It's a Privilege to Know Me

I am all for holding men accountable. I do think we should call out petty, controlling, abusive behavior, and I do think men should face consequences for these behaviors.

Because it is important that these men face consequences, it is important to teach people — men who have gotten away without so much as a slap on the wrist, women who enable these behaviors, girls who are told that it is okay to be treated this way, impressionable boys developing their sense of morals — that it is not okay to behave this way.

But the second we start insinuating that these traits are inherently masculine, innate male behaviors, we throw that progress away.

It's true that these behaviors are more common in men, but not for biological reasons. It's because these behaviors have been labeled as acceptable, these behaviors have been encouraged. Which is why it is crucial to say "no, this is not okay, this is unacceptable, and there are consequences to doing this."

When you reduce it biological explanations, you give these behaviors a pass. You're saying, whether you mean to or not, that men are behaving as men do, because they're men, and this is how they operate. Which means that these behaviors are acceptable by virtue of being uncontrollable. That's just how men are. They can't help themselves. It's up to everyone around them to protect themselves, because men are just giving in to their nature.

A well trained dog can be taught to wait patiently if you put a steak on the ground, and not take it without permission. If a dog can do it, so can anyone.

I don't live in a walkable city.

I live in a mid-sized Texas town that only realizes that there are people who don't drive when TXDoT gives them money for active transportation infrastructure.

People constantly tell me that you just cannot walk or ride a bike in this city. It's impossible!

I do it anyway, because I firmly believe that solarpunk is a useless aesthetic if you aren't living it as best you can. We don't need technology to solve our problems we need will.

Also I do volunteer work on the political side of the local animal shelter and so I find myself at city hall several times a year and there's no bike rack.

Or rather there wasn't a bike rack.

I complained to someone, politely, informing them that I am doing this volunteer work and I don't have any safe place to lock my bike and that locking it to a handrail is inconvenient for everyone and also hideous.

A few months later a single staple-style bike rack was installed at city hall. It's not much, but I got sent a photo of someone else who got to use it before I did, clearly there was a need, if small.

Then I turned my gaze to the local grocery store, which had a bike rack, but the bike rack was terrible. It was too short for modern tire sizes, it was placed too close to the wall so one side was useless, and it was generally pretty cramped.

It took some time, but an advocate friend told me to contact the property owner instead of banging my head against the wall contacting HEB itself, and so I sent another polite complaint with a photo, explaining why it wasn't a very good bike rack and it would be really cool if we had a different one with better placement.

And about two months later, we have new staple-style racks at the grocery store, properly placed for maximum parking.

It's not a new bike lane. It's not a removal of parking minimums. It's not infill development or an active transportation advisory board.

They're just bike racks.

But that's the beauty of it. I, a person with an email address, some basic "how to be firm but polite while making an argument" skills, and a willingness to work out who to contact, fixed two problems for the local community. Trust me, I have had people wait on me to unlock my bike so they could have the "good spot." I was not the only person annoyed at the old rack.

It can be done. You're not powerless. Solarpunk doesn't have to be a wishful aesthetic.

Technology will not save us.

So piracy is at worst not even a problem, and at best it's free advertisement.

Source: (the link to the actual study is in the article)

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but I'm hearing there's a NSFW-friendly ko-fi alternative built on atproto that's actively in the works, and being vetted by lawyers right now. as torrent-princess (OP) says, you should be able to swap out payment processors while keeping your account intact. this matters since even if stripe removes support, you'll still have a shop and all of your links intact. (ATproto is an infrastructure that bsky is built on, but is far bigger than bsky with far more opportunities.)

additionally, the Free Speech Coalition is working on a credit union specifically for adult work (including kink art) - here's the link so you can add your interest & support. Since this will be built by sex workers, there'll be far less risk of being debanked for spurious and puritanical reasons.

on a domain TLD level, there's an initiative here for a .furry domain built from the ground up by seasoned furries; it's unclear whether they'll support NSFW, but it's yet another promising turn of events for a group that's been similarly affected by censorship.