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strawberryamanita · 1 year

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Alright, it was a bad idea to go into the neurosparkly tag. People are chill in the neurospicy tag, but it's just hatepost after hatepost after hatepost in the neurosparkly tag.

I was gonna keep my mouth shut, but now I'm pissed. Y'all really know how to make a person's skin crawl.

Rant below.

Listen, this reeks of one person pulling "neurosparkly" and "neurospicy" out of a very obscure conversation and going "hmm, this gives me the willies, so it looks like an acceptable target to me!", and I'm already sick of it. This gives me the exact same vibes as that one famous post about transmeds vs transtrenders -- this idea of pinning one form of self-expression against another, in the name of dunking on fellow marginalized people that are giving your demographic "a bad name". To that end, I'd like to remind y'all that the original artist of that post admitted they weren't acting right about trans people that aren't like them, and so I'm hoping we get over this and get over it soon.

Because we cannot keep doing this.

Every. Summer. Every fucking Summer, this website has to put a spotlight on a new group to punch down on. First it was just about every LGBTQIA+ group outside of cis gay men you could imagine -- lesbians, bis/pans, trans people, ace people, non-binary people, people who identify as queer (we're literally all queer, but that's another convo all together), you name it. It literally never stops, you people have to be taught over and over again that, no, this one group isn't okay to target either, that's your family too, you're not better than them for being a different flavor of weird.

Now we're doing this to neurodivergent people? Neurodivergent people. The overwhelming majority of this website. You're gonna try and clown on other neurodivergent people for, what is it, being cringe? After we just agreed that embracing cringe is a huge step towards self-acceptance and self-love? tumblr is THE cringe website. We don't do optics here, we don't clean our metaphorical rooms when guests are over.

Like what, we have to take every moment of our neurodivergent lives seriously? It's ridiculous enough that we have a "normal" model for how a brain should be, compared to all the different ways a person can develop. Are we such tragic figures that we can't take the smallest delight in calling ourself a fun little nickname? It's not self-censoring, it's not like "handicapable vs disabled", let's not treat this thing like a gust of wind on the house of cards that is our (quite necessary) camaraderie.

Are we gonna start zeroing in on specific neurodivergent conditions next? How long are we gonna play this stupid game of Who Is It Okay To Bully on this website? If you wanna look like a mature and poised and respectable lot, you can't be doing something so petty, whether it's for fun or "for the cause".

Y'know what? I support neurosparkly. I support neurospicy. My neurotype is glow-in-the-dark. It's glittery, it's color-changing, it's metallic and covered in rhinestones and smells like artificial fruits. My neurotype is crayon drawings and old kids' meal toys and bubble machines and getting bleary-eyed over Muppet songs. My brain is covered in holographic stickers and playing 8bit videogame music on loop. I am Cringemeister General. You could only wish to be as cringe as me.

Now cringe. Cringe and cope and seethe and mald. Dig up everything you can about me to attempt to punish me for disagreeing with you, and let your confirmation bias run wild. Post me on r/cringe, make a YouTube or TikTok video about me, pick me apart on a livestream, make me the poster-boy of your disgust, print out a screenshot of my blog and throw darts at it. Dance the dance of self-hatred, and then wait in the wings until you get to dance it again.

Eugh.

I'm gonna close this rant using every argument that I've seen effectively shut down these yearly attempts at putting eachother in the pillories, because I don't know if I can take another Summer of this:

If you start picking on people for using "neurosparkly" or "neurospicy", I'm assuming you're a fed. Infighting only helps the oppressors, and if we spend our energy trying to police eachother we're not going to get anything done. Kill the cringe cop in your head. There's as many ways for a person to live as are, have been, and will be people on this planet; there's a good chance you're gonna hear about some people who give you the ick, but you're gonna have to swallow that ick and respect them anyhow.

Every ounce of energy you spend rolling your eyes at people you consider beneath you can be spent chipping away at a person in power. Every minute you choose to spend tsking or turning up your nose at "weird" kids can be spent advocating for that weirdness and normalizing being fucking nice to people. You punch down or punch across because it gives you quicker, more visible results; if we're all punching up, they'll have no other option than to listen to us.

There is enough room for everybody. Even the neurospicies, even the neurosparklies.

PS: Any attempts to make fun of me or the people I talked about in this post are just straight-up gonna be ignored. I don't see why you'd want to convince me to think less of others, so trying to sway me is gonna be difficult on your part. I'm not debating anyone's rights, and I'm not gonna conserve spoons to argue with a stranger. I have Anons turned off already, so if you wanna get up in my virtual face you won't have a disguise to protect you.

Thank you for your time.

#neurospicy #neurosparkly #actually autistic #actually neurodivergent #neurodiversity #long post

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youretiredandiminsane · 1 year

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What is love or care or friendship? Am I just a resource to be utilized, required quickly at everyone's leisure? A friendship called my friend had a panic attack and refuses to talk to me about anything else. What about my own world? I'm not your therapist.

I'm so fucking tired, trying to claw my way out of poverty, trying to exercise everything better, bleary eyed looking at job postings while deep inside i know I'm disabled, that it's either ruin myself as a being or face a deeper ruin in homelessness. The world around me has been collapsing and now I'm collapsing and I'm terrified.

What am I hiding here, behind these sealed doors? My incompatibly with the structure of the world is suffocating me and I can't help but wonder what do I have to give up to obtain my basic human rights? Could i ever buy them free? Everything is so convoluted. I want to believe in hope for humanity but I'm so weary.

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digital-dragons-horde · 2 years

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Domesticity

Sasuke x reader

A/N: Hello! This is my first time posting anything online in years-and I do mean years, Quizilla was WILD sometimes gang IYKYK-and I’m taking the plunge with a little blurb about my boy that started it all for me, a character I grew up with, the one I tentatively started writing for as a preteen for fun and one that deserves so much more. Seriously, DO NOT get me started on some of these sequel series’ character choices, I have so many gripes haha! The setting can be read as shortly after the war but could be read as a more modern AU! if wanted, no ninja abilities mentioned.

Without further ado, I give you a fluffy one shot:

You weren’t a particularly heavy sleeper, if anything you were a borderline insomniac, many missions over the years left you with a perpetually screwed up sleep hygiene and made you a light enough sleeper that you’d thought you weren’t going to get a full 8 hours.

And yet, you did. For the first time in a while, and you’d done it thanks to an exciting previous day, a warm fluffy bed, and the full weekend off.

With some joints popping and a big stretch of some static muscles you vaguely noticed the empty spot next to you in your brain fog. Not quite cold enough yet to indicate he’d been out of it for very long but the running sink across the hallway in the otherwise quiet house gave away where he had gone.

Your eyes fluttered in and out of the haze of sleep, almost opting back into it until the rushing faucet stopped. Your eyes half reopened, just in time to watch the last Uchiha walk by the door without a second glance.

Oh. Oh, you had seen this before.

You’d had to have Sasuke over night at your apartment whenever he was occasionally back in the village, after he’d come back from the final battle of the war and for the first instances where he traveled.

How you’d met at all was another story but the villagers were more at ease when he was easing back into it’s walls under your wing. They trusted you implicitly when he was in your capable hands.

Needless to say you two weren’t strangers to sharing a bed.

And as a result of this you weren’t a stranger to these “episodes”. Periods where sometimes he just defaulted, always during the handful of times you’d stayed over in the Uchiha household.

You heard more of him bustling around in the kitchen on autopilot for a few minutes before deciding to make your way out of bed. Not bothering to disguise any sound you were making.

