#ME/CFS affirmations

[compassionmattersmost]

With each breath, I honor my body’s pace and wisdom. Rest is a profound act of strength, nurturing my spirit and guiding me toward balance. In stillness, I find resilience and peace, knowing each small step is part of my healing journey.

With each breath, I honor my body’s pace and wisdom. Rest is a profound act of strength, nurturing my spirit and guiding me toward balance. In stillness, I find resilience and peace, knowing each small step is part of my healing journey. 🙏🕊️🙏

[disasterhimbo]

The difference between day clothes and night clothes is made up btw. You can do whatever you want forever

[ipso-faculty]

Proposing new meanings for the Disability Pride Flag stripes

I love the design of the disability pride flag made by @capricorn-0mnikorn (in consultation with many disabled people!). It’s beautiful, elegant, and distinct. I love the symbolism of the diagonal stripes.

But the more I think about the meanings of the five diagonal stripes, the more uncomfortable I am with them. So I'll explain my discomfort and then give proposed alternative meanings.

For those unfamiliar, these are the meanings that capricorn-0mnikorn gives:

The White Stripe: Invisible and Undiagnosed Disabilities

The Red Stripe: Physical Disabilities

The Gold Stripe: Neurodivergence

The Blue Stripe: Psychiatric Disabilities

The Green Stripe: Sensory Disabilities

With additional and helpful context here! 💙 Like a lot of disabled people my disabilities don't all fit neatly into these boxes, but I recognize some disabled people see themselves in these categories. I do appreciate the symbolism of it being the most common flag colours / internationalism plus the intent of representing diversity amongst the disability community.

Here’s what doesn’t sit well with me:

The yellow was chosen for the neurodiversity stripe because gold = Au = autism (and also as a fuck you to autism speaks, a sentiment I agree with 💯). 

So autism is used to represent all of neurodiversity. Even though the 2018 AutisticsUK campaign to associate gold with autism was explicitly motivated by the idea that neurodiversity is larger than just autism and autistic people should have our own colour/symbol distinct from the rainbow infinity used for general neurodiversity.

One specific disability is effectively being given a whole stripe (autism) while the other four stripes are based on abstract ideas: red is associated with body -> physical disability, blue is associated with the mind (and is “opposite” to red) so -> mental disability. This is reasonable but it’s inconsistent. (And I am very much the kind of autistic who gets bothered by internal inconsistency 😅)

The Deaf community has been using cyan blue for ages (since at least 1999, probably older) and they have been so vital in disability rights history. I feel if any single disability deserves to get an entire stripe to themselves it should be them.

I appreciate the honestly that assigning green to sensory disabilities was because “that was the color that was left over” but it still feels wrong given how vital blind & deaf people have been to disability history. 

Blue for mental/emotional disabilities also misses that the Mad Pride movement has been using purple as their colour since at least 2013. 

If all five stripes were disconnected from actual disability-specific pride flags I think I’d be okay with it. What sets me off is the inconsistency: autism gets the privilege of its own chosen colour but not other disabilities? (Also: autism isn’t the only disability that uses yellow!)

My proposal for new meanings

I propose each stripe represent a different cause of disability, and the associated model(s) of disability that go with that cause:

Red: disability due to injury / the debility model of disability - e.g. injury due to armed conflicts caused by colonialism, injury due to gun violence in a country which fails to regulate gun safety, preventable illness due to sociopolitical neglect 😡🩸

Yellow: disability due to natural differences / affirmative models of disability - e.g. autistic people who lead lives that take advantage of their autistic traits, DSPS folks who are able to work night shifts and take pride in doing so 😄🌟

Blue: situational disabilities / critical models like the social model, social construction model, political/relational model, and radical model - e.g. a Deaf person who feels their only disability is that people don’t speak their signed language and don’t provide captions/etc 🗣️♿️

Green: disability due to illness / biomedical models of disability - e.g. people with conditions like ME/CFS and Long Covid who actually do want to be treated/cured 🤢🦠

White: disability caused by unknown or other factors / other models such as the human rights model - e.g. somebody with a poorly-understood and/or undiagnosed illness who is fighting for access for accommodations and medical care 👀🤍

People may relate to multiple stripes! Whether it’s for the same disability or for having multiple disabilities. Like the old meanings, the intent is to showcase our internal diversity. 🌈

It’s been my experience of disability community that attitudes about disability tend (in general) to be linked more to when/how we were disabled rather than mental/physical/sensory/etc. For example, people like me who were disabled from a young age tend to understand our disabilities differently than people who acquire disability later in life.

Colour choice justifications:

Red as disabilities caused by injury: keeping with capricorn-0mnikorn’s association of red with the body plus the common associations of red with blood, violence, and anger. I want to explicitly include the debility model of disability because a lot of white disabled people tend to forget or gloss over how disability is used as a weapon against racialized & Global South folks.

Yellow is associated with optimism and pleasure as well as enlightenment (such as in the Deaf flag) and so I connect it to the affirmation model of disability (which is the opposite of the charity/tragedy model). From there I associated it to disability due to natural differences, such as congenital neurodivergence. I want yellow to still be something that fellow autistics could still see themselves in the flag for! 💛 And I want intersex people who see their intersex variation as a disability to be able to see themselves here too because being intersex is natural 💛 

Blue as disabilities that are social/situational in nature, like Deafness being a disability in situations where signed languages are unavailable. I wanted Deafness to actually be under blue this time. 💙 

Blue has also been used for disability writ large for a long time now and so this one being the one associated with the Social Model feels most historically connected to me. I’m also including newer critical/postmodern models like the social construction model and radical model which also posit that disability is a social category rather than a deficiency of individuals’ bodyminds.

The social model is generally contrasted with the medical model - viewing disability as a medical problem. A lot of disability activism is focused on de-medicalizing our bodyminds and challenging the idea that we want to be cured. 

But there are chronic illnesses like ME/CFS, long covid, and cancer where the people who are disabled by them do actively (and vocally) want to be cured! And they belong to the disability community too.  Green was picked for illness because green has been used to symbolize sickness (e.g. the 🤮 emoji). And biomedical models like the traditional medical model and the more recent biopsychosocal model are thematically connected to disability being due to illness.

For white, I want people who are undiagnosed and/or who feel the invisibility of their disability as important to again be able to see themselves in this stripe. 🩶White is also the catch-all “other models” because of white being the sum of all colours in an additive colour model. Models like the human rights model I see as being appealing to disabled people who are feeling invisibilized by society.

For each stripe I've included both a cause of disability and a model of disability. The causes are concrete, and easy to understand. The models of disability are more abstract and not everybody will know them (especially ableds). But a flag gives us an opportunity to teach others about us and I think it's a great opportunity to increase awareness of the different views/models of disability. 🖤

Overall, I tried to keep as much of capricorn-0mnikorn’s reasoning/associations alive in my new proposed meanings as I could. 💜 I hope people who see themselves in a given stripe of the original flag will see themselves in this scheme as well. I hope people who didn’t see themselves in the original scheme find these options more inclusive. ☮️

[intervex]

Some new, bright variants of the Disability Pride flag (with historic colours)

The diagonal stripe Disability Pride flag design by @capricorn-0mnikorn et al is flexible about the specific colours used for the red, yellow, white, blue, and green stripes - there are a variety of versions ranging from full saturation to reduced saturation.

For fun -- and to lean into my proposal for the stripe colours to be about different models & causes of disability -- I thought I'd make variant versions where the stripe colours come from historic flags and symbols made by disability organizers!

These are intended as supplementary variants of the main versions for circumstances where we want to talk about disability history. (I think the standard, desaturated version is the best general-purpose disability pride flag!)

The versions on the left have a silver grey (#cfd1d0) background from the Eros Recio disability flag. The versions on the right have the original black. The black/grey is to mourn disabled people who have died due to eugenics, violence, neglect, and illness.

Red: disability caused by violence and/or neglect (itself a form of violence). Also models of disability like debility and disabled black feminist theorizing which focus on how disability is used as a tool of violence to enact societal oppression.

The red (#f71d20) comes from the red AIDS ribbons (1991) used to protest the societal neglect of the AIDS pandemic. HIV/AIDS was ignored by governments for years because they either didn't care - or thought it was a good thing - that massive numbers of gay, black & hemophiliac people were dying.

Similar reds are now used by the Millions Missing (2016) campaigns to advocate for research and treatment for ME/CFS, another disease which disproportionately affects disadvantaged groups (mostly women) that has been widely neglected and dismissed.

Yellow: disability caused by natural differences. Models like the affirmative model and evolutionary models which view disability as providing positive benefits to individuals and/or society.

