i dont really… WANT… to leave tumblr. ive been here since 2011
no other platform has the right format for me to just randomly barf actual thoughts, joaks, and genuine creative content all in the same breath. i dont know how to compartmentalize
every other platform you gotta be a real person. Here you are you’re icon and username and whatever your hyperfixation is at the current moment
on tumblr you can make a post that just says “minecraft” and get 50k notes, where on twitter you have to steal tweets and instagram you have to be hot. tumblr is more like a bunch of kids let loose in walmart where there are no rules and the only god is a bald swedish man
re: tumblr exodus, let me know if it seems like there’s a direction everyone’s heading, platform-wise and i will absolutely jump onto that bandwagon
for the foreseeable future, though, i’m staying here. yes tumblr is a fetid stinky pit but i’ve been here for like 6 years. for all its (many) faults, it’s not every day you find a social media platform wherein it is 100% acceptable to be an openly depressed garbage monster
the fucked up thing about the salvation army is that theyre arguably the most visible and prominent hate group in america, but you cant hastle them or even protest them because to everyone else it would look like youre curb stomping santa clsuse
I find this is similar to what I run into when I criticize Human Rights Campaign. “No really I know what they’re called but they really do hate poor non-white gay people!” “Nonsense! Not the HRC! They’re great!”
Oh okay then.
I didn’t know that about the Human Rights Campaign! Thanks for the psa
sorry to jump in, but i worked for the HRC at one point in my life and i can absolutely confirm that they’re kinda horrible internally and cover it up with their campaign messages so that no one can criticize them.
i found out about them because i went to a research university in downtown chicago. my university was obviously extremely liberal and i ran into a bunch of canvassers on my way to class. if you don’t know, canvassers are the people standing on the sidewalks/street corners with tablets and/or clipboards who give you a speech and ask for money. pretty typical. i got stopped, told them i had no money, but that i supported their cause because i was trans and gay. and… this person’s eyes lit up when they heard that, and they went “hey, why don’t you come work for us?”
i know that seems like a good gig and an easy job, but it really sucks knowing that the only reason you got a job offer is because you’re transgender. they didn’t care about my qualifications. they didn’t even care about my safety. they wanted points for hiring transgender people and where i was working in the chicago offices, they went through a period of time where they were only offering jobs or interviewing trans people based only on the qualification that they were trans. everyone in my interview group was trans, and every one of us immediately got a job offer. they literally did not care about our qulaifications. they didn’t even want resumes. they just wanted us if we were trans. i came to find out that canvassers and their group leaders were only told to give interview offers to trans people at the time and bonus points if they were non-white.
anyways, that’s not the full story.
i needed money at the time. i was taking whatever i could get. they were pretty deceptive about the job and didn’t tell me what it would entail. i would not have taken the job had i known that it would involve standing outside on street corners for 8 hours a day in the chicago winters and not being allowed to sit down, even for a lunch break (”but dave, that’s illegal!” sometimes people don’t care what’s illegal.). this was the same for many of the other people i was working with. they did not tell us about what the job was or what it would entail and if you were disabled, came into work, and found out that you are required to stand for 8 hours a day in freezing weather, then it really just sucks to be you, sorry, they don’t give accommodations.
i’m sure you can imagine that putting a bunch of lgbt (particularly trans, since that’s the main group they were hiring) people out on street corners in almost every neighborhood of chicago wasn’t a great idea. i’m sure you can imagine that canvassers weren’t treated well in neighborhoods that had a high amount of older, conservative people in it. HRC’s ‘failsafe’ for protecting their canvassers is… if you feel threatened by someone you’re talking to, you’ll put your tablet/clipboard on your head and wait for your group leader to help you. but the thing is, your group leader is also talking to people and asking them for money, typically while standing on the other side of the street, not facing you.
i don’t talk about this job to people. i don’t even put it on my resume. the reason i left is not because they hired me literally because i was transgender or the fact that they wouldn’t let me sit or anything despite a very obvious physical disability. the reason i left was because on my third day of work, a man got extremely angry at me when he realized i was transgender, left and returned three different times to harass me and call me slurs, and the third time, physically grabbed my arm to attempt to drag me away. yeah, i put my clipboard on my head. but guess what? my group leader was on the other side of the street, facing away from me, and when i told her about this, she basically just shrugged and told me it was part of the job.
there’s other reasons this job was horrendous and unethical. it’s incredibly true that the HRC does not give a shit about anyone other than white gays. despite their phase where they ONLY hired transgender people in chicago, they don’t care about trans people. they treat their employees terribly. if you didn’t make a quota of a certain amount of money two days in a row, they would fire you point blank. no discussion as to the weather (blizzards and heavy snow are fairly common in chicago) or the fact that they had you on poor college campuses in the middle of finals week. nope, fired. also, if you messed up the ridiculously long and complicated script, even by a couple words, they could and would dock your pay. there was also the fact it was nearly impossible for donators to cancel monthly donations and the fact that we were often sent to pray on poor communities. everything about this place was straight up unethical, from their hiring practices, the things they donate money to, and the way they treat their employees.
oh, and at least when i was working there, most of the profits went to the highest people in the company. little was actually donated. and HRC tried to take credit for a lot of advances in LGBT progress when they had next to nothing to do with it.
sorry that i sorta derailed this post because salvation army is fucking horrendous also, but i saw someone talking about the HRC and wanted to throw in my little known part about how the company works and the terrible ways they treat their employees.
James Potter is the guy who was kind of a dick when he got to high school but cleaned up his act by junior year and went on to become a human rights lawyer with the ACLU because he knew he could make more of a difference fighting for what’s right instead of getting into schoolyard brawls
Severus Snape is the guy who thinks that just because you’ve been friends for years you’ll eventually have sex with him and then after you drop him like a hot potato because hes been spending too much time on 4chan and reddit and started hanging out with guys who make racist and sexist remarks and then say “it’s just a joke!!” only for him to call you a slur in front of the whole school he joins a white supremacist group with his new buds and starts harassing women and minorities online and then in public and then is arrested for planning to shoot up a women’s college only to get off because he’s a white guy and now he teaches at your old high school
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