Good Old-fashioned Fun @papercutmagnet - Tumblr Blog

Chronological retrospective of my embroidery "back catalogue". Incomplete but fairly comprehensive. Just because I'm trying to get back into embroidery and thought it might be motivating to see the progression.

inkbank

Can anyone help me get rid of it?

tumblr is where we rally - does anyone have spoons to help me fix the nhs systems so that gender neutral titles stop disappearing? Is anyone else having this problem?

assignedmale

tinyyellowflowers-blog

I have been thinking a lot about what a cancer diagnosis used to mean. How in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when someone was diagnosed, my parents would gently prepare me for their death. That chemo and radiation and surgery just bought time, and over the age of fifty people would sometimes just. Skip it. For cost reasons, and for quality of life reasons. My grandmother was diagnosed in her early seventies and went directly into hospice for just under a year — palliative care only. And often, after diagnosis people and their families would go away — they’d cash out retirement or sell the house and go live on a beach for six months. Or they’d pay a charlatan all their savings to buy hope. People would get diagnosed, get very sick, leave, and then we’d hear that they died.

And then, at some point, the people who left started coming back.

It was the children first. The March of Dimes and Saint Jude set up programs and my town would do spaghetti fundraisers and raffles and meal trains to support the family and send the child and one parent to a hospital in the city — and the children came home. Their hair grew back. They went back to school. We were all trained to think of them as the angelic lost and they were turning into asshole teens right in front of our eyes. What a miracle, what a gift, how lucky we are that the odds for several children are in our favor!

Adults started leaving for a specific program to treat their specific cancer at a specific hospital or a specific research group. They’d stay in that city for 6-12 months and then they’d come home. We fully expected that they were still dying — or they’d gotten one of the good cancers. What a gift this year is for them, we’d think. How lucky they are to be strong enough to ski and swim and run. And then they didn’t stop — two decades later they haven’t stopped. Not all of them, but most of them.

We bought those extra hours and months and years. We paid for time with our taxes. Scientists found ways for treatment to be less terrible, less poisonous, and a thousand times more effective.

And now, when a friend was diagnosed, the five year survival odds were 95%. My friend is alive, nearly five years later. Those kids who miraculously survived are alive. The adults who beat the odds are still alive. I grew up in a place small enough that you can see the losses. And now, the hospital in my tiny hometown can effectively treat many cancers. Most people don’t have to go away for treatment. They said we could never cure cancer, as it were, but we can cure a lot of cancers. We can diagnose a lot of cancers early enough to treat them with minor interventions. We can prevent a lot of cancers.

We could keep doing that. We could continue to fund research into other heartbreaks — into Long Covid and MCAS and psych meds with fewer side effects and dementia treatments. We could buy months and years, alleviate the suffering of our neighbors. That is what funding health research buys: time and ease.

Anyway, I’m preaching to the choir here. But it is a quiet miracle what’s happened in my lifetime.

loki-zen

Cystic fibrosis used to be a "disease of childhood" because people who had it rarely lived to be adults. Now it's considered a chronic illness.

sleepnoises

i think it's nice that people write books and it's possible to read them. often through the public library system

cathkaesque

Okay, I've been given the green light to say I am allowed to post about what I've been up to for the last few weeks. I've been embedded with the KMU (May 1st Movement) workers union in the Philippines for their 37th International Solidarity Affair, where trade unionists from all over the world came to investigate the social situation of workers, peasants and urban poor in the Philippines and integrate with their organisations.

I spent time with textile workers and restaurant food production workers organised through the KMU, peasants organised through the KMP mounting a heroic struggle for their land in San Jose Del Monte, and saw the urban poor organisation KADAMAY resisting one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen, their homes bulldozed to make way for empty condos and a casino owned by the third richest family in the Philippines on the suggestion of the World Bank. We witnessed the massive 30,000 strong May Day march. I also spent a week doing an integration with a KADAMAY branch in another sitio, maintaining their community gardens while resisting syndicates trying to destroy their homes too, along with members of SIKAD, KADAMAY's awesome cultural organisation.

