Something Like a Heart

Facebook and google are helping cops prosecute people seeking abortion. Be very careful in this new era people.

As the political climate grows increasingly fascist, please consider protecting yourself and the people you talk to by transitioning away from gmail, google chat, google calendar, etc. Protonmail has a free encrypted (private) email option and a free encrypted calendar service, and is trialling a free cloud storage option.

Also consider having sensitive conversations on encrypted services like Signal or Element instead of well-known leakers like facebook messenger, discord, skype, text messages, imessage, etc.

That buffer of increased privacy is probably enough to make a difference for the average person since these mass surveillance campaigns typically prioritize targeting the people whose data is easiest to harvest.

all queer history on here is just US-American or maybe sometimes some UK history as well and it makes me sad that there’s so little information about other countries’ queer history on here :(

@makingqueerhistory has some diversity, as of historical queer people, and they’re doing a great job, but there’s a lot of work ahead. 

OP is definitely right, there still is a huge gap in the discussions of queer history, and thank you for recommending us!

This isn’t perfect, and many of these only have one article, but here is our list of countries we have written about. We are hoping to one day have at least one article for every country in the world but as @every-book-has-a-secret there is a lot of work still to do.

Europe

Albania Austria Belgium Czechia Czech Republic Denmark England Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Scotland Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland

Africa

Algeria Cameroon Egypt Kenya Morocco Nigeria Senegal Sierra Leone South Africa Uganda

North America

Canada Costa Rica Crow Nation Cuba Grenada Jamaica Menominee Nation Mexico Puerto Rico United States of America

South America

Argentina Brazil Chile Colombia Guyana Peru Trinidad and Tobago Uruguay

Asia

Afghanistan Bangladesh China Hong Kong India Iran Israel Japan Pakistan The Philippines South Korea Sri Lanka Syria Turkey

Oceania

Australia Māori Nation New Zealand

Antarctica

Antarctica

!!! This is what I was looking for! thank you!

Of course! Glad we could help!

I’d like to add Tom Of Finland (Touko Valio Laaksonen), the one who drew those erotic pictures of muscular men clad in leather, to the Finnish list.

Some say that Tom Of Finland was the father for the leather gay movement.

PERUVIAN QUEER HISTORY???? God, I love this site

[ID: The Chris Fleming “was anybody going to tell me” meme. A person standing in front of a brick wall speaks, with the captions edited to read, “Okay, was anybody going to tell me that my country has queer history I would’ve adored to know before, or was I just supposed to learn it from a wholesome Tumblr post myself?”]

@queerasfact is a pretty cool blog and podcast dedicated to international queer history!

Thanks for tagging us! We’ve got a list here of all our episodes sorted by country. There’s definitely a lot we haven’t covered, but if you’re looking for a specific area, you can check it out.

for the redditors coming here, this is how we spread news of important events in the world, with a Destiel meme

For everybody who's been here a while and felt like Wiley E. Coyote just after running off the edge of the cliff when they scrolled down to find nothing below

I’m sorry but that is the funniest fucking reblog and edit I’ve seen in my life

heyo other cane user here.

so i primarily use a rollator but when im in places where thats not possible, (or around the house), i will always use my cane. for me personally, i find it extremely fucking helpful when someone offers to get my cane for me when its dropped because i dont usually have the mobility to grab it for myself. however i definitely agree with OP about asking first, as you cant predict every persons reaction to you touching their aids.

I’m not technically disabled, but one of my ankles is permanently injured (I fractured it and tore some muscles when I was a child, and it healed poorly while I was still growing), and I use a cane or a walking stick sometimes when that ankle is too sore for me to walk without help, or when I know I’ll be walking a long distance or standing for a long period of time. For me, dropping things is not generally a big deal, because I’m able to bend down to pick something up when it falls; it’s my ankle that’s an issue, not my knees or my back, and I’m still pretty flexible overall. It greatly annoys me when somebody picks my cane or my stick up for me without asking me if I need them to. It feels condescending even if they just mean to be kind, because there’s an assumption there about what I can and cannot do due to the fact that sometimes I need to give myself a little extra support while I’m walking. My stick is an extension of me, and I don’t like being touched without my consent.

I also have a close friend who walks with a cane most of the time. She does have trouble with her knees, and when she drops her cane or needs to get an item from the bottom shelf at the grocery store, I ask her if she needs help to pick it up. Sometimes she does, and sometimes she doesn’t. But I always believe her when she says she doesn’t need help. She knows what she’s capable of at any given moment far better than I can.

reference this post

yeah that's the post we're talking about, i already reblogged a version of it with more info, thank you!

this is from a "manipulation advice" video and it's just so fucking funny to me. why didn't I think of responding to insults like this

same energy

Reproductive rights are trans rights. ❤️

Incredible how many times I've begged on here and tiktok for intersex awareness and inclusion and how many people have told me directly "intersex people don't want to be included in queer discussions"

To me, an intersex person BEGGING for inclusion

I've had intersex mutuals on tiktok post about their own experiences and had dyadic queer people swoop in to tell them intersex people don't want to be included in the queer community

Why the fuck are yall like this? Yall are so comfortable parroting exclusionist radfem bullshit if it's about intersex people

"Intersex people aren't queer" is a conservative and radfem take. I've met exactly two intersex people who believed that and they were terfs. There are so many more intersex people who are begging yall to include us and to pay attention to our genocide.

