Beverage Enjoyer

frankly i think a LOT of "picky eaters" have some kind of sensory problems– autistic or allistic– and shame is never useful. i don't fucking care how annoying you think we are. if you've never lived through the humiliation of being the only one not eating at a dinner table, or having to choke down something disgusting you already know you hate because other people insist you don't know your own body, or getting a hunger migraine in a house full of food because none of its edible to you? you don't understand how awful it is to have food issues.

whenever i see people draw this distinction between being "just a picky eater" and "having a real problem" all i think is, who does this serve? most people don't even know ARFID exists. there are so many undiagnosed autistics, or just people with a variety of issues that aren't officially diagnosed. why do we need a medical label in order to be treated with respect and compassion? why did i need to be diagnosed as autistic for my family to realize the abuse they put me through for years because of my eating habits?

it's such an easy habit for neglected groups to fall into– the idea that a medical diagnosis can save us. that by appealing to the medical/psychiatric industry, we can be protected from abuse and given basic respect and resources. but the truth is that it should never have come to this in the first place. dignity doesn't come from an abled doctor telling you that there's a medical reason for your symptoms. it comes from being a person. once you accept that you need a Good Reason to have your needs respected, you doom yourself to neglecting and abusing those who have your same struggles because they aren't lucky enough to access medical recognition.

like this is genuinely fucking embarrassing for Y'ALL. if the fact that trans men have uteri and will talk about it and have feelings about it is this goddamn upsetting, go work on that yourself. i need y'all to reflect on why you love hallucinating the worst possible intentions when it comes to anything and everything a trans man does. this is so extremely a non-issue y'all just want to be an issue because the idea of trans men doing anything but quietly pretending to be cis men with extra steps triggers your internalized anti-transmasculinity.

not a single trans person on EARTH needs ANYONE'S permission to feel any kind of way about their sexed traits. not trans women or nonbinary with their penises, not trans men or nonbinary with uteruses, nobody. "its bioessentialist" TO HAVE?????? AN ORGAN YOU WERE BORN WITH AND WHICH IS HIGHLY STIGMATIZED AND SO HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT IT YOU EXPRESS THROUGH ART??????????????????? oh cry me a goddamn river. you know what you are soooo right let's ban every trans man from ever talking about having a uterus or abortion or pregnancy, because its kind of bioessentialist and transmisogynistic to talk about the highly stigmatized body you have!!!!!!!!!

to quote a person in the notes' very shitty defense of why this tattoo is "bioessentialist":

The replies on this post are absolutely full of trans men defending the bioessentialist back tat. Because it’s been buried in sealioning and mansplaining, I’ll say it again: if a trans woman got a tattoo like this depicting any of her cagab’s reproductive organs, she’d be put on a sex offender registry (or perhaps a kiwifarms thread). You people KNOW this tattoo looks terfy. It’s impossible to ignore. And that’s why you need to tie yourselves in knots to pretend it isn’t.

that a trans woman would get shit on for having a tattoo of her genitals (which i would also defend btw. i think trans women should Also be allowed to have art about their sex traits on their body, i don't think art of penises should be seen as inherently evil or disgusting) is irrelevant to why this tattoo is supposedly so bad. "trans women couldn't do this!!!" okay? that's unfair but it is, i cannot express this enough, not this guy's fucking problem.

i am Positive that there are cis people who would also freak the fuck out about this and bitch and moan and make a big transphobic stink about it, too. i don't know if you guys have noticed, but anytime a company dares to put top surgery scars on any kind of advertising, people have a meltdown over "celebrating the mutilation of young girls." transphobes are not normal about trans men either!

"people KNOW this tattoo looks terfy" i think ceding the grounds of ANY art made of one of the most stigmatized and controlled organs in a human body to TERFs is fucking stupid and misogynistic! & i also know if a cis woman did this y'all would not care even half as much, because you are all just swept up in the queer community's most recent Crabs In A Bucket discourse and you jump at ANY chance to paint trans men as evil transmisogynists rubbing their uteri in poor trans women's faces by virtue of. checks notes. talking about having their ability to have an abortion legally denied which can in fact kill people.

i do not know how to tell you people this any clearer

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

#I have a suspicion that a lot of people think aotearoa is a lot smaller than it actually is #I think there's a tendency especially for europeans and east-coast americans to think of it as 'a small island off of australia' #which like #it's small compared to australia #but most countries are small compared to australia #aotearoa has a greater area than the entire united kingdom #it also spans about 15° of latitude #which is 50% more than england #and also more than any US state except Alaska

"off of australia" is also a bit misleading; the distance looks small on a map, but that's because your brain is comparing it to the entire pacific ocean on the other side.