Happy Pride Month! I know things are rough out there, but we have each other, and we have each other’s backs.
There’s always a lingering question that I ask myself, which is why do I, a cis bisexual woman, enjoy romance between two men so much?
There are easy answers, like that it’s just fetishizing. And like, I find men attractive, yes. But I also find women attractive. I don’t have a problem with enjoying het romance, assuming I can find good ones. I enjoy stories with female characters I can relate to.
But there’s something much deeper at play, IMO. A friend of mine who is a gender studies professor was the first person to point this out to me, but a lot of women enjoy m/m romance and gay porn because of the lack of women. It removes a source of pressure and sexism. Without any women present, you don’t have to constantly evaluate the sexism of their portrayal, or be reminded of negative experiences in your own life. It allows women to experience romance and especially sexuality without all the baggage that comes with it in our patriarchal society.
This was recently illustrated to me rather dramatically. I read a recommendation for a het romance. And it sounded cute, and came highly recommended. The tropes at play were fun. Until I read a snippet and realized this was a romance between a woman and her boss. I had a visceral negative reaction.
Instantly I’m thinking of sexual harassment stories I’ve read and heard from other women. I’m thinking of how uncomfortable it would be to have your boss develop feelings for you. How icky the power dynamics would be, etc.
And then I realized…this wouldn’t bother me if it were two men. Now, there’s no logical reason for that. Sexual harassment is just as wrong when its object is a man. But I know I’ve read fics with a similar premise and never thought about it. Because when it’s two men I can accept this is just a light romance, a fantasy, meant to be fun and sexy and not to represent the real world.
But I can’t when it’s a het relationship. There’s too much baggage there. Too much societal history of abuse. I can’t relax enough with the premise to enjoy that story.
Now some people can. And that’s fine. And some people are never going to be okay with power imbalances like that regardless of gender. That’s also fine. I don’t think having either reaction makes one morally superior. It’s okay to just enjoy light entertainment for what it is without going into deep analysis.
But it’s much more difficult for me, and I think for many women, to relax and enjoy romantic and sexual stories when they involve female characters. We’ve been burned too many times by shitty depictions, by shallow role models, by abuse portrayed as romantic. We have developed a stress response, a trauma response to heterosexual romance. We are hyper-reactive to a wide variety of triggers in regards to it. But removing women from the equation makes stories safer for us. And maybe it shouldn’t? In an ideal world? But for many of us, that’s the truth.
So this post blew up in the last 24 hours, for whatever reason, and I was looking through people’s responses, as you do. I’m quite moved that so many found it relatable.
But I wanted to highlight one set of tags (via @reallifepotato )
Because I AM comfortable with my sexuality and fairly comfortable with my body, but still, this resonates so hard as someone who has always been overweight. The amount that our society teaches women to constantly compare ourselves, almost always negatively with every other woman out there, can utterly ruin our enjoyment of this kind of thing. Like how many times have you tried to watch a mainstream romantic comedy where some utterly gorgeous actress is bemoaning that she can’t get a date, or WORSE is made out to be less than attractive. And you look at her and go…but she’s fucking perfect? And you just want to puke.
But with m/m romance you can put yourself in the place of either character and…not compare yourself. You can enjoy a character being attractive without feeling bad about yourself, which is REALLY HARD to do for any woman in our fucked up culture.
crowleys–angel
oh my god someone put it into words!!!!!
there are soooo many nuances and reasons that many of us aren’t even conscious of which makes me doubly angry when it’s dismissed as fetishizing. fuck off and let me read my love stories pls.
dumbhotbitchknightgwaine
nail on the goddamn head there
Also, a lot of m/m fiction offers the notion of an actual friends-to-lovers storyline that isn’t cluttered by sex-first. There’s a foundation there that doesn’t get allowed for in m/f fiction. If there’s a m/f friendship in any media, it’s usually either an automatic love interest on the immediate horizon, or it’s dismissed and not explored as any kind of important to a story. People complain about m/m fiction like “Why can’t two guys just be FRIENDS?!” and i’m over here wanting to know “Why can’t two -anything- just be FRIENDS?!” and m/m fiction is usually the only place i can get that. Also… “fuck off and let me read my love stories pls.” This.
fuck man, this post just summarized something I’ve been trying to put into words for years
Like, fetishization of same sex relationships is a serious issue but it’s very different from what this post talks about and its really important to distinguish between the two
y’all know what day it is
Specifically queued this for Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you!)
fake-magical-girl
Here’s the whole video. It’s called “Don’t Be A Sucker” and it’s 17 minutes long.
republicansareahategroup
don’t just scroll past this actually watch it, it’s only 2 minutes long. If you re-recorded this today word for word with modern actors and places, it wouldn’t even look out of place as a PSA
tebasaki-chicken
300,000 notes and i can’t find a transcript
Transcript: (sorry for the language!)
