Nunchaku precision by @楚儿霸王🔥

warrior women, martial arts, nunchaku, video

"As boys and men went out on the boats — “my grandfather was nine when he started,” said the local historian Arlette Julien — girls and women were in the canneries, some from the age of eight, some up to 80. They’d be called in at any time of day or night, whenever the boats came in: in pre-fridge days, sardines needed treating fast.

Dressed in long heavy skirts and clogs, the women would work up to 18 hours non-stop, go home at midnight and then be called back in at 4am. The floors were filthy with mud and sardine guts, the women’s hands wrecked by brine, toilets often a distant rumour … all for 80 centimes an hour. That 80 centimes was just enough to buy a litre of milk, half the wage of a professional washerwoman. All ages earned the same amount.

The strike struck on November 21 and within days 2,100 people were out, 1,600 of them women. The Communist mayor Daniel Le Flanchec pulled the town council behind the strike. He called in Communist support from all over France.

Thus was assured a level of organisation not experienced by earlier French strikes. Funds were raised, soup kitchens sorted, Christmas presents for children arranged and marches assembled. The strike became a national issue.

Finally, though, and after six weeks, the cannery owners were forced to negotiate. They conceded overtime payments, a ban on work for girls under 12 — and a pay rise to one franc an hour. Men got 50 centimes more. “Equal pay wasn’t an issue. The movement was born of desperation,” the history teacher Françoise Pencalet said. “The women simply wanted a little more than what they had.”

So um,

Yesterday, I learned that apparently, no one talks to Ashkenazi trans girls or women about breast cancer.

If you are taking female HRT, you are at a similar risk of breast cancer as a cis woman. And Ashkenazi women are at a higher risk than the average woman due in part to gene mutations.

Unfortunately, despite that, not all health insurances cover routine mammograms for trans women.

This makes it super super important that you do your monthly Breast Self-Exams (BSE) at home.

I've copied a video on how to perform a BSE below, but just a note that Ashkenazi women are more prone to breast cancer in general and at a younger age, so please if you do feel anything, make an appointment with your doctor

Might need to resource the video. It's age restricted by YouTube and can't be embedded anymore.

Thanks for the heads up! But it was hard enough to find a video that demos the BSE properly to begin with, that I suspect any of them would be age restricted. The video should still have a "watch on youtube" link that you can use to view it.

If you are Ashkenazi, get tested for the BRCA mutations. That mutation ups your chances of not just breast cancer, but also ovarian, prostate, pancreatic, and certain types of skin cancer.

A positive BRCA test gets your insurance to allow early mammograms, as well as other screening. It gets you the option for prophylactic removal of breasts and ovaries if that's the path you want to take. (I don't know if prophylactic prostate removal is a thing.)

You are much, much safer knowing than not knowing. The test is easy. You can do it with spit, no needles necessary. And if you're in a risk group like Ashkenazi Jews, the test itself should be covered by insurance.

Also, have your pcp do a manual exam at your yearly physical.

This is very good advice for cis Ashkenazi Jewish women! BRCA testing is covered by most insurances for cis Ashkenazi Jewish women.

Unfortunately, with the state of health insurance being what it is in the United States, many health insurances don't carry equivalent coverage for cis women and trans women even for conditions they are now equally at risk for.

Be aware, if you do go outside a hospital, health clinic, or doctor's office for genetic testing in general or BRCA testing in specific, they will not be beholden to HIPAA.

This is why regular BSEs are so important, it is not only your most reliable early warning system, with your health insurance, it is likely to be your only early warning system.

Even if you do get the BRCA test, BSEs are still key for breast health. The test only tells you the likelihood of developing cancer, not whether you have any of the signs of having it now.

Eartha Kitt speaking truth to power at a 1968 luncheon at the White House hosted by Lady Bird Johnson which resulted in Kitt being blacklisted in the US for nearly a decade.

On January 18th, 1968, Eartha Kitt stood in a room full of white women at The Women Doers Luncheon, GOT IN LADYBIRD JOHNSON’S FACE, and told her that the government was sending the best of the youth off to be shot and killed and, in not so many words, that THAT was the reason the youth were rebelling. She ALSO stopped President Johnson after he made a statement claiming that mothers should be responsible for stopping their kids from becoming criminals and asked about “the parents who have to go to work, for instance, who can’t spend time with their children as they should”. It was brushed off by LBJ who only mentioned the funding for day care centers put in place by the recently passed Social Security bill, and then more or less said that the women at that luncheon should figure it out for themselves.She was blacklisted, but she defended every word she said that day. 

