Kissclipart and kissPNG - more vectors and clipart (often transparent!)
Getdrawings - simplistic images and drawing tutorials
GumroadĀ - photoshop brushes (and more)
Canva - needs login but has lots of templates
Library of Congress - historical posters and photos
NASA - you guessed it
Creative Commons - all kinds of stuff, homie
Even Adobe has some free images
There are so many ways to make moodboards, bookcovers, and icons without infringing copyright! As artists, authors, and other creatives, we need to be especially careful not to use someone elseās work and pass it off as our own.Ā
Please add on if you know any more sites for free images <3
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 āmeanā 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 ātoxicā issues within watchdog that mean whistleblowersā warnings are ignored ā 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 āculture of fearā 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 ādeep-seated toxic conductā 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 ārudeā to describe their interaction. [...]
When the Doctor was a smart mouth and came in and said ācongratulations you have a periodā it ended up being a very serious infection. [Participant 290, 27 years old, Biracial, Woman].
Participant 290ās 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 āroughā touch when the doctor was examining them. The consensus was that insensitivityāverbal and physical formsāonly 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)āspecifically lack of health insuranceāwas 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 wouldnāt give me anything for the severe headache from the wreck and also from the seizure. They wouldnāt 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 didnāt 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 didnāt even get wheeled out after having a seizure and a wreckā¦[Participant 272: 28 years old, White, Woman]. [...]
ā¦[I] was told in plain terms that those who donāt 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 āgaslightingā or mistreatment in which participantsā experiences were minimized, doubted, questioned, second guessed, or denied by health-care professionals. [...]
ā¦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 patientsā 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 patientās daughter attached a list to her fatherās 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 āgood afternoonā or āenjoyā. Patients also provided examples of a lack of gen- uine involvement of nurses in the nurseāpatient 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. Thatās 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 patientās 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, āroll to the side and sit upā, of course thatās difficult. On the second day, they demand you get out of bed. But I felt worse, I couldnāt get out. And they didnāt believe me, the nurse didnāt believe it. āYouāve had surgery and according to the textbook, you should be able to get out of bed on the second dayā. 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 donāt listen, because thatās not possible, according to the ātextbookā 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, youāve got a scanner appointment. She says: āitās an MR scanā. I say: āan MR scan? I canāt do that because Iāve got a pacemaker.ā And she says āAnd now you tell me?ā āListen here, missy, you walk in here and tell me to come.ā Youād be in there if you wouldnāt have said something, wouldnāt you! The battery can generate voltage which could burn your heart, destroying your pacemaker. If youāre not paying attention, youāre 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 š#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.
#okay the pitt did not mention that detail about that drug#they just said it was āmorphine likeā#and designed to treat withdrawal#and I was like well whatās the big deal then it made his symptoms better?#had no idea it could be dangerous like that
HIGHLY recommend checking out the episode (or read the transcript) "The Cop Baked In" from the podcast Crackdown (a journalist podcast about drug use activism in Canada, hosted by drug user and activist & which interviews many drug users). The episode is about Suboxone and one woman, Reija Jean's, experience with it.
Suboxone has naloxone in it, which means it prevents people from actually experiencing a high, and it can cause precipitated withdrawal if you use other opiates with it, or if its taken too soon after using full agonist opiates. The podcast goes into the really fucked up ways that Suboxone is held up as the "better drug" for opiate addiction and the existence of "Suboxone privilege" in comparison to methadone, which does allow for euphoric feelings and is also extremely heavily controlled to the extent of being burdensome for many people to take, and methadone users are stigmatized for "not getting better" i.e not having the goal of, or ability to, stop using opiates entirely.
Reija found Suboxone wasn't meeting her needs but was pushed to stay on it because it was "her chance to get better." So she started using other opiates alongside it to get the effect she needed:
Eventually, Reijaās taking Suboxone every morning and topping up with down every night. Sometimes this feels great. Other times it causes a storm of sickness and anxiety. We started to call this āthe cop baked inā effect.
Reija Jean: The drug is sorta fighting the fentanyl for your receptors right? The ācopā is fighting the āevilā drug for your receptors. And I can feel that fight. My body starts to feel that fight.
