Okay. To “clear this up real quick” if multiple people are all having the same issues with your post, you probably were in fact being offensive. It’s nice that you weren’t intending to be, but it would be nicer if you stopped justifying and just…apologized. Or listened. Or didn’t say anything and just made an effort to word things better in the future. The point of what I said before is that — standing alone, because that’s how all posts on Tumblr stand — the post links weight and health, and it also makes being fat something to fear. You’re defending to me the fact that thin insecure people need to be told that they aren’t overweight — the message isn’t that they are wonderful the way they are but that they LACK a hateable quality. All that does is make being fat something off in the distance to avoid. Don’t worry, you’re not fat! Not, “so what, you have rolls, so does everyone”. Of COURSE “even” thin people are insecure, but it’s immensely privileged and fatphobic to tell thin people they don’t have to be insecure about BECOMING fat. If that’s something worth saying what the hell are fat people supposed to do? You say that you don’t believe that all larger people are unhealthy. Yet a sentence later you mention that SOMETIMES obesity can be unhealthy (which presumably is a justification for having mentioned so much that ‘you’re healthy!’ in the post). Sure, sometimes obese people can be unhealthy, and sometimes thin people can be. It isn’t relevant to rolls. You also haven’t grasped my problem with that entire discussion, which is that health is not a good metric to tell someone to cheer up about. Unhealthy people are valid people. If someone is obese and has diabetes, for example, they have not failed as a person and are still worthy of love and care by themselves and others, any more than an amputee or a cancer patient or someone with depression. Do you congratulate your friends that they haven’t been hospitalized recently? No? Then let’s get away from judging healthy thin people vs healthy fat people vs unhealthy fat people. Also, no. It wouldn’t be considered thin shaming if thin people were left out. For one thing, thin people carry privilege that fat people do not. For another thing, if this were a post about how everyone has rolls and fat people don’t have to look smooth and hourglassy, thin people wouldn’t be relevant to the discussion. If it were a post about how …everyone has visible ribs sometimes and you don’t have to worry, you’re not getting underweight??… I guess it would be a little thin shaming but that’s NOT WHAT THIS DISCUSSION IS ABOUT.
Zoom Info
Okay. To “clear this up real quick” if multiple people are all having the same issues with your post, you probably were in fact being offensive. It’s nice that you weren’t intending to be, but it would be nicer if you stopped justifying and just…apologized. Or listened. Or didn’t say anything and just made an effort to word things better in the future. The point of what I said before is that — standing alone, because that’s how all posts on Tumblr stand — the post links weight and health, and it also makes being fat something to fear. You’re defending to me the fact that thin insecure people need to be told that they aren’t overweight — the message isn’t that they are wonderful the way they are but that they LACK a hateable quality. All that does is make being fat something off in the distance to avoid. Don’t worry, you’re not fat! Not, “so what, you have rolls, so does everyone”. Of COURSE “even” thin people are insecure, but it’s immensely privileged and fatphobic to tell thin people they don’t have to be insecure about BECOMING fat. If that’s something worth saying what the hell are fat people supposed to do? You say that you don’t believe that all larger people are unhealthy. Yet a sentence later you mention that SOMETIMES obesity can be unhealthy (which presumably is a justification for having mentioned so much that ‘you’re healthy!’ in the post). Sure, sometimes obese people can be unhealthy, and sometimes thin people can be. It isn’t relevant to rolls. You also haven’t grasped my problem with that entire discussion, which is that health is not a good metric to tell someone to cheer up about. Unhealthy people are valid people. If someone is obese and has diabetes, for example, they have not failed as a person and are still worthy of love and care by themselves and others, any more than an amputee or a cancer patient or someone with depression. Do you congratulate your friends that they haven’t been hospitalized recently? No? Then let’s get away from judging healthy thin people vs healthy fat people vs unhealthy fat people. Also, no. It wouldn’t be considered thin shaming if thin people were left out. For one thing, thin people carry privilege that fat people do not. For another thing, if this were a post about how everyone has rolls and fat people don’t have to look smooth and hourglassy, thin people wouldn’t be relevant to the discussion. If it were a post about how …everyone has visible ribs sometimes and you don’t have to worry, you’re not getting underweight??… I guess it would be a little thin shaming but that’s NOT WHAT THIS DISCUSSION IS ABOUT.
Zoom Info
Okay. To “clear this up real quick” if multiple people are all having the same issues with your post, you probably were in fact being offensive. It’s nice that you weren’t intending to be, but it would be nicer if you stopped justifying and just…apologized. Or listened. Or didn’t say anything and just made an effort to word things better in the future. The point of what I said before is that — standing alone, because that’s how all posts on Tumblr stand — the post links weight and health, and it also makes being fat something to fear. You’re defending to me the fact that thin insecure people need to be told that they aren’t overweight — the message isn’t that they are wonderful the way they are but that they LACK a hateable quality. All that does is make being fat something off in the distance to avoid. Don’t worry, you’re not fat! Not, “so what, you have rolls, so does everyone”. Of COURSE “even” thin people are insecure, but it’s immensely privileged and fatphobic to tell thin people they don’t have to be insecure about BECOMING fat. If that’s something worth saying what the hell are fat people supposed to do? You say that you don’t believe that all larger people are unhealthy. Yet a sentence later you mention that SOMETIMES obesity can be unhealthy (which presumably is a justification for having mentioned so much that ‘you’re healthy!’ in the post). Sure, sometimes obese people can be unhealthy, and sometimes thin people can be. It isn’t relevant to rolls. You also haven’t grasped my problem with that entire discussion, which is that health is not a good metric to tell someone to cheer up about. Unhealthy people are valid people. If someone is obese and has diabetes, for example, they have not failed as a person and are still worthy of love and care by themselves and others, any more than an amputee or a cancer patient or someone with depression. Do you congratulate your friends that they haven’t been hospitalized recently? No? Then let’s get away from judging healthy thin people vs healthy fat people vs unhealthy fat people. Also, no. It wouldn’t be considered thin shaming if thin people were left out. For one thing, thin people carry privilege that fat people do not. For another thing, if this were a post about how everyone has rolls and fat people don’t have to look smooth and hourglassy, thin people wouldn’t be relevant to the discussion. If it were a post about how …everyone has visible ribs sometimes and you don’t have to worry, you’re not getting underweight??… I guess it would be a little thin shaming but that’s NOT WHAT THIS DISCUSSION IS ABOUT.
Zoom Info

