This Has Become A Bit Of A Reference Blog-

adult - hi :) - I store things (useful and not) here.

[transand]

a vicious cycle

[whetstonefires]

easy to miss that one of the reasons maternal mortality is diminished so extremely by modern medicine is that modern medicine makes it so much more possible to identify the pregnancies that will die and take you with them, or are otherwise unacceptably high risk. and then discontinue those ones safely, before it's too late.

thought about this because it's so frustrating when people argue that 'dying in childbirth' is a historical sort of event that doesn't happen nowadays (false) and therefore is irrelevant to the legal status of abortion, since it's not a real danger.

except it super is, and i think a lot of people haven't noticed that this argument in addition to simply being incorrect is basically the same as when people say we don't need vaccines for deadly diseases because no one gets those now anyway.

like yeah one reason for that is we vaccinate everybody ffs.

[bogwitchgardens]

The thing is, the anti abortion movement does not consider abortions for ectopic pregnancies, or nonviable pregnancies, or helping to complete a miscarriage an abortion. It 100% is an abortion, but when they talk about ending abortion, these procedures are, for some reason, something different. So when you bring this up, they will insist that abortion is never a necessary procedure to save someone's life. It's a trick of language, because if it is to save the life of the mother, it is not an abortion.

So if abortion is ended, the lack of access to abortion is not what ends up killing women. It is, instead, something else. Abortion access, to the anti abortion crusader, has nothing to do with saving the life of the mother.

They are wrong. Medical doctors use mifapristone or D&Cs or other abortion procedures to save lives. These are, by definition, abortion procedures. But the anti abortion activist will not admit it.

And because of this inability to consider these as life-saving procedures, this line of conversation gets lost.

[penny-anna]

the current twitter discourse du jour is cervical smear tests for some reason and here is my take: there absolutely is a widespread assumption that if you have a vagina and are over a certain age you'll be habituated to vaginal penetration and this is self-evidently heteronormative and sexist and im honestly amazed that more people don't seem to register it fdkjghfdjk

[penny-anna]

it's not just an issue w smear tests. was investigated for PCOS not too long ago and when i was referred for an ultrasound absolutely nobody thought to mention that it would be a transvaginal ultrasound. if i hadn't happened to do my own research i would literally have found out on the day of the appointment?? i remain baffled by this

[penny-anna]

anyway a lot of people on twitter responding to 'actually smear tests are painful for some people' with 'oh well I suppose if you have some kind of medical condition it might be painful' and it's well the thing is people with medical conditions exist in real life

[penny-anna]

oh the other one is 'well the nurse will be super nice and will make sure you're comfortable and will switch to a smaller speculum if necessary' and i'm like you must know that isn't true. like c'mon. even if all your cervical smear experiences have been positive you must be conscious of the fact that some medical practitioners are assholes about stuff like this. a more helpful statement might be 'your nurse should make sure you're comfortable and if they don't then you don't have to put up with it'.

[penny-anna]

They are doing this discourse again and as a result I have a couple of working examples of the problem described in the OP:

'speculums open you up less than sex' *loud incorrect buzzer noise* what kind of sex? Not all kinds of sex involve penetration. Why are you assuming that everyone who has a cervix is having penis in vagina sex?

'if you can have penetrative sex you can get basic medical care' ok. If I can't have penetrative sex then what??

'so all these people who are afraid to get a pap smear have never had sex?' yes some adults have never had sex. I don't know what's so unfathomable about that.

[penny-anna]

anyway so i realise the OP is kind of, mid-argument so here is my actual point best as I can express it:

there is a widespread assumption that if you are an adult with a cervix then you will be having penetrative sex and that, therefore, vaginal penetration in a medical context will be no big deal for you.

this is untrue as a) not everyone is having penetrative sex and b) not everyone who is having penetrative sex finds penetration in a medical context painless and untraumatic.

the result of this is that people for whom cervical smears are significantly painful and/or emotionally distressing are not universally properly accommodated and supported in medical settings.

which is a problem bcos the cervical smear is a very important cancer screening and if a person knows or suspects their medical needs will not be accommodated they might opt not to do it.