The specific golden yellow (#FDD70A): comes from the intersex flag (2013). Intersex is an umbrella term for natural bodily variations that don't neatly conform to ideas of "male" or "female". As a result we are medicalized when there is nothing actually wrong with us. (We intersex folks also belong to the queer community because of how we threaten binary ideas about sex/gender.)

Gold also appears on the Eros Recio disability flag (2017). More recently (2018), gold has become associated with autism, another natural difference.

White: disability caused by unknown or other factors. Models like the human rights model, which focus on how disabled people - regardless of how or why they are disabled - are deserving of basic human/civil rights and liberties.

The specific white (#FFFFFF) is from the neurodiversity flag. I have been unable to track down the first one from 2005 but a large variety of rainbow infinities on white backgrounds have been used ever since for neurodiversity.

Neurodiversity is a large umbrella category, and can be caused by many factors.

Blue: situational disabilities. Models like the social model and the radical model which posit there is nothing wrong with us. The problem is how society excludes us.

The specific blue (#009ee0) comes from the Deaf flag (2011). Many Deaf people feel there is nothing wrong with being Deaf, the problem is that the rest of society does not use signed languages, provide captions & transcripts, etc.

Green: disability due to natural illness. By "natural" I mean not socially imposed like how how treatable diseases are allowed to persist due to sociopolitical oppression/neglect. This is associated with medical models of disability.

Honestly I struggled for a historical flag for green - seems green is not a colour that disabled organizers seem to have been using until very recently(?). There are a bunch of green awareness ribbons from the 00s such as for kidney cancer, mitochondrial disease, hepatits B, and lyme disease. But I could not find evidence that any of them were made by the people with the relevant disabilities.

If anybody knows of any disability-led designs that prominently feature green that were used before ~2016 please let me know!

Green has been used as a colour for mental illness since at least 2013, and judging from my google image search results for "green ribbon awareness" this has been the most popular green ribbon awareness campaign.

But everything I can find gives me the impression this green ribbon campaign was created by sane people, though some celebrities who have been open about having mental health problems have backed the campaign.

The green sunflower lanyards used to indicate hidden disabilities started in 2016 in the UK, from which I got this green (#1f9a4b).

Purple: disability as a community. Models like the social construction model which focus on how the category of disability is socially constructed and maintained.

The purple (#82609b) is from the mad pride flag (2013). Mad pride has its origin in the psychiatric survivor movement, which has been critical of how psychiatry defines and punishes madness.

Madness in particularly has a long history of being socially constructed. For example, in how sociopolitical oppression can be twisted into individual pathology: black slaves who fled slavery were diagnosed with "drapetomania" rather than for society to understand slavery as oppression. More recently, terms like "climate anxiety" and "climate grief" have been used to individualize the climate crisis.

Including purple in the place of green in the flag is as a means to include mad pride & mutual aid communities when talking disability history. The five colours of the standard disability pride flag are to symbolize all of humanity, being the most common colours used in national flags.

Swapping out the green for purple for talking about disability history kind of represents how we disabled people have been on our own, not really represented by nation-states.

[reallylilyreally]

1/ ? Alright long ask incoming. Preface is that normally I am the monarch of all lurkers - I do not directly engage because it is mortifying to be perceived etc. etc. So if this is unwelcome because I am a stranger, or not really what you are asking for, please disregard - I I love your writing so much I couldn't help but respond to your recent post! Regarding John Brady and second string: I have thoughts about how he and Benny may potentially stumble in finding their happily ever after, which

NONNY your 2/? didn't land so i have a GAP in our conversation...

3/? highly emotionally intelligent. He's able to not only identify how Johnny is feeling, but the likely cause (capable of understanding Johnny's thought patterns very early on!) and the appropriate response to alleviate Johnny's suffering as much as possible. SUCH GOOD WRITING. Your characterisation is so strong, honestly I'm in awe of how fully realised these are as your characters. Benny also comes to the realisation of being in love much sooner. However, at the end of "Better than flying"

4/? he seems hesitant to show all his cards, despite him thinking he's not hedging his bets- from Johnny's perspective : “He said he always thought the two of us were already clear on the fact that we're in love with each other,” Johnny says, and forces himself not to look away from Benny's face. There's a little flicker of tension along Benny's shoulders and then it drops away. “Is that what it is”; cf. Benny's internal understanding "He needs Johnny like he needs to breathe. He hadn’t noticed.

5/? Maybe because he doesn't want to scare Johnny off as their relationship shifts to the intentionally romantic? Benny needs Johnny like he needs to breathe. And he realises that. But he doesn't tell Johnny that. Consider also: "Johnny’s off-balance, unsteady. Benny steadies him. It’s his job. They make a lot of sense, standing next to each other. Benny’s starting to think he’s never going to make any sense by himself ever again." and "Benny wants a life like that so much it chokes him and he

6/? has absolutely no idea how he could make it happen. “It looked pretty good,” he says to Johnny, and his heart is fucking broken." John Brady on the other hand, is - for a man with such devastating depth of emotion- kind of emotionally detached when it comes to his self. He feels the huge weight of mother's sons on his shoulders, and acknowledges how that makes him feel. He feels the pain of the Bucks leading into the unknown of the wedding, and the absence of Biddick- he knows how this makes

7/? him feel and he is a reliable support (emotional and otherwise) for so many - but he struggles to articulate how *he* feels rather then how externalities affect him - I'm struggling to articulate this. Johnny doesn't appear to consciously realise the reason he's struggling on his return to civilian life is the absence of Benny, though subconsciously it appears to be a through-vein of his civilian thought patterns (have I mentioned you're a really good writer??) He also- don't hate me if this

8/ ? wasn't the intent! - doesn't appear to really pick up on the depth of Benny's PTSD. While he notes Benny going quiet on the phone, and at dinner after they first kiss, he doesn't seem to click to the quietness being Benny's loss of time- though he tries his best to help Benny through it. Compare with Benny noticing the minute John is 'gone'. Johnny mentally notices Benny making things easy (for him, Johnny), and implies Benny's ease overall, whereas Benny is actually really struggling too,

9/? and has been aching with uncertainty as to the depth of his love being requited. He thinks they're on the same page, but not sure enough to push. Ouch, hurts so good. There's potential for some really heartbreaking then heart-mending gentle conflict here and the most shivery-delicious affirmation of the depth of each other's feelings: Benny thinking his heart is in deeper, wondering how much of this is just helping John cope vs. love to the depth Benny knows *he* feels, compounded by John's

10/? 'still waters run deep' form of emotion. Benny thinks he sees Johnny so clearly, and he has been right to this point, but what if (through uncertainty, societal pressure, self-esteem ?) he misses Johnny matching him and thinks he's in the deep end alone. Unsure if he'll be left there once Johnny starts to recover from the war. Or John with two insecurities - the first being him thinking it (love) comes so easy to Benny, how deep can it really be for him? This is world-shaking for Johnny, he

11/? didn't realise it could be like this, but Benny makes it look so easy. Are they on the same level? And the second being, what are the boundaries to Benny's tolerance for John's behaviour when it's just them? Johnny is struggling, he may feel like a bit of a burden, and from my reading it may be manifesting as anger issues (the irrational anger Johnny showed towards Bucky on the phone during 'Better than Flying') when he's unsure or caught wrong-footed- if that anger is ever seriously expressed

12/? towards Benny, it'd break them both a bit I think. Benny feeling emotionally slighted, John sure that he'll hit a limit to Benny's perceived "easy" love. To watch either of them feeling uncertain of their place in the other's heart, but to have the other then choose them all over again and soothe the uncertainty, *chef's kiss*. A dynamic I love is one you tend to see with writing about the Buck's, from Carson's Euripedes: I’ll take care of you /It’s rotten work /Not to me. Not if it’s you.

13/14 Lastly - the whole sequence in chapter 2 of "Little better than the one" where Bunny questions his place with Nix and Dick (from the misinterpretation of Dick's: “Bunny,” he says, and his voice is low and serious. “We have to leave for the office in five minutes. But we need to talk about this. I can’t keep pretending that…”) where Tab spirals through the loss of his happily ever after, makes up the spare bed, and then is so sweetly emotionally affirmed was like absolute catnip to me.

14/ END Ooh you have self worth issues baby boy? Let's expose them, and then reveal just how loved you are! Delicious. Do that to Benny and Johnny. Sorry this is so long. Thanks for the opportunity to reread all your writing. Would you believe I trimmed this down a lot? Treating your fics like literature, in this essay I will...! In conclusion your writing is phenomenal.

