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@ellynoo
Introduction post
Hi I'm Elly from Aotearoa (New Zealand). I'm Māori, nonbinary and queer.
I tend to blog and reblog posts about te ao Māori, transfem-transmasc solidarity and trans-intersex solidarity
Gender: Sexy not further specified
Pronouns: she/her, they/them and ia
Today I had privilege over a white woman.
Just- not for the reasons you may think.
There was a service dog team boarding the plane ahead of us. Normally I just give the usual ~6-10ft of space so we aren't crowding two dogs right next to each other when they need to work- but I noticed something. Her dog was fairly young, and while he was behaving he kept stopping to look behind so he could see us. She, however, didn't look around at all, just asked him what the problem was and to move forward. To which he complied, but then would stop and look at us again after a couple steps.
I called out that I was behind her with a service dog of my own, and that her dog was behaving but definitely distracted by mine, so if she would like I could give them more space. Initially she tried to say no, that wasn't necessary- but then her dog stopped to turn around again. She said that he was new, and that she hadn't expected him to be so unnerved by another dog.
We were the first two to board with a long line of people behind us. I told her no worries, take the time she needs, the plane won't leave without us and we're boarding with plenty of time to spare. That I noticed she didn't look around when her dog turned and recognized the style of harness and assumed she had a vision related disability and wanted to let her know what he was struggling with so she could adjust. That I would keep my distance so he could properly guide her onto the plane. I asked the people behind me to give us a moment so she could board safely. Everyone agreed to it- surprising at 5am and especially because the family immediately behind me had young children I could hear them teaching about what service dogs are- and equally called encouragements for her to go at her own pace.
She said as she walked with more confidence now that her dog was focused again, that she actually had no vision whatsoever and had just been placed with this dog to assist her via an organization.
She was able to board without further interruptions and then I let her know when I walked by her so she could make sure she understood her dog's reaction to mine. She thanked me for that, and for the assistance with boarding.
I waited until she was off the plane to gather my dog and my things.
But I wanted to talk about privilege- you see, while we both have a disability, mine affects me overall far less. It's a 100% fact that with testosterone, I barely have need for a service dog at all, and only bring one as a "just in case", similar to the cane I keep in my car that I haven't touched in a year. This woman is completely blind- her disability affects her in a much more immediate and drastic way.
As a more seasoned handler and team, I have more confidence to demand accessibility considerations. As a man, I'm more readily listened to. As someone with a large, dark colored dog- I even have the mythical "scary dog privilege" where her cute and friendly waggy lab might not. So when I say, give this lady space for her dog to do his job, as someone with a clearly marked, well behaved dog who can see what the problem is, those behind me stopped dead in their tracks and listened.
This is a social privilege in action. As a confident, cis-male-presenting, sighted person with a well behaved dog, this nervous blind woman struggling with her dog needed someone in her corner to advocate for her while she figured out what she needed to do to get her dog back on track.
My privilege over her in this moment is not an example of oppression. It could have been- had I not realized the issue and taken action to help, had I pushed past her, had I started heckling her about her dog's behavior or her own handling. But it is something that I don't need to consider in my everyday life- after all, I'm not the one totally reliant on a dog to tell me if my surroundings are safe, and my need for a dog is very small these days besides.
And- it's changeable.
During my bus trip with Creed back when I was more reliant on him, and he was still alive, I had several bus passengers pitch a fit about having to tolerate a dog on the bus. Despite his good behavior and his clearly marked vest, it was decided by several seats around me that his presence was a problem. Until an old white man in a wheelchair was put on the same bus, and yelled at them for being so intolerant.
I once caught an old white man as he stepped into the mall I was also entering to shop, and fell back against me while having a seizure. I stayed with him until paramedics arrived. I have no idea who he was. An older white woman interrupted AKC staff at a show they were harassing me about my service dog gear- she was a friend of a friend, though a stranger to me at that time. She died a few months later from complications of a lifelong addiction.
And I think this sort of situation is one that this website does not often consider. Between two under-privileged people, social privilege can change on a whim depending on context and the exact intersections at play for *all* involved.
But instead of doing a thought experiment based on theory, tell me. How do you act when you experience this situation in person? Do you have it in you to step in for someone that needs help, regardless of what demographics you or they represent?
Can I add something? This is also a beautiful example of access intimacy. Access intimacy is a phenomenon where someone encounters a disabled person and immediately knows what they need and how to provide it without being instructed. In this case, you used your greater situational privilege to help her, yes—but you also used your decade of experience as a handler, your knowledge about which harnesses are used for which disabilities, and a little basic empathy to know how you should communicate to help her out and what you should do that would make her life easier without putting her at risk for potential social consequences.
