"I don't want to read this" is totally valid.

"This is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"I don't want to read this because it is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

Bro, blocking someone and then using their tag like this is, all offence, weak as fuck. Like all you had to say was, na bro I don't promote pedo protags on this here blog, because I wholly agree with the premise of your argument given contexts (i.e., writing abusive relationships to show the evils, great; writing abusive relationships to show the romance, yikes).

This response is so, so comically shitty within the context of that tag, oh my god.

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

and

are both authoritarian viewpoints to hold and express, even if you don't have the power to enact them.

If you hold these viewpoints you are holding authoritarian viewpoints.

DUDE IT’S PEDO FICS EVERYBODY THINKS THEY’RE NASTY

Let me explain this to you in simple terms.

Something being nasty is not a good reason to ban fiction about it.

If we accept that "something being nasty is a good reason to bad fiction about it" then we give a foot in the door for all the people who truly, genuinely believe that queer people are nasty to ban all queer literature.

This is not about defending bad people this is about defending the freedom of good people from tyranny, you moron.

I think if you take it to its logical extreme. Say, banning people from writing stories of sexual abuse. That could then be said "well ANY talk about sexual abuse is bad."

And from that, you could ban books that talk about it irl. Or books like how to recover after being abuse. If its not something to be discussed AT ALL.

The fact that I’ve seen this post in some form on my dash like 100x and each time there’s new idiots who do not get that you can’t have *some* censorship.

Either you’re for it or you aren’t.

The moment you agree that something should never, ever exist in fiction is the moment that anything can be banned.

Remember a while back how Tumblr banned a bunch of tags, including many popular innocuous ones that even people who are for censorship used and were upset about?

When censorship happens, stuff YOU like can and will be banned. That’s how it works.

Remember how a bunch of people had their accounts terminated here only last year for writing about their own sexual abuse?

When you ban “pedo” topics, say, any talk of child sexual abuse in any form, that means people can no longer write about their own experiences. It means people cannot educate others so they can learn how to protect themselves or get help from these situations.

Censorship is authoritarian. Full stop.

Even if “everyone” agrees something is “gross” and “shouldn’t exist,” that does not fucking matter.

Do you know who generally believes queer people are gross and shouldn’t exist??

The same people who are banning books left and right solely because they have queer characters or relationships.

The same people who attack and kill queer folk for simply exisiting.

This is not just some fandom matter or a case of being chronically online.

Protecting freedom of expression is essential, and if you do not get that, I don’t know what to say to you.

And the people who keep bringing up child sex abuse as a reason for censorship are doing it very specifically because everyone feels like then they HAVE to agree with the person in favor of censorship.

It’s not that there isn’t widespread societal agreement on this. It’s that they want you backed into a rhetorical corner where you feel compelled to agree with them.

Also, like, we KNOW how this shit shakes out in fandom because it's happened before.

In 2007, Livejournal capitulated to the "pedophilia and sex crimes!" cries of (hate group) Warriors 4 Innocence, and you know what communities got shut down? Slashfic communities. Sexual assault survivor support communities. Authors who'd written non-smut m/m fic even got caught up in it. It was DEVASTATING to fandom spaces. I think pretty much everyone knew at least one person whose account was literally DELETED, or were a member of a community that was wiped off the map because they were considerate enough to include topics like "sexual assault" or "BDSM" in the profiles under the badly-named category of "interests" to indicate that posts on said blogs or communities may include discussion of things like that. Even if it was for a SUPPORT group. And it was because a group of religious bigots came to LJ and said essentially "EVERYONE thinks it's gross and that it's promoting CSA, we should ban it."

Like, strikethrough and boldthrough were a large part of what propelled AO3 out of a more unfocused conversation on one person's blog about hosting a site INTENDED for fandom content, into being an actual archive and nonprofit. And it's a large part of why you won't find AO3 banning topics that you find "gross".

Censorship is authoritarian and it will ALWAYS have more collateral damage than you can imagine.

Going to add that fiction which had sexual abuse and communities which played around with it as a writing topic are the very things that protected me from irl sexual abuse when I was a teenager. I was in a dicey situation, and realized that while my situation did not match up to any of the superficial or textbook cases mentioned in passing (if at all) through school, it matched up a LOT to what I'd learned about irl sexual abuse through works of fiction and the rhetoric of my communities. I got out of that situation and dodged what was, in retrospect, one hell of a nasty bullet. If it hadn't been for that "nasty" fiction and those "nasty" communities, I would very likely have been abused, and subject to further violence spiraling out from that abuse.

you can’t have *some* censorship.

