The way that we learn about Helen Keller in school is an absolute outrage. We read “The Miracle Worker”- the miracle worker referring to her teacher; she’s not even the title character in her own story. The narrative about disabled people that we are comfortable with follows this format- “overcoming” disability. Disabled people as children.
Helen Keller as an adult, though? She was a radical socialist, a fierce disability advocate, and a suffragette. There’s no reason she should not be considered a feminist icon, btw, and the fact that she isn’t is pure ableism- while other white feminists of that time were blatent racists, she was speaking out against Woodrew Wilson because of his vehement racism. She supported woman’s suffrage and birth control. She was an anti-war speaker. She was an initial donor to the NAACP. She spoke out about the causes of blindness- often disease caused by poverty and poor working conditions. She was so brave and outspoken that the FBI had a file on her because of all the trouble she caused.
Yet when we talk about her, it’s either the boring, inspiration porn story of her as a child and her heroic teacher, or as the punchline of ableist, misogynistic jokes. It’s not just offensive, it’s downright disgusting.
the reason the story stops once hellen keller learns to talk is no one wanted to listen to what she had to say
how’s that for a fucking punchline
It’s not that I disagree that we should all be aware of what a badass Helen Keller became, because she had a long and amazing career as an activist and yes, a feminist hero. It’s that somehow when people talk about the ableism of the way Helen’s story is told they always seem to forget this: Anne Sullivan, her teacher, was blind. Seriously. From Wikipedia:
“When she was only five years old she contracted a bacterial eye disease known as trachoma, which created painful infections and over time made her nearly blind.[2] When she was eight, her mother passed away and her father abandoned the children two years later for fear he could not raise them on his own.[2] She and her younger brother, James (“Jimmie”), were sent to an overcrowded almshouse in Tewksbury, Massachusetts (today part of Tewksbury Hospital). He, who suffered a debilitating hip ailment, died three months into their stay. She remained at the Tewksbury house for four years after his death, where she had eye operations that offered some short-term relief for her eye pain but ultimately proved ineffective.[3]“
Eventually some operations did restore part of her eyesight, but by the end of her life she was entirely blind. Also:
“Due to Anne losing her sight at such a young age she had no skills in reading, writing, or sewing and the only work she could find was as a housemaid; however, this position was unsuccessful.[2] Another blind resident staying at the Tewksbury almshouse told her of schools for the blind. During an 1880 inspection of the almshouse, she convinced an inspector to allow her to leave and enroll in the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, where she began her studies on October 7, 1880.[2] Although her rough manners made her first years at Perkins humiliating for her, she managed to connect with a few teachers and made progress with her learning.[2] While there, she befriended and learned the manual alphabet from Laura Bridgman, a graduate of Perkins and the first blind and deaf person to be educated there.”
So Anne Sullivan, disabled and born into serious poverty, learns the manual alphabet from a deaf and blind friend; passes that alphabet on to her deaf and blind student. This isn’t the story of an abled-bodied teacher swooping in to ‘save’ a disabled child; it’s a series of disabled women helping each other. Helen Keller’s story is the story not of one badass disabled woman, but of two. Anne and Helen were lifelong friends; Anne died holding Helen’s hand.
Also is there a book called “The Miracle Worker”? I thought that was the movie/movies based on “The Story of My Life” by Helen Keller. But I could be wrong. And I didn’t learn any of this in school in general but that’s neither here nor there.
I can recommend the ‘62 version of “The Miracle Worker” with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. It’s blatant about Sullivan’s impoverished background and eye problems – her rage on Helen’s behalf isn’t abstract at all, it’s very, very personal. And that’s the most amazing thing about this movie: Anne and Helen are the angriest people on earth. I have no idea if that was erased from the remakes but in the original they are both allowed to have a ton of anger about what has been done to them and what they have been denied.
Anyway, I’ve rambled enough. Here’s a picture of Helen Keller meeting Charlie Chaplin:
omfg I am so mad right now because not only did the kids biography of Helen Keller I read when I was younger erase all her activism, but it very explicitly completely erased anything about Anne being blind herself.
There were scenes of her WATCHING Helen from across the room or yard, and it was all very “oh my, I just MUST save this poor little disabled girl, no other deaf blind person has EVER BEEN EDUCATED and basically it was awful and shitty.
