(Not so secret) Secrets

Learn to articulate how you're feeling without accusing anyone of having bad intentions. You can say "I'm afraid of being alone" without saying "you're just going to leave me like everyone else." You can say "I need some reassurance" without saying "you probably don't love me anymore." You can say "I'm afraid I've hurt your feelings and I'd like to talk it through" without saying "you don't even like me anymore." You can say "I want to spend more time with you" without saying "you've gotten tired of me." You can say "I feel misunderstood" without saying "you always judge me." Try not to let your emotions get the best of you. Have a conversation focused on finding solutions instead of escalating the conflict.

“My thesis is that at many levels of human interaction there is the opportunity to conflate discomfort with threat, to mistake internal anxiety for exterior danger, and in turn to escalate rather than resolve.” (from Conflict Is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman. highly recommend it if you’re interested in having better dialogues and feeling less defensive in your life)

In the New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency, John Seymour - who pretty much defined the principles of “self-sufficiency” as a modern political movement - goes into detail about conflict and community-building. So far from today’s interpretation of self-sufficiency as an American prepper-homesteader isolated from their neighbors - self-sufficient in the sense of “alone” - he envisioned self-sufficient in the sense of “not needing to buy things,” whether that was buying things for pure survival or buying things just to feel good. Seymour felt strongly that a community of close friends, preferably meeting frequently in pubs with wood-burning fires and live music, was a hallmark of being especially practical and self-sufficient; and if you think about it, you’ll see that it makes sense.

After all, if you want to buy absolutely nothing - if you want to create a way to live separate from society - you cannot do it like Thoreau; even Thoreau wasn’t doing it like Thoreau; you have to create an separate society, a self-sufficient community, and live in that.

And interestingly Seymour put his finger on “why communes fail.”

In his experience, which was deep and broad, experiments in self-sufficient communities/communes virtually always failed. And not because the idealistic fools weren’t capable of growing crops, or chopping wood, or whatever. It isn’t even the founders were stupid or ignorant or inexperienced, or because self-sufficiency only attracts dramatic personalities. No, the communities he observed consistently failed because they had no ability to resolve conflict. Every group of people will have to come to a tricky decision, resolve a sticky situation, have an awkward conversation or even just get along with unideal situations. They didn’t fall apart because a sheep fell in a ditch; anyone can get a sheep out of a ditch; they fell apart over the arguments about ideology, ditches, sheep and blame. It was always some issue of conflict or communication that broke these well-meaning, well-intentioned, well-educated people apart.

Step back from that and think: people frequently try to live outside capitalism even in this modern world, people frequently try to live in the most environmentally-friendly way, people frequently try to envision an alternative to a hostile state, even in this world where it is difficult or impossible to do so. For every utopia you might picture, people (being people) will have already made a decent attempt at building and living it, in the hope of showing it or even giving it to you. And those utopias aren’t here at the moment for you to have, because it’s terrifically difficult to make communities out of nothing. And that’s largely because it’s very hard to have communication skills about anything at all, let alone something that gets you mad.

So it’s worth having communication skills. As a matter of self-sufficiency.

If you have ever worked with the public, remember: the public will be part of your politically utopic community.

All the mommy bloggers, all the brosephs, all the every single customer or client or other person you have dealt with who you wanted to fucking strangle, or at least wanted to be allowed one of those amazing moments of Put Down that viral reddit posts are made of, every single frustrating as fuck human: they will be part of your post-capitalist utopia.

They will not wake up, the morning of the revolution, and suddenly become different people. Your choices will be to line them all up against a wall and shoot them . . . .or figure out how to live with them in your community. (And multiple revolutions in the past hundred years have tried that whole "line them up and shoot them" thing, tried it REAL HARD, and it didn't work out great for them either.)

The more de-industrial, de-urbanized, de-impersonal, whatever, your ideal society is? The more it will involve having to work, and work well, and work effectively and without interpersonal violence (physical or social) against people who irritate the fuck out of you.

And no, we never really had any Neat Trick to make that easier in the past. What we most often had was survival pressure so intense that the threat of being ostracized (or having the group turn on you) was enough to force resolutions that nobody was really happy with, or that left an unspoken wound to fester for generations, or to offer up a scapegoat to vent the community's violence on and then pretend to move on, or . . . .

Etc.

If you want a cooperative, non-violent, non-coercive community, and especially if you want that to be the norm, you end up having to learn to work collaboratively and productively with the person who irritates and frustrates and upsets you most in the ENTIRE world. And if you can't picture doing that, then maybe it's time for some self-reflection about how you really want the world to work, and what you're capable of contributing to that.

— Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage Experiment Is a Success (via allthecanadianpolitics)

I’m gonna leave this right here.

When you give consumers money, they spend it. When you give old, rich, white men money, they hoard it.

