listen… i’m a lesbian and i know full well what oppression based on love is like… but i wish white gay folks wouldn’t act like sexuality is the only reason anyone’s ever felt that
there are people in my family who’ve been disowned because they married someone of a different colour to them… i’m mixed race and the very concept of my existence would’ve been illegal in the us when my parents were born. the supreme court only ruled against discrimination of mixed-race marriages in 1967! that’s barely 50 years ago. homophobia is an awful thing to experience and i know that from first hand experience but i’m begging you to remember that gay people aren’t the only ones being killed for who they love. please remember the struggles faced by Black and brown people when you talk about oppression. please have some solidarity with your nonwhite friends (especially your nonwhite gay friends!) when you talk about dismantling the systems that keep us alone and isolated. please remember the horrible history that is anti-miscegenation laws when you talk about equal marriage rights, because they aren’t just for white gay people.
my professor spent our entire seminar whining about how there’s too many girls in our group and not enough boys. he was like “i’m not saying women can’t be good surgeons but we need more men” no, we don’t. men suck. deal with it.
CRY ALL YOU FUCKING WANT YOUR TEARS DON’T MEAN SHIT TO ME. YOUR TEARS MEAN DICK TO ME JUST SO YOU KNOW
Okay so not to be that person who adds on to a post with their own story but my mom is a doctor and when I was eleven she took me to these all-female seminar led by a woman who was the head of a hospital because my mom is an empowered and independent woman who wanted her daughter to be the same way and so there’s like thirty females surgeons in the room, all sitting around his huge circlular confrenece table and talking about their experiences in becoming surgeons
most of them were like “everyone told me I should become a nurse or a pediatrician” and “people assume that I don’t know what I’m doing” you know, your average sexist bs
one of the women’s last name was starboard (yeah I know great name) and she was talking about how even though now she was one of the most accomplished surgeons at the hospital, the male scrub techs (read: guys who didn’t go to fucking medical school) and some of the male doctors call her starbitch in the OR because they (scrub techs mostly, strangely enough) try to suggest different ways to care for the patient and she always tells them no you didn’t go to med school and I did and so they would go out of their way to get the male doctors to treat the patient differently and then she would have to argue with him to prove what she was doing es right but sometimes the male doctor would come and take over the case anyway and this went on for a while
but then the hospital statistics changed bc this woman was literally being prevented from treating her patients bc the men were interfering and so the administrative head heard about this (she was female) and she was like y’all better stop or y’all better start looking for new jobs and then starboard was allowed to work on her patients and got the scrub techs replaced and all of the sudden, the patients were suddenly doing much better during and after surgery.
when she told this story she was like “people still call me a bitch, and maybe I am because I won’t let them walk all over me, but when you’ve got something to do, when you’ve got a life to save, you have to ignore their bullshit so that you can save someone’s fuckin life. Sexism should never stop you from accomplishing that”
and little eleven-year-old me still remembers that bc I was insecure and awkward and here was this woman who just did what she had to do and ignored all the people trying to stop here and she really was better than all the male doctors (like her patient stats were better) and I thought I should share with you this inspiring woman with the cool last name
If you’re an adult, do the stuff you couldn’t as a kid.
Like, me and my sister went to a museum, and they had an extra exhibit of butterflies. But it cost £3. So we sighed, walked past, then stopped. We each had £3. We could see the butterflies. And we did it was great. We followed it up with an ice-cream as well because Mum and Dad weren’t there to say no.
I was driving back from a work trip with 2 other people in their early 20s, and we drove past a MacDonalds. One of the others went “Aww man, I’d love a McFlurry.” And the guy driving pulled in to the drive through. It was wild. But it was great.
I went to a park over the weekend and I was thinking “Man, I’d love to hire one of those bikes and cycle round the park.” It took me a few minutes to go “Wait, I can hire one of those bikes!”
I guess what I’m saying is, those impulsive things you wanted to do as a kid - see the dinosaur exhibit, play in the fountains with the other kids, lie in the shade for 2 hours - you can do when you’re an adult. You have to deal with a whole lot of other bull, but at least you can indulge your inner 8 year-old.
White supremacists: We need to use symbolism from a time when Europe was pure and white!
Medieval historians: *slowly, threateningly take off glasses* Hold my book.
The fact that I had medievalists and classicists specifically requesting “against white supremacy” patches, and that’s one of my best-selling items second only to the pride animals, pretty much fucking sums that all up.
You do not have to be affectionate all the time to care for someone, in fact, caring can also mean a couple of texts or silence for a few days while you both live your lives happily and separately.
People do not care for you less when they’re busy with their own lives. It’s your reaction to them being their own person - and your ability to make yourself happy - that determines how they feel about you.
Not everyone reciprocates to your actions the same way. If you want someone to acknowledge, be interested in, or treat you a certain way for your efforts, all you have to do is let them know. They will try their personal best to accommodate that within their personal spectrum of feelings.
No one owes you 100% of them, not even after 30 years, because someone having a percentage of themselves is what keeps them sane at the end of the day and that’s okay.
