chemins du désir

A blog mostly for srs and pretty things. sj, animals, nature, art, lgbtqia, mental illness, etc. // I have no interest in including my life history in my blog bio and tbh neither should you // I try to keep this blog welcoming to marginalized groups but I am human and therefore the potential to fuck up exists // terfs/trfs/radfems and exclus feel free to leave immediately, you all use literally the same flawed logic and denial of reality and I'm not interested in dealing with you. also, beyond logic? learn some fucking compassion. exclusionism of all stripes and respectability politics have no place here. autonomy and self determination should be the backbone of all policy.

[cheminsdudesir]

honestly kitten even daddy's worksona is having a hard time pretending to love their job and capitalism at this point

[dogpuppy]

[bakersfield-row]

[kurtwagnermorelikekurtwagnerd]

sickens me to my stomach. how dare this guy get to live my dream.

[acutelathos]

Some clarifications and an update

[biglawbear]

This person has more emotional intelligence and healthier skills in navigating relationships than most people

[h-isforhome]

also this is so good.

[iww-gnv]

The people of Gainesville deserve better than poverty wages and sky-high rent!

[depsidase]

[tam--lin]

(7/30/26) The Red Cross just declared the second US blood crisis in its history.

Summer sees both a drop off in donations and, at least for our trauma center, a spike in traumas. Trauma centers across the US are in danger of running out of blood for our trauma patients TODAY, which is very scary but, unlike much of the other scary national news coming across our screens these days, is something you can help fix immediately and directly.

We need ASAP donations of blood, for people to spread the word, and for manager types to help facilitate others' donations. All blood types are needed, but universal donor blood (type O) is especially dire.

[tam--lin]

Useful notes and reminders from the reblogs:

Many things that previously made people ineligible have been rolled back. If you previously thought you were ineligible, please consider checking current guidelines!

While O- is the most dire need as it can be safely given to anyone in an emergency, all types are needed! Our emergent release blood is being pulled for patients who have a high chance of death if they don't get blood within the hour. Once they're stabilized, they can have their type confirmed and get blood of a specific, matching type released to them so that O- can go to the patients who need it most.

Canada is also in a blood shortage, not just the US. Even if you're not in the USA or Canada, maybe check locally, especially if it's summer where you are.

[queerautism]

Extremely fucking stupid bc genuinely who cares. Walking sticks are literally for anyone. They help you when you walk around. Perfectly healthy and abled bodied people use them while hiking because they just work.

And what if it was just a fashion thing? It used to be trendy. It gives your outfit a different vibe. Experimenting with fashion is fun, there's literally zero things wrong with using a cane because you like the way it looks or how it makes you feel.

Every single person choosing to use a mobility aid in public normalises their use, and makes it less likely for me to get harassed out there. It just becomes a regular thing you see while out in public. And that's the exact thing ableist TERFs like Stock are actually against - Not even mentioning the absolutely obvious misogyny here.

Covid was a mass disabling event. It continues to affect many, many people. Denying reality and gaslighting disabled people will not make us go away

[rembrandtswife]

They're more gotdang worried about nonexistent "social contagion" than about actual *physical* contagion, or about helping people feel better.

[wetheurban]

Sending love to anyone who is just… tired.

Not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, socially, financially.

Life is asking a lot right now.

Pause when you can. Breathe when you remember.

Give yourself space. Give yourself grace.

[goatstrogen]

GIRLS THAT'S FUCKING TERRIFYING,, PLEASE FACTORY RESET YOUR PHONES GET NEW ONES IF YOU HAVE TO GET AN INDEPENDENT SIM card WHAT IS HAPPENING

I'M BEGGING YOU

THEY CANT DO THIS TO YOU PLEASE

[lady-viccy]

that is stalking

[the-kill-all-tmes-lady]

its stalking when it happens to children also btw

[bucketofdeltav]

"My mum won't let me" Okay I am 30 goddamn years old and I still have this thought so let's walk through it together.

What's the worst that can happen if you do it anyway? Genuinely. The literal worst. Catastrophise about it with me for a sec.

Will your mum yell at you? You're an adult. Yelling at fellow adults is Not Okay Actually. (Yelling at kids is also not okay but let's take this one step at a time.) If your mum is yelling at you, a fellow adult, she's the one being weird and out of line. You asked your friend and they said so too (me. I'm the friend.)

Will she cut off your phone plan? That would be a problem. Can you look into whether you can afford to switch to a new plan she doesn't have access to? Most phone companies will let you port your number over pretty easily.

Will she cut you off financially? Run the numbers again. Can you afford for that to happen? If the answer is no, that's okay, I believe you and I know you're making the best decision for your own well-being that you can in the moment. If there's anything you can do to make it more affordable, I do suggest doing that, though.

Will she be physically violent, inclusive of breaking stuff that belongs to you? That’s assault. That's a crime. It's not okay for her to do that and she almost certainly knows it.

Will she stop talking to you? Honestly I gotta say at this point that's not sounding like a bad outcome. It sucks. It really really sucks and I'm sorry if that's a choice you're having to make, but take it from someone who's been there and done that: when someone who is being abusive to you (stalking is abuse! Yelling at you is abuse! Threatening to cut off your funds if you don't do what they want forever is abuse! Breaking your stuff or physically hurting you is abuse!) decides of their own volition to cut you off, it hurts for a hot minute, and then you suddenly realise that you can breathe, and it feels so. Goddamn. Amazing.

Delete the tracking application. Live where you want to live. Change your name. Join or leave the religion. Get the piercing or the tattoo or the surgery. Live your life, because it's yours and not your parents'.

