Tag: too often

bittersnurr:

technohumanlation:

emmersdrawberry:

bigbardafree:

the thing about being someone who’s never catcalled is that you start to wonder why like is it because im ugly???

and then you realize that youre judging your worth by whether or not you are objectifiable to a man and thats so fucked up like honestly its so fucked up 

but the worst part about the patriarchy is that it still sits at the back of your mind regardless like “nobody thinks youre pretty because they dont see you as a sex object” like somehow thats a desirable thing and it fucks me up

You’re either public property or completely invisible.

It sucks I related to this and it was finally put into words

Also I feel like it should be pointed out, it’s often not *just* the lack of sexual harassment. It often is combined with women gossiping about how they think you are ugly too. This is important because it’s not just about men, it’s about not being acceptable to women or being the designated “ugly friend”.

If you are a woman or dumped in that label as “close enough” your human worth is directly tied to your appearance. It’s not just men enforcing that. It’s not something you can avoid by sticking to women’s spaces and only being around girls.

Idk I have just had too many woman act like it’s disgusting I have self esteem problems from this but like, it’s not just guys lack of attention, it’s the fact women find me a fun target to beat up on to raise their own self esteem. But people will brush this stuff off as internalized sexism.

We have a major problem in general I think with this expectation this shit shouldn’t bother you because it is stupid. Like you shouldn’t worry about aging, you shouldn’t worry about fitting molds, you shouldn’t worry about how conventionally attractive you are… but rejecting that shit doesn’t make it go away. Society will still enforce it on you and if your self esteem isn’t good enough it will rip you apart. People shouldn’t have to feel guilty for caring about this shit when it has a DIRECT RELATION to how much of a person most people see you as.

One other thing I want to point out: how commonly sexual harassment is treated as only consisting of the “what, you can’t take a compliment?” catcalling variety.

And not so much the “you are such a disgusting freak, and we must loudly go into great detail about this at every opportunity” variations which tend to get thrown at marginalized people more. (Disability, sexuality, gender, you name it.) Which often seems to be far more gender neutral in terms of both targets and who is doing the harassing/assaulting.

Some pretty good discussion of a couple of people’s experiences with this, specifically influenced by disability:

Undesirable: Toxic Romantic Dreams, Disability, Sexuality and Relationships

And prompted by that post: Undesireability and sexual mockery (from autism meetups to high schools)

Instead, I got a series of messages that I was in fact a sexual being, but anything to do with my sexuality was gross and an object of mockery, or, to be used only for really fucked up fetishes for which I could become a fantasy object (but that was much later).

That type of sustained harassment can be brutal, and mess up your head longer term in some slightly different ways. Especially when it is coming from such a variety of your “peers”.

glumshoe:

glumshoe:

glumshoe:

An unfortunate side effect of The Internet being what it is, is that there is no line drawn between the personal and political. Any statement is readily interpreted as a political opinion, and any voiced frustration with one’s personal life that in any way intersects with broader political issues is read as “this person believes that they experience systematic oppression for this”.

@wellofloneliness What I am talking about is when something like “Man, it sucks how no one wants to visit my house because I own a pet python” is instantly interpreted as “Oh, you think you’re oppressed because you own a snake!” Or, if you complain about how you are afraid that high rise jeans are going to go out of style and you won’t be able to find them in stores again, it becomes “Oh, you think you’re oppressed because department stores don’t cater to your 90’s mom preferences?”

Innocuous personal griping gets amplified and skewed into ‘oh this is an expression of your secret problematic beliefs’. I saw it recently on a post where a straight girl mentioned sadly that she gets less desired attention from guys after she cut her hair and people jumped on her for all kinds of stuff she wasn’t actually implying at all. There was no reason to think she had anything against sapphic women, or that she thought that men should hit on butches, or anything like that… but it was taken as a Grand Statement rather than the mild personal struggle it was almost certainly meant as.

image

Oof yeah I’ve seen that before. I think ‘aimless complaining with no real purpose, malice, or political motive’ is a pretty natural human behavior and I’m not sure why people are so reactive to it. Some folks are suggesting this is an American thing, and maybe so. I wonder why that should be.

