Male and female lined seahorse mated pair interacting
Seahorses are really interesting for a wide variety of reasons, but not least because they can be seen doing things like this. Mated pairs will rest next to each other, wrap tails around each other, sway together, and bump gently into each other. It looks almost tender, and it’s definitely not an attempt at mating. Really, it looks like affection.
Let’s think of it this way; the layman separates hair color into three simple categories … blond, redhead, and brunette.
People define their attraction by these three colors. “I’m prone to blondes”. “I love me a redhead.” “Tall, dark, and handsome.” There’s elitism surrounding colored hair, as opposed to natural-born pigment. There’s stereotypes of our entire physical makeup based off of our hair color; and our personalities, too. Some people’s hair even change as they get older, and this prompts a switch in these societal identities.
But of course we realize that there’s more than three hair colors. People of color, for example, often have a hair color that can’t be described as ‘brunette’ – especially black and asian people. Therefore, we have our own words to describe our hair, with all the political backlash it implies ….. much like the use of the word queer, and its history amongst crowds of anti-police-brutality of Stonewall and beyond, which very much targeted lgbt+ multicultural people of color.
And amongst hair enthusiasts, discussions surrounding hair are much more specific and varied; you define your hair by its texture, its shape, its moisture level, its length, its history, and beyond. At the salon, you’re gonna describe your hair as “color-treated, shoulder length, prone to dryness” as opposed to a simple brunette. At Sephora, the clerk helps you find makeup based off of the palette of your “neutral rose-gold blond” hair, and you purchase a shampoo specifically for “ringlet curls”, as opposed to one for “beach waves”.
These specific details are very relevant. Perhaps some times more than others, but within the ‘hair’ community, these multiple identities are useful for describing a more accurate description of your hair. Your body.
And then, someone points out the fact that they’re bald. They don’t have any hair. And the people who have defined themselves as ‘hair colors’ get very confused, even agitated. For others, they simply switch their moniker from hair colors to hair styles. And they discover that its much more inclusive and accurate.
So you get used to all these specific terms. I stop pushing myself into a ‘brunette’ box and describe myself as a ‘warm black, Asian coarse, color and chemical treated, 36-cm length”. It’s what I am, after all.
Cue blond Chris coming in to claim that I’m brunette, because that’s what matters to our oppressors. The length, texture, and history are just verbal modifiers for what’s underneath my …. hat. “You’re just suffering from internalized brunettephobia, trying to avoid the trauma”.
It’s infuriating to me. I finally found words that describe what I am. And I use them, because they’re relevant to my life. There’s no justifiable reason to police the use of terms that truly reflect who you are, that have no ill intent.
There is a specific and terrifying difference between “never were” monsters and “are not anymore” monsters
“The thing that was not a deer” implies a creature which mimics a deer but imperfectly and the details which are wrong are what makes it terrifying
“The thing that was not a deer anymore” on the other hand implies a thing that USED to be a deer before it was somehow mutated, possessed, parasitically controlled or reanimated improperly and what makes THAT terrifying is the details that are still right and recognizable poking out of all the wrong and horrible malformations.
hey I totally fucked up and forgot the 3rd type, which is “Is Not Anymore And Maybe Never Was” monsters
“The thing which was no longer a deer and maybe never was” implies a creature that, at first glance, completely appears to be a deer, but over time degrades very slowly until you realize (probably too late) that it is not a deer anymore, and had you seen it in this state first, you wouldn’t have recognized it as a deer at all, and there’s a decent chance that it was never actually a deer to begin with but only a very good mimic, and what makes this one scary is the slow change from everything being right to everything being wrong, happening slowly enough that you don’t even notice it until its too late, as well as the fact that something now so clearly not a deer could have fooled you to begin with.
And the fourth type, which is, “I dunno, but it sure ain’t a deer.” Which implies complete confusion about what the creature could be, to the point that even a person as comfortable in this world as someone who would use the word ain’t unironically is uncertain, which should horrify you to the deepest depths of your soul.
one that i particularly enjoyed was the ‘nonesuch’, a beast which when you see it your brain convinces you ‘nope, no way that shit is real’. on some level it becomes less real after having been seen by someone who disbelieves its existence as well
May I propose the additional type of “that’s definitely a deer but deer are much more fucked up than previous realized”, because turning the corner on a trail and having half a dozen deer suddenly turn and look up from eating Thier companion’s remains is a special kind of spooky.
Not necessarily. Gay men are sexually attracted to other men. You don’t need to be sexually attracted to someone to have and enjoy sex with them. Friction is friction, your junk doesn’t know the difference.
I’d guess that the above is a result of the horribly pervasive idea that all physical contact between adults is inherently sexual. Men who are basically touch-starved, looking for contact from other men, and thinking that it has to be sexual contact. There may not actually be any sexual attraction.
even if the fraud was like 5% it wouldn’t compare to rich people cheating the system by trillions lmao
Also, SNAP “fraud” is like exchanging some of your stamps for cash to buy necessities you can’t buy with stamps, like soap or deodorant or tampons
TBH even if one hundred percent of people on food stamps were committing food stamp fraud I’d still be in favor of keeping the program around
Hey I wanna talk about this.
I work at a drug addiction counseling center. A ton of my clients have, at one time or another, sold their food stamps. This is basically exactly what the GOP is afraid of, right? Drug addicts selling their food stamps.
I have learned, now, to ask them WHY they sold their food stamps. Here is an incomplete list of the answers:
– I need tampons, and you can’t buy them with foodstamps
– See above RE: toilet paper
– I was living in a hotel with no kitchen then. I had to buy pre-prepared food
– The homeless shelter won’t let me keep food in my locker or room, so I have to buy pre-prepared food (Yes, really)
– I had to make rent
– My sister had to make rent
– My son had to make rent
– I needed co-pays to get my medication or I’ll die
– I needed co-pays to get my medication or I’ll loose control of my mental health
But the absolute most common form of food stamp fraud I see? Giving away food stamps to other family members who get no food stamps or insufficient food stamps to feed their families. I see that every month. People glassy eyed and hungry because they gave away their food to their adult kids, their grand kids, cousins, siblings etc.
So, is food stamp fraud rampant? In some places, yes. And I’m not about to chastise people for it.
She jumps in and out of the puppy pen all day on her own. She is a cat – if she didn’t like it, she wouldn’t choose to do it 🙂
she’s not showing any signs of distress; she doesn’t shut down, freeze, hiss, or swat. She struts through the sea of zois with a confident high tail and grace
Good cat is good and nuzzling into the puppy smothering
@why-animals-do-the-thing I don’t think I’ve ever met a cat who would put up with this, let alone seem to enjoy it. Pretty cool. The pups seem to love her, too, it’s adorable.
nah I think we should really stop glorifying cigarettes
you sound boring.
You sound like you’ve never had the scent of cigarette smoke ingrained in your clothes to the point where people in middle school thought you smoked at eleven because your parents couldn’t be bothered to go outside. You sound like you’ve never had your mother flick cigarette ashes out of the car window and have them fly into your face. You sound like you’ve never been kept up at night by the sound of your dad hacking up a lung because he has to get up for his midnight smoke. You sound like you’ve never had to run into a convenience store to get your mother cigarettes as soon as you turned eighteen and cringed at touching the box because you know they’re not only killers but government sanctioned killers because they can not only tax the shit out of them but ensure people buy more at the cost of young lungs and a once beautiful home now plagued with the smell of smoke and ash. You sound like you’ve never had a great grandmother who stopped smoking 30 years before her death who still got lung cancer and subsequently died. You sound like a Fucking ignoramus. Smoking isn’t Fucking cool, it isn’t fun to glorify, it’s disgusting and makes not only you but your children smell bad. Makes not only you but your children cough, get cancer, get sick.
You sound like a Fucking moron. Smoking isn’t cool. Grow the Fuck up.
No, you grow the fuck up. There’s mountains of constant judgment when it comes to smoking. How about you leave people alone and let them do what they want with their bodies.
There is a REASON. It’s not just their bodies they’re fucking. It’s never just their bodies with something fucking airborne. Especially when you have CHILDREN AND PETS.
My grandfather smoked in his house decades ago. We moved in. We started working on it. After just one day of having the AC off so it could be worked on, I could no longer stay in the house because the smell was coming out of the walls <I>so strongly</I> and triggering my asthma to the point where I couldn’t breathe. My grandfather is dead and his smoking still managed to effect me that negativity. It is not just their body.
My aunt took up smoking in secret as a coping method for her depression. My cousin found out and she was so scared for her mom’s health that she hid the cigarettes. But when my aunt noticed they were missing, do you think she had a calm conversation about the whole thing with my cousin? Nope. She stormed into her room in such a rage, my cousin was too scared to even argue. She just gave the cigarettes back and prayed for her mom to leave the room. There was no explanation for why she took up smoking, for why she was trying to hide it, no reassurance for her worried daughter, not even a question as to why my cousin took them… there was just addiction-fueled anger. Directed at a child who had no control over her environment.
And then there’s my own mother, who has never taken up smoking, but who grew up with two chain-smoking parents. My mom who has permanent lung and throat damage from a lifetime of breathing in smoke that she didn’t ask for. My mom who now takes daily medication so her throat doesn’t ache.
But, tell me again how smoking only affects your body?
I grew up breathing not only my step-dad’s cigarette smoke, but all his friends as they’d frequently hang out in the living room together creating a cloud of smoke that permeated the whole house.
I got asthma at 10.
I found a growth in my left lung at 30.
I now have 1 lung. 1 lung and I’m still asthmatic.
Fuck people who smoke around children.
If you can’t agree with this, then fucking unfollow the shit out of me. Too many people in my family have died. My grandfather lost his wife to Lung Cancer. He still smokes though. And my dad who stopped cold turkey when my oldest brother was born and went through hell to make sure his first kid wouldn’t have to also. But did it help? No. Because his mom didn’t care that she had a newborn inhaling her goddamned secondhand smoke. Don’t you dare say it only affects the smoker. Don’t you dare.
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