Holy shit. Ten years on this site. In that time frame, I've graduated from both high school and college, moved out and moved again, found three different friend groups irl (two of which I regularly keep up with), went to three different conventions (2016, 2017, and this year), had a mental health spiral so bad it's influenced the writing of my book, started and restarted my YouTube channel, became active in my local furry scene, came out as non-binary to my best friend on January 6 2021, came out as non-binary to my dad last year, saw many family members die and be born, got a full time job, got a car, did a guest lecture at a university, started making my fursuit, experienced my first genuine crush and heartbreak, and even with all of that happening...
Rightfully so, I have gotten messages worrying if everything I post is legit (I try my best to make sure the answer is yes), but here’s a masterlist of ones that one or more people have confirmed are legit Palestinians. Most are from the blogs @el-shab-hussein, @ibtisams, @palestinecharitycommissionsassoc ,@90-ghost, @nabulsi and @palipunk
I will also be making individual posts for most of these
Help Khaled and his family escape Gaza
Help lara and abdalla Family to be safe in Gaza
Emergency: Help Ibrahim's Family Find Safety - $50 is 500kr
HELP Ezzideen & his Family to EVACUATE Gaza
Your help is the only hope to save us from war.
Hope : Help Little Elen Fetch a brighter Future
Help Aseel’s family evacuate from Gaza.
EMERGENCY: HELP evacuate Bashar from Gaza
Help Mohammad Hammad evacuate his family from Gaza
Help Madleen's Family From Gaza
Help Jehad Evacute From Gaza
Help a med student & his family evacuate to safety
Help Fadi's Family Rebuild Their Life Amidst Crisis
Help Us Safely Evacuate a family from Gaza
Help child with Cerebral Palsy evacuate
Protect an open source engineer and his family
Help Bring Ayah’s Family in Gaza to Safety
Call to Action: Keep Gazas Talent Alive
Help Belal and His Family Escape the War in Gaza
Urgent Rescue Mission for the Mortaja Family
Save my family from the war in Gaza
Urgent: Help Evacuate My Family From Gaza War
Urgent help to evacuate my family out of Gaza
Help evacuate Safi’s family from Gaza in warfare
emergency : Help Support the Khalaf Family in Gaza
Help AbdulAziz and his family
Help Yousef escape Gaza and treat his cancer
Help my family rebuild home und evacuate Gaza
Please Help Me Evacuate My Children To Safety
Escape From War Nightmare: Support Gazan Family
Help my family in Gaza
Salaam Animal Care, find a safe home for animals
URGENT HELP help my family to evacuate Gaza
Help me & my Family Evacuate from Gaza
Urgent Appeal for Support: Help a Photographer
Help Jana's Family Find Refuge and Peace
Help me to save my family from the war in Gaza
Help evacuate my brother and his family from Gaza
Urgent apeal to help Elzomar family leave Gaza immediately
Help my mum to travel to a safe place
Help Afnan to find safety and to complete her education
Support getting Linda and her family out of Gaza
Support Mohammed and His Family Affected by the Gaza War
Help Ala's Family Overcome Crisis in Gaza
Freedom and home repair for Aesha an family
Help us evacuate and rebuild what's left of our lives
Help Tamer and his Family in Gaza!
Help my family escape death and reunite with me.
Help me and my family escape the Genocide in Gaza
Help rebuild Ahmed's family life in Gaza .
Emergency : Saving My Mother and only brother From War Zone
Rescue Mahmoud's Family: A Call to Escape Gaza's Devastation
Help Mohammed & His Family To Safety
Help Almoghrabi family to evacuate Gaza strip
Urgent Appeal: Help Save Ruba & Muhammad in Gaza!
Urgent help to evacuate my family from Gaza
Help Alia's family and their children get out of Gaza
Urgent Appeal: Save Little Yusuf and His Family Amidst Gaza
Support My Family Escape War in Gaza
Help me get my family out to safety
Help my family out of Gaza
Help me get my family out to safety
Help my children and family from the Gaza war !!
Please Help Evacuate Fadi's Family from Gaza
URGENT: Help Hayam and her Family Escape the Genocide
For what remained in us من أجل ما تبقى فينا
Please Help Restore The Sharifs home & Help Leave A War Zone
Help Shymaa's Family Reunite in Egypt
Help Mahmoud’s family evacuate from Gaza
Donate to help Deyaa and his family escape Gaza
Fatima’s Journey to Restore Artistry in Gaza
My family under fire, help them evacuate Gaza.
Help me to evacuate from the genocide
Help Mahmoud to evacuate from Gaza to continue education
Help my family evacuate from Gaza
Help Sana’a and her family evacuate from Gaza
Haytham needs your help to support his family
Help my family survive and evacuate from Gaza
Help me rebuild a shelter for my family in Rafah
HelpYoussef and his family get out of Gaza for a better life
Let my family be safe and live in peace!
Relief Appeal: Secure Evacuation from Gaza War
Please Help Tahani save her children and husband
Urgent Help Appeal: exit the war of Gaza"
Help My Family Get Out Of Gaza
Vegetables, food, and water for Palestinian families
HELP Muhammad evacuate his family out of GAZA
Secure a Safe Future for Youssef’s Family - Act now
“We chose the term “asexual” to describe ourselves because both “celibate” and “anti-sexual” have connotations we wished to avoid: the first implies that one has sacrificed sexuality for some higher good, the second that sexuality is degrading or somehow inherently bad. “Asexual”, as we use it, does not mean “without sex” but “relating sexually to no one”. This does not, of course, exclude masturbation but implies that if one has sexual feelings they do not require another person for their expression. Asexuality is, simply, self-contained sexuality.”
