#but since the existance of nb people is so foreign to her

[aceteling]

nothing like explaining to my (well-meaning but ultimately uneducated in that field) mum the usefuleness of gender deconstruction and overall gender as a concept at 9 am in the morning

[star-anise]

why would your social environment affect if you identify as a woman or nb?

I don’t know if you meant it to be, but this is a delightful question. I am going to be a complete nerd for 2k+ words at you.

“Gender” is distinct from “sex” because it’s not a body’s physical characteristics, it’s how society classifies and interprets that body. Sex is “That person has a vagina.” Gender is “This is a blend of society’s expectations about what bodies with vaginas are like, social expectations of how people with vaginas do or might or should act, behave, and feel, the actual lived experiences of people with vaginas, and a twist of lemon for zest.” Concepts of gender and what is “manly” and “womanly” can vary a lot. They’re social values, like “normal” or “legal” or “beautiful”, and they vary all the time. How well you fit your gender role depends a lot on how “gender” is defined.

800 years ago in Europe the general perception was that women were sinful, sensual, lustful people who required frequent sex and liked watching bloodsport. 200 years ago, the British aristocracy thought women were pure, innocent beings of moral purity with no sexual desire who fainted at the sight of blood. These days, we think differently in entirely new directions.

But this gets even more complicated, in part because human experience is really diverse and society’s narratives have to account for that. So 200 years ago, those beliefs about femininity being delicate and dainty and frail only really applied to women with aristocratic lineages, and “the lower classes” of women were believed to be vulgar, coarse, sexual, and earthy, which “explained” why they performed hard physical labor or worked as prostitutes.

Being trans or nonbinary isn’t just or even primarily about what characteristics you want your body to have. It’s about how you want to define yourself and be interpreted and interacted with by other people.

The writer Sylvia Plath lived 1932-1963, and she said:

“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars–to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording–all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery.”

She was from upper-middle-class Massachusetts, the child of a university professor. A lot of those things she was “prohibited” from doing weren’t things each and every woman was prohibited from doing; they were things women of her class weren’t allowed to do. The daughters and sisters and wives of sailors and soldiers, women who worked in hotels and ran rooming houses, barmaids and sex workers, got to anonymously and invisibly observe those men, after all. They just couldn’t do it at the same time they tried to meet the standards educated Bostonians of the 1950s had for nice young women.

Failure to understand how diverse womanhood is has always been one of feminism’s biggest weaknesses. The Second Wave of feminism was started mostly by prosperous university-educated white women, since they were the people with the time and money and resources to write and read books and attend conferences about “women’s issues”. And they assumed that their issues were female issues. That they were the default of femaleness, and could assume every woman had roughly the same experience as them.

So, for example, middle-class white women in post-WWII USA were expected to stay home all the time and look after their children. Feminists concluded that this was isolating and oppressive, and they’d like the freedom to pursue lives, careers, and interests outside of the home. They vigorously pursued the right to be freed from their domestic and maternal duties.

But in their society, these experiences were not generally shared by Black and/or poor women, who, like their mothers, did not have the luxury of spending copious amounts of leisure time with their children; they had to work to earn enough money to survive on, which meant working on farms, in factories, or as cooks, maids, or nannies for rich white women who wanted the freedom to pursue lives outside the home. They tended to feel that they would like to have the option of staying home and playing with their babies all day. 

This is not to say none of the first group enjoyed domestic lives, or that none of the second group wanted non-domestic careers; it’s just that the first group formed the face and the basic assumptions of feminism, and the second group struggled to get a seat at the table.

There’s this phenomenon called “cultural feminism” that’s an attitude that crops up among feminists from time to time (or grows on them, like fungus) that holds that women have a “feminine essence”, a quasi-spiritual “nature” that is deeply distinct from the “masculine essence” of men. This is one of the concepts powering lesbian separatism: the idea that because women are so fundamentally different from men, a society of all women will be fundamentally different in nature from a society that includes men.

But, well, the problem cultural feminism generally has is with how it achieves its definition of “female nature”. The view tends to be that women are kinder, more moral, more collectivist, more community-minded, and less prone to violence. 

And cultural feminists tend to HATE people who believe in the social construction of gender, because we tend to cross our arms and go, “Nah, sis, that’s a frappe of misused statistics and The Angel In the House with some wishful thinking as a garnish. That’s how you feel about what womanhood is. It’s fair enough for you, but you’re trying to apply it to the entire human species. That’s got less intellectual rigor and sociological validity than my morning oatmeal.” Hence the radfem insistence that gender theorists like me SHUT UP and gender quite flatly DOESN’T EXIST. It’s a MADE-UP TERM, and people should STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. (And go back to taking about immutable, naturally-occuring phenomena, one supposes, like the banking system and Western literary canon.)

Because seriously, when you look at real actual women, you will see that some of us can be very selfish, while others are altruistic; some think being a woman means abhorring all violence forever, and others think being a woman means being willing to fight and die to protect the people you love. As groups men and women have different average levels of certain qualities, but it’s not like we don’t share a lot in common. The distribution of “male” and “female” traits doesn’t tend to mean two completely separate sets of characteristics; they tend to be more like two overlapping bell curves.

So, like I said, I grew up largely in rural, working-class Western Canadian society. My relatives tend to be tradesmen like carpenters, welders, or plumbers, or else ranchers and farmers. I was raised by a mother who came of age during the big push for Women’s Lib. So in the culture in which I was raised, it was very normal and in some ways rewarded (though in other ways punished) for women to have short hair, wear flannel and jeans, drive a big truck, play rough contact sports, use power tools, pitch in with farmwork, use guns, and drink beer. “Traditional femininity” was a fascinating foreign culture my grandmother aspired to, and I loved nonsense like polishing the silver (it’s a very satisfying pastime) but that was just another one of my weird hobbies, like sewing fairy clothes out of flower petals and collecting toy horses.

Within the standards of the society I was raised in, I am a decently feminine woman. I’m obviously not a “girly girl”, someone who wears makeup and dresses in ways that privilege beauty over practicality, but I have a long ponytail of hair and when I go to Mark’s Work Wearhouse, I shop in the women’s section. We know what “butch” is and I ain’t it.

