#but then again idk why they have digestive systems so maybe i'm wrong

[sodapopacid]

it's been years and i'm still so unclear on how the hell steven was made. did rose shapeshift reproductive organs inside her??? what the hell happened when she went into labor??? did she just turn into steven like she was shapeshifting??? or did she actually give birth and then fade away or some shit??? was she actually growing a baby??? was she actually pregnant with a fetus in there or was she just changing her form to make it feel more humanlike??? DID SHE EVEN HAVE A WOMB??? it's been haunting me for so long i don't think i'll ever know peace

[nothorses]

do you have advice/starting points for learning about radfem ideology & how to spot it in the wild? maybe a weird question, but i'm a trans guy and i've noticed i'm getting kinda hypervigilant about terf/transandrophobic red flags & seeing them in innocuous stuff (idk if you're on twitter but rn there's lots of posts about how all women live in constant fear of male violence and I flinch every time I see that sentiment bc it pings my transphobe radar which I feel rly shitty about!) (1/2 sorry)

(2/2)  I feel like knowing concretely what radfems believe and how that manifests might help me be a bit more chill. However, I’m wary of just googling bc I don’t want to expose myself to a bunch of openly transphobic scholars, so if you have any pointers that would be great! 

The core of radfem ideology, from what I understand, is the belief that it’s men who are responsible for the oppression of all women.

Other forms of feminism will generally point the finger at patriarchy as a system, and often acknowledge that patriarchy negatively impacts all genders in different ways- and, of course, to different extents (this really varies between movements, though, and some are better than others.)

That “men are the oppressor class” belief is rooted in gender essentialism; the idea that genders have essential qualities to them that are, if not shared 100% of the time, at least common enough to justify this kind of stereotyping. There are differing beliefs about why genders share those qualities: classic misogyny will usually say it’s biological, as will TERFs and other bio-essentialists, while “trans-inclusive” gender essentialists might say it’s about socialization. Whatever the case, it’s fundamentally hostile to trans experiences, as well as intersectionality with other oppressed groups- particularly people of color.

If you’re seeing “men don’t realize that a loud male voice is the scariest thing in the world for a woman” posts, or “it doesn’t matter how safe a man actually is if you’re a woman walking alone at night” posts, that’s generally coming from radical feminism to some extent.

That doesn’t make the feelings expressed in that post wrong, and it doesn’t make the person posting it transphobic. Oftentimes, those things are posted or shared by people who may be grappling with a trauma they’ve leveled at men as a gender, and who feel justified in never challenging it. They tend not to think about the implications those feelings have for trans people, or men of color, who suffer the most for a white cis woman’s fear of Scary Dangerous Men. 

Sometimes those things are shared without much thought, because it’s everywhere, it’s easily digestible tidbits of “feminism”, and they feel like they’re helping.

And sometimes it’s a TERF, a transphobe, and/or a racist trying to gain a platform and pull more people into their ideology.

It’s understandable to be wary, and I think it’s less about memorizing a list of red flags/dogwhistles, and more about learning how they think. If you understand their ideology, you can avoid it even as they change tactics to go unnoticed again.

A lot of the people posting and sharing these things have just memorized some red flags and done none of the work to challenge radfem ideas on a fundamental level, and that’s why you see them around so much in the first place.

[jyndor]

Cop-thing-anon here again (yeah I check the hashtag quite a lot..perks of covid homeschooling I guess)

Wow, I don't even know what to say

I knew what/who inspired the nations from atla but I had no idea that everything was deeper than that. I guess I thought atla's message was bad guy = ozai & sozin I guess and taking over the nations = bad. I also had no idea that azula ever said that

Makes sense the way you put it, I didn't think the creators would put in this much thought, like having the message run deeper than it usually is and taking real life events and shaping them kid friendly

You got me there.. actually convinced me. I'm still bummed, sorry

hey anon, I don’t want you to feel bad about not knowing some shit especially if you are a minor (which I am assuming because homeschooling). like I’m 29 and I didn’t know all of that when I was first watching avatar. at all. no one starts fully educated, that’s kind of the point of unlearning and growth.

also like, atla’s message is many messages - whether intended by the creators or unintended. and I don’t even agree with all of them. that’s the thing about media. there’s no such thing as ideologically pure content - there’s always going to be progress to make. and if you’re talking about atla’s creators (like bryke etc) then yeah they put a ton of thought into atla. I have issues with bryke but no one can say they didn’t do an amazing job researching for this world they wanted to build. and I just scratched the surface - there are so many other cultural influences on atla, from the sun warriors (pulling from aztec/incan/mayan cultures) to the foggy swamp tribe (probably related to people of the mississippi delta, or like the bayou) to the dai li being named for general dai li who was a top chinese government official and a fascist leader, etc. now it’s not perfect, like I said these peoples are not a 1 to 1 match for their real life influences.

