#i have no idea if other healthcare systems are this shitty but i have my suspicions. and my doubts.

[hylianengineer]

I found this rant in my notes from that time a couple months ago when the pharmacy lost my birth control prescription right before a holiday weekend and made me deal with unmedicated PMDD for a week and I was scared out of my mind. Have an angry rant about the inadequacies of the American healthcare system.

When Julian Bashir was a child, he thought that if he was bad, the doctors would make sure he got sick. He grew out of it. But… if you live with a chronic medical condition that requires medical attention to manage, this is kind of just how your life works.

You have to do all the right paperwork and go to all the right appointments and say the right things in order to maintain access to the treatment you need to be healthy. Especially if the meds you need are a controlled substance. You have to be the good patient. You have to, or you’re in for a significant amount of pain and suffering. It feels like a threat hanging over your head.

And sometimes, you’ll do everything right, and then something happens outside of your control to screw everything up. Maybe there’s a shortage of the medication you need. Maybe the pharmacy loses your prescription. But suddenly you don’t have what you need to be okay, and you hurt. More than that, you’re terrified. You don’t want to be in pain. You don’t want to suffer.

You just want to be okay; why is that so hard?

And the doctors don’t mean to hurt anyone! They don’t understand the amount of power they hold over us. They really do, for the most part, want to help. But the system is a mess of power imbalances and red tape and fear fear fear. There are too many bureaucratic road blocks that keep people from getting medical attention. There are too many doctors who don’t give a shit. Who don’t listen to their patients. Who assume the worst of us. We just don’t want to hurt anymore. We don’t mean to be a bother, we just want to be okay.

And we have to put our wellbeing in their hands. We have to hand them our lives and our sanity and hope they hold them gently. And if they don’t? We have to pick a new doctor and do it all over again. What other choice do we have?

[cherrysnax]

hi so our last post died, and things have gotten kinda worse with the arrival of our other cat, my elder brothers homelessness, and the racial abuse getting hurled my way

we’re two disabled black lesbians trying to navigate employment discrimination and the American healthcare system, and tbh we’re losing. we originally had to split everything between 6 people, but due to my brothers getting evicted, everything we have (and everything we don’t) also goes to them

like last time, I’m still waiting for a doctor but recently they told me to call back in November. I’ve been calling since April. I believe the stress of everything is causing a flare up of something and I have no idea how to manage it, on top of my new seemingly random food sensitivities that keep popping up. I’m exhausted all the time and sometimes can’t even get out of bed.

on a brighter note, my girlfriend applied to five jobs, but their phone was shut off this morning so it’s urgent that they pay their bill.

we were able to get some necessities early last month due to peoples help, but we can’t make it stretch with 8 people. it’s a shitty situation all around and I wish we didn’t have to ask but until my gf can get a job and I can find out exactly what’s wrong with me, this is literally all we have.

I’m not gonna link my PayPal anymore because people are harassing me with my deadname

my cashapp is $silvertheestallion and my gfs is $Peachjammn

my Venmo is cherryadventure2

thank you so much for reading

[rikamae]

I understand now. I understand all of it.

All those times politicians claimed something was "too complicated" "not that simple" "we don't have the money" it's all lies to keep us complacent.

They did it about the situation is Israel. "It's too complicated" everyone said. It didn't look complicated when I did my own research, away from those shitty think pieces talking down to me. Israel was a state built off the blood of Palestinians, and they simply do not want you to think about it. Because there is oil in the middle east and Israel is our only "Ally"

Wow, so complicated! The complicated part being that our media is tricking us into thinking this is so complex so they can be evil in plain sight: yes, so complicated of a situation!!

And today I wake up to find that the House of Representatives (the lowest level of US government) has passed a bill offering 14 billion to Israel! It will go to the Senate to vote. Wow, billion with a B huh? I got a question for you.

Where the fuck did we get enough money to fund genocide? Where the hell was all this money when it comes to supporting the Americans you politicians claim to be representing? Where was this money for free college, universal Healthcare, covid precautions, the climate crisis??

"It's just too complicated! You'll make us do cuts on other programs! You'll make us raise taxes!! Think of the taxes!!!"

Then where did this money come from? Oh, the IRS, the fucking company that handles our taxes??? Yeah????? That was an option? Why wasn't it an option before but it is now? Were they over funded and we just didn't notice until now? Or are you taking advantage of the situation to cut funding to another service you hate?? The point being: if they really want something, they can find the fucking money. They haven't because they don't want to.

It's never been complicated. It's their job to move money around. It's their fucking job to raise our taxes and provide for us, but the only people they truly represent are the ones filling their pockets with lobby money. They could have done this long ago, given us what we've been demanding, but they coddled us and said it was too complicated and our baby brains couldn't handle it. And God forbid you be a woman!! That means you're double unable to understand!

Enough. Fucking enough. Every year congress votes to increase their wages and refuses to raise our minimum wage. Every year they take advantage of their medical insurance and benefits they get for "representing" us when nearly every adult I know is left to suffer with their conditions: untreated sicknesses, chronic conditions, the depression that looms over us because we live in the most wealthy country in the world but we can't make ends meet and our government is more concern with funding armies that feeding and housing us

Politics was never complicated. They just told us it was. To shut us up. To make us feel young and idealistic and stupid. And we fell for it. And now evil is moving through the wills of our leaders IN OUR FUCKING NAMES to support a genocide in the middle east. Their only crime was being born on that land. Their only crime is being Arab. That's not a fucking crime.

Our system isn't complicated. It's working as intended. Keep the people blind and claim that it's too hard, leave all the details to them. But we are smarter than they are. We are informed. The world is connected like never before and I refuse to let their propaganda ever reach me again.

Hold them accountable. Know their names. Write it in the history books. Let their legacy be known to the end of times.

Be loud about your anger. Go to protests. Write your reps to tell them your vote is on the line. And for God's sake vote in the damned elections!

THE IDEA THAT YOUR VOTE DOESN'T MATTER IS PROPOGANDA. THEY WANT YOU TO FEEL USELESS. THEY WANT YOU TO GIVE UP SO THEY STAY IN POWER.

They want you to think it's complicated. It never has been. Be loud. Vote. Use your right to protest. Use your right to free speech. Use your right to petition. Next Tuesday is election day. Make it fucking count.

[monsterblogging]

So, it finally clicked that while the average person does in fact broadly comprehend that people are neither good nor evil - they're good and bad, and have free will - they also can't understand why some people would fully commit themselves to completely awful causes or to being a terrible person throughout their entire lives. They can't really picture how this works, because they can't imagine themselves choosing to die on a hill of Being A Terrible Person.