— The Asexual Manifesto, Lisa Orlando and Barbara Getz, 1972
It’s 50 years this month since the first version of the Asexual Manifesto was written. Aces have been writing about our experiences under this name for at least half a century. We are not an internet fad.
Thank you, Maia Kobabe, for bringing Gender Queer to the public. Your story touched me in ways I never thought anyone would be able to do. I related to nearly everything, and even though I'm AMAB, there's still a part of me that can understand the feelings of growing up and going through puberty, not wanting the kind of body you're getting. I have always hated having body hair, and I want to get my facial hair removed entirely. I love it when people mistake me for female (hair down to the chest), and I never correct them. I always related more to the aesthetics of my female classmates than my male ones, but it wasn't until 2020 (specifically December 28) that I realized something.
There's this thing about me that every friend and family member knows, and even a lot of strangers know: I'm autistic. I see the world in different ways than most people, but I also taught myself some pretty hurtful things because of those differences. I thought I had to be a certain way and think of myself a certain way so that people would accept it more easily. I convinced myself I was straight, I convinced myself I was cis male, all without realizing what those words meant. It wasn't until I was 16 that I had explored a deeper side of the furry fandom that I realized no representation of female bodies (coupled with an almost traumatizing video of a woman giving birth (because sex ed in the south in 2014 amounted to abstinence)) would ever make me interested. And shortly after that, no representation of male bodies could do that either. I was repulsed by the idea of someone getting close to a very private area, and genitalia in general looked very unappealing to me. I came out as asexual to literally everyone in my sophomore year of high school, including my dad who still doesn't believe me (I am 24 years old now, post undergrad). I got a lot of support and a lot of confused responses. I found a queer community in college in 2018, and studied asexuality in Invisible Orientation, just because I had and continue to have this yearning to understand myself completely.
In 2020, after a brutal year and a half for my mental health, I pledged to be more open and involved at school while I still could. Then the pandemic hit, and all I could do was stay inside. Luckily I'm an introvert, so it was pretty easy to spend time reading, writing, listening to music, drawing, and connecting with people through my phone. With more time spent on my phone than ever, I discovered different gender identities (first through the coming out of Sam Smith) and gender expressions (Dorian Electra). Everything came to a head on December 28, 2020 when I had this epiphany. It teased its way into my brain on the past Fourth of July, but I couldn't deny it anymore: if I'm asexual, then what's the point of having genitalia? Also, what's the point of identifying with it when you have no use for it?
I could just ignore it.
And suddenly my worldview changed forever, and I discovered myself as non-binary. I never really fit the mold of a typical person anyway, so this must be the natural extension of my entire being. I was also studying Buddhism at the time, so that helped with the distancing of flesh as important to one's sense of self. I kept the secret to myself...for less than ten days. On January 6, 2021, I woke up to my phone blowing up about some huge rally in DC. I thought to myself, I know how this is going to go, they'll just get riled up before going back to their lives. Then it happened.
I was terrified that something like this could have ever happened. So much so, that I had to leave home and drive somewhere. My dad had voted for that guy, and I was afraid he would act dangerous in turn or at least get shouty. I drove all the way to my college campus before meeting up with my best friend at her place not too far away. While there, we had this silent agreement that everything was going terribly. However, she let me stay there until things got better. We started playing some games to take our mind off of the travesty because what could we do about it while it's happening? She left the room for a minute and I thought about my gender. She had a right to know if she's the person who I went to when I was scared out of my mind. So, I told her while under the most excruciating stress I had been in recent memory. I was hoping to all that is sacred in Nature's realm that she wasn't going to be transphobic. She wasn't. She said she felt honored that I told her and immediately asked about pronouns, which I had just thought about. I cried so hard as this weight was lifted off my shoulders, and all I had to do was wait for the riots to be taken care of. I drove back home in the dead of night.
After that experience, I slowly came out to all of my friends, my teachers, my therapist, but not the official school system or even my school adjacent workplace. I discovered drag through Drag Race. I came out to my aunt under duress (not caused by her) as I was explaining a script I was writing for film club. And she gave me the best advice: I'm a beautiful soul that just needed to realize what it looked like. Cue more crying. Since then, I graduated college, played D&D religiously, found a new, more stable job (still not out yet and possibly never will be because conservative area), got into the makeup for the first time (w/o my dad knowing), and moved out.
I just knew, once I stopped by the local bookstore and found Gender Queer that I had to read it, so I could have a better conception of what gender means to me. Instead, I now feel like whatever my genderqueerness takes the form of, it won't last. I'm not the kind of person to sit quietly in a box for all time. My future plans are to decorate my new room in colors and posters, upgrade my wardrobe (which I haven't done since I graduated), get the makeup, and maybe stop worrying about my hairline receding (at 24).
Everything is clearer, but farther away. But I was never a good judge of distance anyway. I'm more comfortable knowing there's people almost exactly like me out there (no one can be exactly like me except me), and maybe I'll come out to my roommates. Eventually...
So to Maia Kobabe, I thank you for inspiring me to continue further.
And to myself, the autistic, asexual, non-binary, writer, reader, artist, aspiring musician (also influenced by Bowie), aspiring makeup artist, aspiring video creator, furry, linguist, philosopher (my degree), chronologist, MBTI user (INFP), mathematician, existentialist, anarchist, and all around human, I thank you for being you, no matter what has happened or will happen.
That’s not a contradiction at all. “I love following rules” means “I love having clear instructions instead of them being implied”. It doesn’t mean “I love obeying authority” or “I love conforming”.
>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.
>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.
>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.
>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.
>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.
>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.
>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.
>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!
>Lemmings problem now solved.
>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.
>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.
>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.
>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.
>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.
>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.
