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secretgamergirl · 3 years

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A Little Horrifying Primer on Transphobes

Some time ago, I put together a Little Fact Checking Primer on Trans People, as a basic resource for disabusing people of some of the many completely ridiculous yet absurdly widespread beliefs about trans people that simply have no basis whatsoever in reality. And wouldn’t you know it, every single lie exposed in that primer is not only still widely believed, but is presently being used as a basis to sign some absolutely horrific human rights abuses into law. So it’s high time I follow that up, in this case focused more on who keeps actively spreading these lies and why. I’m going to try and keep things as light as I can here, but we’re going to be looking at the most monstrous side of human nature, so apologies in advance if this is a dark read.

First, let me just note that there are two things I don’t plan to do in this piece. I’m not going to waste time debunking the arguments of the people I’m highlighting (much of this is already covered in my earlier primer, others have done the work in cases where I haven’t, and frankly these people’s claims should be self-evidently utter nonsense to begin with). I am also going to be very selective in what I link to, or even share related images of, as I would frankly not like to fill a post on a blog I generally try to keep safe for all audiences with media directly dealing with, for instance, child sexual assault, and much of the relevant information also involves stochastic terrorism against innocent people, and I would prefer not to throw more fuel onto such fires.

Transphobes lie constantly, about everything.

To some degree this is obvious. We’re talking about people who scaremonger about the possibilities of trans women dominating competitive sports and assaulting people in restrooms, despite the status quo already reflecting the conditions they insist would make these inevitibilities for decades and centuries respectively, and their grim visions never once having come to pass, and also constantly insisting that the woman in the photo below is actually a man, going further to say this is evident to anyone giving her the merest glance.

It goes beyond that though. There’s at least a little plausible deniablity in claims like this, or that “science is on their side” if they were simply uninformed about the world they live in, never actually looking into what laws exist, what science actually says, and never actually meeting a trans person or even seeing a picture of one of us. I’m talking really bold lies here. Like wholecloth fabricating a story that a convicted murder was trans, including anecdotes about wigs dresses and a planned name change, in a major newspaper. Or to cite an old favorite of mine, the time a pack of bigots walked up to a crowd of people peacefully picketing a transphobic legal proposal, started roughing them up and taking closeup photos of members of the crowd to stalk online when they got home, got sufficiently riled up for one to straight up assault an innocent person half her size, filmed the whole thing, uploaded it to youtube, and used stills of that assault as acomanying photos when they went home to write articles about the assailant being a “grandmother” attacked by rowdy trans women. And yes, they did monkey’s paw my wish to see that specific image on newspapers. Interesting side note, when it came to real public light that J.K. Rowling endorsed this sort of hatred, it was because she accidentally pasted some profanity laden rambling about how the imagined moral character of the other party in that incident, years after the fact, into a post praising a child’s fan art of her work.

To be a little less niche, transphobes can’t get enough of spreading the lie that the young fellow in this photo is a girl. Specifically a trans girl, providing proof that all their scaremongering about the dastardly threat of trans girls in competitive sports has finally come to pass.

To be fully clear, that’s a man (or a boy if you want to split hairs about him being 17 in that photo). Mack Beggs. A rather insidious choice for this sort of story, considering the actual context for that photo. See, Beggs attended high school in Texas, during a (still ongoing as I write this) period wherein that particular state had caved to this exact sort of propaganda, and in order to head off a wholly imagined wave of trans girls competing on girls’ sports teams, and enacted a law mandating that in all such competitions must compete under whatever gender is stated on their birth certificates. And as it happens, the first, and to my knowledge ONLY time this has come up was with Beggs here, who again, is a man, as no one with a grip on reality could argue against, has “female” on his birth certificate. Which is another way of saying he is a trans man. The guys in the same boat as trans women who we talk about a whole hell of a lot less because their existence is extremely inconvenient to the majority of transphobic propaganda. Case in point. And this is all information it is really impossible to come across if you’re coming across this photo in any sort of respectable source. Take this story, which is as unambiguous about this as you can get. And yet, in the very comments section of that story, there they are. Carrying on like this story about a trans guy, forced by a transphobic law to compete as a girl, which he absolutely did not want, and received horrific threats over, using phrases like “female to male” and bringing up that he was assigned female at birth and is on testosterone-based HRT, is about a trans woman cheating the system. Or to quote word for word, “Now also transgender female want to be male also compete in female sport. biological born“ That’s not “being confused,” that’s standing next to you in a white desert and complaining about being adrift in a black ocean, bald-faced, not even trying to be convincing just make a power play, lying through one’s teeth.

I could spend this whole article on just this point. Lying about who they are, various people’s falsified credentials, whole websites full of “anonymous parents of children who think they’re trans” turning out to be one single woman documenting the abuse of her very much trans son, or of course the people behind the whole “bathroom bill” panic candidly admitting it was all based on utter fiction. I do have other points to cover though.

Transphobes are firmly entrenched in the media.

It is extremely difficult to find oneself in a position of having to explain to people that a particular group of people is effectively in control of press outlets, as that is rather classically a claim conspiracy theorists absolutely love to toss around at various marginalized groups (including trans people hilariously enough, but of course the most common and lingering version of this is the antisemitic variant). I really can’t get around it here though. Specifically in the U.K., you honestly can say that transphobes control the media. I already touched on this with the assault case I mentioned above and the fabricated story about the murderer, but this is a pretty well-documented situation. I mean, even The Guardian calls out The Guardian on this, and that’s the outlet that gets the most attention because it’s the one with the most otherwise respected name, but every paper in the country has been running transphobic propaganda pieces on a weekly if not daily basis for years now, and while they do get reprimanded by watchdog groups and have mass walk-outs over the worst of it, it’s not like there’s some governing body with the authority to step in about it. Meanwhile the BBC is constantly inviting diehard zealots like Graham Linehan to news programs where he compares being trans to being a nazi, and hosting debates where someone just sits down and repeatedly chants the word “penis” at a trans woman.

Things are better in the rest of the world, but we still have right-wing creeps like Jesse Singal both writing horrific propaganda pieces (we’ll get back to that one) and blackballing trans writers out of covering trans issues ourselves (and personally stalking the hell out of those of us who try). We’ve got our Joe Rogans and Tucker Carlsons out there (no way in hell I’m linking videos here, have a real information link and a still).

The line between diehard transphobes and straight-up nazis basically does not exist.

What even is there to say here? You can easily poke around havens for nazi activity for yourself and compare the particular unique vocabulary used there to the primary bastion of anti-trans hate speech on the internet (the “feminism” section of what was originally a site for parenting tips before violent fascists took the forums over) or just peruse the follows of the thousands of people I’ve blocked on social media and see if you can sort out a clear division in the networks of channers with frog avatars and the accounts with names like GoodieXXrealwoman, or you can read up on Gab and Spinster, the two twitter alternatives that are just different portals to the same server, set up by the same guy. Maybe do some research into “the LGB Alliance,” or WoLF but any way you slice it the only real difference to be found is the general purpose nazis take a little time off now and then to watch borderline pedophilic anime and the really dedicated transphobes think to use language that sounds vaguely well-educated and left-leaning. I mean, this came from the “feminist” side of the fence:

And not to belabor the point here, but the ones claiming to be a bunch of “feminist mums” sure do let the mask slip any time they’re confronted with the fact that “women” includes black women, and oh just have a whole thread about all the weird conspiratory theories these people have about how trans people’s whole existence is some sort of Jewish plot for world domination. I swear a few months ago they were all passing around a story about some bank having an above average number of trans employees and they were all just “and we all know who controls the banks, right?” about it.

Transphobes endorse an awful lot of people who are openly pro-pedophila.

This is the part where I am really loath to link the many many specific examples I have on hand. Or to talk about this at all for reasons of good taste. Or, for that matter, to talk about this in a tumblr post when there’s an ongoing problem of people with backgrounds strongly tied to this site making baseless accusations of pedophilia against every queer person they can find, so let me be very clear just what I’m talking about while avoiding anything too graphic.

That’s James Cantor. Transphobes love him for being one of the closest things they have to a scientist on their side. And I am featuring him in a screenshot here showing that he is followed by current queen of the transphobes J.K. Rowling, while speaking to both another big name in transphobic circles, Debra Soh, and based on their names, what I’m guessing is at least one straight-up nazi. And in case you think “the P” he’s talking about adding to LGBT (or “GLBT” as weird anti-queer bigots who also have issues with women often write it) might stand for “poly” or “pan” he’s all too happy to clarify that.

This is the entire thrust of Cantor’s work and life. He is the world’s biggest pedophile rights advocate. He wants it declassified as a mental disorder, all stigma on it removed, and tirelessly pushes forward the idea that the majority of.. people who feel compelled to sexually assault children are good people who present no potential harm to anyone and should in fact be lauded.

I am not generally one to claim that someone with a PhD is spewing out questionable garbage with regard to their field, but the reason I am aware of Cantor at all is that other transphobes keep trying to hold up a particular post on his blog as "a study” (which it is not) that offers “proof” (in the form of a blurry jpeg of basically some random numbers) of some ridiculous quackery about how trans kids will “grow out of it” if exposed to conversion therapy (another way of saying torture), which Cantor himself seems to be pushing, so I am somewhat skeptical of his academic chops. And I am, of course, REALLY suspicious that all these other bigots gravitate to him purely because they’re that desperate to find anyone with a PhD in anything that backs them up against literally every scientist in a relative field, to the point that they merely forgive his particular advocacy they are plainly all aware of, particularly when such a common fig leaf used by transphobes is “keeping children safe from sexual deviants.”

And of course, Cantor is most often invoked when coming to the defense of Kenneth Zucker. This Kenneth Zucker.

Those are separate papers. Zucker isn’t controversial though for organizing panels to discuss how attractive people agree small children are (at least not exclusively). Mostly, he’s known for running a conversion therapy center which subjected gay and trans children to various sorts of torture in an effort to “fix” them, which at least for those trans "patients” I have spoken with involved a fair amount of having them strip completely naked and talking a lot about their genitals.

Zucker is something of a controversial figure with the transphobic scene, as they are extremely on board with his sexual torture of queer children, but he does actual work (for some value of the term) involving trans people and thus is not able to commit as fully as they would prefer to making life horrible for trans people, due to a professional obligation to acknowledge reality now and then. As an aside, the similarly positioned Ray Blanchard, while not to my knowledge particularly interested in the attractiveness of children, lives in a similar purgatory of trying to reconcile his career, bigotry, and sexual hangups, yielding compromises like this:

Of course, that’s just looking at the straws transphobes grasp at when looking for scientific credibility. Real leaders of the movement include Germaine Greer, author of The Beautiful Boy, which is about what you are afraid it might be, and features a very young child in a cover feature he did not consent to posing for. Or Julie Bindel, who among other things is rather infamous for writing whole articles on subjects like whether a teenage girl she came across maybe has a huge penis you can totally see if you really squint at her skirt. Again, I will not share a link to go along with that one.

Transphobes terrorize and attempt to defund charities and other unambiguously good organizations.

Graham Linehan, previously best known for cowriting some sitcoms and possibly spending a year angling to get into my pants so awkwardly I didn’t pick up on it is now best known for trying to pull the plug on a children’s charity, in a story that somehow also involves Donkey Kong. Well, and the interview about nazis. And possibly the other interview about “defending me from nazis” until it got into his head that I might not be as young and hot as he imagined. Rather not link to a far right extremist youtube channel though.

There’s also a current effort to replace Stonewall (an organization named after the location where a pair of trans women kicked off a riot which is generally agreed to be the start of the LGBT+ rights movement) as the UK’s primary LGBT+ rights organization with the “LGB Alliance.” The hate group mentioned above, with the skull face and the rifle. Closest I can find to an article on that effort on short notice that isn’t propaganda.

Transphobes paper areas in truly disgusting propaganda.

I don’t want to directly link to grown adults skulking around children’s playgrounds and bathrooms plastering surfaces with mass printed stickers of crudely drawn penises, but would encourage you to read this very long post, being sure to load all the images, to really understand how deeply strange this behavior gets.