Speaker: “I see negroes holding jobs that belong to me! And you! I’ll ask you, if we allow this thing to go on, what’s gonna become of us real Americans!”
Hungarian man with clear foreign accent: “I’ve heard this kind of talk before, but I never expected to hear it in America.”
Young man: “This man seems to know what he’s talking about.“
Speaker: “What are us real Americans gonna do about it? You’ll find it right here in this little pamphlet—the truth about negroes and foreigners! The truth about the Catholic Church! You’ll find…” [audio grows quieter as camera shifts to the onlookers]
Hungarian man: “You believe in that kind of talk?“
Young man: “I dunno, it makes pretty good sense to me.“
Speaker: “And I tell you, friends, we’ll never be able to call this country our own until it’s a country without… without what?“
Other man: “Yeah? Without what?“
Speaker: “Without negroes, without alien foreigners,”—the young man is nodding, following along—“without Catholics, without Freemasons! You know these…“
Young man: “What’s wrong with the Masons, I’m a Mason.” Looks to European man worriedly, “hey, that fellow’s talking about me!“
Huungarian man: “And that makes a difference, doesn’t it.“
Speaker: “These are your enemies! These are the people who are trying to take over our country! Now you know them, you know what they stand for. And it’s up to you and me to fight them!” A bunch of the onlookers in the vicinity wave him off like he’s crazy and turn away, “fight them and destroy them before they destroy us!”
Speaker: “Thank you.“
One man in the now somewhat awkward crowd: “claps“
Young man: *is visibly uncomfortable*
Hungarian man: “Before he said Mason, you were ready to agree with him.”
Young man: “Well yes but, he was talking about… what about those other people?“ *the pair sit down on a park bench*
Hungarian man: “In this country, we have no ‘other people.’ We are American people, of course.“
Young man: “What about you? You aren’t American, are you?“
Hungarian man: “I was born in Hungary. But now, I am an American citizen. And I have seen what this kind of talk can do. I saw it in Berlin.”
Young man: “What were you doing there?“
Hungarian man: “I was a professor at the university. I heard the same words we have heard today. But I was a fool, then. I thought Nazis were crazy people, stupid fanatics. But unfortunately it was not so. You see, they knew that they were not strong enough to conquer a unified country, so they split Germany into small groups. They used prejudice as a practical weapon to cripple the nation.”
A film created for folks in case Martin Niemöller was too subtle.
“They used prejudice as a practical weapon to split the people.”
In this country, we have no ‘other people’.
90% of Denmark’s Jews survived the Holocaust, because starting at the top, Denmark’s government and prominent citizens and all the way down emphasized this.
And all this was openly supported by King Christian. He did not, contrary to popular myth, ride his horse through Copenhagen wearing the Star of David, but he did make it clear, as he wrote in his diary, that he considered “our own Jews to be Danish citizens, and the Germans could not touch them”.
Denmark had, in essence, inoculated itself against Nazi propaganda because its citizens believed that Jews were not “other people.” As Bo Lidegard writes in Countrymen:
The Danish exception shows that the mobilisation of civil society’s humanism and protective engagement is not only a theoretical possibility: It can be done. We know because it happened.
Being a Jewish Dane or a Danish Jew might have made you a little different, but it didn’t make you other people.
Unlike Niemoller, they didn’t have to see atrocities visited on a series of Other People and only start caring when it happened to themselves. They understood it as happening to themselves from the start. Because their Jewish neighbors weren’t Other People.
As Denmark’s Jewish population sprang into panicked action, so did its Gentiles. Hundreds of people spontaneously began to tell Jews about the upcoming action and help them go into hiding. It was, in the words of historian Leni Yahil, “a living wall raised by the Danish people in the course of one night.”
