Science Queerdo @nerd-ass-boy-blog - Tumblr Blog

5feet12inches-deactivated201812

“Society finally has a chance to see and learn about who we are."

Eight months after taking office, the mayor of a small town in Texas has come out as transgender.

“As your Mayor I must tell you about something that has been with me since my earliest memories,” New Hope Mayor Jess Herbst wrote in an open letter on the town’s website. “I am Transgender.”

She is believed to be the first openly transgender mayor in Texas, The Dallas Observer reported.

Herbst has been documenting her journey on the blog, JessHerbst.com. She told The Huffington Post that the reaction to her news has been overwhelmingly positive.

brotatochip64-deactivated201901

I’m 👏so 👏 proud 👏 of 👏 her 👏

sashayed

I haven’t quite thought this out enough to have my thoughts totally clear, but I usually clarify my thoughts by writing them down, so I’m gonna try it anyway. For context I am writing as an ethnically Jewish white person.

I have seen some Discourse where person A says something like “We can’t dehumanize the people we’re fighting,” and then Person B goes “Yeah, this was why we shouldn’t have punched that Nazi!” and then Person C goes “Uh, we have to punch Nazis,” and then Person D says “Nazis aren’t people!” and then the whole Discourse Cycle starts up again.

The problem, I think, is that we are taking “don’t dehumanize” as code for “be nice to?” And that’s not what it is. “Don’t dehumanize” means understanding there is not a profound difference between yourself and a person who believes something repugnant. Otherwise, it becomes too tempting to think that a repugnant belief is some kind of monstrous mental defect that we get to just magically Not Have, because we – after all – are people, and Nazis are Not People.

If we believe that we are immune to repugnant beliefs, we become incredibly vulnerable to them. Sorry if I’m being redundant here, but I really want to spell this out: If we think that Nazis aren’t people, we open a door that is going to kill our ability to be useful, effective, intersectional activists. We will absolutely become complacent. Beliefs will creep up slowly in our brains, because that’s what brains do, they gather information and make just whatever crap soup out of it, and we – if we sense the development of these ideas at all – will go “Well, this must NOT be a repugnant belief, because only Not-People have repugnant beliefs, and I am a Person!”

And again, that’s not synonymous with saying that “If you want to punch Nazis in the face YOU’RE JUST AS BAD AS THEM!!!!” That’s crazy and garbage. It’s also not synonymous with “We have to tolerate Nazi beliefs!” I am trying to make a pretty straightforward statement that Nazis are people. They are people, and we have to look that fact dead on, and then we have to punch those people in the face, hard and often.

actuallyclintbarton

Nazis ARE people and tbh that’s part of why they’re so terrifying to me.

animatedamerican

If you believe Nazis aren’t people, then you will refuse to believe that anyone who is (to you) self-evidently a person could really be a Nazi. It should go without saying that this is counterproductive.

Also: if you insist that Nazis aren’t people so that you can justify treating them in a fashion that you believe one must never ever treat people, thaaaat’s kind of morally bankrupt. Not because the way you want to justify treating Nazis is necessarily a wrong way to treat Nazis, but because what you need to do is rigorously reexamine that never ever.

punk-mom-deactivated20201103

Girls: it’s not your job to make room for men. It’s not your job to play nice when you feel threatened. It’s not your job to be accommodating.

continuity-rupture

g-ho-fosho

@passbyval @nerd-ass-boy

nerd-ass-boy-blog

Yaaaaaas

dateaboysuggestions

date a boy whose favorite movie is Scott Pilgrim vs The World

cognitivedissonance

That last tweet

tobeagenius

An Overview of Mental Illness: 5 common mental illnesses. This is a topic that is very important to me, and something I believe our generation has the responsibility to end the stigma that surrounds it. Please share to spread awareness and to stop the ignorance.

My lady is super hot and I worship the ground she walks on.

thetrippytrip

I love this campaign. All members of the LGBT community deserve to feel safe and that includes senior citizens

livelegatolagrange-deactivated2

This is beyond amazing.

january-warlock

I love how the armed march against Jewish people in Montana has gotten no cover/no notes on posts on Tumblr. :)

mmoved-deactivated20181111

The what now?! Why haven’t i heard about this?? Wtf????

january-warlock

Google it.

