Agent of Chaos

A thing I notice is that at least 60% of the time some of the more caustic and temperamental types of people have this self-victimizing attitude where they see themselves as recovering doormats who have been nice for too long and so have "earned" permission to be mean to people because they confuse rudeness for assertiveness and niceness with submission and they have a binary view of the whole thing.

Oh yeah, that's super common.

For people who are confused about what the difference is, an assertive person is as friendly and polite as any other decent person until someone crosses some kind of boundary. Then they advocate for their needs only as hard as is necessary to change the other person's behavior and de-escalate/offer avenues for de escalation when possible. Assertive people keep the pressure relatively low unless someone else pushes on them, turn that pressure up when it's actually necessary, and then relax it slowly as they feel able to do. All of that scales to the magnitude and frequency of given boundary violations, of course.

Assholes, by contrast, keep the pressure up all the time unless someone else imposes a consequence on their behavior. If pushing someone else might feel good in the moment, they'll jostle and shove other people just for the hell of it. If not pushing someone entails work, an asshole won't bother; if their boundary pushes are explained to them, the asshole's behavior does not change.

So, like: I prefer assertive people and have plenty of assertive friends (and friends who encourage one another to be assertive). But I don't tolerate assholes. It's worth learning to spot the difference early on.

Chinese weighlifter Li Wenwen successfully defended her title, winning the gold medal in the women's over 81kg category at the Paris Olympics on Sunday!

In her private life, the Li is actually a fan of traditional Chinese Hanfa.

(source)

(Saw this post on Facebook and loved it, and since Facebook always steals Tumblr posts, I figure I can do the reverse and steal this Facebook post)

hard to believe there are actually people out there who think that big noses are ugly and unattractive … like what the fuck is wrong with you ?

I need you specifically to kill yourself. choose a slow and painful method also

BIG NOSE WOMEN SUPREMACY 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

literally how can anyone not find these women the hottest people ALIVE

collect my big noses

I fucking hate the “explaining = invalidating” when it comes to apologies. Yes, sometimes a person means to invalidate you by saying this, but sometimes we genuinely just want to fucking explain our side so we can properly communicate.

I do not know what the fuck is wrong until I’m told what I’ve done wrong and feel the need to explain in order for us to see both of our sides

I like getting explanations with apologies because for me it helps lessen the damage that was done or can help clear the negative emotions.

I’ve had multiple people say it’s a sign that I’m a bad person that I don’t apologize right away, or that I’m giving excuses instead of owning up and apologizing (which is fucking hard for me to know if I’m actually in the wrong or not and people doing this shit does NOT fucking help). Apologies aren’t always just a “Sorry” one and done deal thing.

knowing that someone didn't mean to harm you, and in fact may have been trying to help, can be comforting! knowing how they came to choose actions that harmed you can help you both collaborate to avoid harm in the future! Knowing whats going on in the mind of your loved ones can be important and bring you closer together in times of possible conflict! An explanation is NOT an excuse, thats true, but that also means that someone explaining doesn't mean they're not ALSO trying to apologize on top of that!

I mean it's actually actively important to understand that people didn't intentionally try to hurt you. We have a real problem with assuming malicious intent behind actions, when the vast majority of people are actually just being a bit inept, or even might be coming at something from a different angle. The absolute insistence that you must never explain your actions, you must simply self flagellate before the Appointed Victim is... well, a lot of very problematic stuff can be enabled by that.

#yeah I lost a friendship over this once#someone who thought an apology begins and ends with 'sorry#so when I wrote a paragraph starting with 'I apologize' and continuing with my explanation of how I'd hurt her by mistake#she said it didn't include the word 'sorry' (??) and didn't want an explanation--didn't care if it was intentional or not#at the time I was somewhat shocked and hurt and very frustrated by her response but in retrospect good riddance

I wonder if a lot of people get frustrated by explanations of mistakes because they want to take their anger out on their imaginary malicious version of you and they don't want new information that might challenge that

if so, sucks to be them, but that's no way to treat someone you want to continue a positive relationship with

i think a large part of the problem is how a lot of people seem to see apologies not as an attempt to mend the relationship and avoid future conflict, but as an signal of who is Winning between you. i ran into this a lot in christian circles; forgiveness is something you graciously bestow on the Bad Person who wronged you because you are Better Than Them, not like...a chance to improve things.

people like that get VERY upset when you instead want to tackle whatever the problem was as a team rather than just take your blame and go.

The point of an apology is supposed to be an indication you'll try to avoid ding it again

Avoiding doing it again is very difficult if you're not sure how or why what you did was a problem because you weren't *trying* to hurt the person

Explaining your intent is a request for clarification as to why what you did didn't turn out how you expected

I find that prefacing the explanation with 'Do you have the spoons to help me understand what went wrong here' helps. It sets the tone to be 'I'm trying to not do this again' instead of 'I'm trying to excuse having done it'

And sometimes they can't help, which is fair and reasonable, they're hurting, and then I go ask other people I trust. This is less than ideal tho, cos then the person I'm asking only has their knowledge and mine

And if the problem was specific to the hurt person, an outside party may also not have the context I didn't have

so judging by how astonished people are by it every time we explain it to anybody, it seems like my wife and I might really be onto something here

during the pandemic, we invented something we call "astronaut time."

when it's astronaut time, it's like we are two astronauts wearing the big helmets, moving around the station on totally separate tasks. one of us is outside the space station and one of us is inside the space station. our radios do not work and we have no way of communicating with each other. we might see each other through the lil porthole windows, but we ignore each other because we both have different things to do.

