uncle-fruity

[uncle-fruity]

I'm begging other trans people to read an ounce of Black Feminist or Decolonialist Feminist writing. I'm on my hands and knees and begging you. I promise you, I promise you, there is so much more to Feminist theory than anything you have picked up from White/Radical/Pop/Liberal Feminism I promise you. Read There Is No Hierarchy Of Oppressions By Audre Lorde. I have a link to the PDF right here you can read it for free. Take my hand I can't do this alone (thanks glass beach). Peace And Love On Planet Earth.

#for later reading #intersectional feminism #resources #important #psa

[uncle-fruity]

Don't worry, it probably will!

[sits up suddenly in a cold sweat] what if my corpse doesn't rot

[uncle-fruity]

To OP's credit, I think warm milk would probably be pretty good in cereal.

IM SO SICK OF YOU ALL

No nuance allowed. please share for a bigger sample 💕💕💕💕💕

*by eat i mean how do you prefer your cereal.

#my grandpa always gave me a warm glass of milk before going to bed when i was little #it's quite pleasant

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some of my favorite replies to this tweet. happy lesbian visibility week!

#lesbian visibility week #queer #love to see it

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I cant believe this tweet is how I find out

#children deserve rights! #important #psa

[uncle-fruity]

have you made a baeddel blocklist yet?

I recommend getting comfortable with the fact that you will encounter people who suck on the internet, developing your ability to understand why certain things suck and why certain ways of thinking are harmful, and committing to simply blocking people you do not want to interact with as you come across them. instead of relying on strangers to tell you who you should or should not talk to.

I say this with as much compassion as possible, knowing I have used blocklists in the past: you do not know what my standards are for categorizing someone as a "baeddel" (as opposed to, say, a random trans woman who has some unpacked baggage about masculinity). You should not trust that I will be sufficiently diligent and discerning when placing people on such a list. Maybe you're willing to take that risk when blocking people on your own blog, but you definitely shouldn't be comfortable seeing that kind of list posted publicly to a blog with thousands of followers. Particularly when trans women are facing a lot of unprompted harassment as it is, and are coming under fire from tumblr staff themselves.

Baeddelism is harmful, and I don't think it's a bad idea to block anyone who proudly- with full knowledge of what that word means- calls themselves one right now. I'm not going to circulate a list of trans women with bad opinions, though, and I really caution you to think about what that ask really means.

#this is a refreshingly responsible answer #so true op #important #psa #gotta learn to think for yourselves

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why is this so accurate? 💀 🐪 🏜

#this made me laugh #lmao #so fucking true

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I don't think younger/newer users fully grasp the shit show that ace discourse was around 2014-17

It was so hostile that, to this day, discussions that begin to derail just enough can make me physically nauseous, some specific mockery trigger crying sessions years later. We lost most accounts with any sort of ace positivity. There was no information, no support, and all this damage was done predominantly by other queer people.

All this to say that you, however you identify yourself, should be engaging with aphobic comments the same way you do any hate. We don't sugarcoat or try to be comprehensive with people who are blatantly racist, homophobic or terfs, so why give it a pass just because it's coming from a queer person? I see how this tolerance goes and it's done enough damage as it is.

#these tactics sound v familiar #i remember some of this discourse #tho i wasn't very active on tumblr back then #important #queer #psa #ace #aro #asexual #aromantic

[uncle-fruity]

Transfem to Transmasc solitary must exist as much as any trans solidarity must exist.

Protect my boys.

#trans solidarity #trans #important #psa

[uncle-fruity]

Voting is a tool.

By which I mean, voting is just a tool; it isn't sacred or magical.

And by which I also mean, voting is one tool that is good for one kind of purpose. If it isn't suitable for the goal you're trying to achieve, you need different tools.

Every time someone makes a post on here rightly criticizing Joe Biden's support for genocide, there's at least one person in the notes saying "but remember, you still have to vote for him!" or, "did you know Trump wants to deport Muslims?" or, "then who do you want me to vote for?"

But that's like going into a plant nursery and demanding they sell you the correct drill bit for planting a tree. They will never sell you the drill bit you want, because the drill bit you want--the drill bit suitable for planting trees--doesn't exist, and also plant nurseries don't sell drill bits.

