#which is legitimately useful for some people

[thetransfemininereview]

Do you have any recommendations for gaining access to these books? I have a pretty long list of ones I want to read but can't afford most of them. The library has the big ones (Whipping Girl, Detransition Baby, Nevada) but the newer or less well known ones have been difficult to find

No this is actually so real though. Let's talk about it.

One of the big problems that I'm trying to address here is the fact that there is a lack of ability for trans books to reach their perhaps core audience, trans people. Over the last few years trans librarians have been trying to increase the number of trans books in circulation, but that's super contingent on where you live. Not to mention the fact that, at least in the US, states are actively trying to criminalize circulating trans books in libraries.

I know Tumblr is allergic to economics a lot of the time, but you've gotta look at the math to understand why this is the current state of things. Essentially it's a vicious cycle. Lots of trans people can't afford to buy a $25 hardcover on a whim, and traditional publishers put a lot of stock into how well a book performs on release, cause that's how they make money. So when the core audience can't afford it and isn't marketable, they register that as a lower demand, which means that fewer trans books get published, fewer end up in libraries, and the cost of an individual book is driven higher. Low demand, high price. Then because the price is high, trans people cant afford the books, and the cycle continues.

It is the dilemma of the transfemme author that most of their core audience is also gonna be transfemme. It's a self-selecting process that's very hard to break out of. And at the end of the day, there just isn't very much money to go around in the trans community because trans people so frequently get cut off from generational wealth. So when you get an ecosystem of transfemmes selling books to other transfemmes who also sell books to them....

I took a class on the Sociology of Art a few years ago, and one of my core takeaways was that the boundaries of a field (yes my teacher liked Bourdieu, come for her ass, not mine) are fundamentally governed by institutions and entities with the money and power to dictate their rules of play. In Althusser's language, you would call those ISAs (Ideological State Apparatuses). When you read Weber, he talks about how culture needs to have some level of social legitimation in order to become a force of power in the world (I butchered that but it's the gist lol). And it's like.

The people who have the money to read the books dictate which books receive the money. Organizations like Lambda Literary, presses, big name publishers, etc. One of the big problems in the field of trans literature up to this point is that the only people who've had the money to produce social legitimation from the organizing schema/matrix of an ISA have also only chosen to read a very small slice of the extant literature. Then, because those non-profits and presses and companies only champion a small selection of books, that in turn dictates for those who have less money which of those books deserve social attention, critical acclaim, sales, library slots, etc.

And like, all of that is an illusion, but it produces a material reality for the transfemme author. It dictates the material conditions for the reproduction of said literature and who can participate in it.

So, what's to be done about it?

"Buzz" is a big deal in the publishing industry. A good review, an award, a thinkpiece - all of that can be the difference between a successful book and a flop. Publishers look for that. If nobody talks about a book and it doesn't sell well, they'll drop the author faster than you can say Susan. Again, vicious cycle. But like, at the end of the day, a "field," an "ISA," a "legitimated" work of art, that's all just a class prerogative. The different between a Very Important Literary Blog and a "person talking about books on the internet" is money. Like. It's just money. The reality of it is really banal.

It's who has the money to read books. It's who has the money and time to write about books. It's who has the money to gain institutional access to book. It's who has the money to read enough to say, "Oh, well that might seem true, but if you look at X, Y, and Z it's clearly not." It takes money to fact check. It takes money to challenge institutional myths. It takes money because when an institution makes a claim about a book and none of the people who care enough to argue with them have the cash to challenge it, the claim tends to stand.

And like, the honest truth is that between the books, the website, and the education, I've spent a lot of money bringing this website online in the form you're reading it in. A lot of the books I've read were really fucking expensive. I grew up in a wealthy family, my parents were accepting. They have both the means and the desire to support my passion projects. I'm lucky.

The goal of The Transfeminine Review is to create at least one independently trans-run website that can challenge that brand of institutional legitimation work from non-profits and big publishers and cis outlets, a website that can actually highlight transfeminine literature as it exists in the world, not as the Big 5 publishers have dictated it. Topside, Metonymy, Arsenal Pulp, LittlePuss, etc. They've all taken on that challenge from the angle of producing books, but there hasn't been a corollary trans secondary ecosystem dedicated to documenting and critiquing them. Or there is, but it's extremely diffuse and hard to find if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. Then there are the general queer outlets, like them. and whatnot, and they do their best but literature is a side hustle at best. There's the queer-helmed literary outlets like Electric Lit (shout out Denne Michele Norris) but they spend most of their time talking about cis authors. None of it is designed to help or review self-published literature from poor authors, and let's be frank, most transfeminine publishing is still done indie or self.

