#outreach

Furry Weekend Atlanta 2026 • Objectumsexuality Meetup 💙🩶⭕️💛💜

Wow, what a turnout! This was my first time holding a dedicated meetup for objectumsexuals outside of a paneling space and I was blown away by the reception. We managed to pack out a whole table on the 10th floor of the Marquis ... with spillage! 😵‍💫 Our final photos represent only a fraction of the people who showed up, with many more who unfortunately couldn't make the timeslot.

I was so touched to see the number of both familiar and new faces, with even some of you guys coming to say hello! 😭 Many people who showed up had been to my panels before and/or explored the topic more in-depth after seeing my presentation at FWAs in the past. We also had a bunch of new people who were curious about the topic, which is always great!

These events are largely a way for OS people meet others like them, mingle, interact with each other's objects, foster education about objectumsexuality, and provide the opportunity for OS people to get their hands on pride goodies that may not be easily accessible for them. Many people brought their objects of affection and piled them together, and were able to interact with the published materials and read through stuff that isn't archived online. All in all, an extremely successful outreach. We're already planning to have another one very, very soon, so keep an eye on that! 🫂

This is what I call the conundrum of "It's not your fault, but it is your problem," i.e. marginalized people should not have to constantly explain their personal stories of oppression and hand-hold even well-meaning folks through the education/decolonization process, but the fact of the matter is, changing minds and cultures takes a lot of hand-holding, or nothing is going to change because ignorance is only changed when it clashes with other perspectives, and ignorant people by virtue of their ignorance do not seek out diverse perspectives themselves.

I think the only way to balance the necessity of outreach with the burden of work is to understand that it is never your personal obligation to engage with someone on any given day. You can let the ignorant Facebook comment go if you don't have the energy to explain or engage in debate over something that shouldn't even be a debate. Either someone else will take that one, or the bigot will still be there to deal with tomorrow.

Is it necessary to bring outreach and diverse perspectives directly to the people whose behavior you want to change? Yes. Because the problem with those people is that they only change by confrontation and engagement.

But is it your personal responsibility to lay out your values, personal struggles, and humanity to every bigot or racist you encounter until you are completely exhausted? No.

Every time you do outreach or argue your side with someone, you do good because even if you don't change their mind, you might have an audience you don't know about reading your perspective (i.e. when arguing online), but it's not your sole burden to do, and you don't have to capture every backward comment at the expense of your energy and mental health.

If you want people to change, you're going to have to put in effort that shouldn't be your responsibility. The price of getting hung up on the fact that it shouldn't be your responsibility is people never changing. But you don't have to carry the burden alone or all the time.

like we need to find ways to encourage people to learn and engage with knowledge that doesn't involve shaming them for not knowing something when no one is born knowing everything and educational systems vary like states of matter

this isn't inspired by greek tragedy related discourse at all I swear

(previous thread)

Materially the power dynamic at play shows that trans women are women, just women that cis women are allowed to abuse and then come out feeling like it was done to a misogynistic man. To expound more on what I meant with that tag, if you think that my idea of a terf believes that trans women are men or are like men any less than you believe it, you're on the wrong track.

I'm confused by this, because I don't even believe a "woman" is a thing at all beyond self-identification purposes. It seems like you're saying you believe TERFs treat trans women "like women," but unconsciously so. I'm against the idea there's an objective social role that can be described as either criteria or proof for being a "woman."

Really just stuck on how wrong that statement about cishet men not abusing people they see as men is.

That's definitely not what I said. I said cishet men do not generally want to have sex with people they see as men. Not even that they aren't attracted to people they see as men, just that they don't want to be and often react murderously when they discover the woman they're attracted to is trans. I don't understand how any of that is controversial, or how you got "cishet men don't abuse people they see as men" out of it.

I have seen transphobic posters dismiss rape threats against trans women on the basis that the men giving them probably wouldn't actually want to do it, so that really struck a chord with me because it's that exact same logic that conflates attraction with abuse while also negging trans women.

I agree that's transmisogynistic.

No, those posts were in response to a transmasc talking about murder rates and how they show a way that trans women are treated like men and therefore might not have it worse than trans men.

We need community in our communities. We need strength, warmth, courage and the solidarity birthed from their melding. We need love.

I feel that It may be a small thing but sharing with our neighbors means something vital to our humanity.

By reminding them that their simple lawn display is someone else's "Shazam!" It's "Popeyes spinach". It empowers that someone else to dust off, stand up, screw their head on and get back in the ring- One. More. Day. -It may not be a big thing. It may be everything.

We will survive. We will thrive. We will win.

Together, we will win because love ALWAYS wins. I believe that. I do.

"The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice." -Dr Martin Luther King Jr.