Our fandom forbearers did NOT suffer through Anne Rice, strikethrough, and other bullshit for fucking ACOTAR and Harry Potter fans to fucking ruin it for all of us by selling fanfiction. I am not losing novel length yaoi epics because some of you don't know how to act in fannish spaces and yes I do blame the booktokification of fanfic but I also blame those of you that treat fandom like content to consume and not a community to engage with.
people are absolutely EVIL about the boundaries of “picky eaters”. no, they do not have to try it. yes, they can know they don’t like it without having eaten it before. no, they probably have not suddenly grown a taste for the food they’ve said they hate. no, they probably are not going to like it in the Special Way This One Place Cooks It. yes, you are being a bad friend if you try to “trick” them into eating it anyway
Since the r-slur is making a comeback (you know, the word that starts with R, has six letters, and ends in D), I'm gonna make a little PSA:
Yes, it's an ableist slur.
Terms like "asshat," "head-up-ass," "up their own ass," and "high on their own farts" exist. There's also words like crap, dogshit, half-assed, assclown, and chucklefuck. And on the less vulgar side, there are terms like ridiculous, nonsense, train wreck, pointless, insipid, self-absorbed, pretentious, annoying, boring, contemptible, vile, and disgusting.
Substituting words like restarted, poptarted, brain damaged, smoothbrain, etc. is still ableist, because either 1. you obviously still mean the r-word, or 2. you're still using disability as an insult.
So a while back, I asked the boss to register and put up ‘Welcome here’ stickers at the clinic.
They’re roughly palm-sized stickers with a rainbow heart in a map icon. They’re obvious but don’t take up that much space and don’t interfere with anybody’s day.
One sits on the reception desk, and one is stuck on the front door. They’re a small gesture that just explicitly states the LGBTQ+ community is, literally, welcome here.
It’s very unobtrusive, and (most) people haven’t mentioned it at all, but the observable results have been:
More Clients specifically adding their same sex partner as another owner on the account.
Some clients that I’ve known for a decade or more actually being comfortable enough to reveal they have a partner in conversation.
More same sex couples calling each other ‘darling’ in front of other people.
A few ‘Mx’ titles on client files.
I want to emphasise that it is a tiny gesture, but it increases the comfort level slightly for quite a lot of people, so I’d recommend it if your workplace can, even if you don’t think it’s relevant.
The only person who has had anything vaguely negative to say has been a notorious problem client, who ‘didn’t see the point’. But obviously the stickers are not for him.