Regular Rebel

Monica, 30s, cis, she/her, aroace, depression, anxiety, self-dx autism, white, fat. I tag myself #regreb. Oh, and I definitely cannot walk in a straight line.

[turing-tested]

there’s nothing purer or better than how much kids enjoy being picked up and then hurled at soft surfaces

[turing-tested]

anyone who’s ever been around kids for ay meaningful amount of time should know exactly how much kids long to be hefted up and then just fuckin tossed! it’s so good! they’re so excited to get fucking tossed around like a sack of potatoes it’s so pure

[abigboysblog]

Why do kids love it so much? Like I remember when I was a kid at diving practice during the summer, the best part was when one if the coaches would toss you into the deep end. And in gymnastics coaches would toss us into the foam pit. Do kids just have a evolutionary urge to die?

[deanwinchesterisadorable]

https://themilitarywifeandmom.com/why-kids-wont-listen/

“Vestibular sense provides information about where the body is in relation to its surroundings. This is the sense that helps you understand balance, and it connects with all the other senses.

When the vestibular system does not develop properly all other senses will struggle to function properly. Without a strong vestibular sense, kids will have no choice but to fidget, get frustrated, experience more falls and aggression, get too close to people when talking, and struggle with focusing and listening. Because they literally cannot help it.”

“Here are a few ways to support your child’s vestibular sense:

Spinning in circles.

Using a Merry-Go-Round.

Rolling down a hill.

Spinning on a swing.

Going upside down.

Climbing trees.

Rocking.

Jumping rope.

Summersaults or cartwheels.

Using monkey bars.

Skating.

Going backwards.

Swimming.

Dancing.

Wheel-barrel walks.”

Yeeting kids, spinning them, flipping them upside down, tossing them in the air, and otherwise disrupting their balance temporarily, is Important For Their Development, specifically for their vestibular sense.

Kids love this because they NEED it.

[severalowls]

In other words: Don’t forget to calibrate your child’s GPS!

[roseyturtles]

YEET THE CHILD FOR THEIR HEALTH

[hjartaohamast-svohljott]

Hi! Paediatric Occupational Therapist here who yeets children into pillows for a living. It’s actually more than the vestibular system! It’s also giving them proprioception, which is the feeling of your joints and muscles / where your body is in space! 

We all seek proprioceptive input, leaning against walls, pushing against the steering wheel when driving, giving your body a squeeze to wake yourself up, the list goes on! When we ‘crash’ kids into soft things like pillows or beds, we’re waking their bodies up AND calming their bodies down! In other words, getting them into this super nice zone of “just right” regulation. 

When I see a child who is bouncing off the walls and can’t seem to stand still for more than a few seconds? I start wrestling with them, crashing them into pillows, giving their body the right amount of input they need to feel good and organised. And suddenly, this kid is able to sit and play attentively or do their handwriting practice. It’s amazing! If you want to know more about why the vestibular and proprioceptive systems are awesome at making your body feel good, google those two words (and sensory processing) and read through some occupational therapy websites! 

Side note: As adults, does your body ever feel jittering/jiggly/wiggly/like it needs to move or calm down but you just can’t figure out why? That’s your sensory system saying Hey! I need to feel differently in order to function better! Here’s what you can do:

Jump up and down (vestibular and proprioception)

Give yourself big squeezes (proprioception)

Place your hands on a wall and do push ups (proprioception)

Do cartwheels (vestibular and proprioception)

Get someone to give you the biggest bear hug for at least 10 seconds (proprioception and social connection, also proven to help regulate your sensory system into just right zone!)

Get a drink of water and drink it through a straw OR blow bubbles into the water (way more fun!) (oral motor input and respiration)

Have a shower or a bath (tactile)

Stretch and do exercise (vestibular and proprioception)

Eat something crunchy or chewy (like chips or gum) (oral motor input)

Listen to some music that suits your mood (auditory)

etc etc etc! I’m sure you already have a strategy that your body has figured out works for you. I personally like to chew gum when I feel like i need to eat something but I’m not actually hungry and just need that chewing sensation in my jaw. 

Long story short, everyone has a sensory system and we all use regulation strategies like the ones listed above to help make our body feel better. So if you ever see someone (especially kids!) fidgeting and having a hard time focusing, maybe suggest something from the list above!

