Wild Dreams @awilddreamer - Tumblr Blog

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thegaylibertarian

liminalweirdo

I am once again begging you to get your hands on physical media and/or save your fave stuff OFFLINE.

flirting-with-psychology

The Passover Story in Memes

My family has an annual tradition of telling the story in a creative way so here it is, told through memes:

bad-with-emotions-sadly

Holy heck how does this only have 140-odd notes

tiktoksthataregood-ish

thefingerfuckingfemalefury

The first one was already funny but the second made me crack up :D

startledoctopus

LOL

augustdementhe

HAAAAA!

hidefdoritos

[Video description:

Tiktok user thehypegoblin faces the camera wearing a dark elf cleric cosplay. A robotic voice reads the text on the screen: "If your tits had a headphone jack what would they play?" She shoves an aux cord into her cleavage. From under the corset comes the audio "Suffocation! No breathing!" from Last Resort. She shrugs, nods, and makes a yep, that seems right face.

Cut to user casespotleson facing the camera looking inquisitive. He shoves an aux cord under his shirt collar. From under the shirt comes the audio "But you didn't have to cut me off" from Somebody That I Used to Know. He retorts, "Yes I did. Stop whining."

End vid description.]

optimysticals

Oh the cackle I just let out.

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

it was a mistake to stop burying people in the fetal position. so now i am forbidden to be cozy even in my own grave?

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

bring 👏 back 👏 neolithic 👏 burial 👏 rites

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

don't you dare bury me on my back or in itchy fancy clothing. i am a SIDE SLEEPER. put me in my coziest pajamas! wrap me in my favorite blanket! bury me with all my best STUFF

re-the-bear

Trying really hard not to slip into despair these days. I mean, with all the poverty, death, starvation, and isolation it's hard, you know? I mean it's been decades since I became a ghost, you'd think I'd just get used to being forgotten and invisible. That I'd stop wasting energy on trying to manifest or interact with my environment. I'm not angry anymore, just tired. Tired of being optimistic about things changing, of believing that someone sees me, only for them to stop. I know other people have rich, vibrant, full lives outside my haunt. I occasionally am able to leave and witness them, though those trips are becoming fewer. I see them with their friends and families, shining with life and connection, millions of brilliant sparks in the dark. My only solace is that sometimes, when I have the energy and luck, I meet a soul who's spark is dimming, and I can muster the spirit to help fan the flames back into life, keeping them from my, or a worse, fate. Sometimes it's just whispered encouragement, other times it's manifested defiance, or outright acts of intervention.

But on the whole, I am a ghost. A soul without a home, an entity out of step with reality.

blessicablimpson

jayalaw

It’s a balance. Knowing how to do the basics is useful for special occasions and job interviews. Same with identifying cosmetics that match your skin type and tone.

But it can be frustrating when you try so hard and still don’t get it right, especially when you have grown up with a lot of judgment about appearances

seananmcguire

I am a full-time author of science fiction and fantasy. "Professional" for me is conventions where people dress up like elves.

And I still get treated like I'm better at my job when I'm wearing a visible amount of eye makeup.

I did a book tour where I tested this, varying the amount of makeup I wore for each appearance, and documenting my results. No makeup, people acted like I didn't know what I was doing. Clear mascara/light foundation, they were a little more willing to believe I could read.

Glitter eyeliner and cartoonish eyeshadow? I was suddenly a professional who could do my job like a competent adult.

I lost some faith in humanity and bought several new eyeshadow palettes.

jayalaw

So eyeshadow color is okay for day jobs? My sister warned me to stick with tones that match my skin if wearing eyeshadow

seananmcguire

Again, science fiction author. I don't think you can really extrapolate much from my version of "normal," apart from "if people assume you're a woman, you'll be treated better with makeup on than without," and I hate it.

tattooed-alchemist

Today, the Federal Trade Commission launched a public inquiry to better understand how consumers may have been exposed to false or unsupport

Today, the Federal Trade Commission launched a public inquiry to better understand how consumers may have been exposed to false or unsupported claims about “gender-affirming care”, especially as it relates to minors, and to gauge the harms consumers may be experiencing. In a Request for Information, the FTC encourages members of the public to comment on any issues or concerns that are relevant to the FTC’s consideration of this topic, including by submitting any written data, advertisements, social media posts, disclosures, or empirical research.

The public will have 60 days to submit comments at Regulations.gov, no later than September 26, 2025. Once submitted, comments will be posted to Regulations.gov. Individuals wishing to submit confidential, non-public comments should reference the alternative submission guidelines in the RFI.

goingtiny

the Federal Trade Commission launched a public inquiry to better understand how consumers may have been exposed to false or unsupported claims about “gender-affirming care”, especially as it relates to minors, and to gauge the harms consumers may be experiencing.

Okay, everyone, let them have it with how much bullshit you've heard and how much harm this has done. Share as widely as you can.

sandmandaddy69

oarfjsh

they probably cant love me back in a human or even mammalian sense, but my goldfish with their smooth pea-sized brain have learned to trust that i will make them better when they are sick. i feel like crying about this often

cantabilechaos

Maybe Princess the tarantula never had anything resembling what we as humans know as emotions, but she still came out of her burrow and up to the glass when we’d talk to her and used to stare at the drawing I’d tape to her terrarium. Maybe she couldn’t even comprehend what we were, but she knew we were there to take care of her. And even if she never showed that sort of curiosity or trust we’d still love her.

gay-jesus-probably

Idk if Munchie the praying mantis felt love for me, but I do know he trusted me enough to climb onto my hand when offered and was comfortable with allowing me to carry him places despite me being absolutely massive in comparison to him. So that's close enough in my book.

anarchistmemedistro

lifeafterpsychiatry

Dealing With Executive Dysfunction - A Summary

(The full post with elaborate explanations can be found here.)

