February 9, 2000 - The London Lesbian Avengers stopped the no. 15 bus in London's Piccadilly Circus, and painted it pink.
This was done to demand the repeal of homophobic Section 28, and to protest the involvement of homophobic millionaire Brian Souter in a Scottish campaign against the repeal. Souter was also the owner of privatised bus company Stagecoach, operating route 15.
Section 28 was finally repealed in England and Wales in 2003. [video]
I survived section 28. Finished secondary school at 16 in 2004. I don't think a lot of people realize just how broad the legislation went and just how harrowing it was for those of us under it.
I got outed at school by someone I thought was a friend, but was actually just mining the local freak for content. I thought we were besties, because autism is like that, so I told her that I thought I might be a lesbian. She told everyone. That was spring of 2001. The next few years were hell.
Section 28 was the justification for the teachers not helping or offering advice beyond 'well if you will make a spectacle of yourself'. It was the justification for not defending me when I was beaten. When I had bleached poured over me. When my hair was set on fire. When my books were all tipped out into the showers and soaked. When the girls formed a barricade and refused to let me into any of the bathrooms because I was a 'pervert' (sound familiar, anyone?). Throughout all of it, I got told there was nothing that could be done.
See, to defend me could be construed as 'putting homosexuality in a positive light'. If they said 'there's nothing wrong with her' a parent or another teacher could complain they were 'promoting homosexuality', and that teacher's job would be on the line. The guidance was deliberately worded so that often teachers didn't know what they could do and where the lines could be drawn, so they chose to do nothing to save their own skins. They'd all heard about what happened to teachers who stepped out of line.
Some of them helped where they felt they could. Putting me in silent detention for my own safety. Skipping their own lunch breaks to sit in an empty classroom with me. One slipped me a book of queer poetry from his own collection. A few months later the same one gave me a flyer for a Pride youth group, which provided some limited respite when I could get there. He could have lost his career, for giving me that book and that flyer. Thankfully my parents were too oblivious to notice.
The thing is, when it was repealed, there wasn't clear guidance immediately to replace it; what was okay to say, what wasn't, what would get someone in trouble, what was now safe. 'Promotion' of homosexuality was no longer illegal, but where did that boundary fall? The same teachers continued to help me. The same mob hounded me every second they got for my final year of mandatory education. Most of the same teachers that weren't helping before still weren't sure how they could help then.
The irony is that now, the teachers that helped me and the social workers who ran the Pride youth group would probably be labeled 'groomers', because it's happening again.
Before too much longer I'm worried we'll end up with another section 28. Another generation of young people desperate, frightened, unprotected by the adults around them and ultimately attempting suicide like I did. Some already are, and some are succeeding.
I hate that when you’re stressed enough your body just starts falling apart. I think it should realize you’re already stressed and don’t need that and start functioning better actually
It bothers me so much that the healthcare system relies so much on the patient's ability to advocate for themselves, organize their history, and be so persistent against every medical “professional” who says there’s nothing wrong/they can do. But so many struggle with fatigue, brain fog, and face such ingrained systemic barriers, that the people who need and deserve help and support can’t access it.
I saw something recently that resonated with me: “Access shouldn't depend on who has the energy to fight for it.” And I’ve never agreed with anything more.
One thing healthcare shouldn't require is a side quest in advanced paperwork, phone tag, and convincing people you're actually sick.
A lot of folks are already running on empty. Asking someone with fatigue, pain, or brain fog to become their own case manager feels like handing a drowning person swimming lessons.
The people who need help most often have the least energy to fight for it. That's why empathy, patience, and systems that actually support people matter so much.
And honestly, if "have you tried calling again?" fixed everything, we'd all be cured by now.
we're moving to an internet where children would be banned from reaching out for help and friendship online but abusive parents can post their children's every second online to humiliate and expose them for money with no pushback
when I was in high school I had a literature teacher who had a policy of unlimited extra credit. All you had to do was read a book by a notable author (his discretion) and have a little chat with him after school to prove that you read it. No limits, no need for variety (one month I decided I really loved Kurt Vonnegut and just read everything of his I could get my hands on).
Yes, I was tearing through books constantly, and talking to this teacher at least weekly. Because even though I always loved reading as a kid, literature was always a very weak subject for me in terms of a teaching-to-standardized-test school setting (I just do awful on "what color were the curtains" type multiple choice questions. Those details don't stick in my memory THEY JUST DON'T). But that didn't matter for this class. I could just read my way out of any bad test score. I have always had fond memories of how I "fudged" my way through that class and "abused' the extra credit policy.
