#it is so useful in conversation about gender and how we raise children

[chocobosdungeon2]

You CANNOT tell me that Malcom Gladwell is the only person to have talked about “the presumption of being heard” i’m about to write a whole essay and send it to my college english professor what the FUCK

[clownwritesfanfic]

I Could Be A Good Mother, and I Wanna Be Your Wife

Katsuki Bakugou x Fem!Reader

Summary: Class 1A is given the surprise task of caring for baby dolls. Everyone is randomly paired up in two’s, and it’s just your luck that you get your crush as a partner.

Warnings: Bakugou may be a little ooc but I don’t care

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 6,512

Disclaimer: Reader is kept as diverse as possible but wears a skirt, uses the girls locker room, has long enough hair to run fingers through, calls herself ‘mother’, being able to birth a child, and was originally written with a fem aligned person in mind. This is safe for poc, and plus size readers. The majority of the fic is also safe for trans women readers but the bonus at the end is not. (Y/N) is used only once.

Important info before you read‼️

This fic was written originally with an OC of mine in mind, however, most people don’t read Canon x OC and while I normally wouldn’t care and wrote one anyway, I am very proud of this and want as many people to read it as possible and hopefully enjoy it. So with that in mind, I took out any describing factors and her name but I did keep some of her backstory and her quirk. If that bothers you, you can move on but I hope you read it anyway because I’m very proud of this.

Also, there is another OC of mine in this story, Usagi. She’s not integral to the plot and has no speaking roles. I had to add her to keep the class even, otherwise someone would’ve been a single parent.

Any feedback is very welcome and appreciated!

Title is inspired by ‘not a lot, just forever’ by Adrianna Lenker but the fic is unrelated.

———————————————————————

It was a Monday, a few weeks after the majority of Class 1A got their provisional hero licenses when Midnight and Recovery Girl entered the classroom. Aizawa had taken it upon himself to snuggle up in his yellow sleeping bag and take a nap after introducing the two women, leaving them to explain what today’s class is.

The students expected Midnight, considering she had taught a few of their classes before, but there were murmurs of why the school nurse was there.

“Listen up boys and girls! We have a very special and unique class for today!” Midnight announced as she raised her hand in the air, her leather whip clutched in her hand, catching the attention of everyone (who was awake) in the room.

“Today isn’t about hero work or everyday schoolwork. This lesson is special, it will help you all later in your lives if you choose this path. The path being….PARENTHOOD!” She exclaimed while striking an enthusiastic pose.

“Wait, what?!” “Seriously?” “What do you mean?!” A series of voices could be heard throughout the classroom.

“Settle down!” Midnight got the attention of the students. “This lesson is the most important lesson anyone can learn. Whether you want to become a parent or not, learning how to care for babies and children is a vital and selfless aspect of life.”

There were a couple hushed protests among the class but Recovery Girl talked over them. “You will have one week to care for these babies.” She explained as she pulled out eleven baby dolls of various genders and races. “These dolls are specially made for things like this. These babies will cry, make noises, “sleep”, “eat”, and soil its diaper like a real baby. They’re also able to record and grade you based on how quickly you can figure out and resolve its problem. And be careful what you say around it and how you say things. They can detect anger and verbal abuse which will drastically affect your score. Now…any questions?”

A bunch of hands were instantly raised. But that didn’t matter since Bakugou stood up and slammed his hands onto his desk and yelled. “WHAT THE HELL DO WE HAVE TO RAISE SOME DUMB BABIES FOR?! THIS IS THE HERO COURSE NOT A NURSEY COURSE!”

“Sit down.” Midnight said sternly. She took over the conversation. “While this lesson isn’t exactly meant to play into your hero work, this knowledge can be beneficial out in the field. For example, in some rescue operations, it can take hours for a child to be reunited with their family. Most of the time, medics will take the child and work with police to try and reunite them with their parents, but there are times where a hero must step in and care for and comfort the child. With older children around three to five years old, they’re easier to calm down. You can talk to them and explain the situation and reassure them. But babies and younger children are harder to console in high stress situations. If you learn these things now, you won’t be stressed if you ever get caught in a situation where you’re in charge of a small child. A lot of heroes are inexperienced with child care unless they are a parent themselves or have young family members. Think of this as getting ahead of a problem before it even starts. Make sense?”

Bakugou grumbled and sat back down.

“Eeeee This is going to be fun! We get to take care of cute babies!” Ashido squealed.

“I don’t think it will be that fun, Mina. Babies are a lot of hard work and dedication.” Asui chimed in, a finger lifted up to her lips. She had two younger siblings, so she knew a thing or two about raising kids.

“Correct you are, child.” Recovery Girl said. “The infant stage is one of the toughest stages of child rearing since they can’t communicate their needs and wants with words. It’s a lot of guessing and paying attention to their body language. However, these dolls do not move so you will have to rely on audio cues to guess what the child needs.”

Midnight spoke up. “You will be split up into groups of two all determined by a random draw. Because there are more boys than girls in this class, some of you will end up in a same sex partnership. You do not have to act as a real couple so don’t freak out if you’re partnered with someone you don’t have romantic feelings for. What’s important is teamwork on taking care of the baby. You are in charge of the child for the rest of this week, including the weekend. You may chose to either take turns or to split responsibility evenly. You will be given all the supplies you will need, if you end up needing more, Recovery Girl will help you. At the end of the week you will return the dolls and we will tally up the scores and see which couple has the lowest score. The lowest score is the winner since each mistake is marked based on how severe of a mistake it was. The higher the score, the worse you did. Any more questions?”

Iida quickly raised his hand. Midnight gestured for him to speak. He stood up and loudly asked “If we are to have the baby all day for the rest of the week, what do we do with it while training? You can’t expect us to take the baby with us! That’s highly dangerous and immoral and I would expect better from such a prestigious school!”

“Yes, you’re right. We don’t expect you to keep the doll with you while training. That’s why each of you will have to figure something out. One of you will have to sit out of training unless you can find a better option. Leaving the child in your dorm and hoping for the best is not an option and neither is bringing it to training and leaving it off to the side. It’s like real life. One of the parents has to stay home and care for the child. Sometimes they will get a babysitter but that is not an option for you since the scores need to come from you and your partner only for you to pass. If you really want to train that day, you’ll either have to talk it through with your partner, or train later in the day during your free time.” Midnight answered.

“Thank you very much for clearing this up.” Iida said, bowing deeply before taking his seat.

Midnight clapped her hands. “Alright! With everything out of the way, let’s draw for your partners.” She held up a blue plastic box. “In this box is twenty-two coloured tokens. There are eleven pairs. Each one of you will reach into this box and pull out one token, when everyone has a token, you will be given time to find the person with the same colour token. They will be your partner for the rest of the week. You may not switch partners. Each colour is already assigned to a baby as well, so you don’t get to chose that either.” As she finished explaining she walked around the room letting everyone reach in and pull out a token. When the box was empty she returned to the front and allowed the class to find their partners.

Midoriya and Uraraka had the yellow tokens, Shouji and Asui had the purple tokens, Mina and Kirishima had the red tokens, Kaminari and Jirou had the orange tokens, Hagakure and Yayorozu had the light blue tokens, Sero and Mineta had the black tokens, Usagi and Tokoyami had the dark blue tokens, Todoroki and Ojiro had the pink tokens, Iida and Aoyama had the green tokens, and Satou and Kouda had the white tokens.

You looked down at your brown coloured token and looked back up to scan the room. All your classmates were already paired up and either happily talking about how it would be to raise a baby together or complaining about their partner. You could faintly hear Mineta crying about not being paired up with a girl. You look across the room at Bakugou who was still sat at his desk, glaring at his token.

Upon closer look, you could see that it was the same colour as yours. You sighed, already accepting that you’ll basically be a single parent as you can’t imagine he’d want anything to do with this. You reluctantly stood up and made your way across the classroom to him.

“Um…hey. Looks like we have the same colour. Guess we’re partners for the week.” You said, gently.

“I can fucking see that. I’m not blind, dumbass.” He retorted.

Ah, it seems he’s decided to take on the verbally abusive and absent father route already. You’ll have to do your best to make sure you get a low enough score. You’ve never taken care of a baby before. You had baby dolls as a kid but they’ve never graded you before. This was a whole new challenge and you could feel the anxiety pooling in your stomach.

“Right…well. We should talk about how we want to do this.” You started. “I think we should take turns each day. I could take it today and you take it tomorrow and repeat. I know you probably don’t want to skip a day of training so I can take it during training even on your days. There’s not much really for me to train anyway so I can afford to lose a week of it.” You let out a weak laugh.

Bakugou growled. “Do whatever you want but don’t be stupid. You can train on the days I have it. Don’t stop your training over some dumb doll.”

“But…you would be stopping yours if you-“ You get cut off by the blonde.

“I’m already the best in this whole class! Missing a few days of training isn’t going to do anything. Besides, you’re weak and you need to be at your strongest so I can beat you and prove that I’m the best in this entire school!” He yelled. You think that was a compliment albeit he put it weirdly.

“Ha…yeah…okay.” You replied. Just then the bell rang and everyone started to put their stuff away. You went over to your desk to do the same.

“Please return your tokens to the box! And before you leave, pick up your baby with the matching colour onesie and the bag of necessities. You have the rest of the day to yourselves.” Said Midnight.

You slung your bag onto your back and walked to the front of the room and dropped your token back into the box. You waited for your classmates to fizzle out a bit so you could get your baby. The dolls were all lined up in car seats. You found the one wearing a brown onesie, a girl with blonde hair. You chuckled to yourself at the resemblance to your partner.

You grabbed the handle of the car seat and went to grab the big duffel bag next to it when someone grabbed it before you. You look over to see Bakugou standing over you, glaring off to the side.

“Move it.” He gruffed out as he slung the bag over his shoulder.

You left the classroom with Bakugou trailing behind you, still scowling. You turn around and start walking backwards to face him and hold out the car seat so he could see the doll nestled inside.

“Look. She looks like you.” You giggled. He glanced down at the blonde doll and huffed.

“Watch where you’re going, idiot.” He grumbled. You rolled your eyes and turned back around and followed your classmates to the dorms.

———————————————————————

Back in the dorms, everyone was changed out of their school uniforms and gathered in the common room with their new kids. Everyone of course…except for Bakugou, who very grumpily went to his room after dropping the bag of things off at your room.

You had went through the bag and found loads of diapers, clothing, a carrier that strapped to your chest, bottles, a pacifier, and some baby toys. You weren’t exactly sure why you would need toys, considering the baby isn’t actually real, but you guessed you’d find out the reason sooner or later.

You decided to change her out of her boring brown onesie so you picked out a cute outfit from the ones provided. You undid the buckles holding the baby in the car seat (why it came in a car seat when you don’t even know how to drive a car, you will not know) and gently and carefully lifted the little girl out of the seat, making sure to support her head.

As you laid her on the ground and started to undress her, she started making cooing noises.

“Oh! Hello….you must be awake now I guess.” You spoke to the baby as she cooed in reply. “Ha…I guess you are kinda cute.” You felt as if you were talking to yourself.

When your new daughter was dressed, you decided to go to the common room since you thought everyone would be there, and right you were. As you went down the hallway you could hear the excited chatter of your classmates getting louder. When you were in sight, Mina noticed you and waved you over.

“Hey! Come over here! We’re all showing off our babies!” She excitedly exclaimed. As you walked over, Kirishima stood up from his spot beside Mina and offered the space to you. You thanked him as you sat down and readjusted your baby in your arms.

“Course! What kinda man would I be if I didn’t offer a seat to a lady with a baby!” He replied. Ever so chivalrous, he is.

“Ha! That rhymed.” Kaminari pointed out.

“Awww you got a girl? How lucky!” Mina squealed. “Kirishima and I got a boy. We named him Kenji.” You looked down at her lap where the doll was laid on its back.

“You named it?” You asked.

“Well yeah! We can’t just keep calling him “it” and “the baby”.” She explained as if it was obvious.

Iida then chimed in, his baby tucked securely in one of his arms. “Yes, I suppose it would be beneficial to name the child. This is supposed to be taken seriously and we can not leave a child unnamed!”

There were murmurs of agreement throughout the room as everyone talked with their partners on what they should name their baby. You looked down to the small blonde doll in your arms that let out another coo and softly smiled.

“Riki…” You thought to yourself. “I’ll call you Riki.”

———————————————————————

“Riki?” Bakugou gawked. “You gave it a name?”

