(((I Will Outlive)))

“Parents can often be the last to know about their child’s gender identity, Ehrensaft says. Coming out can be terrifying for many transgender kids. Family members often respond with violence or distrust or may even kick the child out of the house. Almost 40 percent of transgender youth experience homelessness or housing instability, according to a 2022 report from the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that provides crisis support for young LGBTQ+ people. Many kids who wait to discuss their gender identity with their parents before appearing to “suddenly” come out are simply keeping themselves safe, Ehrensaft says.

”‘It is not rapid-onset gender dysphoria,’ she says. 'It’s rapid-onset parental discovery.’“

The brain does not magically mature at 25. Actual neuroscientists note some 8-year-olds even have a greater "maturation index" than 25-year-olds. The myth misunderstands basic neuroscience but is still used for anti-trans policymaking like the Cass Report. https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-year-old-mature-myth.html

This website: "It says a lot about a person if they write or make art about dark, horrific things. It says what they're like in real life. Hiding in plain sight."

Junji Ito:

i hate how "being a girl's girl" has replaced feminism. I hate that enforced conformity has replaced genuine compassion for and solidarity with other women. I hate how women call each other "pick me's" for not conforming to femininity or for daring to critique something other women like. I hate how we just keep finding new socially acceptable ways to bully other women for being unattractive or outspoken or difficult or complicated or weird or ambitious or for not performing femininity. I hate those front facing camera "comedians" whose whole thing is making up a straw-woman to make fun of. I hate the obsession with "girlhood" and clinging to being a girl instead of a woman. i hate "the girl version of the roman empire" and "girlhood" and it's just consumerism and I hate the characterised of girlhood as passivity, niceness, sweetness, helplessness and frivolity and I hate the revival of gender essentialism even as a joke!!!

don't even get me started on "girl dinner" and "girl math". It's just, respectively, dinner and poor financial literacy/discipline that anyone could have regardless of gender.

“if you consume enough problematic media then there will be a point in which you become desensitized and replicate the behavior”

right, that’s why all my media studies professors moonlight as serial killers

half-serious quip aside, what you’re saying is that you think people have the inherent moral fiber of overcooked pasta and if you don’t spoonfeed them pre-digested purity, they will revert to their baser nature of amoral, immoral, cruel and murderous beasts which, frankly, means you’re a dehumanizing cunt

This is almost 1:1 the argument of ‘If you don’t have God, how can you be moral?’ Execpt, this is about consuming fiction.

How can you leave this absolute Mic drop in the tags

The number of things that have been blamed for causing autism is so long that I never would’ve been able to fit it all in a comic strip. People refuse to believe that it’s genetics. I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t want to admit that they could be the reason for their child’s autism, and just want to blame everything else, or what, but this pseudo-science needs to stop.

Check out my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/autiebiographical

i don't know who needs to hear this, but guilt, self-hatred and shame are not sustainable sources of growth and healing. you can't hate yourself into feeling better, or being better. you can't repeatedly punish yourself for your flawed humanity and expect wholesome results.

Things older LGBTQ+ people need to stop doing:

Things older LGBTQ+ people need to start doing:

"people show their true colours in life threatening situations" no, they show you what they act like when they're mortally terrified, an emotion notorious for literally turning your entire brain off to the point where people who go into those situations as a profession need to be literally trained on how to not have that happen

If you can acknowledge that you're not yourself when you're hungry, you can acknowledge that you're not yourself when you're scared.

people show their true colors when they have safety and freedom and can do anything they want without fear of being hurt or punished or anything, and some of them are horrible, and some of them are absolutely amazing.

you can't waste your life btw it's just not something that's possible to do. your mere existence is already a precious and valuable use of your time. the time you spent becoming who you are now was inherently worthwhile

mental age isn't a thing.

i am not "mentally a child." i am mentally an adult, because i am in my early 20s. i do not care how childish i seem; that never gives anyone the right to say that i am mentally a child. i am an adult who doesn't want nor deserves to be compared to a child.

i do not care how many times i watch sesame street, i do not care that my reading level is low, i do not care that i need lots of things simplified to me, i do not care about all the things i do that make me seem childish. i still am an adult and deserve to be treated like one. i will never be "mentally a child."

this theory hurts people with intellectual disability and i am tired of seeing it.

I wish more people got this because some ‘low-empathy’ people are the most compassionate and sympathetic in the universe, and I hate it when that’s taken to mean ‘unfeeling and probably hostile’ when nothing could be further from the truth

Or, as my dad put it,

Sympathy: I know how you feel Empathy: I feel how you feel Compassion: is there anything I can do to help?

Posting this because I see these words used interchangeably in RP writing a lot, and they are - in fact - not the same. Know the differences and impress your writer friends! It really is noticeable when someone has a strong grasp of vocabulary, and thus is a stronger writer.

Also, empathy is not always compassionate or sympathetic!  It very often goes with those two, but empathy itself is not a requirement for feeling sympathy or compassion at all.  Empathy works like a sponge, and can happen whether you care about the people around you or not.  It works with negative emotions such as anger, and can make you question which of the emotions you currently feel are your own.

Having empathy - especially high levels - can also be an obstacle for counselors to work around and manage in order to counsel others effectively. It certainly has its gifts, but a large portion of my energy when I was a professional pastoral care provider was managing my empathy level and making sure it didn’t actually detract from my care.

Also, as someone with what I would describe as like actually distressingly high levels of empathy, uh empathy isn’t a psychic power, and oftentimes it’s wrong. Sometimes I will go on an empathy spiral because I’m so convinced that like, my sister must be really upset about me saying no to going to a play with her, and I can’t stop feeling the sorrow I think she’s feeling, only for my sister to tell me she actually wasn’t that bothered by it at all. I assumed I knew how she must be feeling and then felt my assumption so strong it became distressing, but at no point did I actually feel what my sister was feeling. And that shit absolutely gets in the way of actually helping people when it really matters. I’d give ANYTHING to be LESS empathetic because of how badly it gets in the way of me helping people and maintaining relationships.

Plus, a lot of people will claim to be “empaths” and insist this means they just magically can tell how people are really feeling, but they aren’t talking about empathy, they’re pretending to be psychic. Real empathy isn’t magic. You can only feel what someone is feeling if they tell you. Even them acting in a certain way isn’t always a sure-fire way to know how they’re really feeling. You can’t read minds. So like, for me and people like me, I think it’s good to check in occasionally and see if you’re actually feeling someone else’s emotions or if you’re assuming someone feels a certain way and spiraling.