Ominous!

the older i get the more useless agab terminology seems outside of like maybe 1 or 2 very specific circumstances

*widely praised poetic quote in a foreword by a usamerican translator voice* see this language.... it's not like other languages. sometimes it has metaphors. or abstract thinking. sometimes a word has several meanings. sometimes a lot of meaning can be condensed into two words. sometimes those words even have etymologies. sometimes if you translate idioms or break down the components of words you can get something pretty cool in english. and naturally this gives us essential insight into the timeless national character of its people

it's because you're always in that damn coffin

A large part of the reason families were bigger in the past was because marital rape was not considered rape and birth control/abortion methods were ineffective, dangerous and/or illegal. We can dance around this and act like our great great great grandmothers just loveddddd being mamas so much that they decided out of their own free will to have 11 children. We can pretend that they DECIDED to have big families because it was a financially advantageous decision so they could have more labor around the farm. But a lot of children in the past were fundamentally unwanted and not conceived out of love, children were not a choice women got to make. We need to admit that and stop pretending historical women were inherently more maternal because they were impregnated at the age of 15 and kept having babies until they were 40. That did not make them loving mothers, it did not make them ‘the divine feminine’ and it sure did not make them happy.

It is important to think about this truth, because it is so painful that the initial reaction is to deny it or simply not think about it...

There's also the element of tech backwardness, not just societal backwardness for the 'left' anprims and granola types out there. If you live in a society with no effective medicine, then you live in a world where half of kids don't live to the age of 2, and a considerable number of kids and moms die in childbirth, resulting in the ungodly number that haunts me since I learned it that in order for a pre-medicine society to reach replacement rate on population the average woman needs something like 7 preganancies. Ofc because averages dont actually work like every woman having 7 pregnancies exactly, and you're more likely to be descended from a family that made a lot of kids, there's a decent chance that those huge families were planning for a 2-4 child deaths that by a stroke of luck just didn't happen. So even the best-case scenario, loving mom and dad - fulfilling the heterosexual expectation thrust upon you means on average seven harrowing pregnancies each very likely to kill you (and you absolutely know people who died this way) and a few heartbreaking miscarriages and early childhood deaths. There really just is no romanticizing the past if you know about it.

citation on the (horrifying) seven pregnancies figure, with math

there should be a term for characters you personally don't care about but you defend them anyways because the way people treat them is really uncomfortable. like ok this is a very middle-of-the-road character for me but the fandom's either been super misogynistic, racist, etc. about them or harassed innocent people who try to genuinely explore that character warts and all, and i find that more annoying than the actual character.

the term should by 'my client', like you're a lawyer defending your client that you are completely indifferent to but you are obligated by your job (or your morals) to defend

i think people are starting to confuse class analysis with bioessentialism. like... no not all men do this, but Men as a constructed social class do do this. that's still okay to say. that is regular material analysis of the world around us.

i think people are starting to confuse class analysis with bioessentialism. like... no not all men do this, but Men as a constructed social class do do this. that's still okay to say. that is regular material analysis of the world around us.

I mean, given that the words are the same, people could also do a bit more when speaking to make it clear whether they're referring to "men the socialized class" and "men the gender," especially given how many people out there do mean "men the gender" when they say that. It's an unfortunate reality that you do need to distinguish which one you are when talking.

or men could just get over it

love the rhetorical sleight of hand here between "men the class" (i.e. the gender-delimited category of people who get socially permitted to get away with shit) and people "socialized" as men. not leveraging transmisogyny to stifle criticism of the actions that constitute the class of men at all.

has anyone noticed recently that it's expensive

times like these really make you appreciate pouring river water in your socks

i hope the femme in the "i top mascs" t-shirt & the butch in the "i let femmes top me" t-shirt found each other!!!!!!

Honestly if you say or do something strange, an employee probably WILL tell all their coworkers about it all day, however they’ll basically never remember it was you specifically and instead just a faceless “customer” amalgamation of every time someone said something to them. Plus you’re giving them enrichment and something to mutually bond over. So really you’re doing an important service by being a little awkward.

rb to affectionately throw a crumpled ball of paper at a mutual