I understand the stereotype of rich horse people but it’s kind of gotten insane that anyone with a horse is now automatically seen as a landed gentry bourgeois so much so that people are straight up calling horses bourgeois creatures and calling for their ABOLISHMENT and even extinction like wtf is wrong with you. Don’t let the era of the automobile erase the horses history as a beast of burden for the working class and farmers. Horses belong to the proletariat just as much if not more than the role of rich person’s plaything.
People calling my bluff, I’ve seen it on twitter in the wild and it is quite weird
Most of the pro-extinction people are PETA aligned ARAs against horseracing but there’s also people who are simply horse haters because of the rich person connotations
Have you guys never actually driven through rural America? ‘Cus growing up in the South, there’s places where people just have their horses and chickens in their yard with a tiny house back in the corner. And from my experience, those people love their horses and make sure their horse is cared for even if they themselves have to go without.
People use horses for things that they’re the best at, there’s just nothing quite as good to replace them with. They use them to round up livestock, they’re used in agriculture, used to travel in places that were originally designed to be navigated by horse, not car.
There’s horse racing, but I’m not talking about the “fancy” kind, I’m talking about kids barrel racing and competing against their friends, building community across small towns. Better than that, horses can be great therapy animals and working with them can be nice for kids and adults with a variety of disabilities. I remember my little brother riding horses as a kid to help build muscle and balance he didn’t have because of a metabolic disorder.
Some people will really see something adopted or made to look more exclusive by the rich and label it evil without having the slightest clue what impact it has on “regular” people. They’ll see a working dog or horse do anything other than be pet by a human and think it’s animal abuse.
Yep. The same people will think a husky living in the texan suburbs left alone for 6 hours a day is living the dream life while denouncing working sled dogs as abused and neglected.
Ffs these people are so alienated from working DOGS that they see a lean one and immediately yell neglect just because it isn’t obese. That’s how disconnected they are from working animals.
There will always be bad people who work their animals to the point of abuse, or exploit them purely for profit in inhumane conditions (there are horror stories of tourist dogsledding companies, and of course the gambling empire built around horseracing where the animals are viewed as nonliving assets), but working animals actually enjoy working! It’s what they were bred for, we selected those traits, and soo many pets go stir crazy when denied fulfillment of said instincts. But imo the first world has internalized the concept of work as miserable drudgery thanks to capitalism, and I think we project those feelings onto the animals we keep. that they must love this easy life in our living rooms and would actually find misery in work.
There’s been studies measuring blood cortisol levels in horses before and after working and guess what, when done correctly they aren’t distressed by pulling carriages, even in NYC!!
At worst this attitude can be downright harmful to vulnerable populations. For example, animal rights groups successfully petitioned to have horse carts banned from cities under the banner of welfare.
But these animal drawn carts are vital to Palestinians who have EXTREMELY restricted access to cars and certain roads by the apartheid government. This guise of humane animal rights can so often be weaponized against minorities. From the demeaning paternalistic attitude that these folk must not know what’s best for them to actively sabotaging their culture by uprooting and destabilizing their way of life in an effort to assimilate them.
These people who say “just left machines do it” think it is by default the more humane option. Would you also goad on the systemic culling of Inuit sled dogs and replacement with snowmobiles that was pushed by the Canadian government in the mid 20th century? Do we really need more gas guzzling machines to replace something an animal can do better and also brings a sense of cultural fulfillment and connection to the world around us?
I’m sick of leftists who haven’t left sheltered urban or suburban areas speaking on animal welfare and the relationships humans have with their animals when it’s anything beyond a pet cat or dog. Wtf constitutes a useless animal!?? Shouldn’t you be in Yellowstone larping as a Disney princess and harassing the bison? They are so disconnected from the rich history and culture humans share with our domestic animals.
if anyone needs me i’ll be frothing at the mouth thinking about the origin of language and interspecies communication. happy wednesday.
how did we learn this? who taught us this? is it coincidental? is it observational? is it that something in the source of these sixteen languages stems from the same animal instinct that causes each of these species to call out to their own kind? I Am Going To Lose It.
Instead of a stoic hero and a chatty villain or a chatty hero and a stoic villian imagine if they’re both chatty. Just, the villian trying their best to kill the hero while the two of them have a in-depth discussion about their opinion of pumpkin spice
Villian: *shoots laser* No but seriously orange is a really fun color
Hero, dodging: but your entire room? I’m not painting my entire room orange
Villain: *stabs at the hero and misses* well then why did you ask my opinion on paint colors if you’re not going to listen
Every single time there is a catastrophic flood (so, every six weeks or so) the news will post pictures of people out in their kayaks or canoes pretending its Venice without any commentary and it makes me completely insane. This is dangerous and people die doing it.
Do not go into the floodwater unless the risk of staying where you are is somehow greater than the risk of going in the floodwater. Do not get in the floodwater except as a last resort.
The water itself is bad news (raw sewage, fire ants, industrial runoff) but the danger here is in the movement of the water: water flowing down a street has currents. Sometimes you can see them and sometimes you can’t. 12 inches of water can move a car. What do you think a few feet will do to you in your dinky little sit-on-top if you get tired? Who is coming to rescue you if the water starts taking you somewhere you don’t want to be?
Visibility in floodwater is shit. You cannot see obstacles (submerged cars, mailboxes, trashcans, etc). Trees and fences will become strainers (imagine pouring pasta into a colander. Now imagine you are the pasta and the force of constantly moving water is holding you in place). If you come out of your vessel you could potentially encounter open manholes or storm drains that suck people in (a lot of water draining through them creates powerful suction!!). People walking in floodwaters regularly step off a curb and are suddenly immersed in moving water well over their head.
