#like. a good example is how abled people are privileged over disabled people because society is built around them

[momett]

i am never gonna forget how i got treated by the actually autistic community for saying masking is a privilege btw. by definition it is. a privilege is something that benefits or elevates you in a society that not everybody possesses.

masking is the act of pretending to be allistic, which is a direct benefit to any autistic living in a society that isn't built for them (which is all of them).

therefore, if you are autistic and have the ability to mask, you are privileged over autistics who can't mask. i don't understand why some people can't accept this.

[random-thought-depository]

Another way of looking at it is it's arguing that there are segments of men who don't experience male privilege, which strikes me as a quite plausible proposition.

Most obviously, severely disabled men are often subject to levels of infantilization and disempowerment that make it very questionable whether they meaningfully have male privilege.

And even when it comes to able-bodied men who don't have significant cognitive impairments, "patriarchal societies treat masculinity as a contingent privilege that can be revoked" isn't even an idea alien to the feminist intellectual tradition. See also: all those posts floating around Tumblr about how social conservatives don't actually treat gender as completely binary and congenital and congruent with ASAB either, they also believe that AMAB people can be at least kind-of sort-of non-men and AFAB people can be at least kind-of sort-of non-women, they just think those "male but not a real man" and "female but not a lady" social categories should be externally imposed punishments that exist to facilitate abuse of people they're applied to.

I think there's probably some good enough for a gender studies paper arguments that hierarchical societies often either in some sense treat all members of subaltern populations as women or assign subaltern men a gender that's basically "all the bad parts of being a man in a patriarchal society but none of the good parts." E.g. the way black men get treated in the modern USA seems like a pretty obvious example of something like the latter; they get the "by default presumed to be strong and aggressive and treated as a threat" part of being a man but not the "given privileges to buy their regime-loyalty because their presumed greater potential for violence is seen as an asset to the hegemony, a weapon against the hegemony's enemies and a threat to hold over the hegemony's less regime-loyal subjects" part (I mean, some US black men get the second thing by being soldiers, cops, etc., but then some women get that kind of privilege that way too; the point is in the US that kind of privilege isn't a default part of being a black man).

Or if you want some "straight from the mouths of people who are at least a little bit tradbrained about gender" evidence, masculinity as a contingent condition that can be revoked is a pretty obvious subtext of all those jokes about revoking a guy's "man card."

like every two months we have a new post saying 'actually [minority identity] men have it just as bad as [minority identity] women, saying otherwise is a radfem talking point' and like. idk when people are going to stop credulously reblogging them, without thinking about the fact that they're essentially arguing that there are segments of women who don't experience misogyny. but I hope it's the same day everyone actually learns what 'intersectionality' means beyond a progressive buzzword to label your YA romance lit as

[mbti-notes]

Hi MBTI. Not type related but I still want to ask because of your social insight. What does respect mean to you? I’ve met people who preach feminism but do not communicate honestly and clearly with girls they sleep around with (eg ghosting), which makes me think that feminism is just political theory, but in practice it means to truly respect other people regardless of their gender (ie being honest, clear and able to put ones anxieties/insecurities aside momentarily to ensure the well-being of

[con't: the other person). I asked myself exactly what respect entails, it’s a concept Ive taken for granted and thought I knew but realized I’ve never actually read/heard someone really putting into words. I’ve been reading online and a lot of people seem to muddle it with the word “admiration” and I think I disagree because I think respect is more about being open to sharing common ground and not placing someone above or below you, as admiration could cause. To me respect and  equality are more similar, and that’s how I linked it to feminism. How would you define respect? And what do you think about this? Thank you and all the best!<3 ]

You're mixing several issues together, which makes your question too complicated. Respect and making moral judgments are big enough topics without adding gender into the mix.

I remember once, a long time ago, I was grappling with a difficult moral dilemma. I approached a few people to talk about it. One person judged me as "incompetent" because the matter seemed quite easy in their mind. One person judged me as "weak" because I wasn't willing to just do what I wanted to do. One person judged me as "fake" because they thought I was only worried about appearing like a moral person in the eyes of others. One person judged me as "selfish" because I wasn't willing to sacrifice myself for the greater good. One person judged me as "overthinking" the matter because I was worried about more than just myself.

Of course, not being assholes, their judgments came out as veiled implications rather than direct criticisms. However, this example reveals some truth: People's moral judgments are often quite egocentric, a mere reflection of their own subjective ego conflicts about what it means to be a "good" or "bad" person. Whichever way they choose to conceptualize morality is what they expect of others (i.e. projection).

We all have to make moral judgments and navigate difficult moral situations. One thing that significantly influences people's ability to make good moral decisions is their level of ego development, you can read more about it in the Type Dev Guide. Suffice it to ask: Is your conception of morality more rule-based (i.e. about the power to judge) or more virtue-based (i.e. about the wisdom to do right)?

The more egocentric someone is, the more invested they are in maintaining a positive self-image, and the more sensitive they are to any data that would threaten their ego and suggest that they are a "bad" person. Egocentric people are more likely to use a rule-based approach to morality because its starkness and simplicity allow for easy detection and deflection of ego threats. If morality is a simple matter of knowing the rules of right and wrong, then moral judgments are a simple matter of whether people followed the rules.

For example, society says that you should work hard in school, get a good job, earn money, and your reward is that you are able to afford your life. Therefore, if you didn't succeed in school, you didn't get a good job, you can't earn much money, you can't afford the things you need, then there is something "wrong" with you. In short, you failed to follow the rules, so you deserve to be punished with the negative consequence of poverty. Rule-based morality is "safe" for the ego because there's no ambiguity that makes you doubt your moral judgment, and hence no reason to doubt your own moral worth.

People often talk about whether someone "deserves" respect, often because they want to make an argument that someone doesn't deserve respect for something bad they did. The more "admirable" someone is, the more respect they deserve? I will respect this person because they are "nice"? I will not extend respect to that person because they are "mean"?

If you approach respect with these "rules", you essentially get to play god. You get to sit on a high horse and judge people as worthy or unworthy. If you obey the rules of being an "admirable" person, you are called a "good" person, so you get rewarded with respect; whereas if you disobey the rules, you are a "bad" person, so you get punished with less respect or even disrespect. This way of thinking is rather childish. Notice how kids argue that they don't have to follow the rules when they see someone else breaking the rules. Their idea of morality boils down to whether they themselves win or lose.

Children, understandably, think in stark terms of reward and punishment because they are only starting to learn what it means to be an "acceptable" member of society. They only see what's on the surface because they aren't yet capable of more sophisticated moral reasoning. When an adult hasn't learned more sophisticated moral reasoning, they continue with the superficial idea of reward and punishment, only they take it further. Now that they are "adult" by society's superficial age standard, they possess the social status and thus the social power to dole out rewards and punishments to anyone "beneath" them in status. In essence, "I was subject to the rules as a child, and now I get to enforce the rules as an adult."

Adding gender into the mix, a lot of people abide by "rules" that they learned in childhood about what a "man" is, what a "woman" is, how they are different, and how people "should" behave according to their gender. Men, as a social group, are taught to obey one set of rules, while women, as a social group, are taught to obey another set of rules. This social conditioning shows up in people's implicit gender biases as well as outright gender discrimination.

If men, as a group, possess the majority of social power and privilege, they become the default reference point for everyone. Social and political decisions are predominantly made from their point of view, in accordance with their needs and desires, and this encourages them to treat women as objects that are only worthy of respect as long as they prop up masculine power. Women, as a group, are taught to see the world through the masculine perspective and believe that masculinity is superior to femininity, so they must behave submissively and serve their purpose to men.

As an individual man, if you follow the rules and elevate masculinity over femininity, you get rewarded with status and power. If you don't follow the rules, you get punished with lower status and being branded as undesirable (not a "real" man). As a woman, if you follow the rules and elevate masculinity over femininity, you get rewarded with some privilege and favors, but always safely within the bounds of masculine dominance. If you don't follow the rules, you get cruelly shamed into compliance and even ostracized if you are deemed a lost cause (not a "real" woman).

It is very difficult for individuals to counter social conditioning because so much of the learning happens unconsciously. It's a steep uphill battle for people to develop more self-awareness about the "rules" they have been taught to follow. And even when one becomes aware of having implicit biases or prejudices, it's not easy to rise above them. It takes a lot of conscious effort to go against lessons that were ingrained into your psyche since infancy. Furthermore, when you're a member of the social group that enjoys more power and privilege, there's very little incentive for you to change, in fact, you have much more incentive to preserve the status quo, which is why inequality is so difficult to remedy.

The unconscious nature of bias and prejudice is why ego development is very important. When you reach higher levels of ego development, your self-awareness grows, and that allows you to gradually shift from a simplistic rule-based morality to a more complex virtue-based morality which recognizes that moral issues aren't always black-and-white. Virtue-based morality is about what's actually in people's hearts and the role that moral conscience plays in decision making.

Taking the example from above: WHY did the person fail in school? Was it simply because they didn't follow the rules and work as hard as they should have? Or was it due to factors that were beyond their control, such as: an untreated learning disability, lack of school funding due to living in a poor area, a dysfunctional family situation that interfered with their learning process, etc?

Rule-based morality is about compliance and shaming people into the appearance of compliance. Virtue-based morality is about understanding and addressing the root causes of moral failing. To be capable of more complex moral reasoning is to dig deeper and ask more questions to get to the truth, which means that morality is no longer a simple matter. The gray areas start to appear, you start to see exceptions to the rule, and you become more empathetic because you're looking into people's hearts and seeing how they have suffered unfairly. You no longer stereotype and generalize about people but treat everyone as a unique individual with unique circumstances to take into account. Egocentric people don't want this level of moral responsibility because then they'd have to always question themselves about whether they are truly doing the right thing, and they would constantly have to confront the many ways they fall short in their morality.

When you truly see the harm of judging people by superficial appearances, you would never want to be a victim of it, and that helps you understand that you shouldn't be a perpetrator of it, either. When you truly see the harm of treating people unfairly based on gender, you would never want to be a victim of it, and that helps you understand that you shouldn't be a perpetrator of it, either. When you're able to empathize with people who were treated unfairly or victimized by unjust rules, you can't help but want to make things fairer for everyone (yes, equality). Virtue-based morality is about moral conscience in terms of what kind of person you hope to be, what kind of influence you want to have, what kind of society you want to live in, and whether you are actually a virtuous person in your heart rather than just appearing like one in public. When you show respect to people, it's not because they "deserve" it, it's because you know that you being respectful to everyone is the first step in helping to create a society that is more respectful to everyone.

[meta-squash]

Brick Club 2.3.8 “Inconveniences Of Entertaining A Poor Man Who May Be Rich”

This chapter is so long. Here goes.

Is it normal for Cosette to have to knock to get into the house she lives in? Or is Hugo just using that as a vehicle to make Mme Thenardier meet Valjean first?

It’s times like this that I desperately wish I knew more about biblical stories and fables and things. This, a rich man in disguise as a poor man being treated poorly by innkeepers and taking something from them, sounds like a bible story or a similar type of fable. But the only two bible stories I know with similar themes are the nativity story and Sodom and Gomorrah and neither of those seem quite right. Still, this entire episode reads like a fable or fairytale.

We’ve already seen how Evil the Thenardiers are re: their treatment of Cosette. Now we are seeing their Evil in the form of treatment of the poor.

You know, that’s an interesting thing that I’m not going to get into in this longass chapter. Javert’s evil and Thenardier’s evil are different because I feel like Javert’s evil is a lot more muddied or obscured by morality and duty and things like that. Where are the Thenardiers are bad but the badness of their actions is much more black and white. I think it’s also because, technically, they never have social power over anyone unless they are manipulative, whereas Javert always has the social power. I’m not sure where to go with either of these ideas but I will look back on it for a shorter chapter.

Cosette is ugly because she’s sad. It’s like the exact opposite of Roald Dahl’s description of ugliness. I called it on the orphanage thing and kids looking years younger than they are; she looks 6 when she’s 8. That doesn’t seem like a huge difference when you look at it written down but the difference between the size and maturity of a 6 year old vs an 8 year old is surprising.

In the way that the description of the doll was a distant echo of young Fantine, the description of Cosette here is a faded echo of dying Fantine.

“Fear was spread all over here; she was, so to speak, covered with it; fear squeezed her elbows against her sides, drew her heels up under her skirt, made her shrink into the least possible space...” I’m sure this description comes from Hugo observing children in his lifetime, but I also wonder if any of this comes from his brother who had schizophrenia and was institutionalized?

“The expression on the face of this child of eight was habitually so sad and occasionally so tragic that it seemed, at certain moments, as if she were on the way to becoming an idiot or a demon.” What an interesting pair of choices. Fear and sadness either stun and numb you completely or they turn you aggressive and evil. Hugo said the same thing before when talking about Valjean’s prison time. Again, like I said before, Cosette here is Valjean when we first met him: exhausted, scared, sad, numb, hatefully terrified of the people around her; the difference is that she still has hope. She had that moment of hoping someone would rescue her, she had the moment of pausing and wondering what the doll’s paradise was like; when we met Valjean he was past that kind of hope.

(Funny that Mme Thenardier doesn’t suspect the trick Valjean just pulled, despite Valjean “finding” a 20 sous piece instead of 15 sous piece.)

I love the description of Eponine and Azelma because it’s so innocent. They as little human beings aren’t morally bankrupt at the level of their parents yet. They’re still pretty and glowing. Partly because they are well-cared for unlike Cosette, and partly because they are still innocent.

