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TEN WAYS of admitting youre wrong in an ego preserving way

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Bystander Intervention Training

so, the US just attacked Iran, and that is fucking terrible. Something we all need to think about right now is how we can stop the harassment and violence against Muslims and Arabs in the US that got so much worse in the early 2000s from happening again to people now.

To that end, I wanted to share some resources on Bystander Intervention. One of the biggest things I learned from training like this is that there are many ways to intervene, and they don't all involve putting yourself in front of the person who may harm you or others. It's ok if you feel intimidated by that because there are more ways to help! And once you do the training, it might not be so scary.

Right to Be has Bystander trainings based on the 5Ds of Bystander Intervention (Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, and Direct). The trainings are free!! sign up here.

I took one of their trainings a few years ago (when the org was called Hollaback!) and it was really very good, they have trainings at multiple levels and focused on various topics. They also partner with other orgs to focus on specific issues (like anti-AAPI harassment and with CAIR Chicago for anti-Muslim harassment, etc.).

Here are a few more resources:

APA Bystander Intervention Tip Sheet

RAINN Practicing Bystander Intervention

I think I'll sign up for one as a refresher.

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rb to make a biological essentialist mad <3

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hot take: we're literally already past the point of the fascist us government recognizing "detrans awareness day." this terminology is not salvageable

if you're cis, you're cis. if you initially came out as a trans man or a trans woman and later realized you're nonbinary, you are still trans. being nonbinary is trans. if you are being forcibly denied medication and healthcare that you previously had access to, or if you are closeted for your safety after previously being out, then you're obviously still trans you're just experiencing transphobia.

we don't need the "not all detransitioners are transphobic and some of us support transition" takes. we don't need "detransition" as an identity.

the construction of the terminology itself suggests that being cis is a default state that one can theoretically always "return" to through medical "reversal" (and thus, implicitly also through denial of medical care, or coerced medical procedures). this framework is transphobic and is very predictably used to further explicitly transphobic political projects. this is not a hypothetical to debate, but a description of how the term is being leveraged functionally right now.

please stop trying to resignify this terminology. this is a losing battle over a term that erases specificity of experience and contradicts sexgender theory and analysis that we collectively rely on for trans liberation.

I'm not criticizing anyone who previously used or currently uses this term. I'm not saying that you were or are transphobic. I am not making any judgement about any individual at all with this post. I am speaking about political tactics and where we go from here.

I am begging you to find other language to discuss your experience. please.

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long post on why i don't like the term ‘RAMCOA’ and what it represents

the term RAMCOA stands for 'ritual abuse, mind control, organized abuse.' it's not used much in clinical settings as far as i can tell, but is common in online communities like tumblr, tiktok, and reddit for people with DID and OSDD. i have DID and was put through what you could call organized abuse, and anonymous vent asks i've sent on this site have been tagged as RAMCOA. personally i prefer referring to what i went through as trafficking, or in the way i did back then, that i was a child prostitute. that said you don't need to be an abuse survivor to recognize the problems with this term and the narrative around it, but i figure i should establish my 'survivor cred' before i begin.

RAMCOA is a modern successor to the term SRA, or 'satanic ritual abuse.' it's heavily tied to a group known as the international society for the study of trauma and dissociation (ISSTD), the wikipedia article for which opens by describing it as a "controversial nonprofit professional organization." the ISSTD specifically has a group called the RAMCOA special interest group for promoting this concept. the ISSTD itself has shifted to using OEA (organized extreme abuse) rather than RAMCOA, but the latter is still commonly used online. for the purpose of this post though i'd like to divorce the term of its connections to the ISSTD as well as the various conspiracies that emerged after the satanic panic in the 80s and just look at what's being said in the current year, and why that's still a conspiracy theory.

