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aloha-from-angel · 28 days ago

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A clip of the ending of the live-action Lilo and Stitch movie ended up on my feed, so y'all get to hear me bitch about it. Specifically, the idea of Nani giving up Lilo so she can go to a mainland college.

A. Fucking. US MAINLAND. College.

When we're out here doing SO MUCH trying to keep our Native Hawaiians home. Like, are you fucking serious? More Native Hawaiians (53%) now live outside of Hawaiʻi than within it! Only 23% of the Hawaiʻi population is listed as Native Hawaiian—and that number includes mixed-race individuals. (There’s mostly Mixed Plate Specials over here <3)

Think about that for a second. Out of well over a million people living in the islands, only around 300,000 are Native Hawaiian. That’s it.

And yeah, we can dig deeper into those statistics later, but for now, let’s just sit with how absolutely messed up it is that the underlying message of this Cash Grab L&S remake seems to be: “It’s good and right for Nani to give up her little sister to the state and go chase mainland dreams.”

Even worse? It’s Lilo who tells Nani to go. Like that’s supposed to be sweet or inspiring or something.

That is so freaking fucked up.

And it's such a gross misunderstanding of the issue WHY Nani shouldn't and WOULDN'T give her sister up.

Native Hawaiian children are more likely to be removed from their homes for neglect—not abuse.

Several studies have found:

Native Hawaiian kids were placed in care more often for neglect than non-Hawaiian kids. They are grossly overrepresented for being taken away because of neglect.

"But Angel, if these kids are being neglected, they SHOULD be taken away and put in a stable environment, right?"

Yes! If they actually ARE being neglected! And if neglect wasn't based on subjective standards that target Native families!

I went to a Hawaiian immersion school when I was in elementary school (Also because my brothers were in Special Education and this almost completely Native Hawaiian run school was the BEST for Special Education on the island) and did NOT know that Hawaiian kids were not the actual majority in Hawai‘i until I was in 7th grade and tossed in with the rest of the district in Middle school.

A good portion of those kids were in foster care.

Some were because of parental drug abuse or physical abuse, ect, (The local domestic violence shelter was up the road,) but a majority were from parents who were trying VERY hard to regain custody. Aunts and Uncles and Sisters and Brothers and Cousins and Tutus of all genders trying so hard to gain custody in a way that made it so it would be harder for them to be taken away.

Some reasons I have PERSONALLY seen given as to why Native Hawaiian children have been removed from their homes are:

"Inability to cope with parenting — (this is extremely subjective and is often a bullshit excuse to say that Native Hawaiian Caretakers aren't good enough. In the case I saw, it was because the mother was a teen mom, but she did a damn good job.)

Inadequate housing — (Which also includes having "too many people in the house”, when culturally many native Hawaiians live with extended family. Case in point was because the kids lived with their five cousins.)

Low or misused income — (Literally not having enough money when milk costs 10 dollars a gallon here…)

Broken families — (having a stepmom/stepdad, anything non-traditional.)

These aren't acts of violence against the kids. These are normal family lives. These kids would cry so hard about their home life, they wouldn’t focus on school, they’d act out, they’d hurt other kids and seek any sort of love and attention from stable adults.

Native Hawaiian kids are:

Overreported

Overseparated

Kept in the system longer

More likely to re-enter foster care

This isn't unique to Hawai‘i and I won’t pretend it is. Bias in child welfare systems has also been extensively documented in African American and Native American communities, with indigenous peoples especially being targeted, especially recently. In acts that can only be described as a continuation of the White Man’s Burden ideology and residential schools, often POC children are tossed into group homes that see them as little more than a paycheck and a chance to “save the poor little wretches from their people”.

The problem was that the system was built on its own narrow ideas of what “good behavior” looked like—usually the way white middle-class kids were expected to act.

The stories I heard and the things I saw made me understand that the system was not just flawed—it is actively hurting ‘ohana in our state. The reasons kids were taken weren’t always about danger or neglect.

It’s a quiet kind of violence, but it’s violence all the same. It fractures the very fabric of what makes a community strong—connections, histories, the ability to hold each other through hard times.

POC children do not do well in the US foster system because of the systemic racism present.

Not to mention that Lilo has behavioral issues and is obviously going through a lot after her parents' death. She's neurodivergent, a POC, and vulnerable now that her parents are gone.

Nani would be aware of these circumstances. She would never willingly give her sister to a system that is literally against her. And Tūtū can have Lilo removed from her home for anything from being “too old to be capable” to Lilo getting in trouble for violent behavior. (Which she's known for and likely will get worse now that the only person still alive from her immediate family is in FUCKING CALIFORNIA, WHICH, BTW, SENDS THEIR STUDENTS HERE TO STUDY MARINE BIO).

Yes, Nani is allowed to have a life outside of Lilo. She’s a 19-year-old who suddenly had to become a parent to her little sister after unimaginable loss. She’s doing it all alone—no real support system, no safety net, barely scraping by. She is SUFFERING.

But the beauty of the original Nani was that despite all that pain and pressure, she chose to fight tooth and nail for her sister. Because that’s her ʻohana. And as the original movie hammered home: ʻOhana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.

That wasn’t just a cute line or a throwaway bit. It was the theme of the story. It was a message about resilience, love, and keeping your loved ones together—especially in the face of colonialist systems that do try to tear families apart.

And Nani would know what would await Lilo if she were taken away—shuffled through the system, disconnected from her culture, her roots, her ʻāina. She’d be statistically more likely to end up homeless as soon as she turns 18. (Unfortunately this is a reality for so many foster kids I know.)

Yes, she left Lilo with David’s Tūtū. And yes, I’m sure David’s Tūtū is a lovely lady, even though she wasn’t in the original movie. But that’s full-on giving her sister up, letting go of custody and walking away for good. That’s not what the original Nani would do—and it sure as hell shouldn’t be painted as the “right” thing.

Lelau was one of those kids who was a real-life Lilo. (and Lilo was her obsession, ironically, she had so much Lilo and Stitch merch.) Lemme tell you a quick story about her.

She was my best friend for most of elementary school. She wasn’t “bad,” but she was different—emotional, lashed out and behaved in a way that was easy for adults to misread or just plain misunderstand.

Her older brother had been taken by child services too, but because he was quieter, more “compliant,” he stayed with their older sister who already had a big family. That sister was trying to keep everything together, but with her own kids to raise, the weight was heavy. Meanwhile, Lelau got bounced around between different foster homes and relatives’ places because the system said she didn’t “behave.”

I think about Lelau a lot. I wonder what she would have thought if she watched this trash as a child, and saw herself in this Lilo, and saw herself as more of a burden than she already did.

Because here’s the truth: kids like Lelau already think they’re the problem. They hear it every day, even if no one says it out loud. It’s in the sigh when they walk into a room. It’s in the way teachers pull away, or how other kids are told to “be patient” with them like they’re some sort of test. It’s in the case files that reduce them to diagnoses and risk assessments. And it’s especially in the “well-meaning” media that repaints trauma and neurodivergence as something to grow out of—or to be handled by someone else entirely.

What they don’t get to see nearly enough is the fight to keep them. The fierce, messy, uncompromising love of someone who says: You’re not too much. You’re not broken. You’re mine, and I’m not letting go.

That’s what the original Lilo & Stitch gave us. That’s what Nani was. She wasn’t perfect—she yelled, she struggled, she made mistakes. But she stayed. She kept showing up. And she refused to let the system take her sister. That’s the kind of story Lelau needed. That we all needed as a kid.

And yeah, the funny blue aliens were the real reasons we watched it as kids, but that doesn’t mean the message was lost on us.

So when I see these rewrites—this gross and horrible story where Nani gives up custody, where that decision is framed as “self-empowering” or “best for Lilo”—I feel sick. I know it’s just a story. But stories matter. Especially to kids who are already hanging on by a thread. Especially to kids like Lelau who don’t have stable adults around, who feel like a problem, who live every day waiting for someone to decide they’re too much and walk away.

Nani and other caregivers deserve better wages, free therapy, housing support, childcare, a goddamn village to help raise that child. Help shouldn’t mean losing the people they’re fighting for. Help should look like wrapping around both the kid and the caregiver. Keeping families together.

But the system doesn’t work that way—by design. It’s rooted in colonialism. It’s built to police poor families, brown families, Native families. It calls it “protection,” but it strips kids of their language, their culture, their names, and places them in homes that get paid to raise them out of context. That’s not safety. That’s assimilation.

Lelau got told again and again that her feelings were “too big,” her reactions were “bad behavior,” and that she needed to learn to “be good.” But what she really needed was someone to say, “I see you. I hear you. I get why this is hard. And I’m not going anywhere.”

She needed what Lilo got in the original story. A sister who would burn the world down if it meant keeping her safe. Her sister tried, god did that sister try, but it was so fucking hard.

I guess I just keep wondering how many kids are watching this reboot, this sanitized versions of their own pain, and slowly internalizing that they are the problem. That the most “loving” thing they can do is to “stop being the burden”.

But that’s not love. That’s the system talking. That’s white supremacy and capitalism in a child welfare costume. That’s the lie kids like Lelau are told every single day.

And I’m just so fucking tired of it.

If you’re gonna tell a story about broken families, about loss, about trauma, about Hawai‘i, then tell the truth. Don’t paint giving up custody as this amazing, empowered choice if you’re not gonna talk about how the system coerces that “choice” out of people in the first place. Don’t act like this was the best option for the child themselves.

Because I’ve seen what happens when those kids grow up. I’ve seen what happens when no one fights for them. And I’ve seen the difference it makes when someone does.

#lilo and stitch #live action lilo and stitch #lilo and stich 2025 #angel rambles #hawaii #from hawaii #disclaimer: am not native hawaiian #feel like I need to tag that #I feel like I should make a tag for my analysises because I do like writing them #angel looks too deep into media

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elodieunderglass · 4 months ago

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History of Black jockeys in the USA: tumblr starter pack

The gif above was created by animating the motion study of “Annie G,” plate 627 of Eadweard Muybridge’s 1887 work, “Animal Locomotion”. The horse is a mare named “Annie G.” The jockey, unknown, is a Black man. It is one of the earliest motion studies on record, and captures some of the first humans and first animals to be recorded this way. (The earlier 1878 Muybridge study of the mare Sallie Gardener is more famous but you can’t really see the jockey.)

The Black jockey is referenced (fictionally) as an ancestor n Jordan Peele’s film Nope (2022) which also looks at the relationship between Black men, horses, and the consumption for entertainment of both of their bodies.

Fold into that what we are learning about today’s acceptance of the jockey-as-consumable, of their body as an accessory, of their wellbeing as mostly irrelevant; but then remember that once upon a time, people cared a lot more about horse racing. This is a big, tricky topic in American horse racing. There was a time in American history when Black jockeys were enslaved and forced into a job that we know is dangerous and consuming. Later there was a time in American history when Black jockeys were incredibly influential and important, competing equally alongside white jockeys, and they were deliberately pushed out of a sport they had mastered.

“The Undefeated Asteroid,” Edward Troye, 1864. Enslaved horse trainer Ansel Williamson, right, holding saddle. Ed Brown, jockey on left adjusting his spurs, was the young enslaved jockey. The groom is unidentified.

Press Keep Reading for an essay/signposts to resources. It’s intended as a jumping-off point for curious people and historians to learn more. TW for racial discrimination and discussion of weight.

As we know by now, jockeys are considered consumable/disposable by their sport; they are athletes whose names are less memorable than their mounts and their working conditions are tough. The sacrifices that jockeys make today to remain strong and light are hard enough when the jockey is willing. They have hard weight limits on their profession. And one of the very dark horrors of this was that young enslaved Black men of small stature and riding ability were singled out and used as jockeys. Their sacrifices would not have been willing. While this essay is about the Black athletes who willingly entered the sport post-abolition, I think it’s important to be up-front about the history of enslaved jockeys in America. Jockeys like Ed Brown (above) were forced into the job very, very young.

Horse racing is a bonkers calling, but it’s also one that people willingly follow. Post-abolition, there were many Black American jockeys who were incredible athletes, their records and statistics still impressive today. In a surge of excellence around the 1890s, Black jockeys rose to remarkable influence and power in America, becoming household names above even the horses, travelling the world, greeted with admiration, true celebrities with their faces on merchandise. At the very first Kentucky Derby, raced in 1875, 13 of the 15 jockeys were Black men.

Between 1890 and 1899, African American jockeys won the Kentucky Derby six times. By the early 1900s, they were history. The key push to exclude Black jockeys came when White jockeys began violently attacking their African American counterparts by boxing them out during races, running them into the rail, and hitting them with riding crops. These attacks prevented Black jockeys from finishing in the money, and endangered fragile and valuable racehorses. Soon after the attacks began, African American jockeys found they could not get rides. Anxiety over job insecurity appears to have played an important role in White jockeys’ actions: there were only a limited number of riding slots. White jockeys would have benefitted in any circumstances from the exclusion of Black jockeys, but in the late 1890s the US was in a depression, and unease about finding rides was especially high. Combined with a growing anti-gambling crusade that reduced attendance at racetracks and eliminated some tracks entirely, jockeys found demand for their services contracting.(National Bureau of Economic Research)

Professor Pellom McDaniels, describing the impact of this on legendary Black American jockey Isaac Burns Murphy:

MCDANIELS: If black people are supposed to be inherently inferior, to have someone who demonstrates success in material terms unravels this idea and therefore those whites during this time period who believe themselves to be inherently superior, something's broken in their psyches. And Murphy represents that kind of attack on white supremacy.

Isaac Burns Murphy, one of the best American jockeys of history, had an unprecedented rate of wins (something like 44% which is almost impossible.) he was born into slavery, but his mother managed to escape with him as a toddler to a Union Army camp. He was inducted into the Jockey’s Hall of Fame in 1955 and Eddie Arcaro was quoted, “there is no chance that his record of winning will ever be surpassed.” (How could it?!)

Today, the American Racing Museum honours many Black jockeys of history in their Hall of Fame, telling some truly incredible stories that are worth browsing.

Like James Winkfield. Born in America 1882, died France 1974. won the Kentucky Derby twice. Left America due to this rising backlash against the growing prominence of Black jockeys, the KKK in particular explicitly objecting to his celebrity and earnings by sending him death threats. Winkfield therefore rode and trained in Europe, settled in Russia, FLED THE 1919 REVOLUTION WITH 200 HORSES?, married an exiled Russian aristocrat (????) and, lest he know peace for five minutes, defended his horses from the European Nazi invasion with a pitchfork(!!!!). Fleeing WW2 to America, where the new racial segregation was now being widely embraced, Winkfield found hotels that had once welcomed the celebrity athlete suddenly turning him away (never forget that segregation was artificial and deliberate.) I am still stuck on him sneaking 200 thoroughbreds out of Russia. Here’s his Britannica article and Hall of Fame bio.

The campaign of racism and terror was successful at driving Black athletes from the profession, and Winkfield was the last Black jockey to win the Kentucky Derby. Jim Crow swept through the USA, and white people in the South comforted themselves with “lawn jockeys,” racist caricature lawn ornaments of Black men in jockey silks.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that Black jockeys began winning high-stakes races in the USA again.

Hopefully this has spurred (ha!) your interest. Here are some links if you find yourself interested in more!

American racing museum: Jockey hall of fame

Kentucky Derby Museum’s Black Heritage in Racing collection

How and Why Black Riders Were Driven from American Racetracks (summary paper, National Bureau of Economic Research)

There is no competition: the legacy of black jockeys (1975 entry in Sepia magazine preserved here. Note that James Winkfield’s picture incorrectly identified as Isaac B Murphy.)

This 1975 photo is from the article above and describes Cheryl Smith, “first Black American female jockey to hold a license.” I haven’t been able to find out much about her, but I’m not a historian - let me know if she takes your interest as a topic!

It looks like there are some big interesting books on the subject, though I haven’t read them myself. If you’re interested in doing a research project, here they are!

