WhyThaHeckNot

[ciaocasper]

I burn the candle at both ends while I can because the light is twice as bright and I don’t know when I might lose my fire again.

[whythahecknot]

20 October 2018

I think my agoraphobia is because going anywhere is a huge production, and because of how people treat me. I can’t just go somewhere. The bus is huge, with beeping alarms and way too many lights. I hate feeling like a circus. People can’t just let me go somewhere, they have to stop me, asking where i’m going and if i need help. The old dudes who make jokes about driving or wanting to race me are the worst. Or maybe the people who nearly knock me over trying to get to the door before me or have actually caused injury by yanking a door handle out of my hand. It might just be the people who stop me to say how brave and inspirational i am. I’m not your fucking inspiration. I’m a person, just like you, who grocery shops and… y’know, exists. Don’t even get me started on those who think it’s ok to touch or pet me. *shudder* How is it ever ok to take something away for someone, or push them, even if your intent is to “help”? People do not see me as a person, and it sucks. It all makes me feel useless and stupid. A stupid, useless spectacle. By the time i get home i am physically (the waiting takes a toll), mentally, and emotionally exhausted. I want to shrink, to hide, to never leave home again.

[feminismandmedia]

[bifinmediasres]

Why is it that in conversations condemning racism, sexism and homophobia everyone always stops short of also condemning ableism?

Oh…it’s because no one sees that as discrimination, it’s just how the world works. Sorry, I forgot for a second /sarcasm/

[ammabananaa-blog]

what is the country coming to?

in kansas, it’s now legal for a doctor to lie to a patient about her medical condition if it means an abortion can be prevented.

in arizona, a law is being passed that a woman must explain why she is on birth control to her employer, and if it’s not for a medical reason, her boss won’t cover it.

my mind is so blown away by all of this.

women of america, we need to stand up to these extremists and fight for our rights as women.

for those who think they can’t outlaw birth control, think again; these unjust things are already starting to happen. we can’t pretend like this will blow over anymore.

[lierdumoa]

To my friends on the spectrum, let me explain to you an unspoken social rule that possibly nobody has ever explained to you before

If a neurotypical asks you, “What game are you playing?” they’re not asking you to describe the game.

They’re asking you if they can play too.

If a neurotypical asks you, “What are you watching?” they’re not asking you to explain the plot of the movie/tv show to them.

They’re asking if they can watch it with you.

.

When neurotypicals ask you “What are you doing?” 

What you think they’re asking: “Please explain to me what you are doing.” 

What they’re actually asking:  “Can I join you?”

Now here’s the really fucked up part. If you start explaining to them what you’re doing? They will interpret that as a rejection. 

What you think you’re saying: [the answer to their question]

What they think you’re saying: This is an elite and exclusive activity for a level 5 friend and you are a level 1 acquaintance. You are not qualified to join me because you don’t know all this stuff. Go away.

.

This is why neurotypicals think you’re being cold and antisocial.

IT’S ALL A HORRIBLE MISCOMMUNICATION.

[bonehandledknife]

I didn’t realize, even thought it took me almost three decades to learn this, that this was such a paradigm changing realization until we had our conversation today.

But it really really is. One of the most bewildering realizations I’ve had is most people don’t talk to learn things unless its related to work or directly towards their own hobbies, all the words and questions are bonding questions if done socially. They are “lets make friends” questions.

So if I answer their question without an opportunity for the person asking the question to give a response or to join in somehow, the asker feels alienated and starts shutting down.

Example: what are you reading?

True answer but not what they’re looking for: Title of book

Best answer for social scenarios where I want to retain/create friendship: This book is about x and y but it has z that i know u have an interest in too.

Example: what are you doing?

True answer but not: drawing

Best answer for friends: I’m drawing but would u like company while I’m working?

And sometimes frankly I’m not in a headspace where I can process people so the answer is something like, “I would like to do something in a day or later, do you want to plan something?”

Tldr: communication is wierd

[survivablyso]

HOLY

SHIT

that explains so fucking much thank you

(why the fuck do neurotypicals never just day what they mean ie hey this show looks cool mind if I join you)

[bonehandledknife]

Further annoying?

They don’t realize that’s what they’re asking and they just feel rejected and go away. So you can’t even ask them what you did wrong because they can’t even put a finger on why they feel the way they do they just know you made them feel bad for some undefined reason.

[13faeinapenguinsuit]

What’s messed up about this is that we are the ones that communicate explicitly and simply and are pathologized for it, while allistics literally expect us to READ THEIR FUCKING MINDS and that’s normal? How even is that reasonable? How is it we are the ones that society thinks are mentally ill?

Uhg.

Just so… for those of you who have to hide your autism, this is a great thing to keep in mind.

[pattiluponeisagoddess]

I love her sm tbh.

