#and I can’t even leave my rapists cause I need their fucking money to survive

[nightcoremoon]

the harmful misogynist hypocritical movement called "pro life" seems pretty cut and dry on the surface. they say abortion is murder and women shouldn't be able to do them. counter argument is it's the woman's body and as such the woman's choice, and that women should always be able to have access to a safe medical procedure, especially if you consider that most abortions are done on dead fetuses or fetuses with issues that will end up killing the mother. I'm gonna be using some pretty cisnormative language here and piss off pro-lifers and a lot of catholics, so here's the disclaimers. I'm trans and I'm saying women and mother because it takes less time to say that than "cis dfab and trans dmab people" and "uterus-owning fetus gestation host", I was pro-life a couple years ago, and fuck the world's biggest cult called catholicism. with that out of the way, let's proceed.

I don't think it's quite as simple as "abortion is murder". clearly it's not. factually speaking, a lot of abortions are done within the first few weeks before the zygote could conceivably be even remotely resembling human, let alone live if separated from the mother. a lot of them are also done when the fetus dies prepartum. this spares the mother the pain and trauma the pain of childbirth to a baby that's already dead, and may even save their lives, and it will certainly spare them the costs of hospitalized childbirth which costs a lot of money. there are cases in which the fetus could conceivably survive out of the womb and its birth wouldn't endanger the mother any more than childbirth usually does, but those cases aren't any less justified because let's look at the reasons why women might get abortions.

(trigger warning: rape mention ahead.)

but first let's look at why transgender people with uteri specifically would get them. gender dysphoria, in addition to the nine months of hormonal hell pregnant people go through, would be like... double hell. passing purposes for trans people who cannot let people around them know they're trans (usually for work and things like that) are also of importance as if you see a pregnant man that challenges the social norms instilled in most of society and because of misogyny and transphobia might alter the way you communicate with that person on an even larger scale degree than just everyday misogyny that alters people's interactions with pregnant cis women versus non pregnant cis women.

anyway, there are other reasons that affect both cis women and dfab trans people. there is rape, of course. sad as it is, it's a common fact of our society. people with vaginas frequently get raped; 1 in 6 I'm pretty sure is the statistic. and rapists aren't usually known for condom usage. also pedophilia which constitutes rape. many children become pregnant from rape and anyone with an ounce of compassion and logic knows it's wrong to force a literal child to carry a baby to term. there are also abusive cases in which pregnancy in unhealthy relationships can occur, and some women may get abortions for their own safety. also, specifically in china, there are women who will get abortions to comply with the child limit laws, or to abort female fetuses to avoid their husbands either killing or abandoning them because that shit happens a lot and it's fucking toxic masculinity "I need a son to carry on my legacy and not a weak woman that won't" misogynist bullshit. and there are women with careers who literally don't have time to be parents as well, and if they do then they have to balance commitment to their work and their baby and that's unfair to both the parent and child, and they're forced to make this concession because god forbid the father steps up and parents the child he helped fucking make; the world won't easily let women have children and careers because "a woman's place is at home with the family in the kitchen making dinner" tradwife bullshit.

all of those are bad things but I'm not gonna be discussing them in this post.

everything up until now has been based on facts and evident social trends. from here on out it's all speculation.

I think the pro life movement is so much more insidious than just misogyny. sure, that's there. some people feel that women only exist to get pregnant and give birth to predominantly sons because they're degenerate redneck filth who hate females. however, analyzing everything else that's part of it, it feels a whole lot worse. let's run through every point I've made so far:

bodily autonomy

medical safety

preventing death

gender dysphoria

rape victims

pedophilia victims

abusive relationships

chinese women's safety

women's career importance

now, that paints an interesting picture. it's all rights and safety for women, minorities, and victims of sex crime. somehow that's just not enough to sway people from thinking "maybe there are good reasons for abortion and we're being assholes screaming at and physically assaulting and killing people who take part". somehow they're still parroting "abortion is murder" like they don't think for themselves.

they don't care about women having rights to a career or bodily autonomy, especially sexual, regardless of their age, even if it includes their very life... & they don't care about trans people.

and that shit invaded the weirdest spaces. fanfiction dot net circa the late 2000s was chock full of girls with profile descriptions with anti abortion copypasta. but why? how on earth did that get into a community predominantly composed of young impressionable teenage girls? ...oh wait a minute.

