My baby daughter got her adorable puffin-print dress absolutely CAKED in mud crawling around the yard and my first thought was "oh no her beautiful dress"
And my second thought was "oh huh it really WOULD be easy to unconsciously steer her away from playing in the dirt. Unlike my son, whose outfits are usually some kind of solid dark easily washed pants plus a shirt that doesn't trail in the dirt like a dress does."
Anyway something something gender roles start getting shoved on kids from literal birth, but with a little time to think about things, YOU TOO can let your children of any gender absolutely destroy their clothes in the dirt pit they're digging in your garden
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I had a person come up to the counter today, look at my badge and go, "You're not [insert stereotypical male name here].
Which, yeah, right, true, technically, I'm not, I had the wrong badge. I forgot mine at home, and I used my coworker's one. It was the only one available and it had "[male name], he/him".
(Side note, I so so so love that our badges have pronouns on them, it's so nice! Another side note, I go by they/them most of the time, but I don't mind he/she/ze or any other pronouns)
And, usually, gender is a concept I don't have the time or brain capacity to consider. It doesn't really matter for me personally, I know I appear feminine, and I don't have a problem with customers referring to me by she/her. I mean, sure, it's nice if they look at my badge, see "Cork, they/them" and refer to me by it, but honestly, the amount of fucks I give about random people using wrong pronouns is zero.
But this person at the counter just, I dunno. Looked like they wanted a fight. And the shop was empty, and I was bored, so I was like
You know what? Sure, let's do this. It's probably the only entertainment I'm gonna have today, might as well make it as confusing as possible. Because I love to watch the world burn, sue me.
So I go, "I actually am."
"But you don't look like [male name]!"
Been there, done that, "What do I look like, then?"
Stutter. "I don't know, but you're not [male name]!"
Okay, we're just repeating ourselves now, sure, "Then who am I?"
"NOT [male name]!!! Why are you wearing a badge that has a wrong name?!"
And it was at this moment that a brilliant thought crossed my mind. So I smile, cute and nice and pretty, and I go, "Because I stole it."
"You what?"
"I stole this name from the one who had it, and now he has no name and I get to have it. Now, can I have your name for this order?" And I extend a hand to them, like asking to put something in there, because I'm now committing to the bit. All while looking them in the eyes and keeping the smile.
They ended up leaving without ordering anything, but they also didn't speak to me after that, so that's a win, overall. And the manager laughed at that, so I'm not even in trouble.
The moral of the story? When in doubt, play by the fae rules.
I didn't even lie, technically speaking.
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What if using the pronouns for someone is a trigger for me? I've tried to work on it in the past with my therapist, but we made little progress on this particular issue in two years and I'm starting to run out of money for therapy. Should I just avoid people who use the pronouns?
no? do you understand how absolutely off the walls that is? that's literally NOT how you heal from trauma- this is the EXACT opposite of that. what, should trans people with she/her or he/him trauma avoid every single person they encounter who use he or she from here on out?
why are you even talking to me to begin with? i use it/its pronouns only.
alright FUCK THIS. not being overly nice for this one, this is absolutely vile and fucking personal at this stage. look i have very severe PTSD and i am sick and TIRED of people using their OWN trauma as an excuse to MISGENDER OTHER PEOPLE:
YOU ARE PERPETUATING THE CYCLE OF ABUSE WHETHER OR NOT YOU REALIZE IT.
you will NEVER have the excuse to refuse to properly gender someone because YOU have some type of trauma. that fucking sucks that you have trauma but that is NOBODY'S burden to bear but yours and NOBODY is misgendering YOU on purpose for it. you CAN and WILL get over triggers if you actually try. you have to put in a lot of effort. you have to understand that calling SOMEONE ELSE BY THEIR CORRECT PRONOUNS IS NOT YOU GETTING MISGENDERED.
YOU are NOT being misgendered by referring to someone else by their CORRECT pronouns. you HAVE to get the fuck over it and STOP making someone else's pronouns about yourself.
seriously, re-read this question and ask yourself is that even a remotely healthy sounding line of thinking? do you seriously think it's okay for men who have been abused by a lot of women to incorrectly refer to women and pathologically avoid them? do you seriously think it's okay for women who have been abused by a lot of men to misgender every man they come across and pathologically avoid men for the rest of their lives?
honestly, how hard have you even tried to work on this? be serious with yourself. you can say you worked on it, but have you? go the fuck back to therapy, you're not done yet. i don't know how to tell you GIVING UP is not the correct way to go about this. therapy can take years and DECADES you can't just INSTANTLY give the fuck up because it brings back upsetting memories. you HAVE to care about other people's feelings, you can't prioritize yourself in ever single situation on planet earth. you can't. trauma can and does make people do selfish, abusive, manipulative things. you are NOT incapable of abusing others just because you have trauma. you don't deserve to be coddled just because you have trauma.
if you can't see it/its users as people who deserve respect and deserve to be referred to correctly, you are projecting your own trauma about your own feelings on these pronouns on to complete and total fucking strangers and that is nobody's problem but yours. that needs to be worked on fucking ASAP. absolutely un-fucking-real. i'm a person and i hate it that you just do not see it/its users as people, but instead roadblocks, and that you don't care about our feelings whatsoever.
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Cis women will almost always be fine with being called dude/bro and people sure do love to weaponise that fact when transgender women don't like it. How do they not see the one big factor that makes it different
this + also the constant “soft” misgendering people do with trans women by deliberately using they/them and other gender neutral language for trans women. even if you completely convince everyone that “dude” is gender neutral it’s still downstream of the fact that people will go out of their way to not use feminine terms for trans women, including using gender neutral language (often under the guise of being progressive and “not assuming anyone’s gender”) as a cover to clock trans women in public and police their gender presentation
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