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My favorite example, beyond the obvious ones like lord/lady, waiter/waitress, steward/stewardess, is housekeeper, which is now the more acceptable term for a maid, when maid, of course, just means "woman" and keeper is masculine, would be keepster or keepess but (to my knowledge) neither were used historically because, well, keeping wasn't something women got to do!

Likewise, waitress has fallen out of favor for host or server, which are also both gendered terms. (hostess or serving girl, respectively. Servant is also gendered, maidservant and servantess were used)

There's been a concerted push with a lot of these to phase out the feminine variants of these words and just treat the masculine variants as neutral, or find neutral alternatives like fireman -> firefighter (even though fighter is also gendered) because the feminine variants are seen as inherently lesser, which, yeah that's how women are seen.

There is a line you have to draw somewhere of "okay let's just treat this and below as gender neutral because, frankly, most words that just mean "person" mean "man" historically because women weren't (and still largely aren't) considered people, and otherwise we're going to shred the whole English language" and I get that.

BUT. I think a lot of folks draw that line at the start and insist that man/guy/dude/bro can be gender-neutral which is obvious stupid. And I think it's always worth having this investigation and questioning how we speak, it shapes how we think about worlds and people real and fictional.

Watch, I'll do it right now:

I, a white trans woman, have privelege over all racialized trans women. All the transmisogyny I face is amplified a thousandfold for them because that transmisogyny intersects with the racism they also face. And I will never be able to truly understand that as they do.

Did the transmisogyny I am subjected to dissapear? Lol, no.

Do I feel a need to invent some bullshit term like "transmisogynblanc" because they have the term "transmisogynior" to describe the specific form of oppression they face at the crossroads of transphobia, misogyny, and racism? Lol, no. I'm not at those crossroads. I'm just at the intersection of misogyny and transphobia. There isn't even an "anti white racism" road to intersect with those other two, it doesn't exist.

you are not out of paper

you have so much paper

it’s okay to function as intended

you are not out of ink

i just refilled that cartridge last month

you can connect to that computer you’re supposed to connect to

So yeah there are people who genuinely believe that "accessibility" means only making things that are unchallenging. This is incorrect in any form of art, whether it's popular media or something more traditional. Accessibility in writing means printing in larger text, use of readable fonts and formatting, translation into Braille, and recording in clear audio. Accessibility in gaming should mean colorblindness filters, toggles to deactivate strobing in cutscenes and environments, scalable text, custom keymapping, and the ability to modify graphical settings including framerates, motion blur, fixed versus free camera, and so on.

Someone pointed out that article's from 2023, and that's my mistake! Here is one that describes better where we are today.

So.

Downloads are still available as of time of writing. If you have music you want to keep, maybe go download it.

If your favorites sell music directly, go buy it there.

Do NOT go yell at musicians for being on Bandcamp. Where, one day after this broke, do you expect them to go? Where else can we get DRM-free files?

If the new owners keep Bandcamp Friday and DRM-free downloads, I will keep buying music from them.

Think of it this way: who are we trying to help? Musicians, right?

It won't help musicians to boycott Bandcamp and I have not (as of this writing) seen a call for it that's actually from a musician.

It really won't help musicians to yell at them about being on Bandcamp.

Next Bandcamp Friday I'm going to go buy albums I'd miss if they disappeared.

Hey everyone - My cat Max needs dental surgery. He's an otherwise healthy cat who likely has a lot of years ahead of him - I want to get this fixed so they don't have to be painful ones. Everyone's hard up right now so I won't seek the full amount here, but I'd really appreciate any help at all. Thank you for reading and sharing ♥

$0/800

grug: but then how will grug demonstrate high level of skill? grug have art degree

thog: any caveman represent buffalo as it is. grug must represent what it means to grug