I saw a post the other day where a disabled person wrote about some sci-fi story where technology had eradicated disabilities. And the OP wrote “So in this utopia, I’m not supposed to exist!?” I couldn’t think of a way to explain to that kind of person that wanting somebody to be able to walk is not the same as wanting that person to stop existing.
It’s more complicated than that.
I’m autistic. Let’s say that, in the future, every disability was erased. Either I would have been aborted, so that my disabled ass wouldn’t have tainted this “utopia”, or I just wouldn’t have been autistic, which mean that I wouldn’t have been “me”.
My autism shapes the person that I am. Without it, I would have no idea what kind of person I would be. It wouldn’t be me. I wouldn’t “exist”, yeah.
Also, you can create a cool sci-fi story with great and helpful technology for disabled people. No need to erase disability and to be ableist.
Unless the story is explicitly about undermining that utopia (apres The Giver), any author that removes disabled people from a story about a “perfect” world or society is showing their biases. A flawless utopia without diversity says a lot about a person.
I think it would be fair to say no current disabilities both exist and are still defined as disabilities, but there’s new disabilities caused by the technology or culture of the future.
For example, if we have the ability to regrow nerve tissue, then no one would have a spinal fracture that leaves them having to use a wheelchair. But what if the ability to regrow nerve tissue comes with side effects that can be disabling?
And then there’s neurodivergences, like autism and ADHD. What if a combination of assistive technologies and social change causes those things to no longer be defined as disabilities, where the parts that directly impact our ability to do stuff – such as executive dysfunction or being non-verbal – are aided with assistive technologies implanted in the brain, and the parts that don’t – such as stimming – are socially accepted and no one has a problem with it? That isn’t the same thing as “autism doesn’t exist” but it might not be considered a thing people care about enough to point out “some people are autistic” any more than we feel the need to say “some people like spicy food” or “some people are introverts”.
I can’t remember if it was fanfic or professionally published, but I recall a Star Trek story where a Cardassian who had been stunned too many times had suffered nerve damage as a result, and had a disability that doesn’t exist in the real world because we don’t have phasers with stun settings. Not that Star Trek has ever pretended to be a world without disabilities – Christopher Pike and Geordi LaForge both come to mind – but there’s obviously less disability in Star Trek than in the real world, because they can fix a lot more problems than we can. In the Marvel universe, they keep giving Charles Xavier back the ability to walk because it doesn’t make any sense that in a universe where new bodies can be cloned for people he should continue to be unable to walk, so as soon as “new clone body” became a plot point they eliminated their ability to keep someone long-term disabled by spine or leg damage. But they have mutants with disabilites caused by the inability to control their powers, such as Cyclops and Rogue, and those can’t be fixed by cloning someone.
I do think it’s sloppy worldbuilding to try to say “there’s literally no disability whatsoever” (including in stories where they kill the disabled, because some people will slip through, particularly neurodivergent people who are good at faking normalcy.) Better to have some disabilities that have been cured, others that have much better treatment or assistive technology than today, and new ones we don’t have.
“Every terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 had been carried out by U.S. citizens or legal residents, not by visa holders or refugees.”
…And nearly all of them have been perpetrated by white men.
Because facts are kind of important if you want an honest conversation. Where motivations were identifiable islam was far and away the primary motivator. And there were nationals from all over the place on the list.
Here’s a link tumblr. I know it’s not fitting squarely in the narrative but it’s time to grow up.
Not to veer off on a tangent, but I like how “Unabomber” is its own category of terrorist motivation.
Imagine if the unabomber happened today and he could just get a blog and not hurt people
The other thing about the word “queer” is that almost everyone I’ve seen opposed to it have been cis, binary gays and lesbians. Not wanting it applied to yourself is fine, but I think people underestimate the appeal of vague, inclusive terminology when they already have language to easily and non-invasively describe themselves.