“Eponine and Azelma did not notice Cosette. To them she was like the dog. The three little girls did not have twenty-four years among them, and they already represented the whole of human society: on one side envy, on the other disdain.”

Ah, human microcosms. Hugo loves those. The Thenardier children and Cosette are the pared down, simplified version of society. It’s also an excellent example of how Privilege works in layers. The girls’ doll is worn and old and broken, but the fact of them having a real doll and Cosette having nothing is already a layer of privilege Someone else, another little girl with wealthy parents and a new intact doll would have privilege over the Thenardier girls. There are layers.

I really love this passage too because it shows the start of the zero-sum game between Eponine and Cosette. At no point are Eponine and Cosette able to be equals. But the important thing is that neither of them are aware of this. Later, when Cosette and Eponine encounter each other again in the Gorbeau house, Eponine doesn’t have the awareness to be angry about the reversal of their fortunes. She seems sad, mostly, a jealousy born from a feeling of worthlessness rather than feeling slighted. And Cosette doesn’t even recognize Eponine, so there’s no room at all for disdain on her part, unless she’s disdainful of Eponine et al due to their poverty, though that never seems to be the case. But Eponine cannot be happy while Cosette is and Cosette cannot be happy while Eponine is, because their goals occupy the same fulcrum (Marius) and they can’t both be on the same level at the same time.

Fanfiction has explored this a lot in modern AU but I wonder the kind of havoc that could have been wreaked had Cosette and Eponine met and become proper acquaintances. Their teenage personalities are two sides of the same coin. I’ve always been of the opinion that had they switched places as children Cosette would have ended up like Eponine and Eponine like Cosette. Because Eponine has the capacity for kindness within her, except that she doesn’t know how to use it selflessly; and Cosette has the same stubborn ruthlessness as Eponine, except that she is held back by convention and reduced to talking a lot in order to try and somehow glean information from Valjean or Marius.

“Now your work belongs to me. Play, my child.” This is the second (or third?) Myriel moment for Valjean. Cosette is a child, an innocent child, but her soul doesn’t need to be bought for god. As far as I can tell, for Hugo, children are always holy. Instead, he’s buying her work. But that makes sense. For Valjean, his soul needed to be bought for god because he had already lost it to sin and to evil and to doubt. Cosette still has hope; what she needs bought from her is suffering.

And here is where the parallel continues. Cosette up until now has been Valjean as we first met him: sullen, suffering, scared, dulled, close to becoming “an idiot or a demon” and now, like Valjean’s soul, her work has been bought so she can be free.

I think it is within the walls of the convent that their parallels will catch up to each other and they will become more equal.

I feel as though the cat in a dress vs the sword in a dress must be some sort of parallel to Eponine and Cosette’s personalities but I’m not quite sure how to pull the meaning out.

“A little girl without a doll is almost as unfortunate and just as impossible as a woman without children.” Ugh. Gross, Hugo. This whole chapter was so lovely and then this misogynist bullshit.

I can explain the “water on her brain” line! Mostly because it’s a medical condition I actually have! So, “water on the brain” is another term for hydrocephalus, which is a buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles of the brain. It can be caused by being born prematurely (like mine was) or by infections/head trauma. Nowadays they can put a shunt in your head that pumps the fluid into the abdominal cavity (which is what I have), but obviously they didn’t have the technology back then. So what happens to the head if the fluid doesn’t drain, is the head will start to increase in size, and the fluid buildup will squish the brain against the sides of the skull, causing seizures and brain damage/intellectual disabilities and vision problems and other such things. I function perfectly fine except for mild dyscalculia and ADHD (which might have been genetic anyway) but back in the 19th century hydrocephalus probably would have resulted in either mild-to-severe disabilities or death.

Cosette doesn’t have hydrocephalus, but what she does have is severe malnutrition, which can make a person’s head look much too large for their body. So Mme Thenardier is likely using Cosette’s appearance due to neglect to fake that she has a neurological problem and explain why they have to “take care of” her.

Jesus fucking christ this next bit is so much. There’s so much going on. Mme Thenardier is talking to Valjean about Cosette’s mother, the drinkers are singing vulgar songs about the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, and Cosette is under the table singing “My mother is dead.” to herself. Woof. It is, yet again, an instance of the memory of “Fantine” (in the symbolic, saintly form of the Virgin) being sullied both by the foul songs of the drinkers and the callous, flippant commentary of Mme Thenardier. And Cosette is there under the table, staring at the fire, suddenly playing the role of her own mother, rocking the sword-baby (herself) to try and comfort herself from the shock of this new knowledge that her mother is dead.

(Anyone else read As I Laying Dying, by the way? All I could think of when I read that line was “My mother is a fish.”)

We start to see Cosette’s bold personality come out in fits and starts. She’s brave enough to sneak out and grab the doll Eponine and Azelma have abandoned. But it’s also an example of how desperate she is for something pleasurable and good, considering she’s doing that at the risk of a beating.

For the second time, we see Cosette so absorbed in her moment of “I Want” that she doesn’t see or hear anything else. Again, this seems unusual considering her constant hypervigilance. But her success in getting the doll and her increased confidence due to Valjean’s presence probably have something to do with her lack of awareness.

Cosette is caught with the doll. Is this the parallel of Valjean being caught with Myriel’s silver? Mme Thenardier says “That beggar has dared to touch the children’s doll.” The gendarmes don’t say as much when they return Valjean to Myriel, but it’s pretty obvious they’re thinking something similar.

“We are forced to add that at that moment she stuck out her tongue.” COSETTE IS SO CUTE I LOVE HER SO MUCH SHE DESERVES THE WORLD. Also I just love the way Hugo writes children, it’s so real.

Why did Hugo choose Catherine for the name of the doll? Is it to do with St Catherine? She (the saint) became Christian at 14 and converted hundreds of people before being martyred at 18 after rebuking the Roman emperor for his cruelty and winning a debate with his best philosophers.

“This solitary man, so poorly dressed, who took five-franc pieces from his pocket so easily and lavished gigantic dolls on little brats in wooden clogs, was certainly a magnificent and formidable individual.” Valjean is now Myriel. Outsiders are fascinated by him because he dresses so shabbily and yet is so benevolent and charitable with his money. Again, the difference is that Myriel’s name is always known, and Valjean’s is never known.

I know I say this so often but the distance with which Hugo treats Valjean is absolutely fascinating to me. Valjean has this incredible power to just go inside himself and not move, but we never get that kind if internality unless it’s really really important (like with the Champmathieu affair). Otherwise, Hugo keeps a respectful distance, and even when we get Valjean’s emotions described to us, I feel like Hugo is always holding back a little, like he’s not letting himself see all the way into Valjean, or Valjean isn’t letting him in.

Valjean asks for a stable; I think this is the first time we see his whole thing about sacrifice of physical comfort. Things like this asking for the stable and sleeping in the shed behind the house at Rue Plumet and not having chairs and only eating black bread etc. This is the first example we see of him feeling unworthy of physical comforts to such a degree.

(It’s interesting to me that we don’t see this characteristic when he was mayor, or at least not to this extreme. Is it because it would be unbecoming of a mayor and therefore would blow his cover? Or did going back to prison hammer in that feeling of worthlessness and lesser-than and warp his perception of what he is compared to others?)

“What a sublime, sweet thing is hope in a child who has never known anything but its opposite!” We’ve said this already, but Cosette is full of hope and life and light and that is Important because it is exactly what Valjean did not have when he was in her position. But it means that she doesn’t have to work as hard in her ascent towards happiness and goodness.

And, lastly, I love that the placement of the gold Louis in Cosette’s shoe isn’t just a sweet Christmas gesture or a gesture towards Cosette: it’s also an echo of M Madeleine breaking into houses to place gold pieces on the table.

Wow. Long af post for a long af chapter. Congratulations if you read through all of my rambling thoughts.

[dpargyle]

_

I'm not doing that podcast anymore. I'm racking my brain here trying to figure out how to build an audience/make $ creatively rn. Every conventional avenue is cut off to me, as I've explained before. I don't really want to write books anymore (due to restricted creative control/sadly losing faith entirely in the medium/business of the novel as an effective art form in these horrendous times) - but trying to build an audience online has just been one failure after another. I really don't know what to do. These days, I catch myself daydreaming about dropping off the grid entirely & farming or some shit but I think realistically my disability precludes me (for multiple reasons) from such foolishness. & I think I'm always going to need to create art of some description. I just wish...like...anyone would care... & this isn't a call out post or anything - like - I get it. Shit is falling apart everywhere (more rapidly than I think many abled folk may realize) so reading/listening to my creative output is nobody's top priority (nor should it be) - especially in such oversaturated markets I don't really know what I'm trying to say here. Like. I'm unemployed - I have no prospects - & even if I had any - the government would cut funding for medical necessities b/c secretly (but not so secretly) policy is set up for people like me to die quietly in the background I'm far more privileged than most in my position, due to my family. At least for now. But if I can't find a steady source of income soon, I'm going to have to move back in with my folks which I really do not want to have to do. Like - I did everything right. I went all the way through a hellish school system. I graduated (with honors) from college. I jumped through all their hoops, I played all the stupid fucking games. & because of my condition I am almost completely cut off from society - b/c no one has given me a chance at the things I actually give a shit about. (This is a rant now oh well lol) & I know I'm a damn good writer. I'm a good artist. But finding an audience is just. I don't even know. I don't even know who I am anymore half the time. I feel thoroughly rejected from society at large. Not that I'd wanna join it right now lmao but like...it'd be nice to be asked. I'm not the only one hanging on by a fuckin thimble right now. I know that. But as a disabled person, I feel the strain before many of you. I feel it when there's not enough people to help me get up in the morning so I get left lying in bed for four hours after my usual times. Sorry, I'm rambling now. I'm also kind of exhausted trying to come up with creative endeavors and putting them up with nobody giving a shit. I put my heart & soul into these things - and I have for years. 32 years of my life, where instead of going out enjoying myself or trying to form friendships (which is already really fucking difficult when I have to get back home every day at 9pm cuz my aides are working 100 hr wks & I don't want to overtax their schedules anymore than I already do) - I chose to forego all that, laying myself on the great altar of art or whatever...all for what? Nobody caring? It's. Fuckin soul crushing. I spend like 95% of my time alone. & I don't think I'm the only one. All I really do is work on creative endeavors, research, and then finally turn off my brain watching football or w/e I don't have energy for any of this anymore. This hyper capitalist mode of....I just. I'm not even making sense & I'm all over the place & I usually outline/plan this sort of shit & probably nobody will read this anyway so I don't know why I'm bothering lmao Shot in the dark, I guess? I dunno. I know I have people who love me. & for that I'm grateful. I hope you all do too. These are dark times & I don't see them brightening in our lifetimes I'm afraid. Hold on to the ones you got I suppose. We all just have to play the cards we're dealt, even if they're all jokers, right? While I do have people who love me, I'm also sick of Utah & the US as a whole tbh, but I honestly doubt anywhere would be much

better if I'm being realistic. Even Mars will be conquered by Musk... Anyway. Just trying to express how it feels to be disabled in these times of societal collapse unheard of since the end of the Bronze Age. Perhaps it's for the best. Wish I could inhabit a different body for a while. But "if wishes were horses, we'd all be eatin' steak," to quote the bard. Like. for just one day, I'd love to experience a day that didn't feel like going to war with myself. With the world. With...like, ok, this is kind of a stupid fuckin example, but on the other hand it shows you the power of art (for w/e that's worth these days) but I was watching the most recent season (series) of Sex Education on Netflix (great frikken show btw) - and for the first time EVER - a disabled character (played by a disabled actor) has an intimate scene with another character where she's not a sex worker (no shame to sex workers but the connotation is always we can only ever have sex if we pay for it) & nobody died lmao - & it was this sacred scene where consent was central & it was playful & sweet & it literally made me cry b/c like - (& I don't cry AT ALL anymore - it's just not me) but I did - I fuckin cried, because like. You can't understand. I'm sorry. But you can't. To never see yourself reflected in such a manner. & then suddenly. You see yourself being tenderly kissed on the nose - & for a touch starved cripple - to see that - like. I know in this life I'm never gonna get that. I've accepted that. I'm too old & too much of a fuckup. But for the youth to see that? For the disabled youth of the world? Fuck. I hope it fills them with the brighter future they deserve. Maybe art can move mountains after all. Just wish I could build a door to get myself out of *here.* It's so fucking hard to see the light right now for me. I hold my head up high. I smile. I'm the strongest person I know. But I just wish I could peel off my shit & be the real me & be loved & I'm terrified none of that will ever be in store for me. But I roll on, as always. Love & strength & sorry to be...this...lmao....

[saywhatjessie]

TRC Exchange

This is my gift for @richardcampbells who requested so primo Gansey content! 3.7k [Ao3]

Gansey did not remember being this twitchy in high school.

It was difficult to remember ‘high school’ as this thing that had happened to him only a short year ago and not something in his distant past. He’d experienced so many things in the years of high school and also in the gap year since, it was hard to hold the memory of Aglionby as something associated with himself. He had felt quite different then.

Quite less twitchy.

Blue would probably take offense to the word twitchy. He didn’t think it was a slur of any kind, but it still felt like a word she would not-so-gently correct. Fidgety, she might say. Hyper.

Not that he was hyper, he just couldn’t seem to stop picking at the corner of his folder. Or playing with the zipper tag on his schoolbag. He had to admit, he did feel rather high-strung.

