myopicry

[myopicry]

Hosio Hirotta

[myopicry]

The plastic surgery industry branding itself as “self care and feminist” and “female empowerment” is the most diabolical thing ever. Changing the way you look and born as is not “empowering” accepting the way you really look is. Women are already so beautiful in their natural state.

[myopicry]

Hans Hammer (German, 1878-1917)

Two Elegant Ladies on the Coast, Gazing out to Sea, 1907

[myopicry]

Hey! So glad you're actually back lol, it was such a pleasant surprise to see new posts from you :)

This is just gonna be a pretty long rant about how my radfem views have evolved, linked to ( at the time of writing this) your latest post answering an ask of mine.

BTW before I begin, I'm glad you've been getting into new hobbies!! Also just overall glad you seem to be doing fine, even though I missed you here on tumblr

Okay so personally I'm not sure how my beliefs have evolved, probably not that much since looking back I feel like I have the same beliefs I did when I peaked or was inching very very closely towards that. But I can relate somewhat to the lack of desire to "spread the word".

I do still have that radblr side blog I mention and reblog there rather regularly, but honestly I'm not as motivated to write my own stuff as I thought I'd be, despite going on long tirades in a private server or with friends. Maybe it's knowing that it'll be accessible to everyone so I'm extra precise with wording so it's more tiring? Maybe it's the remaining fear of being judged that's turning me away? Maybe it's the insecurity that I'll maybe not be as good as radblr posters I like? Idk.

I actually started taking breaks from radblr here and there. For one because after my time as a "TRA" I'm pretty scared of just falling into yet ANOTHER echo chamber, and I always want to check how I'll perceive things after a while of stepping away, basically checking in on myself. But also, and I think this is somewhat common, since this is a movement which touched on many serious topics and issues, it can be very draining mentally and emotionally very quickly, so breaks are needed to calm down and such. I'd say I should've done that when I was a "TRA" for the same reasons.

As for irl, I've actually slipped in certain radfem/gender critical ideas to friends in various ways, particularly when I was first starting to lean towards peaking, mostly because I needed second opinions from people who still had pretty strong "TRA" views. I didn't speak to many about this, just my closest childhood friends, and wouldn't you know it most of them started gaining more radfem/gender critical takes all on their own after I talked to them, or at the very least started seeing things with more nuance. I felt somewhat happy that I my actions led to people I care about doing some rethinking and re-analysing their beliefs, something I think is healthy for everyone to do whether or not you end up changing your views, but at the same time was terrified that I was becoming the infamous "evil brainwashing terf" trope lol. (for context all of these friends are afab and some identified as nb or gender fluid. Whether they still do is somewhat unclear, as they've admitted to feeling like gender is bullshit and some of their self id came form misogyny. But idrc, as long as they're happy and not hurting themselves or others)

Haven't spoken to other friends about this bc I fear they're too deep in the queer gender theory stuff and I'm not close enough with them to not fear losing their friendship.

I'd say I'm actually trying to put what I believe into practice more despite this though: like I mentioned I'm seriously considering volunteering to a cause supporting women and I want to read more famous feminist essays and books. So I'd say that's pretty positive.

I've checked back into pro queer gender theory stuff from time to time but it hasn't changed my mind on anything tbh lol. I'll continue to do so though.

Tbh I'd say I still crave to read radfem posts and whatnot, probably because there's nowhere else to interact with such ideas. I find comfort in seeing other women around the world ruthlessly tearing at the sex and beauty industries, calling out bullshit liberal feminism shies away from, and yes, critiquing queer gender theory takes. It makes me feel less alone and isolated in my beliefs.

