hydor-soa reblogged
“Just because you don’t understand something, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
— Unknown
hydor-soa reblogged
I wish this was my job.
I mean, “Emily” is a nice enough name for a girl.
There, I just earned $1000.
I've read about her! She mostly works with Chinese parents to pick appropriate sounding English names for their children to use later in life. See, Chinese names do not tend to work well outside of China because of how tonal and unique the phonetics can be and how few international documents allow the symbols. Rather than sign their kids up for either never working or traveling abroad or constantly being disrespected on accident, many parents give them backup English first names in addition to their Chinese first names.
However, the problem arises that Chinese parents do not always know English naming connotations any more than I would know Chinese ones, and there’s a LOT of very deep cultural traditions involved in naming your kids, so they can't just grab a popular baby names list and call it good. So some poor kids get names that were direct English translations of those Chinese naming sensibilities that didn't translate well (a friend of mine in College had to help a tutoring student with name change paperwork so she wouldn't have to go by Lush. My dad knew a guy who narrowly dodged the first name Rolex, but his name ended up Cash, thankfully. That sort of thing) or names that ARE English name's but have... unfortunate connotations (think Karen or Hannibal), or names that are just very outdated (Bertha, Ethyl, Quintin, Norbert, etc.). And without becoming world travellers or investing a shitton of time in learning way more about other cultures than they really need to for daily lifw, your average lower to middle class parents couldn't really guarantee that the names they gave their kids would actually help them, thereby risking continuing the cycle of social stratification and limiting upward mobility.
So this woman learns this, and goes "Oh, I know how to fix this!" And she starts a business where Chinese parents can email her with a list of things that they want their children's names to mean or reflect, auspicious elements they want, etc, and she pools her knowledge of English speaking cultural norms and a bunch of baby name guides to email them a short list of names that meet their needs with little descriptions of each one explaining what it means and how people will think of it, and they can pick a meaningful name in accordance with their cultural traditions that won't screw their kids over later.
hydor-soa reblogged
These are comments on a post about "immoral porn" and it made me so fucking angry I had to rant here. THIS IS NOT TRUE. Consuming "fuckdd up" content, including sexual content, does NOT corrupt you or numb you to the point you'll seek out worse and worse stuff or suddenly be okay with doing it IRL.
Do you know why people say this? Where it comes from? FUCKING TED BUNDY saying that "hardcore pornography" was the reason he killed women. SERIOUSLY. Obviously HE WAS LYING!!! He was a lying ass bitch who wanted to kill people, then once he was caught he invented an excuse that would make him look more sympathetic!!
Porn is not actually a slippery slope into serial killing. People choose to do awful things because of their underlying value system, not because of the art they engage with.
@teefiesworld - Agreed. There is a LOT of bullshit surrounding the concept of porn addiction. I believe compulsive sexual behaviour is a real struggle for people sometimes, and can include porn consumption, but that is just not what 90% of content about 'porn addiction' is talking about at all. They're just talking about absolutely normal healthy behaviour they want to suppress and stigmatise.
'Porn addiction' is also too often a vector for men to get straight up abused.
I really recommend "What Do We Know About the Effects of Pornography After Fifty Years of Academic Research?" and specifically chapters 4 and 8 for information about the research that's been done in this general topic. And specifically how it is misrepresented.
One key detail they bring up there is that much of the research done into porn is normative ("assume[s] that the only healthy form of sexuality is vanilla sex (that is, not kinky) between monogamous couple-based partners for reasons beyond simply pleasure.") Stemming from that, researchers looking into associations with sexual violence do not all use the same definition:
Some academic research counts consensual practices as being violent; some doesn’t. Baron and Richardson, for example, define violence as: ‘Any form of behaviour directed toward the goal of harming or injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment’– emphasising that, in order to be violent, an act must not be consensual. But other definitions exclude consent from consideration, counting any acts that might cause harm as violence, regardless of consent. For example, Stanko’s (2001) ‘often-cited definition of violence’ describes it as: "any form of behaviour by an individual that intentionally threatens to or does cause physical, sexual or psychological harm to others or themselves." In this definition, consent is not relevant – ‘violence’ can be consensual but is still called ‘violence’ if it can cause physical harm. Under this definition, consensual BDSM could count as violence. Therefore, the history of academic research on pornography and violence/aggression does not map neatly onto research on pornography and sexual consent. It is no wonder, in this context, that the research on pornography consumption and consent is confusing. Indeed, we even found evidence of academic research where consent was framed as negative; for example, Walker et al. write that pornography shows ‘violence’ where ‘female actors displayed eagerness or willingness to comply’ which is framed as a negative behaviour.