Censorship is authoritarian.

I’m going to chime in from a fundamentalist Christian background where censorship had been the norm for decades.

Sexual abuse was widespread, usually marital, but not always.

Abuse THRIVES in silence, it is a key element.

When you have banished all depictions of abuse you hand the abuser free reign to control the narrative around the abuse and frame it however they like and the victim is left with no language to describe what’s being done to them EXCEPT what they’ve been told by their abuser.

If athletes are allowed to compete, they should also be allowed to win.

Every single time I see a story where a trans athlete "blows out" the competition, their performance usually ends up not being quite as dominent as claimed.

When you look at the fastest 400m times in high school competition, it greatly adjusts the context.

In running, a second can be an eternity. Most world records are only a few tenths of a second apart. And this trans athlete is a full 7 seconds away from a record set by a cisgender high school runner.

According to the New York Post, 7 seconds is a blowout.

College runners are getting times under 50 seconds. And the world record is 47.60—a full 10 seconds faster.

This trans athlete can't help it if she is in a league with a bunch of slowpokes. She won a race. She is pretty fast in relation to her direct competition. But she is not some spectacular speed demon who will dominate women's running.

Her time wasn't even at scholarship level.

And the second place finisher wasn't even close to a "decent" time.

Also...

The vast majority of the world's top sprinters are of West African descent. Just to give you an idea of the statistics, every world record holder in the men's 100m dash since 1968 has been Black.

So they are basically cherry picking ideal circumstances to make a trans athlete look overpowered—as Portland only has a 5% Black population.

If this race happened in Atlanta instead of Portland, the trans runner probably would have won 10th place and this wouldn't be a news story.

How to create a moral panic 101.

We've got another "dominant" trans athlete going viral.

While it is true that Redmond Sullivan has had two first place finishes in tournaments since transitioning, if you look at her record, you might notice this isn't as dominant as claimed.

First I have to explain fencing ratings.

You have individual ratings A through E. The As are top fencers and Es (or unrated) fencers are the worst. The number after the rating is the year.

So a rating of A25 means you are a top level fencer in 2025.

Then you have event classes. They are also A through E but have an additional 1 through 4 difficulty variant.

The easiest tournament is E1.

It has 6 competitors and none of them have to be rated. So you are competing against poorly ranked people and have a much higher statistical chance of winning.

This is like playing basketball with all of your nerdiest friends and "accidentally" forgetting to invite Steve who is 6'4".

The hardest tournaments are A4.

This requires at least 64 competitors and must have at least 12 A-rated, 12 B-rated, and 12 C-rated fencers.

This is like being a 40 year old playing Halo against a hundred 12-year-olds all saying rude things about your mom while repeatedly headshotting you with ease.

You can view all of the event classes here.

If you look at Redmond's two first place finishes, they were in E1 and D1 competitions. (A D1 requires 15 people with four of them E-rated.)

She had a decent statistical chance of winning because the competitors were few and poorly rated.

If you look at her only A4 tournament, she placed 172nd.

I'm not sure I would call someone who placed 172nd particularly dominant.

She currently has a "D" rating overall.

When fencing in men's competitions, she was rated E. And she slightly improved to a D in women's competitions—though this is only with 3 months of data. She ended 2024 with an E rating in women's events. So maybe she improved to a D and a half.

No offense to Redmond, but she is not anywhere close to a top level fencer no matter which league she competes in.

Stephanie Turner, the kneeling transphobe, currently has an E rating and has never finished a year better than a D. By all accounts, she is evenly matched against Redmond and had a legit chance at winning the match. But it was an A2 tournament and she really had no chance of placing highly so I guess she figured this was a good opportunity to be a dipshit.

She is a coward who only took a stand when the stakes were lowest.

I'd also like to point out that Colin Rugg was quick to mention Redmond's first place finishes, but failed to mention that in the very tournament with this kneeling protest, she got 24th place.

It really seems like these trans athletes aren't trying to become dominant athletes by transitioning and they are just competing because they love it.

I mean, if I ever got 172nd place I'd probably hang up my rapier and just watch Zorro movies instead.

