One of the things I really like about Tumblr is there seems to be a healthy appreciation for invertebrate biology here, which I don’t always see as much on other social media websites. Tumblr users overall seem to love bugs, and it’s important to me that every person who loves bugs knows the name Charles Henry Turner. If you’re not yet familiar with this man, I’m delighted to introduce you to one of the most remarkable minds ever born of this earth, and a true pioneer in the field of entomology and animal behavior.
Charles Turner was born in the United States just a few years after the end of the civil war. His brilliance was evident from the start, and after graduating valedictorian of his high school class he quickly went on to earn his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in short order. While in school, Turner’s relentless curiosity became his greatest advantage. He was drawn to and fascinated by topics that were largely ignored by modern science at the time, namely the cognitive behaviors of insects and other invertebrates. While many of his colleagues believed insects to be mindless automata acting on instinct alone, Turner felt deeply that the brains of these oft overlooked animals were far more complex than the scientific community suspected. He performed extensive experiments to test his theories and found overwhelming evidence of problem solving and individualism among organisms as small as ants and spiders.
By the time Turner earned his zoology pHD in 1907 he had published dozens of papers in highly esteemed journals and had even co-authored a book. It is likely that Turner was the first African American to earn a pHD from the University of Chicago. With such a sparkling academic reputation and enormous body of research, one would expect this candidate to have no issues obtaining a professorship at a prestigious school. Though by every right Turner should have been head of science department at a top university, the systemic racism that permeated academia meant that doors a white man would have walked through were locked and bolted shut for Charles Henry Turner.
Turner did not allow this prejudice to dim in any way his blindingly bright passion for knowledge. He took a job as a high school teacher, and continued to perform and publish research on his own all while he instilled his students with a love for zoology. He published more than 70 papers in extremely respected journals and he remained passionately curious for the entirety of his life. If I tried to list here all of the incredible discoveries Turner made in his lifetime it would take me days to sufficiently express the impact he had on the field of invertebrate behavior. His experiments were so ahead of their time that entomologists today marvel at his research and wonder how much more we would know if Turner’s work had been given the attention and respect of other scientists working at the time. Turner’s mind was about a century ahead of those entomological contemporaries who had no interest in giving him a seat at the table. His tombstone simply reads “scientist”
Like many people of color throughout history, Turner’s exceptional contributions to our world have been unfairly overlooked by many. His name has historically been left out of entomology textbooks and courses, despite laying down groundwork that is still used today. I really recommend that anyone interested in entomology or even biology in general read up on Charles Henry Turner and his works. This is an excellent article that discusses his many challenges and triumphs in the field.
So things have been rough! A lot has happened behind the screens with Tigers, and I've hardly been able to keep up with updating it at all.
Many sleepless nights, many days where I can just stare at a wall, trying to collect the pieces in my mind into something coherent. Though things are looking up slowly!
The biggest thank you goes to @suspucomics who has been a great help figuring out a sufficient ending for Tigers, and is always there to listen when I try to figure out plot points and ideas. He's also the one who keeps pushing me into finishing it. During these past difficult years I've almost quit drawing the comic a million times, but he keeps pulling me up, time after time, and makes me draw it. I cannot repeat another Prague Race....... Oh my god....
He has made me see that this can be salvaged, no matter how bad things go, the story is all that matters in the end. And I'm so, so thankful for him for that. So you know. It's thanks to Suspu that this show is still running!! I want to finish Tigers now more than ever.
I also want to talk about my agent Jane Chun, whom I've begun to work with at the beginning of this year. It's such a priviledge to work with someone who is so smart, and makes me feel like I gain level ups every time I receive a new email from her. The level of professionalism is insane, to be able to tap into that knowledge is such a priviledge, I feel incredibly lucky to have her help.
Me and Jane now working on finishing the pitch for Tigers, and then I'm planning on making one shorter, one album length comic after Tigers. It would be nice to make something that takes only two years to finish!! Though depending on wether any publisher picks the story up, in the meantime I will most likely start working with another long form webcomic, the story about the Knights.
If a publisher picks up the shorter story though, Knights will go into hiatus as I work on the album. I think this will be the future for me as a creator, that Knights will be my eternity project, and I try to pick up other jobs here and there, and all excess time may go into drawing Knights.
