#but also. disabled people are everywhere and there are people who care. there is community and there are people who wont just expect you to

[99probalos]

walking around with my cane like Wow this is just like Mr. Plinkett

[scarlettgauthor]

I first posted this in a thread over on BlueSky, but I decided to port (a slightly edited version of) it over here, too.

Entirely aside from the absurd and deeply incorrect idea [NaNoWriMo has posited] that machine-generated text and images are somehow "leveling the playing field" for marginalized groups, I think we need to interrogate the base assumption that acknowledging how people have different abilities is ableist/discriminatory. Everyone SHOULD have access to an equal playing field when it comes to housing, healthcare, the ability to exist in public spaces, participating in general public life, employment, etc.

That doesn't mean every person gets to achieve every dream no matter what.

I am 39 years old and I have scoliosis and genetically tight hamstrings, both of which deeply impact my mobility. I will never be a professional contortionist. If I found a robot made out of tentacles and made it do contortion and then demanded everyone call me a contortionist, I would be rightly laughed out of any contortion community. Also, to make it equivalent, the tentacle robot would be provided for "free" by a huge corporation based on stolen unpaid routines from actual contortionists, and using it would boil drinking water in the Southwest into nothingness every time I asked it to do anything, and the whole point would be to avoid paying actual contortionists.

If you cannot - fully CAN NOT - do something, even with accommodations, that does not make you worth less as a person, and it doesn't mean the accommodations shouldn't exist, but it does mean that maybe that thing is not for you.

But who CAN NOT do things are not who uses "AI." It's people who WILL NOT do things.

"AI art means disabled people can be artists who wouldn't be able to otherwise!" There are armless artists drawing with their feet. There are paralyzed artists drawing with their mouths, or with special tracking software that translates their eye movements into lines. There are deeply dyslexic authors writing via text-to-speech. There are deaf musicians. If you actually want to do a thing and care about doing the thing, you can almost always find a way to do the thing.

Telling a machine to do it for you isn't equalizing access for the marginalized. It's cheating. It's anti-labor. It makes it easier for corporations not to pay creative workers, AND THAT'S IS WHY THEY'RE PUSHING IT EVERYWHERE.

I can't wait for the bubble to burst on machine-generated everything, just like it did for NFTs. When it does some people are going to discover they didn't actually learn anything or develop any transferable skills or make anything they can be proud of.

I hope a few of those people pick up a pencil.

It's never too late to start creating. It's never too late to actually learn something. It's never too late to realize that the work is the point.

[hellyeahscarleteen]

New donors needed to help keep Scarleteen’s queer, trans and gender nonconforming sex educators going!

We, the queer and trans, staff & volunteers at Scarleteen spend the vast majority of our time giving support. We very actively maintain a friendly and accessible website full of resources, advice and information, and provide a caring, safe and patient environment in all of our direct services. We continue to make a massive contribution towards sexuality education as a whole, as we have for the whole of our 25 year tenure. Everywhere we go we receive thanks from educators and service workers for the motivation we, and our founder Heather Corinna, have given them to do incredible work in their communities. However, for our daily survival and our dreams of the future, we need support too!

Unless our current trajectory changes we will not have the funding this year to give our volunteers end-of-year stipends to reward their generous efforts, nor bring our codirectors’ wages any closer to industry standard or even industry average rates of pay for their positions and tenure - averages which we continue to undershoot by quite some margin, nor will we be able to reimburse those staff for the many hours they have worked in excess of their basic 30 hours a week. We will also be unable to increase their healthcare benefits which for one disabled member of our team, will have been exceeded 4 times over by actual healthcare costs by the end of the year, which they have had to pay for out-of-pocket.

As part of our annual Pride celebration we are asking you to consider becoming one of the 50 (and fabulous) new recurring donors we are determined to find this week! Please consider supporting a few good queer & trans people to help us continue to deliver queer sex and relationships education, info and support, which remains free and open to all.

Recurring monthly donations of $10 or more are part of the treasured community of donors who give us peace of mind like nothing else can. We will need a further 250 recurring donors at that level or the financial equivalent to keep us on-track for our most modest projections through the coming years, so whatever help you can give us today to exceed our initial target of 50 will be cherished by us more than you can know.

Here’s some ways to help:

If you can become a new monthly donor, please do! We would love to welcome you to our valued bunch of fabulous supporters!

If you are already a donor, please consider tacking on an extra $10 per month, even temporarily, if you can!

If you cannot currently afford to donate an increased amount, or cannot donate at all, please consider reaching out to someone who you think can, so that eventually we can find that new donor. (And if you manage to sign someone up, do let us know so we can thank you!)

If you only want to or can give us a one-time donation we will still be incredibly grateful for that help at any level. We know a thing or 12 about deep financial limitations and having to choose very carefully where you give.

Please go to scarleteen.com/donate to begin your monthly donation, or if you have further questions head to scarleteen.com/contact drop us a message.