Standing in the plant nursery asking about drill bits will probably initially get you people explaining to you where to find a shovel, and a watering can, and some mulch, because those are tools that will help you plant the tree. If you ignore the attempts to educate you, and start yelling about how they must just want you to throw away your drill, and also they probably hate trees and hate you and want you, personally, to suffer in a world without shade, you'll start getting different answers, like "please stop shouting" and "I'm going to have to ask you to leave now."

Because you're demanding that they tell you how to use the wrong tool for the job. They can never give you the answer you want; the answer you want doesn't exist.

I can't tell you who to vote for to prevent the rise of fascism in the United States, both because you can't prevent something that's already happened, and because you can't vote your way out of fascism.

You need different tools; you need to ask different questions and be willing to sit with the answers, even if they aren't the answers you want.

Boycotts are a tool. Protests are a tool. Shutting down highways, physically blocking weapons shipments, picketing arms companies, those are tools. So is going to your library and checking out books about Palestine, and about decolonization generally.

Instead of asking which war criminal you should vote for, perhaps ask how you can organize members of your community to support and look after each other and keep each other safe. Perhaps ask how you can support Land Back and prison abolition. Ask how you can organize a union in your workplace.

The tool you're most comfortable using isn't going to work for this job. Learn how to use another.

#now THIS is a refreshing take #and i think exactly how i feel about voting in this upcoming election #i have no interest in telling people how to vote bc i know voting won't fix anything #at least not in the way we need it to #and i hear folks who are saying harm reduction is key #and i agree that that is one decent function of voting #but i think ppl stop thinking beyond writing their congressperson and voting blue #sure those things might marginally help #but we should not have to persist on breadcrumbs and the promises of hypocrites & career politicians #like vote however you like #maybe dems will be better for certain groups of folks #but please please please recognize that Biden and MANY of the Dems are already fascists #they will continue to be fascist #and they will continue to pretend to be our only allies in a world full of enemies #but they are not allies #they have a reason for saying those things #there's personal gain for them in appealing to marginalized folks #anyway #don't trust smiling tigers #and don't dismiss ppl's informed criticism of Biden out of hand #and for the love of god STOP with the 'vote blue no matter who' shit #try on 'i respect your decision even though i disagree with it' for size #and then actually listen to what people have to say about it #okay #for real #I'm done ranting in the tags

[uncle-fruity]

I mean, literary knights probably just functioned as propaganda for historical institutions of knighthood, no? I'm genuinely asking this, because I will not claim to have looked that hard into the subject.

I just think about how a lot of modern USAmerican feature films are basically pro-military & pro-cop propaganda hidden under the fantastical tales of superheroes and thriller dramas. It seems not only plausible but extremely likely that literary knights were idealized propaganda to soften people's perception of the real deal.

Then again, I am operating on some assumptions here. Would love to hear if anyone who really knows about these topics has any insight.

i entirely get why people are like "actually knights were historically land-owning nobles waging war on people" and reminding people that idealised modern conceptions of knights are not historically accurate, it's just really really funny given that people have been idealising the institution of knighthood since like. the twelfth century or earlier, go take it up with fucking chrétien de troyes

#interesting #knights #literary knights #historical knights

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I found a stack of my old high school art that I didn't think I still had, and it's actually pretty goddamn good. I forgot how much I used to do in ballpoint. Our teacher had us start doing it to build confidence and train ourselves out of making dark sketchy marks that cluttered the page, and I kept doing it for a long time out of habit.

Maybe I should do that again. It helped a lot.

#i love discovering old art #especially the kind that i can look at and be retroactively impressed with myself #i believe in keeping old sketchbooks & old artworks

[uncle-fruity]

Yup! I'm about to be 32 in a couple weeks. I'll be about 3 years on T in August. When I was 18, I straight up did not know being trans was a real option. All my experience with trans people leading up to actually meeting one was transmisogynistic media tropes and the ONLY mention of trans men I'd ever heard of up until my mid-20s was from when I was a kid. My mom allegedly briefly dated a trans man and during the custody battles she had with my dad, this guy was brought up in court (as a slight against her, I might add). My dad was the first one to tell me about this, probably when I was somewhere around 8-11, laughing about the guy she dated and bragging about calling him "it" due to his being trans. And before anyone gets the wrong idea, my mom is just as shitty as my dad -- if not moreso. Her dating a trans guy briefly does not and did not make her into a less bigoted person. There's mixed accounts as to whether she knew the guy was trans at all before they broke up.