But through my friendships and my career, I’ve gotten experiences among cultures you wouldn’t think would be too different–we’re all still white North Americans!–but which felt bizarre and alien, and ate away at the sense of self I’d grown up in. In the USA’s northeast, the people I met had the kind of access to communities with social clout, intellectual resources, and political power I hadn’t quite believed existed before I saw them. There really were people who knew politicians and potential employers socially before they ever had to apply to a job or ask for political assistance; there were people who really did propose projects to influential businessmen or academics at cocktail parties; they really did things like fundraise tens of thousands of dollars for a charity by asking fifty of their friends to donate, or start a business with a $2mil personal loan from a relative.

And in those societies, femininity was so different and so foreign. I’d grown up seeing femininity as a way of assigning tasks to get the work done; in these new circles, it was performative in a way that was entirely unique and astounding to me. A boss really would offer you a starting salary $10k higher than they might have if you wore high heels instead of flats. You really would be more likely to get a job if you wore makeup. And your ability to curate social connections in the halls of power really was influenced by how nice of a Christmas party you could throw. These women I met were being held, daily, to a standard of femininity higher than that performed by anyone in my 100 most immediate relatives.

So when girls from Seven Sisters schools talked about how for them, dressing how I dressed every day (jeans, boots, tee, button-up shirt, no makeup, no hair product) was “bucking gendered expectations” and “being unfeminine”, I began to feel totally unmoored. When I realized that I, who absolutely know only 5% as much about power tools and construction as my relatives in the trades, was more suited to take a hammer and wade in there than not just the “empowered” women but the self-professed “handy” men there, I didn’t know how to understand it. I felt like I was… a woman who knew how to do carpentry projects, not “totally butch” the way some people (approvingly) called me.

And, well, at home in Alberta I was generally seen as a sweet and gentle girl with an occasional stubborn streak or precocious moment, but apparently by the standards of Southern states like Georgia and Alabama I am like, 100x more blunt, assertive, and inconsiderate of men’s feelings than women typically feel they have to be.

And this is still all just US/Canadian white women.

And like I said, after years of this, I came home (from BC, where I encountered MORE OTHER weird and alien social constructs, though generally more around class and politics than gender) to Alberta, and I went to what is, for Alberta, a super hippy liberal church, and I helped prepare the after-service tea among women with unstyled hair and no makeup  who wore jeans and sensible shoes, and listened to them talk about their work in municipal water management and ICU nursing, and it felt like something inside my chest slid back into place, because I understood myself as a woman again, and not some alien thing floating outside the expectations of the society I was in with a chestful of opinions no one around me would understand, suddenly all made sense again.

I mean, that’s by no means an endorsement for aspirational middle class rural Alberta as the ideal gender utopia. (Alberta is the Texas of Canada.) I just felt comfortable inside because it’s the culture where I found a definition of myself and my gender I could live with, because its boundaries of what’s considered “female” were broad enough to hold all the parts of me I felt like I needed to express. I have a lot of friends who grew up here, or in families like mine, and don’t feel at all happy with its gender boundaries. And even as I’m comfortable being a woman here, I still want to push and transform it, to make it even more feminist and politically left and decolonized.

TERFs try to claim that trans and nonbinary people reinforce the gender identity, but in my experience, it’s feminists who claim male and female are immutable and incompatible do that. It’s trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer people who, simply by performing their genders in public, make people realize just how bullshit innate theories of gender are.. Society is going to want to gender them in certain ways and involve them in certain dynamics (”Hey ladies, those fellas, amirite?”) and they’re going, “Nope. Not me. Cut it out.” I’ve seen a lot of cis people who will quietly admit they do think men and women are different because that’s just reality, watch someone they know transition, and suddenly go, “Oh my god, I get it now.”

Like yes, this is me being coldly political and thinking about people as examples to make a political point. Everyone’s valid and can do what they want, but some things are just easier for potential converts to wrap their minds around.. “I’m sorting through toys to give to Shelly’s baby. He probably won’t want a princess crown, huh?” “I actually know several people who were considered boys when they were babies and never got one, and are making up for all their lost princess crown time now as adults. You never know what he’ll be into when he grows up.” “…Okay, point. I’ll throw it in there.” Trans and enby people disrupt gender in a really powerful back-of-the-brain way where people suddenly see how much leeway there is between gender and sex.

I honestly believe supporting trans and enby people and queering gender until it’s a macrame project instead of a spectrum are how we’ll get to a gender-free utopia. I think cultural feminism is just the same old shit, inverted. (Confession: in my head, I pronounce “cultural” with emphasis on the “cult” part.) 

I think feminism is like a lot of emergency response groups: Our job is to put ourselves out of a job. It’s not a good thing if gender discrimination is still prevalent and harmful 200 years from now! Obviously we’re not there yet and calls to pack it in and go home are overrated, but as the problem disappears into its solution, we have to accept that our old ways of looking at the world have to shift.

[sebastianshaw]

(To Anon---here are more lil Lourdes/Shaw ficlets, also done from her perspective! I hope you enjoy them.) I’m an only child but I have large extended family, and I’m close with my cousins. Close enough that I brought Sebastian around for Eastern weekend, since my parents don’t approve of him, let alone of us living in sin as they put it. Of course, I’m sure they try to tell themselves no such sin has actually occurred despite our cohabitation, and that I’m still a virgin. ...I wasn’t even a virgin when I met Sebastian, actually, but they think I was. In truth, if anyone’s had his blushing innocence stripped by the other, it’s him by me. Poor thing was so repressed. My cousins, on the other hand, seem to think he’s some sort of sexual beast. And unlike my parents, they’re intrigued by that, and by the fact I have dared to, as the popular vernacular puts it in America, shacked up with him. He’s exotic to them, because he’s not Catholic, because he’s not Spanish, and his size and appearance make them think what my parents think, that he’s some hot-blooded foreign brute who has swept sweet innocent little me off her good-girl feet. And they want every detail. While we gossip on one side of the spacious yard at their estate, their children are piling on him on the other. He is looking at me with the most supplicating expression, begging me to rescue him before he does something he regrets that will ensure I’m NOT invited back. I do, but I can’t help letting this torture go on just a few extra moments before I shoo the little ones away—-there’s something so adorable when he’s helpless.   