I'd also like to thank @ohcorny who has always been there to check out my english for Tigers pages. He's been such a massive, reliable help. Also whenever I show him the new page his comments are always such a delight LOL!!
Also thank you Kevin, Meg, Katie, you've been such a huge help and I'll never forget it!
Thank you @noituen for setting up the new website for Tigers! Thank you Sulo for keeping up the store for the comic!
And finally, thank YOU. You, the one who read the comic, the one who left funny tags on my update posts, the one who commented and shared the story forward. Those who emailed me and told me their thoughts, those who drew fanart, wrote fanfiction, talked about the comic on the discord.
It is, in the end, all about you. My stories are my way of speaking with the world. I tell stories to talk with you, to reach people across the world, of all ages, all countries. What a priviledge has it been, to have reached so many people and to have heard their thoughts- and hopefully I have given you something to think about in return.
That's what it all is about in the end, folks. I tell a story, and it being read is the greatest gift of them all.
SO THANK YOU!!!
And also... SORRY FOR BEING SO OFFLINE LATELY!
I have missed lot's of great fanart, comments, messages and emails! But it's time I catch up with things. I feel like I'm ready to return now.
So, thank you for your patience, and I hope... that you will enjoy the ending of Tigers. It's going to be... quite something...
I realized the other day that the reason I didn't watch much TV as a teenager (and why I'm only now catching up on late aughts/early teens media that I missed), is because I literally didn't understand how to use our TV. My parents got a new system, and it had three remotes with a Venn diagram of functions. If someone left the TV on an unfamiliar mode, I didn't know how to get back to where I wanted to be, so I just stopped watching TV on my own altogether.
I explained all this to my therapist, because I didn't know if this was more related to my then-unnoticed autism, or to my relationship with my parents at the time (we had issues less/unrelated to neurodivergency). She told me something interesting.
In children's autism assessments, a common test is to give them a straightforward task that they cannot reasonably perform, like opening an overtight jar. The "real" test is to see, when they realize that they cannot do it on their own, if they approach a caregiver for help. Children that do not seek help are more likely to be autistic than those that do.
This aligns with the compulsory independence I've noticed to be common in autistic adults, particularly articulated by those with lower support needs and/or who were evaluated later in life. It just genuinely does not occur to us to ask for help, to the point that we abandon many tasks that we could easily perform with minor assistance. I had assumed it was due to a shared common social trauma (ie bad experiences with asking for help in the past), but the fact that this trait is a childhood test metric hints at something deeper.
My therapist told me that the extremely pathologizing main theory is that this has something to do with theory of mind, that is doesn't occur to us that other people may have skills that we do not. I can't speak for my early childhood self, or for all autistic people, but I don't buy this. Even if I'm aware that someone else has knowledge that I do not (as with my parents understanding of our TV), asking for help still doesn't present itself as an option. Why?
My best guess, using only myself as a model, is due to the static wall of a communication barrier. I struggle a lot to make myself understood, to articulate the thing in my brain well enough that it will appear identically (or at least close enough) in somebody else's brain. I need to be actively aware of myself and my audience. I need to know the correct words, the correct sentence structure, and a close-enough tone, cadence, and body language. I need draft scripts to react to possible responses, because if I get caught too off guard, I may need several minutes to construct an appropriate response. In simple day-to-day interactions, I can get by okay. In a few very specific situations, I can excel. When given the opportunity, I can write more clearly than I am ever capable of speaking.
When I'm in a situation where I need help, I don't have many of my components of communication. I don't always know what my audience knows. I don't have sufficient vocabulary to explain what I need. I don't know what information is relevant to convey, and the order in which I should convey it. I don't often understand the degree of help I need, so I can come across inappropriately urgent or overly relaxed. I have no ability to preplan scripts because I don't even know the basic plot of the situation.
I can stumble though with one or two deficiencies, but if I'm missing too much, me and the potential helper become mutually unintelligible. I have learned the limits of what I can expect from myself, and it is conceptualized as a real and physical barrier. I am not a runner, so running a 5k tomorrow does not present itself as an option to me. In the same way, if I have subconscious knowledge that an interaction is beyond my capability, it does not present itself as an option to me. It's the minimum communication requirements that prevent me from asking for help, not anything to do with the concept of help itself.
Maybe. This is the theory of one person. I'm curious if anyone else vibes with this at all.