*waves wildly at above* AND THIS IS WHY I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE HATE IMMIGRANTS SO MUCH.

I’ve literally been telling people for years, that immigrants DO NOT steal money out of Australian’s pockets. So what if they have to claim government benefits when they get here? They also have to pay rent, buy food, replace their shoes, buy toys for their kids. They spend their money HERE. IT CIRCULATES MORE MONEY LOCALLY. IMMIGRATION LITERALLY MAKES MONEY.

Immigrants don’t ‘steal jobs’- literally, you bring in a thousand people, you need restaurants, schools, doctors, builders, painters, mechanics, sales people, cleaners, taxi drivers, EVERYTHING, to account for all those extra people that have need of those services. IMMIGRATION LITERALLY MAKES JOBS. WHICH MAKES MONEY. BECAUSE THAT IS HOW BASIC ECONOMICS WORKS.

I seriously, DO NOT understand people’s bullshit. It’s simple math. It’s logical supply and demand. It’s a ‘spend money to make money’ situation. Why is the human race so goddamn stupid...

I think my favorite jokes are the ones that weren’t even all that funny until I was an adult, and now they’re fucking hilarious. I’m not even talking about the dirty jokes. I’m talking about in Finding Nemo where the sharks are having fucking AA for fish eating. Remember that shit? “I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine. If I am to change this image, I must first change myself.” Who ever thought of that? That was brilliant. Or what about that time in Shrek 2 where Shrek and Donkey infiltrate the castle pretending to be union workers? Little me didn’t give a shit about unions but big me is remembering Shrek going “It’s okay buddy, we’re from the union” and the desk worker secretively “we don’t even have dental,” and Shrek just shakes his head and looks at Donkey like he can’t believe this shit and goes, “They don’t even have dental.” What the fuck. I’m dying of laughter. Who comes up with this shit.

Dirty jokes have their place but I kind of wish more “adult” jokes relied on “Things only adults would understand due to lack of life experience,” instead of “Things that are inappropriate for kids,”

My elderly father started talking about how frustrating he finds “the pronouns thing” and I was like. Oh no. He had such a good stand on this, he’s been they/them-ing his cishet siblings for god’s sake! Is he regressing?? And he was talking about how difficult it is to remember, and how onerous it feels to expect strangers to keep track of it, and I’m like oh no oh no.

Then he says, “I mean, the problem isn’t the gender thing. The problem is four words: she, her, he, and him. We got rid of stewardess and turned it into flight attendant. It doesn’t matter if the flight attendant is a man or woman, so we got rid of it. We just need to get rid of those. I don’t need to know.”

“You don’t need to know… people’s gender?”

“No. I don’t care, I don’t need to know, and I don’t want to remember it.”

So we can relax. It’s just a continuation of his crusade to they/them the world. He doesn’t want to remember anyone’s gender. He’s abolishing the genders.

i will literally give $1000 to anyone who can tell me why trans women are real women without saying “because they said so”

Because gender is a social construct that is at its core fundamentally a personal identity rooted in cultural and social context. 

A woman is an adult of the female sex. How can a male be a woman? Also, gender is the societal roles forced on us from birth, and causes the sexes to be treated differently. How can a male truly relate to the experience of being raised female?

Ah, I see the problem. You are conflating gender and sex, and positing that sex is a straight forward binary identification. 

In reality, biological sex is a spectrum, a complicated set of different variables that often align in two ways, but which include a LOT of possible variety. Genitals, hormones, chromosomes, and secondary sex characteristics simply don’t always align in the typical ways. 

On top of that, gender is a social construction, a cultural and personal identity that often correlates with sex, but is not tethered to it. In fact, the idea of third and non-binary genders have existed all over the world for thousands and thousands of years. 

Just as a Woman with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome is still a woman, and a woman who has a Hypertrichosis is a woman, and a woman who has a hysterectomy is still a woman, trans women are still women. We are not defined by our biology. Our womanhood is not a checklist of body parts. 

female = someone with no Y chromosome. this is the definition which society uses to treat someone. when a baby has no Y chromosome, it has a vagina, and is oppressed by society. when it has a Y chromosome, it grows a penis, and is celebrated by society. are you really trying to deny this?

you just admitted that gender is a social construct. it is forced on people from birth. their personal “identity” doesn’t change how they are forced to follow gender roles based on their sex. for females, gender roles demand that they act feminine. femininity is oppressive. for males, including trans women, gender roles demand they act masculine.

so again, please tell me how a male can actually be a female, and how, when gender roles are forced onto people BASED ON THEIR SEX, they have ever experienced being female. also, aside from gender at all, they havent experienced basic biological aspects of being female, like worrying about pregnancy or menstruating. being a woman is a combination of an inescapable biological reality and shitty forced gender roles that males will never experience.