Okay. To “clear this up real quick” if multiple people are all having the same issues with your post, you probably were in fact being offensive. It’s nice that you weren’t intending to be, but it would be nicer if you stopped justifying and just…apologized. Or listened. Or didn’t say anything and just made an effort to word things better in the future.

The point of what I said before is that — standing alone, because that’s how all posts on Tumblr stand — the post links weight and health, and it also makes being fat something to fear. You’re defending to me the fact that thin insecure people need to be told that they aren’t overweight — the message isn’t that they are wonderful the way they are but that they LACK a hateable quality. All that does is make being fat something off in the distance to avoid. Don’t worry, you’re not fat! Not, “so what, you have rolls, so does everyone”. Of COURSE “even” thin people are insecure, but it’s immensely privileged and fatphobic to tell thin people they don’t have to be insecure about BECOMING fat. If that’s something worth saying what the hell are fat people supposed to do?

You say that you don’t believe that all larger people are unhealthy. Yet a sentence later you mention that SOMETIMES obesity can be unhealthy (which presumably is a justification for having mentioned so much that ‘you’re healthy!’ in the post). Sure, sometimes obese people can be unhealthy, and sometimes thin people can be. It isn’t relevant to rolls.

You also haven’t grasped my problem with that entire discussion, which is that health is not a good metric to tell someone to cheer up about. Unhealthy people are valid people. If someone is obese and has diabetes, for example, they have not failed as a person and are still worthy of love and care by themselves and others, any more than an amputee or a cancer patient or someone with depression. Do you congratulate your friends that they haven’t been hospitalized recently? No? Then let’s get away from judging healthy thin people vs healthy fat people vs unhealthy fat people.

Also, no. It wouldn’t be considered thin shaming if thin people were left out. For one thing, thin people carry privilege that fat people do not. For another thing, if this were a post about how everyone has rolls and fat people don’t have to look smooth and hourglassy, thin people wouldn’t be relevant to the discussion. If it were a post about how …everyone has visible ribs sometimes and you don’t have to worry, you’re not getting underweight??… I guess it would be a little thin shaming but that’s NOT WHAT THIS DISCUSSION IS ABOUT.

Q:hello this may be very out of the blue seeing as your post about zonegran was a while back but my doctor is suggesting i switch to zonegran from keppra, and i havent been able to find much helpful information about personal zonegran experiences and would really really appreciate if you could tell me a little about your experience on it. thank you thank you

littlefilthything

TW: Weight loss, fatphobia, medication

(wow, tumblr, it’s great how you’re not sending me notifications!)

