Genderfluid Genderdruid @thegenderdruid - Tumblr Blog

There's this thing I never realized I did when I was doing it that I like to think of as "Ownership of Space"

And it's that thing where you mentally place yourself as the second, auxiliary party to someone else that you consider to be "In Charge" of whatever space or occupation or responsibility you are assigned to

And when you are IN that mindset, it *feels* like you're being responsible. It *feels* like you're being respectful, and helpful, and contributing to the load.

But what you don't SEE- because it *feels* like deference- is that the other person who you're seeing as The Authority you report to- by being assigned that role, has also been assigned the invisible load of BEING YOUR MANAGER.

This is by FAR most commonly seen in husband-and-wife relationships, where the man says, "just tell me what I can do to HELP- you don't have to do it all by yourself, but it's like you won't even tell me when you NEED help. You just do everything and then get mad at me for not doing it first. I can help clean. I can help with the kids. I can help"

But I also see it- and am guilty myself of doing it- at work, at school, in public- that mental, "this is THEIR space, and i will be respectful and helpful to THEM"- without realizing that subservience in this manner isn't actually a good thing. That it actually shifts the burden of responsibility to the other person. That aspect was totally invisible to me.

I didn't understand that when I was told, "if you see something that needs to be done, just DO it", or, "take the initiative", what they ACTUALLY meant was, "I am not above you", or "you have equal say in what kind of environment you want to live or work in", or "I do not want full control over what happens here, I do not want to order you around, I do not want to be in charge, what I WANT is to co-command WITH you"

Being in The Assigned Authority position NOW, that is all so much clearer.

I am the senior member of my team at work, and now, every time I train a newbie, every time I finish catching them up to speed and giving them a list of everything that needs to be done, my next big hurdle seems to always be, "now take pride in the space when I'm not around". "Now don't assume I'll tell you when something is due or what orders to plan things in".

Now, having been on both sides of the struggle, I can appreciate the sticking points here

TO THE PERSON "IN CHARGE": The person deferring to you doesn't understand the invisible labor you're doing. They genuinely believe you know more, you WANT more, you see things they don't, and that they are being respectful and good by staying out of your way and waiting on your orders. THAT is the bit that's not clicking.

TO THE PERSON "WANTING TO HELP": "Help" implies that you are providing assistance to a problem that belongs to somebody else. Stop thinking like that. Understand that the problem belongs to BOTH of you equally, and consider what kind of shared space you BOTH want. What is your SHARED GOAL? Not THEIR goal, but a goal that belongs to you too. Own your space.

This is not a Commander-Lieutenant problem. This is a Partnership problem.

You Are Co-Commanders On This Ship

teaboot

Sharing my own tags actually

anarchacitizen

Having started my career as an Officer in the Military and then peacing out to work minimum wage and getting a Masters—Ive seen this from both sides too, but I think I have an important perspective that's missing here.

Typically Officers, Managers, and Team Leads get *paid* a whole lot more to specifically take ownership of their space. The buck ($$$) stops there, at the top, with the people who get paid to command the ship.

I use to get paid to be the Captain. Sure I wanted things to be equitable in my office, under my command, and I treated my Soldiers as equals.

Which in hind sight I realized was a fucked up thing to do. Since it wasn't their job, they didn't get paid to do it, and it wasn't their responsibility. It was mine.

You can't just subvert a hierarchy by pretending its not there. That just makes you a shitty abusive boss. But you're still the boss.

Fortunately I eventually realized that no one was making me be the boss but myself. So I quit.

Now I make minimum wage and I have a manager that tells me what to do. I don't really need her to, I'm smart enough to figure it out without her direction. But I don't get paid to think.

That's her job and I let her do it. 🖤

teaboot

YOOO YES THIS

I didn't think to mention this because I'm *not* anybody boss- when I train new people, it's to work WITH me. The wage will be the same. I've refused promotion because it's more trouble to manage people than the money would be worth to me.

