The funniest part is probably that she only left him because he tried to appeal to fucking incels and terfs on fucking twitter.

Having a conversation and hug with a 50+ year old nonbinary butch who just got top surgery and has never had a conversation with another transgender person before, and they told me with tears in their eyes that they waited 50 years for their happiness and never once did they think they would meet someone like them and I just

We've always been here. We've always been here.

Can you imagine? Living over 50 years and never once having a conversation with someone like you? Living over 50 years and it's someone 20 years your junior that you come out to for the first time? That the first time you say "I'm transgender" to someone other than the mirror, it's to a person you've known for maybe a couple months? I said to them, I understand you are closeted, and I won't out you, but when it's just us what do you want me to call you? And they said, the same as you were, but in here (touch chest) I'm [name, pronouns].

And then they said, it is good to know you. I'm glad we met. We have a new bond now.

And I told them, when I was a child, people like you were my heros. I wished I could be butch because that was me, except I never had interest in girls. And they said, I understand, because when I met my first butch, everything made sense in that instant to me too.

Can you imagine? Being more than 50 years old and happening to find someone who sees *you* for the first time?

We've ALWAYS been here. We just couldn't find each other, before.

Sarah Jane Baker is a trans woman who served a 30 year prison sentence for the kidnap and torture of her stepmother's brother in the 80s as well as the attempted murder of a child rapist while in prison. During her time in (men's) prison she was assaulted and raped a number of times for being trans. Since her release in 2019 she has been an outspoken critic of the prison system and an activist for trans rights, and when she was initially arrested at London pride this year the police let her go without charge. It seems that only after pressure from the home office did they decide to rearrest her several days later, with a notable silence from the usual free speech brigade.

Free Sarah Jane Baker

Fire to the prisons

don’t leave that in the tags

Op I will destroy you

Sexually explicit material is not immoral, actually.

let's talk about it

I knew it, I fucking knew it. when he said that, I felt so vindicated that Aziraphale gets into these situations and doesn't get out of them specifically so Crowley would save him. it happened too many times for it to be a coincidence. he knows Crowley likes playing the knight in shining armor (acts of service is really his love language) and Aziraphale probably likes being the damsel in distress. and considering how attached Aziraphale was to the idea of book romance, it's even more on-brand now.

Compilation of people holding things that shouldn't be held, please add more if you have any

@chai-cow-ski

@is-the-snake-video-cute looks like a coral snake (blunt nose) but double checking- is it ?

That's indeed a coral snake, good ID!!

This thread is full of the luckiest people on the planet, I think. Also goes to show just how calm even venomous snakes are - coral snakes rarely bite unless you're actively harassing them - and how important it is to make sure your ID as non-venomous is 1000% certain before picking up any wild snake.

I didn’t want to disrupt the post about hostile architecture I saw because it’s true that the main target is homeless people but I did want to mention that this architecture also hurts people who aren’t skinny. I want to preface this all by saying I am in no way trying to minimize how this impacts people experiencing homelessness I am just trying to add on to the discussion of how these are bad.

You think that someone who can’t fit into those weird little yellow seats is going to feel comfortable? No. It will only make them feel bad or excluded.

Look at this shit. It’s not good or nice.

It only adds to the ways fat people are made feel unwelcome and though we already needed to tear this shit down because it makes life a million times worse for people experiencing homelessness and so this isn’t saying this is why you should tear it down. It is saying that our society is fatphobic and that sucks.

This isn’t a side effect, hostile architecture is designed to drive EVERYONE who’s “undesirable” from public spaces. Homeless people are the biggest targets but also disabled people, fat people, elderly people, etc. Other things, like anti-“loitering” measures and increased presence of police and security, drive out even more people, especially people of color and teenagers.

You aren’t disrupting or derailing discussions by talking about your experiences, we NEED to talk about the ways that different kinds of people are declared “unwanted” and pushed out of society.

