Feminist Rage™

*Stares directly into the camera*

If anyone wants to donate to his family then here: https://www.launchgood.com/campaign/support_the_family_of_our_departed_angel_wadea_alfayoume#!/

Jews and Muslims all around the world are being targeted and attacked. This death is a tragedy.

just so y'all know, i emailed the council of american islamic affairs yesterday (they held a press conference about what happened) about wadea and asked about fundraisers for his funeral and his mother's medical bills, and this was the link they sent me, so this fundraiser is verified by an official organization. the funds will also be used, as stated in the fundraiser's description, to help his mother relocate as obviously it's not safe for her to be there anymore.

also very worth noting he was specifically palestinian-american. his parents are both palestinian; his mother immigrated from the west bank and his father from jordan. the man who murdered him was obsessed with the israeli-hamas war and attacked wadea and his mother because, according to the court filing, he "believed that [he and his wife] were in danger and that [wadea's mother] was going to call over her palestinian friends or family to harm them."

that last comment is so fucking revealing as to the actual priorities and worries of people who say 'get therapy' lmao

"therapy isn't about your happiness, it's about making sure you act in a way that i'm comfortable with" is always the implicit content of that comment but it is very impressive to just come out and say it

We need peace and safety, Israeli and Palestinians together in the region. What we don’t need is westerners cheering on their “side” while they sit in safety and our blood soaks the ground.

i went to an event at my synagogue on tuesday where we were able to sit together as a congregation, whoever was able to make it, and just decompress and talk about our emotions in a safe space. one of my rabbis talked about how she went to a grief support group for parents that had lost their children to terror and violence, primarily made up of israelis and palestinians. sitting together and talking about their pain and loss. after the massacre happened this saturday, palestinian members reached out to check on other members and offered up prayers for them. i told a friend that and they laughed and rolled their eyes, then told me "what so you want people to all just sit in a big circle and sing kumbaya????" this really is all one big fucking joke to them. like they really don't see any of us as people, just pawns in their game of "activist" dnd.

Just a reminder that people who still live with their parents as adults deserve respect and for you to stop being ableist. There are multiple reasons someone could still live with their parents! From invisible to visible disabilities, finance issues, and more!

Stop using the “well they’re gonna turn into a creep living in their parents basement” punchline! It’s disgusting. STOP. BEING. ABLEIST. STOP. FORGETTING. THE. POOR.

Do you write music with the view of being politically active and delivering a message or does it just happen and the rest follows? 

Shots fired to keep rent low:

ACAB, pro-kink, sex work is work, faggots and dykes and dykefags are my weed-smoking communist lovers, filth is my life, watch a fucked up movie, kill the puritanical cop in your head, and be excellent to each other

"Neurodivergence" does in fact not just refer to "autism, ADHD and maybe dyslexia". Neurodivergent is a term meant for literally everyone who has a diagnosis which affects the way their brain works. That's why it was created. To be inclusive. Go ask the person who invented it because they stated this clearly

Stated this where? Who? Don't just claim something as fact and not back it up when not even wikipedia has this alleged piece of information.

Also literally every mental illness affects the brain in some way or another that's why they're named that. Is depression neurodivergent then?

I really don't think this is an 'inclusive' take as you think this.

Yes. Yes it is. For those that would prefer not to click through: "Neurodivergent just means a brain that diverges.

Autistic people. ADHD people. People with learning disabilities. Epileptic people. People with mental illnesses. People with MS or Parkinsons or apraxia or cerebral palsy or dyspraxia or no specific diagnosis but wonky lateralization or something. 

That is all it means. It is not another damn tool of exclusion. It is specifically a tool of inclusion. If you don’t want to be associated with Those People, then YOU are the one who needs another word. Neurodivergent is for all of us."

I'm kind of glad to hear that everyone does this. Because it means it isn't colonizer bullshit, it's what everyone does. It's just people discovering new things. Everyone goes:

"Oh hey these people have their own style of [language A's word for thing. Say, what do you call it?"

