really not sure when it happened or why but personally I'm pissed that the queer community at large seems to have given up ground on the "people with penises/vulvas/testes/ovaries" language to sex & gender essentialists in exchange for the much less precise, much more demeaning "AGAB" language.

is it because you're scared of the word vulva? of acknowledging out loud that some people have penises? of recognising that many many people, including but certainly not limited to trans people, have mixed sex characteristics that cannot be accurately summarised by "afab/amab" as shorthand for "female/male"?

"in [GENITAL RELATED] situation AFABs will need to do X and AMABs will need to do Y" there are "afabs" with penises and "amabs" with vulvas. Saying this shit makes you look so unserious & honestly transphobic (given the ongoing erasure of post-op trans people within broader community). Intersex people and GRS have both existed for long enough (fucking forever and, decades, respectively) that we should well past making this basic fucking mistake.

quit referring to people by a vague & often violent event that happened at their birth as though it defines ANYTHING about how they & their body currently operate, and start using precise language so you at least look like you know what you're fucking talking about.

i agree, and will add:

do NOT say 'people with a vulva/vagina" when you talk about PERIODS AND BIRTH CONTROL. the term you want is FUNCTIONNING UTERUS.

lots of trans women and transfem people (including intersex ppl, *including cis women*) can and do get bottom surgery. the procedure in itself does not make actual-blood-loss periods happen, though, because long-lasting uterus transplant is Not A Thing (yet?) and *the blood comes FROM THE UTERUS*. if it's about *side effects* related to *hormones* (so, not punctual iron deficiency, bc that's linked to the blood loss…) then… it's about HORMONES. again, not external(ish) physical characteristics like a vulva or vagina!

agab language can be useful and appropriate in some contexte, but when talking about medical stuff, PRECISION is indeed what we need. and "assigned gender" is anything but that.

DING DING DING we have a good addition to the post!!!!!!

precision is key.

"estrogen dominant" and "testosterone dominant" endocrine systems are also useful terms, especially when interfacing with doctors.

agab language is also very often not accurate when describing social experiences. It doesn't reliably describe what experiences trans people have in their present life or had in their childhood.

And, ya know, it forever ties the 'm' for 'male' to trans women and non-binary folks who have had to do so much to get away from that word and ties and the 'f' for 'female' to trans men and non-binary folks who have had to do so much to get away from that word. Like, what the fuck? How is anyone okay with that?

*Looks at a throuple" so which one of you is the healer, the dps, and the tank?

—

‘Angry across the board’: Inside the civil war raging in the Democratic Party

It’s almost like too many Democrats are old as fuck, entirely comfortable and insulated from the consequences of their inaction, and determined to hold on to power and lobbyist money as long as possible, our Democracy be dammed.

I’m serious: replace them all.

I see a lot of ‘cis’ women say they wish they were androgynous in the way men were or they wish they were pretty in the way men were. This is your sign to go try to do that. You may find you enjoy being an androgynous woman. You may find you no longer identify as a woman. You may find you don’t like androgyny. You will not know until you try. Cut your hair if you’ve always wanted to but have been afraid to. Shop in the men’s section if you’ve been too nervous to. Wear clothing with an androgynous  silhouette. Experiment with binding, take baby steps with compression bras if you want. Wear unisex scents. Live life. Try things you want to try. A lot of cis women do not understand the joys of mens pants and mens deodorant. I think everyone should try both of those things.

(via @monimolimnion)

[screenshot of tags which read: 

#much more comfortable being a woman when I realised it literally doesn’t have to mean anything  #unlock cis+ it’s good for you]

Trans people don't own gender. We stole it the way Prometheus stole fire, so it would be available to everyone.

🔥 ( ´థᴗథ)b 🔥

@Officerfriendly commissioned this brilliant idea for the animated YCH I posted a while ago!

I love it, it's so fitting 🤣

Poor Venat, we love her 💗

captured from an ambulance. captured. from an ambulance. do not stop speaking about palestine please

have you ever shipped something so hard that you become irrationally happy and make a sound akin to steam escaping from a kettle everytime they so much as stand next to eachother

[grandma voice] back in my day, sonny, we called it “squeeing”.

Shaolin monk demonstration of iron finger

So, fun fact, when you hit your bones harder than they're supposed to get hit but not quite hard enough for a real break, they develop tiny microfractures, which make them sore and weak for a while, but then if you let them heal properly the parts that used to be teeny tiny cracks grow back denser and harder. Kind of like how when you exercise, you tear up muscle fibres and then you grow back more of them.

