shame is for other people

trans-carlos:

airagorncharda:

"female/male bodied": 

I’m a man, this is my body. It doesn’t matter what I was assigned at birth, this is my body and I am a man, and therefore this body is a man’s body, and therefore a male body

this is erasure of intersex people

this is erasure of nonbinary people

you don’t actually give a shit about gender, you’re asking about genitals, and unless you’re a doctor it’s none of your fucking business

and if you ARE a doctor, you need to figure your shit out so you don’t alienate your trans patients and make them less likely to seek medical help due to dysphoria

the term you’re looking for is "assigned female/male at birth" or "afab/amab"

"born a man/woman" (also "used to be a woman/man"):

trans people weren’t born cis people and then turned trans; just because it takes us a while to figure out who we are doesn’t mean we were ever somebody else

society is cisnormative, and lies to people, and pretends that trans identities don’t exist and aren’t valid, telling trans people that they are cis over and over again since birth like a mantra, so trans people internalize that and believe it, until the evidence to the contrary piles up so high they can’t deny it anymore. That evidence has been piling up since birth; trans people were never cis people

this is erasure of intersex people

this is erasure of nonbinary people

using these terms incorrectly makes it impossible to use them correctly for nonbinary people who DO identify as having started out as one thing and changed to something else

the term you’re looking for is “raised as a man/woman”

"male/female parts/genitalia":

again, I’m a man, these are my parts, therefor they are male parts, everybody needs to get the fuck over it

Yes, I have breasts and that gives me dysphoria and I want them removed, THANKS FOR REMINDING ME, but they are male breasts

Yes I have a vagina. Again, this gives me dysphoria, you are an asshole for reminding me. Again, it is a male vagina since I am a man

this is erasure of intersex people

this is erasure of nonbinary people

Unless you are a doctor my genitals are none of your fucking business

If you ARE a doctor, you need to start using medical terminology right now, because you’re a medical professional so I think you can use the word “penis” and “vagina” without melting like the Wicked Witch of the West

Doctors using this kind of incorrect terminology are alienating their trans patients and making them less likely to seek medical help due to dysphoria. Trans people already have ENOUGH trouble with getting medical help, don’t fuck it up more

the term you’re looking for is "penis/vagina/uterus/genitals" or "testes/ovaries" or (and this one’s easy) "chest"

"female/male hormones":

cis men and cis women BOTH have estrogen and progesterone and testosterone. Intersex people have all of these hormones naturally as well

there are cis women who have high levels of testosterone and low levels of estrogen and progesterone, and there are cis men with high levels of estrogen and progesterone and low levels of testosterone

these hormones are not specific to one sex or another, and DEFINITELY not specific to one gender or another

this term is hurtful not only to trans people but also people with pcos, people who are undergoing or have gone through menopause, and other medical causes for variations in hormone levels

this is erasure of intersex people

this is erasure of nonbinary people

the terms you are looking for, shockingly enough, are "estrogen" "progesterone" and “testosterone”

(╯◎皿◎）╯︵ ┻━┻

All cis followers please read this.

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realsocialskills:

Some people can speak easily.

Some people always have difficulty speaking.

Some people never speak at all.

Some people can speak, but at a cost that’s not worth it.

Some people are better off communicating in other ways.

Some people speak sometimes, and type other times.

Some people have words all the time; some don’t.

Some people can speak fluidly, but only on certain topics. (Just like how one can be fluent in some topics in a foreign language, but be unable to read the news).

Some people lose speech at certain levels of stress.

Some people rely on hand movements and stimming in order to find words.

Some people have a monotone and convey tone through motion.

Some people make a lot of mistakes with words, and rely heavily on tone to make themselves understood.

Some people rely heavily on scripts, and only sound normal when they stay on-script.

Some people use phrases from television.

Some people communicate by repeating themselves, and tend to be perceived as not communicating.

Some people say a lot of words they don’t understand, and are perceived as having meant them.

Some people substitute one word for another a lot, and don’t always realize it.

Some people can answer questions even when they’re having trouble initiating speech.

Some people who find speech easy sound odd.

Some people who find speech difficult sound normal.

You don’t really know how someone communicates until you’ve communicated with them substantially, and even then, you only know in the context you’ve communicated in. Appearances can be deceiving. 

And it’s important to be aware that all of these things exist.

