#This is a space to talk about cultural impact and the individual impact this has on other victims

[sophieinwonderland]

The problem isn’t plurality. The problem is the language around DID from plural communities and even the DID community. People who have DID but are in denial may take much longer to accept the diagnosis and work to better understand themselves because they may not be able to relate to how it’s spoken about in online spaces. Particularly people who do not feel comfortable viewing themselves as multiple identities in one. Although that is the most popular representation in both media and online spaces, more often than not that isn’t actually the lived experience. You just don’t see that representation as much because people with it are much less likely to talk about it due to the shame they have around it. Shame is often a major component of surviving trauma. Shame and dissociation go hand in hand. Nuance and awareness are both so important in these types of conversations. It’s sort of similar to how in the autistic community there’s a major lack of representation from nonverbal autistics, despite them making up at least 25% of the total community. The lack of representation doesn’t mean we can pretend to lack awareness of their existence.

I know you don’t believe you’re causing any harm but I’m sorry to say that you are. Which isn’t to say that no harm isn’t also being done to you. It’s just not such a black and white matter. I’m not speaking on behalf of anti-endos. I agree- it’s stupid to hate on a group of people for how they identify. I’m speaking on behalf of highly traumatized individuals who may be looking for answers and wind up getting lost and more confused.

I’m sorry if my intentions with messaging got lost in translation at all. I have a learning disability that affects my ability to process and organize language.

Thanks for the clarification, and sorry for misunderstanding your earlier post.

So let's address this.

Is this a problem?

A problem with this whole topic is, first, that I think we need to see some statistics.

And preferably recent statistics because I think identity has changed a lot in the last 40 years. Maybe there's a silent majority of people with DID who don't view themselves as multiple identities/people offline and are getting spoken over. But I would want to see evidence of that.

Even if some studies from the 80s or 90s showed that most people with DID didn't view themselves as separate people/identities, the advent of the internet age and ability to find community with others with DID likely impacted the culture around the disorder.

Even if this is the case...

Is this our problem?

End of the day, I'm a tulpa identifying as a tulpa. It seems kind of silly to me to think someone with DID would see me, a tulpa who is also plural, decide that because I'm a plural tulpa and people with DID are plural and they don't relate to me, that they can't have DID.

There are a lot of leaps there and most don't make much sense.

And all while the presentations you say are harmful are just as common in anti-endo spaces. Seriously, look at DID TikTok. Almost all anti-endo, and all presenting the way you say is a problem. And with much larger influence than myself.

So this issue, if it is an issue, isn't because of the inclusive plural community, and would clearly exist without it.

I don't think the plural label has anything to do with it.

Community Comparisons:

One of the main mantras you'll find in the plural community is that if you feel plural, you probably are plural. Every system is valid, no matter how distinct your headmates feel. Terms like "median system" were coined to denote systems who feel in between multiple and singlet, and still fall under the plural umbrella.

Meanwhile, the DID community is rife with fakeclaiming and gatekeeping of anyone who doesn't meet whatever arbitrary criteria armchair psychologists made up. All while, again, exhibiting the same types of traits you point to the plural community for. (And yes, you do say "even the DID community" does that. I just think you're underselling it a bit.)

Hard Truth: There will always be DID systems who won't relate to presentations of DID

DID, while having core traits in the way that there will be other agents or parts that can takeover, and there will be some sort of amnesia (under the DSM) is incredibly diverse in presentation.

Kluft wrote a paper outlining about 20 common presentations of DID he identified back in the 90s.

And it can only be assumed that more presentations have been identified since.

The reality is that not every presentation will be represented. Not everyone will be able to relate to every single person with their disorder. And there are going to be some people with rarer, or at least less popular presentations online or in pop culture, who are going to feel underrepresented.

Personally, I think starting from a place of "if you feel plural, you're plural" is going to benefit far more DID systems than it would harm, giving them space to explore their connections with their headmates regardless of how similar or how distinct those headmates feel.

It doesn't matter if they're people, parts, facets, voices or whatever else they decide to identify them as.

There are a lot of things that we don't relate to the majority of other plurals about. But I think the solution is to normalize being able to identify with something without necessarily having to relate to every experience under the umbrella.

#syscourse #pro endogenic #pro endo #plural #plurality #multiplicity #sysblr #system #systems

[insteading]

As someone who’s done bereavement care for almost 20 years, I’ve observed again and again and again that it is not staying with grief that cuts us off from other people, it’s suffocating grief and suppressing grief. It’s impossible to repress grief without also repressing all sorts of other things like joy and memory. Actually, expressing grief naturally connects us empathetically to other people. It is not an accident that right now when there is such a profound suppression of global grief, we’re also finding ourselves in a moment of such isolation.

Rabbi Elliot Kukla, in them magazine

I sought out this piece because Rabbi Kukla was quoted in today's sermon in reference to the ongoing genocide in Gaza ("It is lifesaving to mourn our humanity in inhumane times").

But this paragraph about grief hit me so hard I wanted to single it out to share. It is relevant to corporate grief of the sort we might experience when a state is doing harm in our name (police brutality, displacement, execution). It is also relevant to individual griefs.

In the bereavement calls I do for hospice, I have noticed, this is precisely what gets people stuck in grief: the feeling that there is no safe space and time to express grief. Companies tend to give very little accommodation for bereavement, if they give any at all. Culturally we're expected to get over losses in a matter of days. But grief rewires us, and some losses-- particularly losses like war, displacement, and police brutality where a state or institution does the same kind of harm repeatedly-- are complex and ongoing.

Grief impacts sleeping, eating, executive function. (I don't ask people in bereavement calls, "How are you doing?" I ask, "How are you sleeping?" "How's your appetite?" Maybe "Are there moments from your caregiving, or from your [loved one's] dying, that keep coming up for you?" Because of course you're not fine! You just lost someone essential to you. What I want to know is, is your body getting a chance to repair itself as your mind and heart process what you've experienced?)

People have talked to me after a loss about feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by daily life. It's not unlike recovering from a major injury and having a sizable portion of your bandwidth given over at all times to the tasks of bone, muscle, and nerve repair that are not under your conscious control. When tasks you're used to thinking of as having one part suddenly make it clear how complex they are? Cooking a meal takes more out of you. Doing a load of laundry takes more out of you. If you're already an introvert, the cost of social engagement goes up, at a time when social engagement might actually be very helpful.

Doing some of our grief work with other trusted people shares the load. It recovers some bandwidth. But many folks learn early in the grieving process that they have fewer trusted people than they thought. Or that it feels like the wrong time to deepen an acquaintanceship they'd hoped might become a friendship. Or that they aren't as comfortable asking loved ones for help as they thought they would be.

And the bereavement model I'm trained in assumes that a grieving person has experienced one recent loss. We know that a recent loss might poke us in the tender spots left by earlier losses. But that's still different from the experience of a tragedy that affects a whole community at once (as in an entire region's population losing multiple loved ones in a very short time and being forced to flee).

I don't really have a conclusion here, but I'm finding the activism that feels most healing and hope-filled to me has lament built into it: a chance to name the people who've died in our county's jail, while advocating for better communication with families of people inside. A chance to call out the names of people lost to covid while advocating for policies that will mitigate risk to vulnerable people.

Maybe it takes days to name all the people impacted by ongoing genocides in Congo, Palestine, Yemen, while urging our government to end its role in those genocides. Maybe our systems and structures, which aren't even good at honoring our grief for members of the nuclear family we're taught is our primary world, are disinclined to give us that time. Maybe we ought to take it anyway.

#this is not about my favorite silly little pirate show #except insofar as ofmd touches on grief / and actions to preserve the show acknowledge the grief we feel losing something meaningful #grief is the shape our love takes when we lose someone or something we love #and we should be able to name that person or thing #i'm never going to stop being mad at managers / well-meaning acquaintances who tell my clients 'it's been a while; you should move on' #seriously fuck all the way off with that; whoever hurt you / don't pass that hurt on #a person who is grieving is a person who has the capacity for love and care / and that capacity ought to be nurtured #because it's the basis of mutual aid / support / positive action / and a whole host of other things we need more of #anyway: strive to be a person who is safe to grieve around #and strive to be a person who is not too cool to care about anyone or anything #and if you wind up in any kind of position of influence or authority someday? make your environment more supportive to people in grief #grief care #community trauma

[drdemonprince]

Hi Devon,

this might not be a question you can answer, or maybe it is! idk. this is about covid & alike

for context on myself, i’m a white gendrfucky trans guy who’s also autistic & an immigrant (so some cultural context is probably lacking)

as we know, we’re in a 2nd highest surge & the pandemic never stopped and it increasingly dangerous and disabling to so many

i wear my kn95 everywhere i go now, and while i tried last semester, it was a lot easier to abandon masking because of

1. others’ around me negligence

2. some classrooms being IMPOSSIBLY hot and close to unbearable with a respirator on

3. attending crowded events where people needed to hear me

i’ve reevaluated and am rebuilding my practices now, but what i’m finding really difficult is to get people i have in my life to wear a mask again

i feel so lost. i share the informational posts, i talk to my people, i offer masks- what else is there to do?? i know the exhaustion i feel is absolutely incomparable to what disabled and immunocompromised people feel, especially when they’ve done the work for years!

i just don’t understand how i’m supposed to keep moving through life. i mean ofc i’ll keep doing what i’m already doing but it’s so incredibly isolating to be the only person masked in a meeting of 20,30,50 people.

i don’t know how to make people care. i don’t know how to have conversations with my friends in a way that will let our relationship evolve with this new understanding of care. i don’t know how to not polarize people into defensiveness when i talk about the powers wreaking atrocities in falasteen being the same ones shortening an isolation period to 1 day.

i don’t know how to be eloquent enough to be listened to and firm enough where people take what i say seriously. i don’t know how to not start screaming WEAR A MASK anytime it’s a crowded (or even not crowded) meeting indoors with no air filtration.

idk how people don’t realize the “cold” they’ve had for 3 weeks is either covid or direct aftermath of it. idk how they stand for seemingly the right things and then come to work sick & unmasked.

i don’t know how to engage with most people in a meaningful way & find connections because the delusion, the “it won’t happen to me”, the “i don’t care if i catch it and die”, the “this is just the way it is” seems to be a wall made of unbreakable cement and i don’t know what will melt it.

i feel insane for having compassion towards the world and seeing how it can be better. i feel insane for being angry people don’t mask & downplay this issue. i feel insane for even trying to talk sense into people.

i’ve recently been called a lying phony by an account that talks about masking bc a lot of my recent pictures show my face without a mask. i archived the posts since, apologized and reflected. but a lot of pictures i take are in my own room so i am unmasked. idk

i feel like the gap between me and most people i know is growing wider by the minute and with every reading i do about interdependent revolutionary practices, etc.

i know that when one understands something, it is their responsibility to make an impact on their bubble of the world and transform it with their knowledge. but i doubt i’m the only one doing the reading and knowing what’s going on, i just seem to be the only one masking.

i don’t know. i’m sorry it’s such a long ask & i’m sure you have your own stuff you’re dealing with. i just don’t know who else to ask that might understand. i’m sure there are people around me who might but so many are in survival mode and i currently don’t know anyone with the capacity to hold space for this.

i guess it’s bold to assume you do.

anyway, i hope your day goes alright today<3

You are placing wayyy too much responsibility upon yourself as one compassionate and informed individual here, and expecting far too much perfection of yourself in ways that do not help you and do not help the cause. You've done a lot to unpack the terrible individualism that has led to anti-mask sentiment being so rampant, but you are in a way still applying that logic to yourself and your situation by imagining that if you, one humble person with limited power were able to be adequately persuasive, you'd somehow change the actions of thousands. That is not how behavior change works.

