Autistic intersex genderqueer trans woman w/ complex chronic illness, she/it pronouns plz 🐈🐈 I am a cat
This blog is mainly funny + fandom posts (mostly homestuck and dragon age) with a side of personal / social justice posts. I don't keep up with internet drama.
I'm an antizionist Jew and Zionists are not welcome here.
I talk a lot / comment on a lot of posts. I love chatting, I'm opinionated but I'm never trying to get into an argument!!!!! I will block and/or not respond if you are rude 🐈⬛️🐈⬛️🐈⬛️if you want to get in a fight with me please go cyberbully your mayor instead.
Also “sex based oppression doesn’t exist” is a wild take. My grandmother couldn’t have a credit card in her name for some of her adult life. Being a trans man wouldn’t have changed that without major fraud.
It's an EXTREMELY funny claim to make. Sex based oppression is like. The big thing. I'm oppressed because of my sex!!!! Because I'm a girl with a dick!!! Women have been oppressed for having all sorts of genital situations going on. Trans dudes are also connected to that, the only types of people who don't experience sex-based oppression is like, cis dudes with traditional junk. Sex based oppression is the root of basically all gender-based oppression.
okay real talk DA fandom, i know it's fun and cool and popular to use Solavellans as the fandom whipping boy (gn) and it has been since 2014 and especially since 2015, and i know that there are indeed a lot of Solavellans that are extremely cisheteronormative and do/say insane things that absolutely should be dunked on, and I also know that the writers opted to make Solas mechanically a straight romance because they were erroneously of the opinion that it would be bad and wrong for him to be a bisexual villain and that does have some really unforch implications, and i know it's frustrating that Solavellans seemingly got a fuckload of bones thrown to them in the festering shit sandwich that is Veilguard, esp when considering how bipoc and more openly queer characters and their romances were treated narratively which is absolutely a problem, but like. you gotta stop throwing solavellans under the bus. esp the solavellans that have been in the trenches with you over how bad veilguard is and also how stupidly neoliberal the series is in general. we could all be getting hammered in the forum and having beautiful discussions about lore and politics and and and but the infighting is so ugly. the real enemy is the fucking cullen tradwife shortbread mfers and i-never-bothered-to-examine-my-penchant-for-antiblackness mfers and also bioware. amen.
look i'm just not convinced that the TERFs three key positions, "we hate men," "we hate trans women," and "we believe trans women are men" are unrelated
No, this post describes a position that TERFs hold. This post is anti-TERF.
Do TERFs actually hate men? It seems like they just hate trans women.
You may be confusing a more garden-variety reactionary for a TERF. I encourage you to search the word "moid" on this site to gain a better understanding of how the average TERF feels about men.
Does this imply trans women and men are under similar levels of threat from TERFism?
Not even a little bit.
What's the point of making a post like this?
Generally it is good to develop a theory of mind for your political enemies and to say true things instead of false things.
Sometimes I really want to take everyone under the age of 24 (as of 2026) by the shoulders and say:
"I'm really sorry that lockdown and the ongoing pandemic interrupted pivotal educational and social/emotional development moments for you. You have an uphill battle towards adjusting to a lot of community based efforts because you experienced a mass trauma during an incredibly important time in your life where you should have physically been around your peers learning to engage in shared community. There is no "but" here, I'm genuinely really sorry. Something many of us consider key points in our interpersonal growth as youths was taken from you, not without reason but without care for its impact on you. I hope you know we are eternally allies in our struggles and if that is something you struggle to know I hope you can learn it someday."
Because so many of the angriest, most disenfranchised people I see on this website are under 24 and I often try to put younger people's behavior in the context of where they might have been 2020. I've seen the impact on my siblings and their peers+friends first hand, all ages 18-24. We've talked about how its impacted them, the isolation, the attachment to the internet, the anxieties and phobias and fears it developed in them due to the pandemic, the political unrest, and the responses to both that we've seen since. I know they're not the only ones and I know how much being marginalized also influences that impact too.
It's terrifying. I know it must be terrifying for a lot of the young people on Tumblr too. I hope one day we're able to bridge all of those complex feelings into something collective and positive so we can do our best to prevent similar traumas from happening to future generations.
By Peggy Munson, from The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Partner Abuse in Activist Communities. Emphasis mine.
