"You'll Grow Out Of Being Sensitive."

"oh you have an allergy? sorry I harassed you for being a picky eater, I didn't realize you had a valid reason. it's good to know you're not actually a picky eater, I still get to harass those people"

"oh you have chronic pain? sorry I harassed you for being lazy, I didn't realize you had a valid reason. it's good to know you're not actually a lazy person, I still get to harass those people"

"oh you're autistic? sorry I harassed you for being weird, I didn't realize you had a valid reason. it's good to know you're not actually a weird person, I still get to harass those people"

"oh you're deaf? sorry I harassed you for ignoring me, I didn't realize you had a valid reason. you're just not actually a rude person, I still get to harass those people"

"man why does everything have to be a disorder now? I miss the old days when people would TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for being failures and it was socially exceptable for me to harass them, now I look like a jerk when I bully people for annoying me."

I feel like my brain is just broken beyond repair.

Nobody knows what wrong with it. All we know is that something is wrong.

Whatever it is is irreparable. All I can do is learn to live with it, but I don't want to. It's not fair.

How is bnha anime of the decade...... they aren’t even anime of the hour of the minute of the second

People keep telling me my job is supposedly easy, but it's not to me. It's so hard every damn day. and I feel guilty because I'm making more money than plenty of people who have it way worse, but I've gotten so depressed. I don't feel like it's worth it most of the time. I'm off 2 days a week, the building has air conditioning, and we get an hour for lunch, which is more than most people, but I'm still so upset all the time. And being so guilty about it is even worse.

Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won’t radicalize you into a hate group

It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that’s generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.

Unfortunately, these “self-sufficiency” skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the “good old days,” a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.

In the spirit of building safe communities, here’s a complete list of the safe resources I’ve found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.

Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:

Making It by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen [book] (The big crunchy household DIY book; includes every level of self-sufficiency from making your own toothpaste and laundry soap to setting up raised beds to butchering a chicken. Authors are explicitly left-leaning.)

Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by Mercury Stardust [book] (A guide to simple home repair tasks, written with rentals in mind; very compassionate and accessible language.)

How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis [book] (The book about cleaning and housework for people who get overwhelmed by cleaning and housework, based on the premise that messiness is not a moral failing; disability and neurodivergence friendly; genuinely changed how I approach cleaning tasks.)

Gardening

Rebel Gardening by Alessandro Vitale [book] (Really great introduction to urban gardening; explicitly discusses renter-friendly garden designs in small spaces; lots of DIY solutions using recycled materials; note that the author lives in England, so check if plants are invasive in your area before putting them in the ground.)

Country/Rural Living:

Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler [book] (Memoir of a lesbian who lives and works on a rural farm in Maine with her wife; does a good job of showing what it’s like to be queer in a rural space; CW for mentions of domestic violence, infidelity/cheating, and internalized homophobia)

“Debunking the Off-Grid Fantasy” by Maggie Mae Fish [video essay] (Deconstructs the off-grid lifestyle and the myth of self-reliance)

Sewing/Mending:

Annika Victoria [YouTube channel] (No longer active, but their videos are still a great resource for anyone learning to sew; check out the beginner project playlist to start. This is where I learned a lot of what I know about sewing.)

Make, Sew, and Mend by Bernadette Banner [book] (A very thorough written introduction to hand-sewing, written by a clothing historian; lots of fun garment history facts; explicitly inclusive of BIPOC, queer, and trans sewists.)

Sustainability/Land Stewardship

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer [book] (Most of you have probably already read this one or had it recommended to you, but it really is that good; excellent example of how traditional animist beliefs – in this case, indigenous American beliefs – can exist in healthy symbiosis with science; more philosophy than how-to, but a great foundational resource.)

Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer [book] (This one is for my fellow witches; one of my favorite witchcraft books, and an excellent example of a place-based practice deeply rooted in the land.)

Avoiding the “Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline”

Note: the “crunchy to alt-right pipeline” is a term used to describe how white supremacists and other far right groups use “crunchy” spaces (i.e., spaces dedicated to farming, homemaking, alternative medicine, simple living/slow living, etc.) to recruit and indoctrinate people into their movements. Knowing how this recruitment works can help you recognize it when you do encounter it and avoid being influenced by it.

“The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline” by Kathleen Belew [magazine article] (Good, short introduction to this issue and its history.)

Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby (I feel like I need to give a content warning: this book contains explicit descriptions of racism, white supremacy, and Neo Nazis, and it’s a very difficult read, but it really is a great, in-depth breakdown of the role women play in the alt-right; also explicitly addresses the crunchy to alt-right pipeline.)

These are just the resources I’ve personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!

Reblog to open a rail line from your blog to the person you reblogged this from

Is spinning an autistic thing? Like I used to just spin until I was ready to fall over, then I would sit down until I regained my balance and then spin some more.... For fun. No other reason than because I thought it was fun.

Family, teachers, friends of my parents, parents of my friends, doctors. ..

I was not secretive about any of what I was going through. I'd been told that if anyone ever hurt me to tell an adult and I did that every single time. I would find an adult I thought could be safe, I'd tell them my experience and I'd wait for it to get better. It never did.

It sucks for some big media thing to incidentally have an idea you also had, but never posted anywhere.

Because now if you do anything with it people will go "omg this is like [blank] ! I can see you were inspired by it !"

And I'll say "no actually" and they'll be like whatever, but in the back of their mind they'll think I'm lying.

I guess the positive thing is that the whole time I thought maybe it was stupid, but actually it seems like everyone liked it and thought it was cool. In a way you made something people clearly enjoyed.

Happy aniversary you dumb fucks @staff