alicepire

[alicepire]

Uh oh

So, I saw the James Gunn Superman movie last night and I'm pretty sure I'm going to hate the Supergirl movie. Unless the Supergirl movie is going to show major character growth, the set up has me sure they're going with a version of the character that just isn't what I'm interested in (trying to be vague to avoid spoilers).

I forgot how bad James Gunn is with female characters in general. That's really on display in this film. That man really needs to grapple with his inability to see women as equals. Some truly horrific things were played off for laughs in this film, and he squandered arguably the best Lois Lane portrayal ever.

Aside from the women thing, the movie was mostly pretty good. It was fun. I acknowledge that it was mostly a good story and just wasn't the kind of Superman story I'm interested in. I'll go into more detail once enough time has passed that I can say spoilers.

[alicepire]

two bros, both alike in sexuality

in a hot tub, where we lay our scene

[alicepire]

Ooh. Subluxation sounds like a very helpful word for what my knees, hips, elbows, sternum and something in my neck do a few times a week. Thank you! Dislocation was too extreme, but also the bones weren't where they belonged and I didn't know what else to use. Thank you for this!

My neck subluxated while on a video call with my therapist, and her reaction was akin to when the child's head starts spinning in The Exorcist.

She went white as a sheet. I saw her pupils contract.

And there was me muttering "mother fucker" under my breath and slotting my neck back into place like a mild inconveinance.

It's wild the shit you get used to.

[alicepire]

This is awesome for trans and intersex people, and something I wholeheartedly encourage from that lens. But by being deliberately exclusionary in this way, these people are also making these health messages less useful for cis people.

When "women's health" comes up, it's always a mystery of "is this for breasts, vaginas or uteruses?" Which body part are they avoiding actually mentioning today? Hysterectomies are far more common than you'd expect, I was shocked to find out how many people have had them. If your "women's health" message is only subtly alluding to functioning uteruses and periods, then it's not relevant to menopausal women, trans women, many intersex women, and a surprisingly large number of cis women of "child bearing age". It also might not be reaching non-binary people or trans men who might actually need it. Not all vagina owners are uterus owners, whether the vagina is original or handmade.

The amount of time I have wasted trying to work out if a "women's health announcement" was relevant to me, only to discover it was about cervical cancer or pregnancy or something mentioned in cutesy terms at the end is maddening. It means I start disregarding "women's health" messaging that could actually be relevant for me.

Being precise when talking about medical things isn't just for "woke" or whatever term pearl clutches are using to refer to people who are different to them and they are afraid of. Precision means advice reaches the people who need it, even if they don't fit the incredibly narrow definition of whichever binary sex you're imagining exists.

really not sure when it happened or why but personally I'm pissed that the queer community at large seems to have given up ground on the "people with penises/vulvas/testes/ovaries" language to sex & gender essentialists in exchange for the much less precise, much more demeaning "AGAB" language.

is it because you're scared of the word vulva? of acknowledging out loud that some people have penises? of recognising that many many people, including but certainly not limited to trans people, have mixed sex characteristics that cannot be accurately summarised by "afab/amab" as shorthand for "female/male"?

"in [GENITAL RELATED] situation AFABs will need to do X and AMABs will need to do Y" there are "afabs" with penises and "amabs" with vulvas. Saying this shit makes you look so unserious & honestly transphobic (given the ongoing erasure of post-op trans people within broader community). Intersex people and GRS have both existed for long enough (fucking forever and, decades, respectively) that we should well past making this basic fucking mistake.

quit referring to people by a vague & often violent event that happened at their birth as though it defines ANYTHING about how they & their body currently operate, and start using precise language so you at least look like you know what you're fucking talking about.

[alicepire]

They do the same thing with Prince William

Molting male cardinals are so funny looking and whenever it's time for them to molt birding groups are flooded with concerned posts like is there something wrong with this bird? And it's like no he's fine he's just bald right now

[alicepire]

No, it’s ok. Australia isn’t real.

weird to think we're all on here interacting with australians. any given user on ur dash could be an australian, if you think about it

[alicepire]

Easiest weight loss I ever had was losing over a litre of tumours when I had my hysterectomy. Telling people my secret when they commented on it made them very uncomfortable.

[alicepire]

I have been on this website too long

Gatekeeping is so good and important

[alicepire]

Can’t wait for, like, 2025 when we look back on the 2018/2019 era and say “hey, remember when we were all really freaking depressed? That was a crazy time! Glad we aren’t like that anymore”

[alicepire]

As an Australian with a toddler, this is deeply concerning.

Studies show that babies are not afraid of snakes

Scientists launched reptiles into the nursery to assess the reaction of the kids. The result killed: the crumbs perceived the reptiles as toys, and some tried to eat them

[alicepire]

there are two competing sects on this website - one that uses the word "spicy" to mean "neurodivergent" and one that uses the word "spicy" to mean "sexual content." i do not like either of them

[alicepire]

I just think it's fun that it's considered elder abuse to stop your relative with dementia from keeping indentured servants, when he has already stated in writing how he plans to mistreat his indentured servants. Apparently you just can't do anything but watch it happen, if your dementia patient doesn't have quite enough dementia to be incapacitated, but has just enough to think that keeping indentured servants will be completely fine. Like, you're not even allowed to warn the agency that things seem messed up.

