Beth Ditto, The Gossip

it's kind of bullshit that people will react with horror to me discussing my fantasies/kinks until i clarify I'm the sub in them. like even my therapist was all like "ohhh it's ok to want to hold power so long as it's consensual" and then clearly relaxed when I clarified I wanted to be the sub.

i love you everyone and with rape kinks, those who want to roleplay kidnapping and abusing someone, i love you i love you i love you. this ain't me fishing for a dom/me to be clear---you are VALUED as a person, outside of your sexual fantasies. I care about you and appreciate you, and there is nothing wrong or bad about you!!!!

everyone liking this: please reblog!! I don't beg for reblogs but I genuinely want dom/mes, sadistics, etc to get some appreciation

This! And same for dominants when it comes to many taboo or semi-taboo (what's taboo these days? I don't even know anymore) kinks that aren't necessarily CNC but do have a power dynamic.

(a lot of degradation stuff, for example)

What do I have to do to get some pretty femme's tits in my mouth around here??

REBLOG if you don't mind horny lesbians sending you dirty messages 💦

The rest of the queers aren't allowed to exclude asexuals anymore; we've got the JK Rowling Seal of Disapproval! It's official, we belong!

Now that's some positive thinking right there! I love it!

apparently this is the context

"if tumblr goes down find me a-" we have been making these posts for a decade now.. either i wake up one day and its gone and i take up cigaretts to fill the void or 40 years from now i post my 5G cancer xray results direct from my neuralink

I wish age gap discourse hadn't spiraled the way it has because I want there to be a safe space to say "Men in their 40s who date 25 year olds aren't predators, they're just fucking losers"

... honey you just described a predator LOL

No, I said what I said. But thank you for providing an example of how this topic has become insufferable on the internet.

i am honestly burningly curious about how a 40 year old man who fucks around with college grads is not a predator

"College grad" is not a developmental stage, nor is it what I would describe a 25 year old as. I was 4 years out of college at 25. My mother had two children at 25. You can be a fucking congressman at 25.

There's a difference between a man who is immature and buys into misogynistic views of beauty and aging and one who is a predator. Also, many actual predators? Not losers and able to move through society pretty freely being seen as cool and the ideal, so conflating the two isn't helpful.

This is going to be my final response to any attempt at discourse. You're welcome to continue amongst yourselves.

also sometimes a 40 year old and a 25 year old just weirdly find each and it's a perfectly normal relationship - like all human relationships are complex and situational, it's so rarely an either/or thing let alone just one thing only

if a 40 year old dude only dates 25 year olds, DiCaprio style or something adjacent to it, then yeah he's a loser

if a 40 year old dude meets a 25 year old through social event or friends or whatever and they happen to hit it off and make a go of it, and this isn't some sort of reoccurring pattern for the guy, that's just a relationship with an age difference

being predatory means something specific, and man I agree w/ OP and really wish people just stopped ascribing it to any and all relationship dynamics they personally might not like

predator and groomer - two words that need to go up on the "can't use till you learn their meaning" shelf

Something I find really stressful is this seemingly endless creep of infantilisation and removal of autonomy from young people. Like, not to be all “in my dayyyy” about it, but… at 16, my friends and I were expected to be broadly responsible for our presence in the world. Most of us had jobs, we navigated public transport, looked after younger siblings. We were expected to make informed decisions about our future careers and our sexual partners. We were allowed to leave education and work full time (this was not necessarily good thing - I think increasing the school leaving age to 18 was broadly for the best). Most of us were smoking, or drinking, or both - again, not good things, but just facts - and many of us were sexually active. Many of the AFAB people I knew were on the pill. Legally, we could live independently, or get married with adult consent.

Legally (I live in the UK) we were not minors, although we inhabited an odd legal limbo until we turned 18, and we were certainly not “children”. Intellectually, socially, though, we were considered (young) adults, or at the most “older teenagers.” We were expected to read mostly adult books (rather than middle grade or YA), watch the news/read papers, watch mostly adult television.

And I do think we a bit under-protected, under-supported, and in some cases - neglected and financially exploited - and I’m not necessarily advocating that. But it did make us feel, I think, in charge of our own lives, capable and competent to make decisions.

At 16-17 my parents knew they could leave me alone overnight/for a couple of nights, and I wouldn’t starve or burn the house down. I felt comfortable getting cross country trains on my own, or booking and staying at a hotel (yes, with my boyfriend.)

Then there was this… creeping of sentiments that we were all Too Young to trouble our heads about certain things. A lot of it was good - more stringent licensing laws, raising the school leaving age, raising the minimum smoking age(!) - but some of the broader cultural stuff was… a bit patronising? Eg, the introduction of “New Adult” as a category of books aimed at 18-25 year olds, the way cartoons and books written for the 9-12 age group were being marketed as for the 12-15 age group, referring to late teens as “children,” etc etc.

