When Anaïs Nin said “I don’t want worship. I want understanding,” and when George Orwell said “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood,” and when Marina Tsvetaeva said “In my early childhood, for as long as I can remember, I thought that I wanted to be loved. Now I know and tell everyone: I don’t need love, I need understanding.”

Both; first understand me, truly, and then love me for it, as I am and as all I will ever be

Need head from a broad with acid reflux. Make it sizzle princess

how does tumblr think they can possibly police the content on this website

always worth it <3

get in bestie we’re trying out new things even though we’re scared

idolatre

she touch my yippee till i yay

self-flagellation and self-bullying are all bad motivators for change BTW. it can be hard to escape from a spiral but genuinely u have to be nice to urself or nothing will change

you have to take care of yourself and not punch yourself down because you feel like you 'deserve it'. if you feel like the world is against you, you should at least be on your own side while you work through things.

me, having deeply fallen out of the practice of writing poetry: I can’t write any more, I am now a Talentless Hack

the voice of my 11th grade journalism/12th grade creative writing teacher who rly did know everything: if you stop writing for a while the words will build up and stagnate. to clear the water, you will have to open the dam completely, and accept the fact that what initially comes out will not be palatable

This. This is so true. Starting again is more important than what you actually write. You are rusty. You’ll build up momentum again. All you need to do is start.

okay this reminded me of the strongest human being (I use that label with some reservation) I have ever met and I still think about him like once a week because about 4 years ago on Thanksgiving night my sister, cousin, and I were going to pick up a friend about a 40 minute drive from home, and I got lost and tried to turn around on a little gravel pull-off on the side of the road, but my front tires got stuck in the snow.

we were in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception, and the only sign of life was a single, completely dark house across the road from us.

We all did our best to push the car out, and we’re strong people, but we couldn’t make it budge. Cold and stuck, we climbed back and wondered what to do. A car full of men pulled over beside us and asked if we needed help, but getting out of our locked car on a backroad at night with strange men felt like a bad idea, so we said a tow was coming and waved them along. We did that twice before finally deciding our only option was to accept the next offer for help and just risk it,

when a man came out of the house across the street.

He’d clearly been watching us and figured out why we’d been lying to people, which really surprised me & he said “it’s okay, you can stay in your car and keep the doors locked. Just start backing up when I say so.”

I had the window cracked and told him “it’s too stuck. There’s no way we’re getting out. Could you call a tow?”

And he said “just back up when I say so.”

So he walked around the front of the car, squatted, and said “okay back up,”

and I did, and

he lifted

the front of the car Into The Air. Off its front wheels, and we backed up while he essentially wheel-barrowed us back onto the road.

And we were honest to god yelling. We couldn’t help it. We just yelled until all four wheels were back on the ground and he was waving us off while we thanked him.

And then I looked at my sister and cousin & said “he REALLY told us we can KEEP our doors locked as if THAT WOULD’VE FUCKING STOPPED HIM!!!! As if he couldn’t have just RIPPED EM OFF THE HINGES.”

I later looked up the weight of my car, and it’s 3200 pounds without anything or anyone in it.

This haunts me.

the power of respecting women

this is the only valid response on this post

kinda obsessed with these, clearly beginner, rings on Etsy being marketed as garnet when i'd bet money that they are glass

the metal work is. certainly better than what i've ever made, so i don't want to speak to harshly. but uh. um.

Faunwood's "Slither."

Currently on view at Antler Gallery in Portland, Oregon is artist Faunwood's solo exhibition, "Slither."

Miranda ZImmerman, better known as Faunwood, creates delightful and exotic ceramic sculptures and illustrations of woodland critters. "Slither" is a very welcome continuation of the brilliant series from the Eugene, Oregon-based artist.

THE SUPERSONIC ART SHOP | FOLLOW ON INSTAGRAM

I CAN’T BREATHE

YALSo lOcKEd miAUt O De fECKIn cAr

Transcription:

“Otis is after locking me out of the car.

Ah, stop. Ah look here lad, there’s an audience as well.

Good boy Otis, press… press… press it for daddy. Good, that’s it, press it! press it! … The car is on.

[Sigh] [to the cows] What are you looking at?

Otey. Good boy, Otis. Press, Otey. Press the button. Press the button.

[to cows] Sorry, do you know a mechanic around the place?

[to cows] Have a good night last night? The horns are twisted around your head by the get out, for fecks sake…

Anyone c'mere now? You… anyone? No? you’re all talk. None of you feckin’ help.

Otis, will you let me into the car, please!

[fake cries]

Thank God I didn’t fix this window. Oh, shit the things gone in.

Otey, Press the button there for dad…. [Otis does nothing. Guy laughs. Sarcastically] Good Boy!! That’s it! press it! press it! good b-press it! Back a bit… back a bit, good boy… [sigh]

[to cows] could you use your horns there to burst through the door?

Otey! c'mere! good boy, c'mere (pspsps) good boy… press it. Press it, c'mon. C'mere (pspsps).. ugh why’d you go that way.. good boy. c'mere! c'mere! press it… ugh, OTEY C'MERE BABY! (psps) good boy! c'mere, ugh…

we’re gonna keep running over and back until you press it.

[to cows] how are things?

Good Otey! Press it! Press it! YES YESSSS!! OTEYY!! [“You’re The Best Around” by Joe Esposito begins to play] YOU DID IT!! WAAAHHH!!