I basically had to cut myself off from my parents (unrelated to my queerness, but I'm certain it would have been a hassle & their attitude towards queerness definitely contributed to me suppressing those parts of myself) before I could even consider transitioning. Even then, I took an extra couple of years to consider how I wanted to transition. I'm a nonbinary genderqueer guy, so I was debating whether I was comfortable going on T or not. And even after I'd done my research and soul searching about what I wanted, I was only able to get HRT so quickly because I was lucky. Planned Parenthood started offering HRT services, which was huge for me, not having insurance at the time. I was lucky that the system was based on informed consent, instead of having to jump through a billion humiliating hoops after waiting 3+ years to get it. And I still don't know if I should get top surgery, in part because I still don't have decent insurance, I definitely don't have the money to just cover the procedure, and I'm not sure that I could manage having that much required recovery time. I'm not rich and I don't have parents to lean on for help. I transitioned well past the age folks are currently deeming an "acceptable" transitioning timeline, on the grounds that in the early 2000s, people were still debating whether the most milquetoast gays & lesbians you can imagine should be allowed to exist. The bigots did everything in their power to make it seem like trans people *didn't* exist. The visibility we as a community face is just not how it was when I was a kid, and I didn't know that gender was something you could explore and play with beyond general nonconformity (which was at best side-eyed and at worst punished).

I can't speak for what the kids are facing today. I think, in a lot of ways, it's a lot harder than I had it. My ignorance of being trans partially shielded me from the struggle that being trans as a kid is. I had a lot of feelings I didn't have words for, which was a struggle in its own right, but I never had the threat of being beaten to death in my high school bathroom hanging over my head. (Of course, I'm speaking on my own experiences. I went to school with a guy who later came out as trans and boy was he punished & bullied in the girls locker room for his nonconformity. Perhaps he DID have the weight of that fear on his shoulders. We all have different experiences.) While general acceptance of queerness has gone up (great!), trans folks have become the central discussion and attacking points for bigoted adults who didn't even want the milquetoast gays to run around untethered. These kids are on the frontlines of a battle they inherited & never signed up for. Not only is there institutional power trying to hold them down and force them to assimilate, but there are so many societal pressures that come along with it. The added pressure from our very own community to transition young is not only unrealistic, but absolutely not an option for some people. Whether they are poor, have unsupportive parents/adults in their life, are restricted by the laws of their country, or simply just need time to think it over (which is ALWAYS a valid & important use of your time) -- there will always be people who don't transition immediately the moment they realize it. They still have to bear the weight of the transphobia, along with the weight of not being trans in the most "correct and inspirational" way.

Anyway, trans people have vastly different experiences and goals and needs and priorities. No one has to transition at any particular age to be living their transness the ~acceptable~ way. Most people literally cannot. If you can only imagine one kind of trans person, you gotta expand your mind & realize we are all growing up in different environments with different levels of support behind us. Please do not assume it's so easy for everyone who wants to transition. It is decidedly NOT.

Do you ever talk to someone and they bring up trans men and it because very clear very quickly the only trans men they have talk too are the rich white trans guys who can afford to fully transition at a young age and didn’t have to deal with most of the shit other trans guys had too.

Like no I don’t think the dude who got top surgery at 16 is an accurate representation of every single trans guy ever.

#transgender #trans issues #transition timeline #queer #psa #important #about me

[uncle-fruity]

listen to me very very closely: the biblical prohibition against mixing linen and wool is the most SENSIBLE THING IN THE WORLD, do not write it off as silly, unreasonable, or unnecessary. g-d didn’t tell us not to mix linen and wool for no reason, g-d told us not to mix linen and wool together because mixing them is an affront to textiles

#quite an interesting thread #i always find the historical reasons behind religious law to be fascinating #not here to weigh in #it's way out of my depths #but i find it interesting to read about #maybe you will too

[uncle-fruity]

When I was a kid, maybe 14 or so (which is, you know, 20+ years ago), I belonged to a Yahoo! mailing list for an anime called Gundam Wing. It was mostly populated by other teens, of varying ages, as it was started by a teen and her friends. Eventually it migrated, when Yahoo! groups started as forums, and even branched off into non-GW related stuff in a second forum.

