Why are people still up in arms about AO3 needing donations to run? Their budget is publicly available. You can go onto the website, right now, and read it. If you donate more than a certain amount (pretty sure it’s more than $10), you can vote in their elections, because you’re considered a member, and that’s how memberships work.
It’s a free site to use, but not to run or to maintain, especially not with all these net neutrality battles.
Y’all gotta understand that it’s not just fanworks, there’s a lot more that goes into archiving.
Signal boosting this because it’s important af. OTW is a nonprofit organization, specifically a public charity as classified by the US tax code. That means they file a 990 tax report each year that lets you see all of their finances – what they’re spending money on, where their money comes from, etc. You can see their 2016 990 here if you’re so inclined.
And if you’re not sure about how OTW is using their donations? Ask questions. Get involved. Even if you’re not comfortable with or not in a position to donate, there are lots of opportunities to give your time; it’s an all-volunteer organization that recruits regularly. I know for a fact that I get more value out of what OTW provides than most, if not all, my other paid services combined, so $10 to be a member is more than worth it.
ao3 is routinely used as an example of an excellent digital archive in library and information schools – they’re not just a fansite; they’re held in high regard by people across the industry. they run initiatives to preserve old fansites and groups, in addition to the day to day work of hosting all of our work ad-free to ensure maximum creative freedom. ao3 is not just a place to post your fic; it catalogues and preserves our history and culture.
it’s the fact that she wanted to go into her isolated car instead of into the public building. going to her car gets her alone, where as going inside the well lit building with other people gets her around people who could protect both of them from the people she’s claiming are after her.
any actual victim will go straight for a well populated area. they may want you to come with them for help, but they would never try and get you away from a populated area and into an isolated car unless the car was the only option, because a dark car late at night is a fantastic way to isolate and capture a mark without anyone’s notice.
other tactics often used include:
1) pretending to be a heavily pregnant woman stuck out in bad weather she’s not dressed for and asking a good samaritan who asked her if she’s ok to buy her some coffee. if the woman refuses money and wants you to go with her specifically, becoming agitated when you don’t agree and only offer her cash, this is a trick. the person who found this out managed to follow a woman doing this and saw her arguing with another woman and two men. the men insisted she needed to be more convincing so people would be more sympathetic, and she watched her tell him to be the one out in the snow in the thin hoodie and fake belly, and she watched her take off a fake baby bump.
(someone taking the money can still be a scam, but it’s a scam for money, and not to traffic you. traffickers want to get you to leave a populated area, so refusing to go with them will upset them, and that’s the biggest reveal of their true intentions.)
2) a woman banging on your door screaming that a man is chasing her and begging you to let her in, saying he’s going to rape her if you don’t let her in. this was brought to everyone’s attention by a teenager who shared his story about it. his mother wanted to help her, but her husband had grown up in a ‘bad part of town’ and wasn’t so trusting. he unlocked the door but not the chain lock and handed her a brick, telling her his family was calling the police and he would stay with her at the door. if the person did show up she could use the brick to defend herself and he would come out with his..I think it was a baseball bat and help her fight him off. she became very angry, asking what was wrong with them and demanding they let her in. his only response was to close and lock the door again. she got quiet and when the police got there, she was gone but the brick was just sitting on one of their steps.
the next night the police were back, as the woman showed up again at someone else’s doorstep doing the exact same thing, only this time an officer was basically already there. that family had let her in, and she in turn let her partner in who proceeded to murder the entire family before being caught by the officer.
3) similarly, men have been known to use a recording of a baby crying playing at womens’ doorsteps in order to entice them into opening the door, this giveaway being that A) it’s recorded and that’s usually fairly obvious, but also that after a little while, the sound will move, typically under windows around the front of the house, something an actual baby clearly can’t do on its own, and is clearly someone attempting to get closer to the presumed sleeping women in the hopes of getting her attention, since she seemingly can’t hear it from the front door.
this was caught when a woman noticed this ‘baby’ moving and the cry looping and called the police. again an officer was nearby and found two men hiding in bushes around her house.
