#'people are not a social construct' says person who sees no problem in calling everyone 'males' and 'females' as nouns

[annabelle--cane]

this comment was made in response to a bunch of terf bs and I don't tend to like sharing their stuff directly but I desperately wanted to preserve this line on my blog. sorry for stealing your post ms doubleca5t.

[magicalmanhattanproject]

Okay, so with Quackity Studios tweeting about adding new people and the need for tolerance and patience with people who don't speak English, let's just take a second and have a chat about what that's gonna look like.

First: you will hear things or read things on the translator that hurt or offend you.

This is inevitable. Do not immediately post about it. What you need tolerance for is hearing things that hurt or offend you and what you need patience for is figuring out of malicious intent was present or if this is a hill worth dying on right now.

As an example, we're pretty sure at this point that Korean is gonna be the next language added. The second person pronoun in Korean sounds a lot like the n-word in English. The n-word in English, if you're not aware, is like the single most offensive slur we have. It's not something that you want to hear unexpectedly. But also, if we get Koreans, they're gonna be using the word for "you" and English speakers are gonna have to be able to tolerate that.

On the other side of things, Korean has a complex system of honorifics and addressing someone without an honorific would be considered very forward and intimate at least if not very rude. None of the QSMP languages have honorifics though and only French really retains formality* so no one else is going to address them with honorifics unless they specifically explain it to people and walk them through it. That will probably be weird and uncomfortable for them and they're going to have to be able to tolerate that.

*Spanish and Portuguese do technically have formal vs informal but it's disappearing quickly in both of them.

These natural cultural clashes and pain points are going to be harder to overcome since we also know that at least some of these creators won't speak English at all so they can't just switch to English to helpfully explain things to us easily in a way we understand. We're going to have to deal.

So here's the thing: just because there can be cultural miscommunications and mistranslations, that doesn't mean that people can't also be assholes. How do you distinguish between the two?

Step One: Assume good faith. Assume that everyone in a given encounter is trying to communicate respectfully and compassionately and that a failure to do so can be overcome

Step Two: Don't get involved. Especially not in Twitch Chat. Two or more people trying to communicate through a language barrier does not get easier when they're also trying to wrangle hostile viewers.

Step Three: Are you sure you heard what you thought you heard or saw what you thought you saw? Did the translator fuck up? Is it a word that just coincidentally happens to sound like another word? If this is the case, the streamers can ask for clarification or use another tool and get it cleared up. Keep watching and see if they do.

Step Four: If they did say what you thought they said, are the streamers handling it? We had a thing a while back where Bad called some friends, including Bagi and Etoiles, uncultured because they didn't get a reference he was making and Etoiles was like "bro I'm French" and Bad apologized. That should have been the end of it, but I had to see people arguing about it for weeks. The problem was solved in 10 seconds.

Step Five: If the person is doubling down, are you sure this is something you can fix by yelling about it on Twitter or Tumblr? Would it be better to let people who actually know them talk to them behind the scenes? Pierre made a few missteps in the beginning of the server, Quackity said they had a chat, Pierre hasn't misstepped since. It's just easier to sort things out in private, one on one conversation than yelling at someone in public.

In short: it's fine to take note of behavior in case patterns start to emerge in it, but yelling on social media about how so and so is the worst person possible is not constructive.

[yuikomorii]

Well, the truth is I've never been a fan of Ayato, nor do I feel particularly attracted to his design no matter how visual it is, I think it's normal that he draws attention being a vampire compared to the rest of mortals or that he fits the Japanese standard since Satoi makes it visual. I don't know, I never liked him when he expressed himself ugly about Yui calling her a chichinasi or when he made derogatory comments about her physique, I know it may sound silly or funny because this is DL and Yui is told and done worse things than that simple nickname, lol XD I say it because I know that Shu tells her worse things in a CD, I don't think he's a bad character, I think that to a certain point he is funny, but meh, I understand those who hate him or don't like him or don't find him attractive, sometimes it's not the appearance but how the character makes you feel, although the game is for masochists I suppose I am too because I also see the game. LOL I love your page <3

// I mean, I understand that every person experiences attraction differently, but by that logic, none of the characters are attractive to you? Since literally everyone insults Yui, and a lot of them even more than Ayato. On top of that, Ayato is more than his insults, and he’s basically the Diaboy who used the 綺麗 (beautiful) word on her the most. xD

I personally dislike Karl’s personality and I’m not attracted to him either, but he’s definitely a very fine man and I can’t deny it.

Moreover, I believe there’s a difference between attractiveness and actual good looks. I know that some people view beauty as something subjective, but it became a social construct in today’s society, which means that there will always be features seen as universally more desirable, and that’s exactly where Ayato fits in. He is made to fit the EA standards the most, yet even in the West he’d undoubtedly be viewed as good-looking by most people. His features strike a perfect balance between youthful charm and elegance, making him appealing not just to those who favor cute guys but also to those drawn to handsome ones.

I find it immature when people start hating on fictional characters, since they don’t even exist, so it’s just a waste of energy. That said, it’s perfectly normal if Ayato, or any other character, isn’t someone’s cup of tea. You can dislike a character while still acknowledging that they’re stunning. That’s why I can’t believe anyone would genuinely think Ayato is ugly. His visuals are practically flawless, and I can’t even imagine how Japanese fans would react if they saw someone calling him unattractive, when these are just FEW of their reactions.

As I mentioned earlier, if you’re not drawn to his design or personality, that’s alright, no problem at all. What really matters is avoiding spreading hate and not trying to convince others that he’s unattractive. As long as you don’t do that, you’re good.

Thank you for enjoying my page though!

[night-market-if]

Helloo, while I agree with you that Milo is also a victim, I also think that the other anons are also justified in feeling that way about him. I'm really sorry if I'm wrong, but the way you reply to other people's thoughts, about things that you don't have the same opinion on, feels like you're telling them that they are wrong to feel that way.

Let's unpack this for a minute. Because I think this is a great opportunity.

I am not invalidating that anyone has an opinion. They are allowed to have an opinion. And, if they approached me like you just did, I would most likely respond to that opinion in a constructive way. But someone messaging me and just throwing out a random feeling they have that is negative, and then getting mad at me in return when I don't agree with them, is childish. I will not be apologizing for that because most of the people that are "angry" about something, come at me in a really negative context. And then when I state something differently (without attacking them even) they get irrationally upset. I mean, a prime example is me saying that Milo is also a victim. That there can be more than one victim. I then got a response saying I was the one flying off the handle. Following that was another response telling me that I am a hated author. That my game is terrible. That I am a bad person. I mean, think about that for a minute here. Does the response corelate with what I said? Does it warrant that? No.

People are always valid to have an opinion, but there are two things to say about it. Most of the time, the people coming at me, are internet trolls. Not actual readers. And I'm sorry, we were indoctrinated at a young age to "ignore the bullies" and I just don't think that is the right response. Because now we have a generation that ignored the bullies and they got way worse because no one had a social contract to call them out.

Two, the ones that are not trolls, are lacking a lot of media literacy. That is actually an extreme problem within our society. And, since I am the author, it is my job to offer what I was trying to say within my story. That may not align with someone's opinion. But me having my own opinion, does not warrant someone getting mad at me. I didn't get mad at them so why am I suddenly greeted with toxicity.

