Featured on Everyday Health

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

Everyday Health featured me in their piece, The 10 Best Arthritis Blogs to Keep You (and Your Body) Moving:

If you’re looking for a blogger with some attitude, Kirsten is your woman. The self-proclaimed “chronic illness collector” (as a child she was diagnosed with systemic juvenile arthritis, or Still’s disease) and sex educator covers every health topic imaginable on Not Standing Still’s Disease, from mental health to medical terminology to her “Self-Care Sundays” series — posts themed around “our relationships with ourselves.” She is an advocate for the gender-fluid and trans community, which she discusses at length in her separate blog, Chronic Sex, along with (naturally) sexuality and sex with a chronic illness. While the topics she covers on both blogs aren’t light, she still aims to keep her posts humorous and positive. She even pokes fun at herself for having “collected” sixteen different health diagnoses, like scoliosis and asthma.

Go check it out!

Don’t Let Them Trick You – MindGeek, PornHub, and YouPorn are Bad News

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

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Last updated October 24, 2021.

PornHub and YouPorn want you to think they’re good people. They really do. From giving funding to college sex educators to ‘fighting’ revenge porn to even paying for plows during snowstorms in major cities, they run some new positive propaganda stuff every time you turn around.

Don’t believe it for a single second. There’s a reason they’re on my blacklist.

They Have A Virtual Monopoly

PornHub’s parent company, MindGeek, has a virtual monopoly on ‘free’ porn streaming sites. These sites are modeled after YouTube, allowing users to upload content. Total, they consume the third-largest amount of bandwidth, with only Google and Netflix ahead of them. Companies they own or have a part in include (but aren’t limited to):

  • YouPorn
  • RedTube
  • Tube8
  • XTube
  • ExtremeTube
  • PornMD
  • PornIQ
  • Peeperz
  • GayTube
  • Babes.com
  • Men.com
  • Sextube
  • SpankWire
  • MyDirtyHobby
  • Webcams.com
  • Brazzers
  • Digital Playground
  • Reality Kings
  • Mofos
  • Twistys
  • Playboy
  • Wicked Pictures

They are involved with over 100 sites. No, I’m not kidding. If this wasn’t porn, I have a feeling they’d be more regulated and challenged by laws.

Stolen Content

One of the biggest issues with MindGeek companies is that they do not regulate stolen content. This means users can upload clips they got from any performer without that performer benefitting. There are even allegations that they cheat the system:

For example, one shady scenario involves a company that knowingly and willingly submits infringing content to its tube site — or pays others to do it for them — under the guise of “user” uploads. Then in an effort to seemingly comply with the DMCA, removes clips on request — only to have the compliance department send the removed material to the upload department, where this cynically cyclical process is endlessly repeated.

The monopoly MindGeek holds on streaming sites, in addition to the big production names they own or are involved with, makes it very difficult for performers to feel like they can speak up. Adult actress Tasha Reign said, “It’s like we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place in a way, because if I want to shoot content then I kinda have to shoot for [Mindgeek] because that’s the company that books me because they own…almost…everything.” The fear of being blacklisted by a company that owns nearly 100 sites is terrifying.

Siri, the owner of Abby Winters, said, “From personal experience, I know how hard it is to get my copyrighted content removed from tube sites – even the purportedly “legit” ones that porn magnate MindGeek owns still force copyright holders to jump through hoops to get our content removed from tube sites.” She goes on to explain that, like Walmart, MindGeek purposely has built a monopoly by providing ‘free’ content. Hell, they even profit more off pirated content than the stuff they produce and own.

It’s very costly to hire a legal team to issue DMCA takedown notices and threaten legal action, making it less accessible to people, too. That’s even more work someone has to do to afford to take legal action to keep the work they do from being pirated. At the end of the day, that costs too much in money, time, and energy for sex workers – especially disabled SWs.