This void in their comprehension is where the myth of the Ontologically Evil Person is very likely to come and settle in sooner or later, because it seems to finally provide an answer that makes sense of otherwise senseless cruelty and violence. Agonizing questions like "Why would my boyfriend spend so much energy on making me feel like shit and breaking me down?" "Why would this historical figure decided to kill all of these people?" and "Why would this guy go start a cult and murder everyone?" are finally given an answer, and the formerly-bewildered person finally has some peace of mind.

Because of this, the myth of the Ontologically Evil Person is incredibly hard to get out of people's minds once it takes root. For one thing, bad ideas are like bad habits; it doesn't really work to tell people to Just Stop With Them, because without something else to take its place? They're going to fall back on it.

And if somebody's been traumatized from abuse? The last thing they want to hear is that they're basically dehumanizing their abuser and that's not cool, because it feels to them like the other person is taking their abuser's side and telling them to get fucked. Even if this not what's happening, the survivor's brain is currently operating on fight/flight/fawn/freeze mode, and a brain operating fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode is keyed to making snap decisions to try and remove you from the danger as soon as possible, which means categorizing everything into black and white. This person couldn't care less about the history of eugenics right now; literally all they care about is being safe.

"Okay, so if the Ontologically Evil Person doesn't exist, how the hell do you explain those fuckers over there?" some of you are probably asking.

Here's the deal. Literally every human being alive can and will do terrible things if they're sufficiently scared and desperate. They're in no position to appreciate that nearly all asshole behavior can be explained by a lack of critical social and self-management skills, or by a lack of access to self-improvement (including being too traumatized to trust means of self-improvement).

People who are scared, insecure, and under high levels of stress will often cling to anything that makes them feel better, because they want to feel safe and secure and not in psychological and/or physical agony. (Stress does an absolute number on your body, too.)

Being reliant on a shitty behavior, belief system, or product for some measure of feeling secure and safe is how you get people saying things like "If I didn't act mean, everyone would just walk all over me!" or "I was really depressed before I found this, so if I gave it up I'm going to get depressed again, and I might hurt myself." (And there might be some truth to this one! This might indeed happen if they give it up cold turkey, and without finding an alternative!) It's how you get people conducting """scientific""" studies to """prove""" that their bigotry is totally justified and not at all irrational. ("Well of course these people are genetically inferior, they wouldn't be poor and disease-ridden if they weren't... what do you mean, systemic inequality and uneven healthcare access? No that's obviously fake and made up by More Bad People.")

People also act in unhealthy ways to deal with personal insecurities implanted by parents or society. You have people out there whose parents drummed it into their heads that second place was for worthless losers, or that no one would love them if they didn't look or act a certain way. You have people who absorbed the idea that acknowledging the basic humanity of shitty people means that they have to forgive them and personally help them get better and just suffer through the abuse in the meantime.

This is how people choose to die on the hill of Being A Terrible Person. They weren't ontologically evil. They were scared, and they thought they saw a fortress on the top of that hill that would keep them (and perhaps also their loved ones) safe.

[still-searching-for-something]

I feel like I'm constantly talking like a broken record, lol, leftists this, leftists that.

Sometimes it's surreal to see myself typing that and agreeing with it, given I used to be very left wing myself until the response on the left to October 7th. And I hate the idea that it's giving other people the impression that I'm conservative--I'm not. I have some views that I'd share with conservatives--being a Zionist being one of them... obviously.

But I'm literally bisexual. I support same-sex marriage. I think democracy is the best form of government, that the US should have universal healthcare, should abolish the Electoral College (National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, I'm praying for you). I think the invasion of Ukraine is a monstrous crime and Putin is a threat to world peace. I think systemic racism is a real thing in the United States, as is police brutality against black people. I think vaccines work, and mandates are a good idea. I think most right-wing politicians are right-wing populists more interested in causing democratic backsliding and peddling conspiracies than they are in fixing literally anything.

But I can't call myself a leftist anymore, even with this set of values. Why? Because--oh, God--I believe Israel has the right to exist. And to defend itself.

I'm not even some radical on Israel unlike some friends of mine--I think it's a travesty that Israel hasn't yet legalized same-sex marriage or established a civil marriage system. I think the 2018 Nation-State Law was racist in making Arabic no longer a co-official language with Hebrew. I think Bibi is one of those aforementioned populists. I think Israel has a democratic backsliding problem.

But the rest of the left--the rest of the queer community, especially--has made it clear in no uncertain terms that I am not welcome among them anymore. Like, they genuinely think I'm a genocide defending fascist, which is just so weird to me sometimes. Yeah, me, the fascist who thinks queer rights should be non-negotiable in any society. And they, who are posting pro-Hamas slogans, are the ones standing against genocide and bigotry. Uh huh. Oo-kay.

I don't want to constantly be saying 'Oh, the left...' and 'Leftists when...' like I'm some boomer posting shitty memes on Facebook. The right has its share of problems, too. And I'm sure they'll do something soon to make their antisemitism known as well--especially as the 2024 presidential election draws nearer.

But right now, the immediate threat isn't in Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, or whoever. I'm more worried about being accosted by pro-Palestine protestors with something to prove than I am about neo-Nazi gangs. And so are most Jews right now. And that's why I'm posting about the left more than the right here... even though my values are mostly left.

Oh, the wonders of being politically homeless!

[evesaintyves]

trick or treat 👻🎃❤️

thank you @whinlatter 💕

you get a snippet of my shitty first draft of the Beasts tribute fic i started. for non-whinlatters, Beasts is her absolutely astonishing Ginny & the Weasley family fic that follows her postwar seventh year at Hogwarts, intertwined with glimpses of her development as a child & teenager, and there's a brief mention of a care facility where recipients of the Dementor's kiss live out the rest of their lives. Highly recommend this fic - it's just such a rich portrayal of the whole Weasley family, the fraught rebuilding process after the war, and Ginny's emotional & intellectual life.

tw: illness, death, and very unpleasant hospital stuff

this idea of what happens to people after they've been kissed by a dementor really spoke to me for a few reasons - i couldn't help but think about some of the things i've seen in my professional life. i work in a healthcare specialty i can't really name without potentially doxing myself (it's a small world) and early in my career i occasionally participated in testing to determine death by neurologic criteria - essentially, flat lines on an eeg, which is a really terrible thing to see if you know what you're looking at. it's a difficult thing to even comprehend, especially for a parent - that a child who was splashing in the pool a few hours ago, now seemingly asleep, will not wake up, is damaged so profoundly that they they will never take another unassisted breath. i also regularly worked with people who were incarcerated in the state prison system. it taught me a lot about - let's keep it short and just say inhumanity: in the american healthcare system and especially where it intersects with the criminal justice system, and, unfortunately, in some of my colleagues and the way they cared for their incarcerated patients.

