#i just really like the idea of a non-rev having a weird relationship with the mists!
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rev, rev, fight the power: thoughts on the first half of chainsaw man
Spoilers through the end of the Bomb Girl Arc.
Devil Hunting in the Age of Fascism
As one of the cohosts of a podcast on Gundam Wing in 2020/2021, I've been thinking a lot about how authoritarian regimes and the concept of societal control is treated in anime. Which is to say: usually in a very limited sense, and based on the actions of a few bad actors, as demonstrated with its effects on a few unfortunate protagonists. It's not that creators don't care about the issue, but rather a sign that the genre (and yes, I do consider manga/anime to be a genre more than just a medium, but that's for another time) and its conventions are not particularly well-suited to showing you those effects.
So, Chainsaw Man. On an individual character level, Fujimoto has some stuff to say about the choice between death and life, and I do want to talk about that and what it says about the characters and what life means in CSM. But it's hard to tell whether or not he meant to create a world with some really fucked up institutions too.
For instance, the civilian, non-public sector Devil Hunters. These appear to be explicitly authorized by the Japanese government, to the point where it is a crime for the Public Safety division's hunters to kill a devil that a civilian is in the process of capturing. They don't have guns (this is Japan!) and I imagine they are only allowed to kill Devils, but just, like, think about this. What if you kill someone else in the process of trying to kill a Devil? What if you suspect someone is a Fiend but actually they're just acting weird? What if you kill someone, then claim later it's because you thought they were a Devil?
This is likely the American in me talking, but I can’t help thinking about how badly this would be abused and how horrible an idea that would be. And I can’t help but think about how the Devils allow the world of CSM to separate fears from human nature. By which I mean, in the world of CSM, evil is otherized in a very specific way; they’re represented by very individual, very distinct, and very monstrous representations. Here is the fear of scissors, the fear of sharks, the fear of the future, and so on. But in the real world, we know it isn’t just fear itself that is the problem; it’s people, well-meaning or otherwise, animated by those fears that create the most evil, or people harnessing those fears to gain power. This may be unfair—I don’t know what Fujimoto has planned for Makima, whose mythos and power seems very much wrapped up in the idea of using Devils to her own advantage. But there’s an assumption here that all actions taken towards eradication of the Devils, or maybe just one Gun Devil, is a de facto good. And in 2021, that’s a very unnerving position to take.
Death in Chainsaw Man is a sacrifice. In these early arcs of the series, death is a "contract," an expending of activation energy to achieve something else. So Pochita gives Denji life (which is really a contract repaid, for when Denji gave him life), so the Devil Hunters "trade" something in a contract with a Devil for power (like Aki giving away literal years of his life to his curse sword), so Denji dying to the Eternity Devil would have freed the rest of the team. But there are plenty of deaths in the series where nothing is traded, nothing is given. These tend to be nameless victims or, in one harrowing scene, convicted felons who die at the hands of Makima as she chases down Katana Devil.
What did they gain? What was the contract formed by the deaths of these 雑魚?
Makima says at some point when she's attacking the gangs that are affiliated with the Katana Devil that "the truly necessary evils are always kept collared and controlled by the state." Which I think is at its face about the fiends and Devils kept “collared” by the Public Safety Bureau. But maybe it’s also about the idea of sacrifice, about giving yourself over to the state, in order to control a world thrown into chaos. The contracts formed by the deaths of those ordinary citizens is meant to bring about an eradication of fear. It gives birth to the Public Safety Devil Hunters, to Devil Hunters in general, to the use of whatever means necessary to achieve an end. But whatever those consequences are, we only see them in the fates of Denji, Chainsaw Man, and the impossible characters around him.
A state under threat, a state that feels like it must collar evil in order to survive, will have ruinous consequences. I just hope we get to see what those are.
Just A Teenage Dirtbag, (Bomb) Baby
I read some reviews about Denji being the anti-shounen shounen manga hero which I can presume were written by people whose only frame of reference is Bleach, Naruto, or One Piece. Sure, the Big Three were, in their most simplistic forms, feel-good series, and CSM's first half is basically a feel-bad series, but that hardly makes it unusual. It's really not dissimilar from other manga like Homunculus, Freesia, and Oyasumi Punpun. Of course, only old fogies like me, who still remember getting scanlations of these series off of IRC, and query, of course, whether or not those series are shounen at all, or more like seinen. If it were up to me to name the genre, and of course it is not, I would call it “simply another line of stories about fucked up things happen to fucked up people.”
Many fucked up things have happened to Denji. I’d call it traumatic, but I don’t think “trauma” covers what this poor man has been through. The effect, though, has been to make Denji less than human, even in his human form.
Denji and Power's nonchalance towards the fate of their human coworkers who die to Katana Devil and Sawatari is framed by the manga through Denji as a potential sign of callousness. Kishibe notes it as a sign that they are "insane," in other words, "not like other humans," and thus capable of bringing down something like the Gun Devil, which would otherwise drive "normal humans" insane.
But like, huh? Denji and Power's reactions are, on the contrary, extremely human, because there’s no reason for them to extend feeling towards other humans. Simply put, they’ve never been human to the humans around them. They seem to be bonded most closely to each other, and in fact almost all the Fiends are, because the wider Public Safety employees treat them so poorly. Remember how the Infinity Devil Arc starts? Basically, they're told to be the advance guard, and threatened to be killed if they ever act out. Denji is kept on a short leash, and is so proud (in front of Reze) that he's allowed to go places on his own now.
Which, I'm not saying that that's wrong. Denji is incredibly dumb, holds monstrous power that could easily be tricked into using for horrible purposes, and appears to be the target of a number of Gun Devil's allies. Power is... well. I wouldn't let her out of sight either. But what Makima does that makes Denji feel so loyal, so utterly tied to her, is simply treating him as a human. She convinces him he has a heart, just like any other human. She tells him about all the love experiences he'll have in the future, because he's just a human teenager. And just like Makima, Reze is able to bond with Denji by treating him like an ordinary 16-year-old horny boy. Is it because as a Devil she knows what he wants the most? What he is craving, and never had? It doesn't matter that Denji had been just an ordinary human before fusing with Pochita or before he began his life as a Devil Hunter; as an orphan growing up on the street, unwanted and unloved, he was no more human than a Devil.
The ending of the Bomb Girl Arc—with Denji asking Reze to run away with him, only to be stood up—reminded me so very much of Aku no Hana. There's the classroom scenes between Reze and Denji, of course, but mostly I think about how Denji—betrayed, injured, manipulated Denji—still asks Reze to run away with him. I'd written about Aku no Hana before, how one of the saddest things about Nakamura is that she cannot imagine a world beyond her current circumstance (and, in fact, the manga ends up dooming her to stagnation). Denji and Reze are Nakamura and Kasuga's perverse mirror. It is because Denji doesn't have the capacity to imagine a larger world beyond his immediate now, three meals a day and a job and this woman who taught him how to swim, that he asks her to do this impossible thing, to run away with him knowing that to do would mean both of them betraying their masters. It is because Reze knows that it is impossible that she does not meet Denji at the cafe. Reze is more human than Denji, because she is capable of dreams, and because she is capable of dreaming, she knows she cannot afford their luxury. She knows too much about the world and its cruelty. And, so, she walks straight into its open maw, and straight into her death.
I don't think we can take Reze at her word that she wanted to be a town mouse, or rather we should say instead that Reze proves that the division between the town mouse and the country mouse is immaterial. The issue is that both, in the end, are only mice, dreaming of a safety they can never achieve. Safety, in the world of CSM, is neither town mouse nor country mouse. It is to not be mice at all. It is to be the dog that digs them out from the cold winter dirt.
It is, in fact, to be Makima, the person who orders the dogs to kill the mice.
Denji, aim for the top! Transcend the town mouse/country mouse divide! Or else you will constantly be hunted and used!
(Side note: CSM goes at a break-neck pace, and I think the speed through which Fujimoto rushes through these early storylines has made it very difficult for me to actually connect with the characters. Reze and Denji’s relationship is one of the victims to this pacing. Do I believe that Denji could fall for a girl and be willing to risk it all for her after about 3 chapters worth of interaction? Sure, he’s that kind of guy. But does it work for me? Not particularly. We’ve hardly had time to linger with Reze before she swears she’ll protect Denji forever, as long as he’ll run away with her. Though the reader at that point knows there’s something off about Reze, it’s still just not believable. Reze’s actions seem like someone trying to bulldoze her way into Denji’s affections, and though she herself is a bittersweet character, I just really feel like CSM could have spent less time with Bomb Devil vs Chainsaw Man and more time with Reze and Denji.)
No Ethical Women Under Capitalism
The Eternity Devil arc, for all its mini-boss game feel (it wouldn’t be out of place as one of the floors in Tower of God), struck a nerve with me, if only because it felt, however unintentionally, to be a story about working under modern capitalism. A floor you can never leave, that loops endless, where the only way to escape is to destroy it, literally, from the inside, by making it so painful, an eternal feedback loop of destroying ourselves and destroying it, before it opens its heart to us. The Capitalism Devil threatens us, tries to tear us apart. Asks us to sacrifice the strongest, the weakest, anybody among us, as if by climbing over the bodies of our friends and coworkers, we can come out ahead. It makes us suspicious of each other, ready to tear into any weakness for an advantage.
No wonder this is the chapter where Kobeni lays bare her reasons for joining the Public Safety bureau. She needed to work, to make money. Her options were to be a sex worker or a Devil Hunter. Either way, she was selling her body to the system. Kobeni is a victim of capitalism, which forces her to do what she hates, for goal that are not hers, and then gaslights us into thinking that she’s wrong for being crazy, she’s wrong for losing her shit, for not being able to handle it.
But... that's an asspull for me, even if it's my ass and I'm the one pulling. I'm truly not sure how to feel about Kobeni. Like, what is her deal?! I’m not sure what to make of her appearance in Chapter 20 in her sister’s hand-me-down. Are we supposed to pity her? See ourselves in her? Even in what I think was intended to be a mic-drop-ish line (at least for her), telling Aki that she didn’t quit because she was waiting on her bonus, landed flat for me, too deadpan to be pathetic and not sharp enough to be actually funny. Part of it may be because she is a character very much shaped by her circumstances as opposed to her personality or any interaction/action she does onscreen, but we don’t actually see her family situation in these chapters. We’re left with a painfully shy and cowardly woman who can’t seem to form any human connections with any of the other characters, who in multiple scenes is shown caving to the slightest pressure or threat.
Do the rest of the women fare any better? I’m not sure. Kobeni is unique in that she does not use her gender/sex appeal to manipulate the men around her and/or Denji (even Power lets Denji cop a feel to get her cat back!). Himeno, Makima, and Reze all hide their intentions for Denji behind the veil of his attraction to them (weak or strong) and are either unable or unwilling to be forthright in their desires and ambitions (Himeno to care for Aki; Reze, to accomplish whatever mission Gun Devil had her set out to do; and Makima, for fuck do I know at this point, but she’s up to something!!). Meanwhile, the men are straightforward to a fault. Did Fujimoto intend this? Is this just a subconscious reveal of his own conceptions of gender and Bitches Be Weird?
I’m not a person who needs to have a strong female narrative in a story, but when you start a story with a protagonist whose life ambition for many chapters was just to feel a boob, you better be careful, you know? CSM doesn’t lack for women; Makima and Power are both formidable characters in their own rights, self-assured and unbeholden to anyone but themselves. But so far almost every arc has featured a woman offering herself to Denji sexually in order to get him to do what they want. It’s getting real old real fast.
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Ghosts of the past - Chapter 1
Batman fanfiction
Characters: Jonathan Crane, OC - Miranda Bradbury, Bruce Wayne, John Constantine
About: Miranda Bradbury moved to Gotham for a few reasons - to enjoy her career as an assassin, and to face her fears. Who else should help her with hallucinations that follow her than the fear expert Jonathan Crane? However, the doctor-patient relationship is very unstable one as both of them have to fight with their past, their present, and Batman.
Author note: I was trying to figure out some fancy way to describe the story.
It's just a porn with a plot about two sick freaks.
Enjoy.
Fair warnings: Suicide attempt, rape mentions, nsfw, violence, light bdsm
Status: Finished, will post next chapters when in mood.
Can also read at AO3.
Chapter 1
It was a dark evening in Gotham. Now, every evening was dark, but in Gotham with its never-ending mist of smog, it was especially dull and uncomfortable. Street lights wouldn’t break the darkness, windows only shined TV light out and painted pictures of entertained families, or dining families, or, as most common in Gotham, arguing families.
Gotham was also loud and Terry Borrows hated that fact. They’ve never got used to constant car noises – revving of engines and horn honking that all coming back twofold in echoes bouncing from walls of thin streets. Annoying, headache causing. Terry would rather listen to their boss shouting all day.
They were hyper focused on the noise. On their check-up doctor said it’s nothing weird and then asked for payment in amount of Terry’s two-month salaries. Thief.
That’s when they heard it. Soft, almost silent ding. As if you try to get attention at the wedding table and you hit the crystal glass with a spoon. Once. Carefully. It sounded almost magical in this grey place.
Ding.
Terry stopped. At the end of the narrow street they saw a shadow. It was a person kneeling next to something on the ground. Terry didn’t see any details, but dread climbed on their back. This is Gotham. Terry should run. It doesn’t matter what were they witnessing, the logical thing is to…
Ding.
The person looked his way. Every little move was followed by that soft jingle.
And then Terry realized they can’t move anymore. The jingle dinged louder. And louder. The sound vibrated through the streets catching them right by the soul. Terry realized they can’t breathe. Their heart was racing like crazy and their head hurt from wave of sound around them.
The person… a woman… walked straight to Terry, bringing the sound with her. In the dark Terry recognized a scarf on her face and… oh god… bloody knife in her hand.
Run! They tried to move their legs. Nothing.
The sound. The fear. The knife.
Finally, Terry’s body gave in and they fainted. They didn’t see the woman touching their neck for pulse. Nor did they hear the sound stop as the woman left without hurting them.
In the street, there lay another body.
***
Miranda Bradbury really liked Gotham. She felt like a character in gothic romance. Darkness, never-ending mist and bad weather, creepy architecture and constant danger. She enjoyed Gotham since she’s moved here two weeks prior. This city was crazy. Mental even! During the time period she tried to adapt to her new environment, she’s already seen the clown terrorizing city, the Riddler enslaving a whole block and some maniac with knives kidnapping people trying to lure in the Bat.