***

“Lourdes? What are you doing here?” “You spend all day here, Sebastian. I wanted to see what at this factory was more important than me.” I’m teasing, of course. I was really just rather bored, and wanted to surprise him. I’m terrible about that kind of thing---there’s just something about seeing a man of his size and stoicism get flustered. At the same time, I know he’s embarrassed whenever I see him in workman’s clothes, face smudged with smoke and oil, that he only wants me to see him when he’s clean and in suits, and I know it’s unkind of me to come here when he’s going to be in that state. But how else is he going to learn that I love him whether or not he still looks like a poor steel worker? “Lourdes, I---look at you, you can’t be here dressed like that. Your dress, it’s going to get ruined.” He worries a lot about my appearance. It’s easy to mistake that as shallow. It’s not. Sebastian doesn’t know how to express affection easily. Emotions are far to effervescent for his engineers mind to grasp. He is grounded in the material plane, and so he does his best to show his immaterial love through it.   In short, it’s not really the dress he cares about at all. It’s me. This is just how he shows it. I take his arm and tug, “Let it. I want the tour.” “Lourdes, I can’t--” But he can’t refuse me. He can only delay things. “Wait a moment,” he says, and to my surprise, he tears off the sleeve of his own shirt---so effortless, as though he were ripping the thinnest of tissue paper--and before I can ask why he’s done such a thing, he’s stepped behind me and is using it to tie my hair back. “Safety regulations are government bullshit,” he says, one of the few contexts in which he’ll use such language, “But they are right about this. Don’t get close to anything even so, I don’t want you to scalp yourself.” Then he crouches down, and tugs slightly on my ankle, lifting my foot from my shoe. “Sebastian, what on earth---” “Your heels. The points will get caught in the grated walkways.” “And you couldn’t simply tell me that,” I said, as he gently takes the shoe off, and then the other one. He carries them for me, because of course he does. I’m not going to lie---I got close to a few machines that day just to have him pull me back. What can I say? I like big dangerous things. As my taste in men demonstrates. *** (Content warning for menstrual mention. Note, I know that trans men and nb people and so on get periods too, but Lourdes is a cis lady in the 80s from a Spanish Catholic family, she’s going to see it as a ‘woman’ thing.) My mother told me I should be proud of this pain, that it was part of being a woman, that this was the mark of my holy capacity to give life, but I don’t think even the most ardent feminist enjoys menstrual cramps. I certainly never have. I hated this when I was a child and I hate it now and I’m sure my mother hated it too. Sebastian didn’t know such things existed. It turns out that all the times I said I wasn’t feeling well due to cramps that I meant I had cramped a muscle. His assumption was that, not being the towering pile of muscle that he is, I must be more prone to those. He knew vaguely that women had a ‘time of the month’ and had heard other men say things about not trusting anything that bled for five days without dying, but he did not understand the entire situation or the dearth of symptoms it came with. When he did, he wanted to fix it. My engineer. He couldn’t just accept nature was what it was, as I had accepted before I was even in my teens, as every woman learns to accept upon her becoming one. No, he had to be a man about it, had to be HIM about it. I say this fondly; I found it endearing. I think he was more upset by my monthly problem than I ever was. It was an irritation to me, something unpleasant but just a part of life. To him, it was a ghastly medical condition I suffered and must be rescued from. He found all sorts of home remedies. Some of them, I’d never even heard of before. I can’t imagine how he even began researching such things; I can just picture him, this 6′2 man walking into the library, striding up to the poor bespectacled old woman behind the counter, and asking her for a copy of Our Bodies Ourselves! He brought me that, by the way. I told him, it was fine, I took pain pills, I had a hot water bottle, it was fine. But he wasn’t satisfied. For me, it is the thought that counts. But for him, that was not good enough. He needed to help in a way that was concrete, material, or he would feel that he had failed me. Then one day, during that time, when I was curled up in bed waiting it out, in he came all smiles, a manila folder in hand. “I’ve done the research,” he said beaming brightly, “Did you know you can just have your entire reproductive system removed?” He made it sound like a revelation, some medical miracle only just made possible by science yesterday. “Of course, it is a surgery, but it will stop the problems entirely,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, opening the folder to show me diagrams and diagnostics, excitedly explaining to me what he thinks will be my salvation, bless his heart but he tries. “Now, it will mean you won’t be able to have children, but I was thinking---” “Sebastian,” I say, unable to keep the tinge of tiredness out of my tone as I put a hand on his arm, “Sebastian, please. I know you mean well. But I am not having surgery. I am fine. Just...bring me some chocolate.” And that is how I ended up with the entire contents of a candy store in my bedroom.

[pinchofsuho]

Conflict of Interest - (Legal!Kai) (M)

Pairings: Kai (Kim Jongin) x Reader

Warnings: Smut + fluff.

Word count: 2,600

NB: i hope you like this! Tell me what you think of it here and share your ideas of what should happen next. 

- Mila

Prequel Part 1 Part 2

Hangovers, they were the bane of your existence. Every time you suffered through one, you fake promised yourself that you’d never drink. Oh, what lies you told yourself. Due to the headache, it didn’t occur to you whom you were sleeping next to you when you woke up, what was more important was getting over the nausea and the pounding headache that you had. As you were massaging your eyelids as you sat up, you noticed that you were in a room that you didn’t recognise. A one night stand, you thought. You had a few of them so you didn’t care what you did last night. Oh no, that’s because you didn’t notice Kai. He was sleeping with his back facing you.

Begrudgingly, you walked to the bathroom. It took a few moments to find where it was since his apartment was fairly big. The apartment that he shared with the other members of EXO. You opened the door, not expecting to see a fully-grown man in the bath playing with bubbles. He gave you a bit of a fright when he saw you.

“Why are you just casually walking in like it’s your home?” A man hissed at you with a confused tone. He couldn’t understand the situation.