Bakugou was helping with making dinner, well, it was more like he forced everyone to let him do most of it because “no one was doing it right”. You were stood out of the way but within talking distance, your newly named baby in one arm and holding a bottle up to her mouth as she “ate”.

“First off, she’s a she not an “it”. Secondly, everyone in the class named their baby. We have to take this seriously and I’m not going to call her an “it” the whole week. Besides…I thought Riki would be a good name. It means “strong”….and since she kinda looks like you, I figured you’d want your kid to be strong like you so…” You trailed off looking down at the doll in your arms. “We can change it though if you really don’t like it.”

Bakugou huffs. “No…call it-…..call her whatever you want.” He continues to cook in silence. There’s a faint blush on his cheeks. You smile softly at him. Maybe you won’t have to do this alone after all.

———————————————————————

The first day goes by smoothly. You had a bit of a learning curve with changing the diaper but you managed after help from Yayorozu. Who knew she’d be so good at something like that?

You had just settled down into bed after putting Riki to “sleep” and were scrolling on your phone. It was about 10pm, most people were still awake but you knew the person you wanted to talk to most more than likely wasn’t. He went to bed at 8:30pm every night, even on weekends.

You stared at your screen open on Bakugou’s blank private messages page. UA made an app for the students to contact each other and teachers with. It worked like a regular texting app, every class had their own group chat and you could private message each other, even students from other classes. All of them were accessible to staff if needed though.

You didn’t know if you should even bother asking him if he’s still going to take Riki tomorrow. Plus you didn’t want to wake him up. You were about to turn your phone off when you got a message from Mina. You open up her message and see a picture of Kirishima with his hair down, asleep on one of the couches in the common room with their baby on his chest. You laughed quietly to yourself and responded with a cute reaction meme. You thought they would make an interesting pair for this project.

You turned off your phone and plugged it in to charge and set it on your bedside table. You got comfortable in bed and closed your eyes. It would take you a while to fall asleep so you started to let your mind wander. You realized that tomorrow Bakugou will miss out on training if he takes the baby. He already told you earlier today in class not to worry about it and to focus on your own training…but you genuinely couldn’t think on how training would benefit you.

Your quirk has always been more of a supporting quirk rather than one that could do well in a fight one on one. Your quirk is called Cheer, by speaking words of encouragement to someone, you can make your target stronger both physically and emotionally. The reverse also works, if you berate someone it makes them weaker. You can use it on more than one person but its effects get weaker the more people you use it in at once. There’s also a major weakness to your quirk. Anytime you berate someone, you gain confidence, but when you encourage someone, it takes away your confidence. Because of this you feel inferior to everyone else in your class. Even Mineta has a more useful quirk in combat than you do. You’re basically forced to sit on the sidelines and watch people fight. It helps in rescue operations but you still wished you could fight like everyone else. You only managed to get into the hero course because you racked up enough rescue points and got lucky with a three pointer.

It’s ironic that someone with an inferiority complex got paired up with someone with a superiority complex. It’s even more ironic that you managed to gain a crush on the bastard too.

———————————————————————

It was now Tuesday morning and Bakugou was sat in his room staring at the doll in its car seat.

You had entered the common room already dressed in your uniform with Riki in the seat. Hero training was the first class that morning so anyone who was in charge of their baby that day stayed behind and would join everyone later for normal classes. Your tie wasn’t done yet and your skirt was pulled up a little too high, showing off more thigh than you usually do, as you were in a rush since Riki wouldn’t stop crying and you couldn’t figure out why. She had finally managed to settle down when you gave her the included pacifier.

You weren’t much of a breakfast eater, especially if you were training in the morning so you didn’t go to the kitchen. You noticed Bakugou sat on one of the couches drinking something out of a mug. He was wearing a simple black tank top and sweatpants.

“Oh Bakugou! There you are. I’m guessing since you’re not in uniform you’re still taking Riki today.” You sat the car seat on the floor near him and started doing your tie. You knew you were just going to have to take it off soon to change into your hero costume but you still wanted to show up looking like you at least tried. “So I figured out that she makes different noises depending on what she wants. Most of the time she just wants to be held or given a pacifier so she makes really whiny sounds that almost sound like a cry. She was just crying now and the only thing that made her stop was the pacifier so she might start up again soon. I made a smaller bag of her things like diapers and her bottle just so you’re not carrying a big ass duffel bag later.” You were almost rivalling Midoriya with how fast you were muttering, you didn’t mean to but you didn’t want to be late and you kept fumbling with your tie.

As you were smoothing out your front, you felt a pair of hands grab the bottom of your skirt and start to pull down. You shrieked and smacked the hands away and turned around to see (to the best of your ability) Hagakure behind you.

“Oh my god, Hagakure! I had no idea who was behind me! You scared me thinking it was Mineta pulling at my skirt.” You laughed and grabbed onto the girls arms.

“Ahhh I’m sorry! I just noticed your skirt was up a lot higher than normal and you almost showed off a bit too much.” The invisible girl explained as you fixed your skirt. “Come on, we got to get to class!”

“Right, yeah, I’m coming.” You responded as Hagakure held your hand. You quickly turned to Bakugou again who once again had a faint blush dusting his cheeks. “You sure you’ll be okay? I know it’s only for an hour before I see you again so if you want to pawn her off to me next class then that’s fine.”

“Tch…how incompetent do you think I am? Of course I can take care of some stupid doll for an hour!” He barked back at you.

You felt Hagakure pulling you towards the front door. “Ok, well…see you later then!” You said as you finally took off with your friend, leaving Bakugou and a few others scattered around the common room.

“Heyyy, Bakugou! You get stuck on babysitting duty too?” Kaminari taunted, his baby settled in a carrier strapped to his chest.

Bakugou growled. “It’s not babysitting when it’s your own kid you idiot. And you look dumb with that thing on.” He stood up and grabbed the handle of the car seat and went off to his room. He could hear Kaminari complaining as he left.

Now here he was, in his room having a staring match with a doll. He wasn’t sure what to do for an hour, let along with a baby. He glanced up at some math homework left on his desk and decided to finish it up so he was ahead of everyone else in class. Ten minutes past when his concentration was interrupted by whining. He looked over at the car seat that was faced away from him at this angle and sighed. He reached over and turned it around.

“Jesus. She didn’t mention how fucking annoying it would be.” He muttered to himself as he undid the straps and lifted the baby out. “What the hell is your problem, huh?” He asked, surprisingly not as loud as he normally would. He thought maybe she was hungry and remembered you said something about a small bag with her bottle in it. He looked around but couldn’t find it. In fact, he didn’t remember seeing any bag with the baby anyway. He grumbled as he picked up his phone and opened up the messaging app and sent you a private message.

In the locker rooms you heard your phone buzz and decided to look at it as you were changing. You saw a notification from Bakugou and quickly opened it.

Katsuki Bakugou: hey, dumbass. she’s crying but I can’t find that bag you were talking about

You winced as you remembered that you never actually grabbed the bag in your rush to get downstairs.

You: damn I must have forgotten it in my room, sorry. feel free to go and grab it. my room code is 6678 it should be on my desk. you know which floor I’m on right?

Bakugou scoffed.

Katsuki Bakugou: yes I know. I’m not stupid.

You: never said you were <3 have fun lol

You didn’t realize you sent the heart. It was muscle memory from texting with your friends, but it sent Bakugou for a loop.

After he had quickly made his way to the second floor and grabbed the bag you mentioned, he went back to his room where he had left the baby on his bed. Her whining had turned into crying by now.

“Alright, Alright! I got your damn stuff.” Bakugou sat on the floor and settled the doll into his arm. He removed the pacifier and held the bottle up to its mouth. He felt relieved when the crying stopped. “This is fucking ridiculous.” He thought out loud.

He rested his back on his bed and started to drift off in to thought. Why did you send that heart? Did you mean to do it? Was it a reflex? Were you making fun of him? No…that couldn’t be right. You were one of the few that took him seriously. Sure you teased him sometimes, but not as much as the others. He thought back to a time where he accidentally overheard something he probably shouldn’t have that still made his heart feel weird.

———————————————————————

Bakugou was making his way to the kitchen to get something to drink. He could hear you and the other girls of Class 1A giggling and talking about random shit.

He was going to ignore the group when something made him stop in his tracks right before he would be seen.

“Sooo, who do you like?” Mina asked with a teasing voice.

“Who, me?” You asked as Mina nodded. All eyes were on you and you felt yourself blush. “Well…I guess I kinda have a thing for Bakugou…” You answered shyly, playing with the hem of your shirt.

“What?!” “Wait, Bakugou?!” “Really?” The girls cried out in unison.

“Why is that so shocking? You guys seriously don’t think he’s at least a little bit attractive?” You inquired.

Bakugou stiffened at the confession and he felt his heartbeat speed up. You…had a crush on him? Someone actually was interested in him romantically?

“You don’t think all his yelling and name calling is a turn off?” Uraraka asked.

“Hm…not really. Sure he says some mean stuff but…he doesn’t actually mean it.” You reasoned.

“I don’t know…he always seems to be serious about it. I mean he doesn’t even know our names.” Jirou huffed.

“Yes he does!” You laughed. “He’s not stupid. He’s a lot smarter than I think any of you give him credit for.”

“He is in the top our class academic wise as well as hero wise.” Yayorozu chimes in.

“Exactly. Have none of you realized that a lot of his plans actually work? He may seem like he’s rushing into things but it’s obvious he’s put clear thought into his plans. And the fact that he can make one up that quickly is impressive. He’s also more compassionate than you’d think.” You said, leaning back on the couch.

“Well I think you’re wrong with that.” Tsu replied.

“Because you guys are only seeing the surface level. You’re not reading in between the lines. For example, remember when we just moved into the dorms, the talk Mr. Aizawa had with us outside?” They nodded. “When Mr. Aizawa left, you could feel the uncomfortable tension in the class at being reminded of what happened. Bakugou grabbed Kaminari and made him go all dumb because he knew it would make everyone laugh. And it did! The tension was gone instantly! Bakugou really does care, he just doesn’t know how to show it like other people. And remember the school festival? He totally could’ve refused to play the drums but he did it anyway! That’s what I like about him. He’s not a cold hearted asshole, he just wants you to think he is. I use to be like that too.” You trailed off, looking ashamed.

“Wait. YOU were an asshole?” Mina prodded.

You sighed and nodded. “Yeah, back when I first got my quirk. I realized that putting other people down gave me a lot of confidence. I went on a power trip and started bullying everyone. I started to realize that the “friends” that I did have were only my “friends” so they could escape my words. Made me feel like shit when I found out. Now I hate using my quirk like that unless absolutely necessary. But yeah….I see through Bakugou’s walls and I guess it just made me fall for him.” You changed the subject.

“Wow…you’re whipped for him, aren’t you?” Mina teased.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just don’t tell him that. I don’t need him on my ass about it.” You blushed and waved her off.

“You sure you don’t want him on your ass?” Mina teased again.

“OH SHUT UP!” You threw a pillow at her as the girls laughed.

———————————————————————

Bakugou had zoned out at that memory. He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, it’s your fault for being so damn loud and talking about him in the first place! It’s been a few weeks since that and it’s still fresh in his mind. Did he like you back? He wasn’t sure. On one hand he was pissed at how you managed to figure him out so easily, but on the other hand…he felt comforted knowing someone understood him and didn’t make fun of him for it. He will admit that you weren’t that bad looking or as stupid as everyone else. He did wish you would see the potential you had with your quirk, though. He could feel his cheeks start to heat up and he scoffed, snapping out of his thoughts and looking back down at the doll in his arms.

“I guess…she’s not so bad…” He said softly to Riki.

———————————————————————

Training had finished and you and the rest of your classmates were on your way to your next class.

Upon entering the classroom you noticed everyone that had skipped out on training standing around, babies either in their arms, strapped to their chest, or in the car seat. Bakugou was sat in his spot, chin in his hand looking out the window to his left.

You had a few minutes to spare before class started so you walked up to your partner. “Hey! How’d it go? Was she fussy?” You asked as you squatted down to see Riki, who was in her car seat on the floor next to his desk.

“Tch, no. I told you I know what I’m doing.” He grumbled.

“I’m pretty sure none of us know what we’re doing but it’s nice to know that you’re taking this seriously.” You replied standing back up.

“HA? YOU THINK I WOULD’NT? YOU THINK I’M NOT CAPABLE OF THIS?” He yelled as he let off small explosions.

“Course not. I did kinda think you would end up leaving most of this to me though. But it’s nice that you’re playing along.” You smiled sincerely.

