walks-the-ages

[walks-the-ages]

I'm hardly the first person to say something like this but it's incredibly fucked up that health insurance is an industry that sells itself as an essential service but makes money by trying as hard as they possibly can to not provide that service.

[walks-the-ages]

Are you taking submissions for the intersex wiki? I have a really rare autoimmune disorder that for all intents and purposes makes me intersex (tldr my immune system attacks my own estrogen) and it took me so long to find any information about it/is quite isolating I was thinking maybe I could write up something for the intersex wiki about it in case someone goes looking on there like I did?

Please do!!! It would be super appreciated! <3

The wiki is open for anybody to edit, and getting this information out there for our community is why it's here! You just need to make an account to make edits - the Wiki has gotten a LOT of vandalism/attacks (sigh) which is why I have that turned on.

If you have any questions about wiki formatting or the like, discord is here. You don't need permission to edit existing pages, so feel free to also add the page you create to the list of intersex variations once you've made it!

[walks-the-ages]

Hey guys! Mahmoud Qassas needs some help urgently for his wife's treatment for lung cancer. She has been transported to Egypt for urgent medical treatment and needs some funds for it. Please don't hesitate to help.

[walks-the-ages]

Putting this here because I don't wanna bother the OP of that post, but like come the fuck on TLJ does Luke SO BAD.

I get that OG trilogy Luke is very young and people change as they age, and on top of that trauma can affect a person long after the trauma is over, but I'm sorry if losing his fucking hand didn't stop him from trying and succeeding to get through to the good that was very much still inside Anakin then there is nothing that would ever stop him from trying to get through to Ben Solo. Like you're telling me Luke Skywalker offers forgiveness to DARTH FUCKING VADER, who up until very recently he only knew as a vile, evil monster who had murdered millions of people and subjugated millions more AND attacked him and cut his hand off, and still have the sheer willpower to look at that fucking war criminal and say "I'm gonna save him" and BE RIGHT, that Luke, would see his nephew, who hasn't done anything wrong yet, and think "I should kill him so he doesn't maybe become evil" like?? MAKE IT MAKE SENSE, IT DOESN'T.

Vader was a whole entire fucking adult who had up until the last like 15 minutes of his life has spent the majority of it committing countless horrific atrocities with no remorse and Luke knew he wasn't so far gone he couldn't be reached and would not fucking give up until he was saved. Luke faced down goddamn Emperor Palpatine, he risked himself becoming corrupted and joining them, risked DYING despite being the only person left who could actually pose a threat to either Vader or Palpatine, to save the galaxy and his father, and you expect me to believe that fucking Luke Skywalker wouldn't have destroyed himself before laying a hand on a TROUBLED CHILD HIS SISTER TRUSTED HIM TO TAKE CARE OF.

It's just disrespectful. I 100% agree with Mark Hamill about that not being Luke because it wasn't. Luke has always had optimism and kindness as his core driving forces(pun not intended) making him into an asshole cynic to what? Shock people?? Luke would never end up like that in that way. If Luke would go to those lengths to try to save Darth Vader then he would never try to kill Kylo Ren/Ben. If Luke understood that DARTH FUCKING VADER was also a victim and not beyond saving then there's no world in which he would give up on a teenager who hadn't done anything wrong.

And tbh I don't think Ben turning evil would have been the reason Luke gave up on rebuilding the Jedi order because I don't think he would try to rebuild it in the first place, at least not the way it was before it fell. He looked up to the Jedi for sure but he understood their flaws better than anyone else alive. There's no world in which Luke ends up trying to recreate the Jedi and then giving up on helping the galaxy after trying to kill his nephew so he doesn't become evil, and there's no world in which a guy who knew how much dealing with Yoda was would treat Rey the way Yoda treated him. That's just not how Luke Skywalker wouldn't act. Never in a million years. Luke also never let his own flaws or the flaws of others stop him from helping people, especially his family. He lost his and and his friend got sold to a warlord and he still kept showing the fuck up for them. Did dwell on his failures he just got up and said "What's next?" That's who Luke is, for fucks sake. Luke is not a complicated character it's genuinely impressive that anyone was able to fuck him up this bad.

Every actor in that film deserved a better movie. I loved Rose and Poe and Finn and that movie did not(literally so disrespectful to make all the character of color be the unserious b-plot especially after how important Finn was in the first film) they all deserved better). I love Luke Skywalker and that film did not. I love the optimism and fantastical joy of Star Wars and that movie shat all over it for the sake of edgy, disappointing, grimdark twists. I'd rather watch the entire prequel trilogy than ever have to sit through even a minute of The Last Jedi. What a fucking disaster of a film.

[walks-the-ages]

This is a rant about the Scientific American diagram on intersex

This diagram makes the rounds periodically as an illustration of how sex development is complicated. Unfortunately, I don't think people really give it a close look, because it is incredibly intersexist.