Garth Mullins: What does it feel like?
Reija Jean: It feels likeā¦ the most horrible anxiety attack that you can imagine. Like, itās like my body starts to sweat. My face is completely wet. I get that prickly kinda tingly feeling all over my body. Itās almost like early withdrawal, kind of, but it comes on so suddenly. And itās just this feeling of like dread and doom. And your body feels like itās in resistance to something. But you really just want to relax ā I really just want to relax ā and I canāt. And even if I try to take moreā¦ um, smoke more fentanyl ā off a foil, for example ā that doesnāt seem to make it go away.
^ so that is the kind of experience one can have when knowingly taking opiates alongside Suboxone, on purpose. and in the Pitt that man was just gonna walk out of the ER not knowing he was taking Suboxone. and also, not told he had any other options beside Suboxone.
Literally, in that episode, they could've had Mohan say "hey, these are your options for drugs that can help you avoid withdrawal, these are the various pros and cons, I see you clearly want to be there for your daughter." The man wouldn't have needed to lie to get opiates if he could just be fucking honest about why he needed them. (And I forgot to mention but also, when the man in question rightfully tells Mohan "screw this hospital and screw you" after finding out she lied to him about the drug she gave him, Dr. Robby gets pissed off at him??? Like no FUCK Mohan. With a capital F. She's a big girl, she can take a patient being rightfully anxious and upset at the situation SHE put him in where SHE has all the power).
This other episode of the Crackdown, "Change Intolerance" (transcript, and the second part) also discusses how the Canadian government fucks around with medications like methadone at a whim (the whim is money btw), which genuinely got one of the members of Crackdown's board killed. So much of addiction treatment is about managing the icky feelings of non-addicts and especially governmental officials, and not actually meeting people's needs and empowering them. Suboxone is "good" because it allows for the control of addicts from within their own bodies, and again, other medications which many might prefer are far more gatekept "for their own good."
Suboxone is not what everyone who is addicted to opiates will benefit from, and it should definitely not be given to someone without telling them and without giving them a full understanding of what their options are (you know, informed consent?). It is a violation of that character's body and the fact that the audience is meant to support it is pretty disgusting - and they left out all this nuance on purpose to make the audience feel that everything that happened was overall for the best. So if they hear about person who uses drugs having their bodily autonomy violated and their health put at risk by a doctor, they think of the Pitt and go, well, they are just being a crazy addict, one day they'll realize it was for their own good.
It was in response to this climate [feminist hostility to trans women] I wrote the piece āThe Transfeminist Manifesto,ā which was later published in the anthology Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century edited by Rory Dicker and Alison Piepmeier. The manifesto addressed various feminist concerns, such as reproductive choice and health and violence against women, and discussed how transsexual women share many of the concerns of other women. I wanted to write a feminist theory that counter the argument that transsexual women were so different from all other women that there is no place for transsexual women within feminism (or that feminism has no use for transsexual women). I wanted to provide easy-to-repeat arguments that pro-trans feminists can use to confront blatant bigotry and falsehoods against transsexual women. And to these ends, I think āManifestoā was successful.
But there was something unsettling about the āManifesto.ā In an effort to forge an alliance between transsexual and non-transsexual women, the piece neglected the struggles of transsexual men and other transgender or genderqueer people who do not identify as āwomenā unless it was convenient to include them. The piece was also weak on intersectional analysisāthat is, how anti-trans sentiments and oppressions compound and complicate oppressions other than sexism, including and especially racism and classism. It borrowed from the work of women of color when it was usefulāfor example, to point out that transsexual womenās unique experiences should not be the basis for their exclusion because to do so would presuppose a singular universal female experience, which is obviously falseāwithout contributing any insights as to how the inclusion of trans sensibility helps to fight racism and other oppressions.
