#i will never be on time for trends on account of the dysfunction i am once again sorry

[chirrups]

blockmen bloodsport… save me.., blockmen bloodsport, save me blockmen bloodsport

template by @/xmaruu11

[psychemenin-blog]

Reburgening

Inspired by a friend to return to my tumblr account, I discovered all my baby little thoughts *poofed*

I'm genuinely sad about it, my memory will wrongfully insist I had any wisdom.

I love reflecting on what I thought I knew, what I saw myself going through, and I especially appreciate the opportunity to spot trends and patterns that I can apply to my daily.

So , I'll jump in with what's eating me now.

I'm concerned.

What's new? It's not. But I am. Always concerned about something as if I have a ceaseless need to chase growth & spot-to-solve problems. This has everything to do with perfectionism, alanonism, family dysfunction, my dysfunction, I accept it, I love it, it drives me. (do I? This is helping already)

I would appreciate tapping into playfulness. I have been looking into my relationship and life partner to inspire my growth and it's never going to be that easy for me. I have to stand behind my own sense of creativity and independence. I've been putting pressure on myself to feel inspired and profound and find another passion project to chase and something to invest myself in and it's not happening as a result of my incessant internal bickering. These are yet-old ways that I could stand to pivot, since, I'm gradually getting used to practicing speaking to myself with more kindness.

What I look for in my partnership I already possess, and yet, I have some kind of identity crisis. Like a black soot of the soul that I have believed in so deeply that I didn't even recognize could be placed there by not-my-doing. There's a plague of alcoholism which is just really a disease of the mind. It's a disease of attitudes that casts a shadow on the ways in which I was loved, taught to love, and loved myself as a result of my findings.

I think love will continue to be hard for me, but what if I took a new approach? Considered it already available, a joy, a spacious existence that I don't have to work hard to attain. I just think that putting the foot on the gas was always the way to succeed, and success by the standards of "so I think I can't, let me prove myself wrong."

I need (edit: would enjoy) to tap into my own spirit of joy. I need (Actually, need is good here!) to unapologetically spend time doing things that delight me. What fucking delights me?

camping. fishing. building. singing literally which I never do and have historically been self conscious about. What about instead of dog lessons (no I'm going to have to do those, it's time) I consider taking voice lessons? What if I don't like it. But what if I do? Singing is good for the heart. And I don't mean just emotionally, it's literally an improvement on ones cardiovascular health to sing regardless of the quality.

dancing is a huge love language of mine. Moving. hiking is nice. I love my dog so much. I love listening to records, especially when I'm high- which I sometimes judge as maybe numbing but I think it allows me to unlock a series of thoughts that I enjoy most. Or rather, it slows down my thoughts long enough to meditate in what's available to me right there. And I'm only talking about sativa!

Do I enjoy long conversations with friends and time with others? It depends. I do love to 1x1 and I benefit greatly from the experience of being opposite facing and listening to someone who has the same self-peace goals as I do. I can't do small talk, that's surely exhausting, but I do ... ultimately. thinking of no audience here. I do get drained. What fills my cup?

I get drained because I'm programmed to consider the other persons' experience so deeply I don't know hot to track my own adequately or honestly. Maybe part of my experience will always be tethered to my outside, spectator POV.

This reminds me of Fablemans and Suits S8 Ep (unsure) titled Coral Gables that Litt experiences in therapy. Two great examples of honest experiences I so deeply relate to in a way I ego-centrically assumed I could only ever relate to.

Steven Speilberg used a metaphor for filming his family while they were talking about divorce. I am curious if that conversation ever actually happened or if it was a scene written to describe a series of unfolding expectations and disappointments that happen over the months/years of an executed divorce. In my experience, it's uncommon for it to be discussed such as he scene suggests.

He as a kid sits on the stairs but he pitcutres himself filming everyone. That's literally my world <wet spaghetti>.

That is a film, the first film I ever made. I'm so attached to what it tells me now-- same reason I want my old posts to survive. I may have cringed at first, but I respect where I was in my journey and what rings true for me still. I somehow captured the experience I was trying to say- this is the mans' life I miss. I can't immortalize him, but damnit, I'm going to try. And everyone in the family talked about how his death left a mark on them, and yet Kevin's the only person I could reliably hear speak to BEANER. Does it come from being the two youngests? I think my oldests have a narcissistic wound as a result, likely, of my parents being so much younger and in competition for joy and resources when they were young and their kids were young. so then Kevin and I grew up on the other side of a narcissistically wounded family, 10 years later, so we have only taught been taught that we live in service of others. But what I see the most is how I'm not only not in the film, but I am in only two moments. One where I'm asking a question, another where I'm relating to my brother during an intense moment of vulnerability, and a singular photo of me unwittingly threw over the "faking it" arc of the story, which is all I ever felt like I was doing around that time, and any time before it when I can really look deeply. I mean. I don't mean to discount my experience as a young kid. I think she did a great fucking job with everything she could, and I am so appreciative of her cleverness, camaraderie, quick thinking, and general positive view of what the world could become.

And yet now I'm on the other side of that person who aspired for loving myself in adulthood. I'll be good, I'll observe the chaos from here. I used to picture myself as a movie character, thinking " what would she do next?" as an attempt to guide myself when I was so dissociated re: traumatic experiences.

People have such reactions to the word trauma, I feel and recall as I type/think/express it. I believe every single person has it. And Im not in the business of disguising it as unnecessary because it is necessary. Conflict is information. Your character gets tested into making decisions that reveal context about your character. Even this, I find, existing in the world of films and storytelling. everything about human development and film have made a perfect home for me.

So why am I now, pushing myself to experience an output of creativity as something tangible. Why am I discrediting my gains because it doesn't look as harsh as it always had?

[mmagazinemoment]

Why my past loves make me want to look into nihilism as a lifestyle.

Good morning, midday, afternoon, or evening to you my fellow queers and allies and plain and simply gorgeous humans. You see I have already written another version of this edition but instead I have a pure heroine filled piece instead, and you may not be ready for it because it covers a few serious points but it’s also the (fuck your ex) vibe, not literally…unlesssssss * insert meme*. Thanks for joining me again my loves

 Why my past loves make me want to look into nihilism as a lifestyle

You ever just meet someone and fall completely into their arms and become almost a complete and utter 3rd leg of the other? What I mean in all seriousness is, don’t you ever feel like the love game grows on you like a drug addiction and I know some of you will see this and be thinking? What do you mean “the love game” I know it’s not a game, a figure of speech as such. Basically, what I’m trying to say is have you ever loved someone so much that you didn’t see the signs of detrimental dysfunction.

Wow that all sounds so serious, let me dial it down a little, I’m just trying this new thing called being uncensored and not caring about preconceived notions of myself from external eyes. Months ago, I was shattered into a million pieces and I won’t blame just him because it was my fault for thinking every relationship or whatever it was, was going to end up like a tv romance, no that’s a lie. I over invested and blamed him for hurting my own self, sure he had something to do with it, but he wasn’t just to blame. Can’t tell me I don’t know how to take accountability (wow I’m funny).

For instance, in a movie you meet and lock eyes with someone and the breeze grasps your hair, when I met said person, I was like ‘omg he’s tall, I’m going to fall in love with a giraffe’ and then I tried to build a home in him, without the investment and time taken to be careful with my time and words of affirmation in efforts to receive reciprocation I never got unless it was backhanded or what I wanted to hear. So how did you perceive your first love? Did he/she/they look pleasing? Or was it the scent of their perfume or cologne? Did they dress in a floral vintage outfit or was it a suit and tie? Ballet flats or sneakers? Tell me? I want to know all of the juicy details!

I know some of you probably didn’t ask or ever want to know but my first love happened in a series of me closing doors journeying through my uneasy sexuality labelling and let’s be real, fuck labels am I right? (unless you find comfortability and closure under a label and with that you’re perfectly valid), Love to me was like heroine and in some senses it still is. When I first learnt of love, it didn’t feel like love, it felt like obligation, perhaps a trend. Love felt like learning all he moves to a Tik Tok dance as fast as possible before the hype disappeared, and it became irrelevant again, questionable reference point but blame social media not me. I was never satisfied.

Keep in mind this was 15-year-old me, trying to gain some sense of validation to seem a little less repressed and not confused because before 15 year old me realised that 12 year old me wasn’t as weird as I thought.  I was under this veil of non-transparency and speaking on the subject of transparency I must tell you 12 was the year of age I realised that I wasn’t like the other boys at school, just swooning for girls and getting scared of cooties, I was just begging to be seen by whoever had eyes to care. Sounds dramatic I know.

Nobody was ever there to tell me at such a young age that there were others like me, “different”, the type of boy who watched rebel without a cause and felt weird when James Dean was looking so gorgeous and composed in that leather jacket or admiring Tim Curry when he dressed like no man I’d ever seen on a movie screen in or even real life in the Rocky Horror Show, something sparked in… me. I started on the smallest step I knew, acknowledgement, I knew I could find a home in the fact that there were more people like me, and wow I was right. I was finding comfort in what I knew, I found a few gorgeous women and obviously because of my age we thought that holding hands and a peck on the cheek was all we needed in life from the label of ‘relationship’, but it was only ever a weekly process. Anytime I found ‘love’ I wouldn’t know what to do with it without the chase, like a dog chasing a bone. Even to this day I have never had a successfully long relationship but at least these days it’s not because of my toxic traits, I like to think I’ve grown a considerate amount since I was 15. Don’t get me wrong, neither of those experiences were love? How could they be?

