#i will forever be unlearning sexism

[tirfpikachu]

sometimes i feel like, in certain cases, "detrans woman" and "nonbinary woman" ain't too different. and could even be used simultaneously by the same person without much issue. after all, isn't processing internalized misogyny and escaping the gender roles box for womanhood also a way someone can at the same time not feel like a binary man, not feel like a binary woman, but not feel like a not-woman either? after unlearning all the bullshit male society taught us, it can be destabilizing and create distance between us and other women. we might no longer feel like a normie woman. we've been awakened. we're no longer a gender roled woman, rolled up in everything she was taught she needed to be or she would fail at womanhood. we're an unfailible woman, we can't get a bad grade in womanhood bc we don't care about gender grades. we know it's all bullshit. we took back the power patriarchal society had over us. in that sense, we're not willingly binary anymore. and i think, over time, it's only going to get harder and harder to find women who are happily into the gender roles, the gender box assigned to them.

people fucking hate that, ofc. especially male people, and doubly so cis/bio men. they hate that we're awakened women. they hate that we found feminism and sisterhood and go detrans or use nonbinary in addition to woman, bc we reconnect with our body type and our upbringing. and by they, i mean both sides btw. the patriarchy hates that we found our power, of course. non-feminists scoff at us.

and... mainstream trans activists hate that our journey got us here, and hate how we make dysphoria seem curable in unmedical ways and transness more complex than they like to think. we complicate things. they hate that they found power in changing themselves (whatever makes them feel at peace ofc), while we tried to as well, but in the process we found our power was within us all along. we found that just being neutrally sexed animals, just female humans, female animals, girls the way that one calls a cat a sweet girl, cat first girl second, human first girl second... our bodies, our gender category, don't define us. anymore, anyways. anyone who defines us by our womanhood is a bigot, and we scrubbed our brains free of all the shit patriarchal brainwashing left in us. and for us, personally, it was enough to free us. that's not the case for anymore. some folks need more than that. some folks need to modify themselves beyond recognition to feel at peace with themselves. but i do hope they know that deep down, they were always good beings all along. i hope they know that gender is bullshit and sex says nothing about anyone's worth, personality, goals, interests, etc. it says fuckall about any of that. i don't care if i get a male or female rabbit. a rabbit is a rabbit. if i feel affection for a new pet, our connection is what matters [*]. i would never assign someone gender roles based on their sex. but it's sadly done way too often by parents and male society. if you're trans, temporarily or forever, you gotta clean up all your internalized misogyny and sexism/gncphobia. find kinship with other female people, or male gnc people if you're male. just check off some boxes. clean everything up. deep-clean your mind and your heart first.

[*] insert tras here being like, "why can't you be like that about dating? you dirty close-minded terfy homo dyke? why can't you love beyond genitals? beyond just bodies?" and these days i laugh and laugh and laugh at that shit because wow they have zero clue!! they don't know the sense of peace at having my female/afab body against another female/afab body, at knowing we were born the same, at knowing we went thru the same growing up, at knowing we understand eachother so, so deeply without saying a word bc she is what i am, she is where i have been, and i have suffered as she has suffered, and we are a love born of the connection all female beings share, the connection of bio dick havers treating us as prey. not knowing we're more powerful than they could ever dream of. do bodies like ours not hold the godly powers of creation itself? are we not gods in the literal sense, born creators, who get to choose if a new life should be made? do we not hold the future in the palm of our hand? to the dismay of penised beings? and do me and my beloved not love eachother only the way two gods could love one another, knowing the struggle, knowing the power? is the patriarchy not fighting tooth and nail to control us, wrestle us into submission before their phallic altar? do they not know it's impossible, for everything in us would dry up at the sight? do they not know that we can rely on sisterhood to get us through fucking anything? do they not know we masculinized ourselves and found ourselves happily female anyway? do they not know that i'd love her with a beard and five eyes, but if she was reborn male we would not be the same people to begin with (tho ofc i like to think the bodyswapped versions of us would have a love story too, we would not be us anymore, not this timeline's love story, she would be a different version of her and i would miss our og love)? because what is anyone without memories, and aren't childhood memories, puberty memories, some of the experiences most affected by one's body type (under the patriarchy), some of the most developmentally significant memories of all? is female just genitalia and estrogen puberty to tras, to "hearts not parts" type folks?

is female just a meat suit and not also the life experiences linked to it, our upbringing, a rich female culture one is born into? trans women might be immigrants into this female culture if they pass post-transition, they might get the exact body, but they just don't know the culture the way born into it do. any transfem will admit being transfem is hard, it's hard to merge into female culture when they self-admittedly don't know much about it. anyone not having been born into this culture, not being fluent the way only a native resident of femaleness can be, will show signs of it even if it's been 50+ years. you can't just wipe someone's upbringing clean, your past always leaves traces, and a transfem wouldn't be able to bond with other female4female lesbians on basic female upbringing things... when those are the things that make being into other female ppl so attractive for many of us! we just get eachother. we understand without even saying anything. we understand female body issues. there's a warm sense of peace emanating from that knowledge in my heart, knowing me and my girlfriend were born the same. we went through so many of the same things, all the good and the bad sides of growing up female. and i find that attractive as hell, and it brings me immense joy in life. there's so many inside jokes a transfem just wouldn't get the way my gf can. and i unfortunately need to add, since people get defensive, that this isn't shaming the transfem for not having those experiences. i hope the transfem will come to terms with not being female too. she can be a woman in society, but she's not born this way, she's an immigrant into womanhood, and that's okay. she still needs to let lesbians who are only into people raised female enjoy our unique sexuality that she just can't understand. i can't understand the transfem4transfem experience either. so what? isn't lgbt or 2slgbtqia+ or whatever culture all about inclusion and diversity in sexuality and gender expression? what about those who are girls the way animals are girls? we hate gender roles but we're personally definining cis womanhood as being female animals, female humans? what's so twisted about that? what about female4female lesbians? transmasc4transmasc can exist, why not us? why make everything so stupidly complicated for no reason? why shame us for how we were born, for being into others like ourselves?

i pity them, honestly. watch them bring girldick and male upbringing experiences to female4female lesbians, watch as we'll all dry up like the dying succulents on our windowsills and sip drinks laughing at the naked male bodies before us because they're so unsexual to us homodykes. watch as we raise eyebrows at the male's lack of misogyny in her upbringing, her lack of expertise on female culture, and just... everything that's so fundamentally unappealing to us. we can be friends. we can be allies. thankfully though, sex and marriage isn't activism. you can't play woke in the sheets. if you do, that's honestly sad. love isn't political. heteros made it political, but love is just love. and the love between two female people is normal. boring at times, even. we're normies. and if mainstream tras can't see that, well, maybe they have issues to work through in therapy. idk.

if two dysphoric ppl working through really hard shit end up feeling at peace with being female animals, female humans, and loving one another, if that's threatening, if that's bigoted, if that's twisted, well...

we detrans chicks and homodykes will find our own place to hangout. and we'll be nice to your faces, of course, but behind doors we're having a blast with others like ourselves. people like us have done this for as long as humanity has been alive, anyways. we always go underground and make it work anyhow. radblr is proof of that. idc if i have to go door to door checking if any homodyke is there, or if i have to comb thru tra spaces to find cool detrans folks, i will find others like me. that's what the marginalized have always done.

we're like lizards. we'll just find a cooler rock to party under🦎✌️

[real-total-drama-takes]

The “Ezekiel was ignorant and sheltered and didn’t know any better!” Argument has been ran into the ground at this point and y’all should still hold him accountable lol

biases like that take fucking forever to undo and evas singular chokehold wouldn’t make him a raging feminist. given how annoying he is generally and considering he’s unwashed nobody would have the patience for him at all let alone to educate him so he’s probably not unlearing much more than “men are the superior gender”

I say this as someone who loves him and likes to write past the point where he has unlearned most of his overt sexism. (Emphasis on overt lol)

Preach canon amnesia and retconning all you want I do it all the time but once it bleeds into your canon interpretation then you have a problem and need to dip your toes into the source material again

-📺 (tv anon)

[1pcii]

SHADAHKNKAS saw u in the notes of some kuina posts and that made me realize that there is simply a bond with kuina and tashigi fans, who may even often be the same fan, because AOUGHHH KUINA I CARE HIM SO MUCH episode 19 literally changed me forever. swords + gender struggles are all you need to hook me on a character sometimes Maybe. the whole greatest swordsman promise... sob. also. something about zoro promising his name will reach the heavens and trans kuina. which made me think.. what if kuina and The trans fear of dying then having your deadname on your tombstone that you can't do anything about because you're dead. kuina dying before they even get to figure everything out and all of a sudden he's just known as kuina forever, and then zoro making a name for himself in kuina's honor or something idk (i like zoro's backstory) (KUINA )

THERE ISS. people who theorise that they are secretly related or the same person or direct parallels are so close to getting it but don't imo (no shade to those theories tho, I just personally find them narratively unsatisfying).

like they are parallels in that kuina is symbolic of the sexism people suffer and tashigi is an adult woman who has come out the other end sword swinging but ultimately so unsure of herself as a result. also the (trans)genderisms, we are all hand in hand 🤝.