That monopoly also forces a number of performers, sites, and stores who would object to MindGeek’s ethics to work with them. If they don’t, they’d likely cease to exist. This has been an issue for nearly a decade.

Like Walmart, the quality of films made goes way down. When the #PayForYourPorn movement started, Megan Wozniak – the marketing director of Adult DVD Empire – said, ”If people continue down this road, porn is not gonna get made. It’ll all be amateur content, and you won’t get the high-resolution, high production quality that you have with the studios. We just wanted to educate consumers who might not be aware of the effects of pirated content.”

This becomes even worse when we consider that, unlike other film-based industries, adult performers only get paid once for their appearances. They don’t get royalties or money from sales unless they’re a one-person show releasing their own content. That means working much harder for less overall pay, something that has a lot of performers afraid for their career safety.

Doxxing Sex Workers

If that wasn’t bad enough, the process these sites use to remove pirated content puts sex workers at risk. About this time last year, I watched as a friend live-tweeted discovering their videos on PornHub. Once they filed to get that removed, it took quite a bit for PornHub to get on it. The scarier part? They put up this performer’s real name. They had multiple stalkers that could now find them. It took days of several of us harassing PornHub to get this remedied. It seems that every time I turn around, though, I see this happening to more performers.

What they’re doing is doxxing sex workers – sharing their true identities instead of screen names. It’s a revenge tactic to try to scare people away from getting content they rightfully own off these tube sites. If this were something YouTube did, you bet Viacom and others would stomp on this. Unfortunately, because this is porn, the government – which usually would get in on this stuff – doesn’t care.

And that’s scary AF.

For performers who, like any other human in an occupation, has a family or another job to worry about? It’s even more terrifying.

Gathering Your Data

The UK recently based the Digital Economy Act. One of the pieces of this act is to have an age checker on all pornographic sites. The AgeID system that MindGeek sites will use does more than that – it collects information about you. And they’re offering their system to other porn sites for a fee.

In order to verify your age, you can log into a third-party site. According to RT, MindGeek has stated it won’t collect data during the verification process. However, data is still stored:

The program will find the names, postal addresses, nationalities, dates and places of birth, email addresses, mobile phone numbers and demographic information of its users. The firm notes that this information can be used by AgeID “to develop and display content and advertising tailored to your interests on our website and other sites.”

The policy also states: “We also may use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or other online services.”

This has people concerned about visiting social media, conducting business, and more. And rightfully so, especially as MindGeek isn’t to be trusted.

Updates

As of early 2020, Pornhub has been exposed to allow videos of rape and abuse – not just fantasies.

In December 2020, Pornhub purged ‘millions’ of unverified videos amid allegations of hosting child pornography. That same month, both Mastercard and Visa pulled their services from PornHub. According to the New York Times,

Pornhub declined to make executives available on the record, but it provided a statement. “Pornhub is unequivocally committed to combating child sexual abuse material, and has instituted a comprehensive, industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community,” it said. Pornhub added that any assertion that the company allows child videos on the site “is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue.”

Here are additional items from that same NYT article that echo what I wrote here in 2018:

Pornhub is owned by Mindgeek, a private pornography conglomerate with more than 100 websites, production companies and brands. Its sites include Redtube, Youporn, XTube, SpankWire, ExtremeTube, Men.com, My Dirty Hobby, Thumbzilla, PornMD, Brazzers and GayTube. There are other major players in porn outside the Mindgeek umbrella, most notably XHamster and XVideos, but Mindgeek is a porn titan. If it operated in another industry, the Justice Department could be discussing an antitrust case against it.

Pornhub and Mindgeek also stand out because of their influence. One study this year by a digital marketing company concluded that Pornhub was the technology company with the third greatest-impact on society in the 21st century, after Facebook and Google but ahead of Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.

And some new facts to share:

While Pornhub would not tell me how many moderators it employs, I interviewed one who said that there are about 80 worldwide who work on Mindgeek sites (by comparison, Facebook told me it has 15,000 moderators). With 1.36 million new hours of video uploaded a year to Pornhub, that means that each moderator would have to review hundreds of hours of content each week.

