The Salt Repository

pilgrimkitty:

readableposts:

upthefolks:

so like okay, 

I don’t know why I’ve been obsessively thinking about the concept of “gaydar” 

but I have. 

Actually no it’s because a straight family member used the term like 

“oh I have really great gaydar” 

and it made me feel really gross 

and it took me like a full hour to realize why. 

When heterosexual people say that, 

it feels like they’re bragging about their ability to clock us, you know? 

like a straight person is telling me that they can spot us queers at 50 paces 

and i’m immediately going to be uncomfortable with that, 

whereas when other queer folks talk about being able to spot each other 

it’s a tool for survival. 

Like here’s the thing right? 

being able to tell is important sometimes.
 

Here’s an example: 

A couple summers ago I was in a very very small town in Nova Scotia, Canada 

(like 6 buildings small) 

and I met a woman in the library who was probably a little older than my actual mother. 

She was there most days using the wifi 

because she lived across the street in an apartment without internet. 

We sat at the same table a few times and spoke briefly about life in passing 

and after a few of these not-talking-about-gay-stuff convos I was pretty sure she was a part of the lgbtq community 

and I slipped in a casual pronoun re: an ex 

and she just looked at me, 

stopped completely 

and said “oh thank fuck, I thought so.” 

and instantly started talking about her girlfriend, 

it was like this huge wave of relief washed over both of us 

because we were in a small rural town and both hovering in this really queer space and unable to talk about it. 

Anyway she was really rad and took me to the closest big town to buy me a tim hortons coffee 

because she found it reprehensible that I had been in canada for more than 3 weeks already and hadn’t ever had it. 

Almost instantly it was like 

“oh okay we have this thing in common that other people may not be cool with 

but we can actually exist and not hide shit without the fear of violence or anger”

but when it’s a straight person

they’re pretty much just letting you know that they can spot the fact that you seem “abnormal” to them 

like great 

thanks for letting me know. 

[spaces added for accessibility]

We’re identifying brethren while they’re identifying outsiders. It’s that simple.

c-bassmeow:

Idk which one is funnier

eboyminegixhi:

birdblogwhichisforbirds:

Two more weeks of gender!

lamotteling:

fuckglossier:

doctors in the 19th century really were like maam i diagnose you with woman

Doctors today are still really like ma'am I diagnose you with woman

bihet-dragonize:

We have bi vs pan discourse every 2 weeks because y'all decided you couldn’t read and still refuse to read. There is no difficulty in reading the Bisexual Manifesto and understanding that we have always been aware that the gender binary is a sham. We have always been trans/nb. We have always had an attraction to more than 2 genders. All of this info is easily available on your average bi person’s blog lol so no I’m just gonna assume that y'all are dedicated to hating and demonizing bi people and Imma just hit that block. I don’t have the patience anymore. Learn to read. Learn your history. Stop talking over bi people about shit you know nothing about.

tealesbian:

churchnotmadewithhands:

tealesbian:

taking off my bra, puting on a big t-shirt, and crawling into bed at the end of the day is very sexy of me if I do say so myself 

me but at 2 in the afternoon after like running one errand

ok same

findingfeather:

A second note prompted by something else, but is a wider issue I see people missing a lot: 

Oppression and suffering/harm are not actually the same thing. Which is not to say that oppression doesn’t cause harm - it pretty reliably does! - but rather that oppression is not the only thing that causes suffering, even suffering that we “should” care about. 

(I mean I’m of the opinion that misery, harm and so on are pretty bad and we should look for ways to alleviate them in all people, but I’m talking here in a “you’re concerned about how society works? Ok look over here.”) 

Oppression is a commentary on power-dynamics and organization - specifically, systemic abusive power-dynamics and organization. But many things are bad and cause significant human harm and suffering even without being a matter of systemic abusive power-dynamics. 

For instance: due to how society works, chronic depressive disorder does in fact fit within the ambit of the systemic abusive power-dynamic called “ablism”. 

However, even if it weren’t, it would still cause significant suffering and probably death, because that’s literally what the disease is. 

(This, btw, is often a source of contention between disabled people whose problems would significantly be solved by society not being an ablist piece of shit, vs those whose conditions are inherently, fundamentally harmful. Chronic pain will still hurt a lot even if society has no abusive power-dynamics: the only way to stop chronic pain hurting is to, well, adequately treat and solve chronic pain. Conversely there is absolutely no need to “cure” hearing problems or neurodivergence in order to solve the primary problem of society’s shit power-dynamics. Because Intersectionality Is Hard, we fight about this a lot.) 