I am planing on getting back into the dating pool soon though, and as a lesbian I'm pretty worried. My last gf was pretty pro modern queer gender theory like I was and I have no clue how I would've navigated the relationship if we were still together when I started peaking. I actually abstained from interacting with radblr near the end of our relationship at the fear of peaking and that complicated said long term relationship. Maybe she would've heard me out because of how long we had dated so she wouldn't immediately assume things about me, but now I'll be talking to completely new people who don't know me nearly as well or intimately and still don't have a "fixed" idea of me. I feel bad having to lie a bit about my beliefs or hide them, it feels disengenious, but I don't want to shrink my already small dating pool. Maybe it sounds superficial but that's a concern that's been at the front of my mind regarding the topic.

Would love to hear your comments as always <3 sorry about the length of this submission lol

~🪼

I would be a hypocrite if I didn't love reading long posts myself seeing how often I tend to make them myself lol, and I honestly just appreciate anyone taking the time to talk and share ideas to spark conversation so thank you as always for spending your own time to do so!! it's a truly rare phenomenon online to be able to honestly engage with longer, non-instantaneous conversation that isn't built on ragebait/misunderstandings etc. from short word count limits (twitter my beloathed) or from glitchy ui/censorship (youtube comments and reddit my also very beloathed) so weirdly having a tumblr inbox that can receive lengthy messages is a great blessing.

I absolutely relate to the aspect of losing motivation for "public" writing, I guess, i'm of the opinion that the very nature of how social media algorithms work will always discourage actual healthy discourse and make it just exhausting for anyone who seeks more honest communication or social interactions. and there's something about being "perceived" and not being able to control that perception that can be very frightening, which ironically I do feel is a big part of what motivates transition for many people - that fear driving an urge to control how other's perceive them - and all in all it just sort of goes to show how bad social media and internet culture can be for anyone because the very structure of the entire thing is somewhat built to exploit our personal insecurities for more retention time. ok, I promise that's all the "phone bad" boomer energy I have apologies for the brief tangent :p to summarize that up it's definitely good to take breaks and do self-reflection/build up personal philosophies away from the internet as a whole and to focus more on your own local/private network of personal friends.

I've had some middling success with being honest about gender crit opinions to maybe one person I know, but I barely count it because admittedly I was only that honest because we were both a bit drunk at the time lmao and I mostly still keep it light in a sort of more "gender-abolitionist" way and leading with the "freedom of self-expression is good but protection of biological definitions can also be good and those can both be true" flavor of gender criticism. sometimes I wonder if I could stand to be a bit "meaner" about it especially when I see examples of what I believed to be internet exclusive clownery in real life from people I know, but I think I probably come to a similar conclusion as you and likely many other crypto-ish radfem/gender criticals, in that it's not really worth it and it's not like i'd change anyone's mind by being petty, especially if they're that deep in the ideology. plus, for me personally I am already not the world's most social individual lol so for the most part I try not to purposely and publicly alienate myself from others to make my social life harder. anti-social behavior is generally unhealthy, it turns out, so as much as it frustrates me to be so surrounded in space where queer theory is reinforced, I think it is more powerful to almost take a page from the "stoicism" book and focus on maintaining a sense of unbothered peace. still, i always find it funny whenever I do decide to lurk in pro-trans/queer internet spaces (also to see if I ever get unpeaked. still no, as well!) and see "terfs" and trans-exclusionary lesbians pushed as this dangerous and terrible threat in real life when mostly it's people like us who are the so-called terfs, with our very honestly gentle criticism of trans ideology lightly trying to promote open-mindedness and critical thinking to people they care about and want to talk to honestly without the cultural doublespeak. I sometimes wonder how the loads of trans people I interact with in real life on a friendly basis would react knowing I was apparently an evil terf who isn't even really all that preoccupied with the whole being evil thing. it probably would not go over well, but I do wonder if they'd be surprised. not an experiment I ultimately care to ever do because I quite like a peaceful life under the radar, but it's an interesting thought experiment sometimes.