I think everyone should read Helen and Teacher. It’s an absolute brick of a book, hundreds of pages, but it is wonderful. It’s about their whole lives, right up to Helen’s death in old age. It talks about Helen’s feminism, socialism, and campaigning for everything from equal rights to sexual health. Helen Keller was not a syrupy, greeting card girl who existed to make able people feel warm and fuzzy, she was a tireless academic, political activist and writer. She was making noise about the issues she cared about from the moment her partnership with Annie Sullivan began, and she never stopped.
Amazing! I was unaware that Anne was blind as well. Thanks for reaching me something!
I haven’t read these other sources so I don’t know how they would compare, but the biography I read as a child was The World at Her Fingertips by Joan Dash. It covers all of the territory discussed above and had a really clear, easy-to-follow language and narrative that made it really accessible to me even as a kid. So it might be a good starting point for kids to learn about Helen Keller.
If you look up symptoms of ASD specific to girls one of them is frequently “masculine behavior/dress” or whatever and people love to blame that on autism being an “extreme male brain” but it’s really very easily explained when you consider what femininity is: a set of implicit social rules forced on women. Like, of course autistic girls and women aren’t going to be as successful at performing femininity “correctly.” It doesn’t have to do with the fictitious male brain. It has to do with femininity being inaccessible to people who have difficulty navigating complex and arbitrary social conventions.
there’s also the fact that so much of performative femininity amounts to sensory hell.
I mean, just wearing a bra can be agonizing when you’re hypersensitive to the way it feels on your skin, and then there’s makeup, high heels, uncomfortable clothes, hair styling, perfume, etc etc. all this shit can be really uncomfortable just for allistics, but when you have sensory issues it can be downright unbearable.
I think it should be mentioned that this affects trans people too in that when I came out to my mom she said “you’re not trans, it’s just your autism”
also like the ‘prize’ for performing femininity well is just social status. like, that’s it. if you don’t prioritize the approval of strangers over your own comfort and autonomy, you’re not going to be a very ‘good’ girl.
good point. social status is just so abstract and weird when you’re autistic, why would you even want that? like if it’s the only way to get people to quit bullying you, fine, but once you’re out of school it’s much easier to avoid people than politic at them. so of course autistic women aren’t going to deal with makeup and pinchy shoes and scrunchy clothes and fifty million self-contradictory social rules just to get something that’s, to us, about as interesting as being a 33rd degree scientologist and getting to learn about the space clams or whatever.
male privilege is me getting to be respected for being forthright and well informed instead of for wearing complicated clothes. autistic women have it rough, y’all.
‘that’s pornhub, simba. you must never go there.’)
we all see plenty of posts about how adults on the internet need to remember that ‘kids’ (read: teens) are around and we must bear that in mind. and these posts are not entirely without merit. It’s important to keep conversations being held with teens carefully teen-friendly and appropriately distant. but the entirety of tumblr and twitter aren’t designed to cater to the safety of minors, and all the adult self-policing in the world won’t make all the kid-unfriendly content go away.
not all teens believe the internet should have gutter bumpers for them, either. but those that do have mystified me for a while … until I started to understand just how pervasive ‘helicopter parenting’ is in parts of American (and UK) culture, and how that affects the adolescents and young adults of today.
anonymous asked:
a thing worth noting re anyone who pulls the ‘you can’t blacklist on mobile, minors can still see it’ thing to say even tagged content isn’t okay: even if washboard didn’t exist, the tumblr app is rated 17/18+ in app stores. if people under that age get on the app and see things they shouldn’t, that’s on them and their parents/guardians, because they shouldn’t actually have been using the app in the first place.
agreed.
Honestly, though, the argument has moved past this in some ways. It’s not so much about whether or not teenagers are allowed to see this thing or that thing; it’s a well-known fact that most teenagers will break rules if it suits them and they can get away with it, and internet time is a prime space wherein they can do so.