But your theoretical wife ISN'T receiving extra benefits for managing the housework. Your theoretical roommate ISN'T getting a discount on the rent for reminding you there's laundry in the washer.

Equal responsibility SHOULD mean equal benefit!!

mothric

thinking about the time a former housemate said to me "hey I put these box fans in the living room because it's hot" while gesturing to the fans that I was actively sitting in front of because it was hot. and I said "okay thanks." and she kept standing there like she was waiting for something else so I said "am I blocking the airflow? do you need me to move?" and she said no I'm just letting you know they're here, in the living room, for circulation. and I said well yes, I did put that together. I am enjoying them. thank you. and she looked confused. so I asked "am I meant to do something with this information or are you just informing me?" and she said no I'm letting you know they're here because It's Hot In Here. she seemed a bit aggravated, and her emphasis seemed deliberate.

it took me asking three more times before she finally told me she wanted me to leave the fans where they are instead of moving them to my room or something. and I said oh! I had no intention of doing so but thank you for letting me know what the expectation is.

about a month later she brought up that conversation as the moment it actually clicked for her that I Am Autistic And Will Not Magically Intuit The Unspoken Request You Didn't Ask Me.

mothric

I have observed enough allistic communication to know that generally, if somebody points something out to you that you can already see or are already clearly interacting with, they are making an indirect request. but as I don't know what the request is, the only way forward is for me to guess (and likely get it wrong), or prompt the allistic to tell me clearly what they need.

however, allistics don't realize they do this, so asking them to say the unspoken surprises and confuses them. this is not their fault. allistics can be quite emotionally fragile and perceive directness as confrontation, so they habitually rely on indirect speech and coded language to preserve others' feelings. this is why they may find it difficult to be direct, even when asked. I have found that with enough gentle encouragement and reassurance that they are actually helping you, you too can achieve successful communication with your allistic friend or loved one. :)

kianamaiart

What's your fave magical girl show???

LITTLE WITCH ACADEMIA LITTLE WITCH ACADEMIA LITTLE WITCH ACADEMIA LITTLE WITCH ACADEMIA!!!! It's not what some would consider a "traditional" magical girl show but I personally think it falls into the category and magical girls have witchy origins.

it's a perfect show in my eyes. i wish i could watch it for the first time again. PPGZ was a childhood favorite and i really enjoy Ojamajo Doremi!

loreleywrites

everyone watch little witch academia do it right now do it for her

as the great Tom DeLonge once said, "work sucks, I know"

twentybrokenipodclassics

the postal service names their shit exactly like how a 16 y.o. names angsty fanfic

punk-squirrely-ghost

Explain.

twentybrokenipodclassics

try and tell me literally any one of these would not fit above a short story about two wholly random men from the MCU fingering each other, or possibly 12 chapters of one or more characters from a CW show being in high school while having a photogenic but terminal kind of cancer. try.

twentybrokenipodclassics

ok so i want to say in hindsight i think i could probably have been clearer

city of Portland survey gender options review:

good:

-lets you select multiple options

-fill in the blank box option

bad:

-I've never heard someone use the term 'gender expansive' before just say non-binary

