Audley & Cherry

Audley (she/her) is a tired genderqueer woman who is a witch, an anarchist, and busy painting Necrons. Cherry is a dog in a natty sweater. @audleyzdarke.bsky.social elsewhere

[audley-and-cherry]

Came across "if you don't support Israel, you're not a feminist" and nuh uh. No way. Blocked immediately.

[self-loving-vampire]

"Oh but parents do have a right to control what their children eat. What if they just want to eat candy for every meal?"

Most parents can't even distinguish between random whims and autism dietary limitations and end up saying shit like this and starving their disabled children.

[phaeton-flier]

Really love the underlying logic of "if you would eat when you're desperately hungry than it must never really have been that bad";

I would eat a lot of things if I got hungry enough; spoiled food, defiled food, food that might make me sick but definitely will give me some energy.

People will resort to cannibalism if left long enough with no food. That doesn't make their revulsion at doing so any less real.

[feotakahari]

There was a guy a few years ago who said that if you say you can’t walk, but you could walk if he held a gun to your head, it really means you don’t want to walk. For some reason, Rationalists treated this guy like he was worth discussing.

[seananmcguire]

Things that aren't food are not food. It's cool if they're food for you, but trying to convince me to eat something that my brain insists isn't food is roughly equivalent to trying to convince me to eat a bowl of paint chips.

[hollowedskin]

My cousin hated meat and at 8 years old she straight up refused to eat it.

Traditionally Australian bogan food is typically at least half meat product, usually more, and the rest like mashed potatoes, with steamed carrots and peas. The patties or the sausages or the steak is where most of the nutrients are.

So she refused to eat any meat and my uncle refused to feed her any differently, insisting that if she wasnt going to eat it then she wasn't getting more food and that he would just wait for her to "get over herself". 9 months this went on. She lived off mashed potatoes and cereal for 9 fucking months.

She ended up so sick she was in hospital and he had to ring the whole family and tell us that the doctors think she has leukemia, they're just running some more tests.

Turns out she was so malnourished her immune system had given up and she contracted galandula fever and another virus at the same time and was fucking dying because he wouldn't give her food she would eat.

Yes he got screamed at by a bunch of doctors and nurses, and then the rest of our family, because you can't just starve a kid bc you think they're being difficult.

"let them starve?" They will. They fucking will and it will be your fault.

[katisconfused]

My parents learned the hard way that forcing it just made me full on gag on the food and potentially throw the whole meal up. They also had to learn "I'm not hungry" did not mean "I don't want it" from me crying over not being able to force myself to eat my favorite food.

It really is not a choice. Forcing it does not make it easier.

[the-haiku-bot]

It really is not

a choice. Forcing it does not

make it easier.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[audley-and-cherry]

My view on feeding my kid is that, as an adult, no one forces me to eat what I don't want to, so why in the world would I do that to her?

Parents who refuse to treat their kids as if they're people need to jump into the river and never come out.

[takaraphoenix]

I'm going to sound very old and very tired here for a second, but iIt is so dystopian to me to have ads on my computer.

Ads used to be on the internet. And that's that. The things that were installed on my computer did not show me ads.

And that goes even beyond the questionable practice that free versions of programs such as Avira now show you lil ads in the corner of your screen like once a day.

You used to have free games on your computer.

I was in the mood to play a game again, a very rare mood for me, and I opened the game center for the... first time since I had this version of Windows (as I said; very rare mood).

And there's ads. You play the "free" games that live on your computer and there are ads left and right and beneath it and between levels there is just a 20 second ad break.

You can go premium to no longer have ads.

That's dystopian to me.

When things that used to be fully free and just part of something are now riddled with ads and to get the ad free experience that, again, used to just be the experience, you have to pay.

And it's not even a one-time-payment.

Back in the day, you used to pay for something and then you owned it. You used to pay for a program or a game, and you owned a physical CD that you put in your computer to install the thing and it was just yours. It belonged to you, because you paid for it.

Now everything is a per month subscription, which is just so sinister because many look like oh, that's not that much money! Sure, I'll pay 1,99€/month to play games ad free. Every single month sums up, and it sums to a lot over the years though, for something that used to be free. (And I've complained about subscriptions before, in the context of Adobe, which isn't just dystopian anymore, it's actually plain evil to demand 25,99€/month to use a singular program, that you can now no longer buy to actually own.)

And I know - I know - you can find free games online to download or play in browser (already did that for mahjong) - but I'm talking about the principle here. The principle of getting ads on your computer, directly, and to have to pay to no longer have ads and use something that had been a part of the Windows experience since... forever.