[realvibekiller-remade-deactivat]

do you ever look @ someone and think “i just want you to be happy always”

[cookie-waffle-deactivated202511]

here’s one thing ya’ll don’t seem to fucking understand

When demisexual/romantic defend themselves by saying that non-ace/demi are often able to feel romantic or sexual attraction right away or shortly after they meet someone, we don’t fucking mean “Those filthy allos always be fucking on site eww”.

What we mean is:

-Most of use can’t date or use dating apps like non-demi people can because we can’t judge if we like people romantically or sexually soon after we meet them or see their profile.

- Things like one night stands and quick hookups are out of the question because demisexual people can’t feel sexual attraction right after meeting someone, but that does not mean demisexuals assume every non-demi person just goes around fucking all the time.

- Demiromantic people rarely or never have crushes on people unless they’re already closely bonded with them, while a lot of non-demi people have had pleanty of crushes on people they don’t even know such as celeberties, internet stars, people they admire from afar, exc.

I myself have never had a crush on anyone ever, and not because I chose not to. Back in middle and high school I would literally try to force myself to have crushes on people I wasn’t really interested in because I felt left out from everyone else who were already dating.

- We only feel attraction towards people we are closely bonded with, while a lot of non-demi people may bond with their partenrs and get to know them through dating or sex, we already have to know the person and be close with them to even feel romantic or sexual attraction.

- It is not the same as a personal choice. Yea, a non-demi person may choose to only date people they know well, and there’s nothing wring with that. But even if that is your choice, if you can feel sexual attraction towards someone before you are closely bonded with them you are not demisexual. If you can have a crush on someone before you are closely bonded with them you are not demiromantic. It’s actually not that hard to understand.

I absolutely cannot feel romantic feelings for anyone I don’t have a close bond with. That’s not something I chose. If I did have the choice I would actually choose not to be demi because I’m a helpless romantic shmuck who fantisizes about relationships all the time. But I am demiromantic and I cannot change that no mater how much I wanted to.

We do not think non-demi people are hypersexual animals who fuck each other on sight. We can just see the differences between us that makes us demi.

[babyanimalgifs]

aw how adorable

[crossdreamers]

@ScienceVet2 explains intersex variations on twitter.

ScienceVet is a Ph.D in Biochemistry and has published in the fields of endocrinology and sexual differentiation.  His Ph.D. is in Biomedical Sciences - Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmocology.

[dykeselfcest]

Transcript of this thread for easier reading:

So. Hi new people! Apparently, we’re gonna talk about sex. Like physical sex! Because… there’s some confusion.

First, sex defined: We’re talking physical sex here, not gender. Body parts, hormones, and genetics (and more).

BLUF: BIOLOGICAL sex is a spectrum.

Ok, everyone’s super familiar with the XX/XY dichotomy, right? Yeah, what we all learned in like… 4th grade? And that’s great, it gives you a starting point. But it’s… well it’s only the very starting point. 

The IDEA is, XX is girl, XY is boy, right? Welllll… that’s not totally right. There are XY people, who have ovaries! And give birth! AH! And XX people who have male bodies and functional sperm! Double AH!

These are usually written off as “abnormalities” and indeed, some cases have medical issues. But many don’t (like the XY woman giving birth). And this is really only the very very tip of the iceberg of “wait, that doesn’t fit into our M or F box unless we make it bigger.“ There’s a WHOLE HOST of things that can cause all sorts of "weird” things to happen, ranging from genetic (XXY, XYY, Y, X, XX with translocation, XY with deletion) to hormonal (Androgen Insensitivity, Estradiol failure), and disruptors like dioxins.

So, you’re a scientist, and you want to research stuff, right? Which means you have to categorize stuff. Without categories, data is hard! So you take allll these people, including the “weird” ones and you plot them on a graph. Logical!

You use all the differences there are, different genetics, different responses to hormones, different effectiveness in signalling pathways, different sizes in anteroventral periventricular nucleus (AVPV) (yeah that’s a thing) and give everything numbers, add them up.

You get what’s called a bimodal distribution (mostly, we’ll get to that later) which looks like this. Those two big peaks are what we call “male” and “female” (even conveniently colored pink for boys and blue for girls - we are using victorian gender colors right?) 

[Image Description: A graph showing a smooth line that goes up from approximately zero, forms two “humps,” and then returns to zero. The area under the curve is colored in with a left-to-right gradient that goes from light blue to light pink.]

Now, when you’re trying to look at data, we often group stuff. When we do that with a plot like this, it’s called a “histogram.” Basically we’re breaking down a curved line into discrete “bins.” Like this (image stolen from the web).