Saying “I’m gay/lesbian/bi” is pretty simple. Just about everyone knows what you mean, and you quickly establish yourself as a member of a community. Saying “I’m a trans nonbinary bi woman who’s celibate due to dysphoria and possibly on the ace spectrum”… not so much. You’re lucky to find anyone who understands even half of that, and explaining it requires revealing a ton of personal information. The appeal of “queer” is being able to identify yourself without profiling yourself. It’s welcoming and functional terminology to those who do not have the luxury of simplified language and occupy complicated identities. *That’s* why people use it – there are currently not alternatives to express the same sentiment.
It’s not people “oppressing themselves” or naively and irresponsibly using a word with loaded history. It’s easy to dismiss it as bad or unnecessary if you already have the luxury of language to comfortably describe yourself.
There’s another dimension that always, always gets overlooked in contemporary discussions about the word “queer:” class. The last paragraph here reminds me of a old quote: “rich lesbians are ‘sapphic,’ poor lesbians are ‘dykes’.”
The reclaiming of the slur “queer” was an intensely political process, and people who came up during the 90s, or who came up mostly around people who did so, were divided on class and political lines on questions of assimilation into straight capitalist society.
Bourgeois gays and lesbians already had “the luxury of language” to describe themselves – normalized through struggle, thanks to groups like the Gay Liberation Front.
Everyone else, from poor gays and lesbians to bi and trans people and so on, had no such language. These people were the ones for whom social/economic assimilation was not an option.
The only language left, the only word which united this particular underclass, was “queer.” “Queer” came to mean an opposition to assimilation – to straight culture, capitalism, patriarchy, and to upper class gays and lesbians who wanted to throw the rest of us under the bus for a seat at that table – and a solidarity among those marginalized for their sexuality/gender id/presentation.
(Groups which reclaimed “queer,” like Queer Patrol (armed against homophobic violence), (Queers) Bash Back! (action and theory against fascism, homophobia, and transphobia), and Queerbomb (in response to corporate/state co-optation of mainstream Gay Pride), were “ultraleft,” working-class, anti-capitalist, and functioned around solidarity and direct action.)
The contemporary discourse around “queer” as a reclaimed-or-not slur both ignores and reproduces this history. The most marginalized among us, as OP notes, need this language. The ones who have problems with it are, generally, among those who have language – or “community,” or social/economic/political support – of their own.
Oh hey look it’s the story of my growing up.
All of this is true.
Yes.
also, “qpoc” is a thing, like how about we not take away a term that a lot of people of color id with? thanks :))))
It’s the only word I have for what I am, that encompasses both identity and sexuality. It’s literally the only word. I’m not calling myself a “slur”, I’m using literally the only term that works to define me.
I’m not LGBTQ+. I’m not a catchall. I am a very specific thing.
I know there are people who don’t want it applied to them and I try to be considerate of that because I’m not a total asshole, but we CANNOT throw the term away.
when you go from a bad situation into a better one you may collapse exhausted and unsure what to do and full of grief, you may need time to regain the ability to do things as yourself or motivated by anything other than terror, you may need time to process or mourn or fall apart in ways you could not before,
and people may use this as proof that the old situation was better for you, proof that you need to go back, and it is not proof that it was better for you or proof that you need to go back
!!!
It’s so incredibly common to “fall apart” when you’re finally safe. You no longer need to stay so tightly coiled in on yourself, you can finally leave survival mode and process your trauma. You’re not holding yourself up by sheer terror anymore and suddenly the damage that terror has done to you becomes immediate and obvious.
This is so important. Don’t go back. Things are already getting better, even if it doesn’t feel that way.
This is a documented phenomenon with abuse in particular. I’ve had a number of people ask me why they’re falling apart now after they’ve moved into a safer home, or they’re in a less dangerous area, or they’ve left an exploitative job, or they’re in a healthy relationship for the first time. Generally, it’s because they made that positive change.
When we’re still in the midst of crisis, we’re often too overloaded and physically/emotionally unsafe to really feel or process anything. So for most of us, everything gets pushed down/repressed/dissociated until later, when we’re safe and supported. The threshold of safety at which processing begins to occur varies from person to person. And the mental calculations used to determine “safety” usually happen on an unconscious level. Very few of us have the conscious thought “I’m safe now, so I can process what happened to me.” Instead, the subconscious realizes some level of safety has been achieved, and so it just dumps a load of suppressed stuff.