The security situation for us while we were out there was very tough. We arrived very shortly after the murder of 19 people by the Armed Forces of the Philippines in Negros, including members of a solidarity delegation integrating with sugar workers there. Farm worker organisers, student activists, and two American activists were killed, and many of the ISA participants personally knew the dead. This also meant a pretty extreme security environment for us as the government wanted other delegations out the country and also experienced attempts at surveilling and suppressing our delegation. We also met many activists who had endured long prison sentences, false accusations, violence and intimidation to surrender as members of the New People's Army for basic trade union organising.

But as well as bad I also saw immense good. The way the Philippine movements organise is incredible. The movements are highly integrated with and driven by the constituencies. Unlike many western unions, there isn't much in the way of a self interested bureaucracy, with worker committees being the driving force of the organisations and bureaucratic tasks essentially being undertaken by unpaid volunteers who have made a conscious decision to live a poor and hard life for the sake of the revolutionary struggle. They have an extremely clear analysis of the Philippines' semi feudal and semi colonial society and put forward clear solutions to fundamentally transform that society (namely genuine agrarian reform that breaks up the big estates and gives land to the peasants, and national industrialisation which will provide work for the 40 million urban poor and give the country economic independence). The movement places a huge emphasis on culture and art, producing beautiful murals, protest signs, and teaching us all revolutionary songs. I feel like I've been around actual proper communists for the first time in my life and I have lots of things I want to take back to my political work in the UK.

You can read KMU's statement on the ISA here. I'll be posting photos and stories over the next little while as well. Mabuhay!

cathkaesque

Decisively securing my place as the Queen of banana discourse by going to a collective farm and hacking down some of the darn things myself with a big machete. It fucking ruled

This is a bungkalan, a collective farm, in San Jose Del Monte, less than an hour outside Manila. The farm was created by the Bulacan Farmers Association, which is affiliated to the Kilusung Magbubukid ng Philipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines, the main peasant union in the country). A bungkalan is a collective assertion to the peasants' rights to till the land, a demonstration that they are developing and cultivating the land and therefore it should belong to them. The bananas sell for 18 pesos a kilo, and our motley crew of trade unionists helped harvest around 1500kg. They harvest once a month. The proceeds are split 50:50 between the peasants who work the land and inputs for the farm. They also successfully campaigned for a school to be built in the area for their children.

The Association formed in 1995, and in 1997 secured land titles to land belonging formerly to the Araneta family, a huge landowning clan directly descended from Spanish settlers. They own huge tracts of land in Negros, where sugar workers are paid around 200 pesos a day (£2.43) to work their lands. The Aranetas have been trying to get the land back ever since, hiring security guards to destroy their crops. Bananas have deep roots and are hard to pull up - hence their use in the bungkalan. They are also fighting off the Viller and Ayala families, along with Japanese corporations, who want to turn the area into a speculative development and financial hub. The fight of the Bulacan farmers is against some of the largest and most vicious actors in the Philippines semi feudal, semi colonial system.

I was lucky enough to sit down for a long time with the KMP organisers for the area to plan out some solidarity efforts we can do from the UK to support the struggle of the Bulacan farmers. One of the efforts we arrived at is raising money for a solar powered water pump. Their petrol one is too expensive to run due to the runaway cost of fuel resulting from the Iran War. As well as increasing production, irrigation also increases the claim that the peasants have to the land (lands without irrigation are exempted from land reform programmes). I'm waiting for them to send me the exact model and costings, but even the high end ones while unaffordable for peasant farmers on their own are easily within reach of people with access to hard currencies. So watch this space.

To read more about the struggle of farmers in San Jose Del Monte (as well as the extreme political repression they have endured which I'll write about separately tomorrow), see here:

Farming communities in San Jose Del Monte have become vital sources of agricultural products for Metro Manila. They have established their r

papercutmagnet

My friend Cath is doing amazing work

embroiderycrafts

Flower frog stumpwork pin by a_warm_garlic_yurt on reddit.

inkbank

Content warning: chronic illness, disability, chronic pain, cancer, long covid, toxic positivity, helplessness

I'm never really sure if being positive about being chronically is helping me or preventing me from processing my feelings, what do you think?

#i'm writing again yay #please teach me how substack works #substack

Content warning: chronic illness, disability, cancer, long covid

So I wrote a thing?