Iida started ushering everyone to their assigned seats as class was about to begin. You patted Bakugou on his shoulder and left to your seat near the back of the class.

He clenched his fists and glared down at his desk, he could feel his heartbeat going wild again.

———————————————————————

A few days had passed and it was now Friday night and you were at your wits end.

It was your day with Riki and she had been crying non stop for thirty minutes now. You were pacing your room with her in your arms as the doll “sobbed” louder and louder with each agonizing minute. You had no idea what was wrong; you tried feeding her, changing her diaper, holding her, giving her a pacifier, you even tried the toys that they provided but nothing was working!

You were close to tears yourself as you thought about how this would affect your grade and how pissed Bakugou would be if you ruined it. The whole week went by just fine, it never took this long for her to settle down. You had gotten lucky with the baby you were given as she was so easy to care for, but this moment right now was proving difficult.

Feeling like you had no other choice, you left your room with your still wailing daughter in your arms and quickly made your way up to Bakugou’s room.

You knocked on his door while still trying to shush Riki. When Bakugou opened the door, he looked like he had just woken up which made you start ranting.

“Bakugou, fuck, I’m so sorry to bother you right now I know you like to go to bed early but she’s been crying like this for like thirty minutes now and I’ve tried everything but she just won’t stop crying and I don’t know what to do and I’m probably gonna make us fail cause I can’t get her to fucking stop and I just…” You panted “…can you please help me?” You nearly whined.

“Give her to me.” Bakugou reached out as you transferred her into his arms. He walked away with the crying doll, leaving his door open. You decided that was an invitation so you slipped into his room and gently closed the door behind you. You watched as Bakugou gently bounced the doll in his arms and started petting its blonde head.

You stared in awe as Riki started to finally quiet down until she was silent. You breathed out a sigh of relief but tears started to quickly gather in your eyes. Bakugou had opened his balcony door and stepped outside to the cool air. You ran a hand through your messy hair and followed them out onto the balcony. The not quite freezing but cold air nipping at your skin. It felt nice as you didn’t even notice that you were sweating from the stress. You bent over and rested your elbows on the railing and placed your head in your hands, trying to hold back your tears.

“She had been crying for so long…I tried everything but nothing worked. But the minute you have her she finally stops. What the hell am I doing wrong? Why am I such a bad mother?” You muttered more to yourself but your partner could hear you anyways.

A minute of silence went by as you tried to not let your tears fall when Bakugou finally spoke up, surprising gently. “Don’t beat yourself up over something you barely know how to handle.”

He leaned his back against the railing next to you. His arm barely grazing against your shoulder, his way of trying to comfort you. You sniffed and dropped your arms from your head and looked forward out into the dark courtyard.

“She’s been perfect this entire week. Nothing I couldn’t handle…but she just had to act like a total brat tonight.” You sighed.

“Hey.” Bakugou said sternly. “Don’t call our daughter a brat…that’s my line.”

You laughed at that, completely overlooking the fact that you called the doll “our daughter”. Bakugou softly smiled at your laugh, also not realizing exactly what he said. But her certainly felt his heart flutter as he looked down at the baby in his arms.

Bakugou decided he’d take her for the rest of the night so you could get some sleep. It was his turn tomorrow anyway.

———————————————————————

Monday had come by quickly, thus, ending the project. Recovery Girl had collected the dolls, and you couldn’t lie, you felt a little sad at the fact that you won’t have Riki around anymore. The class waited in anticipation to see whose grade was the lowest.

When the results came in, Midnight stood at the front of the class once again and started to call out the grades.

“Coming in last place is Sero and Mineta with a sixty-five.” Mineta started screaming about how unfair it was and that they got a faulty doll. “Todoroki and Ojiro have a score of thirty-four, Kaminari and Jirou have a thirty, Iida and Aoyama a twenty-seven, Usagi and Tokoyami with twenty-five, Shouji and Asui with twenty-one, Hagakure and Yayorozu with twenty, Mina and Kirishima with an eighteen, Satou and Kouda with a fifteen, Bakugou and (Y/N) with a score of eight, and lastly, coming in first place with the best score is Midoriya and Uraraka with a three! Good work everyone. I hope you all learned some valuable lessons from this experience!” Midnight finished.

There were high fives and cheers coming from the people with the lower scores and talks of what they could’ve done better from the people with higher marks.

You stared down at your desk smiling. Eight wasn’t so bad, right? Much better than what Mineta got.

At the front of the class, Bakugou has turned his head back to look at you and softly smiled to himself when he saw your relief. He turned back around to look down at his hands as he played with his pen. He could hear Midoriya and Uraraka being congratulated for the lowest score and for once in his life….he didn’t mind coming in second.

———————————————————————

Bonus:

Twelve years later, Bakugou had established himself as the number two hero with his own agency. You worked along side him as his number one sidekick. You both grew a lot since high school and grew closer from the experience. You managed to get rid of your inferiority complex and become more comfortable with using your quirk against villains rather than standing by and cheering on the heroes. You can also hold your own in combat pretty well now and you have a slew of support items to help.

But instead of kicking ass on the street you were laid out on a hospital bed after the longest 7 hours of your life. You were sweaty and exhausted, but it was all worth it as you looked at the little bundle in your arms. A head of blonde hair was peaking out of the blanket.

“What should we name her?” You whispered to the person leaning over you with their hand on your head and looking lovingly down at the newborn.

“…..Riki.” Bakugou said softly.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Wellness surveillance makes workers unwell

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TORONTO on Mar 22, then with LAURA POITRAS in NYC on Mar 24, then Anaheim, and more!

"National conversation" sounds like one of those meaningless buzzphrases – until you live through one. The first one I really participated in actively was the national conversation – the global conversation – about privacy following the Snowden revelations.

This all went down when my daughter was five, and as my wife and I talked about the news, our kid naturally grew curious about it. I had to literally "explain like I'm five" global mass surveillance:

https://locusmag.com/2014/05/cory-doctorow-how-to-talk-to-your-children-about-mass-surveillance/

But parenting is a two-way street, so even as I was explaining surveillance to my kid, my own experiences raising a child changed how I thought about surveillance. Obviously I knew about many of the harms that surveillance brings, but parenting helped me viscerally appreciate one of the least-discussed, most important aspects of being watched: how it compromises being your authentic self:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2014/may/09/cybersecurity-begins-with-integrity-not-surveillance

As I wrote then:

There are times when she is working right at the limits of her abilities – drawing or dancing or writing or singing or building – and she catches me watching her and gets this look of mingled embarrassment and exasperation, and then she changes back to some task where she has more mastery. No one – not even a small child – likes to look foolish in front of other people.

Learning, growth, and fulfillment all require a zone of privacy, a time and place where we are not observed. Far from making us accountable, continuous, fine-grained surveillance by authority figures just scares us into living a cramped, inauthentic version of ourselves, where growth is all but impossible. Others have observed the role this plays in right-wing culture war bullshit: "an armed society is a polite society" is code for "people who make me feel uncomfortable just by existing should be terrorized into hiding their authentic selves from me." The point of Don't Say Gay laws and anti-trans bills isn't to eliminate gender nonconformity – it's to drive it into hiding.

Given all this, it's no surprise that workers who face workplace surveillance in the name of "wellness" feel unwell as a result:

https://www.ifow.org/publications/what-impact-does-exposure-to-workplace-technologies-have-on-workers-quality-of-life-briefing-paper

As the Future of Work Institute found in its study, some technologies – systems that make it easier to collaborate and communicate with colleagues – increase workers' sense of wellbeing. But wearables and AI tools make workers feel significantly worse:

https://assets-global.website-files.com/64d5f73a7fc5e8a240310c4d/65eef23e188fb988d1f19e58_Tech%20Exposure%20and%20Worker%20Wellbeing%20-%20Full%20WP%20-%20Final.pdf

Workers who reported these negative feelings confirmed that these tools make them feel "monitored." I mean, of course they do. Even where these tools are nominally designed to help you do your job better, they're also explicitly designed to help your boss keep track of you from moment to moment. As Brandon Vigliarolo writes for The Register, these are the same bosses who have been boasting to their investors about their plans to fire their workers and replace them with AI:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/advanced_workplace_tech_study/

"Bossware" is a key example of the shitty rainbow of "disciplinary technology," tools that exist to take away human agency by making it easier to surveil and control its users:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/01/bossware/#bossware

Bossware is one of the stages of the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve: the process by which abusive and immiserating technologies progress up the privilege gradient as their proponents refine and normalize dystopian technologies in order to impose them on wider and wider audiences:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The kinds of metrics that bossware gathers might be useful to workers, but only if the workers get to decide when, whether and how to share that data with other people. Microsoft Office helps you catch typos by underlining words its dictionary doesn't recognize; the cloud-based, "AI-powered" Office365 tells your boss that you're the 11th-worst speller in your division and uses "sentiment analysis" to predict whether you are likely to cause trouble:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Two hundred years ago, Luddites rose up against machines. Contrary to the ahistorical libel you've heard, the Luddites weren't angry or frightened of machines – they were angry at the machines' owners. They understood – correctly – that the purpose of a machine "so easy a child could use it" was to fire skilled adult workers and replace them with kidnapped, indentured Napoleonic War orphans who could be maimed and killed on the job without consequence:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/12/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk/

A hundred years ago, the "Taylorites" picked up where those mill owners left off: choreographing workers' movements to the finest degree in a pseudoscientific effort to produce a kind of kabuki of boss-pleasing robotic efficiency. The new, AI-based Taylorism goes even further, allowing bosses to automatically blacklist gig workers who refuse to cross picket-lines, monitor "self-employed" call center operators in their own homes, and monitor the eyeballs of Amazon drivers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

AI-based monitoring technologies dock workers' wages, suspend them, and even fire them, and when workers object, they're stuck arguing with a chatbot that is the apotheosis of Computer Says No:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

There's plenty of research about AI successfully "augmenting" workers, making them more productive and I'm the last person to say that automation can't help you get more done:

https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/report/augmented-workforce

But without understanding how AI augments class warfare – disciplining workers with a scale, speed and granularity beyond the sadistic fantasies of even the most micromanaging asshole boss – this research is meaningless.

The irony of bosses imposing monitoring to improve "wellness" and stave off "burnout" is that nothing is more exhausting, more immiserating, more infuriating than being continuously watched and judged.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/15/wellness-taylorism/#sick-of-spying

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[shouldiusemyname]

Only Friends - The Voice of the 80's Babies

Long post

Inspired by this post by @chicademartinica and bestie @thegalwhorants's comment about the wardrobe. Also this post from @blmpff which really made me think I'm in the right direction...

Before I get into this I just wanna say that I'm posting this very hesitantly as it's a very personal view of this show (possibly within the Jojo-verse). I might be reading too much into this and projecting my own experience and the fact that Jojo is about my age, but OF feels very much a reaction of my generation. I realize that most of what I'm going to say will sound familiar and relevant to everyone (not just 80's babies) but I'll try to explain the difference between what I read as a general generational experience and a universal experience.

I said it before and after watching the first ep it has never been clearer that Only Friends is what happens when 80's babies are given a chance to settle scores.

Everything about this show screams I WAS A TEENAGER IN THE 90'S!

First of all - the clothes! EVERYTHING they're wearing is like it's taken from my high school photos 😅 I know fashion is fluid and trends will make a comeback periodically, but given what I feel they're trying to say, I believe it's intentional.

The Sex of it All

It's like a direct reaction to the way we were raised and the relationship my generation has with sex. This is very regional and cultural, but generally speaking sex was not discussed as a natural aspect of life and relationships. Sex was either shameful, dirty, reproductive, or (the worst option) over discussed without healthy boundaries. My parents' generation didn't have the tools to discuss sex with their children in a healthy way because they were also denied this conversation by their parents. So, they either hid it or overshared.

So, my generation was raised (by western media basically) believing that everyone must have sex and our social standing is directly linked to whether or not we were having sex (who said American Pie?). We weren't given the option to have different views. We were trapped by this extremely deformed view of sex and relationships.

Watching this show and the discussion around it feels like creators are calling bullshit on everything we were told about sex.

Stuck in the Middle

I'm going to generalise here, but basically people who are just slightly older than us (meaning my generation) have this very black and white attitude towards sex - there's the right time to start having sex, your partner matters (in the way that you should be in love or in a relationship), relationships are monogamous, and kink is a deviation (don't even get me started on queerness - you were either gay, straight, or a crossdresser).

On the other hand, 90's babies were born into a much wider and open world that gave them the opportunity to get a much broader picture and view about relationships and how sex plays into them. This is even as basic as just having a wider vocabulary to talk about it.

