When we become what we are, it happens quietly.

But I love this so much.

jaredtomas:

When going outdoors, design shouldn’t have to take the backseat. These enamel steel cups manufactured using World War Two era machinery are beautifully crafted and designed.

What truly distinguishes the cups is that the rim and the handle — the two spots that get the most abuse — are reinforced with a double dipping of enamel, making this the most steadfast cup in the land. Designed by the durable and rustic Best Made brand, it may just be the most beautiful campfire mug ever made.

(Full article here)

pyladesdrunk:

threestories:

missvanillamilkshake:

norsegays:

astrolope:

People being angry about ~dem gays~ on Target’s Facebook.

I just want to give my two cents on this and tell you a story.

A couple weeks ago, I was hired at Target. I have a job at Target. Not a big deal right?

It is a big deal because i’m a transman. 

It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that it’s hard for me, my brothers, and sisters to get a job. There are legal restraints regarding the job and if you don’t pass, it’s hard to be taken seriously at a job interview.

Right on the application, it asks what your preferred name is. It also asks if there is anything that target should know. I put the fact that I am a transman, expecting not to get a call because usually when you put that down, people will throw out the application. I got TWO interviews.

At the interview, they asked me about it. I told them I am on hormones and they told me that they didn’t care. Not in the sense that they don’t emotionally care, but that it didn’t matter. I was male and that’s all that mattered. They also told me that they give sex same couples benefits in states that do not recognize them as a married couple.

At my job orientation, I was not misgendered once. Even my supervisors who weren’t sure of my gender avoided pronoun use, which I found only happens when you’ve had pronoun training. They gave me a name tag with my preferred name and didn’t ask questions. I felt safe and respected, which is huge for a trans* person.

TLDR: Target is amazing not just for the LGB, but also the T. Shop there for the rest of your life.

 #GO TARGET #FUCK YES

I love reading stuff like this and I’m sincerely happy that norsegays has a safe and respectful environment in which he can do his job.

Whenever I hear about people or businesses excluding LGBT+ customers or workers, I’m reminded of an incident from when I was very young, around 12 or so, so we’re talking the late 80s/possibly early 90s, which was 20+ years ago. My mother, a woman who is otherwise by no means without her flaws, worked as a freelance cosmetic and skin care consultant for Estee Lauder, and at the time, she had been contracted to work in a Macy’s in Houston, TX. This meant she was there not to sell anything, but to merely help customers find the right skincare and makeup products for them, and the counter salesgirls would finish the sales and do any upsells.

Sometimes after school, my grandparents would drive me to the mall and let me hang out and watch my mom work, which was… mostly boring, because I wasn’t too interested in watching my mom put makeup on people, but gave me lots of opportunities to people-watch, too. And sometimes she’d put makeup on me! Which was fun, for a 12-year-old.

Anyway, on this particular day, a very tall and very striking and (I thought at the time) attractive trans*lady shyly approached the makeup counter to browse the expansive lipstick section. I couldn’t help but stare, not because she was strange-looking to me, because my mother knew other trans*folk and so I did, too, but because she was very made up and was wearing very elegant clothes, and seemed so very glamorous to me, very unlike the people I saw in my every day life at a small-town Texas Catholic school. My mother, however, was not there to sell lipsticks, just do makeovers and facials on people, so she waited for the salesgirls to approach the lady and help her.

And waited.

And waited. 

Instead, the two of them - a woman in her 50s and a college co-ed - stood at a distance, staring and eye-rolling and whispering and laughing. The customer noticed - well, we ALL noticed because they weren’t being subtle - and she looked very embarrassed (and in my memory, perhaps a little disappointed), but tried to ignore them as she browsed. My mother must have finally realized no one was going to help her, because she just sort of sighed and charged right on in, introduced herself and started chatting the lady up about lipsticks.

She seemed a little taken aback more than anything at first. Not that I could blame her. She had clearly given up all hope of anyone approaching her, and, well… some of you reading this have met my mother and know she is a very flashy, extroverted, opinionated Latina, fond of costume jewelry and fire-engine-red hair and talking about makeup, so undoubtedly she took this particular customer by surprise on several levels. The tension having been broken, however, I got bored watching them ease into a long, animated conversation about skin types and skin tones and matte vs. shimmer and a bunch of other crap I had (still have) very little interest in and got back to reading my book.

My mother ended up selling her $370 worth of products. At the time? That was a lot of fucking money. She also became a repeat client and referred several of her friends. And when my mother left that Macy’s, the lady followed her to her new location 45 minutes away and patronized her business continually until we moved to another state 3 years later.

The moral of this story is: it not only makes you a shitty person to demean and humiliate and bully and exclude customers and employees for no freaking good reason, it also makes you an inexcusably bad business person.

Target continues to make me proud to be a customer of their’s.

Andie, your mom is wonderful.