Hi, I wrote up a little letter for people to send to staff in response to their recent statement about the most recent transfem ban wave to ask more of staff concerning this issue. If that's something it's appropriate to share on this blog I've included it below as well as steps for submitting feedback below if anyone hasn't done it before or needs clear instructions. If you (or anyone else) have suggestions for me or want to make alterations/additions feel free. If this isn't the right place for it, no worries and have a wonderful day
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Dear Staff,
I appreciate that staff has reinstated some accounts that were banned in the last wave and I think the current "goal of responding to mistaken suspension appeals within 24 hours" is a good step in moving forward.
However, today I was made aware of the banning of a blog which criticized staff's well recorded actions against trans bloggers only hours after staff's apology went out. See here: https://www.tumblr.com/turbro/814174690287484929/this-blog-being-deleted-by-staff-less-than-3-hours?
The fact that this occurred indicates to me that knowledge about the issue is still being suppressed by punishing bloggers who draw attention to it, and implies that staff may not be planning to follow through on its promises to the LGBTQ+ community.
With this in mind, by the beginning of June (pride month) I would like to hear a plan for staff to:
1) Address the transphobia in their ranks by identifying which moderators, procedures and/or site features are causing transwomen and their posts to be disproportionately surveilled and banned,
2) Make both the banning and appeals processes more rigorous and transparent in general and when it comes to transwomen- especially transwomen of color- in particular,
When this plan is laid out, I want to see monthly updates detailing how and when each step of the plan is implemented.
Apologies are not sufficient redress for the material harm done to people caught in ban waves like the most recent one. People rely on social media like Tumblr as part of their social networks, for mutual aid, and even for their careers. As @husbanddaughter said before they were banned, "the normal number of people to have their accounts removed from your platform, without being given any warning or an opportunity after the fact to request any kind of appeal, based solely off of the false reports being made by open and proud bigots and serial harassers, is none…it certainly shouldn't be happening almost exclusively to an extremely vulnerable minority demographic."
I hope that Tumblr is willing to take these steps to become a site which is safe for trans people.
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Steps for anyone who hasn't sent feedback to staff before:
Go to this link: https://help.tumblr.com/
Click the light blue "Contact Support" button in the top right corner
From the Category drop-down, select "Feedback"
Write your message in the text box below (or copy and paste the letter above)
Complete the reCAPTCHA and click "Next" at the bottom of the screen
Next a "Does any of this help?" page will come up. Click the light blue "No, send my thing" button.
Methinks it's time for me to give my thoughts on Iron Lung. There are spoilers ahead, so don't read past this point if you haven't seen the film! Its best experienced blind, with no prior knowledge beyond what you may know from the original game :)
I've always had high expectations for Mark's work. I've enjoyed his previous directoral entries on YouTube, though those have all been obviously far more fun and less serious than this. I've also never seen his show, The Edge of Sleep, so I have no real prior context to him acting in a serious manner. Despite that, I knew he could do it, and I was blown away by the quality of his acting in Iron Lung.
The Convict—or rather, Simon, is played entirely straight. There is a permeating hopelessness to the setting, and Simon stands in simple defiance of that. He insists, with increasing desperation, that he will go free, that he will be allowed to live. But much like the light from those dead stars in the sky, his fate has already been sealed. Simon is dead from the moment he appears on screen, the light of his life wavering faintly and defiantly, until it's gone. Simon fights, screams and cries and bargains for his life, then ultimately accepts his death with the comfort of choosing to focus on the mission. That repetitive "This is bigger than you." becomes his prayer.
Mark's capacity for emotional acting shines here. There's a scene somewhere in the first half, when Simon is still getting his footing, and he finds an audio log from the previous convict who died on the iron lung. But more importantly, that convict intentionally hid a charm on the ship, a piece of plant stuck in glass, tied to a cord as a necklace or bracelet. Simon's response to this is shattering. Up until then, he's been tense and frightened, and seeing that plant seems to break the dam. He stops what his doing, even with the pressing matter of his task and the oxygen counting down on the sub, sits down and holds the charm close. Honestly, sitting in that theater, I felt myself get choked up just watching. It's a private scene, because it's almost a reprieve from the drudgery of figuring the map and navigating the ocean. Because in the face of this impossible task, the sheer kindness in leaving this charm for him is enough to bring him to his knees. It's a very good scene, arguably my favorite scene in the entire film.