[non-binary-laurie-strode]

She did that!!!!!!!

[waffleperks]

iconique

[thatsthat24]

Yellow Diamond, everyone

[yes-this-is-not-ok]

Yes!!!

[bsqu]

What MRA’s think will happen at the Women-Only Wonder Woman Screenings

We at the Alamo Drafthouse would like to officially apologize for our role in the end of mankind as we knew it, and the ascendant Gynocracy that followed. We didn’t know our women-only screening of Wonder Woman would result in the overthrow of all world governments and the total subjugation of men, but in hindsight we probably should have seen it coming.

Keep reading

[exhijabifashion]

The Handmaid's Tale and What Extreme Religious Misogyny Looks Like

I know I haven’t posted in ages– life mental health survival etc. But I’ve been watching the Handmaid’s Tale, and it strikes me as a really great metaphorical vehicle for something infuriating difficult to express.

Specifically, the sheer levels of control that women are under such that compliance is survival and dissent unfathomable. There’s a parallel to women in insular Muslim majority communities here I am consistently unable to escape and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Imagine that was actually your reality. That this is what life in the US has become. And your outward compliance to everything anti-woman restricting your mobility and freedom was paramount for your safety and survival.

Imagine the rest of the world started to look upon your community with distress and disapproval, and savior narratives began to take hold– and in response, those women in your community with the most visibility and status– not the handmaids nor the marthas, but the commander’s wives and aunt lydias–responded with furious indignation at the very idea that they were oppressed or needed saving or were doing anything but what they were driven to by their own values and social preferences and will and self-determination.

Imagine then that this was deemed sufficient to silence dissent from outsiders concerned, that charges of intolerance and slander towards your community were mounted on such bases should anyone persist in objecting to blatant normalized misogyny in your life. And that a sickening subversion of the concept of a victim– one who is stripped of voice, power, opportunity, agency by forces no human could hope to match– persists, making it seem like acknowledging that women like you are oppressed is tantamount to a cultural attack, tantamount acknowledging that women like you are weak, slow, lacking resource and wherewithal and agency and will. As If strong, brilliant, brave, resilient, creative people can’t ever be broken by violence and power. No, rather pretend it is a prejudiced unwarranted lie that women in your community are possibly systemically oppressed in horrific ways when the terrible truth is instead that they face insurmountable odds that the most gifted and resilient and tenacious of persons would be driven to silence and conformity under out of sheer self-preservation.

Meanwhile, to use Offred’s words, the “pious little shits” of your community may freely rail against the mere suggestion that women where you are suffer inequity, and there is little outward capacity to differentiate the genuinely adherent “pious little shits” from you yourself, as outwardly your situation is the same and must appear so.

And so even attempts from outsiders to recognize and demand redress for your plight is subverted. And the progressives of the world stand by and enable your oppression and treat its very suggestion as vile xenophobic myth, in the name of anti-interventionism and the sanctity of self-determination.

Just imagine you, American women (assuming main audience here is function of proximity forgive me if this is not you), lived in the world of the handmaids tale and the progressives of the world treated your position as some mythos *in the name of honoring your agency* while you were bound in silence without recourse. And further to that, took the symbols under which you were bound, say the bonnet and red cloak, and defended free adherence to them with a fierce kind of devotion, and began to incorporate their representation in unilaterally positive ways into their feminist discourse without ever acknowledging their source and meaning and function as they are actually manifested to you and most handmaids who are not “pious little shits” happy in their succor.

Can you imagine how fucked up that would be, how unmatched your helplessness and anger about it? And how doubly silenced it would render you?

Yeah. That’s how we feel. Just try to process that without exploding.

[timemachineyeah]

This is a jar full of major characters 

Actually it is a jar full of chocolate covered raisins on top of a dirty TV tray. But pretend the raisins are interesting and well rounded fictional characters with significant roles in their stories. 

We’re sharing these raisins at a party for Western Storytelling, so we get out two bowls. 

Then we start filling the bowls. And at first we only fill the one on the left. 

This doesn’t last forever though. Eventually we do start putting raisins in the bowl on the right. But for every raisin we put in the bowl on the right, we just keep adding to the bowl on the left. 

And the thing about these bowls is, they don’t ever reset. We don’t get to empty them and start over. While we might lose some raisins to lost records or the stories becoming unpopular, but we never get to just restart. So even when we start putting raisins in the bowl on the right, we’re still way behind from the bowl on the left. 

And time goes on and the bowl on the left gets raisins much faster than the bowl on the right. 

Until these are the bowls. 

Now you get to move and distribute more raisins. You can add raisins or take away raisins entirely, or you can move them from one bowl to the other. 

This is the bowl on the left. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?

You can’t tell for certain, can you? Adding or removing a raisin over here doesn’t seem to make much of a change to this bowl. 

This is the bowl on the right. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?

