jameswrites - Tumblr blog

jameswrites · 3 months

Text

another underappreciated tumblr feature that you dont get on other sites is the queue. i love it when something i thought was funny six months ago and then forgot about a week later crawlts its way out of the processing vortex and i get to see it all over again.

#happy birthday to me!

79K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 4 months

Text

I think I'm just gonna extend my Hiatus. I don't handle being on Tumblr very well lately. I hope yall have a lovely one.

4 notes · View notes

jameswrites · 4 months

Text

sobbing into my plate after overhearing a conversation between a mom and her tiny daughter in this shopping centre food court

64K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 4 months

Photo

ma france <3

1K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 4 months

Text

yeah new pokemon idea. spinosauras fossil with looping evolution line. each stage is a different weird interpretation / reconstruction of it with wildly different stats. you can evolve it by taking it to a scientist npc to see and say "it did not fucking look like that"

17K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 4 months

Text

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza seen as among the most destructive in history, experts say

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in history. In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group. The Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. But from blast fragments found on-site and analyses of strike footage, experts are confident that the vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are U.S.-made. They say the weapons include 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) “bunker-busters” that have killed hundreds in densely populated areas.

7K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 4 months

Text

Nah man, I know what it's like to be called a faggot while someone is slamming me against a window and my hands are getting scraped against brick. I got hate crimed just this past July or August, time blurs.

And I still am a faggot, like, fuck off people talking like they know what words others should reclaim. I've also been called a dyke. Queer. Gay. Tranny.

I am all of those (except dyke, tbh) and like, I've been that in the past. Fuck off.

> person complains about faggots saying faggot

> check bio

> 16

> pour a double shot of whisky and just sit there holding it for an hour

4K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 4 months

Text

Dude literally received death threats from Italian fascists for his research on Italian cuisine

Read this article here (no paywall):

https://archive.md/TRMZJ

44K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 4 months

Text

(Still on hiatus, but had a very stressful day, got on here for a bit. Time to go again! See yall hopefully after the new years and not in like, two hours lmao.)

1 note · View note

jameswrites · 4 months

Text

The best part of waking up

37K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 4 months

Text

So, the DfE have released their non-statutory guidance for schools on "gender questioning children". I know much has been made of the idea of outing trans children to their parents, but I think the guidance actually has far more concerning sections. And by concerning I mean "deeply transphobic and fucked up".

I know some people are happy it's non statutory, but let's be explicit, this document is transphobic, it's dogwhistle politics, and it's existence will directly harm trans people.

Ironically, the DfE's own lawyers have advised that this guidance is likely illegal and contravenes the equality act.

I think the idea that there are lots of students who are fully transitioned in school but not out at all at home is a bit of a strawman from both sides. In my experience (and I've mentioned this on tumblr before), a school would not normally encourage this if a student was genuinely at risk at home if outed, because even if all the teachers knew not to out the students, you can't control the behaviour of other students/parents etc. I think it's a bit of a right wing scare tactic "Schools are transitioning your kids without your consent". It's a fascist dog whistle.

In my experience as a teacher, the vast majority of trans kids I've taught were transitioning socially at home and school. Some did only use their chosen name/pronouns in school, but parents were aware.

But this straw man has been used to build a document which is deeply transphobic and wide reaching and will defacto exclude some trans kids from school, or from school sports, or from attending a school where they feel comfortable.

Trans kids exist. Kids can know they are trans from a young age, and there is no harm to anyone from allowing social transition at a young age. Some kids transition back to their assigned gender at birth. That doesn't mean anyone was harmed. But this guidance explicitly presents the idea of transition as both harmful to the person transitioning and those around them. Which is fucked up.