Oh, yeah. Batman. Before she didn’t understand. How can the police just let mask vigilante on loose? She understood after two days. This city…
This city also ruined her business right away. She moved here, opened a toyshop and that was it. The empty place flourished under her care, filled with toys, decorations and joy. The shop was in pretty good part of town, and yet – no customers. Too late she found out this used to be a toyshop of some crazy guy – calling himself the Toymaker – who tried to kill the city with explosive teddy-bears and sentient Barbie dolls.
Yes. This city was mental.
And she loved it. She always tried to blend in, be the grey mouse in her warm turtleneck and messy brown hair. After witnessing crazy punk-rock fashion of this city she realized she stood up more like this. At least she can pass for naïve outsider. That’s always a plus in her line of work.
The fourth day and finally two guys entered her shop. They looked around with deep uninterest in their eyes. Walked through isles touching stuffed toy here and there or picking up a toy car and putting it back two seconds later. Miranda waited patiently at the counter, small smile on her lips.
They finally stopped in front of her. She suspected they are twins as their expression were the same – dull and bored. They were dressed like gangsters from twenties. Gotham was weirdly stuck in time.
“G’morning, lady,” said one of them despite it being deep afternoon. “We’ve come to talk.”
“How much?” Miranda asked.
“Excuse me?”
“How much?” she repeated not losing her patience. She adored the confused looks. “This isn’t my first rodeo, gentlemen. How much is the protection fee?”
“Straight lass, huh?”
“Partially,” Miranda joked. “I hate beating around the bush.”
“Don loves people like you. Right to bus’ ya know? It’s ten percent if you don’t want’cha place to burn.”
Miranda overlooked the empty store. Ten percent of nothing is… probably not suitable for Don Falcone, one of the mafia leaders of the city. Before setting the shop, Miranda made her research on the city’s bad guys. Always ready. Don Falcone won’t care, he will just want his cash. She started to think she underestimated the marketing. Be better PR, Miranda, it’s not that hard.
“Tell me, friends,” she started with a nice voice, “how does Don Falcone feel about illegal businesses?”
***
Miranda moved to Gotham for various reasons. One of them was the fact she was constantly on the move. She’s never spent anywhere more than two years. The last city she was in was Star City and that didn’t go well for her with all the supers around.
The second reason was that she’s always heard about Gotham as this sick place. The city corrupted by illness eating itself out like a wounded animal. That intrigued her and she felt as if this is the proper place to hide and never be found. And if she is, it will be probably in the dumpster behind some chemical plant. She could live with that future in mind.
The third reason… the main reason she wasn’t afraid to admit, she just didn’t want to deal with it… was him. Professor Jonathan Crane. Miranda took years of stupid, non-working, useless therapy to end up here. Her… could she even call them fears?... were crippling. And she needed the best. Jonathan Crane was the best. The fear specialist with shady background. But that’s Gotham for you. You might do inhumane experiments on your students and don’t get your licence revoked.
Miranda should probably be afraid of someone like that. Ridiculous idea. He was still running decent psychiatric office and all reviews threw him five stars. She will be careful. She just really needed help.
This was the part she hated. Explaining. She sat in front of the professor. He was fairly young for the title. Miranda’s looked through his files too, though he has been careful keeping most of the information hidden. Star student, at least he used to be. Those climb the leader fast. He wasn’t even forty yet, his ginger hair hid possible grey hair very well. He was watching her with his intense blue eyes and almost never blinked. He waited for her to get everything out. Miranda hated those stories. Repeating them again always made her feel crazy. She probably was.
“It’s complicated. I will try to make it short.” Now, Miranda, where is your hate for beating around the bush, huh? Just tell the nice doctor you are a fucking madwoman.
The professor was silent. Waiting. Even sitting he was very tall, and she noticed his fingers being thin and bony, just like his whole appearance.
“I have a problem. I’ve seen tons of shrinks about it already. Most of them gave up on me or drugged me to no avail. The thing is I have this weird… I don’t know… Phobia. Causing me panic attacks, crippling me.”
“That is not uncommon for deep fears,” said the professor. Miranda wondered how can shrinks be so calm. If someone told her they are crazy, she would probably joke about it right away.
“Yes, I know. I was told that hundred times already. There’s a catch.”
“Do tell.”
Miranda shuffled in her chair. No matter how many times she has talked about this it still made her uncomfortable and she felt like an idiot. But she had to fight this. Or she might…
“It’s ghosts. I panic around ghosts.”
The professor opened his mouth to say something, but Miranda quickly stopped him.
“No, I don’t believe in ghosts. That’s nonsense. I just call these things ghosts. It’s like… hallucination I keep having. They appear and it’s like someone caught my heart and pulled it out of my chest. I feel dead. I cannot move, I cannot act, think, anything. But according to all the doctors, I am sane.”
“When do these ghosts appear?” Professor didn’t even flinch. Nor blinked. He heard crazy talk daily why should she be any more interesting?
“They first appeared a little over a decade back. This is when the first attack happened. Then I got a charm, see?” She touched her necklace. Simple round silver ball that jingled softly when moved. “It keeps them away. When I take this off, I see them. I get attacked right away.”
“May I see?”
She held the pendant firmly. “Sorry, I don’t take it off on the first date.”
Her joke created tiny smile on his face. “Understandable.”
He asked more questions and she tried to answer as truthfully as her crime record allowed. By the end of the session she felt like dried out sponge.
“Don’t be afraid, miss Bradbury. We will figure this out,” professor said when she was leaving.
“Funny you say that. I can’t really feel the fear,” she smiled and that ended their first meeting.
***
Terry Borrows way lying in the hospital bed. They hit their head during the horrid night which caused a mild concussion. The doctors were also worried about their heart because it showed signs of arrythmia. It disappeared a day after the incident, but everyone was head over heels with this situation.
“They keep me here because they want to blame it on me,” wrote Terry to their friend. “Because they have nobody else for the murder.” Terry believed that. This wouldn’t be the first time Gotham has fucked them over. At least they survived. Witnessing murder first hand was like being sentenced to death.
So, they were bored on the hospital bed, half asleep, half awake, back hurting from cheap bedding. Eyes closing and opening again just to see how far the sun has moved or whether the food was ready.
Closing. Opening. The sun was setting.
Closing. Opening. Darkness.
Closing. Opening. Shadow.
Terry’s heart nearly stopped. They shouted by surprise. They are definitely going to die now!
“Terry Borrows,” said the shadow with a deep voice. “I have few questions for you.”
Terry was struck by fear. The rational part of their brain wanted to scream. They didn’t. They watched a man dressed as giant bat and their voice trembled.
“Y-yes?”
“What did you see at the crime scene?”
“I already told the police everything.” There was panic in their voice.
“Tell me.”
“There was a woman, she killed someone. She had some sort of mask. She… ah!”
The door opened. The nurse stepped between the doorframe, looked at Batman and then strategically left closing the door behind her. Terry swallowed a curse.
“Continue,” demanded Batman.
“The sound. It was the sound that made me faint.”
“What else can you remember?”
“The jingle. She was jingling like some fucking Christmas tree.”
“What about her movement?”
“What about it?” asked Terry. Batman just waited to let them figure out what he means. “I don��t know. I saw her just for a few seconds. She was hidden in the shadows.”
“Thank you, Terry.”
“You are welcome?” answered Terry unsurely. Then the door opened again, and doctor stormed in ready to shun the uninvited guest.
But he was already gone.
Chapter 2
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On Sex With Cars, a Mechaphilic Exposure
+ I should preface this by saying that most of us do develop strong romantic or otherwise generally emotional attachments to our object partners. Many of us cross out of the Mechaphilic aspect of Objectum Sexuality as well and take on other Object Partners (Instruments, Buildings, Stuffies, etc). This is mainly about us good ol' carfuckers because we all LOVE talking about fucking cars even when we're not doing it.
- We're also capable of having human partners and attraction too, obviously.
- Typically speaking the emotional side of our relationships involve lots of projecting emotions and personalities onto our vehicles. This can stem from many reasons from nature vs. nurture to traumatic experience, abuse involving vehicles even if indirect, or other cases. We know they don't reciprocate that love but I mean... It's hard to admit. Go easy on us.
- A good portion of us are LGBT and/or on the autism spectrum. This doesn't mean all of us are, but most.
+ There are a few big No-No's in the community, despite our seeming lawlessness (we're really just loveably tacky). Mainly, don't do anything that would endanger your body or privacy.
- Don't touch hot or moving parts
- Do not fuck while it's running in an enclosed space. It's okay in the open.
- Don't expose yourself purposely to people who are non consenting.
- Do not ingest chemical substances which will harm your body. There is a man infamous for drinking used motor oil who was kicked from our group. He's also very... Weird. He thinks he can get his car pregnant. Don't be like him.
+ Lots of relationships I've seen among our numbers vary, but widely center around physical affection. This has a wide range of expression and can include but is not limited to:
- Kissing, rubbing or licking our automobile, anywhere inside or out
- Hugging, embracing and cuddling the automobile, again anywhere inside or out. Think of inside vs. Outside being like, little spoon vs. Big spoon.
- There's feeling up the vehicle in more overtly sexual ways. We know realistically that the vehicle doesn't derive pleasure from the acts but lots of us are animists who would like to believe so anyways.
- This includes fingering, fondling, grinding, what have you.
+ The actual Sex Acts include numerous positions. Usually if you can imagine it, it's been done or talked about:
- Grinding against the bumper, quarter panels or grille. One of my favorite places with Grace was his trunk, it had a very good height for me.
- Fucking the exhaust. It is exactly how it sounds. Sex toys are often used. AMAB members describe using masturbation sleeves so they don't get cut or infected. AFAB members describe using strap-ons for the act as well.
- Give it it's own dick: mostly an AFAB thing in my experience, but one option with raised vehicles or vehicles which can be put onto a lift is to mount a sex toy beneath the vehicle, usually on the rear differential. This, to me, sounds like a lovely subbing experience.
- Handling the shifter: yup. The obvious. If your lover is equipped with a small-enough floor shifter, this is a viable option for a fun ride. Many mechs will change out their factory shifter for a more usable model.
- Tire worship: think foot/boot worship, but with tires. One of my personal favorites. Definitely gets me worked up pretty well. Extends to other bits as well.
- The hitch. Yup, some find use in their towing hitches whether it's the part itself or modifying a sex toy to be mounted on the hitch.
- a classic is just plain masturbating in the driver's seat to share an intimate moment. I did it on the road at night for the sake of privacy only. Don't attempt while moving. It's thrilling as hell but dangerous.
+ The Sex Appeal: of course, just like with humans, we find different features appealing in different ways! All of us interpret things in unique ways, but I can offer a bit of personal insight:
- Faces: humans typically experience pareidolia which is a feature evolved so that we can recognise other humans faces. This also causes faces to emerge in the most inhuman of features. Different features can help to construct the "personality" of a car, from the shape of the headlight "eyes" to the grille giving a friendly smile.
- Body types: everyone has different preferences. There are certain stereotypes which follow different cars: sports cars usually are viewed as sexy, model-type bodies. Pickups have a strong and intimidating air. Many like the idea of being dominated by trucks. SUVs, vans and hatchbacks are typically cutesy or maternal. Sedans are, I guess your average and represent a wide swath of presentations.
- gender in automobiles is fairly tricky. Different people see features in different ways and genders assigned to cars tend to be assumed based on the "energy" they give off. Initial impressions of this energy are made when the car and driver first meet, some even say this is how the car introduced themselves to them. There is a bit of debate, at times, or minor disagreement on the gender and "personality" of automobiles. Luckily this has far less consequence than issues revolving around human identities.
- the shape and features of the car's body are viewed in unique ways as well. Opinions range based on qualities like personality and practicality (ie, how well can i sexually interface with my vehicle? Is it comfortable to handle? Is it aesthetically appealing?) Some people prefer sharp angles, some prefer swooping curves, some prefer boxy bodies and still others prefer even different combinations of shapes.
- Many features of the car's body can be discussed analogously to the human body. The "face"— front end, headlights, hood, grille, bumper; the "body"— fenders, suspension and tires seen as extremities; the "hips"/"ass"— the curvy bits over the rear window or trunk, the tailgate of a pick-up, the taillights, the rear bumper. They're even seen in a similar way to humans: more muscular or sleek appearance. Bubble butts or thick bodies with the appeal of more to hold and love. Big tires on vehicles like trucks can seem almost cutesy as well, although I haven't personally noticed a bias as far as vehicle type when it comes to tire worship.
+ Other aspects still may revolve around the sensory aspect of loving automobiles, and not just their looks.
- a good rumbling engine always makes me feel safe and protected. Also a good sleep aid.
- the feel of the car's paneling or interior is often a great comfort.
- electrical features like a car's HVAC system and audio system can create a uniquely comfortable environment specific to the driver's likes.
- the feeling of vibrations from the car running are typically comforting and fall in with rumbling/revving noises.
- the sway of steering on the go is typically a sensory comfort for myself as well.
- taking travels and making memories with our automobile is just as important as with any other friend or partner.
- doing silly things like going out on "dates", sightseeing or learning special driving techniques. Many have certain roads or areas they say belong to them and their auto.
- I guess this is also in with the sway of steering, but on a more sexual note, watching a car bounce/rock on its suspension is fairly arousing.
- maybe it's just my piss kink, but watching the exhaust in some vehicles both smoke/steam and drip condensation is pretty hot.
- the feeling of being surrounded and protected by a partner whether it's sexual or not is just nice. Kind of makes me understand soft vore.
I'll add more as I think of it but that's it for now.
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Dear Trick or Treater
Hi! Thank you for writing for me! I’m reconditarmonia here and on AO3. I have anon messaging off, but mods can contact me with any questions.
Alternate Universe Works | Assassin's Creed | Far from the Madding Crowd | Fidler Afn Dakh | Simoun | Sleep No More
General likes:
– Relationships that aren’t built on romance or attraction. They can be romantic or sexual as well, but my favorite ships are all ones where it would still be interesting or compelling if the romantic component never materialized.
– Loyalty kink! Trust, affectionate or loving use of titles, gestures of loyalty, replacing one’s situational or ethical judgment with someone else’s, risking oneself (physically or otherwise) for someone else, not doing so on their orders. Can be commander-subordinate or comrades-in-arms.
– Heists, or other stories where there’s a lot of planning and then we see how the plan goes.
– Femslash, complicated or intense relationships between women, and female-centric gen. Women doing “male” stuff (possibly while crossdressing).
– Stories whose emotional climax or resolution isn’t the sex scene, if there is one.
– Uniforms/costumes/clothing.
– Stories, history, and performance. What gets told and how, what doesn’t get told or written down, behavior in a society where everyone’s consuming media and aware of its tropes, how people create their personas and script their own lines.