WHY ARE PEOPLE WOMEN IF THEY JUST SAY SO!!?

First of all, not all women are XX chromosomally. Google “ Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome” for me. 

Also, not all women worry about pregnancy or menstruation. Some women are infertile, after all. 

And like, if we really want to argue that it’s all about being “raised female” with all the oppressive shit that goes with that 1) That has nothing to do with biology, so you can send the $1000 to my Amazon wish list if you like and 2) what about trans girls who transition socially when they are still young?

there is something so darkly comical about tumblr potentially outliving twitter

tumblr, which is held together with duct tape and madness, run by three raccoons in blood stained Yahoo! hats and a handful of crabs, its only discernible source of income the sale of shoelaces from an inside joke so inside no one knows the original source anymore and fake blue checkmarks... that website still lives on

truly the cockroach of social media and I love it for that

As an eye doctor, this shouldn't be controversial. It's a problem. 5 years ago, nighttime headlight issues were reserved for people with cataracts or LASIK scars. Today, everyone has problems seeing the road through the oncoming headlights. People are getting anti-glare and blueblocking coatings not bc they are sitting on a computer 8+ hours a day but bc the blue tinted halogens are making them feel unsafe to drive. We are selling insane amounts of yellow tinted nighttime driving glasses even though they're really only for people with cataracts bc ppl are desperate for anything that may help them deal with the headlights. I've had multiple patients tell me they just don't drive at night anymore.

This is an actual safety issue and it needs to be addressed

I hope this is a little bit useful. 

All the libraries where I live closed today and I felt this might be useful to you. 

Stay safe, wash your hands, be careful out there and pray governments can get it together and stomp this virus out as soon as possible. 

Take care of yourself, and each other. 

Vee xo.

good xkcd today

New type of guy who is normal. Type of guy who’s trying his best. Type of guy who can really do it this time. Type of guy with the fortitude to endure it

Listen. Reblogging posts won't kill you, in fact it's how posts are kept alive. This ratio is fucking stupid. You can reblog it if you like it I promise it's ok.

[id: stats for a Tumblr post with 82 notes. It's got 0 comments, 5 reblogs, and 77 likes.]

i think grossness is a vital aspect of life btw and we all experience it and i think its important to represent in art and i think oversanitization of popular media is 100% our downfall. things are gross and disgusting and yucky and thats life we cannot deny ourselves this

I keep thinking about this in the context of caring for my ageing patients. No one TELLS them, before they’re old, how things are going to change, or why. No one talks about the loss of elastin, and how that doesn’t just affect your skin looking old, but also how it heals. No one warns them that their skin will become paper-thin if they live long enough, incredibly fragile and easy to tear. Just “hurr dur wrinkly!!!”

No one tells them their bowels are going to lose strength and coordination, so it gets more and more difficult to have bowel movements. No one warns them about obstipation, much less bowel obstructions. I have a saying I repeat often in clinic: “Proper pooping prevents problems!” I say it because it makes people chuckle, because it destigmatizes needing to poop. Everyone poops. And it turns out pooping requires both a complex network of nerves to create peristalsis, and stools soft enough to move through the bowels, and I have watched more than one elderly patient die because their bowels stopped working right.

No one talks about hemorrhoids, so I have patients coming in terrified by blood in their stools–and listen, blood in your poop is definitely a good reason to see a doctor; if you’re over 50 and you haven’t had a colonoscopy, get one. It’s the best health screening we have evidence for, in my opinion. Colon cancer is a bitch. But more commonly, people have bloody stools because they have either hemorrhoids that are bleeding or because they have an anal fissure after straining on a hard bowel movement. Do you know what a hemorrhoid is? I didn’t, until I was well into medical school. Everyone has them. They’re venous columns that surround the rectum and anus. Internal ones can bleed; external ones can itch. Most people will get them eventually. Be kind about them.

Everyone is going to have trouble peeing if they live long enough. Men can’t start, women can’t stop. Because people with prostates will often have benign enlargement of the prostate–it’s not cancer, but it gets bigger–and the urethra, the tube that lets urine leave the bladder, goes through the prostate. Bigger prostate = compressed tube, less flow. Meanwhile, people with uteruses have much shorter urethras, which means that when we lose that beautiful collagen and elastic, we also lose it in the two sphincters that help us keep from leaking urine, and so we leak urine. Especially when something triggers an increase in intra-abdominal pressure, like a sneeze or a cough or a laugh.