“The door was unlocked? How else do you think I got in?” You couldn’t help but respond with a sassy tone.

“You have a point there.” He muttered.

Your hangover was so bad that you were practically drowsy so you didn’t notice whom you were talking to you. It was Xiumin. After having just splashing water on your face and wiping it off with your shirt, you walked back to the bedroom you just came from; you noticed someone up from the bed that you woke up from. It was Kai, obviously but he had his back to you. He was just putting a shirt on when he saw your face through his mirror and you saw his face through the mirror’s reflection.

Shit. You slept with Kai. It only just dawned on you that you also walked in on an EXO member having a bath.

“G-good morning.” You stuttered as you stared at him. As you broke your stare, you quickly got yourself ready. Having heard you, he turned around with his cheeky grin. You couldn’t really believe what just happened.

“Hello, princess. How was your goodnight’s sleep? You sure were tired after our encoun-“

“Stop right there. It shouldn’t have happened, who even fucks an opposition’s client? In your case, why would you fuck your boss’ lawyer.” You told him as a matter of fact.

“If I remember correctly, it wasn’t me who made the first move.”

“Yeah, right.” You shot back as you tried to remember what happened the night before. You couldn’t remember anything except the fact the two of you had sex.

“Honestly.” he said as he raised his hands up as a sign of surrender. “You were pretty much gyrating on me last night. That counts as a hint for me and at no point did you say no to me. C’mon, pretty, I was good, wasn’t I?” he responded with a mischievous smile. He wanted you to praise his efforts at getting you off several times but then again, he knew how good he was. You knew very well that he wasn’t wrong in what he was saying.

A minute passed by with the two of you silent and just looking at each other. Looking at the clock on his bedroom wall broke your eye contact and it was then when you realised that you were late to leave for another court case. You should have left 40 minutes ago. Because of this realisation, you rushed to get yourself ready as much as you with your limited belongings as of that moment. Once you made yourself somewhat presentable, you made your way downstairs to find Kai.

Kai went downstairs to the living room, just so you could have had some privacy. What you didn’t know was that he wasn’t alone. Suho was with him and at that moment, you still hadn’t quite registered that you were in EXO’s dorm apartment. First Xiumin and now Suho. What the boys didn’t know was that Suho was your bias in EXO. When you spotted the two, you went really quiet and all blushed. Despite the fact you were a little late, you decided to go to the living room for a little bit before leaving.

“Hey, pretty, look at you all blushed.” You rolled your eyes as he tried to compliment you but he was under the impression that you were blushing because of him.

Oh no, definitely not.

You tried to conceal it but it didn’t work. You couldn’t help yourself; you went through a huge fangirl moment, squealing incessantly whilst sitting in between the two boys. Whenever you got nervous or really excited, you were not yourself and in this case, let’s just say you forgot all the Korean you knew.

As Suho tried to say “Hey?” you sat there with your eyes wide and your mouth open. Kai reached out and pushed your chin out to close the gaping mouth of yours. It took you a long minute to sort yourself out. “(Y/N), are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m good. I’m so sorry for that, you must get that a lot and I can’t imagine how it feels when this happened in your apartment.”

“It’s alright.”

It was then when you glanced over at Kai, his eyes were unreadable but he had a tight smile. He might have been jealous. Ignoring that look of his, you quickly checked yourself and decided to move towards the front door so you could quickly catch the train, that was your plan up until Kai got up and jumped over the sofas.

“Let me drive you.” He stated almost proudly as he opened the door for you.

“I can get there myself, you know.”

“I know but the courthouse isn’t too far from here and you’re late so let’s go.”

“Mm sure.” you said reluctantly. You were trying to go in a rush but didn’t want to necessarily still be with Kai. It wasn’t him, it was more of the shame and guilt you had after last night. You could honestly lose your license if the wrong people found out. Only after the case has been decided, you could date him; if he wins, of course.  The two of you hopped into the car and Kai started the car after getting himself comfortable which seemed like ages to you.        

“You’ve got my number in your coat pocket. Just call me, baby.” He whispers seductively in your ear with his hand strategically placed on your thigh. Hearing that gave you shivers down your spine. You stepped out of the car and quickly fixed your hair as you walked holding your files.

—-

A couple of days have passed and you still haven’t called or texted Kai. It’s not that you didn’t want to, it’s just that you were scared and conflicted. You didn’t know where this was going, whether this would be just a hook up situation or a real relationship.

Having been in your apartment on your day off seemed a little boring so, what do you do? Call your mum, of course. It’s been a week and a half since you last properly saw her and spoken to her and you really did miss her. As you dial her number, you thought whether you should get her advice on your situation with Kai. It would be good to get her perspective but better if you concealed his identity.  You wouldn’t want anyone finding out about this.

“Heya darling, how are you doing?”

“I’m great mum, I’m really loving Korea. How have you been?”

You got the pleasantries out of the way after a couple of minutes and, you dove straight into the Kai situation.

“Mmm, what does your heart tell you, dear?”

“Well, nothing as such yet. Actually, that’s a lie; he always calls me cute nicknames and it just makes my heart flutter but the only thing that is pulling me from just being comfortable is the legal side, mum.”  

“Well, honey, do what you have to do because opportunities like these don’t come ‘round every day.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” You sighed.

You spent an hour and a half after that just catching up about your town, friends and television programmes before you got off the phone to let your mum sleep. That phone call really made you miss home. Being in a foreign country and half way across the world was not easy at all.

After having some snacks and binging on your favourite comedy shows, you decided to take your mum’s advice and just text Kai. But then again, you had second thoughts about the legality of it and how ethical it was. Yeah sure, opposition lawyers fucked each other, that was known and accepted but clients? Not so much. One more encounter and then you could decide whether you should end it or continue, you thought as you bit your lip.

[You @ 17:50] What are you doing right now?

[Kai @ 17:50] Waiting on my princess’ demands and wishes ;)

Well, that was fast and smooth as hell.

[You @ 17.52] How charming!

{Kai @ 17:53} That’s me

[You @ 17:53] Why don’t you come over. Here’s my address: 343B Park & Kim Apartment Block, Irwon-dong, Gangnam-gu.