Thank you once more for your support and for being your queer/trans/allied/otherwise-awesome self,

Yours sincerely,

The Scarleteam …

of Scarleteen: queer sex ed for all since 1998❤️

[jasperxkuromi]

Regressors that are (bodily) older, please interact!

Later 20s, 30s, maybe even older? I would love to hear from you and maybe even your stories if you don't mind sharing!

I want to meet more people like me and also show others that age regression doesn't just suddenly "stop" at a certain age

Some of us:

Didn't discover regressing/didn't understand their involuntary regression until they were older

Wasn't in a safe space mentally and/or physically to be able to regress the way we want to

Didnt "grow out" of regressing. I think a lot of people outside the community assume we will all grow out of wanting to regress at some point. Maybe some of us will, but some of us won't. Regressing can be a safe and healthy coping mechanism, no matter your bodily age!

And probably many other reasons I can't think of at the moment lol

I would love to get to talk to older regressors, or if there are any groups/discords, I would like to know those too :3

I'm gonna talk about my story a little under the cut, but I don't exactly recommend reading it if you are little right now! I am going to be talking about s3xualization of agere and children's media unfortunately.

I started age dreamer/involuntarily regressing when I was in high school without really knowing what it was. I was really into MLP FiM during its height popularity. I watched the show, collected and played with the toys, did coloring books, took my MLP blanket to school ever day. You get the idea.

I discovered regression here in Tumblr, but this was yeeeeaaars ago, like back when nsfw was still allowed. The line between ddlg and agere wasn't as solid as it is now. Or maybe it was just because I was a kid and couldn't understand better? Either way ... i ended up getting wrong ideas of what agere had to be and ended up scaring myself off. I also had adult roleplayers leaving really inappropriate comments on my posts that made me feel icky. I thought agere had to be s3xual and scared myself off.

We also unfortunately probably know the uhhh .. types of fan art that was popular of MLP. And it just ended up making me lose interest in the series. The stuff was everywhere and it was hard to avoid even if you were vigilant.

I never got a real chance to understand what healthy, voluntary regression was. I still was an age dreamer, but most times when I involuntarily regress it is out of extreme stress and it isn't fun or pretty.

I had a lot of bad things that happened to me last year and in turn I am having more health issues. Chronic conditions I already had getting worse, and new ones popping up. My mom (the one who birthed me) has been helping me a bit, but it has still been a lot of playing adult. Making phone calls back and forth, filling out paperwork, figuring out disability leave, paying bills, etc etc. I started age dreaming more and more often to cope with the stress. Like I randomly one day bought a DVD player and sets of Winnie the Pooh and Scooby Doo DVDs lmfao.

I also never stopped collecting stuffed animals and came back to collecting dolls again last year. It helps that I have friends IRL who I don't think are regressors, but still enjoy collecting with me. (my friends don't know yet, but I think they would be accepting if I told them, or they might already assume I regress tbh)

I have kinda had age regression on the back of my mind for several months, but was scared to look back into it. I was scared of going through the same thing I did back in high school. But also denying I am a regressor and that I still need to heal my childhood wounds was getting heavier and heavier on me. I am sooooo thankful I finally felt safe to begin exploring regression again ♥️😁

Side note: while I absolutely don't care if people do ddlg and similar stuff as a kink/fetish, I am thankful that the distinction between that and agere is more distinct now. It is important we protect minors and other vulnerable people from having the same sorts of things that happened to me (or worse) from happening to them.

[eepyfaggoth]

Job Opportunity in Boston

Hello! I'm a multiply disabled medically complex wheelchair user in greater boston who relies on caregivers and i am hiring! No experience necessary, just be resourceful, patient, covid cautious, dependable, and an enthusiastic learner. Especially looking for other fat people! Hoping for someone who drives but I am accessible via the T.

Turning to tumblr as a bit of a hail mary because i am having a really hard time finding someone who can do the job, show up, and also be normal to me as a fat disabled queer through local channels, and i have one worker now who comes as often as they can, but ive been without adequate support for a while. i would appreciate anyone and everyone who reblogs, to possibly get this in the eyes of someone who might be a good fit! welcoming advice as well!

I have the sweetest esa cat

Pay is 19$ an hour funded by masshealth, i have 30-35 hours available and you can work as many or as few of those as you want

Im still very much trying to figure out life with my disability and how to function and organize and communicate my needs and navigating what I'm emotionally able to accept help with, but in general I need help with housework, cooking, managing my medical care, pushing me in my manual wheelchair, sometimes help using a slide board, and I'm still trying to figure out what things look like on a daily basis. going places with or for me. helping me get in the car, helping me pack a backpack if i need to go somewhere. getting mail, helping clean and pick things up off the floor, organizing medical appointments, making phone calls, unpacking medical equipment. emptying a pee jar. Helping me manage/charge medical equipment. I have a hard time lifting my arms a lot because of really bad neck issues, and i have really limited stamina. Putting drinks in smaller bottles, taking packaging off things. I also kind of need help with dressing and bathing sometimes but I have a really hard time coping with that and so like. That happens when it happens and is what it is. I have some systems for washing my hair without actually getting in the shower. I have variable conditions so things might not be the same all the time, on a good day I might be able to sit up for a while and do tasks, on a bad day it's very hard to bring a drink to my lips.