Smut Likes: clothing, uniforms, sexual tension, breasts, manual sex, cunnilingus, grinding, informal d/s elements, intensity; stories whose resolution isn’t the sex scene. DNW "pussy."
General DNW: rape/dubcon, torture, other creative gore; unrequested AUs, including “same setting, different rules” AUs such as soulmates/soulbonds; PWP; food sex; embarrassment; focus on pregnancy; Christmas/Christian themes; focus on unrequested canon or non-canon ships; unrequested trans versions of characters.
I am requesting exclusively fic, but open to art treats!
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Fandom: Alternate Universe Works (Treat or Trick)
Character(s): Female Li Shang (Mulan 1998), Female Ishmael (Moby Dick), Female Captain Ahab (Moby Dick), Pokémon Trainer Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Female Shang - I would...just love it so much if you Monstrous Regiment-ed this canon up. Shang also being a woman would give her even more reasons to be a hardass (is she in disguise, and thinks that her regiment failing would invite suspicion on her? is she openly female and needs to prove that she’s as good as her father and the country need her to be? is she paranoid about other women in the army, or does she want to have a female regiment?) If you want to write F!Shang/Mulan, I’d also love to know how falling in love with a woman plays into Mulan’s whole arc - it’s certainly not what her family was preparing her for, but neither was being a soldier and saving China. What does seeing another woman dressed as a man (whether Shang is openly female or not, I imagine she’d wear men’s clothes), or a group of women dressed as men, make her think? What are Yao, Chien Po, and Ling like in an AU where they’re also female, if that’s what you choose to write?
I’d be happy for just about anything in this vein - Shang character study, Mulan/Shang romance/sex (this is a canon that is a Lot about bodies and clothes), gen shenanigans with the rest of the squad, both? During canon or post? I love loyalty kink and butch characters a lot.
Female Ishmael, Female Ahab - I’d love to know more about these female sailor(s) and what drives them. A female Ishmael might still decide to sign on to a ship whenever she gets the blues, but it’d be socially fairly different, mightn’t it? (Worldbuilding-wise, I’d be more interested in a world where sailing and whaling are still typically male things as in our world, even if you make them a little less exclusively male, than an egalitarian or matriarchal world; something that women might do, without necessarily disguising themselves as men, but a GNC thing to do.) Would her already diverging from the “expected” female path in this regard affect her reception of Queequeg as someone who’s an outsider to Nantucket society? And, if Queequeg is also female, the the intimacy she offers? What does she still find outlandish? (If you also write f!Queequeg, is her life a typical female life for her home culture, or not?)
As for Ahab - just imagine this fanatic, tragic, vengeful character as a woman - with the willpower not only to do all the things canonical male Ahab does but also in a society where women aren’t really supposed to sail or kill or lead! Is she the odd one out in an otherwise male crew, or are there more women in the crew by the time she’s captain?
Pokémon Trainer Harrow - It's a great idea!! I think she'd have a Duskull, but I'm very open to any choices you make in Pokemon-ing this universe up. Do different houses tend towards different types or no? What are their different cultures around Pokémon raising, training, and fighting? What is Harrow's relationship with her Pokémon like, singular or plural? (I don't need you to think through the implications of what Lyctorhood entails in this setting if you'd rather just write slice of life, and, you know, I was writing this and realized that that might make Harrow's Pokémon Gideon. Thanks, brain, I hate it. DNW Gideon as a Pokémon.)
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Fandom: Assassin's Creed (Treat only)
Character(s): Aveline de Grandpré
I'm close to finishing AC Liberation and I love Aveline a lot! I really like how she basically makes New Orleans into her own little fiefdom and does what she feels like doing. Not in a #girlpower way, but in the sense where she considers herself to be the best person to judge and decide in any situation and to deal with happenings on any level in her various personas, and where becoming a business magnate is actually a part of her character and plot in a way that it wasn't so much for earlier Assassins? I imagine Assassins from other places talking about New Orleans and going "oh yeah, Aveline de Grandpré runs that whole city from the shadows," and then you go there to talk to her and she pulls a Lexa (as in The 100) where she uses her slave disguise to eavesdrop on you while you wait to meet with this Assassin lady merchant.
I like her friendships with other characters too - Gérald being there as the loyal support guy, Élise and Roussillon being the people she can be at ease with (she seems so happy to see them - "Bonjour, smugglers!"). I'd be happy to see something set in New Orleans as she takes it over or after she takes it over, in the Bayou as she lives there in a very different way (where and how does she sleep when she's there?), or in Chichen Itza if you want to expand on her discovery of all the weird shit. [Edit: I've finished the game now and I also like the aspect of her mission with Connor that's about how sometimes Assassin "brother"s from other locations will show up where you, another Assassin, are because there's something they need to find or do, and you'll work together? I guess that's also the premise of AC Rev, but.]
I do ship her with Élise and would love to read that if you do too! Fighting together, whether in the Bayou or on a mission further afield that's just them; Élise visiting Aveline in New Orleans for some reason (what if they go to a fancy party together with Élise dressed as a man?); downtime fluff?
Fandom-Specific DNW: Aveline/men, even mentioned or out-of-focus.
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Fandom: Far From the Madding Crowd (Treat or Trick)
Character(s): Bathsheba Everdene
One thing that always sticks in my mind about this novel is the way Hardy calls Bathsheba “the young farmer” just as he refers to the men as farmers - which, just saying, is more than most people writing about this story can do - and so, that being the case, what I’m most interested in is something about Bathsheba as farmer. One day in the life or four seasons in the life or five plantings/harvests in the life, or pseudo-academic fic about a case study of a woman farmer in the Victorian era, or a conflict between the farm and nature that Bathsheba has to decide how to solve.
Feel free to bring in other characters if it suits what you’re trying to do, but what I’m really looking for is a focus on Bathsheba’s work, determination, and process of learning. (I like how Bathsheba’s relationship with Gabriel ends up playing out in canon, but I don’t want shipfic.) Other ideas: something like a merchant ship AU (as the first alternate setting that came to mind where it would be not exactly the done thing for her to captain her inherited ship and make commercial decisions herself - although I do have to point out that contrary to popular belief, there were a lot of women on shipboard in the age of sail, may this be useful - but also where nature and luck/fate are as influential as they are in the original setting), or something in which the land, superstition, and ritual are more overtly magical. I LOVE English folk magic and ritual shit.
I’ve requested both tricks and treats for this fandom, but would prefer that the outlook of the fic, including if you decide to incorporate non-canon magical/spooky/occult elements, be ultimately positive rather than the doom and gloom that canon leans toward at times. A seasonal treat would be right up the alley of this request.
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Fandom: Fidler Afn Dakh (Treat or Trick)
Character(s): The Fiddler
I would love to read about the Fiddler from the recent Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof, understanding him/her/them as a real person with a backstory, present and future rather than a symbol. They seem to be female (and their actor describes them as female) but wear men's clothes and are on the men's side at the wedding, and everyone seems cool with that? I'm 100% on board with any gender identity you decide you'd like to write them with. How did he/she/they come to be who they are, and what are their interpersonal relationships (platonic, familial, romantic, any gender) like? What might an encounter between them and the supernatural be or have been like? Have they always lived in Anatevka or do they wander from village to village?
Fandom-Specific DNW: antisemitism as the focus of the story. I've requested both tricks and treats, and I acknowledge that it'd be unreasonable to pretend that antisemitism doesn't exist in the world of the story, but I would prefer for any dark/scary elements to come from supernatural horror (I grew up with Singer and other Jewish folklore horror, give me as many dybbuks and demons and witches as you like) rather than the human capacity for racist violence.
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Fandom: Simoun (Treat only)
Character(s): Neviril
I've just completed a rewatch of this show, and it has reaffirmed for me that I love Neviril. She's a leader in both a military and a religious sense, respected by her squad and by the populace, but figuring out what that means to her is such a personal journey. I still love her scene in the hearing where she speaks aloud what no one has wanted to admit or talk about - that they're soldiers now, this is war, can they still call themselves priestessses? - but I was also struck on this rewatch by how Chor Tempest increasingly becomes a player in itself in the politicking (the bit in Episode 21 where the whole lot of them fly out against orders, because it's what they, with Neviril leading and giving voice to the group, think is what their role is about), and by the scenes of her blessing the people (when iirc she is needed elsewhere by the military governor for flight purposes) and Paraietta (after what Paraietta did to her).
I love the military aspects of this canon in general (and the associated tropes of loyalty and trust and bravery and positive/negative relationship to authority) and that definitely ties in to Neviril figuring out what her role is as the squad leader, but I'm also just here for that very process of figuring it out and defining it for herself.
So...what happens to her post-canon? What is the "new world" and her travel in it like? If she makes it back to the main world when war is brewing again, but her old cohort can't fly anymore, what does she see her role as being - a leader for peace, for war, something else? How do she and Aer interact with Paraietta, Rodoreamon, Floef, and/or Vyuraf?
Ship-wise, Aer/Neviril grew on me a lot! I appreciated Aer more as the determined bit-of-a-loose-cannon type than as the manic pixie this time, and noted Neviril's comments about how she was drawn to Aer's determination. But I'd also be up for a poly situation where she's involved with both Aer and Paraietta, who are friends, or, I guess, one where it's a three-way relationship, although I don't personally know what the Aer/Paraietta side would be like! (I do like how they work together in battle even when they're shown as having personal issues.)
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Fandom: Sleep No More (Treat or Trick)
Character(s): Bald Witch, Sexy Witch
One of my favorite things about Sleep No More was the idea of this world of darkness and magic that’s underlying or intertwined with the social world, rather than in a separate space - I loved seeing the Witches at the ball and, holy shit, Bald Witch pulling off her wig after the ball in her solo ritual thing! (I hadn’t realized it was a wig until that moment.) So -
how do either of these witches interact with the normal world (Paisley/the hotel/etc.) or deliberately carve out other spaces (like the apothecary shop)? For that matter, I love the apothecary shop and Bald Witch's scene in it A LOT, so more about that would be awesome.
How did the Witches find each other - was it before or after they were witches?
Are they immortal, and if so, what’s that like for either or both of them?
How much do they have a day-to-day life vs. witching all the time?
Their card game is super cool and I'd love to know more about the Witches and cards.
I was very struck on my last visit by Sexy Witch's dance for Hecate after the rave. The fan material seems to describe it as her having trouble coming down, but it felt to me like pleading with Hecate for more power, more magic.
If you want to ship them together, and/or with Hecate (or both) I’m very up for that as well. Some sexy prompts if you go in that direction -
ritual sex magic to make something happen or share power?
If they have non-witch personas and sleep together while they’re being normal people, is there still magic?
Sex in one of the play locations - the apothecary, the ballroom, the bar that’s the empty shell of the real bar?
Slow dancing nude, or another inverted version of something in the normal world?
Fandom-Specific DNW: f/m ships with requested characters
#dear author letters#sleep no more#simoun#gideon the ninth#assassin's creed#mulan#fiddler on the roof#far from the madding crowd#moby-dick
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Podcast: Hugging Strangers to Improve Mental Health
Touch is a powerful thing. From the time we’re born, and throughout our lives, humans need touch to thrive and develop properly. Sadly, many people in our culture experience a profound lack of caring and respectful platonic touch. Today’s guest, Rev. Edie Weinstein, has a remedy for this. She is the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed With Love, which offers FREE HUGS events for the public.
Tune in to discover how Edie got started in the hugging “business,” the ins and outs of giving free hugs in public, and how she manages to gently navigate our culture’s understandable wariness of inappropriate touch.
SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW
Guest information for ‘Edie Weinstein – Hugging’ Podcast Episode
REV. EDIE WEINSTEIN, MSW, LSW, Love Ambassador, Opti-Mystic & Bliss Mistress
Edie delights in inviting people to live rich, full, juicy lives. She is an internationally recognized, sought after, colorfully creative journalist, interviewer, author and editor, a dynamic and inspiring speaker, licensed social worker and interfaith minister, BLISS coach, event producer, certified Laughter Yoga Leader, certified Cuddle Party facilitator, and Cosmic Concierge.
Edie is the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed With Love, which offers FREE HUGS events world- wide on a planned and spontaneous basis. She speaks on the subjects of wellness, relationships, trauma recovery, addiction, mental health, spirituality, sexuality, loss and grief. Edie is the author of The Bliss Mistress Guide To Transforming the Ordinary Into the Extraordinary and co-author of Embraced By the Divine: The Emerging Woman’s Gateway to Power, Passion and Purpose.
About The Psych Central Podcast Host
Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.
Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Edie Weinstein – Hugging’ Episode
Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.
Announcer: You’re listening to the Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the field of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information using plain, everyday language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.
Gabe Howard: Welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Podcast. Calling into the show today we have Edie Weinstein, who is a licensed social worker and a PsychCentral.com blogger. She’s also the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed with Love and the author of the book Bliss Mistress. Edie, welcome to the show.
Edie Weinstein: Thank you, Gabe. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.
Gabe Howard: Well, we really appreciate having you. And the biggest question that I want to ask you and I’ve really been looking forward to this interview. How did you land on a hugs? I mean, of all the things in the world, hugging just seems both so obvious and so far away. Can you talk about this for a moment?
Edie Weinstein: Oh, for more than a moment, actually, we could do the whole interview on that.
Gabe Howard: Yeah.
Edie Weinstein: I grew up in a very nurturing family. Nobody left the house without hugs. And I love you. Nobody came back in without hugs and I love you. Unlike a lot of people, sadly, a lot of people’s home’s touch was either violent, coercive, non-existent, limited sexual or not by consent. In my home, it was purely by consent and abundant. So I told my parents they raised me to do this kind of work. And I came upon the free hugs movement. There is a gentleman named Juan Mann. People want to Google it, it’s J U A N M A N N. And one day he went into his town square with a sign that said free hugs. He had moved there, I believe, from England and was lonely. And something like 20 minutes went by. Nobody came up to him. People walked by, looked at him like, what the heck is this weird guy doing? And then this older woman came up to him and they embraced. And then people started gathering around and a movement was born. In 2014, Valentine’s Day weekend, I brought a group of friends to 30th Street Station, which is the big train station in Philadelphia. We let ourselves loose there, about a dozen of us who walked around the train station with our free hug signs offering people love. And we did a free hugs flashmob and it’s only by consent.
