Category: Uncategorized

The epilepsy and seizure first aid awareness thread

A backed up Twitter thread, because I regularly delete my tweets (here’s why, and why you should, too).

This. And also DO NOT PUT ANYTHING IN OUR MOUTHS. You cannot swallow your tongue, but you can choke to death on a fucking spoon crammed in there.

I really cannot overstate how dangerous it is to put things in the mouth of someone having a seizure. It can cause choking, it is also likely to break teeth (and epileptics don’t get free NHS dentistry so that’s a problem).
Meanwhile, the worst thing that can happen to someone’s mouth during a seizure if they’re left alone is grinding teeth, which is suboptimal but better than broken from forcing a spoon in there; and a bitten inside of mouth and tongue, which is sore but heals really quick.
A general rule for helping someone having a seizure is to avoid touching them. If there’s a dangerous thing nearby, like something they could hit their head on or spill, etc, MOVE THE THING NOT THE PERSON
Once the seizure has stopped, you can roll them into the recovery position, but while it’s going on, you don’t need to do anything except time the seizure and call an ambulance if it goes on longer than a couple of minutes.
Yes, in this case if you can get something soft under their head that would help, but try to slip it under when they’re moving rather than moving their head up

🦇 Batalie Dread 🦇@nataliereed84
Replying to @stavvers

The one thing I’ve worried about seeing people seize is their head banging on concrete or whatever. Is it a good idea to tuck a jacket or something under someone’s head, or better to leave be?

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The thing I think a lot of people don’t understand about seizures is every muscle in your body fully tenses, so if someone attempts to move you, that muscle is likely to be overstretched and possibly tear, which is VERY PAINFUL when you wake up
Yes, this is really helpful to do, if someone needs it! But offer it to them, don’t just put it on them while seizing!

Bonnie S Schwertner 🤬⏰@schfinkes
Replying to @stavvers @studentactivism

So true! My sister would sometimes also lose bladder control. If someone has a cardigan – for later – to wrap around the waist, it’s saves a bit of humiliation.

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Half an hour is the recommended time to wait, although call an ambulance earlier if they have another seizure before waking up from the last one. Please note once people wake up from a seizure they’re often confused or out of it. That’s usually normal

PhilippaB@Philby1976
Replying to @stavvers

If the seizure has stopped and you do this, is there a period of time after which you should call an ambulance if they haven’t fully ‘come round’? (Not sure of correct terminology, sorry – this is a very useful thread)

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But following on from that, if there are stroke symptoms after someone has woken up from a seizure (think FAST: facial drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulties) then call emergency services as something may be more wrong.
To be honest, I always go a bit blue whenever I have a seizure, and for a lot of epileptics, that’s normal during the seizure because your breathing isn’t right – not necessarily positioning. Roll them into recovery position after the seizure stops.

sddoubleBOO@sdwolfpup
Replying to @stavvers @mme_hardy

What if they’re on their back and turning blue? Ive read they should be turned on their side but not restrained. Or should we still leave them? Appreciate any info.