MAN KUINAS STORY BROKE ME DOWN ON A BASE LEVEL AND REWIRED NY BRAIN. I had to take a break from reading just to let it soak in it's so good, a swordsmans promise indeed, that scene was beautiful, I love zoro the world's first a accidental feminist <3. zoro carrying on her dream with his will never not have me in hysterics.

FUCK YEA THATS SUCH A GOOD IDEA. I have soo many thoughts about baby!zoro and kuina and trangenderism. egg kuina cis zoro, egg kuina STEALTH TRANS ZORO ABSVDJFBKSHDKDN <333.

little baby zoro looking at his grave with the uncontrollable urge to carve out those letters. to carry and rearrange them and make sure they get back to him in the afterlife spelling 'worlds greatest swordsman'.

trans kuina makes me so emotional because ultimately I don't know if they were canonically trans but it's my FAVOURITE 'what if' for them. they never really got to be anyone outside the dojo masters daughter. the failure of a heir and the girl who beat zoro 2001 times. who would they have been if they got to grow up? come to terms with themselves and unlearned all that heavy, painful biases pushed onto them? as a transmasc who's studying into a (cis)male dominated field myself ik, the feelings of 'betrayal' and 'proving misogynists right' and imposter syndrome and inadequacy issues and perfectionism they might've gone through,,, sobbing my eyes out HE MEANS EVERYTHING TO MEE.

zoros backstory is genuinely one of my favourite parts of the manga idc how 'simple' it was it's still beautiful.

[marshmellowtea]

i didn't wanna derail the post i just reblogged but tbh i hate the "men who aren't trash don't care when you call men trash" shit for cis men too. i actually don't want my allies to constantly be beating themselves up over something they can't control like their literal identity. i think cis men are perfectly capable of being allies to women without having to performatively put down their entire gender for them. "men are trash" is a fucking copout anyway that ignores the fact that men are people who can absolutely make the choice to unlearn their sexism and be good to the women in their lives, they're not doomed to be misogynist monsters forever. frankly i heavily side eye any cis men who plays into the men are trash thing for that reason because idk if he considers himself an exception to that rule or if he thinks he is also trash and either way it just feels like another scapegoat for him to blame his misogyny on, either through the guise of "i'm not like those other men, i'm an ally!" or of "i'm sorry, i can't help it, men are just terrible". i don't want anything to do with it and men are trash sentiments will always and forever be an instablock for me, lmao.

[lucysarah-c]

Holy ground Ch. 20.1 Analysis.

While I understand that the first part of Ch.20 isn't as interested as the other haha for me it meant so much. We clearly see a pattern in YN behaviour. Her always apologizing and offering a smile as a way to escape situations that make her uneasy, her "empty sorrys" for the sake of not being on the other person bad side. Her words to Levi saying she couldn't "fix his birthday".

YN is clearly the consequence of a virgin-madonna complex. In the eyes of Thomas, she will forever be a little girl. Almost as a small doll that will receive him with open arms when he returns from the horror of what he has to do in the name of the royal family, a fragile little porcelain doll that can't do no wrong and will quickly recall her place. I want to highlight that she, never for a second thought about "home" as her father side of the family. No, she thought about Thomas. We have seen along the story that Thomas will do what it is demanded to do for the sake of keeping her safe.

Extra meal, courses, go to pick her up after an expedition, reaching out in multiple letters, telling Levi. In her memories, Thomas goes to visit her when she was alone at the boarding school, picks up her cat so she doesn't cry about it, sits in bed with her to help her transition her asthma, buys her anything she could probably want, and shows her off. This. TOMMY ADORES HER, he talks to the real king ( URIE) about her.

But this type of dedication requires a price. These dynamics are so unbalanced, Thomas would treat her as a princess, as a doll... But he expects blind submission and adoration. The quote "what role has a man if not providing? " Does not only imply an extremely traditional role but the other side "I said I don't want your opinion and you better shut up".

We see a glimpse of it in Levi's pov, saying that YN remained behind them as a sort of "men go first" and didn't produce a sound while they talk because it was "men talk". Almost how Thomas tells her to say goodbye is almost childish "say goodbye to Levi and let's get going," as if she was a toddler that needs to be reminded to give a kiss in the cheek to Grandma before leaving.

THIS is where YN is repeating behaviours. She had an extremely similar dynamic with Erwin. She would adore him, she would be happy and bright, blindly loving. She will wait for him with a hero's welcome, she will support him even if what he did was wrong... The problem arises when she doesn't receive the adoration she expects. "What am I doing wrong? Why doesn't he show me off? Why does he decorate his place with my stuff?"

Funny how Levi is the "least sociable approved candidate" and yet the less toxic one lmao. One time someone asked me here if the reader will ever point out Levi's toxic and misogyny behaviours because he had plenty, don't get me wrong. I pointed out that Levi is already a 10 times more woke man than plenty inside the story 🤣. I think that YN is really learning a lot from it, to unlearn sexism you have to notice its existence. She had been unlearning a lot from Levi himself, the further to learn it's a very difficult task when they are ALREADY a not traditional couple.

[911nmg]

What I'd like to tell to all girls and women who feel like this!!!

I learnt to hate my female body really early in my life.

At five I started going to this school that had uniforms. I live somewhere where the climate is very cold and rainy and unlike the boys I had to wear a skirt all year around while they got to wear long trousers the moment the air got chilly. I couldn’t leap or run without my underwear showing so I stopped playing around, like my female classmates.

At six a classmate decided it would be funny to pull my underwear down in the middle of music class. All boys laughed, all girls started wearing shorts under our skirts. It was forbidden but after what had happened direction aquiescenced to it.

At my new school I was bullied relentesly for being bigger than other girls (I grew up in the 90s, when women were supposed to be stick thin and I wasn’t), which made me hate my body even more.

At nine my mum cut my hair short since I was in competitive swimming and it would take less time to dry and style after practise. I was mocked and told people couldn’t tell if I was a girl or a boy. I hated the experience but really enjoyed the freedom of short hair.

At age eleven I got my first period and when my grandmother exclaimed that I was a woman I lost it, saying I didn’t want to stop being a girl. I knew, subconciously, what society expected of women: to care for everyone but themselves and look pretty while doing it.

I was the only girl in my class who had breasts by that point. Boys turned into a nightmare, gropping me and saying inappropiate things. Adult men would stare at me, whistle, yell nasty stuff from their cars or across the street.

By that point I hated the way my body looked and the clothes and hair style choices I felt I had. I hated the expectations of care placed on me (eldest grandchild and sister), but most of all I hated not feeling safe in a female body.

I have (unbeknownst to me at the time) an endocrine condition that started going haywire with puberty so I had twice as periods as my classmates and was highly anemic but gaining weight as if by breathing. Doctors put me on the pill and over the years acused me of overeating when I brought up my concers.

By age thirteen I had been sexually harassed by teen boys and men for years while also being told my weight, hair and acne was repugnant. So it happened. I developed a very serious ED, to the point I have forever damaged my heart. Now, I might have decided at a subcontious level that if I'm so unhappy as a girl I might be a boy in reality, ignoring the fact all my distress came from being female and having sexist preassures pile onto me for that.

