I’d like to call on neurospicy & LGBT+ Tumblr to gather & shop at Target more often, even just for small things, if you can. If not, share this to spread the word. We need to let them know that the community stands with them & appreciates their friendly & safe pride collections.
Among the issues transphobes hate are rainbow swimsuits for kids (such a silly thing to throw a fit over) & tuck-friendly swimsuits that are intended to be inclusive for transfem people & transwomen. Harmless things that help a lot of people, but the conservatives are throwing a fit, especially in southern states.
Target has been forced to remove some products, & move the rest to the back of stores so transphobes won’t see them. Transphobes have been knocking over displays & pursuing violence & aggression to workers, not just boycotting the store.
If you can, donate to or shop at Target. Remind them of the power our community holds. Remind them that conservatives are not the majority. If you can’t, share this & tell people who can. Let this spread like wildfire.
~Nico
No. Target doesn’t need your money. It’s a multi billion dollar corporation. This isn’t fight for gay rights, this is a corporation trying to pander to gay people. We don’t need to defend the right to have corporations try to capitalize off of pride month. The solution to this conservative nonsense is to support other queer people. If conservatives are moblizing to stop buying from target how do u think they treat actual people, who do not have billions of dollars. Donate to actual gay and trans charities. Target will abandon us as soon as it stops being profitable. Corporations have no morals except increasing profit margins.
I just let out the biggest sigh because I know I’m going to be called a counterrevolutionary or something for this, but I actually somewhat agree with OP (and some with the response, too.)
Corporations only care about money, yes, obviously, no shit. The way to show them it is worthwhile putting their stake on our side is valuable, especially in cultural signaling that we will not only not be forced back into the closet, but that we’re here to stay and it’s the bigots that have to deal with being on the losing side, is to reward that allyship.
It’s a way of signaling to bigots that they’re losing the war, that culture is shifting against them and for us. Assimilation shouldn’t be an ultimate end goal, but having a culture where it is openly displayed that LGBTQ people are not just accepted but celebrated (even with just empty words) is valuable to our continued survival and progress.
Some of y'all might be too young to remember when there were zero institutions with us, and how daunting that was. How isolating that was. How it felt like the entire culture was against us and a corporation showing a sign of being even neutral on LGBTQ rights was unheard of.
When I was planning the road trip portion of my up coming vacation (I know I’m privileged enough to be able to take vacations, my household is 3 income no kids, this is def coming from that place), I was worried where I’d be able to stop when I have to go to the bathroom during this 17 hour drive that will pass through Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Guess what came to mind immediately as a safe place? Fucking Target! When I’m driving around less familiar parts of Austin and I suddenly have to use the restroom and don’t know where I can go? I look for Target.
Literally, I’m not making this up. Target and Starbucks. Both evil corporations that I know don’t actually give a shit about me, but I still know that the policies that they put in place (that were hard fought to be won by our community btw) make me safe for the time being.
We should absolutely be supporting each, other especially queer creators, but there is an actual use to having corporations like Target on our side is still valuable. Then pulling back is a sign of the cultural tide turning against us, and that should scare us more than I feel like it is.
The cultural signaling of Target and other corporations abandoning just embolden bigots, it makes them more powerful. You don’t ceed land to fascists, you don’t cave into their desires.
We can do both, support independent queer creators and show corporations were worth sticking up for. It is possible, I’m so tired of this false dichotomy.
i really dislike it when people don’t understand perfectionism.
like, it isn’t always “person who has tons of motivation and spends a ton of time making this thing *just* right”
wayyyyyy more often than not it’s:
”I know that if I try to make this thing, it won’t be perfect, so I simply won’t try.”
which definitely sounds bad, right? but when you realize that it doesn’t just apply to voluntarily making art, then you realize how perfectionism is not at all a good thing in any context.
“i know that if I try to work on this assignment right now, it won’t be good enough, so i’ll wait until the last possible moment so that I have something forcing me to do it.”
”i know that I should start going to the gym, but I won’t see any improvement right away, so I just won’t.”
”i know that i should brush my teeth tonight, but that won’t be good enough to undo the fact that i haven’t brushed them 4 days in a row, so I just won’t.”
perfectionism isn’t the uncontrollable impulse to make things “just right”. (although it can occasionally manifest as this.)
perfectionism is the absolute, psychological inability to accept the concepts of “good enough” and “better than nothing”. even when you spell it out for yourself in a long text post like this.
want to take a moment to note that today is the 112th anniversary of the triangle shirtwaist factory fire, where about 146 garment workers at the new york city factory – mostly women and girls, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrants – died grisly, brutal deaths due to the inhumane working conditions, including the stairwell doors and exits being locked to prevent the workers from stealing or taking more breaks, thus preventing them from escaping. the youngest victims were only 14. the event spurred a groundswell of unionization efforts and labor activism that resulted in a number of vital changes to workplace laws. today is a saturday, the same day of the week the women and children were working when the fire broke out – the two day weekend was not adopted nationwide for another few decades.