A neo-Nazi newspaper, The Daily Stormer, is encouraging people to “take against Jews” (Jewish people, their businesses, and supporters) in Montana with guns, and no one is doing anything to stop them “because freedom of speech” despite, you know, they could kill somebody.

And Tumblr doesn’t care because it’s Jewish people being effected. :)

faerunner-deactivated20200224

“Kristallnacht”? What’s that?

january-warlock

It was the “Night of Broken Glass”; 8000 Jewish people were moved to concentration camps, and thousands of Jewish businesses were destroyed, along with 200 synagogues.

january-warlock

PAY ATTENTION TO THE MARCH.

PEOPLE ARE MOST LIKELY GOING TO GET KILLED.

january-warlock

I really love how Tumblr can’t be fucking bothered to talk about anti-Semitism.

january-warlock

I’M JUST GONNA KEEP REBLOGGING ABOUT THIS UNTIL IT ACTUALLY GETS NOTES

ashtheclasstrash

WHAT THE HECK ONLY A HUNDRED TWENTY NOTES WHY AREN’T MORE PEOPLE CONCERNED??

sothatgrass

Concerned person, right here….

asongofcaffeineandinsomnia

Maybe a reference would help. The New York Times is also covering this.

They are busing in skinheads and planning to carry high-powered rifles through town. 200 people are expected to march against jews, jewish businesses and those who support them.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/12/27/neo_nazis_are_planning_an_armed_march_against_jews_in_richard_spencer_s.html

meaninglessnessofnumbers

Hi, hello. Resident of Montana here. This is still happening, and it still needs to be talked about. Boost this.

sethgekcos

2k17 and this is still happening

unbelievable

rambleonamazon

Trans Women and "Male" Privilege

I was chatting with a cis friend of mine who is an amazingly supportive and empathic ally, and made a comment about some extremists in the world who accuse trans women of retaining male privilege or of being patriarchy double-agents, and she was dumbfounded by the idea, having seen some of the shit I endure. She made an off-hand comment about “well, maybe before you transitioned, but now, really no,” and I had to stop and really think about that for a minute before we continued. Yes, on the one hand my life was easier in some ways, but in a lot of other ways it was a lot more emotionally violent, and ultimately the best way I could explain it to her was something akin to passing privilege, like when a gay man is assumed to be straight and doesn’t have to take as much crap, or when some racial minorities look “white enough” that they world just assumes they’re in the majority. There is some benefit to being mistaken for a member of the oppressor class, but those benefits are highly conditional and quickly taken away if your minority status is revealed, and often there is some kind of punishment inflicted for “deceiving” everyone. And perhaps worst of all, you can hear exactly what people in power think of people like you when they think they’re alone, and either sacrifice your illusory privilege (or even your physical safety) speaking up against it, or else sit there are take deeply disturbing abuse without being allowed to react.

Did I gain any benefit from people mistaking me for a boy? Probably. I probably got called on more in class, and got harassed less on the street. But my butch lesbian friends got similar treatment for rejecting femininity. And in the meantime I was still told nearly every day that girls need to be quiet, that girls aren’t good at math, that girls should dress and speak and act certain ways. I was told that if a girl gets raped, it’s because of how she was dressed or because she wasn’t careful enough. And I hated myself because I wasn’t little enough and pretty enough. And I worried I wasn’t really a girl because I liked science. And when I got raped, I “knew” it was because of how I’d dressed, and because I wasn’t careful enough. Trans girls have to grow up in the same crappy, woman-hating world every other girl grows up in.

No one calls out gay people for “residual straight privilege,” so on what bizzaro-world did we turn over a rock and find a concept that essentially boils down to “a hated and violently abused minority of women are the real danger to women, because they were forced to hide in fear of violent reprisal for years”?

secondstringheroine

For trans women the ability to pass as cis men before transition is a means of survival in which whatever privilege afforded us is a veil borrowed out of fear.

The violence done to all womankind is violence that is done to us as well. Our privilege is merely the ability to stand in an indirect line of fire, not out of it.

punlich

And honestly not all of us (not many even) even were able to do that?

