Tag: thank you

bisexualcyborg:

things i am going to teach my children later: the “pick one favourite” syndrome embedded in our culture is stupid and useless

it starts at fucking pre-school, in those little get-to-know-me books, and it never ends. favourite colour? mother tongue? favourite character? best friend? favourite sport? song? movie? book? series? band? toy? no you can only pick one

and i am deeply convinced that this is intrinsically linked to one of the things that annoys me the most, which is that in our society, it’s considered a sign of maturity to prioritise one thing, and often specifically one person, above everything else. i mean, priorities are definitely important, but you are also absolutely allowed to equally enjoy/love/feel connected to different things without constructing some kind of hierarchy where one of them always wins out

“you can only like one gender, you can only be one (of the two “biological” – ha) genders, you can only have one partner, you must have one best friend, you must have one favourite activity (preferably your job, bc that makes you a functional member of society) because clearly if you love multiple things, you must love them less than if you spent all that love on one thing”

this rhetoric creates so much guilt and jealousy – as if love is a finite concept.

(incidentally it is also possible to genuinely love something without it being one of the things you love the most, and that doesn’t make that love any less valid, but that’s another discussion)

Make ED recovery resources more trans/nb friendly

meeresbande:

Really, you absolutely CANNOT do/write something about eating disorders/recovery without making it trans/nb/non-cis friendly! If you don’t at least try a litle bit, you will do a great deal of harm, because the number of trans people with EDs or disordered eating patterns is extremely worryingly high and for trans people, EDs are often linked to dysphoria, so trying to use resources that further misgender us and cause even more dysphoria can make recovery that much harder or impossible! That’s if we even get to the point where we feel like we can consider recovery, which isn’t easy in a violently transphobic, cissexist and fatphobic society that makes a lot of us think we have to be thin in order to ‘pass’ or be our gender/lack thereof.

So, at the very least, do not equate certain bodies/biological functions to genders (menstruation to womanhood for example), say “all” genders instead of “both”, mention the existance of trans and nonbinary/non-cis people with EDs. If you have to link to sources that fall short (for example scientific studies), put a warning on it like “cn for gendered language and nb exclusion” or better yet, write a sentence or two affirming trans experiences like: “I’m sorry this text I’m linking to is misgendering/exclusionary towards trans and nonbinary/non-cis people. I know you exist and have unique struggles and I want to support you all in your recovery. Take care of yourselves and don’t feel like you have to read this text.”

If you want to do more, research what trans people have themselves written about their experiences with EDs and recovery, about connections to dysphoria, institutionalised fatphobia in gatekeeping (like doctors refusing surgeries for fat trans people), body and gender norms like “thinness is the epitome of femininity”, “thinness is the epitome of androgynity”, “lack of curves is necessary for masculinity”, lack of fat trans and nb representation and so on. Invite trans/nb people to write for/work with you. Link to their resources (including for example fatpositivity blogs for trans/nb people), quote them and share their work with permission – and pay if possible.

Try to also keep in mind the different perspectives and struggles of trans/nb/non-cis people with EDs who are also black or of colour, chronically ill, disabled, have a developmental or learning disabilty, are LGBPIA etc.

Please consider reblogging this

Don’t call me “high functioning”

bpdzoldyck:

Let me tell you something about autism

I know an autistic person who

  • Can usually make eye contact for short periods
  • Can usually understand body language
  • Can usually understand sarcasm
  • Rarely goes nonverbal
  • Rarely has meltdowns or shutdowns
  • Does not stim “loudly” around other people

This person does not look autistic, they can hold conversations and pass as neurotypical. They seem to be “high functioning”.

