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vinnyistired · 1 year

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Twitter doomscrolling

CW: heavy topics such as mental health issues, transphobia, physical and digital self harm, and are all mentioned (sometimes in an irreverent tone/black comedy)

I have no idea how to use tumblr or how to tag things so if this is sloppy I apologize.

I realized recently that twitter is quickly becoming a digital self harm machine for me. I originally signed up for it to post about my now defunct yt channel and twitch. It slowly evolved into a way to discover new artists, memes, and be a goblin with people. I would never retweet furry art for fear of friends finding out my interest in that stuff and get hectored for it, then suddenly peoples likes appeared on the tl which indirectly outed me as a furry. oops :V

Anyway point is the ratio of chill and doom scrolling was skewed heavily towards posi-vibes, and when there was some terrible news it would be sprinkled between memes and thicc furry women. It was sparce enough that I wasn't overwhelmed by it, and If it was a big deal I would look into it later on my own and/or talk about it with friends.

Somewhere along the line the ratio flipped. To be honest, this is mostly my fault. I somehow ended up following over a thousand people who are all mostly like-minded politically. After I got over my big brain enlightened centrist phase- which I got over very quickly after I put my money where my mouth is and genuinely tried to listen to both sides and learned that a lot of the far right are, as the kids say, "mad cringe"- I realized I was left leaning. I'm also bi and like when PoC aren't being systemically racist upon'd (?), so I naturally gravitated towards like minded people. Especially furries. Like, a lot of furries.

I'm not bringing up political ideologies to call out everyone that disagrees with me as being shrimp brained dildos (they are though, especially about video game and cartoons), I need to paint the landscape of my timeline for you. I'm sure if you've read this far you either figured out where this is going or have a similar twitter experience; Hundreds of people retweet the same tragedies, doom posts, or some kind of calls to action to cancel or unfollow someone for reasons ranging from something as severe and legitimately concerning as grooming to something as meaningless as they're an artist that *checks notes* gave someone's shoulders and knees a uh... slight blush/warm red glow...?

It's too fucking much, but I still blame myself. Despite the toll it takes I keep opening the app, I keep scrolling through my timeline wading through it all for a crumb of muscular orc gf art or a meme about a dude eating dirt or something. I know what's there, I know its going to upset me but I keep doing it. Recently I started keeping track of who was liking and retweeting all this shit and I noticed a pattern; a shotgun blast of bad news, all retweeted within a minute or two between each other by the same account. It read something like this:

TRANS PERSON MURDERED IN HATE CRIME

LIST OF CONTENT CREATORS THAT GROOMED MINORS

HEARTBREAKING: GUY YOU HATE HAS ABSOLUTE DOGSHIT OPINION

Cat pic :3

AI ART, VOICES, AND DEEP FAKES ARE RUINING LIVES

POLITICIAN SERVES 2 DAYS HOUSE ARREST AFTER DRUNK DRIVING THROUGH A SCHOOL

soft cute art uwu

THREAD WITH PICS OF 27 MORE TRANS PEOPLE WHO WERE MURDERED

ELON MUSK MAKING THE WORLD WORSE

ANDREW TATE

I wish I was exaggerating when I say this, but copy and paste that 52 times from different people and that's my timeline. It's affecting my mood and my energy but I can't stop looking. I have no other social media outlets because ironically I have issues socializing and putting myself out there. It's now at the point where my brain now focuses on who is posting it.

I'm very cynical due to being afflicted with what therapists call "heavy lore", so I can't help but wonder; are the people retweeting this stuff even reading it? Do they think about it? Like I said four tangents ago, that pattern was retweeted by the same person in less than a minute. So.. what is this for? Clout? Have we gotten to the point where it is now a social obligation to retweet shit like that to let everyone know "Hey I care, I'm not a prick, please don't unfollow me!" or "As an empath, everyone needs to know I am capable of empathy, lest they neglect to like comment and superscribe". Maybe it stems from a feeling of powerlessness. Almost like they figure there's nothing we can do, so let's shove it in everyone's face in the hopes that it reaches the very few that actually have the power to get the train moving.

I'm sure people with the reading comprehension of a toothpick will think "Guess you hate all those people who died/suffered/are in need huh? Sorry to disrupt your furry porn with the REAL WORLD, BRO.", but the reality is that I do care. We all do. The issue is that shoving it in each others' faces to affirm that yes, we all agree that this is terrible and deserves to be rectified, but it is exhausting when it's coupled with the fact that we lack the power to make lasting change alone, and those who have the power to make a change refuse to do it.

We do it in the hopes it reaches new eyes and ears, but... we are all within the same circles. Sure, it might reach someone outside of our normal circle, but chances are their circle overlaps with ours. We're creating a feedback loop that is inducing some kind of social energy debt to a social circle that ultimately already knows and agrees that the bad thing that happened is bad. We are all allowing what is arguable the lamest and most infuriating kind of vampire sink it's crusty teeth into us, and its not at all hot like it is with actual vampires, and all it does is remind me how truly powerless I am in the face of these tragedies.

I know other people feel it too, because I never see people rally and take action to change systemic issues that matter. I watched people use more energy to get rid of cartoon characters they deemed problematic -in shows they don't even watch- than they have on anything actually useful. I know it sounds like I'm being judgy and harsh, but I will be the first to admit that I am plat II in slacktivism just like every other terminally online person I know. But again, I can't even blame them. They are using what little power they have to do something they feel is making some kind of change for the better.

I've reread this, and I think I figured out my problem. It's not that the problems themselves are insurmountable and unending, it's the unending avalanche of tragedy that is my timeline that makes it seem like these issues can't be conquered. The progress the world has made despite the misguided people that stand in the way is substantial despite the long road we still have to walk. That being said my mental health is on a steady decline and I need to mute or unfollow some mfers cause they seem to feed on it. I spoke with some friends about it and they gave me a new perspective on it. When you're depressed, the easiest emotion to access is anger. In a weird way we are all participating in the perpetuation of an anger economy just to feel fucking anything. This might sound weird, but I think I'm substituting physical self harm with digital self harm. It would explain why I can't stop despite it siphoning what little energy I have left from day to day life. I'm confident in this theory because I've physically hurt myself before, and all of this evokes similar feelings of both anger and guilt.

Whatever the case it's keeping me from seeing friends' art and posts, furry stuff, and terrible memes, and I think we can all agree that is the most tragic part of all of this.

#twitter #doomscrolling #rant #vent post

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avintagekiss24 · 3 years

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Hi! I don't want to start anything on here and am always willing for civil conversations. At this point there's so much I've found out about Seb (besides the video he liked, the tommy lee thing, and the girlfriend thing) that I feel so guilty if I would continue to support him. I love him sm but it just doesn't look good rn. He is associated/follows an organisation (for helping veterans) that has posted a blue lives matter flag picture and who's co-founder has sexual assault allegations against him, and worked with him in 'The last full measure'. His friend Paul Walter Hauser has done blackface in the past, and when called out on it he just listed a few people that also did blackface. There's more, I found a discussion on here that I can link. I seriously don't support "cancel culture" bc I don't think it helps anyone but there are just a lot of 'mistakes' and shady people that can be linked to Seb, I wish it wouldn't be that way. I honestly don't know what to think about it anymore.

Hi! I’m also open to having civil conversations and I don’t believe you’re trying to start anything. I really do think this situation of dragging up a four year old video and taking it completely out of context is harmful not just to Black people, but to fandom/activism in general. This is gonna be long because I’m going to take your points one by one, and I want to preface this by saying that I will not answer any derogatory, sideways asks pertaining to this subject. I will delete every single one and will block your silly ass. I’m not going to argue with people who think I’m blindly supporting Sebastian because I’m just trying to get fucked by him, or people who think I hate myself and am trying to appease some white man.

So, on with the discourse!

The video he liked - this video was taken completely out of context and that is my main issue with this whole situation. It was not a video of a white man saying that he thinks he should be able to say the n word as everyone claimed it was. They were quickly debating on whether or not it's okay to say in rap lyrics. He was told no, that's not okay, that's never okay and they moved on from it. That's it. End of story. That somehow was twisted into a click bait style headline of "Sebastian Stan likes a video of a white man defending his right to say the n word" when that is absolutely not true. My other issue is that people are more upset that Sebastian liked the video than they are about the white man in the video literally saying the n word. So, do you really care about the use of the n word like you're claiming? Cuz if you do, you'd be more upset at the white man that said the word than you would be about the white man simply liking the video. Or, are you just using this as an excuse to grandstand against a white man you don't like?

The Tommy Lee thing - Sebastian Stan playing Tommy Lee does not make Sebastian Stan a bad person. Is Charlize Theron a bad person for playing Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who started murdering men? Is Leonardo DiCaprio a bad person for playing a slave owner? Is Edward Norton a bad person for playing a nazi sympathizing racist? Actors play bad people. That doesn't mean that they themselves are bad people. 1990's Tommy Lee was a bad person, but that should have no bearing on who Sebastian Stan is or his character as a man.

The gf/Paul Walter Hauser thing - Why are we holding Sebastian accountable for what the people around him are doing? Again, why are we more upset that Sebastian is associated with people who have done questionable things than the specific people themselves? I'm not going to speak on the kimono wearing -- I'm not Asian. It's not my place to say whether or not its offensive because it's not my culture, but she posted that picture and attended that party before she started dating Sebastian, quite possibly before she even knew him. Same with Paul. I think that black face thing was long before he knew Sebastian. Now, if Sebastian was defending these actions, going around saying "I think it's okay for white women to wear Kimono's" "I think black face is fine" "I think white people should be able to say the n word" then we'd have a different story, wouldn't we? But that's not what we have, and that's not what he is doing. He is not responsible for the things his friends do or have done in the past just because he's more famous than they are, and he is not required to speak on them. Let's put it this way -- would you be comfortable having to be responsible for something a friend of yours did before you knew them? Would you want to have to be forced to answer for your friend when you yourself had nothing to do with the questionable behavior?

The organization that supports the military/blue lives matter - Sebastian cannot control what message that foundation puts out and it does not mean that he is or is not pro-police himself. There is not enough concrete evidence -- if any evidence for that matter -- that Sebastian is a blue lives matter supporter. Did Sebastian donate before they put up the blue lives matter post? Or after? I don’t know, cuz I don’t follow him that closely, but if he donates before they come out with a particular stance, that means he should be held accountable for that? I know I donated to an organization once and they turned out to support something that i’m 100% against. That means I’m a bad person because I couldn’t see into the future? Another point, how can we be certain that Sebastian saw the blue lives matter post in the first place? I know I’m not online 24 hrs a day, I miss posts all the time and I’m just an average person. I make three or four tumblr posts a day, and I’m gone. I have to play catch up on social media, and even then, I still miss stuff. So I’m sure the same happens to a working actor. As for the co-founder, I don't know who this person is and would rather not get into any allegations against them because I don't want to trigger anyone who comes across this post. If Sebastian knows about these allegations, is a willing participant/supporter of this person then yeah, that's pretty shitty, but we don't know the inner workings of this friendship/acquaintance/work relationship. We don’t know how close they are or if they even still speak.