And when she was asked about it later:

I’ve never been so taken out by a response

I got to see mom do this once. It was… terrifying. I was moving into my first apartment, and my buddy had just moved into a place about half a mile away, and he was almost crying with rage because of some of the safety issues the apartment had with the wiring. There were a whole host of other problems, but that one was about safety and it should not have been a thing. Mom gathered us up, and drove to the leasing office. When we got there, she informed him (not asked. She’d walked his apartment, noted everything she disliked (she had much higher standards than he did) and she was PISSED) that he was to keep his mouth shut, make whatever expressions she cued him on, and pretend he understood whenever she and I switched languages and we’d fill him in afterwards. (I have been used as a complainant prop before. I know what my job is when she’s on this warpath; thankfully she does not use her powers for evil.) It took her all of twenty minutes to have a promise in writing from the son of the owner for everything to be fixed by a specific date and also to install a ceiling fan at no cost to my friend. In that meeting, she managed to leverage his church, his family, his reputation, the concept of a gentleman, the biblical concept of how to treat the poor, how people would treat his children, once they were grown, and the concept of a self-made man (which my friend is trying very hard to be), Christian morality, what it means to be a community institution, real estate law, and honestly, I forget what else. She’d never met him before. She does not live in our city -or state, for that matter. We’re not Christian. She did a cold-read of him based on his office, face, clothing, and posture (he didn’t give us his last name -the ‘related to the owner’ was a guess that turned out to be lucky), and hit every point of pride or insecurity she could find. When some things still hadn’t been taken care of a week later, she *called his father* and implied that he’d failed as a man and a parent since his son hadn’t yet honored his word. My friend had the fan that day, and the remaining safety issues were taken care of on top of it. No yelling, no threats, it was just a calm, ‘friendly’ conversation. My friend does not do subtext; he knew the social chess game was going on, but not how it worked.  tl;dr: I’ve seen my mother do this and holy shit this really should be a thing.

my momma is a retired union lawyer. you should see her tear into landlords and rich people. it’s like watching a lion devour a zebra.

Comrade Karen

I see now…“Karen” is a power that can be used for evil or good…

Listen you are all gonna lose your shit once you find out where there’s a company where that is literally their whole business model. They are called “Karens for Hire” and their whole thing is helping out exploited people get justice - essentially complaining to the right people and making themselves heard.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/26/karens-for-hire-customer-service-complaints/

One thing that's interesting to me about Kira Nerys is that religiously, I think she's rather orthodox/conservative, and I like that about her!

Points of evidence: she admits that early on with her associations with Vedek Bareil that she staunchly disagreed with him on many of his interpretations of the words of the Prophets. Vedek Bareil is presented as being more liberal and progressive in his views, so we can conclude from this that Kira may be more on the orthodox end of the spectrum compared to Bareil.

She doesn't disagree with Vedek Winn about the teaching of the Bajoran children and the wormhole, and even suggests that perhaps the Bajoran children would be better served in a separate school. When several Bajoran officers don't show up in protest of the school, Kira defends them. She and Sisko actually have a rather heated argument about it.

None of Kira's later disagreements with Winn are about Winn's religious views, but rather her bloodthirsty political ambitions. I think, were Winn not so power hungry and willing to twist the Bajoran faith to serve her personal goals, she and Kira probably would've gotten along rather well.

And there is of course the episode where all the Bajorans are expected to go back to their "D'jarras" - to return to a caste-based system. Kira goes along with it, even though she admits she's terrible at art. I imagine there were likely other Bajorans who refused. Kira isn't happy about it either, but I found her willingness to go along with it interesting.

