summer stunner @honongakungaku - Tumblr Blog

When I was a little boy, girls used to just do random cartwheels for no reason. Then one day, they stopped. Now that I am a man, no women randomly do cartwheels. This is because society is evil and killed the cartwheel impulse in their soul. They don't even spin horizontally anymore. It's fucked up.

the--framed--maelstrom

Properly written texts are like spiders’ webs: tight, concentric, transparent, well-spun and firm. They draw into themselves all the creatures of the air. Metaphors flitting hastily through them become their nourishing prey. Subject matter comes winging towards them. The soundness of a conception can be judged by whether it causes one quotation to summon another. Where thought has opened up one cell of reality, it should, without violence by the subject, penetrate the next. It proves its relation to the object as soon as other objects crystallize around it. In the light that it casts on its chosen substance, others begin to glow.

Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia

communistkenobi

I had a lot of/still have some vestigial arrogance about quantitative methods over qualitative ones, probably in a combination of scientific misogyny + STEMlord superiority. But doing regression analysis and quant-heavy data analysis makes me realise more and more that you can justify basically any claim with numbers, and that you can construct your research in such a way as to output the numbers you want. which does not mean that all data are made up or that quantitative knowledge is all false. I think stories about scientists straight up inventing numbers or fudging experiments on purpose prove that there is a real difference between fraudulent and non-fraudulent research. but those data must always be narrativised & are always already narrativised. The act of presenting numbers itself is doing some of that narration because you’re already arguing that these numbers are worth presenting

communistkenobi

People in the notes are rightfully pointing out common issues with data manipulation and pre-loaded conclusions in scientific research (i.e., the academic version of asking "so, how often do you beat your wife?" and so on), but I should have clarified that I'm not really talking about that. I'm talking about completely legitimate, above-board scientific research.

For example, I've had students ask me (in good faith) how it was possible for international medical bodies to report different counts of COVID-19 cases during the early years of the pandemic. And one of the answers is that you need to first define what you mean by a "COVID-19 case." Do you include self-reported incidences? Waste water data? Geo-fenced social media posts about people complaining about their coronavirus symptoms? Federal estimates? Hospital data? How do you compare countries/territories/substate entities with mandatory reporting mechanisms vs countries/territories/substate entities that rely only on voluntary self-reported cases? And what combination of these do you use? How you construct what you mean by "case" is going to impact the outcomes you report. These different counts of COVID-19 cases can all be true simultaneously, not because numbers are made up, but because they all come out of different methodologies that can be equally valid.

And this is true across all science, not just social science. Bill Clinton said it best lol: "it depends on what your definition of the word 'is' is." This feels obvious when you look at scientific research that uses "skull measurements" as their object of analysis - the concept itself is white supremacist, regardless of how "sound" the research is. But even something as apparently self-evident as a COVID-19 case still requires a definition, and how you define your variables is necessarily going to impact how the research goes and what conclusions are drawn.

These definitions are always embedded in political & social assumptions. And again, this does not mean that science is all made up or nonsense or whatever. There is a widespread fetishism of "objective knowledge" that is itself ideological - the idea that knowledge can be divorced from all historical and political contexts, that you can scrub bias from research and simply report the facts. Valuable, well-supported, well-constructed scientific research is always embedded in these contexts. Not just as a result of researcher assumptions, but of the material context it exists in - what research resources are available, how & what research gets funded, the academy's relationship to the state & non-government bodies that both provide data and use that research to inform policy, the historical relationships universities often have with settler-colonialism and imperialism that give them access to "foreign" research subjects, etc etc etc.

So my overall point (which I didn't communicate well) is that data can always say what you want to some extent, for good and for ill. And research results (at least in my experience) tend to surprise you in ways that require explanations, which themselves can be fully justified, but again, exist within many different contexts that influence how you interpret them - and not just the results themselves, but your own surprise at your results

verumex

starlit-lair

Exoplanet, Planet, and Star stamps!