Sometimes, it’s contrast to past experiences that makes us realize something was traumatic at all. In such cases, it’s not that we’ve reached a level of safety and can thus begin to process, it’s that we finally have a basis for comparison to know that what went before was unacceptable.
So I had the strangest dream this weekend and nobody understands me so I need to share it with you because you might. Press J to skip this post if you can’t deal, I will accept this.
In my dream I was standing on the back deck of a rural cabin that overlooked a beautiful Vermont/Scottish Highlands landscape of unspoiled wilderness. It was a crisp, perfect autumn morning. I held a cup of cooling coffee in my hands as I leaned against the railing and scanned the perfect rolling hills in the midground, behind which the great patterned mountains with their snowcaps marched on until they blended with the horizon: #aesthetic
As I gazed at a distant meadow clearing in the trees, a pair of brightly coloured humanoid creatures emerged from the woods and began to dance for each other. It was an esoteric, beautiful mating dance, a strange combination of instinct and choreography. I felt awe washing over me. I marvelled. I felt a deep sense of wonder and peace as I observed this vanishingly rare encounter that I had never thought to observe in person. These animals were instantly recognisable but had never been studied in the wild. I felt incredibly humbled and privileged to witness this behaviour – I knew that I was the first human witness to observe this behaviour – and I reached for my phone, wondering if I should film it, so it could join the scholarly record, where it NEEDED to be. This could change everything. But then I held back – something told me “no,” to let the creatures have their privacy.
Ok, I can’t go any further without telling you that they were Teletubbies.
A red one and a yellow one. I know. I know. Stay with me here.
The cryptids melted back into the woods. My subconscious drew a discreet veil over the rest of their mating ritual, but I knew instinctively that this had been a dance of courtship. I was busy pondering the implications, because they were critical. You see, although the creatures were instantly recognisable as Teletubbies, as I had studied them, even at a distance, I had an incredible realisation.
They were adult Teletubbies.
This realisation dawned on me and in my dream I understood it fully. The ones that we know of – the captive ones that we have seen on television – are juveniles. In fact, they are the equivalent of toddlers. When you see the adults this becomes obvious. The garbled speech and silly movements of the four captive Teletubbies we know are the babbles of babyhood, a private primal toddler-language brewed up between sentient beings who have never encountered an adult of their own kind.
The adult Teletubbies have more branching, complex antlers and shaggy coats. They are less brightly coloured. They are terrifyingly large. Their strangely human faces, emerging from the thick fur, are unquestionably adult; remote, serene, reproachful. Their television screens are glitchy, esoteric and unknowable. They are cryptids whose public exploitation has undermined their rarity and their strange, alien dignity.
In my dream my feelings of awe and peace turned to great sadness at the fate of the captive toddler Teletubbies. I realised that I had to be the scientist who brought this discovery to the world and raised awareness of their plight. And I also questioned: are Teletubbies like axolotls? Do they exhibit neoteny? (Axolotls, the cute aquarium pets with flaring gills, are actually juveniles of an amphibious species – if given the right conditions they’ll grow up into land-dwelling black newts. But they can breed in their aquatic juvenile form, and most spend their whole lives in this form. Deprived of their wild potential, will the Teletubbies ever mature? Or are they merely experiencing a long childhood, natural for a species that is unimaginably long-lived?)
So in my dream my husband came out onto the back deck and I began to share these discoveries with him and before I could even bring up the axolotls he just said “what the fucking fuck” and went away again.
I woke up disgruntled and unable to capture the feeling of peace and sadness. I then tried to explain this to my husband in the waking world, and he said “what the fucking fuck” and walked away before I even got to the explanation of the Teletubbies being toddlers, which just goes to show that you never know someone as well as you think you do.
Anyway I’m sure you guys will join me in this knowledge. And also I’ve googled it and apparently the Teletubbies reboot features infant Teletubbies, so clearly they are getting more from somewhere and the time to question this is NOW
I have a personal theory that how a dream makes you feel is more meaningful than the content.
