You can bend over backwards trying not to be one of “those” cringey queers who wears pride everywhere and goes by arson and has they/it/fluff/pixel/boo pronouns on a catgender pin they wear everywhere and suppress everything “extra” unlikable about your identity and pass as a “normal” cishet and mock everyone who dyes their hair for pride and wears rainbow nail polish and guess what? Conservatives will still want you dead. There is no appeasing them. Stand by your community. Maybe you’ll find that arson (they/it/fluff/pixel/boo) is going to be the best goddamn person to have in your corner when the republicans you’ve given up your life to placate inevitably turn on you and try to sentence you to death because any amount of queer is too damn queer. Maybe you’ll find that we are a community for a reason. We’re all equally degenerate in the eyes in conservatives and equally worthy of joy and life in the eyes of the “weird” queer community you shun.
A general cane guide for writers and artists (from a cane user, writer, and artist!)
Disclaimer: Though I have been using a cane for 6 years, I am not a doctor, nor am I by any means an expert. This guide is true to my experience, but there are as many ways to use a cane as there are cane users!
This guide will not include: White canes for blindness, crutches, walkers, or wheelchairs as I have no personal experience with these.
This is meant to be a general guide to get you started and avoid some common mishaps/misconceptions in your writing, but you absolutely should continue to do your own research outside of this guide!
This is NOT a medical resource!!! And never tell a real person you think they're using a cane wrong!
ALT
The biggest recurring problem I've seen is using the cane on the wrong side. The cane goes on the opposite side of the pain! If your character has even-sided pain or needs it for balance/weakness, then use the cane in the non-dominant hand to keep the dominant hand free. Some cane users also switch sides to give their arm a rest!
A cane takes about 20% of your weight off the opposite leg. It should fit within your natural gait and become something of an extension of your body. If you need more weight off than 20%, then crutches, a walker, or a wheelchair is needed.
Putting more pressure on the cane, using it on the wrong side, or having it at the wrong height can make it less effective, and can cause long term damage to your body from improper pressure and posture. (Hugh Laurie genuinely hurt his body from years of using a cane wrong on House!)
(some people elect to use a cane wrong for their personal situation despite this, everyone is different!)
(an animated GIF of a cane matching the natural walking gait. It turns red when pressure is placed on it.)
When going up and down stairs, there is an ideal standard: You want to use the handrail and the cane at the same time, or prioritize the handrail if it's only on one side. When going up stairs you lead with your good leg and follow with the cane and hurt leg together. When going down stairs you lead with the cane and the bad leg and follow with the good leg!
Realistically though, many people don't move out of the way for cane users to access the railing, many stairs don't have railings, and many are wet, rusty, or generally not ideal to grip.
In these cases, if you have a friend nearby, holding on to them is a good idea. Or, take it one step at a time carefully if you're alone.
Now we come to a very common mistake I see... Using fashion canes for medical use!
ALT
(These are 4 broad shapes, but there is INCREDIBLE variation in cane handles. Research heavily what will be best for your character's specific needs!)
The handle is the contact point for all the weight you're putting on your cane, and that pressure is being put onto your hand, wrist, and shoulder. So the shape is very important for long term use!
Knob handles (and very decorative handles) are not used for medical use for this reason. It adds extra stress to the body and can damage your hand to put constant pressure onto these painful shapes.
The weight of a cane is also incredibly important, as a heavier cane will cause wear on your body much faster. When you're using it all day, it gets heavy fast! If your character struggles with weakness, then they won't want a heavy cane if they can help it!
This is also part of why sword canes aren't usually very viable for medical use (along with them usually being knob handles) is that swords are extra weight!
However, a small knife or perhaps a retractable blade hidden within the base might be viable even for weak characters.
ALT
Bases have a lot of variability as well, and the modern standard is generally adjustable bases. Adjustable canes are very handy if your character regularly changes shoe height, for instance (gotta keep the height at your hip!)
Canes help on most terrain with their standard base and structure. But for some terrain, you might want a different base, or to forego the cane entirely! This article covers it pretty well.
Many cane users decorate their canes! Stickers are incredibly common, and painting canes is relatively common as well! You'll also see people replacing the standard wrist strap with a personalized one, or even adding a small charm to the ring the strap connects to. (nothing too large, or it gets annoying as the cane is swinging around everywhere)
ALT
(my canes, for reference)
If your character uses a cane full time, then they might also have multiple canes that look different aesthetically to match their outfits!
