Tag: pretty much

autismserenity:

vampireapologist:

I’m really done with the infantilizing of white women, acting like anything they do wrong is because they were somehow “forced” into it by men. In my own life as a white woman, some of the most heinous words and hateful hearts I’ve ever encountered belonged to white women. News Flash: it’s 2017. Barring some bizarrely specific abusive relationship, no man is forcing any white women to vote for racist politicians, to join the KKK, or to call someone the N word on twitter. White women have autonomy, and we are capable of evil all on our own.

But we’re also capable of putting a stop to it in our own ranks and doing good.

So stop making excuses and start making choices about where you want to stand.

it’s not an accident that terf blogs are often walls of White Feminism™ posts infantilizing cis women, and investing heavily in the fantasy that men are all abusers (and only abusers) and women are all victims (and only victims).

bittersnurr:

Also because a post under that just reminded me

Can we in general stop acting like traumatized people are the same as ones with regular generalized anxiety and depression?

Like half the mental illness division on this site is probably because people act like Every Mental Illness is just anxiety/depression to begin with, but with ptsd (also usually bipolar) it is worse because usually it is full on erase the condition in favor of labeling it as depression/anxiety. I appreciate people find it relateable but it kind of sucks for example to see Every Single Post about lapis from SU calling her “depressed” when it is CANONICALLY explained as trauma and not a normal mood disorder which does not present the same way at all. It is far worse when celebrities kill themselves ans bipolar is rewitten as being depressed because you know, suicide. Only depressed people commit suicide despite there iirc, the numbers being worse for bipolar people.

Using these things interchangeably is not helpful and leads to condecending posts about how if you are not currently doing [depression treatment] for your ptsd that the treatment DOES NOT WORK ON you clearly are only interested in wallowing in your feelings and not recovery.

Like this literally makes it harder for us to get treatment, because every time you try the doctor just comes back with treatment for standard depression/anxiety issues. Because same thing right? You just need some pills and to work on those distorted thoughs about experiencing abuse. No need to look into other treatment.

We Can’t Keep Treating Anxiety From Complex Trauma the Same Way We Treat Generalized Anxiety

girlsmoonsandstars:

rapeculturerealities:

I’ve been living with the effects of complex trauma for a long time, but for many years, I didn’t know what it was. Off and on throughout my life, I’ve struggled with what I thought was anxiety and depression. Or rather, In addition to being traumatized, I was anxious and depressed.

Regardless of the difference, no condition should ever be minimized. If you are feeling anxious or depressed, it’s important and urgent to find the right support for you. No one gets a prize for “worst” depression, anxiety, trauma or any other combination of terrible things to deal with, and no one should suffer alone. With that in mind, there is a difference between what someone who has Complex PTSD feels and what someone with generalized anxiety or mild to moderate depression feels.

For someone dealing with complex trauma, the anxiety they feel does not come from some mysterious unknown source or obsessing about what could happen. For many, the anxiety they feel is not rational. General anxiety can often be calmed with grounding techniques and reminders of what is real and true. Mindfulness techniques can help. Even when they feel disconnected, anxious people can often acknowledge they are loved and supported by others.

For those who have experienced trauma, anxiety comes from an automatic physiological response to what has actually, already happened. The brain and body have already lived through “worst case scenario” situations, know what it feels like and are hell-bent on never going back there again. The fight/flight/ freeze response goes into overdrive. It’s like living with a fire alarm that goes off at random intervals 24 hours a day. It is extremely difficult for the rational brain to be convinced “that won’t happen,” because it already knows that it has happened, and it was horrific.

Those living with generalized anxiety often live in fear of the future. Those with complex trauma fear the future because of the past.

The remedy for both anxiety and trauma is to pull one’s awareness back into the present. For a traumatized person who has experienced abuse, there are a variety of factors that make this difficult. First and foremost, a traumatized person must be living in a situation which is 100 percent safe before they can even begin to process the tsunami of anger, grief and despair that has been locked inside of them, causing their hypervigilance and other anxious symptoms. That usually means no one who abused them or enabled abuse in the past can be allowed to take up space in their life. It also means eliminating any other people who mirror the same abusive or enabling patterns.

