I love videos of people performing religious ceremonies for small animals. Especially if it’s not something a small animal could participate in theologically.

Sadie the Dog has been BLESSED upon this fine ASH WEDNESDAY she has been reminded of the FRAGILITY OF LIFE and has observed the start of the LENT SEASON

Butters the Cat is wearing a TINY KIPPAH

Cat on tiny praying mat !!!

Cat on a tiny praying mat!!!

@muslimgamer​ and others might confirm this for me: AFAIK cats are Clean Creatures in Islam, so cats on prayer mats - especially their own mini prayer mats - aren’t offensive. One website I looked at said “cats will be cats, cats like to mirror people, and giving them their own mat helps stop them being a distraction during prayers.”

[ID: Photos of cats on prayer mats, some have their own miniature mats, others sit alongside their humans. /end ID]

This is my favorite post on this god forsaken site.

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

Also like. It used to be like that. I think some people forget we had a relatively ad-free internet.

Not only was the internet mostly ad-free, but online ads were almost always presumed to be scams. We would specifically install pop-up blockers because we were so distrusting of ads. Even if they weren't straight up malware, we didn't want people trying to get our money and our data (which is the point of legitimate ads). When did we stop caring?

theres a pretty princess in my house

you know i think i’ve come to the conclusion that the answer to “but what if a cis woman is traumatized by men/male presenting people/whatever?” irt safe spaces is this: if you can’t be in the same room with someone you assume to be male or a man without feeling triggered, it probably means you have a lot more solo therapy and healing to do before relying on group therapy or other communal healing.

because how do you decide who gets to stay and who gets kicked out based on a cis woman’s trauma response? is it based on appearance? should intersex women with facial hair not be allowed because beards are triggering? should butches and studs not be allowed because masculinity is triggering? should talk broad shouldered trans women who don’t want to voice train not be allowed because low voices are triggering? is it based on identity? should a pre transition trans man who came out two days ago not be allowed because he’s a man? is a nonbinary person with a full beard and deep voice allowed because they are not a man?

because if you base your entire set of rules for who’s not allowed in the safe space on what makes cis women uncomfortable or triggers them, you’ve just made that space unsafe for trans people. and you need to decide if you’re ready to own that.

guys this is the faggot tranny blog why is this a hot take.

!!!!!!!!!!

The thing about the bad faith focus on "but what about cis women who find men traumatizing and don't want them in their safe spaces" as an argument is that it frames trans people as the sole instigators of an otherwise non-existent conflict: as though, if we didn't exist, then there'd be no issue in the first place. When actually, the insistence on female-only spaces has real, tangible consequences beyond trans people: namely, to pick the most pressing example, the question of what happens to the sons of women fleeing domestic violence - because many women's shelters don't accept teenage boys. And this is a real and very heartbreaking consequence of the rigid insistence on female-only spaces: that mothers seeking safety with their children - many of whom are also victims of violence - cannot assume that their sons will be as welcome as their daughters. Though many shelters have rules around teenage occupants regardless of gender, others have gender-specific age caps: no boys over the age of 12, say, or 14, or 16. And shelters, as we all know, are frequently overcrowded; sometimes, you're lucky to find a space at all. Imagine you are a mother of two, a 13yo son and an 11yo daughter, fleeing a spouse who has been violent to all three of you, and the only shelter available is one with a strict no men policy. Having mustered up the courage to leave at all, you are now confronted with a terrible choice: unless you turn around and go home, your only options are to either abandon your son to the care of the abusive parent or to have him put into the foster system. Or perhaps the shelter's age cap for boys is set at 14 - meaning, you have until your son's next birthday to get back on your feet, even if that's only weeks away, and the whole time, he will know that his gender, and his gender alone, is the reason for the deadline.

This is, objectively, appalling - and yet it is precisely where the fixation on women only spaces lands us. So while it's absolutely correct to point out that triggers and trauma around the presence of men are very much the responsibility of individuals to manage, it's also important to acknowledge that the issue doesn't only exist because of trans people; that there would still be real questions to answer even if we weren't in the picture, because binary gender exclusion is a shit policy.

I'm also gonna add; triggers are complicated, idiosyncratic things, because brains are weird. Even if you are a woman and you were traumatised by abuse from a man (and that is a big if to go unexamined in and of itself), that doesn't necessarily mean it's men or masculinity that will end up setting you off. It could be something that's not gender locked at all.

And the thing is, being triggered by men or by masculinity isn't intrinsically more painful or frightening than being triggered by something like 'the smell of a certain perfume' or 'the sound of a particular pop song'. I once saw someone make a point about how triggers work on this very site by saying that they were triggered by the taste of jello; they waited a bit, weathering the screaming hordes of people accusing them of being facetious and not taking the thing seriously, and then gave the context that they had spent a long time in hospital recovering from something pretty fucking major and for medical reasons the only thing they'd been able to safely eat in that time was jello. So now the taste was an instant flashback to being helpless, in pain, and without privacy.

Like, there is a reason the term trigger is what it is, people. The trigger of a gun isn't the Most Dangerous Frightening Bit of the weapon; it's the small part that just happens to spark off the reaction that fires the bullet.

When you single out one particular possible trigger and say 'this one should be accomodated' while ignoring all the rest you are not, in fact, creating a safe and accomodating space. You're just claiming that only one particular kind of trauma, and one kind of reaction to it, actually counts.

Dealing with my fear of rejection by never asking for anything, and my fear of being a burden by never doing anything that involves other people. Foolproof.

I have evil furry convention plans.

@sinnar-izu I’m going to put fleas on your fursuit

I love the individual expressions/faces in the Shifting Mound fight

what she listening to

fucking assho

I have one kink and it's not a good idea.

And its nothing

I can't do this I'm going to (remembers suicide jokes have negative consequences on mental health) make a post that does the thing where a suicide joke is interrupted and replaced with something wacky and unexpected . And subvert the punchline in an avant-garde self-aware meta manner to reflect my curious and intellectual soul

TIL the silvery salamander only has females and they reproduce by borrowing sperm from a different species! And 0% of the male's genetic material gets passed down!

That's so weird I love nature!!

It seems that attempting to draw a a line between morality and immorality is like trying to draw the shape of the wind.

The Time Traveler's Guide to Regency Britain, Ian Mortimer

I think the most important thing to remember when reading Jane Austen (or other historical novels) is that the rules of society were grey, as they are now, and there was a spectrum of opinions from liberal to conservative. For example, the Bennets seem to be pretty liberal with what they allow their daughters to do, while the Bertrams, even for their day, would be seen as very strict and conservative. Sir John Middleton would probably be delighted to stage a production of Lovers' Vows while Sir Thomas is horrified. Sir Walter would be convinced the moment he heard that nobility approved the activity.

Sir Thomas thinking home productions are bad doesn't mean Jane Austen did or that society did at large. Edmund says during the play that his father's sense of propriety is strict!

One of the things that amuses me is when someone points out that Marianna is only 16/17 and people are like, "The concept of teenagers wasn't invented yet! People grew up faster!" Like all the teen characters would be held up to the same expectations as adults.

While we have Mrs. Allen in Northanger Abbey: “But one must not be over particular. Young people will be young people, as your good mother says herself. You know I wanted you, when we first came, not to buy that sprigged muslin, but you would. Young people do not like to be always thwarted.”

The concept of teenagers was always in our hearts. There is a reason Austen makes a lot of her characters so young. The people most likely to break and skirt the rules are still the same age group.