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A little more on post-ictal state (i.e. when someone’s woken up but isn’t “quite right”): it lasts up to half an hour, and can have quite diverse symptoms. Confusion, nausea and vomming, forgetfulness, bad coordination, being blissed out. If it stops after half an hour it’s OK
Personally, I get REALLY horny after a seizure, and I will probably crack on to anyone and everyone, and I feel sorry for every ambulance crew who has ever dealt with me. I also get proper goldfish memory and repeat myself. I probably won’t remember that half hour, thankfully.
The trick for dealing with a person after a seizure is be reassuring and patient, remind them what’s happened and ask if they need anything. And ask again and remind them again, because memory/confusion is one of the most common after-effects.
As a general rule, in someone with a seizure disorder, a seizure looks a lot more dangerous and scary than it is. I’m not saying it’s healthy to have a seizure, but be aware that in attempting to help, you may harm them more than the seizure would!
As well as blue lips, know that when someone has a seizure they’ll often froth at the mouth, sometimes bloody froth. Again, looks worse than it is, the froth is just saliva and the blood comes from biting the tongue.
I suppose I want to prepare everyone for what seizures look like, because they look fucking TERRIFYING to see, lots of very unnatural body motion, eyes rolling, frothing, blueness… it can look terrible, but for the VAST majority of seizures, it will stop and they’ll be OK.
And it’s also worth noting that unless you’re a trained medical professional equipped with diazepam and phenytoin, there’s nothing you can do to stop the seizure, which is also scary for a bystander. What helps is knowing when to call an ambulance, and how not to harm them.
First time I actually saw someone have a seizure was long after I’d been diagnosed and I was like “OH DEAR GOD HOW CAN ANYONE SURVIVE THAT” and finally understood why I often woke up to COMPLETE PANIC lol
So to recap: avoid touching a person having a seizure. Move hazards not them. Call an ambulance if seizure lasts more than 5 mins, they have another seizure before waking up from last one, or they don’t wake up for half an hour. Expect weirdness once they wake up.
Oh, and finally, take a moment to breathe for yourself and try to stay calm: the vast majority of the time, it looks a hell of a lot worse than it is.
ONE MORE THING: many people with seizure disorders will wear medic-alert jewellery. It often includes information that is specific to them (e.g. if they have meds in their bag to give, a doctor to call, that they’re fine). Follow any instructions they have on them!

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The mass murderer profile thread

A backed up Twitter thread, because I regularly delete my tweets (here’s why, and why you should, too).

[cw murder] I have literally no idea why all of the media are calling the Toronto killer’s Facebook post “cryptic”. It’s very clear in its intent and if anyone had bothered investigating online communities of white misogynists, the entire thing is basically bog-standard.
lemme break it down for you: these white misogynists fucking love the army and see themselves as soldiers. They hate people they see as “normies”, and consider themselves outside and above it. And they fucking agree with every page of Rodger’s manifesto. Pretty non-cryptic tbh.
The fact that anyone investigating this post thinks it’s “cryptic” shows that they’ve clearly learned NOTHING from the spate of mass murders and still haven’t bothered probing how this radicalised community functions.
And if you’ve spent 30 seconds on reddit, all of the language used in the Toronto murderer’s post is not even remotely cryptic. It is literally par for the course in this community.
This is part of the reason why r/incel was banned along with several other alt-right and misogynistic subreddits: even *reddit*, the perineum of the internet, recognised the potentially dangerous and threatening radicalisation happening there.
And of course, women have been pointing out the threat posed by these white misogynists since fucking forever, and because nobody listened, we’ve now had a spate of mass murders with killers of the exact profile we’ve been saying was dangerous.
So, law enforcement: listen to women. We’ve been doing what you’ve failed to do and monitored the situation.
Here are some things to look out for, since apparently I’m having to do your fucking job for you:
-White male
-Misogynistic
-Thinks he’s entitled to sex
-Fetishises the military
-Really loves guns or other weapons
-A record of violence against women

You’re welcome.

They’re also highly likely to *also* express racist sentiments, because this shit all goes hand in hand, so watch out for overt racism, nationalism, and dogwhistles.
At the end of the day, none of this is remotely cryptic to anyone who’s been paying attention to the situation.

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The TERFs at Pride thread

A backed up Twitter thread, because I regularly delete my tweets (here’s why, and why you should, too).