I had forgotten to watch the Lore Update video on the game that Mark uploaded a few years ago, so the inclusion of names and organizations from the game were brand new to me. It confused me a little, but it never took me out of the story. And in a way, I think I enjoyed not knowing. It gave the movie a sense of more being left unsaid and unexplored, and an established world that did not matter in the face of Simon's plight. I didn't know about the C.O.I, or Eden, but what was given to us felt sufficient, especially for Simon's motivations.
Some people are saying the movie could've been shaved down in length and been improved, but I don't really think so. Struggle though I may with a short attention span (ADHD), I was absorbed the entire time. The slow pacing only made the ultimate climax of the film all the more intense. We've been watching a slow execution for almost two hours, and it finally coming to a head near the end with Simon fighting against the blood to preserve the information for humankind was so riveting. The ocean begging him to give up, attacking him with the fish inhabiting it as he forces his irradiated body to move. It gets a little gory, and even though I knew he was to die, I was hoping he'd at least be hauled up, to die on the boat instead of the ocean. His arm coming off was enough to have the entire theater gasping, including myself. But his refusal to go quietly was so good, watching him rip apart the sub from the inside in a frenzied rush gave me chills.
And the practical effects!!! They're just phenomenal. The submarine felt so real, and I can only imagine how many times they had to flood the thing with blood for the filming process. Simon's body growing boils as he suffers from the radiation of the camera is so gross, and part of you can't help but wonder while you're watching if what's happening to him is because of the radiation or if it's because of the ocean being inherently mutagenic. After all, before it explodes the sub is essentially becoming a living being, which explains the oxygen ticking up, the walls growing veins, the sub's attempt to latch onto him and absorb him into itself. It explains the fish in the ocean that have a human face.
The sequence before the end, where he hallucinates or has a vision of the fish rushing past him in the sub...man, what a scene. What a movie. I could go on but this post is already so long.
TLDR, God I hope this means that the film industry isn't dead. I'm not a huge film buff or anything so I am biased in that sense, but even my inexperienced self can see that there has been a trend of movies being made with barely a shred of passion inside of them. Iron Lung is full of passion, and it shines through with every excruciating moment, which makes it worth a watch.
Humanity has always had wings, though not everyone knows how to fly. Throughout history, humans who could fly became known as heroes, preforming great and fantastical deeds for their gods or their people or themselves.
No one can be taught to fly. One is either born with the knowledge to fly or they are not. It is an inherent ability that is not inherited from parent to child.
Thousands of studies have been conducted throughout history as to why some people can fly, why most can't, and why humans were gifted wings in the first place. Ancient Peoples declared that wings were gifted to humans by their gods, though they were revoked of their flight when they slighted the powers that be. Modern scientists have a running theory that sometime between Australopithecus Afarensis and Homo Habilis, human ancestors developed the need for flight and therefore adapted over the course of several generations.
Since humans started their research into why they have wings, they have never been able to find sufficient answers to all of their questions. This hasn't stopped them from finding workarounds, though. Airplanes for the ninety-percent of the population how can't fly, strict laws and enforcement policies for those who can. And when heroes started to appear in the modern world, they were given even stricter guidelines to follow.
All this to say, many of the questions that were asked have been unanswered, not for lack of trying, but for lack of actual answers.
There is one thing that humans know for sure: To violate a humans wings is to basically kill them. It is a crime punished by life imprisonment.
Those who've had their wings destroyed never continue living happy lives. They're shunned by their peers, usual under the guise of assistance. They're treated as though they are incapable of completing the smallest of tasks on their own. They usually die young.
But those who've had their wings ripped away from them? They die even younger, almost always by their own hand. They are treated as the worst of society, looked upon as though they're walking corpses.
The punishment for taking someone's wings is death.
Jason stumbled upon him a few weeks ago. He was in an alley, beat to hell and bleeding so much it was a miracle he hadn't died already. He'd been shivering something fierce, from the cold or fear, Jason hadn't been sure. He was curled behind a dumpster with his head buried in his knees, crying silently.
Honestly, if he hadn't chosen to hide behind the same dumpster, he'd never have know the kid was there.
So, once Batman had given up on looking for him for the night, Jason had turned his full attention on the kid. "Are you okay?"
It was a stupid question in most situations, but it was a good way to assess what was going on.
The kid didn't answer, instead curling up tighter.
Jason'd shuffled a bit, careful to keep his wings pulled tightly to him so they didn't make too much noise. "Will you let me help you?"
Another important question to ask. Better than asking 'can I help you', especially in the Alley, because that offers the choice of refusal.
The kid still hadn't said anything, but he did move his head and peak an eye and Jason. It was the most chilling shade of blue he'd ever seen. The kid's eye looked like it was a sheet of ice instead of a human eye.
"Can I ask your name?"
Again, giving the option to say 'no'.
The kid shook his head and Jason said, "Okay, that's cool, I get it." Then, "My name's Red Hood." A beat. "You're eye's really pretty."
The kid blushed and looked away, but he didn't burrow into his knees again.
"Is it naturally that color?" A nod. "Are they both that color?" The kid shook his head. Jason hummed. "Is your other one...purple?" The kid smiled, but shook his head, so Jason guess again, "Yellow? Pink? Red? Red would be badass."
The kid shook his head to all of the colors, finally looking up completely. His other eye was the color of mint and sage.
"How in the world did you manage to get eyes like that?" He hadn't meant for it to come out like that, but it was too late to shut himself up. He flinched. "Sorry, that sounded-"
The kid wasn't making a sound still, but he looked like he was laughing.
Jason huffed. "Yeah, yeah. Laugh at my misery." He smiled under his helmet, "Do you want to go somewhere warmer? I've got a safe house near here you can stay in." He didn't offer the location of his safe houses to anyone, not even the Outlaws or even Dick. But something told him this kid was trustworthy. Something told him to help this kid, so that's what he was going to do.
The kid nodded and slowly uncurled from himself. As he moved, Jason could see a greater extent of any injuries and he could feel the green trying to push it's way to the forefront. That hadn't happened in a while. Who would dare hurt a child?
The kid wasn't covered in blood, but there was still a lot of the stuff staining through his shirt. He was barefoot, as Jason already saw, and the clothing he was wearing was thread-bare.
"You know how to write?" Jason asked. The kid glared, but nodded. Jason held out his hand, "You wanna write down something for me to call ya?"
For a minute, the kid didn't move. That's okay, though. He could take as long as he wanted. Then, gently, he reached out to Jason's palm, took off his glove, and, with a touch as light as a feather, he wrote D-A-N-N-Y.
"Danny?" A nod. "Nice to meet ya, kid. Let's get outta here, yeah?"
Danny had been staying in the safe house since then. He didn't so much as make a noise, let alone talk, and the only reason Jason even knew he was still there was because the kid made himself visible at all times. Honestly, if he didn't know any better, he'd've thought Danny could turn himself invisible. Nevertheless, while it wasn't his main apartment, it was nice to have some company. He'd even taken his domino off on day two and introduced himself as Jason.
Danny was a great roommate, total silence notwithstanding. No matter how many times Jason insisted he just relax and heal, Danny insisted on helping out by cooking or cleaning and even offering to patch him up after patrol.
There was one thing he didn't do, though, and that was care for Jason's wings.
Jason hated his wings. He used to love them, as a kid, when they were whole and he could fly. They carried him for miles whenever he needed an escape. But after he'd died...
That was another reason he was still so angry with Bruce about the damn clown still being alive. After capturing him, he'd ripped out half of his secondary flight feathers and broken the pinion joint in both wings, rendering Jason unable to fly in the off chance he survived the explosion.
Not that living did any good. Dying, being revived, being healed. None of it mattered because he still couldn't fly.
Danny loved Jason's wings. He didn't say it, by Jason could tell by the glances he'd seen the kid throw them. And, really, he couldn't blame him. After all, Danny didn't have wings.
He didn't know what happened, and he found himself scared to ever find out. Who could do such a thing and get away with it? Only someone as sick as the Joker would and Jason hated that the kid had had to deal with something like that. He almost hated that the kid had to live after having his wings taken from him.
Jason didn't ask and Danny didn't share. Danny didn't ask and Jason didn't share. Neither were completely discrete in their curiosity, but they found a balance and lived with it.
Besides, Jason knew that if he was asked, he'd go off on a tangent of complaints and he didn't want to subject Danny to that. After all, who is he to really complain? At least he still has his wings.
At the end of their second week of existing in the same space, Danny sat Jason down on the couch with a stare that could see through souls. Slowly, gently, with his touch still lighter than a feather, Danny took Jason's hand in his and wrote on the palm of his hand.
Jason's week had been horrible. There was another breakout at Arkham and now Scarecrow and Two-Face were both hiding out somewhere, Black Mask had decided to try his luck just outside Crime Alley, and some idiot in the government sent a research team to Blackgate and then declared everyone inside as 'Ecto Contaminated' before locking down the whole island. The same government idiot was steadily sending out groups into Gotham and taking people right off the streets.
Overall, it was shitty week.
And to top it all off, everyone was back in the Manor, meaning that the skies were more full than they'd been in months.
He wasn't stupid. He knew what everyone being back meant and he wasn't the slightest bit happy about it.
The green of the Pit was similar to the green envy he felt when he saw the others in they sky. They weren't the same, but they overlapped and worked together more often than not anymore. He wished he could fly with the others. He made sure, while everyone was in one place, to keep to himself in the Alley. It wouldn't do to hurt anyone again. If they wanted him, they could come to him, but they aren't, so he'd not going to bother.
Danny was holding his hand now. The second he'd come in through the window, the kid had taken his helmet and made him sit down. Then, after methodically checking him over and treating his wounds, he'd stood there and stared at him.
"Can I help you?" Jason asked.
Danny didn't say anything, obviously, but he shake his head and take Jason's hand.
"You want to help me?" A nod. "You already have."
Danny shook his head again and sat on the edge of the beat up coffee table. He took Jason's glove off and, with his touch lighter than a feather, he wrote out. H-U-R-T.
"I'm not hurt-"
W-I-N-G-S
That, that made Jason freeze. "..what?"
Danny dropped Jason's hand and reared back like he'd been slapped. He stood and stumbled away, mouthing words he couldn't say, though Jason say "sorry" and "won't ask again" a few times.
Quickly, he followed after Danny. "Sh, sh,sh. No, it's-it's okay I was just- I didn't expect that is all."
Danny didn't look convince. Jason didn't feel convinced.
"My wings've been like this for a while. They don't hurt." He offered his hand again in case Danny wanted to respond.
He did. H-U-R-T he spelled again, Y-O-U H-U-R-T
"A bit, yeah, but I'm used to it."
G-R-E-E-N Danny spelled. He didn't stop when Jason froze up again. H-U-R-T Y-O-U W-I-N-G-S H-E-L-P
Jason resisted the urge to pull his hand back and step away. This was a conversation they were having and it wouldn't be much of a conversation if he was the only one able to communicate. "How do you know about the green."
M-E T-O-O
"..what?"
S-I-M-I-L-A-R
"But not the same?"
Danny shook his head. S-I-M-I-L-A-R
Jason inhaled shakily. "That doesn't explain how you know."
For a few minutes, Jason wasn't sure he was going to respond. But, just before he could say anything, Danny opened his mouth and, after a few false starts, hoarsely whispered, "I died, too."
Seems they have a lot more in common than he first thought.
Gently, Jason led Danny back to the couch and sat him down before going to get him some water. When he came back, he sat next to him and said, "I was fourteen."
Danny sipped his water. "Me, too." His voice was still scratchy and probably wouldn't last much longer, but it was monumental progress.
"Can I ask what happened?"
"Lab accident. You?"
"Joker got me."
"'m sorry."
"Don't be. It's not your fault."
They didn't speak again for a while, just ruminating in their own memories.
Jason couldn't believe the shit people could get away with anymore. The Joker had claimed diplomatic immunity and been let off the hook. Whoever hurt the kid, Jason could tell by his reactions to the white suits wandering Gotham, was being paid to keep doing that shit. Whatever happened to "life imprisonment"? Or was that just for show? A fear tactic that didn't have any backing.
Danny put down his cup and took Jason's hand again. W-I-N-G-S
It took another few minutes before he could find it in himself to answer. Then, he moved to sit on the floor and let his wings extend outwards. "Okay, kid. Knock yourself out."