Outside the cyclone of abuse, there is a social structure steeling the actions of abusers, and this is abundantly clear in the ways ableism informs abuse. Say you have a life-threatening heart condition that worsens if your heart rate goes too high, and your rage-a-holic partner can inflict severe physical harm through prolonged yelling. Over two years, you go from being semi-bedbound to totally bedbound from her verbal abuse, yet you cannot get a restraining order because she never slapped or punched you. You tell an advocate that your partner did inflict bodily harm, in ways you might never recover from, but the advocate fixates on the heroic ways your partner helped you out after your last hospital stay. You talk about Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy and how your partner loved the attention, and ask if any courts in this state allow phone access, but you may as well be explaining shortness of breath to an unmindful marathoner. The advocate finally concedes “emotional abuse” is “very real.” The battered women’s shelter is “working on” making one room disability accessible, but it’s “not a funding priority.” Your phone therapist says, “Well, you do have a degenerative condition—are you sure she made you sicker?” Meanwhile, you can’t get up for a glass of water, and a simple phone call leaves you exhausted. You finally contact your abuser because you need someone to pick up a prescription. She stops at the drugstore and rekindles the abuse cycle. It’s not about flowers and chocolate: it’s about meds that keep you alive.
Intimate Partner Violence organizations have begun to address these realities of disability, but they rarely do more than cite statistical horrors (people with disabilities are at least twice as likely to be abused) and impose a template that doesn’t fit. Disability is treated as a sidebar, not something with dramatically different risks and needs. Many IPV organizations are in fact performing acts of neglect and exclusion that mimic those of abusers, by denying access (not providing materials in Braille, not installing wheelchair ramps or enforcing strict fragrance free policies) that effectively shut disabled victims out and keep them locked in violence. Afraid to confront their own ableism, these organizations rationalize the ways that disabled people are denied help, using a tired social argument that it’s “too hard” to treat people with disabilities as equals.
In a culture that denigrates human vulnerability and provides nothing but a shoddy caregiving net, people with disabilities often rely on their abusers for food, bathing, toileting, transportation, and other survival needs. Leaving can be imminently life-threatening because victims might lose sustaining care, and replacing this can be next to impossible unless there are non-abusive family members willing to provide it. Many caregivers—not just partners—have intimate access to the lives of people with disabilities. If IPV organizations don’t understand the pressing need for transitional hands-on care, a disabled person will not be able to leave. Most IPV literature attributes this literal dependency to an erroneous psychological belief system instead of addressing cruel social projections that people with disabilities are needy for having fluid physical realities. If the only alternative to an abusive caregiver is an institution or a life where she is peeing into a bedpan with nobody to empty it, a disabled victim may be weighing one bad option against another. Are four sterile walls better than an abuser who offers affection, money, or other perks? Not necessarily.
For every Stockholm Syndrome, there are highly detailed acts of physical deprivation and torture that hold a person captive. When someone has a disability, these acts are easy to inflict: they may just be a matter of hiding someone’s painkillers, or sabotaging his TTY phone, or—more insidiously—becoming an indispensable aid so that he can’t function without the provided care. Disabled victims can’t always just get up and go—an idea rooted in the assumption that all people are unencumbered by physical restrictions. Whereas a safety plan for an able-bodied person may involve words like run, walk, call, or drive, these action verbs may not be possible for a quadriplegic, a heart failure patient, someone with a brainstem injury, or someone with cognitive impairment.
IPV crimes against people with disabilities are typically handled administratively through social service organizations, not the criminal justice system. This belies a disturbing social philosophy: our society does not really view abuse of the disabled as a crime. Although many states have mandatory reporting laws for abuse against people with disabilities, and social service personnel are legally mandated to report such abuse, few IPV organizations are familiar with these laws. Plus the court system is ridiculously inaccessible. Several years ago, a woman contacted me about the fact that she was being dragged down hallways by her hair and thrown against walls by a partner. I tried to convince her to get a restraining order, but this was immeasurably hard for her due to her anxiety disorder and extreme agoraphobia. She was quite disabled, but it didn’t matter as far as the courts were concerned. They would not do anything to accommodate her disability. I asked an attorney friend of mine what it would take for the courts to accommodate a homebound person. My friend laughed and said, “Oh, they won’t come to you unless you get a doctor’s letter saying you’re going to die within weeks.”
