Skitty

I was invited back to NYC Pride again this year, but I won't be going. In the past, I've had other trans men tell me to 'go touch grass' because there are fewer trans women like that in the real world, but my actual experience told a different story.

I don't go out much for Pride to begin with, and what happened when I did go to NYC completely shut me down to it. I was marching in the protest against the Broadway production of Jagged Little Pill regarding their erasure and mistreatment of the trans/non-binary community. It was a space that should have been rooted in solidarity. Instead, a trans woman took the microphone and explicitly told trans men to stay to the side and keep quiet on community issues, claiming that trans women are doing things right and have it worse. As I remember it, she actually specifically told us to shut up.

I haven't been back to an NYC Pride-related event since. Even at a rally meant to stand up for the community, my friends and I were told to shut up. What made it worse was that her behavior was applauded by women in the crowd and fully accepted by whoever coordinated the speaker lineup. She was allowed to continue to talk. (To add here there was WAY less applause than other things she said during this event but it was still generally accepted to say)

You can say it's my own fault for letting one terrible experience make me throw my hands up and be done, but it didn't help at all. Now, I will barely even go to a gay bar without fully researching the venue and the event to guarantee it is genuinely transmasc-affirming. If I can be promised a space where trans men are actually safe and respected, I’ll go. But I refuse to step back into a generalized “trans affirming experience” that treats transmasculine people this way.

Uber is a fucking shell game of a company designed to leech investor capital and output bootleg cabs.

Nvidia posted a profit in 2023 of $4.37 billion. This is like someone stealing less than a penny from me.

And they lock this kid in a prison hospital for LIFE?

Which, stopping pedos sounds good, but this bill will not do that.

The EFF has more on it, but the long and short is what it will do is basically outlaw encryption as inherently suspect by way of people being potentially liable if anyone could do anything with it, and it carves out Section 230 to do so.

Which, if you don't know, means that websites are gonna massively overcorrect and ban basically anything that could set it off, and if you don't think that's a big deal, remember that the last time that happened was FOSTA-SESTA, which kicked off the censorship wave that fucked over a lot of sites including Tumblr, and also didn't do dick for its stated purpose of stopping sex trafficking.

It's currently in the Senate Judiciary Committee, so if you see any of your state's Senators in the list of members, CALL THEM ASAP, and even if they aren't, call your senators and especially your House reps and tell them you do not want this censorship law rammed into a must-pass bill without public debate.

Left wingers do this too. Except instead of "THEY'RE EATING THE CATS AND DOGS" it looks like:

"No one else will ever accept you."

"You're too oppressed to be understood by anyone but us."

or

"Anyone outside our group is dangerous."

Check in with yourself about how online communities make you feel.

Do they make you feel hopeful, or hopeless? Connected, or isolated? Accepted, or tolerated?

Do they encourage you to think for yourself, and use critical thought? Or do they ask you to accept without thinking and toe the line? Is there open communication, or are differing opinions bullied into silence?

Beware of anyone who tries to isolate you.

Beware of anyone who tells you no one else will ever love you like they will, that no one else will ever accept you.

Beware of anyone that tells you life is nothing but pain, or that there is no hope.

Hopeless, lonely people are easily controlled.

I know things are scary right now. I'm scared too.

Look out for people who WANT you scared.

Try to find spaces that make you feel like change is possible. Look for people who make you feel empowered to do something!

Using folks’ correct name and pronouns is suicide prevention

Abortion care is suicide prevention.

Accessibility is suicide prevention.

Birth control is suicide prevention.

Mutual aid is suicide prevention.

Housing is suicide prevention.

Healthcare is suicide prevention.

Climate action is suicide prevention.

Food security is suicide prevention.

Ending imperialism is suicide prevention.

Land back is suicide prevention.