And when you spotted him mindlessly staring at the stove, cracking an egg on the pan with one hand and blindly reaching out…without the other. Being in his old home had him reverting to his habits from when you were preteens regularly, habits he couldn’t carry out like he used to and when he was half asleep he instantly forgot.

Bandages from his latest outing wrapped around his forehead and peaking out from his shirt and shorts he had worn to bed. Comfort clothes had been a thing you reintroduced immediately.

His dazed eyes mindlessly kept up their stare but his brows furrowed, confused when he didn’t grasp the spatula right there to the-

You slipped up next to him, bleary eyed yourself, and nudged the eggs and bacon sharing the pan with the spatula in one hand and the other barely attempting to cover a large yawn. You gave him a smiling side eye as the yawn died out.

“I live here too now, you know?”

He blinked at you once, twice, before the fog in them cleared, and he slowly uttered your name in a low greeting, you were used to that too. Sometimes it took a while for him to come back from outer space, with all of the overwhelming peace everyone around him expected him to stomach but you were working on it together.

You hadn’t lived anywhere, permanently, in years either.

You were right, you’d moved in yesterday, you lived with him now. Already you had molded into a morning routine with him, you’d never made him feel like his newfound disability was debilitating and you knew he was independent to a sharp fault.

And you didn’t step on his toes while he was doing what he’d done since he was a kid. You would never baby him, you didn’t even need much in the way of words to know what he needed next with a nudge, like an extension of him with your arm closest to him holding the spatula to the pan’s contents as you started the tea kettle with the other.

Like giving him your arm was second nature, a natural habit for you. In many ways you two were in sync from day one so it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise.

Domesticity, the truly peaceful and content kind, was something he for sure had thought he’d lose out on after he’d abandoned the village as a teenager. He’d abandoned YOU as a teenager.

He let your humming, the smell of your shampoo and body wash mixing with the simmering breakfast when you lean over and reach around the front of him for the jar of tea on the countertop, your presence beside him wrap around him blissfully.

He must’ve zoned out from the comfort surrounding him and the very idea it would be around for a while-honestly he wondered how he survived without it before and doubted he could cope if you left him-because he could’ve sworn he blinked and you’d set the table and plated breakfast.

You stopped humming whatever song it was to look at him with a halo of sunshine glowing around you from the window as you beamed at him.

He sharply inhaled and mismatched eyes widened at you under messy growing hair as a thought struck him.

“Itachi would have loved you.”

He wasn’t sure why he blurted it out and he hoped you took it the right way.

You huffed a single laugh of amusement that just happened to slip out in your surprise. Your cheeks hurt from the blush burning them and the grin that was unconfined because look at how cute he was being. His equivalent of shyness.

It wasn’t often you got this side of him.

Sasuke blushed too but it was a combination of your attractiveness when you were giddy because of him and some embarrassment so he looked away, miffed and cheeks still dusted pink. As you approached he looked away and back, and his eyes shut when your hands reached for his cheeks to pull him to you for a sweet forehead kiss.

You moved to his lips for an equally chaste kiss and his thumb brushed your jawline when his hand moved to hold your neck and tilt your head just so.

You were actually hungry though and cut it short.

“Itachi would want us to eat our breakfast before it gets cold.” You replied gently and took his hand in yours to lead him to the table.

His heart fluttered, as it usually did with you, and this first morning together, paving the way for hopefully many more? He wanted to set the habits into a life together with the ring he had hidden in the house.

#sasuke uchiha #sasuke x reader #sasuke fluff #sasuke uchiha x reader #sasuke #naruto #anime fanfic #oneshot #gn!reader #gender neutral reader #anime #naruto fluff #domestic fluff

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skygirl5 · 3 years

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New fic - Preview

My Castle Ficathon 2021 entry As Long As We’re Together will begin posting Saturday, June 26, but I wanted to give everyone a sneak preview for now

ENJOY!

Chapter 1

Richard Castle jolted from sleep, the hoarse remnants of a scream on his lips. He breathed rapidly, strangling the sheet across his body with both hands. His eyes focused on the ceiling above him as he fully came to realize that it had all just been a nightmare. No, he hadn’t just watched Kate’s skin pierced by a hypodermic needle wielded by Jerry Tyson, but that didn’t mean the nightmare was over—not even close.

As his gulps of breath calmed down to regular breathing intervals, Castle pushed himself upright in bed and raked his hands back through his hair. The nightmare her had been experiencing started much like the others: he was restrained against a cold metal table with cloth straps across his chest, stomach and thighs, an auburn-haired woman hovering just out of his line of sight. This time, however, he was able to get himself out of the room and walk down a long narrow hallway towards a large black doorway. Once he reached the door, he saw Kate was inside, also strapped to a metal table. Her captor was Jerry Tyson, and he was surrounded by medical equipment too medical-looking and horrifying for him to bother recalling with any level of detail. Even thinking about it then made a shiver travel down his spine.

Tugging at his hair, Castle turned his head to his left to catch sight of the alarm clock on his nightstand. It was only 4:45 in the morning, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep again that night. He never did after those kinds of nightmares. The fact that he was forced awake in the wee hours always frustrated him, but it was simply a factor of his life for the prior forty-some days.

After taking a few more moments to stare bleary-eyed across his dark bedroom, Castle pushed himself from bed and shuffled his way towards the kitchen. There, he filled a large glass with water from the sink tap and drank it all down. After starting his coffee pot, he walked back across the apartment and into his office to take up his near permanent position as of late in front of his laptop.

Once the computer was on, he turned on the lamp beside him so the backlight from the screen would not be the only thing illuminating the room. He then navigated his mouse towards the file folder he now kept on the center of his desktop—the one labeled “K.B. Leads.” He reviewed the contents of that folder every morning even if he hadn’t added anything new the day before, hoping against hope that he would notice something—anything—that would give him a clue; something that would bring her back to him.

Forty-three days earlier, Castle would have said his life was as idyllic as it could get. He was happy, healthy, and in the best relationship of his life. After some heartbreaks and miscommunications, he and Kate had finally embarked on a relationship together and it was just as extraordinary as he’d hoped it would be. True, while trying to transition their platonic relationship into a romantic relationship they had encountered some rough patches—particularly in those early days while they were still trying to keep their relationship a secret from their friends and family, but they’d come through those tough spots stronger than ever. They were happy and in love and had recently experienced what he felt to be an amazing milestone: celebrating the Christmas and New Years’ holidays together. Castle could not begin to express the joy he felt holding Kate in his arms as one year rolled into the next, knowing that he could spent nearly every day of that new year with her. Sadly, just seventeen days later it would all come crashing down around him.

While at the time Castle found January 17th to be an entirely uneventful day, in hindsight he felt there were several points at which he might have been being watched. Then again, maybe it was just his traumatized brain playing tricks on him. Either way, as the evening progressed things took a dramatic turn.

On that day, Castle remembered sitting on the sofa with Kate as she absentmindedly scrolled through television channels to find something to watch. After that, things became hazy. The next thing he clearly remembered was waking up when it was daylight out and being naked, but alone in his bed. When he’d tried to get up and move around, he felt woozy and shockingly exhausted. Concerned and alarmed, he called out for his girlfriend, but there was no answer. He stumbled into the bathroom and then back out into the living area where he found her phone and shoes right where she left them. Then, downright terrified, he’d called Ryan. And then Esposito. And then Gates.

