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see years ago my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, and as happens with progressing cancer her mobility was drastically reduced. To help combat this and allow her to retain independence at home Papa (my grandfather) got a shower chair. This is about as self-descriptive as it can get, it is a chair made of metal and plastic that sits in your shower or bathtub. I’m sure those with physical disabilities are already quite familiar with them, for those of you that aren’t just google it.

Eventually my grandmother passed. A couple years after my dad had to stay at Papa’s house for a couple weeks, for his own medical reasons. While there he discovered that Papa had kept the chair. And while Papa was old he was hardly infirm, he didn’t use a cane or have any severe mobility issues. Certainly none that would have affected his ability to stand in the shower. The conversation went more or less as such:

Dad: Why they hell did you keep the shower chair, dad? You don’t need it

Papa: Kevin, you wait until you use it. Then you’ll know why I kept it.

My dad was disbelieving tbh, to him chairs in showers when you don’t need them was a thing that like. Lazy rich people had. wtf could be so great about being able to sit in the shower? Why would an able-bodied person even need to? it’s a fucking shower? wash urself and then get out. Then he used the chair, and according to him it was like he’d had a proper religious revelation. Shortly after his return home (tbh the amount of time it took for him to take a shower sans chair) my dad went out and bought a shower chair.

The ensuing conversation with my mother went as such:

Mom: Kevin why did you buy that? We don’t need it!

Dad: Just use it once, this will change your life.

And it did. After using the chair for the first time my mom straight up wanted to know why they had never thought to get a chair for the shower before. Ever since we have had a chair in the shower.

It has proven itself invaluable.

Exhausted but covered in grime from yardwork so you HAVE to wash before doing anything else? shower chair

Don’t have the spoons to stand in the shower? shower chair

Leg/hip/back injury slowly getting worse over time making standing for long periods a difficult matter? shower chair

Home from work and just want to shower but your feet are killing you? shower chair

can’t keep your balance when masturbating in the shower? shower chair

want to write fic in ur head without your feet starting to hurt because you maybe spent a little too long standing there in spray? shower chair

disassociating? shower chair

gotta shave your legs? shower chair

crying because you’ve now realized how much easier being able to sit down and prop up a leg makes shaving while in the shower? shower chair

I have no current mobility issues, and yet if I had to move house tomorrow a shower chair of my own would be one of the first things I purchase for my own home.

[Sound of typing]

Person 1: Morning, Jill!

Jill: Morning, Stacey!

Stacey: What'd'ja get up to this weekend?

Jill: Oh, I had a lovely little breakdown.

Stacey: Did you?

Jill: I did, yeah. Really treated myself. I felt on the brink all week so I decided to stalk my ex just to push myself over the edge.

Stacey: Johnathon?

Jill: That's the one.

Stacey: Oh, he's got a gorgeous new girlfriend.

Jill: I know.

Stacey: Nice.

Jill: And he's just landed himself his dream job.

Stacey: Oh. [pause]. And you're here. [pause]. Ideal!

Jill: That only had me tearing up so I pushed it a little bit further. I tried on a dress from five years ago.

Stacey: [gasp] You bugger.

Jill: Then I grabbed a bottle of wine, box of McVities, whacked on the news, accidentally opened up my phone on selfie mode, and [blows a kiss French chef style] sobbing.

Stacey: Ahh, that sounds good.

Jill: Felt amazing, nothing like a good cry.

Stacey: You must have felt reborn.

Jill: Oh, I certainly felt like I was being birthed by that dress afterwards.

Stacey: [hums in a satisfied way]

Jill: [hums in a satisfied way]

[Pause while Stacey blows on her drink]

Jill: How 'bout you?

Stacey: Oh, I just saw some family.

Jill: Oh.

[pause while both nod]

Jill: Oh! So massive breakdown.

Stacey: Huge.

Story time: I’m a vet tech and one time I was [???] this lady for an appointment with her little dog who was covered in bugs

I searched this dog high and low for bugs, couldn’t find a single one

I said ma’am can you please point out these bugs to me

She said oh my gosh can’t you see them they’re right on his belly

She showed me her dog’s nipples and proceeded to try to rip them off

I said ma’am no stop

Those are his nipples

She said

There’s no way, he’s a boy

I said ma’am that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have nipples

Those are definitely his nipples, notice how they’re so symmetrical

She said no way, he’s a boy I said

I pet the kitten as I give this lady pamphlets and a personalized Cat Owner 101 lesson.

The kitten is leaving a great time, nearly comatose with happy in my lapm

She goes “That’s it!! That’s the sound!! What’s wrong with him?! If there’s anything we can do, we’ll do it! He’s my son’s best friend, we love him!”

