🪼🦇 Vents - Blog Posts

tw//CSA

same with me. talked about it with my therapist and she told me that its normal because its the way your brain protects you from the trauma you went through

for me, it feels foggy. like a mist is clouding over what happened. the memory, its still there, but it doesnt feel real. as if it was something my brain made up. but i know it wasnt. one of my earliest memories was of it happening to me and it continued on for years. but my brain chose to forget it and whatever i do remember of it is a foggy memory.

tbh im glad my brain chose to forget it. i dont know what kind of person id be if i did. when i was unpacking some of it with my therapist (i didnt like talking about it nor ever brought it up, we only spoke on it if she brought it up) and was going through the legal process to get my abuser charged, i was terrified of everyone and immediately became jumpy and screamed whenever my friends would spook me.

its probably why i even still now have terrible memory even now lmaooo

the SA comic really resonated with me.. i’ve experienced similar. do you feel sick when you look back on the experience, and/or has making such a comic helped you move forward? i hope this isn’t too weird to ask but thank you.... i’m sure lots more people felt seen after you told your story.

To be honest I don't feel much. It feels more like something that happened to someone else. Not one of my memories

my issue with my anxiety is that the way i typically deal with it at home, i cannot do the same thing at work / in public.

its the reason why i want to start anxiety meds but my mom said that i should try looking at other coping mechanisms first before jumping into something that changes my brain chemistry (shes a nurse and shes for finding other ways to deal with issues before taking something that changes your brain chemistry. which i understand and agree with!!)

im just tired of the anxiety tbh i just wanna live a normal life without the constantly shaking, not being able to breathe properly, fear, etc.

the amount of hate i’ve experienced as a tman/tmasc is so shocking especially because a lot came from online queers and even other trans folk.

it disheartened me a lot seeing how trans men are treated online, ESPECIALLY by trans people and queers. we’re often forgotten, fetishized, have femininity forced on us, and are treated like villains for wanting to be / being men. even IN queer communities too!!

ive seen a post here on tumblr where someone was trying to vent in a trans discord server about how trans men are treated and usually ignored and erased and other trans people chimed in, telling him that its his fault because “of course he would be. no one wants to be around a masculine man”.

a trans woman (who used to act on the hate/undermined the hate and discrimination tmen/tmascs go through) once told me on reddit that it often comes from them being uncomfortable with masculinity as a whole so some of them would force it on us then blame us whenever we got upset over the way we’re treated.

i was once even told by a trans medicalist that i wasnt trans because i never experienced dysphoria before and i almost believed them since i didnt know much about trans stuff at the time!! if it werent for the people rightfully calling them out on it and telling me that i could instead have gender euphoria (which i do!!) and if it werent for them i wouldnt have realized that i was trans.

im lucky enough that i dont get much dysphoria or dysmorphia dressing fem still and actually love dressing that way! its just annoying how much its expected of us since we “were women at some point”. we’re fetishized in stereotypically feminine ways (ie: ftm porn often has us bottoming or doing more “fem” roles)

but then again, all this hate towards tmen/tmascs came from twitter and a subreddit thats well known for hating non binary tmen so LMAO dont know what i expected

Can we take a moment to think about the younger trans men and mascs on tumblr right now?

I was a teenager when ace and transmed discourses were at their peaks, and I can’t exaggerate how badly it affected me then.

Now trans men are the latest target, and I’m terrified for trans kids.

It’s easy to say “intracommunity discourse is an online problem! Go talk to queer people irl!”, but people forget that so many kids and teenagers do not have safe or reliable access to IRL LGBT+ communities and support groups. For many, online spaces are the only option.

We need to make sure the younger members of our community are being heard, and block out the hateful voices with messages of support and encouragement. Things are bad enough for trans people right now, and it's easy to forget that trans minors are often the ones suffering the most.