Yeah, we no longer have “ugly laws” on paper, but in practice and architecture, we still absolutely do. If anything, we’ve gotten worse and more hostile towards “ugly” (unhoused, disabled, fat, etc) people in the past ten years- and this is exacerbated in the USA especially by the way communities are built to be car-dependent and segregated by class and race.

more people would be for prison abolition if they just tried to send mail to an inmate even once

for almost a year now i’ve been trying to send a copy of the literary magazine i edit to an inmate who requested one. his prison prohibits any written materials that so much as mention drugs, weapons, criminal activity, or malicious violence of any sort. i’ve been poring over what’s available of the 95 volumes my magazine has printed over the years, and of those found 3 that might pass inspection. the first two were sent back undelivered two months after i sent them because one had a short story that alluded to a playground fight, and the other a poem that used the word “fist” in a nonviolent context. The third was returned for the stated reason that its contents depicted the use of firearms. i reread the entire issue, there’s not a single gun mentioned in all its 120 pages.

while going back and forth with this guy trying to figure out how to get a copy of the magazine in his hands, two of my letters bounced back for unspecified reasons. i learned that inmates are not given their correspondents’ original letters, but scanned copies, often poorly reproduced and sometimes illegible. these people aren’t even granted the ink their loved ones used to pen their messages, or to hold in their hands the paper their loved ones held, if they’re able to receive their words at all.

Karen Zuk Rosenblatt

Kinship, 2015

Oil on canvas

idk man i think that if you can read dozens and dozens of trans men talking about how their support systems abandoned them when they started getting too masculine on T or had top surgery or whatever, and queer spaces started treating them like threats or potential predators, and you find these stories going back to the 90s or even earlier, and you read all of that and come away thinking that there’s nothing wrong with how progressive communities treat men, you are just fundamentally beyond help dude. you don’t see us as people

a lot of people are somehow misinterpreting this post as saying that trans women Don't experience alienation or ostracization from queer, feminist, and/or progressive communities, to which i say: i am not responsible for your belief that trans men and trans women have to have entirely separate and opposite experiences. if you think that trans men experiencing something implies that trans women can't experience it, that's on you! you might want to sit and have a think about how you see the world and whether or not you're buying into the (deeply patriarchal!) idea that men and women are entirely separate from each other. you might learn something.

My stage career began when I was a little under two months old, when I took the spotlight as Baby Jesus in a Christmas pageant. I’m told that I did a wonderful job and slept calmly through the whole thing, which can only speak to my talents as an actress, because I was 1. the wrong gender 2. a colicky screaming demon of a baby and 3. about as far from divine as it’s possible for an allegedly-human child to be. 

I continued to be actively involved in theater as a kid (and frequently played roles of various small animals, because I was tiny for my age). Around the age of ten, I was cast as the lead character in a musical about cowboys that I no longer remember the name of. It was my first real lead role, and I took it very, very seriously. And because I am myself, that means I maaaaybe went…a little overboard.

My character’s introduction was early in the play, accompanied by the crack of a bullwhip. This was more-or-less pre internet (or, at least, our director was not tech-savvy enough to find sound effects online) and we didn’t have a sound effect track for that noise. There were plans to acquire the appropriate sound effect before opening night, but I rapidly tired of making my entrance during rehearsals to the sound of someone yelling “BULLWHIP NOISE!”

This, I thought to myself, is a problem I can solve.

I learned early in life that it’s good to be friends with people who have skills; they always come in handy eventually.  After rehearsals one day, I put on my cowboy boots and biked a couple miles over to my friend Grace’s house. I went down to their basement and knocked on her older brother’s door.

“Hello,” I said. “I need to learn how to use a bullwhip.”

“….Okay,” he said. It did not seem to occur to him that he might ask further questions about why I, a tiny horrible munchkin composed exclusively of rage and pointy elbows, needed to be weaponized any further. Clearly, I had come to the right person.