I get where you are coming from saying that people are allowed to have their own opinion. And I have stated over and over again that everyone is valid for it. I'm not even saying for someone to change their mind or go away. But, someone else's opinion does not invalidate my own. Just as my own does not invalidate theirs. And if someone feels like it does, and this is going to sound cruel, but it is not my responsibility to regulate that for them. That most likely stems from a personal standpoint. I am not responsible for someone being offended by what I have to say about my own story and my own fictional characters. You don't see me coming on here and crying out that someone on anon made me "feel bad". That's not a thing.

There is a difference between just saying something out loud and engaging in a conversation. Constructive criticism is where you offer a opinion, give why you are offering it, and then explain how it does or does not work for the narrative. Then, I can come back, ask questions, respond with what maybe I was intending, and figure out a better way to get what I was intending across.

Non constructive criticism is just coming to me as an anon, and saying they are angry and want to hurt someone. Or that they don't like something of my story without giving why.

To further some points. Milo is a triggering character. I knew this from the beginning. The things that he did is not for the faint of heart and speaks to betrayal. And a lot of people who have been in a situation where they feel betrayed, are going to respond negatively to that. But, that is on them. That is for them to work through and own. It is not the responsibility of my story to change because of that. And coming on to say that you hate a character and want to harm them. Or coming on to say that I'm a bad writer. Or even coming on to say that I'm hated on reddit (to which I say, isn't everyone?) is providing nothing to this community, world, or our author reader relationship. It is done solely with the intent to try and hurt someone because the reader themselves was hurt.

To end this, I am going to make this statement. Telling me it "feels" like I am telling someone they are wrong is based in a personal feeling towards a situation. It is not based in facts. It is not based in anything that I have said. And while everyone has a right to their opinion, just because I am an author and a content creator, does not mean I don't get to defend my story or my characters. If I was being racists, sexist, transphobic? All things to come at someone for. But because I wrote something that makes people angry and they don't want to continue going on a journey with the characters and would rather just block their minds to character growth? I can't do anything about that. If there is no conversation they want to engage in, if they simply want to come on and troll me, then they need to not be surprised when I treat them the same way they are treating me.

I hope this makes more sense and provides some understanding.

Zinnia

[v1rg1nm4ry]

Short stereotypical astrology assumptions/observations that may or may not be superficial, controversial and unserious but informative

This highly excludes crucial aspects and such so is why this is titled as “stereotypical”

By V1rg1nm4ry

Cancer Venus in 11H movies probably make you cry you big crybaby

Gemini Venus/Gemini mercury/suns

You’re Peter Pan, commitment issues, I’m young forever! Would be their quote because they almost never grow up or want to

And you’re a sapiosexual that probably moans or lick the words off of a text while debating a long stimulating conversation with someone that can reciprocate your intellectual curiosity especially of your interests

Gemini mars

You probably like nerdy intellectually stimulating/forthright people

Just very youthful/giddy/passionate/loud/macho people and you’re a sucker for them

Leo Venus

You like childish people

No, a literal woman/man child with a very childish bright yet egocentric, expressive, cheeky attitude and nature. They’re practically your weakness and you like people who bring the biggest child out of you

Pisces south nodes/Virgo risings/North node in 1st house-south node in 7th house

You have a saviour complex and you’re not a hero. Quit the fantasy of fixing or saving people and form boundaries

Libra south nodes

Stop agreeing with everyone or anyone in a conversation and form your own opinion and decision on things

Scorpio south nodes/ Taurus north node

You probably had a troubled past, I find people with this engage in rebellious actives in early life or have an abusive nature and experienced transforming events in their life. Which is why Taurus is in the NN to balance your controlling/tense nature. In which means to let go of control.

Having this north node is a growth to realize your life is yours, that your pain or past does not define your life in any way.

Leo rising/moon/chiron in the 1st

Not everyone will like you and just learn to accept that

Saturn in the 1st/saturnian ascendants

You looked like a very young grandma/grandpa when you were younger and age backwards

Aries mercury/aries in third house/Mars conjunct mercury

‘Think before you speak’ but then you would do the total opposite of that. For example, you’re at a funeral and you call out the bad choice of outfit of the dead person and everyone are in suspense over what you just said but you do not see the problem because the only problem to you in that moment is that outfit.

You call people out almost unnecessarily and think what you say is correct and constructive, but in reality you are just a combative jerk and a hater

Pisces mercury/neptune conjunct mercury/pisces in third house

Stop disassociating and be present for once. We get it. you got a vision of the future

Scorpio Pluto

What’s it like carrying and dealing with the 10 pounds of generational family trauma that nobody in your family wanted to deal with

Neptune/pisces in the 1st house

You hold soft submissive bug eyes

Mars in the 1st house

You admire/envy people who work out or are athletic. You may easily attract aggressors and competitors as well or even physical/verbal abuse in some way. This can go both ways.

Mercury conjunct Saturn/saturn/capricorn in the third house

“I have no mouth and I must scream”

Is basically this aspect/placement. They can’t talk freely or felt restricted in communication which leads to anxiety issues, speech impediments/learning difficulties and social anxiety. They just won’t feel they can ever speak and express their mind unless it’s necessary to.

Libra/chiron in the second house

Are your desires really yours, Or do you just want what everyone has that you don’t?

Lilith in 11th house

Outcast, loner, weirdo, felt unwanted in any community or social event and convention. They will not conform to social norms in some way even if they deny that they don’t realize it in them themselves

And If they were to tell you that they didn’t have toxic friends or the strangest social relationships they would be lying. And it’s either their friends want to have sex with them, or them themselves.

Virgo/gemini/mercury in the 12th house

I find having a mercurial influence in the 12th house can indicate people that will go against what you say even if you had decent intentions. In which can result to attracting a form of verbal abuse/gaslighting

Sun square mars aspect

If you have sun square mars, you likely have trouble dealing your anger in a healthy way. The sun rejects mars and how it expresses itself conflicts mars which results in suppressing anger and fosters resentment

[subconsciousmysteries]

enneagram is a game, don't overdose, DSM musings

Have a very knowledgeable friend who's sick of enneagram, not the legit spiritualist version of it a la Almaas and before him, but the version where people go around trying to "accurately type" "correctly type" everyone else, including themselves.

she says it's just a social power game and she's literally right. I've never seen any enneagram discourse end constructively. even i've been guilty of misusing enneagram, because there's no natural progression to discussing "my type" "that person's type", other than forcing either others or yourself (or both) to identify with the ego fixations that we're supposed to be transcending.

at best enneagram is something to be picked up occasionally and then rapidly put down and forgotten about for a long while so that you can experience life without the filter of enneagram getting in the way. you can draw profound new insights from personality theories for a very brief window in time before you start overdosing on them and distorting your reality with them. it's like acid / LSD. it's a once-every-few-months drug (at most) and that's assuming you have an eventful life with lots of novelty.

