Are You Intersex?

Are you intersex?

It would be a great help if you were to take this 14 question survey about the sorts of terminology you prefer!

Google Docs

Intersex Terminology

A survey for intersex people about what terminology they prefer

This survey will be posted in other locations and intersex forums, feel free to spread it yourselves, I am looking for 385 responses, from a wide array of intersex people from different backgrounds. I intend to use the results of this survey in an informational website I am working on with the help of other intersex folk! If you are not intersex, you can help out by reblogging!

btw I AM SO obsessed with this picture that hozier posted

Lemme tell you a gay little story about an eagle.

Our town (~9,000 people) has a couple garages, but there's a big one on the main drag. My family has been going there for decades. I drive past it every day.

There used to be a huge pine tree on the corner of their lot, but last year it became a hazard and had to be taken down.

Shortly thereafter I drive by and see they've hired a guy to chainsaw sculpt the stump into a bald eagle.

Birds own my heart, but nationalism makes me twitchy. I withhold outright condemnation of the eagle, but I'm skeptical. (The original owner—an objectively Good Dude—sold the business to a younger couple a few years ago, and I don't have any knowledge of their whole deal.)

Then it turns out someone on staff is really into making costumes for the eagle. Every holiday. Every month. Stuffed turkey, witch costume, menorah headpiece, bunny ears. These people love to dress their bird.

The changing of the eagle suit becomes a source of joy every time I drive through town.

Until June, when the eagle is bare.

Now look, maybe I'm expecting too much asking my garage to celebrate Pride. But this is a small town. Every time I drive by that stupid eagle—this thing that has previously brought me so much joy—I feel hurt. I feel reminded that there are plenty of people in my liberal bubble who don't consider my community worthy of celebration. I drive to work, I feel bad. I drive home, I feel bad. The eagle is mocking me.

Then my A/C quits working.

So I book an appointent to bring my car in—and realize what I have to do.

I pick all this up at a thrift store for under ten bucks. I print the shirt with some weird heat-transfer fabric crayons I find in a cupboard. I loop gold elastic around the sunglasses and pray they'll fit on the eagle's head. (It is also important to draw your attention to the price of the feather boa.)

(Nice.)

My reasoning is thus: if I show up with a complete costume ready to go, someone will have to look me in the eye and say "We don't believe in that," at which point I'll be finding a new garage. But if they let me dress the eagle, then people in town get to have the joy I've been missing since the start of the month.

I listen to a lot of hype-up jams on my way over. I hate confrontation. I also don't wanna have to find another garage. I want to believe that this decision isn't actively antagonistic, but I'm not particularly hopeful.

I talk through the A/C issue with the guy at the desk, hand over my keys, then take a deep breath.

"Who's in charge of the eagle?"

"Oh, that's all Dylan. Second bay from the end."

I walk down the row of hydraulic lifts and find a disarmingly smiley middle-aged man pouring fluid through a funnel. I introduce myself and explain that, since the Pride parade is this Sunday and the eagle seems to be missing a costume, I have taken the liberty of making one myself, and can I get his blessing to go put it on?

Dylan grins this absolutely giant grin and goes

"Oh hell yeah."

So that's what's up now.

Happy Pride.

“Physical matter is music solidified” - Pythagoras

Above is the harmonic series

Below a photographic x-ray of a sea shell🐚

calico jack sympathy is a very rich vein for emotional ed whump btw. not saying anyone needs to sympathize with jack at all bc he DOES suck and personally idc enough abt jack to sympathize with him for his own sake, but there is actually textual support for a sympathetic cj read. canonically he has the same traumatic pirate background as ed and the two of them went through a rlly rough time together. we have direct support from the show that jack’s rejection of anything “soft” or “weak” comes from hornigold—the very first mention of hornigold in the entire show is when jack sees the breakfast table set for ed and stede and starts teasing ed for it with “just the two of you? hornigold would shit himself.” plus ed tells stede “jack’s always been emotional” and “he can come on a bit strong but he’s insecure” which strongly implies that ed has seen a side of jack that we don’t get to see in the one episode where he shows up. it’s a side that very well might be completely gone now that jack’s a grown adult man but to me it runs counter to the text to claim that ed’s assessment of jack is completely wrong and this vulnerable side of jack never existed in the first place.

so anyway one possible angle here for sympathizing with jack as a vessel for whumping poor ed’s heart is the tragedy of two kids going through something awful together and not being able to count on each other during the whole experience. being trapped in a physically and emotionally abusive environment together and empathizing when the captain singles one of them out bc they know firsthand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of hornigold’s ire, but at the same time they’re not able to ask each other for support bc what if they use that vulnerability, that plea for comfort, as a weapon against you? what if you try to offer them support and comfort and they push you away? what if, when you DO rely on each other for support, your captain sees that bond and uses it to torture you both even further?

and what do you do if you both comfort each other, you both take care of each other, and then one of you fucking dies? because that’s how it goes—most of the pirates ed knows are dead, a pirate’s life is short but nice, the only retirement they get is death, you’re not likely to avoid near-death experiences in their line of work, heading towards a raid with the one hope being that a certain death ain’t slow. and it’s not just raids, either: your captain might have you keelhauled for a minor offense, might starve you for a week if you laugh at him during a speech, might feed you a live crab for nicking some rations, or maybe a disagreement with another crew member could turn into bloodshed. maybe someone will push you overboard for shits and giggles. what do you if you’ve found comfort with a crewmate, and then that crewmate dies? how do you cope? you’re probably better off not letting yourself care for anyone, rejecting people’s pleas for support or intimacy or friendship, because it’ll hurt less when they inevitably end up dying horrifically just like everyone else you’ve ever cared about.

and then the other big ed whump angle here is watching someone you know experience horrific trauma with not only fail to process the trauma in a healthy way but also become a worse person as a result of it. like ed knowing firsthand just how awful everything jack experienced was and remembering exactly what it looked like every time hornigold beat the spirit out of jack when he was ultimately just a vulnerable kid. ed hearing jack say some toxic macho bullshit and knowing exactly where jack learned that and how much it hurt for 20-something-year-old jack to absorb that lesson—and more than that, ed remembering when he used to believe that exact sort of toxic shit. and ed feeling like he can’t hold it against jack if he doesn’t grow bc he sees so many similarities between him and jack, and the only reason he was able to heal and become a better person is bc he met stede—and it’s not like stede was the only person in the whole world ed could’ve connected with, he had an entire ship full of kindhearted doofuses ready to offer him emotional support and he betrayed all of them because the recent back-to-back backstabbing compounded on a lifetime of trauma and made it impossible for ed to trust them. how can ed blame jack for rejecting opportunities to heal when ed did the same thing? when he can remember watching firsthand as years of abuse caused jack to gradually close himself off, the worst part of it being that it was like watching his own reflection as he also hardened under the pressure of just trying to survive another fucking day? how can ed judge jack, when jack is who he might’ve been if he’d never met stede?