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theprideful-deactivated20251201

Attn: People With Cervixes!

When was your last Pap smear?

Because I am tired of seeing young people (think 40 year olds!) die horribly of an almost completely preventable disease, and I haven't seen the obligatory Tumblr PSA about it, so I'm making my own.

1. CERVICAL CANCER IS REALLY BAD

Cancers that have a good prognosis are usually cancers that can be caught early--like skin cancer, which is easily seen, and therefore usually treated very early. Cervical cancer does not give you symptoms until you have very advanced disease, which means unless someone is regularly testing your cervix, you will likely not be diagnosed early. More than half of people diagnosed with cervical cancer present with advanced disease. 75% of them will be dead within 5 years. For comparison, when caught in the earliest stage, there is a 90% 5 year survival rate. Treatment for those diagnosed is chemo and radiation, and believe me, those are not fun. If you do happen to be in the lucky 25% of survivors, if your cancer comes back, you have an 85% chance of dying within a year. Also! We think of cancer as something that happens to old people, but the average age of diagnosis for cervical cancer is 50.

2. WHO GETS CERVICAL CANCER?

Cervical cancer used to be the most common cause of cancer-related death in women in America, but at this point it's basically a disease of People Without Pap Smears--developing countries, immigrants, low socioeconomic status, BIPOC, rural communities, LGBTQ, etc.

3. HOW DO PAP SMEARS SAVE YOUR LIFE?

A Pap smear is a screening test for two things: HPV, and your cervical cells. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the world. Literally half of the people in America have some strain of HPV on their body. Most HPV infections go away on their own (in people with healthy immune systems), but some strains are Very Bad, and some people are just Very Unlucky, and the HPV starts causing your cervical cells to turn cancerous. 91% of all cervical cancers are caused by HPV. So a Pap smear looks to see if your have HPV, and if so, is it one of the bad ones? And also, do you have any cancerous cells hanging about in your cervix? And! It takes 10-30 years for HPV to turn those cells into cancer, which means you have a really really long time to catch it before it becomes cancer and cut those pre-cancer cells out!

4. WHAT ABOUT THAT VACCINE?

The thing my dad said I shouldn't get because it might make me a slut. Yes! There is an HPV vaccine! You should get it! It protects you against the nine most common cancer-causing types of HPV. It's recommended starting at age 11, and you can get it up to age 45 now! (It used to be 26, but as of 2020, it's now extended.)You can get it from most primary care doctors, or from Planned Parenthood, CVS, Walgreens, etc. If you get the vaccine you still need Pap smears.

5. I HEARD YOU CAN ONLY GET THE VACCINE IF YOU'RE A VIRGIN

Fake news. While the vaccine does not treat old infections of HPV, it does prevent new ones, so while the benefits are theoretically decreased in those who have already been sexually active, it does not mean you will not benefit from having it!

6. WHO GETS PAP SMEARS?

Everyone with a cervix starting at age 21, until you lose your cervix or until you're 65. You should get them every 3-5 years (depending on your exact age and what test your doctor does).

7. BUT I GOT THE VACCINE

Nice! You still need Pap smears.

8. I HAD ONE AND IT WAS HORRIBLE/I'M SCARED OF THE EXAM

Talk to your doctor about this in advance! Good gynecologists (and other providers) will work with you to minimize discomfort as much as possible. They can use a small speculum and lots of gel, prescribe anti-anxiety medications to take in advance, and some people will even use numbing creams and/or laughing gas.

9. BUT I DON'T HAVE/CAN'T SEE A GYN

Most primary care physicians can do them! So do a lot of urgent care centers!

10. BUT I'M A LESBIAN

HPV can be transmitted through oral/genital contact, hand/genital, and even hand-to-hand-then-genital, so you still need Pap smears.

11. BUT I'M A VIRGIN/ASEXUAL

You still need Pap smears. HPV can be transmitted not just through penetrative sex, but also through oral/genital, hand/genital, and hand-to-hand-then-genital, and also 9% of cervical cancers are not caused by HPV.

12. BUT I'M A TRANSGENDER MAN

If your cervix was removed, then congrats! You do not need Pap smears. Otherwise, unfortunately, you are still at risk for cervical cancer and need to be screened.

