every few months I forget about this and then see it again and it is always one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.
So this time I looked it up, I wondered how to get one and how much it cost. Turns out it was a bit hard to find, actually, and that’s because it’s no longer called the Ogo, it’s called the Omeo.
They are pretty advanced as a product now, in terms of accessories, color options, etc (they have an off road conversion kit and stuff!). They are kind of expensive, tho not necessarily when compared to other wheel chairs, which cost anywhere from a couple hundred bucks for a shitty one, to like 4k for a high end electric one. An Omeo will cost you just under 2k.
That’s not the only brand out there! For example onhere are a bunch of other so called seated-segways. No idea about the prices but they might be worth checking out.
Alrighty - I’ve gotten a lot of questions from aces who’re hella confused about sensuality, and I’ve decided to point out something that I debated for a long time against sharing:
With all the ‘gal pal’, ‘bromance’, and ‘white people’ jokes we see, we risk missing on some important details involving sensuality and platonic intimacy. There’s an entire side to the ‘intimacy’ discussion that most of you aren’t aware of, and being unaware isn’t an ok thing; y’all don’t know about the diversity of intimacy because of neo-colonialism, whitewashing, and gentrification.
Water births being a ‘white hippie’ thing. Two men kissing ‘obviously’ being a case of heternormative washing. And so on. Behind a few of these bromance/gal pal/yt people joke hide not only whiteness, but a rhetoric that erases asexuality/aromanticism. And it’s time to address that.
Why? Because American views on intimacy erases non-American people of color, and also forces compulsory sexuality upon people in the ace spectrum. Being an ace of color, my patience is tried.
Listen; America is notoriously neurotic when it comes to intimacy. And only periodically throughout the centuries. In so many other places, kissing on the mouth is what friends and family do. My cousins and I were breastfed until past kindergarten, by our mothers, aunts, babysitters, and friends of family. I’ve seen, touched, and hugs many naked friends throughout my life, all ages across. What western culture sexualizes, not everyone agrees with.
Sexual attraction is described as the compulsion to commit sexual acts with a specific object of desire. Romantic attraction much the same, except not explicit. Sensual attraction similar guidelines, and so on. So what happens when one person’s ‘sexual attraction’ is another’s ‘I just want a goddamn cuddle, is that so damn important?’
When we see vintage footage of old-timey Americans who kiss, cuddle, and embrace each other’s bare skin, there is no doubt that many of them are same/multiple-gender-attracted. But a lot of you say so with absolutely no comprehension of the diversity of physical intimacy, and how different it is around the globe.
In so many other countries and cultures, you regularly cuddle, kiss, and touch your friends. When someone pulls out a camera and says, ‘smile!’ you drape your arms lovingly around your mate, and kiss them on the neck. And that photo is uploaded to facebook and all that jazz.
In modern day America, holding hands is literally second base. Our desire for physical intimacy has been heavily sexualized. And for some people, that’s a huge deficit to their wellbeing and themselves.
As an ace of color, I really don’t appreciate my desires for physical intimacy to be sexualized. I am very much compelled to touch, cuddle, and kiss people. Sometimes it’s romantic in intent, most of the time it’s not. But because of who I am, my actions are very much scrutinized as sexual. Which is very white sexuality and I want none of that in my life.
Thank god someone said it. I always want to kiss and touch my friends, I consider sleeping with them totally normal, and lots of manners of casual touch to be normal, but I don’t fucking touch them because….Culture. And then in my long term relationship I have a hard time with intimacy because it’s always attached to an expectation of sex or feels like it is and I get nervous.
I’m an intensely cuddly person who literally never cuddles.
I don’t know what happened here (I’m lying I know) but our society is SO WEIRD about physical intimacy and we’re all fucked up but like, a lot of the cultures that aren’t mainstream here allot for physical intimacy which in turn has to be treated differently if it can be somewhere it’s judged by the Average American Eye.
I think I’ve kind of always known there was something wrong with how we were raised and not something wrong with me specifically, but it doesn’t help that WHERE in the US I grew up is so intensely puritanical.
I remember when I was about 4 I had a nightmare and my brother invited me to sleep in his bunk with him. When mom came to wake us up for school, she screamed at us about how inappropriate that was, and I remember that was the very last time I was ever cuddly with my brother. That incident caused my sense of intimacy to be warped dramatically. I was always allowed to be cuddly with mom or other little girls who were my friends, but I wasn’t allowed to be the same way with boys who were my friends. To this day intimacy on any level with a woman feels more natural than the same with a man.
Also, the bath image above from My Neighbor Totoro intensely infuriated my mom. She kept going on about how no grown man should be bathing with daughters and about how creepy it was. She then went on to say that it’s disgusting for any adults to bathe with their children after a certain point. But I don’t understand that logic at all.
