Þæs ofereode

Durham pride happened today. the Reform UK led council cut the funding, with the deputy leader, a gay man himself, citing "gender ideology, kids on puberty blockers, and men in women's spaces" as the reason he disapproved of pride. it went ahead thanks to group such as Durham Miner's Association fundraising (solidarity forever!) but the fact still stands that this attack on trans people hurt the entire queer community.

this new guidance hurts queer people in many ways (another example: gay and lesbian couples where one person is trans will no longer be protected as same sex couples under the Equalities Act) and of course, hurts our trans siblings the most (feeling unsure or unsafe about using public bathrooms will lead to trans people going out less. trans men are expected to either break the law or simply not go. trans people will be excluded from pools, gyms and spas that don't have mixed sex changing rooms.)

i wrote about all that, but you may have your own thoughts or relevant experiences about how this guidance has or will impact you or your loved ones. so write it. call on your MP to do the following:

Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate and a free vote on this Code.

Support any motion tabled in Parliament objecting to it.

Write to the Minister for Women and Equalities and the Prime Minister.

or, if you don't have it in you to write ten paragraphs (which is very understandable), you should still fill out this email template with your own personal touches and sign this petition, if you're british. and if you're not british, you should reblog this so your british followers can see it.

if something wants to get at your blood, and they’re, say, some kind of murdersaurus, or maybe a really big frog, that’s where the problems start to arise. a really frog is not made for removing blood, and your blood knows this, which is why it is so vehement about wanting to stay IN your body instead of coming out. 

Tempted to actually put this on spotify so I can secretly stream it at work...

When a client of mine tells me that he became abusive because he lost control of himself, I ask him why he didn’t do something even worse. For example, I might say, “You called her a fucking whore, you grabbed the phone out of her hand and whipped it across the room, and then you gave her a shove and she fell down. There she was at your feet, where it would have been easy to kick her in the head. Now, you have just finished telling me that you were ‘totally out of control’ at that time, but you didn’t kick her. What stopped you?” And the client can always give me a reason. Here are some common explanations:

“I wouldn’t want to cause her a serious injury.”

“I realized one of the children was watching.”

“I was afraid someone would call the police.”

“I could kill her if I did that.”

“The fight was getting loud, and I was afraid neighbors would hear.”

And the most frequent response of all:

“Jesus, I wouldn’t do that. I would never do something like that to her.”

The response that I almost never heard—I remember hearing it twice in fifteen years—was: “I don’t know.”

These ready answers strip the cover off of my clients’ loss-of-control excuse. While a man is on an abusive rampage, verbally or physically, his mind maintains awareness of a number of questions: “Am I doing something that other people could find out about, so it could make me look bad? Am I doing anything that could get me in legal trouble? Could I get hurt myself? Am I doing anything that I myself consider too cruel, gross, or violent?”