My generation was, however, stuck in the middle, left to really hindsight our way through our perception of sex and its place in relationships.

In my 20's I've witnessed so many conversations where people were analyzed over the fact that they choose not to have sex like there's something wrong with them. Why are you not having sex? What's wrong with you? You're waiting for love? - don't waste your time. You're just going to fuck whoever? - that's just wrong. There's no winning.

Furthermore, when considering what Jojo said about the discussion around queer sex in queer shows and bl - my generation was raised with the idea that being queer (which was then just being gay) was all about who you have sex with. No one ever said anything about love or gender. When I was figuring out my own sexuality, being queer was about who you wanted to sleep with, not who you loved. We still see this today when people believe that our queerness is defined by whether or not we are having queer sex, and I believe this is at least part of what @bengiyo is talking about when he talks about the internalised homophobia. This is so much of my generation carrying and passing it on because we were denied these conversations.

So Now What?

Now, creating a show that is about sex, queer sex, and how it plays into queer relationships is reclaiming the conversation about queerness as an expression of love as well as sexuality. We deserve to discuss these issues as a generation that was denied these conversations whether queer or not. And somehow, these issues are discussed more freely and openly within queerness as it has the advantage of being free of heteronormative notions.

Another reason I believe this is generational is the fact that Jojo is consistently having this discussion within his shows. I don't know how to explain it, but his shows feel like screaming liberation, like he's walking around with a baseball bat (preferably Only Friends branded) and smashing these false ideas one by one. Which is why I believe we need to look at this show as part of the Jojo-verse shows along with The Warp Effect, 3 will be free and Gay OK Bangkok. Jojo is on a mission.

Expression Within The Show

Ok, so what am I getting at after I had you read my trip to the shrink?

I believe that ALL OF THIS is expressed in the show through the group dynamics we see in our friend group. They all represent different notions and they will fight over dominance. This is the power struggle that my generation is trapped in. We need and deserve to say our peace.

This is what I meant when I said that OFTS is what happens when you're an 80's baby with shit to say.

As usual thank you for reading my ramblings. I hope you get what I'm trying to say, and clearly have issues 😅 so feel free to comment and give perspective...

[corawritesthings]

chishiya shuntaro headcanons

headcanons (and general ramblings) about our favorite blond boy being besties with reader. because i’m a simp except it’s pre-arisu and gang; reader is assumed to be at the beach. gender neutral reader!!

(BOTH PLATONIC/ROMANTIC!)

disclaimers: mild references to both seasons of alice in borderland. very brief reference to alcohol. not beta read or spellchecked because we die on this hill.

platonic OR romantic headcanons//

-first of all, i have to mention: i feel like lots of people interpret chishiya as this very stoic, emotionless person. and he is, to an extent. he’s certainly got an amazing poker face. but he’s also not a statue, do you get me? like he does have. expressions.

-(my personal favorite being the little grin he does in season 1 when he’s using the walkie-talkie to talk to kuina and she’s like “i would NOT want to be your enemy” and he’s just like “lolol yeah i get that a lot” like TELL ME that face was not adorable)

-he’s a little gossip girl. prove me wrong.

-like, if you two were at the beach at the same time, you cannot tell me that he wouldn’t be in the know about practically all the going-ons. through either his own observations or kuina.

-literally, you could be like: “oh my god, did you hear about [x, y, z]” and more than likely he’d just nod and smirk and be like “yep.” because of course he does.

-(i’m sorry. i’m SORRY. but did you SEE how he was literally dying to tell someone about that couple in the cells in season 2. POOR BABY IPPEI DID NOT ASK TO KNOW ABOUT THAT, CHISHIYA)

-if you were an executive, you two would be like literal children during the meetings. hatter is just going on and on and on, and you two would share glances every time he said something slightly out of pocket. “did-he-actually-just-say-that” type glances. raised eyebrows. the works.

-if he was bored and felt particularly silly one of these days he’d like. try to make you laugh in the most subtle ways. it always works tbh.

-he would share his headphones with you for sure if you asked. he might give you shit for it, do not get me wrong. but he would definitely give in.

-i’ve heard others say this before, but i’ll say it too because it’s very accurate: top love language. quality time. like i firmly one hundred percent believe with my full soul that if you guys are friends, he will just camp out in your room if he doesn’t feel like being alone.

-deadass, he wouldn’t even need to be speaking. he’ll just be there, reading, or tinkering with his latest project, etcetera.

-also! i don’t think he’s nearly as quiet as people make him out to be, either. like he’s not a chatterbox necessarily, and he could definitely have his moods where he’s not in the mood to talk; but at the same time, i feel like the majority of the time, he’d be down for a genuine conversation.

-amazing listener.

-will definitely remember the things you say. will DEFINITELY remember that one embarrassing thing you did when you drank too much that one time. will definitely tease you about it.

-he likes being right, tbh. if he knows how to read you (and chances are, he does), he’ll do that thing where he completely psychoanalyzes your emotions and what you’re feeling and what you’re thinking JUST so that you can be like. “what the actual fuck, chishiya.”

-keeps an eye out for you when you’re supposed to be returning from a game. definitely feels relieved when he sees that you’re okay and alive. probably won’t show it. (LOL)

purely romantic headcanons//

-if you two are dating, i think we’ve all collectively agreed he wouldn’t be SUPER affectionate with you in public. (HELP I ALMOST WROTE PUBLIX that would’ve been funny)

-however, i do think it could go one of two ways.

-one, he could go the route of wanting to keep your relationship private. this is very much possible, and it wouldn’t be because he’s ashamed or wants to hide it--it’s more so to protect the both of you.

-he wouldn’t want anyone to attempt to use you to get to him. you’d be a vulnerability, and he definitely would not want you to get hurt.

-or, route two: perhaps he deems it safe enough for you two to be in a relationship and have it not be a big deal. meaning, he wouldn’t be actively TELLING people, but he wouldn’t be hiding it, either.

-if it went this route, i think it would allow for more public affection. :)

-by this, i mean like. hand holding. quick little smooches on the cheek or forehead. him having an arm around your shoulders if you’re out by the bar or pool. etcetera. (i really don’t believe this would be so out of character!! it wouldn’t be like a crazily obvious amount of public affection. i just mean small little things.)

-he would definitely have just a teeny tiny bit of panic in that heart of his while waiting for you to come back from a game. expect cuddles on those nights. sorry i don’t make the rules.

-i do actually believe he’d be a bit more honest with you in a relationship. like, about the gears that are constantly moving in his mind. you’d get a bit more insight into how he works and how he’s so many steps ahead. you’ve got an intriguing boyfriend tbh can i have him

-there’s so much i could say about this man. please i beg send me requests for headcanons (or even one-shots or drabbles tbh i have brainrot)

[former-leftist-jew]

I really loved your post about religious extremism and I wanted to add that a lot of the people using the "peaceful, noble Palestinian" trope (like you said, the noble savage trope) would have no problem understanding that a Christian population is bigoted against gays because they were raised in that faith and ministered to by bigots -- for instance, Russian leadership using the language of Christianity to make "same sex propaganda" illegal (I literally know someone who went to jail for kissing another woman in front of Russian police) and then holding them to account when said government is removed from power, or even refusing to forgive them even when they've changed. These are totally understandable reactions to bigotry, even societal bigotry (my grandfather remains deeply homophobic due to his Christianity and even if he one day changes, I don't know that I'll be able to forgive him for supporting conversion therapy).

But when it's a non-Western population? Suddenly those people CAN'T be bigoted and CAN'T have been fed antisemitism and hatred for their entire lives because. I don't know, it's different with them! I know so many wonderful, affirming, progressive Muslims who have done the work to reinterpret and decolonize their faith, the same as I do Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc.. But I also know that in the Middle East, many don't DO that sort of reflection -- largely because they don't have the ability to due to decades of corrupt leadership and authoritarian rule. You can be a victim of religious extremism by virtue of being raised in it, but we NEED to hold these people to the same standards as we do Westerners coming out of religious extremism.

I'm not shocked Palestinians support Hamas -- it fucking sucks in Gaza, and has for a while. That's how terrorism gets its roots, same as the Taliban, the KKK, Al-Qaeda, etc; it preaches to a suffering population and promises it everything it wants, if only you'll hate XYZ group, if only you'll give us your children, etc. If we truly want to free Palestine -- which I do, I am a supporter of Palestinian self determination and ending anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia -- then we need to understand all this and help them decolonize and de-terrorize.

(I hope any of that made sense, I just sort of rambled)

Daww, thank you! I'm glad my pot struck a chord with you. ^_^

Yeah, believe it or not, I do have a lot of sympathy for the average Palestinian Muslim/Christian. It's just... like Atticus said of Mayella Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird, my sympathy doesn't extend so far as to condone anihilating Israel and massacring all Jews.

I do believe that everyone has a right to self-determination and self-government. Gay people have a right to marry who they love, trans people have a right to dress and live as the gender they identify as, Arab Muslims have a right to worship Allah with Muhammad as his last and final Prophet, Jews have a right to self-determine and self-govern, etc.

TBH, I think there's a cruel irony that an estimated 30-60% of Palestinian Arabs share ancient Canaanite/Hebrew ancestry with modern Jews (meaning, they're also descended from ancient Jews), but since the region was forcibly conquered and converted by Islamic Caliphs in the 600's, it's fair to assume their Jewish ancestors were colonized and/or forcibly converted. (Or at least passively pressured to convert over time, since non-Muslims in Sharia Law are made to pay a poll tax and live as second-class citizens to Muslim citizens--so who wouldn't want to switch to Islam under that literal two-tiered legal system?)

Part of me thinks, "Why would you WANT to stay with Islam when your ancestors were conquered and forcibly converted (or at least passive-aggressively pressured to convert) as sure as Vietnam is largely Catholic because of their French Catholic former colonisers? BUT AGAIN, I respect their right to self-determination and their desire for self-government. If the Palestinian Muslims with ancient Hebrew blood want to stay with Islam, live in an Islamic society, and be ruled by an Islamic government, that's their right.

With that said, part of me feels like the average Palestinian Muslims (and Christians) have been duped by their Islamofascist government to see Israeli Jews not as long-lost brothers and sisters who finally returned home after centuries in exile, but as "foreign invaders" trying to take what little scraps they have. Both in the early 20th century and early 21's century.

You know that leftist meme that goes like:

"A CEO, white kid, and black kid sit at a table. The CEO's plate is piled high with 10 cookies, white the kids' are empty. He then tosses a cookie to the white kid and says, 'That black kid wants to steal your cookie.'"?

That is LITERALLY Hamas is doing to the Palestinian Arabs and Jews!

Hamas notoriously hoards as much of Gaza's food, fuel, water, resources, and wealth as they can, throw their people just enough scraps to get by, and then tells them, "Those Jews wants to steal your land, your religion, and your liberty. Help us kill the Jew, and you'll be living in Paradise." When the state of the rest of the Middle East (which have little to no Jews left in them) shows otherwise.

And I'm so disgusted by how the Left West recognizes that manipulation tactic when it comes to rich white CEO's duping poor whites into blaming black "welfare queens" and brown "illegal immigrants" for their lack of the good life, but somehow CAN'T connect the dots when Islamofascist dictators who openly hoard all their country's resources for themselves and spread oppressive violence and misogyny to the rest of the population do the exact same thing to the average impoverished Muslim regarding "Jews" and "Western invaders."

The average Muslim? Believe it or not, I DO have some sympathy. Based on what I've seen and read from various ex-Muslims, it sounds like Arab Islamic culture doesn't really encourage critical thinking, self-examination, or widespread education as the norm. MANY ex-Muslims I've met and talked to IRL, and that I follow on social media, talk about how, when they were growing up

A lot of Palestinians are also pretty upfront about how "we don't question" what they've been taught about Islam and Jews.

But, you know what? As far as I'm concerned, it's time to START questioning. It's time to START thinking about it. It's time to START making room for non-Muslims to live beside and share equal rights and resources with Muslims.

And I'm so grossed out that the Western Left encourages the religious bigotry, intolerance, and "no dogs or Jews allowed here!" segregation because "It's their culture/religion." Well then, they need to change with the times like everyone else.

[hero-israel]

What do you think of Reform Jews? I don’t have a problem with it necessarily, but I have noticed it has been the movement of choice for many anti-Zionists to convert into and it’s been making me feel iffy about reform Jews I meet lately bc I don’t know if they’re just a Jew who have been burned by Orthodoxy for their sexuality for example and just want a safe(r) space for them to be both Jewish and Gay, or if they’re a Jew who just converted to legitimize their antiZionism and antisemitism shdjdk which I know is my problem bc I shouldn’t make assumptions about ppl just bc they’re reform

You shouldn't make assumptions about Reform Jews. Or about converts either.