To any younger trans men or transmasculine people reading this:

The hate you are experiencing isn’t normal, it hasn’t always been like this, and it won’t always be this way. It is bleeding out from a small, miserable group of self-absorbed jerks.

Don’t feel obligated to call them out, don’t feel like you have to interact with these people. Please don’t doomscroll through discourse tags; it will make you feel like everyone is out to get you.

If you want to speak up for your community, that’s fine, but please take a break if you feel like your mental health is worsening. Block anybody who so much as breathes rudely in your direction.

You’re just as trans as the rest of us. You are welcome here.

Oh, and if you want to seek out external resources and groups, PFLAG helped me a lot when I was younger. It is an American-based organization, however, so if anyone has recommendations for those living outside of the US, please let me know in the reblogs!

I hate it when I start acting like I don't care about people I love. I care about you, I promise. I really do, and I'm sorry for not showing it. This is something that has been plaguing my mind for a while now. Why am I like this?

I hate seeing my ex be in a happy relationship. I need someone to torture them like they tortured me. They were horrible, and all they get is a good relationship? Fuck them. I hate how they have a good relationship.

I'm gonna kms <3

So, middle school boys are being annoying. They said that one of my classmates (hes ugly asf) likes me, and my friend tells them that I don't swing that way (im gay) AND LATER THAT DAY I FIND OUT THAT APPARENTLY HE SAID HE WOULD BE NON-BINARY FOR ME? These kids are going a lil too far wtf...

Yknow what. Yeah. I'm an attention seeker. So what? I only crave attention because I have abandonment issues. I've been abandoned too much in the past that I constantly try to get even the smallest bit of positive attention so I know the other person cares about me. :3

hello! you doing okay?

🦋 fluttershy

eeehh not really tbh ૮ ߹ ᴖ ߹ ྀིა

A creepy account interacted with a selfie I posted (in a weird way) and that just kind of make my night go down hill :(

how about you though? How are you doin'? :3

Tw! $h mentioned. Block don't report.

The urge to just cvt right now. I feel disgusted in the way I look🥰

vent! Block don't report pls ♡ (it's not anything triggering hopefully, just venting about my ex :] )

I feel like because of my past relationship I don't know how relationships work anymore. Like, they used to love me one day, not gag about me for a month. And whenever I said something about it THEY'RE THE ONE GETTING UPSET? Like, I'm sorry for trying to make sure my partner doesn't fucking cheat on me. We were poly, worst mistake of my life. They had so many partners. They were my only partner. Now I know I shouldn't compare my relationship to a god's relationship, but- it was like fucking Zeus and Hera. MY EX BEING ZEUS. I swear, WORST relationship of my life. Now I'm scared that if I do one thing wrong that my current partner will stop caring about me. All because of my fucking ex.

Don't you love it when people talk badly about you while you're right in the car with them!! People act like I don't exist haha

ANOTHER VENT HAHAHAHHAAH

So I'm about to lose my online dad?? WHY BRO. He's being forced to play a game (I'm assuming by some of our other friends) so he won't be gone tonight, BUT STILL. I'm literally crying what the hell.

tw: vent

Haha don't you just love watching your online friends talk about something, and they mention something about another person that was the way your ex was? (Literally they mentioned how a rp character would be able to go from loving you to hating you, and my ex was in that convo trying to say "OKAY BUT-" ofc SHE'S trying to justify that. She was the same to me.)

Pls don’t feel like that, I know how that feels and I’ve been through it but I just ignore the bad stuff and focus on the good stuff, you are a sweet, kind, nice drawer, nice person I’ve ever known and you are so awesome at it and keep up the good work

Here are some vents I drew when I'm depressed or sad it's because I'm annoying to them to my friends and sometimes they really don't care to talk to me and because I have anxiety and sometimes I could have an anxiety attack it's scary and I'm very emotional when someone scream at me I always get scared I always tell them don't hurt me I didn't do anything I'm sorry I'm sorry.... and other stuff but I'm depressed because I have a big family problem because one of my family members just passed away she was only 69... and she passed today we going to have a very sad Christmas now I'm just depressed because over it because I always call her mom it's because she took care of me when I was little but I'm not going into it because this is very private stuff but I'm..... depressed because of it

Remember the art is by me...