(this goes for any personality framework btw. MBTI, IV, Big Five, DSM personality disorders, are all included)

coz when you try to process life through the framework of personality theories, you start to see everything through the lens of your own confirmation bias very quickly. this confirmation bias leads you to miss essential parts of other people's personalities, which interferes with your ability to form meaningful bonds and connections, on top of causing other problems. and this isn't a skill issue. there is no way around this problem of personality theory distorting reality if you use it too much, because personality theory is subjective by nature. there are no clear scientific metrics to tell you that your observations about other people's personalities are wrong and you need to rethink your approach. Most who try to create these scientific metrics just end up becoming dictators, imposing their personal interpretation of how humans work and who everyone else secretly is onto others, with no objective basis.

the problem I'm describing doesn't just describe enneatards online. it plagues the entire field of psychology which is heavily dependent on personality theories. this is where the endless debate about "is psychology a science or an art?" comes from. as I've talked about before, the DSM is little different to an abstract, interpretive personality type theory. there are no objective metrics (i.e. a brain scan) to confidently tell if someone has a DSM personality disorder. diagnosis is 100% based on observations and reports of your behavior and personality, and how this picture of you fits into boxes arbitrarily defined by some other person. just like personality typing is.

despite its myriad of issues I have to praise the DSM for one thing: at least it has the courage to call a disorder a disorder. It admits that good and bad exist. that there is a hierarchy of morality. unlike personality theories which too often try to pass off dysfunctional traits as "just another type" "just another part of the human experience that we have to accept and cater to uwu" "all personality types are equal".

but you have a lot of people in the psychiatric community who are dangerously changing the way we view disorders. they want to turn personality disorders from rightfully looked-down-upon spiritual ailments, to normalized "disabilities" that deserve to be catered to. they've turned psychiatry into just as much of a moral relativist, narcissist-enabling clusterfuck as online personality discourse is. the type of people who say, "uwu Cluster Bs are valid it's just a different way of being it's not wrong it's not a disorder". "uwu delusions that people were born in the wrong body need to be coddled and enabled" are leading this change.

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

When I was a teenager, between 13 and 20, I was depressed. Nothing unusual and nothing extreme. Just the ordinary low moods, self-hate, physical slowness and feeling of hopelessness.

But I didn't spend all those seven years in a low mood. Rather frequently I felt tinges of hope. On such occasions, my depressive state disappeared entirely and I became like a normal person. As long as I could uphold my hope of having found a decent opportunity to work toward a future, my depression disappeared completely.

Having spent seven years with on-and-off depression, I prepared for an entire life like that. Some people simply are mentally unstable and I was one of those, l guessed. It turned out not to be the case. As I got married, had children and moved to the countryside, my depressive symptoms vanished entirely, never yet to return (more about that in How I cured myself with evolutionary psychology).

This sharp turn-around in combination with the rapid on-off nature of my depression made me form a hypothesis: That normal-range depression is not a disorder, but an adaptation to a perceived lack of opportunity. Apparently, I wasn't depressed as a teenager because I'm a depressive person, but because I didn't see enough opportunities to be constructive. In order to act constructively, people need a vision to work toward. If working toward such a vision is impossible in the current environment, doing as little as possible until the environment changes is the best alternative. That way, the depressed individual saves energy and lowers risks. If there is nothing worthwhile to do anyway, doing as little as possible might be the best alternative.

The rank theory of depression

I formed that sketchy hypothesis almost two decades ago. Since then, I have been on the outlook for similar ideas. I didn't find anything until a few months ago when I stumbled over an idea called the rank theory of depression, explained in a book called Evolutionary Psychiatry - A New Beginning (1996) by psychiatrists John Price and Anthony Stevens. The rank theory of depression was originally developed by John Price in the 1980s. Price noticed that monkeys became uncommunicative following a competitive loss. Price meant that the behavior evolved in order to make the loser monkeys clearly signal lack of ambition. This should improve their chances to escape further conflict and adapt to their new lower status, Price theorized. He thought that the posture and demeanor of the monkeys looked similar to that of a depressed person.

John Price and Anthony Stevens interpreted human depression as a variety of monkey depression. While monkeys who have suffered an important loss display a body language of low self-confidence, humans with depression tend to say and think un-confident things like “I'm useless” and “everyone would be better off without me”. That way, ancestral humans who suffered a loss in rank were allowed to stay alive. If they were constantly demeaning themselves, the winner did not find them threatening.

The rank theory of depression clearly makes sense for monkeys. There is no reason to question the observation that monkeys show signs of depression when they lose rank. Also, human depression is likely to have its origins in monkey-style rank-loss depression. A condition that is as widespread as depression is likely to be old.

However, mostly I think that Price and Stevens exaggerate the similarities between monkey depression and human depression. There are indeed many humans who become depressed because they have lost social status, exactly like the monkeys. But far from all humans who are depressed have experienced such a loss.

There is more to human life than status

The number one problem with applying the rank theory of depression on humans is that most human societies actually do not explicitly rank their members. Instead, human social life revolves around the less rigid concept of social status. That might seem like a minor quantitative difference, but it makes a very important difference between human life and monkey life. For a monkey, rank is the thing with life. The one and big opportunity in monkey life is to rise in social rank. Monkeys don't build things, explore reality or engage in the arts. They just compete over who is the best monkey. The one big reason for a monkey to feel hopeful is the prospect of rising in rank. And thereby, the one big reason for a monkey to feel hopeless is the loss of social rank.

Human life definitely is about social status too. But not in the same simple, clear-cut way. For humans, the road to higher social status is more or less indirect. Competing openly over social status is looked down upon. [...]

Monkeys act depressed when they miss their one and only opportunity in life. Humans get depressed when they fail to see any of the many opportunities there can be in human life. For this reason, I think that the rank theory of depression would be more accurate if it was renamed the opportunity theory of depression.

The quest for unexchangeability

Then a simple question follows: What are humans actually seeking? If it is not higher rank pure and simple, what is it? Basically, I think it can be condensed into two points:

Being useful

Being liked and appreciated by people around - in other words, having that usefulness recognized and transformed into love, friendship and social status.

Different people care about those two points to different degrees. As previously mentioned, the people who care too much about point 2 and seek too much appreciation for too little usefulness are very much complained about. [...]

These extremes aside, people in the normal range have the above two goals: Being useful on different planes and being recognized as such. “Useful” must be interpreted in the wide range of the word. Humans wish to be desired on several plans: Intimate, familial, social, societal. A human being will not be satisfied with only being appreciated on a professional plan or for being useful for lowly tasks that no one else wants to perform. Humans want to be unexchangeable: Useful in a way that only they can be, here and now.

A quest for unexchangeability makes sense in an evolutionary perspective. An unexchangeable wife will not suddenly be replaced by a younger and prettier co-wife whose children get all the opportunities. An unexchangeable husband will not be cheated on, ridiculed, deserted and unable to find a new wife. An unexchangeable band member will be awarded their share of material and reproductive resources. An unexchangeable friend will be defended and warned of danger, also at some cost and risk.

So while monkeys seek higher rank, humans, who live in more complex societies, seek the status of unexchangeables in every area where they operate. The higher the risk of being exchanged, the more dangerous life becomes. In the wider meaning of the word, unexchangeability is a form of social status. But it is in the complex human sense of the word, where one and the same person has multiple levels of social status depending on circumstances. A person's social status rises and falls with the change of company and even with the change of conversational subject. While there are ways of simply being a better monkey, there are no ways of simply being a better human. Instead, humans carve out specialized niches for themselves.

The point of pain

I believe it is the failure to carve out such a niche that leads to most cases of depression among humans. Typically, people get depressed when it seems to them that what they are doing will not lead them to the level of success they hope for and they can see no other alternatives.

I don't say that all cases of depression are caused by a perceived lack of opportunity. Humans can feel physical pain for no reason at all, even in body parts that are no longer there. Then it should be entirely possible for humans to feel psychological pain for no reason at all as well.