{Kai @ 17:54] I’m on my way.

Grinning like a Cheshire cat, you put down your phone. He could really make you smile and giggle in such a short text conversation. You got up to quickly put on an oversized jumper and some boy shorts before making some easy spicy kimchi ramen noodles soup recipe that you quickly googled. Thankfully, you still had the two main ingredients on deck anyway. Whilst that was cooking, you put on some music and you couldn’t help but check the time several times in just a few minutes. Why did time have to drag so slowly when you eagerly wanted something?

Then you heard your doorbell. Once again, you were grinning so hard as you opened the door. Even Kai was surprised. He smiled back and walked into your apartment after you ushered him in. It was a bit of an unspoken moment but your body language spoke loudest.

“So, precious, what do I smell cooking?” He wonders. 

“Kimchi ramen noodles soup.”

“Interesting.” he says as he nods.

When you decided to check up on the soup, stirring it every so often, Kai came behind you and wrapped his arm around your waist and leant his head on your shoulder kissing your neck a couple of times. You liked his neck kisses, His lips tickled your neck and you wanted to moan but you bit your lip instead. Both of your hips rocked to the music and for once, it seemed like you two were in a relationship rather than just two people who have had sex a few times.

Dinner went really well. Both of you really enjoyed the email and you also had a light-hearted conversation despite the fact you shouldn’t really be talking to him in this way. A few flirts were thrown at each other and by the end of the meal, you two were really happy and getting really close.

“Let’s watch something” you offered.

“Netflix and chill?”

You laughed at his reply whilst blushing and shaking your head. Typical of him to say that.

“Sure. You pick though.” You nodded in approval.

“Be prepared” he whispered into your ear and a shiver travelled down your back giving you an almost euphoric feeling. You could sense what he was insinuating and your lips curled up into a smirk in response. You were craving him more and more.

Kai chose a horror film to watch, you didn’t particularly like horror films but you didn’t think Kai knew that fact about you; after all, he didn’t know that much about you to begin with. A few frightening moments came up on your rather modest television screen. Scared by what’s happening on the TV screen, you hide in Kai’s arms and he looks in your eyes in awe. It’s like he realised how he could be protecting you in that very moment.

He started making the first move by kissing your lips softly and licked your bottom lip.  You were thankful that he did this because you were getting bored of the film. You opened your lips a bit so he could put his tongue inside and have a play fight with your tongue. You let out a moan of enjoyment. His hands travelled from the crook of your neck down to your chest and down to your waist only for it to go back to the chest massaging your breasts over your clothing. You bit your lip and he gave you a hungry lustful look.

He raised your arms as he pulled your t-shirt up, his breath was caught at his throat as he saw you not wearing a bra. Your breasts, albeit not the perkiest, were magnificent in his eyes. He took one look at it and massaged the left as he licked and sucked the right breasts. You arched your back as you moaned and groaned in pleasure. He swapped sides and gave both the same amount of attention before giving you lots of butterfly kisses from your chest and abdomen to your hips.

He kissed you again with butterfly kisses all the way down to your clit where he licked your little button repeatedly. You couldn’t help but tremble in that feeling. Your clit was throbbing and practically calling out for him. You couldn’t hold it in, you were very close to climax.

“Wait, princess.” He told you before he rammed his cock into your rather wet entrance.  Both of the parts were like magnets and you were getting closer to climax as he went on and on. Suddenly, a feeling of euphoria and pleasure washed over as you trembled. It was your fourth orgasm ever. After that, Kai shot his creamy load into you signalling that he too had an amazing orgasm.

“Oh, Kai.” You moaned after your orgasm passed through you. What was odd though was the fact he still got off despite you not having to do anything to him. He must have gotten off whilst he was pounding you. Neither of you really noticed or cared that you weren’t using a condom.

You decided to take a shower so you could clean up after your ‘moment’. After that, the two of you decided to get into your bed and head off to sleep since you both had a long day tomorrow of training and working.

“Call me Jongin, baby.” He told you, obviously feeling much more comfortable with you now.

“Well, Jongin, you are the best thing that has happened to me since I have been here.”

“It shows.” He chuckled, clearly proud that he had this effect on you.

You relished his touch that night. He was perfect and too good to be true. You wanted him.

At the end of the night, you felt something inside of your heart yearn for Jongin. You wanted him as your boyfriend and it was obvious as well that he wanted you as his girlfriend. Conflicted was the word to describe your thoughts as you fell asleep with his arm around you and your head rested on his chest whilst the two of you were in bed together.

[snaxel69420]

red, blue, black!

red: how long have you had this kink, and when did you discover that there was a community for it?

- honestly the sneezing fixation is present in my earliest memories? so forever i guess? the earliest related media i can remember is a disney pluto short, that dumb dwarf, and a brief section in this book series “molly moon” where she describes her music teacher’s nervous sneezing? and i would just come back to and read it a bunch of times with no clue as to why i found it so personally interesting hghdfhh

- i think i became aware of it as a thing that other people experienced sometime in HS. i was watching like a list vid of obscure fetishes and this one was included and i was like “hmmmm” and then ignored it for a while before finally googling and being directed to the forum, where i read, in order: a normal-ish fic abt dr frankenfurter, and immediatley after was affronted a horrifying fic abt a “pussy sneeze” and decided haha no fuck that and i haven’t been on the forum since. for a while after, i thought there wasn’t a community outside of the forum!

- i discovered the tumblr community when i was in college by just searching some generic snz content on here and eventually stumbling across snz-centric blogs and found incredible writing and fantastic art and it was so wonderfully overwhelming. but above all, i saw like nb folk and women creating content which was just so nice oml?!?? both in that we are better at writing than cis men, and also just representation matters! i guess it hadn’t occurred to me that like gay ppl could have this kink too? then, i saw someone post abt watching youtube wavs and was like “wait what that’s a thing?” and upon discovering i lost like a whole month of my life trying to consume allll the content lmao.

blue: how open are you when it comes to talking about it with others?