There's no physically lifting my entire body, but I do need someone who can lift the 50lb largest piece of one my wheelchairs and standard everyday heavy stuff like groceries or boxes of protein shakes. And sometimes my limbs. There's also likely things like reaching and stooping, alas, I drop a lot of things on the floor. I have a lot of allergies and some tasks are more complicated than they otherwise might be, and Im really hoping to find someone who can pay attention to detail and is comfortable working through things slowly.

i have a lot of allergies so memory and attention to detail are important, as is a willingness to wash hands frequently. i have a disorder called mast cell activation syndrome and frankly the precautions i need to take feel absurd

covid precautions:

Masks required! I'm hoping to find someone who also takes other precautions.I also need someone to be careful about monitoring yourself and not coming in if you are sick with *anything* because I *will* get it and it *will* be a multiple week ordeal where I likely experience dangerous symptoms. must be able to test weekly and mask with a k/n95 while around me. ideally be someone who lives low risk (masks everywhere, doesnt attend crowded events / spaces, etc). cannot be someone with a high risk lifestyle (has kids in primary school, unmasked in food service areas regularly, etc) we can talk about my precautions too, right now i havent left my house in weeks, i have two way masking with my current pca, and occasionally an unmasked delivery person will come into my apartment though id like to work on solutions to this. i need to like. revamp my precautions. but i dont go anywhere without a mask, i only have unmasked contact with another person if someone comes into my apartment and i cant get to my mask, i am eating while my pca is here and they are masked, or when my also homebound and careful partner is visiting. if someone was working for me more than 25 hours a week and lived a very low risk life i might be open to having a bubble with them during non surge times with precautions like air filters?

i really try to create a calm and positive work environment, though i have complex and real needs and i've been struggling to survive for a long time and i am very overwhelmed. i care deeply about a humanizing workplace, and i am looking for someone who will care enough about my needs as a human being to take the job seriously even though i am as flexible as possible.

About me, in case that helps?

Fat genderfluid dyke. I'm on my third medical leave from college (like a champ!) but I study medical anthropology, disability studies, and linguistics. I don't get out much or do a lot right now because of my illness but i like fiber arts, music, I don't do tons because I spend most of my time in bed but im really passionate about mutual aid, it's been a a minute but I've been wanting to get back into d&d, I think the magicians is the greatest work of television ever written, and I've been trained as a clown and want to try stand up (well, sit down) comedy at some point. I'm a bit neurotic but very self aware. trying to sort out anticonsumerism in the context of my disability. i value creativity, resourcefulness, autonomy, and consent.

(if this went like really well, i am also potentially looking to apply for housing assistance with accommodation for a room for a live in aid, but probably in western mass. idk)

Gwen :) he/they

Message for details

[ana-snz]

More thoughts on the recent snzblr discourse. I will try my best to be understanding and levelheaded about this, but this topic is very personal to me so forgive me if I’m not entirely able to.

I will start by saying that it is not “purity culture” or “moral panic” to say that having this kink does not excuse intentionally infecting unconsenting individuals with illness. There is a MASSIVE difference between enjoying a kink in a consensual setting or fantasizing about it (no one is saying you can’t do these things, you are not being shamed for your fantasies / desires!) and actually involving unwilling individuals in your kink.

Consent is the #1 most important thing in all kink spaces. Like yes we are all here for the same reason, and there may be a propensity to feel defensive if you feel you are being kink-shamed in what is supposed to be a space for us all to be as open and loud and unabashed about our desires as we want, but it is still absolutely crucial to delineate between what is fantasy and what is reality, and understand that our real life actions can and do have consequences. We are not living inside a sickfic, the ways in which we choose to engage in our kink MUST be consensual, respectful, responsible, and safe. It is the bare minimum for this, or any kink space.

It is not kink-shaming to say that non-consensual engagement is wrong and unethical, ESPECIALLY when it comes to something as potentially dangerous as illness. It’s also worth acknowledging that the dynamic of our community has been greatly impacted by COVID, just by the nature of what the kink entails, and that this sucks and is worth mourning, but just like with many other things the pandemic has impacted, we cannot hang on to this old way of being when it no longer is safe or realistic to do so. This is the way things are now, and it sucks, but we can still find SO much enjoyment and gratification and pleasure in the way things are now.

If you are feeling discomfort, if the points disabled people are bringing up around this topic are making you question yourself and your actions, that is likely something for you sit with and explore yourself, rather than trying to debate with disabled people on whether or not their reaction to inflammatory, ableist content is “moral panic”. Understand that this conversation is part of a much, much larger picture and that it is not isolated to just our community, but rather a reflection of a larger systemic response in which disabled people have been disbelieved, undermined, and discarded when it comes to our rights and safety during an ongoing pandemic.

