banana peppers

Madwoman materialistic feminism ✦ LGBTQ people + matters, especially lesbianism + all women-loving women ✦ spiders ✦ antipsychiatry (I support self-undiagnosis) ✦ Ⓥ veganism ✦ trips to the whine cellar ✦ fun long text posts for fun people ✦ butch style sideblog: @a-butchs-style ➨ 🎂 36/⚢ lesbian/🗺️ USA ➨ 🗨️ she/her/hers/herself ➨ for people of color: I am white ✦ for trans women + TMA nonbinary people: I am a cis woman

[bananapeppers]

Happy New Year!

2025 in review: curb scavenging, dumpster diving, and other trash finds

April:

June:

Wing-back Chesterfield Queen Anne–style chair in velvet with wood legs

👆 One of the legs was wobbly, and the shelf was missing two support pegs. I found a set of shelf support pegs in a broken shelving unit the next day, and I repaired the wobbly leg.

July:

👆 I replaced the broken side-release plastic buckles at the bottom of the front flap with steel “D” ring buckles.

August:

Matching pair of freestanding cabinet shelves in oil-rubbed bronze

12-ounce bag of whole-bean coffee

👆 My partner and I use this as pantry shelving.

September:

👆 I changed the buttons to vintage resin buttons in black/transparent moderate-blue swirl.

👆 Our previous dishpan broke about ten days later, so the timing was perfect.

👆 In October I found a set of compatible caster wheels and made this wheeled. More pantry storage.

👆 This I gave to a friend whose fursona is an arctic fox.

October:

👆 Missing scoop. I had been wanting to try the XL size for our cats! They love it.

Medium-duty shelving rack with metal frame, wood-laminate shelves, and caster wheels, from an eatery that went out of business 👈 My partner and I brought this home together. She immediately decluttered our hallway closet and reorganized it using the shelving rack. (I cleaned the shelving rack and handled donations and trash.)

Wheatgrass powder

5 cans of diet black cherry soda

👆 Photo of similar item. I constructed a freestanding shelving unit at the curb using parts from a larger closet storage system and added new rubber ferrules for furniture legs.

November:

👆 This I gave to a neighbor.

👆 The Chanukkah menorah looked beautiful on this.

December:

👆 These I gave to my partner.

👆 These I gave to a neighbor.

A ceramic teapot in white and a sports fandom mug featuring a popular team that I’m not a fan of 👈 These I gave to neighbors.

Items made in part of leatherized animal skin under read more:

👆 I installed new flat shoelaces in yellowish white.

[bananapeppers]

I'm floppy with exhaustion! I have accomplished a lot recently. some shareable notes:

- distro'd a WHO Essential Medicine.

- (vegan and food allergy friendly) Halloween. @auntbutch and I had so much fun giving treats and met some cool trick-or-treaters! my favorite was the octopus, whose costume was realistically designed and velvety!

- day after Halloween: packed remaining treats + ICE watch flyers into snack bags, dropped them off @ little free libraries and little free pantries.

- updated the map that I created of little free pantries in my area, which involved confirming location, signage, usage by visiting them. contributed some foods to them.

- searching curbside giveaways and trash, finding many useful items including a baby bathtub, cleaning and disinfecting it, and then giving it away to a parent of a baby who needs it. also ran into a former coworker, whom I learned has a new baby, and offered the baby bathtub to my former coworker 1st. (turned out they had one already.) it was a good interaction; I'm glad that we ran into each other and that I reached out later.

- also found a beautiful rectangular hammered-stainless-steel serving tray in a trash bin, which type of tray @auntbutch and I had just discussed wanting.

- dumpster-diving at ALDI (renowned at least locally for trashing tons of good fresh produce), finding green cabbage (one of my favorite vegetables) and zucchinis (one of @auntbutch's favorite vegetables) for her and myself.

- @auntbutch got a new walking cane. I cleaned and lubricated her previous cane for giving away. it was a curb find!, and while the rubber ferrule was worn down, the rest of the cane was still in good condition. I went to a pharmacy to buy a new rubber ferrule. now the cane is ready for its next person.