[transandrogyny--turtlebug]

a lot of cis men are allowed to get away with being ugly or fat and not have it impact their ability to get a job or get into academics or something, but I don't think that being seen as inherently predatory or bad or misogynistic for being a fat man is really free from judgment.

Fatphobia doesn't just affect cis women. there's an important intersection of fatphobia and manhood that gets ignored for some reason. What happens some of the time is a fat man does something wrong, and people think "Oh of course you're a creep, you're fat"

[transandrogyny--turtlebug]

Well damn it's even worse than I thought

[transandrogyny--turtlebug]

okay actually according to the reblogs, fat mascs have it depressingly bad in academia

[tboy-cock]

hey so trans men are being forcibly detransitioned in prisons in the hopes to preserve their fertility. and the president admitted this but it didnt even start under him its been happening. why arent we talking about this? why isnt this a discussion?

[autismking]

this is happening to trans people of all genders. don’t be a fucking asshole who thinks that trans women have “more visibility” than trans men. care about ALL trans people.

[thetowerandthewheel]

And trans women are mentioned in the original post where?

[autismking]

that’s the whole fucking point you dumb cunt

[thetowerandthewheel]

Sorry I forgot every post on the internet has to be about all topics at once. My bad.

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[foldingfittedsheets]

There are very few things I enjoy watching extended videos of and I was unprepared for how stoked I was the entire time I watched this.

[tboy-cock]

hey so trans men are being forcibly detransitioned in prisons in the hopes to preserve their fertility. and the president admitted this but it didnt even start under him its been happening. why arent we talking about this? why isnt this a discussion?

[autismking]

this is happening to trans people of all genders. don’t be a fucking asshole who thinks that trans women have “more visibility” than trans men. care about ALL trans people.

[thetowerandthewheel]

And trans women are mentioned in the original post where?

[scramratz]

https://www.tumblr.com/lapdoglover/811137535474581504/transandrophobia-was-coined-by-a-sex-pest-who

[thetowerandthewheel]

Prev tags from @doofnoof are a beautiful dissection of how fucking awful this post is as an actual engagement to any ideas

[thepplprty]

Part of the reason why I'm so passionate about being against the whole 'kill all men' mindset is because it does affect me directly as a trans woman.

If you're the type of person who automatically assumes men are bad people, then I have news for you. That assumption isn't going to wait until I tell you I'm trans. You're going to—whether subconsciously or consciously—assume I am just a man, and even after I tell you I am a trans woman your perception of me will still be permanently altered.

Discriminatatory beliefs aren't going to wait for me to tell you my pronouns.

I grew up in Florida, where at the age of twelve I was a victim of terror campaigns telling adults that I was going to sexually assault their children in the bathrooms, specifically because of the reason that 'men are all evil.'

I went through way too much at the hands of those people to see practically every ""leftist"" online continuing to push that ideology. Unlearn it. Please. It directly affects us trans women, too.

I still, to this day, have internalized this ideology, and I cannot look at myself in the fucking mirror because I think to myself people see me as a threat, no one feels safe around me. As a direct result of 'all men are evil.'

It doesn't matter whether or not transfemmes are your intended target. You are hurting us just as much as you're hurting everyone else.

[dogpuppy]

[cornona]

when i say trfs have fox news grandpa levels of obsession with hating trans men i mean it.

[cpericardium]

[rogue-ai-cat]

The thing is, even if you were lucky and your parents taught you how to clean, they probably didn't teach you how to clean the stuff you clean stuff with, like brushes, mops, sponges, rags, and so on. Or how to clean your cleaning appliances, like a dish washer, clothes washing machine, and clothes dryer and its ducts (if you have a ducted dryer), or a carpet cleaner, vacuum, Or how to clean up clean messes, like spilled bleach or detergent.

My parents threw away all of these things (even the vacuum cleaners and the dryer) when they got too dirty to function, because no one even told them THAT they could be cleaned. Cost them thousands of dollars over the years.

All I'm saying is that cleaning is not intuitive, and not knowing how to clean is not a moral failing, but it is something you can learn.