When there are so few raisins to start, any change made is really easy to spot, and makes a really significant difference. 

This is why it is bad, even despicable, to take a character who was originally a character of color and make them white. But why it can be positive to take a character who was originally white and make them a character of color.

The white characters bowl is already so full that any change in number is almost meaningless (and is bound to be undone in mere minutes anyway, with the amount of new story creation going on), while the characters of color bowl changes hugely with each addition or subtraction, and any subtraction is a major loss. 

This is also something to take in consideration when creating new characters. When you create a white character you have already, by the context of the larger culture, created a character with at least one feature that is not going to make a difference to the narratives at large. But every time you create a new character of color, you are changing something in our world. 

I mean, imagine your party guests arrive

Oh my god they are adorable!

And they see their bowls

But before you hand them out you look right into the little black girls’s eyes and take two of her seven raisins and put them in the little white girl’s bowl.

I think she’d be totally justified in crying or leaving and yelling at you. Because how could you do that to a little girl? You were already giving the white girl so much more, and her so little, why would you do that? How could you justify yourself?

But on the other hand if you took two raisins from the white girl’s bowl and moved them over to the black girl’s bowl and the white girl looked at her bowl still full to the brim and decided your moving those raisins was unfair and she stomped and cried and yelled, well then she is a spoiled and entitled brat. 

And if you are adding new raisins, it seems more important to add them to the bowl on the right. I mean, even if we added the both bowls at the same speed from now on (and we don’t) it would still take a long time before the numbers got big enough to make the difference we’ve already established insignificant. 

And that’s the difference between whitewashing POC characters and making previously white characters POC. And that’s why every time a character’s race is ambiguous and we make them white, we’ve lost an opportunity.

*goes off to eat her chocolate covered raisins, which are no longer metaphors just snacks*

[judedoyle]

Don't Let Trump Exhaust You. That's Exactly What He's Trying to Do.

In the wake of the immigration restrictions, don't forget about the steady erosion of reproductive rights.

The Trump doctrine, thus far, is pretty clear: Send ten thousand threats hailing down on the public at the exact same time, and watch them scatter as they try to deal with it all. For example, cause a full-on humanitarian crisis by banning Muslims WHILE nominating approximately five zillion terrible cabinet appointees, and people won’t even notice the full-fledged assault on reproductive rights that’s been happening at the exact same time. 

And yet, that assault is happening – and it features a permanent Hyde amendment, a potential birth control ban, and the promise of a federal 20-week ban, among other things. Here’s me on what all is happening, why it matters, and why it’s important not to lose focus as the house burns down.

[whythahecknot]

I'm exhausted, aren't you?

[whythahecknot]

#InThisMan I see my abuser. #WeWillNotBeSilent #Trump #Inauguration2017 https://vimeo.com/199628959/62ed2aeeff http://thndr.me/ew3RvS

[yourdarlingdaisy916]

Intimacy is not who you let touch you. Intimacy is who you text at 3am about your dreams and fears. Intimacy is giving someone your attention, when ten other people are asking for it. Intimacy is the person always in the back of your mind, no matter how distracted you are.

(via queerkaitlin)

[whythahecknot]

The Hyde Amdt pushes abortion out of reach for those struggling to get by. We're #United4Coverage to #BeBoldEndHyde. http://thndr.me/Rhew3z

[whythahecknot]

This is quite possibly the best thing ever! 

Krampus in the Corner picture book and plush toy - A creepy parody of the Elf on the Shelf Christmas tradition. Krampus is sure to scare the naughty out of you! - http://kck.st/2cbrluv

[skirtsandbattleaxes]

Sources for the Trump Child Rape Lawsuit

I’ve told a lot of people about Trump’s whole “raping a child and getting sued for it” thing, but for the most part I have not been believed (for some reason it isn’t top news?)

Ignoring this story is an insult to CSA survivors everywhere. 

deathandtaxes

Huffington Post

The Guardian

Snopes

[whythahecknot]

To my fellow white people:

Let us all be cautious not to conflate the sniper(s) with the BLM event or movement or civil disobedience please. Terrorists who ambushed and murdered police officers are not in any way representative of those wishing to bring about much needed change. This community came together to mourn, to heal, to find solutions, and that was derailed by gunfire.

This is not the time to opine or judge. I see far too much speculation and commentary from "allies." Please take the time to stop, think, feel, process, learn. If you have used judgemental words like, "counterproductive" and offered opinions on how to "solve" things, stop now. If you are sharing MLK quotes like you think you know something, stop it! No matter how well intended, just don't.

I know that as a white woman, it is my role, my responsibility to bear witness, and to hold space. I have no business telling anyone affected how to change a system that we have contributed to. I think i need to take a seat, and be helpful by encouraging others who are not directly targeted by this violence to do the same.

Take care of you.