Ironically love happened even ‘after’ I was in a relationship. I had another relationship when I was 17, it lasted a little longer than the prior, it went for a month and a half, I was convinced I loved her, so sappy but you wanted transparency right? I have a lot of it. After that, my ex brought to attention after she cheated on me that I was using her as a sort of beard to cover up the truth about myself, I never knew how to perceive myself until then and that was only the second step, there was so much more to cover.

Skip forward past a few experiences leading up the near current, I met someone, a sort of fleeting romance, now (forewarning, this gets sappy) we talked for a few weeks if my memory isn’t hazy, and we quickly developed something no short of a connection. FaceTime after FaceTime I’d gather more and more pictures of his goofy face and at one stage, I thought I was going to be happy for the foreseeable future, then came reality. You can’t be loved by someone who doesn’t want to face themselves and you can’t help them anymore than what you’re capable of giving out. I didn’t listen to that, naturally things just got worse, and I hated everything…

He would apologise, I would validate his actions to friends who were concerned and realising that I was getting too soon attached and it wasn’t going to end well and I copped the consequences, I still have only recently not found regret in messing up this badly because if I didn’t make that mistake then I would’ve just witnessed those mistakes I made in the lap of somebody else and this is where the saying goes, better the devil you known then the devil you don’t. let me tell you it did more than a number on my mental health before I added up the reasons as tallies against us and internalised what I should’ve subtracted (hehe see what I did there). In all seriousness I wanted the thrill, I sure as hell got one.

Your mental health is amplified by your lifestyle choices and the people you choose to keep in your circle, friendship, or relationships regardless, the whole thing was out of whack and a tornado was nothing less than the accurate definition of where I was at, and it hurt a lot but sometimes it’s best to leave that situation if that person who you thought was going to be there for a while and a necessity to your life ends up being the detriment. (as Ashley Frangipane said) “its crazy when the thing you love the most is the detriment, let that sink in”.  

 If there is one piece of advice that I want whoever sees this to take with them it’s this, Keep your space sacred baby, you only have one life, but also please do not criticize yourself for getting caught in the motion sickness, sometimes you just can’t avoid it and that’s ok. Life is not a movie, life is more like the behind the scenes extra that puts everything into perspective, it’s rational and shows the hard work put in place to make the art and you should remind yourself as such. Remember also that if you cannot cope with all of the stress that presents itself in your life, that there are people that are equipped to help you hold some of the baggage for you until you are ready to take it back and analyse it. Whatever your grief is, I assure you, you’re not alone.

As always, stay healthy and strut your shit and I cannot stress this enough but keep raging against the machine and the super straights xoxo without the gossip girl, farewell until the next piece of The Mantra Magazine. *keep this in mind* next issue will be a little forward, it will include themes of segregation and war regarding the families of the Palestinians and Israeli conflicts happening right now. So, bring some tissues and an open mind. Farewell.

[aelaer]

[1/2] Now this is an actual ask as in asking for help. 👀 I have a problem with Steve and Tony. I spent too much time too early on reading anti/not-friendly post-CW fics about 'Team Cap', and because of that I have been unable to see Tony as a flawed human or Steve as a good person. It's a pattern I've become too familiar with, and even recent stories are often going into that sense. I have been trying for some time now to do something about it, but either the method was bad, or I couldn't

(I tagged a couple people in this post – if you were tagged, the question directed to you is wayyyy at the bottom! Feel free to ignore of course.)

You really hit me with a doozy with this ask. I might offend someone for not thinking the exact same way as them with… everything this topic entails… Steve, Tony, anti-fics. Followers from last year know what happened last time I talked about poor and OOC characterization in fanfic, lmao. Beware The Easily Offended! This Is A Critical Thinking Of Your Hobby Zone! I Am Being Critical Of Specific Types of MCU Fanfic!

Please don’t click the read more button if you can’t handle an opinion that might not match yours. Really. I’m fine with discussing different opinions in a mature manner but if you have issues with people saying they don’t like a specific type of plot, this post is not for you. (The read more button doesn’t appear on the original post for followers using the mobile app, but it works on desktop and in all reblogs. If you don’t see a cut and don’t want to read, just skip it, please).

Yeah. Okay. Moving on. Can’t say folks weren’t warned.

I’ve had this in my drafts for several weeks because of the abuse I got the last time I wrote something critical about certain plot points used in fanfic. I was definitely a bit reluctant to look at this specific topic from an analytical and critical look as I remembered that, but hey, it’s really easy for a coward to use a sockpuppet account and throw abuse. It’s harder to be a minority voice with stark opinions contrasting the popular trend. I’m okay with having a minority opinion amongst the MCU fandom.

(PS - you’re welcome to disagree with my opinions, so long as you’re respectful about it. Remember there are individuals behind the screens!)

Concerning Character Flaws

So the thing about really well-written characters is that they are flawed in some manner. Anyone who thinks Tony or Steve exist without flaws – and I mean real flaws, like arrogance, believing they’re always right, short tempers, and other *real* character flaws that both of these characters have – well, if they don’t think they exist with these flaws, how well do they know the character?

You don’t have to know a character well to be a fan of said character – there’s no rules about that – but if you’re going to write fanfic, and that fanfic entails the character you love against a character you don’t particularly like, I’d say any writer looking to do anything resembling a good job would do their due diligence in figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of both characters before writing the characters themselves. These mental lists of characteristics should be equal for both characters. No, “good abs” is not a character strength if you have no physical aspects in the other character strength column. You don’t have to like a character to still write them well.

Even professionals don’t follow this rule when, say, shows get new writers or comics get different writers, so you might consider me silly expecting those dabbling in fan fiction. But yeah, if an author wants me to take a story seriously as something with quality, I expect the characters to resemble themselves in some manner.

(This level of resemblance varies when you purposefully choose for the protagonist to be evil, be in a completely different time period, etc, but authors who do this *well* still get core personality traits solid, even if morality is out the window or the profession is entirely different. I have a lot of examples from the Sherlock fandom of total AUs that pull this off well – haven’t read nearly enough AUs in the MCU to have a good collection here).

But a resemblance of character, of capturing the three-dimensionality of a character, is what anti-fics simply fail to achieve. The characters they’re anti against usually suffer cases of Flanderization, if they’re not completely out of character altogether in showing traits that were never displayed in the canon, ever. I don’t know why anyone would be interested in such stories, myself, and remain baffled at their popularity. Is there some sort of enjoyment in seeing such a 2D rendition of a character in what is otherwise meant as a serious work and provides absolutely no sense of proper conflict between two characters? Not for me; it immediately takes me out of the story and when it gets too much, I abandon the story. It’s just not enjoyable for me. Turning a canon protagonist into a strawman is just lazy writing and offers nothing to the writer’s favorite, preferred character.

Concerning Steve’s and Tony’s Flaws

Every real human being has some sort of personality flaw that is decidedly unattractive. Some people are really good at showing it very rarely (and are some of the best human beings), but with these two characters we see them at their greatest heights and lowest of lows. Ironically, they actually share a lot of the same flaws, but display them in different manners in canon:

Both men believe they are the best man for the job and will do it without consulting someone who could actually fight against it - or go completely against them. Tony with Ultron is the easy example here. He’s the smartest man in the world and can tackle the issue of protecting it on its own. Steve, same issue, and his job is “helping Bucky”. *He’s* the one who can handle Bucky, the only one who can handle him - big thing in both WS and CW. If both of them had utilized their friends and allies a lot more, a lot of issues could have been avoided.

Both men are sometimes hypocritical. Steve promotes teamwork in all his speeches but again with the Bucky situation. Just… everything Bucky, man. Tony signs the Accords and immediately goes against them with what he gives to Peter, who most assuredly did not sign them (tangent: if he HAD joined the Avengers at the end of Homecoming, I have no idea how that would have gone since Peter would have had to reveal his identity to the UN and then there’s the whole ‘still a minor’ thing, and yeah, Homecoming’s end scene just makes me go nuts). But anyway, their occasional hypocrisy is one of the most realistic aspects of them because most human beings are hypocritical sometimes.

Both men are sometimes arrogant. Tony’s self-explanatory with his genius-playboy-philanthropist-billionaire. One thing he does not suffer from is low self-esteem in regards to his abilities. His arrogance comes from his genius. Steve’s arrogance lies more in his deep-seeded belief that he is on the moral high ground – and one reason I think a lot of people dislike him so much, because moral superiority is very much a faux pas in this day and age for some millennials and many Gen Z folk. He has a very, very solid sense of what is right and what is wrong, and that rubs some folks the wrong way. Tony is more morally fluid – but he is not by any means immoral.

Both of them have a really solid list of strengths as well. As this ask specifically is looking to find the good in Steve, I specifically Googled pro-Steve articles for you to click at your leisure (and one with both). If you need to go back to canon, I highly recommend rewatching The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier, which introduces Steve brilliantly and then lets Steve grow further in the second film.

(Note: I actually prefer Tony to Steve in terms of personal favoritism, but how a very loud segment of Tony fans have treated other characters has led me to be more vocal about the strengths of others, especially Steve and Wanda. So Tony might be in my top 5, but mean-spirited Tony fans have moved me to be a champion of other characters, if only to show other fans that there are indeed Tony fans that do like the other characters and treat them – and their fans – with respect).