[schoolhater]

pinkwashing from zionists is well known by this point and so is the weaponization of antiblackness among arabs to dissuade black people (particularly americans) from supporting palestinian liberation.

in response, however, is a similar tokenization of queer and black palestinians in passing mentions of centuries old afro-palestinian communities, screenshots from queeringthemap, or reposts of cishet gazans being nice to western queer activists. it's as if there mere image of these communities and moments of solidarity is supposed to erase the real ways black and queer gazans are marginalized, or worse, "prove" that palestinians deserve to live because they aren't bigoted.

lost in the discussion of hypothetical genocide victims' personal bigotry are the lives of the real victims themselves. we have to realize that we've been centering cishet and nonblack gazans in our discourse and this has bled into our solidarity efforts.

in the pity economy (coined by yazan mohammed), black people are not worthy of compassion, so people scroll by when black gazans ask for donations. i swear i have never seen a single black gazan gofundme account without at least one post talking about how nobody wants to donate to them because of their race.

this is not a new thing either. we just passed the 20th anniversary of hurricane katrina where displaced black people were demonized and prevented from receiving aid, and even now black fundraisers on tumblr frequently go months without a donation even as white people (and ao3) double and triple their donation goals.

in the pity economy, queer people in the global south cannot even participate. there is a certain mold of a pitiable queer person on the internet, and it's usually a white trans midwesterner. it's not a queer palestinian of any kind.

westerners don't even know how to conceptualize a queer person of color outside of hypotheticals. queerness itself is still seen as a western concept, so the existence of queer gazans frustrates the pitiable image of themselves gazans otherwise have to advertise online in order to survive.

people shouldn't have to deal with this shit online just to avoid death.

don't just talk about black and queer palestinians - donate to them!

bridge of solidarity, a project started by an 18 year old poet that has gained popularity for its anti-capitalist refusal to participate in the pity economy, sees through the bullshit. it recently started a dedicated fund for black and queer gazans to receive a monthly stipend. this is going to be huge for queer people who cannot out themselves on the internet and for black families who are being systemically ignored, even by the broader palestine solidarity movement.

if you want to contribute to this fund, DM @bridge.of.solidarity on instagram and tell them you specifically want to support queer and black community members. as of right now, they are 10% of the way to their $22,000 goal for this project.

to fund their projects in general, donate here. ("what's chuffed?")

[neptunerings]

If you want to help a Black Palestinian, please consider donating to Omar! He and his family are in Ghazzah and they need to raise funds to purchase food and other essentials! His fundraiser is verified! #1044 in the verified fundraisers' spreadsheet by the Butterfly Effect Project!

[shezgotgame]

jonquel jones for glamour magazine 🙂‍↔️

[bananapeppers]

(incest, transmisogyny)

I just read Emily Levy’s poem “One Hundred and Fifty-Seven Ways to Tell My Incest Story” (link to reblog thread that includes transcript) for the first time, and I find this poem so meaningful and important!!!, and I HATE that the original poster organizes around maintaining and promoting transmisogyny, here specifically because being misogynistically incestuously abused (as girl children, as women) is something that many cis girls&women and many trans girls&women HAVE IN COMMON!!! any comradery around shared experiences of misogynistic incestuous abuse victimization that excludes trans girls&women is such an enormous betrayal to all of the many girls&women who are trans (i.e. transmisogynized, TMA) + have been victims of misogynistic incestuous abuse! to refuse trans girls&women’s own experiences, experienced perspectives and knowledge, etc. of misogynistic incestuous abuse victimization is to do a specifically transmisogynistic form of incestuous abuse denialism and misogyny denialism. are you against misogyny or not!!!

[curtwilde]

Bisan says that among all the aid organisations working in North Gaza right now, Ele Elna Elak is one of the most effective, geared towards resolving the water scarcity and making clean water and vegetables available to Gazans.

Donate if you can and share.

[creekfiend]

once again I am asking everyone who thinks that "I work within the institution" is a credential that means they should be listened to more than the average person to accept that "I am a member of a group that has been targeted and hurt by the institution" is a credential also! you ever notice how that only gets recognized as a credential if it also includes "I work within the institution" as well? if you are a member of a group that has been targeted and hurt by the institution but you do not work within the institution then it's considered a detail about you that makes you biased in a negative way. fascinating. I wonder why that could be

[flyingpurplepizzaeater]

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”

and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”

and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.

[iinsawdious]

"this movie doesn't hold up bcos of dated special effects :(" to you, maybe. i would clap at a bat on a string

[iinsawdious]

reblogs are back on for october! limited edition

[bananapeppers]

TIL about Deplin, a brand-name prescription-only psychiatric "medical food". it's levomefolic acid, a form of folate (vitamin B9). the phrase "medical food" may call to mind, idk, a prepared meal or snack developed to deliver a specific medical intervention, but it's a USA FDA classification, having higher requirements than FDA supplement status and lower requirements than FDA pharmaceutical drug status.