Despite the early morning call, his loyal detective friends showed up at his apartment promptly and began searching for clues. Very quickly they discovered that not only had the security system in Castle’s apartment been disarmed, but the building’s cameras in the hallways, elevator, and lobby had also been disabled for twelve hours beginning seven p.m. the night before. With this sickening revelation, Castle could only come to one conclusion. “It’s Tyson; it has to be Tyson,” he had said.

and that’s all you get until Saturday!

#castleficathon2021 #castle #caskett #castle fanfiction #my fic: as long as we're together

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beneaththetangles · 4 years

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All Might and the Importance of Rest

We continue our Holy Week series about anime and disability with a guest post by my former editor, Allison Alexander. Her newest work, Super Sick: Making Peace with Chronic Illness, will be available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository, and other major booksellers beginning on April 17th.

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“If you’re not busy, you’re doing something wrong.” That seems to be the mantra of the day, where if I told someone I spent the week at home doing nothing, I’d get funny looks. (At least, I would have before COVID-19.)

People wear busyness like a crown and achievements like a mantle. You’re not a “proper” member of society if you’re not contributing in some way. But for me, someone with several chronic illnesses, including severe IBS, recurring nausea, and vulvodynia, sometimes all I can do is rest. You can’t push through when your body is exhausted and you’re out of spoons, or if you do, there are consequences.

In My Hero Academia, protagonist Midorya shouts, “One million percent!” before hitting an enemy, meaning he’s giving the punch his all. He’s trying to push past his limits to defeat a foe more powerful than he is. The math doesn’t work, of course, since one hundred percent is all anyone can give.

With its mantra—“Go beyond! Plus Ultra!”—the show toys with the trope of finding extra strength within yourself. If you’re losing a fight and finding yourself at the end of your powers, just try harder! There’s a whole genre of this kind of anime, called shonen, from where the themes of “believe in yourself/friendship” and “find a hidden well of strength” originate. This idea is prevalent in a lot of American fiction, too, where the hero searches inside themself for the answer and gets an emotional jump-start at a crucial moment. It’s a message I laugh at because there is no extra well of strength in me to find. Once I’m out, I’m out. If I could will myself to have more energy, I wouldn’t; I’d will myself to be completely healed instead.

However, My Hero Academia redeems itself with its characterization of All Might, the world’s Number One Hero and Symbol of Peace. He’s not just the best superhero in the world, he’s the superhero whose very presence has brought villains to their knees and who has ushered the world into veritable peace. All Might is also cripplingly sick; his respiratory system was severely damaged in a previous battle and, at the beginning of the show, he can only manage to keep his hero form for three hours a day. The tall, muscular image that the public knows is reduced to a scrawny, bleary-eyed guy for the rest of the time. The time he can spend in his hero state decreases as the show goes on and All Might stretches himself too thin.

At first, he acknowledges his progressing weakness and his desire to train Midorya as a successor by taking a teaching position at U.A. High, Midorya’s school. But in the episode “Yeah, Just Do Your Best, Iida!” he can’t help himself from stopping crime on the way to work. I understand why he does it—societal pressures, his image, and his desire to do good are all at play here. However, as a result, All Might’s powers are all but depleted when he gets to class, and another teacher has to take over for him while he rests.

Maybe this wouldn’t have been such a big deal if villains hadn’t chosen that day to attack U.A. High.

All Might arrives to the fight a couple episodes later, with only a few minutes of his hero form left to attempt rescuing his students, several of whom are injured. He kicks himself for using up his powers earlier that day.

“I can’t believe all this went down while I was resting,” he says to himself.

All Might pushes himself in the fight to save the students; he “goes beyond” and is able to beat back the enemy with the help of Midorya and friends. But he pays a price. Thereafter, the time he can spend fighting in his superhero form is reduced to fifty minutes.

All Might stopping to help people on his morning commute to work could be considered noble, and, in a way, it is. However, there were other heroes available who could have done what he did. He didn’t need to deplete his powers before getting to his job, which severely hindered his ability to teach, something he had committed to. He prioritized his own image as a hero over training the next generation of heroes. I prioritize my own image over self-care sometimes too. I may not stop to solve crime like All Might, but I overextend myself, which leads to consequences later on.

Why do I push myself so hard? I’m not even fighting crime! It’s not like the hope of the world rests on my scrawny shoulders. But I want to be doing the same things healthy people do. I want to be “normal.” I want to be above normal—PLUS ULTRA!

In the early episodes of My Hero Academia, All Might instructs Midorya to pace himself and only use a small amount of his power because his prodigy could hurt himself by doing more. Midorya doesn’t listen, and injures himself a lot in order to help others.

I’m not surprised that Midorya ignores his mentor’s advice, because All Might doesn’t practice what he preaches. All Might constantly pushes himself too far, sacrificing himself for the people around him. Midorya almost completely destroys his own hands by following his mentor’s path.

If Midorya breaks his body, no matter how noble the cause, he won’t be any good to anybody afterwards. He needs to take care of himself and recognize his limits.

The temptation to push myself is strong, whether it’s because I feel cooped up, needy, guilty, or like a burden. Other times it’s because I want to be there for the people I love; I want to be strong for them when they need me. But sometimes true strength is faithfully counting out your spoons and not going beyond your capacity for the day.

Sometimes true strength is recognizing the importance of rest, and that my worth is not tied to my productivity. All Might is still a valuable human being even without his superhero form. HIs life doesn’t look the same—he has to learn to step back from the fight, to let others step up, to acknowledge his own weaknesses and make time for rest—but he is loved, valued, and appreciated.

It’s frustrating when people expect me to manage things I cannot. It’s worse when I expect those things of myself and am angry when I fail. I’m discovering it’s easier when I offer grace to those people, and when I offer grace to myself. It’s okay if I fail. It’s okay if I can’t do things other people can. It’s okay if I’m weak and I let others be strong.

I feel like I should, somehow, be able to give one million percent, and I feel guilty that I can’t. So I remind myself that my one hundred percent is good enough.

When errands go undone, when chores go unfinished, I tell myself it’s all right. When I cancel plans with friends, when I take a three-hour nap, I forgive myself. When I’m depressed, when I’m exhausted, I give myself a little grace. I figure if I keep doing so, I’ll eventually accept it. I can be unhappy about the number of spoons in my hand, but that doesn’t mean I have to be angry at myself because I can’t hold more. Like All Might, I’m learning to give up my image of strength for a reality that fits my body. I’m giving up the plus ultra life for a more peaceful existence.

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About the Author

Allison Alexander is an earthbending Ravenclaw from Hoth who’s more comfortable curling up at home with a video game than venturing out into the wild. As an author, editor, and blogger, Allison aims to make spaces for minority characters in science fiction, fantasy, and pop culture. Also, her favourite character class in Dungeons & Dragons is a bard, so that should tell you everything you need to know about her.

From her home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada—which she shares with her husband, Jordan—Allison writes books, edits novels, and mentors aspiring authors. Her book, Super Sick: Making Peace with Chronic Illness (Mythos & Ink) details her experiences with chronic illness and analyzes fictional characters who struggle with disabilities. She includes interviews with other chronic sufferers and explores how society values healthiness, doctors don’t always have answers, and faith, friendship, and romance add pressure to already complicated situations.

Super Sick: Making Peace with Chronic Illness is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository, and other major booksellers on April 17, 2020.