We'll try together, okay?

[great-and-small]

I witnessed this moment and was inspired to go home and tidy up my living space

[18thcenturythirsttrap]

I can't thank you enough for sharing it with us all!

[aromanticaardvark]

[image description: image of an Aardvark with grey, yellow and white in the background. Text says “Parents say they just want you to be happy and get married” at the top and “Oxymoron” at the bottom.]

[heartless-aro]

Here’s an old aro meme from 2011, which was before the rise of the “Ace Discourse” around 2015 (which may have started out as backlash in response to The Trevor Project deciding to include asexual people around that time). This meme format uses an aardvark to represent aromantic people. At the time, axolotls were often used in similar memes to represent asexuals, so the aromantic aardvark was chosen as the aromantic equivalent of the asexual axolotl. Aardvarks were considered to be somewhat of a mascot for the aromantic community for some time, though they have become less popular as a symbol in recent years.

[nillthirteen]

This reads like a museum guide showing one of the most prestigious pieces in an exhibit

[antikate]

I went to a clothes shop with my daughter yesterday and we were talking about how the clothes were nice but how it was the kind of shop that made us both feel like a horse. You know it’s like, here I am, a horse at a human clothing shop, putting on clothes that look ridiculous on a horse, and it’s obviously my fault for being a horse and not a human

Of course that sweater looks weird on me, I’m a horse, not a human! I can barely get my hooves through the sleeves, and it bunches up over my withers and doesn’t reach my fetlocks, and there’s no accounting for my hindquarters. Or my forequarters either

So then we started talking about horse shops and classifying clothes as for humans or for horses, and now I’m afraid the idea of the horse shop is permanently cemented in my vocabulary, and someone is going to ask me about clothes and I’ll be like “oh I can’t shop there it isn’t for horses” and it will be weird

[snapdragonnz]

i just found out about this bird (scale-crested pygmy tyrant) trying to find the most biodiverse countries and i feel tears welling up in my eyes because its so cute

why does it look like that i love him so much he's a little fella

[luckyladylily]

Someday tma/tme is going to be seen the same way as the phrase gold star lesbian.

[luckyladylily]

I've seen a lot of trans women who use those terms say that we need them to talk about our oppression, that rejecting them is transmisogynistic because tma/tme has stripped it down to the absolute minimum to talk about what people who experience transmisogyny experience. The idea being that if trans women can't use tma/tme or something similar, it is impossible to talk about transmisogyny in any meaningful way.

This shows us something fundamental about how the people who use tma/tme think. In particular, that the only meaningful way to discuss your own oppression, and in particular transmisogyny, is in terms of comparing oppression.

It is a hard mindset to break from and very easy to fall into. It's also an astoundingly prejudice way of thinking. It is one of the major roots of all exclusionist movements within the queer community. When I compare tma/tme to gold star lesbian, I mean that very genuinely. I don't think everyone who uses it is a bad person, but they are getting caught up in something that will end very poorly and be remembered as this incredibly toxic and prejudice thing that grew out of this need to directly compare your oppression to others - or in reality, the wildly inaccurate assumptions you make about how others are oppressed.

And it all seems so reasonable at the start. I get that. I really do. Just like it seemed so reasonable and obvious that lesbians are more oppressed than bi woman, and bi women would never really understand.

I don't think most of the early rad fems were bad people. I think they were trying to come to terms with and explain the problems they were seeing and experiencing and many of them inadvertently fell into prejudice ways of thinking. They tried out ideas and rather than dismiss them when they proved a problem they became attached, dug in.

The same thing is happening now. I don't think the people using tma/tme now are bad people. But they have adopted prejudice patterns of thought, have become attached, and are digging in.

We do not need to compare our oppression to other's oppression to meaningfully talk about transmisogyny. I am begging you to stop. You've got to let go of this or someday, far sooner than you realize, you will be the thing you hate.

[intermascfem]

This site’s new wave of transmedicalism isn’t less harmful or serious than the last, it’s now evolved from “trans people who dont have dysphoria are fakers” to “trans people who aren’t binary or perisex are fakers” and both try to scrutinise and police trans peoples experiences on a medical and social axis. A “you must suffer this much to be trans” the sequel, featuring lenin for some reason.

[nonbinaryjudean]

like im not pro-censorship but i think if the internet archive is going to host holocaust denial and antisemitic propaganda they should at least put a warning with resources on it

[nonbinaryjudean]

I need y’all to realize that it’s on there because of their anti censorship policies, not because they’re unable to to monitor. It comes up at the top of the page when you search “Jews”. You don’t have to look hard for it.

This was literally the 8th result:

this was the 13th result:

you only have to scroll to page 3 to get this:

this justin chatter guy has uploaded tons of unabashed holocaust denial and neonazi propaganda.

i should not have to say this but this is obviously dangerous and hateful content that could lead to radicalization.

Compare this to rateyourmusic, a website I have been using regularly for years. They are also very anti-censorship and include Nazi material on the site as it is meant to be an encyclopedia of all the music of all time. However, they put warnings on any page that contains Nazi material with a disclaimer that the site does not support that content and that it’s simply there for their mission of cataloging music. RYM also is made up of user input. If a user uploads something that isn’t tagged properly as containing Nazi material, their upload will be rejected. Other users vote on whether a submission is adequate.

Here's what RYM puts as a warning on their site:

I like the internet archive. I use it regularly. It’s an incredible resource and a fantastic organization. I just wish they would do more to keep Jewish people safe.