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sophieakatz · 1 year ago

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Thursday Thoughts: Pride Asks!

It may be August, but I’m a big believer in Pride Year, so today I’m going through the list of questions I found on this post and answering the ones I feel like thinking about!

(Turns out I felt like answering all thirty-four of them. Have fun!)

1. Which labels do you use?

I am greyromantic and demisexual! I also use aromantic and asexual, or aro-ace.

2. Do you like to use the term queer for yourself? Or just LGBT, etc?

I’m here, I’m queer! I understand why some people aren’t comfortable with reclaiming this word, but it works well for me. You can’t leave out the A when you call it a queer community.

3. Which pronouns do you use?

She/her

4. Are you "out" to your family and friends?

Yep!

5. Are you "out" publicly?

Yep!

6. (If you're out) do you wish you came out sooner? Later? Or was it the right time?

I wish I’d known it was an option sooner. I couldn’t have come out before I knew about it, so I suppose it was the right time. But I wish I’d spent fewer years thinking there was something wrong with me.

7. Are you the "token" queer person in your family?

No, but when I came out, I didn’t know that there were other queer people in my family.

8. Describe your gender without using any words traditionally related to gender:

My gender is “respect me!”

9. When did you realize you weren't cishet?

In middle school, I knew I wasn’t feeling the same thing that my peers were describing when they talked about crushes. But it was easy enough to dismiss it as just another thing that was different about me. I was already anosmic and autistic, and always the first Jewish kid that anyone had ever met. I assumed I was “straight but broken” for the longest time. I didn’t even really believe that I could be asexual the first time I heard the word, in college. I joined my school’s Feminist Union, and that’s where I learned that there are more options to sexuality than straight or gay, more options to gender than boy or girl, and that romantic and sexual attraction weren’t the same thing. I went on Tumblr and followed as many queer blogs as I could find – I was determined to learn everything I could about all the identities, so I could be the best ally ever! One day, I saw a post with the word “demisexual” in it, and I Googled it. I read the definition, and it clicked.

10. Something that gives you gender euphoria (whether you're cis or trans):

When people call me “sir” or “ma’am.”

11. Favorite (or just one you love) piece of LGBT media?

Technically You Started It by Lana Wood Johnson. I wish I could reach back through time and hand this book to my preteen self.

12. Name some queer artists/bands or songs you like most:

“For Me” by Dearlie and “Never Been in Love” by Will Jay stand out. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but “Good Thing” by Zedd and Kehlani is SO aro.

13. Do you choose to reclaim slurs, why or why not?

Every word we use to describe ourselves has been used against us pejoratively. If I find a word works for me, I use it. If someone asks me not to use a word for them or around them, then I won’t use it for them or around them.

14. How do you think other factors like neurodivergency or upbringing have impacted your identity?

I’m Jewish, anosmic, and autistic. I understood from a very young age that there were things about me that made me different from other people, that other people wouldn’t be able to see right away. Once they realized that that difference existed, they would doubt me, question me, negatively judge me, and distance themselves from me. In a way, that all prepared me to realize and accept my asexuality and aromanticism.

I also give my parents a lot of credit for never putting any pressure on me to date when I was a kid or a teen. In hindsight, my childhood home was a very safe place to be aro-ace. Queerness wasn’t something we ever talked about, so it’s not like they encouraged me to explore, but they never discouraged it, either. When I first told my mom I thought I might have a crush on a girl, she immediately hugged me and told me she loved me, and that was the end of the conversation. I knew I could come to her and my dad with whatever new discovery I might make about myself.

15. How has your identity changed over time?

I went from “I have no idea” to “straight but broken” to “panromantic demisexual” to “greyromantic demisexual.”

16. Do you attend Pride in person every year?

No. I’d like to, but there’s a pandemic going on out there. And I live in Florida.

17. Have you ever attended Pride in a big city/ large metro area?

I went to Orlando Pride once with my then-boyfriend. There was a big, colorful parade, I bought a demisexual pride flag, and someone gave me a pair of rainbow sunglasses that I wore til they broke.

18. How old were you when you got to attend your first Pride? Who did you go with?

I think that Orlando Pride I mentioned was my first Pride. I was twenty-four or so.

19. Do you feel safe and accepted in your local community?

Safe enough, and accepted enough, given that it’s Florida. I stay in the Disney bubble enough that I don’t feel the need to constantly look over my shoulder. I have a girlfriend I love and friends I adore. That said, while no one locally is actively out to hurt me, it’s rare that anyone besides my girlfriend and a few key friends is actively out to understand and support my queerness, either. I try to find other aros and aces to hang out with in person, but it’s hard.

20. Do you feel like you "fit in" with the queer/Pride community overall?

I feel like I do. But I don’t think that they feel like I do.

21. What message would you give to your younger self?

Everything about you – everything you feel, everything you experience – is just as good, just as valid, and just as important as anyone else.

22. How do you usually celebrate Pride month?

These days mostly through TikToks.

23. Do you prefer loud parties or quiet?

Game night!

24. Do you practice any religion, if so how does it play into your LGBT identity? Do you feel welcomed by your spiritual community?

I’m Jewish. Masorti/Conservative. Like I said before, being Jewish in a predominantly Christian area prepared me in a way for being aro and ace. People struggle to understand it in similar ways; people are nice to me until they learn about it in similar ways. My community is pretty chill about it. They know I’m queer. My girlfriend and I met at synagogue. It doesn’t come up much, really. They’re more interested in the fact that I’m a twenty-something in a congregation where everyone is either much older or much younger than me.

25. What queer discourse frustrates you the most?

“Aces and aros aren’t LGBT!” “You’re not queer enough!” “You’re not oppressed enough!”

We have nothing to gain from shutting each other out, and everything to lose from perpetuating hate.

26. How do you feel about the term partner rather than husband/girlfriend/etc?

Partner is a great word! One of the ways my aromanticism shows up is in a fluctuating romance-repulsion. Sometimes I’m happy with romantic behaviors and ideas, and sometimes I’m really not okay with any of it! Right now, I’m calling my girlfriend my girlfriend, but sometimes that word doesn’t sit well with me. When we first announced our relationship on social media, I called her my “person.” I’m a big fan of having more words, more options, for how to describe the many ways our lives and relationships can be. “Partner” is great.

27. What gender-neutral terms for yourself or others do you use (i.e. joyfriend)?

My person. My partner. My friend. Babe.

28. Do you experience both romantic and sexual attraction? Do you experience them the same across any gender(s) you are attracted to?

Great question! I experience both at times, rarely. I’m demisexual – I only experience sexual attraction towards someone after I have an emotional connection with that person – and I’m greyromantic – I sometimes experience romantic attraction to others, without a clear pattern to it. Gender has never been an important factor for me. I’ve been in love with he’s, she’s, and they’s, and it comes and goes the same either way!

29. Are you currently partnered, or if not are you interested in having partner(s)?

My girlfriend and I have been a romantic couple for about three months. We were friends for about two years before that. I want to build a future together with someone, to make big life decisions together, to create a home together and have each other around for hugs whenever we need them.

But I feel fine when I don’t have that. Who I am when I’m in love and who I am when I’m not in love – it’s both me. I’m whole either way. But I know what I want.

30. Are you monogamous or polyamorous?

Not sure! I’ve never been in love with more than one person at a time, but I’m pretty sure I could be. I think it would be amazing to have more than one person you have that kind of understanding with and can count on like that. But I’m comfortable with monogamy. It’s not like my romantic partner is the only important person in my life; my family and friends are just as important.