Additionally, there's problems with conclusions of causality:
However, despite the fact that the data reported actually showed correlations, we found that 19 of the articles explicitly claim that pornography causes changes in other variables despite the fact that data were not available to support this claim. Twenty articles imply causality – implied causality was measured through article references to terms including the ‘effect’, ‘impact’ or ‘influence’ of pornography (some articles both claimed causality explicitly and also implied it, which is why the numbers add up to more than 34). Based on our analysis, only 14 of the 34 articles avoid incorrectly claiming or implying causality. This is a breathtaking finding. Despite the fact that academics are trained from the beginning of their careers to avoid incorrect claims about causality, the majority of these research papers about pornography consumption and consent gets it wrong.
And the research we have right now is certainly not conclusive:
There is no clear pattern in the findings. Some studies find associations between pornography consumption and consent variables; some studies find no association; others find an association between pornography consumption and one form of non-consensual behaviour but not with others; and others find no association with non-consensual behaviour measured using one scale, but they do find an association when it is measured using another. Some researchers have differentiated between different kinds of pornography, finding an association between only ‘violent’ pornography (using a definition of violence that excludes consent) and non-consensual behaviour; others have found associations between only ‘violent’ pornography and some forms of non-consensual behaviour but not others. Still other researchers have focused on intervening variables, including hostile masculinity and impersonal sex orientation, which has only resulted in less clarity in claims of association. Reviewing these data we note that it remains the case that no simple conclusions can be drawn about associations between consuming (various kinds of) pornography and (various kinds of) (non-)consensual sexual behaviours.
They also brings up the concept of "porn addiction", saying that while people's suffering is real, the current answers are unsatisfactory:
The fact that many people feel bad about their pornography use, and that they may self-identify as ‘porn addicts’, demands attention and explanation. But the model of porn addiction currently offered does not present a model of healthy use against which perceived addiction can be judged. Measures of porn addiction merely measure how ashamed respondents are of their current sexual practices, and an emerging literature on ‘moral incongruence’ and pornography addiction supports this point. Research has consistently shown that one of the most important variables in whether people feel they are addicted to pornography is how ashamed they are of pornography use – so-called ‘moral incongruence’ We note that researchers who take a normative view of sexuality have begun to challenge this finding – but to do so they need to misrepresent the data published by Grubbs et al. [...] In terms of our model of healthy sexual development, research on pornography addiction seems to consistently show that large numbers of people suffer shame about sexual pleasure. This data could potentially be used to understand the domain of healthy sexual development that requires that – in order to become happy, healthy sexual beings - we must embrace ‘awareness and acceptance that sex can be pleasurable’. From this perspective, the fact that a significant number of pornography users feel ashamed about their masturbatory practices demands that we start to explore how we could help lower their levels of sexual shame.
This is an excellent addition, and illustrates a lot of what's wrong with the current research in this area. Thank you!
hydor-soa reblogged
futchling
this is a RACK household, I do not play with SSC folks! My play is risk-aware and takes effective steps to minimize unwanted harms, not to meet arbitrary definitions of safety or "sanity." (Plus, goddamn that is such an ableist label, in addition to being unhelpful!)
#reblog#kink#tagged commentary#I have never thought of that (have not interacted with the SSC label in years) but you are so right#Be safe but that changes from person to person and someone could easily take SSC and make it anti-kink because of that#But what the fuck does sanity have to do with waxplay (or anything else ever)#I have never heard of RACK — I am assuming it is Risk-Aware Consensual Kink? — but if the topic ever comes up I will certainly be using it#discourse#queued#– Máxime 🪳#{{he/it/vi}}#date — 18 July 2024
hydor-soa reblogged
preaching to the choir obviously but to rob people of a personal choice out of the ostensible fear they might come to regret said choice is a thousand times crueler than allowing them the freedom to do things they might ultimately regret
if a person regrets their choices in life then that is on them. it is not your business to be everyone's hero.
But if they go to their grave feeling they have never truly lived, all because of your paternalistic, condescending fears, that is all on you.
someone send this post to the christians
also: using the threat of their hypothetical future regret to force people into an alternate option that they regret right fucking now is fundamentally dishonest in a way that beggars comprehension
hydor-soa reblogged
I fucking love fronting and posting on my silly little blog and wearing the clothes I made for me and listening to my edgy playlists and bickering with my headmates over who has to do the dishes and working on both personal and systemwide projects and going on discord and talking to the friends we're out to I FUCKING LOVE EXISTING
hydor-soa reblogged
*jigsaw voice* singlet. you are listening to a system describe an inner relationship. you must explain your view of why it is morally wrong without using the word “narcissistic”. if you fail, the snare around your neck will snap and it will be game over. you have one hour.
edit: ENDOGENIC SYSTEMS ARE MY SIBLINGS
hydor-soa reblogged
Being fictive-heavy plural is like "I have this headcanon about this character" *describes the fictive of said character who lives in my head*
i ❤ endo systems
hydor-soa reblogged
i found a cool tag game on twitter and i really wanna import it (o^ ^o)
this picrew + the last song you listened to :]
no pressure tags: @blood-loving-leech @overtaken-boredom @lesbianthatyaps @kameonerd566 @hexedvampire @laczki @anonymous-shxtposter @fleurafae @flovqy + anyone who wants to do it <3
No pressure! Only if you wants ta :3
(I didn’t know who to tag so jus tagged favorite cgs and moots T-T)
thank you for the tag, kiddo!