What I got from your dream was a sense of wonder and privilege (the good kind), followed by the need to bear witness and advocate for the cryptids. Topped off with a disturbingly accurate example of the attitudes you’d face.
(staring nobly into the distance) yes. yes, you understand. you understand.
I’m so sorry but this is what came to mind and so this is what I drew
Holy
Thank you so much for sharing that dream, it was EXACTLY what I needed to stop feeling like shit. Now I, too, am honored by the knowledge of adult teletubbies.
Here’s my take on this lovely cryptid.
WHOA I’m sorry I missed this. this is magnificent. the feet and hands are really spooky. it definitely fills me with the Fear.
They are enthralling, yes, but never stare into their static for too long.
It will draw you in, and show you beautiful, horrible things.
Again. And again. And again….
I have to apologize for saturating everyone’s dash with such a constant stream of Dark Content but I feel like this art has to be Seen
Just a little addition to this majestic post
that’s magnificent, I’m so impressed. I like the uhhhhh freaky legs???
It’s time for another Installment of Family Lore from my wierd-ass childhood!
Story contains: poor childhood decisions, profanity, extremely poor animal handling practices, and a semi-graphic description of an injury. Mind the content warnings, your health comes first. As usual, all names have been changed to protect everyone’s privacy. rest of the story under the cut to avoid a five-mile post.
*
This is the story of the first time I said the word “Fuck” In front of my mother.
When I was a kid, my parents would drive to Ohio from California every other summer of so to visit my Mom’s family, who never figured out that they can escape. Four days is a long ass time to be a small child in the back of an unairconditioned van with a bunch of rotting bananas but it was worth it for being able to more or less run wild through the Ohio woods.
My mother’s family consisted of my grandparents Polly and Bobby, and her younger brother, Bobby. Bobby has a saint of a wife named Stephanie, and three children. My sister was very fond of cousins Samantha and Amanda.
Due to a combination of Ye Olde Misogyny and post-delivery drugs, for about five generations there, the men had been naming all the children, so literally every AMAB person born into the family was named “Robert” and immediately shortened to “Bobby”. Uncle Bobby very nearly did this to his firstborn, wich would have brought the total number of Bobbies to 8 between the miscellaneous cousins and uncles, when Stephanie put her foot down and named him Jonathan Jackson the second she found out what sex he was.
Cousin JonJack is still my favorite cousin- he has a heart big enough to house every creeping and crawling thing on this planet, and a quiet determination to make things right with the world, even if that means doing something completely batshit insane.
We were camping at a place near West Branch State Park, at what is advertised as a “Luxury Campground next to a Private Lake” but is really an RV collection next to a glorified sump. It has the extremely redeeming feature of being smack in the middle of Northeast Ohio’s dense hardwood forest, and since we had parents that grew up in the area and had passed a reasonable amount of scouting knowledge onto us, we were turned lose after breakfast and told to return by dark or if anyone got hurt. This was splendid, as the woods were full of interesting things like nests of day-old rabbits, their hearts visible as they beat against their delicate rib cages, shimmering black rat snakes longer than we were tall, hives of wild bees, intricate in their geometric structure and remarkably patient as long as you didn’t poke them.
The Sump was even better- it had dozens of baby snapping turtles for the catch-and-releasing, catfish twice the size of any cat, a plethora of bugs and worms and crawdads and families of duck and best of all, Arthur, The Swan.
“Get in the godamned ship! Everythings on a cob! The whole planet’s on a cob!”
ok i’m fucking screaming my friend found this on amazon and apparently it’s like a whole niche and
@sommerrev You and Caitlin need all of these for the kitchen
holy shit
I want to collect Foodimals
They’re called “Home Grown” figurines and I used to admire them all the time in whatever stores carried them. You’re all missing some of the very coolest:
So I was told that Human Planet had a segment about pigeons in the Cities episode that I might be interested in and I was honestly so underwhelmed. I haven’t finished the episode so maybe there’s more pigeon stuff but I feel like all I saw was more Birds Of Prey Are The Only Cool And Acceptable Birds and pigeons are Trespassers In Our Urban World Who Shit On Everything And Are Useless On Top Of It. Which isn’t true and I’m so tired of this being framed as some horrible burden that humanity must face. Pigeons are the victims here, not us.
