people always talk about the extreme no homo mentality in guys sports teams but don’t talk about the severe lesphobia in girls sports teams. growing up playing team sports really fucked me up as a kid. straight girls i’ve played with were always scared of being perceived as gay for being athletic and because of the stereotypes of lesbians in certain sports. this was universal in the 3 sports i played: volleyball, softball, and basketball.
there were always strict unwritten rules about how you presented yourself while playing. for instance the ribbon in the hair for softball and a bow in your ponytail for volleyball. if you didn’t prove your femininity while playing you were a lesbian. there was so much effort in not being seen as a lesbian and proving that you /weren’t/ a lesbian was really important.
girls would always talk shit about girls with short hair on opposing teams. “we’re playing the team with the d*ke” was something i heard often as a kid. something i still heard in high school. being a lesbian in girls sports teams is predominantly what made me feel trapped in the closet in high school. I only felt comfortable coming out after i quit sports altogether
so if we could stop acting like straight girls have less of a stake in homophobia that’d be great
so we have these cookie jars that sit on top of the cupboard right. we’ve had them for years. you can record yourself saying something so when you take the lid off you it will make a noise so you can hear if someone is stealing your cookies or something anyway anyway we have 3 of them. a pig, a cow, and an owl. now i was left alone one day. mum and dad at work, my brother at school and my sister at her boyfriends house. so i had a thought. what if i recorded myself screaming? so i did. in all 3 of them. all 3 different screams too. one was an excited shriek, one was a terrified scream, and one was a long shout. these cookie jars recorded up to 15 seconds, so i took FULL ADVANTAGE of that. now…here’s the thing…i did that almost 3 years ago. and these cookie jars have been sitting on top of the cupboard collecting dust.
until today.
mum’s painting the kitchen, so she had to take everything off the top of the cupboard. and uh…you know how battery powered things…start dying? they……slowly run out of juice? she asked me to check inside one of the jars. the pig, to be exact. and…the pig was the terrified scream. i unsuspectingly opened the jar and as the lid came off the jar, i remembered what i did. but i didn’t remember in time, because in that next second, a fucking demon cry sounded from this Almost Dead Battery Powered Pig Cookie Jar. it was a sound i never want to hear again. everyone ran into the kitchen to see what that god awful sound was and i just stood there, holding this satanic wailing pig. i shut my eyes, and waited the full 15 seconds, until it was silent, before turning to my mum and handed her the pig, and then leaving the kitchen.
i’ll admit i’ve done some dumb things in my life, but nothing could’ve prepared me for the sound i heard today.
i was wondering what the heck parts of britain, and it’s jersey and guernsey so that checks out
this guy Really wanted this old kia on his land
Reminds me of how in the Middle Ages, if you were in trouble of any kind, the primary way of keeping order was to make “a hue and cry”, which means if you witnessed a crime, it was your public duty to scream and shout and otherwise make a fuss, and anyone who heard was obligated to drop whatever they were doing and go see what the screaming was about, with the idea that eventually someone like a sheriff would come and apprehend them.
When you’re in a rural society without any convientant methods of communication it’s not a bad plan, actually, but I love that essentially the medieval 911 was essentially “just scream like crazy and make a huge fuss”, and I’m even happier that they haven’t managed to completely strike it from the books, either.
I mean, every social movement has a vocal contingent of reactionaries who base their praxis on shaming, silencing, and gas-lighting. That’s kind of just a thing about political coalitions.
There’s nothing inherent in supporting a right to gender transition that requires shaming, silencing, or gas-lighting anyone. After all, I’m transitioning and support others who do the same, but am opposed to every kind of shaming that I’ve encountered in this space – whether on the pro- or anti-trans side.
Being trans isn’t about making cis people of any gender feel bad about themselves, and attempts to make that the point of being trans are something I object pretty strongly to.
I think “fun is morally good” is an important part of my perspective here. Like, if you think that something is harmful for lots of people, and merely ‘fun’ for others, then of course you’ll conclude it should be harshly discouraged – we don’t think of ‘fun’ as the sort of thing that trades off against psychological harm. And so often ‘anti’ discourse will be between people psychologically harmed by social pressure against the stuff they need, and people psychologically harmed by the stuff, debating who is more traumatized.
But actually, fun does get to put weight on the scales. It is actively good for people to have a good time. It’s good to have a good time that isn’t about traumatic healing or processing or cultivating virtue. It’s a significant, weighty loss when an avenue for people to enjoy themselves gets closed off.
This isn’t just about the fact that any set of guidelines will cause trauma and cut some people off from something psychologically necessary. It’s also about the fact that it is good for people to enjoy themselves, and it is cutting away an important kind of goodness to try to get them to stop.
Now, obviously, if you’re hurting other people, then that’s often necessary. If you find it fun to bully people, it’s still deeply wrong and needs to stop immediately. None of this ‘trust yourself about what harms yourself’ stuff matters when the question is not the harm you’re doing to yourself but the harm you’re doing to others.
But it matters a lot when you’re trying to figure out what’s good for you that doesn’t affect others. And if you don’t give it any weight you will get weird results.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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