If you didn’t read as much into *that* post as some of us did, great. You likely don’t have to be on hyper alert for this kind of content, but we see it all the time, everywhere. The casual downplaying of COVID and the flippancy about its risks are things we are all too familiar with, and tone policing marginalized folks when we get upset about harmful content is not the move. Listen to us, learn from us, be in solidarity with us. It may seem counterintuitive to you to care about these things in what many of us may see as just a place to escape and have a little fun, but respect is the backbone of kink spaces and we’d all fare well if we could remember that.

This was longer than I planned on it being, oops. I also blocked some people so I don’t even know who will see this but just wanted to add my piece. Love y’all bbs, stay safe ❤️

[pinkhairswagtourney]

i need some serious help/guidance. i feel like a failure. i don't know where to turn – my family is part of the problem and they don't care about helping me, i don't have any IRL friends that i can ask for help from, and i've been so busy dealing with all my IRL shit that i've drifted away from any of my online friends. i've applied everywhere in my town that's hiring, and i mean EVERYWHERE. either i get aired from the jump, or i get a call back, ask for accommodations during the interview, and then never hear back from them. i feel like a lost cause. i can't continue to ask you guys for help forever, but i don't have anywhere to turn to IRL. without donos + commissions, i would actually be dead by now. i'm not kidding. my family doesn't give a fuck if i'm struggling or not, in fact they put me in positions where they KNOW i will struggle. they don't care. my parents never taught me how to do ANYTHING. every practical skill that i know how to do is self taught. they've literally set me up for failure in every aspect. they didn't help me with homework when i was younger, they didn't help me learn how to read or write, they didn't teach me how to socialize and make friends, they didn't teach me how to drive, how to cook, how to clean, how to apply for jobs, how to do taxes, how to do anything at all. and when it comes to the physical aspect, they knew that i was toe walking from a young age and didn't take me to a doctor because it was "cute" and "funny" how i walked on my tip toes all the time and i was so "clumsy" because i had no balance. the window for non-surgical remedies has closed, and now the only thing that can fix it is surgery, that i definitely can't afford, even on insurance, and i'm going to fall off of my parent's insurance next year when i turn 26. the toe walking has led to chronic pain in my feet, legs, hips, and back, and that, coupled with my fibromyalgia, makes just existing feel impossible sometimes. there are days where i don't want to move from my bed because my entire body feels inflamed. even if i were to get hired, how am i supposed to hold a job like that??? i don't know how to file for disability but i know that i need to, as soon as i can. i genuinely don't know what to do. i'm stuck in this house full of people who use me as a personal punching bag, mentally and verbally and physically. i have to keep my room locked at all times or people will steal from me or destroy my belongings. i can't even keep my insulin or food in the public fridge because my brother has destroyed my insulin with a hammer before, and my food will get eaten even if i label it, so i had to buy a mini fridge for my room. my brother shoved me down the stairs last year and my knee is permanently damaged from it, and that was somehow my fault. the only time anyone is talking to me in a kind way is when they want me to do something for them, and if i don't agree to do it, then all hell breaks loose, i've been screamed at, slapped, kicked, had things thrown at me, spit on, belongings destroyed, holes punched in the wall beside my head with a threat that next time it'll be my face. to the point that i just agree to run their errands and do their chores most of the time anymore. in fact, even though i pay my dad car insurance money every month, 9 out of 10 times he won't let me use the car for my personal reasons (doctor, store, pharmacy) unless i'm also doing something for them. they treat me like a child. no, they treat me like an object. but i'm supposed to be an adult. to be honest, i don't feel like an adult. i don't feel like a real person at all. i don't exist outside of this house or these blogs. i could disappear and only a handful of people would actually notice.

i want to do more than just survive by the skin of my teeth. i want to live, i want to thrive, i want friends, i want a sense of community, i want to feel loved and cherished, i want to be hugged. i can't remember the last time i was hugged. i don't know why i wrote all of this. i think it's a cry for help. i need someone to hold my hand through the process and tell me what to do because i have no idea where to turn. i don't know what the next step is. i know the things i need to do, but i don't know how to do them. i need to pay off my court fees, i need to buy my own car, i need to file for disability, i need to file for food stamps, i need to apply for a tax credit apartment so i can finally get out of this house. i'm just too stupid to figure it out on my own. with the constant swath of bills and no consistent income, it feels like i'm drowning and i'm never going to be able to get out of this situation. i can't do this alone. i need help. i'm so tired guys

[ladyyatexel]

Friends, Romans, Tumblrites, lend me your reblogs.

I'm Xel and I live in a society! I think there's a solid chance you do also! So you may relate to the profoundly crappy thing that happened to me and that I once again need a community assist.

I lost a temporary job that was supposed to turn into a permanent job in June because no one there felt safe enough to retire. Only two of us in the apartment were under 50. One of the crew was over 70. Three were chronically ill/disabled. No one felt safe enough to leave in order for me to stay, so I was trained for basically 6 months for nothing.

I have survived on savings from that job until this point, but I'm at the point where I cannot pay rent. I'm looking into getting help from sources more local to me but the internet has always felt like people who cared about me more than the people I share DNA with, really.

