poorly disguised android

social ergonomics should mean looking at social structures and analyzing the outcomes they have re: human welfare, and then taking that information back to the design board and redesigning things to hurt people less.

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

We just hit 12,000 responses! 😁🎉

This is a few thousand fewer than usual by this stage, and I'm not sad about it because 12,000 is SO MANY. I do have some theories.

I have been busy! I have had some important life admin, and also I've been trying to give more time to social stuff during the Gender Census just to avoid the hyperfocus downsides.

The new survey provider (Tally) is an LLM-filled façade of work displacement that I've had to pour my scarce time and energy into mitigating after the point-of-no-return and I'm a bit worried about the fallout regarding data quality and also quantity.

Bit stressed about that second one!!!!

BUT the survey is going, and as always the responses are epic and fascinating, and the more the merrier. I am hoping that I've run into all the problems I'm going to run into and done everything I can about them, and now I will be free to concentrate on promotion again.

All of your help with promotion is very much appreciated! Here is the end-of-survey page with all the social sharing links and whatnot. Remember that person last year who put a QR code in a queer venue's unisex toilet? Let's bring that energy, folks. Surprise me!!!

They do this halfway in Whiterun by throwing in the Drunken Huntsman, but then weirdly keep that tavern fairly empty except for Jenassa in the corner. And Nazeem sleeps there, for some reason. But the Huntsman just doesn't have enough people in it to make it a convincing alternative to the Bannered Mare.

Solitude would definitely have a high-class tavern in addition to The Winking Skeever, and Markarth should have something in the middle tier as a cheaper alternative to the Silver-Blood Inn.

And you need to start over, wipe their memories and give them a true chance. Because they deserve that, right? A good world! That's what it's all about, isn't it? I mean, imagine if there was no second draft! Imagine if you'd run a death empire for 10,000 years, knowing how awful it is, for purely strategic reasons, and then failed to reach the finish line. Imagine leaving the universe in that state. Imagine if you had to accept that all the suffering and cruelty you've deployed wasn't temporary.

Thankfully, that's not going to happen. Because all of this was done for them, so they can start anew. They can do it without you! “I saved the world once—but not for me.” You never deserved it anyway. You'll never be free from knowing what happened—a lot of it you made happen, or you couldn't help making happen, it doesn't matter—and how much blood is in your hands—but they don't have to know! You've been gifted an heir, and you've gifted her a Māori name. She doesn't understand yet, but in time… They can have a beautiful second chance. It's what you wish you'd had. And you've suffered for so long to give this to everybody. The next Resurrection, it will finally be perfect. They don't have to remember—these shitty lives, what you put them through and what you let them do, and what they chose to do and had to live with. Forgiveness not so hard, nor anger long; / our graves will be less deep, our lies less true. You'll fix everything. You loved them so much, you love them despite what they've become under you, you'll never deserve them, you'll love them “until the end of time, until there is nothing left” of you “but the remnant atoms of the God and man who loved” them. They loved you and followed you and you got them killed. And they have caused so much pain in your name, afterwards, but it was necessary—you'll bear that burden “until the universe contracts in on itself and wipes clean what they did, and makes blank such an indelible stain”.

Which it will. You're doing this for them. You'll pay back your debt. It's what's best for everyone. It's what they deserve, what you always owed them. You have to deliver. You were chosen to change, and you fucked it up, and you're wrong, and don't you know it—but what they don't know, and they're lucky they don't know it, is that it won't have mattered, you'll make it not matter—they might be horrified if they knew, sure, but they don't know, that's your burden again—these lives they've lead are your mistake. They wouldn't understand because they can't remember… and they can't remember because they wouldn't understand… When you take it away, they'll get something better. I mean, you couldn't live with yourself if this was all for real.

Thankfully, it won't be. You have to make sure it was all worth it. It will have been worth it. Right?

