It’s solar and wind and tidal and geothermal and hydropower.

It’s plant-based diets and regenerative livestock farming and insect protein and lab-grown meat.

It’s electric cars and reliable public transit and decreasing how far and how often we travel.

It’s growing your own vegetables and community gardens and vertical farms and supporting local producers.

It’s rewilding the countryside and greening cities.

It’s getting people active and improving disabled access.

It’s making your own clothes and buying or swapping sustainable stuff with your neighbours.

It’s the right to repair and reducing consumption in the first place.

It’s greater land rights for the commons and indigenous peoples and creating protected areas.

It’s radical, drastic change and community consensus.

It’s labour rights and less work.

It’s science and arts.

It’s theoretical academic thought and concrete practical action.

It’s signing petitions and campaigning and protesting and civil disobedience.

It’s sailboats and zeppelins.

It’s the speculative and the possible.

It’s raising living standards and curbing consumerism.

It’s global and local.

It’s me and you.

Climate solutions look different for everyone, and we all have something to offer.

I’m here to talk about a concept I am currently referring to as power-jacketing, especially as it relates to the queer community. This is when a marginalized group is painted as having power over others in their marginalized community when this is not the case. Power-jacketing and its consequences are a form of lateral aggression and tie into the idea of oppression olympics.

The point of this term is to understand and discuss the cycle we’ve seen of the queer community misrepresenting a queer group’s experiences to claim they have power over other queer people. An example is the way asexual people on this site a few years ago were misrepresented as “basically straight” because they aren’t often called slurs or physically assaulted for their identity. This idea was used to accuse them of taking away resources from “real” queer people and justify harassment towards them. It relied on ignoring the very real and sometimes unique problems that asexual and other aspec folks face, like being called less than human for not experiencing sexual or romantic attraction and the way aspec identities continue to be viewed as something to eradicate by the medical system.

It is power-jacketing to claim something associated with a marginalized group is a privilege and grants them power over others when that isn’t true. For example, having one’s identity erased isn’t privilege, invisibility isn’t privilege, and having to be stealth/closeted to be treated well isn’t privilege, but these are all treated as if they give the experiencer power over more visible queer folks. Claims of privilege are made by cherry-picking what counts as true oppression, such as murders and slurs, and then considering the target group’s reduced experience on that axis to be privilege while ignoring other, often quieter unique forms of systemic oppression the group faces. Privilege can be used to consider a group “basically straight/cis” (in other communities, basically White, abled, etc.) and deny them access to and support/resources from the community. It is power-jacketing to willfully ignore or purposely deny experiences of oppression by the target group. It is also power-jacketing to exaggerate a privilege gap between two marginalized groups while minimizing the gap between the target group and those with actual systemic power.

Currently, transmascs are being power-jacketed to explain why transfems should be allowed to talk over them and to justify their mistreatment. This comes in several forms. One is calling their invisibility a privilege compared to transfems’ hypervisibility despite the way it contributes to their oppression. The term power-jacketing recognizes that it is not privilege to swap one problem with another. Another big one is the claim that transmascs’ identity grants them male privilege. Using this term requires acknowledging that one’s social perception, how they’re perceived and treated by others, may be different than their identity; for example, trans men may identify as male but be treated as female, and transhets may identify as straight but be treated as gay. Ignoring or denying these lived realities is very much power-jacketing.

This theory is very much a work in progress, so if you have any perspectives or experiences to add please do!

I literally said, "Oh, this is good," when I read this post, and then read it out loud to my wife. I actually don't think I have anything to add to the theory itself. This is a real issue in talking about issues of marginalization, and I think in part it comes from viewing intersectionality as additive and subtractive rather than viewing it as a series of overlaps and modifications. If you add in man then obviously you add in male privilege! ... except it doesn't work that way, because the 'man' is modified by 'trans.'

Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.

What the actual fuck

Boycott this goddamn song contest. Now. And forever.

you know i don’t think we often talk about how difficult it actually is to suddenly realize that a belief you thought was good and moral and correct was actually really fucking toxic. how you have to look at something and go ‘oh shit, oh i fucked up. oh this is going to take probably years at minimum to deprogram from my brain because of all the little ways this shit pervaded the rest of my beliefs’

so. to all the people picking up all the pieces of a recently shattered world-view and trying to figure out what is safe to keep and what has to be thrown away and started over

to all the people having to relearn how to even listen to other people

to all the people putting in the work to do better while struggling with the guilt that comes from finding out you were the asshole

i’m proud of y’all.

it’s hard to admit being wrong and even harder to change in the aftermath. just keep doing the best you can and just know that the effort is appreciated. everyone can change. everyone can do better. keep fighting.

neurodivergent and queer people how are we feeling?

shout out to trans men

shout-out to all the trans men who come in different sizes and shapes, bald, hairy, fat, breast, curves, no curves, acne, facial hair, or no facial hair, tall and short.

I love you guys so much.

I’m glad the folks at NASA are having fun with XKCD too.