The Great Black Jockeys: The Lives and Times of the Men who Dominated America's First National Sport, by Ed Hotaling, 1999

Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey, by Katharine C Mooney, 2003

The First Kentucky Derby: Thirteen Black Jockeys, One Shady Owner, and the Little Red Horse That Wasn't Supposed to Win, by Mark Schrager, 2023.

#jockeyposting 🏇#this is a topic where I’ve tried to signpost to lots of resources instead of doing all the talking being quite conscious that I’m #not really educated enough BUT ALSO if I am the only person posting 🏇 content on tumblr I can at least get other people started.

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sugarlywhispers · 2 months ago

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b.katsuki + quirkless!gf gets attacked by villians

☆— fem reader, suggestive -not completely smut but something similar- emotional sexual tension(?) idk, man🙈

☆—a/n; so, in between the new fic that's draining my mind lately lol i have finished this little piece i have had in my draft for A WHILE🤭 i wanted to make it part of the Fuckin' Marry Me Series, however i liked the way it went like this, so i'm not gonna change it. you're free to decide if you want to imagine it in that world tho😉

Bakugou Katsuki is… surprised. Very much so.

He honestly thinks he has never been this surprised before.

There you are, looking tough and proud and brave –so fucking hot if he has anything to say about it. When you shouldn't.

Don't get him fucking wrong, he does believe that women can be brave and all. Fuck, there are a bunch of Heroes that are women who are fearless and deadly. The prime example of that is Mirko, his third favorite hero after All Might and Jeanist. But if his experience with civilians, mostly women, has taught him something, it’s that they aren’t so… strong, mentally and emotionally, after the incident happens. And this is not him fucking judging, fuck you. This is more statistics. And commonly, women would be ones going through a harsh fucking breakdown if they had gone through what you just did.

Here's what happened.

You and Bakugou had been together for almost a year already and it had been… fucking magical.

Yes, he will fucking describe it like that because, damn, you had shown him how good it feels to be loved and cherished, and fuck, he isn't a fucking coward, he will admit that he is head over heels in love with you. You both had been so enraptured inside a bubble of love, cutesy bullshit and all annoyingly gorgeous pink, that Bakugou really didn't see the big fucking storm coming.

His day began as hectic as any other day at his agency. But it was close to the afternoon, while he was revising a new case outside the city with Deku that he received that phone video call. It was from an unknown number. Normally, he would ignore it. But he accepted it this time, don’t ask him why.

The image that appeared on his phone's screen made him mad –real mad– and completely terrified at the same time.

You were kneeling on a dirty floor, tied up, hands and legs behind your back, tape over your mouth. You looked angry, with tears streaming down your face and sweaty. That infuriated Katsuki even more.

"If you want her back, you know what to do Dynamight," a fucking distorted voice said before ending the call.

It didn't take much for him and Deku to find the fucking bastards, hiding in an old abandoned factory not so far from the city. To summarize it, they were stupid brats beginning their careers as villains, now, of course, continuing it in jail. Dynamight had captured others from the same group when they attacked a technology corporation, so they wanted their stupid little friends free. That's why they kidnapped you.

The biggest fucking mistake they could ever have done.

After that, while you were being treated by the nursing team, Dynamight and Deku were watching the camera records around the place and at the entrance of the factory, and they were… impressed. They were watching how you gave them hell in trying to make you cooperate and enter the factory. You were kicking, screaming, scratching, insulting them with a colorful language that not even Katsuki knew you were able to speak. Even though you were Quirkless, damn, you did give them a fight. It was even clearer when you kicked one of them in the balls so hard that both heroes heard the painful kick.

Fucking ouch!

So, back to the present, he is very surprised as he looks at you entering the apartment with your head held high. Not one tear, no breakdown, no fear in your eyes. Just annoyance. You still sigh because it's been a hell of a tiring day.

"Do you… Do you need my help to…" He can't finish the sentence. What he means is if you need help to bathe or shower. You said on the car ride back home that you were going to get one as soon as you crossed the entrance door to the apartment.

It's not like he hasn't seen you naked already, you have had lots of fun already together, but he knows that during these events people tend to prefer privacy. Isolation even. But when he asked you in the car if you needed to be alone, you said you wanted him to stay with you.

So he is gonna stay the night… and all nights you ask of him.

"I'm fine, Katsuki," you smile, so bright and so cute it's a harsh contrast to how messed up you look with your hair tangled, some cuts over your face, and some parts of your clothes torn.

It hurts his heart seeing you like this. A constant pressure over his chest he can't soothe away, no matter how many times he repeats in his head that you are safe.

He looks down at his hands as he says, "I'm sorry."

"What for?" You chuckle gently as you walk closer to him and grab one of his hands, fingers interlacing with his. "If I remember correctly, you saved me."

He exhales a small sarcastic snort through his nose, "The reason they fuckin’ got you in the first place was because of me."

You shake your head, still smiling and looking at him like he's the most perfect man on earth, which Katsuki knows he isn't.

You're looking into each other's eyes when you say, "You think I didn't know what I was getting myself into when I accepted that first date?"

Bakugou Katsuki is out of words. He doesn't know how to answer back, because the only thing he wants to do is kiss you so strongly it might hurt you. Hug you so strongly that it may combine both bodies into one. So he stays still, holding back his need for you, while you stand on your tiptoes and kiss his cheek before walking towards the bathroom. He takes a deep breath. Fuck. He loves you so fucking much its driving him insane.

He was going to talk to you, to make you see how dangerous it actually was to be with him. He was going to convince you to break up, for your safety. Fuck! If he had been two minutes late today, he doesn't want to think of what could have happened.

But he can’t. Bakugou Katsuki is such a selfish bastard that he can’t tell you to break up with him. He wants you. He needs you. Katsuki fucking loves you so much he can’t breathe without you. So he won’t.

Katsuki shuts his eyes.

This never should have happened. He should’ve seen it coming, yet he didn’t, and that scares him to death.

The thought of losing you makes his chest ache like it’s splitting open.

So he makes a silent vow, a determined promise: Never again.

He’ll train harder. Watch closer. Be better. Protect you from everything and everyone.

No matter what it costs him, he’ll keep you safe.

Because you’re his entire world. Because he loves you with every fiber of his being, and he’s never giving up on you. Not to fear. Not to fate. Not to anyone.

He is so concentrated stirring the soup in the oven a couple of hours later, he doesn't hear you when you enter the kitchen. He realizes you're there when he sees you jump to sit over the counter through the peripheral vision of his eyes.

"That smells good," you comment, a soft and delicate curve of your mouth in the form of a smile that makes him go weak on the knees for you, as you move back and forth with your little bare feet. You're so freaking cute he wants to bite you.

He smirks when he finally sees how you're dressed. It's one of his t-shirts that are so big on you it functions more as a dress. He wonders if there's something else underneath. Or not. This last idea makes him hungry, and not specifically for food.

That's also when he notices the purple and reddish marks on the inside of your thighs and along your legs. He feels his blood boil like the soup he's done cooking. He should have killed those bastards.

Katsuki takes a deep breath before turning off the oven and walking til he's standing between your open legs. Your eyebrows are up, kind of surprised by the sudden proximity, but it is not unwelcome.

He doesn't say anything as he starts to drop down to the floor until he's kneeling, eyes still locked on yours. His mouth then starts a slow and gentle path from your shin, pecking your skin as he ascends to the inner side of your knee, coincidentally kissing around each mark this dreadful day has left on you. Always softly, doing his best in never putting too much pressure to make it hurt again, but enough for you to understand that he is sorry you got each and every one of them.

Your breathing quickens, eyes never leaving his face. A face that shows how concentrated he is now in his task, with his eyes closed as his mouth climbs towards your inner thighs. A small noise, almost like a breathed moan, leaves your mouth when his tongue touches your skin.

His breath brushes against your skin, warm and reverent, and the sound of it nearly undoes you. His hands, calloused but careful, anchor themselves at your hips as his lips reach the tender flesh of your inner thigh. There’s a tremble in his touch, but not from hesitation. You recognize it immediately. It’s restraint. Every part of him is tensed, like he is being extremely conscious of every move of his. You know then, he doesn’t want to scare you away, and that thought warms your heart.