Finally, I cannot stress this enough, this really extreme behavior I’m citing, and the specific people involved in the examples I’m giving, these aren’t random cranks on the fringe of things. The people going on televised panel discussions, writing up news stories, and testifying before lawmakers in efforts to pass horrifically discriminatory if not literally life-endangering laws (there is a major ongoing effort to legally end all medical care for trans people, and I don’t just mean care directly relating to being trans) are literally the same people involved in the sexualization of children, nazi collaborations, and roving gangs assaulting people in the street. At a bare minimum I urge people, when booking guests and handing out writing contracts, to do background checks and see if they’re platforming actual terrorists. If we could actually bring legal consequences to bear against the worst of this, that would be great too. As things stand though, the whole world is just consistently citing a bunch of racist, woman-hating, serial liars with no real credentials, and questionable attitudes towards the sexual abuse of children, as “trusted experts” and refusing to seat actual trans people or people who have legitimately committed lifetimes to academic and practical work with trans people any seats at the table.

#trans #transphobia #educational resources

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fencesandfrogs · 3 years

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hi my name is matthew and i have some thoughts about haes

okay disclaimers: i’m a little jumpy around the subject so while i don’t feel i’m being unnecessarily harsh/unfair, if ur firm on haes w no yielding, and you don’t want to argue about it? either skip this or don’t respond. i don’t really care. but i’m putting the body under a read more.

[3k words, 10 minute read. sections headers, some text italicized for emphasis/some readibility. no images/videos, a few links.]

second disclaimer: i’m not planning on going heavy on sources. i will happily provide sources to people who want them, and i haven’t written the actual post yet but it’s unlike me not to cite anything, but doing an in depth well researched and sourced post on this type of subject is not something i’m up for right now.

like i said, i’m jumpy around this subject. and on the off chance someone decides this post is Bad and i must be banished to the Bad Blogs Bin, i’d rather not put a lot of work into it.

third disclaimer: i’m not particularly interested in reading X study that says actually no people who way 700 pounds are healthy and people who weigh less than 200 are going to die early deaths. i know that’s a straw man i needed to a) get it out of the way now and b) i just am tired all the time and don’t have a ton of itme for it. that said, if you do send one to me, i will probably read it at some point, and i may or may not provide my thoughts.

right then. moving on.

with no more waffling, my thesis is as follows: weight stigma is bad, however obesity is killing people and i really would like people to stop pretending it doesn’t.

i. really hate that that’s a controversial opinion. i mean i hold a decent number of somewhat controversial opinions, most of which i keep to myself because i’m a firm believer that what i think about something should not interfere with how other people live their lives. as a noncontroversial example, i think mormons are in a cult. children, being minors, being indoctrinated is a problem, one i myself am not dedicated to solving because i have other issues but as far as adults involved, that’s their business.

(*please note that i’m not expanding on my thoughts because this post is about haes but i do have a more complicated opinion i’m just trying to demonstrate something please don’t at me about cults i know that they’re bad and adults in them also need help getting out that’s not the point of this post & i’m anxious enough so like, please.)

anyway so. obesity. is bad. it is bad for your health. if you are obese, you are not healthy. that said, i am not going to tell you to lose weight. no one should tell you to lose weight except for your doctor and maybe your immediate family, and that should be from a place of “you are not living your best life and i care about you.” i, an internet stranger, along with pretty much everyone you know, does not get to tell you about how terrible your life is and what a horrible person you are for existing, because you are not a bad person for being overweight. you do not deserve discrimination or mistreatment. even if you’re not actively trying to lose weight. it doesn’t matter. you are a human being like any other and i will fight like hell for you.

i’m not planning on going heavy into eating disorders because a) that’s a triggering topic for me and b) it’s going to muddle the point i’m getting, but since it is a large part of the arguments re. haes, it’s certainly going to come up, so i’d like to list the officially recognized eating disorders.

Anorexia Nervosa (AN)

Bulimia Nervosa (BN)

Binge Eating Disorder (BED)

Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorder (OSFED)

Pica

Rumination Disorder

Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)

Unspecified Feeding or Eating Disorder (UFED)

Other (aka “we are considering making this its own category but for matthew’s purposes it fits into AFRID or UFED well enough because the details aren’t important”)

so yeah. we’ll circle back to this.

section one: haes

haes initially stood for heatlh at every size. that doesn’t really matter anymore because people say healthy at every size now, however, the distinction is important. because.

okay. when i say being obese makes you inherently unhealthy, i am not saying you are having health problems for being overweight. i am saying you have a chronic illness. i have asthma. that makes me inherently unhealthy. i don’t necessarily have an health problems because i am asthmatic, but i have a chronic illness and it certainly would, say, make me more likely to die from covid. that is a fact. saying healthy at every lung functionality would not change that.

but you know, i can still be active and like smell plants and interact in the world like anyone else. i just try to keep my inhaler near by.

so similarly, if you are overweight/obese (i’ve been saying only obese because its less letters so i’m sticking with that), you can, like, live ur best life and take care of your health. you can feel good about your body and eat good food and move and again, i really don’t want anyone reading this to feel that i think everyone who’s obese needs to lose that weight because adults can do whatever they want.

what i’m angry about is that a good thing (encouraging people to make good choices no matter what so they can feel good in their bodies) got turned into a bad thing (telling people they don’t need to change what they’re doing because they’re perfectly healthy).

section two: but what about...?

see my third disclaimer. but as a fast rundown of things i probably won’t talk about in detail later:

the obesity paradox is a specific thing about a specific type of illness in the elderly. it’s also not about obesity, it’s about being slightly overweight. it’s a complicated thing, but it’s not true most of the time

sumo wrestlers have major health problems as soon as they stop exercising like crazy.

did you know there are countries where girls are force fed to become overweight? diet culture goes both ways

if you want to say healthy at every size, you have to mean that every. that means you are not allowed to say shit about underweight people. i’m sorry, is someone you care about wasting away? are they 5′10 and weigh 90 pounds and their hair is falling out because they aren’t eating? i’m sorry, you said people are healthy at every size. you can’t make fun of skinny people. you have to suck it up because you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

section three: self care

a hypothetical that is blindingly obvious to where i’m going: if a small child wants to play with a knife, are you caring for them by giving into it? what if they want to drink some vodka? what if they want to run away from home to live with a stranger in a white van?

i really really hope all those answers are “no, you’re neglecting that child, and also possibly actively harming it.”

so my point is pretty obvious: giving yourself something because you want it does not mean you are caring for yourself.

you know what i want to do all the time? sleep and rewatch twilight every day. but that makes me feel worse. so even though it’s terrible and i hate it, i have to take care of myself (because there is only one of me that i ever get) and go outside and talk to people and eat something that isn’t popcorn because you need protein to live.

(sorry i tried to keep nutrition out of that but i have to actively seek out sufficient salt and protein due to my campus doing a lot of low sodium food, which is bad when u actually need to eat a good amount of salt to keep ur body working, and also i’m vegetarian. so i’m constantly making myself seek it out.)

that doesn’t mean self care is always supposed to be work, but i mean. i’ve always not really gotten into it. i think because i’m hella depressed and i’ve been depressed long enough i can recognize it as this separate entity when it comes to a lot of the mental stuff. like, why do i feel like everything is meaningless? that’s just the depression.

but i digress, this isn’t about me. [proceeds to talk about me again]

one phrase i like a lot for myself is “bad food makes me feel bad.” now, i’m not a fan of putting moral judgements to food. but this works for me, personally. sure, eating a bunch of ice cream right now is good, but it’s going to suck when my stomach flips the fuck out because of all the sugar. and so it seems quite obvious to me that eating that ice cream is not, in fact, caring for my body.

and i think we’d collectively be a bit better served if we could learn to distinguish between self-care and self-kindness. ask anyone who does caregiving (childcare, nurses, etc): it is hard, often thankless (at least for children they’re devils who don’t realize that their toys will get wrecked if they don’t pick them up) work. you care for them not by doing what they want, but what is best for them.

section four: diet culture

as i’ve already played my hand up above with underweight vs haes, i think it’s kind of obvious that i have strong feelings about underweight not being healthy also. so i just want to take stock of what is and isn’t diet culture, and what i think about it. this is probably the most subjective part of this essay.

things i think are diet culture

people trying ridiculous diets. obviously diet culture in the purest sense. it’s real dumb. you need all the food groups to live. sometimes it’s okay, like cutting out sugar, but i’d say its a net negative

not trying to do lifestyle changes. that’s the sustainable way to lose weight. so. yeah.

weight cycling. actually still up for debate if this is bad. this paper says no, along with a lot of others, but i’m not sitting down and reading through all of them, and all of the ones that say its bad, to offer my opinion. i’m leaning towards “it’s better than nothing,” but we’ll see

a lot of other stuff i’m doing this off the top of my head and trying to avoid issues w eating disorders so.

things i think aren’t diet culture

women being pressured to look a certain way. that’s been going on for a long time. being skinny used to be bad. it’s a fact of the patriarchy.

most things? idk i have this impression that like, anyone exercising or eating healthy is a part of diet culture, when in reality, people just have different lifestyles. (also, again, if you’re going with haes, as in HealthyAES (hyaes?) you can’t call it unhealthy or you’re not respecting that damn E)

in conclusion: diet culture has issues, but the correct response to them is not “fuck you, i’m eating fourteen pounds of sugar.” eat fourteen pounds of sugar because you want to. (also it should be fat because if you really want to stick it to the man you should be eating fat, big sugar is responsible for a huge amount of todays dietary problems, both on the under/overweight side)

section five: discrimination

yeah no fuck people who discriminate about fat people. that’s all i’m just moving along to a transition since i was drifting away from my point about health.

section six: weight stigma

...is not responsible for your health issues. being obese is. accept the consequences of your lifestyle.

well. okay. that’s a little unfair. accept the consequences of not treating your chronic illness. and i feel i’ve probably lost people for calling obesity an illness but that’s the whole point of my post.

just like carrying externally heavy objects hurts your joints, so does carrying a lot of weight inside. fat does not cushion your organs, it kills them. getting rid of weight stigma will not make these issues go away.

the treatment for obesity is eating the number of calories you need to sustain a healthy weight at your current exercise levels. (*please consult with your doctor this is more complicated when you have to lose a lot of weight.)

section seven: cico. or, why your metabolism is fine

your body does not break the laws of thermodynamics. it cannot magically create more energy out of a given amount of calories.

there are issues with calorie counting, yes. i think it’s usually done in an unsustainable way that isn’t teaching people to make decisions, just to do math. it can be hard to get an accurate count.

but you are not a miracle of science. you have not discovered how to create and destroy energy. i’m sorry to be the one to break if to you.

if you don’t believe me, if you’re really sure your metabolism is different, go on and get it tested. tell your doctors. because it’s a major problem if it’s not working right.

similarly, i’m sorry, but if someone is the same height as you and a (very, like, +- 50 pounds) different weight, and neither of you have exisitng health conditions, you are not eating the same things/doing the same exercise. you have not broken the laws of physics.

possibly, one of you have untreated celiacs or something of the ilk meaning your body is actually malfunctioning. but if that’s true, i excluded you already, so shoo. get out of here and play in the sun with the other kids.

if you don’t believe this, there’s not much i can do to convince you. but i encourage you to count your calories for a month. find some tdee calculators. weigh yourself. make sure you count everything, it all goes down. check the math. (you can do any amount of time but a month is what you need for weight to be meaningful imo otherwise you’re just proving weight fluctuates a lot).

section eight: cico. or, why counting calories is not disordered eating

it can sure be a symptom of disordered eating, and it can certainly make disordered eating worse, but it isn’t an eating disorder.

also, assuming you’re not trying to verify the laws of thermodynamics, i don’t think counting every calorie is necessary. i have approximate values (500/meal, and around 300 in snacks), which i try not to go over or under.

yeah. i actually use calorie counting to make sure i’m eating enough in one sitting. some of my medication screws with my apetite and then i only eat like 300 calories and suddenly its like 11 and i need to go to bed but i’m hungry but eating before bed makes me feel terrible and it sucks.

but hey, according to some people, avoiding that is unhealthy.

okay i’m moving on before i get salty because the next section is touchy

section nine: eating disorders.

the three main eating disorders are listed way up there. they’re the first three. AN, BN, BED.

oh, yeah, binge eating? that’s actually disordered eating too. it’s not normal.

i’m not going to elaborate on the point because i absolutely know i can’t do it without getting really fucking angry that people call calorie counting disordered eating, like i haven’t watched a fifth grader eat one meal a day because she’s scared she’s overweight. like i haven’t watched a sixth grader cram food into his mouth until he’s sick because he’s worried he’s not bulky enough for sports. like i haven’t watched an eleventh grader tell me he hasn’t eaten anything since lunch yesterday, but it’s fine, he doesn’t want his mac and cheese anyway, since he needs to lose weight.

you think someone keeping track of some numbers is an eating disorder? then either you’re lucky enough to never have to deal with eating disorders on a personal level, and i’m very happy for you, or you have, and you should maybe reevaluate that.

alright i’m cutting myself off now whoop.

section ten: intuitive eating

you know, much like haes, i want to like this. it fits in with my bad-food-makes-me-feel-bad mentality. i’m angry and tired and hungry because i ate like, a late breakfast/early lunch and now i need to eat again because if i don’t eat every six to eight hours i have a medical condition that makes me feel like shit (an aside: unless you’ve been told by a doctor, you don’t need to eat every 2-3 hours. unless you’re a child or have an applicable medical condition, you can probably eat one meal a day and be firne.)

but much like haes, it now has a meaning i can’t in good consience endorse. i can’t stand for a movement that tells people who acknowledge weight makes their joints hurt that they just need to keep eating until they feel better.

section eleven: conclusion

i have a lot more thoughts but again i’m hungry. i meant to talk more about IE and my problems with it but maybe that will be its own post.

i won’t say i’m happy to talk about this because i can’t promise i am (see: eating disorder issues.), but i will most likely respond to constructive discussion if someone sees this and wants to. i can also provide sources. i hate going, “sources available on request” but i tried to provide some stuff for some of the heavily disputed/i already had a source for it and didn’t have to dig through google scholar to find information that’s been peer reviewed.

and i do sincerely wish everyone, at any size, that they fracture the disconnect between them and their bodies (oop didn’t talk about that either another time then) & that they find peace with who they are, and that they get to live happy & fulfilling lives.

