When my cousin Olivia was three, she started preschool and became best friends with a boy named Abraham. Most people called him Abe, even then, because Abraham is a mouthful for a three year old and, to most people, it’s the logical nickname.
Not, however, according to Olivia, who decided to nickname him Ham.
No one’s really sure whether she wasn’t totally listening when he was introduced and only caught the last part of his name, or if she decided Abe was too boring a nickname, or maybe she was just hungry, but the nickname has stuck for the last twenty years. Of course, Olivia was and still is the only person to use it.
When they were seven or eight, he decided to get back at her by calling her Olive. That nickname stuck, too, and they’ve been Olive and Ham since. But only to each other. They get highly offended if anyone else calls them that.
Last night was their seventh anniversary, and Abe proposed to Olivia, and she said yes. And how did she announce it on Facebook, you may ask?
People used to tell me “If you like ham so much, why don’t you just marry it?” So I am.
Shout out to Olive and Ham, who are still engaged and adorable and who are planning on getting married sometime next summer
Happy to know this human @pidgeo_n
・・・
When I was 18, and retrieved my medical records from @luriechildrens, I found out four important truths that changed the course of my life. ▫️
1️⃣ I discovered that as a baby I was labeled a male pseudo-hermaphrodite 46XY. This was shocking because I had been assigned female at birth. ▫️
2️⃣ I was born with undescended testes. No one ever told me this truth, instead my doctors lied and told me I was born with “cancerous ovaries” that had to be surgically removed in order to save my life.
▫️
3️⃣ My clitoris was deemed too large (at a mere 1.5 centimeters when stretched) when I was 4 years old, and surgically altered with a medical procedure called a clitorectomy–very similar to #FemaleGenitalMutilation. ▫️
4️⃣ At age 11, I was told by my doctors at Lurie that I needed a surgery on my urethra and bladder, but discovered thanks to retrieving my medical records that they actually gave me a complex vaginoplasty-like surgery instead.
▫️〰️▫️
All of these surgeries were NOT medically necessary, and done without my consent.
▫️〰️▫️
All of this happened, I would find out, because my genitals didn’t quite fit the doctors’ binary perception of what “normal female” genitals should look & behave like. No medical reasons whatsoever. My body was cut, put on display and medically violated because people with M.Ds pathologize (see last post) our beautiful healthy #nonbinary #intersex bodies.
▫️
I went back to the hospital where all of this went down and asked my best friend (& amazing Chicago movement photographer Sarah-Ji @loveandstrugglephotos) to take photos of me in front of the drive way leading into the entrance of the hospital that was then boarded up and being demolished. It was a driveway I was very familiar with as young person, a driveway that lead to the gates of a small personal hell. ▫️
Lurie Childrens hospital, and all children’s hospitals that continue performing non-consensual medical unnecessary surgeries on intersex kids, claim to “care” for us when we never needed that “care” in the first place. If you go on Lurie’s website today, they still have clitoral surgeries listed as a medical intervention for intersex babies.
Dear girls, be intensely wary of men considerably older than you obsessed with “mentoring” you. They’re most likely trying to groom you. Speaking from experience.
I want to make it clear I’m not just speaking to underage/teen girls. Any younger girl, and this can happen to not that young women as well.
Just because the guy isn’t technically a pedophile, doesn’t make him any less predatory. When you’re in your 20s you may not be a kid anymore, but you’re not fully developed as an adult either. You’re still vulnerable to predators who have the advantage of more experience and thus tools you don’t yet have, in addition to the other advantage of power imbalance due to gendered relations.
A man who wants to be your mentor, especially if he says he wants to “shape” you or anything similar, is a man who’s trying to turn you into his puppet, to make you “develop” (be molded) into the girl/woman that serves his pleasure, even if not directly sexual.
There’s predators who get off on the intellectual performance of the younger female objects of their obsessions. There’s predators who get off on your social development fitting their not-necessarily sexual fantasies. There’s predators who get off on the idea of taking a depressed girl and becoming her “savior”.
There’s people who get off to feet and fucking statues, you best believe there’s predators who get immense satisfaction from mental games against vulnerable girls/women even if they’re not (directly) sexual. And even if those things aren’t sexual at all to you, it will fuck you up. Because you’ll know or feel that you’re being used against your will, that you’re not being treated as a human, you’ll feel trapped, you’ll feel controlled, you’ll feel hopeless and disgusted with what he’s turning you into.
It’s about control, it’s about possession, it’s about ownership of who you are, it’s about having the perfect doll to play with.
It’s about you becoming mentally, emotionally, intellectually, socially dependent on them. It’s about a boost of their egos.
Regardless of your age, but especially if you’re considerably younger than him, and you see signs of him being fixated on this, RUN AS SOON AS YOU CAN.
Can people reblog this version? Because I’m tired of people who supposedly care about abuse victims dropping any concern and compassion for female victims of grooming as soon as a girl turns 18 like she wasn’t a literal kid five minutes ago.
family member/friend/acquaintance/whatever: hello, i am concerned about you because you’re engaging in behaviors that are literally killing you and i would like you to stop doing that because i don’t want you to die
y’all: 🚨OH ‼️⚠️ MY GOD 🚨😱🤭 I CANNOT 🚫🙅♀️ BELIEVE 😯🆘😳 YOU HAVE 🤯 THE AUDACITY ❗️🤬😫 TO SAY 🗣😪 SOMETHING 👀🤧 AS CRUEL ❌💥👺 AS THAT⁉️‼️ WHO 🧐❓GAVE YOU 👈👀 THE RIGHT 😐✋🗡 TO CARE 💁♀️☝️🆘 ABOUT 😬 MY WELLBEING,🤨⁉️⚠️🚨 MIGHT 🤗 AS WELL 💁♂️ JUST ADMIT ❗️📢🙄 YOU WANT 🤤👍 ME 🤢 DEAD ☠️⚰️😵❌ BECAUSE 🤭⚠️ THEY’RE PRACTICALLY 😫💢 THE SAME 👥🤷♀️❗️ THING‼️‼️😔😡 BEGONE 🙅♂️🚫❌, TRAITOR 👎😤🤬👋❗️
べんきょうしなければならない 