thatnerdyblondegirl

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

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[[@else: I suppose it's time to tell my abortion story. Of the abortion that didn't happen, that led to me.

A lot of anti-abortion people put words & thoughts into the mouths of the unborn.

Well, I'm one that was recommended to stay unborn, who got born, and here's what I say.

My mother found our very early in her pregnancy that there was an extremely high risk to her if she continued.

Terminating the pregnancy was floated by one of the doctors. It would have been legal due to the risk to her, but heavily stigmatized.

Her family was deeply Catholic. She was deeply Catholic.

She did not terminate. The risk became a reality.

So I'm here, and she's not.

I'm glad to be here.

It is hard to put into words the gratitude you feel to a mother who sacrificed herself entirely for you, and I'm not going to try here.

Because I'm also very angry.

Without in any way taking away from the courage and selflessness with which she bore her situation and which she showed in all aspects of her life

I don't believe she ever really felt like she had a true choice.

The stigma, the religious dogma, the judgement - everything she'd ever known - told her she could not save her own life.

Her parents would have, however sadly, believed she'd go to hell. Her family and friends and community would have judged her.

Everyone she'd ever loved believed it was wrong. And so she believed it was wrong.

Needlessly.

I don't know what choice she would have made if it had been a true choice.

Maybe she would have chosen me anyway. Maybe she would have chosen to stay for her two already-existing children and for all those who loved her so deeply.

But she should have had a real, true choice.

Would I trade being here for that?

In a heartbeat. Without hesitation.

My siblings could have grown up with their mother.

My grandparents could have seen their beloved daughter live out her beautiful life, instead of mourning her every day until their deaths.

Her brothers and sisters would not still thirty years later feel the pain of losing the sistre they loved so much.

She could have continued to bring the light to the world that she had always brought, that I have heard so much about.

My father perhaps would not have descended into the grief & guilt that destroyed him, our relationship with him, the innocence of our childhoods.

Now, I think about how my young nieces & nephews will grow up without her, without the kind of grandmother I had. That pains me too.

I grew up in the devastation of her death.

I've watched the consequences of it play out for thirty years.

I can see what might have been differently if she'd had a true choice and it snatches my breath away, to see the suffering that didn't have to be for the ones I love most.

I know that it is not my family, but it is also profoundly difficult to know that it is because of me.

Or to be more exact, because the world did not allow my mother her right to a true choice, and my being here is perhaps a result of that.

It's not a burden I'd wish on anyone

I wish that I could have told her. It's okay. Stay. Live. Be happy.

I wish I could know that she knew that that was more than ok.

Don't I want to be here? Don't I want to be alive, aren't I glad to live??

Now that I'm here, sure. But had I never been, what would I have lost? Nothing.

You can't miss what you never had. Can't lose anything when you never existed.

There's no pain or loss in not existing.

I didn't exist then, to want anything. I didn't exist to hope or wish or fear anything.

I didn't exist back then. Not me. There was a possibility. An idea, a hope maybe. Some cells, a process in her body. Not me, any more than a sperm was me or an egg was me.

*I" didn't become until much later. Til I was born.

My mother wouldn't have taken anything from me or cause me any pain by living for herself, because I didn't exist to lose anything.

There was so much pain, so much loss in losing her. Loss that will ripple down generations.

So I will say to my dying breath, as the person who only lives because she didn't abort, that whatever she thought or chose or did not chose, she should have had a real choice to abort.

That she should have felt that aborting me was valid and good a choice as not.

Everyone should feel that, and have real access to enact that choice without obstruction or shame or question.

Whether it is their actual life at risk, or not. A forced pregnancy can be the death of many things, not just the end of ther person's life.

Having me took away from the world everything that my mother could have given it.

Forcing someone to have a child against their will can take away what that person could be and bring if they had their choice, whether they live through the pregnancy or not.

Most of all it takes away their right - their inalienable right - to choose how they live their life in their own body.

A non-person, a hypothetical future event, the birth of someone who doesn't exist yet, doesn't have that right.

Other people, who claim to speak for the unborn do not have that right.

We all lose so much by it. It can cause such pain and suffering, for child-bearers, for children, for everyone.

Do not pretend to speak for the unborn.

Do not pretend to speak for the children born against their mother's will.

Do not pretend that you care for them while you hide misogyny behind dogma.

My mother deserved her right to a real choice.

Everyone does. Unconditionally.

As the child who could have been aborted, I tell you - to oppose that right, let alone work to criminalize it, is unforgivable.

I'd like to emphasize because I didn't say it loud enough in the original thread:

There doesn't need to be a tragic story or a threat to life to make abortion ok.

It can be simply because you don't want to have a child. That's all. You still have the right to a choice.

I told my sad story because:

a) it is important to me to counter the rhetoric of anti-choice folks, that claims that if the unborn could speak they would be anti-choice

b) forced pregnancies can really f*ck up lives in many ways and that needs to be recognized.

But:

There shouldn't have to be a tale of woe to justify bodily autonomy.

It's a right. An absolute right. It should be protected by law.

That's it. That's all.

Last thingL I want this point to be heard, but I don't particularly want to deal with blowing up on twitter.

I will probably lock my account down at some point, but I would like this still to be shared. Maybe use an unroll app and share from there if you would like to.]]

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

I hate how a lot of cultural appropriation discourse has forgotten the reason why it started appearing. It wasn't meant to punish white people for being ignorant and ban them from partaking in other cultures.

It was a discussion meant to draw attention that people of colour were constantly being overlooked or punished for the exact same things that white people were celebrated for. It was meant to elevate people of colour to an understanding and respect that white people had been afforded for years, often unearned.

