*These Days

A way to organize the information overload. Lots of reblogs - quotes, interesting articles, etc.

[missmentelle]

What abusers believe.

If you’ve ever had to deal with an abusive person in your life - like an abusive parent or partner - you’ve probably wondered what made them treat you that way. If you understand why abuse is happening, the thinking goes, you might be able to figure out how to make it stop. 

So why do abusers do what they do? Do they have anger issues? Drinking problems? Past trauma? Personality disorders? Do they just need to get in touch with their feelings and learn how to communicate better?

Nope. 

Abusive behaviours come from abusive beliefs. Abusers - whether consciously or unconsciously - hold specific beliefs about relationships that drive their behaviour and allow them to justify the horrible things they do. Even if your abuser has never put their beliefs into words, you’ll probably recognize a lot of these abusive beliefs:

You are responsible for my emotions. It is never my responsibility to reflect on my emotional reactions or learn better coping skills - it’s your responsibility to stop doing things that make me angry or upset.

I must act on my emotions. If I am angry, I am going to lash out. You have no right to criticize me for that, and it’s not my responsibility to learn to manage my  emotions - you have to stop making me lash out at you. Asking me not to act on my emotions is controlling and wrong.

You will always be responsible for my emotions. Even if the relationship ends, you will continue to be responsible for my emotions, and I will expect you to continue to prioritize my feelings.

If I have feelings about something, it’s my business. If something you do or think causes an emotional reaction in me, then I have a right to get involved or tell you what to do. My feelings must be the priority. You don’t have the right to tell me that it’s none of my business. 

You must judge me on my intentions, not my actions. If I didn’t mean to hurt you or scare you, then you don’t have the right to be hurt or scared. No one has the right to try to hold me accountable unless I meant to hurt someone.

I get to decide what your intentions were. If you hurt me, you meant to hurt me. If you make me jealous, you meant to make me jealous. Nothing you do is ever accidental or unintended - everything you do is intentional and malicious, even if it was a response to something I did.

My feelings are genuine; your feelings are manipulation. If I’m upset, my feelings are real and important. If you are upset, you have an ulterior motive - you’re just trying to be manipulative and get attention or sympathy for yourself.

You have freedoms because I allow you to. Every freedom you have in your life - like wearing what you want - it’s because I generously allow it. I expect you to be grateful to me for that. I have the right to take those freedoms away whenever I want, and I expect you to obey.

If you set boundaries with me, you are mistreating me. If you really loved me, you wouldn’t set boundaries with me. You are doing this to intentionally hurt me, which means I don’t have to respect those boundaries.

You holding me accountable for hurting you is worse than me hurting you. My pain at being called out is worse than your pain at being mistreated. If I feel bad about something I did, I have already been punished enough. You trying to discuss the issue or hold me accountable is just your way of abusing me.

If I apologized for something, you have to forgive me. If the relationship has ended, you have to reconcile with me. You don’t get to ask for more time apart or more discussion of the issue - once I’ve apologized, the matter is closed for good.

The relationship is not over until I say it is over. So long as I want a relationship with you, you must have a relationship with me. Your feelings are irrelevant. Even if we have broken up, you must remain available to me so we can get back together in the future. Not wanting a relationship with me means you are mistreating me or being immature. 

I am the authority in this relationship. I am smarter and more perceptive than you. I know what is best for both of us. My version of events is always the correct one. I have superior judgement, taste and opinions. If you question me or disagree with me after I’ve given you the correct answer, you are disrespecting and mistreating me, or you are simply immature and incapable of knowing what’s good for you.

I have the right to control you. It is my absolute right to decide what you do and who you associate with. You have no right to disobey me. I am owed obedience and control; if you don’t give me those things, you are wronging me and cheating me out of the relationship I deserve. 

If you resist my control, I am allowed to do whatever I think is necessary to get it back. Once you’ve resisted me, I am justified in whatever I do to regain control of you. I am not responsible for my actions when you resist my control; you forced me to do it, and it’s your own fault. 

I should be your main focus. Everything else in your life comes secondary to me. When you make decisions, my feelings should be your first consideration. You are expected to make sacrifices for me and put me at the center of your life; I am not obligated to do the same for you. 

If I spend money on you or do something for you, you are in debt to me. You spending money on me or doing things for me does not erase your debt to me, and I am never in debt to you. You are indebted to me for as long as I decide. I may decide that your belongings and earnings also belong to me, since I allow you to have them. I may also decide at any time that you owe me for gifts I gave you, even if they were meant to be gifts.

