Why Do People Think Im Gay? @kingratboi - Tumblr Blog

Excerpt from the book I may never write:

"You would call me Icarus, but only so you could call yourself the Sun."

White Fingers

Gloves are made in pairs. Each set carefully matched up and color coordinated. They always have a purpose as long as they are side by side, but as soon as one disappears the other becomes useless.

Some gloves are always perfectly with their family, never getting seperated. Some gloves are lost at first, but eventually find their belonging with friends or with a partner. Some gloves never find a family, or a friends, but that’s okay, because sometimes the hand that they warm is lonesome and they don’t need more than one glove, and the glove is content. The glove is content because despite their loneliness they still know that they are helping and some gloves are okay with being alone if they still do good. Some gloves though, some gloves never find a partner. They never find a hand to help, and so they do not get used. Those gloves, the ‘useless’ ones, those are the ones that look the prettiest. The look pristine due to never being worn. They’re not frayed, or stained, or stretched. They are just as innocent looking as when they were made. Those gloves though, those gloves tend to be the loneliest, because they always feel useless or empty inside. Those gloves are always told how pretty or how clean they look, but only because no one takes the time to check for damage inside the glove.

People are like gloves. Sometimes they just need a hand inside them.

guerrillatech

memewhore

teacupsandtimelords

Fun Fact! Two Weeks Notice is not a REQUIREMENT in any sense of the word. It’s a nicety. A polite gesture, and only polite for the MANAGEMENT because THEY want time to find someone to replace you. They cannot withhold your last paycheck if you refuse to give two weeks notice, and they cannot force you to work the two weeks. Additionally, they cannot report that to any future employers who call them regarding your work history. In fact, they’re not allowed to comment on your performance AT ALL! Legally they are only allowed to confirm that you were an employee during the dates you list - anything else and they open themselves up to civil lawsuits in which they can be sued for damages for any number of reasons. So fuck Two Weeks Notice. if you work for a fucked company, they deserve to get fucked in return.

continent-of-wild-endeavor

If you ever feel bad about not giving two weeks' notice, or like you're being unprofessional/unfair, think about this: If your boss fired you, would they give YOU two weeks' notice? Or would they have you escorted out of the building then and there? Anything they don't owe you, you don't owe them. Fuck 'em.

alunarrose

Oh these are therapeutic

severalowls

I'd just like to add a classic:

bruinhilda

As a library worker, there’s something I want to say to you.

You do not have to apologize for the books you choose to read.

At all. To anyone. You owe nobody any explanations; you need no excuse or “good reason” to be reading the book.

You do not have to be ashamed for wanting to read “bad” books. You wanna read Twilight? We got Twilight. Need a banal, cookie-cutter-plot mystery or thriller? Those are always fun. Our regulars check them out by the towering stack. Ask Betty for recommendations; she’s read them all. 50 Shades of Oh Fucking No? We’ve got it, we even got it in large print. Have fun. Check out the rest of our porn too. Oh, and the sex manuals are a MUST if you want to “experiment” yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask; they’re here for a reason.

Want to read a book written by a huge asshole everyone hates and agree was a monster? Yeah, we have those. No, we don’t think you’re an asshole for wanting to know what was actually written in there, or judging things for yourself.

You are not too old for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Babysitter’s Club, or Captain Underpants. You are not too young for Sherlock Holmes. There’s nothing wrong with a boy reading The Princess Academy or Sweet Valley High. There’s nothing wrong with a girl being into The Hardy Boys or Artemis Fowl instead.

You do not have to pull the shame face and offer me an excuse when you check out your books. I don’t care if I got so angry at that book I threw it against a wall when I read it: you have the right to read it, and enjoy it if it’s enjoyable for you. THAT’S WHY THE LIBRARY HAS IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. If we only stocked pure, unproblematic literature everyone approved of, by authors of unquestionable virtue, we wouldn’t have any books at all. Or music. Or movies. It would be utterly fucking boring. And it certainly wouldn’t be a library.

thatspookyagent

I don’t think too many people understand just how much queer POC are being pushed out of conversations and not being considered whenever things that are dangerous to the queer community are being brought up. Like for example, talks about trans men and our experiences with being perceived as a threat (whether within queer spaces or outside of them), desperately need to start including more trans men of color.