At seventeen I entered a relationship with a boy my age. I had CPTSD from years of severe bullying (phsycological, social, physical and sexual) and was still dealing with an ED so I wasn’t the easiest of partners but as time passed he turned toxic. One night we fought and I was still sobbing quietly when he came onto me, I didn’t want to fight anymore, so I let him. We had sex while I cried, feeling my body being used as if I weren’t there.

I stayed in that relationship for two years and a half, and was even more broken than before.

The thought my life would be easier if I were a man had been a constant my whole life so I started unpacking it.

I realised my suffering had been the result of sexism, plain and simple, and worked on unlearning it (I still am) and caring for myself.

I started by cutting again my hair short and enjoying the freedom of it.

Got therapy and mostly recovered from my ED. I'm still working on the CPTSD and only recently opened up to my sister about the fact I was raped by my partner.

I learnt about boundaries and started enforcing mine.

I realised I had been suffering from medical misogyny, so I studied my fucked up labs and armed with knowledge I faced endocrinologist after endocrinologist until I got a diagnosis and proper treatment.

With the pandemic I stopped wearing makeup and instead started wearing more comfortable clothing.

I'm still fighting my issues with gender (I cannot not shave, since the voices of my bullies chanting I'm a yeti still ring in my head). I know my life would be ten times easier if I were a man, but that’s no reason to hate and destroy my female body, nor is it for you out there.

Puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and gender reassigment surgery won’t make you a male, just hurt and sicken you, the way my ED did and worse!

Whatever your reasons to come to the idea you should have been male boils down to how hard it is to live as a woman in a misogynistic world, were we are policed since before birth to become the perfect unattainable "women".

So if you are able (and if you are living in a society that allows transition you probably are) send it all down the toilet and keep what you need and want, instead of destroying yourself one way or another in the name of gender.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

AU where Rachel acquires a female red tailed hawk and gets stuck to be with Tobias, instead of begging him to get stuck as a human

Answered here!

Anon, yours just happens to be the ~10,000th comment in this general motif, so congratulations, you’re a winner!  You get to hear my thoughts about my slight but nagging frustration with this general trend even though there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this specific ask.

I get a LOT of asks about “improving” or “fixing” Rachel’s and Tobias’s relationship, or else making Tobias “healthier” or “better off” — through changing Rachel’s behavior.  I don’t believe anyone’s ever asked me about what Tobias could have done to be better to Rachel, in [checks blog stats] 4 years, ~2000 followers, and more unanswered than answered asks.  For that matter, the Jake/Cassie questions tend to be more neutral (or low-key racist, but that crap gets deleted immediately) like “what if they’d never broken up” or “what if they’d had a threesome with Ax” BUT I’ve still received one or two “what if Cassie had done better by Jake” and zero “what if Jake had done better by Cassie” at last count.  Because gender.

To give credit where it’s due: Rachel’s not great to Tobias in several instances.  She does a crappy job of expressing her worry that he’s going to die young in the opening of #33 (although I would argue against the interpretation that she’s deliberately trying to trap him in morph), she snaps at him in #37, and she inadvertently pressures him to fake good in #13.  However, she also listens to him and supports him when he’s trying to figure out his life in #13, when acknowledging that he does actually want to quit the war in #23, when struggling with the aftermath of Taylor’s crap in #33 and #40, and when being righteously pissed at Loren in #49.  She brings him food (#23), books (MM1), and company (#7).  She defends him from Marco’s bullying in the first several books, and from Jake’s impulse toward pity in the back half of the series. She makes him laugh, snaps him out of his own head, and bodily throws herself between him and danger time and again.

To give credit where it’s due: Tobias is not great to Rachel in several instances.  He tends to deal with problems in their relationship (most notably thinking that she’s Doing It Wrong when she tries to lead in #29 and #37) by muttering passive-aggressively and then going with the “oh, nothing, it’s all fine” routine when asked directly what’s wrong.  He makes her come to him 90% of the time when they’re hanging out, even though she’s a lot easier to find and access at home than he is.  He knows that she’s spiraling in #51 and #52, but mostly fails to reciprocate her support when he could instead go hang out with Marco and Ax.  However, he also loves Rachel and supports her through the extreme weirdness of her crisis in #32, snaps at Marco to get off her back any time Marco’s teasing goes too far (#12, #35, #43), responds to The Other Guy with amusement rather than possessiveness (#32, MM4), and helps bring out her softer side (#12, #33).

Anyway, those two don’t have a perfect relationship, and I think it’s up to debate whether they have a healthy relationship.  I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with speculating about how Rachel could have played a different role in Tobias’s life.  I do think that there’s something wrong with the way that normativity causes all of us (INCLUDING ME) to prioritize discussions of women’s obligation to provide support for male partners over men’s obligation to provide their support for partners of any gender.

[peterpparkrr]

Pinned (pt. 3)

Series: Pinned

Pairing: Anthony Bridgerton x f!reader

Summary: Anthony attempts to apologize. The future is uncertain but neither of them are prepared to say goodbye.

Warnings: some mild period typical sexism, classism, brief mentions of sexual coercion

Word Count: 1.1k

A/N: Sorry for the short chapter! I was going to have something entirely different happen but I hated it so I’d decided to throw that out and rework the story from here so we can get a little more backstory and build up! 

prev. part // next part

You honestly don’t know why you’re surprised when Lord Bridgerton walks into the shop just before closing. 

A part of you had hoped that he would take the hint. Not that it was really a hint, it had been more of a clear request for him to leave you alone. 

But the little that you did know about Lord Bridgerton should have made it clear that he was not one to easily admit defeat.

So now he’s here and the shop is empty so you have no excuse to avoid or ignore him.

“I upset you the last time I was here,” Anthony states as he walks up to where you’re working at the counter, before you can say anything to him. “Don’t deny it, I have four sisters, so I am actually quite attuned to female emotions,” He adds as he smiles hesitantly.

“Yes, I was upset,” You admit as you look up from your work to make direct eye contact with him. You have nothing to hide, and you will not allow yourself to be frightened into submission by him.

You have spent your entire adult life trying to unlearn the shame that society has tried to instill in you. Shame in your position in the world. Shame for the situation of your birth. Shame in your sex. 

In a world where women like you are taught to be unassuming and quiet and to not draw attention to oneself it feels herculean and borderline sisyphean to allow yourself to speak up for yourself and speak your mind. To not bow down to a man who is your better in every which way that society creates its orders. 

But Anthony does not chastise you for speaking out of turn, for pushing back at him. He seems to relish in your honesty, in the ability to meet your challenge.

“Why?” Anthony presses. “You must know that I care about you, I would never judge you, I just want you to be honest,” He says as he stares down at you intently.

“I can not have this conversation, especially not here,” You say in a huff as you push past him to finish cleaning up and closing up the shop for the day.

“You’re closing up the shop, let me walk you home and then we can talk,” Anthony pleads. 

You take a long, hard look at Anthony as you consider your options. Clearly, he does not intend to leave you alone. And the quicker you give in to the chase the sooner he’ll tire of you and leave you alone. 

“Fine,” You huff.

As you walk the streets of London in the twilight neither you nor Anthony say anything. You can feel him watching you, though, waiting for your explanation.

As you near your flat you realize that you can’t avoid this conversation forever.

“You flirt with me, yet you are to be married. I had hoped you were different from other men of your position. I was disappointed to discover that you are like all the others,” You admit.

Anthony tries not to dwell on the idea of ‘others’. He’s heard tales from other men, of their working-class conquests. Ever since he was at Eton had heard countless stories from ‘friends’ about their seductions of washerwomen, farmer’s daughters, maids, and the like. He knows the type of man that preys on vulnerable women and the idea that that might have happened to you makes him sick.

“I am not engaged,” Anthony replies quickly. Wanting desperately to assure you that you are not a conquest for him. That his interest in you is genuine and that his affections are not engaged elsewhere. That he’s not trying to use you or take advantage of you, but that he just can’t stop thinking about you and doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

“But you will be,” You tell him with a shake of your head. “You told me so yourself that this is the season you find yourself a wife. Lord Bridgerton-”

“Call me Anthony,” He interrupts. “I am not engaged. I do not expect to find myself sharing affections for anyone, but you. You invade my every waking thought in ways you cannot fathom.”

“Christian names are hardly appropriate for us,” You tell him. “None of this is appropriate.”

