#The same for teens and young adults who rape.

[voskhozhdeniye]

[carbonatedeverclear]

purity culture ruins people’s ability to engage with works that deal with serious issues and it’s disheartening to see people entirely miss the point of a work because they are guided by a knee jerk reaction towards disgust and I need to ramble

so, I’m reading a book called Jawbone by Monica Ojeda and it’s a very interesting horror novel that centers around puberty and teen girls and their relationships to their mothers. One of the bigger themes in the book is the idea of shame revolving around sexual development. One of the main characters is a young lesbian who is developing feelings for her best friend and has a mother who is incredibly homophobic and disapproving and in part of the book there’s a scene where this character talks about her mother catching her masturbating and the way that she is disgusted by her daughter and kind of this horror around being viewed as having lost your innocence from experiencing something that is common and should be mundane. sexual development is seen as a horrific and sinful action and that causes this character trauma through the rest of the book surrounding the way that her mother looks at her and how her mother is going to react when she finds out that she’s gay it’s a book that deals with a lot of topics around sexual shame. For example, another character is so terrified of the sin of masturbation that she keeps herself from masturbating by imagining being raped by men in her family who she cares about because it disgusts her and keeps her from achieving sexual arousal. the book itself shows that the action of the character masturbating when she’s six years old is an innocent action. It’s one that comes from curiousity and just what happens when you have a body. The book is very clear that the act is being sexualized by the adults around her and their reactions feel violating.

So it is infuriating to then go from reading this book to trying to read reviews of this book and finding that the first review on Goodreads is a one star review that just says “in this book a six-year-old masturbates 🤮” participating in the same disgust with the natural sexual development of young girls that the book itself tries to depict as a horrifying and violating way to view children and puberty 

[olderthannetfic]

Being a trans man and not being an anti is also isolating, which is part of why I think trans guys gravitate towards either being an anti or reposting anti posts. If you're not an anti, you get booted from discord servers, blocked on social media at best or sent misgendering rape threats, death threats and suicide bait by other trans men at worst, and now that I'm in college I've found IRL that not being an anti makes a lot of people in queer spaces available to the average college student incredibly uncomfortable. So you have to either be entirely alone - which is very difficult when you're young, queer, and just coming into your own identity - or you have to be around it a lot without saying a word. Agreeing with it at first wouldn't even be necessary. You just have to not say anything against it, and then you'll be able to be around other people.

It doesn't help that most trans men who get sucked into anti circles are teens at the time. There's 501 proposed anti-LGBT laws right now, not counting everything that has passed, the majority of it anti-trans. If you're a teenage boy seeing all this transphobia on the rise, you're going to feel powerless. Bullying people like antis do makes you feel power over at least a few people. Being told you can consume your way into being a good person via media intake makes you feel like you have power and control over at least that.

I was sucked in incrementally because I wasn't exposed to the more violent antis who fantasized about murder and hurting people for writing fiction, I met my only friend - who was an anti - after my dad had beaten me for coming out as trans, and I was sixteen. I got out when I was eighteen because once I went to live with my mom, a psychologist, she gently corrected me when I would say things that aren't based in fact. She pointed out how upset these people were making me. She taught me how to fact-check claims and look into the veracity of claims.

And when I tried to convey to my friends that no, what they were saying wasn't supported, they turned on me. Including the only person who had been there for me when I was hatecrimed, who had reached out to me specifically because she met me what day. I lost every friend I had in roughly 30 hours.

If I hadn't had a really great mom, a very intelligent rabbi who's well-versed in psychology and is a former lawyer who saw the "fiction made me do it" excuse used to defend heinous crimes and doesn't buy it, and an older half-sister who lived through people calling her a psycho lesbian because she's a lesbian who played D&D, listened to metal and dressed Goth in small-town Montana in the 80's/90's, I would have probably killed myself. Having those three people who accepted me and did not accept this extremist rhetoric kept me sane and repaired my self-esteem enough to keep me going.

But a lot of people don't have three adults who are intelligent, supportive, and know better than to fall for this faux-psychology. A lot of people don't even have one. Often, they have unsupportive people who also believe firmly in the faux-psychology of "if you watch a thing you'll do that thing IRL". So there's not only no one hauling them out of this, it's getting reinforced.

Being a non-anti who is a trans man gets me a lot of shit from a lot of people online and offline. (As other anons have mentioned during the ace discourse, online talking points come up on college campuses and in real life, because the internet is not an alternate dimension, it is something being used by the people around you who exist in the same physical space as you.)

A reality that I don't think people want to discuss is that trans men, just like all other people of all other genders, suffer a lot of psychological distress if they're put in a position where they have no support. I sure as fuck wasn't happy being in a position where I went from having tons of online friends, discord servers I could hang out in and fandoms I associated with good vibes to none of that, plus harassment, plus massive misgendering.

It's a lot less awful of an existence to be a trans man and an anti when you're young and need community and support than it is to not be an anti and be isolated. And humans gravitate towards the least awful option 99% of the time.

--

Yuuup.

Having some kind of real support network, usually offline but at the very least not randos you met a day ago on discord, is vital and is the difference between not only whether you rot in a pit of antidom forever but in stemming the massive flood of trans teen suicides. The overall queer rates aren't great, but the specifically trans rates... they're bad. They're so, so bad.

[atopvisenyashill]

Thoughts on the Alysanne is Maegor's daughter AU? I feel like it has some interesting potential, and it vastly recontextualizes different parts of Jaehaehae (I do not like him sjsjsjs) and Alysanne's relationship (such as Jaehaehae's treatment of their daughters) but I wanna hear what you think about it!

I’ve touched on this a bit before but since you actually want to hear my thoughts, allow me to present to you my Jaehaerys Is The Goddamn Worst, And Alysanne Annoys Me Too: An Essay lmao but my answer is basically “yeah all of what you just said.”

I think it makes Alysanne much more palatable (to me) as a character because as she stands, she just fixates on forcing her daughters through these fucked up marriages at too young an age bc it traumatized her to be married and pregnant at 15 too but she’d never admit that being a willing participant in her own kidnapping by her brother-husband was the single worst thing that ever happened to her, and because Alysanne doesn’t want to admit it (and Jaehaerys would never see it as wrong or a mistake) F&B really shies away from delving into the fact that Alysanne is as deranged of a mother as Cersei is. So as she stands, she’s very flat to me because she’s presented very flatly and inconsistently. She’s so in love with Jaehaerys, she’s maritally raped by Jaehaerys, she’s a loving and doting mother, she forces her daughters into marriages when they’re the same too young age she was, she accuses her teenage girls of being scheming whores then gets angry when her husband accuses their teenage girls of being scheming whores, and worst of all we are just told “Maegelle tells them to make up so they do” so we don’t know why Alysanne gets over all of this. What is the point of riding a dragon when you never use that dragon to protect your daughters from unwanted teen marriages? We’re just not given a good enough justification for why her behavior is so weird and frustrating towards her daughters.