Ok so today I was on the bus with another trans guy and we were talking about how hard it is to get testosterone. The waiting lists, the price, all the doctors you have to go to, that kind of stuff. Except, we were calling it ’T’, like you do when you’re both closeted and in public.

Then suddenly the elderly lady sitting behind us was like ‘young men, either I’m going crazy or you both have never heard of supermarkets, they have shelves full of tea there! Do you need directions to one?’

To which my buddy starts to explain, because why not. ‘Well you see, we’re both trans, and… ’

The lady didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. ‘Oh no, I don’t mind that at all! Now do you want to know how to get to a place that sells tea? I’m actually heading there right now!’

We let her take us to the supermarket. We let her show us, excitedly, where the tea was. We both bought loads.

This is beautiful

Do you mean like me, or like that people in general should do that?

There should definitely be more kinky romance in the world.

So I'm ace, and haven't been sexual in like 4 years, but when I am with someone, it's always a kink relationship. Between the severe OCD and autism and the way they combine to make anxieties and head spinning and the endless stream of worry, kink is the one part of my life that shuts all that up.

For me, it's not sexual. I mean, it can be, but it's usually nor. It's more about someone else finally taking those worries and the pressure of single parent of 2 kids whose been alone for 13 fucking years as of September and being the one running the house (I get given the money, but I pay the bills that are due and I know when they're due and I do the logins and paying and I handle the groceries and I handle the meal prep and I handle the dishes and I do the laundry all the time and I know who's off when and when the dr appointments are for the grown adults in the house as well as the kids and I keep track of who needs shampoo and soaps and and and ad naseum) and its A Lot ™️ and being a sub is about taking all that noise and all that pressure and making it Shut Up because it's not my problem for the time being.

That sub space is the most peaceful place I can be in. Being the pet who lays my head on their lap while curled up at their feet and a movie is on and my hair is being stroked, it's not about sex. It's about peace. It's about knowing that everything is taken care of. I'm taken care of. I'm not in charge of anything, I'm safe.

This is really lovely and I'm so glad you have that space. For me, being able to provide that space for my partners - a similar but not exactly the same space, anyway - makes me feel content in a way that I don't have good words for. I don't make a lot of money, and physically I can't do a lot of the things I want to be able to do, but petting my wife's hair and telling her it's time for good girls to go to bed? It's perfect.

And, too, it provides a space very similar to yours in that when I'm taking care of my girls, that's my only job. I don't need to worry about the business, my medications, my appointments, helping my brother look for an apartment, did I remember to pay the ad agency, etc. My only job is petting her hair and reminding her that she's a good girl.

people misunderstand what ‘gifted kid’ actually means but it’s ok it’s fine it’s cool it’s good

it’s not about actually being gifted, it’s about an initial higher scoring on standardized testing that means little to nothing or being good at learning in the way elementary and middle school wants you to, so you get marked as ‘advanced’. in reality, maybe you had faster development in certain areas, but the issue with being a gifted kid isn’t that “everyone told me I was so cool and special for reading and then I actually wasn’t :(” it’s “I wasn’t properly taught to handle things not coming easily to me, but the adults around me were counting on me not being a ‘difficult’ child in school.”

people who use it as some weird bragging method or interpret it that way are ignoring the way a lot of school systems force certain roles on students to simplify the learning process. If your kid doesn’t need to take notes to understand a science concept bc they get it naturally, well that’s good, but now you’re not teaching them how to take notes and they’re not learning that important soft skill. but because ‘gifted’ kids are easy and don’t show that they’re falling behind in learning in other categories that are harder to quantify, they eventually fall behind after that catches up to them. It’s about the failures of a one size fits all school system trying to compensate in the worst way possible.

And also the thing where ‘gifted’ kids are super likely to also be neuroatypical, which they don’t get screened for because they appear to be doing well in school. Or “You can’t be ADHD/autistic/etc, because you’re doing so well in school!”. Or being shamed for developing mental health issues/generally not being able to keep up with school work later, because you USED TO BE able to do it just fine.

Or the assumption that just because you can read well or you like math class, you’re somehow more EMOTIONALLY mature than your little kid brain is actually capable of being.

Or gifted kids whose parents and teachers put immense pressure on them to Do Great Things and Save The World and you’re like. “I’m 10 and I have no idea how to do that, but everyone is saying that’s my job?”.

This is the best “gifted kid” post out there. I never took notes until college because I didn’t have to, snd when it got challenging I had to literally teach myself note taking at age 18. It also fucks with your perception of asking for help - you’re advanced, you’re competent, you should be able to understand every topic easily. Asking for help/going to office hours/asking for a tutor feels like failing when you were praised in your early years for not needing to do that.

does anyone know if we have transmasc and transfem love and friendship today

We do. And tomorrow and the next day and every day forever and ever and ever too. :)

a long time ago i was struggling with being transmasc because i felt like i was betraying womanhood somehow. then one of my best friends came out as a trans woman and i realised "ah... there will always be so many beautiful women in the world, so it's okay that i'm not one of them". what i'm trying to say is you need to love each other or there's no point to any of this

in a reversal of this. when i came out as transfem i was almost dissapointed because i spent so long trying to be a truly good man. i was raised with a lot of shitty guys so i tried to be the most pro-feminist comfortable dude i could be for the women around me. when my egg cracked, i almost felt this feeling of "shit, are the only men who think like this secretly women inside?" and it feels nice to see that proven so utterly and completely wrong by the trans men i know in my life. i love seeing people take on the masculinity i hated and do amazing shit with it, god bless trans dudes

More of this forever, please.

