#in Harry Potter

[crazy-pages]

Also it's so so easy to want to help people and fail. How many people here had parents who rode their ass hard about grades in a way that didn't actually help and maybe even hurt, because they "wanted the best for you"? How many people here had parents who didn't talk about sex ed or consent with them because they thought not talking about sex was what was best? Seriously, how many people reading this post have had somebody in your life with a position of power over you behave in a way they think is helpful, but is actually hurtful?

Now think about people who believe you shouldn't give money to the homeless because they'll use it on drugs, that if you just give people housing they won't want to work and they'll never "learn independence", that sure it's horrifying what's happening in Gaza but it's the only way to prevent even more terrible deaths that Hamas would cause.

My mother is one of the most empathetic people I know. She's a psychologist and she did pro bono work with AIDS patients back before anyone knew for sure how it spread. She always keeps open pro bono slots to work with victims of domestic abuse. She works with multiple charity organizations and volunteers her time. When there was a mass shooting at her local grocery store, she literally drove down to the aftermath and offered her services for counseling, and kept seeing some of the survivors for free afterward. She is as caring a person as you'll find. Literally the most caring person I know.

I, meanwhile, do not have an empathetic bone in my body. Literally, I don't feel empathy. I thought feeling reflections of other people's emotions or having a strong emotional surge when you saw somebody get hurt was a literary device authors used for emphasis, but not a real thing, until I was probably ... 12 or 13? Hell the single most intense emotion I ever have felt towards others is an intense compulsion towards murder (though I've never acted on it). I'm almost certainly some flavor of sociopath.

And yet my mother believed it was very important to never give homeless people money, to only give them granola bars and water, because they might use it on drugs. It was me who, when I was 11 (remember this is before I realized empathy wasn't literally fake) looked that up and found articles about how dehumanizing that feels and studies about how money is actually much more helpful.

Despite being an amazing psychologist with a specialty in eating disorders, who had an eating disorder herself and got into the field specifically to help people like her And who regularly does continuing education to this day ... she didn't know what "atypical anorexia" was. Which is anorexia where the patient never actually drops below a certain body mass index, their body just refuses to lose the weight, but their organs start failing anyway. Despite the name this is actually the most common type of anorexia and it simply hadn't been recognized for a long time because of fatphobia in the medical field. I was the one who had to find out this was a thing and tell her and then hammer her with enough research papers to get its reality through her head, because it didn't match her personal experiences. And not knowing that as long as she did almost certainly caused quite a lot of harm to some of her patients.

My mother's teachings, my friends, and frankly a good bit of luck with the philosophical influences in my life, were enough to make me into somebody who I hope is compassionate, kind, and helpful to other people. Despite, you know, the whole utter lack of empathy and simmering background desire to cut throats thing. But none of my mother's empathy prevented her from really fucking up sometimes when it came to how to do good for people, and none of my lack prevented me from doing the damn work.

There is simply no degree of empathy or inborn kindness which will prevent you from fucking up. You need to question how you do good and work on how to do it effectively as a skill which can be trained and a practice which can be corrected. And then, maybe even more importantly, you need a network of people who you allow, who you invite, to call you on this stuff. Who are different enough from you that they will have stuff to call you on, and you in turn.

There is, unfortunately, no such thing as being a good person by nature. You cannot simply follow the kindness within you and do good. You actually have to think about it and it's hard and requires a lot of practice. But most things in life worth doing are like that.

you know how there used to be all those posts going around like “I don’t know any political theory, it’s not hard to have good politics, it’s called being a decent person” type stuff, where it’s like okay, well, if it works it works. but this year more than ever has convinced me that actually it’s really important to have political values to fall back on even in cases of high emotion, e.g. anti-imperialism or bodily autonomy. feelings like kindness, empathy, concern, just on their own, are politically neutral and can just as easily motivate conservative or even fascist political positions. you know. like what happens to empathy-based politics when it’s people whose lives are very different from yours, or where there’s a culturally-ingrained bias against seeing them as people, or if they are just interpersonally offputting and unlikeable. like how etiquette is for being polite when you’re not “feeling it”, you need something to fall back on, a metric to evaluate what a “just society” looks like for people you don’t personally know and/or like. am I making sense here

[whimsifae]

the most fun a girl can have is finding parallels, noticing patterns, making connections, contemplating

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[rincewind87]

[ingbing7]

She had that stupid bullshit of “if you disagree with us you must die” but the people who are dying are not cis straight people, it’s lgbtq+ people. It’s the cis people murdering trans people, it’s the straight people murdering gay people, rarely do you see it be the other way around. If anything, Death Eaters were more of a warning against cis straight men than anyone in the lgbtq+ community.

Who does she think she is? Does she think she’s a bringer of the good word? Someone to warn us all about the dangerous people here to steal our genders?

All she is is a bigot who pretends to be a feminist.

She ain't even subtle anymore lmao

[animentality]

[heartiella]

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Welp, if JK Rowling being executive producer and therefore being fully involved in the show wasn't enough for people to boycott, then here's HBO basically saying they don't care JK Rowling is a bigot from hell who literally helped lead a harassment campaign of lies against Imane Khalif in her transphobia and obsession with women being terf's standards of women alongside posting harassment against trans people on twitter at times, they gonna stand by her, while using the excuse, "personal views". Hmm, yes, personal views- that's one way to uh, call what the fuck JK Rowling comes out with a-lot- last I checked personal views do come with consquiences if said out loud....a thousand times in JK's case and still counting....especially if they hurt people, but hey, if it means making another Harry Potter project to milk, just let it fucking be I guess.

[heyybeach]

Growing up is actually just enjoying the exact same things you enjoyed at 14 years old, but in a more gay way

[mysharona1987]

[tuttle-did-it]

David Tennant for Prime Minister, please.

edit- Since this is getting so much attention, edited to include descriptions of screenshots.

This woman has lost her fucking mind.

Jo, are you okay?

[applebugg]

Three young barn owls standing in the stone quatrefoil of Christ Church, Fulmodeston.

[thatboisus]

reading a good ass fanfic up until it said something that just makes you want to stop reading

[mcntsee]

The real barbie is Y/n.

Y/n’s a doctor, a cop, a scientist, an agent, vet, hero, villain, astronaut, lawyer, spy, criminal, artist, chef, engineer, psychologist, architect, journalist, firefighter, event planner, mechanic, photographer, musician, actor, interior designer, bartender, fashion designer, barista, florist, forensic scientist, flight attendant, profiler, tour guide, translator, etc.

[theswampghost]

do you tthink it was the. the d. do you think it was the. the dow. the down wi