To be so far away from her – Blue – when they’d so recently been so close. Closer than close. It was mildly unbearable.

And not only her, but Henry who had been with them on their gap year road trip around the world. Adam, who was following his own academic pursuits but had been a real grounding presence in his Aglionby days. Ronan, who he missed like a limb and who’d worried him while he’d been away and potentially worried him more now that he was close but still extremely far.

Georgetown was not so far. Ronan came to the area every week for mass with his brothers.

It was enough distance for Gansey to feel it in the marrow of his bones.

He tapped his pen distractedly against his laptop, waiting for class to start and contemplating if he should send Ronan another text. Just to make sure he was coping. He couldn’t remember ever tapping his pen at Aglionby.

“Okay, class, welcome to BBH 251, colloquially known as ‘Straight Talks.’”

Gansey sat up straighter, taking a firmer grip on his pen to sublimate the urge to fidget.

“You can all put your laptops away, this isn’t that type of class.”

Gansey startled, blinking for a good few seconds before shutting his laptop and sliding it back into his bag. He wasn’t sure what kind of class didn’t require taking notes. His pulse jumped a bit in his neck, some predecessor to an inappropriate sense of dread.

“This class is about exploring intersectional identity, putting focus on privilege and invisible identities.”

And now the dread made more sense. Gansey was always far too aware of his privilege.

It would be absolutely heinous to have to get up in the front of this room and list out all the ways society valued him more than them. Looking around the room there were women, there were people of color. Students with pride flags on their bags and their hair dyed outrageous colors. There were students who looked like Adam had when he’d first come to Aglionby: hollow cheeked and broken down in a way that could only be reached by withstanding poverty. How was he supposed to come out to this class as a straight, white, wealthy son of a Republican career politician?

“The class is called straight talks because what we learn in this class, we carry over into other classes. We reach out to other classes and introduce ourselves with our full intersectional identities.”

The horrors continued abound. Gansey would have to do this around the entire university.

“I’ll start.”

Their instructor introduced herself as a white, cis woman. She was a lesbian athlete in her mid-fifties. She talked about the difficulties of being a lesbian athlete, how she suffered ageism in the gay community, and the stereotypes that come with it.

Braver souls than Gansey came forward and asked what cis meant. The teacher calmly explained that it simply meant “not trans”. Gansey hadn’t known there was a word for that. He hadn’t thought about the need for one. And that made him feel worse than anything. Because anything that wasn’t “other” was “normal”. What a terribly privileged thing he was.

“And now, to present more examples from your peers, I’ve asked some of my students from last semester to show you what a straight talk might look like. Ryann, do you want to start?”

Ryann didn’t look particularly bothered either way, but started on what was obviously a well rehearsed speech.

He was genderfluid, which meant he changed his pronouns regularly, but he told them all that at this moment he was a he so please refer to him as such. He was of Māori descent. He talked about what it was like to be underrepresented and constantly likened to Taika Waititi just because he was the only Māori person anyone ever heard of, if they’d heard of it at all. He suffered from EDS, which meant he had what was usually referred to as an invisible disability. In other words: people assumed he was abled when they looked at him since he didn’t need a wheelchair. At least not yet.

This wasn’t at all about Gansey, but he still found himself sinking slightly in his seat, the shame he felt by the simple fact that he had none of these additional social obstacles to deal with making him feel absolutely wretched and helpless.

The next speaker helped some. She was white and cis and able-bodied. But she spoke of growing up in poverty in the American south, constantly living in fear because she was bisexual and a woman. She discussed how she’d known more girls who’d experienced sexual violence than she could fit on two hands.

Gansey felt a little like crying. Actually, a lot like crying. But he was a Gansey and he would never show such unmeasured behaviour in company. And this was not about him. He would not make it about him.

The last person was agender. They were mixed race: what races, they weren’t even sure because they were adopted. They grew up in a wealthy family but lived in a community where they didn’t feel deserving of that station. Feeling undeserving was something, at least, Gansey understood.

They were also demisexual.

“So, demisexuality is on the spectrum of asexuality,” the person – Storm – explained, in a practiced-sounding way, but not like Gansey thought they were tired of explaining: they still sounded as if they cared deeply about this label. “Everyone’s heard of the Kinsey scale?” Most everyone nodded, Gansey maybe too enthusiastically. He’d read a lot of history when he’d realized Adam was bisexual. “Asexuality has that same kind of scale, ranging from sex-repulsed asexual to sex-positive gray-asexual. Asexuality is differentiated by the lack of feeling of sexual attraction. sex-repulsed asexuals don’t feel sexual attraction and don’t want sex in any way. People can still be asexual but have sex anyway for stress relief or for their partner: they don’t feel the attraction but don’t mind the act itself. Gray-asexual people can feel sexual attraction but only sometimes. It’s all very relative and, obviously, I don’t speak for everyone blah blah blah. Following?”

There were grumbles of assent from the assembled class and Gansey nodded distractedly.

What Storm (and that was another thing: Ronan would absolutely love the names nonbinary people chose for themselves when Gansey told him) what Storm was talking about with gray-asexuality sounded just like normal people. Not everyone experiences sexual attraction ALL the time. Then wouldn’t everyone want to have sex with everyone else all the time? That sounded extremely distracting, who would have the time?

And not everyone was in the mood all the time either. He was working to be really open-minded, but this didn’t sound real. 

“Demisexuality,” Storm continued, “Is on that spectrum. The important qualifier is that demisexual people can feel sexual attraction but only if they establish an emotional bond with someone first.”

And just like that, something in Gansey’s head snapped.

He shot his hand up.

Their professor waved him off. “We’re not doing questions right now,”

“That’s okay.” Storm said, smiling at him. Something in their eyes glinted in what Gansey thought might be recognition, even though they’d never met. “What’s up?” They asked, nodding at Gansey.

Gansey had no idea what was up. He hadn’t raised his hand with any kind of plan.

“Hello. My name is Gansey,” he introduced himself, because his mother always said that was a good jumping off point. “Demi is from the Latin word dimidius meaning partially or half.”

That probably wasn’t the right direction to start with, judging by the muttering and eye rolling from his classmates. Gansey felt his neck heat up but Storm looked amused.

“Are you calling me half-sexual?”

“No,” Gansey shook his head, trying to come off better. “I guess I just wondered how the leap was made from demi meaning half to demi meaning… what you said.”

“Mr. Gansey–” the teacher started again, looking a little put-out. Gansey guessed he’d probably said something wrong. Something offensive. Something condescending. He was good at that.

But Storm waved her off again. “I don’t know, man, I didn’t invent the word. I just learned it, same as you’re learning it now.” Their eyes flashed again on the words ‘same as you’. “I learned the word and I remembered every teacher I’d had a crush on growing up after they’d established a connection with me. I remembered the weird sex dreams I’d had about literally every one of my friends. I remembered how any time someone talked about having sex with a stranger I thought they were kidding because how could you feel that way about someone you didn’t know?”

Gansey’s hand gripped the seat of his chair, each statement from Storm triggering his own memories. How he’d never had a crush on a girl – a serious, Want To Do Anything About It crush – until Blue. How confused he’d been when Adam said he had more experience with girls, because he hadn’t, really. How Helen’s advances on poor unsuspecting men felt false, because how could she want to sleep with all of them? She’d just met them.

And he remembered the weird sex dreams he’d had about Adam and Ronan, even though he was straight.

At least… he’d thought he was straight?

Storm smiled at him in a soft, almost pitying way. “Any other questions?”

Gansey shook his head. “No, thank you. Please continue.”

It seemed this class may teach him more than he’d counted on.

His first order of business was to call Blue.

Both because he needed to speak with her about this new word he’d just learned and also because he had a scheduled call with her and also because he missed her fiercely.

“Have you heard this word ‘demisexuality’?” Gansey asked by way of hello.

He could almost hear Blue blink in surprise. “No. Where have you heard the word demisexuality?”

“I’m taking this Bio-Behavioral Health class. It’s usually reserved for at the very earliest second semester students but I spoke to my advisor about my apprehension regarding achieving the required credits for gen eds and she suggested combining requirements through some classes that might cover both. This class counts for gym and science.”

“So you’re not taking a gym class?” Blue hummed, mournfully. “No pictures of sunkissed Gansey rowing in the early morning?”

Gansey’s ears heated up and he cleared his throat. “Any photos you’d like I’ll take for you, Jane.”

Blue hummed again, self-satisfied.

Gansey cleared his throat again. “So this class explores identity and marginalization–”

Blue cut him off with a barked laugh. “Oh, man, I would love to watch this class react to you .”

“Yes, Jane, it was not very comfortable for me, aware as I am of my privilege.” He tried not to sound petulant but he was and it did. “But there was a student named Storm who introduced me to this new word. Demisexuality, I mean.”

“Okay,” Blue said. There was rustling on the other side and Gansey pictured her getting comfortable, sitting in the chair next to the table in the phone/sewing/cat room. She had her own cell phone by now – a fight that spanned weeks and several countries of their road trip – but she refused to use it to speak to Gansey himself, only saving it for calling her mother while she was away or to speak to Adam on the phone his own boyfriend had bullied him into accepting. He assumed she’d cave and use it to speak to him when she was away at school herself (her semester didn’t start until October) but for now they were relying on old habits. “So tell me about demisexuality.”

He began to talk through it with her, repeating some of what Storm said and drawing new conclusions and going so far as to pull a webpage on the subject up on his phone as he spoke, switching between reading off of it and putting the phone to his ear to hear her reply. He knew she could have looked this up herself, but he appreciated she was letting him tell her about it. Teaching her was the easiest way for him to learn himself.

She cut to it pretty quick. “Is that what you think you are?”

Gansey blinked, expecting the question, he supposed, but not expecting how it would make him feel.

“I thought I was straight,” he answered. Because it was true. Even if it was becoming less true by the moment. 

There was a rustling that Gansey recognized as a shrug. “Everyone thinks they’re straight until they don’t.”

Gansey blinked again.

“Thank you, Jane.”

Blue hummed. “I’m gonna let you sit with this. Call me back with any updates?”

Gansey hummed back. They hung up.

Gansey appreciated she wanted to let him sit with this – it was a kindness and potentially a necessity. He didn’t know how to do this, he’d never had a sexual identity crisis before.

So he called Ronan.

Who didn’t answer, of course, so he was forced to sit with his sexual identity crisis.

  He sat with it for two hours until Ronan sent him a text. “Dick.”

Gansey called him.

Ronan answered. “Jesus Mary, Gansey, what ?”

“I think I had a crush on you when we first met.”

Ronan choked and immediately hung up.

Gansey swore, growling, before hitting redial.

“Gansey, I swear to Christ,” Ronan pleaded.

“Shut up!” Gansey swore. “Please shut up. I am so stressed out right now, Ronan.”

Ronan, for his part, shut up. It was an angry and embarrassed silence, but considering what Gansey had just confronted him with that was understandable.

“I learned something in one of my classes today and Jane thinks it might apply to me.” Blue had said no such thing, but something told Gansey that Ronan would take information like this more seriously if it came from sensible Blue. “There is apparently a sexual orientation previously unbeknownst to me that describes feelings of attraction only when there’s an established emotional connection.”

Ronan was silent for a few breaths before he said “Okay?”

“So we were very close when he first met and I felt an immediate connection to you and I didn’t know how to process that outside of friendship because I’d never felt it before but now with this new term sort of recontualizing things, I think it may have been a crush.”

Ronan made a sort of squawk in his throat, reacting similarly to the first time Gansey had said the word “crush” but, thankfully, not hanging up the phone.

“Gansey… I don’t know what you want me to do with this.”

Gansey opened his mouth then shut it again. He wasn’t sure what he wanted from Ronan either. He didn’t know how to ask “Do you think I had a crush?” or “Do you think I’m not straight?” or “How do I restructure myself, how do I think of myself, if I’m not straight like I always thought?”

But that was an emotional burden he had no business troubling Ronan with. Gansey’s feelings weren’t Ronan’s responsibility. He had other things going on.

“Nothing,” he answered, quickly, attempting to brush off the entire conversation. “Just a thought to mull over. I thought I’d share. But, you’re right, you have other things to do–”

Ronan sighed so loud and dramatically, he cut off Gansey’s prepared polite change of topic right in its tracks.

“Gansey, it’s okay if you’re not straight. It would be fucking cool, actually. That means none of us are straight. High five for a perfect queer score or whatever the shit.”

Gansey’s mouth twitched.

“And if you had a crush on me that’s cool too.” He cleared his throat, his next statement coming out as a growl to cover embarrassment. “I had a crush on you in the beginning, too. So it’s whatever.”

Gansey grinned. “Oh, you did?”

“We are never bringing this up again,” Ronan told him firmly. “But yeah, man, you’re like the portrait of well tended youth. But you drove a fast and shitty car and smiled like a dork. I was sixteen, what do you want?”

Gansey’s grin softened. “Well, now I feel indecorous. You’ve had time to think about this. I have nothing prepared to tell you why you were crushworthy.”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Ronan said, quickly. “Tell me about the crush you had on Parrish, instead.”

Gansey sat up straight, very much feeling like he’d received a rowing oar to the face. “Did I have a crush on Parrish?”

Ronan snorted, cruel yet fond. “Of fucking course you had a crush on Parrish. Everyone with eyes and a brain has had a crush on Parrish.”

Gansey frowned but remembered again the inappropriate sex dreams. Then he blushed. Then he conceded. “I suppose you make valid points.”

Ronan laughed. “Did you get butterflies the first time he helped you fix the Pig?”