The fact is, I had only been living in my new home town for three months or so when I wrote this piece, and I was not fully in touch with my own discomfort with the white feminism that filled nine out of ten weeks of the Introduction to Womenās Studies, nor did I feel confident enough to challenge the view that feminism is simply about advocating for women and fighting sexismāand nothing more. In short, what I had written was a version of white feminism that was modified just enough to include transsexual women. At the time, I felt that it was the only safe way to write a feminist theory that advanced transsexual womenās place within feminism. I spent next couple of years meeting more people with a common commitment for justice for all, slowly building the self-confidence it takes to ātransform silence into language and action,ā as Audre famously stated.
from Racist Feminism at the National Womenās Studies Association (2008), attached to the The Transfeminist Manifesto by Emi Koyama.
Backed by a conservative legal group, a white doctor is suing āFind A Black Doctorā for allegedly discriminating against non-Black physician
A white doctor based in Colorado has teamed up with a conservative legal group to sue the online directory, āFind A Black Doctor,ā for allegedly discriminating against physicians based on their race.
The lawsuit was filed May 19 in a Manhattan federal court by dermatologist Dr. Travis Morrell and Do No Harm, an organization founded in 2022 that publicly condemns DEI. The complaint accuses the directory of excluding non-Black physicians by restricting eligibility to āBlack physicians and dentists in active clinical practice.ā The suit also alleges that the online platform ārobsā non-Black physicians of āadvertising exposureā and promotes āracial concordance,ā the notion that patients receive better care from doctors of the same race.
āFind A Black Doctor indefensibly robs some physicians of valuable advertising exposure and deprives patients of the opportunity to discover capable providers without regard to race,ā reads a statement from a Do No Harm rep in a press release.
According to the complaint, Morrell, a double board-certifiedĀ physician and member of Do No Harm, says he applied to join the directory on Dec. 23, 2025. However, he didnāt receive a response and followed up by email months later, but was met with silence. The suit, which targets the website and its founder, claims Morrellās application was āconstructively rejected because he is white.ā
āDo No Harm and Dr. Morrell are entitled to relief,ā reads the legal complaint.
Also links for those studies mentioned in the screenshots:
This paper assesses the impacts of physician-patient race-match, especially Black patients paired with Black physicians, on patient mortality. We draw on administrative data from Florida, linking hospital encounters from mid-2011 through 2014 to information from the Florida Physician Workforce Survey. Focusing on uninsured patients experiencing unscheduled hospital admissions who are conditionally randomly assigned to physicians, we find that physician-patient race-match for Black patients reduces the likelihood of within-hospital mortality by 0.28 percentage points, a 27% reduction relative to the overall mortality rate. An alternative identification strategy relying on instrumental variables provides a similar finding.
Black Representation in the Primary Care Physician Workforce and Its Association With Population Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates in the US
In this cohort study of survival outcomes for 1618 US counties, Black PCPs operated in less than half of all counties during each of 3 time points assessed (2009, 2014, and 2019). On average, every 10-percent increase in county-level Black PCP representation was associated with 31-day higher age-standardized life expectancy among Black individuals. Higher Black PCP representation levels were also associated with lower all-cause mortality rates among Black individuals and with reduced mortality rate disparities between Black and White individuals.
Trans manhood and transmasculinity shouldn't have to DO anything for you as a transfem, transfemme or trans woman in order for it to be a beautiful and irreplacable part of our trans community BUT even if you put that aside... there's masculinity in each and every one of us.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: as a transfeminine butch it took viewing my masculinity from a transmasculine perspective to emotionally divorce myself from the toxic notions of societal normativity.
I was never an effeminate kid but I was SEEN as one.
My masculinity was butchness even going that far back and all my peers did look at me and said "that kid's a sissy".
I wore a suit and tie to school the first couple years of primary and I wrote cringy poetry for girls that I had crushes on and all my peers would look at me and say "that kid's a faggot".
And when I then came out and began transitioning, it was like shedding falser skin that never was me to begin with.
But then the idea that I was now to conform to normative notions of "womanhood" hit me like a stack of bricks.
And it took trans men. It took transmasculinity. It took seeing the biggest, butchest dykes, it took looking at women, men and nonbinary people so UNLIKE EVERYTHING society broadly views as attractive who looked similar to me to learn to LOVE ME.
To learn to love the soft fur on my body, the coarse hair on my legs and arms and hands. The pits, the rolls, the bulging stomach, the small boobs, bigger upper pubic area. The stubble on my face, the way my nose hooks just so slightly. The shadow cast by hair upon my face, the way I smell when I do exercise.