Hate of pigeons didn’t start until the 20th Century. Before that was about 9,900 years of loving them. The rock pigeon was domesticated 10,000 years ago and not only that, we took them freaking everywhere. Pigeons were the first domesticated bird and they were an all-around animal even though they were later bred into more specialised varieties. They were small but had a high feed conversion rate, in other words it didn’t cost a whole lot of money or space to keep and they provided a steady and reliable source of protein as eggs or meat. They home, so you could take them with you and then release them from wherever you were and they’d pretty reliably make their way back. Pigeons are actually among the fastest flyers and they can home over some incredible distances (what fantastic navigators!). They were an incredibly important line of communication for multiple civilisations in human history. You know the first ever Olympics? Pigeons were delivering that news around the Known World at the time. Also, their ability to breed any time of year regardless of temperature or photoperiod? That was us, we did that to them, back when people who couldn’t afford fancier animals could keep a pair or two for meat/eggs.
Rooftop pigeon keeping isn’t new, it’s been around for centuries and is/was important to a whole variety of cultures. Pigeons live with us in cities because we put them there, we made them into city birds. I get that there are problems with bird droppings and there’s implications for too-large flocks. By all means those are things we should look to control, but you don’t need to hate pigeons with every fibre of your being. You don’t need to despise them or brush them off as stupid (they have been intelligence tested extensively as laboratory animals because guess what other setting they’re pretty well-adapted to? LABORATORIES!) because they aren’t stupid. They’re soft intelligent creatures and I don’t have time to list everything I love about pigeons again. You don’t need to aggressively fight them or have a deep desire to kill them at all. It’s so unnecessary, especially if you realise that the majority of reasons pigeons are so ubiquitous is a direct result of human interference.
We haven’t always hated pigeons though, Darwin’s pigeon chapter in The Origin of Species took so much of the spotlight that publishers at the time wanted him to make the book ONLY about pigeons and to hell with the rest because Victorian’s were obsessed with pigeons (as much as I would enjoy a book solely on pigeons, it’s probably best that he didn’t listen).
My point is, for millenia, we loved pigeons. We loved them so much we took them everywhere with us and shaped them into a bird very well adapted for living alongside us.
It’s only been very recently that we decided we hated them, that we decided to blame them for ruining our cities. The language we use to describe pigeons is pretty awful. But it wasn’t always, and I wish we remembered that. I wish we would stop blaming them for being what we made them, what they are, and spent more time actually tackling the problems our cities face.
I just have a lot of feelings about how complex and multidimensional hating pigeons actually is
ALL OF THIS
And also pigeon poop was a very valuable fertilizer before we had other options, people would hire guards to stop thieves from stealing their flock’s poop.
#LovePigeonsAgain2016
Late night, reblogging, so bear with me here…
Thank you for posting much of my thoughts over the past year and a half! I am known by many as “that guy who keeps the raptors”. Yes this is true, I do keep and handle raptors for educational purposes, but what many fail to realize is, I am fascinated with pigeons. My interest with birds began with the obvious, the raptors, corvids, and parrots. Then I discovered pigeons. These wonderful little birds with big attitudes and the incredible ability to thrive among people.
The organization I work with got its first pigeon a little over a year ago. She was a rescue with nowhere else to go. I was quickly drawn to her character and attitude about life.
We rarely handled her, but we did spend time with her.
She grew attached to our volunteers very quickly because their were no other birds she could socialize with in our facility.
We never intended to train her for educational programs. It was a job reserved for our raptors. It was our pigeon who decided she would be a part of what we were doing. One day, when we entered her enclosure to change water and food, she decided to fly to my hand and perch like our raptors do.
No training, no treats, just the reward of being with us.
