CAL

if a job is going to be soul-sucking it should be paying $25 an hour. minimum

that IS minimum wage here america i fear for you

where in america is the minimum wage that high??

they're saying that it's minimum wage where they live. and they fear for america

Because it is the anniversary of his death, I wanted to share a small story about my grandfather.

Before I knew that I was intersex, I identified as a trans man. And I went the way any trans man has to go if he wants to transition in my country. My parents thankfully were supportive but I was afraid to tell my grandparents. My grandparents were German and lived/were raised during the third reich. While both of them never said or acted in a way that suggested that they had fascist views (my grandfather was until he died part of a leftwing political party), but there still was this fear in me. "They are old, they grew up surrounded by abhorrent beliefs...". And then there was my aunt. Who would constantly claim that my grandfather was homophobic.

The problem was, back then, there were no openly out gay people in our area, so I never got the chance to see my grandfather interact with someone who was queer. So I just believed her. Because she was so insistent on it. And because it confirmed my fears and my brain loves to be constantly afraid.

But I knew I wanted to come out. I had to, eventually, because I had stopped my estrogen treatment (back then, I did not know that I got that because I was intersex) and went on testosterone instead and first physical changes began to show. We all lived in one big house, so my grandparents would eventually notice.

I was so afraid that my father at some point offered to talk to his parents. I waited outside in the hallway that led to their kitchen and listened.

My father explained, easy to understand, that I was going to transition from female to male because I felt terrible in my body. My grandfather asked, "Is that why the child* is so depressed all this time?" I had been in and out of multiple clinics for manic depression at that point. My father gave a yes. And my grandmother made the incredibly selfish comment, "Can't that wait until I am dead?"

Before I even got time to be upset, my grandfather slammed his fist down on the table. I had never seen or heard him do anything like that before. He was a very calm and collected man who preferred to leave the room before he got too angry. "No, it can't wait. The child gets to get well now. And if that is what is going to help, then it needs to be done."

From that day on, he never used my deadname again or used the wrong pronouns for me. Sometimes, he would stop in a sentence to think and remind himself, but he did always address me correctly.

He celebrated with me when my name was legally changed. He built the bed frame for me and my boyfriend's bed when we moved in together, just like he had built the first adult sized bedframe for me when I outgrew my small bed. He drove my boyfriend to his chemo sessions because my grandfather also had cancer and knew how terrifying it was to go alone.

Did he fully understand what it means to be intersex? To transition? No. But he understood that one of his loved ones was suffering and that he could help to alleviate that pain. And so he did.

He taught me calligraphy. He taught me how to sew. He taught me bookbinding. He gave me many gifts.

But the biggest gift he gave me was, that when someone hated me for what I am, I could stomach it. Because this man was willing to unlearn the bigotry he had been taught for decades so he could love me for who I am.

*in my grandpa's dialect it was normal to refer to children as just 'the child' (genderless)

poor little meow meow.

basically

stalin after lenin called him rude in that letter

It's such a mervyn peake dead rat poem morning

One of the poems ever.

reading a paper on quality of life among 45-to-70-year-olds with Down syndrome:

“Individuals expressed a desire to be allowed to go to bed when they wanted to.”

:(

Imagine.

I lived in a room and board that failed the burrito test. (”If you’re not allowed to get up in the middle of the night to microwave a burrito, you live in an institution.”) No one stopped me from going to bed, but they did tell me I had to have my lights out by 10, and that I had to be out of the house by 10 the next morning. When I complained to my outpatient program that I needed more help than I was getting, they threatened me with board and care, where my cell phone would be taken away and I would lose contact with the outside world. My case manager sounded so damn smug, like he had caught me out, when he said, “if you’re really as helpless as you say, then you need to be in a board and care.” Like my only options were struggling to do things I couldn’t do, or surrendering my life to an institution.