I’m a pretty big fan of Don Cheadle. He’s a stand up guy, he’s a great actor, he’s funny, he’s political and stands up for what he believes in and in a very public way. I support him. Don Cheadle is also friends with Chris Evans, RDJ, Mark Ruffalo, and Letitia Wright (just to name a few). Chris Evans has a bipartisan forum that highlights/promotes right wing politicians, RDJ defended Chris Pratt during the whole “he’s the worst Chris in Hollywood” crap, who’s technically done black face, and who once said to a female reporter “nice tits” when she walked into the room, Mark Ruffalo just walked back his support of Palestine, and Letitia Wright retweeted/supported an anti-vaxxer/anti-trans Pastor who equated an ingredient of the covid vaccine to the devil because it contained some parts of the word Lucifer. Does that mean Don is now a bad person because he’s friends with these people? Why isn’t he getting any heat for his friendships with them? Why isn’t he being held accountable for what they’ve done and said? Oh right, because he’s not a white fave. So people don’t care one way or the other, which brings me to my next point.

I can guarantee you that if Sebastian’s gf or Paul or this co-founder were not associated with Sebastian in any way, nobody would give a shit about her wearing a kimono, about Paul doing black face, or about the co-founder/organization being blue lives matter supporters and in that lies the actual problem. Being critical of people and their actions should be consistent and should happen all the time -- not just when they interact with your white fave. That’s when it becomes performative and looks like you just want to be able to show internet people that you follow/support/stan unproblematic celebrities, when really, you don’t care.

I think the moral of this post is that I think it's unfair to hold a complete stranger to a standard that I cannot hold myself to. I also don't view celebrities the way most teenagers/twenty somethings do, and that’s because when I entered fandom we didn't have social media, so I grew up with a wall between myself and said celebrities. There is no wall now with the presence of social media. "Fans" nowadays have a weird ownership feeling over celebrities because they can read their personal thoughts or view personal pictures and think that they have this personal quasi-friendship with them. I can't get on board with that. I prefer having the wall and I still keep the wall.

If supporting Sebastian makes you uncomfortable, then by all means, stop supporting him. Just make sure you are making this decision for yourself based on credible sources and concrete evidence and that you're not letting this fake woke activist mob make you feel uncomfortable. Internet activism means nothing unless you put your money where your mouth is in your real life and 90% of the social justice internet warriors do not. Real activism is bigger than changing your avi to a black square.

#asks #answered #sebastian stan

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pochapal · 3 years

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rank every year of the 2010s from best to worst i want some pochapal lore

[warning for discussion of my fucked up mental health and my myriad traumas. we’re really opening the pandora’s box here gang]

ok time for me to overshare on the internet again! super long post because i can’t shut up and you asked for it. anyway, by objective ranking:

#1: 2012 - halcyon era, my personal peak. spent the whole year writing hunger games oc fics with my deviantart fanfiction besties whom i still think about all the time and always hope are having the best possible day. if you were here for this era understand i still hold you so closely and dearly in my heart <3.

#2: 2013 - god i was such a good example of a human being back then. was the year my writing like actually took off and i had a healthy balance between creative stuff and a social life (said social life consisting of spending lunchtimes at school breaking into classrooms and discussing fandom shit with five other people. reading homestuck updates in the music room on one person’s really shaky mobile data...legendary). highlight of the year and maybe my life was in the april of 2013 when i got out of failing to submit a hard deadline essay by telling my english teacher i wrote a whole novel over the two week break and then producing said novel. god i wish i had that level of like. fucking confidence back me back then knew what i wanted and how to get it.

#3: 2010 - the last year of childhood. i was 12 and played pokemon all the time with my friends and went places and had a moderately successful youtube channel and it didn’t matter that i was bullied so badly at school because i was basically high off life. summer of 2010 was so good specifically. i’d used to get the bus with a friend and go see movies and break into historical sites and get into normal childhood mayhem and maxed out my pokewalkers twice a month and i was buzzed because i had two (2) whole friendship groups to choose from and that was such a huge deal to me the terminal social outcast. it was so simple and carefree and even though everything and everyone involved in this era grew up to suck except for one specific person i kinda really miss it.

#4: 2018 - this was the first year i wasn’t depressed to the point of nonfunctioning. it was 20gayteen, i was on antidepressants, i was as close to thriving as i got at uni (going into town with people once a week, attending art and culture events, getting good grades across the board), i started to write for fun again, i got my cat whom i love dearly, i was exhibited in my uni’s city’s literature festival, GOD i actually nearly attended a pride event that year can you imagine. this year was basically my life’s second peak. miss getting the 8am train and daintily sipping on a cherry coke to keep me from passing out. wish this time could have lasted longer.

#5: 2019 - kinda absolute middle of the road year not for lack of anything happening but because the overwhelming amount of good and bad things cancelled each other out. so like there’s the fact that i was at the top of my uni game this year, was basically making the first steps into a professional writing career (covid i will never forgive you for killing all that dead </3), finally saved up enough to buy myself a gaming pc, and the summer after the homestuck epilogues, but equally 2019 was the start of the Pochapal Gender Fiasco which is by far the most horrible thing i am still currently undergoing and i burnt myself out mentally about halfway through the year (being stuck overnight in a hospital for a panic attack absolutely horrible horrible irredeemable) and then got like super death plague flu that i was sick with for three months (literally recovered less than a month before rona hit. god’s cruel karma.). so like...it kind of averaged out? the good shit was good but not as great as other years and the bad shit was awful but nowhere near as terrible as it could have been. gotta give a shoutout to 90% of my current mutual cohort for following me in 2019...omelette route gang make some noise !!

#6: 2014 - oof. this year essentially marked the start of a four year long downward mental health spiral because everything fell into awful alignment. i’d just turned 16, finished secondary school, had all my friends up and ditch me at once, was home alone for a whole summer, and was hit with Sudden Intense Body Image Issues that i couldn’t explain until uh. after very recent developments lmao. this one goes out to the me of july 2014 who did nothing but lay in bed and listen to the same two marina albums on a loop because fuck i’m attracted to men and also my facial and body hair are really starting to come in and if i think about this for too long i will literally kill myself because oh god i can’t handle getting older which is clearly and definitely the issue going on here. my brain fucking broke super hardcore and it’s a miracle that an overeating disorder was like the worst thing i walked away with.

#7: 2015 - downward spiral year two!! i was so volatile this year it was such a mess. i was totally socially isolated after a brief stint of falling in with a group of people at the start of my first year of sixth form until january where in quick succession a) it turned out every single one of these people was friends with the person who sexually assaulted me whom i obviously had a lot of complicated feelings towards and b) baby’s first crush came out as bisexual but in the “women and also trans women” kind of way which tore me up so terribly in ways i couldn’t begin to understand. no words for the experience of seeing a girl kiss a boy and crying so hard at night you threw up because you could never be her no matter how much you wanted it. actually kinda get the sense what was going on there was bigger than just some crush lmao. then after that i was so mentally ill i basically attended school less than half the time and it was the only year in my life i failed my exams. i ended up having to resit my entire set of first year a level exams because jesus christ was i in such a bad way it was a miracle i even showed up to them. all i did was either have anxiety attacks or enter bedbound depressive slumps for weeks at a time. but it’s okay because it gets worse.

#8: 2016 - downward spiral act iii: the spiralling. prefacing this by saying that i actually had two whole good months (april - may) in that i was functioning enough to do my exams and finish school with decent grades. the rest was super extra mega terrible. my school attendance for year 13 dipped below 65% and literally the only thing that kept me from being kicked out was the fact that i was naturally smart at the subjects i took and also because the school would have a lot to answer for after letting me get to that state despite having a hefty file on how damaged i was. keep in mind every single part of this was fully untreated btw - i was just floundering around and letting it all fester. i spent three solid weeks going to school but locking myself in the bathroom all day every day and having mental health episodes then going home like nothing else happened only to continue the breakdown that night. then things got kicked into fucked up overdrive when i moved out to uni and was cut off from what little support structures i did have. it was so bad all i did was cry all the time and never went anywhere to the point where three separate sources recommended me to the wellbeing and crisis counselling service that i stopped going to after two sessions because i was fucked up in ways cbt techniques could not even touch. at least i tried to make an effort for the first two months of uni which like. good for me?

#9: 2017 - what lieth at the base of the spiral. helltrench year. i was at literal rock bottom. i stopped going to class, i didn’t hand in a single piece of work. i lied to my parents and would book trains each day only to go back to my student flat and sit there and contemplate suicide. like i would just slump on the floor in a catatonic state and vividly contemplate one of four or so ways i could end my own life. i only didn’t because i wanted to wait until the summer to collect my last student loan and transfer it to my parents as an apology for my death which obviously didn’t end up happening. honestly i can’t remember much of the first half of 2017 that’s how bad it was. i remember taking a gender studies class and the teacher made it Weird that i was the Only Male Student in the room and then she sent me a scolding email after i walked out halfway through a class and never returned. apparently i got into a lot of online discourse in this year but i don’t remember anything other than being put on a blocklist by the milkfic author over ace discourse which is funny if you have the context. mostly i just baited terfs and weirdo freaks to get them to say horrible things to me as what i guess amounts to some kind of digital self harm. anyway breaking point came in late august when i got kicked out of university and then nobody could ignore it any more so there was no choice left but for me to seek out help and recover enough to function which luckily i did. i really Do Not remember 2017. you could tell me anything about that year and i’d probably believe you.

