Something Like a Heart

Call me Desdemona. 43, bisexual, Canadian, long-time lover of the sound of heartbeats, writer, teacher, and musician. Oh, and while this *is* a cardiophile blog, other things show up here on a regular basis as well. TERFs, exclusionists, and miscellaneous jerks who want to take me to task for using the word “queer” to describe myself and others who have claimed it will be lectured. And then probably blocked. Blog colour now orange for the foreseeable future because Every Child Matters.

[something-like-a-heart]

Friendly reminder, prompted by a post that I agree with but that doesn’t completely fit with this blog: while my cardiophilia is predominantly not sexual, I do not want to have minors as followers. Stay away until you’re of age, please. If you don’t and I find out, you’ll be blocked. Hai capito?

[bruzum]

[wenlokholmes]

sorry, prev, your tags are too true to be silenced

[daloy-politsey]

What I Learned Watching a Co-Worker Get Forced Out

Corporate Glossary: every Friday, learn the secret meaning of common corporate words

“They’re trying to discharge her constructively. Do you know what Constructive Discharge means?” She asked.

As soon as I heard the term ‘Constructive Discharge,’ I knew I’d never seen it on a vocabulary quiz.

“No. What does it mean?” I asked.

She explained.

“Constructive discharge is a fancy way of saying “being forced out.” It’s not good. And if you’re not a lawyer or in human resources, you’ll probably learn what it means when it’s happening to you.”

“Oh my God. I’ve seen this my entire career and never knew it even had a name.” I thought.

You’ve seen constructive Discharge too. You may have experienced it. We’ve all made choices to avoid it.

Constructive discharge defined

“We can’t fire you, but we’ll make you so miserable you’ll quit, and then we won’t have to pay your unemployment.”

Then there’s the textbook definition:

“A constructive discharge occurs when your employer has made working conditions unbearable, forcing you to resign.”

Or as one person put it.

“I didn’t get handed a pink slip, but when you’re not wanted, people have a way of letting you know.”

HR isn’t always the secret police.

Employees aren’t always victims of evil-doers.

However, employers push employees out all the time to maintain and protect the, “We didn’t do anything wrong, YOU did,” power structure.

Constructive Discharge looks like this:

— Meeting invitations slow to a trickle, and you’re excluded from emails and generally looped out of what’s going on.

— People stop talking to you or stop talking when you walk in.

— Your emails don’t get answers, or they arrive too late to be of value.

— Suddenly, your work is not good enough, though nothing about your work has changed.

— Reviews, once good or even glowing, are now mediocre or bad.

— Instead of a bonus, you get a Performance Improvement Plan.

— Warnings and write-ups start so they can justify your eventual termination with documentation of your “poor performance”

— Your work, clients, assignments go away, or they overwhelm you with work.

— The words “Set up to fail” were practically invented to describe this scenario.

Constructive Discharge is illegal

It isn’t easy to prove you’re a target, and it’s even more challenging if you don’t even know constructive discharge is a real thing.

If you’ve ever experienced this and don’t fully understand what’s happening to you beyond knowing you’re in the process of being excommunicated, it can be hell. It’s not uncommon for the experience to leave long-lasting scars.

Talk to anyone who’s ever been through it. They’ll tell you.

Knowing constructive discharge exists and how it’s used gives you power to predict what’s coming and to protect yourself.

Seeing the endgame helps you in two ways.

You know what to expect. Having a sense of what’s coming next is enormously empowering. You can go on the offensive and protect yourself. Constructive discharge works to crush your ego, making you feel you did something wrong and deserve this treatment.

Without strategy, you end up being a miserable pawn in your employer’s endgame.

Remember, they’re almost certainly building a case to fire you in the event the hellscape they create for you doesn’t persuade you to quit.

If you’re getting pushed out, and you know what to look for you can prove constructive discharge and you can get unemployment benefits, be released from payback obligations on a signing bonus, and protect your mental health.

You’re not crazy, incompetent, or a failure. This is real and it’s carefully executed to leave you holding the bag and feeling like you did something wrong.

If they force you out, in addition to feeling horrible, you lose your paycheck, benefits health insurance, and possibly owe them money.

[prose-n-scripts]

Transphobia is being signed into law in the UK. Let's fight it together.

I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the rescheduled Mass Lobby at Parliament, now on Wed Sept 9th, 1pm-5pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.

Mass Lobby for Trans Equality - 9th September 2026

The law around trans equality is fundamentally broken. Government inaction is hanging trans people and organisations out to dry - with a con

The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It became statutory guidance in the UK on August 5th, 2026.

Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.