The first thing to know about this diagram is it advocates for intersex genital mutilation. Here are actual boxes in the diagram:

"Genitals can be modified to look more typically female" is written in the part about how CAH looks at birth. "Dysgenic gonad and testis can be removed and genitals modified to look female" is under MGD at birth. "Dysgenic gonad can be removed and genitals modified to look male" is ALSO under MGD at birth and under PAIS.

Let's be clear here. This diagram is advocating that *babies* should be put through genital mutilation that causes permanent nerve damage, just so the babies can look "normal". 🤬

It also advocates removing gonads from babies, because they're the "wrong" ones. 🤬

The same diagram also advocates putting intersex youths on HRT to "promote (male/female) characteristics" or "regulate effects of [one's natural but apparently incorrect] male hormones". Again, coercive medical shit used to try and make our bodies conform to perinormativity without regard for our bodily autonomy, gender identity, goals, etc. 👀

Speaking of gender. The text that looks like the title of the diagram is the infobox on "the gender spectrum", which visually makes this seem about gender rather than sex. 🤨 This infobox also sucks: it defines trans, cis, and nonbinary, without any regard for how intersex people identify. I assume it's there to try explain to ignorant people that intersex is not gender, but in doing so it totally forgets that intersex people have gender and we often don't fit into these definitions of trans/nb/cis! It really reflects a view that intersex people aren't people with experiences and identities, we are just anatomical oddities. 🙃

The descriptions in the diagram are also gratuitously gendered. Like, "male hormones" are used rather than androgens, "female hormones" are used rather than estrogens, and there's vague shit like "male characteristics" (which ones?). 👀

Unsurprisingly, intersex variations are referred to by their pathologizing names, and they're called "intersex conditions" rather than variations. Language in the diagram throws around loaded shit like "biological male" (as in, intersex people are not). 🙃

Altogether this is deeply intersexist diagram, and it's upsetting every time I see it make the rounds. This is not the pro-intersex diagram people seem to think it is. 😩

[walks-the-ages]

I wonder why nothing came of the reports, maybe it has something to do with it all being libel.

No, the USDA just deeply does not care because shutting her down would mean having to find placement for a lot of problem animals or euthanizing them. It would also be a bad PR move considering her following.

[walks-the-ages]

Why do you believe wearing braids is a form of racism?Honest question

Okay, so let me be clear.

Not racist.

Not racist.

Not racist.

Not racist.

Stop that.

The reason it’s an issue is because white people constantly criticize black people for having braids and other traditionally black hairstyles. On a systemic level, it can be considered against school or work dress codes to have natural hair as a black person, with perms and straightened hair being all that’s deemed acceptable in white spaces.

White people commonly swoop onto black culture once it’s deemed “trashy” because they think it’s cool and alternative or whatever. It’s appropriative because they want to have it as a fashion statement but do not want to accept it into everyday existence. In many ways it becomes more acceptable to white society to see a white person with box braids than a black person.

It’s also not really good for white hair to be braided that tight or styled into dreads but that’s neither here nor there.

Look, when racism is magically solved someday, maybe you can use black hair styles. It’s still bad for your hair but whatever. Until then, stop trying to commodify black culture just because you like the aesthetics.

[walks-the-ages]

every binary or binary-aligned trans person who erases a nonbinary character's identity on this website will be hit by a children's toy car driven by a small dog. immediately

[walks-the-ages]

diagnoses character with whatever the fuck it is that i got

[walks-the-ages]

historians will one day look at obama being awarded the nobel peace prize and wonder how the prize was actually seen as prestigious, not as a joke

[walks-the-ages]

anyway you should always remember that all those foreigners you see dying on the news are just as real people as you are who have just as much interiority as you do. there is nothing about you that makes you more important and it is by pure chance that you are not in their position. in fact, this holds for all of history. every person, no matter the horror of the fate that befell them, had just as much interiority as you do. i feel like some people haven't fully internalized this.

[walks-the-ages]

Shorter, snappier post:

If you can't finish a book because its so boring and badly written and you're going to rate it in goodreads, for the love of the gods give it 1 star, unless its for a highly personal reason you can't finish it.

If a book is shit and shittily written to the point you can't finish it, that should be an automatic 1 star review.

Don't waste people's time by leaving 4 star ratings on a book you absolutely hate and would never recommend anyone read on a purely technical level.

[walks-the-ages]

"the demonization of queer desires and queer sexualities is so widespread that it is necessary to defend them and amplify them" and "barging in on a post by a trans woman you don't know to comment on how you are sexually attracted to her is not ok, especially if she's specifically discussing transmisogyny" are not in fact contradictory statements.

[walks-the-ages]

Source

[walks-the-ages]

hot take maybe but if a white cis man is telling trans men to unpack their male privilege he definitely hasnt unpacked his

[walks-the-ages]

I want you to remember:

The fascists hate you too and they just will pretend otherwise until after they've killed the rest of us, before they turn on you.