#bodily autonomy is the basic human right

[scottguy]

Republican men want to control women.

Republicans don't care who ELSE lives or dies as long as it's not them.

Republicans ARE the American Taliban!

😡🤬

[neuroticboyfriend]

it's my body, my choice, til the bitter end. nothing can ever make it okay to take away my basic rights. i do not deserve to be marginalized. no one does.

[martyrbat]

so many of you talk about the cruel adults in your childhood that negatively effected you and caused lifelong insecurity yet you're still perfectly fine with being that mean stranger to any kid that has the misfortune of existing around you and thats just really gross !!!

[scottguy]

If women got in to power and passed laws banning Viagra, men would instantly start whining about "the right to control own body!" and "the state making private medical decisions for me!" 🙄

And no one would even be dying from blood loss or infection in those situations or having the crushing responsibility of raising a child forced upon them.

[elliehopaunt]

It is my fervent hope that the Texas State Supreme Court all choke on a syphillitic dick.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-attorney-general-petitions-state-223953249.html

The Texas Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a pregnant woman from obtaining an emergency abortion in a ruling issued late Friday.

The court froze a lower court’s ruling that would have allowed Kate Cox, who sued the state seeking a court-ordered abortion, to obtain the procedure. “Without regard to the merits, the Court administratively stays the district court’s December 7, 2023 order,” the order states.

The court noted the case would remain pending before them but did not include any timeline on when a full ruling might be issued. Cox is 20 weeks pregnant. Her unborn baby was diagnosed with a fatal genetic condition and she says complications in her pregnancy are putting her health at risk.

[queeraliensposts]

Reddit "leftists" when in order to keep the man who wants to NUKE palestine, and take away everyone's rights out of office they have to set aside their moral superiority and vote for the woman who supports a police state and sends weapons to isreal

[neversetyoufree]

Looking back, I wonder how much of Vanitas's choice in this scene is tied to the fact that he was given a choice in the first place.

So much of Vanitas's character is centered around the theme of self-determination (and the lack thereof). He is absolutely deprived of any control over his body and/or destiny at many of the key points in his life, and nowadays he's always desperately grasping at what few shards of self-determination he does have. This is why he freaks out when Roland talks about him being "under the vampires' power" in mémoire 15. It's why he's hung up on the idea of freedom as isolation from others' influence. It's why his main response to being triggered is to do something crazy and cause a scene; it puts him in control of the situation.

All that to say, when Luna destroys Moreau's lab and agrees to take Misha away, Vanitas must be desperate to feel some form of in-control, but I do not think he expects to be given any choice in what happens to him next. He's been conditioned not to expect that despite how much he wants it.

Vanitas certainly doesn't have much agency in how he lives his life as a child, as no kid gets to pick their parents or circumstances, and Vani has it especially rough with the death of his mother hanging over his head. Then his father dies protecting him, and he dies in a situation in which Vanitas is utterly powerless. Horror erupts into his life out of nowhere, and his dad throws himself in front of some fangs, and there's nothing Vanitas can do but watch it happen.

Next there's Vanitas's brief time training as a chasseur, which is one part of his history we know little about, so it's hard for me to say how free his choice was. He may have been pressured into joining, as we know the Chassuers aren't above pushy/manipulative recruitment of children (Astolfo), but I could also see his choice to hunt vampires made as a trauma response to the powerlessness of the vampire attack he survived. "I was powerless, so I'll claim the power to enact violence and make sure they can't hurt me or others again."

Then Vanitas is abducted by Doctor Moreau, which strips him of his agency just about as awfully as anything possibly could.

Vanitas the test subject has no bodily autonomy. He is poked and prodded and experimented on, because his body is an object of science to Moreau, not the vessel of a person with rights or self-determination. His only big active choices during his captivity are the choice to not run away for fear of somebody else suffering and the choice to volunteer in Mikhail's place. The only choices he can make are the choices to stay and throw himself even deeper into his own violation. Even his relationship with Misha is something that just kind of Happens to him. The kid is a force of nature that Moreau dumps on him without his say.