i'm happy to hear about your experiences and feelings and goals to volunteering and reading! feminism online can only go so far, and the whole discourse around feminism, both radical and not, often becomes such a "culture war" talking point surrounding trends and that it's easy to forget there is tangible good we can do for other women and ourselves by helping a community and enriching our own minds. feminism doesn't have to be a "cringe moments compilation" or a "owning the chuds compilation" it can just be women helping women live healthier and happier lives! I've also got to thank you for the good reminder I should probably also get my hands on some more feminist literature, I still feel I can barely consider myself a radfem because I sorely lack any real experience with reading books from the movement but honestly that is a change that I can entirely bring about myself so onwards to reorganize my reading list I go o7

it's funny you mention still wanting to read radfem posts and such because there's just nowhere else to interact with such ideas in such an accessible and non-isolating way because that is a feeling I know too well, and is probably what keeps me here on tumblr/the internet in spite of my partial desire to cut general screen time from my life. there really is no easy way to find these ideas in physical spaces due to scarcity and just demonization of such kinds of organizing in real life. in my goals to step away from the online world, I have set a rule for myself that I think has been helping make my interactions with the internet more healthy and productive, and that is my goal in whatever I post cannot be for likes, followers, attention, money, but instead to just make someone not feel alone. I often ramble about the ills of the world wide web, but I do think there is benefit in being able to find like-minded people and solidarity with another human when you can't in your immediate real social space. though, the point we're at now, with the online attention economy at heights never seen before, if your ideas aren't "popular" or easily digestible to a mass consumer audience, it feels somewhat more like shouting into the uncaring void. i've personally found my online experience to be a bit better when I take more time to look for these "lonely" opinions, and if I find someone saying things like me, I try to engage a little just to help foster that interaction and contribute something I think is worthwhile with my time online. of course, it's ultimately all a tiny bit meaningless, forgive the digital existential crisis but posts will be wiped from servers, links will rot, domains will all expire in due time especially when it's things so small like a comment or a solitary blog where mass archival may never touch, but I just find forgetting all the shiny incentives of e-fame and online glory and just trying to find those honest sparks of connection gives me something better to think about than internet gossip or consumer trends.

alright, this is already getting exceedingly long but I wanted to give insight into your last paragraph about dating, though my insight is kind of just: yeah. real. can relate :') i've been on a break from trying to actively date, I hit the apps for a couple months but realized it wasn't going to really do much for me, and putting myself on dating apps felt like another kind of weird "social media branding exercise" where I wasn't really gaining any kind of actual connection with anyone other than surface level small talk, so I mostly am focused to just try and involve myself with more hobbies and activities I like and hopefully find chemistry naturally and build romance atop friendship or something while focusing on improving myself so that I can be an actual good girlfriend and have something to offer in a relationship. buuut I do often consider the fact that regardless of the already bad odds I'm rolling with, intimacy grows exponentially harder when holding a culturally unpopular view inside a larger "queer" community. I know gender critical lesbians exist, but I can only find them online... though I have a couple lesbian friends irl who could perhaps be considered "normies" and not really involved with gender discourse, they too have a lot of trouble finding dates in our area. I personally don't find it superficial at all to be a little wary of being too honest in fear of limiting the options, first impressions in general can be so tricky and usually it is better to play it safe even if it means technically "lying" by omission about your opinions. in a way everyone does it when first meeting people so maybe such "disingenuity" is a feature of social interactions in general. it is a weird and difficult place to be in to add an extra layer of caution to your dating experience because ideas from people who aren't even usually lesbians has permeated the dating scene so much that you now have to tiptoe around apparently "controversial" truths. but I suppose dating isn't easy for anyone, and there is always some level of a "social game" to be played before any real level of intimacy can be achieved.

that all being said, don't lose hope! I don't know you personally or anything, but in my opinion having capabilities for self-reflection and awareness, as well as capacity for nuance and empathy is great for relationships, and there's no doubt that the right women would stick around for that and appreciate you for it, and those who don't value it probably weren't the most compatible to begin with. wishing you the best of luck with dating!! know I would never be annoyed if you vented any dating frustrations into my inbox, I always welcome more conversations with lesbians about lesbians into my life because maaaan am I tired of only hearing relationship talk from straight women and men. every day I wish a separatist existence was feasible for me but alas. it's very hard to truly relate to most straight women and far too easy to relate to many straight men for me and there are simply not enough lesbians in my area so. we get the cards we're dealt (TwT)

great to hear from you (as always), hoping this long wall of text had something of value (as always), and apologies for the run-on sentences and inevitable typos (as always) !!