#Anime #Christianity #Boku no Hero Academia #My Hero Academia #All Might #Toshinori Yagi #Izuku Midoriya #Holy Week #Disability #Chronic Illness #Rest #Easter #Guest Posts #Author: Allison Alexander

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garudabluffs · 3 years

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Why The Post published the Pandora Papers investigation

Pandora Papers | Letter from the editor

READ MORE https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/03/about-pandora-papers-investigation/?utm_campaign=wp_must_reads&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_mustreads&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F34ead62%2F616191649d2fda9d4105b241%2F5dbc3df0ae7e8a7319bec215%2F43%2F121%2F616191649d2fda9d4105b241

We’re doing something new today: turning over the newsletter to Ziva Branstetter, our corporate accountability editor, who led The Post’s work in this week’s groundbreaking global investigation, the Pandora Papers. As the hundreds of questions submitted to our Q&A on Monday showed, many of you want to know how investigative reporting really happens. Ziva brings you the inside story. — Washington Post newsletter team By Ziva Branstetter

"There’s a particular kind of loneliness at the beginning of any big investigative project. It’s akin to steering a small boat launched into an ocean. At first, you have no maps or tools to point the way. You build them yourself.

I’ve written and edited investigative stories for the past three decades, the last three years for The Post. Helping to guide reporters as they searched through an ocean of 11.9 million documents — making sense of it, finding the most important stories and bringing them to life — was the most difficult investigative challenge I’ve ever encountered.

This week’s Pandora Papers revelations swept across the globe as more than 100 news outlets, including us, published stories detailing a hidden world that has allowed government leaders, billionaires and criminals to shield their wealth in a secretive financial system.

Where it started

The Post’s investigation, in partnership with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other news outlets, began nearly a year ago. It was sparked by a lunch between a Post reporter and the head of ICIJ.

In December, Debbie Cenziper met with the head of ICIJ, who described a massive trove of secret financial documents even larger than the records behind ICIJ’s Panama Papers five years ago.

ICIJ was looking for a major U.S. media partner. The Post, after carefully determining the project met our editorial standards, signed on. We started with four reporters — Cenziper, Peter Whoriskey, Greg Miller and Paul Sonne — who spent months mining the documents to determine what secrets they held.

This might sound easy, but there were 11.9 million documents. Only 4 percent were “structured data” that could be easily analyzed. There were emails, contracts, spreadsheets, letters and other documents — written in multiple languages — about complex financial transactions involving 14 offshore financial firms across the world.

Early on, Cenziper described it as “wading in the muck” for hours and hours, hunched over a computer screen, bleary-eyed.

Keeping information secure

To complicate the task, the team could only communicate on encrypted apps for security reasons. That meant no email, no Slack channels and none of the other tools we’d normally rely on to communicate clearly and quickly.

Whoriskey said the security measures combined with limits on pandemic travel and an initially messy document dump added to the monumental task.

“The documents are disordered, somewhat hard to read and understand, and finding the big names was, as you said, was like fishing a huge ocean with just a rod and reel.”

ICIJ’s data team worked for months to bring order to the Pandora Papers, but reporters still had to find stories in them.

Eventually, patterns started to emerge. Key names cropped up again and again — clients, lawyers, offshore providers.

Revelations emerge around the globe

In stories by Cenziper and ICIJ reporter Will Fitzgibbon, we focused on people left behind by the world's elite. They talked to destitute sugar cane workers in the Dominican Republic and the family of a disabled 41-year-old, who is still owed millions of dollars from a notorious Hollywood sex offender.

Photographer Salwan Georges traveled with reporters to the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, capturing wrenching images critical to our storytelling.

Most people think of island locales when it comes to the offshore world — the Cayman Islands or the Bahamas. But The Post’s work also exposed the popularity of the United States as a tax haven.

Reporting by Cenziper and Fitzgibbon took them to South Dakota, where the files exposed the wealth of international political leaders and industrialists, including some connected to allegations of wrongdoing, sheltered in secret trusts.

A cool “scrolly graphic” (yes, we use technical terms in this newsletter) by Kevin Schaul walked readers through how trusts are obscured under layers of corporate structure.

Whoriskey teamed up with three ICIJ reporters on a page turner about looted ancient relics. A trust document in the files led the reporters to an indicted art dealer and a coffee-table book he wrote depicting dozens of relics held by the trust.

They scoured museum websites and auction catalogues to find as many of the relics as they could. When the team confirmed a match, they sent museums a survey asking for details about the items’ history. Ultimately, the reporters identified 27 Khmer relics linked to the art dealer in museums including the Met in New York, the British Museum in London and Australia’s National Gallery.

The survey showed that “in some cases, even the museums didn’t seem to know their complete ownership history,” ICIJ's Malia Politzer told me.

Alan Sipress, an editor in our foreign section, guided reporting by Miller and Sonne, who also searched the trove of files for weeks before stories came into focus.

Miller’s reporting uncovered shell companies registered to Jordan’s King Abdullah II that owned lavish properties in Malibu, London and Washington, D.C., worth more than $100 million, purchased during years when billions in U.S. aid flowed to the country.

Miller and Sonne found documents that led them to a swanky Monte Carlo apartment owned by Svetlana Krivonogikh, a woman who was in a secret, years-long relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Russian media. (In what must be the best door-knocking assignment ever, Miller traveled to Monte Carlo to try to interview Svetlana but was told no one by that name lived there.)

Publishing for the world

As the stories began to take shape, our Pandora Papers team grew. Project editor Courtney Kan assembled our cross-newsroom team that included videographers, audio producers, graphics reporters, copy editors, designers, the audience team and many others. More than 60 Post journalists worked on the Pandora Papers in total.

The Post’s digital design team turned the stories and visual elements into a seamless package, choosing a shredded motif that brought main images slowly into focus.

“The idea of obscuring the lead image and revealing it on scroll was a perfect example of illustrating how these documents revealed people or places involved,” said design editor Matt Callahan.

The impact

The stories have clearly resonated with our readers. If you haven’t read them yet, this weekend is the time — here��s where to start. Our team is humbled and gratified by the response to our work and watching for impact from it and the larger global investigation.

#Pandora Papers The Washington Post

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margiehasson · 4 years

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Ramadan Fact Sheet for Non-Muslims and Converts Who are New(er) to Islam

Salaams and hello all! We know for those who are not Muslim, you may have questions about Ramadan and how it all works. Those of you who are new or recent converts to Islam may have questions as well! A few years ago CNN put out this great comprehensive and friendly guide for non-Muslims looking to improve their Ramadan etiquette. Well, we have a few more things that would be helpful for you to know!

Some of this info is for non-Muslims, some for those of us who are Muslim but perhaps have questions about how things work in Ramadan! We hope this is helpful for you all!

1. To answer your burning question: What IS Ramadan? It’s the ninth month in the lunar calendar observed by more than a billion Muslims around the world. It entails fasting from dawn until sunset, praying for long hours into the night, and going into overdrive with good deeds and charity. In short, we deprive our bodies (for just a few hours at a time) and feed our souls!

2. You know why your friend is hungry this time of the year. It’s already been mentioned, but just in case you missed it; Ramadan is known for being the time when Muslims abstain from food and drink and physical intimacy from the hours of sunrise till sunset. This doesn’t mean EVERY Muslim fasts, though; children, the elderly, those with certain disabilities or chronic illness, travelers, anyone who is sick, plus pregnant, menstruating, and breastfeeding women are exempt. Fasting is meant to be challenging, but if you are new(er to Islam and struggle with fasting, you should seek guidance and ease your way into it.

3. Your friend might be reading Quran a lot! If you see your friend (or you yourself are) hunched in deep concentration over the Quran (Muslims’ holy book), it’s because the Quran was revealed to our Prophet Mohammad (S) during this blessed month, so reading it takes on added significance. The actual day on which the Quran was revealed, called Laylatul Qadr, is unknown but believed to have occurred during one of the odd-numbered nights in the last 10 nights of the month.