13. BUT I'M A TRANSGENDER WOMAN

Neovaginas do not need Pap smears! Congrats! Consider getting the vaccine, though, to prevent spreading HPV to others.

14. BUT I'M A CIS-GENDERED MAN

Congrats! You do not need Pap smears! You should still consider the vaccine though, not only to prevent the spread of HPV to others, but also because HPV causes 50% of all penile cancers as well.

In summary: please please please go get your pap smear. Go get vaccinated. The spread of HPV can be prevented, and cervical cancer can be caught and treated before it even becomes cancer.

DON'T FEAR THE SMEAR

#we get a letter after the test in canada #so you know it was negative

marisatomay

“don’t eat honey because it exploits the bees and they can’t consent!!!” bees are literally unionized and will walk out if they don’t like being in the beekeeper’s hives

rowark

Such activities could entail a $5,000 fine or five years in prison while Canada is under the national Emergencies Act invoked on Monday.

Bringing children to the antigovernment blockades that have immobilized downtown Ottawa and shuttered border crossings is among the activities that could net protesters a $5,000 fine or five years in prison while Canada is under the national Emergencies Act.

The same punishment would apply to anyone participating in the protests directly, or bringing aid such a food or fuel to those involved.

There shouldn't be kids there in the first place. The government shouldn't have to invoke the Emergencies Act to prohibit people from using their children as human shields, but that's where we're at now.

#amen

steakandcheeeese

Lmao you’re an adult, you shouldn’t be using the word squick. Use trigger. Use your grown up adult words to explain how you feel instead of leaning on a cutesy uwu term that no one outside of tumblr uses. It’s embarrassing.

Idek if this is serious or ironic honestly

steakandcheeeese

#like…why use this baby word when you can just say how you feel about it

Found this in the original post tags and I just… SIGH

Here’s the thing, anon. Squick isn’t just ‘I don’t like this’, it’s ‘I think this is gross and it makes me deeply uncomfortable but I pass no judgement on those who enjoy it, because I acknowledge that everyone is different and those same people may have the same visceral reaction some of the things I enjoy’ and was originally made popular in the kink community.

So yeah, if you want to say that every time you come across a trope or whatever you find icky then go ahead, say that every time.

Also, this term dates back to Usenet in the early nineties, so sure, go off.

sugarfey

This frustrates me so much because squicks and triggers are fundamentally different things and as someone with PTSD, the distinction is super useful!

Squicks are things I find personally gross but may not be gross to someone else. They don’t upset me or provoke my PTSD, they simply do not pop my corn. Example: Omegaverse. I don’t like it, it makes me uncomfortable and I’m not going to read it, but if you like it, you do you.

Triggers are things which directly provoke my PTSD. This means that my triggers may seem completely normal and innocuous to someone else, because my triggers are so personal and intrinsically linked to a specific event in my life. My reactions to these triggers can include panic attacks and flashbacks to this traumatic event. Sometimes being triggered can affect me for several hours or even days.

Describing something as either a squick or a trigger allows me easily establish the difference in my potential reaction to something without having to go into painful detail about why bodily fluids might make me back button quickly but poker games might leave me a crying wreck.

oopsabird

Making this distinction, and having a specific word for something that is not your slice of pie, but also not an actual psychological trigger, is also REALLY important for making sure that the word “trigger” can retain its original, specific, purposeful, and collectively understood clinical meaning (both inside and outside online fannish communities).

If we encourage everyone to lump things that just make them slightly uncomfortable or simply aren’t to their taste in under the word “trigger”, it actually dilutes the meaning of the word. It makes it harder for us all to, for the most part, collectively agree on and understand what exactly is being described when the word gets used.

And that destruction of shared precise definitions is a problem! It is really useful to have the communal language to be able to clearly and quickly delineate between “this grosses me out, no thanks” and “this is going to set off a trauma episode, rattle my brain, and probably throw off the rest of my day/week as a result” while also maintaining your privacy, and to know that you will be understood in what you are saying. Not having it is actually detrimental to the effort of making our communities safe and navigable for people living with trauma. Which is a goal that is much more important to me, personally, than the idea of not being “cutesy” (a word which in this case which sounds a lot like it’s being used as a euphemism for “cringe”).

