blue collar job and pronouns

if you’re starting a sentence with “as a white person” “as a cis person” “as someone who’s skinny” etc etc that is your sign to stop ✋ and consider if what you’re about to say is actually that important, or if you’re just expressing your penitence to the exact group of people who would really rather not hear you talk about how guilty you feel. like maybe just think for a couple seconds about why you feel like you have to finish that sentence

From Anthony Bourdain:

Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal, and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people—we sure employ a lot of them.

Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, and look after our children.

As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are “stealing American jobs.”

But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as a prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, probably, simply won’t do.

We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we”, as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them—and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films.

So, why don’t we love Mexico?

We throw up our hands and shrug at what happens and what is happening just across the border. Maybe we are embarrassed. Mexico, after all, has always been there for us, to service our darkest needs and desires.

Whether it’s dress up like fools and get passed-out drunk and sunburned on spring break in Cancun, throw pesos at strippers in Tijuana, or get toasted on Mexican drugs, we are seldom on our best behavior in Mexico. They have seen many of us at our worst. They know our darkest desires.

In the service of our appetites, we spend billions and billions of dollars each year on Mexican drugs—while at the same time spending billions and billions more trying to prevent those drugs from reaching us.

The effect on our society is everywhere to be seen. Whether it’s kids nodding off and overdosing in small town Vermont, gang violence in L.A., burned out neighborhoods in Detroit—it’s there to see.

What we don’t see, however, haven’t really noticed, and don’t seem to much care about, is the 80,000 dead in Mexico, just in the past few years—mostly innocent victims. Eighty thousand families who’ve been touched directly by the so-called “War On Drugs”.

Mexico. Our brother from another mother. A country, with whom, like it or not, we are inexorably, deeply involved, in a close but often uncomfortable embrace.

Look at it. It’s beautiful. It has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history. Mexican wine country rivals Tuscany for gorgeousness.

It's archeological sites—the remnants of great empires, unrivaled anywhere. And as much as we think we know and love it, we have barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is. It is NOT melted cheese over tortilla chips. It is not simple, or easy. It is not simply “bro food” at halftime.

It is in fact, old—older even than the great cuisines of Europe, and often deeply complex, refined, subtle, and sophisticated. A true mole sauce, for instance, can take DAYS to make, a balance of freshly (always fresh) ingredients painstakingly prepared by hand. It could be, should be, one of the most exciting cuisines on the planet, if we paid attention.

The old school cooks of Oaxaca make some of the more difficult and nuanced sauces in gastronomy. And some of the new generation—many of whom have trained in the kitchens of America and Europe—have returned home to take Mexican food to new and thrilling heights.

It’s a country I feel particularly attached to and grateful for. In nearly 30 years of cooking professionally, just about every time I walked into a new kitchen, it was a Mexican guy who looked after me, had my back, showed me what was what, and was there—and on the case—when the cooks like me, with backgrounds like mine, ran away to go skiing or surfing or simply flaked. I have been fortunate to track where some of those cooks come from, to go back home with them.

To small towns populated mostly by women—where in the evening, families gather at the town’s phone kiosk, waiting for calls from their husbands, sons and brothers who have left to work in our kitchens in the cities of the North.

I have been fortunate enough to see where that affinity for cooking comes from, to experience moms and grandmothers preparing many delicious things, with pride and real love, passing that food made by hand from their hands to mine.

In years of making television in Mexico, it’s one of the places we, as a crew, are happiest when the day’s work is over. We’ll gather around a street stall and order soft tacos with fresh, bright, delicious salsas, drink cold Mexican beer, sip smoky mezcals, and listen with moist eyes to sentimental songs from street musicians. We will look around and remark, for the hundredth time, what an extraordinary place this is.

crossfaded off of birdsong and a ray of sunlight

I wish that queer people in straight passing relationships could just admit that they feel personal emotional annoyance and not oppression when people point out that they might not experience as much day-to-day homophobia as people in visibly gay relationships. Like. A lesbian saying that she gets harassed on the street in not trying to outqueer you, I promise

I applied for and accepted a job offer because the HR person who conducted my interview told me "no one has been weird about my partner" when I asked if the environment was queer friendly. She is a cis bi woman dating a man. WHO in the environment would have challenged that???