It's an investment, essentially. On the longshot, the hope is that this website will inspire others to do similar work, and that eventually through the collective efforts of trans authors and their readership, we can begin to change the math on trans publishing and help to spread it to a wider audience.

Now.

None of this changes the current reality that trans lit is expensive.

Unless you're lucky, you're probably not gonna find much trans lit at the local library even if you dig for it. Another good place to find free trans books is transreads.org, but their selection is mostly non-fiction, and the fiction is, again, largely the same few books you can find elsewhere. Another good online queer library is https://www.queerliberationlibrary.org/, which might be a good place to look (shoutout to Skye for bringing it to my attention!)

There are a couple of cheaper places to find trans books. If you shop around on itch.io, a lot of self-published trans authors have "name your price" models, which can be more accessible. Creators on itch will also bundle their work on a fairly regular basis, so you can get like 10-20 books for $10, which is, by my token, an excellent price.

If there's a particular author you're interested in, a lot of self-pub trans authors have Patreon accounts where they serialize their novels. You also can find serial (pre-edit) versions of a bunch of books on Scribblehub.

This has gotten steadily less affordable over the last few years cause Amazon is evil, but Kindle Unlimited ($11.99 a month, but there's a free trial) has thousands of trans books. Most of them are erotica, but like, there are a lot of hidden gems in there, and if you're a voracious enough reader, then it'll definitely be much cheaper per book than buying trad.

The problem with all of these, though, is that they tend to favor specific genres and tropes. Like there's only so much variety on itch.io or Scribblehub or transreads.org or KU. So if you like the genre conventions, then awesome! But if you don't it's probably not for you.

And none of it will give you access to some of the rare older tradpub books or the new but scarce releases that I've been going through unless you're willing to pay the full price for them.

I wish I had a better answer, but that's unfortunately the current state of the industry :/

Hopefully this ramble is helpful.

Beth

[innuendostudios]

New Alt-Right Playbook! This one's on spurious claims and how they don't even need to be ARTICULATED to follow you around.

If you wanna keep this series coming out (and maybe help it come out a little faster) do please consider backing me on Patreon or subscribing to me on Nebula.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, you are the kind of progressive leftist with a platform who gets a share of harassment - seasonal or perennial - from reactionaries. In this situation, you will, inevitably, hear one who positions themself as a reasonable moderate ask, “Why Don’t You Respond To Criticism?”

There’s a lot going on in that question, more than is obvious, and it’s worth understanding.

First is that the question is not only directed at you. It exists as a marker, showing up in your Q&A’s, comment sections, or Twitter threads, to imply to anyone paying attention to you that there is some wealth of legitimate criticism you have long ignored. There may well be a specific point this person is referring to, but it’s often left unspecified or generalized, so that the content - and the quantity - of the criticism is left to audience imagination. It is meant to publicly undermine your legitimacy.

Second, it’s meant to make you question whether there is some legitimate criticism out there in the din of people screaming at you. You’re not perfect, and a knock-on effect of being harassed is you get numbed out, unable to discern good faith from bad, often removing yourself from the streams through which your peers used to correct you because of the endless flow of garbage coming through those channels now. But the only way to verify the ambiguous claim that there is criticism worth responding to is to once again strap on waders and climb in, which is often what your critic really wants.

Third, the question isn’t really “why don’t you respond to criticism?” Odds are, you do respond to some criticism. People in your position are often addressing or pre-empting criticism all the time, arguably too much. No, what this nonspecific question is really asking is, “Why don’t you respond to my criticism?” They’ll let it sound like you’ve been ignoring everyone, but they mean “why are you ignoring me?” They are going to insist you owe them a response, that their critique, regardless of your opinion of it, is valid, and demands immediate attention. Odds are there are dozens of people saying the same, all at once.