[myopicry]

foolishly trying to decide if i've gotten more hopeful or more nihilistic about the state of the world as time as gone by when I know deep down it always just depends on the day. ... and the stage of my menstrual cycle.

[myopicry]

would you say that your gender critical views have been reinforced since last time you’ve been active on here (before your long hiatus)? Or the opposite? Or have they remained the same?

~🪼

this is a good question so I really want to at least answer it before I log off for the day, it's a bit complicated so I expect this to get pretty annoyingly long but let's see if I can keep it relatively readable, at least.

I do think any gender critical opinions I've held have, generally, been reinforced. I guess I'm unsure how much they've changed, if they have, it's been a second since I read through my posts, but even after slowing down the output on radblr, I never really stopped consuming or interacting with gender critical ideas. I've tried to be pretty good about staying away from mainstream social media, but I still often lurk what some would consider more "unsavory" parts of the internet that did allow for discussion of gender crit ideas. imageboards, ovarit when it was still alive (rip ovarit), begrudgingly kiwifarms at times (much of it is pretty misogynistic, has a ton of terrible takes, slurs which can obviously be offensive to many people, but the radical diversity of thought allows for fast-updating threads and fascinating conversations to read. a wild west of the internet with well-maintained infrastructure, sort of unique in that way)

I have a somewhat bad habit in that I really really enjoy finding contrarian opinions, perspectives that aren't popular and/or are controversial in some way. many times these opinions are underground and contrarian because they are some chronically online slightly insane take, or it's just a bad opinion, but often, especially radfem, gender critical, transgender critical, anti-consumer, stuff like that, they're considered contrarian because popular culture rejects the idea for being too difficult or breaking some kind of illusion and status-quo that people are comfortable with. so, I never really stopped engaging with such content and discourse, and even occasionally checking in on pro-trans discourse (or unwittingly having it pushed onto me from algorithms in the popular web), the conclusions I still had about gender ideology at large were the same. I haven't "un-peaked" so to speak. still over here committing thought-crimes daily, being a "terf" or something because I think gender is a bit cringe and all that. (obviously, there's more nuance lolol but to keep this short I'll refrain from getting into unnecessary detail about what "gender being cringe" means)

however, I do think I have grown to care much less about working at "spreading" my views, or just, I guess, being an active participant engaging with gender discourse. part of it is just circumstance. I exist with not a lot of opportunity to do anything with any gender critical opinions outside of just personally applying them to my own lifestyle (which is pretty important to me, but has basically 0 outside social impact) and occasionally, if i'm really in a fervor of some kind maybe I'll try and speak into the unending void that is the online (this mostly amounts to rambling letterboxd reviews and offhanded comments on things to prop up someone else's opinion to kind of show support or offer a new perspective if one isn't being offered, not really that meaningful of action), but generally irl i'm not one to give unsolicited gender advice.

I suppose my point is mainly I don't practice what I preach very much. in some sense this means I have come to a point of taking on a "live and let live" mentality, which I feel like is often contrary to holding gender critical views, since I am, well, not really doing any "criticism" outwardly. maybe it's a bit nihilistic, i still believe in a lot of gender criticism, but I feel like expressing it is a losing game. i've always liked the analogy of gender ideology as a religion, but like a religion, non-believers don't really hold much weight in the eyes of the believers. I would never be able to meaningfully change someone's mind just by explaining gender critical ideas really well, whoever I'm talking to has to want to change already. I think about when I peaked, it wasn't just because I found a really powerful piece of rhetoric that changed my mind forever, I obviously already had doubts and a propensity to overthink things (and also rib pain from a binder certainly made me question the ethics of what I was doing to my own body lmao), and I don't think without that I would have been open-minded enough to question the validity of this whole gender thing.