31. Post a pic in your pride gear (or it can just be a selfie or anything else lgbt):

I don’t have any good pride pics right now, but I found this picrew I saved, like, two years ago:

32. Do you do arts and crafts? Post a pic of a project you've done:

I’m a writer, so have a poem instead:

I am yours to sit up with past midnight I am yours now to hold very near I am yours to give flowers and chocolates I am yours when I tell you my fears

I am yours when you soothe all my worries I am yours when you calm all my rants I am yours here beside you for always I am yours since you gave me the chance

I am yours when I tell you you’re silly I am yours when you tell me the same I am yours now to keep us both mindful I am yours in both sunshine and rain

I am yours when we meet in the morning I am yours when I tell you goodbye I am yours, though the allos will tell us That love without sex is a lie

Incidentally, I’m working on a book of Aromantic Asexual Love Poems. If you’ve read this far and you’re interested in beta-reading a queer poetry book, please reach out!

33. What about your LGBT identity do you feel proud of/ want to recognize/celebrate?

The freedom! The freedom to not know what’s going on with me, to be inconsistent, to figure out what’s best for me and my relationships, to build my future day by day by day. Recognizing my aromanticism and asexuality has opened so many doors for me and given me so much hope!

34. What are you needing most right now (what would make your life easier or more fulfilling in regards to existing as queer)?

More people who are neither aro nor ace mentioning aro and ace people in queer contexts. We can’t be the only ones speaking up for ourselves. Y’all need to be positive and noisy about us, too. That’s how we know we’re safe with you.

#thursday thoughts #pride #pride asks #queer #aroace #aromantic #asexual #greyromantic #demisexual #coming out #poetry #queer community #aro #ace #aromanticism #asexuality #aro pride #ace pride #aroace pride

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ao3feed-newsies · 10 months ago

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The Moon's Pull

by, ion_bond by ion_bond “Jack was always working in artful and subtle ways to get David to come to the roof. He tried to lure him with trumped-up union business, and when that wasn't enough, he appealed to David's keen fear of missing out on something good. He offered gossip. He talked up the healthful properties of exposure to night air. He promised meteor showers and white moths as big as hands.” Jack wants David. But if David actually says yes, then where will they be? Words: 3064, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken, Newsies - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Jack Kelly (Newsies), David Jacobs, Kid Blink, Jack Kelly's Mother (Newsies) Relationships: David Jacobs/Jack Kelly, Jack Kelly/Kid Blink Additional Tags: Canon Era, uksies, Post-Strike (Newsies), Angst, Dialect, Orphans, Yiddish, mention of sex work, Kids smoking, Period-Typical Racism, Internalized Homophobia, Boys Kissing, Minor Jack Kelly/Katherine Plumber Pulitzer, Bisexual Jack Kelly (Newsies), canon-typical asshole behavior, Autistic David Jacobs, Jewish David Jacobs, Jack Kelly is Black, No Beta We Die Like "Newsies" at the Box Office in 1992 read : https://ift.tt/8daL4tg - January 10, 2024 at 12:54PM

#AO3feed #newsies #fanfic #newsies fanfic

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atlanticcanada · 1 year ago

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Halifax support workers strike impacting students and families

The father of disabled teen from Fall River, N.S. is calling on all sides to get back to the bargaining table and put an end to the Halifax area CUPE educational support worker strike.

“This has gone on too long and it is not fair for the kids,” Mohsen Nakad sid.

His 13-year-old son Abraham Nakad attends Georges P. Vanier Junior High School, but for the past four weeks, he hasn't been able to attend school with workers from CUPE local 5047 on strike.

Nakad supports the workers on strike and wants the government and all sides to get back to the negotiation table and come to an agreement soon.

“For me, I am supporting the EPAs, because I know how much our life is easier with them,” Nakad said.

His son Abraham is autistic and has cerebral palsy. He’s nonverbal and communicates through a tablet device. At school he is supported by educational program assistants, or EPAs.

Abraham would like to be back in school and he reminds his father of that at least a dozen times every day.

Abraham taps on his tablet device to send a message to his father.

“I...want...school...school,” Abraham said through the tablet. He hit the message button again, to emphasize: “I want to go to school.”

“It's unfair, it makes me very sad for my son and his friends,” Nakad said.

“Just because they have disabilities doesn't mean they should have to miss school.”

Abraham and his father joined school support workers on the picket line Wednesday outside Georges P. Vanier School.

The past three years have been challenging for Nakad, he’s a single father of two children and a small business owner.

While Abraham was at home during the pandemic, Nakad says he was forced to close his convenience store.

Now Nakad had been preparing to open a pet grooming salon, but with the ongoing strike he’s putting that on hold for now to care for his son at home.

“I have to postpone everything now because I cannot look after my business. I have to be with Abraham all the time.”

In Dartmouth, CUPE leaders joined a rally organized by the Nova Scotia NDP.

CUPE Nova Scotia president Nan McFadgen wants Premier Tim Houston’s PC government and Halifax Regional Centre for Education to get back to the negotiating table and work out a resolution.

“We’re disappointed that we’re still here,” McFadgen said.

Seven of the eight regional CUPE groups voted to accept the province's offer, but the Halifax area local voted against the offer. The group is looking for better wages, McFadgen said.

“And this local decided that it wasn’t enough and now they are going to walk the picket line for better wages and that needs to be OK to happen in Nova Scotia,” said McFadgen. “A local has a democratic right to either accept or decline an offer.”

The Nova Scotia’s Education Minister said in a statement Wednesday that the department remains hopeful that the job action will end and that impacted students will be able to return to school before the end of June.

“The first step is for the union to reach out to the employer, HRCE [Halifax Regional Centre for Education],” said Becky Druhan.

“HRCE has contacted the union regarding ways to support students who rely on the striking workers, but the union has refused to participate. HRCE is doing everything it can to support students and minimize impacts of the strike,” the minister said.

Both the union and government said there are no scheduled talks at this time.

Nakad urges the government to meet with the union and get a deal done to salvage the remaining school year.

“We need to see this government doing something for our kids,” said Nakad. “This isn’t fair for them.”

For more Nova Scotia news visit our dedicated provincial page.

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/ewpg2QE

#new brunswick #prince edward island #nova scotia #news #politics #canada #CTVAtlantic

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patrickcann · 2 years ago

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self indulgent kimi ni todoke/mob psycho 100 crossover au that i drew a while back

#kimi ni todoke #mob psycho 100 #mp100 #kageyama shigeo #kuronuma sawako #hanazawa teruki #yoshida chizuru #digital art #the autistic teens are unionizing

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chesedelhim · 4 years ago

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hrm

#fire.txt #though i make it #obvious. i dont actually talk too much abt like being jewish tm on this blog u know and like #i started thinking abt jewish art bc ive been drawing more people lately and like. ok ive been including good strong noses in my people art #for a long time. you see it in everyrhing from my rat bastard to anyone i think i can get away with yknow #but i wanted to see how other jews draw themselves and stuff right and it made me realise that like #i exist in such an isolated bubble lmao like its me my wife our rabbi and the maybe 20 other jews in town except during purim #cause we all crawl outta the woodwork to get drunk and make noise right #so like. okay im getting off topic #i just feel. isolated from the community? like i know its there i just have to reach out and #grab it #but idk i just. dont? i dont! and idk why its not like a lack of access thing or even necessarily #that i dont belong i just....dont interact w a ton of other jews on this site. or anywhere #and ok def part of it is that im a Quirky[tm] [see: very autistic] hermit fuck bastard with goals of piss off gd and everyone right and #XTREME ~TEEN~ 20-ISH SOCIAL ANXIETY and thus hate being perceived or known more than ANYTHING else i hate it. dont look at me you do not see #but like #ugh #idk im sad! i wanna see more jewish art and voices and religious takes i wanna form a union against gd for fun!#thats. a joke.#i want to actually have a community cause its so weird knowing i belong somewhere that i have a place at the table. that i can show up. but #not being able to utilise it #i cant reach out and be in it #this also. def stems from some Home Life Trauma lmao like no doubt i am fucked up about taking up space/resources/being seen/acknowledged/#being somewhere ect bc my parents and my past two roommates and most of my irl friends have irredeemably fucked me up about being anywhere #at any time ever #like ok that sounds a little hopeless but. tbf those were. my entire formative years lmao i only got like 4 more to unfuck these neural path #ok i was gonna say more but that got too Oversharing lmao