Make her Maegor’s daughter though…most of her behavior as an adult makes more sense. Like a worse version of Rhaenyra’s childhood almost - a father desperate for a son, but lowkey obsessed with his daughter, who makes all his hang ups about his parents the problems of every woman around him, except Maegor is out here blood sacrificing and torturing and starting wars and forcing babies on wives he discards quickly and brutally. Then here comes Jaehaerys on a white horse green dragon to save her from the horror her life has become, and he loves her so much he runs away with her even though Alyssa says they shouldn’t marry because people won’t like it. And they have beautiful children, and a beautiful marriage, and build a beautiful kingdom.

Then her pregnancies start getting dangerous. Gaemon, then Valerion, die. Alysanne thinks of the shriveled up mutants she called brothers, if Maegor’s taint has passed to her. Her perfect husband ignores her no, and forces Gael on her. Alysanne remembers that he said nothing to Rogar when Alyssa died, merely wept. Then her daughters start to die. Daella, Alyssa, Viserra, all within a few years. Then Jaehaerys makes Saera watch as he murders her boyfriend, calls her a whore, and says Alysanne cannot follow Saera to Lys. Alysanne thinks of Maegor torturing the Harroways over Alys’ presumed infidelity. Jaehaerys says he’s sorry, and her daughter badgers her into forgiving him, and she remembers how she helped Jaehaerys badger Alyssa into forgiving Rogar. Not two years later, Jaehaerys passes over Rhaenys. Alysanne thinks of how she was never enough for her father, how she felt so superior to Rhaena banished to Dragonstone and resented by Aerea, yet there she is dragging Gael away from court because she can’t stand to be with Jaehaerys. How her father was surrounded by dead women and dead babies and how Jaehaerys is surrounded by his own dead daughters, but surely she did the right thing, surely Maegor was worse, surely the realm is better off? Is he right to pass over Rhaenys? Is she enabling a man just as monstrous as her father? She will never decide, because Maegelle will guilt her about keeping Gael isolated at Dragonstone, and Alysanne will do as she’s told, just like Rhaena, and Alyssa, and Jeyne, Elinor, Ceryse, Alys, and Tyanna, just like every one of her daughters.

I do get why Alysanne is Alyssa & Aenys’ and not Maegor’s. The weird Targ babies, the line not descending from Visenya, Jaehaerys and Alysanne being held up as the perfect Targaryen couple specifically because they are brother and sister and dragon riders. I do even think canon Alysanne is likely traumatized by her time as a hostage on Dragonstone, and the ensuing war, and the trauma bond that caused with Jaehaerys, and it makes her idolize Jaehaerys, and then he isolates her at Dragonstone so he can swiftly and safely marry, groom, and knock her up. It’s not like,,,, a fun time, and it’s enough to make anyone crazy and weird about their daughters, but I think having her father be Maegor makes Alysanne herself much deeper because it gives her, as the most beloved Targaryen queen, a blood tie to the most hated Targaryen king, and a marriage to the most beloved Targaryen king. It fits better with a lot of the themes of the main series (again, imo) - forcing the spotlight on the outsiders to see how the affect the story from behind the scenes. The fall of Aegon’s sons, and The Long Reign, not told from the PoV or to serve the PoV of any of the kings or princes, but of the queen that tied them all together.

[alicentflorent]

Teen Rhaena reminds me of young Alicent in a way. Besides both being Rhaenyra’s handmaidens and having bad fathers, Rhaena is never involved with the plans everyone’s making about her life like Alicent. People won’t see it this way because Luke was her age and it seems like they got along well but Rhaena (and Baela) was betrothed without her consent to further the ambitions of others for the throne. She wasn’t asked prior to the agreement by Rhaenyra and Rhaenys.

Their feelings are constantly disregarded by those around them because they don’t have dominant personalities. While the other kids/teens (minus Aemond) were being playful and joking around at the dinner table in S1Ep8, Rhaena was sat there very mature, ladylike and proper. When the fight broke out, Rhaena was breaking it up along with the adults. It just reminded me of Alicent’s dynamic with Rhaenyra when they were young. Alicent was always treated like one of the adults by the adults around her , while Rhaenyra was still called “a child” and got to act her age. Her immaturity is taken into account by writers and viewers.

Teen Alicent and teen Rhaena’s grief is minimized by the writers because their grief isn’t loud, angry or rebellious. Again they are mini adults, Alicent doesn’t get the same grace as Rhaenyra despite losing her mother very recently too and we see Baela speak about the loss of Rhaenys to multiple people throughout the episode. We even see Rhaenyra shed tears for Rhaenys (odd because neither woman really liked the other). We see Corlys grieve, we see the smallfolk grieve the damn Dragon. Only one brief scene is given to Rhaena and her grief and it’s not even the focal point of the scene.

Their grief takes the back seat to others and the grief of those others becomes more important than their own. The general audience isn’t going to give much thought to the impact of this loss on Rhaena, just like most of them forget that young Alicent lost her mother too.

Anon, how can you say something so controversial yet so brave?

I definitely see parallels between them. You've listed some perfect examples. I also think Rhaena and Young Alicent both have parallels with Sansa Stark. I sometimes think of Sansa as a character that breaks the cycle Alicent couldn't break and I think the key difference is that Sansa had a family who loved her and who cared about her as more than a political pawn. Her parents tried to save her from her situation in kingslanding. This is a key difference between Rhaena and Alicent too. Rhaena has a support system and a family that loved her she'd never get sold off to an old man to be raped and used as a broodmare and even if daemon tried to arrange a marriage like that Rhaenys and probably even Rhaenyra would likely try to stop it. Baela at her young age would probably kill someone before she allowed her sister to be married off into a horrible situation. Alicent had no one in her corner.

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

(TW: sex mention, brief mention of child sexual abuse)

My dear lgbt+ kids,

When I tell people that I used to volunteer for a teen pregnancy helpline, they often get curious and ask "Who was the youngest person who ever called?"

I don't mind answering that: most of our callers were 16 - 19 years old but the youngest ones I personally spoke to were 12 years old.

I find it important to note that kids in difficult situations often do not react in the ways that "make sense" to adults: the youngest callers were also the calmest. As counterintuitive as it may be from an adult perspective, they were definitely less terrified than the 19-years-olds - but that's a whole different conversation to have. The point relevant to this letter is just that the usual adult reaction to hearing me say "They were 12 years old" is, understandably, pity. "Oh my gosh, poor kids, they must have been terrified!".

But there are also people who react in a way that I do not understand: with anger - aimed at the pregnant child but also at me. "Oh my gosh, how does a 12-year-old even get pregnant? The newer generations are so slutty and sex-crazed. Why would you encourage that? Those kids should play with dolls, not have sex!"