(This isn't Mikhail's fault, as Misha is just a child that wants affection, but having a needy, vulnerable little brother figure suddenly dropped on him in the midst of all that horror couldn't have made Vanitas feel less out of control).

Then Vanitas's torment by Moreau hits its climax, and Vanitas is told that not only has his body been violated by way of pain and torture—even his basic humanity has been and will be stripped from him. He now feels the disgust of having the blood of something he hates inside of him without his consent. And he's about to be killed, turned into a mindless husk of a "living key" instead of a person.

And that's when Luna shows up. This mysterious, incredibly powerful being appears and wreaks havoc on Moreau's lab like an avenging angel, and it agrees to Mikhail's request to take "us" along with it. Everything in Vanitas's life so far has taught him that he is powerless in the face of others' great power. Horrible shit just keeps happening to him forever, and this monstrous person sounds like they've just agreed to carry him off on Mikhail's request without a word of input from him. Of course he doesn't expect to be given a choice.

But he is.

Luna scoops up Mikhail, then they turn to Vanitas and ask if he would like to come along with them as well. After months or years of absolutely all of his autonomy and power being stripped away from him, the most powerful being Vanitas has ever encountered stops and gives him a choice about what he'd like to do next. They give him the option to go off on his own and decide his own fate rather than go along with them. And that's why Vanitas doesn't run away.

These are the images that flash through Vanitas's head right before he gets up and runs to Luna:

These moments are what inform Vanitas's choice. The memories of his father's death and Moreau's final experiment on him—his two most awful moments of abject helplessness.

When Vanitas runs to Luna and accepts their offer, these moments are what he's running from. He's fleeing from his inability to do anything or control his fate. He's running from a life of stolen agency. He's running toward the one adult who actually stopped and gave him a choice about what he'd like to do next.

Vanitas chooses Luna because they, despite having the power to kill or subdue him, give him the freedom to choose to accompany them in the first place. He's drawn to them not for protection, but as an escape to a life where he gets to keep making choices and grasp some agency.

Luna is the savior that gives Vanitas his freedom and autonomy back after it's stolen by Moreau. That's why it's so tragic that Vanitas carries their Mark in the present day. It's undeniable proof that, in their right mind or not, some version of Luna violated the fundamental trust and gift of autonomy that brought Vanitas into their family in the first place.

Luna's bite, both the physical violation and the transformation into inhumanity that it brings, is yet another way that Vanitas is stripped of all control of his body and fate.

[a-star-that-burns-brightly]

[ content warning: discussion of in-canon sexual abuse ] Maybe it’s just because I’m not too active in the ALNST fandom and mostly observe from afar, but I think this fandom brushed aside way too quickly the fact that Till was sexually assaulted. I have never seen anyone talk in depth about like, what that actually means in terms of his arc and the storytelling of his character. Which I find deeply, deeply upsetting because holy fucking shit.

This man right here has been told, basically his entire life, that not only is he himself not worthy of being treated as a human, but that his body is not his body, but a piece of property that can be owned. And whoever owns his property can use it for whatever, and however they wish. Now, dehumanization is nothing new or unique in this world, obviously. The very concept of Pet Humans is dehumanizing by nature, leaving all six of our main characters as victims to it, even those who are more well-off like Mizi. But Till is a specially fucked up case almost distinctly unlike the rest, because he is actually treated like a fucking dog.

(x) Ivan: If you keep rebelling like that, they won’t ever remove your collar you know? Till: This annoying bastard… — Ivan: I told you so, didn’t I? You didn’t listen? Till: This annoying bastard... (translation courtesy of @leiikos on youtube)

(x)

An unruly animal who needs to be leashed up and put in it’s place. Animals, as is common knowledge, are not on the same level as a human being. But they are ordained to follow the commands of those above them. And if someone (thing) isn’t doing as it is told…

It deserves to be taught better. But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is the mindset that has followed Till his entire life by the ones who were supposed to take care of him. He is not human, even less human than the existing inhuman. He is a pet, even more so than the other pets, an animal. A thing. Property. Something to own. And the best thing about owning something?