- it took me years to tell the very first person (my gf, and she kinda found out rather than me confiding in her first) and she took it rly well and even offered to do snexy things w me ! afterwards, my brain basically exploded when i realized that i care way more about the possibility of snex than i do abt the possibility of being ridiculed. so that’s what’s lead to me being pretty open abt it! (also i think that being ~weird~ makes other people less afraid of their own inner weirdness, if that makes sense?)

- i don’t mention it to people unless they’re asking about sex stuff but if it comes up in convo i will basically try to promo the community lmao, i’m like you don’t fuck a sneeze? well why not? unacceptable tbh,,,

- this isn’t directly talking abt it but i promo my MV when i can and like 80% of my videos are snz content so if someone looks me up they’re Gonna Find Out, y’know

black: how do you feel about being the person sneezing, as opposed to the observer?

- i used to hate the idea but now i’m into it? idk, the concept of other people finding me attractive is incredibly foreign to me but also 💯👀 plus ideally i’d like to be a service dom

- the idea of other snzfckrs existing in general is pretty fucking galaxy brain if you ask me, it’s incredible

- oh also i only ever film content when i’m already feeling horny and confident so now whenever i’m either my brain suggests “oh worm, sneeze time?” hhfjdjdjdnd

- the only thing abt it is that aftercare!! is super duper important to me, both as an autistic person who gets overwhelmed by sensory things and as someone where snex feels very intimate and personal to me, so i want to be able to trust and feel loved/cared for after, and finding someone willing to do that can be hard.

[queercapwriting]

pleasee write nb!alex in college, like could they meet maggie in college too? also just as a personal preference cause I love the idea could alex have a really cool undercut? wow I love your writing and college nb!alex would be amazing

It’ll all be okay next term.

Next term, when Kara comes to school with them, when Kara will be a freshman.

Because Eliza is always talking about Alex needing to take care of Kara, and Alex is always thinking of taking care of Kara.

But it’s been a while since they’ve realized how much Kara takes care of them, too, without even meaning to.

Because the phone calls and the FaceTime sessions aren’t enough.

Especially now.

Especially now with their new undercut – it took a couple anti-anxiety meds to actually go through with it, because you’re already underperforming in your coursework, Alexandra, and now you’re distracting yourself further with ridiculous haircuts? – and especially now with the binder they’d saved for all of fall term to be able to afford.

The binder that finally helps them be able to wear henleys, because the damn shirts never fell right on their body before. The binder that will undoubtedly draw cries of protest from Eliza, because oh Alexandra – or would you prefer Alexander? You know this is all so much for me to take in – your body is beautiful, and aren’t you concerned about the wear and tear with such intense compression, and what will you do when you have to spend hours in the lab and you get overheated in that thing? You are still intending to spend hours in the lab, aren’t you? Because after you failed that last test, I keep worrying that you’ll just forsake all that you’ve spent so long building for… what? Some girl? Is there a girl? God, can you let me deal with this gender stuff before bringing home a girl? Would that girl be a lesbian, anyway? Oh, Alexan – Alex – why can nothing ever be simple with you, it used to be so simple with you.

The binder that will draw protests, but hell, they’re failing a couple of classes anyway – and Eliza makes sure they can’t forget it – so why not fail at everything, right?

At least, when Alex looks in the mirror with their new binder on – their roommate Lucy had grinned like a fiend listening to Alex stumble around the bathroom, pulling it up over their legs and ass, upside down and backwards, so they could slip it up their body properly, and Lucy’s grin had only gotten bigger at Alex’s excited squeals as they tossed open the door and kept running their hands over their flattened chest, standing front ways, sideways, all ways, tossing on shirt after shirt after shirt, just to watch them finally fit properly – at least when they look in the mirror now, they see their own smile, their own tears, Lucy’s grin, hear Kara’s squeals over FaceTime, rather than Eliza’s disapproval.

“The girls are gonna love you even more than they already did, Danvers,” Lucy nudges them as the two friends sit very illegally on the ledge of their first floor dorm room, their legs hanging out of their window, a couple of feet off the ground, and Alex pffts, and Alex splutters, and Alex blushes.

But then Alex glances down at their newly-bound chest, first with excitement, first with pride, then with… panic, and they grow serious.

“But what if my mom’s right? What if the gay girls just want… well…”

“Straight up girls?”

Alex nods with tears in their eyes.

“You’re amazing, Alex. Binding or not, whatever pronouns you use. Any girl can see that a mile away. And uh… hey. Looks like that gorgeous one already has.”

Alex’s heart plummets and they try to follow Lucy’s gaze, the slight nod of her head, subtly, subtly, subtly.

And then they almost tumble right off the windowsill, because the girl Lucy’s talking about?

The girl who just parked her motorcycle in the lot across from their dorm room, all thick leather jacket and boots and denim and dimples?

That girl is the most beautiful girl Alex has ever seen, and she’s staring right at them.

Alex sends a silent thank you to the queer goddesses that Lucy’s lawyerly aspirations include a military-style commitment to fitness, because somehow, even with her much smaller frame, she manages to grab Alex subtly enough to not make it obvious, strong enough to make sure they don’t splat out of the window.

The girl notices despite Lucy’s subtlety, and she grins.

Her eyes are bright and her dimples are adorable and Lucy mutters a reminder for Alex to breathe.

“Alright there?” the girl calls, and Lucy nudges Alex in the ribs.

“Nice ride,” they call back, and Lucy sits a little straighter, proud of her friend for using… words.

The girl struts over – Alex doesn’t know how to think about her walk as anything other than a confident, almost cocky, strut, and Alex is gone, gone, gone – with a small grin still on her face, a thin backpack slung over both shoulders and her helmet still in her hand.

“You two supposed to be hanging out of your window like that?”

Alex thinks of a lot of possible responses.

You supposed to be so hot amongst unsuspecting queers?

You supposed to be riding that motorcycle on campus? You can cause an accident with how good you look on it.

You supposed to have a voice that sounds like my first kiss and a face that looks like my heaven?

They think of a lot of possible responses, but they only splutter one.

“Sure, we – I mean, no, but pfft, rules? I mean, you rode a Triumph to school, like come on, screw rules, right?”

Lucy grimaces, claps Alex on the shoulder, and swings her legs up and back into their dorm room.