Many of the social services that I was signed up for expired the day that I was supposed to be told that I would be a permanent hire, and since that didn't go down, now I have to start it all again from the beginning, and there are gaps in my security net.

I tell you all of that just to say that I am actually trying to do things, I'm not here to just beg and coast along on some sort of lavish lifestyle where I, uh. Keep living in this dodgy apartment with my cat.

I don't want to bore you with an itemized list, but like 2,000 US dollars would get me through September and October without being worried about it like every 3 minutes. My rent is 700 and change, if you would like to know that. So I'm looking for like September and October rent and money to renew my driver's license, pay a few utility bills, buy a bag of cat food, and refill my medications.

If you have the notion to toss help at an internet pal or the extended reblogged acquaintance of an Internet pal, as is more likely the case, probably, that would be super rad of you.

I'm an artist! You could get things with images on them from me! I sell buttons, prints, and commissioned illustrations if that's your thing. My commissions are going a bit slow as of late - I only recovered from being not really able to walk like 2 months ago, and so I'm doing a lot of catch up like everywhere else in my whole life and trying not to spend too much time at a desk since it aggravates the spine thing that was the problem in the first place.

To be honest, it would be a greater help to me to just receive some Aid rather than full-on commissions, but I completely understand feeling fishy about people getting something for nothing and also feeling bad for being a charity case on the internet, so I'm not opposed! If you want to chat about that, I have a commissions post on the side or top of my blog depending on where you're looking at this!

Ko-fi contains my buttons and is a good place to toss digital dead American presidents if that suits you. I will get hit by some PayPal fees in this process but, I'm willing to call that a call for help on the internet tax.

I promise I'm a real person and not a bot who has made up a cat and is pretending to have interests. My blog has been here since 2010! I've met people on this website in person and everything. I've had embarrassing obsessions no bot would bother coming up with. Speaking of:

Similarly to times before, I would like to be able to do something in order to feel like I have earned some kind of support, and as of my birthday last week I have resolved to try very hard in the next year to conquer my fear and absolute mortification about many of the things I make, so I will once again go digging into my archives for things I can post for you to enjoy as thanks and tribute! I also have a poll running right now to see what kind of buttons people want!

Thanks for taking a look! Be nice out there, take care of your spines!

[ktempestbradford]

Jumping off of what I said in this post about having to dismantle certain toxic ideas about myself, I realized that folks might not know how deeply not being a straight, white, cishet, able-bodied, Christianized male (aka the Dominant Paradigm) in the West messes you up mentally. It's a huge mental health problem that isn't always addressed.

When I started up my latest round of therapy I began to acquire labels for some of the ways I acted or reacted to situations. One day in session I was like: Was that a trauma response? It was, wasn't it? And my therapist confirmed. What confused me is that I didn't think I'd experienced trauma.

The idea I had of trauma was some Major Incident in which something Very Bad had happened to me or near me. Or it was about being in abusive situations, usually at home. The kind of ways trauma is depicted in the media.

Then I came across a Twitter thread in which the person said that everyone needs therapy, especially marginalized people, because the way Western society works, anyone who is not the Dominant Paradigm or doesn't hew closely to it is constantly being harmed by society.

Are you BIPOC? Racism is almost everywhere, and where it is, it's constant. It's also not always KKK-level in your face racism; it's more often wave after wave of microagressions on top of whatever challenging condition you're in due to historical racism. In other words: Chronic.

Are you neurodiverse? Good luck not being overstimulated by allegedly benign activities like going to the grocery store. Good luck not being criticized on a daily basis because you can't act "normal". Try holding down a job that expects you to sit at a desk for 8 hours yet you can't even sit in a quiet environment because the asshole CEO read that open office plans make employees more productive.

Are you anywhere under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella? Welcome to the constant barrage of invasive questions from strangers, invasive laws, invasive religiosity... Once again, an allegedly benign activity (going to the bathroom in public) can be a damn crucible if you don't look like the "right" kind of woman or man. Have fun navigating the medical system when you want affirming health care.

I could go on. Disabled people, poor or working class people, fat people, any people who have been historically marginalized and oppressed all experience this. It is trauma. It is harm. It does affect us. But it's Chronic and Systemic. That's the crux.

Because we have to keep on going even with all this. It's every day and it's not easy to escape. So we "deal with it." Some of us have good coping strategies and or supportive family (bio or found) and that really helps. It doesn't alleviate the overall problem. Thus, we all need therapy (so the OP of that Twitter thread concluded).

I don't know that we ALL need it. And I for sure know that some mental health practitioners and therapy frameworks are quite harmful to marginalized people. I'm very lucky in that I have a great therapist and the treatment I'm getting is informed by my identity and background, not ignorant of it. Not everyone has that or has access to it.

What I do know is that we all need Community. True community offers true support, which is necessary for healing.

We also all need to know that our mental health struggles and our trauma are real and valid, even if they don't look or manifest the way we've been conditioned to recognize them. Don't let anyone invalidate your experience or mental health struggles because you don't fit into a specific, wrongly-labeled box.