I also know an autistic person who

  • Often cannot go to the store alone
  • Often cannot tolerate being touched
  • Often forgets to do things like shower and eat
  • Often cannot hear people speaking to him when other people are talking
  • Often cannot change tasks/start a new task without intervention even for important things like switching from browsing Tumblr to getting food
  • Often gets disoriented by sensory overload in stores, schools, workplaces, restaurants and even just walking down the street
  • Often cannot maintain focus long enough to watch anything but simple cartoons or read anything but simple comics

This person will likely never function independently, complete college or have a job. They will likely always require support from family, friends or partners. They seem to be “low functioning”

Guess what?

They’re both me.

The point is that no matter how high functioning an autistic person appears in conversation with you, you’re only seeing part of the picture. I without fail am always told I must be “high functioning” when I say I’m autistic because all people are looking at are my social skills (and I received intervention when young that taught me many of the social skills I was lacking) but the reality is autism involves much more than that and by many other standards I am “low functioning”. Those just happen to be the aspects of it that are invisible to the people who don’t help to care for me.

Regardless of how valid you believe functioning labels to be it’s inappropriate to apply them to an autistic person without their permission, especially if you don’t know them well. Autism is not that simple and many of the things that affect a persons ability to function aren’t easy to see.

justcisgenderthings:

I made a post about this before but that was last year and I’m making a new one to keep track of new notes… here’s the original (with a few edits)—

If you see some particularly spicy Discourse™, and you don’t feel like giving a serious response to it, everyone has my permission to make the following paragraph I wrote for half an hour straight a copypasta:

Good macklemorning! I am here to discuss my passion for Macklemore, the one true macklelord and savior! I mackleadore him, and will mackleroar his name from the rooftops. He macklesoars through the sky, never ceasing to be a macklebore. (However, it’s in a family friendly way: he doesn’t do mackleporn.) If you want to mackleignore what I have to say, try not to slam the mackledoor on the way out, macklepor favor! Macklemoreover, I would be mackleforlorn in my very macklecore without his glorious presence. I macklescorn anyone who disagrees with me on this one. They must be a macklechore at parties, honestly… they make me macklesnore.

okay @ all of france i really really REALLY need you to go vote in the second round, PLEASE.

driftingthroughtheskies:

palindromordnilap:

weirdgermanwords:

if you don’t want le pen to win, vote for macron. it’s that easy.

no “she’ll never win anyway”. that’s how brexit happened.

 

no “but he’s not great either”, that’s how trump got elected.

no “I’m abstaining because i want to send a message”, that’s just plain stupid and i hope i don’t have to explain why oh my god. PLEASE.

If Le Pen wins, the EU is finished. Yes I’m german and I’m openly admitting that without France, we can’t do it. 

If she manages to win the election she’ll also be able to get France to leave the EU, and that will be a desaster for everyone involved.
Look up how absolutely fantastic the Brexit negotiations are going if you’re still on the fence about that.

It’s a very similar situation to the one the US was in last year.
One 
“ugh a boring politician they’re not exciting and has ties to the big banks and voting for them won’t change anything god i hate the system” candidate
versus one 
“oh look a charismatic fascist who will probably literally kill us all and throw the country, if not the continent, into utter chaos” candidate.

please think twice before you say it’s a choice between two evils. it’s not pest oder cholera, at the very worst it’s a stubbed toe versus lung cancer, and the lung cancer’s best chances lie in people not voting at all.

Macron’s a huge dick who’s probably further right than he claims, but at least we can fight back if he fucks up. Le Pen would just send in the army.

Never assume a crazy person can’t get elected.  That’s what so many people did her in the US.  And look where we are now.