in my current role i work with a lot of patients who just aren't going to get better, who are entirely dependent on caregivers to keep them alive and maintain their quality of life. and it is - i hope you'll understand when i say this i say it as someone who is devoted and privileged to do it - often difficult and demoralizing work. for families and for staff.

my youngest sister was one of these people: she suffered a hemorrhage in infancy which resulted in serious damage to her brain. she never spoke, walked, fed or bathed herself. it was difficult to know what she understood, perceived, felt, wanted. she was a beautiful, calm, sweet-natured child who was easy to love; not every family in our position is so fortunate. it was also easy for us to project on her an interior life that may or may not have really been there, which was a great comfort to my mother. but her daily care needs were enormous, taxing, frustrating, and her inevitable deterioration and death were devastating to witness.

obviously i don't really want to equate people with brain injuries and whatever other special needs with people in the hp universe who no longer have souls - that's part of the reason i've struggled with this fic. there are a lot of potentially-unanswerable questions about the humanity and interiority of victims of soul-removal in this fictional context, but i think the only responsible practice for a clinician working with such patients would be to assume that they still feel, experience, and need what any other person who cannot care for themselves would. including not just nutrition, hygiene, etc. but also company and touch and positive regard. and that whatever crime, even atrocity, they might have committed is irrelevant to my duty to them as a caregiver. but that is easier to say than to do, consistently, every day, at home or in a medical facility, and i know from experience that it won't always happen that way.

anyway, if for some reason you have read this far, here's an excerpt from the story, complete with first-draft placeholders where i decided to rethink some dumb on-the-nose character names, lol. it needs to be rewritten from scratch, honestly. it's set at the end of GoF, when Madame Pomfrey is tasked with removing the house-elf Winky from Barty Crouch, Jr.'s side after he has received the kiss, and I've decided for the purposes of this silly little fic that she has experience in the care facility where he'll end up.

working title is My Beautiful Dead Friends.

Minerva saw the whole horrible thing and it was all over her face, what it had done to her. Poppy has never seen it happen, and neither had [supervisor], which seemed to irritate him; he'd read about it in books. The soul emits a colourless glow as it exits, he said, visible for an instant before it is consumed. For some time in the eighteenth century the Kiss was performed in public, on a platform raised above Diagon Alley. People would bring their children. There were woodcuts depicting the moment, dementors in swirling curlicues, the bound hands and dark mouth of the convicted, and the soul, represented as a star or sometimes a tiny naked man, caught in the moment of transit. It was striking how carefully, how delicately, the little soul was etched, with lines of light coming off it. Even the soul of a murderer, a beautiful shining thing. Minerva had marched Barty to the infirmary dozens of times in his schooldays. Sometimes because Horace wasn't fond of the long walk, nor of standing up to his own students, but often because it was one of her Gryffindors who'd done it to him. He was there all the time, hexed, cursed, punched in the face. It seemed, at first, simply the lot of the delicate-featured son of the head of law enforcement to be regularly trounced. He gave at least as good as he got and sometimes there'd be an entire queue of students behind him covered in boils, missing or extra limbs, pinching their nostrils to stop the bats from flapping out. Barty might chuckle through a mouth of blood while she saw to him, or he might writhe and moan as if in agony; Poppy had a suspicion that it depended on whether there was a Hogmeade weekend or an exam coming up. It wasn't only the usual interhouse skirmishes with Barty—Once, he limped to the hospital wing on his own, so badly beaten she had to put him out for a while and repair his perforated intestines with dozens of tiny movements of the tip of her wand. When he came to, she asked him what had happened, who had done this. He grinned at her with half his teeth gone. "Jusht the cosht of doing businesh, Madame," he said. Bubbles of red on his lips as he spoke. She found out later from Filius that he'd scammed a bunch of Ravenclaws into a sort of pyramid scheme, buying and reselling junk from Zonko's to each other. She was sure he didn't need the money: his robes were clasped with real-silver fasteners in the shapes of snakes. His mother came to take him home for the weekend after that one. He pressed the side of his face into the bosom of her robes and sobbed pitifully while Poppy left them to it behind a screen. On his way out the door, later, he waved to her, like, see you soon! Now he looks content, drowsy, like he's just had a meal. It was always hard to square the faces of the Kissed with what they'd done. Barty could almost be his seventh-year self, resting in the lull of a potion—though he might have already been a murderer by then, she realised. His hands, which had once aimed waves of pain so brutal they'd evicted poor Alice and Frank Longbottom from their own minds, are laced together at rest on his stomach. His thumbnail picks occasionally at the wand-callus on his forefinger. Some unlucky trainee healer will be alarmed by that one day. The Kissed do those little things. Their eyes follow you, sometimes, across the room. They smack their lips when they swallow the bubblemint-flavoured nutrition potion. They sit up in bed. "Look—he's doing it—I've told you—" Llanzo's mother had once cried, summoning the whole staff to come and see. She was tickling Llanzo's ribs with her fingers, and his lips had pulled back, his chest was jerking with spasms of laughter, no sound but a sort of clicking in his throat. "It's a reflex," [supervisor] told her. Llanzo's younger brother slumped in his bedside chair and stared sourly at his mother. She got angry, understandably, and shouted a bit before storming out.

"A rat will make a rhythmic sound if you tickle its belly," [supervisor] told Poppy in private. "You can call it laughter, if you like."

Llanzo was the only one who ever got visitors. He'd been accused of leading a nine-year-old witch away from her parents at Gray's beach and leaving her face-down, strangled, in the shallow mud of the Thames. His mother had given an alibi, which wasn't enough to keep him from being arrested, and he'd been shipped off to Azkaban to be held pending trial. As they'd approached the jagged rocks of the island he'd broken his bonds somehow and heaved himself over the side of the boat. Escape, suicide, or just some motiveless panic, it wasn't clear, but when they'd caught him and hauled him onshore the Dementors had fallen on him at once. He was seventeen, on his summer holidays. Lying in bed on the ward a year later he still looked like a child. Poppy wasn't sentimental, as a rule, but at the end of shift after those visits she'd sometimes have to have a little cry in the car park before she apparated home. "If you ask me I think she's on to something," Catherine told her once, in low tones, eyes on [supervisor]'s office door. "I've seen things. The way they look up at you. You can leave them on the pot for an hour, they won't do a thing, then as soon as they're back on the bed, haven't even had time to get a nappy out—" she made a squelching sound in her cheek. "Pure spite, I swear."

His mother came back the following week, brother in tow, and sat with him reading from Quidditch Through the Ages, turning the book to show him the moving illustrations. Sometimes his gaze moved to land on them and sometimes it didn't. "He was a Chaser," she told Catherine, who'd come to give him a bath. "Fast as anything. His Dad and I were both hopeless on a broom, but he's—" She swallowed hard. Llanzo was smiling faintly, as he often did when he got his bath. His breath came in soft vocal sounds that were almost sighs. "—he's my superstar," she finished. When they left, she made his brother say goodbye to him. Poppy was scrubbing up at the bedside sink to do his skin integrity assessment. Llanzo's brother gripped his hand, and leaned down as if to kiss him on the cheek. "Fucking die," he whispered, lips almost touching Llanzo's motionless face.

