my friend's discord server has a "proof of touch grass" channel where they post pics of them doing regular activities outdoors/in public. i think many online spaces could benefit from such a thing
when i was super depressed - like struggling to eat anything barely able to get out of bed to pee depressed - my good friend asked me every day to send her a picture of me holding a leaf and a picture of a meal i was eating and it helped me significantly
(also, she was never judgey - if my meal was a single potato chip she would simply say good job eating a potato chip today <3 )
which is to say, i agree proof of touch grass is a good idea for online spaces
*guy who doesn't know anything about sports and has never cared about sports in his life* hey did you know womens professional baseball is returning after 70 years and the games are going to be streamed for free on youtube and the season starts august 1st
I think this is so cool and it's awesome they're streaming games for free! I also think it's incredible that this picture is the one they used to advertise the opening day. It's like those videos where someone threatens the camera while their partner shows off their collection of rocks they found.
Jewish baby named Edgardo Mortara is seemingly about to die in Bologna, 1851
Catholic nanny secretly baptises him to save his soul, which she’s not exactly the kind of authority who can do that, but w/e, it’s interpreted by the church as valid later
Kid survives
1857 her secret gets out, a baptising makes a kid a Catholic according to the Church and a Catholic can’t be raised in a non-Catholic household in the Papal States, so the church authorises the police to kidnap Edgardo from his family
Raised personally by Pope Pius IX, Jewish family not allowed to take him back due to Church doctrine, this action destroys the family with grief and despair
This case gets international infamy with the Pope not understanding why everyone’s shiting on him for doing this, including allies
Emperor Napoleon III shifts from opposing Italian unification to supporting it as a direct consequence
Bologna falls the next year, 1859
Kingdom of Italy forms 1861
By 1870 Rome is lost to the Italians and the Papal States are no more
(Edgardo Mortara goes on to become Father Mortara)
(He dies in Belgium in 1940 three months before the Nazis occupied the nation, which if he’d have lived he would’ve been persecuted as a Jew)
Fun fact: the Catholic Church did not stop doing this after Edgaro Mortara. During WW2, many Jewish children were put in convents or catholic-run orphanages for their own safety. Sounds nice right? Except after the war ended, when parents or surviving relative went back to claim their children, the church went, “uhhh, actually they’re catholic now, no take backs!”
The most infamous of these cases was the Finaly affair. Two Jewish children in France, Robert and Gerald Finaly, were placed in a Catholic nursery in 1944 in anticipation of their parents being deported to Auschwitz, where they were both murdered. Their aunt, Marguerite Fischel, survived the war and went to find the boys so she could take them to live with her. However, the nun who had custody of the boys, Antoinette Brun, adamantly refused to give them up, reportedly saying that “The Jews are not grateful”
What followed was a years long custody battle where despite being repeatedly ordered by courts all over Europe to return the boys, Brun took them to many different countries and hid them, with the support and help of other nuns and priests. It was suspected at the time, and later confirmed by documents released in 2020, that Pope Pius XII had supported the effort to keep the boys away from their surviving family and have them be raised Catholic.
Thankfully, after negotiations between a sympathetic cardinal in France and the chief Rabbi of Paris, the boys were finally recovered and reunited with their aunt.
Documents reveal the private discussions behind both Pope Pius XII’s silence about the Nazi deportation of Rome’s Jews in 1943 and the Vatic
I wish I could say that the phenomenon of the Catholic Church kidnapping children and keeping them away from their families for the purposes of forcefully raising them Catholic is unique to Jews, but it’s not. From the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century, the Church ran hundreds of residential schools in the US and Canada where indigenous children were kidnapped from their homes and forced into these cruel and inhumane “schools”. The children were forbidden from speaking their own languages or practicing their own cultures and religions, their hair was cut, and they were subject to emotional, verbal, spiritual, physical, and sexual abuse. Many of the children died due to malnutrition or medical neglect, their bodies buried like dogs beside the schools. The Catholic Church was not the only Church to participate in this, but they’ve been the most reluctant to fully acknowledge and apologize for it. It was only in 2022 that Pope Francis apologized on behalf of the Catholic Church for their part, but some people found the apology inadequate.
Idk what my point is here, just that there’s such a clean link between evangelizing, cultural/religious imperialism, and how damaging and horrifying a religion can be when it is thoroughly convinced of its own superiority. And that unless an institution is forced to change, it probably won’t change on its own.
anyway every time i post about ocd people start tagging the post like "wait this isn't normal?" and i always like to remind people that intrusive thoughts are normal. pretty much everyone experiences them. "what if i jumped off this balcony?" "what if i crashed my car right now for no reason?" "what if i yelled a curse word in the middle of this wedding?" everyone thinks these things from time to time. it's disordered thinking when the distress starts becoming intolerable.