What’s happened is that some adolescents – teens with parents that are overly protective and crowd their schedules with supervised activities, usually – have been taught by their life experience that:
all adults in their vicinity are there to protect them. and no wonder: the large majority of their contact with adults will have been as supervisors. Teachers, teacher assistants, instructors, daycare employees, and coaches are all adults who are paid to watch their activity and will be held responsible for the teen’s wellbeing by their guardians. when have they ever spent time with adults who aren’t in charge of making sure they’re safe?
any space they are in will be designed and maintained with their safety and comfort in mind (no matter how they obtained access). all spaces they enter are specifically meant to revolve around them: schools, sports, playgrounds, etc. The few occasions that they have to enter spaces not meant specifically for them (stores, etc) they are closely watched by adults and any harm they experience will be blamed on adults as a result.
if they can get access, it must be a space that’s safe for them. Having spent very little of their lives unsupervised, they have always been actively prevented from entering spaces that are not meant for them. They’ve never had to learn to set boundaries for themselves, so they naturally reason that if a boundary is not actively enforced, it must actually be a space they’re meant to enter.
they are not responsible for themselves. adults around them are responsible for them. if they come to harm, it’s because an adult wasn’t doing their job properly.
for teens of this mindset, ‘18+ ONLY’ warnings are merely a suggestion. Nobody is stopping them, after all, and it has never been their job to stop themselves. and if they can get access, the space is now theirs – because all spaces they are in are theirs. they couldn’t get there unless it was meant for them; that’s how it works, right?
This is why some teens are utterly flabbergasted by the idea that adults on the internet want to interact with fellow adults on an adult level in a space the teen can access. They’re here! That means the space is specifically meant to cater to them! The adults are automatically tasked with their safety! If teens do get into trouble, it’s because the adults weren’t responsible enough! that’s how this has always worked.
And when adults say ‘no, I do not take responsibility for your actions, the internet is full of things that may frighten or harm you and you must set your own boundaries,’ it’s distressing and scary all at once.
(no wonder so many people in their late teens/early 20′s want to still be considered as children.)
This explains a lot. I grew up with sane parents a long time ago, and as a result, I tend to assume that the world is full of things that could potentially hurt me, but that are very unlikely to if I exercise reasonable caution. This has worked out quite well.
All people with blue eyes can be traced
back to one person who lived near the
Black Sea less than 10,000 years ago. SourceSource 2
Now when I see a person with blue eyes, I’ll know they’re a descendant of Ocean-Eyed Slut Man.
You leave great grandpa ocean-eyed slut man alone, he was just living his life
Actually, since this was determined using mitochondrial DNA, the ocean-eyed slut would be a woman, not a man. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down by mothers.
Forever ago, I ran across an article on privilege and the inability to “sit with fear” that has really stuck with me. I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately, trying to put something into words that has been bugging me and I think it’s starting to crystallize.
The idea is that we live in a society where privileged people rarely have to deal with being afraid or uncomfortable and so they learn to think they have a right to always feel that way and that right trumps other people’s needs. So we see “being around [x race/ethnicity/class] makes me feel unsafe; feeling this way harms me; I have a right to feel comfortable in my environment”
We see this expressed most strongly in the more privileged groups: white people unaccustomed to being a minority or being around minorities, straight men unaccustomed to feeling sexually or physically vulnerable or to receiving unwanted sexual attention from men, etc. These are people that primarily feel safe–people that have rarely hought twice about wearing what they want onto the streets, raising their voice in ways that might be perceived as threatening, or calling the cops for assistance and assuming the cops will be their allies.
This leads to the harmful conclusion that people have the right not just to BE safe, but to FEEL safe.
On the other hand, most members of less privileged groups have at least some, if not lots, of experience “sitting with fear.” We will be in environments where we do not feel comfortable or safe. We will experience vulnerability. Not all the time, not everywhere, but often enough. Some of these times we will actually be in danger, some we will just feel less than safe, but regardless, by the time we are adults we have extensive experience and a well developed toolkit for how to process fear.
Sometimes, when situations are genuinely and unnecessarily unsafe, we will work to change them. Other times, when our feelings of discomfort have to be balanced against the competing needs and feelings of other groups we will work to find compromises or build a variety of spaces. And when multiple needs really can’t be reconciled or when our feelings of vulnerability exist only as feelings not based in reality we know how to sit with our fear.