#10: 2011 - extra circle of hell for this little fucked up gem of a year. on the surface it wasn’t actually that terrible, until the Summer 2011 Domino Effect Of Bad Shit. up until like may/june it was a pretty all right year! i was 13 and had a surprisingly successful youtube channel uploading pokemon soundfont remixes to an audience of i think ~350-400 subscribers at my peak? anyway then i got hit with the early summer triple combo of childhood friends moving away, cute and quirky sexual assault at the hands of a person in my friend group, and then having some Really Great and Super Appropriate interactions with adults on deviantart. like obviously there’s the actual ptsd-inducing event which totally disrupted and killed the person i was right up until that moment and reshaped every facet of my life for better or worse (there’s an alternate timeline where that didn’t happen and i got into electronic music and/or coding instead) but really it’s the events that followed in its wake which were kind of more fucked up. so like all of a sudden i was super aware of my body and me growing my hair out and being mistaken for a girl in class suddenly became this Less Innocent thing and i ended up spending hours overnight going to transgender questioning forums and looking up hrt timeline videos and having the wikipedia article on tracheal shaving saved because it was a life raft to me whose voice was imminently gonna deepen and i was simultaneously reeling with constant trauma flashbacks and the whole thing was so so fucked up. then i was on deviantart and i don’t remember exactly how but a small group of furry guys ten to fifteen years older than me started messaging me and encouraging and requesting me to produce nonsexual fetish stuff for them and talking to me about stuff like if i’d ever thought about growing up to be gay and i didn’t think anything of it for a long while because they called me a very talented writer and it felt so good to have someone be nice to me after being so alone and isolated for months on end. anyway the only reason i got out of that before it got bad was because they invited me to one of the big furry sites and i was weirded out because i thought it was a porn site and thinking about sexual stuff was a huge trauma trigger so i just ended up blocking them all and pretending like it didn’t happen. at the time half this shit didn’t bother me but in retrospect holy fuck 2011 was such a damaging year. to think if like three events didn’t happen i wouldn’t be the fucked up mess you see before you today.

god fuck this turned out super long but i’m not apologising because this was a therapeutic exercise for me and also constitutes as one of the biggest pochapal lore dumps of all time. come get your food or whatever.

#Anonymous #long post #read all of this if you have vested interest in knowing intimate details about my life or whatever

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jaskiersbard · 4 years

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The Fantastic Beasts Franchise and JK Rowling

Alright, so...hi everyone.

I don’t know how many people follow this blog anymore because my main blog of operation is now @alwaysahiccupandastrid - I still try to keep this blog relatively active though, just because it was my original blog, I’ve had it since I was 13, and I have so many memories attached to it.

I’m aware that a lot of the people who follow me, especially since late 2016, do so because a) I was a loud and proud Fantastic Beasts fan, b) I wrote some Newtina and Jakweenie fic, and c)...I don’t know. I literally don’t know why people bother following me anywhere because I don’t feel like I have a lot to say. But, anyway, many people probably follow me due to Fantastic Beasts and my posts/fanfics within the fandom.

Those who follow my active blog will already know my feelings and thoughts, but because of the fact many things about this blog - me, the posts for the last four-ish years, the url itself - are Beasts related, I felt it was necessary to come and write an actual post here instead of just reblogging things and calling it a day. I’ve always been very outspoken online, but I’ve been avoiding a certain topic of conversation on this blog for years now, and I’m finally in a place where we can discuss it.

I am, of course, talking about the hot topic that is JK Rowling.

Back in the days between FBAWTFT and FBTCOG, I was a very outspoken defender of JK Rowling and her decision to defend Johnny Depp’s inclusion in the films. Now, this is something I still stand by to this day, and due to the evidence that has since come out, I’m even more steadfast in the opinion that keeping Depp was a great decision. I am fully in support of him and the way he’s currently battling against his abuser. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about right now. As I was saying, back in the day, I was outspoken about the opinion that “we don’t know the full story” etc., and as a result I received very colourful anon messages. Now, to my knowledge, none of these were about JKR being a TERF/transphone, but I think it’s important to mention that at the time I scoffed at the idea she could be one. I openly admit that I didn’t listen to what other people - including actual trans individuals - were saying about JKR and her transphobia because I frankly didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t want to admit that the person who wrote something that saved my life could be so hateful and a bad person - that, and at the time I passed it all off as “wokeness out of control”.

It is now 2020. Up until last Saturday night, I was still in support of JK Rowling - I didn’t agree with some of the stuff she had said, but I was trying to be positive and have hope by telling myself that she didn’t mean to be transphobic, that she just didn’t know what she was doing was wrong, even though the evidence clearly showed otherwise (I.e. her liking transphobic / radfem tweets). I said to my followers on my Beasts page that instead of cancelling people outright, we should be attempting to educate them instead, and if they choose not to learn then fine. And, being 100% obvious, I didn’t want to admit it because I frankly already was feeling annoyed at two different Beasts cast members for different reasons: Ezra Miller (for choking a girl) and Dan Fogler (for his tweet about BLM - admittedly that was probably him being well intentioned but not saying it right). So yeah, I didn’t want to cancel another member of the Beasts “family”.

I had JKR’s tweets on notifications, and for the most part over the last few weeks, it was all about the Ickabog. However, on Saturday night I noticed that she had suddenly tweeted something completely different, and I looked at it. Given that I had adamantly defended her and said “freedom of speech” for so long, it’s telling that my first thought upon seeing her tweet was literally “for fuck sake, Jo, why”.

I won’t post her tweets here but to sum that first tweet up, it was her being annoyed over the term “people who menstruate” being used in an article instead of “woman”, and mockingly saying “there used to be a word for that” before pretending she didn’t know the word. She knew that tweeting it would start arguments and anger, and yet she still made the decision to do so. Her follow up tweets frankly dug the hole deeper; she tried to defend herself by saying, to sum it up, “I have a butch lesbian friend who agrees with me” “I just care about women’s rights!” And “IF trans people were marginalised I’d march with you!” (“If”, of course, being the real kicker here because what do you mean IF. They ARE. Every DAY.)

Since then, JKR has written an essay on her website defending herself and her opinions, and yes, I read it. I read it a few times, in fact. At first, I felt my anger simmer and felt I had been too hasty to make anti JKR jokes, that I was wrong...but then I read it again properly and realised that what she had written was a piece that turned herself into the victim, and that despite putting on the appearance of her saying she supports trans people, including the phrases “I support trans people” and “of course trans women are real women”, she still spewed much transphobic vitriol and hate. She cited no sources for any of her proclamations or statements about statistics, implied that trans men transition to escape their “womanhood”, that trans women are men in dresses, that trans women are dangerous to “real” women (aka cis women) and shouldn’t be allowed into women’s changing rooms or toilets. There was also the autism comment, and the implication of autistic girls somehow not being able to make decisions or whatever.

I’m going to get straight to the point: I don’t support JK Rowling or her radical feminism.

As someone who is a proud feminist (libfem?), I can honestly say that never have I felt threatened or like I was being silenced by the inclusion of trans women in feminist spaces or conversation. Never. In my second year at sixth form, I was in charge of the LGBTQ+ club until a new leader with better leadership skills could step in, and - put simply - that year, the club was made almost entirely of first year transgender students. Even though I had called myself a trans ally for years, I realised there was a lot I didn’t know, and I learnt quite a lot from these students. I continue to still learn today. They were some of the nicest and most intelligent people I got the chance to meet, and I can truly say that at no point was I ever worried to be in a room alone with a trans woman, nor was I concerned about which bathroom they went in - bathrooms are bathrooms. Speaking of bathrooms...when I was at uni during a particularly tense rehearsal a few weeks before our final show last year, a guy in our group made me cry and I ran to the women’s bathroom to escape. Not only did the other girls come to comfort me, but you know what? The guy came in and apologised profusely to me. Did any of us girls give a shit about having a guy in our toilet? Absolutely not. It’s a fucking toilet. And, on that note, I was never worried about a trans woman or even a cis man attacking me in the toilets. You know who DID attack me in the toilets regularly? Other cisgender women.

As a feminist, I fully support trans women and am not threatened by the inclusion of trans women in women’s spaces or in women’s rights discussions. While I agree that cis women and trans women inevitably go through different struggles, at the end of the day, we all identify as women and are women. I think that if your feminism is so threatened by the existence of trans women - TERFs, RadFems, JKR, looking at you - then your feminism is flimsy and not feminism at all.

As a woman, I find it highly offensive that JKR and many RadFems focus so much of womanhood and feminism on an involuntary biological function that, frankly, many of us would rather do without. Yeah, I’m talking about periods - no matter how proud I am to be a woman, I still fucking hate periods and would get rid of mine if I could without erasing my chance of having kids someday. I can hear the RadFems accusing me of “internalised woman hatred” for saying I hate my periods, but you know what, they suck and they hurt and fuck them. The fact that JKR (also the the radfem movement) reduced “women” to just people who menstruate and can have children, and vice versa, is incredibly offensive and misogynistic. For a start, trans men menstruate, intersex people can, non binary can etc. Next, not even ALL cis women have periods - women who are menopausal, young women who haven’t started puberty yet (some do start very late), some women don’t have regular cycles, some women have medical problems that affect their cycle, some women are on birth control that can stop their cycles. So the idea of women being defined as “those who menstruate” is offensive not only to trans/intersex/non binary individuals but also to cis ones too.

As I write this, I’m a 22 year old woman who is still learning and changing every day, and one of the things that I’ve found myself thinking about recently - especially since we’re in lockdown and we have nothing BUT time to think - is about myself and my identity as a woman. What prompted this was when I saw Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved book, “Little Women”, which I’ve since read, for my birthday back in January, and I left the cinema feeling exalted and powerful with my own identity as a woman. (I’ll be returning to LW in a bit)

After some thinking, I’ve realised some things. For me, my identity as a woman is not just because once a month my uterus decides to shed; I do not identify as a woman just because I have certain physical features. I am not a particularly feminine person either, and I’m what some may call a “tomboy” (a phrase I actually don’t mind but I know a lot of people do for understandable reasons since it’s a phrase designed to differentiate people who don’t conform to society’s expectations etc) because I prefer video games and more geeky stuff to shopping or dressing up or make up.

For me, there is no one way a person has to be or appear in order to identify as a woman. Women are beautiful, complex human beings; we are not defined by our genitalia, by an involuntary biological process. Women are strong, intelligent, and interesting people - no two are the same. For example, some decide to raise families, some choose to pursue a career, some do both - all of these are valid and none are more “feminist” or “womanly” than the others, because it’s our as women. I guarantee that if you lined up every single woman in the world - cis AND trans - no two would be the exact same.

I mentioned “Little Women” earlier, and as I was pondering over what makes me identify as a “woman”, I thought a lot about a certain quote from the 2019 film that has stayed with me since it was first said in the release of the trailer. It’s spoken by Jo March to her mother, and I’ve started to understand what for me makes me a woman.

For me, being a woman is all of this: having minds, hearts, souls, ambition, talent, and being beautiful each in our own ways. Women are capable of love and empathy, capable of desire, capable of the most complex and human feelings and emotions, and coming out the stronger for it.

Sex is one thing; gender identity is another.

I won’t dissect every single thing JKR wrote in her essay, but I will just say this: her comments regarding autistic girls are extremely tone deaf and she does not speak for those with autism. I’m going to be honest and admit something here I haven’t before: I have not been diagnosed with autism or aspergers but I AM currently on the waiting list to see someone who COULD diagnose me. Apparently I show signs of a potential diagnosis, so...we’ll have to see. But I have friends who are autistic, and they’re disgusted by JKR trying to use them to support her TERF arguments. Autistic and other neurodivergent people are absolutely capable of making decisions and are NOT people who need to be babied or have their hands held, to be told who they are. It’s incredibly ableist of JK Rowling frankly.