Edie Weinstein: We didn’t kamikaze hug anybody. We didn’t go grab people. We asked, would you like a hug? And if they said yes, we’d hug them. And if they’d say no, we say, okay, thank you. Hug somebody. Well, one of the people that approached us was a gentleman who was an Iraq war vet. He was the only survivor of his platoon. And he had survivor’s guilt. And he said, I thought about ending my life until I met you people. Can I join you? So, of course, we gave him a sign and he was off to the races himself. And I thought, wow, we’ve really got something here. Hugs, save lives. And I hadn’t realized how much until a few months later, on the way home from the gym, I had a heart attack at age 55. And as part of my cardiac rehab, I walked around Doylestown, Pennsylvania, which is closer to home than Philly, doing free hugs strolls because hugs are heart friendly, not just cardiac friendly, but emotionally heart friendly. And they connect us heart to heart. So friends started calling us “hug mobsters,” and I said, oh, mobsters, Mafia, guns, drugs. Nah, I don’t think so. And I said, what about Hug Mobsters Armed with Love? And thus a movement was, well, it wasn’t born, but it was extended beyond what one man did. So I do it any and every where I can.
Gabe Howard: That is incredible and I love everything about it. And my favorite phrase in there might be, “We aren’t hug kamikazes.” I come from a loving family as well. We’re huggers, I always tell people that I am a hugger and
Edie Weinstein: Yeah.
Gabe Howard: Kamikaze hugs. Again, my new favorite phrase. That’s how we hug. I mean, people just charge you and hug you in my family. But of course, that’s my family. I’m on a first name basis with all of these people. How does this work in the real world? You know, at first, I was like, man, if you just like grab people, that that seems like a really bad idea. But if you just walk up to a stranger and say, can I give you a hug? I’m not going to lie, that also seems like a really bad idea. How are you bridging those gaps?
Edie Weinstein: Well, a couple of things, particularly in the era of #MeToo, we want to be really careful about how we touch people because anything can be misinterpreted. And on the flip side, we want to be sure that we don’t buy into the touch deprivation that so much a part of American culture. So the kamikaze hugs even people in my life, if I’m not sure if they want to hug, I’ll say, can I give you a hug, would you like a hug? And when I’m out on the street having a Hug Mobster sign helps. People look at it like, OK, what is that? Or if I carry a sign that says free hugs or if I wear a t shirt that indicates that I’m doing free hugs. When I do it out on the street somewhere, like I was in Washington, D.C., hugging in front of the White House, and there were people from all over the world, all different cultures, some of them huggier cultures than others. And even that, you know, I would approach people and say, may I give you a hug or would you like to share a hug? Some people are hungry for it. Some say, no, thank you, nah, I’m good. When they say, no, I don’t want it, they’ll say, nah, I’m good. And I say, I know you’re good, but hug somebody. So, yeah, it does feel kind of weird and culturally, sadly, because I’m a woman, it’s less threatening. Because I’ve had male friends go on hug strolls with me and some of them are a little leery about reaching out to hug people. So this is changing the culture, okay. Changing touch culture, changing relationship culture.
Gabe Howard: I remember early on in my career, for those who don’t know I’m six foot three, I’m two hundred and seventy five pounds, I’m broad shoulders, I’m just a giant of a man. And as I mentioned, my family are all huggers. And when I first got started, people would just come up and hug me. And I loved that. That was amazing to me. And as I got more comfortable in my role as a speaker and a presenter and a public figure, for lack of a better word, I just started randomly hugging people back. I work in mental health, so there’s more women than men. But one time I went in for a hug and somebody put up their hand and said, no, no, no, I’m not a hugger. And you should be careful, Gabe, because if people have a history of trauma, people don’t like that. I mean, you know, you’re a man coming in. And I thought about that for a moment. And now I have the phrase, are you a hugger?
Edie Weinstein: Yep, yep.
Gabe Howard: And that’s what I say. You know, people come up and they talk to me and they’re like, you know, gay, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, oh, are you a hugger? And I open up my arms. And if they say, no, I’m not. I say, well, I’m giving you a mental hug or I’m
Edie Weinstein: Yes.
Gabe Howard: I’m hugging you in our mind. And I reach out my hand or I shake their hands or I just do whatever they want. But you’re right. This idea that hugging is natural has sort of. It’s just weird for me. I’m not going to lie because I think that a hug is just something that you do for everybody. Whereas in other cultures, kissing hello is perfectly normal. And I think that’s very weird. So are the majority of people receptive or are the majority of people not receptive? Like, what’s your ratio there? How many people accept the hugs?
Edie Weinstein: Ok. Well, most are receptive.
Gabe Howard: Nice.
Edie Weinstein: When I first started doing this, more people said no because I was uncertain. Anytime you approach someone with a new idea, the more confident you are, the more people are gonna be receptive. Because they sense that energy. Now it’s a few people they know. They say thank you. Thanks for taking care of yourself. Not everybody is into this. And I will do that like if I’m meeting somebody and they’ll hold out their hand. I think that’s what you said. Are you a hugger? They say, oh, yes. And I’ll hug them and they say no, and I will shake a hand. And when people say no to a physical embrace, I’ll say, are you cool with a handshake? High five? Fist bump, virtual hug? Where I’ll wrap my arms around myself and imagine hugging them and usually they will say yes. There are times when I’ve hugged hundreds of people in a day. I go to different events like this summer, there were four Pride Fests, and I probably hugged a few hundred people throughout, you know, a full day. And I don’t keep track. Somebody said, oh, you should have a clicker. I don’t want to do that because it takes away from the quality of what I’m doing. Quantity to me doesn’t much matter. What’s the impact? It’s a ripple effect. I’m not totally altruistic. I do it for myself, too, because it helps me feel connected to the world. You know, when I hug people, I don’t know what their politics are, who they voted for. I don’t know what their religion is unless they tell me. I don’t know what their gender orientation or sexual orientation is. And it doesn’t matter. I just want the world to be a kinder, more loving place. And if hugs can help with that, I’m all on board with it.
Gabe Howard: The next question that I want to ask is surrounding like the worst case scenario. You said that the majority of people are accepting the hugs. You’ve talked about the people who don’t want hugs are just like, oh, no, thank you. And you say, hey, you should hug somebody today. And they say, OK. And they wander off. Have you gotten any truly bad reactions? Has anybody just flipped out?
Edie Weinstein: Never. Nope. The most is somebody says no, I’m not really into hugs or no, thank you. You know, I’ve never had that. But again, I think it’s because I’m a 5 foot, 4 inch woman. I have purple hair sometimes and I wear colorful clothing. So I’m not particularly threatening. But the coolest things that come out of this are the types of people that have said yes. I celebrate the anniversary of my heart attack as a brand new life experience, and I always do free hug strolls. On my third cardio-versary, a friend of mine who’s a filmmaker followed me around South Street in Philadelphia, and there was this beautiful Muslim woman dressed, I wouldn’t say in full hijab. Her face was uncovered, her head, and she comes up to me and she offers me a hug and she says, Who wouldn’t want a hug? And she was kind of gesturing and moving her body around. Who wouldn’t want to hug. And some people don’t. They say that they don’t want them. And she lifted up her finger and pointed at me. And she says even when they say they don’t they don’t want them, they need them. And I thought if the people who espouse hatred see this beautiful woman who is probably in her 40s, I’m guessing, talking about the power of hugs to connect people and that the needs that they meet, they couldn’t possibly hate.
Edie Weinstein: So I think that’s part of it. The other thing that’s important, too, is children. When there are children around that I offer a hug to, I say to the parent, if it’s okay with you and okay with your child, may I hug your child? If the parent says yes, a child says no, I won’t touch them. And I’ll say to the child, nobody touches you without your permission. So it’s OK that you’re saying no. When I was in D.C., there was a family from the Dominican Republic and it was a mom and dad, and like a 7 or 8 year old boy. And he didn’t want hugs at first. And I said, OK, will you do fist bumps or high fives? And he did both of those. So a few minutes later, before I left, he approaches me and opens his arms. So he was asking me for a hug. So I’m a consent educator and this is about consent as well.
Gabe Howard: We’ll be right back after these messages.
Announcer: Want real, no-boundaries talk about mental health issues from those who live it? Listen to the Not Crazy podcast co-hosted by a lady with depression and a guy with bipolar. Visit Psych Central.com/NotCrazy or subscribe to Not Crazy on your favorite podcast player.
Announcer: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.
Gabe Howard: We’ll be right back after these messages.
Gabe Howard: We’re back speaking with Edie Weinstein, a licensed social worker, about the power of hugging. So let’s talk about consent for a moment. As you pointed out, you’re a consent educator. And early on when I was a young boy, I was always told that no means no. Later on, I was told, listen, we have to get rid of no means no because it’s not thorough. And we wanted to hear. Yes, means yes. This opened up a world of understanding for me, because when you hear a yes, you know that you have permission. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because I really do think that people are fuzzy on what consent is. And that’s so unfortunate.
Edie Weinstein: Absolutely. Well, it’s perfect timing because I’ve just started teaching a class with a friend who’s also in the same field that I am called, “Yes, No, Maybe So: The Conscious Consent and Boundaries Workshop.” And we just did our first one together on Sunday. And the way that we define it, define consent is that it’s saying yes, just to touch, but a wholehearted yes to whatever it is that’s being offered to us or asked of us. And if I’m not a full blown heck yes, then I’m a heck no. Okay? I don’t have to say yes. Those of us who are co-dependent and I count myself among them, people pleasers. My husband used to say I was an emotional contortionist who’d bend over backwards to please people. I would often say yes when I really wanted to say no. I didn’t want anybody to feel rejected and I didn’t want to be rejected. So, consent is all bound up in that as well. That when we give our full, wholehearted consent to something, we are on board with it. I consented to this interview. I may have been wishy washy about it, and if I’m wishy washy about something. I won’t do it until I’m sure that this is what I want to do.
Edie Weinstein: And I’ve been that way all my life that I’ve had to think things through before I jump into it. And once I’m there, I’m all in. So, consent for me is about, okay, can I be all in to whatever is being offered to me or asked of me? And that could be touch. It could be sex. It could be a gift. It could be a commitment to do something with someone. So that’s why it’s important. When my son, who’s now 32, was a boy, we talked a lot about not only no means no, but only yes means yes. And not just from him, but to him. I said, if somebody wants to touch you in a way that you don’t want to be touched, no matter who it is, it’s no. And you’re allowed and you’re encouraged, and you’re expected to say no if you’re not comfortable. And to the best of my knowledge, he you know, he’s been appropriate with anybody he’s ever been in relationship with. I’ve never worried about him crossing boundaries and touching somebody inappropriately. And I wanted him to know that he had the freedom and the self body sovereignty to say no to anybody touching him if he didn’t want it.
Gabe Howard: And I think that some of this goes back to what you were saying about getting consent from children. I do not have children, but the majority of my friends and family do. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard. Oh, don’t be that way. Give your uncle a hug or stop that. You say hello and give them a hug. I understand the say hello. I understand the make eye contact. I understand being socially appropriate, but it does shift a little when you demand that somebody occupy your physical space. Right? My question specifically in this isn’t so much about consent, but it’s about how do you teach somebody, especially a child, the benefits and the value of hugging without forcing them to hug a bunch of people?
Edie Weinstein: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Gabe Howard: It’s difficult, right, it’s difficult for a parent because like you said, touch is so valuable and so important, but you don’t want to force somebody to do it.
Edie Weinstein: Right. In the 1960s and 70s, I’m 61, the common thing was, oh, go hug aunt so and so. You don’t want her to feel bad.
Gabe Howard: Right.
Edie Weinstein: One of the things that I encourage children to do, if I was a parent dealing with this and what I would tell the child if the person wanted a hug. They don’t owe anybody a hug. If I was going to a family gathering with a child, even as old as an adolescent, I would say there’s gonna be people here that you don’t know. How do you want to greet them? Now, what would be a good way for you to feel comfortable to greet them? And if they’re people that you do know, know, how would you like to greet this person? Well, I would like to shake their hand or I would like to do a high five or fist bump. And so it’s preparing them in advance. So listen to somebodies words and watch their body language, their non-verbal cues. If you’re an adult witnessing, and it doesn’t have to be anything horrible, it’s not like somebody who’s molesting the child. But if you see a child being uncomfortable with physical behavior from an adult, you can step in and say, OK, enough, enough, stop. And take that firm stand, because that way that child will feel like they have an ally, that they have a voice, and that you’re encouraging their voice.
Gabe Howard: And I think it’s important for anybody listening to understand that obviously the best hugs. Just like anything else in life are ones freely given. We have to consider whether it’s a child, whether it’s your mom, whether it’s whom ever a co-worker or a stranger on the street. If they’re hugging you out of obligation, it’s diminishing the return significantly. I don’t want to hug somebody that doesn’t want to hug me because somebody who is bigger than them and had power over them told them to.
Edie Weinstein: Absolutely.
Gabe Howard: It kind of ruins it a bit.
Edie Weinstein: Absolutely. And if you’re on the receiving end, wouldn’t you want somebody to hug you willingly?
Gabe Howard: Yes.
Edie Weinstein: Doesn’t that feel so much better? And there are times like, for example, if you’re in a relationship and your partner is not feeling so hot and you say, would you like a hug? And they say, no, really, I just want to be by myself. Forcing a hug on them isn’t listening to what they’re saying. And there are some people that when they don’t feel well, whether it’s a physical condition or an emotional condition, that they just want their space. It’s not a rejection of you or the love that you want to offer them. That’s hard too. If somebody is saying, well, I have all this love to give and I know that by hugging them, I’m going to make them feel better. It’s not about them. You’re making it about you.
Gabe Howard: Exactly.
Edie Weinstein: Yeah, I mean, my primary love language is touch, but there are people in my life that are not. That’s not their primary love language. I have wonderful nurturing friends, who would never do a free hugs event with me. They’d never go out and do that. I also teach a workshop called Cuddle Party, which is about nurturing non-sexual platonic touch for adults. And there are people that in my life that would never go to one. My son included. He says, Mom, the day I go to a cuddle party is the day you get in a wrestling ring or go to a shooting range. It so happens. So but he’s very. However, he’s very affectionate with me, with his wife, with his friends. But his style is very different. I’m his weird hippie mom who does all this bizarre stuff. It’s slightly embarrassing for my 32 year old.
Gabe Howard: You know, Edie, along the lines of that weird hippie mom statement that you just made, when I first became aware of you and to be clear, we’re co-workers over at Psych Central. So you’re not just some random person I found on the Internet. We have an actual working relationship. And even then, I thought, what is this? And
Edie Weinstein: Everybody, bizarre woman here.
