apostrophe-philosophy

A few days late, but happy 20 years to "I was there when it was written"

Nov 6 - chancellor Olaf Scholz fires minister of finances Christian Lindner (FDP) for being an incompetent little bitch and drags him on live TV, resulting in a government crisis as the three party coalition (named Ampel aka "Traffic Light"), which is ruling the country at the moment, falls apart.

Scholz also calls for a vote of confidence on January 15th which (if lost) will lead to the Bundestag being dissolved, triggering snap elections in March. This sends everyone into a panic because the ultra right-wing AfD (with Best Of hits such as "Russia is sexy.", "We should criminalize abortions and force every woman to have more babies instead of rights." and "Deport all immigrants and traitors." and the inofficial ones such as "Why don't we just kill everyone we don't like, let's start with the queers.") has been gaining support for a while (because MAGA has no monopoly on racism, sexism, hate and overall stupidity) and no one with an ounce of empathy or a triple digit IQ likes that very much and is thus worried they might actually make it into a new coalition.

Nov 7 - minister for justice Marco Buschmann is heartbroken over the Ampel-Aus and resigns.

Volker Wissing (FDP), minister for transport, commits the funniest anime betrayal and backstabs his party in order to keep his job, leaves the FDP but gets promoted to minister of justice as a little treat. The memes skyrocket.

Bettina Stark-Watzinger, minister of education and research, resigns along with Buschmann and gets replaced by Cem Özdemir (current minister for food and agriculture) because agriculture - education - at the end of the day where's the difference, right?

Federal President Steinmeier hands Christian Lindner his official participation certificate in an awkward ceremony at castle Bellevue. This is broadcast live on television so everyone can be sure that the little bitch is really leaving.

Friedrich Merz (CDU) threatens the nation with the promise that if he (Merz) becomes chancellor, he will let Lindner back into the government so they can keep fucking up the country's budget together. Bffs.

Nov 8 - after backstabbing the FDP Wissing's website gets hacked in retaliation to display FDP ads.

Meanwhile concerns are being voiced that snap elections in March might be way too early due to a lack of paper.

Robert Habeck (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), vice chancellor and minister for economic affairs and climate action, announces that he will be running for the position of chancellor with a social media post that shows him wearing a Swiftie bracelet which spells "Kanzler-Era" (chancellor-era). This sends Gundolf Siebeke from the super conservative CDU spiralling.

Nov 9 - Siebeke fires off a tweet stating that if Habeck becomes chancellor that would of course be totally the fault of women alone (who are all too emotional to make rational decisions) and Germany should "inofficially" consider revoking women's right to vote and officially implement "antiemotional" history lessons in school, earning him a massive shitstorm (completely deserved). Siebeke deletes the tweet.

Nov 10 - previous minister of justice Marco Buschmann processes his grief over the end of the traffic light coalition by composing and uploading a song to Soundcloud (feat. Gregorian chants) which is not exactly a banger but is admittedly still better than 99% of Germany's entries in the ESC these past few years.

Siebeke is still on his misogynistic bs and makes another incoherent and sexist tweet, this time yapping about queens and Christianity while trying to paint himself as the misunderstood victim.

There are sadly no more Volker Wissing memes.

Nov 12 - everyone has agreed to move the elections from March to the end of February because paper is no longer an issue, I guess? However, now everyone is unhappy because the date clashes with the carnival. No joke.

Siebeke changes the banner on his Twitter profile to read "Frauen. Wahl. Recht. Der 19. Januar 1919" / "Women. Right (to). Vote. January 19th 1919" in a pathetic attempt to show how much he actually (not) respects women while at the same time claiming in his Twitter bio that "only conservatism can secure democracy, freedom, rule of law, equality, climate and culture". No comment.

Nov 13 - 113 members of parliament have officially called for the Bundestag to open the long overdue investigation in order to finally ban the AfD.

It has been the longest week in the history of the Bundesrepublik. Everyone needs a fucking break.

To be continued

Nov 13 - Markus Söder, major whine baby of the CSU and walking human wet towel, finally comes up with the weakest retort imaginable to Scholz'es coolness claim: "I don't know anyone who's uncooler than you." That took him two days. These are the ppl in charge of this country.