Here’s the interesting bit :
I see, increasingly, people buying into the privileged fallacy that a state where one never needs to know how to sit with fear is not only achievable but an entitlement.
I mean it’s not unidentifiable, to look at that sense of security and think “I want that. I deserve that.” I think it’s normal. Hell, I think people do deserve that. I just don’t think it’s achievable, not on some kind of black-and-white, universal scale. There will always be people who need different things, and even people who need things whose presence is potentially threatening to other people. (A neutral example: addictive painkillers.)
But I see a lot of people who are hurting, in spaces that are practically designed to hurt them, trying to fix it by turning the broken rules around backwards to make a society designed so they’ll never feel hurt or unsafe or uncomfortable.
And I think that’s harmful.
I think that’s drinking the privileged kool-aid.
This post is, by the way, NOT an argument against safe spaces. Safe spaces are necessary and important parts of any community. What this is is an argument against the idea of universal safe spaces in a world with diverse, competing, sometimes irreconcilable needs. This is a reminder that not every space can serve every person, and that when it comes down to the line we need to be very aware of this fact, and also aware of the difference between entitlement to BE safe and to FEEL safe.
The privileged approach to safe spaces is thinking that your needs are either universal or the priority and that your feelings outweigh someone else’s needs. The privileged approach to safe spaces is “this thing hurt me, so it’s bad.“ It’s thinking “my feelings are unbiased and objective and the most important feelings to have.” The privileged approach to safe spaces is “my internal reality is the one true reality.”
We know different. And when we have to, we know how to deal. Let’s not give that up.
I feel like a lot of attempts at convincing conservatives that larger social safety nets and state-funded healthcare are good things are like… fundamentally failing to engage with their basic concerns.
Like, guys, I have literally been asked questions along the lines of “what are your plans for when the economy collapses and all of our currency becomes worthless” by multiple family members in the past month. If people keep yelling WHY DO YOU HATE THE POORS at them, then I think they’re going to feel roughly the same as a conservationist who keeps hearing WHY DO YOU HATE POOR PEOPLE IN THE CONGO WHO CUT DOWN THE RAIN FOREST FOR AGRICULTURAL PURPOSES
like, you don’t. you don’t hate those people. maybe you hate people much more powerful than them who cut down many more trees, but the people who clear four acres so they have some land to grow crops to feed their families? nah, you don’t hate those people. if you object to their actions, it’s because you’re afraid that those people might accidentally be hastening the end of the world as we know it. And if you think the debate is Person In The Congo Would Like To Clear Some Rain Forest To Feed His Family, Please vs This Will Bring About The End Of The World, you might reasonably conclude that we are just not gonna be able to compromise on the end of the world thing.
There are a lot of conservatives who seem to be every bit as concerned about government spending as liberals are about climate change and extinction rates. And like–you might think that’s dumb. You might think they’re tilting at windmills while ignoring the hurricane right behind the windmills. But as long as they think that the windmills are an imminent threat to everything they know and love and hold dear–as long as they turn to me and say “bard, I’m so sorry we couldn’t defeat those windmills for you, I’m so sorry that you’re the one who’s going to have to live in a world where their reign of terror seems impossible to escape”–like, at that point, you gotta engage with their concern about the windmills. You gotta try to convince them that your proposed policies are not going to destroy everything they care about.
Yelling at them to have compassion doesn’t solve that problem. They have compassion. That’s why they’re so worried about the killer windmills.
Huh, neat point.
this is pretty insightful. it lacks only one thing: the information that some people without compassion are deliberately creating a killer windmill scare to neutralize the compassion of those who might otherwise notice them vacuuming billions of dollars out of the economy to be sequestered in overseas accounts.
i have not yet found a way to convince don quixote that the guy who warned him about the killer windmills was lying, on purpose, for real, with intent to decieve you, yes really, you have been fooled, he fooled you.
folks are just not willing to consider they might’ve been played. it tends to upset them.
Out of
curiosity, I recently googled “Am I lesbian quiz”. Half the “Are You a Lesbian” quizzes just asked outright, “Are you attracted to women?” as though that isn’t the
very answer a questioning lesbian is trying to figure out. The other
half marked me as heterosexual for things like owning more nail varnish than
dogs. I hope this list will give you more nuanced ideas to think about
as you explore your identity.
