tfw you’re bothering a cat but not enough for it to MOVE so it just looks Disapprovingly at you
I would just like to point out. The ears are pointing forward. The cat’s sprawling out more as the bowl is shimmied as opposed to getting up to try and get out. That expression is hardly what i’d call disappointment.
It’s actually enjoying being gently jostled! Can’t explain why, though. Could be the soothing jiggling motions, like how we sit in a vibrating massage chair sometimes. Or maybe it just sees this as an amusement part ride of sorts. Whatever it is, i can tell the cat is very relaxed and trusting of the person holding it in the bowl. I rate this VERY cute!
I think most importantly, it would give us the leverage to say “no”. To walk away from bad jobs and abusive managers. To refuse to work in unsafe environments. To demand better pay.
To demand better, because the options are no longer “suck it up” or “die”.
and that’s why there’s so much resistance to implementing it - capitalism wants workers who don’t have a choice
[ID: A tweet by _aceinthehole that reads: “yes universal basic income would allow us to survive between jobs but it would also allow us to grieve, after loss, to move, to care for others, to have children, to create art, to start new businesses, to be ill, to be disabled, to rest, to rest, to rest”]
Freedom to get the fuck out of abusive situations, god DAMMIT. So many people are trapped.
I don't really feel comfortable talking about it because then I'd look like a "cis woman trying to insert herself into conversation she doesn't belong", but when I occasionally see those "experimenting with gender is important for cis people as well, because cis people who fuck around with gender and find out they're still cis will now be more comfortable in their genders" posts, I'm like "haha I do that"
I used to have a brief period where I was questioning whether I'm really a cis woman or no (spoiler: I am. I've contemplated and tried out both, but neither trans man/transmasc nor the nonbinary umbrella fits me)
And when I see testimonies from cis men, who are like "seeing all these trans people talk about gender made me feel more comfortable and confident in my masculinity" I'm like "YES! YES! SAME HERE". I cannot even begin to express how much healthier (and in a more nuanced and hands-on way, too) I've began viewing feminity after I got introduced to trans people. In the same way those cis men got more comfortable in their masculinity
Feminity became not something that's inherent to me and that I'm expected to perform, but rather something I can explore and play around with
What I love most* about season 2 of Good Omens is the way it’s such a delightful and silly confection but then it sneaks up on you with deadly serious themes, but then even those are so optimistic and comforting.
Like hey! War might not be the natural state of humanity or civilization! War might be rooted in institutional power systems, actually. And also! Binaries might not be the natural organizing principle of humanity; they might just exist to perpetuate the control those institutions have over us. And oh no! It takes courage and strength to challenge this! It’s dangerous, it’s risky, and we’re not always going to get it right. But if we act with love and integrity—if we strive for that, even imperfectly, even if we fail—we’re doing something worthwhile. Because success and failure is just another binary and maybe it’s better not to think about things in that way quite so much.
*I love a lot of things the most about season 2 of Good Omens: equally Aziraphael’s eyebrow sass and Crowley’s ummm snakey joints?
I cant understand people who are like “why is everyone in aziraphale’s neighbourhood gay” like my brother in christ he lives in soho
Did aziraphale move to soho because its the gay area or did soho become the gay area because aziraphale moved in and gay people began naturally congregating around him
thr funniest part of therapy to me is when you first come in and you’re exchanging niceties and they say “hello! how are you” and you say “im fine how are you :)” and then 30 seconds later they put on their therapist voice and say “so how are you doing?” and you go well lisa. believe it or not im doing Bad
one time in my last job a woman came up to the register explaining that when she bought stuff a day prior the clerk forgot to scan a pair of socks worth less than €2 and it was only right for her to bring it back to the store and pay for it proper. unfortunately my manager was directly next to me at the time and took over the register to handle this serious issue. the receipt she had brought with her said which register performed the previous transaction that forgot the socks and the manager could find out who was running that till on that day. poor dude had a manager yell at him for a half hour about how much of an incompetent fuck up he was, he left the job immediately after but i couldnt tell you if he quit or was fired
i think about this moment a lot. the customer seemed like a sweet woman with only good intentions and when she paid for the socks she had a look on her face that said “i feel good because i did the right thing”. and a guy lost his job because of a pair of socks. if shit like this ever happens to you and a clerk forgets to scan an item just think of it as a small blessing or that you had good luck or something. keep it.
when you see your little kitty walking toward you at a leisurely pace and say “hi baby!” bc you’re excited to see her and she starts trotting a little bit faster ‘cause she’s excited to see you too. that’s what life is all about i think
one of the things that i loved about barbie (2023) that i think a lot of the posts making fun of male-written reviews miss is that, though the movie presents itself as a commentary on the patriarchy and sexism, the message at the core of the film isn’t actually limited to being about (cis) women. it’s about anyone who is Other.
i went to go see the movie on thursday afternoon before all the big midnight premieres, and the theater was still packed. there wasn’t an empty seat in the entire theater. i had a seat at the end of the row, which i had picked out in a faint (futile) hope that no one would sit next to me. thirty seconds before the trailers started, a family of about 10 black people walked in and split up, presumably because they’d only just bought their tickets and there were no longer 10 seats together. the dad and the son, who was maybe a few years younger than me in his early-20s, a good foot and a half taller than me, and who i recognized as one of the football players at the local university, ended up taking the two empty seats next to me with the linebacker in the seat right next to me. and that was pretty much the last time i thought of them until the last twenty minutes of the movie.
see, in the last twenty minutes of the movie, america ferrera makes an impassioned speech about not just the limitations that male-dominated society puts on women but the limitations that women put on themselves in order to survive in said male-dominated society. it’s about the contradictions that we’re subjected to–you can’t be too much, but you can’t be too little either. you have to lift each other up but you’re also in constant competition with other women for the shredded dregs of respect that men have left over for us. you can’t say yes to a man because then you’re a whore but you can’t say no because then you’re a prude. it was passionate and bitter and furious and it had every woman in the theater, myself included, in tears.
and in the silence of the theater following america ferrera’s plea for barbie not to make herself less just so that society isn’t threatened by her, the linebacker sitting next to me said fervently, “i feel that.”
it brought everything to a screeching halt. now i’m a white woman, and though i’m fat and nowhere near as gorgeous as margot robbie, from the very first trailer, it was obvious that this was going to be a movie for me. and if done right, it was going to be a movie for all women (and i would argue that it was). but the thing that it also did right was that though the surface of the message was about women making themselves lesser, the core was that it was for anyone who makes themselves lesser to fit in. yeah, it’s for women who are trying to fit into a male-dominated society, but it’s also for bipoc who are trying to fit into a white-dominated society. it’s for trans people trying to fit into a cis-dominated society. it’s for gay people trying to fit into a heterosexual-dominated society. it’s for anyone who’s been Othered and has to shrink themselves in a desperate attempt to survive.
i love the posts making fun of male-written reviews that are butthurt that this movie isn’t for them just as much as the next person. but i think it’s important that we don’t forget that those are representative of the people in power, the people that could never understand this message. barbie is for me, yeah, but it isn’t just for me. it’s for my trans friend who is six feet tall and has a beard and wears pink dresses every single day because they make her feel pretty. it’s for my labmate who could practically be a barbie herself and irritates me every time she talks about thinphobia but also can’t find someone who wants to be with her because she’s brilliant and not because she’s beautiful.
it’s for the black linebacker who sat next to me in the theater and felt heard when a fictional character in a movie told him not to make himself smaller just to fit society’s standards.
3 years ago
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