apage4things

[apage4things]

Are they ‘trauma dumping’ or are they just discussing their life experience and you are such an asshole that you can’t stand to be confronted with information that makes you uncomfortable for 0.005 seconds???

[apage4things]

I got a 4.0 gpa this semester and rejected from every internship and part time role in my field that I applied to, but it’s definitely the applicant’s fault /s

you Applied to 200 jobs and are still unemployed . hope u dont mind we Leak ur data. and no, we will Not be calling back

[apage4things]

Isn’t hate just what you feel when you earnestly wish for love but you cannot make yourself vulnerable enough to be known due to rejection so you resent the very people you desire affection from?

Never forget that hate is more real and powerful than love 💯

[apage4things]

Yesterday morning, which is still technically today since it’s just late enough to be tomorrow, we were applying for a rental, and we were rejected for having two pets too many, I tripped in a rental and nearly broke my leg, my life partner checked a wrong box on accident, we refused a current address inspection, they’re not a great company, but the house is cute, so we considered buying the house, instead, putting all the documents we signed on hiatus, then about 45 minutes into the application, we find out my partner is moving jobs, to a place about an hour away.

So today, I’ve lit a candle to my patron god that is not a god, the ether, who has been giving me weird vibes ever since we started this process.

I tried to eat the plastic, and the universe asked me what was in my mouth, and made me spit it out before I could swallow it

[apage4things]

In Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield talks about his people hunting hat, and how he wanted people to think he was dangerous so he wouldn’t be an easy target, cause he was preyed on when he was young, and I think of this leather coat I wore when I was 15 (right around when I was reading that book) so I could project to people that I was dangerous, as I dodged sexual abuse and survived neglect.

Yeah this is one for me in particular, because the person who hurt me and mine was hurt by someone else, and even well meaning people I care about caused me harm, which leads me to direct acknowledgment that I’ve hurt other people, mostly trying to keep myself from being hurt again.

Hurt people hurt people.

I think about that fucking hat all the time.

neither you nor anyone else alive is ontologically incapable of abuse

[apage4things]

shoutout to slow growers, late bloomers, people whose plans got derailed by circumstances beyond their control or their own choices, people who never had a plan to begin with, people who have had to start over when theyre too old to feel like theyre supposed to be where they are, people who cant pretend theyre built for the environment theyre in, and everyone who's not living the life they thought they would. im proud of you for making it this far and i hope you keep going until youre happy ♡

[apage4things]

shout out to all the people born into cruelty who had to choose kindness in order to find yourself in all the bad shout out to pacifists activists or people who serve social roles that help and who chose to walk that path even if was hard and alien for you once shout out to people who did something bad and spent your whole life trying to learn from it shout out to people who struggled with addiction/homelessness and who woke up this morning different from the hardest day of your life shout out to people who occasionally think unkind, undisciplined thoughts who then correct themselves and try to find something better shout out to people who were taught or learned something that was wrong and spent a lifetime trying for better shout out

shout out to all the people who used to struggle with being Mean or cruel to others and are actively working on being better. shout out to all the people who were hurt, externalized it, and then decided to be kind about it instead. shout out to all the people who CHOSE kindness, shout out.

[apage4things]

[apage4things]

I dun have health insurance, so it’s just that I can’t get it looked at. I’d happily go and walk on it anyway, it just hurts so much that I don’t think I should because I can’t fix it if I make it worse.

I slipped on a set of improperly secured, wet wooden steps, and pretty much scraped up everything from knee to ankle. I stopped myself with the part of the leg pressed to the wood, so it’s just miserable.

I’m there with my bestie and my sibling in my mind!

I will be unable to go to the protest today, because I fell really damn hard yesterday and messed up my leg and I’m not sure I can walk. Shit.