[Image Description: A bar graph showing the distribution of test scores. Each bar represents the number of students who got a score between 0 and 10 percent, 11 and 20 percent, etc. The data is approximately bimodal, like the graph of sex characteristics, and is divided between students who didn’t study and students who did study.]

Traditionally, we’ve used REALLY BIG bins for this when talking about sex. Basically you either group everything vaguely near a peak into the peak, or you just pretend there’s nothing else but the biggest peaks. This makes it super easy, because 2 is simple to do data with.

However, as we’ve gotten to know more and more about signaling and brains and hormones and started to pay more attention to the outliers where standard stuff just didn’t seem to work, we discovered that this isn’t a great model to use.

Now I’m not talking feelings here. I’m talking about data. As you start to look at anything interesting, like say the effects of 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-P-dioxin on animals, you start to realize that a 2 bin model doesn’t predict your results well.

At first you say, “Well it was just weird.” So you redo it, and it still doesn’t work. So you look at your model and you say, “Well ok, what if the model’s wrong?”

But the model sort of… almost predicts a lot of things, and it worked for years, so…

Some enterprising soul says, “Hey, remember that histogram where we said we’ll just model using the peaks?” And everyone goes, “Uh, yeah?” And they say, “What if we… USED that data?” And everyone groans, because complicated data is hard.

But someone sits down and does the work, and lo, wow the model starts to work again. Where TCDD was “randomly” turning some boys into girls but then some girls into boys, now you can see there’s a subgroup of what you’d called “female” that responds like the “male.”

What’s important here is that you haven’t MISLABELED males as females. These are functional “females” who can do all the usual “female” things like gestate babies. But they respond to this one endocrine disruptor in a “male” way.

So you add another two categories, call them “Male2” and “Female2” and go on, happy that your model works! You’ve got 4 sexes now, but you don’t really have to tell anyone that, right?

Exceeeept then you remember you’ve got those XY people that gestate babies. So you add “Intersex1” And then the XX people with penes… and ovaries? Ok, “Intersex2” because all these groups respond differently with signalling and brains when you get into the weeds.

And the more you look, the more we LEARN, the more we’re able to separate out those fine differences. Depending on what we’re doing, we may not care. If a doc is giving you aspirin, it probably isn’t a big deal. But if they’re using a steroid on you? Or treating dioxin poisoning? THAT SHIT COULD BE IMPORTANT. It’s like saying, “the light’s off so the power must not be flowing.” It really matters if the light’s off because the bulb blew.

If we go back to that histogram plot, we can keep breaking down your biological sex into smaller and smaller differences in brain areas, hormone levels, signalling differences, genetic variances. There’s nothing stopping us from binning EVERY INDIVIDUAL into their own bin.

Technically, this wouldn’t be “infinite sexes” but 7.4 billion sexes is functionally close for our brains. Now, our medicine isn’t advanced enough for THAT level of detail to make any difference. BUT IT MIGHT BE in the future. Individualized medicine!

The thing to remember is that this isn’t “new.” We’re not ‘inventing sexes’ here. Sex has ALWAYS been this curve. We were just using REALLY BIG bins. And now we’re realizing that that’s not representative of biology, it’s inhibiting understanding of medicine and biology

In case anyone’s curious, this isn’t ideology. This is because I had to figure out why my data didn’t match the prediction. Those rats I mentioned? Yeah, my lab. And lab rats are a really pure genetic monoculture, and they STILL don’t fit the two peak model well.

So, since it’s come up, an addendum!

Yes, we looked at other things we could do to make our data fit the existing model, that’s how science works! The ONLY way the data fit was if we let “sex” be more than just those two narrow peaks.

Models’ purpose in science is to predict. If they don’t predict correctly, first we check if we’ve measured the data correctly, and repeat the experiment a couple more times. If it still doesn’t fit, we have to look at the model.

Intersex! Because I didn’t specifically mention this above.

“Intersex” is a term used to collectively speak of the “middle ground” of biology where people can’t easily be binned into those two big “male” and “female” peaks. It can include a large range of biology.

It is worth noting that I never talk about transgender in this thread. Intersex is not the same as transgender. You can be one without the other, or be both.

For people who think this is just “outliers”:

Current estimates are that the intersex population is at least 2%. We know that’s low because there are a lot of “invisibly intersex” people. That means AT LEAST 150 million people in the world.