[gridmaster5000-deactivated20241]

why is privacy so eroded. I get treated like a nutcase if I say no, I don't want strange companies taking pictures of my home and putting them online for maps or whatever. I don't want to be in the background of your tiktok, and I think it's weirder for you to assume I'm okay with it than it is for me to politely ask you to refilm it so my face isn't in the frame. I don't enjoy handing my employer a list of every online account I have and feeling under surveillance when I'm just shit posting or sharing pictures of my cats or garden harvest. I don't want to hear your private calls on speaker on the bus, esp when the person on the line doesn't know you're broadcasting their words to strangers. I don't want an algorithm guessing what will piss me off the most so I spend more time online, engaging with shit I don't want to see or hear out of outrage. I don't want any of this. it's total ass.

[mermaidenmystic]

The Kelpie Pond by Jaimie Whitbread

[hypotheticalpeople]

guy who keeps going to cemeteries and digging up human corpses but with such an air of innocent curiosity that no one can get angry at him for it and they just try to gently lecture him on why he shouldn’t do it

[attyrocious]

i bet it felt good

[our-queer-experience]

helen “trans people are perpetuating gender steriotypes” joyce is now upset that the scientific american is writing about how women were hunters too back in the day, not just mothers and caretakers. feminist win!

[the-gummy-worms-have-me]

I think I found the article!

The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong

The influential idea that in the past men were hunters and women were not isn’t supported by the available evidence

Read it if you have the time, it's very interesting.

[mikkeneko]

Reading the article I see why TERFs are mad about it; it explicitly makes the distinction between gender as a social entity and sex as a biological category, and defines biological sex having multiple factors, both of which are anathema to TERF philosophy.

It also includes these fascinating paragraphs about the role of estrogen in different types of physical activity, directly debunking the widespread notion that estrogen is the weak human's hormone and only does weak human things:

Given the fitness world's persistent touting of the hormone testosterone for athletic success, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that estrogen, which females typically produce more of than males, plays an incredibly important role in athletic performance… The estrogen receptor—the protein that estrogen binds to in order to do its work—is deeply ancient. Joseph Thornton of the University of Chicago and his colleagues have estimated that it is around 1.2 billion to 600 million years old—roughly twice as old as the testosterone receptor. In addition to helping regulate the reproductive system, estrogen influences fine-motor control and memory, enhances the growth and development of neurons, and helps to prevent hardening of the arteries. Important for the purposes of this discussion, estrogen also improves fat metabolism. During exercise, estrogen seems to encourage the body to use stored fat for energy before stored carbohydrates. Fat contains more calories per gram than carbohydrates do, so it burns more slowly, which can delay fatigue during endurance activity. Not only does estrogen encourage fat burning, but it also promotes greater fat storage within muscles… which makes that fat's energy more readily available. Adiponectin, another hormone that is typically present in higher amounts in females than in males, further enhances fat metabolism while sparing carbohydrates for future use, and it protects muscle from breakdown. Anne Friedlander of Stanford University and her colleagues found that females use as much as 70 percent more fat for energy during exercise than males. Estrogen's ability to increase fat metabolism and regulate the body's response to the hormone insulin can help prevent muscle breakdown during intense exercise. Furthermore, estrogen appears to have a stabilizing effect on cell membranes that might otherwise rupture from acute stress brought on by heat and exercise. Ruptured cells release enzymes called creatine kinases, which can damage tissues… Linda Lamont of the University of Rhode Island and her colleagues, as well as Michael Riddell of York University in Canada and his colleagues, found that females experienced less muscle breakdown than males after the same bouts of exercise. Tellingly, in a separate study, Mazen J. Hamadeh of York University and his colleagues found that males supplemented with estrogen suffered less muscle breakdown during cycling than those who didn't receive estrogen supplements.

The article also talks about sexual dimorphism in different species, concluding that "Modern humans have low sexual dimorphism compared with the other great apes," and that overemphasis on averages obscures the wide dispersal of individual traits, which is what I keep saying.

[aethersea]

Anthropologists also look at damage on our ancestors' skeletons for clues to their behavior. Neandertals are the best-studied extinct members of the human family because we have a rich fossil record of their remains. Neandertal females and males do not differ in their trauma patterns, nor do they exhibit sex differences in pathology from repetitive actions. Their skeletons show the same patterns of wear and tear. This finding suggests that they were doing the same things, from ambush-hunting large game animals to processing hides for leather. Yes, Neandertal women were spearing woolly rhinoceroses, and Neandertal men were making clothing.

I also thought this part was cool :)

[genderqueerdykes]

PLEASE read this article, this information is incredible for everyone looking to unlearn bioessentialism

[headspace-hotel]

Always reblog...this article is so good.

Also I love how the illustrations portray the woman using stereotypically "female" strength (hips/legs) to carry a deer she hunted on her hip and the man is using stereotypically "male" upper body strength to carry a baby on his back. It just goes to show that the activities we see as suited to men or women "biologically" are actually a cultural perception.

