{ insert joke about salt losing its saltiness here }

raye • they/them • late-twenties. queer is my gender and my sexuality. some flavor of neurodivergent ~ probably adhd, social anxiety, executive dysfucntion abounds!  [ sideblog of icannotweave. ] gonna be working through various brands of Trauma ~ mostly untangling religious trauma and mom-stuff & how it all connects to my brain stuff ~ so i’ll try to tag appropriately! 💙

[roscolux]

need to beam this tweet directly into everyone's minds right now

[vincentpriceofficial]

I think for a lot of people “I am completely helpless and powerless” and “I am completely powerful and in control” are both basically comforting fantasies because most of us live our lives in an in between place where we have enough agency to be responsible for our actions but not enough agency to have true control over our lives and the tension between power and powerlessness in the day to day is psychologically wearing and exhausting

[scramratz]

I think people would be less suicidal if they were allowed to talk about being suicidal without risk of being sent to the Torture Dungeon

[theconcealedweapon]

[ddoodler]

Kindness Accepting Anger.

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

I will never understand how normalized it is to put cameras in your home now. I can recognize some scenarios where it makes sense- if I had a stalker for example, but like. It would have to be That Big for me to consider it. People today use it to tell their kids it's time to stop playing video games and do homework like. Like?? I do not understand how you don't understand how harmful it is to raise kids with the sense they're always being watched like why does anyone under normal circumstances invite this into their home

[wizardarchetypes]

saw a video recently, recorded by a camera in a child's bedroom, of a toddler reading her favorite book after bed time. her mom went in and told her it was time to sleep, and she said, 'but i just love reading so much.' her mom laughed indulgently and told her to sleep once the book was finished. she agreed, but before the video ended, she said, 'you're so silly for watching me!'

she was smiling when she said it, but i found that one sentence so abysmal. that toddler knew her mom didn't just happen to come and check on her. she understands that there is a camera in her room by which her mom (and as far as she might comprehend, any adult) can access her in her private space, in her private time, at all times.

can you imagine? never on your own. can't sleep? too bad. you're a child and the grown ups are watching you. lie in bed in the dark. pretend to sleep. behave.

it's 10 pm and the rest of the house is enjoying winding down after a long day. your parents don't need to worry about putting on a professional face like they do at work. your older siblings get to be themselves instead of who they have to be at school. everyone gets to relax. but not you.

it's 10 pm, and you're three years old, and you must continue to do everything right, because they are watching you.

oh, and when you don't behave, if it's cute enough, your mother will post footage of you in your bedroom for millions of strangers to watch!

[txttletale]

so many people in the notes of my post about how it's outright dangerous to advocate for increased parental control over kids' internet usage saying 'well obviously the Good parents should have control over their kids' internet usage and the Bad ones shouldn't' and it just absolutely baffles me how people can think like this without their heads exploding scanners style. like 'abolish the family' is an ambitious political goal i'll give you that but at least it's a goal that could be executed in the real world

[txttletale]

banking my political positions on the invention of the excalibur style child surveillance software that activates only for the righteous and pure of heart

[themoonbase]

Parents’ right to control nearly every aspect of a child’s life is held not only against the state and other adults, but also against their own children. In every American jurisdiction, parents have a privilege to commit assault and battery against their children under the parental discipline exception that would otherwise be prosecutable as domestic violence, and their children lack the protection from law enforcement that adults enjoy when attacked. Although defenders of “corporal punishment” may conceive of it as a means for parents to instill necessary discipline in children, statutes are written in such a way that parents are free to mete out ad hoc “punishment” without due process, limited only by the high threshold of child abuse. Any inquiry or review into whether such battery actually served a disciplinary purpose is unlikely, absent disagreement by a child’s other parent, due in part to there being virtually no serious legal standards defining when and whether “discipline” is reasonable. Parents may legally hit their children for violating ad hoc rules—or no rules at all—so long as they plausibly believe this to be necessary to control, train or educate their child. Parents can also confine their children and commit what would otherwise be kidnapping against them.

These parental powers over children effectively enable parents to use the threat of violence or confinement to force their children to do whatever the parent desires, so long as it falls outside of narrowly-defined abuse statutes. Likewise, children can be forced by their parents to abstain from anything they are not legally required to do, such as attend school, no matter how unhelpful this is for them. Children can be coerced in this way into participating in nearly all varieties of illiberal indoctrination, from ex-gay movement conversion camps to reactionary political or religious programs, to more seemingly innocuous activities like sports, music lessons, or compelled social bonding with relatives that would nonetheless be degrading to an unwilling participant. That people commonly express toleration for even those parenting choices they profoundly disagree with under the belief that it is not right to tell someone how to raise their “own” children reflects how pervasively accepted parental powers are.