-transgender, trans man, and trans woman are not genders

-'identify' is outdated terminology

far from the worst I've seen, solid 7/10

dark-magician-girl-meets-world

My least consequential hot take is that most people are wrong about Zucker Abrahams Zucker comedies. They're the guys who did Airplane and Naked Gun and Top Secret and if you mention them to almost anyone, they'll say that those comedies are all about cramming in as many jokes as possible. You just keep throwing jokes at the audience and even if only a quarter of them land, that's still enough to be funny, because there are just so many jokes. But that's not what ZAZ movies are like at all. There's usually one big joke every scene. That's quite standard for a comedy movie, maybe even a little low compared to, say, an animated sitcom, where every line is gonna be a joke or a lead-up to a joke. ZAZ movies get this reputation for a few reasons, none of which are the actual pace of the jokes. ZAZ movies are consistently comedic: there aren't serious scenes, which makes the audience feel like they've seen more jokes than a regular movie. The jokes are very high in absurdism and frequently break the plot, tone and physical space of the movie. Again, that makes you feel like the jokes are more central than they are in a more grounded comedy, which makes you imagine them as being more dense. Finally, and maybe most importantly, the jokes are often in the background of the shot or on off-beats where you don't expect a joke. The fact that there are big jokes in the backgrounds and off-beats might make you think the joke density is really high, except that in the scenes that have these jokes, they are the only jokes. If there's a joke in the background, the scene in the foreground is going to be played straight. Jokes don't distract from jokes in ZAZ movies. That's just not what they do. None of this matters, of course. I don't even like ZAZ movies that much. It just bothers me that people are incorrect about this.

dark-magician-girl-meets-world

I'm starting a new program called TAD talks. They're like TED talks, but you only get to talk about things that don't matter to you or anyone else

sleepymoney

What does TAD stand for? Tertiary Annoyance Dissertation?

dark-magician-girl-meets-world

TED stands for something? I just assumed there was a really annoying guy

thegenderdruid

Alright here's my TAD talk:

Tad Williams is a science fiction author who wrote a series of 4 scifi novels called the Otherland series which was released from 1996-2001 and heavily feature a fictional world called The Net which we would now recognize as a VR MMO similar to what Meta's Metaverse was imagined to be except actually good and functional and used around the world. Notably the books wrapped up several years before the Sword Art Online manga began and over a decade before the anime adaptation and therefor well before the vrmmorpg and isekai boom in media, and several years before World of Warcraft and the MMORPG boom in videogames although it was contemporary with and inspired by early MMOs such as Everquest and Ultima Online as well as MUDs which are text based proto-MMOs which started existing as early as the late 70s and early 80s. Obviously this is also well before and commercially successful VR headset as well.

This isn't about the book though, this is about the MMORPG based on the book (which is still the only adaptation of the books into any other medium although there have been attempts to make both a film and a tv adaptation over the years). The game began development by a company called RealU who had a massive plans for scope and ambition but ultimately never managed to finish the game because their parent company went bust resulting in the team folding and the game being cancelled.

Instead of being completely cancelled however they passed the codebase off to a small passionate German studio call Drago Entertainment who took on the project of shaping this half finished MMO with a ton of overly ambitious systems into something functional and playable and in 2016 they released it onto steam. It was an extremely janky and buggy mess but it was playable and had a very small but dedicated fanbase and had a fully playable story that went through a bunch of places featured in the books and featured a bunch of the characters.

In early 2021, MMORPG youtuber and reviewer Josh Strife Hayes, particularly known for playing obscure MMORPGs, discovered the game and upon realizing it had at the time literally 0 players online, decided to check it out and start playing through it. He released a series of youtube videos, which I highly recommend watching if you're into obscure videogames and lost media (link at the end), where he played through the entire game and eventually got in contact with the developers at Drago Entertainment and learned about how the game ended up the way it did. There are multiple points where he encounters literal gamebreaking bugs or server crashes preventing him from progressing but once he gets in contact with the devs they literally fix some of these issues in real time because they're chill and he's one of the only people actually playing their game anymore.

Eventually in late 2021 the servers shut down and now the game is completely unplayable and is effectively lost media with pretty much the only documentation of the story and massive amount of content that the game contained comes from this youtube series as well as an extensive fan wiki.

Here's the youtube series:

Join me as we play through the strangest MMO I've ever found, Otherland, from level 1 to Endgame.

So, yeah thanks for coming to my TAD talk.

hazard-symbols-that-fuck-hard

oh! the space needle is a cute mascot base for seattle’s MLB team! i wonder how they managed to communicate that in a big foam costume?

ambidisastrous

People who work within a system: okay so studies show that the normal system works 90% of the time, but because it’s very bad when it doesn’t work, we’ve set up a process to manage those outliers. We need six well-trained workers to run the system 100% of the time without any serious incidents.

