silver's garden of dreams...

i've wanted to write an entry for a bit now. every day since my last entry i've gone maybe this day will be better, maybe today i won't have to write another negative depressed entry and i turn out very certainly to be wrong. 🙃
ah well.

as much as i frankly detest tumblr overall, there are some things it does right. though, those things never seem to be the things i see tumblr (falsely) praised for, and the exceptionalism i see given to tumblr by far too many of its users still strongly repels me.
i do actually enjoy its mixing of personal journal entry content, and content meant to be shared like images and stories, though. i still feel dreamwidth is by far the best for actual dedicated journaling if you're not a strange little gremlin like me who wants to live off the proverbial internet grid, but it's not really the same for having journal entries right alongside say, a meme someone else posted you wanted to put on your own journal to share with your readers, or some nice art. that is a nice thing about tumblr, is its format works well for that in a way most other social media doesn't. i'd say the only thing that comes close to doing what tumblr does as i've described are customized mastodon servers that have a very largely expanded text limit.
with that said, i think today instead of going into a depressive ramble (which i not only would rather not do, but as always the vast majority of my problems are things i don't want to talk about on a public internet space...) i'll share a few posts i enjoyed, that also feel sort of related to each other in their topic.

(source: doctordragon @ tumblr.com)

In light of recent events, I would like to remind everyone that the correct pro choice talking point that will actually pull people to our side is NOT whether a fetus is human or not because you'll never win. The correct argument is how the state should never have the power to force you to give up physical autonomy for the sake of any other being.

(source: roach-works @ tumblr.com)

if the state can't force you to be an organ donor after your death, it shouldn't be able to force you to be an organ donor before your death. if you can't be forced to give even a pint of blood for half an hour, you shouldn't be forced to give up your uterus for nine months. if your alcoholic father can't demand you give him half your liver, if the red cross can't just demand your blood, if those wig making companies can't demand your hair, no one should be able to demand your reproductive system.

even if a fertilized egg is exactly as much of a person as a twenty one year old citizen, no one else in the world should have a legal right to make use of your body parts without your express consent.

completely agree with this, and also i think it's worth clarifying that i (and i assume the people in this tumblr thread based on these posts) am not trying to argue that dead people shouldn't have rights and should be harvested indiscriminately regardless of their wishes in life or that of their loved ones. (which. i'm not sure why whenever i've said things similar to what these posts are saying, people seem to invariably think i'm trying to argue to have the rights of the dead stripped away... i've never said anything even close to that, and it perplexes me even now, so. just trying to prevent that weird misunderstanding from happening yet again.)
we deserve rights to our bodies and to have our autonomy respected just as much in death as in life. consenting to any and all other activities is not also consent to pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood, and frankly i don't want to live in a society where people are forced to give use of their womb to another person, give up a kidney, have their blood stolen, have their hair sheared for anyone else's benefit without their express permission. that kind of society is, frankly, horrific and i'd even say downright evil.

(source: inkskinned @ tumblr.com)

the question you're never allowed to ask is why, and you learn it young. often the answer is just because and if you ask too often people say you're being a nudge and when you say why do we have to go to church every weekend if god is everywhere won't he also be at home your grandmother says that if you talk like that you'll go straight to hell, no questions

and it never gets easier because as a teenager when you say why do teenagers have to wake up so early to go to school it's bad for them and they shrug and say that this is the way it's always been done so it's how it's going to be done, forever. and no you're not old enough to vote but according to certain state laws you are old enough to get married and carry a baby to term — and yes you're deemed old enough to hold and shoot a gun but not old enough to know about safe sex and birth control — and you say why, though? and they snarl that you're a child, you don't understand the world, go home

and as an adult you learn not to ask why because sometimes something changes in the other person; they can become dangerous, erratic. you learn this with your first boyfriend because you ask why do you expect me to remind you to do the dishes? and he says you're accusing me of being misogynistic and when you ask your boss why she hasn't given you a promotion she says this you playing the race card isn't it and when in an argument about drag shows you ask why are we still letting priests be alone around children your father backhands you, hard, the way he hasn't since you were a kid

and the truth is that you want to ask — why! why is it like this? why not just do what we can for a better environment? why not put money into public education. why not cut interest from student debt? and fuck, but, this shit never stops. it's not just the actual laws — it's silent; comes home and never lets you rest. why do you have to have kids. why do you have to own a house, have to get married, have to give in. why do you have to settle down, find a job that "fits". why do you have to dress so as not to be noticed? why do you have to act both delighted and innocent and also sinful and seductive? why do you have to balance-beam walk across your life, careful and quiet and patient?

so you cut and dye your hair and get tattoos and piercings because truth be told there aren't rules, and you go through the agonizing process of learning to actually-love-your-body, even though it takes actual years to do it, and you learn to dress how you enjoy, even though sometimes your social anxiety tries to kill you for it. you learn how you define yourself, gently at first; and then with a hard-won conviction.

but then you come home and your mother asks you to help her in the kitchen even though your father is sitting on his ass in the living room and of course you'll help her but in that moment some knowledge strips your skin — oh. there is no why.

it's just the way it is.

writeblr hmm. does this make sense i think the thing ive been experiencing the most right now is like this horrible feeling that like. nobody just. sits and thinks through their argument like okay sure you believe that it would be a waste of money to fund public transportation why tho WHY!!! -> drag is bad for children... why? "bc it's sexual" okay but it's not sexual. it doesn't have to be any more than halloween is sexual sure there are parties where it is. but we aren't banning sororities from talking to children so why? ........ i mean we all know why. it's why they react so strongly when you directly question them bc their reason is usually "bigotry and ignorance" but they're too cowardly to name it

(whew. i put a lot of work into preserving the formatting of tumblr posts i want to share, and this one was a lot.)
(that said, inkskinned's writing is just as articulate and amazing as this post, as is inkskinned's poetry. please check out this tumblr if you love this post! also, avoided using pronouns because i'm really not sure what inkskinned's pronouns are and there aren't any listed in a place i can find...)

but yeah. fuck. every time i come across an inkskinned post whatever the topic is is just knocked out of the park, an eloquent post worded far better than i can ever hope to say something. i appreciate inkskinned's work a lot.
i agree with the whole thing of course, and it resonates with experiences i've had myself of questioning things, especially as a child. most people unfortunately would rather uphold the status quo even if it kills them, even as it's slowly killing them, and resent you when you choose not to do the same.

this also ties into the previous post in some ways, i feel. peoples' transphobia is especially apparent when they say shit like trans minors are too young to have their bodies ravaged by an ~unnatural~ puberty but also scoff when the response is, by this logic, everyone should be on puberty blockers then? until they're of whatever magical age they're considered an adult and have the autonomy to choose what happens to their body? but no, whatever puberty your body forces you to go through is fine, they just hate the idea of trans teens doing "irreversible" things to their body, as if things like pregnancy and childbirth don't do those same things.
(which isn't to say people treat teen parents well, because frankly they don't. teen parents and especially teen mothers are treated by vastly too many people like absolute shit. but a pregnant teen deserves to have the choice to have a baby if that's what they truly want without being pressured or shamed, just as a trans teen deserves to have the choice to choose a puberty that doesn't make them suicidal. a minority of people making decisions they later regret doesn't mean that choice should be taken away from them, and anyone using the extremely small regret rate for transition and gender-affirming surgery against gender transition should also, by their own logic, be arguing for the forcible removal of all children from parents at birth to be raised only by specifically trained caregivers as the regret rate of choosing to have children is over seven times higher than that for gender affirming care. so. :) )

but this all ties back into the way youth are treated like objects and property until they reach some magical age of suddenly having control over their lives. that somehow there's a massive and gaping world of difference between a 16 year old getting a tattoo and an 18 year old getting a tattoo. the knowledge there are places in this world, even in this country i live in, where parents have control over their childrens' medical procedures to the point where a child can be denied a life-saving treatment, even while crying and sobbing that they want to live and don't want to die, because the parents reject it. children deserve and should have far more autonomy than they have. people accept it as "just the way things are" that children are basically property like pets for their entire time growing up, but things don't have to be this way...
but if they didn't, the bigots in power would have to give up a large portion of control they have over people. which is why human freedoms and rights are unfortunately not a given in the eyes of the law, and we can never get complacent or feel like our work in fighting the fuckers is ever done. even now i'm still chilled to remember i live in a country where the right to an abortion was overturned, something i have been afraid of for decades since i learned how hard-won that was and had hoped i or anyone else would never have to experience such a thing.

things are never fully lost, though. even if things seem hopeless, as per other entries i've made, hope doesn't have to be a requirement to keep going, to keep fighting. we have to create the hope and dream of a better world if not for ourselves, for the people of tomorrow.