i think if we’re going to have conversations about consent we should talk about how consenting to something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be a good experience, and having a bad experience doesn’t necessarily mean someone violated your consent. this can apply to a lot of situations but the two i’m thinking of right now are sex and transition.

you’re getting it on with someone. you enthusiastically consent to having sex with them. afterward, you feel a little weird about it. maybe even distressed. maybe they did something you didn’t enjoy and in the moment you just didn’t say anything. maybe you just realized after the fact that you were not in a good headspace for sex and now your mental health is declining. that doesn’t inherently mean the person you had sex with violated your consent. sometimes it just means you need to take a break from sex or work on communicating your needs or boundaries better during sex.

and with transition, i feel like this is something that gets consistently overlooked but like. there will never be zero detransitioners. there will always be people who decide that actually transition wasn’t right for them. they could have had the best most thorough doctors in the world who did everything by the book and got full informed consent at every step. and some people are still going to decide they don’t like the changes and wish they hadn’t transitioned. that doesn’t mean that the doctors violated their consent, and that doesn’t mean that transition shouldn’t be available to anyone. it just means that we need to have more resources available for folks who detransition.

regret does not automatically mean someone did something wrong. regret is simply one possible result of having bodily autonomy, and i think we need to get more comfortable with that.

I'm always kind of wary of narratives of autistic interaction that are like "well, autistic people just aren't interested in relationships, they don't like meaningless social interactions"

Because I think there is a mix of trauma, alexithymia, and false narratives being pushed by literally everyone else that leads to this being the narrative that even autistic people tell when it might not actually be the whole story

Because, like, my mum remembers me being excluded from play by other kids before I have my first memories

We know that allistic kids can tell something is "off" about an autistic kid in seconds and not want to play with them

And we know that some of the methods used by neurotypical kids to bully neurodivergent kids is winding them up - deliberately setting off sensory issues or using frustration triggers that they've identified - and that leads to autistic kids being told "that's not bullying, that's you over reacting"

And this treatment begins very young

So now you've got an autistic kid who's, say, nine or ten, and they don't play with their peers - they sit with a book or on their Nintendo or whatever

And when people (parents/clinitions/etc) ask them "why don't you want to play with the other kids?", you get the combo of knowing that "other kids bully me" isn't believed and alexithymia meaning that they know that the idea of playing with other kids feels Bad but they can't quite put their finger on Why

And when they try to rationally look for an answer, the first one that's likely to come up it's all of the technical aspects of playing with other kids, like not liking small talk because it's "pointless", that come up instead of the trauma

And yeah, I'm wary of perpetuating this narrative as autistic adults that "autistic kids just don't like that kind of play and autistic people prefer to be alone, actually" because it just kind of reeks of the "the other kids only pick on you because you're smart" narrative that absolutely did nothing to help me deal with the trauma of being bullied or lead to healthy relationships in my adult life

It's funny cause now as an autistic thirty-something a lot of my interactions with other autistic people are playfully, extravagantly, gloriously meaningless

#yeah#its not 'small talk is pointless'#its 'i dont know the rules to small talk and its terrifying because the consequence of getting it wrong is ostracization

(via @lilietsblog)

reblog to kill an HOA manager

Favorite thing about renaissance faires is that they have fuck all to to with the renaissance. This thang is not about historical anything this is about dressing up like a fairy and watching a joust

#a samurai with a flintlock pistol sitting next to a guy dressed as a caveman drinking a styrofoam cup of dr pepper#and it fucks severely

web 2.0 companies that try to frame people using adblockers as greedy freedloaders always conveniently turn their heads when those same “greedy freeloaders” tell them that advertisers are paying to put malicious and predatory ads on their playforms and adblock users are, by in large, using adblockers to protect themselves

the first time i ever saw an adblocker recommended was for people with photosensitive epilepsy getting barraged with “congrats! you won!” style popups nonstop

the first time i ever personally used an adblocker was when deviantart’s excessive ad placement slowed down my household’s shared computer to the point it was unusable and my mom told me to stop using deviantart. so instead i installed an adblocker

and nowadays on Youtube and Facebook you get ads for casinos and alcohol targeted toward addicts and people with bipolar disorder, quack medicine targeted to people with chronic medical conditions, hate speech targeted toward the victims of said hate speech, and horror movie ads with flashing lights targeted toward…everyone.

and of course Google, who serves a majority of these ads, doesn’t actually care to remove any of the dangerous bullshit it shoves in your eyes but will expect you to pay them for it. sorry, i’d just rather not use youtube at that point. you had your chance.

Do not ever listen to a word of shame from a corporation. Their goal is only and always to extract maximum value from consumers.

Piracy, adblocking, data encryption, third-party repair, literally all of these things are, bottom-line, only bad for the corporations' record-breaking profit line. They are inherently good for the working person.

This is deliberate. Greg Abbot killed these people.

for those that didn't see this bit of news: abbot and his cronies squashed city mandates that outdoor workers have water and shade breaks right before the summer heat waves rolled in.

The second someone implies that getting transition meds is easy or that doctors will recommend it I know they're absolutely full of shit.