#fatphobia #anti haes #obesity #health #haes #i don't know how to tag this lmao sorry if i have a bad tag #q #mine #txt #7th #February #2021 #February 7th 2021 #essay #long post

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angelubasco · 4 years

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"YOUR MIND AND BODY MATTERS"

-October 28, 2020

Have you ever check upon yourself? Especially your mind and body? And if so, when is the last time you did it? As of now that the worlds facing a pandemic it is important to monitor our mind and body not just on the month of celebration about mental health. Many news are coming out about their physical and mental health to their family and personal problems in life especially those students who are having difficulties on their online classes. There are lots of sayings that this is not good for them as you browse on different social links that is based from their experience and it is sad to say that most students felt depression and anxiety that they killed themselves because their minds are full of pressure about simultaneously deadlines/activities and felt sick beacuse of having a lack of sleep. This is one of the examples I have cited that I wanted to encourage my fellow students to ask themeselves right now this kind of questions, "How healthy is my mind and body?" & "Am I truly happy and enjoying what I am doing?". Because we can't deny somehow we feel lost and empty. That's why it is important to assess if we are still okay about our physical and mental health because both are interconnected as our thoughts affects our physical body.

According to Newport Academy (2019), "The mind and the body are not two separate entities—although they are often treated that way. Physical health and emotional health are intimately intertwined in what’s known as the mind-body connection.

Our chemistry and biology impact our mood and emotions, as well as thoughts and beliefs. With all of these factors combined, they play a major role in influencing our stress and physical health. If you’ve ever felt your stomach tighten up when you were anxious, you’ve experienced the mind-body connection."

If you are one of this kind of students who doesn't have healthy mind and body or who wanted to know how to maintain your mind and body strong and healthy, here are Eight Habits for you according to Valentine (2017).

1. Exercise using something you love

Physical exercise has been shown in countless studies to help reduce stress, increase energy, improve mood, and even help make us more creative.

Great right? However, advice on how to make exercise a habit is a bit lacking. That’s because exercise can be a really difficult habit to stick to. But if there’s one thing I’ve found really helps stick to physical exercise and make it a long-term habit it’s this:

Exercise in a way that allows you to enjoy something you love.

You have to really look forward to working out. Whatever it is that you do, whether it’s running, lifting weights, doing cardio, martial arts, Yoga, or something else, you need to pick an exercise method you really enjoy.

For example, I love martial arts. I’m a lot more likely to stick to my work out while doing that than running or lifting weights. On the flip side, if there’s no particular exercise-like activity you enjoy, maybe you really love music. Play all your favorite music during your workout and you’ll notice yourself far more likely to get up to exercise. Another option is listening to podcasts about your craft while running.

Either way, exercise is a big one, so find a way to make it work for you.

2. Meditation

Meditation is another huge one. However, meditation isn’t really what most people think it is.

If you don’t like the traditional idea of meditation, you can meditate while doing virtually anything if you use the right method (i.e. mindfulness meditation). Also, studies have shown that as little as five to ten minutes of meditation offers great benefits, so don’t think you need to sit for a half hour every day. You really don’t.

Similar to physical exercise, there are several different methods and forms of meditation, so do a little adventuring and experimentation to find a method and form that works for you. Everyone is different and different methods of meditation tend to work better for different people.

3. Mindful walking

This is easily one of my favorite activities on this entire list, but it’s also the most obscure. Mindful walking, also known as walking meditation, is meditation in motion. It can be done formally as a dedicated practice and informally by paying attention to your steps and what is going on around you as you move.

This is great for many of the reasons formal meditation is (albeit less concentrated), however, there’s another big reason to do mindful walking: it helps you tune in to the body.

Sometimes, things occur in the body that we don’t notice. Oftentimes, chronic issues and illness begin to creep up in ways often unseen. However, by learning to tune in to the body with mindful walking, we can notice these things arise before they become more of an issue.

It’s a hard thing to explain, but it’s been infinitely useful to me. In many ways, this one exercise gives us a way to check in with both the mind and body on a regular basis and in an incredibly convenient way while going about our daily activities, so its place on this list is well-earned.

4. Rise early

Rising early is something I took years to develop. However, it was so worth it.

There are positives to staying up late, particularly if you find that you’re more productive or creative during late night hours. However, in general, I’ve found that the majority of people are most productive in the early morning hours.

In addition, though, waking up early and adopting a morning routine that prepares you for the day helps you start each day off with the optimal state of mind to tackle problems and make decisions, something incredibly useful for everyone no matter what your profession.

So, if you’re not already, see what waking up a little earlier does for you.

5. Adopt a nighttime routine

On the flip side of that, adopting an effective night time routine that puts your mind in the right state before bed and helps maximize the quality of your sleep is also incredibly beneficial.

Unfortunately, most of us in the West just don’t value sleep enough. We tend to place work above well-being and prefer to leave sleep for when we die. However, two decades of scientific research now says this isn’t just a bad idea health-wise – it’s unproductive.

Take some time to craft a simple but effective nighttime routine and I promise – you won’t regret it.

6. Remove sugar, add water, get your food from the source

This is the basic recipe I follow when it comes to nutrition advice.

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot and tried so many different things with regards to nutrition. At this point, my ideology on nutrition is pretty relaxed. And it’s never worked out better.

There’s a ton of advice out there and, rightfully, it can be pretty confusing. So, I’ve chosen to follow a pretty simple mantra that offers me roughly eighty percent of the benefit of any particular diet while doing about twenty percent of the work to get that benefit. It’s this:

Remove sugar: Sugar is bad. Really bad. Occasional sugar is just fine, even daily, as long as you try to keep it under 50g at an absolute a maximum (30g even better).

Add water: Buy a dedicated flask just for water and you’ll have a one thousand times higher likelihood of sticking to the habit of drinking water daily. About eight to ten cups is fine, but you should look into what your specific amount is based on your body weight.

Get your food from the source: Do you have a farm where you live? Or a farmer’s market? Awesome. Section of your grocery store with local farm foods? Pretty good too. Also, this refers to what food you eat as well. Put a little more whole foods into your diet or get a juicer.

Keep it simple and use this method to get most of the benefit of altering your diet while saving you time to focus on what’s most important to you.

7. Find friends who identify with your challenges

We’re social creatures. No matter what you do, you can’t escape this.

And so, by virtue of this, the more social we are, the healthier we tend to be.

However, there’s something very specific about relationships that helps us more than anything else: having people around us who identify and sympathize with our challenges and who we communicate with often about those challenges. The lack thereof is often the reason for suicide in those who suffer from depression or bullying.

When we have people around us who listen and understand what we’re going through, something magical happens: we get through it (what it is for you). It’s a very simple thing that we often overlook but is so critical to our mental and even physical health.

8. Find a passion project or creative outlet

If you’ve been pursuing something you love for some time now, I don’t have to tell you how great it makes you feel.

The energy we get while pursuing our passions is limitless and gives us a sense of vitality that is hard (if impossible) to acquire any other way.

Using our brain regularly keeps our mind strong and moving helps keep us physically healthy, so if you haven’t yet taken the time to find what you’re passionate about and to start pursuing that with every fiber of your being, start now (before it’s too late).

There's no harm in trying, our mind and physical gives us energy. A person who can change his/her mind can change his/her lives. Always remember health is our wealth. Keep on checking and doing the things you love.

Sources:

Newport Academy, (2019). Understang the Mind-Body Connection. https://www.newportacademy.com/resources/mental-health/understanding-the-mind-body-connection/

Valentine, M., (2017). 8 Habits You Need to Lock Down for a Strong, Healthy Mind and Body. https://www.goalcast.com/2017/12/14/8-habits-healthy-mind-and-body/

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hopefulfestivaltastemaker · 4 years

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November 1, 2020

My weekly roundup of things I am up to. Topics include another update on my recovery, the Rare Earth Hypothesis, materials for renewable energy, climate change and dust clouds, and visions of the future revisited.

Update on Recovery IV

This past week has been good. My bedtime is moving later, now about 11:00, and I am down to 10 hours of sleep the past day. My “normal” is about 2:00 to 3:00 AM bedtime and 9 hours of sleep, so I am getting close to normal. I’ll have to decide if I want to hold back the late bedtime or go back to the way I was. I have a feeling it will be the latter. I’ve been taking fewer naps during the day as well.

I also got back to Urban Cruise Ship research, which was my main work duty before the stroke. Although I am not to full hours yet, I am back to the full range of job duties. There will be more on that following.

I am also planning on going back to the Orenco Station apartment this coming weekend. In the meantime my main goal is to get hold of the neurosurgery department at Kaiser, ask a few questions, and possibly refill one of the medications I am taking. Kaiser has been good for the most part, but I am getting frustrated with the amount of phone tag I have to do with them to get things done.

So far my total expense for the stroke has been $7900, which is exactly the same as my copay. I shudder to think how much it would be without the copay, but that’s what I’m paying for with insurance. I’m not sure if the copay covers what I spent at RIO; if not, then I have more expense coming. Still, the total expense has been less than I feared.

Rare Earth Hypothesis

This past week I read Ward and Brownlee’s Rare Earth book (freebie here). It’s a science classic, which had a major effect on how we think about the question of commonality of life throughout the universe, and it is a fascinating and accessible read. I recommend taking a look, especially to anyone interested in knowing more about Earth history.

That said, I do have a few modest criticisms of the book. Even though it was pitched at a general audience, I would have appreciated some more quantification of the likelihood of various events. For example, the authors assert at one point that an Earth analogue could no longer form because there isn’t enough uranium and thorium left to drive place tectonics. That may be true, but I think they should have provided the numbers on such a statement, as it is far from obviously true. There is a chapter dedicated to calculating the odds, but they offer an equation (analogous to the Drake Equation) without trying to fill in numbers. In the end, I am left with the sense that the Rare Earth Hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis, but not a quantitative statement.

A few elements of the book have not aged well. They make a few assertions about exoplanets in particular which have proven false. Ward and Brownlee assert that Earthlike planets (here defined narrowly as rocky planets roughly the size of Earth, orbiting a star roughly the size of the Sun, in the habitable zone) should be rare, but we now know from expolanet observation that such planets are almost as common as stars in the Milky Way. This point isn’t critical to the book, but it does make me wish there was an update. In the next few years, we should find from the James Webb telescope how common oxygen atmospheres are around Earthlike planets. If they’re common, that will refute another element of the Rare Earth Hypothesis, and if rare or non-existent, it would confirm an element.

