As a kid, when your parents are poor, you're poor. If they don't have money, that means none of you have money. But if someone's parents are rich, that doesn't necessarily mean the kid is. Sometimes rich peoples' kids aren't rich kids, they're just some rich freak's exotic pets that can talk but aren't allowed to.

On related note, a few years ago, the Entomological Society of America officially discontinued the use of "gypsy moth" and "gyspy ant" as common names for Lymantria dispar and Aphaenogaster araneoides. L. Dispar is now known as the "spongy moth," so named for the appearance of their eggs, but I don't think a new common name has caught on for the ant species yet.

These changes we brought about, in large part, by the advocacy of Romani people in academia. You might not think that bug names are a very serious issue, but I believe that language matters. These species became known as "gypsies" because their attributes were likened to certain stereotypes and negative perceptions of actual Roma, so the continued use of those names reaffirmed those negative associations in the public consciousness. Slurs and pejoratives can never be truly decontexualized.

In my mind, one of the biggest obstacles that Romani people face when we are trying to advocate for ourselves is a lack of recognition as a marginalized group that deserves the necessary consideration. Even for seemingly trivial matters, like bugs or comic book characters, the way that people talk about us-- and talk down to us, when we get involved-- is telling. So, I always think that changes like this are a win, because it means that people are willing to learn and grant us the dignity we deserve. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to effect change in your own field, even arts and science.

I appreciate "just some dude"-type of masculine aesthetic and comIetely understand why there is a lot of transmascs who lean towards it, but I just can't relate to it. I need more representation of transmasculine people who transition to be a dark academia history professor, an effeminate dandy, a mad scientist with mysterious sadness in his eyes, a gay politician, a Fyodor Dostoyevsky impersonator, a

Started to draw my feelings. I'm not a great artist, but I have to get it out somehow. The current climate in the USA regarding biologically female bodies and transgender people has been getting to me. This helped.

Do you ever talk to someone and they bring up trans men and it because very clear very quickly the only trans men they have talk too are the rich white trans guys who can afford to fully transition at a young age and didn’t have to deal with most of the shit other trans guys had too.

Like no I don’t think the dude who got top surgery at 16 is an accurate representation of every single trans guy ever.

In the end, if children bother you for sensory reasons and that's why you don't want them to be in the same public spaces as you, there are disabled adults who can and would cause the same sensory issues for you. Adults who are loud, who vocally stim, who have poor boundaries, poor hygiene, who cry in public, etc etc etc. And they're already socially ostracized for all of this.

So actually yeah, it's the bare minimum you can do for the group with the least human rights on the planet to figure out how to accept children as part of your public community without hating them for it, even if you are child-free yourself.

Caption: [A stitch with user @/sapphicyuji. The text on screen reads, " "you can't misgender cis people!", you have never had your gender questioned outside of your transness and it shows. sincerely, a trans poc".

I'm actually super glad we're having a conversation about this. The masculinization of black and brown women, because for years I felt like I endured this unique form of trauma until I realized other people went through the same thing too. And if there's one thing that I'd like to add to the conversation, there seems to be this misconception that this is something that starts at puberty. Like boys tell you you look like a man to hurt your feeling when that's so far from the case.

The first time I was purposefully misgendered was in kindergarten. I was constantly referred to by the masculine variant of my name, I was chased out of the women's restroom, and I had grown adults questioning what my biological sex was before I even knew what the difference was. And those behaviors persisted into adulthood because now if I present as anything less than 100% feminine, people will either compare me to men or animals.

And for myself and for many other brown and black women this is a life long act deliberately intended to humiliate, shame, and other us for the features we were naturally born with and I'm glad we're having a discussion on how harmful it actually is.]

I'm so glad that y'all are so into Monkey Man and the badass hijra priestess army, but friendly reminder that hijra are NOT trans women. Hijra are their own distinct gender; trans women are women. India has both :)

I...tried to make a meme and got carried away and made A Thing that is like partially unfinished because i spent like 3 hours on it and then got tired.

I think this is mostly scientifically accurate but truth be told, there seems to be relatively little research on succession in regards to lawns specifically (as opposed to like, pastures). I am not exaggerating how bad they are for biodiversity though—recent research has referred to them as "ecological deserts."

Feel free to repost, no need for credit

It's always "Read Transfeminism! Read works by trans women!" in response to conversations on trans men and transandrophobia as a concept until it's pointed out the trans women being used as meat shields for these people's arguments have recognized that their scope is/was limited and that trans men and other trans people also deserve a voice and place at the table.