I can only speak on my experiences as Black trans man but masculinity and embracing it for me, is dangerous. Yes I love being masculine and appearing as such but being perceived as masc, even if I wasn’t a man, is enough to get me targeted simply because I’m Black. And there’s not a whole lot of conversation around that and how being myself and transitioning the way I want, might end up getting me hurt or harassed.

Another thing is that terfs, usually white women, pushing that trans men are scary once they start transitioning to pass more as a man, is inherently racist. Period. Black men are often perceived that way, and it’s a big reason why we get targeted by the police. To reinforce this idea is to ignore the countless lives of Black men lost due to the police seeing us as a threat, whether it was because we simply had a hoodie on or were carrying non lethal objects in our hands.

Things like this are only two examples of how being Black and a man intersect, this isn’t even getting into the deeper side of how being trans would effect that identity as well.

The intersectionality between being a person of color and trans is way too significant to ignore and I really wish more conversations included how harmful statements from terfs effect LGBTQ+ POC ten fold. Such as how transphobia is inherently linked to racism and effects the deep queer history within communities of color who have recognized multiple genders and multiple queer identities for centuries. And how the gender binary is a product of colonization.

At the end of the day, I’m barely scratching the surface with this post. I highly encourage folks, especially white people, to think twice before posting something about transphobia or queerphobia because I can guarantee that the microaggression or act of violence you’re talking about, effects LGBTQ+ POC differently or more.

It’s honestly about time that we broaden discussions about oppression and include POC in them, whether it be within queer spaces or outside of them. Our lives as people of color effect literally every aspect of our life, and to be excluded from conversations surrounding oppression (or anything for that matter) would only harm us more. Even if we’re cishet, or cis, POC are still affected by things like the gender binary and white feminism (which is linked to the gender binary). For example, cis women of color are often excluded from feminism, denied womanhood, and told their features are ugly due to the fact that they don’t align with white women’s.

If more people knew about what we go through and experience, it’ll get more people to open their eyes and realize just how vital we are to discussions as well as get white people to realize what we face because of our race and queerness.

thatspookyagent

I would REALLY appreciate it if folks would stop tagging this with q slur and discourse. This isn’t fucking discourse. Me addressing racism and how LGBTQ+ POC are being excluded from discussions within the queer community isn’t fucking discourse. Get that in y'all’s heads. Real fucking fast.

Also for those tagging this as q slur, just tag it as q word or q tag. Or don’t bother reblogging this at all tbh.

neil-gaiman

who even are you. like what did you write

I have no idea. Let me see if anyone else in this ask place knows.

str0kethebigtree-deactivated202

he was in arthur.

telebisou

you're thinking of Jill Eikenberry; I think this guy was an astronaut of some kind

asingerofdreams

that's Neil Armstrong, I thought this guy was in How I Met Your Mother

neil-gaiman

That's Neil Patrick Harris. I think this might have been the playwright who wrote The Odd Couple.

merinnan

That’s Neil Simon. I think this is the musician who wrote Sweet Caroline.

hils79

That’s Neil Diamond. I think this is an astrophysicist

oneiriad

That’s Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think this is a river in Egypt.

omgpurplefattie

That's the Nile; I think this is the Irish guy who made the movies "The Crying Game" and "Interview with the Vampire".

stripedsweatergirl

No no no, that’s Neil Jordan. I think this is the English author who helped write Good Omens.

aphony-cree

You’re right! This is Terry Prachet’s tumblr. Good job everyone

cuddlydemons

ok I love this meme but like

Neil Gaiman actually was in Arthur.

neil-gaiman

This is true.

windwardstar

In case anyone wants some perspective on how utterly random triggers can be. I haven’t lived in a house with a garage door in four-ish years. Right now at this moment, I honestly can’t recall what they sound like, except something metallic moving and rather clanky.