Being a responsible adult doesn’t have to mean doing things perfectly - it means doing what you realistically can. Can’t eat 7 fresh veggies and fruits a day? Buy some veggie juice or a smoothie and chug that. Can’t make a proper, healthy meal? Add some extra protein to your instant noodles. Can’t do the dishes? Buy some paper plates. Don’t worry about doing things “the right way”, just do what works.

It’s not cheating to do something the easy way. If there’s an easy or more manageable solution available, use it. Even if some people think it’s lazy. Don’t worry about that. Just focus on finding the methods of doing things which make life easier for you.

Fuck what you’re “supposed” to do. Yes, ideally you shouldn’t run the dishwasher twice, but if cleansing the dishes by hand is not an option and that’s the only way you can get clean dishes, do it anyways! When you’re in a really bad place mentally, fuck the rules. Do what you need to do to get shit done, even if it’s not how you’re supposed to do it.

Do stuff while you’re waiting to do other stuff. We spend a lot of time waiting, so spend the time you’d normally just waste getting some chores done. Collect the trash while your roommate is in the bathroom or wipe down the kitchen counters while you’re making coffee. You can even turn it into a game! How many dishes can you clean before the potatoes are boiling? How much trash can you collect and throw out before your load of laundry is done?

You don’t have to do everything at once. Don’t wait for the day where you’re up for cleaning the entire house cause then you’ll be waiting for ages. You can wipe down one counter and call it a day. You can put away a couple things and leave the rest. You can do one small chore and let that be it. You don’t have to choose between doing everything and doing nothing. Any progress is worthwhile.

Let go of the idea that something has to become a permanent habit to have any value. Doing a certain sport for a month is still healthy even if you then move on to something else. Exploring a new hobby for a while and then moving on to other stuff will always teach you something. What’s good for you today will not necessarily be what’s good for you tomorrow.

Don’t worry about the entire task. Just focus on the first step. Don’t worry about brushing your teeth - just get your toothbrush wet and put tooth paste on it. Don’t worry about writing the essay - just look at the assignment and open a document. Don’t worry about going to the store - just put on your coat and your shoes. Starting a task is a lot easier if you only focus on the step right in front of you.

Imagine that your body is a pet/animal you have to care for. Feed and hydrate yourself, keep yourself and your environment clean, make sure you don’t get under or overstimulated, allow yourself time to rest and relax, find ways to enrich your life (like socializing, media or hobbies) - and do your best to make sure you’re healthy and happy, even though you never actually signed up for being your own zookeeper.

Just because you can’t do it perfectly doesn’t mean you should stop trying. Packing lunch a couple times a week is better than never packing lunches. Journaling or making art once a month is better than never doing anything creative. Exercising every once in a while when you have the energy is better than never exercising. You don’t have to do something every single day for it to be important and helpful.

Put on a professional persona when it’s necessary. Try to separate the anxious and dysfunctional you from the Student You who’s sending that important email or the Client You who’s making that phone call or the Customer You who isn’t afraid to ask for help. It might feel like you’re performing a role, but to be honest, most of us do at times.

When you’re doing chores, act like you’re filming a tutorial. Narrate what you’re doing like someone’s watching. That might make it easier to maintain focus and to keep track of the various steps.

You don’t have to do anything perfectly. Wiping yourself off with some baby wipes beats not doing anything about your personal hygiene. Eating a protein bar beats not eating. Using mouthwash beats neglecting dental hygiene completely. Going for a quick walk beats not moving. It doesn’t have to be perfect to count and make a difference.

Make something you know you have to do the trigger for you to start doing something else. Tell yourself “next time I get up to pee I’ll take out the trash” or “when I get up to get something to drink next I’ll make lunch.” If you HAVE to get up anyways, you might as well.

Assign yourself a deadline. Tell yourself “once this video is over, I’ll do the dishes” or “once this alarm rings, I’ll do my laundry.”

If you struggle to be compassionate towards yourself, try visualizing your future self as a separate person who you like and want to do favors for. Try to think of your future self as a friend who is separate from your current self and do what you can to make their life easier by doing things like preparing that lunch, doing those chores, taking that shower or making fun plans. I know they’ll be grateful.

Make putting stuff back where it belongs so easy that you “might as well.” Organize your home so that placing stuff where it belongs becomes so easy that you might as well just place it there. For many people that means several laundry baskets, many trash cans and easily accessible and very visible storage options. So if you keep finding things in annoying places, make sure they get an easily accessible home!

Look into why you can’t do something. Is something about the chores you’re struggling to do actually causing you sensory distress and is there something you can do to make it more comfortable? If you hate mint toothpaste, get one that tastes like bubble gum. If old food grosses you out, do the dishes with thick gloves on. If showering makes you feel bad about your body, shower with the lights off. The problem isn’t always about self discipline, and in those cases it’s worth looking into why you’re struggling so much to get certain chores done.

Take care of yourself in order to take care of others ( whether pets or people.) Outside motivation is necessary for many people who struggle with executive dysfunction. For many people getting out of bed is easier when you know someone else is relying on you being somewhat functional. So don’t be afraid to find the motivation to take care of yourself in wanting to take care of others.

