotely like "ace/aro discourse was really bad but nothing as serious as what's happening now" and I'm sick of pretending it's not oppression olympics and also not a manifestation of the continued violence against ace and aro people. If the only way you're going to talk about what happened is through downplaying our suffering and/or spreading misinformation about it, do me and every other aro and ace person a favor and stop fucking talking about us.

#oh that’s fucked #but also fascinating to me because like. I draw the comparison to ace discourse a lot BECAUSE it’s left such an impact on me because of how #big and widespread it was

myirlnameiscloud

B-but people with micropenises are my emotional support minority to bully!! 🥺🥺 B-but it's funny that their penises are small!! 🥺🥺 B-but I only make fun of BAD people by calling their penises small!! 🥺🥺 I have good reason to make fun of people with micropenises!! 🥺🥺 It's not intersexism if it's funny!! 🥺🥺 It's sooo funny because their penises are small!! 🥺🥺 Guys it's sooo funny come on!! 🥺🥺

myirlnameiscloud

Aaand here's some of the lovely comments under this post:

I think I hate tumblr.

Anyways BLOCKED!!!

genderkoolaid

There is no feminist way to participate in toxic masculinity, and mocking people for having fragile masculinity is toxic masculinity, point blank period. Its fundamentally patriarchal.

The idea that "having fragile masculinity" is inherently a personality defect or moral failing is patriarchal. So much of this kind of bullshit is people taking fundamentally patriarchal ideas of manhood (for example, that men being vulnerable is a defect or moral failing) and defining it around slightly more feminist values.

Like, the only thing that is different from bog standard patriarchy here is the inclusion of "macho." But like, the idea that there are "fragile" men who fail to be "real men" with unshakeable firm masculinity, and they also secretly have small penises and are biologically less manly compared to "real men" whose real manhood can be located in their large penises... babe that's just toxic masculinity. The same "macho" shit you hate those men for, you yourself engage in, just a little to the left.

Fragile masculinity is not a moral failing, and it doesn't intrinsically make someone a worse person. And tbh I think talking about "fragile masculinity" like this is kind of disgustingly individualistic, and doesn't do much to encourage conversation about how patriarchy constructs manhood and masculinity as tools of control and oppression (what some feminists might call misandry).

asidewalksymphony

UPDATE! They found the original photo!

darthpseudonym

I think it's important to specify that it's not just Seb Stan as Jesus, it's specifically Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier as Jesus.

headspace-hotel

They made the hand metal too hahaha

It all goes back to Bucky

followthebluebell

Testing the definition of a "cat"

thats-a-cat

that's a cat ✅️

naamahdarling

Owning this thing would fix me.

ewriter91

Professional cat sitter here. I've watched a couple of these babies. While they are very cute, their respiratory problems are severe. The ones I've met sound like they are choking when they purr. Please do not buy one from a breeder. The creation of more of these cats is cruel and should not be incentivized. One of my clients goes out of her way to tell people her cat is a rescue for this reason.

Adopting this breed from a rescue is a good deed, but they will have higher than average medical needs. Be sure to do your research to determine if you are financially and emotionally able to care for one before adopting.

Sorry this is a bit of a bummer.

naamahdarling

You are right and you should say it.

Thank you for giving me the chance to say what I am going to say.

These cats are not something we should be bringing into the world on purpose.

Please don't create demand for them.

If you want a soggy muppet, and can handle the expense and the possible heartbreak, you absolutely can find Persians and Himalayans in shelters and rescues, and they need homes desperately.

Just be ready. I wish it was different, I truly do, but you cannot adopt a cat from a Problems Disorder breed without accepting that they will, in fact, have Problems.

I was in the trenches with one for fourteen years.

I needed something damp that would sneeze into my mouth, so I got this alleged cat from a shelter when he was just under a year old. Here he is at ~13.

Dried Pickle Man.

Nothing about his skull was put together right. Even his ears were uneven. If I'm being honest, the rest of him wasn't so great, either.

Here's a list of the breed-related problems I knew about.

Wry nose/mouth. Very common in brachycephalic breeds, which are also prone to cleft palates.

Breathing problems when he got excited or slept on his back.

Chronic sinus infections and URIs.

Tooth problems. His mouth was so jacked up.

Eye and tear duct problems.

Hyperesthesia, which made grooming painful. We sedated and shaved him twice a year, and in between I trimmed mats myself.