It took being around people, LOVING people to whom all these things I was conditioned to believe to be fundamentally at odds with my closeness to womanhood were DESIRED traits that they STRUGGLED for. It took surrounding myself with people to whom the way I was and wanted to be wasn't things to be erased.
I'm butch. I love my body hair, I love my masculinity. I love all that.
I'm not on estrogen to be less of me, myself.
I'm on estrogen to be MORE of me, myself.
Surrounding myself with people who love their masculinity, who STRIVE for masculinity. To whom testosterone is NOT a poison.
To whom the way I am is not a state that's to be shunned or overcome.
It brought me peace. It brought self love. It brought serenity.
I feel more at ease inside this body I inhibit and I have now to thank for that: trans men, transmasculine people, transmasculinity. Manhood.
I have to thank for all the love that I have found for my own self.
[ note ] Posting this while on the go so phrasing, semantics and spelling errors may remain to be fixed.
and that's the thing: I know that the very binary and transmedicalist leaning focus on "womanhood first, trans second (or never, if stealth)" and "manhood first, trans second (or never, if stealth)" is very big because its a narrative that gets validation from a cissexist and horrifically normative society but the way I see it I will always have more in common with a trans man than with a cis woman without any of the non-normativity on her part.
My womanhood, my gender, my identity is shaped and molded by my experience of it being considered transgressive.
I wasn't a woman until I forced my way out of the norms that I was raised in and I couldn't BE a woman until I asserted MYSELF as that.
A trans man or even a cis woman whose womanhood exists on other intersecting axes of societal marginalization will ALWAYS exist in a way that is more closely related to how I experience the world than a binary, societally conforming cis woman.
And let me be very clear here: this is me saying that ANY aversion, divergence and anti-normativity in a societal sense is what connects and unites me as a nonbinary transfeminine butch dyke with others.
A cis person can 100% be transgressive against societally enforced gender norms and I will always be in solidarity and unity with that person.
We are one. We are the pines swaying in the breeze of yearning for something that society will not allow. We are the children shamed for how they WERE and we're adults who assert our existence against the permission and acceptance of a hateful society.
Our very existence is beautiful transgression against normativity and I will not let one or many divide me from my kin.
at some point i'm gonna have to write up a whole post about how "consent" (in a sexual context but also broadly) is a concept that stems from legal theory and is, as with most things, a social construct. okay whoops i did it here
an important social construct nonetheless! but like a lot of things about how we conceptualize consent, and the flaws therewithin, i feel come from treating consent as like. some vague form of social magic, and not a concept we made up and have been actively re-making up, and also that trying to take a legal concept and use it as the sole framework to analyze messy human relationships is always going to be problematic.
like. part of the reason the difference between rape and sex in ancient greek/roman myths are so blurry is because (people classed as) women could not consent, legally, because they could not be legal actors* at all. sex and gender and patriarchy are all ultimately about property and wealth. in order to get a wife who will take care of your household and provide you with heirs, you need to get permission from some daughter's father to make her your wife and have sex with her. if you have sex with her without permission, that is rape - because the term "rape" comes from a Latin term which literally just means seizing something by force, stealing something**
at the same time, people did have a sense that the woman in question could have opinions on the sex she was involved in and be more or less a willing participant, and that matter a variable degree depending on the situation. but "rape" was never supposed to be about the harm of violating a person's bodily autonomy, it was about legally regulating the violation of property and punishing those who broke that law. which also meant a woman could be "raped" when she was having willing sex with a person of her choosing, because it wasn't of her father's choosing. and this also means that "person choosing to be a slutty slut whore and cheat on her husband" and "person being forced to have sex against her will" are two situations that might be categorized the same way, making victim-blaming VERY common and easy.
what feminism did was say hey, (people classed as) women can be independent legal actors, and legally you need the person you are having sex with's permission to have sex with them, because they own and represent themself, legally. the sexual damage was re-conceived as coming not from the economic or spiritual or social damage to a father's reputation or a family's honor but the harm done to the victim themself. that change was genuinely vital! it is EXTREMELY important that "rape" stopped being about anyone's permission but the person actually involved in the sexual encounter.
