spacebaubles - Tumblr blog

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Boobs. They’re excellent pillows, grabbable, look hot in a good bikini and lesbians everywhere rate them an 11 out of ten. Mine grace your feeds every Racktober, and we thank our lord and saviour Elvis for the bounty they bring to your screens. Beloved angels, divine dirtbags. This year’s Racktober is going to be a little different. I’m afraid to report that for once there’s such a thing as too much bounty. Mine are out to kill me. My rack has revolted, gone rogue and is out for some Beatrix Kiddo style vengeance for all the times I strapped them down on tour beneath three sports bras and a handful of shirts so I could get on stage and do what I did. But now, in their roaring path of revenge, they’ve developed a cluster of cysts that currently reside inside them that are growing, multiplying, and wreaking havoc. Living in my convent in the middle of “**** you that’s where” has its highlights, when I have a beach, peace and quiet and socialised medicine. But that socialised medicine only gets you so far if you’re bleeding out on the floor or having a heart attack. For everything that’s not critical? You gotta wait. And being in the middle of “**** you that’s where”, means it’s even harder to catch a break, especially with 2020 being the pit of madness that it has been. The official terminology- “aggressive complex cystic masses”. While on the waiting list, I’ve gone up at least four cup sizes, and not in the fun way. I’ve now got the equivalent of two marble and gravel-filled holiday turkeys strapped to my chest. My spine is deteriorating as a result of the rapidly growing weight on my chest, with a growing list of complications that include compressed discs, thoracic strain that’s led to tendon tears, osteoarthritis in the vertebrae, and more. Between the debilitating pain on all fronts, as a result it’s meant I’ve been more bedbound than upright in the last year. I can’t wait anymore, my treasured angels and divine dirtbags. I’ve been waiting a year. I’ve exhausted all my options and I’m tired of putting my life on hold. My only path forward now is to source a surgery privately, and of course, it’s not cheap. I will be out of pocket around thirty thousand after the private surgery costs, hospital stay, theatre fees, rehabilitation post-surgery and the follow-ups. Beloved dirtbags, I’ve gotta cast the net far and wide to make this a reality and get my life back. My tech wizard set up a go fund me to raise the funds I need and every dollar counts, no matter how small. If you can’t give, share far and wide- that helps just as much too. You’ll have this beaten but not broken Amazon’s gratitude, praise and love, and be a part of literally saving my life.

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I think that meme you tweeted is not giving the right idea? Isn't it the trans supporters who are tweeting porn of her characters in the posts? Because I did come across some of that and it seems they are doing that to harass her. I'm not supporting jkr to be clear, but I don't think tweeting porn at any woman is right either.

Tweeting porn at anyone is wrong for any reason and especially children. I don't care who was doing it or for what reason, it is disgusting if true. And JK has a platform to do something about it but instead she actively said, for some reason, that she ignored it but wouldn't ignore someone taking her out of context about medication or whatever it was that she went off on to talk about how hormones are bad for trans women like she gives a damn.

Trans women taking hormones - not her business

People tweeting porn at children - very much her business

But she decided to "do something" about one and not the other.

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Just sitting here thinking about the fact that TERFs and radfems are all happy to defend JKR because JKR’s all about “defending those women” and “stopping rape” but was still happy to write

Rape as punishment (Umbridge and the Centaurs) up to and including a joke about flashbacks to trauma (Ron makes horse noises in the infirmary and Umbridge looks around in a panic to Harry/Ron/Hermione’s amusement)

A female rapist as a sympathetic victim (Merope Gaunt drugging her husband into loving her and him leaving her once she stopped drugging him being framed as, like, classism or wanting someone prettier or hating magic or “he left because he’d never wanted her” instead of a victim of years-long sexual abuse leaving his abuser)

Attempted date rape played off as a joke because it’s a woman attempting to drug a man and drugging the wrong person instead (Romilda Vane’s drugged cauldron cakes are fed to Ron instead of Harry, Romilda Vane is never punished for this and the issue of students drugging each other with love potions is never addressed again even though rape-via-love-potion is clearly an issue in-universe.)