Make keeping your place clean as easy as possible. Make sure there’s easy one step access to the things you need often. Make sure that the place where a thing is supposed to be is actually within reach of where you use the thing. Make sure everything has a an easily accessible place to go, even if that means several laundry baskets and several trash cans. Examine what’s messing up your place and find a home for it where you’re likely to actually place it on a regular basis.

Choose one very specific thing to work on - like the bathroom sink or the oven or your desk. If you suffer from executive dysfunction you’ll likely be distracted, but having one specific focus point you can keep returning to will mean that in between getting distracted, you can return to your chosen project and get some shit done.

When something feels overwhelming, tell yourself to “just show up” and that you “won’t have to stay the whole time if it’s horrible.” Cause odds are that once you’ve pushed past your initial mental block, you’re likely to stay and finish what you started.

If you really can’t do something, accept your limits and find a different method. Don’t keep trying to push through via willpower alone. If you need outside accountability to get your shit done, find someone who can hold you accountable. If you know you can’t remember the stuff you’re supposed to remember, make sure to always write things down. If you keep forgetting your meds, set a daily alarm. Don’t keep expecting yourself to be able to do things you always struggle with.

Make your chores into a game. Assign certain chores certain points and make a list of fun rewards you can have once you’ve earned a certain amount of points through doing chores.

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly. Any amount of effort is better than none, so on days where you can’t do something well, do it anyways! Any amount of progress beats not getting started.

Find a momentum and use it to do that thing you’ve been struggling to start doing. You can’t get yourself together to shower? Well, find something you CAN do - and once you’re already doing something, you might be able to channel said energy into showering.

Take it one step at a time. I know a shower sounds overwhelming, but can you take your clothes off? If yes, can you turn on the shower? If yes, can you stand under the stream? Look who just tricked themselves into doing the thing by breaking it down into manageable chunks!

Don’t just break a task into smaller steps - break it into steps so small you can’t possible get overwhelmed and fuck up. “Clean my room” is far too vague - but “set a timer and collect all the trash you can in 10 minutes” is actually manageable and so is “move all dirty dishes to the kitchen” or “remove and/or sort all clothes laying on the floor.”

Don’t worry about how most people do things - worry about what works for YOU. You constantly lose your key? Make ten copies. You overlook your post it notes? Put something with the important reminder on it in front of the door. Got laundry and trash all over the floor? Get more laundry baskets/trash cans. Coping with executive dysfunction is not about learning to do things the neurotypical way, it’s about finding strategies which actually work for you.

When you’re overwhelmed and struggling, find the easiest and fastest way to get rid of some of the distress. Eat if you’re hungry, sleep if you’re tired, pee if you have to, get that thing you’ve been postponing done if you can. The more stressors you can remove, the better - and it’s okay to start with the smaller ones!

Don’t worry about aesthetics. When you struggle with executive dysfunction, maintaining a picture perfect home is probably unrealistic. So drop that dream and focus on making your space practical and functional. Remove the doors of your kitchen cabinets and closets if that will actually make you put stuff away. Get a paper shredder and a mail sorting station if you got mail and advertisements everywhere. Buy all your socks in one color if you struggle to pair them. There are many ways to make your environment more functional. Explore them instead of just trying and failing to make your home look nice.

Get started on your next task before you take your break. Write that first sentence, make that first sketch, get the vacuum cleaner out of the closet or collect the dishes for washing and THEN have your break. Many people with executive dysfunction struggle to start tasks, so for most of us it’s easier to continue something we’ve already started working on than to begin from scratch.

gallusrostromegalus

Lok’Tar Ogar

(As usual, all the names have been changed to protect people’s privacy. LONG POST so press “J” to skip or start scrolling because I can’t make cuts work for Moblie, sorry.)

Back in 2004 I went to a cousin’s wedding and my mom got into Fandom.

Ruth, my Mom’s-college-roommate’s-daughter was getting married to a man of mixed reputability in what had been for several months had been the primary sitcom of the family- mushroom vs. champagne draperies, the bride wanted a small ceremony and the mother of the groom wanted to invite every business contact she had, and then there was the problem of the Rabbis- Ruth’s rabbi had mostly retired but had promised to marry her in her youth, David’s had promised the same and the current Rabbi of Ruth’s synagogue wanted in too, so they agreed to be married by all three Rabbis. Furthermore, any Jewish wedding requires a Chuppah- a canopy under which the ceremony takes place. Mom agreed to make one for Ruth and David’s wedding, (MUSHROOM-colored of course, not champagne) and escort it there personally as we were attending the ceremonies.

Alas, the wedding was in Columbus, a terrible place.

Southeast Ohio is generally a rather nice place- on the far northern end of the appalachia it has lovely rolling hills of deep hardwood forests, a spectacular zoo and many other things a scientifically inclined teenager might enjoy but I was not going to those, I was going to a Wedding, where I had been guilted into being a flower girl on account of being the youngest available cousin, along with my sister. I spent most of the drive from Colorado in a state of spectacular teenage misery, which was almost entirely obliterated when we got to the hotel.

The guests of the Hotel consisted thusly:

My family (4)

A small herd of fancy-suited businessmen there for some obscure finance meeting (30ish)

A jolly and boisterous horde of Gamers, Cosplayers, Geeks and Freaks present for the World Of Warcraft convention immediately across the street (several hundred)

I didn’t actually know a damn thing about WoW, other than it was something my geekier friends in middle school played, and that it had elves with ridiculous eyebrows, but I know how to make friends with the kind of people who wear nothing but bodypaint and prosthetic ears in public and started talking to the gang of Blood Elves at the breakfast bar while the businessmen huddled together at their table like a group of musk oxen forming up against a pack of wolves.

