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Grammar for a native speaker doesn’t have to be taught. It’s the fundamental rule system that allows you to compose meaningful utterances. Any sentence you can understand has correct grammar. So:

“I have green coat.” = correct grammar

“I have going will.” = incorrect grammar

The rules we’re taught in school aren’t grammar rules, they’re style rules, which means they’re not rules, they’re conventions, and conventions are just fads. So:

“I have a green coat.” = good style, no editor would flag

“I have green coat.” = dubious style in formal prose for hundreds of years, editor would flag

“Non-standard” dialects aren’t just bastardized versions of the “standard” dialect, they have their own grammars with rule-sets just as complex as those of any other language. Also, the standard dialects didn’t come first. Examples:

If you say “I done go to the store,” you’re not saying “I went to the store” incorrectly. AAVE has its own tense system that goes right over the heads of SAE speakers, who rarely know that “I done go” actually means something more like SAE’s “I have just gone” (recent past perfect).

If you say “We was a-goin’,” you are not degrading the proper English phrase “We were going,” you’re using a dialect that preserves grammatical features of standard 16th-century English that modern standard dialects have lost: plural subject with singular past-tense verb, and a-prefix, both of which you can find all over fancy Elizabethan literature. (“Ain’t” is also an older form that dropped out of some dialects but stuck around in others.)

In short: every dialect has just as complex and consistent a grammar as any other.

THE COCOAPUFF GIRLS

So about this project. For awhile now I’ve noticed almost every single time I see a darker skinned black woman “going viral”, she’s half naked, oiled up, and/or sexualized in some way shape or form. It’s very rarely ever “Look at this amazing dark skinned woman who accomplished this thing.” Or “Look at her smile, she’s gorgeous”.  Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying. There is nothing wrong with darker women and black women in general being free and expressive about their sexuality and provocative features. BUT that is NOT ALL they are. They are so much more than sexual beings, but for some reason, that seems to be almost the only thing that grabs viral appreciation. So here’s my attempt to have darker skinned black women go viral for just being cute, creative, stylish, bubbly, beautiful, and black. Aside from the videographer EVERYONE involved in this project IS A BLACK WOMAN. I hope you guys like it. I ask that if you enjoyed this and agree with my objective, share it with a few people please.

A special thank you to @aggienes, I couldn’t have done this without her.

and, yeah, i am defending straight women here. like… it’s not funny or just pitiable that every time they develop feelings for men and act on them they risk severe violence (physical or otherwise) from their oppressors. the idea that one of the most pure feelings in the world (love) is an inherent risk for women of all sexualities isn’t like… funny or a race to prove how your love is more work. loving men? is a huge fucking risk when it comes to things like domestic violence, being forced to take on domestic labor, and just about all the other shit that comes with being with men. loving women? is a huge fucking risk when it comes to homophobic violence and other forms of discrimination.

Vaginal Thrush

Menorrhagia

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Fibroids

Add in fibromylgia, which affects 8x as many women as men, as well as lupus (and almost any other autoimmune condition), systemic exertion intolerance disorder (SEID), iron deficiency anæmia (all of which affect more women than men), and you have well over 25% of childbearing-age women globally living with chronic pain and tiredness.

Chronic pain is overwhelmingly experienced by women, and women are less likely to be taken seriously or given treatment by medical professionals. I went through two years of diagnostics to finally find out I had occipital neuralgia; I felt doubted when I described my pain at every step of the way, but was lucky to have a partner who was persistent in helping me get treatment.

This is why if you get pregnant your doctor will take you off basically any and all medication you’re taking (including mental health medication, can’t imagine any implications/dire consequences there), not because they know it will have an adverse affect on the foetus but because they have no idea. How wonderfully kind of them to prioritise the health and life of an unborn foetus over that of a living person, let’s just hope they don’t become ill whilst pregnant. How charmingly logical it is that they wouldn’t even bother to test drugs in people with a uterus because it’s all too difficult and gosh, darn what an ethical conundrum we’ve been faced with, let’s just not! Which is so in the spirit of capital S, Science!  

Take menstrual cramps, for example. Everybody knows that cramps are a normal part of menstruation, and that virtually all people who menstruate experience them throughout their lives, right?

Except that’s not right at all.

Yes, it’s true that about two-thirds of individuals who menstruate begin to experience menstrual pain during adolescence, but it’s basically a side effect of puberty, and normally subsides by your late teens. Only about 20-40% of menstruating adults experience menstrual pain on a regular basis - and according to some estimates, as much as 80% of that figure is due to undiagnosed endometriosis or some other underlying medical condition.

Yeah, roll those numbers around in your head: if you’re an adult who experiences menstrual cramps, it’s overwhelmingly likely that your pain is a symptom of some potentially serious medical condition.

I know someone who took bc and now has endo tumors all over her body including in her arms and legs. But her drs wouldn’t change her bc when she said her symptoms got worse. But she couldn’t go off it cuz she has pcos and her periods literally would not stop without bc to regulate her hormones.

Bc controls menstration. Often encouraging the lining to build up (cuz that’s what actually stops the active bleeding by the way. It doesn’t just empty out the uterus. If the lining didn’t start building back up you’d just keep bleeding cuz those cells would try and stick and won’t and just break down and come out. I know this is a thing because this is how I got my pcos diagnosis. I almost bled to death because I lacked enough estrogen and my lining wasn’t sticking and just shed and shed and shed…)

All throughout my teenage years my doctors said I was just “extra sensitive” or “over-reacting” and that I was actually “fine.” I went trough debilitating pain for 7 years and they were fine with ignoring my concerns and pleas for them to do ANYTHING so that I didn’t have to be bedridden for weeks on end.