#but im still proud idgaf it was awesome

[spinninggayrat]

Why the fuck do people hate on sign language so much or people who use/need it. I've been taking asl classes for a bit and holy shit I actually love it so much. It's such an expressive and beautiful language it's been absolutely amazing learning the history behind it and different dialects (yes sign language has dialects). If these mfs would stop being ableist for one damn second and pulled their head out their ass and took a sign language class they would see the absolute whimsicalness of it all. It's also helped me a lot to despite being hearing, I have autism and ADHD so I have really bad sensory issues and sometimes go non-verbal. Now I can still communicate with my friends and my teachers without having to stress myself out or write everything down. If you know asl for whatever reason, whether its cuz you're deaf or heard of hearing, your relatives are deaf or hard of hearing, you need it to help communicate better, you're an interpreter, or just know it just to know another language for fun. Just know I love you and you're fucking awesome :3/p /nf

[freebooter4ever]

that particular brand of male posturing where you’re only allowed to be enthusiastic over Dudely Specified Cool things

the four guys on my team were all late thirties and had been best friends since childhood, so i definitely was the odd one out, but i did try to find ways to relate to them. and one of the guys was wearing this star wars tshirt and the other bigger football coach dude was like ‘whats with the shirt, what are you thirteen?’ and we all laughed cause Cool Dudes bond over insulting each other, and i have discovered i gotta at least pretend to go along with it if i want to fit in. but then in an effort to play my card as ‘the girl’ who is able to, you know, like things, i casually brought up the new star wars land and teasingly asked if he’d been to it yet (it just opened, its still impossible to get into, i knew he hadn’t, i thought we could bond over lamenting so close yet so far away), and instead of starting a conversation about how awesome star wars is, like what would have happened if i’d done the same with my sculpting buddy Han (I sent him a screenshot of one of justin’s photos and immediately he identified the exact type of pod racer it was), the conversation devolved into how not cool disneyland was and how over it these guys were. and they tried to justify it by saying they grew up so close to disneyland that they didn’t like it anymore. and im just sitting there quietly listening to all this inwardly thinking ‘the only reason i asked you for the wifi password was so i could still get live star wars ig updates from justin scarred, a boy who also grew up literally minutes away from disneyland, who still loves it completely and utterly, and is unafraid of sharing that enthusiasm with the world’

anyway i think the only way the disney hate conversation ended was by me finally saying blatantly that my life goal was to be an imagineer, and then things got awkward for a bit cause im good at that. but ultimately the entire exchange reminded me of justin’s talks about ‘quest for positivity’ and how he had to essentially unlearn this type of thinking, where for him being part of the punk scene was about also just hating everything and life and having the kind of ‘too cool for school’ attitude. I had to deal with this when dating hot artist too, like whenever we would hang out with his friends he’d make himself smaller and less spontaneous and i was surprised by it until i noticed that if he ever did something he normally would do alone with me or his twin, his friends would immediately jump on it and tear him down a peg. it was a very very fine line to walk with him where i couldn’t outright criticize his friends, but at the same time gently point out that them making fun of his interests or hobbies constantly was not normal and that, yes, he is allowed to be enthusiastic and goofy. i am a little proud when he calls me up with silly stories like ‘guess what i wore my cactus onesie to lunch with my friend today cause i wanted to and idgaf’.

cause like yesterday earlier than the star wars convo i had been talking to football coach dude and we had an entire discussion about seattle and nirvana and how much he wanted to visit aberdeen (it took me a minute to remember why anyone would want to go to aberdeen a tiny boring town with nothing interesting, and then i was like OH RIGHT lol) so CLEARLY when they want to be enthusiastic about the right type of stuff, cool stuff like grunge music, not dorky stuff like star wars or disney, they can be.

tldr sometimes im really glad im seen as ‘the girl’ even if the only reason its socially acceptable for me to love things is because i am dismissed as ‘lesser than’ or a fangirl