Persuasion almost never happens logically or instantly, almost never through one person's remarks. Behavior is shaped by a vast array of economic, sociological, emotional, and ideological factors.

It's also not helpful in my opinion to worry about the opinion of someone who would shame you for not wearing a mask at home alone in your bedroom, either. Obsessing over the optics of our actions and wanting all people to morally approve of us at all times is yet another consequence of individualism and Puritanism. as you well know as someone who masks in a crowd of maskless people, sometimes we gotta do what we know is right and disregard others' opinions.

What you can do, in my opinion, is this: keep masking. Your behavior reminds people of the need for masks and models socially responsible behavior. Bring spare masks with you. Offer them to your family and friends and the people standing near you in public. If they refuse, and you have a good relationship with the person where they have shown they respect you and listen to you, then you can tell them why masking around you is important to you. You cannot change the opinion of someone who has never shown you any respect so don't expect that to ever work.

Even if you do have a good relationship with someone, persuasion is a long, hard process. Do not expect yourself to change their mind. If you can get some people to mask at least around you, that is a victory. Perfection is an unrealistic goal here to expect of yourself, and for public health in general. Any improvement you can inspire is a victory. Even if it's just making one or two friends mask more often when they are with you. That still lessens risk. That still sends a visible signal to everyone around you. You have no idea of the impact you truly have on other people in the long term. It is both more modest and far larger and longer-reaching than you as an individual will ever know.

Please be easy on yourself. You are just a person. An average person with very limited power. So is everyone else for the most part. When you stop burdening yourself with the unrealistic responsibility of changing thousands of people's behavior, you will feel less resentful toward others as well. When we resent other people it always means we are doing too much.

And when you feel less overwhelmed and overburdened, you will be more effective in the conversations you do have with people about COVID too. People do not respond well to (what they perceive to be) guilt or intensity or someone presuming to know better than them. What people do respond to well is to be asked genuine questions, listened to, validated in their feelings, given help where they are facing barriers to action, and being treated with compassionate gentleness.

But to do that you have to work on believing that people who are flawed in their response to COVID have reasons for doing so that make sense to them, and that they aren't all foolish and lacking in compassion. As my friend @kim-from-kansas says, people do not do things that do not make sense. If a person's actions do not make sense to you, it is because you are missing a piece of their context. The sad fact is people have many reasons to think that masking doesn't work or is hopeless. People have been very heavily propagandized and trauma also makes many people value life less.

Convincing people to take COVID more seriously is a tall, tall order, but if you wish to do so, you will need to be more than correct. You will have to put real work into not making people feel judged, and you will have to make peace with not always (or even usually) succeeding. It sucks but that's how it is. Best of luck!!

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

I know when you have suffered it can be hard to hear judgment on a group you belong to. Because it can often feel like a massive attack. Even if it’s not something you have done.

But I’m actually so tired of both irl and online wlw spaces. So unbelievably tired. It’s getting very clique like and hostile.

Bisexual women NEED to listen to lesbians when we talk about our experiences without shutting us down or trying to throw in a tidbit about bisexuality, even if what we are talking about is in relation to bisexuality.

Lesbians NEED to listen to bisexual women when they talk about their experiences without shutting them down or trying to through in a tidbit about lesbianism, even if it’s in relation to our sexuality.

We need to stop having a blanket state of vilification towards one another.

Yes, some bisexual women have caused some lesbians lots of pain. Yes, some lesbians have caused some bisexual women a lot of pain. Yes, we both deserve our own groups sometimes to talk about issues that uniquely pertain to us. Yes, we can still have collective spaces as well. Both statements can be true.

Yes, homophobia and its individual impact on us and how it’s impacts us in the way our sexualities are seen throughout society is going to make things difficult at times. Some things might be said that make you feel prickly, or misunderstood or angry. Those aren’t inherently bad emotions. It’s just how we handle them that matters.

A lesbian woman who has been too scared to accept her sexuality is going to have a different experience to a lesbian who hasn’t struggled with that as much. A bisexual woman who came out as a teenager is going to have a different experience to a bisexual woman who accepted herself as a middle aged woman. A woman who is dating a woman is going to have a different experience to one who isn’t. And that’s all going to change too based on culture and age and country and interests.

It’s hard. It’s isolating. It’s frustrating. That’s okay. If we move in good faith, if we apologise when we misstep , and take the time and space to just LISTEN , I really think these spaces could be a lot more helpful and less hostile.

[waitmyturtles]

Be My Favorite: I’m All Caught Up!

So two nights ago, I kind of lost it, HAPPILY, in a binge of Be My Favorite -- I’m here to report that I’m all caught up, I’m VERY SEATED for the ongoing episodes, and hopefully I can get it together to do episodic meta from here on out. 

First off, I’d like to say, publicly, that I had written multiple times in previous posts that I would NOT be watching BMF after having watched SOTUS, SOTUS S, and Our Skyy x SOTUS for my Old GMMTV Challenge. I thought Krist Perawat’s acting in SOTUS, etc., was awful, especially compared to what Singto Prachaya was delivering. While Our Skyy x SOTUS was markedly better than the two full series, Krist wiping his mouth after the airport kiss still gave cringe, and I was like, peace out, cub scout, hope you never do another BL again.

I RECANT. Clearly, much has improved by way of Krist’s acting skill -- and, likely, by way of how GMMTV workshops their actors and scripts before filming a BL. (And I REALLY want to thank @rocketturtle4​ here for going very hard in the paint for Arthit and tagging me in your post, because your SOTUS meta absolutely had me thinking about Krist’s acting again. That piece was part of the inspiration and urge that led me to pick up BMF. Thank you! Good things happen when you clown, friend!)

(As well, I want to note that while Krist’s reputation regarding homophobia has not, by way of general public judgment, been fully redeemed, that I think recent discourse surrounding the early days of the pressures of shipper culture and how his comments were received is very interesting to peruse -- especially for me, as I develop a MUCH sharper eye towards the toxic, negative impacts of shipper culture. This amazing dialogue between @absolutebl​ and @thelblproject​ has been EXTREMELY helpful to me in setting that history and context for me.)

So, with all that said:

Be My Favorite is a FABULOUS SHOW. The writing is SHARP, the acting is GREAT, and the chemistry between Krist and Gawin Caskey is SUPERB. 

Catching up to episode 7, I want to review what I’m seeing as the major themes of the series, ones that I’m seriously enjoying:

1) As I noted in my Monday night liveblogs, this show is structured in part around the inspiration of a few old yt dudes philosophers and physicists regarding time, space, truth, and relative existence. We gots Nietzsche, Einstein, Orwell, and -- gah, the Thai writer of the book that Max was reading early in the series about Thai social hierarchy, and I cannot find the post that explains that book (if someone has the link for that post, please send, and I’ll edit it in here). (EDITED TO ADD: thank you to @grapejuicegay​ for sending me the link! The book Max was reading was The Face of Thai Feudalism, and here’s a wiki link for the book). Otherwise, receipts!

Just to recap what I wrote in underslept franticness on Monday night: the first of the old dudes to enter the ring of this series is Einstein, regarding time travel. I mentioned that I am a huge fan of Jack Finney’s Time and Again -- I loved that book in high school. It’s a fantasy about how the American government uses Einstein’s work on weight and light to understand the dimensional aspects of time, the present, the past, and the future, and how multiple existences may be present -- if you can create a pathway into them. 

I don’t know at all if BMF is talking to Time and Again, per se, but it IS talking to Einstein and relativity, along with Nietzsche and what’s referenced in the slide above -- Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (and, yooo: here’s the text! Read it! Everyone: READ MORE NIETZSCHE! Let’s meditate on power together when we have the time, eeee!)

I really want someone with a Ph.D to not allow me to say this, but let me offer a blasé summary of the text to say: what’s essentially being said in the dialogue between Einstein and Nietzsche is that truth is relative to the moment in time in which truth is being sought, and to the individual to whom the truth may have meaning. Truth is relative to the beholder of that person that is seeking truth. 

In other words: what, exactly, is the truth that Kawi is seeking? 

2) @respectthepetty​ (here) and @lurkingshan​ (here) are writing excellent meta on the dislikability of Kawi, and how this search for his “truth” is fucking him the hell up. First: I TOTALLY AGREE. This dude wants to spin that damn ball to find out if his life gets “better.”

And what we’re seeing is that he’s slowly relaxing the parameters of what “better” means. What “better” HAD meant to him, early on, was that he’d be in love with Pear, and that his dad would be alive. In episode 7′s rock star world, we see neither of those things happening; in fact, in none of his presumed worlds do we see that happening. 

Besides Kawi’s dislikability, which I’ll get back to in a second, I just want to say:

Him jumping to world after world is SO important to this story, and I really like that this series isn’t trying to hone in on ONE world being THE RIGHT WORLD, because -- Nietzsche, Einstein, and Orwell aren’t necessarily the guys you want on the bench arguing in favor of a ONE RIGHT WORLD perspective. They’re the dudes who are like -- bend some light here (Einstein), throw in a linguistical concept there (Nietzsche), and add some questionable politics and power control issues (Orwell), and, well, you got some messy worlds there, my friends.

In other worlds: this show is set, per episode, in the world in which Kawi is existing at that moment. It has relativity to his other worlds -- because he’s an anchor in all these worlds -- but not one specific present moment is his absolute truth. YOW.

3) Sooooo, where does that get us? It gets us to episode 7, an episode that really moved us...“forward” (??) (ha) in this series. In that, Kawi changed enough in his initial state at the start of the series to create a new future for himself that was vastly different than the ones in which Pisaeng was going to marry Pear.

What I am loving about this series is that by being anchored by the influence of the philosophers, in part, that we get to see a lot more light into Kawi and Pisaeng. Pisaeng, as we now know, was pressured by his mother to stay in the closet at a young age (cc @brazilian-whalien52 and @respectthepetty on the linked post!). 

What is your truth if you’re in the closet for so long?

In episode 7, Pisaeng has disappeared from the lives of his friends and Kawi for months. We don’t exactly know why at this point. But we get a hint at the very end of the episode -- that he is ultimately spending his time, possibly in multiple worlds, being patient for Kawi to come around to Pisaeng’s love. 

