Crushed Red Leaf

and remember

Trans in the South: A Guide to Resources and Services

From The Campaign for Southern Equality:

Trans In the South: A Guide To Resources and Services is a directory of more than 400 Southern health service providers that the Campaign for Southern Equality team has confirmed to be trans-friendly and trans-competent.

Available in both English and Spanish, you’ll find lists of trans-friendly mental health providers, primary care physicians, HIV care specialists, attorneys, endocrinologists, and more across 13 Southern states. The guide also includes resources to assist with funding medical transition, and helpful information about insurance coverage. We hope this resource guide helps people access the services they need to survive and to thrive.

We’re grateful to the many providers and agencies listed in this guide and to partner groups in the South and nationally that also put out resource guides. We’ve done our best to curate this updated guide to be as thorough and accurate as possible about trans-friendly services across the South.

Example: I downloaded Friday the 13th because it’s free on psn. I dunno how to play, so I just enter quick play and I’m matched with 3-4 kids on mic. Immediately on mic they’re shitty and disparaging to each other. They laugh at each others deaths, they actively work against team mates and self sabotage, they call each other “fags”, etc. From the sounds of the voices they cannot be older than 13-14.

I put on my mic and just decide I ain’t havin it. I am nice. I thank them for barricading doors or leaving me items. When they break free from Jason’s grasp I say “good job!” or I try to help them. One kid survived for most of the match by himself. When he dies, I tell him he did a fantastic job.

The mood shift is practically INSTANT. These kids almost immediately stop being dick heads. They start encouraging each other and being kind. After the match all of them try to friend request me. Which should tell you a couple of things:

A) kids want to be kind, and they want to have a nice time playing games. But encounters with adults like me or so rare that they’ve trained themselves to instantly put on a toxic, shitty, defensive veneer when encountering any new person online. It’s literally just THAT EASY to not groom a horrible gaming community, it’s just that NO ONE does it.

B) the speed of which they all tried to friend me was cute, but paints for me such a sad picture? Like these kids are SO desperate to find people to play with who aren’t crappy jerks. They played with me for 10 minutes TOPS and all instantly tried to reach out to me.

Now here’s the thing. Most of these boys, my brother included, have ADD/ADHD. About a week into the project all they had in their shared world was chaos. Somebody filled the place with tnt and lit it up. Holes everywhere. Whenever one would attempt to try and build something (mostly wood huts and not the actual project) it would be destroyed within minutes as the boys began to insult each other heavily and complain that the design was ugly.

I brought my own ipad with me and decided to sit with the boys while they continued their reign of terror. I joined the world and built a hallway out of brick at the very center of this war zone. Immediately one of them tried to destroy it under the impression that “it looks bad”.

“Well, what should I make it out of?”

“Diamond.”

The ten year old mind is a mystery to me…

Anyway, then I showed him some pictures similar to these:

I reasoned that it would be easier to sway this kid toward another pretty block than trying to get him to stick to the materials of the time, so I asked him if he would like to help me replace my brick design with quartz (eh, it’s white).

Bam! One of the ten year old anarchists is dutifully building me a glittering gem hallway for our insanely rich monks.

The other three are off somewhere still yelling at each other and setting off explosives, but we have something built. Much to my surprise the kid asked if he could build the church next because he “wanted to build the most important part”.

Here’s where I learned something important. I don’t have ADD or ADHD but as I said before my brother does. When he gets fixated on something, he’s really gets into it. Once a few minutes had passed and this kid already had four walls up I decided to grid up the entire mission. One gets the church, one gets the farm, etc.

After playing the game with them for an hour, I had a pretty good idea of where each kid should go.

Church kid, I found, was very particular about materials and shape(hence his hangup over the brick). I gave him free reign over the outer walls of the mission and showed him the reference pictures to get him started.

My brother liked the farms most (he was building dirt domes over the cows don’t ask me how I made this connection it just worked, okay), so he was in charge of building pens for the animals.

Another kid was, at first glance, very loud and bossy when it came to decorating (constantly said we were making chairs wrong). Turns out he likes interior design, like putting benches and beds in the little rooms, so his bossiness was just frustration with my brother’s artistic sense I guess.

Another was very good with placing trees and plants around the exterior (I guessed this because he covered the place in a ridiculous amount of trees and I asked him if he would like to know where they are supposed to go). He got to make a vineyard for us and organized how the crops should go.

So how did it turn out?

Actually very nice!!

So what did we learn? Kids actually like to play games and be praised for their creativity and intuition. If I had just told them to stop messing around rather than direct their attention to areas within their interests, they never would have gotten anything done.

