Pens and Pictograms

Dara, He/Him, 29, European, MA Creative Writing graduate and lover of ancient Egyptian and Eastern European history

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

My coworker completely misreads our maintenance guy’s vibes… he sees a big fuzzy bearded dude who works outside and thinks he must be super macho, completely missing all the bisexual tabletop gamer coding in his mannerisms. So when maintenance guy and I greet each other like high camp theatre nerds with a series of bows and flourishes and made-up titles, coworker is SO visibly confused and thinks I must have trained him to do this.

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

yeah he is my thrall now. I clicker-trained him with football hamburger gun and now he rolls for initiative at my command.

[sexybritishllama]

one of the most frustrating things about getting a job is that after you go through the absolute hellscape that is applying and interviewing and you finally prove yourself worthy of having employment, you'll end up in the workforce and realise that 90% of the people with jobs are not actually very good at them. so like why was all of that even so hard

[kaylmao]

idk i would personally rather give up access to certain products seasonally or locally than have people enslaved to give me the ability to have any product any place any time. i think i can go without tomatoes in january.

[kaylmao]

i truly do think that most people if confronted with it and pressed on it would agree. but it's comfortable to gain privileges from someone else's suffering, especially if you don't have to see that suffering directly.

[glamfellens]

"he can't write women" is crazy because its not like women are aliens or whatever but i guess men dont see women as people so it all adds up huh!!!!

[glamfellens]

perhaps i am missing something but i just dont understand how this is an issue that is struggled with by men. i know i answered my own question above but sometimes i'm floored by the stupidity of it yknow.

[glamfellens]

and then these guys will sit at the top of best selling lists and be considered giants of the genres they write for. its fine i guess

[the-supernatural-atheist]

if theres one thing that really pissed me off from my 3 years of architecture i took in high school it's learning about how we used to have all these little techniques to maximize or minimize heat or warmth and now we just merrily abandoned all those to have the same copypaste style buildings everywhere that are often INCREDIBLY unoptimized to the local weather and climate so we can just throw more money at our heating and cooling bills

[the-supernatural-atheist]

where i live it is hot as balls approximately 80% of the year. i do not want a massive butt-ugly grey mcmansion with a huge echoey open-concept kitchen-livingroom-foyer-diningroom-staircase that has huge windows so i can have an hvac unit the size of a barge heaving and straining to keep it at a constant 72 the grees. i want a north indian traditional style home with small windows to force the airflow to cool, decorative grates to limit the amount of sunlight, and a COURTYARD with a POND *smashes unspecified large object*

[makaeru]

I hate learning about instances of "oh yeah we know how to do that, we just don't".

[mumblesplash]

people who make comics are fucked in the head. what is wrong with you

[fluff-e-boy]

[ohevoyev]

why are british people always so mad when people make jokes about their accents. sorry you say yewchube. it’s funny though innit

[bees-and-mice-and-frogs-and]

This is something I’ve been dying to talk about.

There’s something called culture. People (especially USAmericans) think of culture as cultural dress, cultural food, cultural music. These are culture, but they are only the very superficial aspects of it. Like the icing on your cake. Far more deep rooted is the more meaty bits of culture: the attitudes, the ideas, the taboos.

There’s a guy on tiktok who has done a series that shows this very well, of Germans Vs Irish. In one video the German offers the Irish person two kinds of tea, green or black. The Irish person keeps putting off the choice with things like “Oh sure whatever is easiest”, “Which have you more of?” and, “Ah sure I don’t want to cause a fuss” whereas the German just wants a straight answer. This is a cultural difference of politeness.

Here in the UK, accents mark your class very openly. They let everyone know where you’re from (though this has become less pronounced in the last 50 years,) and what your background is. A lot of people (especially northerners, but also a fair contingent of working class southerners) face discrimination on the basis of their accents.

Some of us (myself included) even change register (though I believe USAmericans call it code switching) in and out of our regional accent and a close approximation of RP. We learn to do it because it makes us seem more intelligent (even though it shouldn’t) and helps us be taken more seriously.

Thus, our country carries a lot of baggage when it comes to accents. Especially those of the working class who have had their accents made fun of, or have faced discrimination based on it.

So when someone outside the country (usually USAmericans) makes fun of our accents they’re stepping on a lot of cultural taboos and boundaries. Especially because the “It’s Chewsday, gonnae wot-ch sum yewchube innit” is a working class accent.