Payton McNabb had a genuinely tragic injury from a volleyball spike to the face. There is no denying that. When you watch the video of it, it's clear this was a brutal shot to the face.

But this tragedy was quickly capitalized on by the anti-trans propaganda machine. The context was significantly altered and an insidious narrative was constructed. Payton and her parents then jumped at the chance to monetize the incident.

You can hire Payton to dramatize her incident and repeat all of the common anti-trans talking points.

If you can't afford to hire her as a speaker, you can request to feature her documentary, "Kill Shot: How Payton McNabb Turned Tragedy into Triumph."

Possibly one of the most emotionally manipulative things I've seen in a while. After they discuss the injury you can just sense the coaching involved as they parrot every talking point.

Let's deconstruct exactly how Payton's injury was turned into propaganda.

First, all of the conservative news outlets reported on the incident. And they were sure to include details to give the impression this injury was severe, uncommon, and something only a trans girl could inflict.

The ball was going a blistering 70mph.

The trans girl was a towering 5'11".

Payton suffered a concussion.

The evil trans girl cackled in delight.

Of course, none of these details can be verified. The trans girl cannot tell her side of the story because if she identifies herself, it will put her in grave danger.

Let's investigate the claims a little deeper, shall we?

First, the ball going 70mph.

Not even remotely possible.

Elite level high school girl volleyball players can spike a ball between 40 and 50mph. Boys can manage between 50 and 60mph. So that is already debunked with a simple google search.

But I went a step further and analyzed the footage using a technique I learned from Adam Savage on Mythbusters. You take a known measurement (the width of the volleyball) and count how long it takes to travel a certain distance using the framerate. The ball went roughly 426 cm in 200 milliseconds.

I did a high and low estimate and the ball was going between 43 and 47mph, as best as I can tell.

Which is in the range of what a typical elite high school girl can achieve.

In fact, the world record for any woman volleyball player is around 70 mph. This was accomplished by professional player, Paola Egonu. She is 26 years old and 6'4".

The men's record is around 80 mph.

So they are saying this trans girl hit a volleyball as fast as the world record set by an adult professional athlete. And it was only 10mph slower than the fastest spike ever hit by anyone.

Okay, what about the trans girl being 5'11". That's pretty tall for a girl, right?

Not for volleyball players. In fact, it is not uncommon for high school volleyball teams to have players 6 feet and above. Many college and professional teams regularly have cis women that are 6'5".

Well, there is still the fact that the girl got a concussion.

You might be thinking... "That never happens. I mean, they are just high school kids playing a game. And a kid's game isn't dangerous. The *only* reason Payton was injured (as her parents imply) was because a trans girl was playing."

Did you know that women's volleyball has become so notorious for injuries that the NIH did an entire study documenting them?

Here are some highlights...

"In total, an estimated 214,302 female athletes aged 14 to 23 years were evaluated in EDs across the United States with volleyball-related injuries between 2012 and 2021. The ankle, head, and knee were most frequently injured, often involving strains/sprains, contusions, fractures, and concussions.

While sprains and strains were the most frequent injuries, head injuries accounted for the second most common diagnosis in both groups, suggesting that clinicians should maintain a high index of suspicion for concussion when evaluating players."

It would seem that head injuries are extremely common and there are literally thousands of cases of concussions.

Volleyball is fucking dangerous, yo.

This has to be a known danger that parents and players are aware of. They choose to take this risk despite the danger. They don't advocate for any kind of head protection or protective gear.

The reason Payton was so seriously injured was not because of a trans girl. It's because she was hit point blank in the face with a volleyball—just like thousands of others.

An event so common that when I was researching spike speeds and looking at highlight reels of Paola Egonu's world record spiking, one of the clips was of her bonking another player in the head.

The only reason this woman wasn't injured was because the ball had a chance to decelerate. In the first 400 cm of this spike, the ball is going so fast that the camera could not even see it. It just evaporated into a blur until it slowed down from air resistance. Just imagine if that woman was as close as Payton was.

Cis women are fully capable of causing these types of injuries.

To review...

They villainized a high school trans girl for hitting a ball only as fast as her cis counterparts.

They said she was a giant even though she is kinda short compared to other players.

They inferred only a trans girl could cause this type of injury even though it happens all the time.

They said she cackled like the Wicked Witch with no way to dispute the claim.

