TcBe ✿

Pattern Playing - plus a little mathart.

Is there a rule for how many pentagons at each step? For total number of pentagons after each step?

Is there a rule for exposed edges at each step? Total?

Is there a rule for number of new vertices at each step? Total?

Is there a rule for the number of rhombi at each step?

Is there a last step to the pattern?

Will the pentagons enclose regular polygons next to the original yellow pentagon?

Like... you can't build a foundation out of sand and wonder why your house is gone when the tide comes in

The parties are not the same

The parties are not the same

I added the numbers in a high-visibility way in case the image was hard to read for people.

I...tried to make a meme and got carried away and made A Thing that is like partially unfinished because i spent like 3 hours on it and then got tired.

I think this is mostly scientifically accurate but truth be told, there seems to be relatively little research on succession in regards to lawns specifically (as opposed to like, pastures). I am not exaggerating how bad they are for biodiversity though—recent research has referred to them as "ecological deserts."

- people who are okay with capitalists generating artificial scarcity in order to increase profits

"Socialism is bad because no one is entitled to the fruits of someone else's labor."

- people who are okay with a system where a boss is entitled to the fruits of the workers' labor while the workers don't even get to keep enough to survive

"Socialism is bad because it promotes dependence on government."

i should NOT be an elder queer, i should be middle at most. i am a middle aged queer. most of the elder queers died.

when i was growing up i didn't go to pride parades, i went to pride marches. because that's 100% what they were in the 80s and 90s.

Housing is not geared towards single people and living with your family or in a shared flat/house is seen as immature and something you're supposed to grow out of.

everything is so much more expensive and married people get tax write-offs because...???

Jobs. Sexism overlap: Some employers think married women are more moral and dependable, others think that yes, you're a single woman now, but eventually marriage and babies will happen, so why invest in you? Either way, you lose.

If you're a happy single, family gatherings will get annoying/unbearable. Fast. Because everyone will have an opinion on what you're doing wrong and will try to set you up with people you have nothing in common with. Just being single and living your best life is apparently Not Done.

Being a single parent is hell. That's why too many people stay in toxic relationships "for the sake of the children".

Beauty and fashion industries. The idea that we should dress our bodies not for comfort but to appeal to potential love-interests hurts both our wallets and our self-esteem. But if you don't adhere to that, you're seen as either weird or slovenly, and that can have actual consequences where your job and your social standing are concerned. This especially affects disabled people.

The fucking media. Not everything needs romance subplots (looking at you, The Hobbit) and this is actually a problem that overlaps with compulsory heteronormativity - it's both that make it "weird" for the hero not to get a girl. And that keeps female characters stuck in the function of "love interest" almost exclusively. It sucks.

The Lens(TM). You know, I'd like to be viewed as a person first, not as a potential love-interest. This one strongly overlaps with misogyny - cishet men tend to only try and relate to women who they find attractive. I want the categories of "fuckable" and "possible future girlfriend" to stop existing!

legal incentives for marriage: there are many legal benefits (tax credits, split ownership, medical rights, etc) that can only be gained through marriage, as well as much of society being structured around marriage, making it much more difficult for both single and multiply partnered people

expanding on issues with multiply partnered people, amatonormativity also applies to non monogamy, or poly relationships. the expectation for relationships is two hetero people in a life long monogamous child bearing relationship, and so relationships that exist outside of of that are heavily scrutinized, if they're tolerated at all. This is also where heteronormativity overlaps heavily with amatonormativity!

now expanding on child rearing: the invention of the nuclear family model also erased the use of community raising of children. throughout human history, raising children was really done by the whole community, with varying degrees of blood relatives, neighbors, friends, and etc, and this allowed for children to have a wide support network and be well taken care of and protected from abuse, since a child with more adults to rely on isn't going to be isolated in abuse as much. nowadays, it's very hard for more than 2 people to be legal guardians of a child, and even adopting while unmarried or with more than one partner is near impossible.

expectation to have children. this is another overlap with misogyny, but part of amatonormativity is not only the expectation to get married, but also to have children! luckily more and more people are choosing not to have kids and this is being more widely accepted, but its still a default you have to "opt out" of and have a reason to not have kids, otherwise something is "wrong" with you/your relationship. it is much healthier to only have kids if you actively want them, rather than have them because you don't have a "good enough" reason not to.

