Homophobia
I was raised in a right wing, rural area, and i didn’t meet a gay person til higschool. When he said he was gay, i assumed he was joking.
Im trans now lol
Dude tells you he’s gay, immediately turns you trans. The danger is real, people! 😭
if my grandma were to be believed my dad’s babysitter when he was 4 years old infected him with homosexuality then he passed it onto his children because one (me) is trans and the other is bisexual
She’s not very harmful about it but is just really damn confused lol
So if I get this right, your dad turned homosexual from his babysitter… Then proceeded to have two, presumably biologic, kids?
presumably biologic kids
Yeah, my dad fell for the “get a woman to protect you from same sex attraction” propaganda. Over the years he changed his mind and learned that it’s not something to be ashamed of, but he was in a relationship with kids now.
when I came out and my mom was very verbally abusive he kinda had the realization that the relationship wasn’t benefiting the children either. Also my mom was very very controlling over who he could talk to/make friends with.
He is currently in the process of a divorce after 22 years and is coming to terms with how he let fear control his life for that long.
It’s kinda sad.
Small towns are terrible for this. And racism
There’s a reason cities are more liberal. Turns out being surrounded by different cultures, races, sexualities, and beliefs shows you that maybe they’re not so different. In a town of 15k middle American white folks, it’s hard to see another culture equally, let alone at all.
Same thing with college. There’s no such thing as a liberal or democratic college. It’s just that people are simply surrounded by other people. You learn all of those weird rules and things you were taught don’t actually hold up, and that everyone is kind of the same
Also: aphantasia
You have no idea how pissed I was to find out all of you had a fucking superpower, would have been nice to learn this before I wasted 3 years at graphic design
I don’t know if this counts, but when I was little I’d go to friends houses, then later in high school to my first serious girlfriends house, and I remember their families were like… loving? I loved spending time at my girlfriends house especially, hanging out with her Mom and her Dad even if my gf wasn’t there. They were so nice, and you could tell had genuine affection for their children (and to some degree, me). I miss you Mr. and Mrs. Miller!
That’s me. I had no idea other families were affectionate and said crazy stuff like, “I love you.” My god, they even hug.
To this day I struggle with affection, even though I love it. If you touch me unexpectedly I’ll involuntarily flinch. I don’t mind, at all, but I still jerk and can’t help it.
I think my family was the same but I turned out cuddly, maybe the difference was the cats?
Knee pain. Everyone told me it was normal growing pains, until one little league coach notice I run weird. Queue years of doctors and specialists and tests and scans and surgeries, and now I’m a 40 something guy with advanced arthritis that could have been much much worse if left untreated.
way to go attentive little league coach!
also wtf parents?
“Well it’s not hurting me so it can’t be that bad.”
Reading.
Or rather, how so many people seem fear and avoid it, or can’t do it. Something like 21% of adults in the US are illiterate, and the majority – 54% – read at or below a 6th grade level.
I’ve been a sight reader probably since I was about six years old. I absolutely cannot look at any words legibly written in my native language and not understand them. You couldn’t force me to look at words written in English and not digest them if you held a gun to my head. I fear no wall of text, no matter how tall it is.
It takes some effort to wrap your head around the notion that not only can most people not do this, but statistically speaking most or at least a plurality of people have to struggle or exert conscious effort to read and many of them are loathe to do so. And roughly one in five people simply can’t. This did not sink in for me when I was younger.
I can’t imagine having to live my life that way. You nerds have seen how much bullshit I write in a day; I’d go absolutely bats.
As a kid I kept asking librarians why libraries were so empty of people if they had so many books and it took me years to understand the sadness in her shrug.
Oh plenty of things:
having respect for others
being honest
helping the needy
fair pay for fair work
honestly considering others’ perspectives
loyalty
Basically every virtue I was ever told was worthy to embody has been used against me as a weapon or a tool
And of the hundreds of people I know IRL less than 10% give any of these internal value or even attempted to put into practice
And here I’ve been a sucker all my life doing the proper social contract thing because I don’t like the way the world is shaping up and getting CONSTANTLY bent over for it
Having a constant noise in your head/ears. It was so normal to me I didnt question it for many years. I randomly asked my friends about it one day and found out most people actually dont have an old crt tv like noise in their ears (and that its the disorder tinnitus).
In my case its not very severe thankfully, I dont notice it unless Im in a silent room or Im actively thinking about it.
That not everyone secretly wanted to be a woman.
Oof yup that was a doozy
I’m still not entirely convinced tbh. I mean women are cute and just great and men are…
Men can be great too, and being a man has lots of perks (beyond even those imposed by patriarchy). Look for allies and you will find them in all gender flavours.
oh for sure. Wasn’t being serious, dysphoria is there and makes me basically think of existing as a man as hell and finding out that’s not everyone was interesting to say the least.
Well, not the women, obviously, because they’re already women.
Lucky bastards.
Excruciating period pain that would leave me fainting and vomiting every. Single. Time.
“Every girl goes through this” said the doctor, convincing my parents that I was just “dramatic”.
Turns out I had huge polyps growing out of control! Left scarring in my uterus and high-risk when pregnant.
Dealt with that hell every fucking month since I was 11 until I got onto birth control in my 20s.
My wife went through something similar. Took until she was in her 30s and we were pursuing IVF for someone to take her seriously and actually do the investigation to realize she had crazy scarring from endometriosis causing all kinds of issues.
