I work at a pretty typical data entry company and thereâs monthly employee spotlight emails that go out to everyone in the company just like who are you what do you do what are you hobbies what do you look like
At my supervisorâs insistence I added this as one of the my photos that, again, went around the company of maybe 150 people
With the caption âthis is what happens when you donât empty your lint trapâ
Within 20 minutes of that email going out I had 7 women from my company contact me to tell me how much they like my photos.
contrary to popular belief not everyone has an innate sense of internal gender or care to have one or seek a name for it, some people go their whole lives without questioning their occupation in one of two gender roles, but for some people, if pressed, they donât feel that internal sense of âi am a womanâ or âi am a manâ, and in that case i feel the switch over to transgender vs cisgender relies on active identification of a gender other than the one they were assigned. if someoneâs like âidk dude I just work hereâ then thatâs valid
#i would describe my gender as not exactly âidk dude i just work hereâ #more likeâŠ..when someone assumes you work somewhere that you donât #but you know how to help them so you do it anyway #my gender is wearing a red shirt at a target
A portion of people in the notes are like âbut that makes you trans. Thatâs called being agenderâ and another portion of people are going âthis is how the majority of cis ppl feel and itâs NOT agenderâ and personally I feel like both of them are missing the point here. Yes a lot of people identify as agender because of this feeling. Yes a lot of people with this same feeling still identify as cis. These are not mutually exclusive experiences and it doesnât mean the agender people are secretly cis or the cis people are secretly agender. It just means they have very similar experiences of gender that they choose to conceptualize and label differently, and neither of them are mistaken or wrong to do so.
Iâll be forever bitter that we were ROBBED of a fancy ball at the necropolis, so hereâs what Maude Ingellvar wouldâve worn to the occasion (with Emmrich by her side, of course)
Btw, this is how conservatives keep getting to claim that trans people are a new thing no one has ever heard, because our history and existences have continually been erased or obscured systematically through out history.
The most famous example was 92 years when the Nazis raided the library of the Institut fĂŒr Sexualwissenschaft, the medical practice where the term transsexual was first coined and the first gender affirming surgery was performed in in 1931.
What did the Nazis do after raiding the library on May 6th, 1933? You may be familiar with these images
More cut lines. It seems like companions talk to Rook after the regret prison depending on the romance.
Lucanis.
Spite caught your scent before we all heard you.
Taash?
Then I caught your scent. Sort of. It was your scent but with magic and feelings and crap.
Emmrich, I guess.
Then suddenly, I heard you, darling. And the welcome pull of your voice.
Finding you was fiendishly difficult. I tried a number of rituals. Multiple attempts.
According to the localization in my language, these are the lines of a female character. Harding, Neve, Bellara?
But I heard you. Over everything else. Because, well. It's you.
I heard your voice. I wasn't sure it was real but⊠here you are.
I didn't believe it at first, when I heard your voice. But it was you.
Once again according to the localization in my language, these are the lines of a male character. Davrin, Lucanis?
And then all of a sudden, I could hear you. Across the Veil.
Then I heard your voice. No way you're getting away from me that easy.
No idea.
(Chuckles.) Welcome back. We missed you.
Rook?
You're all incredible. I⊠I don't know what to say.
I don't think "thanks" really covers it, but thanks. All of you. You saved me.
They are trying to wear you out, and they own most major social media now, along with many major media outlets. The disinformation machine is cranking along. You are going to have to slow the fuck down and read things before you help them wear out other people, too.
So you just saw a post about a real scary bill, hunh? Republicans want to make it a capital offense to pet dogs and repeal The Sky Is Blue Act of 1793, declaring the new official color of the sky to be squant? Damn, that sounds scary.
Let's go look up this fictitious "Make The Sky Squant Again Act" on GovTracker* & on the official legislative tracker on congress.gov!
Tracking legislation and votes in the United States Congress.
U.S. Congress legislation, Congressional Record debates, Members of Congress, legislative process educational resources presented by the Lib
Well, let's see... GovTracker estimates it has a 1% chance of even getting out of committee and a 0% chance of being enacted, while congress.gov says this bill has 2 cosponsors who have been in the House and combined total of less than a month. The bill doesn't have any actual text, and it was referred to 5 different committees.
That fictitious bill and a hundred others like it are quite literally not worth your time, and more than that, continuing to wring your hands about it and tell other people about the scary scary squant sky bill only does their work for them. It scares people, it makes them spend time and energy on it, and it wears them out. It is a legislative Gish Gallop, meant to throw so many things at people that we can't keep up.
Even calling or messaging your Rep in this case means their staffer has to waste time responding to you and letting you know that Representative Buttzonheads definitely won't support making petting dogs a capital offense, a thing that will never, ever happen regardless.
Staying engaged in this environment is going to require protecting your heart and protecting your energy, yes, but also protecting the energy of others. This is why WWII propaganda posters also included ones taking people to task for spreading panicky rumors and undermining morale.