A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Our demands have changed. Ask your MP to:

Write to Ministers and Prime Minister Andy Burnham to say they are profoundly concerned by the rolling back of trans rights, and that they believe that it is time for Parliament to legislate to protect equality for trans people.

Ask parliamentary questions focused on protecting trans people’s rights and defending trans people’s abilities to live safe and dignified lives.

Speak up both inside and outside Parliament in defence of trans people’s rights.

Meet regularly with trans constituents to understand their lived realities. 

Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.

I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.

We have already had some wins because we took action. The 2026 EHRC guidance has already rolled back its most harmful elements because of mass campaigning by individuals like us, and groups like The Good Law Project. This summer, 166 MPs signed the Early Day Motion 240 to reject the EHRC Code of Practice, because of our campaigning. That is 1 in 4 MPs.

It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:

Worried about what to say? Bring your personal worries about transphobia being signed into law, and trans friends being excluded from public spaces. You are a living person who deserves dignity. Remind your MP of that. On the day, you'll get guidance and brochures from Trans Solidarity Alliance that outlines our demands. This is mine from last year.

Here is an online briefing for lobbyists (10 mins read for essential info, 20 mins for details) Money issues? Trans Solidarity Alliance provides a travel bursary that you can sign up for via the link.

Got a refusal or no response from your MP?  Come anyway! You can request a same-day appointment with your MP through a process called greencarding. They will come and see you if they’re already in Parliament. Even if they don’t, they’re made acutely aware of your cause because you showed up in person. This is my greencard from last year.

Here is the EHRC Code of Practice in full. It's a tough read, but some highlights are:

Organisations can’t provide trans-inclusive, single-sex services, or they risk being sued for discrimination. e.g. domestic violence support for women including trans women, men’s rugby group including trans men (12.68).

Trans people will have nowhere safe to pee. If you’re a trans man, businesses can't allow you to pee in the men's, and you can also be ejected from women’s bathrooms if you’re perceived as a man. Vice versa for trans women. EHRC suggests a ‘third space’ bathroom, which is discriminatory and unworkable for most businesses. (13.130-133)

Sports organisations must exclude trans people from single-sex competitions (13.73).  A women’s only sports competition must exclude trans women because of their biological advantage or face potential lawsuits (13.74), but a trans man who has undergone testosterone treatment can also be excluded based on fairness rules (13.81).

Trans women are stripped of the legal definition of ‘lesbian’, and therefore no longer have legal protections if they’re discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation. (2.50, 2.92).

Here is the Good Law Project's better explanation of the EHRC Code.

Sign up for the mass lobby and email your MP here, or click the main link above.

If you are not in the UK but want to support the case, please donate to The Good Law Project.

Save the date and book off work!! I will see you there :))

[homunculus-argument]

A three-circle venn-diagram where the circles are "sex workers", "the furry community", and "people working in morgues". I don't know what the overlap parts are.

[flufflogic]

Fourth circle needed: IT workers

[homunculus-argument]

You say that with such confidence that I am compelled to trust your vision. Personally I have no idea where this is going.

[trytocallmecal]

i'd say the overlap between "sex workers" and "people who work in morgues" is probably "seeing naked strangers a lot"

[homunculus-argument]

"professional handling of bodies of strangers"?

[small-gods-curator]

Putting my neck out for you folks here

[tryan-a-bex]

Okay I’ve gone through many of the reblogs and “prefer when clients don’t talk to them” is peak

[teaboot]

"The value of the physical form and what is done with it / how it is presented may be either sacred or immaterial depending on the beliefs of the first party, but no matter the case, the first party should have the choice to alter, modify, and impliment whatever physical aspects desired or required for the desired outcome to be achieved regardless of the aesthetic or philosophical preferences of those unaffected", but also "Everybody else thinks they know exactly what your job is and has an opinion on it despite zero first hand experience"

[sandersstudies]

A lot of you on here sure don’t like the idea of making any kind of sacrifice for the benefit of others huh

[sandersstudies]

Some of you act like doing minor inconvenient acts of kindness is equivalent to donating a kidney as if it’s not those acts that form our communities and make the world go around.

[sandersstudies]

Return your grocery cart. If you’re able-bodied offer your seat to someone who is not. Help your friend move. Drive your sister to the airport. Make sure drunk people have a safe ride or walk home. Pet-sit for your coworker. Participate in a meal train. Volunteer in your area. That’s what friendship and community is about.

