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i think the thing that fucks me up about anti-fatness is that it's a pure disgust response but people don't even realize it cause they've wrapped it up in so much moralizing and bad science. Like they can't even look at the part where they're just taught to view people as disgusting anymore and understand that that's all it is. And when they see fat people trying to be or do anything that isn't being sorry for existing they have to push it back into that mold. I have to be a walking talking anti-fat psa.

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HIV and COVID

A major barrier to preventing the spread of HIV is accurate test results.

There is a high chance there are many people with HIV that have it and do not know. We do not know how long this undetected time period is (lentiviruses are often associated with long periods of time of virus activity that goes undetected- 5 to 10 years or more), but there is a chance many individuals with HIV go undiagnosed for many years. Individuals during this time before an HIV diagnosis complain of fatigue and many undiagnosed disabling symptoms during that time period. HIV is able to cause changes to immune cells that prevent HIV tests from finding the infection. Some people get negative HIV tests when they are HIV positive. This means you could be HIV negative, but still have HIV in your blood and can spread HIV to other individuals.

Getting a COVID vaccination (and sometimes other vaccinations like the flu vaccination) can help the body identify HIV hiding in the body. This allows earlier treatment and intervention. Once HIV has been identified, it also reduces the risk for all individuals in our population to be exposed to more severe infections.

Getting tested regularly for HIV used to be part of our federal public health recommendations.

This just further emphasizes why this information is so important to know and healthcare needs to start testing for more diseases in more people and do these tests more often.

People often assume their infection came from an unfaithful partner, but in reality HIV has been spreading unknowingly to many in the medical community and still in the public sphere no one is talking about it like the huge deal it is.

This potential means people could be raped as a child, never have sex again, never encounter drugs, and then be miserable & living with an active HIV infection into their early 20s and they would never know. Once they got a positive test result they would have no idea where the infection even came from.

Our entire understanding of these types of diseases has to change and the seriousness of this topic has to be addressed by the world. This was theorized as a mechanism of HIV spread due to how many people were getting diagnosed but had no identifiable cause of their HIV, but now it’s proven and right in front of us. This is disastrous.

To everyone that told the truth about how they didn’t know how they got these types of diseases & how they had no idea where they got it from then faced judgement from others and even the medical community- you aren’t crazy.

On behalf of everything these types of diseases did to destroy families, relationships, and your body, I’m going to apologize right now for all the individuals that I know won’t ever give you an apology for what they did and what they said.

I believe you. I always did.

Without you telling your truth , we never would have been able to figure this out about HIV.

HIV is spreading in “HIV negative” individuals to other individuals as some researchers theorized.

The mRNA vaccination technology developed is now the foundation for the next generation of HIV treatment and disease control. We must continue to push and advocate for improving the lives of all people with disease and we all just took a huge step forward.

You do not have to be sexually active to develop HIV. Your sexual trauma doesn’t have to define your life for the rest of your life- you are stronger than you know and braver than you feel.

Find a place to get tested for HIV here:

I still recommend getting a NAT or “viral load” test done as the first test to see if you have HIV.

I think considering what we know about HIV and in consideration of all the things we still don’t know that this is the safest option. Any other test for this condition available today has too high of a chance of producing a wrong result. I find it extremely uncomfortable we still use the other types of tests in the hospital and doctor office settings.

If you choose to order a test through an online service be aware some tests only tell you about either HIV-1 or HIV-2 and will not always provide you information related to type 1 and type 2.

For example, here:

This will provide you information related to ordering a test that looks for both types of HIV instead of just one strain of HIV.

Stay safe.

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You're not coming back from shit! Thrashing around in that high-conductivity state of yours, bumping into things and acting like a clown. Who are you kidding?

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To this day, many intersex people are mutilated as infants or toddlers.

From malevolent attempts to make their bodies more visually appealing to completely forcing them into a male/female binary.

Please do not just use our suffering as a 'gotcha' moment to own TERFS and other fascists. Please do not forget about us.

Edit: Also, not all parents know what is done to their child. Sometimes, they are lied to, and they are told that the surgery is necessary or even life-saving. Sometimes they are left completely oblivious, like in my case.

Having your child under the care of female staff/doctors does NOT matter. The surgeon who decided to operate on me was female.