Thinking about the bigots protesting Pride yesterday, I suppose it was a bit of a relief to see that there was only a handful of them and it *was* the same faces who picketed the Dyke March a few years back, suggesting they’re failing miserably at recruiting. BUT…
That’s absolutely no reason to be complacent. Despite the tiny numbers, we lesbians do need to admit we have this problem of bigots within our community and do what we must to deal with that problem.
It’s not enough to say “they don’t represent us”, although of course they don’t represent us. We need to take a hard-line stance, zero tolerance, standing up to transphobia wherever possible and constantly showing solidarity with and centring our trans lesbian sisters.
We KNOW who some of these people who appropriate lesbian identity in order to spread bigotry are. We need to ensure they are not welcome in lesbian spaces; as well as being bigots they pose a material physical danger to trans and cis dykes alike.
(for those wondering why they’re a threat to cis lesbians too, imagine one of those bigots decides you’re quite tall and they can ~always tell~ when someone’s trans)
We need to make it very clear that transphobia and transmisogyny is NOT WELCOME in our lesbian community and our lesbian spaces. We’re doing this already, to some extent, now let’s do it MORE.
As lesbians, we’re best placed to clean out the massive turd on our own carpet, and as *cis* lesbians, we are the ones who MUST do the heavy lifting here. Cis lesbians are uniquely placed to deal with the dangers posed by bigoted cis lesbians.
Silence is violence and what we cis lesbians need to say is not “not all cis lesbians” but “these transmisogynistic bigots are disgusting and not welcome. I support my trans lesbian sisters”. That’s where we start, and now we get out the metaphorical marigolds and clean our house
Oh and finally, on a purely pragmatic level we kind of need to deal with the bigot lesbians because their definition of lesbian is so fucking narrow that all lesbians will have died out in 20 years or so when old age has claimed those nasty sorts.
tl;dr us cis lesbians gotta step the fuck up because that handful of bigots are our problem and we need to deal with it.

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The junk thread

A backed up Twitter thread, because I regularly delete my tweets (here’s why, and why you should, too).

Here, we have yet another TERF who is completely unaware of how female biology works. Everyone has prostate tissue. Literally everyone. You’re assigned female at birth, you still have prostate tissue.

You’re born with a pussy? Yep, you still got prostate tissue, we call it Skene’s glands. They secrete prostate specific antigen.

Literally everyone starts out with the same gubbins, and it just moves about depending on what switches on while you’re gestating. If you’re assigned female at birth, you still have a prostate and all the erectile tissue for a penis.

If you’re assigned female at birth, you have one of these. It looks like a dick when you look at it. It’s because it’s all the same tissue.

Nature is lazy. It’s easiest for nature to give everyone the same parts and tweak the arrangement a little. But whatever we’re assigned at birth, we all have the same junk.

But yeah, I genuinely feel sorry for TERFs, being so desperate to make up a definition of “woman” that excludes trans women, that they’re alienating themselves from their *own* biology.

btw, all of this stuff isn’t just vestigial. It all contributes to sexual pleasure. And I find it cool, knowing about all the awesome parts of my junk.

fuck it, time to share the fact I have a big old tattoo of a clit at the top of my spine. Erect, of course. A nice big boner.

Anyway, yeah, for god’s sake never learn about bodies from TERFs, they have no fucking clue about how genitalia work.

True story: I once thought that there were two very different biological sexes. It was my journey into understanding, accepting and enjoying my own junk that made me realise just how absurd that myth of drastically different biology is.

If I’ve used “junk” a lot in this thread, it’s because I really love it as an informal, gender-neutral term for “genitals”

I really can’t go on about how similar genitals are for everyone. Why do penises have that line down the front? Because it starts life in two parts. Look back to that diagram of the internal clitoris for the other way that erectile tissue can be arranged.

Why does the clitoris do that weird little loopy thing towards the end were it goes up and then hangs back down? Look at a cock, they do that, and it’s easier for nature to just pop the same ligaments in roughly the same places.

Why do we all have foreskins on our glanses, regardless of if it’s a clitoris or a penis? Again, nature is fucking lazy.

If anyone’s new to any of the information in this thread, don’t sweat. It isn’t widely-taught, and definitely not taught at school. It should be, if only because it’s a really easy-peasy way of teaching about how embryos arrange themselves into something recognisably human.‏

I also suspect there’s a political motive, of course, in not wanting everyone to know that basically what’s supposed to be immutable, vast biological differences is actually more of a case of us all having the same stuff.