Eventually mom wandered over and joined in the conversation- after years of making Halloween costumes, stage props, miscellaneous fabric constructions like the Chuppah and so forth, she’d gained an extensive knowledge of what fiber can be made to do, but wanted to know what marvelous things these people were doing with plastics. She hit it off particularly well with the Troll over his teeth, and they decided to confide in her.

“Hey, here’s a fun thing to do-” Said the blood elf, before trotting over to the edge of the mezzanine overlooking the lobby.

“LOK’TAR OGAR!” she bellowed as loudly as her tiny, corseted frame could manage. “FOR THE HORDE!!!” Roared back several dozen Warcrafters, shaking their con-safe weaponry and causing several of the businessmen to duck for cover.

“Yeah, if you need anything, just yell that.” she nodded, before we parted ways.

Later that night, Mom slipped in the shower and sprained her ankle, which resulted in a moderately panicked but ultimately boring visit to a clinic to get it X-ray’d and acquire a wheelchair. The next morning, however, we had to proceed to the wedding, and discovered that the elevator was out of service.

A Chuppah, if you’re not familiar with one, is roughly the same dimensions and weight as those pop-up tents they use at gentrified outdoor craft fairs, or about 9 feet long and close to 60lbs when folded up. This one was closer to 100 once all the memorial images and sentimental fabrics and special tent poles had been added on. Mom was stuck in the wheelchair, Dad was in a state of near panic at Mom being injured and also having to be somewhere On Time, and my sister and I were liquefying in the summer heat and the bride-mandated mushroom-colored seven goddamn layers of itchy-ass tulle flower girl dresses, barely able to lift the chuppah between us.

In short stairs were not happening and three quarters of us were about to riot but Mom is definitely the smart person in the family because she remembered-

“LOK’TAR OGAR!!”

“FOR THE HORDE!!”

“I NEED SOME HELP!”

Instantly the cosplayers from the night before were there, along with a dozen more. Two beefy trolls carried Mom down the stairs and clean out to the parking garage, someone else got the chuppah, and the Blood elf managed to get concierge to bring our car around to the curb with our destination already programmed into the (VERY PRIMITIVE) gps. I thought my dad was going to cry with relief.

“So [Gallus].” Mom asked me on the way to the wedding. “People who like videogames. Do they all have Magic Words?”

“Yeah most of them have some kind of phrase like ‘may the force be with you’ or ‘live long and prosper’. Why?”

She just nodded, storing that fact away for later.

The wedding turned out to be an event in and of itself- The mother of the bride fainted when they kissed, the rabbis nearly got into a fistfight, the mother of the groom fell off the chair and needed stitches, uncle Larry tore his pants on the dance floor then elected to remove them and keep dancing- and I managed to forget entirely about Mom’s question.

Last year, we were doing theater set-in at the same time the local theater and culture complex was hosting the small city convention. It was July, hotter than satan’s own asshole, and the stage pieces were too large for both of our 5’2-and-under asses to move.

I came back out from wresting a Magic tree into the complex to find mom squinting calculatingly at a group of Marvel cosplayers.

“What are their Magic Words?”

“Huh?”

“The words you say when you want to summon them- ‘Use the Force’ or something?”

I blinked a few times, as my heat stroke-addled brain translated that. “…Avengers Assemble?”

“HEY AVENGERS!” Hollered Mom. “ASSEMBLE!!”

INSTANTLY, an Iron Man and three Captains America sprinted over.

“What can we do Ma’am?” asked one of the captains, sticking rigorously to character.

“We need help moving these set pieces in and you have muscles.” she explained, and without question everyone pitched in to move a magical forest, the front half of a castle and a dragon’s cave into the Children’s Theater backstage. The Iron Man politely answered questions about painting metallics on Cardboard for her and all three Captains America lines up and saluted her upon emptying the truck.

“You’re dangerous.” I teased her as they returned to Con.

“Tell me more Magic Words- I need that tall one in purple to help with the lights.” she said, gesturing to a Waluigi that was about to become familiar with the Children’s Theater Lighting System.

_________________________________

(If you enjoyed this story, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon where you can pre-order my upcoming Family Lore illustrated Anthology. Thank you.)

Can’t stop the signal 💓

https://youtu.be/ZOvHC5pOjNg

#antifascist #cant stop the signal #viva la revolution #the revolution is now #rise up

fuck-customers

sataniccapitalist

Same bullshit, different year

fozmeadows

Pointedly, the continuous throughline here is one of either direct improvements to, or continuing efforts to improve, working conditions and labour regulation, which have occurred in parallel to the rise of social safety nets. While I have no doubt that people in power complaining about the apparently lacking work ethic of those they own employ is as old as human civilization, the specific wording in the above examples is telling.

In the earliest example from 1894, the writer laments that "nobody wants to work these hard times," which acknowledges that difficult circumstances are material to the issue, while in 1905, the complaint that "none want to work for [?] wages" appears to similarly stem from a specific situation. This changes in 1916, when the quoted speaker opines that "the reason for food scarcity is that nobody wants to work as hard as they used to," (my emphasis); wording which implies an across the board decline in both the ethos of workers and the quality of their labour, if only in the realm of agriculture. (Which, if we consider what specific events were occurring in 1916 that might, perhaps, have had a material impact on food production, is certainly A Choice.)

But then, in the postwar world of 1922, this claim is expanded into "nobody wants to work any more unless they can - [redacted]," where the missing qualifier most likely represents some benefit or concession to the worker. And the presence of that qualifier matters, even when missing from the sample text, because it's an acknowledgement, however grudging, that the quality of work might be in some way dependent on how workers are treated, or that a desire to work might therefore be informed by that treatment (or lack thereof).

