crawling back to you

^^ THIS is what actual transfeminist materialism can look like btw.

that's really exactly it.

as someone who could very easily qualify for a diagnosis of bpd or cptsd, and even very often resonates with both, everything described in bpd is just a demonization of the same patterns of behaviour described by cptsd. it is just describing you as evil for struggling with being hurt so much, and in doing so, takes the focus away from the person hurting and puts it onto how it inconveniences everyone else.

we really need to be critical of how these labels come to be, because they are deliberately created, and they are created by people with biases. they are so often just a tool of oppression, another extension of a discriminatory machine.

I hope it isn't derailing, but I think this is also really illustrated with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. "narcissist" was a word for an asshole before it was a word for a disorder. rather than describing how someone might struggle to relate to others or be open to true connection, and centering the person who needs to heal, they instead called everyone who struggles with that an irredeemable dick and dressed it up in medical expertise so you wouldn't think to question it. frankly I think it's silly to call for treating "narcissist" like some sacred medical term instead of looking at how fucked up it is that they called a disorder that???

WAP deemed the short story objectifying and anti-woman. Their problem was that Nestle had recounted her narrator “Joan” enjoying a butch/femme sex relationship with a male-passing Puerto Rican taxi driver (“Esther”) “whose lover was a prostitute.” Worse, Nestle had included brief mention of a dildo.

The feminists objected to the following (ostensibly vile and misogynist) sentences:

With extreme tenderness she laid me down…. I was trying so hard to be good for her … I turned to touch her, but she took my hand away from her breast. “Be a good girl,” she said. I knew I would have to work many months before Esther would allow me to find her wetness as she had found mine. The words, the language of my people, floated through my head—untouchable, stone butch.

I can scarcely believe that any “sisterhood” would seek to deplatform this text, which describes a transmasculine dyke with “hands like butterflies shaking with respect and need,” for misogyny. Yet in this period, anti-porn feminists “fought really dirty,” or so the leather-community feminist veteran Patrick Califia recalls. “They attacked anybody who argued with them as an advocate of violence against women, a child molester, or (gasp) a sadomasochist. They weren’t above calling employers, publishers, or dissertation committees to inform them of the ‘perverts’ in their midst.”

Nestle received a call to let her know “that if I write about butch-femme relationships in the past, I am O.K., but if I am writing about them now in any positive way, I am on the ‘enemy list’ … a ‘reactionary,’ ‘heterosexually-identified Lesbian,’ ‘believer in patriarchal sex.’”]

But for those who would say that “our” sex is literally under siege— as Lederer and Reisman said, in their crusade against female extinction—the effect is to justify any and all countermeasures. From inside the war room, those of us who persist in “seeking ecstasy on the battlefield” (as sex radicals Ellen DuBois and Linda Gordon put it in 1983) begin to look a bit like traitors to womankind. We are told it is wrong to imagine that one can taste any joyful, unalienated ways of embodying gender now, before the revolution. Or that, even if feminist heterosex is tastable, there’s no excuse for putting political focus there while the corpses of women are piling up.”]

I am the man. I suffered,

I was there.

-Whitman

Cutting - in my opinion, the most labor intensive part of the process. The amount of time/effort needed varies depending on the pattern and if seam allowance is included or marked separately, but no matter what this process can not be done by machine. Each and every panel and piece of fabric that goes into a garment must be cut by hand by a person.

Pinning/clipping - pinning (or clipping) is the stage at which you align the pieces you are going to be stitching together and hold them together with — you guessed it! — either pins or clips. This can not be done by machine.

Stitching - the actual sewing. This can be done by a sewing machine, but that machine still needs to be operated by a human being.

Ironing/pressing - two words that mean the same thing. The iron itself is a machine, but once again, it needs to be operated by a human being.

Finishing - depending on the technique you use, there are certain finishing techniques that can only be done by hand. But, let’s assume we’re talking about fast fashion, which is usually just finished with a simple overlock/serger. Once again: these machines need to be operated by people.

These are just the basic steps to making a garment, and don’t include textile arts that I am not as knowledgeable about, such as weaving, knitting, and crochet. Also, it is important to note that there are a lot of things that can only be done by hand, such as certain stitches and decorative techniques.

Also, the machinery being operated in textile factories is not equivalent to a domestic sewing machine. We’re talking about one of these guys:

See that gray cylinder under the table, behind the knee pedal? That’s the motor. These machines can sew through your fingers bones and all and not even stop. The people in these factories and sweatshops are operating heavy machinery, and are subject to all the risk that comes with that in addition to all of the work I mentioned above.