ONE MORE THING I almost forgot to add. Female ejaculation/squirting. Often what comes out isn’t “just pee”. There’s prostate specific antigen in there too, because the Skene’s glands go “ohh I know this, this is where I come in *splorch*”

Incidentally, the internal clitoris is why, contrary to myths spread by sexually-inadequate men, vaginas are “tighter” when turned on: the whole thing is surrounded by erectile tissue on three sides.

btw while it’s rare, AFAB people *can* get prostate cancer, on account of having prostate tissue. It is *very* rare though.

likewise, AMAB people can get breast cancer, because everyone has breast tissue, because–say it with me–nature is fucking lazy and we all have the same junk.‏

btw, quick note on terminology in this thread: I’ve avoided using “g-spot” because it’s a bit contentious and probably applies to several bits– a combo of skene’s glands and the erectile tissue knocking round in the area.‏

I’m also using “skene’s glands” while some researchers prefer “female prostate”. This is mostly because the word “female” makes my skin crawl a bit, but they’re synonyms, so you can say “female prostate” OR “skene’s glands” depending on your preference.

(I’m sure most of you know I don’t like “female” because it’s used so often by TERFs and misogos alike in reducing women down to just being babymaking vessels)

and finally, on terminology, what I’m talking about is genitals, not the purely reproductive organs (testes, ovaries, uteruses). And if you think genitals can’t be divorced from reproductive function, go and collect every cum-soaked tissue you can find and give it a funeral.

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Shit I cannot believe needs saying: Your mate might be nice, but is an abuser

Content note: this post discusses domestic violence and abuse, and apologism

When a rich, powerful white man is accused of perpetrating violence against women, a dance begins. It is the world’s worst dance, making Agadoo look like the Bolshoi Ballet. In this well-choreographed dance, everybody rallies around the abuser. They support the abuser, claiming that he is the best guy in the world, and couldn’t have possibly done it. They leap over the evidence presented by the survivor, all in step. Nothing can dent their pal’s Nice Guy status.

It probably doesn’t even matter who the abuser is, or how well they truly know him. This dance is political: it is a way of protecting all abusers across the globe by showing survivors what happens if they speak out.

Let us pretend, for a moment, that some of what is being said is true. Let’s imagine a chap called Johnny Blepp, who has been accused of beating up his wife. Let’s imagine some washed-up pals of his, who we’ll call Paul Gettany and Dickey Rourke and Vanessa Cara–oh fuck it, we all know who we’re talking about here, don’t we?

I believe that Johnny Depp beat Amber Heard. I would believe this even without the sheer level of evidence that Amber Heard showed, the sheer level of evidence which was sufficient to get a restraining order granted.

And, to be perfectly honest, I’d believe Amber Heard even if I was BFFs with Johnny Depp, because I know something which has apparently escaped the notice of those who are seeking attention by leaping to his defence: even if a man is nice to you that doesn’t mean he’s incapable of harming anyone. 

If Paul Bettany had given things a moment’s thought, perhaps he would consider how he has never shared a house, a room, a bed with Johnny Depp, so probably can’t have the first clue what his pal’s like behind closed doors. If Mickey Rourke had had a little think before opening his gob, maybe he would have considered that just because he had never been hit by his mate, doesn’t mean his mate has never hit anyone. If Vanessa Paradis had taken a few seconds, maybe she would have remembered she hasn’t lived with her ex husband in at least four years, and a lot has happened in those four years, so perhaps so has her ex’s temper.

All of these people are outsiders. None of them are party to the knowledge of what goes on behind closed doors. So why on earth do they presume that they know so much that they can confidently accuse a woman of perjury?  That is, after all, what they are doing when a woman has gone to court, told her story (and been granted a restraining order), and they accuse her of having made it up.

I understand that it can sometimes feel implausible that your friend might do horrible things, but this is why it is important to remember that you have no way of knowing how they treat others. You have no way of knowing what it’s like when they go home. Abusers are manipulative people, and have you considered that you are being played?