I am not abusive, and you are not allowed to tell me otherwise. I know what abuse is, and real abusers are significantly worse than me. If our relationship has ever had any good times or positive moments, it can’t possibly be abusive. If you accuse me of being abusive, you are the one abusing me, or you have been led astray by bad influences. 

Relationships should be effortless (for me). I am owed a relationship that is peaceful and requires no real effort from me. It is your job to make sure we have that kind of relationship. If there is any tension or conflict in the relationship, it is your fault, and you are depriving me of the relationship I deserve to have. 

Abusers and victims alike often buy into the narrative that abuse is rooted in anger issues - after all, abusers are frequently angry, and anger is an issue that can be treated. But this narrative just isn’t true. Abusers aren’t abusive because they are angry. Abusers are angry because they are abusive. 

A non-abusive partner is not someone who has learned how to control their rage whenever you spend time with your friends or get home 15 minutes late from work. A non-abusive partner just doesn’t feel any rage in those situations. An abuser’s rage is firmly rooted in their beliefs about relationships - they feel entitled to a relationship that meets their impossible expectations, and when they inevitably don’t get it, they bubble over with fury. Whether they know it or not, they have firmly entrenched beliefs about how relationships should be, and those beliefs are at the heart of their abuse. 

Can abusers stop believing these things? Maybe. If they can acknowledge that they have these beliefs, accept that these beliefs are dangerous and unreasonable and let go of these beliefs, maybe it’s possible for them to no longer be abusive in the future. Maybe. But it’s not your job to hang around and find out. If you’re in an abusive relationship of any kind, you deserve better. There are many people in this world who don’t hold abusive views of relationships, and you deserve to find happiness with them. 

[figmentforms-the-human]

This basically sums up my ex husband

[dantecain]

When I complain about being a ‘gifted’ kid who grew into a talentless adult I don’t mean that I’m not trying to work on my talents or anything

I mean that the ‘gifts’ I had are useless

Reading books above my age isn’t a talent when I’m not eleven

Knowing big words isn’t a talent when I’m not a kid, it’s just growing up

It’s just a weird thing that happens and it feels shitty when you’re brought up being told you’re an exceptional child only to realise as an adult you’re just average

[coolfayebunny]

This

[riotbrrrd]

I did a lot of reading about gifted kids and especially gifted adults when I got my “diagnosis” because I was told I was gifted at 23 and well, it serves no purpose to have a confirmation that you’re gifted at 23

Thing is, gifted children are not amazingly better than everyone else. Gifted brains just don’t work the same so they build their skills in a different order

Basically when you’re very young, most people brain learn social skills and how to interact with their peers, but gifted brains are already at the next step which is how to understand and interact with the world

That makes the stereotypical young children that are very good at math, always asking questions about how things work, very upset when they don’t know a thing

But the thing is, when everyone gets older, they’ve mastered most social skills and now turn towards understanding the world

But the gifted children have already mastered that part and are turning towards how to build social skills. Except there’s no one left to teach us about that! Because we’re late to that party

Long story short, at the end everyone, gifted or not, goes through all the necessary steps to make functioning adults, so the difference that was obvious as a child has disappeared

But us gifted people often end up with social anxiety and impostor syndrome because we are actually less equipped than others to face a world that taught everyone to be confident and talk to people while we were busy reading books above our age

[poppetawoppet]

……………that last paragraph.

damn.

[jenniferrpovey]

Is ‘gifted’ really another way of being neurodivergent? (I say this as somebody who was 2X, which is not a fun way to go through the school system).

[prismatic-bell]

Honestly? Given its high comorbidity with ADHD and autism, I’d say yes.

[purplebuddhaproject]

“She is proud, she is struggling with herself; but kind, charming, generous.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky (via purplebuddhaquotes)

[anxietyproblem]

[unexpectedyarns]

May remain silent instead of voicing opinion if we think it will cause conflict

Constantly self-criticizes or thinks something is our fault

[thesesunflowerdays]

Oh

[sirfrogsworth]

On letting go and being friends.

jicklet replied to your post “A review that turns into a rant.”

This means a lot to me. I’ve lost a lot of, well, what I thought were friendships with dudes due to the not moving on thing. You’ve got a good attitude about it, Froggy.

Sadly, this lesson took me way too long to learn. I was influenced by peers and society to think of every friendship with a woman as a potential romantic entanglement. It wasn’t until my late 20s that I realized how toxic and ridiculous that attitude was. 