My friend’s older brother would have been an SCA nerd, if SCA was a thing where we were. Instead, he was one of those unsupervised 4H kids with weird hobbies, largely oriented around ancient forms of combat. He was somewhere in his late teens at this time, and he liked to make stuff. It was an urge I, even at age ten, could sympathize with. His name was Aron. 

Aron got out his bullwhip (which I had noticed hanging on his wall on a prior visit, and had filed away mentally under a for future use tab) and we went to the backyard. 

“Step one of using a bullwhip,” Aron began, “Swinging the bullwhip.” 

We rapidly discovered that since I was god’s tiniest, angriest creation, a full-size bullwhip was way too long for me to use. Aron’s shins suffered for my attempt. 

“…Step one of using a bullwhip,” Aron said, “Making a bullwhip.”

So we went back inside, found a tanned cowhide (that he just…had? I don’t remember if there was a reason for this.) and some razor blades, and I learned how to cut and braid a bullwhip. It took a few tries, and I wound up coming back for a while, because I kept getting frustrated with the bullwhip-braiding process and Aron kept distracting me with bait like: “Hey kid, wanna learn to make some chainmail?” and “Hey kid, wanna fletch some arrows?” and “Hey kid, wanna try doing horseback archery?”

Obviously the answer to these questions was “BOY, WOULD I EVER!” Some delays are necessary to the artistic process.

(At one point my mom asked me “Hellen, what are you doing over at Grace’s house all the time?” And I, perfectly innocent, said, “Making weapons!” and my mother, who never understood why I was like this, but accepted that a girl has needs and those needs occasionally involve stocking a personal armory, said “Okay! Have fun!”)

Soon, the bullwhip, size extra small, was finished. The lessons on actual bullwhip use commenced. 

It should be noted that Aron was self-taught, and really had no idea what to do, so this was mostly an exercise in the two of us standing twenty feet apart and flailing wildly with our respective whips until snapping noises happened. And then we figured out what we’d done to make the snapping noises. And then we kept doing that. Extremely vigorously. So vigorously that at one point one of the bullwhips launched into the air and caught on a tree branch and we hand to drag the trampoline over so Aron could bounce me high enough to grab it. But we persisted!

Eventually we reached a point where we could line up pop cans on a fence rail and hit them off three times out of five.

Feeling extremely accomplished and like I finally understood method acting, I packed my bullwhip into my backpack for the next play rehearsal. Soon enough, it was time for me to make my entrance. 

I leaped on stage in my cowboy boots and cracked the bullwhip as hard as I could, immediately launching into the song despite the fact that the sound of five feet of braided leather breaking sound barrier had startled the accompanist so badly she’d keysmashed on the piano.

The director shouted something she probably shouldn’t have shouted in a room full of small children, and then demanded, “WHERE DID YOU GET THAT!”

“I made it!” I declared proudly. “I’m a cowgirl! I can make my own bullwhip noise!”

“You…made it?” 

“Yes! Because we needed a bullwhip sound effect. And bullwhips are where bullwhip sound effects come from!”

This was, of course, impeccable logic.

It is apparently difficult to argue with a gleeful ten year old who happens to be armed with a bullwhip longer than she is tall. After some negotiation, the director agreed that I could use my bullwhip for my opening song, provided that I didn’t pop it while anyone was anywhere near me on stage and I didn’t let anyone else play with it. These terms were acceptable to me. 

Somehow, no one was injured and the play went off without a hitch. We can only chalk up these things to the magic of the theatre. 

Nearly a decade later, an unsuspecting college classmate asked me, “Hellen, wanna take a class on bullwhip combat with me?”

And obviously I answered, “BOY, WOULD I EVER!”