This is one reason I'm so insistent that allyship is a verb, not a noun: I think fully fledged allies should be able to offer the equivalent of access intimacy to the communities of people you're in allyship with. It's not that it's bad to mean well but not know how to execute this kind of informed contact—being ignorant is just part of life, there's always more out there to learn. But benevolent neutrality isn't allyship: allyship entails knowledge and action both. You have to know what is usually helpful (or at least how to ask) and then do it.
yall know human trafficking isnt just sex trafficking right? right????
The MAJORITY of human trafficking is for labor; factory work, garment/textile work, agricultural work, construction, and domestic work/cleaning.
And that's without counting -legal- human trafficking: Prison labor.
https://www.ilo.org/topics-and-sectors/forced-labour-modern-slavery-and-trafficking-persons
I think trans people should be free of the fucking medical establishment. I think once you decide to transition, you should have a hormone prescription that auto-renews for life. I think that you should only have to see doctors if you're having problems.
"Clearly I wasn't talking about disabled people-" yeah part of the problem is that the existence of disabled people just isn't considered in your worldview like that's the problem we're criticizing not a get out of jail free card
this pride month remember to love and appreciate aromanticism, aromantic people, aromantic love, aromantic relationships. this pride month get more aromantic
It is legal in New Zealand to record audio of someone having sex without getting their consent
Michael Forbes was accused of secretly recording sex workers. The government hasn't addressed the gaps in the law laid bare by the scandal.
One year ago women of New Zealand were horrified to learn that it is 100% legal in New Zealand for a man to secretly record audio of a woman having sex. We know this because a police complaint was made against the deputy chief press secretary of the prime minister accusing him of recording sex workers without their consent. We can only speculate whether charges would have been filed against a woman making a non-consensual audio recording of a man, or whether charges would have been filed if the women who were non-consensually recorded were not sex workers.
The government has had one year to act in order to update our pathetically inadequate legal protections for victims of sexual abuse and they have not done so. It is still legal today for a man to record sexual audio of women. What are they doing instead? Voting for a law change that would attempt to legislate intersex women and transgender women out of existence.
Explainer - A new bill would define gender in the law, and there's a month to make public submissions on it. Here's how.
If you want to protect intersex men and women and transgender men and women you can make a submission to the select committee to let them know what you think about this.
And if you want to do something about this government engaging in legislative violence against intersex and transgender people in the name of “protecting women” while simultaneously not doing anything to protect women who are recorded having sex without their consent then check whether you are enrolled to vote and update your details or enrol if needed so you can vote in the elections that are happening this year
You will get over it because you fucking have to
I was in a long-term relationship that fell apart partially because I was ace and my partner was very much not, and every time we looked for relationship help we got told that I was the problem. Not just that a significant mismatch in sexual desire could be a problem in a relationship, but that it was My Fault, Specifically, for not being willing to suck it up and have a bunch of sex I didn't want. To my ex's credit, he cared about consent much more than any of the professionals we talked to and refused to pressure me even when my (lesbian, billed as progressive and pro-LGBT) therapist was actively telling him to.
But it meant that we had absolutely no help or support when we were trying to work on the relationship in ways that *did* value my autonomy. There's basically no advice for people who want to try to make a relationship where there's a big desire gap work that isn't "well you should just have sex anyway" or "just break up lol". And that sucks!
Sometimes breaking up is necessary, and that's what ended up happening with us because there were other reasons we worked better as friends, but there *should* be better frameworks for discussing what people want and need that don't automatically assume that one partner's feelings are automatically more important or valuable than the other's.
I was dating someone who wanted to be accommodating and work with me to figure things out but lacked the EQ to do so in any effective way. It was my first relationship and I was still figuring out what being ace meant for me. It’s been eight or nine years, but I still remember very clearly the moment I realized we’d been approaching the entire discussion as if my orientation was the problem to be solved, and that it would be equally as valid to say that hers was.
She was significantly less impressed with this revelation than I was, but I tried to hold on to it ever since (although obviously the real problem wasn’t either one of us, but the mismatch and the lack of tools to deal with it). I think it’s super important to remember that we aren’t the ones in the wrong while our theoretical partners are the ones in the right. I was surprised by how much I’d internalized the assumption and I don’t think I’m the only one.
The other frustrating aspect of this is allo relationships will often have periods of time where libido does not match (I'm not derailing and this will swing back to asexual people)
Just after giving birth, during a family crisis, during a mental health episode, during health problems, during stressful periods at work
There are a lot of times when one person is horned up and raring to go and the other has no interest
And the solution often presented is that the person who is going through something should just put out because they are the problem instead of like...finding ways to engage in non sexual intimacy to reaffirm closeness
An asexual person is going to get 10x the amount of pressure and blame put on them and no advice on how non-sexual intimacy can help their relationships and if they get that at all it will only be to sell it as a bridge to sex they don't want.