Do you know why most observant Jews don't eat chicken and dairy together, even though the ban is on red meat and dairy together bc you're not supposed to cook the calf in the milk of its mother?** It's not because we think that chicken might secretly lactate or Just Because. It's because the rabbis decided that if I'm sitting out in public and eating turkey and cheese together, someone might glance at the turkey and mistake it for red meat and think, "oh, well, I know that Spider is a good Jew, there must have been a change, or maybe I can just justify it to myself that if Spider does it, it must be permissible to bend the rules just that much." And I would then be accidentally leading my fellow Jew astray. We are responsible for being even more careful for the sake of others than we are for ourselves.
It's the same principle here. We need to really be careful about the information we are spreading and check things past reading a news site. Is it true? Is it relevant? Is it meaningful? Is the news site one I recognize? Can I find meaningful independent corroboration on another site, which is to say, if I find an article about it on a second site, is it just quoting or rephrasing this site?
Yeah, that is a lot. But that's how we keep them from using us to lead our fellows astray.
*GovTracker is an independent site. They explain their methodology in their About section.
**I cannot say enough how I am not at this time interested in going on a Jewish Side Quest About Dietary Laws on this post. Usually, I love it, but hold off this time, please, y'all. Let's stay on target this once.
I'm pretty sure that's the main reason for most of Trump's Executive Orders on day 1. A lot of them are unenforceable, others are blatantly illegal or even unconstitutional, but people will be distracted in the courts trying to shut them down, and it's splitting everyone's focus away from the few that are genuinely dangerous. Splitting people's focus is the one thing that Trump is genuinely good at, distracting the public while the Republicans are doing more subtle awful things in the background.
Relatedly, if you want to keep up with everything, because thatâs responsible, but itâs crushing because itâs horrific?
Try âWhat the Fuck Just Happened Today?â
Your essential guide to the shock and awe in national politics. A sane, once-a-day newsletter helping normal people make sense of the news.
Itâs a news digest with sources. You can stay informed without completely losing your mind.
Also, our legacy media have proven to be cowards at best & complicit at worst. As a librarian, while I will consider some articles on some topics from CNN, NYT, WaPo, etc., theyâve sadly shown we cannot trust them. This is the problem with 1. Never paying for news, and 2. Monopolies
So where do you look? (And support!)
1. The Guardian. Independent news thatâs not behind a paywall & is in the UK. Theyâre more trustworthy while still being traditional.
2. ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Their work has won Pulitzer Prizes.
Where else?
1. Seth Abramson is an independent journalist (among other things). Heâs done deep dives into both Trump, Musk, and Jan6. Those deep dives were extensive âmeta journalism,â pulling on many fragmented sources to get to a full picture.
2. Mother Jones : Another nonprofit news organization. Traditionally a bit leftist for sure, but fact-based. theyâll be the counterbalance to the propaganda weâre facing.
3. Any other non-US news sources that are fairly reputable. Getting perspectives from outside of our country will be hugely beneficial in the coming years.
These are good resources! I also like 404 Media for tech news and Assigned Media & Erin Reed for trans news. Jessica Valenti's "Abortion, Every Day" is a good source for reproductive health care news, too.
I really love the Citations Needed podcast! They're a completely ad free leftist media analysis podcast. They tend to take what's in the news currently or broad political trends and contextualize it in historical precedent. They're asking things like "Where have we seen this type scaremongering before and who perpetuated it against who? What has this type of rhetoric this newspaper is promoting led to in the past? Who is this ultimately harming and befitting?" LOTS of really helpful insights, and they always bring experts on to discuss the topics more in depth.
if you or someone you know might need it in the next few years, purchase plan b. the shelf life of plan b is 4 years, and we might not be able to access it as easily as we can now in the days ahead.
if you are larger/plus size: go online and purchase ella instead of plan b. plan b is less effective if you arenât under 160 pounds.
if you can, purchase books that project 2025 is looking to ban.
mass deportations are starting. if you see ice vehicles or agents, yell ice raid and la migra as loud as you can.
if someone asks who you voted for, keep your mouth shut. theyâre fishing for traitors.
if anyone, anyone at all asks about your neighbors or their legal status in the us, you know nothing. donât be the reason that their family is separated.
if anyone asks about your religion or lack thereof, keep it vague. this administration will look for any excuse to persecute you.
your friends are trans or queer? for the next four years theyâre not. donât expose anyoneâs status as a trans or queer person to anyone else, even if you think you can trust them.
did someone you know get an abortion? no, they didnât. they were never pregnant.
in short, donât be a snitch, and keep to yourself these next four years. weâll make it through this even if it seems hopeless at times.
we can survive this. weâve survived before, and weâll survive again.
what do you mean elon musk did a nazi salute on live tv at the united states presidential inauguration twice and is now erasing the evidence off the internet by replacing the footage with the crowd cheering instead?
would be a shame if people reblogged this, wouldnât it?
I have great faith in fools - Poe @gratefulbabayaga - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag