Azathot

Z72.52 Putting the casual in casualty since 97 profile pic made by https://www.tumblr.com/valkyriedraws

[charlesoberonn]

America has a weird relationship with cults where they’re terrified of small cults (or organizations they think are cults) but completely normalized massive cults that hurt many more people (eg: LDS Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Amish, Scientology, most Megachurches)

[charlesoberonn]

To anybody asking if the Amish are a cult, the answer is yes, very much so.

They’re a high control group that isolate you from society. The cult decides how you dress, how you behave, who you marry and how. They control what you know, blocking all information from the outside world. They control how you feel and what you’re allowed to think with threats of both social and supernatural harm. They’re a cult.

[charlesoberonn]

The best method to determine if a group is a cult, in my opinion, is Steven Hassan’s (cult expert and former cult member himself) BITE model.

BITE stands for Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, and Emotional Control.

The more points a group “scores” on the model, the more of a cult it is.

I think this model is the best one for several reasons:

It’s more nuanced than “cult” or “not cult” and doesn’t make false equivalences between groups

It’s versatile, applying to groups big and small, and cults of all kinds, religious, political, financial, etc.

It focuses on what’s important, which is what the cult does to its members, and those members’ experiences, and not on irrelevant details like how uncommon their doctrines are or whether they have a charismatic leader

[charlesoberonn]

This is a great example of Thought Control used by cults whenever they’re confronted with criticism.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

#you might notice that there are a lot of similarities between cult techniques and those of abusive partners#and that is an important thing to be aware of

yah that goes in the post

[charlesoberonn]

The creator of the BITE Model considers abusive relationships to be two-person cults.

[bogleech]

Yeah, having extended family who are radically religious and badly abuse their kids, I’ve noticed all my life that it’s the same exact thing, and it goes far beyond both cults AND abusive interpersonal relationships.

I mean, think of the core psyop of both: “you should just be grateful that I do so much for someone as unworthy as yourself.” This isn’t just how fundies write their God’s dialog or how my cousins were all raised, but how law enforcement and the justice system respond to criticisms of their non-stop human rights violations. How whole governments characterize their endless war crimes. How the military brainwashes its sacrificial human pawns. How megacorps like disney and billionaire manchildren like trump or musk feel about their supposed benefit to the economy. It’s how countless employers large and small want to interpret their relationship with their workers. How celebrities can frame their “contribution” to popular culture. For that matter it’s how some people even think of their pets. It’s not so much “this is how cults operate” but that this is just simply what the most basic primordial human power tripping innately looks like. Absolutely every facet of human life and society operates on this model depending on who is at the top of it, all the way up the scale from a one-sided friendship to a global ideology. They’re all made of people, and this is what people do when they’re selfish.

[pawtheticpuppyboy]

I think when a sub says "you can do whatever you want to me" what they're actually wanting is to not make decisions anymore, and they think by saying this they can foist the decision making off on the dom without having to do any of the work beforehand. But unfortunately to get to the Not Making Choices part of kink you do in fact have to make a Lot Of Choices beforehand and communicate those choices to your partner. This is an essential part of the process and skipping it is both unsafe and unfair for whoever you're playing with.

Not Making Choices is the reward for communicating clearly, not the default

[homalothecium]

To people who say this, as someone who has been there, reasons you might find yourself wanting to say "you can do whatever you want to me":

It feels flirty (situationally dependent. This is not the use OP is talking about but make sure you've *already negotiated* before, don't say it in response to genuine questions. If anything else on this list feels true to you, don't let being flirty be an excuse to say it anyway/not communicate/not address those other factors.)

Wanting to please/prioritize your partner (not a bad desire, but they likely want a clear understanding of your own wants and limits so that they can not only do what they want to do but have the Impact they want.)

Fear of seeming too needy, demanding, not submissive enough (maybe ask for them to share some of their desires and limits first so it doesn't feel like you're leading the conversation right out the gate, and understand that you having to trust that if you ask for something they don't care for they'll say no is the same trust they have to have in you.) (note- some Doms DO complain about subs being demanding, or asking for things right out the gate, treating them as kink dispensers. Subs Can be shitty like that and it's fair to complain, but also Doms can do this unreasonably, and in either case people overhearing these complaints can absorb that "don't be demanding, treat your Dom as a person" incorrectly as "don't ask for things")

Not knowing what you want (generally you can just state this outright, I recommend including a request for suggestions or brainstorming, or a discussion of a kink tasting, "Can we try a couple things and see what clicks?" If they're not up to work with you on figuring it out then you will have to just figure out what you want by yourself or with someone else.)