Fourth, odds are good that you have, in fact, addressed their specific complaint, but not in a manner they will accept. This one person’s criticism is likely not unique, you may have covered it somewhere in your output purely because you know what kind of arguments are getting thrown at you and you want to cover your bases. There’s a decent chance your critic doesn’t actually consume enough of your work to have seen it. But it’s maybe even more likely that they are aware of your counter-argument - possibly one of your fans directed them to it - but don’t consider a response legitimate unless it is directed at the critic. Covering it in a different context or on a different platform doesn’t count. They are owed a statement they can respond to directly, because they want the argument to continue. Really, the question is, “Why don’t you respond to my criticism on my terms?”

Finally, even if you did respond to them by name, it’s likely your response would still be disqualified. If you were to summarize their argument in any way, they would claim you are building a straw man. If you isolated any specific critique, or pointed to the cruelty that accompanied it, they would claim you’re cherry-picking. You must, it seems, first present the criticism, full and unabridged, before you may respond to it. Which is to say: the only “correct” way to respond to criticism is to platform the critic.

And there are dozens who expect this of you. Who will tear into you for not addressing, in meticulous detail, every single critique they’ve ever tossed your way, and, in the same breath, make fun of you for talking too much. Because they don’t want to move on from “Why Don’t You Respond to Criticism?” As a rhetorical tactic, it’s pretty ace. To announce, before the argument is even stated, that it is thus far undefeated? ::chef’s kiss:: Because any response you make will keep the focus on you and not their argument. “It’s not worth responding to.” “Well why should The Accused get to decide what is and isn’t worth responding to?” “I have responded, repeatedly.” “Well why didn’t you respond in this particular way?” None of this looks at whether the argument had any credibility to begin with, only at whether your rebuttal is following procedure.

Take, for example, the hypothetical criticism that you should not listen to me because I am just four eels in a trenchcoat. How would I respond to that? What can I say that isn’t exactly what four eels in a trenchcoat would say? “I’m not even wearing a trenchcoat”? Well, the first thing four eels would do when people start to catch on is wear hoodies. Show my birth certificate, saying I was born a single entity to a human mother at a weight four newborn eels wouldn’t add up to? Well, did that work for Obama? Or did the guy saying the birth certificate was fake get elected President? And, of course, anything I have to say about how fascism has evolved on the social internet is suspect if I can’t even prove I’m human. What do fish know?? We stayed at war with Iraq for seven years after the government announced the Weapons of Mass Destruction we were looking for never existed, and some people, to this day, still think we found them. What hope would I - a warm-blooded mammal who would make very mediocre sushi - stand in the face of that? [bell chime]

So, if you ever see this claim out in the wild, “why haven’t you responded to _____,” ask: do you know what _____ is, do you yourself agree it’s a valid question, and are you sure it hasn’t already been answered? And don’t repeat the question unless you’ve got three yesses.

[readerswritings]

In the Damn Kitchen - Poolverine 1/2

Smut will come in next chapter I promise, just needed to get this part out into the world first to see if people like it. (AO3)

Warnings/tags: roommates, first Kiss, idiots in love, eventual smut, canon-typical behavior

Wordcount: 1224

Summary: Logan and Wade are some weird kind of roomates, and one morning Logan tries to figure out how to make Wade shut the fuck up without getting blood in his breakfast.

Logan has been staying with Wade on his shitty pull-out couch for three months. Something that was meant to be somewhat temporary is feeling less and less like that these days.

They still fight physically, stabbing each other and making a mess (that Al complains about later), but they also just hang out.

Which Logan isn’t used to.

Not anymore.

Haven’t been for a good while.

Wade has grown on him, even with all the touching. And talking.

All the goddamn talking.

It rarely stops.

Wade talks on the inhale and exhale.

Not even when he eats is Wade quiet, talking with his mouth full of food. He has been doing it less lately, after Logan stabbed him with a fork a few times so he wouldn’t have to see that shit.

Wade is only quiet when he’s sleeping.

Logan has returned late from a bar or late-night walks a few times to Wade asleep on the pullout. Seeing him quiet and still had been odd. Wade’s ADHD filled ass never being still when he’s awake. 

Wade also sleeps like he’s dead. Logan had discovered this when he tried to wake him so he would move the first time. It was legitimately difficult to wake him up. So after that first time where it took an eternity to get him conscious enough to move, Logan either goes to sleep in the armchair he had gotten off the street the first week he was here, or tips Wade onto the floor with a pillow if he is in a bad mood. 