When you view everything through that romantic lens, it taints the friendship. You stop trying to bond normally and everything turns into strategizing. 

“Maybe if I think of more flattering compliments.”  “Maybe if I give unexpected gifts.” “MAYBE IF I’M A NICE GUY™.”

I had this notion that continued effort could win hearts. I had seen it in movies and TV shows. My friends even told me that I should keep trying. Perhaps I could wear her down and magically she would see me in a different light. 

If you persist you can win your prize! 

But people aren’t prizes.  You can’t exchange your Nice Guy™ points for romantic rewards.  And feelings of attraction rarely change. 

I wish more young people understood that attraction is a fickle thing. Much of it takes place in that stubborn lizard brain. The feeling is either there or not. One look. One conversation can be all it takes to decide. 

Yes, sometimes people can take a bit longer to warm up. 

But not that long. 

Once someone has a decent perception of who you are as a person… if they aren’t feeling that biz in their brain and bits… move on. 

(I know not everyone feels things in their bits, but it was good alliteration and I couldn’t help myself.)

And maybe give some serious consideration to friendship. Real friendship. If for one second you think “Aww, man. I’m in the stupid friendzone!”… that isn’t real. Friendship is not a substandard consolation prize. If you feel that way, kindly punch yourself in the face, apologize for being a buttmunch, and excuse yourself from their life. 

If someone had just explained this to me at 15, I could have saved myself so much heartache. So much embarrassment. And there are probably some friends of mine who I put into uncomfortable situations that were completely unnecessary. I shouldn’t have needed 32 hints to understand. The fact that some of those women still talk to me decades later is a miracle. 

But the worst part is the regret. I ruined two very close friendships because I kept trying to create a spark that didn’t exist. 

And I wasted soooo… much… time. 

I didn’t even consider exploring other, more realistic options. I let potential romantic pairings slip away because I wouldn’t let go.

My brain got switched into angsty melodrama mode.

“She’s the one.” “She’s my soulmate.” “She just doesn’t know it yet!”

I’m so embarrassed to even admit I was like that. 

Eventually, I realized that once I dropped the romantic pretense, I got along better with the women in my life more than the men. It was a huge lightbulb moment. (And no, this isn’t a “grrr… men suck” deal. Those specific men at that time just sucked, okay?) I found my interactions with the women in my life more rewarding. It was so much easier to be emotional. It felt freeing to open up in that way. To talk about deeper things. To have more intimate conversations without any awkwardness. Even the hugs were better. Hugging men was always like… *pat pat* *release* and then no eye contact for ten seconds after hug completion. I had more fulfilling handshakes.  

My guy friendships all seemed to focus around pure geekery and my ability to make them laugh. Video games or sports or computers or the latest cool media franchise. I enjoyed talking about shared interests. I liked making people laugh. But then I’d talk about my depression or poor health and they’d get uncomfortable. If I wasn’t happy-fun-guy all the time they’d just nod and try to change the subject. As I got sicker, I didn’t have the energy to be “on” all the time. It was exhausting to try. 

Once I finally started accepting the women in my life as nothing more than friends, I found a source of emotional support that I really needed. And I was decent at returning that, so our friendships were more even. Mutually beneficial. I could be funny when I wanted to. I could be serious when I wanted to. I could be a shoulder to cry on. They could be a much needed hugging companion. And that was so much more important than trying to find a date. My body was falling apart and romance seemed so trivial. The women in my life took care of me. The men faded away.

Then I started being bothered with how my male friends talked about women. Bragging about sneakily watching girls in yoga pants work out. Talking about their significant others looks as if those were their only admirable features. Detailing sexual conquests as if they were recapping a sporting event. Asking me when I was going to “hit that” about my friends. Then making fun of me when I told them it wasn’t like that. 

As I got closer to women, the more I saw them as equals and well… human beings. I mean, I wasn’t very directly sexist or misogynistic in general. But I also never thought about sexism or misogyny even when it was right in front of me. My issues were more internalized. 

These conversations with men started really frustrating me. I found myself playing the part of “bro” and feeling scummy afterward. If that happened today I’m hoping I’d have the courage to say something. But I was just figuring this stuff out and was a bit of a chicken then. 

