#what the spork? im speakin here!

[bellaswansong]

message for girls: you can be a boy too. you dont have to stop being a girl to be a boy. if you dont want to be a girl you can stop, but you can also keep being a girl and be a boy at the same time. you can be a trans man and still be a woman if you want. if your womanhood is real to you and not just an imitation of what you think you're supposed to be doing, the way a lot of trans men describe, you can keep doing womanhood and just start doing manhood alongside it. and even if yours is an imitation you can keep it forever if you want to, if it is dear to you, you do not have to give it up to be valid.

and btw if your womanhood is hard-won and you feel like any hint of manhood is a threat to your validity, you can still have both things if you want both of them. you can be a trans woman and also a man if you wanna. you don't have to but if you want to, you can.

also no matter what kind of womanhood you have you can stop doing it whenever you need to. including if your womanhood is sincere and genuine btw. and it doesnt have to mean you were never a woman. you can do whatever you want forever i love you

#bigender #multigender #trans #'message for boys' additions are welcome too #what the spork? im speakin here!

[bellaswansong]

reblog to make it more fun hehehe

#what the spork? im speakin here! #polls #bug race

[bellaswansong]

reblog to make it more fun!

#what the spork? im speakin here!

[bellaswansong]

my toxic trait is that every time i read about an undeciphered inscription or an entire undeciphered language on wikipedia, i think "show me the data i bet i can do this"

#linguistics #linguist humor #what the spork? im speakin here!

[bellaswansong]

alternative terms to nonverbal

putting this in the tag so nonverbal and nonspeaking people know what to ask others to say instead

people who sometimes lose speech need alternatives to nonverbal because nonverbal is a term that is for people who do not speak ever and will never speak. they do not want this term watered down.

here are the words i use:

wordlost: this is a temporary state. it is when you aren't going to be using words on your own. aac possibly still works, like word emojis and flashcards, and you might be able to read text out loud if it is composed for you, but you probably cannot use most words without seeing them or hearing them, and they might be difficult to arrange into sentences even once you have them. you also might still experience vocal tics including words, or echolalia including words.

talklost/speechlost: this is a temporary state. it is when you cannot speak your own words with your mouth. typing or writing words yourself still works. you might not be able to read out loud, either, but sometimes being speechlost just comes from not being able to compose your words and say them with your mouth all at once; some people might be able to type and then read out their own words while speechlost, or the same person might be able to sometimes and not others. you might also still experience vocal tics including words, or echolalia including words.

you can be speechlost and wordlost at the same time!

the first two sentences of each definition are the most important. the rest is just explaining and giving examples so please do not use that part to "gotcha" anyone unless it is to include more. do not use it to exclude others though because there are probably things i did not think of.

there is room for more terms of this format too, but i don't have those experiences, so i wouldnt know what to put in the explanations.

anyway i hope this helps!

PEOPLE IN SYSTEMS CAN USE WORDLOST AND SPEECHLOST ALSO.

oh also if you want to, you can say you are wordfound or speechfound after you stop being wordlost or speechlost! the phrase "trying to get wordfound" repeats in my head a LOT when im wordlost.

#nonverbal #actually autistic #nonspeaking #what the spork? im speakin here! #actually plural

[bellaswansong]

episode 30: mayday

#wolf 359 spoilers #wolf 359 #do NOT give me spoilers #what the spork? im speakin here!

[bellaswansong]

guy whos never seen any musical but heathers during the bath scene of "nerdy prudes must die": getting a lot of jdronica vibes from this

#nerdy prudes must die #what the spork? im speakin here!