When it comes to practical things outside of the cane, you reasonably only have one hand available while it's being used. Many people will hook their cane onto their arm or let it dangle on the strap (if they have one) while using their cane arm, but it's often significantly less convenient than 2 hands. But, if you need 2 hands, then it's either setting the cane down or letting it hang!
For this reason, optimizing one handed use is ideal! Keeping bags/items on the side of your free hand helps keep your items accessible.
ALT
When sitting, the cane either leans against a wall or table, goes under the chair, or hooks onto the back of the chair. (It often falls when hanging off of a chair, in my experience)
When getting up, the user will either use their cane to help them balance/support as they stand, or get up and then grab their cane. This depends on what it's being used for (balance vs pain when walking, for instance!)
That's everything I can think of for now. Thank you for reading my long-but-absolutely-not-comprehensive list of things to keep in mind when writing or drawing a cane user!
Happy disability pride month! Go forth and make more characters use canes!!!
the point of my masculinity and male positivity posts are to underline that masculinity and manhood are seen as a threat or in direct opposition to queerness, and that often times in order to be seen as queer you have to be partially or wholly feminine or gender neutral, or express your manhood in a feminine or gender neutral way in order to no longer be threatening, invasive, or a problem.
it is very difficult to exist in queer spaces as a hyper masculine person & a man. you're made to feel like you need to walk a tight rope feeling like you're inherently out of place, as if you existing and being masculine or a man in queer spaces makes others uncomfortable inherently.. just know that when i make positivity posts it is to remind us all that masculinity/manhood and queerness are not opposites and that you do not have to be a feminine man or masc person to be viewed/seen/heard as queer.
chasing men, masculine people, and masculinity out of queer spaces isn't helping anyone currently and won't help anyone down the line. please accept masc enbies, butches, bears, and masculine trans men with the same kindness, love, and passion that you do neutral and feminine people. that's the point when i make these kinds of posts. thank u
This is 100% thanks to the “No kink at Pride” people. Because?
They didn’t want these men at Pride. This is a leather daddy. (A rather covered-up leather daddy, because this addition doesn’t do anyone any good if it’s flagged into invisibility, but best believe that dude has hella abs under there, and a 50/50 chance of heavy tattooing.)
Here’s another. Again on the modest side for the sake of not triggering the automod thing, but you can see the interplay of queerness and masculinity—particularly a kind of forward, unashamed sexual explicitness, if you take a look at their crotches. That’s a kind of…for lack of a better term, mating display. “I have this and want to use it, or at least know there are men here fantasizing about me using it.” It’s akin to a woman wearing a plunge neck. You’re supposed to look, and if you’re a dude, he’d like you to like it.
These dudes (well, most of these dudes)? They’re bears. (I said “most” because the guy in the sunhat is technically a cub. He’s too young to be a bear.) The furriness and the beards and the age and the bellies ARE THE POINT. The name “bear” is an affectionate one. Literally “I’m big and hairy!” In the 00s there was a stereotype(?) that bears were also super-cuddly. I don’t know how true it is, but I can confirm every bear I’ve ever met gives amazing hugs. They will readjust your spine, your touch starvation, and your entire outlook on life.
None of this touches on the rather large queer kink communities around “men in uniform.” Military, police, construction, I can’t tell you how many strip nights I’ve been to at a local gay bar with a guy dressed as a sexy firefighter getting absolutely swamped with dollar bills and lap dance requests.
You aren’t seeing these men because they’ve been forced out of spaces THEY CREATED. One of the best things you can do is to help bring them back.
They’re not threatening, they’re not disgusting, they’re not somehow dangerous just by virtue of being open about their sexuality and sexual desire. They’re just human beings who human slightly differently than you.
Leather daddies, imho, are fucking around with hypergender performance as much as drag queens. It's two sides of the same coin. Leather daddies literally have beauty pageants.
Also, there's a solid 50% chance that when you talk to those masc-looking leather daddies and bears are just much femme sissies as more femme presenting gay men.
Sincerely, a genderqueer amab bear who dresses like a dad half the time
Your local leather historian here to add a little bit of context to the "this is the fault of the no kink at pride" thing.