Nov 14 - SPD and Greens (backed up by the Left) have proposed a law to legalize abortions up to the 3rd month of pregnancy

Additionally, info surfaced that the FDP had prepared the Ampel break-up with a PowerPoint presentation. Which would be hilarious if they hadn't called the designated date for the break-up "D-Day". Never a good idea.

SPD is still super furious and dragging Lindner's political corpse in every single press statement and interview. Something something about no need to shoot a dead horse, but we will gladly make an exception here.

Thomas Haldenwang, head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which has been "looking into the AfD" for quite some time due to concerns of the party being unconstitutional (yeah, no shit) since AfD members have been exposed to be part of militant underground groups hoarding illegal weapons and keeping assassination lists of "undesired individuals"), announces his candidature for the CDU. Yeah. The super conservative party with the dude who wants to block the new abortion law and is besties with the party who wants to revoke women's right to vote and who has been getting increasingly chummy with the AfD. The joke kinda writes itself.

SPD members have started calling for the party to endorse Federal Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius as chancellor instead of letting Scholz run again. Quite a few members are a huge fan of the idea. Pistorius isn't. Guy probably thought of how he'd have to deal with Donald Trump come the next year, and decided ha ha, I'd rather drink bleach.

Several US American accounts on Twitter have picked up on the drama in Germany and started tweeting about it, calling chancellor candidate Habeck from the Greens a "radical leftist". If you've never seen someone blasting their drink out of both nostrils with superhuman force but you'd really really like to, go and find a German with a drink and mention the ultra radical leftist Habeck while they're taking a sip. Wear a raincoat for protection, though.

On a side note the BKA released the newest stats regarding crimes against women and girls. To keep this short (because it's depressing as fuck): all of them increased significantly, most of all crimes based on misogynistic ideas. Time to start calling it what it is: misogynistic terrorism. I will refrain from making jokes about fire, houses and Dick Fuentes here because that would be tasteless. Btw, that was not a typo.

Markus Söder (CSU) is trying to get the nuclear power plant Isar 2 up and running again which is exactly as stupid as it's funny because it was already confirmed, multiple times, by engineers and the fucking plant operator that it's impossible to reactivate the plant. Just shows that there will always be men who never learn when it's the right time to pull out. Of nuclear energy, of course. (I need Habeck to become chancellor even if it's just so that he can bite Söder like a rabid dog.)

To no one's surprise Jürgen Pohl (AfD) has promised to support Scholz during the vote of confidence which is exactly what no one wants, least of all Scholz since winning the vote of confidence would mean that there will be no snap elections and Germany will be stuck without a functioning government until the end of next year. To everyone's surprise Pohl defended his decision by saying that Scholz is the lesser evil because Merz would suck major ass as chancellor.

Lindner bashing has now been picked up by the Kommunen (local administrative units?) who are super mad that Lindner withheld money from, well, everyone just so he could boost his own ego and the FDP's popularity (which is obviously an oxymoron). Germany really looked at that idiom "Man sollte aufhören, wenn's am schönsten ist." (You should quit when it's best) and went "I suddenly can't read." Good. We can do this all day. Keep it up. (PS: even the CDU has now joined the hate train and is avoiding Lindner? The only way this man could still get a job in politics is if he moved to the US. Donald Trump would surely create a whole new department for him.)

The SPD is still arguing whether to endorse Pistorius or support Scholz re-running for the position of Bundeskanzler. Apparently the cat fights within the party have gotten so bad that grandpa retired chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) had to step in and tell everyone to shut the fuck up.

Also, Pistorius is starting to get really annoyed by reporters constantly asking him about the chancellor position. To the point where Pistorius snapped and said "Anything can happen in politics. The only thing I can say for sure will never happen is me becoming Pope." I'm just putting this here so that Future Me can have a really good laugh later.

Meanwhile in the federal state of Brandenburg: minister for economy Jörg Steinbach (SPD) looked at the impending coalition of his party with the BSW, went "Yikes." (which is the general mood when it comes to the BSW) and decided to straight up retire from his position since he'd rather lick a toilet seat than work with the pro-Russia dumpster fire that is the BSW. We seriously need more politicians to roast the BSW. I'm not kidding.