There’s a related idea that ‘if you complain about it, you must want to do something about it’. If you disliked how someone was rude to you, you must want some kind of retribution, right?

I remember when I made a post about being frustrated at how difficult it is to find well-made manual labor clothes in women’s sizes that are actually meant to be worn for working. People took this to mean that I think that women dressing fashionably in flimsy clothing are like… bad or foolish people, while others were offended that I would complain about an inconvenience rather than Taking Action and learning to sew heavy denim or petitioning companies or whatever.

Edit: Another manifestation of this is "Oh, you don’t like X show? Why – what’s problematic about it?” as if disliking something for trivial, non-ethical/political reasons is unthinkable, which I think leads people to try to force ethical justifications for their not liking things. Which is… honestly really destructive.

zorilleerrant:

archaeologysucks:

fullpraxisnow:

“[T]he interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them,” for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated.” — Paulo Freire

The history we were taught in school has trained us to center the accomplishments and humanity of white people, especially wealthy white men. When the accomplishments of the Other is touched on only briefly in passing, we internalize the idea that such people are less important; that their stories are mildly interesting sidebars at best, and not part of the main arc of History. 

I don’t believe that most teachers do this on purpose, but I do think there are a lot of teachers who fail to examine critically and question the history they themselves were taught, or the curriculum their school uses, which can lead them to unwittingly perpetuate harmful narratives and extremely lopsided history.

Every time you are presented with a historical narrative, or remember a historical “fact” you learned in school, stop and ask yourself, “is that really what happened? How do we know?” Then look up and confirm the information with a reliable source (preferably multiple original eye-witness accounts), if you can. 

If you’re not sure where to start, try googling “factual account of [historical event]” and seeing what websites and book recommendations come up. For books, read the negative reviews, and see what people’s complaints are. If reviewers complain about factual inaccuracy, steer clear. Young adult books are often a good source of basic information, broken down in ways that are easy to understand. 

For Americans, I recommend starting by looking up factually accurate accounts of the Plymouth colony and the first Thanksgiving, since that is one of the most heavily mythologized pieces of American history. The story you think you know is probably the sanitized and simplified children’s picture-book version invented in the 19th century to promote American unity during and after the Civil War. 

  • What do you actually know about what the Pilgrims believed, why they were persecuted in England, and what they hoped to accomplish in the “New World”? 
  • What do you know about the life and background of Squanto (Tisquantum) or William Bradford or Miles Standish? 
  • What did the Pilgrims think about the Indigenous Americans, and vice versa? 
  • What were relations like between the colonists and the natives after the First Thanksgiving? 
  • How and why did the national holiday of Thanksgiving come about?

The true history of the world is sometimes sad, sometimes horrifying, but always fascinating and worth the effort of finding it out.

The way we were educated also tells us to center individuals rather than groups, which is a way of reinforcing capitalist ideals, even though no individual in history existed separate from groups and support structures. This is what allows people to claim they rose to power/prominence from their ‘own hard work’ and causes people who have not risen to power/prominence to be blamed for the fact that they have not. (Regardless of whether they’re capable of it, but especially regardless of whether they want to.)

It also centers Important Events, when it’s important to not that all events had many factors leading up to them and had many impacts beyond whatever people find important to list out. Most historical changes can be traced to a whole slew of events that may be considered ‘more important’ or ‘less important’ for a variety of reasons, and can be used in different ways to create different narratives of how history went. Changes happen over time, not instantly, and won’t just keep going without further input.

Another thing a lot of emphasis is put on is war and revolution. A lot of things have happened in history that don’t involve fighting though, and there’s a lot to learn from histories of farming, social movements, weather and natural disasters, myths and stories, art, or anything else you can think of. War definitely has an impact on society, but so does everything else, and plenty of revolutions happened without any bloodshed at all, or even people noticing any drastic changes, which is probably where house cats come from.