“Katsuki…” Your voice is a breath, half plea, half warning, but he just shakes his head against you.

“I know, Firefly,” he murmurs, the rumble of his voice caresses your skin, softened by guilt and affection. “I know you’re hurt. I’m not gonna push. But let me take care of you, please…”

Bakugou Katsuki never begs. But he does. For you, only for you.

He leans in again kissing the spot just above the last bruise, and then another, slow and deliberate, as if he’s memorizing every mark this day has etched into your body. Every kiss is an apology, every breath he draws is laced with the fury he holds back. Not at you, never at you. But at the world that dared touch you like this.

You reach for him, threading your fingers through his messy hair, grounding both of you. He exhales, a low sound that vibrates against your thigh, as his eyes close for a moment. Enjoying your touch. Like your touch is all he needs to survive.

When he finally looks up, red eyes meeting yours, the heat there is unmistakable. But so is the tenderness, the love that rarely expresses out loud, yet it’s unquestionable that he feels for you.

“You tell me when to stop,” he says, voice thick. “I’ll go slow. I’ll stop. I’ll just hold you. Whatever you need me to. But I need to show you… Need you to feel it. That you’re still here, that I’ve got you.”

And with that, he travels back up your body, peppering kisses along the way until he’s hovering over you, foreheads touching, breath mingling. His hand cradles your cheek, thumb brushing gently beneath your eye, and for a long moment, all he does is look at you. Eyes so focused on you, you can feel the burn, but his body still.

“Let me make you feel safe again, Firefly…”

#mha fanfiction #bnha fanfiction #mha bakugou katsuki #bnha bakugo katsuki #bnha bakugou katsuki #bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugou x reader #mha bakugou x reader #mha smut #bnha smut #bakugou katsuki x midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou katsuki x you #bakugou katsuki smut

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covid-safer-hotties · 9 months ago

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Also preserved on our archive

Half of Americans (49%) believe they'll never get COVID again, according to new polling from the Ipsos Consumer Tracker

Why we asked about COVID expectations: COVID cases are continuing a summer surge as “back-to-school” also becomes “back-to-COVID” season. New vaccines are starting to roll out.

What we found: This question is one we’ve asked for years now about how people think about their risk of getting COVID. And even as it surges around us those who think they will never again get COVID is now at the highest levels we’ve seen: about half (49%) of Americans. That leaves the other half shifting between those who say they expect to get it “despite trying to stay as safe as possible” and with the more fatalistic “I have gone about my life as normally as I could.” Many fewer (20% now compared to 31% at this time in 2023) say they are trying to stay as safe as possible as safety measures have mostly disappeared in all spheres. And yes, politics come into play here. Equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats don’t expect to get COVID again, but Democrats were twice as likely to say they are trying to stay safe. For the record, between 600 and 900 deaths per week recently are due to COVID, which currently accounts for about 2.5% of all deaths, according to the CDC. Car crashes, for reference, kill about 850 per week. (Nadi's NOTE: This is an incorrect statistic, as the 33% of hospitals reporting [making any current count a severe undercount] lists over 1,200 people dying last week from covid, up from over 1,100 the week before and over 1,000 the week before that. It has not been below four hundred deaths per week since March 2020.)

#mask up #covid #pandemic #covid 19 #wear a mask #public health #coronavirus #sars cov 2 #still coviding #wear a respirator

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smallswingshoes · 2 years ago

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Your local pharmacy technician here.

The medication is called Isotretinoin, aka Zenatane, Amnesteem, or Claravis.

It can cause severe birth defects, which is why it's required for patients to be on birth control if they have a uterus and to be repeatedly educated on the risks of the medication. To be fair, men on the medication also have to be repeatedly educated on not having unprotected sex while on it.

It has, iirc, a 30% chance of causing birth defects in infants. You have to understand that this is extremely high for any medication on the market. Compare that to fetal alcohol syndrome, which, if I did my math right, is something like a 7% chance of happening when drinking alcohol while pregnant, although numbers vary. That's a significant difference.

There are many, many medications that could, theoretically, potentially cause problems for a baby if taken during pregnancy, but they don't have a THIRTY PERCENT CHANCE of causing birth defects.

I'm seeing people in the notes calling this dystopian, but, frankly, the ipledge system requiring people to prevent pregnancy while on this medication is the only way this medication could have made it to the market. It's nearly a 1 in 3 chance of causing birth defects.

Part of the reason there are these measures put in place is because, on a grand scale, you just can't take "I pinkie promise" from patients as any kind of guarantee. You just can't.

I know it's incredibly frustrating, but imo the solution is for more medications for acne to be available and/or more birth controls to be available so that there are more options.

It would be criminally irresponsible to put isotretinoin on the market without some sort of stopgap in place.

If it was really about "but what about the babies?", believe me, there would be so many more medications attached to the ipledge system. It would be a logistical nightmare and impractical to boot, even ignoring the moral implications.

Please believe me when I say there's a good reason isotretinoin has the ipledge system. It literally wouldn't be available at all without it. I am directing this message less to anon and more to conspiratorial commenters on this post.

You know what medical pet peeve, I kind understand it but I still find it stupid and hate it. There's this medication I wanna try for my skin, but I can't use it unless I use birth control. I forgot the English name, sorry. Literally I cannot get it unless I'm on birth control and actively taking it, even though I don't fuck, I don't do casual sex and I am not dating, I'm completely soloing life. Ok? I would also have to piss in a cup each month to prove I'm not pregnant. I can't get the medication unless I take birth control because when pregnant it's bad for the fetus. A fetus I'll not have because I don't fuck, and have no interest in it, and I also in my current position and maybe future, just do not want children.

I can't fucking take birth control because all of the ones I tried leave me completely destroyed mentally and physically, I just don't have the body for any birth control. They make literally everything worse, bloating, nausea, periods, weight fluctuation, itchy for some reason, one even made me leak and then my breasts got so badly inflammed wearing a shirt was agony, etc. The medication I want to take isn't the best for general health either: Dry skin, liver, some other shit. I fucking hate it, I either have to just not do the medication, or I have to completely ruin my health in two ways because of a pregnancy that is just is not going to happen because I don't fuck.

I am guessing this is because of people lying about their sexual activity or some shit, but for the love of everything, now I can't get the medication that would actual improve my quality of life because of these people. I think what got me the most is that the Doctor I spoke to said that even if a woman doesn't have the ability to have children she would still need to take birth control and piss in a cup.

#your local pharmacy technician #please i am begging you #there is an actual medical reason for this #30% is insane you dont understand #its probably only available at all because it doesnt cause infant mortality like thalidomide did #is it super frustrating?#yes #but can you imagine if they didnt have the ipledge system in place #the amount of people who would give birth and have babies with birth defects would be insane #and then people would turn to the medical establishment #and ask why they didnt prevent this #had they learned nothing from thalidomide?!#and the medical community would say #well we tried to educate people #and everyone would agree that that wasnt good enough #because clearly just education didnt prevent this from happening #because birth control is fallible #people are fallible #even in the best of circumstances and assuming no patient ever lied about preventing pregnancy #there would still statistically be a number of people who would get fucked over #like 5 million americans are on this medication #lets assume half of them have a uterus #hormonal birth control has a failure rate of 7% for a variety of reasons but mostly human error iirc #if i did my math right thats 175000 unplanned babies #thats 52500 babies born with birth defects in one year #and thats when people decide to go on the med even with the current red tape #statistically speaking that number would only grow if there was no ipledge system #reply

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dandp · 3 months ago

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So during the tit premiere I made this jokey post and then the Phannie Statistic Brain popped out and said "actually is that even hyperbole or is that accurate" so naturally the only thing to do was rewatch tit and mark down every time they touched and do a statistical analysis. Yes this is an incredibly dumb concept/post. Results under the cut!