I was thinking about it again today, and only just now realized that he absolutely tricked me into being well-read, while my teenage self thought I was totally getting away with something. THAT MOTHERFUCKER. I hope he's doing well.
How do I explain to you people that interracial relationships are okay
Not every white person dating a POC is fetishizing. White people can be respectful and responsible when it comes to culture and relationships and not everyone has bad intentions.
Asian people can date Black people without you saying shit like “your kids will be so pretty” they’re not dating for pretty kids. They’re dating bc they like each other.
Someone can dress their partner in clothing from their culture if they want. Someone can take their partner to cultural events if they want.
People in relationships can share cultures, experiences and love without it being toxic or skin deep.
Their partner isn’t culturally appropriating. Their partner is being shown the ultimate form of love, bc their partner trusts them and loves them enough to share their history and heritage.
Yeah, dating someone from your culture is nice bc you automatically have similar experiences. But you’re not limited to dating people with the same experiences. Loving someone is sharing and growing and being together.
Interracial relationships aren’t always toxic, and some of y’all need to stop projecting onto other people.
more leftists should be vegan. veganism and leftism operate on the same beliefs. social justice, no exploitation of labor, autonomy, environmental concern, intersectionality, an equal and just living etc. leftist praxis should include veganism
Animal welfare and animal rights are different things; it is good and normal for humans to be slightly anthropocentric while acknowledging our role within the greater ecosystem. Factory farming should indeed be dismantled- I want all animals harvested for food/leather/fur/bones/organs to have full and rich lives with as little suffering as possible before they're harvested. But it is not anti-leftist to live as a predator within the ecosystem. It is not more wrong for humans to eat salmon than it is for bears and eagles to do so.
i used to work in a vegan restaurant and it had basically all the same labor and management problems as the other restaurants i worked at that served meat. obviously. because it was a business in a capitalist system so obviously theres an economic incentive to pay workers the bare minimum and charge customers the maximum you can get away with.
in fact, the restaurant used the vegan identity and environmentalism as fuel for their marketing in quite cynical ways. at the same time they had a deal with Whole Foods (implicated in prison labor allegations btw) to source ingredients, meaning that there were transcontinentally shipped produce lol. for example we used frozen blueberries that were product of Chile. for a restaurant in the pacific northwest region in the united states of america. there are blueberry farms in oregon, washington, etc. But it’s cheaper to exploit south american farms than get local blueberries i guess. (which still by and large exploit the labor of migrant farmworkers from mexico and south and central america, but i digress)
i was vegetarian at the time and i had a lot of deep conversations with my coworkers and manager and the conclusion i came away with is that veganism is merely a cultural practice and is not inherently “leftist” in any way. if you consider human lives equal to animal lives i think that is not compatible with a clear-sighted materialist analysis of the world we live in. its practically a religious belief. which, like, okay, you can be religious, you can have irrational beliefs, but that’s not what “”””leftism”””” is about. that’s not really what any socialist or communist theory is about. it could be syncretized with socialist theory, but it would always merely be an ill-fitting addendum.
Cashews that make vegan cheese are extremely dangerous to harvest due to the fact they mist be harvested by hand and the fruit has corrosive enzymes. Most workers end up with scars from chemical burns.
Almond farms were linked to the declining bee population due to the number of bees needed to pollinate the plants. Most bee keepers were lucky to get half their hives back after farms rented them.
We all know about how much of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed to make way for soy farms.
Agave is a main food source for many bats, but no, harvesting excess honey from bees that over produce it is the problem. If bees regularly have a large surplus of honey they swarm, the hive splits and some leave to start a new hive. Problem is that most bees don't survive this process because it makes them vulnerable to other environmental factors. So encouraging farming and over consumption of agave and stopping the consumption of honey, you're actually harming two different populations of pollinators.
"Vegan leather" is mostly plastic, which breaks down and sheds microplasics. Contributing to the ever growing landfill and contaminated water supply issues we have. Meanwhile cow hide is a natural byproduct from the meat industry, and real leather can last decades if taken care of. A single cow can feed 2 families of 4 for a year, and that leather can go towards making belts, boots, gloves and jackets that last decades.
If you want to actually support ethical food production and animal welfare do your research on where your food comes from. Look into local farms and their practices.