These experiences are all really common among – but not universal or exclusive to – people who later realize they’re lesbians and find a comfortable home in the lesbian label and community.
It’s mostly stuff that I and
other lesbians I know have wished we knew when we were first coming to
grips with our lesbian identities, because the fact is it takes a long
time to discover how common a lot of these experiences are among
lesbians, and not knowing what to look for when trying to figure out if
you’re a lesbian can be hard.
‘Attraction’ to men
Deciding which guys to be attracted to – not to date, but to be attracted to – based on how well they match a mental list of attractive qualities
Only developing attraction to a guy after a female friend expresses attraction to him
Getting
jealous of a specific female friend’s relationships with guys and
assuming you must be attracted to the guys she’s with (even if you never
really noticed them before she was interested in them)
Picking a guy at random to be attracted to
Choosing
to be attracted to a guy at all, not just choosing to act on it but
flipping your attraction on like a switch – that’s a common lesbian
thing
Having such high standards that literally no guy meets
them – and feeling no spark of attraction to any guy who doesn’t meet
them
Only/mostly being into guys who are gnc in some way
Only/mostly being attracted to unattainable, disinterested, or fictional guys or guys you never or rarely interact with
Being deeply uncomfortable and losing all interest in these unattainable guys if they ever indicate they might reciprocate
Reading your anxiety/discomfort/nervousness/combativeness around men as attraction to them
Reading a desire to be attractive to men as attraction to them
Having a lot of your ‘guy’ crushes later turn out to be trans women
Relationships with men
Dreading what feels like an inevitable domestic future with a man
Or looking forward to an idealized version of it that resembles literally no m/f relationship you’ve ever seen in your life, never being able to picture any man you’ve actually met in that image
Being
repulsed by the dynamics of most/all real life m/f relationships you’ve seen
and/or regularly feeling like “maybe it works for them but I never want my
relationship to be like that”
Thinking you’re commitmentphobic
because no relationship, no matter how great the guy, feels quite right
and you drag your feet when it comes time to escalate it
Going
along with escalation because it seems like the ‘appropriate time’ or bc
the guy wants it so bad, even if you personally aren’t quite ready to
say I love you or have labels or move in together etc.
Or jumping ahead and trying to rush to the ‘comfortably settled’ part of relationships with guys, trying to make a relationship a done deal without investing time into emotional closeness
Feeling
like you have to have relationships with guys and/or let them get
serious in order to prove something, maybe something nebulous you can’t
identify
Only having online relationships with guys; preferring not to look at
the guys you’re interacting with online; choosing not to meet up with a
guy even if you seem very into him and he reciprocates and meeting up is
totally realistic
Getting
a boyfriend mostly so other people know you have a boyfriend and not
really being interested in him romantically/sexually
Wishing your boyfriend was more like your female friends
Wishing your boyfriend was less interested in romance and/or sex with you and that you could just hang out as pals
Thinking you’re really in love with a guy but being
able to get over him in such record time that you pretend to be more
affected than you are so your friends don’t think you’re heartless
After a breakup, missing having a boyfriend more than you miss the specific guy you were with
Worrying that you’re broken inside and unable to really love anyone
Sex with men
Having sex not out of desire for the physical pleasure or emotional closeness but because you like feeling wanted
OR: preferring to ‘be a tease’ to feel wanted but feeling like following through is a chore
Only being comfortable with sex with men if there’s an extreme power imbalance and your desires aren’t centred
Using sex with men as a form of self-harm
Feeling
numb or dissociating or crying during/after sex with men (even if you
don’t understand that reaction and think you’re fine and crying etc for
no reason)
Being bored with sex with men/not understanding what the big deal is that makes other women want it
Doing it anyway out of obligation or a desire to be a good sport/do something nice for him
Never/rarely
having sexual fantasies about specific men, preferring to leave them as
undetailed as possible or not thinking about men at all while
fantasizing
Having to make a concerted effort to fantasize about the guy you’re “attracted” to
Early interest in women
Not recognizing past/current crushes on women until you’ve come to grips with your attraction to women
Being unusually competitive, shy, or eager to impress specific women when you’re not that way with anyone else
Wanting to kiss your female best friend on the mouth for literally any reason (”to practice for boys” included)
Getting butterflies or feeling like you can’t get close enough when cuddling with a close female friend
Looking at a close female friend and feeling something in your chest clench up and being overwhelmed with love for her – love you may read as platonic