"Oh it's [language B's word for thing]."

"Got it, it's [language B's word for thing] variety [language A's word for thing]"

added to which it is LITERALLY JUST LINGUISTIC SHORTHAND for 

[item] the way [culture] makes it. 

If you don’t want sliced bread, you want bread the way Eastern Indians make it you ask for Roti, not bread. Because Roti is bread THE WAY [EASTERN] INDIANS MAKE IT. Like fuck, it’s not that complicated a concept. 

OF COURSE it’s not colonizer bullshit! It’s just linguistic shorthand!

I’ve been contemplating for several days something, and I’ve been trying to distill it into meaning, and put nice little bullet points on how this relates to things that have been bugging me about some common Discourses I’ve been seeing, but at the end, I only really have a story. So here, have a story.

About ten years ago, sometime in the eventful 2006-2007 George W. Bush-ruled hellscape of my identity development, I was just starting to figure out how I felt about my conservative upbringing (not great) and whether I was some brand of queer (probably, but too scared to think about what brand for too long). I was working as a server at a popular Italian-inspired sit-down restaurant that was the closest thing my tiny South Carolinian town had to “fancy” at the time but isn’t really fancy at all.

The host brought a party of four men to one of my tables. It was hard to tell their ages, but my guess is they were teenagers or in their early 20s in the 1980s. Mid-40s, at the time. It was standard to ask if anyone at the table was celebrating anything, so I did. They said they were business partners celebrating a great business deal and would like a bottle of wine.

It was a fairly busy night so I didn’t have a LOT of time to spend at their table, but they were nice guys. They were polite and friendly to me, they didn’t hit on me (as most men were prone to do – sometimes even in front of their girlfriends, a story I’ll tell later if anyone wants me to), and they were racking up a hell of a tab that was going to make my managers happy, so I checked on them as often as I could.

Toward the end of their second bottle of wine, as they were finishing their entrees, I stopped at the table and asked if they wanted any more drinks or dessert or coffee. They were well and truly tipsy by now, giggling, leaning back in their chairs – but so, so careful not to touch each other when anyone was near the table.

They’re all on the fence about dessert, so being a good server, I offered to bring out the dessert menu so they could glance it over and make a decision, “Since you’re celebrating.”

“She’s right!” one of the men said, far too emphatically for a conversation on dessert. “It’s your anniversary! You should get dessert!”

It was like a movie. The whole table went absolutely silent. The clank of silverware at the next table sounded supernaturally loud. Dean Martin warbled “That’s Amore” in some distorted alternate universe where the rest of the restaurant went on acting like this one tipsy man hadn’t just shattered their carefully crafted cover story and blurted out in the middle of a tiny, South Carolina town, surrounded by conservatives and rednecks, that they were gay men celebrating a relationship milestone. 

And I didn’t know what I was yet, but I knew I wasn’t an asshole, and I knew these men were family, and I felt their panic like a monster breathing down all our necks. It’s impossible to emphasize how palpably terrified they were, and how justified their terror was, and how much I wanted them to be happy.

So I did the only thing I knew to do. I said, “Congratulations! How many years?”

The man who’d spoken up burst into tears. His partner stood up and wrapped me in the tightest, warmest hug I’ve ever had – and I’ve never liked being touched by strangers, but this was different, and I hugged him back.

“Thank you,” he whispered, halfway to crying himself. “Thank you so much.”

When he finally let go of me and sat back down, they finally got around to telling me they were, in fact, two couples on a double date, and both celebrating anniversaries. Fifteen years for one of them, I think, and a few years off for the other. It’s hard to remember. It was a jumble of tears and laughter and trembling relief for all of us. They got more relaxed. They started holding hands – under the table, out of sight of anyone but me, but happy.

They did get dessert, and I spent more time at their table, letting them tell me stories about how they met and how they started dating and their lives together, and feeling this odd sense of belonging, like I’d just discovered a missing branch of my family.

