Kat | they/she | 30+ I have the humor of a 10 year old. All the things here will probably reflect that. I tag for triggers, spoilers, and post appropriately labeled NSFW art. if I am not tagging something you need to block I'll try to add it..
sorry to everyone tagging this "malicious helplessness" "learned incompetence" "some straight girl's bf who sucks at doing the dishes on purpose" etc etc etc but this post was actually about disability.
This kind of response to things I say about sex work, which isn't always phrased like this but almost always focuses on me being male or a man or my pronouns, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of why mansplaining is bad.
I am a sex worker. I have been for a decade. The majority of people I know are sex workers and I'm embedded in sex worker community. I started before 18 and have done it in brothels, cars, my own home, clients' homes, saunas, and hotels.
It's absolutely reasonable to criticize men who speak on issues they don't experience like an authority, especially when they speak over women to do it. It is not reasonable to raise someone's gender (or in this case, pronouns) as a reason their thoughts aren't worth hearing when the issue is one they do face.
I see people bringing up that I'm trans in response to things like this, as a way to legitimize my speech. The reason I refuse to do so, despite many of my experiences selling sex being pre-transition, is that I equally do not want cis men who have done sex work to be silenced on the topic.
We need more active and former sex workers to speak out. That won't happen if we're dismissing those who do.
someone made a terrible youtube video searching for the source of this dog picture like it's lost media and he on-screen scrolls by a live tumblr link to this post before claiming i deleted my account, pulling up a wayback machine archived page, and then lying about contacting my ex boyfriend for more information
“I never let my chronic illness stop me from doing things!”
That’s nice, I do. Not listening to my body is part of what got me this bad. Sometimes you have to balance taking care of yourself and achieving your ultimate goals.
Way too many people are comfortable making their own personal discomfort about their past other people’s problem. I was an autistic little fat girl, injecting testosterone every week doesn’t change that for me. At one time that’s who I was and it fundamentally shaped my life in a way that I know for a fact it wouldn’t have if I’d been an autistic fat boy. I’ll always carry a little piece of her inside me, and that’s okay. If you would find that viewpoint on your life invalidating then that’s completely fine, you don’t have to identify that way. How I or anyone else views their pretransition selves has no bearing on you, says nothing about you and is most importantly not up for you to decide.
tl;dr: all "algorithmically" pushed stuff on a newsfeed is mostly ads. nothing that's really surprising form this vulture article, but it is dismal and makes me grateful for one website where you only see things from people you follow WITHOUT horrible short-form video content
I think this idea of transfems can only be safe around transfems is... I mean it's a problem because it's false, right, someone being the same demographic as you is no guarantee that they won't be toxic or abusive. And if you're restricting your social groups based on criteria like that, you'll have less options, you'll be more isolated, you'll be more reliant on fewer people and thus more vulnerable to abuse. The safety is an illusion.
#it's lesbian separatism all over again#it will not save anyone. just a bomb shelter that gets smaller and smaller#kicking out anyone who doesn't behave
Funny that the stereotypical cynic is an idealist who aged out of it. In my experience, the reverse is true. I was an extreme cynic as a teenager and then I noticed how profoundly limiting it was, and also that "cynics are cool and smart" was a message that was being constantly reinforced by corporate media for some reason.
#yes! cynicism reads as very juvenile to me#and yes prev often stemming from teen pain
Yeah, like I see black-pilled people on here and my default reaction isn't "oh, these must be world-weary old warriors who've lost their faith in humanity", it's "these people are in their 20s and need a hobby"
I also think that the present era has proven that authoritarian leaders don't actually want a population of wide-eyed idealists, they want a population of jaded assholes who are convinced that everyone is lying, any resistance is either a scam or doomed to failure, and nothing can ever get better.
we're moving to an internet where children would be banned from reaching out for help and friendship online but abusive parents can post their children's every second online to humiliate and expose them for money with no pushback
it's weird that "i'm nonbinary, but i have a job" was turned into a "lol, being nonbinary is super unprofessional" meme rather than an actual conversation about nonbinary employment discrimination.
idk i think a lot of yall forget that child sexual assault is like an actual sex crime with real victims and not just "icky" and your biggest issue with csa and fictional depictions of csa is that You think its gross and not that csa is a life ruining sex crime with real victims. and so you say shit like "this person supports fictional csam" when the person in question just said that fictional csem isnt the same as actual csa because actual csa has actual victims on account of it being sexual abuse and fictional csem doesnt because its fictional and theres no actual child being hurt in it. which is objectively correct
As a survivor of csa and csem (photos were taken), anything fictional is neither csa nor csem/csam. Because there is no victim. Pictures and words are not people, no children were abused or exploited.