and I guess I could make the argument that being open and writing about gender critical views is helpful because it is exactly finding works like that which helped me peak, and to contribute to that ecosystem is valuable (I do still believe that, one of the best and worst things about the internet is having access to the personal stories of so many different individuals at once) but I guess I figured it's not really my job to take up that task, nor am I very qualified with these long, drawling walls of text that mostly amount to restating the obvious. I am no expert in my field, I guess, and this also really isn't my field.

all that to say, my opinions largely haven't changed, but my attitude towards the value of expressing them has changed. maybe I don't quite believe in the efficacy of a gender critical community as much as I used to, even though I think it's good people can find such communities online, I think like any online community the "online" aspect can have detriments and forming actual interpersonal relationships in real life is probably a better bet for any young person regardless.

mainly, I think i've been more open to accepting that sometimes, having certain opinions against the popular narrative will be alienating and isolating. being openly gender critical is setting yourself up for loneliness, and the more you get into it, the harder it is to socialize with people who are not. and yes, I can anticipate the question of well, why socialize with such people at all? and unfortunately I am one of those silly american art students and also a lesbian which means I both do not have many choices and I can't afford to be picky with my network :') but I accept that partially, I'm not exactly going to be able to ever be 100% honest or vulnerable or myself with many, many people, and I will be generally pretty alone for a lot of the time. but, I think it is incredibly valuable to learn how to enjoy being alone, and as much as I would love to yell everything I think as loudly as I can and just see if there's any chance someone might stick around, there is some peace to learning to live with myself, no matter how tough it can get.

I am realizing this response to an ask about gender critical ideals has sort of veered off track and as I expected, has gotten excessively lengthy.... I hope any of that was even slightly helpful in providing an interesting answer and I am very sorry if it wasn't (⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠) I've gained a bad habit of being a bit solipsistic in my writing lately because I've taken to very navel-gazey online journaling and recording long rants where I talk to myself about myself in a very narcissistic bout of self-reflection so I fear I have lost some ability to effectively get a point across to another human being. you're a saint for reading all this lol, and let's hope I can get better at doing this in time :p

[myopicry]

I'm getting catfished by you bc ain't no way you said you'd be more present last time and now I hear you're gonna continue the hiatus you went on right after 😭😭😭 I was so excited when I saw that you updated yesterday, was hoping you'd answer some of my asks

Also I'd LOVE to hear your points!! I miss your posts so much, even though I think it's been WELL over a year since I read your last radfem post

Light hearted whining aside, in all seriousness don't feel pressured to come back, do what healthiest for you. If you really want to analyse that video, maybe try doing it in moderation (yes ik), maybe by limiting yourself to analysing only half an hour of the video every day or something like that. Idk. Either way don't feel pressured to make the post if you've been happier not posting. I'll miss you though!!

Some updates on my part : I've been posting on my radblr account, mostly reblogs but I do sometimes have long ass writings of my own. I graduated hs recently and am planning on doing some volunteering to help women if my schedule next school year allows it! I have the urge to rebrand my radblr blog but that would be kind of useless bc I'm not THAT active on it.

If you don't make the post on that video you mentioned then I probably will after finding it lol, I'll pop many blood vessels but my curiosity is great and my urge to write greater...

I hope you're doing well wherever you are!! Miss you as per usual 🫰

~🪼

hi! hello! it's always nice to hear from you. I have to be honest, I am always a little shocked anyone does bother to check on this blog and I am sorry I keep disappearing haha, but I genuinely do really appreciate your messages in my inbox when I see them! and let this response be a promise that I will proceed to answer the rest of your asks and any more you might send over hopefully in the following weeks.