So I counted pretty much every touch, all of which are listed at the end for anyone curious. Boxing is kind of an outlier and I didn't count every single individual moment in that but am roughly considering it to be 13 touches. I'll include stats both counting it as just 1 and counting the full 13. Also counting Sister Daniel entrance because it's close enough with what Dan does with the cross necklace and I felt on principle it had to be counted. Here's what we ended up with:

Total number: 28 (40 if you count boxing)

Average: 1 touch every 3.36 minutes (2.35 minutes if you count boxing)

Total number of shoulder touches specifically: 12 (1 every 7.38 minutes)

All but 2 of the non-boxing touches were done by Dan

The largest amount of time without a touch was 16:24 - Dan did in fact beat the "needs to touch him every 10 minutes" allegations once! He made up for it in the averages though, where he certainly did not beat them. It should also be noted that this stretch of time was during parts of conspiracies and role model/nole model, where they are generally staged further apart from each other. Dan getting right up in Phil's space during the fake video conspiracy was also within that time period which, while it couldn't be technically counted as a touch, is in the spirit.

The staging overall did tend to play a role in the frequency of touches throughout the whole show. I've summed up this phenomenon in this very scientific and real graph.

In conclusion: Man, those boys really touch each other a lot! (Mostly Dan though. No one is surprised)

Full list of touches:

Shoulder touch 2:01

Shoulder touch 10:00

Arm grab 11:04

Shoulder touch 13:51

Shoulder touch 15:02

Wrist grab 15:22

Hand touch 21:27

Shoulder touch 37:51

Shoulder tap 43:17

Shoulder tap 44:27

Shoulder grab by Phil 46:44

Arm touch 47:40

Shoulder touch 48:09

Side bump 51:14

Hair tousle 52:05

Slap fight 52:07

(52:38-57:38 intermission)

Boxing 57:38-1:04:50

Shoulder touch 1:09:18

Hand slap 1:09:33

Shoulder touch 1:09:51

Arm touch 1:14:38

Shoulder touch 1:14:58

Grab + push 1:15:06

Sister Daniel entrance 1:20:30

Shoulder touch 1:25:53

Extended hand touch in song 1:35:49

Tit grab 1:35:56

Back to back 1:36:37

#dan and phil #phan #can you perhaps tell from reading this that recently ive been yearning to be a student again and/or get a research related job in my field #also sorry phil if youre lurking and see this lol i didnt beat the 'omg they touched!!' allegations today. but it was for science at least.

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saphronethaleph · 1 year ago

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Longform Statistical Analysis

“Master Nu,” Windu said, with a smile. “It’s nice to see you in the Council Chambers once more.”

“Thank you,” the librarian replied, inclining her head. “Unfortunately, I bring dire news.”

“...you do?” Windu asked, worried now. “What kind of dire news?”

“Dire news coming out of the library is usually either trivial or an absolute disaster,” Ki-Adi-Mundi contributed. “Which is it, so we can decide how worried to be?”

“Quite possibly, both,” Nu told him. “To summarize… Masters, two years ago we discovered that the Sith were not extinct. With this in mind, I have been engaged on a long-term project – I evaluated data about the discovery, admittance, tenure and ultimate loss of every single Jedi for which we have data. Every one in our archives.”

“Now I understand why it took so long,” Even Piell said. “In fact, I credit your skills for taking so little time. That must have been… what, a thousand years… there are ten thousand knights now… hundreds of thousands of Jedi total?”

“Around that,” Nu confirmed. “But the problem is… this. This is the number of active Jedi at any one time, during the first hundred years after Ruusan.”

Her holoprojector activated, showing a kind of flow diagram made out of strands of light. Light yellow marked those newly discovered and accepted as initiates, green padawans, blue for knights and purple marked those who were masters. The tiny Order, wounded but triumphant in the years immediately after Ruusan, was reborn and swelled as it gained more members and those members it had reached greater degrees of Mastery.

“Two hundred years,” Nu went on, as the diagram swelled and zoomed out. The growth was slower now, harder to see on the same scale, but the Order pulsed in colours of green and blue and purple as the Golden Age of the Republic continued.

“...you said this was dire?” Adi Gallia asked.

“We’ll get there,” Nu said, accelerating the projection a little.

As it ran forwards, decade after decade passing by until it approached the present, Master Yaddle leaned forwards in her seat.

She wasn’t the only one. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but the Jedi Order – which had swelled to enormous, triumphant scale during the Golden Age – had begun to contract again.

By the time it reached the present day, it still possessed deep reserves of strength, but the colouring was… just a little different. The purple of Mastery was less common, though the blues and greens of Knighthood and Padawan were still fully present, and Nu manipulated her controls a bit more.

A second strand appeared, this one much thinner and more intermittent. And, as time tracked towards the present, it went from a shading of mostly blue hundreds of years ago to shades that were a little more green.

“This is the members of our Order who left our ranks due to their death,” Nu explained. “While the differences year-to-year are so minor that I would hesitate to describe them as meaningful, when given the long view and looked at in aggregate the effect is clear.”

She folded her arms. “The Sith faced by Knight Kenobi is the anomaly – an open Sith attack which makes no pretensions as to what they are. This is what I would call a true threat, Councillors. Not a single Sith who seeks to kill individual Jedi in a duel, but a centuries-long program of gradual, subtle, pervasive damage to the Jedi Order, chiefly through the loss of Padawans before they become Knights.”

“You think the Sith are behind this?” Ki-Adi-Mundi asked.

“Behind any given casualty?” Nu asked. “...no. I have no proof I could offer, though a detailed examination of the loss of any given Padawan may conclude that there was some other factor behind their death. Behind the whole pattern? I think it’s quite possible, Master Mundi. We know the Sith can plot and plan for something for a thousand years, and there are only two targets for such a plot that make any sense – ourselves, and the Republic.”

She met the gaze of each councillor in turn. “If this is not due to the Sith, my friends, then we must ask ourselves – what is? They have been doing something for ten centuries and we know nothing about it.”

After a slightly dismayed silence, Yoda tapped his gimmer stick on the floor.

“Much to think about, we have,” he said. “Master Nu – more to say, have you?”

“Yes,” Nu replied. “My presentation, I hope, serves as a reminder that the Sith did not appear out of nowhere two years ago. They have been doing things over the last thousand years, and it is quite possible that we have run into their machinations without identifying them as such… it would be a great mistake to generalize from the Sith defeated by Knight Kenobi.”

“...hmm,” Windu said, frowning. “During the interrogations of Nute Gunray. He said that his actions were based on a shadowy figure pressing him to get a treaty signed by Queen Amidala of the Naboo. That treaty would have benefitted the Trade Federation, but nobody else.”

“The wording of the treaty, benefit the Trade Federation, it would,” Yaddle said. “The existence of the treaty – benefit someone else, perhaps?”

In his office, Sheev Palpatine paused halfway through reading a law.

He had the strange feeling that he’d just been betrayed by his greatest ally. But that was nonsense, since the closet thing he had left to a true ally was paperwork…

#star wars #mace windu #ki adi mundi #jocasta nu #yoda #another bad day for palps #palpatine

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sunnyrosewritesstuff · 6 months ago

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So last month I was doing some statistics to find the "top Bagginshield fics" and I thought I would post my findings. First, I'm going to explain my process. I looked at the top 25 fics for hits, kudos, and bookmarks in the Bagginshield tag. Some of these overlapped which gave me 40 fics to work with. I then used these stats to rank the fics in 3 different ways: Rank by Stat, Rank by %, and Rank by Monthly Stat.

Rank by Stat- I assigned each stat a numerically value. So for example, the highest hit would get a score of 40, the second highest hit would get a score of 39, so on and so forth, the lowest getting a score of 1. For each fic they got a numerical value for hits, kudos, and bookmarks. I then added these numerical values together and ranked each fic from highest to lowest score. This tended to favor long running multi-chapter fics.

Rank by %- I divided the kudos by number of hits, and the bookmarks by number of hits. I turned these values into a percent. I then combined the two percents together. I ranked the fics from highest percent to lowest percent. This tended to favor short running one-shots.