What we hadn’t noticed for the couple months prior was her watching us. This brilliant little bird had been watching us every day as we trained and worked with our raptors. Finally she decided she didn’t want to be left out any longer. She made her place on our hands.
This occurred several times before we finally put her on a glove and brought her into the public. Needless to say, she was right at home. She fluffed up and preened the entire evening while people gawked and asked us why we had a pigeon on one glove and a hawk on another.
Since then, we’ve added 5 more rescued pigeons to our growing flock. And our pigeon (Tybalt) has become a mainstay ambassador for our programs. Each of our pigeons are incredibly fun to watch and interact with. Pigeons simply don’t get enough love. They are marvelous creatures incredibly suited to life alongside people both physically and mentally.
Raptors my have been my introduction into birds, but pigeons opened my eyes to a new appreciation for them and the fascinating world of bird cognition.
NOT ONLY are pigeons very amazing, worth our respect, and INTERESTING (did you read any of that stuff above?), but they are beautiful too!
Not chickens, but I feel compelled to spread this gospel.
hmmm. this is making me rethink my new york pigeon hate
and, AND, haven’t you ever wondered why city pigeons come in a magnificent rainbow of unusual colors?
Most wild animals all look alike within a species, with TINY, RARE individual variations in terms of rare color morphs, unusually big or small animals, different facial markings and other subtleties. But there is no evolutionary benefit to having species where everyone looks slightly different, and in fact, it’s beneficial for species to be similar and consistent, with a distinctive aesthetic. Especially if you’re trying to blend into the environment – a black wolf is all very well, but it looks positively silly in the summer tundra, where its grey/brown/brindley cousins blend in. A white deer has a great aesthetic – and a very short lifespan in the forest. Distinctive Protagonist looks are rare in the wild, simply because natural selection usually comes down heavily on them.
To humans, most wild animals are visually indistinguishable from each other.
As a result, most wild animals are like
“Oh it’s obvious – you can tell the twins apart because Kara has a big nose.”
Wild animals usually have a pretty consistent aesthetic within their species. It’s important to them!
SO WHAT IS GOING ON WITH PIGEONS?
Look, in one small picture you’ve got a red color morph in the center, several melanistic dark morphs, a few solid black birds, a few variations on the wildtype wing pattern, a PIEBALD, a piebald copper color morph…
Like, there are LAYERS UPON LAYERS of pigeon diversity in most flocks you see. Pure white ones with black wingtips. Solid brown ones with pink iridescent patches. Pale pinkish pigeons.
WHY IS THAT? When other wild animals consider “being slightly fluffier than my brother” to be dangerously distinctive in most circumstances?
BECAUSE CITY PIGEONS AREN’T TRULY WILD.
MANY OF THEM (POSSIBLY MOST OR ALL) ARE FERAL MIXES.
THEY WERE ONCE BELOVED PETS, SPECIAL MESSENGERS, EXQUISITE SHOW-WINNERS, AND PRIZED LIVESTOCK.
THEIR PRETTY COLORS WERE DELIBERATELY INTRODUCED BY HUMANS.
AND NOW THEIR HUMANS DON’T LOVE THEM ANY MORE.
See, pigeon fanciers bred (and still breed!) a huge array of pigeons. And the resulting swarms of released/discarded/escaped/phased out “fancy” pigeons stayed around humans. What else were they going to do? They interbred with wildtype pigeons.
Lots of the pigeons you see in public are feral. They’re not wild animals. They’re citizen animals. They’re genetically engineered. And now that’s what “city” pigeons are.
These “wild” horses are all different colors because they’re actually feral. Mustangs in the American West are the descendants of imported European horses – they’re an invasive domestic species that colonized an ecological niche, but they are domestic animals. Their distinctive patterns were deliberately bred by humans. A few generations of running around on the prairie isn’t going to erase that and turn them back into wildtypes. If you catch an adult mustang and train it for a short period, you can ride it and have it do tricks and make it love you. It’s a domestic animal. You can’t really do that with an adult zebra.
No matter how many generations these dogs stay on the street and interbreed with one another, they won’t turn back into wolves. They can’t. They’re deliberately genetically engineered. If you catch one (even after generations of rough living, even as an adult) you can make it stare at your face, care about your body language, and love you.
