you are absolutely not being unkind or uncaring at all, quite the opposite really. you’re just trying to keep everyone at the events and yourself safe. being masked for others safety is literally the least people can do.

stick to your gut, I’m sure you can refer the old lady to other events/groups in the area that she can parade around maskless at so she doesn’t get too lonely. but all in all, you aren’t resposible for her if shes not following your groups rules. honestly I would feel much safer attending events myself if they had a strict vaccine and mask policy, but nowadays with the mask mandate gone I’m just perpetually stuck at home I s’pose. what you’re doing is great and accessible to those that don’t want to get sick.

I would love to know if your wife knows any other decent brands! I struggle really bad with sunscreen, it’s a sensory nightmare ugh

I think that the best thing you can do is allow your child to lead the way and support them in this process. It’s honestly really refreshing to see parents such as yourself ask questions like these, I wish my parents growing up cared to do so. As a trans person myself, I can say in my experience that gender can be confusing and in some cases take a while to figure out. I experimented with multiple gender identities as I transitioned and I wouldn’t change that journey for anything, experimentation/phases should be celebrated! As a kid figuring out my gender, the support I wanted from my parents would be verbal reassurance (Being told that I would be loved, cared for, supported no matter what). Just hearing that from my parents would have changed a lot for me.

If you’re worried about pushing labels/brainworms as you’ve mentioned above, you just have to approach this from a standpoint of open support. Having a conversation with your child and expressing that experimenting with different pronouns/names is ok and something you would support them in, allows them to feel safe in that experimentation without assigning them a label yourself (there were times where I tried going by they pronouns for a week just to see if they fit! I decided they weren’t for me but trying them out helped me understand myself more). It takes time to figure things out, as long as you are creating a safe space for your child to express their needs without fear or worry, and if they hear that they will be loved and supported through whatever they discover about themselves, that is the best thing you can do for a questioning/experimenting child (even if your child is cis and just enjoys expressing themselves in feminine ways, knowing that gender experimentation wouldn’t be an issue is key).

It’s a great idea to take your child shopping to let them choose what they like, just support and encourage them to wear and express themselves in the ways that make them happy. I hope this makes sense and is helpful. If you have any more questions feel free to ask me and I can try and help more, take care ^_

someone responded to the article criticizing its framing and made this amazing statement

I suspect a better frame through which to present the authors’ data would be “Right temporoparietal junction underlies pervasive moral inconsistency in Neurotypical Spectrum Disorder”.

I’m obsessed

oh wow this looks stellar, I love willows so much! they’re always so beautiful, you really got their likeness down in how you drew out the foliage. stunning work!

yeah I’ve found it’s just so incredibly hard to make any lasting friendships since graduating highschool (and by extension of that, since being a kid). it’s difficult to make friends and meet people in person unless you’re being made to meet with a group on a daily or at least semi regular basis. which really sucks since I don’t really go anywhere anymore. I find that anytime I speak to an acquaintance/stranger its only a superficial or transactional exchange, a very lonely culture to exist in.

I do love the friends I made in online spaces though, I feel more genuine connection in my interactions with them with those superficial and transactional elements less present. but I just wish there weren’t so many barriers to meeting people and developing friendships in person.

my chess strategy is having no strategy and simply just reacting to what my opponent does.

sometimes I win and sometimes I don’t but I have fun either way. watching chess tournament games are wild though they play so fast, if i ever had to play chess with a timer my brain would simply short-circuit.

Yeah I hated that moment, it broke my immersion. Everything feels so different from the previous game. The story is moving too fast and they’re really dropping the ball with making Odin and co. seem even remotely intimidating, especially when they built them up so much. Everything the first game was leading up to feels very cheapened. Also the combat feels weak compared to how weighted it was in God of War 4.

Still gonna play but I’m honestly disappointed with the direction they took. God of War 4 is one of my favorite games.

the prioritizing autonomy thing is absolute bullshit, I’m still astounded that’s the leading argument for those supporting this. there’s no choice here. this is canadas “oh so polite” way of framing blatant eugenics by imposing horrible conditions on poor and disabled people and saying it’s their choice if they want to die because of it. it’s just so much easier to coerce them into being killed than actually providing services and aid that would improve their quality of life. like this shit is so fucking insidious.

the autonomy argument just gets me cause its like, oh you want to take away a disabled persons ability and right to choose?? like fuck off you are not advocating for their autonomy, you want them to choose to die so your hands feel more clean when you kill them. I’m so tired and upset about the lives bill c-7 will take.

these assholes are really like wow! how can we make autistic tendencies to uphold their morality regardless of social pressure a bad thing? slap dysfunctional abnormality on that I guess. the framing of this paper is horrendous. they took a really cool study and warped it to push their biases that autistics are inherently impaired. allistics really can’t help themselves.

also the wording of calling the allistic participants in the study “healthy controls” as opposed to the “obviously diseased” autistic participants is big gross.