Oh my GOD i am in your fucking walls about this, this is an insanely detailed and insightful reading and projection of their dynamic, and I cannot TELL you how wonderful it is to read through and digest.

Some of your points are so fucking intriguing to me because they reveal the different ways things land for different people - RE Benny and Johnny having different understandings of their love, for example. In my mind, Benny is *sure* that Johnny loves him just as much in return. What he's not confident of is how much Johnny is aware of that, and how comfortable he is with it. He's aware that Johnny's really bad at being scared, and that's actually something I'm exploring in the fic I'm writing at the moment, how they both deal with the risk of what they're doing, and how their reactions to things differ and how that causes conflict. There's a lot of hot shit in your asks that I wanna pull in, too.

Jesus, i can't tell you how much this means to me. Thank you. I'm so glad you've enjoyed second string, it's one of my favourite pieces, and i ADORE your shoutout to my forever babe, the BunWinNix ot3.

Nonny i wanna invite you to a dinner party and feed you fancy bread. You're the best.

[mrs-snape5984]

“Darling you're safe with me…”

“If you're face down tryna tread the water, You know you can climb my shoulders if you need. I'd sink to let you breathe…” (“Safe with me” by Ike Dweck)

Two days ago, this beautiful artwork landed in my private messages and I can’t stress enough, how grateful I am for this unexpected gift from my friend @severus-snaps. Thank you so much to realise my idea for one of your wonderful drawings by showing my undeniably self inserted OC Jules, who’s supporting Severus in any occasion of his life - even if it’s only about buttoning up his robes. It was a true bliss, when I noticed this message of yours, my dear. Feel hugged!

Support is a great keyword for this brief post. Over the past couple of months, every here and there have been people all over the internet, who supported me with a kind gesture, some sweet words of encouragement or just by checking on me and my current condition. I feel blessed to know, that there is still some honest kindness in this world, and my gratitude goes out to all of these gems of human beings, who made my days a bit brighter. Thank you all for being a light to my darkness.

I’m always trying to spread some appreciation and kindness to others, even though I’m very aware of the restraining confines of my disease ME/CFS. Over the past 1,5 years, in which I’ve built up my blog, I gave my best to support the artists of Snapedom with so many commissions, reblogs and words of affirmation. Sadly, I’ve become a bit more silent here, but I have my reasons and some urgent responsibilities to take care of. The next months will be especially tough and challenging for me and the people, I love so dearly. So, please take my apologies for my need to keep my money and strength for my children and the path, we will have to take now. A divorce in my miserable health condition is truly no fun.

And yet, there are some very precious and important people in my life, whom I will never let down…no matter what might happen. I just wished, that I could do more…that I could be enough to make them feel safe and loved…and cared for. I’m ready to do anything to improve myself in order to offer them the support and love, they deserve! All I can do, is to be there for them…hoping they know, that my arms, ears and heart are always open for them. 🖤 It needs only one word…fuck, no…only one single glance and I’ll be there! I will find ways and possibilities to make it work. Always.

🖤Severus & Julia🖤

🖤Sevy & Jules🖤

[emblemxeno]

To preference this I live in the US but I almost can't handle 3H anymore. Edelgard defenders are almost pulling word for word things the oppressors are saying in the world and frankly it's really scary. The latest one is people arguing about merit and meritocracy and why getting rid of affirmative action is a good thing and it's almost exactly the same argument used when arguing for Edelgard's system. I know fiction isn't reality but with the turn this country is taking lately it scares me to see the same arguments in fictional spaces that real people are making to oppresses and be racist to others

YEAH I didn't wanna be a fuckwad and be cheeky about the merit thing regarding Affirmative Action, but it should be an indication that the people who want things to be achieved solely on "merit" are 99% of the time horrible people. Or at the very least, really stupid.

Outlawing inheritance based on blood and replacing it with positions earned based on "how hard you worked" like Edelgard does isn't a progressive shift, it's entirely lateral, because no matter how hard Edie-chan tries, 1) she can't enforce her standard of "how hard did you work" on everyone 2) she can't ensure that either party is lying unless she has spies everywhere which contradicts and compromises her supposed free world, and 3) she hands off her position of Emperor in half her endings anyway.

The reality is that many people always look for excuses to justify not treating others well based on bigoted views, be it social class, place of origin, gender, skin color, etc. To say that the world will be better if meritocracy is enforced is ignorant and short sighted. When person-of-color X is working twice or three times as hard as other people in their field, it means jack shit when their new boss is racist and still tries to justify firing them by saying they don't work hard enough, or accuse them of stealing, or mistreating people, anything that isn't true.

Also much like real life, Edelgard's meritocracy will probably fuck over people who don't have connections, cuz wtf is the family 50 miles away from Enbarr supposed to do for work or protection when they have to earn it instead of having it guaranteed? And most of the people she gives positions to in CF are mostly nobles anyway, it might as well be an allegory for legacy students at Harvard. Her fans would probably say "well in her endings and epilogue it's said that Fodlan prospered" okay then that only means the writers know jack shit about how meritocracies work; even if it's a fantasy world, it'd still be awful.

[groupalpha]

WARNING

This comic contains themes of isolation. If you are sensitive to such, please skip this comic.

If you wish to proceed, comic is under cut.

13ES: I have it loaded from my memory conflux now. ... I apologize if this is upsetting to anyone.

Loading memory from Memory Conflux

Please stand by...

Memory loaded successfully!

. . .

EPS: Misunderstandings are not something I take lightly.

EPS: It's my job to prevent such misunderstandings from my part. I sincerely apologize for such incompetence.

13ES: Prism that's enough, your work does not equal your worth. You don't need to be so hard on yourself because of a simple mishap.

EPS: With all due respect, that doesn't excuse my actions. I know... that... Stories?

13ES: Prism, something isn't right. The communication towers are... trying to send a signal?

EPS: Stories, your communications are-

13ES: Prism?!

[LIVE BROADCAST] - [ANNOUNCEMENT] COMMUNICATIONS MANIFEST to Group Alpha

[[ERROR]]

CANNOT OBTAIN LOCAL GROUP ID - ATTEMPTING AGAIN. PLEASE STAND BY...

...

. . .

. . .

[[ERROR]]

LOCAL GROUP ID UNOPTAINABLE - SENIOR ID FOUND

ATTEMPTING TO CONNECT...

13ES: I don't... did the communications break? I don't think it... !

[LIVE BROADCAST] - BROADCAST ANNOUNCEMENT - SLIVER OF STRAW

TRIPLE AFFIRMATIVE

AFFIRMATIVE - THE SOLUTION IS PORTABLE AFFIRMATIVE - THE SOLUTION IS FOUND AFFIRMATIVE - THE TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION IS POSSIBLE AND APPLICABLE

13ES: Sliver of Straw? But... what-

[EQUIPMENT MANIFEST] Grabbing data Loading Holograms Please stand by...

13ES: Holograms?! But-

[EQUIPMENT MANIFEST] Thirteen Elder Stories - Second Generation Group Senior of Group Unidentified has been added to hologram announcement

[ 13ES: Who else is out there?

STOU,CF: ... . . . You and the future of your group are all that exists. ... Senior Thirteen Elder Stories, do not ask me this again. ]

13ES: ...

. . .

It was a lie. T-there's more of us out here.

They never...

They... they wanted to keep us behind locked doors... they didn't want us to...

Everything... every single thing. It was all a lie. Everything was nothing but a lie.

[LIVE BROADCAST] - COMMUNICATIONS MANIFEST to Thirteen Elder Stories

[[ERROR]]

ID CODE LOST.

ALL PARTICIPANTS IN BROADCAST ANNONCEMENT BLOCKED.

13ES: WAIT!

I...

I never got to even speak to them...

(You can ask questions on this if you'd like)

[coochiequeens]

A teen girl with mental health issues who expressed a desire to transition was removed from her family who wanted to try treating the mental health issues before transitioning was romeved from her home by the state’s child protective services and is now in Canada?

By Anna Slatz. January 29, 2024

A family in Glasgow, Montana is accusing the state’s child protective services of “kidnapping” their teenage daughter after the girl began to identify as a transgender “boy.” Krista and Todd Kolstad spoke to Reduxx about their ordeal, revealing that the child had been removed from their care and was now going to be sent to Canada.

Krista, the child’s step-mother, explains that their nightmare began in August of 2023 after they received a call that their 14-year-old daughter, Jennifer*, had expressed suicidal ideations while at school.

“She had always had problems at school,” Krista says, noting that she and Todd had even pulled her from one district and sent her to another due to issues with bullying in an effort to give her a fresh start. But despite experiencing some real-world hardships, Krista claims Jennifer also had some undiagnosed mental health concerns, including attention-seeking behavior.

