Squalor & Fripperies

You, a heroic paladin have successfully slain a fearsome dragon. But the dragon warns you that death is but a door, and dragons don’t die, they reincarnate. You paid it no mind….until your son was born with golden, slitted eyes.

curious friends and family: hey why does your kid have golden eyes

paladin who for sure fucked the dragon instead of killing it, thinking fast: dragons uh. reincarnate. surprised you didn’t know about that. it’s a common fact that i definitely did not make up. no further questions

If you dare come at me about banning straws, I will throw you into the sun cannon. I’m disabled, I’m crippled, I need disposable plastic straws, and all those pricey ridiculous alternatives aren’t working as well. Plastic straws were invented for the disabled.

Way to shit all over a vital access need because you think straws are worse than corporate greed.

We all care about the turtles, the seals, the oceans, obviously. Notice how the easiest thing to yell about was something that would barely affect anything but appealed heavily to emotional discourse.

The disabled community is huge, and it can be joined by anyone. Most of those As Seen On TV products were invented for us. Society still mocks us and ignores us, and often outright harms us in multiple ways.

Communicate better. Listen better. But stop putting us out in the cold because you are inconvenienced by our simplest needs.

Straws aren’t killing the planet, its animals, or people. They’re a microscopic fraction of an iota of a percentage of the problem. You want to do something? Ban plastic fishing nets. Anything else is just a hollow feel-good gesture at the expense of real living disabled people.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastics-environment/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ocean-plastic-fishing-waste_n_5bc47dc9e4b0bd9ed55c1f60

i have an environmental degree and i’ve been saying this since this straw ‘debate’ started: its all a tactic by those in power to distract people’s attention from bigger issues such as fishing waste. don’t fall for it. and don’t be a dick to disabled people who need straws to make their lives easier.

That’s the best analogy. Thank you.

There are single-use plastics that don’t need to exist (don’t kill me, let me finish, please). Spices are the most obvious to me—yes, a lot of spices need to be finished off before they expire because otherwise they’re not as potent/don’t taste as good, but salt? Ground pepper? Dried onion? There are other shelf-stable spices that are good for YEARS—slap a best-by label on each batch, put it in a bulk dispenser, and have customers write it on a sticker and put it on a reusable bottle. Customers who care will do so, customers who think “it all tastes the same” won’t but won’t be bothered. Sell reusable bottles or let customers bring their own containers and sell by weight. A few isolated places do this (Winco comes to mind), but very few.

But some stuff can’t be reused, or can technically be reused but it’s really not safe (for example, syringes). We need to focus on things that do not impact QoL, and stop throwing disabled people to the wolves.

Genuine question,I feel like there must be something obvious that I’m missing: what disability prevents one from using a paper straw?

Some people have allergies to wood pulp. Any organic material will have this issue, unfortunately, and people with the kinds of disabilities severe enough to need straws almost certainly have comorbidities such that anything potentially triggering to the immune system could be a problem. As some examples consider chemo patients, organ transplant recipients, and people with autoimmune disorders.

Paper straws also dissolve, which can cause problems for people who need to drink more slowly to avoid choking (there are a TON of disorders where this is a problem), and people with Parkinson’s, some forms of cerebral palsy, and similar conditions may need a straw that bends, which paper cannot do. People with Alzheimer’s struggle to drink and may reject an unfamiliar kind of straw because they can’t process new information, and low-functioning/high support needs autistic people may require assistance drinking but find that paper straws are a Bad Texture, and thus avoid them to the point of dehydration.

@thebibliosphere has a fantastic chart on the different kinds of straws and what the pros and cons of each are for disabled people, and the reality is, only plastic ticks the boxes that cover everyone, and some straws are simply impractical for daily use (figure out how to carry a glass straw in a purse!). (Joy, if you see this, I don’t remember a single stitch of text from that post to look it up on your blog, could you do me a solid and share the link?)

Also aren’t paper straws like, not gluten free? Or at the very least they trigger people who have a gluten intolerance/celiac/similar things (I know I’ve seen ‘not gluten free’ come up before as an issue with, some kind of not plastic straw before). So like, that’s ANOTHER big problem there.

I think you’re thinking of a similar type of biodegradable straw that’s made of wheat something-or-other. I know the one you’re talking about, the details are just failing me at the moment. It’s not paper, but it’s marketed along the same lines.

The glue used on some paper straws uses wheat, so they are not guaranteed to be gluten-free either.

And I’ll do you one better, here’s Jessica’s video and the straw ban:

And here’s the chart:

Apologies for the lack of image description, I’m on mobile and my crippled hands hurt.

I will point out that I know some people who are allergic to disposable plastic straws (if having a mast cell disease has taught me anything, it’s that your body can develop a reaction to anything) but as you can see from the chart, disposable plastic straws are the most allergen-friendly next to glass.

Unfortunately, glass is not safe or accessible for many disabilities (my own included) so disposable plastic straws remain a vital necessity for disabled people.

fun fact one of the world champions in pepper-eating contests is a trans woman and she actually faced significant backlash because people somehow thought she had a biological advantage. to eating spicy pepper

update bc i went back and checked: her name is brianna “the chilli queen” skinner and she set a record in 2017 by slamming back 23 carolina reapers consecutively. she only stopped when told to by the referees, and the next year she stepped down out of boredom. queen

Here's a picture of her, by the way

And her super supportive wife

I know people on tumblr looove stories of underwater cave diving, but I haven't seen anyone talk about nitrogen narcosis aka "raptures of the deep"

basically when you want to get your advanced scuba certification (allowing you to go more than 60 feet deep) you have to undergo a very specific test: your instructor takes you down past the 60+ foot threshold, and she brings a little underwater white board with her.

she writes a very basic math problem on that board. 6 + 15. she shows it to you, and you have to solve it.

if you can solve it, you're good. that is the hardest part of the test.

because here's what happens: there is a subset of people, and we have no real idea why this happens only to them, who lose their minds at depth. they're not dying, they're not running out of oxygen, they just completely lose their sense of identity when deep in the sea.

a woman on a dive my instructor led once vanished during the course of the excursion. they were diving near this dropoff point, beyond which the depth exceeded 60 feet and he'd told them not to go down that way. the instructor made his way over to look for her and found a guy sitting at the edge of the dropoff (an underwater cliff situation) just staring down into the dark. the guy is okay, but he's at the threshold, spacing out, and mentally difficult to reach. they try to communicate, and finally the guy just points down into the dark, knowing he can't go down there, but he saw the woman go.

instructor is deep water certified and he goes down. he shines his light into the dark, down onto the seafloor which is at 90 feet below the surface. he sees the woman, her arms locked to her sides, moving like a fish, swimming furiously in circles in the pitch black.

she is hard to catch but he stops her and checks her remaining oxygen: she is almost out, on account of swimming a marathon for absolutely no reason. he is able to drag her back up, get her to a stable depth to decompress, and bring her to the surface safely.

when their masks are off and he finally asks her what happened, and why was she swimming like that, she says she fully, 100% believed she was a mermaid, had always been a mermaid, and something was hunting her in the dark 👍

they used to make smackable technology. you used to be able to hit your tv when it didn't work good.

when I was a kid I had an old tv in my room that would always turn to unwatchable static in the middle of shows but one night my sister and I were watching Naruto & every time Kakashi was on-screen the static cleared so we were like “hahaha the tv looooves Kakashi.”

I had a Kakashi bookmark so we held it up against the screen as a joke but the static actually cleared up. Mystified, we tried different bookmarks and objects with the same plastic material but nothing else worked, only the Kakashi bookmark.

We ended up taping it to the corner of the screen and it stayed there for 11 years until we moved out. When I was older people would be like “can you move the bookmark off the screen” bc it did sort of block a bit of the view but I would demonstrate the static issue and everyone was always just like “huh. what the hell?? well…alright.”

No explanation, but thanks Kakashi.

The trick to these sorts of questions is to just have an answer ready that you give any time people ask this sort of stuff.

Just pick something to officially be your favorite song, favorite movie, favorite book, weirdest thing you’ve ever seen. Whether it’s 100% true all the time or not. Just have a stock answer.

One time I knitted a 15 foot long scarf. Is that the most interesting thing about me? Probably not. But it’s in a list of stock answers I have to “share a fun fact about yourself”

Like literally write down for yourself a list of answers to these sorts of questions. Favorite movie, song, food, earliest memory, 3 slightly unusual facts about yourself you’re comfortable sharing, one or two things you like to do in your freetime.

It doesn’t have to be profound and it doesn’t even have to be 100% accurate at the moment. The point of having stock answers is to give you something to say when you don’t know what to say.

What’s my favorite tv show? Officially it’s doctor who. The real answer is that I don’t really watch tv anymore and I’m kinda searching for something I actually want to watch. But in the moment to new people I’ll just say it’s doctor who because I know how to talk about it.

I also do this thought exercise after a vacation of before a holiday.

My coworkers are going to ask how my vacation was. Let's pick one fun fact to have in my back pocket.

At Christmas my relatives are going to ask what's new in my life; I haven't seen them since this summer. Let's choose one interesting thing that happened in the last few months so I have an answer prepared.

fairies come in many forms

Feminist fantasy is funny sometimes in how much it wants to shit on femininity for no goddamned reason. Like the whole “skirts are tools of the patriarchy made to cripple women into immobility, breeches are much better” thing.

(Let’s get it straight: Most societies over history have defaulted to skirts for everyone because you don’t have to take anything off to relieve yourself, you just have to squat down or lift your skirts and go. The main advantage of bifurcated garments is they make it easier to ride horses. But Western men wear pants so women wearing pants has become ~the universal symbol of gender equality~)

The book I’m reading literally just had its medievalesque heroine declare that peasant women wear breeches to work in the field because “You can’t swing a scythe in a skirt!”

Hm yes story checks out

peasant women definitely never did farm labour in skirts

skirts definitely mean you’re weak and fragile and can’t accomplish anything

skirts are definitely bad and will keep you from truly living life

no skirts for anyone, that’s definitely the moral of the story here

Now, a skirt that’s too long will be harder to work in–skirts brushing the floor may look elegant, but is also a tripping hazard–but that is not a problem with skirts in general, it’s a problem with that particular skirt not being suited to being worked in. Skirts are very practical. You can hike them up if you’re hot or need more freedom to maneuver (this is called “girding your loins”). If you need to carry something, you can lift up your hem and make a pouch just like the person in yellow in the bottom picture above. If you need to handle something hot, a skirt generally has enough material you can hold it out from your body to use as a hot pad. (Tight skirts were only used by people who didn’t need to work/move until the invention of elastic fabric.)

Long skirts were markers of class almost as much as gender. Both men and women in the European middle ages wore extravagantly long garments to indicate both “I’m so rich I can afford THIS MUCH fabric” and “I don’t walk in the mud, I pay servants to do that for me.”

Skirt hiking: Definitely a Thing. (Janet’s tied her kirtle green/above the knee and not below…)

Love this post, and want to add: another example of the “empowerment means shitting on feminity” is the bizarro way that this genre attacks basic survival skills like cooking and sewing as pointless, inferior or mutually exclusive with masculine pursuits (like your lady knight should probably know how to cook for herself and sew her own wounds and patch her clothes while she’s on her quest through the North to rescue her boyfriend, or this happy couple is in for a world of hurt!)

Or to quote one of my all favorite posts, “fuck women’s contribution to our survival.”

Historically, skirts have been the garment of choice for almost every culture, gender and class. Breeches, or pants, were created specifically for riding horses.

Meanwhile, men wearing skirts.

*bangs gavel* NEEDS MOAR SKIRT

(Seriously, the notes on this post are a goldmine for people mentioning their cultures where men wear skirts. I couldn’t fit them all in. This is missing toooons of cultures from every part of the globe, especially Asia, Africa, and the Americas.)

Ancient Rome

Modern Morocco

Medieval Europe

Traditional Saudi Arabia

16th century Russia

Traditional Papua New Guinea

16th century Turkey

Modern India

i deliver propane.  this means driving a large truck, then dragging a heavy hose up to one hundred and fifty feet through people’s yards, usually in deep snow and severe cold.  i was the first woman my company ever hired.

and when i showed up for work in a skirt, all the men went BALLISTIC.  they told me i’d trip, i’d get stuck, i’d freeze, i’d quit within the month when i found that i had underestimated how hard the work was.  i asked what they thought women wore to work outside before the mid twentieth century, and they told me “women didn’t work outside then.  they stayed in the house all the time.”  and that’s when i learned that hatred of the skirt is another way of erasing women’s history–if you can pretend that all women were too hobbled by their clothes to even function, you can pretend that they never contributed jack shit to society.

anyway i’ve been doing this job in a skirt for three years now, and all the men should be jealous of my complete range of movement and infinite layering potential.

Another thing to keep in mind is that often a garment can be cumbersome if you’re not used to it, but no problem at all if you’ve worn it everyday for years and years.