If I feel better Draw Something....

Ocean Worlds Beyond Earth

We’re incredibly lucky to live on a planet drenched in water, nestled in a perfect distance from our sun and wrapped with magnetic fields keeping our atmosphere intact against harsh radiation and space weather.

We know from recent research that life can persist in the cruelest of environments here on Earth, which gives us hope to finding life thriving on other worlds. While we have yet to find life outside of Earth, we are optimistic about the possibilities, especially on other ocean worlds right here in our solar system.  

So…What’s the News?!

Two of our veteran missions are providing tantalizing new details about icy, ocean-bearing moons of Jupiter and Saturn, further enhancing the scientific interest of these and other “ocean worlds” in our solar system and beyond!

Cassini scientists announce that a form of energy for life appears to exist in Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and Hubble researchers report additional evidence of plumes erupting from Jupiter’s moon Europa.

The Two Missions: Cassini and Hubble

Cassini

Our Cassini spacecraft has found that hydrothermal vents in the ocean of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus are producing hydrogen gas, which could potentially provide a chemical energy source for life.

Cassini discovered that this little moon of Saturn was active in 2005. The discovery that Enceladus has jets of gas and icy particles coming out of its south polar region surprised the world. Later we determined that plumes of material are coming from a global ocean under the icy crust, through large cracks known as “tiger stripes.” 

We have more evidence now – this time sampled straight from the plume itself – of hydrothermal activity, and we now know the water is chemically interacting with the rock beneath the ocean and producing the kind of chemistry that could be used by microbes IF they happened to be there.

This is the culmination of 12 years of investigations by Cassini and a capstone finding for the mission. We now know Enceladus has nearly all the ingredients needed for life as we know it.

The Cassini spacecraft made its deepest dive through the plume on Oct. 28, 2015. From previous flybys, Cassini determined that nearly 98% of the gas in the plume is water and the rest is a mixture of other molecules, including carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia. 

Cassini’s other instruments provided evidence of hydrothermal activity in the ocean. What we really wanted to know was…Is there hydrogen being produced that microbes could use to make energy? And that’s exactly what we found!

To be clear…we haven’t discovered microbes at Enceladus, but vents of this type at Earth host these kinds of life. We’re cautiously excited at the prospect that there might be something like this at Enceladus too!

Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope has also been studying another ocean world in our solar system: Europa!

Europa is one of the four major moons of Jupiter, about the size of our own moon but very different in appearance. It’s a cold, icy world with a relatively smooth, bright surface crisscrossed with dark cracks and patches of reddish material.

What makes Europa interesting is that it’s believed to have a global ocean, underneath a thick crust of ice. In fact, it’s got about twice as much ocean as planet Earth!

In 2014, we detected evidence of intermittent water plumes on the surface of Europa, which is interesting because they may provide us with easier access to subsurface liquid water without having to drill through miles of ice.

And now, in 2016, we’ve found one particular plume candidate that appears to be at the same location that it was seen in 2014. 

This is exciting because if we can establish that a particular feature does repeat, then it is much more likely to be real and we can attempt to study and understand the processes that cause it to turn on or off. 

This plume also happens to coincide with an area where Europa is unusually warm as compared to the surrounding terrain. The plume candidates are about 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100 kilometers) in height and are well-positioned for observation, being in a relatively equatorial and well-determined location.

What Does All This Mean and What’s Next?

Hubble and Cassini are inherently different missions, but their complementary scientific discoveries, along with the synergy between our current and planned missions, will help us in finding out whether we are alone in the universe. 

