Allow me to start with something.

When I walk through a city, I keep my eyes open for stickers and graffiti. So often they're cute, fun, or signs of struggle, and of resistance to fascism.
I bring my own stickers to stick over any hateful messages.

Sometimes it feels like a city or neighborhood is itself is part of the struggle. Like the cityscape is solidarity.

@cadxdr dutch flag: just a french flag we couldn't hang up right

@clacke @eldang the more I think about and hear it, the more sad it gets :(

(Not that that excuses anyone from their shitty behaviour if it comes from any of this)

I think "you've got to relax" is a strange think to say.
Having to do something just puts pressure on it, which doesn't work with relaxing.

But "you're allowed to relax" is something I like, it creates space for the relax, permission.

So something I became aware of today: the Netherlands are drafting new anti conversion therapy laws (yay). I've not seen much about it (besides TERFs being angry about it).

Today I learned that this new law doesn't really include asexuality. It mostly uses 'LGBTI' as a shorthand. And other legislation using 'LGBTI' has excluded asexuality. So we can expect more of that.

Looks like today is International #asexuality day. I really don't know what to do with that, so this is just a post to let you all know we're here :heart_ace:

@erosdiscordia wow, these all sound amazing, and you have a lot.

The low-demand hands-on art thing sounds like a great thing for me to try sometimes too <3

@erosdiscordia please do be a killjoy.
I'm grateful that you're sharing all this, but all these things come form a place of necessity and having to cope with a hard world, and I shouldn't be taking joy in that.

I also find the ocean, or even smaller bodies of water very calming when my mind won't give me any rest or peace 💙

"We need a handle when we lose it. A killjoy survival kit is about finding a handle at the very moment one seems to lose it, when things seem to fly out of hand; a way of holding on when the possibility you were reaching for seem to be slipping away. Feminist killjoys: even when things fly out of hand, even when we fly out of hand, we need a handle on things."

- Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life

Do you have a "Killjoy Survival Kit"?

Things that keep you going, and things that keep you committed and keeping your hopes (of a better life, and a better world) alive?
Are there books, items, tools, practices, art, things to do? Really anything and everything can be part of a killjoy survival kit.

Is there something in your killjoy survival kit that you'd like to share with others?

I'm reading (listening to) "All About Love" by Bell Hooks.

bell hooks talking about the devaluation of friendship for romantic love, of the expectation to from romantic relationships, of falling into gendered patterns and roles in those, and of the isolation of nuclear families
uwu

Do anti-vaxxers also refuse tot get blood transfusions?

Or does whatever is harmful about vaccines only get in through the needle?

-
I think I actually don't want to know the answer to this question.

* I meant "does whatever they think is supposed to be harmful about the vaccine (vaccines are good and those things aren't there, it's all disinfo) only get in through the needle?"
Just to be very clear

That dreaded place in which a man and woman are friends, but from which the man cannot climb up into romance and sex, where he is doomed to the dreary fate of friendship :cat_scream_ms:

This has been the scary tale of 'the friendzone'. A sexist theory of male and female sexuality, sprung from the dark corners of the internet, slowly seeping into popular consciousness :ghosthug:

If I haven't told you about PUA's, MRA's, and the MGTOW yet (the groups I mentioned before), these are good scary stories for another day. I think this has been enough for now.

"the friendzone"

I don't know if there's an official history of 'the friendzone' but this is the one I have heard.

(Please read the following like I'm telling you and old tale :blobcatreading: maybe we're sitting around a fire.)
Back in the early days of the internet, heterosexual men would gather on webbed sites and fora. There they would talk honestly about their relationships and philosophize on the nature of men, women, and their relationships. They would give each other practical advice.

These were places of fierce and rigorous debates, of male community bonds, and new social invention.
These sites and fora are now known as the birthplace of what would become MRA, PUA, and MGTOW movements.
- I have told you about these groups and people, haven't I? Those scary groups of men, committed to the patriarchy, and social regression. United in their dehumanizing views on women, and in their violent fear of feminism.

In their philosophical thinking about relationships between men and women, these men sitting behind their personal computers, they coined the "ladder theory". Now, they have come up with a great deal of theories of human psychology and social and political theory, many of them forgotten in the passing of time. I'll tell you about the more recent theory of 'dad deserts' some other time, it's a laugh and a scare.

This ladder theorem goes as follows: for relationships with women, men have one ladder. Simple. Low on that ladder is friendship, higher up are sexual relationships and stable partnerships.
Women however, complicated creatures as they are, have not one but two (yes, two!) ladders for relationships with men.