That is why the last 10 days/nights of Ramadan are so important, and Muslims are encouraged to especially lean into their worship during the last 10 days. Worshiping on the night of Laylatul Qadr is deemed to be better than worshiping for one thousand months because of its auspiciousness and blessings.

4. Ramadan is also a time of immense worship. In addition to the five daily prayers, Sunni Muslims observe tarawih (also spelled taraweeh) prayers after the fifth prayer of the day, isha. Tarawih prayers, in which an entire juz (chapter of the Quran) is completed every night during prayer, are considered optional. They are prayed in pairs of two rakat, which are prayer cycles, well into the late hours of the night. Tarawih prayers can go up to 20 rakat, so if your friend/coworker looks a little bleary-eyed at work meetings, you know it’s because she was hard at worship the night before!

This year, with most of us doing our Ramadan in quarantine and most mosques closed, tarawih prayers will have to happen at home, and we have laid out how to do just that! Salatul Jumu'ah (Friday) prayers are also happening at home, and here is guidance on how that works!

5. Ramadan is a time to get rid of bad habits and work to be better people. Of course, your Muslim pal is already super sweet, but she seems to be extra nice and forgiving this particular time of the year, doesn't she? ;) Muslims believe that in Ramadan, the gates of Hell are locked and gates of Heaven are wide open. This signifies God's mercy being at an all-time high, so we try and get more good deeds and acts of mercy in our day to days. In fact, any good deed that a Muslim does gets multiplied by 70 in this holy month!

6. There is an emphasis on being more charitable! Seeing a significant uptick in charitable giving posts by your friend on her Facebook timeline? As Muslims are encouraged to follow the example of the Prophet Mohammad (saw), also called the sunnah, they emulate his heightened generosity during Ramadan. In this way, they significantly increase charity to the needy and poor, as well as donations to their mosques and relief organizations around the world.

Even as you find yourself at home, this is a great time to engage in charitable giving. There are SO MANY wonderful campaigns and organizations doing good work that need your help. Even giving just a little helps a lot.

7. We celebrate with Eid at the end of Ramadan! Your friend's hard-earned fasts and good behavior give way to a grand celebration at the end of the month: Eid-al-Fitr! This is when she’ll take a day off work and school and hang out with friends and family as they eat all day, get stylishly decked out, and enjoy the general mirth and merriness of the day. And yes, you’re invited, too! Her mom would love to have you over for chai and samosas as they all celebrate the end of yet another wonderful Ramadan together.

Even though most of us will be at home for Eid this year, Insha'Allah the celebrations will still happen right where we are. So dress up for Eid right and celebrate with friends/family via FaceTime or a Zoom meet-up. If you are new(er) to Islam and don't know any Muslims, reach out to us at [email protected] or through Instagram (@hautehijab) or Facebook, and we will be more than happy to help you make connections so you don't feel alone!

Ramadan Mubarak/Mabrook/Kareem everyone!

Find this post useful? Share with all your friends and coworkers! You'd be surprised how many questions they may still have! Do you have any questions about Ramadan? Share them in the comments below and we'll answer them all!

Ramadan Fact Sheet for Non-Muslims and Converts Who are New(er) to Islam published first on https://lenacharms.tumblr.com/

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this-is-a-chat-astrophe · 7 years

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Come Back To Me ch 2

1 || 2 || 3

AO3

Adrien begs and pleads for his father to bring him home to Paris. Gabriel won’t let his son go back, especially with the break-in at the Agreste mansion. It’s not safe, he insists.

Obviously Adrien doesn’t leave it at that. His friends are in danger; he won’t give up without a fight.

So he fights.

Nathalie makes it easy for Adrien to get his hands on her tablet. She “forgets” it in his hotel room when she delivers his afternoon schedule and doesn’t return for it till an hour later. The passcode lock is disabled and his father’s schedule is conveniently opened up.

Nathalie is scheduled to fly back to France tonight to assess the damage at the mansion.

There is an extra ticket ready to be printed in case his father decides to accompany her, even though she knows he has an important business meeting at the same time as her flight.

Adrien’s afternoon schedule is conveniently empty, except for an early afternoon magazine interview.

He arrives in France in the early morning, the sun barely raised into the sky. The town of Paris shows little sign of the akuma wreaking havoc, a few shredded billboards and some cars crushed when the Agreste mansion gate was ripped from it’s hinges. Swallowtail, despite being active for days, has caused the least damage of any akuma. Ladybug is still in there, he insists; Ladybug would never hurt her city.

Chat roams the city in costume, hoping to attract enough attention to earn an appearance. Tourists and natives alike wander out into the streets of Paris, cameras in hand waiting for a fight. Even Alya shows up, a bleary-eyed Nino in tow. They expect a show, and, if this really is his Lady, they are going to get one.

Swallowtail arrives swiftly, though Adrien muses that there must not be much for her to do while waiting for Chat Noir since he is her only objective. Despite the change in costume, she is as beautiful as ever. Her fanfiction blue eyes shine in stark contrast to the black and red of her mask as she smiles.

“How nice of you to join us,” she says, voice loud and unwavering as she approaches her target. “I was beginning to think you were a scaredy cat. Five days is a long time to make a woman wait.”

Chat bows, ever the gentleman. “My apologies.”

Razor-sharp talons shoot out from her gloves, narrowly missing the agile cat. Using his baton, he launches himself onto a nearby building, luring Swallowtail away from the gaggle of civilians on the ground.

“All I want is your miraculous, chaton.” Dark wings flutter behind her, carrying her easily from building to building. “We both know you’re hopeless without your precious Ladybug.”

The truth in her statement sends a chill through Adrien; he can’t purify the akuma without her help. Hopefully he can stall long enough to locate the akumatized object. Then he can ask Plagg what to do.

With lack of a better plan, Chat dances around his adversary, surveying her closely. Her outfit displays black, red, and white in varying patterns so it is difficult to find any flaws in the design that were allude to an akumatized item.

A pair of yo-yos assault the wall on either side of his head. Swallowtail, a sadistic grin on her face, saunters over. Chat stands there, perfectly still, inspecting every inch of her to only find nothing.

“It’s rude to stare, Chat Noir,” she says as she draws closer. He does not move despite the intense urge to run. She leans in close, her body nearly pressed against his. Surprisingly tender, she reaches out and traces his cheek with a sharp talon. The delicate touch makes him shiver.

“I want to hurt you,” she whispers, her breath ghosting against his lips.

“And I want to love you,” he replies, letting his eyes fall closed, surrounding himself in darkness. Vulnerable. “I see no difference.”

A purple haze falls over Swallowtail, causing her figure to crumple in agonizing pain. Chat’s eyes fly open at the pitiable noise. Swallowtail shrieks, batting away the violet mask over her eyes. She only succeeds in scratching herself with sharp talons.

“Stop!” she screams, hand over her chest, drawing attention to the barely visible pocket and the item peaking over the edge.

Chat reaches out, removes the item before Swallowtail can resist. It’s purple, the site of the akuma. It’s also a photograph of Adrien.

Chat takes a step back, photo clutched to his chest. He already knew it was his fault, of course Ladybug would be upset with him for leaving, but this punched him in the heart.

The worst part? He couldn’t fix this without her. Of course she was here, physically, but Swallowtail is a far cry from Ladybug. His only hope is to escape and ask Plagg if there is anything he could possibly do. He runs before Ladybug has regained control, and by the time she lifts herself off the floor he is gone.

