Omg this kid doesn’t deserve 20 years in prison for protecting his own mother! This is fucking ridiculous. It was definitely a defense. He’s 13 years now, just imagine how traumatized he must be after watching his mother getting sexually abused and brutally beaten by a stranger? I am sure, if the boy was white American he would be carried carefully out of the house and would be given probation. That’s how white privilege works all around the world.
yall really gotta stop believin every story you hear on tumblr. jesus christ.
first, i tried to find the story, the top result being this change.org petition followed by a bunch of stories that were completely unrelated.
well that didnt work, let’s be a little more specific…
…
the one result that was relevant came from a site called wnews.world whose front page looks like a goddamn tabloid had sex with a hipster minimalist web designer.
you can find a link to the related story here, though i recommend against clicking and giving them any kind of attention. CW: death.
finally, i attempted a reverse image search, which didn’t provide anything more helpful beyond twitter accounts retweeting this same exact thing you fuckers fell for.
but i did find another article, which tells a different story.
huh that picture looks familiar….
but wait, what’s this?
a picture of the same kid at a different angle?
and one of him with his mom, also at a different angle?
please stop blindly believing everything you see on the internet. i do it too sometimes and i need a slap in the face when i do. i hope you take this as your slap in the face.
i have nothing but love for you and only want you to be aware about the things you believe in. false stories like this spread like wildfire because they were created just to be shared as many times as possible to make money for the organizations that create them.
Okay I really didn’t want to do this but here goes.
My name is Neil, and in March the UK Government stopped my Disability Living Allowance, They may be switching me over to PIP but that’ll take at least six weeks from today. I have a condition called Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita, which makes doing certain jobs pretty much impossible for me as a way to earn extra money.
Since March I’ve been working as a Tutor and I’ve been doing some freelance writing.
Right now I’m living hand to mouth, I could just about afford rent with my jobs paying out, but at this moment jobs are few and far between. At the moment I have £20 to my name, my phone bill coming out tomorrow that’ll be wiped out.
I usually don’t like to do this but if you can help in some small way I would be so grateful. If you know of anyone who needs a proofreader, or a tutor for Mathematics and Science, please point them my way.
If you can afford some small donation so I don’t get hit with monster bank charges next month and be able to do some small food shop, I’d basically die from the kindness of strangers and I’ll try and make things square when I can.
Thank you for reading this.
@thebibliosphere can you boost this? You have more people than me 🙂
Absolutely, @youthoughtiwasasleepdidntyou do you have a PayPal email you can throw up for us? I’m on mobile and so I apologize if I’m just not seeing it.
The switchover to PIP in the UK is a nightmare. My little brother is still waiting on his, so you have my full empathy for going through the process.
The people that I’ve trusted most in my life have been the people totally aware of their ability to hurt me. They aren’t ashamed that they have it; they just choose not to use it. My foster dad was the only person I fully trusted until I was 25, and he’s a military combat veteran with PTSD. I think a lot of what made him so trustworthy for me was that he was never upset when I was startled or uncomfortable with him; he just factored that into his plans. “I’ll explain it, but to adjust your stance more I’d have to come in and move your legs.” “You can sit on this couch with me, or drag over that chair.” “If you’re okay being around people with guns, you can come to [event], otherwise I’ll see you on Thursday.” And we’re from a social context where some people just DO have those triggers, and you accept that and Don’t Fucking Touch People When They Can’t See You. My own startle reflex is from childhood bullying, but it blends in pretty well with a found-family of military veterans and trauma survivors.
So I mean, there are ways to tone down a startle reflex, which are mostly just “ways to get PTSD treated” but I for one? Chose to actively keep my startle reflex even as I went through other treatments (medication, therapy, EMDR, yoga, etc). I’m generally a pretty passive and gentle person IRL, since I’ve worked to be very soothing and calming to other trauma victims in my work, but that means my boundaries get trampled a lot. If I didn’t have a strong startle reflex, I’d just freeze up when my physical boundaries are infringed on, whereas the startle gives me the energy I need to get physically clear and have a bit of adrenaline going to do something scary like tell them to back off.
So you know, this is me and the choices I’ve made–choices like “not dating anyone until I was 29 and finally found someone 100% okay with my boundaries”–but I’d tell your boyfriend to learn to deal with it? If you were a combat veteran who startled every time he dropped something loud, I bet he’d have a lot more sympathy for you and not make it All About Him. I mean, I get that it sucks to make a gesture of intimacy and connection and have it rebuffed, but the point is: IT’S NOT ABOUT HIM, BECAUSE IF YOU KNEW IT WAS HIM YOU WOULDN’T FLINCH. You say yourself that it’s about being aware that it’s him touching you! It’s knowing, “This is my boyfriend, whom I trust; a serial killer hasn’t wormed his way under my couch and decided to wrap an arm around me.”
So maybe he needs to work on better signalling his presence the way my found family does, like audibly making sounds when he’s coming up behind you (scuffing his feet as he walks, jingling keys, humming or whistling), approaching from within your field of vision before he touches you, or moving from a known area of touch for a new one (so if, say, he’s standing next to you, instead of just throwing an arm around your shoulders, he touches a near part of you with his hand, then slides it across your shoulders, so you’re always aware of what’s happening.)
Maybe HE lives in a world where people can be 100% trustworthy? Maybe he lives in a world where it’s reasonable to be hurt when people don’t automatically interpret everything you do as benign. But I’ve lived with being traumatized for so long, and lived around traumatized people so long, that I’m like, “That sounds like an interesting place, I wonder what colour the sky is there.” Like… you don’t think he’s bad or malign or going to kill you (one PRESUMES), but at the same time, you live in a world where the people you’re socially close to and comfortable around CAN hurt you, and your definition of “trust” is always going to mean choosing to be around them despite knowing they can hurt you. It’s not very possible for you or your body to just un-know that.
And in the end it ABSOLUTELY would not cool or fair if you end up in a situation where HE can show upset and discomfort with your emotional expressions, but YOU cannot show upset and discomfort with his, and his unhappiness is more important than yours, and you’re the one working to silence your discomfort for the good of the relationship but he’s not working to change his behaviour and deal with his emotions to make you happy. He needs to take his sadness over your “not trusting” him and go, “Okay, it’s not me, so now I’m just sad that my girlfriend had these negative experiences, but I will use that sadness to make sure I act in a way that feels safer and more comfortable to her.”
If I didn’t have a strong startle reflex, I’d just freeze up when my physical boundaries are infringed on, whereas the startle gives me the energy I need to get physically clear and have a bit of adrenaline going to do something scary like tell them to back off.
…..huh. My response is generally to freeze up until I can get out of the situation somehow (and I may not even notice that’s what I’m doing until after the fact). I don’t have a typically overactive startle response (usually). Perhaps I should stop letting my brain use that as “see you’re just faking.”
Yeah fear responses are actually tripartate: flight, fight, FREEZE.
@star-anise tends towards the flight-type of startle – jump/flinch AWAY, etc. I … have in fact nearly broken people’s noses because I have the fight-type – “KILL THE THING THAT TOUCHED ME”, and even though I’ve gotten a good handle on it so that I don’t HARM people without at least a split-second’s thought (enough to parse “do I know this person/was it probably a total accident/is killing Allowed here”), the hostility is still. Um. APPARENTLY VERY OBVIOUS.
But a fuck of a lot of people freeze, too. Especially people who’ve learned/been conditioned to know they CAN’T either fight or flee. Like all responses in some situations it can be vital, and in a lot of others is Less Useful.
It’s specifically Less Useful when you’re trying to establish working safe boundaries in situations where people genuinely can’t hit you with a mallet. Which is most of the situations one is in on a normal day to day basis.
Just a reminder that I’m an Adult™ and if that makes you feel uncomfortable feel free to:
unfollow me
ask me to unfollow you
block me
I won’t get mad or anything. It’s important to make sure you feel comfortable and secure.
I don’t understand millennials actually promoting age segregation like this. One of the chief selling points of the Internet for Gen Xers in the 90s was that we could interact freely with adults without being “protected” or put in our place. Your generation actually WANTS to be protected and segregated? I don’t get it.
I don’t quite get it either. Maybe it has to do with NSFW content? Dunno. I’m an older millennial, but I used to follow adults in the 00’s on livejournal and such because their lives were much more interesting than mine was as a high schooler! IRL my friends run the gambit from 19 to 52, so yeah, age segregation seems odd to me. 🤷♀️
Yeah, I can’t get my head around it either. I used to frequent age-diverse forums from the age of about 13, and the age ranges ran between 11-12 to 70+. Everyone interacted pretty equally, it was rare for someone to be singled out for different treatment because of their age, and I’d have been highly annoyed if the older people on the boards had coddled me and treated me ‘like a kid’. I can’t wrap my head around anyone wanting that, wanting to be parented by strangers and presumed incapable of understanding things.
Then again, I never had any problems with predators- possibly because the sites I used were quite anonymous and I never got to know anyone well. Tumblr’s obviously a bit different to that.
People are saying it’s about NSFW content, but not all adults post NSFW, some minors do, and you can check a blog doesn’t post a ton of crap you don’t want to see before following it anyway.
I suppose it might be because some people see following someone as creating a sort of relationship with them? Like, following an adult isn’t just following them, it’s like automatically being their friend, or something. (Yeah, you can tell I have no idea how interpersonal dynamics work on this hellsite, can’t you).
Anyway, confused, don’t understand, why the shift in opinion between generations etc etc.
… If it does matter to you for whatever reason, I’m 23, I don’t mind who follows me, and I don’t post much ‘age restricted’ content anyway. If I follow you and you’re weirded out by my age, I won’t be offended if you ask me to unfollow, because even though I don’t objectively understand why people want age segregation, I don’t expect other people’s triggers and squicks to make objective sense to me.
Yeah, same. When I was a teen I was lying about my age to read the smut.
I think though that part of it could be that the Internet was a lot more passive back then. I lied for access to salacious content posted on static web pages. I didn’t lie to rp or chat with people whose age I didn’t know, who might take advantage of my normal curiosity.
Yeah but even then, I was primarily taken advantage of by people my own age, not the adults.
As someone who probably got more direct abuse as an assumed cishet abled girl in school then I get now, as none of those things, it’s kind of scary kids (and women in general as well) get touted as “safe”. No group is universally safe and if you think you’re in a safe space and aren’t you’ll be in danger.
Agree.
Oh yeah, as a teenager I was much more wary of other teenagers than I was of adults. Mostly because other teenagers made up the vast majority of the “people who want to hurt me” group, whereas most adults I met treated me OK.
Right on cue, I see someone on Twitter kvetch about how Kamala Harris (supposedly) supports prison labor. Uh, citation required?
And also, FUCK YOU. This is not activism.
It just occurred to me that Harris is a former prosecutor and therefore possibly holds positions that aren’t palatable to prison abolitionists. Which, okay, fair enough.
The problem with this kind of purity politics, though, is that it overlooks the NEED we have for liberal, feminist women of color like Harris to serve as prosectors. If we just let all of these positions get filled by the other side we’re setting ourselves up for disaster.
I don’t expect everyone to agree with Harris on everything, or of any other liberal politician. But I do expect people to at least try to understand their full histories and context before condemning them as Not Enough.
Step one: Abolish prisons.
Step two: ????
Step three: Liberation!
Yes, this.
The prison system is colossally fucked… which is exactly why WE NEED A PLAN to reform it. Or to replace it with something else if we abolish it, which will probably happen over a LONG time if it does.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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