but this is where we get to the problem i mentioned above. consent in this legal context can be much more black and white (although not completely) because the ultimate goal of considering consent at all is figuring out if a law was broken and what to do about that. when it comes to interpersonal relationships and sociopolitical context, things get a whole lot messier.
this is where you get issues like the "enthusiastic consent" model. it seems like a very good idea to define sex around not just willingness but desire, but then you have situations where people are insisting that sex workers are being raped because their sex isn't "enthusiastic" because of the economic factor. which creates a situation where everyone involved in a sexual encounter is saying "yes, i am willing to do xyz with you under these conditions," but a third party finds this problematic. which, you might notice, is VERY similar to the exact situation we were in before that feminist approach to consent, where what a person can choose to do with their body depends on what some other, unrelated but "more knowledgeable" party feels they should be allowed to do. and with that considered, i must ask if "consent" really should be doing the work of weighing desire and emotion and the immense complexity of how that relates to our choices.
similarly, i do not think adults should have sex with children! i think that is not good. but ultimately "legal minors cannot consent to sex with adults" is a legal construct. the law does not recognize sex an adult has with a person under 18 as consensual because that is how our legal framework currently seeks to prevent children from sexual harm from adults, by saying "this class of people is not legally capable of consenting." that doesn't necessarily make it the best way to accomplish that goal, but it is how the current framework goes about it. that can be true without claiming that "minors can't consent because their innocent underdeveloped brains are incapable of having genuine sexual desire and seeking it with an adult" because that just isn't true! and it can diminish the subjective experience of many young people with sex and sex work and deprive them of the ability to understand their own desires, what it feels like to be taken advantage of, what choices they made and why, etc. and can serve to alienate survivors who do not narrate their experiences with sex as a minor in the "appropriate" way. all because the legal inability to consent is conflated with a biological inability to desire or will.
ultimately right now my opinion is that we should try to distinguish between consent and will and desire and allow for shades of grey and multi-dimensionality in our sex lives and moral frameworks. i think someone who does sex work because they are in poverty and disabled and can't get another job should be allowed to explore and express that experience on their own terms, navigating the questions of what they chose and what they didn't and what "choice" actually means for them and what they need and want and how we as a society should react to them having been in that situation, without having people, unrelated to any of the actual sex had, try to do Morality Math to decide whether or not it was "consensual" or "not." we make up the law to help structure our society and our legal frameworks should not be the basis or the extent of our moral frameworks.
*nuance here, i'm talking very generally about a lot of different times and places to make a point, actually laws on people's ability to participate legally when classed as women varied even just in ancient mediterranean europe! however even when people classed as women had more legal autonomy, it was still under an androcentric system where their legal autonomy was subordinate and (cis)male authority was default over the women in their lives was socially default and legally supported
**also want to mention that there's also nuance re: "women as property." yes people classed as women were (and are) treated as property, but also a lot of the time, as i understand it, the legal position of these people was actually more akin to "you are a person who is not a slave (and thus not someone's property) BUT you are legally incompetent and so cannot represent yourself or act legally on your own. which is the situation of both children and people classed as women throughout history. so like, its not always "you are legally property" as much as people being in the socioeconomic role of property while being legally seen as not necessarily "property" but incompetent and under the control of another person.
to be transmasculine is to be a ghost I think. transmasculinity is a haunting (silent, invisible, found hiding in the lost and overlooked, viewed as a stain, people prefer to ignore it than face what it might imply, etc.)
transmasculinity haunts "tomboy" and "dyke" and "female husband" and "woman hides as man" and "bulldagger" and "butch". transmasculinity lurks in the graves of the ones who were buried without being undressed. it's the invader in the 'normal' home. it's the presence that died in silence and is recognized only by the ones who can see the outline of where it might be. transmasculinity is the ghost that lingers unseen in the mirror as you walk by it
'Transfem DIY HRT' and 'Transmasc DIY HRT' are a pair of zines aimed at teaching transgender people how to safely self-administer DIY Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT).
Both zines are 100% free to download here from Little Mouse (who also made the zine). Print, share and distribute to those who need it!