Americans are taught that bodies are shameful and that sharing our bodies in any ways other than what’s deemed as acceptable by our culture is the most shameful, sinful thing you can do. This kind of platonic or parental intimacy is so shamed that we’re /forced/ to have an unhealthy relationship with it by the time we leave home. And when intimacy of any kind is demonized like it is, we end up with situations where parts of the human body are sexualized because they are taboo. Even now, women are being constantly shamed for breastfeeding their children, teenage girls are forced to cover up shoulders and collar bones for fear of being distractions to boys…
And for what? All because Americans shame displays of non-sexual intimacy and up-sell sexual intimacy to the point of causing the sexualization of non sexual body parts and so on. It’s so ridiculous, but American culture is just really weird like this.
“Americans shame displays of non-sexual intimacy and up-sell sexual intimacy to the point of causing the sexualization of non sexual body parts and so on.”
^^^THIS^^^
folks in North America and a larger extent ‘White British Colonized’ places- have ‘flattened’ human interaction into touching=sex, nude=sex, affection=sex and to finish it all off Sex=BAD. This strange hyper-sexualization and parallel rejection of sex has created an entire culture of touch and affection starved people. With all the psychosis and trauma that goes with isolation and rejection.
It is critically unhealthy. We’re primates. We belong in communities- that groom, cuddle, and show genuine warm affection with one another.
I like this discussion.
As both an asexual and aromantic person this kind of thing has been the bane of my existence my entire life
“ Coffee, ice cream, and alcohol. These are three things that always elicit a look of shock, horror, and disbelief or even an audible gasp whenever someone learns that I don’t like them. How can you not like coffee? But everyone likes ice cream, it’s delicious! So you don’t like any kind of alcohol? They either pity me or become irrationally angry about my aversions—which I did not consciously choose to have. They try to convince me that I simply haven’t tried coffee, ice cream, or alcohol in the right way yet, and they pressure me to try it again at some undetermined point in the future. Sometimes it feels like moral outrage. Sometimes it feels like they have instantly become offended, either because they assume that I have insulted something that brings them great pleasure, comfort, and joy or because they think I’m judging them. I’m not. I have simply tried these things—on multiple occasions, with different flavors, and in various situations—and I have determined that I don’t like them and I currently have no interest in trying them again, in any iteration. This is apparently a difficult thing for most people to grasp, and I have seen similar reactions when people learn about asexuality.
Sex is not a human necessity or obligation (and neither is romance). Sex is not universally desired and sexual attraction is not a universal experience. People on the asexuality spectrum acknowledge and embody these unpopular truths, and we are ostracized for it. Not only do we have our very existence questioned by a dominant society which cannot stretch its imagination far enough to believe in the validity of orientations outside of those deemed normal, but we are also often denied space in the very community that takes pride in the challenging of those norms. Asexual is queer, but many queer allosexuals spend an inordinate amount of energy trying to convince us otherwise and actively trying to shut us out of the queer spaces that should be safe havens for everyone with (ethical) non-normative sexualities and attractions.
So many people see queerness as being principally defined by which gender(s) one has a sexual and/or romantic affinity towards (or which gender(s) one is). Historically, this is largely how it has been defined and understood, by both queer and cishetero folks. They have only understood queerness through the non-normative performances of and attractions related to sex (and gender), not through the denial or subversion of these performances and attractions. It is my belief that asexuality would be better understood if we collectively expanded and reformed our cultural notions about sex, intimacy, and relationships, and even prescribed gender roles in relation to these things (an essay for another time).
Asexuality would also be better understood if we expanded and reformed our understanding of queerness itself. Over the last few years, it has become increasingly clear to me that far too many people largely define queerness in the same problematic way that many define Black womanhood—by how many harms and heartbreaks we are faced with and by how much danger we are in on a daily basis. I cannot begin to express how dangerous and counterproductive it is to define queerness by our suffering. I’ve had my queerness invalidated and witnessed others have theirs invalidated by self-proclaimed queer experts citing the dangers allosexual queer identities face for being out or not “passing” as straight and/or cis, making all sorts of assumptions about what traumas I may or may not have and how they may or may not be wrapped up with my asexuality.
Conceiving of queerness in this way is in direct contradiction with the project of queer liberation. The point is to normalize queerness so that none of us have to endure, survive, or die from these abuses—whether institutional, individual, interpersonal, structural, public, or private. It is not to define our queerness by whether or not we have experienced these abuses “enough” to be considered authentic. Gatekeeping is not queer liberation. It only serves to reproduce the same harms as compulsory cisheteronormativity.”
so, in honor of pride month: please remember that ‘queer’ has been a fully reclaimed, non-slur identity for decades now, and queer studies is a legitimate academic term, and it’s only been in the last decade that TERFs have pushed to reclassify it as a ‘slur’ starting in online spaces.
because ‘queer’ is such a broad and flexible term, it’s much harder for bigoted, trans-exclusive, bi-phobic, a-phobic people to interrogate the queer community and try to divide it into who deserves respect and who deserves to be expelled. the queer community is extremely diverse, extremely accepting, and it’s entirely opt-in. no one can say you’re not really queer, because if you say you’re queer, you are.