And then they gave her a bunch of money to repeat the narrative that they manufactured.

She even got to meet the president for selling her soul.

This is where anti-trans talking points come from. It is bad faith all the way down. Every claim is a lie or so twisted and out of context it might as well be a lie.

Is this really the side you want to be on?

Are these the bedfellows you want to align with?

I do want to jump in here and point out that Redmond is fencing foil (as opposed to epee or saber). Foil concentrates on a small area of the torso. If your torso is smaller, and you're shorter, this is actually... better. The same is true of epee, but kinda more so, because you can target more of the body, so it's just... the bigger you are, the more of you there is to target.

My wife, who is 6'8", used to fence and ran the fencing booth at the MN Renaissance Faire for several years; she fenced competitively. (A late friend of hers -- Guppy Dibble z''l -- is the reason there is a rule on the books at least locally that you cannot use an offhand fish in tournament matches.) The amount of bitching that streamed forth from her when I casually asked, "Isn't being smaller and slimmer an advantage in fencing?" was pretty fucking epic.

All of this is really fucking ridiculous.

Oh. Has anyone pointed out yet that the woman who took a knee in this fencing bullshit is thirty-one years old, and this is her hobby? There's nothing wrong with having a hobby or competing in beer-level tournaments, but there is something wrong with turning them into national fucking issues and ruining someone's fucking life over them.

I hope she can't ever show her face at a fencing competition ever again.

Well fucks? Get to it!

41.7k notes and as of 7th April, the signatures are only 14,817.

The deadline is 9 July 2025.

Trans rights are always wavering in safety and are not stable and well protected in the UK. Please sign.

Trans rights in the UK is my rights.

Image description: Screenshot of Bluesky post from Hank Green:

today i found out that when monarch butterflies migrate south for the winter, all the ones that go across the middle of lake superior suddenly stop going south and go west for five miles and then continue south. which really freaked scientists out cos like What is in the Middle of Lake Superior what do Butterflies know that We Dont Is This The End Times etc. anyway turns out about a hundred million years ago there was a mountain there and the butterflies still think they gotta fly around it. classic butterflies

Y’all, unfortunately, this is just not true. A few months ago, I urged people on this site to be skeptical specifically about ecology & wildlife biology posts with no sources. This is a perfect example.

This post has made its rounds for ten years (originally posted in 2015), and the earliest source I have ever been able to find for this claim is an article posted in 2013, which says:

“Biologists, and certain geologists, believe that something was blocking the monarchs’ path. They believe that that part of Lake Superior might have once been one of the highest mountains ever to loom over North America.”

Who these “biologists” and “certain geologists” are is a mystery. The article links two sources:

Dillard is an acclaimed author and nature writer, but she is not a biologist or geologist and cannot be referenced as such. The referenced excerpt from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

Dillard credits this claim to nameless entomologists and a book with no title. It’s a dead end. Bear in mind, the entomologists and books who may have made this claim, which Dillard later read, would have done so pre-1974.

The truth about monarch butterfly migrations may lack the sci-fi/fantasy allure of a mountain range that exists only in a butterfly’s primordial memory, but it’s still incredible.

These creatures with magnificently intelligent and fragile bodies are believed to use internal solar and magnetic compasses to traverse mountains and lakes:

The geologic history of Gichigami, aka Lake Superior, is also extremely cool:

But as far as I can find, there is no Monarchs’ memories of a long-lost mountain which dictates their modern-day migration route. If anyone has more insight on this, I would appreciate it, because I am not an entomologist. I specialize in marine science and scientific interpretation, and I only used those skills to find and present what I believe is the best available information on this topic. Thank you!

people keep calling this “a net zero information post.” you should click any of the links I shared about butterflies and the lake and learn something new and exciting! : )

embarrassment has good bones

When everything is embarrassing, that’s a sign that your passion is waking up, and it wants more. Your desire is a tender sprout that wants more water, more sunshine. It wants you to give up on SEEMING happy and in control and to start FEELING joy instead, even when it feels a little too big, even when it makes you cry, even when it forces you to question where you are and why.

Passion and desire and shame and sadness don’t signal that you have to change everything immediately, though. These are sensations that don’t require solutions. Your primary job, in the face of renewed lust for life, is to tolerate the shame of joy.