The new guidance has some really concerning bits in it which will seriously negatively impact all trans students. Here are some quotes below, with my comments in italics. Please note I'm quoting directly from a document that uses transphobic language:

-Primary school aged children should not have different pronouns to their sex-based pronouns used about them. (This is fucked, I cannot stress how fucked this is. These kids exist and simply pretending they don't is awful in the extreme. The idea that children can't socially transition at primary school is really messed up. )

-schools and colleges should only agree to a change of pronouns if they are confident that the benefit to the individual child outweighs the impact on the school community. It is expected that there will be very few occasions in which a school or college will be able to agree to a change of pronouns. On these rare occasions, no teacher or pupil should be compelled to use these preferred pronouns. (How does a child using pronouns of choice impact the school community? It doesn't? In my experience, teens are much more accepting of trans classmates than some adults. Also giving teachers explicit permission to misgender kids is fucking dangerous).

-schools and colleges should exhaust all other options, such as using firstnames, to avoid requiring other individuals having to use preferred pronouns. (My initial response to this was "why the fuck" but a trans friend commented that the purpose is to make trans people's lives as difficult and as miserable as possible, and they're going after the most vulnerable trans people- trans kids)

-If a child does not want to use the toilet designated for their biological sex, and the school or college has considered all the relevant factors outlined above, they may wish to consider whether they can provide or offer the use of an alternative toilet facility. (this is weird because I'm pretty sure it contravenes the equality act, I'm pretty sure there is a legal duty on schools, and certainly colleges where over 18s attend to provide gender neutral toilet facilities if required. Also, not having an appropriate toilet defacto excludes children from school).

-Schools may have different uniform requirements for girls and boys. Some specify which uniform items are for girls and which are for boys, and similarly some schools have hairstyle rules which differ by sex. A child who is gender questioning should, in general, be held to the same uniform standards as other children of their sex at their school and schools may set clear rules to this effect. (So some schools could, for example, force a trans boy or non binary student to wear a skirt. Which is unfair and messed up. To be honest, I think sex segregated uniforms belong in the dark ages anyway, but this is just ridiculous.).

-There is no general duty to allow a child to ‘social transition’. (Firstly, there legally is. Secondly, why would a school not want to? This just gives licence to transphobic heads to say "oh, no, we won't allow you to transition", which is illegal, but the whole thing is just such a fucking mess. And again, why? Why would you not allow a child to transition socially? Unless you want to pretend that trans children don't exist?)

If you want to read the full guidance, it's available here, but trigger warnings etc do apply: https://consult.education.gov.uk/equalities-political-impartiality-anti-bullying-team/gender-questioning-children-proposed-guidance/supporting_documents/Gender%20Questioning%20Children%20%20nonstatutory%20guidance.pdf

Yes, the guidance is non-statutory, so in theory schools could ignore it, but in reality, OFSTED etc can use non-statutory guidance as a stick to beat schools with. At this stage, I think we all know the OFSTED don't give a fuck about anyone's mental health or wellbeing.

Interestingly, even the DfE's own lawyers have admitted the advice could open schools up to a legal challenge. This SchoolsWeek article on the topic is super interesting: https://schoolsweek.co.uk/trans-guidance-dfe-lawyers-said-schools-face-high-risk-of-being-sued/

Anyway, whilst the fact it's non statutory is something, this is not the victory some people are making it out to be, and the fact a document encouraging misgendering children has been published at all is fucked. This document could very much be used to prevent children from transitioning, and will likely prevent some children who have transitioned from attending school.

1K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 5 months

Photo

“Lighten Up” by Ronald Wimberly

Beautifuly written- and drawn.

461K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 5 months

Text

Images that you would probably not see again @thoughtstherapy

27K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 5 months

Text

transphobic music fans be listening to he or she might be giants

59K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 5 months

Note

I don't know if you know blue eye Samurai, but I hate how people talk about the protagonist.

I'm a non binary Trans man, and I actually identify a lot with Mizu (the protagonist), but I go here on Tumblr and I see a lot of posts that say: "I know everyone can see Mizu however they like, but I want everyone to know that the right interpretation is that she is a woman pretending to be a man... but everyone can think whatever they want, not forgetting that she is a woman of course."