I would also like to point out... I’ve seen people saying “but she doesn’t hate autistic people, Newt is autistic!!!” - yes, but JKR didn’t write him as autistic. Eddie Redmayne chose to play Newt as autistic - JK Rowling didn’t do shit.

It’s also time that I acknowledge that both Potter and Beasts inevitably hold JKR’s problematic views, and that by denying her ownership of her work, we’re not holding her accountable for the horrible things she’s done. This includes - but is not limited to -:

Anti-Semitic stereotypes in the goblins

Lycanthropy being used as a metaphor for AIDS - an illness that is heavily associated to the gay community, and also there was the panic of the AIDs crisis in the 90s where much misinformation and homophobia was generated and spread because of it.

Adding further to the lycanthropy point, one of the infected individuals - Greyback - is stated to have a sick preference for infecting children. Not only are werewolves tied to harmful gay/AIDs stereotypes, but also to the disgusting and frankly wrong notion that gay people are pedophiles.

The only Asian character is called Cho Chang. Cho Chang. That’s two steps away from outright just calling her “Ching Chong”. It’s not a name an actual Asian person would have.

The Goldstein sisters are probably distantly related to Anthony Goldstein, who JKR confirmed (on Twitter of course) is Jewish, meaning that Tina and Queenie are most likely Jewish too (and Goldstein is a Jewish surname). However, despite the fact that the first FBaWTFT is set DURING Hanukkah in 1926, there’s zero signs of them celebrating or observing it. Maybe that’s more on set design than anything else, but come on - if I, a fanfic writer, can do some research, JK/the crew of a major movie can too!

Adding on from that, gotta love how one of the JEWISH main characters then decides to join the Wizarding world equivalent of Hitler. I already had problems with Queenie’s characterisation in CoG, but that’s the icing on the cake.

POC/Black characters - in both series but since I’m a Beasts blog... Seraphina Picquery, a Black female president serving a term during a MAJOR wizarding world crisis, is severely reduced to have only 3 lines in CoG. Nagini’s only purpose is to be the only friend of Credence, a white man, before he joins Wizard Hitler and abandons her; she’s also an Asian character who we know one day permanently becomes a SNAKE, and who goes on to actually have a piece of Voldemort’s soul inside of her?? And some do see her as his slave, though you could argue that she’s actually the only being that he holds any love or respect for. Leta Lestrange is a half-black woman who is killed/literally sacrifices herself for TWO WHITE MEN, and who’s death was literally confirmed to have been added in last minute.

Also, the whole Lestrange storyline was fucking nasty: white Lestrange Sr imperius-ed a black woman (Yusuf Kama’s mother), raped her, and she then died in childbirth. I’m sorry, what the fuck??

In Harry Potter, Seamus is a terrible stereotype of an Irish person - he likes to blow things up. Look up the IRA and their bombings. Fucking Irish stereotype. As someone with Irish grandparents and who is proud of their Irish heritage, this really pisses me off.

Let’s not forget the whole Native American cultural appropriation. That truly speaks for itself.

So here is where I speak candidly to everyone who follows me and/or sees this post. While Beasts is no longer my No. 1 fandom these days, it and Potter still hold a huge piece of my heart. I have 5 wizarding world tattoos, so much merchandise, and I can safely say that being a fan of both series has shaped me as a person. Both of those series helped me get through the darkest days of my life, including bullying at school, my Nan passing away, and my mental health struggles.

This is why what’s happened has impacted me so much and broken my heart. For me, it feels like it’s tainted now because of Jo and her views. I know that we should separate the art from the artist, but when her views are so clearly woven into the very fabric of the Wizarding world, it’s a huge problem.

Here’s another part of the dilemma - I do not wish for the Beasts films to be cancelled. I’m well aware that the *cough* people who dislike me will say I’m trying to be negative, trying to boycott the series blah blah blah, but that’s truly the last thing I want. I still love the story, the characters, the soundtrack, and I want to know how it ends, if only for my own piece of mind. It’s also important to add that by boycotting Beasts, it’s also harming the hard working thousands of others who worked on the films: the cast, the crew, the extras, the musicians, etc., not to mention the fans who actually are invested in the series and have taken solace in it. It’s not fair for them to all suffer over the actions of one TERF.

This is one of my biggest worries, however: the Fantastic Beasts films do NOT have a good reputation as it is. The second film was boycotted by some due to Depp, and now there’s talk of people boycotting number 3 because of JK Rowling. Lots of people already talk hatred about it, and this will only fire that hatred up even more.

There’s also talk of Eddie Redmayne potentially being kicked from the franchise due to a “leak” that he doesn’t want to work with JKR anymore, but this could be sensationalist news reporting. But if it came down to it, I can honestly say that I would rather continue to have Eddie play Newt than keep JKR as a writer. Eddie has done more for Newt than even JKR has, and if he goes, then that will be the last straw for me within the fandom. That will be when I take a sharp exit out, sell my FB merch and have my tattoos covered.

To add, the Fantastic Beasts scripts are...not great. Or, at least, what we saw on-screen wasn’t. Maybe that’s David Yates being the literal worst (fuck you, Yates, you suck) and cutting all the parts with strong female characters, but I honestly don’t think that JKR can write screenplays well at all. I think she’s clearly better at writing books, and that’s fine - books obviously allow for more time to explore characters and story/plot arcs etc, and film scripts offer way less of those chances. I don’t think screenplays allow her to write what she needs to in order to tell the story she wants to, hence why CoG was kind of a hot mess. So maybe it’s just that she’s not suited for screenplays and should stick to books.

Honestly, I kind of just wish that WB would hire another person to finish writing the Fantastic Beasts movies - obviously they’d have to keep JKR on board to tell them the actual plot, but get someone who can actually write screenplays and not be problematic to write them.

By now I’ve gone on long enough that I’ve forgotten my original intent while writing this, so I’ll try to sum up and end now. In short, I am extremely disappointed in JK Rowling and do not support her or her views any longer.

I don’t know how any of you guys are feeling but I would be interested to hear other people’s thoughts, especially other Fantastic Beasts fans. I want to also add that, as always, my DMs and inbox are always open - if not here, then always at @alwaysahiccupandastrid where I’m more active nowadays.

Finally, you guys don’t need me - a white cis woman - to tell you this but you’re all valid and magical and fuck JK Rowling. Her characters would all be ashamed of her, and the characters we grew up with would not stand for the bigotry and vile hatred she spreads under the guise of ““protecting women””. Several of the amazing actors from Potter and Beasts have spoken out against her and her tweets: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Bonnie Wright, Katie Leung, Chris Rankin, Eddie Redmayne. Some have been...less inspiring (Tom Felton, Evanna Lynch, looking at you two 👀)

I’m sending love to everyone right now. I wish I could say something more useful but I’ve spoken enough - I’ve made my opinion clear. I love you all, please stay safe.

#fantastic beasts and where to find them #fantastic beasts: the crimes of grindelwald #jk rowling #harry potter

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dorkylittleweirdo · 4 years

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crazy shit that happened during high school

freshman year:

my favorite teacher (pe coach) ended up being a pedophile. it’s kinda scary to think about bc like,, that was my favorite teacher and i trusted him and if he tried anything with me i don’t think i would’ve stopped him and just yikes. but yeah, it was a whole thing. once the school found out they got the police involved and he fled the state. they got him in the end but i mean,, i spent a lot of time in the secretary’s office crying about it bc i really trusted that dude and i was distraught over it. that might’ve been where my trust issues started??? fun stuff

my school shut down. like i mean,, bc it was a charter school and we had to get the charter renewed. but the board at my school wasn’t using their money the way they were supposed to. it was a whole thing, like the principal left that school year bc he knew what was happening, couldn’t stop them from doing it, and didn’t want to be part of it. so they had a lot of meetings that us kids were allowed to go to so we could see what was happening and all that. i only went to one and it was A Time bc the lady who was recording everything passed tf out and of course nobody was a doctor and my pipsqueak thirteen year old ass went “i know what to do” bc i Did so i had to help her which was a trip in and of itself. but anyways, the school’s charter got denied, and everyone had to transfer, but the district promised that we could go to any school we wanted, not just the one we would have to go to by zip code

sophomore year:

i ended up going to a private christian school. big fucking mistake. absolute disaster. nothing really happened that was crazy by their standards, but it was for me

so they have a house system. think of harry potter, it’s EXACTLY like that. we have points, we have competitions, we have all that extra stuff. it was such a time, like i don’t,, i don’t even know how to explain how fucking weird that shit was

i came out in the middle of class. the principal’s daughter was our sub and she goes “okay so everyone is gonna tell us something that nobody knows about them” so when it was my turn i go “so it’s not a secret and y’all should know this but clearly y’all don’t: i’m not straight”. silence. dead silence. we could hear the class next to us it was so quiet. some girl whispers “i knew it”. another girl leans over and whispers to my friend “i’m so sorry”. principal’s daughter gives me the most threatening, condescending smile i’ve ever seen and goes “thanks for sharing”. i had to come out to my mom that same day bc i told me friends and they panicked on my behalf bc when people found out that they were gay, the principal told their parents. and i was Not about to be outed by the principal. my mom has since told me that the principal never contacted her about it so i came out for nothing but i mean i really like being out so we’re good

so instead of prom, cult school has this thing called “the ball”. sophomores, juniors, and seniors are allowed to go bc there’s less than fifty people per grade so if sophomores don’t come, there’s not enough people. so i went bc my friends were all going and i was like “yeah why not might as well”. three dance lessons. three fucking dance lessons for this stupid ball that i didn’t dance once at. i literally had three panic attacks in the span of an hour at the second one, and then i had swim practice right after. fucking exhausted. felt like i ran five marathons by the time i got home. the last lesson i didn’t do any dancing, just vibed with my friend in the corner. so at the actual ball, same friend and i vibed at the tables the whole time. we went to the bathroom for like an hour and took mirror selfies and tried to make our asses look bigger bc we’re Like That

