☽ go be love ☾

You’ll see a lot of lesbians start to go by androgynous or masculine names (or nicknames) to feel more comfortable. Sam, Pat, Chris, Jay, Moe, etc. are all really common chosen names among lesbians for that reason. 

I also knew an older butch– my parents’ age– who went by Otter (& her femme partner went by Kitty) because they decided to just depart from standard names entirely– and I see younger lesbians using neo-pronouns in very similar ways for very similar reasons. 

A lesbian who was raised with the name Christina and the pronouns she/her/hers deciding he’s more comfortable with the name Chris and he/him/his pronouns to reflect his complex relationship to womanhood is not a huge confusing leap, it’s pretty normal depending on what circles you’re in. 

There’s this overwhelming rhetoric we’re fed that the only nature worth protecting is Grand and Huge and most of all Somewhere Else.

Nobody thinks about the wetland behind their local Walmart that is in Desperate need of protection, or the little remnant prairie in a cemetery, because they’re too focused on the abstract and often flawed concept of “wilderness” somewhere else.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to travel to see something new and unique, but the way I hear people talk about our own backyard, the way the last remnants of what we have here are ignored or outright rejected, breaks my heart.

My professor has spent his entire career in the Midwest trying to protect wetlands from housing developments and new superstores, but he almost always loses, not just because the developers have money, but the community doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.

Afterall, what’s a few old oak and birch trees in a little puddle of a swamp compared to miles of marsh in Scandinavia? What’s a grassy hill to a distant mountain range?

Well, to the duck, to the heron, to the bluebird, and to precious few people, I’d say it’s Everything.

I love to travel myself, and I know people probably don’t know that when they say “why is our wildlife/plant life etc. so lame” that they’re contributing to an attitude of rejecting what unique beauty we do have,

But

I hope one day people can see the wonder nearby and fight to protect it. I hope there’s something left to protect.

“women for weed, dykes for dope, radicals for reefer, folks for tokes…”

Me: 

fuck y'all that detach the harm and misery from such an experience by calling it “sex work”.

fuck y'all that only listen to the privileged few cam girls, high class escorts, sugar babies and porn stars that “love their jobs” and not the 91% that want to be out of the industry who are raped, attacked, murdered, drugged, addicted, pimped, homeless, starving or struggling to support themselves and their families.

Putting two people in complete control of another person (who is particularly vulnerable and has few legal rights) and then having no oversight for the whole arrangement is the absolute worst idea.

less isolated familial structures in general

children being made aware of how they should and shouldn’t be treated

Some form of child protection services that don’t just believe the parents and assume a child is lying when they report abuse

- These communities are not necessarily connected by an biological ties. In a lot of these multigenerational ‘families’, including people in the family who are not relatives or married into the family is totally normal. This has always created a lot more space to support people without families, support people who do now want to partner up and to create communities in which couples who can not have children (like some queer couples but not all & other couples too) can be a part of child raising. 

- Having a lot more young people around often means young people learn from each other. In many cultures young people form a non-hierarchial group that learns together and can do a great deal without adult supervision. 

The nuclear family doesn’t just facilitate abuse, it facilitates hierarchy. It’s a training school for obedience to authority. 

Now, which system would push such a training school strongly so it could get docile obedient citizens? Which system whould push the nuclear family. 

I’m not saying it’s capitalism but it’s capitalism. 

And then there’s the fact that the 2 parent, nuclear family can be most easily pushed into the pattern where one adult works an extremely exhausting job many hours a day that leaves that adult hardly capable of doing anything else, while the other adult takes on all the other things that adult would otherwise have done: care for children, clean the living space, prepare food, prepare clean clothing, etc. for free. What we know as traditional gender roles. 

This way capitalism gets one intensely loyal worker who feels ‘responsible’ for ‘supporting a family’ while all the work to keep that worker going is done for free by an unpaid worker in the home.