And I’m thinking about how radfems talk about how they’d prefer sex workers be raped over “normal” people who haven’t “agreed” to be raped and how the Patriarchy-is-the-only-evil model is really fucking awful at handling intimate partner violence in same-sex relationships without claiming that the abusive partner isn’t a “real” woman because women are innately nonviolent and violence is only an expression of patriarchy and

okay

if we look at SPEW as the book’s analogy for feminism with the understanding that Rowling is a radical feminist then it actually MAKES SENSE that the house elves are happy slaves because it’s not making the comparison to chattel slavery, it’s making the comparison to compulsory heterosexuality. The elves aren’t *slaves* to Rowling, they’re *housewives* and some housewives are married to the Malfoys and want to get out but some are “married” to “good” institutions and are happy with their tradition and lot in life and Hermione is doing the “right” thing by attempting to trap them into freedom, just like radfems are doing the “right” thing when they call the cops on sex workers. Of course they don’t want to be freed and have to find a new way of life. Of course they don’t want to be arrested and “rehabilitated” from the only jobs they know. So somebody who “knows better” has to make them.

And I’m thinking about the way that characters in the books simply ARE what they are, they never BECOME. Dumbledore IS good, he didn’t have to *become* good and his brief dalliance with Magical Supremacy was never a real threat, it was just something his edgy boyfriend was into. Draco didn’t BECOME bad, he was bad because he was a Malfoy and in the end he didn’t BECOME good, he was the same person with the same beliefs but less power. Even Voldemort didn’t *become* bad, he always was - 7 years old and torturing other orphans in a cave because Good and Evil are Inherent Traits and You Are Good Or You Are Bad (side note: this is why Snape’s ‘redemption’ in canon is so unsatisfying - we are simply *told* Snape Is Good after years of him showing the exact sort of behavior one would EXPECT from an active bigot to his students and allies and his ‘redemption’ is unearned). Even Peter Pettigrew - he didn’t ‘go’ bad, he was always weak, no matter which side he was on.

You’re good or you’re bad

It’s black or it’s white

It’s a harm done by the patriarchy or it isn’t a harm

You’re one biological sex or the other

Nothing *becomes* nothing *changes* things simply *are* and you’ve got to live with that.

Anyway. I’m just thinking about that.

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CHAPTER TWO: "NO", DOES NOT MEAN "CONVINCE ME".

She looks bewildered as she glances around the room.

"My wife has never done this before," he looks excited. Oh. That means I'm a birthday present. "It's my birthday, you see," he continues. Ha. Nailed it.

"That's okay. It was all our first times once." I'm looking at the wife. "Would you feel more comfortable watching? Or directing?" Wives like directing, it makes them feel in control.

"No." The response is barely a whisper.

I frown. "Are you sure you want to be here?" I ask. I already know the answer. She is silent.

"Honey, is this what you really want?" he already knows the answer.

"I want to make you happy," she starts to cry and he gets up off the bed, disappointed.

"We’re leaving. Sorry to waste your time." They paid $250 for me to go back outside and watch TV.

***

I cannot stress enough how important it is to ask if it's okay to put a banana in someone’s vagina. I’m not going to give you any context for that, but know that it is relevant to this chapter.

Enthusiastic consent is one of the more critical things in life, next to pizza and sleep. It is the one thing that ensures we maintain our sense of agency as individuals, and as long as we are thoroughly informed on the topic at hand, it aids in preventing exploitation and abuse. Consent is also important and something that should not be confused with enthusiastic consent. Consent means that I am simply willing to participate. It tells me nothing about a person’s want to participate nor their comfortability in doing so. Enthusiastic consent means that I am both willing and wanting to participate and completely comfortable with what is going to happen.

Being a sex-worker taught me more about sex and sexual matters than I had ever learned in school or at home. It taught me about consent vs. enthusiastic consent. It taught me about owning my personal boundaries and being assertive with my right to body autonomy. I learned that you as a person define what empowerment means. I found self-confidence. I found the means to be comfortable in being assertive as the quickest thing you learn is that just because someone paid for you for a sexual service - doesn’t mean they own you. You learn that when someone wants anal, you can feel right at home charging an extra $100 because my butthole is a privilege. If a client wants my butt and they should be damn grateful I’m accepting their offer of payment for it.[i]

I learned that there were plenty of people just like me, people navigating the world of sex without a damn clue what they were doing. I would listen to clients spill their guts, safe in the knowledge that a stranger wouldn’t judge.[ii] Some of them didn’t even want sex, they just wanted to talk. Young men who were scared of relationships, afraid of being considered a fuck up because they were so damn insecure with themselves that they would cry if they had been taught how to express emotion. Young women who didn’t know who they liked and were trying to figure out who they were. Middle-aged management types wanting to indulge their kinks free from the weight of their guilt.

Trans people who just wanted a few hours without feeling like the world was against them. People wanting to explore their sexuality. Lonely older men wanting a human touch, most times not even a sexual one. Couples wishing to feel the thrill that happened when they first met. The distance between them forcing them to learn to communicate with each other again. Stable couples opening themselves up to new experiences together. People with disabilities not wanting to be treated like children. People from all walks of life paying for sex because they considered it safer to have sex in a legal brothel with protection knowing that the person they were with had a low chance getting pregnant, or impregnating them, or contracting an STD.

I learned the intricacies of consent and how to set boundaries and communicate without feeling guilty for doing so. I learned the difference between being fucked for my body, and fucked for my personality, and that it was okay to like it both ways. I learned how to tell people the things they needed to hear and not the things they wanted to hear. I learned to soothe a wounded ego and tell people that practice makes perfect and that constructive feedback can only make things better but only if you learn from it.

Ironically the people wanting to fuck me for my body and for the persona I had created, were the people that taught me what I needed to learn to enjoy myself, and how to have a mutually enjoyable experience. My experiences with them taught me the things I needed to learn to protect myself from diseases, from assault, from emotional manipulation, as well as develop a healthy attitude towards sex.

"YES" IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY

"It's huge. I briefly wonder how I am going to fit it all in my mouth. I haven't had a burrito in a while.

The receptionist walks in. "You're not going like this." I narrow my eyes. "He picked you."

I look forlornly at my dinner and lean back in my chair, "Fuck." I hate these bookings. I stand up and walk to reception. Loud Aggressive Dad wants Quiet Shitting-Bricks Son laid. Dad pays my fees. All my fees. For everything, he can think of. He insists on a two-hour booking.

"You’ll treat him right, won't you, honey?" The Dad lingers as we walk through the security door. We walk into the booking room, the kid looks like he is going to pass out. I sit on the bed. He swallows loudly.

"Do you really want to be here?" He shakes his head, that's a No. "That’s okay.""

I made $400 listening to a guy talk about Xbox, laser tag and his favourite pasta. Buy a PlayStation, fucker.

You would think and hope the vignette above wasn’t as frequent as it was, you would be wrong. I purposely placed the story in this chapter as opposed to any other to highlight the differences between consent and enthusiastic consent, and the importance of being able to asset your boundaries. I could have taken the dad’s money, and I could have given his son the ride of his life and been done with it, but that wasn’t my call to make. I would have been following the instructions of the father, which may or may not have aligned with what my client actually wanted.

While the son had agreed to go along with what his father wanted, he certainly didn’t seem to want it to happen. He definitely wasn’t comfortable, and the only time he felt comfortable in asserting his boundaries was after I questioned him in a room that was away from his father. If he didn’t feel comfortable in asserting his boundaries and saying "No" that could have led to a terrible situation for both of us.

Consent is much more complicated than just saying "Yes", and is not conditional on the whims of whoever is paying. This notion is unfortunately lost on a lot of people. I feel this is due to the cognitive dissonance that stems from not being able to reconcile "sex work as a job" with "workers can still have free will." This attitude seems to have been born from the adage "The customer is always right." This is a concept that has and will continue to be spoken about in this book: just because you are paid, doesn’t mean the client owns you.