Gansey hummed, getting a little lost in the memory, before jerking back. “Oh. Have I been a little stupid about this?”

Ronan snorted again, the sound 100% joy this time. “Yeah, man. But that’s okay. No one can know everything.”

When Gansey was slated to present his own “straight talk” to the class weeks later, he was prepared. Not ready. Not comfortable. But prepared.

“Hello,” Gansey started, his politician’s-son smile on. “My name is Richard Campbell Gansey III, but I go by Gansey. The legacy in my family, so aptly captured by my name, has never been something I was comfortable with.”

Gansey watched a few faces around the room nod. Expressing that they saw him, they understood what he was saying, and they accepted it.

It gave him the strength to continue. He smiled a bit more easily this time.

“It feels overly boastful to list the ways for which I have privilege in this world – it was something I was never brought up to put a name to for fear of coming off ungracious or pompous. But putting a name to something is the first step to breaking down the social structures that put people like me so far ahead simply by the state in which I was born. So just because it makes me uncomfortable, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t say it. I only ask that as I go down my list, you all don’t hate me too much.”

That got a few laughs. Gansey sighed a bit in relief before steeling himself.

“I’m white. White Anglo Saxon Protestant, which is rather ironic as I’m deathly allergic to wasps.” Another laugh. Gansey took another breath. “I come from a wealthy family: what some call old Virginia money. I’ve never wanted for anything. I am cis, I am male, I am able-bodied – save my poor eyesight and previously mentioned bee and wasp allergy. Access to care for eyes and allergy has never been a problem, though, because of the aforementioned wealth. I’ve been able to go through my life relatively normally because of the wealth and despite what otherwise might be debilitating conditions.”

The bee allergy had killed him, once, but Gansey wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to get into that in this setting.

“I have a girlfriend, so I am straight passing,” Gansey continued, swallowing. “And, until very recently, I thought I was straight.”

He lifted his eyes to the class, hoping some of them were remembering his questions to Storm on the first day. Storm themself wasn’t there but Gansey pictured them in his mind as he continued.

“Learning about demisexuality has opened some things up for me,” he confessed. “I spoke to my girlfriend and to some friends from high school who are queer themselves and who I only recently realized I had had crushes on. They all think it’s extremely funny, telling me I was terrible at hiding it. And they’re all very excited to realize this gives us a perfect record of queerness in the friend group.”

More laughs. Students’ faces were very open and friendly. Some were still a bit disdainful – there would be some fights he couldn’t win, some people he would never be able to win over because they had suffered too much by people just like him – but there were people in this class who didn’t visibly hate him. Gansey grinned fully.

“I expect this discovery of identity will continue: probably until I die.” (Again) “And it was challenging to have to restructure my self-perception, but a bit thrilling, too. I thank you all for sharing so much of yourselves with me. I hope I can go forward in this life and take advantage of my outrageous privilege to do right by you.”

He glanced over at the professor, who looked rather stoic, but nodded once, eyes shining in something that looked a little like surprise and a little more like pride.

Gansey looked back to the class and nodded. “Thank you.”

He hoped he could answer questions – from the class and from himself – whenever they came.

[melodrawmah]

I’ve noticed I’ve been seeing on my timeline a lot of posts from Black men about how they want to be treated by Black women. How they feel they’re always under attack (ex :” niggas ain’t shit” rhetoric). How they can’t be vulnerable; especially amongst Black women. This is all valid. However, I never see these men taking accountability regarding the fact that Black men can be honestly the biggest discriminators towards Black women. How Black men and women are just NOT equal.

Now, read carefully because I didn’t say ALL Black men, but there’s a history of this relationship between Black men and women that justify why Black men need to stop seeing themselves as equals to Black women and invalidating how some Black men treat us, as well as the privilege you have over us.

In a racial group, you will always have people who have more privileges than others. For instance, a Black straight person has privilege over a Black queer person. A Black cisgender person has privilege over a Black transgender &/ or non- binary person. A Black able- body person has privilege over a Black disabled person. A Black light and/ or mixed has privilege over a Black dark skinned and /or “fully” Black person.

And YES Black men have privilege over Black women! We aren’t equal. I didn’t even use examples regarding intersectionality beyond race and one other factor to show that Black people don’t have monolithic experiences. There’s layers to this.

But , the reality is Black men need to listen to Black women as well and understand why we say and do certain things that may feel like an attack. I’m not going lie and act like they’re not some situations where Black men have it harder. Y’all are more likely to be racially profiled by cops, arrested, accused of crimes, for instance. Y’all are expected to have or show no emotion, which results in bad habits to cope with your mental health. In the worst case scenario, it explains high suicide rates amongst Black men. Black women are the most educated in America, while Black men significantly aren’t .

However, the thing is they’re are plenty of Black women who support Black men, but not necessarily the reverse. We are used as free teachers and therapists for Black men. Always expected by some to educate y’all on social matters , when y’all can honestly get that education from school or by self teaching. That therapy from a counselor, instead of your Black girlfriend, woman friend, etc.

We come from the same neighborhoods and home. Why is it that more Black women have college educations? Even high school educations? But yet, Black women statistically still make less money than Black men?

Black women have always been seen in Western society as unattractive. Unfortunately ,many Black men push this narrative from when they’re young. Myself and so many other Black women can say how many Black men used to shame their appearances. We were too “dark”, “promiscuous “, “ghetto “and “masculine” back then. Even many of us get that same feedback as an adult (ex: Megan Thee Stallion. Look at how many Black men put her down, when they can just ignore her content). Now as adults, many of y’all shame Black women for conforming to Eurocentric beauty standards or undergoing cosmetic procedures, but fetishize those same features on a non- Black woman. Some clown Black female celebrities for saying or doing one problematic thing, but support the Black male celebrities who constantly show to the world how problematic they are.

Even back to our anatomy and upbringing. Y’all took biology 101 like Black women, but some are quick to call Black women “crazy, mean and rude” for hormonal changes that are a results of her period, birth control or pregnancy. The same birth control y’all sometimes make a woman go on just because you want to go raw. Some of y’all hear how many Black mothers shared how they face malpractice when they are pregnant but yet so many Black men end up being absent fathers ( I agree and it takes two to make a child and reality is some men didn’t want to be parents but the mother decided to have to kid anyway. Before y’all try to say anything )

I can go on about the numerous examples of how Black women face multiple forms of discrimination and mistreatment from Black men. But I want to end off with the biggest example of this statement: The Black Lives Matter movement. This movement was started in 2013 by Black queer women, who decided to fight for the rights of Black people who are killed because of police brutality and / or racism.

Fast forward to June 2020. During a pandemic, people had to protest because three Black people (Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, & George Floyd) were murdered by police or racist white people. Out of the there cases, Breonna Taylor’s case is by far the most clear cut. All the people deserve justice but by far Breonna’s is the easiest one to understand and yet her killers are free, no convictions. Only one fired. Now, how is this the Black man’s fault? It’s not. But I’m showing you that police brutality happens to Black women as well. Even during this year 2 Black women activists we either arrested or murdered . They are/ were 20. From young, Black women are always fighting for your rights, risking their lives to protect you. In the same breath, we don’t have that. If you’re curious I can list own personal examples. But they’re plenty Black women besides Breonna Taylor and Sandra Bland who were victims of police brutality. Say their names, the same way you say Black men’s names who don’t align with “respectability politics “. Meaning the only two names we hear for Black women are ones who have a “clean image”. No arrests, “good “ jobs and education etc. While some of the Black men we fight for are convincts for instance. We should say ALL their names. Regardless of status or gender because they ALL deserve justice.

If you made it this far, I know this was a long read but I want you to just comprehend that Black women aren’t your equal. We have our own struggles because we are both Black and women. And those experiences are complex. Our discrimination because we are Black isn’t like yours all the time . Our discrimination as a woman isn’t like the experience of non- Black women all the time. Intersectionality creates a whole new form of disparities.

I’m not saying it’s necessarily okay for a Black women to generalize y’all and say “niggas ain’t shit”. However, have y’all ever generalized white people? Or straight people? Why? It’s because they are the oppressors naturally right? Same goes for men. Your Blackness doesn’t remove that privilege you have over us.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Lots of good concepts here!

I don't think I have much to add to the big picture discussion, but on a personal level:

I have a complicated relationship with mental illness and have since my preteens. I am deeply uncomfortable with treatment being forced on people, forced institutionalization, etc including in cases of self-harm/suicide risk. At the same time, I'm uh not exactly 100% happy with how my brain works either, and think destigmatization of mental illness and generally people being chill about people talking about having and seeking care for mental illness, are important.

I got CFS, have for eight years now, and holy fuck it sucks. Fuck yes do I want a cure. Fuck fuck fuck. Main issue is wanting more attention from medical professionals: more research, more awareness, more sensitivity, less getting brushed off. Especially more awareness about PACING. I got told I might have CFS over a year before my first real diagnosis, and didn't hear from a medical professional that pushing myself might make things worse until over a year after that. And in the mean time, I got a visit with a cardiologist for shortness of breath who told me the exact opposite, that at my age I should make sure I stay active. Literally the bare minimum was to not make things worse and you couldn't even do that.

(And, I don't think the social model is wholly irrelevant to my CFS. Both in a very straightforward "stairs are not my friend and things like elevators and sometimes wheelchairs are" kind of way, and also in a more subtle "when most people my age work 9-5, not being able to work is pretty isolating in a way that I think not all times/places have been." In societies where more work is done at home rather than in a workplace, it's easier for people who can work a tiny bit to contribute and also be around other people, and also get care without it being a massive extra expense.)

(The debility model is brand new to me so I'll have to turn it over in my head for a while. I don't personally have a "body wearing down from physical labor" problem, but stress is also not exactly known as a positive influence on health, and who knows.)

I probably have ADHD and may some degree of autism, and my feelings there are pretty similar to my complex feelings about mental illness, as in: this is often inconvenient and also I wish society was different, and also changes should be about personal goals and not forcing yourself into a mold or being forced into a mold. Plus some additional "wow I had no idea for the longest time, and yet in retrospect it very much had an impact on my life. People should be more patient with people that they don't know are disabled, because this is common."

Like a lot of people, I wear glasses -- I am including this solely as an example of something that could be disabling without the right gear and is basically a non-issue with it. Which is maybe encouraging? I wonder what else could be a non-issue with the right supports.

(I've got a lot of privilege -- white, in a first world country, current and growing-up financial security, etc. So, not the most important voice here but I figure personal stories are a good thing and we always need more of them, not less.)

Proposing new meanings for the Disability Pride Flag stripes

I love the design of the disability pride flag made by @capricorn-0mnikorn (in consultation with many disabled people!). It’s beautiful, elegant, and distinct. I love the symbolism of the diagonal stripes.

But the more I think about the meanings of the five diagonal stripes, the more uncomfortable I am with them. So I'll explain my discomfort and then give proposed alternative meanings.

For those unfamiliar, these are the meanings that capricorn-0mnikorn gives:

The White Stripe: Invisible and Undiagnosed Disabilities

The Red Stripe: Physical Disabilities

The Gold Stripe: Neurodivergence

The Blue Stripe: Psychiatric Disabilities

The Green Stripe: Sensory Disabilities

With additional and helpful context here! 💙 Like a lot of disabled people my disabilities don't all fit neatly into these boxes, but I recognize some disabled people see themselves in these categories. I do appreciate the symbolism of it being the most common flag colours / internationalism plus the intent of representing diversity amongst the disability community.

Here’s what doesn’t sit well with me:

The yellow was chosen for the neurodiversity stripe because gold = Au = autism (and also as a fuck you to autism speaks, a sentiment I agree with 💯). 

So autism is used to represent all of neurodiversity. Even though the 2018 AutisticsUK campaign to associate gold with autism was explicitly motivated by the idea that neurodiversity is larger than just autism and autistic people should have our own colour/symbol distinct from the rainbow infinity used for general neurodiversity.

One specific disability is effectively being given a whole stripe (autism) while the other four stripes are based on abstract ideas: red is associated with body -> physical disability, blue is associated with the mind (and is “opposite” to red) so -> mental disability. This is reasonable but it’s inconsistent. (And I am very much the kind of autistic who gets bothered by internal inconsistency 😅)

The Deaf community has been using cyan blue for ages (since at least 1999, probably older) and they have been so vital in disability rights history. I feel if any single disability deserves to get an entire stripe to themselves it should be them.

I appreciate the honestly that assigning green to sensory disabilities was because “that was the color that was left over” but it still feels wrong given how vital blind & deaf people have been to disability history. 

Blue for mental/emotional disabilities also misses that the Mad Pride movement has been using purple as their colour since at least 2013. 

If all five stripes were disconnected from actual disability-specific pride flags I think I’d be okay with it. What sets me off is the inconsistency: autism gets the privilege of its own chosen colour but not other disabilities? (Also: autism isn’t the only disability that uses yellow!)