Meanwhile the Greens announced that they have gained a huge influx of new members since the Ampel breakup, setting a new personal record with 13,000 new membership applications (and counting).

TV channel ZDF did a segment called "Backgroundcheck" about super rich people who pay not enough taxes and chose to upload the video to Youtube using a headshot of ex-minister for finances Lindner for the thumbnail. Didn't think the ZDF had balls as big as the Brocken but I will always admit it if I was in the wrong, so - chapeau. Monster balls.

The AfD in Bavaria is now openly in full hating-immigrants-and-refugees-mode (until last year they were trying to only hate in secret but as expected they failed that spectacularly, like every single lesson in humanity) and the party is now actively pushing an official resolution for mass deportations while whining that "Germany should no longer be the world's hammock." Nobody tell the AfD that Turkey and Iran both took in about 1 million more refugees each in 2023 than Germany while having less citizens than 'schland. And by "nobody tell the AfD" I mean "Everybody tell them". Loudly.

On a funnier note: the ministry for defence has set a budget of 825 million Euros for the Bundeswehr's new formal military uniforms (a decision that was already made in 2018 but was postponed several times) and then decided to postpone the whole thing again because the Bundeswehr is currently lacking in so many areas that the uniforms are not exactly the highest priority. But what can you expect from a country that goes crazy every 4 years about the colors of the NT's away jerseys but at the same time had to send Ukraine old GDR equipment from a half forgotten warehouse because they had nothing better at hand to offer. Ukraine, I'm so sorry. Germany did not do that to mock you. The military *is* just that badly equipped in 'schland.

Meanwhile the FDP decided to release the D-Day PowerPoint in a desperate attempt to prove that they are not the bad guys but ended up proving instead that none of these ppl should be in a position that comes with more responsibility than keeping a plastic cactus alive (yeah, it's just that bad). Bonus points for the shitty timing, because the decision to make the PowerPoint available to the public clashed with the news that several members of the FDP have urged the party to support the new proposed abortion law (which would have actually helped the FDP to save some face, but someone in the PR department decided to go rogue and do a political-party-suicide-speedrun, or at least that's the only explanation that makes sense right now).

I hope you don’t mind me reblogging your tags but these are my feelings EXACTLY

When I got married, I hadn’t had sex yet.  Waiting until marriage was important to me, so that’s what I did.  My wedding night was the first time I had sex.

It sucked.

I figured, ok, this is new for both of us, it’s probably going to take some practice.

A year later?  It still sucked  We tried a lot of different stuff.  A lot  of different stuff.  It sucked so bad, we even bought a copy of “Sex for Dummies”.

(it didn’t help)

I started working late so I didn’t go to bed at the same time as my husband.  Every time he would travel for work, I’d be grateful that I didn’t have to go through the awkwardness of avoiding his advances when I went to bed.

He didn’t think it was healthy for a newlywed couple to have sex less than once a week.  So we scheduled it.  Repeat, scheduled intimacy.  I thought I was putting on a brave face and doing what I needed to do to maintain a good relationship.

Because I had no idea that asexuality was a thing.

I talked to my husband, told him I didn’t like sex.  He didn’t understand.  I lost track of how many times I said: “It’s not that I don’t want to have sex with you.  I don’t want to have sex with anyone.”

So it was established, Amber doesn’t like sex.

But we still did it.  Because I wanted my husband to be happy.  Sometimes halfway through, I’d start crying.

And he’d always be supportive, and apologize.

After he finished.

So when I found out about asexuality, and told him how I felt, he suggested I go to a doctor.  Because obviously there was something wrong with me.

So I went to a doctor.

(surprise, surprise, I’m perfectly healthy)

Then I told my mom.  When she suggested meds to improve my sex drive, I broke down in tears.  I told her there was nothing wrong with me.  And my mom has been 100% supportive of my orientation ever since.  When people ask if I’m a lesbian, she teaches them about asexuality.  