[whentheynameyoujoy]

OK, fuck it, I have thoughts.

So I like Axiom’s End. Its theme may hit as subtly as a sledgehammer but it’s saved by the characters and the way it’s delivered. The whole point is about not truly being able to comprehend the mysterious Other, about communication and knowledge not being a panacea to bigotry and supremacism, about how studying the Other can often lead to the reinforcement of said bigotry as you confirm your prejudices and refuse to abandon your point of view where you’re the default, the morally superior and the Other at best a flawed imitation, at worst a contemptible aberration. And you arrive at this and the usual “wait, this is actually about our world, isn’t it” via the protagonists and their own personal failure to truly comprehend one another, even though at the same time they’re aware of their respective cultures’ atrocities. Again, unsubtle but it works.

And then Truth of the Divine comes and it just doesn’t. The theme is utterly divorced from the characters’ inner journeys. It’s literally a “wise accomplished guy sees further than the protagonist and informs her of the theme which they then spend the rest of the book trying to effect”. The idea that “if you deny rights to aliens, you create a legal framework which then allows humanity to keep indulging its centuries-long human rights abuses” isn’t even less on the nose than what the previous book presented but because it comes to the story as a monologue and the response is “oh I never thought about it that way, guess that’s what we’re doing now” it reads like a Medium article preaching to the choir.

And I absolutely am going to blame this on Kaveh or rather the way he’s designed. For the theme to be a result of a learning process, you really need someone like Timothy Snyder not realizing until his 50s that the U.S. healthcare system is a bit shit, because he’d never been affected by its shittiness before. You need a person of privilege. You obviously can’t do “I discovered racism exists” via an Iranian refugee who got his big break by exposing CIA torture sites in the Middle East.

But OK, fine, I guess that the world doesn’t need another white savior “I learned something today” narrative (let’s ignore it could have been Miranda having a leopards ate my face moment). But to really drive the final nail in the coffin, Kaveh isn’t even particularly complex as a character. He’s endlessly understanding and empathetic and soooo self-aware, absolutely would never use Cora to his advantage, no siree, he genuinely loves her and wants to take care of her and never abuses his worldliness and is a great fuck and exactly what she needs at this stage in her life and he never has doubts about anything and his demons are long behind him and only serve as a means for Cora to learn there is a light at the end of the tunnel and his connection to Nils doesn’t amount to much in terms of character flaws and he believes the idea of daddy issues is stupid and he opens doors to a better future for Cora and stands up for her and is loaded but his wealth doesn’t affect his worldview whatsoever and his dick is uuuuge and throbbing and oh my fucking god I get it he’s perfect I could not give less of a shit about him why is this Gary Stu taking up so much space.

And this, kids, is how momma found herself yearning for the tertiary CIA agent who most likely has a past of torturing people. Simply because he seems to have something, anything else going on behind what’s readily apparent.

[theorgantrail]

"Evolution has treated us as a species and spared almost all of us by sharing the risk. The process of disease is a mandatory byproduct of biological success. It is insurance for our species."

a brief argument for universal healthcare.

Roger Strair, quoted above, invites us to think of ourselves not as individuals but as a collective, a species, whose can ensure the success of our communities, our nation, our species by sharing risk. He argues that "an ethical foundation for universal healthcare" starts in our very DNA. I agree.

As noted in a previous post, our current insurance system puts many people in the position of betting on their health when choosing a healthcare plan. Even then, many people delay or even forego medical care, or ration lifegiving medications, because they can't afford the 'cost share' amounts left after insurance. America is notorious for the medical expense GoFundMe's. What if we had a system that could replace crowdfunding, insurance premiums, and medical debt with a couple of basic taxes, simplify the billing and payment process for providers, and ensure that every person had free & equal access to the healthcare they needed? It's not too much to ask from our government - we have plenty of examples of other governments who have figured it out!

I would really like to see what the average American taxpayer pays for their healthcare under the private insurance system, and compare it to the amount in taxes that they'd contribute to fund a single payor solution. I had trouble finding the numbers I wanted, but I did find some potential funding options on Bernie Sanders' Senate page that came close to this idea. Either way, I know I'd personally rather pay my fair share of taxes to live in a country with universal healthcare than pay premiums for shitty insurance I can't even afford to use.

For more reading, I recommend this Point/Counterpoint section in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, where arguments are made for and against the idea of Medicare For All. I find the supporting points far more compelling. Ultimately, I think there are solutions to any problems that opponents of this type of policy might present, such as cost to the government or impact on healthcare providers. We have given the marketplace a chance to compete for consumers, and we're not satisfied with what it offers us. It's time to try something new.

[titanicfreija]

y'all. Seriously. We have hologram projectors. Why are you insisting that we would still have homelessness? I understand it's hard to wrap your mind around the idea that it's possible to have enough to take care of everyone, and you're right to an extent.

But like this is running ringing the same bell of "we can't afford national healthcare" when so many other places are already doing it successfully.

No one is gonna be getting fat off their freebies, but for it to be the problem you're making it sound like, a hell of a system of ownership would have to survive the same apocalypse you're trying to say killed all the supplies.

We know we have corn as it's growing in the EDZ, staple grains are just that, and it's probably dog shit compared to shit you can buy for glimmer, but you can totally have a functional economy with food markets and everything while people get taken care of. In fact, it's healthier for the market because now people aren't struggling to pay rent and can still buy stuff at the market.

The Eliksni Quarter was deliberately shitty, guys, it was a ghetto, that was the point.

The walls are huge and they're hollow. The entire bottom floor all the way around could house my entire hometown.

Food would be the argument I could have, but someone already called apples "basic" with complete disregard as to where they come from and how they'd get into the City because it IS just a grocery trip away for a lot of us and it's easy to overlook that kind of thing.

Is it really just so fucking hard to imagine?

[nature-nerd-sarah]

it's your turn! Narrativise your life! Find a moment that has the core of a novel you'd read and then MAKE IT SO

I've thought about it, and barring any stuff that I should really talk through with a therapist first (the Dutch healthcare system is so overtaxed and understaffed that I probably never will), I think my first year of uni could be pretty good.

Get into uni to study biology. My first ever relationship ended in a break-up near the end of summer vacation, and I have pretty bad social anxiety, but whatever. I'm gonna try my best to make a new life in uni.

Rent a room from a private landlord. It's small and has no outside windows. The only sunlight comes from a window into the hallway, which has an outside window. Whatever.