I wish I had more good radfem points to make, but I think anything I could say has probably been said by many people before in much better ways, and as much as I love debating with strangers online and digging into a flawed argument to provide a well-spoken counterargument in case anyone might find it valuable, it is a pretty sisyphean and unhealthy action, where I give way more than I get and ultimately, I can't say it's worth my time.

example: I couldn't help myself and did leave a comment or two on that long video (if you dig in the comments you'd probably figure what my alt account is lol) - I'll link it here in case you want to check it out but I don't know if I recommend it because it does not touch on radfem critiques commonly seen as "transphobic" or any social/cultural aspects about gender and transphobia as far as I could tell and is more of a "science" based debunk against people who say trans people don't exist, which I don't really care to debate because I mean, yeah, trans people exist. my thoughts and concerns are more that largely the ideology which trans people base their transness on, their personal philosophy and the societal narratives are flawed at best for such goals of attaining your true self or combating dysphoria, and harmful towards the self and obviously women at worst, and the effects of transition itself and the culture around it has a lot of problems that people refuse to talk about, but it seems like the video is more concerned with the easy win of repeating an opinion people already hold than seriously addressing critiques of transgender ideology. but ultimately I didn't expect much from a man talking about transphobia lmao, and once I started getting responses from handles with "futch transbian" in them, I kind of felt like any response I could muster even in the best faith would be a waste of my time when I could spend it doing something good for me instead (I've been trying to get good at music lately, mostly ukulele and piano, hoping to be good enough to write some songs which is proving to be a big task as I also, cannot sing very well lmao. but the process has been really soothing and enriching).

congrats on graduating! I hope your higher education experience will turn out to be fulfilling and educational! my own next semester of university is coming up, and I do fear perhaps this blog will get just a bit more active because of some fault of my own (and some plain bad luck just from circumstance) my entire social circle is pretty gendery (for lack of a better term) and I figure I would be less of a bad friend if I kept things cordial irl and kept the gender crit stuff to a semi-anonymized tumblr blog or other semi-anonymized accounts/spaces/whatever online ... which is still a little cold and anti-social, I do admit, but until I find the mythical group of radfem gender critical lesbians on campus (who do not exist. or at least not openly, though I can't blame them because I am literally part of the exact same problem being closeted and closed off about my opinions) to talk to, I guess the internet, however flawed it might be, will have to do.

tl;dr - I don't think I have smart things to say in me, but maybe I will do the thing that tumblr was meant for and occasionally do a personal blog if I don't get too self-conscious about being too open on the internet. and I'll try to answer more asks at least more frequently for real this time!!! I will try !

[myopicry]

ooooh i'm really trying to maintain a hiatus because even if it isn't perfect I do feel a little more content and mature as a person when I spend less time online and stuck in my own head doing gender discourse but there's a five hour long "debunking transphobia" video gaining traction I found that through a cursory skim has no good debunk for many fair radfem points against gender ideology (and yes it is by a man)...

it is taking so much willpower for me to not sink my teeth into it and waste probably weeks of my life combing through the whole thing (hence the random tumblr post I am attempting to exorcise the urge of responding to a five(!!!) hour(!!!) long video by posting a tumblr about it, yes I know that is equally silly but here we are) and motivate myself to do, I dunno, job applications instead T_T wish me luck maintaining my social media sobriety lol

[myopicry]

Started a radfem/gender critical blog after around 2 years of lurking! Your blog was a stepping stone to that. Hope you're well :]

~🪼

hi :0 if you'd like to share the link with me I would be absolutely honored to follow! I'm slowly piecing some social media back into my life (mostly the gender crit/radfem parts because I realized how valuable having even that online community was when my irl tended to be so stifling in that regard) so I will actually be online enough to engage :D

hope you're also doing well! I see your messages in my inbox, they're always a welcome sight to see even if I am a few months late to them, and I'm so flattered that my niche little blog is even a little bit important to anyone that I'd get asks despite the silence from my end. slightly less silence from my end now though, ideally!

[myopicry]

Oh my gosh myo is back!!!! It's been forever ago since I hit send on my last ask! How are you??