I'm going to reblog this post with resources for learning how to clean things and how to clean cleaning things (I'm not at my desk at the moment). If you have any favorites, please feel free to add them in too!

[rogue-ai-cat]

I like this video because it does a great job of introducing the basic foundations of house cleaning (and because he doesn't use bleach, which is a common allergy in addition to being awful to inhale). He also talks a little about how to clean a vacuum. And why you shouldn't put grease from your pots and pans down the sink drain. I also love that he mentions that different houses and different people have different needs and different versions of what clean and cleaning looks like.

He doesn't mention though that the toilet seat comes off. I take my toilet seat off to clean under the hinges and clean the seat more thoroughly once a quarter.

[rogue-ai-cat]

This is another video from the same guy about cleaning and depression. This advice, especially at the beginning, can feel really really difficult and oppressive to hear. However, I find that it's generally pretty solid. But I'm autistic and so is he, so that gets a massive Your Mileage May Vary stamp on it.

I have a favorite part of this video. It's from 10:52 to 12:36. I think we could all use to hear that. There's a HEFTY pause after that one. I promise the narration does come back.

I'm also going to recommend KC Davis' book "How To Keep House While Drowning"

[rogue-ai-cat]

This is a pair of videos about how to correctly load and use a dish washer.

The first one is a quick 1 minute 30 second overview on loading. I can't find the exact video I'm looking for, so consider this a substitute for that. If I can find the one I'm looking for, I'll swap it in.

The second is a half hour deep dive on dishwashers and detergents. The short form of that is you shouldn't need to pre-rinse anything, detergent pods are overpriced and can cause problems, some dishwashers have a filter in the bottom that needs to be cleaned (but most don't), run your sink until the water is HOT before starting your dish washer, and put a little detergent in the pre-rinse dispenser when you're washing extra dirty dishes (or on the inside of the door if your dishwasher doesn't have a pre-rinse dispenser).

[rogue-ai-cat]

Favorite Scrub Brushes + How to Clean Them - Clean Mama

Favorite Scrub Brushes + How to Clean Them. The right tools for cleaning tasks make all the difference! Scrub brushes are great tools and it

Here's a blog post about scrubbing brushes and how to clean them.

And a video for all cleaning tools, including scrub brushes. This video does use bleach. I'll try to find some alternatives to that.

[rogue-ai-cat]

How to clean a front load washer (with bleach). This should be done monthly or every time you wash really soiled clothes.

The Dirty Truth About How Often You Should Clean Your Washing Machine

With expert tips and tricks for all types of washers.

How to clean a top loader (without the removable agitator thing). This should be done every 1-3 months depending on you unit, or every time you wash really soiled clothes.

Clean Your Washer and You'll Have Cleaner Laundry

Regular cleaning of a top-load washing machine will prolong the life of the appliance and leave your laundry cleaner and brighter.

How to clean a top loader (with the removable agitator thing). This should be done every month, or every time you wash really soiled clothes.

[rogue-ai-cat]

This video is for pet owners.

These carpet brushes are a LIFE SAVER if you have dogs. This thing allows me to go from vacuuming about 4 square feet before my vacuum is full to vacuuming half the living room (I don't vacuum often enough. You should vacuum weekly, and I just can't.). I have to unclog the vacuum less often. It fluffs up some of the flat spots in the carpet. And I also use the brush to shampoo my rugs in the spring.

A spot cleaner (or a carpet cleaner with a spot cleaner attachment) is another life saver, ESPECIALLY if you can afford to splurge on a heated one. I see them at Goodwill or at yard sales occasionally, and they're worth picking up. The shark one in the video is great too.

This channel is gold. There's tutorials for cleaning EVERYTHING on there. Just go subscribe!

[yamatoess]

Anyone else thinking it's more trans misogynistic for yt trans men to act as if trans women are poor damsels in distress

Like it feels incredibly infantilising and dehumanizing

[creature-wizard]

Why do american atheists get so mad when it's pointed out that they are culturally christian?