(Also, one has to wonder if people told Shakespeare he was being childish when he made up entirely new words that are still widely used in the English language today…… 🤔)

mumblingsage

My understanding is that “squick” was also created to avoid using more judgmental terms like “gross” or “disturbing”–like yeah, I do find X kink gross or disturbing, but that’s my personal feeling, not an objective fact about the world, and if I’m explaining to my friend who is super into X that I’d prefer they leave it out of the story they’re writing me in the fic exchange, I want to use politer language!

“Squick” does sound silly, like onomatopoeia, but I think that’s part of its role–it’s a word that defuses if, again, you’re saying something squicks you in front of an audience that may include its connoisseurs. When I say I’m squicked, I’m clearly not getting onto a high horse of dignity and moral righteousness. At the same time I’m not being so indirect for the sake of politeness–”oh, it’s not my favorite thing, I’m not sure it works for me, I haven’t found a fic about it that clicks for me”–that someone could misunderstand how much I do not want to see it.

ruffboi-mags

And, to reiterate, it is a grown up word made by grown up nerds in the 90s so if you think it was somehow born on and limited to Tumblr I’m going to need you to actually do some fandom history research before you ever speak authoritatively again about anything fandom-related or adjacent.

littlethingwithfeathers

I love and deeply miss the term “squick” and really want to see it brought back. It allows dislike for its own sake and without judgement. It’s polite, gentle, and has an air of “you do you.” A squick is not a trigger. Triggers are related to trauma. You’re allowed to not like things and not have them related to anything other than just finding them unpleasant. And that aversion can be strong! That’s okay! I really don’t like watersports. Like, gag-reflex levels of aversion, but it’s not triggering. I just really don’t like it. I feel like we’ve lost the right/ability to just… quietly not like things and move on with our lives. Not everything is for everyone, and you don’t need a reason to not like something. Just politely and quietly excuse yourself. No need to draw attention, and if someone asks you why you just say, “No, it squicks me out.” No judgement. No narrative necessary.

lilykep

There is a sad trend of trying to make everything you personally dislike morally reprehensible in some way to justify your dislike of it. You’re allowed to just not like something for no real reason. You do not have to justify why you dislike something, and the word “squick” is perfect for that. It say “look I really really don’t like this thing, but it’s ok if you do” and that is useful.

ruffboi-mags

I think the biggest problem is that a lot of these kids are VERY into the whole fandom purity culture thing, so they actually DO want to make it out to be morally reprehensible, and they DON’T think it’s ok that other ppl might be into it.

neil-gaiman

Cheerfully using “squick” since 1992, because it means a specific thing and other words do not mean that thing.

dduane

I sure haven’t stopped using the word, and don’t intend to. It has a distinct and distinctive meaning in the general fannish communities I frequent.

(See also [and paraphrasing a bit here]: “When I became as much a ‘grownup’ as I intend to become, I ‘put away childish things’ and gave up the fear of childishness* and the the desire to be and/or seem Very Grown Up.” [And also, see the rest of Lewis’s pertinent quote, where he doesn’t mince words about what he thinks of people who use the term “adult” in critique as a term of approval.])

*There is also a very specific difference in the meanings/implications of the too-often-interchangeably-used words “childish” and “childlike” which a lot of people miss, but that’s material for some other post, some other day…

allthecanadianpolitics

Ontario is removing vaccine mandates March 1 🤪 who’s ready to stay inside for another god knows how long when this backfires horribly

~~~~

marctypesthings

…

controversial opinion: but they should, i guess

most people are vaccinated and if we want/ed to change, we can/could’ve tried to invest more into hospitals

allthecanadianpolitics

22 people died of Covid19 in Ontario, just yesterday.

There are currently 400+ people in ICU’s in the province.

Also chronic health problems from Covid19 (”Long Covid”) effects people for months after being infected, even for those who are vaccinated.

There are also disabled and immunocompromised people who can’t get vaccinated and spreading Covid19 around because we’ve just given up is a death sentence for them.

Fuck right off.

kc749

As a person who is far more vulnerable to dying of covid (or any sars virus) I'm disappointed but not surprised that they're giving up on trying to keep people like me safe. Capitalism always ends up with profits valued over morality.

Then again, the people who are going to be likely to die if we ditch the precautions are mostly the idiots who want them gone. Part of me wants to see the precautions go so more of them get sick and die for being deliberately ignorant.

#thankfully i can get vaccinated #though there's no guarantee i don't die anyway #anti vaxxers like to talk about how viruses are supposed to kill off the weak #turns out sometimes the 'weakness' is in the fucking ability to tell fact from fantasy

theartistichuman

Are we as the trans community ready to acknowledge that sometimes gender just straight up changes?

Obviously this doesn’t apply to all people, but for some trans people they were fine being their AGAB until they weren’t.

I used to follow an enby who proudly identified as a woman for years before one day they just went “actually… it changed. I’m not vibing with that any more. I was a woman, but now I’m not and I’m ready to open a different chapter of my life.”

Sometimes people who are genderfluid don’t have fluctuating dysphoria, and just have a changing gender.

Sometimes non-binary people will find that their masc/femme alignment changes.

Sometimes people who were binary feel more non-binary, or oppositely binary.

Are we ready to normalize this too?

jasperwocky

YES can we acknowledge that the “born this way” narrative (while true for many of us) is kinda just something we told cishets so they would stop telling us to change

i think as people with complicated genders and shit we have this desire to make a cohesive narrative that cisnormative society will accept, even at the expense of our own self-discovery. i think this also plays into the larger idea of “why should we make cis people comfortable with our existence?” why try to fashion a consistent narrative for the very society that labeled us as other in the first place? we do not need to be explicable

zhooniyaa-waagosh

Talking about this more would also help people who have DEtransitioned. Sometimes a person transitions because they really were a man or woman or nonbinary at one point, and then that changed again later and they started reidentifying as their assigned gender. And that's FINE.

But it's an experience that just isn't talked about and leaves a lot of detransitioned people feeling lost and alone, like they've been tricked or they're betraying the people who supported them or even that they're betraying the person they were. A lot of those people end up turning to transphobic communities, like radical feminism, to try to find reasoning behind their experiences and to understand why they've found themselves where they have, because they've been told by both cis and trans people that gender is static and unchanging.

Gender changes. Sometimes it's a slow change, that happens over years. Sometimes it's fast and you just suddenly realize "oh, that isn't who I am anymore." Sometimes you go through things that change your perspective of yourself, your identity, your idea of gender entirely. Sometimes you go through something that has left you unable to connect with gender or that has changed you on such a fundamental level that you are someone entirely different from who you were.

People are just always changing, always shifting, always growing. Our genders reflect that too.

nepofledgling

duolingo has more gay representation than the marvel cinematic universe

johannepetereric

Can you please elaborate?

nepofledgling

there are more gay characters on duolingo than the marvel cinematic universe

johannepetereric

How? I don’t see it

nepofledgling

the example sentences can be stuff like “her wife” or a man saying he loves his boyfriend, and the stories (at least in spanish) include gay couples.

thenicedevil

Ok I totally agree with you but when I saw “duolingo has more gay representation than the marvel cinematic universe” I thought you were talking about how the duolingo owl was gay

yellowpie

He is and I have proof

thenicedevil

Ok wait I knew he’s gay but like what’s the proof please share I wanna know

yellowpie

Ok so there’s this Disney show called The Owl House, and, as the name implies, it has both owls and gay characters. Naturally, this lead to people making jokes about shipping one of the owls and the Duolingo owl. For a while, that’s all it was, just some fans saying “haha what if these owls were gay?” Somehow, Duolingo eventually heard about this, and started occasionally referencing The Owl House on their Twitter, including in this tweet:

If that art doesn’t say “These Owls Are Gay And There’s Nothing You Can Do About It” I don’t know what does