<333 this trend is fun!! (i considered adding kitty ears but i would never live that down..)
unfortunately they didn’t have tuxedo kitty but this is close enough
I did Simon here
I believe my last song was Three Kobolds In A Trenchcoat by Chase Noseworthy
Summons:
'Cry For Help' by Shinedown. we dont use spotify anyways lmao
<33333
currently listening to music so the song that's on rn is Take It Out On Me by Thousand Foot Crutch
@daggo-dead-dove @thevibrancycollective @aceofcrows1222 @spadesmidnightcrew @bambiilooza ?? + whoever else
-- Fin 🍾
hydor-soa reblogged
About this post [link]; I don't think you knew, but 'reject modernity, embrace tradition' is a fascist dogwhistle about how the modern world is 'culturally degenerate' and 'traditional values' are the only solution.
It's unfortunately gotten really popular with people who have no connection to those kind of beliefs as shorthand for 'the old thing was better', but AFAIK, it's still in use in its original context among conservatives and traditionalist groups today
You can let me know if I need to tag stuff like that, and I'm also totally willing to hear you out if you think it's still not good even ironically, tagged or not, but that is actually the intended joke. It's a meme that clowns on fascists who say that.
start-where-i-end
I personally believe making memes with fascist language is bad not because I genuinely assume the op to be a fascist, but because it creates some diluted, gradient atmosphere, where you (general you) start struggling to tell apart ironic and genuine statements.
Obviously, nobody thinks emo haircuts are "tradition". But I've seen the same meme format with a modern Steam game versus a retro console game, and that's already a step in the diluted area.
Fascists make memes too, they're not always extra serious about their verbal cliches. And a place that accepts fascist verbal cliches is bound to attract first people who drag in genuinely fascist-made memes due to naivety and second actual fascists.
A little less than a year ago I saw an admin of a fediverse instance overlook genuine fascist gathering on her site till they started making suicide baiting posts targeting trans people, because she was sure they were ironic. The atmosphere she herself cultivated, the language she used, was massively identical to theirs with some words swapped.
I had to take this stuff into account as an admin myself, and since I got more strict on this type of humor, harassment somewhat went down too.
hydor-soa reblogged
"transandrophobia isn't real/a good term, what you are ACTUALLY experiencing are these seven other words that all of you already know about and use when describing transandrophobia. I just think you should exclusively use a bunch of miscellaneous other terms instead of every having one word you can use to talk about transmasculine oppression as a unified experience."
"transandrophobia is bad theory because it all exists online and mostly on Tumblr. you guys need to read some real theory, in Books™, which largely do not discuss transmasculinity and when they do, do so in ways which do not align with your collective lived experiences as trans men. I do not know that the man who coined this term, as well as others, have actively been in the process of writing books on transandrophobia. I also do not know that it is very common for theories (such as misogynoir) to come from casual community discussions that then get solidified in academic work, rather than having the Gods of Sociology come down and give us peasants the correct way to analyze our lives."
sorry I can't get over this. "It's not transandrophobia, they don't know it's actually misogyny and gender essentialism and oppositional sexism–" those are all terms we use all. the fucking. time. There are people who learned about oppositional sexism by seeing it discussed by "transandrophobia truthers" talking about Serano's work coining it. We literally talk about gender essentialism all the goddamn time. Clearly you HAVEN'T been paying that much attention to our conversations if you think we aren't extremely aware of these words and their meanings.
hydor-soa reblogged
start-where-i-end
My body does not have identities - I do.
My body does not have feelings - I do.
My body does not have opinions - I do.
My body does not have independent value - I do.
My body is not its own creature - I am.
My body is not entitled to protection - I am.
My body is a way for me to interact with the world, not the other way around. You do not evaluate me through my body. You do not put my body above me. I own it entirely, and you don't get to have a say in this.
start-where-i-end
If you think I look 20, but I tell you I'm 40, you believe me instead of your interpretation of my body.
If I want cookies, it's me who wants cookies, not my body, even if I think wanting cookies right then is inconvenient - I'm allowed to have inner contradictions.
If I want to remove my tits, bleach my hair, get my legs broken so they grow longer, this is just as real as if I always was this way, because my body is a changeable expression of my self, not an autonomous entity that can appear "true" or "false".
start-where-i-end
I DO NOT HAVE A "TRANS BODY", I AM TRANS AND I HAVE A BODY.
hydor-soa reblogged
start-where-i-end
One would think "you can't transition into X identity, you don't have the lived experiences" wouldn't be such a popular position in a largely queer community. And yet.