[insert title here]

So you know.

Regardless of the numbers on your paycheck or in your bank account, nobody is less than you.

Also most people in NYC are working more than 1 job. I know people living out shelters working 2 jobs.

This happened in Syracuse, New York, where I live. It is one of the poorest cities in the entire United States. We have a large number of homeless people, many who are mentally ill and/or disabled. When these stories are labeled as “New York,” people think it’s NYC and end up ignoring the issues in “upstate” NY.

This homeless man’s name is Jeremy Dufresne. He is a homeless man suffering from schizophrenia. He was charging his phone in order to contact his mother. A gofundme was put together in order to replace Dufresne’s clothes and phone charger. So far 22k has been reached to help him get on his feet. 

Al-Amin Muhammad, a local homeless advocate, confronted the Dunkin Donuts employees. He runs an organization called We Rise Above the Streets, which has been feeding and clothing homeless people in Syracuse, NY. You can support this organization by donating here. 

(Money supports distribution of meals, clothing, and hygiene items)

Al-Amin Muhammed is a former homeless man, drug dealer, and convict. He now dedicates his life to helping those who went through the same struggles as he did. He actively protested this Dunkin Donuts. He met with the owners of this store, and they agreed to contribute to feeding the homeless.

Additionally:

The workers who dumped the water on Dufresne were fired almost immediately. Furthermore, one of the workers publicly apologized for his actions. Another popular donut shop is giving away 1,000 donuts to the homeless in the wake of what happened.

Lies

Babies (and small children) also cry for reasons such as:

1. “I am tired and that makes me angry”

2. “I scared myself with a fart”

3. “You are the wrong parent”

4. “I ran into something with my face”

5. “I’m facing the opposite direction then the one I want to”

6. “I fell asleep in one place and woke up somewhere completely different”

7. “I am a very small person in a very big world”

8. “I got scared because YOU farted”

I am teething and it sucks

I am teething and biting things makes it feel better and I bit my toe but I didn’t know my toe is attached so I bit it real hard and now my toe hurts

I can’t figure out how to get off my belly and it makes me angry

I have GERD and it hurts (untreated GERD is a pretty common cause of baby ‘colic’) 

It’s too noisy and I’m scared

It’s too quiet and I’m bored

You didn’t let me put something I’d choke on in my mouth

You didn’t let me eat dirt

You took me away from an animal I was accidentally hurting before the animal hurt me back

I scared myself with hiccups

I scared myself with sneezing

You scared me by sneezing

A stranger is here

I can’t figure out how to stand and I’m frustrated

Do you smell that? I smell bullshit! those happen to be the leading provinces for the past 65 years

So you either have to admit one of two things if you believe that:

1.) That it doesn’t matter what political party is in power if you believe that this doesn’t matter for job creation (in which case you should stop bashing the NDP)

2.) Acknowledge that the NDP is playing a positive role in economic growth (because that chart shows that NDP lead provinces are leading in job growth)

People who didn’t vote literally had no effect on the election lmao like y’all just love blaming those who didn’t vote for all shit that’s happening just so you can feel better about voting for Hillary lmaoooo

Russia’s up to shit again. It is in their interest if President Orange Terror continues to have the power to send your country down the porcelain pisshole.

And to some degree, you’re not wrong: Yes, you’re fighting an uphill battle in the next US election. The system is set up for you to fail.  We were fighting one here in Canada in 2015, where the system is literally set up so the biggest minority wins (the whole point was to frustrate the will of the majority, if you read the early writings of those setting up the system), and our government was actively engaging in voter suppression (with ID laws, “phone bombs” - i.e., mass calling of confirmed non-supporters on election day to make it difficult to get out the door -  challenging of voter registrations, scare tactics, and misleading robocalls and targeted online ads, where voters were directed to the wrong polling station) and preventing existing government institutions from doing their job in countering these activities (they de-funded and revoked the authority of Elections Canada to advertise to Canadians about our rights and about the correct polling station information). We were set up to fail. We won anyway. We won by getting out the vote in such numbers and with such strategic vision that it overwhelmed their attempts to suppress us. Did we win the best outcome? No. But what we did achieve was the ouster of a government actively hostile to gender, race, and religious equality. And that was a big win. I’d argue it was the best outcome that was possible. And we achieved it by energizing the vote, and drowning the government’s disinformation campaigns in correct information about how and when to vote, how and when to register, helping each other register, giving each other drives to the polling stations, and where appropriate, taking the government to court. 