4)more of an example of something very common, a young woman shared a story of when she was little many years ago. she and a friend were going to some sort of event (she was into something. she was ether part of a sports team or dance team or something to that affect, something done by her school as she was around 6-7 at the time) her mother stopped off at a grocery store real quick and left her and her sleeping friend in the car. another little girl looking to be about 4 was in a car nearby with what this girl assumed was his father. he too got out of the car and left her there, going into the store. the girl was all smiles with him, even waving to our storyteller and smiling, until the man left. once he was inside suddenly she looked scared, and was acting like she wanted her to get out of the car and come to her. she tried waking her sleeping friend to tell her about this, thinking now the man wasn’t her father but someone who was a danger to her, but her friend gave her the dirtiest look, demanded she shut up and let her sleep, and rolled over. she looked back up at the 4 year old who was now looking at the store. she too looked over and saw the man just standing right at the window smiling and encouraging her. she smiled at him and then looked back to our storyteller, with her face instantly dropping back into that scared look on her face. she refused to get out of her car, and when the 4 year old looked back at the store, the man came back out, without having bought anything, gave the girl a smile and a pat and driving off, with the little girl waving at her as he drove away. after seeing this, she was convinced he was coaching her and using her to lure other children out to abduct them.
5)another example of something very common, a woman who was moving to another state and was by herself, as her fiance had gone ahead a month earlier to get things set up in the new place while she tied up the loose ends at the old one. on her way back to her car, she was stopped by a man in his truck, his passenger side between them, and asked her if she knew where a grocery store was. she said she didn’t know, as she was just stopping through on her way to a new place. he then said something along the lines that this was a nice place to stop on a trip with the family, and she admitted she was alone. it was then when he said it was nice to meet her and reached out his hand to shake hers, but did nothing to lean out, meaning she would have to reach in the car to reach him. it was here where she realized his questions confirmed that she was alone, far from home, and unfamiliar with the area, meaning if she vanished no one would know when she vanished or where on her long trip alone, and it would be a good while before anyone expected to see her, meaning by the time anyone realized she was gone she’d be long gone.
she refused to shake his hand, stating that she was going to go, and he sped off, far too fast for her to read the license plate.
the one thing all these stories have in common, the thing that’s kept people alive, was their refusal to give in to social expectations and protecting themselves as well as the person supposedly in need. by refusing to get into her car, the op story woman saved herself from being abducted and trafficked, as did my last story’s woman, by refusing to be polite and shaking the stranger’s hand.
Op’s woman still attempted to help her, so you absolutely can still help someone in need, but you have to do so safely and logically, without putting yourself at risk, which is exactly what these people need you to do. while it’s true a real potential victim could be screaming at your door for help or a real baby left on your doorstep that’s crying, you still have to be cautious because traffickers have no morals. there is no low they won’t stoop to if it means catching another person.
I know it can be hard to believe a woman would do something like this to other women, and not using such chances to get away themselves, but that’s what brainwashing, Stockholm syndrome, and abusive manipulation will do to someone’s mind. we all want to trust other women and believe in that solidarity against our mutual oppression, but it doesn’t always work out like that. girl code and solidarity is important, but we also have to watch our for ourselves, because not everyone cares about that code.
Like seriously I wish we had a more comprehensive sex education program in the U.S. You know how many guys I know who had no idea an unaroused vagina is only 2-3 inches deep? Or that the cervix raises up when aroused to accommodate dick? Or that if a girl is “tight” that generally means she’s not turned on and you’re shitty in bed? Or that the cervix has an entire cycle it goes through throughout the month where is changes hardness, placement in the vagina, wetness? Like, when you’re ovulating your cervix gets soft and raises high up into the vagina and your hormones get you really horny. It’s like natures way of moving the furniture around and fluffing the pillow for dick because it wants to get pregnant. And before menstruation, it gets really hard and low in the vagina. It’s basically inactivating it’s Facebook and saying “I just need some alone time for a few days”
Ladies and gentlemen, take a moment to learn about vaginas. Men, take an interest into your woman’s menstrual cycle!
U.S. Needs better sex Ed because I’m a 23 year old woman and didn’t even know all of this
Hi I had no idea about the cervical cycle.
God bless this post pls share it far & wide
Wow didn’t know any of th that
My brother got the benefit of learning with me as I went through all this shit. He had been desensitized to so much, and I’ve actually had girls I’ve never met come up and thank me for teaching him even the basics! I personally believe that the whole sex ed lesson needs a serious overhaul. And I wish that schools did Co ed sex ed like they show in tv shows and movies. Men need to know and understand just as much as women. I had to explain to my husband that we don’t pee and bleed out of the same home. He was like 25. I also had to explain that Larry the cable guy was wrong about cramps being caused by expanding tampons. Seriously. Educate your fucking boys.
I’m not ace myself, so I’m coming at the whole acephobia thing from an outsider’s perspective, and as such, it’s not my place to speak to the experience of those on the receiving end of it.