But we aren't as important as everyone else I guess :)

What I have always heard is "some intersex people want to be included in the queer community, and so they are queer, and some don't, so they aren't". It seems like a pretty reasonable take to me, what do you think?

That's true with literally anyone who falls under the queer umbrella by definition. There are intersex people who refuse to identify as intersex, even.

My point is, in what world are replies like that useful when intersex people are begging for solidarity and inclusion? Why is it when we speak about the genocide that has erased us so thoroughly, the bills being pushed to classify us as disabled and therefore unable to use either male or female bathrooms, the efforts to mutilate and erase and kill us off. I get "but some intersex people don't wanna be queer :)" like cool, okay. Sounds like those intersex people are privileged to not feel impacted by anti-queer legislation and anti-queer violence. We aren't talking about them.

There is no point bringing up that some intersex people don't want to be considered queer. We are treated queer our bodies are queer and we are being outlawed from public in 2023. Stop replying to those of us begging for solidarity with "not all intersex people"

ESPECIALLY if you're not intersex

It’s especially terrible for this messaging to be spread when the anti-trans legislators are putting clauses in their bills that make sure that they can continue to mutilate and abuse us as infants. We need to be a part of this. We are a part of it. Even if some intersex people don’t identify or label themselves queer, the world has put us in the same boat.

It's not JUST clauses to continue mutilating infants.

I believe it's Kentucky that is voting to classify intersex people as disabled specifically to bar us from any restroom that isn't one of those gender neutral family bathrooms. This would also bar any intersex person from women's shelters and domestic violence shelters.

And any of these bills that affects trans people on the basis of appearance will affect intersex people who are visibly intersex, like me.

I'm also an afab intersex woman looking into testosterone - my body responds better to T than E. If I was still living in Texas and not New Mexico, I'd not only be unable to access the hormones my body requires, but I'd be on a fash list somewhere.

It's important to think of intersex infants - but equally important to remember we as adults have been driven out of the public eye, forced into "normalizing" sort of treatments and at risk of violence and discrimination if we LOOK intersex.

It's not that I think a person, entrusted with control over their own body, could never make the wrong decision, I just think that any entity entrusted with control over someone else's body is definitely going to make wronger decisions

maybe its bc i live in a place where forestry is one of the dominant industries but like tree planting rly isnt good. like the majority of the time its done by forestry companies to “offset” what they’ve cut down, and they almost always just plant fir & spruce monocrops and then they prevent the rest of the forest from naturally regenerating by spraying glyphosate, because they want to kill off the hardwoods that grow back since softwoods are worth more to the pulp industry… anything a company does that is supposedly “green” never is.

They aren’t actually replanting the forest, they’re building lumber farms in the middle of it and trying to pass them off as the same thing to people who think a forest is just trees because they live in a world mediated by images and have never been in an actual forest long enough to be able to tell healthy diverse growth from a struggling monocrop.

hey. to the fat person reading this who wants to transition or is transitioning. make your transition goals fat like you. please. the things you aim to gain from transition can be gained while fat. you can be/express your gender and be fat. there is nothing wrong with that, no matter what anyone says. i promise.

let yourself exist. let yourself be happy. you have just as much of a right as every other person in this world to do that, especially as you transition. it's okay. you're going to be alright, and you're also going to look fucking awesome. you already look fucking awesome. it's your body. own it.

whoa i just thought of something really cool we could do during pride month it's called including aces and aros

Hi folks! UPM, a Finnish forest industry company, is planning on cutting down forest in Rokansaari — an island that spans five square kilometers in Lake Saimaa. Rokansaari has often been described to be a hidden diamond and a paradise island, known for its natural sandy beaches, eskers, and lush beautiful pine forests. It’s very popular among travellers, boaters, tourists, all kinds of people really. Some of the forests on the island are even 130 years old.

The areas that UPM is planning on cutting down are labelled as a protected area, but that really only means that you can’t build things there. “Careful cutting down” of valuable old forests is fine. Do you know what UPM’s definition of “careful cutting” is, according to their previous work in other parts of Rokansaari?

…Yeah. And now they’re back to cut down the rest of the area they have.

Anyway, Greenpeace has made a petition to urge UPM to not cut down Rokansaari’s forests! They’ve succeeded in telling UPM off before in 2016, when they managed to keep another similar island safe. I hope they’ll be able to do it again, so I’m sharing the petition! I’m not sure if non-Finns can sign it, but if not, sharing it would be enough. We need more people on this case!