The information contained in this zine is collated from, and openly available from, DIYHRT.info.
Heads up guys, some of the info for testosterone in the zines is incorrect.
Specifically regarding the bloodwork, you do NOT want to test your T levels right before your next injection, you want to take it approximately halfway between your injections. Trough levels (T levels immediately before your next injection, when your T is at the lowest point) are useless. It doesn't tell you what your T levels actually are, and does not provide a frame of reference for adjusting dosage if you need to. Taking your blood levels approximately halfway between dosages allows you to see what your T levels actually look like for the majority of the time, before it starts to work out of your system.
I think the confusion is caused because the zine is based on weekly T dosage, but T is generally taken every 2 weeks* and you should take your blood levels one week after your shot if you're on a 2 week schedule.
*every 2 weeks is standard for a couple of reasons:
1) injections suck and doing it every week sucks.
2) T in the US until recently could not be handed over by a pharmacy and therefore injections could not be done at home and instead had to be done at at doctor's office. The 2-week schedule allowed for less doctors visits and less expense.
3) perisex cis men also have a hormone cycle (albeit one not as visible as those of perisex cis women) and having your T high and T low be about 2 weeks apart is thought to mimic that natural cycle. This may or may not actually be true, but it was part of the prescribing basis for a long time.
4) because the half-life of cyprionate is 8 days, HALF OF IT is still in your system after 8 days. Taking a second dose at that point messes with the dosages and results in you stacking your dose on top of half of your previous dose, resulting in you taking 150% of the amount you're trying to take.
If you have severe emotional weirdness, menopausal symptoms, or other general issues the last 2-3 days before your shot consistently, you may want to switch to weekly T injections, but because of the half-life of cyprionate you may need to be moved to another type of T.
good art is when something looks like real life, the more real it looks the more better the art. abstracted figures give my trad children nightmares, one time they were exposed to cubism and couldn't go outside for a week
Huh fascinating, I wonder what the fash have against Eric Carle? I wonder what he might have said about his life, and influences, and early experiences that makes them say heās part of an āinsalubrious cultureā?
Franz Marc (1880-1916) was a German painter and printmaker, one of the key figures of the German Expressionist movement.
hbo max blocks screenshots even when I use the snipping tool AND firefox AND ublock which is a fucking first. i will never understand streaming services blocking the ability to take screenshots thats literally free advertising for your show right there. HOW THE HELL IS SOMEBODY GONNA PIRATE YOUR SHOW THROUGH SCREENSHOTS. JACKASS
somewhere out there is a guy who meticulously takes screenshots of every individual frame of his favorite tv shows and then painstakingly etches each one onto a roll of film which he puts into his old timey projector and recreates the footage as a silent film with his own lavishly hand-lettered dialogue cards and original score that he plays on his upright piano and charges audiences one shiny penny a play. at last, big media has finally outsmarted ol' Zachary Zoetrope
PSA for everyone who doesn't know, explained simply
this is NOT because of blocking screenshots, it's because of HOW streaming sites use your computer's hardware to optimise performance, which means the thing rendering the video and the thing capturing your screen aren't the SAME thing. so they can't talk together.
you can fix this by going to your browser settings, searching for "hardware acceleration", and turning that off.
people will really come into kink spaces and say you can't forcefem women like there wasn't a feature length movie about an elderly gay man forcefemming a woman as part of scheme to thwart an elaborate assassination attempt before the killer even determined their target
this trend of shitting on peer-reviewed academic studies in favor of tweeting āwe already knew this was happeningā is so soul-crushing. not to be an elitist cunt, but we have got to open the schools again. people genuinely seem to have forgotten that their personal lived experience isnāt indicative of the larger population, AND IF IT ISā¦ā¦ then you need researchers to support these assertions from a relevant data pool instead of a blog post from 2013 š
respect non-binary people not because this is āa step to realizing theyāre really a trans man/trans womanā but because non-binary people are deserving of respect in their identity. because being non-binary is not ājust a stepping stoneā for many people and they still deserve their identity to be respected.
being non-binary is being trans, and we respect our trans siblings in this house. full stop.
Todofam Needs Therapy @staples-and-feathers - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