Calling fiction depictions csa or csem activly waters down what those terms mean. It is insulting to compare the life ruining events that I and countless others went through, to a drawing or written words.
Also, reporting those things takes away resources from actual real life children being abused.
And we need to have them without 1) being unironic stereotypes and/or 2) me having to defend my entire race every time they show up and act like, you know, a character
By Peggy Munson, from The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Partner Abuse in Activist Communities. Emphasis mine.
Outside the cyclone of abuse, there is a social structure steeling the actions of abusers, and this is abundantly clear in the ways ableism informs abuse. Say you have a life-threatening heart condition that worsens if your heart rate goes too high, and your rage-a-holic partner can inflict severe physical harm through prolonged yelling. Over two years, you go from being semi-bedbound to totally bedbound from her verbal abuse, yet you cannot get a restraining order because she never slapped or punched you. You tell an advocate that your partner did inflict bodily harm, in ways you might never recover from, but the advocate fixates on the heroic ways your partner helped you out after your last hospital stay. You talk about Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy and how your partner loved the attention, and ask if any courts in this state allow phone access, but you may as well be explaining shortness of breath to an unmindful marathoner. The advocate finally concedes “emotional abuse” is “very real.” The battered women’s shelter is “working on” making one room disability accessible, but it’s “not a funding priority.” Your phone therapist says, “Well, you do have a degenerative condition—are you sure she made you sicker?” Meanwhile, you can’t get up for a glass of water, and a simple phone call leaves you exhausted. You finally contact your abuser because you need someone to pick up a prescription. She stops at the drugstore and rekindles the abuse cycle. It’s not about flowers and chocolate: it’s about meds that keep you alive.
Intimate Partner Violence organizations have begun to address these realities of disability, but they rarely do more than cite statistical horrors (people with disabilities are at least twice as likely to be abused) and impose a template that doesn’t fit. Disability is treated as a sidebar, not something with dramatically different risks and needs. Many IPV organizations are in fact performing acts of neglect and exclusion that mimic those of abusers, by denying access (not providing materials in Braille, not installing wheelchair ramps or enforcing strict fragrance free policies) that effectively shut disabled victims out and keep them locked in violence. Afraid to confront their own ableism, these organizations rationalize the ways that disabled people are denied help, using a tired social argument that it’s “too hard” to treat people with disabilities as equals.
In a culture that denigrates human vulnerability and provides nothing but a shoddy caregiving net, people with disabilities often rely on their abusers for food, bathing, toileting, transportation, and other survival needs. Leaving can be imminently life-threatening because victims might lose sustaining care, and replacing this can be next to impossible unless there are non-abusive family members willing to provide it. Many caregivers—not just partners—have intimate access to the lives of people with disabilities. If IPV organizations don’t understand the pressing need for transitional hands-on care, a disabled person will not be able to leave. Most IPV literature attributes this literal dependency to an erroneous psychological belief system instead of addressing cruel social projections that people with disabilities are needy for having fluid physical realities. If the only alternative to an abusive caregiver is an institution or a life where she is peeing into a bedpan with nobody to empty it, a disabled victim may be weighing one bad option against another. Are four sterile walls better than an abuser who offers affection, money, or other perks? Not necessarily.
For every Stockholm Syndrome, there are highly detailed acts of physical deprivation and torture that hold a person captive. When someone has a disability, these acts are easy to inflict: they may just be a matter of hiding someone’s painkillers, or sabotaging his TTY phone, or—more insidiously—becoming an indispensable aid so that he can’t function without the provided care. Disabled victims can’t always just get up and go—an idea rooted in the assumption that all people are unencumbered by physical restrictions. Whereas a safety plan for an able-bodied person may involve words like run, walk, call, or drive, these action verbs may not be possible for a quadriplegic, a heart failure patient, someone with a brainstem injury, or someone with cognitive impairment.