#writing #my writing #chronic illness #chronically ill #chronic fatigue #me cfs #disabled #spoonie #joy #frogs #ponds #gardening

neuvogue

1000-year-old-virgin

Lily Allen - Ruminating

sunlit-elain

"if it has to happen, baby do you want to know?" is diabolical

tiktoksthataregood-ish

thefingerfuckingfemalefury

The first one was already funny but the second made me crack up :D

startledoctopus

LOL

augustdementhe

HAAAAA!

hidefdoritos

[Video description:

Tiktok user thehypegoblin faces the camera wearing a dark elf cleric cosplay. A robotic voice reads the text on the screen: "If your tits had a headphone jack what would they play?" She shoves an aux cord into her cleavage. From under the corset comes the audio "Suffocation! No breathing!" from Last Resort. She shrugs, nods, and makes a yep, that seems right face.

Cut to user casespotleson facing the camera looking inquisitive. He shoves an aux cord under his shirt collar. From under the shirt comes the audio "But you didn't have to cut me off" from Somebody That I Used to Know. He retorts, "Yes I did. Stop whining."

End vid description.]

doubleca5t

"male loneliness epidemic" is misleading because it implies that men are suffering because they can't get girls when I feel like the actual problem is that pretty much any online content that's aimed specifically at men conceptualizes the masculine ideal as what I call the Buff Scammer. there are only two things in this world that matter, says the Buff Scammer: being jacked and making money. how you get to either of those things doesn't matter, you just need to be as rich and as buff as possible or you have failed as a man. Get into drop shipping. Eat nothing but raw meat. Rugpull a memecoin. Remove seasonings from your diet. Sell an online course. Go to the gym daily. Starve yourself so your body will achieve ketosis and start burning fat. Attend a seminar on real estate investing. Work 80 hours a week. Take steroids but don't let anyone know about that part. Flip a YouTube channel after 10xing the subs. Sell AI art on Etsy and AI audiobooks on Amazon. What's that? You're trying to do this to get girls? Why would you care about women? Women are all stupid whores who don't help you get richer or buffer. The only people you should be paying attention to are other rich, buff men. If you do hang out with women you should be pimping them out on Chaturbate so you can at least get an ROI off your time spent not thinking about men. Male friends? You don't have time for friends. You should be hustling and grinding 24/7 365. And if you absolutely do need to spend time around other men you should only be spending time with other buff scammers so you can collaborate on entrepreneurial ventures. Like Jesus Christ even writing this is exhausting I feel like trying to be this dude would be fucking miserable like not only did you turn yourself into a friendless, materialist, misogynistic asshole who can only conceptualize the world in terms of value extracted but you're NOT EVEN HAVING FUN DOING IT!!!!!!

redeless

At some point in my transition, the "hate yourself, get an eating disorder, buy product" messaging I get switched from woman flavor to man flavor, and omfg. What the hell is this shit!

The "woman" version would often disguise itself as self care. There's this facade of softness and gentleness. ("indulge yourself: buy skincare! do what's right for YOU: starve yourself and smile emptily at zucchini noodles! this is empowering. your body is a temple, divine feminine chakra mother!!!") In the man version, no such thing. Self compassion is not allowed. You've got to brutally grind yourself into the shape of a Real Man or die trying, but you don't get to *enjoy* being the Real Man because comfort is for girrrrrrlllssss.

My dangerous trans gender ideology is that being a man should be enjoyable. If there's nothing fun about it, change your approach or stop being a man.

overfedvenison

I think this is an important aspect to look at broadly Male isolation and the male loneliness epidemic are real. The issue is not that men can't get women, the issue is men have no companionship or outlets for emotion - Especially not emotion expressed in ways men are comfortable with. For years, men were just sort of expected to deal with their emotions in silence. This compounds with a lot of societal trends. Our culture's gender roles are such that men have traditionally defined themselves by their careers, their wives, and their work. Well, how does that play into a society where a worker is increasingly transient? When work does not value your loyalty in the same way it did 50 years ago? Other issues also exist culturally, such as male sexuality being seen as uniquely predatory and regressive while others are seen as empowering, creating a lot of issues in people. So men feel isolated - that's what the 'male loneliness epidemic' actually is. And, when people bring this up, it is often dismissed - "Oh, boo hoo, the mens are so oppressed because they lack companionship" kind of stuff. The idea that a man could feel isolated for their gender's anxieties, or face problems because of that societal role, is a concept which a lot of people are quite uncomfortable with. Some people think that sort of thing gets in the way of a feminist view of the world; others think that men being emotional is a sign of weakness and of men no longer being the 'Real Men' which existed in the past. It sorta seems like no matter where you look, a whole lot of voices are telling men they are inadequate...

