#with all the lgbt+ kids

[horrorsequel]

feeling so normal abt the HS in yellowjackets having the same school colors as mine did. same shade and all. NORMAL.

[beaulesbian]

- [Nimona]:You should be questioning everything right now. The will of Gloreth, the Institute, the wall. What's it all really for? - [Ballister]: For protecting the realm. - [Nimona]: Oh, you mean from villains like you? Or monsters like me?

[inkskinned]

it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.

yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.

right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.

the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.

these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.

it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.

we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.

secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)

whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.

they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")

and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."

i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.

one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.

i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.

[maishiia]

Underrated sapphic media? Fried Green Tomatoes is first on my list

[metalandmagi]

It kind of just occurred to me how much the queer community is winning this summer. We had Nimona. We had Barbie (ace Barbie, Allan, just queer vibes all around). We had Good Omens season 2. We had Heartstopper season 2. We're getting High School Musical: The Musical: The Series season 4 and Red White and Royal Blue two days apart from each other. We even have The Witcher finally delivering with Jaskier (or at least it did in the first part, haven't watched part 2 yet).

I don't know where I was going with this. I'm just happy about it.

[cryptid-phoenix]

"You can't stop progress..."

I just love restoring and coloring old Tintin sketches!

[anghraine]

jenndoesnotcare replied to this post:

Every time LDS kids come to my neighborhood I am so so nice to them. I hope they remember the blue haired lady who was kind, when people try to convince them the outside world is bad and scary. (Also they are always so young! I want to feed them cookies and give them Diana Wynne Jones books or something)

Thank you! Honestly, this sort of kindness can go a really long way, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time.

LDS children and missionaries (and the majority of the latter are barely of age) are often the people who interact the most with non-Mormons on a daily basis, and thus are kind of the "face" of the Church to non-Mormons a lot of the time. As a result, they're frequently the ones who actually experience the brunt of antagonism towards the Church, which only reinforces the distrust they've already been taught to feel towards the rest of the world.

It's not that the Church doesn't deserve this antagonism, but a lot of people seem to take this enormous pride in showing up Mormon teenagers who have spent most of their lives under intense social pressure, instruction, expectation, and close observation from both their peers and from older authorities in the Church (it largely operates on seniority, so young unmarried people in particular tend to have very little power within its hierarchies). Being "owned" for clout by non-Mormons doesn't prove anything to most of them except that their leaders and parents are right and they can't trust people outside the Church.

The fact that the Church usually does provide a tightly-knit community, a distinct and familiar culture, and a well-developed infrastructure for supporting its members' needs as long as they do [xyz] means that there can be very concrete benefits to staying in the Church, staying closeted, whatever. So if, additionally, a Mormon kid has every reason to think that nobody outside the Church is going to extend compassion or kindness towards them, that the rest of the world really is as hostile and dangerous as they've been told, the stakes for leaving are all the higher, despite the costs of staying.

So people from "outside" who disrupt this narrative of a hostile, threatening world that cannot conceivably understand their experiences or perspectives can be really important. It's important for them to know that there are communities and reliable support systems outside the Church, that leaving the Church does not have to mean being a pariah in every context, that there are concrete resources outside the Church, that compassion and decency in ordinary day-to-day life is not the province of any particular religion or sect and can be found anywhere. This kind of information can be really important evidence for people to have when they are deciding how much they're willing to risk losing.

So yeah, all of this is to say that you're doing a good thing that may well provide a lifeline for very vulnerable people, even if you don't personally see results at the time.

[redysetdare]

I said it once and i'll say it again the sooner the queer community drops the idea of the straight Boogeyman the better off we will all be. The sooner y'all accept that straight people can also be queer the easier it becomes to accept identities you don't understand.

Straight and queer are not opposite. They aren't contradictory. They aren't mutually exclusive. If you can accept that cis people can still be queer then straight people can to.

Straight trans people exist. Straight aspecs exist. They are all still queer. Grow the fuck up and get over it instead of throwing a fit because things are not about you.

[hollymacycomic]

Holly & Macy and Everyone Else

Chapter 4: Page 38

Start at the Beginning | About the comic | Tip-jar 

🌘 Support the comic & read the next page now on Patreon! 🌘

[destielmemenews]

"About 5,000 Central Florida students and about 27,000 statewide may not be able to take a class they signed up to tackle in the 2023-24 school year."

source 1

source 2

[jesncin]

We're still celebrating Lunar Boy release this Pride month!! Featuring bi sunshine butch and pan angsty stepbrother. I rarely find bi but especially pan characters in middle grade graphic novels (let alone characters that explicitly identify that way) so we really wanted to highlight and celebrate those identities in Lunar Boy.

[beaulesbian]

~ But what if they still hate me? ~ No one hates a hero of the realm.

[uncanny-tranny]

r u chill w non transitioning ppl?

Why wouldn't I be? At one point, every trans person who is transitioning was once someone who wasn't (whether or not that was a choice or their need is a separate discussion).

Hatred of any kind of trans person is not a Righteous or Good Thing - every single trans person has their place, their entitlement to safety, community, and respect of who they are

[your-queer-dad]

To every trans, Non-binary and genderqueer kid, teen, young person or adult out there and reading this:

Hold on. For the love of god, hold on. Keep going, find things to live for. This world is awful and hard and dark, but your life is worth so much and you existing simply as yourself makes this world a better place. There are things worth living for. There's cups of tea to be drunk, laughter to be laughed, new songs to hear for the first time, surgeries and treatments to get if that's your thing, friends to be made and memories to be experienced. Even in the world of people hating and oppressing us, we will thrive with love and care. And that includes love and care for ourselves. So hold on for today, ignore the news for today, ignore the terfs and the transphobes and the Bible preachers telling us we're a sin. Ignore all that today, and let yourself be for today. Tomorrow can come tomorrow. Just hold on for today. And we can try again tomorrow. I love you. I'm proud of you, little solider. Keep pushing. <3

[arielthedaydreamer]

I'm still questioning if I'm ace but the image of teenage me trying to figure out my sexuality by looking at pictures of girls and viciously inspecting for any feeling of arousal and trying to force myself to wonder if I would ever have sex with them when my heart really just wanted to go "Cool goth!" is... uhm... some evidence

[slayingholofernes]

Femme bottoms are familiar with the hours of preparation and labor that happens far before the top even arrives. Making sure they look and feel and smell and taste their best, they put in so much effort. I want femme bottoms to know it doesn’t go unnoticed. I cherish everything you do, and it always makes me feel so special that you chose me to do it for.