~🪼

hi!! been busy, sorry to disappoint but I am promptly disappearing from tumblr again lmao, definitely have been on an internet addiction kick lately and my screen time has gotten very concerning and so I'm trying to break the habit and genuinely get my eyes away from the screen :p

honestly knowing me I'll be back in a month to reblog some cool posts though haha. it's genuinely good stress relief to be reminded that not all of the world is suffering from terrible cognitive dissonance. as cool as doing things irl is, I am often reminded how steeped in discourse and ideology my peers are, which gets realll exhausting and means I tend to escape back into tumblr. unfortunately that means I've been slacking in my attempts at finding real life connections and thus my mental well being hasn't been amazing lmao, so I do need to step away from this funny website more, all things considered.

anyways enough about me! thank you for stopping by to say hi! hope you have a good rest of your day/night whatever time it is you see this lol

[myopicry]

The last green leaves 🍃

[myopicry]

I don't think I'm ever going to be reblogging those posts that say something along the lines of 'unfortunately you have to do the Good Things in order to feel better' because I really don't think that line of thinking is sustainable. And I think those kinds of posts really miss the core problem, they're jumping to the end goal. Yes, you can do it the long and slow way round by surrounding yourself with good and healthy stimulus until you build this sense of trust in your ability to have sustained happiness but also... the moment some big life event knocks you over, you've not really ever gained an understanding of why anything works or what - or who - all of this is ultimately for, and you're back to square one. You end up treating your mind as some sort of machine or logic gateway, rather than it being you. Yes, eating healthily, going on walks, having a wash etc. etc. all help you, but if foresee a life where you're going to be forcing yourself to do them forever, I genuinely don't think that's sustainable for you. In the end, you have to want to do these things, and you can't make someone want something. If you're forcing yourself to get out of bed, then that simply means there's some part of you that wants to stay in bed - and treating that part of you as some aberrant tumour that needs to be forcefully cut off necessitates refusing to respect that, for better or for worse, that part of you is part of you. And what does someone do when they feel ignored? They shout louder.

The thing I've come to understand is that our selfhood is necessarily complete: we already know everything about our selves because we are ourselves. And this is reflected in how the mind works. Think about it: as all sorts of mental health theory has shown us, mental illnesses and addictions are as metaphorical as they are physical, and each of them seem calculated to elicit a certain psychological effect. It's almost as if our minds know exactly what harm they want and how to achieve that harm. The first realisation I had that prompted my entire journey was the suspicion that if I bristle against the advice that people have given me about my mental health in the past, then I must have a point of view - you can't disagree with something if you don't have an opinion on it! So I took the plunge into asking myself that if I don't like those answers, then what do I believe will help me? And thus started a series of revelations about the nature of my 'self' - specifically this realisation that the self, by its inherent nature, knows itself, and knows exactly what it needs.

Now, I am not a professional and I cannot say for sure how 'pure' the self's self-knowledge is - I am fortunate to have had mental illnesses on the 'mild' end of the scale - but what I have noticed is that every single one of my problems that I once thought to be completely impenetrable and unknowable are both accessible and answerable. There isn't a single issue I have had that I haven't been able to recognise, address and negotiate with. This understanding has opened me up to an entirely new and freeing approach to my own selfhood in relation to the world. I don't need to force myself to do the Good Thing, because I have learned to pay attention to what my selfhood naturally requires; as a result of my shiny new Want I want to respect myself, and I understand the underlying mechanics of what doing the Good Things communicates to me about my respect to myself: I make conscious choices out of conscious love, rather than grumbling to myself 'I will go on this stupid walk to make my stupid mental health better'. This is why I say that those posts jump to the end, trying to force an outcome, trying to Around when The Only Way Out Is Through.

