sweetstarcollector

[sweetstarcollector]

The whole reason we ask for inclusive language around reproductive rights is because once the government legally recognizes someone as a man, their insurance starts saying shit like "You don't need a papsmear, you're a man." Regardless of whether you see trans men as men or not is irrelevant if the government gives them that recognition and trans men deserve relevant healthcare to be covered. Yeah, a lot of people who don't know better throw that language into stupid places, but the whole point of mentioning specific body parts or specific bodily functions is because if we don't have it acknowledged, suddenly our health no longer matters. My brain and body not matching up don't mean that I should be any less entitled to reproductive healthcare than you and if you see me as a female person or whatever, I'd think you'd agree with that.

So I log into this account for the first time in like 9 months, and i have an anon waiting for me that appears to have been sent today! (Assuming tumblr isn't being weird). Life is funny :)

Anyway, I 100% agree with you! Female people deserve access to female healthcare, regardless of identity. The government should recognize that all female people deserve access to female healthcare, regardless of how they identify. That should be the end of the story, we shouldn’t have to use language that in many cases is inaccurate for the government to recognize that.

For example, imagine your insurance covers abortions for “all people with uteruses”. All the female people who can still experience a pregnancy but don't have a uterus are best case, swept aside and unconsidered, worst case, not covered under the policy at all. Many trans men who undergo partial hysterectomies would fall into this category, and “funnily” enough would be *excluded* by the very language meant to *include* them. If the policy instead covered “all female people”, then anyone who could possibly need an abortion would be covered.

[sweetstarcollector]

STOP!

STOP SCROLLING!!

Your doom spiral will not save homosexuals! Your despair and misery will not free me or anyone else from our traumatic pasts!

Either invest that time and energy into meaningful connections that better homosexuals or release your angst and take 5 minutes to write about every good thing you have as a homosexual today

If you, like me, live in a country where homosexuality is not openly, legally, violently punished PLEASE do not waste the beautiful gift our brothers and sisters crafted for us

Do not let this awful stupid world take your homosexual joy. Rip it from life's hands, craw it out of the dirt till you've torn up every last morsel as a fuck you to every homophobe past and present

[sweetstarcollector]

thank you to the women who refuse to wear makeup

thank you to the women who don’t own any high heels

thank you to the women who cut their hair short

thank you to the women who dress in comfortable, baggy clothes

thank you to the women who don’t shave and don’t hide it

thank you to the women who talk loudly and take up space

thank you to the women who eat what and how much they want in public

thank you to the women who sit boldly instead of with crossed legs

thank you to all the gnc women who make it easier for the women around them to fight the prison of femininity, too

[sweetstarcollector]

i'm literally the priest's favorite sacrificial lamb because i am so docile and sweet and i hold very still when they put the rope around my neck and i trot along so happily while they lead me to the altar and they do not even have to tie me down because i lie so very still and only bleat once or twice in my lovely lamb voice and when the knife comes down it cuts through me like butter and i offer no resistance and i bleed so prettily all over my new white wool and my guts all unspool like the most beautiful shining yarn and my eyes are animal and dumb and hold no accusation and every time i die i come right back as another little lamb because the priest loves me so so much and he always chooses me for the sacrifice every time and he always places one hand on my small and twitching nose to calm me while he lifts the knife and he doesn't do it for the other lambs only me because i'm his favorite

[sweetstarcollector]

If Men Could Menstruate

In this satirical essay published in an early issue of Ms. magazine (October 1978), feminist activist and journalist Gloria Steinem “flipped the script” to show how a natural reproductive process, which is considered negative and stigmatized because it is associated with women’s bodies, would become positive and worthy of attention and pride if it were associated with men’s bodies. Anything associated with higher-status groups is automatically more valuable and respectable than anything associated with lower-status groups.

A white minority of the world has spent centuries conning us into thinking that a white skin makes people superior—even though the only thing it really does is make them more subject to ultraviolet rays and to wrinkles. Male human beings have built whole cultures around the idea that penis-envy is “natural” to women—though having such an unprotected organ might be said to make men vulnerable, and the power to give birth makes womb-envy at least as logical.

In short, the characteristics of the powerful, whatever they may be, are thought to be better than the characteristics of the powerless—and logic has nothing to do with it.

What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?

The answer is clear—menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event:

Men would brag about how long and how much.

Boys would mark the onset of menses, that longed-for proof of manhood, with religious ritual and stag parties.

Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea to help stamp out monthly discomforts.

Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. (Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of commercial brands such as John Wayne Tampons, Muhammad Ali’s Rope-a-dope Pads, Joe Namath Jock Shields—“For Those Light Bachelor Days,” and Robert “Baretta” Blake Maxi-Pads.)

Military men, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation (“menstruation”) as proof that only men could serve in the Army (“you have to give blood to take blood”), occupy political office (“can women be aggressive without that steadfast cycle governed by the planet Mars?”), be priests and ministers (“how could a woman give her blood for our sins?”) or rabbis (“without the monthly loss of impurities, women remain unclean”).

