When I was nine, possibly ten, an author came to our school to talk about writing. His name was Hugh Scott, and I doubt he’s known outside of Scotland. And even then I haven’t seen him on many shelves in recent years in Scotland either. But he wrote wonderfully creepy children’s stories, where the supernatural was scary, but it was the mundane that was truly terrifying. At least to little ten year old me. It was Scooby Doo meets Paranormal Activity with a bonny braw Scottish-ness to it that I’d never experienced before.
I remember him as a gangling man with a wiry beard that made him look older than he probably was, and he carried a leather bag filled with paper. He had a pen too that was shaped like a carrot, and he used it to scribble down notes between answering our (frankly disinterested) questions. We had no idea who he was you see, no one had made an effort to introduce us to his books. We were simply told one morning, ‘class 1b, there is an author here to talk to you about writing’, and this you see was our introduction to creative writing. We’d surpassed finger painting and macaroni collages. It was time to attempt Words That Were Untrue.
You could tell from the look on Mrs M’s face she thought it was a waste of time. I remember her sitting off to one side marking papers while this tall man sat down on our ridiculously short chairs, and tried to talk to us about what it meant to tell a story. She wasn’t big on telling stories, Mrs M. She was also one of the teachers who used to take my books away from me because they were “too complicated” for me, despite the fact that I was reading them with both interest and ease. When dad found out he hit the roof. It’s the one and only time he ever showed up to the school when it wasn’t parents night or the school play. After that she just left me alone, but she made it clear to my parents that she resented the fact that a ten year old used words like ‘ubiquitous’ in their essays. Presumably because she had to look it up.
Anyway, Mr Scott, was doing his best to talk to us while Mrs M made scoffing noises from her corner every so often, and you could just tell he was deflating faster than a bouncy castle at a knife sharpening party, so when he asked if any of us had any further questions and no one put their hand up I felt awful. I knew this was not only insulting but also humiliating, even if we were only little children. So I did the only thing I could think of, put my hand up and said “Why do you write?”
I’d always read about characters blinking owlishly, but I’d never actually seen it before. But that’s what he did, peering down at me from behind his wire rim spectacles and dragging tired fingers through his curly beard. I don’t think he expected anyone to ask why he wrote stories. What he wrote about, and where he got his ideas from maybe, and certainly why he wrote about ghosts and other creepy things, but probably not why do you write. And I think he thought perhaps he could have got away with “because it’s fun, and learning is fun, right kids?!”, but part of me will always remember the way the world shifted ever so slightly as it does when something important is about to happen, and this tall streak of a man looked down at me, narrowed his eyes in an assessing manner and said, “Because people told me not to, and words are important.”
I nodded, very seriously in the way children do, and knew this to be a truth. In my limited experience at that point, I knew certain people (with a sidelong glance to Mrs M who was in turn looking at me as though she’d just known it’d be me that type of question) didn’t like fiction. At least certain types of fiction. I knew for instance that Mrs M liked to read Pride and Prejudice on her lunch break but only because it was sensible fiction, about people that could conceivably be real. The idea that one could not relate to a character simply because they had pointy ears or a jet pack had never occurred to me, and the fact that it’s now twenty years later and people are still arguing about the validity of genre fiction is beyond me, but right there in that little moment, I knew something important had just transpired, with my teacher glaring at me, and this man who told stories to live beginning to smile. After that the audience turned into a two person conversation, with gradually more and more of my classmates joining in because suddenly it was fun. Mrs M was pissed and this bedraggled looking man who might have been Santa after some serious dieting, was starting to enjoy himself. As it turned out we had all of his books in our tiny corner library, and in the words of my friend Andrew “hey there’s a giant spider fighting a ghost on this cover! neat!” and the presentation devolved into chaos as we all began reading different books at once and asking questions about each one. “Does she live?”— “What about the talking trees” —“is the ghost evil?” —“can I go to the bathroom, Miss?” —“Wow neat, more spiders!”
After that we were supposed to sit down, quietly (glare glare) and write a short story to show what we had learned from listening to Mr Scott. I wont pretend I wrote anything remotely good, I was ten and all I could come up with was a story about a magic carrot that made you see words in the dark, but Mr Scott seemed to like it. In fact he seemed to like all of them, probably because they were done with such vibrant enthusiasm in defiance of the people who didn’t want us to.
The following year, when I’d moved into Mrs H’s class—the kind of woman that didn’t take away books from children who loved to read and let them write nonsense in the back of their journals provided they got all their work done—a letter arrived to the school, carefully wedged between several copies of a book which was unheard of at the time, by a new author known as J.K. Rowling. Mrs H remarked that it was strange that an author would send copies of books that weren’t even his to a school, but I knew why he’d done it. I knew before Mrs H even read the letter.