[sandersstudies]

[animentality]

[intactics]

"rickrolling is mean" rickrolling is the gentle, kind, prosocial descendant of what we used to do on the internet, which was putting a redirect to goatse in every possible misspelling of a url

[michaelblume]

Rickrolling is a beautiful achievement in collective disarmament. We designated a perfectly pleasant pop song as The Prank Song, we agreed that if someone tricks you into listening to it, that means they Owned You, and now no one has to look at goatse anymore.

[3scythes]

CAMERON: We've got rectal bleeding.

HOUSE: What, all of you?

[pocket-deer-belly]

i do actually think it's crazy that employers get a say over shit like tattoos and piercings and we just let that happen

[pocket-deer-belly]

if you look cool as fuck you become unemployable

[pocket-deer-belly]

i do also mean like, face tattoos, yall know that right

[partyinthecloudkingdom]

besides the obvious that people should have the right to do what they want with their bodies as a form of self expression, the stigma against face tattoos specifically has a long, violent, racist, imperialist history that stretches across the globe

[pocket-deer-belly]

hey. we're having a talk about employment discrimination

[sergeifyodorov]

I don't read as much fic as I used to but one "tell" for non Canadians writing us, besides the etransfer, is the units you use to describe us measuring something. I hate to tell you this but The Chart is real and it's completely subconscious. Please abide

[demotu-writes]

ETA the chart (or at least a version of it):

ETA2: we do use inches/miles in poetic ways ("he was lost in thought/miles away" or "his lips were a bare inch away").

Also, the length of a dick is in inches for SURE.

[bogkeep]

there's something so deeply dystopian to me how tech companies don't understand that a forced convenience is not a convenience at all. i'm sure autocorrect is helpful for many, but a function that forcibly changes my actual written words and punctuation is taking away my language. photo filters can be nice but i need to choose using them myself or else i have lost the ability to take the picture i want. i don't want a machine to draw or write for me. taking away the option for me to do things manually feels like violence!!!! all this talk of endless opportunity, why are you RESTRICTING me

[bogkeep]

disgustedly throws youtube autodubbing onto the pyre pile

[escuerzoresucitado]

[beggars-opera]

[hope-for-the-planet]

Indigenous cultural practices are a climate solution, report finds

Indigenous lands are crucial for climate mitigation and resilience. Research shows their health is a direct result of Indigenous stewardship

While this isn't news to anyone who works in this space, it is useful to have this water-is-wet research to affirm that Indigenous knowledge and land management are extremely effective at storing carbon and protecting biodiversity.

I want to draw special attention to this part of the article:

New research shows that approach overlooks the key role that Indigenous knowledge and culture can play in mitigating climate change. It also reveals a dangerous misconception that has taken hold in global climate discussions: the idea that Indigenous lands are so rich because they are remote or sparsely populated. Nothing could be further from the truth. The health of Indigenous lands and their ability to store vast quantities of carbon stem from the stewardship of the people who inhabit them.

[hope-for-the-planet]

I'm actually bringing this back around to say another important thing.

I get a fair number of asks and comments on my posts expressing sentiments like "human beings are a plague on this Earth", "humans ruin everything, we deserve to be wiped out", "humanity is inherently selfish, evil, and irredeemable".

I don't think the folks saying these things have bad intentions, I know their words come from a place of very understandable pain, fear, and anger. But to act as though humanity's impact on nature is inherently damaging and extractive is to erase thousands of years of Indigenous stewardship of nature. These ecosystems are thriving because there are humans living there.

This is your regular reminder that you don't need to feel guilty for being a human. You are part of nature--viewing humans as inherently separate from the rest of nature is actually part of the problem. You will be so much better served redirecting that guilt into supporting the humans who are helping nature or resisting those who are hurting it.

[leebrontide]

Younger people, one thing I want you to understand about Millenials is that, overall, our parents taught their daughters to aim for careers and employment, but they didn't teach their sons to keep house. This causes a whole lot of Situations.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

My brothers are my half-brothers; they spent summers and some holidays with us. I love my brothers.

Their mother picked up after them. They were not required to take plates the kitchen or do the dishes or anything like that.

My mother, who would tell you she is for equality, came home one day, sighed at the mess of dirty dishes scattered about, and said, "Gayle, help me pick up."

"Those aren't my dishes," I said. "I picked up my dishes."

My mother sighed again. "Just help me pick up."

"No," I said again. "I didn't make that fucking mess."

She never approached my brothers and said, "Boys, in this house, you take your dishes to the kitchen." She did not tell our dad, "Hey, tell the boys they need to pick up after themselves."

It was, "Gayle, pick up the dishes."

And when I refused because it was not my fucking mess, I got lectured about being difficult.