After an hour of gaming they:

Mirrored my language; “thank you!”, “which part are you working on?”, “I like this block.”

Realized each other’s strengths; “hey [kid name] can you help me with the roof?” “How do you make the big trees [kid name]?”

Were able to articulate exactly what they did or didn’t like without using force; “that looks good!”, “how about we put it there?”, “I don’t like that block, how about this one?”

This thread. It killed me. I am slain.

aight folks heres a little character psa for ya

THIS is sora and vanitas they are NOT the SAME person

THIS is ventus and roxas they too are NOT the SAME person

HOWEVER

sora and roxas, technically, ARE the SAME PERSON take ‘sora’ add an x and rearrange

ventus and vanitas also, technically, ARE the SAME PERSON note the name similarity

ALRIGHT I HOPE IVE CLEARED THAT UP FOR EVERYBODY AND NO ONE IS CONFUSED ANYMORE!!!

this has been a kingdom hearts psa

y’all

need

to

read

Shimanami Tasogare

It is an amazing manga with an almost entirely LGBT+ cast and talks a lot about gender identity, sexuality and troubles faced by those within the LGBT+ community (especially for younger members). Also it is fucking BEAUTIFUL.

Kamatani Yuuki’s use of imagery and visual metaphors never fails to take my breath away.

“I won’t be available.”

Imagine you’re at work and your boss asks you to come in on Saturday. Saturday is usually your day off–coming in Saturdays is not an obligation to keep your job. Maybe you were going to watch a movie with a friend, or maybe you were just going to lie in bed and eat ice cream for eight hours, but either way you really, really don’t want to give up your day off.

If you consider yourself a millennial you’ve probably been raised to believe you need to justify not being constantly at work. And if you’re a gen-Z kid you’re likely getting the same toxic messages that we did. So in a situation like that, you might be inclined to do one of three things:

Tell your boss you’d rather not give up your day off. Cave when they pressure you to come in anyway, since you’re not doing anything important.

Tell your boss you’d rather not give up your day off. Over-apologize and worry that you looked bad/unprofessional.

Lie and say you’ve got a doctor’s appointment or some other activity that feels like an adequate justification for not working.

The fact is, it doesn’t matter to your boss whether you’re having open heart surgery or watching anime in your underwear on Saturday. The only thing that affects them is the fact that you won’t be at work. So telling them why you won’t be at work only gives them reason to try and pressure you to come in anyway.

If you say “I won’t be available,” giving no further information, you’d be surprised how often that’s enough. Be polite and sympathetic in your tone, maybe even say “sorry, but I won’t be available.” But don’t make an excuse. If your boss is a professional individual, they’ll accept that as a ‘no’ and try to find someone else. 

But bosses aren’t always professional. Sometimes they’re whiny little tyrants. So, what if they pressure you further? The answer is–politely and sympathetically give them no further information.

“Are you sure you’re not available?” “Sorry, but yes.”

“Why won’t you be available?” “I have a prior commitment.” (Which you do, even if it’s only to yourself.)

“What’s your prior commitment?” “Sorry, but that’s kind of personal.”

“Can you reschedule it?” “I’m afraid not. Maybe someone else can come in?”

In Ontario, Canada, for non-union employees, you can refuse work only if you feel it is dangerous. So if your employer asks you to use a piece of equipment that is obviously broken, you can refuse to do this work and be legally protected from punishment, and it is up to the employer to prove that the equipment is safe. But if your employer asks you to do something outside of your job description, “that’s not my job” isn’t considered a valid excuse and you could be reprimanded.

When it comes to overtime, things are less clear. Your designated number of hours (whether you’re full time or part time) must be laid out in your employment contract by law. However, this doesn’t protect you from working overtime, it only defines when you become entitled to overtime pay. So if your employment contract says you work 40 hours per week, you employer can still ask you to come in on the weekend to do 8 more hours, but they must compensate you: either with increased pay for those hours designated as overtime OR with paid time off. Again, you can only refuse this extra work if it is unsafe. Refusing to do paid overtime can not only make your employer upset, it could also put them in a legal position to fire you.

If you’re a unionised employee, your collective agreement will outline all these terms and help protect you from shady employer practices. Always talk to your union representative if you don’t understand your agreement.

Some people can enter a 140° car in the summer to get something out of the car. But if they stayed in the car, they’d die from the heat.

Some people can hold their breath underwater for 30 seconds. But if they tried to go scuba diving without the necessary gear, they’d drown.

Clearly, someone doing something for a short period of time does not automatically mean that they can do it indefinitely with no problem.