When he doesn’t give a shit, he’ll just crawl onto the pullout with Wade. He tends to wake up before him anyway. The few times he doesn’t, a few claws to the guts makes Wade shut up, or at least talk about something else.

Another thing he hasn’t quite gotten used to, is how casual Wade is about touch.

Sure, Wade had been touching him a bunch when they first met. But that had been to rile Logan up, to get a reaction, even if it was all negative. (The Honda doesn’t count in any positive way, the intent behind all of that had been hate and adrenaline. Even if the end result had been good.)

Now though, it’s a hand patting his shoulder as they pass in the kitchen. A thigh bumping against his own as they watch shitty reality tv. Feet kicking him under the dinner table if he says something too blunt or rude. A shoulder bumping against his as they walk that damn ugly dog together.

It makes his skin crawl, mostly with how used to it he has become. And how he kinda, not that he will admit this to anyone but his own thoughts, likes it.

It’s all become routine, a weird kind of domestic, (Logan hates that word), that works for them.

Speaking of routine, Logan often makes breakfast for them. Wade can barely cook, Al is blind, and Logan doesn’t mind that much most of the time. He needs to eat a lot anyway, and getting something into Wade that is somewhat healthy and not just all sugar makes him a little less irritating to deal with during the day.

Wade of course likes to tease him when he cooks. Stealing bites before it’s ready. Logan has become quite adept at fighting just with a spatula, smacking hands away with a grunted ‘fuck off.’

He’s off his game this morning though, as Wade manages to snatch a piece of bacon, straight from the pan where it was almost finished. Logan knows it must be burning his mouth and tongue, but Wade crunches on his price with a grin on his face. 

He’s wearing Deadpool pajama pants, bunny slippers, and a pink long sleeve with Hello Kitty on it, and frankly looks ridiculous leaning on the counter, extra so next to Logan who is fully dressed for the day in his flannel, t-shirt, jeans, and boots.

“Haven’t had enough coffee yet peanut?” Logan grunts, smacking Wade’s hand as it tries to go for another piece. 

“Fuck off.”

“Oh you know I love it when you talk dirty to me, even this early in the morning.”

“It’s 10 am dipshit.”

“Oh you know the saying, it’s always 5 am somewhere.” Logan snorts, shaking his head. He grabs a plate to put the finished bacon on, putting some more in the pan. He lets Wade take a piece from the plate.

“Besides, I kept waking up because my dreams were being haunted by this sexy lumberjack looking figure, and I woke up with a raging hard-on that I had to take care of every-” Logan tunes him out, a necessary and learned skill by now. He flips the bacon, then stirs the eggs in the other pan where he’s keeping them warm on low heat.

There’s a hand in his hair, and that makes his focus snap back to Wade and his yapping. 

“You know, I always wonder if you roll out of bed with these little tufts.” Logan pushes his hand away, letting the claws out just enough so he knicks Wade’s skin. 

“Ouchie, someone’s a grump this morning. You’ve clearly not gotten enough caffeine in your hot bod yet. We should get that coffee that has a fuckton of it, the one with the skull or whatever, that lethal shit. Wonder if that would actually kill you, do you think your heart could give out on you? I think they even make you sign a wai-” Logan tunes him out again and wonders what it will take to shut Wade up. He is right, Logan has not had enough coffee for this. (Or booze, but he’s trying to do a little less of that.) 

Logan absentmindedly notices one of Wade’s scars on his cheek looks kinda almost like an H, and his mind drifts to the Honda. Unintentional, though not unwelcome

He’d rather not get blood on his bacon right now, so he goes for another component of all that shit.

He steps to the side and turns, leaning forward, pressing his lips against Wade’s. It’s a brief kiss, but Wade doesn’t immediately say anything as Logan leans back just enough to gauge his reaction. He's enjoying the silence as Wade's eyes are flickering all over his face.

Wade’s mouth is gaping like a fish, opening and closing before his brain is booting back up. It makes Logan snort as he leans back all the way back.

The silence lasts for maybe thirty seconds.

“What the fuck peanut? You interupted me mid-monologue, that was fucking rude you-”

“Thought it would shut you up, but I see that didn’t work.” Logan takes a step back, but is hauled back by hands twisted in the collar of his flannel.

