my stuff

she/her, 20+, I'll reblog stuff here so my art blog isn't such a mess

[seyenna-stuff]

my art: #art.sey

my podfics: #podfic.sey

my fic recs/fic rec lists: #fic_rec.sey

[strictlyquadrilateral]

and this isn't even getting into harm that's genuinely necessary! i read a book recently that was intended to educate people in healthcare about medical trauma, written by a medical professional who found that there weren't existing resources to help her cope with the aftermath of the extremely traumatic c section that saved her life. the whole tone of the book was "i know you've never thought about this before, but walk with me through this case study" and it's aimed at other medical professionals! it's aimed at the people who are doing this harm, and so many of them think that people aren't allowed to find it harmful just because it's necessary!

[strictlyquadrilateral]

so many trauma resources assume that your trauma is from a specific person or people who treated you in a way that society deems unacceptable. if your trauma doesn't fit that profile then you're left sitting there like. idk i dont think most of this stuff applies to me. where are the resources for people like me.

[strictlyquadrilateral]

if you were ever scared or in pain and were told that you had to grin and bear it because it's necessary for you to do the thing that scares and hurts you, you are allowed to say that that was traumatic. you are allowed to say that you were scared and in pain and that even if this was the least bad option, even if it was lifesaving, it still was not okay. something being necessary does not inherently make it okay.

[the-real-seebs]

i think i still have mild trauma from a dentistry-related thing some years back, and it was completely voluntary and i wanted it, just, the experience was actually really upsetting. like, totally worth it in overall outcomes, just. wow, yeah. i do not want to ever do that again.

i have more than one thing that saved my life and traumatized me.

[finelinesignattwo]

I'm a juvenile diabetic: relatedly, I used to be crippled by CPTSD. it turns out, infants dislike needles, and having your primary caregivers administer them daily can be bad for those relationships. I had no sense of trauma as the etiology of my issues for a while, because I couldn't find any 'abuse' in my history.

I remember talking to a psychologist: guy was like "are you absolutely sure you weren't abused as a child? I am literally a therapist, so you can tell me". when I demurred, he was like "truly? because you really really come across like you were, and I meet a lot of people with that history".

it was only after a parent mentioned that I'd go quiet and waxy during injections (tonic immobility, in retrospect) that I started to consider whether the lifesaving medical care I received had negative psychological effects.

[fittingoutjane]

This is a common gateway to pseudoscience. People experience trauma from receiving, or from seeing a loved one receive, lifesaving medical care and aren't able to find the space to process that it was necessary, the alternative was worse, AND it was really and truly awful. People who are afraid to go back. People who need accommodations to make necessary medical care less stressful and scary, and can't get them.

[lakemojave]

I have you blocked because I don't like your blog at all but I hope you're doing well. ok blocking you again adieu

Hello???

[lakemojave]

Anon bb come back i can change for you

[wickedsick]

[quasi-normalcy]

I've reached the point where cynicism is a major turn-off for me. You're not smarter than idealists, and you're not helping.

[quasi-normalcy]

Funny that the stereotypical cynic is an idealist who aged out of it. In my experience, the reverse is true. I was an extreme cynic as a teenager and then I noticed how profoundly limiting it was, and also that "cynics are cool and smart" was a message that was being constantly reinforced by corporate media for some reason.

[quasi-normalcy]

#yes! cynicism reads as very juvenile to me#and yes prev often stemming from teen pain

Yeah, like I see black-pilled people on here and my default reaction isn't "oh, these must be world-weary old warriors who've lost their faith in humanity", it's "these people are in their 20s and need a hobby"

[quasi-normalcy]

I also think that the present era has proven that authoritarian leaders don't actually want a population of wide-eyed idealists, they want a population of jaded assholes who are convinced that everyone is lying, any resistance is either a scam or doomed to failure, and nothing can ever get better.

[pierogiy]

guy who says eep

[lesbianyapper]

[foeofcolor]

Only day you can rb this

[foeofcolor]

This post is like a fucking rosetta stone I've had the same theme song tagged in at least 6 languages so far

[zinesbycee]

(nods sagely) (nods basily) (nods rosemarily) (nods saltly) (nods star anisely)

[stealingpotatoes]

the twins find out mind tricks don't work on Padmé the hard way

(ko-fi requests are open!)

[viralfrog]

[original-character-chaos]

[cutecipher]

whether or not men benefit from feminism has no bearing on whether feminism is worthwhile

[cutecipher]

put another way. i dont care about how men are impacted by feminism

[cutecipher]

already have people mad about this. okay here's another take. men should be feminists for no benefit.

[mantis-lizbian]

just as white people should be anti-racism for no benefit, and cis people should be pro-trans for no benefit. the only "benefit" that should be required is the creation of a more just world, not because you, personally, actually do get something out of it.

[bucketofdeltav]

This is all true. People should, and many people do, do work that benefits others for no benefit to themselves, because this is the right thing to do.