Now, that’s not to say we can’t take a joke, but this is the kind of joke you share with someone who you have been friends with for a while. My boyfriend often will pick up on the way I say certain words, in much the same fashion I pick up on his idiosyncrasies of speech (English isn’t his first language so he says stuff like close the lights, which is adorable.) If we aren’t predisposed to liking you, then the joke you’re trying to make is more like an insult.

The way I like to think of it is if you were in a pub, and made those sorts of jokes to someone. If they knew you, and they liked you, they’d probably laugh along. If they didn’t like you or know you, they would punch you in the jaw.

HOWEVER: I recognise this post as a joke. I don’t personally find these jokes offensive, but then no one really makes fun of me or considers me stupid because of my accent.

[badolmen]

Oh that actually makes a lot of sense! It’s like how it’s assumed in media that the southeastern Appalachian (‘hick’ or ‘redneck’) accent is audible shorthand for ‘this American character is stupid.’ That sentiment reinforces negative stereotypes about that region which has historically been home to a large working class population that has suffered from an underfunded education system and other systematic abuses. It is ultimately an underhanded joke, but not everyone from America (or even the region necessarily) considers it to be offensive despite its classist nature.

[mighty-meerkat]

yes, that’s basically it! it grinds my gears when certain Very Online Americans will quite rightly say that europeans have no right to mock the us’ lack of healthcare/gun control and working-class accents…but then turn around and act like working-class british accents and foods are hilarious and should be mocked ‘bc of colonialism and the bp oil spill’ as though all british people are directly responsible for the oil spill. and then some of them conveniently forget that there are in fact british people of colour - in the wake of brexit, a smug american blog defended saying that british people upset by the referendum were getting ‘karma’ for the british empire, even when british poc pointed out that they were the ones most likely to be negatively affected by brexit, by saying ‘obviously i don’t mean you’, to which said british poc responded ‘THEN WHY DID YOU SAY BRITISH PEOPLE’

[stormclouds-chainmail]

The hatred, by the privileged of England, towards Scotland and any Scottish accent was so pervasive that my mother wouldn’t let my brother and I develop a Scottish accent. She was born in Jamaica but her family moved to London when she was 11. She moved to Scotland when she was pregnant with me. Both my brother and I were born in Scotland and spent out entire childhood there. Mum was adamant that neither of us would have the local accent. It was “common” and “low class” and “would hinder us in the future”. She used to fine us half our pocket money if we used any Scottish slang or said anything in a Scottish accent. I got bullied at school for having a “posh English accent” but she thought my job prospects were more important than a modicum of happiness at school. My outsider status was doubled by that. I was brown and “English”.

Even now, after decades in Scotland, I still don’t sound Scottish. The English hear a slight lilt but that disappears as soon as I spend any time with them.

I feel alienated on two fronts now, skin colour and accent. And one of those was avoidable if it hadn’t been for the prejudice against against perceived lower class accents. Even in Jamaica Mum learnt to speak in an English accent like the white girls at her school. She could switch between the two. Jamaican with her parents, posh English everywhere else. Why couldn’t I have had that?

[amuseoffyre]

The fact that a lot of regional actors are expected to code-switch their accent patterns the a kind of neutral English accent in Britain shows how pervasive the classism is.

When Christopher Eccleston was cast as the Doctor in Doctor Who, people were surprised that he used his own northern accent, instead of performing with an accent like every Doctor before him. That was only 15-ish years ago.

Even now, this still happens - James McAvoy made a very vocal protest a couple of years back about a critic who complained about the use of Scots accents and only applauded the “plummy English” accent of one character in a play.

Regional and working class accents were used as joke accents for decades in British media. Look up old broadcasts and notice how many people only speak RP English (ie. the formal pronunciation that smacks of elocution lessons and enunciation). As media accessibility and productions expanded, there have been more regional accents showing up, but it’s still a big problem.

[sillyjimjam]

Putsimply when you mock “innit” you’re mocking poor people and often people of colour. Boris Johnson doesn’t say “innit bruv”.

[phoenix-ghost-town-deactivated2]

I would like to add that there was a study by the Worcester College that found that people talking with a Birmingham accent were twice as likely to be accused of a crime as people who speak RP. Accents carry huge baggage in Britain.

