#and there's no reason why i can't do these things other than my own shitbrain leaving me too scared and depressed!

[pochapal]

need to get back to being the new me i built for myself before i got sick so badddddddd </3

[curetapwater]

I've been having this on my mind for a while. I've been looking at the moral OCD tag sometimes because it helps remind me that I'm not alone in my thoughts, but I've also seen an increasing amount of posts about the people in Gaza asking for donations. And idk.. it feels like sometimes it's phrased as if the people in these horrific situations are intentionally trying to upset people, when in reality they're just asking for help and are very desperate.

I personally struggle very very hard with guilt and morality spirals, not helped by the fact that I'm unemployed and therefore am not in a situation to be spending/donating money very often (thats why I've been trying to focus on other ways I can help like the clicks and streaming Hind's Hall on a constant loop). But that is my problem, NOT the fault of the people just asking for help. If you aren't in a position to help for financial/mental reasons, please please please remember to still be understanding, y'know? Scrolling past someone that you know you can't help is a bad feeling, I know. And it is also not your fault if you can't handle war imagery (I know that I personally struggle with irl photos of injury/blood/gore regardless of context, especially of children). But you cannot let those understandable feelings of guilt become resentment. They aren't trying to upset You Specifically, they're crying for help.

And like I said, I Get It. Last year, I kept getting this very graphic image of dead children on my dash and I couldn't sleep because my shitbrain took notice that I was in a comfy bed while they weren't as "you personally killed all those kids." Which is bullshit!! That thought didn't help anyone, it only made me lose sleep!!! So after that night, I took a step back and tried to work with my brain to try to help and spread awareness on a level that won't leave me frozen in bed (that's why, if you noticed, I tend to mostly reblog things like resources on education and how to help). That was my struggle to work out. Like it is so so important to recognize your own feelings without blaming the people you feel bad for. Y'know?

Basically.. I understand if you can't help, and if you feel guilty about that. But it's important to not lash out at the last people who need that right now. If you literally can't do Anything, that's still better than acting like the posters asking for help are malicious. You've gotta step back and keep yourself from implying that desperate people asking for help are in the same caliber of guilt-tripping as a US American tumblr user telling you that if you don't do X thing the world will end. Am I making sense.

[perasperaadpasta]

You people don't understand me and then triple down on it.

I never said Gaiman's victims would read, I meant victims in general, like me.

My issue was specifically with people (such as yourself) who say they will "remain neutral" until a verdict is issued.

As I tried to explain through 16 million replies, the percentage of sexual assault that is actually reported is miniscule. Of those, the percentage that is investigated is miniscule. Of those, the percentage that goes to trial is miniscule. Of those, the percentage of acquittals is immense.

Bias against women is baked into societal and institutional norms which affects this entire process.

In Common Law jury trials (which is the case in NZ, Australia and the UK, where a lot of these cases occurred), juror candidates in rape trials have to disclose (at risk of a mistrial) if they have themselves been a victim or have relatives who have, as that is considered undue bias. You realize how this excludes women in particular, from participating in the process of justice of crimes that disproportionally affect them. Jurors do not have to disclose, by the way, if they have relatives who have been accused of rape (I'm not gonna go into why jury of peers is an insane concept in itself).

Cops are documented to have a higher than average tendency to be domestic abusers themselves. Judges have been found to be rapists and this didn't cause their sexual assault verdicts to be automatically eligible for retrial.

Do you get the gist? Of why it's infuriating to hear "presumption of innocence!" and "I'll wait for the verdict", particularly in a case with multiple victims?

It's very likely there'll be no verdict. And if there is, it's very likely to be subject to these biases. The likelihood these women will be believed is astronomically small.

That's why you (and a million other people online) saying "there's presumption of innocence", "let's avoid insulting Neil Gaiman as a serial rapist yet" and "I'll remain neutral til the verdict" reads as not believing victims.

Gaiman's victims might not be reading, but I am, and I can't help imagining this being said of the men who raped me. It's not that people don't believe me, but presumption of innocence you know. It's not that they don't think he's guilty, but let's not call him a rapist yet. Let's wait for the verdict (not that it matters! they believe me, but just wanna wait for the verdict to say it, for some reason).

Like I'm sorry to yell at you, apparently, that this fucking sucks to hear and it is disencouraging.

Then you started saying it wasn't about the verdict at all, it was about the conclusion of your own research, and I said well, maybe you should have done that first, before commenting ALL THIS about it, and that it didn't change the fact you still emphasized the verdict outcome as a requirement for your support (if that's really not the case, why say it?).

That's all. That is the thing that's irking me with these posts, yours included but unfortunately far from exclusively.

I really, really hope this gets through this time 'cause I don't know how else to explain it.

I do understand, however, that you must have felt I was coming down on you personally for no reason. This is the reason, but if that was overwhelming and upsetting to you I still apologize.

And mind you, I did not come looking for this response and I never visited your blog, this showed up on my For You, probably because we interacted and it's on the Neil Gaiman tag.

And for the anon, not only did you not understand it, you reduced my point to absurdity just so you could have a witty quip on someone's inbox. Who are you to be saying tumblr shitbrain behavior of anybody else.

Typical Tumblr shitbrain behaviour; convincing themselves that screaming at random bloggers for daring to say “I don’t have enough information to form an opinion on this situation yet” is going to save sexual assault victims. Sorry you got yelled at by someone who spends too much time doomscrolling as if any of the women who came forward are going to read your blog specifically.

Exactly what I was trying to explain. What difference does it make for the victims that I, an anonymous person on the Internet, do the research in my area, then wait for the whole affair to be complete before exposing the opinion that I would have formed and which will have evolved, strength of the next information that will arise ? But apparently that just means that I don't believe the victims, that I necessarily think that Neil Gaiman is innocent, that my opinion will not change and that apparently I will never speak truthfully on the subject. 🙄