feminism & stuff

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

Just because your parents resigned to a life of unhappiness doesn’t mean you need to do the same. 

This may sound a little bit harsh and of course it does not apply to every single parent out there - but I believe that openly saying this can be really important for those who do have parents like that. 

The type of parent who casually says stuff like

„I don’t get why this whole lesbian thing even matters so much, it’s not like I am attracted to your father either. We can not stand each other but we make it work!“ 

„You kids break up so quickly today, he only slapped you once. I took beatings and now I have three kids with that man. Our generation still understood the concept of forgiveness.“ 

„It just feels so extreme to change your name just so you can feel happier. What does that even mean? Do you think I am happy with my life? I am miserable every day, that’s just what adulthood is like“. 

„I don’t even know how you come up with all these thoughts about your own  identity. I don’t have that much free time on my hands. I wanted to be a music teacher but then I got pregnant and my parents pulled me out of school, and I haven’t had the luxury to think about my own dreams ever since. And what a blessing that is, because if I thought about it too long, I’d just cry!“ 

These are very specific examples obviously, to drive the point home, but you see the common pattern: this type of parent is unfulfilled or even resentful of how their life turned out - but somehow they think it’s a virtue. 

it can be a tricky place as a kid: you may feel deeply sorry for them and at the same time also be annoyed, hurt or angry. These pieces of lore about your parents life can be heartbreaking to think about - the realization that your parent isn’t just your parent but a whole person with their own story hits hard anyway, but that hit can be especially painful when you realize you kind of pity that person. 

But then again, while the lore is pitiful, their conclusion can also be really upsetting. And so you may be torn between „I am sorry you’re stuck in a loveless marriage and never got to get the education and career you wanted“ and „You think you are wise, I think you need therapy“. 

However, this letter isn’t so much about their life or happiness, it’s about yours - and I just want you to know that you deserve happiness and fulfillment and love, even if your parent has given up on it. You are allowed to chase happiness. You are allowed to work towards your dreams. You are allowed to try your best to live a life aligned to you, not to what society expects of you. You are allowed to prioritize yourself. 

You are allowed to break the cycle, even if your parent couldn’t. 

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Dad 

[los-copa]

her name was Juniper Blessing, she was 19 and she was just doing her laundry

[wispthicket]

From one of her friends on a Reddit post.

[intersex-support]

It is October 26th, intersex awareness day! Intersex friends, today is for us. I'd like to share this quote from Sean Saifa Wall:

"By connecting with other intersex people, it literally saved my life, because we had the constant script that we are alone, that we are rare. I think intersex activism, and intersex justice actually lets people know that we are not alone” -Liberating All Bodies: Disability Justice and Intersex Justice in Conversation.

We are not alone. We are valuable, and our intersex identity is worth celebrating. Our community knowledge, care for each other, and solidarity is worth celebrating. Our intersex joy is worth celebrating.

When so many of us experience trauma, violence, and isolation, awareness days can bring all sorts of emotion to us. There is room for all of the messiness--whatever being intersex means to you is important, and you deserve the space to express yourself.

Feel free to add on this post and tell us how you're celebrating intersex awareness day today--whatever that looks like for you.

For anyone who wants to learn more about intersex, check out this post and our resources.

[is-this-fascism]

remember kids, homelessness is the direct result of flaws in the capitalist system 👍 it is not the result of laziness, addiction, or even misfortune. it is a state of being only possible when profit becomes more important than humanity 👍 homelessness is manufactured as a threat, or a promise of what will happen if you don't give your labor to the ruling class 👍 we can disarm this threat by removing its power to cause fear and by being kind to the homeless 👍

[crippled-peeper]

“ew thick water gross and weird” ITS NOT FUCKING FOR YOU!!!!! “ew why buy pre-cut vegetables when you can cut your own” ITS NOT FUCKING FOR YOU!!!!!! “I don’t need a device to help me put my socks on I’m not lazy” ITS NOT FUCKING FOR YOU !!!!!!!!! “Why drink liquid meals when you can cook them” ITS!!!!! NOT!!!!!! FOR!!!!!! YOU!!!!!!!!

[jaylynx1412]

The, "if you show gays to kids they will be gay!" argument is so funny to me because

I know asexuals exist, I'm not asexual.

I know non-binary people exist, I'm not non-binary.

I know doctors exist, I don't want to be a doctor.

I know goths exist, I don't want to be goth.

I know kleptomaniacs exist, I don't want to steal things for no reason.

I know vegans exist, I don't want to be vegan.

And what about all the gay parents who raise straight kids?

What about gay kids who were raised by straight parents and knew they were gay before they had access to the word?