Take that as a word of advice, France.

two unrelated thoughts:

a. why do we gender voices please stop

b.
if you’d told smol me they’d be able to like. Instantaneously Message
Their Favourite Author For The Small Price Of Free idk how they’d have reacted but i love the internet ok

kalany:

pyxamid:

non-autistic authors write autistic characters all the time. they just don’t realize it. they’d rather not admit it most of the time, either.

the thing is, non-autistic people have met autistic people more than enough times. however, due to their stereotypes about autism, they often can’t identify it as autism. they see something is up, but they can’t put their finger on just what is up.

so they see people like us and they know the ‘archetype’ which is autistic people. they write us all the time: airheaded professors, awkward nerds, pent up geniuses, etc.

when autistic people point out how strikingly obvious it is that this character is autistic, they usually deny it, or at best, they say the character is ‘if anything, extremely high functioning’, which is more of a kick in the gut than a confirmation. we hardly get those, either.

so, here’s the thing: there are some characters that are very obviously autistic to actual autistic people. pearl from steven universe and papyrus from undertale are two of the most agreed upon examples that i’ve seen. nearly ever autistic fan of steven universe i met says, “yeah, she’s autistic”, and the same goes for papyrus. 

when we, as a community, bring this up, however, we are shot down. “oh, he’s not autistic.” i once was told that – ironic as it was – my headcanoning papyrus as autistic offended autistic people or hurt autistic people. but i’m autistic and they weren’t. 

two autistic people were both agreeing – damn, this character is blatantly autistic – but non-autistic people felt the need to but in and say how horrible it was to “project” onto characters with such a horrible thing.

listen, if you aren’t autistic and you’re reading this –

if an autistic person says a character is autistic, can you just shut up about it?

because if you’ve watched any amount of tv, read any amount of books, whatever – if you’ve consumed stories, there are tons of autistic characters in them.

just because neither you nor the media’s creators knows shit about autism doesn’t mean that the character can’t be autistic.

either way, it’s none of your business.

we have little to none confirmed representation that isn’t terrible and inconsiderately offensively written. 

find something better to do with your time.

1 in 58 people is autistic. That’s like… being American and meeting someone from Louisiana. Or Hawaii, Maine, and Alaska combined.

And for those of us that learn to pass, a ton of us congregate in a handful of areas: STEM is the one I’m familiar with, because that is me, but I know there are more. I would guess, based on my personal experiences in the areas, that 1 in 3 math professors are (mostly undiagnosed) autistic, and probably 1 in 2 software engineers at startups. We exist out there in the world, interacting with you, and most of us don’t wear signs.

So, if you write a person like that software engineer who goes to your church, or like that one math professor in college who was funny and weird, there’s a really good chance that you’re writing an autistic person.

And we’ll notice, because hey, it’s one of us!

So maybe stop and think about why you’re so sure that character you wrote can’t be autistic.

The hijab Q&A that nobody asked for but everybody needs

rnashallah:

hi okay if you don’t know any hijabis/muslims personally, you might be wondering how it “works” and im here to answer ur questions!!

Q: Do you like.. wear it all the time?? (re: do u shower in it?? do u sleep in it?? when was the last time u sAW UR OWN HAIR??? ) 

A: Nope! To put it simply, we wear the hijab when we are around strange men. And by strange I mean men who are not directly related to us. That means I can show my hair to women. It also means I don’t have to cover from my brother/father/uncle/grandfather/child. I would have to cover from my male cousins because you can technically marry them (note: this is only one of the reasons we cover! it’s not only to cover from possible suitors lol. Just bc I wouldn’t marry a gay man, doesn’t mean I don’t have to cover from him. The quran says to cover from men and not from women. that’s pretty broad and open for interpretation. I keep it simple for myself- I cover from all men and do not cover from any women, regardless of sexual orientation. This could differ from one hijabi to another). I also would not have to cover from my husband if I were married. Lastly, we don’t have to cover from any young boys who haven’t been “through puberty” yet. I guess it’s up to the individual to decide when that is as well. 

Q: It seems kind of sexist to me that men don’t have to wear hijab, but women do…

A: Actually, men have their own hijab. (It’s not the turban you may see some men wearing, they are Sikhs, an entirely different religion.) Men have their own modest dress code to follow and are expected to follow the same rules the women do action-wise. Remember that equal does not have to mean identical. It wouldn’t make sense to ask men to cover their boobs or women to grow beards (we’ll come back to that later). 