Early in the series, as well, Kawi notes to Pisaeng that Pisaeng wasn’t being honest to Pear about not having feelings for Pear. I think this extrapolation has already happened in previous posts, but I’m not finding them at the moment, so let me give flowers to everyone who has said: that Pisaeng’s internal reality is also a world, a present, that Kawi doesn’t necessarily share by way of absolute reality -- in that, what Kawi demands of Pisaeng early on is relative revelation for the sake of the people around him. And how will Pisaeng’s truth affect others? How will it affect Kawi, how will it affect his mom? How does it affect Pear?

All of that is relative truth that each individual, involved in these circles, must translate AND accept and digest in their own individual, micro-level perceptions. Pisaeng’s own truth BECOMES a kind of truth that is slightly different for each person that’s receiving it. 

4) And the same for Kawi. Except, we’re seeing it develop differently for Kawi. I think we have known, up until the end of episode 7, what “better” meant for Kawi, as I wrote previously -- Pear, his dad’s health, etc.

But I think we’re going to see a change in Kawi now (hopefully). We’re seeing that Pisaeng keeps returning to Kawi, in almost all the worlds, as Kawi improves himself and checks himself against his “present.” Surely, what we want to see in a BL is Kawi warming up to Pisaeng’s affections. The fact that time travel is the modality by which Kawi will experience that change -- vis à vis some VERY fascinating perspectives on what “truth” really means -- is FABULOUS.

It’s unique, because -- I think -- in the story of Pisaeng, do we see a macro commentary on the reality of being queer in majority cishet societies that may view queerness as dangerous or something to be kept secret, as Pisaeng’s mom indicates. 

To keep one’s queerness in the closet -- FOR THE SAKE OF SOMEONE ELSE, damn it -- isn’t that a violation of one’s own truth? And one’s own reality?

5) And, final point (for now) (ha) is: a theme that’s been running through my head on this series is how both Kawi and Pisaeng CHALLENGE EACH OTHER TO CHANGE themselves. Maybe even... for “the better.”

Previously to all of this time travel stuff -- neither of them experienced external pressure to change their worldviews. Pisaeng was going to marry Pear as a closeted queer individual. Kawi was going to live out his life friendless and companion-less.

Instead, THROUGH the time travel, and through their growth in all of these different worlds -- BOTH of them have been forced to change.

I really like this lesson. One can become complacent. As Theory of Love so deftly demonstrated: behavioral change is really hard. But it might be a little less hard if you have a companion, a friend, maybe even a lover, going through similar changes as well.

Kawi is still dislikable, I think, because he’s not aware of either HOW or WHY he’s changing. But he’s changing, alright. He doesn’t have the context, yet, as to why this might be good for him.

Maybe the crystal ball will tell him that?

OR, MAYBE: he’ll come to realize that contentment in the present is ultimately what will give him the most happiness. As Pear said to Kawi during her wedding in episode 7:

“But as we grew older, lived our lives, and continued to make mistakes, we’d have to accept that this was the farthest that we could achieve.”

What Pear is saying here is: you can stop striving sometimes, Kawi. If you can just -- BE -- and accept that life is not PERFECT -- then your future WILL just BE the result of THAT work THAT YOU DO NOW, THAT WILL CONTAIN MISTAKES.

What I hope to see in the future episodes of this series is Kawi recognizing that that work is what will be his revelation, and his ultimate truth for himself -- the truth that makes him the most happy and fulfilled.

We’ll see. I haven’t even gotten into all the subtle references to Krist’s past that this script holds, but @lurkingshan​​ is holding that down in her meta (yay, Shan!).

I am in LOVE with this show, and am SUPER EXCITED to join y’all in watching it! I am VERY IMPRESSED with GMMTV taking another chance on Krist in a BL, and Gawin was a perfect choice as an onscreen partner.

(CCing a few friends who were holding me down during my Monday liveblog, here ya go, some meta for ya -- THANKS FOR YOUR PREVIOUS FEEDBACK, FRIENDS! @dribs-and-drabbles​​, @grapejuicegay​​, @rocketturtle4​​, @chickenstrangers​​, @lurkingshan​​) 

P.S. I FORGOT TO ADD:

GAWIN. CASKEY. DAMN. CAN THE HOMEY ACT, OR CAN HE ACT? He is SO GOOD IN THIS, MY GAWD! Their CHEMISTRY! MEEP!

#be my favorite #be my favorite meta #krist perawat #gawin caskey #kristgawin #kawi x pisaeng #pisaeng x kawi

[huntunderironskies]

A Call to Action

Hi all.

I wish I had better news to give. I thought long and hard about whether or not I should share this because I will be functionally doxxing myself when I do. But I've had several days to sleep on it and think about what to do. I've come to the conclusion that this is more important than me. This will be a long post but I urge you to read all of it. I'm afraid I have to be thorough here given the situation.

I think everyone who has been following me for more than a week knows how much I love religious studies as a field. It is my single greatest passion in life.

Unfortunately my school, UNC Greensboro, is trying to eliminate our department under claims of it being "not financially justifiable," among others (including anthropology and all Korean language classes.) These claims are highly spurious. Debunking this in full will take some time but I'll try to cover as much ground as I can in the relatively short space I am given and provide some sources. If anyone needs further elaboration, I'll report to the best of my abilities.

This is all to lead into the fact that I would like to provide some opportunities for people to help us out over here, which I will cover at the end. The shortest possible version is: please signal boost this. I do urge you to read it in full, though.

With the first introduction out of the way...

A Second But Very Brief Introduction to Religious Studies and a Justification of Its Presence in Academia (Given the Natural Bent of this Site is Sometimes Towards Antitheism)

Feel free to skip this if you have any familiarity with religious studies as a discipline, I'm putting it here because I find that it's often confounded with theology and every time I talk about it someone asks me if I'm going to be a priest (no.)

To be clear, religious studies is not theology. It does not purport the existence of any higher spiritual powers or presences. It is strictly the study of religion and spirituality as a force in human culture. This falls under both negative and positive effects, and covers everything from historical impact to individual psychology to macrosociological effects of religion to the simple understanding and study of mythology and folklore.

While internalized cultural norms are of course an issue that must be overcome by any scholar, for a religious studies scholar the Catholic Worker, the Sikh ragi, and the long-dead Sumerian ašipu should all have their beliefs and inner lives treated with the exact same sort of gravity and understanding, no matter how far their own beliefs might be from our own. It is, in my subjective opinion, the most humanizing of all the humanities because we are forced to operate on a deeply personal, vulnerable level.

I wish I didn't have to explain why these sorts of skills are important, especially given the current climate of intolerance that has been growing across the world and the growth of anti-intellectualism. I recognize that I might have to but I don't want to linger on that given everything else I have to cover in this post. Go ahead and ask as I do love talking about my field but I might take some time to answer.

A Brief Summary of Events Beforehand

My school has hired a firm known as rpk Group (lack of capitalization true to actual title) to restructure school funding financially with a focus on eliminating programs deemed to not earn enough for the school. Here is a brief explanation from the source itself. I apologize if the school website's CSS is still broken and it's difficult to read due to the social media icons being about thirty times the size they should be. Apparently they couldn't find the funding to pay a web designer instead of an expensive financing firm.

Those of you who have kept up with news in American academia may recognize this as the same group that forced cuts at West Virginia University. Please keep that in mind as we go forward.

Here are the high points:

Religious studies attained a passing grade under the rubric set out by the school. There have been active attempts to hide the scoring system from anyone but faculty. The spreadsheet in which the data was published has been password protected (source, which also contains several other refutations to the chancellor's talking points.)

For those who wish to keep score, anthropology did as well and our anthropology program is known for being quite good. This is without going into the other benefits the anthropology program provides the school with, which include such things as a community garden.

There were lower scoring programs that were kept. In other words, the decision-making process has been entirely inscrutable.

This is supported by the fact that the administration has been giving out incorrect numbers regarding program attendance to both news outlets and students, with some programs proposed to be cut having their student enrollment off by several factors.

Religious studies had over five times as many students as was originally reported. The Chinese language minor was reported to have zero students when there were thirty-six. To operate with this level of error from alleged professionals beggars belief and undermines any faith I would've had in this process.

The administration has claimed that they used the correct numbers in their rubrics. As they will not publish further data to myself nor the public, I have no evidence this is actually true.

They were going to cut Korean language as a minor. We don't have a Korean language minor. We do have a track of Korean language and I am given to understand as of this semester, culture courses. Which are operated solely by one professor and are consistently full or close to capacity due to popularity. There is no evidence they are losing the school money and I have several testimonials that the Korean culture-related programs have drawn students to UNCG as it is a unique niche the school gives not just over other UNC schools but over other colleges and universities.

Faculty and students were given information about what programs would be cut at precisely the same time, through an email sent schoolwide. Many students and faculty were in class at the time this was sent and had to proceed as if they weren't about to have their programs eliminated.

The administration alleges that current students will be able to finish their degrees. I have little faith this is the case for reasons that will take a while to get into but, to summarize as briefly as possible, completion of a degree here requires certain high-level classes that may be difficult to obtain with faculty cuts.

The chancellor alleges that Jewish Studies and Islamic Studies will not be affected by the elimination of religious studies, despite the fact that they are hosted under the department and Islamic Studies uses the same funding. As such, I believe that the highly technical and academic category used to refer to this sort of thing is "a blatant lie."

The administration has tried to quietly edit out any errors in original reporting. I am pleased to report that, as many of us intensely online people know, the Wayback Machine exists. Here is the original statistically incorrect press release that was given, which they have tried to bury.

While they have held forums, these have largely been ceremonial gestures rather than serious attempts at communication. At the one I went to, all non-administration speakers were given only two minutes to speak while the chancellor and dean were given as much time as possible to respond. Their responses to concerns were often dismissive and rarely addressed the necessary issues. I believe any person present will back me up on this, though I am not currently in possession of a voice recording.

I must operate within the evidence I am given. The best-faith interpretation of their actions is that the metrics they were using to determine what cuts should be made are incorrect and must be re-done before going through with any sort of program cuts, and that the administration's collaboration process with the group they employed is poor to nonexistent given the scattershot information provided. There is very, very clearly a communications breakdown somewhere along the line that raises this entire procedure into question.

I think it goes without saying it's all downhill from there. The level of arbitrariness with regards to cuts, lack of professionalism, and total lack of transparency would lead a reasonable person to believe there are heavy political motivations involved here and not simple brute facts. You are welcome to draw your own conclusions anywhere along this spectrum, of course. I encourage you to be skeptical.

Lastly, if I can't convince you that it's worth stopping this process to save religious studies, think about the anthropology department. Think about the languages that are getting cut. Think about physics or mathematics. A large-scale public university without a physics program is quite frankly unreal and the fact it's primarily humanities being targeted runs parallel with some sinister trends within American education. This process should, at the very least, be halted for time being.

