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Basic info

Perisex means non-intersex. If you do not have an intersex variation you are perisex.

Hermaphrodite is a slur for intersex people.

Contrary to popular belief, it was actually used for intersex humans long before its adoption into zoology to be used for cosexual & dichogamous animal species.

It is being phased out of zoology due to its vagueness and derogatory history.

This movement is still in its infancy, so plenty of sources and communities still use this term. Intersex activists are trying to change this.

Reblog for reach, furries especially!

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about some of the people I interact with. I have a coworker who I am pretty sure is a MAGA type, and she is also a lovely woman who is dreadfully overworked and so good at connecting to patients when they call. I can see the conflict on her face when she talks to me, a gigantic tranny dork who speaks Spanish and affirms the LGBT community, but can also talk to her about her cows and knows about guns and stuff. I can see the fear in the eyes of my former Young Men’s leader when he misgenders me and realizes that I’m not an ideology but a person he has known for a long time. I can see the way my extended family stop and stutter over political discussions when they realize they are talking about me. And I don’t know why but lately it’s just made me think about my neighbor as a kid.

When we moved to Arizona, we moved next door to a lovely retired couple - John and Lucy. John was a veteran of WWII, he had an M.D. and a Ph.D. in radiology, and he LOVED us to pieces. His wife, Lucy, was a sharp and gifted woman - well spoken, very observant, and VERY clever. I just know that she used that cleverness as a mom to great effect, because with my and my siblings she always managed to find a way to send us home with candy and treats for a week despite my dad’s protests. We loved them, growing up, and even though they have long-since passed away I love them still, and I love what I learned from them.

John was, as stated, a WWII veteran. He was enlisted as a rifleman, and later as a front line medic, starting at Point Du Hoc and moving inwards to France and towards the Rhine. He let me do a report on him in 6th grade where he shared war stories with me he had kept to himself his whole life - he said it was out of respect for his friends who didn’t get to come home and tell their stories.

He said he told me because he knew I could respect the memories of his friends.

He showed me his collection of medals, and which he’d kept hidden away in a sock in his attic because he’d feel an immense grief any time he saw them. He had wanted to be a doctor his whole life, prior to being drafted he was studying medicine and had taken the Hippocratic oath to Do No Harm. He saw his medals as a reminder that he had Done Harm.

After telling me his stories he was able to convince himself that while he had Done Harm, it was only because his only other alternative was, to him, cowardice. He chose to be brave even if it meant acting against his Oath because he felt that if he didn’t do it someone else would have to go in his place and he would be responsible for the harm that befell them. I don’t think that’s true, but for him it was and that was something no being on earth could have ever dissuaded him from believing.

He shared wild stories - melee combat on the beach, clearing artillery bunkers, receiving a Purple Heart for being injured in hand-to-hand combat with a Wehrmacht rifleman he said he felt pity for because they were the same age and he had to imagine the man he was fighting had been drafted just like him.

He shared how he was awarded a Silver Star for charging a machine gun nest, but shared that he was most proud of not killing anyone in the process. He threw a grenade with the pin still in it and when the machine gunners jumped to avoid being blown up they were killed by someone else so he didn’t have to do it. He took the machine gun and shot the other machine gun in that French field to pieces so he didn’t have to kill the people operating it. He said they were giving out Silver Stars like candy but I knew he was being modest.

He told me about being redesignated as a medic, about how he crawled for about 500 yards on his belly to rescue an injured tank driver, then threw him over his back and crawled the same 500 yards back (1000 yards total) to treat his injuries. He said he met the man in an Army hospital in England after his spine was broken by a high explosive panzer shell was fired through a hollowed out French farmhouse and landed about 20 feet away from him.

He told me about all the people he helped and saved as a medic, he told me about his work in radiology and research after the war. He showed me a hallway that was quite literally wallpapered with academic honors he’d earned as a researcher. He told me about how his first Fourth of July back was a horror show for him because fireworks and German artillery make very similar sounds. He told me about how he woke up in a cold sweat well over half a century later hearing the screams of German artillery men being burned alive with flamethrowers, or hearing his own voice apologizing to the young German soldier he stabbed in the heart at Point Du Hoc.