_________________________________

In the relative safety of the Agreste mansion, Plagg flies out of the ring with urgency, furious. “You idiot! You were so close!”

Adrien puts his hands up in front of him defensively, afraid the little cat will pounce. “I need more detail than that, Plagg.”

“You should have kissed her,” the cat groans. “True love's kiss is stronger than any magic!”

A nervous laugh bubbles up in Adrien’s throat. “That’s ridiculous.”

Sighing, Plagg flies up onto Adrien’s head. “Fine. If you don’t believe me, then our only option is to find her miraculous, if she doesn’t have it.”

“We don’t know her identity, though.”

Once again, Plagg groans. “Do I have to do all the work? Ask the Ladyblog girl. She might know.”

Adrien could almost kiss his miniature cat god. “When this is over, I’m giving you as much camembert as I can get my hands on.”

“Good,” Plagg huffs.

“Plagg, transform me!”

“And here we go again.”

Finding Alya isn’t nearly as difficult as Adrien thought it would be. All he has to do is send Alya a message through the Ladyblog forum. She is skeptical at first but agrees to meeting him at the park.

“I’m sorry to call you out here like this, but I need information,” Chat opens the conversation with, not wasting any time. “Do you have any idea what the akuma’s identity is?”

Alya slumps down on the bench, hands loosely gripping her cellphone, fiddling with the ladybug strap. “I knew it was her when her parents called me asking if I’ve seen her. She hasn’t been home in days, but I guess being an akuma is better than the alternatives.” She sucks in a deep breath, leaning her head back to look up at the setting sky. “It’s Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

The pieces all fall into place and he wonders how he hadn’t realized it. Chat should feel surprised, but all he feels is concern. How could sweet, considerate Marinette become an akuma? And how could he dare do this to her?

“She’s Ladybug, isn’t she?” When Chat nods, Alya drops her head in her hands and chuckles dryly, humorlessly. “All this time I’ve been chasing my best friend.” She looks back up to address Chat, cheeks tear-streaked. “Don’t worry, I haven’t posted her identity on the Ladyblog and her parents are keeping quiet. Nobody knows that Marinette is Ladybug.”

“That’s good,” he mumbles half-heartedly. Nothing is good.

“So, what’s the plan?”

Chat’s head whips up. He hadn’t even realized that he dropped his gaze to his ring.

“You do have a plan, right?” she asks, rubbing her face dry. “Without Ladybug it won’t be so easy to cleanse the akuma.”

The kitty nods, head heavy with ideas. “Can you get me into Marinette’s bedroom? Hopefully she wasn’t wearing her earrings when she was…”

Alya looks at him skeptically with a dipped brow. “She never took those off. Ever. I bought her earrings once and she used them as charms for matching bracelets so I wouldn’t feel bad about her not wearing them. Though I guess it makes a lot more sense now.”

Chat shrugs, attempting to maintain external composure while internally frying. He didn’t remember earrings on Swallowtail. “All we need is some luck.”

“You’re a black cat. You’re the epitome of bad luck.”

His smile breaks her heart. “It’s not my luck that we need.”

#my drabbles #ml fanfic #come back to me #ladynoir #adrienette #marichat #ladrien

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mebwalker · 6 years

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Ozias Leduc, Église de Saint-Hilaire, détail (Encyclopédie de l’Agora)

« L’art enseigne, renseigne. Il révèle l’âme. Nul doute qu’il a le pouvoir d’ordonner en un cosmos le chaos de l’inconscient. D’un désordre, d’une souffrance et d’un déséquilibre, il conduit à la stabilité, à l’harmonie et à la joie. » (Ozias Leduc, tiré d’une lettre à Paul-Émile Borduas, 1943)

In a very recent post, entitled Comforting Thoughts, I inserted a link to an article published by the BBC. I am quoting, first, a paragraph from my post, and, second, the article published by the BBC. Nurses are overworked and there are families who do not or cannot, for lack of money or time, participate in the care given a mother, a father, a brother, and other members of their family.

In Comforting Thoughts, I wrote that

“We stayed with him [my brother] the entire afternoon and the little group returned to the hospital in the evening. I stayed home. I don’t want to know how much we paid in parking fees, but if members of his family did not help my brother, he would require the services of at least one professional twenty-four hours a day. A nurse came in to give him morphine and she obviously kept an eye on us, but he wasn’t alone.”

Researching Health Care, I found this article published by the BBC (UK). Home news from abroad. Doctors in Quebec earn approximately three times, perhaps more, the salary of a University teacher in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and they enjoy a lifestyle most of us can only dream of.

When I moved to Quebec, I could not find a doctor. I phoned and phoned and phoned. I was put on several waiting lists to no avail. The doctors whose office I called always had “more patients than he or she could handle.” I ended up contacting the University of Sherbrooke’s Medical School. A secretary made an appointment for me at a CLSC, Fr / En, a public clinic. I would see an intern. No problem! My intern was a fine doctor and he was supervised. When his internship was over, he asked his supervisor to take me as a patient.

And I am the only person facing this problem. Last week, I met a young woman who had waited 4 years to find a doctor and was sitting in the waiting area of a public clinic, or a CLSC waiting to see an intern. I reassured her. She had come to the right place.

An Aristocracy

As I wrote in my post, doctors were becoming an aristocracy. They work from 9 to 5 (9 to 17 hours) and they may be on call. Some doctors also ask that medicine not be discussed outside working hours: it would be too stressful. They need their rest and a private life. What about patients? Should people go untreated and nurses worked out of their chosen profession?

I once went to ask a Vice-President to help me resume my career. This Vice-President was not a bad person, but he told me that he could not wait to eliminate employees who were fragile. Did he also think universities could not accommodate the needs of persons who could not work 70 hours a week. Did he also think Insurance Companies should support people who fall ill because they have been overworked and intimidated into doing more than they can?

Ozias Leduc (Google)

Let us now go to the BBC.

Home News from Abroad: the BBC (UK)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43336410

“Doctors from the Canadian province of Quebec have shocked the world by turning down a pay rise.

Why would anyone turn down a pay rise?

For doctors from Quebec, the answer is simple: patient care.

An eight-year, retroactive deal struck in February would see about 20,000 of the province’s medical specialists and general practitioners receive an annual salary increase ranging from about 1.4% to 1.8% each year [bold characters are mine].

That would mean that the province, which subsidises the bulk of doctors’ salaries, would be on the hook for an additional C$1.5bn ($1.2bn, £840m) by 2023.

It is a fair agreement, according to the unions representing Quebec doctors, who pushed for the deal with the province.

But not all physicians are on board – more than 700 physicians, both GPs and specialists, have signed a petition from Médecins Québécois pour le Régime Public saying they do not want the rise, and they would rather have the extra money go to patient care and services. The group represents doctors in the province who strongly support public access to healthcare.

Their cry for fairer distribution of government funding comes at a time when the healthcare system is under intense scrutiny.

On Wednesday, an independent report commissioned by Quebec’s Health and Welfare Commissioner found that physician salaries had doubled between 2005-15, while the hours doctors spent with patients declined.

Meanwhile, the province’s nurses are fighting for better working conditions and salaries. A picture of a bleary-eyed nurse posted on Facebook went viral and was shared more than 50,000 times in January.

“I’m so stressed that I have back troubles, enough to keep me from sleeping. I don’t want to go to work because I dread the workload that awaits me,” wrote Émilie Ricard, who said she alone was in charge of caring for 70 patients in one shift. “I come home and I’m crying with fatigue.”