However, most physical pain is a signal: Whatever you are doing that causes this, stop it. It wouldn't be strange if most psychological pain was of the same nature: A signal telling the individual that a change of circumstances would be a good idea.

In an ancient environment, individuals who didn't feel competent or appreciated, or both, and who didn't make a good subsistence, had very good reasons to do something differently so they would become competent and appreciated. In situations when they saw no opportunities for that, doing as little as possible might have been the best alternative: Instead of provoking the people who think you are of little use, just put yourself in waiting mode instead. If socializing can't lead to valuable alliances, then social withdrawal is the low-risk option. A depressed person is doing the bare minimum, because there is not much upside to doing things anyway. There are only risks. That way, depression is a kind of social freezing until better times.

This, I think, is what teenagers tend to suffer from. They have little status to lose to begin with. Instead, they despair over the lack of constructive things to do here and now in order to work towards a status of exchangeability. And adults are not that much better off, either. On a material level, capitalism has brought great wealth. But the price for that wealth is that we have been explicitly reduced to exchangeable units, valued in numbers. The more of human life that is reduced to numbers that way, the more exchangeable we become.

[icelogged]

soooooooooo right abt coquette being used for regressive femininity im not even familiar w it but it's just kinda really frustrating to see something u found yourself in being used for something almost diametrically opposite to it

EMMM one of my favourite gay people on my phone or however it goes

“—used for something almost diametrically opposite to it”.

that’s what gets me the most. the reclamation of girlhood lost to trauma repackaged into patriarchal bigoted dogma but written in a glitter pen.

i went off longer than i expected, so i went full throttle— oleta’s soapbox moment. tysm for this gift cliff 🫀💞 I will try to use it well :3 @ everyone else if you are not acquainted with nuance or im generalizing (not all xyz) don’t interact with post maybe sit outside without your for 15 minutes. i’m in flare today and can’t deal with people thinking i am attacking a specific group, im targeting them specifically when we’re literally strangers etc etc

just because you put a racially “diverse” [one girl of colour] group of VS models as your header, reblogged *“poc coquettes” are valid and think women are inherently “divine” doesn’t mean your opinion on body hair [a true neutral; as it doesn’t care what you identify as, it just grows (and yes there are exceptions)] and femininity, want for your boyfriend to think for you, holding his finger instead of his hand to make you feel small and demure, constructing every facet of your being down to smell whatever corporations say “is” coquette—doesn’t mean your idea of femininity is extremely regressive, Mary. and it literally does not serve you.

when people speak out about this the response is so sinister and calculated; suddenly these concerned persons are anti-feminist. “let women have fun and feel good”. uhm hey did you know that your pleasure shouldn’t the only indicator in deciding what is “good” or not.

how are you going to tell me that saying **woke trad wife aestheticisms and waiting to see what the influencer it girl of week is wearing before shopping is anti-feminist. it’s like the definition of feminism has become freedom for women to do whatever they want [instead fighting for worldwide liberation and then equity]. feminism is anti-feminist because you told a woman no… smells western selfishness to me. “if it feels good then it can’t be bad”. so it’s feminist to agree with the man who ended eating women he said this to [fictional, chose this example because i think Hayden is a kinda genius and i so thankful work for so many reasons but the discussions and awareness her “silly little story” has shifted the trajectory of many]

this all very by design and social media amplifies it. [I know i draw tiktok through the mud every chance i get but] eras don’t even last 5 years now and that shift can be marked through tiktok’s journey from being musical.ly to what it is now.

musical.ly [branded as fun social media for youth including underage persons] -> oops we had such a bad pedophile problem we gotta overhaul everything -> tiktok [cringe, because it was just musical.ly but called something different and people think people especially kids minding their own business and having fun lipsyncing is cringe, 2018?2019?] -> summer 2019; guys it’s just like vine, are feeling that nostalgia son?(it was not like vine) -> im locked in my house wah wah (people are dying steven) i am so bored and addicted to technology that when i refresh my feeds and there’s no new content i don’t know what to do with myself time to try this new app. did i mention im horny and my porn addiction got worse <3 -> tiktok having to scramble again because of all the new adult content. thus the tiktok is now an app for everyone rebrand -> disguised ads as unsponsored content -> becomes a profitable app -> you can’t say lesbian but you can sure romanticize the nuclear family -> (we are here. i’ll be talking more specifically about regressive femininity especially the kind found in the “coquette”community) femininity is womanhood, it is a specific checklist and if you don’t follow it you’ll never be a lizzy grant waif key west kitten soft girl old money female manipulator (i’ll never get that one, Jesus). shaping your body and presentation to what is deemed desirable and feminine is self care and self care costs money thus hating your natural self is actually bettering it. let the original self die and be just like her [can be anyone, tuned to their likes and opinion on beauty] and don’t forget to preserve your youth [as if aging wasn’t a natural process and something you could stop if you have the money]. older male validation should be your lifeblood, they aren’t like the silly boys at your school, don’t you want fall in love and have a big strong man to protect you that takes advantage of your naïveté to control you but that’s okay because you’re an angel starlet and he has money because he’s older (no he doesn’t he’s in debt Julia like everyone else) <3 but when you hit 26 you might as well be ***milf. be warned hubby gets bored of “milfs” because they’re too harden by the world by then, seen too much, too hard to shape into the little maid sex doll of his dreams so he trolls for ****eighteen years olds again. “if it’s legal :purple_devilface:” etc etc etc ! #coquette

*i’m going to be real with y’all… the use of “poc” [people of colour, person of colour] as a word, not as it’s true form as an acronym has taken years off my life. ‘person/people of colour coquette�� doesn’t make sense. while we’re at it… nblm/w also ruined my life specifically /hyperbolic. e.g nblm reads; ‘non-binary loving male’ when you mean ‘male loving non-binary’. as wlw reads; ‘woman loving women’ also interpreted as women loving women, though such wouldn’t work as smoothly for nblw etc

** i miss when woke actually meant something, aave and ball terminology becoming universal means nothing is sacred

*** the way men in their 60s are dilfs sometimes dilfs all the way to the grave— women who are 27 are milfs… but only three years later they’re hags! oh and men apparently somehow when you reach 30 you’re a certified daddy, unaffected by ageism and your desirability to people who’ve only been adults for less than five years is bass boosted supported by the patriarchy… that sounds familiar doesn’t it? desirability sure has a short shelf life for women and they have to care about it, agonize over it, spend all their money over it but that should be a post in itself *adds to my drafts <3* honestly i do write all the things i said i would i just have ocd and im waiting for a made up arbitrary time to post that is 100% determined by mental illness, perfectionism and subconscious self hate because i totally don’t consciously hate myself anymore because im the sweetest girl in town (haha get it?) and think im martyr gifted from god but i am really into self harming and sabotaging <3 thanks trauma you’ve made my life so interesting ! my brain gets more wrinkly everyday trying to navigate it <33333

****IN MY OPINION people shouldn’t be identified as adults when they are eighteen and nineteen but somebody really wanted to fuck someone’s daughter :/ making me think of another one my ****’s theses; all evil in the world stems from greed. now if society was founded in science not feelings adults would be 25 and older as the frontal cortex develops by then but i can see how that would be an eugenics nightmare as neurodivergent people etc can develop it later though i can’t see this hypothetical society checking everyone’s brain before deeming them an adult because a). you have to wait even longer to legally sexualize them b). it would give everyone a free mandatory health check up but that is also another conversation