Which brings us to 1937, where - at least in terms of the provided examples - we get the first unqualified use of the hallmark phrase: the claim that "nobody wants to work any more," presented as a full and complete sentence. And what's particularly noteworthy about the date here is that 1938 is when the United States introduced the 40-hour, 5 day work week: meaning that, in 1937, worker mobilization, unionisation and protest to achieve this goal was in full swing. Can I be 100% certain, on the basis of this excerpt alone, that this quote was authored in response to the lobbying for the same basic working hours that we now consider standard? No, I can't - but it does seem highly likely.

In 1940, an identical assertion - "nobody wants to work anymore" - is further contextualised by an additional complaint: that "everybody is on relief or a pension." Assuming that this quote comes from an American source, this is particularly relevant as a framing, as 1933-1938 marked the institution of F.D.R's New Deal policies, many of which formed the backbone of America's social safety net. In other words: by this point, people were no longer universally being forced to work through injury, extreme poverty and in old age, but were instead provided a basic level of dignity and financial security. That someone was openly objecting to this in 1940 - which is to say, a year into WWII - is also, as with their spiritual predecessor in 1916, certainly A Choice.

By 1952, we're back into postwar prosperity, and while the complaint remains the same, it's now given a new contextual explanation: that "everybody was getting too darn lazy." Which is pretty much what every example from that point on, spanning a period of seventy years, either implies or says outright: that people don't want to work now, not because conditions are bad or times are hard or because there's a problem with wages, but because, with the success of social safety nets, they're presumed to no longer have a work ethic; because this new generation, whoever that happens to be in context, is spoiled.

But if you track the social and political changes that are happening in that timeframe, what we're really seeing is successive generations of employers, powerbrokers and older people reacting negatively to the ongoing fight for better working conditions by labourers, subordinates and young people. Each generation is broadly arguing that whatever conditions were normative when they first entered the workforce should continue unchanged; while those beneath them, either in response to legal reforms or the widening disconnect between what's expected of them vs what they're actually getting relative to predecessors in the same roles, are pushing for something better. Every generation of employers is thus simultaneously the beneficiary of those who came before and the bane of those who come after, wanting good conditions for themselves when they were coming up as workers, but reluctant to offer similar improvements to workers once the boot is on the other foot.

Which brings us to the present moment, where the endgame of late-stage capitalism in America is working hard to try and strip away all those previous, hard-won worker protections and social safety nets, the better to squeeze as much labour from workers as possible while outlaying the bare minimum level of recompense. Because the anymore in nobody wants to work anymore is the key to it hidden in plain sight: because once upon a time, work wasn't optional. Once upon a time, there weren't such things as parental leave and sick leave, holidays and weekends, overtime pay and worker protections, OSHA and a legal minimum wage, pensions and worker's comp, unemployment payments and food stamps.

Once upon a time, unless you were born wealthy, you either worked or you fucking died, and in many cases died anyway, because your lungs seized up from the coal dust or you contracted sepsis when your hand was crushed in a machine or one of a thousand other horrors, because capitalism does not give a shit about quality of life. It only cares about Number Go Up, and without successive governments around to browbeat its masters into at least pretending to give a shit - without legislation to force an easement on their grinding consumption of material resources and human lives - they simply will not do those things, because treating workers as people cuts in to profits. And all those legal protections that exist to stop companies from saving a few bucks at the expense of polluting the water table, poisoning their customers, maiming underage employees or otherwise causing harm? Those laws are what Trump is actively rolling back. Because he doesn't give a single, solitary shit about you, or anyone like you. He cares about his bank account, and he cares about Number Go Up, even when the shit he's doing will frequently result in Number Go Down, because he's a selfish amoral jackass who doesn't know what the fuck he's doing a solid 85% of the time.

So, yeah. It's not that nobody wants to work anymore. It's that employers and corporations resent being made to behave as though employees, customers and the environment have a greater intrinsic value than Number Go Up.

nightmarethrenody

The results of capitalism are truly horrific.

Look at the stark cruelty implied in the phrase "earn a living." We have to keep proving our right to exist, every day, and the worth of our lives is measured in money. We even say, explicitly, that so-and-so is "worth x dollars a year"!

People who don't work are called lazy and undeserving, as if labor was a virtue in itself and not a means to an end (and yet the rich are seldom castigated for not having jobs, being somehow assumed to have "earned" any money they have). We produce plentiful food, but people still starve because corporations would rather throw it away than give it away, out of fear it would undercut their profits. Everyone and everything is seen only as something to extract value from.

An enormous amount of work is constantly being done that is, at best, completely pointless — if not actively harmful. Companies employ people to design and manufacture products that no-one wants or needs, employ advertisers to try to manipulate people into wanting them, and then when the fad is over, the excess stock is dumped in a landfill as the CEO ambles off with a bag of cash (often while declaring bankruptcy). All that effort for a net total of some environmental damage and a lot of annoying ads. Unless your goal is to make rich people richer, if would be much more efficient to just hand all the employees some money and be done with it. Society demands you have a job to prove you deserve to continue existing, but doesn't seem to care much about if your work actually accomplishes anything.

All the world's resources have been hoarded by few greedy bastards, and we get called "entitled" for asking them to leave us a little bit to keep ourselves alive. When they do toss us scraps, they expect us to thank them for "giving us jobs" which help make them even richer, while making the world worse for everyone else. If we refuse their terms, they complain — because they feel entitled to our labor.

