It also genuinely really bothers me how so many people's "pro fat" posts are along the lines of "Yeah, fat is fine/good, eat whatever you want as much as you want!" Like yes that's a good sentiment and yes fear of fatness is what causes so many people to eat less than they otherwise would. I Understand This. But it's important to me that people understand. Someone being fat does not actually mean they eat more than a thin person does. Just because you're ostensibly defending or praising the fat body does not mean you aren't partaking in dangerous stereotyping
If you frame fatness as 1. A deviation from a 'normal' baseline and 2. Caused by overindulgence, you are perpetuating a hurtful stereotype and I don't want to see it. I don't care if you think it's a good thing or not. I don't like being assumed to eat more (or more sweets, etc) than the thin people in my life because of my size, and I especially don't like the causal link people assume. Some people's bodies just are fat without them having 'done anything' to cause that to happen.
I did not spend years of my life at university studying rome in classes that were over 50% women to let someone say "rome may be for the guys" on my post!!!
men aren't obsessed with Rome they're obsessed with being patriarchs who get to subjugate everyone around them. He doesn't care about Pliny the Elder, he's having wet dreams where he gets to be Caesar. It's unironically the new vegas thing, we're living in an age beyond on-the-nose satire. This was also mussolini's deal
the word "transandrophobia" does not imply a systemic hatred of men it implies a systemic hatred of trans men. notice that prefix? trans? we're not talking about cis men here, stop changing the subject. we're talking about the systemic oppression of trans men.
What Hermitcraft can teach us about internalized ableism and how not to talk to people with disabilities.
[timestamp for the quote is 2:16:00 if the link doesn't work]
Skizz made this comment 3 months ago, and it was so appalling I haven't been able to stop thinking about it ever since.
CW: ableist attitudes and brief implications of hypothetical su*cide
Context: Skizz and Scar were having a chat about taking care of your health. Scar was giving advice like "You gotta have a good sleep schedule, a clean diet, some kind of physical activity, something to stimulate your mind, and companionship with loved ones."
Expanding on that, Scar added, "You gotta have something to stimulate your brain otherwise you end up just staring at a wall for hours at a time."
Skizz then remarked about how Scar is especially qualified to talk about this sort of thing, "Because... let's call it what it is, dude, if anyone has had a reason to, uh- stare at a wall and... I'm not trying to get dark but... 'swim down,' y'know? It's you. And that's why I've always associated you with strength because you are legitimately one of the strongest people I've ever met."
(I feel like you can visibly see how much this offends Scar.)
I'd like to take an educational approach to this post, so we can all hopefully learn from Skizz' disrespectful comment.
It's impossible for any of us to fully understand what it's like to live with Scar's numerous disabilities and complex health conditions. We will (hopefully) never know what we would do if we were in his position, but our inability to grasp that reality often leads to the conclusion that we wouldn't be able to "overcome" everything he's been through.
This is often the case when hearing the stories and experiences of people with disabilities, and it typically results in them being reduced to a source of "inspiration" for able-bodied people. In the sense of: "If they can get through all those hardships, I can get through whatever struggles I'm going through!"
This is called "inspiration p*rn" or "disability p*rn" and it's unfortunately very pervasive in our culture today, especially on social media.
[source: bezzymigrane.com]
Our struggles serve as lessons in resilience, reducing us to simplified âinspirationâ for those who will never live our reality. People gawk at our hardships with solicited sympathy, saying, âIâm glad that isnât me.â
âStella Young described inspiration p*rn as the way society turns disabled people into motivational stories just for existing,â explains Ehab Youssef, a licensed clinical psychologist at Mentalyc. âItâs when someone says, âIf they can do it, whatâs your excuse?â or shares a feel-good video of a disabled person doing something ânormalâ as if that alone is extraordinary."
Scar has responded to "compliments" about being "strong" or "inspirational" before by expressing that, "A lot of people don't know know what they're fully capable of until they're in that kind of situation," and "The human spirit is a powerful thing when pushed to its limits." (paraphrasing based on quotes I remember) Which is the most polite and tactful way to dismiss ableist remarks that I've ever seen.
Some people reading this may think, "But Scar is inspirational for having such positive attitude about his disabilities! He's so optimistic despite going through so many awful things, and that's admirable!" But that's another harmful idea rooted in internalized ableism.