I don’t have time to unpack my full thoughts on the whole argument of ‘you shouldn’t be a burden to the healthcare system’ but I would like to chime in on it:
so, all athletes should immediately stop playing sports. construction workers, anyone with jobs that put them at risk, they need to find different employment. people with uteruses shouldn’t ever get pregnant, either. actually you know what? don’t enter a car or vehicle at all! and don’t even get me started on old people. what age do we think they should just give it up & throw in the towel? 50? 60? after that they become way too burdensome. it’s a problem.
sweet baby eugenicist, your anger is misplaced. they want you to blame yourself instead of their crumbling system. you should be asking, what kind of a fucking healthcare system is it if it can be burdened by the very thing it exists to provide? which is healthcare?!
The key is: you can't be a burden on a system whose only purpose is to serve you. No people? No healthcare system. Much like the economy and the government, the healthcare system only exists to serve the population. The economy only exists BECAUSE consumers and producers exist first. The government only exists BECAUSE there are people to be governed. And viewing these as tools to generate wealth or deny service, in the manner of conservative capitalistic politics, has corrupted it into a point of disutility.
The system does not work because we do not treat it like a system; because we forget it is not a machine for profit. I hope the fattest, most disabled, most reckless driver and extreme-sports-adrenaline-junkie, former-coal-mining retired 70-year-old woman with uterine cancer who eats a bacon cheeseburger with poutine and a deep fried twinkie every day can walk into any hospital or clinic and get 100% free, comprehensive, respectful treatment--because the system's purpose is to treat her.
Y'all remember that time The Salvation Army refused shelter to a trans woman and willingly let her freeze to death? Cause they did that. The Salvation Army murdered a trans woman.
[PT: Y'all remember that time The Salvation Army refused shelter to a trans woman and willingly let her freeze to death? Cause they did that. The Salvation Army murdered a trans woman. /End PT]
The reason why so many of y'all's feminism sucks is because you still believe deep down in your hearts that there are only two kinds of people in the world: precious, ethereal, fragile dollthings called "women", and violent, lustful, rage-fueled apes called "men". Until you throw that idea away, 3rd-grade-tier "girls rule boys drool, girls are princesses and boys are stinky :(" is as feminist as we'll ever get-- and I hope it's obvious that that's lightyears away from the bare minimum of where we need to be.
I don't know how I'm supposed to explain to ostensibly trans-friendly feminists that "women are beautiful soft things made of glass, men are obsessed with violence and sex" is exactly what the patriarchy wants you to believe. Patriarchy wants you to believe that being a woman and/or having a vagina (patriarchy generally believes those two things are synonymous) makes one shatter on impact with reality. It makes you easier to control if you are scared shitless of the other half of the population, and it makes you more compliant with your lot in life if you believe it is in the nature of the other half of the population to rape and kill rather than realise those were choices those individual rapists and murderers made. There is no way to make gender essentialism progressive and feminist, because it is one of patriarchy's tools of subjugation. Stop trying to make it progressive.
And I can scream all of that from the rooftops over and over again, and what I hear in reply is "Trans men really are men because no woman would ever decide to become an inherently evil repugnant rapist ape", and "You're so right. Trans women are women because they too are pretty delicate little objects I can fuck", and "You're non-binary? So are you fucktoy non-binary or sexpest non-binary?", and my patience runs ever thinner.
i do get pushing back on "mean girl nurse" being used in a lazy misogynistic way against a group of workers who are institutionally abused & their feminized labor underpaid.
that being said. can we not erase the fact the entire conversation began with disabled people talking about being medically abused pretty please. & also, iirc the post that first really blew up about "mean girl nurses" never said "ALL nurses are evil bitches who hate everyone and they deserve to be mistreated" it was saying "women who sought power over other people in high school go into careers where they can wield power over other people, same as men, and there are women who go into nursing and present themselves as kind and caring and maternal, who are motivated by a desire to have unquestioned authority over other people's bodies to make themselves feel powerful, again, same as men who do the same things in masculinized careers." & i just find it "interesting" how all that has been reduced down to "all nurses are mean girls")
i think nuance is always important & doctors and nurses do need better treatment and society frequently praises them while also supporting their abuse. and yet they are also universally recognized as vital important members of society & empowered to have immense control over the lives of people who are systemically vulnerable and seen as leeches who add nothing to society. and yet who has to deal with the impacts of their stress and their trauma and their anger and their burnout? the disabled people under their care.