Depriving children of the equal protection of the laws by privileging parents to commit what would otherwise be battery, domestic violence, kidnapping, and false arrest under the parental discipline exception is far from the only way the state grants parents rights against their children. The state also directly imposes legal duties on children to obey parental authority. The most dramatic examples of these legal duties are found in the ungovernable, unruly, or incorrigible minor laws, where children who disobey their parents may be charged with a juvenile status offense. Defying parents under these status offense laws can trigger direct state coercion against children in the form of court-mandated probation or even imprisonment in a juvenile detention facility. A significant number of states continue to maintain runaway laws that allow conviction of a child away from home without parental permission for a juvenile status offense. Most states that do not define this as a formal offense will nonetheless have procedures for police to detain children who are away from home without parental permission. Children who repeatedly run away are often regarded as children in need of services and may be forcibly confined to the same detention facilities where juvenile offenders are incarcerated. It is a crime in most places in the United States to aid a runaway, contribute to the delinquency of a minor, or both."

Samantha Godwin, Against Parental Rights

[rimonoroni2]

the christian veneration of the lamb has always been terrifying to me in ways i can’t explain

[rimonoroni2]

here’s this figure that is vulnerable and easily abused and what’s admirable about it is that it doesn’t fight back and it doesn’t try to defend itself and it’s suffering is noble because it just sits there and takes it. pain is beautiful when you surrender to pain, suffering is godly when you don’t question or try to protect yourself and survival is ugly… like it is just me or is anybody else’s fucking skin crawling rn!!

[sandersstudies]

When you spend all day gentle parenting other people’s children and then watch their parents undo it :)

[sandersstudies]

Me: hey dude, I know you don’t like wearing your shoes, but to play over here you have to wear shoes because if you don’t you could get hurt. If you don’t put on shoes, you cannot play here.

Child whose incentive to put on shoes is to join playtime: ok

Parent at pickup: What did I say about taking off your shoes? If you don’t have your shoes on in three seconds I’m going to take you to the bathroom and spank your bare bottom!

Child whose incentive to put on shoes is now fear of physical pain: *screaming crying and running away resulting in more disruption*

[sandersstudies]

Me: hey guys, I heard you two were having some problems earlier. I know you two are usually friends, so let’s take a few deep breaths and then we can talk about what happened and make up, okay?

Their parents in the parking lot: *screaming their heads off at each other*

[purlturtle]

The thing is, though: every moment you spend with these kids is a seed. Is the knowledge that the way it is at home/with their parents isn't the only way.

One day, the seed will bloom. None of your actions with these kids are ever wasted, nor are they ever fully undone.

[headspace-hotel]

Wrote journal entry today reflecting on my childhood experiences of The Fear and how my understanding of myself has changed over the years.

Some parts of it I cannot approach without spiraling, some parts I am just newly able to write about.

I am remembering how in many cases, the thing I was afraid of was so terrifying to me I could not imagine what it was. I couldn't get close enough to it in my mind. My fears in childhood mostly had a unifying theme, but the rumination or "thoughts" centered on the implication of the thing, and the thing itself I just couldn't think about at all.

I am less tied up in knots now about "whether I can consider myself to have trauma or not." My experiences didn't fall into anything that would be classically considered "traumatic," and I thought I had accepted that, but I keep looking for a Big Explanation for why my experience of [The Bad Thing] is so dramatically different.

Experiencing The Fear impacted my personality and my entire life so much. Looking back on it, I was in so much pain, and later when i was a teenager I coped by keeping approx 55% of the volume of my consciousness so tightly boarded up I couldn't think about [The Bad Thing].

I had only ever been myself. As an adult, I feel horrified at the very thought that a young child could be experiencing that level of fear, but I know that I did because I remember it, but...little me, she was so small. I feel like none of the adults around me understood the depth and vastness of The Fear. I only had the words i had been exposed to. I couldn't tell them.

[headspace-hotel]

Does anyone else have the following feeling? I am amazed looking back on my child self because I could not imagine "things being okay" to the extent I am okay now. I thought the world was just a torture labyrinth by nature and I would pass through it and suffer.

My capacity for courage was much higher as a child. I was so strong. I did so many things that terrified me; I would never do something now that terrified me that much! It wouldn't be acceptable.