Tara Knight (transfeminist Substack "writer", better known for other work) says that her laterally transmisogynist screed about trans women who are too solipsistic/disabled/un-self-sufficient to be good polycule partners was just a "vent post that was taken too far." I think this is weakling behavior, but an illustrative example. Tara knew that she was being provocative, intentionally, she made that clear in the initial post caption ("I'm sure the reaction to this one will be fun"), only to perform shock and offense that people were provoked. (A common response of the "they just hate me because I speak truth to power - so remember to buy my book, donate to my website!" grifter.)
The formal decision to write this in second person, and to then post it on Substack, where the positive comments are clearly receiving it as something beyond mere venting of a personal narrative, is inexplicable from the perspective of a vent post. It is transparently cynical engagement bait for her recently released self-published book of essays.
Oh, actually, apparently it was always "material analysis," something with some sort of educational or consciousness-raising value. I thought it was a hyperbolic vent post!
Anyway, these professional discoursers are only interested in promoting their own social authority and lining their pockets by churning out a high volume of low-effort low-quality content. The fact that it takes the form of long-form essays and not short-form video doesn't actually change the basic lack of substance.
Tara doesn't know what "materialist analysis" is in any meaningful sense - the reference to surplus-value in her essay is completely nonsensical given that the only substantive claims are about unwaged reproductive labor and providing wages to support a dependent partner (as well as sexual exploitation and emotional manipulation, which are, of course, bad). But she knows that it is a phrase you can invoke to give the appearance of insight, righteousness, knowledge, and radicalism. She knows because she has seen many people do it successfully for years, because there is a whole market in your feed for this kind of intellectual posturing. The whole fixation on rehabilitating "radical feminism" is the same way. If you find that her work is lazy, pretentious, long-winded, repetitive, rhetorically bigoted, or lacking in original insights - well, you are really just showing you are insufficiently materialist, and by extension insufficiently radical.
Tara - and what I'm far more interested in talking about, people like her - are not equipped to do this sort of social-theoretical work, because they are not actually interested in doing it but in using it as a means of maximizing their self-advancement. Their work is a mix of vibes and half-remembered discourse posts and cherry-picked references and AI slop. It is a simulacrum of feminist theory. It is embarrassing.
Hi, there! I was wondering if you would feel comfortable speaking about what you see in your line of work in terms of the intersection between mental health, crime, and the court system? Have you ever defended someone who was determined initially incapable of standing trial due to mental illness? Do you have any thoughts on ways that the system could improve in handling alleged offenders who are mentally ill? Or what can be done in cases where the offender in question is truly in need of help and they’ve also, actually committed crimes and are a danger to themselves and others?
In disclosure, I am thinking of a terrible situation I am aware of (but trying not to doxx myself with specifics), in which a mentally ill man made threats against a neighboring family, made sexual gestures toward their child, burned down part of their property, burned down his own house, was in and out of jail on multiple smaller charges, had restraining orders against him that he ignored, etc. After a years long situation extremely well documented, and with the cops called many times only to say they couldn’t do anything, the guy murdered one of the family members (the murder was recorded on the victim’s cell phone).
Suspect got put in a secure mental facility and was put on medication to get him stable enough to go to court. He ended up getting life without parole (in a death penalty state). The family was just…shattered. Severely traumatized from the years of harassment, the murder, AND the lack of any real action by the system to prevent this, even though they had “done everything right” as expected by the law, so to speak.
I firmly agree with your posted thoughts on human rights, and I know it’s far more likely for people who are mentally ill to be victims than perpetrators. But sometimes…it’s possible that it does happen. And I just feel so sad, for the family who lost so much. And sad that it took forcibly incarcerating this man and medicating him before he could even be declared competent, to even be aware enough of what he did, that he understood his actions and their consequences sufficiently to be given due process.
It’s hard not to wonder - if they’d done that in the first place, if he would still have committed this murder. He must have been so very sick and yet, even in and out of jail, there just wasn’t anything in place that would have prevented this. Or if there was, it didn’t work as it should have. He’s lost any chance at a life of his own, and has to live in prison with what he did while he was very unwell.
I’m sorry, I know this is a very fraught topic, and I understand if you prefer not to answer this. I may unintentionally be coming across as in favor of involuntarily commitments, but I am very sensitive to the matter of involuntarily hospitalizing and medicating people suffering from mental illness. It is a system historically and contemporarily riddled with horrific abuse of marginalized people. It’s not necessarily a viable solution to anything, especially not in its current state.