I stare at her helplessly, fighting every impulse because this woman is so genuine in her love and concern for this, the first cat her family has ever experienced.

“Ma'am,” I say, so, SO gently.

if something wants to get at your blood, and they’re, say, some kind of murdersaurus, or maybe a really big frog, that’s where the problems start to arise. a really frog is not made for removing blood, and your blood knows this, which is why it is so vehement about wanting to stay IN your body instead of coming out. 

 This is a very interesting question.

There are a few ways to go about answering it that come to mind.

Considering Intent. This is kind of like the Kantian way of doing things: as long as you’re doing something for good reasons, it is OK. Conversely, doing something for bad reasons is wrong.

Dracula has arguably good reasons for sucking blood - that is how he sustains himself. He would die otherwise (or whatever the equivalent of death is for those that are undead), and we generally think that when having to choose between survival and death, it is almost never wrong to choose survival (even at the expense of another’s life - think of self-defense killing).

The mansquito likewise has arguably good reasons, assuming they need the blood for the same reasons that a Mosquito needs blood.

It is worth pointing out here how when it comes to common pests like Mosquitos, Black Flies, Deer Flies, etc., no matter how annoying they may be to us, and how much we may hate them, we do not really think that they are evil. Yeah, we wish they were wiped off the face of the Earth forever, but we don’t think that they are bad. They’re just doing what nature has programmed them to do. For the same reasons we do not say that a Tornado is evil, even if it destroys whole towns. 

So this moves us towards considering something like the “Nature” of these beings. In Philosophy this is sometimes called “Natural Law” theory. A Natural Law theory is one that proposes that there are certain natural laws, and breaking those laws is unethical. (Natural Law theory often goes hand in hand with Christian philosophy, and things like homosexuality used to be (still are, even) argued against purely from a standpoint of Natural Law - “It’s not natural!” (whatever that means).)

So again, Dracula and mansquitos are just following their natures. We can’t really fault them for it. We can be annoyed or angry, but we can’t really say that what they’re doing is bad in any real sense. The same, of course, would probably go for the Murdersaurus, whose basic nature is to murder. Again, just doing its natural duty.

The Really Big Frog is different. Assuming that a Really Big Frog is like a typical Frog except Really Big, sucking blood would be “deviant behaviour.” This is not what normal frogs do. Moreover, it is harmful to others. It’s Evil. The problem with Natural Law theory is that it assumes usually one kind of normal behaviour, and anything that doesn’t fit that is “deviant,” wrong, weird, etc. Maybe it works when you’re talking about rocks, plants, and bumble bees, but it seems to be grossly over-reductive and restrictive when it comes to describing people and other things.

So this could move us away from this whole style of thinking, and towards something that is more individual-based. I’m thinking now of Nietzsche, and what we call in philosophy Perspectivism. This idea is like relativism, in that each person has their own perspective, which grants them their own, unique, individual style of flourishing in the world. Some people like Cats, others like Dogs, others have Ant Farms - it’s all good. So long as my own style doesn’t interfere with yours, it’s all good. And even if it does, that’s isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 

Bro: No. The—the thing. The bad cultural thing. The paternal thing. 

Me: Ohhh. The Patriarchy?

Bro: That’s the bitch.

Me: I feel like we should probably not call the patriarchy ‘bitch.’ All things considered.

Bro: You right. See? This is why I’m stressed! What if I say something dumb like that in front of her!? Anyway. We’re going out again on Friday, I just gotta make sure I’m not patriarch-ing. Can you help me pick out what I’m going to wear? Feminists like flannel, right?

Colonizers have not limited their use of racial cannibalism to the medicinal. They have also used it punitively and vindictively. During the genocidal King Leopold II’s occupation of the Congo (1885-1908), Belgians massacred more than 10 million Africans. Most were forced to work for the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company, and were severely punished if they did not meet their rubber quota. In Don’t Call Me Lady: The Journey of Lady Alice Seeley Harris, there is a black and white photo of a Congolese man named Nsala, seated at the edge of a porch. His eyes are fixed on the severed hand and foot of his 5 year-old daughter, Boali. The Belgian militia had cut them from her body before killing her and her mother. To further exact their cruelty, they ate Nsala’s wife and child. They did this because he had failed to meet his rubber quota for the day.