There was one on tv. I wasn’t even paying attention to it, I had my headphones on and was actively trying to tune the show out. My ears picked up on the sound of the garage door, and a jolt of adrenaline shot through my body as I grabbed my laptop and moved to get out of my seat and run to my room.

I realized what happened after about two seconds.

The sound is gone from my ears, but my heart is still racing and I’m waiting for the door to the house to open, to hear the jingling of my mother’s keys and her footsteps moving through the house. My muscles are still tense and I’m fighting the urge to run to my room and stick a board in front of the door.

For years, the sound of a garage door was my warning to pack up what I was doing quickly and retreat to my room if I was out of it.

I can’t remember the sound of the garage door right now, but I can’t tell my brain to stop trying to react to it.

windwardstar

This can be reblogged, if anyone was wondering. I wrote up this post with the intention that hopefully people who read it and didn’t really get triggers would understand a bit.

the-real-seebs

So, a thing that’s particularly important here: The trigger here is not the bad experience itself.

jumpingjacktrash

after my super funtime medical adventure, i had to change all my bath products, because my brain had associated the scent of them with being terrified and in extreme pain.

these were products i had chosen myself because i liked the smell. and they got connected to the medical phobia because i was using them to wash off the hospital reek and the fear sweat and so forth. i don’t know why they became a trigger. maybe because washing off the hospital smell didn’t make me not in pain. maybe because their ‘fresh pine ocean breeze bluegreen spicy stuff’ smell didn’t really replace the hospital stench, just mingled with it.

but for whatever reason, smelling these objectively nice soaps made me do flashbacks and get all hopeless and wobbly. so they had to go.

triggers are random. they’re often something that was simply present during a trauma, and you can’t guess what they’ll be. no one who hasn’t heard me explain this would ever associate suave naturals ocean breeze body wash with unbearable abdominal pain. so i guess the takeaways here are twofold:

- if you have triggers, remember other people can’t predict them, and don’t expect to be protected from them all the time. that’s up to you.

- if you don’t have triggers, don’t assume you can judge what a ‘real’ trigger is, and if someone asks you to accomodate them, don’t be a dick about it. even if you don’t want to make that accomodation, decline politely and apologize, don’t disparage their request.

bigenbysharkshoal

If you’re going to deny someone’s request to respect their triggers, don’t bother being around them. You’re not a safe person for them to be around, whether you like it or not, the simple action of declining any kind of safety (physical, emotional, mental, psychological, verbal, etc) is not something a real friend would do.

Respecting triggers is the bare minimum of decency, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not respecting triggers (even through “polite decline”) is ableism.

lymmea

See, I knew this take would be here in the notes, and it is unfortunately an incorrect take. There are situations in which it is reasonable to say “I’m sorry, but I cannot accommodate your triggers, and it’s important that you know I can’t do this for you so that you can decide what’s best for you accordingly”.

Example: a follower of your blog asks you to tag something for them specifically. Maybe you don’t like using tags. Maybe it’s a tag for something really common, and it would be a huge hassle you’re expected to go through in order to make your blog trigger-safe for someone you barely know. Maybe you have a terrible memory and you know you’re not going to remember to tag this thing, so even if you wanted to make your blog safe for this one person you can’t promise strict compliance. Maybe this person wants you to tag something as a trigger that’s very personally meaningful to you/a very prevalent theme on your blog, so you’re not even sure why they want you to accommodate them because you’re not sure why they’re even here because your blog is never going to be tailored toward people like them and you are not about to even start to try making it so. (See: if someone asks me to tag “the q-slur”, not only am I going to say no, I’m going to tell them I don’t even want them following my blog because they’re straight up insulting a major facet of my identity.)

