#other sociologist

[liccy]

I want to see people's routine when a scantily clad empty blog starts stalking you.

Please reblog to obtain a larger sample size, thanks!

[noriyucko]

i think the main reason why theres so much controversy and misunderstandings in the mw fandom already, like people defending jimmy, demonizing curly, and the insane amount of ableism and misogyny, might be because of the amount of second hand media consumption. were talking things like watching playthroughs or reading wiki pages instead of playing the game for yourself. dont get me wrong, i used to always watch playthroughs before playing a game. but i have noticed some insane stark contrasts between people who played the game vs those who havent.

dont know exactly why this could be causing it, but i have heard the same idea be given by other fans who played the game.

[diyasgarden]

if you're an american who lives in a place where your reproductive rights may be on the line and use a period tracker, please delete it. i'm not the first person to say it, nor will i be the last, but i will repeat it for hours if needed. this is the time to delete it.

with the results of this election (specifically in congress) many have already acknowledged the effect it will have on access to abortion in this country. rightly so, but it is important to remember that this isn't a solitary issue. at the core of the abortion debate, is an inherent discussion on the self-autonomy of women's bodies. the republican's party disguises it's qualms with this autonomy as qualms on abortion, a procedure which they know draws up strong sentiments across political, socioeconomic, and racial lines. by creating legislature that bans abortion, these states are crafting a legal basis to go after any procedure regarding women's health. you may think this is point of view is extreme, but it's a process we've already seen unfold when alabama threatened the right to ivf earlier this year. banning abortion has never been the end goal, but simply a starting point.

do what you can to take care of your health. and if that means deleting anything that could comprise you, please do it. many of these apps have been instructed to share their data with the state and some already have. it is simply not worth the risk.

and please know that regardless how it may feel right now, there are doctors who stand with you. doctors who will work for you. if you are blessed with the ability to pick your healthcare provider, be intentional with it. find these doctors because they are the ones who will have your back more than any politicians ever will.

[cruelsister-moved2]

im sooooo sick of neopagans thinking they invented stuff that literally every religion thats not modern american evangelicalism already has 💀 i dont care if u want to light candles in ur bedroom or whatever, but even when youre swinging at “normie” religions ur still missing like okay catholics LOVE altars. jewish liturgy celebrates moon cycles. whatever youre trying to articulate about an all encompassing divinity of universal love was probably said in verse by a persian muslim centuries ago. your american christian/atheist background is a huge outlier in the global history of religion: it’s not even that you’re missing some niche exception, it’s literally that your entire perspective on “organised religion” is based on an outlier 💀

[contagious-watermelon]

It's interesting to me that understandings of transsexuality have been almost exclusively filtered through the lens of queerness and the social aspects of gender. In other words, that the "T" was added to "LGBT." I've thought for a while that in a lot of cases, transness — and specifically dysphoria — makes a lot more sense when analyzed through the lens of disability rather than through queerness. (Personally I see it as being at the intersection between those things.)

I think that a theory of transsexuality would be incomplete without taking into account the societal aspects of gender, yes, but it seems to be similarly incomplete in the popular understanding of it.

I've seen a lot of discussion in the stuff I've read by disabled people about the contention between being objectively harmed or, well, disabled, by your disability, but still wanting to be proud of it or finding identity in it regardless. A lot of autistic communities, I've noticed, talk a lot about the fact that being autistic is difficult; it's made worse by other people's reactions to it, but it still is hard on its own (e.g. auditory overstimulation); yet people still can say that they'd rather be autistic than not. Or they may say they wish they weren't, but that they've come to terms with it because it's not exactly changeable.

Point is, there's open discussion about the differences between inherent challenges to your disability regardless of society, the ways which ableism makes things more difficult, and the contention of finding identity and community in your disability despite that. (And I use autism as an example because I'm autistic; I don't want to speak for, say, a physically disabled community as I'm able-bodied. But I have seen similar discussions there as well.)

The trans community, as I've seen, doesn't really have that. We're polarized between the extremely self-hating people who think that being trans is a curse and that people who like being trans are just fakers co-opting transness, and the toxically positive contingent who refuse to engage with the fact that sometimes dysphoria really does just hurt. And also that transphobia exists.

There's also the fact that in many ways, dysphoria is actually disabling. It isn't for everyone, and part of the problem is that transness as a concept covers so many things that analyzing it through just one lens will always be incomplete, but for me at least it caused me a lot of depression and dissociation, and made it difficult-to-impossible to interact with other people or function at my classes. Back before I medically transitioned, I related a lot to some descriptions by disabled people about their chronic pain, because my dysphoria effectively was chronic psychological pain. I don't want to say it's the same thing, because obviously I've only experienced one of those things, and dysphoria has a treatment while many (all?) chronic illnesses don't, but nevertheless it was a comforting lens to think of my dysphoria through in the time before I got top surgery.

Also of note is the way both our communities are treated by the medical establishment. I've heard many horror stories by disabled people of how doctors simply refuse to diagnose them or give them issues with their meds. Trans people obviously also have to deal with the shit that doctors put out in order to get access to HRT and any necessary surgeries. People deride HRT, saying that we shouldn't take it because it'll "make you a medical patient for life." People act like mental pain isn't real — calling depression fake, acting like because things like fibromyalgia aren't "real pain" that it shouldn't bother you so much, etc. — and that extends too into the way they dismiss the pain of gender dysphoria.