Decision fatigue/desire to set aside making choices (you can in fact also say this bluntly. Being offered a simple two options to pick between works for some people, so you can suggest that as a starting point. You may also need to get some down time to start with, prior to subbing. Subspace is not a replacement for self care and the human need for relaxation. It can help with decision fatigue to have time in subspace, so before doing more in depth scenes needing signifact negotiating you can do smaller ones to help that, but you do need to make Some decisions and do communication upfront for that even if you find ways to safely minimize the decisions to start with. You could ask for suggestions and make the only decisions be indicating your interest/lack, fill out kink interest worksheets so it's on paper instead of a conversation and can be broken up into more manageable chunks, or do a tasting type scene where all you say is yes and no. Seriously try to give yourself downtime and meet your needs without Just putting them on another person though.)

Shame about expressing desires (let yourself be embarrassed. Turn red, stammer, say "I need a minute", push yourself to voice at least one thing. You don't need to be suave in a negotiation, and most Doms will find it cute/hot. And probably do some reflecting on where that shame comes from, how it does and doesn't align with your values, and unpack that some with a professional or at least a trusted friend.)

Fear of setting boundaries/voicing limits (this is a serious one. If you can't do this in the negotiation do you think you can safeword in the moment? You simply Have to find a way to set those boundaries to be able to play. That's not to say you can't Work on this while in a kink relationship, but you need to start working on it Now, and make sure that your Dom understands that that's where you're at and is okay with being in those troubled waters with you. Do Not Be Shitty if they are not up for it. Let them leave without guilting them.)

Lack of concern about your own wellbeing (first of all goddamn do I get it. Depression is hard, ideation warps perception of everything, trauma can destroy your sense of self preservation, I used to think trusting someone meant not minding if they did hurt you rather than having faith that they won't. If you can't find it in you to care about not being hurt for your own sake, care about it for theirs. They almost certainly don't want to trigger you, hurt you in a way you dislike, abuse you, or kill you. If they do want to do those things then you saying what you don't want won't stop them, so in that case it doesn't matter. But they probably don't, that's why they're negotiating with you. Your lack of concern doesn't outweigh their concern for your wellbeing, so let them know the relevant info.)

Thinking about what fits here can get you to a place to address issues, accomodate your needs, and communicate effectively.

[suncaptor]

linked tree (includes options to donate to Ghanaian projects)

petition to show support

[moringmark]

[skidmark4-deactivated20251026]

i get high & start actn like joe biden

[delirious--mistakes]

[captain-price-returns]

[rontieremodeled-deactivated2023]

*me flirting*

so… have you… learned anything interesting lately?

[rontieremodeled-deactivated2023]

*me flirting*

so… have you… learned anything interesting lately?

[upsettingandunfortunateclasshate]

My son's tattoo hurt me deeply

When Tess Morgan's son came home with a tattoo, she was griefstricken. She knew her reaction was OTT (he's 21) but it signalled a change in their relationship

This is gold this, absolute gold, the most over the top melodramatic hysterical ridiculous thing I’ve ever read

[brawlcloud]

This is actually so interesting to read- it’s from 2012 but its full of the same anxieties, even some of the same phrasing that many of the guardian’s later pieces on transness use. really hammers home how much of the terfism that emerged in the late 10s was middle class mothers angry at a loss of control over their adult children- whether that be their bodies or their friends or their opinions- and making that everyone’s problem because they have the power to do so

[monkey-cat-vivi]

He says, “I’m still the same person.”

I look at him, sitting there, my 21-year-old son. I feel I’m being interviewed for a job I don’t even want. I say, “But you’re not. You’re different. I will never look at you in the same way again. It’s a visceral feeling. Maybe because I’m your mother. All those years of looking after your body – taking you to the dentist and making you drink milk and worrying about green leafy vegetables and sunscreen and cancer from mobile phones. And then you let some stranger inject ink under your skin. To me, it seems like self-mutilation. If you’d lost your arm in a car accident, I would have understood. I would have done everything to make you feel better. But this – this is desecration. And I hate it.”