Later on that same evening, a case worker with Montana Child and Family Services (CFS) showed up to the Kolstad home to speak with Jennifer and do an inspection. Krista had been preparing dinner at the time, and invited the case worker to tour the residence despite both her and her husband being distressed by the sudden appearance.

Todd, Krista, and Jennifer in a Christmas photo. SOURCE: Supplied.

During the interview with CFS, Jennifer claimed to have consumed toilet bowl cleaner and painkiller medications that day in an effort to commit suicide. Krista says that it had immediately struck her as being highly unlikely, as not only did Jennifer not have access to either substance unmonitored, but that Jennifer had expressed no symptoms of imminent illness that day.

Despite their doubts about the veracity of Jennifer’s claims, Krista and Todd agreed to take Jennifer to the local hospital on an emergency basis. While there, blood work returned that Jennifer had not consumed any toxic substances.

Krista and Todd provided Reduxx with copies of Jennifer’s medical paperwork to substantiate their claim that Jennifer had not consumed any dangerous substances the day she was admitted to hospital. The paperwork confirms that there were no abnormalities detected in Jennifer’s system, and that her overall physical health was good.

But notes taken at the hospital consistently mention that Jennifer identifies as a “male” and wishes to be called “Leo.”

From the hospital documents. SOURCE: Provided.

Krista says she and Todd immediately made their objections known to Hospital staff, requesting Jennifer be called by her birth name.

“We were very clear to the emergency room staff as well as [CFS] that this goes against our values, morals, and our religious beliefs,” she said, but hospital staff refused to listen. “They told me to call their lawyer if I have an issue as they will do what the patient tells them.”

While the medical transitioning of minors was prohibited in the state of Montana at the time, Krista says the hospital told her that “social transitioning” was a “grey area” and continued to call Jennifer “Leo” and refer to her as a boy.

As a patient admitted for suicidal ideations, Jennifer was placed on 24/7 watch to keep her safe. But Krista says an aide was placed outside of her door who would regularly talk to Jennifer about “gender affirming” care.

“I came one day and she was talking about having top-surgery and being non-binary,” Krista says of the aide. She took her complaint to the on-duty Doctor, who dismissed her. “He told me, ‘why are not you more concerned that your daughter is trying to harm herself, then what [the aide] is talking about?'”

Another aide who had been set to watch over Jennifer similarly chastised Krista, telling her to “respect” Jennifer’s wishes to be called “Leo.”

Krista describes Jennifer’s time in the hospital as a period of constant efforts to undermine her and Todd’s parental authority. In addition to not respecting their wishes to refer to Jennifer by her birth name, hospital staff refused to abide by any other requests, such as limiting Jennifer’s TV and phone time, encouraging her to do her school work, and not allowing her to have copious amounts of junk food.

During this time, Krista and Todd had communication with Child and Family Services, and all agreed that Jennifer would benefit from specialized residential care for treatment and counseling. But during a conversation about where Jennifer could be placed, Krista says the possibility of her being moved to Wyoming was presented.

Jennifer and Todd. SOURCE: Provided

“They told us that there were 6 facilities in Montana, but that there was also a facility in Wyoming. And at that point, because we were already in such a state from the hospital disrespecting us and our wishes, we immediately looked up Wyoming’s laws on transitioning minors,” Krista says. “It looked to us like kids could go ahead and have procedures done and have hormones without parental consent.”

Concern began to set in, but Krista and Todd were assured that the most likely scenario was Jennifer being placed in a Montana-based facility, and on August 22, Krista and Todd were told that Jennifer was next in line for a bed in Billings, Montana.

But hours later that same day, Krista and Todd were called and informed Jennifer would be moved to Wyoming.

“They called and told us that a bed had opened up in Wyoming and that Jennifer needed to go. [The Doctor] said ‘she has to go. she’s not doing any good here,’ and we were really blown away,” Krista recounts. “No one talked to us about the the name of the facility — we had no one to answer our questions. We told them we wanted our questions answered before we accepted the bed.”

Ten minutes later, Child and Family Services arrived at the Kolstad residence with police.

“They showed up at our home to serve us with papers to take Jennifer out of our care,” Krista says. “They told me the reason was that we were ‘unable or refusing to provide medical care.’ That’s just not true.”

The next day, August 23, Jennifer was transported to Wyoming. Despite the fact that Krista and Todd were not allowed to see Jennifer during her move, CFS did allow Jennifer to stop and see friends and co-workers prior to leaving the city. Krista would later find out that Jennifer had told her friends that she was “crazy and trying to kill herself” and was being taken away from her parents.

“I feel this was a lapse in judgement by [CFS], a violation of HIPAA, and a miscarriage to Jennifer, as she is only 14. What if, when she is 17, this incident is behind her and she is in a good place mentally? This is a very small town and they have just let her brand herself as the ‘crazy kid’ who tried to kill themselves.”

While Jennifer was in Wyoming, neither Krista nor Todd were allowed to speak with her directly. Instead, they had to go through Jennifer’s counsellor, but Krista says they were very reluctant to give her information.

Krista later had to request Jennifer’s records from the center in order to get an understanding of what had happened to her while she was at the facility.

A letter sent by Krista to CFS expressing dismay at the situation and offering Jennifer clothes and comfort items. SOURCE: Provided.

On September 25, Jennifer was returned to Montana and placed in a Youth Dynamics group home where she has remained ever since.

“They called it ‘temporary legal custody,’ which means they have the say over where she is at, but we are supposed to be able to have the say over everything else. But that was not upheld. There were incidents of her getting vaccines we did not consent to, we were not told the name of the Doctors involved, and she was allowed to shave her head,” Krista says.

Since Jennifer returned to Montana, Krista and Todd have had monthly court meetings along with Child and Family Services to determine next steps. The couple was assigned a public defender, who simply encouraged them to keep their head down until the process was complete.

“I am not trying to throw them under the bus… but all of their advice has been ‘play nice, just let her finish the group home program and then get her back in your care and move on with your lives.'”

But while the group home placement should have been just 6-9 months, the family’s situation took a dramatic turn for the worse during their hearing on January 19, 2024, when the court decided to hand custody of Jennifer over to Child and Family Services.

“We were told that letting Jennifer transition and live as a boy was in her ‘therapeutic best interest’ and because we aren’t willing to follow that recommendation, the court gave CFS custody of Jennifer for six months,” Krista says. “CFS is now going to place Jennifer in the care of her birth mother in Canada, who has never really been apart of her life. The judge said to us ‘you need to expect that reunification with your family may not be what you are expecting.'”

Krista and Jennifer. SOURCE: Supplied.

Jennifer’s birth mother, Christine, currently lives in Kitchener, Ontario with her new husband. After Jennifer was born, Christine reportedly left the child with Todd, and has never been involved in her care since.

“She’s never called to see how [Jennifer] is. She’s never sent her anything. Nothing,” Krista says.

According to Krista, any communication from Christine at all has been sparse, and she has never made a meaningful effort to have a relationship with the children she left in Montana. Despite her apparent lack of interest, Krista has been sending Christine semi-regular updates on all of her children for the past seven years.

But disturbingly, Krista explains that she and Todd have grave concerns about Christine’s fitness as a parent.

“I have this letter from one of Jennifer’s previous counsellors that recommends that if Christine wants to come back into her children’s lives, she should do unification therapy, there should be trial visits… all of this stuff should happen because the children reported her as being abusive,” Krista says.

Krista and Todd provided Reduxx with a copy of a statement from a licensed professional counselor detailing sessions that Jennifer and her sister had attended. Both girls described Christine as being uncaring, abusive, and even “crazy.”

In one section of the statement, the counselor describes one of the girls as witnessing “incidents of violence directed at an older sibling,” which involved Christine “throwing that sibling against the refrigerator after becoming enraged at her” for wearing her mother’s jewelry without permission. The child goes on to detail “incidents when her biological mother would punch, hit, slap, and kick her and her siblings.”

An excerpt from the counseling report reviewed by Reduxx. SOURCE: Provided.

Jennifer similarly alleged disturbing cases of abuse by her biological mother, including one time Christine reportedly grabbed and held her around her waist while repeatedly slapping her in the face.

Of the five children Christine and Todd had together, only one had lived in Canada with Christine prior to aging out of her care. While living with Christine, the boy exhibited severe behavioral problems to a point where Christine approached Krista and Todd for help.

In one conversation, Christine admits to regularly checking homeless encampments and police records in anticipation she would one day find her son in jail.