Because embarrassment is sometimes just a sign that you’ve never lived out in the open before, you’ve never cared more about a feeling than you care about how you’re coming across, you’ve never prioritized happiness over control.

This is why it’s good to take risks that might embarrass you regularly. Because every time you dare to embarrass yourself for the sake of who you are, you’re teaching your body to prioritize joy. You’re teaching yourself to let go of seeming better than the things you love. You’re showing yourself how to feel where you are — to soak in the cool fall air, to breathe in the moon, to love every lopsided moment of your glorious, flawed life.

Shame is a Side Effect of Desire, Heather Havrilesky

I Worried, Mary Oliver

I'm so pissed right now. I know that fabric has been declining in quality for a while but I just bought new pajamas from kmart and they are literally see through. Not just through one layer of fabric either; I can see through the leg, that is, through 2 layers of fabric. These aren't clothes. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have strained soup through cheesecloth thicker than these pants. These are men's flannel pajamas, the kind people wear in winter, and they are made if shittier thinner fabric than even the most bargain bin bullshit halloween costumes. This "flannel" feels like plastic and is thinner than a chux wipe. Why is this even for sale.

I buy almost exclusively from kmart because I don't have a car and they deliver to my house for free, but this might be the last fucking straw. All of their clothing is about half as thick as it should be but this is a new low, it is physically not possible to make the fabric any shittier than this. I think I'm done with kmart now, for clothing at least.

This is literally why most of my clothes are from Goodwill. The decline in fabric quality has become so steep so quick that, well...let me put it this way, I'm literally packing a box for Goodwill right now (as in, there is a basket in front of me that's getting folded in, I mean RIGHT NOW) and I just put in a skirt from 2008 because it no longer fits me but it's still perfectly good. IT'S SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. Meanwhile tank tops I got three years ago at Walmart are ready for the bin. I'd rather wear used and potentially unfashionable vintage that holds up.

I'm currently taking psychic damage on a daily basis trying to find a new pair of sweatpants that feel right

#real#the reason my entire wardrobe is from the thrift store

Everything in the op shops in my town is also stuff from Kmart.

#id study how this is due to fast fashion and the quickening pace of clothing trends lifted up then torn down by popular figures#as well as the inherent greed of companies abusing people who cannot afford higher quality clothing by selling them pure sludge to make#prices more desirable in this age of economic struggle but im not the right person to do that#still forever angry tho like WHY are modern clothes so Useless

Fast fashion is a symptom of the same problem (the more often they can get you to update your wardrobe, the better), but the cause is very simple -- shitty fabric is cheaper. Thinner fabric is cheaper, fabric with shorter fibre lengths is cheaper, the more plastic you can get in the fabric the cheaper it is, and paying the workers less per garment or increasing their quotas (thus forcing them to rush, skip double stitching, and overlook small defects) is cheaper. Getting as many clothing pieces out of as little fabric as possible, even if it means the warp and weft are at a weird angle, is cheaper. Not putting linings in clothing or reinforcing stress points is cheaper, so nothing has a lining or is properly reinforced any more. The company must get more profitable every year, so the goods must either be cheaper to acquire or more expensive to sell every year. It's just shrinkflation.

To a free market proponent this shouldn't be a problem, because if the clothes are too shitty then the customers will just buy from somewhere with better clothing and the problem will self-correct, right? Except that doesn't work when everyone is doing it. When every affordable chain store is putting out shittier, flimsier clothing for the same price every year, and when the fabric stores are selling equally shitty fabric (and only a minority of the customers would have time to sew anyway), and the op shops are full of shitty clothes abandoned by frustrated customers from the affordable chain stores, who else can the customer buy from? If the good quality clothing even exists in their area any more, if they can even save up to buy it, how are they to know where to find it? Expensive stuff is very often made of shitty bullshit that falls apart in two years too now. Reliable brands are constantly changing hands and becoming unreliable, four fifths of artisans out there carefully making high quality clothes are just dropshippers selling you the stuff that even kmart wouldn't take. It's not technically a monopoly but it has the same effect as one -- if you take away the customer's other options, you can exploit them as much as you want.

They're selling us shittier and shittier clothes every year... because they can.

I noticed this from Kmart too. I could see straight through my shorts. Like, I can fucking read through them.

I went to the op shop to look for flannos this winter, and I didn't get anything because 1 they were all the same exact ones that were for sale at Kmart (shit quality, ugly colours) and 2 they were THE SAME PRICE AS A NEW ONE FROM KMART!!!