[ndnbutch]

negative self talk IS unproductive and painful for you and often those around you. but like every other post that talks about this is like “yeah it makes you an exhausting and burdensome person to be around and if you don’t stop now everyone in your life will abandon you. Also I personally hate you for it”. and it’s like hey hi hello. basically the theme of all my negative self talk is that I’m an exhausting and burdensome person to be around and that everyone in my life will soon abandon and hate me. so like haha what’re we doing here? are you going to provide any actionable advice for how to get out of this habit, or just tell me that I’m Doing Bad And Wrong And Must Suffer For It?

Anyway. If you struggle with negative self-talk I feel for you. It’s hellish, and it’s not something that can just be bludgeoned out of someone by telling them it sucks. We know! I’m not out of the weeds just yet by a long shot, but here’s some of the stuff that’s been helpful for me:

Fake it til it’s real: cliche, I know! but it really has helped for me, even though it makes me suuuuper uncomfortable at times. but literally tell yourself that you’re super charismatic and sexy and everyone loves you. or whatever version of that feels good for how you’d like to be seen. it’s gonna feel silly and untrue for a really long time, but it helps!

Reframe: I struggled to phrase this one, but what I mean basically is like… taking that notion of “hey negative self-talk sucks for the people around you too” and turning it into “wow, it is kind of mean to my friends to just assume they’re lying when they say they love me. I don’t want to be mean to my friends. I’m going to take the risk of trusting them”. Try not to go too far in the direction of “oh god I’m being mean to my friends” and stay on the path of “I want to and CAN do right by them”

Separate from it: I like to kind of act like my negative self talk is something of a different entity from me. Your mileage may vary on this one. I was a really mean really sad teenage girl once, and for me that kind of feels like the place the negative self talk comes from. So instead of being like “I guess I just hate myself and always will”, I can be like “I have this wounded inner child who is lashing out. I’m going to be gentle with her, but I’m also going not going to listen to the things she tells me we are, because she is 16 and hasn’t experienced anything good yet.”

This is far from a comprehensive list but this post is getting long—feel free to add on if you have any tactics that have worked especially well for you!

[farewell-to-lorien]

Talking to Ghosts, by Sienna Gonzales.

[unclothed-i-shall-return]

in what should be no surprise to anyone, i am having Feelings about Wicander Halovar. goddamn brennan lee mulligan campaigns and the sneaky incorporation of religious trauma 😭😭😭

[loveridden1999]

i may have my father's worst traits but i am more ethical & virtuous with them than him

[pawberri]

One weird experience of transitioning is failing at ur assigned gender role the whole time and everyone constantly deriding you for it but then u come out and it's like we lost a beautiful gender conforming warrior today. Must grieve for my wonderful child who pissed me off by being ugly and weird since day 1

[innuendostudios]

The Alt-Right Playbook returns triumphantly with a video about conservative fatalism, binaristic thinking, the morality of “lesser of two evils,” fundamentalism, and Christian atheism. It’s called I Hate Mondays.

If you like The Alt-Right Playbook, consider backing me on Patreon and keep it coming out.

Transcript below the cut.

Keep reading

[byjove]

So many Reddit relationship stories (where the relationship is not inherently fucked and the other person is not a threat to society) just come down to the person not realizing their feelings aren’t valid. Sometimes you think and feel things that are damaging to yourself and others and you have to learn to mitigate those bigggggg feelings. It is shit I thought we learned in kindergarten. Everybody is a little jealous of the birthday boy’s cool gifts but if you have a sobbing screaming jealous breakdown about it at the party, nobody is going to want to be your friend and it is not going to change anything in your favor.

There will be posts like “I feel angry at my wife because she hasn’t been as affectionate towards me because she’s been taking care of her dying mom.” like, okay. Grow the fuck up. That’s an inside thought. It’s normal to miss your S/O when stressful life events keep you from spending quality time with each other. Absolutely not normal to behave like your point of view is the most important part of this situation and to continue to develop resentment towards your spouse who is experiencing one of the worst things that can happen to a person.

Sometimes something someone does makes you uncomfortable and you realize it is your fault for feeling that way. Sometimes you will be jealous for no particular reason. Sometimes you’ll have an immature and selfish point of view on a situation. Sometimes you genuinely have to admit to yourself your feelings do not matter in a particular situation and swallow them.

[byjove]

Maybe it’s the autism or the fact I’ve been severely mentally ill my entire life but I’m so used to thinking/feeling something and then being like “Actually, that is completely irrational. I need to work through that.” or “That’s wrong. Thinking like that does not benefit anyone.” that it is baffling to see people who completely refuse to admit their feelings are not always justified and valid.