“Oh no, you are not going anywhere until I get an explanation, or more.” Logan arches a brow, hands at his side, not touching Wade. The urge to punch or stab him is rising. 

And the urge to kiss him. 

Again. 

He knows all of the options would work for Wade.

“I gave you an explanation.” 

“Grew tired of the claws old man? Don’t wanna stab this supple fle-”

“God you are desperate.” Logan doesn’t know if he means it as an insult or a compliment, but kisses Wade again anyway.

[chekhovstrap]

It annoys me so bad when people minimize what Alicent means when she repeatedly says “you have no idea the sacrifices that were made to put you on that throne.” Like it’s her entire fucking life!! She was a child when her father told her to go to Viserys’ room in her mother’s dress to comfort him. She was a child when she married him and was subsequently forced to bear his children. Her life was the sacrifice, one that her father was more than willing to give in service of his own ends. A lamb to the slaughter. It’s that violence that fuels the machine, perpetuates it. She’s scarcely been able to conceive of her existence outside of wife, mother, daughter, queen which is synonymous with woman for her (forever upholding the kingdom, the family, the law—). There is no person in all of that, only a tool. An implement to be used by others and later discarded (I wanted whatever you impressed upon me to want). It is a fucking miracle that she was able to find a way to eventually extricate herself from it and I cannot stress that enough. By freeing herself in this way it’s like she legitimately found a way to explain astronomy in the absence of physics because, really, she had no model outside of Rhaenyra and her loud disdain for things associated with “womanly” duties and responsibilities. And Alicent had spent such a long time resenting her for it. And even what Rhaenyra eventually had wasn’t true freedom, because of course it couldn’t be. It wasn’t sailing across the Narrow Sea and eating only cake. It was making her prison a bit more comfortable. It was if I must get married, I will have some say in who it is to. If I must bear children, I will decide who sires them. The option to choose what style of chains she will don. The only control she felt like she could exert, but that still played by the rules and conventions laid out for her. This illusion of choice.

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

So, there is a use case for all these smart devices. My wife's smart watch just saved her life earlier this week.

But until the industry adopts a centralized open source framework for the software and the hardware these things are going to have stupidly short lifespans, as well as have huge privacy concerns.

I know enough about the innards of these things to know that if you dig deep enough they're probably built on well known open source libraries already so hopefully it's not a huge leap. But it would also mean you don't have to install a stupid app for each new device you get, just one that keeps getting extended.

It probably won't happen because open source means that someone would notice if data was being shipped out to centralized servers for unknown purposes, but it would make all these gizmos more useful and resilient.

[salvadorbonaparte]

I think that, in theory, you should be able to run for office even if you have been convicted of a crime. Otherwise, you'd risk show trials where political opponents get convicted of fake crimes to get rid of them. However, Donald "first president to be impeached twice" "first president to be convicted of a crime" Trump with his 34 felony counts, other open cases and all of that directly relating to his campaign and time as president. Is no such case. He never should have been able to become president in the first place. Every day I hope there is some loophole that disqualifies him and also that he dies in prison.

[bunnyboy-juice]

im begging people to turn on the post dates for your feed bc sometimes i see ppl rb advice with good intentions but the advice is from 2010-2017 and therefore is WILDLY outdated!!!! and that's not good!!!!!

[flecks-of-stardust]

prompted by a conversation i had with my roommate and also a surprisingly common phenomenon i've noticed. explanations and elaborations always welcome!

oh wow you can edit post bodies now, how nice. anyways this is for whichever region you entered first, no matter which one you ended up exploring more later. if your first gate out of outskirts was drainage, but you died then went to industrial later, please still vote drainage.

[andreal831]

Let me get this straight, in TVDU:

We blame amnesic Elijah, who erased his memories seven years before Hayley's death, for Hayley's death when he didn't even know who she was and didn't actually kill her.

But we don't blame Kol for Davina's death when he was the one that actually drained her of blood because the ancestors were controlling him.

And we don't blame Freya for torturing and kidnapping Keelin because she did it for family.

And we don't blame Klaus for nearly killing Caroline twice because it was romantic when he saved her from his own venom.

And we don't blame Klaus for nearly strangling Hayley to death because he was just scared of being a father.