although RAMCOA is an acronym encompassing a variety of forms of abuse, it seems to be primarily used to describe a form of sexual abuse in which the victim is 'programmed' via torture to develop DID. this involves creating alters which are blank slates for abusers to do whatever they want with. there are various types of 'programs' named after the types of brainwaves like beta, alpha, epsilon, etc. essentially this is suggesting that it's possible to make someone have DID on purpose, and that said DID can be used to turn a child into a mind controlled sex slave. proponents of RAMCOA suggest that there are organized secret societies (primarily within american religious institutions it seems) that have been practicing programming for generations, and that this a common tactic in the realm of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) to keep their victims loyal and silent. proponents further suggest that these groups are composed of people who have been programmed themselves and have mind controlled alters that perpetrate abuse on their victims. going by this narrative one would believe that there is an underbelly of society composed of people who have dissociative disorders and are part of inter-generational incestuous cults that bare children solely for the purpose of putting them through this treatment. they further suggest that these societies are incredibly wealthy and influential, and have co-opted the law to help cover up their abuse. these societies usually have a religious or occult element to them, which will be reflected in the victims' alters and inner world. proponents are adamant that we should not share any details on programming and how it is done, and that victims should remain secretive about their identity and location to avoid their abusers and prevent them from remotely triggering programs via the internet.

this is problematic for many reasons. child exploitation rings absolutely exist, and not infrequently embed themselves in religious institutions. see this recent case from new orleans as an example. there is even a real life satanic ring called the order of nine angles (ONA), which grooms victims using occult imagery and neo-nazi ideology. the ONA however is a very modern phenomenon, and only came into existence in the 1980s. it claims to have been founded in the 60s, but record of it only exists since the early 80s. it only began committing crimes in the 90s, and the first arrests of people distributing CSAM and perpetrating CSA within the group began in the late 2010s. it's possible it was involved in the CSEC industry longer than this, but personally i find this unlikely considering anti-fascists have been aware of and cataloging the ONA since its emergence in the 80s. the ONA recruits victims over the internet on places like roblox, and uses the same tactics online groomers everywhere use. numerous ONA members have been arrested and tried for their crimes, and none of these arrests have uncovered literature or instructions on how to 'program' children, because that's not how they operate. they simply use basic emotional manipulation and sextortion like all online pedophiles do. if any group was practicing 'programming' it would be this one, and yet there is no evidence it has done so. it can hardly be called 'inter-generational,' considering most members are teenagers or young adults.

the RAMCOA narrative suggests that people with dissociative disorders are a unique underclass within society. it suggests that we are exceptional and the result of CSEC that is undetectable and unnoticed by wider society. it's a convenient narrative if you are someone looking to gain clout within the online DID community, as now people are expected to listen to you to avoid 'disrespecting survivors.' the narrative suggests that victims need to be 'de-programmed' by a therapist who specializes in RAMCOA. since most therapists and psychiatrists know very little about DID and OSDD, victims are thus encouraged to end up in insular online communities that promote the RAMCOA narrative, and it doesn't take much digging to see that these sorts of discord servers and group chats are filled with drama and infighting like most online communities in the modern day. being a 'RAMCOA' survivor is a convenient bludgeon to wield against your enemies in the current discourse, whether those are endos or anti-endos or whoever else. the RAMCOA narrative is also problematic for the suggestion that torture and sexual abuse always cause a dissociative disorder. medical research on these disorders is scant in general, and some instead believe in the 'sociocognitive model' which suggests they come from things other than childhood trauma. likewise victims of CSEC are not guaranteed to develop DID, and people respond to this trauma in a variety of different ways. if purposefully inducing DID in victims was as common as proponents claim, i would expect it show up more in literature on survivors of CSA and trafficking. perhaps these studies just lump it together with PTSD, but that seems unlikely to me.