He told me that when he was asked to present at a medical conference in Germany 25 years after the war ended that he was so scared he couldn’t step off the plane, and that his wife had to hold his hand and lead/pull him with her. He said he was not scared because he was worried about being triggered, but because he knew that someone somewhere outside of that plane had the course of their life irreparably altered by his military service. That to someone out there he was the cause of immense suffering and harm. That some unwitting waiter could be the son of the Nazi Officer he stabbed in the heart with a 12-inch hunting knife. That some woman asking questions in the audience would be the daughter or widow of a man he sent to judgement with a .30-06. He was scared that they would hate him.

He knew what the Nazi’s had done, he knew better than anyone I’d ever met. He’d watched the documentaries, he’s seen the PoWs returning from camps, he’d seen the civilians massacred and tortured by their regime, but he also knew that among the monsters were people like him - idealistic 20-somethings who only wanted to make the world better and were ripped away from that life by the Nazi war machine. And he spent his whole life mourning the loss of innocence and peace that was forced on so many people by such a corrupt power.

To be honest I don’t know if I could do that, but he could. He told me he could still feel the dead and lost with him, both when he slept and when he woke. He told me he thought he’d go to his grave never having told a word of this to anyone. That the stories of him and his friends and allies would disappear silently with him and those like him. That he had wanted that until he realized that he didn’t have to sell out to share the stories - that he could give the stories away for free to someone who would love the people in them, and not just the content of them. He didn’t want his stories to be used as Patriotic Pornography by some TV network or magazine. He wanted the people he knew to be respected, he wanted their memories to be honored and loved, and he entrusted me, a 12-year-old “boy” to do that.

He told me for years afterwards that after telling me these stories that he slept better than he ever had. That by sharing the stories with someone who could hear Him over the din of victory and glory and honor and revisionistic history. Someone who could see the man in the story and not just see the plot of a battle being won. He wanted to be human, and he wanted the people he saw die to be human too - everyone, not just the people on his side. He wanted someone to see and to know the anguish of having to look someone in the eye as heartblood muddies the ground beneath them and hope that they understand that this was not an act of love or hatred but an act of desperation. To hope that you had just taken out One Of The Bad Ones instead of a medical student or a poet who had been drafted. He wanted me to see how hard he had worked since then to build a world without scarcity, to build a world of peace. He wanted me to know SO badly that the cost of violence, any violence, even necessary violence, is always ALWAYS paid by both parties involved.

I think about the rise of the new right wing - the new Nazi movement’s traction in politics, and I feel sad and scared - the world that Johnathan J Yobaggy, my neighbor, my friend, and my hero, worked SO hard to build is being done away with by people who do not understand the cost of the path they are entering. I can see brief moments of recognition in the eyes of some of the people I mentioned - The former young men’s president who immediately regrets misgendering me and hen he makes eye contact with me and sees Me staring back at him and not a faceless “ideology.” I can hear it in the voice of my uncle who quietly comes up to me to apologize for some homophobic comment he made absentmindedly. I can see it in the eyes of racists and sexists being interviewed on TV when they realize that they didn’t vote for a concept, they voted for a real thing. And honestly, I have mixed emotions about it. Because while I understand frustration with the status quo, the importance of basic human needs like affordable good and rent, and I know the fear that comes with feeling powerless, I also can’t help but grieve the endless wheel of history bringing us back to this God Damned Fucking Place again. I hope we can avoid this fate, not just for our sake but for the sake of everyone who has ever tried to make the world safer. For everyone who has ever tried to make up for human nature, for everyone who has ever placed themselves on the offering plate to protect others from the cruelty they know lies just under the surface of mankind’s tenuous grip on progress. I want SO badly for there to be a solution to this, for the people who idolize the Nazi party and the impact of fascism to see that the price of this path is paid in more than just blood but in soul. That they’re allowing themselves to be devoured too. I want for the centrists and the fence sitters and the idealists who want to “change it from the inside” to see how dangerous our politics have become. I want them to see that they’re losing the things that make them great in exchange for a security blanket that’s now become far far far too small to ever work for them again.