My own thinking falls into line with the Rare Earth Hypothesis. My guess is that microbial life is common but “advanced” (plants and animal) life, let alone intelligence, is so rare that we should not expect to find it with present techniques. The book confirms that thinking. The main argument against the hypothesis, and Ward and Brownlee’s thesis, is that they only look at advanced life on Earth and thus ignore the myriad other pathways by which it may have arisen. That may be, but it is my sense that advocates of a common life thesis make many unprovable assertions of how life may have arisen.

In any event, it is an exciting time for astrobiology. The next few decades should give us some more answers, from James Webb and other sources. I’m very much looking forward to that.

Materials for Renewable Energy

Speaking on things that are supposedly rare, I got back to my Urban Cruise Ship work by looking at rare-Earth elements and other elements that may be barriers to renewable energy expansion.

My own sense, and I cited a couple sources to this effect, is that it won’t be a barrier. There are in fact barriers to a 100% renewable future, but availability of elements shouldn’t be one of them. I think it will be like the fears of platinum shortages when the catalytic converter was mandated. There was a temporary supply crunch, but then supply expanded to meet demand.

I think the same will happen with Rare Earths and other elements critical to renewable energy and electric vehicles. Modeling suggests that we will need about four times the Lithium and Cobalt, and several times the Neodymium and Dysprosium as well for permanent magnets for wind turbines. Miners should step up to the plate and provide what we need, and probably without the geopolitical conflict that some are fearing.

I didn’t look at every element that people are worried about. Copper, which especially will be needed for an expansion of transmission capacity, could be an issue as well.

Climate Change and Dust Clouds

My funder raised a question when I talked with him last: what role, if any, do interstellar dust cloud play in past ice ages? He noted that this was a common question, raised by Carl Sagan and others, back in the 1970s and 1980s but not one that we hear often now. To my knowledge, no one has confirmed or debunked the dust cloud/ice age question, so what is the present state of knowledge, and how relevant could dust clouds be for future climate predictions?

To be clear, I’m not questioning here the scientific view that the main cause of contemporary global warming is accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It would be my guess, though, that part of the reason for the fall-off of the dust cloud hypothesis is the perceived need to elevate CO2′s role and diminish the role of other factors, even in far past climate change.

That said, there is some relevant recent research. My friend Nick pointed out this paper from last year which posits that the breakup of an asteroid may have been a cause behind the snowball Earth event of the Ordovician. There is also this paper from 2005, arguing a similar thing.

The funder’s interest is specifically about future climate change, and whether it would be worthwhile to send small probes from the Earth to scout extraterrestrial dust for the purposes of predicting future climate change. I would also therefore want to know how fast dust clouds could operate, and what (if anything) is known about our nearby cosmic atmosphere.

Visions of the Future Revisited

Last week I mentioned three categories of the future as envisioned. My friend Nick again emailed me to mention that there is a much broader range of categories to be considered. In particular, when considering scope, we shouldn’t just think about human population but also think about distribution, e.g. on Earth and in space. One could imagine a future where human numbers are vastly extended beyond Earth, but on Earth shrunk to levels required merely to maintain monuments. Sustainability visions too often combine a reduced human population with greatly increased standards of living. For reasons I won’t belabor here, I think such a future is unlikely, but it is what many envision will happen and work toward.

As far as “scope” is concerned, there are several variables. Human humans and geographic extension (e.g. whether in space) are two of them. Overall technological prowess is another variable. Such variables are correlated but distinct.

Anyway, I wrote that section fairly quickly and meant it to be simple. Having a 2X2 matrix of scope and scale is simple, while hiding much of the complexity within those two variables.

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splendidcas · 5 years

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My Supernatural Fandom Research Paper

A/N: this is the draft of my 17 page research paper on the fandom that I am doing for my communications college class! I still have work to do on my results section but it’s almost done! once the final draft is complete, I will be presenting my research at my college’s student symposium! I want to thank all of you who helped me with my research, it means so much!! <33

ALSO feel free to skip the Literature Review; it’s not about SPN, just scholarly literature!

I also included some screenshots of tweets and posts from the cast that are in my actual paper. tada :) hope yall like it!

Finally, THIS PAPER IS 17 PAGES LONG SO FAR (in my Pages application). so yeah, feel free to skim or read as much or as little as you like. I just wanted to thank you all again for your help. Love you all <3

the rest is under the cut!

Abstract

This research paper explores the uniqueness of the hit television show Supernatural on The CW, which has been ongoing since 2005, and its fandom. Fans of the show have been labeled as “die-hard” and the cast has engaged in an ongoing relationship with the fandom for the past fourteen years and counting. This paper investigates what about the show and the fandom makes it so unique, as well as what the impact of such a relationship is.

Introduction

Five years ago my mother introduced me to the hit television show Supernatural, and I was instantly hooked. Since then I have participated in fan-created content, made many friends in the fandom, and have been to three Supernatural conventions so far. Through being such an active member of the fandom, I gained extensive knowledge on the show, its cast, and fellow fans. I realized what a unique show and fandom this was, and I began to question what the impact of that would be.

According to dictionary.com, a fandom is “the fans of a particular person, team, fictional series, etc., regarded collectively as a community or subculture.” Fandoms can also form around TV shows, movies, books, video games, and more. Although many of them share similarities, every fandom is different, and the Supernatural fandom in particular very much stands out from the rest. In fact, they’re not just a fandom; the cast and fans call themselves the “Supernatural Family” due to their close relationship. “Both aca-fans and mainstream media have recognized the increasingly reciprocal relationship between fans and producers, facilitated by internet technologies and social media” (Fandom at the Crossroads, 2). This relationship is certainly unique; for the past 14 years and counting it has led to episodes dedicated to the fans, fan conventions where the fans and cast meet and interact, charity campaigns, scavenger hunts, and more. Needless to say, the cast and fans have been engaged in a constant conversation that has greatly impacted the lives of all who are involved.

Since social media took off, fandom culture has grown significantly and has become an important part of the individual’s lives. For example, fandoms are an example of participatory culture, which “involves fans acting not only as consumers but also as producers and creators of some form of creative media” (Grinnell College). Fans creating art and fiction, also simply known as fan art and fan fiction, are examples of such creative media. Fans are not just fans anymore. They’re no longer simply reading or watching their favorite media; they are becoming a part of the fictional worlds themselves, adding to them by creating their own versions of canons in the worlds. The Supernatural fans are no exception to this; there are currently 328,391 works of Supernatural fan fiction on the fan fiction website Archive of Our Own alone (archiveofourown.org). There are countless works of fan fiction on Tumblr and Wattpad as well. Many fans even bring their fan art to the cast at Supernatural conventions where they can get cast members to sign them.

The relationship between Supernatural fans and cast members is important to note because not only are the fans immersing themselves into the fictional world, engaging with the cast, and dedicating a good chunk of their lives to the show, but also because it has been ongoing since 2005. Jensen Ackles, one of the main actors on the show since the beginning, has even hinted that the show will “keep going for several more years” (TV Guide). This begs the question: What is it about the show that has created such die-hard fans? In addition, what is the impact of such a reciprocal relationship? To conduct such research I plan to use the Uses & Gratifications theory create a survey for Supernatural fans. By using the Uses & Grats theory and conducting a survey I hope to discover what the impact of the relationship between Supernatural fans and the cast members has been, as well as why Supernatural acts as a breeding ground for die-hard fans.

Uses and Gratifications in Fandoms

Elihu Katz provided the foundation for the Uses and Gratifications theory with his work, “Uses and Gratifications Research.” He explains that the theory “begins by specifying needs and then attempts to trace the extent to which they are gratified by the media or other sources” (Katz). In other words, people have needs that need to be met, and they seek to meet and gratify those needs in different medias. In his work he also provides five basic assumptions of the theory. First, audience members are active, and second, “much initiative in linking need gratification and media choice lies with the audience member” (Katz). In other words, people choose what media to consume; they do not passively wait around for media to find and affect them. Third, different media compete with one another to provide gratification and satisfaction. Fourth, people are self-aware and recognize the needs they seek to be met and can report on them. Fifth, “value judgements about the cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended while audience orientation are explored on their own terms” (Katz). In other words, different medias affect people differently, and judgements toward that concept should not be made.

In the McGraw-Hill textbook A First Look at Communication Theory, Emory A. Griffin does a great job at explaining Katz’ work in simpler terms. He goes on to explain the typology of Uses and Gratifications, or the categories of reasons one might consume a particular type of media. Such categories include: passing time, companionship, escape, enjoyment, social interaction, relaxation, information, and excitement.

Other scholars have chosen to take Uses & Gratifications even further by combining it with other factors and theories. By doing this, it becomes easier to get more specific in terms of why audience members choose the media they do. For example, Roger Cooper and Tang Tang in their article “Predicting Audience Exposure to Television in Today’s Media Environment” combined seven structural variables with Uses & Grats and turned it into a model of audience exposure. Such variables include internet, audience availability, the cost of multi-channel service, age, instrumental motivations, and gender (Cooper, Tang). In other words, these variables influence and affect what a person is going to choose to watch, read and engage with. A woman who is 25 years old might not be watching the same thing as a 75-year-old man because of the age difference, gender difference, or because perhaps they cannot afford a multi-channel service while the elder can. Scholars Gildasio Dos Santos, Michael Kotowski and Jake Hardwood expand on the gender variable in their article “Television and Gratification: The Role of Sex in Predicting Media Uses and Gratifications and Television Programs.” Gender plays more of an important role in the uses and gratifications of a media than one might think. The article cites research that found that women have a “greater tendency than men to have an empathetic and accommodating attitude towards situations in which characters struggle with an issue” (Dos Santos, Kotowski, Harwood, 9). Therefore one can draw the conclusion that women are more drawn to certain genres of television and certain television shows than men. Given that the Supernatural fandom is mostly women, this is an interesting aspect to note in my research.

Another possible variable in why someone chooses a certain media is race. Jessica R. Abrams discusses in her article “African Americans’ Television Activity” the reasons why African Americans select certain television programs and what they may get out of it in contrast to caucasians. Results found that caucasians and African Americans had different gratifications for selecting television.

Uses & Grats is deeply psychological, and it is important to note research about the psychological aspects of the theory. Alan M. Rubin argues in his article “The Uses-and-Gratifications Perspective of Media Effects” that dependency on media is a big factor in consuming certain medias. He says, “Dependency on a particular medium results from the motives we have to communicate, the strategies we use to obtain gratifications, and the restricted availability of functional alternatives.” Any of these factors may result in a dependency on media. If someone doesn’t have any other alternative to communicate or receive a certain gratification, they resort to depending on a media to get it (Rubin). Continuing with the psychological perspective of Uses & Grats, authors Mark Galauner, Michael Beatty, Jill Red and David Atkin did a study combining the personality traits of extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism to see if there were any connections between them. The article discusses research conducted that found that “ extraversion and psychotics both appear to reject most of the ‘traditionally identified’ television viewing motivations” and that neuroticism “represents the strongest predictor of media use” (Atkin, Beatty, Galauner, Red). In other words, those who showed extraversion and/or psychoticism were less likely to engage in television use than those who showed neuroticism.

One model that has been combined with the Uses & Grats theory is the MAIN model, which stands for modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability. Scholars Chamil Rathnayake and Jenifer Winter used the MAIN model to conduct research on 383 college students and social media use. They explain that the MAIN model argues that “distinctive gratifications can emerge from new media affordances.” Modality is the way the media is presented, agency recognizes the ability of users to be able to contribute to media, interactivity relates to the interaction with and on a medium, and navigability is “the affordance that allows user movement through the medium” (Rathnayake and Winter, 374). Shyam Sundar and Anthony Limperos also use the MAIN model to find out if new technologies bring out new gratifications in consumers. Technology itself is a gratification, and the article found that more and newer technologies bring about more gratifications.

An extremely important aspect of the Uses & Grats theory is parasocial relationships, or an “ongoing, one-sided bond with a media figure” (ThoughtCo). Parasocial relationships are important because they are a driving force of why many engage with a certain media over and over again. Scholars Sarah Erickson, Kristen Harrison and Sonya Dal Cin wrote a journal article which explores romantic parasocial relationships that adolescents in particular have, called ARPA. Although APRA is largely ignored by scholars, the authors argue that they have a great impact on the lives of adolescents. To discover just what the impact of those relationships might be, scholars Riva Tukachinsky and Sybilla M. Dorros did a research study and found that APRAs created an idealized relationship that led to disappointment in real-life relationships. A journal article by Bradley J. Bond argues that parasocial relationships are even more important among adolescents who are members of the LGBTQ+ community. Such members may experience trouble forming real-life bond as well as expressing themselves to others. This is perhaps why they form such strong and continuous parasocial bonds with certain characters. One study by Jhih-Syuan Lin, Kuan-Ju Chen and Yongjun Sung in “Understanding the Nature, Uses and Gratifications of Social Television” found that when an audience is attached to a character, they become attached and loyal to the program. When audiences are loyal to a program, they then inadvertently become loyal to the television network.

