That Thing in The Woods

💔 My children deserve a chance to live with dignity.

Every day, I struggle to provide food, clothing, and basic necessities for my children. Seeing them face hardship and uncertainty breaks my heart.

Your support, no matter how small, can help bring hope, comfort, and a smile back to their faces.

🙏 Please consider donating or sharing our story. Thank you for standing with my children during these difficult times. ❤️ #Gaza #SupportMyChildren

Please donate $10 to help me and my children live and provide for their needs.

fuck racism, shoutout to romani people

You get told a lot as a man “real men do or don’t do xyz”. I’ve even experienced this as a trans man.

but the “real man” is an impossible standard to achieve. He doesn’t exist. He’s a mythical being to strive towards. You will never be him and trying to be him will trap you in a cage.

People struggle with understanding what masculinity is because of what you said: They confuse masculinity with violence. Namely, they confuse the condition of "being a man" with the condition of "being a warrior."

A man is many things. He's a father, a son, a brother, a best friend, a lover, a thinker, a doer, and a dreamer. He can be goofy and serious, passionate and bored, courageous and cowardly. He can live a quiet life and an adventurous one. But most importantly, he can change how he expresses himself whenever he pleases.

A warrior can't do these things.

War is a theater that asks people "Are you a soldier, or are you a civilian?" You can determine this by looking at people's behavior: Who is fighting, and who is running/hiding/trying to stay safe?

While someone can do a mix of these things, there's a very clear line between "warrior" and "not warrior" when it comes to who gets sent to the battlefields. Warriors are trained to fight. Warriors are conditioned with a specific mindset. Warriors have certain skills, know certain protocols, and operate within a specific environment. Most of all, warriors react to situations in very strict, impersonal, and calculated ways. There's no room for personal expression, there's no place for unconventional ideas, and there's absolutely no getting overwhelmed with emotion. You respond with your training so you and your comrades don't die. That's it.

Now the question is: Why did we conflate our definition of "being a man" with the definition of "being at war"? Personally, I think the World Wars had something to do with it.

Before the Wars, a man was a man because he was a gentleman: He was civil and good-mannered. He knew how to exercise his education. He was articulate, expressive, social, well-behaved, and interested in human cooperation. This is what made him masculine as opposed to his unmanly opposite—an oaf. (Think of the cultured and successful Dr. Jekyll and the slovenly and impulsive Mr. Hyde.)

But then the Wars came. Multiple generations of men went to the battlefield and experienced manhood as the condition of being a soldier. When the Wars ended, they brought this wartime experience of manhood back to the civilian world, passing it down to their children and grandchildren as a narrative of "what a man is and does."

Now we have a problem where we feel like we have to live in conflict-filled environments in order to feel like we're men. The wartime definition of masculinity is beholden to the presence of war. Without it, it's not possible for us to meet the standard that was handed down to us. It feels both unobtainable AND caging because it was created in an environment that no longer exists, and in ones famous for destroying the human spirit.

The men who went through the World Wars sacrificed being men so they could be warriors. They had to give up their ability to holistically express themselves and direct their own self-development in order to become the assets they needed to be. They didn't come back as whole people.

The world has become devoid of humanity; we live in suffering every day.

Please don't ignore me. I need your donation, even if it's small. No one has donated to me for many days. I'm in a difficult situation. Please😩💔.

I will be expelled from university and my studies will be interrupted Because I've been postponing my studies for over a year since I don't have enough money to pay university fees. 💔😭Please help me pursue my dream of studying; I don't want my school years to be wasted. 😩💔🙏🙏

Please donate to me via the link so we can raise the tuition fees and I can continue my studies and achieve my dream. 🙏🙏🙏🥹

An old comic I made in art school (14 years ago) about a papa and baby bear, as well as a neolithic human sacrifice

Protests and lawsuits from Native American tribes and other local groups stopped a graphite mining operation in South Dakota that was going forward without appropriate environment review.

The Trump administration is trying to strip public lands from the American people and hand them over to corporations and billionaires.

Under the guise of "reorganization," they're dismantling the U.S. Forest Service, relocating its headquarters, shutting down regional offices, and gutting the science our forests depend on.

This isn't efficiency. It's sabotage.

By making it harder for the agency to function, they're clearing the path to sell off lands that belong to all of us. We've seen this playbook before. We won't let it stand. We're organizing grassroots supporters, pressuring lawmakers, and sounding the alarm, but we need your help. Give now to protect our forests.

Defend the Forest Service from the Trump Administration’s Attacks