again. Nuance! but i just cannot help but Side Eye In Cripple some things people say on this topic. it can both be true that nurses (& doctors) experience horrible working conditions and that, in my opinion, that any conversation about burnout and abuse of medical professionals needs to also criticize the authoritarianism of the medical field and how widespread medical neglect and abuse is, lest we simply fall back into "the poor beleagured doctor who is Jesus Christ On The Cross Himself, all-wise and all-knowing and forced to tolerate all these entitled know-it-all ungrateful patients!" which changes nothing for anyone.
like. look at this article. the actual context for the "mean girl to nurse pipeline" (that some women seek out power over people to control them and make themselves feel bigger, and women are likely to do this through caretaking in the role of nurse, teacher, mother, etc.) is not brought up at all. the fixation is entirely on "its mean to call nurses mean girls! they experience a lot of bullying! you don't REALLY know any mean nurses, just poor tired bullied ones!"
First, the phrase itself is unfair to women. Although nursing is a female-dominated field, this phrase focuses on women as being the “mean” ones to worry about.
like. do youuuu fucking see the erasure of medical abuse. the actual bullshit nurses do to real living human beings, which goes massively under-reported. & not just disabled people but people of color as well. god fucking forbid medical professionals are treated as anything but literal saints descended from heaven. god forbid white cisgender women are recognized to have the ability to be cruel and power-hungry and to hurt other people through traditionally feminine roles based on caretaking. like I genuinely do understand that nurses are subject to immense stress, bullying, and violence, and that providing better working conditions for nurses is vital to improving medical treatment for all patients.
but when the actual neglect and abuse nurses can do to their patients is ignored and drops out of the conversation entirely, in the name of complaining about nurses being called "mean"? sorry but it pisses me the fuck off.
(links to some sources on patient abuse under the cut since this is long enough as is)
Exclusive: Leaked internal document lays bare concerns of ‘toxic’ issues within watchdog that mean whistleblowers’ warnings are ignored — an
Nurses and midwives accused of serious sexual, physical and racial abuse are being allowed to keep working on wards because whistleblowers are being ignored, a damning new report has found.
Staff are too scared to report their concerns to the nursing regulator because of a “culture of fear” within the watchdog, documents seen by The Independent reveal.
One whistleblower, speaking to this publication, drew parallels with the Lucy Letby case, accusing the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) of being defensive and trying to protect their own reputation.
They claim “deep-seated toxic conduct” within the NMC is leading to skewed and failed investigations.
A review of NMC guidelines was launched after The Independent highlighted concerns earlier this year by speaking to staff who complained that the NMC was leaving nurses accused of sexual assault and domestic violence free to work unchecked.
Incivility is one of the most prevalent forms of interpersonal mistreatment. Although studies have examined the full range of experiences of
Incivility is one of the most prevalent forms of interpersonal mistreatment. Although studies have examined the full range of experiences of incivility against nurses and other hospital personnel, very few studies examined the forms of incivility that patients face in a hospital. [...]
Participants most frequently reported experiencing insensitivity (38%) or affectively negative interactions. A majority explicitly used the word “rude” to describe their interaction. [...]
When the Doctor was a smart mouth and came in and said “congratulations you have a period” it ended up being a very serious infection. [Participant 290, 27 years old, Biracial, Woman].
Participant 290’s experience demonstrates some of the potential consequences of rudeness. In this case, the doctor was not only insensitive but gave an incorrect diagnosis. In addition, participants frequently indicated how insensitivity was also communicated through a “rough” touch when the doctor was examining them. The consensus was that insensitivity—verbal and physical forms—only made the participants feel worse when they are already in the hospital not feeling well.
Participants (15%) indicated experiencing rudeness because of their identities. Many individuals explained how their socioeconomic status (SES)—specifically lack of health insurance—was a significant factor in shaping the treatment they received:
I had a first time grand mal seizure and wrecked my vehicle. I do not have insurance, so the hospital I was taken to was so rude. I was brought in by an ambulance, they wouldn’t give me anything for the severe headache from the wreck and also from the seizure. They wouldn’t give me anything to keep me from throwing up. The only thing they did was give me an IV of Keppra to stop the seizures. After finding out I didn’t have insurance, they discharged me within 10 minutes. They took me to the bathroom to change clothes, they met me at the bathroom door, handed me my papers and pointed me to the door. I didn’t even get wheeled out after having a seizure and a wreck…[Participant 272: 28 years old, White, Woman]. [...]