I apologize for the failure to use the word “intersex” higher up in the discussion. Many people in the middle ground (including the XY person who can carry a child, for example) use this term. I cannot go back and edit the thread, and apologize for my overly clinical description.

Part of the purpose of the thread, which may have failed, was to point out that “intersex” is not a condition, it is not a disease. It’s natural with a bimodal distribution. Science not only supports this, it suggests that ignoring intersex people makes your conclusions wrong.

If you’d like additional reading on this topic, the author’s original thread contains links to resources if you scroll to the bottom. [link]

[theconcealedweapon]

Police officers claim that there’s a war against them.

They’re always saying that they have a tough and dangerous job. They’re always saying that society is full of people who are out to get them. They’re always saying that a police officer’s life can be ruined by a false accusation of brutality.

But if that were true, they’d be begging to be filmed. If the police were always filmed, people would see how dangerous it is to be a police officer. Police officers would be able to defend themselves against thugs who try to kill them, because the video would prove that it’s self defense and not police brutality. Anytime a police officer is wrongly accused of brutality, they’d be able to immediately disprove the accusation.

But that’s not what happens. Police officers protest against being required to wear cameras. Police officers threaten people who film them. 

Clearly, there’s no war against police officers. Police officers want people to not know what actually happens. Police officers know that in the absence of video evidence, a police officer’s word will be taken as fact. They’re just afraid of being held accountable for once.

[smarter-than-the-republicans]

Scalding

[trans-road-warrior]

[regularrebel]

Transcript:

Want a job with very little risk of dying on the job? Become a police officer. In 2013, there were only about 10.8 deaths of police officers out of 100,000 workers, whereas loggers topped the list with 91.3 deaths. Even bartenders (16.4 deaths) had a higher death rate than cops.

[marsixm]

it’s so funny how people get upset that gender is a social construct? EVERYTHING is a social construct??? go ask a frog what day of the fuckin week it is, he doesn’t know

[headspace-hotel]

I feel like the best way to respond to someone you’re friends with making gross, racist, sexist etc. jokes isn’t to argue with them or call them out directly, but just to kind of wince at them like they just did something incredibly inappropriate and awkward and try to change the subject. Like, almost in an exaggerated way, like you’re just really disgusted and want to forget they said it. Arguing with them lets them 1) shoehorn you as a “SJW” and shut themselves off to you 2) defend their opinion or feel like they did and 3) lets you end up categorized as the person who did the inappropriate thing by making a “big deal” out of it. But acting like you would with any extremely gross and inappropriate thing makes it harder for them to mentally defend themselves and thus to avoid feeling weird and ashamed. It prevents them from getting in any way satisfied by your reaction or validated in their views. It makes them the person that broke a rule. And anyway, it is really gross and inappropriate to joke like that. It has to be a taboo, not just a viewpoint or a style of humor that some people don’t like. If you argue, it frames the issue as an opinion. If you just show disgust and displeasure and treat the offensive material like you would a pile of dog shit on a sidewalk you’re walking down, it’s not arguable. It’s an action, with nothing intellectual about it, and there’s nothing for them to defend against. 

Anyone have any thoughts? Has anybody tried this? 

[micanificent]

This is straight up how I deal with the subtle racist and homophobic behaviours a lot of people exhibit, as well as the use of slurs. Wince. Make a face. Look away. Get really quiet. Change the subject. Personal favourite is just just to say “dude” quietly and loaded w disgust.

And you wanna know what?? It fucking works. I’ve observed a decrease in these behaviours in the people I react this way to. OP is totally right, don’t give them the chance to turn it into a ‘discussion’, just skip directly to shame.

[dragontatoes]

Make them realize they’re not edgy or shocking, they’re boring and embarrassing.

[thetrevorproject]

The 'Emotion Chart' My Therapist Gave Me That I Didn't Know I Needed

"I hope it's a tool that can help you too."

“The magic thing about processing and identifying emotions while they’re happening is that afterwards, I often feel lighter” 💜

If you or anyone you know is in crisis, we’re here for you 24/7 at 866.488.7386 or text/chat: thetrevorproject.org/help 📲

[thr0atmistress-deactivated20191]

The only people who get upset when you set boundaries are the ones who benefited from you having none.

[curlicuecal]

That’s why they perceive it as a personal attack— because your boundary encroaches on space they’re used to owning: eg, yours.