So, I don't really understand why the trans community has taken so many pains to disavow themselves from being considered even remotely similar to disabled people. I know that the common refrain, "we're not mentally ill!" is meant to combat the idea that we're deluded into thinking that we're a "different gender" than we really are, but the effect is throwing actually mentally ill trans people under the bus. The insistence that there's no way that dysphoria should be considered a disorder because there's nothing wrong with us — I just think that we could take a hint or two from the way that disabled people theorize about this subject.

[cthulhubert]

Some day I'd love to read a story about an alien visiting Earth, and we get a bunch of mileage out of how weird Geflorbians are. But it turns out it's just an extremely weird Geflorbian, and the typical Geflorbian is actually extremely similar to the typical Earthling.

[malthusiana]

Just love it when people try to cheer you up by claiming age doesn't matter if you want a career transition. I agree it shouldn't matter, you see. I don't think people over 30/40 whatever can't learn new things or get their way in a whole new career.

But why are you trying to spin what is a well-documented, thoroughly known market discrimination as a mere insecurity of mine?

[laegolas]

I think the biggest culture shock I (an Australian) have experienced during this international academic conference (in Canada) is that I forgot about the amount of respect given to titles.

Back home, most academics will introduce themselves with their first name and expect you to call them by it. One of my supervisors got promoted to Associate Professor, but he's still [Nickname], even to the undergrads. If you're Australian, and you try to force someone to use your title, you're seen as a bit uppity - a symptom of tall poppy syndrome I'm sure. If you introduce yourself with a name, we assume that's what you'd like to be called. If we like you enough, we may even bestow a nickname upon you.

But spending time around the other postgrads, they all call their supervisors, or anyone with a title "Doctor ...", "Professor ...", even if they have a close, positive relationship. Meanwhile I defaulted to the name they introduced themselves with - which explains why some of them thought I had already received my PhD. And I truly don't mean to be rude, or disrespect the title. It's these little things that mean, even if you speak the same language, you do not come from the same culture.

[prettygirlgerard]

99% of lgbt discourse over the past 5 years is just teenagers with a specific insecurity that they want to make everyone’s problem

[dangerclaw]

So you’re telling me aliens can be cars, but people can’t be genderfluid???

The math isn’t mathing

[huntunderironskies]

The struggle between "this is a really good idea for some homebrew mechanics and my need for instant gratification means I want to share it immediately" versus "I should probably actually experience this game from a player-facing point of view before trying to design power sets for it."

(This is about Changeling, I have two Contracts that originated from the Wilmington setting I've written. One is from the Court of Breath, which are a group of Changelings who've organized under a Strix, the other is the Contract of the Phial which is. Well. (: Let's just say my persistent obsession with Jacques Ellul plays into it.)

[babymyleopard]

honestly? yes. I need validation, I feel the most alive when I am around others and I only feel beautiful when there's someone else's eyes upon me.

THIS is what makes us human. it's not a flaw or weakness. we are social creatures and we need to relate and socialize.

[so-i-grudgingly-joined-this-site]

So, in the course of starting and subsequently scrapping at least two further meta essays, I think I've come upon a frustrating phenomenon of fandom that I've decided to term "should've stayed in the classroom". It's related to "should've stayed in the drafts" and "fandom wank" BUT the original poster has a legitimately good point that is unfortunately completely wasted in the fandom social media format, which lacks the understood terms of debate, simultaneous approach to the same source material, pretense of expert moderation, and teeth-clenched dedication to at least surface level politeness and good faith that academic debate does.

(Ever seen a paper titled something like "A measured response to [someone else's paper]"? Someone is about to try and tear a bitch apart, but they can't *say* it)

Of course, academia has a litany of institutionalized issues that, frustratingly, often parallel those in fandom and social media. HOWEVER, there is something to be said about how social media is essentially a busy street corner you're shouting on-- even if the Shouting Street Corner Guy is saying something important or that you like, you're unlikely to listen to him there rather than at something like a conference or structured debate. Such debate is NOT going to happen on the street corner. It's vital to bring such ideas to the wider world, and admittedly I have no idea how, but the random street corner shouting isn't it.

So yeah, if you're wondering what happened to some of my planned essays, I took a look at how the arguments were shaping up and decided they Should Stay in the Classroom. The observations were either too dense for the likely random-passerby reader, angry in tone, or easy to take in bad faith outside of specific context.

[brambletakato]

biggest author green flag ever is if they know the difference between archaeology and paleontology or something similar to that. Yes the fields often intersect but NO they are not the same thing!!

[moleshow]

oh. there’s the problem

[bazingerrr]

Did you all know that I’ve been falling into a deep hole where I can feel myself disconnect from myself and view myself not as me but as a person separate from my being, the more I think of myself as a human and watch old videos of myself all I feel is the urge to talk to her but she doesn’t exist because she is me and I can’t interact with her in a way that is truly real because we are the sa-

OH MY GOD THE RIDDLER TAG UPDATED!! :DD