[quasi-normalcy]

Also just the classism of her associating tattoos with “vest tops, dogs on chains, broken beer glasses”; like, just say you hate poor people

[interested-individual]

They got rid of all that other stuff and now all we can do is drink each others blood and blow smoke in each others eyes, forever

[interested-individual]

Until theres nothing left to drink and nothing left to smoke

[giragirameganedan]

[corrya]

I think about this like once a day

[bauliya]

so women are supposed to grin and bear the books, the comics, the movies, the plays, the tv shows, the stories, the sci-fi, the translated ancient poems, the fucking millennia of men writing about their self inserts torturing women and it being declared as High Art by other men, we’re supposed to read it in our free time, study it in classrooms, include their styles in our own writing, accept their cultural influence as natural, watch it in the cinema, write about it, talk about it, accept it, aspire it, but men can’t tolerate three seconds of female wish fulfilment of a woman snapping the wrist of a creep without feeling personally kicked in the balls.

[darkshrimpemotions]

This reminds me of something I observed in college while I was doing my honors thesis on women in modern horror films. I watched a LOT of horror during that time as part of my research, and sometimes that was done with my family around.

And my dad and brothers? Were deeply disturbed by the movie Jennifer’s Body. I was flabbergasted. It’s not scary! It’s not even that gory. But they were horrified by it. These men who grew up on 70s slashers were legitimately shook by 90 minutes of Megan Fox eating a few teenage boys, mostly off-screen.

Similarly, my all-male reading panel for my thesis? Were so disturbed by my synopsis of the film Teeth that they couldn’t even talk about it. One of them said he couldn’t look at his wife for a week after reading it.

Again, grown-ass men who study and teach media for a living. Who definitely watch and enjoy horror movies. One of whom was a huge Tarantino buff. We watched and read worse in his intro to mass media class! But one movie about a girl whose vag could bite was enough to haunt him.

Then of course you have things like the Gone Girl backlash–men yelling that Amy Dunne is evil and women clamoring to assure everyone that they know she is not someone to emulate–the backlash against Carol Danvers, and, more recently, the griping from MRAs against the upcoming film Hustlers, which is about strippers scamming their Wall Street clients.

My conclusion? Most men–at least most straight, cisgender men, who are both my sample population and most of the ones whining that Carol is a “villain”–are perfectly fine with, and desensitized to, media where men do violence to women (horror movies), or men do violence to men (horror and action movies). They’re even sort of fine when women do violence to women (“ooooo cat fight!”).

But they get intensely uncomfortable when women are depicted doing any kind of violence to men, especially in films that tilt the balance of power to the other side of the m/f gender binary beyond a single moment or scene.

So woman as flesh-eating monster with men as her preferred cuisine? Woman who responds to unwanted sexual contact by biting it off? Woman who frames her cheating husband for murder? Woman whose response to harassment–behavior that many of the loudest whiners know is both creepy and reflective of their own thoughts/actions–is to break something?

Too scary. Unacceptable. Disturbing. These men hate being presented with the idea, even in fiction, that their position of power is socially constructed, that it could easily be flipped the other way. It terrifies them.

In feeling that terror, they experience a tiny modicum of what living, existing, moving, being perceived as a woman in the world is like.

And they flinch every time.

[tzikeh]

Here have a newspaper comic from 1993

[silvermoon424]

UNFATHOMABLY based hive mother. Let's pour one out for our fallen bee comrades.

[silima]

in loving memory of my favorite shirt

[silima]

turmeric kun update

[awesomepudding]

I don't know who needs to learn this but, the chemical causing the stain in tumeric (Curcumin) is easily destroyed by uv light. You can remove stains by leaving whatever shirt, cooking dish, etc stained by it in full sun for like half a day and it'll be gone.

[milanesa42]

“The employees need a larger salary” “hmmmm large celery”

[orphanedsource]

the place I work at remodeled these split gendered restrooms into “inclusive restrooms” and never told us what they meant while construction was ongoing. I need you to know every atom of potential criticism or whining that could’ve happened disappeared when people found out this meant we got 10 fully separate private bathrooms with sinks inside. I’ve not heard a single person crack a joke about the inclusive signage. this is the world TERFs are trying to steal from you