Living wages. it takes two adults working full time above minimum wage to provide for a family, making being a single parent much much harder.

expected structure and progression of a relationship. the ideal relationship model is made out to be a monogamous romantic relationship that moves at the right place- too fast you're a slut or needy, too slow you're prude or cold hearted. romance is also expected to involve things like kissing, cuddling, and sex to the point where people often feel like they are owed these in relationships, even if they've never communicated with their partner about it and learned whether or not they're okay with any of those things. this expectation is also particularly hostile towards non romantic life partnerships (which yes they exist and no its not homophobic to be a same sex couple engaging in a non romantic and/or non sexual life partnerships. these are still good queer rep and important to respect and include.)

partners are property. this can overlap with misogyny, but exists outside of that as well imo. a romantic partner is seen as "belonging" to one another, where they may feel entitled to your time, emotions, body (ties into expectations of physical affection and sex), and even your life decisions. this amplified against women obviously, where they're expected to give up personal and professional lives for a male partner, but it can go both ways. imo it's unreasonable to be expected to give up or significantly change life or career goals for a person- your partners should work with your life, not against it. the pressure and self worth tied to relationships leads to a lot of people giving up education, job, or personal fulfillment opportunities to stay in relationships. Hell, I've even know some people where their coming out/transitioning was interrupted or delayed by staying in relationships longer than was healthy, all due to a fear of loneliness.

the idea that being alone = unhappiness, and that loneliness is only solved with romantic connection. people are often told, in exact words, that happiness comes with romantic love. this is expressed in a variety of ways, like that life doesn't start until you're in a relationship or married, or if you break up with someone you'll be unhappy (even if that person is making you miserable), or that a romantic relationship will cure your depression. in reality, none of these garuntee happiness. Yes a relationship has the potential to bring happiness, but that is not inherent to the relationship, but rather a product of the time and bonding spent with another person, which can be done without romance.

relationship hierarchy. this is definitely something I know a lot of aros are salty about, myself included. this is the idea that a romantic relationship is the most important and should be upkept before-or even at the cost of--all others. this often leads to people getting in relationships and just.. leaving behind or dropping contact with friends, sometimes family, and limiting their social connection to primarily one person. this is shitty for many reasons, including the fact that you drop relationships, but also because it socially isolates people and makes them vulnerable to abuse. its expected and normal to drop friends because they don't like your partner, even if they don't like them because they treat you like shit. the hierarchy of romance, then family, then friends last also leads to people not utilizing friends as important social connections even if they're single, which really can amplify feelings of loneliness and isolation. many people keep friends who just do stuff together, but never actually talk, bond, and support each other in the way that's essential for many people.

lastly, and probably the thing that will make people hate me the most, is obsessive shipping. amatonormativity absolutely influences the mentality that characters need to be in a relationship to be happy, and the main benefit of enjoying and creating media is to synthesize romantic and/or sexual relationships. combined with loneliness, hyperfixation or obsession, leads to people who only consume media for shipping purposes, struggle to interpret anything outside of a shipping lense, and will reject or even become hostile towards anything that goes against their ship/s (like people harassing creators to make ships canon, ruining careers of people that don't make ships canon, shipping irl people including minors, "shipping discourse" leading to harassment campaigns, violently rejecting non-romantic interpretations of a relationship, even accusing real life people of "queer baiting" for not being out/in a relationship. it goes on and on). Not saying all shipping is bad or goes that far, but its core it's absolutely saturated with unchecked amatonormativity, and unfortunately most people are unwilling to hear any criticism of fandom, especially when it involves examining its own toxicity. this has definitely led to many aspecs abandoning fandom, or only engaging in it within the aspec community.

"We are people living in the world of property relationships, a world of sharp class contradictions and of an individualistic morality. We still live and think under the heavy hand of an unavoidable loneliness of spirit. Man experiences this 'loneliness' even in towns full of shouting, noise and people — even in a crowd of close friends and work-mates. Because of their loneliness men are apt to cling in a predatory and unhealthy way to illusions about finding a 'soul mate' from among the members of the opposite sex. They see sly Eros as the only means of charming away, if only for a time, the gloom of inescapable loneliness.

"[...] It is the bourgeoisie who have carefully tended and fostered the ideal of absolute possession of the 'contracted partner's' emotional as well as physical 'I', thus extending the concept of property rights to include the right to the other person’s whole spiritual and emotional world.

"[...] The idea of 'property' goes far beyond the boundaries of 'lawful marriage'. It makes itself felt as an inevitable ingredient of the most 'free' union of love. Contemporary lovers with all their respect for freedom are not satisfied by the knowledge of the physical faithfulness alone of the person they love.

"To be rid of the eternally present threat of loneliness, we 'launch an attack' on the emotions of the person we love with a cruelty and lack of delicacy that will not be understood by future generations. We demand the right to know every secret of this person’s being. The modern lover would forgive physical unfaithfulness sooner than 'spiritual' unfaithfulness. He sees any emotion experienced outside the boundaries of the 'free' relationship as the loss of his own personal treasure." — Alexandra Kollontai, 'Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle', 1921

Amatonormativity as we know it today is the crushing weight of millennia of narratives used to justify controlling sexuality and reproduction to contracted relationships in order to assure lines of wealth succession and ruling class domination. We've inherited the stories told to culturally reinforce that violence.

