do better

the god of confusion. he/him 20s art/fandom side @cephalad

[sev-arts]

cooler lesbian comix than the one youre probably talking about

[cheaphalloweencostume]

i can tell by the way you successfully manage your emotions and reactions that you’re never experienced trauma, because i personally have never even considered the idea of learning how to manage and deal with my trauma response rather than stew in it and bring it up every time someone tries to tell me im acting out of pocket

[kid-bunny]

in order to unlearn racism u have to be willing to accept that u are racist. it’s not a bad thing to want to change for the better. it’s not a bad thing to say hey, the way i’ve been acting is racist and i don’t want to be racist anymore. when people of color are telling u ways in which u have been racist, it’s actually not cool to brush it off and say, well i didn’t mean it that way.. u actually have to make an effort to stop doing those things if u want to be able to actually say ur anti-racist. u can’t just say ur not racist because u don’t wanna be seen as racist. that’s not how unlearning racism works.

[kid-bunny]

“um i’m actually a good person so calling me racist couldn’t possibly be true. ur just attacking me!” see how the racism is literally right there? see how ur just seconds away from calling me an angry black girl?

[theilluminantsystem]

I literally reblogged this a day ago and OP was still up. This shit is entirely unacceptable fucking hell.

[bluesturngold]

Whether this was a mass report until OP got auto-modded or a racist mod terminating OP with prejudice, any Black person who speaks up on racism instead of just grinning and bearing it still risks getting nuked from fucking orbit in this shithole.

Take what OP said to heart and do away with your white fragility.

[gunsandfireandshit]

[mush7221]

Sofa Soulmates

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

idk man I'm thinking a lot about the discourse being reported in this post and my own post about crushes, which has garnered a lot of responses like this one

and I don't know exactly what to do with this yet but I'm fascinated, in a really upsetting way, by the way some of these people seem to conceptualize romantic and/or sexual attraction as an act of violation that no one should do to people they like and care about. if nothing else it raises some really compelling questions about what they think actually goes on between people who have sex and/or romantic bonds with each other if that's not supposed to be something that happens between friends.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

normal stuff happening in the replies

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

oh my god I'm doing patriarchy now

[vaspider]

This just in, "having feelings, regardless of how or whether you act upon them, is an aggressive, patriarchal act." 🙄

Saying this as gently as possible: if you have any of the above reactions to finding out that someone has romantic feelings for you, that's on you, not on them, and your reactions are both evidence of trauma and not something you should encourage in yourself. Please seek help and healing.

[bemusedlybespectacled]

[athena-cat-wizard-official]

[friend-crow]

Genuinely kind people don't get enough credit. People seem to think that being nice is just a personality trait, but it's actually a commitment to treat people well, even when it's hard. It's not just being nice to the people you like.

It's choosing to be kind to people when you're in a bad mood, or when they're being annoying.

It's choosing to be kind to people who your friends don't like.

It's choosing to be kind to people who you don't particularly like.

It's choosing to be kind to people who you envy.

I'm not saying that you can't be a kind person and stand up for yourself, or tell someone to fuck off when they're doing something genuinely harmful, but there are a million petty reasons people use to justify treating people badly.

It is a conscious choice, made over and over, often several times a day, to treat people with kindness and respect, even when they make it hard. So appreciate the consistently kind people in your life, because they work hard to be that way, and they really don't have to.

[friend-crow]

Something that comes up when I discuss kindness with people is that people who I experience as being kind believe that they're just faking it. They don't believe it counts if you're kind to someone who you're secretly annoyed by.

But that's exactly what kindness is. It's making the effort to treat people well when you don't feel like it.

If anything it should count MORE when it's not effortless.

[the-real-seebs]

shout out to all my friends who are running on the hardware that makes for narcissists and psychopaths and who are trying to be kind people anyway. even when you don't always nail it, i really respect it.

[m0thmancore]

it’s genuinely fucking absurd that cis people have any goddamn say at all on trans healthcare

[m0thmancore]

“oh yeah i mean im not diabetic but i dont really know how insulin works and i think its kinda freaky that you gotta poke your finger all the time so im gonna go ahead and say insulin is illegal”

thats how it sounds.

[whyenn-reader]

firm believer you can't be a ''good person''. too much niuance to life.

[whyenn-reader]

you can be good (adjective) but you cannot be good (identity)

[whyenn-reader]

if you think you are good (identity) you are more likely to cause harm as you don't consider yourself to be capable of it

[unhistorical]

Cora Latz and Etta Perkins were a lesbian couple who met in 1972 and were together until Perkins’ death in 1998. In 1973, they held a commitment ceremony; in 1998, they privately renewed their vows with the staff who cared for them at the Jewish Home for the Aged.

GLBT Historical Society

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

For anybody not caught up: Tennessee just passed a new map that pretty much makes it so black neighborhoods have no power in local votes. Two things about this. While protestors were chanting "No Jim Crow", white Tennessee lawmakers were caught laughing on video. On top of this, Representative Justin Pearson and his brother KeShaun Pearson were arrested for trying to give their takes on the matter (which is not only their legal right but literally his job). If you give a shit about black people, help fight this. We can't allow a return to Jim Crow.

[icemankazansky]

Heyyy guess where I live

A local paper had some great photographs, all taken by Nicole Hester:

The day before, Rep. Justin Pearson tries to attend a Senate Committee meeting and is barred access by the Sergeant at Arms.

Lawmakers and protesters link arms as the descend the capitol steps.

Once inside the chamber, Democratic representatives continued to stand together with arms linked.

They continued standing together with arms linked as votes were cast.