IPV crimes against people with disabilities are typically handled administratively through social service organizations, not the criminal justice system. This belies a disturbing social philosophy: our society does not really view abuse of the disabled as a crime. Although many states have mandatory reporting laws for abuse against people with disabilities, and social service personnel are legally mandated to report such abuse, few IPV organizations are familiar with these laws. Plus the court system is ridiculously inaccessible. Several years ago, a woman contacted me about the fact that she was being dragged down hallways by her hair and thrown against walls by a partner. I tried to convince her to get a restraining order, but this was immeasurably hard for her due to her anxiety disorder and extreme agoraphobia. She was quite disabled, but it didn’t matter as far as the courts were concerned. They would not do anything to accommodate her disability. I asked an attorney friend of mine what it would take for the courts to accommodate a homebound person. My friend laughed and said, “Oh, they won’t come to you unless you get a doctor’s letter saying you’re going to die within weeks.”
Later, I tried to get my own restraining order against a partner who was terrorizing me. Bedridden and homebound, I could not even make the calls to advocates, who kept refusing to talk to my Personal Care Attendant on my behalf—probably because they assumed she was my abuser, and they couldn’t imagine a disability hindering someone’s ability to make phone calls. They told my PCA there was no way I could get a restraining order without going to the courthouse unless an attorney filed a special motion on my behalf (not only can I not travel, but I can’t go into facilities that aren’t fragrance and chemical free). It took my PCA about fifty calls (she estimates) to find an attorney who would do this. The attorney said time was of the essence as weeks had passed since my last contact with the abuser, and then she stopped returning our calls. I gave up in a state of complete despondency. I was hovering on the edge of death and couldn’t even fight for appropriate medical care, let alone coordinate the changing of my locks or action against my partner. My helplessness wasn’t learned: it was literal. Even lifting a phone receiver or talking into it required more strength than I generally had.
The West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that disabled victims are more likely to be blamed for their abuse, because they are perceived as difficult to be around or care for, and “caregiver stress” is considered a legitimate excuse for bad behavior. These social myths are no different from abuser jargon that habitually accuses the victim of provoking the abuse. Because of the subtleties involved in abusing a disabled partner, people with disabilities might not identify themselves as abused, and rarely get support from a society that already perceives abusers as self-sacrificing for dating crips. It is common for batterers to “target punch” their victims to avoid getting caught. With an able-bodied victim, this might mean hitting her torso where bruises will not show. With a blind partner, this could mean putting obstacles in her path so she will trip and fall. With a frail partner who is too neurologically impaired to express consent, this could mean using body weight to hold her down during sex even while she tries to resist by stiffening her body and pushing weakly with her forearms, then forcing the sex in a way that physically harms her.
Advocates working with disabled victims of IPV must redefine the list of what constitutes IPV, tailoring it to an individual’s disabilities just as the abuser has probably done. Abusers will sometimes use the minimum amount of force to maintain power and control, and this minimum amount of force used on a disabled victim—though it may cause substantial injury—might not fit neatly into legal definitions of abuse. Coercion and threats to a disabled partner could involve threatening to withdraw basic support, an act that can be more dangerous to a person with a disability than a violent beating. Intimidation tactics might include harming or mistreating a service animal. Economic abuse might include embezzling funds from a disabled partner who can’t fill out a deposit slip, or giving her lavish gifts of adaptive equipment the state won’t pay for to encourage her dependence. Physical abuse might consist of rough handling when transferring someone out of a wheelchair, or over-medicating. Sexual abuse might include forced abortion, inappropriate touching during bathing or dressing, or put downs about a disabled person’s sexuality. Neglect can include withholding care, medication, or life-sustaining attention. Denying the person’s feelings might include attributing injuries to the disability itself (“You’re just touch-sensitive! That didn’t hurt”). Many forms of abuse against people with disabilities—particularly those against some of the most vulnerable groups, such as the developmentally disabled—involve discrediting a person’s own voice when she tries to convey her experience.
Activists have to think about the creative ways that abusers are maniacal and get away with it. Abusers sail through life, therapy, and the court systems with a “not as bad as that guy” philosophy. Their rationalizations are endless, and they can often pass off controlling behaviors toward a disabled partner as “concern.” If they can convince themselves or others that looking through a partner’s garbage, monitoring his phone calls and mileage, and insisting to know what he does every waking hour is not abuse, they will. For a disabled person confined mostly to a home or bed, such acts of control can be a replication of the inherent suffering the disability might already create. Most people will believe the abuser’s pleas that she was simply trying to protect the (ungrateful) disabled victim.