One example of using a Uses & Grats approach to parasocial relationships is Alan M. Rubin discussing the parasocial relationships between talk radio hosts and listeners. He also discusses the impact of the relationship, as well as what the attraction and motivation of the listeners are. Rubin found that parasocial interaction with a talk radio host “should lead to greater talk radio exposure, should lead to increased information acquisition, [and] should positively predict perceptions of attitudinal and behavioral effects in line with a host’s expressed opinions” (Rubin, 640).

Scholars Darrin Brown, Sharon Lauricella, Aziz Douai, and Arshia Zaidi used a Uses & Grats approach to discover what it is about crime dramas that attract so many viewers, similar to what I would like to do with the Supernatural fandom. They fond that “frequency of viewing crime dramas was a statistically significant predictor for only full gratification and curiosity/information” (Brown, Douai, Lauricella, Zaidi, 1). Using this theory can reveal just how impactful media is; it affects the way we perceive real-life events as well as real-life relationships.

Method

In order to conduct my research with the Uses & Gratifications theory, I will be conducting a survey to gather the data necessary to discover the impact, uniqueness and perseverance of the Supernatural fandom. To discover this, many questions must be asked and answers must be sorted into categories, thus a survey makes for the easiest and most sensible method. I will be using SurveyMonkey to conduct my survey and will post it to Tumblr for several reasons. First, a very large portion of the Supernatural fandom engages with each other and with Supernatural content on the blogging website. Second, Supernatural fans on Tumblr are very willing to participate in surveys that have to do with the show, as I have discovered in the past with previous surveys. Third, as I have experienced in my 8+ years on Tumblr, it seems to have an extremely diverse group of users, and by posting my survey there I hope to gain more diversity in my sample.

My survey will first begin with a series of closed-ended questions, including age, gender (male, female, non-binary, or other), ethnicity, and sexuality. I want to include such questions because they give me reassurance that I am getting a diverse sample, and also because the answers to these questions could have an impact on the reasons they watch Supernatural and engage with the fandom. My survey will then move to open-ended questions. I realize open-ended questions may cause participants to stray, however I feel comfortable asking open-ended questions because the fans are generally very willing to participate in anything Supernatural-related, even surveys. I also feel I will get the most helpful responses through open-ended questions. I will begin with asking perhaps the most important question: “Why do you watch Supernatural?” After gathering answers to this question specifically, I will categorize them based on the answers I receive. The next open-ended questions include: “Why did you get involved in the SPN fandom?”, “Do you participate in any fan-created content (fan art, fan fiction, etc.)?”, “Have you ever been to a convention? If yes, briefly describe why and what your experience was like”, “Has Supernatural and the fandom impacted your life? If yes, briefly explain how”, and “What do you think makes Supernatural and its fandom so unique from the rest?”.

Results

After posting my survey to Tumblr and letting it run for the course of about 24 hours, I received a total of 515 respondents, though that number varies slightly among the survey questions.

My survey found that out of 508 respondents, 39.8% were between the ages of 18 and 24. 25.8% of respondents were between 25 and 35, 22.2% were under 18, 8.3% were between 35 and 45, 3.0% were between 44 and 55, and 0.98% were 55 or older. These results show that, while the majority of fans are younger, Supernatural attracts fans of all ages.

Next, out of 513 respondents, 92.4% answered that they identified as female. 2.34% identified as male, 4.5% identified as non-binary, and 0.8% identified as other. This clearly shows that the vast majority of the fandom identifies as female. This is interesting to note and can lead to many suppositions as to why this might be.

513 respondents answered the question about their ethnicity. 81.3% of respondents were white or caucasian. 13.1% were Hispanic or Latino, 4.5% were Asian or Asian American, 3.3% answered that they were another race, 1.2% were Black or African American, 1.8% were American Indian or Alaska Native, and 1% were Native Hawaiian or another Pacific Islander.

Out of 513 respondents, 39.8% identified as heterosexual. 37.4% identified as bisexual, 8.6% identified as other, 7.8% identified as asexual. 2.9% identified as gay or lesbian, and 3.7% said they preferred not to say. These results show that the majority of fans were either heterosexual or bisexual, but there were also many fans who varied among the spectrum of sexuality.

The next question I asked respondents was the first open-ended question of the survey, asking “Why do you watch Supernatural?” and it received 514 responses. Based on the answers I received, I created eight categories of Uses and Gratifications that most respondents said got from the show. The categories were: Actors, Characters, Community, Escapism, Hope. Attractiveness of Actors, Humor, Mythology, Storyline About Family. The most popular answer for as to why they watch Supernatural, which was given by 45.5% of respondents, fell under the Characters category. Many said that over the years they had grown attached to the characters. One respondent said, “I love the characters like my own kids.” Many also responded that they loved the relationships between the characters on the show and watching them interact.

The second most popular response fell under the Mythology category, with 27% of respondents. The show involves stories about monsters, lore, angels, demons, God himself, Satan himself, and more. Many respondents seemed to find that concept extremely intriguing because not many other shows go into depth with mythology like Supernatural does.

The third most popular response, with 22% of respondents, fell under the Storyline About Family category. Several respondents said that they enjoyed that the main storyline of the show was about family because there weren’t many other shows like that. One respondent said they felt like the characters were their family now, too. Another respondent answered, “It [Supernatural] taught me more about love, friendship, and family more than anything or anyone else in my life.” Someone else also said, “It [the show] just feels like home.” Based on these answers, I have concluded that the familial storyline is one major reason as to why the show has grown so popular; it seems to have provided a family to viewers as well.

9.5% of respondents answered that the show gave them hope, falling under the Hope category. Here are some quotes from several respondents to show this and give insight as to why this is: “It [the show] makes me believe in myself again,” “These two brothers fighting against everything makes me know I can fight whatever I’m going through and overcome it,” and “I watch Supernatural because it is, in almost a way, perfect. It’s people learning to live with their demons. It’s people trying to make the world a better place. It’s finding family and love and acceptance, and a place to belong. It’s about never giving up. It’s about carrying on.” For the remaining categories, 16.9% said they watched for the actors, falling under the Actors category. 12.7% said they watched the show as a form of Escapism, 7.8% fell under the Community category, meaning they watch because they have found a community within the show and its fandom, 7.4% fell under the Humor category, and finally, 6.2% fell under the Attractiveness of Actors category, meaning they watched the show because they found the actors good-looking. Based on these results, there are many reasons as to why people watch Supernatural. However it it seems that it is mostly because it is about a family who battles demons, both literal and metaphorical, and the show has provided fantastic, lovable characters played by equally lovable actors through that storyline.

The next open-ended question I asked was “Why did you decide to get involved with the Supernatural fandom?” This question received 514 respondents, and I broke the responses down into 10 categories: More Content, Actors/Charity, Boredom, Community, Fanfiction/Fanart, Inclusion/Acceptance, Frequent Postings, Enjoyment of Show, Recommendation, Support, and Same Interests. The More Content category means that fans joined the fandom as a way to get more content for the show, whether that be through fan-created content, discussion of the show, gifs, and more. The Actors/Charity category means that respondents got involved with the fandom because of the actors and/or the charities they created. The Boredom category is for those fans who got involved with the fandom simply because they had nothing else to do. The Community category was for those who joined because they wanted to be a part of a new community and to make new friends. The Fanfiction/Fanart category means that respondents saw the fan-created content and decided to join in themselves. The Inclusion/Acceptance category, as well as the Support category, were for the fans who joined based off of the reputation that the fandom has for being accepting, welcoming, and supportive. The category of Frequent Postings means that respondents said they got involved because Supernatural and the fandom’s posts “kept popping up everywhere on Instagram and Tumblr,” as many respondents said, so they decided to give it a try themselves. Enjoyment of Show was for respondents who got involved with the fandom simply because they liked the show. The Recommendation category means that respondents got involved based off of a recommendation to do so from a family member or friend. Finally, the Same Interests category was for respondents who said that they joined the fandom in order to discuss the show with people who had the same interests as them.

The most popular response, with 18.9% of respondents, was Same Interests. As one respondent put it, “I loved the idea of being part of a community of people who are so passionate about a show.” Next, the categories of Frequent Postings and Community tied with 14.4%. For Frequent Postings, one respondent said, “I just wanted to understand all the references on Tumblr.” It seems that, based on the responses, the fandom took over a large part of Tumblr, leaving little room for non-fans to escape. For the Community category, many joined because they had heard about the fandom and wanted to be a part of a community of people with a “reputation for being a brilliant fandom to be a part of,” as one respondent put it. Another respondent said they had “never felt a part of anything in [their] life until the show and the fandom came along.” The next most popular category was Fanfiction/Fanart, with 14.2% of respondents. The remaining categories were Recommendation with 10.9%, 9.9% with Enjoyment of Show, 8.8% with Inclusion/Acceptance, 7.4% with Actors/Charity, 6% with More Content, 5.5% with Support, and 2.3% with Boredom. Based on these results, it can be concluded that fans got involved with the fandom for a wide variety of reasons, but mostly because they wanted to meet and talk to people who shared similar interests.

The following question I asked was, “Do you participate in any fan-created content (fan art, fan fiction, etc.)? If so, please describe your participation.” The fandom is so widespread, and I wanted to know how many were participating in fan-created content because that shows what an impact Supernatural has had on its fans’ lives. As said before, they are not simply watching the television show and moving on with their lives. Instead, they create their own canons within the Supernatural world. This question had 505 respondents and answers were divided into 4 categories: Creator, meaning they themselves create content, Consumer, meaning they do not create themselves but consume the content created by others, Both Create and Enjoy, and No, for those who did not participate in any fan-created content. The majority of respondents were Creators, with 30.3%. 28.9% were Consumers, 17% fell under Both Create and Enjoy, and 16.4% said No. Based on these results, one can conclude that the vast majority of the fandom is participating in some way, shape or form in fan-created content. What this means is that they are letting the show take up a larger portion of their lives than they would if they only simply watched the show and then left it alone. It also means that the majority of fans are creating for/because of/based off of the show, which is significant because they may be enhancing their own creativity and skills just because of a television show.

I also asked participants if they had ever been to a Supernatural convention. These conventions are expensive and the price goes up every year, so I assumed many people would answer No. However I wanted to ask anyway for the fans that had been to a convention in order to get a sense of what the experience was like for them. 85% of respondents said they had never been to a Supernatural convention, and the vast majority of them said they wanted to if they could afford it. 15.5% said they had, and almost every single one of those respondents answered that it was a very positive experience. Many of these respondents also said they had been to multiple conventions. One respondent said, “I have been to MinnCon and it was AMAZING!! Meeting them [the cast], listening to stories, taking pictures with them [the cast]…it was heaven.” Another respondent said, “I met a lot of great people from all around the world.” Another respondent also said, “Rich and Rob [cast members] put on an amazing show for us, Louden Swain [the cast band] rocked the concert, and all of the actors are just so fun and funny you can’t help but have an amazing time.” One respondent even said it was the best experience they’ve ever had. These answers are important to note because, based off of them, it can be concluded that Supernatural is greatly impacting and changing lives. Fans are saving up money to go to expensive conventions in order to be able to interact with the cast in a more intimate way that not many other fandoms do. For example, one person said they went to a meet and greet with Jensen Ackles, and they said they “got to tell him how much [they] appreciate him to his face.”

The following question I asked respondents was, “Has Supernatural and the fandom impacted your life? If so, briefly explain how.” Out of 510 respondents, only 37 of them said that they had not been impacted, meaning that 92% of respondents had been impacted and in a positive way. Many mentioned Jared Padalecki, another main character of the show, and his charity campaign Always Keep Fighting that he ran in 2015 in an effort to bring awareness to mental health, as he suffers from depression himself.