Because words are important. Words are magical. They’re powerful. And that power ought to be shared. There’s no petty rivalry between story tellers, although there’s plenty who try to insinuate it. There’s plenty who try to say some words are more valuable than others, that somehow their meaning is more important because of when it was written and by whom. Those are the same people who laud Shakespeare from the heavens but refuse to acknowledge that the quote “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them“ is a dick joke.
And although Mr Scott seems to have faded from public literary consumption, I still think about him. I think about his stories, I think about how he recommended another author and sent copies of her books because he knew our school was a puritan shithole that fought against the Wrong Type of Wordes and would never buy them into the library otherwise. But mostly I think about how he looked at a ten year old like an equal and told her words and important, and people will try to keep you from writing them—so write them anyway.
*sobs for like the umpteenth time this day and reblogs the fuck out of this*
this is it:
“Because people told me not to, and words are important.”
…yeah, my mother told me when I was 13 or 14 (right around the time I started writing both poetry and fanfiction) that I shouldn’t write so much. Why? Because she’d dug into the desk in my room, gone through my recent handwritten journals, and told me that what I was writing was too dark. Too emotional. It would make people wonder about me. Those were her exact words.
If someone tells you not to write? Write like your life depends on it.
Tag: important things
be kind. be ridiculously, radically, endlessly kind. be a part of someone’s good day. send nice thoughts, send positive vibes, send support and love and well wishes. be kind. so often we wish for tomorrow to be a good day when we are at our lowest. some sort of sign that it gets better. be a part of that better day for someone. the world does not magically decide that it will be softer on you today, tomorrow, the next day. and sometimes it starts with a message from someone else, maybe a little bit of inner strength to pull yourself up and take a shower, maybe a bit of sunlight makes the day better. but it’s these small things, these soft things that make a day better. so be kind. don’t ever think about being anything other than kind. be a part of someone’s good day because you don’t know how desperate they might be for it.
I Apparently Reblogged From Russia Propagandists
So, I too received the “We’re not mad you reblogged Russian propagandists, we’re just disappointed” email from Tumblr. As per @copperbadge‘s suggestion, I searched for the posts by typing the usernames into “paxpinnae.tumblr.com/search/RussianTrollGoesHere” (Note that you have to have Tumblr search enabled in your profile to do this, but that’s a quick fix.)
Now, I’ve deleted all the posts, because better safe than inadvertently complicit in undermining American democracy, but for those who are interested, this is the quality content the Russian IRA was putting out:
- That post with the Google results showing the Obamas as the President and First Lady and saying “reblog this it’s the last day they’re true.”
- A post bitching about how Howard the Duck might be getting a(nother) Marvel movie before Kamala Khan, America Chavez, or Miles Morales saying “When Marvel would rather make a movie about a duck than a person of color.”
- A post with a Twitter screenshot of a guy saying feminists don’t have loving dads and getting dragged for it.
- A post about Imran Yousef, the marine vet bouncer at Pulse in Orlando who helped save people, which actually was a twofor on Russian trolls, with one reblogging the other to give an assist.
- That post about Hillary Clinton’s interview where she says she keeps hot sauce in her back, which the troll framed as “admitting to pandering to black people.”
- A post promoting Solomon’s Shield, an app that will give you your rights during a traffic stop and help you livestream the stop to Facebook and urging me to “OMG STOP POLICE BRUTALITY!!!!!”
- A post about some A+ queer moments from Betty & Veronica with the caption “heteros explain this” that I’m actually really mad about deleting because it was GR8.
- A post with a bumper sticker reading “Proud Parent of a Child who has Resisted His Teachers’ Attempts to Break His Spirit and Bend Him to the Will of His Corporate Masters” which I am also really mad that I had to delete.
There are a few trends I noticed as I went through the posts that I want to take a moment to highlight, for the sake of my own critical thinking skills as well as others’:
- Most of these posts seemed to come from a standard Tumblr left-wing point of view… BUT:
- Most of them ALSO promoted a defeatist attitude toward our current systems and cultures. “Why is no one talking about Imran Yousef?” “You know why.” “Just admit you don’t want equality for all”
- The fundamental goal of the Russian propaganda machine is to undermine Americans’ faith in our political and cultural institutions. If everything is inherently terrible, how can we fix it? If both sides are equally bad and corrupt, then it’s better just to give up on government and try to live as best we can.