So, a whole lot of people exploit this status quo. Political grifters emerge, selling this idea that what you are missing is a tradwife and property and right-wing traditional values. The "Manosphere" gives people a lot of legitimately terrible advice about how this is all feminism's fault. Techbros are 'bros' for a reason - This thing where you live for the grind and invest all you have is absolutely appealing to a certain type of man who needs this kind of goal in his life. Men have a lot of spaces to tell them how to be masculine, but seldom are those spaces actually healthy So it's like... If a man is lost and needs emotional support (and a lot of them are,) they may have to turn to these spaces for any support at all. And these spaces don't actually exist for men's benefit, even if some have the illusion of it. Many of these spaces are very right-wing and reactionary, and men can easily fall into them because these are the places you find if you need affirmation in your masculinity at all. I think the solution cannot just be about men being able to expand their gender role. I'm not saying to discount that - Of course we need spaces where men can be caregivers, or creatives, or countercultural femboys or whatever. But we also need spaces where men can be traditionally masculine and not have that be a weird radicalization chamber created with the goal of exploiting them. For example, if a man wants to improve physically and grow stronger... You know, there's no reason that has to be about deadlifting and eating raw meat and not like, cleaning a river or learning home improvement.

whetstonefires

an awkwardly big part of the Male Loneliness Epidemic is that male homosocial relationships used to be an important part of masculinity, and have been severely pruned back over the last several generations in reaction against the increasing visibility of homosexuality. setting up that status quo discussed in the above addition.

the idea that emotional intimacy between men is de facto kind of gay is a relatively modern product of homophobia. which served to increase male emotional dependency on female romantic partners, even as the modern convenience age cut down on the traditionally high level of practical dependency.

like, the idea that Man Is Stoic isn't new, but the That's Gay reaction to being close with male friends is a late 20th century phenomenon. it's abnormal. it's reactionary. it's modern.

this is something i keep seeing people struggle with; there's this teleological view of history that assumes all social developments move along a given vector consistently always, so if a given view is old-fashioned it's obviously also ancient.

(a lot of old-fashioned approaches to 'male friendship good' were deeply misogynistic, ofc, but due to various historical forces you don't see a lot of modern sexist reactionaries pushing the idea that because women are intellectually inferior you can only have a really satisfying, emotionally meaningful personal relationship with another man. except in parody, where the joke is that the only reason a guy would say that is because he's secretly gay.)

but concurrently with this pathologization of male friendshp, feminism was reducing the practical dependency of women on men, so even as the need for female emotional support got thoroughly locked in as a social norm, the supply of women willing to do that kind of work for a partner unreciprocated was dropping.

leaving increasingly large numbers of guys crammed into an impractical corner where there is no realistic, survivable course that doesn't give them some kind of goddamn gender dysphoria.

so anyway i think one of the most important things we can do as a society, that doesn't even require anyone to take on the burden of Managing Dudes' Feelings For Them, and which is conveniently a much smaller target than Fix Manhood Systemically, is to stop validating the unhinged reactionary narrative that Male Intimacy Is By Definition Gay.

because like. it's funny when it's fiction. but when a real guy who is not gay, which is statistically gonna be most of them, is getting barraged from both sides of the political aisle with the message that he can't have an emotional connection of any significance with a male friend without Proving that the world Knows Better Than He Does and he's clearly gay and just lying to himself about it.

that creates a context where a significant chunk of young people are getting gaslighted into either giving up on having any kind of emotional support ever, or getting radicalized into bigots just to stop feeling insane.

that's bad. we shouldn't be doing that.