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tintentrinkerin · 4 years ago

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Wincest: Oneshots

Sammy’s Sickness [explicit, Weecest]

Cabin Birthday [mature, Weecest]

Re-Union [teen]

True Unity [mature]

Scare [teen]

Profound Pain [teen]

Neutral Evil [teen]

Kintsugi [explicit]

King of the Wilds [bangfic]

Wolfmate [bangfic]

Golden Rain [teen, dark, gencest]

Wincest: Multichapters

‘the fortress that is your soul’

Cathartic Arrest [mature, Samdean, hell trauma]

‘The Boyking and His Knight’

Part one - adelphopoiesis [explicit, gore, Samdean, complete // can be read separately from Samael and Din]

Part two - The Book Samael and Din [explicit, gore, Samdean, ongoing]

Chapter One: Josephine

Winkline: Oneshots

Kissing people, forgetting things. [explicit, Samjackdean]

Curse’s Delight [explicit, Samjack]

Shared Property [explicit, Samjackdean]

Peep [explicit, Wincest + unrequited Samjack]

Sam’s Boys [explicit, Samjackdean]

Hard Candy [explicit, Samjack]

Yuletide [teen, Samjackdean]

soaked. [explicit, Samjack, piss kink!]

Sun and Moon and Samuel [explicit, noncon!, Samjack, Deansam]

Cursebreaker [Samjack, Deanjack, dubcon /TBA]

Winkline: Multichapter

‘Hedgehog Dilemma’

Part one - Innocence Lost [mature, Samjack, dysfunctional Destiel on the side, complete // can be read separately from Harnes & Spears]

Part two - Harness & Spears [explicit, Samjack, dysfunctional Destiel on the side, ongoing series]

Interlude & Chapter One: Basic Oneirology

Chapter two: Should I stay or should I go now?

Chapter three: Sacred Spaces

Chapter four: Collision Course

Chapter five: Father’s Eyes

Chapter six: This is no puppy love

Chapter seven: Bed of Thorns

Chapter eight: Angel Trap

Chapter nine: Caress every ache

Chapter ten: The Stars

‘The Fem!Jack Adventures’

The Fox, The Serpent and The Vulture [explicit, female!Jack, Samjackdean, oneshot that can be read on its own // more parts are WIPs]

‘Constellation’

[AU, Trans!Jack, heed the tags and warnings! Polyamory, Samjackdean]

Chapter one - Discovering the Escort

WINKLINESTIEL (yes, you read that right)

‘Meet Me On The Equinox’

[Omegaverse, very explicit, they all fuck, Jackwena at the side]

The Start: Waxing

Real Person Fiction

Infinity Pool [mature, J2]

The End Has No End [explicit, J2]

Ficlets (pairings vary)

mine. [mature, Wincest]

Hail the Queen [Samdeanwena]

Culloden Ghosts [Sastiel, autistic Jack]

#sin's masterlist #sin is sinning #wincest #winkline

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snarkesthour · 4 years ago

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Happy St George's Day!

· In the midst of a pandemic when schools are all closed, the government votes to not allow free school meals to schoolchildren during school holidays, despite this being the only meal many of them have each day

· Marcus Rashford, a footballer, led the drive to feed the nation’s children, 49% of which live in poverty, and forced the government to provide food for them during the school holidays

· Instead of previous years when vouchers were given to parents that can only be spent on nutritious food, members of government give contracts to friends to provide a week’s work of food costing £5 to schoolchildren for a price of £30. Food is unhealthy and would not last a week

· Parcels also expect parents to cook two tablespoons of rice at a time in the oven and bake their own bread every day, ignoring poverty-stricken families possible lack of access to such equipment

· Wife of conservative MP attacks poor families for eating unhealthy food when healthy food is cheaper, ignoring the fact that not all families have access to equipment needed to store and cook it

· Nigel Farage, head of the Brexit party came out strongly against the government for their stance on starving schoolchildren. Not a good look.

· Another MP came out and said that poor families should not receive government assistance because the money would be going direct to brothels and crackhouses and the parents would spend it on drink and drugs instead of feeding their kids, a dangerous and persistent stereotype of working class people

· For the first time in its history, UNICEF is feeding kids in the UK – the 5th richest country in the world – and the head of the House of Commons accused them of “playing politics” and said they should “be ashamed of themselves”

· J.K. Rowling came out hard as a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), writing a book about a serial killer that dresses up as a Muslim woman, which isn’t subtle when you look at her history of transphobia and other “-isms”

She also publicly supported an author who wrote a book about the destruction of Europe by waves of Muslim immigration

· Speaking of J.K. Rowling, the government’s response to the Gender Recognition Act.

· It is now impossible for under 16s to receive reversible puberty blockers

· Wait times at NHS Gender Clinics, of which there are only 7 in the country, have doubled, with wait times now up to 60+ months (5+ years)

· Keir Starmer, head of the Labour (left wing) party says he doesn’t want to get involved in trans issues

· With the loss of Labour, no major party supports trans rights

· Self ID is no longer allowed, meaning every step of transition is medicalised and involves the trans person having to prove that they are “trans enough” at every stage to panels of cis people

· Government wants to invalidate non-enrolled deed polls, essentially making available a public list of every trans person in the UK

· Hate crimes have quadrupled

· Anti-trans campaigners are now setting their sights on trans adults’ access to hormones

· A petition was formed to counter this and was reviewed by the government, who determined that nothing was wrong with the GRA except that it might have been a bit lax.

· The Guardian newspaper ran child labour and child starvation supporting stories

· Internal border now along the border of Kent and lorry drivers must produce travel papers (Brexit Passport) to cross it, placing the county of Kent in a state of “no man’s land”

· Government fails to lockdown on time, every time

· Government refuses to ban conversion therapy in the UK

· Scotland adopts Human Rights of Children, which requires the government to better support children and families, especially those who are poor, disabled, minorities or young carers. England does not

· The government declared that sleeping rough is now grounds for deportation

· Schools reopened several times despite being warned not safe to do so

· The government banned NHS workers from speaking out about COVID

· Do Not Resuscitate orders proposed for those in care homes, with learning disabilities and who are autistic

· The government cut pensions as the COVID death toll rose

· The government learnt about new South-East COVID strain in September and didn’t come forwards until December

· New COVID strain targets kids, teens, and young adults, and yet none of those groups are allowed vaccination unless a serious pre-existing condition is had, even if they are key workers

· Downing Street says UK should be model of racial equality because government report says no institutional racism in the UK

· Report also says young people are young and foolish for thinking it exists and that minorities are superstitious and irrational and are sabotaging themselves out of success

· It came out that the government was given the independent report and rewrote it to the version that was released to the public – the version that says racism doesn’t exist in the UK

· The rewritten report also refers to the slave trade as the “Caribbean experience”, like those enslaved were on holiday

· Woman in London abducted, murdered and dismembered by off-duty cop and when socially distanced vigil goes ahead, police wait until dark before trapping women, arresting them, using excessive force on them, and also destroying memorial

· Bill passed in government that allows undercover officers to commit serious crimes such as murder, torture and rape

