dude thats froggers

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1989. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

I used to prep, wash dishes, and cook at mellow mushroom. I had chronic pain that wasn't NEARLY as bad as it is today, but it was still very debilitating. I told my employer "i cannot stand more than 4 to 6 hours. I CANNOT do shifts longer than this due to my illness." And even though i made my boundaries VERY clear, everyday i worked it was 8 hours at the least and 10 or 12 at the most. I would go up to my manager and say "look i really need to leave, my shift is over, my chronic pain is killing me." And he'd say "we really need to here, you HAVE to push through." And so i did, and after one, ONE month of that job my crps got incredibly worse to the point where i could no longer walk my dog around the block which was .5 miles. I quit, and that was FOUR years ago, and ever since that day I HAVE BEEN BEDRIDDEN AND HAVE TO USE A WHEELCHAIR. It is my biggest regret in life.

My best friend who has seen my whole journey has recently developed undiagnosed chronic pain, and she is in the EXACT same scenario i was 4 years ago. Busting her ass at a pizza place with extreme pain that hurts her so much she tells me "im in so much pain i don't even feel like a person." She doesn't feel LUCID. And her manager and coworkers are saying the same thing "if you don't help us you will let us down, we'll be in the shit."

Abusive girls exist and what they’re doing is seen as like “badass tough don’t take no shit” but your girl should not hit you. Ever.

She should not demand for you to hand over your phone to look through.

She should not yell at you and humiliate you either alone or in front of people.

She shouldn’t make you distance yourself from your friends or family.

She shouldn’t scratch you or twist your arms.

She should not call you names.

She shouldn’t tell you ‘she’ll kill herself if you break up’

These are just a few examples of abuse and it’s just seen as okay when girls do it and god knows I’ve fallen victim to it a few times, but you shouldn’t have to.

Never worry about not being in a relationship. If they’re worth it, they won’t hurt you.

It was dismissed by others as her “being a strong and independent woman”

don’t take this shit. Break it off

immediately

I have seen cases where women beat the hell out of their boyfriend or husband and then called the cops on him for finally responding physically to stop her.

I have seen cases of women sexually abusing their boyfriends or husbands and insisting that he must have wanted it because he’s a man and his body physically responded.

I have seen cases of financial abuse where women leveraged traditional gender roles of men as providers and then drained accounts and disappeared.

I have seen a ridiculous amount of stalking behavior from women, harassment, and/or tracking and monitoring their male partners’ or exes every move.

I have seen cases of women using children as pawns and/or making false allegations to child protection agencies.

I have seen cases of especially white women enacting horrific racial abuse on their black, native, or latino male partners.

I have seen cases of women who are caretakers for their disabled male partners using that caretaker role to control, manipulate, and abuse them.

I have seen cases of mental, physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse of mothers or other female caretakers to their sons/other boys under their guardianship or care.

I have seen cases of cis women outing stealth trans male partners to their communities, resulting in targeted transphobic violence from those communities and from the state.

I have seen cases of women intentionally getting their sober/recovered male partners back into drugs or alcohol as a way to control them and make them dependent on her again, and I’ve also seen cases of tiny! frail-seeming! women using drugs and then viciously physically attacking their much larger and theoretically stronger male partners or relatives to the point of putting them in the hospital.

I’ve seen cases of severe mental, emotional, and/or spiritual abuse of men by women go completely unaddressed for years because he wasn’t believed or it was downplayed to such an extreme that he didn’t seek help.

I’ve seen cases where women intentionally stopped taking birth control like they’d agreed upon as a couple in advance to force a permanent co-parenting relationship on their male partners.

And yeah! So many of these women showed up and tried to pretend that they were the real victim (against the great weight of the evidence) and/or that they were Strong Independent Girlbosses for doing this stuff.

This stuff happens to men, from women, all the time, and if it’s happened to you: 1) I’m sorry you had to go through that, and 2) the true promise of feminism is a world in which the victim’s gender does not determine whether or not they are believed or helped, and the abuser’s gender does not determine whether or not they are held accountable.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong and very possibly malicious.

I really like how the scientology speedrunning trend is developing, in this clip we see that the participants are

Not deterred by the closed door

Working as a group

Protecting their identities

Inflicting material costs to the institution via property destruction

Getting away at the end

The back panel of baby's first battle jacket is complete 🍅🏴☀️ Hand painted design plus some storebought iron on letters I eventually had to just sew on individually. @_@