However, as a bisexual dude, I can observe that many of the arguments that are employed to establish that ace folks have no place in the queer community are strikingly similar – indeed, at times practically word-for-word identical – to the arguments that were for many years (and in some circles still are) employed to establish that bisexual folks have no place in the queer community.
It’s enough to make a guy suspicious on general principle, you know?
I’ve gotten a few messages asking for (well, in some cases more “demanding”) elaboration, so: here are a few of the primary areas in which I’ve observed that arguments against bi inclusion and arguments against ace inclusion tend to exhibit significant overlap. There may well be others – these are simply the ones I’ve run into most frequently.
The Passing Argument
It has been argued that bisexual folks don’t have any grounds to complain about discrimination and violence suffered in relation to their orientation, because a bisexual person is able to pass as straight simply by choosing partners of the appropriate gender. Therefore, any discrimination and violence that a bisexual person does experience must be construed as voluntarily undertaken, since they could have passed, and freely chose not to.
This argument is similarly applied to ace folks via the assertion that being ace poses no particular barrier to seeking a partner of a socially acceptable gender, so any failure to do so must likewise be construed as voluntary.
The Performativity Argument
It has been argued that bisexual folks ought to be excluded from queer communities because sexual orientation is purely performative; i.e., being gay is defined in terms of currently having a sexual partner of the same gender. A bisexual person who has a partner of a different gender is functionally indistinguishable from a straight person, and must therefore be regarded as straight. Conversely, a bisexual person whose current partner is of the same gender must nonetheless be regarded with suspicion, because they could “turn straight” at any time simply by leaving that partner.
This argument is similarly applied to ace folks via the assertion that their orientation has no discernible performative component; an ace person is functionally indistinguishable from a straight person who simply isn’t involved in a sexual relationship at that particular moment, so ace folks must therefore be regarded as straight by default.
(An astute reader may notice that the passing argument dovetails neatly into the performativity argument: those who choose not to seek partners of a socially acceptable gender may be dismissed because any violence and discrimination they experience is a consequence of their voluntary failure to pass, while those who do seek such partners are performatively straight and therefore to be shunned. It’s a neat little system.)
The Mistaken Identity Argument
It has been argued that, while bisexual folks may suffer discrimination and physical and sexual violence, they’re not targeted by such acts because they’re bisexual. Any discrimination and violence a bisexual person suffers in relation to their orientation is suffered because they were mistaken for a gay person. Any effort on their part to discuss such experiences is therefore to be regarded as appropriative, in spite of the fact that they personally experienced it. In short, a bisexual person’s own experience of violence and discrimination doesn’t truly “belong” to them: it “belongs” to the purely hypothetical gay person their persecutors allegedly mistook them for.
This argument is applied to ace folks practically verbatim – no particular adaptation is necessary.
I’ll add The Contribution Argument, which involves one of these gatekeeping behaviors:
1) rewriting history to erase bisexual and asexual contributions to political LGBTQ rights movements, and then claiming that bisexuals and asexuals have never done anything for the community at large
2) arguing that modernday bisexuals and asexuals should be excluded from current political movements because our goals are distinct from, or even contradictory to the goals of the LGBTQ rights movement at large
3) interpreting any attempt on the part of bi/asexuals to make safe spaces for ourselves within the community as an attack on LG safe spaces, generally by reframing bi/ace pride as homo/lesbophobia, or by dismissing accusations of bi/acephobia as inherently homo/lesbophobic
In other words, arguing that bisexuals and asexuals, rather than being contributing members of the community, are parasites on the community, leeching from, and undermining the community and its goals.
The Contribution Argument is an interesting one because it goes way beyond popular biphobia.
It’s often been asserted that bisexual folks ought to be excluded from the LG community because that community is specifically for folks who experience homophobia, and bisexual folks don’t experience homophobia, save by misidentification. (See the Mistaken Identity Argument, above.)
However, anybody who’s over the age of 30 can tell you that the positioning of the experience of homophobia as the community’s great unifier is, itself, a relatively novel development.
Up until quite recently (and by “recently” I mean as recently as the mid 1980s), even lesbians were routinely characterised by the leaders of mainstream gay rights activism as unwelcome parasites, riding on the movement’s coattails and contributing nothing in return.
Not only is identifying the experience of homophobia – defined narrowly as discrimination against those who are actively involved in sexual relationships with persons of the same gender – as the sole qualifier for inclusion a totally arbitrary place to draw the line, it’s baldly ahistorical.