City pigeons? Well, you don’t have to like them, but they’re in the same boat. They’re tamed animals, bred on purpose, living in a human community. Their very bodies are marked with their former ownership and allegiance; they cannot really return to what they once were; if you caught one, you could make it love you (in a limited pigeon-y way.) They have gone to “the wild,” but not very far from us, and they’d be happy to come back.
So next time you see a flock of city pigeons, spare a moment to note their diversity. The wing patterns. The pied, mottled and brindled. The color types.
All of it was once meant to please you.
I am now on Team Pigeon. Thank you.
Aww, the pigeon discourse has come home to my dash again! Like a homing pigeon.
LOL NOPE
Europe is racist as fuck. Europe has armed gaurds and high fences on its borders. Europe makes it illegal to rescue refugees at sea. Europe locks up refugee children. Europe has killer cops that shoot teenagers of color. Europe is full of fascist politicians nostalgically fantasizing about ethnic cleansing. Not a day goes by without attacks on Muslims.
Fuck Europe.
Can confirm.
The problem with England (I can’t talk for the rest of Europe) is that our racism and our xenophobia and all our bigoted views manifest in a different way then America, and we use this to claim that it doesn’t exist, even when our country is built on it.
We are taught that the British empire was a good thing, and pretty much no one here knows anything about colionisation and our role in most current world problems.
But the amount of times that I’ve tried to talk about any issue within England and been shut down with the claim “well we’re not as bad as America”.
That’s why the trump protests were so important. We are constantly looking to America to justify our own bigotry. We’ll call America out on their unjust wars, and ignore the fact our own army and government was supporting them.
Listen, I like my country- I like that we have a rich history (not that I support it, but heck, everyone likes learning about the Roman Empire, doesn’t mean they think it’s a good thing), I like that we have countrysides and big diverse towns like London, I like that we love fish and chips and curry sauce, I love our old pubs and traditional pub food, I like that we have the NHS (though I dislike how it’s run), I like our sense of dry gallows humour, I like our film and tv industry, I love our history of theatre, I love our myths and legends.
But god damn are we historically an awful country, and have we ever tried to make reparations? Our actions are still affecting other countries and ruining life. I don’t like the empire, I don’t like what the monarchy stands for, I don’t like our politicians that spew bigotry and hate, I don’t like our press which are like vultures, I don’t like the power the BBC has to cover-up actual sexual abuse and rape, I hate Katie Hopkins and that she has any platform to spew her hate, I hate Brexit and that it was founded on hate, I hate how we think our lives are more valuable than that of refuges or immigrants, I hate that we don’t think that we are directly or indirectly responsible for a lot of the refugees and asylum seekers that exist today, I hate that we have a system that is actively leading to the deaths of disabled people and that even when investigated by the UN and told to change because we were violating human rights we refused, I hate how we support America’s bigotry and then use their country as a shield when accused of our own bigotry.
I hate that we, as a country, are incapable of accepting responsibility and making amends for our terrible actions.
Incredibly well put.
One of the tricky things is that every European country has their own fictional self image which it keeps repeating to convince itself it’s not a bigoted shithole.
In the UK it’s very much focused on being better than the US, being civilized and polite and stylish, while.. ya know… having a lot of blood on its hands and doing all the same racist and bigoted shit everyone else is doing.
In the Netherlands it’s focused on being ‘tolerant’ and gay-friendly and having semi-legal weed, while.. ya know…
having a lot of blood on its hands and doing all the same racist and bigoted shit everyone else is doing.
In Germany it’s focused on having ‘learned from the second world war’ and being ‘better now, while .
. ya know…
having a lot of blood on its hands and doing all the same racist and bigoted shit everyone else is doing.
And so on.. every European country considers itself either an underdog or a pioneer or a peak of civilization or small and quirky and of course they all consider themselves so much better than the US while
doing all the same racist and bigoted shit everyone else is doing.