Dutch unis have a thing called "introduction week", where new students get sorted in groups to do activities during the day and parties at night. I start drifting away from most of my introduction group pretty much as soon as introduction is over. We were just randomly sorted anyway.

I do end up becoming friends with three of them, E1, B1, and L1. Too lazy to think up fake names, so you're just getting the first letter of the first name, and a number if there's more than one person with that letter.

Also met a girl at a camping trip during summer, M1, and we kind of stay in touch. I feel attracted to her, but don't realise this is an after-effect of the break-up.

A new housemate moves in, D1. He complains whenever stuff gets to loud for him, which is anything above a whisper after 6pm, and anything above normal talking during the day. He sometimes starts banging doors and shouting because you're too loud.

I hang out with E1, B1, and L1 at uni for a while, start getting closer and eventually start dating M1, and try not to get into D1's way at home.

At some point, B1 and L1 pair up for a uni assignment. Bad idea. They're too different in how they work, end up fighting, and the friend group falls apart.

Start getting second thoughts about dating M1 around this time too. She's... a difficult person to deal with, and I'm not equipped to handle all that.

At some point, the landlord is having some work done to the bathroom. It's pretty necessary work, but very noisy. D1 attacks the workman over this. They beat each other up pretty badly, and the landlord kicks D1 out.

Meanwhile, I start hanging out with another friend group at uni, an introduction group that did actually stay together. E2, D2, B2, M2, E3, L2, and L3. L1 also hangs out with them, because she's becoming toxic bffs with E2.

I realise I can't with M1 anymore. She really is too much for me to handle. At the time I have some weird superiority complex about breaking up with her, in hindsight I feel bad for using her to get over a previous relationship. Such is life, I guess.

I realise a studymate, D3, lives near my house. I greet him in the way to uni one day, and we end up going together a lot. We also meet up for drinks sometimes.

The friend group I'm hanging out with is becoming pretty toxic. L2 and L3 are talked about barely behind their backs for being too lovey-dovey of a couple. Truth is they're both autistic, and L2 has some pretty bad anxiety that L3 is helping her with.

I at some point mention that I'm bi to this group. I didn't think it was even that remarkable, but they do. I feel a real shift in how they treat me going forward. Especially E2 and L1 become much colder towards me.

I end up hanging out with D3 at uni more as well. Also with his friends M3, N, and T. They're all pretty cool. L2 and L3 start hanging out with us more too, because we're not being shitty about them being lovey-dovey.

I go for drinks with D3 and L3, and the friendship is really cemented. We make a group chat, and start doing most of our assignments together.

This all happened in a little over a year. That final friend group (D3, L2, L3, M3, N, and T) has been my stable group of uni friends for 8 years now. They're the ones I recently came out to as trans.

[moontheoretist]

When Empire supports a wannabe Empire

War in Ukraine and Genocide in Gaza are two examples of how USA as a country chooses who to support. Ukrainians and Gazans are both victims of oppressors that want to KILL them all. If USA was a normal country that cares about people, they'd support Gazans as much as they do Ukrainians. But unfortunately, USA is not such a country, and it was known long before now. USA as a country only supports those that suit their political and capitalist agenda at the time. USA hates Russia, so they support Ukraine, but I can as well imagine that if USA was ever in a good relationship with Russia and had a lot of money to make from supporting them, they wouldn't support Ukrainians at all, just like they don't support Gazans dying in the most horrifying act of genocide we saw in recent history. Israel is shooting at civilians, who they call "human animals" and USA's president is proud to support it.

Israel and USA want to create Greater Israel together at the cost of civilian lives of innocent Palestinians, because they only care about power and power alone. They don't see Palestinians as people at all.

Israel spreads propaganda about Palestinians that says they are less than human, that Israel should have been ashamed to even create, because it's the exact copy and paste of nazi propaganda that killed THEIR people around the world, and USA stands and claps at their genius ideas. But I guess they don't care as long as Israel can acquire that land for their precious country and USA can get someone in the Middle East that they can use to control it. I don't know & can't even comprehend how both USA's government and Israel's government can live with themselves knowing that they are building their alliance and political presence in the region on genocide of innocent people.

Oh, and if you doubted my Russia = Israel comparison, then know that Israel is doing something fishy on Lebanon/Israel border. Specifically, they're lighting fields and mountains on fire, not letting firefighters in to put down those fires and are killing anybody who comes closer.

And you know what is the most annoying? That if Americans don't use the narration of "our tax dollars pay for it" then they won't have enough people actually caring about the issue. For some unfathomable reason people care more when they know their money was used to do this. Because people think that taxes are stealing the money from people, and hell, maybe in USA that's real, looking at their shitty healthcare system, education system etc. but it's still vile to some extent that some people can only care if their money were taken from them and used to do something horrible, and wouldn't care otherwise. Wouldn't care that bombs are dropped on innocent people if those bombs were not funded by their money. And funnily the exact same argument can be used against them to make them despise helping Ukraine, because "why should their tax dollars go to some foreign country", yes? I saw people like this. I don't know what is wrong with those people at all.

Are there better ways to use American dollars than to help genocidal maniacs? Of course, but maybe don't make it a core of your argument when people are dying. It distracts from the real issue: the genocide.

Still, it's important to stop the USA from funding this genocide. Not because American citizens' money were taken, but because funding genocides is evil. Nobody should be doing that, especially not the country that is supposedly standing for freedom. The most powerful country in the world could destroy many other countries by simply funding the wrong people, and we can see that now in Gaza. USA's help is contributing to saving Ukraine, but in Gaza the same kind of help offered to Israel is a reason why this genocide happens so quickly. The reason why Gaza is leveled into rubble as we speak. It's terrifying.

And yet...

USA's president is denying the genocide. He is claiming that people are lying about how many Palestinians were killed. To the point that the Health Ministry in Gaza had to release a 212 pages long document including all the names of victims of Israeli attack (and those don't include people that are missing or whose bodies can't be identified).

The UN Security Council voted recently on a resolution to condemn violence against ALL civilians, while calling for humanitarian pauses to the fighting in order to get aid into Gaza. You know what was the ONLY country that voted against it? Yes, United States of America.

USA vetoed the resolution that was supposed to help people.

USA's government doesn't care about people. They are caring only about their own interests. And I'd really want to say that EU is better, but it's not when the EU's President Ursula von der Leyen claims that "Europe stands with Israel" to the absolute outrage of people and European countries like for example Ireland whose EU representative almost screamed that von der Leyen doesn't speak for her country and doesn't speak for Europe. She doesn't. There are people in Europe who deny the genocides too. People of my own nationality saying shit that makes me ashamed I share the country with them. Because how can someone say something like this when innocent people are dying? Do they have no empathy, no heart? I can only hope there are more people who care than those who fall for propaganda and spread lies.