Historically, a great many folks who do experience this type of homophobia have routinely been left out in the cold by mainstream activism for gender and sexual minorities – and the Contribution Argument, as you’ve outlined it here, is one of the primary tools that’s been used to justify that exclusion.
this post is literally just “why won’t those big meanie gays let asexuals in their club??? :(” written in the form of a jargon-filled essay for a philosophy class
I love your wording; because that’s precisely it. Its the “gay club.” As in, its the same fuckers who wanted us bi people to be excluded. It’s the same people who argued that we should drop the “T” to focus on the “gay movement.”
Newsflash: no one wants an invitation to that party. No one is “invading.” No one wants to be included in your “gay club.”
What we want is shits like you to quit perpetuating intra community bigotry and hatred in the LGBT+; because the only ones treating it like a “club” are those of you that check the “queer credentials” of everyone looking for a safe space and stamp their hands with “gay enough I guess” to let us pass through the gates. (Not that we get the same treatment as the ~VIP cis gays~ anyway.)
Anyway, nice to know that you people are still ignoring when bi ppl speak and repurpose that biphobia as ace hatred in the same breath :)))))) kinda :))))))) reinforces the points above :))))))))))
Also the idea that you have to have the consistent ability to perform your sexual orientation on a daily basis in order to be oppressed enough to be welcomed into the exclusive “gay club” is pretty shitty. The point of having inclusive spaces is to allow people a specific space where they feel they can comfortably perform and express their orientation/identity/etc, but if you gatekeep, what you’re telling people (bi and ace people in the case of this discussion) is that they must subject themselves to a constant barrage of discrimination in order to be worthy enough to access a space where they do not feel discriminated against, which just defeats the purpose of said “inclusive” space, doesn’t it?
Why should anyone demand that certain members of the LGBTQ community must run a trial by fire first in order to have enough oppression points to pay for a spot in The Gay Club? And then on top of that, tell them that even AFTER they subject themselves to said discrimination, they’re only accessing the same discrimination “real” gay people face and are therefore somehow insincere in their experiences because they aren’t “gay enough” every day of their life to constitute a real place in the community.
This is more of a personal note, but nothing hurts more than your family/peers calling you broken and sick, then going to an LGBT+ “safe place” and being told that your family/peers were right.
Nothing hurts more than your family/peers calling you broken and sick, then going to an LGBT+ “safe place” and being told that your family/peers were right.
hey uh? i dont really know if this is real but im? kinda both scared and disgusted rn? even if you’re not muslim if you could spread this? i dont know how many muslim followers i have but, please, stay safe?
please spread this and please stay safe.
every single one of my followers should reblog this. Keep your brothers and sisters safe.
DUDE WTH
what the frick is this real
according to the internet this is a real thing in the UK.
thats messed up.
stay safe
I just looked it up and for real people are getting these letters all over the UK.
Please be safe if youre muslim, if youre not muslim please look out for and protect the muslim people around you, theres some seriously sick people out there that may very well act on this.
What the actual fuck.
Please stay safe everyone
Rushed to snopes, hoping to find it’s a hoax – doesn’t seem to be, and it’s reported on The Independent and on Sky News and on The Guardian.
I just realized how fucking disgusting it is that it’s considered healthy and normal for teenage boys to eat everything ever yet teenage girls are obviously also growing but are fucking dieting all the time and shamed for eating while they’re growing
Shit
That’s not even the half of it because
– often when a teenager (male or female) puts on some fat it’s in preparation for a growth spurt. Grownups know this.
– teenagers grow in weird gawky ways, like a girl’s hips will spread out and look “fat” until her legs get longer, or they’ll shoot up super tall and then slowly put on muscle and fat. Grownups know this.
– it’s very common for a women’s body weight to fluctuate plus or minus 5% with her menstrual cycle
but in the diet mentality all of these things are considered personal moral failures, a failure of control, when controlling it is literally impossible. I am so incredibly saddened by women who weigh themselves multiple times a week and fuss over ten freaking pounds when that’s well within the bounds of menstrual fluctuation + just-ate-lunch. It’s horrible.
“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.” – Naomi Wolf
Grown ups really do not know this. I tell this to parents at least once a week, your child is sleeping/moody/putting on weight because their body is preparing to more or less jump the Grand Canyon of maturation stages. Hormone changes start a full YEAR before first menses.
My own mother, who works in the medical field and has worked solely for OB/GYN for the last 16 years, gave me grief about all of those things. And she knew about hormone level changes and weight distribution changes and she STILL did it. Don’t think hard facts will outweigh societal norms. Keep talking about it until they can’t ignore the facts
Nothing but My Aching Soul 