When they finally left, all four of them took turns standing up and hugging me, and all four of them reached into their wallets to tip me. I tried to wave them off but they insisted, and the first man who’d hugged me handed me forty dollars and said, “Please. You are an angel. Please take this.”

After they left I hid in the bathroom and cried because I couldn’t process all my thoughts and feelings.

Fast forward to three days ago, when my own partner and I showed up to a dinner reservation at a fancy-casual restaurant to celebrate our fifth anniversary. The whole time I was getting ready to leave, there was a worry in the back of my mind. The internet web form had asked if the reservation was celebrating anything in particular, and I’d selected “Anniversary.” I stood in the bathroom blow-drying my hair, wondering what I would do if we showed up, two women, and the host or the server took one look at us and the “Anniversary” designation on our reservation and refused to serve us. It’s not as ubiquitous anymore, but we’re still in the south, and these things still happen. Eight years of progressive leadership is over, and we’ve got another conservative despot in office who’s emboldening assholes everywhere.

It was on my mind the whole fifteen minutes it took to drive there. I didn’t mention it to my partner because I didn’t want to cast a shadow over the occasion. More than that, I didn’t want to jinx us, superstitious bastard that I am.

We walked into the restaurant. I told the hostess we had a reservation, gave her my last name.

She looked at her screen, then looked back at us. She smiled, broadly and genuinely, and said, “Happy anniversary! Your table is right this way.”

Our server greeted us, said, “I heard you were celebrating!”

“It’s our anniversary,” Kellie said, and our server gasped, beaming.

“That’s great! Congratulations! How many years?”

And I finally breathed a sigh of relief, and I thought about those men at that restaurant ten years ago. I hope they’re still safe and happy, and I hope we all get the satisfaction of helping the world keep blooming into something that’s not so unrelentingly terrible all the time.

what do you say to a trans person who’s sharing after-surgery pics?

good post op

My brother is a librarian, and his library is one of the ones that hosts Drag Queen Story Time.

He is also 6'3", 300 lbs of Heavy Weapons Librarian.

This week, some karen showed up to take video of said storytime. She was unmoved by the director of the library telling her their policy against taking video in the children's room.

My brother was also unmoved. Specifically, he was unmoved from his position directly in the line of karen's cellphone. She got video of an acre of blue broadcloth shirt, and that's it.

Other people who showed up to scowl at the drag queen decided they had other things to do that day when my brother scowled at them. He inherited our Mama's scowl, and it's a good one.

Sometimes, an ally looks like a big fat bald white guy. Sometimes, an ally looks like a wall.

Today I thought about fentanyl so hard that a cop a few blocks away exploded into pure energy

Some of y'all are not ready to hear this, but disabled people deserve sexual autonomy too.

Those with developmental disabilities included.

We need to start sexualizing mobility aids

[Text ID: torrin a. greathouse

SICK4SICK

I think my lover's cane is sexy. The way they walk like a rainstorm stumbles slow across the landscape. How, with fingers laced together, our boots & canes click in time-unsteady rhythm of a metronome's limp wrist. All sway & swish, first person I ever saw walk with a lisp. Call this our love language of unspokens: We share so many symptoms, the first time we thought to hyphenate our names was, playfully, to christen ourselves a new disorder. We trade tips on medication, on how to weather what prescriptions make you sick to [maybe] make you well. We make toasts with acetaminophen bought in bulk. Kiss in the airport terminal through surgical masks. Rub the knots from each others' backs. We dangle FALL RISK bracelets from our walls & call it decoration. We visit another ER & call it a date. When we are sick, again, for months -with a common illness that will not leave-it is not the doctors who care for us. We make do ourselves. At night, long after the sky has darkened-in-something like a three-day-bruise, littered with satellites I keep mistaking for stars-our bodies are fever-sweat stitched. A chimera. Shadow-puppet of our lust. Bones bowed into a new beast [with two backs, six legs of metal & flesh & carbon fiber]. Beside my love, I find I can't remember any prayers so I whisper the names of our medications like the names of saints. Orange bottles scattered around the mattress like unlit candles in the dark. /End ID]