I hope you see this since it’s been a few days! I’ll do my best, since I switched in the other direction and so obviously for me, Keppra was more effective but I’m guessing for you it wasn’t doing much, and/or our seizures behave slightly differently. Meds vary widely so I can’t realy speak to how effective it’s going to be for you. It is less EXPENSIVE than Keppra, so if money’s an issue it probably will be better on that front.

In terms of side effects, Zonegran has a few. It definitely is what it’s hyped up to be in terms of weight loss and (clinical) anorexia (that is, not wanting to eat). I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t really interested in food, but some people actively dislike the taste of food while on Zonegran. Personally for me this more took on the form of the feeling of hunger just not being that important to act on, or being satisfied with nutritionally totally irrelevant food (Eggos, for me). YMMV pretty widely in terms of weight loss, too: some people lose weight, others don’t. Personally I dropped like 100 pounds in a year, from size 18/20 to size 6. When you’ve always been the fat kid and everyone starts suddenly praising you and asking what you did (and the answer is “had seizures”) it can do some weird things to your self image and self worth, and I wasn’t mentally super healthy, especially when I started plateauing and gaining the weight back as my body adjusted to Zonegran, and ESPECIALLY because it became clear that people around me saw this as a magical side effect that should be encouraged whatever the cost.

I’m digressing. I still have some resentment about the way people started piling on the praise for losing weight, and the people who encouraged me to up my dose, which as I’ll mention in a minute wasn’t good. But —

— because this is one of the most common side effects, I would definitely recommend talking to your doctor (and a counselor if you need to) about how you feel depending on how radically your body changes and even more than that I would recommend being on vitamins, especially folic acid but probably a multivitamin or iron supplements, because you will likely forget to eat a bit.

The biggest/most serious change for me, though, was when I went up on my dosage. I’d been having what seemed like strangely elongated absence seizures or partial seizures where I could hear what someone was saying but would just stare and not be able to respond. We weren’t sure exactly why so I was recommended to take one extra of the zonegran from the therapeutic dose I’d been taking. Basically went from “somewhat controlled” to “a zombie” in one pill. My thinking seriously slowed (I didn’t even realize what this symptom MEANT until this happened), it only worsened the effect of not being able to answer questions or respond to people, I had trouble finding words, stop talking in the middle of WORDS, had a hard time analyzing concepts… To this day I’m not sure if what I was having in the first place were side effects of the zonegran slowing my thinking, or simply partial seizures that weren’t being dealt with very well (since they also sound like that to me). (Annd as a side note, I never ended up losing weight after the first burst, even on a higher dose, so the joke - if it was that - about how this was the preferred medicine to go up on was just totally wrong and in poor taste. Clearly I haven’t gotten over that).

Now keep in mind, since I’ve been rather scary, that the zombie effect did not kick in until I was on a bunch of zonegran (+ others) a day. I would say that it’s something to watch out for - get the opinions of people around you, are you as awake or alert as you used to be, is it interfering with your life, how are your grades, etc - but not something to panic over. I didn’t get the Keppra “rage” very much either, but you may have, for instance.

Ultimately, my experience with Zonegran was neutral to negative. It was way more effective than my previous medicine, Depakote, was, but it didn’t control my seizures as well as Keppra XR did. You may have the opposite experience. Whatever controls your seizures best is probably best, but at the same time I don’t want to sugar coat the side effects I had because I want you to know where they’re coming from if they happen to you.

I would really encourage you to get on the forums at epilepsy.com, and also check out crazymeds.us, which is dedicated to anti-epileptic, anti-anxiety and anti-depressant drugs and their side effects, uses, etc and has a forum section as well. That way you can get a range of responses and experiences and also hopefully find other people with the same *exact* issues to give you advice.

I also want to say good luck! Seizures suck, especially since a lot of people don’t understand. I wish you the absolute best with trying to find what’s right for you. I hope I wasn’t too scary here :P I KNOW I was too long winded, so sorry!!

Q:unless you have some sort of balance disorder, i'd say go for it! i've done pole on and off for 3 yrs and when i was doing it 3x a week with benign positional vertigo it was still fine: the pole centers you, after a few classes you'll get used to it and be super elegant on-pole even if off you fall over air off it :D (lots of girls in the community will tell you as much about their own experiences, too). it's a fab sport, if you wanna try you should, clumsiness or lack of coordination be damned

fuckoff1234567

Wow, this is amazingly helpful and encouraging! Thank you!