Another example: a friend is triggered by the smell of coffee, so they ask you - an avid coffee-drinker - to stop drinking coffee. Full stop. Not “don’t drink it around me”, which would be a more reasonable request, but not to drink it ever. This is an example of someone wanting their triggers respected, but who is demanding accommodation in a way that infringes on someone else’s right to live their life the way they like. In those cases, it’s reasonable to say no, because the request itself is unreasonable.

But what if it was a more reasonable request? Say, a significant other asking their partner, who they live with, not to drink coffee, because it’s kind of impossible to escape the smell of coffee when someone is brewing it in the place where you live? This is more reasonable to ask, since it’s understandably harder for the person with the trigger to avoid the trigger in such an instance…but it’s also something that could be a dealbreaker. Some people really need coffee to function. (There are even some people who need to self-medicate to some degree with coffee.) Compromise could happen - such as, maybe the partner gets their coffee from Starbucks so they don’t have to brew it in the house - but it could also be super disruptive for them, or perhaps unaffordable on tight incomes. So how do you handle that? In cases of conflicting needs, the person with the trigger needs to either try to reach a reasonable compromise with the person they’re asking to accommodate them, or accept that they need more accommodation than can reasonably be given by the other person and withdraw for their own safety. It sucks when conflicting needs like that can’t be resolved(which can sometimes happen), but it doesn’t mean the person putting their foot down is wrong to do so. It doesn’t mean it’s anyone’s fault. But it’s not only people with triggers that have a right to live comfortable lives with reasonable freedoms to do what they want.

It’s nice to accommodate someone’s triggers, obviously, but a reminder: it is not okay to make demands or expect complete compliance from strangers to make something that is not ultimately for you, specifically - such as someone else’s personal blog - safe for you. Likewise, even with close friends, making unfair demands or expecting someone to change major aspects of their life for you, without respecting their right to say “this is too much to ask of me”, is a great way to make Bad Guys out of completely reasonable people. There are limits to what it is reasonable to ask someone else to do for you, which are also tied into how well you know them and how onerous it would be for them. Asking a stranger to make very minor accommodations is not unreasonable; asking a close friend to make significant accommodations is not unreasonable. Asking a stranger to make significant accommodations, or a close friend to make unreasonable and/or actively life-altering concessions, really starts to enter “it’s great if they’re willing to, but they are not obligated to and you don’t get to call them a terrible person for saying no” territory.

Saying “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this for you” not only is a reasonable statement - after all, it gives the power of deciding what to do next, for their own safety, back to the person with the trigger(s), and it doesn’t chastise them for having their trigger(s) so much as it is warning them that a certain space cannot reasonably be made safe for them - but it absolutely needs to exist. Acting as though anyone who declines to tailor their lives to any and all trigger requests, for any reason, is ableist - without even the slightest consideration to conflicting needs, or certain spaces being inherently unsafe for certain people(if people being tied up is a trigger for you, perhaps you should not be demanding the shibari blog to make itself a safe space for you), or even whether the accommodation request was remotely reasonable to begin with…you’re basically saying “having a trigger means you have a right to make demands that only Bad People would ever refuse”. There’s no room for nuance. There’s not even room for other people to have the simplest of rights, like “having the content I want on my own blog, and the freedom to tag or not tag what I feel like in a space that is literally mine and no one else’s when tags are already a user-optional thing”.

And it opens the doors wide to people who will either make unreasonable demands because of their triggers(because people with triggers can be and sometimes are extremely unreasonable about how other people should keep them safe), or to people who will actually fake having triggers in order to force other people to do what they want. Which is utterly reprehensible, and obviously it’d never be safe to assume someone is faking a trigger, but if you’re saying people with triggers get to make demands that only evil ableists can say no to, can’t you see how tempting that arrangement would be to people acting in bad faith??? It invites people (whether they have genuine triggers or not) to strong-arm others into doing what they want, and if their demands are refused for any reason then they have an excuse to villainize and attack those people.

