the homosexuality persists

ghostofbriggiesmalls:

a-method-in-it:

You know that Chris Fleming line that goes “Call yourself a community organizer even though you’re not on speaking terms with your roommates”?

I honestly think every leftist who talks about the “revolution” like Christians talk about the rapture needs to spend a year trying to organize their workplace. Anyone who sincerely talks about building a movement so vast and all-encompassing that it overwhelms all existing power structures needs the dose of humility that comes with realizing they can’t even build a movement to get people paid better at a badly run AMC Theaters where everyone already hates the manager.

the real takeaway here is that organizing movements is *not* what most people think it is. This is where ideological purity on the front end destroys movements. This is why the left loses.

If you want change, you need power. If you want power, you need people. If you want people, you need a collective goal or objective.

You pick a target, something the left is garbage at. NOT EVERYONE NEEDS THE SAME TARGET AND YOU CANT DO EVERYTHING AS A SINGLE GROUP. You pick a target that is immediate, specific, and salient. This usually involves actually working with fucking people. You have to understand what they want and need to unite them around a common goal. You can’t just come in and say “I care about a walkable city and so should you, dumbass.” You have to come in and listen and learn about what people actually would unite around. Maybe they’re sick of having to pay so much time and money to commute because they can’t afford to live near their work.

Then you work together to develop a solution. With specifics. And goals. And tangible milestones. The “things should be better!”rallying cry is true, salient, and fully fucking useless. You find out what solution is most acceptable. What’s going to make an impact that people are going to feel and care about and fight for. The bigger the fix, the longer and harder the fight. Maybe it’s better public transit. Maybe it’s higher wages. Maybe it’s rent caps. Maybe it’s renters unions. You build a coalition of people around a common goal. They might not be from the same background, political ideology, etc. AND THATS OK. IN FACT, *THATS GOOD AND NORMAL AND HOW IT SHOULD BE.* (more on this later)

Then starts the hard, frustrating, boring slog of work. It takes WORK. It takes lots of people lots of time to attend meetings, develop talking points, work to get more people on board, develop plans and suggestions.

All the while people are still STRUGGLING. This is where so many orgs fall flat on their fucking faces. YOU NEED MUTUAL AID. Provide for people. Help them tangibly. Get them bought in. So many orgs either want to provide services but have no endgame, or want to fight for change but have no way to keep people in the fight. This is exactly how the Black Panther Party built power and truly threatened the status quo. MAKE PEOPLE LESS RELIANT ON CURRENT POWER STRUCTURES THAT ARE KILLING YOU.

Ok, but you’re not all ideologically pure. But you know what? This is where you build solidarity. Maybe your pro life coworker sees a single mom of 3 get pregnant and wrestle with what to do. She sees the humanity of people who are in these situations and how the world is shades of grey. Maybe the guy who isn’t homophobic but isn’t super comfortable with trans folks has car trouble and someone in the community helps out. That person has a trans sister and talks about how scared she is right now. This helps humanize the problem and help people see why they should care. Maybe this guy isn’t gonna fistfight a nazi, but maybe the next politician who starts trans bashing isn’t going to get his vote.

Now you’re building power. You’re getting momentum. You’re building community and you’re getting somewhere. But maybe you’re only still just dozens or hundreds in a sea of millions. Well boy howdy welcome to mutualism. Look across and see your fellow communities who are fighting their fights. See where there are bridges and common goals. Maybe the next city council meeting to discuss the budget for public transit gets your group AND the folks fighting for rent caps. And then you attend their city council meeting to shut out the bitching landlords complaining about new regulations.

NOW YOURE BUILDING REAL POWER. And not just in your movement. In your mutual aid too. Now people have more help. More folks who they can uplift and be uplifted by. And the power of the city council seems pretty small by comparison. In fact, the next election may see many of your group win seats.

But this is not easy. This takes time. This takes flexing communal muscles many have all but lost (definitely the case for us in the US). And it takes patience. And the willingness to put community over self. Yeah there are people who you don’t agree with now. But life isn’t about surrounding yourself on a bed of pillows to never struggle. I get it. It’s already hard. And getting harder by the day. So that bed looks really appealing. But we’re only digging the hole deeper. And the first rule of holes is to stop digging.

(via sauntervaguelydown)

sidetrek:

makin out in the hall, no one has to know

(via spockfascinated)

catgirl-catboy:

catgirl-catboy:

I’m taking away the word empathy from the NTs until they discover it isn’t a synonym for “giving a shit about people”

In an attempt to be less of a dick:

empathy is a brain function that some people (including me!) struggle with.

There are three types! Affective empathy, which is basically the ability to read other people’s emotions, Somatic empathy, the classic “I feel sad because you’re sad” and Cognitive empathy, which is the ability to accurately guess what people are thinking and feeling.

If you use empathy to mean “caring about other people” when you could use words like compassion, you’re implying a large subsection of the population (including people you may know) are heartless and bad simply because of the way they were born!

Not cool!

(via sauntervaguelydown)

derinthescarletpescatarian:

saxifraga-x-urbium:

saxifraga-x-urbium:

https://twitter.com/vagina_museum/status/1628046312275935232

YEAH

Highlighting that this is “considered quite rare” but in actuality we have absolutely no idea how common this, or indeed a great many variants in sexual development, are. Because if it’s not visible from the outside then we only learn about it if doctors (or coroners) go looking, and doctors only go looking if it’s causing a problem.

