#the only lesson it effectively teaches is agression

[princess-of-the-corner]

Had some thoughts on the "Its easier than you're making it" idea, where Kagami, due to hanging out with Chloe for reasons, realizes that she can actually be very easily directed towards less harmful or positive behavior. One just needs to approach it with firm, clear instruction, rather than relying on aggression, ideals or emotions.

Agression:

We already know how Chloe responds to aggression, she fights back, or takes a lick then comes back to fight later. punishing, shouting or beating her doesn't do anything.

All Chloe learns is that she didn't win, not that she shouldn't have fought at all.

Ideals:

Trying to reach Chloe via ideals or morals is a waste of time at least early on. Andre, who ostensibly raised her explicitly taught her to extort, cheat, bribe and threaten; the other adults in her life all suck equally much. She has no reason beyond her own lack of success to think they are wrong or immoral & wouldn't want to think that of them.

Basically, unless you are already a respected person & can communicate your ideas clearly, you are wasting time.

Emotions:

Chloe does have empathy, we see her show flashes of guilt at unintended harm or sadness or a love one suffering. But these quickly get lost if angered or are things she only expresses when alone, or when utterly overwhelmed. Chloe fucking HATES being vulnerable.

Real vulnerable anyway.

Cos she is otherwise very expressive, but its all performative. "Produce tears here, to extract concession there" thought processes; big performative actions of sadness or hurt in a context she's already deemed a competitive environment aren't liable to have an effect, as Rose saw. She's not liable to see it as anything but someone doing an act, why would someone intentionally bare their belly like that? Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!

Plus there's there simple fact she's used to emotional neglect, cruelty from her father that's tacitly endorsed by her father & whatever it is about Gabriel that makes her nervous. She still loves these people, so clearly it shouldn't be a big deal if she hurts someone, she's hurting all the time after all.

Add in that understanding or articulating this would be beyond her skill range and you have a concoction for someone who is not going to be open to common methods of behavioral correction or improvement.

Anger doesn't just makes her fight.

Morality is utterly relative at the best of times.

Emotions freak her out, are fake & cruelty is normalized.

One needs to get her to like... Being able to so much as communicate with others without a fight or incredibly skewed dynamic forming before one can conceive of unpacking all this!

Honestly though just fucking.

Chloé's skewed upbringing means that negative reinforcement doesn't do jack shit to her. It doesn't teach the right lesson. It's never 'what you're doing is wrong/bad/harmful' it's 'you didn't try hard enough to succeed at what you were trying'

It can occasionally work if you say directly what the problem is! Like Adrien saying 'you're mean to my friends, I don't like that, if you don't fix it I can't be associated with you'. That gets her to fix things to an extent.

But people rarely do that and more often insult her. Which, given her parents' actions, means she thinks that she needs to do what she did again but better.

/Positive/ reinforcement works so much better for getting her to actually do good things! Telling her she did a good job at something. Leading her to a better solution that still gets what she wants but without hurting people.

And I know some people will complain that this is babying her and yadda yadda but yes! Baby steps! She's someone who is just now learning how to be a decent person after years of being taught to be awful! Ofc you have to treat her very delicately like a baby!

[softer-ua]

I just—

Like what does that even mean?

He’s 16???

What grandiose things was he supposed to being praised for?? What is shallow praise for a CHILD

Seriously I wanna know, what is too shallow to praise a child for?

My godkids 7 and I gave her a standing ovation for tying her shoes last weekend?? I got excited about her making a bagel by herself.

I’ll praise her for being a line leader between gym and music, brushing her teeth, saying excuse me, getting a C on a test, singing a song off key, doing the weirdest most uncoordinated off rhythm dance I have ever seen. IDGF

There isn’t a single mildly good behavior or moderately effort taking task too small to praise a child for, that’s what good people do.

It’s incredibly important for their development.

Hell my little brother is 19 and I gave him praise for doing the dishes after our thanksgiving dinner. Was it something he was expected to do because I cooked? Yes. Doesn’t mean it’s not nice for him to hear. No one’s ever too old to be celebrated, even for the bare minimum.

Fuck especially the bare minimum, forget me passing a class I deserve applause for doing my laundry and calling my doctor back lol

So what on earth was Katsuki being praised for that she didn’t think a child deserved it??

Because by the time a praise becomes shallow it naturally doesn’t feel like praise anymore it feels patronizing, you congratulate a 13 year old on covering their mouth when they cough they don’t feel superior they just think you’re being an ass

Like should people dismiss him for getting good grades? Ignore his musical talents?? Turn a blind eye to his cooking?? Absolutely not.

Other people were not the problem. A child’s behavior is on the parents to guid and mold.

Maybe if they hadn’t made Katsuki feel like he had to earn every compliment with every fiber of his being…

Maybe if they didn’t blame him for things that were completely out of his control…

Maybe if they told him it’s okay to make mistakes…

Maybe if they told him they were proud of him uncon

Maybe if they showed him just a little grace…

They could have done what parents are supposed to do, teach him to navigate this world in a way that causes as little hurt as possible. For him and for others.

There’s so much pain that could have been avoided if they had just done the actual absolute barest barest fucken minimum of teaching him to value kindness

He could still have been a loud, stubborn, short tempered, pompous, go getter. That’s just who he is, but he could be that and have recognized Dekus kindness for what it was.

They probably would have still had problems but they wouldn’t have been as exacerbated, a small rift vs a chasm of misunderstandings

But because they couldn’t do that Katsuki will spend the rest of his life having to undoing the harm and reconditioning his behaviors. It’s going to hurt and it’s going to be a lot of work, their negligence will be a burden on him forever and it’s unfair and it makes me so so mad.

He could have been so much happier in this life

[athenawasamerf]

Exiting On A Positive Note

2018 has been a wild year for me, as I have been more immeresed in feminist issues than I was before, i graduated high school and started medical school in my home country, living with my cousin and grandma 2000 miles away from my wildly abusive parents, and finally being able to breathe away from extreme and horrifyingly restrictive Saudi Arabian law and culture.

I started this year as an intersection feminist, slowly and unconsciously became a libfem as tumblr exposed me to the trans rights movement and libfems and TRAs I followed painted it as the most Woke™️ and the most correct political movement.

Not long after, I came across @artemiswasamerf and @respectthefemalebodysabuse (May they both live long, happy and fulfilling lives) and started reading more and more about radical feminism. It started when I noticed a severe lack of discussion around topics that were, to me, central in the feminist movement; these included FGM (which is a huge issue where I’m from) and abortion rights.

It took a long time for me to fully realise that I’d accidentally isolated myself in an echo chamber of ‘Transwomen are women and they can do no wrong’, to the point where any point made to the contrary could never cross my mind. However, I wasn’t so far gone that I opposed basic facts such as sex-based oppression matters and should be a focus in feminism and transwomen have drastically different experiences than ‘cis’ women and therefore their voices count for less on sex-based issues. Seeing women who argued very logically and very politely to this effect hunted down, sent death and rape threats, branded TERFs and called Nazis and ‘literal terrorists’ was a huge red flag to me. The cotton ceiling, destruction of female-only spaces and the agressive and intense fight to push women out of our own movement were the final nails in a coffin that had taken weeks to build.

I emerge from 2018 as a more mature, more informed, more active, more thoughtful person. I have learned the value of sources and documented data and actual real-life encounters and events over empty claims. I have learned to critically appraise everything I come across and I have become, all over, a better person and a better feminist for that.

Thank you, 2018, for teaching me vital lessons and helping me improve to be a more rational and more insightful person. Here’s to hoping 2019 brings more healing, more love, more self-improvement and more success to every woman out there.