transatlantic-reads

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Conversational skill check: Work acquaintance mentions in an offhand tone with no discernible expression that they have recently lost over 20 pounds. They fail to elaborate. A response is expected.

Me, rolling a 6: …On purpose?

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this is so sweet 🥺🥺🥺

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guys. i really like you. it's nice to be on this dashboard together

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i get that americans love their cultural imperialism, but it really does piss me off that june is “international” pride month just because something happened in the united states.

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. martha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1989. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

anyway, happy pride, americans. i’m truly sorry that most of you don’t see the negative impact your nation’s culture has on the rest of the world. and to the rest of the world reading this, try searching for your own country and culture’s queer history, don’t accept the american narratives as your own. we deserve our own histories divorced from the cultural hegemony of the USA.

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was going through some of my health records and some doctor put “dresses oddly” next to my psychotic symptoms. hey fuck you too man

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basic human empathy has got to make a comeback divas

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X

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Several years ago, on a crowded commuter train in southern england, I was standing in the aisle, being miserable with many other miserable people, and there was an annoying persistent rattling noise. it was loud, inconsistent but constant, and designed to inflict suffering. Eventually I worked out that it was a window, which obviously needed to be open because it was sweltering hot, but which (being a british train not in London) was a piece of shit falling apart.

I took a random scrap of receipt from my pocket, folded it up, and with a serene "pardon me" popped that fucker straight into the part of the window that was rattling. the rattle stopped instantly. silence spread like a balm. the bliss was intense, palpable, intimate. I felt powerful love and affection. sometimes things happen like that.

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it's 8am on Monday 16th June and there are only 26, 095 signatures.

that's only a quarter of the signatures needed with less than a month to go

Well fucks? Get to it!

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— Sunrise, by Louise Glück

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I truly think that the christian insistence on hell being a divine and necessary punishment for evil and our current prison system have a lot to do with each other

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a little reminder

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i am as white as a white american can get and the thought of using the white color emojis sickens me to the bone. bitch if you dont make me simpsons yellow

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It could be worse. You could be wearing a bra right now.

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Hey boss man can't come in to work today. I'm just not feeling the love. You know how it is. Not feeling the love. At all