[brainrotallthewaydown1312]

my grandparents and my uncle have always been my support system in my family. but they live far away and my uncle is often busy with work, so even though we are very close, we don't get to talk very much.

partly because of that and partly because he is a vet who doesn't talk about politics and has lived in the south most of my life, and partly it felt less weird hearing my dead name from them, when I came out to my uncle I told him my new name and everything and I told him it was okay if he didn't change over right away because I knew it was a learning curve and that he supports me either way. by the time I got that far, he was already changing my name in his phone. to my full chosen name. my name has lore. I have my dead name, a nickname that he'd heard in passing and that my friends still use that was my transition name, and my proper name which was totally new to him. and he immediately changed to my proper name and hasn't gotten it wrong once.

he asks questions and talks (sometimes) about what he sees of queerness and queer rights in the world. he uses old words that aren't right anymore. and he conceptualizes things in a way that is unintentionally othering. and he is a little awkward in his attempts at support for something he doesn't feel like he understands. but it's all so genuine and earnest.

a while ago, there was a new hr person at his job who wanted to change the bathrooms at his office. they were all single stall gender neutral and she wanted to gender segregate them so "women could have a safe space" in the office. and my uncle called me to ask about the appropriate way to confront her about this. he laid out what it was she was saying and his concerns.

she was basically staying within the exact perfect social justice language and saying having no bathroom for just women was violating and that it was inappropriate to expect men to be in the bathroom with women's menstrual products.

his concerns were that nobody had ever mentioned this as a problem before, but it had been complimented by employees and clients as convenient and accepting. and changing it would be inconvenient for everyone because it would make it so that everyone had fewer accessible bathrooms because it would go from everyone being able to use all the bathrooms to everyone having exactly half the options. he also had concerns that it would be alienating to trans people he knew to be in the office that she did not know about.

in this conversation, my uncle called an enby a transsexual, regularly fumbled the difference between male/female and man/woman, and used the word transvestite. he also made several other mistakes about the language to talk about the situation. some of it was dated and how it would have been talked about in the 80s and 90s when he was a kid. some of it was just wrong. but all of it was unintentional and he was genuinely trying to be supportive and helpful. I did correct his language on a few things but for the most part I let it slide because he was trying and that was what counted.

on the other hand, that hr person was doing it all perfectly from the perspective of social justice. she was hired specifically to manage and improve social conditions in the office. and she knew exactly how to do what she wanted to do. she went to the CEO (a socially clueless man) and said what she wanted with her fancy words and her carefully constructed argument about safety and the comfort of women and started to get her way. but from what I heard about her position and what she had to say about things, she is just a terf. my uncle had to go to the CEO and carefully point out to him his concerns in a way that wouldn't out anyone for this to get stopped.

I am always just as wary of perfectly constructed activist language because while it is used by allies and activists and people in our community, it is also used by people who want to cause us harm. people who purposely learn our language so they can use it against us. to cause divides in our community so there are fewer of of for them to fight with from the side of the majority. and while the unpolished language is more abrasive on the surface because it is used overtly against us in a more aggressive way, it is just as often the language of the unfamiliar. or even just older people. a lot of it isn't wrong exactly, it's just dated. the language of the activists in the 80s is basically a crash course of what not to say now. and even in the 00s it looked very different than it does now.

don't look at how something is said, look at what it says between the lines. both of the quotes in the original post are coming from people outside the community who don't fully get it. just like both positions in the story about my uncle. when you see someone talking about us from their outside perspective, ask yourself is it saying "I support you even if I don't get you" or "I don't get this but it's no skin off my teeth" or is it saying "I know exactly how you feel about this and I don't care because you make me uncomfortable" or "I think you are dangerous because you are different from me and I will do everything I can to mirror that perceived danger"

the people using our language against us want you to miss the difference because it helps them further their efforts to stamp us out. and the people supporting us with imperfect language will eventually get tired and stop trying if they are always responded to with hostility.

if you have it in you, make the big corrections as gently as you can and wait for questions. the more patient you are, the more questions you'll get and the quicker they will learn. if you don't, that is totally valid. do your best to either be patient or remove yourself, because it's likely they've been snapped at from people on both sides of it as much as you've heard that language be used from the bad side of it

"The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I'm not a trannie or a fag so I don't care, just give 'em the medicine they need."

"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."

One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.

[voidingintotheshout]

Tw: transphobia

Oh my goodness, I hate that man so much! He’s just frustratingly stupid. Listen to this shit:

“I'm the father of a two-year-old daughter,” Vance said. “I don't want her going into athletic competitions where I'm terrified she's gonna get bludgeoned to death because we're allowing a six-foot one male to compete with her in sports,” Vance said.

Like, that’s not how this works. Your two year old child is not going to get beaten to death by anyone. Like that’s not how it works. Two-year-olds are not in competition with like I don’t know… College students? Like what the fuck? He knows that’s not how this shit works. He knows this is not how gender affirming care works. He’s just taking advantage that the people who he’s trying to get the votes of don’t know anything about how this shit works.

But I know this is where I lose everybody, but as a Muslim, I absolutely hate this, because in the Middle East, they don’t talk about gender and all of this kind of stuff. It’s just not considered an appropriate topic of conversation and most Muslims know someone who they are pretty sure is gay and as long as that person doesn’t make a big deal of it, they don’t say anything (not that that’s perfect but it’s better than lgbtq witch-hunts). However, since the freaking Republicans feel like they should have opinions on everything, even if it’s just an opinion based on their own bigotry, now, increasingly, every single mosque, and every single Imam feels the need to offer their two cents on whether being trans is valid and whether it’s sinful, and whether it’s a problem or whether it’s a danger. Like literally, just today some bro centered Islamic discussion, called the “Imam Cave“ is doing a conversation about whether gender is assigned at birth or is a social construct. Why?!? How is this helping anyone? 

Like I know that I’m just some nobody gay Muslim convert, but it just drives me crazy. Like it’s completely meaningless because most of the LGBTQ people I know are not Muslims and doing this armchair quarterback about the good and evil of these people is just gonna end up getting people hurt. It’s just gonna end up making parents feel like “doing the right thing“ means throwing their kid out until they “live right“.

I love Islam, I know that doesn’t make sense to most people, but it’s just as beautiful thing That gives purpose and direction in my life, but increasingly because of this rhetoric from Trump and all of his cronies, every single person in Islam, feels like they need to be commenting on LGBTQ issues, and specifically about trans people, and whether they are a “danger”. They’re not a danger?!? They’re just trying to leave their lives! I hate this because it’s just something I see you again and again in American religions that, unlike a lot of other countries, Americans can’t have a religion that’s about their own spiritual path. The American way of practicing religion always ends up being about what everyone else is doing wrong. It’s like the Gladys Kravitz school of religious dogma. I actually wrote an Islamic parable earlier today about this very topic.

It bothers me so much that so many of these Muslims are are becoming just is outwardly focused and judgmental and hypocritical as the Christians that have always been their acting like their crap doesn’t stink. It’s just so irritating. I think maybe it’s just because the mosque I go to is not attended by a lot of people who are born and raised in Muslim countries, who don’t really talk about it as much, but even in mosques with mostly people from Muslim countries,  The Imams are still doing the scare tactics in their speeches about these dangers that you need to be aware of as a parent. It makes me so frustrated and so sad because it’s just like – the trans person that works at Trader Joe’s is not hurting anybody. They just want to have a life that is full of joy and satisfaction and they had a harder road to get there than most people and it doesn’t have anything to do with some Imam who just wants to get people to put more money in the plate by making them scared. 