Deplin's marketing explicitly hinges on the "chemical imbalance" myth, for example stating (bolding mine):

"Deplin® is targeted nutrition that provides an essential nutrient your body can’t get through diet alone to help restore brain chemistry balance. This allows your brain and antidepressant to work better together for more effective symptom relief." (https://deplin.com/, accessed today October 24, 2025)

"Deplin FC™ ["Free & Clear", a formula of Deplin free of several of the most common food allergens] is a medical food specially formulated to meet the distinctive nutritional requirements for neurotransmitter imbalances in the clinical dietary management of depression and schizophrenia." (https://deplin.com/products/deplin-fc)

"Rebalancing Your Brain" is a heading at Deplin.com > Why Deplin

😮‍💨

(even psychiatric publisher Carlat Publishing, which lacks a fundamental criticality of psychiatry and therefore doesn't contend with some of the other problems here, has published a critique of Deplin's claim that their super-special form of folate is superior to other forms of folate.)

explicit chemical-imbalance claims after so many mainstream-news and psychiatric announcements of the "death" of "the chemical-imbalance myth" a few years ago ... and what might it mean about the effectiveness of "antidepressants" that so many people who are on them are dissatisfied with the performance of "antidepressants"?

important additional context note for Deplin: (inappropriate) claims related to genetically based problems metabolising folate, referring to MTHFR, are trending in "alternative medicine" spaces, same as and contemporaneously with Deplin.

[chimerarachnid]

Just a busy, little furry friend very hard at work.

[bananapeppers]

Calculates how much bleach product to dilute with water to get your desired concentration (ppm) of chlorine solution.

today’s online tool recommendation

This easy-to-use calculator tells you how much bleach product to dilute with water to get your desired concentration (ppm) of chlorine solution.

It is intended for use by public health units, health care facilities, child care centres, swimming pool operators, and the general public (e.g., for disinfection of wells and homes).

[closet-keys]

the way that the transfem exclusionary part of transfem exclusionary radical feminism (TERFism) is constantly de-centered is so revealing.

people love excluding transfems from all their analysis & meaning making around sexgendered oppression.

yall love to talk about what it means to be nonbinary in ways that exclude transfeminized people from the definition

yall love to talk about what it means to be intersex in ways that exclude transfeminized people from the definition

yall love to talk about what it means to be lesbian or bisexual in ways that exclude transfeminized people from the definition

yall love to talk about what it means to be survivors of sexual assault or domestic violence or reproductive abuse in ways that exclude transfeminized people from the definition

at the end of the day, when this constant exclusion of trans women and other transfeminized people is so normalized, the only part of TERFism left to oppose is the feminism part.

the objection many people have is not to the epistemic injustice of excluding and erasing the contributions of transfeminized people from every single conversation on gendered oppression

the objection held by many is just admitting that all forms of gendered oppression are part of a larger explicitly patriarchal structure that establishes men as a higher class than women.

they see TERFism and instead of joining transfems in going “we combat this by integrating transfeminism into every conversation on gendered oppression in all contexts”

they instead act opportunistically & go “the negative perception of TERFism is a great way to launder antifeminism for trans and intersex and queer people who aren’t transfeminized”

[bananapeppers]

@melimelu thinking of you

[bfdi]

i don't like how this website tries to equate 'shelteredness' with physical isolation and asociality rather than an obliviousness to one's place in society that is afforded through material privilege. someone can have a job and a thriving social life and regularly go out with their friends or whatever and still be 'sheltered' about certain forms of oppression in that regard. i promise you your rhetorical "shut in" who has been cut off from the outside world (through self-imposed means or otherwise) is probably the least likely person to be blissfully unaware of life's hardships if you were to actually think about why it is they might be in that position in the first place

[bananapeppers]

these are so beautiful!

[bananapeppers]

human-socialized cat showed up at my home today, tried to dart inside. no ID. keeps trying to pet and play with me. I set up a crate on the porch with a towel-lined carrier, water, food, and a pee pad inside, trapped the cat, and contacted 2 cat rescues.

stressing the fuck out about being responsible for this cat with the temperature falling overnight. 1 rescue responded: the person was condescending, and I would have to deliver the cat to a location that's too far away for me to deliver the cat. the other rescue hasn't responded. my landlord, who lives next door, told me that her sister—who currently lives with her and who has been wanting a cat companion for forever—wants this cat. great! but the sister is currently unavailable for a couple of weeks. (the landlord didn't bring up housing the cat in the meanwhile.)

also: I posted a notice under my (offline) name to a public locality-specific forum because I want to get this cat where they need to be!, and that was a difficult decision. I avoid sharing my name + location as much as possible. and I'm feeling scared about it! I want to delete my post, but I feel obligated to keep it up for the cat's sake.