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badedramay · 9 months

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Idk why anyone is surprised Mayri is doing well. People cling to romance, and unfortunately, toxic couples are stanned the most. It’s true in anime, tellywood, Hollywood, and pretty much every other big media dynasty.

If we’re specifically talking about pakistan, people lost it when the ending to Gul e Rana was changed so that Sajal didn’t end up with toxic ass Feroze in that drama. People seriously wanted her with a dude who was high key implied to have raped her. Actually, nearly every FK drama fits this narrative. Tere Bin is another shining example of what you said — as long as there’s a love story, the problems are forgiven (will never forget the diatribes people wrote excusing Murtasim’s rape before that was retconned into it being mutual).

And as I said earlier, this problem isn’t unique to pakistan, but you can’t entirely blame the audience for wanting to see hope in even the most hopeless situations. It’s how most of us are living our day to day lives, yo.

okay but is the Mayri couple actually TOXIC though?? this word is used loosely for literally anything that isn't immediately perceived as a healthy, green flag-y representation of a character/relationship. whereas the actual implications of the word need to be a little more drastic than a young, teenage couple that got married way before their age having a child. is it wrong? yeah, it's a solid topic to discuss. is it TOXIC? ummmm...no? I don't think so?

the thing in, not just Pakistan, but a functioning patriarchal society is that toxicity in marriages is not seen as anything worth breaking the relationship off. the sanctity of marriage >>>>> everything. literally ALL the problems and all forms of abuse are seen as minor "inconveniences" when happening within the relationship of marriage. and it will take a LOT of generational unlearning for people to realize that marriage as a relationship can never be more important than the individual safety of a person, physical and mental. in Pakistan toh some scholars have twisted the whole meaning of marriage from being a partnership to being a master-slave relationship by completely misinterpreting the teachings of the Prophet and the religion. because agaiinnn the country where this religion originated from and the country that is STILL the most powerful center of it IS a patriarchal society. yeah, the Prophet prohibited the burying of newborn girls but over the 14+ centuries since His time, the men of that nation have found new ways to smother and suffocate women to death without directly getting their hands dirty. if this is up your alley then look for the sources of the teachings that have shaped the mindset of our nation regarding specific gender issues and you'll get your answer ke chal kya raha hain yahan pe.

i am not trying to take this answer to another tangent. it's just that when you realize what specific mindset led to the angry outbursts at the ending of Gul e Rana or the passionate defense of Murtasim's rape comes from..they become very understandable. i don't have to support them but being part of the same society and living with these people, i get why it happens. it's great that social media now has the power to change such otherwise normally accepted wrong behavior like it did in the case of Tere Bin but it will take a LOT of time for the on-ground reality to change. iss generation mein toh hone se raha.

100% agree with your last point of audience wanting to get some respite from their already exhausting daily lives. if a fiction drama, under the wrappings of all the torture and melodrama, can give them a glimmer of hope to cling to for like 2 months in a year toh I see nothing wrong in it. at the end of the day the audience is the most blameless of the lot. they only react to what they are given. none of the audience went out on the streets DEMANDING they be given only a certain kind of fictional entertainment. the makers brought us here slowly and steadily over the course of last decade. ab audience pe kya blame daalna? grab the collars of the makers who hare raking in crores by making this kind of content.

#type: opinion #i am not sure if you meant to call Mayri toxic or just talked two different points in one paragraph #apologies in advance if the first para comes across as me having a go at you #i am not #i am just tired after a very long day.

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britneyshakespeare · 2 months

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i have been working with kids for four years and i had to write my first ever note just now about a seventh grade boy being inappropriate towards me. i don't know what the hell this could possibly lead to or what. he was trying to feel my legs repeatedly to the point where i had to stop sitting next to him (and i was subbing for his one-to-one para!!!). he's got high support needs. in that kind of job, you're supposed to sit next to them all day and look over their work.

the teacher whose classroom this was happening in could also tell something was wrong. the whole class was acting kinda crazy because it was the day before school vacation week and there was another class coming in to share projects. so like, he was swamped with keeping order already. but we were sitting two feet away from his podium at the front of the room. the kid was giving him and me a hard time when he wouldn't take out his chromebook as he was instructed. and then when he did take out his chromebook, he immediately, for some reason, places it on my lap. he had been ogling my legs the whole time. he puts his computer ON MY LAP. and i'm just like, stunned, because what the hell? can you not keep it on your own lap, for some reason? i don't even know what to say, i just hold it a little above my lap while i'm thinking why on earth would this be happening? he would NOT do this to his regular para if she were here, would he? this can't be normal.