Later, I tried to get my own restraining order against a partner who was terrorizing me. Bedridden and homebound, I could not even make the calls to advocates, who kept refusing to talk to my Personal Care Attendant on my behalf—probably because they assumed she was my abuser, and they couldn’t imagine a disability hindering someone’s ability to make phone calls. They told my PCA there was no way I could get a restraining order without going to the courthouse unless an attorney filed a special motion on my behalf (not only can I not travel, but I can’t go into facilities that aren’t fragrance and chemical free). It took my PCA about fifty calls (she estimates) to find an attorney who would do this. The attorney said time was of the essence as weeks had passed since my last contact with the abuser, and then she stopped returning our calls. I gave up in a state of complete despondency. I was hovering on the edge of death and couldn’t even fight for appropriate medical care, let alone coordinate the changing of my locks or action against my partner. My helplessness wasn’t learned: it was literal. Even lifting a phone receiver or talking into it required more strength than I generally had.
The West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that disabled victims are more likely to be blamed for their abuse, because they are perceived as difficult to be around or care for, and “caregiver stress” is considered a legitimate excuse for bad behavior. These social myths are no different from abuser jargon that habitually accuses the victim of provoking the abuse. Because of the subtleties involved in abusing a disabled partner, people with disabilities might not identify themselves as abused, and rarely get support from a society that already perceives abusers as self-sacrificing for dating crips. It is common for batterers to “target punch” their victims to avoid getting caught. With an able-bodied victim, this might mean hitting her torso where bruises will not show. With a blind partner, this could mean putting obstacles in her path so she will trip and fall. With a frail partner who is too neurologically impaired to express consent, this could mean using body weight to hold her down during sex even while she tries to resist by stiffening her body and pushing weakly with her forearms, then forcing the sex in a way that physically harms her.
Advocates working with disabled victims of IPV must redefine the list of what constitutes IPV, tailoring it to an individual’s disabilities just as the abuser has probably done. Abusers will sometimes use the minimum amount of force to maintain power and control, and this minimum amount of force used on a disabled victim—though it may cause substantial injury—might not fit neatly into legal definitions of abuse. Coercion and threats to a disabled partner could involve threatening to withdraw basic support, an act that can be more dangerous to a person with a disability than a violent beating. Intimidation tactics might include harming or mistreating a service animal. Economic abuse might include embezzling funds from a disabled partner who can’t fill out a deposit slip, or giving her lavish gifts of adaptive equipment the state won’t pay for to encourage her dependence. Physical abuse might consist of rough handling when transferring someone out of a wheelchair, or over-medicating. Sexual abuse might include forced abortion, inappropriate touching during bathing or dressing, or put downs about a disabled person’s sexuality. Neglect can include withholding care, medication, or life-sustaining attention. Denying the person’s feelings might include attributing injuries to the disability itself (“You’re just touch-sensitive! That didn’t hurt”). Many forms of abuse against people with disabilities—particularly those against some of the most vulnerable groups, such as the developmentally disabled—involve discrediting a person’s own voice when she tries to convey her experience.
Activists have to think about the creative ways that abusers are maniacal and get away with it. Abusers sail through life, therapy, and the court systems with a “not as bad as that guy” philosophy. Their rationalizations are endless, and they can often pass off controlling behaviors toward a disabled partner as “concern.” If they can convince themselves or others that looking through a partner’s garbage, monitoring his phone calls and mileage, and insisting to know what he does every waking hour is not abuse, they will. For a disabled person confined mostly to a home or bed, such acts of control can be a replication of the inherent suffering the disability might already create. Most people will believe the abuser’s pleas that she was simply trying to protect the (ungrateful) disabled victim.
At every juncture, society is complicit in the abuse of disabled victims. For example, an abuser will isolate a victim of IPV. If that victim is wheelchair-bound, and very few venues in town are wheelchair-accessible, the abuser is not the only one isolating her: society has shut her out by relinquishing responsibility for accommodation. When she comes forward with her abuse, her peers might side with the abuser because they are, through inaction, supporting a similar agenda. When the abuser talks about all he has done for his victim—as abusers are prone to do—and the list includes bathing her, driving her to medical appointments, and hand-dispensing medication, people might view him as a hero. This reflects the deep threads of ableism in our culture, which believes that basic, hands-on care for most disabled people is exceptional, and should not be socially mandated.