Of course people who rarely/never wear skirts are going to have a harder time working in them than people who wear them every day! I wear shirts with big puffy sleeves everyday, and I never have any trouble with them, but someone who’s used to t shirts probably would.

I have to strongly disagree with the assertion that bifurcated garments are only useful for riding horses though. Plenty of cultures wore some form of pants, wether they had horses or not. Often you’ll see bifurcated garments with skirts layered on top of them.

Try and tell me that traditional Inuit women’s clothing includes trousers because they were riding horses they didn’t have and not because it’s sometimes -40 there. Skirts without anything underneath are very practical in some parts of the world, but in others you would quite literally freeze your junk off.

Bifurcated garments are useful for keeping cold drafts out! Or for keeping bugs from biting you, or just showing off your legs! And probably good for keeping sand out too, but I’ve never encountered a sand storm. None of this goes against all the other stuff about skirts being practical of course, but you can make a pro-skirt post without minimizing the usefulness or ubiquity of bifurcated things.

I wear below-knee skirts and dresses exclusively* and have for a number of years. The one thing I have to say about What People Say About Skirts is:

When someone tells you that you “can’t do X in a skirt”, they are wrong.

Specifically, they are leaving out some critical modifiers. It’s not true that you physically cannot do various things - ride horse, climb tree, run hard - in a loose skirt such as normal people have historically worn. What they may not be aware that they mean is: you cannot do those things in a socially acceptable fashion, which generally means without a chance of anyone seeing your underwear/lack of underwear. If you are in serious danger, or are alone, or simply choose not to care about this, I promise you can do those things just fine.

(Personally, in my life I find that I can also shovel snow in a skirt, because my scandinavian heritage makes me get warm VERY fast when I’m exercising. Obviously snow is not Super Cold Weather, but: you can do it. It will kind of suck if it goes over the tops of your shoes, though. Get good shoes.)

*It’s not a religion thing or anything, I just hate shopping for pants and wearing pants that don’t fit right or have bad texture so much that I quit forever. If it sucks, hit the bricks!

This is about skirts, but I want to add another thing to the truly EXCELLENT “if you can pretend women were too hobbled by their clothes” thing above.

I run a corseting panel at anime conventions. I always start it with my feet up on the table, chatting with the audience until start time. Then I say “so, who believes I’m corseted right now?” WITHOUT FAIL the people who raise their hands are all veteran cosplayers, often wearing a corset of their own. Then I say “you’re right, I am. How many of you believe I’m tightlaced?”

The hands go down. My shirt comes off. I turn around to show them my laces and tell them tightlacing is defined as a waist reduction of over 4”, and I’m at slightly over 6”.

Then I turn back around and say “also, I’ve pushed a stalled car across eight lanes of intersection like this” and you should see the faces. They’re gobsmacked. They’re HOOKED. They never quite know what to say after that revelation. I never bother telling them I wasn’t even breathing hard because I know they wouldn’t believe me.

Women were not nearly as hobbled by their clothing as you think.

not to mention that corsets are actually incredibly helpful if you’re a farmer, or you’re someone who has to be on their hands and knees a lot. they provide excellent back support. the history writer Ruth Goodman has written a lot about it. also, if you genuinely believe no one can do work in a skirt, watch literally any history re-enactors with women. you’ll see the kind of freedom of movement a skirt offers.

Heath Ledger as William Thatcher — A KNIGHT’S TALE (2001)

Haha looks like that relationship didn’t work out… didn’t work out et al.

before directors are allowed to put in the request for cgi they should be required to answer: “would lord of the rings have been able to do this by sitting somebody a little further back, using an apple box, or putting out a casting call for a really big pig?” and if the answer is yes they should consider finding a really big pig.

I feel like I should make a post about this because it’s not something that’s very well-known, and that Americans in particular may need to know about given the uncertain state of our healthcare system at the moment. I’ve wanted to write this out for a while, It’s kind of a long post, so sorry about that!

If you have an emergency and have to go to the hospital, you’ll owe the hospital a lot of money. (I got into a car wreck and broke my ankle and my arm. My hospital bill was around $20,000)

You’ll also owe the ambulance provider, if you need one. (My ambulance bill was about $800)

You may get separate bills from the anesthesiologist or surgeon. (My anesthesiologist bill was $1,700)

You may need follow-up appointments. (My orthopedic surgeon billed me for the appointments and his surgery together and it was about $1,000)

You’ve also got to pay for medical equipment you need afterward, like crutches or a walking boot. (Mine cost about $75)

Altogether, I ended up with almost $24,000 in medical debt from one car accident. That’s a really scary number for someone like me who makes $10/hr at a 12 hour a week job.