it's a frustrating narrative because it's so close to the truth. CSEC and CSA are very real, and are often perpetrated by family members against their own children just as i've seen in most RAMCOA testimonies. one part of RAMCOA people mention a lot is 'scripts,' which are apparently pieces of media like the wizard of oz or alice in wonderland that can be used as a guide for programming. i haven't been able to find any non-anecdotal evidence of this, but there was a CSEC ring known as the 'wonderland club' that existed in the 90s. as far as i can tell this group never used any kind of 'programming,' though police were only able to identify a small number of their victims, one of whom went missing a long time before the club was caught. reading about RAMCOA you often see echoes of the truth distorted into a conspiracy. the testimonies i've read about RAMCOA generally describe what is actually known as familial trafficking, where parents prostitute children to people in their local community. the RAMCOA narrative portrays this as much grander than it really is. children are often trafficked to fulfill a drug addiction, or are coerced into becoming addicted themselves. the majority of the time the mother is the primary trafficker. it often runs in the family, and in many cases the trafficker has been involved in prostitution themselves. the motivation most of the time is simply money or substance abuse, rather than the family being an inter-generational incestuous cult. familial trafficking is nothing more than families exploiting their children for material gain, something encouraged in many ways by capitalism. here's my source for all this.

this narrative only makes sense if you believe that there is a deliberate conspiracy to cover up the existence of RAMCOA and discredit survivors, which would require allies in high places in the government and law enforcement. the unfortunate truth is that CSEC is a taboo subject and people are uncomfortable studying it, and law enforcement in most of the world is wildly corrupt and unequipped to handle this problem. there is no deliberate conspiracy nor are there programming societies with as much influence as the CIA. instead perpetrators of CSEC target children who are already abandoned by society and are unlikely to be believed. major government and religious institutions are not controlled by the CSEC industry; instead CSEC rings operate within the corrupt segments of them in plain sight while being careful to avoid the eyes of the law, and if that eye ever falls on them they are quickly punished. the sort of gigantic inter-generational societies supposedly programming people would be impractical if one is looking to avoid detection. i have yet to find a RAMCOA testimony in which one claims to be a low-level member of one of these societies. it's pretty much always that the victim was a child of a high-ranking member and was being groomed to end up like their abusers, yet was able to escape unlike their parents. in the dozens of RAMCOA testimonies i've read i've come across a grand total of 3 transfeminine people claiming to be a victim of this (one of whom instead described it as SRA). trans women are at an incredibly high risk of being trafficked or forced into sex work. anecdotally my ex girlfriend came very close to being trafficked, and i was myself as a kid. even with the demographics of tumblr i would expect to see more transfems claiming to be RAMCOA victims, and yet there is absolutely nothing. that is extremely suspect to me, but perhaps is just a result of transmisogyny in the DID community. either way, not a good look.

i apologize if i've come across as callous here. i absolutely believe that every victim of 'RAMCOA' is a victim of CSA or CSEC in some form; these things really are that common, and most cases go unreported. that being said i'll acknowledge for myself at least i was very young when i went through CSEC, and i'm not even sure what happened myself. people with DID and OSDD are very likely to experience psychosis and delusions; i often have auditory hallucinations. i'm fully expecting that when i finally work up the courage to get the law involved the details will most likely not match the things i remember. different alters tell me different versions of what happened, and i mostly remember vibes and sensations. a lot of piecing together my story has been pure guesswork and speculation. i think it's important to recognize that we as survivors are not infallible and can fall for false narratives. i doubt what i've written here will convince anyone peddling the RAMCOA narrative to stop, but maybe i can inspire some skepticism. regardless i am not trying to invalidate you or your trauma dear reader, i simply ask you to question the things you hear on the internet.

more than anything i believe to combat CSA we need to have solidarity with our fellow survivors no matter how 'bad' their abuse was. the RAMCOA narrative creates a hierarchy among survivors between those who went through 'complex trauma' and those who did not. to me this is a ridiculous distinction; people who have been through 'minor' trauma can end up just as traumatized as those who went through CSEC. it's not a contest for fucks sake. the RAMCOA narrative encourages the same thing the mental health industry does, that trauma survivors should focus on 'healing' in an individualistic manner and shell out money to crackpot therapists. RAMCOA survivors are supposed to focus on 'de-programming' themselves, which is always a solitary project between you and your therapist. it puts the focus on the specific 'cult' that abused you rather than the systems that actually cause CSEC: capitalism and the nuclear family. i really just wish communities for survivors of CSA focused more on getting people fired up and angry about the fact that society allowed this to happen to us. the oppression of children is one that intersects with every single other form of oppression, and we should be forming those kinds of bonds with other liberatory movements rather than focusing on our own personal 'healing.' that's my opinion at least, and i am a bleeding heart anarchist with a liberal arts degree so take it as you will.