I just wish Americans didn’t need to ruin absolutely everything. Everything America wants to engage with they turn to shit.

Stay safe out there y’all.

Jummah Mubarak I guess.

[ccrossstitchh]

loserdom: an actual word

The state or condition being a loser. 

Spring of 2024 was the first time in my life I actually felt like a loser. I’d had low points before, naturally, as do all teenagers, specifically teenage girls, do. But none had felt as deliciously lonely as those months nearly the end of my first year at university. It wasn’t a low point as such; I was bordering on an unhappiness, but had yet to cross it. But loserdom; that was the region I had steadily crossed into, with the decline of my time being spent with actual other people. Gone was the end of summer and early autumn that I had so treasured, one filled with nights out, alcohol, gossip, and tears, a perpetual state of change in emotions. No, my new spring was actually perpetual. It was spent alone. 

Now, saying I was a loser who spent all my time alone was a disservice to one person and one person alone; my best friend, *****. But she was back home, I was here, and no amount of texting and calling would change the fact that I had barely any actual friends in Kirikiriroa. Besides, she and I had both declared we were losers, separately, which brings forth the logical conclusion that the addition of one loser to another does not change one’s already dire social position. So, loser. 

My experience in halls, I felt, was very much shared with a lot of my peers, but the nature of it meant that it felt unique to me. Surrounded by others my age, teenagers, almost adults, young people, all going through the same but different things, it should’ve been easy to not feel alone. But the solid concrete walls that physically separated our rooms did more than just that. I could always hear voices and footsteps from the halls and others’ rooms, but these walls felt so confining and immobilizing that it was very rare for me to actually venture out to see what was happening. It did the same to most others; I knew that as I walked up and down the hallway, that most others would be listening to me pass their door, but never got up to open it. We were all together, yet sometimes it felt that I was the only one to live and reside and sleep in my room. 

The leftover residue from high school was yet to leave us, and I do credit that to how isolating university felt. The desire to be cool, look cool, the fear of others, approaching them, talking to them, being judged by them, was still so present in all of our minds, most solitary people kept to themselves. It was funny, we would all cram into one room for three meals a day, all three hundred of us over the space of an hour and a half, everyday, and yet I never once used any of those opportunities to sit and meet someone new. I don’t think anyone else did either. I sat with the same two groups of people I knew, and when I didn’t, I sat by myself. 

Social media made whatever I was feeling a thousand times worse. Seeing my few long distance friends not reply to my messages and then the next second on Instagram with their new university besties hurt, even when I knew they had it as rough as I did. Seeing random girls from high school, old acquaintances, people I barely knew living the life I had imagined for myself only drove the hurt deeper. Nevermind that I knew social media was a fabrication; a carefully constructed story of what people want you to think, I still felt so far behind everyone else. The thing that hurt me the most, I believe, was my assured awareness of the dangers and problems of the issues I was facing. 

I thought I knew what I was dealing with when it came to envy, social media, friends, etc. This perceived awareness meant that I failed to see how badly these things were hurting me until it was too late, because I believed myself to be too smart to fall into the same trap that others had before me. Surprise, surprise, this only made everything worse in the end. And, turns out, you cannot avoid these coming of age lessons by being smart; like all hard things in life, you only learn the lesson by going through it. Hindsight has always been 20/20. 

The full acceptance and relish of my new statehood came from one thing; getting off my phone. It was hard, and it had taken me the better part of four years to finally get where I am now. Everytime a lull in my day would come, the urge to reach for my phone or something to scroll would make itself present. I could feel the eye in my mind looking, searching, wanting the easy haze of doomscrolling. Those moments were most uncomfortable; my mind felt fuzzy and achy, wanting the familiarity of being able to completely surrender to emptiness. It was a type of restlessness, but eventually I grew to ignore it. Again, this took the better part of four years, but finally, finally, I was able to get off my phone. 

Access to the internet had almost become an actual tangible thing in my mind. I saw it above me, almost like a door, a passage, a connection to everyone and everything going on in the world. Because that's what my phone was; the passage to someone or something else. Like a portal, my phone never felt like a flat object when I was watching it, rather something infinite that I could reach into and constantly entertain myself with. When it was gone, I felt blind. For the first time since I was around 13, I was off trend. I was off the algorithm. It is embarrassing to admit how much I relied on social media and my phone to tell me what to do. I used it for inspiration, books to read, things to do, I found music, songs, films to watch, clothes to buy and where. I was constantly moving forward through trends, ideas, consuming what was the new thing each and every day. Now, ever since I had deleted those apps, I felt like I was almost standing still. It felt like the breath was being released from my lungs. A rest.

I could be me again, unfiltered and uninfluenced. 

I still feel blind, but I fill this uncertainty with other media. I watch films, read books, draw and stretch. Neglect my studies and the task of finding a summer job for my hobbies. My schedule does not expand to accommodate other people, but the things I, as a child, loved and forgot about. I call my sister and my mother. I go to bed early. I cannot escape my loserdom, and someday soon I will want to, but not now.  

This is where the ‘delicious’ part of the deliciously lonely comes in. Delicious, like a delicious burn or pain. Alcohol down my throat or smoke in my lungs. I am a loser in the cool, strange way all movie protagonists are. Mysterious and interesting, alive and beautiful, even if no one sees it. I can be that on my own, with no validation. 

Slowly, slowly, did the weight of other people’s thoughts begin to wear off. What I had imagined was them throwing their judgments onto me was really just me throwing them onto myself, pulling their strings and making their mouths move like puppets’, to cast their words like curse onto me. Once I, the puppetmaster, stopped, I failed to see what had even prompted me to begin. These peers of mine that I had been so quick to demonize, easily let me fade from their lives, because ultimately, being a good thing or not, they did not care at all about me. 

Last Sunday I sat on the grass and let the feeling of the damp ground beneath me comfort me. I let the smoke of my one cigarette fill my lungs, and the nicotine swirl to my head. I was reading Watership Down, my father’s favorite book, and was thinking of him. I sat, undisturbed, for an hour, thinking, reading, smoking. Alone. 

I watch the sunrises and sunsets from my lovely third floor window. I let rabbits and stories comfort me, their faith in their god wash over me. For a few moments, when I look out to the sky and think of Hazel-rah and his Frith, I don’t feel afraid. I watch films like Midnight in Paris, and feel inspired again. In the film, a version of Hemingway proclaims it is only in the moment of the truest love can man escape his truest fear; death. I know this to be true. Nothing will replace the feeling of genuine love and human connection, but for the time being, the love I have for myself and the nature I get to look out to every morning, is enough to placate me. 

[the-expose-on-girls]

Goals and Aspirations

The purpose of The Expose is to make people aware of and speak out against toxic women, while providing a place of healing and community for victims of female bullies. To this end, most posts focus on calling out the negative. So, as a little break from the sometimes depressing norm, we will take a look at the positive characteristics that make a woman a GEM, a beneficial person to be around to any degree, and someone we should all aspire to become.

Virtue

Regardless of how she labels herself---religion, belief circle, what have you---she possesses and practices core virtues in her day to day life. Honesty, compassion, modesty and humility, loyalty, patience, dedication, just to name a few. You know she is the real deal when these qualities are not something she brags about possessing and practices even when no one is watching.

