Latest Posts by crunchywater17 - Page 5
You are still you, even when you’re going through a difficult time. Even when other people have expectations that they think your aren’t meeting. You are allowed to have struggles. You are allowed to make mistakes. The you that has struggles and the you that makes mistakes IS the real you.
We need representation
We need representation so kid's eyes aren’t covered by parents who sense danger in two men holding hands
We need representation so women can kiss and not feel ashamed or sexualized
We need representation so bi and pan and omni and anyone with a heart so big it can’t love just one gender isn’t told to choose
We need representation so the people with multiple partners aren’t condemned for cheating
We need representation so kids don’t run up to people asking if they're a boy or a girl when in reality they are neither
We need representation so trans kids don’t grow up feeling dysphoric without the words to express themselves
We need representation so aro and ace kids don’t grow up thinking something in them is broken
Literally the witch in Hansel and Gretel cared more about kids.
At least she was feeding them.
McAuleyATL: Finland ended homelessness. They provide a small apartment and counselling woth no preconditions. 4/5 make their way back into a stable life and guess what - it was CHEAPER than allowing homelessness to continue…
The Original FattyAtomicMutant.: Let that sink in.
They ended. homelessness m.
They saw a problem that needed solving and just.
Poof.
Ended it.
Period
There is not one Republican politician or Republican policy or Republican talking point that actually helps children.
Not monetarily, not philosophically.
Just the opposite. Their goal is systemic suffering. The child. The mother. The family.
Since pride month is literally right around the corner, DO NOT be fooled by companies that change their logos to rainbow when their money speaks for themselves. Image ID below “keep reading” line. Source of said financial information is “florida campaign finance”
Keep reading
Christians, or far-right zealots?
Jewish law explicitly allows for abortion when the health of the mother is at risk, and in many other cases. In some cases abortion is recommended or required by halakha. Prohibiting them by law infringes on Jewish religious freedom. Not to mention it’s unsafe.
"Never Again"
Pro-choice chalk graffiti seen outside the US Supreme Court during a protest against the court's decision to overturn the legal protections for abortion access.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again.
If you want Roe v Wade overturned, but don’t support:
Comprehensive sexual education in schools
Easy and affordable access to contraception
Access to adequate and affordable prenatal care
Paid parental leave
Subsidized childcare
CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program)
WIC,
Then you don’t actually care about reducing abortions or protecting children. You just want to punish people with uteruses for having sex.
Heartstopper is different because it takes pleasure seriously
Since I watched Heartstopper, I've been trying to figure out what about it made it feel so different from other stories similar to it. When you just describe the plot of it, it sounds like something straight (har har) out of Glee or Sex Education or Elite or SKAM or Skins or Degrassi, or...you get my point.
But it felt so different to me, and I realized yesterday what it was. Hearstopper takes the pleasures of queer romance and eroticism as seriously as it takes the pains of it. By which I mean, it gives an incredible amount of screen time to the excitement of it, the thrill of it, the visceral good feelings of it. Pleasure drives Heartstopper, in a way that is still incredibly unusual in mainstream queer media.
In most other stories like this, the pain and the angst and the ambivalence and the negative social ramifications of the premise take up like 90-95% of the screen time. The pleasure aspect typically exists as minimally as possible to catalyze all the negative or difficult parts that are the 'real' story. And while Heartstopper doesn't shy away from those things, it gives a roughly equal amount of narrative and screen time to the two leads getting a lot of pleasure out of their relationship, too. The amount of time the show invests in showing Nick and Charlie enjoying each other romantically -- throughout the story, not just at the very end -- is just absolutely decadent (and I mean that 100% positively).
The first kiss is a perfect example. In any other TV version of this story, the boys would have kissed that first time for less than 2 seconds, and then IMMEDIATELY been interrupted by the other boys. Instead, Heartstopper lets them kiss once, take a breath, and then have a second, very extended kiss enhanced by animated embellishments designed to emphasize just how incredibly enjoyable this is for them...before finally disrupting it again with Plot™.
And the amazing thing is, from a pure narrative standpoint, you don't need the second kiss. It's completely unnecessary to the plot. You could completely eliminate it and the plot would hold together exactly the same. The second kiss is there exclusively to emphasize the intense pleasure of this experience for them. That's all it does.
Heartstopper is serious about foregrounding pleasure, and how important pleasure is in all of this. Which frankly, is a thing you usually only ever see in romance novels and fanfic.
***
One of the reasons I was hesitant to watch this show initially is because I have limited tolerance for coming out stories that are so focused on the unappealing parts of the experience. It's not that those things don't MATTER. But there is such a cultural allergy to making the pleasures of the experience a serious focus, particularly (yes I'm going to say it) the sexual pleasures of it.
Hearstopper, blissfully, refuses to shy away from pleasure, and from making it important.
It's not just that my tolerance for queer pain in media is limited (although admittedly that's true). I also grow so weary of popular culture treating queerness as mostly a political identity upon which we simply moralize about tolerance, and engage in self congratulatory yarns about ~being yourself~ and loving yourself. It's not that I think any of those things is BAD. But a) I've seen that story many times before and b) there's an ENORMOUS piece of this experience that we're still mostly skirting around the edges of because we're still very chickenshit about it, to be perfectly frank.
We, as a culture, are still scared as fuck to really say, very bluntly: queerness feels fucking good.
In the midst of this, Heartstopper does something wondrous. It says to the audience, in no uncertain terms: Queerness feels fucking good...so, let's spend some time actually talking about THAT for a while.
Don’t let your insecurities deny people their agency to choose. Even if you think you don’t deserve it, or you don’t understand why, let people decide to love you, to decide to look after you, to decide to help you.
Just a reminder that we aren't gatekeeping Pride.
I know it's only April, but I just saw such a rancid take on Tiktok (and the person blocked me, woo!) That I need to vent somewhere.
The argument went "bi/pan/queer people with cishet partners shouldn't bring those partners into queer spaces/Pride because it makes those spaces unsafe for lgbt folks."
Which is a frankly awful take for many reasons.
First of all "makes a space unsafe" is not an identity. It is a behavior. And ANYONE who is making those spaces unsafe, regardless of their identity, *shouldn't be there.* Whether they are a cishet man or a lesbian, if you are making people unsafe, you shouldn't be there.
Secondly, it's blatantly unenforceable. You can't clock someone's identity at the door. You don't know if they are bi or trans or nonbinary. And no one should have to out themselves to a bouncer.
As a caveat to this, you also don't ever know *why* someone might bring their cishet partner to pride. Whether that's because this is an important part of their life they want to share with their partner, or they are disabled and need help managing their meds or mobility aides, or the partner is a designated driver. You just don't know. So even if you did know they were cishet, maybe they have a "good reason" for being there.
So between it not solving an actual problem to not being enforceable, all this discourse does is create an EXTREMELY hostile environment for, well, bi/pan/queer folks especially. Always. We always get targeted for this kind of stuff.
But also anyone who might worry that *they* aren't queer enough or not look queer enough. Trans folks who haven't socially transitioned, non-binary folks who aren't androgynous enough, ace and aro folks, people who are newly out- they see this rhetoric and think "Oh no. What is someone sees me and thinks I'm cishet? What if someone tells me I can't be there? What if I don't really belong?"
So we aren't doing it. It's shitty snd hostile and biphobic and exclusionary.
Everyone can come to pride.
Except cops.
Fuck cops.
[Image Description: A screenshot of a tweet from Alice Oseman's Twitter. It reads: if we get a season 2 of Heartstopper, I have (all caps) plans. Big asexual plans. End Image Description]
Hi let's talk about this
“Nondisabled people using amenities originally designed for disabled people does nothing but improve our lives”
do men have resting bitch faces as well or do they not have negative characteristics ascribed to them for putting on a neutral rather than a deliriously happy facial expression
Hey yall, I wanted to make a PSA about this because it'll be useful to many of you in the United States. You might qualify for public assistance now, specifically because of rising food prices.
The federal poverty line, the biggest determining factor for public assistance, has been kept artificially low for decades because it was based on the outdated assumption that food was the primary expense for most American households. For decades now, shelter has been the larger expense, but the federal poverty limit has still been determined based on the prices of food commodities.
Because food prices have recently gone up, the federal poverty line has gone up significantly as well. This means if you were previously slightly over the income limit to qualify for public assistance such as food stamps or medicaid, you likely qualify now. I'd like to encourage everyone who thinks they might qualify to apply for these programs. The qualification cutoffs are still absurdly low, so please be assured that if you qualify for assistance, you're not taking something you don't need or deserve.
Please reblog this if you think your followers will find it useful. I haven't seen anyone talking about this, it's just something I noticed recently, so I want the info to become more public to help people who might be struggling.
remember that asexuality is a spectrum and international asexuality day celebrates everyone on that spectrum <3
Happy International Asexuality Day!
i’m sorry to say this, but bad things are going to happen. it is pretty unavoidable. but when bad things do happen, you can have a support system in place and you can trust that you will be okay. it does not have to be the end of the world even though it may feel like it right now.
Speaks for itself
Source: insta
i learned that each woman spends approximately $5,600 on her period over her lifetime (x)
Chills. I can't imagine my own high school showing up like this less than a decade ago to protest disgusting legislation like Florida's Don't Say Gay bill. The support Gen Z shows for the LGBTQ community is breathtaking.
The fight goes on. Keep it up.