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bisexualpiratequeen:

I’m trying hard to live by Cat Principles.
1- I am glorious above all things
2- Eat when hungry, sleep when sleepy, play when bored
3- Affection is given and received on my terms and only mine
4- Show displeasure clearly.
5- NO
6- Demand the things you want. If they aren’t given, demand them again, but louder this time.
7- If you are touched when you don’t want to be, say so. If they continue to touch you, make them bleed.

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into-the-weeds:

PSA:

There are very few experiences that only autistic people have. I’ve seen a lot of people reblogging that post about sensory overload and relating to it but worrying they were somehow appropriating autism. No. Sensory overload is not something we own. If that post helps you, it helps you. Claim it. 

This goes for a lot of other things too, but I’ve seen it a lot about that post. Sensory overload happens to lots of people with lots of different disabilities, and some people without any disabilities at all! (FOR NOW.) 

Claim it!

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affectingly:

I understand the desire for things to stay civil. But I want you to think about this: Why do you think it is that politeness and civility and calmness are held as the standard for any discourse? It’s because people in power set the rules.

When someone has done something to you and made you angry and you shouted at them, and then got scolded for shouting, was that just about trying to keep things “calm” and “civil”? 

Or is it a tool to take your power away from you? Is it a way to keep the conversation under the control of the person in the wrong?

When the oppressor gets to set the terms for the oppressed to react to their oppression, that is keeping the power in the hands of the oppressor. 

When something has happened to a person (a racist act, a misogynistic one, a homophobic one, an ableist one, etc.), do you think it’s fair that they get angry about that? Don’t you get angry when someone does something hurtful to you?

And it doesn’t matter if you choose to express your anger in a different way than the SJ blogger or minority you’re dealing with. What matters is that, even if you’re really not trying to dismiss their argument, even if all you want is for them to be civil with you, by asking for that, you’re telling them how they get to express their anger with a fucked up, oppressive system.

You’re doing the very thing that people in power have been doing all along: setting the terms of the discourse for YOUR comfort, instead of the oppressed’s comfort.

So yeah, it really sucks to deal with angry people who say “mean” things while getting their point across, and yeah, it hurts our feelings sometimes. But when you’re dealing with someone who has systematically had their power stripped from them within a system that you benefit from if you’re white and talking to a POC, or cisgendered and talking to someone who is trans*gendered, or a man talking to a woman, etc. etc. …is it that much of a sacrifice to accept whatever way they want to deal with their oppression? 

Because I don’t think it is, and not only that, if you don’t like the way they choose to do things, you can click away. You can google the same topics and find all the information. That’s your privilege as someone not directly affected by racism (or ableism or transphobia or homophobia, etc.). And also remember that privilege is intersectional, and just because you may not have straight privilege or male privilege or thin privilege doesn’t mean you don’t still benefit from white privilege or cis privilege or what have you.

It’s not about tit for tat when SJ bloggers get angry. Most people don’t even LIKE getting angry because expressions of anger often leave a person even more exhausted and emotionally drained. Anger and how we choose to express it can be very powerful, though, and in the face of oppression and abuse, people have a right to express it. 

I hope that helps.

—

[this version is rebloggable]

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feminishblog:

baddominicana:

split-the-coast:

When you discuss the wage gap, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Only white women make $0.77 to a man’s dollar.

Black women make about $0.68 to a man’s dollar.

Latina women make about $0.58 to a man’s dollar.

Intersectionality matters.

Re-posting because it’s always new to somebody. Truth bombs are full of truth.

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ronstormer:

Sylvia Plath: There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.

Rudyard Kipling: I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.

Emily Dickinson: [Your poems] are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.

Ernest Hemingway (on The Torrents of Spring): It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.

Dr. Seuss: Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.

The Diary of Anne Frank: The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.

Richard Bach (on Jonathan Livingston Seagull): will never make it as a paperback. (Over 7.25 million copies sold)

H.G. Wells (on The War of the Worlds): An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would “take”…I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book’. And (on The Time Machine): It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.

Edgar Allan Poe: Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.

Herman Melville (on Moby Dick): We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in [England]. It is very long, rather old-fashioned…

Jack London: [Your book is] forbidding and depressing.

William Faulkner: If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don’t think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don’t have any story to tell. And two years later: Good God, I can’t publish this!

Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.

Joseph Heller (on Catch–22): I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.

George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.

Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermere’s Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.

Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): … overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down so many times, Beatrix Potter initially self-published it.

Lust for Life by Irving Stone was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies.

John Grisham’s first novel was rejected 25 times.

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul) received 134 rejections.

Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) received 121 rejections.

Gertrude Stein spent 22 years submitting before getting a single poem accepted.

Judy Blume, beloved by children everywhere, received rejections for two straight years.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle received 26 rejections.

Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected 20 times.

Carrie by Stephen King received 30 rejections.

The Diary of Anne Frank received 16 rejections.

Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rolling was rejected 12 times.

Dr. Seuss received 27 rejection letters

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rainbowrites:

andythanfiction:

Your favorite fanfic will always be better than your favorite show.

Because the fanfic author doesn’t have to clear anything with network, worry about poll numbers, ratings, that article the executive producer just read in an old copy of National Geographic, that hotshot in marketing who wouldn’t know a beat if it beat his ass. 

Because the fanfic author will never have an actor twist their ankle on the first take of the big fight scene, will never get their exterior rained out, be unable to get the permit for that location at the last minute, have the guest star start vomiting, have the recurring villain get pregnant, have the lead drop dead, or the key prop break.  

Because the fanfic author will never be told that’s too expensive, we don’t have the technology for that, all the llama handlers are booked, it’s against union rules to do that with a baby, you can only have eight extras, you can’t put pyro that close to a lead. 

Because the fanfic author doesn’t have to make it fit into forty-two minutes with a cold open before the slate, a twist at the second and third, resolution in the fourth, and a lead into next week. 

Because the fanfic author doesn’t have six other authors writing prequels and sequels to their fic at the same time, all with the same wild cards they do, all of which can throw each other off.

Because the fanfic author isn’t writing a chapter in a three-season arc that may or may not be the end of the story that they don’t know the end of yet and can’t because there are too many other decisions they don’t get to make and they don’t know how long the show will last.

Because the fanfic author doesn’t have to worry that they can only use this character this many number of times this season or that they suddenly need to write around a big name guest star while still doing everything that installment needs to do.  

Because the fanfic author may be writing off someone else’s prompt, but they can turn it down if they don’t like the pitch, and they won’t be called 2/3 of the way through and told to change everything and still get it in on deadline.  

Because the fanfic author doesn’t lose their job if they don’t get it in on deadline.  Because the fanfic author doesn’t have to write it in two weeks, whether they’re on their game and churning out gold or have a headcold, the kids are being shitheads, the plumbing exploded, their mother in law is in town, and they know it’s shit.  

Because the fanfic author can cast whomever the hell they want, even if that person doesn’t exist, and give flawless line reads every time.  Because for the fanfic author, their couples will always have great chemistry.  

Because the fanfic author isn’t going to have the production designer, costume designer, director, lighting director, or actors make choices that completely change the meaning of what they wrote.  Or cut things out.  Or add things.  Or rewrite a line on the fly because it just felt better.

Because the fanfic author can decide fuck it, I’m writing for me and I’m going to write the best goddamned story my heart and brain can put forth and if people don’t like it they can shove it up their ass sideways, they don’t have to offset $50,000,000 of production costs in happy advertisers every season or go off the air.  

Because the fanfic author doesn’t have to worry about TVPG or prime time content or the FCC or network guidelines or protest groups or making the editor nervous.  

Because the fanfic author has the option of slapping on “AU” or “canon-divergent” and knowing that’s effectively carte blanche to change or ignore any pieces of canon they don’t care for…or to throw canon out the window entirely and set their story with only nominally the same characters as steampunk space pirates in an alternate version of 18th century Revolutionary France.  

Because the fanfic author has internal monologue, the ability to guide perception with prose choices, and complete control over POV.  Because they do not have a show bible, genre guidelines, A/B/C arc requirements, expectations that this episode will blend seamlessly with all those before and after, and a beat sheet.  

Because even if two chefs have exactly the same skill, you can’t turn one loose with complete freedom in an infinitely stocked kitchen and tell the other they have to make a three course meal with four servings per course gluten-free raw nut-free vegan Asian-African fusion in twenty minutes making sure to use kale and gummy bears and then try to compare the results as if they were equal.  

Because the fanfic author gets to be God, while the TV writer is a cog in an industrial machine creating a very specific product. 