Frankly said, these kinds of reactions piss me off. Mainly because they (choose to?) overlook the obvious: Pregnancy at such a young age is highly, highly likely to be a result of sexual abuse. I get that it's difficult to stomach the thought, and yes, it is not always the case, but when we are talking about pregnant 12-year-olds, we need to consider the very real possibility that we are talking about rape victims.

But even if we choose to overlook that or just focus on the cases in which 12-years-olds had sex with their (same age) boyfriends and got pregnant, it's such a ridiculous reaction. The kids and teens who called us did so because they either already had a positive pregnancy test or at least had a strong suspicion that they were pregnant (or in some cases, had already given birth) - in either case, it means that they already had sex. It's not like they called us to ask for permission to have sex! They called us after the fact. Because, well, that's what we were: a resource for those who already are in that situation.

And this is where this long and not very lgbt+-related story finally circles closer to what this blog is about:

"If you offer resources to pregnant kids, you encourage kids to get pregnant" is just one flavor of a common misconception. It's the same logic some people use to oppose (lgbt+-inclusive) sexual education in schools: "Teaching kids about sex will encourage kids to have sex!" (which is kinda ironic because, you know, it's actually proven that kids who receive Sex-Ed are less likely to become sexual risk-takers. They wait longer to have sex, and when they have it, they are more likely to use condoms - both of which would help lower the number of teen pregnancies.)

Less of a direct mirror but also in the same vein are some arguments people use to oppose trans rights (which in turn mirror arguments people use against gay marriage). "That's a slippery slope, people will see that and copy it, and suddenly we have doctors performing gender surgery on toddlers!" ("... and suddenly we have people marrying their dogs!").

It's good to learn to recognize that pattern in an argument - because any flavor of it is based on faulty logic: Offering X does not increase the number of people who need X. It just means that those who already needed it will now have easier access to it.

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad

[hjellacott]

To those agreeing with what I say but saying I'm mean and "Let's just be nice" when we're discussing TRA things or feminism or J. K. Rowling... I am DONE being nice.

I was nice the first 100.000 times. Now I've been bombarded with private messages and Tumblr "post" (the envelope thingy) and general comments, plus seeing dozens of posts that I just can't be nice and patient about. Because these MORONS and some of them, actual TERRORISTS, are literary burning books, twisting the Harry Potter stories to justify their unjustifiable extremism, harassing children for being Potterheads, mocking adults for finding solace in Harry Potter, attacking and sending death threats and death wishes to everyone that disagrees with them, manipulating children, autistic, and also all kinds of mentally disabled people to absorb their agenda and mutilate their bodies, targeting the lives of people who disagree with them and attacking them and their loved ones, cyberbullying left and right hiding beneath anonymous names and pink and blue flags, burning and thrashing businesses where feminists go, turning Pride into an event where rapists are being allowed to take the mic and say to kill women (literally) and being applauded, saying homosexuality is transphobic and raping lesbians and gays, applauding men changing in locker rooms in front of little girls, applauding men taking over women's sports and spaces, applauding sending rapists to women's prisons, applauding children being brainwashed into life changing treatments, terrorising the world, imposing their own agenda with violence and threats, silencing and attacking the detrans community, manipulating the media, fucking it all up for all the normal trans people who are now thanks to the TRAS being seen as terrorists, and justifying their hatred and their violence on them having basically no reading comprehension, twisting people's words to have a pity party, and creating a self-imposed narrative to try and convince us that everyone wants them to die so it's all right for them to attack everyone else and be given free reign and justification to do so. Police can't even report that a criminal is trans any more and people are losing their jobs for reporting crimes by trans people, for fuck's sakes.

Do you know how often I've dealt with the same lazy justification to "explain" to me, a mixed race Jewish descent woman, why JK Rowling is anti semitic or racist? Or why she's transphobic? And every time one tries to nicely point out that they're twisting things and decontextualising them and inserting their own racist views, they just tell you to kill yourself. They've taken over press, media, social media, pride, women's spaces, they're going after children, attacking local pubs and restaurants... I'm not going to allow it. I'm done being nice.

I see them bullying the detrans community and shutting them up. I see how they harass and threaten the trans community that doesn't want to occupy women's spaces or that doesn't condone violence and threats and wants children to be left alone. I see how they attack women, lesbians and gays. I have a collection of articles of their rapes and other attacks, mainly to women. And they won't brainwash me.

I'm not afraid. These are a violent, terrorist mob that is taking over the left and making themselves the victims when we haven't faced a more aggressive and dangerous mob since the Nazis. Have you seen the videos of the teens and young adults crying in the US Congress, talking about how afraid they are when they see men changing in their lockers, or talking about how their breasts were chopped off and begging us, adults, to stop this nonsense? I have and I'm listening.

Like Joanne Rowling, like all the women who won't wheesht, I'm going to fight for those kids, for the normal people in the trans community, for detransitioners, gays, lesbians, mentally disabled... I'm not afraid and I'm not nice. Not any more. You want a fight? I'm full of weapons.

[blubushie]

i've seen some blogs i follow say that misandry isn't real and men aren't opressed for being men and honestly the former doesn't sit right with me. misandry is not systemic like misogyny but your answers about your experiences prove that it does indeed happen in queer spaces. masculine queer men have to prove that they aren't a threat by making themselves a walking gay caricature.

Hell men aren't just oppressed in female-dominant "cultures" (like queer spaces) but they're also oppressed by patriarchy and, in some ways, legally. They're just not oppressed in the same way women are.

Men are considered inherently stronger/better, which means women can't compete with us, which means any time a man is a victim of a woman it's automatically his fault for ALLOWING himself to be. How are you, a man, gonna let a woman hit you? (It's because even if you defend yourself, and you make the call the police, YOU'LL be arrested as the aggressor. It's your word against hers, and in domestic violence they will always favour hers.)

We are simultaneously shit on for defending ourselves, because how dare a man ever put his hands on a woman even in self defence, but at the same time if we DON'T do that, it's our fault for being abused because we didn't "resist" our abuser. This is the male version of being asked about what you were wearing when you were victimised. The only way men are ALLOWED to be recognised as victims is if you're a child and your abuser is an adult man. If it's an adult woman? Hell, kid, you're lucky.

A lot of people think men can't be raped—either because we "always want sex", or because we're expected to physically resist our rapist and win. Contrast this to women, who are told to piss themselves or scream, or just take it because maybe if you do your rapist won't kill you. (If you ask me a firearm makes a helluva equaliser, but that's a conversation for another day.) Legislation even reflects this—in the UK, for example, according to UK law, it isn't possible for a women to rape a man unless she penetrates him with an object. A woman violently raping a man, even a child, by restraining him or otherwise and forcing him into penetrating her, is merely considered sexual assault and carries a much lighter sentence than rape.