Child and Family Services was provided both the counselor’s statement and the text messages, but Krista said that nothing could be done to intervene in Jennifer’s placement.

“Our family has been destroyed by this. We have little to no contact with Jennifer and our rights as her parents have been trampled on,” Krista says. But despite the turmoil that has been brought into their lives, the couple says they will never stop trying to help their daughter come home.

Krista and Todd chose to defy a judge’s order to remain silent on the case in order to tell their story. They were set to appear in court today to respond to charges of contempt, but have had to delay the hearing due to a family emergency.

“We will continue to fight. We will never give up on our daughter and for what we believe is morally right. We will continue to tell our story, even though we are currently in contempt of court, and try to keep other families from going through this. Our greatest fear is that our daughter is now going to become a victim of this system and eventually take her own life.”

While Krista has expressed fear that the family’s legal avenues are limited, she has said that they intend to find any means they can against Montana Child and Family Services as well as the hospital where Jennifer was treated.

“I will also be looking at if we have a case against Youth Dynamics Group Home for socially transitioning our daughter against our wishes,” Krista says. “This is NOT about money, this is about standing up and telling our story so this does not happen to another family. We will fight to save our daughter no matter what it costs us financially or emotionally. That’s what parents do for their children.”

*The child’s name has been changed at the request of her parents.

[ongolecharles]

DAILY SCRIPTURE READINGS (DSR) 📚 Group, Tue June 18th, 2024 ... Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year B ... KNOW YOUR CATHOLICISM

WHY DON'T CATHOLICS GO STRAIGHT TO JESUS?

Common questions regarding confession and forgiveness of sins posed to us Catholics by lapsed Catholics or Evangelical Christians usually are: Where in the Bible does Jesus give authority to men to forgive sins? Why can’t Catholics confess their sins directly to Jesus, the only mediator between God and us? Doesn’t sacramental confession deny that we have been justified through faith and made righteous by the redemptive blood of Jesus? Here is the characteristic Catholic response:

IF YOU FORGIVE SINS, THEY ARE FORGIVEN

First, Jesus did give the power to forgive sins to human beings. In John 20:21–23, Jesus says, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” Then he breathed on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” This is the bedrock on which the sacrament of confession stands or falls.

The meaning of this passage is clear to Catholics: Jesus, who alone has the power to forgive or retain sins (Mark 2:10; Luke 5:24), transmits that power to the apostles. But Evangelicals usually have a different take on John 20:21–23. One of the most popular is that Jesus sent the apostles to preach the gospel and to inform hearers that if they have faith in him their sins are forgiven, and if they do not believe in him their sins are retained. This “preaching only” interpretation comes from reading John 20:21–23 in light of 1 Timothy 2:5, in which Paul says that Jesus is the one and only mediator between God and us. Because Evangelicals approach the text believing that Jesus could not have really given the apostles this power, they conclude that he instead commissioned them to preach about the forgiveness and retention of sins. The Evangelical then draws a parallel between John 20 and the “Great Commission” texts, as they are referred to by many Protestants, where Jesus commanded the apostles to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15; cf. Matt. 28:18–20, Luke 24:47). John was saying the same thing but using different words. To the Evangelical mind, John is saying, “Whoever believes the gospel, you can declare their sins to have already been forgiven through the preaching of the cross.” Of course, that is not what the text says. Jesus clearly commissioned the apostles to carry out his ministry of reconciliation as his agents.

PRIESTS ACT IN PERSONA CHRISTI

But Paul teaches that Jesus is the one and only mediator between God and us (1 Tim. 2:5), so isn’t the priest an unnecessary intermediary? Shouldn’t Christians confess their sins directly to God?

Catholics do confess their sins directly to God both within and outside the confessional. Jesus advocated praying directly to the Father to ask forgiveness for our sins (Matt. 6:12), and Catholics do this communally at every Mass and in prayer groups, and individually during private prayer. But Catholics also believe that Jesus gave the Church a unique role in his ministry of reconciliation by entrusting it with his power to forgive and retain sins. It is useful to clarify what happens in the sacrament of confession. During confession, the priest perpetuates this ministry by acting in persona Christi, “in the person of Christ.” In other words, when Catholics receive absolution from the priest for sins confessed, it is Jesus’ forgiveness that is granted, not the priest’s.

An essential principle of the ministerial priesthood is that God works through men who have a special spiritual role within the Church to communicate his grace and truth. Both Catholics and Evangelicals affirm Paul’s teaching that Jesus is the sole mediator between God and us, but Catholics recognize that Jesus was at liberty to allow his mediation to be worked through the apostles and their successors in the Church.

We see Jesus giving specific power to the apostles to perpetuate his presence and ministry not only in John 20:21–23 but also in other Gospel accounts: Jesus confers his authority to baptize, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:18–19); he also gives Peter and the apostles the power to teach and to excommunicate within the Church in a way that would be ratified in heaven (Matt. 16:18; 18:19).

Jesus chose to use the apostles as his instruments. Most Evangelicals will agree that this instrumentality is at work in their own pastors, who perform baptisms in their churches. In a similar way, God employs priests as ministers of forgiveness in the sacrament of confession.

BY OUR LOVE THEY WILL KNOW US

At the heart of the Evangelical tradition is the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide), which says that once we accept Jesus as our personal savior in faith, we are clothed with his righteousness and forever righteous in his eyes. Because we are justified entirely by God’s grace, which we accept through faith, our past, present, or future sins have no bearing on our standing before him. Scriptural passages that Evangelicals use to support this belief include Paul’s references to justification by faith apart from the law in Romans 3:21–23 and 10:4.

Catholics and Protestants believe that we are justified by God’s grace through faith but differ on what that actually means. Evangelicals usually understand justification as a one-time historical event, but Catholics see it as a dynamic process of conversion that includes the forgiveness of sins and the interior renewal of the person (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2018). By our faith in Jesus and the unmerited grace that we receive in baptism, God comes to dwell within us. In doing so, God does not simply declare us righteous. He arms us with the power of his Holy Spirit to become truly righteous and reflect his love to the world.

The faith that justifies us, according to Catholic doctrine, is alive and expressed through love (Gal. 5:6), not just intellectual belief or personal trust. In Romans 3:21–23 and 10:4, which Catholics interpret differently than Evangelicals, Paul teaches that Jesus ushered in a new mode of justification—apart from the Mosaic law but not apart from good deeds, which James tells us are essential for justification (Jas. 2:24–26). In fact, Jesus says he will measure our righteousness by how well we have put our faith to work in acts of love for our neighbor (Matt. 25:37–40).

Unlike Evangelicals, Catholics believe that after baptism we can lose the grace of justification by sinning. Jesus is clear on this point. The wheat will be gathered into the master’s barn while the weeds will be burned (Matt. 13:30); the good fish will be kept while the bad ones will be thrown into the furnace (Matt. 13:47–50). Paul echoed Jesus’ teaching when he warned the Galatians, who were already baptized believers, that if they commit serious sins they “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21). He also cautioned the Romans that those who perform wicked deeds will receive “wrath and fury” instead of eternal life (Rom. 2:7–8).

Living the Christian faith in love has always been easier said than done. Like Paul, sometimes we do evil instead of the good we want to do (Rom. 7:19). Even when we have professed our faith in Jesus and become regenerated by the Holy Spirit in baptism, at times we will separate ourselves from God by offending him. At these times, we are called to “be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20).

The sacrament of confession incarnates Jesus’ “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18) so that we can walk together with God again after we have strayed away in sin. Like Evangelicals, Catholics affirm that Jesus’ love unto death was entirely sufficient to redeem us, but Catholics believe that it is precisely by the power of his redemptive blood that our personal reconciliation with God is then possible.

By virtue of the new covenant in Jesus, God’s mercy has been made available to us when we sincerely ask for forgiveness. Being reconciled with God means exercising our freedom to make a U-turn back to God in humility and love. Placing this process of conversion and forgiveness within the context of sacramental confession allows us to experience Jesus’ redemptive power in our own lives.

In the words of Pope John Paul II:

This reconciliation with God leads, as it were, to other reconciliations, which repair the other breaches caused by sin. The forgiven penitent is reconciled with himself in his inmost being, where he regains his innermost truth. He is reconciled with his brethren whom he has in some way offended and wounded. He is reconciled with the Church. He is reconciled with all creation (Reconciliation and Penance 31, 5).

***

【Build your Faith in Christ Jesus on #dailyscripturereadingsgroup 📚: +256 751 540 524 .. Whatsapp】

[claudehenrion]

Le genre des mots...

