The 2024 Gender Census is now open!

[ Link to survey ]

The 11th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th June 2024.

It’s short and easy, about 5 minutes probably.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful - it’s what helped us get 40,000 responses last year.

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

For the curious, you can also spy on some graphs and demographic data for the incoming responses here.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

Image credit: Malachite and rhodochrosite.

Link to the gay porn library of Alexandria.

Happy pride.

Speaking as someone who's a. a technical writer, and b. on the spectrum, I 100% agree that the wording of most autism self-assessment schemas sucks, but fixing that is also a legitimately hard problem. Identifying neurotypes boils down to identifying habitual patterns of behaviour, and one of the frequent hallmarks of autism is having difficulty generalising from anecdotal observations to identify trends. The upshot is that an autism self-assessment that wants to be useful to its target audience is very often going to find itself in the position of trying to explain what a habitual pattern of behaviour is to someone for whom the only discernible patterns are "Every Time Forever Without Exception" and "A Series of Isolated Incidents".

Wormy Dune Tee by ashandmilk

“ExcUSE me?!”

i feel like polycules are winning the rat race tbh, maybe the reason there's the stereotype about polyam people all having "useless" part-time jobs is because it's much easier to split rent 5+ ways on a one bedroom if you're all comfortable seeing each other naked.

also it's fairly transparent why people would be mad at anyone who is working fewer hours and having sex with a greater number of people, all the hate kinda just seems like cope.

The novelist writes from inside. I’m rather sensitive on this point, because I write science fiction, or fantasy, or about imaginary countries, mostly—stuff that, by definition, involves times, places, events that I could not possibly experience in my own life. So when I was young and would submit one of these things about space voyages to Orion or dragons or something, I was told, at extremely regular intervals, “You should try to write about things you know about.” And I would say, But I do; I know about Orion, and dragons, and imaginary countries. Who do you think knows about my own imaginary countries, if I don’t? But they didn’t listen, because they don’t understand, they have it all backward. They think an artist is like a roll of photographic film, you expose it and develop it and there is a reproduction of Reality in two dimensions. But that’s all wrong, and if any artist tells you, “I am a camera,” or “I am a mirror,” distrust them instantly, they’re fooling you, pulling a fast one. Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts—only in the truth. You get the facts from outside. The truth you get from inside. OK, how do you go about getting at that truth? You want to tell the truth. You want to be a writer. So what do you do? You write.

--Ursula Le Guin, from the "On How To Become A Writer" at LitHub, from The Language of the Night (via @neil-gaiman)

I finally finished the Walouija board

Hi, hello, writers? This is how you do a cyberpunk game.

I get mail

I, a total stranger, was thinking of befriending your kid, but before I did, I thought I'd ask you, are they a boring, selfish jerk?

It's fine if they are, I'm just really trying to find quality people to be friends with, so I thought I'd ask you, is your kid a dick?

Wait, don't get offended! How are people supposed to know whether to hang out with your kid if you can't answer a simple question?!

I, a total stranger, was thinking of inviting myself over to your house for dinner.

But before I do, I wanted to ask, is your cooking insipid, greasy and terrible?

Honestly, it's not problem if it is, I'm just trying to focus on eating food that isn't shit.

Oh, come on, don't be so touchy! How is anyone supposed to know whether to eat the food you cook if you won't tell them whether it sucks?

you'll just be minding ur business and then suddenly the air smells like an august evening in 2005

this is so fucking funny

This is Money Snake. She only appears every 312 years. 

If you reblog her picture within the next twenty-five seconds you will have good luck and fortune for the rest of your life. 

but seriously though i’m sick and tired of those masterposts that are like “here! A reference site on Greek mythology for all your needs! Look it has all fifteen Greek gods on it!” And I’m like. tHERE WERE LIKE HUNDREDS OF FIGURES IN MYTHOLOGY YOUR CRAPPY HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL BIBLIOGRAPHY SITE MEANS NOTHING TO ME 

if you want a basic outline of Greek mythology okay sure fine??? but like. if you want an extensive fucking reference site you are looking in the wrong goddamn places

as a self-declared greek mythology snob my reference site is fucking always this fucker right here. almost every single figure ever mentioned in a Greek text is on it, it has the most obscure gods, spirits, nymphs— it’s GREAT. You really wanna extend your mythological knowledge past the basic 12 and like four others? USE THEOI.  plus plus PLUS everything is cited so you can actually read the source material written about whoever it is you’re looking at.

fucking signal boost this. i’m so sick and tired of writer’s helpers blogs referring people to sites with as much information you would get from opening a third grade mythology book jesus chriiiiiist

The Bitter Drop by Isak Bloom

You’ve seen me do D&D articles, you’ve seen me do Lost articles, you’ve seen my ass jump in on a post about Meti ten Ryo, the Destroyer, the greatest slave to the sword to ever live, and now you’re gonna see me recc some fiction. Like. Quite a bit of fiction this is about to be the first post of A Few. So let’s talk about The Bitter Drop.

The Bitter Drop is an ongoing web serial written by Isak Bloom, written solely in text but with interactive footnotes that help expand on Our Hero’s thought processes & character, the world, and/or your capacity to die of laughter. As of the time of this writing two chapters are available (The Night Goes Pale and Walking With Strangers), and it updates…when it updates. I’m putting that bit right up front because I don’t wanna hear anyone coming to me going “updates when, Vox?” it updates when it updates, you will receive more gay Jews when Isak bursts from his very sexy coffin with a new draft in hand and then you’ll await his slumber like the rest of us.

The question of using spoilers to recc a piece of writing or not is fun here, since there’s so little of the work currently extant, but let’s try this: as The Bitter Drop opens you meet Lev, Our Narrator, as he is returning to the Desert Peach after doing a stint in a madhouse. Lev’s got a lot going on in his life right now. Currently homeless, coping with psychosis, and a Jewish fag under an oppressive empire whose best-day scenario is shoving his people into a ghetto to be neglected and ignored (and the best days, they grow fewer and further between), he comes back into the Peach looking to reconnect with his community, to de-stress, and maybe pick up a hot boy who’ll rail him into another dimension and let him sleep in a building. Events…proceed…from there.

I honestly aspire to the casual richness that Isak brings to his characters’ voices, and with Lev as Our Narrator the story has an intimate feeling, as if told next to you on the couch or around a smoky table where the wine does not stop flowing. It can be at turns wistful, melancholy, outraged, and absolutely hilarious; it hits deep with its depiction of living under empire while refusing to assimilate, and concerns itself greatly with the ways in which oppressed people are alike while still being wholly unique. The beginnings of its romance, already here in the first couple of chapters, are both adorable and searingly hot. Also notable here, and I really perhaps should have said this up front, is that The Bitter Drop does not depict either its empire or its Jews on Earth; instead it takes place in a fascinating fantasy world defined by a relationship between the Silver - a deep and dream-like fog of pure possibility - and the Bones, the “real reality” on which humans live that emerges distinct from the Silver but is still of it, born from it, and shaped in turn by it.

You can join me in waiting for fresh updates here. Hope to see ya: https://thebitterdrop.com/