Oh

How much does a box of paper weigh?

Oh …

I love how all these reblogs from ableds are like “boxes of paper are 20 pounds GOTCHA” as if every single person in a 60-person workplace needs to be able to lift a box of paper.

“What’s that, James? You tore your rotator cuff? Sorry, we have to let you go. What if the printer needed to be refilled and the other 200 people in this building were home sick? It just wouldn’t be fair.”

I deserve more intellectually challenging low-effort justifications for bigotry. Please try harder next time. 1/10.

hi! i’m a secretary with a lifelong congenital back issue that i had fixed via surgery.

the first thing i want to point out is that the box of paper that @bransrath​ posted is not the weight of the box. the 20 lb in that description is the paper weight, which is the amount of force a piece of paper can take before tearing. i know this because it’s described as copy paper, and copy paper is by default 20 lb weight. so posting that picture as a ‘gotcha’ in response to this post is ignorant at best and intentionally ableist at worst. in reality, that box probably weighs no more than 15 lbs. 

secondly, i have never had to actually pick up one of these boxes ever. and i have to deal with them a lot, given that i’m a secretary who, prior to the pandemic, was printing off 1000+ pages of booklets per week. i’ve never had to pick these up because you can literally just open them, grab a ream of paper, and take it to the printer to load it in. there’s no fucking reason why you would need the whole box. most places, like my office, also store them on or near the ground because they’re heavy, so what i do is a just drag the boxes to their designated corner until they need to be used. 

so “must be able to lift 20 lbs” is a tactic of discrimination, and there’s no excuse for it in office jobs like mine. i can’t actually lift more than 15 lbs and chances are, i’ll never be able to lift more than 20 lbs. i can still do all the duties of my secretary job, though, and it’s really easy to find work arounds for things like heavy boxes of paper. even i can, and my office literally employs 3 people including me. a weight limit is not a reason to deny someone a job. 

*checks how much that is in metric*

MOTHERFUCKER I WORK IN A FACTORY AND WE’RE EXPLICITLY TOLD AS A PART OF ORIENTATION AND WORK SAFETY TRAINING THAT “hey man if you ever need to lift something heavier than 10kg (about 22 pounds), you should get someone to help you“

A woman whose epilepsy was greatly improved by an experimental brain implant was devastated when, just two years after getting it, she was forced to have it removed due to the company that made it going bankrupt.

Specifically, because she couldn't afford to buy the implant from the company. They basically took her implant back to recoup their losses. This is what happens when you privatize healthcare and health research. The group providing her with this implant should not have been able to go bankrupt in the first place, let alone repossess her implant to pay off their debts.

“no polyamory at pride” is some chronic no bitches shit. that’s got to be made up. no gay person would say that they’d have no fucking friends

look to be a bit serious I know "no gay person would say this" but like.

The amount of people who are LGBT+ who ALSO hate on polyamory because "It's just straight men who want to fuck a lot of women" and "It's just abusive straight men cheating with extra steps" (which also all REEKS of radfem flavored bullshit) is...

An astounding and terrible amount.

Anyway. Every time I see "polyamory is all straight men" I look at my little polycule. Which consists of me and my wife. And her nonbinary girlfriend. And my boyfriend- who I guess you COULD argue is straight but the man is somewhere on the asexual spectrum and also is 1) dating ME, a very not woman and 2) has been told multiple times by Annoying Straight People that he isn't straight because he doesn't balk at the idea of women and feminine people who aren't women with non-normative genitals and that apparently makes him gay and at this point he fucking counts even if you DON'T include the asexuality so anyone who says that shit can fuck off into the sun.

Polyamory is inherently queer. The idea that it is "straight men wanting to fuck a lot" and "cheating with extra steps" is bullshit that comes from the same place that says gays are all sexual predatory monsters and trans people want to hurt children. It's all conservative puritanical bullshit. Except I hear it MOST OFTEN coming out of the mouths of my fellow LGBTQ+ siblings.

POLYAMORY IS QUEER.

I've seen so many queer people say shit like "polyamory is cringe, it's always just some loser forty-year-old cishet woman claiming having five boyfriends means she's special and queer" which is literally just a remix of the old biphobic "bi women aren't special(read: don't count as queer) for dating men" argument with an extra dose of misogyny and slut-shaming/sex-negativity/anti-kink rhetoric thrown in for good measure.

I'm really glad attitudes seem to be changing and that there are spaces where polyamory is accepted filled with people who are willing to stand up and make us feel welcome, but yeah polyam people have been on the respectability politics chopping block right alongside bi+ folks, a-spec people, nonbinary people, kinksters, trans people, drag artists, and sex workers for a long ass time.

“The average US president has been charged with 1.56 felonies” factoid isn’t true. The average US President has been charged with 0 felonies. Donald trump, who has been charged with 72, is a statistical outlier and should not have been counted

The fact that you made this mathematically accurate made my tummy warm