I’m working on a novel that has a very broad range of characters and I’m trying to do them all justice, so that means that I’ve been doing a lot of research–I’m white and cis, and I know that presents an inherent limitation in my experience, but I don’t think that’s an excuse to just…not do the best justice I can to my characters and the very real people they represent. To wit: I’m working with an especially prominent side character who identifies as a trans man. Because of the limitations of the universe, gender reassignment and hormone therapy are currently not available to him, and he struggles with fits of dysphoria. If you’re not comfortable, there’s absolutely no pressure, and you can pretend that you didn’t see this, but I was wondering if there was anyone would would be willing to share their experience with me so that I can craft him as best as I possibly can. I have anon turned on if you’re more comfortable that way, or you can message me privately.
It takes place entirely in an elevator of an office building.
So you see various people interact with each other at different times of the day.
Sometimes, they’re all getting along. Othertimes, they’re making out. And othertimes still, they’re throwing punches and threatening to murder one another.
You see people by themselves, doing things that they wouldn’t do otherwise.
You hear everyone complain about one character who you never see for the duration of the show, because they take the stairs.
You actually have no idea what the company does. One day, they’re talkking about balancing the budget, one day, they’re taking about how they all got food poisoning on their retreat to Tahiti, one day they’re in furry costumes, and one day, one of the characters gets a phone call where the ringtone is ‘Hail To The Chief’; they answer it, saying, “Yes, Mr. President?”
You have just enough information to go on, while also knowing nothing.
*banging my fists on a table* LET CASHIERS HAVE CHAIRS
Every time I see a cashier with a chair I’m like “I support this business”, no joke. That shit shows me that a company actually CARES about it’s employees. Quit making people stand on their feet for 8 hours straight that shit is torture.
This is so weird what countries are you all living in where I come from ALL CASHIERS HAVE CHAIRS!!! Like, really, each and everyone of them!
(Also, while it’s nice having a chair while working, trust me, after a few hours of sitting you’ll be glad to stand up every now and then. Also if there are many people and they are queueing in front and behind you, it’s actually quite uncomfortable to sit, because you’re surrounded by people who stand and look down on you.)
America, friend-o. Land of the obscure bureaucratic rulings and low minimum wage. Help us.
The medical community on literally every female specific health issue ever: “very common condition” “no known cause” “no known cure” :))))))
What the fuck is tumblr? Like honestly what is this? Do you guys pull shit out of the inner most depths of your rectum and then just throw it on your keyboard and have it turn into a post???? This site is something else what the fuck is wrong with you people????!?!?
Endemetriosis
Vaginal Thrush
Menorrhagia
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
Fibroids
Very common conditions, causes are unknown or only speculated, long term cures have not been found. Most can cause chronic pain or discomfort, all can seriously impact your quality of life.
Men are so damn privileged they can’t even imagine female bodies have different healthcare needs than theirs and that our healthcare needs are important even if they can’t be affected by one of these conditions.
Endometriosis causes excruciating pain and is a leading cause of infertility. Thrush is extremely
uncomfortable, and expensive to treat repeatedly; over-the-counter preparations rarely completely eradicate it. Menorrhagia, which I
have, makes you anæmic. PCOS causes hormonal symptoms that are socially
difficult (facial hair, acne, hair loss, weight gain). Fibroids are so common, and are often treated with a hysterectomy.
Add in fibromylgia, which affects 8x as many women as men, as well as lupus (and almost any other autoimmune condition), systemic exertion intolerance disorder (SEID), iron deficiency anæmia (all of which affect more women than men), and you have well over 25% of childbearing-age women globally living with chronic pain and tiredness.
Basically, this is a huge problem, and also one of the reasons I have been considering medical school.
Don’t forget that most pharmaceuticals go to market without ever having been tested on people with a uterus, lest someone get pregnant… seriously that is the whole rationale behind not testing >50% of the population. This has been legislated against in some countries, but still persists in the of majority drug development because of other regulations, and traditions and laziness. The use of a drug is of course monitored in the population after release, but the people “trying” it in this capacity get none of the insurance, close and regular medical examination or monetary benefit of essentially being in a late stage drug trial. Drugs that are pulled from market after release are sometimes done so on the basis that the dosage is just too high for females/afab people and this is, of course, after they’ve experienced the adverse affects.
This is why if you get pregnant your doctor will take you off basically any and all medication you’re taking (including mental health medication, can’t imagine any implications/dire consequences there), not because they know it will have an adverse affect on the foetus but because they have no idea. How wonderfully kind of them to prioritise the health and life of an unborn foetus over that of a living person, let’s just hope they don’t become ill whilst pregnant. How charmingly logical it is that they wouldn’t even bother to test drugs in people with a uterus because it’s all too difficult and gosh, darn what an ethical conundrum we’ve been faced with, let’s just not! Which is so in the spirit of capital S, Science!