Above is a screenshot of a Facebook post Jared made back in 2015 when the campaign was still running. Those who mentioned Jared and the campaign said that the campaign improved their mental health and has given them hope on a daily basis. Some said that it, the show, and the fandom saved their lives. One respondent said, “Someone that I hold very near and dear to my heart is Jared. I 100% believe that if it weren’t for him, his character Sam, and the Always Keep Fighting campaign, I wouldn’t be here today.” Below are several more quotes from other respondents that show what an amazing impact the show, its actors, and the fandom have made on the lives of fans:

“It’s made me feel welcome when I’ve felt like an outcast. It’s given me focus when I felt untethered. It’s given me a family when I’ve felt alone. For those reasons and so many more, I owe Supernatural and its fandom so much. More than I can say.”

“The actors have impacted me a lot with what they’ve done for the world and that they talk about things not everyone else does. It makes me feel accepted, and I don’t get that often.”

“The characters have flaws and the series shows the it’s okay to be different or not alright, but it’s always important to get help…this show makes me want to keep fighting.”

In addition, below is a tweet made in 2018 by Misha Collins, the third main character of the show.

The final question I asked respondents was the open-ended question, “What do you think makes the Supernatural fandom so unique?” Although I did not categorize these answers or look at all of them because there were 510 long responses, many respondents said similar things. One answer many provided was the fact that the show has been around for so long and yet still has such active, passionate members. As one respondent put it, “It has survived for over ten years and still has a following. Most other fandoms lose steam or just die in that amount of time. But even during weaker seasons, the fandom lives on…” Another popular answer for this question was the fact that it is more than a fandom, it is more like a family composed of not only fans but cast members as well. A respondent said, “What makes Supernatural and its fandom so unique from others is that we are a tightly-knitted family that was started by people who just wanted to do some good in the world. Supernatural is so unique because the characters we see on screen…are real, kind, selfless people…We see that the actors who play those characters we look up to possess those same virtues and qualities. What makes people so dedicated to Supernatural and its fandom is the fact that nothing is fake, even if you take away the movie magic. The fandom has built itself into something more: a family.” Below are several more quotes from different respondents discussing the Supernatural Family phenomenon:

“I think that it’s a fandom for people who find themselves lost, and together we’ve made a home for ourselves. We help each other learn and grow into better people. Other fandoms don’t seem to be as much of a family as we do and I think that’s what makes us special.”

“This show is special because of how much interaction we have with all the actors; they are constantly saying how much they love the fandom and family.”

“The fandom feels more like a family than a group of strangers fawning over the same thing (a very, VERY huge family, of course) and we’ve all bonded deeply over the years while seeing these characters we love suffer time and time again and yet always emerge more or less intact and ready to keep fighting.”

“When we are at our best, we operate like a family. The actors will ask fans one on one how they’re doing and if they’re okay. Friends who were strangers before the show have saved each other’s lives. We keep hope alive for each other when we don’t have any.”

“We accept everyone as is. We are voca, about mental health. We are supportive of each other. We are a family. Not a fandom.”

All of these quotes by respondents and the cast members show how significant and positive the impact of the show and the relationship between the fans and actors have been on so many, especially in terms of mental health. All of these are proof that the Supernatural fandom is not just a fandom: it’s the Supernatural Family, and it will continue for years to come.

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tagging those who were interested: @mrscasnovak @dammitsammy @unisaursarethebest @ezilyamuzed @tardis-impala-bakerst-221 @supernatural-bellawinchester @iammsamy

#supernatural #spn #spn family #supernatural family #spn fandom #shannons college adventures

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thisnerdsadventures · 6 years

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skills/things you should work on before or during college

i’ve decided to bring back the #advice

so in my past couple years, i’ve noticed a few places where people fall short on skills they were expected to have, myself included. note that this is a list of these skills, but there are tons tons of masterposts out there on how to work on each one. I’ll also try to link them, but i’ll def miss a few. here’s a few of such skills:

how to do a presentation

slides tips

preparation tips

tips for during your presentation

personal comments:

as fast as you can, learn how to not read off slides - i feel like i’ve been told this several hundred times in the past by teachers, and honestly it will make your presentation be a lot more engaging!

people have different ways of presenting. Some people like to present without any notes. Some like the speaker notes on powerpoint. Some like flashcards. Some like printed notes that they actually never even look at because they rehearsed ten times before the actual presentation, but prefer to have on them as a safety net and something for my hands to hold onto so they don’t fidget around (me). You need to figure out which one works best for you!

how to write

when you forgot about an essay until ten hours before (but still in general)

how to approach an essay

writing the essay (simple outline that seems pretty good)

personal comments:

things I didn’t find: how to research. This is also very important because learning how to accumulate knowledge is an important skill to know. Learn how to use your local library. Learn how to use the search database system. Learn how to read papers (academic papers). Learn how to make citations.

When you have like twenty sources you’re juggling, organize them by what they’re about, or what body paragraph of yours they correspond to. for example, i just wrote an essay about mariachi, and had papers about educational programs (which was a couple paragraphs), and other papers about the history of mariachi (which was another couple of paragraphs), so separating them kept me organized.

but as said before, learning how to read papers has actually been very important to me, especially in a STEM field. First learn to read papers in your field, then learn how to read papers outside it, because chances are at some point, you’ll need to read a review of some field you’d never thought of before.

how to code - shameless plug by cs kid

learn the fundamentals of programming - i would more suggest a youtube series or an mit ocw or edx series for this. personally i dont really think codeacademy works well here bc it more teaches you the syntax rather than coding strategies or the thought process behind coding, but thats personal

learn syntax - codeacademy or tutorialspoint are personal gotos for me because they sum up really quickly language syntax in readable language for someone not familiar with the language yet

algorithms - EVER WONDER WHAT PEOPLE MEAN BY QUICKSORT here it is jk this is the sole reason i passed my algorithms class last semester

personal comments:

yes this was a shameless plug but in many many industries, knowing how to code will separate you. it’s almost essential to know if you’re into STEM fields, and even in other industries, having that kind of problem solving ability is important to have in general.

if you’re going to code like for serious, its very important to learn the fundamentals of coding and coding principles very well rather than speeding thru languages. focus on one language, learn to use it very well and solve lots of problems with it, and then you’ll find picking up other languages will be really easy

how to learn by yourself

languages - learning languages is a good summary of learning anything by yourself. also tumblr has masterposts for literally any language. use the search function

any other topic [college geared, but not exclusive to] - try edx, mitx, mit ocw, coursera. these all offer recorded or online versions of college courses. can confirm that we here also use ocw to prep for our own courses lmao

lots and lots of colleges now offer online content. try googling for it

so in high school i found a few good sites, but am still finding these places. here a few links i really enjoyed

boundless - IMMA TELL YOU THIS SITE CARRIED ME THRU AP BIO

for real though, lots of good content on here, and they also summarize every section into key bullets, which was really helpful for me, its really a hidden gem

wikipedia - sooo if you’re looking for a quick intro to a subject, its really not that bad as people say it is. i still use it pretty often. just dont cite it (if youre looking for research sources, go to the original source), and make sure its cited by some trustworthy source at the bottom

learning anything by yourself takes dedication and scheduling. having a plan increases the chances of following through tenfold.

how to present yourself

resume tips - note that different fields will have slightly different resumes. For example CS might have a side projects section - science might have a publications section. Note your own planned field of study and learn how people there might structure

career fair tips

interview tips

interview tips pt 2

personal comments:

I couldn’t find a good masterpost, but networking is also really important and going to local events and how to talk to people there. How you present yourself is also different from field to field, and how you learn to do so, I think, is when talking to mentors or upperclassmen from your field.

random tip - if you say you know something, please actually know it

how to manage time

there are like ten thousand posts out there on this ...probably because its IMPORTANT

time management tips

organization tips - lots of times, the reason you’re wasting time is because you’re disorganized!

managing time while working

tips in visual form

personal comments:

this is what works for me: to-do lists, devotion to google calendar and living and breathing an organized life (ie i make sure my room is [vaguely] clean)

know your strengths...and weaknesses

if you know a class is easier for you, you’re not necessarily going to need to schedule as much time for it as another class that might be harder, or you could you use smaller chunks of time in between other time slots for that class

hitting a rough spot of procrastination? take a shower, work out or go get water or make a cup of tea, or better yet, write an informative long studyblr post

how to cook SOMETHING

i’m not asking you to know how to cook a five course meal, but at least know how to fry an egg or do a basic pasta or something because the freshmen meal plan does not last forever

how to cook/food in college - basic tips for cooking and buying food/things on a budget too

buzzfeed is surprisingly good for easy manageable recipes

personal comments:

i first learned how to fry and scramble an egg. i now prefer making a kickass omelet, but usu i settle for the five minute fried egg

i next learned to make pasta, first cooking pasta and then mixing it in with store bought sauce, but lately i’ve been experimenting with like different homemade garlic/oil/cream sauces

i once upon steamed vegetables in the microwave and it wasnt horrible! that being said, dumping vegetables into boiling water isnt too bad my friends

frozen food from trader joes is your friend

ok hopefully this was informative/useful. sorry i havent posted in a month, i was overseas and then came back to campus and was bedriddenly sick for a week. on that note i just saw a mouse run by so i need to make sure my door’s closed. thanks guys!

#studyblr #college #masterpost #college tips #general

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loudlytransparenttrash · 6 years

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This Week Within Our Colleges: Part 18

Texas State University student, Rudy Martinez, is doubling down and defending his campus newspaper article ‘Your DNA is an abomination,’ which he argues “white death will be liberation for all,” and tells white people to “accept their death as the first step toward defining themselves as something other than the oppressor.” He goes on to write in his piece, “I hate you because you shouldn’t exist” and “there are only about a dozen white people” he would “consider decent.” He also claims white people have the luxury of always coming home safely and never being nervous when confronted by police officers, hence ‘white privilege.’ Although the article was condemned by the student body president, calling it “blatant racism,” Martinez sees it differently. Citing the left’s dumb, manipulated version of racism which “can only be from a position of power,’ Martinez claims he is proud of his stance against the bad white people.

SIT Graduate Institute have released a paper which encourages educators to promote “racial identity” among minority students to prevent “assimilation into the dominant culture.” The author, Hadiel Mohamed, says she “aims to answer how educators can incorporate ethnic/racial identity development in the classroom for youth of color who are driven to pursue whiteness.” “Our education system has been used as an oppressive tool for people of color.” Mohamed contends. “We see the preservation of whiteness through immigration laws. There has been a deliberate attempt at preserving the white race within the United States by racializing our borders.” She worries her fellow POC will “adapt, conform and assimilate to whiteness" and become just as complicit in all of this oppression. To avoid this, she encourages educators to help them become hyper aware of their own racial identity and develop a sense of ethnic pride early enough in the classroom before they can “conceptualize the ways expected to assimilate within white society.” How does she plan to teach these kids to be proud of their ethnicity and refuse whiteness? Lessons on the “injustices enacted upon people of color,” of course!

A University of Colorado, Denver administrator worries that white children may “forfeit their humanity” if they aren’t raised by sufficiently woke parents. She argues that parents should employ “critical race parenting” to prevent white children from committing “racial microaggressions” against their peers. She goes on to suggest that white people are “constantly wielding racial microaggressions,” and that over time these microaggressions can cause “racial battle fatigue,” noting that children of color are especially susceptible to this horror. White children, on the other hand, are especially prone to committing racial microaggressions because they “learn a complicated dance of whiteness” that teaches them not only to “maintain and defend whiteness,” but to do so while claiming to be “colorblind.” “When they learn to love their whiteness, their souls waste away as they are quietly tearing themselves from humanity and real love,” she writes. “Can we instead begin at the core with our white children and work to ward off white identity and whiteness before they succumb and forfeit their humanity in order to join the oppressor?”

University of Wisconsin-Madison is once again offering their charming course, ‘Problem of Whiteness.’ The African Cultural Studies course seeks to teach students to “understand how whiteness is constructed and experienced in order to dismantle white supremacy,” according to the online description. The professor teaching this course just so happens to be a white guy, and says it’s important to explore whiteness because “the problem of racism is the problem of whites being racist towards blacks.”

The same professor also chaired a panel discussion with the same name as his course, ‘Problem of Whiteness,’ which involved another white professor from the Florida Atlantic University, who encouraged the scholars in the audience to spend more time listening to their white, male conservative students. He goes on to argue the reason professors need to be more open-minded towards them isn’t because it’s the fair and right thing to do, but because if they don’t, it will lead these young white men to become anti-feminist and white nationalists which then leads to “the radical militarization of white men that we’ve seen time and time again, all too recently materialize in mass shootings.” The professor goes on to explain how discussions on whiteness “lets white students come to grips with their racist inheritance” and “allows students of color to talk about alternatives to a white supremacist society.”