I got my debt down to $1075 by making some phone calls and submitting some paperwork.

The first thing I did was contact the hospital. They don’t make it easy to find, but many hospitals (perhaps most hospitals?) have financial assistance programs for people who can’t afford medical bills. I don’t make a lot of money, and I have bills to pay, so they were able to help me. I called the billing department and asked if they had any assistance programs for low income people who can’t pay their bills. I had to call multiple times, and I got transferred in circles by people who didn’t know what I was talking about. Finally, I got an appointment with someone in “Eligibility Services” (I don’t know what other hospitals call it, if it’s something different). I had to bring my pay stubs and copies of all of my bills. When I got to the hospital for the appointment, nobody knew what I was talking about so I had to wander a little to find where I needed to go. I spoke with the guy in Eligibility Services, and I waited for a decision on how much of the bill they would forgive. A month later, I got a call telling me it was totally forgiven.

I did the same thing for my ambulance bill and my anesthesiologist, but the process was a LOT easier. I just had to mail some paperwork and it was totally forgiven.

I didn’t bother with the medical equipment suppliers, since the bills came from separate companies and I didn’t feel like going through the process twice for $75. I was assured at the hospital that they had similar programs for debt forgiveness, so I could have probably avoided paying that too.

The only thing I couldn’t get taken care of was the surgeon/follow-up appointment cost, but they were able to put me on a no-interest payment plan.

Medical debt is scary because it’s something that can come from stuff that’s already really scary. I didn’t need the burden of $24,000 in debt on top of trying to get around on a crutch with a broken arm (it’s not easy, believe me!).. but I can’t imagine what it would be like with a bigger debt or a more severe medical emergency. I see lots of people in even worse trouble than I was in, both financially and medically. Please know that there are options for you when that GoFundMe doesn’t do enough. Even if your income is higher than mine, it’s worth a shot even for partial debt forgiveness.

I am about 900% sure there are people who don`the know this. 

PLEASE READ THIS IF YOU LIVE IN AMERICA AND HAVE MEDICAL BILLS

I had to do this once as well and I can ABSOLUTELY confirm that this is true.

Get in contact with the hospital. Don’t just…sit there and let the anxiety grow and panic and then ignore it in an effort to find peace.

Reblogging this because they don’t teach us this in school

It should also be recognised that Lucille Ball helped advance the medium of television as a whole by, more or less, inventing the idea of reruns. This was, in large part, what drove the success of non-serialised shows such as Star Trek, but also paved the way for extremely popular television genres like the sitcom

One time I was explaining to my dad how unfair it is that every big city has at least a couple gay bars but there are only like 20ish lesbian bars left in the country and he responded with "That's cause gay men have a good party culture. Lesbians don't have time to party, they're too busy debating the sociological implications of things and studying for postgrad degrees" and as much as I wanted to tell him he was out of line for that, as a lesbian who spends all her free time on Tumblr debating sociological implications and messaging other lesbians in discord servers where everyone has a PhD or masters for some reason I felt like I might not be the best person to make that argument

All of my in person sex work clients and the majority of the phone ones were more respectful and less traumatizing than the average Target shopper was when I worked there through six departments in two years

The one TRULY disrespectful and potentially dangerous irl client I've had doing sex work ended up getting his ass beat and getting booted without a refund. At Target, for an entire year, a child employee (16) was forced to hide in the breakroom any time one specific stalker came in looking for her. Management wouldn't ban him.

Just. Thinking about that sex work clients post. Yes, some of them say horrible things. No worse than any retail or call center customer. Ever.

When the pervy guy calls the hotel reservations line jerking off and moaning, my supervisor had a duty to keep him on the line and keep trying to book him even though he just hung up when he came after making her uncomfortable for 20 minutes. Phone sex averages $2/minute and you can hang up on anyone for any reason, they might just get a refund.

Why are sex work customers and clients seen as the inherent slimebags? When they're the ones exercising an understanding of consensual exchange of money and services within specific limitations. Not the multiple people who reached over my register to touch me when I was 18. Or the woman who told me I was everything wrong with the world and I should die bc we were out of soft pretzels when i was also 18. Nobody's ever said soulcrushing shit like that to me as a sex worker lmao, "ugly fat whore" is just facts