The moderators fast forward through videos, but it’s often difficult to assess whether a person is 14 or 18, or whether torture is real or fake. Most of the underage content involves teenagers, the moderator I spoke with said, but some comes from spy cams in toilets or changing rooms and shows children only 8 to 12.

“The job in itself is soul-destroying,” the moderator said.

Executives of Pornhub appear in the past to have assumed that they enjoyed immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet platforms on which members of the public post content. But in 2018 Congress limited Section 230 so that it may not be enough to shield the company, leading Mindgeek to behave better.

It has doubled the number of moderators in the last couple of years, the moderator told me, and this year Pornhub began voluntarily reporting illegal material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. After previously dragging its feet in removing videos of children and nonconsensual content, Pornhub now is responding more rapidly.

It has also compiled a list of banned content. I obtained a copy of this list, and it purports to bar videos with terms or themes like “rape,” “preteen,” “pedophilia” and “bestiality” (it helpfully clarifies that this “includes eels, fish, octopus, insects”). Diapers are OK “if no scatophilia.” Mutilation depends on context but “cannot depict severing parts of the body.”

Pornhub has introduced software that supposedly can “fingerprint” rape videos and prevent them from being uploaded again. But Vice showed how this technology is easily circumvented on Pornhub.

I don’t see any neat solution. But aside from limiting immunity so that companies are incentivized to behave better, here are three steps that would help: 1.) Allow only verified users to post videos. 2.) Prohibit downloads. 3.) Increase moderation.

According to City News, “The company recently settled a lawsuit involving 50 women, including four Canadians, who alleged they were duped into taking part of a massive human trafficking ring.”

In October 2021, a story came out of a woman who has attempted multiple times to remove footage of her being sexually abused as a child from PornHub to no avail. She is now a part of a class-action lawsuit against the group. 

Alternatives

There are so many porn sites and companies to avoid. SO MANY. Badass Ben Woods covered a lot of them in this piece for The Next Web. I highly suggest reading it because it highlights how awful other sites are as well.

As Siri points out,

There is no such thing as a “mom and pop” free porn site, I’m sorry. The largest, most popular tube sites are owned by large corporations (or simply extremely wealthy individuals) seeking to profit by stealing other people’s copyrighted material, and organizations that promote piracy of all online media.

So just know that every time you log on to a tube site, you’re definitely hurting performers like me, who work hard and pay out of my own pocket to produce original content for my own website. And you’re hurting the non-MindGeek-owned companies like Naughty America, Bang Bros, and many of the mainly-DVD-release studios like Vivid, Girlfriends Films, Elegant Angel, Evil Angel, and New Sensations/Digital Sin. Many of those companies continually have to cut their budgets as a direct result of piracy and tube sites.

I haven’t even gotten into the issues around problematic mainstream porn. In addition to the poor quality Wozniak mentioned above, much of the porn on these sites reinforces stereotypes that are way past done. They lack representation. Hell, they even teach those without access to better sex ed some negative things about communication, consent, and general sexuality. Alas, this isn’t the time or the place to really get into that.

Let’s discuss alternatives to MindGeek sites.

Obviously, my top pick is anything from parent company Pink & White Productions like CrashPad, Pink Label, or Heavenly Spire. Yes, these are affiliate links because I love P&W. I wouldn’t be their affiliate if I didn’t. The representation for queer, trans, disabled, and people of color their sites have honestly can’t be beaten.

Other paid sites to check:

Make sure to check out amazing content from independent pornographers, cam performers, and more, too. Some of my favorite pals include:

Vaguebooking and Subtweeting Are Valid Communications Techniques

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

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TW talking about repercussions of abuse

Vaguebooking and subtweeting are two techniques in the world of communictions that get a lot of shit. This is when someone talks about a situation or another person without sharing specifics. Many people see these as passive-aggressive techniques. However, it only seems as though they do that when they feel targeted by these writings.