Yes, oh FUCK yes, there are some staggeringly talented fanfiction authors out there.  Some fanfic absolutely deserves to be categorized as straight-up literature and there isn’t a damned thing except social stigma separating it from the novels on the Best Seller list and the short stories in the New Yorker. Some of them are published authors, English professors, even screenwriters, poets, and playwrights. Give them all the credit they are due and then some because they do it for you without getting paid or compensated except in your love.  I am not for one fucking instant suggesting you reduce your esteem for these awesome artists and wordsmiths.  

But professional TV writers have made it into one of the hardest, most competitive fields for people who make stories with words for a reason. They are doing a hellacious job with a thousand obstacles that fanfic writers and novelists never face, and if it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t have fallen in love with the shows in the first place.  Are they perfect? No.  And neither are the fanfic writers. But they’re hella better than people who don’t understand what they even do give them credit for, and they don’t deserve to have their apples snidely held against fandom’s oranges and derided for their lack of a textured rind. 

So in the words of TV writers Sara Gamble and Julie Siege

#this post is brought to you by sick of watching the writers get shat on#blamed for anything and everything an individual viewer doesn’t like#and constantly compared to the viewer’s favorite fanfic#as if the two kinds of writing are even on the same planet#they’re not perfect#but they’re doing an incredibly hard job damned well#and not in control of most of the things you’re howling about anyway

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I've set it on fire because it's not true.
fyeahcopyright:

Don’t let misinterpretations of the proposed updates to Tumblr’s Terms of Use keep you from tumblr-ing.  (And please check the end of this post re psychfacts’ truthfulness.)

We were away all weekend at a Harry Potter thing at Universal, and came back to an Ask box and email in-box filled with questions about the updates to tumblr’s Terms of Use (and staff post about it), and in a project that reminds us of the times we explained changes to the LiveJournal Terms of Use (sometimes not terrible, sometimes head-deskingly awful, which is why so many aren’t there much anymore), as well as those of Yahool, MySpace and yes, AOL when Usenet became accessible via their proprietary system. 

In other words, we’ve been trying to reduce panic (or, alternatively, foster it) for longer than some of you have been alive. 

Rather than tackle each Ask and email separately, we’ll go through some of the more significant rumors, and invite any follow-up Asks at any time - but we also note that none of this is legal advice, and the copyright laws of your country will vary at least slightly from those in the US. 

Will tumblr now own all the copyright in everything I post or add to a reblogged post? 

No. Tumblr has (always? If not always then at least for the last three years) held a license to host, share, distribute and do certain other things with any content you post. Tumblr could not exist if it didn’t hold those licenses. Tumblr exists so people can reblog and share content!

You - yes you - own the copyright to any original work you post on tumblr (photos, poems, songs) also many if not all of the original elements in your fanworks. You own those rights pretty much as soon as  you create those works. You hold all the copyright - and Tumblr needs you to license some of those rights to them so they can show your content to the world.  They make copies by backing up the site on backup servers; they distribute copies by allowing others to see what you’ve posted, and then others make copies by reblogging what you’ve posted. 

If you don’t want people to reblog what you’ve posted, don’t post it on tumblr. If you do want people to reblog what you’ve posted, they need a license to do so. To put it simply, the Tumblr ToU contains those licenses. It contains them now and it will continue to do so. 

Why did the Community Guidelines change from “authorized” to “allowed” re posting things copyrighted by other people? 

We hope it’s because Tumblr loves fanworks and realizes their importance on the site and to its users. 

If something is authorized, then you’ve been given explicit or implicit permission to do it. If something is allowed, then that might be the case - or the law might allow you to do it. In other words, I’m not authorized by JK Rowling or any of her designees to write Harry Potter fanfic; they haven’t given me explicit permission. I am, however, allowed by US copyright law to write Harry Potter fanfic for a number of reasons (transformative works, fair use, laches). Tumblr is now saying that if I am allowed to post something, even if I am not authorized to post it, their Community Guidelines say it’s fine. 

SQUEE!

BUT WHAT ABOUT THIS, FYEAHCOPYRIGHT? 

This isn’t true, and it isn’t true because they aren’t saying they own your copyright (and as we explain below, little-to-no uncopyrighted work is posted to tumblr). They are not saying they own any of the content you post. They, in fact, explicitly say they do not own any of the content you post. 

At line 140 in Section 6 of the ToU, it says this: 

Subscribers retain ownership and/or other applicable rights in Subscriber Content. 