and the teacher sees this and within a minute places a stool in front of the kid for him to put his laptop on. and i'm like. oh ok. yeah. he notices exactly what's happening and that that's not appropriate. and then when the other class comes in to share projects he tells me "miss b——, you don't actually have to sit next to c—— this whole period if you don't want to." and he grabs me a chair for me to go sit with the other paras in the back opposite corner of the room. like he KNEW. and thank you mr. d—— for recognizing that because i was just kind of shocked and didn't know if i was overreacting in my head to all of this.

when there's a point in the class where the kids are discussing stuff, i privately mention what's happened to the para who's sitting closest to me. and she says that the thing about him calling me pretty is something he's been known to do, but the fact that he kept trying to touch my legs is new behavior. and that's a completely different class of behavior. i was telling him NO, don't do that, and he kept doing it. and the fact that he was calling me pretty repeatedly, even when i was giving him instructions that he wasn't taking. and this is the second to last class before the end of the day, so she says she'll take a walk with him before learning center and talk to him about it, and i'm grateful for that. she does. the kid apologizes to me as soon as i come into learning center. but like. WHAT the hell.

i'm STILL like what the hell. this is unfathomable to me. the other adults who i told about this or who witnessed it were supportive of me. but. what to do??? i wrote a long note to his regular para about this, because i knew she was going to hear about it at least from the first para i told. the second para i told about it after school had a kind of... i'm not gonna say enabling reaction, but i suppose since it had already been "taken care of" (or at least, he had been spoken to and apologized) she didn't really have much to add in the way of discipline. i told her what happened after school and she was just like... a little bit, laughing? like oh, yup, that dog. she at the very least confirmed he KNEW what he was doing, that that was not an accident. she said to me "i had a feeling he was going to develop a crush on you" (me and these other paras were together for most of the beginning of the day too). but it's like. it's not about that.

i have worked with children for FOUR years. children have had crushes on me before; i'm quite unfazed by it. boys from the ages of 5-to-15 have told me i'm so pretty before and asked me to marry them. i've never had them feeling up my legs before. i've never had them making me physically uncomfortable. it's NOT about this seventh grader having a crush on the pretty substitute. he is NOT unusual for that, at all. but i've never had a boy of any age or education level repeatedly touching my knees and thighs. THAT is problem behavior!!!

because what if i wasn't assertive enough with him to tell him to stop? what if i was a girl his age? worse, what if i was an adult who encouraged this behavior? i don't come to the middle school to be a seductress. i had no intention in putting on a pair of tights and a skirt this morning of being viewed as an attractive object, especially not by a pubescent boy. what if i did though? what if his interpretation of me wasn't so incorrect and offensive? what if i let him keep touching me inappropriately and saying flirtatious things to me? me, an adult in my mid-twenties, towards a middle school boy?

in no world would that be ok. if i had been feeling up and overly-complimenting a CHILD at my place of work, holy shit would there be reports about me. so a child acting that way could never be ok either. if it'd be firable for me to be reciprocating that action, then that action should not be happening to me. ever. and that child should never repeat that action again to any other adult again.

like i am simply not there to be treated as an attractive young woman. i put on a skirt that shows too much knee and get paired with a boy, though, and that's apparently just a natural consequence. hooo-ly shit. like i don't know what to do. first of all, the more time passes since this has happened, the more i am just unable to stop thinking about it. i wasn't "hurt" or too emotional in the moment but i'm just still processing it and it gets worse. i'm just more and more disgusted.

i don't know what i expect to come out of this, or the email i sent to his regular para. like, am i gonna have to attend a fucking meeting? what is the precedent that this sets for him? WHY do i feel BAD for him about this? well, because he's a child, of course. a child who has done wrong he may not be able to understand. but he knows WHAT he did. he just doesn't know WHY it was wrong.

and i couldn't even say something to him that was like, "well, how would you like it if i was touching you like this?" because young boys do not understand how inappropriate it'd be. i'm sure this kid thought he was gonna get away with what he was doing at the very least. but probably not unlikely he (being a child with no concept of how wrong it'd be) thought he could get some sort of "positive" attention for treating me like this. either way he was simply doing what he wanted to do, with no perspective of how it would make me feel or that it could be classified as harassment. teenage boys think it'd be awesome if the older attractive woman would reciprocate their affections. they're wrong. i, as the older attractive woman of his affection, cannot be the one to convince him of that, though.