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism because we are enmeshed in a system that will kill us for disobedience. It will do so quietly and softly, and will not even notice. We live by small margins, and so we are killed by margins, suffocating to death under the bloated weight of capitalism's cancerous greed.

We need social safety nets like healthcare, housing, food stamps, and universal basic income, because they will give us a little room to breathe. They can give us the power to say no to exploitative working conditions and unethical employers without being afraid of starvation. The rich rely on this implicit threat of death to coerce us into driving the engine of capitalism, even as it crushes us; if we can choose not to be their tools, they are disarmed. This is the point of labor unions — and if universal basic income is made truly universal, there will be no-one desperate enough to be hired as scabs.

At this point, someone always asks, "If no-one has to work, how will anything get done?" I've already mentioned how we're doing so much more work than we need to be, thanks to our capitalist overlords teaming up with the Protestant Work Ethic to insist on us being indiscriminately and pointlessly productive. I think that if people weren't being constantly overworked and burnt out from trying to keep own their heads above water, plenty of them would use their time and energy to help other people. The point of society is to look out for each other.

If you don't think people will ever do any work if they don't have to, all you're really saying is that you can't conceive of a society functioning without forced labor.

homunculus-argument

Random linguistic worldbuilding: A language with six sets of pronouns, which are set by one's current state of existence. There's a separate pronoun for people who are alive, people who are dead, and potential future people who are yet to be born, and the ambiguous ones of "may or may not be alive or aleady dead", "may or may not have even been born yet", and the ultimate general/ambiguous all-covering one that covers all ambiguous states.

The culture has a specific defined term for that tragic span of time when a widow keeps accidentally referring to their spouse with living pronouns. New parents-to-be dropping the happy surprise news of a pregnancy by referring to their future child with the "is yet to be born" pronoun instead of a more ambiguous one and waiting for the "wait what did you just say?" reactions.

Someone jokingly referring to themselves with the dead person pronouns just to highlight how horrible their current hangover is. A notorious aspiring ladies' man who keeps trying to pursue women in their 20s despite of approaching middle age fails to notice the insult when someone asks him when he's planning to get married, and uses the pronoun that implies that his ideal future bride may not even be born yet.

A mother whose young adult child just moved away from home for the first time, who continues to dramatically refer to their child with "may or may not be already dead" until the aforementioned child replies to her on facebook like "ma stop telling people I'm dead" and having her respond with "well how could I possibly know that when you don't even write to us? >:,C"

homunculus-argument

@witchofanguish it is also used in poetry and plays, ghosts talk like that. Imagine being in a folk story, staying overnight in an abandoned cabin and in the middle of the night there's a knock on the door and a bellowing voice going

LET ME IN.

and from the "me" alone you know that whoever is out there is not one among the living.

rotationalsymmetry

ok but also: imagine the mysterious stranger implying that they don't know whether they themselves are alive or dead.

Ghost stories where the characters don't know they're ghosts and keep referring to themselves by living pronouns, where the audience doesn't know they're dead for most of the story. Ghosts that signal that they're ready to move on by using I'm-dead pronouns.

gingersnapwolves

So today I want to talk about puberty blockers for transgender kids, because despite being cisgender, this is a subject I’m actually well-versed in. Specifically, I want to talk about how far backwards things have gone.

This story starts almost 20 years ago, and it’s kind of long, but I think it’s important to give you the full history. At the time, I was working as an administrative assistant for a pediatric endocrinologist in a red state. Not a deep deep red state like Alabama, we had a little bit of a purple trend, but still very much red. (I don’t want to say the state at the risk of doxxing myself.) And I took a phone call from a woman who said, “My son is transgender. Does your doctor do hormone therapy?”

I said, “Good question! Let me find out.”

I went into the back and found the doctor playing Solitaire on his computer and said, “Do you do hormone therapy for transgender kids?” It had literally never come up before. He had opened his practice there in the early 2000s. This was roughly 2006, and the first time someone asked. Without looking up from his game of Solitaire, the doctor said, “I’ve never done it before, but I know how it works, so sure.”

I got back on the phone and told the mom, who was overjoyed, and scheduled an appointment for her son. He was the first transgender child we treated with puberty blockers. But not, by far, the first child we treated with puberty blockers, period. Because puberty blockers are used very commonly for children with precocious puberty (early-onset puberty). I would say about twenty percent of the kids our doctor treated were for precocious puberty and were on puberty blockers. They have been well studied and are widely used, safe, and effective.

Well. It turned out, the doctor I worked for was the only doctor in the state who was willing to do this. And word spread pretty fast in the tight-knit community of ‘parents of transgender children in a red state’. We started seeing more kids. A better drug came out. We saw some kids who were at the age where they were past puberty, and prescribed them estrogen or testosterone. Our doctor became, I’m fairly sure, a small folk hero to this community.

Insurance coverage was a struggle. I remember copying articles and pages out of the Endocrine Society Manual to submit with prior authorization requests for the medications. Insurance coverage was a struggle for a lot of what we did, though. Growth hormone for kids with severe idiopathic short stature. Insulin pumps, which weren’t as common at the time, and then continuous glucose monitoring, when that came out. Insurance struggles were just part and parcel of the job.

I remember vividly when CVS Caremark, a pharmaceutical management company, changed their criteria and included gender dysphoria as a covered diagnosis for puberty blockers. I thought they had put the option on the questionnaire to trigger an automatic denial. But no - it triggered an approval. Medicaid started to cover it. I got so good at getting approvals with my by then tidy packet of articles and documentation that I actually had people in other states calling me to see what I was submitting (the pharmaceutical rep gave them my number because they wanted more people on their drug, which, shady, but sure. He did ask me if it was okay first).