My proposal for new meanings

I propose each stripe represent a different cause of disability, and the associated model(s) of disability that go with that cause:

Red: disability due to injury / the debility model of disability - e.g. injury due to armed conflicts caused by colonialism, injury due to gun violence in a country which fails to regulate gun safety, preventable illness due to sociopolitical neglect 😡🩸

Yellow: disability due to natural differences / affirmative models of disability - e.g. autistic people who lead lives that take advantage of their autistic traits, DSPS folks who are able to work night shifts and take pride in doing so 😄🌟

Blue: situational disabilities / critical models like the social model, social construction model, political/relational model, and radical model - e.g. a Deaf person who feels their only disability is that people don’t speak their signed language and don’t provide captions/etc 🗣️♿️

Green: disability due to illness / biomedical models of disability - e.g. people with conditions like ME/CFS and Long Covid who actually do want to be treated/cured 🤢🦠

White: disability caused by unknown or other factors / other models such as the human rights model - e.g. somebody with a poorly-understood and/or undiagnosed illness who is fighting for access for accommodations and medical care 👀🤍

People may relate to multiple stripes! Whether it’s for the same disability or for having multiple disabilities. Like the old meanings, the intent is to showcase our internal diversity. 🌈

It’s been my experience of disability community that attitudes about disability tend (in general) to be linked more to when/how we were disabled rather than mental/physical/sensory/etc. For example, people like me who were disabled from a young age tend to understand our disabilities differently than people who acquire disability later in life.

Colour choice justifications:

Red as disabilities caused by injury: keeping with capricorn-0mnikorn’s association of red with the body plus the common associations of red with blood, violence, and anger. I want to explicitly include the debility model of disability because a lot of white disabled people tend to forget or gloss over how disability is used as a weapon against racialized & Global South folks.

Yellow is associated with optimism and pleasure as well as enlightenment (such as in the Deaf flag) and so I connect it to the affirmation model of disability (which is the opposite of the charity/tragedy model). From there I associated it to disability due to natural differences, such as congenital neurodivergence. I want yellow to still be something that fellow autistics could still see themselves in the flag for! 💛 And I want intersex people who see their intersex variation as a disability to be able to see themselves here too because being intersex is natural 💛 

Blue as disabilities that are social/situational in nature, like Deafness being a disability in situations where signed languages are unavailable. I wanted Deafness to actually be under blue this time. 💙 

Blue has also been used for disability writ large for a long time now and so this one being the one associated with the Social Model feels most historically connected to me. I’m also including newer critical/postmodern models like the social construction model and radical model which also posit that disability is a social category rather than a deficiency of individuals’ bodyminds.

The social model is generally contrasted with the medical model - viewing disability as a medical problem. A lot of disability activism is focused on de-medicalizing our bodyminds and challenging the idea that we want to be cured. 

But there are chronic illnesses like ME/CFS, long covid, and cancer where the people who are disabled by them do actively (and vocally) want to be cured! And they belong to the disability community too.  Green was picked for illness because green has been used to symbolize sickness (e.g. the 🤮 emoji). And biomedical models like the traditional medical model and the more recent biopsychosocal model are thematically connected to disability being due to illness.

For white, I want people who are undiagnosed and/or who feel the invisibility of their disability as important to again be able to see themselves in this stripe. 🩶White is also the catch-all “other models” because of white being the sum of all colours in an additive colour model. Models like the human rights model I see as being appealing to disabled people who are feeling invisibilized by society.

For each stripe I've included both a cause of disability and a model of disability. The causes are concrete, and easy to understand. The models of disability are more abstract and not everybody will know them (especially ableds). But a flag gives us an opportunity to teach others about us and I think it's a great opportunity to increase awareness of the different views/models of disability. 🖤

Overall, I tried to keep as much of capricorn-0mnikorn’s reasoning/associations alive in my new proposed meanings as I could. 💜 I hope people who see themselves in a given stripe of the original flag will see themselves in this scheme as well. I hope people who didn’t see themselves in the original scheme find these options more inclusive. ☮️

[jaimereyes13]

Are you a terf?

I answered a similar ask a week ago that asserted that I was a transphobe. Am I a terf? We can break that down, however if you want to know if I’m a transphobe, short answer, no, I don’t consider myself a transphobe. Lol. 

Longer answer:

Am I a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist? Firstly, I am a radical feminist. Or, at least, I have radical feminist beliefs and try to put them into practice in my own life. Being a radical feminist is about liberating women. This is a pretty lofty thing to say, but it is the goal of the ideology, just like the goal of liberal feminist ideology might be “equality for all people.” As soon as we see these two goals, we can start to see a difference in the two, right? Radical feminists don’t necessarily argue for “equality,” because in a society where people are a part of oppressor classes and others a part of oppressed ones, what would be the goal? For everyone to be an oppressor? Radical feminists reject the status of men and don’t want to become ‘equal’ to oppressors but rather dismantle the systems that make women oppressed. One axis of oppression, the one radical feminists base their praxis on, is gender. Other axes must necessarily come into view; race, disability, sexuality, etc. but all of these are focused on how they affect women (ie, how does the experience of a white woman vary from a black woman? What privilege does a straight woman hold over a lesbian woman? How about a feminine straight white woman over a black butch woman?)… of course, being aware of and caring about these different modes of oppression means we are also aware of men who are oppressed because of their race/sexuality/etc…. but WOMEN are our focus. 

SO how do we define womanhood, since that is what this ideology is based on? Women are adult human females. We are of course also focused on liberating girls, but girls are not adults, and woman and man are words that denote adulthood. This is an obviously important distinction since I would not (for example) call a 5 year old a woman. The human distinction is pretty obvious too. Anyway, the aspect that most people seem to be upset by/confused by/find fault with is the female part of this description. Women around the world are oppressed because they are FEMALE, and people can tell this because women overwhelmingly have uteri and can become pregnant (”female: of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs”) You can also often tell that a person is female because of their breasts, the way the fat is situated on their bodies, their bone structure, their size, etc. Because of women’s BODIES men have often taken advantage of us to enact sexual violence and keep women in a subservient position. For example, the military (speaking from an american/canadian perspective) is still considered a dangerous place for women to be, not because they are potentially going overseas and engaging in combat with rifles/bombs/weaponry, but because the sexual assault rates are SO HIGH. WITHIN THE ARMY. ASSAULT IS PERPETRATED NOT BY THE “ENEMY” BUT BY YOUR “BROTHERS.” When women ‘step out of line,’ men like to tell us to “get back in the kitchen” or “suck my dick” or call us “bitches/whores/cunts.” Men don’t like it when women are self-reliant or form communities with other women–how many man have discouraged the women in their lives from learning mechanics, going to school, or working? What if that woman they were calling a “slut” and telling to “fix me a sandwich” or threatening with rape said “actually, I don’t identify with womanhood. I’m not a woman. I’m trans.” Would that change anything? Why not? Because you can still physically identify her as a woman… because she is female.

So women are oppressed on the basis of sex. Our sex is told we have “women’s brains” that make us more inclined to be quiet, caring and illogical, and that a good woman wears heels (painful, uncomfortable, limits mobility), makeup (expensive, time-consuming, promotes hiding of “flaws” and a desire for “perfect” looks/“beauty”), stays at home and takes care of the kids (isolating, unrecognized/unappreciated labour, strenuous, removes independence), and serves the men in her life completely. What liberal feminists call gender roles, we call gender. Because gender is entirely based on classifying what women (adult human females) and men (adult human males) are allowed to do. So we reject gendering. 

Does this exclude trans people? Well, it depends on how you view it. Remember that radical feminism is about women, who are female, and despite us being able to recognize that systemic injustices are faced by men of colour and disabled men (and gay men and poor men etc. etc.), we focus on liberating females. So males are not included; they are ‘excluded.’ Trans women (male - to - female transgender individuals) are male. SO, yes they are excluded by this description. However, just as we can recognize how indigenous men are oppressed, we can recognize the pain of dysphoric males and the oppression of gender non conforming males. 

This was all written very quickly and in one go so there are probably mistakes in it, sorry! If you want to send another anonymous ask with follow up questions/remarks, feel free.. you can also come off anon and we can chat privately. I hope you’re having a good day and that this helped to explain my views. :)

[fightmeyeats]

"If you hate capitalism so much, go live in the forest!”: An Analysis of “Freedom,” “Individualism,” and the discursive model of “the Forest”

In one of my classes today we discussed some of the limitations which go along with the dominant narratives of “freedom” in the Global North (namely the U.S.), specifically in the context of Climate Change and the way that ideologies of freedom both feed into and work alongside ideologies of individualism in ways which prioritize the desires of individuals over communal needs and greatly undermine abilities to organize collectively. One student made a comment to the effect that people in the “First World” do not use the freedom they have, and in fact having freedoms becomes a source of anxiety for them; people don’t choose to enact freedom, for example, by pursuing opportunities to educate themselves. This is not intended either to perfectly/accurately articulate the student’s position (I am not attempting to misrepresent them, only acknowledging my own partial perspective and the assumption that they would have more to say to defend their position, otherwise (one hopes) they would not have said it in the first place), nor my desire to repeat the discussion in class; rather it is the product of my further meditation on the subject while sitting in traffic on the drive home.

To say that people in the “First World” do not use the freedom they have does several things: first it establishes the people of the Global North as “having” freedom (which further makes freedom something tangible and able to be possessed); second, it implies the Global South is not free; third it establishes that the Global North is not only free, but uniformly and universally free, and the Global South uniformly and universally “not” free; and fourth, it leaves “freedom” undefined in ways which make it difficult to understand what is intended by this sentiment. Is it freedom if you have real social and material consequences which make it difficult or even impossible for an individual to pursue certain options? The example I used in my response in class was something to the effect of: if I am against capitalism (which, of course, I am), am I complicit in capitalism because I have to perform wage labor in order to survive? And my coworkers who are even further disadvantaged, who have to work additional jobs and cannot attend school, where is their freedom to pursue education? Is it practical (or fair) to say that myself or my coworkers are anxious about the excess of freedom in our life, rather than the limitations?

Part of the response I received was a comment to the effect of “if you hate capitalism, you are free to go live in the forest.” Why is the forest freedom? Do “I” even have the freedom to live in the forest? Who does (or even might) have the freedom to live in the forest? What constitutes “living” in the forest? Let’s look first to the forest as a discursive figure, before discussing realities. As another student pointed out during discussion, the way the forest is so centralized to ideologies of freedom is because of an (over)privileging of Thoreau. In my opinion, it centers the idea of “freedom” in a lack of governmental, social, and, in this case, corporate intervention into one’s life; is this what freedom is? Perhaps, in hegemonic discourses. I would argue that there are ways in which the forest is a space of un-freedom: while, again in the discursive model, there is a lack of intervention by social/governmental/corporate forces, many of the same concerns which appear in social spaces will still exist, even if they are articulated in other ways. Let’s say you are living in this forest by yourself (the discursive model is an individualistic one, after all): you may be free from the social influences/restrictions which come from actively cohabiting with humans, but you are not free from the cultural framework you were raised in or from isolation from humans and let’s move away from anthropocentrism, anyway--you are still cohabiting with other animals, and there is a kind of social organization involved in this so are you really free from "society"? You are also controlled by the elements, by your access to food, housing/shelter, medical care, etc; this is not to say that these are not concerns outside of the forest, but to point out that many of the same concerns which limit freedoms outside of the forest will not evaporate once one has entered the discursive space of the forest, and some of these limitations may even be heightened. 

So now let’s turn towards some of the realities of the forest: first of all, one must ask is this even a desirable space? Do I feel “free” because I “can” live in the forest? Am I happier with my subsistence living in the forest (presumably by myself; can I convince my friends and family to live in the forest? And am I still free if I have brought a human social order with me?) than I am with my city/suburban subsistence living? If we treat this as a viable form of freedom, how must we then consider the homeless, the unemployed? Are they “free” because they “operate” “outside” of capitalism? And is exclusion from the “benefits” of a system the same as operating outside of it anyway; and how do we know when it is one over the other, whether the person experiencing homelessness and unemployment feels it is a “choice” or an imposition? I will concede that many people do have escapist fantasies where they go live in the forest or on a small self-sustaining farm or in some other way are able to be free of the social constraints they experience. One thing I do want to add on this note is the fact that, especially in the context of climate change, this itself is a prioritization of individualism which disrupts abilities to collectivize, further privileges the desires of the individual and reifies the individual itself as a discursive figure. Moreover in an American context this fantasy has some deep underlying colonial roots (whose forest do you plan to live in by yourself? whose land will you be farming?) which fundamentally tie into manifest destiny-esc ideologies of land ownership and desirability. That being said, I will also concede that the US is a continued settler colony and there is no discourse of desire at the present time which can be removed from this criticism, and there cannot be while the US remains a settler colony.

Okay, so we’re moving forward on the basis that it is in fact desirable to live in the forest. Now let’s ask who can live in the forest, and on what terms. If we’re looking at the forest as a reality, you probably can’t actually live there. Many forests are private property, but even “public” land is government owned; you can only camp at a National Forest for fourteen days, for example. So the two options here would be to move constantly between forests or to risk the consequences of trespassing (whether on "private" or "public" lands). I do acknowledge, of course, that one could likely stay a good deal longer than two weeks at a National Forest (or longer than any set restriction placed on any other forest, private or public) by moving within the forest to avoid detection (or perhaps in some of the larger forests simply by setting up a stationary living situation camouflaged with the environment somewhere relatively remote), so my argument here is not that you could never live in a forest longer than two weeks, but rather that the forest is not a space of freedom from the government or corporations. These fantasies of isolated living still hinge heavily on land ownership which are inaccessible to many. Am I free if it’s only a matter of time before I am arrested for trespassing or poaching? The kinds of anxieties these uncertainties would generate certainly don't stem from an abundance of options.