I’m sorry, but nuance, compromise between both parties, the possibility of conflicting needs, and the right to say “no” to accommodating triggers are deeply necessary aspects of any conversation about triggers. In a perfect world, everyone’s triggers could be accommodated by everyone else with no issue, but that is not the reality of the world we live in. You obviously have a very narrow view of who might refuse to accommodate triggers and for what reasons, but there is a lot more to consider that you haven’t taken into account. Your stance on triggers and accommodating them could do far more harm than any polite refusal.

curlicuecal

#another one for the #‘when we are not allowed boundaries we will resent others for having needs’ wall

neotrances-deactivated

Ok I took your advice with saying the “woah mama Mia cunt” and I ended up ruining a 6 year friendship and am now blocked on everything but it was worth it. Thank you

!??3?1?4????4?2?4?2?????3?2?3?3

absolutedarkness-deactivated202

Ok I’m anon and I just wanted to say that this Italian fuck is homophobic, transphobic, and pro-capitalist and continuously called me a snowflake while I was trying to debate against his ideals but the second I pull “mama mia cunt”, he instantaneously shuts down and I just ??

neotrances-deactivated

a bit of a win with this added information i salute you

prokopetz

The trouble with public art installations is that even among those that don’t strive to be inoffensively bland, too many of them are designed to be cute or inspiring or edgy or otherwise provoke a specific, well-defined emotion. What we need is more public art whose intended reaction is “what in the goddamn…?”

sistertaxon

the chicago pants

doomy

the dallas eye

theroguefeminist

Just a reminder because apparently people don’t realize this, but the rainbow gay pride flag isn’t like…a gay male pride flag? it was literally meant as a pride flag for everyone in the community. not that there’s anything wrong with specific identities having their own flag, but i keep seeing ppl post flag sets as if the rainbow ride flag only represents gay men and saying that not including every single other flag known in existence means you’re excluding people when no it’s not the rainbow flag is for everyone

beanierhodes

I think this is really important for people who are daunted by all the labels and still figuring themselves out. It’s okay. The rainbow flag is yours too

peoplehood-deactivated20211003

Maximalism! Cover your walls with art, clutter your shelves with trinkets and ceramics, fill your corners with potted plants!

kingratboi

That’s a weird way to spell ADHD

meladoodle

i wanna be a reverse tooth fairy where i rob people and then scatter human teeth on their bed

firelorcl

a dentist

turkeyimportedfrommassachusetts

i dont know what your dentist is doing to you but i think you need to go to the police

kingratboi

Alas, I have found it, the great prophesy

oceanicgf-deactivating-deactiva

WHERE is the video with the guy with the laptop dancing to really bad music please i need this

sensicalabsurdities

before i hit play i was like “I’m sure ‘bad music’ is subjective” … and then

world-heritage-posts

world heritage post

kiibo0the0human0robot

huh

ultrasopp

if you compliment your cis male friends by calling them handsome and strong but you compliment your trans male friends by calling them pretty and cute and soft you need to take a moment and think about why you do that and how you really look at your trans friends

ultrasopp

you may also take a moment to think if you call your cis male friends “man” but you call your trans male friends “boy” when they are the same fucking age :)))

ultrasopp

actually, @ cis people, take a moment to think about this anyway because you might be doing this subconsciously!

and no, having done this subconsciously doesnt make you a bad person, realizing mistakes and changing behavior is part of growing and all that stuff

hella1975

im sorry but writing enemies to lovers on ao3 is so fucking funny. one of them will go a whole paragraph saying how much they hate, absolutely despise, have genuine burning contempt for the other and we’re all here knowing damn well that enemies to lovers tag is just sat there. like we already know what’s coming bro you’re just embarrassing yourself

ashes-and-ashes

the appeal of enemies to lovers though is less “oh will they ever get together?” and more “at what exact point does he go from wanting to kill the bitch to the oh in italics?”