Israel now cut off internet in Gaza, so we couldn't see what they are about to do to the people. They were targeting journalists and their families before that... but now? They are going to keep bombing the innocents. And if someone is still alive after, that feels like it will be a miracle. Imagine you live in Gaza and know you may not survive what is going to happen and have no way to say goodbye to your family living abroad, or a way to tell your story before you are gone.

Is that really "justice" USA fights for? Because it doesn't feel like any type of justice. If they support what Israel is doing right now, they're not supporting justice. They're supporting genocide of innocent ppl. And I will say it as many times as it's needed. Because it's the truth.

I'm loosing hope in humanity, but we need to keep it alive. Because if not we, then who will stop those govs from committing crimes? We're powerful, but often don't realize how much power we wield. We have to use it to help in any way we can. Scream, show them we all care.

Here are some links that may help to stop it all:

https://linktr.ee/nooraldayeh

https://linktr.ee/justgraciegrace

[solrika]

Vent post.

Id put it behind a cut but I’m on mobile :/ also this is very ramble and not at all coherent but oh well.

I always have a bit of an issue with posts like this that are like “your trauma and how you react to it doesn’t make you a bad person” because. Uh. Cycles of abuse are a thing, you can absolutely do bad things out of trauma responses. You can absolutely be a shitty, hurtful person from a place of pain. (Staring at the entire state of Israel and its treatment of Palestine). Especially in the context of that post, which specifically mentions anger issues and addiction.

I’m not replying or reblogging said post because I truly don’t think that’s what op was going for, the greater point was “autism isn’t just sunshine and roses but can create real issues for people,” it’s just… an accidental unfortunate implication. But it’s late and I’m dealing with my own neuroatyoical issues flaring up atm so. Yelling about implications and the need for nuance and space for caretaker burnout on my own blog. Probably dealing with some buried trauma of my own.

(Also the USA healthcare system sucks for people who can’t easily take care of themselves, I dunno what it’s like outside the country but in here you need SO Much Money just to get barely adequate care for TBIs or Alzheimer’s or shit. )

There’s a little byplay in the notes that I think is important—someone says “I don’t have autism but I got secondhand trauma because my sibling does,” someone else responds “fuck you, of course allistic is making it all about them self” and a third person goes “hey it’s very common for the siblings of disabled people to be neglected in favor of the ‘squeaky wheel,’ I know it hurts to hear but disability hurts more than just the disabled person.” That plus some of the notes describing damage that autistic people have done (and largely regretted) to others… Disabled people can cause harm. That’s a thing!!! Being disabled does not make you blameless! Cool motive still murder!

And your disability can absolutely cause secondhand harm even if you don’t mean it to! My little sister no longer feels like the smaller sibling because my parents spend more emotional energy on me—and that’s a mild case, my disability only really began being an issue when we were both in college. It’s nothing compared to her friend, whose adult brother suffered a TBI and can’t live at home because it’s not safe to have a huge man around who can’t regulate his strength when he’s upset. It’s not at all his fault that he’s like this, but it’s a horrible situation and ALL involved should be able to say that it’s horrible.

I have done shitty things because of trauma responses, and I have worked really hard to create strategies to keep those shitty behaviors from happening again. I give myself—and others—a bit of a pass when a situation is truly uncontrollable. Or when someone is actively trying to ignore boundaries I’ve set to protect myself, but… that’s not the same as going “I have anger issues. Huh. Oh well! I will continue having destructive trauma responses and do nothing to mitigate it!”

I dunno. I’m sure some of this strong reaction of mine comes from being lashed out at by people in the midst of their own meltdowns, even though those have been more TBI related than autism related. Still. The meltdown was unavoidable but the ways they acted during were… hm. Not great.

At least stay away from vulnerable entities when you’re like this. My partner removes himself from the dog when he’s having a meltdown because the dog can provoke him into physically lashing out. (The dog has no idea, of course. The dog is very stupid and only barely understands what me crying means. ) He can’t control the meltdown happening but he can step away from things he could hurt. I really wish the people who hurt me had stepped away from the child I was.

I wish I’d gotten an apology, too. Like at least apologize for your shitty behavior, please!

(This whole “writing my own separate post and not tagging op” is one of those “hm. Am having Emotion. How to express it without causing pain to others” things I’ve tried to cultivate.)

If you don’t fucking MANAGE damage to others, others won’t want to be around you. If you hurt someone they are absolutely within their rights to set boundaries to protect themselves.

I dunno. I started at point A and I’m not sure where I went from there. Don’t be a dick I guess.

[herunswithscissors]

My late 40's are so much better than my teens, 20's, or 30's. I didn't realize how miserable and fucked up I was.

With every new year, I look at my past and see how I've grown and healed over the years. Some years I think I finally figured things out. Some years I'm glad that what I thought I had figured out turned out to be bullshit.

I've been learning who I am. I've been building up an internal life, an education, learning empathy, and becoming more attuned spiritual realities. I've been becoming more sure of myself and more comfortable with being myself around others.

I have been working on my mental/emotional health for decades and it has been a slog. Nothing ever seemed to be getting better. But with good treatment and doing the hard work of talking things out I didn't want to talk about, every year was healthier than the last. If you knew how far down in the pit and how close I was to suicide every God damn minute for 10 years, you would be surprised to even see me alive. Let alone actually feeling happy. I'm still a mess inside, but I'm so much better today than I was at 25 or 36.

My wife and I have finally settled into our marriage and have a way of relating that works for us. (We are still doing counseling anyway because we are screwed up people and we want this thing to last.) And we finally figured out how to be pretty decent parents. Unfortunately, the kids are mostly grown by now and we are also grandparents. But my parents have shown me that you are never done parenting your children. Your role as a parent just morphs over time to fit your children's needs and they still need us.

I understand people and the world so much better now. Don't get me wrong, I still don't understand shit. I just understand shit better.

I know more about the stupid systems and how to navigate our draconian healthcare, justice, education, and government better. Which is good because they are all getting so much worse and harder to work with and I need to move about in them and get care/services. This also means I can give better advice to my son, students, and younger colleagues when they need it. I'm no lawyer or ombudsman but I'm better than nothing.

I didn't shed my fundamentalism till I was 45. I feel so much better. And I can love so much better. And I'm a much better father, husband, friend, and professor. And I'm a much better Christian, if I can still be called one. I know God so much better now and have such a wider, healthier, affirming, and more powerful love. And everything makes more sense.

I have no idea what the second half of my life will bring. I hope it is better than the first half. Even though I'm still fucked up and am worried as hell about the future (it's going to be shitty, folks), at least I'm in a better place inside myself to face it.