“I’d like to make it appropriate. I’d like to spend time with you, if you’ll allow me the honor.”

His words are sweet, truly. And you can’t help but find yourself leaning into the flattery. But you still cannot understand what it is that he truly wants from you.

“Are you attempting to court me, Lord Bridgerton?” You ask, with a teasing lilt. Just light enough that he will not imagine that you are genuinely asking if that is not what he meant, but your eyes study his face as you try to read his response. 

“I would like very much to try,” Anthony admits with his own sincerity.

“Gentlemen don’t court women like me,” You tell him as you shake your head.

You don’t know why you’ve even allowed this to go too far. You’re not naive, you know what men like him want from women like you, and normally you are quick to turn down those advances. 

But you don’t know if it’s hopeful thinking but you want to believe that Anthony is different, and you feel inexplicably pulled in. He’s a handsome man and he knows it but there’s something more to him that attracts you, deeper than lust. 

Anthony called out your name with such tenderness that you almost gave in right there. 

“Please, I’d like to prove to you that I’m not the man you think I am. Will you let me do that?” He asks.

“You are relentless is what you are,” You reply with a shake of your head, though your exasperation doesn’t bleed through your tone, instead you just smile.

“But do you not find it terribly endearing?” He teases.

“That is not the adjective I would use,” You reply.

“You haven’t given me an answer yet,” Anthony says. “May I see you again?”

“We must entrust that to providence, Lord Bridgerton,” You tell him. “Though I imagine the fates have already deemed you more than responsible for orchestrating another meeting.”

“Goodnight,” You bid him farewell as you take a step away from him. “Anthony,” You add before you turn towards your door.

“Goodnight,” He calls after you as he watches from the pavement as you disappear through the doorway and close the door behind you gently.

[itsclydebitches]

Honest question. Why is cancel culture bad? Like I'm seeing people defend Dave Chapelle or just not care about the shitty things he said. As a transwomen he can fuck right off. Why do we tolerate comedians or anyone famous saying shitty things? Like you have influence over tons of people. If you're going to use that power to say ignorant harmful stuff then step the fuck aside until you can be a better influence. Famous people need to be better because they have mass influence.

Hey, anon!

So this is a pretty complicated topic and I’m going to attempt to explain my own viewpoint with the understanding that it… might not be the most coherent post I’ve ever written lol. Basically though, I think the main takeaway here is that “cancel culture” is not the same thing as “criticizing someone for saying horrible things.” It’s not the same thing as a boycott. It’s not the same thing as activism. Cancel culture is a very particular, mob mentality response that ultimately just makes everything worse and it’s this response that people are pointing to when they say, “cancel culture is bad.” So, what are the problems with cancel culture?

First, it doesn’t allow for any gray areas. Admittedly, that may not seem like much of a problem when we’re talking about something as awful as a celebrity being transphobic. (And for the record, I’m not on the up-and-up about everything Chapelle has said lately, so all these examples are generalized, not geared towards his situation.) It’s easy to go, “How can you think there’s any gray area when it comes to racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/etc.?” but the point here is that cancel culture doesn’t discriminate between the legitimately heinous rhetoric that a long-standing celebrity has been spouting for years, and the ignorant comment made by the up-and-coming influencer they legitimately didn’t know was a problem. Or the patterns of behavior someone now knows is wrong, but needs time to unlearn. Or the moment when they were at their lowest, made a mistake, and now that is forever immortalized via social media, brought up again and again as a way to perpetually shame them. Under cancel culture, every act is equalized as The Worst Thing Ever even though, in reality, most situations are not equal. The transphobe deliberately trying to influence their massive audience is not the same thing as an older celebrity not knowing the latest terminology and mistakenly insulting a group. But through cancel culture, each individual’s tweets will be screenshotted, passed around, and used as evidence for how horrible they are—with those trying to provide the context of the latter example ("It really was an innocent mistake in this case") are easily drowned out by the crowd.

Similarly, cancel culture doesn’t allow for any change. It’s right there in the name: you’re cancelled. It’s a final thing. Once you’ve done the Bad Thing, that’s it, you’re done. It doesn’t allow for education, improvement, apologies, or absolution, even though most people will say that’s precisely what they’re looking for. To provide a small example, recently in the RWBY fandom an artist made a modern, real life AU where the webseries’ characters were reimagined as actors. She ended up leaving out one character’s prosthetic arm, referring to it as a “prop” in this AU. Getting a great deal of backlash for that, she apologized, explained her ignorance, and took action by fixing the art. She did everything she should have, yeah? Personally, I was thrilled to see someone listening, apologizing, and taking action to demonstrate the importance of what they've now learned. That's great! Exactly the sort of improvement we want to see in the world. Except twitter was filled with people saying that she hadn't apologized enough, that they can’t trust her now, that she’s only saying this to avoid the bad PR, etc. Cancel culture breeds the idea that change isn’t possible, even while we paradoxically call for it, which means that, under this mentality, we’ll never see improvement. People aren’t allowed to come back from being cancelled, which not only continues to alienate those who are working to be better, but likewise “justifies” those who aren’t. “See, they don’t really care about you,” the bigot says, pointing to how it’s impossible to come back from making a mistake (which, being human, is inevitable). “Why bother? You did everything they told you to and it still wasn’t enough, so just.... continue being an asshole.”

And to clarify that, this doesn’t mean that those hurt from this behavior, as individuals, need to forgive the celebrity in question. Once someone acts in that way—deliberately or not—each person is, of course, allowed to continue not liking them, not engaging with their products, being personally wary of their interests. Rather, I’m talking about the collective behavior of continually insisting to others that change is not possible, or not to be trusted. There’s a big difference between someone going, “Yeah, I’m glad they’ve educated themselves, but I personally can’t enjoy their content after everything they’ve said” and someone making posts reminding the community at large that this person did a Bad Thing and you should all refrain from engaging with them, no matter how long ago that was, what’s happened since then, the context of the situation, the fact that they apologized, whatever.

Which brings me to the fact that cancel culture, ultimately, becomes a way to punish peers, not the celebrity in question. “If you're going to use that power to say ignorant harmful stuff then step the fuck aside until you can be a better influence” is fantastic advice, but the sad reality is that most celebrities are not going to take it. That reality (hard as it is to hear) is that we have very little, practical influence on people who have achieved that level of fame, wealth, and notoriety. Yes, we can boycott their content, try to shame them into changing, warn others about what they’re done… but there's only so much we can truly accomplish through those means, especially when it comes to celebrities immersed in our culture. JKR remains an easy example. We’d like to believe that sending her a heartfelt tweet about the harm she's caused will be the catalyst that makes her realize how horrific her views are, but the reality is she’s a millionaire entrenched in global culture and we’re strangers she can block with a single click. It’s hard as hell to educate the people in your everyday life who have some incentive (like loving you) to unlearn that level of bias—many, many queer people will know this struggle—now imagine trying to do that work over social media to someone who only knows we exist as an abstract concept. "The fans." The result of all this is that those fans, frustrated and feeling powerless, turn to policing their own community instead. If they can’t have an impact on the celebrity themselves, if JKR won't change, they’ll try to impact the people closer to them—and remember, what they’re trying to accomplish is coming from that black and white, “I’m right and you’re wrong” viewpoint. The idea isn't to provide the community with a nuanced look into how JKR fell into these beliefs and how others can avoid the same trap (people are not born transphobic, they learn that shit), it's about telling the community that she was always Evil, we're Not Evil, except if you do anything we don't like you will be deemed Evil very, very quickly. That’s how we end up with fans tearing into one another for daring to still engage with this content, still finding any joy in it, forgiving a celebrity when someone else hasn't been able to yet… everything but criticizing the celebrity themselves anymore. In the last couple of years, I’ve seen more think pieces about how other fans are the devil for still enjoying parts of Harry Potter than I’ve seen pieces about JKR’s own transphobia. Cancel culture warps blame, simply by virtue of everyone wanting to (understandably) change a not easily changed situation. Cancel culture is far more likely to punish the trans person for watching the Harry Potter movies on their down time than it is to punish the actual transphobe. And, as already established, punishment here is both ineffective and, at a certain point, unnecessary. Obviously, I’m no longer speaking about JKR whose beliefs are deep and her harm incredibly wide-reaching. I’m talking about the celebrity who said something questionable in an interview once, has made major strides since then, but every couple months something brings the clip back to remind everyone, “You’re not allowed to like them and if you do like them (or something they produced, something they were in, something they made long before any of this came out, etc.) I’ll put all my attention towards making you pay for that.”

