You can always start again. Clean out your social media. Create a new account for your new taste in music. Study or work in a new city. Start socialising with new people. Choose a new signature scent and style and purge the outdated parts of yourself. If you don’t like where you’re at, but you don’t know what to do about it - try starting again.
“Not all toxic people are cruel and uncaring. Some of them love us dearly. Many of them have good intentions. Most are toxic to our being simply because their needs and way of existing in the world force us to compromise ourselves and our happiness. They aren’t inherently bad people, but they aren’t the right people for us. And as hard as it is, we have to let them go. Life is hard enough without being around people who bring you down, and as much as you care, you can’t destroy yourself for the sake of someone else. You have to make your wellbeing a priority. Whether that means breaking up with someone you care about, loving a family member from a distance, letting go of a friend, or removing yourself from a situation that feels painful — you have every right to leave and create a safer space for yourself.”
Me: *falling asleep to an audiobook on the science of the gut*
Book: saliva is actually filtered blood!
Me: ʕʘ‿ʘʔ
Me: ʕʘ‿ʘʔ
Book: saliva also contains a painkiller that is stronger than morphine, but we don’t produce a lot of it otherwise we’d be constantly high
Me: ʕʘ Д ʘʔ
Opiorphin is 6x stronger than morphine and actually contains an anti-depressant compound which is why some doctors believe it’s linked to comfort eating
‘Queer’ was reclaimed as an umbrella term for people identifying as not-heterosexual and/or not-cisgender in the early 1980s, but being queer is more than just being non-straight/non-cis; it’s a political and ideological statement, a label asserting an identity distinct from gay and/or traditional gender identities.
People identifying as queer are typically not cis gays or cis lesbians, but bi, pan, ace, trans, nonbinary, intersex, etc.: we’re the silent/ced letters. We’re the marginalised majority within the LGBTQIA+ community, and
‘queer’ is our rallying cry.
And that’s equally pissing off and terrifying terfs and cis LGs.
There’s absolutely no historical or sociolinguistic reason why ‘queer’ should be a worse slur than ‘gay.’ Remember how we had all those campaigns to make people stop using ‘gay’ as a synonym for ‘bad’?
Yet nobody is suggesting we should abolish ‘gay’ as a label. We accept that even though ‘gay’ sometimes is and historically frequently was used in a derogatory manner, mlm individuals have the right to use that word. We have ad campaigns, twitter hashtags, and viral Facebook posts defending ‘gay’ as an identity label and asking people to stop using it as a slur.
Whereas ‘queer’ is treated exactly opposite: a small but vocal group of people within feminist and LGBTQIA+ circles insists that it’s a slur and demands that others to stop using it as a personal, self-chosen identity label.
Why?
Because “queer is a slur” was invented by terfs specifically to exclude trans, nonbinary, and
intersex people from feminist and non-heterosexual discourse, and was
subsequently adopted by cis gays and cis lesbians to exclude bi/pan and ace
people.
It’s classic divide-and-conquer tactics: when our umbrella term is redefined as a slur and we’re harassed into silence for using it, we no longer have a word for what we are allowing us to organise for social/political/economic support; we are denied the opportunity to influence or shape the spaces we inhabit; we can’t challenge existing community power structures; we’re erased from our own history.
Pro tip: when you alter historical evidence to deny a marginalised group empowerment, you’re one of the bad guys.
“Queer is a slur” is used by terfs and cis gays/lesbians to silence the voices of trans/nonbinary/intersex/bi/pan/ace people in society and even within our own communities, to isolate us and shame us for existing.
“Queer is a slur” is saying “I am offended by people who do not conform to traditional gender or sexual identities because they are not sexually available to me or validate my personal identity.”
“Queer is a slur” is defending heteronormativity.
“Queer is a slur” is frankly embarrassing. It’s an admission of ignorance and prejudice. It’s an insidious discriminatory discourse parroted uncritically in support of a divisive us-vs-them mentality targeting the most vulnerable members of the LGBTQIA+ community for lack of courage to confront the white cis straight men who pose an actual danger to us as individuals and as a community.
Tl;dr:
I’m here, I’m queer, and I’m too old for this shit.
I know I keep reblogging posts like this, but it matters to me. “Queer is a slur” is a TERF dogwhistle, and a lot of the younger generation is falling for it. Please pay attention to history and ask questions about who’s behind social media campaigns that undermine the inclusivity of your community.
“I don’t identify as queer and prefer not to apply the term to myself” is a personal preference.