Bringing Balance (to the Universe…) Fanfic-Style

This addresses the second part of your ask in regards to the fanfics. And this is where I started running into trouble, too, mostly because, well, just how many Stephen and Steve fics are there? Yeah, exactly. Stephen’s my main guy. So I did some research, outsourcing, and reading.

Here’s two I knew of before cuz Stephen’s in them in some capacity:

Identity Theft by KitKat992 - it stars Peter and both Tony and Steve play integral parts from what I recall. Good story too, very engaging.

A Dysfunctional Senior Year (series) by ApolloLoki97 - this also stars Peter and has a large Team As Family aspect, so it shows the entire Avengers team as just decent people. My favorite part is naturally part 3 because Stephen comes in that one, haha.

And to find other stories, I went into the Anti-Accords tag. It was nice to find fics that didn’t have such a love of hypocritical authoritarianism. Aannyyyyway.

Making Sense of Chaos by SparkedtoLife - mind the tags. Seriously, it’s heavy duty. Yet another Peter fic because he’s way more popular than my favorite character, qq. Lots of Netflix Marvel characters too! Anyway, deals with not only Tony and Steve really well (and has a different dynamic with Tony that isn’t IronDad, so that was a nice change of pace), it also deals with the Accords situation very realistically. And none of those are even main plot points. If you can handle the very serious, sensitive subject that is the main plot point, I highly recommended it. It’s a very masterfully done work.

Atlas by nanasekei - Stony. Treats all characters with respect and both Tony and Steve as three-dimensional, flawed humans with some serious self doubts. Also highly agree with the author that Thaddeus Ross sucks and is basically one of the biggest people to blame for Everything Going To Shit.

Homecoming by an orphaned account - Some Stucky. This is a lovely one-shot of things I basically wanted to happen when the team got together again but didn’t. Sigggghhh. Everyone is definitely in character in this one, traumas and healing and all. And look, another person realizes that trusting Ross is a really horrible idea.

Locks Not Replaced by Riverdaughter - first this writer has a Tolkien-based username so yay. Anyway, the fic starts off by Tony realizing that he almost killed Steve during the fight with his repulsors, and it was only Bucky that stopped him. Do people seriously think he’d survive a shot to the face with that power? This is one reason the ‘Steve tried to kill Tony’ people piss me the fuck off. What do you think those repulsors shoot, fucking rainbows? Honestly, guys. Anyway, mini rant over. This fic is great. Author comes in with a Cap favoritism but treats Tony well, and honestly Tony turning a blind eye to everything and ignoring Ross is what I like to think happened in canon (he clearly dislikes the guy). And also I love the Robin Hood parallels. Love love love. I think this fic is my favorite of the ones listed in this section.

Meeting Your Heroes by Riverdaughter - naturally after reading that fic I went to explore more and found this gem. She’s not incorrect in saying Tony wasn’t a good mentor at the beginning - I think he had his own growth after Peter’s actions in Homecoming especially (though even through Homecoming he was trying, just… not always successfully lmao). Anyway love these two together. It’s great.

Photograph by slytherclaw420 - A scene we deserved in Endgame and didn’t get. Sigh. Definite IronDad feels here. Hopeful Steve, rebuilding of a friendship.

And uh, an honorable mention of sorts:

Balancing the Scales by MoonFire1 - I’m not recommending this fic for good characterization or plot. It really doesn’t have either. The fic was written in retaliation for the nasty Tony fans completely trashing Steve’s character. You should only read this if you want to see the argument from “the other side” and if you want to see an anti-Tony fic like you’ve seen anti-Steve fics. Don’t harass the author though. This is presented as a counterargument to anti-Steve fiction, for those interested to read the other sides arguments. I don’t like the nature of the fic, but I loathe that “not Steve friendly” has 30 fucking pages of works with tens of thousands of kudos, so one anti-Tony fic (with a comparatively small three pages under that tag) really doesn’t compare. Ugh. I hate the anti culture in this fandom so much. Loathe it. It’s such a nasty energy! Why would you indulge in such negativity? But as I’ve mentioned before, I appreciate authors aware enough to tag it so I can avoid it. I wish that part of fandom culture didn’t exist, but well, can’t change it. Just can criticize the fuck out of it on my blog. Maybe encourage people to think less one-sided in the process if I’m lucky.

But there’s probably more good characterization Steve fics to be found, so I am forcefully recruiting two people via tag:

If you’re looking to dabble into Stony fics with good-guy-Steve, if anyone would know of any, I’d imagine it’d be @babywarg.

You don’t know this person, but @cairistiona7 has actually known me the longest of anyone here on tumblr (half my life! HALF! She even knows my real name :P She betaed a LOTR work of mine a decade ago I ended up never fully publishing… thanks again for all your help there…). Anyway, she’s a big Bucky fan, and Bucky friendships is the best thing. So if anyone would know any wholesome Bucky and Steve stories, it’d be her. (Or really I’d take any of your recs, Cair, as I’ll probably enjoy them as well).

I hope this was helpful to you md, and that I didn’t piss off too many of my followers in the process of answering this lol.

[aro-neir-o]

Results PART 1 DESCRIPTIVE DATA: Aro-Spec Identities and Experiences of Stigmatization

This post is a report of the findings of the survey I had running in the last couple of months of 2018, investigating the intersection of aro-spec identities and experiences of stigmatization and microaggressions.

This report is very long and comprehensive, so I will split it into three parts: - PART 1 will cover descriptive data, like demographics and general aggregate findings - PART 2 will cover inferential statistics, like correlations and variable relationships - PART 3 will cover discussion of the results, limitations, and plans for further study

A full version of these results on one page is available here.

Thank you to everyone who participated! 

Results are under the cut. Where possible, I will use graphs to show the data, but I will also explain the content of the graphs just under the images to accommodate people who may respond better or worse to data presented in a certain format.

THIS IS PART 1: DESCRIPTIVE DATA

DEMOGRAPHICS

There were 623 responses to the survey. 357 of these responses were complete - these participants completed the survey in its entirety.

People were recruited from Tumblr, the Arocalypse online forums, and the Arocalypse Discord server. Snowballing was used as a technique for recruitment, so there may also have been participants who were recruited indirectly through other participants.

The survey was only made available in English.

Age

Over half the participants in the study were between the ages of 18 and 24. Over a quarter of the participants were under 18. The rest of the participants were aged 25 to 34, with a small minority being over 35.

Gender

Over half the participants surveyed reported being non-binary, genderqueer, and/or an other gender identity. Just under half of all participants reported being cisgender women. Transgender men and cisgender men also participated, but in small numbers.

Note: I separated out cisgender and transgender identities for the purpose of analyzing intersectionality. It may be the case that transgender people who are aromantic navigate microaggressions and stigmatization differently than transgender people who are not aromantic or aromantic people who are not transgender. Unfortunately, there were not enough responses for me to run this statistically, but other queer-focused studies have noticed intersections of queer identities affecting life experiences.

Racial and Ethnic Background

A significant majority (read: over three quarters) of participants in this survey identified as white. Most of these participants (about three quarters) did not specify further than “white,” but those who did specify fell into European, North American, and Australian/New Zealander categories.

After white persons, the next most common demographic was Asian, followed by Latinx, Mixed race, Jewish, Hispanic or Portuguese, Native or Indigenous, and finally, Black or African. 

Note: In cases where ethnic backgrounds are reported together in these results, these categories were combined based on low numbers and relative appropriateness. Broad categories were determined based on several different Census conventions (e.g., Canadian Census categories) as well as categories used to report demographics in a variety of academic studies. If you are curious about which ethnicities went into which categories, you can ask me for more elaboration. People who reported multiple identities were counted in both or all relevant groups or put into the mixed race category, depending on the person’s answer (e.g., if they explicitly wrote “mixed race” or not).

(Romantic) Orientation

Almost three quarters of the participants surveyed identified as broadly Aromantic. The next most represented orientations were Demiromantic and Greyromantic, accounting for half a quarter of the total. Participants in the Other category were the next most represented, followed by Quoiromantic, Aro-spec, Aroflux, and Lithromantic or Akoiromantic people.

Other identities captured in this survey include: fictorimantic, sansromantic, aegoromantic, abroromantic, cupioromantic, nebularomantic, oriented aromantic, non-SAM-using asexual, non-SAM-using aromantic, and queer.

Partnership Status

Almost half of all respondents reported being single with no intention to marry at the time of the survey. About a third of respondents reported being single (never married). Single people therefore made up the vast majority (read: over three quarters) of the survey respondents.

The next most represented participants were those dating or Other. A very small minority reported being married, and an even smaller minority reported being divorced or separated from their partner(s).

Do you consider yourself polyamorous?

Just over a quarter of respondents considered themselves polyamorous. The rest (i.e., the majority) did not consider themselves polyamorous.

Have you ever been diagnosed with a physical or psychological condition? Does this have any bearing on your view of aromanticism?

Almost two thirds of respondents reported having been diagnosed with a physical or psychological condition. Of these people, about a quarter reported that their condition does have a bearing on their view of aromanticism.

MEANS AND AGGREGATE RESULTS

The following questionnaires are revisions made by the researcher to Foster (2017)’s revisions of existing queer/LGBT scales. Foster (2017) applied an Asexual focus to the scales. The researcher for this study applied an Aromantic focus, changing terminology where appropriate.

Experiences of Aromanticism

The diversity of the aromantic community was highlighted in the response rates to the following items.