There's lots of things in your body that are like that, because evolution works more towards efficiency than peak performance so the 'default' state is soft and slow and weak because that doesn't require as much food to maintain, but if you live the kind of life where you need to be able to lift heavy loads or run for hours on end or sometimes fight a tiger with a pointy stick then evolution is willing to let you burn more energy and nutrients in order to make that happen.

These Shaolin motherfuckers, they spend years just... hitting things. Over and over. Like, they start out punching sand, or padded wood or something, then they work up to bare wood, then stone and metal, over the course of literal years of just waking up and punching things every day. And that doesn't just make them strong, the way lifting weights or whatever would, it makes their bones ridiculously dense. Like, just carrying around their skeletons is wasting energy from an evolutionary standpoint, making them need more food than normal people just to walk around. But because their bones are ridiculously dense, because they've been almost shattered enough times, over and over for fucking years, they can hit things that would absolutely shatter the bones of any vaguely normal mammal, and make the rock break first.

Note that this is a carefully balanced process that they've figured out over like, thousands of years of trial and error. If you push too hard and actually break your bones, that generally leaves them weaker than they started, not stronger, so don't take this as advice to immediately start beating your head against a brick.

I always assumed this type of thing was made up or purely discipline. This makes sense now

Truth.

We're genuinely so brave for the way we somehow manage to navigate cis society never knowing wtf is going on in their heads at any given time

This meme is a MURDER ATTEMPT.

I am absolutely fucking serious. The original meme, without the big red denial, is someone's attempt to fucking kill people.

There is NO SAFE DOSAGE of pennyroyal oil. Even Mother Earth News says there's no reason to use pennyroyal essential oil for ANYTHING, even topically or as a fragrance, for fuckssake! That should give you some idea about how dangerous it is!

Pennyroyal tea, plant matter in hot water, is a traditional abortifacient. It is *incredibly* dangerous, induces abortion by bringing the body close to organ failure (and frequently pushing the system right over the edge, because dosage is impossible to meter), but I would drink a gallon of it before I took a half-teaspoon of pennyroyal essential oil.

Two teaspoons, taken across 48 hours, has successfully killed someone.

Three teaspoons taken as a single dosage killed the consumer within THREE HOURS.

There is NO SAFE DOSAGE! FOR PENNYROYAL OIL INTERNALLY! NONE!

The person who made this meme is PURPOSEFULLY, ACTIVELY, trying to get desperate people killed!

Pennyroyal oil contains pulegone, which is highly toxic, particularly to the liver. Ingestion can lead initially to gastrointestinal distress such as nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Later on, it can lead to failure of the liver and kidneys, resulting in bleeding, seizures, multiple organ failure, and death.

There is no antidote for pennyroyal oil poisoning.

- straight from poison control

I’m gonna go ahead and rant real quick. I’m a fanfiction author, and I’m constantly looking for ideas I like. A lot of those ideas come from prompts, or tumblr posts, or other fandoms, or existing tropes.

Sometimes, fics already exist in those tropes.

So here’s my apparently “unpopular” opinion: I like reading fics of the same trope. If there’s a fic where they’re famous actors and they fall in love that I enjoy, I want four more slightly different ones. If I’m writing a fic where one is catfishing, I want to read the trope in at least four other fics like???

I like to see other authors’ take and style on common tropes. Just because one fic in a trope exists doesn’t mean the trope is off limits for the fandom. Far from it - take a chance with that trope. If you’re worried you’re too similar, mark it inspired by. You’re not going to copy someone exactly, and you could have an interesting spin on it. I want that spin to exist.

If two fics of the same trope can’t exist, I might as well delete over half my fics, including some of my most popular. It’s discouraging to hear people drop ideas because something like it exists - or even maybe exists.

tldr; more than one fic can exist within a trope or prompt in a fandom and be good fics. Please write whatever you want, even if something similar exists. Someone (like me) will read them all and enjoy them all.

Here’s dril’s candles on a graph for reference.

As a curator, all these people saying museum are expensive...the one I work at is $3 to enter. But there are also plenty of free museums in my area. If you are saying museums are expensive you need to open your eyes to the world of museums beyond big institutional ones. There are so many small, historical houses, historical parks, little art galleries, out there that are free or have small fees. There are also museums that have free or discounted days. There are museums that offer student discounts, senior discounts, military discounts, museums that offer free or discounts if you have SNAP benefits.

Almost all museum memberships have reciprocal benefits. It's a little more up front, but if you become a member at one museum (It's usually like $50 for a year) you get a membership card and there's usually a list of other museums that card will get you into for free.

Also you can always sign up to be a volunteer. Then you can look at the stuff all the time for free. I got my start 10 years ago as a volunteer, fell in love and made it my career.

also lots of public libraries keep a stock of free museum passes at the circulation desk for check out