Somehow, despite all this, these people NEVER have LIFEJACKETS on!! You own a boat but not a lifejacket?? Not that a lifejacket would make this a good idea, but if you are forced to abandon your home/car/whatever and get in the water a lifejacket might very well SAVE YOUR LIFE.
Look at a picture of professional swiftwater rescuers operating in a flood situation. They have on lifejackets, drysuits, helmets, boots, and a shit ton of gear. You are in a two-piece bathing suit and a shitty walmart paddleboard. DON’T BE STUPID. IT’S NOT WORTH IT.
sorry for the all caps lecture but one drowning is too many.
so one of the things that’s so horrifying about birth control is that you have to, like, navigate this incredibly personal choice about your body and yet also face the epitome of misogyny. like, someone in the comments will say it wasn’t that bad for me, and you’ll be utterly silenced. like, everyone treats birth control like something that’s super dirty. like, you have no fucking information or control over this thing because certain powerful people find it icky.
first it was the oral contraceptives. you went on those young, mostly for reasons unrelated to birth control - even your dermatologist suggested them to control your acne. the list of side effects was longer than your arm, and you just stared at it, horrified.
it made you so mentally ill, but you just heard that this was adulthood. that, yes, there are of course side effects, what did you expect. one day you looked up yasmin makes me depressed because surely this was far too intense, and you discovered that over 12,000 lawsuits had been successfully filed against the brand. it remains commonly prescribed on the open market. you switched brands a few times before oral contraceptives stopped being in any way effective. your doctor just, like, shrugged and said you could try a different brand again.
and the thing is that you’re a feminist. you know from your own experience that birth control can be lifesaving, and that even when used for birth control - it is necessary healthcare. you have seen it save so many people from such bad situations, yourself included. it is critical that any person has access to birth control, and you would never suggest that we just get rid of all of it.
you were a little skeeved out by the implant (heard too many bad stories about it) and figured - okay, iud. it was some of the worst pain you’ve ever fucking experienced, and you did it with a small number of tylenol in your system (3), like you were getting your bikini line waxed instead of something practically sewn into your body.
and what’s wild is that because sometimes it isn’t a painful insertion process, it is vanishingly rare to find a doctor that will actually numb the area. while your doctor was talking to you about which brand to choose, you were thinking about the other ways you’ve been injured in your life. you thought about how you had a suspicious mole frozen off - something so small and easy - and how they’d numbed a huge area. you thought about when you broke your wrist and didn’t actually notice, because you’d thought it was a sprain.
your understanding of pain is that how the human body responds to injury doesn’t always relate to the actual pain tolerance of the person - it’s more about how lucky that person is physically. maybe they broke it in a perfect way. maybe they happened to get hurt in a place without a lot of nerve endings. some people can handle a broken femur but crumble under a sore tooth. there’s no true way to predict how “much” something actually hurts.
in no other situation would it be appropriate for doctors to ignore pain. just because someone can break their wrist and not feel it doesn’t mean no one should receive pain meds for a broken wrist. it just means that particular person was lucky about it. it should not define treatment.
in the comments of videos about IUDs, literally thousands of people report agony. blinding, nauseating, soul-crushing agony. they say things like i had 2 kids and this was the worst thing i ever experienced or i literally have a tattoo on my ribs and it felt like a tickle. this thing almost killed me or would rather run into traffic than ever feel that again.
so it’s either true that every single person who reports severe pain is exaggerating. or it’s true that it’s far more likely you will experience pain, rather than “just a pinch.” and yet - there’s nothing fucking been done about it. it kind of feels like a shrug is layered on top of everything - since technically it’s elective, isn’t it kind of your fault for agreeing to select it? stop being fearmongering. stop being defensive.
you fucking needed yours. you are almost weirdly protective of it. yours was so important for your physical and mental health. it helped you off hormonal birth control and even started helping some of your symptoms. it still fucking hurt for no fucking reason.
once while recovering from surgery, they offered you like 15 days of vicodin. you only took 2 of them. you’ve been offered oxy for tonsillitis. you turned down opioids while recovering from your wisdom tooth extraction. everything else has the option. you fucking drove yourself home after it, shocked and quietly weeping, feeling like something very bad had just happened. the nurse that held your hand during the experience looked down at you, tears in her eyes, and said - i know. this is cruelty in action.
and it’s fucked up because the conversation is never just “hey, so the way we are doing this is fucking barbaric and doctors should be required to offer serious pain meds” - it’s usually something around the lines of “well, it didn’t kill you, did it?”
you just found out that removing that little bitch will hurt just as bad. a little pinch like how oral contraceptives have “some” serious symptoms. like your life and pain are expendable or not really important. like maybe we are all hysterical about it?
hysteria comes from the latin word for uterus, which is great!
you stand here at a crossroads. like - this thing is so important. did they really have to make it so fucking dangerous. and why is it that if you make a complaint, you’re told - i didn’t even want you to have this in the first place. we’re told be careful what you wish for. we’re told that it’s our fault for wanting something so illict; we could simply choose not to need medication. that maybe if we don’t like the scraps, we should get ready to starve.
we have been saying for so long - “i’m not asking you to remove the option, i’m asking you to reconsider the risk.” this entire time we hear: well, this is what you wanted, isn’t it?
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this. There’s so much going on here. I genuinely love the conception of gender as mystic autodeism. Gender as divine microcosm. Gender as Great Work. It’s gnostic, it’s alchemical, it’s got notes of bacchanalian worship of the body and the inherent magic of self-discovery. This but unironically.
Shoutout to transphobes for thinking gender is this fucking badass
What’s the quote? “God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.”