This same environment is where I received a veiled SA threat from a coworker after he found out I was a woman with a woman partner.

it just makes me so tired . We are not trying to challenge your place in the community. We are not trying to remove you. But people who are multiply attracted MUST recognize that straight passing relationships are afforded very real and present levels of protection and acceptance that I as a lesbian will never in my life be able to access. Unless I force myself to endure endless sexual assault and marry some man, I'll never be able to have a relationship that hides that I'm queer. How can you not understand how much more vulnerable we are. Why does that enrage you instead of making you want to protect the people in your community.

the fact that so many ppl view slurs and oppression as cool exclusive clubs to claim access to, tells me a lot of ppl have never genuinely experienced violence before.

we threw a party the other month, and this straight girl showed up and started using the word dyke, and all the gay women at the party immediately went on edge. my gf had to leave the room.

when she was called out, she started claiming she was using it in a “fun empowering way”. upon explaining that a lot of the gay women there had actual trauma from straight women using that word, including physical violence, she started crying because WE were making HER feel uncomfortable.

it’s really hard to talk to ppl in and around the queer community whose worst experience with hate is “online community infighting”. meanwhile my trans friends are getting beat up in bars for laughing too loud.

like, sorry ppl online talking about misogyny and racism in the gay community makes you feel “invalid”, but it’s really hard not to see you as a fucking idiot when my gf and i almost got ran over the other day.

this is what upstairs neighbors have

Awesome

A good video that accurately explains why stud is a term used for black lesbians only, not white, not poc, BLACK

I’m not even going to say please. Respect black identities and labels, they are ours for a reason.

Imma need this reblogged by white queer tumblr users since it’s mostly yall who wanna use it or want to know why you or other white people shouldn’t/can’t use the term “stud”

[video description: a tiktok made by @/callmekellin, responding to a comment that reads “what does being black have to do with being a stud …….”

the person in the video is a fem presenting black person in their car. they say “i love that you asked, lemme give you a little history lesson. full disclaimer, no hate to the commenter, i’m just giving everybody a bit of a debrief! now firstly, let’s talk about where the term stud actually comes from.

back in the days of slavery, when people still used to refer to us as animals, black people that were taller were known to be stronger because they could do more work. so down in the south, they started comparing us to horses. that then coined the term[s] studs for men, and stallions for females. like megan thee stallion. it was really big in the south. to compare us to animals.

but enough about the bleach brigade, let’s actually get back into the history. as you know, or if you don’t know, black women were not able to enter the working class until well into the 1960s. before then, there was a small populous of women that were still working, even though they technically were not supposed to.

‘how was it possible?’ these women would be dressing more masculine—using binders in order to help put down their chests, dressing more in a male form—and because of the fact that most bleach bandits believed that we, as black women, were already masculine, they got away with it. thus coining the term, in the black community, “stud.” because all the dudes knew, but she was one of the guys. so what did it matter?

any time the chlorine community would come up to black people and be like “hey! is that a female working!?” the guys would just save her and be like ‘nah, that’s a stud right there.” it was joke to them because they all knew. but as times changed and slang did too, the black community still keeps it close at heart. and yes, it was rooted in racism, but we’re taking it back for ourselves.

so once again, if you’re not a black, masculine lesbian that wants to be called a stud, you’re not a stud. you’re a masculine lesbian. even a butch if you want to. i hope that explained it!” end video description.]

The Golden Girls – 5.18: An Illegitimate Concern

people need to start publicly shaming elon for dragging his toddler son everywhere as an ego boost it's weird as hell

Don’t forget while he’s using his child like a show dog he is also using his toddler as a human shield by constantly carrying him on his shoulders in public spaces

girl

young seth mcfarlane is doing something to me…

I'm sorry I'm going fucking insane over trans people in sports issues the anti trans crowd has lost the fucking plot and then has the audacity to act like its the trannies who are ridiculous

I used to be of the "well the sports issue isn't really important to me its w/e I just don't want it to be a gateway into other transphobia" but oh my fucking god we are so far gone. The fencing shit is sending me over the edge. What the fuck.

I can't even articulate my words so I'm just going to tell a story in screenshots

I am so fucking tired of being gaslit about this

I'm also still so fucking pissed that we have to include "ooo the trans fencer only finished in X place" because its a reminder that trans women will never be allowed to excel at anything in the public eye without being cut down. Fuck OFF

Remember this post?

Transphobes will make up the most ridiculous fucking claims in order to dehumanize trans women. There never was any biological advantages. It's all made up because the truth is, they just don't like seeing trans women, period. Estrogen does wonders, everything else is bullshit. And as a cis woman, this narrative that women are weak and no match against a "biological man" pisses me off because feminists have literally fought to prove that we are just as strong as men, that we are equal. And now sexism is being packaged in transphobia, and cis women are taking it hook, line, and sinker.

I don't know what your experience is, but tbh, I don't think as many cis women are taking it as people want to believe. These talking points seem to mostly be coming from men, propping up the same small collection of cis women over and over again to make their points.

Idk. Maybe I'm in a bubble. The cis women I see day to day are obviously the ones that have been accepting of me throughout my transition, so they're probably a biased sample.

environmental storytelling.

my mum was googling for an article about why everyone in the lord of the rings film is white (like to be clear she was annoyed by this) and the google ai was apparently like “everybody in the lord of the rings is not white. gandalf is grey.”