Male radicals, left-wing politicians, and mystics, however, would insist that women are equal, just different, and that any woman could enter their ranks if she were willing to self-inflict a major wound every month (“you MUST give blood for the revolution”), recognize the preeminence of menstrual issues, or subordinate her selfness to all men in their Cycle of Enlightenment. Street guys would brag (“I’m a three pad man”) or answer praise from a buddy (“Man, you lookin’ good!”) by giving fives and saying, “Yeah, man, I’m on the rag!” TV shows would treat the subject at length. (“Happy Days”: Richie and Potsie try to convince Fonzie that he is still “The Fonz,” though he has missed two periods in a row.) So would newspapers. (SHARK SCARE THREATENS MENSTRUATING MEN. JUDGE CITES MONTHLY STRESS IN PARDONING RAPIST.) And movies. (Newman and Redford in “Blood Brothers”!) Men would convince women that intercourse was more pleasurable at “that time of the month.” Lesbians would be said to fear blood and therefore life itself—though probably only because they needed a good menstruating man.

Of course, male intellectuals would offer the most moral and logical arguments. How could a woman master any discipline that demanded a sense of time, space, mathematics, or measurement, for instance, without that in-built gift for measuring the cycles of the moon and planets—and thus for measuring anything at all? In the rarefied fields of philosophy and religion, could women compensate for missing the rhythm of the universe? Or for their lack of symbolic death-and-resurrection every month?

Liberal males in every field would try to be kind: the fact that “these people” have no gift for measuring life or connecting to the universe, the liberals would explain, should be punishment enough.

And how would women be trained to react? One can imagine traditional women agreeing to all arguments with a staunch and smiling masochism. (“The ERA would force housewives to wound themselves every month”: Phyllis Schlafly. “Your husband’s blood is as sacred as that of Jesus—and so sexy, too!” Marabel Morgan.) Reformers and Queen Bees would try to imitate men, and pretend to have a monthly cycle. All feminists would explain endlessly that men, too, needed to be liberated from the false idea of Martian aggressiveness, just as women needed to escape the bonds of menses envy. Radical feminists would add that the oppression of the nonmenstrual was the pattern for all other oppressions (“Vampires were our first freedom fighters!”) Cultural feminists would develop a bloodless imagery in art and literature. Socialist feminists would insist that only under capitalism would men be able to monopolize menstrual blood…

In fact, if men could menstruate, the power justifications could probably go on forever.

If we let them.

[sweetstarcollector]

“Butches who desire other butches are difficult to theorize in accordance with traditional lesbian imagery for writers like Rubin, Brown, and others, because the numerous social restrictions on acceptable forms of desire make it hard to come to grips with something as multiply transgressive as the butch who desires other butches. Two female bodies having sex violates the myth of “natural” heterosexuality, female bodies in men’s clothing violates gender restrictions, and female bodies in (or out of) men’s clothing having sex with each other constitutes a triple whammy. The butch-butch couple confounds all of these conventions, which is why butch-butch makes even some lesbians uncomfortable. Trish Thomas describes what can happen when a butch pursues another butch: “She wonders if I’ve mistaken her for femme…. She becomes concerned that she’s throwing off femme vibes without even knowing it…. And suddenly she gets this overwhelming urge to arm wrestle” (22). Butch-butch sexuality is constantly being assimilated back into familiar categories, as with the butch who worries Thomas must be picking up “femme vibes” or Brown’s description of butches having sex with other butches as “faggots.” Despite such overwhelming conceptual resistance, butches, unconcerned with theoretical disputes, continue to desire other butches. Look down Castro Street any Saturday evening, and you are likely to notice a number of butch couples strolling by. Visit a chic lesbian bar in San Francisco, and you are apt to see two leather-jacketed, buzz-cut young women clinging to each other on the dance floor-and they will be far from alone”

— Inness, Sherrie A., and Michele Lloyd. “‘G.I. Joes in Barbie Land’: Recontextualizing Butch in Twentieth-Century Lesbian Culture.” 

[sweetstarcollector]

Actually horrifying. How can you not want men to literally just drop dead en masse. Also plenty of comments from other women shaming her for not wanting to have sex every single day, and men telling women if they don't have sex with their man every day that he will find a woman that will.

(audio: "You're gonna take that dick, you're gonna take that dick")

[sweetstarcollector]

every time you google a female specific health issue you get results like "it's estimated between 9-34% of women suffer from this condition. its causes are unknown and treatment is either birth control or just fucking raw dogging it. diagnosis takes an average of 12 years because only 8 different doctors are informed about it and every other one will tell you you're making it up"

[sweetstarcollector]

Kill yourself for real 💀

[sweetstarcollector]

[sweetstarcollector]

Men who slam doors and furniture are making sure you hear how much they want to hit you.

[sweetstarcollector]

[sweetstarcollector]

Expectations vs Reality

[sweetstarcollector]

I remember one time I was talking to someone about shaving and she said that she totally thinks that there should be positivity for women who don’t shave, but that there should also be for women who do shave, because she was worried it would “swing too far” and she’d end up being shamed societally for shaving.

Like okay once that starts to become an actual concern then let me know we can talk then. But for right now at least I don’t think you have anything to be worried about my friend.

[sweetstarcollector]

masculinity and femininity are completely cultural.

[sweetstarcollector]

a totally normal gay person's response to a butch lesbian existing and not at all something a regular homophobe would say

[sweetstarcollector]

LGBeetles