I do believe that kids are smart and capable of digesting a lot. I was 14 or 15 when I first saw atla, and even though I was super anti-war (now I would categorize myself as anti-imperialism) avatar still taught me a lot. and when I rewatch the show I get so much more out of now that I understand more about these themes that they were pushing in the show.

like for instance, the episode where katara becomes the painted lady to save the fire nation town that is being poisoned. I was so mad at those townspeople for not accepting her because of her waterbending. like, how dare they? now... I still find it abhorrent but I understand why the writers made that choice. first off, those towns people were so poor and exploited I’d be shocked if they’d ever seen a waterbender before. so they probably didn’t know what waterbenders look like. and also, it’s a real thing that happens. poor communities can be bigoted and also exploited by corporations and business interests. that episode is not just about katara having empathy for poor people (even if they are people who have benefited in some small way from her people’s oppression) it is also about the toll that imperialism and the war machine have on the people who are supposed to benefit from those systems.

if you look at the united states, people like to say fuck america it should all drown etc, and yeah fuck the united states I agree, but the us is full of people who are dying from poverty and hunger and cancer from industry, and I’m not even talking about black americans who do not benefit from imperialism at all, but like... west virginia. skid row in california.

I read this un report on poverty in the us that fucked me up for a while:

“The evidence is  everywhere. On Skid Row in Los Angeles, 14,000 homeless persons were arrested  in 2016,         including for urinating in public and other "quality of life" offenses, while overall arrests in the city were  declining. For those wondering what the problem is, the answer is not hard to  find.  In 2016 there were only nine public toilets available for some  1,800 homeless individuals on Skid Row. The resulting ratio of one public  toilet per 200 individuals would not even meet the minimum standards the UN  sets for Syrian refugee camps.”

so like, not to bum you out further anon, but that is why critically engaging with media is so important. because if you just watch that episode and say “well fuck those poor fire nation people for probably being at least xenophobic if not racist” um I mean I get it I am sympathetic to that point. but it also brings up the lie of american exceptionalism that people around the world did actually believe. like that coming here would be better for people. idk maybe it is. but that episode was also saying that being a poor person, even a poor citizen who has privileges in their imperialist country, is at risk because of imperialism and capitalism lbr.

you can argue that that episode makes the case against there being a clear race factor in the show, but I’d argue that most people are willing to deal with someone’s differences until those differences are explicit. they’re totally cool with katara until they see the proof of her foreignness, and then they hate her. even when she put her neck at risk for them.

as far as the fanart goes, I’d be shocked if they were like “haha I’m fucking over indigenous people and supporting cops and police brutality” but it is a matter of not unlearning harmful things. like I know that the artist said they wanted to make sokka the cop first, but that is also a common thing in cop propaganda in shows. so like, have you ever seen the cool black cop or the gay cop or the woman cop? or the gay black cop with a cool corgi? that is making cops look progressive. that is a common ploy. it’s used by countries and companies to seem progressive (pinkwashing - israel does this, pretends to be gay friendly and woman friendly but they’re still harming palestinians so they’re not gay or woman friendly) and it works. people love brooklyn 99. but it’s still doing heavy lifting to present police departments in the united states as decent when they just are all complicit by nature.

so chances are that artist was not thinking about the messages they sent. and that art had over a thousand notes, so clearly people didn’t really think about it either. I saw a couple of comments saying it was gross but... shrug idk.

anyway, I don’t want you to be bummed out because of this. you didn’t do anything wrong, you just didn’t understand why I was mad about it. <3

[cookinguptales]

Okay so weird question, but how exactly did you get diagnosed with POTS? I was diagnosed with hypermobility syndrome and partial arrhythmia a while ago, and it's only just recently that I've had a doc wonder if I have POTS. He didn't really tell me anything about POTS, and now I'm really lost! Do you think it's unlikely that I could get to be 21 and not be diagnosed?

Strap in, friend, because the story of how I got diagnosed is long and unpleasant.