At every juncture, society is complicit in the abuse of disabled victims. For example, an abuser will isolate a victim of IPV. If that victim is wheelchair-bound, and very few venues in town are wheelchair-accessible, the abuser is not the only one isolating her: society has shut her out by relinquishing responsibility for accommodation. When she comes forward with her abuse, her peers might side with the abuser because they are, through inaction, supporting a similar agenda. When the abuser talks about all he has done for his victim—as abusers are prone to do—and the list includes bathing her, driving her to medical appointments, and hand-dispensing medication, people might view him as a hero. This reflects the deep threads of ableism in our culture, which believes that basic, hands-on care for most disabled people is exceptional, and should not be socially mandated.
People often believe that disability empowerment means taking a “just like me” attitude that presumes a disabled person wouldn’t want exceptional treatment—even if that treatment is fragrance free accommodation or a sign language interpreter or, more subtly, acknowledgement of someone’s physical vulnerability. The differences in human vulnerability can be huge, especially when talking about IPV dynamics that involve power and control. To sidestep this fact pretty much denies the entire reality of people with disabilities and reinforces a mentality that only wheelchair athletes and feel-good- super-crips should be recognized. Understanding the intricate differences in power and ability enables activists to calibrate their definitions of abuse. While the abuser of an able-bodied person might dramatically bar her exit by pushing furniture in front of escape routes and pulling phone cords out of the walls, the abuser of a bedridden individual can inflict the same level of terrorism by simply charging into a bedroom and screaming when she can’t get up and leave. These acts are equivalent and should be treated as such. It can be incredibly invalidating for a disabled abuse victim to hear, “I would just leave if someone treated me that way!” Or even, “I would just ask the abuser to leave.” Asking an abuser to leave is often not an option for someone with a disability: she might need him to take care of her after he battered her. And who is going to explain to the hospital staff the medical needs relating to her rare congenital condition?
Ironically, what endears a batterer to a disabled victim is often his investment in her vulnerability, which most of society insults, ignores, and doesn’t respond to in an empowering way. All abusers are dependent on keeping their victims vulnerable—a fact that transcends disability. This attunement to the power imbalance can give abusers a sixth sense about what a disabled person needs, and how to give or withdraw it for the purpose of control. This is no small thing when other able-bodied people just stand by and don’t offer help. Few people know the intricate ergonomics of a disabled person’s life, even though her ability to function or very survival depends upon these things. What puts the “I” in Intimate Partner Violence is often this: abusers may see intimately into a complex reality that most people do not notice or care about. For example, I tried to explain to my family for years why I needed someone to be on call 24 hours a day due to my erratic medical emergencies, my need for someone to bring me food and water while I was lying down unable to move, and my need for someone to nurse me during my many unpredictable crashes after having a chemical exposure or exerting myself. They offered inconsistent bursts of help and care—a week here and a few days there. They assumed that someone out there would fill in the gaps between these weeks and days. But I had nobody to do it, nobody but an abuser carefully tuned in to my vulnerabilities. While others in my life would try to create a cheerful mood and bring me take-out food, my abuser would dig in to the gritty realities of my disability, draping a blanket over my legs before I even said I was cold and bringing me a glass with a straw so I could drink lying down. These were the acts of kindness woven into the abuse, but without them I wouldn’t have survived. This isn’t to excuse the abuser’s heinous behavior, but to point out that until people are given the resources to live healthy, functional lives, they will be easy prey no matter how many Model Mugging techniques they know.
The details, in other words, cannot be afterthoughts. Wheelchair ramps, phone access, and other accommodations are essential for disabled victims to make the first move toward escape. Abusers tend to look for social cues to tell them whom they can effectively victimize. Fully educating IPV organizations about disability—and including the voices of people with disabilities in that education process—is a critical step in stopping abuse. Extensive planning must go into making sure services are accessible before a person with a disability calls, because time is of the essence when stopping abuse and people should not have to beg for access. Meanwhile, as time passes, more victims of IPV will become disabled. It is not uncommon for initially able-bodied victims of IPV to become temporarily or permanently disabled by physical injuries inflicted by abusers, or to develop ongoing psychiatric disabilities caused by the abuse. These survivors are at high risk for re-traumatization that might incorporate the disability. The underpinnings of abuse have to do with distorted notions of strength and weakness, with the essence of bullying. IPV activists must ferret out inequities in their own organizations, to take a concrete stance against the exploitation of privilege. Disability is a central issue in IPV. The ability to convey the gestalt of a traumatic experience to a receptive witness, and validation that truly comprehends the difference in vulnerability, helps disabled victims of IPV to step out of the fury and into a safe future.