Having
had strong and abiding feelings of admiration for a specific female
teacher, actor, etc., growing up that were deep and reverent
Having had an unusually close relationship with a female friend growing up that was different and special in a way you couldn’t articulate
Thinking
relationships would be simpler “if only I were attracted to women/my
best friend who would be perfect for me if she/I weren’t a girl”
When
a female friend is treated badly by a man, having your protective
thoughts turn in the direction of “if I was him/a man I’d never do that to her/my girlfriend”
Being utterly fascinated by any lesbians you know/see in media and thinking they’re all ultra cool people
Having
your favourite character in every show be that one gay-coded or butch-looking woman
(like Shego from Kim Possible or Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica)
Feeling weirdly guilty and uncomfortable in locker rooms etc., when your
female friends are less clothed than they normally would be around men
and being more careful not to look than they are
The ‘straight’ version of you
Thinking that all straight girls feel at least some attraction to women
Thinking
that your interest in seeing attractive women/scantily clad women/boobs
is an artificial reaction caused by the objectification of women in
media
Being really into how women look “aesthetically”/“just as artistic interest”
Thinking it’s objective and uncontested that almost all women are way more attractive than most men
Being a really intense LGBT+ “ally” and getting weirdly
emotional about homophobia but assuming you’re just a Really Good Ally
and v empathetic
Having like half your friend group from school turn out to be LGBT+
Getting emotional or having a strong reaction you don’t understand to f/f love stories etc.
Having had people think you were gay when you had no suspicion you were gay
Exploring attraction to women
Feeling like you could live with a woman in a romantic way, even if you can’t imagine doing anything sexual with a woman
Feeling like you could enjoy sexual interaction with a woman, even if you can’t imagine having romantic feelings for a woman
Thinking
you couldn’t be a lesbian because you’re not attractive enough, cool
enough, or otherwise in the same league as most of the women you know
Interacting
with het sex/romance in media by imagining yourself in the man’s
position or just never/rarely imagining yourself in the woman’s position
Really focusing on the women in het porn
Being really into the idea of kissing/being sexual with a woman ‘to turn guys on’
Being really annoyed when guys actually do express interest in watching or joining in when you do that
Only feeling/expressing attraction to or sexual interest in women when you’re inebriated or otherwise impaired
Gender Feelings
Having a lot of conflicting gender feelings that are only possible to resolve once you understand you are/can be a lesbian
Thinking
that being gnc and feeling a disconnect from traditional womanhood mean
that you can’t be a woman even if that’s what feels closest to right –
many lesbians are gnc and many lesbians feel disconnected from
traditional womanhood since it’s so bound up in heteropatriarchy
Knowing
you’re attracted to women and not being able to parse that (esp + any
gender nonconformance) as gay, taking a long time to figure out if
you’re a straight man or a lesbian
Being dysphoric about the
parts of you that make straight men think your body is owed to them,
having to figure out what that dysphoria means for/to you
Knowing
you’re attracted to women, but feeling weirdly guilty and uncomfortable
trying to interact with them as a straight man, and only later
realizing you’re actually a trans lesbian
Knowing you’re gay, but experiencing a lot of the symptoms of comp het
when you try to interact with men romantically/sexually, and only later
realizing you’re a trans lesbian and not a gay man
Being
nonbinary and taking a long time to sort through being able to
respect/understand your nonbinary identity and your lesbianness at the
same time
Considering lesbianism
Wanting to be a lesbian but feeling like if you don’t already know you are one you can’t be
Feeling
guilty about wanting to be a lesbian, feeling like you’re just
attention-seeking or trying to be trendy
Suppressing your lesbian
dreams because you think exploring that desire would mean you’re a
bad/homophobic person using lesbianness selfishly
Wishing you were a lesbian to escape the discomfort of dating men
Fantasizing
about how much fun it would be to be a lesbian and just be with women/a
specific woman, but thinking that can’t be for you
Worrying that some of your past attraction to men was actually real so you can’t be a lesbian
Worrying that bc you can’t be 100% sure you’re not attracted to men and can’t be 100% sure you won’t change your mind, you can’t be a lesbian
Worrying that you only want to be a lesbian because of trauma and that means your lesbianness would be Fake
Worrying that trauma-induced complications in how you experience sex (e.g., a habit of self-harming via sex w men or a fear of any sex at all) mean you’re not a Real Lesbian
Every item on this list is common among Real Lesbians. It’s all Normal Lesbian Stuff. If you’re worried that you can’t be a lesbian even though it’s the life you really want for yourself, I hope this gives you permission to explore that. You are allowed to be a lesbian.