Again, I get why people may be resistant to that question: nobody likes to feel like a fool. Nonetheless, Depp’s friends, coming out in support of him, are serving not just their mate, but abusers everywhere. They’re helpful little pawns, parroting a line which keeps survivors silent, showing survivors that nobody will believe them. Their intervention isn’t even particularly helpful to their friend: after all, nothing happens to rich white abusers. Look at Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, for example.

If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all. You’re not being objective in the slightest when you knee-jerk defend your friend based on your complete lack of knowledge. You don’t need to say anything at all: if you don’t believe the survivor, keep your gob shut, because you’re mostly basing your disbelief on misogynistic tropes you’ve been fed since birth. If you truly want to keep an open mind, you need to keep your mouth shut, and give what a survivor has said equal weighting to your pal’s denial.

All we know about our friends is they are nice to us. It is peculiarly childish to extend their niceness to us into an assumption that they are nice to everyone.

One day, I hope the dance will falter. I admire the courage of every woman who comes forward despite the power of the man who abused her, and despite the fact that surely she must know that everyone will close ranks with tedious predictability.

I believe Amber Heard. I cannot believe I need to say this, when it ought to go without saying. I believe that Johnny Depp attacked and beat his wife, and I believe Amber Heard.

Kiddle: a search engine which endangers children

Content note: this post discusses child abuse, homophobia and transphobia

A new search engine for kids has been launched, and my goodness, it’s terrifying. 

Kiddle is supposed to help kids navigate the internet safely, using a combination of human editors and Google’s Safe Search. However, it’s also been criticised for blocking searches relating to LGBT issues.

Last night, when I had a bit of a fiddle with it, it seemed to have a bit of a double standard regarding what it just wouldn’t provide results for, and what it decided was Bad:

Before you ask, it wasn’t down to what’s known as The Scunthorpe Problem, a product of automatic filtering which causes innocent words to be blocked.

However, more has changed since last night. While last night, a search using Kiddle for “transgender” returned some results, today it’s been deemed A Bad Word, with the judgmental robot wagging his metallic finger.

Blocking searches pertaining to LGBT issues is dangerous. It keeps young people from accessing resources to help them better understand themselves. Telling them words they’ve heard that they feel might apply to them are bad is more dangerous still: it feeds guilt and shame.

Kiddle’s solution to some (but not all) LGBT-related searches is woefully inadequate and, again, could turn out to be dangerous. Instead of just not returning any results, it now tells children to ask their parents.

Untitled
Eagle-eyed readers may spot an issue here: a young person is using the internet to seek answers, they’re probably not in a position to ask their parents the questions they have. Asking could, in fact, put children at risk of violence–physical violence, emotional violence, conversion therapy.

It’s not just LGBT-related searches that are blocked, though. Dr Jill McDevitt tried some common queries that children and young people may have, and found that information about puberty, is-my-body-normal type questions, searches related to menstruation, and searches about abuse were also blocked, sometimes with the Bad Words robot appearing.

The Bad Words robot appears on a search where anything judgmental definitely shouldn’t appear.

When dealing with child abuse, a sensitive approach is necessary. Children are likely to feel shame and guilt, and being told off for using bad words is hardly going to alleviate this.

It gets worse. Say an abused child was looking for contact details of someone who could help. Too bad.

Apparently other helplines and services are similarly blocked, the stern robot repeating over and over that these are bad words that should not be used.

This site is an abusive, controlling parent’s dream, barring their child from access to any possible sources of help. If, by accident, something useful does slip through the net, parents can request blocking a search. I assume that this is what happened within the last 24 hours to the search term “transgender”, which returned results last night, but is A Bad Word today.

So who actually owns Kiddle? In truth, we don’t know. All we know is that it isn’t Google–which is hardly helpful information considering more than 7 billion people on this planet aren’t Google. It’s all very fishy. There’s no transparency on who owns the site, or who’s involved in editing it. Do they know that they are enabling child abuse? Would they be mortified if they did know, or is it their goal all along? For all we know, Kiddle could be run by a paedophile ring hoping to keep kids blissfully ignorant that what’s happening to them is not OK.