To totally mangle a metaphor, you don’t win an uphill battle by taking your ball and going home. That cedes the fight to the other side, for free. Do you want to hand Trump control of your country for two more years on a silver fucking platter? Cuz that’s how you hand Trump control of your country for two more years on a silver fucking platter. You don’t win anything that way. 

You win by digging in and fighting harder than they think you can, slyer than they think you can, longer than they think you will. They don’t have to beat you, they just have to make you frustrated enough to give up, and you’ll beat yourself. So don’t give up.

Notably, in most of those, it’s stated flat-out within the first couple of minutes that the character in question is dreaming. It’s not a big reveal, it’s a fundamental detail of the setting.

If you’re gonna do a dreamworld, actually commit to doing a dreamworld.

3, The female characters were people in their own right, even though the story was focused on a guy, and they didn’t exist to be the main character’s harem (Wheel of Time, I’m looking at you) or love interest. They had their own ambitions and desires, and were every bit as complicated and interesting people as the male characters in the story.

So it was really interesting to read him vow to be better and then, despite his best intentions, become corrupted by power. And it was also interesting to watch everyone around him react to this character arc - because the book also delved into issues like speaking truth to power and the cost for it, when it’s appropriate to end a friendship due to someone doing something you find abhorrent. Like this trilogy dived into heavy shit, and did it in a very compelling and thoughtful way.  ANNND THEN the author ruined everything. Y’see, his corruption wasn’t the effect of power or his own decisions and flawed character, but waaay back at the start of the second book and something never mentioned again he was attacked by a vampire in a side quest that literally started and ended over the course of about 10 pages (in a 300+ page book) and apparently he was sick with vampire plague which was corrupting his soul and magic happened and now he’s good again and everyone lived happily ever after. That was the last 25 pages of the last book.  And I was so pissed off.  Because the first two and a half books were building into a fantastic tragedy with a Pyrrhic victory. Yeah he won, but in the process he became the monster he hated. While I was reading it I told anyone who listened that it was becoming my favorite trilogy ever because here was this genuinely fresh and thoughtful take on fantasy tropes, and delving into concepts that fantasy normally doesn’t even consider, let alone deal with in depth.  And then the author, or their editor, chickened out and shoehorned in some Disneyfied happy ending that didn’t fit. Cuz a good surprise ending? Is foreshadowed. It surprises you when you first read it, but if you think back, you’re like, “Oh, yeah, okay, I can see where that’s coming from.” This thing wasn’t foreshadowed at all. It didn’t fit. It was literally as if the editor gods came in, chopped off the real ending and told the author, “You need to make it happy. Say everything he did so far was a curse, I don’t care. But this is fantasy, it needs to have a happy ending!” 

... and as a result, instead of that series topping the list of my favorite trilogies, it’s one I warn everyone off of. “The first two and a half books are great, and the last 25 pages or so ruins everything.”

The reality is that most of our understandings of history revolve around what men were doing. But by paying attention to the other half of humanity our understanding of history can be radically altered.

For example, with Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich it is just kind of assumed that it was a decision made by a man, and the rest of his family just followed him out of danger. But that is completely inaccurate. Women, constrained to the private social sphere to varying extents, were the first to notice the rise in social anti-Semitism in the beginning of Hitler’s rule. They were the ones to notice their friends pulling away and their social networks coming apart. They were the first to sense the danger.

German Jewish men tended to work in industries which were historically heavily Jewish, thus keeping them from directly experiencing this “social death.” These women would warn their husbands and urge them to begin the emigration process, and often their husbands would overlook or undervalue their concerns (“you’re just being hysterical” etc). After the Nuremberg Laws were passed, and after even more so after Kristallnacht, it fell to women to free their husbands from concentration camps, to run businesses, and to wade through the emigration process.

The fact that the Nazis initially focused their efforts on Jewish men meant that it fell to Jewish women to take charge of the family and plan their escape. In one case, a woman had her husband freed from a camp (to do so, she had to present emigration papers which were not easy to procure), and casually informed him that she had arranged their transport to Shanghai. Her husband—so traumatized from the camp—made no argument. Just by looking at what women were doing, our understanding of this era of Jewish history is changed.