[bellaswansong]

sometimes (not for everyone, not for every disability) an ability that you previously did not have for whatever reason will suddenly be available to you. and you can just use it. more than before maybe, or perhaps even whenever you want.

i spent my entire life unable to catch things that are thrown to me. i would try every time but always miss.

ive noticed, though, that in the past year or so, i have caught things. i have reached out to catch them and pulled my hands back having successfully caught them. im making this post because i just made the following catch (but with both hands; i had to use one to take the photo, so the photo just has one hand)

THERE WAS AN OBSTACLE! i was already grimacing in anticipation of explaining that i can't catch things very well.

and then i caught it. I CAUGHT THE KITKAT BAR. catching things feels like having superpowers to me. i feel like im gonna save the city or something idk

so! what's an ability that YOU'VE recently gained access to, or gained more access to? whether it just clicked or you moved somewhere more accessible or you got an assistive device for it. i wanna hear! tell me about your new superpower!

#disability #actually disabled #what the spork? im speakin here!

[bellaswansong]

american schoolchildren (particularly white suburban kids) need to be exposed to nonstandard varieties of english from a young age. kids need to be given the chance to learn how to understand people from all kinds of backgrounds. it is fucking appalling that at age 13 i couldnt understand the indian accent used by a moderator of the timed academic competition i was in. i should have been taught that in school.

they say they want to prepare us for the work force. there are black people in the work force, but i wasn't taught that african american english is just as grammatical and consistent as standard english until i went to college for linguistics. there are countless companies with entire branches in india, but i never heard a single indian accent in school until college. bayer, a german company, bought monsanto recently, but my only exposure to german accents was fiction until recently. learning to understand unfamiliar accents is VITAL for reducing employment discrimination, because language-trait-focused discrimination is often a substitute for discrimination based on race, country of origin, and class.

our schools need to show documentaries with voiceover in nonstandard English. our schools need to teach children that their own goodwill is essential to the process. that they will fail to connect with someone who is perfectly competent in english communication unless they learn to put in the work.

if you have trouble understanding certain accents, i urge you to work on this and find things to watch or listen to in those accents.

i would really appreciate it if this post blew up, because getting this idea out into the general tumblr community would be a great start to making it actually happen. if a lot of your followers are educators or pre-education students, a reblog (or any post you want to make about this yourself, if you can explain it better) would be especially valuable.

thank you for reading!

#what the spork? im speakin here! #lingblr #langblr

[bellaswansong]

hey guys is it just me or have we all been interpreting "never love an anchor" completely wrong this whole time? i finally gave in and listened to it a while back, and yeah, its super good (it gets stuck in my head all the time) but i think it's actually about something else

the line that stuck with me was "never tied your shoes." it just seemed a little out of place for the romantic reading of the song. now im not great at interpreting the entire meaning of a song just from listening to it, so i looked up the lyrics and it just made me even more sure

let's start with the last two stanzas:

"you are someone i have loved but never known" doesn't seem to me like it fits a romantic relationship very well; i realise that you can feel like you dont know someone if theyre super closed off, but the rest of the song seems like the singer is apologising for being closed off or inaccessible or not allowing someone to love them, and if we take it as the person being too closed off to get to know, this feels like a break from the previously described dynamic, as if the singer is reversing their positions.

"never soothed your fevers," "never tied your shoes," "never held you gently," all of these are things that parents do. "never had the chance to lose you" also just doesn't make sense if the feelings are romantic, because even if you never express your feelings for someone it still feels like a loss when you lose them.

and if we apply this parenthood interpretation to "you are someone i have loved but never known," it almost seems like the singer is talking about a child who died or a pregnancy they aborted, but the next stanza contradicts that by addressing the child as if they are still alive and able to interact with others; "i am all the things they might've said to you."

so i think this is about giving a child up for adoption.

the rest of the song still makes sense, too. here's the first two stanzas:

"it's a secret i keep tucked inside my chest" - it is so so so common for women who give up a child for adoption to keep it a secret from family and future partners. my grandmother had a child between marriages, gave it up for adoption, and then listed it as a past stillbirth on the birth certificates of all her kids after that.