Which is an interesting take, but a few counterpoints:
- No.
- Fuck that.
- American democracy has many problems, but the solution isn’t to give up; it’s to fight harder.
- Change is slow and hard and yes, involves compromise, and doing a few things that you don’t like in the short term, and talking to people who you personally disagree with, and that’s okay! If you continually subject everything to a rigid test of moral purity, the world will always fail you, but if you approach things with an attitude that even people with whom you disagree can have valid points, you might find something good.
- (I’m still mad about how good that Betty & Veronica post was. I mean, I know it was probably intended to undercut American culture somehow, but that thing was AMAZING.)
Part of the real punch to the guts here is that:
1) The things they point out aren’t *wrong*. We ARE a racist society. We ARE a a sexist society. We ARE a deeply hetero-normative society. Insert a justice problem, and it probably applies.
2) It’s super easy to agree with and promote the defeatist attitude because these are giant systemic problems it’s super easy to feel defeated by.
3) I fully expect to be hoodwinked by more such accounts in the future. Just look at how tumblr people and people of a certain age talk all fatalistic about the future, how we make our depression and low expectations for our lives into jokes. You can try to be more aware about WHO you’re reblogging, but you’re gonna make a mistake on that someday, not cause you’re an idiot, but cause it’s just that hard not to.
So what to do about it?
Do like Pax and use the tips from @copperbadge to delete the posts you’ve reblogged. Then, in the future, if you see a post that, per @paxpinnae‘s comments, takes a defeatist stance towards a real problem, by all means, reblog it. But add to the post – add a call to action. If it’s about trans bathroom bills, include a form letter for your state reps. Do something similar if it’s about lack of representation in the media – why not send emails to movie studios saying we want Miles Morales and Kamala Khan cause they’re fucking rad as hell and could totally bring in Black Panther $$$. If it’s about police brutality against black people, link to BLM fundraisers.
That way, you’re being civically engaged. You roll your eyes and feel sad about the ways in which our world is shit, but then you do something about it, even IF it seems small and useless. It’s still something, and then you’re maybe – hopefully – perhaps inspiring someone else to take incremental action along with you. And bonus, you’re undermining some asshole’s attempt to undermine you, so if nothing else, you’re getting spite points.
And that’s my thought. Time to do some research and gather rebloggable resources so I can do my best to put my money where my mouth is here.
I did not plan to mire myself this deeply in this whole event when I made An Humorous Post about being in league with Russian agitators, but it has led to some really awesome analysis that I wanted to share with everyone, so this is well worth reading. Thanks for tagging me, guys!
gentle reminder to all ace and aro peeps:
the majority of the lgbtq+ community sees you and accepts you as a part of the community and in queer spaces. i know seeing all the hate on here from within the community can be incredibly disheartening and exhausting, but aphobes are just a loud and angry minority, they are not the norm in actual queer spaces.
you are valid. you are loved. you belong.
hey i really believe in the importance of trusting your gut when something seems wrong and erring on the side of caution even when it’s not exactly CLEAR what the problem is but it is possible to take that too far, and leaving comments on posts like “this seems bad but I don’t have the time and energy to explain why” is reeeeeally teetering on the edge bc what you can end up doing is creating a problem where there isn’t one for people who don’t deserve trouble.
I understand not having the personal and emotional energy to thoroughly investigate why something makes you uncomfortable, and I understand tagging a friend who may have a more relevant perspective and saying “hey, what’s your take on this? something seems off about it to me,”
but at SOME point you have to take personal responsibility for the implications your comments create, and it IS good and RECOMMENDED even to be introspective when something seems wrong and ask yourself “what exactly bothers me about this” so you don’t end up projecting a personal issue onto someone else’s innocent post.
I cannot tell you how many times I have had someone lash out on a post in anger and even hate and when I’ve calmly addressed the issue, they take a step back and say “well, there was actually nothing wrong with your post, but it bothered me because I have a personal history with this topic.”
I once saw someone say about a small-time lingerie artist “hey, wait, are all the models they use adults?? If not, that’s bad!” And it would’ve been bad, of course.. But all the models were adults, and what’s more, the person had absolutely no reason to believe they weren’t. The artist was totally taken aback by why the question even came up. Apparently, the person made a post that ultimately amounted to rumor-fodder that could have destroyed someone’s business, just because.
It’s okay to have unique triggers, to be made uncomfortable by harmless things, to feel uneasy about something that’s not really a problem for anyone else, it’s okay to not have the energy to make a point right now, and it’s okay to ask people you’re following to tag these things, or to ask another person for their opinion on something that seems off,
but it’s Not okay to call someone a villain without facts and evidence, and it’s questionable to make vague statements like “this feels bad but I don’t feel like explaining it someone else can” to cast doubt upon something that you can’t even personally state is worthy of criticism.
2018 is the year to become introspective. Let’s work on it together.
how web 2.0 (and especially tumblr) is ruining fandom
there’s so much to tell about this subject that I might add more to some points on subsequent posts.
everything in the below post is from observation and reading about the experiences of others on web 2.0. please feel free to add anything you feel is necessary.
(socmed = social media in shorthand.)
What even is web 2.0?
Web 1.0: web model where dotcoms generated their own content and presented it to users for free, depending on advertisers for their income. ‘social media’ mostly made up of mailing lists and forums on these content-oriented sites. collapsed because ad revenue wasn’t sufficient to support site maintainance costs.
Web 2.0: web model where dotcoms create a free space for users to generate their own content, depending on advertisers for their income. these sites define social media today. likely to collapse because ad revenue still isn’t sufficient to support site maintainance costs (even after shucking the cost of paying content creators).
(if you want to read more about how ad revenue is the social media Achilles Heel, check this link out: Why Monetizing Social Media Through Advertising Is Doomed To Failure.)
What makes Web 2.0 social media so much worse than web 1.0?
mostly: web 2.0 socmed exacerbates the pre-existing conflict of interest between users and site owners: site owners need ads. Users want to avoid ads.
With web 1.0, users were attracted by site-created content that had to appeal to them: users were the clients and advertisers were the sponsors. (Forum interaction was a side offering. sites dedicated to user interaction were small, scattered, and supported by banner ads.)
Web 2.0 socmed strips users of client status entirely; the content we generate (for free!) and our eyes/eyes we attract to the site are products the site owner sells to the actual site client: advertisers.
early web 2.0 social media sites (livejournal, myspace) used hybridization to pay site costs – users could buy paid accounts or extra blog perks. they also had privacy/limited-spread sharing functions and closed communities, which still ‘exist’ but with limited capabilities on current socmed sites. privacy, it seems, isn’t very profitable.
now web 2.0 is geared towards spreading content as far as possible – and further if you’ll choke up a little cash to grease the algorithms. 😉
–
Web 1.0 had its fair share of problems. Web 2.0 generated new ones:
- following people instead of joining communities based on interests has negative emotional and social implications
- social media sites benefit from knocking down privacy walls. Maximizing content spread and minimizing blocking/blacklisting capabilities benefits advertisers – the true clients of websites.
- social media sites benefit from eroding online anonymity. they track user site interaction, searches, and more to precisely target their ads at your interests (unless you deliberately turn it off). tracking data can endanger anonymity and make doxxing easier.
- social media sites benefit from conflict. Conflict generates user response much more effectively than harmony/peace. More user interaction means more eyes on ads, increasing ad space value.
- social media sites are therefore deincentivized to address abuse reports, increase moderation, improve blacklisting tools, or offer privacy options. and there’s nothing you can do about it because
- there’s nowhere different to go. it’s difficult to compete with existing social media sites as a startup. to draw social media users, a newcomer must offer something bigger, better, and equally free*, and offering any of this on startup capital is … unlikely, at best.
*‘I’d move if they just had privacy features!’ the joke is: any successful socmed site that starts with privacy features will have a hard time keeping them down the road under the present profit model. they will be forced to cater to their advertisers if they want to keep afloat.
–
how does the structure of web 2.0 socmed harm fandom?
in aggregate: it forces fandom[$], a diverse space where people go to indulge niche interests and specific tastes, into overexposure to outsiders and to one another, and exacerbates the situation by removing all semi-private interaction spaces, all moderation tools, all content-limiting tools, and all abuse protection.
The result is that fandom on web 2.0 – tumblr in particular – is overrun with widespread misinformation,
black & white reasoning obliterating nuanced debates, mob rule and shame culture as substitutes for moderation features, fear of dissent and oversensitivity to disagreement, hatedoms and anti- communities, and large/expanding pockets of extremist echo chambers that have no reality check to protect those trapped inside.
to be more specific:
- moderated communities were replaced by following unmoderated tags, directly leading to and encouraging the creation of hate spaces – ‘don’t tag your hate’ leads to negativity-specific tags that could themselves be followed, forming a foundation for anti- communities to develop from
- no privacy, minimal blacklisting options, poor blocking tools, lack of oversight, lack of meaningful consequences for TOS violations = ‘fandom police’/vigilanteism (attempts to assert authority over others without actually having that authority) – some people react to the inability to get away from content that they hate by trying to force that content to stop existing entirely. without actual moderating authority, they accomplish this by social pressure, intimidation, and shame tactics.
- the people-following structure of web 2.0 is fundamentally incompatible with web 2.0 reshare functions and search engines. content posted on a personal blog is rarely intended to stand alone because people who follow the blog presumably see all the blog’s content in an ongoing stream. but reshare functions and search results separate the content from the context in which is was presented, causing misunderstandings and strife. (for site owners, the strife is a feature, not a bug.)
- following people instead of joining communities based on a shared interest creates social stress – following/unfollowing an individual has more social & emotional implications than joining/leaving interest communities
- Unmoderated conflict is polarizing. Web 2.0 specializes in causing unmoderated conflict. – exacerbated by the depersonalizing effect of not being able to see or hear other users, conflict in the unmoderated spaces on web 2.0 social media quickly devolves into extremism and nastiness. web 2.0 socmed structure even eggs the conflict on: people are more likely to interact with content that makes them angry (’someone is wrong on the internet!’ effect), which shares the content with more users, which makes them angry, so they interact (and on, and on).
- The extreme antagonism generated by web 2.0 socmed creates echo chambers – the aggregate effect of unmoderated conflict is that the most extreme and polarizing content gets spread around the most. polarizing content doesn’t tend to convince people to change their minds, but rather entrenches them further in their ideas and undermines the credit of opposing points of view. it also increases sensitivity to dissent and drives people closer to those who share their opinions, creating echo chambers of agreement.
- reacting to content that enrages you increases the chances of encountering it again because algorithms – social media site algorithms are generally designed to bring users more of the content they interact with the most because they want more site interaction to happen. if you interact with posts that make you mad, you’ll get more recs related to content that makes you mad.
- everyone has an opinion to share and everyone’s opinion has to be reshared: reactionary blogging as a group solidarity exercise. when something notable happens and everybody has to share their reaction on social media, the reaction itself becomes an emotional and social experience, sometimes overwhelming and damaging.
- when the reaction is righteous anger that everyone can reaffirm in one another, it creates an addictive emotional high. one way to reproduce it? find more enraging content to be mad about (and web 2.0 is happy to bring it to you).
- It’s easy to spread misinformation (and hard to correct it) – no modern social media site offers ways to edit content and have that edit affect all reshares. Corrections can only reach fractions of the original audience of a misleading viral post.
- web 2.0 social media discourages leaving the site with new content notifications and by lacking tools that keep your ‘place’ on your dash, deincentivizing verification checks before resharing content.
- web 2.0’s viral qualities + misinformation machine + rage as a social bonding experience = shame culture and fear of being ‘next’ (tumblr bonus: no time stamps and everything you post is eternal) – when offending content is spread virally, each individual reaction may have proportion to the original offense, but the combined response is overwhelming and punishing. many people feel the right to have their anger heard and felt by the offender, resulting in a dogpile effect. fear of inciting this kind of widespread negative reaction depresses creativity and the willingness to take risks with shared content or fanworks.
- absolute democracy of information & misinformation plus too much available information leads to uncertainty of who/what is trustworthy and encourages equating feelings to facts – social media doesn’t give content increased spread and weight based on its truthfulness or the credibility of the OP. misinformation is as likely to spread as truth, and the sheer amount of available information – conflicting or not – on the web is overwhelming. when fact-checking, it’s hard to know who to trust, who is twisting the facts, or who is simply looking at the same fact from a different viewpoint. information moves so fast it’s hard to know what ‘fact’ will be debunked by new information tomorrow. People give up; they decide the truth is unknowable, or they go with what ‘feels’ right, out of sheer exhaustion.
- information fatigue caused by web 2.0 makes black & white thinking look attractive – conflict and polarization and partisanship erodes communication to the point that opposing points of view no longer even use language the same way, much less can reach a compromise. the wildly different reference points for looking at the same issue makes it difficult to even know what the middle ground is. from an outside point of view this makes everyone on both sides seem untrustworthy and distances the objective truth from everyone even more.
- it’s easy to radicalize people who are looking for someone or something to trust/are tired of being uncertain – information fatigue leads to people just wanting to be told what to think. who’s good and who’s bad? whose fault is this? and don’t worry – lots of people are ready to jump in and tell you what to think and who to blame.
- everyone is only 2 seconds away from being doxxed: our anonymity on the net is paper-thin thanks to web 2.0 – before facebook encouraged using our real names and the gradual aggregation of most people to a few major socmed sites, anonymity was easier to maintain. now we have long internet histories with consistent usernames and sites that track everything we do to improve ad targeting. anyone with minimal hacking knowledge could doxx the large majority of socmed users.
- and all it takes is one poorly-worded, virally spread tweet to send the whole of twitter after you with pitchforks.
[$] using the vld discourse survey as a reference, fandom is (probably) largely neurodivergent, largely queer/lesbian/gay/bi/pan/not straight, has many non-cis and/or afab members, and around 20% are abuse survivors/victims. fandom is a space we made for ourselves to cater to the interests we have in common with each other but mainstream society doesn’t often acknowledge.
Ridiculous yet effective ways to deal with Executive Dysfunction
Dealing with
executive dysfunction and ADHD becomes so much easier when you stop trying to
do things the way you feel like you should
be able to do them (like everyone else) and start finding ways that
actually work for you, no matter how “silly” or “unnecessary”
they seem.For
years my floor was constantly covered in laundry. Clean laundry got
mixed in with dirty and I had to wash things twice, just making more
work for myself. Now I just have 3 laundry bins: dirty (wash it
later), clean (put it away later), and mystery (figure it out later).
Sure, theoretically I could sort my clothes into dirty or clean as
soon as I take them off and put them away straight
out of the dryer, but
realistically that’s never going to be a sustainable strategy for me.How
many garbage bins do you need in a bedroom? One? WRONG! The correct
answer is one within arms reach at all times. Which for me is three.
Because am I really going to
get up to blow my nose when I’m hyperfocusing? NO. In
allergy season I even have
an empty kleenex box for “used
tissues I can use again.”
Kinda gross? Yeah. But less gross than a
snowy winter landscape of dusty germs on my
desk.I
used to be late all the time
because I couldn’t find my house key. But it costs $2.50 and 3
minutes to copy a key, so now there’s one in my backpack, my purse,
my gym bag, my wallet, my desk, and hanging on my door. Problem
solved.I’m
like a ninja for getting pout the door past reminder notes without noticing. If I really don’t want to forget something, I make a
physical barrier in front of my door. A
sticky note is a lot easier to walk past than a two foot high
cardboard box with my wallet on top of it.Executive dysfunction is always going to cause challenges, but often half the struggle is trying to cope by pretending not to have executive dysfunction, instead of finding actual solutions.
i left cabinet doors open all my life and couldn’t make myself stop leaving them open until i figured out my subconscious just wants to know where everything is at a glance. i put labels on each cabinet door for what was behind the cabinet and after that i was a lot better at closing them.
showers are hard for me because they involve a lot of steps to get in and out. buying cleaning hand wipes helps me stay a lot cleaner and happier when i’m too tired or distracted to make myself be a normal person– they’re faster and involve way less prep time, decision making, and unpleasant physical sensations.
i have disordered eating because, again, getting food is complicated, much less cooking anything. buying 10-12$ of cliff bars at a go and keeping them in my room by my bed gives me a headstart on breakfast and lets me take my meds on time. otherwise i would lie in bed, not taking my meds because i had to eat, and not eating because i was too tired and nauseous from being hungry to get out of bed.
‘just try harder’ is not a solution. figuring out the actual problem and addressing it is the solution.
’normal’ isn’t the goal. you can’t be normal. it’s too late, but you know what, fuck normal. trying to be normal is going to kill you. ‘functional’ is the goal, and you can be functional. you can kick ass at functional. and that’s a lot better.
When I talk about how there is no universal system for Keeping Your Shit Together, and how it’s more important to find a system that works for you, this is exactly the kind of thing I mean.
My keys hang on the door so I literally can’t leave my apartment without touching them. My socks kept getting everywhere when I kept them with my other clothes, so instead I now keep them in a little hutch in the kitchen, where I keep all my shoes. All my silverware is in jars on my kitchen island so I can see clearly when I am out of forks. When I didn’t want to put on my socks to go running, I bought running shoes that didn’t require socks. There are people who would find all of the above unworkable and/or appalling but they don’t have to live my life and I do.
Find what works for you and work it. Doesn’t matter if it’s weird or unusual or not as healthy as some weird ideal which is probably just a marketing tool anyway. If it works, work it.
’normal’ isn’t the goal. you can’t be normal. it’s too late, but you know what, fuck normal. trying to be normal is going to kill you. ‘functional’ is the goal, and you can be functional. you can kick ass at functional. and that’s a lot better.
Reblogging for this bit. It’s okay to be functional.
Someone telling you that you’re using X rhetoric is not the same as someone calling you X.
