lot of terfs have been reblogging this so I may as well publicly state that the woman on the right is modeled with permission after my transfemme friend. if you relate to it as strongly as many of you claim in the tags I urge you to reflect upon that with empathy and compassion about the depth of experiences you truly do share with trans women.
otherwise fuck off I guess. my art is not fuel for your hatred.
'Oooh if you do what you love you'll never work a day in your life' false. I'm a glassblower. I love glass more than (almost) anything else. And I have worked. Every day. For the past four weeks. And I am just as burnt out and depressed and miserable as when I was killing myself working at the Home Depot. All of that labor is tainted with the knowledge that if I hadn't done it I wouldn't have been able to eat. Or live indoors. Or support my partner. Capitalism is hell, dont let anyone fucking lie to you and imply that if youre fucked up about it you're just doing it wrong.
A rule change pushed by White House officials would slash benefits or end support for as many as 400,000 Supplemental Security Income recipi
The Trump administration wants to make a rule change that would decrease or end benefits for SSI recipients who live with their family. As many as 400,000 disabled people may have their benefits cut if this rule change occurs.
It's worth noting as always that as things currently stand, the MAXIMUM benefit a person can receive from SSI is $994 a month.
If two people on SSI are married, the MAXIMUM they can receive is $1,491 a month, total, for both of them. (Meaning marriage to another SSI recipient reduces your maximum income possible to $745 a person each month.)
Could you live on that?
Could you live on that without living with family?
The administration is working on a rule change that would deduct the value of a disabled adult’s bedroom from their SSI allotment, even if the family members they live with are poor enough to qualify for food stamps. This would mean slashing the benefits of some of the most low-income SSI recipients by up to a third — about $330 a month in Burton’s case — or ending their support altogether.
The SSI rule change is being reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, a process that involves editing the draft regulation and considering where it falls on the list of the president’s priorities. Once it’s returned to the Social Security Administration for initial publication, there will be an opportunity for public comment; it could take until next year to be finalized, depending on the amount of opposition it faces.
(quote from article above)
AND IT NEEDS TO FACE A LOT OF OPPOSITION, SO CALL AGAIN!!
im gonna look up contact info for the office of management and budget staff, White House Budget Director Russell Vought, and Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano. Bombard them. no peace for em.
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.
okay so, guy at work, who i find out afterwards is famous at this place for being a sex pest, comes up and starts with what i also learn is his favorite opener to conversations where he’s going to be a sex pest, namely: “Do you know where the term ‘blow job’ comes from?”
and here he made his first fatal error. his moment of hubristic sex pesting. because of course i know where the term blow job comes from, i love learning about sex and the history of sexual terms! i know so much about oral sex that i could write a book on it!
his second error: approaching a little autistic freak with what he intended to be an uncomfortable sex question that would make me feel weird and gross. Friends, Romans, Countrymen, I Have Never Misjudged A Man’s Intentions So Incredibly In My Life. because i did not realize he was trying to harass me. because i love talking about sex facts, albeit not usually at work. unless. someone prompts me. my coworkers are the kind of people who are generally online enough to know terms, but not exactly what they mean, and they realized they could ask me a while back and get good answers without the resulting awkwardness because i do not experience shame. i am primed to answer questions like the one he has proposed.
So I Answered It.
and well, really, what happened is that I began answering it, then realized the answer required a bit more context. I mean, you can’t just say “oh, well, the term first appears in writing in the 1940s” without first explaining that ‘blow’ by itself already had sexual connotations for centuries, and then, really, are we talking about the origin of the term or the origin of the act. and well we have a ton of literature and art depicting fellatio throughout human history, did you know a lot of it was men performing it on other men? oh, that reminds me, there are a multitude of latin words for oral sex performed on penises, and hold on let me quote you the entirety of catullus 16 from memory and explain it’s fascinating insights into the roman world of homosexuality-
i do not know how to turn any of this ^ off, by the way. i’m sure some people out there have a switch that disables their infodumping mid-speech. i do not. and i also didn’t realize he wasn’t looking for a real answer until my other coworker explained so hours later. he could not excuse himself from the conversation he started, and i made a conservative man at least 30 years older than me to listen to my catullus recitation. i will sodomize and facefuck you, indeed.
anyway, i think i got a bad grade in being sexually harassed. my pro tip is maybe don’t start with what a very autistic individual will misconstrue as you earnestly asking them to explain sex to you. the special interest shield will cause splashback damage.
being friends with english majors is so fun you'll send a text like hey are you free for brunch and they'll respond with some shit like "haven't the faintest clue, my schedule is utterly fucked"
Happy Pride everyone, today is the tenth anniversary of the nationwide right to gay Marriage in the United States and the 22nd anniversary of nationwide legalization of Gay Sex. In 2 days is the 56th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.
We have won nothing without fighting and we have everything to lose, there is no gay liberation without trans liberation, none of us are free till all of us are free, we have won so much and come so far but the road ahead is still long, we must continue to fight for both our liberation and the liberation of all people
The gay liberation movement is young, everything we have fought for and won happened over the course of less than a human lifetime, and there are forces at play that wish to claw back at these hard fought for rights, we must be prepared to defend what we have fought for and we must continue to fight for improvement
We have to celebrate how far things have come, because we never would have made it this far without joy and hope, and while we can and must fight, we also must remain hopeful
most fantasy books or fics i’ve read that contained a desert biome fell back on real world prejudice and misconceptions in place of authentic worldbuilding for a place and people, and it is so telling that the trope seems to repeat itself
things like
the desert as a lifeless wasteland where ‘life is crushed underneath the shifting sands and blazing sun’ blah blah blah. deserts are full of life and they are beautiful and people have lived and prospered in them for eons. please read a book
the desert as an ugly or barren terrain where everything is harsh and threatening
the desert as something scary
the inhabitants as backwards religious zealots
the men as overly violent and oppressive
the inhabitants in need of outside instruction/intervention, i.e. “civilizing the savage”
the “harem” and women as exotic, sensual, mysterious
writing tribalism with no knowledge of how tribes actually function
djinn (or for the westerners, genies)
Islam Lite (the aesthetics or spiritual practices appropriated and stripped of meaning)
sprinkling random arabic words for ✨flavor✨instead of expanding your worldbuilding to include language as well
clothing as oppressive or mysterious, instead of serving its actual purpose (protecting you from the elements, which should be obvious but i guess it isn’t. covering your skin keeps you cooler and safer in most deserts)
people who live in deserts as ignorant, superstitious, uneducated
this isn’t worldbuilding, it’s just ignorance and bigotry
janainaart
yousharknotpass
theartofmadeline
dededos