People often believe that disability empowerment means taking a “just like me” attitude that presumes a disabled person wouldn’t want exceptional treatment—even if that treatment is fragrance free accommodation or a sign language interpreter or, more subtly, acknowledgement of someone’s physical vulnerability. The differences in human vulnerability can be huge, especially when talking about IPV dynamics that involve power and control. To sidestep this fact pretty much denies the entire reality of people with disabilities and reinforces a mentality that only wheelchair athletes and feel-good- super-crips should be recognized. Understanding the intricate differences in power and ability enables activists to calibrate their definitions of abuse. While the abuser of an able-bodied person might dramatically bar her exit by pushing furniture in front of escape routes and pulling phone cords out of the walls, the abuser of a bedridden individual can inflict the same level of terrorism by simply charging into a bedroom and screaming when she can’t get up and leave. These acts are equivalent and should be treated as such. It can be incredibly invalidating for a disabled abuse victim to hear, “I would just leave if someone treated me that way!” Or even, “I would just ask the abuser to leave.” Asking an abuser to leave is often not an option for someone with a disability: she might need him to take care of her after he battered her. And who is going to explain to the hospital staff the medical needs relating to her rare congenital condition?
Ironically, what endears a batterer to a disabled victim is often his investment in her vulnerability, which most of society insults, ignores, and doesn’t respond to in an empowering way. All abusers are dependent on keeping their victims vulnerable—a fact that transcends disability. This attunement to the power imbalance can give abusers a sixth sense about what a disabled person needs, and how to give or withdraw it for the purpose of control. This is no small thing when other able-bodied people just stand by and don’t offer help. Few people know the intricate ergonomics of a disabled person’s life, even though her ability to function or very survival depends upon these things. What puts the “I” in Intimate Partner Violence is often this: abusers may see intimately into a complex reality that most people do not notice or care about. For example, I tried to explain to my family for years why I needed someone to be on call 24 hours a day due to my erratic medical emergencies, my need for someone to bring me food and water while I was lying down unable to move, and my need for someone to nurse me during my many unpredictable crashes after having a chemical exposure or exerting myself. They offered inconsistent bursts of help and care—a week here and a few days there. They assumed that someone out there would fill in the gaps between these weeks and days. But I had nobody to do it, nobody but an abuser carefully tuned in to my vulnerabilities. While others in my life would try to create a cheerful mood and bring me take-out food, my abuser would dig in to the gritty realities of my disability, draping a blanket over my legs before I even said I was cold and bringing me a glass with a straw so I could drink lying down. These were the acts of kindness woven into the abuse, but without them I wouldn’t have survived. This isn’t to excuse the abuser’s heinous behavior, but to point out that until people are given the resources to live healthy, functional lives, they will be easy prey no matter how many Model Mugging techniques they know.
The details, in other words, cannot be afterthoughts. Wheelchair ramps, phone access, and other accommodations are essential for disabled victims to make the first move toward escape. Abusers tend to look for social cues to tell them whom they can effectively victimize. Fully educating IPV organizations about disability—and including the voices of people with disabilities in that education process—is a critical step in stopping abuse. Extensive planning must go into making sure services are accessible before a person with a disability calls, because time is of the essence when stopping abuse and people should not have to beg for access. Meanwhile, as time passes, more victims of IPV will become disabled. It is not uncommon for initially able-bodied victims of IPV to become temporarily or permanently disabled by physical injuries inflicted by abusers, or to develop ongoing psychiatric disabilities caused by the abuse. These survivors are at high risk for re-traumatization that might incorporate the disability. The underpinnings of abuse have to do with distorted notions of strength and weakness, with the essence of bullying. IPV activists must ferret out inequities in their own organizations, to take a concrete stance against the exploitation of privilege. Disability is a central issue in IPV. The ability to convey the gestalt of a traumatic experience to a receptive witness, and validation that truly comprehends the difference in vulnerability, helps disabled victims of IPV to step out of the fury and into a safe future.