I was so consistently attacked and abused and no one could articulate what it was they hated about me but my mannerisms, my voice, my movements, all of those things triggered intense fury in cis men (and boosted the bravery of less common exploitative cis women in violating my physical boundaries in much subtler ways).

Sometimes sexualized fury (the hazing and bullying took on sexual undertones at times and the words faggot and bitch were a constant attack)

For a while I believed that I had “passed as cis male” in my youth only to find out that I was the only one out of the people around me in my youth who believed that. And talking to other trans girls who knew of their past experiences better and without influences from cis bullying in the present muddying the water helped too.

No one was surprised. Everyone said they “knew something was up” with me. And they knew it wasn’t being gay or anything like that. They knew. I mean many of them still articulated it in sexuality terms but it was always a special kind of weird gay. A gayness not even acceptable to the cis gay people I knew, who acted like it was odd the way I was as well.

And mind you I am autistic and mentally ill and those things will change behaviors and make a kid “weird” to their peers. But it was very specifically a weirdness of gender.

My brother knew. My dad responded abusively to it. My mother knew something was up and was bothered by it. My peers knew and either treated me like scum to break or avoided me to avoid being associated with that (most of my friends were outcasts for whatever reasons). People would stare at me on the street.

I won’t say it applies to everyone, I’m not going to take agency away from other trans girls in describing their own lives. But I know that I was fooled and bullied into claiming first that I had male privilege and then later that I was passing as male privileged before transition and both proved to be untrue and the result of a transmisogynist ideology designed to ostracize and attack us, on the level of existence itself.

I think that’s a big deal. I think a lot more of us experienced this phenomenon than we realized.

rambleonamazon

What you described is exactly what I’m talking about when I talk about “illusory” privilege. So long as we can maintain the illusion that we belong in the majority—an emotionally exhausting task that can inflict a lot of damage over time—then we gain some of the benefits. But if we fail at that, if our status as a member of a minority is revealed or even suspected, then privilege is revoked and replaced with isolation, mental abuse, and physical violence.

Some trans women are better than others at pretending. I was pretty bad at it as well, and took a lot of abuse from peers and even some teachers for being “feminine.”What little benefit I gained form the male illusion came from authority figures who didn’t know squat about me beyond a name on a clipboard, and even that vanished when my identity came out. Suddenly, even without presenting as female at school, I went from “being bullied” to “starting fights,” and went from “star pupil” to “troublemaker.” The principal, a woman who didn’t know or care about a single student on campus, pull me aside and inform me that any trouble form me at prom would get me suspended.

punlich

Oh ok, I misunderstood you

rambleonamazon

To be fair, I think my using the word “privilege” in there at all is misleading/confusing. But I couldn’t think of a more accurate term to describe the fake non-privilege benefits you get for performing adequately. Passing treats?

sadspockpanda

Asshats: Why can’t you just accept Drumpf as president and not attack/slander/belittle him. Show some respect.

Me, remembering how Fox News and Drumpf have been dragging Obama since 2008 over bullshit/for no real reason:

spinals

ewatsondaily

One of the reasons why Emma Watson is one of the best female role-models of our time. She’s so underrated.

sherlocks-study

You need this on your dash.

thestudyharder

Forever and always reblog.

notsafef0rtwerk

The United States is not a monarchy, you are not expected to show reverent respect to the POTUS, they are not some inhuman-godlike being. There is not to be an assumption that they have been put there by any sort of divine hand, so stop telling people that they need to respect Donald Trump’s election. Especially when (a) he did not respect Obama’s, (b) he won without the popular vote because of an antiquated system that has no place in today’s United States, © He. Ran. His. Campaign. With. The. Promise. Of. Removing. The. Rights. Marginalised. Individuals. And. Disrespecting. Their. Humanity.

heartthrobsuicide-remade-deacti

Okay, but I’m being 1,000% serious now. Survivors and victims don’t give a fuck if their abuser changed. They really don’t care. It does not change what the abuser did. No matter what you think, survivors and victims are still allowed to hate their abusers, whether or not the abuser has “changed”. Even if the abuser has mental illnesses.