if you are struggling with choosing which fundraisers to support, please consider donating to the following places providing medical aid, food, and other supplies to palestine at this time:

if you are looking for individual fundraisers to donate to but are struggling to choose, gazafunds gives a spotlight to fundraisers that are not close to their goal.

instead of watching and supporting eurovision tonight, please instead boost this post & donate if you can. keep your eyes on rafah.

BTW here's a coupon code for eSIMS

This is a long read, but worth it. Some takeaways:

-Don’t use “buy now pay later.” The fine print isn’t what it seems.

-The fine print on medical financing, store credit cards, and contactless payment is also not what it seems.

-Payday loans are still predatory, even when offered by your employer

-Rewards programs are an income stream for the companies that run them. The points systems are manipulated so that the house always wins. They depend on people leaving money in rewards accounts and not in interest-bearing traditional bank accounts.

-Electronic payment apps like VenMo are not banks. You don’t earn interest. Your money is not protected.

-Your financial information is not private if your money is not kept in a regulated bank.

-None of this is regulated by the FDIC. Your money is not protected if it is held by a non-bank doing banking business. Our economy is not protected from the collapse of financial institutions that are not banks.

-The Biden administration was making progress in increasing accountability for non-banks operating as predatory financial services providers. The current administration is reversing those protections to favor corporations.

Oh boy.

 A third of younger Americans hold their savings on nonbank tech platforms like Venmo

PEOPLE! DO NOT LEAVE YOUR MONEY IN VENMO OR APPLE PAY OR ANY OF THIS SHIT. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GO FIND A REAL BANK OR A CREDIT UNION.

If Venmo were to close tomorrow all your money would vanish. There's no insurance or guarantee on any of these things. I know banks aren't great but legit banks will have the "FDIC insured" logo on their doors and websites, which means if my bank goes under tomorrow I still get my money back. Also I guarantee you there is a credit union somewhere in your town, go find it.

You can leave some money in Venmo or Apple pay or whatever, but NOT ALL OF IT for the love of God.

FYI this is what the logo looks like and Apple Cash is FDIC insured.

No, it's misleading. Go to Green Dot's T&Cs, search for "FDIC," and you'll come across this:

In the event Green Dot Bank fails. Meaning the only time your money is protected is if Green Dot goes under. Not if Apple goes under (unlikely, granted). Or if Apple changes its terms (entirely possible). Or if you got scammed. Or if Apple freezes your account because they think you're the one scamming. Or any of the other countless mishaps your money could suffer. Green Dot is insured, but Apple Cash is not.

This is the disclaimer (highlighted) you see before you set up Apple Cash:

I really need my followers, especially younger ones, to read this.

And DO NOT get store credit cards, they are money sucks and difficult to cancel.

As someone who's worked in the industry for a decade now, here's a quick rundown (US specific,) of what your schools and parents didn't teach you:

Take this information and do your own research so that you can make an informed decision. Now you know what to look for! Don't be taken advantage of!

im not even the type of guy to go "actually it's frankenstein's MONSTER" because a painting by rembrandt or picasso or any other artist is often called "a rembrandt" or "a picasso" as shorthand. so in this respect frankenstein's monster can be considered "a frankenstein"

darling I love your 8 foot tall patchwork flesh creature, it really livens up the place. is that an authentic frankenstein?

it's only a true frankenstein if it was produced in the frankenstein region of switzerland. otherwise it's just a sparkling homunculus

I don't think there is a significant or notable number of people who believe transmascs are not oppressed.

I feel slightly insane just having to type this out, but this is rhetoric you inevitably come across if you discuss transfeminism on Tumblr.

The mainstream, cissexist understanding of transmasculine people is the Irreversible Damage narrative (one that's old enough to show up in Transsexual Empire as well) of transmascs as "misguided little girls", "tricked" into "mutilating themselves". It is a deliberately emasculating and transphobic narrative that very explicitly centers on oppression, even if the fevered imaginings misattribute the cause. As anyone who's dealt with the gatekeeping medical establishment knows, they are far from giving away HRT or even consults with both hands, and most transfems I know have a hard enough time convincing people to take DIY T advice, leave alone "tricking" anyone into top surgery.