It’s insane to me how much the modern medical community seems to normalize or straight up ignore this shit, like you said.
I realize we could have pushed harder, but when multiple doctors tell you “yeah, some women just experience periods differently, here’s 500mg Naproxen to help you through” you tend to believe it.
Poor you! It must have been terribly frustrating that the doctor wouldn’t take you seriously. Seems to be a frequent thing women go through in the medical world. Hope you’re okay now.
Thank you.
Birth control was my savior and actively allowed me enjoy life again. 💕
Sucks when doctors just assume things, it can cost lives.
It’s barbaric. They assume that if you’re girl/woman, most problems are basically “female hysteria”!
Not even “it could be [blank], you might want to keep an eye on that and report back if it doesn’t go away.” Nope! Diagnosis: dramatic.
And women die from this shit. Or become disabled / handicapped. Or it affects their long-term future if they want children. It’s awful.
Some people did a thing with a specially configured tens machine where the woman would turn it the levels up and up until it was at the level of their normal period pain and then the man would go through the same levels stages and be gasping and writhing before it got there.
Turns out men have been massively underestimating period pain for centuries.
That said, some women experienced far, far higher levels than normal and were encouraged to take that data to a non-dismissive healthcare professional.
As a dude, I want to believe that it’s less than it is because that’s just wholly unreasonable that women have to put up with that.
They’re were a lot of men who insisted on immediate medical attention who got told that their partners had tried that and absolutely nothing would come of it.
Not everyone has tics they must surpress while in public.
This was a really recent realization for me. I am one of the people who can voluntarily activate the tensor tympani muscles in my ears to create a low level rumbling sound. I recently tried explaining this to someone else and they still think I am making it up.
Wait, not everyone can do that?! What the fuck?!
I use to control it before, but since I’m on some other medecine, it start to have its own will. It happen to me unvoluntary like every 5 or 10s. That’s SO FUCKING ANNOYING !!!
Oh…? That has a name? Thanks!
Let’s get ready to rumble!
This superpower is so usless. I love it.
Fellow rumbler rejoice!
As I kid I thought it activated some kind of telekinetic or telepathic power so i’d keep doing it and gesturing at ping pong balls or candle flames
So sad to learn that it has nothing to do with psychic powers
I can do this as well, as can one of my siblings and my father so I assume there is a generic component. Used to call it “ear clicking” since it is audible to others if they put their ear to yours in a quiet environment.
I figured out that was the name when googling about it some years ago.
Is it just a click or also the described rumbling. Because I don’t hear a rumbling but I do make the clicks when I notice that my ears need to adjust to the air pressure.
If you hold it tense you get a rumble as described but the first time I tense it will make a little click. If I keep applying tension and release eventually it will stop clicking and just I’ll just hear the rumble and it will take a bit to “reset” to where it clicks again.
Humans are weird.
Edit: I quick kagi search turns up a Reddit thread saying the clicking is caused by “Voluntary Opening of the Eustachian Tubes” which is equalizing the pressure in my ears. That sorta explains why it stops clicking after a bit.
Wait, that’s not normal?
Seems so.
It’s more that most people don’t figure out how to tense those muscles independantly of the rest of the neck
for men to wish to be a woman
Apparently, it isn’t normal to just space out during a test. Yeah, I went through K-12, undergrad, and grad school with an undiagnosed learning disability. This was only one of the symptoms…
wait, it isn’t normal?
I’ve never been diagnosed with a learning disability and I would often space out sometimes during a test. The brain gets tired and needs a break/reset before going back to the task. Now, if it was constant or for long periods of time, maybe that’s different? I’m not a doctor and this person didn’t specify.
Being unable to think of something without a prompt.
I guess most people can just remember things without sticky notes and calendars.
Genuinely. This is sadly how my memory works. It’s gotten better since I had a partner who I would talk to everyday with the inane question, “so how was your day?”
Then suddenly I had to learn how to summarize recent aspects of my life.
And then you’re like, “shit, that happened to me today? shouldn’t I be angry about that?”What are you, an LLM?
I might be. Give me a topic and I’ll spew out all sorts of obscure trivia, but until you mention it, I don’t know that any of it exists.
Is that a challenge? Tell me what you know about Living Card Games without looking it up!
So, “Living” card games doesn’t mean anything to me, but you did trigger card games in general, which could take me a while. I’ve probably spent a majority of my waking life playing Magic, Poker, Hearthstone, Silver, Smash up, and various other card games. Most recently, I’m obsessed with Balatro.
That being said…
Are you about to open a Pandoras box by making me look up Living Card Games?
Mate, if you’re into CCGs, you really missed out by not getting into LCGs! Android:Netrunner, a remake of the original Netrunner from the 90s is the absolute GOAT CG out there with a close second being the Doomtown:Reloaded (which I helped design). Basically it was CGs without the luck/gambling. Just get all the cards and make exactly all the decks you want.
Unfortunately Netrunner and Doomtown run out of steam half a decade ago, but they’re still developed by their fans, but usually the only way to play them consistently is online in places such as Jinteki.net. There’s a few others still in production, but iirc they’re co-operative ones, like Arkham Horror
Growing up using a poop knife.
Stop. Get some help.
Did you actually? Or are you carrying that over from reddit? 'Cause I actually have a similar one to that 😅
Never did I think someone would call my bluff.
Do tell
It’s a reference to an old reddit post.
I misread your post. I thought you had a story similar to having a family poop knife
Ah, a person of class!
