Pursuingimmortality - Torianne

“Cis women who don’t pass” is such an insane thing to say. Do you even hear yourself? “Cis women” don’t need to “pass as women”. We literally ARE women, it’s that simple. The concept of passing doesn’t make the slightest sense when applied to a person who doesn’t identify as trans.

my trick for getting through grad school is learning to navigate the quadrants with all their nuances

What's a book written by a woman that changed your life or that you consider a classic? Any genre, any language.

But seriously, if you keep pushing yourself past your mental or physical limits, it will catch up with you. You cannot live forever on three hours of sleep and caffeine and willpower. You cannot keep overpowering your very natural need to relax and recharge. If you don't treat both with care and respect, at some point your brain and your body will reach a point of breakdown and burnout - and any mental or physical conditions you may have tried to ignore and power through will kick your ass. So take that goddamn nap or that break now. Don't wait for yourself to shatter and fall apart before you tend to the cracks in your body and mind. Just because you may have the choice to ignore your limits right now doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Take care of yourself now or you WILL regret it.

If you accidentally hurt someone or cross their boundaries and they make you aware of this, literally all you have to do is apologize and stop. You don't have to beat yourself up internally for months. You don't have to hate yourself for fucking up. You don't have to feel like a horrible person. No one benefits from any of that - and at worst, such an extreme reaction will make the person in question less likely to speak up around you in the future, cause even if your negative reaction is directed at yourself and not at them, it's still unpleasant for everyone involved.

10 Female Written Short Stories Everyone Should Read

I have seen a post circulating for a while that lists 10 short stories everyone should read and, while these are great works, most of them are older and written by white men. I wanted to make a modern list that features fresh, fantastic and under represented voices. Enjoy!

1. A Temporary Matter by Jhumpa Lahiri — A couple in a failing marriage share secrets during a blackout. 

2. Stone Animals by Kelly Link — A family moves into a haunted house.

3. Reeling for the Empire by Karen Russell — Women are sold by their families to a silk factory, where they are slowly transformed into human silkworms. 

4. Call My Name by Aimee Bender — A woman wearing a ball gown secretly auditions men on the subway. 

5. The Man on the Stairs by Miranda July — A woman wakes up to a noise on the stairs. 

6. Brownies by ZZ Packer — Rival Girl Scout troops are separated by race. 

7. City of My Dreams by Zsuzi Gartner — A woman works at a shop selling food-inspired soap and tries not to think about her past. 

8. A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor — A family drives from Georgia to Florida, even though a serial killer is on the loose. 

9. Hitting Budapest by NoViolet Bulawayo — A group of children, led by a girl named Darling, travel to a rich neighborhood to steal guavas. 

10. You’re Ugly, Too by Lorrie Moore — A history professor flies to Manhattan to spend Halloween weekend with her younger sister.

So I was back in Mandarin class and the teacher let us know that in ancient times sometimes they wouldn’t even give their girl children names. Their attitude was why bother getting attached to her when she’s just going to grow up and belong to someone else? She doesn’t need her own identity because she is the property of her future husband. If they needed to refer to a woman they would say that’s Wang’s wife. In the same way you would say oh, that’s Wang’s car or Wang’s house. Let’s remember that we give names to dogs, horses, ships and buildings but some human women don’t deserve such recognition. She also touched on sex-selective abortion for a bit and it was all in all a pretty sad discussion today.

I was really moved but it felt like everyone else didn’t care or thought that stuff doesn’t matter because it doesn’t happen anymore. And yet even now women’s identities are being erased when they get married. Their personal history and family ties are untraceable because they are “adopted” into their husbands family. It’s disgusting and I hate that its so nomalized and I hate that even women’s names are not our own. We might as well never have been given names in the first place.

Your emotional reaction to an injustice is not the criterion you should be looking at to determine whether you are living up to your values, or the values you'd like to hold.

Your actual response, in words and in actions, and how that response impacts others, is what you should be evaluating.

Having a strong emotional reaction to injustice isn't a guarantee that you'll actually do anything about it. Sometimes people, distressed by their emotional response, choose not to see injustice so they don't have to feel that way. Sometimes people focus so much on their emotional response that Feeling Things is the extent of their interaction with that form of injustice.

Having a calm and rational-feeling reaction to something isn't a guarantee that you're actually seeing The Bigger Picture. It can just mean you aren't having a big emotional reaction; it doesn't mean you're actually being logical or that you're well-informed about a situation.

Sometimes people assume that their emotional reaction is enough to tell them what would help, and their completely uninformed attempts to help can make the situation worse. Finding out what would actually help takes work. Feelings can't do that work for you.

Having All The Right Feelings about something isn't activism, and not feeling an emotional connection to an injustice doesn't automatically mean you can't or won't contribute meaningfully to addressing or alleviating it.

Your feelings are only relevant to injustice if they help you to actually do something constructive, or if they get in the way of you doing anything constructive.

In and of themselves, they're just feelings. There's no moral or ethical aspect to them, any more than there is to hunger pangs or an itch. You don't need to feel guilty based on feelings alone, and you have no right to self righteousness based on feelings alone.

Your feelings don't help or hurt anyone; your words and actions do.

I miss when I would get Tumblr asks that actually said things and weren't just digital panhandling scams.