also hot take if you're a trans queer ideal leftist and you think you're exempt and haven't made the effort, you're actually probably just as bad about not listening to women or expecting them to do ten times the work to convince you of something a man could do with a passing comment
everyone has to do the work, you're not exempt you're just insufferable
PSA: If #ADHD strategies and coping methods work for you, please use them without sweating whether you have the diagnosis or not.
outing myself as an insufferable nerd, but there was a 4-5 month period where i was like "i'm imagining it, i must be crazy" and i just straight up kept track on a SPREADSHEET, i swear to god i had a little number clicker
women around me got interrupted ~2x as much as men
i get interrupted ~3-4x as much as after i came out as transfemme
women and people i knew to be trans-friendly had no significant difference from men as a whole
everyone has to work on it, it's a cultural pressure
Events, advice for organizers
A nice essay on pitfalls to avoid and why it's important to get rid of toxic volunteers.
Death, racism, covid, disability, hunting, memorium, long
Also, like, I don't know.. He was racist and I didn't spent as much time with him as I would have liked in later years because he was racist. I don't want to give the impression that that didn't matter.
But also, he tried to do better and now he's also dead. I miss him, and I miss the person he hoped to be.
Man, conservative news sucks.
Death, racism, covid, disability, hunting, memorium, long
Two years ago today, my grandfather died.
He was old and kinda racist, but he was also the kindest relative I had.
I think he tried really hard to be a good person around me. In my eyes, he was perceptive, thoughtful, and compassionate. I guess earlier in life, he was kind of an angry, prideful, volatile man. I think somewhere in him, he wanted to change, but just.. I don't know, I guess we're all works in progress.
One of my first memories of him is him intervening when my parents were angry with me for touching something I shouldn't have. I was a pretty curious kid. I didn't really understand why they were acting the way they did and was pretty upset. I was maybe three or four? And he just sat next to me with his hand on my back while I cried things out. He must've done something to get them to stop yelling at me, but I don't really remember what. I just remember him as a reassuring, strong, peaceful presence.
The Trump years and Fox News hit him hard. Maybe it was a combination of losing his vision and a resurgence of national pride, but whatever it was, it changed him some. It was often difficult for his own children to talk to him about meaningful issues, since he'd often shift the conversation to immigration and isolationism. In a small town, I guess it makes sense, but it.. I don't know, it was a tension I'm glad isn't at the dinner table anymore. Hearing stories from relatives, I guess this was kinda typical of him in his younger days, but it's not as much like the man I'd grown up with.
It was a small blessing that he died when he did, surrounded by family, a few months before the pandemic started. By then, he'd had a myriad of health issues, and had had a Do Not Recuscitate for about eight years, couldn't see well enough to hunt, and had troubles breathing due to inoperable lung cancer.
In the early days of spring in 2020, I often thought about how fortunate we were to have been able to spend a few weeks together with extended family talking, eating, and playing cards and music while holding vigil at his bedside. Weirdly, it was about as nice of a death as you could ask for.
I have a few regrets, mostly centered around things I wasn't able to do for him. He'd wanted a blood oxygenation sensor to let him know to sit down before he got too dizzy, he wanted working eyes, and we wanted hearing aids that a stubborn, tough old man would actually wear. I guess my experiences with him impacted a lot of the accessibility work I've been working with these days. A bone conduction baseball cap would've worked great for him.
I wasn't able to build anything for him, but I did compose a song at his bedside and played as much as I could. I had bruises on my thighs from holding my harp so much, and I needed to track when I'd gotten my fingertips wet so they wouldn't blister. It was good to be there with him. Good for both of us, I think. It was the best I could do.
When he finally died, it was the first morning I'd gone into work in two weeks. There was a violent thunderstorm and I was trying to start my car to leave to go visit the hospice when I got the call. It feels like he just wanted to spare me from being there at the time.
A friend drove out and gave me a lift about half an hour later and I was just a bawling mess. It was a really cathartic drive together.
Anyways, today is a bittersweet day for me. It's a day of remembering death and of togetherness. My grandfather treated me so well, and yet, I don't know, he was just also deeply flawed. I guess no one's perfect, but it was tough sometimes.
He grew up hunting in a frozen swap, was orphaned as a teenager, and was just so quietly supportive to me.. I don't know, I get the feeling he knew he was kind of an asshole and just tried not to say too much. Going through his things after his death, we found a St. Jude pendant. As a devout catholic, his patron saint was that of last causes. It feels like him.
Here's to changing and fighting and love and long walks in the swamp. Hold each other close today. 💙
I am VERY happy and proud to announce the public release of the "OpenBSD Webzine" !
'The Celtics' and facist lack of imagination
I do find the link between facist thought and lack of imagination and creativity facinating.
The Celtics is a great example of this in action. There's utterly no creative energy in it. It's literally regurgitated propaganda skinned in bad Celtic stereotypes.
And this isn't 'only stupid people are facist'
This is because facist ideology discourages anything outside of rigid, categorised thought as a threat. So only easily quantifiable art is acceptable and anything more experimental breaks out of that mindset.
It's why facist movements only want to claim classic art forms, because they don't have to recon or engage with them.
The Good Law Project's taking action against NHS England re the execrable waiting times for trans care. If you'd like to donate:
like, i'm fucking burnt out as fuck and exhausted of working but that's not because i don't want to participate in my community/labor for my community, it's because there has been a deliberate effort on behalf of capitalism to completely divorce the average person from their community.
if we had any capacity to build and strengthen our communities we would have so much more capacity and passion for life.
if i had medical care, unlimited access to a communal dining hall, and free room and board i would happily spend 30hrs/week laboring for my community however they needed support.
realistically 30hrs/week is probably double what would be needed. imagine how much more efficient that labor would be without capitalist middlemen stealing 99% of said labor's value.
the only barriers to this future are a) the leeches b) the bootlickers and c) the doomers.
Hi all: this account is in hybernation after #Gab functionally left the #fediverse, but wanted to wake it from slumber to note that all your work got noticed in a new ISD Report.
"There is precedent for open source communities to push back against those who seek to use their tools to promote hate speech. One such case is Mastodon, an open source social media community which has waged a long-running war of attrition against an influx of far-right users from Gab – a war which, as of December 2020, they appear to have won."
Everyone is invited to participate in this survey about ability to become pregnant, regardless of gender, sex or trans status. It's open until 5th Oct 2021, and I'll blog the results.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe2eOnwV1h7ZrFqwcc3IDMiO4nA2CRSVZnFU8llNcENSlvQ6g/viewform
transphobia
New Trans lives in the UK survey: https://www.transactual.org.uk/trans-lives-21
99% experienced transphobia on social media
93% said media transphobia [fueled] strangers on the street
57% avoid going to the doctor when sick
63% experienced transphobia while seeking jobs
I found a copy of the later book, Proverbs of Ancient Sumer. If Otis any indication, it's appropriately rife with filth.
If you can find out where the original tablet lives now, perhaps mentioned in the forward, that would be an amazing lead.
i like kind machines. pro-people-not-dying. anti-nazi. anti-colonizer. pagan, but lazy about it.
I am #HardOfHearing, #nonbinary, polyamourous, into ttrpgs and #tech. Hobbyist #leatherworker, hobbyist scifi author, community builder, and artist.
I like to build #whimsical things that help people to #dream better and form meaningful connections. If you wanna hang out with friendly computer weirdos in Minneapolis, lemme know.
Profile image description: a watercolor painting of a person with pale skin and brown and blue hair laughing. They have a side cut and an audio processor is visible behind their ear. The art style is loose and the eyes are squinched into little crescents.