queer and what you might call freakish

it's deeply frustrating to see how many people have abstracted into layers of theory which have no relation to actual physical reality anymore. no, that trans man isn't signalling his crypto-terfism. yes, all art is political but no, that doesn't mean a thousand people need to huddle around to misinterpret a tattoo and attempt to divine a stranger's detailed socio-political viewpoints from it. no, just because you can make your reasoning sound kind of feminist doesn't actually make it feminist to—and i cannot stress enough that this is what's happening—come together with thousands of people to disparage and insult a trans person afab for getting a tattoo you don't like.

"well, i think it's ugly and obviously a bad idea, but—" stop. consider why you feel the need to concede the idea that the tattoo is bad. consider why you feel it's appropriate to comment on the tattoo's quality or artistic merit in this context. why does that matter? why do there need to be a hundred well-meaning replies which all begin by insulting the tattoo?

Mouse, aged 3.5, has been requesting The Book Of the Earthworm as their toilet book, although I abridge it as I read aloud - maintaining interest and speeding the process up. This was summarised as “earthworms are slimy,”

“WHAT,” barked an outraged Mouse.

“earthworms are slimy.”

“Earthworms NOT slimy,” Mouse said carefully.

“If you touch one, you’ll find they are slimy.”

“Mummy,” Mouse said, needing some clarity, and betraying a faint concern; “earthworms is turn into pepperoni?”

“What?”

“Earthworms is salami? If you touching an earthworm, and it is turn into pepperoni?”

So, collecting this knowledge:

Sometimes a mouse can hear things wrong, or somethings a word has two meanings, like chicken (bird) and chicken (meat), or knight (fighter) and night (time).

Pepperoni and salami are similar

If earthworms are salami, they must be enough like pepperoni for Mummy to understand what Mouse means by it

This is distressing, and doesn’t sound RIGHT, but it’s sensible enough to question further (salami DOES have some earthworm-ish qualities)

But what I’m getting at here is the Mouse-ear soundscape of the world. When grownups are blathering on and the word “chicken” floats past, you have to scramble to work out if they mean your pet or the food.

It’s okay to attack your meat with a knife and fork, but not okay to attack your pet, even if they are the same word. You are not allowed to put ketchup on the “pet” category of chicken, even though it is THE SAME. You can put both things in the compost when finished, but only one event is Death and therefore Sad, and the other is Mouse Why Did You Do That To Your Dinner; Now We Can Only Feed It To the Earthworms. When your chickens die, they don’t come back, but the chicken you didn’t eat at dinner mysteriously presents itself again as lunch. Chicken is food, but not “chicken food”, which is apparently the pellets you feed to chickens. (Despite sounding very similar, chicken pellets and chicken nuggets are not the same thing at all.) Chickens quite like eating chicken meat; it’s impolite for humans to bite pets. Eat your chicken / be gentle with your chicken. Okay, you can play with your chickens / Don’t play with your food. Sometimes chicken is a pet, sometimes food, sometimes cowardice, sometimes an abstracted flavour of instant noodle. Yes, they’re the same thing, but they’re not the same THING - Mouse is three and sees right through that argument.

The world is terribly complex, and often seemingly hypocritical; and learning other complex things at the same time - English; decorum - is a bewildering task.

he looks SO shocked and taken aback and goes “what did you just say? how do you know my name?” so i sit there for a moment trying to figure out what the fuck he is talking about, and then go, “…. bitch?” and he looks so relieved and tells me his name is mitch.

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

PS: You can see some regularly-updated statistics about incoming data here, with lots of demography and graphs to peruse!

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

PS: You can see some regularly-updated statistics about incoming data here, with lots of demography and graphs to peruse!

if there is two things you should remember me by it's both loving birds and being very pro Europe.