ellistheelephant

[ellistheelephant]

I heard a radio program on the BBC the other day where one character thought another character was lesbian because she didn't like One Direction. I had to laugh!

[ellistheelephant]

"I've seen people online say you shouldn't sing because you can't hear me but the the truth of it is they're not here. We're here and we're gonna have a good time tonight."

— Zayn at his show in London tonight (credit)

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OH the shirt is a long sleeve...

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Did you see the picture from the daily mail of the hotel workers carrying Liam's lifeless body to his hotel room? Do you still think the staff shouldn't be held responsible in some way for his death? I'm not blaming them because I understand this was an accidental fall but this wasn't a case of them having to restrain someone high on drugs. He was literally passed out and they chose to physically carry him to his hotel room and leave him alone. That's negligent

My basic politics and beliefs haven't been changed by those pictures anon. I don't think hotel service workers are responsible for the health and wellbeing of very wealthy clients. I think if there is any responsiblity it would lie with the hotel and the leadership of the hotel, not the individuals who were working. I think there's a lot we don't know about what sort of help was and wasn't available and the risks of asking for that help for Liam

I don't want to get fully into the negligence question - because that's a legal framework and I'm not really interested in it. So I'll just say that I think its a long bow to suggest that this particular bad outcome was forseeable.

So I'll say this - it's not easy to know how to respond to someone who is an altered mental state. I know New Zealand isn't well set up for it - either in terms of capacity or breadth of skill. Often here responsibility falls on individuals who know the person, or are just around the person at that time. We don't have a good social safety net, collective response, or ways of supporting the individuals who are responding. I doubt Argentina is any different.

I understand how awful it is to know that Liam could have survived the day if things had just been a little different. But I think it's important not to give into a fantasy of it being easy and there being a right answer. In the sort of society I'd want to live in - then there would always be more than enough resourced teams of emergency addiction and mental health specialists on call who knew how to help someone in crisis without blowing up their lives. There would always be someone to call and they would always get there quickly. There would also be adequate staffing at all service jobs so that it was possible for staff members to attend to someone in crisis early.

We don't live in that world. And blaming individuals who are trying to get paid and keep their jobs under difficult circumstances - for the fact that we don't live in that world - goes against everything I believe in.

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Zayn 😭

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“I missed the timing. Sorry, I got too excited.”

-Zayn in Leeds - 23/11

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You are right that it wasn't Maya Henry coming forward with more allegations but the cease and desist documents being reported on, when I read one of the articles it had quotes from the woman who messaged Maya saying that Liam tried to send her explicit pictures of Maya, I thought that meant they had interviewed her, but going back to look at it it seems that the information was also from the cease and desist letter.

I guess I had a different perspective because I had only seen articles about the explicit pictures which were reported in a fairly straightforward way. While I think it's a good thing that this celebrity gossip site is considering the impact of their articles, and it might not have been intended by the article I do think it also minimizes sexual violence. For example in the top section they mention invasive articles to do with explicit photos, drug use, and his watch, and then in the last section they say 'if he was going through some personal issues so be it' and then go on to mention both the drug use and the watch which leaves me to conclude that they think sending unwanted explicit photos is just 'personal issues'. I don't mean to harp on their word choices but I do think that is how sentence structure and implicit meanings work.

I guess my critique is not about their decision to not post about Liam, which I think is by and large good, but the way the article was written and how it feeds into the already existing dismissiveness about sexual harrasment

👏👏👏

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I don't disagree that there have been invasive and unnecessary things printed surrounding Liam's death, however it's misogynistic and dismisses the sexual violence women face to say that Maya Henry coming forward about Liam harassing her and her family with explicit pictures and threatening revenge porn is too 'icky' for them to publish because it's "muddying up the legacy and memory " of Liam

They do mention other stories as well that I haven't read, but they also downplay the explicit photos as if they were being sent with consent rather than a harassment campaign.

I understand Liam's family and friends being upset about these articles, and I understand fans feeling upset by them as well. But I think it's incredibly important not to dismiss women when they come forward with accusations of sexual violence by men, any men, even men that I have affectionate feelings for, and even after their death.

👏👏👏

[ellistheelephant]

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Gisèle Pelicot takes stand in French mass rape trial

"I want all women who have been raped to say: Madame Pelicot did it, I can too. I don't want them to be ashamed any longer," she said, referring to her request for an open trial and for the videos of the alleged rapes to be shown.

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I mostly agree with your anon answer.. but I think a little grace might be needed here..

"I don't agree that Liam never got the chance to make amends. He chased Maya with an axe four years ago - he had a chance every day. One of Liam's last acts was to not pay sex workers."

and he did get sober in those four years. he did. he shared his days he'd been sober with people. im not sure if people thought maybe he's not allowed to relapse? but he did try.

"I would only ever talk about amends in a context where someone who had done harm had started towards accepting that harm and stopping."

he was sober for a while. and he did apologize publicly for a lot of public mistakes.

idk if his current girlfriend alleged any abuse. he was trying.

he did relapse. for who knows what happened behind the scenes. and we will never know. but he did try.

There's a lot here anon - and I think we disagree about quite a bit.

I do think you are projecting onto me something I didn't say. You seem to understand me as saying that Liam never took any steps towards amends. I didn't say that - I have no way of knowing if he did or not.

And in response I'm aware I'm going to be quite harsh - I'm going to say things about Liam that I know some people don't want to hear, but I think are true. I do unfortunately think it's necessary. I do think myths about abuse do harm and I want to make sure that there is an alternative voice out there. I think it's only possible to extend grace once the truth has been acknowledged. I don't think grace can be used to obscure the truth - or pretend we know things we don't.