· Plainclothes police to now patrol nightclubs and bars due to aforementioned murder by police officer

· Bill passed that bans any protest at all, no matter how quiet, unobstructive or small it is, including single-person protests. Bill also includes a 10 year sentence for damaging a statue, which is a longer sentence than for rape

· TV programmes critical of the government have been cancelled

· Universities have been told what to platform and schools have been told what to teach, including banning material speaking about BLM and calling for “overthrow” of capitalism

· Voting has been supressed, mainly those who are working class or POC

· During protests in Bristol, press was assaulted and pepper sprayed by police and two legal observers were arrested

· Being Roma/Traveller and living the traditional Roma/Traveller lifestyle is now illegal under that same bill that bans protests. They also have to register as such and receive a licence or risk losing their vehicles

· Hours before Eid, lockdown across the UK with no warning whatsoever, meaning people woke up the next morning after visiting relatives to find themselves “criminals”. The country was opened up specifically for Christmas though

· Conservative (right wing) party blamed BAME (Black And Minority Ethnic) communities for dying of COVID more than white people

· Landlords have been protected extensively and renters blamed for living in close quarters or having to take public transport to work

· Conservatives have launched investigation into possible corruption in Liverpool Council. Liverpool is a Labour stronghold and if corruption is found then the Conservatives can seize control of the council. No evidence of corruption is present as of yet

· Military threatened to stage a coup if Corbyn (then head of the labour party) became Prime Minister

· Government orders all government buildings in England, Wales and Scotland to fly the Union Flag every day to boost patriotism

· MPs call for the curriculum to require teaching the history of the Union Flag rather than Britain’s many atrocities

· The first fortnight of April saw a mini heatwave with temperatures up to 20°C immediately followed by snow, and this is ignored in favour of debating “vaccine passports” in order to visit the pub

· UK allows for international summer holidays despite being warned it will cause a third wave, such as the situation in Germany

· Government placed asylum seekers arriving in the UK in army barracks where they were to sleep 24 to a room with no open windows or air circulation, and when COVID inevitably ran rampant, the Home Secretary accused the asylum seekers of not following COVID protocol, such as social distancing

· Several accounts of self-harm and suicide attempts were reported from the asylum barracks and were dismissed

· UK to deport unaccompanied minor asylum seekers

· UK refuses entry into the UK for radicalised teen failed by system who joined ISIS. Case is difficult and controversial because teen wishes to return to the UK temporarily to fight for her citizenship after the UK broke international law by stripping it from her, despite her not having dual citizenship. Argument given was that her parents were from Bangladesh and so she could apply for citizenship there. Bangladesh refused. Teen is now stateless and living in a refugee camp after losing several children, unable to fight for her citizenship to be reinstated.

· Rioting in Northern Ireland, which included the first use of water cannons in 6 years, a bus being hijacked and burnt, a press photographer attacked, and people throwing bricks, fireworks and petrol bombs at police, not to mention some of the clashes happening over a peace wall in west Belfast, completely ignored in British media and then later drowned out by non-stop news of Prince Phillip’s death, obscuring any important news from being heard. Riots were over Northern Ireland’s being a part of the UK

· MPs take vote on whether China’s treatment of Uighurs constitutes genocide. They decide it does, but that it isn’t their job to do anything further

· Home Office released their spending for the 2020 fiscal year. It’s a mess, including over £77,000 at an eyebrow salon in March alone, and £6,000+ in Pollyanna Restaurant which doesn't appear to exist.

· When people started questioning the spending, the Home Office sent a tweet fact checking themselves

· Country reopened over the summer for Eat Out To Help Out, a scheme to boost the economy. COVID cases rose sharply and the government then blamed people, but mostly working class people, for not following restrictions such as only leaving the house when absolutely necessary, after telling them it was safe

· Foreign NHS workers denied COVID vaccinations

· GCSEs and A-Levels were cancelled due to COVID-19 and expected exam grades were to be used instead. Private school students received grades much higher than they were expecting, and state school students received grades much lower, some grades falling as far as an A to an E. This was because the government couldn’t imagine state school students being smart enough to receive the high grades they were predicted to get; after much uproar the grades were scrapped, and a new method was introduced

· BBC offered staff grief counselling following Prince Philip’s death, but not after having to report on the ever-rising COVID death toll

· The COVID-19 Infection Survey closed in mourning for Prince Philip, with workers to contact participants to reschedule visits for “as soon as possible” when they return to work

· Census workers told to pack up and go home and were placed on immediate unpaid leave due to the death of Prince Philip, but told they must make up the hours later

· Conservative MPs lobbied for a new royal yacht after voting to keep schoolchildren hungry (see first points)

· The BBC’s complaint page crashed over the amount of complaints they got of their coverage of Prince Philip’s death. It was covered non-stop for over 24 hours and the page came in at over 100,000 complaints before going down

· BBC also fast becoming politically biased despite their requirement to be apolitical, after cutting out the audience laughing at Boris Johnson on Question Time, displaying Corbyn as a communist figure in front of a prominent piece of Russian architecture, and providing a platform for a Conservative MP to tell a stage 4 bowl cancer patient that her life wasn’t valuable on live television

· On the COVID-19 pandemic, the BMJ, (British Medical Journal) said about the government that “science was being suppressed for political and financial gain” by “some of history’s worst autocrats and dictators”

· Not only did Boris Johnson launch Eat Out To Help Out when he was warned it was dangerous, lifted lockdowns too early when he was warned it was too dangerous, reopened schools when he was warned it was too dangerous, but when scientists said the second COVID jab should be delivered within 3 weeks he decided that was too tall an order and it should be within 12 weeks – after a period of radio silence, suddenly the science fit his plan. No scientists came forwards to defend it

· The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, blamed protestors for protests that became violent from police attacking protestors, bullied staff members under her, bought members of staff in her department, said it was “disgraceful” to topple the statue of Edward Colson, a slave trader, in Brighton because it undermined anti-racism protests, held treasonous meetings with Israel with the plan to divert aid money, and threatened to starve Ireland in order to get them to agree to Brexit

· She also wants to set up Australian-style asylum processing centres on British islands, but the islands she wants are in the Atlantic ocean and over 4000 miles away from the UK. This is because she wants to help asylum seekers enter the UK legally, completed ignoring or oblivious to all the reasons that asylum seekers might not be able to do that, and for the fact that to seek asylum you must essentially walk up the border and ask for it

· The bungling of the Track and Trace system – the government spent £10bn on a system to track and trace the spread of COVID-19. All data was stored on an Excel spreadsheet which developed a technical glitch and many results were lost before the system was scrapped

· As Autism Acceptance month began, the BBC ran a story saying the autism causes fascism, and that an autistic person who had chosen to embrace the ideology was incapable of seeing that a neo-Nazi group he joined was morally bad because he was autistic

#st george's day #uk politics

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professorsparklepants · 4 years ago

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Good morning to underage drinkers who participate in anti-drunk driving campaigns, the one member of the friend group who can't draw, jocks who break their leg once a year, girls who drink chicken broth out of their reusable water bottles, polite mormon boys who definitely won't leave the church, obnoxious mormon girls who definitely will leave the church, catholics teens who think fetuses have souls, first chair violins who wear tuxedos as casual wear, eighteen year olds who think liking twilight is a personality trait, identical twins with different sexual orientations, girls who look exactly like their baby photos, indians whose names are always butchered by substitute teachers, republican members of the Jewish student union, students who treat their art teacher like an annoying older brother, autistic boys who are stupidly good at guitar hero, boys with afros that have the circumference of a beach ball, chinese kids who never get away with eating in class because their lunch can be smelled from down the hallway, and the only soprano in choir who isn't a prep.

