she/they/it // tech artist, gender sicko, fibro queen
For some reason most of my partners have ended up being Cincinnati refugees. So I think I can second this. “it’s a good place to be from” is a common refrain.
as a Colorado native I’ve disliked most every other person I’ve met from the state elsewhere, no particular reason outside luck of the draw I think
It always depends but tbh I hope you feel free to use whatever terminology you find useful to describe yourself! and I think there’s no valor that can be stolen, identity is what you make for yourself. It’s always a joy to learn someone I know is queer in any form. Lots of us have had times where we’ve doubted how we describe ourselves too and gatekeeping labels doesn’t tend to help anyone. You will come across people who do here and there, I did myself, but in my super objective opinion they’re annoying, smell bad, and stifle people just trying to figure themselves out. Labels are just tools for further conversation and more people using queer labels is a good thing.
+1 to this for sure. Applies for gender identity too. Speaking just for myself, the longer it’s been since I transitioned the less my actual labeled identity has mattered, to the point that these days I just say “nonbinary” and move on. It’s what makes a lot of the “what is a woman” rhetoric baffling, given the label and definition matters so little in day to day life.
My bf comes off pretty much straight, but he describes himself as pansexual and attracted to feminine people. It’s cool to see him engage with the queer community despite being more or less able to “pass” as cishet if he wanted to, and his nebulous labeling was really helpful in settling my nerves as a newly-out trans woman. Less worrying about whether or not I was woman enough, more just hearing him say he likes me and that’s that.
Was just about to post IDLES here myself. It goes and it goes and it goes
SPD has “limited value” to the small biased sample of locals I know. They’re very unpopular in some communities, especially queer/minority communities around where these inspections took place. But as always, many others aren’t directly impacted and so they tend to be quietly neutral or supportive of the police.
I went just once in Capitol Hill, Seattle. If I was more of an extroverted type it probably could have been cool - it was a concert venue featuring a bunch of queer artists, and a lot of tents for queer community organizations - mutual aid, healthcare, counseling, etc. There’s definitely a way to make Pride useful for the community. But it’s really just bringing together a community that always existed regardless - and imo no reason to wait til June to start getting involved and organized 😁
I point conversion therapy out as an egregious example of persecution, but there’s plenty more, through a variety of avenues. Many fly under the radar as things that sound less intense - schools notifying parents if kids go by a nickname or change how they present is one that’s come up a lot lately.
From experience - lots of people thankfully have a “live our lives in peace” attitude - but unfortunately even a minority of bigots can make our lives pretty difficult and divisive. Especially if they’re allowed to do so by other people who don’t agree themselves, but also don’t fight it when they see it.
And so sure, the message has been coopted for mainstream audiences by corporations running ads like “[sterile uplifting music] at CitiBank, we think you’re people! [stock rainbow flags waving]” If you know anyone who’s queer, you know there’s real difficulty that comes with it, but also a resilient community takes care of each other the best they can. Pride ads are how most people know of us, but they’re not even close to representing us or the stakes we face. They’re pretty much entirely irrelevant to us - we never asked for them, and they certainly don’t help.
A lot more people identify with LGBT+ than there used to be, because it’s a very open label and people are more able to identify with it in accepting environments.
There’s a hell of a lot more people now who are… pretty much cishet, but maybe have some 5% attraction to the same sex, or they’re attracted to trans/nonbinary people, and so they consider themselves bisexual or pansexual, etc. when 5-10 years ago they probably wouldn’t have.
The specific number starts to mean a lot less when we remember the attitude of those people answering “do you identify with LGBT” has quickly shifted from “oh, well I’m definitely not gay!!” to “uhh sure, why not?” in a very short amount of time. I’m of the opinion this doesn’t reflect a change in our baseline behavior and is… not even consistently measurable given the diverging, shifting cultural context.
Talking in broad strokes all about balancing “freedom of identity/attraction” and “religious freedom” makes for a decent-sounding empathetic viewpoint prioritizing individual liberty. I understand where this is coming from, I don’t disagree myself, but then again who would?
And that’s why we have to get into the specifics of “forcefully spreading their belief system and values to others” because that’s what happens to queer people as status quo. We’re legally and socially discriminated out of a lot of aspects of public life and often carry deep trauma from wrath and abuse incurred on the way. Conversion therapy is still legal in many places for fucks sake! The hell is that if not forcefully spreading a belief system?