I couldn't post this without saying how much I disagree with your model of addiction and abuse. You treat addiction and abuse as if they were the same and should be treated in the same way. I strongly disagree and think this does a lot of harm. I think you do this in two different ways - the first is that you treat them as literally the same thing - and the second is you use the same model.

Throughout this you seem to be treating evidence that Liam was sober as evidence that he was not being abusive. You are treating them as the same first step. They're not the first step. They're not the same thing. There are many people who are abusive to their partners when using drugs and alcohol and treating the substances and not the abuse as the problem is an approach that puts everyone in danger.

The times when Liam was sober are not evidence that he was making steps towards amends. They're not evidence that he stopped abusing women he was having sex with. The idea that Liam was only abusive towards women when he was using substances is comfortable fiction that fans are telling themselves. Not only is there no evidence to support that fiction. There is evidence that it isn't true. There are scenes of emotional abuse in Maya's book where Liam is not depicted as using any substances.

*******

To turn to models of addiction and abuse, if I had been talking about addiction and sobriety - I would agree with pretty much everything you say here. (Although it did make me have a whole lot of other thoughts of how to talk about sobriety - without adding pressure or devaluing the lives of addicted people. But that's a question for another day).

I think a model of addiction that emphasises trying, and is very accepting of relapse is very important. I know that a lot of models of addiction treat addiction and the harm that people do to other people while addicted as the same thing. I understand that may sometimes be important for the person making a recovery. However, models that work for the person who is making a recovery can be really dangerous if it's adopted as the model the rest of the world must take.

If someone who hit their partner stops, recognises that they've made amends doesn't hit their partner for months and then hits them again - their partner is still bruised and the psychological impact on safety is even larger -

I have one final point and it's about your use of the word trying. I think the assertion that someone who has been known to abuse partners is trying not to be abusive - is one that needs substantial positive evidence. It's not something to assume - or to suggest casually (particularly not on the basis that a current partner hasn't publicly spoken about abuse!). Importantly in order to know that someone's trying - there has to be some evidence that they've started to accept that they've done harm and understanding and address that.

I don't think we have any evidence that Liam was working at not being abusive to the women he was having sex with (we do have evidence that he worked on being sober - like I say it's not the same thing). I think we have the opposite - his emotional abuse of Maya long outlasted her relationship. The last thing he did was not pay sex workers. We have much more evidence of continuity than anything else.

I think there is space for grace - once all this has been acknowledged. I think there are two sorts of grace here. One is about our own ignorance: Liam may have taken steps that we did not know about. The other is the hope that the future brings - if he had lived there he would have had many more opportunities to change.

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When I was 18/19, I was also in a relationship that I didn't know how to get out of. He constantly said that he would kill himself if I broke up with him and he did try when I finally left him after a year and a half.

I really related to that part of Maya's story and felt very seen when I heard her talking about it. The tension between it being a genuine threat by a person who needs help and an emotionally abusive manipulation tactic is a nuance that I don't think is talked about enough.

And strangely, Liam's death has made me reflect on that period of my life more than anything else.

My honest to God first thought when I heard that he died (and how he died) was: "That's what these men do. That's what they always do." And I felt really guilty for thinking that way when someone's child, brother, father, friend, and significant other had passed away.

But. Sitting with that discomfort and reflecting on a part of my life that I've tried to avoid thinking about for so long has actually made me feel less confused and more compassionate.

Thinking of that ex-boyfriend now, I know he was in a lot of pain. But I was, too. And I can acknowledge the fact that he was really hurting (because yes, it is a fact) without excusing everything else.

People are more than one thing and now I'm able to look back with compassion and gratitude for the role he played in my life.

And to a lesser degree, I feel like I'm able to do that with Liam now, too.

I've really been struggling to decide where my opinion fits in all of this because most of the posts on my dash the last few days haven't resonated with me.

I'd been distancing myself from Liam in the past few weeks because it was all too familiar and I felt kind of resentful and disillusioned.

I didn't want to deny the pain he caused or normalize the type of behavior that was very hurtful and scary to my teenage self. But I also felt compassion for him as a person and thought the way his life ended was really, extremely sad.

It can be both/and instead of either/or.

One Direction brought me a lot of joy, and Liam was a part of that. I'm thankful for the memories, the music and I’m sorry that he was in pain.

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hey - hope you're well. x

Thank you for checking in anon <3 I have been going about my life only halfway present and feeling sad, but I am alright. I hope you are doing alright as well. <3

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He will as soon as he figures out his foot

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"Thank you for being part of our teenage years. You will be missed dearly 💔"

via cuchoir.bgr

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me, bursting through your bedroom wall in a shower of dust: bUT that hug before they go onstage is what we’ve always wanted from One Direction, and that’s what makes them unsustainable as a phenomenon. What we always wanted from them was what they did not give to us intentionally

you: wh

me, briskly removing my shoes and shaking fragments of rubble out of them: One Direction is perhaps the first band to exist entirely within the Panopticon, from the very beginning, and yet even that was not enough for us. Can you imagine how difficult it would become to hold onto a “self” when what people want most from you are the moments of your life that specifically are NOT FOR THEM? It wasn’t just what they DID, we wanted to know what they FELT, constantly. We demanded to know but we did not want to be TOLD. The knowledge could only be “authentic” if it was not meant for us

you: why are you in my house

me, climbing into your bed and pulling your blankets up to my chin: The endless “documentaries,” the social media – we had an unprecedented, and unprecedentedly intimate, degree of access to these people, and still what we valued most were secrets and accidents. What we wanted was their interiority, and when we could not have that we invented it. Wouldn’t you resent having to constantly be GRATEFUL for that grasping, rapacious love? I would

you: are you crying?

me: We wanted to love them by devouring them, and now we have nothing to eat but our own hearts. can you bring me a hot water bottle