forged-in-fire-and-darkness

Duolingo owl says Gay Rights!!

noodles-07

Duolingo owl also says to practice your spanish or else

astronomical-bagel

Duolingo owl says derechos de los homosexuales!!

captain-lonagan

diversity win! the owl threatening your life is gay!

funnytwittertweets

chesh-ires-deactivated20210426

being nonbinary and a fan of non-human creatures isn’t easy. like i’m constantly struggling with the fact that i’m both like “i wish there was more enby representation in humans” and “i’m the same gender as mewtwo and that fucking rips”

ckret2

the tension between “representing NBs only as nonhuman characters is dehumanizing and othering” and “but monsters, aliens, and robots are so much cooler than humans”

mypunkpansexualtwin

randomslasher

in this photo i have 3 hands and they’re all wearing a different jacket

vbartilucci

aiweirdness

With just a few style-change examples, I got GPT-3 to change the Winnie the Pooh theme song into this:

In the uncanny depths of the Hundred Acre Wood is the place where the great wizard Christopher Robin plays. If you are fool enough to enter, you will find the enchanted place where he first came into the fullness of his power.

The great wizard is accompanied by Eeyore, a donkey of great power As well as the famous Kanga and that which is called Roo. We shall not speak of Tigger. There is also Rabbit, and Piglet, a mighty duo feared across these lands, and, of course, there is Owl, also known as The Silent Feathered Death. But the greatest of them all is Winnie the Pooh.

Winnie the Pooh! Tremble to pronounce his name! The Great Bear, whose deeds speak for themselves. Yes, Winnie the Pooh! Speak the power of the Pooh. Ubiquitous, unpredictable, and terribly ancient.

cephalophor

The first funny bitch was Cain, who straight up lied to God after killing his brother.

nakedinasnowsuit

God: where’s Abel?

Cain: fuck if I know??? I’m not in charge of him

thewitchway

It is TRAGIC that you can’t read this in the original Hebrew.

God: Where’s the Sheepkeeper?

Cain: Do I LOOK like a Brotherkeeper?

careful-crow

God: hey where’s Abel???

Cain:

adventuretfox

He killed his yonger brother in cold blood because he was jealous of him. There is in no way anything funny about this. No hesitation just poped a rock over his turned head, droped his body over the edged and tried to lie to god about what he did. FUCK YALL CRAZIES!!!

funkyness

oh are those the receipts, Cain is problematic now?

bprinny

Cainceled

bebx

Ao3 writers are the strongest Avengers

nickyandmikey

when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each other… like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?😳

nickyandmikey

THIS IS NOT ABOUT ONE DIRECTION I DON’T KNOW WHO THIS “HARRY” PERSON IS GO WATCH BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND CLARENCE CLEMONS KISS ON STAGE RIGHT NOW

irrelevantlyvalid

op is the only valid person i’ve ever met. everyone else needs to come to the light

chokolattejedi

Okay, but this is really important: Bruce Springsteen occupied this really weird place in music history. His songs were all from this pessimistic, nihilistic view of an America that had let him down:

Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didn’t *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.

Politicians used his music to promote their ‘Murica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. He’s over here asking when we’re going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who weren’t helping the people.

It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jackson’s record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.

Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.

So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.

Passages from American Popular Music by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman

executeness

I used to think that Bruce and Clarence kissing onstage was exuberance, showmanship, and telling racist homophobes to fuck off. Like, they picked up a certain kind of audience and went “Racist homophobes? Not in our house!” And started the kissing then but then I actually looked it up and

https://www.gq.com/story/this-fucked-me-up-bruce-springsteen-singing-about-clarence-clemons

It was a story where… we remade the city. We remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship and our love for one another wouldn’t have been such an exceptional thing. - Bruce Springsteen

It wasn’t about showmanship or rejecting bigots or anything it was just. Damn right that was one of the loves of his life and damn right he was going to kiss him onstage

It gets me a little that Bruce has had a divorce, that he’s been married twice, but he loved Clarence for the rest of Clarence’s life and will presumably love him the rest of his own

Clemons said in one interview. “Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for.” In another version of the story, Clemons says “He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love.”

I’m having some emotions about it!

“He was elemental in my life,“ Springsteen adds, “and losing him was like losing the rain.”

Not just! I love you pure and deep and true but! I am going to love you like that in front of the whole damn world!

We have fewer narratives about taking risks and making statements for platonic love rather than romantic and supposedly it would be easier to downplay this onstage than romance and! They refused! They fucking refused! In front of hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of years! In the spotlight, in word and deed, I love you!

God I’m not okay about it