I have read an article arguing that the Renaissance only existed for men, and that women did not undergo this cultural change. The writings of female loyalists in the American Revolutionary period add much needed nuance to our understanding of this period. The character of Jewish liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century is a direct result of the education and socialization of Jewish women. I can give you more examples, but I think you get the point.

So, you wanna understand history? Then you gotta remember the ladies (and not just the privileged ones).

There was one woman who begged her husband for months to leave Germany. When he refused to listen to her, she refused to get into bed with him at night, instead kneeling down in front of him and begging him to listen to her, or if he wouldn’t listen to her, to at least tell her who he would listen to. He gave her the name of a close, trusted male friend. She went and found that friend, convinced him of the need to get the hell out of Europe, and then brought him home. Thankfully, her husband finally saw sense and moved their family to Palestine.

Another woman had a bit more control over her own situation (she was a lawyer). She had read Mein Kampf  when it was first published and saw the writing on the wall. She asked her husband to leave Europe, but he didn’t want to leave his (very good) job and told her that he had faith in his countrymen not to allow an evil man to have his way. She sent their children to a boarding school in England, but stayed in Germany by her husband’s side. Once it was clear that if they stayed in Germany they were going to die, he fled to France but was quickly captured and killed. His wife, however, joined the French Resistance and was active for over a year before being captured and sent to Auschwitz.

(This is probably my favorite of these stories) The third story is about a young woman who saved her fiance and his father after Kristallnacht. She was at home when the soldiers came, but her fiance was working late in his shop. Worried for him, she snuck out (in the middle of all the chaos) to make sure he was alright. She found him cowering (quite understandably) in the back of his shop and then dragged him out, hoping to escape the violence. Unfortunately, they were stopped and he, along with hundreds of other men, was taken to a concentration camp. She was eventually told that she would have to go to the camp in person to free him, and so she did. Unfortunately, the only way she could get there was on a bus that was filled with SS men; she spent the entire trip smiling and flirting with them so that they would never suspect that she wasn’t supposed to be there. When she got to the camp, she convinced whoever was in charge to release her fiance. She then took him to another camp and managed to get her father-in-law to be released. Her father-in-law was a rabbi, so she grabbed a couple or witnesses and made him perform their marriage ceremony right then and there so that it would be easier for her to get her now-husband out of the country, which she did withing a few months. This woman was so bad ass that not only was her story passed around resistance circles, even the SS men told it to each other and honoured her courage. 

The moral of these stories is that men tend to trust their governments to take care of them because they always have; women know that our governments will screw us over because they always have. 

We’re both Asian.

We went on a bus and sat in front of two girls.

I kissed behind his ear (and then he punched me in the arm, he’s shy in public) and I heard one of them whisper to the other something along the lines of “We get to see close up yaoi on here!”.

(Neither of us are even Japanese)

I was kinda offended, so I took my boyfriend by the hand and left.

It made us feel very uncomfortable.

I just want to say:

Our love and relationship isn’t for your entertainment.

Nor is it here for you to fetishize and sexualize.

Please just keep your “yaoi xDD” to just fiction, and please do not call us “yaoi”.

Many dismiss this as not a problem, which I find rude as they have never experienced this so they don’t really have much to say against this.

Thank you for reading.

- Submitted by Anonymous

okay no shade at all I just want all of u to learn and grow and become better writers! so here’s a handy tip list!

we don’t stutter on every word. okay, sometimes it can seem it, but honestly, we don’t, so leave a few words in there to give your readers some breathing room.

we stutter more on specific sounds. for me, f and s sounds are big ones. everyone has their thing and most stutterers have sounds that are harder to get out.

we don’t just stutter at the beginning of words and sentences. okay, honestly this is a big one for me. sometimes, a word starts off really well and goes down the drain at the second syllable! and the stutter doesn’t disappear once we’ve made it past the first word - it clings in there, so don’t forget it.

some of us don’t always stutter. some, not all, of us have what’s known as an anxious stutter, which generally comes alongside anxiety disorders. so, while it may be usually present, when a person with an anxious stutter is particularly comfortable with a situation, it tends to get better (or even almost disappear).

we don’t stutter when we swear. this is why some of us can stutter and stutter and stutter on a word and then shout fuck and everything’s cool. as far as science knows, this is because swearing is from a more primitive part of the brain, and so it bypasses the bit that makes us stutter! it’s so cool honestly.