We, Quebec doctors…

“We, Quebec doctors, are asking that the salary increases granted to physicians be cancelled and that the resources of the system be better distributed for the good of the healthcare workers and to provide health services worthy [of] the people of Quebec,” read the letter.

This sentiment has struck a chord with people across Canada and abroad.

The letter was described as “utterly Canadian” by Washington Post reporter Amy B Wang.

In Kenya, the doctors’ letter was greeted with shock, especially since last year Kenyan doctors went on a three-month strike for higher wages.

“It is almost unheard of that a worker would complain of a high salary from their employer,” wrote an article in the Kenya paper The Standard.

At home, the Quebec doctors have been praised by officials, but some of their colleagues have kept mum.

“If they feel they are overpaid, they can leave the money on the table. I guarantee you I can make good use of it,” said the province’s health minister Gaétan Barrette.

Quebec’s physician unions have not commented publicly about the call for less than the agreed-upon pay rise.

In Canada, healthcare is public and run by the provinces, not the federal government, which means that salaries can vary quite a lot from province to province.

The average salary for a physician nationwide was $339,000, according to the most recent data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

In Ontario, Canada’s largest province by population, the average specialist made C$403,500; in Quebec, they made C$367,000.

Conversely, family physicians in Quebec made C$255,000, while in Ontario they made C$311,000.

The Quebec doctors’ rebuff of a pay rise has put them at odds with many of their colleagues in other provinces.

The Ontario Medical Association has been fighting for higher wages with the province for years.

The province has cut fees twice in three years and the association still has not negotiated a contract with the province.”

End of quotation.

Conclusion

Why should medical doctors be paid three to four times a university teacher’s salary. I suspect that many doctors, those who are doctors mostly for the money, were disgruntled when the Médecins Québécois Pour le Régime Public refused a rise in salary. They may have been motivated to vote Dr Couillard out of office? As for nurses who had to look after 70 patients, they may have believed that the premier was at fault. Not quite!

In Quebec, future doctors enter Medical School after grade 11 and + 2 years in a CEGEP. They can start earning money earlier than doctors living elsewhere. But so few are available that when one retires, his or her patients are devastated. Yet, between 2005-15, a physician’s salary doubled while nurses looked after 70 patients. What about the wages of an overworked nurse, old-age pensions, and disability benefits? A nurse’s salary does not double in ten years. As for disability benefits, they never go up. The amount is 60% of the salary one earns the last year one works. After 15 years, one’s financial security is endangered. At age 73, now 74, I had to take a mortgage to buy a one-bedroom apartment. But I’m not complaining.

The building had elevators and a reserve fund, etc… A kind friend told me that the decision to move was a “no-brainer.” She’s right. If one has the money, such a decision is a “no-brainer,” but if one lives on a small pension, the matter ceases to be a “no-brainer.” One has to be very careful.

—ooo—

I thank the doctors, the Médecins québécois pour le Régime public, who turned down a rise in salary and I am glad that the working conditions of nurses have been brought to the attention of the world.

Taking care of Jean-Pierre was a full-time occupation, and the nurse assigned to him was looking after other patients. She was a fine nurse, but she was probably relieved to see that members of Jean-Pierre’s family were looking after him. She did not want to neglect a patient. She told us about the little beds available to family and friends who preferred not to leave a dying relative. We were happy to learn that there were little beds for the family.

Jean-Pierre died graciously. He thanked the staff for the fine care he had received. He thanked the priest who administered the Last Rites and he told all of us that he had simply reached sa date d’expiration, his expiry date, which is a date all of us have to face.

Love to everyone 💕

Tomás Luis de Victoria

O Magnum Mysterium -The Sixteen Christophers

youtube

Judith, Ozias Leduc, c 1914 (Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec)

We, Quebec doctors… « L’art enseigne, renseigne. Il révèle l’âme. Nul doute qu’il a le pouvoir d’ordonner en un cosmos le chaos de l’inconscient.

#Doctors refuse rise in salary #Fatigued nurses #Ozias Leduc #Quebec Canada #Salary of Physicians #Videos

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illuminatedbyu-blog · 7 years

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“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. -Marie Shear”

I’m not quite sure how to begin this or if I am even the right person to write this post, seeing as how I am relatively new to feminism myself, having only been introduced to it around 2011 or so. I’m ashamed to admit that as a teenager (and, if I’m being honest, even into my college days) I used the term “feminazi” and believed that feminists were just a bunch of men hating weirdos who didn’t want to shave their armpits and legs and who were, obviously, all lesbians. By the time I reached graduate school, I was more open to the thought that feminists maybe weren’t everything I thought they were, but imagine my shock when my graduate school girl friends pointed out that my views and values aligned with those of third wave feminism.

Much like Taylor Swift, I was resistant to the label at first. I didn’t know what it meant that I was now a feminist or if there was a set of rules I was supposed to follow or a certain set of things I was now supposed to do. I can almost imagine the horror seventeen-year-old me would feel at finding out that not only did I turn out to be a feminist, but I turned out to be the type of feminist who would endure a nine hour long car ride and intensely uncomfortable crowds just to not be able to see or hear anything at the world’s largest single protest. But that’s exactly where I found myself and what I found myself doing a few weekends ago.

Around the same time that I found out I was a feminist, I also found out that I have something called privilege- and lots of it. As a straight, white, middle class, cisgender female, there were and are a lot of opportunities available to me that aren’t available to other people. In addition to learning about privilege, I had to learn about things like gender, intersectionality, and race in ways I had never considered before. According to Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectional feminism is “the view that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity. Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated, but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society. Examples of this include race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity.” If you’d like to learn more about feminism, I highly suggest reading bell hooks’ book, Feminism is for Everybody or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists.

Intersectionality means that I am oppressed not only because I’m a woman, but also because I’m a disabled woman. I’m lucky in that I’m a cisgender middle class white lady, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t experience any oppression. It just means that I experience less than some people and more than some other people. Feminism has helped me make sense of a world that I previously didn’t fully understand and it’s helped me understand why it can feel so bad to be a woman and specifically a woman with mental health stuff.

I wrote something about the Women’s March on Washington sort of for my Memoir Writing class I’m taking and sort of for my own personal record keeping. It’s here:

I’m walking down the street, River on my left-hand side and Tiffany on my right. Tiffany and I make small talk about how excited we are for the day to come, but we are also bleary-eyed from not getting to sleep early last night and, if I’m being honest, there’s still a bit of the sleeping pill I took last night in my system. We are in Arlington, Virginia and we are on our way to board the silver line Metro to the National Mall. We swipe our SmartTrip cards and pass through the barriers. The station is packed and it takes us almost an hour to finally board a train as all the ones that come through the station are either too full for anyone to get on them, people push past us to get on them, or they don’t have enough room for Tiffany, River, and I. River does better than expected on the train, lying down next to me and only trying to greet two people. A woman spills her hot but not burning coffee on me and all over the floor. It hurts a little bit but it mostly makes me angry because she chose to push her way to stand in between my legs over River in the first place. We will see later if River got sticky from the coffee or stayed out of it, but at this point, I’m really not sure. We exit the train and it’s time to face one of my biggest fears for the day: will the elevator be working or will we have to take the escalator up? River has practiced on the escalator a lot, including using the escalator a lot yesterday to prepare her for this very moment, but I’d still rather she didn’t have to use it at all in the crowd and she does better going down the escalator than going up it. The crowds make it impossible to do anything but move forward towards the escalators. Mercifully, they are turned off and are therefore glorified stairs that are unlikely to trap unprepared dog claws and toes.