The thing about white supremacy is that it does not merely subsist through the consumption of the Other; it whitewashes by de-emphasizing and lessening these misdeeds and others. History looks very different when white people are not the protagonists in its retelling. A significant instance: the accepted and well-known white feminist narrative about the Salem Witch Trials of the 1600s is that it was a hysteria driven by rampant misogyny and a pointed persecution of white women, the survival of which they harken to as evidence of their historical resilience. I prefer to think of it, more accurately, as a community of racist, religiously-intolerant enslavers and colonizers of stolen Native land cannibalizing itself—and I wish it had finished its meal instead of begetting centuries of white people who would gorge on the lives and cultures of Black and Indigenous folks.

As the Donner Party traveled across the U.S. as part of a violent westward expansion in 1847, a small group that broke off from the larger party became stranded without food in a grueling wintery hellscape. So, they conspired to murder their two Native American guides, Salvador and Luis, for food. The two men ran away, but were found a few days later and were swiftly eaten, the only members of the party to be hunted and murdered before they were cannibalized. Salvador and Luis are rarely spoken of when the story is told to relay the suffering and survival of the people who ate them. In the version of the story that tells the truth about colonialism and the violence it requires, the Donner Party are the monsters, not the damsels.

In middle school we had assigned seats on the bus for some reason, and the kid behind me loved snapping my bra strap and calling me crazy. Naturally, the authorities did nothing. I finally had enough and spent a week letting my nails grow long, and sharpened them to pointed claws with a file.

Snapper reached over the seat and quick as a whip I sank my claws into his hand, and I mean IN his HAND. I could feel his flesh as they went and I think the fact that they were still in the wound is the only reason they weren’t bleeding. “You have a choice now,” I said. “Pull your hand away and turn this into something worse that you get to explain, or keep it there and let the driver catch you in the act.”

1) The word translated as “forbidden” is “toevah.” While that translation isn’t … wrong, it’s sort of like saying “McMansion” means “really big house.” There are a lot of connotations in that word. The specific issue with toevah is that we … sort of … don’t know anymore exactly what it meant. Based on context, it seems likely that the word referred to something ritually forbidden. This part of Torah was written not only as a guide for future generations, but also to say “so, look around, see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT.“ Thus, if we interpret “toevah” to mean something that’s forbidden to do as a ritual before G-d, then the verse says nothing whatsoever about Adam and Steve and their two kids and their dog–it’s saying you shouldn’t have sex with another man in the Temple as a sacrifice.

2) Following the same “this is ritually forbidden” logic of toevah, this verse may also be interpreted as “don’t do sex magic,” which was a thing in. Like. A lot of fucking cultures at the time.

3) Hebrew is a highly gendered language, and the grammatical gender in this verse is really really weird. One of the “men” in this verse is given female grammar. Why? Who fucking knows, man, this isn’t the only grammatical oddity in Torah. (There are also places where G-d is referred to as plural, and also as female.) One suggestion is that this is a way of creating a diminutive–that is, that the verse should be read as “a man should not lie with a boy.” Now, it’s worth noting that modern secular scholarship has concluded the written Torah was written down around the 6th century BCE, and most non-Orthodox Jewish scholars are like “yeah, all things considered, that sounds pretty legit.”

Do you know what else was happening around the 6th century BCE? What laypeople tend to mean when they say “ancient Greece” was happening.

Do you know what happened a lot in that time period in Greece? Dudes forming relationships with younger boys, like ages 10-15, and using them for sex in exchange for financial gifts, mentorship, etc. While we don’t know just how young some of these younger boys may have been, we do know some were prepubescent. In light of this, and also something I mentioned under the first point–”see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT,” if this verse is interpreted to say “a man should not lie with a boy,” then it’s pretty clearly “my dudes, my fellows, my lads, don’t be fucking pedophiles.”

4) Because of the grammar I mentioned in #3, it’s also possible that “should not lie with a man as with a woman” is actually referring to a place, not an abstract personhood: a man shouldn’t have sex with another man in a woman’s bed. In the time period, a woman’s bed was sort of like–that was her place, her safe sanctuary. It was also a ritually holy place where babies were made. By having sex in her bed, you’re violating her safe space (and also introducing a man who may not be a male relative, thus forcing her into breaking the laws of modesty). If this verse is read this way, then it should be taken to mean “don’t sexually violate a woman’s safety and modesty.” 5) And as an offshoot of #4, this may be a second verse relating to infidelity. Which woman’s bed is any random dude in 600 BCE most likely to have access to? His wife’s. But laws were administered differently based on whether the person they pertained to was slave or free, male or female, and so on–thus, a man committing adultery with a woman would be treated differently than man committing adultery with a man (especially because the latter would carry no chance of an illegitimate pregnancy).

This is the worst tiktok video I’ve ever seen