A classic example of these techniques is when someone writes about a situation they experienced at work without naming names. If we’re supportive of those situations, why are so many people against these methods for other situations?

There are many reasons why someone might engage with the world via subtweets and vaguebooking. Some of us can’t bring up conflict directly due to abuse and other circumstances. It’s important to honor that, especially when we’re working through it. My therapists have discussed this method with me as a way for me to handle things that bring on negative emotions. WIthout engaging in these methods, I wind up holding a lot of anger in – which increases my stress and physical pain.

On top of that, I’m terrible at conflict. Growing up in abuse tends to do that to people.

Sometimes, I won’t bring up an issue directly because I’m concerned about harming someone’s feelings. This is especially the case if a situation brought up a systemic issue – which it does more often than not for me. Other times, we engage in this to maintain our privacy.

Why are people upset about these anyway?

Well, part of it has to do with a lack of empathy for others. This may sound like a joke, but it absolutely isn’t. Friends know that this is something that I need to do for me and both my mental and physical health. They know that I will mentally and physically have a difficult time if I don’t release my emotions. When I subtweet or vaguebook, I do it because I have to get my feels out – but also because I don’t want to directly harm someone’s feelings.

A lot of it has to do with tone as well. I don’t think people are great at reading tone in writing. I gave a quick heads up recently to another patient about using ableist language including a link on said language. Everyone knows that I can be incredibly mean, but this was very kind and worded nicely. Assuming that I was angry, I’ve been on the receiving end of a (now muted) series of tweets accusing me of being a horrible person.

… which I feel like just solidifies my decision to subtweet and vaguebook honestly. Why would I share something with someone directly if I wind up getting harmed over and over again?

For those who have the energy today, I highly suggest reading this thread from one of my favorite people, Coffee Spoonie.

two tweets from CoffeeSpoonie: "Subtweets have made me into a better person, tbh. It might be too hard for someone to criticize you directly or they don't have the energy, or ur part of a larger trend that needs addressing."

It’s from October, but so timeless. She goes on to share how she adjusts what she does and says based on subtweets that involve her as a person of privilege.

Subtweets, vaguebooking, and callouts – oh my!

Each of these is an amazingly effective communication technique for people in marginalized communities. As a queer disability activist, I’ve been able to use these methods in addition to callouts to let companies, organizations, and individuals know when they’re harming entire communities that may otherwise not be heard. I’m certainly privileged in many ways, but callouts have worked for me around my marginalizations – and for me to help others understand why the ‘joke’ they just made was racist.

I’m not the only one.

Riley has a great piece where they discuss the issues around callouts – and how it’s not the culture that’s wrong, but people who tone police marginalized communities:

The idea of “calling out”, first and foremost, came from Black femmes on social media who were being violently harassed every single day… The idea of “calling out”, first and foremost, came from Black femmes on social media who were being violently harassed every single day. That was the original goal of a call-out. To make someone stop harassing you.

When you shit on calling-out, you shit on Black femmes doing whatever they can to prevent harassment, and that’s supremely fucked up. Talk about MISUSE, not about the concept itself.

Call-outs aren’t what’s toxic. Those who have appropriated it for their own shitty ends ARE.

Shaun Scott shares more information about anti-callout BS:

What many critics call “call-out culture” is actually a past-due moral balance being called in. With interest added. Had our pain been spoken more consistently over a longer period of time, perhaps our anger would be a manageable trickle, and not an avalanche. But we never asked for the condition that required us to remain silent in the first place. Oppressed groups once lived with the destruction of keeping quiet. We’ve decided that the collateral damage of speaking up—and calling out—is more than worth it…

In the end, there is no imagined community that “call-out culture” corrupts; no solid consensus that it dissipates. All the dreaded call-out does is expose fissures that already exist between those who need change and those who say they want it. If the rhetorical identification of privilege and racism is on its own enough to alienate people who claim to be progressives, there’s good reason to assume that they were never as progressive as they claimed to be in the first place.