And that really sucks for someone like me, who was raped by two women while I was drunk. Who didn't even realise I was raped until a mate explained it to me, because it's normalised that women can have sex with a drunk man and that's not considered rape—not even if he blacks out and asks them to stop when he wakes up, and they keep going while he blacks out again. Like what happened to me. An even bigger kicker—a man is always considered responsible in sex. So if a drunk man and a drunk woman both agree to sex while both are intoxicated, legally HE is raping HER despite both being unable to actually consent.

This in addition to men being expected to be sole providers for a home by society—look at the current rise of women looking for a sugar daddy or red-flagging a man because he only has one car instead of two, or of men never being favoured in family court even when the mother is unable to care for the children or is abusive, or how women will weaponise visitation against fathers for spite because they know the court will side with her regardless of how good of a father he is, or the lack of men's shelters, or how DV shelters won't take women with minor children who are boys older than 12 so a woman has to either go back to her abuser with her children or leave her sons behind alone with an abusive father, of people laughing at the male loneliness epidemic and treating it like a good thing/deserved reckoning instead of recognising it as a warning sign for a flood of lost teens and young men drifting down the Andrew Tate or rapist incel misogyny pipeline, of people laughing at men's mental health month posts and outright encouraging men to commit suicide under them while men already statistically commit suicide at a higher rate than women...

Men are oppressed in some ways, I'd argue some of those ways are systemic, but no one talks or cares about it. There was a feminism wave in the 90s of "patriarchy harms everyone", which is true, but now we're on a different wave of "men are biologically evil", which is absolutely batshit fucking insane and helps no one. Bioessentialism helps no one. (Plus it's transphobic and intersexist.)

Anyway I'm gonna go back to working on my ute now.

[thebottomfromhell]

I am completely sorry for leaving you all hanging again, this apology is probable very cheap at this point, it's been rough lately. Right now I feel as if my mental health was in shambles. You see, I sometimes do work for my mother, who is a judge, and write of some testimonies on court and the last one really got to me. It was a SA case between cousins, one a young adult (the accused) the other a teen (the victim) in which almost everyone took the side of the accused, creating the story the girl (the victim) was lying, that it was "consented" but she fear the consecuences from her mother, who everyone in that family knew was abusive but nobody ever did everything. I have been hoing through statement after statement, writting people defending the guy and I'm done, I'm exhausted, both mentally and emotionally. Never a case has gotten me this much.

I really don't want to turn this into a ramble, it wouldn't be appropriate of me to take this things out here. But I want to give you some tipa if you are ever in court or need to take something, specially SA, to court. Idk, I feel this is the minimun I should be doing.

Check the actual age of consent where you live. There is an age where is you are touched or anything sexual is done it you, is automatically considered rape, but that age is never "under 18". In most places from 13 years old to older you WILL need proof that it was forced/violent to prove it was not consented. That being said, be aware that an adult going for a minor, while not ilegal, IS creepy, IS bad and actions should be always taken.

The first thing you do if you are hurt and want to take it to court is go to get medical attention, the first. Same thing if something happens to someone you know, if you don't know what to do, go get medical attention. In some countries there are medical centers linked with the local investigation/cop organization, those WILL be cheaper. Always tell the one attenting you what happened, sometimes they will lead you to a doctor/psycologist/investigator dedicated to court.

You WILL have to give several testimonies most of the time, one to the police/investigators if included, one to the lawyers, and one to the court/jury. Sometimes the jury and lawyer will use your previous testimonies to clarify things or spot contradictions. Everyone in court have these documents at hand, so don't you even think of changing the story and ALWAYS specify if you are adding a detail you disn't say before and say why you didn't add it.

Your testimony and statements must always be as detailed as possible, never assume, while they do, that the jury knows what happened. You are the one telling. In case of SA you must say the name of the specific body parts that were touched, with what and how. It's all for it to be coherent with the results of the medical evaluation.

In most cases you will have to wait years for evidence and people to be recolegted to have some to go to court. It's valid if you don't remember everything, but take note on places, time and date, and if possible, faces and/or names (nicknames count too).

"I don't know" and "I don't remember" are VALID answers in court, always say this lines instead of lying.

Never refer that you don't remember other testimonies you gave, it gives the impression you don't remember your "lines". Just say "I don't remember what happened exactly, what I remember is..."

Sometimes layers will ask the same thing several times, phrased differently, in order to get a different answer. Don't be ashame to repeat the answer and call them off by saying "I already answered (say the answer again)" in case the lawyer in your side is bad and doesn't object the question for repetitive.

In case of vaginal rape, AFAB people have all different types of hymen, it doesn't always break, but there are still other rypes of vaginal scarring. Infections are also common in case of SA. Penetration of almost any type leaves scaring, other forms of touch that are not punches or hit does not.

Try, if you have the means, to have a psicologist with experience in court (in spanish profesionals linked to court are called peritos) and colaborate. Even if you don't have the symptoms of a "good victim" "default victim", you WILL have simptoms, that their testimony explaining thems helps a lot to make the jury believe you.

In some places if you are a family member of the accused you will be obligated to attend to court but you will have the right of not giving testimony if you fear your word can be used agaisnt that person. The accused also tends to have the right of not giving testimony, and if they do give testimony they are not obligated by law to say the truth unlike witnnesses (because, let's be real. Who is going to admit it?)

You can be charged for lying in court, conviction will change depending where you live. However, if nobody (the lawyers, the judges and the jury) decide to let it slide in order to not make a whole new case based in that you lied, you might get away with it, specially if you lied in a detail. (Really, I have seen so many people get away with it.)

Anyone who fears being accused of rape over being raped doesn't know shit and it's a massive red flag. In court you have to prove both that there was "sex" and that it was "forced" as two separate things. Most of the time you can't prove it without scars that match a medical history and proves of violence used against the victim. Most of SA cases never get to court anyway, then proving it is even harder.

Always anwser the question of the lawyer first and then explain. First, because your testimony is being registered so that makes it easy to mark, and second, if you start with the explanation you might loose the focus and not only never answer the question, but it looks af if you are making an excuse.

Most white cisgender straight people, specially man, don't really know what SA is. Most of them will think that doing it while the other person is drunk, to give an ultimatum, to insist until the other will allow in order to be left alone, to scare them into doing it, anything if there wasn't penetration, or even things like groping and catcalling don't count as SA. They do. So most of these people will defend the idea that it wasn't SA because they genuinely don't understand that what they did was SA. Always be explicit and precise with what happened.

Related to the other point, most people, again cis staight men mostly, think that it has to be violent, that one must be forced to submit, and there must be punches for it to be rape. That is not the case, but always be prepared to have to fight off this idea.

Defense lawyers, in my personal experience, tend to be assholes more than any other lawyer. Some will even treat the case as if winning a competition over making justice.