F2U w/o credit, but I would love to know if you use any of these.

Image sources and info below cut!

fatfangs

the way im incapable of having a conversation about weight with normal people. those conversations feel like a mine field because there are no right answers. im not gonna feel sorry for you that you gained weight and i dont have any dieting tips and your self depreciating weight jokes arent funny and i dont feel like congratulating you on your weight loss with how mean to your past self you are being and it doesnt feel good that you think that me wanting to gain weight is weird or stupid. sorry

soup-mother

I wish trans ppl were even half as hostile to the notion of "biological sex" as people keep accusing us of being. it's fucking bleak out here

soup-mother

Talking about getting rid of birth assignment gets you called a bioessentialist (???) and intersexist for the reason of *bong rip so loud you can detect it from space*

m-carrick

what do people who don't watch sports talk to their fathers about

#politics unfortunately #video games

freakoutgirl

It's important to have one medium you are pretentious about and another medium that shows you also have dogshit taste

muzzlesbian

WE FINALLY GOT A PROGESTERONE STUDY!!!!!!!!!!!

The addition of the hormone progesterone to gender-affirming hormone therapy leads to increased breast growth for transgender people followi

this is extremely exciting. progesterone's effect on breast growth has been under-studied for so long and as a result has stopped a lot of transfems from getting on it. this could potentially be a game changer in a great way. i'm shaking. holy fuck.

catgirlmimikyu

Social media offers a forum for individuals to share experiences after being wronged by an individual, an organization, a group, or a govern

this is a really good article about how belief in the just world hypothesis (the idea that people get what they deserve) leads to apathy and negative reactions on social media toward victims to whom justice cannot be easily restored

I think we should all be aware of the just world hypothesis and how it colors our own behaviors when we see a victim's story

necropill

you cannot believe in transandrophobia and also believe in trans solidarity. they are mutually exclusive because the concept of transandrophobia is a massive misunderstanding of what transmisogyny is. people who believe transandrophobia isnt real do not, in fact, believe trans men dont experience transphobia or that they experience a less intense version of transphobia compared to trans women. its just that the concept of transandrophobia is based on a reactionary misunderstanding of transmisogyny as a concept

imagine if white feminists saw black feminists talking about misogynoir, didnt read up on sources discussing misogynoir, decided misogynoir is just a label for misogyny thats specifically directed at black women, and coined the terms "blancsogyny" and later "whitesogyny" to describe misogyny specifically directed at white women

and when black feminists take issue with the term whitesogyny and correctly claim its a reactionary misunderstanding of misogynoir, those white feminists reply "no its definitely real. when someone accuses me of using white women tears to win an argument or makes fun of white women buying pumpkin spice lattes that's whitesogyny"

and when pressed for examples of what whitesogyny looks like as actual expressions of oppression that uniquely result from the intersection of being white and being a woman, the white feminists claiming that whitesogyny is real say things like "being denied access to abortions" or "not being taken seriously by doctors" or "having my work experience undermined by men who dont work in the same field as i do" or "not being paid as much as the men i work with", which are presented by the people claiming whitesogyny is real as if women who are not white dont experience any of those things

trans men and transmasculine people experience transphobia. they dont experience transmisandry or transandrophobia because being a man/being masculine is not an axis of oppression. being a man or being masculine can shape how you are oppressed, but that doesn't make it an axis of oppression itself

to date no examples i have ever been given as proof that transandrophobia exists have all been things experienced by cafab people who arent transmasc and/or by transfeminine people. the non-exhaustive list of things people have told me are exclusively transmasculine problems include corrective rape, denial of medical care, forced pregnancy, and murder

if you sincerely believe trans men and transmasculine people are the exclusive or major group of trans people who experience these things, i don't expect you to get this far without blocking me but if you have i implore you to read transfeminist sources. read the whipping girl at the very least