We don't get to choose our childhoods or our traumas. We don't get to pick what worldview or religion we start with and most of us are stuck with the same religion and worldview for life. We don't get to pick how much homophobia or discomfort with other races and cultures we feel right now. All we can do is try to move forward now, using what we have now. It matters far less where you are now, than it matters what direction you are trying to grow.

(BTW, apply this to the right wingers and fundies you meet. You have no idea how much sense everything makes on the inside. It sounds crazy, but fundamentalism is wonderfully powerful propaganda. And so is conservative punditry. And even for a weirdo non-conformist, mad genius like me, after growing up fundamentalist, it took 25 years living in American slums, deep depression, suffering, loss, poverty, doing a PhD in the sciences, getting to know a whole lot of foreigners and non-White Americans, marrying into a non-American, non-White family, having non-White kids, drugs, humiliation, lack of "success", breakdowns, the multiple viewpoints and discussions with diverse people on Twitter, losing my friends, isolation, getting duped by a Christian University into a predatory contract, and abuse by the state and the church to crack my fundamentalism open. Only then could I start to untangle myself from the chains.

I can finally love and accept my neighbors as themselves and celebrate who they are and see the beauty in who they are. Without thinking about how I can get them saved or judging them. I doubt I'll ever get rid of the visceral homophobia or fear of Black people or discomfort with other cultures. That shit is programed in. But I'm learning to ignore it and it is becoming less overwhelming.

What can I say. Once I stopped believing I even needed forgiveness, and realized that my every transgression was always forgiven in the moment just like I do for all my children. Adopted ones included. And even my dumbass students whom I love dearly. Once I realized God was more like a Good Father and not a judgemental Patriarch Emperor White American type of being, I just started changing for the better everywhere. The weed helped a lot.

Have a little pity for the poor fuckers still stuck in there. See what direction they are trying to move on civil rights or tolerance and love for others. Stop trying to argue so hard. Just keep chipping away. And plant some seeds of doubt. But mostly just be their friend and let them see a different way of living and loving in you. That will do more to get to their heart than any grand slam comeback to their stupid arguments.)

Just want every young person terrified of becoming older than 23-25 to know that I'm currently 32 and my 20s were fucking miserable and while life isn't wholly perfect right now I wouldn't trade my 30s for my 20s for the LIFE of me. The idea feels as ridiculous as trading my 20s for being in high school. FUCK no. And I'm sure at 42 I'll feel similarly to my 30s and so on and so forth. Embrace the passage of time and be grateful that you get the privilege of growing old, bitch. Life's sooooo much better past your mid 20s.

[red-revival]

Whoooo love being disabled and clinically depressed and not rich in a province that hates disabled people and anyone who isnt rich. Vent post if that wasnt clear. I'm not gonna act on anything under the cut I'm just angry and in pain

Love not being able to get dental care because I woke up halfway through the last surgery so they can't do anything else to help me without bringing in an anaesthesiologist and putting me completely under which we cant afford because its somewhere around $10k and we obviously dont have fucking 10 thousand dollars because who the hell does nowadays. And having barely anything I can do but try to keep my teeth from getting worse while the decay slowly creeps up into the rest of my head. I'm rotting from the mouth out because I'm resistant to drugs so conscious sedation doesnt work and we cant afford actual anesthesia so I just have to wait and cross my fingers and hope we maybe maybe get enough money by some miracle or that insurance decides to be nice for fucking once and. I'm so angry. I fought for so long to keep my will to live but I keep running into medical issues that want to kill me so what was the fucking point of all that. Sometimes I wonder why bother taking my antidepressants if my entire body is so fucking desperate to die anyways. May as well give the useless piece of shit a painless deathinstead of letting it kill me slowly and painfully. And obviously I'm going to keep living because I'm not letting this useless fucking body decide whether I live or not when its never done anything good for me to deserve any say in the decision. But its so hard not to be tempted by the idea of just dying painlessly because at least tjats better than my body trying to kill me slowly. And I also know at the end of the day its not really my body's fault because none of my issues are things that should kill me without medical help its just that we cant afford the help I need, ultimately its the fault of shitty economics and corrupt politicians, but I cant control economics or politicians and I can control my body. So its easier to be angry at my body. And none of this is probably coherent so good. I hppe its not.

I'm gonna keep living because my little cousin saved me life and even though I lived long enough for my promise in his memory its unfair to him if I die now. I'm gonna keep living because I've gotten this far through stubbornness and promises and if I have to make it even longer with nothing but anger I'll do it. I'm gonna keep living because I hate the ucp too much to let their stupid fucking butchering of our healthcare system be the thing to kill me. I'm gonna keep living because I refuse to let the depression or other conditons that ruined so much of my life win. I'm gonna keep living because I haven't seen any coralroots in person yet. I'm gonna keep living because I want to meet my new little cousin who's due soon before I die. I'm gonna keep living because I need to be there for my little cousins who've been born and met already. I'm gonna keep living because I dont want to just disappear on my friends. I'm gonna keep living because I haven't finished CaDi yet. I'm gonna keep living because I have too much to live for to let my body and economic situation kill me. I'm gonna keep living because I'm too damn stubborn and angry to die. I'm gonna keep living because I've broken deaths legs before and I'm not done breaking all its fucking bones yet.

I'm gonna keep living because I want to rip out a vertebrae from deaths spine and wear it as a necklace.

[thatonebirdwrites]

<3 to this. All of us are valid and wonderful as we are. All of us are deserving of love, trust, acceptance, and have our needs met. I'll share some thoughts about dynamic disability related to my own experiences: I use a wheelchair at times or a rollator. Sometimes my arm crutches. It honestly depends on the day. Sometimes I simply don't have the stamina, energy, of even working legs to walk at all, so I'm stuck with my wheelchair. When I say working legs, I mean legs that can actually hold my weight. There are some days they just can't no matter what I do. Yes, I have done physical therapy, but that can't cure what I have. It can only help me maintain what little muscle I have left and help me learn balancing tricks. That's about it. The frustrating aspect of this is when I encounter people that harass me -- yes HARASS -- because I can walk six to ten feet on my good days. They get in my face about me "faking" my disability, which is emotional and verbal harassment. They have no idea what my story is or who I am. They judged me by their misguided and false notions of what disability is, and they are engaging in tremendous harm. Sometimes these people threaten to "report" me to... whoever. Do Not EVER report a disabled person who you think is "faking" it. The claims of "faking" are rooted in this falsehood that one can tell who is disabled by looking at them. This is false. You can't. No one can. Only that person knows if they are disabled or not. This myth causes some people to feel emboldened in harassing others out of this idea that disabled people don't deserve basic services.

Everyone deserves basic services such as healthcare, food, water, housing, Internet. No one should ever be denied this, and I wish people would stop threatening the lives of others by threatening to take away the things we need to live. That's really harmful and atrocious behavior.