But it's certainly also him not wanting to get attached to this run because he's long since decided to reset it once he's done. It's also intentionally leaning into things he hates and letting things get worse so that he'll feel all the more compelled to go through with his reset in the end, and him being unable to imagine any future for himself except one where "everyone we loved has gone or fled." It's also that he's been suicidal since before the apocalypse and wishes the nun had just killed him instead of herself, but he has a job to finish first.

And even with all of that from both sides, it's interesting how much Māori culture does still exist in the Houses, some in a straightfoward way, some in a warped and bastardized way. Cover art can be shaky as evidence, so you can argue whether or not Ninth facepaint does have some patterns that resemble moko, but there's that as one of the first things anyone picking up the series will ever see. There's the way traditional Māori burial practices involved burying the body or placing it in a sacred hidden place (such as the Tomb) for a time and then later exhuming it to clean the bones, sometimes paint them, and put them on display for another round of mourning, and then we look at the painted bones lining every inch of the Mithraem. There's the green and silver fern leaves spread over the path when everyone arrives at Canaan. There are several moments where characters press foreheads together for comfort, including Jeannemary and Isaac breathing in unison for one of them, and I have to wonder if that's evolved from the hongi. And certainly debatable, but I've started to wonder if John's crown isn't a Roman laurel at all, but pare kawakawa, a Māori mourning wreath. (Bonus if it has the traditional heart-shaped leaves in the horrors of love series.)

And then there's the more past-focused and meta stuff. John having been taught about Te Punga long before the Southern Cross and still liking that better (but still saying Southern Cross first as an adult). John being framed as a dangerous nut even when all he'd done was offer people free healing, before he'd ever committed a real crime, when the New Zealand government has a history of suppressing and targeting Māori healers. Even "I saved the world once, but not for me" and the way that echoes Frodo in LotR when the movies had such an impact on tourism and Māori actors were only allowed to play orcs. There's the way John making Alecto's body is a mix of God making Adam and Eve but also Tāne making Hineahuone from the soil. There's the constant emphasis on John looking ordinary, plain, normal, ordinary and the fact that the word "māori" when not a proper noun means exactly that; it's the mundane as distinct from the spiritual, tangata māori means "normal person" or "human being" (and bonus wai māori means freshwater as distinct from saltwater).

If you are scared of something, do it anyway. If you feel anxious, you must do things that make you scared. Get out of your comfort zone. Tell your fears they are wrong. Act as though you are not afraid. Ignore, ignore, ignore, silence, silence, silence.

It hurt me-- it is a horrible psychological weight to carry for a child to be certain that she will suffer unbearably over and over and that she will never deserve sympathy or compassion for it-- but it is also fundamentally incurious and disconnected.

If your body expresses something that is inconvenient or hard to understand, just silence and ignore it, because the things the body wants are wrong and the things the body communicates are false.

Look, I got to thinking about this when reading scientific articles about nutrition.

So much research is conducted about why people eat foods that are Wrong and Bad. But the research is conducted around an already-known truth, like a tree that has grown around a metal fence: people eat wrong and bad food because people like pleasure and avoid discomfort, and "bad" foods are pleasurable whereas healthy foods are not.

I feel a hole big enough for the wind to howl through: the joyful table, the raw ecstasy of staining my fingers with raspberries in the thicket, the peaceful bubbling of soup on the stove, salsa canned from vegetables in our garden. Stir-fried wild mushrooms, pawpaws messily devoured in the woods, the fragrance of soil and green and growing things. Curry powder. Smoked paprika. Ginger. Allspice. Garlic and onions hitting a hot pan. Nourishment. Connection. Caretaking. Safety. Pleasure. Pleasure.

Why does nobody ask, What is the goodness of food? What makes food good? Why does nobody say, Let's explore and study that goodness. Let's understand it deeply. Let's investigate the pleasure we feel, the condition of satisfaction of the things our bodies crave and need, the sense of belonging and interconnectedness that is present when good food is shared among friends. What does it mean to be nourished? To be satisfied? To feel peacefulness and comfort in the act of eating?