What You (the Reader) Can Do

Firstly, be aware that we have until February 1st before decisions are finalized. I apologize for the short time limit. Myself and other members of the community were taken completely by surprise as well, and once again as I mentioned above it has caused some level of cynicism around the motivations of the administration.

With that out of the way...make noise about this. The school administration is making all efforts to keep this quiet. I can say the good news is that according to other people on the ground, they are beginning to lose control of their narrative that they are making difficult financial decisions to keep the school financially solvent.

Believe it or not, the farther removed you are, the better. If this hits a national scale then the school may be finally forced to acknowledge they are rapidly causing the otherwise prestigious UNC system, typically considered to be one of the best public university systems in the US, to be a national laughingstock and that they will lose money as their reputation declines in a way that they would not have if they'd simply carried out this process in a more reasonable way.

You can sign our petitions here and here. Easy enough, takes about three minutes, self-explanatory.

Finally, reach out to an academic or any passionate learner in a specialized field today. A lot of us feel understandably threatened and demoralized. Again, this is not just about me or even about my school. This is about trends within the American education system. Explaining the hows and whys in full detail is not within the scope of this post, but I think a reasonable person can conclude after looking at the current evidence that there is a dismantling of American schools in favor of a corporatized existence. For those of us who love knowledge and learning, this is incredibly sinister. Knowledge should not have a price tag put on it.

A Final Word

I and several other people have Chancellor Gilliam on record saying that he has dedicated his life to working at the collegiate level and towards students. While he and the administration have tried to ensure that their statements outside of highly controlled environments are not easily accessible, I should be able to provide a clip if needed given that this statement was livestreamed and North Carolina is a one-party-consent state in regards to recordings.

They have consistently characterized this process as having to make hard decisions to keep the university afloat. The chancellor is currently the highest-paid employee within UNCG itself and the fourth highest-paid member of administration within the UNC system as a whole (source.) Please be aware this does not include other benefits, which in 2022 put his salary above $500,000 (source.) As others have, I must ask why these "difficult decisions" within the school have not included a salary cut for himself if he is so dedicated to improving the lives of students.

Thank you for your time and consideration. If you've gotten this far, you've already listened more than anyone outside of the academic departments have and that means a lot to me in and of itself.

#religious studies #mythology #college #studyblr #college life #university #north carolina #theology #religion #unc #tagging in as much stuff as i can think of lol #anything is worth a shot at this point #academia

[granulesofsand]

System Accountability, Again

🗝️🏷️ RAMCOA, syscourse

My opinion has not changed since last time this was up for debate; system accountability relies on the system being seen as one whole, and we do not use that model.

There are pieces of decency that I extend as a person, but I won’t pick up any more than that because I share a body with others.

Some things I will do, as a person:

Try to mediate: if I care about the outsider or the insider involved, I do my best to deescalate and resolve. I am the only one who gets to decide whether or not to put myself at risk. If any of the participants are dangerous to me, I don’t give a rat’s ass what is morally correct — I am allowed to maintain my own safety, even if my giving it up would be detrimental for the situation.

Educate: either the insider about why their behavior was inappropriate/unhealthy or the outsider about why this behavior is appropriate/helpful. Still refuse to be forced into the role; it’s a decency thing, and I’m not respecting the personhood of an outsider over my own. We are both important, and we don’t have to coexist if one of us is being harmed.

Discuss: before or after a conflict does escalate, many of us are now able to clarify and communicate without turning to inappropriate behavior. Many is not all, and while I respect the right of an outsider to cease interaction with our system, I’m not taking responsibility for whatever that alter did. It’s not unlike social media, where the website is not responsible for the content unless they are knowingly hosting threats. It wasn’t me, and we will not be adopting a model that hurts us because it would be convenient.

Walk away: I, as an alter, have enough proficiency with technology to block off channels of access if an outsider does decide to cease contact. It’s okay if you can’t find safety with other of our alters after a bad encounter with one. You are allowed to leave (or ask us to leave, if it’s your space) and make decisions about your own boundaries.

Sometimes I do take it upon myself to repair damages another alter caused, but it is not required of me. I see it much the same as our external family; they can be dangerous, and they do cause harm both because we were involved and for other reasons — I did not cause that harm, and my reaction to that is up to me, just as anyone who faced that impact.

Some of our alters care more about relationships than others, and they might go further for the sake of preserving a bond. That’s great, and it’s their choice.

The choices are very important to us because we did not always have them. Our background in programming and coexisting with many programmed systems informs our opinions quite a bit, and we were not allowed to present ourselves authentically as a requirement of that environment. Our individuality is crucial to our existence, and while you are free to describe yourself/selves however you want, you do not get to choose for us.

I can talk more about why we insist on being separate people rather than feeling like separate people, or anything along those lines. I know it’s contrary to dominating clinicians, but I still value my/our lived experience over their learned experience. We do listen to their opinions and mind the evidence presented, and the stance we present externally is as close to a consensus as we can get. You don’t have to understand right now to give us this kind of respect, however, if you don’t, I will not continue to extend it to you.

There’s a lot of ideas in RAMCOA and general CDD spaces that are cultural, and that can be good and safe if it feels right to you. We will still reflect whatever you use when we address you, but please be aware that what works for you might not for us. Differences are okay, and I have yet to find the statement without exception. It’s part of being a person, and you are doing it just fine. I need you to consider we are doing the same.

#syscourse #osddid #did osdd #cdd system #dissociative identity disorder #ramcoa #tw ramcoa #traumagenic system #adaptive system #ec did #hc did

[kipandkandicore]

alright, so we feel like we need to respond to @eeveecraft ‘s post that they made using the document we’ve compiled.

looks like they’ve blocked this syscourse blog… but not our main. so we cannot reblog their post with our thoughts, but we can still see it (and therefore are going to respond to it). we don't think it's block evasion to respond in this way… (though if it is, let us know and we'll rewrite this response on our main blog which isn't blocked).

we don’t like to vague or to talk about a post without reblogging it directly, but we don’t see another way for us to respond properly, so here we go.

we are anticipating this will be quite long... so we're preemptively putting this under a cut.

here’s a link to the original post so you can read it for yourselves and come to your own conclusions!!

and here is a link to our document compiling thoughts on tulpamancy language by those affected. it is so important to center voices of marginalized groups in discussions that impact them!!

but after witnessing an announcement by Plural Nest that they’re switching to parogenic terminology because they’ve been convinced by sysmeds that tulpa = appropriation while literally “sourcing” things from minors, singlets, non-Tibetans, and yes, of course, sysmeds is just so goddamn frustrating that I’m going to write this post. I will be referring to this Google Doc Plural Nest themselves linked in their announcement that contains a motley of blogs and accounts by various people:

it's weird to us that at the very beginning of this post the author claims that the poc voices we've included should be disregarded because they are "minors, singlets, non-tibetans, and sysmeds."

first of all: do minors and singlets not get to have a say on their culture? do they not get to speak out when they notice cultural appropriation that is causing them harm? additionally, is this not an issue that concerns buddhists, and specifically asian buddhists? as we understand it, the term "tulpa" has direct ties to vajrayana buddhist practices. we believe that a buddhist does not have to be specifically tibetan in order to understand this language and to feel affected by western cultural appropriation.

also: how does this person define "sysmed?" because many of the individuals linked in the document are not system medicalists, nor do many of them disbelieve that the western practice of tulpamancy exists. as far as we know, this has always been an issue of adjusting language to respect people of color. not attacking the practice itself.

last, it's interesting that they linked the doc (which includes our tumblr information) but didn't feel it was necessary to @ us, either on this blog or on our main. huh.

now onto their prefaces:

Something that has always bothered me about this “discourse” is that the people who go on and on and on about how they’re protecting minorities and stopping actual harmful, real appropriation by attacking the Tulpamancy community never: Go after actual harmful depictions of tulpa that actively profit off of sensationalizing the paranormal version of the word and deliberately linking it to Tibetan Buddhism (Supernatural, Mandela Catalogue, Slenderman, etc). Uplift the voices of actual Tibetan Buddhists, even ones who disagree with them (which there ARE Tibetan Buddhists who are 100% okay with tulpa as a term, not just the Tibetan Buddhist AMA). Explain how us using tulpa to describe our systemmates is actively harming Tibetan Buddhists. They just say it’s harmful without providing any real examples of harm besides the word annoying them.

why put "discourse" in quotes? are we having a conversation? or are you trying to make it look like these discussions are one sided?

we're a white system. however, we are doing what we can to learn about racism, and are trying to become an active antiracist in our spaces. a big part of unlearning racism is learning how and when to pipe down and listen to the voices of people of color, especially when they're speaking out about something that harms them.

we're not the ones insisting that tulpa language is harmful with no basis for these claims. we are doing what we can to uplift marginalized voices who have said as much. centering poc voices in issues that they feel concern them is an important part of having less racist discussions in our spaces. idk if we’d say we're "protecting minorities" here... rather, we're attempting to make sure the voices of these minorities are heard, acknowledged, and taken seriously. and eeveecraft has done the first two in their post, but not the last.

1) we are personally unfamiliar with supernatural (watched a few seasons years ago and haven't touched it since), mandela catelogue, or slenderman. in fact, we haven't really seen tulpamancy acknowledged in public spaces and fictional works at all. that doesn't mean that we condone the racism within these works!!! we just can't speak on them as of yet because we haven't consumed that content. we certainly would like to, so we can understand what this author is saying about tulpamancy portrayals in media. but we feel like sensationalized instances of tulpamancy in popular media is not the only way this language has been harmful. people online using tulpamancy language have proven to be racist and unwilling to listen to marginalized groups. and since we're more involved with the system community than with the supernatural, mandela catelogue, or slenderman communities... we haven't spoken about it. because we are not a part of those spaces, and are still pretty uneducated about them specifically and how they have portrayed tulpamancy.

this doesn't mean we'll never get around to it! we'd love to help shed light on the racism of tulpamancy in popular media, and we hopefully will one day soon! but that doesn't negate the fact that advocates for tulpamancy language online are being incredibly racist...

2) again, we think that asian buddhists have the right to be upset about this, whether or not they're specifically tibetan. what's more, multiple people with testimonies in the document are actually, specifically tibetan! we'll be interested to see eeveecraft's sources of tibetan buddhists who are pro-tulpa language... maybe they'll be referenced later in the post? (edit side note: they referenced one person they know personally, one tumblr user, and one twitter user, whose thread we could not access for some reason. we added the testimony of the tumblr user to our document, though!)

3) we have explained it. language appropriation is real. it has genuinely harmful effects. our words don't exist in a vacuum. cultural appropriation is not some nebulous thing that never causes real harm to those who experience it!! i mean seriously... is that really what this author believes? we'll include some links to cultural appropriation and specifically how it affects buddhists and/or people of tibet:

x x x

we've said this before, but we will choose to believe the marginalized groups who say that this language directly affects and harms them, rather than those who claim otherwise without the ability to back up those claims with articles, resources, or testimonies from those minorities.

how are these not examples of real harm?

the testimony from the tumblr user referenced in eeveecraft’s post did speak favorably of tulpamancy as a practice, but didn’t say much if anything about tulpamancy terminology, which is what we have been trying to learn more about and discuss.