Finally we need to consider the accessibility of such a living arrangement: so going along with the idea that this is a desired lifestyle and that one has indefinite and unrestricted access to the space itself, we still need to consider who can actually live in this way. This not only means who has the kinds of knowledge necessary in order to survive (knowledge of hunting/fishing, butchery, agriculture, cooking, sewing, construction, etc), which many people who (are forced to) engage in urban/suburban modes of subsistence living do not have access to, but also intends to call into question the role of ability/disability. Are there wheelchair ramps in the forest? And, in the long term, what about medications? I am dependent on biweekly medication: does someone deliver my medication to The Forest or do I hike to the nearest city and hope the pharmacy accepts barter? When I have a day where I am physically unable to function due to pain and/or fatigue, do I (living by myself in the forest) call out sick to my garden, or to the river where I fish? This is not to say people with disabilities cannot or have not lived in the forest, or that they cannot/have not lived other kinds of rural lives; the inability to access certain kinds of medication has and does cause deaths, as have and do certain kinds of disabilities without access (to medical care, food, housing,etc), but communities are and historically have been able to work together to create more accessible conditions--this is just something missing from the hermit in the forest model. And to this end, I want to add that Thoreau himself, on whom this whole discursive model is based, did not live in the forest without support: he had friends and went into town and visited his mother and took home leftovers from dinner. Through my critique of “go live in the forest” as a discursive model of freedom, the point which I am ultimately trying to make is that if we choose to examine the anxieties we believe are generated by freedom, we need to consider first the perspective of those with too few options before the perspective of those with too many.

[shaanks]

So I was getting ready for school today, idly thinking about how to explain privilege and equity to obtuse republican morons who pretend they’ve never heard of the former and think the latter is communism, and this is what I’ve arrived at. Feel free to share with the obtuse republican morons in your life:

Say you’re renting an apartment with three other people, who just so happen to be MBA basketball players. The shortest one of the bunch (outside of yourself) is 6′11″, the next is 7′4″, and the tallest one is 7��7″. For the purposes of this example, lets say the shortest of your roommates is a full foot taller than you. Now, in your own IRL household, things are probably arranged so you can reach them, right? The dishes are on shelves you can reach, the bookshelves are accessible, the things in your shower are where you can get to them, your belongings in general are arranged so they’re compatible with your stature, yes? 

Not so in this house. You come home one day to find that your roommates have totally transformed the house. The dishes  are all on shelves a good foot and a half over your head, the fridge is on a stand that puts the bottom of it at your waist and the food on the top shelf out of reach, the showers have all been affixed with stilted shelves so that the soap is much higher than you would feel safe reaching to, etc. In short (haha) the house where you live has been made very inaccessible and in some ways unsafe for you to live in.

So you think, okay. I’ll talk to them about it, see if there’s some compromise to be had here. When you bring up to them that you, as a person who lives in the house, no longer have access to a lot of the basic necessities and functions IN your house, they balk at you.

“I can reach everything just fine,” says one of them dismissively. The others nod in agreement. 

“Have you even tried reaching for things on your own?” the second asks.

“Just what the FUCK is wrong with having things where I can reach them???? This is what makes ME comfortable and it really seems to me like you want me to give up my safety and prioritize yours. :/”

You argue that you’re not trying to make them feel unsafe or uncomfortable, you just also want to be able to participate in the amenities of the house you live in and are helping to pay for. 

“Well why are your needs the only ones that are important? Shouldn’t ALL our needs matter?” One of them asks, disgruntled and angry. 

“All of our needs DO matter, the problem is that right now the ENTIRE HOUSE is only designed to facilitate YOURS.” 

The argument makes no headway. Nothing you say seems to make them understand that you’re not trying to take away the taller shelves, you’d just like it if some of the things--your own things!!--were on shelves you could actually reach. 

In the end, you decide to just buy a stepladder. That’s going to make the shower an interesting adventure, but it seems to be the only option. This works well for one day, but the next day you go looking for it to get down a cereal bowl and its gone. 

“Hey, where’s my stepladder?” You call out to no one in particular. One of your roommates responds. “Oh, I converted it into a neat little side table, its the perfect height!” 

You come around the corner and explain that you needed that in order to reach things, and ask if you can have it back. Your roommate is affronted. “Why do you get something special to reach things, I don’t have anything special and what’s more, I don’t NEED it. I took it because it doesn’t make any sense, I see you pick things up all the time, this was just something you bought to be petty and now it’s actually making the house better.”

You try to explain that, again, you literally can’t reach anything in the house, and that they don’t have a “special” thing to help them reach things because they already CAN reach things, but again, it just doesn’t seem to connect. All they hear is that you’re purchasing special treatment for yourself for something that they don’t personally need any help with, and they refuse to return it even though its something you need to participate in daily house life with.

In desperation, you ask another tall friend to come home with you sometimes and get things down off shelves for you. For some reason, this makes your roommates absolutely furious.

“Why are you letting someone else use things in this house when they don’t live here??” “This is theft!!! You don’t even need help, you’re just trying to scam us out of our dishes!!!!!!!!” “Why do you have to keep making such a fuss, this house is so comfortable and easy to live in!!!!!!! You’re bothering me by constantly bringing this up and making it an issue!!!!! If you keep bringing your little “aid” friend here, we’re going to kick you out!!!!!!!” 

You don’t have enough money to move out anywhere else, nor the time to search for other roommates. You’re trapped. You have no choice but to stop getting aid from outside sources. You’re climbing on counters trying to get the basic necessities that you need, which hurts your knees and is tiresome, all while your tall roommates, who have no issues using the house safely, berate you for being lazy, for making up problems, and for bothering them with your lack of ability to reach things.

THAT’S what privilege is. Privilege is living in a world that is built to cater to your needs.

“All lives matter!!!!” yes, they do!!! the problem is, only SOME lives are being treasured and prioritized and protected right now, and the ones being cared for are constantly throwing literally everyone else under the bus, either because they don’t personally face discrimination, or because they think other people wanting to be safe means THEY won’t personally be safe anymore.

“Why do YOU get a special parking space, I want one of those!! You’re going into the store, clearly you can walk!!” Well, you have a special parking space if you’re not handicapped, its literally the entire rest of the parking lot. Many people who are disabled can do things you can do in short bursts, but to do so for a prolonged time would be incredibly harmful to them. They need that so that they can participate in the store the same way you can. Nobody but you parks in those spots just to give the finger to people who have to walk farther. 

“You’re just using food stamps/housing vouchers/other forms of financial aid because you’re lazy!!! Those are taxpayer dollars going to your laziness, that’s theft!!!! You’re just trying to fraud the system!!!!!!!” 0.0009% of people on income assistance were found to be fraudulent cases last year. People who are disabled, who are mentally ill, who are currently unemployed, who are single parents trying to care for their families, people who aren’t straight white cis men, face a TON of issues coming up with the money necessary to live a stable and safe life. The fact that you do NOT face those types of issues does not mean they don’t exist. It’s not that you worked hard and they didn’t. Its that they’re working EQUALLY as hard as you with severely limited opportunities, or they are physically UNABLE to do the same work as you. Being able to do/find work =/= right to live. You shouldn’t have to prove yourself to be profitable to deserve to eat.

People are born with certain privileges based on their race, their gender, their sexuality, their family’s history of wealth, and like...its not a good or bad trait simply to have privilege, it’s just a thing that exists. I’m 5′6″, I have hazel eyes, I have white privilege because...I’m white. Being part of a privileged group doesn’t make you a bad person, but refusing to see the issues that others are facing because you don’t personally experience them, and eschewing all evidence that negates your personal world view does.  

Stating that we live in a world that was built by and caters to rich, christian, cis straight white men is not a political statement. It’s just a fact. Saying that people deserve to be able to eat, to have the medicines they need to live, to have access to the types of aid they need to function in our society is not a political statement. Its not “the snowflake SJWs coming for our freedom” it’s just other human beings who are not you that would like to be able to live in the house too. 

[southeastasianists]

Tell me a little about yourself and how you became a writer. I’ve always loved stories and writing since I was a little girl. At eight years old, I filled a notebook with stories and poems. I liked especially adventure stories and mystery stories. I was painfully shy and fearful, and I couldn’t even say anything when someone was being rude to me in public. My only outlet was writing. It was the only space where I could truly be myself and say what I need to say.

So, I took it seriously. I kept on writing – I wrote longer and more complex stories, and after college, I began sending pieces out to various publications, both in English and Bahasa Indonesia. I also started working on what became From Now On Everything Will Be Different, signed up for workshops and festivals, and learned the business of becoming a writer. As I got published more often and got invited to speak at writers’ festivals, slowly I gained the courage to speak up in daily life too. I became more confident in my own opinions and instinct; I became more able to trust that I have good ideas and good vision.

Now I can talk back when someone catcalls or insults me in public, for example. It’s all because of writing, and finding someone who loves me for me and doesn’t want me to change or conform. Writing is my home; I feel most alive with my imagination and the world I’m creating. It is my space to ask the questions I need to ask about the world, about how and why Indonesia is changing, about why we don’t allow women to be in control of their own bodies and their own lives, why I can’t be myself around my family, if I still want to be a Muslim and how, and many other things. I believe writing – and being creative – is an expression of faith in our own ability to heal and save ourselves.

Your novel From Now On Everything Will Be Different is about the Reformasi [post-Suharto] period that began in the late 1990s. What inspired you to write it, and what themes were you going after? The inspiration was the letters I exchanged with a friend. We were discussing our sexual adventures, which we had to keep secret from our family, colleagues and our other friends who disapprove of such free behaviour. We also talked about our artistic aspirations and how our family pushed us to more conventional, stable professions. We talked about the opportunities we had and how we missed them, our self-destructive habits, if we could ever break free from the patterns of starting [anew], failing and moving somewhere else to start over again. I realised that is also the story of Indonesia – from ’98, we had moments of great hope, moments that promised transformation and improvement, but we were often disappointed. I thought we would be free to choose our own leaders, careers and romantic partners. I thought we could write about whatever we wanted because writers and artists would no longer be censored or persecuted. I thought we could all be safer to be ourselves. Then I realised the obstacles don’t come only from the government – we are also constrained by social norms and our families’ expectations. With From Now On, I want to explore how the young generation could try to live free and follow their own hearts, choose the profession and relationships that fulfill them, instead of what is usual or expected of them.

Your novel was set to be launched at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in 2015 but was cancelled due to government pressure. How did you react to this? Has the environment for writers improved since 2015? I believe the pressure mostly came from the local police. I reacted by printing excerpts of my novel on T-shirts and wore them to the festival. I wanted a creative means to resist or circumvent the censorship, and I wanted to do it in a way that achieved the goals of the book launch, which was to let people know that I had this novel just published. I also wanted to show the authorities who might be watching that censorship often has the opposite effect. They attract people’s attention to the censored or banned book, rather than away from it. I also wanted to show fellow writers and artists that we can resist censorship – there are ways to do so that are fun, creative, and conducive. I believe if we have good amount of attention, and international attention, the authorities will think twice before messing with us again.

I think there are still many concerns and much fear in exploring and publishing certain topics – for example, controversial periods in Indonesia’s history, ’65 and ’98 especially, environmental issues that brush against corporate interests, LGBTQI issues and anything challenging the mainstream conservative Islam narrative. Regarding the last two themes, I’d say things are even worse now. We need publishers and media outlets to be braver to support writers who are exploring those themes in a progressive and inclusive manner.

Tell me a bit about your work at House of the Unsilenced, and why you founded the project. The idea came to me late last year as I was following the #MeToo movement. It occurred to me that there were not as many stories coming from Indonesians. If a survivor were to come forward with her story, she may face negative stigmas. These things affect survivors everywhere, I know, but I feel in Indonesia the social stigma and sanctions can be harsh. So I thought if we can’t speak directly in person or through social media, maybe we can speak up with art. This way, people will have to listen to us. We’re not just nameless survivors anymore, we’re also artists and creators. We’re telling our stories and turning them into art. We’re also fighting the situation by telling our society that we refuse to be silent, we deserve to be listened to.

We had more than 20 artists, writers and performers participating [in the project], and about 50 survivors. We invited artists working in various mediums because people express themselves in diverse ways and we want as many survivors as possible participating. We had workshops and collaborations. We had discussions about themes related to sexual and gender violence. We had a film showing and an open-mic night. For most performances and discussions, we had a full room. We provided quiet rooms and psychological first-aid volunteers to help survivors who felt panic or triggered. With our partners we developed ethical guidelines for staff and participating artists and writers. We worked with partners who often work with survivors, such as APIK Legal Aid Foundation, Pulih Foundation, Lentera Sintas Indonesia support group and Hollaback! Jakarta. We also consulted Indonesian Association of Women With Disabilities to help make a conducive environment for disabled participants. The themes for the artworks also varied, from survivors speaking about sexual harassment to how sisterhood still often excludes non-cisgendered women, to forced pregnancy and lack of access to safe abortion services, and many more.

The artists and the survivors are equally important in this project. I want us to speak up together with the survivors, not for them.

What does being invited to speak at the festival mean to you? What types of events will you speak at, and are there any writers you are especially excited to meet? I hope by speaking at the festival, I can create more interest and support to do more House of the Unsilenced events, particularly in Bali and also in other places. That is one of our goals: to be able to hold events with House of the Unsilenced’s model wherever it is needed, with local artists and survivors.

I’ve heard so many great things about Clarissa Goenawan’s work, and I’m also excited to meet or hear Reni Eddo-Lodge, Yenny Wahid, the filmmaker Kamila Andini, also my friend Tiffany Tsao, and many others.