Are you stupid?

[classycookiexo]

[flowercrowncrip]

I hate it so much when the rationale for providing treatment/ care/ equipment/ research for disabled people boils down to “it’s more expensive than if we don’t”

Pressure relieving cushions and mattresses should be provided because pressure injury sucks for the person with them, not because it’s more expensive to treat pressure injuries than it is to provide equipment.

Research should happen because it will improve people’s quality of life, not because XYZ condition costs the economy however many billions a year.

Societies exists to protect the most vulnerable. I hate how much we’ve lost sight of that

[dddemigirl]

[glorious-spoon]

every genius who thinks mandatory two-factor authentication is a good idea should be forced to do tech support for a public library that serves a lot of elderly poor people

[glorious-spoon]

way too many people are interpreting this as 'old people are too ignorant to understand technology' instead of 'poor people, especially elderly poor people, often do not have reliable access to a cell phone'.

i know 2fa is more secure. everyone knows that 2fa is more secure. the problem is, when you make your very secure 2fa reliant on a cell phone, people who do not have cell phones can no longer use your service. when the service in question includes every major email provider, and you are required to have an email to access many basic kinds of assistance, people without cell phones are cut off from accessing those things.

and this is a fucking problem.

[politijohn]

Source

[ahuara-deactivated20250412]

many people have said it but bears repeating again:

Palestinian liberation calls for a 1 state solution under which all people are equal under both under the law and in practice.

In order to have peace the genocide, apartheid, and occupation must end. Settler colonialism must end. Second class citizenry must end. All Palestinians imprisoned must be released. Reparations must be made to Palestinians who have been affected by both current events and historical, from the Nakba in 1948 to today. Everyone who participated in the facilitation of the apartheid, and the violence of the apartheid and occupation required to maintain the oppressive regime, must be held accountable. Palestinians must be granted the right to return to their homes.

The idea that Palestinian liberation = carrying out a genocide on Israelis is nothing more than baseless, racist, orientalist fearmongering (and, to an extent, pure projection) that serves to justify the current genocidal regime and the apartheid having been maintained for decades. One people's freedom does not threaten another people. People are fearmongering over a hypothetical scenario (the same fearmongering used in South Africa; both during the reconstruction era following the abolition of slavery & also against abolitionists while slavery was still legal in the United States; in regards to the North American indigenous population; and so on) while an actual genocide is going on.

the only way to real actual peace, safety, and security is through the complete liberation of the Palestinian people, not the continued maintenance of the current regime or the apartheid that led to this current moment in time. apartheid is inherently violent; oppression is inherently violent. colonialism is inherently violent. if YOUR 'safety' is dependent on the oppression, displacement, and murder of OTHER PEOPLE then your conditions are not and will never be safe.

[ibtisams-deactivated20240709]

It has been hard for me to talk about how what is going on with Israel and Palestine is affecting me personally, but I grew up in Gaza and most of my family still lives there. My father did not survive the bombings last week and I have not been able to contact my younger sister in days. I am try to being understanding that most people do not have personal connections to what is happening and therefore are justifying their silence, but is heartbreaking to see this misinformation being spread. What’s happening there is a genocide, not a war. It is not antisemitic to support Palestine, it’s not even antiemetic to criticise Israel. There is no grey area or neutrality regarding this, and it is so easy to find resources that will educate you on the subject. It is my people and my home being destroyed so I will never be silent about this, but I please urge everyone to get informed and start speaking up and finding ways they can help.

decolonizepalestine has tons of information on Palestine’s history/propaganda that has been spread throughout the years

UK citizens can email their MP asking for a ceasefire

US citizens can call/email their local government officials asking for a ceasefire

Jewish Voice for Peace also has many resources for ways for US citizens to get involved, including protests

Donate to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

Donate to Medical Aid for Palestine

Donate to help get food and hygiene kits to Gaza

[gogh-save-the-bees]

incase it wasn’t clear - i am and my blog is anti-terf 👍

[genderqueerdykes]

the reason intersex people need to be visible and at the forefront of every queer's activism is because we are completely devoid of autonomy when it comes to identifying ourselves. no matter how hard we try to speak up on how we are treated, how we are dehumanized, how we are refused our right to say who we are, it falls through the cracks because of how many people continue to diminish our issues, and espouse intersexist beliefs.

when i speak up about being transfemme, and a trans girl, it's not because i'm trying to step on people's toes or speak about something i don't understand. i speak up about it because this is the life i've lived. it doesn't matter if strangers see me this way or not, this is how i've been my entire life. whether or not someone knows i was technically born AMAB and then had my gender "corrected" shouldn't matter.