You gain the ability to do whatever you want to it. Till’s body was not his from the start. It was used as something to toy around with, experiment with, to train and train and train, presumably for his whole life. His body, his skin, his flesh and bone and blood, it was all nothing more than a plaything. So what if he screams? Just ignore it. Or don’t. If this competition has taught us anything, voices have the most value of all. On top of it being reinforced that Till is not deserving of humanity, he is also not deserving of his bodily autonomy. People are free to do whatever they want with his body because it’s not his body, it’s theirs. And that brings us, finally, to the scene itself

He can’t sing her song, he refuses to. This isn’t the first time he’s refused to do something, far from it actually. What was once an innocent puppy with dilated hope in his eyes has grown into an angry, disobedient mutt. And we know what happens to an animal that refuses to do what they’re told. But there’s something interesting about dogs, or rather about the ones they descended from, the wolf: When the circumstances call for it, they will bite the hand that’s supposed to feed them.

And here is where I intrude to remind you that this is the only time we see anyone physically fighting back against the aliens in the confines of Alien Stage. We see Hyuna and Mizi fucking up aliens in All In, but that was after they had escaped from the cage. And you could make a case for Mizi trying to escape the grasp of the guards that grabbed her in Ruler of My Heart, but from what we saw she didn’t actually lay a hand on them and more so just tried to force herself out of their grasp. though if you disagree with me on that that's fine Here though? Till has this bitch’s face grabbed into his palm with a bottle in hand ready to smash it directly in between it’s eyes. I consider this to be the first act of physical violence shown against the aliens within the uncomfortably tight enclosure. And it’s triggered not because of anything personally done to Till, which on its own could probably fill a list that reaches the ground. But because of the prospect of Mizi being dead. Till knows that this place is shit, that his life is shit. Said so directly on his profile.

Dislikes: Everyone, including Guardian Urak (translation courtesy of @kh47uo on twitter)

But he stays regardless because Mizi is there. If Mizi is dead, Till has absolutely nothing to lose…Right?

I can almost imagine him thinking: There’s nothing you can put me through that’s worse than every other way you’ve hurt me. …But there was. Oh there was.

A final, disgusting message to the pet to put him back in his place. Back on his leash. Making sure he will never forget where he stands for the rest of his days.

And that is really what the sexual assault of Till represents to me. It is a cruel reminder to Till that fighting back is impossible, having hope, being free, it might as well be a fool's fantasy. He will always be less-than-human, less than anything. His body will always be the property of the ones that were supposed to protect him, claimed, and then used used used until it’s worn out and dead.

And the aliens chose to exemplify that fact in the most direct way they possibly could.

So what if he screams? Just ignore it. Or don’t. If this competition has taught us anything, screams have the most value of all

[scottguy]

Why should others be allowed to control YOUR body? If anything is completely your own, it's your body.

Pro-choice is about so many things other than abortion that you should keep your nose out of.

[radfemsiren]

🤍A basic rundown of my beliefs as a radical feminist 🤍

(I don’t represent every radical feminist, but these are usually the standard opinions you’ll find of many radfems. Hate or disagree with them, that’s fine! But know the truth of who I am and what I stand for beforehand)

- there are 2 sexes, the male sex is oppressing the female sex

- femicide, rape, child sex abuse, hijab laws, female genital mutilation, domestic labor, trafficking, war crimes, revenge porn, prostitution… women and girls around the world are being exploited, tortured, and killed because of this oppression, and it must end.

- female oppression is sex based oppression, meaning a woman can’t just identify out of her oppression (for example hijab laws)

- sex is biological and an immutable truth, gender is a social construct

- gender should be done away with because gender roles are male supremacist and result in women and girls being stereotyped, dehumanized, barred from education, safety, bodily autonomy, etc.

- defining women with anything other than biology is misogynistic and relies on stereotypes

- the biological differences between men and women must be acknowledged in order to effectively end patriarchal oppression

- radical feminism is getting to the root of female oppression (radical -> root)

- misandry is not real and is just an extension of misogyny (for example, “men are told not to cry!” Yes because women are seen as inferior and any trait associated with us is seen as degrading/emasculating for men. This is why there is no female equivalent to emasculation.)