[official-linguistics-post]

official linguistics post

[pocketss]

It was important to me that she puts emphasis on the TOK

[darkwebdad-deactivated20160207]

when people bring up your past

[landmineblogging]

[landmineblogging]

[batbetbitbotbut]

"focaccia, serves 4" yes all 4 me

[batbetbitbotbut]

"tiramisu, serves 2" yes all 2 myself

[dawnandpiplup]

“Pie, serves 8” yes I 8 it all

[eroscestlavie]

This just pissed me off so baaaad 😂

[romanceyourdemons]

doing research in the field of humanities is interesting because there isn’t necessary this paradigm of the most recently published studies are by definition the best that you get in the hard sciences, like sometimes that book published in 1909 really continues to be the best foundational text about 1590s amsterdam, but then again sometimes i’m reading a text published in the 60s and it starts describing italian culture as “oriental” with no further discussion and i’m like hmmm maybe i should find something a little more current

[erzebett]

[greelin]

“what’s up with you and vampires, man?” we don’t have the time to discuss this

[gothhabiba]

men make it absolutely impossible to practice humility

[gothhabiba]

what you say: “I think this is the case”

what men hear: “I have no idea whatsoever, but here’s a totally random guess”

what you say: “I’m not an expert on this subject”

what men hear: “I don’t know anything about this subject and need its bare fundamentals explained to me”

what you say: “I could be better read in this area”

what men hear: “I have never read anything in this area”

[gothhabiba]

like okay fuck it nevermind I’m actually an expert in every subject I’ve ever read or heard about. in fact I know everything.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

If anyone's ever wondering why I come across as such an arrogant bitch on Tumblr it's because I used to work in science with a lot of men and never readjusted my communication style afterward.

[respectissexy]

This is one of my biggest seemingly low-stakes feminist soapboxes. Women are often encouraged to take hedging, consensus-seeking, and checking-in phrases out of their speech in order to seem "more confident". And listen, of course you do not need to say "I think" when you actually know for pretty damn sure, or double-check every little thing you say, or apologize for things that are out of your control.

But there are men in my life who I respect, who I think are generally good communicators, but who have admitted to me that if they do not know the answer to something they will just state their best guess in a confident tone of voice, with no hedging or clarification to warn the listener that what they just said was pulled from their ass.

I once asked my high school boyfriend what noise a platypus makes and he confidently told me "oh they quack" and I said "really? that seems like they'd have different noise-making structures than ducks since they're not birds" and he said "oh yeah you're probably right. I was just guessing." And had no idea why I was mad! I was like, so if I ask you a question you might just bullshit me?? What if I had believed you and gone and repeated that to other people? I could have looked like an idiot. I could have spread misinformation to a ton of people! But I have told that story to other men and had them say "oh yeah I totally do that."

This is so much worse communication than just saying "I don't know but I think..." There shouldn't be campaigns training professional women to sound "more confident," there should be campaigns training professional MEN to stop doing whatever THAT is!

[gothhabiba]

[ID: Chidi Anagonye from The Good Place saying “okay, but that’s worse. You do see how that’s worse, right?” End ID.]

[lustcannibalism]

you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for a nuanced reason

[warcrimesimulator]

[the-bi-wonder]

When I was diagnosed at age sixteen, after having one period in the eighth grade and then never again till a medically induced one my junior year of high school - my uterine lining measured in centimeters because it was so thick, my mother turned to me in the car. She was upset. Literal tears in her eyes. And she told me her friend had PCOS, but was still able to have kids. That this was still a possibility for me if I did injections and fertility treatments, etc. My mom had never asked me if I wanted kids, she just assumed.

My first conversation about PCOS with my new endocrine/OBGYN was about weight management and how that could improve my fertility when I eventually wanted kids. It wasn't asked what my goals were for my health or if I wanted kids, just assumed.

I was a hormonal, depressed mess. I hated my body. My body dysmorphia was so bad that I cloistered myself away from so much. I wore hoodies and jeans in the 90°F, 80% humidity summers. This was considered fine. I was given metformin and birth control pills and told this was all that could be done. That PCOS wouldn't affect my life until I wanted to be pregnant. I wasn't asked if I wanted to be pregnant, just assumed.

I don't know how many PCOS groups I joined on my early 20s hoping to find community and commonality for body dysmorphia and symptom management, only to be bombarded with fertility treatments and tips and 'inspirational conception' anecdotes. They never asked if I was attempting to conceive, just assumed.

It's a problem. It's been a problem. And thank god I learned to speak up and find medical professionals that would help me with *MY* goals. I shouldn't have had to, someone should have recognized the needs of that sixteen y.o. and protected her, but I can only hope the conversation changes as awareness increases.