Just wanted to make sure I understood where the fandom stands on this. andrea831 metas

[hananono]

Thank you for your continuous support for the Palestinian cause until freedom is achieved🇵🇸 🕊♥️. I hope you can help me spread my message to the whole world by reblogging my story🥹🙏🏻♥️. 

Best regards and love, 

Dr. Mohammed Al-Deeb from Gaza.

as far as i can tell, this is a legitimate fundraiser. the gfm is here:

[jaggedjot]

The teaser does need to be understood, at least in part, as a marketing strategy to sell studio stakeholders and the average viewer on the incredibly bizarre plot point of Lestat becoming a rockstar. By introducing the concept prior to the third season starting filming, the idea can be somewhat normalised to a wider audience. That it is the focus of the teaser, with the second half effectively becoming a music video, is intended to demonstrate that the production team have the skills to render it on screen.

[demigodofhoolemere]

Me through most of Boom: Wow, this is a really solid dramatic episode.

Me when Moffat needlessly sprinkles in anti-faith sentiments without specifying that it’s blind faith in bad things that the Doctor doesn’t like, which makes it come off like the Doctor is just against religion generally:

[bucephaly]

Just curious, where would you recommend starting genealogy research? I’m mostly curious more than anything, thought I don’t think having Native American lineage is likely for me?

Start by talking to your family and writing down as much info as you can. Names of grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, whatever you can. Birth dates and places they lived as well.

I do genealogy thru ancestry.com and it's mostly great but I know some people have problems with it. You can get a 2 week free trial and you might be able to get plenty of your tree filled out in that time.

Then, just put in what info you got from your parents, and look for census records. US Census records from 1950 and earlier are public, so start there. I was able to go back to my gg grandfather just thru censuses, and then I was able to find his Dawes card. I have gone back further but the farther back it goes the less reliable anything is. Be wary of anything on ancestry or other sites where the only source is someone else's tree, because people can put whatever they want down and a lot of it is wrong. [For example, on other parts of my tree it's tried to connect me to pocahontas 3 times.]

Ofc this advice doesn't just apply for those looking for native ancestry, it's just general genealogy stuff and it's really interesting for anyone to learn about their ancestors (:

Sorry this might be specific to the US, I'm not familiar with how records work elsewhere.

Good luck!

[brittlebutch]

finally found a place to read With the Light online and i'm thrilled; if you haven't read this manga i do Legitimately recommend it

[nothorses]

anon from before, i understand better now! i think i just thought abt it too much and confused myself but your explanation helped. im still on the fence abt cultural christianity but i think thats bc it seems like everyone is talking about it in a different way? like one person says it means this, but another person says its that. i think you made some really good points against it, but i also think spacelazarwolf made some good points for it so im just still figuring it out i think.

Yeah, I fully agree people are talking directly past each other in the conversation, and that's exactly why I made this post to begin with.

And I'm gonna @spacelazarwolf here because I respect his point of view a lot, we've been mutuals for a while, and I hadn't seen him talk about it until I went searching his blog literally just now; I don't wanna be talking about this behind his back or anything.

So like- correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like what he's defending is, for the most part, use of the term in some specific contexts:

"You are viewing this issue through a culturally Christian lens"

"Because you come from cultural Christianity, you may have developed blind spots and internalized ideas that you need to pay special attention to finding and rectifying"

(I'm specifically referring to these two recent posts)

I actually really agree with these uses! Those posts also clarify further that this isn't something you are, it's something you've been influenced by, or something you're doing. That's exactly the thing I say in my original post that I am very much here for, because, like I've said: Christian hegemony is obviously real, people are influenced by it- some more than others-, and it's necessary to be able to talk about these things.

I feel like the majority of arguments I see recently boil down to like, "why do you think cultural Christianity doesn't exist?" which, y'know, I don't doubt some people are actually saying. But if a lot of people are only really arguing that we shouldn't use it as an individual label that others get to decide to apply to them, and the people on the Other Side of the argument are only really arguing that we should be able to use it to refer to the impact of Christian hegemony on culture and shared ideology, like...

Maybe it's time to recognize that we're kinda saying the same shit. If we can get behind "don't label individuals, but do acknowledge the cultural impact and behavior", we can probably just move forward knowing that none of us are trying to advocate for something shitty just because someone else on our "side" said it. And maybe have more productive & relevant conversations.

[waterberry-strawmelon]

i hate feeling ashamed.