Rank by Monthly Stat- Finally, I divided each stat (hits, kudos, and bookmarks) by the number of months that fic has been "live". So from the month the first chapter was posted until December of 2024. I then repeated the process I did for for Rank by Stat with the numerical values and ranked these fics from highest to lowest as well. This tended to favor the "younger" fics, but the 40 fics I worked with were mostly made around the same time so this really became a buffer score of sorts.

I then averaged these three ranks and that's what made the list below. It's definitely not a perfect method. For one thing, my sample bias was to only choose the top 25 of each category to begin with which didn't allow for a lot of newer fics to have the opportunity to be ranked. But this is the list I created! I would love to hear in the comments which of your favorites made the list and which didn't. I certainly had a large number of fics in my personal top 25 that didn't make the cut.

Top 25 Bagginshield Fics Statistically

You Got Me by drunkonwriting

Planting a Hobbit by northerntrash

Para Bellum by RyuuzaKochou

lay down your sweet and weary head by Elenothar

Safe and Distant by Lindzzz

A Shot in the Dark by Silver_pup

Call You Home by northerntrash

An Eye For Quality by Linelen (Linelenagain)

Sansûkh by determamfidd

A Passion For Mushrooms by Chrononautical

The Color of Possibility by lindoreda

Comes Around Again by scarletjedi

The Naming of Hobbits by Margo_Kim

An Expected Journey by MarieJacquelyn

Something Blue by Lapin

Gardening by The Feels Whale (miscellea)

An Unexpected Addition by karategal

The "Dying" Hobbit by Resacon1990

A Most Sensible Idea by HildyJ

Growing Dwarves (And Kingdoms) by Lumeleo

Made and Remade the Necklace of Songs by pibroch (littleblackdog)

Burned To A Cinder by ferretbaby

The Mediator by Mynuet

Hearts Will As Hearts Must by determamfidd

The Riven Crown by BeautifulFiction

#the hobbit #bagginshield #ao3 stats #what i do when i'm bored

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evidence-based-activism · 1 year ago

Note

you’re still ignoring WHY the rates for men are so high, because women get underreported and don’t get taken seriously at all when they commit crimes. Women abuse children more and initiate 70% of domestic violence, yet men are still portrayed as the villains. You should read the comments or some of the reblogs under that post. Full of people who have been abused by women and have been safer when around only men,and never been taken seriously. You say it’s a strawman fallacy but no it’s not, radfems say this shit all the timesee. and are very gender essentialist themselves. Maybe you’re not saying it but a lot of popular radfems are, to mostly agreement from other radfems,so you can’t really blame people for seeing that and understanding it to be a popular TERF take.

Hi -

So, I'm going to answer this ask and the one that includes the bustle link that I expect was also sent by you? However, I'm not going to continue putting in this degree of effort (i.e., reading and researching the information you send) unless you start matching that effort. It will be difficult for you to do so in an ask (although I suppose you could try), so I suggest you reblog this post to further discuss.

So, on to the response:

---

No, there is not a significant reporting gap (at least, not one caused by sex).

You said "women get underreported and don’t get taken seriously at all when they commit crimes", but there is no evidence that is the case. Let's take the crime data from two sources: the criminal victimization survey by the BJS [1] and the FBI crime data explorer [2]. These two sources are helpful for this discussion because the BJS attempts to determine total offenses including those not reported, while the FBI only looks at reported offenses.

For 2022 (rounding numbers) and looking at violent offenses (excluding homicide as the BJS report is interview based):

Male violent crime: 4,750,000 estimated by the BJS and 1,990,000 reported by the FBI for an overall 42% reporting rate

Female violent crime: 1,220,000 estimated by the BJS and 777,000 reported by the FBI for an overall 64% reporting rate

These numbers would suggest that more female offenders than male offenders are reported (i.e., a greater percent of female offenders, even though in absolute terms there are far fewer female offenders). However, there are some caveats to this data that makes me reluctant to state this conclusion:

The crime definitions between the BJS and FBI differ slightly. For example, I had to search through the "other crimes" for the FBI to find simple assault and several additional sexual assault categories to try and match the overall BJS "violent crime" statistic.

These stats are incident based not offender based. So, for example, if John commits 10 aggravated assaults and 5 of his victims report the assault to the police, 5 incidents are recorded in the system. Therefore, recidivism may or may not play a role in reporting rates.

I calculated the rate using the offender stats for individual offenders and "both male and female offender". Proportionally speaking a greater percent of female offenders are in the "both" category (23% vs 6%). Other statistics suggest more severe crimes are more likely to be reported to the police (e.g., 50% of aggravated assault is reported vs 37% of simple assault). If we make the assumption that violent crimes involving multiple offenders are more likely to be severe, then this could partially explain the disparity.

However, this point is essentially irrelevant, as the statistics previously discussed in the CDC report don't rely on reported crimes, they specifically interview representative samples in order to determine prevalence rates. (The difference between this data (and data in the BJS report) and the number of reported cases is how we know these crimes are under-reported.)

Just to drive the point home: the BJS study, which again, looks at both reported and unreported crime indicates:

Men take part in 84% of violent crimes and the only offender(s) in 79% of violent crimes (the stats for women are 21% and 17% respectively)

The offender-to-population ratio is 1.6 for men and 0.3 for women. That means the share of men in the "offender population" is 60% more than the share of men in the US population. The share of women offenders is 70% less than their share of the US population.

And before you send me another debunked myth: no men are not victimized more: the victim-to-offender population ratio for all violent crimes is 1.0 for both men and women.

I've also talked about how men don't under-report abuse (at least, not anymore than women do) in the past, so see this post for a couple more sources.

There's also no evidence that crimes committed by women get taken less seriously. However, it is true that when women do commit crimes, they tend to be less severe than the crimes committed by men (i.e., women commit more simple assault and aggravated assault). Given this, women's crimes may be taken "less seriously", but that's because the crimes are less serious, going by the accepted definitions of the crime. (And this is not my personal opinion! There is an actual "crime hierarchy" used in the American justice system that ranks crimes by degree of severity.)

In terms of legal consequences, women and men receive similar sentence lengths with one major caveat [3]. Caretakers of children, especially, young children, routinely received shorter sentences. Since women are more likely to be the primary caretaker of children, they'd be more likely to see this sentence reduction. However, this gap has been closing since the introduction of mandatory minimum sentencing. Some research suggests women may receive harsher sentences than men for "traditionally male crimes" [4].

Either way, crimes by women are clearly taken at least as "seriously" as crimes by men.

---

No women do not abuse children more.

You said "Women abuse children more", but this is an oft-repeated statement from terribly misinterpreted data.

The misconception comes from data from the child maltreatment report from the HHS [5]. This report looks at reports of child abuse and neglect. In it they found that 52% of victims had a female perpetrator and 47% had a male perpetrator. At first glance, this looks like women abuse more children (hence the wide-spread misinterpretation), however this neglects to take several things into consideration.

First, since about 51% of the population is female, even if we considered nothing else, these values would suggest parity in maltreatment (abuse + neglect) rates. Of course, even this interpretation is deeply flawed, but I thought it merited pointing out.

Second, and perhaps most important, these stats are not looking at incidence or even prevalence rates. This isn't a rate at all. For example, you may be tempted to interpret these as "52% of children in a women's care are abused" or "52% of women abuse children". These are, and I must stress this, completely incorrect interpretations. These stats say only that of child maltreatment (abuse+neglect) victims identified by CPS, 52% of them were maltreated by a women.

Next, these stats fail to take into account the fact that many more women are the primary caretaker of children. According to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), mothers spend 80% more time caring for children than fathers. This disparity widens even further when you exclude the "entertainment" categories like playing or reading to children (130% increase, or more than double) [6]. This matters because it provides some insight into how rates of abuse would be different. You need to adjust for time spent with children to get a meaningful rate. Another way to look at this is that despite mothers spending almost twice the amount of time around children as fathers, they account for the same number of perpetrators. This alone should tell you that a child is more likely to be safe in the company of a randomly selected woman than a randomly selected man.