Here's what I've seen among the ones who do this:

1: They think "culturally Christian" is an inherently negative accusation, and incorrectly imagine it as something that's supposed to work like original sin - essentially, a bad thing you're tainted with.

(This is of course incorrect; "culturally Christian" is a neutral descriptor, simply used to point out that things are Christian in origin and therefore not religiously neutral. For example, the Gregorian calendar is culturally Christian. This doesn't make it inherently worse than any other calendar, it just means that it's a calendar created by Christians that centers Jesus - even if you change the BC and AD to BCE and CE.)

2: They think being called "culturally Christian" is the same as being told they're still believers in Jesus Christ deep down inside.

(This is also incorrect because being culturally Christian or participating in cultural Christianity doesn't have anything to do with your beliefs. If you participate in Christmas or Easter as a nonbeliever, you are participating in Christian culture. If you try and claim your holiday celebrations are religiously neutral - well, you're just straight-up wrong. If you try and claim they're religiously neutral in order to pressure, say, Jews into joining your celebrations, you are pushing religion on them even if you consider yourself non-religious.)

3: They are emotionally motivated to feel as distant from Christianity as possible. They've become atheists fairly recently, and have a lot of unhealed trauma.

(Taking your trauma out on people and trying to police what they say and do to make you feel more comfortable is not a healthy coping strategy. You need to focus on healing yourself, not try and police how religious minorities bring attention to and talk about Christian hegemony.)

4: They haven't learned how to think about and analyze things in nuanced ways yet.

(Not uncommon among younger people in general, and also to be expected from people who've left a Christian group that actively hindered critical thinking. Fortunately it's a skill that can be worked on.)

So yeah, that's what I've seen so far. It's a dash of ignorance plus a dash of emotional reaction.

[entanglingbriars]

I think it's significantly more complicated than that. First, a lot of people accusing atheists of being culturally Christian absolutely do mean it pejoratively. They refer to things like black-and-white thinking, moral overscrupulosity, belief in the positive/redemptive nature of suffering, and a punishment-oriented view of justice as examples of what makes American atheists culturally Christian. None of these, of course, are unique to Christianity, but they are frequently framed as such.

Second, and I cannot stress this enough, I have actively encountered, multiple times, people saying very confidently that the only way to stop being a cultural Christian is to convert to another religion and atheism doesn't count. People who would not refer to a Christian convert to Judaism as a cultural Christian will absolutely refer to a Christian (de)convert to atheism as a cultural Christian. The devaluation of atheism as a way of approaching and understanding the world is clear and explicit.

Third, a lot of people who use the term are employing a motte-and-bailey with it. The motte is "people in an overwhelmingly Christian culture are influenced by Christianity," which no one disagrees with, but the bailey is "American atheists are crypto-Christians," which is highly offensive for several reasons including the identification of an oppressed minority with their oppressors.

Fourth, it betrays a fundamental failure to understand how white American Protestantism functions (and when we're talking about American cultural Christianity we are absolutely talking specifically about white American Protestantism). Unlike most other religions, white American Protestantism values belief to the near exclusion of almost all other means of identification with the religion.

Being baptized isn't enough, being raised by religious parents isn't enough, participating in the rituals and festivals of the religion isn't enough; but belief, on its own, even without any of the above elements, is. If you aren't steeped in that way of understanding religion, it's hard to understand why someone who was baptized, raised by religious parents, and celebrates Christmas wouldn't consider herself a Christian, but the fact is that in the US she does not benefit from Christian privilege and may have faced ostracism and exclusion from her community for her failure to believe.

Similarly, if you are steeped in that way of understanding religion, it's very hard to understand things like cultural Catholics and Jewish atheists. And anyone who calls you a Christian will very much sound like they're saying you affirm the Nicene Creed. At which point the term "cultural Christian" becomes an active barrier to dialogue and mutual understanding.

[ms-demeanor]

If you blindfold yourself and throw a dart at a calendar you'll hit a date when Tumblr has banned a trans woman who had been the subject of an ongoing harassment campaign.

I didn't know that Patty had been banned but I have seen the awful attacks that had been aimed at her for months that echoed other types of isolating harassment that I know she'd been subject to for years.