SO AFTER THE BALL, there was apparently a massive party and there was alcohol and stuff. so my friends and i were blissfully unaware bc nobody liked us bc who tf likes the school sinners. so we walked to get ice cream after in our fucking ballgowns and suits looking like All That. so the principal thought that it was one of us who hosted the party and we were like “??? what party?”. literally almost got in trouble bc the principal thought we were LYING. i told my mom and she takes No Shit, so when the principal called her demanding to know if i went to/hosted the party, she marched her ass down to the school and was like “i know y’all have something against mexicans and people who are different from y’all, but that’s no reason to blame my daughter for something that your so called “perfect” students did”. my mom got Heated, roasted the fuck out of the principal, then LEFT. principal never fucked with my mom after that

so there was a fire like across the street from the school. the fd told us to evacuate, but noooooo the school was like “god will protect us” i’m like “okay but i’m gay and apparently your god hates that so i think we’re gonna Perish”. the fucking POWER went out and they STILL wouldn’t let us go. my mom called to sign me out so i could go wherever the fuck i wanted in the school until my friend’s dad came to pick us up bc she couldn’t get there bc of the fire. so i vibed next door to my friends’ class and i was like “heeeeey god’s trying to kill the gays” and we laughed about that until my gay ass got saved lmaoooo

okay so this is the funniest memory i have. in chemistry once, our teacher took us outside and started digging a lil hole next to the school. and keep in mind, my chem teacher used to be a hardcore atheist druggie, like fucking meth and coke and shit. took a theology course and converted. so he’s really sweet and nice but he’s also Slightly mad scientist vibes. so anyways, he puts something in this little hole, lights it on fire. i forgot why he did it, but i was standing back with him and one of the exchange students and the three of us watch in Horror as the rest of the class makes a circle around the fire and start doing some weird dance and saying something. it wasn’t like a chant, idk what to call it, but they were like counting like “and one, and two, and three, and four” and then the dance would get more intense and they’d get louder. so eventually they were screaming and going apeshit and i looked at my teacher and he’s just,, watching them do this. i’m like “and i’m satan, huh?”. like these kids really trying to summon the devil but i’m the bad one bc i like girls

junior year:

so technically this was during the summer but i’m putting it here. they have like a house party after the school year ends. i made cookies. apparently they “looked weird” so nobody ate them, two of my soon to be teachers kept insulting them. i called my mom to pick me up, took my cookies with me, got back in the car in tears. had to have a whole conversation with the principal and those two teachers so they could apologize bc i wanted to leave the school after that. dw tho, i took my cookies to the guards at my summer camp and they appreciated the hell out of them bc they were Very Good Cookies

so my ap bio teacher was an enabler. i was his favorite bc i wasn’t a religious nut and it was very obvious that i believed in science and not whatever the hell this cult was doing with their creationist bs. also he was a parasitologist and i’m super into parasitology so he had fun talking about it to someone who both understood and was extremely interested in the topic. i rolled up to class one day like “hey so i’m gonna buy hissing cockroaches from amazon, if my parents find out and don’t let me keep them do you want them??” and he’s like “yeah”. i brought them to class a few times and everyone Hated it but my teacher was like ayyyyy. and everyone thought he was either and atheist or agnostic, so when some girl asked how he thought mary conceived jesus to see what he said, he looked at me like “y’all hear somethin/hel p” and i go “parthenogenesis” and he Went With It, talking about how it was theoretically possible in humans but we ignored the fact that the baby would’ve been a girl bc the class is dumb none of them have ever heard of parthenogenesis before jesus is the true trans icon we all need

my art teacher was my favorite and she knows that i’m gay. she’s the only teacher from my school that i’m still in contact with. so every big project we did, i made it gay. and i knew, and my friends knew, and she knew, but the rest of the class had no idea. i’m like presenting my project and the class would get sus and they’re like “so are those two really good friends” and i’m like “so she has a rainbow heart on her choker and she has a lesbian symbol on her shirt”. the class was still confused and my friend yells “they’re LESBIANS”. it was iconic

my brit lit teacher was bi. she never said it, but i know she was. always talked about how much she hated men, then was like “women are very very good”. no way this woman was straight. so we read dracula and it’s got that Subtext, so one time i leaned over to my friend bc he sat next to me and i go “the Homoerotic Subtext”. and i didn’t realize that the teacher was right in front of me until she tapped my desk and goes “it gets better”, told me a page number that i flipped to, and it was Even More Gay and i was like 😏. also she assigned me a gay poet for my poetry project and i talked about that for my whole presentation in front of the class and it was the biggest paragraph in my essay and i got 100% on it even tho i choked at the beginning. also i mentioned in passing that i liked sappho and she goes “ooh i love sappho” i’m like “ma’am please leave this cult and get you a gf”

senior year:

i left the cult finally. went to the one school i actually liked. i made friends who actually like me and they were patient and they were amazing and i love them all very much even if i’ll never tell them. my classmates were great, v friendly, i had a great time. however,

so many fires. school got cancelled like five times bc of how bad the fires were

the school shooting. i don’t think i need to go further into that, it’s pretty self explanatory

covid. again, don’t need to go further into that, v self explanatory

#school #high school #school stories

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mayleitz · 5 years

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The Stalking

Okay so here’s this.

Elliot stalked me for over a year before we dated. The first time I met him, he spoke to me in my discord server right when it was new. He said he did not pledge money to support my videos, he didn’t really watch them or care about them. He supported me so he could have a direct line to talk to me.

Naturally he started flirting with me and because at the time I was miserable and repressed, I went along with it at first but then told him to stop and to just be my friend. He doesn’t take rejection well so he kept trying and when I felt pushed away by his advances he would get mad at me for being a bad friend.

This went on for a pretty long time, until he came out as trans. I was super excited for him and because we sorta knew each other and had been around, I forgave him for all the advances that were unwanted because I know trans folk pretransition have a tendency to be a bit like-that.

And after that I grew to trust him a little bit more even though he really never knew me. But I always needed people to talk to and my resources were limited (the person I was dating at the time didn’t really let me have friends) so I talked to Elliot occasionally. He slowly gained my trust so I slowly opened up to him more and more. He was in some bad relationships, and so was I so we had that in common and could talk about it.

On the night that I broke up with my then partner, I was suicidal. It was rough. I was trying to please them for so long that I just...didn’t honestly remember what doing anything for myself was like. I felt so backed into a corner. So I called Elliot.

We started to have a closer friendship where we would talk on the phone for hours at a time. I exclusively wanted to be his friend and he was constantly pining after me from this point on. He told me that he viewed YouTube like a dating site and that each channel was like a dating profile. He said he had dated multiple YouTubers and had dirt on all of them and planned to one day post some call-out thingy about all of them. I didn’t know the people in question so I didn’t question it much. But this was absolutely a through-line to our relationship. He viewed youtubers as possessions that he wanted to have. And god did he want to have me.

It started really simply with telling me he was in love with me. He kept telling me and one day I said it back. Like...I love you, as a friend, who is into women. I had to constantly remind him that I was a lesbian and I was only interested in women. I had never really gotten a chance to experience that as myself and that was exclusively what I wanted.

Anyways so he started sending me unsolicited nudes. Usually when drunk but he did it a whole bunch of times. He would call me at parties and orgies he was at, sometimes while high on hardcore drugs or exceptionally drunk and he would say things like: “I’m gonna come visit you and we’re gonna have sex.” “May, are we gonna have sex when we’re together?” “God I want to fuck you.” and so on.

And so I told him to stop because I was uncomfortable and I did not want any of it. It was all explicitly against my consent. And because I didn’t know what to do, I wouldn’t hang up so he just started passing the phone around to all his friends. One of them told me he wanted to blow me and I got so skeeved out that I tried to end the call.

But then when I told Elliot I wouldn’t be having sex with him and I would like him to stop, he turned his attention a bit towards: “Just kiss me then.” “We have to kiss.” “There’s no way I’m not gonna kiss you.”

Which wasn’t a lot better.

The next day I was super angry. I told him I was tired of him sexualizing me without my consent. He got really upset and distant and I was worried that I would lose, in essence, my only friend, so I let him off the hook and said it wasn’t a big deal and I still cared about him. So he just started right up again. This happened multiple times a week.

He demanded to come to visit me but I was uncomfortable with that. My apartment was sorta my private space where I could transition in peace and be left alone. I didn’t want to bring a man into that space. Like ever. It was sacred to me.

But he persisted so much that I finally said okay. He immediately got a plane ticket and oops now it had to happen. I was terrified.

I felt a lot better when he got here because he wasn’t like most guys I’d known, at first. He was sweet and fun and funny and sure, he said a lot of off-color things but I mostly ignored whatever red flags were around. He asked if he could kiss me one night and I gave in and was like...well alright. He kissed me violently hard. With no kindness or gentleness. It felt like an attack. It was in my car and I had no real place to go so I just awkward looked around and waited for it to be over.

But after that, I could sense that he wanted it to be more romantic that just friend stuff and so I held his hand and at one point I told him we were on a date and stuff to make him feel good and loved. It was clear that he was really happy and I wanted that more than anything.

But then things started to get more serious and scary and my inability to say no to him made everything so much harder. It kept getting harder and harder to say no even though I knew this was not what I wanted. This person basically stalked me, sexually harassed me and treated me like an object of desire for over a year and somehow I was afraid to hurt his feelings.

We got a tattoo together. It was my first tattoo and I was really nervous and scared and he held my hand and was very warm to me and I thought about how alone I would soon be again when he left but I was hesitating because I didn’t want to be in a relationship with him.

By this point, he got his way and we had had sex. I didn’t want to but I knew it was what he wanted so I did my best to power through my feelings. I even tried to be really into it so I could convince myself that what was happening was okay.

I told him I didn’t really want him to go and that I would miss him and I loved him and stuff but inside I was relieved when he was leaving. I wanted my privacy and my space and I wanted some distance. Things were fucking hard with him around and I needed to get back to work on myself. The whole week that he was here he joked about just never leaving. Like, just randomly staying here with me and dating me and stuff. Of course, again I was a lesbian and he knew this. But like...me not rejecting his advances made him believe that I was actually into guys and more specifically him and I wanted it too.

So on the day when he was set to leave, he didn’t really pack or get anything ready because he had his mind made up. Part of me wonders if this was the plan from the start, I don’t know. But he basically announced that he was staying. The whole situation was so stressful and surreal that I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to unravel the threads and say ‘no, I’m still a lesbian, we’re still not dating and I still want to be here alone.’ so instead I was like ‘okay whatever,’ and went to take a shower. While I was in the shower he posted about it on facebook instead of telling anyone directly and then he abandoned his partner, all his friends, his family and everyone from his home.

The first week it was exhausting but so surreal that he was living here that things seemed alright. The limited solace I had was my job at the mall where I could be aware and get some clarity. I tried to tell him that staying with me was only temporary and he could just move back when he was ready. I tried to help him get a job so he could pull his own weight (he didn’t I paid for everything. Even when he had a job, he mostly blew his money on meaningless stuff instead of helping me.)

It was a disaster and I was trapped. He constantly joked about cancelling me if we ever broke up, he constantly joked about tweeting out the ‘n-word’ on my account and ending my career. He constantly joked about publicly shaming me. When we were with friends, he would publicly shame me and when I started doing it back, he got really hurt so I stopped and just let him do it to me.

