FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

The thing about being in a giant, oppressive country is that one is always fighting for space to exist. I became expert at identifying the clues that some hegemonic thing was preparing to squash me. I was ready to fight like hell on a moment's notice, because this was required.

I showed up to England, where I *thought* I'd be speaking my native language, but I discovered I couldn't understand my new neighbours at all. When I did get the pronunciation, I found phrasing that was massively suspect. And, as always, I came out swinging. What I failed to notice was the different context.

To be fair to myself, hegemonic USians are always claiming some sort of contextual excuses that are always bullshit, but, as I was actually in a different country, the context was actually different. Words that were offensive at home were benign abroad. (And worse, benign words at home turned out to have extremely offensive baggage here, which lost me friends.)

The fediverse is international, but people who have lived their whole lives in the US have largely been denied previous experiences negotiating it.

Everyone on this network has some privilege and just as anyone can be gentrifier, anyone can participate in american hegemony. Especially if one is unused to having privilege in a situation, the fighting we all learn can easily turn into this. Indeed, this is some of the origin of white women's tears and similar things.

meownyan

No more girlboss only girlbots

Dear anyone looking to be a professor or who is a professor:
I understand not accepting things like .wps or .odt for reports, but if you don't accept .pdf and instead require .doc or .docx, fuck you.
Sincerely,
Kat, who just wrote an entire report in LaTeX then had to rename the PDF output to .pdf.docx in order to be able to submit it