There is no transfer of ownership when paying for sex. The removal of your humanity is not a consequence or condition of being paid for your skills. The idea that a person owns another just because they paid them is ludicrous. I don't have the right to slap a barista if I don't like how they made my coffee, just because I paid them to make it. Customers don’t magically gain right over another person just because money exchanged hands. Sex work is only exploitative in the minds of people who think paying for a service means you have free rein to treat the service provider however they want. Those people must be fun at restaurants. Capitalism is exploitive. Sex work is labour.

Suffice to say; it is a terrible idea to believe that we must always say "Yes" to every client and all requests services in all situations to the absolute detriment of ourselves. This is not a healthy mindset to have. When you understand very little about your boundaries and have little ability to be assertive, it will very quickly result in being in situations that you may not be comfortable with.

This is the essence of why being able to communicate, as well as recognise both verbal and non-verbal cues, and having a firm knowledge of boundaries is so vital in both sexual and non-sexual settings. It leads to not only the ability to provide a quality service, but also to protect against impacts to your mental health, being exploited, or actively being abused. It meant more power at pre-booking negations as I had a clear idea of what my body could and could not handle. I had more of an understanding of unrealistic fantasies, what could work, and what was going to be a disaster. It also means protecting your clients to a degree. If I was unable to read between the lines in the above situation, out in the world there would be a guy still carrying repressed trauma. Quite possibly feeling like he couldn't speak about being coerced into having sex before he was ready.[iii]

As you will quickly discover, sex work is a nuanced conversation that people refuse to have. Why would they? It’s a complex, cross-cultural topic that differs primarily according to the region you live in and your personal circumstances. It’s far less effort to moralise the issue and dismiss the concerns of its workers than to invest time, energy, and emotion in having a complex discussion. I'm sure this is why there are so many stereotypes and generalisations about the industry, its workers, and its clients.

SAYING "NO" TAKES TRAINING

Here is a thing that will blow your mind: I don’t really like being touched without warning. My wife can touch me, but I’m not one of those people that deals well with casual touching/hugging or personal space of less than a metre radius. I have a mini anxiety attack when someone approaches me in my workplace. Humanity is not really my strong suit. I’ve never been good at interacting with people in casual settings. Problems, I can handle. Analytics is my jam. Give me a problem, and I will give you a solution. I’m amazing at customer service as a by-product of being completely comfortable with analysing situations and resolving conflicts. Touching which takes place outside of my control is not my idea of a good time. This is important to note in the context of my previous job.

I have spoken about how sex work was my gateway to developing confidence, assertiveness, and fully understanding my boundaries, which is one of the most important things when dealing with people up close and personal. I learned not only to follow through on the little voice in the back of my head that said "This is not okay, I can’t do this," but to also be comfortable with whatever aftermath of my rejection resulted. Your issues with me rejecting you is yours and yours alone. I am not responsible for managing those feelings.

Learning to say "No" is particularly hard for women because we spend so many of our lives being taught that saying "No" is not an option. I’m sure we’ve all heard the statement "Why don’t you just give him a chance?" in response to an unwanted advance. Like somehow, our feelings are less important than the needs of the other person. Quite often a "No" is not enough, to the point you need to act like an arsehole to get your point across. "They were just being nice to you!" is the catch-cry of people unaware they are defending predatory tactics designed to wear down your defences.

When you grow up in a world where you are taught that ‘No" is not an option, and without coping skills for managing feelings of rejection, you live in a world where assertiveness and boundaries are a rarity. The inability to say "No" doesn’t just apply to women, men are also told they cannot say "No" especially with regards to sex. That they shouldn’t say "No" and that there is something wrong with them if they do. "Just say No" is also not as easy as one would first think in a world where people are harmed or killed as a consequence of asserting their right to reject an unwanted advance. When you don’t know what reaction your "No" is going to receive, you are less likely to say it.