[audley-and-cherry]

All I'm saying is that you all need to learn the difference between discomfort and harm.

[bladefucker]

You are not a leftist if you think two adults consenting to kink should be considered a crime. Idc what kink it is. The perpetuation of shame around sex is inherently conservative. The criminalization of sex that you don't like or understand or that you think is "wrong" or "immoral" is inherently conservative. You cannot actually believe in the freedom of all marginalized people if you would enact oppressive systems on any group that you dislike. Like this should be common sense but y'all are so far up your own asses...

[kushblazer666]

genuine question, why doesn't harm reduction apply to voting?

first of all because harm reduction has nothing to do with voting. harm reduction is a public health strategy. stuff like condom distribution, needle exchanges, supervised injection sites, free STI tests, that shit is harm reduction. which has fuck all to do with elections

what youre talking about is strategic voting, which is an actual thing. but the last two decades of pragmatic, strategic voting (i.e. just mash the democrat button without any consideration for who you vote for or what their policies are) has done fuck all to change this country into what i would like it to be like. just the opposite in fact. so if i vote im going to vote for someone who i actually support, not just cuz they only wanna give $18 billion to the hitler baby woodchipper machine and not $18.1 billion

[vultvomit-deactivated20240924]

[balaclava-trismegistus]

even if we ignore the consent and sexual assault component of what you’re arguing about, are you incapable of recognizing that body fluids are biohazardous? you’re not doing anybody favours by implying that the lgbt community is all into rape btw

have you ever had sex it isnt the fucking splash zone at sea world

[bloglikeanegyptian]

whats happening at the dnc might be my limit, not because it is singularly cruel for american politicians to ignore all the people they've killed in the middle east and their families who loved them, but because it's really hard to watch people who think of themselves as good people, these rational liberals, championing a big tent and progress and rights and equality, act as though the biggest problem with a genocide is how inconvenient it is for them

the democratic party has made zero concessions for palestinians. zero. saying you want a ceasefire or you're working tirelessly for a ceasefire while you facilitate a genocide for ten months straight is not a concession to voters, it's a lie. it's lying to voters, and the only people who believe it are the people who find it convenient to believe. the good people, the rational liberals, who champion a big tent and rights and equality but they just don't care if 15,000 palestinian children are killed and 20,000 are unaccounted for. they don't care if a bomb drops today or tomorrow, as long as it isn't inconvenient to kamala harris's campaign.

palestinians aren't inconveniencing the democrats. the democrats, in their role as the current leaders of the american war machine, are killing them. they are inconveniencing themselves. but a genocide, you know, it's not an inconvenience. it's parents burying children and children burying parents, saying "we're so lucky they died in one piece. we didn't have to collect their parts. it's a privilege to die in one piece these days."

talking about this in terms of convenience to the american voter, i don't really know if i can do that kind of thing anymore.

[super-ultra-mega-deluxe]

regarding US liberal politics i cannot emphasize enough that a democrat president has not been better for trans rights than the previous republican one. the last four years have seen some of the worst backsliding on trans rights specifically, with access to gender affirming care being explicitly illegalized in a number of states. proclaiming that my rights are stored in the bodies of brown people abroad- a statement democrats will routinely ridicule republicans for- looks especially absurd in the circumstance where the party you are championing isn't even pretending to do that for people like me! there are 8 instances of the word "transgender" in the whole of democrat's 92 page 2024 party platform, half of which are the democrats congratulating themselves for allowing trans women to be drafted and serve the imperialist war machine, with the rest not referencing any specific policy or policy plan at all. at best they're quietly complicit in killing trans people and trans women especially. do not appeal to my existence in your justifications for genocide

[audley-and-cherry]

I don't see Democrats doing anything for trans rights except to say "of course we're better than Republicans!" Okay, where? Prove it.

[melrosing]

im glad chappell roan has told ppl to fuck off lol like im sick of watching this cycle where people commodify artists and deify them and then denounce them and destroy them. can you people not just have a normal fucking relationship with art. artist makes the thing you like, you consume the art. consume it with friends! consume it a thousand times over! memorise every word of it start a blog about it tattoo it on your goddamn body! but you aren't entitled to the artist themselves! they are not your special interest, they are not your political avatar, they are not your best friend, they are just some rando and so are you, and that's fine. empowering even. stop worrying about what taylor swift's favourite breakfast cereal is and think about yours

[daily-weasel]

[mammalidentifier]

Mountain weasel (Mustela altaica)

[professorsparklepants]

#it fucken sumny (via @mindfulwrath)

[feminist-space]

[official-lucifers-child]

the wemther brothers

[parentheses-posts]

This post has 2 sets of parentheses.