depressed goblin nightmare boy

Asexual people getting to be open and talk about not wanting sex and never having sex is important in a world that tries constantly to sell sex to us as an inevitable activity

Disabled people fighting for the right to marry is important in a world that holds life-saving benefits hostage and prevents one from marrying

Women fighting for the right to divorce or to never marry is important in a world that pushes women into a subordinate role of "wife"

Ex-Religious people fighting for the right to leave a religion or not be forced to convert to a religion is important in a world that subjects everyone to predatory missionary work

Religious people fighting for the right to practice their religion and do so openly is important in a world that prioritized religions over one another--often Christianity but not always

And you could substitute many more things into this. Young people fight to not be infantilized by authority, but they also in some areas fight to not be adultified. Some people have to fight so hard for a variety of reasons to be able to grow out their hair. Some people have to fight so hard to be able to cut it. Some fight to be allowed to wear coverings, some fight to be allowed to wear nothing. Some fight to be left alone, some fight to get the care they need. Some fight to be able to leave, some fight to be able to stay.

None of these comparable fights are opposed to one another, because the fight isn't about the specific thing, it is all about the same thing: autonomy.

Someone's fight to wear a dress is someone's fight to wear pants is someone's fight to live alone is someone's fight to live with someone is someone's fight to be left alone by medical institutions is someone's fight to be able to medically alter their body.

It is the same fight. People who want the opposite for themselves that I want for me are my siblings. We want the exact same thing: the choice to be who we want, how we want, on our terms.

A lot of us were raised with the idea that “its normal for wives/children to get hit! it helps them learn– only white folk don’t get beaten when they misbehave”. That’s not true, white people aren’t the only ones who deserve a safe and abuse free environment. Black and brown people can and do have loving families. 

Q. You want to raise every boy as a girl? Yes.

Q. Why? A boy will learn to hate girls as long as he is raised in such a way where he is treated as better, and superior to, his girl peers, whenever he is cruel to girls. So, instead, we raise boys as girls.

Q. What if they say they are not a girl, and want to be acknowledged as boy? Then you know they are a boy, so you must make sure to understand them as boy, and not a girl.

Q. What does it mean to be 'raised as a girl'? That's up for you to decide. The only difference is that you should not raise boys any differently than you raise girls, since you raise every boy as a girl.

Q. Girls and boys are raised in specific ways for specific purposes, so it does not make sense to raise boys as girls. If you raise every boy as a girl, then there is no being which is not raised as a girl, so anyone raised as a girl necessarily must learn to do anything and everything to grow up, without restrictions on tasks, labours, or interests.

Q. But boys and girls are different. All two girls are different, and raising girls in one specific way destroys this individuality in favour of moulding girls to serve the same master. Still, the girls resist to live life on their own terms. If girls can be raised such that they know they can do anything they want, including not being girls, so too will boys raised as girls.

Q. Why not raise every girl as a boy? Because if a girl does not exist among boys, then the girl is made.

Q. Why not raise girls and boys as themselves? The self must be made in a world where girls and boys can first and foremost be themselves. One step towards this goal is to raise every boy as a girl.

Q. The way people raise girls is cruel, so why would you raise boys with that cruelty? If you raise girls with cruelty, then you should stop being cruel to girls.

as i understand it the core point being made here is challenging the concept of "raising a child as a gender" entirely by going straight to the misogyny that is fundamental to patriarchal gender. to me this suggests "raise boys as girls" is about raising boys to identify with girls, rather than to develop an identity as a boy around opposition to girls. this is not being depicted as simply "genderless parenting" because it is making a specific point about misogyny & its role in gender socialization and identity formation. to deviate from patriarchal demands of masculinity is to become associated with femininity / girls regardless of intention or actual intentional performance of femininity (what i assume is meant by "a girl is made"). rather than trying to pursue an almost apolitical gender neutrality that fails because it doesn't engage with the role misogyny plays in preserving patriarchal gender as a whole, gender neutrality is presented as synonymous with identifying with girls, as under patriarchy the entire construction of gender is built (not exclusively but fundamentally) through sexism that is both oppositional (exorsexist) and traditional (misogynistic).

the point is that raising a girl should not involve cruelty, or stereotype, or stigmatization, and boys should be encourage to feel no shame or identity conflict in identifying as the same kind of being as girls. so its a purposeful act of provocation to say "boys should be raised as girls" which to me sends the message that challenging misogyny and challenging the construction of gender itself are the same project. and that being (raised as) a girl should not mean anything other than being raised as a whole person, as part of a community of whole people.

I had trouble understanding this part, so I reframed it in my head as:

"Because if [the other] does not exist... then [the other] is made."

Which might not be exactly what this is going for, but it helped me understand it a little more, at least from one angle.

It's actually two separate things:

Masculinity is understood in a hierarchy. Under this system, there is no masculinity without a Highest Ranked Man and a Lowest Ranked Man (LRM). All men must jockey at all times in every group of men to be, at least, not the LRM.