#lectures #these are all kids i went to high school with #ONE of these is me. u have to guess which one. bonus points if u guess which one is my bff.

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ourimpavidheroine · 5 years ago

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So today is Coming Out Day!

The first time I figured out that I might be into girls was when I was 14 years old. It was 1983, I was hanging out at my Grandma’s house, and my cousins and I were watching MTV and the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams video came on and there was Annie Lennox, with her bright orange buzz cut and her black suit and tie and her lipsticked mouth, smacking that table with her pointer and I was like, WHOA NOW, WHOA NOW, WHOA NOW.

Like I broke into a sweat, people.

I didn’t really do anything about it. I spent my teens in a tiny town in Northern California (less than 2,500 people) and let’s just say that as a (then undiagnosed) Autistic teen I wasn’t dating anyone at all. And even at that, I still had crushes on boys as well. I just...rolled with it, for the most part.

I don’t remember being bothered by it. My family on both sides is notoriously liberal - hippies, labor union presidents, bi-racial marriages, etc. - and I wasn’t worried that me coming out would mean my family would disapprove. I just figured I was who I was and eventually I’d get the hell out of that shitty little town and have a life to live then.

I was with my ex-husband from 1990-1998. I knew I was bi, but I was with him and tried to make that work. It really didn’t work for me; I don’t think monogamy works very well for me.

I officially came out to my family when I got a girlfriend in my mid-20′s. (Yes, it was when I was married; my ex-husband knew about it and we agreed.) I don’t think any of them really cared that I was pansexual; none of them really liked my first girlfriend (and for good reason, she was incredibly hot but SUCH bad news) but it wasn’t about her gender. When a few years later I divorced my ex and brought my late wife home they ADORED her. Everyone was very supportive when she and I decided to have kids. (My mother had issues with my late wife but it wasn’t about gender; it was more about me moving to another continent and not letting her control my life any longer.)

I did not come out at work in the U.S. Yes, I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, but it was the 90′s and I worked for a corporate company. I knew better. Moving to Finland in 2000, however, was different. My wife and I were together, we had kids together, I work in a very liberal place, I’ve always been out here. I have dealt with homophobia here - make no mistake - but nothing compared to how things were in the U.S.

During our years together my late wife began to understand that she was trans, or possibly genderfluid. It was something we were talking about together before she died. I would have been okay with any decision she would have made with regards to her gender, and she knew that. (She worried a lot about our kids, and I wish she hadn’t. Our kids are beautiful, loving, and compassionate humans and I’ve talked to them now about their mother and her gender and both of them understand. And are sad that she went through so much pain and confusion about it.)

I don’t fuss about it. I always knew I was bisexual. (Later, more terms got added to the rainbow and I realized that pansexual was a better description, although to be honest I’m not too fussed about it either way.) At this point in my life I don’t have anyone; it’s been 4 years since my late wife died and I’m just not ready at this point for romance. Who knows what the future will bring? But honestly, I’m open. I’ve always been okay with my sexuality, and I think a lot of that is reflected in my writing.

#coming out day #personal

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savegraduation · 5 years ago

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Aaliyah Would Be Proud

I'm James Landau, known on the Internet as Savegraduation.

I am starting this blog, Aaliyah Would Be Proud, to discuss one of most important and flammable issues of our time: youth rights. There are civil rights (for African-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Arab-Americans, Native Americans, Mexican-Americans, Indian-Americans, Filipino-Americans, and others); there are women's rights; there are LGBT rights (for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender people, and non-gender-binary people); there are workers’ rights (for union laborers); there are disability rights (for the physically challenged, the blind, the deaf, the mute, the obese, arthrogrypotics, epileptics, CPers, autistics, Aspies, Downies, people with bipolar, people with borderline, schizophrenics, Touretters, obsessive-compulsives, ADDers, PTSDers, etc.); and then there are youth rights. The youth rights movement seeks to abolish or lower the age of legal restrictions, as well as change informal societal attitudes, that look down on people below a certain age (often 18, 21, or 25) as inferior and undeserving of even basic human rights.

We youth-rightsers aim to lower the voting age to 16. To lower the drinking age back to 19 or 18. To lower the age of majority and age of emancipation to 16. To protect students’ rights at the mandatory institution known as school. To abolish age-discriminatory store policies (”no more than two high school students in at one time”). To extend the rights of medical consent to all people old enough to wish for or object to treatment, regardless of age. To stop punishing parents for their minor children’s crimes. To abolish the draft. To ease restrictions on younger workers, and stop employers from viewing young employees as a liability. To allow people under 16 to get a job without adults bellowing, “Child labor!” To guarantee to every American the right to practice the religion she or he wants to and express her/his mind without her/his parents having her/him arrested for “insubordination”.

Age-discriminatory laws run a wide spectrum of enormity. At one end are age restrictions of things, such as drinking alcohol, smoking weed, or gambling, that the majority of Americans today believe are morally wrong for youth to do. Then come other status crimes like teen curfew laws. Then come laws like the laws in America preventing under18s from voting (even though Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Austria, the Crown Dependencies, Scotland, and Malta already allow 16-year-olds-to vote; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_age#Chronology_of_lowering_the_voting_age_to_16 ). Then come the oversteps of strict parents and Skinneresque faculty at K-12 schools, trying to prevent boys from wearing earrings, or censor the school paper because the principal doesn't like the angle of a particular student-written story or editorial. At the far end are stories of teens being abducted from their homes and taken into gulag camps simply because they have parents who don't like their nonconformity. Teens having their most beloved possessions destroyed or thrown away by their parents. Teens having to drive over state lines into states that will vaccinate them, lest they die before their eighteenth or even nineteenth birthdays because their parents refuse to let them have a vaccine . . . and also the less lucky teens who died already because a state legislature decided a parent's wishes trump a teen's concerns. 16-year-olds who have been seeking emancipation for a long time and then get kicked out to house by their parents (to their initial delight), only for the parents to then lie and report their child as a runaway, and having the mendacious parents rather than the truthful teen believed because of pervasive ageist attitudes and stereotypes, vitiating the minor's eligibility for emancipation. Gay teens undergoing the atrocious conversion therapy. Parents who take their 12-year-old sons to get circumcised against their sons' wishes. (And judging by their "Being a minor is only temporary!" argument, ageists seem to believe the boy's foreskin will magically regenerate on his eighteenth birthday.) If, when you hear the phrase "youth rights violations", you think simply of "You have to be 21 to drink", think again.

The title of this blog came from the R&B singer Aaliyah, who was born at the beginning of the Millennial Generation in January of 1979 and succumbed in a plane crash in 2001. In 1994, at the age of 15, Aaliyah released an album titled Age Ain't Nothing but a Number. Aaliyah lived her life to the fullest, not kowtowing to ageist laws and attitudes, and it was a good thing she did, because her life lasted only 22 years. I like to believe that if Aaliyah were to read my blog today, she would be proud of me for making the case for youth rights.

The seed of this Tumblr blog was planted several months ago, when a member of the NYRA Youth Rights Discussion Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/NYRAyouthrights/ told us about the Tumblr blog he had started on the topic of adult privilege (as analogous to male privilege, White privilege, straight privilege, etc.). Even though this blogger was an adult himself, he was swamped upon posting his first entry from people who wrongly assumed he was a kid who was upset because his parents wouldn't buy him an iPhone.

It is common among Gen-Xers (born 1964-1978) to be unaware that it's normal for Millennials (born 1979-2004) -- even the ones in our twenties or thirties, or who turned 40 this year -- to take many pro-YR positions, such as suffrage for 16-year-olds or restrictions on parental authority. These ignorant people assume that anyone starting a blog about ageism and ephebophobia (the fear of youth) must be "some kid", and that their concerns must be about positive rights (entitlement), rather than pressing negative rights.