- all current religions are patriarchal and made by men to exploit and control women

- access to abortion is a human right and should never be threatened, women are the creators of life and deserve to gatekeep it, as well as exercise full autonomy over our own bodies

- Using sexist gender roles to define yourself is giving these misogynistic stereotypes power (wearing makeup or dresses doesn’t make anyone less or more of a woman, this is misogyny)

- the beauty industry is patriarchal and exploits women, our bodies and our money

- sex work is not work, it’s always exploitation (consent can not be bought)

- the porn industry is patriarchal and relies on trafficking, coercion, and rape to function. It also conditions its watchers to be aroused by violence against women, and results in more real life consequences for women and girls

- women’s spaces and institutions must be protected. Women’s safety is more important than catering to male feelings

- marriage is a patriarchal institution made to exploit the domestic labor of women for her entire life

- BDSM/kink are patriarchal and only center the pleasure and well being of men.

- hookup culture is patriarchal and the risk to reward is not worth it for women to engage in it

- gender ideology is patriarchal and is a direct hindrance to female liberation (we can’t define ourselves or our oppressors, we can’t create spaces away from our oppressors, we can’t create laws and policy based on these definitions, people who are gender non conforming are pressured to alter their bodies to conform to a rigid standard and become lifelong medical patients, etc)

- choice feminism and liberal feminism caters to conforming to patriarchal standards and institutions, and refuses to examine why women make choices under patriarchy

- women of color face oppression on the axis of our sex and race, men of color only face oppression on the axis of their race

- non white patriarchal institutions must be criticized: a mullah is just as dangerous to the liberation of women as a pastor is

- women should decenter the men in their lives just as men have done with women. That means prioritizing us! Engaging in women’s media, art, stories, fostering female communities and support networks, uplifting and empowering their sisters around the world

- being a radical feminist means consistently taking radical action, big or small, we all can do it! Go support a female artist, go donate menstrual products to a shelter, go tell off a man when you see him making a woman uncomfortable. We all can make a difference!

…My feminism focuses on criticism of Islam and middle eastern patriarchy, but there are radfems with many focuses/passions… some in eco feminism, some on uplifting Romani women, black women, neurodivergent women, women with disabilities, prostituted women… some are passionate about women’s sports, women’s art, women’s writing, women’s history, lesbian and bisexual women’s stories… everyone has their passion on here, so before you come to attack, just check out my blog and click around at the different profiles on this corner of the internet…. maybe we might not be the terrible witches you thought us to be. Or maybe we are, but witches are awesome so who cares lol

[nimiana]

Orin the Red, importance of burial and bodily autonomy or lack thereof

Orin doesn't leave a body behind. Her remains are similar to her armor - a bloody mess that doesn't even resemble a person. It's not even marked as Orin. You want to cast speak with the dead on her? Too bad.

Mutilation of a corpse and lack of proper burial is one of the biggest fears that's been haunting humanity and, as I believe, further reinforces the overall theme of Orin's lack of personhood. Since I have a degree in classics and I'm slightly insane about the similarities between House of Atreus and Bhaalfamily, let's dig into the topic from the perspective of Greek texts.

Starting with the Iliad. Thorough the story, despite gory and very detailed description of each death, battles end with a truce allowing both sides to gather their dead and give them a proper burial:

VII 380-7, tr. R. Fagles.

Hector's dying wish is for his body to be return to his family:

which Achilles immediately refuses - thus breaking the custom:

Op. cit. XXII 398-417.

See Andromache's lament at the sight of Achilles' mutilating Hector's corpse:

Op. cit. XXII 597-605.

Her speech paints a grim picture of rot, pointing to physical destruction of Hector's body and contrasting it with care and love he should be treated with.

Achilles' actions finally bring down divine intervention as Apollo urges other gods to stop his madness:

Op. cit. XXIV 39-51.

Achilles is likened to a lion - his lack of respect for burial rites is inhuman. Compassion (ἔλεος) and respect (αἰδώς) are a meter of one's humanity. What to we get from it? One of earliest known literary works underlines that even in the midst of brutal war, act of proper burial is sacred, regardless of the enmity between men. Deliberate mutialtion of corpse and denial of one's burial is horrific and impious. To quote Emily Vermeule:

Moving on to classical times. Before we go to Antigone, let's make a short stop for the Oresteia cycle. Twice is mentioned that Klytemnestra not only murdered Agamemnon, but also mutilated his corpse:

Sophokles, Elektra, 439-447, tr. H. Kitto.