…[I] was told in plain terms that those who don’t pay for their [insurance] have no right to complain about not receiving the best treatment [Participant 47: 34 years old, Latina/Hispanic, Woman]. [...]
Participants (26%) indicated what we categorized as containing elements similar to “gaslighting” or mistreatment in which participants’ experiences were minimized, doubted, questioned, second guessed, or denied by health-care professionals. [...]
…I was told I was lying about being sick. I was told that I had lost 45 pounds in 2 months because of a mild cold, and that I was wasting their time. They tried to make me feel like I was a burden, and I was taking away from other patients who they implied were sick. Turns out I was sick, and I needed surgery. Going to a hospital out of town, they diagnosed my problem within 1 visit. [Participant 275: 34 years old, White Man]
Patients adjust their behaviour based on what they experience in care relationships with nurses or the hospital care. It is crucial that pat
Most research on aggression in health care relates to staff experiences about patient aggression. Research on patients’ perceptions of aggressive and transgressive behaviour in care relationships with nurses is limited. [...]
When it comes to competent care, some patients told stories of how expertise of care providers was questioned. One patient described a nurse provided pain-relieving medication while he is allergic to that product. In response, the patient’s daughter attached a list to her father’s bed listing products he is allergic to. Despite this list, every time her father asked for pain relief, that same product he is allergic to was brought to him. Another patient described a nurse accompanied him for an examination. He asked where she was taking him to and when she said it was to Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, he said he was not allowed to because of his pacemaker. He indicated the nurse had not gone through his medical file and was putting him in danger [...]
Patients told stories of being ignored by nurses or not treated as human beings. One woman described the nurse criticized her for not having to have worked a day in her life because of her long-term illness. Another man described dinner was put in front of him without a single word, no ‘good afternoon’ or ‘enjoy’. Patients also provided examples of a lack of gen- uine involvement of nurses in the nurse–patient contact. Various patients mentioned they felt like a number:
. . .One thing that is very annoying is when two nurses are caring for you and they are conversing with each other over your head. That’s so annoying, you really feel like just a number. . .
Furthermore, various patients indicated nurses are more concerned about the way care is organized than they are about the patient’s request. Patients mentioned nurses stick to their routine and are reluctant to deviate from it. One nurse distributes medication while another checks parameters of all patients. Patients describe they cannot approach the nurse about matters that are not part of his/her task at that moment [...]
Various patients gave examples of situations where they were not acknowledged or heard with regard to their own appraisal or expertise concerning their illness and health. Patients stated they themselves felt what they could or could not do, but nurses kept emphasizing and imposing things, according to guidelines and protocols, they should be able to do at a certain point in time. Several patients felt they were not heard:
. . .I had two surgeries on my back. So the first day after the surgery, they said, ‘roll to the side and sit up’, of course that’s difficult. On the second day, they demand you get out of bed. But I felt worse, I couldn’t get out. And they didn’t believe me, the nurse didn’t believe it. ‘You’ve had surgery and according to the textbook, you should be able to get out of bed on the second day’. On the third day, they made a new scan and saw that those nerves had not been unblocked and on the fourth day I had another surgery. So they don’t listen, because that’s not possible, according to the ‘textbook’ you should be able to do this. . . [...]
When patients realize it is not self-evident to receive adequate care or do not feel in competent hands, they become more observant and vigilant. Patients describe they observe nurses carefully, check their medication and ask which examinations they are having and why. The care they receive is more outspokenly questioned:
. . .They came to collect me for my hip. Ah, you’ve got a scanner appointment. She says: ‘it’s an MR scan’. I say: ‘an MR scan? I can’t do that because I’ve got a pacemaker.’ And she says ‘And now you tell me?’ ‘Listen here, missy, you walk in here and tell me to come.’ You’d be in there if you wouldn’t have said something, wouldn’t you! The battery can generate voltage which could burn your heart, destroying your pacemaker. If you’re not paying attention, you’re done for. You constantly have to be on your guard. . .
You literally cannot find any information on abuse or racism perpetrated by nurses by searching up pretty basic terms, because the results are entirely full of abuse done to nurses. Which is important, but my god.