In treating my mental illness as an absence of selfhood rather than a deviant selfhood, I learned to respect myself in my entirety, and as a result I've learned all sorts of things which I have been able to communicate both in real life and on here. Obviously I'm still in the really early stages of this process but I've documented what a radical change it has made in my life already. And it's worth saying that since I started this journey I don't have depression(tm) anymore, whereas I keep seeing these 'You Must Do The Good Thing, Sorry' posts shared by people whom I know still suffer from depression, or at least are on the website infamously full of people with depression. I see time and time again this attempt by people going through mental health problems to come up with what are essentially get-mentally well-quick-schemes - sometimes they are literally 'I discovered this neat trick yesterday' - and whilst I guess it's better to do something rather than nothing they do make me feel very uncomfortable. And yes, I know, a lot of what I write is not much different than that, and perhaps I am a major hypocrite. But I can't help but notice how all all these mental health posts are obsessed with tricking yourself and doing some sort of mechanical jump-start - y'know, everything other than treating yourself as a naturally subjective individual entity: a person. It's like how I never understood the whole 'put a jellybean every other paragraph to incentivise reading that far' - like, I'm sorry but I'm just not that stupid, I'm very consciously aware that I can just eat the damn jelly bean any time, yanno? So trying to trick myself like that is me actively telling myself that I'm stupid and vapid with no object permanence and I'm fucking not that.

Thinking of myself as a bundle of impulses I ultimately have no control over and have to manage like the owner of a defective machine is the ideology that fueled my depression - I still call the collection of symptoms I had 'depression', but I maintain that I was still a rational, thinking being throughout, and only treating myself with genuine respect - yes, even the really dark, dumb and embarrassing parts - is what gave me such an understanding of my Self that resulted in me not having those symptoms any more. Because that's just it, they're symptoms - and the 'illness' is subtractive, not additive. The illness and its symptoms fill in the gaps where my natural subjective personhood should have been - depressive episodes filled in the gaps of genuine sadness, depressive narratives of my life filled in the gaps of the inherent horror of being a human who makes choices in the real world, and being stuck in bed filled in the gaps of 'even though it's way past breakfast time so I 'should' be out of bed by now, I actually don't really want breakfast yet and I like staying in bed for a bit longer'. When I drop those 'shoulds' of doing the Good Thing, I notice that naturally, when I'm ready, I suddenly desire to the Good Thing. And I notice that I actually always wanted to do the Good Thing not because it's the Objectively Good Thing but rather because I, as an individual subjective person who naturally interprets the world and has feelings, actually like feeling good and so I want do things that make me feel good. And idk, your mileage may vary but I can't not imagine that to be a much more sustainable line of thinking.

[myopicry]

inshallah this happens to every man who wronged me once

[myopicry]

snoopy work stickers (take it easy) by SNOOPY

[myopicry]

I've developed so much fatigue over online radfem spaces to be honest, like yeah I still align with the politics and I don't think that'll ever really change, but I'm at a point where I can't get over the inaction of online political spaces...not saying that there's none of this happening but, we have to organize, we have to venture into the material world. There's risks that have to be discussed and addressed sure but there's more risk to staying silent & also strength in numbers. Being crypto is reasonable, but how can we move forward? These are things that need to seriously be considered for any sort of real societal shift or activism to happen, or even for us to just have irl connections which are so, so invaluable and so different from digital ones.

[myopicry]

in an art class where the topic of applying for grants is being discussed and my professor was just going over examples of grants and pointed out how we need to check if some grants were exclusive or not. she gave the example of a women’s art grant that was exclusive, and one that was open to all applicants. the funny thing was when she described the exclusive grant, she explained it by saying it was exclusive to anyone who identified as female or non-binary or as transgender, and that the non-exclusive one anyone could apply for. so basically, she explained how…both the grants essentially were the same. even the supposedly exclusive one, if anyone thought about it for even a minute, is basically wholly inclusive :| how is this not obvious to anyone else, especially my professor who is trained on writing for the arts and the whole class is essentially about word choice and clarity of statements…

art academia is so cooked I know this fact is pretty obvious but like. damn.

[myopicry]