Cases CAN be reopen if a LAWYER asks for it, but most of the time it doesn't work because witnneses refuse to go a second time, specially the victims as it opens wpunds and forces them to live the trauma again, specially with minors.

It can vary in different countries, but most of the time is actually harder to condemn than not. To condemn the judges have to specify what evidence makes the story of ehat happened believable, build up a story/theory of that happened linked to everything exposed and the sentence must be approved by the jury. On the other hand, a "there wan't enough evidence" is enough to absolve. (That is why to reopen the case might lead to setting the accused free in a easier way, since there aren't as many testimonies nor as many evidence as the last time)

Some lawyer of defense, this links from the two previous point, will be assholes for that, to make the work harder for everyone. Witnesses, other lawyers, judges and jury alike, so the evidence and testimonies can't be collected properly.

I will see if later I have anything more to say, but this is all I can recolect for now. Reminder that laws might change depending where you live, always check them and try to be aware of your rights.

[maleswillbemale]

I just peaked. Yesterday. And now I feel so ashamed, so foolish, for everything I believed before. It feels as though I've been seeing things right in front of me, and instead of accepting them as simple fact, I've been doing insane mental gymnastics to justify them. My teen years were spent defending trans women, and eventually, every single one of them I knew either sexually mishandled me or somebody else. I was a teen runaway, and they took me in and harmed me. I'm still not able to openly talk about what some of them did. One of them was known to be an accused rapist, but when I brought this up, I was told the accuser was a crazy bitch and to pay it no mind. When this person then raped one of her own trans women, THEN she was cast out. Not when it was a female. Another one eventually got outed as a serial rapist of her partners, so bad that one of her exes still cannot go outside much. This same trans woman groomed me and tried to strike when I was 18. All the other trans women were fine with it. The things they would say about their gender identity behind closed doors, about their kinks, their sexuality... they're fucking disgusting. And I somehow believed it was normal, and powerful, and that I was an oppressor in that situation. I was someone who would laugh at "kill terfs" jokes. Who completely dehumanised TERFs in my head. I would be so vocal in high school about how evil TERFs are and how wrong -- because I live with trans women! They took me in! They're fun and kind! Now that I realise what they were truly like, I feel so much shame for what I said and perpetuated. I'm so sorry. Truly. I'm still very young, so I hope I can do some good to counteract it still. I am so so so sorry for being a part of that abuse for so long. I wish I could take it back. I was so foolish.

It's going to be a long process of unlearning what was shoved down your throat and learning more about radical feminism, but I'm really glad that you've made the first step. I'm so sorry that you were taken advantage of and manipulated by those men when you were so vulnerable, you didn't deserve any of that.

Give yourself some grace; when you were trying to defend trans women, you had good intentions at heart. You wanted to be a good person and uplift a group of people that so many people around you insist have it so hard. It's on the adult men who manipulate others and victimize themselves to achieve access to places they don't belong and empathy from well-meaning people like you were.

Take some time to unpack everything that has happened to you. Be gentle with yourself. It'll be okay

[beardedmrbean]

China is being rocked by a series of shocking murders of little girls committed by boys as young as 12.

But, nearly as shocking is how the communist nation deals with juvenile killers — usually letting them go without jail time.

Often, they are sent to mental institutions for just a few years. In one case, a killer was allowed to return to school shortly after his crime.

As China struggles to answer how to hold children accountable for heinous killings, the most notorious of which are committed against other kids, it’s often the parents of the victims who find themselves waiting for justice that might never come.

Gong Junli, whose 8-year-old daughter was brutally stabbed to death by a 13-year-old boy, is among the latest heartbroken parents waiting to see if the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) will sentence his child’s killer to prison.

The single father’s plight made headlines in March when prosecutors agreed to pursue criminal charges against the teen, who allegedly coaxed the girl to follow him into the woods in the Xinjing Township in September 2022, according to Red Star News.

The boy then stabbed her multiple times and abandoned her body in a grove of poplar trees, officials said.

Investigators noted that the 13-year-old allegedly prepared knives, blades, disposable gloves, plastic ropes and other tools for the murder, placing them in the woods where he invited the victim to play.

Officials said the teen showed no remorse for the crime and spoke nonchalantly when questioned by police.

Junli’s surveillance camera captured the moment the young girl was lured away by the teenager, who had come to ask her to join him in the woods twice before.

The grieving father told Red Star that the teenager had allegedly developed a hatred for women after being beaten and scolded by his mother, and had planned to kill her and female classmates with good grades before choosing the 8-year-old as his first victim.

Junli told the outlet he fainted when he first learned about his daughter’s fate, with his family who was babysitting the girl urging him not to see her body.

“You will never recover after seeing this for the rest of your life,” they warned him.

Junli, who has spent his days cutting down trees to divert people away from his daughter’s crime scene, initially believed the suspect would undoubtedly pay for what he did, but he has now acknowledged that he might not ever get the justice he seeks.

In 2021, China lowered the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12. But, unlike the US, children are not sent to detention centers and adult-level punishments are rarely brought when the crime is murder.

Junli’s case is similar to one from last year, where a 4-year-old girl was killed by a boy under 12 years old who pushed her into a manure tank just 300 yards from her home in Hubei.

The case against the boy was dropped in January because of the boy’s age, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

The father, who still wants the case to be heard, claimed the boy killed his child “simply because my daughter and his sister quarreled many times over toys.”

The boy is reportedly being held at a psychological corrections facility, the same sentence given to other young criminals under 12.

The lenient sentencing was also the common practice prior to the 2021 amendment, when a 13-year-old boy was sentenced to only three years at a juvenile rehabilitation center after raping and fatally stabbing a 10-year-old girl in 2019.

The victim’s father said the teenager, who was under the former age of criminal responsibility, lured the girl to his home, sexually assaulted her, stabbed her to death and then disposed of her body in the woods in the city of Dalian, Jinyun News reported.

The case caused an uproar in China at the time, with public opinion already at a boiling point after police were forced to release a 12-year-old boy who confessed to stabbing his mother to death.

The child was back to attending school days later, according to Chinese media.

The outrage ultimately led to the 2021 amendment lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 12, but despite the new law, China continues to see an uptick in cases against juveniles.

Between 2020 and 2023, prosecutors charged 243,000 minors, with an average case increase of 5% a year, according to CCTV.

The SPC recently announced that it had handed down sentences against 12,000 minors in the first three months of 2024.

The court also acknowledged that it sentenced four minors aged between 12 and 14 to 10 to 15 years in prison in April, but did not say what their crimes were.

Along with the sentence, the court issued new guidelines on preventing juvenile crime, where it suggested that courts could hold parents and guardians responsible for their children’s actions.

The court specifically pointed out that 30% of those who committed violent crimes between 2021 and 2013 were from “left-behind” or single-parent families.