There’s so much more but my hands are tired. Not like it will make a difference. He’s a liar. He’s a fucking liar and manipulator. He is a sex pest. He repeatedly fucked me until I was bleeding and then we turn around and do it all again moments after I told him he needed to stop. He would tie me up and ridicule me. He demanded that I do that to him as well and I did only twice. The first time triggered my DID and my alter just wanted to kill herself. It scared me to fucking death. It scared me so bad that it happened that I could barely sleep and of course he used that as part of his call out.

He openly tweeted about my ptsd and DID and used that to say I was a bad person when what I was every moment we were together was scared. Lina too. These people overran my life. They took over leaving me nearly no control. I was scared to death that they were going to hurt me and when I finally distanced myself from them and went off to have the life I actually wanted from the start, they took my career from me.

Since they tweeted about me being ‘an abuser’ I have lost over 1000 followers on twitter, 3000 subscribers and $600 on Patreon. I can barely pay for my life and they put that in jeopardy. I had a small savings for surgery that is now gone. I am still losing things every single fucking day. I’ve lost countless friends. No one checked on me or listened to what happened to me. I had to beckon the limited friends that would hear me, to tell them what happened. And naturally every time I post or say or do anything about this, I get an influx of people telling me I’m a liar and I’m actually the problem. Elliot’s friends from Washington have all tweeted threads about how I’m actually bad, but the truth is, I liked all of them. They were all super kind to me and I tried my best to be a good partner to Elliot in their eyes.

The point is, I’m afraid to say any of this because I know for a fact they will retaliate. I don’t want that. I don’t want to deal with any back and forth or anything. I just want to return to my life and I’d like to stop losing everything and I’d like to be left the fuck alone. Every day since that post came out, I have had to explain myself to hundreds of people. It’s exhausting and enough is enough. I wasn’t going to say anything because I didn’t want to hurt Elliot or Lina. I still don’t. Give them their privacy and please respect mine.

May

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rotationalsymmetry · 4 years

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A word about Harry Potter.

One thing that’s standing out to me right now, because I’m thinking about prisons, is that the HP series has an entire book where the awfulness of prisons is the main theme. Sure, it’s a fictional prison and dementors aren’t real. But you’re clearly supposed to be thinking, at the end of Prisoner of Azkaban, “what if real world prisons are that bad?” and “wait, innocent people getting convinced is a thing that can actually happen, right, so maybe it’s important to make sure that we don’t treat anybody horribly no matter how bad the thing we think they did actually was?”

It’s not a clear “raze the prisons to the ground” stance, but it is a clear “there are some things you just don’t do to people, no not even really bad people” stance.

And that theme recurs throughout the series. There’s no moment when Harry and friends sit down and go “well, I know these curses are called unforgivable, but the enemy we’re up against is so powerful and horrible we have to start using Crucio and Imperio and Avada Kedavera.” I know a lot of people think this is corny, but JKR made a choice to have Harry win through the Power of Love and a disarming spell — Voldemort died from his own hate spell bouncing back at him, not because Harry decided he deserved to die, which is consistent with the “just because someone’s bad and dangerous doesn’t mean you can do anything you want to them” theme.

There’s some fantasy stories where good and evil are labels for sides, and the good guys don’t actually act any differently than the bad guys. Harry Potter is not one of them.

There’s people criticizing Harry Potter and that is right and good, it should be criticized.

There’s some people criticizing Harry Potter in a way that makes it sound like it’s just a horrible series with no redeeming qualities and certainly not something that anyone should read or engage with.

I don’t stand there. I have yet to encounter a story so thoroughly problematic and without positive qualities that I think no one should read it. There are books I won’t read and movies I won’t watch. (And a whole lot more that I’ll watch and then criticize the shit out of.) But that’s different.

There has to be room, a lot of room, in the middle: this book is good in this way, bad in this way, read it if you want, don’t read it if you don’t want. I’m tagging this so that anyone who’s absolutely done hearing about HP doesn’t have to.

Now, JKR as a public figure is a bit different: she’s been saying incredibly transphobic things and that requires pushback and damage control. But most of that can and should be in the forms of “these are ideas in society at large, how can we condemn and deplatform (I think deplatforming is better than refuting here) these violence-inciting statements in society at large” and “these are ideas in specific subcultures, how can we keep our subcultures from being hostile to trans women/trans people”* rather than “hey, if we act like Harry Potter doesn’t exist and that only bigots talk about Harry Potter, that will fix everything right?”

You can’t divide stories into good stories and bad stories. That’s not how it works.

There has to be a LOT of room for “this story has good qualities and bad qualities, let’s talk about them, and neither set cancels the other out.”

And this isn’t an unwillingness to do anything, OK? Some people are presenting this as not being willing to make even the smallest sacrifice. This is not about that.

You have no idea what a given person does for trans people in terms of money, volunteering for hotlines or youth shelters, just being a friend, taking care of a trans person’s cat while they’re recovering from surgery, signal boosting money requests, being a shoulder to cry on, escorting trans people through situations that could be dangerous to them, deflecting harassment, writing letters and making phone calls, answering Trans 101 questions for less aware relatives, giving less aware friends and relatives a chance to process their cisfeels so they won’t do that at a trans person, writing postcards or letters to trans people in prison, promoting works by trans people by word of mouth, offering a couch to crash on for a while, making sure events have appropriate bathroom options, pushing their workplace to be more trans friendly, and just every other thing that trans people need other than getting a break from hearing about that one terf author and the series that she wrote, which can be accomplished in much easier ways.

And yes, I don’t get to decide for trans women and other people who are directly affected by transmisogyny what an appropriate response to JKR/HP is. However, as far as I can tell, this “if you don’t stop engaging with the HP fandom entirely you’re prioritizing your own comfort over trans women’s safety” thing is not actually primarily coming from trans women etc and is not an opinion that most trans women etc hold.

I could be wrong.

(Do not use this post as an excuse to be awful to anyone, especially actual trans people, just disengage/block instead.)

*transmisogyny also affects many non-binary people, not sure how to say that succinctly (transfem people I guess?) and this stuff also hurts trans men and other trans people who aren’t transfem.)

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larryatendoftheday · 5 years

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Let’s correct some misinformation about Taylor Swift

a lot of people are blocked by this user so here’s a version of my response that you can reblog

rosesau ORIGINAL POST

not to rant but i will. when louis put out a song where he was making a point that was close to his heart, he did it thru just like you and he didnt fucking use that song to pander to anyone. he didnt have countless headlines abt it he didnt even have a music video for it he didnt release it as a single he just.. gave that song to us bc he wanted to say that to us. every fuckin time taylor saint swift has made a song abt smth ~important to her.. she’s always capitalized off of it in the most obnoxious way. she’s always just whining abt ppl not liking her. look what you made me do was abt her problems with literally Everyone who criticized her ever and she used her feud with kim and kanye to make that song get big. she even mockey kim k’s robbery in her music video. the song wasnt rlly abt her it wasnt her being genuine it was her finding smth to exploit and now with this new one if this is her “coming out” she’s exploiting pride and capitalizing off of something that is so important to so many of us. so many ppl say jly was a throwaway song bc “lol it wasnt even a single” but thats exactly the point lmao he wasnt trying to make money off of that song he wasnt trying to gain attention from that song he fought to have it out for us which is the exact opposite of what taylor does. bitchass white feminist who stayed silent during one of the most critical election seasons in a while, attemped to sue a woc who wrote on her own personal blog that taylor’s reputation era was feuling the altright fans and she should denounce white supremacy, and only encouraged ppl to vote for the “right” person when it was time for her to release more music. choke sweetie.

tswiftisgay aka MY RESPONSE from my other blog

Ok so you have misrepresented some stuff. I’m tired of Taylor bashing. Critique I get. But let’s get some facts straight.

Her first major political statement was not when she was releasing new music. It was in October last year before the November election. That’s when Trump said he liked her music 25% less. She had nothing coming out anytime soon when she did that.

Louis has a consistently terrible team that has only just started to improve. Do you really think he wouldn’t have marketed Just Like You more if he could have? It’s a good song, and it has important content that the general public should hear too. Don’t make his team’s failure into something honorable.

I used to be critical of Taylor for not speaking up sooner about politics, but I realized that being political when you are quite as big as Taylor is extremely risky, especially coming from a country fan foundation. Plus she was “cancelled” anyway. What would her voice have done for the mess of the 2016 election? And after that during the Rep era, she gave LOUD pride speeches early on in her tour. She did a lot that pretty clearly demonstrated she was NOT supportive of the alt right. Anyone who really wanted to know could have seen that. So of course she sued the woman saying she was alt right. I’m not saying I like it, but if you are not a nazi and someone called you one, wouldn’t you want them to stop? I wish she had used different methods, but again, what would have worked? I’m not sure there is something that would have convinced this woman to change her tune.

When she did speak up last October, she explained that the absolutely horrible political events of the past few years had made her want to speak up. “In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now.” Think of how you have changed over the past few years. We have all become more aware of our role and responsibility. We have all grown louder and more aware. Why can’t Taylor also have grown and learned?

In an essay in Elle earlier this year she elaborated on that. “Only as someone approaching 30 did I feel informed enough to speak about it to my 114 million followers. Invoking racism and provoking fear through thinly veiled messaging is not what I want from our leaders, and I realized that it actually is my responsibility to use my influence against that disgusting rhetoric.” Waiting to find your voice when you have this big a platform seems pretty solid to me.

Taylor isn’t a white feminist. In her October post she said, “I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.” She also made a point of protesting a lack of laws about domestic abuse which unfortunately disproportionately effects women of color and trans women of color. She has pointedly included and celebrated women of color in her tours. On Rep tour the women dancers–many of color–all were introduced and given a moment just for them as part of the song Gorgeous. She has spoken about racism and I expect to see her continue to do so during this next election cycle.

Taylor did not mock Kim K’s robbery in the music video. I see how you could interpret it that way, because there was a robbing scene and a ring prominently displayed but that was in reference to a lot of Swiftie fan theories that she was engaged and the larger feeling of being attacked and dragged aka robbed. There were references to Kim but that was not one. Taylor is a women with stalkers who has her house broken into regularly. She of all people wouldn’t joke about that.

Last but not least, Taylor is pairing her new music with advocacy DESPITE the fact that it has turned away many of her old country fans or older Republican fans. She is also on her way out of the closet, which would make it much easier for others in the music industry to come out. Ahem. Harry and Louis.

So I have to ask that you stop spreading misinformation and stop hating on a woman who is changing the music industry by forcing streaming services to pay artists fairly and now–on her coming out journey. She donates to charity. She advocates for politicians and policies that could improve or even save lives. She is using her platform for good. Stop hating.

Or I guess I should just say… don’t step on her gown. You need to calm down.

TLDR: Larries are often so uninformed and nasty about Taylor. She didn’t speak up about politics for a long time, but when she started it was not near any new content from her. She is queer anyway. She's been very misunderstood by her own community.

