lonesomecowboy - Tumblr blog

[lonesomecowboy]

Hello, i am highlighting this campaign led by multiple grassroots organisations in Lebanon, mostly in support of people that are part of marginalized communities that are often overlooked during humanitarian emergencies(such as migrant workers, Syrian and Palestinian refugees etc...). Share and support if you can.

[lonesomecowboy]

hey, so this is super random and I’m not sure if you have thought about this but figured I’d ask: (came to my mind after reading your story in *unmasking* about intervening in street harassment)

I’m audhd and it really affects my sensory processing, social/ situational awareness etc since it’s hard for me to discern which stimuli are important in any given situation. I’m also realizing that I never really feel unsafe as a single woman in a dense city environment, even when my friends feel unsafe. Makes it hard to trust my own intuition about that kinda stuff since everyone I know apart from myself has that experience.

Question is, do you happen to have any info/ best practices about situational awareness and judging the danger of potentially sketchy situations? Walking around the city at night, creepy rural gas station, online hookup, greyhound bus alone etc.

Everything online says “trust your intuition” but my intuition always says “ehh it’ll be fine” lol.

The truth is, it usually WILL be fine. Most people's *~magical crime and danger intuition~* is a combination of true crime slop, inaccurate media coverage of the crime rate inflating their anxieties, and classism and racism. The vast majority of crimes are not committed by random strangers lurking in the dark, but between individuals who know one another and in circumstances that are at least somewhat explicable, and so you do not need magic empath powers to determine if you will be safe somewhere or not.

The way you keep relatively safe is by informing yourself of the facts, not the hype -- look up the actual crime statistics for your area, for example, though be highly skeptical of them. These figures are collected by the police state and we cannot trust them to define what safety or unsafety even IS, as they are the source of the danger for the majority of us. What they classify as crime and where they bother to enforce crime is highly skewed, and itself can create massive misapprehensions. So make sure to also speak with people in the communities you are visiting about what happens to them and the general vibe. Also spend a lot of time out in your community yourself, observing things, talking to people, hanging out, maybe volunteering, and learning the lay of the land. You'll have more people around to help you if you ever need it, and you'll find more occasions where your help is needed, too!

Follow some basic, common sense advice to avoid making oneself especially vulnerable, but don't over-isolate yourself. Things like keeping one earbud out of your ear when walking home alone at night and not keeping a purse open on the train are always sensible maneuvers; carrying pepper spray or a gun that will more likely be used to harm you is not. Learn how to de-escalate people if you don't already know -- acting calm, making your posture non-threatening but confident, moving slowly and predictably, avoiding provocative eye contact, changing the subject of conversation, engaging a victim of harassment and pretending to know them in order to drag them away from a bad situation, etc. These things will be helpful to you if a situation arises, and the more prepared you feel, the less anxious you ever have to be.

Honestly, moving through the world with a "this feels fine / seems fine" energy is ITSELF massively protective. I have ALWAYS walked around alone at night, even when I was a small 18 year old "girl," including in areas where the majority of women of my then-demographic would have not felt "safe" going out on their own. By and large, I was completely fine. People really don't want to mess with you if you seem like you have a handle on your shit and are not afraid of them.

The worst that ever happened to me was a guy grabbing my tit -- in broad daylight on a sunday on a train packed full of people. It really couldn't have been avoided. And a guy flashing me -- again in midday in a family oriented neighborhood many would deem safe. I survived these things, and I defended myself by getting aggressive with the guys who did them, and physically attacking them, which scared them off. I'm glad I did what I did, and I'm glad I wasn't so intimidated by the possibility of scary stranger danger that I kept myself sequestered away.

The few other times anyone made me uncomfortable, it was things like leering comments or walking alongside me for a block, hitting on me (sometimes, yes, late at night), but because I was able to be assertive, unbothered, and stand my ground, the guys always gave up or were scared off (by me). And this reaction from me is one I largely credit to having no instinctual "stranger danger" crime intuition of the sort most white women are conditioned to have.