[source: bezzymigrane.com]
âInspiration p*rn sometimes promotes the idea that disabled people can, and should, always have a positive attitude and outlook about their situation or communicate things in an uplifting way," adds psychotherapist and clinical consultant Steph Fowler.
...This mindset pressures disabled people to always be exceptional. âPeople in the disabled personâs life may not recognize inspiration p*rn as harmful, and may perpetuate these ideas by suggesting the person needs to try harder, practice gratitude, or have a better attitude about their experience,â Fowler says.
We can be inspiring and sick or disabled, but dehumanizing us by suggesting that we are somehow more worthy if we have a positive attitude that inspires nondisabled people holds us all back.
I believe Skizz' statement about Scar's "strength" is rooted in this ideology.
Which brings me back to his quote- where he implies that if anyone has had a reason to sink into depression and end their own life, it's Scar.
I cannot express how inappropriate and outright disrespectful this assertion is. Scar has mentioned once or twice before that when he initially got sick, he struggled with depression for a long time, but that's all he's said on the subject. Skizz is assuming a lot about what Scar went through (and what Scar is comfortable sharing about himself publicly) by making such a bold, careless remark like this.
Implying that anyone would "have a reason to" end their own life is beyond disrespectful in any context, but it's far worse when said to a person with disabilities... and on a live stream at that.
[source: goodmenproject.com]
People with disabilities are just like everybody else. Theyâre complex and sometimes flawed. They hide insecurities and struggles and inner demons that they might not want the outside world to see.
We are not perfect, angelic human beings by virtue of having a disability. Life just doesnât work that way, and you canât pigeonhole us as brave or permanently optimistic or whatever innocuous stereotype helps you process our disabilities better.
Scar is not strong for wanting to live despite the challenges his health and disabilities bring. Scar is not inspirational because of how much he's gone through and how he's remained optimistic throughout it all.
Scar is inspirational because he's an incredible artist, a delightful entertainer, and a wonderful human being.
He's always teaching others about his building and design methods and encouraging people to step out of their comfort zone and try new things.
Multiple hermits have said that Scar is wonderful to work with, and the only hermit they've never once had any conflict with personally or professionally.
You don't need to look to Scar's disabilities to find "inspiration," Scar is an awe-inspiring person just by nature of who he is at heart.
-
I'd like to conclude with some advice on how to recognize and prevent the spread of disability p*rn, so hopefully we can come away from this post having learned something valuable.
[source: bezzymigrane.com]
âThe biggest shift has to be seeing disabled people as people, not symbols of perseverance, not life lessons, just people living their lives,â says Youssef. âInstead of focusing on how someone âovercomesâ their disability, we should be asking: Are we making the world accessible enough so they donât have to overcome so much?â
...When someone calls a disabled person âinspiring,â I ask them why. I encourage them to think about whether thatâs because the person is actually inspiring or if they just happen to have a disability.
Take a moment to question the content youâre being served and the things youâre sharing to limit the spread. Instead, focus on stories that celebrate the person as a whole, not just as a representation of disability.
For those that didn't click the link (do try to get in the habit please): The trans man in question was first in a men's prison unit, where he was getting abused. He was then transferred to a women's unit, "for safety", where the abuse continued (in his own judgement) worse than before.
This is not about how trans men should be incarcerated in men's prisons because "women's prisons are too dangerous for them", or about trans men "having it worse than trans women", or about any kind of easy fix. It's about the common assumption that trans men and transmascs can safely be in women's prisons; which is an assumption that shapes legislature, judicial decisions, and causes a lack of safety precautions and consequences.
In a lesser sense, this is also about how this assumption is often considered to be a "privilege" over trans women, who are commonly considered much less safe in their "agab-aligned" prison than trans men are, due to the existence of V-coding. This supposedly leaves trans men with the assumed "privilege" of having safety in at least one type of prison, and trans women with none, since they're v-coded in men's prisons and a (perceived) "male threat" in women's prisons.
But there is no inherent "safety from abuse" in a women's ward (or women's spaces in general; this goes hand in hand with not believing victims where the abuser is a woman) for genderqueer people perceived as female (or anybody else, for that matter). The victim in this article describes experiences of sexual assault in the women's ward very similar to v-coding, as well as simultaneous punishments for being perceived as a "male threat" and an inherent danger to the other inmates!