Converts are Jews - full stop - and must always be welcomed, as their souls were welcomed at Sinai. I find it next to impossible to believe that there is any significant trend of people converting to Judaism in order to be anti-Zionist troublemakers. Given how long and involved conversion is (and Reform conversions are just as valid), "haters coming in to attack us" probably happens about as much as razorblades in Halloween candy.

When it comes to anti-Zionist Jews, the call is coming from inside the house. To an overwhelming extent they were born Jewish along one of two paths:

Ultra-Orthodox haredi Judaism (Neturei Karta, Satmar, "True Torah Judaism," etc), who hate Israel both because it was formed by mortal men with smelly armpits instead of by Moshiach with a red heifer, and because Israel is much too tolerant and liberal with too many rights for minorities instead of being a theocratic kingdom where all non-Jewish faiths have been totally eliminated. They "support Palestine" only because it isn't time to wipe out the Palestinians yet, and are every bit as cynical and apocalyptic as the Christian Zionists who want Israel to persist until it is destroyed in the Rapture.

Raised lapsed and unobservant, with Jewish identity totally irrelevant to their lives, to the point that even antisemitism meant nothing to them, so from either the "push" or the "pull" aspects a Jewish state was senseless to them. Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, Eli Valley, Norman Finkelstein, Alan Rickman, Jackie Walker, Arthur Hays Sulzberger.

It is very hard to convert to Judaism, and we should want more people to persevere through that. It is very easy to throw away a culture and history that seems totally irrelevant to oneself, and we should want those conditions to stop entirely. The latter is a much more real cause of anti-Zionism. It is totally backwards to presume converts must be bringing weakness and subversion with them. I always expect they have joined us out of love and I have never met a case otherwise. The way we slow down the growth of anti-Zionism within the Jewish community is by helping to build dialogue and warmth among people who were born Jewish but for whatever reason feel disconnected and apathetic about Judaism. Show them the community they can still have with us; when we don't, they enter college with a gnawing void of meaning inside them and are easy prey for "Jews for Jesus in Palestine" groups (i.e. If Not Now, formed and led by evangelical Christians).

And since I am Reform, my family is Reform, my children are Reform, "what I think of Reform Jews" is that we're just fine, thanks. The basic "point" of Reform Judaism is to attempt to realize equal treatment for women, LGBT Jews (with gender-neutral ceremonies if requested), and children of interfaith parents, with clergy roles available for all of the above (rabbis, cantors, mohels, etc.), and girls reading from the Torah at their bat mitzvahs; this used to be really distinctive but with overall social trends it no longer is. In terms of social politics, inclusion, and Hebrew-to-English ratio during services, a Conservative shul in 2023 is pretty much a Reform shul in 1993. Where Reform congregations do still stand out is in their full embrace of patrilineal Jews, and in my opinion other congregations should follow that lead as well. I expect they will.

I deliberately left out Jews of color from that list as I think all denominations have been poor at welcoming them. Anyone who wants to give it a go first, please feel free.

[bbygirl-aemond]

i was reading a meta about Rhaenyra's relationship with Harwin Strong and about Criston Cole and HAAAAAAA

In history, who is blamed for the dance, at least in the popular imagination, is Criston Cole the Kingmaker, who didn't like Rhaenyra and convinced brother against sister to fight and consequently ending the Targaryen dynasty

I'm pissed and I don't even like crispin cole that much 😭😭😭

The way that history blames him is so unfair like

oh god don't get me on my little criston soapbox ahaha but long story short i fully agree with you. criston is very bitter and has major anger issues, but it frustrates me how much people take his relationship with rhaenyra at face value rather than acknowleding how problematic it really was. i think it should spark some conversations about the double standards we hold men versus women to when it comes to experiencing sexual assault, because if criston and rhaenyra's genders were reversed i think fans' takes would be very different.

i've made a post here about why criston's ability to consent to rhaenyra was compromised. criston is canonically dornish (= poc, subjected to racism by other characters in the show including harwin), lowborn, and poor, while rhaenyra is valyrian (= white), as highborn as it gets, and super fucking powerful and wealthy. and she coerces him into sex in a situation where she literally holds the power to have him killed (if she accuses him of coming onto her) while he has no power at all. and he only takes this risk reluctantly, and under the false assumption that the sex means something. rhaenyra doesn't do this intentionally, but being oblivious to your power doesn't make it okay when you use it to pressure others into sex under false pretenses. like she just did not consider the implications of the power difference and of how much more criston risked than she did. of fucking course he's bitter, and of fucking course he hates her.

and i've made a post here about how and why criston ended up with the greens. alicent gave him a very real purpose and sense of healing after what happened with rhaenyra. she was one of the only characters to treat him like he wasn't lowborn, dornish, and poor. she entrusted him with herself, and with her children, and literally brought him back from the brink of suicide. of course he loves her, and of course he'll do anything to protect her and her children. he raised those children when viserys would not (think of how many times he rightfully gives viserys the stink eye in the show, there's very much stepdad-esque resentment there). and the political threat to them is very much real (maybe i should make a separate post about this, but there's one here that i think does a good job). honestly, the fact that he was defending them against rhaenyra was probably only a small bonus. obviously he hurts other people, including innocent people, in the name of protecting his loved ones- but like so does literally every other character involved in the dance lmao.

long story short: criston's actions were very much based out of a love and desire to defend the family he'd built, not so much around his hatred of rhaenyra, though that was probably the cherry on top of the cake. i'm not surprised history remembers him so poorly though, given how bigoted westeros is towards dornish, lowborn men like him. because how dare someone actually fight for their position rather than being born into it, am i right?

[uh-velkommen]

More Thoughts On Gen V:

Mental Health:

I've been watching some reviews on the show and I think one thing that constantly gets overlooked is the conversation around Mental Health. Initially it's Emma who is the purger, her ED is linked to her powers (or so she thinks). Then we learn that its more so about her feeling small, being made to think she is unworthy or nothing. Marie is a self-harmer, whether or not you see it that way, she needs to hurt herself in order to use her powers (for now). It could go one of two ways, she hurts herself and then excuses it as "using her powers" (much like Emma) or it's just a bad habit that is subconsciously linked to her emotions (again, like Emma) and I don't think we'll get a clear answer on that until the next season within The Boys - Cinematic Universe (TBCU). But just think about how many times we see her cut to use her powers in the height of a negative emotion versus when she uses them through other means. Most important of all though: The fact that everyone in The Woods who was given Compound V, has a mental illness or disorder. We know this because Dean Shetty, who runs the thing, talks about her experience as a Phycologist and Sam quite literally has Schizophrenia. She chose to experiment with these children in particular because who would want mentally unstable kids with super powers running around? These kids, to her and the rest of the world, are disposable. They are dangerous, until controlled. Now think about Emma and Marie, aren't they dangerous? Well, no, because their illnesses are "hidden." And it's a perfect commentary on how we talk about mental illnesses today. Everyone wants to raise awareness about mental health until they're met with an illness that has potential to villainize the person who has it.

Gender Queerness:

I love Jordan Li! I think the backstory, having them be Chinese and their Dad sharing how proud he was to have given birth to a son where gender preferences with children is still such a hot topic in Chinese culture, was a brilliant move. I think about how if Jordan had never been given Compound V, they probably still would've experienced issues with their gender identity. The Compound V gave them a gift. (I like to think that Compound V only emphasizes something within the individual, like with Emma and her almond mom or the invisible dude and his perviness but I haven't seen enough evidence to prove this canon). And when Jordan and Marie got together I was so happy to see a Lesbian Protagonist double POC interracial relationship on steroids, except whenever they were together, Boy Jordan would appear and I got mad at the show for being heteronormative. But once again, TBCU came through and gave Jordan the opportunity to talk about how they feel like they have to be a boy for Marie, opening the floor for that conversation to happen between the two sometime in the future. It's a point on having to perform to make other people comfortable. The last thing was something I didn't even notice until Marie pointed out, was how Jordan always turns into a boy when they want to be heard or when they need authority. It's a beautiful note on how aware Jordan is of the privileges that come with passing as a boy. Jordan works with the patriarchy even if not fully intentional. It's the inherent entitlement that is instilled in men and the cultural influences that queer people have to actively unlearn in order to fully be themselves. (Also I feel like I made some poor word choices in the last bit. I'm not anti-men, just couldn't think of another way to say it😅)

Racism:

This part is so simple yet it didn't click in my brain until just now. Throughout the entire show we are being fed the idea that Vought could not have too many POC in the spotlight at once. There's no way a bigender Asian kid could be number one. We can only have one Black person in The Seven at a time. But we're watching this show under the guise that we will get a happy ending. The good guys are going to win this... Did you forget what show you were watching too? Homelander shows up at the end and we think the fighting will stop, until he damn near uses a slur at Marie. The NEW Guardians of Godolkin are two blonde-haired, blue-eyed, do-gooders and we realize that the finale had been foreshadowed the entire time: The minorities can never come on top.

[otter-pup]

we wake up, my long limbs still cradling your small frame, hands possessively on the swell of your belly.

while last night was the culmination of weeks spent apart, this morning it feels like the release of all that tension-- we fuck again, obviously, but it's lazy in the fresh light filtering through the window, a giggling, flushed morning. we talk about kinks, we chat about gender, we joke about being in bed with someone you barely know aside from the perfect way your bodies fit together, we discuss the developments of the past few weeks and i only occasionally derail your train of thought by making you gasp with pleasure.

it is morning, and at one point you have to prod me to bring me back to reality, as i'm lost in admiring how naturally suited you are to pregnancy, to growing my children... and how excited i am to see how huge you're inevitably going to get.

i could almost swear you already look more filled out than you did yesterday.

a few weeks later, i accompany you to an appointment. you haven't quite reached the second trimester mark yet, though your belly (so eager to grow with my young) looks like it could be approaching the third. coming up on three months, and, walking behind you down the hall, i can already detect the faint hint of a waddle in your gait.

time to find out just how thoroughly i've bred you.

-🦑

everything feels so much more relaxed as you wake up, your arms tightening around me as you adjust back to the waking world. i mumble a good morning, and you hum back, hands already wandering down from my belly. i laugh a little at that, considering your eyes are barely open, before i gasp and buck my hips against you.

it continues slow and gentle, you starting an actual conversation while we tease each other. we learn our kinks match up well, another point to the possibility that our insatiable need for each other is a sign of some sort; we laugh at ourselves for how quick we gave into it, twice now, three times if we count this. you ask me about the obvious, and i bite my lip from a mix of embarrassment and pleasure before explaining that i forgot to consider consequences until about two weeks ago now, and, well. here i am. (at the end of it, you find a new spot to touch, and im left struggling to finish what I was saying through gasps and moans.)

eventually, we’re both sated, and your hands are roaming my belly and hips again, gently rubbing over them, your eyes focused exclusively on my body while still clearly lost in your thoughts. i bask in it for a while, before finally forcing myself to gently push you away, reminding you that we need to start the day, especially since I need to get back to my apartment and find something I can fit in for my plans later.

we remember to exchange phone numbers this time, and i text you the details of my first appointment—the office was busy, so I had to wait a bit longer than usual for one, but they assured me it was fine. we find times to meet before then, and im bigger each time, raising the anticipation for my first appointment more and more.

im completely helpless to slow it down, not that i’d want to. the only real issue is finding clothes that fit. the rest of it all—the steadily increasing weight, the struggling to get up, the cravings and the hormones—are surprisingly enjoyable. it just feels so right to carry your young, to let my body swell to care for them, that im not even concerned with the looks on the other parents’ faces when they ask when I’m due in the waiting room and I respond that im only about ten, eleven weeks along.

you stay behind me while one of the nurses leads us to a room, having to slow a bit with how my walk has changed as I’ve swollen, slowed me down a little. not quite waddling yet, at least—the longer I can stay on my feet and moving, the better, right now.

i take a seat on the examination table. they don’t ask me to change into a gown, just having me pull up my already-slipping shirt fully. i look up at you as the nurse rubs on the gel, giving a small smile.

they already seemed to be questioning how big I was already, considering this was my first appointment, but the way their eyes widen upon actually starting the ultrasound says almost all I need to know. they reset their expression a second later, clearing their throat and continuing the exam.

they don’t say anything until the doctor comes in after. she’s equally bewildered as she lets us know that the babies are all healthy, before saying the number.

septuplets. you knocked me up with seven of your babies. im carrying seven of your babies.

i look back over at you, face flushed. i knew it would be a lot—my size says that on its own.

but my body was eager enough to grow seven of your babies. i can’t say anything while the doctor is there, but i try to tell you with just my eyes about the heat rebuilding in my core, and that we’re gonna need to go back to one of our places as soon as the appointments over.