I’ll be speaking at two panels, #MeToo and Ladies to the Front. I’ll be talking about women’s leadership and the imbalance of power that makes rape culture possible. I will also share experiences in creating a huge collaborative art project with a strong social focus, and what a privilege it is to get to know and make work together with resilient women and survivors who, despite the huge obstacles they face and the deep trauma they’ve experienced, can overcome their fear and speak up and work for others like them.

[bjro233]

The Life of a Gay Man and His Need To Prove It

#1 The “Gay Gene”

               Although it has only been found in males, a linkage to males and homosexuality has been discovered by Dean Hamer and colleagues. On X chromosomes there is an unidentified gene that these scientists have named Xq28, which they relate directly to homosexuality. It’s a very controversial theory but ultimately purposes so many answers.            

#2 Evidence is Mounting for Homosexual Men

               “In 1993, genetic variations in a region on the X chromosome in men were linked to whether they were heterosexual or homosexual, and in 1995, a region on chromosome 8 was identified.” says Andy Coghlan from thenewscientist.com. This just proves that no, gay men don’t just wake up one morning and say “Hey, I wanna try dick today.”

#3 The Third Gender: Muxes

              In southern Mexico, the Zapotec people recognize a third gender called Muxes. In our culture, they would be known as homosexual people and transgendered people. This just makes me realize that some cultures, although so old, are so ahead of their time, open-minded, and progressive. Another reason to yell @ Donald Trump, don’t build the damn wall.  

  #4 We Are Not Alone

              Listen, science isn’t the only thing that proves this theory. Look at our environment and what isn’t directly affected by or altered by humans. “Homosexual behaviour is a natural biological feature and is common among non-human animals. In at least one species – sheep – individual animals have been known to form lasting preferences for same-sex partners.” says Australias Science Channel. Fun Fact: the oldest living tortoise who was thought to be female but was actually male only mated with males. Thus showing why no babies were being born.

#5 Should We Care About Giving Reason To Being Gay?

                Of course, being gay myself, you’re faced with a lot of harassment, questioning, judgment, and bigotry. Religion really attacks you, and you’re forced to feel like an outcast and forced into a stereotype. So, given the chance and these scientific findings, it can help explain to people who don’t believe/understand. It normalizes sexuality, it lowers being/feeling like a minority. “It adds yet more evidence that sexual orientation is not a ‘lifestyle choice’. But the real significance is that it takes us one step closer to understanding the origins of one of the most fascinating and important features of human beings.” says Dean Hammer from newscientist.com.

#6 Being A Watermelon in A Sea Full of Cacti

                      One word: Grindr. If you’re a gay male, you either gagged or hid your face in shamefulness for using the app. My need to prove myself starts here, it completely drains lives of romance and relationship oriented people. It sends a message that all gay men are they same, they’re horny and only want to bone. “The mental health professionals I spoke to are seeing problematic Grindr use in their clinics. And there is little published guidance on how to help those who are struggling.” says Jack Turban with Vox.com. This app is notorious for only being used to have sex, and it’s showing and obviously causing detrimental effects on gay men.

#7 Breaking Stereotypes One Straight @ A Time

                    Growing up, I only had girlfriends. Instead of playing basketball or throwing a football at recess, after school, in college, etc... I jumped rope. I learned how to french braid, I sang and danced. I yearned for the male on male friendship, or bromance you may say. I never got it because theres a stereotype, “I don’t have a problem with gay guys, but if he hits on me its game over.” Now, I can say once straight cis men give me a shot, they realize the stupidity behind it. I always here, “I’m not gay, but you’re one of the coolest dudes.” which isn’t ideal, but it’s progress.                    

#8 Trouble in the Workplace

                     When I bring up LGBTQ issues to acquaintances, a lot of the times i’m faced with “I don’t think gay people have a lot of issues nowadays”. But we dont, thats why I feel its so important for me to prove myself, my life, and what comes along with it. The facts, the struggles, the ugly truth. “59% said that where they live, they are less likely to be afforded employment opportunities because they are part of the LGBTQ community. One in five stated that they have had difficulty when applying for positions.” says victoryinstitute.net

#9 Let’s Prove Stats Wrong!

               Statistics can be demeaning, not all the time are they helpful or good. Sadly, for the LGBTQ+ community, the stats are disheartening. For example, LGBTQ people are 5X as likely to commit suicide than heterosexual people says thetrevorproject.org. 77% of LGBTQ youth reported are depressed, have anxiety, and/or have feelings of worthlessness says hrc.org. So, to all the heterosexual people out there wondering where their “Straight month” or “Straight parade is”, you have it, 11 months out of the year because you dont have struggles like that.

#10 Trans People are Simply, People.

                  Working with white, privileged, conservative, middle-to-upper class women, i’m forced to hear a lot of what they believe and how they think and what political decision they have recently made. Now and then, obvious and not so obvious transgendered women come into the store to shop and they outwardly treat them different or question the “real gender” of the person. I ask myself why whatever is under their clothes matter so much to them. When I tell them they are a woman, and that’s all they are, they are confused and partly agitated because I didn’t give them the answer they wanted to hear. Saddening fact? In a national study, 40% of transgender adults reported having made a suicide attempt. 92% of these individuals reported having attempted suicide before the age of 25 says thetrevorproject.org. Maybe if we stop making people feel so different, and start working toward progression instead of sticking our nose where it doesnt belong, we could actually get somewhere. Proving myself, to help the Trans community.

#11 “Gay People Can’t Naturally Reproduce”

                          I want a family, I want someone to call my husband. My son or daughter, my family. I need that in my life weather it is “natural” or not. People are so pressed about the natural way of things, but they can’t see that a majority of LGBTQ people who don’t reproduce via a man and a woman, help reduce the amount of foster children.14,000 foster children are being raised by Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual foster parents says Movement Advanced Project. Just because I am a man, married to a man, with our own children doesn’t make us any less capable for raising a family. 

#12 LG(B)TQ+

                Another group of people that are drastically hated on for being themselves. Human beings can’t grasp that someone may actually be more concerned about someones personality rather than their sexual organs. According to 2013 research by the University of Pittsburgh, 15% of people did not categorize bisexuality as a legitimate sexuality, with straight men being three times as likely to think it's "not a thing." People looking at you and just thinking you’re fake or just too horny. It’s pathetic, hence another reason to prove myself, my sexuality, for the other groups in my community.

#13 You Can Be Cured With Some Treatment & Religion - Mackelmore

                     Ever since before me, for a very long time, we were taught that there are conversion treatments, that being gay was a mental disability, a deformity. There were actually shock therapy treatments and conversion camps for LGBTQ+ people, people were killed in the midst of these treatments. But heres, *tap tap* the mutha f*ucking, *tap tap* TEA! American Psychological Association undertook a thorough review of the existing research on the efficacy of conversion therapy and their report noted that there was very little  research on sexual orientation change efforts (SOCEs) and that the "results of scientifically valid research indicate that it is unlikely that individuals will be able to reduce same-sex attractions or increase other-sex sexual attractions through SOCE." says hrc.com. Today there are still states that legalize this method!! Stop this!!

#14 The Importance of PRIDE

                   This isn’t just a time for LGBTQ+ people and allies to strut down the street in cute colorful clothing. This parade we participate in is a lesson, its teaching others about what we’re trying to do. Policies, laws, and other arguments we want and need heard. During the 2000s, battles at local, state, and national levels were being fought for marriage equality. Pride parades were utilized to educate the public, generate support, and encourage lawmakers to vote in favor of LGBT rights says thegayfamilylawmaker.com. We need to educate people on the education pride parades actually do. If it wasn’t for these parades, we wouldn’t have made the progress we have today. 

#15 The Audacity!?

                 My need to prove myself may be... borderline pathetic. HOWEVER, it’s so important and necessary in today’s society. The fact that just in 1982, it was okay to openly discriminate against LGBTQ people. IN 1996, it was BANNED to marry unless it was between a man and a women. Only in 2011 was “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” finally repealed. This may sound like good news... but then BAM! THIS YEAR, President Trump banned Transgender people from being in the military.(CNN.com) Every time we feel like we’re ahead, we get knocked back down a few steps. This is why it is important, this is why it is necessary, this is why i’m doing it. 

REFERENCES

https://australiascience.tv/science-of-sexuality/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cross-cultural-evidence-for-the-genetics-of-homosexuality/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2155810-what-do-the-new-gay-genes-tell-us-about-sexual-orientation/

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/genetics-dna-homosexuality-gay-orientation-attractiveness-straight

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/giant-study-links-dna-variants-same-sex-behavior

https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/us/lgbt-rights-milestones-fast-facts/index.html

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/4/4/17177058/grindr-gay-men-mental-health-psychiatrist

https://victoryinstitute.org/issue-at-a-glance-lgbtq-employment-discrimination/

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/preventing-suicide/facts-about-suicide/#sm.00001tfv8n5yekdvsq5f6al6h6i7u

https://www.hrc.org/resources/2018-lgbtq-youth-report

https://justlists.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/familyequality/

[weareindeedbastards]

ok but listen guillermo del toro is just so fucking good

so the shape of water was clearly about minorities stepping up to the man and shit right?

but it wasn’t just plot-wise and dialogue driven it was also visually. And yes it’s pretentious of me to assume people won’t get these because they’re not super subtle visual cues and very basic college film class 101, but I wanna talk about it anyway bear with me

so the story being set in 1962 makes the plot a lot easier to go about. Cold war, experiments, usa vs russia and the rest of the world can go fuck itself. It just makes sense, tense times. But more than that, it was a fantastic opportunity to highlight human hypocrisy at its most obvious (woof that sure was some alliteration right there). The early 60s wasn’t drastically different from its preceding decades. A lot of its culture was basically just everything back until the 30s but with a new stamp on it. And when I say that what I specifically have in mind is what my man del toro decided to focus on here: ideals vs reality

you thought I was gonna say minorities again, right? well hold on, children, I’m getting there

we’ve all heard it before. “Boy, I sure wish I could go back in time. I’d love the 40s/50s/60s, wouldn’t you? Apple pies, milkshakes, tight hairdos and pretty polka dot dresses to the sound of some jazz, nothing like it, don’t you think?” And while my answer is usually nervous laughter it’s not just because those people often fail to realise my developing country did not exactly have the same americanised culture. It’s also because no I wouldn’t love it. Sure there’s some nice aesthetics that we associate with the time periods but I’d much rather enjoy them in modern times which we absolutely can. Why? Because life would suck for me as a poor, queer latina. And I know people who are all sorts of categories that don’t exactly thrive in these conditions (non-white, non-rich, non-straight, disabled, etc) who would and have said the same. We don’t romanticise those times because they wouldn’t be kind to us unlike the often clueless upper middle class abled straight white person posing the question. And you know what, I think it’s ok some don’t realise! It’s not their fault, guys, they grew up hearing about how awesome it was from people like them. They never saw or heard it from another pair of eyes.

And that’s precisely what the film does. But it doesn’t just say it, it shows it too.

Mr of the Bull presents us with the glorified ideals of the time. The whole shebang, from the stereotypical family Giles has to paint for an ad and the real life examples of it, Strickland’s family

to peak 40s/50s/60s culture: an all-smiles blond man tending to a colourful diner full of sweet treats

and all of it emphasised by the sounds of Vera Lynn and Carmen Miranda through scratched vinyls and old TVs (the latter which is, probably intentionally and ironically chosen for the soundtrack because it’s a white woman who’s often seen to represent brazilian culture despite being portuguese so as to be more mass marketable than the exotic but too foreign actual brazilian culture - but hey that doesn’t sound as nice or printable as “the brazilian bombshell”, huh?)

it all sounds nice and cosy though, doesn’t it? Pop me open a cold glass bottle of cola and we’re good to go...but woah there, only if you’re a privileged straight abled white man, of course. That’s right it’s exclusive to a very specific group and it’s irregardless of your personality! In fact, both examples above are assholes but who still get their ego boosted by a submissive wife, adoring clients or a salesman. Who cares about having things because you earned them or simply treating people the way you wanna be treated, right?

Meanwhile the minorities suffer but differently, because despite all of them being marginalised groups they present different layers of experiences and social positions in the hierarchy. What do I mean by that? Eliza and Giles are both white but are discriminated over something unseen. Eliza is disabled and Giles is queer. Zelda and the couple who show up at the diner during one scene are discriminated over something visible. They’re black. And on top of that a bunch of these characters are not well off and gotta struggle in such undermined jobs.

And once again, all these power layers are told to us but also shown.

With privileged characters being positioned upfront at the camera, all big and untouchable, while minorities...

are sheepishly hidden in the back.

And yet it takes a character like Giles being discriminated for showing his true colours to finally open his eyes and see other marginalised groups’ suffering which he previously ignored.

He who, just like Eliza in comparison to Zelda, was previously closer to the camera to seemingly represent the second layer at the social positioning - aka they were benefited by their appearance but held back by their unseen “problems”. But Giles finally takes a step forward, and after subtly defending the couple’s mistreatment (could have been a lil bit firmer buddy but ok) quite literally rises above the unkind privileged man showing that in the end he’s not the real loser here, he’s not “lesser”. And again the camera play shows the change with perspective and character size. Intimidated -> determined

He then comes out braver and ready to kick some ass! Kinda..he helps rather gently, as himself, which is accepted by Eliza because accepting your friends as they are is super badass. And just as he does this the visuals of the dreamy 60s begins to seem darker and darker in saturation and our knowledge of how cruel the world can be taints every idealised scenario we step in.