The criticism of our peers should not be enough to drive us to the arms of our enemies. Unless of course we secretly wanted to end up there anyway.

Judgments hurt, not justice

Calling those of us who participate in these issues terrible shows that you misunderstand callouts, subtweeting, and vaguebooking. As Eve Peyser writes for Gizmodo, “You can do nice subtweets. You can do profound subtweets. You can do beautiful, artful subtweets. You can do benign subtweets. Multitudes.”

Peyser gives an example of a tweet where they talk about an interaction with their mother, supplementing it with the following: “I get why people mistake subtweeting for talking about someone behind their back, I do, but online, there is no metaphorical “back.” For example, here I subtweet my mom. I’m not talking about her behind her back. I’m also not saying it to her face. Like with any other tweet, I am shouting it into the void. Ultimately, the subtweet is never for the person who it’s about. It’s for your audience. ”

Or, for many of us, for ourselves – for self-care.

Bottom line

If these types of communication aren’t for you, that’s fine. You don’t have to participate – just like you don’t have to get ‘gay married’ or have an abortion. You can unfollow or unfriend people like me who use these for a multitude of reasons. That’s fine.

What you cannot do is tell me and Lebron that we’re not allowed to subtweet something simply because you don’t like it.

S2E6: Isabelle and Uterus Owners’ Pain

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

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Endometriosis is an incredibly painful condition where the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus. It’s vastly underdiagnosed, undertreated, and assumed to just be ‘bad’ period pain. This can cause excessive bleeding, pain with bathrooming, pain with sex, and much, much more. Endo affects approximately 176 million people worldwide.

Today I’m talking with Isabelle Lauren – a blogger, writer of erotica and sex toy reviewer. She believes in better sex education for everyone. You can hear more about her endometriosis story here. Follow Isabelle on Twitter and check out her site.

Abby Norman Wants You to Ask Her About Her Uterus

It’s Not All in Your Head: New Book Sheds Light on ‘Bad Medicine and Lazy Science’ Harming Women

The Mortal Ones: How Young Women Navigate Serious Illnesses

Don’t forget to enter the SYLK giveaway over on IG.

Check out more events I’ll be at over on FB.

Compersion in Nonmonogamous Relationships Study

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

Have you ever experienced joy (rather than jealousy) when your partner(s) found love with another partner, in the context of a committed, consensually nonmonogamous relationship? If you are 21 years old or over, speak English, and answered yes to the question above, you might be eligible to participate in a doctoral study on the topic of compersion.

Participation includes one 45 to 75 minutes-long interview (in-person or over Skype) and one 20 to 30 minutes follow-up interview. Your confidentiality will be protected. For more details, please contact Marie Isabelle Thouin-Savard, Ph.D. candidate at the California Institute of Integral Studies, at mariethouin@gmail.com.

Trans Experiences in Therapy

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

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A group of researchers from Towson University is conducting research on the experiences of therapy as an individual with a trans identity or history. I’m especially excited about this because trans people are even involved in the research!

If you choose to participate in this research, you will be asked to complete a brief online survey, which should take approximately 10-20 minutes to complete. During the survey, you will be asked to think about your experiences in therapy and provide examples of events that may have happened in these therapy sessions.

You will not be asked to give information that would allow anyone to identify you and you do not have to answer every question.

The Towson University Institutional Review Board has approved this study. If you have any questions regarding this research or its purposes, please contact the faculty advisor for this project, Dr. Paz Galupo, at pgalupo@towson.edu, or the primary investigator, Ezra Morris, at kmorri27@students.towson.edu. If you have any questions pertaining to your rights as a participant, please contact Dr. Elizabeth Katz, Chairperson of the Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Participants, at (410) 704-2236.

Click here to participate.