In case you still aren't convinced however, the report also clarifies that the perpetrator sex varied widely by maltreatment type. Women were the perpetrator in 58.5% of neglect cases (vs 41%) and 70.5% of medical neglect cases (vs 29%). But men were the perpetrator in 49.5% of physical abuse cases (vs 49%), 89% of sexual abuse cases (vs 8%), and 59% of emotional abuse cases (vs 41%). While no form of child maltreatment is ever acceptable, I hope I don't need to explain how abuse (which "requires an action") is different from neglect (which "occurs from an inaction") and requires different responses.

Speaking of neglect: there is much discourse on how much of the neglect (and medical neglect) registered by CPS is "true neglect" and how much is a result of poverty. This is particularly relevant considering single mothers are much more likely to live in poverty than married couples or single fathers. Examples of this may include: a mother doesn't have enough money to buy food and pay for rent so she and her child eat very little until her next paycheck, a single mother can't miss work without being fired so she sends her sick child to school, a single mother can't pay for child care so she has to choose between leaving her child home alone or having an unfit adult (her own abusive parent? an unsuitable boyfriend?) watch her child. In all of these situations, something absolutely needs to be done to help the child, but it likely isn't the same something as a child who's being beaten or sexually abused by his father.

Other notes on neglect: even the relatively higher proportion of female perpetrators for neglect and medical neglect in this sample are well below parity when adjusted for time spent with the child. It’s also likely that men’s rates of neglect are likely severely under-reported here. Why? Because a neglect case is rarely (if ever) opened for absentee ("deadbeat") dads; it's also unclear how many men with non-primary custody are listed as perpetrators of neglect. (I ask you: if mothers are considered neglectful for failing to intervene on behalf of their child in abusive/neglectful situations, why aren't fathers?)

Other studies on child abuse perpetration (sadly no national reports) show:

Evaluations of child fatalities in Missouri over a 8-year period showed men inflicted 71% of fatal injuries on young children [8]

Evaluations of fatal and nonfatal abusive head trauma over a 12-year period at the Children's Hospital of Denver found 69% of the perpetrators were male (including 74% of the perpetrators of fatal head traumas) [9]

Data from conviction rates and victimization surveys suggest that 4-5% of adult, child sex offenders (as in child sex offenders who are adults) are female, meaning that 95-96% are male [10]

Altogether, this indicates that men are more likely to abuse a child in their care than women. Unsurprisingly, it’s safer for children to be around women than around men.

---

No, women do not initiate more domestic violence/commit the same amount of abuse.

You said "women ... initiate 70% of domestic violence". It took me a while to find a source for this statistic, but I eventually found out it comes from a poorly done study that unfortunately finds company with a number of other poorly done studies touted by MRAs and anti-feminists.

Before we address that study specifically: a brief history of the nonsense plaguing domestic violence research.

To be clear, this is not a new discussion, we (the general we) have been having this same discussion about whether there's gender parity in domestic violence for, oh, 50 years or so. It is, possibly not entirely, but certainly mostly the result of the "Conflict Tactics Scale" (CTS). Intended for use in family violence research, it has several methodological flaws which make its results ... let's go with unreliable.

I really thought I'd discussed the CTS before now ... but can't find anything on my blog. But there is this post which is a nice pictograph about this next topic, which I will loop into our discussion of the CTS.

So ... why is the CTS so unreliable? Because "domestic violence" is not a homogeneous phenomenon. If I asked someone to picture an abusive relationship they are almost certainly going to imagine an abusive man controlling his partner through intimidation, likely restricting her behavior, and possibly hitting or otherwise physically harming her. This "typical" dynamic is what we think of when we hear "domestic abuse/violence". (I'd argue that it's what we should think of when discussing domestic violence, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.)

Notably, what this doesn't include is the -- far more common -- case of situational violence. A "typical" example of situational violence is arguments that "gets out of hand" and end with one partner slapping/shoving/etc. the other (switching between perpetrator for different incidents) or two people who routinely get "nasty" (name calling, personal insults) to each other during arguments. There's no intimidation or controlling behavior and it doesn't escalate. It also is generally not associated with significant victim hardship (i.e., no/little increase in depression, anxiety, or PTSD; little fear or feeling unable to escape the relationship; no or few physical injuries; little or no economic hardship; etc.). It's also what's predominately being measured by the CTS.

This isn't to say that situational violence is "okay". It clearly isn't, no more than a bar fight or slapping a co-worker is okay. It is, however, far more comparable to these examples (bar fight, slapping a coworker, etc.) than it is to the standard conception of domestic violence (which itself is more comparable to being a prisoner of war [11]). Some people have tried to resolve this by renaming the standard conception to "intimate partner terrorism" or "domestic abuse with coercive control". I have ... mixed thoughts on this, so I'm going to leave it at this for now.

If you'd like to read more about this, Michael P. Johnson at PSU (who originally proposed this division back in the 1990s!) has written a book and also has numerous articles about the topic.

I have a lot of sources about the CTS/differences in violence perpetration rates, but this post is already very long and I plan to make a whole separate post about this at some point. So, I'm going to briefly summarize the points and give some references that would be particularly helpful.

So, the issues with CTS include:

Failure to include a full range of possible violent behaviors, including many that are almost always perpetrated by men, including: rape, murder, choking, and suffocation.

Failure to examine post-breakup/divorce time periods, despite post-separation being one of the most dangerous time periods for abused women (but, notably, not men).

Failure to examine context. This gets back at the paradigm I mentioned above: studies that do examine context have shown that the vast majority of coercive controlling violence (i.e., traditional abuse) is perpetrated by men and the vast majority of responsive violence (i.e., self-defense) is perpetrated by women.

Failure to examine the severity of the violence and/or violence impacts. Studies have also shown that women routinely receive the more severe injuries than men. That applies to both the injuries received from coercive controlling violence and from situational violence. Notably, men are rarely ever injured from responsive violence. Women also routinely report more severe psychological and social problems as a result of abuse.

Extremely poor phrasing of the questions. The CTS is unique in its false positive rate, as has been established by several other measures of violence. For example, simply adding the stem "Not including horseplay or joking around..." reduced the number of violent incidents reported and also showed higher rates of female victimization than male victimization.

Inconsistency with every other scale/measure used for determining prevalence rates of abuse! Hopefully it is obvious why this is an issue, but as an example: if I created a new measure for "depressive symptoms" and I found that it correlated very poorly with every other accepted measure of depressive symptoms then my new measure would be considered to have very poor "convergent validity". In non-politicized situations, my measure would likely never make it to the publishing stage, and would certainly fall out of use once this poor validity demonstrated by another study. Unfortunately, science is not immune to politics any more than the people conducting it are, as we can see with the survival of the CTS.

I gathered this information from a bunch of sources, but I've selected a few reviews (i.e., papers that "review" or condense many other papers into one) that would be helpful to you [12-16]. I recommend [12] in particular, although [13] touches on much of the same information and is much shorter. Ultimately, the CTS can, at most, be considered a measure of situational violence (and it's not even very good at that!).

---

So, finally, why is the 70% study [17] particularly bad?

All of the above problems with CTS apply, but in addition to all of that, they didn't just use the already flawed measure as it was ... no they, narrowed it down into 6 total questions. In total it asked about the respondent's perpetration of victimization of the following forms of violence: threatening with violence, pushing/shoving, throwing something, slapped, hit, kicked. They then "assessed" severity by asking a single question about injuries ("How often has partner had an injury, such as a sprain, bruise, or cut because of a fight with you?" and the corresponding victimization version.)

So, let's see ... failure to include predominately male forms of violence? Check. Further exclusion of even the existing items on the CTS that do examine this? Check! Failure to examine time past the relationship? Check. Failure to examine context? Check! Failure to examine severity of violence? Check. (Asking about a sprain or a bruise but not hospitalizations? broken bones? concussions?) Inconsistency with all other measures? Definitely!