[apage4things]

[apage4things]

The thing about gay sailors in the Victorian era is that England and America had totally different takes on it. In the british navy they could, and did, literally kill men for having consensual relationships with other men. But in the US navy, even tho John Adams literally copied England's naval regulations when making America's version, he chose to leave out every proscription against sodomy. And no one knows why!!! England was like hmm yes the death penalty and America was like i dont really see how thats my business. And like gay American sailors could still be charged with things like "uncleanliness" or "indecency" (charges that were vague enough to cover a lot of different things) but bc it wasnt specifically forbidden in the regulations "the commanding officers [were given] wide discretion to prosecute, punish, or ignore."*

And by and large US officers seem to have ignored it. We literally have the records of every flogging (the most extreme form of punishment allowed during these specific years) onboard a naval vessel for the years of 1846-1848 and almost all of the cases that involved homosexual activity "unambiguously refer to male/male homosexual activity involving attempted assaults on children, not consensual couplings between adults."* There are also multiple recorded instances throughout the Victorian Era of an American sailor coming forward with a charge of sexual assault and pulling in other sailors or even officers as witnesses who tell their captain yeah i totally saw them and didn't say anything until this sailor told me it was nonconsensual. There are even records recorded by naval recruitment officers of men with extremely explicit gay tattoos being allowed to join the navy. Why did the US navy not care enough to even include it in the regulations while the British navy literally hanged men for it??? Were we so hard up for sailors that John Adams was like bitch we need every gay sailor we can get????

And weirdly enough this was true on American Whaling ships too! In the recorded cases where homosexual activity led to sailors being disciplined (in some cases punishment so mild as just being dropped off their ship at the next port) it was usually in situations where rape was involved and/or there was a high degree of ship disruption related to it (guys getting into a public knife fight for example). Idk I just think thats so interesting especially when America and England were so similar to be so different in this particular area is fascinating

*quotes from Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail by William Benemann

[apage4things]

having anti punitive justice morals sucks because you want to say "man that guy sucks he should get hit with hammers until he dies" but you also want to make it clear you don't think anyone should be put in charge of the 'hit people with hammers until they die" machine.

[apage4things]

I will be unable to go to the protest today, because I fell really damn hard yesterday and messed up my leg and I’m not sure I can walk. Shit.

[apage4things]

Reblog because wow yeah and also big shoutout to people with a disability who smelled and couldn’t shower because we were poor! That sucks so bad! Broken water heater, couldn’t get warm enough to stick it out, couldn’t pay the bills, out of soap, couldn’t get to the store to buy more, homeless, living in a car, it’s rough out there

Dude that sucks, I get you. I’ve been there. I see you. I love you, it’s ok

big shoutout to disabled people who smell bad. disabled people who cannot shower regularly. disabled people who sweat a lot and it causes them to smell bad. disabled people who cannot apply deodorant due to mobility restrictions. disabled people who cannot do laundry regularly or at all, and end up wearing dirty clothes for a long time. disabled people who cannot clean their living space, and thus end up smelling bad themselves. disabled people who have any condition or disability that causes body odor. and any other disabled people who smell bad for reasons i didn't mention. i see you and i love you.

(this post is for all disabled people, including mental and physical disabilities)

[apage4things]

Cripplepunk, madpunk, and neuropunk aren't just "I'm disabled and also left-leaning". It's a specific realm of activism rooted in dismantling the systems that put disabled, mad, sick, etc folks at a disadvantage in society. This mean not only being against the very systems that harm us but also understanding their colonial origins and continued racist legacies. (Anti-ableism, anti-sanism, anti-psych, etc). This means not only just identifying and finding pride in your disability but also building and constantly evolving your understanding of disability and diversity and learning how you can change your worldview to accurately highlight the struggles of disabled people. (EVEN if it sometimes means you will be uncomfortable or unsure of unlearning some kinds of hate.)

[apage4things]

As I keep shouting into the void, pathologizers love shifting discussion about material conditions into discussion about emotional states.

I rant approximately once a week about how the brain maturity myth transmuted “Young adults are too poor to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own” into “Young adults are too emotionally and neurologically immature to move out of their parents’ homes or have children of their own.”

I’ve also talked about the misuse of “enabling” and “trauma” and “dopamine” .

And this is a pattern – people coin terms and concepts to describe material problems, and pathologization culture shifts them to be about problems in the brain or psyche of the person experiencing them. Now we’re talking about neurochemicals, frontal lobes, and self-esteem instead of talking about wages, wealth distribution, and civil rights. Now we can say that poor, oppressed, and exploited people are suffering from a neurological/emotional defect that makes them not know what’s best for themselves, so they don’t need or deserve rights or money.

Here are some terms that have been so horribly misused by mental health culture that we’ve almost entirely forgotten that they were originally materialist critiques.