Underlying this ignorance is a big myth surrounding generations that states every generation follows the same lifecycle as the Baby Boomers (born 1943-1957) did: they are innocent as children, then turn into wild, pot-smoking, socially liberal teen-agers who argue fiercely for youth rights, then go on being young and idealistic until they have children of their own and settle down . . . to then become "responsible", socially conservative adults who considered their younger selves to be irresponsible and misguided, raise their own kids strictly, start claiming "marijuana is illegal for a reason", and oppose youth rights. Or so the narrative goes.

But not every generation in Anglo-American history has followed this lifecycle. Take the Silent Generation (born 1925-1942), for instance. They began as Shirley Temples and Alfalfas amid the Great Depression and World War II, then spent their teens being a low-crime generation, despite all the Blackboard Jungle concern about juvenile delinquency and gangs. They married young. During the Postwar Era of 1950′s America, some of their members were beatniks, or invented rock-and-roll, or crusaded for the Civil Rights movement (after all, Chuck Berry and Martin Luther King, Jr. were Silents), but more often they kept their heads down, being grey-flannel-suit fathers who focused on their careers instead of activism, or barefoot-and-pregnant mothers who focused on being the perfect housewife. William Manchester wrote of fifties-era high school and college students: "Never had American youth been so withdrawn, cautious, unimaginative, indifferent, unadventurous -- and silent." They were indulgent parents, however, raising the Baby Boomers to the tune of Dr. Spock. Then they hit 40, and had their "midlife crisis", realizing they had wasted their youth being so un-rebellious. They started riding motorcycles and growing ponytails in middle age, and during the Vietnam Era, they generally raised their Baby Boomer and Joneser (born 1958-1963) kids permissively. It was a Silent, 1932-born Ted Kennedy, who proposed amending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to lower the voting age to from 21 to 18 at a national level, and argued in Oregon v. Mitchell that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment meant Congress could pass voting-age-related legislation at a federal level.

The "all generations are the same" myth notwithstanding, there is another, competing big myth prevalent today. This myth states that today's youth are "the worst" ever. Older Americans often indulge in saying that the Millennial Generation is the worst generation ever . . . or at least was until the Fifth World Generation (born 2005-today) came along. Memes posted by Boomers and Xers on the Internet say that when they were growing up, youth respected their elders, parents spanked their kids without fearing CPS, the spankings did no harm, and children freely "drank from the garden hose". Do they even remember the accusations during the sixties that teens had "no respect for their elders", "no respect for authority"? Older generations like to stereotype Millennials and Fifth Worlders as generations of Eloi, genetically attached to their smartphones, phones that are smarter than they are. Mark Bauerlein titled his book on Millennials The Dumbest Generation.

Are Millennials really the worst, dumbest generation ever? Nope. As sociologist Mike Males wrote in an LA Progressive article : "Imagine that a time-liberated version of vigilante George Zimmerman sees two youths walking through his neighborhood: black, hoodied Trayvon Martin of 2012, and a white teen from 1959 (say Bud Anderson from Father Knows Best). Based purely on statistics of race and era, which one should Zimmerman most fear of harboring criminal intent? Answer: He should fear (actually, not fear) them equally; each has about the same low odds of committing a crime." From 1982 to 2012, crime rates among African-American youth plummeted: property offenses declined by 51%, assault declined by 59%, robbery declined by 60%, rape declined by 66%, and even murder declined by 82%. And even though Donald Trump said in 2017 that "The murder rate in our country is the highest it's been in 47 years", the murder rate in America has in fact been halved since its 1991 peak. Far from the fabled heathens who have no morals because their parents didn't spank them, Millennial teens and twentysomethings, whatever their race, have too many moral compunctions to murder, rape, burglarize, or assault someone or set fire to someone's beloved belongings. Sadly, the stereotype that today's youth, especially boys and especially African-Americans, are "superpredators" persists, and has cops and security officers shooting and killing Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray. People often support their fears by using the thinnest of anecdotal evidence: “Look at Columbine, they were teens!”

And "kids have no respect for their elders"? So what. Just as Boomer youth were right in questioning their homophobic, pro-war elders from the Greatest Generation (born 1911-1924) during the Vietnam War, today's youth are not necessarily in the wrong for speaking out against a parent, uncle, teacher, principal, coach, or psychologist-they-were-sent-to-after-being-diagnosed-with-ODD when said elder tells them that boys shouldn't grow their hair long, or that it's "inappropriate" for two girls to kiss, or that only paranoid alarmists believe in climate change, or that George W. Bush must be followed, right or wrong, or that kids must never express disagreement with adults on even as subjective and trivial a matter as whether the weather today is nice.

And the accusation that Millennials and Fifth Worlders are stupid? Co-champions were declared at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2014, 2015, and 2016, for only the fourth, fifth, and sixth times since the bee's inception in 1925. Then came 2019, when the spellers were so good that Scripps ended up with an EIGHT-way tie! Word lists got increasingly harder; the winning words from 1935 to 1941 were "intelligible", "eczema", "promiscuous", "sanitarium", "canonical", "therapy", and "initials", while the winning words from 2007 to 2013 were "serrefine", "guerdon", "Laodicean", "stromuhr", "cymotrichous", "guetapens", and "knaidel".

Other ageists listen to media frenzies over teens eating Tide Pods and snorting condoms. The moral panic over these "trends", however, has turned out to be a tempest in a teapot. Reports of being poisoned by laundry detergent pods were actually down in 2018, at the same time the media hype over this alleged teen fad was spiking. The trend stories were trend pieces reporting on previously written trend pieces, with acts of detergentophagy less common than the media would have their unwitting dupes believe. As the Washington Post wrote: "There's just one small problem, however: Those headlines were wrong. The only thing viral about the condom challenge right now is the moral panic about the idea of teens doing the condom challenge. In a matter of days, word spread from a single local news report to a small army of local and national publications across the world, all warning about a challenge that, in 2018, barely exists." As a Snopes page discusses, claims to fake "teen challenges" have been around for a long time. Sorry, but real youth are not as dumb as urban folklore makes them out to be. The media is simply getting more ephebophobic.

A common misconception among ageists is that the reason youth rights activists who are older than about, say, 25 still support youth rights is that they are pedophiles. The fact of the matter is that most adult youth rights activists are still fighting for youth rights because they faced some instance of ageism, or a repeated barrage of instances of ageism, during their childhood and/or adolescence that scarred them for life.

I am a young adult, soon to be middle-aged. I had many run-ins with, and undeserved attempts at discipline and sociaLIESation from, my parents, teachers, school administrators, psychologists, psychiatrists, and random adults in the neighborhood as a child, teen, and college student. I was also the victim of nonconsensual medical treatment, as I'll open up about in later blog entries.

When I was in kindergarten, the class learned the song "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly", of which I was horrified. I starting scraping my nails down my throat and sticking them out of my mouth whenever I heard the words "spider" or "goat". Over the next two years, the "purging" ritual I was developing went down to my groin, and more words (and objects!) were added from ages 6 to 22. Other words were dropped over the years.

Little did I know at age 6 that I was developing what I call "logaesthesia", or word-tasting. When I hear or read one of those terrible words like "scxxt" or "whxxps", I get the sensation that I have swallowed the word. It's as if it's inside of me, slumbering in my intestines and attracting intestinal slime. To hear or read a word is to take in. I can never read an article without feeling as if I'm taking a drink of that article's waters, feasting on a repast of bread, beef stew and almond roca from the article. The same with listening to conversation. The words, further, have specific tastes when I eat them. When I hear the word "whxxps", for instance, I immediately taste whipped cream. The whipped cream is there right inside of me, its cold creaminess sitting in the front seat of my pants. Would you like you have whipped cream in your pants? That's what it feels like to me. The word "mxss" tastes like oatmeal. "Scxxt" tastes like cooked carrot, like the carrot in pot roast. "Jxggle" tastes like red hots -- the candies -- while "jingle" as well as "t-ngle" taste like those tiny spherical hard candies you put on cupcakes. "Xll xver the plxce" tastes like pasta-ey soup, a soup like Spaghetti-O's perhaps. And "ice xxxxx", of course, tastes like ice xxxxx.

And it's not only the words that make me purge that have a taste. Many of the innocuous words do too. For instance, "trump" tastes like sautéed mushrooms. "Doodle" tastes like macaroni. "Kentucky" tastes like fried chicken. With my logaesthesia, I am a person to whom words do more than convey semantic meanings. To you, "tale" is just a word for a story, but to me it conjures up the taste of lasagna, the pasta in lasagna with a light sauce on it. Even names can have tastes to them: Greg tastes like chocolate Easter egg, while the name Kevin tastes of ice xxxxx cone and Tiffany of lemon meringue pie.

To avoid coming in contact with these words, I don't watch television, nor do I go to the movies. I avoid coming into chatrooms as much as I can, too. Logaesthesia affects my life when it prevents me from doing certain things such as these. I also used to suffer while surfing the Internet and had to copy-and-paste a lot of posts from the Net into Notepad and use Find & Replace on them. Now I have a Greasemonkey filter that replaces the offending words.

The object triggers in logaesthesia also affect my quality of life. To avoid coming across things that make me purge, such as spiders and cobwebs around my parents' house, or plastic silverware in restaurants, or Winnie the Pooh and Spider-man garbage in stores, I have to close my eyes, or at the very least cup my hand in front of my eyes so I only see the aisles in front of me. It makes it hard for me to make my way around a store when I can't allow myself to look around, and sometimes I even bump into shelves. I can't push shopping carts or wheelchairs when we go into public places, unless we're going to someplace where everything is safe, such as See's Chocolates.

I often go into rooms alone so I have a place to purge where no one will see that I am purging. I used to purge in public, but eventually the rituals got so deep into my groin that I had to unbutton my pants and couldn't do it in public anymore. I am not prudish about other people seeing me, but I am afraid that other people might tell me my behavior is "inappropriate" or "socially unacceptable" if they see me purging, so I need to hide my purging to save my fragile soul.

Because of my condition, teachers and other adults who had convinced themselves that I was masturbating, or even who insisted it was "inappropriate" even if it wasn't really masturbating, because of society's taboo against what they called "putting your hands in your pants" (ooh, how I hated that phrase) have tried to socialize me, talked down to me, and then told me I was wrong for contradicting an adult when I defended myself. All the "socialization" I received in high school, all the being forced to do things, all the fascist comments that my behavior was "inappropriate" or "socially unacceptable", haunt me to this very day. I still think back weekly to run-ins with authoritarian teachers that happened during my school years, triggered by the logaesthesia or other, non-logaesthesia-related events, causing me to yell, bite myself, punch my skull, and punch my abdomen as if slicing open a watermelon. If I had only been given the chance to stop going to school, to live away from my parents, to move to Berkeley, I may have been able to get away from it all before too much damage was done.

It doesn't help me much either that I have never heard of another person having logaesthesia. OCD? Yes. Lexical-gustatory synaesthesia? I've met a few such people online. But the two in synergy? I've never even read of it. It attests to the extreme rarity of my condition that I was the one who had to coin a word for it. And I feel lonely. People with ADD, Asperger's, social anxiety, Alzheimer's, or conduct disorder are a dime a dozen, especially on the Internet. But me? I really know the meaning of being lonely. Even the Ehlers-Danlos "zebras" have found each other on the Net.

Let me tell you more about myself. I am writing a rock musical about Millennials, called The Bittersweet Generation, and had an alternative band called Red Cilantro during my late teens and early twenties. I have a collection of music on my iPod that includes such artists as Nirvana, Third Eye Blind, Smash Mouth, Fastball, the Beatles, Pink, Sia, The Naked and Famous, Florence + the Machine, Gotye, Enya, the Cranberries, the Sundays, Of Monsters and Men, Shaggy, KT Tunstall, Avril Lavigne, Hole, Michelle Branch, Lady Gaga, M83, Muse, Ingrid Michaelson, Bastille, Depeche Mode, the Weeknd, and Xymox, and listen to my headphones when I am out and about to avoid hearing purge words. I do my hair like Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, and always wear a turtleneck, khakis and sunglasses. I love trying new foods and eating old favorites such as lasagna, biscotti, sushi, Chinese food, Taco Bell, spice drops, ravioli, manicotti, rice crackers, cranberry juice, challah, suman antala, dolmas, quiche, pomegranate juice, Brussels sprouts, banh mis, enchiladas, rambutans and piroshkis. When one of my friends was diagnosed with cancer, I tried to get everyone we knew to pray for her. I like spending time with my friends, both male and female, whom I love to a degree more typical of friendships between two females than of male-male or male-female friendships.

Another abnormality I suffer is a sensation I call That Feeling. I will be in the middle of an activity, or just lying down, when all of a sudden I feel as if spiders are going to fall down from the ceiling onto me. I begin constantly looking for spiders on the ceiling, and checking my own hands for specks of dead spider that may have gotten on my hands from handling objects -- again and again. I feel as if my eyes are going to cross. It feels as if I am using 110% of my brain. I notice every object and sound around me equally, and have a hard time telling my surroundings from my own thoughts. My eyes can't make sense out of the pictures I see online. This has been happening to me since 2009. I'll call my caretaker and tell him, "I've got That Feeling again", and he'll know what I mean.

I am cismale, bisexual, Jewish, deist, a beatnik, ENFP, 4w3sx, Virgo, Californian, anarcho-syndicalist, bearded, anosmic, and childfree, with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. I was born sunny-side-up with a single umbilical artery. On Simon Baron Cohen's tests, I got an empathizing quotient of 32, a systemizing quotient of 17, and an AQ of 24.

I've participated in, and read, many debates on the voting age, the drinking age, parental authority, school dress codes, medical consent, the youth rights movement as a whole, or just the whole concept of taking kids seriously -- I've seen them on Internet fora, on the comments sections of news websites, and in the emails I've received. And every place youth rights issues have been debated online, I've seen certain very shoddy and fallacious arguments against youth rights regurgigated again and again. If you're active in the youth rights movement, or even if you just read the comments sections at the Washington Post, you've probably heard them all: "Being a minor is only temporary", "You can wait", "16-year-olds will vote like their parents", "Young people think they're immortal", "I supported youth rights when I was younger but then outgrew that position", "You'll change your mind when you're older", "The only adults who still support youth rights are pedophiles", "If 16-year-olds are deemed incapable of signing a contract, how can they be mature enough to vote?" (the de jure fallacy), "My house, my rules", "Emancipation will solve everything", "Kids aren't oppressed -- they don't have to pay bills!", "Teens were eating Tide Pods a week ago", statements beginning "Society has decided . . .", and the red herring question "Bah, what about child labor?" Many of the posts in this blog will be centered around focusing on a certain argument and refuting it.