conspiracies about CSEC are mainstream in political discourse right now. the RAMCOA narrative is just one among many, and really in the grand scheme of things is harmless compared to stuff like QAnon. that doesn't mean we should just tolerate it though, because at its heart the RAMCOA conspiracy is the same one you always see for this subject: CSA is only the domain of our enemies, of the outgroup, and there is a deliberate conspiracy by this same 'other' to cover up this fact. for those who read this and are still devoted to the term RAMCOA, at the very least be more critical of these kind of conspiracies, and try to take more notice of the way they are employed in political squabbles and online discourse. these conspiracies do nothing to help CSA survivors, and are in fact a harmful distraction. the purpose of all of them is to mobilize our trauma and anger towards the political enemies of the day, and we as survivors cannot let that happen.

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"there should be some kind of test you have to take before having kids" -> wrong, extremely dangerous and highkey eugenicist and racist "the youth should have safe and effective legal pathways at their disposal to make sure their human rights are constantly protected and upheld" -> based, centers the youth, gives minors more power to fight inequality and does not reinforce the idea that parents are immune to scrutiny from their kids

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“So, when these gentlemen say, ‘You are utopians, you anarchists are dreamers, your utopia would never work,’ we must reply, ‘Yes, it’s true, anarchism is a tension, not a realization, not a concrete attempt to bring about anarchy tomorrow morning.’ But we must also be able to say but you, distinguished democratic gentlemen in government that regulate our lives, that govern us through the opinions that you form daily in your newspapers, in the universities, schools, etc., what have you gentlemen accomplished? A world worth living in? Or a world of death, a world in which life is a flat affair, devoid of any quality, without any meaning to it? A world where one reaches a certain age, is about to get one’s pension, and asks oneself, ‘But what have I done with my life? What has been the sense of living all these years?’”

— The Anarchist Tension, Alfredo M. Bonanno

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i strongly believe that it's better to take aspirin of a known dosage than to take some willow bark with an unknown amount of active compound that could also just be sawdust from an unrelated tree. like that's just factually correct. medical science is real and the supplement industry is an unregulated nightmare of mostly scams. but. the thing is. if, in order to get aspirin, i had to schedule an appointment where i tell my doctor that my friend said i might have a headache (because i can't just say i have a headache without being treated like a googlemad hypochondriac). and then the doctor nodded and ordered a bunch of expensive tests that have very little to do with my head and a lot to do with the size of my ass. and the tests all came back fine so he shrugged and asked if my head hurt and when i said yes he prescribed me some aspirin while emphasizing he didn't know if it would help but i could give it a shot if i really wanted. and if i had to do that every time i wanted some aspirin. i would probably start eyeballing the willow bark. to be perfectly honest with you.

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I think the big internal contradiction of fatphobia is that they know that it's a disability, but they build a magic fence around it so they don't have to consider it one, just saying "they did this to themselves, we shouldn't have to coddle them" when like, idk, any paraplegic u see on the street could have gotten that way from their own folly, but that doesn't matter. if someone just decides that they REALLY want to cut their legs off, they should still get a free wheelchair right? like are there simply motivations that someone can have that void them of a right to life & dignity? their answer is probably yes but they won't say that.

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i should add more to that "living under the healthy abled gaze" essay like i'm sure a bonafide disability studies writer has written about this concept in a better way than me but i really need to hammer home the daily experience of "push your knees forward so you don't get worse, pull your shoulders so you don't get worse, pull your head in so you don't get worse, push your pelvis forward and stack your ribs or you'll get worse, sit up straight so you don't get worse" so on and so forth being this oppressive presence in your head at all times - not just being a result of ocd but a mottled mix of medical neglect, prevailing cultural healthism, things that healthcare providers have said/done to you, etc.

