in-mutual-weirdness

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“I paused finally and watched the trees for slashes of light, but saw none. As my heart settled and my ears became less occupied I listened and heard nothing but the thready pulse of the night. And I sensed that the hunt was over. I’d been prey and now I was not. Prey knows this. Prey knows when it has escaped.”

— Augusten Burroughs, A Wolf at the Table (via bookhag)

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i love this thing i wish i was hopelessly defending it w a bolt action or sent to die in it or just selling moss out of it

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theres something about this recent discussion in the oviposter that really reminds me of your previous statements about knowing people in abusive relationships and the difference between the use of force and judgement to "free" them from those situations vs waiting patiently until they are able to free themselves. something here IRT parentified authoritative care vs the care of autonomous equals and comrades... an interesting connection. thanks as always for laying those eggs!

I’ve just had so many experiences as a young and anxious person of being around settled people who know and dig themselves who don’t feel any particular anxiety about making sure I know how to behave. Their genuine sense of self-regard and belief they deserved kind and respectful treatment communicated and demonstrated itself to me without them having to act like a preacher or a social worker. The longer we stayed friends, the more their attitudes became part of my internal world and I could see what it meant in practice to behave as if you deserved respect and kind treatment and didn’t have to put up with manipulative horseshit.

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[“Pop culture tells us that a real woman knows how to use her body to get what she wants, wielding the power of attraction, seducing with her animal magnetism. But I ask, how much power is there in being a carrot on a stick that is dangled in front of someone? And I can’t help but notice that when men try to flatter us, they often use words like “enchanting” and “mysterious.” But to me, those words seem like a subconscious attempt by them to place some distance between us.

So it bothers me when I hear women buy into a similar mysticism, as they try to empower us by proclaiming that we are magical, that we are mother earth with the ability to give birth, bearing life cycles that follow the moon like the tides of the ocean. But don’t they see the danger in buying into the idea that we are supernatural beings? For if we call ourselves “goddesses,” then there is no need for anyone to treat us like human beings.

I believe that this is where second-wave feminism came to a grinding halt: When we got caught up in the myth that women are special because of our biology. Because when we take pride in how fundamentally different we are from men, we unknowingly engage in a dangerous game of opposites. For if men are big, then women must be small. And if men are strong, then women must be soft. And it becomes impossible to write a loud and proud poem about what it means to be a woman without either ridiculing men or else pulling the rug out from under ourselves. And being a woman is contradiction enough without being both a transsexual and a dyke like myself.

I often feel like the monkey in the middle: On one side of me are older lesbians who insist that I am still a man, as if being born male was some awful disease that has infected my blood and my bones permanently. On the other side of me are younger dykes who are infatuated with trans men and tranny bois, yet secretly confess to friends that they are disturbed by trans women because we act so “effeminate.” I wonder how they can be so oblivious to their own arrogance, for anyone who admires trans men but dismisses trans women is simply practicing another form of sexism. I used to think it was a contradiction that some dykes abhorred me for my masculinity while others hated me for my femininity, until I realized that being a woman means that everyone has a stake in seeing what they want to see in me.”]

julia serano, from excluded: making feminist and queer movements more inclusive, 2013

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A long time ago I read (possibly in one of the Ender's Game series) a scene where an alien bug queen was laying eggs and the protagonist was filled with disgust at the sight of a string of egg goo shining between the flexing tip of her ovipositor and the freshly laid egg, to which the alien bug queen responded by sending him a telepathic image of an infant at the breast, with a string of saliva between its innocent smile and its mother's nipple.

Which obviously burrowed deep into my memory stores the moment I read it. But is also ironic to recall now considering the discussion happening on your blog lately.

this is simply horrible I love it

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what are you waiting for? someone to grant you permission? the perfect and permanent emotion? a shooting star to magic away every problem you have or ever have had? alright, wait away then. but no one is going to live your life for you while you wait to become someone else

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you CANNOT read too much old timey fiction because I was playing Raft with the lads this morning and without a THOUGHT said we could sail over to another island "if the wind would consent to blow" & let me tell you. This did not pass by unremarked.

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the author's barely disguised open wound splattered livid and filthy across everything they create

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I am so bad at posting here consistently but I feel like Tumblr would appreciate my best friend Fishbag (and the various creatures that live within her)

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anon who jokingly not jokingly fears you here: you are the only person who writes like you understand my mother, even though she was not exactly your mother. I will never speak to her again, but I love her. Everyone else gives themselves so much credit for surviving her and they act like she was like that for no reason and they're so wrong. They don't know her like I do; she did not act upon them like she did to me. I understand her. And you understand her, too, despite never meeting her. I don't understand her despite the emotional/physical/medical abuse, but because of it. That you know what you know and lived what you lived and you can engage with it so well is terrifying. I know no one else like that, not to this extent. What else is there to feel in the face of such power? Awe, maybe. A skittering kind of respect as I go around your territory. Incredulity at these people who think they can police your thinking in any way that matters.