One of the things I remember the most clearly is the oldest person in the group. Her name was Steelsong. She was a 40-something Dom with a sub whose name we knew even though we knew nothing else. She ran her own fanfic archive because the web was still handmade HTML and navigated in webrings and I’m pretty sure Google didn’t exist or was only barely, barely launched and not well known. She was kind and patient and we loved her. She treated everyone on the group with the respect given any adult, even though most of the rest of the world was still treating us like we were children. Not teenagers even, but children. She never once condescended to any of us, never made our youth a barrier to her respect, never treated us like we were incapable of being full people or like we were less than her because we were young.

I remember that she hosted our fanfiction, as absolutely terrible as it was (and I still have some of it, I am WELL aware of how cringingly terrible it is, just absolute nonsense garbage), right there alongside of other fic that was soul-achingly beautiful. Not a separate section for her friends or for kids, just right there like we were good enough to feature alongside other authors. I never once received crit from her that I didn’t ask for, only support. Only love. I am still writing today partly because Steel was so kind about our fic, fanfic and original.

I remember that when I started doing clay sculpture, she commissioned a tiny pair of dragons from me, to support me doing artwork. She sent a check my mom cashed for me, and my mom helped me mail it when it was finished. It broke in transit, and Steel assured me that she mended it and that it was still beautiful. It was a small gold dragon curled up with a small silver dragon.

I remember that her patience knew no bounds. I remember that she was there for us, regardless of reason. When we wanted to know silly things like what to do with a single AA battery, she answered. When we had serious questions about sex, she answered.  When we had questions about writing, she taught us. When one of our group members, a young gay teen in Australia, ended up in the hospital and then stopped making posts, and we all knew what had happened, she let us talk to her about it because we couldn’t go to our own parents, even though we had just lost a friend.

She was not a replacement to my parents, but she was an extra parent, in some ways. A friend, certainly, but someone that had been through more life than we had and was willing to pass on knowledge if we asked for it. Someone older that we trusted with things that were too uncomfortable to go to our parents or teachers or whatever about, because we already knew she wasn’t going to judge us or something, and that we would get an honest answer.

I don’t know why I’m remembering this so hard tonight, and I’m not sure if there’s a point to sharing this, except that I know she’s gone now. She was ill the last time we spoke, and her site went down a long time ago, and I miss her. She was a huge influence on my life, then and now. She was hope, for me, that life as an adult didn’t have to be boring, it wouldn’t have to mean giving up the things I loved and Becoming Only Responsible With No Fun. Her presence meant I had hope I could still write and play with friends even when I wasn’t ‘a kid’ anymore. And she’s gone, and I miss her, and I wanted to share her from the perspective of youth, and the perspective over twenty years later has provided me.

And I think of her, when people go off about older folks being in fandom with younger folks. I’m an older folks now, or at least middle aged folks because there are certainly folks older than me still, but I wasn’t always. I’ve been here since i was a younger folks, and I know how much Steel’s presence and support meant to me, how much she helped not just me but everyone on that group. And I think of the people saying older folks don’t belong in fandom, and that they shouldn’t interact with younger folks at all, and I just think… I can’t agree. I needed that kind of solid presence in my life back then and even at the age I am now, I need the folks older than me to stay. I want them here.

So I guess, like, if you’re here and you’re 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or whatever, I want you here in fandom with me, still. Your presence here is a comfort. It is hope. It is a reminder that life will continue to be fun, even as I get older, myself. And if you’re younger and you have this sort of elder in your groups, I hope that they are like Steel. I hope they are kind and patient and supportive, and that knowing them gives you hope for your own future. I hope in twenty years you look back and remember them fondly.

#this was so sweet to read #fandom

[uncle-fruity]

Can't Help But Feel Like Somebody's Watching

#painting #art #cool #eye

[uncle-fruity]

the smallest artist i listen to? probably the bird outside my window

#cute~ #:3 #support small artists