"with this heart of mine that's guilty, not remorseful" - regret is one of the most COMMON things people talk about feeling when they miss their chance to confess to a romantic interest. this line does not fit with that interpretation, but it does fit with the adoption idea. the narrator is not remorseful because they know this was the best option for the child.

"i couldn't bring myself to hold you" this one just hurts man

and finally the middle stanza, which i think is the most ambiguous, but also hits the hardest when you have this meaning in mind:

(umbilical cord metaphor btw)

ok thats all. sorry about your ships but i think this song is about putting your newborn child up for adoption

#the crane wives #never love an anchor #trafficblr #the first draft of this post was just 'imagine giving a child up for adoption and then listen to never love an anchor again.' #'maybe youll get it this time' #but that seemed too mean lol #what the spork? im speakin here!

[bellaswansong]

playing strip poker with an onion. weeping at the sight of her naked body.

#what the spork? im speakin here!

[bellaswansong]

hi when i was 7 i was labelled as "gifted" (bullshit) (bad) and i spent the rest of my public school career in programs. age 9 i was moved into an all-day every day gifted program supervised by adults who told us things like "the normal rules dont apply to you" (what the fuck) (irresponsible) and "normal kids probably won't get you" (oh my god) (literal adults telling this to me, a 9 year old, surrounded by peers who had been told this since they were 6) (so i am sure you can imagine how fucking unbearable all of us were)

anyway i figure im qualified to comment on a selection of Opinions™ from the tags of yet another post by someone who remembers how annoying people like me were in school and has never moved on or considered how the adults responsible for that factored into things.

hi! i had a 504 plan in high school. i should have had an IEP but the school refused to even consider that because i was in the gifted program. four of my same-grade peers also had 504 plans and there were about 15 of us. there were 400 people total in my grade.

the point: you probably know how the gifted program worked at your school, but none of this shit was standardised, so when you see a "gifted" kid on the internet, you have no way of knowing if things were the same for them. where i am from, most of the gifted kids were either diagnosed with Problems or refused sufficient accommodations based on their "gifted" label.

so true go off. no comments here. i was not retaining SHIT, those books were a dissociation aid <3

i blame my feelings of inadequacy and sadness on the fact that i was told i was inadequate daily because i failed to live up to a coercively applied label. i was not special and it was irresponsible to tell my parents that i was. if someone was affected by the "gifted" label to the point they are still talking about it, there is a high chance they were abused by parents and teachers. "imagine being a real adult and being affected by your childhood in a way that i can misinterpret in bad faith" "imagine being a real adult and having stuff to say about your abusive childhood" stfu about "gifted" kids forever <3

it is the gifted program that sets the demands our parents enforce. it is the gifted program that told our parents they should expect miracles from us. maybe my parents would have abused me for my grades either way, but the shape of their abuse is inextricable from the trappings of "giftedness" and i am not going to pretend like none of their tools came directly from my teachers.

true go off

anyway why is the validity of our experiences questioned based on the behaviour of high schoolers? a lot of us behaved sooo fucking poorly in school but that doesn't make it ok to assume all of us are overdramatic liars.

you have sympathy for the troubled kids who were hated by authority but as soon as someone with the same problems is singled out by adults and held to impossible standards you treat it like a reward when it's just a different form of abuse.

if you feel like youd rather withstand whatever i went through if it only meant you could access the opportunities i failed to grasp, that is your own damn business. abuse that would be worth it to you is still abuse.

#what the spork? im speakin here! #salt #gifted

[bellaswansong]

#polls #what the spork? im speakin here!

[bellaswansong]

trans woman who has a dick and uses a packer to have a second girlbulge

#is this anything #what the spork? im speakin here!

[bellaswansong]

#everyone who voted when will my stream begin over the rest of these in the first poll is wrong #joe hills #what the spork? im speakin here!

[bellaswansong]

dracula got taken off the app store. yeah, for microbetransactions. yeah, he was selling dirt crates

#dracula daily #what the spork? im speakin here!