Q: I always hear about women being forced to wear it… That’s oppression and wrong.

A: I completely agree. “There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion” (2/256). That’s taken directly from the Quran. Forcing someone to wear the hijab is a sin. Furthermore, many Muslims believe that hijab is not required/is only preferred/is optional. There’s a lot of interpretation involved in religion. It totally depends on the person and their own beliefs. 

They way a Muslim chooses to wear their hijab also differs from person to person. Some women choose to cover their entire body. Some wear abayas (the black dress) and niqabs (the veil that covers the face). Some wear a simple scarf to cover their hair and dress “modestly” (this, again, depends on your interpretation of what modest means). Some just cover their hair. Some show a some of their hair. Some wear turbans. Some dress modestly, but don’t cover their hair. Some only wear it on certain occasions. (more here on the diff types of cover)

For men, some choose to grow beards (many believe this is just “sunnah” which means it is preferred, but not compulsory). Lots of men don’t follow the rules set for them. That can be due to personal beliefs, but I won’t deny the misogyny apparent in the Muslim culture (note: culture, not religion) probably has a lot to do with that. 

Q: Do women only wear hijab for religious reasons? 

A: No. I mean, that’s probably one of the most prominent reasons women choose to cover their hair, but there are many different factors. In many cultures, hijab is considered a thing of beauty. It’s a fashion statement (for Muslims, we’ll talk about cultural appropriation in a sec). It’s tradition. It’s a part of their identity. It keeps them in-tact with their religion and it identifies them as a Muslim to other Muslims. The reasons are endless, but I think you get the picture. 

Q: I heard hijab is just keep men away.

A: As @angrymuslimah put so eloquently: Hijab is not to prevent men from looking at women or “protect them” from men. Hijab is not for men, or to help men control themselves – it’s for women themselves, to empower women. Men in Islam have a responsibility to lower their gaze and respect a woman no matter what she is wearing or what she looks like. 

Q: Can women ever take the hijab off for safety reasons? (ie: heat exhaustion/possible attacks by islamophobes) 

A: Totally! You’re obviously never supposed to compromise your health for anything, regardless of your religious beliefs. I once got asked if it would be okay for a women to remove her scarf when playing soccer in serious heat and my answer she could if she wanted to (again, she can do wtvr she wants), but playing soccer is optional. there’s a difference between wanting to play soccer and really having your life in danger. If hijabis choose to wear the hijab while playing soccer in 100 degrees, they’re badass and props to them for sticking to it even when it got hard, but that’s kind of the point of hijab. Again though, your health always comes first. 

Q: I see hijabis sometimes and I want to compliment them/tell them it’s pretty, but I don’t want to be disrespectful. 

A: It’s totally okay to compliment us! Please do! I live for the validation of strangers! For real, though. Just think about it this way, if you can say it to a non-hijabi and not offend her, you can probably say it to a hijabi. You can compliment anyone on their scarf regardless of where it is on their body. 

Q: Can I wear the hijab if I’m not Muslim?

A: There is no specific way to wear a hijab. there is no specific fabric. We get our scarves from h&m and forever 21 like everyone else. There is nothing that identifies a hijab as a hijab except the wearer. So if you want to cover your hair for your own religious/personal reasons, you can do it! That doesn’t make it a hijab! The only thing that makes it a hijab is the wearer labeling it as a hijab. As long as you aren’t doing that, you’re not being disrespectful or appropriating our religion. (wearing it out of respect if you’re in a mosque or a predominately muslim country is also okay!)

I would however, advise against wearing it as a fashion statement. It’s not a style or accessory. 

/So this got really long and I’m stopping here but I haven’t even really made a dent in the hijabi discourse. If yall have any more questions, you should ask your friendly neighborhood Muslimah! I promise, we won’t be offended, we just want yall to know the truth.