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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • I have to use them professionally. That’s why I got one in a different color from everyone else. Ok really it’s that my old boss’s boss had one a different color from everyone else and I didn’t like the guy so I decided to be different too knowing that’s exactly the kind of crap that gets under his skin. But also it’s nice to have everyone know when you’re the one laser pointing




  • Deviation from social expectations can be attractive as can novelty. Fetishization of a group is often associated with the group being perceived as exotic and possibly even taboo. And there are a lot of people who when they feel shame about their desires lash out against those they desire. The sort of guy who feels the need to tell everyone he’s not into fat chicks? Yeah he’s getting rejected by them in secret.

    Your example is someone you personally hate because Gary fucking sucks. But if there were a group of Garys who were just a bit different that you were always told not to interact with because they’re bad despite the fact that they all seem perfectly nice if a bit odd. Well a certain portion of your community would find themselves torn between the excitement of the exotic (hell you don’t see a Gary every day, and you usually have to go to a certain part of town to see one) and the expectations of not interacting with them, and this would lead to shame and anger, because to an unexamined and immature person these Garys are seducing them, tempting them away from what they know to be the rightful separation of good normal people and Garys. This is even worse if anyone could turn out to have always been a Gary. Maybe some of those people are afraid they might be a Gary but are afraid to even think about it enough to discount it. So they may start calling to ensure there’s no chance of them accidentally running into a Gary and making sure nobody becomes a Gary hoping that that will keep them safe and maybe even punish the Garys who did this to them.


  • Yeah it’s wild to me that the ban wasn’t a blanket “no product may be sold containing both nicotine in psychoactive doses and pleasant flavorings other than menthol or those found naturally in tobacco or intended to recreate the flavor of tobacco may be sold”. Like they could’ve killed those gross flavored swishers that exist solely for making blunts while they were at it.

    Like, I don’t mind a “buy a flavor bottle and it has room for you to mix in a bottle of one of the various concentrations of unflavored nicotine sold right next to it” situation, but that level of inconvenience is good. It always forces you to choose your dose and means that when kids get ahold of the stuff it’s easier for them to get ahold of the nonaddictive version. What we have now is a bunch of e waste that also ensures that there’s a lot of access to nicotine for children.


  • Yeah, that’s so unbelievably not fucking surprising. A weird amount of harassment I’ve gotten for being trans has been kinda (or occasionally extremely) sexual. Also the redder the area the more I get street harassment.

    ETA: Oh upon reading the article, the city I’m thinking of (Lexington, KY, I basically couldn’t take a walk without being catcalled there) is in the top 10 cities.

    And yeah, anti trans bigotry is interesting because it seems to be an alliance of exterminationist bigotry (“x people should not exist or should be hidden and we should work towards that goal”, examples of targeted groups include disabled people, Jewish people, and gay people) and supremacist bigotry (“x people are our lessers and must be forced into their place beneath us”, anti black racism is the classic example). You have plenty of transphobes who just want us gone no matter what, but you also have quite a few who think our place is as discreet sex workers and are mad that we are insisting we deserve to live in society as equals and do whatever work we want. They were fine with us as prostitutes, but not as mechanics, as shameful side pieces but how dare we say we deserve to be spouses.

    That perspective of us is deeply entwined in the insistence that anything pertaining to us is sexual. They look at us and reduce us solely to the lens of sex then condemn us for it. Then when some of us internalize that our only value as people is as sex objects they point and say “see look, we told you”.