Now, take all this and add it to the fact that cancel culture is never really about explaining to someone why their views are harmful in the hope that you will improve the world a little bit. It’s about suicide baiting. Doxing. Threatening their friends and family. Saying such horrific things that everyone else reading it learns, “Okay, so when someone does something I think is wrong I can just tell them to go get gang raped. That’s a completely acceptable response to any situation and in no way reflects my own bigoted views.” If cancel culture actually meant educating someone, systematically boycotting works to show associated creators such views won't be tolerated, leaning into various forms of activism to combat that hate, or even just saying, “I will not support them so long as they forward this rhetoric” on a large scale… we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The point is that cancel culture isn’t any of those things. It’s a black and white mob mentality that feeds into the worst parts of online culture and the result is almost never what people hope will occur (getting the celebrity to stop), but instead just harms a lot of innocents caught up in the mess. To say nothing of the mental health of the person participating in cancel culture to begin with. It’s overwhelming to be confronted with thousands of voices denouncing a single individual, detailing their every fault, laying out all the new (ever changing, contradictory) rules for how everyone else can appropriately talk about them. Cancel culture isn’t just about how the celebrity is acting inappropriately, it’s arguably more about how everyone else is acting too. The moment you join in, your own blog, feed, life is under scrutiny to ensure you’re “correctly” responding to the situation. The moment you slip up and say something the mob doesn’t like, you’re the one being cancelled.

Cancel culture is bullying at its most extreme, it’s never confined to its original target, it thrives on black and white thinking, accepting accusations without doing your own research, and it doesn’t achieve any of the things people hope it will. It is, ultimately, about dominating and feeling superior, not educating and protecting vulnerable minorities. By all means, still boycott celebrities who you believe have done wrong, or write posts explaining the harm you see in their behavior, but cancel culture is a very particular, wide-spread phenomenon wherein the type and extent of public shaming does far more harm than good. People need to be held accountable for their actions, absolutely, but that’s not a good way to go about it.

[sokkagatekeeper]

how did jin inform zuko's arc? not only from the whole living in ba sing se wasn't right for zuko standpoint but also from the perspective (and im pretty sure you've done an analysis on this) that zuko is gay?

mostly i think zuko’s date with jin informed the outside view that we have on zuko being gay rather than it being a clue to zuko himself on how he’s gay. iroh pushes zuko to attend this date with jin because he’s mostly well meaningly trying to get zuko to do normal teenage boy stuff, go on dates and have fun. as iroh is a heterosexual man, he fails to see zuko is a solid kinsey 6. or maybe he didn’t fail to see it at all and this date was his “this one can surely turn him back” homophobic moment, who’s to say. however that is zuko behaves like a total asshole in front of this girl which has more to do with the fire nation’s misogyny & strict gender norms and zuko’s background both as a privileged prince and teenage boy survivor of abuse and with an attitude problem than with the fact that he’s gay. that entire cupon scene did actually occur bc he was gay tho, and that he didn’t show any romantic interest in jin but rather he’s kind in other ways, litting up the lanterns for her and all (that's literally all i remember zuko did on that date that was remotely nice i hate him so much god bless).

i also think personally that jin was just another song, another jet, another lee, another katara. jin gave zuko yet another perspective on the people of the earth kingdom’s humanity, maybe even helped with zuko unlearning his sexism in the long run. even when zuko wasn’t attracted to jin romantically, he did appreciate her company (“it was nice” he says after slamming the door of his house like a teen does).

this event was mostly for zuko to experience a normal teenage boy experience rather than a horrible terrible traumatic no good experience that he’s been having his entire life. it gave us as the viewers perspective on zuko being gay (and for jin being straight. a legend!!), and it helped widen zuko’s perspective on the most mundane part of the peoplehood of the countries his nation has been colonizing, especially women and the little things they were robbed of in the fire nation like a good piece of dinner (the implications of that one zuko comment about how jin has “quite an appetite for a girl” will forever haunt me). all around a progressive and a homophobic experience!!

[thatocdfeel]

Just as a general statement for other people who struggle with moral stuff like I do. I've been doing some reading and there's this thing called white fragility which basically means white people can't handle facing their own racism and get really anxious when confronted by it. Combine that with the fact that literally all white people are racist and that basically means that if you've been really anxious about racism in the last week or so it's probably not your OCD and you're actually racist.

Okay, so I’ve let this sit in my inbox for some time, not sure how to approach this, because:

1. I am white 2. I am not from the US

It’s not my place to discuss what is or isn’t racism, however, I do think your ask is oversimplifying the matter, and I’ll explain my reasoning.

White fragility is a term coined by Robin DiAngelo in her essay of the same name, which you can read here.

For a TL;DR, here is a quote from an article by the Guardian:

‘’DiAngelo says she encounters a lot of “certitude from white people – they insist ‘Well, it’s not me’, or say ‘I’m doing my best, what do you want from me?’ ”. She defines this as white fragility – the inability of white people to tolerate racial stress. 

This, she says, leads to white people “weaponising [their] hurt feelings” and being indignant and defensive when confronted with racial inequality and injustice. This creates a climate where the suggestion or accusation of racism causes more outrage among white people than the racism itself. 

“And if nobody is racist,” she asks, “why is racism still America’s biggest problem? What are white people afraid they will lose by listening? What is so threatening about humility on this topic?” 

Using DiAngelo’s own words, we have no ‘racial stamina’.  Whether you think of yourself as a ‘morally good’ person and the idea of being racist offends you, or if you are a racist who doesn’t believe racism is even real, or you’re a proud racist and believe it to be ‘morally just’, or you simply don’t give a shit about it one way or the other -- being forced to confront racism will trigger discomfort, anger, anxiety and defensiveness. 

Whether or not you consider yourself racist, white fragility enables racism, and is something white people have to consciously make an effort to unlearn.   

And to your point about ‘being automatically racist’, people who don’t consider themselves racist will still have internalized racist ideas, because if you live in a white supremacist / racist society, you will grow up surrounded by these ideas. 

And while consciously you are against racism, morally, ethically, politically, etc... these internalized, learned behaviours will be there, and it is a long and difficult task to find, identify and unlearn them. 

This is true about sexism, homophobia, ableism, classism and so on. 

I am not arguing this. 

The main concern I had with your ask is that this is an OCD blog, and because OCD encourages all or nothing thinking, a follower might read that statement and think you are either racist or you aren’t, and that if you are racist, it’s game over forever. 

The OCD sufferer, based on their own moral compass, cannot allow this unthinkable, horrible scenario to be true, because what if I am racist? , to the OCD sufferer, appears only to have one answer: if you are, you’re evil forever and your life is over.

When in reality, the answer to the question what if I’m racist? is: if you are, you can choose to educate yourself and work to do better, or you can choose to be complicit and do nothing. 

If you’re white in a society like the US, you WILL have internalized racist beliefs and behaviours. Some of these will be so subtle you don’t even consider them, because you’ve never had to consider them. And because you never had to, suddenly making yourself consider these things will be hard, and it will take practice, time, effort and a degree of self-compassion. 

These things, while true, do not make you an irredeemable, evil monster. They do not mean you are morally corrupt or that the only way to atone is through self-punishment. If you care about being anti-racist, you cannot judge yourself ‘irredeemable’ and call it a day. 

You have to look inward, you have to look at your white friends and family, your society, your government -- you have to educate yourself, you have to listen to the voices of PoC,  you have to speak up against other white people and you have to fight that white fragility that tells you to run away from the conversation.

TLDR; There are plenty of reasons to be anxious about racism, especially if you are someone who is plagued by OCD.  So yes, if you’ve been really anxious about racism in the last week or so, it will in part be because of ‘white fragility’, but that doesn’t mean your OCD related anxiety is any less real or valid. 

Intrusive thoughts about racism, fears of being racist, fears of acting racist, and so on are not uncommon and you will definitely be anxious about it because that’s how the disorder works. 