See also: My brothers--in a classic dick-move of all siblings--figured out they could pop the lock on the bathroom door and throw it open, and I would freak out because I was in the shower and trying to get five fucking minutes of peace.

Guess who got yelled at for being "unreasonable"? Not the boys. Because a lot of moms of millennial boys still said shit like "boys will be boys" when they should have said "Boys, if you got body-slammed on the concrete, I'm not taking you to the hospital."

[gwydionmisha]

It was similar for Xers. I spent a lot of time in my 20's teaching romantic partners and friends basic household skills and having to be really hard ass about them carrying their weight.

It is stupid and infuriating and I hate that the "Boy Mom" trend is setting yet another generation up for unfairness and domestic strife.

[vaspider]

Yep.

[rhincodono]

One time when I was in high school, my mum came home w/ groceries. She needed help bringing all of them in. Did she ask my brother who was already outside playing basketball? No. Did she ask her husband who was sitting on his ass watching TV in the living room? Nope. She walked past both of them, through the house, and into my room where I was doing homework and yelled at me for not immediately coming out to help her.

I have been told that I am "the last of the millennials" or that I'm a "gen zer" or that I'm "on the cusp" by so many different people that I am 100% convinced this is not a generational problem. It is a societal problem. And millennial parents are not immune to raising their kids this way just bc they're younger than x'ers and boomers. Same goes for gen z'ers and every generation after us so long as misogyny remains the bedrock of society that it is.

[rockatanskette]

My parents did a lot to teach my brothers to keep house but the one that sticks with me and drives me a little crazy when it runs up against social expectations is that when we were 13+, everyone was on the dinner rotation. We didn’t have to make anything fancy and we didn’t have to do it alone, but once a week, dinner was our responsibility.

When I tell people this, they always, ALWAYS, assume I have sisters. They say shit like “oh I’d love to do that, but I have boys” and when I tell them I only have brothers, “oh you must have eaten a lot of burned dinners then!”

Like, no. To both of those statements. Sure we burned stuff when we were younger but we all learned to cook before 13, that was just the age where it became a scheduled chore. You know who did burn everything? My MOM. My Boomer dad did all the cooking because my mum didn’t want to and he was the one to help when we needed it, though my mum did help with prep/chopping things.

Fast forward to now, middle brother can make the best risotto I’ve ever had and my youngest brother is vegan and makes almost all his own meals because his partner isn’t and he doesn’t expect her to make two meals so he can eat.

The worst part of this social conditioning is how bullshit it is. I know this is not ingrained, I know people are teaching their sons to be assholes, and I look at my middle brother in his immaculate apartment with tasteful decor that he picked out himself and I look at my youngest brother who does all the clothes shopping for him and his partner because she struggles with it and it makes me want to just start biting people.

Men can be better than this, I GREW UP WITH THEM. I SAW IT. The parenting described above is fucking bullshit and it can be unlearned. My mum’s Russian and my dad’s a Boomer and they unlearned it, which means anybody can.

[madanimalscientist]

Seconding this. All of us got put into the dinner rotation as we got old enough for it. Gender didn't matter - knowing how to feed yourself is a universal thing. My mom is pretty conservative, but she was very clear on that - all of her kids would know how to feed themselves and take turns cooking dinner. But I know it's not as common as it should be - my brother had 3 housemates during college and he was the only one of them who knew any cooking. But the thing is, it totally can be. My siblings are all pretty awesome cooks, but it's because we got started helping young, got taught how to, and then it was made clear that it was expected of all of us to take turns feeding the family, regardless of gender. That was part of being a family.

[youthincare]

people should be allowed to have low ambition, and also be able to feed a family on the salary of a cashier at a convenience store.

[aetherograph]

And! We need cashiers. And convenience stores. And I think it's kind of broken that society says people who want to do stuff like that have "low" ambition (not you OP, I get you're using it illustratively because that's what society labels said jobs) and don't deserve to live at the same standard as people with "high" ambitions.

If we need someone to do a job, that job is a role in the community and deserves not just a salary but cultural respect for the role.

"high" ambition jobs are all jobs that involve domineering and controlling others. "low" ambition jobs are all jobs that involve service to others. Have you noticed? Because I have noticed.

But serving others is actually more needed than controlling them.

[blunt-skuncher402]

People are shocked when I say I'd trade my office job for a career in food service or cashiering if I could pay my bills with it. I love customer service--it's legitimately my passion. But I get paid and treated like dogshit in those jobs, so it's not worth it.

[dozydawn]

[lew-basnight]

Look I know this is a scientific publication but you don’t understand— we need to include milk and cookies in the photo. We have to. Otherwise the science suffers