This isn't aimed at any one person, more of a general observation from my comments/inbox over the last few years, but the number of people who say things like "but that's normal" when I describe hypermobility compared to the number of times healthcare providers look at me like I'm a glitch in the matrix is a Ven diagram made up of a single circle at this point.
Like I feel like some people just aren't envisioning the things I'm describing properly and are imagining a normal range of motion, but I also think some of you might want to consider getting evaulated.
Especially when you send me messages like, "There's nothing wrong with me except for my debilitating joint pain, crippling exhaustion, and the fact that blood shoots out of my eyes once a month, but isn't it normal to be able to do X?"
Game that's a dating sim/time management style game, but you don't date anyone (or at least if you do, dating isn't the point). The premise is that you've gotten a new entry level job in your dream career in a town that's WAY too expensive for you to live in with zero available rentals, but due to a stroke of amazing luck and a distant family connection, you're able to score a rental in a nice community for a price you can just about handle. The catch is that you have to join the homeowner's association. Your landlord is distant, but expects you to keep in line with the HOA or get evicted.
The game consists of carefully managing your out-of-work time to keep up with the HOA's increasingly stringent list of rules about the appearance and maintenance of your property. If you don't spend enough time on yardwork and maintenance, you'll start to get violation warnings, but you also need to go to community events to avoid getting on the other members' shitlists and making enemies who'll look more critically at your property. You can buy leeway if you spend time schmoozing the other HOA people, helping them with crises, and siding with the more powerful figures in disputes. Your dream career is a background event in your life, focused more on keeping a roof over your head, but if you skip work to tend to HOA stuff you risk getting fired, and conversely if you put in extra hours and do really well you can get bonuses which you can use to pay a professional gardener or housekeeper and free up some more time. The power dynamic in the HOA can change, so be careful putting all your eggs in one basket relationship-wise lest your friends be on the outs and your enemies start looking for ways to get rid of you. But if you change your alleigances too often, you'll get a reputation as a fair weather friend, which can be equally dangerous. Getting too close to someone who ends up in a scandal could tarr you with an equally scandalous reputation, but you won't know what scandals are going on in the neighbourhood . Getting evicted or fired are both, of course, loss conditions, but showing up for work and [honing it in isn't too hard; you've always wanted to work at... uh... whatever it is that you're doing again. Never mind that. The most important thing in your life is making sure that the grass in the front lawn doesn't grow more than half an inch above the prescribed length.
Hannah Montana is fucked up because its entire POINT as a show is that children should be protected from fame and exploitation, but it stars a REAL little girl that's being exploited. Nearly every episode carries the looming threat of Miley being outed as Hannah and losing her peaceful teenage life to the ravages of fame. Her father in the show (played by her own father in real life) wisely protected her from the trauma of fame by making her wear a disguise and live a rather quiet, interview-free life. Meanwhile the REAL Billy Ray Cyrus sold his daughter to Disney Channel when she was 11 and forced her to read dialogue about how terrible it would be to face the public eye. Like... Jesus, dude. The fictional Robby Ray is 10x the father, and it's not even close. (It's also IMMENSELY funny that her dad doesn't use his real name in the show, while she does. Almost like he wanted a bit of a disconnect between his identity and his character. Something Miley didn't get.)
Once my friend Henry was accused of wearing wireless headphones by a substitute so she said for him to hand them over so he took them off and handed them to her. Then later on she asked him a question and he didn’t respond so she said it louder and he still didn’t respond. She asked why he was not responding and he said “I can’t understand you ma'am, you took my hearing aids.”
So a while back, I asked the boss to register and put up ‘Welcome here’ stickers at the clinic.
They’re roughly palm-sized stickers with a rainbow heart in a map icon. They’re obvious but don’t take up that much space and don’t interfere with anybody’s day.
One sits on the reception desk, and one is stuck on the front door. They’re a small gesture that just explicitly states the LGBTQ+ community is, literally, welcome here.
It’s very unobtrusive, and (most) people haven’t mentioned it at all, but the observable results have been:
More Clients specifically adding their same sex partner as another owner on the account.
Some clients that I’ve known for a decade or more actually being comfortable enough to reveal they have a partner in conversation.
More same sex couples calling each other ‘darling’ in front of other people.
A few ‘Mx’ titles on client files.
I want to emphasise that it is a tiny gesture, but it increases the comfort level slightly for quite a lot of people, so I’d recommend it if your workplace can, even if you don’t think it’s relevant.
The only person who has had anything vaguely negative to say has been a notorious problem client, who ‘didn’t see the point’. But obviously the stickers are not for him.
fatphobia and ableism is so insidious. You can look up like, food, and it'll say "eating a lot of food causes diabetes" and you're like oh dang what? I thought we didn't know the cause of diabetes. So you look up what causes diabetes and it says "we still don't know what causes diabetes" bruh they're just making shit up to give people eating disorders