Often times, the term this is justified under is “freedom of religion” - but really it’s freedom to control and abuse others due to religious justification. The two freedoms are not equatable, therefore the balanced center between is not a neutral position.
Corporate pride advertising is super forced and very few queer people are actually on board with it. The term is “rainbow capitalism” and it’s pretty derisive. Unfortunately that’s all of what some people know of us - they don’t know us as people, as communities, just like them; they know us as a rainbow flag on a TV screen and as a Tucker/LWT/[whoever’s got opinions about us today] talk show segment, and so that’s all they think we are. Nobody likes this, queer people least of all.
I’ve heard this as a sticking point for some people, and I think it’s fair. Some don’t enjoy putting themselves in the shoes of a complete fuckup main character who’s already made a ton of terrible decisions before the game’s even started and will continue to do so despite your best efforts.
But, worth noting this is part of the appeal for a lot of other folks, and the game is going somewhere really special with it. It’s not bad writing, it’s a necessary component of the story being told.
semi-related tangent, I think some people misunderstand this kind of thing as “well if he was trans it would be fine.”
when really, no, a trans comedian would just write different and much better jokes about this subject matter because they’re immersed in it and have a deeper understanding of the community and the experience.
Outer Wilds, to my estranged family. I think they could use a new religion and that game’s probably a better place to start.
It really depends on the sport imo. Trans women may retain some more muscle and some parts of the skeleton are largely unaffected, but muscle elasticity, hip rotation, flexibility, and endurance all end up being more dependent on hormones than birth sex in the long term. How much these things matter varies a lot from sport to sport, and the current system is not sufficient to balance these traits even among people of the same sex. Multiple leagues based on broad body types sounds reasonable, but I have no idea how complicated the rules would have to be to make it completely fair, given we already accept a great deal of unfairness currently.
What a gross comment. I happen to think that’s bad.
Yes, which is why I brought up consent. Obviously nobody should be forced into it. But I’m not gonna worry about it on behalf of people who clearly don’t hate it. I feel it’s better they have something yaknow?
You can get enough money to buy a laptop in a couple weeks working at mcdonalds and you didn’t have to let creepy guys jack off to you in the process.
She already had a cashier job during the day, whenever they’d give her hours. But it wasn’t enough to have much left over. Dunno why you’d assume guys jacking off to you is inherently more traumatic than any shitty food service job.
Not on OF, but I’ve got nudes out there. I really don’t give a shit who sees em. I’m not ashamed of them. Where do you get the idea that irreparably damages women?
You’ve got it backwards. Lots of people who face addiction, homelessness, etc turn to sex work. It pays and sometimes that’s what ya gotta do to survive. I’d argue that consent is dodgy for anyone forced to do sex work to pay rent, but barring that, whatever gets struggling folks paid is good in my book.
An acquaintance of mine who’s been living out of her car for some time just got a refurbished laptop that she’s now using to polish up her resume and portfolio and get a stable job doing vfx. She paid for it using money she earned via sex work - which she’s not ashamed of at all, it’s just another skill she has that opened some other doors for her. She met a fantastic partner who she’s now living with. And now that she’s got a leg under her she’s getting sober too. I’m genuinely really proud of her.
For the person being executed, firing squads are among the most “humane” methods. It’s fast, reliable, and simple. It’s not common because the brutality of painting someone’s brains on the wall is too clear for onlookers.
Do you know who ate all the function candidates?
If it were up to me I’d be avoiding templates altogether. Sadly, I don’t get that choice with 3rd party code.
my main beef is that “too fat” is a wildly varying scale from person to person because everyone stores and processes fat differently. and if you’re “too fat” that may not in fact be your most relevant health concern. my experience with health providers that focus on BMI during intake is that if you’re “overweight” many other health problems will be seen through that lens even if they’re unrelated… in my case, lots of dieting advice, being told to exercise more come to find out decades later I had an undiagnosed nervous/muscular condition. now that it’s treated somewhat, my weight stays pretty much in “normal” BMI with the same or lower activity. I’m kinda pissed it took this long to get treatment for an underlying condition because the ruler said “too fat.”