Ultrakill3-2 - Horse Girls Make Do

Aching in Ireland, while my Broken Heart is Held Hostage with my Family in Gaza

Before the ongoing horrific genocide in Gaza, I happened to be a PhD student at an Irish university collecting data for my research from universities in Gaza. Little did I know that being a student at an Irish university would be my only way to be saved from the horrible war. I was lucky and privileged, unlike my helpless family trapped in Gaza. Four months and a half into the war, my Irish supervisors and my family insisted that I should seize the opportunity to evacuate to Ireland while I still could.

Setting foot outside Gaza felt like leaving hell and entering a whole new world. People walk carefree in the streets not fearing being killed by an airstrike! They go for a run in the morning and walk their dogs! They go to school and work and live a normal life I had been deprived of for so long! I see people talking and laughing and cannot help but have the daunting thoughts that the next airstrike could kill all of my family members in Gaza.

A horrible mixture of fear, depression, survival guilt, and agony engulfs me and paralyzes my entire life as I watch the news while being far away. Just a couple of days ago, 100 innocent people were killed in a school in Gaza where people sought shelter. I saw pictures and videos of people carrying the burned meat of their family members instead of whole corpses. Could our world be more evil, insensitive, desensitized, and cruel?

My heart skips a beat every time I hear that the neighborhood where my family has been displaced was bombed! What if they are running out of luck as I write these words and the next indiscriminate bombing will end their lives?! Therefore, evacuation is a dire need and a matter of life and death at this point as the genocide and massacres continue unabated.

I am desperately trying to protect my family from this genocide just as you would do if you were in my place. I plan to evacuate them to Egypt as a first step in the hope of reuniting with them in Ireland where we can have a dignified safe life together away from the missiles, bombs, corpses, diseases, polluted water, and pain of loss. We love Gaza more than anything in the world, but I can not accept carrying them as burned meat in plastic bags like I see all the time in the news and social media.

Please find it in your heart to help me save my family by donating, reblogging, and sharing.

Note: Vetted by:

1. @el-shab-hussein and @nabulsi # 151 on the spreadsheet of Vetted Gaza Fundraisers List]

2. @riding-with-the-wild-hunt Here .

gofundme.com

Donate to Death chases my family in Gaza; help me save them, organized by Mahmoud Khalaf

People say: "Family always comes First," and to that, I say: "Amen!".… Mahmoud Khalaf needs your support for Death chases my family in Gaza;

i never puppy bores when i do my puppy chores!!

i wag my puppy tail when i check my puppy mail!!

im always happy looking when i do my puppy cooking!!!!

Perisex allies: stop this shit

CW: intersexism

Came across this infographic during some google image searching and I'm still kind of a state of despair about it because it's not just offensively wrong about what intersex is, it was used to teach university students about queer issues:

Alt text: LGBTQIA+ are defined one by one. Intersex is defined erroneously as "These are people who were born with genital organs of both sexes (male and female). It is a genetic condition."

It's one thing for your rando perisex person to be getting this wrong on social media. It's another thing entirely when it's professionals getting this wrong in an educational setting. 😩 And that this infographic appears in a peer-reviewed publication. 😩

It's even worse to know the students that were taught with this infographic were medical students, who will be the ones traumatizing intersex people for decades to come 😩

It's so wrong in so many different ways:

Intersex is not limited to people with genital differences. Most intersex people have intersex variations that are not apparent at birth, with puberty being the most common time of life for variations to present. Many people find out in adulthood having no outward physical differences.

Of the intersex people with genital differences, they do not have two sets of genitals. Most genital differences are still recognizably female or male (e.g. spadias), and those who have ambiguous genitals have one set.

Intersex is not "male parts + female parts" or even "intermediate male/female parts", it is an umbrella term for anybody whose primary/secondary sex characteristics don't line up with what is expected for male and female bodies. Some intersex variations make women look more feminine, or make men look more masculine.

Defining intersex by genital differences doesn't just exclude most intersex people, it also sets the tone that we are defined by our genitals. To be publicly intersex is to have non-stop DMs about your genitals. This sort of framing sets up openly intersex people for invasive questions and harassment, and it keeps large numbers of intersex people from coming out.

Many intersex variations do not have a known genetic basis. Many intersex variations are caused by exposure to certain hormonal levels in the womb. Certain medications when taken during pregnancy can trigger intersex variations.

While bodily variation is necessary for being intersex, the social experience of stigma, discrimination, isolation, hyper-medicalization, and hyper-sexualization are all just as much a part of being intersex.

📣 Perisex allies: this is shit you can stop. When you see other perisex people parrot this sort of misinformation, correct them. Direct them to look up resources written by actually intersex people.

Here are some starter resources to give:

Intersex explained by Hans Lindahl

Media and style guide by IHRA

FAQ by intersex-support

A recent post I did compiling information for trans people who want to be better intersex allies

hold on hold on wait a minute

i think we should all start using arabic words and phrases more often because its a beautiful language and also theres not really. english equivalents that have the same vibes

theres also the comedy potential of it. you guys dont know the joy of having your muslim friend text you "hopefully the racists in our city will all get sick and cant go to the protest" and you, as a pasty white guy, responding with "inshallah they get covid"

its a one hit KO every time. its fucking hilarious. theres no english word that has the same effect.

he also once texted me that he got over a mysterious illness he came down with (i think? i cant remember the exact context) and i responded with "subhanallah he is cured"

again, one hit KO. he lost his shit.

what im saying is we gotta normalise arabic. its just a language like any other, and it has some great words. its just like saying "thank god" or whatever, but theres so much variety and nuance. its beautiful