iron-deficient bull

the ambassador 

based off of Idleness by John William Godward

So when I was 16 I was in a theatre class & I was partnered with this boy for a kissing scene & I didn’t like him at all but I was Totally Straight ™ he just wasn’t my type and I didn’t want my first kiss to be with him and that’s obviously why I literally threw up at the thought of having to kiss him! I mean, who doesn’t throw up at the prospect of their first kiss with a boy! Anyways, my friend (who I def had a crush looking back on it) said she’d teach me how to stage kiss! And for a stage kiss one person cups the other’s face but puts their thumb on the other’s lips and then they “kiss” the thumb. So she cupped my face & put her thumb on my lips & then as she went in for the “kiss”,,,, my knees actually fuckin,,,, buckled underneath me,,,, like just the thought of (stage) kissing this girl caused me to physically become light headed and fall over, but I was def straight! Only into boys obviously! Never would wanna date a girl! And I played it off as having low blood sugar & being stressed but I’m all reality I was just gay & stupid

This is so similar to my high school experience tbh 😂 I got genuinely weak-kneed with fluttery butterflies (and couldn't stop smiling/touching my lips) when getting a tiny peck on the lips from my friend (who'd eventually become my first gf) during an impromptu theatre performance of that Maureen/Joanne song from Rent, whereas I got nauseated to the degree of dry heaving when a boy kissed me the first time 😅 G A Y

Smash that mf reblog button if you stoically ignore all labelled washing instructions and everything your mama ever told you about laundry and just send those bastards hurgling around in an overfilled tub to meet either death or glory

who told you that you could call me out like that

I have no doubt that Millie Bobby Brown doesn’t see anything wrong with her friendship with Drake, and because of that I get why she has come out to defend him. However. We need to remember that as poised and wordly-wise as she may come across, Brown is still a girl of fourteen and likely has not grasped exactly why the world has reacted with raised eyebrows to her revelation that a 31 year old man texts her saying that he misses her. 

Her statements do not and should not exonerate Drake. A 31 year old man has no reason to be texting such personal things to a 14 year old girl outside of a familial relationship (and even then…..best not to) and he is the one who needs to come out and make a statement explaining this away. But he won’t. Too busy with his recently turned 18 girlfriend. 

TW child sexual abuse including details of one grooming experience

I don't know exactly what's going on here but literally this, regardless of what a CHILD says in defense of an ADULT being inappropriate towards that child, it is still the job of adults to protect that child. I was literally just talking about this with @lando-palrissian in a totally different circumstance. Thanks to fucked up social messages as well as not being fully grown, children can have really skewed views about what is and isn't okay for adults to say and do, and that's not their fault or responsibility to determine that, since they're not adults.

I remember being delighted at being groomed for sexual abuse at 13 by a man in his late 30s, with absolutely no sense of how wrong it was for him to do things like full-body embrace me, complain about his marital problems to me and tell me how much more wonderful I was than his wife, tell me I was basically an adult because of how mature I was, tell me charmingly how he felt nervous around me because of how pretty and talented at writing I was, etc. Does this mean everything was fine? FUCK NO. It means in my case I was already being sexually abused since infancy, had zero self-confidence or awareness of boundaries, and was highly susceptible to additional abusers because of my already vulnerable position as an abused, unloved child desperately seeking what all children seek, which is love. It doesn't matter that I would have defended him at the time. He was a pedophile and it was wrong.

This is just one of MY experiences and as I said, I don't know what's up with this other situation, but once again: a child's view on what's happening is not necessarily what's happening. That's literally how grooming works.

Taínx: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean

From the exhibition I had the opportunity to attend thanks to my friend Tara for the find!

Walking in I didn’t know what to expect or if folks would be welcoming considering how little the subject is talked about. But everyone was very helpful and informative and I was able to meet 2 archaeologists, Pauline Kulstad and Diana.

We exchanged info and art relating to Tainx culture, they loved the painting I did of the 4 sisters foretelling colonization and would love to hook me up with more info so I can make more informed Tainx art♥

Also met Jorge Estevez who loved the concept of the painting as well and was in the middle of making some type of hammock from scratch when I saw him! Look him up if you don’t know him he works at the Smithsonian Museum of Native American and specializes in reclaiming of Tainx identity especially among those born in Quiqueya island.

This is potentially awesome, I'm going to look into this more, but friendly reminder Taíno is not a Spanish word and does not indicate "masculine" gender like a Spanish word ending in "o" usually would. So there's no need to change the ending for gender-inclusivity, please.

when you go from a bad situation into a better one you may collapse exhausted and unsure what to do and full of grief, you may need time to regain the ability to do things as yourself or motivated by anything other than terror, you may need time to process or mourn or fall apart in ways you could not before,

and people may use this as proof that the old situation was better for you, proof that you need to go back, and it is not proof that it was better for you or proof that you need to go back

!!!

It’s so incredibly common to “fall apart” when you’re finally safe. You no longer need to stay so tightly coiled in on yourself, you can finally leave survival mode and process your trauma. You’re not holding yourself up by sheer terror anymore and suddenly the damage that terror has done to you becomes immediate and obvious. 

This is so important. Don’t go back. Things are already getting better, even if it doesn’t feel that way.

This is a documented phenomenon with abuse in particular. I’ve had a number of people ask me why they’re falling apart now after they’ve moved into a safer home, or they’re in a less dangerous area, or they’ve left an exploitative job, or they’re in a healthy relationship for the first time. Generally, it’s because they made that positive change. 

When we’re still in the midst of crisis, we’re often too overloaded and physically/emotionally unsafe to really feel or process anything. So for most of us, everything gets pushed down/repressed/dissociated until later, when we’re safe and supported. The threshold of safety at which processing begins to occur varies from person to person. And the mental calculations used to determine “safety” usually happen on an unconscious level. Very few of us have the conscious thought “I’m safe now, so I can process what happened to me.” Instead, the subconscious realizes some level of safety has been achieved, and so it just dumps a load of suppressed stuff. 

Sometimes, it’s contrast to past experiences that makes us realize something was traumatic at all. In such cases, it’s not that we’ve reached a level of safety and can thus begin to process, it’s that we finally have a basis for comparison to know that what went before was unacceptable. 

i want men to be able to emotionally connect with people they don’t plan on having sex with. i want men to stop assuming i am planning on having sex with them because i make an effort to engage with them emotionally. i want men to stop feeling personally betrayed by the fact that i engage deeply & genuinely with people regardless of whether i desire them sexually, because i value people & seek to understand & connect with them regardless of sexual attraction

OMFG I just found this old post of us by accident 😂 @lando-palrissian

when ur reading fanfic and one character was cooking and the other comes up to them and they start making out and everyones like starting to take their shirts off and the author STILL hasnt mentioned anyone turning off the stove

today i got an unusual compliment about how pretty my eyes are (literally never been told that before in my life) and it got me thinking SO in the tags will you reblog: the thing(s) you are most complimented on AND the most unusual/bizarre compliment(s) you’ve gotten