IBD. Strongly associated with intestinal lymphoma.

Bladder crystals and bladder stones. Painful. Expensive. Can absolutely kill them. He had both.

CKD. Kidney disease. All cats are at high risk for this. Since it is a dominant gene, Persians and Himalayans, with their, um, ergonomic family trees, are even more at risk for it, and it is hard to catch early. There is no cure. To manage just this, we did bloodwork at least three times a year. He needed regular urinalysis, prescription food, medications, and sometimes subcutaneous fluids. Three times he started to spiral downhill. Three times some of the best vets in the country pulled him back. The fourth time, they couldn't.

Y'all, this was just one cat. Their genetic code can fit so many other problems inside it.

This backyard-bred bog haint averaged around $200-$250 a month just in routine care and food. For most of his life we were never below $3,000 in vet debt.

My god, I loved him, my stinky son with Every Disease. Can you understand? That I loved him?

The night before we were going to help him along, he drifted peacefully into the Bog Eternal while in bed with us, after snackies. We did everything we possibly could for him before he went. His quality of life was good, we didn't keep him longer than was best for him. It just took an incredible amount of effort, money, and love to keep it kind to him. The love, at least, was easy, but it hurt the most.

I knew exactly what I was signing up for before I adopted him. I thought harder about that decision than I'd thought about any adoption before or since. Could I handle it?

I decided yes. And by the skin of my teeth and the grace of his tusk, I did. I did.

I have never regretted adopting him.

I would absolutely regret paying someone to make me another one.

should-be-sleeping

Beautiful yucky boy...

headspace-hotel

^^^

while we're at it, Scottish Folds (the floppy eared cats) have a painful cartilage disorder that makes them develop arthritis while they're still kittens, and Lykoi (werewolf cats) develop gruesome and painful cystic acne because of their coats. Manx cats (the ones with no tails) can have spina bifida and incontinence related problems because of their short spines. Munchkins (short leg cats) have a form of dwarfism that causes problems with their spines and joints.

A cat born with a disability can live a happy life, provided the effects can be helped and accommodated, but so many "cat breeds" are the result of people intentionally creating more cats with disabilities we know cause pain for profit

xekstrin

Something to keep in mind…. building muscle is so hard people compete to see who can do it best. If you’re a woman worried about “getting bulky”, i promise you that you cannot achieve that physique by accident. Now go lift weights to increase your bone density & protect yourself from osteoporosis and improve your insulin resistence and eat a fiber + protein dense meal with some carbs to refuel and fat for satiety + energy 🫵

xekstrin

trans women this goes double for you especially the part about eating 🫵 you are not immune to your bones becoming tapioca in your old age pick up the weights and the fork sister we’re all gonna build our new bodies if i have anything to say about it

snarkincense

If I get into art again I'm gonna draw all the women muscular for representation, to piss off incels and to treat lesbians. There's so many bonuses and no downside to that (except maybe extra shading)

xekstrin

As a woman into muscle mommies I approve but this isn’t about “representation” or “pissing off incels”, it’s about encouraging real women in real life to lift weights because a not-insignificant amount of women are intimidated by weight lifting, which is frustrating because it would help them out so much, and becoming strong will not give you a muscle mommy body because you have to be incredibly intentional to get the muscle mommy body

As an artist you also should get into some sort of sport or physical activity so your body doesn’t collapse 🫵 put down the pen pick up the sword and fix your posture

enki2

hylianengineer

@copperbadge this seems up your alley

copperbadge

If the system ain't broke, don't fix it, I guess! Accounting may not be the oldest profession, but someone had to keep the books for them.

I mean, in theory I know that Excel is based on the structure of earlier accounting technology that's been around for hundreds of years -- what do we think we did to track commerce before computers? -- but it still kind of blows my mind to, for example, look at my ancestor's journal from a whaling voyage in 1770 and see spreadsheets in the back.

charaznablespeteevee

self-loving-vampire

According to the book I'm reading, proto-Cuneiform writing seems to have actually started as spreadsheets to keep track of resources rather than as a way to record language or express ideas.

The administrators of that extremely early city had to keep track of lots of things, and doing this by memory alone was a nightmare. These spreadsheets were devised as a solution to that as an evolution of an earlier system that used clay tokens and balls.

Spreadsheets are older than written language as we currently understand it.

dogpuppy

madcaker

krshush

Oh, yeah, I wonder how that map's progressed si--wait MISHA COLLINS?

sunspotpony

Tags passing peer review, gonna share.