Many of them didn’t even see it as “resistance work” on behalf of the Jews because it was simply fighting back against an attack on their own community.
Though there was anti-Semitism in Denmark before and after the Holocaust, the Nazis’ war on Jews was largely viewed as a war against Denmark itself. After the war, most Danes refused to take credit for their resistance work, which many had conducted under false names. Ordinary people who never considered themselves part of the Danish Resistance passed along messages, gathered food, gave hiding places or guarded the possessions of those who left until they returned home from the war.
Communities in which there are no Other People save lives.
hi guys-
breaking from my normal posting to bring up something really important to me.
have you heard of powell’s city of books? they’re famously the world’s largest independent bookstore, lauded as a family business, tourist landmark, and progressive icon of portland oregon.
i work there.
currently our union is fighting to have the company pay us a living wage.
it’s embarrassing how little powells pays us- we barely make more than minimum wage right now- and most people don’t know that the famous business they’re supporting treats its workers like dirt.
when asked to consider our wage proposal, our lead hr officer stated: “We have all worked jobs where the pay and our personal needs were not in alignment.” this isn’t about personal needs “being in alignment.” my coworkers can hardly afford rent or afford to even feed themselves with our current wages.
what am i asking for?
if you love books, love or know powell’s, or just want to stand in solidarity with fellow workers, i’m asking for you to let powell’s books know how you feel about their insulting wage proposal: email our union and they will pass on the message to corporate-
community@ilwulocal5.com
it can be as short and sweet as you want to make it. we want to show the company that people are paying attention to the example they set and won’t stand for it.
also literally just sharing this post to let everyone know what we are asking for helps too. share it on booktok, tell your friends, tell your book club, spread the word. powell’s skates by on its reputation and in doing so hides its betrayal of the workers that dedicate their lives to make it the special place it is.
thank you for reading ❤️
links to our original union instagram post: here
goodbyeroaches
like, i’m not saying that adults don’t have a place in fandom. they can and they do, and many are perfectly great people.
but if you’re an adult, say, in your mid to late 20s or older, especially if you’re in a fandom that’s filled mostly with teenagers, you do need to be careful about how you interact with young people in fandom.
you need to be careful about the content you produce or share, and if you do something that people take issue with, you need to be prepared to address that in an honest and meaningful way, instead of blocking the young people who are telling you you’ve done something wrong and going on a rant about how “it’s just fiction” and “ship and let ship” and “do whatever you want” and “i’m too old for this.”
if you’re an adult in fandom, you need to be able to recognize how the content you produce might affect young people, and honestly, you should be able to show maturity when dealing with it, because you are still an adult talking to many people who are literal children.
many of those young people will, by default, view you as a sort of authority figure based on your age alone, as that’s what they’re used to. be careful of the lessons you teach them.
Hm. Okay. Here’s the thing.
We all know who you’re talking about and which situations you’re talking about. What you really have an issue with isn’t anything to do with anyone’s age, it’s about people producing things that other people find hurtful, then not responding the way the hurt people would like them to when called out on it. That can and does happen anywhere, regardless of the ages of the people involved. It’s a separate issue that should be discussed and dealt with.
And yes, in some of those recent situations, the ages of the offenders or the offended were brought into the discussion, by both sides at different times. The age difference does complicate things, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the main issue.
You may be thinking “why do you care if I focus on age, it was a salient part of the argument for me, you’re trying to defend adults who don’t care how their words hurt children!” But here’s the thing.
You may not realize this, but in other fandoms adults have been doxxed, have been threatened, have been outed because they were creating things that someone, somewhere deemed “dangerous for minors.”
Adults who were creating things that were not meant for minors, that were openly and blatantly tagged as being NSFW, explicit, as containing triggering material. I’ve even seen people who weren’t even creating the offending material being harassed, bullied, and threatened, for daring to stand up for the people who were. Not even just online, but in person. I’ve been a victim of it myself, though not to the extent that I’ve seen many others go through.
All because a segment of the fandom decided that because certain content could be dangerous for minors, it should never, ever be posted anywhere a minor might possibly read it. Adults who do post it are responsible for every bad effect it could possibly have on anyone who reads it and are horrible people for not willingly taking on that responsibility.