Abolishing borders is suicide prevention.

you work 5 days a week for 8 hours at a very intense job with multiple skills required. you have 5 minutes to grab all of your very heavy tools and navigate to the opposite end of the building when you change shifts. you get a single 30 minute lunch. you have to exercise, regardless of illness, neurodivergence or disability for an hour and you don't get to choose what you do. you have hours of the same work to do at home. also if you fuck any of this up, or do it the wrong way, or stop showing up, you will be punished and your caretakers could go to jail.

maybe you have the choice to do this all at home. the only difference is that you don't have to transport as much. so you're stuck in one spot, alone, head down, working like you usually would otherwise.

completely inhumane, right? but sure, "kids these days are..." alive people who think and feel. you should not torture children.

Infrastructure. Building were made with the intention to keep heat in.

The UK is made up of islands. It is surrounded by water, which usually means it's humid, when the temperature rises. When it is humid, the sweat on your body, can't evaporate and stays on your skin. It sort of traps the heat in, instead of cooling you down, like it's meant to and makes you sweat more. Viscous circle

Air con. A lot of places do have air con, like shops and offices. The average home, does not. To buy a singular air con unit for a room, it's about £100-300. Depends on what you can buy. To get a whole house fitted out with air con, can cost around £1000-6000. This is not taking into account how much it cost to run it, with energy prices being so high. It's a luxury that most people will not save up for as the heatwaves are sporadic. If it was the norm to get very hot temperatures throughout the whole of summer, air con would likely be viewed as a necessity and wpuld be a normal part of people's budget

Not enough time to Acclimatise. Heatwaves will only last a couple of weeks at a time, before the weather changes to a more mild temperature. For the majority of the year, the UK (mostly of England and Wales, it is more cold up north) temperature stays about 10-20°c. When a heatwave does come, it is usually about a 10°c jump (at least) from what the weather was the week before. The Heatwave is normally only a couple of weeks, before weather drops again. A lot of the times, storms follow after. It will then be cool again for quiet a few weeks, at a temperature brits are used to, before it suddenly changes again. The heat is hardly ever around long enough for the body to get used to it. If your body does get used to it, the cooler temperature that follows, pretty much reset your resilience to hot temperatures the next time there is a heatwave.

When it gets hot, there tends to be a hosepipe ban. Water companies will call for a hosepipe ban, meaning people will not be able to water their gardens, no sprinklers or paddling pools. The heat often causes ponds to dry up, rivers and lakes to shrink. Probably why there is sometimes a storm after a heatwave, all the evaporated water comes back down when temperatures cool.

It's not normal. The temperatures when the UK is hitting, is not normal. People you see complaining about the heat, did not grow up with temperatures getting this high. They just aren't used to it. Some Brits may be aware that the heat is not normal and may be why they struggle with it so much. It is different when travelling to a hotter climate, as most people travel with the knowledge that where they are going to, is meant to be hot.

So here you go. Hope this was an intresting read for anyone curious

Edit: As this is getting shared I would like to spread the word of putting hot water bottles filled with water, in the freezer. Put that lump of ice in your bed at night and it does cool things down.

Edit 2: As a comment kindly pointed out, if you do use the frozen hot water bottle method, don't reuse it with hot water. Freezing will weaken the rubber and will offer less protection from heat, which could lead to burns.

Thing is though, as a teacher, I actually do suffer from kids being online, because it means that I can't have public social media associated with my real name. When you start teacher training in the UK, they'll typically advise you to lock that shit down as much as possible.

“We had somebody a few years ago,” one of the instructors on the course said, “who didn't lock it down and the kids found it. She came to us all upset, saying that it wasn't her fault, but obviously it was her fault really because she should have made her accounts private.”

It is very common for employers to ask for all your social media accounts (personal and professional) when you interview, often explicitly to check for “extreme political views”.

So like… is that all gonna stop then?

Like if we're doing this to protect the kiddies, and the kiddies aren't going to be allowed online any more, then can I get an OnlyFans?

Not saying I want an OnlyFans, but could I get one?

Could I post long, expletive filled political rants?

Or essays about which drugs I think should be legalised?

Or top ten lists of my favourite sex acts, including illustrations done by me in green pen on lined paper?