we don’t stutter when we sing. the biggest two reasons for this one is 1) music comes from a different part of the brain to talking (language=left; music=right), and so it once again bypasses the stutter, or 2) ‘easy voice’, which is the voice that people sing in, is softer and smoother, and the sounds are longer so there’s less opportunity to stutter. either option is way cool but we don’t stutter when we sing.

sometimes, we give up on words. after a certain amount of stuttering on a certain word, you may see a stutterer take a deep breath and either try again, or replace it with a synonym. sometimes that word just won’t fit right in our mouths!

we hate it when people try to guess what we’re trying to say or try to speed us up. this might be a more personal thing for me, but there’s nothing I hate more than that clicky sound people make or the weird hand gestures or being told to “spit it out.” because we can’t control this shit and it gets tiring. it’s better just to let the person get it out and take their time with it, so when you’re writing, keep this in mind!

it gets worse when we’re anxious or stressed, and when we’re excited! I get really really stuttery when I’m enthusiastic about the topic of conversation, because I know so much about that thing that I try to talk really fast and my mouth can’t keep up! it’s the same when I’m anxious or stressed - when there’s more on our minds, the more everything gets a little muddled.

•when I’m acting, I don’t stutter. Probably because the words aren’t mine and I don’t have to come up with them myself. (But when reading through the script the first few times before I’ve memorised it I will struggle)

•when I’m reading aloud however, my stutter becomes even more prominent

•sometimes I’ll give up talking all together and say never mind so I’ve developed the habit of not inputting into conversations

okay no shade at all I just want all of u to learn and grow and become better writers! so here’s a handy tip list!

we don’t stutter on every word. okay, sometimes it can seem it, but honestly, we don’t, so leave a few words in there to give your readers some breathing room.

we stutter more on specific sounds. for me, f and s sounds are big ones. everyone has their thing and most stutterers have sounds that are harder to get out.

we don’t just stutter at the beginning of words and sentences. okay, honestly this is a big one for me. sometimes, a word starts off really well and goes down the drain at the second syllable! and the stutter doesn’t disappear once we’ve made it past the first word - it clings in there, so don’t forget it.

some of us don’t always stutter. some, not all, of us have what’s known as an anxious stutter, which generally comes alongside anxiety disorders. so, while it may be usually present, when a person with an anxious stutter is particularly comfortable with a situation, it tends to get better (or even almost disappear).

we don’t stutter when we swear. this is why some of us can stutter and stutter and stutter on a word and then shout fuck and everything’s cool. as far as science knows, this is because swearing is from a more primitive part of the brain, and so it bypasses the bit that makes us stutter! it’s so cool honestly.

we don’t stutter when we sing. the biggest two reasons for this one is 1) music comes from a different part of the brain to talking (language=left; music=right), and so it once again bypasses the stutter, or 2) ‘easy voice’, which is the voice that people sing in, is softer and smoother, and the sounds are longer so there’s less opportunity to stutter. either option is way cool but we don’t stutter when we sing.

sometimes, we give up on words. after a certain amount of stuttering on a certain word, you may see a stutterer take a deep breath and either try again, or replace it with a synonym. sometimes that word just won’t fit right in our mouths!

we hate it when people try to guess what we’re trying to say or try to speed us up. this might be a more personal thing for me, but there’s nothing I hate more than that clicky sound people make or the weird hand gestures or being told to “spit it out.” because we can’t control this shit and it gets tiring. it’s better just to let the person get it out and take their time with it, so when you’re writing, keep this in mind!

it gets worse when we’re anxious or stressed, and when we’re excited! I get really really stuttery when I’m enthusiastic about the topic of conversation, because I know so much about that thing that I try to talk really fast and my mouth can’t keep up! it’s the same when I’m anxious or stressed - when there’s more on our minds, the more everything gets a little muddled.

There are three main types:

The one most people think of is repetition. This can be a single sound repeated like, “S-s-save me a s-s-seat.” Or it can be part of a word repeated like the OP mentioned above where they get stuck on the second syllable. Or it can be whole word repetitions, “Can-can-can-can I go?”

The second type is called blocking or blocks. This is when the air or sound is stopped at lungs, throat, or mouth. It’s kind of impossible to write, but it would look like, “Can…” he seemed to be grabbing for sound, “I come too.” When someone is blocking, there is no sound and typically you can see the strain in the person.

The third type is called prolongation and this when someone gets stuck on a sound. They’re holding on to a sound but their lips, tongue and teeth aren’t moving. It can happen on any sound but it’s more common on vowels. This would like, “Caaaaaaaaaan I come too?”