• I experience romantic attraction toward other people: 22% True, 78% False

• I lack interest in romantic activities: 77.5% True, 22.5% False

• I don’t feel that I fit the conventional categories of romantic orientation such as heteroromantic, homoromantic (gay or lesbian), or biromantic: 92% True, 8% False

• The thought of romantic activities repulses me: 52% True, 48% False

• I find myself experiencing romantic attraction toward another person: 17.5% True, 82.5% False

• I am confused by how much interest and time other people put into romantic relationships: 85% True, 15% False

• The term “non-romantic” would be an accurate description of my romanticism: 70.5% True, 29.5% False

• I would be relieved if I was told that I never had to engage in any sort of romantic activities again: 77% True, 23% False

• I go to great lengths to avoid situations where romance might be expected of me: 76% True, 24% False

• My ideal relationship would not involve traditionally romantic activities: 73.5% True, 26.5% False

• Romance has no place in my life: 70% True, 30% False

Aromantic Microaggressions Scale (AroMS)

Of the participants who experienced microaggressions against them (i.e., participants who responded with frequency ratings greater than 1), the following trends were observed.

• Generally, participants reported experiencing microaggressions aimed against them at a rate of “sometimes” (mean=2.84/5). Participants reported these incidences as moderately distressing (mean=3.69/5).

• The most frequently reported aggression against aros was others telling them that there is no such thing as aromantic discrimination or prejudice (mean=3.39/5, sometimes to often). This moderately distressed participants (mean=3.72/5).

• The most distressing aggression against aros was aros being propositioned for pursuing romantic relationships because they were aro-spec (quite distressing, mean=4.01/5; occurring once in a while, mean=2.68/5). As well, participants found that being threatened with harm was quite distressing (mean=3.90/5; occurring once in a while, mean=2.5/5). The latter was also the least frequently reported occurrence.

• The least distressing aggression reported was being asked to provide examples of how aros knew they are aro-spec (mean=3.2/5, meaning being bothered a little bit to moderately).

MOST OFTEN EXPERIENCED TO LEAST OFTEN EXPERIENCED o Others have told me that there is no such thing as aromantic discrimination or prejudice o I have been made to feel inferior by others because I am aro-spec o I have been told that I am aromantic because I haven’t met the right person yet o Others have assumed that I choose to be aro-spec o I have been told that aromanticism “isn’t real” o I have been asked to provide examples of how I know I am aro-spec o I have been told that being aro-spec is against human nature o I have been told that no one will want me as a relationship partner because I am aro-spec o I have heard non-aro-spec people speculate about the ‘cause’ of my aromanticism o I have been called derogatory names (e.g., “manipulative” or “freak”) in relation to my aromanticism o I have been told that aromanticism is a form of dysfunction or illness, not a valid way to identify o I have been propositioned for pursuing romantic relationships because I am aro-spec (e.g., “I’ll show you what you’re missing”) o I have been harassed because I am aro-spec o I have been told that I am “not healthy” because I am aro-spec o People have asked me if sexual/relationship trauma is the reason I am aro-spec o I have been threatened with harm because I am aro-spec

MOST DISTRESSING TO LEAST DISTRESSING o I have been propositioned for pursuing romantic relationships because I am aro-spec (e.g., “I’ll show you what you’re missing”) o I have been threatened with harm because I am aro-spec o I have been made to feel inferior by others because I am aro-spec o I have been told that aromanticism is a form of dysfunction or illness, not a valid way to identify o I have been told that aromanticism “isn’t real” o I have been called derogatory names (e.g., “manipulative” or “freak”) in relation to my aromanticism o I have been told that being aro-spec is against human nature o I have been told that I am aromantic because I haven’t met the right person o Others have told me that there is no such thing as aromantic discrimination or prejudice o I have been harassed because I am aro-spec o I have heard non-aro-spec people speculate about the ‘cause’ of my aromanticism o I have been told that I am “not healthy” because I am aro-spec o People have asked me if sexual/relationship trauma is the reason I am aro-spec o I have been told that no one will want me as a relationship partner because I am aro-spec o Others have assumed that I choose to be aro-spec o I have been asked to provide examples of how I know I am aro-spec

Stigma Consciousness Questionnaire (SCQ)

This scale is a common and reliable questionnaire used to measure how aware respondents are of stigmas others have toward the respondents’ community.

• The most agreed upon item for all respondents was that most non-aro-spec people have a lot more anti-aromantic thoughts than they actually express (mean=4.03/6 or slightly agree)

• The most disagreed upon item for all respondents was that most non-aro-spec people do not judge aro-spec people on the basis of their lack of romantic attraction (mean=2.66/6 or slightly to moderately disagree)

• Particularly variable were participants’ responses to the item “I never worry that my behaviors will be viewed as stereotypical of aro-spec people.” Similarly, responses to the item “stereotypes about aro-spec people have not affected me personally” were variable.

Collective Self-Esteem Scale (CSES)

This scale is used to measure the aromantic community’s collective self-esteem.

• Most agreed-upon item internally (i.e., response with least variance) was “overall, aro-spec people are considered good by others,” with the response slightly disagreeing (mean=3.22/7)

• Respondents also generally agreed that others do not respect aro-spec people (mean=3.13/7 or slightly disagree)

• Respondents were ambivalent about “most people consider aro-spec people, on the average, to be more ineffective than other social groups” (mean=4.36/7, or ambivalent, but with quite a bit of variance)

• In general, respondents’ thoughts were that the aro community is not well-respected, liked, or considered good by others in society, to a slight degree

The Heterosexist Harassment, Rejection, and Discrimination Scale for Aromantics (HHRDS-A Aro)

For the participants for which these questions were applicable (i.e., for participants who reported frequencies greater than 0), the following trends were observed.

• The most frequently reported aromantic discrimination from participants was hearing anti-aromantic remarks from family members – on average, happening once in a while to sometimes (mean=2.68/6)

• The least frequently reported aromantic discrimination from participants was being denied a raise – on average, happening never (mean=1.02/6). Considering the most represented age demographic in this survey, this result makes sense, as many young adults and teenagers are not far enough into careers to have this opportunity arise at all

MOST TO LEAST FREQUENTLY EXPERIENCED o Heard anti-aromantic remarks from family members o Been treated unfairly by parents o Been treated unfairly by friends o Been treated unfairly by a romantic partner o Been made fun of, picked on, called insulting names, pushed, shoved, hit, or threatened with harm o Being treated unfairly by strangers o Been rejected by a romantic partner o Been verbally insulted o Been rejected by parents o Been treated unfairly by a sexual partner o Been treated unfairly by sibling(s) o Been treated unfairly by extended family o Been treated unfairly by people in a medical profession o Been treated unfairly by peers, co-workers, or colleagues o Been rejected by extended family o Been rejected by a sexual partner o Been rejected by sibling(s) o Been treated unfairly by teachers or professors o Been treated unfairly by employers or supervisors o Been treated unfairly by people in service jobs o Been denied a promotion o Been denied a job o Been denied a raise

[thewul]

Predictive Dialer

We are going to continue here, and also it seems that I forgot to add extortion to my resume. I do have a natural ability to make people lose their bets, people have certain mechanisms by which they gauge a personality and after that when you have a certain facility for it you can project, because these are projections all of it, different personalities. They are meant to achieve different goals, some of them might be to have fun with people that I usually do not know except for their personality types which have been well known for a while. Emotional or analytical and so forth. Or factual arguments to eliminate them physically such as verbal menaces. 

People except for psychopaths operate within a certain set of parameters, and even psychopaths have their own dysfunctional personalities and traits. My reputation is also due to my ability to manipulate people, often in advance and in prevention.  I do know how to preserve myself very well. All sentient good willing intelligent lifeforms have developed mechanisms and tactics to preserve themselves, even ants have societies. And then you have parasites, such as parasites of my time, the time they plan spending making me think who they are not. Playing in my hand.

I would like to get back to society as a mechanism to preserve oneself, let me tell you it’s still a difficult environment, and people high up can have bigger issues than your job as a dentist. Otherwise you have extremely dangerous creatures, poison pills too, and I am one of them. And some people have no luck with me. They for some reason underestimate my capacity to kill them which is mind boggling when you know how easy it is to die, there are statistics for that by cause of death, age, skin color, sex, even weight. I am also a statistician and out of respect for statistics I stay within them.

Also as in trauma physician, the body is mindbogglingly resilient but in other aspects very frail. We fear heights because of the trauma and possible death associated with falling from a certain height, which increases with the height and you lack of training. The lift cage of your high rise as a corporation has been sabotaged previously to your Presidential visit and your corporation is not going to be liable to the government for that. Employee life insurances will kick in so nothing to worry about except a few fatalities, titles in the press and some employees leaving.

Employees will leave your corporation if it represents a high fatality risk, my job is also to keep people assured that my services will not wrong them in any way. How when, secret services checked the lift, so far it is absolutely safe, what they didn’t check however because always pressed for staff and time is the C4 disposed somewhere between the 190th and 170th floor, that’s 30 floors of lift casing and you have to be thorough which people nowadays are well less. I know I work there late at night and I am leaving out of falling on the lift fear, which I have been questioned by secret services giving them my usual blank look. I know that they know that I am an assassin with the government, dozens of them and high up too.

I know that they know that I am a poison pill of the worst kind because I represent too many interests to meddle with, one of which is the safety of operations on this planet. I could easily pass for one of those golden poison dart frogs if it was the trend here. One of them can kill some 10 000 people. I can get more killed much more if my safety is threatened in any kind, I tell Generals what to do. After that I don’t tell people my rank because it is ridiculous at my age, but you can guess by my uniform which I wear every now and then, and its different ones too. I avoid people trying to piece it all together like the plague, and its only so many that I let into knowing when and where I will be present.

