Unfortunately, men who have had sex with another man in the past year are still barred from donating blood. However, I have heard that the city's blood banks have caught up with demand so it may be less necessary. Remember that if you have O Positive, O Negative, or AB blood type, you're usally the most in-demand for donation. There are also height and weight requirements, so check those before you go to donate.Maybe a bit late, but if you guys want to help, here's the official GoFundMe for the victims, run by Equality Florida: https://www.gofundme.com/PulseVictimsFund
Counteracting evil is hard but that doesn't mean we can't do our best.
EDIT: If you really want to make a difference you can donate blood. I have, in the past. It's not painful or scary at all and is even quite pleasant.
Here's a list of blood bank donation centers in Florida. http://blood-banks.regionaldirectory.us/florida.htm
Red Cross site for giving blood: http://www.redcross.org/give-blood
Being direct shows confidence, which is attractive, it's only tactless if you're a dick about it or time it with like they're confiding in you about depression or something. Plus nothings gonna happen by not saying anythingSo on a lighter subject, does anyone itt have any tips for talking to someone that you like but aren't sure if they're gay or not? Been spending a lot of time with a guy lately and I'm not really sure on the best way to go about asking him out. Everyone I've spoken to keeps telling me to be direct about it but it just seems a bit tactless to go all in like that
so how do you approach the subject? Confidence is really not something i have a lot of lolBeing direct shows confidence, which is attractive, it's only tactless if you're a dick about it or time it with like they're confiding in you about depression or something. Plus nothings gonna happen by not saying anything
You've got to find a way that works for you bud, trial and error. If this guy likes you back, then you can fumble and spaz all you need to and he'll probably think it cute, as long as you build up the courage to do it.so how do you approach the subject? Confidence is really not something i have a lot of lol
I know how you feel. I haven't told many people that I'm bisexual because of the fact that it's looked down upon by many others as its "not valid" or whatever. I think that being bisexual is a great thing, it shows the diversity that I have over others. It's ok to love who you love, and I think that you're a valid person for who you are, despite what others say.Oh finally, a place for this. Okay so this year I recently came out as a bisexual to all of my friends and they were all cool w/ it and stuff, but then I told them I had a crush on a boy and one of them actually told the boy I liked him, a few of them would also just randomly blurt stuff like "lol you're bisexual" out in public and this didn't really bother me too much until I saw the boy giving me dirty looks. He would always just be passive around me and glare at me and it made me feel like trash because he has bisexual friends, but sometimes uses,"gay" as an insult, I still like and respect him because he never told anyone else my secret. I never worked up the courage to talk to him, the school year's over and he's being left behind and i've never once talked to him. I'm crying and I don't know what to do, how am I suppose to cope w/ being heartbroken, kinda being forced to come out, and being looked at in nasty ways because of my sexuality :(?
Not everyone necessarily sees xe/ve/ze as gender neutral pronouns, but rather associates them with a non-binary gender identity that falls outside of male/female. People also might view them as being actively gender neutral rather than passively gender neutral - they can be used for someone of any gender, for example, but if you called a man or a woman "xe" they'd probably feel offended (many men and women would take offense with they though, depends on the person of course). The use of xe/ze/ve, especially xe, as a replacement for they in some "radical" circles may make someone feel that it has taken on the exact same meaning as they, and create a new variant that eventually gets overtaken, but I do think there's room for one of them to become generally accepted as a truely gender-neutral pronoun in the same vein as "it", but without the negative connotations.Something I've been wondering about with regards to the trans* community, in particular those parts of the trans* community that aren't simply ftm or mtf, is what function all these miscellaneous pronouns like "xe", "ze", "ve", or what have you serve. Considering the English language has a gender-neutral pronoun these days, why do some trans* people still feel the need to, more or less, make up their own pronouns?
everyone has their own personal pronoun. It's called their first name.Not everyone necessarily sees xe/ve/ze as gender neutral pronouns, but rather associates them with a non-binary gender identity that falls outside of male/female. People also might view them as being actively gender neutral rather than passively gender neutral - they can be used for someone of any gender, for example, but if you called a man or a woman "xe" they'd probably feel offended (many men and women would take offense with they though, depends on the person of course). The use of xe/ze/ve, especially xe, as a replacement for they in some "radical" circles may make someone feel that it has taken on the exact same meaning as they, and create a new variant that eventually gets overtaken, but I do think there's room for one of them to become generally accepted as a truely gender-neutral pronoun in the same vein as "it", but without the negative connotations.
I do find some of the more extreme variants, such as therian (kit/kitself, bun/bunself) pronouns annoying because they're completely ignoring the function of pronouns in everyday language, though.
then if that is the problem, it is resolved by having a unique identifier that is semantically identical to your name but is "less awkward" to say, which is rather similar to a nickname. "They" or "ze" or whatever also fits the bill. Nouns/pronouns collectively serve to identify. A noun is used to concretely identify the object - and a pronoun thereafter as a reference to this noun. The pronoun is not meant to convey any information about the object: it is purely a pointer to established information. The gender-based 'flavour' of pronouns is entirely redundant, as is any other flavour.. Moreover, the aim of these personal pronouns is to have a personal identifier that gives the person listening/reading a constant reminder of this identity: it is rarely relevant enough that you identify as an Apache Attack Helicopter to imbue such a common word with such information. And anyone who thinks otherwise is placing too much importance on intrinsic values to identify themselves, and the need for others to know. And nobody needs to know this shit because who you are as a person is based on what you do, how you do it, rather than some arbitrary label that ironically categorises you.That's a proper noun, and it's actually really awkward to continually refer to someone by their name in a sentence, just like its awkward to use bunself pronouns in a sentence. If that was the point you were trying to make, I mostly agree.
in that case, isn't there an imperative for fully neutral pronouns? Something that doesn't even convey gender (like he/she/ze). Let's face it, you can tie yourself up in knots trying to guess which pronoun is appropriate: you could offend a staunchly feminine/masculine person by using a genderfluid pronoun, just like you could offend someone genderfluid by using he/she. Avoiding the topic of gender entirely seems the most sensible thing to do, because it doesn't get brought up implicitly..
The awkwardness comes from the difficulty in keeping gender identity a secret (which is hugely important; outing someone as trans is a huge deal in real life) and the disruption of sentence flow (which is why using names a billion times is awkward). That's actually part of why using names can be cumbersome; pronouns actively show the role a noun takes in a sentence - it's why he/him/his pronouns exist, rather than them all being he. There's a reason we use pronouns when refering to people with one-syllable names - it offers more information than their name does once their name is known.