This shows that trans men and transmascs (and I would wager any other type of person who is not cisperisex, regardless of identity or c/agab / c/asab) are at a heightened risk of gender-targeted abuse in both men's and women's prisons, just like trans women are too! Sometimes it's (trans)misogyny, sometimes it's (perceived or not) proximity to maleness, sometimes it's exorsexism, sometimes it's all of it. But cis-gender non-conformity puts all of us on a silver platter for targeted abuse, and all of it needs addressing â This is the key takeaway here. We are all at similar risks.
And whilst we're at it, let's not forget about the targeted abuse of trans men and transmasculine people in ICE facilities (also a "women's" center, in these cases), specifically for their being-a-man. It's all the same problem.
for the lovely lovely deafies out there who want to get involved in direct action you absolutely 100% cannot ever bring a hearing aid or cochlear implant with bluetooth to any direct action. bluetooth devices all carry a unique signal that can be used to identify you if it's picked up at a direct action. go with a [more] hearing buddy and communicate in sign language. if you don't mutually know a sign language then come up with gestures. do not risk your freedom because you want to have your hearing aid/cochlear implant at the action. it's not worth it.
flock cameras are also now tracking bluetooth device signatures when you pass them. if you drive past a flock camera with your bluetooth-enabled hearing aid or cochlear implant, the flock camera knows you passed through
Wait I just realized this is gonna apply to all cgms and most if not all insulin pumps. Theyâre all Bluetooth devices, itâs essential to how they work
Iâm sorry but I think if you are Choosing to play a blind character and not do anything roleplay OR gameplay wise to engage with the blindness, instead Choosing to say âdonât worry guys, because of my god now I See Forwardsâ then your character didnât need to be blind in their backstory in the first place. Magic cure. Thatâs a magic cure. Thatâs the ableist trope magic cure.
AMERICANS!!! DO NOT DO THIS TO FLOCK 'SECURITY' CAMERAS. REPOST AND SPREAD THE WORD
do not get IR blocking fabric or thick wool to cover your nose and mouth
do not get IR blocking sunglasses since facial recognition has moved up to targeting and identifying the upper face
do not avoid having your phone or any bluetooth devices around these cameras as they can detect and track those signals
do not buy cheap green lasers 1 milliwatt or above from etsy or walmart or amazon (i will not try and find a link if you ask)
do not use them to fry those fuckers from a distance damage the delicate inner sensors by pointing the beam in the lenses
AND unless you want to cost Flock more money in repairs, do not buy a small circle saw or a reciprocating saw and cut down the pole
OR do not climb said poles, spray paint on the solar panels, cover the lens with paint or a sticker, then use bolt cutters to sever the wires
when doing all these things, DO NOT avoid using latex gloves as fingerprints can leak through
DO NOT USE DEFLOCK TO FIND FLOCK SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS NEAR YOU
remember, flock is for YOUR safety :) even though crime rates have not gone down since they were implemented, they're being abused to track down exes and s/os, and many face pools or houses or schools or gymnasiums! Where there are no liscence plates to be found!
DO NOT DO THESE THINGS and enjoy a life under surveillance!
enjoy living in the country where 87,000 of these cameras were used to track down a woman who got an abortion!
enjoy living in the country where there's no consequences for a flock exec to watch a inside of a gymnastics place without their knowledge!
Remember, this is their American Dream.
EDIT: 53 cities have cancelled contracts with flock and are now turning to Axon, in which đș invested 1-5 million dollars earlier this year. Do not limit your focus to one brand.
for all the insane batshit nonsense that sucks about mcytblr, i think tumblr at large could learn a LOT from some of the posts about the skizz situation.
at the end of the day, i'm not trying to cancel whatever indie creator had the last big scandal. i'm not trying to ruin their life and get rid of their internet presence or anything. i just am not comfortable watching them or their show or whatever, while knowing what they said or did. having maga friends or making racist jokes or whatever.
we've definitely posted about this before but if i see one more person act like the only forms of childhood trauma that exist are abuse from family or sexual assault i will actually start crying and it will be so so so loud everyone will hear it from every corner of the earth
THE SCHOOL SYSTEM !!! PEER ABUSE !!!!! ISOLATION !!!!!!!! RACISM !!! SEXISM !!!!!! MEDICAL ABUSE !!!!!! NONCONSENSUAL SURGERY !!!! POVERTY !!!! SO MUCH MORE !!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Natural disasters! I never see anyone talk about that one and as a result I spent years thinking that watching my hometown get destroyed on the news and subsequently having to uproot my entire life at the age of seven wasn't Real Trauma because there was no Abuserâą
We should all be talking about KOSA. The bill would mean the end of the open internet in the US, and it was just approved by a House committee for a floor vote. The act is ostensibly designed to regulate the age of social media users. However, it actually deanonymizes the internet and allows the government to sue LGBTQ+ websites.