Those frogs are really something marvel at, you can see what tactics and mechanisms they developed and they have all my respects for not depending on social security of any kind. Rather the opposite and I too is one of the most dangerous life forms I know of, I use those frogs too, killed whole buildings with them by poisoning the water supply. I synthesize that stuff into aerosols and sprays as well. Its ill advised to say that those frogs are killing machines, they are just preserving themselves and the same goes for me.

People think that I am some form of AI that they can steal, it is upsetting and funny. Actually I feel empty headed every morning, I am like I said amnesic. Its irreversible too, I wake up everyday with no souvenirs of the stuff that I discarded, which I think the discarding phase takes place at night, I can also instantly forget and mark you for killed. I will forget after a time I killed too many to bother, and always for good reasons. 

No I don’t remember the good times either sorry to disappoint again. Its often good times with people that I see once in my life. Near some airport somewhere in Japan or elsewhere, I almost live aboard my private jets, because I have several of them. I meet in complete anonymity too many people to bother having seen you and those good times, I smile when people say good times I know that they were good and remember their faces so that I don’t see them again anytime soon. They can go have good times somewhere else and leave me alone.

“We won’t make an opinion before he answers for kidnapping”, its not a charge honey its my job when the government wants to talk to you, when I want to talk to you anywhere and anytime, global too. I can’t tell you who or where I kidnapped people, they’re many thousands and a lot of them owe me for being still alive because I told them that they could get killed going on like that. The rest died after being questioned on a variety of things ranging from terrorism to human trafficking, narcotics, counterfeiting, all kinds of swindlers I killed like that. I made street gangs disappear for playing people funny.

I completely forgot what the rest of the resume said, counterfeiting maybe, such as that IBM building somewhere, these are all secret agents under first tier id’s, they will check out right each and every time, I know I got them printed by different governments and delivered them hands on. I don’t even know if I can be charged for counterfeiting because I have secret services create whole identity sets or I do it myself for agents, operations, and people who need a new start in life so there, call it counterfeiting if you want. If you’re not killed for finding out.

How are we so far, you probably bought the book because you are interested in me, and in espionage. GITS is an espionage flick go watch it again everywhere people are getting played including Aramaki in front of the cyborg. Do sentiments exist, we would be dull without them there is a whole palette of sentiments, words, phrases and behaviors in GITS. Some of them are induced. Motoko is manipulated, and she’s the main protagonist. 

Why did we have a call center room, because we had no other contact with the outside world, I still take calls, inasmuch as I am remote from your everyday life I can become an everyday presence in your life for a variety of reasons and corporations. Of which Amazon, Ebay, Fedex, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun we said that. I will unfailingly provoke an issue with your services or account in order to have you on the phone, AMEX lets add that. And I will take your different calls for different things with voice virtualization technology, call it a synthesizer. I can be any famous actor you can name, and also lip sync Guns and Roses.

Do I listen to your domestic calls, yes even professional, do I need an injunction for that never, my mandate is not to leave anything in writing. Like we said the government maybe has reasons to get rid of you and is not too keen on you knowing it. What you suspected always existed, the government will even hire hardened criminals to kill you make it like you got stolen for your Rollie at a NY street corner. Its not any different in that regard to various criminal organizations.

My story with law enforcement is a complicated matter where the government that employs me doesn’t want his law enforcement to find out what its doing. Abroad doesn’t really exist for me but for the sake of the word it gets worst abroad because now its two governments that don’t want their law enforcement branches to know about any of it. And it can be related to people in different countries with different citizenships. 

[stringcoin0-blog]

Erica Wagner's Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge

One of life’s more delightful surprises comes about when something one has expected to be at best no more than a pleasant chore turns out to be a positive pleasure. I must admit that when Peter Aigner asked me to review this book my first thought was that it was a brave soul who would dare to follow McCullough’s vintage account, even if the passage of nearly fifty years held the promise of new sources and fresh perspectives. My second thought was along the lines of “OK, enough of the ‘Great Men’ already!” After all, Washington Roebling didn’t build the Brooklyn Bridge any more than a movie star makes a movie: what about the second gaffer or the assistant third grip or any of the hundreds of others whose names we briefly catch at the end of the movie, if we even bother to watch them roll by? But then I was also curious about “the man in the window” — in McCullough’s felicitous phrase — the house-bound invalid who supervised the last six years of the construction of the bridge from the confines of his office at the back of the Roebling’s home at 110 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn. And the book’s author was indeed able to draw on sources that were not available fifty years ago, mostly importantly Washington Roebling’s private memoir of his father’s life, which turns out to have been as much a memoir of his own life as that of his father’s, at least up until his father’s death in 1869. Our sense of history has, I think, also changed: fifty years ago my mother’s mother, who was born in 1881, could still repeat the Civil War stories told by her grandfather, who had been a captain in the Union Army; today not only she but her children also are gone, and even her grandchildren are getting long in the tooth. The span of Washington Roebling’s life, which saw New York emerge as one of the great cities of the world, has by now passed not only from the realm of living memories but also from the living memories of those memories. And of course today we can read about those by-gone days on our mobile devices via a wireless connection to the internet while flying across the country at 500 miles per hour at an altitude of 30,000 feet, which does, somehow, change our perspective on history in ways that at present we can only guess at.   Chief Engineer does give us a lively account of the actual construction of the bridge and the trials and tribulations of all kinds attendant upon any engineering project of such magnitude, but appropriately enough, the bulk of this account takes up less than a fourth of the story, and even so is interwoven with the events of Wahington Roebling’s “non-bridge” life. Chief Engineer is not a technical account: readers wanting to know, e.g., the details of how the bridge’s cables were “spun” would be well-advised to search out Roebling’s assistant Wilhelm Hildenbrand’s 1877 Cable-Making for Suspension Bridges, with Special Reference to the Cables of the East River Bridge, or, for the construction of the towers, Roebling’s own 1873 Pneumatic Tower Foundations of the East River Suspension Bridge (scans of both are available on-line at archive.org). But for this reader, at least, the greater interest of the book lies in the cast of family characters surrounding his own life: his father, his mother, his brothers — especially the youngest, Edmund — and his first wife, Emily Warren.

The word “Dickensian” almost unavoidably springs to mind: the portrait of John A. Roebling that emerges from his son’s memoir is that of a monster who beat his wife and children — four sons and three daughters survived into adulthood — so often and so mercilessly that they lived in constant terror of him; who when he wasn’t beating them subjected them to the most hideous torments of his quack belief in “water cures” for all ailments of body, mind, and soul; and who later in life engaged a spiritualist medium to establish communications with his deceased wife, even though, as Washington later wrote in his memoir, he had treated her so horribly that “the poor woman was glad to die, even at 48.” The “dysfunctional family” has been around at least since Helen ran off with Paris, and was apparently still thriving in nineteenth century America, as it no doubt still is even today. In any event, it’s hard not to feel some sense of poetic justice when Roebling Sr. dies an agonizing death from a tetanus infection after rejecting proper medical treatment in favor of another of his bogus “water cures” when his toes were crushed in a ferry slip accident while inspecting the site of the Brooklyn-side bridge tower on June 28, 1869.

The middle two of the four Roebling sons survived well enough — at what psychic cost we will surely never know — to be able to run the Trenton, New Jersey, firm that, following their father’s death, was known as the John A. Roebling’s Sons Company, a steel wire mill that later supplied the wire for the Williamsburgh, Manhattan, George Washington, and Golden Gate bridge cables. The youngest brother, Edmund, was not so fortunate. Erica Wagner tells us that sometime after 1917, when, in Washington’s words, Edmund was “a harmless white haired old man of over 70,” a doctor engaged on behalf of the estate of his recently deceased brother Ferdinand had declined to say whether Edmund was compos mentis. Apparently this had been something of a life-long concern. Washington later explained that Edmund’s sad situation arose “from his surroundings from boyhood— No real home, no friends, no ties of relationship, no wife, no occupation, not sufficient force of character to rise above the circumstances and perhaps too much money when young.” He, would, however, survive Washington by some four years, dying in 1930. Washington Roebling’s sisters play no prominent part in Chief Engineer, but the same cannot be said of his wife Emily Warren, whose assistance in supervising the construction of the bridge during the years in which her husband was an invalid was indispensable, rising to the status of becoming what her biographer Marilyn Weigold called the bridge’s “surrogate chief engineer.” Erica Wagner recently told The New York Times that she “didn’t think the Brooklyn Bridge would be standing, were it not for [Emily Roebling] … She was absolutely integral to its construction.” It should come as no surprise that the eldest son of the monstrous father should himself be a difficult man to live with, even without the burden of his chronic illness and the responsibilities for the bridge project it imposed on his wife. Erica Wagner quotes a letter to her son John written on her wedding anniversary, January 18, 1896, saying that “Your father has been married 31 years today. I twice that long.” After the completion of the bridge, however, she was able to establish something of a life of her own beyond the reach of the Roebling family curse: she became involved with a number of civic organizations, travelled widely, and took the Women’s Law Course at New York University, from which she graduated with honors in the spring of 1899, not quite four years before her death at age 59 in 1903. Her 1899 feminist essay, “A Wife’s Disabilities,” written for her NYU course, is still notable for its arguments for women’s rights.