You can be using the exact same rhetoric that republicans use without being a republican. You can be using that exact same rhetoric while also finding republicans repulsive and disagreeing with what they believe.
You can be using the exact same rhetoric that TERFs use without being a TERF. You can be using that exact same rhetoric while also finding TERFs repulsive and disagreeing with what they believe.
Someone saying that you’re using X rhetoric is saying that you’re using the same talking points that X uses, sometimes word for word or by putting a different twist on it while still remaining true to the same ideology, and that what you’re saying has roots in or is made of the same structure as the belief system that X uses.
Added to this, being part of a group that is targeted by X does not mean that it’s impossible for you to still use the same rhetoric that they do—trans people are capable of using TERF rhetoric, liberals are capable of using conservative rhetoric, so on and so forth. When you’re called out for using X rhetoric, your identity is not a valid defense for why the person calling you out is wrong. No matter what your identity is you’re just as capable as using bigoted rhetoric as anyone else.
it’s also a derailing tactic as old as time. “the things i’m saying aren’t [type of bigoted] because i’m not [type of bigot]!” is an attempt to shift the conversation from what you said/did (something tangible that can be proved and argued) to what you inherently are as a person (something abstract and impossible to verify and not super relevant to the actual effects your actions have on the world)
which is centring the wrong part of the issue and inevitably leads to the absurd scenarios we’re now inundated with where people will genuinely post shit like “sure is sketchy how all these trans men and nb people are probably self-hating lgb+ women” and well-meaning but intellectually lazy allies will eat it up bc hey, op has “TERFs don’t interact” right there on their blog, it must be fine!
most organised communities of bigots know this, by the way. it’s a legitimate tactic for them to slip their poison in by just stripping off the labels and presenting it in a way that will sneak past the key-word filters in ppl’s cognition and plant the ideas in their heads, ready to be tended carefully until they can be harvested. they know that privileged ppl are already inclined to believe narratives that centre them as the most important, most put-upon ppl; they know their real strategy isn’t to convince but to market. nobody wants to eat day-old dead cow, but they’ll eat beef. nobody wants to be a TERF, but they’ll be a gender-materialist.
This is gonna start off sounding weird but stay with me for a second:
We really need to move on from the current performative culture of “no terfs allowed” and “reblog to make a terf angry”
Because that’s not a valuable solution to the underlying problem.
You know what would really bother trans exclusionary/exterminatory radical ‘feminists’? IRRELEVANCE. They’re just like the Alt-Right; their worst enemy is an audience that isn’t receptive to their message of hate and won’t give them a voice to keep spreading it. Instead of giving them a free pass to go back to their echo chambers and prey on young wlw that they can indoctrinate and radicalize into their transphobic cult, make it so that their voices don’t actually reach anyone in the first place. Deny them stable footing to build a platform on.
You know how you do that?
Build an alternative culture of radical acceptance and validation for trans women in women’s spaces and especially wlw safe spaces.
Don’t just toss out a “fuck terfs” every once in a while and think your job is done. If you actually want to be an ally to trans women, BE AN ALLY TO TRANS WOMEN. Make your spaces a safer place for us, and be VOCAL about it. Be consistent, persistent, and insistent on defining us authentically as women and make it obvious that we’re accepted and welcomed as such. And make sure you are boosting the voices of trans women in queer and women’s spaces if there’s any doubt that you don’t have the best information to hand out on trans issues, because misinformation about us is the best weapon terfs have. START DENYING THEM THAT WEAPON BY ACTIVELY PRESENTING A TRUTHFUL NARRATIVE ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE INSTEAD.
This exposes new generations to the reality of trans women’s lives and identities instead of letting terfs pick off and cultivate the vulnerable ones who don’t know any better and using the dismissive nature of performative allyship to convince these young wlw that there’s some gender conspiracy that’s letting men invade women’s spaces.
(Which is obviously insane just on face value. Can you honestly even imagine a cis man having to face the reality of womanhood for an extended period of time? It’d be a trainwreck. The whole basis of their philosophy falls apart in SECONDS when you just represent the lived experiences of trans women in an honest way. No cis man could live a day in a trans woman’s shoes.)
If you don’t have the energy to deal with these people personally, by all means care for yourself by keeping them at a distance. But NEVER believe that slapping a “twerfs can choke” in your bio is by itself enough to deal with the source of the problem, which is terfs preying on vulnerable young wlw by feeding them misinformation about trans women.
If you really want to be an ally to trans women you HAVE to present an alternate narrative of truthful information so these younger generations won’t be swayed by the false narratives that terfs are currently selling them.
Deny them their recruiting grounds by ACCEPTING AND VALIDATING AND WELCOMING TRANS WOMEN IN WOMEN’S AND WLW SAFE SPACES, STAND UP FOR US WHEN YOU CAN, AND NEVER LET TERFS CONTROL THE NARRATIVE ABOUT US. Make their voices irrelevant by exposing them for what they are: predatory radicals that use the same isolation and misinformation tactics as the Far Right to cultivate new generations of twisted, vile rhetoric and a philosophy of violence and hatred.
Don’t just “reblog to make a terf angry”. They take out that anger on US while you remain safe in the ‘terf-free zone’ you want your blogs to be.
Instead build an authentic culture of love and support for trans women and spread visibility for the truth of our womanhood so terfs can’t keep selling their snake oil to new generations of vulnerable young wlw who end up making comics about literally boiling us alive.
Reblog to start building that culture of trans positivity and make the world a safer place for us to live.
Reblog to validate a trans woman.
valid and good replacement reccomendation, but this reads a ton like, “ignore it and itll go away” liberalism. we can do both: value (and validate) trans women, while also trashing transmisogynists!
also i think the “anti-terf posts harm trans women” argument is not valid. buttt,,im too high to make sure, and sorry if i upset anyone.
It’s not about ignoring it until it goes away, it’s about demographics and strategy. I explain better in this version of the post.
tl;dr, performative hostility on tumblr does more harm than good, because a lot of the radfems on tumblr are the very young generation of newer “gender critical” girls who were preyed upon by the older generations that figured out how to market their ideology to modern gender politics.
Being hostile to these literal children, especially when it’s happening within wlw spaces that are otherwise aimed at them (since the easiest targets for terf ideology are young, penis-repulsed lesbians), is actually feeding directly into the narrative that the older terfs are selling them – that ‘men’ have colonized feminist spaces and corrupted them in order to infiltrate women’s spaces and make them less safe for ‘real’ women.
The way to combat this is to make sure all women’s spaces and wlw spaces are explicitly and without exception openly welcoming and inclusive of trans women, and vocal about representing the lived experiences of trans women in an honest way. It’s a lot harder for terfs to sell their bs “trans women are dangerous” narrative when trans women are welcomed in and nothing actually happens, since there are no cases ever of any trans woman causing a problem in those spaces, but the performative hostility culture here on tumblr IS causing a lot of the harm that the terfs warned them about.
This is meant to cut off the recruitment cycle. Instead of alienating these younger girls from their own spaces and pushing them deeper into radfem circles by showing them the hostility that terfs promised them the evil trans women would bring, stop letting them alienate trans women from those spaces and let them see that we aren’t actually a threat.
This isn’t about fighting (older) terfs directly. It’s about being the louder voice of influence and reason in women’s spaces so terfs don’t get to control the narrative and keep corrupting these children with their bigotry.
It won’t fix the problem of older terfs being terrifying monsters who stalk, harass, threaten, doxx, out, and otherwise attempt to disrupt the lives of (to the point of actively putting their lives in immediate danger) trans women.
But it will lessen their influence on younger women and make it harder for their twisted hate cult to grow, which is a hell of a lot more useful than telling children they can choke because a bunch of older radfems taught them to be irrationally scared of an imaginary threat.
For the younger generation of “gender criticals,” a lot of the problem is just not knowing any better because they’ve been told a bunch of lies that made them afraid of trans women. In their eyes they’re just trying to protect themselves from something they’ve been taught to see as a threat. Performative hostility from our allies is proving to them that the threat is real.
Being open and welcoming and accepting of trans women at all times is CRITICAL to proving that the threat was never really there.
And since there’s no science whatsoever to back up any of terfs’ other claims, and an ever-growing body of research validating trans identities, that goes a long way toward destroying terf ideology, which should be the long term goal.
Basically if I could condense all of this into a single, easily digestible TL;DR for everyone to remember it would be this:
We should be focusing on making terf RHETORIC AND IDEOLOGY unwelcome in women’s and wlw spaces, specifically by supporting and welcoming trans women into those spaces, because the current performative hostility that is popular right now is mostly hurting and excluding young queer cis women on a personal level, which is exactly what older terfs warned them about and feeds directly into the recruitment cycle that they use to manipulate and radicalize those young women.
This isn’t about “respectability politics” on the part of trans women as a response to the people who will always irrationally hate us. This is about getting our allies to stop doing more harm than good and be more productive about how they approach the inclusion of trans women, without hurting any young women in the process by alienating them personally from communities and safe spaces that should be there for them.
I'm a defeatist but I don't have to be 