“Well. Good luck with this one,” she says to Maggie with a grin. “I’m Lucy Lane, and their name – if they never get around to telling you – is Alex Danvers. Feel free to stop by any time…”

“Maggie Sawyer,” the girl answers, but her eyes are on Alex’s face, which has gone pale since Lucy used their proper pronouns to introduce them to this gorgeous girl, since Maggie’s eyes traced slowly up and down Alex’s body, taking in their undercut, their flat chest, their boy jeans, their black, short-sleeved henley.

“Well. You kids have fun,” Lucy claps Alex’s shoulder again, and Alex thinks about asking her – begging her – to stay, but Lucy’s hopped back inside before Alex can form words.

“So, college has you so busy that you’re window hanging, Danvers?” the new girl teases. Maggie. Maggie Sawyer.

Alex rolls the name around in their mind, on their tongue, and decide they love it.

They shrug. “I’m usually in the lab.” They point haphazardly in the direction of one of the science buildings. “But I uh… I’ve had a lot going on lately, depression and whatever, and my mom’s been ragging on me more than usual, so I haven’t been doing so great in classes, so they gave me time off from the lab to fix my grades and – shit, I’m sorry, I… I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

“They tend to ramble in front of cute girls, Sawyer!” Lucy shouts from inside their living room, and Alex nearly leans in to take a swipe at her, but Maggie just grins.

“They’re lucky I find rambling charming, then,” Maggie calls back with a tilted head and a bright smile.

She used my pronouns. She used my pronouns. She used my pronouns and she’s smiling at me like maybe she can like me and holy shit, is she – she is – oh shit shit shit fuck fuck fuck I’m gonna either kill Lucy or get her a car or something as a thank you…

Because Maggie is swinging her backpack off her back and gingerly placing her helmet on top of it on the ground, and she’s arching an eyebrow.

“Want some company up there, Danvers?” she asks, holding up a hand, and Alex gulps, and Alex leans down to grasp it.

They both inhale sharply at the other’s touch, at the strength in the other’s grip. At the spark, the heat, that shoots through both of their bodies on contact.

Alex tugs her up easily, and Maggie situates herself next to them on the window ledge.

“So your parents have hella painful expectations of you too, huh?” she asks, her voice deliberately light.

“Just my mom. My dad, he uh… plane crash.”

“Oh shit, Danvers, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to – “

“No. No, it’s okay. Your parents too? Expectations?”

Maggie grins wryly and studies their fingernails. “It’s whatever. But hey – looks like you got yourself a nice roommate.”

“Damn right they do!”

“Oh my god, Lucy!”

“What, am I cramping your non-existent style, Al?”

Alex groans but Maggie just laughs. “She looks out for you,” she says softly after a few moments, like it’s hard for her to believe that people have relationships like that. Friendships like that. Family like that.

Like it’s a foreign concept to her.

Alex runs their hand over the side of their head that’s shaved, and bites the inside of their cheek.

“Do you not? Have people who look out for you?”

Maggie just shrugs. “I’m new here. New to… cities, generally.”

Alex studies her for a moment. “Welcome, then, Maggie Sawyer. Consider yourself looked out for.” They hold out their hand, and Maggie looks wary, like touching them again will catapult her into a world she’s scared to go, terrified to trust, petrified to hope for.

But Alex’s face is kind, and it’s open, and damn, it’s cute as hell.

And cute queers always were Maggie’s weakness.

Or, now, maybe… her hope.

She takes Alex’s hand, and shakes it, and she watches Alex groan good-naturedly when Lucy whoops from inside their living room.

“Can you get your own life?!” Alex calls back inside, not bothering to take their hand from Maggie’s.

“Not when yours is so straight out of a movie!”

Alex blushes and Maggie beams and Alex thinks, for once, that maybe, if this is part of their life movie, that they’re not such a failure after all.

[newssplashy]

Beer, cigarette industries workers jittery over FG’s duty hike

…20,000 job losses, shutdowns expected

Bimbola Oyesola

As the Federal Government looks forward to bolster its resources with more revenues  from its June 4 raise of excise duty on alcoholic beverages and tobacco, stakeholders including the organised Labour have warned the policy may be detrimental to the economy at the end of the day. They are concerned that an expected 20,000 jobs may be on the line when the policy is fully implemented.

The Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, while announcing the new tariff hike last month said the new excise duty rates were spread over a three-year period from 2018 to 2020, to moderate the impact on prices of the products.

Though she explained that the new excise duty regimes followed all-inclusive stakeholder engagements by the Tariff Technical Committee of the Federal Ministry of Finance with key industry stakeholders, the furore and reactions that it had generated so far have proven this to be untrue.

Federal Government view

From the Federal Government’s point of view, the upward review of the excise duty rates for alcoholic beverages and tobacco would achieve the dual benefit of raising its  fiscal revenues and reducing the health hazards associated with tobacco-related diseases and alcohol abuse.

According to the Minister, the Tariff Technical Committee (TCC) has recommended the slight adjustment in the excise duty charges after cautious considerations of the Government’s Fiscal Policy Measures for 2018 and the reports of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund Technical Assistance Mission on Nigeria’s Fiscal Policy.

She said, “The effect of the excise duty rates adjustment on trade and investment was also assessed by the Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment and it adopted the recommendations of the TTC.

“Furthermore, peer country comparisons were also carried out showing Nigeria as being behind the curve in the review of excise duty rates on alcoholic beverages and tobacco.”

Adeosun said the new excise duty rate on tobacco was now a combination of the existing ad-valorem base rate and specific rate while the ad-valorem rate was replaced with a specific rate for alcoholic beverages.

“For Tobacco, the government will maintain the current ad-valorem rate of 20 per cent and introduce additional specific rates with the implementation to be spread over a three-year period to also reasonably reduce the impact on prices.”

She explained that the new excise duty regimes were in line with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) directive on the harmonisation of member-states’ legislations on excise duties.

But some stakeholders who spoke to Daily Sun contended that the increase may be confirming fears that government was increasing the tariff to please the international community as the Minister indicated in her report on reasons for the raise.

