Getting Silly In The Midnight Zone

If you haven't been following her story, Maram is a 26 year old Palestinian woman currently living with her 3 sons (9, 7, and 4 years) in Gaza, who's lives have been ravaged by the Isreali occupation and bombings, which destroyed their home. Since then, she has been scraping by on donations to her campaign (linked here), scrounging in any way a mother can to provide for her family; without the stable income, housing, food or medicine that they need.

Over the last week, thanks to your donations and reblogs, Maram was able to raise the full $600 for her youngest son Ziad's surgery! She's shared that Ziad has had his procedure, is feeling much better for it; and he's expected to make a full recovery! I cannot overstate how happy and grateful I am to everyone who has helped. The situation in Gaza is an unacceptable standard of living for all, and even surviving is a daily challenge. This one family now has one less element of suffering to bare, and that is no small thing.

At time of writing, Maram is currently $4,657 away from her full campaign goal of $30,000. I thought, if we could raise $600 in a week and a half, think what more we could do for this family in a month, or two months, just by giving what we can or sharing to those who can instead!

For the foreseeable future, I'm going to continue doing free sketch requests for donaters who send me proof of transaction to Maram's campaign. If you donate anything $1 and over, you can request anything you like! I will draw for any fandom, OC's, or even real life friends / family! For a donation of $15+ I will add flat colors, and the higher the donation the more detail / time I will put into your piece. Here's what you can expect from these sketches:

I’ve decided to also open up donation sketch commissions for this campaign! If you’d like to get yourself something like one of the drawings below, donate as little as $1 to Mariam’s campaign above! Every little bit helps, but the more money you donate, the more detail I’ll put in!

I conceptualise gender and masculinity/femininity not as boxes that one needs to conform to, or labels that one has to choose to adopt or reject, but as toyboxes full of trinkets. I can take whatever trinkets I like. I don't have to take the ones I hate. If I hate all of the toys in a box, I can just close the box. If I like only some of them but hate others, I don't have to bring the whole box with me. I can put them back in the box if I don't want them one day, and I can take them back out if I want them again later. I can play with the toys and paint the toys and mash the toys together and experiment with the toys and break the toys and cherish the toys at my leisure. And I can buy them from elsewhere, or even make my own, if I want more toys but can't find them in the toyboxes provided.

I'm gonna be talking, of course, of grammatical gender, because of this viral image:

I'm sure you've seen an image like this floating around and people crying about how having non-binary be translated with a feminine and masculine form depending on usage defeats the purpose of the term.

But it doesn't!!!

Spanish is not like English, it has ✨grammatical gender✨ which has nothing to do with gender identity whatsoever. It's not that we believe chairs are female and stools are male, our grammar is just like this. Every word has a grammatical gender and there must be grammatical gender concordance. Thus, non-binary must have both a feminine and masculine form to use depending with which word you're pairing it.

Let's say you want to talk about a "non-binary person". 'Person' in Spanish is 'persona' a grammatically feminine word (despite its usage being gender neutral and encompassing people of any gender, as I said, grammatical gender ≠ gender identity). Because 'persona' is a grammatically feminine word, you have to apply grammatical concordance accordingly, and so to say "non-binary person" you would say "persona no binaria".

Now let's say you want to talk about "non-binary gender". 'Gender' in Spanish is 'género' a grammatically masculine word, and because of that to say "non-binary gender" you would say "género no binario".

See? It's not about grammatically imposed misgendering, it's about how this language is built.

But Shine, I hear you say, that's all nice and good, but how do I refer to my non-binary friend? And well, dear reader, you're in luck because I'm not only Spaniard but also non-binary myself.

In Spanish 'friend' (like a whole lot of words) has a feminine and masculine form. When those words are used to refer to people, grammatical gender does match gender identity. For the most part. And broadly speaking, feminine words are associated with the vowel -a, and masculine with the vowel -o (this is not universal, there are exceptions to this, I'm trying to paint the broad picture to give you a general idea).