The intention of these people never was to protect vulnerable minorities, it was to deliberately blacklist a word a community has used for over a decade and a word that is literally being used in academic studies. If we as a community dropped tulpa, cold-turkey, 100%, we would lose access to so much of our history and access to scientific studies that the community NEEDS to be more accepted by the general public.

we vehemently disagree! our intentions are to uplift the voices of vulnerable minorities who have genuine, understandable concerns about tulpamancy language. we don't believe that if this language was changed that community members would lose access to their history and scientific studies.

language changes all the time. researchers have to adjust their language accordingly all the time. there are tons of words that used to be used in research, but aren't any longer because it was discovered that those words were bigoted or culturally appropriated. this literally happens quite regularly in academic spaces, as far as we're aware (examples: multiple personality disorder -> dissociative identity disorder, transvestite -> transgender, etc!)

we have a separate post we're actually working on that refutes these claims made by eeveecraft. we'd call this sort of thinking fearmongering: the action of intentionally trying to make people afraid of something when this is not necessary or reasonable, within system spaces. eeveecraft's post is actually rife with fearmongering, and there is a huge issue with fearmongering in pro tulpa discussion.

after this, eeveecraft links to a tibetan buddhist who was open on reddit about the practice of western tulpamancy and how it relates (or doesn’t relate!) to the buddhist practice. from what we can tell, the author of the post believes that western tulpamancy and buddhist tulpamancy are similar in the name alone, and that’s it.

our issue with this is… if they share a name but are not the same practice at all… why wouldn’t the tulpa community want to change their language? if the language was shifted, there wouldn’t be all this confusion and arguing about a western practice with an appropriated tibetan name.

it’s true though that this is a post concerning tulpa language made by a tibetan buddhist, so we’ll be adding their testimony to our doc. it was never our goal or intention to cherry-pick testimonies - we genuinely weren’t aware of dharmayokeyodasampa’s post!

eeveecraft’s next large section discusses the differences between modern and paranormal tulpamancy, how one is harmful while the other isn’t, and how the two terms should not be conflated.

but they fail to mention how common and likely it is for people to conflate two different terms that have the exact same name. how is the average person supposed to know that when the community talks about tulpamancy they’re referring to modern tulpamancy and not paranormal tulpamancy?

it’s especially bizarre that they claim alexandra david-neel’s tulpamancy definition is the one that is harmful. don’t get us wrong, we completely agree! but that line of thinking doesn’t align with that of other pro tulpas discussing tulpamancy. many tulpamancers are huge supporters of adn and still today claim that she was not racist and did not commit cultural appropriation through her “fact or fiction” tales in magic and mystery in tibet.

like, this is incredibly common. for as long as we’ve been in system spaces and have been trying to learn about tulpamancy (which has been more than a year at this point) we have never seen a single person try to separate sensationalized media portrayals of tulpamancy (aka “paranormal tulpamancy”) from the western practice (aka “modern tulpamancy”) that eeveecraft talks about. if other tulpamancers were also trying to make this distinction… wouldn’t it be more regularly included in discussion? we think it’s a huge and important distinction, if it really exists as one. but we’ve never seen anyone talking about it.

this also leads us to wonder… if people within the tulpa community themselves are having to make distinctions between two different types of tulpamancy - one of which is perfectly fine and normal while the other is racist cultural appropriation… wouldn’t practitioners of modern tulpamancy want to change their terminology as a way to distance themselves from the real racists?

they later write:

Also, important that another blog reblogged that post [our post with the doc, we believe] and mentioned that they’ve spoken to actual Tibetans on Facebook and how none of them think tulpa is harmful specifically because it’s so far-removed from Tibetan Buddhism. Like, they’re cool with it as long as the community doesn’t try and link it to Tibetan Buddhism, which is literally what the community does and has been doing for YEARS.

the most glaring issue we have with this is… if the term was coined by a white explorer appropriating tibetan culture in the 20th century (which it was…), and if other tulpamancers will readily admit that tulpamancy language has close ties to tibetan buddhism (which they do… and it does…) why the huge push from pro-tulpas to distance themselves from their own language and their own language’s history?

this post both claims and denies that tulpamancy language is connected to buddhism. other tulpamancers will readily admit that tulpamancy as a term was created by alexandra david-neel, an explorer which bastardized the terms “sprul pa” and “tulku” in order to write a best-selling book and make money.

it’s weird that those who are pro tulpa language recognize these facts while simultaneously trying to brush them off and sweep them under the rug.

the community is trying to link tulpamancy to tibetan buddhism by maintaining their culturally appropriative language. tulpamancy language directly ties this western practice to vajrayana buddhism and the asians who practice it. we don’t understand the willingness to acknowledge and deny this fact at the same time? maybe we’re misunderstanding this part of the post, but it seems incredibly bizarre to us.

the next section explains that asian poc should have no say over what is and isn’t cultural appropriation of tibetan buddhism. and at first, this does seem like an important point to make! the author explained how chinese individuals should have no say over what is or isn’t japanese cultural appropriation as an example.

but this point still sits weirdly with us. what about diaspora tibetans - those who are culturally tibetan but live outside of their homeland? what about those who are buddhist and who have concerns over their religion and how aspects of it are being taken, bastardized, and promoted without permission or adequate education? as white people, why do we get to decide who has more of a stake in these discussions than the buddhist people of color expressing their worries and concerns? do white non-buddhist voices matter more than asian buddhists regarding this topic?

we really don’t think so.

next:

All it [tulpamancy terminology discourse] does is segregate the community and draw unnecessary lines, which is exactly what sysmeds want because it’s ways easier to harass and kill smaller communities that way or turn them against each other until they eat each other alive. And they won’t just stop with tulpa terminology, they’re just using tulpa because they found a convenient scapegoat to attack it. Sysmeds literally find ANY excuse to demonize or take away a word from the endogenic community, it’s no different here.

To further prove this point, sysmeds literally tried to say “system hopping” is a term appropriated from RAMCOA survivors, which was completely false. They are not afraid to pull the appropriation card on any word they can, tulpa isn’t the only instance of it.

again, many of the people who are bringing up these concerns aren’t even sysmeds. many of them actively support the practice of tulpamancy and endogenic plurality in general. this 100% has to do with racism in the community and unlearning racial biases. the goals of this discussion are not to destroy the tulpa community.

we genuinely don’t see what system hopping has to do with this. because again, the people making these points against tulpamancy terminology are mostly not sysmeds at all.

and if eeveecraft themself can admit that there are two different kinds of tulpamancy - one good (modern), one bad (paranormal), why in the world wouldn’t those who practice the “good” tulpamancy want to change their language in order to be respectful to people of color while further removing themselves from the “paranormal tulpamancers?”

they then say that many people who are against tulpamancy terminology don’t even know what it is. and that may be true for some systems, but certainly not all! we are against tulpamancy terminology and we understand completely what the practice is. our wife has created a thoughtform (which she achieved using tulpamancy guides and engaging with the tulpa community). she has been an active member of this community for quite some time, and changed her labels recently after learning about the dubious roots of the terminology.

just because willogenic (one of the proposed terms to replace tulpamancy) as a label does not cover the whole scope of tulpa experiences, doesn’t mean there are no other terms that have been suggested.

parogenic exists. paro/paromancy exists. thoughtform exists. and if none of these words truly would work as a suitable replacement, we fully believe in the community’s capability to come together and select a new, less racist term. we have complete faith that the tulpa community can achieve this.

it’s also worth noting that many of the proposed replacement terms were created by and for the plural community. we fully believe that if there is no term which perfectly fits the definition, we can change the definition of the term!! so paro could mean any headmate created in the way tulpas are created. the community made these terms, and the community can change them if they need to!!

it’s a shame to see eeveecraft does not share that same faith in their community.

next, they talk about how discussing tulpamancy terminology actually causes harm:

Let’s start with me. On multiple occasions, I have had multiple anons harass my inbox, calling me racist, calling me slurs, and even sexually harassing me in the comments of one of my posts specifically because of this issue. In fact, several sysmeds tried raiding our Discord server alongside harassing us on Tumblr because of what Amanitasys’s post started, and this has also happened to @cambriancrew, @sophieinwonderland, and more because we happen to be blogs that intersect both communities.

we have never, nor will we ever, support doxxing, targeted harassment, suicide baiting, or any other horrible thing that can come out of people being vicious and self-centered online. of course, we can see why folks may call eeveecraft racist, because they are promoting incredibly racist ideas.

the user cambriancrew has been a loud, ableist voice in discourse spaces for years.

the user sophieinwonderland is a proud racist, and is a promoter of zoophilia and other outrageously harmful ideas like transx. we’ve written on this before.

it makes sense that people want to call out and address these issues when they see them. while we do not condone harassment, it’s not fair to call those who are voicing understandable concerns “harassers.” it’s not fair to lump these people in with actual online bullies who cause serious, long-lasting harm.

further, they talk about how anti-tulpamancy terminology discussion harms the plural community by dividing it.

The relationship between the Tulpamancy and broader Plurality community was already tenuous, and for most of the Tulpamancy community’s history, it has stayed isolated from other Plurality circles. It was only within the past few years that the communities started to intermingle, but this drama can ruin that.

Because as someone who HAS been in the community for over half a decade, I can tell you that the majority of the Tulpamancy community thinks this drama is stupid and aren’t going to change terminology for multiple reasons. Now, do NOT take this as the community going, “Tulpa is a completely unproblematic word!” when the community has debated the term’s usage for YEARS. Nobody is saying the word is perfect, but it’s what the community has used for over a decade now and every attempt to change the word has failed. And honestly, as someone who’s reviewed the vast majority of Tulpamancy guides in existence, I likely know better than anyone else that if tulpa was blacklisted like some people want, the community would lose so much history and resources, it’s not even funny.

it's interesting to see the author here claiming that those within the tulpamancy community think this drama is stupid and aren't ever going to change the terminology. especially when multiple times in the post, eeveecraft admits that there are issues with the terminology that tulpamanvers will readily admit, and that those who are "paranormal tulpamancers" are somehow completely distinct from and unrelated to "modern tulpamancers."

we recently created a post on reddit's r/tulpas, hoping to share our document compiling asian buddhist voices on the matter. we wrote about our experience here - basically, our post was removed less than 5 minutes after being posted, despite complying with the subreddit's own rules and guidelines.

it leads us to wonder... how many other posts like ours have been taken down by the moderators without a second glance? how many other pro-tulpa, anti-tulpa terminology folks have tried to speak out on this issue among their peers, only to be immediately dogpiled, shut down, and have their posts removed? how can good-faith discussion happen in these spaces when the community leaders are so quick to remove content, and those seeking answers and discussion are dismissed as bad actors?

we think that those with concerns (either from within the tulpa community or from asian, buddhist spaces) absolutely have the right to air their grievances. and by ignoring, deflecting, and brushing off these voices, those who are pro-tulpa terminology are not doing anything to help, participate in, or even put an end to this discussion. instead, they are perpetually putting it off, and allowing a wound within the community to fester and get worse over time as resentment builds.

to us, this poses a more significant threat to the tulpamancy community and the plural community overall than any real attempt to discuss the issues of racism and cultural appropriation regarding tulpa language.

eeveecraft then claims that changing tulpamancy terminology will cause others to lose access to the wealth of resources created by tulpamancers over the years.