BDSM-Kink Online Survey

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

Do you have experience with BDSM/Kink sexuality (e.g., role play, bondage, dominance, discipline, S&M, eroticized pain and/or power play)?

Renae Mitchell and Charlene Muehlenhard at the University of Kansas are looking for volunteers to fill out an online survey about how people communicate in sexual encounters that involve BDSM/Kink sexuality.

They are looking for individuals

  • who are age 18 or over,
  • who have had at least two sexual encounters that involved BDSM/kink experiences and/or eroticized pain or power play, and
  • who are interested in filling out a short (less than 30-minute) anonymous online survey.

This study is being conducted as graduate student research at the University of Kansas and has been approved by the university’s institutional review board (IRB).

If you are interested in filling out a survey about your experiences with BDSM/Kink sexuality, click here.

Completion of the survey indicates your willingness to take part in this study and that you are at least 18 years old. If you have any additional questions about your rights as a research participant, you may call (785) 864-7429 or write the Human Subjects Committee Lawrence Campus (HSCL), University of Kansas, 2385 Irving Hill Road, Lawrence, Kansas 66045-7563, email irb@ku.edu. Additionally, you can reach Renae at rcmitchell@ku.edu or Charlene at charlene@ku.edu.

Awareness Calendar for March

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

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Month:

  • Black Women In Jazz & The Arts
  • Bleeding Disorders
  • Brain Injury
  • Colorectal Cancer
  • Developmental Disabilities
  • Endometriosis
  • Gender Equality
  • Hemophilia
  • Kidney
  • Multiple Sclerosis Education
  • Self-harm
  • Sleep
  • Trisomy

Day/week:

  • Self-Injury Awareness Day (1)
  • Bone Marrow Failure Awareness Week (1-7)
  • National Aplastic Anemia and MDS Awareness Week (1-7)
  • National Sleep Awareness Week (2-9)
  • Endometriosis Awareness Week (3-9)
  • International Childhood Cancer Awareness Day (7)
  • World Kidney Day (8)
  • National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (10)
  • Patient Safety Awareness Week (11-17)
  • Brain Awareness Week (12-18)
  • World Oral Health Day (20)
  • National Native American HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (20)
  • World Down Syndrome Day (21)
  • International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (21)
  • American Diabetes Association Alert Day (21)
  • World Tuberculosis Day (24)
  • Purple Day for Epilepsy Awareness (26)
  • National Doctor’s Day (30)

Proud Moment

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

I wrote this in the wee small hours this past Sunday morning while hanging out with my roommates for the last night of the Playground Conference in Toronto.

a photo of three mixed media hearts hanging with white text - "Proud Moment Chronic Sex"

A few weeks ago, I had a really nice conversation with my husband. Don’t get me wrong – 98% of our conversations are nice. This one was different, though.

First, some backstory

T has never really had to encounter physical health issues until he met me. Things like accessibility weren’t things that he needed to think about on a daily basis. Even when we were early on in our relationship, I was ‘good enough’ to go without those accommodations – and, honestly, far too proud to use them.

It wasn’t until we moved in together that my everyday health really got bad enough for him to see it. Shortly before that point, I had the worst flare-up of my SJIA since childhood – something that’s thankfully yet to be topped. I had a combination of my rash. It’s a salmon pink rash that usually will show up in the evening around 5 and then again before bed.

Fun fact – this rash is itchy for 5% of peeps. Of course, I would be in that smaller percentage. On top of that, I was also dealing with intense hive-like welts. These can be my SJIA rash, but it only was like that when I was extremely ill in childhood.

I wound up stuck in my apartment for a while dealing with this pain and discomfort. I used icy hot for the first and last time due to the inability to wash it off my hands and use of masturbation for pain control. It just felt like the universe was adding on too much shit.

Long story short, the last thing I wanted was for T to see me like that. I didn’t really see him for the worst of that time. It wasn’t that help wouldn’t have been useful, but I was also aware that it would be terrible to see. I could barely move my fingers, wrists, ankles, and toes. My face swelled to the point where I didn’t look like me.