I know the situations you’re talking about are different. In many of those situations, adults chose to interact with the minors who were complaining about them, and yeah, when you’re choosing to directly interact with a minor you need to tread carefully.
But once you go down the “adults in fandom are responsible for the minors in fandom” road, if lots of people start clinging to that mindset, that is where it can lead. And that is an extremely serious issue. It can literally destroy careers and ruin lives.
I am not in this or any other fandom to produce content for minors. I have asked many times for minors not to follow me; I don’t block them, but I know quite a few people who block any minor who follows them. I produce enough SFW content that I don’t mind minors being able to, say, reblog it from others on their dash, but I do not want them following me and getting explicit content directly from me, full stop. If it becomes an issue, I will start blocking people.
If you’re a minor, I’m old enough to be your mother. But I’ve got my own kid, and I’m not in fandom to babysit anyone else. When I create or reblog content, I do not and will not take the presence of minors into account when doing so. Because that is not my job.
Now, right now I’m choosing to get involved in this discussion, which will involve people much younger than me, including minors. So yeah, I’m being careful about what I say and how I say it. And I agree that any adult who willingly engages in conversation with minors needs to do the same.
But I simply can’t agree with your last two paragraphs. Those “literal children” already have parents. If their own parents aren’t monitoring what media they consume, aren’t having conversations with them about problematic messages in media, it certainly isn’t my job to do so. Period.
This is an excellent time for teens in fandom (and in general) to stop seeing every adult they come in contact with as an “authority figure” and start viewing us as human beings who are living our own lives with our own motivations, problems, desires, and inclinations that have nothing to do with them. That’s something that will serve them well in life.
How people interact with oppressed groups they aren’t a part of who complain about their representation of those oppressed groups is an entirely separate issue that is not about the age of the people on either side. Age can complicate it, especially in that it can be difficult to communicate across a generation gap when people on either side have such enormously different experiences. I think that that has caused some problems.
But any adult who is not willingly choosing to interact with a minor is not responsible for minors who consume their content, and conflating the two issues is downright dangerous.
@porcupine-girl nailed it 100% but this especially bears repeating:
This is an excellent time for teens in fandom (and in general) to stopseeing every adult they come in contact with as an “authority figure” and start viewing us as human beings who are living our own lives with our own motivations, problems, desires, and inclinations that have nothing to do with them. That’s something that will serve them well in life.
Fandom is a good way for teenagers to learn how to interact with people in different age groups as peers. Because that’s what we are, we are fandom peers posting on the same web sites and obsessing over the same shows and no one in fandom has any authority over anyone else (no matter how much some people might try to claim it). I am not your teacher, your parent, your babysitter, or anyone in any position of authority over you or anyone with a responsibility for taking care of you. Nor am I willing to take on that role. The vast majority of the billions of adults in the world fit that description. Only a very few, ones you know in real life, are responsible for you personally - and soon that number will be none as you become an adult yourself.
I block anyone with an age under 18 listed in their profile if they try to follow me - not with any animosity, I’m just not interested in interacting with kids on a fandom level. This is a completely valid option and I think it’s a wise one.
bandersnatchmycummerbund
Plus the original post here is predicated on the assumption that fandom belongs to people in their early 20s and younger and the rest of us are just hangers on. Sorry baby, look at the demographics; you’re the minority. We’re not in your house. I, for one, am happy to interact with anyone I have interests in common with and bond over those interests; I think people of all ages have exciting perspectives and interesting minds. But I don’t want to be treated like a second class citizen by anyone, and as said above, I am interested in interacting AS PEERS ONLY. I ain’t your mommy and I have enough people IRL trying to leech emotional labor off me, I got none for strangers on the internet.
I have watched my friends raise their kids in fandom. Literally. Raise. Their. Kids. I’ve watched young things I met carried in arms toddle, walk, run, be 8, 18, 28, marry, come to a convention carrying young things in their arms.
It was assumed that everyone who knew the parent would keep a vague eye on the child because friends don’t let friends’ little ones run into traffic. But at NO POINT was it ever assumed or expressed that the adult fans had to stop being adult fans talking about adult things. If a minor walked into the “How to write explicit bondage” panel, then someone gently suggested that this was not the place for the kid to be. If the kid found the dick pics in the art show, they were told “go ask Mommy what ‘slash’ means.”