The leather community has existed formally (in the United States) since the mid 50s. The Satyr Motorcycle Club was founded in San Francisco in 1954, it is still around today making it the oldest continously run gay organization in the country. This is 15 years before Stonewall. The first gay leather bar, the gold coast, opened in 1958 in Chicago. 11 years before Stonewall. Informally the leather community has existed since the end of wwii when men who had spent years wearing leather, riding motorcycles, and having gay sex came back home and kept doing those things.
Gay men have been arguing about whether or not the leather community belongs at pride since 1970. Since the inception of pride, or more accurately, "Gay Freedom Day." Because the leather community has heavt ties to the SM community. (Whether or not the Leather community is a sub community in the larger SM community, or there's just a lot of overlap is a conversation leathermen have always been having) but there has always been push back because of the tie to radical sex and because of accusations that leathermen are trying to "act straight"
In an essay in Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice Leatherman Michale Bronski recalls hearing a lesbian tell a gay man "“Give me a break. You think that someone wearing chaps, a black leather jacket, a motorcycle cap, handcuffs on his belt, two different color hankies, and 36 inch high black boots looks Straight!”*
Which brings us to their presentation of masculinity. If you'll excuse me for becoming An Academic(tm) for a moment, if you look at these communities, Leathermen and Bears, what you find is that popular theories of masculinitu don't work when describing these men, at least not when they're in the spaces that the audence that their gender performance is for also exist. Queer masculinity is a performance for queer people, framing it in the lense of heterosexuality does not do anyone any good and erases the nuances of what is happening.
The leather communities are some of the oldest queer communities in America. To push them out of the queer community or suggest that they're toxic, or somehow harming the community as a whole is to ignore history completely, and engage with an argument that's half a century old.
In 1982 leathermen founded AIDS Emergency Fund in San Francisco. Consistently through the first decade of the AIDS Crisis leathermen (and other radical sex communities) were promoting safer sex, and hosting all kinds of fundraisers to raise money for PWAs and reseach (a lot of leather beauty pagents popped up just for the purpose of rasing money.) All this while they were being told BY OTHER GAY MEN they were the ones killing everyone, they and their weird gross sex were the problem (never mind that a lot of what the leathermen were doing was already safer than monogamous anal sex)
Leathermen are your family, we're part of your community and have every right to be here, even if you don't understand our masculinity.
❤️🖤💙🤍💙🖤
*none of this even begins touching the surface of the discourse leather lesbians and feminists have been having since the 70s. It's tied to TERF rhetoric and the anti-porn movement.
Historic note on bears: the origin of the community is shouded in myth, but certainly by the late 70s the beginnings of the community were there. The AIDS Crisis shot the community to popularity. Because AIDS will cause incredible weight loss, the eorticization of fat bodies was the eroticiaztion of safe bodies. If you read porn written by bears in the 80s and early 90s you'll notice the use of condoms where in other erotica that is lacking.
Actually I'll never forgive Punk Rave and Killstar and fast fashion brands for tricking people into thinking that being goth or punk or emo is expensive. Babygirl the only goth brand names you need to know are Rit, Good Will, Etsy, and Studs and Spikes, we used to shove safety pins through our ears and then they started selling earrings that look like safety pins for 15.99. We used to dye thrifted wedding dresses black and they started selling gothic gowns for 300 bucks. We used to put studs on boots we found in the back of the good will and they started making Demonias. DIY or die wasn't perfect it can be exclusionary to disabled people but whatever the fuck we've got going on right now is so much worse. It's not any more inclusive to the disabled and it is exclusionary to the people who made punk, to the people who made goth, to the people who made emo. If you've got the funds and you don't want to do diy pay someone else to do it for you but please let it be a small artist or a friend not some guy in a suit who's made it his business to gentrify punk. You can turn flats into platforms with flipflops, hotglue and gumption don't let anyone tell you different.
Here are some miscellaneous tips and misconceptions for sighted people who want to be a better ally to the Blind / Visually Impaired:
- Don't assume how much residual vision we have even if you think you can tell. Do not ask extensive questions about our vision and what we can or can't see in general unless we give permission. Don't try to figure it out on your own either.
- Blindness is a spectrum and there are many different ways to be blind. Some of us have very complex vision or vision that isn't static. Someone could read a book fine, but still be blind because they have a very small field of vision and no depth perception. Anyone on the blind spectrum is welcome to identify as blind.
- We act "more blind" than we are because people will refuse us help when we need it if we don't "fit the blind bill" so to speak. Don't accuse anyone of faking for any reason but especially for that one.