If we completely dropped the word, the ability of new people to look up and find these guides becomes FAR more difficult. “Tulpa” is a unique and consistent word and makes it easy to look into the community, which in turn helps people discover resources that can help them on their tulpa creation journey.

their responses to the anticipated "just change the resources" argument are as follows (paraphrased)

there are tons of guides, resources and research articles already published using tulpamancy language. and tulpas need these to remain the same in order for tulpamancy to spread in the public sphere

the majority of people who wrote resources are no longer in the community and may not consent to their resources being adjusted

they personally are critical of and found flaws with other tulpamancy replacement terms

there aren't as many resources being created now as there used to be

we've seen a lot of these claims before, and are actually working on a separate post that refutes many of them. but basically:

we believe sites like tulpanomicon, tulpa.io, and tulpa.info could include information as banners and on their front pages that express community concerns and explain that they are making the shift. sites can also be set up so they redirect to others. so, say, if the terminology changed to "paro/paromancy," the sites "tulpa.info" could redirect to "paro.info." the community could rally together to rewrite many resources that exist, while creating new ones. this wouldn't be an instantaneous shift, but it certainly could be achieved over time.

for those who aren't in the community or don't want their resources changed... they can be left alone. if the host sites (reddit, tulpanomicon, tulpa.io, tulpa.info, etc) included disclaimers on their websites about the language shifts, it wouldn't be that big of a deal for many guides and resources to be left untouched

if the community were to come together and choose, say, paromancy as a replacement for tulpamancy, the definition of this term could probably be adjusted to accommodate for tulpas who were created naturally or spontaneously. with such a huge language shift, it makes sense that some adjustments need to be made in order for everyone to be represented. additionally, we see no issue with "thoughtform" being both an umbrella term and meaning something specific based on the context. there are many, many umbrella terms which function this way!

honestly the shift of language might bring with it a resurgence of interest in the community. especially if people are vocal about the change and why the community has decided to commit to this shift! we genuinely think that this could bring so much good press to the community and help it regain popularity.

after this, they speak about how those pushing for a change in tulpa terminology remind them of sysmeds, and that they have to be doubly careful about which spaces they interact with because those which claim to be "inclusive" may be phasing out language that they believe is racist, ultimately excluding those who use tulpa language and cutting them off from the plural community.

we don't think this has to happen. we think this makes a lot of assumptions and assumes the worst about these communities, and fails to recognize or acknowledge the genuine concerns people have.

we run a positivity blog for systems, plurals, and multiples of all sorts. right now, we're nearing 2k followers. on that blog, we are very clear in our stance that we are pro tulpa, anti tulpa terminology. we will never turn away a tulpamancer from our blog simply for the words they choose to use to identify themselves. we will be vocal about lifting up marginalized voices, we will be honest about our concerns, and we personally will not be using or advocating for tulpamancy language on that blog. but we certainly have not and will not cut off tulpamancers from that space.

we don't see why this can't be the case in more places. it is not our goal to divide the plural community from the tulpa community. rather, we think this shift could bring us together as we join to make a long overdue shift away from culturally appropriative language. we fully believe this could make the community stronger as a result.

So, in the Tulpamancy community’s perspective, we either: A.) Give up our most used word and people lose access to so much history and resources, and create a huge divide in our already fragmented community. Or: B.) Stick to our guns, but be excommunicated and villainized by the broader Plurality community.

we aren't a fan of the false dichotomy here. we think there is a secret third option, which is:

c. band together with the plural community to address this issue, choose a new term, commit to change, and adjust the resources we can while uplifting the voices of those who have been so often silenced along the way. this change could bring the community together and also shed positive light on the community in public spaces, bringing us together and strengthening both communities as a result.

personally, we like this option a lot more!

in their next section, eeveecraft writes:

So, what are people trying to attack so hard and blacklist from plural spaces? What are people fighting so hard against to conform to their standards, or be labeled as racist? What Tulpamancy is, for a lot of people, is a means to living a better life. I cannot tell you how many stories I have read of tulpas stopping their hosts from taking their own lives, how creating a tulpa has hugely improved the mental health of others, or how tulpas encourage their hosts to socialize and take care of the body, or how just making a tulpa connects you to a community with the mutual interest in self-improvement and self-love, and so, so much more. Tulpamancy improves people’s lives, and Tulpamancy techniques are not exclusive to us.

we absolutely agree that the practice of tulpamancy can be immensely beneficial, beautiful, and positively life-changing. we ourselves have seen our wife's mental health and outlook on life drastically change for the better through fostering connection and building a relationship with her thoughtform, nevetien. nev has improved our wife's quality of life so much, and the community they've found online and with each other truly is something special.

we love this for her. we want them to be able to grow and flourish in the future together, and we feel so lucky to be able to help them nurture each other and witness their strength and joy as they grow closer together as a team.

this does not negate the valid concerns over tulpamancy language by buddhist poc. it is possible to support the practice of tulpamancy while rejecting the racist roots of the language. and shifting away from tulpa language does not mean abandoning those with thoughtforms, willomates, paros, or whatever term is chosen in the future.

finally, the conclusion:

“Tulpa” as a term, at best, is murky. Nobody is arguing that David-Neel was a saint. She wasn’t, and she’s dead and buried. Tulpa isn’t her word anymore. People in the Tulpamancy community are just fed up with outsiders trying to dictate how their community should be run. We know the term has issues, we know its history is not all sunshine and rainbows. We do not need outsiders barging in and stating the obvious and acting like they know more than we do about our own community and history. And look, I know some people who believe tulpa is appropriative have good intentions and just want to be non-offensive, but people take advantage of that. Sysmeds took advantage of people wanting to do right and weaponized people into being their mouthpieces under the guise of, “We just want to be racially-sensitive.” But instead of actually protecting minorities, all it did was harm another minority while ignoring groups who are taking advantage of the word, and using it for clout and profit. That is exactly why I started this LONG essay with why this whole thing is a bad-faith argument.

it is weird to us that eeveecraft is willing to acknowledge issues with alexandra david-neel, while deflecting issues that arise from the terminology coined by her. she may be dead, but the cultural appropriation she committed is still alive and well today, and will be for as long as tulpamancy terminology remains in use.

we understand the frustrations with not wanting the community's path to be dictated by outsiders. however, this language does affect many outsiders (i.e. asian buddhists and practitioners of vajrayana buddhism). it also does seem like there may be many people within the tulpa community who are uncomfortable with this language and want to shift away, but their voices are buried or silenced by others within the community.

you can't say "some people who believe tulpa is appropriative have good intentions," then follow that with "sysmeds will take advantage of that and weaponize others while claiming to be racially-sensitive." that attempts to negate and cast aside the real concerns of those who have issues with this language and want their voices to be acknowledged and included in the conversation. in this way, eeveecraft, you weaponize the voices of anyone worried about the racism of this terminology, by lumping them in with sysmeds so that you can ignore their valid concerns.

we are not attempting to ignore groups who are taking tulpamancy terminology and using it for clout and profit. we genuinely will take some time to learn about tulpamancy in popular media (specifically aforementioned supernatural, the mandela catalogue, and slenderman) in order to speak up against the use of culturally appropriative language. we just felt the need to address the problems in our own home (tumblr, and the plural community here) before stepping outside our front door. we can't be expected to properly or accurately discuss issues that we were never made aware of, because we just hadn't been exposed to it before.

we did not make that document in bad faith. we have never argued against tulpamancy in bad faith. we are not a sysmed, and in fact are vehemently pro-tulpa and accepting of systems of all origins. however, as we learn more about racism and struggle to call it out and come to terms with its existence within our own communities, we can no longer continue to support tulpamancy language in good faith.

we know this was incredibly, incredibly long. if you've stuck with us this far, thank you so much for reading. we are not an expert on tulpamancy, though we have been involved in the community for a while. we're no expert on race, cultural appropriation, buddhism, or anything that we've talked about today, really. we're just a system who truly cherishes the plural community, trying to confront our own internalized biases and sharing how we feel about this response to our document.

thank you for your time. take care.

#syscourse #tulpamancy #tulpacourse #pro tulpa #anti tulpa terminology #racism

[nanowrimo]

The Importance of Filipino Stories: Celebrating Filipino American History Month

October is Filipino American History Month. With more than 4.2 million individuals of Filipino descent here in the U.S., we know there are at least 4.2 million stories to cherish and celebrate! Today’s story comes from Josie Gepulle, our fall 2022 Editorial intern and proud Filipino American. It wasn’t until I was in my second year of college that I got my first reading assignment on Filipino American stories.

At my university, I was taking a history course entitled “American Radicals and Reformers.” Halfway through the semester, I learned about Larry Itilong, a Filipino migrant laborer who went on to lead the five-year Delano Grape Strike in California and later co-founded the United Farm Workers of America.

I’m pretty sure my jaw actually dropped hearing about this. An actual Filipino American made his way into the history books, one who had a profound impact on the labor movement. 

That’s also when it really hit me: there was a lack of Filipino stories in my life.

I grew up in a small suburban Texas town. I was the first and only Filipino my community saw, so I don’t really blame anyone for their ignorance. It was frustrating, however, to receive several comments like, “Are you sure you’re Asian? You don’t look like it at all.” or “Where is the Philippines anyway?” I didn’t understand at that time because I’m proud of my heritage, but what does that mean to a world that doesn’t even know you exist? The most recognition I’ve gotten is from veterans recalling war buddies or travelers who visited Manila once.

I learned the history of the Philippines from my dad, not school. The Philippines, it seems, had no place in the story of America, despite being one of its former colonies. Even the mainstream media barely acknowledged our culture and our community. Any reference to the Philippines seemed to only refer to Manila and how the language was Tagalog. I couldn’t relate to that. My parents are from Bacolod, a city in central Philippines, where the community spoke Illongo. The narrative America wanted to tell about the Philippines, as limited as it was, was not one I could fit into.

It took me a long time to identify as a Pinoy writer. That same year at college when I learned about Larry Itliong, I attended a special event where I heard Jose Antonio Vargas, the famed journalist and immigration rights activist, and openly undocumented Filipino American, give a talk about his book, Dear America: Notes from an Undocumented Citizen. He, too, was a storyteller and writer, just like I wanted to be.