I still remember exactly how it felt to read about this man being brutally asssulted, HIT ON THE FACE WITH A PLANK OF WOOD, in London, a city I lived next to and visited all the time, simple because he was speaking my native language in public.
I remember breaking down sobbing because of how many people in this country I love hate me so fucking much for being born somewhere else.
IIRC, there was another similar incident on the underground this past April.
So tell me more about the supposed lack of xenophobia and racism in Europe
These sort of things are sometimes best articulated by people who did not grow up here and suddenly experience it all at once. Pretty much every exchange student of color that I’ve spoken to in the Netherlands has recounted an experience to me
that went pretty much like this:
Day 1: “Yay! The Netherlands! Country of tolerance and gay rights!”
Day 2: “Huh, that person was really friendly to me and did like 15 micro-aggression, that was weird”
Day 4: “Waaaaaiiitt… why does this happen constantly? Are people messing with me? Am I imagining this? Do I just misunderstand their culture? The Netherlands can’t be this racist.”
Day 10: “Oh my god, I’m not imagining it, people actually are this racist and they think they’re not! WTF”
Day 12: “Holy crap, if I try to point out a micro-aggression people go from super friendly to hyper aggressive screaming in my face in about 5 seconds. And people I thought I could trust jump to their defense. What is this hellscape?”
Day 13: “Everything I thought I knew about the Netherlands is wrong. This place is so racist.”
Day 14: “Holy crap, is that a primary school teacher in black face?”
Yeah, the European side of tumblr likes to pretend they’re not racist or xenophobic or anti-black, when yall come from countries that let refugees drown at sea or try to ban headscarves.
Both the USA and Europe are built on the oppression of those deemed “other.”
Also, US-based Tumblr-users/activists/bloggers etc have a strong tendency to go “this wouldn’t happen in Europe”, “we should be more like Europe”, “we should copy the European model of healthcare/drugs/prisons/cops/etc”.
Which generally brushes over all the things that are terrible here and makes it very hard for people in Europe to make the oppression they are experiencing heard and acknowledged by an international audience.
Anything American Tumblr says echoes LOUD, so think twice before you pretend it’s all so much better in Europe.
when signing out forms to apply for disability / filling out a form for diagnosis
you’re supposed to fill it out as you on your worst days
like, I filled out forms that said I could do most things usually
like, my doctor added in the conditions like “yeah, they can feed themselves when not stressed” “they can do this when not stressed”
but how I should have filled it out was more like
“some days I can’t feed myself” “some days I can’t leave the house”
My doctor didn’t even know this, but I talked to someone who had worked with people with both developmental and intellectual disabilities for a number of years, and she told me to write down how it is for your bad days
this should be a thing they tell you, but it isn’t
part of the reason I didn’t get my autism diagnosis as soon as I should have is because I filled out forms wrong!
This also goes for filling out forms for disabled parking rights. I’ve been rejected multiple times for a pass cause I didn’t find this out till recently.
Wow
Also you’re generally supposed to fill it out as you are without help.
That throws me too. Because the more help I get, the more capable I get. It’s easy to forget what happens when the help falls away even partially let alone completely.
The medical staff that give me my autism diagnosis apologized because, in the letter they’re writing to help me get my status of disabled worker, they basically have to paint me as “helpless” and “almost unable to function on my own”. They have to amplify everything and basically invent a whole tragic story, otherwise I’ll just get rejected.
I haven’t read it yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to hurt to see me painted in this way.
It’s awful to think that, for just a bit of necessary help, you need to cry and beg and paint yourself as an helpless victim, who can’t do nothing if the righteous able-bodied/NTs in your life aren’t helping you. Sigh…
I am familiar with this post. I came across it for the first time when I was in the process of getting my own autism diagnosis and going on disability pay + disabled worker status.
I am surprised to say that, I didn’t have to act “pitiful”/helpless during this process, or write what I was like on my worst days. I just wrote what it was like for me on most days… 🤔 maybe i was “pitiful” enough then, or maybe I had other things going for me that I can’t think of right now… what do I know.
I do think that perhaps the MDPH (France’s disability office) is actually less strict than what the psychiatrists say.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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