And here’s the key point of this story:

At no point, during any of this, did it ever even occur to any of us that we might have to worry about whether or not what we were doing was legal.

It just never even came up. It was the medically recommended treatment so we did it. And seeing what’s happening in the UK and certain states in America is both terrifying and genuinely shocking to me, as someone who did this for almost fifteen years, without ever even wondering about the legality of it.

The doctor retired some years ago, at which point there were two other doctors in the state who were willing to prescribe the medications for transgender kids. I truly think that he would still be working if nobody else had been willing to take those kids on as patients. He was, by the way, a white cisgender heterosexual Boomer. I remember when he was introduced to the concept of ‘genderfluid’ because one of our patients on HRT wanted to go off. He said ‘that’s so interesting!’ and immediately went to Google to learn more about it.

I watched these kids transform. I saw them come into the office the first time, sometimes anxious and uncertain, sometimes sullen and angry. I saw them come in the subsequent times, once they were on hormone therapy, how they gradually became happy and confident in themselves. I saw the smiles on their faces when I gave them a gender marker letter for the DMV. I heard them cheer when I called to tell them I’d gotten HRT approved by insurance and we were calling in a prescription. It was honestly amazing and I will always consider the work I did in that red state with those kids to be something I am incredibly proud of. I was honored to be a part of it.

When I see all this transgender backlash, it’s horrifying, because it was well on the way to become standard and accepted treatment. Insurances started to cover it. Other doctors were learning to prescribe it. And now … it’s fucking illegal? Like what the actual fuck. We have gone so far backwards that it makes me want to cry. I don’t know how to stop this slide. But I wrote this so people would understand exactly how steep the slide is.

star-anise

So “queer” isn’t just an identity that’s broadly inclusive because, I don’t know, we like big parties. There’s actually an underlying ethic, a queer theory, that has political implications.

Its name reclaims a slur because the point is to say, “I am different, but that’s not a bad thing.” The queer movement is about upholding the right of all people to deviate from an oppressive cisgender, heterosexual, patriarchal norm. Broadening the spectrum of acceptable diversity; questioning and dismantling the social pressures that police and punish deviance. Changing not just our own lives, but how our entire society thinks about sex and gender.

That’s why “queer” embraces so many different groups. It’s not trying to erase their differences, but to try to coherently understand the complex overlapping pressures that affect each of them, and to extend our reach beyond the LGBT+ community. It’s about the right of lesbians to live without men and the right of trans and nonbinary people to be who they are, the right of asexuals to define for themselves what’s significant in their lives, the right of straight men to be vulnerable and emotional and nonviolent. When the great queering project is done, you will see the changes everywhere, not just in small LGBT+ enclaves.

It’s recognizing that something that harms or oppresses one of us is pretty likely to harm all of us, so we all benefit from taking it down together.

star-anise

For everyone who’s like “Whoa, I was with you until you threw straight men in there”:

Homophobia is a huge part of how all men are policed. If a man isn’t strong, tough, aggressive, and dominant? He gets called gay. So this isn’t “Soft straight men are totally LGBT+ and belong in your gay support group!” but it is “Part of the work of disassembling homophobia is changing how it affects straight men.”

It’s the same way that men aren’t the primary intended beneficiaries of feminism, but part of the work of feminism is addressing and changing toxic masculinity. If you’re effective enough at changing the system, you change it for everyone.

rabbitindisguise

Also getting really tired of that criticism of any activism that dares talk about how it might benefit Straight™ men

Maybe straight men not being as miserable … shouldn’t be an automatic negative, especially not if the whole idea before that addition was to benefit marginalized groups?

Also it’s not just homophobia, it’s toxic masculinity which is the manifestation of hating women so much it impacts their own gender, and also transphobia and transmisogyny, where any deviation from the gender assigned at birth is heavily policed with violence

donna-dot-paella

I really disagree here, and not because I don’t think straight men should have more occasions to be vulnerable and emotional, but because they as a group benefit from the oppression of everyone else

I get it, of course they would in some ways know some positive changes in a less patriarchal/heteronormative society - but maybe let’s not forget who patriarchal/heteronormative society benefits to? Because like. A straight man who is vulnerable and softspoken won’t be as oppressed as a gay man, no matter said gay man’s personality!

I don’t think anybody thinks it’s a good thing straight men are miserable but like are they really? are they miserable? Compared to everyone else?

They’re the norm the queer movement deviates from!

star-anise

Do they? Broadly, as a class? Is every single straight cis man benefiting from privilege more than every single gay cis man?

I think that men are promised the rewards of privilege. They are told that being homophobic and straight will make them fundamentally better than gay men. They are told that being male and masculine will make them fundamentally better than women. And yes, the people reaping the rewards are generally straight cis men.

But it’s like a pyramid scheme: Every member, when they join, is promised the INCREDIBLE REWARDS they could receive, if they only get a few people to join at a lower level than them! And some members ARE making absolute bank. But when you look at the balance sheet, you see that 90% of active members are earning absolutely no money, and meanwhile the top 1% are fucking millionaires.

I think that, yes, if you look into the lived experiences of men in our culture, masculinity is making them actively miserable. There’s a reason men are, on average, more depressed, more isolated, more violent, and more likely to die by suicide. “Toxic masculinity” wasn’t a term coined to talk about women’s experiences.