[alicepire]

I waited up until midnight just to be able to post this

[alicepire]

So there's something I want to say re: intentionally withholding your vote, and I want to do it without coming across as condescending or dismissive.

I've worked as a field organizer in two campaigns, 2010 and 2012, and my job was to help turnout the vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket. Technology may have changed, but people are still knocking on doors for specific voters the way they were 12 years ago.

If you say you're not voting/voting 3rd party, the campaign volunteer is supposed to mark that and move on. Their job, in the final month of the election, is to make sure the campaign's supporters have all the information and resources they need to cast a vote.

They aren't collecting data on why you're withholding your vote. They aren't submitting opinion polling results to the campaign. Something like 155 million people voted in the 2020 election, and if you say you're not voting, the campaign is not going to waste a volunteer's time and morale begging you to vote when there are literally millions of other voters to turn out.

Let me repeat that: The campaign does not track why you're not voting. They simply note your vote is not a priority for turnout and move on.

I say this because I see a lot of promotion of non-voting like that's a boycott, when the function is not the same. A boycott is a coordinated mass refusal to engage with an institution—which sounds similar if you see a vote as a good or service to withhold. Unfortunately, it's not.

A vote is a choice you're making as part of a community hiring committee. Your abstention doesn't prevent someone from being hired. It just lowers the threshold for the worst candidate to succeed.

All this to say: In my direct experience as an organizer, abstaining from the vote sends a message. That message is not "You need to try harder to win my vote." It's "Don't waste time on me."

[alicepire]

Also, just putting it out there, but having a child through surrogacy doesn't mean it won't be breastfed??? Trans women can induce lactation and breastfeed. It's really difficult and labour intensive, but it can (and does) happen. Also, as a child born through surrogacy to straight parents, my mum induced lactation for me, and a network of women donated breastmilk for me. I got more antibodies than the limited set "normal" breastfed babies get. Inducing lactation is something that's been done for millennia. We have new, more effective ways of doing it, but the concept is not new.

Hell, my wife gave birth to our daughter and I'm breastfeeding her for a few meals a day, because I induced lactation.

Women do not have to give birth or breastfeed if it's not right for them, there is no shame in not being able to do an incredibly difficult thing. But let's also not pretend that things like breastfeeding are limited only to cis women who have recently given birth.

As always, biology (and the world in general) is far more interesting than what exists in a TERFs limited imagination.

Terfs are constantly tripping over themselves to show their fascist roots.

This post was ostensibly supposed to be an attack on surrogacy, but in it they choose to take a deeply anti-feminist line of attack in the process. This is the problem with cultural feminism. It always comes back to some mystical understanding of the female essence or whatever the fuck in a way that just repackages patriarchal ideas and harms women.

The fact that you're so desperate to attack gay men rather than stick to the actual issues with surrogacy (capitalism) that you would shame people for using formula, something that is necessary for many women? Absolutely disgusting. The ability to choose formula is so fucking necessary that I would absolutely 100% argue that attacking it is anti-feminist.

Have any of these people who have reblogged this even given birth? Absolutely any of them? Have any fucking one of them ever tried breast feeding??

Because breast feeding is fucking difficult. It is time consuming. It uses so much energy. It. Fucking. Sucks. Having the ability to choose formula allows you to actually be independent of your child at some point if you can't make enough breast milk to freeze (or if you don't have the ability to freeze and reheat your milk at a later time.)

You think it's feminist to shame someone for not wanting to be plugged into a machine like a fucking dairy cow for hours a day??? Really????

How about the women* who can't work because their job won't allow them to pump? Either because they don't have laws protecting them or their company violates the laws? How are they supposed to be financially independent?

You know why I stopped breast feeding? I was sitting in my kitchen, attached to my breast pump, as my ex stomped around the house in a fit. The scary part was, my mom was sitting right next to me. My ex was going through a full breakdown and letting the mask slip in front of my mom. I had the sudden realization that if these slips could happen in front of my mom, how bad was it going to be when she was gone?

I suddenly realized how vulnerable I was attached to this machine. If my ex wanted to start beating me while I was attached to it, I would have a difficult time getting away without breaking my very expensive pump (which I would also get beaten for doing). I have ADHD and serious memory problems, but I remember the exact fucking moment I decided to switch to formula because it was the only way to keep myself safe.

My ex did not want me to switch our baby to formula for the reasons OP listed above, but I somehow made it happen. Looking back I am actually shocked I got away with it.

The demonization of formula is fucking bad for women. We can talk about the ways in which companies like Nestlé use predatory practices in order to force impoverished mothers into using formula, but again a lot of these arguments are about capitalism itself. Formula in and of itself should be celebrated. It helps women be independent, it feeds babies who can't drink breastmilk, it helps children who are adopted... Etc.

I mean, what are adopted children supposed to do? What about babies whose mothers die in childbirth? Are they just supposed to die??

This is why I hate terfs so much. Cultural feminism is so deeply fucking unserious.

[alicepire]

I misread the first screenshot as "paediatrician" and then got progressively more confused as the screenshots went on trying to work out how a doctor got involved with all of this.

[alicepire]

The rest of the thread is here.

tl;dr: Don’t monetize AO3, kids.  You won’t like what happens next.