One of the few lingering things I have a lot of body shame about is athletic/performance type stuff - I never thought of myself as someone who was the “type” to do sports (even when I was playing basketball for …six years??), particularly graceful sports like dancing and skating and so on - so maybe actually getting out and doing something I like is a good step to beating that perception of myself. I’ll definitely have to save up for classes but this may be something I put on the to-do list. 

Thank you for the note, I feel a little more hopeful about it <3!

Q:are there any women in the persian catholic community considered a saint

Anonymous

I literally stared at this for like half an hour. I can’t tell if this is like, the weirdest troll in the universe, someone who sent the wrong person an ask (not particularly relevant to my blog?) or someone trying to do their homework (inventive).

I mean, it’s better than anon HATE, I guess, but whoa.

By the way, the answer is yes, there are. There’s a wiki page on the subject. Saint Christina is one. 

….this website gets weirder every day.

Q:I don't mean to presume to know your identity better than you, but maybe just as food for thought: I went through a lot of the same worries and confusing as you seem to be, based on your agender post (hi from the tag, btw!), and I've since realized that I feel better identifying as bigender: female AND agender. Whatever conclusion you come to for yourself, though - even if it's still being unsure - I wish you well :)

Anonymous

Thank you :) I hadn’t considered that possibility, to be quite honest with you. I don’t thiiink it’s really where I’m at, but it’s good to hear from someone who’s been in the same position. 

What bothers me most right now is a pressure to be …well, it’s not transnormative, really, but neutral-normative, I guess? I don’t think it’s as much confusion about my own identity - though that is a bit of an issue sometimes - as feeling like I’m not “properly” agender for the way that I act. 

And like, some days I don’t give a fuck - most days probably - and I definitely think people should be able to perform however they want and STILL be identified the way they are, but somehow this doesn’t apply to me some days.

But, this does indeed give me food for thought. Thinking about what feels right to me is never a bad thing and it is entirely possible I fall somewhere to the left of agender or vacillate between. I’d be surprised but not bothered.

Still had it in my mailbox! Though really, the gray head is SO UNFLATTERING.

I honestly don’t know what you want from this question. First of all, if you walked up to the majority of FAAB people and said “are you a woman” or “do you think of yourself as a woman” they would answer yes. That concept isn’t bizarre. If you asked them “are you not a woman?” they would know how to answer that question. They might not be educated on the gender spectrum but that answer still makes sense. 

What is the … I’m sorry. It’s late. This doesn’t sound like English to me.

The idea of a woman is someone who identifies as a woman. The end. Woman is not ‘a person with breasts and a vagina’ or ‘someone who fucks dudes’ or ‘a person in a dress and heels’. Which, if you’re the same person telling me lots of people don’t identify with patriarchy, you know. If I asked a butch woman if she thought of herself as a woman likely the answer would be yes, possibly even very offendedly. Yes, gender is socialized and constructed, but there are lots of people who defy norms even from a young age who don’t stop identifying as their assigned gender. And honestly that should be PROOF POSITIVE that the people who identify themselves as something OTHER than the gender assigned to them (or without one entirely) have reason to. Gender is a construct, but it is not ONLY a construct.

So yeah. Are you telling me that if everyone who didn’t like gender stereotypes was agender way more people would be agender AND ALSO that because gender is a construct, people who don’t fit into that construct just call themselves (their assigned gender) because the very idea of identifying anything else is foreign to them? Like. That’s not only offensive to me, that’s offensive to most people on earth and pretty much assumes they’re stupid. You don’t get to just tell people well, gender doesn’t exist. I don’t even LIKE gender but I appreciate that others know what the fuck they’re talking about. You’ve just implied that agender people are fake because women aren’t actually real. WHAT?

I don’t even know why I’m answering this except I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT.

Time for bed.

Q:To be honest, I don't think a lot of women really identify with the patriarchal idea of woman or their bodies. I mean, it's got to be more than that for you, but if that's what agender means, then most women aren't really cis (though they may not explicitly id as trans or agender).

Anonymous

Oh man, how did I know implicitly inviting people to comment on my gender would end badly?

I mean my temptation is to say well OBVIOUSLY. Yes, lots of women don’t identify with patriarchal expectations. Most, I would say. How could they?

But for one thing, my comment was about how I DO feel physically ok with my body, most of the time. At odds with the way I can mentally cringe at calling myself a girl instead of a person, or look in the mirror and just feel a sense of disrecognition, I feel fine about my body, usually, and its curves and weirdness. Sometimes I wish it could vary at will. But.

For another, probably a lot more women than you think aren’t cis.

I don’t know what it feels like to know you are a gender. I don’t like the concept. It doesn’t feel right. It’s not about my inclination toward the stereotypes of one gender or another, it’s about my brain.

