@iceghosto / iceghosto.tumblr.com
last week two ambulances, a fire truck, a UN vehicle and around 16 rescue workers were dispatched to save people crushed under the rubble after a bombing in rafah (do you remember rafah? one of biden's red lines.) they disappeared, and due to israeli tanks nobody could enter the area and nobody knew what had happened to them.
a few days ago after the tanks left the vehicles were discovered crushed and buried under the sand, and one rescue worker's body was recovered. israel admitted to targeting them. and then yesterday the rest of the workers' bodies were recovered in a mass grave. one of the corpses had wire around one foot, indicating torture and interrogation, several handcuffed, all of them buried in their clearly marked uniforms and gloves.
cnn reported this story alongside like five other incidents of israel targeting humanitarian workers this past week to little outrage because the workers killed were palestinian and not international, and because israel has been regularly killing humanitarian workers.
but for the PRCS (the palestinian red crescent society), the same organization that hind rajab called desperately from her car around this time last year, one of the few that struggled to save lives throughout the war even when it got their workers killed by israeli forces, these are fathers, sons and loved ones who spent a genocide digging people out of rubble with no equipment and trying to save lives:
all of them were buried in a careless mass grave of rescue workers, found after a week of pleading from their loved ones and radio silence from their murderers and those who enable them.
hi, a lot of you need a perspective reset
Their asses are NOT sparring your honour
extremly urgent! shadi @shadeesam053 is a 22 year old bombing surviver from gaza that is currently undergoing treatment for vision loss and needs all the money he can get.
shadi needs to raise around kr500K in order to stay affloat in gaza while preventing his condition from worsening.
his campaign is still very low on support, with no new donations received in the past 4 days. please go help him out!
gfm link / vetted by @gazavetters (number #363)
no new donations in the past 3 days.
last donation was now 4 days ago.
no donations in 6 days.
this is a $9 toll for cars entering parts of the city. this of course was met with carcels loudly complaining that it would ruin the economy, but the opposite happened:
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.
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.
Genuinely as a gender goal question, do you have any sort of workout routine? HRT and pain medication have made it so I can actually feel motivated to improve my body for the first time in years and I want examples of activity levels I can work up!
Hell yeah! I do but it’s every loose. I try and do three sets of push ups, pull ups, curls, crunches, and planks every day and every other day i run on the treadmill for like 25-30 minutes with lunges on the off days. Its super simple but its been good to me. Especially since i spend all day sitting at a desk haha
How did u get so hot. How did u make that happen.
Haha aww thanks! I have no idea! I blame hrt and slowly embracing my crunchy, grungy butch-femme vibes
Sorry more random thoughts. I think part of it is that i just have the confidence to try stupid shit now. Like i used to agonize over getting a haircut or getting a certain shirt or worry about if something would fit my style. But ive gotten to a point where i decided to shave the side of my head when i was break from work in the bathroom or pin my bangs back cause i of a pinterest post i saw. A lot of them dont work but its allowed me to find the things that really do.