So to start off, here’s a basic explanation of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. It’s a syndrome, which means that it is a description of a collection of symptoms rather than an underlying cause. Frankly, doctors aren’t super sure why any of this happens, what exactly causes it, or even if it’s genetic or what. (But my mom, sister, and grandmother all show signs of mild POTS, so uh. It’s probably genetic.) The long and short of it, though, is that your blood vessels are supposed to automatically tighten or release in order to control blood flow. When you stand up, they tighten to counteract gravity and make sure blood stays where it should be. When you have POTS, your blood vessels don’t do what they’re supposed to do. Your autonomic nervous system stops controlling this tightening and loosening process, which means your blood flow is not being adequately controlled. (Also, there seems to be some research showing that #1, we tend to have more elastic blood vessels, which means they just expand when they fill up more – bad because that means your body can’t use blood pressure to regulate blood flow, either, and #2, we may not always have enough blood in our bodies to fill our blood vessels, so again, shitty blood pressure.) ANYWAY, what all this means in practice is that assorted parts of your body aren’t getting enough blood, or they’re getting too much blood. Blood does all sorts of important things for your organs, especially oxygenating them, so this really means that POTS is an “anything that can go wrong will go wrong” situation. Anything in your body that uses blood can go haywire at any time. And sorry to say, that’s everything.

Now, POTS is highly variable. Again, it’s a loose collection of symptoms, and those symptoms are different for literally every patient. POTS is actually super common in teenage girls, but it tends to be very mild and some teens (mostly boys, mind) completely grow out of it, so people often don’t even notice they have it. People only just started researching it and it’s still not talked about much, which, well, is probably due to sexism. I learned the hard way that teenage girls are not generally listened to when they complain about nebulous symptoms, especially if those symptoms have literally anything to do with hormones and menstruation. (Which POTS does. It’s…I think ¾ of all people who have it are biologically female, and onset usually accompanies periods of hormone fluctuation such as start of menstruation, childbirth, or start of menopause. Most sufferers get it in their teens when they start getting their period.) Like… It’s hard to really put this in a gender neutral way because I promise you, the reason doctors are shitty about POTS is tied to both the biological and societal effects of being female. That’s an aside though.

Anyway, tl;dr, it’s different for everyone and doctors think you’re nuts. When I was diagnosed, in the informational packet literally said “THIS IS NOT ALL IN YOUR HEAD” because so many patients have been repeatedly told that. For me, I was actually uh. I don’t want to say lucky? But in some ways I guess, yeah, lucky. I have a really bad case of POTS with some really severe symptoms. I have a lot of digestion problems, extreme exhaustion problems, dizziness, faintness, anxiety/depression, pooling/tingling/coldness in extremities, and here’s the biggie – blindness. When I stand up, I often just straight-up go blind. (Or if I’m just sitting there doing fucking nothing if I’m on an airplane.) It was really bad especially when I was a teenager. It used to be like literally every fucking time I stood up. (We later found out it was because all the blood was draining out of my head bc gravity. Turns out your brain likes blood! This is also why it hurts so much.) Now, doctors ignored most of what I told them about exhaustion, trouble keeping down food, aches and pains, etc. I was repeatedly told “oh, well, that’s just part of being a teenage girl”. Like honestly, try telling someone that you have exhaustion, pain, and nausea relating to a period and see how seriously you get taken. Jesus.

BUT UH THEY COULD NOT IGNORE THE BLINDNESS. Like I don’t care how teenage girl-y you are, it is not normal to go blind on the regular! My doctors could not figure out what the hell was happening. And I do mean doctors. I got POTS when I was around 10, along with my period. I was diagnosed when I was almost 18. In the meantime, I was passed around between dozens of doctors and honestly? I was a guinea pig. They didn’t know what was wrong with me so I was subjected to constant barrage of tests and treatments that made me a hell of a lot sicker. I was going to like 3 different doctors a week, sometimes every day. There are very few medical tests I have not had at least once. Some of the treatments they tried, I later learned, carried a strong risk of addiction, permanent neurological damage, and death. I was a drugged-out mess trying to drag myself through 15 flavors of physical therapy every day. Like uh. In short, my teenage years weren’t…good… 

I finally got referred to like my sixth neurologist, and the guy was like “okay, you have been passed around between neurologists, cardiologists, ENTs, sleep disorder specialists, etc. for YEARS and we don’t know what’s wrong, so it makes no sense to keep ‘treating’ you – so I’m gonna take some readings and send them (and you) to a research hospital”. And that’s what he did! He took me off all of my medications (leading to the kind of DTs that honestly possibly could have killed me; I researched a few of the medications later and let’s just say you’re not supposed to go off them cold turkey) and did some tests. He found out some stuff like my blood pressure moves around a lot when I stand up. And sometimes my blood pressure was as low as 60/40. (Yo, that’s almost dead. The nurse took the reading three times with two different machines bc she was freaking out, lmao.) So he referred me to Mayo Clinic.