While I don’t have any specific resources on this, I’d recommend reading about:

Moral Scrupulosity OCD

Responsibility OCD

And here is someone’s personal account (tw for eating disorders)

A final word on OCD enhanced anxiety about racism, as a white person:

This doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, but it also doesn’t mean you’re free of responsibility. We all have the responsibility, every single day, to fight injustice, unlearn prejudice and make the world better. We don’t do this through self-hatred, but by accepting that you are not perfect. Moral purity is impossible, being 100% good is impossible, having no flaws is impossible, never ever in your life doing, saying or thinking a single bad thing is impossible. Accepting this does NOT mean accepting the any particular moral value of that behaviour. The first step to change the parts of yourself you do not like, is to acknowledge that they are there. 

Whatever your OCD makes you scared of, think of it as a stain on your carpet. If you think that having a stain on the carpet is the worst thing that could ever happen, that this is an UNTHINKABLE situation, you will ignore the stain every time you walk by it. You get angry when people point the stain out. You have a CLEAN house, damn it! The stain CANNOT be there because that means YOU have failed, and YOU are BAD.

Stop. Look at the stain. The stain is there. It happens. Stains happen all the time, to everyone. Now, when you have seen the stain, acknowledged it, accepted it is there. How did the stain happen? Once you figure that out, you can stop that stain from happening again. 

Maybe you spilled your coffee because you don’t look where you walk. Start looking where you walk. Does this mean you’ll never spill anything else again? No, but next time, you’ll be even better at recognizing, cleaning and preventing stains than you were before.

Or you can leave the stain and keep spilling coffee until there’s coffee everywhere and the whole carpet is ruined. 

That is a deliberate choice you can make, and that is the decision that matters.

[yukisohmasmokesweed]

What's your opinion on Kagura?

kagura seems like a bitch and i love that for her. she is a LOT less annoying when she’s not around kyo and i wish we had more of her with rin. i also wish we had more scenes of her with haru and kyo because (as i wrote into my middle school fic lol) i think the three of them spent a lot of time together as kids since theyre all around the same age and did karate together. 

i looooove her storyline about how she views kyo, its very indicative of how the brainwashing within the sohma family works as a whole when it comes to him. they either hate him outright (like yuki) or they look down on him, and that is definitely not unique to kagura; i would say it goes for all of them until they start unlearning that thought process by getting to know him. i appreciate that kagura is actually mature enough to recognize those ugly feelings and apologize to him. its an interesting arc for an otherwise minor character

def wish her violence towards kyo wasnt played for laughs, but it also does function as an interesting reflection of kyo’s casual sexism (that he won’t fight girls on principle). the comedic relief is waaaay overdone and goes on for way too long and also, yeah, abuse isnt funny and fb does this weird thing where it goes back and forth from portraying abuse as what it is, an extremely damaging thing that can alter you forever, and like. comedic relief. kinda strange

[moontheoretist]

I am ranting.

“Have you seen Kentin?” “No, I haven’t seen him. What do you want with...”

30 is enough to make him like you i think

Well then, if Beemoov wasn’t closed-minded all of those below would have a crush on me and I would be sooooo thrilled to be able to romance them.

Do you want to hear my in-storyline explanation or outside-of-story explanation why Castiel blushed in this conversation (even though I already said that once)? 

I do not think that 30% on lovometer is enough to trigger different reaction to you in a conversation with anybody, ESPECIALLY Castiel. Why? Because lovometer isn’t the only factor which makes up whole romancing system of this game. This game is structured by a few more rules, which make lovometer irrelevant unless you reach certain point, and even then it only works for one set of characters. As you can see above, if lovometer was the only thing which determines whether character falls for your Candy or not, you would have at least half or more of the school crushing over you, boys and girls alike. But because Beemoov is homophobic, or at least was when they made a game, they didn’t give you any female options to romance, except later introducing Priya as the only canon bisexual character in this game, who you still cannot romance even when you have high enough lovometer, and have to wait for University Love to actually eb able to romance her. Why is that? Well, the second rule is that this game only triggers romance for boys as only boys were written to be romantic partners. Girls weren’t, even the bisexual character we got at last. But even romantic partner needs more than 30% of the lovometer to fall for you. 30% is enough to make him like you as a classmate or have really, really slight crush which will fade as quickly as it appeared, because it isn’t strong enough to turn into romantic attraction towards you. Considering how MCL’s romance mechanic works it is fair to see it like that and me seeing it like that doesn’t mean it is some headcanon of mine. It is canon that characters shouldn’t be into you if you do not pursue them. The only exception is Kentin who canonically has crush on you since forever, while the rest of the boys develops it with time.

THE REAL reason why I think Castiel blushed was BECAUSE writers assumed that at this point in the storyline this particular face is the only one he shows in this conversation and didn’t create the second one which would be triggered if you didn’t have high enough lovometer with him. Which means that authors selfishly assumed that you would pursue him no matter what, which is idiotic, stupid and unnecessary in my opinion. IT DOESN’T THOUGH MEAN THAT THEY DIDN’T CREATE IMPLICIT HOMOEROTISM due to not stating why he blushes there. The work of an author is to some extent separate from the author. What author says about the work and what is considered canon IS ONLY AUTHOR’S INTERPRETATION OF THEIR OWN WORK, which doesn’t have to align with your interpretation of their work or what this work says without author realizing it, as implicit meanings can be created even without author’s intention. This is called Death of the Author theory. In short, it means that works of fiction exist as separate objects full of meanings, which are written by the author, but not always done purposefully by them. That’s why text written by you has more meanings than you know it has and that’s why interpretation is always about seeing more than what author wanted to say, as author’s visions is only one level or one possible interpretation of their work. You can for example see the biases of the author, which they may have and not know about by analyzing their work. Biases like homophobia, racism, sexism etc. which they were raised with as norms, so even if they actually unlearned them, there is still a chance it will appear in some form in the implicit meaning of the works they create without them doing it on purpose. Sometimes though some things are done on purpose and Beemoov not giving us options to date more people, not writing story in more open-minded way and always assuming that all guys in their game are straight, even when they accidentally created implicit homoerotism, is all their own choice. They chose to make a game like that, even though they could do the opposite and it is sign of heteronormativity and the upbringing of the creators. Also their awful behavior, them deleting critical posts and treating fans like shit is not a sign that they actually can change how they were raised and broaden their perspective. Now, when they act as if they did nothing wrong, it is even more their choice to be shitty company than just accidental assholness.

If anybody else will go at this post and say to me it isn’t homoerotic I will block you, no matter if you wanna have nice conversation about interpretation of works or not. I am tired of heteronormativity forced down my throat. I am tired of people who treat me like an idiot who sees things which aren’t real. I didn’t get a fucking degree from creative writing and medias to be taught by randoms online what is right and what is wrong. And I also didn’t write theses about fandom and romance in games to be treated like an idiot who talks shit.

[yes-dal456]

Health, Truth, And The Bell Curve

I was privileged this past week to deliver commencement addresses for Bastyr University on their campuses in San Diego, and Seattle, to a combined audience of several thousand, celebrating the graduation of hundreds of students receiving various bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in the health professions.  Here, more or less, is what I said.

*****

I am honored and delighted to be here today to join in this celebration, and partake vicariously in your triumph. As I will reiterate at the end of my remarks, today is a triumph, truly, and I congratulate you heartily for it. I am privileged to celebrate it with you.

We preside today together over the consummation of one set of proverbially big “ifs:”- IF I make it through; if I pass my exams; if I make it to graduation . You have, you did, and you are- and along with your faculty and parents, friends and family- I am delighted to be here to offer my congratulations. 

We preside today together over the conception of innumerable contingent “ifs” as well. After all, this is a commencement, not a termination; it is the beginning of things. The many implicit “ifs” – if I go on to more study or not; if I move here, or there; if I take this job, or that job – echo into the uncertainty of the future.