Ironically, what endears a batterer to a disabled victim is often his investment in her vulnerability, which most of society insults, ignores, and doesn’t respond to in an empowering way. All abusers are dependent on keeping their victims vulnerable—a fact that transcends disability. This attunement to the power imbalance can give abusers a sixth sense about what a disabled person needs, and how to give or withdraw it for the purpose of control. This is no small thing when other able-bodied people just stand by and don’t offer help. Few people know the intricate ergonomics of a disabled person’s life, even though her ability to function or very survival depends upon these things. What puts the “I” in Intimate Partner Violence is often this: abusers may see intimately into a complex reality that most people do not notice or care about. For example, I tried to explain to my family for years why I needed someone to be on call 24 hours a day due to my erratic medical emergencies, my need for someone to bring me food and water while I was lying down unable to move, and my need for someone to nurse me during my many unpredictable crashes after having a chemical exposure or exerting myself. They offered inconsistent bursts of help and care—a week here and a few days there. They assumed that someone out there would fill in the gaps between these weeks and days. But I had nobody to do it, nobody but an abuser carefully tuned in to my vulnerabilities. While others in my life would try to create a cheerful mood and bring me take-out food, my abuser would dig in to the gritty realities of my disability, draping a blanket over my legs before I even said I was cold and bringing me a glass with a straw so I could drink lying down.
really if you're reading this i demand you go back and read this piece in full, but i wanted to pull this section out in particular because i have never seen this articulated so clearly.
The biggest bullshit with Adultism is basically that the people will defend it with: "Well, if we did not force X on kids, kids would not do it, because they hate X."
And then you actually look onto the research.
Kids do not generally hate learning or school. Quite the opposite. Children tend to enjoy learning and are naturally curious. It is exactly the fact that they are forced into school and into the rigid structure of it that often punishes curiosity but also is hostile towards the differences inherent in people, that kids hate it.
Kids do not naturally hate medical care. While medical care is scary at times, the fear usually comes from medical care scenarios being defined by adults overriding a child's agency, not explaining things to him, and otherwise being abusive, that makes children afraid of medical procedures. Additionally the way a lot of medical procedures go hand in hand with denying a child's reality ("Look, it is not that bad") tends to be traumatizing to children.
There have been studies done in this. If you explain a child - even a toddler - what you do and why, children will generally be a lot more okay with stuff like needles and simple procedures, and will even agree to necessary surgical interventions.
If you create a learning environment that allows more for self-directed learning, and involves less specific testing, most kids actually will enjoy learning.
The way kids hate school, and are afraid of doctors is the result of those interactions being associated with violence and coercion. The hatred is because of the coercion, rather than the hatred making the coercion necessary.
I truly enjoy how much Animorphs is like “here are our young heroes, each with a distinctive trope to fill in the group!” And then it makes you watch how the pressure of each person’s role grinds them to dust. And also they have homework.
#IM SORRY THEY DO HOME FUCKING WORK IN ANIMORPHS??????
Yeah they're students. If they don't keep their grades up or if they miss too many classes (or miss classes at suspicious times) then they risk drawing the attention of the faculty and/or their parents, some of whom are the enemy and some of whom can just make future espionage a whole lot harder. There are multiple missions where they're like "okay, this is incredibly time sensitive but it'll take a full day or longer so it has to wait for the weekend and we'll have to all lie to our parents about sleeping over at each others' houses. It's gonna have to be done at the last minute because we've gotta go to class. Also, remember to get that English paper finished, we can NOT afford to have you grounded right now."
These have been out of print for an age, and the authors have given their blessings to share the PDFs. Here's everything, including companion/side books and the non-canon Alternamorphs books, in reading order:
All of the Animorphs books by K. A. Applegate, as well as the other books set in that universe. I got them here. I am not the one who collec
i just kinda feel like some of yall (including other trans people) see "trans men are men" and "trans women are women" as feelgood statements that we just say to be niceys and not like facts lol