However, in practical terms, this is another example of People Will Not Just. If your movement relies on large groups of people Just Doing [thing that does not directly benefit them], your movement is fucked.

Your options, if you want real change and not just moral purity, are to show people how it does in fact benefit them, or be so loud, and so annoying, and so inconvenient, that supporting you in order to make you Stop That Already will register as a tangible benefit to the people who Will Not Just.

[textonly]

[ehyde]

NASA advertising "do you want to be an astronaut" to tumblr users surely means something. What have you found out there, NASA? What have you found that you believe tumblr users, specifically, are best equipped to handle?

[ursavorpalis]

[sarkavonsy]

gotta include the bonus panel

[lakemojave]

Happy Pride Month everyone! Remember 4 months ago when the CEO of this platform harassed and chased a trans woman off this website just for posting her transition timeline, then chased her to other social media platforms to continue harassing her, and threatened to call the FBI if she continued disputing the multiple dubious terminations of her blogs that did not violate tumblr's terms of service in any way? And despite tumblr staff insisting that the CEO was acting against their interests, the broad transmisogyny evident in the site's culture and moderation policy has still not been adequately addressed?

[lakemojave]

Remember that staff is continuing to nuke the blogs of trans women even after all of this. Remember this post when they call this site the queerest place on the internet again this month

[lakemojave]

It's 2 years later. It's gotten worse. Happy pride month.

[fforsythiaaa]

Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.

[hypokeimena]

#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)

[vacuously-true]

"IOC bans biological males from women's sports" headlines driving me bonkers. These headlines don't tell me what they banned, because "biological male" isn't a kind of person.

They banned people with the SRY gene.

The SRY gene is typically found on the Y chromosome, although occasionally it appears on an X chromosome. People with an SRY gene may or may not have a testosterone-based puberty. They may or may not have a Y chromosome. They may or may not have a penis. They may or may not be amab. They may or may not be men. It is not scientifically reasonable to say that "biological male" and "SRY positive" are equivalent.

Sexual dimorphism in humans means there are clusters of traits that tend to appear together in two groups. Sperm vs egg production. Low vs high voice. Presence vs absence of Y chromosome. Presence vs absence of SRY gene. More facial hair vs less. Tall vs short. Longer vs shorter penis/clitoris. High vs low androgens. Low vs high estrogens. Et cetera.

On average, someone who has some traits that look more like the first than the second in these pairs will also likely have other traits that look more like the first than the second in these pairs. Traits that are correlated in this way are considered primary and secondary sex characteristics, and we call one of the correlation classes "male sex characteristics" and the other "female sex characteristics."

But, while it can be useful to refer to individual sex characteristics by their correlation class name (as in, male hormones, female genitalia, et cetera) it does not make sense to refer to an individual human person as male/female. Because all human beings come with a mix of primary and secondary sex characteristics. I would argue that the vast majority of people do not have every single one of their primary and secondary sex characteristics present as clearly solidly in the same correlation class, especially since the correlation is much weaker when it comes to many secondary sex characteristics. That doesn't mean the majority of people are intersex, although "just what mixtures of traits count as intersex?" is a question that doesn't have a clear cut answer. I will not pretend to have an answer for it.

The point is, though, that presence of SRY gene is not any more valid of an idea of "biological male" than using any other single sex characteristic. I'm not sure exactly what percentage of people have an SRY gene but suppose it's 49.8%. I could come up with a testosterone threshold that cuts the population at 49.8%. I could come up with a height threshold that cuts the population at 49.8%. I could come up with a variety of tests on a variety of sex characteristics that cut the population at 49.8%. Or any other percent. And they would not produce the same partition of the population. There would always be some people who land on one side of some tests and the other side of others. And none of them would be a good test of "biological male" because no single sex characteristic defines the "male" correlation class. It is defined by its rough correlation of characteristics.

People have to stop writing headlines (or anything else) with the nouns "biological male" and "biological female" in them as if those mean something. Those literally don't mean anything.

The IOC banned people with an SRY gene from participation in women's Olympic sports. They banned people with that specific male sex characteristic. There are cis and trans men, cis and trans women, and nonbinary people who have that gene. And who lack it. They did not ban "biological males." They are not permitting "biological females." There are no such things. We have to stop pretending there are.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Secondary poll based on the comments so far:

You two should reconsider your relationship if you're not able to compromise

You're perfect for each other, never involve anyone else in this situation

Voting ended onJun 23, 2023

Original post

[the-tzimisce]

propose to him with the worst fucking ring you can possibly get your hands on. like not a half-assed, "oh you won't like anything I get anyway," passive-aggression ring, that is not the play, you need to do your research and take some interest in the things that matter to your enemy future husband and really learn about like, the gemstone cuts or whatever, and then you need to get him the most eye-catching ring you can find that would also be completely offensive to his overdeveloped sensibilities. He's putting in all this effort to bribe the cat to bite you, it's the least you could do to step it up in response.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

So that anon came back with an adorable proposal story, but I fucking love this idea and need it to make it into someone's fanfic or something