GROW A BEARD BURN A BILLBOARD @metapphjores - Tumblr Blog

This past weekend I was talking with someone, a midwestern guy in his late 60s who’d coached girls soccer for his three kids. The world cup was on, and he asked if I followed sports. I like being honest if at all possible. I told him I didn’t grow up playing sports. I went into my usual defensive “we went to the library instead,” which is true. And I gave him my usual “in high school gym class I sat with the other girls in the corner and we painted our nails and didn’t participate,” which is also true. Those both sounded like cute, wholesome stories to me. Easy ways to explain who I am today. “That’s a shame,” he said. I’d never realized that. “Oh?” I asked. “It’s a shame you didn’t get that experience of togetherness, of teamwork and accomplishment.” I could have kept expanding on that list of things I was missing out on, I realized. I didn’t get the experience of getting to know my body, of getting to know my limitations and strengths. Because the truth is, I loved playing sports as a kid, when I could handle it socially. The only reason I hadn’t played is that I was routinely mocked and assaulted. The polite word is “bullied.” I hadn’t chosen to sit outside society, I’d been cast out.... The reason that the sports ban breaks my heart is because when I see trans youth I see everything that I was denied. Society denied me a girlhood, and for a brief moment in the 2010s I saw trans girls who got to just be girls, who got to grow up right. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express in words how much I just wanted to be one of the girls as a kid, or just how grateful I am to the girls who tried to let me. I’m eternally grateful for the girls who let me paint my nails with them in the corner, who helped me put on makeup after I made it to school. I’m eternally grateful for goth, which told me it was okay to genderbend. But it would have been cool to be on the field hockey team too. It’s fun to get good at things. It’s fun to get to use our bodies. It’s fun to do all of those things together with other people.... There are going to be endless knock-on effects of the sports ban, of course. We’re already seeing racist policing of cis women’s bodies in the name of transphobia. Society is going to start staring at kid’s genitals in order to sort them into boxes at school, which isn’t good. And of course, fascists love to be able to categorize people in order to oppress or destroy them, and anti-trans liberals are helping them determine “womanhood” as an immutable category. Fascists will build a prison for cis women built out of trans people’s bones. But even if this ruling only affected the trans girl athletes, formally casting them out of society by casting them off the sports team that would be bad enough. Even if it only affected the third best discus thrower in West Virginia, it would be bad enough.

Margaret Killjoy, excerpts from It's Just Sports, I Tell Myself, With Nervous Laughter or: it's just acceptance in society

embroiderycrafts

My experiments with food continue 😌 by Fantastic_Head_2350 on reddit.

correctopinionhaver

i predict when tumblr finally does end someday there won't be any warning or fanfare. we'll all just be blogging one day and all of the sudden it'll be like

meatdiaz

do you ever think about how sometimes it just... takes one random message? and suddenly you find yourself with a best friend or in constant conversation with someone who lives on the other side of the world but is just as much of a freak as you are or maybe you find yourself in love with someone without a last name but with so much kindness and affection in their words and presence. crazy how life and love and friendship just happen

#and sometimes you take an 18 hour direct flight about it

safije

Katie Harris is photographed with her Appaloosa. Harris made most of the horse trappings as well as her own traditional outfits herself, including the bead work. Some of the trappings are passed down from older generations but the girls like to make their own to continue the tradition.

By Erika Larsen

mymotherthemountain

Katie is Nez Perce, Cayuse, Umatilla and Karuk

troutreznor

pigeons but shoot it like a hardcore show

asteriskless

By Cameron Strand

ymutate

Maria Prymachenko (Ukrainian self-taught artist, 1909-1997)

Winged Horse (This Maria Drew Animals) 1936 (gouache on paper)

gonzocoded

don’t ever kill your self because maybe someday you will get brunch with your tumblr mutual

akonoadham

Footage of Juneteenth parades and events from 1979-1991 broadcasted on the KXAS-TV station in Fort Worth, Texas.

free-my-mindd

Life is so beautiful

inkskinned

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht.

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

inkskinned

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.