While also being a more optimistic metaphor for leaving outdated concepts behind and moving on - note the cutesy old fashioned font washed in darkness, but it’s on the back of a van being driven by a scared gay man helping a mute female janitor take the weirdest member of the squad (it’s ok nobody judges anymore, acceptance rules) back home. This is a love mission dammit.

As for our two girls? Our help-people, shit-cleaners and piss-wipers as Mr Cutthoseoffalready put it? They were always strong. And when the time came to help each other they fucking stepped up to the task alright.

Whether it was in the simple but incredibly difficult act of not submitting to the abuse of someone who knows fully well their privilege allows them to get away with it (ew look at that creepy smile, christ dude, it’s darker than your fingers)

- which Del Totoro portrayed by having the villain taking over all the upper space on screen, never respecting others’ space and just keeps taking up more. He’s so in your face that the mirror in the scene where Zelda is threatened reinforces this manmade claustrophobia of our heroines’ enemy being everywhere. Much like the challenges minorities face everyday... -

to some aggressive action taking. They came, they saw, they took frogman to the docks. And all these characters quite literally crushed the repressive society represented here by the male ego, in turn represented by stricklame’s teal car getting rekt (cry, bitch, cry those repressed feelings out)

And they did it all despite the obstacles of their underprivileged positions because in the end, my lambs, it was their social setbacks that made them stronger, more caring and more resilient. All until they were finally the bigger person on camera, standing above their oppressors and becoming the (literal lens) focus of the story to the privileged character’s eyes.

And just like the Amazon Merman God showed us minorities: you can do it too. Guillie is using this dark, but uplifting fairytale to say that he believes in you.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, have a nice day

[tariqk]

PS for folks with privileged identities who want to call people saying mean shit about their identities “discrimination”

Because I’ve been getting this crap and I’m going to reference this again when it happens.

Examples:

If you’re white and you see people making mean comments about you and you want to call it racism.

If you’re straight and you see people making mean comments about you and you want to call it heterophobia.

If you’re cis and you see people making mean comments about you and you want to call it cisphobia.

If you’re a man and you see people making mean comments about you and you want to call it sexism.

If you’re thin and you see people making mean comments about you and you want to call it “thinphobia”.

If you’re affluent and you see people making mean comments about you and you want to call it classism.

TL;DR

You’re using the wrong word. Use “prejudice”, and know that these folks are prejudiced for a good reason. Disagree? Want to know more? Read on.

Why you’re using the wrong word.

We could refer to the dictionary definitions of both racism and sexism to do this, but they’re typically meaningless (they’re a kind of fallacy), because dictionaries are records of how people use terms, and not as authorities to the actual term themselves.

So in order for people to agree with your argumentation, you need to use definitions that everyone finds mutually useful, and defining “sexism” and “racism” as “people who hate you because of your identity” is of limited utility.

Why it’s of limited utility

There are several reasons:

If you have hate for an identity, it’s usually called several things:

bigotry if it’s really literally hate towards that identity

prejudice if it’s a negative view that identity that colors your interaction with people of that identity

You can make arguments about how it’s counter-productive for folks to feel this way about your identity, but to be honest, those feelings are shaped by something else that’s covered by the terms you want to appropriate, because…

A lot of people feel this way about your identity because they experience discrimination and suffer material and physical disadvantages because of their identity is made to be in opposition to your identity.

And that’s why they use terms like “racism”, “homophobia”, “sexism”, “transphobia”, “transmisogyny“, “fatphobia”, “classism” and “ableism”. It refers to two things that operate together:

The prejudice or bigotry that those in the majority feel towards a person’s identity.

The institutional and social power that makes it possible for those with prejudice and bigotry to make the lives of marginalized folks very difficult or next to impossible.

“But my life is difficult too!”

I’m not saying that your life isn’t difficult.

“But you’re saying that how I’m feeling about people saying mean things isn’t valid!”

No. I don’t want to have to waste my energy like this, but if your life is difficult? That sucks. I hope it gets better. But let’s not talk about you for a minute and focus on other people. I’m going to give some examples:

Black folk cannot exist in public, anywhere in the world, without their existence and validity being called into question and, more often than not, having violence enacted towards them.

Black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) have to get past the institutional and social damage of over 600 years of colonialism, which include poverty, discrimination, lowered health outcomes and less social and community wealth.

Trans folk literally die forty years before everyone else. Like, the reasons are myriad, and oh god, depressing, but they literally die in their thirties when other people can reasonably expect 80+ years of survival.

Violence against people who are lesbian, gay, bi and a-spec are still a thing. Even in Western countries. Just because they won a few legislative victories doesn’t erase the centuries of discrimination. They’re still recovering from an epidemic that literally destroyed an entire generation of folk.

Women are… hoo boy. You know what? Women have to deal with a culture that subjects them to relentless scrutiny about their appearance and behavior, are still, around the world, subject to relentless intimate partner and other kinds of violence, struggle to represent themselves politically and commercially, and… listen, okay? I could bombard you with statistics and lists and if that still doesn’t change your mind I don’t know what to say.

Fat people suffer worse outcomes with the medical community, and we’re only finding out that the reasons why.

It’s expensive to be poor. Poor folks get dinged left right and centre, and furthermore, poverty in itself reduces the mental bandwidth that is available for poor folk to deal with their day-to-day decisions.

It’s been decades since we figured out that executing disabled folks was the beginning of, oh, I don’t know, history’s worst genocide, and we still have “progressive” folk making arguments that disabled people should be sterilized or, I don’t know, killed as a burden towards society.

This is an incomplete list. God, it’s an incomplete list, and I’m sorry if you’re marginalized and you’re not included here. But I included all of these examples to illustrate what they had in common:

They happened to folks because on their identities.

They harness state, institutional and social power against those identities to make the lives of those marginalized worse or kill them.

When people say your identity makes you privileged, no one is saying that your life can’t be hard. No one’s saying that. Your life could very well be hard. Hell, your life could be very hard because one of the above identities, or other marginalizations that you might have to live with. But it’s not hard because you’re a dude. It’s not hard because you’re straight. It’s not hard because you’re white. It’s not hard because you’re cis.

Just to be clear:

When a marginalized person gets angry and says “fuck $privileged_identity”, what happens to you, the privileged person? Nothing much. You’ll feel sad, or get upset.

When a privileged person says “fuck $marginalized_identity”, it contributes to that marginalized identity’s worse outcome. Maybe you won’t kill them. But you’ll make their lives harder in some small way.

Heck, you might not even have to do or say anything. That’s how discrmination and oppression works — not by a group of Bad People™ taking the effort of doing Bad Things™, but just… people not seeing Bad Things™ happen more or less automatically, because they’re conditioned to not see it when it happens.

It’s men expecting women to look and defer to them in a certain way, whether they’ll be personally violent to women if they fail to do it. It’s white people expecting BIPOC folk to behave in certain ways, whether they’ll personally be responsible for causing those BIPOC folks grief. It’s straight people closing their eyes to gay and trans folk dropping dead due to governmental malicious neglect in the 80s. It’s abled, affluent cis and thin folk closing their eyes due to medical and social neglect happening now.

That’s why words like sexism, racism, transphobia, ableism classism and fatphobia exist. They’re to describe this shit. They’re not for you to use, because those things I talked about at length? They don’t happen to you. Not that way.

“Wait, so what word should I use, then?”

Well, I did give you two options: bigotry and prejudice. But I’d advise against using “bigotry”, because it presupposes that marginalized people hate you. Maybe they do, but it’s also likely they don’t, and it’s probably easier on you if you assume that they don't hate you, personally, considering how often marginalized folk bend over backwards to accommodate privileged folks. That’s right, they do. And yeah, you don’t see it because you’re privileged, and marginalized folk know better than to express it to your face because they might suffer for it.

So if you have to describe it, use prejudice. It’s pretty much something you can use on a technical basis, because it literally means “people thinking bad about you without having all the facts about you yet”. And yeah, maybe you’re not like the other privileged people that they’ve had experience with yet, but you know what? This prejudice? It’s part of survival, as pretty much outlined in stuff like Schrodinger’s Rapist.

Maybe you aren’t a Bad Privileged Person. But if the cost is between thinking badly of you unnecessarily and… well, getting hurt or killed? Who can blame them?

[somethingstoconsider-blog1]

Issues in Young Adult Books

At age 16, I found myself shy and insecure. I did not have a job yet, did not play sports and did not have a friend to hang out with. With all the free time I had and the overwhelming feeling of loneliness, I found solace in books. They became my source of adventure, friendship, and love. I would spend my entire weekend reading book after book, getting lost in the lives of these characters that I thought were way better than my own. Up until recently, I never considered all the ways these books may have affected me. Yet, after reading the works from people such as Betty Friedan and Marilyn Frye, I began to see the harmful messages these books portray about love, beauty standards, and gender roles.

Young Adult fiction is a category of fiction published for readers in their youth. YA books cater towards readers from 12 to 18 years of age. New Adult fiction bridges the gap between Young Adult and Adult genres. The central theme that seems to be in almost all of these books is love. Even if it's not the central conflict in the book, it is nearly always one of the main character faces. The male protagonist tends to be an extremely good-looking, charming male who sleeps around and is desirable. The female protagonist is commonly shy or soft-spoken, awkward and inexperienced. The male is the chaser while the female being chased. The hero fantasizes and relishes in the fact that this girl is a virgin, and wants to be the only one that ever gets to have her. The heroine tends to be this extraordinarily selfless and kind person who will do just about anything for someone else. One example being Katniss in The Hunger Games; as she gave up her life for her sister. The traits of these characters already have been put into the typical gender stereotypes; man being the aggressor, strong and hard, while the woman is portrayed as soft, weak, kind, and pure. After being pursued, she eventually falls for the emotionally damaged, insecure and disturbing man; loving him despite it all. She may put up with verbal abuse, cheating, and jealousy with the idea that there is a great man underneath it all.

These authors romanticize unhealthy relationships and promote the idea that the “good girl” can fix a man. That in order to get to “the good parts” you must encounter the “bad parts” first. This often reflects the idea that women are only here to serve men and must be as pure and selfless as these characters. This idea is accurately described by Marilyn Frye’s “Oppression.” Frye writes that, “Whether in lower, middle or upper-class home or work situations, women’s service work always includes personal service (the work of maids, butlers, cooks, personal secretaries), sexual service (including provision for his genital sexual needs and bearing his children, but also “being nice,” “being attractive for him,” etc.), and ego service (encouragement, support praise, attention).” (Frye)  In “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan she writes about this same idea. A woman’s primary goal was to provide and care for their men no matter the cost. She recounts all the women in which confessed to feeling unhappy in life but were too ashamed to come forward due to the amount of scrutiny they would face for not being satisfied with their family. As Friedan writes, the issue is with society making women feel as though their sole purpose is to serve their men. “Over and Over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their femininity. Experts told them to catch a man and keep him, how to breastfeed children and handle their toilet training..how to keep their husbands from dying young and their sons from growing into delinquents.” (Friedan)  Ultimately, his happiness and well being must come before yours and it is your responsibility to make him better.  “Women’s service work also is characterized everywhere by the fatal combination of responsibility and powerlessness: we are held responsible and we hold ourselves responsible for good outcomes for men and children in almost every respect though we have in almost no case power adequate to project that.”(Frye)  Both Frye and Friedan's writing accurately describes what is being presented in these books. In order to be loved you must be selfless and kind and in order to prove your love to a man you must put up with a man's shortcomings and toxic behavior.

Another issue I came to find in many of these books is the unrealistic beauty standards portrayed. The heroine is always stunningly beautiful. She has eyes as blue as the sky, long beautiful hair, perfect full lips and curves in all the right places. Even better, she doesn't even know it. The idea that these women are all exceptionally beautiful but at the same time utterly blind to that fact, is the same old story that has been fed to women for years through the media. The story which says “Look at all these beautiful women that you look nothing like! You're the anomaly! Not them. You can't be loved without it!” Not only must you be abnormally good looking but if you acknowledge or believe yourself to be beautiful you are considered vain and superficial. The same way in which media presents, these books tell young readers that you must be beautiful but you must not acknowledge your beauty because no one will ever love a conceited, superficial women. Further emphasizing just how much society thrives and encourages women's insecurities.

Not only are there many issues within the relationships in these books but the lack of diversity among the main characters in many YA books is hard to look over. If you randomly select a YA or NA book right now, chances are it is going to be about a white, straight, female or male. Part of the enjoyment of reading is being able to relate to the characters. Young kids who are not straight, young kids of color, or young kids who have physical and mental disabilities should all have the same privilege to be able to read stories about characters that are similar to them. Due to the lack of diversity, it may cause kids to feel as though they are “different” or they are the “other”. This is the same idea that is so strongly implemented within our society. White and straight is the “normal” if you are not those things then you are the “other”. In Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege” she explains that white privilege is not just a privilege but “confers dominance.” We are taught white is the dominant race, directly and indirectly.  “For this reason, the word ”privilege” now seems to be misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work to systematically over empower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one’s race or sex.” (McIntosh) We are fed this idea subliminally through TV, movies, politics, and even books.

I’ve come to realize that some of these books may have given me unrealistic expectations for relationships and even myself. I always aspired to be as beautiful and kind as the characters I read about and longed for the type of “love” that was portrayed. It never came to fruition due to the fact it is just not realistic. Although books are for entertainment, I think it is important to remind young people that these books, although tremendous and relatable in some ways,  are not comparable to real life. If we do not do this, I feel as though it will leave kids with much disappointment, insecurity, and longing for something that does not exist.