Aeschylus, Libation Bearers, 439-443,. tr. A. Brown

Verb μασχαλίζειν is used in both instances, and, as Francis Dunn points out, evidence suggests that it adapts ritualistic language more fit to animal sacrifice to describe disfiguration of a corpse with intention of either shame towards the deceased and their family. Again we see that the idea of mutilation of a corpse is seen as something extreme and wrong, that should stir the audience with anger.

Now, Antigone (and Seven Agains Thebes). The story of brothers killing each other, resulting in one of them being denied the right to burial. Without getting into the debate of whethere state can dictate laws and natural versus cultural orders of things, let's see how the issue of leaving corpse unburied is described.

Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes, 1294-1311, tr. H. Bacon

Op. cit. 1324-37

Op. cit. 1368-74

Firstly, lack of burial is an extension of punishment and secondly, grieving one's nearest kin is an universal, basic feeling.

Sophokles, Antigone, 961-79, tr. R. Gibbons, C. Segal

Antigone's speech points out one more important thing: burial must be carried out by one's nearest kin (to which I will come back later). She (and her sister) are the last remaining members of their family and the responsibility falls on them.

The last example is, chronologically speaking, the youngest, but nonetheless striking. In one of his partially surviving comedies (yeah, comedies), The Shield, Menander describes in detail a gory afermath of a battle from the perspective of a survivor who lost his master in a turmoil. As a result, a family is bereaved of an heir and left without his body to bury.

Tr. S. Ireland.

The play itself was written and staged during the period the Wars of the Diadochi. Menander described a grim scene - mass grave, mutilated bodies, lack of proper, individual burial - which was a well known reality for his audience and a nightmare that haunt them. The story ends with the young master alive and returned to his family, giving the viewers a sense of closure they couldn't have in reality.

Leaving the fiction behind, public funerals and annually paid honors to the deceased were also important for shaping collective memory. Families of men killed in combat had a chance to cherish memories of them and, in case of young children, to learn about their fathers.

Ever since the Homeric epics, the theme of immortality gained through collective memory is prevelant. Memory is shaped during funerary rites and cult surrounding the burial site, for which physical remains are necessary. As Gregory Nagy concludes:

And, lastly, despite funrary games being public and serving the purpose of a state, funeral itself was a family business and duty (hence the disruptions in funerary practice in the house of Atreus served to show how badly the family was messed up).

What does it mean for Orin?

Orin cannot be buried. As a result, she cannot be properly mourned and remembered. She is bereaved of this incredibly basic, primal right that no one should be denied.

If she can't be remembered, did she even exist? Was she a person?

Well, the game is inclined towards taking it from her.

Helena and Orin - mother and daughter, sister and sister - are trapped in a cycle of abuse even in death. Orin preserves Helena's body in her chambers and calls herself Helena's daughter. Where Orin's remains are gored to nothing, Helena's remains are forever embalmed in a mockery of burial.

Neither Durge, nor Orin (nor Helena!), are allowed to have a sense of personhood apart from being their father's vessels.

As someone with a bad enough relationship with my father, I am ar marvel at how the writers managed to show how abused children still yearn for their parents. It's not their affection.

The last words Orin hears before she is turned into slayer are taking her personhood away.

Off with her family tree, off with love her felt for Sarevok and any trace of affection she had for Helena, any last remaining emotion she felt about herself.

No more Orin. The fact that no body remains of her - not Orin, but Orin's Gore Pile - is the only possible consequence.

You cannot mourn murder and there's no Orin to mourn. As we've seen from cited above classical sources, mourning one's family is not only one's responsibility, it is the most basic, primal human need. How can you remember someone without burying them, without performing funerary rites from them? Every familial bond is destroyed here, every rite crooked. No one here can move on with their grief. Before Orin was murder, she was Orin, but how can anyone remember her now, with no proof that she even existed?

The last thing I have on my mind is this quote from Jean Anouilh's Antigone (tr. L. Galantiere):

She was my sister.