So what about gender neutral? Well, officially we don't have one. The Real Academia Española doesn't recognize it... But the RAE isn't word of god, it compiles usage, so the more a term is used, the more chances it will be officially recognized. Not using a term because it's not officially recognized is actively detrimental to the goal you want to achieve.

Okay, not an official gender neutral, but what have we come up with? Well, at least in Spain, it's associating gender neutral to the vowel -e. So you have the femenine ella/la/-a, the masculine él/lo/-o, and the gender neutral elle/le/-e.

Now time for practical examples!

"My friend, David, is a boy." 🇬🇧 → 🇪🇸 "Mi amigo, David, es un chico."

"My friend, Liz, is a girl." 🇬🇧 → 🇪🇸 "Mi amiga, Liz, es una chica."

"My friend, Alex, is non-binary." 🇬🇧 → 🇪🇸 "Mi amigue, Alex, es no binarie."

And that's how you do it!! At least in queer friendly spaces in Spain, can't speak for other places. I have seen the 'x' thrown around to make gender neutral in Spanish, but -e is way more intuitive for spoken language, so I like it better.

I am currently reworking my magical girl idea into a scifi graphic novel pitch 🚀✨️💪🏾 I'm gonna start working on it this summer. Here is One Image

Hi there! I'm Tawi, a Black, disabled lesbian trying to save up to move to a state with better healthcare as well as a replacement wheelchair.

To enter: head over to my kofi (https://ko-fi.com/appleplush) and tip $5 or more AND follow this account (appleplush).

It's some shit that everyone thinks they can understand based on vibes but science just doesn't work that way. Real scientists have proved time and time again that it doesn't work how people assume. Many medical conditions where it's assumed weight is a "cause", something to blame the patient for, it's often actually a symptom.

Body size is based on so many individual possibilities. genetics, upbringing, wealth, what type of food you eat, what type of work you do, where you live, etc etc etc. it is impossible to control for all of these.

I was a child born to fat, impoverished, labourer parents, and I grew up doing farm labour, gaining muscle - I will never ever be thin. It's just how my body developed. And no matter how much weight I were to hypothetically lose, doctors would still push me to lose more. Family would push me to lose more. Society would push me to lose more. It will never ever ever be enough. You will never be thin enough, there is no bmi low enough to satisfy them, there is no "progress" that won't just make them pity or shame you even more. Your personal circumstances aren't important to a pseudo-scientific practice, the variables don't matter that much, it must be a one-size-fits-all solution.

Every weight loss pill, every low calorie shake or meal replacement, every weight watchers frozen meal, it all contributes to the pseudo-scientific cult of thinness. Every ad that says you're not good enough, it pushes you to drop your critical thinking skills. We have created a world where people think shitting themselves into thinness using potions with untested ingredients is healthier than having some fat on their bodies. But it's not! That's absurd! You're sending your body into a constant state of gastric shock!! And one day, when you get bored of eating tasteless nutrient paste and decide to eat something with some flavour in it, your body will react with a starvation response and store every little bit of fat that it can, because it's so used to being fucking starved. Which sends people into a panic response, buying up more pills and trying to crash-diet and lose their meagre protective layers.

Your body stores fat because that's your reserve energy. Fat is protective. I thank my body every day for storing so much energy for me, fuck knows I need it! That's your blubber!! You are a large mammal. Your body is designed to keep energy in reserve so you can sleep and stay warm and keep your brain alive. You should research the human metabolic process. You should research the cow metabolic process. You should research bear metabolic process. YOU NEED FAT!

And just like so many other pseudosciences, fatphobia and all that it entails is deeply rooted in racism and specifically antiblackness. It is not a mistake that the ozempic-chic era is coinciding with one of the biggest waves of open, globalised white supremacy we've seen in decades. Whiteness needs to perform & police whiteness constantly, maintaining appearances is THE way to stay part of the ingroup.

Reblog this if you're willing to answer random questions via Ask.

if you'd rather buy a plushie - here's the shop he and his wife run!