2, 6, and 11 for the 3 things ask!
aww thank you dear!!
2. 3 movies you have rewatched many times
i am a constant rewatcher of things so i'll give my most recent: glass onion, dnd: honor among thieves, and the laundromat
6. 3 characters that inspire you
i tend to relate to characters deeply more than be inspired by them, but a few who fit this description are:
elizabeth mccord - madam secretary: i was obsessed with this show in middle school and am rewatching now so i can finally finish it, and i just find elizabeth so comforting. she's not saintly by any means, but her dogged faith and morality in the face of often-ugly politics and a crumbling world are reassuring to me. the series is aspirational, and elizabeth inspires me to hold onto my stubborn hope.
justine sokolov - things heard and seen: kind of left field but i LOVE this movie for its reversals of female stereotypes in horror, and i just remember being so floored by justine the first time i saw it because she broke so many scripts i anticipated. she felt so wholly herself, so ungoverned by fear.
bibi garvey - bad sisters: inspires me to be gayer, hotter, and better at archery and murder
11. 3 books that you would recommend everyone to read
station eleven by emily st. john mandel
- oh my god this book. i am not usually a dystopia girlie, but this story of the human spirit sustained by community and art. agh. also just a gorgeous ensemble piece that plays with time and weaves past and present together with elegance and heart. also! scenes set in malaysia!
where'd you go, bernadette by maria semple
- love this as an artist who goes a little insane when art is inaccessible to me, as someone in mother-daughter relationships, as a person on the earth. i first read it in a library cafe in singapore over one afternoon which was especially intense because it broke a years-long reading block. broke my mentor's reading block too!
the bluest eye by toni morrison
- i just finished this book, and it is heavy and imperfect and horrible and true. chicken toni for the soul. helped to quantify some nebulous pains and feels important to understanding the longstanding, layered, generational impacts of racism on a society. our society.
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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When people think women aren’t capable of misogyny I have to laugh because misogyny isn’t men just being creepy and weird and rating women on reddit. It’s not just statistics on violence and crime stories, even though that is a big part of it.
It’s also republican moms and mean girl sisters who encourage competition between women as peak femininity. It’s also women who think having friends is an equivalent to a bravo TV show that includes hair pulling and slut-shaming. It’s also women who tell you certain things make you ugly and “look like a man.” Women who make fun of feminine features in men. It’s women who think the best way to deal with a patriarchal system is by trying to befriend it so they can try to benefit off of it by “not being like other girls” — the way people boil feminism down to the proximity of femininity and masculinity on the internet really bothers me. Some of the worst misogynists I’ve known in my life have been the republican women I’ve grown up around.
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