And don't let anyone tell you that this society isn't out here traumatizing you, because it is. Society doesn't need to be this way. But here in The (European Colonizer Created) West, that's what those with more power have chosen for the rest of us. And it sucks.

I have nothing but hugs and empathy for all the other people out there experiencing this. The only piece of advice I have is: Find community, hold on tight to each other, be that oasis of Okay that others need and they'll be that same oasis for you. <3

[sonicenvy]

Anyways I think one thing that is making me so hopeful about our ticket is that we have so much they don't have. We have hope, optimism, a belief in a better future, in love and kindness in the face of hatred, and we stuff to be for.

What do they have? They have hatred, fear, prejudice, chaos, destruction and division. They don't stand for things, only against. They stand against justice, against equality, against kindness, against everyone but themselves. Fascism can never sustain itself long term because all it has is hatred and fear, and once they "destroy" their enemies, that hatred and fear will get turned against their own people next. It's Ouroboros eating its tail, destroying itself. Fascism wants you to be afraid, wants you to believe that they are some kind of unstoppable force, something all powerful and inevitable. But they're not. They never will be. You can't build anything truly lasting on a government based on nothing but fear and hatred.

Dictators and fascists everywhere all across time and space have fallen, and always fallen in the end, because life, hope, and kindness can sprout back anywhere eventually. Life comes back even when the Earth has been scorched and razed. Every single fascist ever has inevitably been a loser. H*tler and the N*zis? Losers. Fr*nco? Loser. M*ssolini? Loser.

When we laugh at them, make fun of them, and call them weird they hate it. I think they hate it because it breaks their narrative where they're all-powerful, inevitable and unbeatable. It contradicts their narrative that says that their ideas of hatred, fear, and intolerance are what the average, normal person believes, and that everyone secretly is with them. Ultimately they're ridiculous, weak, losers who don't represent the average person and they hate when we put this message out there. The "weird" attack has been so successful thus far because of this, because it's everyone saying loud and clear, "fuck you, you don't represent me and my community." Under the constitution they have the right to say what they want without government interference, but equally the rest of us have the right not to listen to them and to tell them to fuck off.

Adjacently, something that we've seen in the archeological evidence of prehistory is that caring for each other and for members of our society with disabilities is a fundamental part of the history of humanity. It's something that they've also seen in Neanderthals. As much as war and violence have long been a part of human history, so have care and kindness. I think that that pushes back against a lot of narratives about the humans of prehistory where they're nothing but violent and everything had to be reciprocal, and where people with disabilities would be left to die.

idk, just having a lot of feelings and thoughts about kindness and the hope for a better future. To quote one of the Harris campaign ads, "we believe in a country where people aren't just getting by, they're getting ahead."

I think that we can do this, that we can beat these weird, creepy, losers and their ideology of hatred that represents none of us.

[compassionatereminders]

I know you are not asexual but just want to say something in case you have asexual followers and what are their opinions.

In asexual community I just see things like. If you're ace you are not sex repulsed, you can still have sex, you can enjoy sex... while these things are TRUE for some it's like they completely want to ERASE asexuals who are sex repulsed, those who never want sex...

In 90% of the posts I only see ace people talking how aces can be horny, can love sex, cam be kinky... yet the other aces who don't have sex or any sexual desire are ignored so badly. I don't even want to look up asexual posts anymore. It's like everywhere else just sex, sex, sex, we love sex... and focusing only on asexuals who enjoy/want sex.

I feel us who don't want sex are so ignored. I really want to connect with those asexuals who don't want sex/are sex repulsed (I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST OTHER ACES WHO WANT SEX BTW) but sometimes I just want to talk about us... about aces who are not into sex. Yet 90% of the time you have to listen about sex when it comes to allos, then you also don't find many people in your own community who are the same as you because some people on those site start to put their words in your mouth and say you don' support other aces... well I do... but from time to time I just wish I could meet more people like me.

I feel so ignored even of I never ignore aces that are different from me. It's like not even aces care about aces who don't care about sex.

I'm so sorry for this long message but I just feel so alone. You have followers from all kind of communities and I'm wondering... what do they think.

And what do you think? Am I really a bad person because while I do support and respect others sometimes I just want to people who are like me and actually don't want to listen about sex all the time....

I see this everywhere and I really hate that approach to destigmatizing marginalized identities. "Many autistic people are really smart! Many disabled people work! You can be X and STILL act normal!" Like yeah sure but your support of marginalized people really shouldn't be dependent on how well they conform to the expectations of mainstream society...

