Where Ceia Lives

No shirt, no bra, completely bare torso, just like cis men are allowed to

It's about desexualizing breasts and "female presenting nipples" and not being criminalized for our bodies if we want to go topless because it's a million damn degrees out. This was a popular growing movement that was still widely known a decade ago!

because it's genuinely insane the things i've heard americans say 'america doesn't have' when it's just factually incorrect.

for some perspective: during my longest move i did by-car in the u.s., i drove ~3,000 miles. That's ~4,800 km. It took nearly 50 hours drive-times alone. Meaning, if I could have driven without stopping once, it would have taken nearly 50 hours. Of course I split that up over several days.

Driving that same distance here, If there's a ferry+road from Rabat (in Morocco) to Kyiv (Ukraine), I could take it and keep on going another several hours.

So you can understand how silly it is for someone from the u.s. to be asked to answer a question on behalf of the entirety of the u.s.—geographically, culturally, etc.

So now that we've said all that, I need you to know that I listened to a guy from Idaho tell an Irish person today, "yeah, we just don't really get snails much in America."

Simultaneously, I’m an adult who, in my spare time, enjoys engaging in adult fiction spaces. As a result of that, I have, unfortunately, been shouted at a decent number of times by young adults (18-25 seems to be the common range) about children, and their well being, and how what happens in adult fiction spaces causes harm to children, and themselves by proxy. (I’ve also been yelled at by actual children, but I’m happy to ignore them, given many of them have been influenced by the previously mentioned young adults to behave that way.)

“Grooming” isn’t truly a technical term, though my industry uses it as one often. It doesn’t have a precise definition or pattern of behavior beyond “inappropriate conduct with a child.” It’s had other uses, of course, like saying someone was “groomed to inherit a title” or similar. But generally what we mean online is “this has to do with child abuse.”

Children are, no joke, one of the most uniquely oppressed classes of human being in the world. Most of the time, they simply have no recourse, no legal right to self-advocate, no ability to retain counsel, choose their own living environment, what they do, how they dress, what they eat. To even report their own abuse — which I assure you, most children are perfectly aware is abuse — they must first be believed by an adult, who may then choose to do something on the child’s behalf, or not. Any option a child has for safety or freedom of choice is entirely dependent on an adult deigning to humor them in the first place.

When you turn the age of majority in your country, you are automatically given a new set of legal and social rights. Even a severely disabled adult, in most places, may advocate for their rights on the basis of their legal adulthood. (There are constant failures here by the legal system, of course, but the point is that you are allowed to advocate in the first place.) You become a different class of person, who can do and ask for things that children are simply not allowed to.

When you try to say that “adults can be groomed,” by bringing up all kinds of random possibilities like “well what about cults” “what about age gaps and different levels of life experience” “what about this or that,” you’re still ignoring the idea that the exploited adult has recourse, in those situations (again, leaving out that there are many failings with the system that allows that recourse does not eliminate the fact that recourse is an option.) Restraining orders. Moving away. Going no contact, with no parent to force you to continue to see that person on holidays. Even if you are young, you are not helpless. You have an agency allowed to you that children simply are not given.

Of course, an 18 year old can be abused and exploited. And I absolutely am wary of a 19 year old dating a 40 year old — personally, I question the shit out of that. I’d even suspect that that 19 year old was previously groomed in some way. But the distinction is important to me, here, not to diminish the abuse that young adults can face, but to ensure that the plight of children is properly understood.

Oops, did I say painting? I meant quilt.

The quilt is by fiber artist Nancy Hershberger (@hershberger.nancy on insta).

[Q: Why did you decide to do this experiment?

A: Snake behavior has been generally neglected as a field of research, especially in Brazil. And most studies don’t examine what factors make them want to bite. If you study malaria, you can research the parasite that causes the disease—but if you don’t study the mosquito that carries it, you will never solve the problem. Up until now, the popular wisdom was that the jararaca would only attack if you touched it or stepped on it. But that was not what we found.

Q: Why did you need to be the victim?

A: The best way to do this research is to put snakes and a human together. In this case, the human was me. We put the snakes inside a ring on the floor of our lab until they got used to it, then I stepped in wearing special protective boots. I stepped close to the snake and also lightly on top of it. I didn’t put my whole weight on my foot, so I did not hurt the snakes. I tested 116 animals and stepped 30 times on every animal, totaling 40,480 steps.]

Bison Quilt - Wally Dion

Quilt Noir - Wally Dion

"The first fabric star quilt was made as part of a 2022 residency at Wanuskewin Park. It was my way of reflecting upon prairie tall grass and the reintroduction of bison into the Great Plaines. I wanted to make several transparent quilts and superimpose them; one in front another... a quilt for the microbiome, another for the bison, their manure & hooves, another for the summer fires that scorch the ground and a final quilt for the sweetgrass braid. "I was considering how all of these things worked together for thousands of years to create what is known as the 'prairie tall grass ecosystem'. A vast and fertile expanse of land stretching from the foothills of Alberta to the banks of the Mississippi. I wanted to highlight the invisibility of systems when everything is working well, as it should be. "I started with the green quilt because it is the colour of the sweet grass braid that is exchanged in ceremony and relationship building. I considered the nature and tradition of quilting; impoverished craftspeople using tiny scraps of fabric. I considered the act of offering fabric and adherence to tradition. I thought of a thousand tiny prayers and how that might look; invisible acts of respect and adherence to protocols spanning decades. My thoughts travelled across the land, imagining the trees and rocks collecting these prayers like a bush of cloth, or an etched bolders."