And as our lives become more and more crushingly lonely under the alienation of capitalism, amatonormativity (especially marriage and nuclear family) is presented by ruling class cultural narratives as the only way out — because it reinforces rather than challenges the structures that got us to this point of alienation in the first place! And those narratives of ownership and property bleed out beyond the cishet contracted marriage into all concepts of love and interaction.

Shortly after (maybe even the same day) the Roe decision is officially published, the TX AG will announce that because of it, he believes he and TX are no longer held by Obergefell. Abbott will instruct clerks to stop issuing marriage certificates to couples who are same-gender (toss in smth about "original unredacted birth certificates" for full shittery), and possibly void current certificates which aren't solemnized. The state will then sue to void all "illegal" marriages they were "forced" to perform.

It'll be upheld all the way up the chain.

I've been saying for years this is all a long game.

There have been arrests in multiple states at gay bookstores, theaters and bathhouses which I also predicted last year would be the cases they will try to push for Lawrence.

So many things are based on the "right to privacy": the right to teach your children your own language, the right not to be forcibly operated on (specifically sterilized), the right to own and create pornography (or "specific kinds" of pornography, and please do not forget that ANY queer lit is viewed as porn by these people), the right to have queer sex in your own home, the right to live with a relative, the right to access contraception, the right to marry someone of a different race, the right to access transition care... and Alito just said "nah."

Us older queers have been saying and saying that this is all so tenuous and so fragile and there are better things to fight about than all the stupid shit people want to fight about.

Last year, Texas devised S.B. 8, a de facto ban on all abortions, and despite the fact that it clearly violates Supreme Court precedent, Trump’s three nominees to the Court refused to strike down the law. In the wake of that ban, a woman in Texas was arrested on murder charges for allegedly inducing an abortion. While the charges were eventually dropped, the mistreatment she faced sends a message to all women in Texas. And it’s not just Texas. Across Republican-controlled legislatures, abortion bans are sweeping the nation. And today, the Republican Governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, signed into law a de facto ban that criminalizes providing an abortion:

Once the law goes into effect, anyone who provides an abortion will face a felony charge of up to ten years in prison and a fine up to $100,000. There are no exceptions for rape or incest.

Republicans told everyone exactly what they would do if they took power. But for some reason, people chose not to take them at their word, they trivialized concerns about the Supreme Court, about reproductive rights, they bought into propaganda and misinformation, and here we are. Because Trump was able to stack the Court with three conservative justices (which are all lifelong appointments), he and the GOP have effectively killed Roe v. Wade, but it's innocent women across this country who will carry that burden.

That harm can't be undone, but we can still change course. I'm choosing to underscore the myopic discourse of 2016 not because I want to shame people who protested voting but to emphasize the fact that the future harm was so understated. No matter what people say about 2022 and 2024, about how Biden or any other Democrat is “just as bad as [literal fascist]," their claims will pale in comparison to the reality of Republicans taking power again. Queer rights, free speech rights to even just talk about race and racism, voting rights, freedom to protest and engage in political activism—all of these basic civil liberties are at risk if people choose to repeat the mistakes of 2016. If Trump's election proved anything, it's that no one can predict just how much devastation can be inflicted by choosing not to vote.

Midterm elections are coming up. If we want to codify Roe v. Wade and open the door for Biden to sign life-changing legislation into law, we need to reshape Congress and put progressive lawmakers into positions where they can remove the filibuster. We need to vote.

“Respondents . . . rely on post-Casey decisions like Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges. These attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define one’s ‘concept of existence’ prove too much. Those criteria, at a high level of generality, could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like. None of these rights has any claim to being deeply rooted in history.”

For those who don’t know, Lawrence v. Texas was a landmark queer rights case because it struck down laws that criminalized homosexual intercourse. Obergefell v. Hodges is the landmark case that legalized same-gender marriage. And in this opinion, the Court implies that these freedoms are comparable to allowing drug use and prostitution, it explicitly says that these rationales have gone too far, and that these rights are not rooted in American history. The Court is showing its hand and how it views what it perceives to be Court-created rights (abortion, gay marriage, gay sexual intercourse, etc.). Basically, the Court seems to be overturning the framework of substantive due process rights, which is the doctrine that creates these basic rights. If abortion rights can be overturned on this logic, so will queer rights.

Do better or fuck right off but either way you have sincerely fucked us all over for years going forward and that’s not something that’s easily undone - if it can be undone at all. Fuck every single damn one of you assholes.