i need to think of a better title

My mom told me a story today about how, in her last semester of high school, she had 4 study halls, calculus, and PE. She told me she skipped her study halls and just showed up for calculus and PE so she could graduate. She told me on her senior skip day she went to the lake with nearly her entire class.

I'm not saying this is like, incredibly awesome and educationally productive, but she was a teen. And she did teen stuff.

My school doesn't have study halls. Punishments for absences start once you dip below 95% attendence rates. 3 tardies count as an unexcused absence. We got several emails about how senior skip day was not approved and that anyone caught to be participating would get in school suspension. 45 minute lunches are a "privilege". Skipping class is an in school suspension, which are sent along with grades to colleges you apply for. Speaking of which, the majority of my classmates are still spending hours everyday studying, and failing that, doing part-time jobs, clubs, sports, and volunteering -- all in hopes of getting into the college they want.

Everyone is fucking wiped! Barely any of us enjoy school (+or life, to some extent), many of us are actively suicidal because of school. One of us didn't make it to graduation. This is seen as an "us issue", a matter of mindset (don't worry! Today's quote of the day is another variation of "good mindset = good day, bad mindset = bad day"!!) Most places actively bar or discourage teens from being there (hanging out in a mall = loitering, no minors allowed without parent supervision basically everywhere, walking around with no real goal is "suspicious", etc etc). When we stay inside and go on the internet, we are told that we are the problem, we need to stop spending so much time online, and the solution is social media and phone bans. As if excessive use of electronics by younger people isn't a symptom of a much larger issue. As if bans will solve the problem. As if we like spending our teenage years scrolling.

My friends tell me how their mom took their inheritance money and bought a car. How their dad flipped their shit, verbally and physically, when they dyed their hair. I read stories about people getting messages from online friends that say "I think my parents found out I'm queer" and then never hearing from them again. Have you ever read about the troubled teen industry?

And that isn't even, like, the basics!!! That's barely even scratching the surface!!

hi hiiii it's j again .. thank you to everyone that's helped keep me afloat over these last few months,, it's been! rough! on a lot of fronts! but we're pushing through.

my partner got us a house and we'll be moving over this next month! thankfully our first big house payment won't be until the beginning of august, but moving is an expensive endeavor, i still have utility bills to pay, and i need to eat :')

any and all help is appreciated, even if it's just a reblog 💕

v: @jmaeveb

c: $jmaeveb

It has some genuinely fascinating stuff to say about gender, and I feel like it's worth looking at/thinking about in the context of Historical Gender Stuff. This 100 year old book has the following to say:

"The truth is that some young gentlemen would rather they had been born young ladies: they cannot admit this openly, because in the male world to confess as much would lead to instant ostracism if not worse; but they cannot conceal it either, and by preferring the company of girls, and soft, feminine clothing, and by flinching during the rough pursuits to which all boys, willing or no, are occasionally heirs, they attract opprobrium."

"Such boys weep too readily for their fellows' tastes - weeping is a great crime among boys unless it is generally admitted that circumstances left little choice - and are hounded for that reason."

"Just as there are girls who had rather been boys - we all know examples of the type - there are boys who, in a kinder world, would have been born into the gender more suited to their dispositions."

"Many young people of this sort are riven with a guilt they do not deserve but have been forced, by the conventions of society, to adopt; they are confused, ashamed and thoroughly unhappy."

"The ideal thing to do would be to treat these cases on their merits, send them to girls' schools, and so on. (The same thing should happen with those girls who would rather be young gentlemen.) Boys of this sort are girls in any case-in all respects save one."