@genderkoolaid 's original tags because lying to patients is 100% something so many people believe as being unequivocally good when that patient is seen as anything other than perfect:
#m.#reminds me of how the pitt has several scenes i remember being like.#whyyyy are we making so many jokes about drug addicts and mentally ill people and their distress guys 😀#like that one fucking scene of the one doctor berating a drug user for no goddamn reason but it portrays her as#righteous because He Lied For Drugs (literally no way for him to be honest with you)#lying to HIM about giving him a drug that CAN MAKE YOU GO INTO WITHDRAWAL IF YOU TAKE ANY OTHER OPIATES WITH IT (suboxone i think)#WITHOUT TELLING HIM!!!!!!!!!! MASSIVE massive violation of patient autonomy and SAFETY. since she LIED about what drug it was#and the man HIMSELF clearly wanted opiates so he wouldnt be in withdrawal for his daughters wedding#and then she. berates him? for not caring about his daughter???????#and no one seems to be annoyed at this scene but me a fucking pparently#because it was the sweet nice doctor and its her fucking character development to be cruel towards a drug user for doing literally nothing#except trying to seek the care he needed to live his life in the way he knew how#and ofc they presented it as ''well maybe when hes ready he'll get clean now that you were a jerk to him :)''#she shouldve been fucking berated for that. they shouldve had a whole scene telling her how big of a fuckup that was#but nooooo its her cute little character development moment#idc get that poor man some methadone and TELL HIM HOW IT WORKS
It is shocking how recent the idea that "people have the right to decide what medical care they do or don't want" is. The whole modern medical system in the US, for example, was built with the presupposition that doctors give instructions to nurses and patients, nurses follow those instructions and give instructions to patients, and patients do exactly what they're told and be thankful for it. Hell, the Tuskegee "Experiment" didn't officially end until 1972 and the ADA was only passed in 1990. The present day system is the culmination of literal centuries of medical abuse of vulnerable people, and the ways in which the system has improved has been through the ongoing struggles against it by those it abuses. And this is not unique to the US by any measure, just the one whose history I know best.
Lying to patients? It's for their own good.
Giving them a medication without telling them what it is? It's for their own good.
Having a patient imprisoned committed institutionalized against their will? It's for their own good.
Berating a fat patient for existing? Drug users for using drugs? Patients with disabilities needing (legally mandated) accommodations? It's for their own good.
We're only just now starting to grapple with the vast number of people who have been traumatized by the medical system. The last estimates I saw we're around 12% of patients exhibit symptoms consistent with PTSD related to experiences with the medical system, and that number rises sharply for patients of color (especially black patients), disabled and chronically ill patients, fat patients, LGBTQ+ patients, and basically any other marginalized group. Some doctors and nurses have worked intentionally to try to address and mitigate their biases, in many places the number of medical professionals who are themselves members of these groups has been increasing, but the vast majority just never even consider that they could be harming their patients. Like, for fucks sakes, it's 2026 and research is still finding that a substantial portion of graduating medical students still believe that black people have thicker skin and higher pain tolerance (or even can't experience pain at all!?!) and that women are more likely to exaggerate their pain and other symptoms.
I can have solidarity with medical professionals as a worker but still point out the ways that they hold (and abuse) power over us. Even the ones who aren't intentionally causing harm. Treating them as unassailable, unerring paragons doesn't help anyone except in shielding those who use their position to hurt us.
I will be honest if someone posted "I'm a tutor and everyday I watch zoomers try to double tap on books to open them" thousands of you would reblog it and tag "😱 it's so scary that this is what all kids today are really like they're so helpless and stupid omg!!! those damn kids need to get off their phones!!!!"
things a concerning amount of people aged 25-40 on this site believe about today's children:
they don't know how to read and this makes them mean and dumb. also even though their meanness and dumbness are the result of poor education, they are still personal character flaws that deserve to be mocked.
they are responsible for wide scale censorship in schools and on social media. because, as we all know, children are famously politically powerful, never want to see horny or edgy content, and love it when books are banned in their school libraries.
they love to spread misinformation around so they can all armchair diagnose each other and act like they have learning disabilities in order to excuse their laziness about doing school work. obviously they are all liars and just need to just get their acts together and grow up instead of shirking responsibility for their actions like this.
they are uniquely cruel in comparison to past generations, and this is because of Phone. and also TikTok. no one has ever been cruel like this before.
they would all be much better off with their parents monitoring their internet usage. if they're closeted and their parents are homophobic then, well, sucks for them. kids being abused out of sight is better than them being annoying where I can see them.