Disfluencies can last anywhere from less than a second to up to 10 seconds. Typically, it’s from less than a second to up to 2 seconds, which doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but it’s longer than you think.

Along with stuttering, there tend to be secondary behaviors which can come in a variety of types. The most common behavior is escape behavior that people who stutter have developed to try to “get out of” the stutter. Not everyone has secondary behaviors, but they can be things like turning their head to the side, rapid eye blinking, tucking their head, tapping fingers against their leg. This might also be when the rate of speech changes. After an instance of disfluency, a person who stutters might speak the rest of the sentence really fast in an attempt to “just spit it out.”

You might also get what are called “avoidance behaviors”. Avoidance behaviors are not necessarily bad but they might effect the rhythm and rate of speech. This could be talking around a word that’s hard to say or using starter phrases like, “Ya know,” a lot or what we call “anti-expectancy devices”. This would be something like talking in a sing song voice or a different accent or a silly voice because people tend not to stutter when they’re using those different parts of their brain. They might use a lot of filler words like “umm…” before difficult words.

Every person who stutters is different.

okay no shade at all I just want all of u to learn and grow and become better writers! so here’s a handy tip list!

we don’t stutter on every word. okay, sometimes it can seem it, but honestly, we don’t, so leave a few words in there to give your readers some breathing room.

we stutter more on specific sounds. for me, f and s sounds are big ones. everyone has their thing and most stutterers have sounds that are harder to get out.

we don’t just stutter at the beginning of words and sentences. okay, honestly this is a big one for me. sometimes, a word starts off really well and goes down the drain at the second syllable! and the stutter doesn’t disappear once we’ve made it past the first word - it clings in there, so don’t forget it.

some of us don’t always stutter. some, not all, of us have what’s known as an anxious stutter, which generally comes alongside anxiety disorders. so, while it may be usually present, when a person with an anxious stutter is particularly comfortable with a situation, it tends to get better (or even almost disappear).

we don’t stutter when we swear. this is why some of us can stutter and stutter and stutter on a word and then shout fuck and everything’s cool. as far as science knows, this is because swearing is from a more primitive part of the brain, and so it bypasses the bit that makes us stutter! it’s so cool honestly.

we don’t stutter when we sing. the biggest two reasons for this one is 1) music comes from a different part of the brain to talking (language=left; music=right), and so it once again bypasses the stutter, or 2) ‘easy voice’, which is the voice that people sing in, is softer and smoother, and the sounds are longer so there’s less opportunity to stutter. either option is way cool but we don’t stutter when we sing.

sometimes, we give up on words. after a certain amount of stuttering on a certain word, you may see a stutterer take a deep breath and either try again, or replace it with a synonym. sometimes that word just won’t fit right in our mouths!

we hate it when people try to guess what we’re trying to say or try to speed us up. this might be a more personal thing for me, but there’s nothing I hate more than that clicky sound people make or the weird hand gestures or being told to “spit it out.” because we can’t control this shit and it gets tiring. it’s better just to let the person get it out and take their time with it, so when you’re writing, keep this in mind!

it gets worse when we’re anxious or stressed, and when we’re excited! I get really really stuttery when I’m enthusiastic about the topic of conversation, because I know so much about that thing that I try to talk really fast and my mouth can’t keep up! it’s the same when I’m anxious or stressed - when there’s more on our minds, the more everything gets a little muddled.

Often, it’s worse when we’re tired. My speech therapist when I was a kid said this has to do with the same thing as when you’re anxious or stressed - basically the more strain your brain is already in, the less energy it has to focus on talking.

Blocks are a thing. Stuttering isn’t just repeating noises. Sometimes it’s weird, out of place stops. These are called “blocks” and they suck. Imagine you’re talking and suddenly your mouth/throat decide nope, no noise. It’s harder to write blocks than repetition of sounds, but they exist. I block far more often than I repeat sounds, and blocks are really frustrating for me. Sometimes I can even be having a nice, fluent sentence and then suddenly a ten second block nukes it from orbit. “Hi, I’m ischemgeek, I work ... ... ... ... ... ... for [the group I work for].”

Sound prolongations are often a part of stuttering.  Mine like to pair up with my blocks, so it might sound like, “I work ffff- ... ... ... .... fffffooooor [group I work for].” Most people would just think that’s me being my weird self. It’s my stutter. 

