plenilunada

From 'We Do This 'til We Free Us'

And as an aside we have seen how 'straight' straight men are...so I don't even need to go there.

But straightness in women is...weird because it comes along with some very odd behaviors that make no sense and seem to appear in relationship with the degree to which a person participates in a patriarchal colonial culture.

I saw a vid the other day of a woman doing that 'what I wore vs what he wore to the event' vids. This type of video features a woman properly dressed up for a 'going out' event like a party or dinner date, and then shows their partner dressed like an overgrown 11 year old boy about to run around in the neighborhood streets.

Stretched out tee, random sneakers, stupid jorts, maybe a baseball cap. Mentally absent look on his face.

The 'joke' is that the woman looks great and put effort into her appearance and the man didn't....Because 'men' never do?

But here's the thing: I'm bi. The men I'm attracted to have never, EVER fucking done this.

I only date bi ppl, so I only date bi men.

Straight women will share about how their husbands are gross, can't clean, don't know where anything is...

.....AND consistently tolerate this bullshit, childish behavior from their 'life partner'.

They will date men who are boring, uninteresting, borderline mean, and then be 'surprised' when they find out he didn't really like them...but it was kind of obvious and what's more, how did they even like him?

DID they like him? Or is straightness 80% comp het?

Because when you exist within a narrative that mandates genders appear a certain way and behave a certain way despite what thousands of years of human behaviour show, then you're really just accepting the NARRATIVE and not an embodied experience of attraction.

I think about the commonly repeated discrepancy between male and female orgasm-- women orgasm with women, men orgasm with men (not like that matters much, statistically), men orgasm with women, but women hardly orgasm at all in straight relationships....

But I am very curious if that holds true in BISEXUAL relationships because again....I have never ever experienced this personally. Not to say that my exception breaks the rule, but ...I'm not straight. And I think that matters.

I saw a white woman get online as maybe some (dubious) sex educator to talk about the vagina and how most of the nerve endings are in the clitoris and labia (true! great!) and so few are in the vaginal canal (ok..!) that penetration 'barely feels like anything'.

Bitch. Pause.

Because coming back to straightness, that'sn some shit white people literally invented, and now skinny white women get to sit up here on podcasts selling their 'happy O' courses talking about how penetration 'isn't enjoyable'....

I think about the straps and dicks I've ridden, and I'm truly confused.

I also think about the layers of sexual repression that women are forced into, levels that are even more maintained depending on how white and straight you continue to be, and how vaginisimus and orgasmic dulling coincide with said repression.

I think about the long history of Black women singing writing and rapping about sex and how much they enjoy it, and having to fight back at people -- largely white!!! -- who have shamed us for doing just that, now saying penetration isn't enjoyable anyway.

Would we be rapping about it this way if that was true? Would y'all be so mad at Meghan if that was true?

The same women who make excuses for being with men that don't like to talk to them, the same women that have to be coached into expressing their desires in the bedroom, the same women whose lives revolve around shitty men, the same women who just accept that your 'husband' will dress himself like a fucking 8 year old who doesn't wanna leave the house....these are not the women, I don't think, who are in any position to tell me jack fucking shit about sexuality.

Straightness in general, but for the sake of this discussion, in women, seems to heavily be a performance of not only tolerating unattractiveness from men but actively pursuing and celebrating it. The woman who comes online to 'joke' about how her husband packed her dog food for lunch, who shows of how poorly he dresses for an event they are both attending as adults, who ignores her desire for a partner with charm, attentiveness and the ability to self express and gladly parades her lack of acquisition of a partner in lieu of having an oversized, boring, smelly child at her side.

I'm sorry, that's not natural.

I think of the woman who went on a vacation to Italy with her husband and showed how, after day 3, he went from dressing like an 'american man' (again the childish/lazy/everywhere-is-walmart-and-also-a-gym look USAmericans are known for) to an 'italian man' i.e. an adult in a crisp linen button down, well-fitting slacks and leather sandals.

And I think, that's the thing; do your husbands look like lazy shit bc they are men?

Or because they are USAmerican-breed 'straight' men? I.e. unfashionable and ungroomed....and you've been trained to like that?

Because it's not at all universal.

And you have to ask yourself WHY bc we are both attracted to men.

And if you look at some other cultures, even the straight women are wayyyyy less interested in tolerating today's men, despite being exclusively attracted to them.

In Queer Indigenous Cinemas, scholar Gabriel S. Estrada offers an analysis of queer Indigenous media from the Americas, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. This groundbreaking work uses Indigenous directional space and sovereign mapping methods to uncover the emotional, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of queer Indigenous lives. The book’s seven chapters—each one of the directions—look closely at media such as cinema and streaming videos that draw on Indigenous concepts from diverse nations such as Diné, Caxcan, Kanaka Maoli, and Nehiyawak.

