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It's like how a bunch of celebs were big on body positivity and fat liberation...until Ozempic dropped and it turns out no, none of them ever believed any of that! They just pretended to bcs up until now healthy, long term weight loss was impossible so they had no choice but to cope by learning to love themselves no matter how they looked...but now that it's here we can go back to the truth! Being fat is ugly and gross and unhealthy and you should starve yourself and take experimental meds right now so you can be skinny which is what ALL humans are clearly supposed to be!! Yeah that body positivity stuff was fun, but come on. We know you actually just wanna be skinny and think being fat is a fate worse than death.

That's what it feels like to me. Every single time. Honestly in a lot of other areas too, one of the big issues with the left is that they really do seem to think that Republicans are right about how things work and should work but we just pretend otherwise because it's the right thing to do and it reduces suffering. Which seems fine, but you cannot be an effective leftist like this. You do actually have to deconstruct your beliefs and biases and world systems, you can't go around like "well yeah we aren't gonna kill disabled people that's eugenics and it's wrong" when you clearly don't actually think it's wrong. You think eugenics would work but implementing it would be uncivilized, and it shows. You have to actually understand that racism and ableism and all other forms of bigotry are not just cruel, but entirely incorrect.

well i guess i'll just encode my urls

AND LIKE OK I get it, I do

having the unencoded tags in the URL does make it easier for users to search for tags directly through URLs but like

surely that can't be the main way people use it

especially when mobile is so prevalent nowadays

The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.

Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.

I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so go drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.

Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.

"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."

"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."

"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"

Well who is it meant for, then? The cross-dressers? The kinksters? The ones who don't pass? The sex workers? The "ugly" ones?

Maybe it's for the rude ones, or the "loud" ones, or the ones who never came "out", past their middle-aged years and slipping on nice stockings under their khaki trousers, putting on a bit of blush in the bathroom mirror and then quickly washing it off again before anyone can see?

Maybe it's for the "traps", the beautiful ones who keep it secret and don't tell you until after the third date, when you can stab them to death for the crime of being human and plead "Gay Panic" at the trial to get off scot-free?

If we're going to call people "tranny", but not the ones like me, then who exactly are you thinking of?

I would agree that the majority of fear and hate and disgust is directed towards Trans women.

And as a Trans man, who has also lived as a woman in this society, I understand the absolute hell that is, "You're woman enough to be dumber than a man, women enough to be weaker than a man, woman enough to be objectified and women enough to be sexualized, but at that same time you are a man enough to be a predator, man enough to be a threat, man enough to be deceptive on purpose, and so you are entitled to all of the responsibilities of both and the privileges of niether". I understand that first-hand, even if I have the option of hiding from it if I choose to cut off a hand as sacrifice.

What I don't understand, what genuinely confuses me- and this is not some poorly-disguised attempt at being holier-than-thou or passive aggressive because I really really do not get it and would like an answer- is why should I be so willing to play that game?

Why should I pretend that my sisters are such different species that I can't throw bricks from their side of the line?

I may not be a woman anymore, and that may be easier to accept online, but in the meat space, I still look like one. I'm still PERCEIVED as one. People still dump on me all the same shit they dump on every woman, and call me the victim, and harp on about all these dangerous secret perverts in dresses who want to ogle me in public bathrooms, because I'm the victim, I'm the target demographic, so shouldn't I be on their side?

And when that happens, and they tell me, "be careful, be safe, watch out for those disgusting men, look out for those awful trannies" I like to turn around and spit back, "I am one of those trannies- go fuck yourself"

Because even though you and I are disagreeing right now- not fighting, but disagreeing, because as I said, I'm not willing to entertain the idea that we are a group that can or should be divided- at the end of the day, no matter who has it worse or who has it easier or who is more acceptable to Good, God-Fearing, Respectable Men And women- we really are all sitting at the same table here, the one labeled "TRANNIES, FREAKS, SICK-MINDED PERVERTS", and it doesn't matter if we all agree 100% or not as long as none of us will let anyone poison the food one seat to the left.

By definition you can't accidentally queerbait. Queerbaiting is specifically using a same sex pair from the show to market the show to queer audiences with no intention of ever following through on a romantic relationship.

There is officially licensed Destiel merch signed off on by Kripke. Teen Wolf had a commercial with the actors for Derek and Stiles draped over each other talking about being "on a ship." Both shows actively used scenes between them as marketing while actively mocking fans for wanting them together. Sherlock has multiple characters refer to Johnlock as a couple, including characters we're supposed to believe are never wrong about human behavior and pushed those scenes in marketing. Then they acted insulted when fans saw them as a couple.