As we ponder those reverberations emanating from today’s milestone, we might productively consider the words of the ostensible expert on that very topic, Rudyard Kipling, whose most famous poem is entitled, simply- “IF:”

                            If you can keep your head when all about you

                            Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

                            If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

                            But make allowance for their doubting too,

                            If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

                            Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

                            Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

                            And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

                            If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,

                            If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;

                            If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

                            And treat those two impostors just the same;

                            If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

                            Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

                            Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

                            And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

                            If you can make one heap of all your winnings

                            And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

                            And lose, and start again at your beginnings

                            And never breathe a word about your loss;

                            If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

                            To serve your turn long after they are gone,

                            And so hold on when there is nothing in you

                            Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

                            If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

                            Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,

                            If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

                            If all men count with you, but none too much,

                            If you can fill the unforgiving minute

                            With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

                            Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

                            And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

                                        --Rudyard Kipling

Kipling’s famous poem, and wisdom, have stood the tests of time; but we may concede that time has tested them sorely just the same. For one thing, there is the blatant sexism acceptable in his day, but objectionable in ours. We can have none of this man/boy, father/son exclusivity- even on the cusp of Father’s Day! Were we to write the poem today, we might end with something like:

Yours is the earth, all that’s tame and that’s wild-

And what’s more, you will merit that treasure, my child.

I have another objection to the poem, specifically on our behalf as crusaders for health. Why does health matter? We may tend to forget that health is not a virtue. Health, per se, is not the prize either; health is a currency uniquely applicable to the purchase of the prize. Health matters because…healthy people have better lives; healthy people have more fun.

What we feel matters: pain and sadness, or today- joy and pride. Disaster, when it happens, as it inevitably does to us all, is undeniably real. Triumph is as well.

Accordingly, I have presumed to write a rebuttal to Kipling’s ‘If.’ Mine, naturally, is entitled- “If, and but:”

Triumph and disaster are both

real; for life and death are set

apart by little more than our

capacity to feel. and Kipling, grown

more old than wise, unlearning to

despise or love; mistold the goal, concealed

the prize. For triumph and disaster are

both real; all that I

feel is nervously alive upon the slippery

verge of death. triumph

fills, inspires me; disaster

drains me dry; and neither, more,

nor less reliably

than breath. 

-DLK

To reiterate: today’s triumph is real, and deserves to be celebrated. How it makes us feel matters.

But my job here today is not just to celebrate and congratulate you, pleasant though that might be for us both. My job- the job of a commencement speaker- is to provoke and harangue, goad and attempt to inspire. I have only faint hope of achieving all that, but in accepting this invitation, I pledged my best effort.

In service to that mission, then, it is other lines of the poem that seem most to warrant our consideration today. Namely:

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools…

There’s a lot there to ponder in a post-truth world of alternative facts. There is a lot to that in a world where every opinion mistakes itself for expertise; every voice can access the megaphone of cyberspace; and every assertion can amplify itself in echo chambers populated by those attending carefully only to the opinions they already own, drowning out all else.

We presume that Kipling is speaking to us, and thus that THE truth is OUR truth. But if everyone is the person to whom Kipling is speaking- if each of us owns the truth- then who is the knave, who twists the truth? Who is the fool taken in by such willful distortion? Recall the precautionary lyrics, courtesy of The Main Ingredient: everybody plays the fool, some time…

Sometimes our view of the truth can be too narrow. Those of us who embrace and espouse holism see just that liability in staunch conventionalists who refute any truths that reside outside the bounds of their comfortable conventions.

Sometimes, though, our view of truth can be too broad. Not all that glitters is gold; not every therapeutic modality with intrinsic appeal and vocal proponents- actually works.  In the pursuit of truth, we must keep open minds- but not ever so open our brains flop out!

We can all too readily believe what isn’t true, and play the fool. In our fervor, we can pass along that misguided conviction, playing the knave- and making fools of others.

When you know the truth reliably; defend it. When you don’t know the truth, admit it. When you hear the truth, embrace it. When most uncertain, listen and reflect at greatest length. Respect how readily we all mistake our native preferences for truth.

Kipling says if you meet all criteria, the earth is yours. But I say: if you are worthy, you know the world cannot be yours, because it belongs to everyone. And to no one. It was here before us, and will be here after us. It belongs as much to butterflies and bears, penguins and pine trees, lizards and lemurs. 

We cannot own the earth, and should aspire to no such thing. We should not seek to own the truth, either- we should strive to share it.

Sometimes, our view of truth is too proprietary. Many of us try on our own to be that source of truth that rises above the shouts of the knaves, and reorients the gullible fools. But in this age of incessant din and endless echoes of every opinion- no one voice can reliably deliver the signal of truth; no one voice can overmaster the din. Only in our unity is there sufficient strength to try.

We should not seek to own fundamental truths about well-being, or anything else for that matter. We should share them. And if sharing them requires us to build new bridges to unexpected places, then we should all be just such engineers.

The True Health Initiative is my effort at bridge building- a global coalition, devoted to defending and disseminating the fundamental truths about a sustainable, health-promoting lifestyle. Alternatives to those truths are forever tempting the public because they are provocative, and magical, and sexy. Sadly, they are untrue.

When you do find the truth, don’t seek to own it. The truth is only ever distorted in echo chambers. The truth withers and dies in bunkers. The truth is made for bridges, not bunkers. The truth blossoms in the disinfecting rays of daylight. The truth is best shared.

That, in turn, brings me to the one truth of my own I presume to share today, reflecting on my own efforts to do good in the world. We all want to be special, and rightly so. You are distinguishing yourselves today, so my comment may seem a bit incongruous- but the truth does not promise to be congruous or convenient; only true. Here it is: I believe the best measure of our worth is not how much better we can be than average, but how much we do to make the average better.

What difference does it make if you know that health care should be a right, but society treats it as a privilege? What difference does it make if you know that access to care should be universal, but it remains exclusive? What difference does it make if you know that holistic models of care can be kinder and gentler and highly effective, but the system is unreformed? What difference does it make if you know that climate change is real, and we are complicit in it, but our culture remains committed to doing far too little far too late about it? What difference does it make if you know that multicolored marshmallows are no part of a six-year-old’s complete breakfast, but Madison Avenue doesn’t give a damn?

Gertrude Stein famously said: a difference, to be a difference, must make a difference.  To make a difference, we must make the mean different. We must raise the average- of awareness, knowledge, and understanding; of empowerment and opportunity; of concern, compassion, and civility.

Society does not do the bidding of outliers; it heeds the tolling at the center of the bell curve. Society, and culture, regress to the mean. They are governed by the popular imperatives, not the most erudite. 

So don’t seek exclusive islands in the tail of the bell curve; you can be different there, but you cannot make a difference there:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

-John Donne

Like John Donne’s church bell, the bell curve tolls for us all. We will rise or fall together.

That’s my truth for today. The true measure of our worth is not how much better we can be than average, but how much we can do to make the average better. It’s your time, and it’s your turn to make the mean of us all- better.

Graduates of 2017- push your youthful strength up against the reluctant weight of the mean- but do it tomorrow. Put your shoulder to the unyielding line drawn through the middle of the bell curve and lift, tomorrow. Welcome to the revolution, tomorrow; it will be waiting for you.

Today, the simple truth is- you’ve made it. That is a triumph. Perhaps a small triumph in the grand sweep of things; but all triumphs are small in the grand sweep of things. It is a triumph, truly, and worthy of celebration. It matters.

I am honored to celebrate it with you, and proud to be here to say: Class of 2017- congratulations!

-fin

David L. Katz

Director, Yale University Prevention Research Center; Griffin Hospital

Immediate Past-President, American College of Lifestyle Medicine

Senior Medical Advisor, Verywell.com

Founder, The True Health Initiative

Follow at: LinkedIN; Twitter; Facebook

Read at: INfluencer Blog; Huffington Post; US News & World Report; Verywell; Forbes

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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[imreviewblog]

Health, Truth, And The Bell Curve

I was privileged this past week to deliver commencement addresses for Bastyr University on their campuses in San Diego, and Seattle, to a combined audience of several thousand, celebrating the graduation of hundreds of students receiving various bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in the health professions.  Here, more or less, is what I said.

*****

I am honored and delighted to be here today to join in this celebration, and partake vicariously in your triumph. As I will reiterate at the end of my remarks, today is a triumph, truly, and I congratulate you heartily for it. I am privileged to celebrate it with you.

We preside today together over the consummation of one set of proverbially big “ifs:”- IF I make it through; if I pass my exams; if I make it to graduation . You have, you did, and you are- and along with your faculty and parents, friends and family- I am delighted to be here to offer my congratulations. 