Left-behind children are those who stay behind in rural areas while their parents move to work in the cities.

Left-behind children also make up a large portion of bullying victims in China, including Junli’s daughter.

A 2019 survey from the Beijing-based NGO found that out of 14,000 left-behind children, 90% of them said they suffered emotional abuse, 65% experienced physical violence and 30% said they had been sexually abused.

The spate of violent incidents have triggered many to call on parents to return home and focus on raising their children and keeping them out of trouble, with the Supreme People’s Court calling for communities to come together and address the issue.

“Collaborative efforts by schools, families, social organizations and government agencies to build a joint work system to address bullying and solve the problem at an early stage is essential and urgent,” the court said.

[the-shy-artisan]

seeing as it's pride month, i'd like to share with you all my coming out story c:

i knew, even at a very young age, that i was different.

i was around seven years old when i decided i wasn't interested in sex. of course the adults around me thought it was cute or saw it as a joke: what seven year old says something like that? "you don't know that for sure," they'd tell me, or, "you'll change your mind when you're older."

well, i grew a little older, but my decision still remained; buried at the back of my mind, out of sight and quiet. by middle school, i watched as my peers fawned over movie stars far older than them; they would point them out in teen magazines and ask me things like, "isn't he so hot?" "god, i want do him so bad," and, "what about you? who would you fuck if you had the chance?" i'd never answer, because i didn't have the heart to tell them i didn't feel the same way as them. it was yet another way i didn't fit in with the crowd.

then high school came around.

my views on sex aside, i did have relationships. but it wasn't until my third that i started to heavily question my sexuality. it came about one day during a visit to his house, we were on the couch watching a movie. he started touching me in places i never wanted to be touched. i moved his hands away multiple times, told him no, even moved to another piece of furniture away from him. i sat through the rest of the movie with my legs firmly crossed and my arms wrapped around myself. i felt sick to my stomach, and later i confided in my mother about what happened.

what she said still shocks me to my core to this very day:

"well, you've been in the relationship almost a year, and he's a man. you need to give him something. he has needs you know."

i was appalled. i reminded her of my long standing views about sex, only to have her respond with, "still? i would've hoped you'd outgrown this by now."

it broke my heart, but i broke hers the day i ended the relationship (she was certain we were going to get married and give her "beautiful" grandchildren).

i spent a very long time wondering if she was right. i started to think i was broken.

then came college… and the discovery of a magical word.

i found it on tumblr, hidden under the gif of a waving flag striped with purple, white, grey, and black. "asexuality." i was intrigued, i had never seen another flag besides the rainbow we all know. a quick google search brought up a definition on my computer screen… and tears in my eyes.

asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity.

all those years spent thinking there was something wrong with me, that i was the odd piece to a puzzle that didn't fit in, that i was a broken thing never to be fixed; everything suddenly made sense. that seven year old little girl who was ridiculed and shamed for even having the idea of never having sex, the teenager who cried alone in the bathroom as she vomited after her boyfriend made unwanted advances towards her; there was finally a word that described her.

asexuality.

it's been some time since i've taken on that label, it almost felt like being wrapped in a warm blanket. i finally felt comfortable in my own skin.

of course that's not to say there hasn't been some negative outcomes: my mother screamed and cried the day i came out to her (she still denies my sexuality to this day), and i've had complete strangers tell me i should be raped to be "fixed."

but despite that, i am proud to be ace. and unlike what some may think, i do very much wish to be in a relationship; just a queer platonic one, another thing i see many have mixed feelings on, much like the identity i use to describe myself. but the love i experience and wish to share is deep and true, just minus the sex. i only wish others would understand.

i am not broken, i never was.

i was just different.

and that is okay.

[aronarchy]

You and alot of the youth libration posters on here: "adults need to listen children and teens and take them seriously"

Me who is trying to understand better: "I agree with that"

The overmajority of the children and teens I take to on platforms other then here: "We don't like media and stories that sexualize us in anyway"

You and alot of the youth libration posters on here for some reason: "That's bad and here's why you should ignore them"

I'm legit confused bruv

(I’ll assume you’re talking about fiction not depicting specific real-life minors here, because that is usually the topic of discussion.)

Your experiences have been very, very different from mine, then.

I’ve had a few IRL friends whom I had discussed or mentioned the topic to or vice versa when I was a child/young teenager; they were generally supportive and didn’t take issue. I met far fewer children and teens IRL who were opposed to it. (I actually can’t remember any specific incident of someone being opposed to it around me. Although that’s probably because it wasn’t really a topic of discussion much. But yeah.)

I am a minor, and I have met many, many minors online who are proship. It’s actively difficult to be a proship minor, even more difficult it is to be a proship or antiship adult, or an antiship minor, because of how we’re commonly erased, how both antis and adult(ist) proshippers like to assume we just don’t (and can’t) exist, and we are rarely listened to.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of fantis I’ve met have been adults. It’s also adults who have driven public discourse for moralizing dark fiction, and adults who lobby for and pass laws censoring art.

I knew a (fanti-adjacent) adult who sexually harassed and abused multiple minors, building his brand on being a “predator-hunter,” protecting minors. He severely stalked and harassed many people, adults and minors, perceived as sexually deviant or problematic, for long periods of time. When my friend, a minor, went public about their abuse from him, they were branded a liar by his friends and supporters, all or almost all of whom are fantis. Many were minors themselves. There were more minors supporting him than supporting my friend, because he had more supporters in general. Should I have agreed with them, because they were minors? Erased the victims?

My friend has experienced sexual harassment from a minor for being interested in “problematic” art depicting fictional CSA. That same person also harassed me, including with bigotry and suicide-baiting, for my related stances and my sexuality, and sexually objectified me (in a mostly unrelated context). Would you support him because “we need to listen to and agree with minors more”?

There have been innumerable cases of adult fantis online being caught grooming, sexually harassing, or abusing minors, including minor fantis, and running exploitative, cult-like communities. Even one (at least one, whom I remember) who raped someone IRL. It’s become almost an expected occurrence that adult fantis go around sharing the “problematic” art they call “CSEM” and make others, including survivors with PTSD who are distressed by it, and even minors, to look at porn they otherwise would not have seen. And trivializing CSEM, calling depictions of fictional characters “CSEM,” and, like what I once saw done to a friend who is a rape and CSEM survivor, being dismissive of them when they are, naturally, offended and triggered by claims that fictional material could be possibly equivalent to actual recordings of rape or abuse.

(Yes, many proshippers are CSA survivors; you can read some testimonials from them here.)

Many, maybe even most minors support the “stranger danger” myth and other adultist, authoritarian beliefs to some degree. Believing that sexual “deviants” or “degenerates” are the cause of CSA and that purging them in a fascist manner is the solution. They would likely invalidate my claims of having been abused, because most people are conditioned to downplay child abuse, even as children themselves. This dynamic is replicated with any other marginalized group. Fully liberationist beliefs are rare in general. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong, or not what we all need, ultimately. (That does not also mean it would automatically be paternalistic to disagree with someone else on what would constitute liberation or whether liberation is good.)

