i just rbed a post about something similar but. i need my white disabled to folks to be more aware of the privileges they have when navigating the healthcare system. every bit of medical ableism one can experience can be made even worse by being a poc. some of us can't threaten to report a doctor to the ethics board, or refuse care from healthcare workers who aren't masking, without jeopardizing our access to care in general or even our physical safety. we are more likely to be seen as drug seeking, or marked as noncompliant, or experience medical abuse and neglect. that's not to say these things don't happen to white disabled people, but i just think it's important to recognize how dangerous receiving medical care can be for disabled poc specifically. please keep this in mind when giving advice on navigating healthcare.
5K notes
·
View notes
he says i hate everyone except you and that is addictive and that is kind of romantic and beautiful because you're young and you're kind of a sarcastic asshole too and you don't like bad boys, per say, but you don't really like good ones either. and you like that you were the exception, it felt like winning.
except life is not a romance book, and he was kind of being honest. he doesn't learn to be nice to your friends. he only tolerates your family. you have to beg him to come with you to birthday parties, he complains the whole time. you want to go on a date but - people are often there, wherever you're going. he's just so angry. about everything, is the thing. in the romance book, doesn't he eventually soften? can't you teach him, through your own sense of whimsy and comfort?
at first - you know introverts often need smaller friend groups, and honestly, you're fine staying at home too. you like the small, tidy life you occupy. you're not going to punish him for his personality type.
except: he really does hate everyone but you. which means he doesn't get along with his therapist. which means he has no one to talk to except for you. which means you take care of him constantly, since he otherwise has no one. which means you sometimes have to apologize for him. which means he keeps you home from seeing your friends because he hates them. you're the single exception.
about a decade from this experience, you'll type into google: how to know if a relationship is codependent.
he wraps an arm around you. i hate everyone except you. these days, you're learning what he's actually confessing is i have very little practice being kind.
5K notes
·
View notes
Go spend some time on male pattern baldness or male(AMAB) balding forums/subreddits and such. I did after realizing it is happening to me and the ammount of people who truly don't realize how BRUTALLY it tanks people's confidence and mental health is insane.
There's no cure to baldness by the way, and it can start at any time and there's no way to predict how fast or slow it will go. The only real working option is a daily pill that usually just halts it, but it can stop working or just slow it down or cause major side effects. To regrow you have to use a daily topical solution, or use a roller to wound your scalp. None of these are surefire by the way, and if you stop them you'll just lose your hair and whatever you regained. It's a daily involved thing that might not work and often at best just retains. The best drug, the one that occasionaly gives regrowth, also causes shedding at the start, and can have side effects from growing breasts to brain fog to EDsyfunction(sorry, censoring cause tumblr). Now, those are INCREDIBLY rare and almost never happen but it weighs heavily on the mind of those already spiraling.
But that's just background. What I'm here to talk about is the pure woe you'll see on those forums. People speak as though their lives are over, as though they've lost every chance of finding a woman(predominantly, there's a running idea in such places that women don't like bald men or like them less) or doing anything. You can read countless stories of people who describe that they no longer go outside, are now filled with anxiety and self-hate, have gone from extroverted to never showing their face. And some of these people are kids who lost their hair in high school or even before, or are holding as best they can to a very receded hairline and feel like there is nothing they can do.
And then there's something touched upon far less in those communities, but is important to bring up here; baldness and masculinity. There's the horror of knowing so much of society sees a bald guy as a very masculine guy, at seeing that the best advice for being hot and bald is "grow and beard and big muscles bro". Imagine now you're AMAB balding and nonbinary, or a trans woman who doesn't want to be on hormones.
Just genuinely take the time to look at those forums no matter who you are. Understand what these people go through, what I am currently going through. It is soul-crushing, spiraling, brutal. I have the dream of one day being like Brennan Lee Mulligan or Matt Mercer and starting to lose my hair made me feel like I could never. I felt like and still feel like I would have to be masculine, have to be a bro-y dude, have to look older than I was(I'm fuckin 22). It was the feeling that I could never dress feminine again, never present as a woman when I wanted to again, that I'd always be viewed as a bald guy before anything else.
This is an incredibly vulnerable post for me, and I hope it reaches you all as well in a kind and understanding mood. There's a tendency online for people to joke about baldness, to make fun of it, to treat it as a playfull silly thing but it fucking ruins lives, and it shouldn't. It happens to half the population's sort of bodies and very often. It should just be a neutral thing. You don't need long hair to be feminine, you don't need hair to be feminine. You don't need hair for anything. I guess I'm just saying in general that everyone should be kinder about balding, more understanding, and view it with as much import as they'd view the pixels between this sentence and the next. None at all, I mean.
And for those like me, very feminine guys who wanna keep that and don't want a beard and are terrified of balding, here's some names and I do hope others that see this will add more;
Mr. Bruce (also in The Correspondents(band)
Alex Ward in LA By Night
Jason Carl in LA By Night
Cecil Baldwin of Welcome To Night Vale
Bob The Drag Queen
RuPaul(in looks alone, I know about the whole fracking stuff but this post is about looks)
tananasho on instagram
Also your mannerisms and style of dress will convey femininity far more than your hair. Yea sure a front-on neutral shot of you may not and maybe you need makeup and stuff, and hell maybe a lot of people might reject you more but it'll just filter down to the people for you.
And to all you artists and writers and creatives; make more bald characters. Try it out. Feminine ones, masculine ones, all sorts. None of the copout nonhuman sort, just dudes and girls and mates and individuals who are all sorts of things and also bald. It might make a few of the people going through the various vortexes of pain that balding causes feel a bit better.
And to those noticing I did not adress female hair loss much here, that was intentional. I am AMAB and currently a nonbinary guy who goes by any pronouns but often likes to present as fem. I learned I was possibly losing my hair and lost two months of my life, no work or going or anything, to male hair loss forums and research and spiraling. Checking my hair twenty times a day, unable to sleep, unable to eat, unable to think. And my situation was NOT unique, but it also did not give me any experience or understanding of female hair loss and what AFAB people may go through with that, so I don't feel knowledgeable enough to speak on it.
Also living with baldness WILL get easier and you will find something that works for it, by virtue of simply living with it. Things get easier with time.
4K notes
·
View notes