gaygothur:

Video game: has a skinny white guy with short brown hair

Y’all: 😘😘😘😮😮😮😵😵😵😵🤤🤤🤤🤤🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪😳😳😳😳😳😳😳

theunitofcaring:

So I haven’t posted about this since college because I don’t think it’s ever happened to me since I got out of college, but a recent conversation reminded me that it’s still negatively affecting lots of other people, so:

Lots of people find it distressing to be asked their pronouns. They might be trans and not out, or trans and out to some of the people present but not all of them, or not sure if they’re trans, or entirely cis and just really hate being asked to think about the question. I personally freak out about ‘preferred pronouns’ because it makes me go “uh, I don’t really prefer ‘she/her’, I’d much rather be parsed as a genderless amorphous being, but I don’t prefer that strongly enough to go through the hassle of trying to get people to actually see me that way, especially since I’m not really sure it’d work, and people will get confused by ‘they/them’, and if I express a pronoun preference then I’ll be more upset about people getting it wrong than if I don’t, and aaaaaahhh I prefer not to be in a social context where I have to have this thought process it makes me sad!!!”

Other people find it affirming, and that’s legitimate too. There are definitely competing needs here. But I think, since there are competing needs, you at least need to allow for an exit strategy for the people who will be harmed by pressure to come up with an answer.

So: “nametags are here, also feel free to put pronouns on your nametag if you want” is great. “nametags are here, put your name and pronouns!” or “why aren’t there pronouns on your nametag?” are going to cause stress and potentially cause harm.

“Share any of ‘favorite animal, best concert you’ve been to recently, and preferred pronouns, but feel free to skip any of those if you’re coming up empty’” is a decent way to handle competing needs if you’re doing “go around in a circle and introduce yourself”. And if you’re doing introductions with pronouns and someone doesn’t volunteer a pronoun, don’t remind them; the risk they skipped it on purpose and you’re putting them on the spot is not worth the benefits of getting an answer if they just forgot.

Gender sucks. When we’re trying to make it better for people, we need to keep making sure there are doors open to flee screaming ‘aaaah fuck gender’.

andhumanslovedstories:

I hate comebacks to assholes that aren’t dependent on that person being an asshole. If the guy bothering you at the bar wasn’t bothering you at the bar, he would still have bad teeth. If the woman who cut in front of you in line hadn’t, she would still be fat. Calling someone ugly isn’t dependent on their actions, so that kind of insult implies that it doesn’t matter whether you are good or bad, you’re still ugly, and you being “bad” in this circumstance is just permission for us to acknowledge your ugliness. It’s an uncomfortable Trojan horsing of unacceptable comments, and while I realize the self-esteem of the douche at work with a thick accent of whatever you find least respectable or whatever isn’t the Most Paramount Vulnerable Population, the group of people who get made fun of for their accents exists separate of how he didn’t tell you about a meeting, so just make sure you call him a douche for, you know, the true douche reasons

queeranarchism:

Like half of queer fashion is about celebrating things labelled ‘ugly’ by rocking them harder and repelling straight people and I love it.

spitblaze:

Hi, if you want to play a good cyberpunk adventure game with a story about what it means to be human and liberation and ISNT written like crap with visual metaphors for racism and slavery so direct that its downright offensive, maybe play 2064: Read-Only Memories instead.

 It’s an adventure game based off of old adventure games like Snatcher, is actually made by like. decent human beings, has a ton of casual representation without Burying Their Gays, and has…significantly less ‘being so “progressive” it goes back to being racist’ in it. It’s real good and its just ten bucks on steam right now. go play a good adventure game instead of pressing x to end slavery.