Arguably, the misogyny that transmasculine folks experience is the defining narrative surrounding their existence, as transmasculinity is frequently and erroneously attributed to "tomboyish women" who resent their position in the patriarchy so much they seek to transition out of it. This rhetoric is an invisiblization of transmasculinity, constructed deliberately to preserve gendered verticality, for if it were possible to "gain status" under the sexed regime, its entire basis, its ideological naturalization, would fall apart.

Honestly, the actual discussions I see are centered around whether "transmisogyny" is a term that should apply to transmascs and transfems alike. While I understand the impetus for that discussion, I feel like the assertion that transmisogyny is a specific oppression that transfems experience for our perceived abandonment of the "male sex" is often conflated with the incorrect idea that we believe transmasculine people are not oppressed at all. This is not true, and we understand, rather acutely, that our society is entirely organized around reproductive exploitation. That is, in fact, the source of transfeminine disposability!

I know I'm someone who "just got here" and there is a history here that I'm not a part of, but so much of that history is speckled with hearsay and fabrication that I can't even attempt to make sense of it. All I know is that I, in 2024, have been called a revived medieval slur for effeminate men by people who attribute certain beliefs to me based on my being a trans woman who is also a feminist, and I simply do not hold those views, nor do I know anyone who sincerely does.

If you're going to attempt to discredit a transfeminist, or transfeminism in general, then please at least do us the courtesy of responding to things we actually say and have actually argued instead of ascribing to us phantom ideologies in a frankly conspiratorial fashion. I also implore people to pay attention to how transphobic rhetoric operates out in the wider world, how actual reactionaries talk about and think of trans people, instead of fixating so hard on internecine social media clique drama that one enters an alternate reality--a phantasm, as Judith Butler would put it.

Speaking of which--do y'all have any idea how overrepresented transmascs are in trans studies and queer theory? Can we like, stop and reckon with reality-as-it-is, instead of hallucinating a transfeminine hegemony where it doesn't exist? I'm aware a lot of their output isn't particularly explicative on the material realities of transmasculine oppression despite their prominence in the academy, but that is ... not the fault of trans women, who face extremely harsh epistemic injustice even in trans studies.

The actual issue is how invisiblized transmasculine oppression is and how the epistemicide that transmasculine people face manifests as a refusal to differentiate between the misogyny all women face, reproductive exploitation in particular, and the contours of violence, erasure, and oppression directed at specifically transmasculine people.

You will notice that is a society-wide problem, motivated by a desire to erase the possibilities of transmasculinity, to the point of not even being willing to name it. You will notice that I am quite familiar with how this works, and how it's completely compatible with a materialist transfeminist framework that analyzes how our oppression is--while distinct--interlinked and stems from the same root.

I sincerely hope that whoever needs to see this post sees it, and that something productive--more productive dialogue, at least--can arise from it.

legitimately worldview altering realisation and i'm not even employed right now

Marie Curie's notebooks are crazy once you think about it. They're so radioactive they have to be sealed in a lead box. Imagine a world where atomic theory is forgotten and a dude just goes "yea there's a book that details the secrets of the universe, the machinations of the creation of existence down to its barest essentials, but if you get close to it you fucking die. The more you read it the more your body slowly disassembles into mush." like wat excuse me

Are you ever just constantly struck by how women are not allowed to have body hair in film or TV

Im up there in his pussy like a dog drinking water

Last night I sat beside my baby Qais, cleaning his wound as he cried quietly, his small body shaking from pain and fear, and I felt the world turn away from us—I will not forgive being ignored without even a share.

His injury is worsening, infection is spreading, and medicine is out of reach while time runs out faster than my tears—please help us now, save my child, and keep him alive by donating today.

I am a mother begging with everything left in me: don’t scroll past Qais’s pain. A share, a prayer, or support can change his fate and give my baby a chance to heal.

Gofundme - Vetted#679

Baby Qais no longer plays, laughs, or sleeps peacefully—his days are measured by pain, infection, and waiting. Every minute without help steals his strength. Please donate now— don’t let this be his ending.

Tonight, I watch my baby fade while the world scrolls past us. Qais is not a story—he is a child bleeding, hurting, waiting. If you can hear me, please donate and save his life.

I press my hand against Qais’s wound and feel his tiny body shake from pain. His cries grow weaker, his eyes heavier. As a mother, I am breaking. Please—donate now. Help me keep my child alive.