University of Michigan held a two-day training session that aimed to encourage white employees to deal with their “whiteness” so they could become better equipped to fight for social justice causes. Participants who took part in the “Conversations on Whiteness” session were taught to “unpack their whiteness” in order for them to “recognize the difficulties they face when talking about social justice issues related to their white identity, explore this discomfort, and devise ways to work through it.”

Two New England professors have urged their colleagues to cultivate a “space free from microaggressions” by adopting a “social justice agenda” in class. Their first recommendation for professors involves requiring students to wear “name cards with gender pronouns” to avoid instant microaggressions on the first day. Their second brilliant idea is to quickly stop any conversation from turning into a debate as that allows “one student to be wrong and one to be right,” and that’s a microaggression. “Dialogue, not debate,” you see? To prevent conversation from turning into a debate, the professors suggest asking the individual pressing the other to “move out” of the discussion, which is a disabled-friendly way of saying “step out,” avoiding another microaggression, you see! They conclude by expressing hope that their recommendations will help to create an “anti-oppressive arena for learning,” declaring social justice essential to education.

University of Southern Indiana is the latest school to embrace the left’s tragically regressive push for us to go back in time and see nothing but a person’s skin color when we look at them. Students are being encouraged to “reject colorblindness,” as it’s today racist and microaggressive against racial minorities when white people say, “I don’t see color when I look at people.” A “good ally” instead identifies and “acknowledges the oppressed and disadvantaged group to which the person belongs,” and then behave accordingly around them in order to “reduce their own complicity or collusion in the oppression” of that group.

San Diego State University held a bizarre workshop which certain students were required to attend as part of their class. Organizers described the experience as “shocking” and “disturbing” but it’s all to help the students “step outside their comfort zone and into the shoes of those who are struggling with oppressive circumstances.” Students were walked through a darkened room where they were met by campus leaders acting out a series of horror scenarios non-white people supposedly find themselves in every day. The students were screamed at and told to face the wall before listing a bunch of minorities “they” have gone after. They were then confronted with “ICE agents” breaking into a home and stealing family members, while another scene acted out Nazis. The performance then showed a girl “having a problem” with her new roommate because she’s “a little too foreign.” The students were then taken into a room and debriefed by professors about how these totally realistic plays made them feel and what they should change about themselves to better combat this oppression. “It is our sincere hope that by exposing students to the oppressive systems in society they’ll take a look at how we all participate in these systems and hopefully commit to changing oppressive patterns and behaviors,” the professor says.

Reed College finance office was shut down for three days after a group of students from the ‘Reedies Against Racism’ group forced their way in and refused to leave, blocking the employees and harassing them with demands. They ordered the school to sever its ties with a bank whom they claim is funding the “mass incarceration of POC.” During planning for the protest, white members of the group were designated jobs listed on the ‘Whitey Tasks” which "did not require POC approval,” such as printing labels and carrying objects, while POC in charge dealt with the more serious stuff. The same group have also protested against the school’s Western Civilization course, demanding for it to be “reformed” and taught through the lens of oppression.

Two University of Northern Iowa professors have blasted the prevalence of "white civility" in college classrooms, saying that civil behavior reinforces "white racial power." This civility can reinforce white privilege, the professors argue, and it can even “reproduce white racial power.” To prove their point, they interviewed ten white students and asked them what civil behavior means to them. Those who mentioned “treating everyone equally" were accused of erasing the identity of POC and reinforcing whiteness. The students also became guilty of white privilege if they admitted they spoke to students of color nicely and politely when discussing race. To fight this, the professors suggest that college professors intervene, saying “it is important instructors ensure their classrooms are spaces that challenge, rather than perpetuate, whiteness and white civility.”

University of Rhode Island professors have come up with a way of helping the school’s non-white students deal with all the “racial microaggressions” they’re confronted with daily on campus. Professor Annemarie Vaccaro, the same person who came up with the term “invisibility microagressions” - which is when a ‘person of color’ “feels invisible” around white people - explains the only way these poor, victimized bastards can cope with all of this microaggression is to provide them with extensive therapy and counseling. Providing therapy to a bunch of people who have been misled into believing every slight and moment of discomfort is a coordinated attack against them? Instead of just reminding them they’re perfectly free and capable adults who are in control of their own damn lives? Sounds a lot like feminism.

University of Wisconsin-Madison social justice student group were outraged to discover the school’s football team and band spent a night in a Trump hotel during their Orange Bowl appearance. The group released a statement stating they are “disappointed” and “concerned” with this “massive violation.” “College football makes its profits off the work and talents of people of color. It is absolutely disgusting the very same people of color are being rewarded with a stay in accommodation owned by a man who is one of the biggest oppressors of people of color in this country.” They then go on to accuse Trump of more racism, “questionable working conditions” and “human rights violations” and demand the school to never stay at a Trump hotel EVER again. There’s only one problem - the retards didn’t realize Orange Bowl’s contract with the Trump hotel was set four years ago, and according to Orange Bowl vice president, the hotel not only meets their standards and requirements but exceeds them.

Professors in New York have united to sign a letter calling for New York City to remove monuments of Theodore Roosevelt and Christopher Columbus, saying the statues of the historical figures represent “white supremacy.” “For too long, they have generated harm and offense as expressions of white supremacy,” the professors say in their petition to the mayor and city commissioners. “The monuments are a stark embodiment of white supremacy, and are an especial source of hurt to black and indigenous people among them.” They go on to call for a “bold statement” to be made in removing the statues, declaring such a move would show the world that “racism won’t be celebrated in New York City.”

Ohio State held an event named “Managing the Trauma of Race,” which aimed to teach black students strategies for “self care and activism” and how to “mitigate the trauma the African American community faces from individual, systemic and institutional racism.” The school’s Multicultural Center website states that black Americans are “bombarded” with racism and that it “leads individuals to experience trauma on a daily basis.” What’s traumatizing here is teaching young Americans everything in life is either racist or microaggressive and their lives are a predetermined dead-end designed by white people.

The University of Washington professor who invented the concept 'white fragility’ has quit her job to travel the country giving seminars on ‘white fragility.’ These seminars begin with Robin DiAngelo, who just so happens to be a white woman, telling the white people in the audience to stand and walk on stage. The white people are then required to read from a projection screen, each taking turns admitting their sins, such as “internalized superiority” and “racial privilege.” When they’re finished reading, DiAngelo tells the audience to “not clap” for the white people as they return to their seats. Question-and-answer sessions are also permitted from her seminars - I’m not surprised.

UC Santa Barbara is currently dealing with one helluva internal catfight. An employee popular with trans student activists was dismissed from her position in the school’s Sexual and Gender Diversity center. What was the response from the students? Angry protests and accusations of the Sexual and Gender Diversity center “perpetuating violence against queer, transgender people and marginalized communities” and “perpetuating the systems of white supremacy,” of course! The activist students listed a set of demands during their protests, which included a new building for the center, a doubling of the center’s program budget and extra funding for the school’s queer and trans health advocate. Along with a “trans taskforce advocacy coordinator” (whatever the hell that is) they also demanded for the employee to be reinstated while demanding the center’s director and assistant dean to resign. What was the administration’s response? Heartfelt apologies and total compliance to the demands, of course!

Cal State San Marcos held an event called “Whiteness Forum,” detailing the many different ways in which “whiteness” in America oppresses people of color and society. Guests were welcomed with a large banner reading the “Whiteness Forum is about reflecting on white privilege and racism.” Several anti-Trump displays were also set up around the room. The forum kicked off with some slam poetry performed by students in the “Communication of Whiteness” class who took the opportunity to express their frustration with whiteness. One of the performers, a black female student, called Africa “the greatest country in the world” and went on to claim, “On a daily basis I am seen as a threat, but you get a pass because you’re white.” Another student offered similar sentiments in their “poetry”: “Whiteness thrives on the hate of everyone. Every day is a day to challenge whiteness.” After the performances, the professor in charge of the event encouraged the crowd to interact with her students and learn about the “white supremacy” in all its forms embedded across the country.

Evergreen State College has a new section in its student newspaper dedicated strictly to non-white students in an effort to provide a “place where POC can be us without it being overshadowed by the dark cloud that is living under white supremacy.” They gave an inspiring introduction, encouraging only POC who are united by fear of Nazis and police to get on board with submissions, before footnoting the popular, “Dear white people“ routine, explaining how having a problem with the bizarre concept of white fragility is actually evidence of white fragility, and how embarrassing it is when white people say “we need to view people through a color-blind lens.”

University of Minnesota community members were handed a memo from their Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action to warn against creating a hostile environment for students who could be offended by the joy of Christmas - I think we all know who they’re talking about here. Items the document describes as “not appropriate,” include bows, bells, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, wrapped gifts, the star of Bethlehem, angels and doves. Also included were decorations in red and green or blue and white themed colors. State University of New York, Brockport issued similar guidances, banning “culturally sensitive holiday decorations.” Life University sponsored a decorating contest, but the decorations were ordered to be “inclusive to other cultures and religions.” University of California, Irvine encouraged everyone to celebrate the winter season rather than the Christmas holiday itself while. Many other institutions omitted the word “Christmas.” University of Alabama’s student newspaper accused Trump of being a Christian bigot for returning a nativity scene to the White House.

#college

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goalsinlifeessay576 · 4 years

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exampleargumentativeessay787 · 4 years

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mgrotesques · 4 years

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Why You Need a Family Health Guide

If you have a family, then you will want to be certain if your child does not feel well, or hurts themselves, you know what to do. Having a family health guide is the best method of doing this.

If you're picking a family health guide, then this is exactly what you will need to consider.

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The Ultimate Dog Health Guide - Review

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#healthy #healthy guide #healthy tips #Family Health Guide #dog health guide

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lexyeevee · 7 years

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Correcting the record

Some people are saying some things again, and I don't really have a masterpost of why those things are off the mark, so here is one. I guess I'll update this if anything else spicy crosses my radar, for ease of linking.

(That doesn't mean to send me new things; I don't need to be kept constantly up to date on the latest hot takes from Breitbart Jr.)

I know this is long, which means most people won't bother to read it. But hey, that means it must be true, right? That's how it works for callouts, so surely it works the same way here.

Foreword

KiwiFarms is a forum that grew out of a wiki dedicated to the sustained stalking and harassment of an autistic trans woman. Their biggest subforum is called "lolcows", referring to the idea that certain people are valued only for the forum's ability to squeeze mockery out of them.

This is the source of much of the scandalous "truth" about glip and myself.

They don't lie, not exactly. Instead, they find a single tweet or sentence somewhere, then concoct a story that fills in the details. That way, they can present the original source as "proof". A casual reader will notice that the source matches their story, and take the story as true. The source doesn't prove the story, but that's a subtle distinction.

Sometimes they'll even claim that the source says something slightly different than it actually does, and still most people won't notice. Maybe the order of sentences gets reversed. Maybe "this will happen" is spun into "I want this to happen". Close enough.

Once they have one reason we're horrible, they can take for granted that we're horrible, which justifies interpreting the next snippet as proving that we're horrible. The more horrible we appear to be, the easier it is to justify digging ever deeper.

They collect mountains of these stories, which makes it very difficult to push back. No matter how many individual tales we respond to, there will always be more. It's actually a well-known poor debating tactic, but it works.

A huge post about how awful someone is looks like a documentary, even though it's carefully constructed to only "report" on things to make the subject look bad. Things we've disproven or apologized for years ago still show up in callouts. Just a few days ago, I saw someone link a post that didn't even exist any more; it had been replaced by an apology. Neither the person who linked it nor the person they linked it to seemed to notice this.

Juicy gossip spreads very quickly, both among people who love gossip and people who genuinely want to do the right thing. Retractions and corrections are boring; nobody spreads those. Besides, if you spread something awful about someone, and it turns out to be false, what does that say about you? Once you've spread gossip, if you want to save face, it's in your best interest to insist the gossip is true — whether it really is or not.

Other people are discouraged from pushing back on our behalf, since that risks attracting the same scrutiny. Besides, if you try to say someone isn't abusive, you may get called an abuse apologist. That makes no sense at all, but it doesn't matter.

