• Cimiterium •
Melaten-Friedhof, Cologne, Germany
Rerum.Novis
hello vonnie
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
Peter Solarz
NASA
will byers stan first human second

roma★
Sweet Seals For You, Always
ojovivo

izzy's playlists!
Keni

titsay
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Claire Keane
DEAR READER
KIROKAZE

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
almost home
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Not today Justin
Misplaced Lens Cap

seen from Germany
seen from Netherlands

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Germany

seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Italy

seen from Malaysia

seen from United States

seen from Malaysia

seen from United Kingdom

seen from Malaysia

seen from Netherlands
seen from Türkiye
@localb0y
• Cimiterium •
Melaten-Friedhof, Cologne, Germany
Rerum.Novis
I realize this is a cast iron gate but I’m choosing to believe it’s a magic protection ritual
It IS a magic protection ritual, and it summons an iron gate to protect you from intruders.
“I cast Iron Gate!”
As a blacksmith I have been called a wizard by several small kids
Moonrise, Chilmark, Massachusetts, 2001/2003 - by David Fokos (1960), American
荒木 経惟
Tokyo Lucky Hole (1990)
the next time someone asks what this country is like i’ll just send them this
- Velký noční hlídač / Watchman
- author of the videomaping Milan Cais
-photography ©ČTK, ©David Peltán, MAFRA.
how do we get them to stop doing that
they also blink and move btw in case anyone was wondering if it could get worse
Always remember that the EU did a study in 2013 about the effects of piracy on media publishers and found that there is no correlation between piracy and sales! (And then they tried to hide that study bc that's not the result they wanted)
So piracy is at worst not even a problem, and at best it's free advertisement.
Source: (the link to the actual study is in the article)
In 2013, the European Commission ordered a €360,000 ($430,000) study on how piracy affects sales of music, books, movies and games in the EU
some psychiatry loaded language and thought stopping cliches:
The Work (what exactly is the work??? unless this is explained with concrete specifics, it is meaningless)
Maybe that was true before, but it isnt now (assumption. often blatantly false)
It's over now (assumption. often blatantly false)
that's irrational (general shut down and dismissal, but often blatantly false. higher class way of calling something crazy. gives a false impression of intellectualism)
thats's just the [mental illness/pathology] talking (maybe or maybe not, but they do not actually think about it or engage with any reasoning. another easy general shut down and dismissal)
you just think/feel like/believe/perceive that (pathologizes knowledge by asserting that it is a disordered thought, feeling, belief, or observation)
take responsibility [for being abused/traumatized] (usually just victim blaming, and obscuring the responsibility of the abusing/traumatizing party if applicable, a subtle accusation. choosing to see a mental health professional is literally taking responsibility. at this point, what is "responsible" is so elusive that it has no actual meaning. what does an abused person do to "take responsibility" for that when the abuse is outside of their control, which is a key element of abuse and also trauma? ultimately it is a distraction and a re-delegation of the burden back onto the victim. without clear specifics, this means nothing)
negative thoughts/beliefs/feelings ("negative" within psychiatry and especially in this context, is synonymous with "false" and "sinful" and "sick" as in mental illness)
healing/recovery (this does not actually refer to what a mental health patient wants and needs to improve their life and quality of life, but to the desired traits and goals of their professionals. often it is characterized in such a way that suggests a kind of transcendence: you are barely a human being anymore you are so healed. nothing phases you. you are indifferent to life's horrors)
suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem (disregards the ongoing issues suicidal people have, their efforts to alleviate those issues, and trivializes their desire to die as a result of poor logic)
for 2 and 3 (maybe that was true before but its not now/its over now) i said its an assumption, but its more like a mythology. the mythology is that Its Over Now because whatever it was, its ended. and now you're in therapy. They cannot and do not conceptualize certain kinds of chronic struggles like abuse. i never ever had any psych professional who would acknowledge that abuse was an ongoing reality for me in any meaningful way. Its Over Now. the only reason i think it isnt is because, well, number 5 that's just the mental illness talking. i truly dont think psych professionals are able to (or willing to) admit that bad things can be happening right now. thats just not part of the psychiatric dogma.
Hope it's ok to add something that may make people feel less alone/provide some hermeneutic repair. Mel Baggs z'l developed a helpful framework for understanding and naming this sleight-of-hand - "Snake Words," the manipulative language those tasked with 'serving' disabled/Mad people use to smuggle in paternalism, coercion, force, and systemic abuse/abandonment. In a blog post called "Snake Words: Hiding the Dystopia," Baggs describes this tactic this way:
They can take a word, twist it inside-out, and turn it on its head. Until they can justify taking away all your freedoms with language designed to protect your freedoms. The DD [Developmental Disability] service system is excellent at playing this particular word game. It can be especially confusing if they use the right meaning of the word sometimes, but the wrong one most of the time. Always, always look for the snakes behind the words. Because they’re there. And in the DD system, they’re everywhere. Every word or term that has an actual meaning that is supposed to protect our freedoms and rights as people with developmental disabilities, has an evil twin that looks exactly the same but exists to take away our freedoms and rights. Look for the snake words. Just look for the snake words. If you understand how they work, they will give you a window into the dystopia a lot of us are living in.
I've done some peer-reviewed writing on Baggs's oeuvre that might interest people, but really, I recommend checking out hir blogs for clarity, compassion, and immense relief that someone else sees through the lies and manipulation fed to us as "care" but designed instead to erase us.
david alan harvey, backstage at tropicana nightclub. havana, cuba. 1999
Z.Liu
Origami by Toyoaki Kawai, Japan, 1982
Before coming out I used to work at a mental health crisis line. There were so many problems with this place, that I will probably talk about some other time, but generally stemming from issues relating to social class and demographics more broadly.
90% of the volunteers were wealthy retired neurotypical cishet white women. That meant that for basically every call these people received there was a pre-existing power dynamic where the caller was well below the call-handler, and the call was consequently handled totally paternalistically, never with any sense that the volunteer might actually have something to learn from the caller. The similarity to the typical patient-GP/PCP dynamic was really striking.
Most of the callers were prisoners, homeless, or people who had recently stopped taking anti-psychotic meds. I think many of the volunteers enjoyed the feeling of the power dynamic that was obvious in these calls. If you spend most of your social time with people of the same high social class as you, I guess you might find it refreshing to encounter people who remind you that you've actually done well out of life, only from a safe distance and through a phone ofc.
We also got a lot of trans callers. Hearing how the volunteers talked to these callers was a really radicalising experience. "Why do you think you're a woman?" "Why do you think you enjoy wearing women's clothing?" "Is there a sexual component to it? Maybe something that happened in your childhood?" "What do the other girls at school think about you calling yourself a boy?", plus the obvious constant misgendering and pronoun "mix-ups", saying, "Oh sorry, miss, your voice sounds like a man's so it's confusing."
People would say this stuff during training too, and the people training us would say it was correct. It's not like they were letting their bigotry cause them to deviate from policy, bigotry was the policy. I remember there was one senior volunteer who was a retired cis lesbian police officer, and I asked her about handling trans callers and she just repeated back all the same bigoted nonsense everyone else thought (at the time I put that down to her being a cop, not being aware back then that being a cis lesbian is no guarantee at all of an absence of transphobic views.)
It didn't take long for me to start getting reprimanded for having too much empathy for the callers. I was an unusual volunteer in that I had actually been in the same position as a lot of the callers. I was trans (albeit not out yet), I was frequently suicidal, I had been on anti-depressants (incredibly I was the only volunteer out of around 150 with that experience), I had experienced CSA and domestic abuse, I had lived through times when I had a zero bank balance, I had eaten food out of a bin because I had no money, I had been heavily addicted to alcohol and nicotine.
It meant I normally had some commonality with all the callers that I could use to make sure I was talking to them in the way I would've wanted to be talked to, i.e. as an equal. I would actually let the caller direct the conversation rather than directing it myself (which was the policy), I would show genuine interest in their story, I wouldn't tell them to hurry up because there were other callers with "real problems". After a while, I couldn't handle it and I just left, not because of the stress of dealing with the callers, but the stress of dealing with the other volunteers.
And now many years later I often see queer groups near me directing people to this crisis hotline in case of emergency, and I always have to make a fuss to get them to remove it as a categorically non-safe institution. But it's so well-known and respected where I live (by people who have never used it, but they are typically the ones in positions of power ofc) that it can be really hard to get people to believe it is actually that bad.
Jan Tarasin (Polish, 1926–2009) - Rain, Oil, canvas, 88 × 129 cm (1995)