(via cock-holliday)

learn-how-to-love:

Something that happens to trans men and mascs when we come out is a sudden loss of support services we had when we were still perceived as women. Scholarships, housing, resources we might once have relied on for survival are now either barred from us or require us to endure subtle or overt misgendering in order to maintain access. Even for programs inclusive of all trans identities, it can require outing oneself which can be very dangerous for those forced to be stealth for survival. And unlike cis men, trans men and mascs do not have access to a lifetime of privileges afforded by the patriarchy. We may have had to cut contact with everyone we once knew, pick and choose who we interact with to prevent being outed and, in many cases, are very visibly trans regardless. We started out oppressed by the patriarchy, and now that we’ve transitioned we still are but now without access to resources that would be given to us unquestionably had we stayed “women”. It’s one of the biggest contributing factors to why ftm detransitioners are relatively more common, some people simply can’t afford to live their lives authentically when it means losing access to their means of survival.

(via therapatical)

bellad0nnaheart:

Something that I think gets understated (understandably so) by Tumblr transfems, and Tumblr trans people in general tbh, is how it does suck to be excluded from sports, actually.

I enjoy sports. I have enjoyed playing games for a lot of my life, I have enjoyed studying sports, tactics and players, their histories and drama, engaging in communities. When I was younger, I used sports to try and fit in with others, and now I’m older I am using sports to build a better relationship with my father.

But as a transfem, the culture is so hostile towards, not only my existence, but my engagement in sports. In every sports website, subreddit, forum I post on, I post anonymously, using a different account from my regular account and never ever mention my gender. When I go to games, I dare not wear the clothes that make me feel happy, and I especially don’t use the bathroom I feel most comfortable in, or correct people on my pronouns.

And there is no!!! safe!!! space!!! because trans people have been so thoroughly excluded from sports that finding any who have even a passive interest is extraordinarily rare. Even worse, I am never humoured. In the (very autistic) spaces I’m in, it is common courtesy to listen to people ramble about their TV shows, their blorbos, their niche horror podcasts. But that sympathy, that interest evaporates into thin air, replaced by a glassy facade if I so much as mention a ball. It’s so embarrassing as well, the way they look at me as if I’ve admitted that I was actually faking being a trans woman the whole time, I’ve finally let the mask slip and exposed the cis man, the predator, who’s been there the whole time whenever I talk about it.

I don’t expect people to relate or suddenly get into sports or whatever, but I want people to start being activists about it. Because whilst I know for a lot of you, losing sports from your life is inconsequential, hell it may even improve it, but it’s such a core part of me and my relationships and my past that the loss of it has genuinely damaged my personality. And to the trans people out there who are into sports I’m begging you to be more open about it.

(via cock-holliday)

wizardshark:

bisexual-engineer-enby:

skippyisntfunny:

Pulitzer Prize type shit

Why’s this dude built like crash bandicoot

(via overpoweredoriginalposter)

runawaymarbles:

Just went to a political talk and while there were some things I’d dispute, one of the speaker’s points boiled down to “if Black activists in the South could sit at a lunch counter and stay calm while people called them terrible names and threatened to kill them, you can take a deep breath and try and meet your uncle with love while arguing with him” and I will say. He does have a point there.

(via therapatical)

mefablead:

(via infamouslydorky)

sergeifyodorov:

the difference in performance between female and male athletes has far less to do with physiology and far more to do with the fact that boy athletes get the good coaches and the best ice time slot and the set of baby skates and the girl athletes get to change in the bathroom and to know that this won’t be a career for them

(via mtreebeardiles)

transfemmbeatrice:

sometimes the cool worldbuilding leads to great porn. sometimes the great porn leads to cool worldbuilding. this is known as the circle of life

(via lymantriidae)

officecyborg:

grawly:

every time I think about Dilbert I think about this comic and how the question being asked is Not Stupid and its answer is genuinely interesting and arguably very important information anyone using a computer should know

(via sauntervaguelydown)

chaumas-deactivated20240115:

chaumas-deactivated20240115:

it’s frustrating when you’re talking about an inherently oppressive institution that dehumanizes everyone who is subjected to it and someone is like “it’s especially bad for those it is incorrectly applied to!” as though being the intended victim of an injustice makes it less of a tragedy

been thinking about this lately after some discussions about historical marriage where people have chimed in about how extra awful it would have been for trans men forced into The Wife Role because of dysphoria. which like. yeah. but the thing about The Wife Role in the context of not having civil rights and being the property of a husband is that it is inherently dysphoria-inducing to anyone who identifies as a human being instead of an object.

(via sauntervaguelydown)

lindleland:

lindleland:

lindleland:

lindleland:

the most noble professions are

3. line cooks. unsung warriors fighting in unreasonable conditions to make food that taste good.

2. sanitation worker. working at risk to carry out unpleasant tasks without which society would collapse within days. actual heroes

1. artists who draw blowjobs good

oh shit i made a mistake

the most noble professions are ACTUALLY:

4. line cooks.

3. sanitation workers.

2. artists who draw blowjobs good

1. whores

lmao they blocked me

in fairness they are called startsargumentsforattention not finishesargumentsforattention

(via overpoweredoriginalposter)

conflipt:

turns out that people deserve to exist and be happy

(via thorne1435)

ramlightly:

The first page of my new comic, “No Peeking”! Currently this is an updating patreon exclusive.

I’m trying a lot of new stuff here that I hope people will join me for. Expect some developing relationship dynamics and horny lake hijinks! You can read the next page right now on my patreon

(via taylor-titmouse)