I finally realized I wasn’t alone. I didn’t need to be the author who put the Philippines in the history book. Several writers already did that for me. Carlos Bulosan wrote the famous America Is in the Heart, establishing the Filipino American perspective in literature. Then there are the writers of today, like Elaine Castillo with her book America Is Not the Heart, a clear callback to Bulosan. While Filipino Americans may have different interpretations of their identities, these stories are very much in dialogue with each other.

Each story, including mine, is only a small piece in a much larger puzzle. My own perspective that only represents a tiny fraction of Filipino history. The Philippines is made up of 7000+ islands and has 120+ spoken languages. We have our own history and mythology that existed long before the Americans came and long before the first colonizers, the Spaniards, arrived as well. While colonialism has tried time and time again to erase our stories, remembering our traditions and history is how they live on. We don’t want these stories to become forgotten simply because they’re left out of school curriculums. However, I do have to take a moment to be grateful for virtual spaces, especially those for writers. While my family is no longer the only Filipino family in my city, it was online where I met my very first Pinoy friends. Together, we traded experiences, laughing at the little tics that our families share. That, too, is an important part of the story. My friends and I aren’t famous, but aren’t those cherished moments together part of our experience as well?

And well, NaNoWriMo is the perfect time to explore your own stories, isn’t it? I remember being drawn to the challenge a long time ago, when I was a tiny middle schooler who felt so lonely in the giant world. NaNo made me believe that my story truly mattered, not just to everyone in the Philippines and America, but to me, the person who all my writing is eventually for. There’s no way I, or anyone for that matter, can accurately describe the story of every single Filipino, let alone Filipino American, out there. But you can talk about your story. Personally, I want to write characters who speak Ilonggo or grew up the only Filipino in their class. Maybe your characters will speak Cebuano or Ilocano. No matter what, Pinoys will get to be main characters! They’ll have grand adventures or share quiet moments with their loved ones. We’ll share our culture, our heritage with the world.

Together, our story will be told. Dungan ta sulat!

Josie Gepulle is a longtime NaNoWriMo fan, spending her teenage years lurking on the YWP forums and procrastinating her novel writing. She loves hearing the unique stories that come from writers all over the world and believes every voice is worth listening to. She enjoys the many different forms storytelling comes in, doing everything from analyzing TV shows to drawing her favorite characters. She can be found scribbling notes or doodling with an array of pens by her side. If you’d like to learn more about Filipino American History Month, here are some more sites to explore.

10 Ways to Celebrate Filipino American History Month

National Today

Filipino American National Historical Society

FAHM Resources and Creators to learn from (IG Post)

#nanowrimo #writing #amwriting #filipino american history month #inspiration #by nano intern #josie gepulle #motivation

[nothorses]

i understand the idea of telling people to think about their cultural christianity in terms of making sure youre not dismissing other religions holidays and such as that, but, specifically when it comes to holidays, if the argument is that an atheist partaking in christmas is culturally christian [which is Bad and also something they cant really escape from without converting to a different religion, or something?] are we supposed to just not have any holidays besides whatever country holidays [eg. fourth of july] we get born into? or is there some atheist non religious holiday i dont know about.

this isnt meant to sound aggressive or anything youre just the only person ive seen push back against the way people have been talking about this and i feel like i missed half of the argument people are trying to make. even though i have read so many posts.

I feel like the first part of this ask actually demonstrates a huge part of the problem I have with the way "culturally Christian" is used on tumblr: i.e., as a replacement for "Christian privilege", "Christian normativity", or just "Christian bigotry.

Those terms describe a system of power, which centers Christianity and excludes and attacks all others.

What's important here is that they are describing systems, rather than placing blame on specific individuals.

"Cultural Christianity" is meant to describe the values that Christianity promotes, the culture that arises from it, the impact Christianity has on our culture as a whole, and the insidious and often unacknowledged nature of it all. Again, the problem here is the system at large; not specific individuals.

By calling specific individuals "culturally Christian", determined by their current/past beliefs, their location, and nothing else, you send the message that it isn't about the system- the problem is the individual, it originates from something they can't control in the first place, and as such, they can never hope to meaningfully change or grow.

The second part of the ask illustrates another big part of my beef with this conversation: the insinuation that atheists do not and cannot have agency (until we're doing something they don't like, of course).

Atheists can partake in any religious holiday without it making us religious. Anyone can partake in any religious holiday without it making them that religion. We can celebrate christmas, and while it's good to think critically about why that holiday might have value to us, there is also not much of a point in refusing to visit the family for the big dinner and what is perhaps the only time you will see most of them that year, just because someone on tumblr says it makes you Basically Christian.

Atheism is a valid belief. It's not a blank slate, it isn't just code for Whatever Religion Is ACTUALLY Dominant In Your Life. It's a complete, independant, coherent way of seeing the world that does not need to be supplemented by religion. There is no empty space that Christianity creeps into when we don't fill it with other religion; we have our own ideas, values, and priorities, and we are capable of making connections and decisions about what we do or do not want to include in those values.

Atheists are not uniquely or exclusively susceptible to absorbing Christian ideas from surrounding culture; people of other religions also frequently pick those things up without realizing it, and an ex-christian converts to other religions will probably have a lot more to unpack than, say, an atheist who grew up atheist.

So I guess to answer your question: no, we don't have any atheist holidays. We also don't need them. Going to Christmas dinner to be with your family doesn't make you Christian, and we don't really need to come up with something else to "cancel out" the Christian influences in our lives. If anything, all that does is further center Christianity as The Default Religion.

Celebrate whatever the hell you want (as long as it's respectful and invited). You're just as atheist either way.

#atheist discourse

[pablo9306]

The Impact of Instagram on Teen Body Images and ways to ignore them

In todays age of social media, Instagram has emerged as one of the most popular platforms among teenagers. While it provides a space for self-expression and connection with friends and family, it also has a significant impact on the body images of young individuals. In this blog post, I am going to go in depth on how Instagram influences teen body images and how we can ignore them

So to start us off, I wanted to talk about Comparison Culture Instagram is filled with carefully picked profiles showcasing seemingly flawless bodies and lifestyles either if its body builders or people with a lot of makeup on. Teens are bombarded with images of those profiles. This constant exposure creates a culture of comparison, where teenagers feel pressured to conform to unrealistic and often unattainable body ideals. This was one big thing that has been on my mind for awhile, that Comparing one another is not right and should never happen, it destroys people's mental health for not being up to date on things and looks

Next up on the list is Influencer Culture Influencers on Instagram often promote certain beauty standards and products. People, mostly Teens, who are highly impressionable, may idolize these influencers and would want to emulate their appearance. They may start comparing themselves to these influencers and feeling horrible or left out if they don't meet the same standards. One example being a teenager might feel dissatisfied with their body because it doesn't resemble that of their favorite fitness influencer. for example maybe its someone who wants to look like Brooke Monk, or someone who wants to look like one of the Trent twins (these are just exemples) this is what destroys people self confidence and mental health and gives them a lot of stress for “not being up to date on beauty standards'' 

Finally we have Filters and Editing. I wanted to talk about this as it's just stupid all around as so many people use these nowadays you cant tell whats real or not. So to start off Instagram offers a range of filters and editing tools that allow users to enhance their appearance. These tools can be used to mess around and have fun, but they also contribute to the distortion of reality. Teens might develop an unhealthy obsession with achieving the perfect look through excessive editing or using filters that create a false sense of beauty. People out there go nuts for attention, some people even spend hours on those filters perfecting them, and they don't even look like that in real life.

I also wanted to mention Makeup, Its used everywhere now even if it's just a quick photo or going out, people will always use makeup, makeup in my opinion is like using one of the Instagram filters but having it on you temporally and only taking it off when you want to stop receiving attention. People go crazy on makeup just like Instagram filters which has the same consequences.

So what are some things we can do to ignore and stop it?

One main thing anyone can do is take breaks from social media take periods of time or days where you intentionally disconnect from Instagram and other social media platforms.  As well you can set a few boundaries by only being on Instagram for a few hours or even just every few days. Another thing is to take control of the content you see on Instagram by actively curating your feed by unfollowing accounts that show unrealistic beauty standards or negatively impact your self-esteem. Instead, we can follow accounts that promote body positivity, self-acceptance, and mental well-being.

In Conclusion, Instagram Is a great social media app that is used by many people worldwide, while that is the case teens will have body image issues that cannot be underestimated. The constant exposure to beauty/body building profiles, influencer culture, and the use of filters and editing tools all contribute to an environment that fosters comparison and unrealistic beauty standards. However, it's important to remember that Instagram also offers opportunities for positive change, with body positivity leading the way. As others mostly teens navigate this digital landscape, we should promote self-acceptance and a healthy relationship with social media.

#instagram #teenagers #social media

[varshnarsh]

nothing against these women but there are A LOT of white women in the nutritional space and almost all of them do not talk about the importance of spices, herbs, recipes that non-eurocentric cultures use in their cooking and how wellness and even survival is so closely attached to these cultures through cooking (also how colonialism has affected these cultures). i advocate for more nutritionists taking up space yes bc it’s a new field that is more or less important nowadays in accordance to health + sustainability, but i really really wish there were more people of color, more people who understood food deserts and advocated for food equality rather than just a fun trader’s joe haul to make the same three salmon, overnight oat, salad recipes. there is more to nutrition beyond one individual’s singular environment and that limits the nutritional space greatly. no one wants to go beyond what they know— that’s where it gets messy and scary but advice buried in the surface and not rooted in actual knowledge and wellness seems… not authentic or valuable to me.

and while i understand some can only educate with what they know and how they live, it really takes effort to be transparent and show that you are listening and open to learning and understanding nutrition beyond your life. it’s vital that something in the nutritional space needs to change if we want nutrition to actually be a conversation that is respected.

this also is a notion for understanding and/or questioning why more people of color aren’t in the nutritional space. what’s stopping non-eurocentric individuals from entering this space ourselves? i personally want to get better at it and make sure i’m more vocal when i can be, but it’s also a pondering of— let’s take up more space here and bring value and impact here.

we can look at it as: the conversation has now started and it is admirable the space has been carved for conversation, but it’s time to dig deeper and further and i have the resources (and if not, i am willing to learn) to do so.

#rant over lol #thoughts

[think-queer]

I just saw a post that was talking about how movements like free the nipple were shut down by government and corporations instead of just individuals changing their minds. I'm not reblogging directly because I'm tired and probably not going to phrase this very well, but it kinda frustrated me. Even though specific movements were shut down by force, I've still noticed a growing amount of sex negativity in online spaces, including leftist spaces. Because these sorts of things are quite complicated. The internet is becoming increasingly sanitized of nudity and sex, which contributes to a culture of sex negativity.

Young people grow up in this sort of sex negative environment and mimic the values that they've been taught. And people who were already sex negative are emboldened by their views being enforced.