Emily Roebling’s role in the construction of the bridge was a consequence of her husband’s crippling attack of “the bends” in 1872 resulting, in his own words, from his “imprudence in remaining too long in the caisson on Saturday last.” The caisson was a highly pressurized structure that made it possible to work underwater to excavate the riverbed for the bridge towers’ foundations; though little understood at the time, “the bends” were the result of decompressing too rapidly on returning to the surface, which allowed atmospheric gases that had been dissolved into the body’s fluids by the pressure in the caisson to reemerge and to form bubbles that pressed painfully, injuriously, even fatally on the body’s joints and tissues. Erica Wagner tells us that Emily “was not always entirely convinced by her husband’s complaints” and that “much of what ailed him would remain mysterious.” The suspicion, however, lies not far off that whatever part of his suffering was due to “the long term costs of working in compressed air,” another part may have been due to the long repressed pressures of having been the dutiful son of a monster  — a genius of a monster, perhaps, but a monster nonetheless.

Erica Wagner is a wonderful writer and Chief Engineer is as entertaining as it is engrossing, so much so that I am reluctant to register a few complaints about the book itself. Publishers have become so shy of footnotes, bibliography, figure captions and lists of picture sources, as well as indexing, that in their attempt to minimize what they fear are, for the lay reader, the forbidding aspects of a proper scholarly apparatus, too much is lost for those who read a work like Chief Engineer for more than its entertainment value. Alas, Chief Engineer is no exception to this lamentable trend, which puts the burden of sorting out which note belongs with which part of the text on the reader. While the color illustrations are well-done and well-captioned, with sources given, the black and white illustrations in the running text are of only variable quality, sources are not given, and in one instance, a photograph of Washington Roebling seated with British Admiral Jacky Fisher, even the caption has been dispensed with — and the reproduction is so murky one could scarcely begin to recognize either of the two men or to tell the one from the other. This is, I suppose not the author’s fault.

There are also occasional minor errors of a kind that while surely unavoidable in a work of this breadth are nonetheless disconcerting. The Catholic World article on the “The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City” on which the author relies for her evocation of slum conditions in New York (Manhattan) at the time the work on the bridge was about to get underway appeared in volume VII (1867) and not, as the note in the back would have it, volume VIII (1869). And it is a mistake to take such a source at its word: the number of seven or eight story tenement buildings in the city at that time — if indeed any existed at all outside the Catholic World writer’s quite properly indignant imagination — must have been very small, too small to be presented as typical. Even in 1903, when the number of tenements in Manhattan had more than doubled, less than one percent were more than six stories tall.

The Roeblings, father and son, may have seen Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Donizetti’s Don Pasquale performed by a travelling opera group in Pittsburgh sometime around 1858, but they could not have seen La Bohème, at least neither Puccini’s well-known nor Leoncavallo’s lesser-known opera, both of which had their premiers in 1896. If they saw a Bohème it could only have been Théodore Barrière’s hit play of 1849, which was based on Henri Murger’s stories of Parisian life in the Latin Quarter in the 1840s, collected in 1851 as his novel, Scènes de la vie de Bohème.

But I cavil, perhaps unnecessarily, as these are minor slip-ups — there are surely a few others too that readers with expertises and interests different from my own will wince at, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I’ve made a few myself even in the brief space of this review. None of them can alter the overriding fact that Erica Wagner has given us a wonderful if disturbing portrait of a man, a family, and a time in New York’s history — and America’s too — that is both informative and a genuine pleasure to read.

Source: https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/erica-wagners-chief-engineer-washington-roebling-the-man-who-built-the-brooklyn-bridge

[feministbachelornation]

The Bachelor/ette Through a Feminist Lens:

Thoughts on Last Season, the Upcoming Season, and Why I Want to Start These Conversations

Hi. My name is Emily. I am twenty and I just finished my second year of college. I love The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and Bachelor in Paradise. I understand these shows aren’t the pinnacle of intelligent entertainment, but I still watch them, and I love them. I could call them a guilty pleasure, but I don’t feel guilty about it. The Bachelor franchise is a cultural phenomenon. It almost seems that it’s more unique to have not seen or heard of the show than to watch it religiously, or just watch it sometimes. 

I am double-majoring in Theatre Art and English Writing, and seriously considering a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies. This past semester, I took a class called Writing of Women. One student did her final project on The Bachelor and how it is anti-feminist. I felt embarrassed at first. Feminism is important to me, and I don’t want to contribute to a society that puts women down. The girl doing the presentation had never seen an episode of the show, but a lot of her points were valid. The Bachelor has editors that work hard to make women look crazy, like bitches, like idiots. The Bachelor fosters the mindset that a happy ending should be focused on (especially for a woman) marriage above all else. 

But still, many women - myself included - love the show. My classmate suggested we don’t watch The Bachelor anymore, so it might get cancelled. I can realize The Bachelor isn’t going anywhere. And I’m not sure I want it to. This is a show many women enjoy, and often times the things women enjoy are devalued as stupid or not worthwhile. There has to be some good and some validity in a show that so many people really like. I’m not saying it’s perfect - it’s far from it. And I want to talk about those issues, and how they should be fixed, and how angry they make us. But I also want to talk about the merit found within the show. Week by week, episode by episode, I want to dissect and discuss through a feminist lens the show that I really enjoy. Maybe by the end, I won’t enjoy it anymore. Or maybe it’ll make it easier to digest. 

That said, I want to talk about last season. I don’t think I have too much to drone on about - it was kind of boring. I had wanted Nick Viall to be the Bachelor for years, and I felt unsatisfied by a season that was (probably, I don’t really remember) promised to be The Most Dramatic Season Yet. Don’t get me wrong, I still like Nick Viall. I like to believe, even though it’s obvious he just got accidentally caught in the middle of that women’s march, he still supports the movement. As far as Bachelor guys go, he seems to be one of the few that doesn’t actively hate women. 

I also loved the women on his season. I think it’s really important for a show to be able to foster so many female relationships. Alexis was hilarious, and I can’t wait to watch her on Paradise this summer. Rachel was stunning and smart and her season has me so hyped and hopeful. Vanessa was my favorite all season - even as I watched fans begin to turn on her because she was edited to be too serious, or because she was treating her relationship with Nick like an actual relationship instead of a TV relationship. 

I think the initial hatred of Corinne is similar to the current hatred of Vanessa. Corinne wasn’t doing anything particularly villainous. She was just being open with her sexuality. I was shocked as I watched her get slut-shamed on twitter week after week. Why weren’t people getting mad at Nick? He was the one, as America should assume, that was looking for something serious. He could have sent her home, and he didn’t. She should be able to act however she wants.

Luckily, the tables turned for Corinne and she became an incredibly loved contestant from the season. However, the same can’t really be said of Vanessa. It seems to be a trend for fans to hate whatever woman the Bachelor gets engaged to - the same nasty comments Vanessa receives also seem to be aimed at Lauren from the previous season. I don’t really understand why people seem to hate these women so much. The whole point of the show is for the lead to get engaged - but they really can’t win. If Vanessa tries to have conversations with Nick about what her life would look like after they got engaged, she’s too serious. If she goes on After the Final Rose and says they have no plans to get married, she’s not serious enough. 

I personally have not seen the same kind of verbal attacks thrown at male contestants that female contestants receive. Perhaps it’s just as bad for them, but I haven’t seen it and it seems gender-related to me. 

This season, I’ll make sure to keep up with the guys and their social media following. Obviously women get terrible edits, but I realize men can get a bad edit as well. Evan from JoJo’s season is apparently a millionaire, and they made him out to be a “loser” character. I think that might go into the fact that he’s a father and he ran an erectile dysfunction clinic. It was easy for producers to poke fun at the fact that he isn’t traditionally “masculine.” I’m sure we’ll see a lot of that this season. The recently released promo is already doing that and I’m going to talk about that in another post.

The bright side will be getting to see Rachel Lindsay every Monday. I truly think she’s the best Bachelorette to ever get the gig and I can’t wait to see how she handles each situation with grace and intelligence. I am so excited that a woman of color was finally given the opportunity to be the Bachelorette. It was an amazing decision, however, I don’t think we should be praising ABC for it, considering it took twelve seasons (plus twenty-one seasons of The Bachelor) for the lead to be given to a person of color. It’s progressiveness, but at a tortoise pace. I think we still need to hold ABC accountable to being more progressive and giving more opportunities to POC on the show. I’m sure the majority of the men on Rachel’s season will still be white. 

Cast bios are coming out on the 17th, but if you follow Reality Steve or another Bachelor-related gossip site, you already know who the bachelors on Rachel’s season are. In the interest of not revealing spoilers, I’m going to wait to talk about the men until they’re released to the public, but I might cave and discuss the four men who went on ATFR before then since we’ve all already seen them. I would also like to compare the bios of the men on Rachel’s season to the women on Nick’s season - maybe it could be interesting. In the days leading up to Rachel’s season premiere, I hope to write about a lot of interesting things from past seasons to talk about. 

If you read this and you have anything you’d like to chat about, let me know! I’m really excited to start watching the Bachelor shows through a feminist lens!

[digitalworldposts-blog]

Love Labyrinth // Behind The Post (Pt. 3)

lab·y·rinthˈlab(ə)ˌrinTH/

noun

1.a complicated irregular network of passages or paths in which it is difficult to find one's way; a maze.