Assertiveness and confidence are traits that take training and reinforcement. These can only grow in environments where it is safe to start to develop them, a situation where saying "No" or saying "Yes" is supported and encouraged by the people around you. Never once in my brothel career was I criticised for saying "No" or "Yes." Criticising the rejection of an unwanted advance is tantamount to emotional manipulation and abuse and should not be tolerated. Confidence does not come from the ability to say "No," it comes from the understanding that saying "No" is okay.

Being in a safe environment where I could start to develop the ability to say "No" and "Yes" without residual negative feelings, meant I could also begin to learn more about my boundaries. It’s not that I don’t like being touched, it's that I don’t like being touched in situations where I am not in control. I do like being in control of my interactions and when you work in a customer service role it is always vital to be in control.

I’M DOWN TO FUCK, BUT WHAT I REALLY WANT ARE DONUTS

He looks around the room. "Do you enjoy this?"

I shrug "People behave themselves. Do you enjoy your work?"

Sometimes, he says. "I work in retail. Customers can be dickheads," he continues.

I laugh and sympathise, "You poor bastard."

He laughs. "I won’t be a dickhead customer," he promises. He keeps his promise.

**"

People often ask, how did you handle the job so well given that you’re not straight? How hard was it to have sex with strangers, particularly men? Being emotionally and sexually apathetic towards men helped compartmentalise my work. I had no concerns about impacts to my sexuality and no worries with being unable to divorce sex from emotion. If you can’t do that you will be on a fast track to emotional burnout.

I agonised for quite a while on how I was going to convey my next message, without realising why I was struggling as much as I was to articulate myself. I came to the following conclusion: the way society as a whole views sex and sexual intimacy impacts on our ability to view sex in the form of a business transaction. While it is an intimate, often emotional form of work, it is still, at its core, a business transaction. One which is entirely dependent on a sexual contract in which the terms and conditions have been clearly negotiated, and agreed upon by all parties.

Being a sex worker was not just my job, it was my profession, therefore thinking of it professionally and maintaining professional detachment, as with all employment, was key to sustaining a healthy work and personal life. Sex work functioning in the same manner as any other profession can thus be summarised in the following way: Always willing but not always wanting. I’m still willing to go to work, but sometimes I just don’t want to. At times you just don’t have the motivation to go through the daily work grind.[iv] Sometimes I enjoyed a booking and other times I just wanted it to be over. At times the interactions started awkwardly and ended fantastically; other times they were great from start to finish. It came down to the client and how I was feeling throughout my shift.

With that in mind, I am comfortable in saying while I was willing to have sex with a client for money, I had not always been wanting to do so. I will consent, but I would much rather do anything else. I haven’t met many people who can say sincerely that they would be thrilled to go to work for 8-10 hours if they had the option to do something else. Being always willing but not always wanting never bothered me, as my professional detachment in my clients is the line that keeps professional sex nothing more than work. My sex drive is low, but my interest in sex is high, so it’s not hard to get me in "the mood" because I’m willing to be gotten "in the mood". I may not have always been in the mood, but that never negated my willingness to be there.

This approach to engaging in sex even in a work setting is perfectly fine, as long as you are 100% comfortable feeling that way. A high level of self-awareness is required as it can very quickly slide into coercion if you’re not careful. You can be comfortable with being willing to engage but wanting to be elsewhere (i.e: I said Yes although I want to be at the beach and I'm okay with that) without consequence, but you cannot be uncomfortable with willing or not wanting (i.e: I said Yes but I'm not comfortable with and I want to be elsewhere).

The key component when dealing with these situations is your level of personal comfort. I can walk into a booking room completely fine with what’s about to happen. I’m not horny, I’m not in the mood, and I would much rather be eating nachos and watching TV, but being in that place at that time engaging in an act solely for the other person is completely fine. I may not necessarily always want to be there, but it’s okay that I am.

- Excerpt from Pizza, Pincushions and Playing It Straight

Link: https://pizza-and-pincushions.myshopify.com/products/pizza-and-pin-cushions

Now 20% off. Discount applies automatically at the checkout.