For better readability:

Sometimes they can't wait to clip your wings.

I was two days old.

I was supposed to be a moth.

Instead I had to be pretty.

I seek healing.

I denied the false cocoon.

I'd rather be a clipped moth than a forced butterfly.

I sadly do not know how to properly ID something. Other users have reblogged with IDs however, thank you for your work.

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lately ive been addicted to these tiktoks where people put on an alien filter and just browse google maps and mark off countries and all the comments are people with pfps of little green aliens saying like "YES BOSS" "ALL CLEAR" "UNDERSTOOD BOSS"

AH I FOUND ONE

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this is just a bunch of text and barely a comic sorry, but i really wanted to talk about this stuff even if i don't have the energy to properly draw

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Imagine a person who only consumes Batman-related media. That is, they only watch movies and TV shows that have Batman in them, only read books that are novelisations of Batman media, only play licensed Batman video games, and so forth. This is not so absurd an idea; Batman-related media is sufficiently popular, varied and widespread that restricting one's media consumption in this way is completely feasible. However, I trust we can agree that if you actually do this, you will be left with very strange ideas about what popular media looks like.

The next step in this analogy is undestanding that if the only tabletop RPG you're acquainted with is Dungeons & Dragons, you have the same grasp of the tabletop roleplaying hobby as our hypothetical Batman Guy has of popular media.

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dont worry guys we just need to abandon marxism for what a white woman who saw Pocahontas once thinks indigenous philosophy is

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every time someone draws gillion with massive big bahoongas i gain another year to my life because I too am a guy with huge bagoogas please keep drawing him with xl bababas so i can be immortal

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i hate it when customers get mad about policy and go “well i’ve always thought it worked differently” like ok. when i was a kid i thought the drains in sinks and bathtubs lead to Hell and i would pour things down them for the dead people. it turns out that you can think things that aren’t true

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"when people ask how you're doing, they don't really care." most of them do, actually, the amount they care is just directly proportional to how well they know you. you're just mad you can't be the main character of the Twice Daily.

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Resources for Writing Sensitive Topics

As always, when writing about sensitive topics/injuries/illnesses, we encourage everyone to research and tag works appropriately. This is to ensure that the whump community can remain a safe space for everyone, as well as assist writers in creating well-informed works that avoid offending people and stereotyping, romanticising, or sensationalising hard topics.

Below are some links to resources we and others found useful - we'd like to thank the wonderful members of our community for helping us with finding great resources.

Blogs/Tumblr Posts:

@cripplecharacters - A whole blog dedicated to helping people write disabled characters.

^ A Guide to Writing Disabled Characters

@writingwithcolor - A whole blog dedicated to writing and resources centered on racial, ethnic and religious diversity.

^ Stereotypes and Tropes Navigation

Resources for Writing Injuries (Tumblr Masterpost)

Resources for Writing Sketchy Topics (Tumblr Masterpost - please note that a couple of links are broken due to the post being 7 years old, but many are still working!)

A guide to designing, drawing or writing characters who use mobility aids (Tumblr post)

Writing A Blind or Visually Impaired Character (Tumblr Post)

Independent Websites

Avoiding Stereotypes in Fiction: Characters with Mental Health Issues (WritersHelpingWriters)

How Do I Depict a Disabled Character Respectfully? (Fay Onyx, Mythcreants blog)

Respectfully Depicting a Character Adapting to a Disability (Fay Onyx, Mythcreants blog)

Writing Deaf Characters (T. Frohock, author.)

How to Write Deaf or Hard of Hearing Characters (Melanie Ashford, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association)

How to Write a Blind or Vision Impaired Character (AllWriteAlright)

If anyone has any additional sources, feel free to share them in the reblogs/replies!

POST CONTRIBUTERS - Thank you!

@psychologeek - Thank you for sharing some of the primary resources with us, it helped us a great deal :)

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Saw a post on Twitter that was like "I think it's entirely possible to be trans without dysphoria, but a lot of you are severely underestimating how much dysphoria you actually feel and how much you’ve let fade into background noise" and honestly? Yeah lol.

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So we are at Stage 2.

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Here's a key part of the transfemme experience that is very overlooked: when you don't pass, people don't actually see you as a man, or treat you like a man.