And there's no downside to doing any of this. If something false spreads to thousands of people, who's accountable for it? Nobody. You can outright make things up about people and nothing bad will happen to you — but if it's just a misunderstanding, all the better.

Keep all that in mind as you read this.

glip did not refer to autistic people as emotionless robots

Let's start out with a particularly great example of callouts in action. The log screenshot used as "proof" that glip said this about autistic people actually proves it false, because the conversation was:

pk: know what also pk: the section on sociopaths was creepy pk: they’re like emotionless robots

glip/eevee didn't really self-diagnose as autistic

It's weird to be accused both of thinking we're autistic and of insulting autistic people.

But no, not really? We've both observed that lists of symptoms are conspicuously familiar. We don't make any effort to call ourselves autistic, we don't claim to know anything about autism, and our lives haven't changed as a result of this observation.

I don't really get why people care about self-diagnosis anyway. I "self-diagnosed" with ADD before going to a psych who then regular-diagnosed me with ADD and gave me magic brain pills for it.

eevee did not put glip's boobs online

Another good example, though I don't think this ever spread beyond the confines of the forum thread.

I have a public filedump, full of files. One file is called "bewbs.jpg", and unsurprisingly is a photo of some boobs. Someone assumed the photo was of glip's boobs, and so it became truth.

Surprise! It's not. I don't know who's in the photo. It's some image I found online, probably over a decade ago. I don't have the slightest idea why I uploaded it. You can even check out the metadata and see that it was saved from Photoshop 4, which I've never used. Also, Photoshop 5 came out in 1998, when glip was 8, so... prooobably not them.

our cats poop a lot i guess

No, seriously, I've heard this complaint. Our cats do poop a lot, but I'm not really sure what it's supposed to say about us, or what we're supposed to do about it. Corks?

glip is not abusive

The "abusive" label is usually ascribed to a massive callout post by PengoSolvent, but he never said that. He did say "potentially abusive", but left the conclusion up in the air. The difference seems significant.

Oh, and he later recanted, and he's now on good terms with glip. Turns out it was all a series of misunderstandings.

Also, I've been dating glip for nearly a decade now and I'm pretty happy with them, but for some reason, nobody seems to think that counts for anything.

fieldoftheother's level 100 post is bad

Previously.

glip is not trying to get kids to see their porn

I've seen a couple people cite this line from the Discord, claiming it means glip wants 13-year-olds to read forflor:

my legacy will be 13 year olds secretly reading forbiddenflora and realizing they're gay and/or trans

But this was said because people were talking about having themselves been young teenagers who secretly looked at porn and realized they were gay or trans. It was a tongue-in-cheek observation: teenagers will look at porn one way or another, and if they read forflor, its themes may very well jostle some realizations.

I've also been told that glip must want everyone who reads the main comic to also read the porn, because they put character development in the porn. But if that were the case, why would they have the sites separate in the first place? How would anyone even know there's porn, just from reading the main site? The only place that even comes close to linking is in a heavily-disclaimered blurb at the bottom of a few character profiles, on the volunteer-edited wiki, which neither of us even knew about until someone told me in response to this very post. This makes no sense as a master scheme.

The truth is much more mundane: glip feels attached to their characters and likes to make comics with character development.

It is true that glip doesn't care if teenagers seek out their porn. I don't care either? We're not your parents, and we have no way of stopping determined horny teens anyway. It's tagged and separated so people who don't want to see it don't have to, but if you're trying to seek out porn then that's your own business. Just, uh, please don't try to talk to us about it, that's super weird.

glip drew a porn comic with an underage character, but...

This is true. They later took the comic down, and they've since talked about how it was a way of wrangling with their own experiences with CSA.

glip is not transphobic

I think people say glip is transphobic because their comic has a girl with a dick who doesn't hate her dick?

Well, er, newsflash: not all trans girls hate their dicks? It seems like this complaint is implying glip should only depict stereotypical self-hating trans characters, and I don't really understand how that's any kind of improvement.

Ironically, I've seen this claimed multiple times by people who refer to glip with the wrong pronoun.

glip's irc does not prey on children

Someone we knew as spaggledagger claimed that people hit strongly on her on our IRC, despite knowing that she was only 13 and had never had any kind of sexual interaction. She also claimed to have gone to the police and asked them some details.

I've been over this before, but the short version is:

She never mentioned she was 13 until the day she left the IRC for good (because of alleged ageism on our part — she'd invited a friend and the two of them were being incredibly disruptive). On the contrary, she made frequent reference to drinking and having had sex, so by all accounts she presented herself as an adult.

The thing she says the police told her is technobabble. It makes no sense at all.

We cannot find any shred of evidence of the conversations she says she had. However, we did find one thing she claimed was said to her — it was in public, and wasn't directed at her at all.

She mentioned having lied to get an ex-boyfriend in trouble. We also got a message from the moderator of another small community who'd interacted with her before, warning us that she tried to get back at them for banning her by claiming elsewhere that she'd been abused.

She claimed to be paranoid because we mentioned living near her, but she told us where she lived, after someone else in the channel mentioned living in the same area. We've never lived anywhere near either of them.

So this was someone with (by her own admission!) a history of lying to screw over older people, who never told us her age, who supposedly got incomprehensible advice from police, and whose few concrete details were completely wrong.

This particular claim appears to be a total fabrication. To get back at us for not wanting her friend around, I guess?

eevee does not support legalizing child porn

I once read an article that argued for it, and I said "I'm not sure I disagree" — referring to the argument, which was that outlawing a photo of one particular kind of crime was inconsistent. I'm bothered by inconsistency, but obviously it wasn't right to just legalize child porn, therefore the argument must be wrong. So I thought about it out loud.

That's why I also asked someone why a photo of a particular type of crime should be illegal. It wasn't rhetorical; I genuinely wanted to know what the other person thought about the inconsistency.

I wasn't especially clear about this at the time, and it didn't occur to me that my lazy phrasing could be taken as active support for abolishing the law. It was also pretty insensitive to treat a serious topic like debate club — especially one that almost certainly had impacted some of my audience. I know I upset a couple people, and I'm sorry for that.

The tweets have since been dug up and transformed via a game of telephone to "supports legalizing child porn", "has talked extensively about legalizing child porn", and straight up "is a pedophile". Sorry, no. I just like nitpicking, and I made a very poor choice of thing to nitpick.

I've also tweeted about this before.

eevee is not trying to help kids to look at porn

In a FurAffinity journal from 2009, I played armchair lawyer over FA's handling of minors and their access to porn. FA had (and, I assume, still has?) a policy that if an admin finds out a user is underage, their account will be prevented from seeing porn — "agelocked" — until they turn 18. This was usually said to be for legal reasons. I was saying there weren't any legal reasons.

The claim is thus that I wanted teenagers to look at porn for some kind of nefarious reasons. I don't know what those reasons could be? I didn't even draw porn at the time, so it's not like I was trying to lure anybody in or whatever. My actual motives were much more mundane:

I like nitpicking. See above.

I'd seen a few cases where people had done some very invasive snooping to find someone's age. I thought that kind of near-stalking — especially targeted at someone already suspected to be underage — was pretty creepy, and I saw the policy as encouraging it.

glip had been drawing porn since they were 16, mostly in the form of commissions, and at one point had been agelocked. They were 19 when I made the post, so it was still relatively fresh in my mind, and I was annoyed that the policy had landed squarely on glip's main source of income.

(That said, FA is a rickety thing, and I don't think they'd ever tried to agelock a porn artist before. I believe the result was that glip could still post porn, but then not see their own work. I don't know if that was ever fixed.)

eevee did not let her cat die rather than give him medicine

I heard this one second-hand so I don't know exactly what's being said, but regardless I am fucking livid about it. It boils down to a sentence from my old tumblr:

given that atenolol’s most common side effect is lethargy and styx already spends most of his time asleep i don’t think i’m going to do this

My cat, Styx, started rapidly losing weight around the beginning of April. I spent the next month and several thousand dollars being shuttled between vets, trying to find a cause. At one point I was sent to a cardiologist, who — shockingly — diagnosed him with a heart condition.

He was prescribed atenolol, a beta blocker and the usual treatment for the heart condition. I was hesitant to give it to him, since also on the table was FIP — a disease with no cure and a life expectancy measured in days. Beta blockers can cause lethargy, Styx was already sleeping most of the time, and I didn't want to cost him his last few waking hours for no reason.

I decided to wait a few days for the vet's formal diagnosis. What I got was the post linked above, saying the most likely cause was FIP; the heart condition wasn't even on the list. So, yes, I decided against the vet's recommendation, and did not give him the medication for the condition he probably didn't have that wouldn't have affected him until years later anyway. There was never any indication that the atenolol would've helped his FIP in any way; I interpreted the vet's advice as being just in case he had the heart condition instead.

A week later, the vet finally started talking about looking into experimental treatments for FIP — a full ten days after the first mention of a disease that can kill cats in as much time.

Four days after that, we buried the cat I loved. He'd just been sitting in pools of his own diarrhea — the same thing that had ultimately led a vet to recommend we put down our elderly cat.

That month was by far the worst thing I've ever been through. I did everything I could think to do, burned through cash, spent every waking moment with him, and it wasn't enough. I still can't reread his eulogy; it's the only thing that makes me cry.

Extremely cool that some jerks who are desperate for a reason to hate me are now trying to use my dead cat against me.

eevee/glip are not... usually... mean online

It's not uncommon to see people calling us super mean based on a tweet thread that they've carefully cropped to remove the part where the other person was being an asshole. Maybe check for that first.

We get enough assholery that we have fairly low bars for who qualifies as an asshole, too, so there might be false positives. If that's you, ah, sorry. We try our best!

But also, it's common for someone to be a dick while feigning politeness, and we tend to have little patience for that, whereas other people have seemingly infinite patience for it. If you see us snapping for seemingly no reason, we probably got a very different read off of someone.

Final thoughts

I'm sure there's more, but hopefully this is enough that you're starting to suspect a pattern. Most of what we're called out for is wildly misinterpreted or misreported just enough to be damning.

These are people who misgender us and use glip's old name, then call us transphobic in the same breath. They follow our every public move with bated breath, while being largely anonymous or sockpuppets themselves. They show up as one of the top referrers every time I publish a game on itch. They've dug up a comment I made on a friend's LiveJournal from 2004 and implied nefarious explanations. They archived the entire "styx" tag on my old Tumblr, meaning they read everything I went through and their only takeaway was some new "dirt". They've taken the worst things that have ever happened to both glip and I, and used them as blunt weapons to say we're awful. They put this crap in the Tumblr floraverse tag, inflicting it on people who just want to share fanart. They hide in our IRC and our Discord, waiting for new logs they can post and reinterpret. Only completely locked-down spaces are safe from their obsessive eyes, and they openly speculate about what happens behind closed doors as well.

Does this sound like a reasonable way to behave? If a single person acted this way towards someone else, anyone would be rightly horrified — this is straight up stalking. But people reblog their callouts and never question their tactics. I guess stalking is okay if we "deserve" it, and we deserve it because we're awful, and you know we're awful thanks to the stalking.

Here's my question: if they know all their existing stuff is true, why do they keep looking? Ostensibly they believe that we're both proven to be complete monsters, so what else are they hoping to find? Do you think I accidentally tweeted a confession to a murder? Does my old MySpace contain the plans for an orbital superlaser?

Or look at it this way: who have we hurt in the however many years this has been going on? Where are all the actual victims of our cruelty? Who has been protected by this muckraking, and from what?

They have no interest in what's true, only in what's titillating. It's right there in the name of the forum: "lolcows", not "investigative journalism".

And, hey. If you want to hate us for actual reasons, please go ahead. I'm thoughtless and insensitive at times, and I'm bad at maintaining friendships. glip is short with anyone who appears to be acting in bad faith. We both fuck up sometimes. If any of that has put you off, fine. If you think we're insufficiently horrified by the idea of a 17-year-old somewhere sneakily looking at a drawing of a boob, sure, hate us for that too.

But don't make stuff up to fulfill your power fantasy of defending the world from a cartoon villain. Yeah, you — I'm sure a bunch of Kiwi folks are eating up every word of this post simply because I've written it. Hot tip: the first thing to enter your brain is not automatically the truth. How cruel are you being if you're wrong?

#screaming into the void #floraverse

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bronzerandlouboutins-blog · 5 years

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How to Effectively Use a Facebook Job Online Search | TopResume

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