A gift for you
I am legitimately so upset, I don’t have very much longer at my current job and I only just realized that I have the perfect opportunity to casually but forcibly educate the public that earthworms are an invasive species in most of the northern half of North America. NOBODY realizes that earthworms are invasive because most of us grew up learning about how good earthworms are for the soil and finding them in the ground and there’s generally a lot of positive cultural messaging about earthworms*. While most people are generally aware of invasive species and try not to spread them, they don’t think of earthworms in that category. It can be really surprising to learn that earthworms can be bad for the environment - I know it was for me. So I’ll take advantage of my audience here:
Earthworms are an invasive species in large parts of the USA and Canada, especially notable in the Great Lakes region. They disrupt the normal ecological processes of hardwood forests by eating organic material (duff) that is needed for native species to survive.
Please be aware of this if you live in the region and use earthworms for fishing or gardening. Further resources can be found at the Citizen Science Project Great Lakes Worm Watch and the UMN Invasive Species page.
*Positive cultural messaging about earthworms is great - for the regions that they’re native to, such as Europe. Not so much in regions where they’re invasive.
growing up as a cis girl the patriarchy told me “you’re a girl because of the way you were born, there is nothing you can do about this, you have no say in your gender” and i hated being a girl because it wasn’t my choice it was a prison and the trans community told me “you’re a girl because you say so, your view of yourself is the most important thing, if you change your mind that would be ok” and it made me proud to be a girl and feel empowered in my gender and i wasn’t trapped anymore and then terfs come along and tell me “you’re a girl because of the way you were born, there is nothing you can do about this, you have no say in your gender (but like in a woke way)” and they somehow expect me to be on their side?
if you respond with some terf shit im blocking you lmao
I’m so happy someone wrote this because I feel the same was as a cis girl. I felt pressured to be feminine and went full nlog because I felt too ugly and fat to be “feminine” and I was in an academic setting where it’s a nono. Then the trans community was so proud of their femininity it made me feel gratitude for being born a woman. Trans youtubers empowered me to buy my first skirts and dresses and I no longer felt “stupid” for doing it. I took another colleague that felt “stupid” for being feminine dress-shopping once and we’ve been friends ever since and she now dresses up all the time and tries to feel cute and feminine and I’m so happy to see her like that. The trans community destigmatized being feminine for cis women more than any girlboss feminism I’ve seen and we owe it to trans women.
A trans woman was the one to make me realize I was a trans man. I’d always thought all girls hated being girls, that being born female was a terrible curse we all just had to endure. And then I met a trans women who was so, so fucking excited to be able to wear skirts and cute tops and makeup at last, after years of fighting for the right to get on HRT. I saw the pure joy she felt as she did a little twirl in a skirt and I realised being female isn’t bad. It’s not bad at all. I’m just not female. And I can experience that joy, too. And then I got my HRT and my voice dropped and I got hairy and I learned what it was to be happy with your gender. It took seeing a joyful trans woman twirling in a skirt for that to happen for me.
Thank you trans women.