Indeed, the issue is so severe that, in many cases, folks with uteruses are routinely told that their diseases and disorders are not, in fact, disorders at all, and are just a normal part of having a uterus.
Take menstrual cramps, for example. Everybody knows that cramps are a normal part of menstruation, and that virtually all people who menstruate experience them throughout their lives, right?
Except that’s not right at all.
Yes, it’s true that about two-thirds of individuals who menstruate begin to experience menstrual pain during adolescence, but it’s basically a side effect of puberty, and normally subsides by your late teens. Only about 20-40% of menstruating adults experience menstrual pain on a regular basis - and according to some estimates, as much as 80% of that figure is due to undiagnosed endometriosis or some other underlying medical condition.
Yeah, roll those numbers around in your head: if you’re an adult who experiences menstrual cramps, it’s overwhelmingly likely that your pain is a symptom of some potentially serious medical condition.
And yet we tell folks it’s just a normal thing that everybody has to deal with.
Bonus round: Look up PCOS and gender identity.
Then look up PCOS and diabetes.
Ok, to show how incredibly important this post fucking is, I just looked up endometriosis and I match just about every sympton, and it would explain not just my incredibly painful periods but many other things as well. I had no idea this existed.
Please, read this post and reblog this so others can learn.
I will reblog this every time because my cousin (a cis girl) went through seven years of pain without being taken seriously until SHE suggested it was endometriosis. And that’s not even unusual - that’s the average amount of time it takes between first symptoms and a diagnosis of endometriosis.
…wait WHAT.
I had endometriosis for 17 years before a doctor suggested my symptoms were abnormal. Everyone else said, “that sounds like a normal period to me.”
Had endo for 13 years before a doctor finally fucking listened to me. I’ve had FOUR SURGERIES since then to clear out adhesions.
It only took me like two weeks to have enough free time to post the second part of this, but HERE. And here’s Part the First.
Here
are the signs that every child learns in the fifth grade.
One. Exhaustion, coupled with crippling insomnia. (Fact: Harry
should have seen the circles under her best friend’s eyes, and the loll of her
head as she fought to focus in class.)
Two. A gleam in the eye, a silver sheen to throw
back light when struck at the right angle.
(Fact: the darker the eye, the more obscure the glint. Harry knows this, but cannot help but blame
herself for missing it.)
Three. Carelessness trending toward ruthlessness,
toward anyone not considered a personal possession. (Fact: the boy who had upset Harry had not
deserved the cracked ribs, nor the shattered nose. He certainly had not deserved the cold gaze
and mocking laugh that fell on him as he lay bleeding in the dirt.)
Four. A sudden disinterest in sleeping altogether,
and a total vanishing of the need.
(Fact: Harry had thought this enviable, in her more bitterly whimsical
moments of high school.)
Five. A crippling fear of iron, and blackened burns
on contact. (Fact: Harry has not
considered herself clever since she was fifteen, because it was only the sight
of her best friend cringing back from a wrought iron fence that made the
connection between her strange behavior and the lectures they had heard about
children stolen and replaced with something else.)
Six. Total disintegration of the mortal
glamour. (Fact: Marys had been so lovely,
standing in the sunlight, all sharp ears and sharper eyes, that Harry had
almost wept. She still hates herself a
little, that the tears in her eyes were not of grief.)
A judge has ruled in their favor to continue their lawsuit against Urban Outfitters for their gross misuse of the word Navajo to describe their shitty clothes. Urban Outfitters tried to say that there was no standing to the lawsuit because The Navajo Nation couldn’t show “injury in fact” but Judge Bruce D. Black ruled the tribe has does, and can continue its claim under the Arts and Crafts Act.
Cultural Appropriation is disgusting and to call something “Native American” when it’s not is illegal.
This is huge!!! Congratulations to the Navajo Nation!
okay but like can we talk about star trek just for one second.
because.
like.
so much tv and so many movies and so many books are all about how the future is a disaster because technology ends the world and aliens attack and humanity is awful.
and then there’s star trek. motherfucking star trek. where, yeah, shit goes wrong all the time, but technology lets us reach and grow and learn, and humanity builds itself starships and warp cores and makes contact with aliens and builds this interstellar family out of all these disparate cultures and it names its flagship Enterprise because that’s what it is, it’s this enterprise of hope and discovery, and no matter how often they all risk their necks and get in fights and end up shooting it out with the Borg or the Klingons or the Romulans or whatever, humanity still looks up at the stars and says “you know what, let’s boldly go, motherfuckers,” and that’s the kind of future I wanna see.
