Be Aware.
Here are some political things that have happened this month in the US (mostly in the south of course) that are inching us closer to dystopia.
1. A bill was sent in by a Florida rep to ban girls from talking about their periods in school.
2. An Arkansas republican wants to hold libraries to criminal liability for offering ‘obscene materials’-- anything relating to gay or trans people and anything else republicans deem immoral. It passed with 56 votes.
3. Trump may be getting indicted on Tuesday, and he has gone on social media and asked for protests. For what it’s worth, many republicans are asking people not to. Be careful on Tuesday, especially those in DC and in the south.
4. Sarah Fuckabee Sanders has signed a new law that will allow a monument near the state Capitol marking the number of abortions performed in Arkansas before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. It’s being privately funded but will be erected near the 10 commandments monument they have there now.
5. Wyoming has banned the abortion pill and made anyone selling it criminally liable to the tune of a felony. They’ve also banned other versions of the pill which are given to women to expedite miscarriage. In these cases, women would be forced to have surgical D+C even in early stages of miscarriage. They’ve also banned any websites where people can give information about where to get the pills. It’s now illegal to “create, edit, upload, publish, host, maintain, or register a domain name for an internet website, platform, or other interactive computer service that assists or facilitates a person’s effort in obtaining an abortion-inducing drug.” So...you can’t teleconference a doctor to discuss it, or have the prescription mailed to you, either.
6. Arizona republicans are putting up a bill to jail AZ teachers for up to 2 years if they decimate any ‘sexually explicit books or reading materials’ that don’t protect fundamental Christian values.
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and i am still so proud of felix for making it to the semis which is still much farther than anyone else in canadian singles history, he still won a medal in mixed which is our first mixed medal and our second ever tennis medal, he beat two top ten players, and he frankly played the best tennis i have ever seen from him this week. he played in THREE disciplines and made it to the semis in two of them. big things are coming as we approach canada and also indoor hard court season!
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Some Tolkien affirmations to help you along when the darkness seems too much and everything seems lost
"The world may be grim, but there's always hope. Even in the darkest of days, there may be one bright star to guide you."
—Elrond
"It is not despair, but only the handing on of a torch."
—Aragorn
"The greatest good returns at last to those who share it freely."
—Gandalf
"It is not by sorrow and by suffering that we grow. It is by the choice we make when faced with sorrow and suffering."
—Fëanor
"The world is changed because I am in it."
—Bilbo Baggins
bonus round (Tolkien never actually wrote this — Peter Jackson did — but it's a good fucking line and Tolkien would have 100% agreed with it):
“Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love."
— Gandalf
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I’m reminded of that post about how goths and people who wear only lots of pink are actually the same because “wearing only one color” is a specific choice in opposition to just looking Normal
I’m flying to a friend’s wedding today, and I recently acquired from my neighborhood free page a very pretty vintage suitcase in like a brocade upholstery texture in all of my good colors, so of course I needed a coordinated airport outfit à la Midge Maisel. You guys don’t know me, but I usually dress very put together, in what my sister calls Outfits, with a capital O to distinguish it from just wearing clothes. And since getting a full time job I’ve been slowly adding to my collection of vintage and 50’s-vibes clothes, because I just really like that aesthetic (my bridesmaid dress for the wedding is a vintage tea dress I got from Etsy. The fabric is in great condition but I had to reinforce pretty much every seam with my sewing machine, because the structural integrity of the original thread was breaking down, so that was an interesting learning experience).
