Dresses With Sticks

Embroidered this on the back of my jacket for Pride a few months ago, promptly forgot. I used lineart direct from Watership Down to make the rabbit. ID under cut.

Level 2: Sci-fi aliens exhibit the target audience's gender binary with some specific feature conspicuously inverted, like women are the stereotypically violent and lustful ones or whatever.

Level 3: Sci-fi aliens exhibit the target audience's gender binary, plus 1–3 "extra" genders just sort of dangling off the side of the system that literally never come up except to make jokes about them.

Level 4: The text insists that the sci-fi aliens have no genders, which are a human conceit; that every individual alien we meet happens to neatly conform with the target audience's gender binary is coincidence.

Level 5: The text attempts to un-gender its sci-fi aliens simply by taking the target audience's gender binary and subtracting one of the genders, like all of the aliens are lesbians, but you can still clearly tell which aliens are meant to be the "man" lesbians and which aliens are meant to be the "woman" lesbians.

Level 6: The text genuinely departs from the target audience's gender binary, but only because the author is using the sci-fi aliens' genders as an allegory for something else – e.g., physical disabilities, political affiliations, etc. – in a way that doesn't really make sense if you think about it too hard; "capitalist" is now a gender.

Capitalistgender is such a funny concept to me

Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman calls “bids.” For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife, “Look at that beautiful bird outside!” He’s not just commenting on the bird here: He’s requesting a response from his wife—a sign of interest or support—hoping they’ll connect, however momentarily, over the bird.

The wife now has a choice. She can respond by either “turning toward” or “turning away” from her husband, as Gottman puts it. Though the bird-bid might seem minor and silly, it can actually reveal a lot about the health of the relationship. The husband thought the bird was important enough to bring it up in conversation and the question is whether his wife recognizes and respects that.

These bidding interactions had profound effects on marital well-being. Couples who had divorced after a six-year follow-up had “turn-toward bids” 33 percent of the time. Only three in 10 of their bids for emotional connection were met with intimacy. The couples who were still together after six years had “turn-toward bids” 87 percent of the time. Nine times out of 10, they were meeting their partner’s emotional needs.

Children are desperate to teach the wonders of the world that they know, that they have just learned, and share it with anyone interested.  Adults pour passion they didn’t know they had into voluntary obligations, and crave a simple acknowledgment of that passion as being worthy and valid. 

“Dear third grader, tell me exactly why you chose <x> as you third favorite carnivorous dinosaur instead of second, as specifically as possible.”

us: WE DON'T KNOW. SHE SHOWED UP AT OUR HOUSE TWO DAYS AGO

the vet and techs were all really shocked by how sweet and stable she is and one was even like "she kind of acts like a service dog?" which I took to mean she was observing the same stuff that I was when I was thinking yesterday that she seems like she has received some positive reinforcement training. she's a very mysterious dog. she needed to take her Emotional Support Cow Ear with her to the x-ray, but she wasn't guard-y about it at all when the techs picked it up to give back to her if she dropped it etc.

+ bonus: