They may also present less passively and will instead: *fly off into angry rages when something mildly irritating happens *refuse to self care and instead force themselves to do everything without complaint *constantly expect others to treat them the same shitty way and cut peole out before it can happen
Join the Legal Fight to Stop an Undercover Policing Inquiry Whitewash by Undercover Policing Inquiry non-police, non-state core participants
Undercover Policing Inquiry non-police, non-state core participantsWe are three victims of undercover policing who have had their lives turned upside down and are demanding justice.
Imagine you are in a five-year relationship with a man you believe you will spend the rest of your life with when he suddenly vanishes into thin air and you discover later he was an undercover police officer spying on you…
Imagine your nearest and dearest was arrested and died as a result of excessive force by the police and that you campaigned for justice – then imagine you discover one of the supporters in your group was a police spy…
These things happened and many other extraordinary stories involving vast sums of tax payers’ money being spent by the state to spy on people exercising their democratic rights.
We are three core participants in the undercover police inquiry. We, like the many others spied on, have had our lives thrown into disarray by the long-term policy of institutional spying employed by police forces around the country.
Our fear is that if it continues in its current trajectory that the Undercover Policing Inquiry will be a whitewash. We have been forced to initiate a legal challenge to the Home Secretary’s decision to refuse to appoint a panel with the skill and diversity required. Our aim is to restore public confidence in the Undercover Policing Inquiry and its ability to get to the truth. Join us by contributing now and sharing this page on social media.
The time for action is now. The urgency is that the legal proceedings to challenge this decision need to be launched by 5 July
Who is bringing the case?
Patricia Armani da Silva, a cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes, the young, innocent Brazilian man, who was gunned down at Stockwell tube station on 22 July 2005 by police officers in a botched surveillance operation after he was wrongly deemed to be one of the fugitives involved in failed bombing attempts the previous day. A family justice campaign was founded by the friends and family of Jean Charles to find out the truth about his death, to bring those responsible to justice and to campaign to end the police ‘shoot to kill’ policy and prevent a similar tragedy happening again. Over the next decade, the family endured the stress of two IPCC complaint investigations, an inquest, a civil claim, a further complaint and two legal challenges in their quest for justice for their loved one. In 2014, they were devastated to learn from Operation Herne that their justice campaign had been spied upon by undercover police. They demand to know why and will not be denied justice again.
‘Jessica’ (a pseudonym) was an, inexperienced, vulnerable 19 year old girl with a love of animals. Her first real sexual relationship was, she believed, with a 24 year old, socially awkward, fellow animal rights activist who shared her values. Last year she found out that he was a 32 year old, married, undercover police officer, tasked by his senior officers to spy on her and her friends. Jessica would never have consented to sex or intimacy if she had known his real identity.. She feels violated and humiliated. She wants to know the truth about his deployment and his relationship with her, particularly whether her clear vulnerability made her easy prey.
John Burke-Monerville’s 19 year old son, Trevor, was held at Stoke Newington police station in 1987 during which time his family believe he was beaten and in consequence suffered brain damage. A Justice for Trevor campaign was mounted, supported by the Hackney Community Defence Association. Trevor and members of his family were thereafter harassed by the police. Tragically, Trevor and his brother were murdered in separate incidents years apart. No one was prosecuted for the murders because, the family believe, of failures in the police investigation. Mr Burke- Monerville has learned that the justice campaign meetings were subject to surveillance by the SDS.
How much are we raising and why?
We need to raise £5,000 to cover the initial stages of the application for this crucial step to challenge the refusal to appoint a diverse panel. If the court grants permission for the case, we will then need to raise a further £50,000 to cover the costs of a full Judicial Review. Any money left will go to support other legal activity surrounding the Inquiry.
We want to properly participate in this Inquiry. We want it to succeed. We want it to be transparent and fair. We feel that we have no option but to issue a legal challenge now
I know these kind of posts can get annoying to some of you but right now this is really serious. My mom has been living with my father for more than 20 years ever since she left her poor situation to live with him. Ever since then she didn’t get a job and the only money she has is this very small heritage from her father that is currently on lock.
My mom has been trying to get a divorce for as long as I’ve been alive but my dad is a lawyer and of course he knows she’s terrified of being alone and poor again. My dad is very manipulative and often use his lawyer friends to scare her by saying she’d end up penniless if she left the house. I know that is not true, but turns out that she doesn’t have money to hire a lawyer of her own. Eventually she gave up.
This is very hard for me to share but two days ago my dad yelled and hit my mom and left a huge mark on her leg. I woke up to his yelling and when i left my room my dad was leaving and my mom was left crying. She is very depressed right now and hardly even leave the room.
She herself asked me to make this post so she could get enough money to hire a lawyer full time. I instructed her to not talk anything about this to my dad and move out to a friends house while getting better instructions from her lawyer. I’m scared that if she stays in she will either get physically abused or give up.
If you can donate, please donate to my paypal @ claudiarguimaraes@ied.edu
So there are a ton of posts out there – especially from some of our favorite BDSM bloggers – that talk about and list red flags. What they are, what to look for, how to spot them, etc. Lists upon lists. I reblog them often! Knowing what red flags to look for can be helpful and can save someone from lots of pain, damage and heartbreak. There are lots of those red flag posts out there.
This is not one of those posts.
This is not about what red flags to look for. This is not a list of things to avoid. This is not a list of warning signs. This is not about how to spot the red flags. This is a post about what to do if you missed the red flags.
Those who pay attention to my more personal posts may be aware that in the last few months I’ve been working with my therapist to deal with the trauma of being raped last October. (And most of you are probably aware it’s been long, hard, and not really felt like it’s going that well.) Anyway, the long and the short of that point is that the man who raped me was someone I’d been dating for a few months and was someone I thought I could trust, someone I thought I was safe with, someone I thought was a good person.
Or, in other words, I missed all of the red flags.
Me. A person who regularly reads, discusses, and reblogs posts about warning signs and things to look for and red flags to avoid. A person who can rattle the red flags off without even thinking about them. A person who can spot these red flags in someone else’s relationships with no problem. I missed them. I missed the red fucking flags. And I paid for it. And I’m still paying for it.
So what the fuck do you do with that?
Well, I’ll tell you. Don’t blame yourself. Seriously – do. not. blame. yourself. Do not beat yourself up. Don’t sit there and think about how stupid you are. Don’t talk about how this is your fault. Do not do that.
Here’s the thing about red flags. When you’re not the one immediately and emotionally involved in the situation – they seem like the most obvious things in the world. They seem so easy to spot. They seem cut and dry and like giant glaring neon warning signs. You literally sit there and read this shit and think to yourself that stuff like that is so obvious and you’re prepared for anything and there’s no way you could ever possibly miss that. (Despite, in my case, ending up in toxic, abusive relationships more than once.) But when you are the one involved in the relationship? It’s so much messier. It’s so much harder to spot. It’s so much easier to get sucked in and caught up and not know how to get yourself out once the red flags start to seem more obvious.
That’s the thing about abusive people. That’s the thing about abusive partners. That’s the thing about dating and being involved with an abusive person. They are really fucking good at this shit. They are manipulative as can be. They are masters of the mindfuck. They have spent years and years practicing this and mastering this and becoming really fucking good at this. They know how to draw you in. They know how to make you care. They know how to trap you and get you in so deep that you feel like you can’t leave. They know how to make you believe their lies and their bullshit and their complete and utter abusive crap. They know. They know.
So my point? It’s not your fault.
If you’re sitting there going back over and over and over your relationship and parsing it and slicing it and studying it and tearing it apart and wondering what you missed and how you didn’t see it and how you could have done this differently… If you’re sitting there blaming yourself? Don’t. Don’t. It is not your fault. It is not your fault. It is so easy to see things in hindsight and to go back over the relationship when you’re not in the moment and caught up in all of it and having to interact with the person abusing you and see all of the things that you missed, and all of the things that were wrong, and all of the things that you should have noticed.