"astronaut time" is how we get total privacy when we live in the same apartment. I will pretend you don't exist. You will pretend I don't exist. we have a nonverbal, zero-contact signal for when astronaut time is over (usually "I'll draw a smiley-face on the whiteboard in the kitchen when I'm done"). No talking, stay out of each other's line of sight, we are actively avoiding each other, unless you are currently experiencing a medical emergency goodbye.

it has been. a godsend. imagine living with your partner and being able to close every single tab in your brain related to social interaction. no fear of being interrupted by a "hey, quick question--" or "sorry to bother you, but do you know where the scissors are?" or "did you want something to eat, too?" Once or twice a month, we look at each other lovingly, hold hands, and say "baby I think I need some astronaut time tonight," and the other person goes "okay cool. bye! have a nice night!" and nobody's feelings are hurt and we both go and have a lovely evening completely by ourselves.

like idk it's a small thing but it's made our lives so much nicer, so if you and your partner/roommate are both people who sometimes need total privacy in order to recharge, maybe try it

worst relationship status to have w someone is “objectively they’re a fine person who is nice but i don’t enjoy their company as much as they enjoy mine”

second worst relationship status to have with someone is “objectively they’re a fine person but they Bother You”

secret third technically more harmless but in practicality more frustrating relationship status is “objectively they’re a fine person and they like so many of the same things i do but they like them in a fundamentally different way that is harmless but reads wrong to my brain and it has made attempts at forming an actual bond with them aggravating more than anything”

tbh i think stuff like this is why so many people, especially younger people, fall into this trap of “well if i don’t like a person or thing, they must be bad”. it would be so much easier if you could dismiss them as bad and move on. but it’s like, no, Objectively Fine people or things can just not mesh well with you for totally subjective reasons. and sometimes when they’re people you mesh much better with their brain than they do with yours. and sometimes you have to live with that.

I think one of the reasons drag kings aren’t as popular as drag queens, aside from the fact that straight women don’t like us, is that people are uncomfortable acknowledging masculinity as a performance. Like we as a society know that femininity is a performance, with its own costumes and rules. Masculinity is also a performance, and nothing makes that more clear than someone making an exaggeration of it

To everyone saying that “uh actually it’s cause drag kings aren’t as visually interesting”

Kreme Inakuchi

Wang Newton

Murray Hill

Hugo Grrl

Lotus Boy

Landon Cider

Manny Dingo

Māori child, Aotearoa/New Zealand, by Maania Tealei

Maania Tealei has more portraits at the link and they're all amazing.

every time i remember that photo of the little inuk girl with her puppy i engage in inconsolable hysterics

this is it. this is the photo of all time

One of my favourite things about hanging out in the trans community is how it has and will continue to slowly erode my ability to blend into cishet dominated social settings. I'm just fundamentally on different wires now, and that's great because I never liked those social settings anyway

cishet ppl will say shit like "if your boyfriend closes the fridge door with his hip he's not a boyfriend" and expect you to understand what they mean then explode when you liken your gender to a wolf but in a girl way

I've never felt more seen

Cate Blanchett photographed by Francesco Carrizzini for L'Uomo Vogue.

i think one of the most important things you learn about making connections with others is that a significant portion of the time people just do not know theyre doing what theyre doing

sometimes someone is acting selfish because they just didnt think you had any interest in what theyre hogging. sometimes you dont get invited to the movies because your friend could have sworn that you said no. sometimes you think someone is mad at you because theyre bad at hiding how little sleep they got. we are all like little worlds that briefly crash into one another from time to time and we just arent physically capable of seeing the whole picture at once in those moments. and learning that really changed everything!

part of being an ally to trans men is not being a dick to cis men for their appearance btw

the short trans men hear you. the trans men with bottom growth—or who are post-phalloplasty—hear your bad jokes about small dicks. the trans men undergoing hrt who are losing their hair hear you talk shit about bald spots.

also, hot take, you should care about not hurting random cis men in addition to not hurting trans men. like just because some guy is being an asshole online doesn’t mean the thousands of young boys reading your comments about someone with their same acne deserved it. i don’t care what your reason is, even if you think someone is bad enough to warrant being bullied, who gave you permission to hurt the innocent bystander?

hey y’all should spread this version bc some people need to hear this context

Look, it's like when people mock the ex prez for being fat when FASCIST is right there. Assholes have plenty of earned flaws to point out, making fun of body shapes and types is just lazy and cruel and likely to hit innocent bystanders. And lots of people manage to be decent people while also being fat. The fat isn't the problem, the fascism is. It's not just pointless, it's markedly less effective at calling attention to the real evils.

Also not make fun of neck beards. That hurt trans men too