I know how to be a good butch because of the women who tried to be good men but weren't men at all (or were only men sometimes). I'm trying hard to teach my daughter how to be good at the thing I'm not.

I need the transfems in my life. They need me. Our community fails when it breaks apart on gender lines. We fail each other when we let it happen.

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

Protect my boys.

Trans masc to trans fem solidarity must exist as much as any trans solidarity must exist.

Protect my girls.

Non-binary to binary trans solidarity must exist as much as any trans solidarity must exist.

Protect my girls and boys.

Binary trans to non-binary trans solidarity must exist as much as any trans solidarity must exist.

Protect my pals.

I keep seeing people reblog this with their own mention of solidarity and I'm really touched by how much everyone has jumped on board with this because yes, you understand! We're to be here for each other!!!! I love you!!! ♡♡♡♡♡

Guys, it's time to drop Google.

Google isn't the only search engine in the whole internet, there are others! And we need to diversify our search engine usage or we're gonna end up where we were a decade and change ago with the Internet Explorer issue. We can't let a single brand monopolize everything! This is why Google Search can afford to suck so hard: because people use it regardless! And there are alternatives.

A little bit about search engines, there are 3 types: crawlers, which work by scraping the web and developing their own indexes; metas, which get their results from the crawler-type search engines and therefore depend entirely upon them; and mixed, those which have their own (small) index but also pull results from the crawlers.

Right now, there are a couple of independant crawlers apart from Google, Bing (from Mycrosoft) and Yandex (the Russian one): this are Mojeek and Wiby.

Supporting independant crawlers is the easiest way to fight the shittyfication of the internet.

Mojeek.com is an independant british search engine with its own growing index commited to fighting internet censorship. It's small, and therefore it's usability isn't as good as that of the Big Three, but it doesn't censor, it's fairly respectful of people's privacy, and it doesn't drown you in adds. For those old enough to remember, it's a lot like early 2000s Google: you can find what you need, but if you write "dig shelter" instead of "dog shelter", that's what it's gonna search for. That said, please try to use it and support it as much as you can before we end up entirely dependant on Google, Bing and big corps adds. [click here to go to Mojeek]

Wiby.me is a new indie project that is literally dedicated to bringing back the old-school web. It's goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. So, for those of you who can't find any answers to technical questions beyond highschool level because Google buries them under a gazillion commercial sites and other meaningless shit, keep an eye on this project! It has a lot of potential. And, if you know of any personal websites that have great stuff but have been murdered by Google, you can go over to Wiby and submit it to their index. [click here to go to Wiby]

Aside from those, there are also meta search engines you can use to ween yourself off Google and search for random, day to day stuff.

Qwant.com is my go-to here—it has its own index and pulls from Bing, has relatively little censorship, and is fairly private. This is the one I use on my phone for everyday stuff. [click here to go to Qwant].

Historically, DuckDuckGo has always been a go-to for those who want a search engine that respects your privacy and doesn't censor. Personally, I've never been a fan, and there have been a LOT of scandals in recent years. It supposedly has its own index and pulls from Bing, much like Qwant, but I don't know. I just don't like it. Still, I've added it here for completeness' sake.

If you have Firefox Mobile browser, you can set any of these search engines as your default search engine and you can also add the others as secondary search engines and switch quicky from the navigation bar. If you don't have firefox mobile though, what are you doing with your life??? Go get it!! It is So. Much. Better. You can have add blockers and watch YouTube add free, for free! You can have reader mode and dark mode add-ons! You can have the world oh my goshhhh, drop Chrome!!

4get.ca is my last recommendation: it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn't have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it's the best for reaserch, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can. It's also very privacy conscious, so that's an other plus, and it has that late 90s / early 2000s vibe that I totally dig. [click here to go to 4get]

If you wanna learn more about the topic, you can over to the Search Engine Map [click here] which shows you a bunch of Search Engines and how they relate to each other. Or you can also go over to this one dude's personal website whose done A Lot of reaserch into the topic (way more than me) and seems to be pretty legit, if a little extra. [click here to go to digdeeper.neocities.org] Hope this infodump is useful to someone =D

PS: here's to hoping all the links work!

EDIT: eliminated the "read more". Figured there are enough mega long posts in tumblr, one more won't make no difference lol (tho the version w the read more has been reblogged already, in case you'd rather)

Matthew Lillard and Angelina Jolie in Hackers (1995)

lillard in this movie is like a rosetta stone for tgirl fashion of the 2000s its a true revelation

also-