Gabe Howard: You know, I’m kind of on guard for this. As the host of the podcast, I talk to a lot of people. I get a lot of guest pitches. As an associate editor over at Psych Central, I read a lot of the submissions and there’s a lot of what I like to call misinformation out in the world, especially surrounding mental illness and psychiatry and the treatment for mental health conditions, mental illness, etc. And just to disclose, when it, when I first saw this, I thought, well, this doesn’t make any sense. I mean, just randomly hugging people, that’s not going to do anything. But I’ve also learned to keep an open mind and I read your articles, I read the information that you provided. And of course, again, we’re coworkers. I know you. It makes it a little easier. And I realized that, yeah, because you’re not saying that hugging it cures mental illness. You’re not saying that hugging prevents depression. All you’re saying is that hugging has intrinsic value and that kindness has intrinsic value. And that value reverberates out into your life and into the lives of others in a very positive and meaningful ways.
Edie Weinstein: Right.
Gabe Howard: And I wish more people would understand that when, you know, they roll their eyes at this, because, you know, some people do. And I think if
Edie Weinstein: Yeah.
Gabe Howard: They really thought about it, they would realize that, oh, my God, we’re sitting on the simple solution to feeling disconnected. And here we are.
Edie Weinstein: Yeah, I totally agree, and as I said, hugs save lives. I don’t know what happened with the gentleman that hugged us initially, five years ago. I don’t even know if I’d recognize him if I saw him again. But I also know that for the people who experienced this, the feedback that I get from them, they don’t feel so alone. There’s another form of hugging that I do. It’s called free mom hugs. Have you ever heard of that?
Gabe Howard: I have not.
Edie Weinstein: Ok. Free mom hugs got started probably around the same time as Hug Mobsters did. There’s a woman named Sarah Cunningham and she was a devout, she’s still a devout, Christian whose son came out to her as a gay man and she went into a tailspin. She thought, oh my goodness, how can I love God and love my son and not have to choose between them? So she had a dark night of the soul, like a lot of people do, if their kids come out to them and she realized she didn’t have to make a choice. So Parker invited her to go to a pride fest in Oklahoma City, and she made up a sign that said free mom hugs with the idea that those who come out to their parents don’t often get hugs, though she said by the end of the day, she was covered with tears and glitter because a lot of the people that she hugged sobbed because they didn’t have the kind of parents that she was for her son. And she thought, just like I did, I’ve got something here. So she took it on the road. So I’m part of free mom hugs. You can actually look that Web site up too, free mom hugs. There’re chapters probably in all 50 states. And when I went to the Pride Fest, I hugged a lot of young people whose parents rejected them when they came out and they said our parents would never do that. There’s also free dad hugs. So that healed. I can’t tell you how many lives that kind of hugging changes when they feel accepted by a maternal or paternal figure, even if it’s not their own. And yes, I’m sure there are articles out there that talk about the mental health healing, power of safe, nurturing, platonic touch by consent. And that’s how I would categorize what I do.
Gabe Howard: Well, that is incredible. Edie, we are about at the end of our time. Can you tell folks how to find you and how to find your book, Bliss Mistress?
Edie Weinstein: They could find it on Amazon, The Bliss Mistress Guide to Transforming the Ordinary into the Extraordinary. They can find me on my Web site www.opti-mystical.com. So that’s my Web site. I’m also on Facebook. My son calls me a Facebook addict. But it’s Edie Weinstein, W E I N S T E I N, and I encourage you to be in touch with me and hug somebody today starting with yourself. So I invite whoever is listening to wrap their arms around themselves and then take it out to the street.
Gabe Howard: Well, thank you so much for being here, and I could not agree more. Hug as many people as possible and I really like the idea of hugging yourself. Thank you again for being here.
Edie Weinstein: My pleasure, Gabe.
Gabe Howard: And remember, everyone, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counselling anytime, anywhere, simply by visiting BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. Also, wherever you downloaded this podcast, give us as many stars, hearts or bullet points as you feel appropriate and use your words. Tell people why you liked the show. And finally, share us on social media. Email us to everybody you know and we will see everyone next week.
Announcer: You’ve been listening to The Psych Central Podcast. Want your audience to be wowed at your next event? Feature an appearance and LIVE RECORDING of the Psych Central Podcast right from your stage! Email us at [email protected] for details. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. Psych Central is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, Psych Central offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com. To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at gabehoward.com. Thank you for listening and please share widely.
Podcast: Hugging Strangers to Improve Mental Health syndicated from
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Podcast: Hugging Strangers to Improve Mental Health
Touch is a powerful thing. From the time we’re born, and throughout our lives, humans need touch to thrive and develop properly. Sadly, many people in our culture experience a profound lack of caring and respectful platonic touch. Today’s guest, Rev. Edie Weinstein, has a remedy for this. She is the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed With Love, which offers FREE HUGS events for the public.
Tune in to discover how Edie got started in the hugging “business,” the ins and outs of giving free hugs in public, and how she manages to gently navigate our culture’s understandable wariness of inappropriate touch.
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Guest information for ‘Edie Weinstein – Hugging’ Podcast Episode
REV. EDIE WEINSTEIN, MSW, LSW, Love Ambassador, Opti-Mystic & Bliss Mistress
Edie delights in inviting people to live rich, full, juicy lives. She is an internationally recognized, sought after, colorfully creative journalist, interviewer, author and editor, a dynamic and inspiring speaker, licensed social worker and interfaith minister, BLISS coach, event producer, certified Laughter Yoga Leader, certified Cuddle Party facilitator, and Cosmic Concierge.
Edie is the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed With Love, which offers FREE HUGS events world- wide on a planned and spontaneous basis. She speaks on the subjects of wellness, relationships, trauma recovery, addiction, mental health, spirituality, sexuality, loss and grief. Edie is the author of The Bliss Mistress Guide To Transforming the Ordinary Into the Extraordinary and co-author of Embraced By the Divine: The Emerging Woman’s Gateway to Power, Passion and Purpose.
About The Psych Central Podcast Host
Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.
Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Edie Weinstein – Hugging’ Episode
Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.
Announcer: You’re listening to the Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the field of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information using plain, everyday language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.
Gabe Howard: Welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Podcast. Calling into the show today we have Edie Weinstein, who is a licensed social worker and a PsychCentral.com blogger. She’s also the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed with Love and the author of the book Bliss Mistress. Edie, welcome to the show.
Edie Weinstein: Thank you, Gabe. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.
Gabe Howard: Well, we really appreciate having you. And the biggest question that I want to ask you and I’ve really been looking forward to this interview. How did you land on a hugs? I mean, of all the things in the world, hugging just seems both so obvious and so far away. Can you talk about this for a moment?
Edie Weinstein: Oh, for more than a moment, actually, we could do the whole interview on that.
Gabe Howard: Yeah.
Edie Weinstein: I grew up in a very nurturing family. Nobody left the house without hugs. And I love you. Nobody came back in without hugs and I love you. Unlike a lot of people, sadly, a lot of people’s home’s touch was either violent, coercive, non-existent, limited sexual or not by consent. In my home, it was purely by consent and abundant. So I told my parents they raised me to do this kind of work. And I came upon the free hugs movement. There is a gentleman named Juan Mann. People want to Google it, it’s J U A N M A N N. And one day he went into his town square with a sign that said free hugs. He had moved there, I believe, from England and was lonely. And something like 20 minutes went by. Nobody came up to him. People walked by, looked at him like, what the heck is this weird guy doing? And then this older woman came up to him and they embraced. And then people started gathering around and a movement was born. In 2014, Valentine’s Day weekend, I brought a group of friends to 30th Street Station, which is the big train station in Philadelphia. We let ourselves loose there, about a dozen of us who walked around the train station with our free hug signs offering people love. And we did a free hugs flashmob and it’s only by consent.
Edie Weinstein: We didn’t kamikaze hug anybody. We didn’t go grab people. We asked, would you like a hug? And if they said yes, we’d hug them. And if they’d say no, we say, okay, thank you. Hug somebody. Well, one of the people that approached us was a gentleman who was an Iraq war vet. He was the only survivor of his platoon. And he had survivor’s guilt. And he said, I thought about ending my life until I met you people. Can I join you? So, of course, we gave him a sign and he was off to the races himself. And I thought, wow, we’ve really got something here. Hugs, save lives. And I hadn’t realized how much until a few months later, on the way home from the gym, I had a heart attack at age 55. And as part of my cardiac rehab, I walked around Doylestown, Pennsylvania, which is closer to home than Philly, doing free hugs strolls because hugs are heart friendly, not just cardiac friendly, but emotionally heart friendly. And they connect us heart to heart. So friends started calling us “hug mobsters,” and I said, oh, mobsters, Mafia, guns, drugs. Nah, I don’t think so. And I said, what about Hug Mobsters Armed with Love? And thus a movement was, well, it wasn’t born, but it was extended beyond what one man did. So I do it any and every where I can.
Gabe Howard: That is incredible and I love everything about it. And my favorite phrase in there might be, “We aren’t hug kamikazes.” I come from a loving family as well. We’re huggers, I always tell people that I am a hugger and
Edie Weinstein: Yeah.
Gabe Howard: Kamikaze hugs. Again, my new favorite phrase. That’s how we hug. I mean, people just charge you and hug you in my family. But of course, that’s my family. I’m on a first name basis with all of these people. How does this work in the real world? You know, at first, I was like, man, if you just like grab people, that that seems like a really bad idea. But if you just walk up to a stranger and say, can I give you a hug? I’m not going to lie, that also seems like a really bad idea. How are you bridging those gaps?
Edie Weinstein: Well, a couple of things, particularly in the era of #MeToo, we want to be really careful about how we touch people because anything can be misinterpreted. And on the flip side, we want to be sure that we don’t buy into the touch deprivation that so much a part of American culture. So the kamikaze hugs even people in my life, if I’m not sure if they want to hug, I’ll say, can I give you a hug, would you like a hug? And when I’m out on the street having a Hug Mobster sign helps. People look at it like, OK, what is that? Or if I carry a sign that says free hugs or if I wear a t shirt that indicates that I’m doing free hugs. When I do it out on the street somewhere, like I was in Washington, D.C., hugging in front of the White House, and there were people from all over the world, all different cultures, some of them huggier cultures than others. And even that, you know, I would approach people and say, may I give you a hug or would you like to share a hug? Some people are hungry for it. Some say, no, thank you, nah, I’m good. When they say, no, I don’t want it, they’ll say, nah, I’m good. And I say, I know you’re good, but hug somebody. So, yeah, it does feel kind of weird and culturally, sadly, because I’m a woman, it’s less threatening. Because I’ve had male friends go on hug strolls with me and some of them are a little leery about reaching out to hug people. So this is changing the culture, okay. Changing touch culture, changing relationship culture.
Gabe Howard: I remember early on in my career, for those who don’t know I’m six foot three, I’m two hundred and seventy five pounds, I’m broad shoulders, I’m just a giant of a man. And as I mentioned, my family are all huggers. And when I first got started, people would just come up and hug me. And I loved that. That was amazing to me. And as I got more comfortable in my role as a speaker and a presenter and a public figure, for lack of a better word, I just started randomly hugging people back. I work in mental health, so there’s more women than men. But one time I went in for a hug and somebody put up their hand and said, no, no, no, I’m not a hugger. And you should be careful, Gabe, because if people have a history of trauma, people don’t like that. I mean, you know, you’re a man coming in. And I thought about that for a moment. And now I have the phrase, are you a hugger?
Edie Weinstein: Yep, yep.
Gabe Howard: And that’s what I say. You know, people come up and they talk to me and they’re like, you know, gay, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, oh, are you a hugger? And I open up my arms. And if they say, no, I’m not. I say, well, I’m giving you a mental hug or I’m
Edie Weinstein: Yes.
Gabe Howard: I’m hugging you in our mind. And I reach out my hand or I shake their hands or I just do whatever they want. But you’re right. This idea that hugging is natural has sort of. It’s just weird for me. I’m not going to lie because I think that a hug is just something that you do for everybody. Whereas in other cultures, kissing hello is perfectly normal. And I think that’s very weird. So are the majority of people receptive or are the majority of people not receptive? Like, what’s your ratio there? How many people accept the hugs?
Edie Weinstein: Ok. Well, most are receptive.
Gabe Howard: Nice.
Edie Weinstein: When I first started doing this, more people said no because I was uncertain. Anytime you approach someone with a new idea, the more confident you are, the more people are gonna be receptive. Because they sense that energy. Now it’s a few people they know. They say thank you. Thanks for taking care of yourself. Not everybody is into this. And I will do that like if I’m meeting somebody and they’ll hold out their hand. I think that’s what you said. Are you a hugger? They say, oh, yes. And I’ll hug them and they say no, and I will shake a hand. And when people say no to a physical embrace, I’ll say, are you cool with a handshake? High five? Fist bump, virtual hug? Where I’ll wrap my arms around myself and imagine hugging them and usually they will say yes. There are times when I’ve hugged hundreds of people in a day. I go to different events like this summer, there were four Pride Fests, and I probably hugged a few hundred people throughout, you know, a full day. And I don’t keep track. Somebody said, oh, you should have a clicker. I don’t want to do that because it takes away from the quality of what I’m doing. Quantity to me doesn’t much matter. What’s the impact? It’s a ripple effect. I’m not totally altruistic. I do it for myself, too, because it helps me feel connected to the world. You know, when I hug people, I don’t know what their politics are, who they voted for. I don’t know what their religion is unless they tell me. I don’t know what their gender orientation or sexual orientation is. And it doesn’t matter. I just want the world to be a kinder, more loving place. And if hugs can help with that, I’m all on board with it.
Gabe Howard: The next question that I want to ask is surrounding like the worst case scenario. You said that the majority of people are accepting the hugs. You’ve talked about the people who don’t want hugs are just like, oh, no, thank you. And you say, hey, you should hug somebody today. And they say, OK. And they wander off. Have you gotten any truly bad reactions? Has anybody just flipped out?
Edie Weinstein: Never. Nope. The most is somebody says no, I’m not really into hugs or no, thank you. You know, I’ve never had that. But again, I think it’s because I’m a 5 foot, 4 inch woman. I have purple hair sometimes and I wear colorful clothing. So I’m not particularly threatening. But the coolest things that come out of this are the types of people that have said yes. I celebrate the anniversary of my heart attack as a brand new life experience, and I always do free hug strolls. On my third cardio-versary, a friend of mine who’s a filmmaker followed me around South Street in Philadelphia, and there was this beautiful Muslim woman dressed, I wouldn’t say in full hijab. Her face was uncovered, her head, and she comes up to me and she offers me a hug and she says, Who wouldn’t want a hug? And she was kind of gesturing and moving her body around. Who wouldn’t want to hug. And some people don’t. They say that they don’t want them. And she lifted up her finger and pointed at me. And she says even when they say they don’t they don’t want them, they need them. And I thought if the people who espouse hatred see this beautiful woman who is probably in her 40s, I’m guessing, talking about the power of hugs to connect people and that the needs that they meet, they couldn’t possibly hate.
Edie Weinstein: So I think that’s part of it. The other thing that’s important, too, is children. When there are children around that I offer a hug to, I say to the parent, if it’s okay with you and okay with your child, may I hug your child? If the parent says yes, a child says no, I won’t touch them. And I’ll say to the child, nobody touches you without your permission. So it’s OK that you’re saying no. When I was in D.C., there was a family from the Dominican Republic and it was a mom and dad, and like a 7 or 8 year old boy. And he didn’t want hugs at first. And I said, OK, will you do fist bumps or high fives? And he did both of those. So a few minutes later, before I left, he approaches me and opens his arms. So he was asking me for a hug. So I’m a consent educator and this is about consent as well.
Gabe Howard: We’ll be right back after these messages.
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Gabe Howard: We’ll be right back after these messages.
Gabe Howard: We’re back speaking with Edie Weinstein, a licensed social worker, about the power of hugging. So let’s talk about consent for a moment. As you pointed out, you’re a consent educator. And early on when I was a young boy, I was always told that no means no. Later on, I was told, listen, we have to get rid of no means no because it’s not thorough. And we wanted to hear. Yes, means yes. This opened up a world of understanding for me, because when you hear a yes, you know that you have permission. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because I really do think that people are fuzzy on what consent is. And that’s so unfortunate.
Edie Weinstein: Absolutely. Well, it’s perfect timing because I’ve just started teaching a class with a friend who’s also in the same field that I am called, “Yes, No, Maybe So: The Conscious Consent and Boundaries Workshop.” And we just did our first one together on Sunday. And the way that we define it, define consent is that it’s saying yes, just to touch, but a wholehearted yes to whatever it is that’s being offered to us or asked of us. And if I’m not a full blown heck yes, then I’m a heck no. Okay? I don’t have to say yes. Those of us who are co-dependent and I count myself among them, people pleasers. My husband used to say I was an emotional contortionist who’d bend over backwards to please people. I would often say yes when I really wanted to say no. I didn’t want anybody to feel rejected and I didn’t want to be rejected. So, consent is all bound up in that as well. That when we give our full, wholehearted consent to something, we are on board with it. I consented to this interview. I may have been wishy washy about it, and if I’m wishy washy about something. I won’t do it until I’m sure that this is what I want to do.
Edie Weinstein: And I’ve been that way all my life that I’ve had to think things through before I jump into it. And once I’m there, I’m all in. So, consent for me is about, okay, can I be all in to whatever is being offered to me or asked of me? And that could be touch. It could be sex. It could be a gift. It could be a commitment to do something with someone. So that’s why it’s important. When my son, who’s now 32, was a boy, we talked a lot about not only no means no, but only yes means yes. And not just from him, but to him. I said, if somebody wants to touch you in a way that you don’t want to be touched, no matter who it is, it’s no. And you’re allowed and you’re encouraged, and you’re expected to say no if you’re not comfortable. And to the best of my knowledge, he you know, he’s been appropriate with anybody he’s ever been in relationship with. I’ve never worried about him crossing boundaries and touching somebody inappropriately. And I wanted him to know that he had the freedom and the self body sovereignty to say no to anybody touching him if he didn’t want it.
Gabe Howard: And I think that some of this goes back to what you were saying about getting consent from children. I do not have children, but the majority of my friends and family do. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard. Oh, don’t be that way. Give your uncle a hug or stop that. You say hello and give them a hug. I understand the say hello. I understand the make eye contact. I understand being socially appropriate, but it does shift a little when you demand that somebody occupy your physical space. Right? My question specifically in this isn’t so much about consent, but it’s about how do you teach somebody, especially a child, the benefits and the value of hugging without forcing them to hug a bunch of people?
Edie Weinstein: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Gabe Howard: It’s difficult, right, it’s difficult for a parent because like you said, touch is so valuable and so important, but you don’t want to force somebody to do it.
Edie Weinstein: Right. In the 1960s and 70s, I’m 61, the common thing was, oh, go hug aunt so and so. You don’t want her to feel bad.
Gabe Howard: Right.
Edie Weinstein: One of the things that I encourage children to do, if I was a parent dealing with this and what I would tell the child if the person wanted a hug. They don’t owe anybody a hug. If I was going to a family gathering with a child, even as old as an adolescent, I would say there’s gonna be people here that you don’t know. How do you want to greet them? Now, what would be a good way for you to feel comfortable to greet them? And if they’re people that you do know, know, how would you like to greet this person? Well, I would like to shake their hand or I would like to do a high five or fist bump. And so it’s preparing them in advance. So listen to somebodies words and watch their body language, their non-verbal cues. If you’re an adult witnessing, and it doesn’t have to be anything horrible, it’s not like somebody who’s molesting the child. But if you see a child being uncomfortable with physical behavior from an adult, you can step in and say, OK, enough, enough, stop. And take that firm stand, because that way that child will feel like they have an ally, that they have a voice, and that you’re encouraging their voice.
Gabe Howard: And I think it’s important for anybody listening to understand that obviously the best hugs. Just like anything else in life are ones freely given. We have to consider whether it’s a child, whether it’s your mom, whether it’s whom ever a co-worker or a stranger on the street. If they’re hugging you out of obligation, it’s diminishing the return significantly. I don’t want to hug somebody that doesn’t want to hug me because somebody who is bigger than them and had power over them told them to.
Edie Weinstein: Absolutely.
Gabe Howard: It kind of ruins it a bit.
Edie Weinstein: Absolutely. And if you’re on the receiving end, wouldn’t you want somebody to hug you willingly?
Gabe Howard: Yes.
Edie Weinstein: Doesn’t that feel so much better? And there are times like, for example, if you’re in a relationship and your partner is not feeling so hot and you say, would you like a hug? And they say, no, really, I just want to be by myself. Forcing a hug on them isn’t listening to what they’re saying. And there are some people that when they don’t feel well, whether it’s a physical condition or an emotional condition, that they just want their space. It’s not a rejection of you or the love that you want to offer them. That’s hard too. If somebody is saying, well, I have all this love to give and I know that by hugging them, I’m going to make them feel better. It’s not about them. You’re making it about you.
Gabe Howard: Exactly.
Edie Weinstein: Yeah, I mean, my primary love language is touch, but there are people in my life that are not. That’s not their primary love language. I have wonderful nurturing friends, who would never do a free hugs event with me. They’d never go out and do that. I also teach a workshop called Cuddle Party, which is about nurturing non-sexual platonic touch for adults. And there are people that in my life that would never go to one. My son included. He says, Mom, the day I go to a cuddle party is the day you get in a wrestling ring or go to a shooting range. It so happens. So but he’s very. However, he’s very affectionate with me, with his wife, with his friends. But his style is very different. I’m his weird hippie mom who does all this bizarre stuff. It’s slightly embarrassing for my 32 year old.
Gabe Howard: You know, Edie, along the lines of that weird hippie mom statement that you just made, when I first became aware of you and to be clear, we’re co-workers over at Psych Central. So you’re not just some random person I found on the Internet. We have an actual working relationship. And even then, I thought, what is this? And
Edie Weinstein: Everybody, bizarre woman here.
Gabe Howard: You know, I’m kind of on guard for this. As the host of the podcast, I talk to a lot of people. I get a lot of guest pitches. As an associate editor over at Psych Central, I read a lot of the submissions and there’s a lot of what I like to call misinformation out in the world, especially surrounding mental illness and psychiatry and the treatment for mental health conditions, mental illness, etc. And just to disclose, when it, when I first saw this, I thought, well, this doesn’t make any sense. I mean, just randomly hugging people, that’s not going to do anything. But I’ve also learned to keep an open mind and I read your articles, I read the information that you provided. And of course, again, we’re coworkers. I know you. It makes it a little easier. And I realized that, yeah, because you’re not saying that hugging it cures mental illness. You’re not saying that hugging prevents depression. All you’re saying is that hugging has intrinsic value and that kindness has intrinsic value. And that value reverberates out into your life and into the lives of others in a very positive and meaningful ways.
Edie Weinstein: Right.
Gabe Howard: And I wish more people would understand that when, you know, they roll their eyes at this, because, you know, some people do. And I think if
Edie Weinstein: Yeah.
Gabe Howard: They really thought about it, they would realize that, oh, my God, we’re sitting on the simple solution to feeling disconnected. And here we are.
Edie Weinstein: Yeah, I totally agree, and as I said, hugs save lives. I don’t know what happened with the gentleman that hugged us initially, five years ago. I don’t even know if I’d recognize him if I saw him again. But I also know that for the people who experienced this, the feedback that I get from them, they don’t feel so alone. There’s another form of hugging that I do. It’s called free mom hugs. Have you ever heard of that?
Gabe Howard: I have not.
Edie Weinstein: Ok. Free mom hugs got started probably around the same time as Hug Mobsters did. There’s a woman named Sarah Cunningham and she was a devout, she’s still a devout, Christian whose son came out to her as a gay man and she went into a tailspin. She thought, oh my goodness, how can I love God and love my son and not have to choose between them? So she had a dark night of the soul, like a lot of people do, if their kids come out to them and she realized she didn’t have to make a choice. So Parker invited her to go to a pride fest in Oklahoma City, and she made up a sign that said free mom hugs with the idea that those who come out to their parents don’t often get hugs, though she said by the end of the day, she was covered with tears and glitter because a lot of the people that she hugged sobbed because they didn’t have the kind of parents that she was for her son. And she thought, just like I did, I’ve got something here. So she took it on the road. So I’m part of free mom hugs. You can actually look that Web site up too, free mom hugs. There’re chapters probably in all 50 states. And when I went to the Pride Fest, I hugged a lot of young people whose parents rejected them when they came out and they said our parents would never do that. There’s also free dad hugs. So that healed. I can’t tell you how many lives that kind of hugging changes when they feel accepted by a maternal or paternal figure, even if it’s not their own. And yes, I’m sure there are articles out there that talk about the mental health healing, power of safe, nurturing, platonic touch by consent. And that’s how I would categorize what I do.
Gabe Howard: Well, that is incredible. Edie, we are about at the end of our time. Can you tell folks how to find you and how to find your book, Bliss Mistress?
Edie Weinstein: They could find it on Amazon, The Bliss Mistress Guide to Transforming the Ordinary into the Extraordinary. They can find me on my Web site www.opti-mystical.com. So that’s my Web site. I’m also on Facebook. My son calls me a Facebook addict. But it’s Edie Weinstein, W E I N S T E I N, and I encourage you to be in touch with me and hug somebody today starting with yourself. So I invite whoever is listening to wrap their arms around themselves and then take it out to the street.
Gabe Howard: Well, thank you so much for being here, and I could not agree more. Hug as many people as possible and I really like the idea of hugging yourself. Thank you again for being here.
Edie Weinstein: My pleasure, Gabe.
Gabe Howard: And remember, everyone, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counselling anytime, anywhere, simply by visiting BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. Also, wherever you downloaded this podcast, give us as many stars, hearts or bullet points as you feel appropriate and use your words. Tell people why you liked the show. And finally, share us on social media. Email us to everybody you know and we will see everyone next week.
Announcer: You’ve been listening to The Psych Central Podcast. Want your audience to be wowed at your next event? Feature an appearance and LIVE RECORDING of the Psych Central Podcast right from your stage! Email us at [email protected] for details. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. Psych Central is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, Psych Central offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com. To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at gabehoward.com. Thank you for listening and please share widely.
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Podcast: Hugging Strangers to Improve Mental Health
Touch is a powerful thing. From the time we’re born, and throughout our lives, humans need touch to thrive and develop properly. Sadly, many people in our culture experience a profound lack of caring and respectful platonic touch. Today’s guest, Rev. Edie Weinstein, has a remedy for this. She is the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed With Love, which offers FREE HUGS events for the public.
Tune in to discover how Edie got started in the hugging “business,” the ins and outs of giving free hugs in public, and how she manages to gently navigate our culture’s understandable wariness of inappropriate touch.
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Guest information for ‘Edie Weinstein – Hugging’ Podcast Episode
REV. EDIE WEINSTEIN, MSW, LSW, Love Ambassador, Opti-Mystic & Bliss Mistress
Edie delights in inviting people to live rich, full, juicy lives. She is an internationally recognized, sought after, colorfully creative journalist, interviewer, author and editor, a dynamic and inspiring speaker, licensed social worker and interfaith minister, BLISS coach, event producer, certified Laughter Yoga Leader, certified Cuddle Party facilitator, and Cosmic Concierge.
Edie is the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed With Love, which offers FREE HUGS events world- wide on a planned and spontaneous basis. She speaks on the subjects of wellness, relationships, trauma recovery, addiction, mental health, spirituality, sexuality, loss and grief. Edie is the author of The Bliss Mistress Guide To Transforming the Ordinary Into the Extraordinary and co-author of Embraced By the Divine: The Emerging Woman’s Gateway to Power, Passion and Purpose.
About The Psych Central Podcast Host
Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. To learn more about Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.
Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Edie Weinstein – Hugging’ Episode
Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.
Announcer: You’re listening to the Psych Central Podcast, where guest experts in the field of psychology and mental health share thought-provoking information using plain, everyday language. Here’s your host, Gabe Howard.
Gabe Howard: Welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Podcast. Calling into the show today we have Edie Weinstein, who is a licensed social worker and a PsychCentral.com blogger. She’s also the founder of Hug Mobsters Armed with Love and the author of the book Bliss Mistress. Edie, welcome to the show.
Edie Weinstein: Thank you, Gabe. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.
Gabe Howard: Well, we really appreciate having you. And the biggest question that I want to ask you and I’ve really been looking forward to this interview. How did you land on a hugs? I mean, of all the things in the world, hugging just seems both so obvious and so far away. Can you talk about this for a moment?
Edie Weinstein: Oh, for more than a moment, actually, we could do the whole interview on that.
Gabe Howard: Yeah.