We’re back in it! Good boy! Otey Otey Otey! Good Boy! You did it! … You also locked me out of the feckin’ car-“

Queer men (especially trans men) have been using the term butch for decades, and the movement to redefine butch and femme as lesbian exclusive terms is spearheaded by and beneficial to terfs.

If butch is the word that fits, then use it. Terfs don’t deserve to shape your life or our community.

Terfs don’t define us, and they certainly don’t define you.

is that true? Do you know where I could read more about it? The only things I could find just state that butch is a lesbian term

I’m on mobile right now, which is always hard on research, but I will collect you some sources tonight, no worries

Thank you so much!

Starting off simply, here’s a timeline of the history of “butch,” exploring its roots in working class queer women of color’s bars (remember, the word lesbian just meant “woman who has sex with women” until the 70s). The 80s is when the author first starts talking about the use of butch by queer men. Specifically, urban men of color.

And, while I hate to play the “defer to authority” card, when it comes to butch identity, there are few people who would know more about it than Butch Voices, the largest butch activist organization in the world. Which specifically refuses to exclude men, and more than that explicitly includes trans men.

Gay men often describe themselves (check out these personals ads), their partners or their friends in terms of being femme or butch, not just in casual contexts, but in research ones. That’s how deeply these identities are felt. Again and again, the term used to describe all queer masculinity is butch.

And while most definitions by queer organizations welcome and acknowledge the fact that butch was popularized in post-WWII women’s spaces, you’ll note an absence of gender limitations on the definitions themselves.

That’s because butch identity, by its very nature, is a violation of gender norms (one that some people say is outdated and antiquated, though I strongly disagree).

And so, too, are all forms of queerness ultimately a violation of gender normativity, of strict definition and categorization.

That’s why major butch authors, for example, hesitate to even use traditional gender pronouns such as “he” or “she” when writing about the hypothetical butch. Because a butch may be a woman, but womanhood is not a necessary component of butchness. And I do apologize for that link, I know it only shows scraps of the whole book, but it does at least include a couple of the more relevant essays about the complexity of trying to assign a gender to butch identity.

For all queer people–including the men–butch identity is an act of reclamation of masculine performance, in the same way that for all queer people–including the women–femme identity is a reclamation of feminine performance, ripping it out of the hands of the cisheteronormative hegemony and saying, hey, fuck you, you don’t get to decide who counts as what, who gets to do what, get fucked. And this can be fumbled, of course, but so can anything. Performance is what it is, and we all make missteps.

Now, as for the other half of my conclusion: that the constant claims about butch (and femme) being “lesbian exclusive” are TERF propaganda.

The following links require content warnings far in excess of just “these talk about queer history and the evolution of terminology.”

These are links to TERF news articles written and intended for non-TERF audiences. That means they present TERF talking points in positive language. Be careful when you approach them, be careful when you read them.

Since at least the 1980s, when masculinizing medical transition started becoming more accessible on a larger scale, trans-exclusionary feminists and trans-exclusionary lesbian separatists have been going out of their way to erase, shame, and punish their trans brothers and lovers for “betraying” them,.

A great many people who had previously identified as hard-butch lesbians because it was the only word they new moved into identifying as trans men. And because radical feminist, lesbian separatist theory had no place for any kind of men, the only way that kind of act could be frames was as treachery. The men who did so, some of whom had been stalwart feminists for decades, some of whom had even been powerful voices in second wave feminist movements, were suddenly treated as abusers, drug peddlers, and sexual criminals.

And that is why it is imperative that we refuse to let TERFs define who does and does not get to be butch. They never got to before, and they sure as hell don’t get to now.

I am all here for a great resource post and @intersex-ionality kinda knocked it out of the park with this one.

Here’s more evidence that TERFs don’t get to define anything in our community, especially not for butch people.

Bigotry has no place in our community. TERFs are bigots and have no place in our community.

Butch here! Literally all of this is historically accurate.

The butch and ftm community pretty much started out as the same community and then diverged slightly when the trans label became a thing. Before the identity existed there were butches using he/him and even taking T. For example Leslie Fienberg, the author of Stone Butch Blues, started out identifying as a butch lesbian which he explained was defined by his lack of connection to womanhood. He now identifies as trans, uses he/him pronouns, and takes T.

Every single butch I’ve ever talked to has said that they have at best an extremely convoluted and challenging relationship with their womanhood. Many experience gender dysphoria to varying degrees. A handful use he/him pronouns or change their names to be more masculine. Every butch I know described wearing femmenine stuff as numbing, humiliating, dishonest, and even painful. They describe masculine expression as empowering, genuine, exhilarating, etc and big leather jackets/boots as armor.

Some of those butches were bisexual, non-binary, trans men, etc. And you know what? Very few of them had issues with other butches but they tended to get a lot of shit from, unsurprisingly, white lesbian feminists.

My point is butch is a label for a feeling and experience more than it is an identity. If I didn’t identify as a lesbian I would still identify as butch because hypermasculinity and the expression of it is fundamental to who I am. If the hat fits, don’t let some terf bullshit keep you from it.

old dyke here, love this post/thread! ime pretty much any time you see lesbian gatekeeping including “only lesbians can reclaim dyke”, ”only lesbians can use butch and femme”, “lesbians can’t be bi or pan too”, “d-slur”, etc.,  you’ve found separatist/terf propaganda. 

strange decanters by etienne meneau

my favorite AITA ruling comments

I’m a fan of this one.

would like to add this one