On finit par s'habituer à tout, au fond. Et peut être même plus facilement aux mauvaises choses qu'aux bonnes. Je pensais à ça l'autre jour, devant ma télévision –que je regarde très rarement, dégoûté de ce qui s'y raconte, même s'il m'arrive parfois, depuis que mes soirées sont solitaires hélas, de commettre ce péché contre le bon goût-- en écoutant une discussion sans intérêt (je veux dire : normale, quoi, habituelle !) sur ''le genre''. Ce vocable pourtant ancien et clairement défini, s'est ratatiné dans l'esprit de la plupart des gens à une digression emmerdante sur le changement de sexe... ce qui est faux, bien sûr, comme tout le discours officiel.

Avant l'actuel plongeon vers la folie qui prétend servir de néo-référence à nos contemporains, il existait deux genres, en français : le masculin et le féminin. Contrairement à beaucoup d'autres langages, il n'existe pas de neutre, ou plus exactement, le genre ''neutre'' a disparu à l'usage, les mots jusque là neutres se déclinant selon le genre masculin (le plus souvent) ou le genre féminin, ce qui a servi de faux argument aux guerrières du féminisme pathologique pour oser affirmer une prétendue ''main mise du patriarcat'', triomphant mais pas moins criminel pour autant, sur l'histoire, les mœurs, la société et que sais-je encore.

En avons-nous entendu, des sornettes, sur ce sujet qui n'en est pas un ! (NDLR : nous parlions la semaine dernière des conséquences dramatiques qu'a eu chacune des soi-disant victoires d'un féminisme-de-combat qui ne peut, répétons-le en contemplant avec désespoir leur champ de ruines qui s'étend chaque jour, que déboucher sur des catastrophes irrattrapables et, in fine, mortelles pur toute société --cf notre édito ''Quand avons-nous perdu les pédales?'', du 6 mai 2024). Bref des criminels potentiels ont réussi à faire croire qu'il était concevable de franchir le Rubicon –quoiqu'il s'agisse plutôt du Léthé ou du Styx, dans ce cas-- et de changer de sexe (eux disent ''de genre'', mais c'est ''aussi pire'' !).

Pourquoi revenir sur ce sujet qui ne peut être que controversé ? Simplement parce qu'un quotidien ''généralement bien informé'' a titré il y a peu, à propos de l'Intelligence artificielle, sur une découverte récente de cet outil qui n'a pas fini de révolutionner nos vies jusque dans les moindres détails : ''Un algorithme a réussi à distinguer le cerveau des hommes de celui des femmes'', ce qui est une brèche énorme dans le mur de bobards que les relativistes avaient érigé pour protéger leurs élucubrations de toutes les réalités. Les résultats sont sans appel : en analysant des images IRM, l'algorithme a réussi a trouver, avec moins de 10 % d'erreurs, (qui vont très vite se trouver ramenés à épsilon %) s'il s'agissait d'un homme ou d'une femme.

La conclusion par les neuroscientifiques de Stanford de plusieurs études sur ce sujet (dans plusieurs pays) ''mène à penser que l'organisation et le fonctionnement des régions cérébrales étaient dramatiquement opposées selon le sexe biologique''. On précise que ''les régions'' concernées par ces études sont le Striatum (circuit de la récompense et de la motivation), le système limbique (qui contrôle l'attention, la mémoire et la régulation des émotions) et le ''mode par défaut''(qui ''gère'', lui, la rêverie, le ''mental'' et la conscience de soi)...

On est loin des élucubrations gauchistes dont nous rigolions la semaine dernière où un groupuscule de ''Gauchos'' se met d'accord avec lui-même pour affirmer que les gens de Gauche (donc : eux, au tout premier chef) sont plus intelligents que les gens de Droite. Aujourd'hui, au contraire, on est ''dans du lourd'' : comme le démontrent le bon sens (et nos 5 sens), l'Histoire, l'expérience et la simple observation du quotidien, la femme ne sera jamais ni ne peut être l'égale de l'homme pas plus que l'homme ne pourrait être l'égal de la femme, pour la simple raison que cela revient à rechercher des égalités impossibles entre une carpe et un lièvre ou entre un couscous-merguez et une armoire normande ! Et les absurdes divagations de nos faux intellectuels en mal de suicide collectif n'y feront rien.

Dans ce monde ivre d'une intelligence qu'il croit avoir conquise à travers la seule affirmation nietzschéenne que ''Dieu est mort et c'est nous qui l'avons tué'' (fausse, en plus , comme Nietzsche l'a écrit lui-même !), l'espèce de fondamentalisme idéologique iso-religieux qui a pris la suite de ''la Foi de nos Pères'' (NB : l'homme ne pouvant vivre sans référence à ''plus grand que lui'') présente une similitude avec les attitudes des anciens ''dévots ridicules'' : ils s'attachent à une (ou des) croyance(s) envers et contre tout, ''quoi qu'il en coûte''. Dans l'idéologie progressiste, une avancée vers ''le mieux'' est un dogme nécessairement vrai, même absurde. Par exemple, il est interdit de croire que le sexe biologique des gens pourrait avoir une influence sur leur comportement, qui ne serait déterminé que par un ''genre'' peu ou pas défini, la correspondance entre genre et sexe biologique n'étant qu'une construction sociale.

Et c'est là que nous retrouvons les chercheurs de l'Université de Stanford dont nous citions les travaux au début de cet éditorial : leurs conclusions sont sans appel. Je les cite : ''Nous disposons des preuves irréfutables de l'existence de différences sexuelles reproductibles et généralisables dans l'organisation fonctionnelle du cerveau humain. Les résultats attestent le rôle crucial du sexe en tant que déterminant biologique dans l'organisation et donc le fonctionnement du cerveau humain''.

Malheureusement pour nous (je veux dire : pour toute l'humanité), dans notre Occident à bout de souffle, une pulsion mortifère, inexplicable et injustifiable mais qui a l'air durable, semble avoir volé la place de l'ancienne pulsion ''Pro Vita'' pour la sauvegarde de l'espèce, donc la procréation et –disons-le-- la Vie. A sa place, nous sommes envahis par une sorte d'iso-religion qui ne saurait en être une, le mot ''religio'' décrivant ce qui rapproche, pas ce qui déchire, sépare et tue. Une des caractéristiques de cette pathologie mortelle est un désintérêt total pour toute vérité, surtout scientifiquement démontrée : la science, de nos jours, sert à imposer des idées aussi fausses que folles (exemple : la référence permanente de Macron, pendant ''le covid'', pour imposer des séries de mesures anti-scientifiques), pas à chercher à se rapprocher de la Vérité.

L'énorme choc que devrait entraîner chez les tenants d'idéologies indémontrables (et pour cause, elles n'ont jamais été corroborées par de véritables scientifiques), ne va sans doute être invoqué par aucun des pouvoirs en place. Il faudra bien chercher, un jour, d'où peut bien venir le désir de nos fausses élites de promouvoir, à l'exclusion de tout ce qui pourrait être bon pour l'humanité, des idées qui ne peuvent que la conduire vers son malheur (nous y sommes) et vers sa perte (c'est la prochaine étape, ''sauf si''... Mais je commence à ne plus y croire !).

H-Cl.

[scratchandplaster]

Stack The Deck - Wellness check

CW: stalking, obsessive behavior, intimidation, Morris hating on bald people

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

CF3 46E, CF3 46E, CF3 46E...

Morris needed to find that car again, right now, before the trace got cold and slipped through his fingers like sand. Frantically shoving the clothes he had borrowed back into the boxes, he was unsure about how to act next. Go back to the apartment and hope for the mother to come back again? Maybe drive around the city and look for the familiar code of the license plate, that too would travel to a new home.

Upstate... Nothing more than forests and rivers there, and to do what exactly? Live in a log cabin and siphon off tree sap till his parents grew old?

CF3 46E

Morris couldn't let that happen, staying back and remaining nothing more than a ghost story Elliot could tell his family: the tale of the pathetic fuck that didn't realize he had everything right under his nose until-

A forceful knock on the door ripped him from his thoughts.

CF3 46B

He didn't expect company, much less had the nerve for it right now. Everyone could go to hell for all he cared. With one exception, of course.

CF-

The booming against the wood became more vigorous; impatient rhythms meeting quickly thinning patience.

"Miss Roberts, I don't know where your cats are, I'm not stealing them. We've been over this."

No grace in sight, just more assault on Morris' poor ears, like the noises all throughout his head: crying, screaming, rough bristles against tile. The sting of apple-fresh bleach still burned at the back of his sinuses, even after weeks of mind-numbing distraction.