Edie Weinstein: I grew up in a very nurturing family. Nobody left the house without hugs. And I love you. Nobody came back in without hugs and I love you. Unlike a lot of people, sadly, a lot of people’s home’s touch was either violent, coercive, non-existent, limited sexual or not by consent. In my home, it was purely by consent and abundant. So I told my parents they raised me to do this kind of work. And I came upon the free hugs movement. There is a gentleman named Juan Mann. People want to Google it, it’s J U A N M A N N. And one day he went into his town square with a sign that said free hugs. He had moved there, I believe, from England and was lonely. And something like 20 minutes went by. Nobody came up to him. People walked by, looked at him like, what the heck is this weird guy doing? And then this older woman came up to him and they embraced. And then people started gathering around and a movement was born. In 2014, Valentine’s Day weekend, I brought a group of friends to 30th Street Station, which is the big train station in Philadelphia. We let ourselves loose there, about a dozen of us who walked around the train station with our free hug signs offering people love. And we did a free hugs flashmob and it’s only by consent.
Edie Weinstein: We didn’t kamikaze hug anybody. We didn’t go grab people. We asked, would you like a hug? And if they said yes, we’d hug them. And if they’d say no, we say, okay, thank you. Hug somebody. Well, one of the people that approached us was a gentleman who was an Iraq war vet. He was the only survivor of his platoon. And he had survivor’s guilt. And he said, I thought about ending my life until I met you people. Can I join you? So, of course, we gave him a sign and he was off to the races himself. And I thought, wow, we’ve really got something here. Hugs, save lives. And I hadn’t realized how much until a few months later, on the way home from the gym, I had a heart attack at age 55. And as part of my cardiac rehab, I walked around Doylestown, Pennsylvania, which is closer to home than Philly, doing free hugs strolls because hugs are heart friendly, not just cardiac friendly, but emotionally heart friendly. And they connect us heart to heart. So friends started calling us “hug mobsters,” and I said, oh, mobsters, Mafia, guns, drugs. Nah, I don’t think so. And I said, what about Hug Mobsters Armed with Love? And thus a movement was, well, it wasn’t born, but it was extended beyond what one man did. So I do it any and every where I can.
Gabe Howard: That is incredible and I love everything about it. And my favorite phrase in there might be, “We aren’t hug kamikazes.” I come from a loving family as well. We’re huggers, I always tell people that I am a hugger and
Edie Weinstein: Yeah.
Gabe Howard: Kamikaze hugs. Again, my new favorite phrase. That’s how we hug. I mean, people just charge you and hug you in my family. But of course, that’s my family. I’m on a first name basis with all of these people. How does this work in the real world? You know, at first, I was like, man, if you just like grab people, that that seems like a really bad idea. But if you just walk up to a stranger and say, can I give you a hug? I’m not going to lie, that also seems like a really bad idea. How are you bridging those gaps?
Edie Weinstein: Well, a couple of things, particularly in the era of #MeToo, we want to be really careful about how we touch people because anything can be misinterpreted. And on the flip side, we want to be sure that we don’t buy into the touch deprivation that so much a part of American culture. So the kamikaze hugs even people in my life, if I’m not sure if they want to hug, I’ll say, can I give you a hug, would you like a hug? And when I’m out on the street having a Hug Mobster sign helps. People look at it like, OK, what is that? Or if I carry a sign that says free hugs or if I wear a t shirt that indicates that I’m doing free hugs. When I do it out on the street somewhere, like I was in Washington, D.C., hugging in front of the White House, and there were people from all over the world, all different cultures, some of them huggier cultures than others. And even that, you know, I would approach people and say, may I give you a hug or would you like to share a hug? Some people are hungry for it. Some say, no, thank you, nah, I’m good. When they say, no, I don’t want it, they’ll say, nah, I’m good. And I say, I know you’re good, but hug somebody. So, yeah, it does feel kind of weird and culturally, sadly, because I’m a woman, it’s less threatening. Because I’ve had male friends go on hug strolls with me and some of them are a little leery about reaching out to hug people. So this is changing the culture, okay. Changing touch culture, changing relationship culture.
Gabe Howard: I remember early on in my career, for those who don’t know I’m six foot three, I’m two hundred and seventy five pounds, I’m broad shoulders, I’m just a giant of a man. And as I mentioned, my family are all huggers. And when I first got started, people would just come up and hug me. And I loved that. That was amazing to me. And as I got more comfortable in my role as a speaker and a presenter and a public figure, for lack of a better word, I just started randomly hugging people back. I work in mental health, so there’s more women than men. But one time I went in for a hug and somebody put up their hand and said, no, no, no, I’m not a hugger. And you should be careful, Gabe, because if people have a history of trauma, people don’t like that. I mean, you know, you’re a man coming in. And I thought about that for a moment. And now I have the phrase, are you a hugger?
Edie Weinstein: Yep, yep.
Gabe Howard: And that’s what I say. You know, people come up and they talk to me and they’re like, you know, gay, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, oh, are you a hugger? And I open up my arms. And if they say, no, I’m not. I say, well, I’m giving you a mental hug or I’m
Edie Weinstein: Yes.
Gabe Howard: I’m hugging you in our mind. And I reach out my hand or I shake their hands or I just do whatever they want. But you’re right. This idea that hugging is natural has sort of. It’s just weird for me. I’m not going to lie because I think that a hug is just something that you do for everybody. Whereas in other cultures, kissing hello is perfectly normal. And I think that’s very weird. So are the majority of people receptive or are the majority of people not receptive? Like, what’s your ratio there? How many people accept the hugs?
Edie Weinstein: Ok. Well, most are receptive.
Gabe Howard: Nice.
Edie Weinstein: When I first started doing this, more people said no because I was uncertain. Anytime you approach someone with a new idea, the more confident you are, the more people are gonna be receptive. Because they sense that energy. Now it’s a few people they know. They say thank you. Thanks for taking care of yourself. Not everybody is into this. And I will do that like if I’m meeting somebody and they’ll hold out their hand. I think that’s what you said. Are you a hugger? They say, oh, yes. And I’ll hug them and they say no, and I will shake a hand. And when people say no to a physical embrace, I’ll say, are you cool with a handshake? High five? Fist bump, virtual hug? Where I’ll wrap my arms around myself and imagine hugging them and usually they will say yes. There are times when I’ve hugged hundreds of people in a day. I go to different events like this summer, there were four Pride Fests, and I probably hugged a few hundred people throughout, you know, a full day. And I don’t keep track. Somebody said, oh, you should have a clicker. I don’t want to do that because it takes away from the quality of what I’m doing. Quantity to me doesn’t much matter. What’s the impact? It’s a ripple effect. I’m not totally altruistic. I do it for myself, too, because it helps me feel connected to the world. You know, when I hug people, I don’t know what their politics are, who they voted for. I don’t know what their religion is unless they tell me. I don’t know what their gender orientation or sexual orientation is. And it doesn’t matter. I just want the world to be a kinder, more loving place. And if hugs can help with that, I’m all on board with it.
Gabe Howard: The next question that I want to ask is surrounding like the worst case scenario. You said that the majority of people are accepting the hugs. You’ve talked about the people who don’t want hugs are just like, oh, no, thank you. And you say, hey, you should hug somebody today. And they say, OK. And they wander off. Have you gotten any truly bad reactions? Has anybody just flipped out?
Edie Weinstein: Never. Nope. The most is somebody says no, I’m not really into hugs or no, thank you. You know, I’ve never had that. But again, I think it’s because I’m a 5 foot, 4 inch woman. I have purple hair sometimes and I wear colorful clothing. So I’m not particularly threatening. But the coolest things that come out of this are the types of people that have said yes. I celebrate the anniversary of my heart attack as a brand new life experience, and I always do free hug strolls. On my third cardio-versary, a friend of mine who’s a filmmaker followed me around South Street in Philadelphia, and there was this beautiful Muslim woman dressed, I wouldn’t say in full hijab. Her face was uncovered, her head, and she comes up to me and she offers me a hug and she says, Who wouldn’t want a hug? And she was kind of gesturing and moving her body around. Who wouldn’t want to hug. And some people don’t. They say that they don’t want them. And she lifted up her finger and pointed at me. And she says even when they say they don’t they don’t want them, they need them. And I thought if the people who espouse hatred see this beautiful woman who is probably in her 40s, I’m guessing, talking about the power of hugs to connect people and that the needs that they meet, they couldn’t possibly hate.
Edie Weinstein: So I think that’s part of it. The other thing that’s important, too, is children. When there are children around that I offer a hug to, I say to the parent, if it’s okay with you and okay with your child, may I hug your child? If the parent says yes, a child says no, I won’t touch them. And I’ll say to the child, nobody touches you without your permission. So it’s OK that you’re saying no. When I was in D.C., there was a family from the Dominican Republic and it was a mom and dad, and like a 7 or 8 year old boy. And he didn’t want hugs at first. And I said, OK, will you do fist bumps or high fives? And he did both of those. So a few minutes later, before I left, he approaches me and opens his arms. So he was asking me for a hug. So I’m a consent educator and this is about consent as well.
Gabe Howard: We’ll be right back after these messages.
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Gabe Howard: We’ll be right back after these messages.
Gabe Howard: We’re back speaking with Edie Weinstein, a licensed social worker, about the power of hugging. So let’s talk about consent for a moment. As you pointed out, you’re a consent educator. And early on when I was a young boy, I was always told that no means no. Later on, I was told, listen, we have to get rid of no means no because it’s not thorough. And we wanted to hear. Yes, means yes. This opened up a world of understanding for me, because when you hear a yes, you know that you have permission. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because I really do think that people are fuzzy on what consent is. And that’s so unfortunate.
Edie Weinstein: Absolutely. Well, it’s perfect timing because I’ve just started teaching a class with a friend who’s also in the same field that I am called, “Yes, No, Maybe So: The Conscious Consent and Boundaries Workshop.” And we just did our first one together on Sunday. And the way that we define it, define consent is that it’s saying yes, just to touch, but a wholehearted yes to whatever it is that’s being offered to us or asked of us. And if I’m not a full blown heck yes, then I’m a heck no. Okay? I don’t have to say yes. Those of us who are co-dependent and I count myself among them, people pleasers. My husband used to say I was an emotional contortionist who’d bend over backwards to please people. I would often say yes when I really wanted to say no. I didn’t want anybody to feel rejected and I didn’t want to be rejected. So, consent is all bound up in that as well. That when we give our full, wholehearted consent to something, we are on board with it. I consented to this interview. I may have been wishy washy about it, and if I’m wishy washy about something. I won’t do it until I’m sure that this is what I want to do.
Edie Weinstein: And I’ve been that way all my life that I’ve had to think things through before I jump into it. And once I’m there, I’m all in. So, consent for me is about, okay, can I be all in to whatever is being offered to me or asked of me? And that could be touch. It could be sex. It could be a gift. It could be a commitment to do something with someone. So that’s why it’s important. When my son, who’s now 32, was a boy, we talked a lot about not only no means no, but only yes means yes. And not just from him, but to him. I said, if somebody wants to touch you in a way that you don’t want to be touched, no matter who it is, it’s no. And you’re allowed and you’re encouraged, and you’re expected to say no if you’re not comfortable. And to the best of my knowledge, he you know, he’s been appropriate with anybody he’s ever been in relationship with. I’ve never worried about him crossing boundaries and touching somebody inappropriately. And I wanted him to know that he had the freedom and the self body sovereignty to say no to anybody touching him if he didn’t want it.
Gabe Howard: And I think that some of this goes back to what you were saying about getting consent from children. I do not have children, but the majority of my friends and family do. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard. Oh, don’t be that way. Give your uncle a hug or stop that. You say hello and give them a hug. I understand the say hello. I understand the make eye contact. I understand being socially appropriate, but it does shift a little when you demand that somebody occupy your physical space. Right? My question specifically in this isn’t so much about consent, but it’s about how do you teach somebody, especially a child, the benefits and the value of hugging without forcing them to hug a bunch of people?
Edie Weinstein: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Gabe Howard: It’s difficult, right, it’s difficult for a parent because like you said, touch is so valuable and so important, but you don’t want to force somebody to do it.
Edie Weinstein: Right. In the 1960s and 70s, I’m 61, the common thing was, oh, go hug aunt so and so. You don’t want her to feel bad.
Gabe Howard: Right.
Edie Weinstein: One of the things that I encourage children to do, if I was a parent dealing with this and what I would tell the child if the person wanted a hug. They don’t owe anybody a hug. If I was going to a family gathering with a child, even as old as an adolescent, I would say there’s gonna be people here that you don’t know. How do you want to greet them? Now, what would be a good way for you to feel comfortable to greet them? And if they’re people that you do know, know, how would you like to greet this person? Well, I would like to shake their hand or I would like to do a high five or fist bump. And so it’s preparing them in advance. So listen to somebodies words and watch their body language, their non-verbal cues. If you’re an adult witnessing, and it doesn’t have to be anything horrible, it’s not like somebody who’s molesting the child. But if you see a child being uncomfortable with physical behavior from an adult, you can step in and say, OK, enough, enough, stop. And take that firm stand, because that way that child will feel like they have an ally, that they have a voice, and that you’re encouraging their voice.
Gabe Howard: And I think it’s important for anybody listening to understand that obviously the best hugs. Just like anything else in life are ones freely given. We have to consider whether it’s a child, whether it’s your mom, whether it’s whom ever a co-worker or a stranger on the street. If they’re hugging you out of obligation, it’s diminishing the return significantly. I don’t want to hug somebody that doesn’t want to hug me because somebody who is bigger than them and had power over them told them to.
Edie Weinstein: Absolutely.
Gabe Howard: It kind of ruins it a bit.
Edie Weinstein: Absolutely. And if you’re on the receiving end, wouldn’t you want somebody to hug you willingly?
Gabe Howard: Yes.
Edie Weinstein: Doesn’t that feel so much better? And there are times like, for example, if you’re in a relationship and your partner is not feeling so hot and you say, would you like a hug? And they say, no, really, I just want to be by myself. Forcing a hug on them isn’t listening to what they’re saying. And there are some people that when they don’t feel well, whether it’s a physical condition or an emotional condition, that they just want their space. It’s not a rejection of you or the love that you want to offer them. That’s hard too. If somebody is saying, well, I have all this love to give and I know that by hugging them, I’m going to make them feel better. It’s not about them. You’re making it about you.
Gabe Howard: Exactly.
Edie Weinstein: Yeah, I mean, my primary love language is touch, but there are people in my life that are not. That’s not their primary love language. I have wonderful nurturing friends, who would never do a free hugs event with me. They’d never go out and do that. I also teach a workshop called Cuddle Party, which is about nurturing non-sexual platonic touch for adults. And there are people that in my life that would never go to one. My son included. He says, Mom, the day I go to a cuddle party is the day you get in a wrestling ring or go to a shooting range. It so happens. So but he’s very. However, he’s very affectionate with me, with his wife, with his friends. But his style is very different. I’m his weird hippie mom who does all this bizarre stuff. It’s slightly embarrassing for my 32 year old.