But you honestly don’t deserve that explaination. This comment is way too close to the same things trans kids get told by radfems. Oh, well, no one likes themselves. It’s patriarchy.

o, there’s a wide spectrum. IM sure all this angst would be relieved if I just pretended to be a girl but that’s not real.

Q:dude, aerials or silks will MAKE you flexible and strong - i'm not into either as of now, but it's def one of my favorite things about pole, and they're similar. prior conditioning helps, of course, but it's definitely one of those get-stronger-by-doing kind of things. if you want to try it, you should!

fuckoff1234567

thanks for the encouragement! despite being super body positive, i think (and i sort of blame my parents for this because when i was growing up i was sort of told that our family wasn’t any good at sports, that i didn’t ‘have the body’ to do certain things, blah blah blah) exercise and athletics have been the hardest thing to see myself doing, much harder than wearing form fitting clothing or not thinking about dieting. it’s scary to think about being embarrassed in front of people or judged by them…when i really need to frame it as doing something that might be really fun and that everyone will have awkward moments while learning. 

i really do need to get active again, though. i loved playing basketball as a kid, and though about half of that was really liking being part of a team and feeling that sense of belonging, i definitely liked having a stress reliever. so maybe i shall check something out. (and there’s the other issue: money! uggggh)

anyway, thank you! :)

ohwhatatragiccost replied to your post: The Homestuck quiz said I’m John. Woe. I don’t know anything about these characters, really, but I know I don’t want to be John. I would have been okay with like, literally anyone but John. DAMN.
Fuck that, I want to be Dirk, he’s an idiot and he’s queer.

You can be Dirk if you want. He was on the short list anyway. You gotta be a mad pimp though. With robots.

I feel like everyone is coming to me like we’re on the playground playing Homestuck. “I’M KARKAT. YOU CAN BE GAMZEE. YOU’RE…JOHN.” “I don’t wanna be John.” “OK YOU CAN BE DAVE. NO, ROXY.” “Man, I’m totally Dirk.” “FINE, FUCK, YOU’RE DIRK.”

Q:I DON'T MURDER PEOPLE THOUGH. Also I just finished Act 2 a few minutes ago. I should probably get ready for work.

adamstardust

OR DO YOU~

Well, that’s why I said I was looking for the more universal qualities?

Mwahahaha a convert :D :D Don’t let anyone tell you ‘it doesn’t get good until Act 5’. It takes forever to meet the trolls but they’re not the only good thing about the comic (though they are great!) and definitely not the most important part. I will say it does get a little less specifically aimed at RPG players though, at least it seemed super confusingly tangled up in that when I first started reading.

Q:The Homestuck quiz said I'm John. Woe. I don't know anything about these characters, really, but I know I don't want to be John. I would have been okay with like, literally anyone but John. DAMN.

ohwhatatragiccost

noooo John is my baby. Like, I don’t talk about John much because he’s not super controversial, and also I like the girls a lot, and there are about 23230000 characters? but I love John.

I maintain that you’re more Dave-like, but I could see how a perfunctory - or even not - personality quiz might see you as John. Yeah, John is the “straight man” to his friends’ quips (….I don’t think I ever saw the connection between him claiming he’s not a homosexual and being the straight man before *FACEPALM*) but he’s also very brave and has a lot of ingenuity (for example, he’s better than some of his friends at putting things together, which is not unlike you). He also seems to believe or expect the best of people. I guess the thing is, that John can come off a little naive or passive, but it’s because he legitimately believes in GOOD and in people being. And I don’t think you’re unlike that.

Also he gives the best presents. Like, some of my favorite panels will always be the gifts he sent to the other betas. So your obsession with making people cry over their gifts is totally John.

That said I think you do have Dave’s “I’m so cool, please ignore that I’m not actually cool, how about I do something stupidly dangerous to save you instead.”

It’s hard for me to figure out who you would be. So far I may be leaning toward Roxy. She’s a little like Dave - she can also be very insecure and she kind of puts up a cool/silly front, but is similarly daring and badass, will take a risk or kick ass when she needs to, and actually has the most strife specibuses (basically weaponable items) of any of the characters. . And like both Dave and John, she cares deeply about her friends (and sometimes has dumb crushes on them) and though she can be hurt when they’re not the most sensitive, she might be the most willing to listen and offer advice of any of the characters, no matter who’s talking, and she also cares about the people/creatures around her and will put herself at risk so they can survive even though they’re not directly important to her life.

So maybe Roxy. There are a couple others maybe.