[reasoningdaily]

Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali in “Green Book”

(Patti Perret / Associated Press)

To the editor: Erin Aubrey Kaplan makes an excellent point in her discussion regarding racism. Her claim is that in the movie “Green Book,” Virgo Mortensen’s character seems to make a sudden shift away from his racial prejudice that is unrealistic.

Overcoming racism or any other prejudice is a process that often takes generations. Our consciousness is continually evolving and it requires not only understanding and compassion toward our fellow man but also to our former selves.

Our negative beliefs about “the other” are generally inherited from our families and culture. However, each of us is responsible for changing these attitudes through deeper introspection and acknowledgment of any lingering and sometimes subtle prejudices.

Kathy Welsh, Claremont

..

To the editor: One thing Kaplan seems to have overlooked is the profound lesson embodied in the Rodgers and Hammerstein 1949 song, “You’ve Got to be Taught.”

The song, sung by a young white naval officer in love with a native Pacific Islander, tells us, “You have to be taught to hate and fear … people whose eyes are oddly made and people whose skin is a different shade … to hate all the people your relatives hate, you’ve got to be carefully taught.”

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As a senior citizen, I do believe that change is happening. I have seen many examples of color and gender blindness in the younger generations. This in spite of the obstacles posed by vast income inequality and disproportionate educational opportunity. I do think we will get there.

But, the “evolution” of which Kaplan writes will only move us forward when parents and teachers stop teaching our children what we older folks were taught.

Richard Klinger, Sherman Oaks

I am white. As an academic, consultant and writer on white racial identity and race relations, I speak daily with other white people about the meaning of race in our lives. These conversations are critical because, by virtually every measure, racial inequality persists, and institutions continue to be overwhelmingly controlled by white people. While most of us see ourselves as “not racist”, we continue to reproduce racist outcomes and live segregated lives.

In the racial equity workshops I lead for American companies, I give participants one minute, uninterrupted, to answer the question: “How has your life been shaped by your race?” This is rarely a difficult question for people of color, but most white participants are unable to answer. I watch as they flail, some giving up altogether and waiting out the time, unable to sustain 60 seconds of this kind of reflection. This inability is not benign, and it certainly is not innocent. Suggesting that whiteness has no meaning creates an alienating – even hostile – climate for people of color working and living in predominantly white environments, and it does so in several ways.

If I cannot tell you what it means to be white, I cannot understand what it means not to be white. I will be unable to bear witness to, much less affirm, an alternate racial experience. I will lack the critical thinking and skills to navigate racial tensions in constructive ways. This creates a culture in which white people assume that niceness is the answer to racial inequality and people of color are required to maintain white comfort in order to survive.

An inability to grapple with racial dynamics with any nuance or complexity is ubiquitous in younger white people who have been raised according to an ideology of colorblindness. I have been working with large tech companies whose average employees are under 30 years old. White employees are typically dumbfounded when their colleagues of color testify powerfully in these sessions to the daily slights and indignities they endure and the isolation they feel in overwhelmingly white workplaces. This pain is especially acute for African Americans, who tend to be the least represented.

While the thin veneer of a post-racial society that descended during the Obama years has been ripped away by our current political reality, most white people continue to conceptualize racism as isolated and individual acts of intentional meanness. This definition is convenient and comforting, in that it exempts so many white people from the system of white supremacy we live in and are shaped by. It is at the root of the most common kind of white defensiveness. If racists are intentionally and openly mean, then it follows that nice people cannot be racist. How often will a white person accused of racism gather as evidence to the contrary friends and colleagues to testify to their niceness; the charge cannot be true, the friend cannot be racist, because “he’s a really nice guy” or “she volunteers on the board of a non-profit serving under-privileged youth”. Not meaning to be racist also allows for absolution. If they didn’t mean it, it cannot and should not count.

Thus, it becomes essential for white people to quickly and eagerly telegraph their niceness to people of color. Niceness in these instances is conveyed through tone of voice (light), eye contact accompanied by smiling and the conjuring of affinities (shared enjoyment of a music genre, compliments on hair or style, statements about having traveled to the country the “other” is perceived to have come from or knowing people from the other’s community). Kindness is compassionate and often implicates actions to support or intervene. For example, I am having car trouble and you stop and see if you can help. I appear upset after a work meeting and you check in and listen with the intent of supporting me. Niceness, by contrast, is fleeting, hollow and performative.

In addition to niceness, proximity is seen as evidence of a lack of racism. Consider the claims many white people give to establish that they aren’t racist: “I work in a diverse environment.” “I know and/or love people of color.” “I was in the Peace Corps.” “I live in a large urban city.” These are significant because they reveal what we think it means to be racist. If I can tolerate (and especially if I enjoy and value) proximity, claims of proximity maintain, I must not be racist; a “real” racist cannot stand to be near people of color, let alone smile or otherwise convey friendliness.How 'white fragility' reinforces racism – video explainer

In a 1986 article about black students and school success, Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu describe a “fictive kinship” between African Americans, a kinship that is not consanguineal (by blood) or affinal but derived from the assumption of shared experience. The racial kinship white people attempt to draw from niceness might be seen as a false or fabricated affinity. Most white people live segregated lives and in fact have no lasting cross-racial relationships. We are in the position to choose segregation and often do. The claims of non-racism that we make are therefore based on the most superficial of shared experiences: passing people of color on the street of large cities and going to lunch on occasion with a co-worker.

Note that our cursory friendliness does not come without strings. Consider the case of a white California woman who called the police this past May when a group of black Airbnb guests did not return her smile. The expectation is that the “nod of approval”, the white smile, will be reciprocated. This woman, like all the other white people who have called the police on people of color for non-existent offenses, vigorously denied she was racist. After all, she did smile and wave before reporting them.

I have heard many black Americans talk about the awkwardness of white people “over-smiling”. The act is meant to convey acceptance and approval while maintaining moral integrity, but actually conveys white racial anxiety. Over-smiling allows us to mask an anti-blackness that is foundational to our very existence as white. A fleeting benevolence, of course, has no relation to how black people are actually undermined in white spaces. Black friends have often told me that they prefer open hostility to niceness. They understand open hostility and can protect themselves as needed. But the deception of niceness adds a confusing layer that makes it difficult for people of color to decipher trustworthy allyship from disingenuous white liberalism. Gaslighting ensues.

The default of the current system is the reproduction of racial inequality. To continue reproducing racial inequality, the system only needs for white people to be really nice and carry on – to smile at people of color, to go to lunch with them on occasion. To be clear, being nice is generally a better policy than being mean. But niceness does not bring racism to the table and will not keep it on the table when so many of us who are white want it off. Niceness does not break with white solidarity and white silence. In fact, naming racism is often seen as not nice, triggering white fragility.

We can begin by acknowledging ourselves as racial beings with a particular and limited perspective on race. We can attempt to understand the racial realities of people of color through authentic interaction rather than through the media or through unequal relationships. We can insist that racism be discussed in our workplaces and a professed commitment to racial equity be demonstratedby actual outcomes. We can get involved in organizations working for racial justice. These efforts require that we continually challenge our own socialization and investments in racism and put what we profess to value into the actual practice of our lives. This takes courage, and niceness without strategic and intentional anti-racist action is not courageous.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jamie Reed

Published: Feb 9, 2023

I am a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders. My worldview has deeply shaped my career. I have spent my professional life providing counseling to vulnerable populations: children in foster care, sexual minorities, the poor. 

For almost four years, I worked at The Washington University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases with teens and young adults who were HIV positive. Many of them were trans or otherwise gender nonconforming, and I could relate: Through childhood and adolescence, I did a lot of gender questioning myself. I’m now married to a transman, and together we are raising my two biological children from a previous marriage and three foster children we hope to adopt. 

All that led me to a job in 2018 as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, which had been established a year earlier. 

The center’s working assumption was that the earlier you treat kids with gender dysphoria, the more anguish you can prevent later on. This premise was shared by the center’s doctors and therapists. Given their expertise, I assumed that abundant evidence backed this consensus. 

During the four years I worked at the clinic as a case manager—I was responsible for patient intake and oversight—around a thousand distressed young people came through our doors. The majority of them received hormone prescriptions that can have life-altering consequences—including sterility. 

I left the clinic in November of last year because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to “do no harm.” Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.

Today I am speaking out. I am doing so knowing how toxic the public conversation is around this highly contentious issue—and the ways that my testimony might be misused. I am doing so knowing that I am putting myself at serious personal and professional risk.

Almost everyone in my life advised me to keep my head down. But I cannot in good conscience do so. Because what is happening to scores of children is far more important than my comfort. And what is happening to them is morally and medically appalling.

The Floodgates Open

Soon after my arrival at the Transgender Center, I was struck by the lack of formal protocols for treatment. The center’s physician co-directors were essentially the sole authority.

At first, the patient population was tipped toward what used to be the “traditional” instance of a child with gender dysphoria: a boy, often quite young, who wanted to present as—who wanted to be—a girl. 

Until 2015 or so, a very small number of these boys comprised the population of pediatric gender dysphoria cases. Then, across the Western world, there began to be a dramatic increase in a new population: Teenage girls, many with no previous history of gender distress, suddenly declared they were transgender and demanded immediate treatment with testosterone. 

I certainly saw this at the center. One of my jobs was to do intake for new patients and their families. When I started there were probably 10 such calls a month. When I left there were 50, and about 70 percent of the new patients were girls. Sometimes clusters of girls arrived from the same high school. 

This concerned me, but didn’t feel I was in the position to sound some kind of alarm back then. There was a team of about eight of us, and only one other person brought up the kinds of questions I had. Anyone who raised doubts ran the risk of being called a transphobe. 

The girls who came to us had many comorbidities: depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, obesity. Many were diagnosed with autism, or had autism-like symptoms. A report last year on a British pediatric transgender center found that about one-third of the patients referred there were on the autism spectrum.

Frequently, our patients declared they had disorders that no one believed they had. We had patients who said they had Tourette syndrome (but they didn’t); that they had tic disorders (but they didn’t); that they had multiple personalities (but they didn’t). 

The doctors privately recognized these false self-diagnoses as a manifestation of social contagion. They even acknowledged that suicide has an element of social contagion. But when I said the clusters of girls streaming into our service looked as if their gender issues might be a manifestation of social contagion, the doctors said gender identity reflected something innate.

To begin transitioning, the girls needed a letter of support from a therapist—usually one we recommended—who they had to see only once or twice for the green light. To make it more efficient for the therapists, we offered them a template for how to write a letter in support of transition. The next stop was a single visit to the endocrinologist for a testosterone prescription. 

That’s all it took. 

When a female takes testosterone, the profound and permanent effects of the hormone can be seen in a matter of months. Voices drop, beards sprout, body fat is redistributed. Sexual interest explodes, aggression increases, and mood can be unpredictable. Our patients were told about some side effects, including sterility. But after working at the center, I came to believe that teenagers are simply not capable of fully grasping what it means to make the decision to become infertile while still a minor. 

Side Effects

Many encounters with patients emphasized to me how little these young people understood the profound impacts changing gender would have on their bodies and minds. But the center downplayed the negative consequences, and emphasized the need for transition. As the center’s website said, “Left untreated, gender dysphoria has any number of consequences, from self-harm to suicide. But when you take away the gender dysphoria by allowing a child to be who he or she is, we’re noticing that goes away. The studies we have show these kids often wind up functioning psychosocially as well as or better than their peers.” 

There are no reliable studies showing this. Indeed, the experiences of many of the center’s patients prove how false these assertions are. 

Here’s an example. On Friday, May 1, 2020, a colleague emailed me about a 15-year-old male patient: “Oh dear. I am concerned that [the patient] does not understand what Bicalutamide does.” I responded: “I don’t think that we start anything honestly right now.”

Bicalutamide is a medication used to treat metastatic prostate cancer, and one of its side effects is that it feminizes the bodies of men who take it, including the appearance of breasts. The center prescribed this cancer drug as a puberty blocker and feminizing agent for boys. As with most cancer drugs, bicalutamide has a long list of side effects, and this patient experienced one of them: liver toxicity. He was sent to another unit of the hospital for evaluation and immediately taken off the drug. Afterward, his mother sent an electronic message to the Transgender Center saying that we were lucky her family was not the type to sue.