"Are trans men privileged" is one of those things that you need to look and say "no". Individual trans men can have male privileges but systemic privileges are not about individuals. Systemic privileges are about everyone. You could say trans men are privileged because they're men but that would ignore that they're trans which makes them mostly to not be seem as the gender they choose. "But Quas" you might say "Why don't trans women are privileged if they're not seem as women but rather men? Why don't they receive male privilege then?" Fellas it's the trans part. Transgender suggests that you're performing your expected gender wrong. The same way a bigot can treat a trans woman with mysogyny because he likes to have a woman he can ounch without consequence, he will still treat a trans man with mysogyny. Because he doesn't sees him as a man.
"All trans men have male privilege" is one of those takes you have if the only trans men you've ever met are post-op, on hormones trans men who happen to be white and thin, that live in a progressive area and are respect as a man everywhere they go.
"Individual trans men might have male privilege in certain places and situations"
"All trans men have male privilege" (Incorrect buzzer sound)
I think people have trouble understanding the institionalised part of opression. It's easier to see a bigot screaming at a victim and understanding that's bad than to look at stuff like funding discrepancies.
The moment you think about the medical system and the way trans men need to navigate it it would be clear as day that we are affected by whatever mysoginy is ingrained in it (lack of research, denial of reproductive autonomy, etc).
Being trans means that you need to fight with every institution to correct the default and most were never expecting to have to change it. Privilege doesn't mean people are nice to you, it means when people made the buildings and institutions you need to navigate someone took out the time to think about how you'll move in it and how to make it easier.
So, I'd actually go as far as to say that not even the passing post op trans guy has male privilege. I don't think any trans person can, because the world was not set up with us in mind.
I don’t say this to be inflammatory. This is something I wholeheartedly believe because I see it myself all the time. Violence and transphobic rhetoric about transgender men is so normalized that it doesn’t even register to people and often gets repeated.
One of the most obnoxious examples of this is about once a month I see post/post cast clip/hear from someone irl that they think JK Rowling is an in denial trans man. They’ll take the quotes from her about how were she born in this generation, she would’ve been trans and that “the allure of escaping womanhood would have been too much to resist” and say she obviously a trans man.
But by believing this you haven’t discovered some secret of hers. Rowling quite literally wants you to believe she would’ve been trans to lend herself credence into the trans conversation. And you are agreeing with her and the TERFs that reason transmasculine people transition is because of internalized misogyny and peer pressure.
Why can you understand she’s a lying, manipulative demon when she speaks about trans women or trans people broadly, but take her and TERFs at their word when it comes to trans men? You are dangerously susceptible to propaganda and absolutely spineless.
tbh u can believe what she says about her interpretation of herself and believe she's an in-denial trans man and pity her for it and still wholeheartedly oppose her in every way. it does NOT mean you give her the credence of a person who identifies as trans. she herself is misunderstanding what makes people trans and unfortunately she is making it at other people's heavy expense rather than just her own. i myself denied my trans identity out of believing it was internalized misogyny, but only for me, while believing that other trans people had authentic reasons. eventually i overcame the transandrophobic shame, but even if jk did eventually identify as trans, there still would be a lot of damage that she (or he) would still have to be accountable for.
nothing about believing her saying she thinks she would have been trans means you have to believe or support anything else about her.
"it's so easy to boycott mcdonalds because their food isn't even good" well. I do like their food. and I boycott it anyways because participating in a boycott isn't determined by how good food is or how much you like it.
it's fine if it's easy for you to boycott something because you didn't like it in the first place but those are the people least needed in a boycott. the most effective boycotts pull existing customers away from something. when people constantly say this it pulls the focus away from "you should boycott mcdonalds (or other applicable boycott) because they participate in genocide" and puts it on "you should boycott if it's easy" even if that's not the intention.
the most important people in a boycott are the people who do have to change their routines to participate in it.
I was a regular at McDonald's before I found out about the boycott. I actually had McDonald's doordash on the way when I learned about it (I had covid so I was isolating and not cooking in the shared kitchen). I loved their chicken nuggets and french fries and haven't found a replacement that I enjoy as much
I am also capable of not eating there even though I like their food because the point of a boycott isn't for it to be easy. I have self control and I can accept that my desires to eat my favorite fast food are not more important than the lives of Palestinians.