I get that the OP wants to protect children, but while it’s my job to make sure someone too little to take care of themselves doesn’t get hurt, it has NEVER, through three generations of fandom, been my job to be anyone’s actual parent or to stop adulting around adults.
Oh, and the line “I’m not saying adults don’t have a place in fandom; they can and they do” - that line? Child, ADULTS BUILT FANDOM. We created the cons and the fanzines and the webrings and the clubs and the fan sites and the VCR tape swaps and the letter writing campaigns and the podcasts. We maintain the fan sites and the fic repositories and the conventions and the rest. Did you think those things just spontaneously evolved? Fuckin’ A we have a place in the culture that we built!
If you’re old enough to be online unsupervised you’re also old enough to police your own fandom experience. Head the tags and warnings, that’s what they are there for.
Also, to be blunt, I am not responsible for anyone’s children. Full stop.
The focus on age in fandom is a new and a little perplexing thing to me. Back in my day it was shoved into the background as much as possible; the young ones like me wanted to pretend we were totally super adult and mature and could handle any discussion (I just wanted to talk to other X-Philes without being instantly recognised as “the kid”), and older fans didn’t want to explain that the reason their kinkfic update was late was that their kid had a stomach ache. Fandom was an escapist space, so real life only entered into the picture once you became actual friends with someone. At that point you might get the “whoa, you’re only 15? But you’ve read my kink fic!” reactions – but these were mostly in private messages and emails. Because fandom as a whole didn’t need to know everyone’s ages. I don’t recall ever once stumbling accidentally on something age-inappropriate in fandom. When I entered a fic archive and read the descriptions for fics, even back in 1998 when “tags” weren’t a thing, I could always tell which ones had mature content. When I read porny or violent fic as a minor, I did so fully aware that I had made that decision myself. It would never have occurred to me to blame the writer – in fact, some of them were probably minors too and pretending themselves. This approach didn’t do me any harm. I daresay it taught me a few things about personal responsibility. In fandom, we were all just fans together; that was what I loved about it.
Now that I am An Old I do like to talk about it and joke about it occasionally, because what, I’m supposed to let all this perspective go to waste? But I still don’t assume I know anyone’s age in fandom. If we know each other in online fandom I’ll treat you with respect and make sure you’ll know what you’ll get if you read my fic. That’s all the “maturity” you’re going to get from me. I’m not the nurturing, parental type in real life and I’m certainly not going to bend myself backwards to be the perfect adult role model and fandom mother to random people I don’t know when I’m here for fun escapist things. If you learn something from me, great! I’d love to learn something from you, too! But I will never accept that as my literal responsibility as an adult in online fandom spaces. Baby-sitters get paid, parents choose to become parents. I’m not here to be either.
I read my first lemon fic at age 12. This was in an archive that was hidden from the rest of the website - no links from the main pages, which were strictly policed on ratings - you had to enter the URL straight into the URL bar to get there. I found it because I was deliberately looking for it. Because I had just hit puberty and wanted to explore the feelings I was experiencing. *I* chose to find these fics and read them. And that’s how it was the entire time I was in fandom as a minor, all six years. Everything was tagged, labeled, disclaimered, and warned within an inch of its life, which I appreciated, because it meant I could find what I wanted when I wanted it. And as an adolescent, what I wanted was porn.
Thing is, I was raised in a conservative Christian household. I know what purity culture looks like, and a huge part of it is controlling the children. Every teen self-help book basically assumed teenagers were helpless lust monsters who had to be protected and sheltered and flagellated with guilt to prevent them from committing sin. Moral panics every other week over what the precious children had been exposed to, while I and the other minors in fandom laughed at the adults for not realizing that their children had already been exposed in years before, and we were fine. The only thing it all taught me was a fuckload of guilt about sex (which I still resent) and also the computer skills to get around every restriction set by the adults, because guess what? Teenagers. Are. People.
70% of the reason why I was in fandom at all was because nobody treated me like a puling infant. Now I’m on the other side, and it’s the same. I follow fandom etiquette on tagging and titling things, and the rest is up to you. I am not your babysitter.