[covid-conscious-and-silly]

introductions and house rules!

hello, fellow covid conscious/cautious/informed sillies! my name is mitchie, and welcome to my home. [edit: i formerly put my name as “meesh”; i am indeed the same person! <3]

i created this blog because i needed a place to vent and create community over feelings i know many people have had since losing almost all of our covid mitigations in the us. here's a brief intro and some guidelines below:

meesh | 22 | she/they | main @storiesandglory

queer, white, non-disabled (aspiring intersectional ally and accomplice)

outside of caring about my health, my hobbies include writing poetry, crocheting, reading, and listening to podcasts. i'm always looking for recommendations! <3

i believe in a free sudan, a free congo, a free palestine, a free tigray, a free haiti, and freedom for all unliberated people everywhere. if you don't believe in liberation, get out of my home.

while this blog is sometimes for venting, i hope to also provide information for those who don't know what is going on. i do not always have the energy to explain the severity of covid/why we need to act in solidarity with immunocompromised and disabled people, but i will try my absolute hardest to point you toward resources that may help! i will do the work as an ally (to my knowledge, i do not have long covid), but i am not a superhero nor do i claim to be god.

i am not perfect, nor am i striving toward perfection. i aim for solidarity and know i will make mistakes along the way. i see this also as a blog that will engage with intersectional activism to an extent. i hope we will be patient with each other.

that all being said, this will also be a silly space sometimes! i feel very tired as i'm writing this; know that this voice is not me 100% of the time. i hope to continue looking for myself reflected in the people who are in the covid conscious community, and i hope to find some hope through all of this tragedy. i love you! stay safe and wear a mask!

love, mitchie <3

[pulsar-ray]

i'm so tired of the popular autism influencers being all lsn i'm so tired of autism acceptance only being geared towards level 1s i cannot stand any of it but it's everywhere.

you're forgetting us & you're making us 'freaks' that you can forget about because we're too disabled & therefore not human to you. you act like you're the only autism experience ever as if you're even the ones who would've been institutionalized or killed for being too disabled 100 years ago. you can live independently. you can act normal in public. you weren't constantly called the r slur when you were 5 feet away because they don't view you as a person who can understand.

& you just take m/hsn experiences & start using our words for yourself "going nonverbal" "autism level up" "i'm catatonic" because you don't care enough to research & understand the community you COME FROM & god forbid you start calling yourself the r slur because "i'm autistic so i can reclaim it!" while you can't even acknowledge the existence of people with id.

acting like whatever you're doing is the end all be all & whoever doesn't fit in one of your boxes isn't really autistic they're just playing it up or they have something else going on. oh you can't take care of your basic needs? try harder. you can't? you're lazy you just want to look autistic but autism doesn't have a look :)

it's not everyone but god it feels like every single time we're even acknowledged in the 'autism community' it's a friend who's a character who we're using as a teaching moment & not a person who is also autistic & deserves to be heard. i just want to be a person & not a pity.

[autistpride]

When a person is killed, especially by parents or caregivers, people's response is that the murderer needs to be locked up for life. Many even support the death penalty. People say that the actions were utterly disgusting and the killer needs to pay what they did. People are hostile toward the murderer.

However, people's views change when autism or disability comes into the picture.

The response is sympathy toward the person who committed the crime. The narrative changes from a cold blooded killer to a parent who suffered and snapped under the burden of caregiving or sometimes even the caregiver who killed because the other options were too unbearable. The term “mercy killing” is commonly used. Those who are convicted in these situations often face less severe sentences.

One study showed that of the homicide cases of autistic individuals under 21, 85% were murdered by their family. 63.5% by their parents, 13.5% by their caregiver, and 7.7% by their siblings.

23.1% died from gunshot wounds, 19.2% from drowning, and 19.2% from strangulation, suffocation, or asphyxiation. The rest from other causes such as neglect, medication overdose, blunt head trauma/physical abuse, fire, stabbed, thrown off a bridge, and unknown causes.

Sadly, the autistic victim's narrative tends to be the one talked about in a poor light. The person was too much to handle, requiring 24/7 care, they were a burden on their families, or they had an intellectual disability.

The murder of an autistic person is still seen as a tragedy, but the act of killing them is dismissed and seen as more permissible than in other murders.

The study showed that of those who committed this heinous act, 47.1% said that the stress of caring for their autistic individual was the contributing factor.

Following a murder of an autistic person, people are upset and demand more disability support. People talk about the need for parental support, respite care, and the like so that things like this don’t happen again. But people also agree not to judge the murderer because they haven’t been in their shoes.

We are in desperate need of greater support for the autism community. But that conversation needs to happen not following the death of another autistic individual because it excuses away the actions of the killer and oftentimes the lack of support is not even the reason why autistic people are murdered.

While services are desperately needed, reacting with murder is simply not normal.

Disability advocates believe murder cases like these have much more to do with our negative stance toward autism and special needs than they do with lack of support and services.

We can’t deny the negativity surrounding our narratives of autism. The “thief in the night” that “steals” an otherwise normal child, the idea that those with the disorder are mere shadows of people, or that autism has "taken a child hostage in their own mind". The unending focus on the “burden” autistic people are.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network said it best:

“When we say every parent of a disabled child has had moments like this or walk a mile in our shoes or the system failed everyone or but you have to understand how hard it is, we are excusing a parent murdering their child. It does not matter how many times we say not that I would ever condone this: if we attempt to make a parent murdering their child understandable, if we ever attempt to position it as a comprehensible or inevitable or normal thing, if we take and normalize the perspective and the side of abusers and murderers, we are minimizing and excusing this act. Doing so puts the lives of disabled people everywhere in danger.”