Many minors, like people living under a CSA culture in general, believe in victim-blaming myths like “children and teenagers wearing ‘over-sexualized’ clothing ‘tempts’ adults into sexually assaulting them; we need to promote [modesty standards for clothing] to prevent CSA.” Many people, even survivors, claim that abusers abuse because “they can’t help it,” because they lack emotional self-regulation, because they are mentally ill… or because they looked at some fiction or art depicting abuse in a not-entirely-condemnatory light, and suddenly pro-abuse beliefs magically entered their head entirely against their will, or they got “hooked” on it and developed a “porn addiction” or uncontrollable sex drive until they couldn’t help but “escalate” by attacking real-life minors, as if abusers only abused because of fiction and not from any volition of their own. As if that excuses it, or can adequately explain it away. As if that’s not an excuse SA’ers have been using for a long, long time.

Many of those minor fantis would likely defend my CSA to me, or at least try to paternalistically overwrite my own perceptions, memories, interpretations, and understandings of my experiences, because they don’t fit their preconceived narrative.

These are deeply destructive myths, harmful to minors and survivors, but they are still extremely prevalent.

Does that make them okay?

The vast supermajority of minor fantis I have encountered or observed (and a far greater proportion than among proshippers) are adultist, often violently so, and defend the nuclear family and mock me for advocating abolition, and connect their fanti stance with their adultist stances in logic and framework. They would dismiss me on the basis of my age. They think purging fiction is a sufficient solution to abuse and take issue with my efforts at more concrete activism against abuse culture within communities and political causes of abuse. They think adults should use parental controls and censor minors’ media and coerce us to not view content perceived as problematic or corrupting even if the minor does not agree to that. They either pretend minors with kinks or other “deviant” sexual interests don’t exist, or demonize us and sneer at minors’ experiences of distress and trauma from societal kinkmisia. They would help adult fantis harass proship minors and minors who view dark fiction/create “problematic” art. They play into culturally adultist notions of “childhood innocence,” adult control over youth sexuality, denial of agency, and paternalistic condescension, but also turn to aggression and overt hostility when a minor doesn’t buy into it. See, for example:

I grew up in a conservative, abusive, sexually repressive, censoring environment. Then when I first went online I encountered a ton of the same negativity. I felt a lot of shame and internalized stigma and constant self-doubt because I was worried I was somehow being immoral for enjoying dark fiction and accidentally harming myself in the long run or indirectly wronging people I care about. That was deeply detrimental to my mental health for a long time. I felt a lot of clarity and felt much safer, more validated, more comfortable existing as myself, and less self-hating when I encountered other people who did have similar views which were supportive and who were interested in pursuing the real causes of child abuse (which I didn’t really know a lot about until I started unraveling all the propaganda I had absorbed which scapegoated unrelated things, and has been immensely helpful to my understanding of my conditions and beginning my ability to advocate for myself and others), and things finally made a lot more sense (fanti views were contradictory, confusing, and I knew even when I had a lot of internalized problems that they were very wrong on some level). I also unlearned a lot of adultism in the meantime. I’m not sure where this recent trend of “antishipping is youthlib” is coming from. I’ve always only ever seen fantis promoting adultism along with their ideology, and that it’s been implicitly understood everywhere that if you support antishipping you support adultism too because they’re part and parcel.

I do believe in a standpoint epistemology, where one predicts that a marginalized group is on average much more likely to have correct opinions about issues pertaining to their oppression and blind spots generated among oppressor classes through that oppression, because of the disproportionate pressures and incentives they experience to understand more, or else they suffer more. However, this does not make me a relativist; it does not mean that I repeat “listen to and uncritically agree with whatever marginalized group X says about Y, because reality is subjective and if someone believes it they automatically can be right.” I still believe that there is objective truth, and while I try to find wherever possible where they may be blind spots in my perspective, my goal, ultimately, is still to rely on methods of evidence and logical inference. I don’t go about this in a way anywhere near how the average normie does, and they wouldn’t like my methods either. But still—I recognize, yes, that marginalized people are not monoliths, and we are not going to all agree on everything; at some point, even the privileged will have to look on and deliberate and choose what they think is true. And, sometimes, there’s a reason why one perspective is more rare on the surface (suppressed? claimed to be impossible? threatened?) than another.

Fanti communities are abusive. Fantis are abusive. I still have a lot of trauma from how individuals and groups have treated me, especially online. It was cruel. It was fucking unfair. I don’t think ritual harassment, bigotry, trying to cut someone off from resources, abuse apologia, and enforcement of authoritarian norms are somehow youth liberationist. I don’t think silencing minors or making them afraid to exist in spaces because of harmless beliefs or fictional interests is youth liberation.

This is also how many conservatives have treated fictional depictions of violence. (I can attest to that from personal experience too; that was also incredibly traumatic.) Do we have to censor GTA before we advocate against murder and torture and assault?

It feels very distressing being told that I can’t possibly support views that are important to me and my freedom of expression and in helping resolve the trauma and violence many people I care about experienced without somehow secretly or inadvertently undermining myself and other causes I care about. This paradigm keeps people trapped in toxic communities, feeling like they are being forced to choose either one or the other, which makes it easy for abusers on both sides to exploit us and then moralize against us. It’s suffocating and cruel.

I don’t just disagree with minor fantis when I encounter them. I feel triggered, afraid, threatened/in danger. I remember a whole slew of awful past incidents, and a long time feeling a lot of confusion, feeling gaslit, feeling like my whole self and existence are wrong. I anticipate hostility and possible violence toward me and people I care about. I feel angry, because I remember what people like them did to people I care about (and to me), and tried to do. I feel even more angry that people will run apologia for them and try to gaslight the rest of us into thinking there’s no problem, everything’s fine, shut up and get in line or else you’re next.

Recently, fantis effectively killed a proship CSA survivor for drawing cope art on a private account after a years-long harassment campaign. Do you think your friends would defend this? Do you think they would agree, that this is protecting children?

But this is only my perspective. I know that fantis will always have the moral and discursive advantage over me and that it would be much easier for someone to accuse me of being adultist/corrupting through this, or tokenizing myself/having internalized adultism/being predatory/a dozen other things I’ve been accused of other the years to discredit and invalidate my words which I do, in fact, sometimes worry over, as I argue with myself in my head, as I internalize gaslighting and doubt myself and wonder if I really am wrong and should just abandon trying to carve out a space for myself, to exist as myself and with dignity. It would be easier to be mad at me and think I have insidious or misguided motives or am trying to guilt-trip.

I wouldn’t even really blame you. It’s always been easier for me to blame myself.