Unsurprisingly, the Heritage Foundation is one of the main lobbying groups behind this push. They have publicly stated they want to use the law to restrict LGBTQ+ and abortion-related content. Blocking children under 16 from accessing the internet means young people will be isolated within their communities. They cannot discuss LGBTQ+ issues with their online peers. They could not request help to access abortion clinics. Senator Marsha Blackburn, who once personally sent the FBI to my doorstep to harass me, admits the law is intended to shield âminor children from the transgender [sic] in this culture.â
âThe through-line couldnât be clearer: destroying online anonymity is a way for government to be able to identify ÂŹâ and ultimately punish â dissenters,â explains Ari Cohn, lead counsel for tech policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The DHS has already subpoenaed hundreds of anonymous accounts tracking and protesting ICE. KOSA would make it even easier for the government to access your data.
I learned about the murder of Kitty Genovese in two separate psychology classes, at two separate universities. It was studied as an example of the âbystander effectâ, which is a phenomenon that occurs when witnesses do not offer help to a victim when there are other people present.
I was told by my professors that Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old unmarried woman who was attacked, raped, and brutally murdered on her way home from her shift as manager of a bar. I was told that numerous people witnessed the attack and her cries for help but didnât do anything because they âassumed someone else wouldâ. Nobody intervened until it was too late.Â
What I was not told was that Kitty Genovese was a lesbian who lived more or less openly with her partner in the Upper West Side and managed a gay bar.Â
Now⊠is it likely that people overheard Kittyâs cries for help and ignored them because they thought someone else would deal with it? Or, perhaps, did they ignore her because they knew she was a lesbian and just didnât care?
Maybe thatâs not the case. Maybe it was just a random attack. Maybe her neighbours didnât know she was gay, or didnât care.
But itâs a huge chunk of information to leave out about her in a supposedly scientific study of events, since her sexuality made her much more vulnerable to violent crimes than the average person. And itâs a dishonour to her memory.
RIP Kitty Genovese. Society may only remember you for how you died, but I will remember you for who who were.
I also never knew this about Kitty Genovese, but I do know that, in fact, many of the dozen (not thirty-eight) people who witnessed some part of the attack (which took place after 3AM, on a chilly night in March when most peopleâs windows were closed) tried to help in some way.
One shouted out his window for the attacker to leave her alone, which did successfully scare the man off temporarily.
Another called the police but, seeing her still on her feet, said only that there had been a fight but the woman seemed to be okay.
And when Kitty Genovese was finally attacked in a vestibule where she couldnât be seen from outside, Karl Ross, a neighbor, saw what was happening but was too frightened himself to go to her rescueâso he started calling other neighbors to ask what he should do. Eventually one of them told him to call the police, which he did, and the woman he called, Sophie Farrar, rushed out to help Kitty even though she didnât know whether the attacker was gone.
Kitty Genovese died in the arms of a neighbor who tired to help and comfort her while they waited for the police and ambulance to arrive. Kitty was in fact still alive, although mortally wounded, when the ambulance reached the scene.
The man who saw the final stabbing? Who panicked and called other neighbors first instead of the police? The man who said, infamously, that he âdidnât want to get involvedâ because he was reluctant to turn to the police for help? He was thought to be gay himself. He was a friend of Kitty and Mary Annâs. After being interviewed by the police he took a bottle of vodka to Mary Ann and sat with her, trying to comfort her.
So, no. I donât think the evidence indicates that Kitty Genoveseâs neighbors let her die because she was a lesbian, because Kitty Genoveseâs neighbors tried to help.
See also: Debunking the Myth of Kitty Genovese (The New York Post)
A Call for Help (The New Yorker)
(Also, going by the content of the murdererâs confession, it was indeed a random attack.)
how on EARTH was this âscientificallyâ studied but the details gotten so wrong and the wrong as hell conclusion published and taught in schools?!?!?! where were those scientists observation skills?! on vacation?!
How to take facts and turn them into an urban legend that gets taught in schools: Make a bad made-for-t.v.-movie about it, watch it, believe everything the movie says, annnnnnnd go! Thatâs how it gets taught as this supposed âscientific study.â Someone got fucking lazy.