Comfort must be one of the least understood things in the world. No one is curious about the secrets it may hold.

Why was I burdened with the obligation to get over my fear and never encouraged to explore what would it mean to feel safe?

The goal of the therapy and medications was clear, to get my fear to a manageable enough level that I could "function" "normally." Safety was not part of it, the feeling or the reality.

The physiological functions and maladaptive thought patterns of fear were exhaustively discussed and explained to me. They only talked to me about the fear. How to ignore it. How to dominate it. How to force the physiological process of it to stop. How to manage it. How to understand and confound its patterns.

No one talked to me about safety. How it unfolded in the body. What it felt like. How to recognize when I was feeling it.

It was an attitude of profound incuriosity. I was never prompted or encouraged to ask, and no one else in the world seemed to ask: What does it mean for a person to feel safe? What does it feel like when I am safe? What things create that condition of safety? What are my safety needs? How is safety felt in my body? What can my body tell me about what I need to feel safe?

It is this flat, dull insistence that forcing oneself into what causes pain and discomfort automatically orients one in the direction of growth, whereas comfort and pleasure provide no information or guidance.

There is a very abundant supply of such articles and a recent one especially annoyed the hell out of me because it (without actually mentioning the idea of disability) repeatedly alluded to accommodating a kid's sensory issues as example of parents being too permissive or failing to teach kids to tolerate discomfort.

That's bullshit because being in tune with your own needs and discomforts sensory wise is so fucking important for being able to adapt and function in the world.

Like, just an example, I got rid of almost every piece of clothing I own that was polyester or a polyester blend and just doing that dramatically improved my life and gave me more ability to cope with stressors, because I figured out that a lot of my sensory issues with clothes came from bad temperature regulation and the scratchy pills that polyester blends make.

"Discomfort tolerance" has never been super helpful as a concept for me. I have no problem tolerating discomfort in the sense of like, not doing anything about the thing that's hurting me. It's just that if I do it for too long, I can't think straight and process what's happening around me and I eventually become so fatigued it feels like I've got a fever, or else become uncontrollably angry.

I think "discomfort curiosity" is way better concept. You feel uncomfortable. What is the feeling like? Where in your body do you feel it? What does your body urge you to do about it? When does it start? What is it responding to? What about that thing makes you feel that way? Feel it...Experiment with it...Dabble in it...Play with it. I say curiosity because curiosity is so closely related to fear and to some extent, disgust. Curiosity is a frontier zone between repulsion and fascination.

Curiosity is an instinct that encourages us toward unfamiliar things, not away from them. It is part of a large landscape of feelings where away-instincts and toward-instincts are blended together.

I think of the difference between curiosity and fear to be like the difference between solitude and loneliness, or like excitement and apprehension. Or, think of exploring an eerie abandoned place, one of the "liminal spaces" the internet speaks of. The place is "eerie" which is closely related to fear, but the "eerieness" shades into becoming a positive stimulus that our instincts are drawn toward. Liminal spaces, for those of us that enjoy them, are "creepy," but they are also "nice" at the same time. And the "creepiness" is part of the "niceness."

And curiosity is sensitivity. It allows for openness and playfulness toward the unknown.

Many humans' relationships with their own urges and instincts are based on domination and punishment. Tyranny over the body by the mind. The goal is to absorb without shock and endure without indulging the urge to seek relief, to reduce your attunement to your body.

But the ability to be "less controlled by" your body's urges is not positive, because your body is providing information about what your needs are. I find that the ability to make reasoned decisions about how and when and why to persist through something painful requires a deeper attunement to the body's instincts, not a greater ability to ignore them.

Stop treating your bodies like they're animals in a cruel experiment to be shocked with electricity until they lay on the floor whimpering in helplessness. It doesn't help.

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It's open until 19th July 2026, and it's open to anyone whose gender(s) (or lack thereof) defy the restrictive binary of male/female.

Reblog for SCIENCE~~~