Please reach out to me with questions. I would love to help rectify this unfortunate sentiment in the fandom.

#haylor #taylor swift #mine #larry stylinson #discourse

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kmtam · 5 years

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Some of my thoughts on the thing.

I’m feeling mostly good about the election. Not great, but not bad, and nothing like The Day After in 2016. Regardless of how you slice it, we’re in a better position today than we were yesterday, even if some of our preferred candidates lost, or our preferred narratives didn’t fully pan out.

I’ll start with the bad. Apparently my moving to a GOP district did not magically flip it blue, which is a bit surprising but OK, whatever. Katie Porter lost, and this is the biggest disappointment of the night for me (I think?) because this district was actually winnable. Mimi Walters, the incumbent, is an uncharismatic, do-nothing who rubber-stamps her party line without fanfare. This county, if not the district, is now majority Democrat, and this election was a chance to rebuke the past two years of Republican governance. But Katie Porter lost, and I think she lost because she ran a bad campaign. I saw very few Porter signs on the streets (and the streets here are FILLED with signs around election time); I knew nothing about what Porter actually stood for (I just found out this morning she supported repealing the gas tax!); and she cancelled on multiple in-person events during the primaries and general. Now, maybe all of her resources were spent in more conservative parts of the district, I don’t know, but I do know that I got multiple people knocking at my door over the past few days, in an ivory tower neighborhood literally filled with liberal professors, asking me to vote for Katie Porter, which seems like misspent energy to me.

Oh well, there’s always 2020.

The senate is a tough loss, especially Heitkamp and very especially McCaskill. But despite media narratives to the contrary, the senate was always an extreme long-shot for the Democrats. The map and schedule were historically difficult, and the fact that Beto actually got within a few points in a race that started out with about a 20 point difference is extraordinary. Sure, it would have been great to take the senate, and it sucks that there are now fewer Dems in the senate than before, but in terms of actual legislative power etc., there’s not really any difference from the status quo. Now the Dems will lose by a slightly higher margin. But at least there’s a check in the House.

Florida and Georgia are bad. And in both cases there’s some electoral irregularities, along with outright vote suppression. Democrats absolutely must make voting access — and gerrymandering and voting machines — a top priority in their agenda, at all levels of government.

The defeat of Prop 10 -- which would have allowed the expansion of rent control in California -- is bad. The margin by which it was defeated is baffling. Who the hell are all these people who really don’t like rent control? And who are all these people voting to force EMTs to remain on call while they take their breaks? And why does California legislate so many stupid things through ballot initiatives?! At least the greedy boomer home-owners didn’t get their tax break.

There’s more bad stuff. Like that everyone I gave money to lost, except one person, and she’s not even in my state (Jacky Rosen in NV). And my longtime nemesis Diane Feinstein took her race handily. And literal white supremacist Steve King narrowly won back his seat in Iowa.

But there’s plenty of good stuff, too.

More women, and especially more women of color, will now be serving in Congress than ever before. Two of them are Muslim American, two of them are Native American. My home state of Massachusetts elected its first Black woman to Congress (uh, why’d it take so long?), and Boston elected a Black woman as District Attorney.

Medicaid expansion passed in Utah, Idaho, and Nebraska.

Scott Walker lost in Wisconsin (which I assume is due to the presence of @tnelms and @suchasuperlady), and Kris Kobach lost in Kansas (!).

Voter turnout was massive, in comparison with previous midterm elections.

Kim Davis, whom none of us should ever have heard of in the first place, was booted from office.

Massachusetts re-affirmed trans rights.

And lots more.

Here’s the thing. The “blue wave” thing was a media construction that was designed to either work or fail spectacularly — that is, there either would be a wave or there wouldn’t. There’s no in-between, mostly because there’s no room in the metaphor for in-betweenness. Focusing on and thinking through stupid metaphors like this -- and then trying to work within those metaphors, like referring to the “blue trickle” or the “blue particles” (har har) -- distracts us from seeing what has actually happened.

And what actually happened is that the Democrats took a lot of seats in the House, despite what is, according to traditional measures (if not direct experience), a really good economy. One of the only tried-and-true metrics that has held over the decades is that the relative health of the economy dictates whether the incumbent party gains or loses seats in an election. If the economy is doing well, the incumbents tend to hold seats or gain some, but if it’s doing badly, they lose. It’s virtually unheard of for incumbents to lose seats when the economy is doing well, but that’s exactly what happened last night, at least in the House.

And look at those Medicaid expansions in very conservative states. Republicans began the campaign by running on only three issues: healthcare, tax cuts, and racism. They basically gave up talking about the tax cuts they passed, because they were very unpopular, and they ended up outright lying about their position on healthcare since, as it turns out, even in red states, people overwhelmingly want affordable healthcare. So all they’re left with is racism. Now I’m not saying this is a good thing, of course. Obviously not. But it demonstrates that the “issues” that the GOP touts are all smoke and mirrors, and the Democratic positions on those are in fact widely preferred. Plainly, all the GOP has at this point is racism. Once we all understand that, and stop pretending like the GOP is a legitimate, issues-based political party, the better equipped we are to organize around them in the future. Which is to say, anti-racism needs to be a basic building block of everything the left, including the Democratic party, puts forward from now on.

Remember, this is all about power, not just aesthetics or feelings (those matter, too, but only really in relation to power). And the medium and long games are just as important, if not more important, than the short ones. The short game played from 2016-2018 wasn’t perfect, but it was a good step forward because the unfettered power of the GOP now has a few more checks on it. There’s another short game to play starting today, and this one is even more important than the one we just finished. As I’ve said before, I have no love for the Democratic party, but for better or worse, they’re the only force we have right now for stopping a political cult from destroying our fragile democracy, so the best thing to do, from point of view, is help them win this game. I really hope they can do it.

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destroyyourbinder · 7 years

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finally,

I wanted to write something quickly while I was sitting in my family’s house again. Many, many thoughts come to me here. This place is absolutely not what it once was to me, now that I have left and have another home, yet I am still subject to encapsulation by the forces present here. While here I am alienated from my new life, emotionally and physically; while at the place I now call home, I am alienated from nearly everything of my old life, which includes my family, the only people I had any significant proximity to for about twenty-six years.

I come here about every other week to visit my father, who has lung cancer and is now, with almost certainty, in the process of dying. This place has always been saturated with anxiety, but now it is impossibly dark, headed towards infinite darkness. Switching back and forth between my new home and my old is disorienting, especially under these conditions. It feels like total jet lag of existence. I don’t know how to walk through my parents’ front door, knowing I am walking into the world in which I was held captive and isolated for years, and knowing I am walking into a world in which I am completely subjugated to my mother’s abuse, but knowing that I must walk anyway, because I may be able to now count the number of times I will see my father again on my hands. I escaped my parents’ house in August of last year to live with my sister, who had an apartment in an even more isolated rural area of this state. I suppose now it is roughly the anniversary of the first time I had ever lived apart from them. I expected that this event would be life-changing. It was. But it was not life-changing in the way I expected, at all. When we tell people that it is ok or encourage them to make a huge decision, one that is self-actualizing or affirming, we often do so by discounting the fears they have about the decision, or attempting to get them to make a “rational” decision by listing the pros and cons and weighing them, as if positives can cancel out negatives. I do not regret moving out of my parents’ house, nor making the decision to move out of my sister’s place to live with my girlfriend, but many of my fears did absolutely come true. I am poor. I am lonely. I cannot get a job that is enjoyable or worthwhile, or uses my strengths, or even respects me as a human being. I did not make it to graduate school and never likely will. My mother disowned me for a few months, absolutely knowing how sick my father was, and would not permit me in the family’s home, nor would talk to me. She acknowledges I exist, now, but she has banned my girlfriend from her house, from my father’s future funeral, and has even banned me from using the word “girlfriend” in her presence. I am now subject to more homophobia, now that I am visibly and openly gay, than I ever thought could bear down on a real, living human being, one that existed outside of the realm of scare stories. I am still depressed, anxious, and dysphoric. I am in excruciating pain from the working conditions of my job and cannot make it to a doctor, because I have little free time and have no car. And so on.

My life looks like exactly how I feared in many ways, and exactly how my mother warned me it would become. If my past self a year ago knew what my life looked like now, she might not have moved out at all. The decision would still have just been as brutally difficult. I could never have predicated the decision on my becoming “happier”, because in most ways I am absolutely not. When I was trans-identified I thought that someday, I would reach a state where my hardships would end, or at least I could significantly mitigate or avoid them. I was in denial that these facts-- that I was a woman, that I was not interested in men, that I was autistic and disabled by mental illness, that I had a circuitous path through schooling, that I was abused in childhood, and that I was raised by two parents that although they made it to the middle class in adulthood had grown up in poverty (and my mother in severe poverty) -- meant that I was always going to unavoidably face a number of hardships.