“Queer is a slur” is absolutely an exclusionist dogwhistle.
it’s infinitely more accurate to characterize a trans woman as a woman pretending to be a man than it is to say she’s a man pretending to be a woman
This is such an important point, and it hits at the crucial problem that even when cis people do genuinely try to wrap their brains around trans people, they tend to have trans men and trans women entirely reversed.
When a cis man tries to imagine what it would be like to be trans, invariably that man imagines what it would be like if he “wanted to be woman,” because that’s what many people think trans women are.
Instead, he should be trying to empathize with trans men. He should be thinking about his own childhood and relationship to manhood, and then asking himself how it would have felt if he’d grown up being told he was a girl, forced to wear dresses, never recognized by other boys as a boy, and then experienced the horror of going through the wrong puberty and becoming a giant estrogen factory.
Many cis women, particularly in LGBT spaces, will fall all over themselves trying to empathize and identify with trans men, because the same transmisogyny that tells them that trans women and cis men are connected tells them that cis women and trans men are connected.
Instead, cis women should be asking themselves what it would have been like if they had never been allowed to have their womanhood acknowledged. How would it have felt to grow up being told you were a boy, not allowed to deviate from male stereotypes (often with violent repercussions if you did), always viewed by other women as an icky boy or predatory male, exposed to the utter horror that is being a woman in male spaces where they think no women are around, and had testosterone distort your body irreparably only to have everyone around you use your anatomy and appearance to forever deny your womanhood and where your best possible outcome is to transition and live your life in abject poverty fighting loneliness and dysphoria and surrounded by people who think you’re a disgusting, subhuman monster who should be locked away or put down?
If you want to worry about men pretending to be women, pay more attention to trans men. They are men who are forced to pretend to be women, and while that is immensely fucked up for them to go through, it doesn’t change the fact that they are MEN in WOMEN’S spaces, and many of them take advantage of transmisogynist ideas about gender to stay in those spaces even after coming out and transitioning. Just look at all the trans men at women’s colleges – schools that in most cases will not allow trans women.
Trans women have always been women. Trans women have always been female.
Trans men have always been men. Trans men have always been male.
A trans woman cannot be a “man pretending to be a woman” because by definition we aren’t men and never were.
Needed to hear this today.
If you wanna have a clue what being a transgender person is all about, read this.
“exposed to the utter horror that is being a woman in male spaces where they think no women are around”
So many people have no idea how true this is. Almost no statement I have ever read has resonated with me more than this.
One of the arguments certain people (mostly terfs, but dishearteningly often well-meaning feminists who have accidentally been corrupted by terf rhetoric) make about trans women is that we experience “male privilege.” This is a muddy topic, because there are certainly some situations where being socially read as male is a convenience (it is much easier to apply for jobs pre-transition and then transition while employed than it is to apply for jobs during or after the more awkward and difficult parts of transition, as an example).
There can be benefits, here and there. But to call it privilege, especially with the term “male” attached to it, is horribly misleading.
Trans women can, in the earlier parts of our lives, EXIST in male spaces. That does not mean we belong in them. Or feel comfortable anywhere near them. Even if you look outwardly male, being in male spaces is terrifying. Even being in NEUTRAL spaces is terrifying. You are in a constant state of panic around men. And you fear rejection and ostracization from other women – the people you most empathize with and understand, whose personalities and ways of thinking most closely match your own, whose communities you desperately crave to be a part of because that’s where you belong – almost as much as you fear breathing the same air as any man you aren’t comfortably out to, including friends and family. We NEVER feel safe. And we are firsthand witnesses to all the reasons we SHOULDN’T feel safe around men. They’re horrifying. What was so frustrating about the “Locker Room Talk” scandal during the 2016 election, as a trans woman, is that you know from personal experience that it was “anywhere and everywhere outside the earshot of a woman” talk. Dozens of sports teams came forward and said no, we don’t talk like this, we would never say things like this, we would never disrespect women like this. I have never been an athlete. My only experience with locker rooms was required as a high school credit, and made me extraordinarily uncomfortable. I ASSURE you, I have heard talk like this OUTSIDE of the hypermasculine world of sports. The level of total disregard that men have for women’s most basic humanity is STAGGERING. Men don’t see women as less than human. They see women as less than ALIVE, nothing more than usable, disposable objects.