Self improvement

Healthy relationship with attention

This quality can manifest itself in many different ways from person to person. One girl might devote her free time to hobby classes like painting or ballet, while another may study tutorials on hair and makeup to become more self sufficient. Self improvement is so important for humanity. Those who focus on "leveling up" spend their time doing constructive activities that help them learn, grow, and thrive. Some of these endeavors have the added benefit of improving the world around them. With each passing year, they become a better person, adding talents, skills, and knowledge to their repertoire. They become much more interesting people. They expand their social circles.

This goes for personal characteristics, as well. She is self aware enough to see where she falls short, where she should improve, and then she aims for just that.

When she is praised for an achievement or a quality that she possesses, her first impulse is the divert that praise onto someone who helped her reach that point. She recognizes that her accomplishments in life are not reached through her efforts or talents alone, but with great contributions from friends and family.

ALSO, when someone else is the recipient of attention and praise, she is right there cheering them on. She is completely comfortable with someone else being the star of the show.

She doesn't thirst for the spotlight. She doesn't feel driven to be the center of everyone's attention at all times.

Creation vs consumption

The majority of her time, efforts, and resources go into creation, not consumption. Amazon wishlist? What's that? No, she is too busy building a life for herself, bringing all of her dreams and ideas into existence, to waste time online shopping, constantly thirsting over trivial material satisfaction. Whatever realm or medium her talents are in, she is always exercising and improving them, whether it be writing a book, learning a new language for her next adventure, taking classes to start her own business one day, staying up late to paint in her studio, what have you.

She doesn't waste the finite time of her life shopping for clothes she'll wear once, getting an overpriced manicure every two weeks, chasing the latest color of trendy travel mug, or hitting "add to cart" until her thumbs are raw.

Her time is spent bettering some portion of the world througg the creation of her hands, rather than helping society consume it all until there is nothing left.

Positive speech

Have you ever been around those people who never cease to talk negatively about others indiscriminately, complain about everything in their lives, and just say nasty, derogatory things in general? I have and it's absolutely exhausting.

An admirable woman speaks positively as much as possible. She hesitates to talk negatively of others, even strangers and "enemies". A problem in her life has to get very severe before she'll even mention it, and even then she's more focused on solutions or hoping for the best, rather than garnering attention from others by griping. Her humor is clever and never at the expense of others or herself. If someone confides in her about a problem they are having with a 3rd party, she will respond with wholesome advice, rather than jumping immediately to seeking revenge.

She lifts up everyone around her, rather than dragging them down.

Discretion

When trusted with sensitive information, she doesn't turn around and use it to gain attention or cause drama. If someone else blabs about whatever it may be, she will pretend like she didn't already know. If you ask her about something that happened to someone else, she will redirect you to ask that person to their face. You can always trust her with secrets, without even asking her not to tell. She will take secrets to her grave, rather than give up private details.

She doesn't gossip or talk negatively about others behind their backs. Yes, there may be people she does not like or get along with. But she won't take that as an opportunity to spread their personal information (or invent total lies about them).

[wild-wombytch]

Respectfully middle-class people know as much about poverty as men know what it is to be women.

You can't erase people who are actually poor by putting 65k/year people in the same bag as people who live in a house with literal holes on the walls, asbestos in the floor, who sleep on a bedless 35yo mattress found in a dumpster and have lived with literal starvation and homelessness. Who think buying super glue to fix their shoes is a luxury and resort to using their grandma's dusty sewing threads to fix the soles. Who still handwash their laundry. Who can't cook most food because they don't have a oven. Who live without heater all winter long in a house so poorly isolated that there is mist coming out of your mouth in the morning. Who as 6yo grew up with underwear worn out to the point of being rags. Who didn't pursue higher studies because of the cost. Who can't pay their parents' funerals and no they won't be able to take care of their parents when they age. Who don't have a driving license because of the cost. Who couldn't buy menstrual products in a all-women house during covid. And that's in a first world country and for those lucky enough to have a roof on top of their head and a mattress at all.

Like what the actual fuck? Unless there's some heavy cultural context I don't get (but I don't think so cue to the 17k comment), literally how are you the same category of poor when you own your house, have a car (new? That you send to car wash?), sometimes have two incomes and/or ma and pa backing you up financially, and so on? We clearly don't have the same problems if the middle-class obsession is to whine about how poor they are while shitting on actual poor people.

I used to follow tepkunset back in my TRA day and legit I still have more in common with her and more respect for her than people whining about having 65k and dismissing poor people. In what world are you living? 3 months before being homeless if you lost your income today? You know some people even with their income can't pay the rent, right? You know some people work while being homeless, right?

The only ones seeing a whole class as an enemy are the same who makes middle-class and poverty meaningless and tell us to look elsewhere but not critically look at them. And by doing that, you refuse to see your privileges in comparison to others. Heavens forbid we see privileges for what they are. Don't call the naked emperor naked if it makes the emperor feel bad. Do you all note that nobody even called you rich? You are literally attacking someone with less privileges than you on a strawman because of victim mentality. You cornered tepkunset out of nowhere because you are so protective of being called poor and unprivileged instead of standing with her saying everyone should have a minimum of 65k and fight in that sense, which would have actually been constructive and uplifting. Tepkunset is ALSO a nurse and essential worker (or was back in the day). And she takes care of two people! Can you fathom that some peeople do the exact same as you do, except with more hardships and still make less money and still have shittier situations? But why find solutions and listen to others who have less and uplift them when you can make a piss contest out of it every time we point out the discrepancies betweenways of life that are practically aliens to each others at this point.

If I got a penny every time a middle-class people came crying on my shoulders about how they can't even pay a cinema ticket these days or go in vacations outside of the country or "womp womp we can't live with two 6k incomes a months, life is hard :'(" ...I'm sure I'd be able to talk about my dental care without laughing. You don't need to be a CEO billionaire to have privileges over otther people.

One day I swear I'm gonna charge a zoo trip in my fancy poor person social housing with no toilet seat, with the authorization to sleep on the floor for a fee so some of you can say you have seen one poor person in your life and can say "eww is that a slug on the floor and water from condensation?" once in your life. This conversation is nuts. I can't even wrap my head around this. Let us eat cake, I guess.

By the way, compost the richs, it's better for health and the planet and you can grow more foods out of them. Maybe make it so classes like gender disappear and everyone has basic needs met.

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[silvanoir]

The 2 of him

I'd like to say I have nothing better to do than figure Work Friend out, but I DO have better things to do, but I don't want to do them... my brain and body are exhausted from my own life, I'd rather ponder someone else's. And I don't think he minds because he says no one can figure him out and I've been right about some things (wrong on others)... and he likes to try to figure out what makes people tick too so I don't think he's offended.

So my latest pondering (which I'll tell him about tomorrow, see if I'm off-base or not) :

I've been trying to reconcile his 2 personalities all year. There's the outgoing jokey guy who likes to pull silly pranks, and then there's the guy with wayyyyyy too much trauma who has social anxiety so bad he'll hide and crumple up like a discarded folding chair, his hands will shake, literally try to disappear into the dark. They don't seem to gel into one person.

Except maybe they do.

He keeps saying (to everyone, not just me) "You gotta laugh so you don't cry".