let's also take into account the juxtaposition of slut shaming, sexual objectification, a total lack of male willingness to use condoms, and rape, as well as everything in that bulleted list.

it really feels to me like pro lifers desire to live in a world where babies born with vaginas solely exist to become sexual objects the moment they become sexually appealing (which can be at any age honestly from a pedophile's POV), but not because they desire to (since they'll be labeled sluts) but because a man desires to fulfill his sexual desires (double standard), whether she wants him to or not, and when she gets pregnant she's locked into a relationship no matter how old she is (like the hundreds of pentecostal forced marriages at 11 years old, for example) and no matter whether it's healthy as long as the Man™ gets his son and his hot dinner at 5pm like it's fucking 1953 (because god forbid the woman be the breadwinner or even leave the house to do anything but shop for groceries, let alone vote, amirite), and if she dies during childbirth, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ oh well, the heartbroken man suffering from Manpain™ will just pick up another lady off the street at half his age who will cure his broken heart with her vagina and replace the last one, since women are apparently inherently replaceable; and if a wife gives birth to a daughter, hey, she'll be a carnation, pure and sweet until she becomes sexually appealing and starts the process all over again. also everybody is cis and straight. and also white, neurotypical, able bodied, rich from hard work and daddy's money, oh yeah and christian, but not the protestant heathens, I mean the catholics who are the only ones who won't go to hell. everything exists to serve the man.

okay wow so it's not just basic misogyny. it's the systematic patriarchal eurocentric values.

the pro life movement is just a small subset of all of the other things wrong with the world.

"but sheena you can't say that pro lifers are all misogynist, transphobic, racist, queerphobic, ableist, classist, rife with religious intolerance, anti feminist, and otherwise harmful in other ways! it's an stereotypical overgeneralization!"

show me one fucking pro lifer who isn't at least half of those. show me one. I only wanna see one. I just wanna see one pro lifer who isn't bigoted towards any demographic of people. prove me wrong and show me ONE. please.

you can't. they're all mouth breathers incapable of singular conscious thought outside of a hive mind of facebook memes and post-evangelical moral superiority and smug condescension and an obsession with the 1950s. they're physically incapable of individualism, intelligent thought, and basic empathy skills. I know this because I WAS ONE OF THEM. THAT'S HOW THEY ARE.

there may be some deviations here and there but we all know the dangers of "#not all _____".

so fuck the pro life movement and fuck you if you're pro life. you're pro death penalty and pro military and pro cops and pro letting homeless people starve and pro letting people die from preventable causes because of lack of access to healthcare and pro letting women die from childbirth because ~abortion is bad~.

you're not pro life.

you're just anti choice.

and anti woman.

(and anti trans because you all use exclusively cisnormative language to the point that I used it while speaking on the subject).

so go ahead and send more money to trump to save unborn babies. he'll spend that money on bombing the middle east and building a racism wall.

you care more about white fetuses than about brown skinned people in general including their babies. your ignorant hatred is transparent.

because you're not pro life.

above all else,

if anything,

you're fucking pro death.

[thatawkwardnerdytomboy]

Happy Broke Millennial New Year!

So I keep seeing my Facebook friends posting subjective statuses as if they’re objective about 2017 as if the things they’re posting about apply to everyone and I know that they don’t but still...I don’t think they understand that not everyone had the same year they did. 2017 might have been fantastic for some people but for others, it wasn’t. So, my 2017 was pretty terrible. How? Why?

1. Donald Trump’s Inauguration! Yet another reminder of how shitty this country can be. Congrats, America! You voted for a rapist who believes that Climate Change is a Chinese hoax, who wants to go to war with North Korea, is racist, hates Muslims, wants to make the poor poorer, the rich richer and wants to outsource more jobs to other countries than any other president and wants to build a wall that Mexicans can just fly over on a plane. Congratu-fucking-lations...

2. I lost 2 jobs! Funding for the arts has been getting cut so much because Republicans hold the majority of the house and senate that arts programs like the ones I work for don’t have enough funds to pay their employees. So, one of my jobs on 4 occasions since 2017 started couldn’t pay us on time. And I drained my savings account and nearly maxed out my credit cards trying to get to work and feed myself while I was working for this organization and I decided that it wasn’t worth it to go into so much debt anymore and I had to quit. The other arts organization I was working for laid me off without even telling me. So luckily, and I use that word lightly, I got a job at the community service program I was in while in high school which leads to my next one...

3. Got a new job and I hate it! Working over the summer at this place was a fucking nightmare. It was my first summer camp job. There was so much shit to do and know. I was managing a group of 6th graders and the guy I was working with was an insubordinate asshole who gave me an attitude whenever I asked him to do anything. He kept breaking rules, he would leave me to do all the planning for each day when we were supposed to be planning things together, he did inappropriate things with the kids and whenever I pulled him aside to talk to him about these things in private, he started raising his voice at me like he doesn’t know how to have a private conversation. I talked to my boss about him multiple times and she didn’t do much. He didn’t change. Oh, and he ever yelled at her once too. I was so stressed at this job that I had a panic attack after work and had to be taken to the hospital. And when I texted this guy to tell him that I wasn’t going to be in that day and told him where to find everything we needed for a field trip, he yet again gave me an attitude. What fucking human being hears from their co-worker that they had to go to the hospital for a panic attack and responds with “oh, that’s your job?” I was so fucking livid. And eventually, when one of the kids’ parents called to complain about him touching her daughter inappropriately, he quit. Wow, child molester in the making...fucking creep. So I still work at this place but with less hours because it’s just an after-school program now. The kids that I work with are the worst group of kids I have ever had to work with in my 7 years of working with kids. They make racist and homophobic comments all the time (try hearing these things when you’re black and gay), they start physical altercations with each other, they’re blatantly disrespectful to staff, one girl even called my co-worker/friend a racial slur. There’s not enough time in the day to get our work done and me and one of the other staff are always having to stay late to get things done and we don’t get paid for the extra hours that we stay. I really want to quit this job and I don’t wanna work with kids anymore. It’s grating on my mental health. If I can’t get a job in my field (animation, comics or other commercial arts) then I rather just work in an office somewhere as a data clerk because I spent 3 years in college doing that as a work-study job. But apparently, I’m not qualified to do that either. No one wants me to do anything other than working with kids. 

4. I’ve gone into more debt this year! Yay! $600 from going to the hospital for a panic attack, about $450 from credit card debt from my jobs not paying me on time and whatever interest I have accrued from my deferred student loans plus the $50K in loans that I owe. I’m trying to save up to move out because my living situation has become more crowded. I live in a 2 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend, mom, her boyfriend and my brother. My brother sleeps in the living room which is attached to the kitchen which means that when he goes to sleep, we can’t go out into the kitchen to get food or throw trash out and it’s really fucking annoying. Also, I have to share a bathroom with 4 other people and I have a disease (hypothyroidism) that causes gastro-intestinal issues and I’m also a girl so that means that often I can’t get into the bathroom when I really need to. My girlfriend and I applied for a low-income housing lottery and I really hope that we get called. I’m scraping by with what I make at my job and I have to help my mom with rent and bills and it’s just really difficult trying to pay any debt off and save money. Like wow, I live in a country where poor/low-income college grads may have to go on welfare to survive and can’t get a break with student loans and the fucking president wants to help out the rich people and screw the poor over more. Oh, and fuck Betsy Devos for wanting to make life harder for people like me. 

5. I lost one of my closest friends. I had a friend in college who I was very close to. She was always there for me when I needed her, she helped me with my assignments, we hung out with each other outside of school and we always confided in each other. I got to meet her family and even after graduation and she had to move back to Florida, we still kept in contact. She was supposed to come back to NYC with her mom but she was having some family issues and had to stay. I haven’t heard from her since 2016 in November. I’ve been trying to contact her ever since. I called, texted, e-mailed, I’ve messaged her brothers on Facebook with no response, I contacted her friend and asked if she’s heard from her and she hasn’t...I’m pretty worried. For all I know she could be dead or her family could have been deported since Trump has ramped up ICE’s tyranny. I miss the hell out of her. I just really want to hear her voice. If I had the money, I’d go to Florida and try to look her up. I was thinking of sending a letter to her address to see if anyone replies to it. 

Despite how terrible this year has been for me, here are are a couple of positive things that have come out of it. 