All similarly-classed men are above all similarly-classed women in this system. All white men are above all white women, etc. Because men are understood to only exist in hierarchy, and because all men in a group are above all women from the same group, to be the LRM is to sit on the boundary between Man and Woman. The LRM might as well be a woman. (There is homophobia in this as well, but let's keep it simple for the moment.)

Therefore, the easiest way to not be the LRM is to make another man into the woman of the group. From this we get insults which denigrate men by accusing them of womanhood. You throw like a girl, it's feminine to wash your ass, etc.

Boys have already been taught this behavior by being raised as boys, that is, as beings whose socially-constructed gender demands an internal hierarchy which is always at war with every other member of itself for the purposes of establishing hierarchy.

Therefore, this problem is not fixed by raising girls as boys.

The problem is fixed by raising all children such that their gender is not dependent upon an internal hierarchy.

A young woman is imprisoned in a castle by a monstrously formed prince. The servants of the castle hope for them to fall in love, and when the spell is broken they assume their prayers have been answered. They are all surprised, but nonetheless pleased, when it is revealed to them that the young woman and prince are the truest of friends, and nothing more.

They say the kingdom is ruled by an evil queen, a woman who is incapable of loving. She is unmarried, she has no consorts, and she wishes for no partner. She is the wretched queen, the heartless queen. She must hate her daughter, for her daughter is beautiful, and women are incapable of liking another woman who’s prettier than themselves. It must be for this reason that the princess was sent away, not for how she was attacked by a man in the woods. They say the kingdom is ruled by an evil queen because she cannot love. The queen loves her daughter, and that is enough for them both.

There lives a prince who is forced to choose a bride at the ball. He meets many beautiful women, but find none which he loves. He spies one in a gorgeous gown and wonder in her eyes, and he dances with her all night long. The kingdom is sure he has found his bride. When the clock strikes midnight he tells her how he will never love a woman, or a man, in the way he is expected to. The beautiful woman smiles and tells him she expects nothing from him. The next morning the prince and the beautiful woman are missing, having run off together to see the world. They leave their shoes behind in their haste.

exist. It doesn’t all have

to be romantic.

[Q: Why did you decide to do this experiment?

A: Snake behavior has been generally neglected as a field of research, especially in Brazil. And most studies don’t examine what factors make them want to bite. If you study malaria, you can research the parasite that causes the disease—but if you don’t study the mosquito that carries it, you will never solve the problem. Up until now, the popular wisdom was that the jararaca would only attack if you touched it or stepped on it. But that was not what we found.

Q: Why did you need to be the victim?

A: The best way to do this research is to put snakes and a human together. In this case, the human was me. We put the snakes inside a ring on the floor of our lab until they got used to it, then I stepped in wearing special protective boots. I stepped close to the snake and also lightly on top of it. I didn’t put my whole weight on my foot, so I did not hurt the snakes. I tested 116 animals and stepped 30 times on every animal, totaling 40,480 steps.]

I have a friend I know from when we were both 6. She is the only person living nearby and so she saw me go from walking through limping to wheelchair on a daily basis. I keep her updated on my health even tho we rarely hang out anymore. She was gonna come over yesterday and I had to cancel. She asked if I can’t hang out later that day. When I said i won’t feel better later, that if I feel that bad in the morning later will only get worse she got annoyed and “joked” that I’m just finding excuses. And I was surprised, she knows all about me being disabled after all? So, a bit taken aback, I told her it’s a normal thing for me.

“But you got the diagnosis now, aren’t you better?? I thought you’ll get better now”

free-to-use “the only ship that is bad is censorship” badge

—> “proship & proud” badge

sometimes I’m reminded that there are still people who don’t know ao3 was literally created by incest shippers — and the site’s sole purpose is to 1. be completely against censorship and 2. host all kinds of dark, taboo fics that are banned on other platforms — and the first ever fic that was posted on ao3 was a fic about an incest ship from supernatural.

you are in the house that was created by freaks. for freaks (affectionate). every disgusting thing you can think of is rightfully allowed and welcomed on ao3, because they are exactly the reasons why ao3 was created in the first place.

ao3 was created because its creators got tired of censorship, they got tired of dark and taboo fics getting banned on pro-censorship platforms, and they wanted a place that was safe for ALL FICS THAT WERE DARK AND TABOO.

ao3’s main principle is being against censorship and being proship / profic.

there are some things in fiction that make me uncomfortable, but instead of shaming people who are just minding their own business and not harming anyone in real life, I choose to curate my own internet experience by blocking/muting what I don’t want to see. ao3 has excellent tagging system, so instead of being rude, instead of asking why the world doesn’t revolve around your personal comfort, use their tagging system properly and you won’t see the things you don’t want to see.

it’s your job to curate what you see. it’s not other people’s jobs or responsibilities to censor themselves for your personal comfort. the world does not revolve around you.

also you cannot censor “only the things you personally hate” without expecting everything else, that isn’t of conservative beliefs, to be censored too. because censorship is a slippery slope and a fascist tool. I promise you there are people who think “why do tags for queer love even exist on ao3? they’re grooming children”.

if you allow the things that you hate to be censored — because someone with enough power gets to control what other people can and cannot create/consume, it will not stop at the things that you hate.