And it's a bit annoying because when I see explanations of why is "wrong" to see Mizu as a Trans man, I see people going "Why can't there be representation of gender non conforming women!?" And "she wouldn't pretend to be a man if it wasn't for the society she lives in!"

The last one makes me especially angry, because of how many Trans men get erased from history with that same argument.

I don't know, I think it makes me mad because that fandom feels like a micro cosmos of the anti Trans masculinity a lot of Trans men have to face.

And it's not like I think it's wrong to see Mizu as a woman, but when everyone goes "of course she is a woman, why would she want to be a man for anything other than necessity?" I don't know how to feel.

I'm gonna steal my own words from that post about jeanne d'arc:

And the best part is, we can say all of this and also see her as part of women's history! Because women's history, too, does not have to be exclusively about woman-born or woman-identified women. It can be about a larger cultural experience. And Jeanne d'Arc suffered because of transphobia which is always fundamentally misogynistic. I would argue it even makes sense to say her death involved transmisogyny in a very literal sense. The thing about transfeminism is that it can free us from the need to view personal identification with the role of "woman" as vital to feminism. Being a woman, in whatever sense, is certainly not unrelated to feminism, but one can be a feminist and have any kind of personal or communal relationship with womanhood. Anyone can be inspired by the story of Jeanne d'Arc and her bold defiance of both misogyny and transphobia, no matter how she may have personally understood her gender.

People have this idea where if a character or historical figure (or even currently living person) is anything but a woman, then any kind of Feminist Story falls apart. Especially when it comes to misogyny! People act like someone being a trans man means all their experiences with misogyny are like. gone? Or the story is now, essentially, about a cis man being mistaken for a woman, and thus women are Not Allowed to feel any connection at all.

All of this on top of the fun hypocrisy that is "we can't say this person/character is a trans man because they wouldn't have that concept, but we can say they are a cis woman because those are both the only options and ciswomanhood is a natural and universal concept we can apply regardless of any other context :)"

& with Mizu its like. you literally can see her as a GNC woman. people calling him a trans guy or transmasc or genderqueer or anything else are not taking away your experience of her as a GNC woman. Transmasculinity is not just Negative Womanhood, the idea that transmasculinity is something which saps away representation/power/dignity/identity/value from (cis) women is like ATM 101.

But the whole way people treat trans men and misogyny really annoys me, I guess because the assumption is that for women, having to dress as a man to get respect inspires anger at one's position in society, but trans men are incapable of having any complex feelings about that. Like trans men must fully enjoy not being able to have sex with others, or go to a doctor, and having to live in fear of being outed and facing the brunt of transphobia and misogyny, and trans men also couldn't possibly be angry about misogyny that they experienced, and also nonbinary people don't exist and no transmasculine person could possibly be anything but fully comfortable being seen as a cis man all the time. Sure, some trans men are perfectly happy passing as cis men, but like. there is more than one trans man. & ignoring all other transmasc experiences besides The One is a form of erasure, it just passes as something else because technically you are acknowledging A transmasc existence.

186 notes · View notes

jameswrites · 5 months

Text

One thing I really love about seedy anime websites and YouTube mp3 converters is like. They actually do what they say they’re doing. But they WILL try to trick you into downloading a virus. Like it’s almost just a greeting at this point. I try to extract a song from a YouTube video and it says free VPN installer tonight perhaps? Free VPN installer tonight queen? And I say YouTube-mp3 converter you sly dog, you know what I’m here for. Show me the goods. And YouTube-mp3 converter says ahhh you got me, no getting one over on you. Thought it was worth a try tho. Here you go king x

152K notes · View notes

jameswrites · 5 months

Text

you know how all those applesauce packets were recalled for lead?

well. it turns out the cinnamon used in them may have been laced with lead on purpose.

fun times in the united states food industry right now am I right folks

46K notes · View notes