I saw a therapist for depression for like 10 years and that shit never once came up. And when I did my research and decided I wanted to transition and brought it up myself, it still took two years of psych evals to get my hands on hormones. The shit transphobes spout about kids getting tricked into transitioning is absolute fucking nonsense. Don't get me started on surgery

someone tell the tumblerinas that you can raise an issue without deliberately guilt-tripping everyone about it

okay, I take it back. I don’t think everyone is doing this deliberately. some of it is so deeply entrenched in tumblr culture that you probably don’t always notice you’re doing it

“nobody’s talking about this” -> you can just delete this phrase

“if you can’t reblog this, unfollow me” -> you can also delete this one

“x group can, and should, reblog this” -> remove the “should”. or you know. delete the entire sentence

your post will still spread all the important information without the guilt-tripping parts, I promise

if an otherwise valid post tries to guilt trip me it’s a pass on the rb, sry.

legend 🙌

Someone had to do it

we need to go back to hating tumblr. no more hellsite (affectionate). don't even think of giving these clowns your money. if i see you with a checkmark next to your name i'm opening fire

*sound of gun cocking* they can be disabled

tumblr's current business model isn't profitable and never will be and no amount of scolding from staff blogs or tumblr ad-free pay piggies is gonna fix that. don't let yourself be guilted into buying merch, badges or ad-free. you're throwing your money into a bottomless pit while the techbro ghouls running this website laugh about you at their next board meeting while applauding the shmucks coming up with new ideas on how to twitter- or tiktokify the website

''but tumblr needs to make money!!!''

if tumblr really wants its regular user onboard with keeping the website afloat then we should at least demand that they do the bare minimum in keeping the site functional. and right now, they're not even doing that. every change they've made lately has made the website/app worse. i should give my money to tumblr so what—they can make a more intrusive version of tumblr live? remove the chronical dashboard? come up with an even more transphobic way of doing content moderation? yeah, no thanks

is this even funny i dont think its funny im not putting it in the tags

How has this comic made such a groundbreaking cultural impact without getting over 40k notes

my favorite letter is H for holding hands and spinning! which is what im doing with you!

Wheeeeee!!!!! Yippee!!!!!!!!

If you like giant mech suits and giant bugs, you might enjoy my 72-pg comic, Modern Carapace! I’m biased, but I think it’s pretty good!

i haven't seen this here yet so heads up

the relevant passages:

This policy was published on June 15, 2023 and will take effect on July 24, 2023. The previous version of this policy can be viewed here.

...

Please note that Section 11 of the Terms below contains a binding arbitration agreement and class action waiver for users in North and South America. By agreeing to the Terms, you and Etsy agree to submit any disputes between us exclusively to individual arbitration and not to sue in court, except in the limited circumstances described below.

...

11. Arbitration Agreement and Class Action Waiver

If you’re upset with us, let us know, and we’ll work together in good faith to resolve your issue. But if we can’t work it out, then you and Etsy (including our employees, officers, directors, agents, subsidiaries, and affiliates) agree to submit our disputes exclusively to binding individual arbitration, and we won’t sue each other in court before a judge or jury, except in the limited circumstances described below.

This Section 11 (which we’ll also refer to as the “Arbitration Agreement” or “Agreement”) applies only if you are a user in North or South America, and applies to the fullest extent allowable by law.

...

G. Opt out. You have a limited right to opt out of this Arbitration Agreement (excluding Section 11.I). Specifically, if you are a new user of our Services, you can opt out of this Arbitration Agreement within 30 days after you first accept the Terms. If you are an existing user of our Services, you can opt out within 30 days after the effective date (listed above). To opt out, you must send a timely email to arbitrationoptout@etsy.com with your name, the email address for your account, your username and your shop name (if applicable), and a request to opt out of arbitration. If you validly opt out, neither Etsy nor you will be required to arbitrate as a result of this (or any prior version of the) Arbitration Agreement, but the Terms (and any other agreements between us) will otherwise apply to you. If we update the Terms after you validly opt out, we will continue to respect your opt-out, but such updates do not provide a new opportunity to opt out of arbitration.

In case anyone is bad at writing emails like me and needs it, here's an email template made according to the instructions in Section 11-G.

You can switch some words around or just copy and paste it, either way it doesn't need to be anything super fancy. As long as your intentions to opt out, as well as the exact thing you're opting out of, are made super clear. Do not add any complaints in this email, as this could complicate things down the line.

Both sellers and customers can opt out of this agreement, so make sure to schedule send it now so they recieve it within 30 days after the effective date (July 24th, 2023).

"tumblr is not easy to use" girl hunderds of thousands of people figured it out. it's not rocket science

i do think it could be good to implement a tutorial. i can imagine it is a bit intimidating to join tumblr when all you're used to is tiktok, insta, twitter etc. eventually people figure it out on their own but a bit of support wouldn't hurt! just. don't change the entire platform to try and appease these confused newbies

Ian Stone, Doubting Thomas, oil on linen, 12x16 in, 2023

"If you know the painting by Caravaggio, Doubting Thomas, it was my direct inspiration for this piece.

A doubting Thomas is a skeptic who refuses to believe without direct personal experience. 50-60 years ago, it was not uncommon for people to think or believe that being gay was a phase or a mental illness or deviance in some shape or form. It's embarrassing that the same things are being said about trans people today."

STOP SCROLLING!!! THIS IS NOT A PHOTO IT'S OIL ON LINEN!!!!!!!!!