Then there are the scientific claims, published even by respected scientists, that claims teens have immature, underdeveloped, etc. brains, which first became trendy during the nineties. In a 2007 Scientific American article titled "The Myth of the Teen Brain", psychologist Robert Epstein exposes this as junk science. As Epstein points out, the studies that examine adolescent brains, teen-age pathologies, and teen angst do not distinguish cause from effect. Teen-age ills are caused by the restrictions on youth and segregation of teens from adults that got started in the early twentieth century. Teens in preindustrial societies do not show high rates of crime, and spend most of their time with adults. They do not feel teen angst. When Western-style schooling and television are brought to these societies, the adolescent members of these now Westernized societies begin to exhibit delinquency and teen angst. The Inuit living on Victoria Island, Canada had no problem with juvenile delinquency until their community was Westernized in the eighties, and by 1988 they had established their first permanent police department now that the worms had escaped from the can. Epstein also points out that brain imaging studies show only a correlation between age and brain anatomy, not a causal relationship. While the orthodoxy in the 1970's was that the brain reached its adult state at 18, and in the 1990's the line changed to "The brain isn't fully developed until 25", research in the 2010's now reveals that a person's brain in fact continues to develop and change for her/his whole life.

It's enlightening to see the kind of junk science that was used in its own time against women's suffrage, as in this recent article in the Atlantic. Note that William P. Sedgwick, an outspoken opponent of women's suffrage who claimed voting would be bad for women's brains, was a reputable professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But all of that will be delved into in more detail in my blog entries in the weeks, months, and years to come. I've been writing about youth rights and ageism for more than two decades, and I do believe it is high time I had a blog on it. I have a moral philosophy I call bixochromatism (which in a nutshell states that the freedom to be in control of one's own decisions is more important than making what people tell you is a "good" or "wise" decision), which I will discuss in future posts. In the meantime, you can read my essay, 10 Reasons to Support the Youth Rights Movement, at http://khemehekis.angelfire.com/10reasons.htm , or even browse the website of the National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) at https://www.youthrights.org/

In solidarity,

Savegraduation

#youth rights #ageism #medical consent #voting age #baby boomers #generation x #millennials #fifth world generation #myths about youth #logaesthesia #aaliyah #silent generation #teen crime #national spelling bee #politics #hot topics

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sofiadearos · 5 years ago

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Any animal is more elegant than this book: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Unfortunately, this has to be the top contender for the worst “good” book I’ve read to date. So many words, so little substance– I’m shocked at how many words can be written about nothing much. I really wanted to like this book, guys, I really did. I liked Heidi Sopinka’s “The Dictionary of Animal Languages”, which has the same stylistic fragrance that Hedgehog attempts.

The difference?

The narrator of Languages brightened my world, while I was suffocated by the alternating narrators here, named Renee and Paloma.

Renee is a concierge approaching her sixties while Paloma is a twelve-year-old intellectual prodigy who loves writing in her journal and wrist-wringing over the constant trauma of living in, uh, a patently elite apartment complex in a gorgeous Paris neighbourhood where she is surrounded by relatively pleasant people and their pampered pets. Renee, who unflinchingly pronounces herself as stout and ugly, works in this apartment complex, and takes extreme precautions to ensure that the residents never find out that she is passionate about fine art, loves experimental cinema, and worships the literary canon. She also has a cat named Leo, after Leo Tolstoy, and is at all times paralysingly worried that the residents will get the reference.

First of all, the central premise is questionable and absurd in that it goes great lengths to cloyingly counterpreach the stigmatisation of something that may not even be a stigma. The book in 140 characters or less: a concierge affectedly and pompously demonstrates that it is okay for her to be intelligent. Here’s an excerpt:

“Concierges do not read The German Ideology; hence, they would certainly be incapable of quoting the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach. Moreover, a concierge who reads Marx must be contemplating subversion, must have sold her soul to the devil, the trade union. That she might simply be reading Marx to elevate her mind is so incongruous a conceit that no member of the bourgeoisie could ever entertain it.”

The problem with this is that I don’t think anyone in the apartment complex would care if they found out that Renee was intelligent. Renee takes up half her narrative time belabouring how difficult it is to be someone who betrays societal expectations by being a smart concierge. Not once is her delusional hypothesis put to the test. Not once was Renee allowed to wonder whether, in fact, people had something against smart concierges at all. If she were, this brittle plotline would disappear and invalidate the whole book.

Second, there are many characters living in the apartment complex, and I was interested in getting to know them. Colombe, Paloma’s older sister, was especially interesting! I did my best to piece together a portrait of her through Paloma’s exasperatingly condescending and hate-filled journal entries. I couldn’t help but feel that the fake-deep so-called “social commentary” was self-defeating and managed to destroy the storytelling. Where’s the due social commentary about hypocrites? You won’t find it in this book narrated by snobs devoid of self-reflexivity. What’s worse is that the musings of Renee and Paloma are less sincere social commentary than snooty flexings of how brutally they can tear down other people. The other characters are ruthlessly flattened and it’s a shame, because I don’t know if this is entirely necessary. The narrators sentimentally and self-importantly capitalise the words “beauty”, “art”, and “humanity” but their intellectual posturing is soulless and regrettably anti-humanity and unbeautiful. They’re so deep in their heads that they’re not ruminating on the human condition at all— they use other people as sandpaper against which to sharpen their mean verbal acrobatics. This is so blatantly their point and I rolled my eyes when Renee called herself a prophet for contemporary times or whatever. What’s the point of endlessly contemplating beauty and art when you spend hours and hours overarticulating how other people are worthless? I was not impressed by their devotion to jasmine tea and camellias. Reading about mean people is fun when the whole thing is graced with irony, when the author is so fully in on it. But the narrative voices of Paloma and Renee are so strikingly identical that I can’t help but feel that the author, Muriel Barbery, is writing with minimum effort, writing so close to her own heart that there isn’t much space for self-irony or self-parody. I could be wrong though. I also took note of how Japan was depicted in this book— all hype, no depth. This contrasts with how Paloma conflates Asia with poverty in talking about a Thai boy adopted by a French family:

“And now here he is in France, at Angelina’s, suddenly immersed in a different culture without any time to adjust, with a social position that has changed in every way: from Asia to Europe, from poverty to wealth.”

I know she’s 12, but it struck me. Japan in this book is fetishised and immediately valued exclusively because of a handful of its cultural exports. Sushi, bonzai, haiku, Ozu, the traditional bow, and wabi-sabi are briefly mentioned. That’s all. What’s afforded is the Google-able iconography. The book goes no deeper, and the peppering of Japanese references did nothing to re-posture the characters, which is what it seemed to be going for. Kakuro, the Japanese man introduced to change the narrator’s lives, was so thinly written. Extras in KDramas have received richer characterization. I was baffled as to why he, poised ummistakably as the pivotal character, was paper-thin and dimensionless, when the other characters were described with such precision albeit disdainfully. He “changes their lives” because the plot said so. One last thing: this book was published in 2009, before discourse on mental health became more widespread. Words such as “anorexic”, “autistic”, and “retarded” are used a couple of times as adjectives, usually in derogatory contexts, which will date the book.

Man. I really wanted to like it.

Somewhat related recommendations:

“Pure Heroines”, an essay included in Jia Tolentino’s bestselling collection “Trick Mirror”. The essay explores the tropes performed by female literary characters, i.e. as children, they’re exceedingly crafty and prematurely disillusioned by their environment, and the plot hinges on how gloriously they can rewire themselves to escape it all; as teens, like Paloma, they’re angsty and hot and intellectual; and as grown women, they become casualties of certain institutions, such as religion, marriage, or what have you, and eventually kill themselves. Paloma, in this case, is a suicidal teenager. Interesting.

“The Dictionary of Animal Languages” by Heidi Sopinka. Also set in Paris. Also about an art-loving woman. Language is also somewhat florid but oftentimes delectable. Is a plotty book but doesn’t read as plotty, because it’s configured so diaristically. A sweet-smelling collection of painterly phrases.

#books

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