Trans women’s great “privilege” of existing “safely” in male spaces is being exposed to this world and these people up close, alone, (if in a locker room, without most of your clothes, and with all the added shame about your body that comes from that) in a state of absolute terror that ANYTHING about your personality, your mannerisms, your body language, the way you don’t quite fit in with the way they talk, will tip them off that you’re not one of them. Your LIFE depends on whether they notice. That’s not safety. That’s Russian Roulette where you don’t get the option to stop playing, and not only do you not know if or when you might get the bullet, you don’t even know how many bullets are loaded in the first place. Every single interaction with another human being is a trigger being pulled in slow motion, in overwhelming, agonizing detail as you can only wait to find out if you drew a blank.
We spend our lives pretending, often badly, to fit in with these people. Not because we have or want any god damn thing on this earth in common with them, but because the alternative – that they will know we aren’t – fills us constantly with a paralyzing, spine-chilling terror that is almost impossible to describe. Even when real benefits that do come from being read as male (again, this is usually socioeconomic factors), we are constantly, inescapably aware that all of these things come at the expense of our own authenticity. We have to lie to get them. We live in unbearable discomfort with the fact that everything good that happens to us is because other people are making these massively incorrect assumptions or judgments about the kinds of people we are. We live with the fact that everything good could be taken away the second anyone finds out we’re not what they wanted based on our appearance, because often it’s the only way we can survive at all.
Let me rephrase that last part for emphasis, because it’s integral to understanding the core of this issue, and the core of the argument that OP (and the excellent addition) wanted to make. If your takeaway is just ONE part of my addition to this post, let it be this:
Every single interaction we have with another human being is based solely on the value assigned to us based on our physical appearance, and how well we can conform to those expectations, which leaves us feeling suffocatingly, deeply uncomfortable and often terrified for our personal safety and livelihood.
Think about that before you put the words “male privilege” anywhere in a conversation about trans women.
For parts of our lives, we can exist in male spaces. But even in them, we are still always, at our core, women. Everything else is social. Everything else is acting. Trans women pretend to be men until we just can’t take it anymore, and we either live as the women we always were, or one way or another, we die. We can never really be anything other than female.
Womanhood is not the thing trans women have to fake.
Did a bunch of dogs breakup a fight between two cats? Am I seeing this right??
Having none of that shit today.
“Ay man, y’all chill the fuck out. Y’all fucking up the party.”
I CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT I’M SEEING
Pack animals like dogs don’t tolerate dissent in their group because it weakens the pack’s social structure… There are similar clips on youtube of them breaking up rabbit and rooster fights… They don’t care what species you are, they just want you to CUT THAT SHIT OUT.
They don’t differentiate species because dogs think everything else is just a weird dog.
ANIMAL BEHAVIOR IS FUN MAN OMG
“EVERYONE ELSE IS JUST A WEIRD DOG” This is painfully accurate
You do not have to be affectionate all the time to care for someone, in fact, caring can also mean a couple of texts or silence for a few days while you both live your lives happily and separately.
People do not care for you less when they’re busy with their own lives. It’s your reaction to them being their own person - and your ability to make yourself happy - that determines how they feel about you.
Not everyone reciprocates to your actions the same way. If you want someone to acknowledge, be interested in, or treat you a certain way for your efforts, all you have to do is let them know. They will try their personal best to accommodate that within their personal spectrum of feelings.
No one owes you 100% of them, not even after 30 years, because someone having a percentage of themselves is what keeps them sane at the end of the day and that’s okay.
Today the Department of Unexpected Interspecies Friendship is going hiking gorgeous Colorado landscapes with Henry the dog and Baloo the cat. Both adopted from animals shelters, they live with humans, Cynthia Bennett and her boyfriend, who are avid hikers. Even as a 14-week-old puppy, Henry immediately wanted to join in on their hikes.
“I think we only had him for three days when we took him on our first hike, which was to Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs,” Bennett said. “He found the steepest, tallest rock around, and he ran up to the top of it to look over the edge.”
Baloo joined the family just a few months ago and immediately bonded with Henry.
The moment Baloo met Henry, he loved him — he wanted to play with Henry and snuggle with him. Not only that, but Baloo refused to be left behind when Henry went out for a hike.“If I touch Henry’s leash, [Baloo] will start screaming at the door,” Bennett said. “He’s very vocal.”
Since Baloo was so eager to go outside with Henry, Bennett set about harness training him, but Baloo immediately took to being outdoors and on a leash and now he goes anywhere Henry goes. All their adventures are shared.
“He’s definitely not the kind of cat we can leave home alone on the weekend anymore,” she added. “I think he thinks he’s more a dog than anything.”