Unfortunately for many, creating a 100 percent abuser-free environment is not possible, even for those who set up good boundaries and are wary of the signs. That means that being present in the moment for a complex trauma survivor is not fail-proof, especially in a stressful event. They can be triggered into an emotional flashback by anything in their present environment.

It is possible (and likely) that someone suffering from the effects of complex trauma is also feeling anxious and depressed, but there is a difference to the root cause. Many effective strategies that treat anxiety and depression don’t work for trauma survivors. Meditation and mindfulness techniques that make one more aware of their environment sometimes can produce an opposite effect on a trauma survivor.  Trauma survivors often don’t need more awareness. They need to feel safe and secure in spite of what their awareness is telling them.

At the first sign of anxiety or depression, traumatized people will spiral into toxic shame. Depending on the wounding messages they received from their abusers, they will not only feel the effects of anxiety and depression, but also a deep shame for being “defective” or “not good enough.” Many survivors were emotionally and/or physically abandoned, and have a deep rooted knowledge of the fact that they were insufficiently loved. They live with a constant reminder that their brains and bodies were deprived of a basic human right. Even present-day situations where they are receiving love from a safe person can trigger the awareness and subsequent grief of knowing how unloved they were by comparison.

Anxiety and depression are considered commonplace, but I suspect many of those who consider themselves anxious or depressed are actually experiencing the fallout of trauma. Most therapists are not well trained to handle trauma, especially the complex kind that stems from prolonged exposure to abuse. Unless they are specially certified, they might have had a few hours in graduate school on Cluster B personality disorders, and even fewer hours on helping their survivors. Many survivors of complex trauma are often misdiagnosed as having borderline personality disorder (BPD) or bipolar disorder. Anyone who has sought treatment for generalized anxiety or depression owes themselves a deeper look at whether trauma plays a role.

first of all how dare you

We Can’t Keep Treating Anxiety From Complex Trauma the Same Way We Treat Generalized Anxiety

“folx” is used because of the Nazis and white nationalists ruining “folk” because they decided to use it as a fucking dogwhistle.

lenyberry:

fierceawakening:

prudencepaccard:

fierceawakening:

prudencepaccard:

thiswaycomessomethingwicked:

lenyberry:

fierceawakening:

Ah, okay. I never knew that, actually.

So why did we let them do that? Why not just keep using it the NORMAL way and then yelling at any racist assholes who try to talk to us thinking we’re dogwhistling at them?

My understanding is that “Folx,” in the last few years, has been used by people in queer spaces to include those who do not identity within the gender binary and has nothing whatsoever to do with Nazis and dog whistling?  

yeah that sounds about right

Wait, how is “folks” gendered?

They weren’t using “folx” with an X to contrast with “folks.” The actual history of the spelling is still somewhat unclear here, but it still makes more sense for it to have started in that context

But why would you need a new spelling to be more inclusive if the old spelling didn’t exclude anyone?

I’m… on the “baffled” train with Fierce, here. I see no sense in it. 

I mean, I always thought it was just a cutesy meme spelling or something. Like “smol”. 

t3trahedron:

clatterbane:

theroguefeminist:

madbanshee:

optometrictzedek:

skyholdherbalist:

optometrictzedek:

tumblr is massively wrong about the Amazon strike and there are a few key people trying to get the right information out and y’all are too focused on sticking it to Amazon to bother getting it right. @brainstatic started noticing yesterday that the dates people were posting were funky and @janothar started posting that even the Spanish strike isn’t starting on the 10th and yet y’all are still spreading this like it’s fact. I honestly have not seen a damn thing about the strike literally ANYWHERE but tumbr so I decided to use our good friend google and here’s what I’ve found.

On July 10, 2018, Reuters reported that the Spanish workers will participate in a 3 day strike starting on July 16. NOT July 10. The strike is also, according to this article, NOT across all of Spain or all of the EU but only at ONE location – the San Fernando warehouse. It is already the second walk out this warehouse is doing this year, but y’all weren’t even aware of the first one and now are misrepresenting this one. EuroWeekly News stated the same thing as Reuters.