Safety found in the past is already gone, and safety found in the future is only as real as a daydream. That any ideology that promises that by “joining us now we’ll make things rough so we can make things safe in a decade” is a promise made by those who will not have to fight the battles they send you to.

I don’t know if America was ever really great, but as long as John was alive it felt great to me. There is no ideology that can replace a neighbor. No tax plan that can replace a friend. No grocery bill that can replace community and connection. No amount of budget cuts that can replace kindness. No amount of suffering from people I hate that will ever make more love. I don’t know how to make America great, but I know how to make my America great and it is not by selling out integrity and compassion and community and fucking humanity to make eggs and gas cheaper. It is by seeing and hearing the people around me. I’m not Mormon anymore, but I still know the value of mourning with those that mourn and comforting those that stand in need of comfort. I’m not Christian anymore but I still have Eyes That Can See and Ears That Can Hear. I want to make this all stop but I can’t stop the collective power of tens of millions of people so instead I listen to my MAGA coworker tell me about how sick her kid was last week. I make jokes with my Young Men’s leader. I hug my uncle. I let them see me fully, as a human and not an ideology. As a woman and not the concept of gender. As a whole person and not someone who can be easily summarized or boiled down into something short and quippy. And I let them know I can see them fully too, and I can see all their humanity as easily as they can see mine. I just have to hope that this works - that enough people can See and Hear the people in their lives who matter to them to bring them out of their personal world of forms and into the real world.

I am probably, honestly, just spiraling a little bit. I took my ADHD meds today and in addition to helping me focus they make me a little anxious so I doubt things are as bad right now as they seem. But just in case there’s any truth to the way things seem to be going, remember, and I mean this seriously: Be kinder to each other, be gayer, and read more Terry Pratchett.

And for the love of god day hello to your neighbor.

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Youth, Amatodivergence, and Buckets

The thing about young people identifying with the a-spectrum: Sexuality and orientation are very now-based things; there's nothing wrong with a child identifying as one thing or another, so long as it's accurate to your current state.

It's like you have a bucket, right? You leave this bucket outside in the off chance it will fill with some rain. Well, right now, your bucket is empty, so you can say, "hey, my bucket is empty!" There's nothing wrong with this statement, it's entirely accurate. And some people might say, "well, your bucket is going to fill with water eventually, just give it time!" And maybe this will be true, but it doesn't mean you can't call your bucket empty. Because it is empty right now! And—who knows—maybe in a while, your bucket will fill up, and you will say, my bucket is no longer empty, or, maybe in a while, you'll realize your bucket's been sitting under a roof all along, or you live in a desert, and it will never fill up. Or maybe you'll have a bucket that fills, but the water evaporates, and you follow the pattern, and you say, "sometimes, my bucket is full."

The thing is, regardless of what you think is going to happen, right now, your bucket is empty, and as long as you're aware that maybe in a while, it might start to rain, there's nothing wrong with identifying with that. Because you're right: your bucket is empty, at least for now <333

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sometimes i just want everyone to understand that a-spec people exist and not everyone is looking for a second half-

maybe we're all just whole already <2

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Romance is mysterious and important©

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The thing that bothers me about Epic the Musical is that a big plot point and reason that Odysseus is seen as a good person is that he didn't ever cheat on his wife

but uhh... to my knowledge, in the myths he definitely cheated on penelope with circe (and afaik calypso too?).

...hate to say it, but odysseus and circe having a whole ass child is pretty irrefutable evidence lol

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The thing that bothers me about Epic the Musical is that a big plot point and reason that Odysseus is seen as a good person is that he didn't ever cheat on his wife

but uhh... to my knowledge, in the myths he definitely cheated on penelope with circe (and afaik calypso too?).