"kill the health coach in your head" or w/e

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This is a nightmarish hellscape for the medically neglected and a nightmarish hellscape for those with OCD related to their body. Don’t just optimize your career path, optimize your schoolwork, and optimize your daily routine! You should also optimize your own body functions, optimize how you sit and stand and walk, optimize how you breathe (because it turns out there’s a “correct” way to do that too!)

i wrote something for the first time in forever because it's been bothering me increasingly as of late

it's also on substack if medium restricts access (prettysocialreject.substack.com)

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real talk like. YES many fat people eat a healthy diet! lots of fat people don't eat sweets! lots of fat people love veggies! there are fat vegans!

BUT sometimes I see this being used as a gotcha in a way that says "it's okay to be fat because it doesn't mean you're eating Immorally" and I resent that.

I am fat and today I ate three cookies for breakfast. big ones. and that doesn't change the fact that my fatness is amoral and my diet - while objectively not very healthy, this cookie thing is part of a pattern in my life as a stressed out grad student - is also amoral.

it's okay to be fat and love little debbies. and it's okay to be fat and eat little debbies more than you "should." you don't owe your health or nutrition to anyone. everyone should fuck off

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new updated drive with psych abolition resources! it’s sorted into folders for specific subtopics for things like harm reduction, different types of support, disability justice readings, mad liberation zines, etc. it’s not complete yet—there’s a bunch more resources I want to add once I’m at my laptop again but wanted to share now!

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btw if you’re fat and your partner doesn’t love you wholeheartedly, if they’re attracted to you “despite” your body, if they avoid touching you, if they look away from certain parts of you, you’re allowed to break up with that person. look at me. you can do better. you are not unloveable and you don’t have to settle i fucking promise.

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Like I mean sure often trans men are included in lesbian spaces when trans women aren't because they don't see trans men as men right. I'd absolutely say that's the more common situation. but I really think it'd be nice if people could acknowledge the other thing here which is that plenty of people are more than willing to accept any "complicated relationship to lesbianism" and tme gender and sexual identity under the sun but not trans women. like sometimes people are just transmisogynistic actually, that's not super incompatible with supporting other groups of trans people.

I mean hell even other trans people act like that and willingly go along with "unique afab solidarity" type shit, plenty of people willingly play into it because it benefits them. being shocked that sometimes people are accepting about one thing while also being transmisogynists just makes you kinda an unhelpful ally tbh and conveniently obfuscates your relationship to "victimhood" in this situation.

the whole "we're the real victims here because maybe we're not being entirely respected in the space you are almost always categorically barred from" thing is just old at this point.

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also, if you are someone who was assigned female, were solely given a very binary and medical framework for understanding trans identity and have thus publicly identified as a trans man for some time, but privately do not believe you are a man and don't want to be a man-- please please know that being nonbinary is a real thing. you do not have to be a man if it's making you feel like shit to do so.

I know for many trans people, performing a particular manhood or womanhood is the only way to access to medical care that allows you to have a good relationship with your body. but what you perform for doctors does not need to be how you see yourself, or how you engage with others. many nonbinary people, regardless of assignment, pursue various forms of care that fit under the umbrella of "medical transition." bodies are not identity. you can have (/desire/pursue/enjoy) any bodily traits and be any gender.

I think there is a frustrating tendency in nominally 'transmasc' spaces to conflate trans men with nonbinary people who were assigned female, but these are not the same gender or experience just because you were assigned the same thing at birth. a trans man is not a cis woman, a cis woman is not a tme nonbinary person, a tme nonbinary person is not a trans man. being trans is refusing sexgender assignment. you do not have to be a man, or masculine, in order to be trans.

if you love the effects of testosterone or having a flat chest or a penis, but moving through social space as a man makes you feel like shit, you do not have to identify as a man. that remains true no matter what you were assigned at birth. I think if you make an effort to talk with with more (tma & tme) nonbinary people you'll find this experience is not an unthinkable taboo that will unravel your whole identity and claim to transness if you admit it, but just one of many trans ways of engaging with sexgender.