But anyway back to my journey of self-discovery

So I tell my husband, I’m asexual, I don’t want to have sex.  You are not asexual, you do want to have sex.  One of us is going to be miserable in this relationship, and I’m tired of it being me.  I love you too much to make you miserable for the rest of your life, but I love myself too much to be miserable for the rest of my life.  We might have to face the fact that we’re not right for each other.

So his immediate response is “no, I can change, I’ll do anything, divorce is not an option, etc”

But I can’t exactly ask him to stop wanting to have sex.  Because that’s not how allosexual people work.  And he can’t seduce me into wanting to have sex, because that’s not how asexual people work.

Anyway.  He cries, I cry, we decide on marriage counseling to help our comunication.

Because we’d been married for almost 6 years by this point, and had been together for 3 years before that, and we still can’t really talk about what we want (or don’t want) in regards to sex.

So we go to counselling for 6 weeks.  The first 3 sessions individually, and the last 3 together.  During the together sessions, the therapist would prompt us with a question, and we’d talk to each other, being completely honest about things.

During (what turned out to be) our last session, I’d finally had enough.  I’d had enough of being embarrassed about what anyone else would think.  Enough of the gender roles I was being forced into.  Enough of paying someone to watch me talk to my husband.  Enough of pretending to salvage a relationship that I had been increasingly avoiding over the past 2 years, and I said:

“Josh, I love you.  We have communication problems, but we’ve been together almost ten years and I’m willing to work through those if you think we can make it work.  But I am never having sex with you again.”

(At this point, the therapist who’d been trying to get us to communicate put down her notebook and said, ok I think we’re done.)

Then and only then, did he agree to file for divorce.

—————–

I say all that to say this:

Don’t you dare fucking tell me that asexual representation doesn’t matter.  I would have six years of my life back if I had known.

And if you’re in a relationship, talk to each other oh my God.  About everything.  What dream you had last night.  That song from scout camp that randomly gets stuck in your head.  The reason you don’t like sweet potato.  That embarrassing thing you did in third grade that still makes you mad when you think about it.  If you and your partner can share these tiny, intimate details, talking about sex is no big deal.  And it takes practice, so practice.

————–

On a happy note, now, 3 years after the divorce, I am in a happy, stable relationship with another ace.  And if you happen to ask my mom how I’m doing, she’ll tell you “I’ve never seen my baby girl happier.”

ASEXUALITY IS A REAL THING, LOVING, SWEET ACE RELATIONSHIPS ARE REAL! Just because your partner wants sex doesn’t make you broken. Just because you don’t want sex doesn’t mean you should have to force yourself to do so. 

dude.

Passover: They enslaved us, God freed us. Remember this via a big ceremony/feast and then don’t eat bread for a week. This is a big one; you’re going to have to clean your house and host all your relatives.

Tu B'Shevat: It’s Earth Day, let’s eat some fruit.

Simchas Torah: We read the entire Torah every year, and we got to the end! Let’s have a dance party and then start all over again!

Tisha B'Av: They destroyed our temples. That sucked.

Rosh HaShanah: Happy New Year! It’s time to ask (and grant) forgiveness for the wrongs done in the past year, pledge to do better, and wish for a sweet new year. And go to synagogue for HOURS.

Yom Kippur: Rosh HaShanah’s somber counterpart. God decides on this day your fate for the next year. Repent your sins, hope for forgiveness, and fast. (And go to synagogue for HOURS.)

Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Sukkot: Harvest festival! Sleep in a hut under the stars.

Shemini Atzeret: Man, I don’t even know?

Shavuot: God gave us the Torah! That was pretty nice of him.

Get it from

@sage-derby Yes!!!

Here’s a rundown of their general policy, from literally the first article I clicked on just now:

As you might be getting from that, they’re pretty intersex inclusive, too. Here’s a sample of something that’s a little more directly about sex-specific stuff in case you’re thinking “well but they said that was just about pleasure tho”:

They have a lot of sections on their site, but number two is Gender:

“That’s probably just like hetero gender dynamics stuff tho...” Nay nay! Here’s a few of the articles from the first page of their “Gender” section:

They have a disabled section with stuff for chronic pain. There was a link about navigating consent with non-verbal partners. This is an awesome resource, I've never felt so included.