i don't know. i don't know. like it's just so not ok. but if i didn't tell another adult about this, he would've gotten away with it. he would probably do it again. and him being in trouble for it is not the same as him understanding that it was wrong. unless someone has a REAL talk with him about inappropriate attention and consent, it's not unlikely that he'll just repeat the behavior in a setting where he thinks he won't be caught or told on. THAT'S the problem. me, i could just never have to be this boy's para again. in my email, i didn't say that i would never be ok working with or around him ever again. he already knows i didn't like it and i'm not afraid to tell on him; as far as that lesson applies to me, individually, i think he's become too ashamed to repeat that.

i don't know. i don't know. i very much expressed that i, i guess, "forgave" him in the email that i wrote. i clarified that i was writing it for the sake of having it on the record. i think that could potentially be very important for the purposes of preventing further similar or escalating behavior from him in the future. i don't want him to be in trouble. i don't think i will be blamed for this, especially not with how promptly i acted, although i don't know to what extent this will be framed as me thinking i'm a "victim." i'm not... i don't feel victimized. i feel disgusted. i feel afraid for the sake of what could happen to or with him in the future, if he thinks behavior like his towards me today is ok.

i feel like if i end up having to further respond to this, this will be made about me. in a way it kind of was. is? in the moment it was happening, it was certainly about me. because i was the one this boy was giving all this unwanted attention to. but to make the consequences of this about me and to involve me any further, i also don't want. because i said what i said already, i don't care if a student has a crush on me. this isn't about me being the pretty substitute. i'm the pretty substitute all the time, to tons of people. that's not really something i've been concerned about up until now.

but do i have to reexplain my personal embarrassment? that i was wearing a skirt? that he was ogling my legs? really? what more do i have to gain from sharing that, other than having the adults at my place of work confirm or deny me in their heads as the pretty substitute? i don't know. perhaps that's REALLY overthinking it. but i don't want to be the substitute that caused a problem for this special ed kid. i don't wanna be the reason that he can't be around me anymore, the person people think of when they're monitoring how he's acting around girls and young women. i DON'T want to be the one people think of when they think of his past misbehavior. i'm NOT here for that.

that's just fucking humiliating. and in this being a thing that could follow him, i have to be ogled and touched over and over again in people's minds for this to be taken seriously. but for this to be swept under the rug would be even worse, no? i don't know. i hate this. the principal is a nice guy; i wouldn't be surprised if he and/or people from the special ed department reached out to me sympathetically about this. but i don't wanna be reached out to. i don't wanna have ppl i work with tell me "sorry that kid was just so attracted to you he couldn't help himself" like come on. if the kid himself doesn't change then i don't really care to remember this incident. and no one reaching out to me and saying they've talked to this kid will actually prove to me he understands. this is the kind of inappropriate behavior it takes years for people to understand why it was wrong, especially a child who has no idea. i mean come on.

#tales from diana #long post #sorry i should probably put this under a read more but it was just a long stream of consciousness #and idk. im tired. im so tired #do you wanna be known as the substitute teacher a kid kept touching inappropriately? probably not #thank god for the first para i told bc she took it really seriously seemingly. i mean idk what she told him in their conversation #not EXACTLY what she told him. she obviously said this was wrong and she reiterated in learning center again #that if that were her daughter she'd be through the roof and that she'd be telling his regular para #i mean of course i had to tell the regular para directly. i would rather it come from my mouth #i'm the one who has the most information of how and why it happened. i think other ppl telling it would just reduce it to #'he thought she was so pretty and he kept staring at and touching her legs cuz she wore a skirt' like come on #the indignity of that!#i already feel undignified enough.#and also thank god for the social studies teacher. the more im processing this the more im like thank god #i dont know him well. he had already been a nice dude to me before in my interactions w him #like as a sub you notice the people who are really affirming of the strange and irregular work you do #earlier this week i was subbing for the math teacher across the hall for instance and he came in before class started and said #that if anyone's giving me a hard time to just send them to him. bc that group can be a little rowdy/wild #my classroom discipline skills are not that bad where i felt the need to have someone more experienced defend me so to speak #like i know i look young and am assumed to be new. but with most classes. i can handle most misbehavior #i can put my foot down in a way kids normally respect. i know how to keep em on task #and for MOST of the day with this kid that's what i was doing. but if that social studies teacher hadn't done what he did #i might not feel so bold in just straight up walking away from that kid. after saying stop stop stop repeatedly #like he had his own job to do independent of me but i remember the gestures and like. i could cry. he KNEWWWW #that's just a very trustworthy person i feel. he didn't want me to suffer through that any longer #a lot of teachers (unfortunately) largely ignore the kids with paras and/or expect the paras to communicate to the kid exclusively #that teacher is not like that. he was willing to mind that boy while i escaped that situation. so so grateful to him

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