this is extremely frustrating to terfs, who want a very narrow and rigidly policed LGB community (minus the T, A, and Q+, of course), so they have been working to reclassify queer as a slur. they target young isolated girls online, and take advantage of their earnest desire to be helpful and unproblematic, and they get them to repeat ‘queer is a slur’, and it’s incredibly sad and frustrating for us queers to deal with.
lesbian, gay, and queer are all slurs. they’ve all been used to insult us. and they’re all reclaimed. people that don’t want to be called queer don’t have to be, but tagging posts with q*slur is an insult to everyone who identifies as queer. breaking into posts where queer people call themselves and each other queer and refer to the queer community of queers who call themselves that to let us know that ‘queer is a slur’ is itself bigoted, TERF-aligned behavior.
please reblog this post, and accept that queer is a valid term with decades of history and millions of proudly self-identified people. the next time you see someone say ‘queer is a slur’, let them know that phrase is manufactured and propagated by TERFs as an attack on the queer community. we’ll all have a much happier pride month if we stand up for each other against the real sources of hatred, rather than letting them get us to chew on each other for another year.
Does anybody know where the picture below originally is from?
And what the hell is in front of him? I only see cotten candy with ice cream and cookies O_O But is it?
There also was another picture of him in that hoodie. Something like a bts/post photoshooting Instagram post, lots of light in his face. Who posted that one? I just can’t find it anymore.
They taught you that you had to file yourself down to be acceptable; that you had to calm down or want less or smile more or feel less or speak less - that your passions were ugly and that your desires were selfish. You couldn’t admit to the bad nights, that was burdensome. You couldn’t ask for better, you couldn’t cry that loudly. When you said “Look what I made”, the answer was “…. Oh.” You became a sectioned person - good and not-good. The prayer in public and that private, terrible sin.
And then they looked at you and said - why don’t you trust anyone enough to let them in?
A good thread on whether “queer” is a slur and if it should be used or not.
“If I am unashamed of being queer, you do not get to give that word BACK to the fuckwits who made it a slur.”
you do not get to give that word BACK to the fuckwits who made it a slur
EVERYBODY WHO CAME OUT BEFORE YOU HAS TAKEN THE ROCKS AND BOTTLES AND MADE THEM INTO SHIELDS AND WINDCHIMES
Holy motherfucking shit. Don’t fucking come at me about Queer is a slur. I FUCKING KNOW IT IS. It was hurled at me like a fucking spear all through my youth. I know it’s a god damn slur. And it’s mine. You don’t get to take it away from me because you can’t take also away the scars it gave me while I was standing in front of my younger queer siblings in this community.
always, always reblog this one.
If my enemy swings a sword at me and I take that sword away from them, it’s my sword now. And the person telling me I can’t use it because it belongs to my enemy and I have to give it back to them sounds quite a bit like an enemy themselves.
This came around again, but it’s worth sharing and remembering. You have the right to only accept certain words be used to describe you, but so does everyone else.
I have this bookmarked to through at people who DM me about using the word Queer.
“Don’t force yourself into sexual situation just to satisfy your partner” should never be a radical statement
This isn’t a matter of discourse. If you don’t like sex or are meh about it, then don’t force yourself to do it just for your partner. Sex isn’t a task. Sex isn’t a requirement for a relationship. If you are afraid not wanting sex is a dealbreaker for your partner, talk with them about it.
Sit down and have an actual honest talk about the matter. If your partner prefers to be with someone who is into sex while you aren’t then it’s more fair for both of you if you split up, than to try to keep together a relationship that wouldn’t work. A person who is sex repulsed/uninterested in sex deserves a partner that will respect that, and a person who likes sex deserves a partner who will respect that. Stop perpetrating bad sex rethoric for fuck’s sake
Transcript: We have romanticized the idea of romance, and it is cancerous. And when you raise children in that world, where everything points towards love and everything’s perfect on the outside, when we become an adult for the first time in our late teens and our early 20s, we’re so terrified. We’re so trying to be an adult that some of us will take the wrong person, the wrong jigsaw piece and just fucking jam them into our jigsaws anyway, denying that they clearly don’t fit. I’m gonna force this fucking person into our lives because we’d much rather have something thant nothing. People are more in love with the idea of love than the person they are with. 55% of marraiges end in divorce. 90. Nine Zero. Percent of relationships that started before they are 30 end. If those were the stats for surgery, none of us would fucking risk it. But because it’s love and we’re stupid, we just lie on the operating table like, “Maybe this time I don’t die inside.” There’s nothing wrong with being alone. There’s nothing wrong with taking time to work out who you are because how can you offer who you are if you don’t know who you are? There’s nothing wrong with being selfish for a bit, because you’ve got the rest of your life to be selfless. If you only love yourself at 20%, that means somebody can come along and love you 30%. You’re like, “Wow, that’s so much.” It’s literally less than half. Whereas if you love yourself 100%, a person that falls in love with you has to go above and beyond the call of duty to make you feel special. End transcript]