The straight-cis-men-always-win argument especially falls to pieces once you look outside the realm of sex and gender–there’s no arguing that things like class, money, race, immigration status, incarceration, disability, and mental health don’t also have huge impacts on peoples’ quality of life. There are a lot of ways queer people can have, comparatively, a lot of privilege compared to straight cis men.

So really, does it benefit us, as a group, to outcast and demonize groups of people who are fighting the same forces as us? Do we want to pit large swathes of the population against each other and stage the Oppression Olympics endlessly? Or do we want to recognize that it’s probably 99% of the population getting fucked over by the massively powerful people at the top and doing something about that?

I want to recruit straight cis men to be my allies, not typecast them as my enemies because I think that homophobia is the only kind of evil in the world.

just-a-zuki

When I said, “cops are oppressed under capitalism,” this is the kind of shit I mean. Oppressor/victim isn’t binary. I particularly like this ‘pyramid scheme’ conception of privilege.

star-anise

Particularly because pyramid schemes rely on an endless chain of recruitment. The way to move slightly up the ladder is to have people under you. Just slide into a higher role…

Be a shift manager. Get promoted to Corporal. Move from floor staff to the sales desk. Make it onto the police force. Put all your effort into being the best little cog in the whole machine. Someday it will pay off. Someday you’ll move up high enough in the ranks. Oh, you’re still poor? Work harder. Get a better job.

Be a man. Catcall women. Get dates. Have a girlfriend. Have children. Produce an entire family of people who have to respect you as its patriarch! Oh, that’s not happening? You must not be manly enough.

It’s similar to the way colonialism works, where the children of one conquered country are used to fill the ranks of the army that invades the next one, because when colonialism has destroyed your country, being your oppressor’s footsoldier is one of the last viable careers left.

The biggest lie the system sells is that if you cooperate well enough, you’ll get to run the show someday. We have to have the wit and awareness to understand that the entire system is rigged, and we need to take apart the systems that dominate and control people, instead of just replacing the people on top.

Which is part of why I get very nervous about straight-white-cis-abled-man bashing. A lot of people don’t sound like they want people to not be treated badly based on demographic characteristics they have no control over; they just want to be the people wielding the whips.

alarajrogers

The other thing to consider is that straight-man stereotypical, toxic behavior is actually profoundly unnatural and we should remember that it is. It is heavily enforced by men on other men, with some participation by some straight women, because that is the only way it can even exist.

Look at straight women, gay women, gay men. What’s one thing they all have in common? They are all free to look up to the person they love. Not to put them on a pedestal, but to think of them as a leader. To follow that person when they have good ideas, to obey them when it seems like the right thing to do. To respect them and consider their opinions vitally important.

Now look at what most straight men do. Women are honored for their attractiveness and for caretaker traits, but a good portion of the time, straight men do not respect the opinions of the women they love, because they have been taught that a Real Man doesn’t listen to a woman’s opinions. They don’t look up to women they love. They don’t follow them.

This is not normal. Normal human behavior is what is evidenced by everyone who is not a straight man and not under enormous pressure to behave as if the people they’re biologically compelled to love and want sex with are inferior, subhuman beings. Love is supposed to make you respect and honor and listen to the person you love. It’s supposed to make equal partnerships. because when you take the pressure off to do something else, that’s what people do.

Homophobia is, in part, straight men reacting violently to the notion that a man can still be male, and human, and have all the same rights as another man, if he doesn’t religiously police his own behavior to be sufficiently misogynistic. Doing “feminine” things – which includes loving another man – has to make a man subhuman, just like women, because if it didn’t, then straight men have everything to gain by treating women well. Contrary to what the NiceGuys whine, women really do prefer men who respect them and honor their opinion. If there were a lot of men who did that, the men who don’t wouldn’t be able to get laid, because natural competition… the only reason women settle for men who don’t respect them is that that’s the only kind of men they know.

In order to maintain male privilege, straight men must attack any man who seems sympathetic to women – including fellow straight men who actually respect women, gay men, trans women (who they see as being feminine men), and anyone who challenges the binary. If they do not do so, then natural behavior – respect the person you love – reasserts, and also, men who respect women and don’t exercise privilege over them get women more easily, and cultural evolution destroys male privilege. So the stakes are high, but in order to keep their privilege, they have to practice subtractive masculinity – a component of toxic masculinity that says “anything that women do is feminine and men can’t do it.”

Keeping a clean house? Feminine. Caring about how other people feel? Feminine. Eating enough vegetables to be healthy? Feminine. Having a close relationship with friends you can be emotionally open with? Feminine. Loving pets, especially cats? Feminine. Wiping your own ass? Feminine. (Seriously, I’ve seen men argue that wiping their butts properly is “gay”.)

As “being good in school” becomes defined as a thing women do and therefore feminine, men have to start making themselves deliberately into idiots. As “reading” becomes defined as a thing women do, men have to reject it. There are seriously forces at work in our culture trying to turn men into apes because women were allowed to do all the things that define us as human, and now men can’t do them… if they participate in toxic masculinity.

Straight men would be infinitely better off if they just gave up the privilege and accepted being equals. And everyone else would be better off too. Just because straight men would benefit from an end to toxic masculinity doesn’t make it a bad idea.

Just a goth outfit dump 😍

flightsofwonder

being an adult is just saying to yourself “this is the weekend i’ll clean my [x]” and then proceeding to not do that because it’s the weekend and you deserve to relax, goddamnit

flightsofwonder

why does this have 85K notes

randomslasher

because we reblogged it instead of cleaning our [x]

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