THIS. Every flavor of this. It’s baffling to me how the focus on age has come about. When I was first entering internet fandom, I tried to lie about or completely ignore my age as much as possible. I wanted to come off as someone far older than I was, someone with experience and knowledge and interesting contributions. I didn’t want to be defined by ANYTHING but my words and deeds. The internet felt like this utopian space to me back then, where I could be anyone and anything I wanted. I was a mind, divorced of physical trappings like age. I was just me.
It was in that way I found my earliest fandoms. I joined Yahoo groups and applied for membership on Geocities websites so I could start posting my fic. I remember digging through the website ‘rings’ back then, which all linked to one another to create a sense of unified fandom back before larger platforms existed. Not all of them ended up being to my taste, but I got a good sense of where people were at in the fandom and found some great like-minded fellow fans. I knew nothing about them except that we liked the same thing and had great conversations, and that was how I preferred it.
It was from those sites and that sense of community that modern fandom was built. The notion that younger fans must be protected or sheltered is frankly impossible and counterproductive. It speaks of an eschewing of personal responsibility that I dislike. I am all for tagging appropriately, and being responsive to those who request a specific tag in your material so they can better screen their own experience. That’s just common courtesy. But the idea that we must not post materials “because of the children” strikes me the same way all such movements have struck me through the years: simultaneously deeply underestimating the understanding and capability of young people, and seeking to divide fandom at a time when we really don’t need that. We are all fans. Older fans have experiences in fandom that can be fantastic, and younger fans have fresh new perspectives. Fans of all ages create a thriving fandom, and gatekeeping anyone discounts their experiences and perspectives.
Be clear in your tags, and police your own experience. The greatest thing anyone can do in fandom or elsewhere is to take control of their own life. Even when you’re a young teen, take as much control as you can. Establish your own boundaries and your own perspectives, while still remaining flexible. Respect everyone around you, because they can all add to your experiences. Seek out what interests you and figure out what you don’t want to see and be certain to block it appropriately. Tumblr Savior and XKit are both useful.
Basically, the internet is vast and we all have our own lives to live. You set up your own corner of it, and you tend it yourself. You choose who you follow and what tags you block. You live your life, and take control over your own fandom experience.
pure queer joy
ah! Everything in this! the switch leading! the hand on the back of his neck! the grace!
Is it too soon to reblog this? Oh, wait: I don’t care. Here it is again.
#7 and your space BatB pair? (They're the reason I started following you.)
Oh my GAWD bless your heart. ABSOLUTELY <3
Here are Orrin and Eriel and a Distract-Someone kiss.
For people with anxiety about filing taxes, here’s what things that happen when you make a mistake on your tax return:
- it gets corrected
- you get a letter in the mail either asking for some additional information or a letter showing the adjustment
- you pay the amount (there’s options for payment plans too!) or get a refund
Things that do not happen
- you’re “in trouble”
- you are charged with fraud
- you go to jail
I know that most people are probably just joking/exaggerating when they say a mistake on their return means they get thrown in jail but when I worked with the public I always would encounter people who believed that would happen and they would be panicking about it. So I like to put this out there every year because if I can even prevent one person from feeling that way, it’s worth it
Annual reblog of this important information.
The thingy above where you sign your tax form says that you’ve filled it out to the best of your ability. “Sir, I am a dumbass” is 100% a valid defense
blondebrainpower
Teacher greets students, by having them choose which greeting is most comfortable for them.
B O U N D A R I E S
WE STAN
i love the variety of choices and that the kids get to pick day-to-day. sometimes you need a silly dance, some days a hug, and sometimes you need the distance the formality of a bow affords.
And they don’t have to verbalize it.
And you can tell that last one is excited to get the hug!
"For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism—a body-wide starvation response that blasts you with hunger hormones and drops your internal temperature until you rise back to your highest weight. Keeping weight off means fighting your body’s energy-regulation system and battling hunger all day, every day, for the rest of your life.
The second big lesson the medical establishment has learned and rejected over and over again is that weight and health are not perfect synonyms. Yes, nearly every population-level study finds that fat people have worse cardiovascular health than thin people. But individuals are not averages: Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Meanwhile, about a quarter of non-overweight people are what epidemiologists call “the lean unhealthy.” A 2016 study that followed participants for an average of 19 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fit fat people."
A surprising article to find on the Huffington post. I think, especially towards the end, there's still a saturation of healthism and diet talk (just of the "clean eating" variety), but the information about weight discrimination is absolutely on point, especially within the medical field ignoring decades of research.