Honestly if nothing else it simply proves the point that even someone who is "non-medical transition" and still uses the pronouns associated with their assigned sex at birth is Too Trans for transphobes the moment they come out. We've already seen this with other nonbinary celebrities such as Demi Lovato but it is just so unbelievably grating to see people claiming that nonpassing/nontransitioning trans people are somehow granted cis privilege when that is very obviously not the case.

Please look me in the eye and tell me that Ishii and Lovato and others like them are somehow receiving male privilege, cis privilege, and passing privilege simultaneously.

Green sea turtles have been an iconic endangered species since the 1980s, mostly due to bycatch in fishing nets and taking adults and eggs for food. I have core childhood memories of watching Steve Irwin talk about sea turtle conservation in front of a beach full of nesting green sea turtles.

After 45 years of conservation efforts, their population now meets the IUCN criteria for Least Concern rather than Endangered.

For a species with such a slow life history (it takes green sea turtles decades to reach sexual maturity) and a nearly global population, this is a Really Big Deal. This is the kind of long term conservation victory that many of the amazing humans who started working on green sea turtle conservation back in the 80s didn't live to see.

Just because something isn't fixed right away doesn't mean it won't ever be fixed. Just because the work is slow doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.

Probably the biggest mistake in Mistborn was not making Sazed non-binary. Ohhh the Hero of Ages prophecies use gender-neutral pronouns so we don’t know if they’re a man or a woman! But actually it’s because the Hero is not actually a man or woman. No that has nothing to do with Sazed’s gender, he always refers to himself as a man, is mostly comfortable in his masculinity outside a brief conversation or two with Tindwyl, and everyone else always considers him a man and uses gendered he/him pronouns for him BUT! He is a eunuch, making him not actually a man because man=penis. Sanderson your transmisogyny.

From the way the kandra talk about them, I think that Harmony might be shifting towards at least being fine with they/them pronouns. I just take it as Sazed not really having words for it/time to think too hard about his gender given his life.

I’ll take your word for Sazed/Harmony using different pronouns, since I haven’t read Era 2 yet. If that’s happening, I’m glad, and I have to admit that watching Sanderson change and become more accepting is a very interesting meta narrative in his work, but it certainly wasn’t implied at any point throughout Era 1 that Sazed was in any way not cisgender. You having time to think about his gender, but that’s pure headcanon.

My post was criticizing Sanderson, the author, for the choices he made in crafting his narrative and the biases they reveal. I was not arguing that Sazed is a non-binary character in Mistborn Era 1; I was saying that it was a mistake for him not to be written as one, because it is clear to me that Sanderson never intended Sazed to be non-binary. In my opinion, the way Sazed was written in Era 1 is as a cisgender man, and Sanderson writing that he fits the gender-neutral prophecy because he’s a eunuch and thus not a ‘real’ man is an unconsciously bigoted and somewhat lazy writing choice.

In essence:

Some video games really don’t let you make old people. You slide the age or maturity slider over and it barely does anything. I want to write the story of a grandma that likes shooting guns and causing problems is that really too much to ask

“This game lets you do anything!”

Well it doesn’t let me be a fat muscular grandpa so jot that down

I wanna roleplay as a weightlifting old man who has been divorced twice and likes punching demons but video games have decided this is unrealistic but dragons and plasma guns are not

I very genuinely need tumblr to understand that museums are as diverse as historians, egyptologists, archaeologists, and what have you in general. Like from the way people are talking you'd think that only straight white Western men are ever involved in these concepts, because the internet at large just loves to be able to get on their little high horsie about how they are sooo much more morally correcter than the Evil Other

Which is absolutely not a concerning attitude to have, not at all no sir

forgot I'm on the piss on the poor website so I'll spell it out: Western straight white men aren't per definition the Evil Other either

You know where the real danger is? Anti-intellectualism, the concept of moral purity, and opening your damn trap when you don't know shit about fuck

#also our job market is a hellscape and a lot of us aren't wealthy either and neither are our workplaces #many museums especially have SUCH a hard time affording anything rn #the days of museums as institutions and the humanities being a realm of wealth and prestige are well and truly over #this is a field that is being devalued constantly in a world that would love to believe everything important is digital #or about making money #and that's a fucking problem bc the whole thing of museums is that they offer easily accessible education #HOW is the “go to your local library” website so indifferent or even hostile towards museums#academia (via @veilchenjaeger)

Edward Said, Orientalism

reblogging again in light of recent events