as unions grow in popularity around the country and bigger and bigger companies attempt to crack down on them, we should not forget what is at stake if we fail to fight for our dignity at work. the organizing after the fire bolstered the burgeoning international ladies’ garment workers union, of which my grandmother was a member after taking up factory work when she immigrated. ive directly benefitted from the work that came from the outrage. thinking about what these women and girls endured that day is wildly difficult but we cant afford to forget.
in the latest cyber-news: the internet archive has lost their case against 4 major publishing houses(verge article).they’re going to appeal, but this is still a bad outcome. the fate of the internet is currently hanging in the balance because 4 multibillionare publishing groups missed out on like $15 of combined revenue during the pandemic because of the archive’s online library service. it’s so fucking stupid.
for those who don’t know what the internet archive is, it’s a virtual library full of media. books, magazines, recordings, visuals, flash games, websites - a lot of these things either don’t exist anymore or cannot be found & bought. heard of the wayback machine? that’s part of the internet archive. it is the most important website to exist, and i don’t say that lightly. if the internet archive goes down, the cultural loss will be immeasurable.
so how can you help?
boycott the publishing companies involved in this. they’re absolute ghouls, frankly, and don’t deserve a penny. the companies involved are harpercollins (imprints), wiley (imprints), penguin random house llc (imprints), and hachette book group (imprints). make sure the websites are set to your location as it may differ worldwide.
learn to torrent. download a torrent client (i recommend transmission), a vpn (i recommend protonvpn - sign up and choose the area that’s closest to your continent/country), and hit up /r/piracy on reddit for websites. with torrenting, you can get (almost) any media you want for free in high quality, with add-ons such as subtitles, and with no risks of loss. i would also recommend getting into the habit of watching stuff online for free. the less you can pay to a giant corporation, the better.
get into the habit of downloading and archiving materials. find a TB external hard drive, ideally the higher the better. it’ll probably cost around $60 for 1TB and continue to go up, but they’re so so useful. if you can’t afford a drive, look for any GB harddrives or memory sticks you have lying around and just fill them up. videos, pdfs, magazines, songs, movies, games - anything you can rip and download and fit on there, do it, because nothing is permanent.
donate to the internet archive. this is the most important option on the list. the IA relies entirely on funding, and it’s going to need more to fight this case. whatever you can donate, do it. i promise it’s helpful.
and finally…
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cannot stress enough that donating to the internet archive to help them appeal this without going broke is the most important thing you can do right now. my day job revolves around fulfilling digital article and book scan requests at an academic library and a huge part of that is borrowing from other libraries that do controlled digital lending (incl. the internet archive!). copyright law is already hugely restrictive on what we can and can’t lend, and we absolutely don’t have the option to pirate anything for our patrons due to being a large academic institution. it’s difficult to overstate just how bad this ruling could end up being for libraries that have digital lending programs, esp ones that rely on CDR for old/archival/hard-to-find texts.
so i asked a friend what was up and she replied with this and i feel like i’m in an episode of the twilight zone
Echoing the “What?” and augmenting it with a spray of scone crumbs because -
Well, because of several reasons, not least of which is that little detail of having the funeral…
Later.
When our hamster died in Wisconsin in the bleak midwinter we kept him in the freezer, and then, in early spring, when the snow and ice melted enough that the creek was running, we gave him a Viking Funeral on a small burning boat.
I’m laughing, but there’s a super useful corollary, which my husband calls “the Red Balloon.” He was a defense lawyer and had a fair number of drug addicts come through, and there is a thing where if you’re like, on your first offense, they’ll do a thing where you can go to treatment and if you complete it they’ll take the conviction off your record.
And he would tell his clients, “Look, everyone’s going to tell you not to do drugs. They’re going to say it over and over again. And it’s like, if people tell you not to think of a white elephant, you’re going to think of a white elephant. But the trick to not thinking about a white elephant is to think of a red balloon. So you need to find your red balloon. For some people it’s yoga. For others it’s woodworking. For some people it’s scrapbooking or gardening or any of a long list of things to do. They focus on that, it’s a lot easier to succeed in ignoring the white elephant.”
So yeah, “watch yourself” is one thing… but the better idea is to watch something else. (Even if it’s fanfic about werewolves fucking.)
It’s a form of productive dissociation, and is super, super helpful.
It’s easy for me to get bogged down in how much pain I’m in… but some of the most painful periods of my life have also been the most productive, writing-wise, because writing is one of my red balloons.
There is a phrase I use A LOT in my parenting and my son gets very sick of it, but it’s true:
The thing you practise is the thing you get good at.
You may not intentionally be practicing “being grumpy” but if you don’t put effort into practicing “not being grumpy” then I’m afraid that’s what you’re doing. It’s hard! It’s really hard! Sometimes, for some things, it’s pretty much impossible and that sucks!
But being carefully aware that you are going to get good at the things you do most of is a good way to be more careful of what those things are. If that makes sense.
You gotta appreciate sometimes how tumblr works in such a way that everyone who wants to reblog this interesting or useful psychological advice is also forced to reblog the thing about werewolf fucking
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