[transmutationisms]

Hi there! 👋 so there's a lot of discourse surrounding the "mature brain" pop science (eg., the brain doesn't "mature" until 25 and therefore we should move the age of consent, bodily autonomy, etc.. to 26). I have found this being peddled by a lot of kids and young adults. Why, in your opinion, are people so quick to self-infantilize (I really don't want to use that word but I couldn't think of anything better) and to take their rights away? Like it's really weird, I would think they'd want more rights, not less.

you could ask the same question about lots of groups: psychiatrically pathologised people advocating for increased medico-legal control over their own lives, for example—but i think it comes down to a few things:

meaningful coalition-building is often hindered by factors like intra-group racism, transphobia, &c ("there should be more control over Those People, but not me, i'm one of the good ones")

discursive constructions that position children's safety/protection and autonomy/rights as mutually exclusive, such that demands for political liberation are interpreted instead as calls for the group in question to be exposed to total social and economic violence ("so you think kids should be left to fend for themselves on the streets?")

the general disenfranchisement and isolation of kids and teens, which also makes coalition-building extremely difficult

the immanently enforced gap between working scientists and the lay public, which allows certain scientific discourses promulgated by public-facing journalists, ted-talkers, &c to maintain political legitimacy regardless of the strength of any empirical evidence for or against them

and relatedly the problem of such discourses having been already formulated by human beings with certain ideological and theoretical commitments and class interests, such that an assertion like "people are basically brain-children who should have my will imposed upon them until the age of 25" gets a lot more legs than "brains probably change throughout a person's entire life and maturity in this sense is largely socially constructed"

[scottguy]

Often, after the birth control failed or a rape. How cruel to say "no."

U.S. Democratic Socialists

[linkspooky]

Spinner ending kind of confirmed for me that even if Horikoshi does bring back Shigaraki/Tenko, it won't be so he can heal the League, and they can reform together. I get the sense that we are even supposed to feel like all of the villains *deserved* their fates, that it isn't something they deserve saving *from*. It's like he couldn't decide between having them be evil + getting punished for it and having them be sympathetic to an extend + humanising them. I'm seriously trying my hardest to wrap my head around this, it feels so cruel??

I already talked about it in this post, but Obito's death is a much better example of how to "save the villain's heart" then what MHA is trying to sell us.

It's this excessive focus on whether or not the league's crimes are forgivable that's really the problem, because it comes down to the implication that once the league has crossed a certain line into unforgivable territory they're "no longer human" and therefore not deserving of human empathy for what they've suffered.

The main characters constantly use that line "I can't forgive them" so they don't have to think about the league as human beings who have suffered greatly.

What does it matter if they're forgivable or not? My Hero Academia is not a work that analyzes moral philosophy. I'm not reading Crime and Punishment here.

The theme they brought up is "Are heroes obligated to save the villains too, even if those villains have done unforgivable things."

I've stated this before but whether their crimes are forgivable or not is irrelevant to that question, because it's about the heroes obligation to save everyone not pick and choose who to save. They are government servants who are supposed to use their quirk to stop villains and save lives, but at the start of the story heroes only focus on the brutally beating down villains part of the job. The central theme of the manga is that the greatest hero wins by saving, and saves by winning, therefore Deku must save even his enemies.

The worst part is that despite bringing up the topic of forgiveness, MHA basically has nothing to say about the issue of what should be forgiven, what shouldn't, and how justice should be applied in this situation. It is wildly inconsistent because the villains are all held to task, whereas characters like hawks are never held accountable, and Enji while put in a wheelchair suffers way less consequences than his son and victim Toya.

Since MHA has like nothing intelligent to say about accountability, redemption and what merits justice and what merits forgiveness it might as well have just swept everything the villains did under the rug and thrown them in prison because we would have gotten the same result regardless. The story never addresses anything it brings up or applies consequences to the heroes so why do villains need consequences too?

I'm reading another comic right now Gunnerkrigg court, which actually discusses these themes of morality, and whether victims should be saved even if they've harmed others in the past.