That's queerbaiting.

Done on accident it would just be queer subtext. Done because they had no other choice due to censorship is queer coding.

The specific meaning of the word is really starting to get lost and it's a pretty important one to keep accurate. It describes a very specific phenomenon that was done repeatedly and maliciously for decades and is meant to examine that specifically.

I’ve always been a serial monogamist and my shortest long term relationships clocked in at three years. So perhaps that’s why when I finally broke it off with my ex I went insane on dating. Part of it was definitely just that between anxiety and loneliness I wanted to fill up my time.

This happened when I was living alone for the first time, no roommates, just me and my little cat Leeloo. I didn’t want to come home to an empty house so instead I set up dates.

Most of these were disastrous. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea and I had a lot more first dates than second because they’d seen enough, including the one where people aggressively complimented me.

But after a few months I had four people I was seeing simultaneously. I was up front with all of them that things were not exclusive, and they all agreed, so no infidelity took place here, just a lot of hijinks.

Here’s who was on the dating roster:

• An apprentice woodworker that we’ll call Jill. I honestly thought at 26 years old that her being 21 wasn’t a problem age gap and I quickly learned that there was a vast gulf of both maturity and life experience between us. Jill described herself as “heteroflexible” and had just dumped her first boyfriend to flirt it up with me.

• A married woman looking for a friends with benefits. We’ll call her Alice. I insisted on meeting her husband first to be sure I wasn’t part of a cheating mess and he gave me his blessing when I stayed over at her house. Years later when he and Alice had divorced I would go on to sell him and his new fiancée an engagement ring and we both realized at the end how we knew each other and it was wildly awkward. Alice was nice, but a hardcore vegan who insisted I brush my teeth if I so much as ate string cheese before I could kiss her. She was also unhappy in her marriage and was feeling out if I’d want to get serious.

• A bartender dubbed Snakebites, so called because of her signature piercings. She cooked me a steak so raw it was still mooing and some of the best asparagus I’d ever had. In our singular sexy encounter she bit my nipple and I never got over it. Really don't bite someone if you don't know their preference and work up in pressure. We weren’t terribly compatible but neither of us were willing to admit it yet. Truthfully I considered still dating her solely because I desperately wanted her bathroom. It had all black tile, black toilet, black sink, a rain shower in the corner and a jacuzzi tub. I may not have loved her but god I loved that bathroom.

And finally,

• My beloved, who I would go on to marry, who was dealing with a lot of personal stuff at the time. Obviously that meant I liked them the best of all the people I was seeing because we were both disasters at the time.

So that’s the cast of this little misadventure. Now, our story begins with Jill.

Jill was someone who heightened my anxiety. Each of the three times she came to my home she brought and left more stuff. A self help book, a ramen kit, the entire Teen Titans collection of DVDs. It was like she was trying to move in. She also liked to deride my taste in things, frequently calling me a pleb when I mentioned a band or show I liked.

She was working on a gorgeous little decorative table in her woodworking program. The main wood for the top had a beautiful dapple of knots like jaguar spots, and when she showed me a picture I exclaimed how pretty it was.

“Do you want it?”

“Oh- I mean it’s lovely, I wouldn’t mind having it, but you should sell it and make some money!”

But she was adamant. She’d give me the little side table. At about this time, Alice was starting to get awfully lovey for a FWB. I knew she wasn’t happy with her husband but I also knew we were not a good fit. Fun fact: Alice and her husband were step siblings with a pretty hefty age gap. They got together when he stumbled upon a kink photo shoot she’d done with vegetables. None of their family was happy about the relationship but they weren’t related by blood so it was fine.

So I was fending off more overt romantic advances from Alice, and feeling increasingly like I needed to break things off with Jill. Snakebites wasn’t ever initiating communication and I decided to pull a lot of plugs at once.

I ghosted Snakebites, told Alice that I thought we should cool it, and in a move worthy of a rom-com I asked my beloved if I could pretend we were exclusive to put off Jill. They agreed and I texted Jill to let her know that I was no longer single.

I was not prepared for Jill’s response. She. Was. Devastated. She flew off the handle. She’d just been waiting for the right time to tell me how she felt about me! How dare I do this to her!

What about the table?!