So seeing people go "white people don't partake in anything that isn't white" misses a lot of nuance in the discussion, because a lot of different cultures ARE willing to share and allow people into their culture on their own terms and in a respectful matter.

There's a massive difference between a white person going "I just invented the BEST version of this" where everything had been watered down and stripped away versus one going "I try out this thing to appreciate cultures and viewpoints that aren't my own".

As a first generation Asian Australian whose own cultural identity is a massive clusterfuck I do think we need to remember that cultural exchange and sharing is incredibly important for an ever changing and global culture.

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

Somehow it feels like tumblr is accidentally the perfect social media site, because none of the things that I love about it make sense as features the way we use them. Tags are for organization, but we also use them to have our little thoughts in without raising them to the status of main text. The queue makes sense for keeping a steady stream of Content going if you're trying to Build a Social Media Presence, but really we use it just to bank posts we want to reblog without flooding everyone else's dash. You can't see how many followers anyone else has, which I just have to assume was an oversight because it flies in the face of everything about social media, and it's great because you can never quantify anyone's Influence so everyone's essentially on the same level. There's no way they planned for giffing to become such a Thing, because before tumblr, gifs were practically relics of the early internet days, a novelty, usually kind of tacky, and now they've become a sort of folk art form. You can reblog an entire conversation, not just a single post, so there's a whole genre of humor that exists here that can't really propagate like that on any other social platform. Honestly this website is just a little freak of nature that cannot possibly have been intended, and that's why no media company has been able to figure out what to do with it, because it makes no sense within the larger social media ecosystem. I love it.

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

You can only reblog this today.

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

Is anyone else more entertained than they should be by the vintage 1990′s straight-to-DVD, home shopping network aesthetic of the pinned ad for “Tumblr Ad-Free Browsing”?

Staff 1: “We should advertise this.”

Staff 2: “I can put together something slick and modern.”

Staff 1: “Are you new here? They’d hate that with the power of a thousand suns. No, our only options are retro tackiness or off-the-wall bonkers.”

Staff 2: “I don’t have any ideas for bonkers.”

Staff 1: “Retro it is.”

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

I'm not even 30 yet but same

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

The thing that gets me about a lot of pseudoscientific medicine is the baffling way in which they view the human body.

It isn’t the inaccuracy that gets to me; we have a long history of just fucking guessing how the body works. It’s not even the extreme simplicity of their models. It’s how vulnerable they seem to think it is.

I mean, the skin is a barrier. It keeps stuff in and it keeps stuff out. Yes, there is some limited permeability; if you smear the right kinds of things on your skin then a little bit will get into your body (this is how topical anaesthetics work, and why we wear gloves in chemical labs). But some people are like “smooth this acai berry cream on your skin to boost your immune system!” [note: you DO NOT WANT to boost your immune system], or “put a raw potato under your armpit to draw to toxins out of your body!” or some shit. I look at those foot bath things that fill up with yellow rust as you use them and people go, “all that yellow stuff is the toxins being drawn out through your feet!” and I am horrified at their mental model for how the body works. They know your insides are protected by skin, right? Right?? If I thought my body was that permeable I’d wear a hazmat suit at all times. What if I touch some mud that’s got Toxins in it and they all get absorbed into my body? What if I use the wrong root vegetable under my armpit and it sucks all the vitamins out of my blood instead? That’s terrifying!

“Drink alkaline water every morning to keep your blood pH high!” Friend, how vulnerable is your blood to pH changes? You know that a fairly small variation can kill you?? If I thought this worked I’d never eat fermented foods again. I’d never clean with vinegar in case my Super Permeable Frog Skin absorbed all the acid into my blood and I died of acidemia.

“This essential oil gives you energy! This one boosts your immune system!” They’re for smells! They make smells! In your view, how much of my metabolism and immune regulation are dependent on what my environment smells like?? Am I going to die because I bought the Strawberry Surprise scented candle instead of sandalwood and my body forgot how to make ATP?? What???

The extreme fragility that they perceive in the human body, with apparently no barriers or regulatory mechanisms, vulnerable to such tiny changes in diet and environment, would terrify me. If I thought of the body like this I would never leave the house.

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

It’s my grandpa’s birthday next week and he said “I don’t want to be 85” and my grandmother, his wife of 59 and a half years, said “well your only alternative is to die”, I can’t believe how affectionate they are

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

JUST LET ME BE.

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

For any of you who need it, the polish border is accepting Ukrainian refugees with passports. Take care

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

Tomorrow maybe I will prepare my favourite dish, Rice With Ingredient

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

I am happy to announce that today, 22.02.2022, is a full-on Two's Day on a Tuesday my dudes

It's kind of tragic that 02.02.2022, a literal two's day, isn't on a Tuesday

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

Reblog if your sleep schedule is a mess.

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

An insane part of me really wants a gritty CW teen drama reboot of Harry Potter a la Riverdale. The show has to be completely off its shits and bear little similarity to the source material. Draco and Ron are dating. McGonagall is running an illegal Felix Felicis drug ring. It turns out Voldemort was actually Dumbledore’s evil nephew. There are regular parties in each houses’ common room and the intricacies of who is snogging who is for some reason treated as being as equally if not more important as the whole Voldemort murdering students thing. The Hufflepuffs have all been secretly starting a cult to revive Helga Hufflepuff in an attempt to bring in the Golden Age of Wizarding. Harry ends up in Azkaban and attempts to teach the convicts about the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows, of Hogwarts Quidditch. The plot has to be completely inconsistent and get progressively more batshit as the seasons go on. It’s terrible but it’s a train wreck that you just can’t look away from.

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

How about 25?

[thatnerdyblondegirl]

I keep forgetting what the differences are in the over the counter pain relievers, so I made a handy chart.