The videos opened my eyes to a new light and brought me to a place I didn’t think was possible, normality. I remember this as clear as day, it was the middle of the afternoon and i’m laying in my dorm bed. I randomly see this video and i instantly lost it. Crying my eyes out because I had just seen a video of a girl and boy, who very closely resembled me and my boyfriend at the time. I thought, for the first time ever, I think I am actually seeing this situation for what it is, seeing my “relationship”  for exactly what it was. Pathetic. Unhealthy. Traumatizing. Abusive. A Labyrinth. And at that, unacceptable. By the end of that video, a whole 3:42 later, I had made my decision. I was done. And I was allowed to be. For once, it was my turn to decide.

I sat in bed for awhile and thought about how to realistically get out for good. I’ve been told I have a way with words so I thought, I’m just going to write down everything I have to say, send it and block him, so that’s exactly what I did. I wrote him probably the longest message anyone has ever seen in their life, explaining and reprocessing what he had put me through and how unfair it had been to me all this time, and told him I was done for good and to never make contact with me ever again. I blocked his number and every single account he owned digitally. To this day, almost 2 years later, I still never know what he responded. And that is more than okay with me, I didn’t need closure, and I sure as hell didn’t care for it. For the first time in my life, my health, happiness and sustainability came first, before anyone else's and I was going to selfishly do whatever the hell I wanted to and never turn back. I was going to make decisions in my life, not settle of them. For the first time in my life, I felt free, and wow did that feel astronomically different to anything I had ever been used to. Over a 3-year period, I had held on to all of this abuse, mistreatment, disrespect, and anger between two different relationships for far too long. It seemed to control my destiny; but that all changed when I was on Facebook that one random day, trying to escape my own darkness, when reality hit me square in the face and said, “you are better than this, you are strong”, and you can do anything.” This video in an estranged way, while breaking me down to my core, it also gave me a new sense of courage. To decide. To choose differently. To shift my energy and only give it to healthy people who reciprocate it. 

That platform allowed me search the interface of Youtube a bit, navigate their page and see what other videos they had if any. To my pleasant surprise, there were 10+ videos, apart of a mini series (all videos 0:36-1:10) called Behind the Post: Will and Zoe.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDX1fXzBdxw 

Which is a five minute video, filled with all the other shorter videos to makeup one very short film. However, I dug deeper and watched the individual videos after the longer one. The individual videos were listed as follows;

Behind The Post: 

Betrayal   

Isolation  

Jealousy                                      

Intensity  

Guilting  

Volatility                                      

Belittling  

Deflecting Responsibility  

Sabotage 

Manipulation                                

Each video demonstrating a different tactic of relationship abuse. A different tactic that is not only highly normalized in our society, but in many relationships of all ages, although more commonly seen in teenage / young adult relationships. This archive of videos allowed me study, digest and educate myself fully on each and every tactic, how it was happening and why. Because for the first time, so many things that had been there all along, just magically rose up to the surface. It all kind of just clicked. I could see situations for what they were, I could think clearly, and I could apply differently. This was a trivial moment for me. The videos are played as a short movie, you simply just watch the characters in this relationship deal with all these traumatic extremities. Even more interesting, the reason it’s called “Behind the Post” is because through these short clips, we see their fights and the true ugly side to their unhealthy relationship, while meanwhile one of them will post a photo on Instagram of them smiling with some sort of shallow and basic caption, indicting that everything is just fine. Highlighting the obvious and idiotic fact that where our generation stands in the digital age and how we embed that into our personal relationships, is very much truly portrayed in this short film. We get in a fight with our significant other, do or say something really horrible, apply any one of the unhealthy tactics listed above, and in seconds someone will post a picture for validation of others as well as their significant other and themselves. We have succumb to such selfish, fake and preposterous measures in an attempt to maintain a certain digital image we want to show the world, it’s embarrassing. I was able to learn a number of things throughout this one specific digital experience; personally categorized both as constructive to my mental-health and well-being moving forward, as well as recognizing and understanding a lot of fads and trends we unwillingly encourage and participate in, like the picture posting, trying to reserve a statement that everything is okay, when it is entirely the opposite. I realized how much I am able to learn in such a short period of time, how far my brain can expand if i allow it, and if i look hard enough to find the information that is meant to be seen by me. I truly believe those videos were meant to be seen by me, because I can’t imagine how my life would’ve panned out otherwise. Through all the darkness and dysfunction, came a very long-awaited and beautiful transformation, for me to become exactly who I was supposed to be. Finally. 

[zachwhitworth]

Where are the art students?

Social media has proven to be a fantastic set of tools for artists in this past decade. I’ve personally grown attached to Instagram, as the image-oriented structure yields a platform prime for arts exploration. I love being able to look into art schools and university art departments around the country, something which normally required travel prior to the Internet’s widespread usage. Connecting with other young creators and students is invaluable; ideas and creative methods can be shared between urban and rural communities, (or rural with rural, urban with urban,) allowing for distance-bridging friendships and mutual corroboration.

Since I’ve been living on my own in a rural southern Oregon town with a (sadly) laughable arts scene, Instagram has been my main link to other working artists. Conversing with students my age living in Oregon’s larger cities has resulted in the exchange of show cards and zines via snail mail, and the positive feedback that comes out of each new relationship only reinforces why we’re all on this career path.

However, building these connections can be difficult when one can’t find others online. When looking for fellow students, our educational institutions are the gatekeepers, since the social media accounts of art schools and universities can be the most direct routes to discovering one another––the youngest, most up-and-coming, emerging artists. Official school accounts have a significantly higher reach than most individuals too, meaning even a single-post promotion of a student’s work may be one of the more supportive and elevating acts an institution can do for someone these days. Even if a school is relatively small, highlighting student artists is a valuable boost, and it ultimately shows that an institution cares and is invested in helping people succeed. Student promotions on college Instagram profiles allow for those outside the institutions or immediate areas to gain some insight as to what these other schools are brewing. It shows what sorts of artwork are being produced and sometimes gives a preview of what styles or methods one would expect to be geared toward while attending, (or perhaps what programs are more popular).

It is fascinating then that many schools don’t promote their younger students. When students are shown off, they will almost exclusively be MFA candidates, (graduate students,) while ignoring or obscuring undergraduates. This does vary by school, and some colleges are doing far better than others, but the trend of seeing art department Instagrams with select or no art students is far too concerning to disregard.

I’ve noticed this from numerous colleges in the Pacific Northwest, (being that it’s my most local region,) but in seeking out a number of art schools and departments elsewhere, I’ve seen disheartening similarities. It is somewhat common to find studio-specific accounts managed by students, but they are typically more hidden from standard searches, and most are limited to only a few people working in a single medium, i.e. ceramics or painting. Many of those accounts tend to be abandoned or rarely updated after a while.

University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) is the biggest name on the west coast guilty of this; for example, their Design & Media Arts account (@ucla_dma) features only nine posts in total, last updated nearly three years ago. Their art department’s main account (@uclaarts) remains active, but it focuses most heavily on non-student events and faculty promotion, occasionally showing work by alumni or MFA students, while undergraduates seem to be featured only once in a blue moon. They claim in their bio that the UCLA arts program is the “#1 Public Arts School in the US,” yet there seem to be next to no undergraduate art majors according to their Instagram feed.

Going further north is another example, University of California Berkeley. Their arts department account (@berkeleyartsdesign) is also focused on non-student events, and half the posts serve only as an extension for their art museum, BAMPFA. What hurt me the most was digging around to find the art department geotag, only to find a plethora of students having documented their own work and classes. The art majors at UC Berkeley seem to be wildly active, sharing paintings, ceramic sculptures, colorful installations, illustrations, and even large-scale collaborative murals, all while their school appears to be giving them little to no attention, at least as indicated by their Instagram.

It’s both better and worse in my home state of Oregon. Both Eastern Oregon in La Grande (EOU) and Oregon State in Corvallis (OSU) do show some student art, but nearly all are class projects. While OSU (@oregonstate.art) does attribute the classwork to individual students, EOU (@eou_art) bunches several pieces into single posts, typically excluding the names of students. There is then Southern Oregon (SOU) in Ashland, whose social media management is arguably the messiest on the west coast. Searching for the most straightforward “sou art” leads to an empty account under an official name (@art_souashland), though the art department has a second account with actual content, started just this April. This second account uses a title and acronym completely obscure to someone who hasn’t attended the university, and there is no work by an individual student, (there is a single piece made by a group, but not even at the school itself). Once again, there is more focus on non-student events rather than students, functioning primarily as an extension of the school admissions account.

Why is there little to no focus on art students on these college accounts? Boiling it down, this would indicate either a lack of enrollment in art programs or actual apathy on the part of these art departments, as posting an image to Instagram is––let’s face it––not tough in the slightest. In fact, all these schools have art students. These schools are not unique in their avoidance of their own students; too many colleges across the country, from California to New York, are culprits of keeping their students invisible in an age where visibility comes at the touch of a screen.

It becomes even more shameful when placed in contrast to college art departments that put more thought and effort in their Instagram curation. University of Washington Seattle (UW) is a prime sample of adequate social media management; their Instagram feed (@uwsoa) features student artwork regularly, and it does give undergraduate BFA students some good love, all while incorporating faculty art, alumni features, well-spaced event announcements, and an account takeover by a student every once and a while.