In theory, a child-friendly search engine using safe searches and human moderation is a good one, but it cannot and must not block things which parents find unsavoury. Instead, if a child searches for information about sexuality, they should be able to access it. If they want to know about what’s all right and what isn’t, they should damn well be able to access it. Keeping children ignorant only opens them up to abuse. Question why parents (or perhaps just the owners of Kiddle) don’t want children to access information about being queer, or resources for child abuse.

The view of parents as an all-powerful authority over their children, able to control what they see and do not see is a dangerous one in and of itself, but sadly all too prevalent. The only source of hope we can perhaps draw with this Kiddle incident is maybe they won’t be supervising their children online so much, so young people can go about being more digitally-savvy than their parents and find the information they need online themselves.

Guest post: The Fuck Off Fund–all right for some

Content warning: this post discusses domestic violence

This is a guest post from an anonymous woman. It is a response to the article A Story of a Fuck Off Fund, which has been widely shared and praised by middle-class white feminists. This guest writer has written a response to the article. 

Sometimes the mother and the feminist in me find themselves at odds. It shouldn’t happen but it does. As a feminist I want to tell my daughter to wear what the fuck she likes, say what the fuck she likes to do what the fuck she likes, but the mother wants to counsel her against the risks of getting too drunk or wearing shoes that mean she can’t run fast, or walking alone late at night in dark deserted places.

This is what it means to be a woman in this world -this constant battle between what should be our right and what is safe.

For this reason I can see why this article has been such a hit with some people. This is the advice I would give to give my daughter, before she goes out into the world. To be careful, not to take risks, not to be too trusting. To always have a get out plan. In an ideal world we would all always have a get out plan, but we don’t live in an ideal world.

Let me share something with you that I haven’t told many people yet. On Boxing Day I fled an abusive relationship, I took the children and we crept quietly out, in the dark of the night. We took little more than the clothes we were standing up in and we ran.

As it happens I did have some money saved, and I have many supportive friends, and my parents have been great and most importantly I have a secure place to live within my community and every day I am thankful for these things and more -that I was able to buy a washing machine (because of course we don’t have many clothes right now) that I could afford to pay for a bunk bed so they have somewhere to sleep, that there were school places available in the local schools. I know how incredibly lucky I have been and yet still it hasn’t been easy.

When I read the article I started crying. It is true that I’m emotional these days and it doesn’t take much to trigger a round of tears, but I haven’t stopped all day. I am horrified to realise that there are people in the world can write this shit or share it without appreciating the wider implications of what is actually being said. It is sensible to always have something saved in case of an emergency, to not max out your credit cards or take out loans, of course I agree, who wouldn’t agree? But to say that with no awareness that sometimes we are forced to this, to get through christmas, to pay the colossal gas bill that always comes in spring, to replace the broken laptop so your children can do their homework or to find the money for the school trip.

I live in the UK, and despite being one of the richest countries in the world it is a place where the majority of under 30’s are spending more than 50% of their income, not on halterneck dresses, but on paying rent to private landlords. Where visits to food banks are routine. Where until the government redefined what it meant to live in poverty more than half of all children lived below this line.

Britain is a country where some of us have to choose between feeding our kids and switching the heating on at night. I might have had a fuck off fund a few weeks ago, but I certainly haven’t got one now, and unless some kind of miracle happens I won’t be replenishing it any time soon.

Arguably financial independence is a good thing to strive towards, a good thing to teach your kids, I get that. But having savings is simply not an option for a large proportion of the world’s population. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to pull themselves up by their boot straps, many people but more commonly women don’t do jobs that are valued enough by this patriarchal capitalist society to make any more than just getting by a possibility. Being able to put a little aside every month is not something everyone can do. That doesn’t make them feckless and short-sighted, that makes them victims of an unforgiving world.