fountainpenchess

[fountainpenchess]

Lately I've been seeing stars.

[fountainpenchess]

There is always something more, always an incredible variety of experiences you haven't had and may never have. As a result, your awareness is always less than complete. This incompleteness can be worrying. It means your own perspective is only a fragment of a broader whole, a whole you can't possess or even comprehend. How can you reconcile this fact with the requirements of life? For you must live and act from your own perspective — there is simply no choice in the matter.

The only honest way seems to be to question your perspective. You need to do this not to deny your experiences or their meaning, but simply to recognize there might be other possibilities than the ones you've already considered.

Read more...

[fountainpenchess]

i've been getting asked about whether specific brain related insults are okay or not. is "stupid" a better insult, is "brain rot" okay? and like. i think genuinely people need to start learning more about ableism and how it works. because without understanding the underlying mechanism, the logic used to devalue disabled people, then you will never actually address ableism. instead of making a list of good or bad insults, you have to interrogate why your insults are demeaning someone based on the premise of their intelligence or cognitive processes. what are you trying to say when you're insulting how their brain works for behaviour or ideas you disagree with? unless you lack the ability to understand these things, it's really your duty to dismantle ableism as an ideology that's rooted within your everyday beliefs instead of asking disabled people to give you a checklist of good and bad behaviour you can uncritically parrot and follow. until the linguistic drift makes the next words disabled people use to describe ourselves into an insult or slur by mere association

[fountainpenchess]

I was halfway through The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir when I realized… damn. This whole experience, being a woman, is just being seen as ‘the other’

On social media if a page doesn’t show a face people assume it’s a guy. If someone tells a story without saying the gender people assume it’s about a man. The default is always a man. Being a woman isn’t just existing, it’s performing. You’re expected to look like one act like one sound like one. Wear dresses, smile take up less space. You’re never just you, you’re always a role.

This world doesn’t give women the space to just be. But it can. If we decide to change it.

[fountainpenchess]

Equality isn't oppression. It just feels that way when you're used to privilege you were never meant to have

[fountainpenchess]

[fountainpenchess]

idol

digital photograph, 2024

[fountainpenchess]

venom

digital photograph, 2024

[fountainpenchess]

Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? How could they be the sponsors of something whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation. Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons—not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized.

—Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

[fountainpenchess]

Every time you let a man's idea of the world tell you how to exist, every time you wonder if he'd find this outfit hot, if your voice is soft enough, or if you're too much to be loved, you lose a piece of yourself quietly, silently, like a thread slipping from your own fabric, and one day you’ll wake up not recognizing the girl in the mirror who was once so full of lightning.

Listen, being attractive just to be looked at isn’t a win; it’s a slow death. Being beautiful just to survive the male gaze is like watering a plastic plant and calling it growth. You're not alive just to be pretty for someone else's story. The male gaze is not love. It’s a hunting lens, and you are not prey.

What scares me is that so many girls have gotten used to reading stories where love looks like violence in slow motion, where being called names in bed is supposed to make you feel wanted, where humiliation is dressed up as romance, and where nobody talks about how much it chips away at your soul. Like we’re supposed to be okay with being treated like playthings in fiction and in life and then pretend we don’t carry that into our reflection.

Girl, what they’re selling you is not sexy. It’s social conditioning in a lace bra. It’s patriarchy with soft lighting. And you’re buying it. Stop. Just stop.

These books, this content, this noise—it’s not harmless. It’s programming. It’s making you duller, sweeter, quieter, and emptier. a real-life dummy who knows how to blush but not how to roar. You should be learning how to break cycles, how to build wealth, how to raise hell, how to speak to God, and how not to flinch at your own fire.

Stop thinking about your pimple. Stop standing in front of mirrors wondering if you’re enough. Start asking who profits when you hate your own face. Start noticing how industries are built on your self-doubt. and how you’re paying with your power.

The truth is a lot of men are not safe. Not emotionally. Not spiritually. not in how they love. You think they’re the answer, but they’ve been raised to be the question. They’ve been raised to believe that if they can’t be powerful, they’ll settle for being in control of you. And maybe one day someone will come who changes that narrative, who treats you like a universe, not a maid, and if he does, good. Love him well. love his people. Let him love yours.

But if he lies, if he folds after marriage like a cheap paper promise, if he starts to chip away at the woman you fought to become, don’t stay and suffer and call it strength. Leave. Or if you can’t leave yet, learn to play the long game. Use what you must to rise. detach. plan. And when the moment comes, go.

Do not have his child thinking it will anchor him. Do not pour into him hoping he’ll fill you. That’s not how wells work. You are not here to carry the dead weight of someone else’s arrested development. Let his parents deal with what they raised.