All of which is to say that I Dressed Up for the airport in a vintage-y outfit that coordinates perfectly with some of the colors of my suitcase, and my hair is curled, and I have a vintage leather purse that my grandma gave me that matches her watch that I’m wearing and the shoes she bought me last summer at the same vintage store that my skirt came from, and a teenage-ish girl with whatever you call the 2023 teenage equivalent of emo/punk vibes, like the dark maroon mullet and not a lot of makeup and dark comfy clothes but like, very on purpose, told me I look cool when I walked past on the way to security
And like, she Gets It! We have different fashion goals but I think we put a similar degree of intention into the way we look compared to just wearing regular clothes. Which is cool! It’s validating. Not that I really need validation, but it’s always nice to get compliments, of course. And the way I dress is really not terribly distinctive most of the time, other than being Outfits and a little dressier than maybe the norm is, like I think most people who see me one time in passing would see that I look Nice but not necessarily see it as a cultivated Look. But punk mullet girl gets it.
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"Surviving trauma doesn't make you an expert on other people's trauma" is how I'm paraphrasing your tag. But it's such an important point to me. I feel like not just internet spaces but also societal mental health conversation has been ignoring this for decades. I can talk about this extremely broadly because I think it's one of the problems with 12 step type of addiction treatments. But it's also especially popular in the realm of victims of crime and/or abuse of any kind. Surviving trauma only makes you an expert on your own personal trauma and healing. There is no universal cure for any trauma, everyone needs something different. And treating others requires a level of detachment that rarely exists in amateur survivors of similar trauma. Sorry for preaching about this in your inbox but your tags really reminded me how passionate I am about this. I've experienced people scolding me for abandoning support groups and group therapy types of things when they didn't feel helpful to me because they helped them and "I just didn't give them proper chance".
(x)
Don't apologise, anon! I totally agree, and I'm really sorry that you've had that experience with support groups and group therapies.
I've been thinking about this a lot actually since the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial and the horrific treatment of her during all of that, but it's been a pretty big factor in my life these days in general.
Like, look, this is kind of getting a bit in the weeds of my real life right now, but my aunt's very angry at me and my mum at the moment in a way that's been pretty exhausting. (Putting this below a cut because nobody needs to read this, haha)
My aunt is a victim-survivor of some pretty horrific domestic violence. It was many years ago now, and she's done a lot of healing and is in a better place overall, but the situation currently with my sister going through emotional and financial abuse, gaslighting and physical intimidation, with her ex-husband has I think brought up a lot for my aunt, and the result is that she's really trying to dictate the choices that my sister makes as she's going through this.
My aunt has been genuinely so supportive of my sister, but she's also been incredibly judgemental and critical. It's been a really challenging space for their relationship, and, by proxy, my relationship with my aunt, because she calls me (and my mum, who's her sister) up to try and influence my sister's decisions. We're in this current kinda stand-still over it because we're six weeks out from final trial in family court, and my ex-BIL has done something very threatening to my sister, and my aunt wants my sister to get an AVO. We tried to get my sister an AVO last year, and the police told her that until he put her in hospital, they wouldn't give her one. Now my aunt wants my sister to try again, and my sister's lawyers are saying no, because it looks like a play to the judge. They've been in family court for two years, and to try again this close to final trial may be legitimate but to a judge it'll read as a move that could influence her custody of her children.
My sister doesn't want to take that risk, her lawyers don't want to take that risk, and in my opinion, the worst result would be for her to try, have it on the record that she tried, get the same response she did last year that he hasn't put her in the hospital yet, and ergo get no AVO and a bad mark on her heading into court. On top of that - - AVOs don't do shit. They're a piece of paper that maybe bump you up a few spots in the queue when you call the police.
Anyway, my aunt's furious about this and it's become this huge thing where my aunt feels she knows better because she got an AVO, because she's been through this already, because none of us understand what she understands, and I'm like - - it's exhausting, and it's unfair. Their experiences are not the same by any stretch of the imagination, and I hate that a part of me keeps thinking that what happened to my aunt didn't end because of an AVO, it ended because he was a gambling addict and he was killed over an unpaid debt.
My aunt really is trying to do the right thing by my sister, and I love her for that, but there is this disconnect between survivor experiences that can cause an enormous amount of friction and complication, and I think we need to get better in general at acknowledging that.
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