I was still in denial of this when I attempted to apply to graduate school while working 12-hour shifts at a distribution warehouse, trying to study for the GREs, thirty minutes a night in the bathtub, while soaking my throbbing feet that were ground into hamburger by the metal catwalks I walked miles on. I think I stopped being in denial of this sometime around when I was standing in the parking lot of the town grocery store in the bumfuck mountains, at about 10 PM on a frigid January night, about ready to leave to go live with my girlfriend in the big city, listening to my mother tell me over the phone that I was no longer her daughter. I don’t really know what changed in me, then. At some point I realized there was no escape, as the sort of woman I was, as any woman at all. But I think I must have realized in that moment that even literally escaping, having my sister stuff blankets and food and clothes into her car and drive me and my girlfriend in the winter dark, miles and miles away from everything I had ever known, did not mean that I could really leave my past, myself, behind. What I did was worth it in many ways, as were many things I chose in the last year or so. But it should be made clear that these were choices made out of necessity, out of deep conflicts in my life, rather than empowerment. I chose not to transition, for example, and this will affect my life forever. It was a choice I made in accordance with my values, but it was not a choice that made me fulfilled or happy. If I had chosen to transition, it very likely would have turned out similarly. When I was trans-identified I believed strongly that it was only the things blocking me from transition that stopped me from being fulfilled or happy, and once I was able to transition I would be on a path towards contentment and meaning. But this was false; that would have not been so. One of the biggest things I have learned over the last year is that often, we-- all people, but women in particular-- are forced to make choices where there is no good option, only the least bad. The devastating part of making these choices is that we will always end up having doubts or regrets about whichever fork of the decision we chose. This is the case even if it genuinely was the least harmful decision or was, in fact, the only decision we could make. I strongly regret moving out of my parents’ house. I feel guilt beyond guilt, both for leaving in the first place, and for not returning home. My father was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer only a few months after I had left. I could have turned back. I could have chosen to turn towards them when they had no one else to comfort them or help them, but instead I abandoned them. I will likely regret this for the rest of my days alive. But imagine I had stayed. It is difficult for me to imagine ever being able to leave; my mother would have had the ultimate trump card with my father’s sickness and his eventual death, and I would have remained in her house, probably until she was gone herself. A forty-year old version of myself who had never lived apart from her abusive mother, who had to grieve her father under her mother’s thumb and knew it meant also the end of her independent life, would also have plenty of regrets. Occasionally I think to myself, “finally, I’ve arrived.” “Finally, here is my chance.” “Finally, I am home.” “Finally, I am loved.” “Finally, I am happy.” But things change. What I have managed to achieve is not permanent. When I moved out of my family’s home into my sister’s apartment, I thought, “finally,” then. It was the opportunity I had waited for all my life. I was going to go to school. I was going to get better, mentally. I was going to build myself up, bring myself up and out of my circumstances. And then my father got cancer. In the next few months I spent all my money helping someone, suddenly, under bizarre circumstances, I had to get a shitty job at a warehouse to make up the cash, and then my car’s engine blew-- right after I had spent serious money to get it to pass the state inspection-- in an unwalkable town surrounded by the Appalachians, with my sick father hours away. There was no “finally”, anymore. I had left my parents’ house thinking that I would get one. My decision was predicated on the assumption that there would be a “finally”. That I could rest, that something in me would get peace, that I could settle something down inside. What would I have chosen if I knew what would happen to me in the next four or five months alone? Could I have even faced the decision if I knew that “finally” would turn into “again and again”? I know now that I can’t make my decisions with the understanding that I will get a “finally”. It doesn’t stop me from hoping, anyway. I don’t know how to look into anyone’s face-- the faces of the gay kids watching those “it gets better” videos, the face of a young person considering transition, my own face in the mirror-- to say the truth, which is that you don’t get to run away from your past once and for all, but you have to keep running. I am capable of enduring much more, now, than I ever could, but the fact is that I have to endure a lot. Sometimes I think endurance is pretty much what life is. I can remember sitting in the psych hospital for days on end, with nothing and nobody familiar around me and nothing to do, and feeling all of the seconds drip past me as if I could hear each one annoyingly plink from a faucet. I realized then that endurance is peculiar; in many ways, you don’t have to do anything at all, yet it torments you all the same. I endured the hospital with the understanding that it would be over in a week. But I can’t endure most things in life like this. I endured my female state with the understanding it would be gone upon transitioning to male, but what many of us who end up not transitioning or who detransition ultimately realize is that this is not what transitioning does. Our femaleness follows us, dogs us, all the same. There is truly no “finally,” when it comes to being female, and that is what makes it so difficult. I can tell myself I can endure my father’s sickness with the knowledge that his suffering will end, but this is not how I will have to actually endure. I have to endure it knowing that his senseless, agonizing death in my early life will haunt me for the rest of it. I have to endure it knowing that the end, the “finally”, spells the irreversible destruction of his existence. I don’t have any answers to this. I wish I had a way to end this piece, but I suppose the point is that there are no ends to things, and nothing tidy to sum things up.

#writings

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tirsaroundtheworld · 7 years

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North Vietnam

After our first few weeks of traveling through the South of Vietnam we had already grasped the country's diversity and contrast. The North did not fail to keep up. # Entering the North of Vietnam means crossing the former Demilitarised Zone, the DMZ, that buffered between North and South Vietnam from 1954 to 1975, ironically then one of the most militarised areas in the world. Most of the bunkers and combat bases that once marked this 5km strip of land along either side of the Ben Hai river have vanished a long time ago, but some results of its history of many many bloody battles can still be found. From Dong Ha we explored the area and visited the old United Nations office building which is now a memorial, the Lien Huong bridge which connects the North and South, Vietnam's largest cemetery Truong Son where thousands of victims of the war are remembered and the very impressive Vinh Moc tunnels. This network of shallow, dark tunnels at different depths under the ground was dug by the inhabitants of the heavily bombed Vinh Moc to continue life during the war. It shows the unbelievable strength and endurance of these people of which some are still alive today to share their stories. Definitely an impressive experience! # After a fantastic drive from Dong Ha higher up into the mountains, we reached Phong Nha Ke Bang national park. This huge and beautiful park is filled with limestone rocks, ancient jungle, wildlife and impressive caves. We spent a few days exploring the area by motorbike and our absolute highlights were the Botanical Garden, where we hiked and climbed along the waterfall feeling like true Bear Grylls' apprentices, and Paradise Cave, a huge, breathtaking underground world with a depth of 31 km of which 1 km is accessible by a fairytale-like lit, wooden walkway. ✨ # After Phong Nha we speeded up and only stopped for a night in Vinh and in Ninh Binh, in the latter treating ourselves to a night in an 'expensive' ($22 😂) hotel. Ooooooh how we enjoyed the spacious room with window, even overlooking the city, the comfortable, not rock-hard bed and the clean and modern bathroom. And don't get us started on the breakfast buffet! 😍 Just what we needed to recharge and make our way to Cat Ba island. # Apart from boasting a beautiful national park, Cat Ba island is a great and not especially touristy way to visit the famous Ha Long Bay. We spent one day hiking through the park and climbing the highest peak overlooking the island; we really love heights and views (too bad it usually takes pains of climbs though). The second day we made a boat trip into Ha Long Bay, including a kayaking trip through the many limestone formations, a swim in the bay and a visit to Monkey Island. A fun day! # After our lovely time on Cat Ba island we started our final trip, destination Hanoi. At least we thought it would be our final trip; before we left the island, in the middle of nowhere, our motorbike broke! Slightly fearing that the frame had broken under our huge weight, we walked a few kilometers until we reached a small village where we were approached by a local who said he could help us. It soon turned out that he just wanted to make a ridiculous amount of money on us so we passed, but we did manage to lend his phone for a short call to the owner of the hostel where we had stayed. The guy had us picked up with a truck, helped us to find a mechanic to discover that 'just' some spokes had broken and got us a room for the night; such a hero! The next morning we left with a fixed motorbike and a new friend! # We made it, we reached Hanoi! Proud and happy we got settled and spent four days in Vietnam's wonderful capital. We had some sort of a schedule as we wanted to sell the motorbike, fix the camera issue and get our itinerary sorted while visiting Hanoi's most beautiful sights, exploring its culture and taste the many different types of streetfood. And as the experienced travelers that we by now are, we managed to do it all! We visited the 3rd long-term dead leader of this trip, Ho Chi Minh, for who we had to wait in line the longest by far. We strolled around the old quarter, looked at the different arts and crafts, joined a celebrational ritual at a temple, went to the Vietnamese Women's museum, walked around the Hoan Kiem lake, admired the Tran Quoc pagoda, drove to Bat Trang ceramic village to score some beautiful tableware and made many tea and smoothie pitstops at some of the many many hip coffee shops along the way. We ate enough bahn mi, springrolls, potato coconut snacks, noodles and rice with all kinds of sides and fried stuff for the rest of our lives. We extremely coincidentally literally bumped into the guy who was just texting us about our motorbike and who bought it for a solid $225 (meaning we spent only about $100 in our journey all around Vietnam!). 👍 Though we actually were a little bit sad to say goodbye to the beast, it was meant to be. And then it was time to leave! We spent almost 5 weeks in Vietnam, during which we dove right into its various sights and characteristics. Some differences between the North and the South of Vietnam (apart from architecture, dialects and clothing) that we noticed: # The weather! Where we would wear the lightest possible clothes in the South (except for Dalat) to deal with the hot sun, the North was cold and wet. With maximum temperatures between 15 an 20 degrees Celcius and a near constant blanket of clouds and rain, it felt like a proper Dutch autumn! This is also why we had to cancel our plans to visit Ha Giang in the upper North to enjoy the mountainous views dotted with rice terraces: the temperatures there would drop even more, making driving on a motorbike significantly more unpleasant, and the clouds and rain would take away all visibility. Meh. The bright side: the difference in climate can partially be explained by the hight and mountainous surroundings in the North, which treated us to the most breathtaking scenic routes. # The food in the South is rather sweet and spicy, which changes to salty and sour while moving towards the North. There are also different typical streetfood dishes, which varies per city rather than North or South. # The people in the South are more open and hospitable than those in the North, where interactions between us and the locals were rather formal. # The communist character of the country is better to be witnessed in the North, where the standards of life seem to be slightly lower than in the more developed and wealthier South, where the quality of guest houses and hostels deteriorates the higher we get, just as the quality of the roads, where public speakers share news items and propaganda at certain times during the day and where propaganda banners, pictures of Ho Chi Minh and flags decorate the streets. # Apart from Hanoi and Halong Bay, we found the North to be more rural and less touristic than the South. # Unimportant but noticeable: there are less avocados in the North! 🥑 Some things that are just Vietnamese in general: # Vietnamese people are literally burning their trash everywhere. Where-ever we would go, we would not find a single bin but many piles of all kinds of trash at the side of the road that would just be burnt. All the beautiful sights, parks, cities and beaches: they are all littered. 👎 # Even more than their Thai and Cambodian neighbours; Vietnamese people are transporting EVERYTHING on their scooters. From foodstalls to meat to live animals to crops to kilos of plastic foam to ladders to wooden frames to building materials and what not, in the end nothing surprised us anymore. Not even 5 adult people on 1 scooter. # Conical hats make great scarecrows, and we have seen a variety of creativity in the many farmlands we passed! # Shops selling specific products are concentrated in the same area. Their would be an entire street with duct tape shops, the next with locks, the next with meat, the next with scarfs and so on. # Sidewalks are not for pedestrians but for parking scooters. # The highways are deathtraps for motorbike riders. On a motorbike you are of the lowest rank. Big trucks and buses are competing who goes first, cars try to squeeze through and no other driver considers you. We lost count of the times we had to hit the brakes hard because someone felt like crossing the road right in front of us, or someone from the opposite direction came our way from the side, or a third person wanted to overtake 2 overtaking people... # Related to the previous point: people in Vietnam have made a habit out of honking. Not as a sign of warning, but as a sign to notify their presence. When approaching a crossing, starting to take someone over, exiting or entering the road they honk like maniacs. Honking has become such a normal thing that reaction is numbed (just like our eardrums) and as a result people are upgrading their vehicle's honk!! Sometimes we heard a honk from behind and expected a big truck, while in fact a schoolgirl on an electric bike got on the road.. 🙄 Happy to have survived this adventure without a scratch, but slightly regretting it is already over we got ourselves to the airport. Next up is Laos, but not before a short stop in the Northern Thai Chiang Mai and Pai! Pad Thai, here we come! 🇹🇭

#dong ha #phong nha #ha long bay #hanoi #vietnam #traveling #aroundtheworld #blog

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