That means that subscribers retain whatever rights they have when they put something on Tumblr. 

Subscriber Content is defined in the Agreement as Subscriber-submitted/transferred/provided “video, audio, photographs, images, illustrations, animations, logos, tools, written posts, replies, comments, information, data, text, software, scripts, executable files, graphics, Themes and interactive features.”

In other words, you submit/transfer/provide, you still own what you already owned (ie the text on a pic of Doge, your poetry and songs and fanfic and the photo of the hot Butterbeer you had for breakfast yesterday).

How true is this? 

Copyright (in the US, where tumblr and Yahoo are located) attaches to a work - a photo, note, story, poem, song, video - as soon as that work is “fixed” - such as when it’s written on paper, printed out or saved to a hard drive, the cloud or a USB stick - or when it’s posted on a website. And it vests in the creator, unless that creator assigns the copyright away. A license is not the same as an assignment - it means you’re giving someone else some rights, but not all of them. 

WHY does tumblr keep a license to my stuff after I delete my blog and go away?!?

Because someone else may have reblogged it in the meantime. That’s how tumblr works, and why it’s different from sites like MySpace, or how LiveJournal used to be. If someone reblogs your content while your account is live, they have a copy of it - sometimes with their comments on the post or in tags - and to use tumblr the way it was created to be used, the way it has been used for years, they need to be able to hold on to a license to keep using content you submitted to tumblr. 
If you don’t want tumblr users to reblog your stuff or even host it after you leave or delete it, host it offsite and link to it or embed it. Then you keep more control over the content itself. 

But what about commercialization! I don’t want anyone commercializing my stuff!

Given how tumblr exists, you can’t stop other tumblr users from reblogging your stuff on tumblr, or linking to it from other sites. 

There are commercial sites with accounts on tumblr. Tumblr and Yahoo are for-profit companies. Tumblr and Yahoo have been profiting off of user-posted/submitted content since said content was first submitted. 

That’s how the sites work, and why they exist. 

But even if you are ok with Tumblr and Yahoo making money off of your content, what about other sites - those “third parties”? They could be anyone! You might not like them!

True. But as long as they are on tumblr, they can reblog your posts, images, videos, stories, etc - and they can put ads on them, or link back to their site which has ads, or put a link that gets them more followers, etc. 

If you’re not comfortable with the theoretical possibility of that happening with your content, don’t use Tumblr. That’s your decision. 

But it’s been an aspect of Tumblr’s platform for years, so please don’t freak out that it’s some sort of new and weird and evil sudden action. 

What is Poor Man’s Copyright and should I do it with all my stuff right now so tumblr something-something?

Back in days of yore before computers and the internet allowed us to have a machine document the creation date/time of a work, people would mail their original or a copy to themselves in a sealed- sometimes Notary-Public-certified - envelope because it would supposedly confirm the date on which something was created. As the US Copyright Office says on their website, there is “no provision in the copyright law regarding any such type of protection, and it is not a substitute for registration.” Registration is a cool thing to do with stuff you’ve created, and we’ll do a post on it later this week, but whether you have it or not won’t impact anything re tumblr’s current or proposed Terms of Use. 

Kudos and thanks to basilintime for a fantastic summary of the changes with much less tl;dr than our post. 

As of now the panic-generating images posted by psychfacts’ tumblr have almost 60,000 Notes - a bunch of them explain the ToU and contradict the panic, but please reblog this so our (admittedly tl;dr) analysis can be out there. 

ETA re Psychfacts: We don’t know if they’re trying a social experiment on tumblr users, or if they just think it’s funny to post lies and see how many reblogs they get. 

We do know this: Many if not all of the “scientific” terms mentioned in the images on psychfacts’ posts are fake. "Hexodermic radiation"? "Kemblen cycle"? "Sutoamephrine"? NONE of it exists.

It is possible that Psychfacts is experimenting on tumblr users to see how many reblogs they can get for made-up content that’s scary, in contrast to how many reblogs they can get for made-up content that’s soothing or cheerful. If that’s their intention, then they’ve managed over 60,000 reblogs for the scary versus an average close to twenty for things that are not.

It’s possible they’re making stuff up for some other reason. We have no idea. But they are not honest in their posts, and they are deceptive in their post re the tumblr ToU.

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“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever being able to do it.”
- J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
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