Full-on art schools are also hit-or-miss. The Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland (PNCA) has one of the most student-oriented approaches on Instagram, with their account (@p_n_c_a) given over to individual students for short periods of time as digital residencies. While this model is fairly experimental, visitors can view the entire spectrum of artwork coming out of PNCA through Instagram, and all student residents of the account are linked back to their own personal accounts, allowing for people to be easily contacted and connected with. Other schools like the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle have struggled in social media execution. Cornish finally has a visual arts department-specific Instagram account exclusively featuring their BFA students (@art_cornish), but it was only started this last week. Nothing prior.

Why are numerous university art departments with established Instagram presences so uninterested in their undergraduates? Instagram specifically has been out in the world for over six years, so finally hopping on the train at this point is a bit sad, but it is nonetheless needed. For every institution doing a crap job with their social media, there’s another that’s been using it successfully and in full support of their budding art students. Do these department administrations not pay attention to what others are doing well? Are they flat-out opposed to using social media as such? Are they embarrassed by their student body?

These days, plenty hopefuls are risking a lot by seeking a career path in the arts. Wealth can become a cruelly determining factor in acquiring arts jobs, and university tuition prices seriously hurt art students even before wandering into the job desert. Promoting student work is the very least a school can do, and even those small gestures can open up avenues for young artists who are just hoping to be given a chance and be noticed.

My last school’s ignorance of most of its art students left my peers and I in the cold without any real visibility or connection to the outside world. In begging for a change in approach to social media, I was met with uncaring attitudes and a total lack of recognition, even when nearly all of the dedicated, core art majors had transferred away within a year due to dysfunctional relationships with partisan faculty and department administration. In finding the absence of undergraduates in the Instagram posts of other college art departments, I am genuinely concerned that these issues of disconnection are not unique to my previous university.

I implore arts institutions to be generous in providing promotional boosts to students. I praise those like the University of Oregon in Eugene (UO) for finding a solid balance in online presentation. UO (@uoart) is no stranger to problems, but its Instagram serves as a virtually ideal model; students frequently rotate managing the account and can provide real pictures of both people and the artwork they create. They regularly share a balance of classwork, studios, some alumni, and faculty, but they most importantly create a fluid feed between undergraduates and MFA students; they are presented equally side-by-side, never favoring one over the other, and credit is satisfactorily given.

It is through fair and ungrudging reinforcement of young art students through school social media accounts, especially Instagram, which can help bolster better relationships between students and administration. It is vital in the modern age for allowing students to interact with those from outside schools and to be discovered in turn. I know from my own experience on the platform that priceless ties can be fostered between young artists in this way, and it could prove to form bonds between institutions themselves.

We do not deserve to be abandoned by our schools. Please support your art students.

__________

•Give attention to students of all ages, class standings, and working media •Credit individual artwork and link to the artist’s own account •Show studio spaces and classwork, but not as an alternative to more serious student projects •Acknowledge alumni on occasion, as they deserve continued love •Hand off the account to students on a regular basis •An art department account is not an extension of a university museum or school admissions account

[junker-town]

The Bulls got themselves into this mess. Can they climb out?

The locker room drama in Chicago has reached a boiling point. We work through the franchise’s options going forward.

There are a lot of angry stars in the NBA right now, but no franchise is in as much locker room upheaval as the Chicago Bulls. In this week’s FLANNS & ZILLZ, we work through the Windy City drama.

ZILLER: Oh for the halcyon days when the Chicago Bulls looked like a normal franchise fitting in under the expertise of Dwyane Wade and immense talents of Jimmy Butler.

Last week, Wade and Butler ripped their entire supporting cast, earning subtle snipes back from some of the younger players. Rajon Rondo was not subtle, lighting into the dynamic duo in an Instagram post. (Rondo doesn't really do subtle.) Then the Bulls started leaking like a reused milk carton, with players complaining to the media that Wade rarely practices with the team.

Meanwhile, Rondo has continuously lobbed snark at the coach, and GM Gar Forman is admonishing the team while refusing to take questions from the media. The Chicago Bulls, ladies and gentlemen!

FLANNERY: You left out Fred Hoiberg, which is appropriate because he's been left holding the bag. I'm not blaming him for this entirely -- lord knows there's enough of that to go around -- but this is one of the things that can happen when you make a dramatic change in temperament.

Tom Thibodeau held everyone accountable, perhaps to a fault. Hoiberg is laissez-faire, perhaps too much. Change sounds great in theory until you get run over by a freight train and no one knows who's in charge.

Russ Isabella-USA TODAY Sports

Let's take this bit by bit here and start with the players. Butler has had a great season. Wade has been good. They're Chicago's two best players and vocal leaders. Did you think calling out unnamed players was wrong?

ZILLER: It's not the best practice, certainly, but Wade and Butler are hardly the first stars to take beef public. It's a problem because Wade is supposed to be the model leader here, and his comments rubbed the more impressionable teammate the wrong way. If he wanted to inspire the young guys, he obviously failed. Zito Madu had some good thoughts on this in his piece on the debacle.

Wade seems unable to reach the Jerian Grants of the team. Is it because, despite his rings and résumé, he's a newcomer? Should it then be on Butler to provide some positive leadership, or on Wade to work with long-tenured Taj Gibson? I think the answer is "yes" to all of the above.

And I do think Hoiberg is becoming a bad fit on a Butler-led team. Jimmy has asked for greater team-wide accountability in the past, and there's no evidence the coach is offering it.

My vets would never go to the media. They would come to the team. My vets didn't pick and choose when they wanted to bring it. They brought it every time they stepped in the gym whether it was practice or a game. They didn't take days off. My vets didn't care about their numbers. My vets played for the team. When we lost, they wouldn't blame us. They took responsibility and got in the gym. They showed the young guys what it meant to work. Even in Boston when we had the best record in the league, if we lost a game, you could hear a pin drop on the bus. They showed us the seriousness of the game. My vets didn't have an influence on the coaching staff. They couldn't change the plan because it didn't work for them. I played under one of the greatest coaches, and he held everyone accountable. It takes 1-15 to win. When you isolate everyone, you can't win consistently. I may be a lot of things, but I'm not a bad teammate. My goal is to pass what I learned along. The young guys work. They show up. They don't deserve blame. If anything is questionable, it's the leadership.

A photo posted by Rajon Rondo (@rajonrondo) on Jan 26, 2017 at 3:03pm PST

There's also the matter that Rondo is OBVIOUSLY trying to get waived.

FLANNERY: Yeah, so that was the most Rondo move of all the Rondo moves I can ever remember. From the moral righteousness, to the bluntness of his critique, and the praising of the 2008 Celtics while leaving Ray Allen out of the photo was so perfectly Rondo.

And you know, he does have a point here. Close teams keep that stuff in-house and the Bulls are obviously not one close.

ON THE OTHER HAND.

He's not a good player anymore and it sure seems like there's an awful lot of dysfunction that follows him wherever he goes. How telling was it that people not only fell for the fake D-Wade response, but we're like, “Yep. Nailed it.”

Sidebar: Assuming he does get waived, you think he winds up in Cleveland? Cause I'd be interested in who takes what side on that one.

ZILLER: Having enjoyed the Rondo experience thoroughly last season, I would wholly recommend the Cavaliers go a different direction. Three different disaster seasons under three different coaches? That's officially a trend.

What good Rondo did is get it all out there -- to hell with a Cold War, figure it out before it's too late. Hopefully Wade can turn the conflagration into a source for unity going forward.

Mike DiNovo-USA TODAY Sports

I am, however, a little worried about Jimmy. He's never played better, but this isn't his first drama rodeo either.

FLANNERY: That's the whole ballgame right here. D-Wade will move on eventually. Rondo's probably gone. Players come and players go. Hell, Michael Carter-Williams is already on his third team in four years. But Jimmy's the one to keep if you're serious about building a team around the guy.

Let's be real about this: The Bulls don't seem that interested in doing that. If you're committing to a franchise player like Jimmy Butler, you don't go out and add two more ball-dominant guards and you don't keep dropping his name into trade rumors. Say what you will about Larry Bird's strategy in Indiana (and I'm not a fan of his recent moves), but at the very least the word is out that Paul George is off limits. That's what you do in that situation.

That said, Jimmy does have a bit of drama in him. Last year was a learning curve. This year is, man, I don't know. I mean that. I'm really not sure whether his leadership style will be a positive or negative influence. I do know that he works his ass off and competes every night, and that's a great start.

So, do you keep him and commit to a full rebuild while empowering him to take charge, or do you flip him at the height if his value?

ZILLER: The Bulls don't have a whole lot beyond Jimmy in terms of youth, so it'd be a project, thus wasting key years of Butler's prime. Wade has been pretty good, and the team's actually not awful. So I think you lose Rondo, try to kumbaya it up, and do your best to improve the team in the short term. The worst that happens is it doesn't click while Wade's there, Hoiberg doesn't take, and you try again in a year or so.

Unlike with, say, the Knicks, the stakes are not actually precipitously high in Chicago. There's no reason to shop Butler, and I'm guessing just losing Rondo on the next interstate flight will improve morale. But man has that bizarre front office got to stop poking Jimmy in the eye.

FLANNERY: That would be my play too, but I think you could take what you have and build smartly in rapid succession around Butler.

This whole conversation takes us back to the same place, and that's the front office. They desperately need capable shooters to put around Jimmy. I know that's hard to find in this day and age, but they didn't have to add a whole bunch of non-shooters. This is their mess, from the coaching change to the roster decisions to the team culture. I think that's where you start.

But these are the Bulls and they probably won't do that. So, they're stuck.