Anyway, homie is, like all wealthy white dudes, egregiously imperfect, but he’s definitely fucking trying. So in that regard, he’s valuable because he’s reaching audiences that you personally probably wouldn’t be able to reach, and if you find he has specific stuff on topics you need to persuade people on, he’s a valuable avenue.

theterminalskeptic

People can say that I'm not being punished for transitioning but the shit you say about transgender men you don't say about cisgender women so I'm starting to think I am being punished for transitioning.

testosterone-tuesday

There are many, many people whose only understanding of manhood is through defining it by its association with power.

Whether that be through a feminist lens regarding manhood or masculinity only through the analysis of cis patriarchal hierarchy, and/or an uncritical repetition of gendered norms produced by such a system.

So what ends up happening when a transgender man explains he is disempowered, and disempowered specifically in relationship to being a man and how the ideas (just like this) attached to it effect him, the only conclusion they can come to is that he must be implying he isn't a man, that he is misgendering himself or undermining his identity, or that he is weak and failing to live up to it- or that he is lying.

The complicated marginalization of trans manhood as manhood is so radically contradictory to the patriarchal values of power which men are expected to fulfill, and so contradictory to the intensely cis-normative approach to feminism and gendered oppression, that his experiences end up in a placeless void of compounded invalidation. Although coming from the very same place.

Enough that to even have acknowledgment for his experience of gendered oppression, his identity as a man must be severed from the very context of its existence. Just transgender, just a generic, unspecific transphobia. Denying the specific modality which produced the reality of his transgender existence. Cutting his social experience into pieces, either cutting out the manhood, or cutting out the weakness.

This continues on his invisibility, furthering the doubt of the validity of his own reality. Feeding into the inevitability that his struggle will go unnoticed and uncared for, and will not receive the attention needed to help him, or to change these things.

Ironically and integrally, all of this enabling his marginalization specifically because- well because he is a man.

Because of the expectations of what it means to be a man, and how we cannot imagine his experience of a specifically marginalized manhood.

a-polite-melody

I hate that people keep pretending that trans men’s being men isn’t related at all to their oppression.

If a trans man weren’t a man, he wouldn’t be trans.

His claiming of man as his gender is the exact thing he is being oppressed for.

This is how intersectionality as a framework is supposed to be used to look at this, not, “man doesn’t add another oppressive force.”

And before I get, “but if man doesn’t add an oppressive force, how can the oppression be intersectional. Isn’t that just transphobia now?”

That’s still a huge misunderstanding of intersectionality, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to be the one to help here.

But simply, the best try I have, is that the patriarchy and sexism still create something else which oppresses trans men that isn’t “just transphobia”. It targets them specifically for claiming manhood, as well as for anatomy they may have been born with as trans men which society uses to see them as being not men, and social knowledge of them “having been a woman”…

Manhood doesn’t add protection for trans men except in the extreme circumstance of being absolutely stealth (as in you’ve managed to have a life where no one you have to interact with for the rest of your life will ever be able to figure out that you’re trans, and you’ve cut off anyone who knew you pre-transition).

And it fascinates me that people like to claim that non-passingness means that trans men will be seen as precious little girl flowers who are cherished. Because often we have mixed sex characteristics. And intersex people and trans women talk extensively about how having mixed sex characteristics is dangerous. But we’re never thought of as having mixed sex characteristics, only as perfectly stealth or pre-everything. And why is it that stealthing privilege is considered for trans men, but not trans women?

Oh, because women are oppressed anyway so they can’t be safe really? Okay then why are pre-everything trans men so safe? If a person who is assumed a woman is actually a trans man, that’s someone who will be treated as harmless and beautiful, and if that person assumed to be a woman is actually a trans woman, that someone will still be at the mercy of misogynists? How does that work? Are we really doing a fucking “they can always tell”?

Or maybe it’s that a trans man can state that he’s a man and the oppression would stop? I can tell you that the opposite is true; that asserting you’re a man when someone has assumed you’re a woman and is mistreating you for that, only gets you treated worse. And again, why is this something only available to trans men? Can people not lie to try to be safer? Is that not what stealthing and closeting are to a degree?

Anyway, that got a little off the rails from my original point. But it does show the absolute absurdity that you have to accept to disbelieve a marginalized community trying to speak on the oppression they face.