Be the one who plans family vacations no one ever thought they’d take. Be the one who earns the income, pays the bills, and makes the memories. Be the one your younger self would sob to meet. the one who didn’t give up. the one who said, “No, I don’t want your script. I’ll write my own.”

Trust God. fiercely. Trust your gut. quietly. Trust people slowly or don't.

And for the love of everything sacred, stop living your life like you're a supporting character in a story that was never written for you. Take the pen. Burn the script. Write in the margins. Scream in italics.

And to the girls who think they are ruined, impure, and unworthy of anything sacred because of what they’ve done, listen to me: God does not think like that. He is not sitting on some high throne, keeping score of your failures. He is not disgusted by your mistakes. He is not ashamed of your survival. He knows—he knows you were trying to make it through a world that never handed you safety. He saw the moments you were crying while pretending to be fine, the nights you felt like nothing, and the times you gave your body because you just wanted to feel wanted, even for a second. And He still—still—calls you His. The Qur’an says, “My mercy encompasses all things” (7:156). The Bible says, “Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). The Gita says, “Even if the most sinful worships Me with undivided devotion, he is to be considered righteous, for he has made the right resolve” (9.30). Sikhism teaches, “God Himself saves the fallen ones” (SGGS, Ang 918). Every path, every prophet, every scripture—they say the same thing: come back. Come back to God; fall into His mercy like a child who’s tired of pretending. Bow your head and say, “I won’t go back there again. I know better now.” And He will lift your chin with such tenderness that you'll wonder why you ever thought He turned away. You are not too far gone. You are not stained. You are not too late. Your story is still holy. Your heart is still worthy. And your return, that quiet, trembling return, might just be the most sacred thing you ever do.

You don’t owe the world your softness when it offers you only edges. Cry, yes. Repent, if you must. Cleanse yourself of the past, but don’t get stuck in shame. Use it. Build from it. become impossible to look at . Become you.

[fountainpenchess]

it’s not pretty, it’s not polite and it’s definitely not for everyone. grrrlina is live + free shipping because i love you all ♀

grrrlina.com

[fountainpenchess]

It really fucking is all misogyny isn't it

Every fucking thread of transphobia goes back to a fundamental need to cement completely immutable sex categories so cis men can assert themselves as superior on some level

Trans women are seen as perverse degradations of the male ideal, people who "chose" womanhood, who are read as women for persecution but not for protection, who are sexualized and assaulted the same as any woman. "Choosing" womanhood is so unthinkable in our misogynist society that brains scramble to think of why anyone would do it, and every trans woman is living proof that womanhood is empowering

Trans men aren't allowed in the club, because if masculinity can be "earned" instead of granted, it implies that men aren't intrinsically superior but made and maintained, and that someone who could have been a good little baby maker housewife realizes that that's not the fate they want

It's so fucking like. Basic shit. 101. How is it difficult. I'm sorry but I just. Fuck. How is this hard.

[fountainpenchess]

it makes me sad the way cis women are so terrified of and disgusted by their own body hair. and i'm not talking "i have to shave for sensory reasons" i mean i keep seeing videos of women using hair identifier spray on their faces and hands so they can shave the tiniest barely-there bits of peach fuzz that came free with their bodies. hair that serves a purpose and that purpose is cleanliness and protection. i mean when i was in elementary school girls who had barely hit puberty were talking about shaving their arms. i mean full-grown adult women who will have a breakdown if they see two days of stubble on their legs/crotch/ jaw/pits because god forbid you don't look like a perfect plastic barbie doll. god forbid your body that keeps you alive comes with hair that may not be soft and glossy and photogenic. some women are so afraid of having any hair apart from their head and eyebrows that they've uno reversed themselves into six different kinds of gender dysphoria that they can't recognize as such because they're convinced that this unnatural state of highly-groomed capital-informed beauty is how women have always been. you're so scared of looking "gross" or "ugly" or "mannish" that you can't even look at your body in the mirror and recognize what it is. sister you are an ape. why are you so determined to deny your nature.

[fountainpenchess]

"In my culture, we know death intimately. In Arabic, the highest expression of love is the phrase "ya'aburnee" Translated "you bury me" . It means "I love you so much, I'd sooner die than bury you". It was used by mothers in our lineage who were so used to losing their young in war. In my culture, we cannot talk about love without speaking death's name"

-George Abraham, "Untitled," Published In Black Napkin Press

[fountainpenchess]

Nyaaa🐈🐈🐈🐈

[fountainpenchess]

my aquarius mercury and capricorn venus are showing... like yeah my views on relationships are very amatopunk and I will die on the "non monagamy is valid as hell" hill but my heart wants security and respect. that can be achieved tin non traditional relationships but most people just don't see it that way and won't give you respect unless you are in a traditional relationship

sigh

[fountainpenchess]

Mary Oliver, "From The Book of Time." Devotions