Codependency What it originally referred to: A non-addicted person being overly “helpful” to an addicted partner or relative, often out of financial desperation. For example: Making sure your alcoholic husband gets to work in the morning (even though he’s an adult who should be responsible for himself) because if he loses his job, you’ll lose your home. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/codependency-addiction-recovery.html What it’s been distorted into: Being “clingy,” being “too emotionally needy,” wanting things like affection and quality time from a partner. A way of pathologizing people, especially young women, for wanting things like love and commitment in a romantic relationship.

Compulsory Heterosexuality What it originally referred to: In the 1980 in essay "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/493756 Adrienne Rich described compulsory heterosexuality as a set of social conditions that coerce women into heterosexual relationships and prioritize those relationships over relationships between women (both romantic and platonic). She also defines “lesbian” much more broadly than current discourse does, encompassing a wide variety of romantic and platonic relationships between women. While she does suggest that women who identify as heterosexual might be doing so out of unquestioned social norms, this is not the primary point she’s making. What it’s been distorted into: The patronizing, biphobic idea that lesbians somehow falsely believe themselves to be attracted to men. Part of the overall “Women don’t really know what they want or what’s good for them” theme of contemporary discourse.

Emotional Labor What it originally referred to: The implicit or explicit requirement that workers (especially women workers, especially workers in female-dominated “pink collar” jobs, especially tipped workers) perform emotional intimacy with customers, coworkers, and bosses above and beyond the actual job being done. Having to smile, be “friendly,” flirt, give the impression of genuine caring, politely accept harassment, etc. https://weld.la.psu.edu/what-is-emotional-labor/ What it’s been distorted into: Everything under the sun. Everything from housework (which we already had a term for), to tolerating the existence of disabled people, to just caring about friends the way friends do. The original intent of the concept was “It’s unreasonable to expect your waitress to care about your problems, because she’s not really your friend,” not “It’s unreasonable to expect your actual friends to care about your problems unless you pay them, because that’s emotional labor,” and certainly not “Disabled people shouldn’t be allowed to be visibly disabled in public, because witnessing a disabled person is emotional labor.” Anything that causes a person emotional distress, even if that emotional distress is rooted in the distress-haver’s bigotry (Many nominally progressive people who would rightfully reject the bigoted logic of “Seeing gay or interracial couples upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public” fully accept the bigoted logic of “Seeing disabled or poor people upsets me, which is emotional labor, so they shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public”).

Battered Wife Syndrome What it originally referred to: The all-encompassing trauma and fear of escalating violence experienced by people suffering ongoing domestic abuse, sometimes resulting in the abuse victim using necessary violence in self-defense. Because domestic abuse often escalates, often to murder, this fear is entirely rational and justified. This is the reasonable, justified belief that someone who beats you, stalks you, and threatens to kill you may actually kill you.

What it’s been distorted into: Like so many of these other items, the idea that women (in this case, women who are victims of domestic violence) don’t know what’s best for themselves. I debated including this one, because “syndrome” was a wrongful framing from the beginning – a justified and rational fear of escalating violence in a situation in which escalating violence is occurring is not a “syndrome.” But the original meaning at least partially acknowledged the material conditions of escalating violence.

I’m not saying the original meanings of these terms are ones I necessarily agree with – as a cognitive liberty absolutist, I’m unsurprisingly not that enamored of either second-wave feminism or 1970s addiction discourse. And as much as I dislike what “emotional labor” has become, I accept that “Women are unfairly expected to care about other people’s feelings more than men are” is a true statement.

What I am saying is that all of these terms originally, at least partly, took material conditions into account in their usage. Subsequent usage has entirely stripped the materialist critique and fully replaced it with emotional pathologization, specifically of women. Acknowledgement that women have their choices constrained by poverty, violence, and oppression has been replaced with the idea that women don’t know what’s best for themselves and need to be coercively “helped” for their own good. Acknowledgement that working-class women experience a gender-and-class-specific form of economic exploitation has been rebranded as yet another variation of “Disabled people are burdensome for wanting to exist.”

Over and over, materialist critiques are reframed as emotional or cognitive defects of marginalized people. The next time you hear a superficially sympathetic (but actually pathologizing) argument for “Marginalized people make bad choices because…” consider stopping and asking: “Wait, who are we to assume that this person’s choices are ‘bad’? And if they are, is there something about their material conditions that constrains their options or makes the ‘bad’ choice the best available option?”

[apage4things]

Something something puritanical belief systems

Something something Calvinism

*Gestures around*

Meeting genuine adults that think legal = good, illegal = bad is so bizarre, like bro not even the law itself agrees that that is a good ethical framework