its almost interesting that between all the vitriol that scenario does create a pretty reasonable picture of a transmisogynized live in sex slave who plainly knows its unwanted and is only kept around for its sexual utility as the only thing it can offer. why i or anyone is supposed to hate it and side with the openly resentful person purporting to be its primary caretaker in that situationship is beyond me though
every time I'm like "it's ok to be Somewhat Noticably Grouchy as long as you're not mean or rude to someone, it's not evil to be in a Bad Mood because of The Circumstances and not constantly Projecting An Aggressively Friendly And Pleasant Vibe is not actually hurting prople" someone takes it deeply personally that my manner is Noticably Grouchy. I'm trying to train myself out of constant fucking people pleasing at the cost of my own health. can people stop punishing me for it. thanks 👍
also as someone who used to project a hyper personable super friendly external self? people hate that. they hate it so much. they hate that they can tell that you are stressed. they hate that they can tell that you are trying, despite the stress. they hate it even as they benefit from it, even as they demand the performance of it.
i am severely traumatized. raised in a crack-house by human traffickers traumatized. my reflex, when i escaped, was to Be Nice. the world is so cruel, i wanted to fill it with as much love and kindness as i could muster. so i did. i fully did. it was never feigned. i was trying. i didn't know how to be a person, let alone how just To Be. but i was willing to try. and i wanted to be a nice person. i wanted to be a liked person. i wanted to be someone that people missed, someone that people wanted to be around. i wanted to be Enough.
i used to be overly chipper, cheerful and kind, doling out compliments, always smiling, asking people questions about themselves & listening intently, encouraging others and gently correcting their self deprecation. you call yourself a stupid idiot, or worse? Don't Be Mean To My Friend, HaHa! you lambast yourself for being ugly? fat? your teeth? the way you walk? i grin through it all, painfully, you insulting the way i look, gently coaxing others out of the fucking Swamp of Misery. no no, you're not fat, person who is thinner than me! you're not ugly for your teeth, person with a better smile than mine!
and people said i was a great listener! i was The Girl To Go To with problems! i know someone who can help, i have advice, i've read about that! i always listen! i never raise my hand or voice! people said i was bubbly, a "breath of fresh spring air!", the kindest person they knew, soft spoken, articulate, thoughtful. the most considerate.
and simultaneously, it was Fake. i was Fake. She's Too Nice. It's Weird, Isn't It, How Nice She Is. She's Hiding Something. She's Secretly Conniving. She's Being Nice To Trick You! Into Thinking That She's Nice!!! Nobody Is That Nice!
no matter how earnest or genuine or heartfelt. no matter how much i meant it. it wasn't enough. it was too saccharine. and it wasn't saccharine enough.
it's never Enough. even the most spine-breaking-torn-apart-at-the-seams, load-bearing-pillars-groaning-under-tension, BEND OVER BACKWARDS kindness i can scrape with bloody fingernails out of the bottom of the barrel, ISN'T ENOUGH.
because the same people who praise you for being That Girl, that Sparkly-Gem-Of-A-Person. they will call you all sorts of ugly names, and insult you, and beat you down until that outer shell cracks. at which point they will scream and cheer, cackling with glee, about how they Knew All Along that you were Secretly Evil.
and then your "secretly evil" moment is being pushed to the absolute fucking limit, and being slightly curt or snappish, or crying in public, or raising your voice, or cussing.
and you're the person who never does any of those nasty things, which means your kindness was always a Facade, hiding the True You, the Evil Asshole! all the praise, all that talk about how considerate you are, and nobody will stop to lend you that same consideration. how thoughtful you are, so sayeth the person who will not spare a second thought to your current state, let alone a first. how kind and careful and what a good listener you are vanishes the moment they see that you DO have negative emotions!
so no. don't be a raging asshole, of course. don't scream at or hit or curse at people, don't insult them, subtly or otherwise. don't break or steal their shit. but don't grin at them either, don't lend them the shirt off of your back, don't dish out compliments in a cheerful tone.
focus on your own emotions first. don't read the room, trying to placate, or be palatable... it's not worth it. it doesn't work. you will never be Enough. you need to focus on just Allowing yourself To Be. Just Be first. don't worry about Enough.
Inspired by this post (x). I keep thinking about how gender is viewed differently in Qunari society and is determined by job. But what if the job itself WAS their gender?
Bull being from gender nonconforming Qunari society would lead to witty situations like this:
Orlesian: Are you a man or a woman
Iron Bull: I’m a spy
O: No I meant biologically
IB: A Qunari
O: No I mean what’s between your legs
IB: On a good day, someone’s mouth ],) ],) ],)