Democratic representatives take a group photo protesting the redistricting.

Rep. Justin Jones burns a photo of the Confederate flag with the words, We will not go back.

And stomps the ashes.

KeShaun Pearson being escorted from the building by the Staties.

KeShaun Pearson (left) being taken into custody. Rep. Justin Pearson (right) showing his support of his brother.

Additional information: State lawmakers have been gunning for Pearson and Jones nearly their entire terms. Most notably, in 2023, the House expelled them for participating in a protest at the Capitol. Their districts had to have special elections to have them reinstated.

Pearson is one of the plaintiffs of a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the redistricting.

The city most affected by the redistricting is Memphis, where locals are fighting against xAI's data center, which has been operating with very little oversight and is poisoning the people who live there. Here is a previous post on that with more information and more sources.

[crabussy]

every time a trans man who does not want to be called a twink gets called a twink I will personally go out into the world and rend 1 parked car to shreds with my teeth. cut it out

[crabussy]

walk with me for a moment. let's think for a sec. I'm not upset but I do want people to understand. do you think assigning a label associated with feminine features, hairlessness, skinniness/lack of muscle tone, and high pitched voices is something that most trans men would feel comfortable being associated with? why or why not?

[crabussy]

of COURSE there are trans men who don't mind it, or trans men who actively enjoy being called a twink. but I am not hairless by choice. I WANT fat and muscles and body hair and a deep voice. and a lot of trans men that get called twinks DO HAVE THESE THINGS, yet they get called "twink" anyway. why do you think that might be?

it's okay if you've done this in the past. maybe just check in before you call your friend or acquaintance something with so many specific, potentially disheartening associations!

[crabussy]

I wonder if the inverse occurs with trans women getting called "butch" too. because there are many wonderful butch trans women!!! but if you call trans women "butches" for traits like short hair or body hair despite otherwise feminine presentation, maybe think about why that is? is she really a butch? or is that just her body? just ask first!

nonbinary people too. are they really "masc presenting" or is that just their body? are they really "fem presenting" or is that just their body? let's all try to be a bit more cognisant of the language we use to describe the trans people in our lives, yeah? [: it's worth thinking about. don't worry yourself into a hole about it, of course! but it's something to check every now and then.

[igottherapy]

how much of the world's cruelty is built with the bricks of self-preservation?

how much can we unbuild?

[genderkoolaid]

every since i learned that there was a feminist coalition between housewives, sex workers, and "others" (lesbians and presumably other queer people perceived female) i haven't really stopped thinking about it. we do not talk about this enough

from Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights by Molly Smith and Juno Mac:

In the UK, the 1970s and 1980s sex workers’ rights movement was deeply entwined with the ‘wages for housework’ campaign. Marxist feminists named the value of women’s unpaid reproductive and domestic labour and demanded a radical reorganisation of society to value women’s work. Around that time, the feminist group Wages Due Lesbians linked domestic work, sex work, and the work of heterosexuality in a solidarity statement against a 1977 vice crackdown: ‘Wherever women succeed in winning some of the wages due us, it is a strength to all of us and proof that women’s services cannot be taken for granted’.

from Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work by Melissa Grant:

“Hookers and Housewives.” It’s hard now to conceive of these groups of women as class allies. Hookers and housewives, to speak in impossible generalities, are too often considered rivals (by those on the Left as much as by those on the Right), occupying opposite sides of one economic circle, two classes of women who earn their living from men’s waged work. Their labor, by contrast, is considered illegitimate. Caretaking and sex should be offered freely, we’re told, with genuine affection and out of love. A housewife maintains her legitimacy by not seeking a wage, and a hooker breaks with convention by demanding one. They are both diminished and confined by the same system that would keep women dependent on men for survival. And they could free themselves from that system together. As Margo St. James recalled in an interview (also from Carol Leigh’s archives), before she founded COYOTE in early 1973, there was WHO—Whores, Housewives, and Others. Others meant lesbians, “but it wasn’t being said out loud yet, even in liberal bohemian circles.” An early COYOTE supporter, anthropologist Jennifer James, coined the term “decriminalization” to express the movement’s goals of removing laws used to target prostitutes. The National Organization for Women (NOW), still very much in its Feminine Mystique era, adopted the decriminalization of prostitution as an official part of its platform later that year.

like. now THIS is feminism!!!!!

[sleepy-seal]

im being so serious when i say this but we need to bring back the "my genitals are none of your business" "if gender is whats in my pants then my gender is some loose change" mentality from the late 2010's because too many people on here are openly flirting with exclusionary people who spout enbyphobic rhetoric. stop caring about what people's agabs are you assholes. they literally mean nothing. they're not a zodiac sign or indicative of people's character. you are not wholly pure or wholly evil because of your assigned sex. you're just a person.

[ash-and-art]

"what genitals do you have?" Is sexual harassment regardless if its from a security guard or a chronically online furry

[userfish]

this pride month we’re all going to be radically pro transgender. or else.

[userfish]

hey so this means radically pro ALL transgender. don’t put limitations on this. all trans people are radically accepted here.

[theneonmark]

@reasonsforhope I didn't expect to start this pride month with an ugly cry but thank you from the bottom of my nonbinary heart 😭 💜🤍💛🖤

[reasonsforhope]

💜🤍💛🖤

Right back at you from my nonbinary heart

No matter who's reading this--

No matter how comfortable you might or might not feel with the word trans, or nonbinary, or whatever else--

Even if no other person on the planet has ever believed you about your experience of gender

Guess what? I do

💙🩷🤍🩷💙

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.