For instance, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its report recommended a 100 per cent increase in excise duty rates imposed on all alcoholic beverages and cigarettes in Nigeria to conform with global norm

However, the recommendation, contained in IMF 2018 Mission Report on Nigeria, was higher than the rates approved by President Muhammadu Buhari.

It has noted that the excise duties rates for alcoholic beverages and cigarettes were very low and should be reviewed as “a full-proof revenue raising strategy.”

The new excise duty rates approved by President Buhari for tobacco were in addition to the existing 20 percent ad-valorem rates.

Under the new rates, each stick of cigarette would attract N1 specific rate (or N20 per pack of 20 sticks) in 2018; N2 specific rate per stick (or N40 per pack of 20 sticks) in 2019, and N2.90k specific rate per stick (or N58 per pack of 20 sticks) in 2020.

The minister said Nigeria’s cumulative specific excise duty rate for tobacco stood at 23.2 per cent of the price of the most sold brand, as against 38.14 per cent in Algeria, 36.52 per cent in South Africa and 30 per cent in The Gambia.

In Ghana, beer and other alcoholic beverages attract excise duty rates of 47.5 per cent, while local spirits, including “Akpeteshe” attract 25 per cent duty. The duty for tobacco products is 150 per cent for cigarette and cigar, $12 per kilogramme for Negrohead and 170.65 per cent for snuff and other tobacco products.

Another government agency, the Consumer Protection Council (CPC), in support of the Federal Government equally believed that the recent increase in excise duty on alcoholic beverages and tobacco products will serve to reduce the risks of abuse and disease.

The Director-General Babatunde Irukera, said government’s approach will also foster consumer confidence, provide regulatory clarity and prioritise safety, all of which reinforces the mandate of the Council.

Stakeholders insistence

Since last month when President Muhammadu Buhari approved the amendment to the excise duty rates for alcoholic beverages and tobacco, Organised Labour and the Nigerian private sector have vehemently opposed the increase.

The Organised Labour warned that over 20,000 jobs may be lost due to the increase in the excise duty on alcoholic beverages and tobacco. 

National President of the National Union of Food Beverage and Tobacco Employees (NUFBTE), Lateef Oyelekan, said employers in the industry have notified the union that they may have to downsize as the new tariff would impact on the cost of production.

Oyelekan, who is also the Vice President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), said with the new tariff, consumers would have to pay more for cigarettes and alcoholic beverages, which cuts across beer and stout, wines and spirits.

He noted that the union has subsequently written the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, on the implication of the new tariff, which may further exacerbate the problem of unemployment in the country.

“This new policy of the government will increase the cost of production and if that happens employers would have to look for a way of cutting cost, and workers are always the first option”, he said.

Oyelekan said more than 20, 000 workers are presently employed in the Alcoholic sector and half of this may lose their jobs, the same for the tobacco sector.

The NUFBTE President said the new tariff would not make Nigerian companies competitive with their colleagues outside the country and would further encourage importation instead of local production. This will escalate the problem of smuggling of alcohol and cigarette products, he argued.

He said, “The British American Tobacco (BAT) has just decided to make Nigeria its African headquarters where all its products for other African countries would be produced, but this may make the company to relocate to other African country with much more favourable policy.

“We can recall that Dunlop, Mitchellin relocated to Ghana due to unfavourable policy and now produce there and still bring the products to Nigeria because this is where the market is. That means Nigeria is providing employment for foreigners while our people walk the streets daily looking for jobs. It is sad!”

Oyelekan said what the union expected from the government was to look for a way to create jobs for Nigerians and maintain the existing jobs with the high insecurity in the land.

He also stated that the drive towards foreign direct investment would be impacted negatively as no investor would like to invest in an economy with low return on investment.

“Our employers have already notified us that it would lead to shut down of some of their companies. What government should be doing is to come up with policy that will discourage employers from downsizing, but before they can do that tariff has to be reasonable”, he said.

The Nigeria Breweries (NB) Plc, at its Pre- Annual General Meeting event last week  corroborated the fact that consumers may have to pay more for the consumption of the alcoholic drinks from June this year if Federal Government insists on going ahead with the increase in tariffs.

According to the Managing Director of the NB, Jordi Borrut Bel, the new tariff would be adding a bigger challenge to the sector that is barely striving to survive amidst the present economic challenges in the country.

“We would have to pass it on to the consumer, though we would do it in the most responsible way that we can manage”, he said.

He stated that the company supported the Federal Government call for specific transparency, but equally advised it not to do what will go against its policy on job creation.

OPS stand

The Organised  Private Sector (OPS) is however calling for the total reversal of the new tariff, which it maintained may lead not only to loss of jobs, but total extinction of the companies in the sector.

The President of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Frank Jacobs said none of the companies targeted by the policy will remain in existence by 2020.

He said, MAN was still engaging government on this policy. We know in 3 years when it would be in full force, the companies definitely must close shop because there is no way any of them will survive.

“It will affect workers too, hence we are on the same page, if the company is closed, there would be no jobs.”

The Director General of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Muda Yusuf, also shared the view that imposition of Excise duty on manufacturing firms at a time like this would do more harm than good to the economy.  

According to him, one of the most vulnerable sectors of the Nigerian economy is the manufacturing sector.  He said, “Already, the sector is grappling with high operating cost, high energy cost, weak purchasing power of consumers, an unfriendly tax environment, influx of smuggled products and high cost of logistics.”

The LCCI director general equally said that imposing additional excise duty would conflict with the vision of the ERGP regarding economic diversification, job creation and local value addition.    

“If the government cannot give tax incentives to manufacturing firms, it should not impose additional tax burden on them, given the challenging operating environment for production in the economy”, he stated.

For its part, the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA), said the increase at this period when the economy is just coming out of recession with the low purchasing power of the citizens was indeed a bad time to make any additional demand on the people.

The Director General of NECA, Segun Oshinowo, said the disposable income of an average Nigerian has drastically decreased relative to what it could purchase two to three years ago.

The post Beer, cigarette industries workers jittery over FG’s duty hike appeared first on The Sun News.

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/04/beer-cigarette-industries-workers.html