Please Understand That Not Every Marginalized Person Is Going To Have A List Of Peer Reviewed Sources

just rewatched the season 1 of winx and HOLY FUCK. that was intense.

last time i watched it, i was probably like 7 years old and i couldn't comprehend the dark and serious parts of the story. i was mostly focused on sparkly magic and outfits.

genuinely, this show feels way more enjoyable now that i'm adult. and it actually makes me sad how much everything went downhill.

season 4 wasn't as good as first 3 seasons. but season 5 and so on...even at the age of 10 i knew the quality has drastically dropped.

it sucks...the amount of potential this story had.

cries its so beautiful

Do not really know what to say. A year ago we were making posts about how Gaza was being bombed through Christmas- how the oldest Christian community was being bombed- how the birth place of Jesus was being destroyed and his people murdered. A year later, it is going to be Christmas again soon, and the bombings have not stopped. But the news, and the attention seems to have died down considerably. It feels terrible and scary.

Hello! I'm going to be running some lessons on queer stuff in my highschools Queer Student Union, and I plan on doing one or two days dedicated to us intersex people. What core concepts do you think i should I teach someone who has never even heard of intersex people before?

Oh excellent! I have a lot of recommendations, so this is going to be a long one.

What is intersex, and what it isn't - We are people whose natural sex characteristics fall outside of what is typically male or female. Here is a list of intersex conditions/variations you can use as examples.

Being intersex is not the same as being transgender or nonbinary, and is a separate category from gender identity; you do not transition into being intersex. Intersex is not a third sex, but rather an 'other' category, for those whose natural development does not fit typical ideas of male or female bodies.

Not all intersex people identify as LGBTQIA+, which should be respected, just as it should be respected that intersexuality is a valid and included reason someone can consider themselves part of the community. Intersex people are included in pride.

We are not disordered for our intersex traits, intersexuality is a natural occurrence in any population with males and females. Some intersex variations do come with associated health conditions, but it is not the intersex part of the variation that is the health condition, and not everyone with intersex traits has health complications. I would recommend this page We are More Than a Disorder, and this statement on DSD terminology from InterACT, one of the most prominent intersex advocacy groups.

It is not in our best interest to forcefully sort us into the male & female sex binary. Intersex people can be any gender and may consider their sex to be male or female (this may or may not be in addition to being intersex. Many of us consider ourselves to be intersex males or intersex females, and some of us consider ourselves to just be intersex) It is wrong to say phrases such as 'all intersex people are male or female', or 'intersex variations are sex specific'. Sorting us into this binary comes with the caveat that we are 'wrong' males or 'wrong' females, rather than normal, fully formed, intersex human beings. This is the basis of the oppression we face.

Be sure to note that no intersex people, including those with genital variations, have both reproductive organs, we are not H-words (good time to add that this word is outdated/derogatory and I considered a slur). A hermaphrodite can only come from a hermaphroditic species, such as snails and worms. The use of the term hermaphrodite itself should be discouraged, even in context of animals. A term like monoecious is much better. The term hermaphrodite and pseudohermaphrodite used to be medical terms for us, and was commonly used in the early days of intersex activism, such as here. An intersex person may reclaim this word, but it is inappropriate and wrong to refer to an intersex person this way.

Intersex variations are not rare. We make up over 2% of the population (there is no accurate statistic because of a number of factors, intersex variations are extremely underreported, or erased from medical records). We are a widely invisible group who has been purposely erased with medical violence for decades. We are considered "rare" because of 'corrective' and 'normalizing' treatments. Intersex healthcare as it currently stands is more concerned with making us 'look normal' rather than making sure we are healthy. I would recommend reading @dabwax's paper Medicalizing Sex: The Erasure of Sexual Diversity, and this TED Talk by Georgiann Davis. include what you will from that in your lesson. Don't skimp out on the medical erasure part, it is very very very important for anyone learning about intersex people to be aware of just how far behind our movement for bodily autonomy is.

These medical interventions are not a thing of the past, and happen in all of the grey shaded countries on this map. Not only do they happen, they are often considered proper medical protocol.

I hope this is helpful! Good luck!

If any others want to add on, please feel free!

im down when do we start

I need a ballet class with just disabled and chronically ill dancers so I can get back into dance without being yelled at for my limited range of movement

yes omgosh im having such a hard time finding brightly coloured wool yarnnnn

i just want natural fibre thats colourful pleaseeee

wish be knit with cool yarn rn

BFL & targee & cormo & rambouillet & —

Idk who needs to hear this, but “it could always be worse” is a genuinely harmful mindset. And that applies to multiple situations whether it be mental health or physical health. Yes it could be worse, but it could also be significantly better. You deserve to reach out for help before you drown in your issues. No matter if someone drowns in 4 feet of water or 20, they are still just as dead.

hey all, originally this post used the term “deformed” and some people who were born with illnesses that have caused them to look different have asked me and other people to not use that word unless they have an illness that causes such. completely valid so i changed it.

i was not born with an illness that did that, however i have many medical issues that have lead to my body looking different to those around me. i do not know whether that makes me “valid” in using that term and i dont feel comfortable sharing my medical history to try and “prove” as such. so i will no longer be using that term online.

i also want to point out the OR in the first sentence of this post. i am bringing up two different occurrences here, and expanding on the disabled one.

love and kindness i am not offended by any of this 🩷

being unattractive or physically different/disabled DOES NOT equal being morally bad/evil. there is an atrocious amount of ableism that occurs when someone doesn’t look “normal.” and i am so fucking sick of it.

in media it is (almost) always the villains who are different/disabled. and media is a massive part of how people form their world views.

i want to mention arcane for example, because people seem to be confused about what good representation is. people praise the hell out of that show, and for good reason it has great things about it, but people told me it had good disabled representation. so i watched it. and while parts of the disabled representation is good.. almost all physically different/disabled characters are portrayed as bad/evil/villains at some point in their story (or all of it.) and then by the end of the show most of them are dead.

abled people i need you to understand that is not good representation. please look out for these tropes it happens ALL the time.

good representation includes different/disabled characters who are heroes and morally “good” too.

if you make all your villains physically different and none of them are heroes i hate you. i am so sick of this.

oh my god i had no idea these were a thing maybe i could bake again 😭😭😭

If you're ambulatory and struggle standing to cook, consider a "perching stool" for the kitchen. They're made to make cooking safer and easier for disabled people and there's a lot of different kinds. I wish I had known about these when I could still stand.