This is important, because observing that a particular group suffers because of this, that or the other, is not actually the same as saying that the same group is oppressed in any given system. 

So for instance, on the axis of “gender”, cis men are not “oppressed”: that is to say, the fucked-up power dynamics do not target and disenfranchise them. 

That doesn’t mean it’s not harming them, or even killing them. It is. In fact toxic masculinity kills men continually. It just means that in terms of the power dynamic, they’re on the top of it. 

Likewise, on the economic axis, the wealth-class are by definition not an oppressed group! AT ALL. EVEN REMOTELY. They are the top of the fucking heap. They have all the power and all the structural bullshit to the nth degree. 

They are not oppressed. 

However, they do still suffer and die from it. It still harms them. Because oppression is not the only form of harm. 

This, for me, is perhaps part of the biggest reason understanding that systems don’t have to actually benefit anyone is important.  

We have a tendency to look at groups and go “you’re not oppressed, ergo your reports of the suffering you’re experiencing are unimportant/made up.” Which doesn’t get very far, because humans as an entire species react badly to being told “you’re not actually suffering”. 

But because we synonymise “suffering” and “being oppressed”, it also means that a person who knows (because they experience it) that they are suffering - that pain, harm and damage are occurring to them - will in turn either need to deny their own reality, or they will have to reinvent reality so that they are oppressed. 

This?

This is what allows radical groups to recruit. Regardless of their focus and ideology. They can go: yes, we totally get that you’re suffering! And you know why you’re suffering? Because you don’t have enough power! And you know why you don’t have enough power? Because [whatever target group] actually has it! And any time they ask you do to something that’s difficult or uncomfortable or annoying, that’s them using their power over you, and oppressing you. 

And bob’s your uncle. 

Don’t get me wrong: oppression is absofuckinglutely a major cause of suffering. But it’s not the only cause, and it is not necessary for suffering, and suffering still matters even when it’s not caused by systemic power-imbalances. Hell, even when it’s causing same, because weirdly enough sometimes solving the suffering is a necessary part of solving the systemic power-imbalance. 

(It is rarely sufficient: you usually have to do a shitload of stuff along with it. But it is often necessary, which is to say that if it’s not solved, all the other stuff won’t do it - at most it will just … flip who has the systematically imbalanced power.) 

And because there are many ways in which power works in a society, it may be an abusive imbalance on one axis (like, say, economic class) that is causing significant suffering which is then misidentified as being caused by a different axis that the person is actually on the top of! And this is how you get the MADDENINGLY ILLOGICAL PERSISTENCE of violent white supremacy among the rural poor* so that they’re constantly working to maintain the power of landlords and members of the wealth-class who are directly exploiting them, because those landlords/etc are successful at convincing them that the actual problem here is that White People Are Oppressed. 

Because humans are complicated and difficult. 

And very very bad at thinking clearly when we’re miserable and suffering. 

So that’s another thing that I think it is useful to understand, when trying to take the steps necessary to stop this world from being a miserable hellpit. 

*(y: being inculcated with racism by society from birth helps a lot for sure. But have you ever been frustrated by the fact that white rural poor will, in fact, often ACT AGAINST THEIR OWN SELF INTEREST IN EVERY WAY? *points* Welp.) 

probablyasocialecologist:

The threat of Christian dominionism extends beyond health care into another sensitive environment: public schools. Chrissy Stroop, a writer who grew up in a conservative Evangelical family and is now an “exvangelical” activist, told me that church leaders at her Evangelical private secondary school would encourage young people to go into important fields — medicine, business, politics — in order to lead the political culture war.

realtransfacts:

Your gender is who you are, not what you look like (img source)

doomsneigh:

British people are like, what do you mean our cuisine is gross? Do you not like beans on sneakers?

ssnubbull:

kermitlesbian:

this is literally in response to a video a mom posted of a stop motion film her TEN YEAR OLD SON MADE FOR FUN why do men speak

wait you forgot the best part

citizen-zero:

scarlet00rose:

luminarai:

listen, I’m not the biggest fan of kids but if a child looks at me then you bet I’m gonna smile back at them. kids deserve to experience the world as a kind and safe place to explore okay.

But the world is not kind or safe.

then Fucking do your part to make it that way.