- It's not your place to expect us to blend into the sighted world the best we can or use as much of our vision as we can. A lot of us choose not to use our residual vision because with certain kinds of blindness, it takes conscious effort to see/process what we are seeing. It's easier to be blind than see sometimes.
- Ask if we need accommodations or for you to adapt how you usually communicate. Do not assume we do or don't need them.
- Start adding image descriptions to ALL images you send/post anywhere. Start considering blind people and screen reader users everywhere because trust me, we are everywhere!
- Stop using "blind" and blindness as an insult, joke or metaphor. There are some uses of those words unrelated to visual impairment that are fine when used respectfully (i.e, "a blinding light") but choose your words carefully.
- People who have perfect vision with glasses, "visually impaired" is not your term
- For fiction writers, stop with the blind seer / "blind but has super cool special abilities that make up for it or entirely erase it somehow" tropes please.
- Stop using small text in your posts
- Put image descriptions/alt text on the images in your carrds and rentrys and whatnot. Start putting them on your blog or get help to.
- We don't want to hear about your grandpa that's going blind or your pet cat that lost an eye while we're just trying to wait in line for coffee
- Treat white canes like you would treat any other disability aid: it is an extension of the person's body, don't touch it or move it without permission. Don't ask to try it out.
- DeafBlind people exist. We're out there. We're not a myth. Consider us too. There are many ways of interacting with the world that do not involve sight or hearing.
- Don't tell us about your all consuming fear about the treacherous horrors of vision loss and how you wouldn't want to live if you went blind. Blindness is our reality, not your nightmare. Examine why blindness is so terrifying to you and work to overcome it.
Blind/Visually Impaired people, feel free to add on!
![[Image text] Arm bends a little. Cane height at hip joint. Many canes have adjustable height. Cane sits within the natural center of balance. Causes stress on: Triceps, upper back, wrist (pressure) fingers (grip). Helps with: Joints (lower back, hip, knee, ankle, foot), weakness, balance, pain.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/0c8731401f496885dc8d4309a7dbe7ee/f831b3159e1d7635-e7/s1280x1920/c0727e182d1199164b0d14b8aa97a1d0951103ac.jpg)
![[Image text] 4 Major Handle Shapes (significant variation and uses). Tourist/Crook/Hook. Classic shape, fashion and medical, easy to hook on things (arm, door, chair, etc), generally solid wood (stronger, heavier). Offset. Newer design, not a fashion handle, only handle for quad-bases, generally better balance, usually aluminum (light + cheap), soft handle, adjustable (rattles/clicks when swinging). Derby/Fritz/Anatomical/Contour. Classic medical shape, many fashion variants, some fashion + medical, varies in many ways, sometimes contoured to hand, comes in foldable styles, many aluminum styles, many customizable styles. Knob/Decorative. Fashion exclusive, knob shape hurts the hand after prolonged pressure (especially with designs), tend to be heavy, "sword canes" have the same issues.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/102d2e5f13a88817eaa44974bc5a7486/f831b3159e1d7635-e2/s1280x1920/48b743c42fa427d9ba0668932749d84216a6c1d0.jpg)
![[Image text] 4 Major base shapes (significant variation and uses). Adjustable base. Aluminum, standard modern medical, adjustable height, rubber base, wears down over time. Tripod/ quad base. If you need extra balance. Terrain attachment (varies, this is for ice). Removable, helps stop slipping on ice/snow/sand/etc, some canes have a retractable tip for ice. Classic base. Non-adjustable, custom only, modern standard still has a rubber base.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/78d350cfac4077376b7ce521a9a7d929/f831b3159e1d7635-ab/s1280x1920/3f62aebc781579ce8cd629c161dc1cc0e422532d.jpg)
![[Image text] Where to put your stuff. Purses/bags. A lot of size range, Can mess with balance, Zippers are too hard with one hand, Handheld means you have no hands, over the shoulder only. Fanny pack. Accessible with one hand, Limited space, Good for balance. Backpack. Very physically comfortable, evenly weighted, holds a lot (medicine, foldable cane, emergency supplies, etc) can't access without fully stopping and putting cane down/hooking it on arm/dangling on strap. Pockets. Can only use on free side, many outfits don't have good pockets.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/de0f85e864c0ac470fb08900d78d8375/f831b3159e1d7635-21/s1280x1920/57025fd6c870f2df7e6af3cdc5e5408dea8c3fdb.jpg)
