fracture

idk if i should be encouraging you, per se, beyond just encouraging you to allow yourself to be how you are and accept it... but, if you really want to know, perhaps studying trauma will give you the answers you seek.

i like this question

one of the major roadblocks to figuring out i was trans is that a lot of my self value and perspective of the world was rooted in being a woman

the night i realized that wasn't true, that i wasn't a woman, that i probably had never been a woman, was truly incredible. everything i knew about the world fell away and for a short time, i saw everything with fresh eyes. nothing i had learned before was taken for granted; everything was subject to change, everything needed to be checked again

of course, over the course of the next week or so, i found that indeed, the world worked pretty similarly to how i had figured it did before. but ever since, a lot of things have changed, too. for example, it's very hard to assume that people's genders are set in stone anymore. prior, i thought them to be fairly rigid, known early in life. and now it's more like... if you're cis, it's a little harder to assume you'll always be cis, since most cis people haven't gone through the internal work to even be open to the possibility that they're not cis, nevermind the various threats to life and identity that come with it...

anyways, the point i was trying to get by talking about all this is- especially over the last decade or so, where i found out a lot of people i looked up to or even aspired to be like were total shitbags- i think that rooting your identity is a mistake

let yourself be open to being whatever you're composed of at the moment... knowing you might need to release it in the next. appreciate it while it's there, understand what you get out of it, and don't be afraid to fall into its absence... trust that you'll always find the solid ground of yourself below it

beyond the obvious ways this is fucked up, imagining this happening with AI gen text is insane. trying to craft a post to both empathize with another poster, kindly demonstrate flaws in thinking or logic about a point they usually care a lot about, and trying to explain how the different point of view better supports the things they care about it such a monumental effort already that AI just cannot do. no actual persuasion will come out of this (not that a ton happens on the internet to begin with, but even less than that)

and honestly if you're firehosing people like that, AI is just going to absolutely drown out any actual communication from happening. at some point, we'll just have bots going to war for us about our points, and no one will be reading it

big shoutout HOTS... i should tap back in... FUCK deadlock (note: this user has not played deadlock)

the survival story was beautiful. marco should be extremely proud of reraising himself and achieving a happy life

it was also shocking to see that this is maybe the link between homosexuality and pedophilia that the right are so often trying to warn people about. it's... truly horrific, what kentler did to these kids. and kind of infuriating that his actions would be linked to homosexuality as a whole

it's not like i don't have any empathy for him, he was a product of... deeply fucked up people, people who also judged and shunned homosexuality. but what he did is just absolutely fucking vile

that's true, but there's also an argument of resources and conformity to consider. oppressive regiemes also have large amounts of media at their disposal and tend to be very good at issuing orders from the top down, so their ability to define things is pretty strong

we don't really... have those things :') so our ability to make an impact isn't really as great, i would think. and given that, maybe it's best to recognize and educate people on what the existing dog whistles are, rather than trying to reclaim them?

really would like to see the article if you have it on hand. i can see the argument for both sides, so i would like to read more and potentially be persuaded one way or the other

this is something i didn't realize until recently, but you really gotta be on washing that shit weekly. i used to think it wasn't a big deal, you could just do it every couple of weeks / once a month, but you sleep WAY better when you wash them weekly because your body and skin don't have to hold off a trillion bacteria trying to get into your body / getting allergies triggered by dust mites

although, to be honest, i would never have figured that out without dealing with a persistent vaginal infection because of it... 😭 at least i'm like 95% sure that's the cause atm. i guess i'll edit my comment in two months when i can confirm it (i'm testing this as of about a week rn)

i would have liked it if this had offered a COVID perspective on communal baths. i'm inclined to think that a hot moist environment is a likely place for it to flourish, and it seems odd to neglect to mention that three years of a pandemic probably had an outsize impact on the number of bathhouses still open in 2022

obviously we probably don't have a ton of data on how to circulate air and filter COVID out of bathhouses, but i also bet there's a way to do it in a relatively energy efficient way

anyways, it feels like a major spot that's lacking in an otherwise informative and well thought out read

really good thoughts and write up that you linked, thanks

that's YOUR union, go get involved and fix it!

even unions are gonna eventually fall to corruption and laziness if ppl think they'll solve your problems for you

the union IS you (and your coworkers)

not until they've unionized ✊