Ever since that lightbulb moment I’ve been much more open to just being friends with women. And I’m a bit pickier when befriending men. I know someone is probably going to read this and think I’m trashing all men. It’ll be the M&Ms all over again. All I can say is that these are anecdotal examples of my personal experiences. If people generalize beyond that scope, that is up to them. 

What’s the expression? 

Not all men?  Some of my best friends are men!  My father is a man! My dog is a tiny furry man! 

All kidding aside… I think the quality of all my friendships (men/women/non-binary) has increased substantially since I had this epiphany. I just sought out more fulfilling relationships in general. 

I think I’ll end with a relevant story. 

I had a crush on my current best friend in the whole world. 

For about 3 days. 

We were exchanging Facebook messages. Getting to know each other. I thought she was cute. After a few days she mustered up her courage and let me know that she was gay. She feared that would be the end of our communications. In the past, many guys would just disappear once that bomb dropped. She worried it would be the same with me. 

Maybe 15 years ago that would have been me. I don’t know. 

But she was hilarious and talented and smart and adorable. Our conversational chemistry was incredibly in sync. Talking to her took almost no energy because everything came so naturally. And for someone with CFS, that is a rare delight. I don’t know if I have ever connected that strongly that quickly with anyone in my life. 

After that message, I immediately ended my crush and started our friendship. The easiest and best decision I’ve ever made. 

I was just like… “You’re awesome! Let’s be friends!” She was like “YAY!” And I was like “YAY!” And the rest is history. 

It’s been 5 years and we’re closer today than we’ve ever been. 

But the fact that we even had that exchange is the reason I think we need to be teaching this to young people. Telling someone you are unavailable romantically should not even be a bomb that is dropped. It should be a low pressure FYI. 

I’m not saying you can’t be disappointed. Or that you should be able to instantly turn off feelings like a light switch. That takes time and experience. I’m also not saying you need to be friends with every person that rejects you. I’m just saying don’t pass up a good thing.

You can learn to move on. 

Once you accept the reality, it’s actually not that hard. And the more you do it, the easier it is to let go. 

You can just be friends. 

Once you abandon the romantic nonsense, you might even find a closer, more rewarding bond. 

This mindset changed my life and gave me a best friend. I feel like a less sucky person too.  

I highly recommend it. 

Epilogue

I will now patiently wait for angry messages from men who say I drank the feminist Kool-Aid and I’m saying all this just to attract women. Even though that is contrary to everything I just said and it has had a 0 percent success rate so far. (Not that I’m keeping track. It’s just that 0 is pretty easy to count to.)

Or that I’m white-knighting and trying to appear virtuous even though the things I’ve described are mostly the bare minimum for being a decent human and require no adulation. You shouldn’t expect a cookie for doing what is… well… expected.

Also, I’m not putting all women up on a pedestal either. I’ve encountered plenty of sucky women in my life. I just think sometimes men can have this layer of societally influenced suck that interferes with emotionally rewarding friendships. If that layer of suck was removed I think we’d all be better off. And happier. And maybe the hugs would be nicer. 

Yeah, I’m still gonna get messages. Oh well.

[whyhansolo]

[ricelumps]

#this is the most dramatic reaction to a boner ever

[mermecha]

Republicans reactions to female sexuality

[alianovnataliasoldblog-deactiva]

[froankie-deactivated20130715]

#SHE IS NOT EVEN ANYWHERE NEAR THE GENERAL AREA OF FUCKING AROUND GODDAMN

[all-fades-away]

Hello Queen of Genovia

[theroguefeminist]

i read an article once that tried to “analyze” why so many people hate anne hathaway. i think the reason is because she’s a woman who sticks up for herself and stands up against sexism

[closet-keys]

I hate Freud. His whole weird theory about penis envy and children being sexually attracted to their parents and secret desires and all that shit actually came straight out of an attempt to ally himself with wealthy and influential rapists and was a direct form of victim blaming.

He had started the research looking into “hysteria” which at the time was really usually referring to women’s symptoms of PTSD. It turned out that the reason so many woman had these symptoms is because so many of them had experienced sexual violence– especially CSA and incest at the hands of their fathers. 

At first he was making real progress, and it was through working with these women that he discovered that talk therapy could be used to treat trauma. The symptoms of PTSD were lessened when women were able to safely speak about their experiences out loud and be believed. 

But it wasn’t the women who paid for the therapy. It was their fathers, husbands, the same men who were perpetuating the violence in the first place. And Freud didn’t want to validate his patients (the women) if it meant making his clients (the men) unhappy.