Not only do we know that weight loss isn't sustainable or possible, we also know that weight discrimination kills, in a myriad of ways. If you actually care about "health" then start unlearning your weight bias NOW and realize that fat people are just people who are a different shape.
And this article doesn't even touch on "the obesity paradox"(the fact that fat people survive heart attacks and injuries BETTER THAN thin people) or the fact that dieting, especially "yo-yo dieting," is a better predictor for heart disease than weight, and that many of the fat people who have cardiovascular diseases have a long history of dieting that (understandably) didn't work.
encouraged to rb but fatphobes will just be blocked.
I HAVE WAITED ALL YEAR TO POST THIS
There’s a protest going on against AI art over on artstation, so I feel like now is the time for me to make a statement on this issue!
I wholeheartedly support the ongoing protest against AI art. Why? Because my artwork is included in the datasets used to train these image generators without my consent. I get zero compensation for the use of my art, even though these image generators cost money to use, and are a commercial product.
Musicians are not being treated the same way. Stability has a music generator that only uses royalty free music in their dataset. Their words: “Because diffusion models are prone to memorization and overfitting, releasing a model trained on copyrighted data could potentially result in legal issues.” Why is the work of visual artists being treated differently?
Many have compared image generators to human artists seeking out inspiration. Those two are not the same. My art is literally being fed into these generators through the datasets, and spat back out of a program that has no inherent sense of what is respectful to artists. As long as my art is literally integrated into the system used to create the images, it is commercial use of my art without my consent.
Until there is an ethically sourced database that compensates artists for the use of their images, I am against AI art. I also think platforms should do everything they can to prevent scraping of their content for these databases.
Artists, speak out against this predatory practice! Our art should not be exploited without our consent, and we deserve to be compensated when our art is exploited for commercial use.
This user supports AO3
This user is anti-censorship
This user believes in “don’t like, don’t read”
This user believes in “ship and let ship”
This user believes that fiction tastes and preferences do not dictate moral character
I love women who are unabashedly big.
Women with big laughs, big smiles, big voices, big bodies, and even bigger personalities to match. Women that don’t care if they take up space with long strides and sit with their legs miles apart.
They give big hugs and big kisses, and they have big hearts. Big, proud women are amazing.
This posts includes trans women and excludes terfs, btw.
Rb this version pls
I mean Jesus fucking Christ this is not right
My friend told me the best example to explain the vast difference between a million and a billion
"A million seconds ago was last week. A billion seconds ago we were still dealing with the Soviet union."
This is why when we talk about “rich people” who aren’t paying taxes or who are wasting money, we’re not talking about the person who makes 1 or 2 grains of rice worth of money a year. We’re talking about the person who makes the giant fucking Costco sized pile of rice.
@bookhobbit idk if this is what you’re interested in?
That is a really awesome display of the data btw
Missing some important words
Source: twitter.com
Seeing more and more blogs without a [username].tumblr.com site which means you can only view their blogs in tumblr.com/[username] mode, and I realized just the other day that nowadays you have to manually go to your blog settings and toggle the “enable custom theme” switch to have a browser site activated.
I REALLY recommend activating this! Especially if you’re an artist or if you have a themed blog, like if you reblog fanart for a specific fandom or ship. First and foremostly you can change the whole theme if you want to, you can really just go wild with building your personal aesthetic for your page.
But what I think is even more important, is that you NEED to “enable custom theme” to enable access to your archive! The link [username].tumblr.com/archive doesn’t work if you don’t have this enabled!
If you post art or archive fanart or fandom content of any kind, letting people access your archive makes it so much easier for people (and yourself) to find older art on your blog or to look for something you drew a while ago that they remember loving and want to look at again.
We talk lots about how on Tumblr old art gets to circulate, and the archive is part of how that works. It’s a really useful tool in finding good content that isn’t brand new. And especially if you are good at tagging, it’s very easy to filter the archive to find ship content or meta or fics, whatever you want to find.
this is the big debate on facebook today but frankly starting with 3 is the only thing that ever felt right to me and everyone else is wrong
luminousbensolo
One driver already quit and NASCAR responded with basically “we had to google you because nobody knew who the fuck you were”
Nascar started because they said fuck cops and its nice to see they havent lost their roots completely.