I very frequently see people complaining about anything even remotely sexual being allowed on sites that aren't solely meant for porn. I saw someone getting extremely upset at a post that references sexual attraction (no nudity, just referencing that some people are attracted to a fictional character, and not even an underage character) because it was posted to an app that's rated 12+. I honestly even feel uncomfortable at the way that "no horny" memes have become the norm. If I scroll down to the comments of any drawing of a character drawn in a sexual manner (even without nudity, even just a woman in an evening gown) I find tons of comments complaining about how sexual it is and telling the poster not to be horny.

There has definitely been a shift in the attitude of what's appropriate in online spaces, a huge part of that is due to the corporatization of online spaces and well as those spaces becoming so mainstream.

But that doesn't change the fact that I've seen an increase of sexually conservative views being treated as normal in leftist spaces. Those attitudes aren't being challenged when they come up, at least not as often as they should be.

It can both be true that corporations and government have forced the shut down of sex positive movements through censorship and that sex negativity has become a lot more normalized, including in leftist spaces. If sex negativity is allowed to be the norm then there will be less and less pushback against this sort of censorship. Censorship may have started this cultural trend towards sex negativity but that doesn't change the fact that people are following that trend. It's possible to discuss the impact of censorship without ignoring that individuals support and normalize that censorship.

I don't know if any of this makes sense. I might delete this later. I just feel like the issue of sex negativity in otherwise progressive spaces is a genuine issue and it shouldn't be treated like it's at inevitable result of censorship. We should still be pushing back against people who come into leftist spaces and try to push sex negativity.

#long post #sometimes i just get frustrated at how people talk about things #social issues arent black and white #its complicated #tqlk

[anamericangirl]

Just letting you know, the anon feature is still on.

I've spent most of my formative years in leftist spaces and have been transitioning to more central-right ones over the few months. It's been interesting to see the other side of the argument. Being around here has helped me mentally acknowledge the humanity of unborn babies. However, I still struggle with the lack of empathy that unborn babies are a clump of cells narrative has fostered within me. Do you have any tips or book recommendations to help me with that?

Furthermore, I need clarification on the Slippery Slope argument. This has been difficult for me to understand, let alone sympathize with. My feelings are complex, but I'll simplify them. My essential source of frustration is the lack of diverse representation. I feel like the argument focuses on the worst possible LGB individuals with no thought toward the normal LGB individuals who most likely disagree with how the community acts. I was raised religiously (mainly Protestant with Catholic influence) and know fundamentalist Christians' views on homosexuality. We don't all support transgender people, drag queens, or pride parades. I'm OK with legalizing gay marriage but keeping it separate from the Church. But no, people like me aren't seen, just the ones causing the most outrage. At the end of the day, I can't control what people think or feel, but I am still frustrated. 

Yeah I turned anon back on because the problem people were just making throw away accounts to continue their trolling and I've found blocking them is a much better solution.

I am so glad you have been able to start seeing the truth through the many lies, especially when it comes to abortion and I think knowing that the clump of cells narrative has created a lack of empathy is a good sign that you're already on the way out of that mindset. But you're definitely not alone there. The culture surrounding abortion doesn't only impact pro-choicers this way. I think even a lot of pro-lifers have been desensitized to the idea of abortion and have to be careful not to lose empathy.

One thing that has helped me is listening to testimonies of both abortion survivors and women who have had abortions.

Gianna Jessen has a powerful testimony and I also recommend abortion survivor Melissa Ohden.

There is also this testimony from a man who was conceived in rape.

I also recommend the testimony of Nancy Kelly, who chose life for her twins after she was raped. She also has had two abortions. One was a partial birth abortion and she remembers hearing her baby scream. It's very powerful.

As for books, I don't have any personal recommendations as of right now, but students for life has what looks like a great book list that I am planning on reading my way through.

Hearing people share their stories and talk about their experiences usually works to help me when I feel a lack of empathy, and I hope it can help you too.

As for the second portion, the frustration you feel is totally understandable. I think arguments tend to focus on the worst individuals of any group because focusing on normal people isn't newsworthy. I feel the same way about the way Christianity is portrayed a lot, honestly. Because a headline that reads Christians and LGBT Are Normal People isn't as interesting as the alternative. While most people in any large group are going to be completely normal, it's usually the not normal ones that are the loudest and the news outlets end up using them to represent the whole.

The slippery slope is not so much in regard to individual people like you living their lives normally and not supporting terrible things, but it's about the cultural shift and the narrative being pushed by those who own it.

So while the majority of people in that community may be completely sane, the people controlling the narrative are not. It went very quickly from just legalizing gay marriage to bake the cake bigot, compelled speech with the pronoun nonsense, and now trying to force it onto children. That's the slippery slope. And it’s not being created by the majority of the community who have common sense, it’s pushed by the worst people of the community, who go cry to the media when someone won’t bake a cake for their wedding and then the media picks it up and puts it on blast. They also work to create hostility against people who don’t want drag queen story hours or kids at drag shows or pride parades. But i can understand the frustration because when that’s how the media paints you that’s what people start to think of when they think of that community.

#answered

[mogai-sunflowers]

I'm not trying to like... Start a fight? But it's ahistorical to say that the only reason bi sapphics left the lesbian label is because political lesbians drove them out. It's not true. There are many cases of bi sapphic and bi achillian activists who wanted to be defined by their own sexuality and not by their sex acts. It removes the autonomy of bisexuals to claim we all were so weak that lesbian separatists drove us out for feminist reasons when the political lesbians your mentioning, not by name given but it's not really needed, were a fringe group whose harm is indeed large but often over exaggerated. They wouldn't have that power to literally change all of lesbian culture and it's community and make bi sapphics leave. In my opinion, based on historical documents of both lesbian and bisexual activists and writers from the 1920 up til about the 1960s, it was just a natural shift in the community. Bisexuals wanted their own label outside of just being forced to swing between straight and gay depending who we're with and to claim they just got basically shoved out of lesbian bars and slapped with the bi label just.... Isn't true and ignores large swabs of bisexual history in trying to own our identity and the acceptance of bisexuals in mlm and wlw spaces.

I'd love to see counter evidence and I'm not opposed to the mspec lesbian label but as someone who loves and inspects bi History, this narrative that we were simply kicked out and it was the mean lesbian's fault is often used to encourage lesbophobia and simply... Isn't true. I deeply encourage you to check up on bisexual history concerning activists and the separation of the mlm and wlw communities maybe in different places than you haven't prior and how, for most of us, we left the gay and lesbian communities willingly because LGBT enforced biphobia was just as rampant back then as it is today and we wanted our own identity outside of just sex acts.(which deeply did and still dose contribute to the biphobic sediments that bisexuals are flirtatious and unloyal cheaters and liars. it wasn't just cishets calling us that stuff.)

I hope this doesn't sound passive aggressive or demeaning in anyway, that's not what I'm trying to say. I'm just tried of this take that it was mean lesbian supremacists that kicked us out without a source ever to be found and just buckets and buckets of bi activists talking about bisexuality and how they wanted a label and place of their own going completely unnoticed and unacknowledged because it doesn't fit the narrative that often underlines arguments concerning mspec lesbianism next to mono lesbianism ("bi lesbians are great and automatically unproblematic but monosexual/cis lesbians are automatically suspicious and terfy" kind of trash with no introspection into how that's blatantly lesbophobic regardless of any trans/mspec standpoint. Not just bigoted and applying your own stereotype on a fellow queer person because of terfs (also reinforces the terf sediment that terf is just the new word for lesbian) but also just patently not true.)

I fully agree with everything you’re saying, I normally talk only about the political lesbianism aspect because it was pretty violent and it’s what I know most about, I know it’s not the sole reason for what happened. so in that regard I’m sorry for misrepresenting that part of history.

however, I don’t think that pointing out the impact lesbian separatism has had on the community is in opposition to that. lesbian community used to always be about celebrating the joy of love for women, not about not being attracted to men. im not saying there’s anything wrong with being proud of not being attracted to men, or that individuals shouldn’t define themselves that way in relation to their lesbianism, but political lesbianism DEFINITELY reflected a shift that has made the general entity of the lesbian community much less about love for women, which is in my opinion a loss. it’s become more about excluding people based on an attraction quota than it has been about including people who personally resonate with the lesbian label and experience. The exclusionary part came from political lesbianism, and that’s evident in the way so many younger lesbian communities operate nowadays. Bi activism wasn’t about trying to force a rift between the two communities, but rather to acknowledge their general distinctions, so to me it’s not as relevant to the history of lesbian exclusionism. But I don’t know enough about that aspect of history to truly form an opinion on it, so I would really appreciate if you could send some of the sources you’re talking about!!

overall, I agree with you that i and others should take those aspects of queer history into account more, and I’d love to learn more about it, but I don’t think it’s any less important to acknowledge the roots of the exclusionism that so many lesbians face. i do not at all think that lesbian and terf are synonymous and I hate that people think they are, but acknowledging that the roots of radical feminism partially lie within lesbian feminism, isn’t saying that, it’s acknowledging how transphobia and biphobia have played a real part in our history. it’s not “mean lesbians” it’s bigoted people who used their lesbian identity as an excuse to promote exclusionary and reactionary queer politics /info /nm

#🌌written in the stars ; asks 🌌 #tw discourse #discourse tw #bi lesbian #exclusionism tw #tw exclusionism #exclusionism discussion

[youthculture2b]

The benefits of generational trauma

Ana Temer Bay

In the last decades the relationship between parents and teenagers has been described in many different ways. Varying from more negative or positive dinâmica depending on individual experiences and cultural influences. Some of the most common positive representations on those relationships emphasize a more supportive and nurturing behavior by the parents, in which they provide guidance and understanding, also depending a lot on open communication, for example emphasizing the importance of open and honest conversations between parents and teenagers. This may involve discussing personal problems, feelings and experiences more openly than before, both on the teenagers and parents part. Our society is increasingly recognizing different family structures and dynamics, including single-parent households, blended families, and LGBTQ parents. But what so positively changed the relationship between parents and teenagers? In part, the answer may be generational trauma, the transmission of unresolved psychological and emotional wounds from one generation to the next, and its impact on parent-teen interactions in today's society is increasingly recognized. This phenomenon can completely change the dynamics of these relationships in several important ways. And personally, I believe it is actually one of the most important factors in changing parent-teen relationships. Many know that their family history may contain unresolved traumas that affect their behavior, attitudes and communication style. A relationship where parents are open to talking about the experiences and difficulties of their adolescence and the relationship they had with their parents allows not only a greater capacity for adults to remember the difficulties that teenagers go through, but also generates empathy in teenagers, who begin to understand that your parents are sometimes trying their best to do the best they can. In some cases, discussing generational trauma fostered more open and honest communication between parents and teens, since sharing their experiences and feelings can really help to break down communication barriers. Families who have experienced generational trauma are more likely to seek professional help depending on the severity of the problem, both individual therapy and family therapy. Doing everything possible to avoid repeating the same mistakes and heal from old ones. Generational trauma and the positive effects it can end up having on certain families has been increasingly recognized. By understanding past suffering and mistakes, families gain the possibility of greater empathy, space for healthy discussions and more honest relationships between parents and teenagers.