There is no moral gray here. Murder of an innocent person, even an autistic one, is wrong and yet it happens all too frequently.

[mayakern]

Adding my two cents here, hope you don't mind... The entire synthetic vs natural fiber argument is really reminding me of the plastic straw debate.... And I feel like the arguments are ignoring the nuance of the situations. Would I love if everything everywhere could be natural and biodegradable etc etc? Sure! Ofc! Except when degrading is what you DON'T want. I need to drink with a straw sometimes due to a bunch of personal health and sensory reasons. You know what sucks? Finding the fancy paper straw the cafe gave you has started to degrade part way through your drink. Or going somewhere that doesn't have straws at all. And personal stainless steel straws are a sensory nightmare!

Regarding clothing, I'd rather have a high quality polyester skirt that I can where over and over for years than a cotton skirt that will, given the material, eventually wear down regardless of how you care for it. I have synthetic blend shirts in my closet that I've had a literal decade and that I still wear! And I've had plenty of natural fiber clothes become sensory hell that I maybe got 3 or 4 wears out of. Polyester and other moisture wicking blends are also the best options for exercising and camping, especially if you have a tendency (like me) to overheat and oversweat. Cotton takes ages to dry out and doesn't breathe nearly as well.

And none of the natural fiber arguments ever seem to take the environmental costs to produce those natural fibers into account. A lot of the time they require a lot of water to grow and maintain on land they're likely not native to, planted in ways that push native plants and animals from their own environments. How is that necessarily better?

There are pros and cons of both fabric types. And ignoring that in favor of purely natural fibers can have negative impacts on people who may not have other choices. Like disabled people. Fat people. Poor people. People running small businesses. I promise, those of us that fall into any or all of those categories who are also environmentally conscious have looked into alternative options. And if we've gone back to synthetics? It's because we don't have one or we've weighed our options and came to the conclusion that actually, synthetic IS the more viable option.

When it comes right down to it, I think it's how we treat the garments and how long we continue wearing them that makes a difference, not what the materials are. Fast fashion is the problem. Not synthetic material itself.

I'm GLAD you provide high quality, durable, ethically sourced synthetic material skirts made in sizes and patterns we can't get anywhere else, all at a relatively affordable price point. Thank you!

And I apologize this is so long I just think, in this instance, the arguments can be a bit ridiculous sometimes. 😅

this is another facet and honestly part of it i just haven't had the energy to address. there's a lot of nuance to a situation that is often treated without nuance. you mentioned straws, which i think is a good comparison, but to me it really reminds me of the big push towards veganism a few years ago that completely overlooked labor concerns and that these "superfood" or alternative grain fads were incredibly destructive to the communities that relied on those foods as staples.

anyway that's a whole other issue with its own host of difficulties that i'm really not equipped to dig into haha

but yeah the quality in the construction of a garment and how it's treated (i.e. if it's worn for years or discarded after one use) bare way more impact on the environment than people realize.

the problem is, it is a lot easier and more profitable to sell people on changing WHAT they consume (natural vs synthetic) rather than HOW they consume.

[the-delta-quadrant]

people keep redefining transgender-related terms to make them only or at least mainly about medical transition and i'm tired.

like, people already use the term "transition" to mean medical transition only, even though it also includes social and legal transitions.

now they're doing it with "gender affirming care" too, saying it's medical support for transgender people. when even the literal WHO also include social and legal support in gender-affirming care, which is also how i've seen the term used by the community for years until recently. but i guess it wouldn't be the transgender community if medical transition wasn't centred everywhere and everyone still act like the rest of us are second-class transes.

gender affirming healthcare, gender affirming medical care, medical transition - all these terms are right there and yet you'll just say "GAC" and treat medical as the default.

(tbh i find the term GAC weird anyway because it's literally just another word for transition, just more outright inclusive of social and legal stuff, which a) is already included in transition and b) people are now trying to define it out of GAC anyway)

also a note on gender affirming healthcare, or transgender healthcare: this shouldn't just include medical transition, but it should also include stuff like not being misgendered and having your gender respected in medical settings that have nothing to do with medical transition. if a therapist wants me to explain what nonbinary means every 5 minutes they aren't gender affirming, if an eye doctor misgenders me, they're not gender affirming. gender affirming healthcare is any healthcare that affirms and respects our genders. transgender healthcare is any healthcare that transgender people get, because you best be sure our gender will probably come up even when we're not seeing anyone about it.

that last part is particularly important when it comes to the intersection of transgenderness and disability, because disabled transgender people tend to have to see doctors way more and have to deal with uneducated and non-affirming doctors all the time, and a lot of us tend to avoid seeing doctors when we should. but you all don't wanna talk about intersectionality, you just wanna talk about hormones and surgeries.