Estrada discusses how the cinema brings into focus the ways that many Indigenous genders do not conform with the male/female binary, genders and sexualities that may or may not overlap with contemporary constructions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and two-spirit (LGBTQI2+) identities.

yes, India made legal gender change impossible but my friends have always gendered me correctly and stick to it even when it confuses other people and my friend's little sibling calls me older brother in Kannada yes, India made legal gender change impossible but my dog learned my new name quicker than the humans and she runs to give me a kiss when she's told to without being confused about who's being referred to

yes, India made legal gender change impossible but I can feel the Adam's apple growing in my throat and my muscles getting stronger, and my smile more real and I'm growing a beard, and I talk more freely

Then there is the YouTuber talking about Transformers, casually dropping the "Iraq war aesthetic" like it's a color palette. Desert punk. Military core. A vibe. This is what happens when your country hasn't had a war on its own soil in living memory; the violence becomes media, a backdrop for childhood toys. The explosions are no longer the sound of mothers screaming; they are cool action sequences. They are digesting the visual debris of massacre as a nostalgic fashion choice, scraping the trauma off and compressing it into a genre for their retro-futurist fantasies. The apocalypse becomes a mood board.

And finally, the girl recounting celebrity love triangles from her childhood, flippantly mentioning how the U.S. was "busy with the Iraq war or whatever." Or whatever. That single phrase is the thesis statement of American innocence. Over a million dead, a region destabilized for a century, an endless river of grief; and for her, it was the commercial break between pop culture segments. It didn't raise her rent. It didn't stop her Wi-Fi. The violence is geo-locked to brown skin and distant deserts, just background noise like a refrigerator humming. She has the luxury of forgetting because the machine doesn't eat her children, it eats yours.

A spokesperson for U.S. Health and Human Services confirmed to Stateline on Friday that the agency is canceling 53 out of 67 grants, worth about $68 million, under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, affecting grantees in more than two dozen states.

A list obtained by Stateline of canceled grants includes those awarded to universities, community organizations, city and state health departments and Planned Parenthood affiliates in states such as Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Texas and West Virginia. The grants were canceled two years before their expiration dates because the programs did not align with agency priorities, according to one of the grantees who received a termination notice.

The program is part of the agency’s Office of Population Affairs and is a “national, evidence-based grant program that funds diverse organizations working to prevent teen pregnancy across the United States,” according to the HHS website. The agency provides funding to programs that develop and evaluate innovative approaches to prevent teen pregnancy as well as to prevent sexually transmitted infections among adolescents, and to promote positive behaviors.

Ayana Bradshaw, president and CEO of AccessMatters in Philadelphia, told Stateline her organization received the termination notice of its $1.2 million grant on Friday, and it was effective the same day. Bradshaw said the letter cited a misalignment with agency priorities, specifically that the program “normalizes or promotes sexual activity for minors.”

AccessMatters’ Adolescent Health Initiative is entirely funded by the federal grant and provides free sexual and reproductive health programs to more than 1,100 teens between the ages of 13 and 19. The program provides information, education and referrals for healthcare as needed.

The Trump administration identified the teen pregnancy program as one to cut in its 2025 budget request, and it was included in the final 2026 appropriations bill. The language accompanying that bill said grants for sexual risk avoidance must use medically accurate information and teach youth about risky behaviors “without normalizing teen sexual activity.”

abuse in caregiving professions (like teaching or nursing) is not solely a result of power dynamics. it's also because people who go into those professions often have a idea of themselves as Good People, and are consequently incapable of recognising or acknowledging when they've hurt someone else. instead, they mentally put 'people who have inconvenienced me' into the Bad People box so they can freely abuse them while maintaining their moral high ground.

i read ross greene a lot when i was working with "difficult" or "behaviourally challenged" children. his refrain is "kids do well if they can" - meaning, in short, that most kids act out only when the demands of a situation exceed their capabilities. punishing them for this is not only cruel but also completely pointless, because they also don't want to be doing what they are doing.

Cutting - in my opinion, the most labor intensive part of the process. The amount of time/effort needed varies depending on the pattern and if seam allowance is included or marked separately, but no matter what this process can not be done by machine. Each and every panel and piece of fabric that goes into a garment must be cut by hand by a person.

Pinning/clipping - pinning (or clipping) is the stage at which you align the pieces you are going to be stitching together and hold them together with — you guessed it! — either pins or clips. This can not be done by machine.

Stitching - the actual sewing. This can be done by a sewing machine, but that machine still needs to be operated by a human being.

Ironing/pressing - two words that mean the same thing. The iron itself is a machine, but once again, it needs to be operated by a human being.

Finishing - depending on the technique you use, there are certain finishing techniques that can only be done by hand. But, let’s assume we’re talking about fast fashion, which is usually just finished with a simple overlock/serger. Once again: these machines need to be operated by people.

These are just the basic steps to making a garment, and don’t include textile arts that I am not as knowledgeable about, such as weaving, knitting, and crochet. Also, it is important to note that there are a lot of things that can only be done by hand, such as certain stitches and decorative techniques.

Also, the machinery being operated in textile factories is not equivalent to a domestic sewing machine. We’re talking about one of these guys:

See that gray cylinder under the table, behind the knee pedal? That’s the motor. These machines can sew through your fingers bones and all and not even stop. The people in these factories and sweatshops are operating heavy machinery, and are subject to all the risk that comes with that in addition to all of the work I mentioned above.