So he came up with a new idea. These symptoms weren’t from trauma. The memories weren’t real. These women were just sexual beings as children and had penis envy and it made them lust for their fathers and fantasize about the rape that they had reported to him. That’s where the shittiest parts of Freud’s theories emerged. Another part of it besides just the monetary aspect, though, was that there was a feminist movement on the fringes starting up at the time and by publishing work about women’s CSA he would be aligning himself with it and therefore losing support, respect, funding, prestige from his male peers and from the psychological community at large. He literally made that gross victim blaming shit up to keep his own reputation with these fucks and to make sure he still got publication and fame.

By coming up with fake theory about little girls fantasizing about incest he not only fucked over generations of women, the feminist movement that was arising, and the entire psychology field for years to come, but he also completely swept away any progress made in understanding trauma and so we didn’t have any clue why men coming back from war had “hysteria” like women during WWI.

And our research on PTSD and trauma is still lacking to this day, especially because of the stigma that maybe traumatized people deserved it or wanted it or imagined it. People don’t want to believe it’s real. Perpetrators of traumatic violence want everyone to forget about it, not acknowledge it, or trivialize it.

And they have Freud’s cultural legacy to help them.

[vetivervelvetviolet]

Can you provide academic citations for this? This is really neat.

[disease-danger-darkness-silence]

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959353596062015

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0959353596062015

If you don’t have access bc paywall, here’s a decent summary on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freudian_Coverup

Some vague proof:’

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/24/science/freud-secret-documents-reveal-years-of-strife.html?pagewanted=all&mcubz=0

An essay on the topic:

http://socialistreview.org.uk/404/whats-wrong-sigmund-freud

If you want some more, just google, “Sigmund Freud Seduction Theory Problematic.” There’s lots of academic and non-academic discussion on the topic, but TLDR Sigmund Freud is basically disregarded in almost all aspects of psychology by anyone who actually cares about their patients, so fuck that guy for holding psychology back.

[thewesterwoman]

Words cannot express how much I hate Freud. His theories have been entirely disproven by current psychological research, but using him to interpret literary texts is still a widely accepted technique in the field of literary study today.

English departments across the country will not bat an eye at tenured professors bringing Freud into lectures and citing him in scholarly articles and books. Doing a “Freudian reading” of a literary character or theme is regarded as a valid means of understanding and drawing meaning from works by authors as diverse as William Shakespeare, James Joyce, and C.S. Lewis. And it is based entirely on this guy’s unbelievably sexist, flat-out fraudulent, and thoroughly disproven research. It’s insane.

[f1rstperson]

Just so everyone on my dash is aware that Freud’s theories are pseudoscience.

[themintywitch]

I too hate Freud and everything he stands for. I just wish people knew why I hate him so much.

[gucciballs-deactivated20200720]

Freud also made crazy leaps in progress for OCD, but again. he pretty much threw it all in the trash. not to mention most of what we know about human sexuality is taken from Freud and Alfred Kinsey who was a huge piece of shit in his own right. was the little unfounded progress they made really worth the years of torture have been through?

[friendly-animals]

(Source)

[househunting]

$82,000,000/8 br/8250 sq ft

NYC NY

[thesesunflowerdays]

The Lego building!

[scifigeneration]

Transparent solar technology represents 'wave of the future'

See-through solar materials that can be applied to windows represent a massive source of untapped energy and could harvest as much power as bigger, bulkier rooftop solar units, scientists report in Nature Energy.

Led by engineering researchers at Michigan State University, the authors argue that widespread use of such highly transparent solar applications, together with the rooftop units, could nearly meet U.S. electricity demand and drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels.

“Highly transparent solar cells represent the wave of the future for new solar applications,” said Richard Lunt, the Johansen Crosby Endowed Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at MSU. “We analyzed their potential and show that by harvesting only invisible light, these devices can provide a similar electricity-generation potential as rooftop solar while providing additional functionality to enhance the efficiency of buildings, automobiles and mobile electronics.”

Keep reading

[thesesunflowerdays]

That is amazing

[whimsicalnay]

Maybe We’ll Catch Up at a Better Time: a Literati playlist — listen on Spotify.