I really hate the selling of intimacy as only equaling or facilitating sex. Intimacy comes in many forms and should be explored more by every couple as a non sexual act. And it the given importance it deserves. In fact I would argue if we as a society put more value on non sexual intimacy more relationships would be happier and healthier
And asexual people would stop getting shit for being themselves.
if you are or you know someone working in healthcare, especially healthcare for disabled and ill children, please watch this video
because i am sick of walking into medical settings and warning healthcare workers "hey, i have PTSD about this kind of thing, please be gentle with me" and getting stared at like i've grown a second head
medical trauma and PTSD is real. learn about it so that you can minimise your chances of perpetuating it and harming more generations of disabled people ✨
Part of the reason I'm so adamant about encouraging people to get comfortable with bugs, my own interests aside, is because we cannot have a bright, solarpunk future without them.
A green future is not a bugless future. It is, in fact, a fairly bugful future. If you care about ecological stability, then you need to start with bugs, because they're the most at risk with our current use of pesticides.
!!!
bugs are so important! even if they give you the ick sometimes (like they do for me), leave them be! take them outside if you find them in your home! bugs are a necessary and important part of our lives and always will be.
Stevie Working as a Trans Boy: An Extract from “My Body, My Business: New Zealand Sex Workers in an Era of Change" (2018)
still thinking about the time my bf asked about favourite dinosaurs and my brother said quetzalcoatlus (pterosaur (not a dinosaur)) and my bf said dimetrodon ((synapsid (stem mammal) (went extinct 50 million years before dinosaurs evolved)) and i said crows (bird (dinosaur)) and yet i was judged to be the incorrect one in this scenario
from HuffPost article The Sugarcoated Language Of White Fragility by Anna Kegler, directly translating Dr. Robin DiAngelo’s article White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism into a table format
[Image description: Screenshot of a table with the headers “Cause of Racial Stress” and “Effect on Aspect of White Identity.” The corresponding pairs are as follows:
Suggesting that a White person's viewpoint comes from a racialized frame of reference (Challenge to objectivity)
People of color talking directly about their own racial perspectives (Challenge to White taboos on talking openly about race)
People of color choosing not to protect the racial feelings of White people in regards to race (Challenge to White racial expectations and need/entitlement to racial comfort)
People of color not being willing to tell their stories or answer questions about their racial experiences (Challenge to the expectation that people of color will serve us)
A fellow White person not providing agreement with one's racial perspective (Challenge to White solidarity)
Receiving feedback that one's behavior had a racist impact (Challenge to White racial innocence)
Suggesting that group membership is significant (Challenge to individualism)
An acknowledgment that access is unequal between racial groups (Challenge to meritocracy)
Being presented with a person of color in a position of leadership (Challenge to White authority)
Being presented with information about other racial groups through, for example, movies in which people of color drive the action but are not in stereotypical roles, or multicultural education (Challenge to White centrality).
End description.]
There is one very important thing I need people without major dietary restrictions to understand: the distress caused by allergies, celiac disease, and other food restrictions is largely not about the food.
Do I miss some foods I can't eat anymore without getting sick? Sure, but that's not what really bothers me. What bothers me is being excluded from a huge portion of human social life of which food is a crucial component. What bothers me is the stress and social stigma of trying to figure out what I can safely eat. What bothers me is the amount of extra work and cost that is required of me to identify, obtain, and prepare safe foods. What bothers me is people treating my needs like a nuisance, as though I chose to be like this - as though their brief inconvenience to check an ingredients list is unreasonable, when I deal with this every day of my life forever.
I don't miss the food that much. I miss not having to worry about what I eat. I miss freedom. I miss when trying new foods and new restaurants was fun instead of a minefield. I miss not having to plan my entire life around the need for safe foods.
Food is such a basic human need, and a lot of people don't really need to think about it. When your danger foods can be anywhere and everywhere, suddenly your entire life revolves around avoiding them, and it massively sucks. You get used to it and it's not a big deal most of the time, but then you go to a new restaurant, or your office has a potluck, or you've been invited to a party and suddenly it feels just as miserable and exhausting as it ever has.
I won’t step foot in France til they pay Haiti. People love making a spectacle of the Eiffel Tower like it wasn’t fully funded by Haiti. & don’t even get me started on CitiBank. 
Here’s a 54 page scholarly article on how CitiBank has been exploiting Haiti for 115 years. The research explores how Citibank has played a powerful role in shaping Haiti’s economy for more than a century, influencing its financial systems in ways that limited true economic independence. It places this relationship within a broader pattern of financial imperialism, where global banks use economic power to steer political and social outcomes in less-powerful nations. Ultimately, the article encourages readers to reconsider Haiti’s ongoing economic struggles by acknowledging how deeply international financial interests have been embedded in its history.
https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2899&context=ilj