The crowd is stop and go, moving at barely a crawl for reasons unclear to us. We eventually emerge from the escalator and walk out of the metro station where we continue to walk for a few blocks before we run into a massive number of people. I’m not sure how many people are here, but there must be hundreds of thousands of women with some children and men about as well. I’m sure the media will have a count in the days that follow, but all I know right now is that it is a lot of people and the weight of having so many of them around me makes me feel like I’ll be crushed to death. I know that weight is all in my head. This is a peaceful demonstration, after all. The organizers have worked very hard to ensure that and have done their best to ensure that few, if any, arrests are made. But tell that to my anxiety disorder. Or don’t. It won’t listen anyway.

Each person is here for her own reason, she has her own motive, her own white whale, but we are all united under the same unifying principles and the same title, the Women’s March on Washington. I march because it’s the right thing to do. I march for Planned Parenthood and the ACA and Equity and disability rights. I march because this is 2017 and the idea that Black Lives Matter should be a given, not a necessary and crucial movement that is dismissed by so many in positions of privilege and power. I march because I get to call the United States my home, while so many others are in danger of being forced to leave their home because of the President Elect. I march so I can tell future generations of my family that I was here in this important, beautiful, historic moment.

We are excited for the rally, but we waste time trying to find the ADA tent so that we can sit down. My back is already screaming at me but it should calm down soon because I took a muscle relaxer after we got off the metro. I may pay for this later, but this rally and this march are more important to me than a few days of pain. We look for a way to get to the ADA tent, but we can’t find it and crossing Independence Avenue seems like an impossibility. Even looking to the left away from the rally, Independence Avenue is packed with shoulder to shoulder people as far as the eye can see. We cross Independence Avenue a few times, moving towards the front of the rally in an attempt to get away from the super religious counter protestor who has set up shop with a megaphone right next to the closes set of speakers. From where we end up, you can just almost see a big screen showing the stage and you can sort of hear what the speakers are saying, but the crowd around us is affecting us both in a negative way, me more than Tiffany I think and in spite of the 2 mg of Ativan I have taken. It’s time to move away and find somewhere else to go and find somewhere for me to sit for a while.

We make our way to the side of Independence Avenue away from the National Mall and walk along the buildings where there is more room and less of a crowd. We round a corner and realize we are back where we started. We walk up to the intersection and find a woman with an orange vest that says something about ADA on it and ask her where the ADA tent is. She says there is no point in going there because all of the seats are full, it’s become overrun by non-ADA people, and it’s very crowded. We turn back the way we came and sit down in a truck delivery area for some big concrete building to eat our lunches. We hear from someone else later that this is when Gloria Steinem was speaking and we missed it, but that isn’t accurate- she spoke much earlier even than this. We were very upset about this, but at least the live-stream is available online. I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while Tiffany eats her ham and cheese. When we finish, we make our way back to independence avenue and begin searching for a bathroom because I have the smallest bladder in the world. We went towards the Smithsonian Castle but got to a point where we couldn’t move anymore, so we turned around and stood in place for a while listening to Scarlett Johansen speak about how she had to go to Planned Parenthood when she was fifteen because her family was poor. Or at least Tiffany was listening to that happen. I had no idea Scarlett Johannsen was speaking, only that I really needed a restroom. I interview a woman for the podcast about what feminism means to her and about why she is marching. I don’t know it at the time, but my voice recorder isn’t actually working.

I eventually tell Tiffany that the bathroom situation is really getting quite urgent. About two hours have passed since lunch when I first said I needed the bathroom. We push our way past the crowd coming from the Smithsonian Castle towards Independence Avenue and make it to a place where we can climb onto the grass and continue going. As Tiffany and I are walking, my left foot goes into a plastic pipe with a broken lid the wrong way, I fall, my foot bends forward, my ankle twists, and I hear a loud pop. Thankfully, we have just seen a Smithsonian employee and Tiffany goes to get her. She comes over and asks me if I’m okay and how I was injured. I tell her that I think I just sprained my ankle (a white lie, I think I may have torn a tendon) and how it came about. Her name is Rosario and she will continue to be kind and helpful the whole time I am in the Smithsonian’s care. She calls to someone else on the radio and the other woman, Ms. Smith, brings a wheel chair. Tiffany grabs River’s leash and my backpack as the other two women help me to my feet, guide me over to and off of a small ledge to the wheelchair, and help get me situated.

Rosario and Ms. Smith push my wheelchair across the grass to avoid the impressive crowd on the pathways. We have to stop and I have to stand up again so that they can close the wheelchair, push it between two trees, then help me hobble through before I sit back down. Almost as soon as we get inside, Rosario takes me in the elevator down a floor to the bathroom and pushes me all the way up to the stall door. I wash my hands and she pushes me back upstairs. We sit inside one of the Smithsonian buildings for a while, Rosario checking on me every so often and asking if I want her to call 911. I resist because of the cost. I don’t want to pay $600 for the ambulance ride plus the hospital deductible and copay just for a sprained ankle or torn tendon. Tiffany eventually leaves to find the first aid tent for the Women’s March, which is supposedly close by, but before she does she gives me 800mg of ibuprofen, for which I am grateful. She isn’t gone long. “They won’t leave the tent to come here, but if we can get you to them they can wrap it and take care of it for you,” she tells me. Through all of this she is calm and kind. She doesn’t even act like I’ve ruined her March experience, even though I’m starting to feel like I have. We make our way to the Smithsonian exit.

I hobble down the street with Tiffany and River on either side of me, surrounded by women, men, and children holding signs, marching, and chanting things like, “hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go! Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go!” We finally make it to the first aid tent. They ask me if River will remain calm if they let her inside the tent. I say yes and prepare myself for an argument about the Americans with Disabilities Act and its provisions for service dogs, but luckily it’s a nonissue and they let her in with me. The paramedic wraps my ankle with an ace bandage, stuffs some Hot Hands down into my sock, and tells me I can put my shoe back on and be on my way. There’s still a lot of pain when I put weight on my foot, but at least it’s more stable.

I emerge from the tent to see Tiffany standing just outside it and we make our way out into the crowd. It’s less dense here now that people are moving, but it’s still a very thick and close crowd. We march, chant, and chat, making our way along a few roads and into a park that has a fence in it where people are putting their signs. It’s a powerful sight, but somewhere down to the left some young men start kicking the fence down. Almost everyone yells at them to stop, but Tiffany and I decide that it’s time for us to head back to my brother’s house. We walk to the Metro station which is almost but not quite as crowded as the one from the morning. On the way there, we meet a veteran who has a service dog and her group of friends. They seem really nice. On the Metro ride home, I interview three young women for the podcast. Then we listen to a Trump supporter start a verbal argument with a woman with an “End racism” sign. He has accused her of calling people names because of her sign. He then calls her husband an idiot and tells her to go bark at the moon before proceeding to actually bark at her. If I was braver, I would stand up for her, but he made me fear for my safety, so I stay silent. We get off at our stop, walk back to my brother’s, and decompress for a bit before figuring out we are going to eat pizza for dinner and hanging out with the dogs.

Resources

Women’s March on Washington

Chimamanda Ngozi TED Talk- We Should All Be Feminists

Woman in Viral Photo From Women’s March to White Female Allies: ‘Listen to a Black Woman’

Women’s March on Washington

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Feminism by Catherine Cottam #CompassionOrBust "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. -Marie Shear" I'm not quite sure how to begin this or if I am even the right person to write this post, seeing as how I am relatively new to feminism myself, having only been introduced to it around 2011 or so.

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