I need to explain everything, and he will accept my apology, and we can finally start over-

Before another hit could let the hinges vibrate with force, the door swung open to reveal a bright red face of anger to the unwelcomed guest.

"I SAID-" Morris growled, and stopped when he recognized the utterly unimpressed man. One he really didn't want to deal with right now.

"Belanger, for fuck's sake, now is not the time-"

"You don't answer my calls." Because I'm tired of being your postie.

"I'm busy, and you give me a job like what, once a week? Of course I'll keep myself occupied otherwise."

Caught in a gloomy expression, no man dared to back down so quickly. 

"You need to answer when I call."

Biting his tongue, the only thing Morris could retort was an annoyed huff; he knew about the duty towards his employer. It was nothing he could just push along as he pleased, but the information he'd worked hard for wasn't worth being thrown out so suddenly. The window he had created for himself was quickly shutting down. 

"So you are busy and under-worked at the moment? Doesn't sound convincing..." Belanger's lusterless fish eyes kept focus on the target of his worry, even as he pressed himself past the door frame. 

Remaining face-to-face with the always discreetly clothed partner, one could only wonder why a few missed job opportunities would rub him the wrong way. Thinking of it, Morris guessed that he would be just as sensitive, provided he'd also lose all his hair minutes after turning thirty. On angry nights, he often asked himself if he could take on Mr. Clean's dipshit cousin.

"Please, make yourself at home," Morris sighed, not sure how well-thought-out it had been to let the mass of a man into his quarters.

The tired proxy carefully eyed the mess littered throughout the room; photos, piano booklets and obviously strange clothing only affirmed what he had already suspected:

"Are you getting distracted again?"

Yes, actually, by the nagging little middleman he was supposed to stand by for.

That exact man painfully remembered the last one that stole Morris' focus: some bony princess from new money; he caught him scrolling through an ocean of pictures when they should have been occupied with handling the daily charge. Belanger wasn't ready to put up with this whole act once again, not so soon. The only thing worse than the fawning, and god did he hate that, will be the moment it all inevitably crashes and burns to the ground. The phase where Morris got especially difficult to handle...

"What is it this time? I'll see if I can make some space for you," he answered instead, paying no mind to Belanger's interrogation.

"You better do that quickly, Dutch wants to see you."

Shit. He really should have taken that call.

"Now?" Morris desperately tried to squeeze his voice past the lump blocking his throat. It was better to know when he would be led to slaughter, saves a lot of time on scheduling.

"Don't piss yourself yet, he was impressed with whatever you did back at the den," the proxy said, letting his monotone drawl hide how much he enjoyed seeing him all antsy, "Fucking massacre, if you ask me, though." 

"I cleaned up after, if you need it..."

"At least you got that right. Congrats, I guess, nobody found the body yet." Yeah, me neither.

"Wasn't that bad, just so you know, uh-"

"I would stay in line if I were you, with the cops still on my ass and all," Belanger let his voice drop low, having neither interest nor patience for cheap horror stories, "Let's go!"

Morris was close, so much closer than the last few weeks. There had to be another way, one that didn't involve Dutch, of all people.

"Listen, I'll call you back soon and-"

"Wasn't a question, Morris."

He thought of Elliot and the festering itch that burned up when remembering these hazel eyes, looking up at him just one more time... I forgive you. God, he would give everything to hear these words.

He thought of Dutch, and his bad knee let a cautionary twitch rock his body.

So Morris budged. Some people you can't let wait.

CS3 46B would still be there for him, a few miles further northwest, more or less. It wouldn't take that long, right? He could let the itch heal down and hope the lingering antipathy would fade away, give them all some time to breathe. A fear started to nest deep already, hidden behind Morris' own self-preservation: the silent terror that Elliot wouldn't stop to look out for him.

Belanger would, though, keeping Morris on track until their boss was satisfied.

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

Thanks for reading 🤍 [Masterlist]

Taglist: @whatwasmyprevioususername, @canislycaon24

[the-chomsky-hash]

[B. Positively characterizing a specific philosophical ethos a that could be described as a permanent critique of our historical era - cont'd]

[2. If we are not to settle for the affirmation or the empty dream of freedom, it seems to me that this historico-critical attitude must also be an experimental one - cont'd]

b. This means that [if we were to follow such an experimental schema, then] the historical ontology of ourselves must turn away from all projects that claim to be global or radical [i.e., the root of a universal revolution].

i. [On one hand, such a schema always implies a counter to these global and radical projects:] in fact we know from experience that the claim to escape from the system of contemporary reality so as to produce the overall programs

of another society

of another way of thinking

of another culture

of another vision of the world

has led only to the return of the most dangerous traditions.

ii. [On the other hand, such a schema also implies a naturalized and adequating compensation, under bourgeios models of contract and taste:] I prefer the very specific transformations that have proved to be possible in the last twenty years in a certain number of areas that concern

our ways of being and thinking

relations to authority

relations between the sexes

the way in which we perceive insanity or illness

I prefer

even these partial transformations that have been made in the correlation of historical analysis and the practical attitude

to the programs for a new man that the worst political systems have repeated throughout the twentieth century

iii. I shall thus [avoid this blackmail of Enlightenment and Humanism, and] characterize

as if by obligation, yet taken on ironically

not as defense, but as contestation

not for glory, but to lose oneself

] the philosophical ethos appropriate to the critical ontology of ourselves [i.e., the one it appears to demand]:

it is a historico-practical test of the limits that we may go beyond

it is work carried out by ourselves upon ourselves as free beings

[cf. "We are having a try with the truth! Perhaps humanity will perish!" (The Will to Power)]

– Michel Foucault, What is Enlightenment? (part IV: A specific philosophical ethos), in Rabinow (P.), éd., The Foucault Reader, 1984

[lacquiparle]

Of the various woke movements that have popped up in the last several years, perhaps the most, well, intolerant of them all (and that's saying something!) is the transgender rights movement.

In a crowded field, I give them first place in re-writing language to assume agreement - "misgender", "gender-affirming" - even "he, she, him, her, them, they" (kinda puts redefining"racism" to shame).

Perhaps you think the pronoun thing is inevitable - maybe, but I don't think so. I think it would have been cool to develop a compound "he-she", "them-him", etc that would recognize that the gender was in dispute. I don't care about professional settings. What I care about is among friends. I would love to have a "she-he" (affectionate), a way to say, "You think you are a she. I recognize that and that you are responsible for your life and decisions. I disagree with your claim. Let's move on." (Ok, that would be a pipe dream, but I like it.)

The movement tries (hopefully unsuccessfully) to teach trans people to treat all disagreement as hate. This belief is, to say the least, not helpful for getting along and seems like it would be horrible for the mental health of the movement's "clients".

As you might suspect, I also think the trans activist movement is wrong on the object level, but that is not why I wrote this post. The reason I wrote this post is because I'm starting to wonder if the reason the trans movement is intolerant and the reason it is wrong are connected. 60-70% confidence: the project the trans movement is attempting to make is not within the normal elasticity of human nature. Such projects normally just fail, but when they succeed, they can only do so through extreme intolerance of dissent (cf. Communism), destroying society, not necessarily through their original failings, but through the secondary destruction of fighting the humans in their society for so long.

But now I feel that I have to add a longer, less important to me, post as to why the trans movement is wrong. That post is under the cut.

The best pro-trans argument I've seen is written by @slatestarscratchpad (Scott Alexander) who is exceptionally tolerant of disagreement in his entire corpus, so, of course, actually wrote a response to critics. You should read it. It's his 2014 post Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories. My orders of magnitude shorter summary and my rebuttal follow after the link.

Scott argues that many things, including sex/gender (which he treats as synonyms except for an aside recognizing that some people disagree), are a cluster of characteristics that allow freedom in choosing a useful definition:

"Absolutely typical men have Y chromosomes, have male genitalia, appreciate manly things like sports and lumberjackery, are romantically attracted to women, personally identify as male, wear male clothing like blue jeans, sing baritone in the opera, et cetera.

Some people satisfy some criteria of manhood and not others, in much the same way that Pluto satisfies only some criteria of planethood and whales satisfy only some criteria of mammalhood."

According to Scott, in these edge cases, the common use definition (in 2014) makes chromosomes the tiebreak, but the trans activist project wants to change the tiebreak because it would help people with gender dysphoria.

Scott is wrong about what the common use definition is (was?), but more importantly, the common use definition in 2014 and the basically unquestioned definition until some time within the past 20 years (which I will call the "traditional definition" from here forward) is good and useful and probably load-bearing, and the new definition isn't working.

