dmtafra - Tumblr blog

[dmtafra]

Evocation by Alexander Rothaug (1870 - 1946)

[dmtafra]

Grief is just love with no place to go.

– unknown // Art piece by Ikenaga Yasunari

[dmtafra]

Pros of having ADHD:

Can track prey for hours without losing focus

Special interest: basket weaving

Always fidgeting - banging rocks together and discovers flint-knabbing

Distracted by berries

Stimming by making noises, discovers the sksksk that lures out squirrels

Can't sleep at night, great at guarding the cave while family sleeps

Sensitive senses means discovering and refusing to eat rotten/poisonous food

Sees bird eat nut - impulsively tries it too and discovers that nuts taste good

Cons of having ADHD:

Can't do homework

Impulse buys

Can't use a calendar

Can't sit still in classroom

[dmtafra]

how dull for you to live your life without any hills to die on, you, on your vast flat barren plains of compromise, acceptance, and accommodation, while I reign supreme over the lush, rolling highlands of stupid shit I have irrationally chosen to stake my entire identity on

[dmtafra]

basically emotional manipulation and guilt tripping as social justice praxis is pointless and not sustainable imo. it doesn’t promote real growth or solidarity if the entire basis of your activism is stemming from guilt or fear 

[dmtafra]

Team “I can hear the near silent hum of electrical appliances and the bubbles fizzing in the can of soda on the coffee table, but can’t watch tv without subtitles and processes conversation at ¼ speed”

[dmtafra]

Ugh that post has gotten me thinking about fat acceptance in a way I haven’t in years. I’ve read more studies about weight and health than probably any other topic I’ve ever researched. And every time I see someone wail about health I am just like

Did you know that in post-mortem examinations there is zero correlation between weight and levels of arteriosclerosis and related diseases found?

Did you know that people with an overweight BMI have the longest life expectancy, that those with an “ideal” and an “obese” have about the same life expectancy, and that being “underweight” raises mortality rates more than being “morbidly obese”?

Did you know that losing weight and then gaining it back is worse for your heart than remaining at the weight you started consistently?

Did you know that 95% of people who lose weight do gain it back, and there has never been a single documented weight loss program that has been demonstrated to keep the weight off for five years or more in the majority or even a significant minority of people? Like, telling people to lose weight isn’t much use if we don’t know HOW to make that happen.

Like I have read The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos and Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata and Big Fat Lies by Glenn A Gaesser (Ph.D!) And Fat!So? and several other books that I don’t own and so don’t remember all of their names I spent like four years reading every single study coming out and looking at the methodology and noting which ones had huge holes or terrible methods and which didn’t (the holes were almost always in the pro-weight-loss studies) and like

Big Fat Lies has 27 pages of bibliography. 27 pages worth of scientific citation. The book content itself is only 197 pages. That’s a page of references for every 7 pages of book. Reading the book is just reference after reference and study after study. Most of these doctors (like Linda Bacon, author of Health at Every Size) started out the same way. They wanted to use the scientific method to find a real weight loss program or health solution that worked and could be proven to work, and so studied everything they could about weight and fitness only to find out that we didn’t need weight loss in the first place. That all the studies calling for it were lacking or nonexistent. That weight and underlying metabolic health have very little relation. That the history of our relationship with health and obesity has little basis in fact and a LOT of basis in capitalism, politics, and fashion. No, really, the association between weight and health was first proposed by insurance companies looking for ways to charge people more by claiming risk. They also charged tall and short people more. And people with different skin colors. When they got in trouble for charging people for things they had no control over and had no bearing on their health, they set out to prove that weight was controllable and that fat was unhealthy to make money. 

These are also a lot of the same people who went on to invent the President’s fitness program, so if you went to public school you probably already hate them. 

Anyway, if you want a place to start reading about the issue, this article is a pretty good launching pad. 

[dmtafra]

[dmtafra]

From Shit People Say to People with Disabilities

I’ve noticed that ableism tends to be one of the lesser discussed isms on Tumblr, particularly in regard to physical/visible disabilities. While we usually associate the isms with hate and discrimination, ableism can be much harder to pinpoint because a lot of it is seen as attempts to help or empathize with disabled people.

A few tips:

Noticing that someone is disabled or thinking that they might have a disability is not an open invitation to interrogate them.

Similarly, it’s not okay to allow your children to endlessly ask us questions. We are not a convenient way to “teach them diversity” on the fly. We are not obligated to educate anyone. I don’t care if you think it’s cute or precocious, it’s rude and very awkward.

Please avoid making any connection between disability and religion. It’s almost always offensive, no matter what your faith. Telling me that I can be healed through prayer also automatically assumes that I want or need my life to be changed.

Do not appropriate someone else’s experiences as a way of showing solidarity with their community. Being injured for a few weeks is not the same as being disabled. If you really wanted to be my ally, you wouldn’t need to find a way to shoehorn yourself into my perspective to get yourself to care.

I don’t really want to be your inspiration if your definition of inspiration is “thanks for making me feel better about my life because I think your life looks incredibly shitty by comparison.” 

On that note, don’t make presumptions about our quality of life. When people say things like “I couldn’t live like that,” you’re basically implying that you would rather be dead than disabled. That doesn’t feel very good.

Physical disability does not always indicate cognitive delays. Even if the individual in question does happen to have cognitive disabilities, what gives you the authority to determine how much they’re able to process and understand? Talk to a disabled person the same way you would talk to any other person.

If you’re that fascinated with how and whether or not we can have sex, why don’t you find out for yourself? (With consent, of course) ;)

[dmtafra]

[dmtafra]

When I was younger and more abled, I was so fucking on board with the fantasy genre’s subversion of traditional femininity. We weren’t just fainting maidens locked up in towers; we could do anything men could do, be as strong or as physical or as violent. I got into western martial arts and learned to fight with a rapier, fell in love with the longsword.

But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.

As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.

The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork.  In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.

That can be so revolutionary to those of us stuck in our towers who fall prey to thinking: Nobody would want to visit; nobody would want to listen; nobody would want to stay.

[dmtafra]

My therapist said “I have to show you something on my phone!”

It was this:

[dmtafra]

https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/1iart/

https://www.instagram.com/1iart/

[dmtafra]

[dmtafra]

????

[dmtafra]

fucken hippies man

[dmtafra]