1. I made 3 years with my girlfriend and we’ve been talking about getting married in the future. Which means that when we have the money and our own place, we’ll most likely get engaged which I’m really excited for. We’ve been through a lot together, good and bad and we’ve always remained by each other. I feel like she’s the girl of my dreams; she’s everything that I want in a girl. She’s sweet, nerdy, affectionate, sensitive, open-minded, we have so much in common and we want the same things out of our relationship. We both want to move to California someday, travel, adopt kids, have pets and have the lives that we’ve always wanted for ourselves growing up. I hope that our relationship remains as great as it is now. 

2. I may, someday soon, actually get to live out my dream of being a filmmaker! When I was in high school, I was taking a comic book illustration class with Ivan Velez Jr. a former writer for Marvel and DC comics and ever since, we’ve remained in contact. A few months ago, he contacted me and some of his other former students and said that he wants to work on a film project with us and that he has connections with Netflix! I’m not going to get my hopes up because this is a really big chance and a lot of things can change or possibly go wrong but so far, it seems like things are going well. I can’t talk about what we’ve been planning but he has to speak to his Netflix connect and see if we can get funding for this project before anything else happens. But yeah, I’m super excited! He says that we might be able to start filming as soon as later this year if we get the funding. I already worked on a script for the short film I want to make and I have other things planned for this story as well. It’s funny, I was just ranting about how disappointed I am with some films I’ve been seeing and not too much later, he contacts me. So I’m hoping it works out!

So I hope that all my fellow struggling millennials and non-millennials have had a better 2017 than me and that your 2018 comes with more hopes and positive life changes. Hope everyone can take better care of themselves and keep fighting though things are really difficult and seem hopeless. 

Happy New Year!

Please reblog if you’ve had a tough year and let me know about it so we and all the other struggling millennials out there know that we’re not alone! 

#Millennials #millennial generation #stuggling millennials #broke millennials #broke #struggling #new year #2017 #2018 #new year 2018 #rant #money problems #the struggle

[omgktlouchheim]

Word Vomit Wednesday - Blessed Be the Fruit

Welcome to Word Vomit Wednesday! A series of blog posts about a specific topic from current events that I, and sometimes the rest of the Internet, ruminate obsessively about. All thoughts/opinions/experiences are my own; I don’t claim anything that I write to represent anyone other than myself.

CW: Sexual Assault/Violence

 Today was both #NationalComingOutDay and #InternationalDayoftheGirl. While these are important and empowering sentiments to have and keep having, there needs to be more of effort to making society an actual safe and equal place for women and LGBTQ+ folks to live. For anyone who is marginalized there is an obstacle course manual that we’re constantly referencing as we go through life. Living in a white patriarchal heteronormative society requires us to anticipate every possible outcome to survive. (Check out this article from a POC perspective on what that looks like). For some people, the decision to come out or to report an assault or rape can mean anything from the loss of a career, family, money, and reputation or even one’s own life.

In terms of coming out with my bisexuality, I’ve been very lucky to have friends and family that are supportive and don’t think there’s anything wrong with me or that I’m going through a phase until I meet “the right guy.” But, as we know, there is still a lot of hatred toward the LGBTQ+ community here and around the world and many youths become homeless because their families won’t accept them. Brazil is one of the more recent countries to start cracking down on LGBTQ+ communities with a judge approving “conversion therapy” and in Chechnya gay and bisexual men are being murdered in what’s being called a “Gay Purge.” We need to do better.

We also need to do better when it comes to rape culture. I’m so sick of writing about this. I’m so sick of rarely really feeling safe, rarely feeling like I’ll get ahead in my career, rarely feeling 100% comfortable in my relationships (personal and professional) with men because I’m just waiting for them to try something. I’ve been conditioned to feel this way and to try to avoid any situation (which is basically every situation you can possibly think of) because these things have happened so many times to me. They have happened so many times to women and some men I know. They happen to millions of women all over the world every day. So many women are conditioned to not trust men because we’re treated like children, nags, and receptacles for getting them off. It’s disgusting.