As of this morning (July 11, 2018)), the Independent is reporting that activists are asking consumers not to participate in Prime Day sales to support striking workers. Not asking for a week-long boycott, just a boycott of Prime Day. The Independent also confirms Reuters’ reports that the strike is ONLY 1000 Spanish workers – it does not start on the 10th and it is not an international strike. 

There are a handful of other sites reporting that the strike started on the 10th and that other EU countries are participating; however, as @brainstatic pointed out already, these all link back to the same .info site that is not reliable and is not backed by reliable news sources (unlike Reuters, which is a reliable news source). The .info site is also only a CALL to strike – it is NOT a statement of that anywhere other than Spain is striking. The Observer article that links to the .info site above also literally uses tumblr’s “the boycott starts on the 10th” as a source for the boycott starting on the 10th… meaning that TUMBLR started those rumors, not the Observer article, and there is no reliable source for the boycott starting on the 10th other than the fact that y’all made that shit up and some online news source picked it up and ran with it. You can’t use an article that sites you as the source as a source for your bullshit. Got it?

If you want to support the striking workers, know when they are striking and what they want from you. Know what the actual activists involved are calling for. Know when and where the strike is taking place. As of right now, the strike is ONLY in Spain, it is 3 days long starting on the 16th, and it is ONLY focused around Prime Day. It did not start yesterday on the 10th. It is primarily about raising wages and other similar issues in Spanish factories, which are unionized already. It is not about people dying in American Amazon factories. Having half-assed, half-researched boycotts here and there that do not correspond to the strikes and are not well coordinated is not going to make a point. Having an organized, well-informed, large movement is what gets your point across. So stop what you’ve been doing and do this right. Boycott Prime Day and stop spreading misinformation.

Correct information is good, but all of this is slacktivism unless you actually do something about it.  Is it really going to affect the Spanish strike if some tumblr users start boycotting Amazon yesterday as opposed to waiting until the 16th??  Will it harm “the movement” or dilute the point?  No.

It’s almost like there are more issues at play here than Spanish union wages, huh imagine that

y’all are too focused on sticking it to Amazon to bother getting it right

you’ve got to be kidding me

Uh oh, the tone police showed up because I wanted to correct misinformation and point out that being a well organized force with correct info is better than being a disorganized mess of people who don’t actually know what’s going on

I mean yes, we should have the right info and we should be spreading that, but I have to agree that it’s not like it’s a BAD thing for people outside of Spain to boycott Amazon and not only do it on the specified days. Yes, we should focus on supporting the strike itself. But I can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, Amazon and its subsidiaries being boycotted internationally and for a long time surrounding the strikes is… not a bad thing? Spread the correct info, by all means, but don’t get mad at people for boycotting internationally and on the “wrong” days we well as the right ones. Hell, I don’t use Amazon AT ALL unless absolutely necessary anyway, I don’t wait for specific days to avoid it.

OP is wrong. Check out this post to a link that German Amazon workers have been striking at SIX different locations. There are actual pictures from the strike so…not tumblr rumors.  And  [Edit: OK I’M WRONG! FAIL! The strike in Germany was last year! I should have checked the source more closely!] Even if the strike was originally only announced in Spain and the workers are only asking we don’t buy things on Prime Day…so what? At least one other country Amazon workers are striking. There have been calls on social media to strike internationally. So boycott some extra days. Boycott them for the rest of the week. There has been sufficient media coverage so that Amazon knows why we are boycotting. How this is ineffective is beyond me. While it might be true that there aren’t other organized strikes beyond Germany and Spain (that we have confirmed as of yet) that does not mean there hasn’t been an international call that is spreading. So let’s keep up the momentum.

I think it’s good that you corrected the misinformation, but it’s not tone-policing to point out that your method of doing so has the potential to have a “depressive” effect on social media activism and momentum. There are ways to correct misinformation without urging people to stop taking action or spreading the word.

(The German strike was from last year, but otherwise mostly agreed.)