Stuttering is not associated with lying or dishonesty. A person who stutters is not likely to be more dishonest than someone without a stutter. It’s a common stereotype that people stutter if they’re lying, and that’s not true.

Stuttering is not a sign of being intoxicated. People who are intoxicated often do exhibit atypical speech patterns, but stuttering is not one of those patterns. Also, I don’t know why, but my speech actually gets more fluent if I’m mildly intoxicated. I’ve had cops assume I’m drunk due to my stutter on more than one occasion. The funny thing is, if I’d actually had enough to be unsafe to drive, my speech would be fluent enough someone who is not a trained speech expert wouldn’t notice anything unusual. 

Some stutterers have a lot of trouble saying their own name. For me, it’s hit or miss and depends a lot on what kind of a day I’m having. On bad days, I say my name in a little sing-song just so I can get it out (singing often bypasses stuttering). It makes me seem really weird and silly, but people get to hear my name, and I don’t attract the wrong kind of attention by being unable to say my own goddamn name. I’ll take weird and out of the conversation over weird and center of attention while I stutter endlessly any day. 

Stuttering is not caused by not organizing your thoughts or not taking your time with speech. That’s actually a related disorder, called cluttering disorder. Folks who stutter often have fully crafted speeches in their heads that they know they’ll never be able to get out. If someone has a genuine stutter, advice to “take your time” or “take a breath”, it will make us have a harder time by making us more self-conscious of the stutter.

I mean, despite how much left wingers (myself included sometimes) like to pretend otherwise, a person`s preferences for social policy and economic policy don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. A significant chunk of my extended family self-identify as socialists, are in favor of a strong social safety net, want a minimum income, etc... and also want non-heterosexual identities criminalized, and also think that the government had it right when they were still trying to exterminate the FN peoples. And they feel strongly enough about wanting non-het identities criminalized to tell me, an out bi person, to my face that “Hitler wasn’t wrong” about everything and that people like me should be locked up in camps to protect children from our influence. These are current NDP and Liberal voters who believe this, who may well be swayed to Bernier’s party if he’s vague enough on his economics.  On the other extreme, some in my immediate family are hard-core right-wing gun nut libertarians... who I have personally seen go out of their way to speak out against racism, and are the sort of folks who are behind the Conservative party’s decision to stop trying to roll back marriage equality on the grounds that the government shouldn’t butt in to people’s private lives. 

It’s easy to treat right-wingers as a monolith, but they’re not, any more than the Left is. 

Bernier’s party, from what I can tell, is primarily aiming for the white nationalist, gun rights, and libertarian wings of the CPC, but given his dogwhistling towards “core conservative principles” I am guessing he’s hoping a good chunk of the religious conservatives will come his way as well. Really, all he’s doing is taking the hard-right arm of the party - the group that made up the former Reform party and never really fitted in with the PCs all that well int he first place - and splitting them back off again.

The Alliance staged a hostile takeover of the CPC in the early 00s, guess what the Tea Party did in the 10s? I could go on. They do both give each other inspiration, they learn from each other, and they collaborate and bounce ideas off each other - just like the Canadian Left does with left-wing activists elsewhere in the world, and for the same reason.

The right-wingers in Canada are their own breed. They do take some marketing tactics from the US (frex, “fake news”), but they don’t just try to transplant everything here, whole hog. For one, Canadian legal institutions have a very different structure. For two, Canadian culture as a whole is different from US culture. A thoughtless transplant won’t work, and frankly, the Canadian hard right is savvier than that. 

Its too early to say. It’ll depend on whether Maxime Bernier’s new party actually gains traction. If it does it could split the right vote.

and this is the result of a culture where choosing an identity label that ends up being wrong is far worse than never exploring your identity in the first place. it’s the same reason people freak out about trans kids, because what if they decide they aren’t trans after all in the future? it’s also why i’ve run into multiple callouts on this site that include things like “10 years ago they called themself a ‘lesbian with an exception’ for a couple of months,” because trying to reconcile old identities with new experiences is seen as a threat.

And it’s a problem that cishets are seen by so many as the “default.” I mean, I’ve been cishet for 55 years, but if I came out as trans or gay or pan tomorrow, it’d be a cause for celebration (among non-bigots, anyway), whereas someone identifying as anything OTHER than cishet gets slammed if they change their label? That’s not right.

Did y’all think I was kidding?