What makes this whole thing even more devious is sometimes these men have so much power we’ve been told we just need to “play the game” and we’ll be fine. First of all, that is never true and secondly, it’s abusive as fuck. Here’s a quote from model and actress Cara Delevingne recounting Harvey Weinstein assaulting her:

“When I first started to work as an actress, I was working on a film and I received a call from Harvey Weinstein asking if I had slept with any of the women I was seen out with in the media. It was a very odd and uncomfortable call… I answered none of his questions and hurried off the phone but before I hung up, he said to me that if I was gay or decided to be with a woman especially in public that I’d never get the role of a straight woman or make it as an actress in Hollywood. A year or two later, I went to a meeting with him in the lobby of a hotel with a director about an upcoming film. The director left the meeting and Harvey asked me to stay and chat with him. As soon as we were alone he began to brag about all the actresses he had slept with and how he had made their careers and spoke about other inappropriate things of a sexual nature. He then invited me to his room. I quickly declined and asked his assistant if my car was outside. She said it wasn’t and wouldn’t be for a bit and I should go to his room. At that moment I felt very powerless and scared* but didn’t want to act that way hoping that I was wrong about the situation. When I arrived I was relieved to find another woman in his room and thought immediately I was safe. He asked us to kiss and she began some sort of advances upon his direction. I swiftly got up and asked if he knew that I could sing. And I began to sing… I thought it would make the situation better… more professional… like an audition… I was nervous. After singing I said again that I had to leave. He walked me to the door and stood in front of it and tried to kiss me on the lips. I stopped him and managed to get out of the room. I still got the part for the film and always thought he gave it to me because of what happened. Since then I felt awful that I did the movie. I felt like I didn’t deserve the part. I was so hesitant about speaking out… I didn’t want to hurt his family. I felt guilty as if I did something wrong. I was also terrified that this sort of thing had happened to so many women I know but no one said anything because of fear.I want women and girls to know that being harassed or abused or raped is NEVER their fault and not talking about it will always cause more damage than speaking the truth. I am relieved to be able to share this… I actually feel better and I’m proud of the women who are brave enough to speak… this isn’t easy but there are strength in our numbers. As I said, this is only the beginning. In every industry and especially in Hollywood, men abuse their power using fear and get away with it. This must stop. The more we talk about it, the less power we give them. I urge you all to talk and to the people who defend these men, you are part of the problem.”(*I made these particular words bold).

This is only one example of the bullshit Harvey Weinstein pulled for 30 YEARS. This was an open secret for 30 years and people just let it happen. How worthless must women be seen as in the eyes of so many to allow this monster to abuse his power and assault and rape women who were trying to make it in their chosen industry. The fact that other women were used as a tactic to make Delevingne feel safe in a dangerous situation is horrifying. The use of physical intimidation and threats is classic manipulation. The trying to rationalize and give this man the benefit of the doubt when her boundaries are so clearly being ignored is incredibly sad and upsetting. The only thing I can compare the actual feeling to is when you’re watching a horror film and you get a sense of impending doom in your chest because you know something bad is going to happen. And she knows something bad is going to happen but feels powerless to do anything about it. On the flip side of the misogyny coin is Mike Pence. I’ve seen a lot of people on the Internet try and say that if we lived with the “moral compass” that Pence exhibits then that would solve a lot of these problems. Except it wont because his point of view, just like Weinstein’s, is that women are liars and men just can’t help themselves. Let me make something very clear:

MEN. IF YOU DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU CAN BE NEAR A WOMAN WITHOUT WITNESSES BECAUSE YOU INHERENTLY THINK SOMETHING SEXUAL WILL HAPPEN, YOU ARE A DANGER TO SOCIETY.  

STOP BLAMING WOMEN FOR TRAUMA YOU CAUSE. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

We live in a society where we’ve brought people up to believe that women are irrational and cannot be trusted. Sometimes to the point where women can be so dissociated that they don’t know how to trust themselves. This makes it difficult to feel safe reporting crimes if you already know you’re not going to be believed. That’s partly why when one person comes forward more people flood out in the open. It feels safer when you’re not alone. And Delevingne is right, we do just need to keep naming these people so that hopefully the justice system will begin to change in a way that will actually serve justice.

Trauma at the hands of men is very tricky. I want to name my rapist and abusers, but I’m still stuck in fear. I believe it is a responsibility to name them, I’m just not ready. I still shut down. I’m still traumatized. And that’s just where I am in my healing journey. I’m glad that these conversations are happening more often and I’m hopeful about male allies are beginning to speak up and take women’s stories seriously. We still need to do better. Our country elected a sexual predator to be President of the United States. We have a long way to go.

For another in-depth take on why survivors/victims don’t come forward, Evan Rachel Wood posted this today.

 Katie Louchheim is thoroughly disgusted a majority of the time.

#lgbtq+ #women #endrapeculture