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The Americans: You're amazing, you're valid, I just want you to see how brilliant you are

Tan, the British Bitch™: if you don't change your wardrobe no one will ever fuck you

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“Gender critical therapy” is just “conversion therapy” with another name, and just as harmful.

Graham Linehan, co-creator of  British TV shows like Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd, wanted to create a list of “gender critical therapists”, and this has caused a lot of discussion in British media. 

The argument was again based on the common misunderstanding, namely that gender non-coforming kids are forced into transitioning. That does not happen. Transgender health care is focusing on kids who have gender identity issues, not those who violate the gender stereotypes onlu.

In The Independent Gemma Stone, draws the obvious parallel between “gender critical therapy” and “conversion therapy”, i.e. people who are trying to force gay, lesbian and trans kids to stop being queer:

//The core tenet of the gender critical belief system is that you cannot change sex. If you are born a man or woman, you will die a man or woman respectively. “Sex is immutable” is their catchphrase, you can search this and find thousands of anti-trans results. Funnily enough, this is the exact same premise that conversion therapy for trans kids is built on too.

The purpose of both conversion and gender critical therapy is to discourage a child from being trans, for one reason or another. In the case of religious advisors, the typical claim is that it’s against their religion, while secular anti-trans activists tend to claim that their GCSE in science trumps the vast array of medical and humans rights organisations who support trans people and children. 

Often such “therapy” is performed by putting us in extreme pain, to create an association between who we are and pain to act as a deterrent. Testimonies from said victims, such as people like Carolyn Mercer, a victim of trans conversion therapy in the Sixties, have spoken of being strapped to chairs and electrocuted while being shown images of women’s clothes under NHS care.//

Health professionals as well as institutions like Stonewall, Amnesty International and the Human Rights Campaign, tell us that conversion therapy does not work. As Stone points out it  “is unethical, and creates so many needless negative effects, including a vastly increased risk of self-harm, and even attempted suicide.”

More here.

Photo from the article: According to recent studies, transgender children supported in their identity show greatly improved mental health outcomes ( Getty )

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Maya Forstater just had a go at the Equality and Human Rights Commission on Twitter for changing their display picture to the Pride flag. For Pride month.

She literally just "What about other minorities?" the EHRC during Pride month. That's the equivalent of saying "What about men?" during discussions about feminism.

And JK Rowling supports her.

It's the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It's their *job* to show support. They have made posts on race inequality and disability rights during BLM as well.

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❌BREAKING NEWS❌

Atlanta Police Walkout In Protest Following Murder Charge Against Officer Who Shot Rayshard Brooks

The head of Atlanta’s police union confirmed Wednesday June 17th, 2020 that officers from the Atlanta Police Department in Zones 3 and 6 walked off the job Wednesday afternoon.  

Vince Champion, southeast regional director of the International Brotherhood of Police officers, said that police officers had stopped answering calls midshift, in response to charges against Officer Garrett Rolfe who is accused of murdering Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta.

Police are doing what they call the BlueFlu: a strike action, especially among police officers, in which workers are absent on the pretext of “sickness”.

#WAKEUP

Follow here for more news

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Additional: You will smell more. Your body odor will be more pungent. Don't try to cover it up with deodorant or cologne as you will just smell like BO and deodorant.

Invest in antiperspirant and apply it to your armpits straight after you get out of the shower, this will stop bacterial forming as your sweat glands will be blocked from forming sweat.

Use antiperspirant to stop sweating, and cologne to smell good.

Some trans guy tips from your dad

Don’t try that mascara/arm hair shit. I’ve been passing for more than a year with short, blond arm hair. It’s not an important secondary sex characteristic.

Board shorts (without pockets in the front) do wonders to minimize the width of your hips. Always choose board shorts over swim trunks. Choose them over cargo shorts if it’s appropriate.

Speak from your chest, never from your head.

The goal of binding should not be an entirely flat chest; you should bind for your body type.

GC2b makes the best binders out there, and their products are designed specifically for trans men/transmasculine people.

It might seem useless if you’re pre-T, but working out can be a big help for dysphoria.