Other problems with the study: they asked individuals to rate their perpetration and victimization, they did not examine their partners responses to such questions. This is a problem for a study like this, given that men tend to over-estimate their partners violence towards them and under-estimate their own violence towards their partner, and women do the opposite over-estimating their own violence and under-estimating their partners [12]. A note that a related problem has also shown up for the original CTS (i.e., if you asked both partners to complete the scale, their responses may agree on the "explaining a disagreement" item pair, but there was little if any agreement on the severe items like the "beating up" item pair).

To make a bad problem even worse: they condensed their multi-item (8-point) scales into binary (yes/no) categories and 3-item (low/medium/high) categories. This reduction in variance likely created artificially high rates for women and artificially low rates for men.

Hilariously (infuriatingly), they make it all the way through this data and then acknowledge that their study may not actually have examined domestic abuse at all! Instead it describes "common couple violence or situational violence", which, again, goes back to what the paradigm I introduced earlier. Of course, they don't revise their title or abstract to be less misleading ... that wouldn't be sensational enough.

Also, just to point this out: even this poorly designed, misleading study still showed "men were more likely to inflict an injury on a partner than ... women". So ... there you go. Even tipping the scales/design as far in favor of a "gender symmetry" result as they can possibly go, women still end up injured more than men.

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So, for the rest of your ask:

"yet men are still portrayed as the villains"

well when 1 in 3 men around the world openly admit to abusing women, and they are the perpetrator of 90+% of homicides, and 10-67% of men openly admit to believing non-defensive physical and sexual violence against women is at least sometimes okay it's pretty easy to see why women can see them as the villain/enemy.

"You should read the comments or some of the reblogs under that post. Full of people who have been abused by women and have been safer when around only men,and never been taken seriously."

This is one of those cases where critical thinking skills are pretty important! Let me start you off:

Do I think that a social media post will garner a representative sample from which to draw conclusions? Or is more likely that people who agree with the post will comment on and re-blog it, spreading it more people who are more likely to agree with it?

Can I see the re-blog I'm making comments about (i.e., evidence-based-activism's re-blog?). If not, (hint: it's not in the re-blog viewer :)) is it possible that there are other hidden replies that are disagreeing with this post?

Maybe most importantly: do I need female-on-male or female-on-female violence to be as common as male-on-female and male-on-male violence in order to show compassion to those who do experience it? (Hint: you shouldn't!! Something doesn't need to be common to deserve sympathy and rare =/= excusable.)

In addition, this is touching on a pretty common issue with discourse these days -- the prioritization of "feeling" over "being". Someone (male or female) may feel safer around men, but statistically speaking they are safer around women. It's reasonable to respond to and accommodate people's feelings on an individual basis, it's not reasonable to base an ideology or policy around them.

"You say it’s a strawman fallacy but no it’s not, radfems say this shit all the timesee. ... Maybe you’re not saying it but a lot of popular radfems are, to mostly agreement from other radfems,so you can’t really blame people for seeing that and understanding it to be a popular TERF take."

Similar to the last point ... views on social media are not representative of a population. Views that you, specifically, are seeing are not representative! If they were, then "well, I see more posts preemptively criticizing people for not including men than I see posts excluding men" (which is true, almost every post I read now-a-days includes caveats like "but men are abused too!! and women can be abusers!!") would have been a valid counter-argument to your ask. But see, I know that my experience on social media is not universal, and I should hope you can acknowledge the same of your own!

Also ... to be fair to all these unnamed "radfems", I'm guessing that you would consider my posts (like this response) to be an example of someone "saying this", which is very much not the case. I am acknowledging social trends and making reasonable generalizations to allow for communication about a complex topic (you know, the way people do for any and every topic ever), but I'm not claiming that no women is ever abusive or that no man has ever been abused. I'm guessing that these other posts are pretty similar (if less verbose).

side note, you also said: "radfems ... are very gender essentialist themselves".

Either you don't know what "gender essentialist" means or the people you are talking to/about are not radfems. I acknowledge that there are a number of people going around and saying they're radfems, but the nice thing about a political group like this is they have (at least some) defined beliefs.

So, for example, if someone went around saying they are a communist, but then when asked to describe their desired economic system, describes an economy based around the free market and decentralized production ... then they aren't a communist no matter what they call themselves. A command economy is a central tenant to communism, so much so that a desire to implement one/have one is intrinsic to being a communist.

In the same way, if someone is calling themselves a radfem, but supports the preservation of gender/gender roles or believes that femininity/masculinity is biologically innate ... then they aren't a radfem.

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TL;DR:

Violent crimes for women and men are reported at similar rates.

Women and men are punished similarly for violent crimes (i.e., people do take crimes by women seriously).

Children are safer in the company of women than men. There is insufficient research to accurately describe perpetrator demographics of "minor" child abuse/neglect, but there is significant research indicating that men are the perpetrator of the the vast majority of severe injuries, fatal injuries, and sexual abuse.

Men commit the vast majority controlling domestic violence (the type of violence people think of when thinking about domestic violence); women's violence is predominately responsive. Women are also the recipients of the vast majority of injuries (minor and severe) and are the victim of almost all fatalities.

Social media posts are not representative studies.

Critical thinking skills are important!

And, everyone -- regardless of sex or any other demographic characteristic -- deserves compassion when harmed. It is still appropriate talk about trends and create policies that assist the majority of those harmed.

A reminder that I will expect a reasonable degree of engagement with this information if you plan to engage in further discussion! I'll answer the bustle link ask, but after that I'll simply delete asks that don't make a genuine attempt to think critically about this information. (Clarifying questions are okay to ask though :)).

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References below the cut:

Criminal Victimization, 2022 | Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2022.

“National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Details Reported in the United States .” Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer, https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend.

Myrna S. Raeder Gender and Sentencing: Single Moms, Battered Women, and Other Sex-Based Anomalies in the Gender-Free World of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 20 Pepp. L. Rev. Iss. 3 (1993) Available at: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/plr/vol20/iss3/1

https://web.archive.org/web/20240406064949/https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2019/jan/12/intimate-partner-violence-gender-gap-cyntoia-brown

Child Maltreatment 2022. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/report/child-maltreatment-2022.

“Average Hours per Day Parents Spent Caring for and Helping Household Children as Their Main Activity.” Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-parent.htm.

Shrider, Emily A., Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen, and Jessica Semega, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-273, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020, U.S. Government Publishing Office, Washington, DC, September 2021.

Schnitzer PG, Ewigman BG. Child deaths resulting from inflicted injuries: household risk factors and perpetrator characteristics. Pediatrics. 2005 Nov;116(5):e687-93. doi: 10.1542/peds.2005-0296. PMID: 16263983; PMCID: PMC1360186.

Starling SP, Holden JR, Jenny C. Abusive head trauma: the relationship of perpetrators to their victims. Pediatrics. 1995 Feb;95(2):259-62. PMID: 7838645.

McCartan, K. (Ed.). (2014). Responding to Sexual Offending. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137358134

Comparison Between Strategies Used on Prisoners of War and Battered Wives | Office of Justice Programs. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/comparison-between-strategies-used-prisoners-war-and-battered-wives.

Michael S. Kimmel. (2001). Male Victims of Domestic Violence: A Substantive and Methodological Research Review. The Equality Committee of the Department of Education and Science. https://vawnet.org/material/male-victims-domestic-violence-substantive-and-methodological-research-review

Flood, M. (1999, July 10). Claims About Husband Battering [Contribution to Newspaper, Magazine or Website]. Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre Newsletter; Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/215068/

Walter DeKeseredy & Martin Schwartz. (1998). Measuring the Extent of Woman Abuse in Intimate Heterosexual Relationships: A Critique of the Conflict Tactics Scales. VAWnet.Org. https://vawnet.org/material/measuring-extent-woman-abuse-intimate-heterosexual-relationships-critique-conflict-tactics

Shamita Das Dasgupta. (2001). Towards an Understanding of Women’s Use of Non-Lethal Violence in Intimate Heterosexual Relationships. VAWnet.Org. https://vawnet.org/material/towards-understanding-womens-use-non-lethal-violence-intimate-heterosexual-relationships

Whitaker, Daniel J., et al. “Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 97, no. 5, May 2007, pp. 941–47. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020.

#feminism #male violence

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