[spitblaze]

millenials: *get consistently fed the capitalist success stories since childhood that the key to achieving anything you want is hard work and nothing else*

millenials: *collectively develop perfectionist complexes and try as hard as they possibly can, going above and beyond and still falling short in their own eyes*

millenials: *dont get hired by anyone after working themselves to the bone because the economy is only doing well if you already have a hedge fund and hiring from outside relies more on connections than actual talent or effort, end up having to work horrible energy and life-sapping dead end jobs in order to survive*

millenials: yknow what, maybe capitalism is crap.

captialists: ABSURD! HAVE YOU EVER HEARD ANYTHING LIKE THIS IN YOUR LIFE!!! CLEARLY THE ISSUE IS THAT THEY’RE NARCISSISTIC AND CODDLED. THIS IS CERTAINLY NOT OUR FAULT. TAKE YOUR 7.50 AN HOUR AND GO, PEON.

[yidquotes]

To put it plainly, Jewish law allows for abortion. For the first 40 days of gestation, a fetus is considered “mere fluid” (Talmud Yevamot 69b), and the fetus is regarded as part of the mother for the duration of the pregnancy. It is not considered to have the status of personhood until birth; the Mishnah (Ohalot 7:6) teaches that if the mother’s life is in danger from the pregnancy, even in labor, the fetus may be sacrificed to save her life, unless the baby’s head has already emerged. Only then, according to Rashi (Talmud Sanhedrin 72b), is the fetus or baby considered to be a nefesh, a soul. Elsewhere, the Mishnah (Arachin 1:4) teaches that “If a [pregnant] woman is about to be executed, they do not wait for her until she gives birth. But if she had already sat on the birthstool, they wait for her until she gives birth.” Birth, not gestation, is the critical marker, here.

This body of literature, needless to say, comes in stark and striking contrast to arguments that life—and personhood—begins at conception.

Interestingly, many Christian communities derive their prooftexts against permitting abortion from the Hebrew Bible, like verses about God forming humans in the womb (Psalm 139:13, Jeremiah 1:5, Isaiah 44:24)—texts which don’t even register in the Jewish legal conversation on this topic. To put it simply, we don’t derive matters of Jewish law from Psalms. - Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

[s-leary]

An astonishingly useful thread on progressive vs. conservative thought by Jennifer Dziura (text version via ThreadReader):

[arathergrimreaper]

Welp, looks like chopping heads and breaking knee caps will just have to do.

[korrasera]

This. If I could pay money to understand the mechanism that causes people to do this whole…I don’t know what to call it but it’s some sort of fault in justice modeling based on arbitrary moral constructions…thing then I would.

Understand why they say these things and we’ll understand how to dismantle these things.

[iron-sunrise]

I’ve been trying to think about it too and all I can come up with is hubris. And I know thats only a chunk of it. Hubris, callous disregard of what they think of as the Serf class because ‘individualism’. Nationalism as morality, perhaps?

[regularrebel]

transcript linked above

[skepticalmuppet]

[regularrebel]

Transcript:

Regarding the use of “it was just a joke” as a defense:

If it was “just a joke,” then there’s no reason for you to be upset that people didn’t find it funny. You just accept that the material fell flat, note it for future reference, and move on. If, however, it angers or frustrates you that people didn’t find it funny or tell you that it was offensive, then it wasn’t “just a joke” to you. It was a belief that you shared in a joking manner and you’re taking the rejection of it as a rejection of a part of you. Be honest about that instead of asking others to pretend that they believe you were joking.

[jehovahhthickness]

[moon-priestesss]

This is what I’ve been saying.

[liberalsarecool]

Capitalism crushes labor.

[regularrebel]

Transcript:

It’s cute how people say “Why should a fast food worker get paid $15 an hour when a paramedic gets paid $15 an hour for saving someones life?” instead of “How come a paramedic gets $15 an hour while a 30 minute ambulance ride costs $900?” Wow, it looks like the fast food worker, the paramedic, and he person in the ambulance are all getting fricked and somehow mad at each other about it instead of being mad at the people who are profiting off them.

[sarahseeandersen]

[mystrothedefender]

its nice to know that this is something that other people do too.

[regularrebel]

Transcript:

Human: Well. I totally failed.

Rabbit: Did you try your hardest?

Human: (No.) Yes.

Rabbit: Then you did all you could.

Human: (No I did not.) Yes.

[left-reminders]

[regularrebel]

Transcript:

a society that values STEM topics while devaluing the social sciences and humanities is how you end up with a generation of “rational” guys who think 101 sociology concepts are a conspiracy against america and get all their view from blogs names “brain zone” and “thinkateria”