It's just a facade over a facade

i Hate how entitled adults can feel over a child’s hair!

it started when i was young myself, i wanted a mohawk, but my dad didn’t approve of that look on a “girl”, and insisted i’d regret such a bold cut. at 16 i was finally given full autonomy over my own head.

but then i have a son and everyone around us is trying to keep his hair short. when we finally moved out just me my partner and him, i told him he doesn’t need to get any haircuts he doesn’t want.

so he starts growing it out, it’s still short but coming on mid-length. his teacher makes a point to tell me it’s getting long as if i don’t have eyes. i hear her walking out with him one day talking to him about haircuts, as if to coax him into one. eventually i get child services called on me for ‘forcing a transgender lifestyle’ over what i can only assume is from a combination of me drawing cute ponies on his valentine box and letting him go to school in a ponytail.

he kept it short for awhile after but told me he wanted to grow it out again, so i let him of course. he comes home one day after getting a haircut at his grandpa’s and tells me he didn’t Want the haircut.

i ask why he got it then and learned he was bribed with a promise of a surprise IF he cut his hair.

but This One Lady from church decided that leaving my hair messy and curly was child abuse and threatened to call social services on my family every damn time she saw me until one day she was the designated kid watcher and ho boy my momma tells me i came out with tears in my eyes and greasy slicked down hair and that’s where she ends the story because i think my mother beat her ass but yeah.

Some reasons, not exhaustive:

Parents tightly controlling this shit is damaging and super often indicative of sexism or queerphobia they will begin imposing or are already imposing on the child.

Early form of indoctrination into boys vs. girls behavior; it begins super young when the child is very malleable. Sets the stage for strict gender roles.

A parent who does not respect their child’s autonomy over something as trivial as their hair is absolutely not going to defend their child from other assaults on their autonomy, unless those assaults are property crimes that challenge or might lead their child to challenge their ownership of the child’s body.

It’s disgusting.

It also goes for life partners. Controlling someone’s appearance either directly, or indirectly through repeated “hints” and shit-talking people who don’t meet their standards is at the very least toxic, and sometimes it is downright abusive. There’s a reason “woman cuts her hair in a way that she knows you don’t like” is seen as a “warning sign” that your wife might “leave you.” The hold is breaking. I did it, progressively, as things spiraled down. It wasn’t rebellion. It was reclamation. (Also me realizing that I really didn’t like having long hair. This is way better.

as someone with a speech impediment, all of the people saying that only one type of stuttering is valid are wrong.

stuttering CAN look like this: "t-this is a-an example s-s-sentence"

OR this: "this-this is an example sen-sentence."

OR this: "t-t-t-th-..t-ttttthis is an example sentence."

OR this: "this is, uhm, an example, uh, sentence."

OR this: "this is an example sssssss-sentence."

OR this: "this is an examp-...this an example sentence."

sometimes the sentence won't even come out of your mouth at all.

there are probably many examples i'm forgetting, but that's the point! it usually is a mix of a few of these, but some people do one of them more often than others! some people with speech impediments have certain sounds that they almost consistently have trouble with (for me it's "st").

people with speech impediments also rarely-if ever-stutter whilst they're singing or whispering.

most importantly!!!! people with speech impediments are capable of saying a sentence without stuttering!! it can just be a gamble sometimes.

and if more people could portray the frustration that comes with stuttering and not being able to get words out, i'd be a very happy girl.

(fun fact: sometimes when my mouth won't let me say what i want to say, i get so annoyed that i just yell or grumble out "WORDS.")

i’ve made i’m happy that it’s

THIS one that blew up

for a while, my husband worked as a call handler for the ambulance service. during his training, they had a talk from someone wanting to introduce new policy and he wanted to use my husband's group as a tester group. fun, right?

well, the talk was about how saying suicide was triggering. if a caller says theyre suicidal, the handlers should say "unalive" instead, because saying the word might actually trigger the suicidal person.

if the caller says they were raped and need help, the handler should say "S A" instead, because rape is triggering.

I don't know about you, but if I phoned up the ambulance service to ask for help because I want to die, I wouldn't want them using tiktok speak and trivialising the issue. I think that would make me less likely to ever ask for help. SAY THE WORDS. how are we supposed to address the problem if we can't even name the fucking problem.

luckily, my husbands main instructor literally said "well, that's fucking stupid" to the man wanting to introduce this policy and it hasn't been implemented. but it might. we are watching language be erased. NAME. THE. PROBLEM.

“Do you want to kill yourself?”

A, it has the benefit of making sure everyone is on the same page. Self-harm and attempting suicide are two different things. You can want to harm yourself without wanting to kill yourself. It can also let you know if the person is passively suicidal or if they’re in the process of killing themselves.

B, stigmatizing suicide leads to more suicides.