my (very queer) friend is pregnant for the first time and she’s been on all the baby message boards (eg tiktok, facebook) and she found this tag that was like “ftm pregnancy” and she was like “oh cool! there’s whole tag for pregnant transmen!” and then was extremely confused as to why the tag was full of what appeared to be cisgender women. she was like “i mean i don’t wanna judge, maybe they are transmen but they don’t look how i expected them to, that’s okay, if they say they’re trans then they are” except she kept looking through the tag and literally NONE of them were transmen, ALL of them appeared to be ciswomen. she was VERY confused, seriously questioning what she knew about trans people (and not to be like “she has trans friends!” but literally her partner is trans, her sibling in law is trans, many of her friends are trans/nb, hell i think she’s a bit nonbinary herself, idk, we haven’t actually talked about that recently lol) and doubting reality in general.
and then she found out that, amongst a huge section of the internet to which she had never been exposed before, “ftm” stands for First Time Mom.
there’s no moral to this story i just thought it was funny
11K notes
·
View notes
every once in a while i think back to college and the time my animation professor used moses from prince of egypt as an example of “unappealing character design” and each time i remember this i’m closer to branding it an internalized racism thing
8K notes
·
View notes
Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
17K notes
·
View notes
i fucking LOVE creating things with my friends!!! let's talk about our ocs and put them in situations!! let's make a song together or share our writing!! let's connect on a meaningful and artistic level!!!
17K notes
·
View notes
I think the best example of how 'taking an obviously bad liberal position on an issue and just holding the opposite stance within the exact same framework' isn't at all a substitute for an actual communist view on the matter is the absolutely inane statement of 'Your HRT isn't more important than Palestinian lives!' -- like, take a step back here and consider for two seconds why we're just accepting as implicit the notion that trans rights and anti-imperialism are inherently at odds with one another? Is this actually true? And who does it serve to say that it is?
2K notes
·
View notes
i feel like etho and iskall's roomies situation in season eight exists on the opposite end of some spectrum with beef and iskall's roomies situation right now (season ten). like. two corners of a graph with two axes. one axis from "never talks to each other" to "never leaves each other alone", the other from "happiest roommates possible" to "the only reason they won't move out is that means the other guy wins". and they're just. in opposite quadrants. what i'm saying is get yourself an iskall. get yourself a man who can do both,
4K notes
·
View notes
Speaking of a lesbian Shen Yuan, let's just get it out of the way this woman would NOT know how to act after transmitgation. Like, all it took for a male Shen Yuan to start acting like the world's biggest babygirl was dying and being reborn into a villain's body, what do you think would happen if he was a closeted lesbian who religiously consumed either porn or male centric media? She'd commit war crimes on the poor women who had the luck of interacting with her. This woman would squeeze Liu Qingge's biceps and playfully say she can always depend on her strong shimei to protect her, she'd U-haul a marriageble age Luo Binghe into her side room and treat her as one would a wife, she'd host her sect leader to talk about her peak's budget wearing exactly two layers because it's just so hot and we're all women here shijie, she'd invite Gongyi Xiao to her peak with a smile and too much subtext for it to sound like a simple discipline invite to anyone hearing it, she'd call Zhuzi-lang fascinating to her face with no type of irony or mockery. This woman would would do all that AND still think think someone means lebanese when they say they're a lesbian, again, the system doesn't know what type of evil they unleashed upon the PIDW world
2K notes
·
View notes
It's funny how often Bill is described as a master manipulator, he's so smart that he knows what everyone is thinking and how to push their buttons.
Because he is SO BAD at manipulation!
The only reason he ever gets what he wants is because he can literally read and control minds. And historically, he is pretty shit at using what he learns in a productive way.
Every time he has a human partner, it's because they are obviously desperate for something he can provide. All he does is use the fact that he's a seemingly omniscient otherworldly being to gain ethos, and then tell them he can get them the thing they want.
These are not complicated concepts. Anyone with those inherent advantages could do that. And, historically, when the actual negotiations are up to him and he hasn't backed someone into a corner, he pretty immediately fumbles the bag.
Think of when he possessed that priest: he pitched his plans outright with zero tact and everyone in the room immediately refused and dedicated themselves to making sure he never got his way.
The pharoh DISPISED him, found him annoying and tried to banish him. The shaman caught wise pretty quick. Xgqrthx never even planned on helping him at any point. Every plan failed because of Bills own ineptitude, when all the cards were stacked in his favor!
The way he talked to Ford was disturbing and direct and entirely Bill-like. Ford was just a sponge for any flattery and happened to be into the way Bill spoke and left him rats and suggested murder because he is also abnormal.
Bill is bad at making friends, which is why he has just a few henchmaniacs he's gathered over billions of years.
People DO NOT LIKE HIM.
And he's in denial about that to an extent. He always thinks they'll be on his side once he reveals his true intentions. He always thinks they'll go for the promise of infinite power and destruction because who wouldn't?
Basically, for an immortal god who's had an unfathomably long time to practice social skills and can LITERALLY ENTER MINDS TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO SAY... he's really, really bad at manipulation. And really, any sort of person to person connection.
2K notes
·
View notes