And I'm wondering if it IS the anxiety. Like a very sideways version of L'appel du Vide (The Call Of The Void). Where instead of being afraid of heights leads the anxious person to think about jumping from heights as a means of taking control of the fear.... he's got social anxiety. So fear of crowds of people, being trapped with people in buildings for extended periods of time, fear of strangers getting too close/knowing too much, fear of asking anyone in authority for anything he wants/needs.... so instead of jumping to control that fear... it's making a joke of himself and his problems, saying too much, being overly friendly with people he doesn't even like... and when it's a place he knows he has to go repeatedly he'll screw it up on purpose, call attention to himself via the pranks, which annoys people to the point of kicking him out.

Like, example.... the bank story. Many years ago, he had to take the mortgage (of a house he no longer owns) to the bank, big amount of money to deposit. Kept telling himself it was important. Over and over. He also had a chipmunk in a trap in the back of the truck that he took from a client who wanted him to dispose of it for them (he did and still does light construction work) so he gets to the deposit.... and instead of putting the money in... puts the chipmunk in. And then drove away and went home and decided to switch banks.

And now, current day, he's in debt (identify theft, some people had a lot of fun with his credits cards and he couldn't fully prove it in court so now he has to pay it off), so that limits where he can shop.... and got himself banned from his local Dollar Tree for acting stupid.

As a fellow anxiety-haver, I've had thoughts of doing stupid things but don't act on them. Including a more direct version of The Call Of The Void whenever I drive over a tall bridge. Makes me nervous that I'll drive off and plummet to my death. And so that voice in the back of my head tells me to swerve and hit the gas and just do it already, full throttle, take away the fear by making it happen! Get it over with! I tell that voice to SHUT UP and continue, rigidly straight within the lines until I'm over the bridge in a normal way.

I won't be telling him that one, though, because he might not ever want to get into a car with me again. His dumbass things only ever cause harm to himself and minor property damage, which is maybe why he finds his harder to ignore, because the consequence isn't death or serious bodily harm. We just gotta find a way to get him to tell his voice to SHUT UP and not act on it.

[animentality]

Yeah gender is fake. I am glad people are starting to realize.

Now please start connecting the dots and see that gender is a set of rules made to keep women and girls small and subservient. Please work w radfems to tear it down. No child should ever be told they are playing with a “girl/boy” toy again

I don't get terfs though. I don't.

I know you probably are one, bc you've been stalking my blog for weeks.

How could you claim to be a feminist then uphold this idea that biology matters more than anything else?

Insist that men trying to be women are demeaning themselves in the process?

Or that they must be doing it for amoral reasons?

Isn't that just ragging on feminism too?

Biology is not destiny. Feminism broken down to its roots should destroy the idea that sex and gender are so fundamental to who we are.

You should be able to break that boundary. It's so bizarre how terfs have embraced this patriarchal idea of gender to enforce this idea that women are women and men are men.

A woman is whatever you want it to be.

A tomboy, a butch lesbian, a high femme, a she/they enby, a trans woman.

Femininity is a construct that can be remade however we see fit.

Why the fuck is it so hard for terfs to be accepting?

Why the fuck is it so wrong for a "man" to want to be a woman or a "woman" to want to be a man?

Why isn't that fluidity allowed?? What is your problem with it???

I can't imagine why a terf would think any trans woman is somehow evil without them just being a fucking bigot.

You don't know every single trans person.

You also don't know every single "man" either.

Too many of them think trans women are just men trying to steal their experiences or are predators in the making.

Those man hating ideas are precisely why you're a fucking laughing stock.

You really want to kill all men because they're all rapists and dogs that need controlling?

Please. Congrats on not understanding how the world works. And never meeting another human fucking being.

And upholding yet another sexist idea that men are just violent lustful sinners who don't want anything else in the world but to fuck you.

That's horrible.

Misogyny is horrible too of course. But it's a snake eating itself, trying to go the opposite way and say well all men-

All people are different, you pathetic shrivelling worm.

All people live by social systems we taught each other, but they could be changed if we wanted.

And that change starts from the ground up.

You fucking terfs have been ragging on me for weeks and sending me angry anons.

First off ive been here for 9 years, almost 10.

You don't scare or upset me. I'm used to anon hate.

Secondly, I'm not a fucking freak like you. I'm perpetually online but unlike you, I choose to give people the benefit of the doubt.

My mom raised me to try and feel compassion for everyone, even people who are different than me. To try and understand the suffering of others. To live in another person's shoes and appreciate a pain other than my own.

You are never going to convince me to hate any group of people based entirely on stereotypes and fiery rhetoric constructed by fucking fascists.

You'll never convince me to hurt a minority with a high suicide rate and the likehood to never make it past 30.

A minority which started the whole fucking LGBT movement.

I identify as nonbinary but I feel a kindred spirit with trans people because I've spent my whole life uncomfortable with certain pronouns too.

It was such a relief finding friends willing to call me by the right name.

The right pronouns.

I know what it's like to feel just a little of that disconnect. That discomfort.

Feeling like your insides don't match your outsides and that society is calling you the wrong thing, every day. And wishing it were different. Kinder. More accepting.

And even if I fucking didn't understand that.

You'll never turn me as cruel as you.

You fucking terf rats.

I've rambled too long so I'll just leave you the most essential message of this ramble, eloquently put, by Hozier.

[khorneschosen]

Each part of its kind of true.

Kamala is mixed race at best and really only displayed herself as black for the election. It's political posturing all the same and frankly race is a social construct. At a certain point you can't really disagree with somebody who is changing race for the sake of political convenience. Or really say what is that race because we socially make it and if everybody believes Kamala is black then she's black according to this ethics.

You can have an abortion post birth if that baby is stillborn so mentally or physically diminished that it would not survive very long. And he was quoting such a case and such a case if taken as true implies very disturbing things for the institution because the institution cannot ever be about that. Not even a little bit because at that point you have given full sanction for parents to murder their children they're still living children. That is something you can't have happen.

And yes some Haitian immigrants do cook up at least the ducks in the ponds and at least one cat.

So it's not exactly untrue.

Furthermore it's very sensible everything here is very sensibly true. Third world people oftentimes eat cats and dogs because they breed rapidly and are easy source of protein for whoever gets them especially for urban populations.

They probably came here and we're wondering man there's a lot of wildlife around here that all of these people are just not eating what's wrong with them.

Because they come from the third world and not the particularly nice kind of the third world. The actively failed state third world. The fucked up got their government so badly that it is an unlivable situation.

So while you go with the most authoritarian fact checkers anyone with a brain is leading between the lines and seeing what is fundamentally true and necessarily true.

Like on every level these are things that are troubling and are symptoms of something very wrong and need to be addressed The response to these problems is to pretend that they aren't problems which is concerning.

And if you ignore problems like this long enough you end up with something like they soon to be failed state of the UK. Like I know that you're taught to believe everything is fine and everything is wrong all the same time but we actually kind of have it good all things considered we have some problems on the horizon big problems but not failed state problems but the fact that we're at that point we're at the precipice of that should concern everyone involved in politics it should be the wake-up call of oh we need to actually treat this seriously.

It's why in debates that I do here I sometimes default to just insulting people who aren't going to make the effort to treat these things as serious that this is a hobby for them and they don't actually care this is this is their own personal posturing and they don't realize that they're playing with the machinery of civilization. And you can't play with it lightly.

If ideas matter then you must treat them as if they matter. If not I'm going to treat you exactly how you deserve as the idiot who is smoking in the armory.