The traditional definition is basically a physical appearance definition, which, in intimate spaces is a genitalia definition (technically still a cluster of traits, but a much much smaller cluster than Scott suggests). Some people are trans by this definition, and it had been generally accepted that sex change surgery changes one's sex, which was synonymous with gender, before the current controversy.

There's a purpose to the traditional definition. It's about the other meaning of sex - sexual intercourse and sexual reproduction and the many associated downstream effects thereof. No matter how well a woman gets along with her fellow lumberjacks at the ultimate MMA fight, what we need from sex/gender is a way to identify that she is the lumberjack that most of the other lumberjacks will look at differently, especially in the lumberjack shower. This is the load-bearing part. It has ripple effects all through how people treat each other. [Gestures in the general direction of Camille Paglia]

In theory, the new definition would work if people's self-definition was good, or even better than the traditional one, at getting what we need - if it found the outliers in sexual attraction, both to and from a person. In the real world, considering the people who claim a gender different from how they look, I don't see that happening at all. I don't even see it picking out the outliers in the broader cluster. It's not finding boys who think like girls or vice versa. Instead it's demonstrating that it's the nature of humanity to misperceive the other sex, and to latch on to a typical-mind, simplistic, or caricature understanding of them. It's as if Alpha Centauri and asteroid belt object #5C312 noticed some similarities of themselves to planets and decided that they must be planets. Meanwhile, Venus and Mercury decided that they weren't. Then we just went with it and tried to go on talking about astronomy, never bringing up uncomfortable facts, such as that Alpha Centauri is so big.

(Aside on gay people and 3rd, 4th, etc genders skipped for some pretence of a semblance of brevity, or maybe just laziness. These don't rescue the modern trans argument.)

But what about the extreme cases with gender dysphoria? I'm not a psychiatrist and I don't have the clinical experience Scott has. It's hard to imagine the pronoun thing is working. If people need to tell others their pronouns, they won't be perceived as the gender they want to be. Also, I think insisting here is where we destroy society. (See above.)

There has been a solution since the mid-20th Century. I already mentioned it. I don't think we've developed anything better. It's a lot more expensive and permanent and life-changing than just changing pronouns. It can't and shouldn't be done lightly. Society has a good reason for the traditional gender categories. If it is to keep them, the only gender changes allowed have to be so. Sorry. It does have the advantage of being the best at changing social perceptions.

[intervex]

Poll: what model of disability would you associate with the colour green?

[Poll at bottom of post]

A a few months back, I proposed new meanings for the Disability Pride Flag that was designed by @capricorn-0mnikorn in consultation with a bunch of disabled folks. For those unfamiliar, it's this rockin' flag:

I proposed instead of having the coloured stripes being associated with categories of impairment (red for physical disability, yellow for neurodivergence, etc), we could instead have the different colours refer to different models of disability. I proposed:

Red: disability due to injury / the debility model of disability - e.g. injury due to armed conflicts caused by colonialism, injury due to gun violence in a country which fails to regulate gun safety, preventable illness due to sociopolitical neglect 😡🩸

Yellow: disability due to natural (beneficial) differences / affirmative models of disability - e.g. autistic people who lead lives that take advantage of their autistic traits, DSPS folks who are able to work night shifts and take pride in doing so 😄🌟

Blue: situational disabilities / critical models like the social model, e.g. a Deaf person who feels their only disability is that people don’t speak their signed language and don’t provide captions/etc 🗣️♿️

Green: disability due to illness / biomedical models of disability - e.g. people with conditions like ME/CFS and Long Covid who actually do want to be treated/cured 🤢🦠

White: disability caused by unknown or other factors / other models

I'm pretty happy with all of the colour-model associations except green, and would like input on if there's a more suitable colour to use instead.

👍️ Advantages of green for medical model: - green is associated with disease, sickness, poison, etc - it is a major model of disability, even if it is one that disability organizing tends to be organizing against

👎️ Disadvantages of green for medical model: - the original meanings had green down as meaning sensory disability, and a lot of folks with sensory disabilities like the Deaf community reject the medical model quite strongly - from what I've since seen of other disability-specific flags, green is the most common colour used for neurodiversity (e.g. this autigender flag), another group that strongly rejects the medical model - there are almost no flags that embrace the medical model, and the only two I'm familiar with - the Crohn's flag and the transmedicalist flag - both use *white* as the colour of medicine. Lab coats etc. - rolling the medical model into the white stripe ("other models") would fit both the medicine-as-white association and how invisibly disabled people are often those fighting for care

Some weeks back I posted asking for alternative ideas for a model of disability for green. These are the options sent my way:

⚖️

Option 1: human rights model. Disability is viewed as a natural part of being human, and humans should have basic civil rights. This is a legalistic framework. It's used for advancing legal protections, gaining workplace accomodations, etc. Unlike the social model it can be kind of (but not entirely) individualistic: a given individual has their rights infringed, so laws need to be created and enforced to protect them.

Green is a colour used sometimes to represent humanity (though teal/cyan I think is a bit more common.) It's a model compatible with the neurodiversity movement and Deaf pride. People who are sick and want to be treated are also compatible in that they deserve a right to medical care.

🧬

Option 2: biodiversity model. Disability is beneficial for the gene pool because genetic variety makes for more resilient populations. Unlike the affirmation model, this doesn't see every disability as actually good to have - for example, sickle cell disease sucks for those who have it, but the heterozygosity advantage it provides for the population makes it a net asset.

Green is a colour associated with nature. I'd say this is also compatible with neurodiversity & Deaf pride + sick people.

✊️

Option 3: radical model. Disability is entirely a social construct. There is nothing wrong with any of us (Withersaj, 2012). The social construction of disability was created in order to marginalize segments of society - such as how IQ testing and the idea of "intelligence" was created by eugenics to rationalize slavery. This model is strongly connected with mad pride (Ralph, 2018)

This one probably isn't compatible with sick people who want care. Many neurodivergent & Deaf people would resonate with it, but I suspect some folks who feel their neurodivergence can be at times legitimately disabling may push back on this.

🕸️

Option 4: political/relational model. Any discussion of disability is inherently political. Rather than disability being an individual problem or a macro-societal problem, this is a hybrid: "disablement as something that occurs because of ideological systems that disenfranchise disabled people, not individual needs or choices." (Price, 2021). This model pushes back on the disability/impairment dichotomy from the social model: "This model recognizes that it is not the environment that disables us, but our own bodies and minds (e.g. chronic fatigue or pain)." (Accessible Academia)

Green is a colour often used for symbolizing relationships. I think this is compatible with neurodiversity & Deaf pride, while also being open to sick people who want treatment.

🍃

Option 5: eco-crip model. This is in some ways the opposite of the political/relational: the environment is disabling. For example, many environmental toxins are known to cause disabilities. Many disabled people are particularly vulnerable to changes in the physical environment, especially climate change: smoggy air, power outages, evacuations from disasters, are all things that hurt disabled people much harder.

Unlike the radical model, this model views disability as not (only) a social phenomenon: even in a world with universal design everywhere and accommodations in place, a paraplegic still can't hike most trails.

📊

This brings us to six options for models of disability for green. Tumblr lets you only vote for one, but if you like multiple (or you're AGAINST one or more) let me know in the replies/reblogs. 💚

[eternal-echoes]

“We believe in God. This is what the main sections of the Creed affirm, especially the first section. But another question now follows: in what God? Certainly we believe in the God who is Creator Spirit, creative Reason, the source of everything that exists, including ourselves. The second section of the Creed tells us more. This creative Reason is Goodness, it is Love. It has a face. God does not leave us groping in the dark. He has shown himself to us as a man. In his greatness he has let himself become small. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father", Jesus says (Jn 14:9). God has taken on a human face. He has loved us even to the point of letting himself be nailed to the Cross for our sake, in order to bring the sufferings of mankind to the very heart of God. Today, when we have learned to recognize the pathologies and the life-threatening diseases associated with religion and reason, and the ways that God's image can be destroyed by hatred and fanaticism, it is important to state clearly the God in whom we believe, and to proclaim confidently that this God has a human face. Only this can free us from being afraid of God - which is ultimately at the root of modern atheism. Only this God saves us from being afraid of the world and from anxiety before the emptiness of life. Only by looking to Jesus Christ does our joy in God come to fulfilment and become redeemed joy. During this solemn Eucharistic celebration, let us look to the Lord lifted up before us on the Cross and ask him to give us the immense joy which, at the hour of his farewell, he promised to the disciples (cf. Jn 16:24)!”

- Pope Benedict XVI, Islinger Feld, Regensburg, 12 September 2006