More other people being, y'know, brilliant:

Lots of stuff about being real and whole people out there, and I once again exhort all seven and a half of my readers to go look at it.

First, A. J. Luxton, writing about age and ageism, with minor Dr. Who spoilers:

And I’m sitting here asking is it really that impossible to face the idea that an older person might be sexy, might be loved, might be loveable?

Because I’m sure doing my best to face that idea. Because it’s worth everything, really, it’s life itself.

Would I sleep with a 70-year-old now? Well, never say never, but I don’t think it’s very probable. My cultural reference points connect me to the people I count as friends, mostly people in their twenties through fifties.

But I’d better get adjusted to the idea by the time I’m fifty, because I’m in a long-term relationship with a sizable age difference, and other people get older at the same rate that I do.

I’m amazed by the way many people aggressively forget that.

The fear of age is the fear of other people reminding you that you might not always be the same age you are now; that you might get older; that you might become vulnerable to death.

Well, all of you WILL get older, and you ARE vulnerable to death. (I believe immortality is possible, but: you are vulnerable to death. That’s not an if/and/but, there.) Treating people like they don’t exist because they’re old: WILL NOT CHANGE THAT.

Trinity, on the love-hate relationship with being called "cyborg" and what it means to have that coming from the outside and how it differs from the inside:

I am not a semiotic anything. Here I fly in the face of academia but it needs to be said: Speak plainly or shut up.

Talk about the people. Talk about their lives. Not just about composition, message, image-making. Talk about what they've said about the image they want to present. How has the media done? Do they like their own pictures? Do they think they're presented well, as they would wish to be?

Talk about that, if you want to talk about this.

And take your fascination and cram it.

If this body IS a revolution: it is my revolution.

Not yours.

(And for an interesting sort of interaction between these two, Trinity again, on resisting being unsexed and not being willing to be blown off with, effectively, 'When you're older you won't care about sex anyway'.)

And to round up this large selection of other people's words, WordK on dealing with being silenced, not being heard, and being disagreed with from the perspective of someone who has wrestled with all three:

The badly made point is, it takes a heck of a lot more than someone disagreeing with your opinions or your actions -- or even outright mocking what you have said or done as sheer foolishness, stupidity, or bigotry -- before you have actually been silenced. A gun to the head, the possibility of being taken down physically, the threat of stoning, deprivation of liberty, physical violence, starvation in the streets, being thrown out of your community into the desert -- these can all legitimately be called silencing. Just being told you're a flaming idiot, whether rightly or wrongly, or that you have mistreated others -- nope, that is not being silenced.

Someday, original content. For now, other people being brilliant.