Zimmy is a character being used as a human battery for the court's (a shadowy organizations) plan to create a new world without the Ether, which is a chaotic force that warps reality. Omega is a character who is for this plan, because she is 1) a semi-omniscient being who sacrificed her own bodily autonomy in order to help the court by giving them predictions of the future that furthered it's plans.

(Therefore, she does have the understandable perspective of, Well I sacrificed myself for the greater good so why can't Zimmy?)

and 2) Zimmy is kind of a jerk, who has an incredibly dangerous ability that puts everyone around her in harm's way. Therefore if you're going to sacrifice someone for the greater good she makes sense.

Zimmy isn't a perfect victim. She constantly gaslights her girlfriend by telling her that everyone hates her except for her so she'll never leave. (A girlfriend who is rather selflessly devoted to I might add). She is like, a walking bomb ready to go off at any moment.

At the same time the story never minimizes Zimmy's suffering with the idea that she "deserves it" for being a bad victim. The main character is consistently advocating for her, which also SHOWS the main character's empathy rather than MHA's habit of continually INISTING upon Deku's empathy without ever showing it.

I don't think the author expects us to side with Omega, but it does entertain her argument so it's a two sided discussion. To cap this off I hope this demonstrates the difference between what I think is a thoughtful depiction of a bad victim and to what extent the main characters are responsible for saving them, and a completely thoughtless one and why one is more entertaining to read than the other.

[cripplecharacters]

Context:

I know the first question on your QNA says your general answer is “if you are talking about your own disability, you can talk about it however you please”, so for clarity: I am mentally disabled. I am not physically disabled. My story features characters with a range of different disabilities, many of which I do not have.

The story in question is a satire on the mental health industry and my personal experiences with ableism (especially about ableist societal pressures about needing to be “fixed”).

It follows the daily life of many characters who underwent a fictitious sci-fi “cure-all” treatment which was pushed onto mentally ill people who were considered “lost causes”. The “cure” is inherently flawed on a conceptual level, but also just doesn't work.

Here's what I'm worried about:

A lot of the featured characters wind up with disabling side effects from the “cure” (for example, two characters end up with acquired neurological disorders), or exacerbations of symptoms they had previously (some through adverse reactions physiologically to the "cure", some through the emotional trauma of the experience, etc).

I don’t want it to seem like the takeaway should be “eugenics is only bad because it makes people more disabled”, and I'm worried that might be an accidental implication here.

Do you have any advice on preventing that implication?

This isn't the whole plot, but I don't know how relevant the rest is the mention.

Hello,

Okay, so this is a matter of consent and the violation of it. Focus on that. That's an absolutely massive violation of bodily autonomy with no concern for the patient. In fact, this violates the Hippocratic Oath, which is the number one rule of science and medicine, to do no harm, but it's okay to just disregard that when the patient is disabled. That's what's messed up about this. Their bodily autonomy was violated and their bodies and minds were permanently modified without their consent in a way that caused major undue harm, and the government and doctors associations (or whoever can take away a license to practice) are okay with this because the victims of this crime are disabled people.

Focus on it that way. It's not about the resulting disability, it's about the fact that these people had their right to their bodies taken away from them because they're disabled, and they were denied basic human rights and humane medical treatment on the same basis. The resulting disability isn't really the problem, it's the fact that undue harm was done to them by medical professionals that's the problem.

You have a basic human rights issue, something that is violating the international agreement on basic human rights. That's the huge deal.

Mod Aaron

[comma-after-dearest]

Some of you may be wondering why I'm pro-life. It's quite simple.

Abortion is a conflict of rights issue: the woman's right to not be pregnant vs. the fetus' right to not be killed. Fetuses are biologically human from conception, and I think all innocent humans have a basic right to not be killed. Bodily autonomy is important, but it doesn't justify direct killing or violence, which is what abortion is.

If I'm right about this (and I have good reasons to think I am), then it's easy to see why I think it's the most important issue of our time, given that thousands of innocent humans are being killed every day in my country, the vast majority for no medical reason. And it's easy to see why I cannot support any candidate or party that supports it.

If you disagree with me, fine, but tell me why. I am more than happy to have a civil conversation about this. But please engage with my actual points in this post instead of with some strawman argument.