Eyebrows are really important to passing pre-testosterone. Muss that shit up. Make them look unkempt.

When you ask for a haircut, make sure the edges in the back are squared, not rounded.

If you have peach fuzz, I would advise shaving it. Cis guys shed theirs when they go through puberty. Shaving can also help with facial hair dysphoria.

Don’t ever buy a binder from Amazon. They run in strange sizes (I was an XXL even though I’m a M in GC2b) and take weeks/months to come. It’s also difficult to breathe in them after a few hours.

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Some trans guy tips from your dad

Don’t try that mascara/arm hair shit. I’ve been passing for more than a year with short, blond arm hair. It’s not an important secondary sex characteristic.

Board shorts (without pockets in the front) do wonders to minimize the width of your hips. Always choose board shorts over swim trunks. Choose them over cargo shorts if it’s appropriate.

Speak from your chest, never from your head.

The goal of binding should not be an entirely flat chest; you should bind for your body type.

GC2b makes the best binders out there, and their products are designed specifically for trans men/transmasculine people.

It might seem useless if you’re pre-T, but working out can be a big help for dysphoria.

Eyebrows are really important to passing pre-testosterone. Muss that shit up. Make them look unkempt.

When you ask for a haircut, make sure the edges in the back are squared, not rounded.

If you have peach fuzz, I would advise shaving it. Cis guys shed theirs when they go through puberty. Shaving can also help with facial hair dysphoria.

Don’t ever buy a binder from Amazon. They run in strange sizes (I was an XXL even though I’m a M in GC2b) and take weeks/months to come. It’s also difficult to breathe in them after a few hours.

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Do not engage with TERFs. They don't deserve your time or your words. They don't want to engage with you in good faith, they want to make you feel shitty for 20 minutes.

TERFs will throw every woman under the metaphorical bus in an effort to feel better about themselves. As much as they try, they can't take anyone's womanhood from us. Feminine, masculine, or gender non-conforming, straight, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, cis, trans - we're all great and wonderful.

💙💗🤍💗💙♥️🧡💛💚💙💜

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Text: User: @AHumanNerd

Lesbians who exclude trans women from our spaces need to remember that the Lavender Menace was a thing:

TLM was a response to queer women being shut out feminist spaces. Feminists claimed that lesbians were as dangerous as men and would try to prey on other women.

“Few dykes, even lesbian feminists, remember today that the first negative response to lesbian participation in the women’s movement was the idea that we would contaminate consciousness- raising groups with male behavior— specifically, sexual predation. Straight feminists assumed lesbians had the equivalent of male identities” (Califia 2003, 3). This is similar to conservative arguments about trans women preying on cis women in bathrooms. Lesbians have been, and still are, accused of “taking resources away from the ‘real’ concerns of the women’s movement” [Bunch 1972, 8] (zero- sum argument) and of lacking the heterosexual experience or essence that makes a “true” woman (experiential and essence arguments)."

Bunch, Charlotte. 1994 (1979). “Learning from Lesbian Separatism.” In Lavender Culture, edited by Karla Jay and Allen Young. New York: New York University Press.

Califia, Patrick. 2003 (1997). Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism. San Francisco: Cleis Press.

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Anyone who says “All Lives Matter” must now say “Happy Holidays” and not “Merry Christmas” because all holidays matter, Karen.

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The phrase "People who menstruate" doesn't erase cis women.

Cis women are still included, we're not being erased. Our language is evolving to be more accurate and include other groups of people often left out of the conversation.

Transgender men who haven't started HRT or those early in their transition, intersex, and non-binary people can menstruate. They deserve to be included in conversations around healthcare.

Inclusion is not erasure. Inclusion means the voices of the forgotten are being heard. They're being included.

I'm going to repeat the same thing I said to those who thought same-sex marriage would erode straight marriages: One group gaining rights, doesn't mean another group loses them.

Why do I need to constantly have these conversations with people who claim to know what it's like to be part of a struggling minority?

[spacebaubles]

Racists, bigots, and murderers don't deserve statues, let alone monuments to their evil.