“When I first heard it, from a dog trainer who knew her behavioral science, it was a stunning moment. I remember where I was standing, what block of Brooklyn’s streets. It was like holding a piece of polished obsidian in the hand, feeling its weight and irreducibility. And its fathomless blackness. Punishment is reinforcing to the punisher. Of course. It fit the science, and it also fit the hidden memories stored in a deeply buried, rusty lockbox inside me. The people who walked down the street arbitrarily compressing their dogs’ tracheas, to which the poor beasts could only submit in uncomprehending misery; the parents who slapped their crying toddlers for the crime of being tired or hungry: These were not aberrantly malevolent villains. They were not doing what they did because they thought it was right, or even because it worked very well. They were simply caught in the same feedback loop in which all behavior is made. Their spasms of delivering small torments relieved their frustration and gave the impression of momentum toward a solution. Most potently, it immediately stopped the behavior. No matter that the effect probably won’t last: the reinforcer—the silence or the cessation of the annoyance—was exquisitely timed. Now. Boy does that feel good.”
— Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)
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Now that the post is over 10k and my notes are straight-up unusable...
One thing I wish I'd spelled out more explicitly in the original post because I see this point getting lost on a lot of rebloggers who don't understand why the healthcare thing was such a big deal is like
The subtext I thought would be understood bc I lived back then but apparently has been lost today is that making sure queer employees and their partners had healthcare in the early 90s meant Disney was paying for a lot of AIDS treatment.
This is one reason fundie Christians were so upset and queer employees were so grateful. It's one reason why it was such a controversial decision. It was a major talking point amongst my family, who believed back then that AIDS was a punishment from God.
(Some still do, I think. We don't talk.)
I keep seeing people saying that Disney only chose that option "because of their bottom line" and it's like??? Were you listening??? Disney has been paying for that decision for literally decades, but they've stood by it.
Like... the 90s weren't like now! It wasn't profitable to cater to the queer population of the country back then. They weren't raking in money with this.
It's in no way a perfect company but I fully believe in criticizing people for the specific things they do wrong and praising them for the specific things they do right. Disney has fucked copyright, monopoly, and labor laws and I'm not about to defend that. But they are well known in FL for being friendly to both queer people and disabled people, and that is unambiguously a good thing.
(Like side note, I could talk about Disney and accessibility for days. I have traveled extensively while disabled and no one does it like Disney.)
I've had people reblogging the post like "I straight-up don't believe Disney is an industry leader in equal protections for queer employees" and it's like ??? do you think I just pulled this out of my ass? If you want more information, go look it up! You'll see that this is well-established history. It's not my fault y'all don't read! :|
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I don’t believe in gatekeeping at all but if you flat out admit to me that you’ve consumed little to ZERO of the canon media and have gotten all of your information based off of reading fluffy fic with woobified characters, I will not be taking ANY of your fandom opinions or meta seriously
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