can we please stop acting like reproductive health is just contraception please. yeah that’s a huge part of it, but if you say you support the improvement of reproductive health systems you can’t just support free birth control. you need to support the doctors lobbying for endometriosis research funds, support the thousands of people that go untreated because doctors tell them they’re just weak about their periods, support school sex ed teaching kids about the kinds of diseases there are of the uterus and ovaries and when to see a doctor, support the people that literally can’t get an official diagnosis without an invasive surgery that has barely changed in 50 years, support the people whose only treatment options are $1,500 a month for a shot or some birth control pills because the medical community isn’t proactive in developing new treatments for reproductive diseases. yes the cute women-owned business that gives out a free pad to poor people is really great, but there are so many layers to this and the shallow support is so tiresome. supporting free birth control is great, but so is working to destigmatize the uglier issues of people with “gross” periods and working to improve their lives.
This was exactly my reaction when, in 2015, a 15yo on Tumblr came and sent me a load of hate for being “an OMG ACTUAL ADULT” calling myself ‘queer’ and using ‘queer community’.
Like, how to put this. In Australia since the early 90s, ‘queer’ has been the accepted term to call that community. It’s a mainstream word. We say ‘queer theory’, ‘queer community’, ‘queer organisations’, etc. Another Australian who words for the government said it’s a perfectly acceptable term to use in policy documents and funding applications. Here, in Australia, queer hasn’t been a slur at any point in my life. The only Australians I’ve ever come across who think it’s a slur are people who spend too much time around American youths on social media.
I did a post about the international queer community, it got 5-7k notes (ish) and people from at least 10 other countries said ‘queer’ is not a slur in their country and it’s just the word that’s used for the queer community.
This is why it drives me nuts when a 15yo from South Carolina, USA assumes:
1) Her experience with ‘queer’ is the same as everybody else’s
2) A small number of people having a bad experience with ‘queer’ is an acceptable reason to deny and police usage by the entire wider international queer community
The short of it is that it’s not acceptable. Many older queer folks have used this word for decades – it’s been in common use since at least the 80s. In the past 3 years it’s become very fashionable (mostly only on Tumblr, but on pockets of social media elsewhere, too) to treat queer as this Big Bad Slur (forgetting that there are many other slurs and most of our language gets used as slurs at some point by various people) and to pop up on every fucking post that mentions queer like “UM EXCUSE ME IT’S FINE FOR YOU TO CALL YOURSELF QUEER BUT IT’S LITERAL ABUSE FOR YOU TO USE IT FOR OTHER PEOPLE LIKE AS AN UMBRELLA TERM AND YOU ARE A BAD PERSON!!!”
like. babe. I’ve never met you in my life. You live an entire world away from me and you can’t tell me what language I’m allowed to use for myself and my own community. If you don’t like the word, you have trauma associated with it or whatever, I accept that. I feel for you, I have trauma about some words, too. USE XKIT BLACKLIST. Your trauma is your problem, just like my trauma is my problem. Yes, really. Get counselling. It’s not everyone else’s responsibility to change their identities and language because of your trauma. That’s not a lack of empathy from me, that’s a hard life lesson you need to learn about the world not revolving around you. I am not abusing anyone by using the language I’ve always used about my own community.
It’s not the end of your world, though. You’re not doomed to read ‘queer’ all over tumblr forever. There are many many many tools available for you to protect yourself and avoid triggers. You should be responsible for yourself and your experience online and protect yourself from seeing things that upset you.
“BUT I’M A MINOR!!”, you cry! okay, true. Get up from the computer, go directly to your parent or guardian, and let them know you’re not old enough to police your own internet usage and ask them to do it for you. It is not my responsibility to take care of you. It is no one else on Tumblr’s responsibility to take care of you. The internet is not just for kids. If you can’t take care of yourself, your parents need to help you do that.
The short of it is if you’re old enough to know the word ‘queer’ upsets you, you’re old enough to download xkit blacklist and add ‘queer’ to the blacklist words. If you’re not doing that, I have to assume you’re actually trying to pick fights with queer people and it’s more of a power struggle to you than anything about semantics.
“BUT I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO USE XKIT! IT’S AN EASY CHANGE FOR YOU!” Dude, you’re asking me to change my whole identity. You’re asking me to change my lexicon for you. It’s not an easy or fair change for you to ask me to make. Xkit is a quick and easy solution for you (and now, you can use the tumblr innate tag blocks, too). If that’s too much for you to do, I have a feeling you’re just looking for a fight and not actually traumatised by ‘queer’.
NEVER. NEVER. Come onto a queer person’s post and start telling them anything about how to use their word. Queer folks get policed and oppressed enough by cishet folks. We don’t need people from our own community trying to police our language and language we’ve used for decades and continue to use in many countries and in many parts of the US.
There is absolutely no reason to derail posts being “””””””helpful”””””””” by repeatedly, constantly, aggressively spreading rhetoric that shames people for using language we have used for ourselves and our community for decades. Your problem with the word queer should not be my problem, so don’t make it my problem.
I get frustrated when people say there is hypocrisy “on both sides” as if it is even remotely comparable. For one thing, I don’t think there is a human on the planet immune from some hypocrisy.
I love animals. I think cows are cute. I ate a hamburger.
But the hypocrisy rampant within the GOP is so far beyond anything I’ve ever seen. The “both sides” argument is truly one of the most outrageous false equivalencies that is commonly bandied about.
And it’s not just that the GOP is hypocritical. It’s the lack of shame. They don’t even make an attempt to hide it. They have no guilt when doing it. I think some of them take pride in their hypocrisy. Mainly because they get away with it and rarely suffer consequences.
The other day I saw a conservative comment thread in which people were defending CEO salaries. All of the classic talking points showed up. These executives work very hard. They have skills and experience that warrant such a high salary. Why punish the rich for being good at what they do? If people are upset about the wage disparity between them and the lowest paid worker, that worker just needs to work harder. Maybe go to school. Pull themselves up by the bootstraps so that one day they can be the CEO.
Let’s all work super hard and then everyone can be a CEO. We’ll be the CEO country. Just pull up to McDonald’s and be greeted by an empty drive-thru window. No one can take your order because all the workers now run the place.
“Rich people are the best!” -Republicans
Then tonight I saw a local attack ad for Claire McCaskill, my Democratic senator.
They have been running these attack ads like crazy. On TV. On Facebook. If you live in Missouri you cannot escape these damned things. The interesting aspect of these ads is that they don’t attack her policies. They don’t attack her voting history. No mudslingy character judgments.
The ads are basically, “OMG! Look at how rich Claire is!”
They show a picture of her larger than average home. They mention her renting private planes to go places. She takes vacations to expensive destinations. She eats at fancy restaurants.
“How dare this woman be rich!” -Also Republicans
Just ignore the fact that many of the Republican senators are millionaires. Ignore that they also have big houses. Ignore that the freakin’ president OWNS a jet airliner and a helicopter. Please ignore the constant defense of the wealthy. Also ignore that even though Claire is wealthy, she consistently votes for tax policies that will not benefit her.
“This woman is rich and therefore cannot understand the plight of the little people!” -Wealthy Republicans who totally get you
“I would like to buy one grocery, please. Here is my identification.” -Head Republican
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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