Yeah. I think it’s super important to clear up misinformation, so thanks OP (and apologies to my followers for the previous bad information), but I also don’t think the right answer is ‘so everybody start buying from Amazon again until The Right Days are upon us’. Amazon is a shitty company that does shitty things internationally, they deserve to be boycotted permanently.

I’m not an expert on this, so I genuinely don’t know if it’s ‘better’ for a large number of people to boycott on one clearly signified day then return to buying, or a medium number of people to boycott for a longer period of time/permanently, but potentially not be as clear as to the reasons why they’re doing so. I can see both sides of the argument (mitigated completely if the latter group ensure Amazon knows why they’ve stopped shopping there, but still), but that doesn’t mean either is wrong, or that one or the other is somehow harmful to the movement.

madgastronomer:

pervocracy:

Why do people want to live in the sad little world where STEM is the only thing worth doing, anyway?  Is your ideal society a battleship with no windows because seeing outside is a needless luxury?  Is your personal mascot a worker ant?  Do you read 1984 and sigh wistfully, then throw the book away in rage because reading fiction is not Productive and writers are not Productive People?

or are you big ‘ol hypocrites who actually enjoy the fruits of art and design and liberal arts every day, but you just don’t want to admit it because then you won’t feel special for knowing how to slap together three lines of javascript

Y’know… very, very few of the people actually in STEM that I know are like this. Most of the people I’ve met who are like this do, like, office work or something, and just idolize STEM. But also frequently are not in favor of giving grants to STEM projects.

loribrio:

theblackelf:

I think we need to shelve the concept of whether or not someone’s nice to people and instead make judgements on how exclusive someone is or isn’t with kindness.

I remember that one post that went around showing an old film of Hitler chatting casually, kindly with a young girl, and the polarized responses tended to be in relation to how footage and narratives of “But look, the monster has a soft side” serve to humanize and normalize really, really bad people. Corrupt and murderous politicians constantly use baby-kissing narratives of their down-home chumminess- often to children- to offset any judgments about them being a bad person, and I’d like to say they should be entirely irrelevant. Not just because that’s a cheap emotional appeal but because I strongly believe we need to understand that niceness is neutral to symptomatic and not at all ‘good’ on its own.

The issue here, while I have other things to say about niceness, is that it shouldn’t matter that the monstrous person is *gasp!* seen doing a nice thing, because the issue should never have been that anyone believed they were 100% evil all the time. The issue is how big or little their sphere of niceness is.

Of course The Bad Person is nice to someone. But whatever warmth they’re showing is simply exemplary of how many people they see as like them. As human.

If the only time the person in question shows kindness is to people superficially just like them then their sphere of humanity is too fucking small. They see more people as ‘other’ than ‘like them’ and THAT is the issue.

Every bearer of poisonous idealogy has someone they like, someone they reward for being like them or suiting their ideals. The issue is how many other people in the world they don’t think are fucking human, or worth recognition and support.

For me the issue has always been is that no one is all good or bad, and we must judge individual behaviors or patterns, rather than trying to lump people into “monster” or “good person” categories. Because, really, that’s what we do a lot of the time. The neighbor of the serial killer says “oh, but he seemed so nice. Do you really think he did it?” as though if one seems nice then nothing bad can coexist in them. Alternately, pedophiles are often left to roam in families because “he’s so nice and helpful, and I know he loves the kids a lot.” This idea than one cannot be a perpetrator if they are capable of human affection is dangerous. It lets people off the hook because they say “look, this person does a good thing,” or “look, I do this good thing, I’m not as bad as this person/group. I’m a *good* *person*” as though this idea of the “good person” means that everything you do is now good and acceptable and should be free from repercussions. 

Alternately, this concept allows us as a society to subject people to monstrous and unjust punishments when we do have proof they did something monstrous, because now they’re a *monster*, and we dehumanize them, and put them away in prisons for decades and refuse to hire them and take away all their rights and murder them, because we see no possible good in them. 

We all do shitty things. We all deserve consequences for them. Some of us do inhumanely destructively deviantly shitty things. We still deserve appropriate consequences. There aren’t monsters and angels, there are people who do monstrous things and people who do sacred things, and often times people who do both.