trans people do not only come in binary sexes- just like gender, physical sex is also not a binary. i am an intersex trans girl , even if my agab didn't stay AMAB forever. I would be an intersex trans girl regardless of whether or not they assigned me male at birth, because my experience with womanhood and femininity is that they've always been held away from me, way farther than it would ever be possible for me to reach.

i've had to take estrogen & progesterone HRT in the past in order to "correct" my masculine features in order to look like and be a girl "correctly". the subject of my body and my gender has never been something i've been able to control. my whole live i've just been told that i'm a girl wrong, and that i need to "Fix" it.

boyhood or manhood weren't options either, that was held away from me with a 10 foot pole as well. i've had to transition into gender, itself, because i was forbidden to be a boy or a girl. i was always too sensitive or soft to be a real boy. gender as a concept has been a source of control and degredation for me. i had to transition into both manhood and womanhood in order to have control over how i identify. even now when i talk about manhood and being a man, people tell me that i'm not a trans man because of how i look. i'm routinely denied manhood, I "have" to be a trans woman only to some.

due to my intersex condition, i'm a trans man and a trans woman, transfemme and transmasc, but people struggle to accept this. there's no reason for people to give me hell about these parts of myself, and yet people still do. intersex awareness matters because we fight to be seen as the people we are. we struggle to have our identities be addressed correctly. we are in the same fight as trans individuals, and we owe it to intersex trans men, women, and people to help people understand that trans folks come in all different types of bodies, and that biological sex is not a binary, either.

we have to fight for each other's autonomy. for all of us. together we are stronger, louder, and braver.

[uncanny-tranny]

Children don't matter because they are "pure" and "innocent" and "untouched by sin."

Children matter because they are human beings. We should not be associating children with purity because it is dehumanizing rhetoric. It isn't about saying that children are not pure, but that we should be treating them as equals because we recognize they are people, not because they are "purer." Children should never have to be "pure" to be treated as people.

[nicname]

”Oh if we didn’t have xenogenders/GNC trans people/neopronouns/MOGAI/etc etc etc then transphobes would respect us.” Untrue. Most transphobes are so insanely vitriolic that you could be the most standard, decent, agreeable trans person, and they would still hate you.

I’m a fairly basic trans man, online and off. I tone my gender down even more for work. I have short hair, facial hair, I wear pretty standard non-fitted pants and t shirts with some manner of compressive undergarment underneath, and I go by my fairly basic, common masc name. The only difference between me and my cis coworkers is that I openly engage in good-faith discussions about my being transgender when brought up, and I have a “he/him” pronoun pin I like to wear.

I have one coworker who I’m well aware has never gendered me correctly. I have assumed it was an intentional, bad-faith decision (because of other, unrelated-to-me conversations he has had with coworkers), but I’ve never really cared enough to bring it up to him. I figured, “if this is intentional, that’s his issue. I’m not interested in trying to change his mind.” I’ve reached a point in my transition to where I don’t really care that much if some random person doesn’t respect me or my gender, because I don’t need every stranger’s approval to be happy with myself.

With all that being said, I’ve treated him the same as I have every other coworker. I’ve been civil, I’ve been agreeable, I’ve still been friendly to him and haven’t gone around the workplace intending to smear his name. (Yes, I have discussed his behavior to those close to me who have asked, but I’ve kept it very private and said that as long as he doesn’t say anything outwardly malicious, I don’t really care about his behavior.) He has been outwardly friendly to me, too, telling me about his past careers, showing me pictures of his family, we’ve talked about our hobbies and other things we enjoy.

Still, after all of this, he has given up the ghost and decided to gossip about me negatively to coworkers. I won’t go into detail about what I’ve been told he said, but it was all explicitly transphobic and pretty aggressive. I’ve never gone out of my way to make him mad, relating to my gender or not, so it’s a little out of nowhere. I’m not particularly surprised by this, but I’m more surprised that he would be bold enough to say everything out loud when working for a company that has explicit protections for trans people in place. He was reported fairly quickly, without me ever knowing what occurred. The only reason I found out about everything is because I overheard a manager discussing it with a concerned coworker from my department.

So, if you take anything away from this, let it be that no amount of friendliness, gender-conformity, or civilness with stop a transphobe from taking their transphobia out on you, and it’s not your fault or any other trans person’s fault. Don’t victim blame trans people who become the subject of someone’s transphobic hate, because a transphobe is dedicated to harming trans people regardless of whether they blend in with cis people or not. Don’t use a transphobe’s needlessly malicious behavior as a reason to harass other trans, GNC, nonbinary, or otherwise gender diverse people.