How little patients understood what they were getting into was illustrated by a call we received at the center in 2020 from a 17-year-old biological female patient who was on testosterone. She said she was bleeding from the vagina. In less than an hour she had soaked through an extra heavy pad, her jeans, and a towel she had wrapped around her waist. The nurse at the center told her to go to the emergency room right away.

We found out later this girl had had intercourse, and because testosterone thins the vaginal tissues, her vaginal canal had ripped open. She had to be sedated and given surgery to repair the damage. She wasn’t the only vaginal laceration case we heard about.

Other girls were disturbed by the effects of testosterone on their clitoris, which enlarges and grows into what looks like a microphallus, or a tiny penis. I counseled one patient whose enlarged clitoris now extended below her vulva, and it chafed and rubbed painfully in her jeans. I advised her to get the kind of compression undergarments worn by biological men who dress to pass as female. At the end of the call I thought to myself, “Wow, we hurt this kid.” 

There are rare conditions in which babies are born with atypical genitalia—cases that call for sophisticated care and compassion. But clinics like the one where I worked are creating a whole cohort of kids with atypical genitals—and most of these teens haven’t even had sex yet. They had no idea who they were going to be as adults. Yet all it took for them to permanently transform themselves was one or two short conversations with a therapist.

Being put on powerful doses of testosterone or estrogen—enough to try to trick your body into mimicking the opposite sex—-affects the rest of the body. I doubt that any parent who's ever consented to give their kid testosterone (a lifelong treatment) knows that they’re also possibly signing their kid up for blood pressure medication, cholesterol medication, and perhaps sleep apnea and diabetes. 

But sometimes the parents’ understanding of what they had agreed to do to their children came forcefully: 

Neglected and Mentally Ill Patients

Besides teenage girls, another new group was referred to us: young people from the inpatient psychiatric unit, or the emergency department, of St. Louis Children’s Hospital. The mental health of these kids was deeply concerning—there were diagnoses like schizophrenia, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and more. Often they were already on a fistful of pharmaceuticals.

This was tragic, but unsurprising given the profound trauma some had been through. Yet no matter how much suffering or pain a child had endured, or how little treatment and love they had received, our doctors viewed gender transition—even with all the expense and hardship it entailed—as the solution.

Some weeks it felt as though almost our entire caseload was nothing but disturbed young people. 

For example, one teenager came to us in the summer of 2022 when he was 17 years old and living in a lockdown facility because he had been sexually abusing dogs. He’d had an awful childhood: His mother was a drug addict, his father was imprisoned, and he grew up in foster care. Whatever treatment he may have been getting, it wasn’t working. 

During our intake I learned from another caseworker that when he got out, he planned to reoffend because he believed the dogs had willingly submitted.

Somewhere along the way, he expressed a desire to become female, so he ended up being seen at our center. From there, he went to a psychologist at the hospital who was known to approve virtually everyone seeking transition. Then our doctor recommended feminizing hormones. At the time, I wondered if this was being done as a form of chemical castration. 

That same thought came up again with another case. This one was in spring of 2022 and concerned a young man who had intense obsessive-compulsive disorder that manifested as a desire to cut off his penis after he masturbated. This patient expressed no gender dysphoria, but he got hormones, too. I asked the doctor what protocol he was following, but I never got a straight answer. 

In Loco Parentis

Another disturbing aspect of the center was its lack of regard for the rights of parents—and the extent to which doctors saw themselves as more informed decision-makers over the fate of these children.

In Missouri, only one parent’s consent is required for treatment of their child. But when there was a dispute between the parents, it seemed the center always took the side of the affirming parent.

My concerns about this approach to dissenting parents grew in 2019 when one of our doctors actually testified in a custody hearing against a father who opposed a mother’s wish to start their 11-year-old daughter on puberty blockers. 

I had done the original intake call, and I found the mother quite disturbing. She and the father were getting divorced, and the mother described the daughter as “kind of a tomboy.” So now the mother was convinced her child was trans. But when I asked if her daughter had adopted a boy’s name, if she was distressed about her body, if she was saying she felt like a boy, the mother said no. I explained the girl just didn’t meet the criteria for an evaluation. 

Then a month later, the mother called back and said her daughter now used a boy’s name, was in distress over her body, and wanted to transition. This time the mom and daughter were given an appointment. Our providers decided the girl was trans and prescribed a puberty blocker to prevent her normal development. 

The father adamantly disagreed, said this was all coming from the mother, and a custody battle ensued. After the hearing where our doctor testified in favor of transition, the judge sided with the mother. 

‘I Want My Breasts Back’

Because I was the main intake person, I had the broadest perspective on our existing and prospective patients. In 2019, a new group of people appeared on my radar: desisters and detransitioners. Desisters choose not to go through with a transition. Detransitioners are transgender people who decide to return to their birth gender. 

The one colleague with whom I was able to share my concerns agreed with me that we should be tracking desistance and detransition. We thought the doctors would want to collect and understand this data in order to figure out what they had missed. 

We were wrong. One doctor wondered aloud why he would spend time on someone who was no longer his patient. 

But we created a document anyway and called it the Red Flag list. It was an Excel spreadsheet that tracked the kind of patients that kept my colleague and me up at night. 

One of the saddest cases of detransition I witnessed was a teenage girl, who, like so many of our patients, came from an unstable family, was in an uncertain living situation, and had a history of drug use. The overwhelming majority of our patients are white, but this girl was black. She was put on hormones at the center when she was around 16. When she was 18, she went in for a double mastectomy, what’s known as “top surgery.” 

Three months later she called the surgeon’s office to say she was going back to her birth name and that her pronouns were “she” and “her.” Heartbreakingly, she told the nurse, “I want my breasts back.” The surgeon’s office contacted our office because they didn’t know what to say to this girl.

My colleague and I said that we would reach out. It took a while to track her down, and when we did we made sure that she was in decent mental health, that she was not actively suicidal, that she was not using substances. The last I heard, she was pregnant. Of course, she’ll never be able to breastfeed her child. 

‘Get On Board, Or Get Out’

My concerns about what was going on at the center started to overtake my life. By spring 2020, I felt a medical and moral obligation to do something. So I spoke up in the office, and sent plenty of emails. 

Here’s just one example: On January 6, 2022, I received an email from a staff therapist asking me for help with a case of a 16-year-old transgender male living in another state. “Parents are open to having patient see a therapist but are not supportive of gender and patient does not want parents to be aware of gender identity. I am having a challenging time finding a gender affirming therapist.”

I replied:

“I do not ethically agree with linking a minor patient to a therapist who would be gender affirming with gender as a focus of their work without that being discussed with the parents and the parent agreeing to that kind of care.”

In all my years at the Washington University School of Medicine, I had received solidly positive performance reviews. But in 2021, that changed. I got a below-average mark for my “Judgment” and “Working Relationships/Cooperative Spirit.” Although I was described as “responsible, conscientious, hard-working and productive” the evaluation also noted: “At times Jamie responds poorly to direction from management with defensiveness and hostility.” 

Things came to a head at a half-day retreat in summer of 2022. In front of the team, the doctors said that my colleague and I had to stop questioning the “medicine and the science” as well as their authority. Then an administrator told us we had to “Get on board, or get out.” It became clear that the purpose of the retreat was to deliver these messages to us.

The Washington University system provides a generous college tuition payment program for long-standing employees. I live by my paycheck and have no money to put aside for five college tuitions for my kids. I had to keep my job. I also feel a lot of loyalty to Washington University.

But I decided then and there that I had to get out of the Transgender Center, and to do so, I had to keep my head down and improve my next performance review. 

I managed to get a decent evaluation, and I landed a job conducting research in another part of The Washington University School of Medicine. I gave my notice and left the Transgender Center in November of 2022. 

What I Want to See Happen

For a couple of weeks, I tried to put everything behind me and settled into my new job as a clinical research coordinator, managing studies regarding children undergoing bone marrow transplants. 

Then I came across comments from Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender woman who is a high official at the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The article read: “Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health, said that clinics are proceeding carefully and that no American children are receiving drugs or hormones for gender dysphoria who shouldn’t.”

I felt stunned and sickened. It wasn’t true. And I know that from deep first-hand experience. 

So I started writing down everything I could about my experience at the Transgender Center. Two weeks ago, I brought my concerns and documents to the attention of Missouri’s attorney general. He is a Republican. I am a progressive. But the safety of children should not be a matter for our culture wars. 

Given the secrecy and lack of rigorous standards that characterize youth gender transition across the country, I believe that to ensure the safety of American children, we need a moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria. 

In the past 15 years, according to Reuters, the U.S. has gone from having no pediatric gender clinics to more than 100. A thorough analysis should be undertaken to find out what has been done to their patients and why—and what the long-term consequences are.

There is a clear path for us to follow. Just last year England announced that it would close the Tavistock’s youth gender clinic, then the NHS’s only such clinic in the country, after an investigation revealed shoddy practices and poor patient treatment. Sweden and Finland, too, have investigated pediatric transition and greatly curbed the practice, finding there is insufficient evidence of help, and danger of great harm. 

Some critics describe the kind of treatment offered at places like the Transgender Center where I worked as a kind of national experiment. But that’s wrong. 

Experiments are supposed to be carefully designed. Hypotheses are supposed to be tested ethically. The doctors I worked alongside at the Transgender Center said frequently about the treatment of our patients: “We are building the plane while we are flying it.” No one should be a passenger on that kind of aircraft.

==

The U.S. gets its Tavistock. It will not be the last.

Fathers may well be some of the unsung heroes at the end of this mess. Whenever one parent is pushing for life-long medicalization of a child, it is invariably a Munchausen-by-Trans (Transhausen) possessed mother, with a father fighting against all odds and the system that favors her.

[1mnobodywhoareyou]

I've been thinking about something.

Well, lots of somethings. But one specifically I want to bring up here and now about how parents of privileged children (myself included) avoid conversations about topics that don't seem relevant to us and our kids. It's come up a lot in antiracism spaces I've been a part of but it got me thinking today about how many queer kids don't know how their parents will react to them coming out. And specifically got me thinking about the different parents in the Osemanverse (I want to revisit a convo I saw regarding Jane Spring in the future too but this isn't about her).

Sarah Nelson is hailed as the "good" mom of the universe. And yes. She does great. Accepts her son(s) unconditionally (though the stuff with David may need to be another convo for another day). But... The only reason Nick didn't know how she'd react to him coming out is because she'd NEVER had conversations with him about queerness. Which is such a great disservice to him and the folks he's been in relationship with until now. Actually, the stuff with David is relevant here too. Because same thing. The odds of him being such a homophobe would be greatly reduced by being raised having these conversations...

It's one thing to not have any understanding of queerness (still unacceptable imo) but she does. She knows what bisexuality is. She knows he doesn't have to say he likes girls even if he doesn't. So why in 16 years did they never talk about sexuality outside of hetero norms? It's rhetorical, but we owe our children these conversations. From early childhood through adolescence and beyond. And not just from queer parents. And we owe ourselves honest conversations about "good" parenting in media. Accepting our kids for who they are is honestly bare minimum shit.

Don't get me wrong. I love the Osemanverse and I love that the parents are imperfect and that we get to see a range of parenting styles. But I haven't seen a lot about this yet.

(also, insert this same gripe about anything. We should be talking to our kids about race and gender and sexuality and ability and fatness and class and, and, and)

[vixenpen]

What Your Husband Don’t Know pt. 3 (Toji x Black Mom Reader)

(Just decided to do this randomly cuz why not? Remember reader is a black mom. Enjoy)

😏💦😩: Meet me at the Pearl in Hotel Blue

You blinked at the screen. You hadn’t heard from Toji since the last time the two of you had hooked up in the restaurant bathroom. That night, you had each been on dates with your significant others, and you had never felt so guilty and turned on in your life.

You thought back to that evening and the way Toji had gotten so possessive over you. How he’d manhandled you and fucked you until you had a permanent switch for the remainder of that night. Hell, that whole week. The way he had stared at you the entire night until he and his wife finally left.

The memory was enough to make your knees weak and your pussy clench in desire.

Then again; there was also her.

Hana Fushiguro, Toji’s wife.

She had walked out of the women’s bathroom beside the gender neutral one that night after you and Toji had finished.

The tired, strained smile she had given you when you tried to make polite conversation still haunted you. You’d been thinking about her ever since that encounter as well.