All these things people are taught to be ashamed of and embarrassed about–they are so common. They’re normal parts of having a human body and doing the things one does with a human body. Poop trouble? Welcome to the club! People have been writing about their cures for constipation for as long as written language has existed. Listen, you are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone. And that means that when someone else has a gross problem, you must be kind to them, because that is going to be you. There will be a day when you have diarrhea, because viral gastroenteritis spreads like wildfire every winter. There will be a day when you cough a huge glob of mucus comes out, because mucus is a natural defense mechanism and kind of miraculous but also nasty. Every gross thing a body can do, yours is likely to do, if not now then later.

Be kind.

One of my sister’s friends had blood in her stools for a while, and eventually went to the doctor. That’s how, at the grand old age of 36, she discovered she had bowel cancer. In the shiniest of silver linings you ever heard, they caught it at the point the tumour was on the verge of metastasising - it was massive, and malignant, but hadn’t quite yet spread. As a result, she had an operation to remove it plus a section of her bowel, three rounds of chemo, and then was given the all-clear. She now has to use a colostomy bag (“My bum is now a cul-de-sac!” she told me once). But, assuming the cancer doesn’t make an unexpected comeback, she will live.

But here’s the kicker: after the diagnosis, still not knowing if it had metastasised or not yet (but knowing it almost certainly had because of the size), she broke the news to her family.

And it turned out her father, grandmother and aunt had all also had it. That meant it was a genetic risk; that meant she should have been on a watchlist for it, with regular testing. But she wasn’t, because none of them ever told her.

Why?

They were embarrassed. Bowel cancer was gross and embarrassing, so they all kept it quiet. As a result, because her family was too embarrassed to even tell each other to look out for the warning signs, my sister’s friend was not put on the watchlist to save her life, and it nearly killed her.

Anyway, the cycle ends with her: she’s a comedian and in the name of public awareness she did an Edinburgh show this year about it called Bad Ass.

cancelling procedures to mitigate the effects of chronic illness/cancer treatment/disability management appointments for the q*een’s funeral when chronically ill and disabled people have already had to fight for the Bare. Fucking. Minimum. in access to healthcare and specialist referrals for two years due to the pandemic is genuinely the most callous display of antipathy I’ve witnessed to date.

So there is apparently a Tik tok trend for an airport life hack where able-bodied people are requesting wheelchairs to get through TSA and customs faster.

As someone in their twenties who can walk but still needs a wheelchair in an airport because I can't walk long distances or fast with my disability, this trend is very frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten dirty looks from elderly people or been made to wait for a wheelchair because people assume that I'm fine when I'm sitting down and not moving. Idk. There are a group of disabled persons called ambulatory users who rely on mobility aids while still being able to walk on good days. They are often stigmatized by people's assumptions. Please don’t this! You are making it harder for people who are invalidated on a daily basis for not being "correctly disabled"

Also, as someone who regularly needs wheelchairs to travel through airports? Most of the time, IT WON'T EVEN WORK. You will be waiting around SO LONG. Usually my friends would have enough time to walk to the gate before me, and getting off at the other end? They'll ask you to wait to exit until after everyone else, and then you might even be waiting even longer if the airport is busy. Which if every man and his dog decides to use this ‘hack’, you almost certainly will be.

You people realize the body positivity movement is literally a political movement right. Like it's a movement that was started to improve the rights of fat people and stop discrimination against fat people. You realize that. It's not a tea party where everyone just compliments everyone else on their looks.

One time I was teaching undergrads and we were talking about how you can even define what is "fair" in employment. And I was explaining how there have been court cases about employers forcing their employees to wear makeup or do their hair/nails, etc, so of course we end up talking about flight attendants. And my students, predictably, are like, "Well ok but in the case of flight attendants, being good looking is literally just part of the job description." So I point out how applying this principle universally would basically make it so that any employer could refuse to hire someone who was fat or ugly. And That One Kid was like, "Well if it affects the business's ability to make money, I mean, that's just smart." And so I say, "Yes, that is certainly what a capitalist would say. But don't you think that allowing that capitalist interest to take precedence would lead to a world in which it's legally permissible to refuse to hire someone just because they're fat or ugly? Basically legalizing discrimination and blocking access to work and livelihood?" And this motherfucker is like, "Well, yeah. 💁🏻"

When I tell you I almost had to leave...I was full-body shaking and afterward, my queer students came up and were like, "omg are you okay?"

So yeah, it's fucking political. What you think is about personal aesthetic preference is actually oppressing huge groups of people, so.

This is a fascinating example because I actually am a flight attendant, and no the fuck it isn't a part of my job description to "be good looking." It hasn't been since the 60s. We're literally first responders. Should your ER nurse have to wear makeup in order to save your life?

Finding someone who thinks you're interesting enough to talk to you every day, whether they're a friend or a lover, is one of the best feelings ever.

let’s be clear, intimacy isn’t just sex. it’s them mental check in’s, date nights, conversations, forms of affirmations, the small simple shit.

*makes another silly little poster*