And it feels so lonely, so often, to understand that women can be monsters.

and it's so continuously monstrous how so many women insist that mothers are exactly what we need to be.

If your mother is anything like mine then she must be a powerful charismatic unkillable body hopping demon: I’ve gotten to see her again and again and again in different bodies and I get so excited every time. Whenever I encounter a blisteringly intelligent young woman with a deathwish and a fanatical love for underdogs and an evil personality I am overwhelmed by joy and fondness. That’s her! She’s okay! She will always be okay. Cockroaches will die out before she does. When all of this is dust there she’ll be at the end of all things howling and rending her garments in unendurable agony and rage ❤️

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guess i'll add my 2 cents/ovipositor but this discussion on like people taking authoritative "i know best" positions in relationships like. Kinda opened my eyes to my own behaviour and like. Idk i fell asleep reading the posts and asks and woke up and like immediately like whoa. Like yeah that's another instance of me being a condescending asshole & that's something I'm aware I go to when I'm angry. So it's interesting to like. Kinda connect it to anger I suppose. I don't really know where I'm going with this but like I do notice a trend of like... frustration? That drives my behaviour when I get like that. Like. I guess part of it is my own self-talk constantly going "okay you already know the steps to get better so why aren't you just taking them" and like. I guess externalizing that as well? Which is very uncharitable and like I'm kinda recoiling at thinking that I've been thinking about others this way this whole time bht like. That's really the flipside isn't it. Like the idea that I have Techniques that can Help and I gotta Share Them and figure out circumstances under which they don't work so I can figure out how to Make Them Work or something. Really miserable shit. Thanks so much for publishing your insights becaude like. This has been a really big breakthrough for me it's wild how despite me assuming like okay I generally don't think of myself as like Thinking I Know Best I guess I'm kinda. Thinking exactly that or if not that then something just as bad in a similar way. Hope you have a great day

quit moralizing it: human beings have rescue fantasies and get frustrated with idiots who need saving. if you’re lucky and brave you recognize the fantasies as they arrive and quit holding them against the people in need of rescue. after a couple of ego deaths and a handful of humiliating miserable failures that destroy every shred of self-worth you ever had you get better at spotting and transforming them into something useful.

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filtering down ao3 results from 14000 to 6 based on a single tag is foul. im sorry none of you are as enlightened as me ig.

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There’s something about the anxious coworker story that my brain keeps circling back to that I just don’t quite understand. It’s the thing about the gifts.

See, often when you make that kind of post, I’ll be hit with some reflexive shame, at least on first reading. My brain is always quick to jump on anything that might be evidence that I’m a horrible person, even if it has to squint at it upside down. So at first it made me think of my own anxieties and how I’ve reacted to them and interacted with friends because of them. First seeing the similarities and being hard on myself in a way that probably isn’t helpful.

But the gift thing. The gift thing just won’t let me do this, because I cannot understand how anxiety would drive someone to do that. I only know my own mind, and what I know about myself is that if someone told me that receiving gifts made them feel unhappy and uncomfortable, I would make a very strong mental note not to buy gifts for them and probably feel quite miserable about needing to be told in the first place. I just can’t figure out how someone coming from a place of anxiety and fear gets to the conclusion that they should do the thing they were specifically told not to do and emotionally manipulate you into going along with it.

I have to be missing something here, right? How does an anxious person come to the conclusion that this is the SAFE thing to do?

oh she’s nuts. she has excellent reason to be. she went through her own woodchipper. she lives her life and fights her battles and does her best and is a lovely brave loyal person who just isn’t going to do the sane sensible thing most of the time because her brain’s busted. I like her quite a bit, we have a lot in common, and I do obnoxious nonsensical shit all the time for more or less the same reasons, so I get it.

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Hi! Wanted to ask how does caring for someone as an equal look, in your opinion, and how does it differ to caring for someone as a parentified figure?

it’s fucking stressful to parent vulnerable reactive kids with much less power and emotional intelligence than you who you can’t trust to take care of themselves without your input.

a grown adult who knows who she is and has held on to her decency and insight no matter how much the world has tried to beat it out of her? with an ass that won’t quit?? my shoulders are lowering. my heart rate is slowing. my pussy is throbbing. and so on.

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I adore this recent trend (if that's the right word) of letting an orchestra play classical music on a festival. It's magical to see thousands of festival-goers going absolutely wild on Beethoven. Mosh/circlepits, crowd surfing. It's wonderful to see the orchestra and the audience having the time of their lives.

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prometheus: hot take,

the greek gods: no give that back