Disability is NOT a bad thing. There's nothing inherently wrong with being disabled. We are human beings worthy of care, respect, love, and acceptance like any abled-bodied person.

Anyone at anytime can become disabled for any reason. This isn't something to fear.

Instead, we should be fixing the systems that harm disabled people with draconian measures and forcing us to live below poverty level in ways that hurt us further. Disability benefits is less than minimum wage. It hasn't been changed in over thirty years in the USA, and it's so underneath the poverty level, that most of us have to engage in mutual aid and fundraising just to get enough to pay for housing and food. We are not the cause of debt -- that's the bailouts to multi-million corporations and their shitty tax breaks. Go yell at them, not us. Often, when people try to report us for "faking" it based on shitty myths, this can often cause our disability or other services to be denied. That denial cuts us off from what we need to survive, which can and has killed some of us. This isn't some game. Do Not EVER report anyone as 'faking' it. No one can truly know the full story of another person unless you talk with them and they share it. So since no one can know that, stop acting like you can figure it out with one glance. You can't.

Instead, BELIEVE the person, and trust they know what is best for their body. I know, this seems like such a hard thing to do these days, but I promise if everyone treated people in this kind and affirming way, the world would be a lot less shitty. Yes, this is a rant, but I've had far too many people judge me because I can get out of my wheelchair, stagger ten feet, and collapse into bed or chair. Great, I can walk ten feet, but that's my limit. Just because I can do that, doesn't mean I'm faking it. It means that's my limit. That's all my body allows of me that day. A LOT of illnesses are actually dynamic illnesses, meaning what our limits are can fluctuate throughout the day or week. So what we are capable of doing isn't always easy to predict. This is why it's much, much better for everyone to BELIEVE disabled people when we say what our limits are. To BELIEVE us when we use mobility devices. And to mind your businesses. Our needs matter as much as anyone else. We are deserving of care and love as much as anyone else. We deserve to THRIVE. Let us thrive. Thanks for reading.

Shoutout to ambulatory wheelchair users who can walk a long way, whether aided or unaided. To people who can hike up a mountain one day, but another day can’t even get out of bed; you still deserve to use a wheelchair, you are not faking your disability. When you have a fluctuating disability, it’s hard to feel like your needs are important, but they are.

(Yes this post is about me. Don’t clown on this post, if you don’t relate just scroll away)

[ms-demeanor]

My friend says not to vote in the upcoming election because our liberal establishment is no different from fascism and because Trump's policies are merely an extension of existing policies (like the ICE concentration camps that were established under Obama). How would you, being a leftist like me and my friend, respond to this attitude?

When I was in high school there was one cataclysmic, catastrophic, Very Important school board meeting.

It was a perfect storm of religious freedom, LGBT Rights, and Holy Shit You’re Talking About Taking Daycare Away from Students Who Are Parents.

The first thing, religious freedom, was exceptionally stupid but I think it’s a great example of how shitty the suburb I lived in was and what we were dealing with. Basically the D&D club that I started was accused of being Satanists and the Campus Christian Club was trying to get us shut down for worshipping satan. (I live in the fucking WORST part of LA County, I swear). The defense for the D&D club was pretty simple: If we’re worshipping satan as an on-campus activity at lunchtime we have every right to do so just like the Campus Christian Club an in fact if the Campus Christian Club got us shut down for practicing a different religion they’d made a very effective argument for shutting down their Praising Christ on-campus lunchtime activity.

The second thing was ANOTHER conflict with the Campus Christian Club - this was more serious. This was “High schoolers shouldn’t be exposed to deviant lifestyles and therefore we need to shut down the Gay/Straight Alliance.” At that point the GSA was also very new and I was also the VP of it. Spoilers: we were allowed to continue existing and we had speakers come in from time to time - we had grownups who talked to us about dealing with homophobia and resources for what happened if your parents kicked you out; we had a trans woman in her 50s come and talk to us (in 2003!) about transphobia and dysphoria and how to cope. The adviser handed out a packet to all of us that had the suicide hotline number right at the top, I know at least three people used that number the first year. The defense for the GSA was actually another handy-dandy page out of the ACLU handbook: The Campus Christian Club’s definition of deviance is something they have a right to hold but not to impose on other people - if you ban the GSA based on being ‘deviants’ you are imposing someone else’s belief system on us so knock it off unless you want to be a fun LA Times story.

The third thing didn’t have ANYTHING to do with the Campus Christian Club and was much worse because it had to do with funding and teen moms. The third thing was “The district believes it’s a waste of money to continue to pay for childcare at the district continuation school; if you can’t afford childcare you should have thought of that before becoming a teen mom, good luck getting a babysitter while you’re trying to finish high school.” Four of the students from the continuation school had showed up with their children and their defense of the daycare program was basically (and understandably) “What the fuck you fucking ghouls we just want to finish school and it’s one fucking daycare provider on campus you already have to pay the insurance for childcare providers for other schools in the district what the fucking fuck.”

The D&D Club, GSA, and Childcare for Teen Parents Program were all allowed to continue existing.

By one vote.

By someone who had recently been elected to the school board.

By four votes.

Four people went out and voted that November. Four people filled in a bubble on a ballot.

The GSA did fundraisers to pay for STI testing and suicide prevention. My friend Michelle graduated on time with her daughter waiting in the crowd. Knowing that adult trans people could survive and exist and thrive and love themselves was lifesaving information for a few kids in the GSA.

Four votes. If four people stayed home that’s a hundred fewer STI tests, that’s wondering if Michelle would ever be able to get a job when she didn’t have a diploma and couldn’t hire a babysitter. That’s three dead queer kids and another two homeless.

And it didn’t happen. Because four people filled in a couple of bubbles one night in November.

Voting is not activism but it is by no means useless. If your friend is incapable of distinguishing fascism and liberalism that sounds like a them problem and it sucks to be them; that amount of nihilism is hard to carry around.

People who criticize leftists for “electoral apologism” or whatever for voting are the “yet you participate in society, curious. I am very intelligent” comic

Yeah, the system’s shitty. Yeah, it sucks and should be overthrown. But it’s not overthrown YET so we may as well take advantage of the few areas of harm reduction the system allows. Voting doesn’t mean you STOP doing direct action or that you stop pushing for change, it just means you’re doing the single easiest real-world thing to alleviate suffering. And if it doesn’t work who gives a fuck - you did the bare minimum and it cost you a small amount of time.

Vote and then go hand out food in the park or cut the valve stems off a cop car if you’re feeling angsty about conceding to the system.

(also FUCK, you have no idea how much I hate having to defend the Obama administration but please go talk to a trans person about whether it is easier or harder to get healthcare in their state under Trump or under Obama. I fucking hate liberals but I don’t think that they’re actively interested in overturning Roe V. Wade. Fuck this political purity culture and go learn about harm reduction.)