From Emi Koyama's 2002 postscript of the Transfeminist Manifesto [ pdf ]:

Julia Serano in 2021 on her Medium site [ link ]:

I also think it's vitally important that Emi Koyama calls direct attention to the fact that she came to reevaluate her positions because she was engaging with other women of color, disabled women, and working class women. Engaging with feminism that doesn't center around your own identity and instead places more diverse voices into your space is a net good. More perspectives are good. They help you self evaluate and understand how you and those around you actually fit into these larger systems in ways you're unable to in an echo chamber of the self.

HETEROSEXUAL CIS-PEOPLE LOOK HERE

Snaps my fingers at you as you scroll past this post

Look at me. Listen.

I'm not the best at serious posts, but that article up there reminded me of how important it is that people like you stand up for us. So hold on while I try to get this out of my mushy end-of-work-day brain.

We could fight this fight ourselves for decades trying to reach the equal laws, gender affirming trans healthcare that doesn't have a 2-5+ soul-eating years of waiting time, medical care with equal knowledge of lgbtqia+ bodies, and, what is often forgotten, inclusion in the little everyday areas of life like our way of speaking or things being set up or designed with the existence of queer people in mind.

But you joining in could get us there so much faster.

The power you have as a hetero cis person is that you set the standard for what is seen as the average way of treating us among other hetero cis people. You have been given the power of deciding what's "normal" and I'm begging you to use it.

Richard Green is a great example of to what extent your actions can help our situation, and smaller ways of support still add up to a great impact on society, and could make the days of the queer people you interact with.

Educate yourself before you speak up, but don't be silent.

Transfem to Transmasc solitary must exist as much as any trans solidarity must exist.

Protect my boys.

Everyone needs a work gender and a home gender actually if you don't do this you can't have a work-life balance

if your community couldn't handle a trans girl with a diaper kink without collapsing into pedophile witchunting

your community simply will not last. if your community cannot handle the clearest example of someone harming no one but herself without breaking down into rabid demands of exile, it cannot weather internal conflict that actually matters without going up in flames. not only is transmisogyny, you know, a literal death sentence to the trans women it brands sex criminals, it also just is a fundamental weakness of your community if a trans girl hurting no one can set it ablaze like i don't know how to tell you this but if you're that eager to collapse into moral purity testing for "enemies within" over a girl that just likes pissing herself and calling her girlfriend "big sis", that is a trivially easy weak point for a hostile attacker to shatter your space along. support the Weird trans women, even the ones you're not personally comfortable with. we're not coming to fuck your kids and dogs, i promise.

Source details and larger version.

Here are the vintage knights I’ve so far encountered in my research.

A commonly overlooked symptom of depression is anhedonia, the inability to feel joy or pleasure. The reason that it's easy to overlook is that it's easier to miss the absence of something that's not around all the time than it is to miss a symptom that causes active distress, such as feeling tired and miserable all the time.

Anhedonia is good at being a persistent undercurrent to your life. My aunt, who has major depressive disorder, related to me that she figured out that something was wrong when she looked at the daffodils she had planted blooming, and couldn't recognize the emotion that she felt when she looked at them. It had been long enough since she had felt happy that she lost the ability to recognize the emotion.

It's a particularly dangerous depressive symptom, because it robs you of the ability to feel those little spots of joy that keep a lot of people going, while not doing anything to impair your ability to function. If you don't know that this is a treatable symptom of depression, it's easy to assume that your ability to feel good is permanently broken, and decide to commit suicide because you don't want to live like that. It's not an irrational conclusion, but it is an uninformed one, and everyone deserves to have all the information when making a major decision.

This is what a lot of questionnaires are trying to look for when they ask about "loss of enjoyment". If you can't remember a loss of enjoyment because you can't remember enjoyment, then you probably have anhedonia. If you struggle to define how it is to feel "happy", "content", or "good", or how it feels when you feel those emotions, you probably have anhedonia. If you can't remember feeling any of those emotions for a week or more, you probably have anhedonia.

Symptoms commonly co-occurring with anhedonia are fatigue (often the cause), clear and thoughtful consideration of suicide, loss of desire to socialize or do activities that used to make you happy, and weight loss (due to lack of enjoyment of food).

This section is anecdotal. In what I have observed, anhedonia due to fatigue rarely responds well to depression treatment unless depression was causing the fatigue. If fatigue and anhedonia are co-occurring and are not both alleviated by depression treatment, consider other causes for the fatigue.