YES YES I NEED THIS SIGN IN EVERY SINGLE PARK PLEASE
This is my daily struggle, I had so many arguments with people with off-leash dogs (in a mandatory leash area!!!). Thanks to this behavior I'm struggling with Kim being anxious/aggressive with other females as she often gets involved in unpleased interactions with free females while on leash. And every single time that I ask for the dog to be at least recalled, I'm being called names and insulted of course.
Also 9 out of 10 their dog isn't really that friendly at all.
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"Tell your favorite creators that you like their work, people usually enjoy things silently, but hate tends to be loud"
This is a phrase I just heard from Dnd shorts that captures perfectly why I often try to make the effort of commenting on posts and telling people that I enjoy their work and why
Even to small creators, I advice everyone to make the extra effort to tell them, I can guarantee it makes all the difference in the world, it's not cringy or obnoxious, it'll just brighten someone's day
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I see you disabled people who don't know your family medical history because your family members couldn't/wouldn't/weren't allowed to go to the doctor and never got diagnosed, or don't know your family.
I see you disabled people who didn't know you were disabled growing up, physically or mentally, maybe because your parents didn't have insurance and couldn't afford it/wouldn't take you seriously/didn't think it was a problem because they had it/doctors couldn't figure it out.
I see you disabled people who have bouts of an issue that you grew up with, that are/were infrequent enough that you never really thought about it and dealt with it on your own, and when you have one in front of people who weren't medically neglected, you wonder why they look so horrified as you describe it.
I see you disabled people who didn't/haven't had any amount of care or accommodation for their disability since it started, because you couldn't get diagnosed.
I see you disabled people who grew up thinking everyone had the same problem as you and that it was normal and so you accepted it, because you didn't understand how the human body worked and had no real frame of reference nor the language to ask for help, or the people around you saw it and just ignored it.
I see you disabled people only now understanding that what you experience is abnormal, and that there are things that can be done to help it, make it easier, or at least help you understand yourself better.
I see you disabled people that will never be able to get diagnosed or get the help you need, whether from being poor, lacking insurance, or any number of reasons.
This shit is hard, and there are people who will never quite understand your struggles. It doesn't seem to get talked about as much, but I wish it was. Please know I love you, and you aren't alone.
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lurking in radfem spaces has really changed my entire view of most mainstream internet spaces because once you realize just how censored women's voices and feminist thought are on these sites, and how much porn and misogynistic values are defended, you can't unsee it.
how anyone can bear to participate in an online space where porn, of all things, is lauded as the bastion of "self-expression" and yet any woman slightly critical of popular cultural opinions is demonized is wild, especially when a lot of that porn is a) violent and misogynistic b) often accessible by minors c) gross and shallow d) myriad of other reasons far better writers have probably described
fuck I'm just so tired. seeking rationality online is just opening a pandora's box of garbage and seeing the reflection of how bleak the social hegemony has become.
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it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.
yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.
right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.
the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.
these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.
it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.
we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.
secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)
whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.
they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")
and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."
i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.
one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.
i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.
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