Technology is also an interesting and educational thing to look into, but also something depicted as a) instantly inciting change, b) monotonically increasing, c) universally good with no negative impacts, d) the only/most important marker of an ‘advanced civilization’, and e) whatever will make post-Enlightenment Western culture look like the best and smartest culture in a way that’s unique to them and makes it difficult to prove other cultures had/have cool technology.

So even when ideas about history can be backed up by facts, it’s important to be careful to read between the lines and figure out what story they’re telling, and especially who that story benefits.

bittersnurr:

cyborg-sevalle:

cyborg-sevalle:

cyborg-sevalle:

I’m seriously beginning to think that a lot of people honestly assume that “childhood trauma” is something that only affects children, rather than both children and adults who were traumatized back when they used to be children.

This is the kinda shit that ruins every attempt I make at taking a hiatus, like, I witnessed the galaxy brain take of someone saying, “I can buy people still suffering from childhood trauma when they’re 16, but if you’re in your early 20s, you can only use that as an excuse for so long”, and by “excuse” they literally just meant, like, an excuse for being sad and fucked up by the fact that your parents beat you or something.

Like, imagine sitting a kid down after they’ve been through some horrible, soul-shrivening shit and telling them “Well, you’re 10 now, so you’ve got about 8 years to figure out the many complicated and emotionally draining feelings you’re experiencing right now, cause once that big 18 rolls around, you need to grow the fuck up and get over it!”

And I fucking say this like this isn’t essentially the exact sort of message I was bombarded with as a kid for years until it eventually turned into “You really should be over this by now.” or the more nefarious and to-the-point “I think you might be some kinda fucked up weirdo because you’re so obsessed with your own childhood.”

The worst thing about this is I have NEVER SEEN anyone who had a positive experience with any intervention happening before they were an adult. Like in general if you get sent to therapy or whatever it is often your parents who hire the them, and afaik usually children are abused by their family or people who the family trusts.

The result is, everyone I know who started treatment young are completely unable to trust their perceptions on anything because the “help” they got was basically gaslighting them. This additionally on some level can make you dependent on therapy because you need a check system because you cannot trust yourself.

Child abuse trauma effects the foundation you build your thought processes on and if you have no “before” you can remember, how the fuck are you supposed to get better???

I keep having this memory of when I was in 3rd grade and in math class we had to solve a bunch of problems. I kinda… wrote mine all around the paper and the teacher yelled at me and made me stay through part of lunch so I could write them in rows instead. Or in high school when I did my problems differently than what was taught and didn’t show my work so I got points taken off. I also reverse numbers in my head. (Like 23 becomes 32.) Anyone else have math related suffering? Because oh BOI.

spongebob-autisticquestions:

Oh yes! I tend to work out problems differently than others. I never really understood why some people are against that though. Like as long as we get the right answer, why should there be a problem?

Figure out a way to approach a problem which actually makes sense to you, get penalized. Usually with no explanation other than “that’s not how it’s done in the book!” 😧

(Of course, especially in lower grades, that’s likely the only thing the teacher knows to say about it. Part of the problem, but hey.)

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.

I got extra aggravated at that bit of Amazon strike commentary, as another demonstration of how much more value too often gets placed on using the right words than on actually behaving decently.

Like I said in tags, I learned about this stuff (in age-appropriate ways) before I started school, with another round of mining strikes going on then not far from home. The folks I learned about this from were not that big on rattling on about “powerful acts of class solidarity”, in those terms. They were probably too busy not freaking scabbing.

cordolia:

theysbian:

Unpopular opinion that shouldn’t be unpopular: anti-bullying programs in school that don’t address the root causes of bullying – which are almost invariably larger forms of bigotry and oppression like racism, ableism and homophobia – are completely useless and ultimately futile.

kids get bullied, frequently, because they’re “weird”. but it just so happens that the traits society calls “weird” are overwhelmingly related to poverty, minority religion or ethnicity, neurodivergence, non-straight sexuality, and gender non conformance. 

funny, that.