When I tried to talk about these things with other people, they always rationalized it away. (I told my dad once that my caseworker was reading my e-mails as I wrote them, demonstrating extreme disrespect for my privacy, and he said, “Well, she’s probably making sure you don’t use the internet to goof off.” I was 22 years old.)

 People tend to mock the idea that telling an adult when to go to bed, when to eat, etc., is a human rights violation, even though they would find it outrageous and absurd if anyone came into their lives to do the same thing to them.

And this is what people seem to think when they tell disabled activists we’re just not disabled enough to understand that some people really do need to be locked up and deprived of all autonomy.

Here’s the paper:

https://library.down-syndrome.org/en-us/research-practice/06/3/quality-life-ageing-down-syndrome/

They don’t want *any* activists for mentally/developmentally disabled people. If you’re able to advocate for your rights, you’re not “disabled enough” - and if you were disabled enough you wouldn’t be able to advocate for your rights.

I need 2 know when hornets 🐝 wake up i am trtijg to make new farming ventures 🐝 🐜 and i have so much food ouut but they don5t come out i thought they like honey and sh!t i thouugt they want a sip of old crow with me and suck a my stogies but its stupit fucking roaches only and whenn onhad sexy investors over i got laugh at for my idea and he said why is it so fuckkng dirty and whys there so much food aroundd and it hit him hard with back of my hand and made his schull eplode now hes more like infestor

its so sweet to me whenever a reconstruction of a neanderthal's face shows up on social media and people are like "oh they would have loved minecraft" "they would have loved weed brownies" it's so sweet. i hope that continues on to the next stage of human evolution. i want whoever comes next to dig me up, reconstruct my face, and for the girlbloggers of this far-flung civilization to go "duuuude she would have loved churfing back a freefing zarbee"

type prevs url with your eyes closed in the tags

CRYING AND BAWLING AND LOSING IT

In a truck stop bathroom washing my hands today and 2 boys, looked about 5 and 9, came in with their little sister who looked maybe 2. The following whispered conversation made my entire day

"We have to wait, there's a lady in here!"

"That's not a lady, he has a mustache! We can be in here!"

"Some ladies have mustaches! And she has boobs!"

"Well some guys have boobs! Like Uncle Jake!"

"Uncle Jake is fat!"

At this point I could not contain a chuckle and both whirled around with identical looks of panic on their faces. I smiled and said "it's alright for you guys to be in here so your sister has help, don't worry. And I'm both! That's why I have boobs and a mustache. Some folks are just built that way"

(In unison) "Ooooooh!"

(older boy) "So do you use Sir or Ma'am or both?"

"Both, but I prefer Sir"

"Cool! Well thanks Sir! We have to help our sister now!"

This was in a small town country truck stop and both boys had "Murica" type stuff on and neither of them had any issue at all with these concepts. Their mom approached me while I was in line about 10 minutes later and apologized for them bothering me in the bathroom (they had told her about the interaction) and she and I had a lovely little chat too. I got to introduce her to the term "intersex" and her reply was "I think I've heard of that before! I didn't know that was the word for it. Amazing how many different ways God can make people!"

Sometimes the world is good. More often than you might think, if you give it a chance. It's not all bad loves <3

i do desperately need everyone on this website especially people who arent american but want to rag on america to familiarize themselves with the basic romanized spelling conventions of native american languages because every day i come on here and i see people making fun of massachusetts or connecticut or mississippi or passamaquoddy or mashpee or nipissing and its like PLEASE. PLEASE THEY ARENT ENGLISH WORDS. PLEAAAAASEEEEEUUUHHH. USE YOUR MINDS TO IDENTIFY WHEN A WORD LOOKS LIKE IT MAY NOT BE ENGLISH. I DONT CARE IF YOU MAKE FUN OF AMERICA JUST PLEASE STOP BEING RACIST WHILE YOU DO IT

Map I found showing which states got their names from where. Over half of the states come from Indigenous languages.

fuck this

whatever