The intersection of issues at play here feels like the devil’s own crossroads where nobody wins and everything goes straight to hell. But I have to hope that this CAN change. And I’d really like to hear some things you think could help improve it?
I really appreciate this ask and its thoughtfulness. This *is* a really complex and tangled issue and the complete awful tragedies that result, like what happened to that family, are! preventable! It makes me furious that they weren't!
I'll back up a little and answer this a bit at a time.
1: Do I have clients who have been declared incompetent?
My GOD, yes. I have a half-dozen right now who are in the middle of the competency restoration process. (It's called "restoration" even if that person has never been competent in the first place.) Competency can be based on lack of knowledge/understanding about the court system (often because of developmental disability, or in the case of representing juveniles, because of (checks notes) being an actual child) or it can be based on a lack of rational understanding of what's going on. That's when you get into the delusions and psychosis and such.
2: Have I had clients who were not guilty by reason of insanity?
Yes, actually. It's a tough thing to get to, but some of my clients have been so delusional that they truly did not comprehend the nature and character of their actions/the rightness and wrongness. It's very much not a get-out-of-jail-free card; if an NGRI (not-guilty-reason-insanity) happens on a misdemeanor, the person would likely spend far far more time in a state hospital than they would in jail.
3: What should have happened here?
This is the question you're struggling to answer because you don't know the systems involved.
The saddest revelation, as always, is that the system does not protect people. Cops are not there to prevent crime. They are there to arrest people in the aftermath. So you can scream and scream all you want, but if the person hasn't done something a cop thinks makes for an easy arrest, often they will do nothing at all. Even when harm is preventable.
This is why you get court cases that say that even though cops are there to "serve and protect" they actually have no obligation to do either.
The other thing you have to understand is that our mental health system was dismantled in the 80s and never recovered. My state has three state psychiatric hospitals for adults and one state psychiatric hospital for children. My state isn't in the top 10 most populated states but it's pretty close; put it at somewhere from 5-10 million people.
One hospital for children. Out of millions of people.
Even those hospitals have huge wings that are shut down. Some of the adult hospitals have literal huge abandoned buildings just on their grounds, rotting. They are always understaffed, even for the number of beds they have available.
So, a huge amount of mental health care and monitoring is outsourced to local services. (Run on the level of counties and cities, but funded through the state.) Those are open access for all residents of their county.
Yeah, they'll monitor if someone released from a hospital comes in to their appointments. They'll try calling a few times to see if they answer their phone. If the person was lucky enough to get into some kind of supportive housing, they might coordinate with that. Beyond that, they don't have the capacity to do literally anything.
So the hospitals fast-track people for release. The local services groups fast-track people off their caseloads. And the police aren't interested in protecting anyone. And you get this bullshit, which is not unlike things I have seen happen.
4: So, again, what should have happened here?
On the first incident, he should have had access to a process that evaluated him for competency and sanity at time of offense in a quick and accessible way.
After that, restoration services should have gotten him on medication to stabilize him with either consistent follow-ups available in the community and assistive services if needed, OR if that was not viable, he, in fact, needed to be involuntarily committed.
Involuntary commitment sucks, y'all! The fact that I have some real power to say "my client is crazy and needs to be evaluated and taken into custody" is deeply fucking scary and uncomfortable, and is one of the hardest parts of my job. But, stepping back and viewing this with as much warmth and humanity as possible (because being objective objectively sucks):
If someone is causing harm and cannot stop, the state has a responsibility to intervene.
If someone is experiencing harm and cannot effectively defend against it, the state has a mandate to intervene.
Involuntary commitment is always applied too broadly, just like imprisonment, but there have been a handful of clients over the years who absolutely 100% needed to be in a hospital, potentially for the rest of their lives, though thank god I don't have to make that call. I can honestly just cross my fingers and hope that the hospital treats them well, that conditional release is achievable, that everything is done right.
Trump, by the way, cut even more federal funding for local and state psychiatric services. Those cuts could be directly responsible for the lack of service availability/accessibility that led to this situation.
What also fucking destroys me is that these kinds of tragedies are not unpredictable. There was a huge long course of behavior that led up to the last escalation. The intervention should have been there. The services should have been there. The fact that they weren't isn't an inevitable consequence of a free society. It's a government that doesn't want to fix this problem.