Of course both Mrs. Fushiguro and your husband were constant features in the back of your conscience, but it had been so easy to forget about them. When Mrs. Fushiguro was just a distant obscure figure. More of an idea than a person.

Then of course there was Kento. Sweet, unsuspecting, naive, Kento. Who never doubted you for a second. Who loved you unconditionally.

Every time you thought about him guilt  churned in your gut until you were sick, but you always rationalized it.

Oh he’s never around. He’s always working. He doesn’t even notice. It’s his fault if he’s not concerned enough to be involved in this family. He loves us, but he doesn’t show it the way I need. The passion is gone and it’s partially his fault.

And then it was easier to assuage your guilt. To continue the affair with Toji because you had enough excuses to drown the shame and flush it out of your system.

It was what you were doing now as you stared at the screen.

You pulled off the other yellow rubber glove, and discarded it beside the sink where the dishes were soaking in hot, bubbly water.

For a long time you could only stare at the screen.

It was 11:00am. The kids were in school, Kento was at work, and you had a long list of housewife chores to muddle through before picking up the children.

Three and a half hours. It would take at least half an hour to get to Hotel Blue if you gunned it.

😏💦😩: ????

You blinked at the screen. What did he want after an over week?

Me: I’ll be there in 30 mins

Half an hour later, you strutted into the restaurant wearing a red wrap dress and heels. A clutch was tucked under your arm with all your essentials  in it. You knew Toji wouldn’t be able to resist the bright color against your dark skin.

You scanned the restaurant. Big windows let in plenty of sunshine illuminating the sparsely populated restaurant.

You didn’t see Toji’s familiar build or mop of black hair anywhere.

“Looking for me?”

Your heart skipped. You motor senses failed you. Time seemed to stop for just a moment.

By force, you turned around.

There she stood.

Hana Fushiguro glared at you with all the ire she seemed able to muster.

Your mouth went dry.

“M-Mrs. Fushiguro—“

“Save it.” She raised a palm. “We need to talk.”

Your stomach flipped. Hana breezed straight past you to a booth at the back of the restaurant. You didn’t know what compelled you to follow her. You could have just as easily turned around and walked out. Hana couldn’t force you to follow her.

Yet you did.

You slid into the booth across from her and the two of you stared at each other.

The mistress and the wife.

You had watched these moments unfold on countless dramas and telanovellas. Read about them in numerous romance novels. But none of that had prepared you for being in this moment.

For Being the other woman.

There was a charged silence infused with unasked questions, speculations, insecurities, and comparisons as the two of you sized each other up.

Hana Fushiguro was a lovely woman. Fair skinned, luminous complexion, almond eyes—which upon closer inspection were actually a rich, dark brown—and shiny black hair. Her figure was slim, but soft and hugged in a white Juicy Couture sweatsuit. 

And yet…the stress of the affair had taken its toll, you could tell.

The usual luminous quality to her skin was dull. It looked as if she had forgotten to moisturize that day. Her hair was damp and tousled as if she had raked her fingers through it several times. Her eyes were puffy and red rimmed.

She had been crying.

You felt like shit.

After a few minutes of silence, Hana spoke in a voice shaky with unshed tears.

“I hope you’re happy.” She spat. “Toji left me.”

Your eyes blew wide.

“Wha-“

“You heard me, bitch. He left me. Said our marriage hasn’t been happy for years. Said his affair with you just confirmed that.”

“I-I-I don’t know what to say.”

“I tried to record you two that night, you know?” Hana fished through her little black pocketbook. “I heard you two through the bathroom wall. Imagine my surprise. Hearing my husband fuck another woman in the fucking restaurant bathroom WHILE WE’RE ON A FUCKING DATE!” She screeched.

Diners whipped their heads in your direction and the minimal chatter in the restaurant ceased. A passing waiter paused on the way to a table.

“Moaning about how much he loved your slutty cunt and-“ Hana choked out a sob as she cut herself off.

You watched her fiddle with a carton of cigarettes she’d pulled out of her pocketbook.

She drew the cigarette to her red painted lips while fumbling for a lighter.

“And here your ass come.” She chuckled. “I found that fucker’s second phone weeks ago. But he swore it was another work phone.” She let out a dry, humorless chuckle. “So,” she shrugged, “I believed him. Even when he would cut the screen off when I would look over his shoulder. Even when he would take the so called ‘work phone’ into the bathroom. I wanted so badly to believe him.”

You felt lightheaded as you listened to the woman. Your hands folded tightly in front of you while your knee bounced beneath the table. You had to do something. Say something.

“Hana, I-“

“Do you even give a shit?” She asked, cuttingly. Then she eyed you with the most offensive sneer you’d ever seen on a person’s face. “I mean, Clearly not.” She scoffed, gesturing at you in disgust. “You rushed right down here in your tightest fuck me dress to hop on my husband’s dick in the middle of the day. My god. You were just out with your husband last week. Did you go home and screw him too with my husband’s cock on your breath?”

“Hana, that’s—I’m not-“

“Does he know?”

You blinked back at her.

“Does…what are you-“

“Your husband.” She deadpanned. “Does he know?”

You swallowed a lump in your throat. The waiter had quietly brought over a couple glasses of water and bread but you hadn’t touched either.

Hana scanned your stiff posture and pensive expression before letting out a chuckle.

“Of course he doesn’t.” She sat back against the booth.

A waiter came to the table, nose wrinkled in irritation.

“Ma’am, you can’t smoke here.”

Hana never took her steely gaze off you as she took a long draft of the cigarette.

“No problem.” She stood, never once looking at the waiter. “I’m done here.”

The waiter looked uneasy as he glanced between Hana and you, but instead of pressing the matter, he just nodded.

“Please hurry, ma’am, it’s bothering the patrons.” Then he scurried away. Leaving you alone with Mrs. Fushiguro once more.

You thought about defending your honor. Making a case for yourself or at the very least, retaliating against Hana’s verbal cut downs.

But you didn’t.

Instead, you could only cower under Hana’s scornful glare, feeling small and ugly as she stood over you.

Then a small, wry smile stretched across the woman’s tired, pretty face. She leaned down, her damp, black hair framing her face like a veil.

“Since you won’t tell your husband about your affair, Mrs. Nanami, I will.”

Hana dropped the cigarette in your glass of water. The smoke fizzled out in seconds.

“We can both be single, bitch.”

And with one last parting glare, Mrs. Fushiguro stormed out of the restaurant.

You watched her discarded cigarette float in your water feeling that familiar guilty churn in your gut. Stronger than ever.

With a jolt, you jumped from the table and bolted to the nearest bathroom.

[desert-bluffs-and-me]

WTNV Quick Rundown - Live Show - The Debate

One day, I'll actually get to attend one of these things. Until then, you and I can go through it like this together~ This show featured the guest voices of Kevin R. Free, Mark Gagliardi, Mark Evan Jackson, Jackson Publick, Hal Lublin, Annie Savage, and Mara Wilson.

We found a little piece of heaven here. It is black, smooth, oblong. It hums a soft but discordant note, and we are afraid to touch it. Welcome to Night Vale.

The Debate mention is, of course, the mayoral debate between candidates Hiram McDaniels (a literal five-headed dragon, wanted by the law for tax evasion) and the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In All Of Our Homes (FOW).

As a surprise, we are also told that Marcus Vanston will be running for mayor. He's pretty much just a jerk this entire episode (lol) saying things like how he basically used to own a dragon as a slave and other rich boy stuff. Anyway he gets turned into an angel.

We are told that Pamela is 'not' being soul-bonded with someone and forced to step down.

In Night Vale, mayors are chosen by counting and interpreting the loud pulses coming out of Hidden Gorge, but Cecil says they're allowing citizens to hear what the candidates have to say anyway.

NV's recorded history apparently only goes back seven years.

Hiram's wishes to 'break ground' for those who do not identify as human. He says that having multiple heads makes him a better candidate because they are all good at different things. Green Head is good at maths, for example. He also reveals he has debilitating claustrophobia. Hiram also says that he'll be less invasive of people's privacy and less inclined to try and run their lives, as he doesn't understand humans so doesn't care to do so.

The FOW's (who has a name but will not share it) says she will be a good mayor because she has always been and always will be by the side of every citizens (she's also set fire to countless homes) and knows them intimately. She is quite passionate about children and learning and wants to sell off people's unused possessions in order to raise money to fund school programmes.

Weather: “Promise to the Moon” by Jason Webley

The FOW mentions citizens by the name of Mike Numminen, Claire Franklin (who hasn't yet told someone called Eva she loves her) and Felicia Jackson. There is also somebody called Roberta who works as sales staff at the station.

Cecil owns a whole set of collectible jadeite bowls he doesn't use. Hiram has a hoard of rare jewels and gold in a mahogany chest in his cave. Marcus has a coffee table made of human bones.

Angels, all called Erika with a K, call both to worry about the tiny city under Lane 5 and to call upon Marcus. They're not legally allowed to be recognised as existing, so the conversations as brief. They are afraid. They also say that angels do not hear gender.

Diane Crayton calls with questions about helping NV's schools, concerned about centipedes crawling out of teachers faces, clocks which don't work, gun violence and declining graduation rates.

John Peters (you know, the farmer?), calls about how the Glow Cloud has been disrupting his farming by dropping dead animals everywhere. However, the Glow Cloud (all hail) has too much of a psychic grip on the town for anyone to do anything.

"Hi, this is Steve Carlsberg? And, um, my question is for Hiram. Hiram, –" "NO!!! NO!!! STEVE CARLSBERG!?! WE ARE OUT OF TIME FOR QUESTIONS GOODBYE!!!" I am begging you to look up this up on youtube it's so funny.

There has been an alarming humming, attributing to a mass of deer with time-travelling abilities which have appeared in great numbers (often displacing people in time and space), but is in fact coming from a vortex not dissimilar to the one which opened during the Sandstorm.

Hiram investigates and brings Kevin of Desert Bluffs through with him, much to Cecil's shock and horror.

Kevin is finally told Cecil's name and the name of the town. He mentions again how he and Cecil are so similar, especially in the eyes and the smile. He states that the FOW actually has a face, with deep hazel eyes, proud lips and an archaic jaw. This deeply disturbs her as she has never had a face.

He states again that NV has old-fashioned technology and how 'places like this' are usually covered in blood and other such things, but hey guess they do things different in NV! He's very enthusiastic about NV and wishes his intern, Vanessa, could see as he'd always talked to her about visiting NV. He says she's funny and enthuses about her greatly, only to reveal that she died many years ago during an...incident...

'Oh, dear, I’m sorry, no. Vanessa died many years ago. We’re all still very upset about it. Very upset about what we saw. Some of us never came back to work again. Some of us never left our houses again. Most of us never woke up again. I don’t like to talk about it much.'

He says that Stexcorp is recalling the deer and will be carrying them away by helicopter, having planned to introduce them slowly to do people's math problems and earn them extra work hours by shifting them back through time, but they got carried away.

Kevin also says that anyone affected can contact Strexcorp attorney Luisa Reyes as she is filing a class action lawsuit against Strexcorp. He then says he has to go and that he thinks the towns are connected by more than a two-lane highway.

"You are beautiful when you do beautiful things." Another nice little popular quote.

Cecil is quite terrified of Kevin, describing him as having blood-stained skin, with missing eyes and teeth like an abandoned cemetery.

Stay tuned next for a chasm of subjectivity and bravado between yourself and every other human being. Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.

[lil-tumbles]

Something I feel isn't talked about enough in the conversation about gender stereotypes and how we teach our children to uphold them is this: we teach our children their flaws.

Let me explain. What I mean is this: when we talk about children bullying others, when we talk about boys we tend to mean physical bullying (kicking shoving etc) and when we talk about girls we tend to mean psychological bullying (snarky petty passive aggressiveness cruel veiled comments etc). And that's encouraged.

We tell our boys they should be physical and aggressive, so that's how their flaws are expressed, too. We tell girls that women are sassy and mean using words, and so that's how our girls behave. We all have flaws, and how those flaws are expressed depends on how we're taught we should behave. The "flaw" is to behave too much like this, or not enough (to be a bad woman is to be snarky because women are meant to be docile, for example).

We teach our children the flaws we expect of them. Of course they're going to express those flaws. What I'm saying is that I think girls tend to bully with words because they've been taught that words are how they should express themselves, never actions (women write poetry and use romantic language etc), so when they are being mean, they'd use words to do that, too.

We have fucked up women because we raise our girls to be fucked up in exactly that way. What else should we expect?