CEOs and politicians, every time: Well i just saw it go right twice in a row which means the normal system which you say works 90% of the time actually works 100% of the time. We’re cutting the team down to one person pulling 18 hour shifts without breaks

devincastro

tguzz

I will always reblog this

bradspace3000

still remember how revolutionary this ad felt 10 years ago

annesophiewashere

excuse me but it still feels revolutionary

stevviefox

Keep reblogging until it feels normal everywhere.

ruffboi-mags

For context: this came out in 2011 in Australia. Same-sex marriage would not be legalized until December 2017.

It was only legalized in 8 US states (the 8th only a few months before), and wouldn’t be legalized nation-wide until 2015.

It was only legal in TEN COUNTRIES in 2011. We wouldn’t hit 20 countries until 2017. (Australia was 23rd)

As of today (April 14, 2026), I believe only 38 countries have fully legalized same-sex marriage. Out of somewhere around 200 countries in the world. That’s only ~19% of countries.

This is still revolutionary.

bundibird

queer-as-city-folk

Even in a post-capitalist, post-consumerist world, you still need to produce goods, as a result of this, you need factories because it is more effective to have a few people making a lot of clothes in a factory than every woman being forced to sit down and spin wool all day.

queer-as-city-folk

The issue with factories is poor wages, unsafe working conditions and environmental impact, all of which can be fixed through things like regulatory bodies and unions, the issue is not the fact that goods are no longer all made at home

offtherecordsarahc

What people call “adulting” these days — chores, errands, personal finance, bureaucracy & taxes — is hard for a lot of people, and we’re all vaguely embarrassed about it. We feel like it should be trivial. We rely heavily on technology that makes it easier, and wonder how past generations managed.

For some things, I think it genuinely used to be easier. Back when corporate employment was more paternalistic, the company did a lot of the “adulting” for you. Planning a vacation? You didn’t have Travelocity, but the company did have a travel agent.

Notice how a lot of “adulting” has to be done during working hours? When you’re kind of stealing time from work to do it? How are you *supposed* to do it? I think the answer is “that’s your wife’s job.”

But isn’t this kind of hard for your wife too? Like, it’s hard to go to the bank if you’re dragging a couple of screaming kids, right?

First of all, this only works if the kids are in school most of the day. Second of all, it used to be a lot more normal to have *servants*. Third of all, you can squeeze more work out of people if they feel they *must*, and sexism is great at that.

The 20th century system was never set up to allow a person to work full time *and* do all the chores necessary for a decent life on his/her own. Weird “millennial” ways of filling in the gaps — roommates, software apps, cleaning/laundry services, company perks — are substitutes for old solutions like non-wage-employed family members, servants, government services, and company perks. Sometimes better solutions, sometimes worse, sometimes exactly the same thing under a different name. But the fact that “adulting” is time-consuming and sometimes difficult isn’t a result of some inherent moral turpitude in Millennials. Chores have *always* taken time.

therandomray-artz

eeveelution sleepover

nerdygaymormon

dunkthebiscuit

This is why Pride is not just a party. It's a joyful celebration, but it's also a pointed and colourful two-finger salute to a world that stood back whilst so many of us died. And we'll never go quietly, never again.

beardedmrbean

distant-screaming

there really is nothing better than getting asked an innocuous question and being like

copperbadge

I once inadvisably shared an interesting article about a romance novel lawsuit with a co-worker. About an hour later she appeared at my cubicle and said, "You can explain to me what they mean when they say 'omegaverse', right?" and I was forced to respond, "I can, but not during office hours, I'm not getting fired for being sexually inappropriate in the workplace."

I will say, when I started to explain it, her eyes got really wide and she said, "So that's at least six genders, right?" with the kind of mental acuity I'd never even thought to bring to bear on the subject.

depsidase

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