salami without the art

Astra Announcer Lines

I have a convenient checklist of things that can, should, and in fact must be done on Joseph Breen's grave:

little discussed piece of transmasc history is that one of the previous oldest living pair of conjoined twins (who died in 2024) was a trans man! his name was George Schappell & he came out in 2007; unfortunately his family had him deadnamed and misgendered in their obituary, which is part of why he deserves to be talked about more.

As trans people begin to organize politically, it is tempting to adopt the essentialist notion of gender identity. The cliché popularized by the mass media is that trans people are "women trapped in men's bodies" or vice versa. The attractiveness of such a strategy is clear, as the general population is more likely to become supportive of us if we could convince them that we are somehow born with a biological error over which we have no control over it. It is also often in tune with our own sense of who we are, which feels very deep and fundamental to us. However, as transfeminists, we resist such temptations because of their implications. Trans people have often been described as those whose physical sex does not match the gender of their mind or soul. This explanation might make sense intuitively, but it is nonetheless problematic for transfeminism. To say that one has a female mind or soul would mean there are male and female minds that are different from each other in some identifiable way, which in turn may be used to justify discrimination against women. Essentializing our gender identity can be just as dangerous as resorting to biological essentialism. Transfeminism believes that we construct our own gender identities based on what feels genuine, comfortable and sincere to us as we live and relate to others within given social and cultural constraint. This holds true for those whose gender identity is in congruence with their birth sex, as well as for trans people. Our demand for recognition and respect shall in no way be weakened by this acknowledgement. Instead of justifying our existence through the reverse essentialism, transfeminism dismantles the essentialist assumption of the normativity of the sex/gender congruence.

Discord is supposedly saying this is going to affect "only 10% of users", but I really don't believe them at all. It's always going to be way worse and affect more people than what they claim.

One thing I do just want to note—yes, creators of the source media all too frequently give Black and Brown characters scraps when it comes to content. But we would not have Rolan clocking in more works than Wyll if content quantity mattered most in who fandom engages with. Yes, sometimes creators make missteps when writing Black and Brown characters. But with many white characters fandom will hc around dips in writing quality, or meta about how it’s actually brilliant.

So, I’ve been pulled over a few times in my life. Not many, but a few. And I’ve also been in a couple of cars that got pulled over. And let me tell you, if you were actually doing something wrong, the officer doesn’t make any small talk, just straight into “I clocked you doing 70 in a 55.” The only time I’ve ever gotten the “do you know why I pulled you over?” was the time when I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and I got let go even though he insisted to the end that I was doing 87 in a 70 (white privilege at work).

Also, you can always go to court and contest a ticket, and a lot of times you’ll win. Or if the cop thinks you’ll win they won’t even show up and you’ll win by default.

Another helpful phrase especially with speed stops is “I believe I was going the speed limit.”

"crochet can't be made by machines" went from being a cool fun fact to being a call to action of "so if you see mass manufactured crochet in Target, that was made by a person and they were underpaid and you should boycott it" which is true, it was made by a person, but EVERY item of clothing you own (that you did not purchase from a company using ethical labor) was made by a person being underpaid (at *best*.)

If you've ever seen images of sweatshops in the early 20th century, in New York or the UK or other developed countries

I think part of the reason why fights like pre-nerf Lei Heng suck aren't because they get to deal 10 billion damage to you even if you break all the coins, but the unfairness of how the enemies get to screw you over as much as they like while you aren't allowed to fight back on the same scale until a new op id drops and you can steam roll them.