Kira is overall very observant of Bajoran faith rituals. All Bajorans are shown as being very faithful in the show, but Kira very strongly leans on her faith as a point of both pride and strength.

dykes read Fucking Trans Women challenge

i am so fucking serious

when i read this zine some time ago i was struggling to accept my sexuality. i never had sex ed in school growing up in south america, so all i had was the cultural knowledge that i was an object for the penis to go in. when the penis goes in, i was told at age 9, it will hurt so much you wont be able to think about anything else but the excruciating pain and im telling you this so you can prepare yourself, so you don't make any noises of pain to distract the man from his pleasure. when i read romance and erotica novels as a teen i'd think the orgasm the women characters described were a fantasy. yeah as in i didn't believe in the existence of (female) orgasm. no joke. so when i started questioning that i might be a lesbian... well. how the fuck was i supposed to pleasure a woman if they're unpleasurable??? i was panicking. like really, a lot. i mean as an adult i had found out about the clit and i had found out the female orgasm was in fact a real thing, but i could never fuck women the way a man would. i didn't know then that was a good thing, that that's sort of included in the "desire for women" part of lesbianism. that i had to relearn everything i thought i knew about sex, gender roles and sexual organs. but at the time i just thought every woman id fuck would wish i had a penis, and resent me bc i didn't. i thought theyd find me lacking and that i wouldn't be able to pleasure them without it. and then i read this zine. jesus fucking christ. Mira Bellwether tells us how she prefers to fuck her gfs with dildos instead of her real life penis right around the same page she reveals shes a lesbian. i felt like crying. i think i actually did. heres a woman with a penis, here's what i thought i had to be all this time to fuck women properly and she didn't even use the damn thing. she used her penis as a clit fuck me. do you even get it. she talks about how a real penis doesn't have the range a dildo does bc its softer. i think i will never forget what i felt when i read that. the drawing of a woman using a strap on with her penis hanging on top like a giant clit is gonna be branded on the inside of my brain until i die. my entire understanding of my sexuality is tied to this zine. my understanding of what turns me on and what doesn't, of what sex could be like, my acceptance of myself, of my body, of my desire for women. it turned my whole world upside down. without the trans perspective id never come to terms with my lesbianism and id never learn to define my sexuality in a way that works for me

That link is dead so here's the archive

Mira Bellwether passed last year. A legend of transfeminine and lesbian sexuality, and she died, and so many have yet to mourn her.

Please, read her zine. Learn how to please (and be pleased by) trans women. And when we tell you that we're lesbians, believe us. We literally wrote the book on this shit.

Still bored. Still curious.

I unironically think that people are so invested in Barbara as Batgirl vs. Oracle because they haven't bothered to read any of Babs' stories as Oracle nor have they actually read Cass or Steph's Batgirl runs. They're basing their opinions purely off of adaptations and vibes

I once asked someone about this directly, the best they could give as an answer is that they wanted to have more fight scenes for her (this is after I had to point out that being the 'man in the chair' allows them to be in far more scenes than any other character in the series).

I told him about the big fights she had as Oracle, the physical ones, but they just didn't get it.

Which, as a person who has a particular interest in ladies in combat, had a familiar odor to me.

I've seen "I'm sick of hating a thing I used to love, it isn't fun, I am willing to accept 'invisibly disabled' Babs if it means I can enjoy that there's new content with her and get joy out of reading Batverse again."

Heavily colored, I think, by caring more about Babs' relationships with other characters than about Babs herself, in some cases. Being Babsgirl makes the Dick/Babs ship into the combat couple it wants to be (kissing on rooftops!), anchors her more closely into the Batfam (we fight the crime we can reach on our able-bodied feet!), makes it easier and more likely for her to interact with Bruce and Damian than Dinah or Ted Kord. If that ship and that anchoring in Bruce's shadow network is important to you, Oracle's foundational concept of "lesser mobility, greater independence and reach" will always be counterproductive to your desires.

A reminder that this image exists:

Any time I find myself fed up with the insufferability of the Batgod take on Bruce, such as him somehow being the most dangerous person in the world, I just need to remind myself that this is a thing that exists.

Bat man has openly admitted he doesn't know of any good way to stop Wonder Woman, other than maaaaaybe Superman...and even then, he wouldn't count on it.

What he does count on--or at least holds out hope for--is that Wonder Woman will remain A Good Person.

He's got a whole host of things to stop everyone else in the Justice League and other supers beyond that...but WW is the one he isn't sure he could find a way to stop.

So he's relying on her to stop herself...and relying on her to be able to stop him...since if he turns evil, his evil-self has all those methods to stop everyone else, but not her.