(Except then I look around and see all the people, minors, CSA survivors, extremely traumatized and fucked-up people who’ve been badly hurt who feel doubt too who really need this activism and it doesn’t seem so hard then, does it? Cruelty is cruelty. Abuse is abuse. Trauma is trauma. Bigots can fuck right off.)

[atopvisenyashill]

To be fair Daenerys does not ever say dragons plant no trees in the books. Twice she says she wants to plant trees and she has a hallucination of Jorah telling her dragons plant no trees. That said we missed out on a lot of good sass and passion and spark that’s present in book Daenerys. Emilia seems like she’s always holding something back. I don’t think she ever feels like a teenager. Which is fair because she was like 24 while filming season 1. I feel the same way about Kit like that is a grown man right from season 1. He was also like 24 and it’s true that some mid-20s can pull off teenagers (I’m one of them; I’m newly 26 and still get mistaken for being under 18), I don’t think Kit, Alfie, Emilia, or Richard can. Not just based on how they look either they all have a maturity to them. Alfie less so, he does impulsive teen pretty well and his crazed rant culminating in him getting whacked on the head by his own men is one of my favorite additions to the shows.

The biggest crime wrt age is honestly the fact that Daemon and Viserys are like 24 and 26 in the books being played by men in their 40s and 50s. I was 24 while watching hotd season 1 and the idea that Matt Smith was of age with me had me in fits

Oh yeah but that's part of hte problem, like I said, that Dany is a very introspective character. They tried to kind of turn Theon's thoughts into dialogue by having Sansa say his "If I die let me die as myself" line, so it can be done and I think considering how much that line, and others like it, echo in her head, it's important to include them. I mean, her whole vision sequence when she's losing Rhaego, the way she sees Rhaegar's face and hears "the last the last" in her head, all of that should have been translated onto the screen in some aspect too. Because yeah, Dany is witty, and funny, and snarky, and thinks through her even thought a hundred times over, but it's mostly in her head, and they don't even really try to adapt that into her dialogue which is annoying because it cuts out half her character.

And yeah, the only like "adults playing teens" that actually did seem like a teen was Jack Gleeson (I believe he was 19 when they started filming), everyone else looked absolutely grown despite playing like 18-19 year olds who just Do Not Look Like Adults yet. I think Richard and Emilia were kinda the worst when it came to that - Richard just doesn't look like a fucking 19 year old in the slightest and it makes Robb look just soooo fucking stupid in season 2 and season 3, especially when he refuses to forgive Catelyn despite Robb forgiving Catelyn in the books for releasing Jaime.

And yeah, HOTD is just so unserious about all the ages it drives me crazy. Ewan does not look like a teenager to me. Ryan and Fabien just don't age at all in like fifteen years even though like, they definitely should have. I've seen the point raised and I think it's a great point, that a lot of people would have received Alicent and Viserys much less negatively if Paddy looked as young and fit and handsome as he actually was when he was in his 30s like Viserys is and that's honestly just factually true because look at the reception to the show version of Dany and Drogo despite them making Drogo's rape of Dany like waaaay more obvious. And I'm not saying it's inherently a bad thing that they were trying to really emphasize the age gap here especially considering how many people still don't get that Alicent was a victim of spousal rape but I also think it plays into this idea that like, an abuser always looks like an abuser, is always some dirty old man, and not like, a handsome healthy 30 year old who prefers to fuck 16 year olds because 16 year old girls don't argue back the way 30 year old women do.

[kit-middleton]

I just watched Teen Wolf 3.08 and I loved the way it used the unreliable narrator trope.

My random thoughts:

The casting for babyDerek and babyPeter doesn’t work. I couldn’t remember why I already loved Paige, then realized she played Ian Tracey’s daughter on Supernatural. Small world.

I loved babyDerek having the same (reasonable) reaction any adult watching this show has had: someone should really call security or report this older teen/young man who keeps hanging around the high school looking sketchy as hell in his leather jacket.

Oh good, Gerard has a Lucille.

Love how we’re pretending the adults are way younger by having the actors shave. That appears to be the only change made to their appearance.

I was puzzled by Peter using the exact line Stiles used on Lydia the previous season, then remembered he was in her head at the time, so: well done writers! (Or maybe it was a slogan from a Reese’s ad? I dunno.)

I barely had time to mentally respond to Stiles’ “how do you know that?” by “ew, he was watching the children have sex” before it cut to… babyPeter watching the children make out. He’s such a perv.

What was Peter’s plan, exactly? Maybe I’m too used to him only doing things that benefit him in some way to imagine there was ever a time when he was different, but… suggesting Derek get some rando, violent werewolf non-consensually turn his girlfriend? That seems like a no-win situation. (Maybe he learned his lesson and that’s why he asked for Stiles’ consent in season 1 then didn’t do it when Stiles said no?)

I have to say that’s a lot of rape-y tropes for one teen show. Yikes.

How did Chris grow up with those fucking psychos and become the man we’ve got to know? I judged him for violently pulling Scott from the car window and threatening to kill him, but from what I’ve seen in this episode that was gentle by comparison. He’s a kitten compared to those people. (Kit the kitten. Sorry.)

I love, love, love how my boy Stiles saw right through Peter’s edited version of the story.

Scott!!! It took only 3.5 seasons but he finally did something that impressed me. He saw through Colonel Tigh’s lies *and* threatened to kill him. Now if only he followed through…

That was fun.

Btw I get the Peter/Stiles shippers, but when do we get Peter/Chris scenes? (Except for the movie. And the homoerotic impaling. I saw those gif sets.) Those have way too many shippers for the fact I don’t think they’ve met yet.

I love Peter. Even (especially) when he’s being creepy and/or manipulative.

[jitterbugjive]

A lot of the really shitty things I’ve said in the past were from me mirroring my previous groomer. This was a person who made me think it was cool to rant about edgy opinions, and who normalized the idea of RP’d and illustrated CP (Actually a few adults normalized it for me but the other adults didn’t know I was underage) I very much shy away from it now, it just makes me super uncomfortable now as it should. He gave me the mindset that even the worst people can and should be helped by the right people and should be pitied and given a second chance. I was taught to look down on others, to slut shame, to fall into the clutches of rape culture, to judge people harshly even if they were kids. He skewed my view of suicidal ideation because of the constant threats of suicide any time he’d get even a little bit stressed or not get what he wanted. This was someone who was incredibly toxic and abusive and left me with a lot of trauma, but also someone who I wrapped my whole personality around for years since I was a young teen because I idolized him and wanted to impress him because it felt good to be praised and told how smart and independent I was. He gave me an inflated ego while at the same time giving me horrible low self esteem and insecurities. This is all stuff I’m trying to come to terms with, stuff I’ve been learning and unlearning, and I can only really figure out a bit at a time. It’s been hard finding my own voice and my own opinions again.