NASA scientists have reported that they’ve successfully tested an engine called the electromagnetic propulsion drive, or the EM Drive, in a vacuum that replicates space. The EM Drive experimental system could take humans to Mars in just 70 days without the need for rocket fuel, and it’s no exaggeration to say that this could change everything.
But before we get too excited (who are we kidding, we’re already freaking out), it’s important to note that these results haven’t been replicated or verified by peer review, so there’s a chance there’s been some kind of error. But so far, despite a thorough attempt to poke holes in the results, the engine seems to hold up.
“Be waiting out front of the HAB, Watney, we’re not fucking waiting for you to get dressed. Places to be.”
Guys. Guys. I’ve been following this story for a while now and you don’t get it. Some guy made this and was like “well hi I made a thing and it shouldn’t go but it goes.”
And the science community was like okay that… there’s no way that works.
Then they tested it theoretically and it worked.
Then NASA was like okay but technically this breaks one of Newton’s laws so even if it theoretically goes it won’t like, actually go. So they built it and tested it more and it works.
So what we have now is the scientific community slowly cautiously freaking out because this GODDAMN EM DRIVE breaks the RULES OF PHYSICS but every time we test it, it FUCKING WORKS.
How cool is this????
Every time we’ve found something “broken” that functions, it means something is wrong with our understanding of reality. The next step is to figure out what, figure out what’s true, and open up a plethora of new scientific discoveries.
Ohhhhh I LOVE it when there is something wrong with our understanding of reality shit gets donnnnne!
“When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side…there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.” And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period.”—
god i HATE the way crime shows aggressively push the idea that only guilty people (or occasionally innocent but morally repugnant people) want lawyers when talking to the police.
it’s one of the most harmful lies on tv honestly because it encourages real people to waive their right to counsel making it vastly easier for cops to take advantage of them, lie to them, railroad them etc. regardless of your guilt or innocence, if you’re suspected of a crime, you need a lawyer.
hey there LGBTQ kids who are also Christian/Jewish! If you feel like you’re disobeying God, questioning your faith, or feel wrong and dirty for loving who you love, there’s this fantastic site I found today called hoperemains that accurately and thoroughly combs through scripture and its (many) mistranslations, validates your orientation, and basically let’s you know that you’re not pissing off God. It’s insanely thorough and after reading through every page on the entire site it’s super helpful. Go check it out!
hoperemains is completely from a Christian perspective, and not pluralistic or interfaith at all.
If you reblogged the first post from me please reblog this amendment so the Jewish peeps can access this resource too!
Trans Jewish kids, you can go to TransTorah as well!
Muslim LGBTQ kids, you can go to iamnotharaam! It’s run by a mod squad of different genders and orientations, and they take submissions from everybody!
–BB
MAY ANYONE WHO REBLOGS THIS BE ELEVATED TO THE EQUIVALENT OF SAINTHOOD IN THEIR RELIGION BLESS ALL OF YOU OH MY GOD.
REBLOGGING THIS AGAIN BECAUSE IT’S SO FREAKING IMPORTANT TO ME AND ALL MY FOLLOWERS TO READ THAT DEAL WITH GRIEF AND GUILT WHILE BEING LGBTQ AND RELIGIOUS
Maybe Jesus didn’t like to talk about it because it wasn’t the same kind of car as his Dad’s.
Because as we all know, God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden in His Fury.
Nah, clearly God drives Dodge pickup trucks, because Moshe’s people are told not to approach the mountain “until the Ram’s horn sounds a long blast” -Exodus 19:13.
fUCK YOU ALL
fialleril, I am embarrassed to report that it got better.
CW Spidey is probably not even old enough to see the Deadpool movie without parental permission. How many jailbait jokes does Wade make, and how quickly does Tony Stark get a restraining order against him?
Friend, it’s Deadpool. Tony was like “here, kid, come help us have a fight in this airport and also sign this restraining order against Wade Wilson”. Peter’s all “???? is this about the Accords thing? who’s Wade Wilson, is he on Captain America’s side?” and Tony’s like “naw this is literally just standard practice in the superhero community”.
Being a procrastinator with a violent fear of failure is almost hilarious because like 80% of the time I’m like “I’m not even going to think about this” and then there’s like a distinct moment when everything switches and it turns to “I can’t fail oh my god I need to turn this into an A in like a day why am I like this”
instead of that “write an about me” meme going around, people should write a review,
like on the back of a book cover, about me and i’ll put it on my blog.
examples:
she is so cool - anonymous
definitely not thirsty - anonymous
who are you and why are you in my house? - my mum
PLEASE DO THIS. I WILL PUT THE BEST ONES ON MY BLOG DESCRIPTION
Omg this is amazing
I know this blog is run by 4 mods, but maybe it could still work, DO IT ~cf
do you ever read an article so bad that it makes you want to get a PhD so that you can publish a response and thinkshame the author’s opinions with authority
“thinkshame” is officially the greatest word we’ve come up with as a species.