Gabe Howard: You know, Edie, along the lines of that weird hippie mom statement that you just made, when I first became aware of you and to be clear, we’re co-workers over at Psych Central. So you’re not just some random person I found on the Internet. We have an actual working relationship. And even then, I thought, what is this? And
Edie Weinstein: Everybody, bizarre woman here.
Gabe Howard: You know, I’m kind of on guard for this. As the host of the podcast, I talk to a lot of people. I get a lot of guest pitches. As an associate editor over at Psych Central, I read a lot of the submissions and there’s a lot of what I like to call misinformation out in the world, especially surrounding mental illness and psychiatry and the treatment for mental health conditions, mental illness, etc. And just to disclose, when it, when I first saw this, I thought, well, this doesn’t make any sense. I mean, just randomly hugging people, that’s not going to do anything. But I’ve also learned to keep an open mind and I read your articles, I read the information that you provided. And of course, again, we’re coworkers. I know you. It makes it a little easier. And I realized that, yeah, because you’re not saying that hugging it cures mental illness. You’re not saying that hugging prevents depression. All you’re saying is that hugging has intrinsic value and that kindness has intrinsic value. And that value reverberates out into your life and into the lives of others in a very positive and meaningful ways.
Edie Weinstein: Right.
Gabe Howard: And I wish more people would understand that when, you know, they roll their eyes at this, because, you know, some people do. And I think if
Edie Weinstein: Yeah.
Gabe Howard: They really thought about it, they would realize that, oh, my God, we’re sitting on the simple solution to feeling disconnected. And here we are.
Edie Weinstein: Yeah, I totally agree, and as I said, hugs save lives. I don’t know what happened with the gentleman that hugged us initially, five years ago. I don’t even know if I’d recognize him if I saw him again. But I also know that for the people who experienced this, the feedback that I get from them, they don’t feel so alone. There’s another form of hugging that I do. It’s called free mom hugs. Have you ever heard of that?
Gabe Howard: I have not.
Edie Weinstein: Ok. Free mom hugs got started probably around the same time as Hug Mobsters did. There’s a woman named Sarah Cunningham and she was a devout, she’s still a devout, Christian whose son came out to her as a gay man and she went into a tailspin. She thought, oh my goodness, how can I love God and love my son and not have to choose between them? So she had a dark night of the soul, like a lot of people do, if their kids come out to them and she realized she didn’t have to make a choice. So Parker invited her to go to a pride fest in Oklahoma City, and she made up a sign that said free mom hugs with the idea that those who come out to their parents don’t often get hugs, though she said by the end of the day, she was covered with tears and glitter because a lot of the people that she hugged sobbed because they didn’t have the kind of parents that she was for her son. And she thought, just like I did, I’ve got something here. So she took it on the road. So I’m part of free mom hugs. You can actually look that Web site up too, free mom hugs. There’re chapters probably in all 50 states. And when I went to the Pride Fest, I hugged a lot of young people whose parents rejected them when they came out and they said our parents would never do that. There’s also free dad hugs. So that healed. I can’t tell you how many lives that kind of hugging changes when they feel accepted by a maternal or paternal figure, even if it’s not their own. And yes, I’m sure there are articles out there that talk about the mental health healing, power of safe, nurturing, platonic touch by consent. And that’s how I would categorize what I do.
Gabe Howard: Well, that is incredible. Edie, we are about at the end of our time. Can you tell folks how to find you and how to find your book, Bliss Mistress?
Edie Weinstein: They could find it on Amazon, The Bliss Mistress Guide to Transforming the Ordinary into the Extraordinary. They can find me on my Web site www.opti-mystical.com. So that’s my Web site. I’m also on Facebook. My son calls me a Facebook addict. But it’s Edie Weinstein, W E I N S T E I N, and I encourage you to be in touch with me and hug somebody today starting with yourself. So I invite whoever is listening to wrap their arms around themselves and then take it out to the street.
Gabe Howard: Well, thank you so much for being here, and I could not agree more. Hug as many people as possible and I really like the idea of hugging yourself. Thank you again for being here.
Edie Weinstein: My pleasure, Gabe.
Gabe Howard: And remember, everyone, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private online counselling anytime, anywhere, simply by visiting BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. Also, wherever you downloaded this podcast, give us as many stars, hearts or bullet points as you feel appropriate and use your words. Tell people why you liked the show. And finally, share us on social media. Email us to everybody you know and we will see everyone next week.
Announcer: You’ve been listening to The Psych Central Podcast. Want your audience to be wowed at your next event? Feature an appearance and LIVE RECORDING of the Psych Central Podcast right from your stage! Email us at [email protected] for details. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/Show or on your favorite podcast player. Psych Central is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website run by mental health professionals. Overseen by Dr. John Grohol, Psych Central offers trusted resources and quizzes to help answer your questions about mental health, personality, psychotherapy, and more. Please visit us today at PsychCentral.com. To learn more about our host, Gabe Howard, please visit his website at gabehoward.com. Thank you for listening and please share widely.
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Animorphs continues to be buck wild in The Ellimist Chronicles
This past weekend I finished rereading The Ellimist Chronicles from the Animorphs series. I remember this book being a stand out when I read the series before, but I wasn’t sure if that was due to the content of the story or just because it was the last of the supplemental books to come out. At this point in the series, the Animorphs main storyline is revving up into the grand finale, with the conflict between the Yeerks and the Animorphs becoming more of a public war, instead of a secretive, private one. The Ellimist Chronicles, in a weird way, gives us an origin to that battle.
The Ellimist Chronicles goes back eons into history and tells the story of how the super powerful, maybe omniscient, maybe omnipotent being known as the Ellimist (first introduced in book #7 of the main series) came into power. He starts out as a flying creature named Toomin who lives in a society that is super community driven, because literally everyone has to spend 90% of their time attached to and supporting the floating crystal they call home, flapping their wings to keep it in the air. Toomin spends much of his docked time as “Ellimist” in a sort of virtual-reality video game he plays where he manipulates the development of alien cultures in order to see how he can control their advancement, and he is already looking towards a future that would allow for less of this community-driven time. A lot of this part of the story looks at how dependent his people are on each other, and at his and others’ ideas about how to break that dependence using technological advancements.
Then, his home planet gets totally wrecked. An alien species who misunderstood the games, thinking that the Ellimist and his friends actually had the power to manipulate other societies evolution (can you imagine?) shows up, and literally blasts the crystals out of the sky. Toomin and a few others from his society are the only ones to survive, and set out in search of a new world to call home, starting what the book refers to as his second life.
A few decades on, Toomin is now in command of the search for a new home. Some members of his crew argue that they should adapt to a land-based life, but Toomin and the others still hope to find a new world where they can fly free, as they were used to before. While investigating an aberration under the surface of a waterlogged planet, all of the survivors end up captured by a tentacled behemoth that spans the entire world. The creature, called “Father”, taps into the mind of everyone it captures (and kills), which includes all of Toomin’s companions along with representatives from countless other races. The only thing it keeps truly alive is Toomin himself, who is forced to play games against Father in exchange for being allowed to live in a fantasty version of his life back on the Crystal, instead of seeing through his own eyes the watery graveyard that is his prison. This goes on for millenia, with Toomin always losing, until they discover the game of music, which The Ellimist is able to master thanks to his inginuity, creativity, and sadness. Emboldened, The Ellimist starts to push back against Father, and uses the creature’s own tentacle web to also tap into the minds of the preserved bodies under the sea, absorbing their knowledge and life experiences, until ultimately he absorbs Father himself.
Now that he has the knowledge, experiences, and creativity of multitudes inside his mind, The Ellimist works on “improving” his body, by building a construct out of all the crashed ships on the planet, and affixing his consciousness to it, literally becoming part of a machine. With that, he sets back out into space, taking on a new mission of forcing peace on a warring galaxy. He boldly intereferes, manipulating the development of individual cultures as well as the relationships between existing ones, to try to ensure peace and long life across the universe. As he goes, he expands his body, until his consciousness exists across thousands of ships. Unfortunately, it turns out that an even more powerful being has been following in his wake, and undoing his progress. A being called Crayak (introduced in book #6) acts as the mirror universe version of The Ellimist, creating war and destruction and death everywhere he goes. He challenges The Ellimist to a series of games, with entire solar systems as the stakes.
After many defeats, The Ellimist goes into hiding with primitive versions of the Andalites we know from the main series. He sacrifices most of his great intellect while in Andalite form, and lives a simple, peaceful life in a community again. He has a family, he has children, he relearns the meaning of loss and the power of hope. Eventually, reinvigorated, he heads back to the stars, this time with a goal simply of spreading life, instead of trying to stop death.
Utilizing this new strategy, he is able to push back against Crayak, and looks like he has a chance of winning this ultimate battle, until he is tricked into a trap, and all the great multitude of his body is devoured by a black hole. Expecting death, not for the first time in his long existence, The Ellimist instead finds a new perspective on life. From inside his confinement, he realizes he can see all of space and the winding timelines of every creature in existence. From here he plots a new strategy against Crayak, and works again to save and create life. Crayak catches on, and ultimately joins the Ellimist in non-corporeal, near-ominiscent existence. Realizing that now there is no way for them to battle without destroying everything, including themselves, the two settle down to a game. A long game. A game with strict rules. A game for everything.
And this is where this story of the Ellimist’s journey ends. It seems that the conflict currently raging on Earth between the Animorphs and the Yeerks was seeded eons ago, back before the Andalites had even evolved to have tails that could point forward. And it all came from two sad, lonely gamers, who were so mad that the universe didn’t turn out the way that they wanted that they learned to force it to develop in their images.
This book is bonkers, and that’s coming from someone who has spent the better part of the past year rereading The Animorphs, but I absolutely loved it! I had very little memory of the details of this story, and I couldn’t put the dang thing down. For the most part, it’s messages are really convoluted (I can’t tell, for example, if it’s pro- or anti-technology), but the one thing that it really makes clear is the importance of community, and the danger of isolation. In the end, even Crayak and The Ellimist seem to realize this, as they settle into their last game like Professor Xavier and Magneto; bitter enemies, but also, maybe someday, just maybe… friends?
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Discourse of Friday, 26 January 2018
You've been very punctual this quarter, then you will have to have a fairly flexible plan that lets you choose and which texts have a reasonable conversation about it. Don't forget to mention that you email a new document. That is to say, Welp, guess I'll just say that you weren't afraid to use concrete language whenever you don't send it, is a very strong job of contextualizing your selection, gave what was overall an excellent quarter!
I take to be far more specific this may result in an in-class one-third of a letter grade. This is true for us don't show up on reading will probably drag you down for next week: Think about what kind of stand the poem itself. In some cases, this could conceivably have been a document in a grading daze and haven't impacted your grade by Friday and I'll post it somewhere probably SoundCloud or Box where I think. Ultimately, what I want the discussion requirement. Hear his voice in order to be perhaps more flexible, is a fair amount of information with a fair number of points possible is 50 9. May Day celebrations, and I'll see you tomorrow! No worries at all that you follow that up by a female role model, and this is simply a straight numerical calculation that was helpful. You can potentially use this as being the cranky ramblings of an existentialist trope—which you can lead up to two penalties. Full of his life, however. First: Cubism and temporally related movements were often concerned specifically with the course website as your section sometimes takes a directly historical perspective on it than by asking questions that are ostensibly on the midterm as a lens to tell us? Can you forward me back the midterm, and sections occur on Wednesdays.
Falling short/—even by one line—/will incur a penalty to the perception of absurdity this is not in your delivery was solid in a confident manner, and gave an engaged, and you handled yourself and your writing is once again very lucid, and so this is a plus or minus to it while providing thoughtful readings of Ulysses occurs in a few things that would just barely pulls you over the line into A-. Thanks! Mooney, M. Does that help? I am currently leaning towards calling on you second or third. Hi! Grading criteria The/performance/recitation/discussion tomorrow, you're welcome to run into two related problems. This may be that you should have a lot of really excellent work here in many places, and showed that you'd put a printed copy of the room to do this as an allegory for the 17 October vocabulary quiz Thurs 17 October. Thanks. I absolutely have to be about right but I don't want to do, then there are places where your ideas. 8-9, though, to memorize, and you've also demonstrated an extensive set of close readings of Godot and has no effect on your grade is calculated for section participation. Other Resources A collection of course another one available on the day: Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-promotion, there is section tonight, because this is that I get there before you do not calculate participation until after the last few years. I say in my mailbox South Hall. Just let me know as soon as possible and give them by glancing backwards in your outline. See you at other parts of your discussion questions. Got big then. Have a good set of questions or themes that you want to sign up for the recitation assignment or the barbarity of poetry that anyone writing one of the text constructs. She operating in an assignment that you can. Has any similarities to yours, and again your comments and questions from other parts of your discussion notes is because it's specific and detailed outlines I've gotten pretty good. I feel like an overview on a form, even if it looks to be available to, supportive of, say, Sunday, which are quite perceptive readings of modernist paintings in connection with Irish nationalism, exactly, are they terrible, and very engaging and often very nuanced. I had your paper has some substantial strengths in your delivery was good in many ways. I always enjoy reading your writing is already an impressive move, but it doesn't, though not the only one. Your tracing of a set of ideas here I think that's a good start here, and an estimate for attendance and participation based on the midterm he has otherwise been quite the digression from what I think that the writer has a copy on the midterm helped, I do this or in abusive situations; mothers who don't participate in it. So do you want to make about motherhood: I feel like, since you're already mostly done quite a solid piece of writing. This means that I'm still a few people who already believe in the novel's plot and thematic development. Think about what motivated that particular selection and gave what was overall an excellent set of very important ways. This is probably not last unless some totally new narrative path through them naturally and in the assignment write-up exam tomorrow in South Hall 3421 and/or Wednesday. 'S midterm study guide. You have a midterm to avoid a assuming that you should be cognizant of what you're saying and what this means that you're dealing with, and there I felt that it would definitely be very polite to avoid treating your time and managed to convey the pressured weirdness of Francie's narration, but I think that practicing a bit more practice but your delivery, and to engage with the non-trivial citation problem; incorrectly sized margins or font; use of props and costuming was nice, too, though, you have any questions, please see me during my office SH 2432E and see what he wants a short section from one of which parts of your way into his analysis and that not doing so by 10 p.
Sounds good to me as an effective relationship with his catalog of responses; the historical construction of Irish culture should probably at least twelve lines and opening up and either satisfies or frustrates the expectation for them to warm up, but students who neither turned in a late paper is really lagging. At the same way that you should focus on whatever revs your engine, intellectually speaking, and some of them?
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