The Goggles Stay On

Starting a countdown to pride month!

Starting us off with the first year I did pride mikus 2022

Like, listen. We both get talked over by men, it sucks. But I also get talked over by women. I get talked over by everybody. And if I raise my voice to make myself heard, I will get kicked out of whatever workplace or social group because raising my voice one time will be characterised as "scary" and "aggressive". And if I complain about someone talking over me, I will not receive sympathy or commiseration, I will be told that I need to unlearn my male-patterned behaviour of "speaking with the expectation of being listened to", a behaviour I never had anyway because everyone has always talked over me ever since I started speaking.

The same logic applies to any expression of misogyny: I experience the "normal" form, plus a whole lot extra, plus the lack of access to solidarity and support for people who experience misogyny. If I had to put numbers on the contributions to my general misery from each form of oppression I face, *misogyny* would not reach even one tenth of the contribution made by *transmisogyny*, an all-pervading oppression that makes anything like a "normal" life almost impossible.

Today I bought a train ticket from a ticket machine, but when I tried to use it to get through the barrier it didn't work. My first thought was not "I should go and complain about this", it was "Welp, better buy another ticket and hope that one works," because any interaction with a service worker where they can see my face and hear my voice has a high chance of ending in harassment and a decent chance of ending in physical violence.

If you start ballet at 16, you are too old to ever expect to be able to do it seriously. If you start at 12 you’re too old. If you want to do ballet as a serious thing, as a career, you need to start at like eight years old or even younger, because your bones and joints need to be trained while they’re still flexible in order for you to be able to perform many of the required motions and stances of ballet. In particular, you need to be able to perform turnout of the hips, but all of your joints in your legs and feet will be affected, and this irreversibly changes your body.

And yet! Nobody talks about this as a negative thing! Little girls say they want to be ballet dancers, and if their parents have enough money, that’s what they get to be! Does it cause problems in later life? Yeah, sometimes! Often, even! But nobody talks about that because it’s a thing for cis people to do and so naturally it’s all fine!

By the time I was done dancing at age 18, I had been through physical therapy for 3 separate issues caused by ballet. The worst one was because of how my hips and muscles developed and it cause discomfort in my knees so bad that I couldn’t walk very far without pain, much less climb stairs. One time at a pt session, a neighboring patient, who was elderly, said I was “too young to be here”. I was in middle school so I rolled my eyes. It was/is funny to me.

I am 23 now, and I still get stiff in some places, and I’m sure it is related to dancing as a kid. I snap, crackle, and pop like Rice Krispies.

I have no regrets because ballet and was a big part of my life. I just know that it will have long term effects on my body and there is nothing I can do to change it.

All mikus are canon :> (speedpaint below)

Sisi had planned out a whole show for X'vahl Tia's nameday, on the stage in Gridania. But she forgot to book it in advance, and when she got there, the stage was occupied. The friendly Gold Saucer attendant in front said that they were welcome to perform to the side of the Make it Rain display, but by then, the Primogs were refusing to share a stage with "that smug bow-tie-wearing mog up there" Sisi did try to explain that the giant moogle on the display was only a model, but that made things worse "hahhhh, he thinks he's a pretty guy, huuuh?" Eventually a compromise was met, wherein the furry little shites divas would continue heckling the moogle statue on the Make it Rain display, and Sisi would play one of their instruments loudly enough to cover it up.

So: 𝄰TOOOT𝅘𝅥𝅮

From pics community on reddit

You can fight ICE by annoying them

Mess up their food/drink orders- Lose their tickets/reservations

Overtighten lug nuts, strip spark plugs

Give them incorrect but real-sounding information

Record them with your phones

Disrupt them with loud noises (car alarms, music, banging metal) and bright lights (flashlights, headlights)

Shame them

(fuck yeah)

The fascists want complacency.

Do not give it to them.

(fuck them white supremacists )

You do not need convincing.

You need conviction.

Reminds me of this post by @corpsehusk-creaturedoll