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

- Jill Thomas Doyle

A zeugma walked into a bar, my life and trouble.

im also genuinely astounded how having a cat made me realize i do not like dogs. like its not dogs fault but a cat is what i wanted dogs to be the entire time i was forced to live with dogs

what i wanted in a dog:

- quiet but still chatty

- would not suddenly make loud jerky movement

- playful but not physically rough or large

- soft long fur that did not smell like dogsmell

- keep me company without always needing to be touching me but also enjoy cuddling

- not need to be let outside/be able to self manage but i can still clean after it and feed it

- not play attack guests for no reason or knock down my elderly/disabled friends and family

- be more gentle and spatially aware as to not knock me over (also disabled)

what i have realized since is i like cats and my family were terrible at training dogs

i see a post talking doom and gloom about how we'll never escape toxic masculinity. i think about back in 2017 when american girl released their first boy doll, and a review for him went viral in the collecting community. the review was written by a mom, who said they went into the store to get their daughter a doll, only to see their son's eyes light up like fire when he saw a doll that looked like him, and now every night he puts his doll in pajamas and rocks him to sleep. i think about the toddler in my daycare room a few years back who was obsessed with baby dolls, carrying them everywhere, and his mom proudly told us he uses his sisters' old baby dolls and wants to be just like them. that toddler saw another toddler crying one day and gave her the doll he had to cheer her up. i think about the eight-year-old boy i saw a few years back, excitedly waving around raya's sword in a target checkout line like all his dreams were coming true. there was a video on my instagram the other day of a little boy at disneyworld crying with joy upon meeting his hero, mulan. i think about the voice actor for bow in the she-ra reboot saying his nephews only wanted adora action figures. celebrity men are wearing dresses on tv now. last halloween i saw a little boy dressed as elsa. i went to go see spiderverse over the summer, and in the line ahead of me was a boy who couldn't be older than twelve or thirteen, bouncing and beaming, giddy with excitement over getting to see the female-led romance movie elemental. i think about the five-year-old boy at my library who breathlessly asked me where the pinkalicious books were, eyes widening when i had more on my cart, his mom explaining that he is all about pinkalicious and fancy nancy. i saw so many pictures online of boys and men dressed in pink to see barbie. teenage boys are gonna open their phones and see the man who wrote fucking game of thrones dressed in pink to see barbie. when i was a kid, a boy dressing in pink was practically a social death sentence. there are boys running around in pink on my street right now.

Something deeply painful is the fact that seasons, especially fall, dont feel the same. Not because of individual maturity but because climate change has impacted the weather patterns so so so much that we cant even experience the same annual shifts that our ancestors have for centuries

I feel displaced, i yearn for the spring, summer, fall, and winter that i can barely remember experiencing

To make things worse, if you’re under 50-60 years old, you can’t even remember what normal seasons were like because you weren’t alive to experience them

In the graph above, you can see how there’s a clear tipping point in the late 1970′s, which is when global temperatures first began to really skyrocket.

I was born in 1997, so about 20 years after this shift occurred. There is an immense difference between the climate now and the climate I remember growing up in, but the way I experienced the seasons in my childhood was already fundamentally different from what the seasons were supposed to be like! My parents were pretty much the last generation to experience a normal climate, and that’s just... incredibly sad

I am processing this information in a normal way devoid of rabid rage and bloodlust i am processing this information in a normal wa-

I'm just old enough to remember the tail end of real seasons. I can't express how different it is now.

I think I've heard of this as climate trauma or climate amnesia. And really emphasizes the fact that climate change is an all-encompassing phenomenon

I grew up in LA, so no real seasons.

However, I grew up when the smog was EXTREMELY BAD. So, I want to say, that I experienced environmental change that included improvements which were directly created by legislation.

Yes, I'm extremely distressed and depressed by all this, but I hope we can still affect change.

as soon as the internet decided depression and anxiety were the everyman mental illnesses and therefore not to be taken seriously we were all fucked tbh bc the fact that i have to feel embarrassed to admit i have debilitating anxiety because people will think im just an uwu dont call me out coward is ridiculous. its insane that i have to clarify that my depressive episodes are like life threatening and not whatever dipshit dumbed down idea of depression people seem to have like oh yeah i just wanna watch netflix and eat ice cream and not text people back. like bro i think im the devil

like maybe depression and anxiety are household names now but they do still kill people. like. theres a reason they fucking kill people.