"am i normal" is not as helpful question to ask as "are intrusive thoughts causing me frequent distress?" and "would my life be better if i could find a way to feel less distress/learn to tolerate the distress?"
millions and millions of people have ocd. having ocd is normal. you're normal. but what if you could feel better? what if living everyday in your own mind and body could be tolerable? is that something you want? need? these are questions to ask.
i do not want to live in the fucking panopticon fuck the camera that blinks above me at work, the tv watching me at the store, the "smile you're on camera" signs, the ring cameras, the flock cameras, the apps to track your child or partner, the activist friends telling me "just assume everything you do in public is being recorded somewhere", the government building protester databases, the teslas recording every move all around them, the knowledge that everything i type or search or save is being tracked and logged, the ads and search suggestions that mysteriously know what i was just talking about, the way biometrics keep creeping into more places, the way my car spies on me, the way my phone spies on me, the way there is nowhere to go to get away from it!!! no wonder the internet is full of vindictive little stalkers and witchhunts when it's the water and the air of society from the culture to the infrastructure
unfortunate truth of reality is that oftentimes 15 year olds will say/do/believe some stupid bullshit because they are 15 but telling them that they believe that because they are 15 is probably the most counterproductive thing in the entire universe
Wayne was gay. It was obvious. He was unable to stay in the closet even if he wanted to. To make matters worse, he was also Black. From a bullying standpoint, that was not a great combo. Both Black and white students made fun of him relentlessly. He was ostracized from the only community that may have given him protection. Only us theater kids stuck up for him, but not to significant effect.
Wayne was bullied so much that at one point he finally snapped and attacked his bullies with a lunch tray. I was actually seated in perfect line of sight and just sat there chewing my soggy fries in stunned silence. It didn't even seem real as I was witnessing it. The image of him wailing on his main bully as the food on his tray flew off is permanently logged into my long term memory.
The bully he attacked had blood all over his face and went straight to the nurse. Other than superficial cuts, he was not injured.
Before the attack, Wayne went to teachers for help.
He went to guidance counselors for help.
He went to the principals for help.
He did all of the things you were supposed to do. No one helped him. They wagged a finger at the bullies and warned them to stop.
Wayne's lunch tray melee was the only thing that worked. His bullies stayed far away from him. But a week later Wayne was expelled and the bullies were given no punishment.
So... no.
No one in my school talked about being trans.
Because the only way to survive being openly queer was to bash people with a lunch tray.
I went to all girls, private, Catholic school in the 90s. Two of my friends became romantically involved. It was discovered and one of them denied it and said the other girl was harassing her and it wasn't mutual. (Still friends with both of them, it was a weird and stressful time and they were both under a lot of threats of various sorts.) The accused friend was expelled for poor attendance. (i.e. being gay.)
The next year I had two younger friends who I met through theater start secretly dating each other. I was the person they talked to about it, I got the "Uh I think I might be gay" phone call when it started. One of the girls' parents worked at the school and when she found out about her daughter doing queer shit, well, among other things she was forbidden to speak to me or spend any time with me anymore. Did it matter that that queer relationship was what stopped her daughter self-harming and binge drinking to dangerous levels? No. The answer was obviously to isolate her daughter and not allow her any social life.
Secondary school in the 90s in the UK, it was illegal for it to be brought up by teachers. We only had one openly gay person in a school of over 1000 people and that lad was only known by dint of being the most camp fella imaginable. The bullying was horrendous. I apparently emitted the queer equivalent of the bat signal clearly enough (even though I didn’t know what it was) that I got my share of it too. No one even had the language to talk about transness.
It was considered the worst thing to be, even though we as kids didn’t know why. It was talked about like this monster under the bed, the bogey man, something horrible and corrupting and perverted, which is just... peachy when you’re a baby queer and are being told even just existing makes you some kind of deviant and pervert.
Likewise at the time, if you were a queer adult working in a profession with/around children, you could lose your job, reputation, career, home and worse.
We didn’t choose to stay in the closet. A lot of us had to stay in the closet for our own safety.
When we had our first open lesbian couple in my HS, the school ended up banning all public displays of affection for a while in order to keep the lesbians from kissing in the halls.
When I was 16 or 17 in as late as 2012-2013 (in germany) a friend and me asked our principal if the school could hold a minute of silence on the international day against homophobia. Our principal told us he didn't think it was something that students had any reason to care about.
About a week after that a gay kid from our partner school in the same town killed himself after years of being bullied and everyone pretended that nobody could know why he did it.
The younger sibling of a good friend was a few years ahead of me, and came out as trans in '95. I say "came out," but he didn't, not really. He just quietly slid from one set of pronouns to another, and transitioned socially as soon as he had his diploma. It was a complete, seamless, silent change, and no one questioned it, and the only reason he didn't do it while he was still in school was to avoid everything described above.