...hate to say it, but odysseus and circe having a whole ass child is pretty irrefutable evidence lol

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I can't find the post I read yesterday (or Sunday?) about the DOE's attempt to ram through a "direct final rule" to rescind the part of §504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that mandates the construction of federally-funded buildings make them accessible, but here's Disability Scoop's article on that. 《 Under existing regulations, facilities constructed or altered after June 13, 1980 that receive federal financial assistance must be “readily accessible to and useable by handicapped persons.” Buildings are considered to meet that standard if they comply with what are known as Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards.

But now the Energy Department is calling this requirement “unnecessary and unduly burdensome.”》

(And no, I don't understand why this is under the DOE, but it appears to apply to all federally funded construction, not just for that department.)

Please read and share and most importantly go to the links below to comment - the comment period is open ONLY UNTIL JUNE 16TH and the rule would go into effect on July 15th, so this is urgent. They need as many comments as possible to keep this from being pushed through with virtually no opportunity for the public to comment.

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I can't find the post I read yesterday (or Sunday?) about the DOE's attempt to ram through a "direct final rule" to rescind the part of §504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that mandates the construction of federally-funded buildings make them accessible, but here's Disability Scoop's article on that. 《 Under existing regulations, facilities constructed or altered after June 13, 1980 that receive federal financial assistance must be “readily accessible to and useable by handicapped persons.” Buildings are considered to meet that standard if they comply with what are known as Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards.

But now the Energy Department is calling this requirement “unnecessary and unduly burdensome.”》

(And no, I don't understand why this is under the DOE, but it appears to apply to all federally funded construction, not just for that department.)

Please read and share and most importantly go to the links below to comment - the comment period is open ONLY UNTIL JUNE 16TH and the rule would go into effect on July 15th, so this is urgent. They need as many comments as possible to keep this from being pushed through with virtually no opportunity for the public to comment.

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I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits, but finding orange cat hair inside your keyboard while taking apart your computer for the first time in four years, three years after your cat died, will haunt you.

it had been been so long since i've seen that fur.

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the fact that nobody has made a Language of the Lost animatic for both Katniss and Peeta is criminal

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Part 2: shape, style, and length with femme styles!

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Okay I JUST realized I never posted these on here—- BUT BASICALLY, about a year and a half ago I started doing these experimental black hairstyle posts that were threads long on Twitter, to give artists a source of inspo for their black ocs whose hair they wanted to try something new with! There’s more to black hair than just the selected styles portrayed in media, and I thought it would be fun to show people how much texture, shape, fades, length, and style can be combined when drawing black hair—-cause it’s a kind of manipulation our hair can do irl! The OG thread from when I made these a year ago were lost with the hacking of my original Twitter account (@/bagels_donuts) but I’ve since reuploaded the whole thread to my new Twitter (@/ItsDonutsFR)! I hope artists on tumblr find these useful, sorry it took me so long to post them here😭🙏🏾 I’ll upload them all in parts!

Part 1: Long masc hairstyles + playing with fades

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made vivipary cow. shes a beeg strobbry :D (+ some extra doodles)

vivipary is a unusual natural phenomenon where the seeds start growing while still on the fruit. Doesn’t this look cool?

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like i cannot stress enough if ur white u have been raised and taught to view urself as the center of the world, almost all media caters to you, ur cultures viewpoints dictate the world, ur ancestors are the “victors” of colonialism and shaped the planet to fit white supremacy, that little voice in ur head that tells you to comment on every post about racism u see with stuff like “LISTEN to this white people” “im white, but this is important” “im as white as snow but i also agree with this” is not the compassionate gesture u think it is

that little voice is ur taught racist desire to center urself and ur opinion as more important and factual, something to be listened to above all else, because you were raised to believe you and everyone like you has the final say, you get uncomfortable when brown people voice frustrations because you don’t like reckoning with how the entire world is shaped in your image, you need to ignore that little voice that tells you your input is needed, because that little voice means absolutely nothing to the lived experiences of people of color, we donot need your approval or for you to agree for the racist history that has oppressed all of us to be true, we donot need YOU to tell us we are right when it has already been proven through history, through statistics, on the millions of lives lost to genocide and war in the name of whire supremacy, you are not the center of the world, you are just taught that you are