A book about this, âNo One Helpedâ: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Nonfiction this year! if anyone wants to check it out try your local library!
I want to add one crucial but telling detail: the story about the 38 witnesses didnât come out of nowhere, it was handed to the New York Times City Editor by the Police Commissioner in order to distract said editor from asking unwelcome questions about a different case, and the story that was eventually written and which made headlines was almost entirely composed from police sources.Â
At the time, the NYPD was coming under quite a bit of criticism about rising crime rates and the seeming ineffectiveness of the policeâs response to the problem. In the Kitty Genovese case, even though people did in fact call the police, it took about an hour for them to show up and the first detectives didnât arrive until three hours later (at which point they mostly spent their time interrogating Kittyâs girlfriend about their relationship, because for âsome reasonâ they considered her to be the most likely suspect for the murder. In fact, the police wouldnât catch the actual killer until six days later when he was picked up for having a stolen TV in the trunk of his car, at which point he admitted to having committed a total of three murders). Itâs not an accident that one of the things to come out of the Genovese case was the establishment of the 9-1-1 system, because at the time that the attack happened, you had to call the specific number of a particular police precinct and it was up to the duty sergeant on the desk to take action - which was usually to send someone out from the precinct to the address reported, because cops on foot patrol wouldnât be outfitted with two-way radios for several years.
Itâs more than a little convenient that at a time when the NYPD is coming in for public scrutiny about its ability to do the basic job of responding to reports of crimes in a timely fashion, the Police Commissioner happens to hand the City Editor of the cityâs most prominent newspaper a story which puts the blame for the slow response on the apathy and inaction of New Yorkers, neatly absolving the NYPD for its ridiculously poor performance in this case in particular and its response to the rise in crime in general.Â
Itâs also quite telling that the New York Times ran with the story the way they did. Itâs not like there werenât people on the scene who said they had called the police, or that the basic facts about how many witnesses there were and what they had seen didnât match the account that the commissioner had given. The writer the Times sent out chose not to include this information because âit would have ruined the story.â The Times wanted to frame the story as a narrative about how the root of NYCâs problems was urban apathy and anomie - and the news organizations that picked up on the Timesâ reporting and made the Kitty Genovese case a national and global story wanted to frame the story as proof that NYC was a dangerous urban jungle that deserved its decline because of the bad character of its residents.Â
I think the takeaway from this case isnât just about sloppy scientific research, itâs that you have to always consider how official narratives are used to assign blame to specific individuals and groups and absolve larger institutions of responsibility.Â
no i mean addiction. gambling addiction and self harm addiction included. we don't have to avoid these words like they're a bad thing. the stigma will exist regardless, so if someone says "what, you support addicts?" instead of saying "i support people struggling with substance abuse" you can just say "yes." no caveats, yeah i support addicts. i support homeless people. i support homeless addicts. it's fine
While we are at it I need nonblack people to stop saying âYNâ and âđ„·đŸâ just to get around saying antiblack racial slurs. Yes that includes that stupid shit where white people go âooh but I said nega not-â I donât give a shit. You know damn well what you meant. Fuck off. Itâs a insta block from me for anyone who does this shit and think itâs funny or whatever donât pmo.
And before someone fucking says âerm are you referring to the fanfic / shipping term? How is your name offen-â obviously no Iâm not referring to that and anyone who is using it to mean âyour nameâ types it with a slash -> (y/n) *NOT* âynâ. Like. I need nonblacks to stop randomly regurgitating aave they see or hear without knowing what it fucking means and misusing it to hell and back thinking itâs cool/ trendy/ or something worthy of mockery. It means young nigga. Stop fucking using it if youâre not black lol
something i think a lot of white people don't understand is that saying racist antiblack things 'ironically' 'as a joke' 'satirically' or 'as bait' is still... just being racist. as if saying 'bait used to be believable' somehow undoes the disrespect? as if pointing out that its probably a bot or a psyop nullifies the slurs? as if informing me that its a meme/copypasta/reference means you're not at fault for repeating them? as if any of this is okay? it doesn't work like that. why is the hatred and disrespect of black people acceptable background noise for you? why do you find it funny?
i know most leftists agree that everybody should have a right to food, water, shelter, and healthcare but i think a vitally important fifth pillar is privacy. people should not be compelled to be tracked, monitored, or to share personal space with others to access their other essential rights