The people who have been harassing her have been using weaponized social justice language to demonize a young woman who who has spent her whole adult life in public on the internet. She is in a tremendously unenviable position and there were times when she didn't handle that gracefully, but it's ridiculous to expect someone being flayed alive to perform ballet.

At this point it has to be clear to everyone that callouts say much more about the person doing the calling out than the person being called out, right? At this point we know that accusations about a person based on their kinks and sexual roleplay is sexual harassment, not 'community protection' right?

The trans community is full to the brim of traumatized people who are working through their trauma and realizing their fullest selves in complicated ways, and it is also chock fucking full of people who only 'feel safe' when they manage to unperson someone who likes things they think are icky or who was clumsy when navigating new territory.

The last five years have felt like watching a purity spiral that protects a false idol while spitting out the trans women it has broken. I don't know what to say, I don't know how to help, but we have got to stop taking it at face value that complicated individual human beings with layered histories and varied motivations must be Evil because someone showed us a screenshot of them talking about kink in a way that feels weird to the viewer (it probably feels weird because you were not part of that conversation and should not be involved and definitely should not be sharing it as an example of why someone deserves to be isolated from any sense of community to suffer!)

[clorofolle]

I've seen the kind of ways those people justify putting such a person through harassment hell, and it's clear to anyone with an ounce of reading comprehension how in bad faith they are.

I've seen takes such as "The issue is not that she has a kink, but that she cannot differentiate reality from fiction! She has *already* sent porn to a minor, she is already acting on it, we need to deplatform her to protect other minors from being groomed!"

And they all proudly point to one episode. While... actively ignoring, disregarding, or hiding the context. Which is, that this trans woman in question was in an extremely vulnerable position when she hit 18. She's very disabled, and spent all of her youth isolated, being subject to abuse, unable to have the same foundational experiences as most peers of her age - never learning how to not taken advantage of. And 18 is not a magical age in which all people become mature adults. She was being actively groomed by older people into acting inappropriately. Yes, she sent a furry porn image to a minor in this context, thinking it was appropriate and she was being funny. That is not... "grooming" a child. This is a very young and vulnerable person being groomed into perpetuating harmful behaviours.

And there's a reason those people always have to dredge this one incident (from like... 7? 8? yrs ago) up, right? Because she didn't mean to hurt someone, and has since matured and learnt what she did wrong, and how she was being taken advantage of.

It's so immensely clear she doesn't pose a "danger" to minors on the internet. But it's hard to just accept you like hunting a vulnerable, trans, autistic person down for sports - or because you think of her kinks as "inexcusable" somehow. So you need to make up a reason to justify your harassment campaing, and find any and all evidence to support your theory. No wonders she developed POCD, and harassing her over that, too, is downright evil.

I appreciate how many people on my dash have been outspoken about this situation. I have been aware that so many trans women have been the subject of ridiculous harassment campaigns. This is the first time it happened to a user I followed and was a fan of, enough to get the full context on it. If I already was wary of "callout posts" and the likes, this has been the nail in the coffin. Those people have been capable of taking posts in which she, a victim of CSA, talked about how the systems in place don't protect young people/what could have been helpful in her situation... and spun them around, purposefully misunderstanding them in such a way to show that *she* is a predator. Stuff like "If you are a minor and are going to seek out nsfw spaces no matter what and there's no stopping you, please at least stay safe and don't tell everyone you're a minor" becoming "she encourages minors to lie about their age", for example.

How could you ever take any callout post or blog seriously anymore, after seeing this?

[andhumanslovedstories]

One of the stranger things about training brand new nurses is explaining how to min max small talk. It feels very weird to coach people on how to chat.

[andhumanslovedstories]

if I make and post an insanely detailed powerpoint on the twenty different equations I run mentally during casual conversation to make it flow better, everyone has to say that it's sexy and cool and not weird at all

[andhumanslovedstories]

remember, everyone promised to be cool! also disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer assume I said all the things you'd say to be like "i know human interaction is complicated, i know some of what i listed here would be very annoying to some people," and all that