Seriously though, the easiest way to piss off a rich person is to own something expensive as a poor person—they literally think that they’re the only people who deserve nice things and will argue that you deserve to starve and die for it.
Three times in my life, my mom has saved up for 6-13 months to make big purchases for me.
The first, once she heard about the ps3 coming out, she starting saving. By the time my birthday rolled around, almost a year after it came out, she had bought it for me. The second time, she bought me a flat screen 30" tv from a pawn shop as a graduation gift. She wanted me to be able to comfortably see the tv/play the game she got me while I was away for school instead of using our tiny tube tv. The third time is the most recent; she asked my brother to take her to the Air Force base and use her card to buy a ps4 for me so that they could use his military discount. It was my christmas present just after the system came out.
I’ve had people from high school til now tell me that if I wanted to live or have money I’d sell all of my belongings. To wealthy people, poor people should look poor at all times. They should have bare studio apartments with blankets for a bed and wear rags and walk everywhere they go. I’m sure they’d prefer it if we didn’t have shoes too. Goodness forbid we do anything nice for ourselves or someone gives us a gift that we don’t immediately go sell. It’s infuriating and depressing all at once.
Shout out to everyone who has ever had this problem. Seriously. This just in, poor people can have nice things, we just tend to have them more rarely and without disposing of them until we absolutely have to. That luxury car is a hand-me-down, the Calvin Klein shirt is from a bin sale at Sam’s Club, and that TV was something we could only get in a tiny window of sales after Christmas, with money that had been given to us for the purpose of selecting a gift.
This shit happens fucking constantly.
God this is important and it’s also worth pointing out that THINGS…. are often affordable. phones are affordable at a discount with various plans from providers, electronics are on sale all the time, a ONE TIME purchase is often affordable.
what isn’t affordable: the rising costs of rent, the rising costs of food, car payments and car-fixing expenses if you can only afford to buy a cheap used car in the first place, a wardrobe nice enough to wear to a job interview and to the office every day after that, medical procedures and medicine if you live in the states and don’t have amazing insurance.
THINGS are often affordable. LIVING is barely affordable.
and by the way, having a smartphone and a computer is not even a luxury these days. you pretty much HAVE to have those for work/school/communication these days. they are basic necessities for anyone trying to get out of poverty.
OOOH THAT LAST ONE. YES.
Things are often doable. It’s the things that have to happen for life that cause issues. Do you know how much food costs? Rent? Utilities? Medical care? Wow, I am so angry, I’m gonna go fight everybody ever.
good evening, just checking in, I still love sam wilson, you? good. sam wilson though. I mean, wow. sam. wilson.
salutations i’m just poping in to agree. sam wilson. what a great. just. how wonderful it is to live in a world with sam wilson in it. i love sam wilson.
these are all excellent points, thank you. sam wilson is also excellent. e x c e l l e n t. I am thankful for him also.
But have you stopped to consider…Sam Wilson? Gosh Sam Wilson is the greatest.
Sam Wilson is the greatest good we’re ever gonna get.
find a slightly older female friend. like… two to ten years older than you. they will save your life, they will teach you so much, they will give you such great life lessons. they are so vital and helpful and important.
And don’t worry if the person is married or has kids. One day you may find yourself in that stage needing advice
My knitting group is so full of diverse life experience, it’s a really wonderful place
i apparently have become the person that your math textbook warns you about due to my grocery store only selling buttermilk by the half-gallon
SO
DO ANY OF YOU PEOPLE LIVE WITHIN HALF AN HOUR OF CHARLOTTE HALL, MARYLAND? BECAUSE I AM VERY SHORTLY GOING TO HAVE A COUPLE HUNDRED ANISE COOKIES THAT I NEED TO GET RID OF
no i’m actually serious i need to use all the buttermilk because i’d feel horrible pouring it out and i don’t know what to _do_ with all of them, the recipe makes like 20+ cookies and i’m making twelve batches
PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU LIVE NEARBY AND WOULD BE INTERESTED
I DO NOT AT ALL LIVE NEARBY BUT THIS MADE MY NIGHT, I’M FUCKING DYING.
ATTENTION, FEZ HAS BECOME THE PERSON THE MATH TEACHERS WERE TRYING TO WARN US ABOUT.
