life isnt about being anyone except you

I want to boost everything this person has said and add on.

The reason I call myself a tomboy now, despite it being seen as a childish word and having had someone swear at me over it because ‘tHeRe’S nO suCh thInG as BoY thInGs anD giRL thIngS sHut uP’ is because I couldn’t call myself that or be like that when I was a kid. It was seen as a negative thing and I was already bullied enough. “Looking like a boy” was the worst thing that could happen to a girl.

And I’m not even 26 yet. We aren’t talking 30+ years ago, we are talking 2000s and even 2010s. It’s only since trans people have become more accepted in the past few years that gender nonconformity has too.

And the people who helped me accept my gender nonconformity more than anyone else? Were trans people. They taught me, “there’s nothing wrong with how you feel. You’re still a valid woman no matter what you wear, how you have your hair or what you’re into ❤️”

And don’t even get me started on how people treat gender nonconforming men. JK Rowling has a lot of nerve to be like “uwu boys can wear dresses and only us gendercrits accept that!” when she has, even in recent works, made femininity in men a negative trait, as well as making masculinity in women a negative trait also.

A lot of people still don’t accept gnc people even now. Just last year I had someone tell me they’d never let their daughter “dress like a boy”, and I’m always terrified to walk into a bathroom in case the next JK Rowling is in there, sees my gender expression and pepper sprays me or worse.

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

(screenshot from the linked RNZ article)

it took me less than three minutes, and that's only because I wrote a whole paragraphs on why this is a stupid idea. all you really need to put is "don't pass this bill" if you want. it'll only take 30 seconds.

Hi friends! I am back with another request to fund ongoing pygmy raccoon conservation initiatives. Here are the details:

I am currently working in partnership with the Cozumel Municipal Ecology Department to find actionable ways to keep critically endangered pygmy raccoons alive. Right now, there is almost no infrastructure for rehabilitating and releasing orphaned and injured animals. We are working on changing that. Thanks to previous donations, we have already been able to purchase a small plot of land and hope to start building sanctuary enclosures soon. However, we hope to conduct an ongoing study to determine the efficacy of new rehabilitation procedures and protocols in development. Part of this involves tracking the animals to see if these changes are actually working, and finding any issues so that we can fix them.

Right now, a baby pygmy raccoon named Mapas is in the care of my research partner (who oversees all animal rescue on the island). Mapas is being raised with the intent to release under current procedures and protocol. Nobody has any idea how these current rehab methods are working, so we hope we can track Mapas after release to get a baseline of efficacy.

To do this, we need about $1,600 to purchase a receiver ($1,099), an antenna ($210), a collar transmitter ($225), and shipping ($50). While the collar is kind of a one time use thing (that lasts up to a year,) the receiver and antenna will be used going forward during the formal study next year when I return to Cozumel, and in the years to come. This is a very worthwhile investment to let us track the species. If you are interested in donating for this project, you can do so in the following ways: Venmo (Please leave a note about a donation for pygmy raccoon tracking)

Paypal (Please leave a note about a donation for pygmy raccoon tracking)

Credit or debit card on the Nature Conscious Tourism Initiative website

All donations through all platforms are tax deductible, and I can provide a receipt if needed. Just send me a message here or through the contact form on the NCTI website.

If you have any further questions, please let me know!

I show up and am given a list of cognitively engaging but achievable tasks

I complete the list

you can see the atmosphere. that halo around the edge, that's my air. the green on the upper right is my aurora. those are my clouds, my sunlight.

As important as it was to contact Tumblr when they made that asinine, fucked up change, now that they've reversed it, you have a chance to say thanks for reversing it.

I know that you're probably still riding the high (negative) from the stress of going through yesterday's changes, and worrying about the fate of your community, and how badly the change would have affected creators. We banded together, and we let the staff know that we didn't like what they were doing, and you know what? They listened. That's part of why we're here on Tumblr and not other places that would have just shoved that down our throats regardless of the hundreds of thousands of complaints. Yeah, they fucked up. Big time. But they also backed off, and it's important to speak on that front as well if you want them to do it again later.

So, even though you may still be mad that they did it at all, take a moment and a breath, and click here. Select feedback if it isn't already selected. And just say "Hey, thanks for listening to your users, and for rolling back the change. I like my community here, and I like that you listened to us when we asked you not to do something we didn't like." It doesn't need to be elaborate. But if we want them to listen to us, making it worth listening to us is a step in the process.

Which also means that if you added a negative review somewhere due to this update, consider retracting or editing it to address the back track on the update. If you were a premium user and you cancelled in order to speak with your money to object to the change, consider speaking again now that you've been listened to.