Hubble will continue to observe Europa. If you’re wondering how we might be able to get more information on the Europa plume, the upcoming Europa Clipper mission will be carrying a suite of 9 instruments to investigate whether the mysterious icy moon could harbor conditions favorable for life. Europa Clipper is slated to launch in the 2020s.

This future mission will be able to study the surface of Europa in great detail and assess the habitability of this moon. Whether there’s life there or not is a question for this future mission to discover!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Who should worry most about climate change? 

a) Poor people. They’re the most vulnerable to the harmful effects of climate change, including natural disasters and disease. Some people benefit from practices that exacerbate climate change - if those people were at risk, they’d be actively fighting those practices. My teacher drew a diagram on the board; poor people live in one area and rich people live in the other. If the rich people want to build a big yucky factory, they’ll build it where the poor people live, because they don’t have any money for lawyers. This is the way it’s been all over the world. 

b) People who live by the sea. Rising sea levels, flooding, and storms won’t treat those places will. A lot of property will be damaged, people displaced, and coastal cities could be underwater before the century is out. Boston is my home. I don’t want my people or my family to be uprooted by water. I don’t want the history, art, and architecture of my city to go underwater - it’s too beautiful for that.

Here’s the thing fam-

You have to decide if you want to be one of the best, or the best. 

The fact is, there’s gonna be a lot of people in you’re life who will get the same grades and credit and praise and points, but who aren’t the best people. They can be rude, vapid, inconsiderate, myopic, or just not very nice; plenty of people like that will get the credit you deserve. But they’re not the best - you are. You are a person with a big, beautiful heart. You’re hardworking, talented, conscientious, and kind; it’s people like you who should get the best in life. But you’re the only one who can make that happen. You, for the sake of everyone, need to commit to being one tough cookie: don’t let them get the best of you, get the best of yourself. Be the best version of yourself that you can be. Make sure that you get everything other people get, that you do everything other people do, and more. Don’t cheat yourself.  

And the people I mentioned above? The one’s who don’t hold a candle to you? The goal isn’t to stop them; it’s to not let them stop you.

Prompt 1 February 17&18: Discovery 

I started questioning my sexuality two and half years ago, and for a while I was experimenting with different labels and words to describe myself. Figuring out I was asexual was pretty easy, but my romantic orientation continued to confuse me - sometimes it still does. I knew for certain I fell on the aromantic spectrum when a close friend of mine developed a crush on me, and we started to ‘date’. It became pretty clear to me that there was a problem, and it wasn’t my friend. Two weeks into our relationship, I had to break it off, and I explained all my feelings and discomforts to my friend. Ever since then, I’ve been exploring my aromantic-ness and finding new ways to describe and express it. 

I don’t ever want to date someone, or even kiss them - like a real kiss. I don’t know how I know this for certain, but I do. I never want to say about my relationship with someone “we’re an item. don’t touch us.” Staying single is what works for me. I’m a really affectionate, emotionally open person, but I’ve learned that it’s hard for me to show love for someone without leading them on. I’ve been aware of people developing feelings for me that they think I might reciprocate, but I don’t. It has hurt some friendships and my own way of expressing myself. But I’m just gonna focus on being me, and loving people exactly the way I want to.

So, today’s Valentine’s Day, and I asked myself, what do I want my fellow aromantic kids to know? 

I want them to know that there’s nothing wrong with who they are. They’ve been told that there’s only one way to love, but that’s a lie. So they don’t fit inside a box, a box of flowers and pink hearts and stuffed teddy bears? So what? They’ve got broader feelings in their hearts, feelings that don’t have to be limited, or cookie-cutter perfect, or as recognizable as holding hands. I want them to know that you don’t need to date someone to show them you care. You don’t need to date anyone, in fact: you can just love everyone equally, and that’s OK. We’re told that we need someone to be complete, but here’s a secret: we don’t need other people. We want people, maybe, but we don’t need them. Not in that way.   

I want them to know that their color is green. On the color wheel, green is the opposite of red; red is the color of romance, and we are aromantic.   

I want them to know that they aren’t ‘missing out.’ All forms of love are beautiful, vibrant, exquisite, and kind. They’re kind.   

I’m writing from the heart, guys, from this small green heart that didn’t feel whole until I realized there was nothing wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m just a kid who wants to be me, to be free and love freely. Freely, in colors that aren’t just pink and red and ‘we’re an item’ colored. I want all of you to feel that same love; just shout it from the rooftops. You’re valid. You’re beautiful. I know it’s complicated, I know it’s not all clean edges and perfect form. But we’re gonna be okay. I just know it. We’re gonna be okay. 

Green hearts, everybody. Peace.

What I want in 2019 - a prevention plan for climate change. preferably involving lots of solar panels and immigrant employees. - an end to world hunger. preferably involving sustainable agriculture and lots of international aid. - for everyone to have access to clean water. See my ‘World Water Day’ post for details. 

And hey, @ my classmates - stop using ‘gay’ as an insult. It ain’t cute. 

ooh, y’know what would be even better!? Let’s have everyone stop saying “he or she” or “his or hers” to refer to someone who’s gender we don’t know. Doesn’t matter the context - its unnecessary and cis-normative and hard on the tongue. If you wanna be fancy and impress your friends, try saying “guys, gals, and non-binary pals,” (as coined by Thomas Sanders). Or just use “they”. “They” is fine, guys. 

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

OK. It’s time to get this done.

Hi everyone. It’s been a while. 

I started this blog in September of 2017. I stopped posting in March 2018. Now i’m back, after 9-odd months of figuring stuff out. 

I guess I needed to get myself together, to eliminate some pressure from my life. I’ll say it, last spring was a really rough time for me, and I just couldn’t keep this blog up anymore. I took the summer to recollect myself, and the autumn to enjoy my new life. And it is pretty new - new school, new friends, new schedule. I’m glad to say I’m doing much, much better. 

And during this time, I didn’t think much about this blog and its purpose at all. I was still writing all the time. I was still thinking about the same things I’ve written about here. But last year, the pressure was getting to me - to be clear, pressure I was putting on myself. I wanted to put my all into this blog - and I genuinely enjoyed doing so - but I guess it just became too much.   

This is a long post. It’s written by someone you don’t know and have never met, so you probably won’t spend 10 minutes of your time reading it. I don’t really mind. But I’m writing this for three reasons: to explain myself, to advise you, and to make a super rough draft of a mission statement for this blog. That sounds a little dramatic. But I think it fits the goal here, actually: To explain, to advise, and make some super rough drafts of crap.

If you are reading this, you’re probably one of my much beloved followers. Thank you so much for all your support and (dare I say it) interest. I didn’t forget about you these past nine months, but I also learned not to forget about myself. It takes guts to put yourself out there on the Scary InternetTM, and I’ve learned that if I wanna do it right, I’ve gotta be thinking about my own well-being. I only have to do this if I want to, not for the sake of strangers. No shade - it’s just me being honest. 

And I guess that’s where the advice come in: if you want to put yourself and your work out there, whether that’s here or anywhere else, it shouldn’t be just for others. It has to be for you, too.   

And now for the mission statement part, or a very rough draft of it: the purpose of this blog is to share with you my opinions, ideas, values, and writing. That’s why I do it for me. What I do for you (hopefully) is inform and teach, about issues I care about and that I hope you care about too. Social justice, environmentalism, history, sociocultural issues; sometimes just poems or stories. 

Someone, upon hearing about my blog, told me I was a social critic. I prefer the term ’social observer’. I think that, in a way, that is my responsibility as a writer. It’s also my responsibility as an activist. Your craft, gift, passion, whatever you want to call it should be shared. It deserves to be shared. So have at it. 

There will be more posts coming up in the next few weeks. But for now, thank you, everybody. Happy (almost) New Year!

Small Steps: Household Chores Edition

to produce less trash, don’t use dryer sheets (they don’t really do anything anyway)

scrape plates rather than rinsing them before you put them in the dishwasher - they’re gonna get wet anyway

sweep first, then vacuum what you couldn’t get - it saves electricity

Hey, it’s the little things - home cleaning doesn't have to be as wasteful as it could be. We sometimes think that our tiny daily habits don’t have an effect on anything else, but added up, it’s resulted in where we are today. The things you were taught in kindergarten, about littering and recycling - they wanted you to know that stuff for a reason. Preserving our planet is more important than ever, wether you care about keeping trash out of the oceans or the effects of deforestation.   

It isn’t all money and politics, though the actions of global leaders can do a lot of good - or bad. This is our world, our future, and we have a responsibility to make it a good one. Start small, and work your way up from there. Changing our habits seems daunting, but just keeping these little alternatives in mind will help you remember next time. And for a good cause, why not?

Every man on the radio these days is telling his crush how beautiful she is. He’s crooning “How can you not see how beautiful you are? You capture my attention every time you step in a room, and I would do anything if I could tell you so each day.” His crush, a girl with immense physical attraction, does not know how many are captivated by her, and he takes it upon himself to gush to her about her own gorgeousness. A good sentiment, kind hearted, for how many girls out there are self-conscious about their body, hair, features? Isn’t it every girl’s dream to be noticed by a guy who looks at her as though she is his everything?   

    But what if this girl, being serenaded by every male pop star out there, was aware that she was beautiful? What if you complimented her, and she responded with “Thanks! I thought this dress looked nice too.” Would the man she’s wooed be attracted to her self-assured stride, the way she holds her chin high - or would she seem too arrogant for his ego? Would she be more appealing for her confidence, her knowledge that she is exactly where she’s meant to be, or would he loose interest because the need to shower her with appreciation is gone?   

    These are questions in our society that must be asked. Are men more attracted to weak, unsure women, or determined ones who know the only person they need are themselves? Why? Why does a woman have to conform to men’s standards of how much self-love you can have? The only person a woman needs to keep her happy and strong is herself. She does not need to have you gush through the false speakers of the radio to tell her she is beautiful. She’s not arrogant for knowing she deserves the world, she is not a “bitch” for condescendingly thanking the whistlers on the corner, she is not stuck-up for taking compliments and knowing they have a reason to be said.   

    But a girl at peace with herself is deemed unattractive by a man who wants to be emotionally dominant in a relationship. Because a girl is not supposed to know her own self worth.

I can officially say that my history class is everything I’ve ever wanted in life. For homework last night, we read an article about how hand-written notes enhance learning and help students analyze and remember content, verses the less helpful effects of note taking with a laptop. We split into groups of four and discussed things we noticed, disliked, and were intrigued over from the article, later writing observations on the board. Though I wasn’t able to talk, the whole time I was thinking about my own theories and observations about what technology has done to our generation. 

With the Internet, wifi, and the world of updates, social media, and handy gadgets upon us, today’s citizens are more connected, involved, and consumed with information than ever before. It definitely has it’s benefits - efficiency, safety, and knowledge among them. We can call, text, learn something new with the click of a button, have the world only a few types away. But today, studies are constantly popping up about how what you do on a screen effect you in negative ways. I often think about times before typing and Google existed: a time of writing, book research, correspondence and script, because the only options were pen and paper. And no distractions! How many more blog posts could I have finished during the hours I spent watching YouTube? Were the eras before the present day tech boom smarter and less cluttered? Obviously the world today has it’s beauty and benefits verses time of the past, but sometimes I still wonder.   

My history teacher was going through what we’d written on the board, briefly discussing each before she moved on to ask us: “In three words, tell me how you think our world is going right now?” I straight-up gave a thumbs down sign. Other classmates provided adjectives - “divided, angry, messy”. “Okay, why do you think so?” She called on me, and I said, “I think a big issue today is climate change and global warming in general. It is a very global issue that people aren’t doing enough about, when it comes to who gets what and who does what, and I think our generation is very much at the cusp of this issue. Because, going back to the technology topic, our generation has the most opportunities, but we also have the most responsibility, and that’s a very real thing in regard to this problem.” My teacher responded with a take-apart of what I’d said about “who gets what and who does what” adding on with “and who doesn’t get what.” She agreed with me, concluding with a statement about how humanity has been through rough patches and didn’t think they’d get through it, but they did. Sometimes I just need to hear something that hopeful.   

She went on to show us a slide show of covers from The Economist magazine. All the covers had pictures and titles about one of four countries: Russia, China, Great Britain, and the USA. Specifically, how Russia and China are becoming more powerful and economically prosperous, and how the contrasting Western countries are declining in strength. My history teacher said that everything with history has one bigger theme, a story, if you will. We told her that the story for these images was a rising East and falling West. She explained that for us, as Westerners, it comes as a moral crisis in our eyes, that these countries that don’t share all of our American values are becoming more powerful. How are these governments, without all our liberties of democracy, capitalism, free trade of goods and services, and freedom of speech, rising and supporting their people? Why are we, citizens of the greatest country on Earth, watching our government decline in contrast to more “corrupt” governments? What’s going wrong? 

I really love my history class. I know this didn’t tackle one set issue or topic, but I found these discussions to be very interesting. I hope something in this gives you a different outlook on the world today, sparks a discussion with you and another. Have a nice weekend, everyone.

The Netherlands - 2001 ~ Belgium - 2003 ~ England - 2003 ~ Wales - 2003 - Spain - 2005 ~ Canada - 2005 ~ South Africa - 2006 ~ Norway - 2008 ~ Sweden - 2009 ~ Iceland - 2010 ~ Argentina - 2010 ~ Portugal - 2010 ~ Denmark - 2012 ~ New Zealand - 2013 ~ Brazil - 2013 ~ France - 2013 ~ Uruguay - 2013 ~ Luxembourg - 2014 ~ Scotland - 2014 ~ Greenland - 2015 Finland - 2015 ~ Ireland - 2015 ~ USA - 2015 ~ Colombia - 2016 ~ Germany - 2017 ~ Malta - 2017 

A recap of which countries have legalized same-sex marriage and when. Did some of these nations surprise you in their decision? Maybe you were thinking of some of these countries as more culturally conservative - sometimes, for better or worse, politicians misrepresent their people’s real wants or interests. I know that’s true, such as the misrepresentation of Americans by our new administration - but I told myself I wouldn’t get political. 

Same-sex sexual contact is illegal in 74 countries, and many others still contain stigmas against the LGBT+ community. While progress is always being made, certain examples of homophobia divide us even more. The murders, tortures, and outings of gay men in Chechnya have continued. On October 4, the United States sided with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, and other countries to vote against the United Nations act to ban the death penalty for homosexuality. In Egypt, on September 26, a group of young concert-goers held up a rainbow flag to represent homosexuality. They were later charged with “public indecency” and “contempt for religion”, among other things. 

  People, these hateful and homophobic actions must stop. Homosexuality is not, and must never be, something that is scorned or punished in such brutal and horrendous ways. Stories like these are all over the news these days, and it is absolutely our job to discuss them and their causes. October is LGBT+ History Month, and as compassionate, conscientious members of society, we have to stay aware not only of dates and places, but of what the community has to say about itself and it’s members. 

  We love. We are literally being imprisoned and murdered for loving people. How dare this glorious world call itself all that it is, when such hate and ignorance are filling my feed? What must we do so our children will feel that much more comfortable to love the people they do? 

  Educate yourself. Speak up for others. Stop the hate.

Metro Last Light: the vents before Revolution level

the grief of loving too much is heavy but it is better than the regret of not trying at all