For all that she's a supporting character, Wonder Woman is amazing in Kill The Justice League

She's the only member of the League not turned perma-evil by Brainiac, a long over-due correction of what Morrison did to her in Final Crisis. And while of course she jobs to Clark because of plot, her final defeat at least has the feel of the epic struggle Knightfall put Batman through before Bane broke him.

Not a fan of their choice to go down making her just an advanced form of golem, though.

Xena doing solidarity right. 

Here She Comes…Miss Amphipolis.

This episode is so fucking wild to me.

Not just because an arguably trans woman (I don’t remember it really being made explicit whether she’s trans or GNC) is the guest protagonist and is written as a whole ass normal person who is beautiful and her cis dude romantic partner knows and he’s just desperately, hopelessly in love with her and wants everything for her, and she ends up winning the beauty pageant and this episode came out in 1997 when we, as a culture, were still calling things “gay” because we thought they were dumb or cringey.

Like, that’s why this episode is beautiful and important.

But less important but also wild to me is that the entire episode is the plot of Miss Congeniality three years before Miss Congeniality was released. I don’t remember what the specific threat was, but Xena’s there because she had to go undercover in the pageant because there was a plot against it and the women in the pageant were going to get hurt. And Xena is, of course, not a girly-girl, so she complained and was awkward and did some very Not Pageant-y things on stage, but inexplicably still ended getting pretty far. But instead of winning the way you might expect it to go, she ends up losing to a supporting character who you’ve come to love and sympathize with, who the pageant means so much to, and who’s worked so hard to be there and really deserves it.

Oh and also, even wilder, if you’re looking at Gabrielle up there in the turban and the high collared robe and thinking the whole Look seems familiar? It’s probably because you’ve watched Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends because she’s dressed (and also kind of talks!) suspiciously like The Duchess

Do I know for certain that The Duchess was at all inspired by Gabrielle’s undercover persona in this random Xena episode that aired 7 years before Foster’s premiered? Absolutely not. But it’s a hilarious coincidence if not.

I don’t know if Karen Dior ever said definitely if she was a trans woman or a drag performer - in those days, there was a lot more muddiness about drag vs trans, which I kind of miss sometimes tbh. Not everyone wants that kind of clear-cut line and it can be restrictive but anyway:

I don’t think it matters much if it was GNC vs drag vs trans. What matters more to me personally is that Lucy Lawless kissed Karen Dior on camera in 1997, and Karen Dior very publicly had AIDS (it’s why she left adult films). This was a big deal bc ppl still had very confused ideas about how AIDS could spread. That kiss wasn’t just a queer kiss no matter how you slice it, it was “you can’t get AIDS by kissing someone.”

When Lucy Lawless appeared at the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras in 1999, she wore the gown that Miss Amphipolis wears in those last gifs.

In honor of 2023 being the 40th anniversary of Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness quartet, these are the beloved and much-read paperbacks I bought with my allowance money in 1992, when I was 13.

b

SEVEN OF NINE (Star Trek: VOY) ➢ "I would defy people to find a more beautifully developed character than Seven of Nine." - Jeri Ryan

credit: x + x + x + x

Oh cool! The guy who insisted on deadnaming Jennell Jaquays in his very famous article about her wildly influential dungeon design techniques, for years after both her public coming out and his having been informed, has decided, while she was on her deathbed, to rename the technique discussed in the article after himself, replacing the text of the original article and any of his own references to it online. He presumably discusses the technique in the book of dungeonmaster advice he's just published because his article on her technique was a foundational work in the blog that got him the book deal though who knows if there's any reference to Jaquays there given his apparent need to claim all credit.

Jennell was one of the most influential and foundational designers in the ttrpg hobby and her visibility as a trans woman has been incredibly important to so many of us in the space. Losing her has been a tragic loss for our community and now to have her name spat on like this just as we've lost her is horrific. Grief and Rage.

Nonlinear dungeon design is Jaquaysian or Jaquaysed or at most distant, Thracian. Making a dungeon more non-linear is Jaquaysing it. Let's agree that Xandering is just being an unbearably spineless white man, given the Buffy context and this one.

Seriously, watch the music video for Lady of the Dark on YouTube

Milunka Savi'c was the first female soldier to be in The Iron regimen during World War 1 and is currently the woman to earn the most metals in military history