From that point on, I became a stickler for accessibility.

Fast forward

A few months ago, I wrote the piece about adding image descriptions. As I say in that post, it’s something I think more and more about as I grow older. Already dealing with worsening vision on top of a history of iritis and anterior basement membrane dystrophy, I think about often what will happen when my sight continues to decline. From a very selfish standpoint, I know that I want to be able to imagine what my niblings look like as they grow and accomplish so much.

After I wrote that piece and had been circulating it, my husband stopped to consider the work involved with putting image descriptions up. T asked if there was any specific way you’re supposed to compose descriptions, so I gave him the short verbal version of the post. While I was grateful he asked, I thought it was more about the fact that I had written about it that prompted these questions. After the last few years, I’ve grown less hopeful about reasons behind people’s questions – even those closest to me.

We’re very active in podcast-related facebook groups. As T becomes more active in these spaces, I’ve noticed his focus on helping others grow. He has always been a helpful and very kind dude, but it’s becoming even more pronounced. I like to think that we bring out the kindest and more passionate parts of each other.

Sometimes the two notions fight each other. Being passionate sometimes curtails our ability to be kind because, for example, anyone can understand why a parent might want to park closer if they leave children in the car. However, passion (and law) says parking in an accessible spot to do so without an accessible parking permit is wrong.

Also, yes, this really happened a few years ago at one of our favorite pizza places – after an ice storm. Yeah, the face you’re making? Same.

One of the reasons why people call me a bitch or asshole is because I don’t hide my passion for the comfort of others, especially when they need to understand how harmful they’ve been and/or if people don’t share the same marginalizations. That can make it much harder to understand and even empathize.

Honestly, when T asks me questions about accessibility stuff, I geek out. It’s like asking me about sex. Hello! So, naturally, I talked a lot about the description question.

The proudest

T began to use image descriptions regularly in groups. He is working on being more accessible, not just because I think it’s good and needed but because he totally gets it. A few years ago, he had Lasik to correct his vision. I think he’s been more mindful about eye stuff ever since.

My favorite thing is that T does this even in spaces I don’t regularly go. There is one FB group for a podcast we both love that I don’t regularly visit because items from racist and TERFy pages get shared. Upon bringing up concerns, I was told that the content itself wasn’t the issue so why would it matter where it came from.

Again, that face you’re making? Like someone just farted right under your nose? SAME.

Anyway, I began to disengage with the group itself because I knew things that brought up harmful feels would be shared. T still adds descriptions in there, even though he knows I probably won’t see it.

Why are you talking about this? It’s 12:30 AM at the end of Playground. You should sleep before your 12-hour drive tomorrow.

This feels like a humble brag, but it’s more than that.

It took me years to feel like T really understood what I meant about a lack of accessibility. Even then, it’s different than him going through these things and truly getting it. Our mental health issues are similar enough that I feel witnessed on that while being able to provide him support, too. The physical limitations are just hard to fully grasp if someone doesn’t go through that.

While sharing a tweet with my roommates that T had put into a group, I nearly cried. Part of it was con drop and the post-exertion stuff. I’m sure part of it was wrapped up in missing T and being excited to see him once I get home. Mostly, it’s about T still being kind T even when I’m not home.

We all change a little bit depending on the people we’re around or situations we find ourselves in. This is the first time I’ve traveled in 2018, though, and the first time I’ve been away since T started writing these descriptions. I think part of me assumed he was only doing it to flatter me – and seeing that’s not the case was really necessary. It was uplifting.

On top of that, I was just really touched by the idea that I got through to him on so many things. It’s hard for the two of us to talk about heavy emotional things and, honestly, I don’t think about what things to discuss based on things we need to ‘fix’ or whatever. I don’t and would never give T a honey-do list on changing for me.

After talking today to a room full of amazing chronic peeps and allies/partners, though? It was like the icing on the cake.