I know how that is. I know how that is. But trust me. It’s not your fault. It. Was. Not. Your. Fault.
So you missed the red flags? I know how that is. I know how that feels. I know the shock waves it sends through your life. And you know what you can do about it? Don’t blame yourself. Seriously, stop it. Stop it! Stop blaming yourself. And then when you’re ready? Talk through it with someone you trust and someone who has your best interests at heart. Look at the things you missed. Set up check-ins for the future so that you can have someone else help you look at situations when you’re in them and help call out red flags.
It sucks to miss the red flags. It will haunt you. I know. It will make you feel like you did something wrong. You didn’t. You’ll feel like an idiot. You’re not. You’ll feel like you deserved it. You didn’t. You’ll think it’s your fault. It is not your fault.
Really, it’s not. It’s not easy to spot these things when you’re living the red flags every single day. You didn’t do anything wrong. So stop blaming yourself.
Over the past 6 years I’ve been in a very abusive relationship. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t stay anymore. My boyfriend has cut me off from most friends and family and I have no one to reach out for help. I don’t know what else to do. Last night was the last straw for me. He beat me and I can’t take it anymore but im afraid. He watches everything I do. I’ve made this tumblr to reach out for help. I don’t really work and I recently found out that I’m pregnant. I know if I can’t give my baby the life they deserve here and I need to leave now. I feel terrible asking for people to just give me money but I have no other option at this point. I just need enough to buy a plane ticket to go to a family member in Honduras. Please. I don’t know where to turn. I’m not good at anything so I have nothing to offer. The ticket is $938 and I just don’t have that. Everything is in my boyfriends name. Please. Anything helps. I need to leave as soon as I can. Someone before suggested I go to the police but I can’t. My visa has expired and because I don’t work or go to school anymore my bf said there would be no reason to renew it because we’re getting married.. that was 3 years ago. I’m undocumented and I’m afraid of something happens to me and my baby no one will come looking for us or care. Please. I know this is a little scattered and all over the place but my mind is all over. I really need help. Please any donations help. Even as little as .50. I’m looking for another nannying or housekeeping job to help pay for the ticket but I haven’t found anything yet. If you can donate or give any info on how I can get the funds please let me know. Thank you to anyone that even reads this.
Here I am, a person with Real Actual PTSD who has been professionally diagnosed for 19 years and got that diagnosis re-confirmed by a different professional 3 years ago, telling you that:
Self-diagnosis is valid.
It doesn’t matter if it was “just” bullying or “just” emotional abuse or “only” mild physical abuse or “not that bad” of an accident or “not that dangerous” of a situation. All of those things can cause PTSD, even if it wasn’t as severe as what other people have gone through.
Your triggers are not stupid or exaggerated or made up.
Your triggers don’t have to cause a full-blown panic attack or flashback to be real.
Your flashbacks don’t have to be vivid visual hallucinations of a past event to be real.
You are not too young to have PTSD. Trauma doesn’t card you. Your age doesn’t make your experience invalid.
You matter.
And as somebody who has been through bullying, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse pretty much nonstop throughout their life and had the police involved many times… You’re not taking anything away from people with “severe” PTSD (there’s no such thing as severe PTSD, every experience is relative and will affect everyone differently). Despite having been diagnosed with PTSD by every professional I’ve ever been to, I still doubt my struggles because I wasn’t beaten every day or I haven’t been to war. It doesn’t matter how “big” or how “small” the thing/things are. You matter.
A huge thank you to all of the people working towards helping these women and increasing awareness. It has been a long time coming, and I hope that many more people are inspired by this example.
violence against people who are in psychiatric institutions is not lesser or somehow more deserved if the people who are in institutions “deserve” to be there or “belong” there
aka people who hear voices and and communicate with angels and demons and God and ufos and who don’t feed or clothe themselves don’t deserve ANY form of abuse even the tiniest, slightest, faintest fraction more than someone who was “really sane” and ended up in an institution “by mistake”
furthermore, the ability to institutionalize and abuse “innocent” people wouldn’t exist if the ability to institutionalize and abuse “actually crazy” people didn’t exist
but my bottom line is being “crazy” does not make you worthy or deserving of abuse in any way
On Facebook I recently claimed that it is commonly said: “We should treat addiction the way we treat other mental disorders.” I strongly suspect this is a prevalent claim among liberals who casually support drug policy reform but who know very little about mental health or societal ableism.
And I have responded: “We should not treat addiction the way we treat other mental disorders– because we already treat other mental disorders very badly. Rather, we should treat addiction, and all other mental disorders, much better than we currently do.”
However, in reply, one of my friends has suggested that maybe very few people actually believe that “We should treat addiction the way we currently treat other mental disorders,” and that nearly everyone who supports drug policy reform also thinks we need to treat all mental disorders much better. She thinks I might be attacking a strawman.
So, who is right? Is “We should treat addiction the way we treat other mental disorders” not a common claim? Are there notlots of liberals who are ignorant of the fact that our society treats all mental disorders horribly?
Speaking as a liberal here: I think a lot of liberals are ignorant of the fact that our society treats mental disorders horribly, but it’s not in a “the way things are is okay” way, it’s in a “I don’t know how things are and I think that things are much better than they currently are.”
Most NT people don’t have experience with the psych system beyond maybe “I have a friend who has depression, she’s on meds and doing a lot better”. They think that IRL psych care is … well, like any other kind of doctor-ing, in an idealised TV kind of way. You go in, people who care about you and want to help talk to you about your mother or the way you feel sad all the time, you cry a lot, they give you meds and everything turns around in a montage of coffee cups and jogging into the sunset. They think abusive psychiatrists are overwrought caricatures made up for ghost stories and that widespread institutional psych abuse hasn’t happened since the ‘50s.
Concrete example: I watch a youtuber who reviews old video games. He recently reviewed a very bad, corny, and ableist game about a psychiatrist gaslighting her patients. One of the main plot points of the game is that the protagonist cannot get rid of this psychiatrist- every time he goes to the agency she works for, they tell him “oh, she can’t be doing this, she’s very experienced, I’m sure she knows what she’s doing”.The youtuber in question laughed this off as being unrealistic. And I kind of cringed, because that is the defining experience of dealing with long-term mental health care.
The liberals you’re talking about are falling into a failure mode, yeah, but it isn’t because they think the current mental health system is adequate; it’s that they think that we have a better system in place than the one that actually exists. They are trying to say “treat addicts like people, with respect and compassion; don’t treat them like criminals”. And they think that mental patients are treated with respect and compassion, because they haven’t seen evidence to the contrary. I think that if they did know, they would not be saying “treat addiction like any other mental illness”.
I nearly drowned when I was 3. My mom had to jump into the pool fully clothed to rescue me. 44 years later, she still complains that I made her ruin her Mickey Mouse watch.
My mom broke my arm when I was 6. She tells a funny story about it. She doesn’t tell the part about when she came to me immediately afterward and complained impatiently, “Stop crying! It doesn’t hurt that bad.”
When I was in my 30′s, a doctor committed malpractice in his treatment of me, resulting in me permanently having less than 50% kidney function. Every single time I mentioned the kidney disease to my mother—panicking about what this would mean for the rest of my life, explicitly asking her for comfort and reassurance—she told me that it was my own fault for trusting the doctor instead of researching everything on my own.
Some people will tell you that nothing is more important than family.
I’m here to tell you that love is more important than family. Loving yourself is more important than family. Finding other people who offer you unconditional love is more important than family.
If your family causes you pain, then there are a hell of a lot of things more important than family.
YOU are more important than family. Always remember that. Always.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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