In short, I think your instincts might be more accurate to reality than your friends' are. It's good to look around and pay attention to things, to learn to recognize patterns, to study one's area, to speak to people in your community and know what's going on, and to prepare oneself for hard situations, which WILL happen to you sometimes no matter what you do. but the world is rarely as scary as it's made out to be.

[lonesomecowboy]

i hate when people talk like its the responsibility of trans women to put themselves on the line and break down the way women are expected to present. like, nothing but love and respect for transfems who are fighting for no makeup shaved hair and men's clothes, but if you're talking abt a trans girl who puts on makeup to go to the office as though shes disproportionately responsible for these expectations and not disproportionately punished by them. do better.

[lonesomecowboy]

young couple wearing surgical masks leaning in to kiss (1990s)

[lonesomecowboy]

A solidarity banner containing the names of Palestinian martyrs hangs on the Raouche in Beirut, Lebanon.

[lonesomecowboy]

long post version for the autobio comics crowd. stop what you are doing and, let the pain and anger in, then donate to @save-mohamed-family here now

[lonesomecowboy]

i dont really know how you can look at the american legal system and not see it a system intended to enforce racial hierarchy and subjugation of black people in america. apartheid in the sense that there is an entirely different course of law depending on race. and thats the entire history of this country. why anyone wants to salvage anything from american nationhoood is beyond me

[lonesomecowboy]

[lonesomecowboy]

I just honestly have been feeling sick to my stomach all day because I really didn't think we were going to be at a point where we're almost a whole year into this genocide, still screaming about the exact same things we screamed about on day one of this carnage, but this time it's not just in Palestine, it's also in Lebanon (and who knows where next) because the most evil entity in the world knows no bounds and is emboldened by the silence of so many cowards who see violence in the ~middle east~ as normal and inevitable.

[lonesomecowboy]

Israel is a vile, sadistic, cruel, immeasurably pathetic country that will go down in history as one of the most despotic regimes of all time. An entire nation of settlers and colonizers so drunk on their own ethnonationalist wet dreams they can’t see how utterly fucked they are. Not even with their billions of dollars of military gear and the unyielding patronage of the greatest empire on Earth have they been able to crush the Palestinian people. Palestine will be free again in our lifetimes and Israel will only be remembered as the insane orgy of cruelty it has always been. Deal with it Zionists.

[lonesomecowboy]

[lonesomecowboy]

(This campaign has been vetted by @moayesh, who has asked me to post this fundraiser. Mohamed is personally vetting many campaigns for people trapped in Gaza, which you can also find at @gaza-evacuation-funds)

As you can read above, the Al-Habil family are in desperate need of our help. They have only raised €255 as of my writing this. They are setting an initial short-term goal of €1,000 which will enable them to purchase a much needed new tent and food.

I encourage you to read more about Shadiah and her family and what they are facing on their gofundme page linked below. Please, please consider donating even just €5, as your contribution will make a material difference in this family's life. They have been suffering immensely, and we are able to relieve some of this suffering through our collective efforts. Let's work together to help them!

€255/€1,000

tagging for reach, my apologies! please lmk if you don't wish to be tagged going forward <3

@appsa @brutaliakhoa @watermotif @dirhwangdaseul @shesnake @akajustmerry @stuckinapril @heritageposts @northgazaupdates2 @deathlonging @furiousfinnstan @lakevida @womenintheirwebs @7bitter @rhubarbspring @poetrylesbian @schoolhater @transmutationisms @opencommunion

[lonesomecowboy]

i can convince myself anyone deserves to be mistreated. i am also unshakable in my belief that i'm pure of heart and objectively a good person <- how you guys sound to me

[lonesomecowboy]

Almost 200 killed and over 700 injured today after Israel’s attacks in Lebanon. Nearly 400 air strikes in only a few hours with more expected to come.

[lonesomecowboy]

u gotta be hedonistic about vegetables. they're not good boy food that u eat to prove you're mature, they're the food that you can shovel into your mouth at 5 am without getting nauseous

[lonesomecowboy]

had a good delivery this week

[lonesomecowboy]

RELEASE THE TO WONG FOO SCREENTESTS NOW!!!!!!!!!! NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!