We preside today together over the conception of innumerable contingent “ifs” as well. After all, this is a commencement, not a termination; it is the beginning of things. The many implicit “ifs” – if I go on to more study or not; if I move here, or there; if I take this job, or that job – echo into the uncertainty of the future.

As we ponder those reverberations emanating from today’s milestone, we might productively consider the words of the ostensible expert on that very topic, Rudyard Kipling, whose most famous poem is entitled, simply- “IF:”

                            If you can keep your head when all about you

                            Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

                            If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

                            But make allowance for their doubting too,

                            If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

                            Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

                            Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

                            And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

                            If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,

                            If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;

                            If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

                            And treat those two impostors just the same;

                            If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

                            Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

                            Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

                            And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

                            If you can make one heap of all your winnings

                            And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

                            And lose, and start again at your beginnings

                            And never breathe a word about your loss;

                            If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

                            To serve your turn long after they are gone,

                            And so hold on when there is nothing in you

                            Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

                            If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

                            Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,

                            If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

                            If all men count with you, but none too much,

                            If you can fill the unforgiving minute

                            With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

                            Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

                            And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

                                        --Rudyard Kipling

Kipling’s famous poem, and wisdom, have stood the tests of time; but we may concede that time has tested them sorely just the same. For one thing, there is the blatant sexism acceptable in his day, but objectionable in ours. We can have none of this man/boy, father/son exclusivity- even on the cusp of Father’s Day! Were we to write the poem today, we might end with something like:

Yours is the earth, all that’s tame and that’s wild-

And what’s more, you will merit that treasure, my child.

I have another objection to the poem, specifically on our behalf as crusaders for health. Why does health matter? We may tend to forget that health is not a virtue. Health, per se, is not the prize either; health is a currency uniquely applicable to the purchase of the prize. Health matters because…healthy people have better lives; healthy people have more fun.

What we feel matters: pain and sadness, or today- joy and pride. Disaster, when it happens, as it inevitably does to us all, is undeniably real. Triumph is as well.

Accordingly, I have presumed to write a rebuttal to Kipling’s ‘If.’ Mine, naturally, is entitled- “If, and but:”

Triumph and disaster are both

real; for life and death are set

apart by little more than our

capacity to feel. and Kipling, grown

more old than wise, unlearning to

despise or love; mistold the goal, concealed

the prize. For triumph and disaster are

both real; all that I

feel is nervously alive upon the slippery

verge of death. triumph

fills, inspires me; disaster

drains me dry; and neither, more,

nor less reliably

than breath. 

-DLK

To reiterate: today’s triumph is real, and deserves to be celebrated. How it makes us feel matters.

But my job here today is not just to celebrate and congratulate you, pleasant though that might be for us both. My job- the job of a commencement speaker- is to provoke and harangue, goad and attempt to inspire. I have only faint hope of achieving all that, but in accepting this invitation, I pledged my best effort.

In service to that mission, then, it is other lines of the poem that seem most to warrant our consideration today. Namely:

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools…

There’s a lot there to ponder in a post-truth world of alternative facts. There is a lot to that in a world where every opinion mistakes itself for expertise; every voice can access the megaphone of cyberspace; and every assertion can amplify itself in echo chambers populated by those attending carefully only to the opinions they already own, drowning out all else.

We presume that Kipling is speaking to us, and thus that THE truth is OUR truth. But if everyone is the person to whom Kipling is speaking- if each of us owns the truth- then who is the knave, who twists the truth? Who is the fool taken in by such willful distortion? Recall the precautionary lyrics, courtesy of The Main Ingredient: everybody plays the fool, some time…

Sometimes our view of the truth can be too narrow. Those of us who embrace and espouse holism see just that liability in staunch conventionalists who refute any truths that reside outside the bounds of their comfortable conventions.

Sometimes, though, our view of truth can be too broad. Not all that glitters is gold; not every therapeutic modality with intrinsic appeal and vocal proponents- actually works.  In the pursuit of truth, we must keep open minds- but not ever so open our brains flop out!

We can all too readily believe what isn’t true, and play the fool. In our fervor, we can pass along that misguided conviction, playing the knave- and making fools of others.

When you know the truth reliably; defend it. When you don’t know the truth, admit it. When you hear the truth, embrace it. When most uncertain, listen and reflect at greatest length. Respect how readily we all mistake our native preferences for truth.

Kipling says if you meet all criteria, the earth is yours. But I say: if you are worthy, you know the world cannot be yours, because it belongs to everyone. And to no one. It was here before us, and will be here after us. It belongs as much to butterflies and bears, penguins and pine trees, lizards and lemurs. 

We cannot own the earth, and should aspire to no such thing. We should not seek to own the truth, either- we should strive to share it.

Sometimes, our view of truth is too proprietary. Many of us try on our own to be that source of truth that rises above the shouts of the knaves, and reorients the gullible fools. But in this age of incessant din and endless echoes of every opinion- no one voice can reliably deliver the signal of truth; no one voice can overmaster the din. Only in our unity is there sufficient strength to try.

We should not seek to own fundamental truths about well-being, or anything else for that matter. We should share them. And if sharing them requires us to build new bridges to unexpected places, then we should all be just such engineers.

The True Health Initiative is my effort at bridge building- a global coalition, devoted to defending and disseminating the fundamental truths about a sustainable, health-promoting lifestyle. Alternatives to those truths are forever tempting the public because they are provocative, and magical, and sexy. Sadly, they are untrue.

When you do find the truth, don’t seek to own it. The truth is only ever distorted in echo chambers. The truth withers and dies in bunkers. The truth is made for bridges, not bunkers. The truth blossoms in the disinfecting rays of daylight. The truth is best shared.

That, in turn, brings me to the one truth of my own I presume to share today, reflecting on my own efforts to do good in the world. We all want to be special, and rightly so. You are distinguishing yourselves today, so my comment may seem a bit incongruous- but the truth does not promise to be congruous or convenient; only true. Here it is: I believe the best measure of our worth is not how much better we can be than average, but how much we do to make the average better.

What difference does it make if you know that health care should be a right, but society treats it as a privilege? What difference does it make if you know that access to care should be universal, but it remains exclusive? What difference does it make if you know that holistic models of care can be kinder and gentler and highly effective, but the system is unreformed? What difference does it make if you know that climate change is real, and we are complicit in it, but our culture remains committed to doing far too little far too late about it? What difference does it make if you know that multicolored marshmallows are no part of a six-year-old’s complete breakfast, but Madison Avenue doesn’t give a damn?

Gertrude Stein famously said: a difference, to be a difference, must make a difference.  To make a difference, we must make the mean different. We must raise the average- of awareness, knowledge, and understanding; of empowerment and opportunity; of concern, compassion, and civility.

Society does not do the bidding of outliers; it heeds the tolling at the center of the bell curve. Society, and culture, regress to the mean. They are governed by the popular imperatives, not the most erudite. 

So don’t seek exclusive islands in the tail of the bell curve; you can be different there, but you cannot make a difference there:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

-John Donne

Like John Donne’s church bell, the bell curve tolls for us all. We will rise or fall together.

That’s my truth for today. The true measure of our worth is not how much better we can be than average, but how much we can do to make the average better. It’s your time, and it’s your turn to make the mean of us all- better.

Graduates of 2017- push your youthful strength up against the reluctant weight of the mean- but do it tomorrow. Put your shoulder to the unyielding line drawn through the middle of the bell curve and lift, tomorrow. Welcome to the revolution, tomorrow; it will be waiting for you.

Today, the simple truth is- you’ve made it. That is a triumph. Perhaps a small triumph in the grand sweep of things; but all triumphs are small in the grand sweep of things. It is a triumph, truly, and worthy of celebration. It matters.

I am honored to celebrate it with you, and proud to be here to say: Class of 2017- congratulations!

-fin

David L. Katz

Director, Yale University Prevention Research Center; Griffin Hospital

Immediate Past-President, American College of Lifestyle Medicine

Senior Medical Advisor, Verywell.com

Founder, The True Health Initiative

Follow at: LinkedIN; Twitter; Facebook

Read at: INfluencer Blog; Huffington Post; US News & World Report; Verywell; Forbes

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://bit.ly/2rZzEjI