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this isnt really the type of game where you'd want to stop and examine everything. but if you do anyway... you might find some easily missable interactions

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Are you 🫵 pissed off about the Lilo and Stitch monstrosity remake? Do you want to know how you can actually make a difference in supporting the people and ecosystems of Hawaii?

Tourism is a big issue in Hawaii (which the remake got rid of the original's commentary on because it makes foreigners look bad). I'm not gonna promote it, BUT I know that realistically, thousands of people arrive here every single day by the airplane-ful. And the majority of them aren't educated on the socio-cultural and economic impacts of tourism. SO, I'm making this post in an effort to educate visitors. If you or someone you know is visiting or moving to Hawaii (whether by circumstances in or out of your control), here are some suggestions on how you can give back!

You can donate to the Hawaii Community Foundation, which has been instrumental in giving aid to the displaced community of Lahaina after the Maui wildfires in 2023. They also provide scholarships to students of under-represented communities.

If you're interested in visiting Kualoa Ranch, you can do their Mālama Experience where you get your hands dirty giving back to the ‘āina (land)!

There are other organizations you can join to volunteer with, too, like Kupu and Mālama Maunalua. Check them out; maybe you can help with a beach cleanup or plant native trees! These are both non-profit organizations that accept monetary donations.

Visit the Bishop Museum to learn about Hawaiian history and culture! They also have events focused on sustainability and conservation.

If you're visiting Hilo on the Big Island, go visit the Laulima Nature Center! They're a non-profit aimed at protecting Hawaii's native species, and they even have an online store that ships to the US mainland and internationally! (After I post this, I'm gonna head on over and get myself a manu o Kū pin ♡)

A few other tips I have:

DO: Respect the locals' homes. Several beaches and hiking trails have access points in residential areas. Please be mindful to keep your voices down when passing by, and park ONLY in designated parking areas.

DO: Wear reef-safe sunscreen! Sunscreens containing oxybenzone and octinoxate are banned in Hawaii because they are known to damage coral reefs.

DON'T: Approach wildlife, particularly honu (sea turtles) and 'īlio holo i ka uaua (Hawaiian monk seals). Stay at least 10 feet (3 meters) away from turtles and at least 50 feet (15 meters) away from monk seals. If you see someone harassing animals, report them to the statewide NOAA Marine Wildlife Hotline: (888) 256-9840. You can also contact the Hawaii State Department of Land and Natural Resources.

DON'T: Collect sand, rocks, or other natural items to bring home with you. This is to protect the ecosystems and also out of respect for Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians), who have cultural beliefs regarding lava rocks in particular. Taking lava rocks is extremely disrespectful.

DON'T: Litter! Please throw away your waste in proper trash cans. If you see a bin that says "ʻōpala," that's a trash can!

Many Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) are moving to the US mainland because the cost of living in Hawaii has been driven up so high (because of people moving here), they can't afford to live in their ancestral home. So, if you are going to visit or move to Hawaii, please:

- Make the effort to support local businesses, especially those owned by Native Hawaiians!

- Educate yourself and your loved ones about actual Hawaiian culture!

- Try Hawaiian food, like poi!

- Learn some Hawaiian words and don't be afraid to ask how to pronounce words correctly!

- Donate to a food bank!

- Watch films and read books written by Native Hawaiians!

My hope is that whoever sees this post will use it to educate themselves, their friends, and their families who are considering visiting.

My background is in sustainability and the environment, so that's what I know to suggest off the top of my head. If any Kānaka Maoli read this post and have suggestions to add, please do!