Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Elephants are also one of the few animals besides humans who can suffer from PTSD.  Additionally Daphne Sheldrick who runs the Elephant (and other wildlife) orphanage has spoken about baby elephants orphaned by the ivory trade who frequently wake up screaming for months after witnessing their entire herd/family get slaughtered in front of them.

Elephants are believed by a lot of people to not only be highly intelligent and self aware animals,but to be emotionally not so different to us in general. They also show altruism to each other and sometimes other species too, try to look after and their injured/sick.disabled,  and if a mother elephant  dies an older sister, aunt, or grandparent will often take over mothering an infant (how old the calf is, and whether or not it’s weaned often  determine whether or not they are able to succeed, but they still try). There was even a recorded (filmed) case of a  baby elephant,that was seen wandering alone by some water, and then entered it not realising crocodiles were approaching. A small herd of unrelated elephants walked by, the matriarch had a baby about the same age as the orphan, but slightly older, at first she just gave the lost baby a brief look, but kept on walking. Then one of the crocodiles made a grab for the baby, and it screamed, the matriarch of the passing herd abruptly turned her herd around and rushed back to chase off the crocodiles, and then adopted the orphan into her herd, allowing it to nurse and raising it alongside her own, and this was during a drought when resources were hardly at a premium. I’m pretty sure she succeeded as far as the documentary followed them too, at least as I recall he was still alive and healthy by the end of the dry season, along with his adoptive sister. The matriarch and her entire herd struggled at times, both (mainly) because of the drought itself , and also because she was trying to nurse two calfs at once when because of the drought, her own body reserves at times were running low (and elephants typically only have one baby at a time, two is very unusual) but she did it.   

wft is this?

Are these people saying a transmasc character is actually still a woman because he does xyz? Or a cis male charcater they're forcefemming in some sort of weird sexist joke?

Original thread

this is true

I have since found a better therapist directly through my insurance website.

my first name starts with A and was actually too long lol 😭 but it’s fine bc I’m going by my middle name on here atm anyways

My name is so short it looks kind of awkward oh well lol

A transmasc posted about how transmascs and trans men are often invisible, how our issues are dismissed, and how resources, especially medical ones, are almost always written with non transmascs in mind. They posted this both to r/Trans and r/lgbt.

A moderator of r/Trans responded by telling them to “stop bitching.” That’s the word they used. That’s the level of respect trans men get. Transandrophobic by the way, don't call trans men bitches.

The comment was deleted, quietly, after backlash. Then the entire post was removed. When asked why, a mod responded that the post was “playing oppression olympics,” and took the time to go through and dismiss each of the original poster’s points, including saying that trans men being sexually assaulted isn’t “unique to transmascs” and therefore not an issue, and claiming that access to testosterone isn’t any more restricted than access to estrogen, which is a straight-up lie, because T is a tightly controlled substance in most places and E is not.

The original poster was banned for three days.

Then a separate mod made a post saying, “nobody asked us our side of the story,” which is wild because people absolutely did, publicly and repeatedly. Users also started reporting that they’d had supportive comments removed or had been banned after disagreeing with the mods, some of those claims are still unconfirmed, but given the general behavior, it wouldn’t be surprising.

Then r/Trans locked down entirely. No new posts. The conversation was forcibly ended.

Some people posted about it on r/FTM, many of those posts were mass-reported, automatically removed by Reddit’s automod, or quietly buried. Meanwhile, r/lgbt also removed the original post, with no explanation.

One of the r/Trans mods eventually posted an “apology,” which was really just a soft-scrubbed PR post full of noncommittal language and distancing. They said they didn’t mean to call a trans man “a bitch,” they just used it synonymously with “complaining,” and they didn’t think about the implications until later even though the first post was about microaggressions just like the mod committed. They did not apologize for anything else, not for wrongfully banning people, not for accusing a transmasc venting like any other user of playing oppression olympics, nothing at all. They said they’re on break and can’t do anything about it. They said, and I quote, “please don’t be mad at the rest of the team.” even though the rest of the team are just as culpable for not stopping their behavior.

They also added that trans men are “a welcome part of the community” and tried to point at moderation history as proof. Because apparently we should be grateful that people occasionally get banned, every so often, for implying trans men aren't oppressed at all, wow, thanks, that is like below the bare minimum, cool.

The current state of things is: r/Trans has over 600,000 members, and trans men and transmascs were silenced, banned, and told to shut up for bringing up their own oppression. And the subreddit is locked down. There’s a mass exodus happening to the new sub, r/trans4every1, but let’s be real, the damage has already been done.

Now let’s talk about what this actually means.

This is not “just more Tumblr discourse.” This isn’t some random blog saying they don’t like transmascs. This isn’t a Twitter reply guy. This isn’t a niche zine or a spicy personal take. This is a massive trans-focused subreddit with over half a million users. It's easily one of the largest public facing trans community online, maybe even the largest, I've certainly never found a bigger one myself. And the moderation team made it crystal clear: they do not want transmascs to feel safe or welcome there.

This is what transandrophobia looks like on a slightly larger internet scale. When it’s in the hands of people who get to decide who gets heard and who gets deleted.