1. The Nicest Thing - Kate Nash | 2. I Like Me Better - Lauv | 3. Chateau - Angus & Julia Stone | 4. New York - Snow Patrol | 5. Boys Like You - Anna Clendening | 6. Still Falling For You - Ellie Goulding | 7. Litlost - X Ambassadors | 8. A Beautiful Disaster - Kelly Clarkson | 9. Speeding Cars - Walking On Cars | 10. Intimacy - Sunbathers | 11. Waking Up Slow - Gabrielle Aplin | 12. Sweet Creature - Harry Styles | 13. Battleships - Daughtry | 14. Out of the Woods - Taylor Swift | 15. Just Say When - Nothing More | 16. Mixed Signals - Ruth B. | 17. Belong - Cary Brothers | 18. Come to This - Natalie Taylor | 19. Another Sad Song - Lower Than Atlantis | 20. Sorry - Halsey | 21. Rush - Lewis Capaldi ft. Jessie Reyez | 22. Happier - Ed Sheeran | 23. A Drop In the Ocean - Ron Pope | 24. Over You - Ingrid Michaelson ft. A Great Big World | 25. Holding On and Letting Go - Ross Copperman | 26. Poison & Wine - The Civil Wars | 27. Suitcase - Matthew Koma | 28. For Blue Skies - Strays Don’t Sleep | 29. When We Were Young - Adele | 30. Happiness - The Fray | 31. Hold On - HAEVN

[saywhat-politics]

[sarahseeandersen]

[yyyyddmmsupremacy-deactivated20]

absolutely nothing should be sold for a profit if its absence can kill you.

water shouldn’t be sold for a profit.

food shouldn’t be sold for a profit.

healthcare shouldn’t be sold for a profit.

any system where people can die because they’re unable to access these resources needs to be dismantled.

[s-e-wings]

Free embroidery pattern found on POLKA DOT CHAIR.

[zarekthelordofthefries]

Not to critique evolution, but I would think orange and black stripes wouldn’t be as good for camouflage in a forest as, say, green and black would.

[acceptableduraz]

It turns out a lot of animals can’t see the difference between orange and green!  Elephants, for instance, have dichromatic vision (two types of cones, rather than three like most humans.) 

Check out this diagram from ResearchGate.  It deals with the color vision of horses, who are also generally dichromatic.  (I think, though I’m not sure, that zebras would have the same color vision as horses.)  See how orange and green look to them?

[zarekthelordofthefries]

Not to critique evolution but I think prey animals should be better at telling when their predator is dressed like a traffic cone.

[squeeful]

It doesn’t matter what zebras see, because tigers are not native to Africa and do not naturally hunt zebra.  Tigers are Asian and mostly hunt animals like deer, elk, and buffalo.  These aren’t animals with great color vision.  They don’t need to have it because they don’t eat fruit and so don’t need to know when the berry is ripe vs when it’s not.  Good color vision is too expensive to have if you don’t need it.  Deer put their vision stats in a wide field of vision that is sensitive to motion, low light capabilities, and possibly seeing UV light.  They don’t have great color and lack a lot of acuity, but have a great sense of smell and good hearing.  That’s way more useful if you’re prey.  Deer see well in the blue end of the color spectrum and less well in the red.  This makes sense because deer are most active in the dawn and dusk periods, when there is more blue in the light.  Tigers are taking advantage of deer eyesight by being orange.

We see tigers are being obviously colored because tigers are fruit colored to our tree ape brains.

[thelibrarina]

I don’t know what the best part of this is: implying that deer chose their attributes on a character sheet, or the fact that we get to see tiger colors because they look like a snack.

[koryos]

Not to mention, in general the forests tigers live in go through dry seasons, turning much of the brush pale gold, so orange is actually not a bad choice.

(photo by Art Wolfe)

But either way, the main point of tiger camouflage isn’t blending in via it’s coloration, it’s actually a combination of disruptive coloration and countershading. Disruptive coloration uses boldly contrasting colors to break up the shape of an animal’s outline, as shown in this image by Hugh Cott:

It’s much harder to resolve the movement of a tiger as “TIGER!!” compared to grass or branches swaying in the wind this way.

In addition, countershading is another camouflage strategy the tiger employs. It’s darker-colored on its back and lighter-colored on its belly. This is because when light falls on objects, it illuminates their top halves, while shadow falls on and darkens the lower half. Animals with the same top and bottom colors will therefore stand out from the background, because of the shadows cast on their legs and belly. Countershading helps to ‘flatten’ the silhouette of an animal by disguising these shadows. If that confuses you, check out this figure by Ian Alexander:

Both these strategies work whether the foliage is green or brown, because the tiger’s camouflage doesn’t need to be perfect- just confusing enough to let it get close.