Now, what I did not know before this was that Mayo was actually the clinic that had discovered (and still researched) POTS! They saw a lot of girls like me. They took some blood, did a few tests, and when I had my appointment with them, they knew in under a half hour that I had POTS. I…cried. A lot. haha. It was so bizarre how many things in my life were actually an indicator of POTS. They were like “do you often sit all folded up?” and I basically exclusively do – and often got in trouble for it in school – and they were like “yeah, that’s POTS, you unconsciously try to keep all your limbs tucked in to reduce how far your blood needs to go”. Which is, I guess, why I tend to lose sensation in my legs and/or have my feet turn purple when I sit in normal chairs. lol. “Do you ever get dizzy or black out when you stretch or yawn?” oh yeah. “Do you get really sick when you take hot showers?” almost died once or twice, check! “Do you get weak when you lift things above your head?” you betcha. “Do you have a lot of problems with heat and sunlight?” OH YES I DO. Living in Florida was hell. I’d be vomiting and unable to stand up after like 30 minutes outside in the summer. I still vomit and get migraines if I look at a sunset, when the sun is strongest. Sensory sensitivity, especially photosensitivity, is a thing with POTS.

The actual diagnosis of POTS is kind of difficult. They usually have to do a ton of tests to rule everything else out first. Then they’ll usually try a tilt-table test (they tilt ya and measure your heart rate to see if your heartbeat skyrockets to help battle your blood doing weird shit) or a sweat test (which I am told is supposed to be painless but was one of the most painful experiences of my life so maybe it was a POTS thing) or look at your pee and see if you’re hella dehydrated. If you have POTS, you’re pretty much always hella dehydrated. (Gross but important: a symptom I never mentioned bc I didn’t know how abnormal it was – it burned like HELL when I peed. Turns out I was grossly, dangerously dehydrated. My urine was so concentrated that it was literally burning my urethra. idk how this slipped by so many doctors, but drink some dang water!) So it’s really a combination of tests for diagnosis, and they have to know to look for it in the first place! More and more doctors know about POTS now, but when I was first diagnosed almost a decade ago (this February! :’) when I went to college none of the school doctors knew about it. My family doctor didn’t know. None of my specialists knew about it. They wouldn’t give me student vaccinations bc they didn’t know how they’d interact with my brain. lol. It’s better now, though! I recently got a new doctor when I left my school’s health system, and she knew what POTS was! I was so happy, haha. Once I had a doctor literally google it right in front of me, so it was uh. A welcome change.

All this is to say that getting POTS diagnosed can be hell!! And I could definitely buy that you’re 21 and haven’t yet been diagnosed, especially if you’re female. My recommendation is this: the main treatment for POTS is diet and exercise, and that can’t hurt even if you don’t have POTS. I shit you not. There’s no cure or anything, but you are supposed to drink A LOT of water (I drink over a gallon a day, and that’s on days I’m not dealing with the sun) and eat a LOT of salt (”as much as you can stand” was their exact wording) and wear compression clothing (spanx and compression socks help me) and try to keep your body as toned as possible. It’s really easy to get out of shape when you have POTS (god knows I did), but they recommend trying to keep your blood moving. (THOUGH, CAVEAT!! I put on a lot of weight since I got diagnosed, and I have to admit. It’s gotten my blood pressure to a healthier level. So idrk what to make of that.)

I’m not gonna tell you to start eating massive amounts of salt when I don’t know your body, but drinking water can’t hurt you. So if you suspect that you may have POTS, start drinking water. This is not a replacement for a treatment plan, but it can’t hurt you! It can only help! So while you’re working with your doctor, just drink a lot of water and see if it helps you feel better. It is like night and fucking day with me.

Finally, POTS has a high comorbidity rate with other issues. In other words, if you have a severe case of POTS, you probably don’t only have POTS. A common illness to have with POTS is EDS, or Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It’s a type of hypermobility, which may be why your doctor is concerned. (I don’t have EDS, probably, but I do have some pain/movement issues that they’ve never been able to pin down, so there’s probably…something. idk.)

Here’s my advice. Work with your doctor to try and figure things out. Drink water. Make sure you have a good doctor whom you trust. Even after I got diagnosed, I regularly got medical professionals who believed this shit was all in my head. And try not to worry. Like I said, for most people who have it, POTS is extremely mild. If you change your lifestyle, you might not see many symptoms at all, and if you do, well. Work with that trusted doctor. Hit me up. I know a lot of ways to get a lot of salt in your body. lol