And for anyone who’s still stuck on “well they apologized” listen: trans men are told all the time that we’re being too loud, too angry, too entitled, too manly, too feminine, too confusing, too “binary,” too "Nonbinary", too much. We’re told that we’re “oppression olympics-ing” just for talking about our lives. And now we're getting banned and locked out of the spaces that claim to represent a huge portion of online trans people.

This isn't just online drama. This is a bellwether. And if it isn’t setting off alarms in your head, it should be.

The way transandrophobia manifests in online spaces absolutely bleeds into real life, into medical gatekeeping, into poor data collection, into the erasure of sexual violence against transmascs, into advocacy groups that write us out of the picture, into educational materials that treat us like footnotes, if they include us at all.

And if you’re sitting there thinking, “well it’s not that deep,” you’re part of the problem.

We need to start being more honest about this: Transandrophobia is real, it is widespread, and it is growing. We need to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt when they’ve shown us they don’t want us in the room.

And frankly?

We need to start making TRFs [Trans Radfems & transmasc-exclusionary feminists alike] deeply uncomfortable being open about their beliefs. We need to make them afraid to be TRFs, the way they’re trying to make us afraid to exist.

The same way we don’t coddle fascists. The same way we don’t tolerate TERFs. We need to stop tiptoeing around transandrophobia.

Because this growing wave of transandrophobia is going to kill people. Full stop.

But being able to go to a breakfast place and not be stuck with the kids menu because I don’t want to waste food, and see many options listing “half portion” just makes me so happy. This is with American portions btw.

The guilt from wasting food and the pressure to clear a plate so you don’t look picky or like you’re wasting food in a restaurant *sucks* and I can’t always take food home if I’m not immediately going home after.

The whole concept of “you can’t leave the table until you finish your plate there are starving children in Africa”

they deal with human shit, dog shit, body fluids, razors and broken glass, hazardous chemicals, dead animals, live animals, flammable, corrosive, and poisonous substances, they are more likely to get cuts and punctures than most jobs, and those cuts and punctures are more likely to get serious or exotic infections...

and if they didn't do it for like just a few days, your city would be unlivable.

Garbage collectors went on strike in Memphis and within only 3 days Memphis had an estimated 10,000 TONS of garbage piled in the streets

However.

Especially since Covid, I live on Interstate 4 that goes from Tampa to Daytona through Orlando (around Disney World). This road is infamous for its accidents and traffic, and a lot of that is from clueless tourists who absolutely need this exit as they’re passing it cutting across four lanes of traffic instead of going up and making a u-turn. It’s also the people who hate those tourists suffering perpetual road rage.

The amount of lazy and dangerous drivers around me, who have seemingly forgotten all they learned in driver’s ed, makes driving so much worse than it needs to be. No blinkers, no headlights at night beyond the automatic running ones if their car is young enough to have them.

The etiquette of a 4-way stop, the merge lane, tailgating, those people whose power fantasy it is to go slow in the fast lane so they can control the road, people who cut off semi-trucks because they’re deliberately leaving space between them and the next car because they’re heavy and need time to brake, that spot isn’t a red carpet for your little-dick pickup truck.

People who cannot drive in our rain who throw on their hazards as if that’s helpful and not disorienting and dangerous intermittent bright yellow lights in low visibility over your bright red consistent tail lights. People who don’t properly tie-down their loads. People on their phones, doing makeup, eating lunch, fussing with the big lcd screens antithetical to non-distracted driving without being able to map your touch patterns.

Ironically, hard light is bad for recording sexy time.

It will highlight every pore, every vein, every wrinkle on your nutsack.

These outtakes where the flash didn't go off are also AI generated.

I like this spooky dutch angle one.

I was just starting to learn flash and I didn't have all the equipment I needed. Since corgis are quite short, I had to put the lighting on the ground. The off camera flash was on a tipped over lightstand with a shoot-through umbrella to diffuse the light.

But I had no wireless triggers. And the only other way to trigger a flash, is with another flash. So I used the on-camera pop up flash to trigger the main flash.

But I had two issues.

First, I did not want that dinky on camera flash affecting my picture.

Second, triggering a flash with a flash is best done indoors. The flash will bounce all around the room and eventually hit the sensor so the main flash triggers. When you are outdoors, there is no bouncing.

SO... I took a little handheld makeup mirror and angled it toward my main flash. This blocked the dinky pop up flash and sent the beam of light towards the main flash to trigger it.

I was lying on the wet morning grass, holding a camera in one hand, a mirror in the other, trying to aim the mirror exactly toward the main flash, making crazy noises to get Otis's attention, and trying to get the focus point on his face so I didn't get a blurry photo. Also, Otis was much more interested in sniffing things than posing for a photo.

Here is an overhead view that might help explain.

I await all of your comments saying my amazing drawring is clearly AI generated.

Only 30% of the time did the flash actually go off. Aiming the mirror was tricky and I was doing like 8 things at once. I wasn't even sure I got the photo I wanted. But when I came back to the computer there was one that stood out and it is one of my favorites I've ever taken.

It was the best combination of monumental effort, great discomfort, perfect foggy sunrise light, and just pure luck.

Unfortunately, people like me who use advanced sculpting light techniques are getting accused of using AI more and more. Not really sure what to do about it—other than show the 30 awful photos it took to get the good one.

My 80s sunglasses photo and spoon photo get called out the most.

But it's just good old fashioned gradient lighting which has been used in product photography since the days of film.