I genuinely think the answer to this is going back to community making. Not even necessarily selling, you know? Maybe my neighbor makes me some yarn and I make us both sweaters.

The issue is, I’m a sewist. And I have no idea how fabric is actually made, beyond a vague sense that it’s perhaps done on a loom.

Is it just easier to crochet or knit things than to attempt to make or source actual fabric?

It can take literal months to crochet or knit a jumper. It takes longer to weave fabric on a loom. There's a reason why pre-industrial fabric was so precious and a reason why pre-industrial women spent the vast majority of their 'free time' sewing, spinning or weaving -- it is an unbelievably labour-intensive procedure that, in a modern society with the way our days are structured, would be next to impossible for the vast majority of people.

So, no, we can't replace factory fabrics with hand woven or knitted stuff. Even if we could, the problem goes all the way down -- non-plastic yarn gets sold at shorter and shorter fibre lengths, and dear god is spinning your own a slow process. People do make clothing 'from scratch' as a hobby or small side business (I just put down the vest I'm crocheting to type this), but replacing all the shitty clothing, shitty sheets, shitty towels, and various other kinds of shitty fabrics in our lives with handmade fabric is simply not feasible. (And of course, crochet, knitting and weaving all produce different sorts of fabrics that have different uses.)

#NO ACTUALLY A LOOM IS MUCH FASTER THAN KNITTING OR CROCHET#AND TAKES LESS YARN THE FABRIC IS JUST STIFFER#spinning DOES take a ton of time and effort but there is still a ton of quality weaving thread and yarns available#pls pls pls join a weaving guild many have looms for communal use#replacing all you shitty fabrics are doable HOWEVER#they r gonna ne more expensive and you're gonna have to take better care of them#and probably make do with less#well it depends where you are about feasability but I Assure you#there are weaving and spinning guilds across the world#and the tech is still Very Available and In Use#many guilds will do craft trades too#so like if u can mske mugs they eill trade mugs for towels etc

Good news about the speed of weaving

Also weavers in weaver guilds tend to kick the bucket frequently (its an old lady gang) so theres often supplies going for cheap cheap cheap. my mom recently got into weaving and all of her many many many supplies are dead-lady stock.

This is gonna sound horrible but I love old dead lady stock. I've gotten some good yarn that way.

idk why but i feel like being a punk is for he/hims and doing ballet is for she/hers

Bibliography

HEY, FELLOW HATERS OF INSANELY-BRIGHT CAR HEADLIGHTS, SOMEONE HAS STARTED A PETITION TO REGULATE THEM.

It's an official petition through the Australian Government's e-petition page, which means if it gets enough signatures, it will be tabled in government.

You do have to be an Australian citizen to sign it, BUT!!! PLEASE REBLOG THIS EVEN IF YOURE NOT, because these kind of things have a roll-on effect, and if Australia legislates LED headlights, then other countries may follow.

FYI, the petition asks only for your name and email, and once you've clicked the sign button, they'll send you an email to confirm your signature --- you need to click the confirmation link in the email to have your signature counted.

Ice cold takes from a Transgender Woman:

Anyone can be

Non-Binary, there is no

“look” or requirement

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

Its weird how quickly stereotyping cats based on color has taken off online now

I'd say its just people wanting to lovingly tease their pets, but I've come across several conversations recently of people wondering what genetically causes orange cats "to be that way". I think it's because they are a cat.

It's even weirder because people act like "orange cat behaviour" is a long-standing cultural stereotype and not something that popped up in the last five years!

Oh some of my favorites include "my tortie loves to [insert normal cat behavior here], and only torties act that way!" and "I could never get a calico, they are mean!" Like bitch what? You think fur and skin color determines personality? You're cat racist. Make it make sense.

It's astrology for cats. Including people that are real fuckin weird about it.

Tortietude has been a thing for years, I remember reading people joking in my cat magazine when I was a kid many decades ago about torties being spicy, though they didn't use that word.

But the orange cat thing has been memed out. I shouldn't further it, I know I shouldn't. But the lighter fur and their open little faces do indeed make them look very very silly sometimes. There isn't much mystery to an orange cat. Just sunshine.

