I'm getting old

during the presidential election (black) ppl were given so much shit for not being head over heels for biden with one of their biggest reasons being "getting the cheeto out of office!! uwu". yes trump is evil but biden has literally taken the reigns of america and is doing the same dance with them.

i don't think (white) liberals understand what it's like being petrified of having little to no power when it comes to relatives in colonized countries that have been crumbled to ruin and left to slowly die. they don't think beyond the baseless twitter or tumblr post that has so many likes and shares that it has to be true due to its popularity.

while u are sitting in the comfort of ur home screaming at strangers online over issues that only personally affect u and ur fragile image, there are ppl that work to support their families both in the US, Canada, UK, etc and the ones back home. making bi-weekly trips to western union. buying minutes to make sure they're alive and not just okay. deciding whether or not to cut food costs for themselves or folks back home because they can't afford it.

and when absolute hell breaks out to the point where ppl would rather risk their lives swimming with their children on their backs or huddling on crowded dingy make shift boats not haven eaten in days so they can reach sanctuary in a country that has promised asylum, even going as far as making it law, but are instead met with whips similar to the ones black ancestors met their ends to and put on the first flight back into what they were trying to escape.

the right panel shows a businessman in a suit holding up two large bags of money, with text reading ‘A company steals $140,000 from employee paychecks. In most states, not a crime, grace period to reply, can still buy politicians’. a small bubble by the businessman reads ‘Bonus: interest-free payments’.

the bottom panel reads ‘Criminalize wage thief. Why do we even have to say this?”

the use of gendered language, whether in law or in company guidelines, has been used as an excuse to exclude trans people from various kinds of reproductive healthcare. there have been stories of abortion providers pointing to the use of “pregnant women” in all clinic literature to justify not giving trans men assistance. there are issues where “women’s health clinics” will refuse to accept referrals for anyone who doesn’t have “F” on their records, which of course includes many trans women. there are in turn stories of trans women being unable to access “male” prostrate cancer screening.

language in this sort of capacity needs to be as factual and neutral and carefully constructed to avoid loopholes as possible. at this stage in my life, as a non-woman capable of pregnancy, i don’t really CARE anymore if you talk casually about pregnancy as something that happens to women. but i DO care if the medical system writes out some guidelines that, in only acknowledging pregnant women as a possibility, open me up to the possibility of being denied care by transphobes who can claim they’re just following the rules.

it’s for reasons like this that some people don’t get their gender markers changed, but that in itself creates dangerous situations when their marker doesn’t match their presented gender - I’ve heard horror stories of people getting arrested after being pulled over by a cop who thought they were lying about their identity.