Then, in 2008, there was the big financial crash and suddenly my generation were (broadly) robbed of all the usual markers of adulthood and success, meaning that we got ‘stuck’ in the lifestyles and modes our late teens/early 20s. And suddenly, all the emphasis shifted from social and legal protections for late teens/ younger adults, to legal restrictions on their freedoms/rights, and strange philosophical protections on the emotional states.

So, OF COURSE a 23 year old can’t buy a beer without carrying an ID card, and a 17 year old can’t have a crush on a 16 year old, but also, because you’re *children* you don’t need to live like adults. So the UK government got to save money by saying “18 isn’t a proper adult,” then “20 isn’t a proper adult,” and “25 isn’t a proper adult” because it meant they could refuse to give single occupancy housing benefit rates to people of those ages (I think they’ve raised it over 30 now.) Or by refusing to clamp down on exploitative temporary/zero hours contracts - because they’re just “temp jobs for young people!”, or by raising the retirement age because “60 is far too young to retire. You’re not a real adult until 35.”

And it means the discursive environment is such that you can claim that a 21 year old trans person is too young to make their own medical decisions, or a 15 year old is too young to consent to the contraceptive pill.

Meanwhile, they are not offering additional *protections* to these newly infantilised adults. 18 year olds are still encouraged to saddle themselves with enormous educational debt, or allowed to have credit cards, or expected to pay rent, or no longer receive child benefits. You still have to *work*. In fact, in the States, they’re looking to removed child employment restrictions - but that’s fine, because 20 year olds are being protected from making their own medical decisions, and adults get to say which books their teen kids are reading in school, and kids aren’t allowed to change their name or what they wear without parental consent.

We can see what these people are doing to the rights of children - so why are we being so complacent in expanding the definition of ‘child’?

Regardless - 25 is VERY CLEARLY an adult. At 25 I was married, had two kids, an overdraft, rent to pay, and experience of living in the world for 6 years. I had more in common with someone of 40 than I did with someone of 15. Hell, at*20* I had more in common with someone of 40 than someone of 15. Any sexual or relationship decisions you make at 25 are your own to make.

Of course there are likely to be power imbalances in a 15 year age gap - which is why most 25 year olds don’t date 40somethings - but not actually necessarily. And yeah, a 40 year old who only dates 20somethings is a skeeze - just like a 30 year old who routinely ingratiates themselves with rich 80 year olds is a skeeze.

But if any young people are reading this (doubt it)… your rights are much, much more important than your protections.

Yes, young people should be protected, but if someone claims they’re protecting you while denying you access to personal autonomy, financial stability, intellectual curiosity, or sexual self-determination because you’re “too young” to need, or understand those things… be very suspicious of their motives.

And if you’re legally an adult, ask yourself why you don’t feel comfortable defining yourself in those terms.

This thread is from 2023, and now with the Cass report we have seen the real, tangible danger that comes from infantilizing adults in their 20s.

stop eating gruel with the fools and come eat a leek with a freak

this post got me laid

also i love that the phrase "piss on the poor" is functionally an effective shorthand on here for "someone has a lack of reading comprehension". wonder how long it will be before the knowledge that it is an intentional misapprehension of the phrase "piss poor" disappears and we get a Reader who says. the phrase piss on the poor is so cruel we should say something else

based on the notes of this post, which has gotten several thousand in the last day or so, we have in fact already reached this point

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers."

(Incidentally, "piss poor" is itself taken from the phrase "not a pot to piss in", which is itself a shortening of "not a pot to piss in or a window to throw it from", in reference to those so poor that they had neither home nor chamberpot. Isn't language fun?)

For those in the notes wondering, it's a reference to this ancient post:

Wow, 2012.

[ID: tumblr post from November 2012, by user drakensberg-blog saying "The reading comprehension and overall common sense in this website is piss poor."

This is followed up by a comment added by user poupon, who jokingly replied "how dare you say we piss on the poor." /end ID]

#tumblr itself #is that where it's from? #I thought it was like a Mark Twain reference or something

this somehow delights me.

Lately when I go to the grocery store and they offer me a receipt I think about how many receipts are given out every day just in this one store, and how many stores there are, and how all that paper comes from somewhere, and I wonder how much capital goes into the production of something so disposable, and who is being forced to labor to produce all of it.

So I tell them I don't want the receipt.

Sigh.....

Just peed and drank water at the same time and yep it was basically the same water I drank just going straight through me

not true

Okay I peed out the same volume as I drank in so maybe it became yellow dyed and pass through me? I’m just thinking sciencetifically but u can’t stand 2 see me think with a bigness style

i think youre faking it for notes and you weere storing the piss seperate so you could lie online that you did it all at once instead of storing the piss :/

its tuesday somewhere! 🙋🏻‍♀️