I'm lowkey bugged by it because they're also gendered sterotypes. Orange and black are carried on the X chromosome, so XY kittens with an orange X frequently come out orange, while XX kittens with one orange and one black X typically come out with the variable black and orange coat of the tortoiseshell or calico.

So effectively, this means that tortoiseshell and calicos are 99.9% girls and orange cats are 85% boys.

And then, totally coincidentally, people went in hard on stereotypes where the mostly-boy population are sweet dumb himbos, and the girl-population are moody, emotional, and prone to overreacting.

When these cats are not different breeds or geographically separated populations at all; this is a common coat colour for cats all over the world, and oranges and tortoiseshells are frequently brothers and sisters. Or parents and children. A tortoiseshell/calico mother will often have orange boys and tortoiseshell/calico girls; getting a tortoiseshell/calico cat requires one parent with an orange X, which is frequently an orange boy.

When assessing behaviour and personality, a major thing psychology has had to fight against is demand characteristics and confirmation bias. Having a preformed conclusion about how somebody is will lead you to interpret all their behaviour in a way that confirms your original theory, and your preformed concept of somebody can lead you to act in ways that unnaturally evoke that response in their behaviour. I have not seen any study on "tortitude" or "orange cat behaviour" that fails to rule out these two factors.

I normally shut up about this because people are entitled to their own silliness and having fun with their cats, but I'll be honest, the gender of it all just bugs me deep down.

I’m about to save you thousands of dollars in therapy by teaching you what I learned paying thousands of dollars for therapy:

It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.

Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.

1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.

2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?

3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?

4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”

5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.

6. Repeat, it takes practice but is a skill you can learn :)

I have been in EMDR therapy recently to help with past trauma and like 90% of the appointments is just this post. Which I thought was silly at first bcs I was like "well I know how I'm feeling, I feel bad" but man you have no idea. Literally JUST talking through whatever stressful thing I have going on at the moment and whenever I feel a Big Emotion stopping and acknowledging, naming, and sitting with it. I've made more progress with my trauma and mental illnesses just doing this in a single year than I have in like 10+ years of therapy.

It might feel silly or pointless at first but stick with it, it really helps.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-22/food-plant-solutions-malnutrition-farming-edible-plants/12580732

https://fms.cmsvr.com/fmi/webd/Food_Plants_World

This guy is my new hero. I LOVE learning about native food plants that just grow everywhere without human help.

The database is a little clunky to use (especially on a phone), but still loads of excellent information.

Here’s their website - Food Plant Solutions - and they can use volunteers! And $ of course. What they really need help with is connecting with NGOs/groups on the ground already working in countries, to get them access to the database. They also need help from formally trained agronomists, people good with website stuff, and people good at marketing / getting the word out about their project.

i do think there should be more stories and shows and stuff about guys falling in love with butch women actually, i think that’d be a good thing. and not ‘this is as butch as twitter can handle’, i mean butch as can fucking be without apology, and making those boys weak in the knees about it. i think it’s great actually to have f/m romances that exist to break gender norms, too. i think it sucks that the only mainstream het romances that exist are either about women who are already feminine or with women who are just a little too scarily masculine and have to be fixed into being girlier. that’s shit.

it’s not like. taking away from queer people if you let “the straights” have some genderfuckery in their romance, too. that’s good, actually, the blurring of gender roles and performance and getting better understandings of your own sexuality is good for everyone. and it’s really fucking weird if you think that mainstream “het” romances shouldn’t feature women who are “too masculine” because that’s only allowed for queer people, somehow.

And as always ~m-spec people exist~ and can date straight people if they want to. Bisexual butches that date men are real, straight butches that date men are real, etc. There's probably lots of people who would be butch if they knew it was an option that didn't require being a lesbian, too

The Trans Agenda is to Keep My F*cking Friends Alive — sol rios

published as part of the Citizen Trans* {Project} by New Words Press

I promise you, relationship anarchy is a good thing. Tell your friends you love them. Go on dates. Domme them. Take them to weddings. Have a relationship with the sub from the dungeon where she does your taxes or you mow his lawn. Help your neighbor plant begonias and become their honorary granddaughter. Become friends with your partner’s partners. Cuddle with your book club and talk about Polysecure or something, idk.

I don’t care. Just stop expecting every relationship to follow a specific pattern and instead find the beauty you both want in your specific relationship with that other person.

Life is more than the nuclear family and strict pseudo-Christian mythological ideals.