And if you’re not sure yet – if you took the time to read this entire thing because you’re curious about your identity, if you identified with a bunch of items on this list – you may or may not be a lesbian, but friend, you almost certainly aren’t cishet. Welcome.
(I’d love to hear other things lesbians wish you’d known were A Thing when you were first exploring your identity!)
It’s about time someone got around to uncovering all the cheat codes for this “human being” software. It’s only been out for like 10,000 years.
?????????????
I’ve used this technique for about a year, and I can safely say that it has efficiently transformed my sleeping habits from several hours of struggle to fall asleep, to passing out in a matter of minutes.
It’s a form of Alexander Technique. It’s a technique that was designed for actors to keep their body in ready working condition and give it the best way to perform. This is the method used to calm, and center the body. Once the body is at that point it can perform anything you want it to.
Reblogging for later reference after I tried it earlier today to try to calm down. It actually does help a lot, not just for sleep but if you have problems with anxiety.
My default mental setting is “vibrating intensely in the background.” After doing this, I felt noticeably calm and relaxed – I wasn’t as fixated on my breathing, I wasn’t tense, my movements weren’t jerky and I didn’t feel like I had to be as tense as possible to be under control. 10/10 would recommend.
me gonna try it
dont wanna reblog but insomnia is a bitch for some ppl so heres for my mutuals having trouble sleeping.
gentiles on this website: “The Old Testament God is cruel and vengeful!” actual Jews in my synagogue yesterday: “My favorite part of the reading is when it says the Torah is not in heaven so it’s too far to reach, it’s not across the sea so we can’t get it, but that it’s in our hearts… the idea of having that be so close, of being so close to something divine, that thrills me.” “And here, where it says ‘the Lord will delight in you as he did in your fathers’, that’s such a beautiful thing. You know, God is this all-powering being, and God delights in us.”
gentiles on this website: “You can’t be an atheist and religious!” actual Jews in my synagogue yesterday: “I’m just not buying any of this. I was born during the Holocaust and I could never wrap my mind around this omnipotent all-seeing God, and usually I’m a little moved by this, I try to be hopeful, but when I look around the world now, I just don’t buy it! If I really believed there was a God, I would resent him.” [still wears a prayer shawl and attends synagogue regularly]
gentiles on this website: “Religious people never question what they’re told, they just followed blindly!” my actual rabbi: “Sometimes the Torah can be like an older relative whom we love dearly, and who has a lot of wisdom to give, but who also says things that cause us pain, that we find offensive or wrong. And I think the wrong instinct would be to pretend we don’t hear what they’re saying, or to cut them out entirely, or to be guided by them into thinking and behaving in offensive ways. What we need to do is engage the Torah. We need to wrestle with it, and try to understand it, to figure out where it’s coming from and learn how we can progress from it, because the Torah is not unchanging. It belongs in each of our hearts, and it changes for us as we study it, as each generation challenges its old assumptions.”
When I was a teenager on the internet looking at adult content, the fear was that some “concerned” parent would stumble across any of the relatively small fan communities and raise hell with the ISP until it was shut down.
Now I’m a grown-ass adult, and the fear is that the teenagers themselves will threaten, doxx, bully, and harass content creators off of large social media sites who have entire legal teams dedicated to covering their asses because their parents have done such a shit job teaching them internet saftey that they operate under the delusion that the entirety of the worldwide web was created as some “safe space” for minors rather than the godamned seedy back alley it has always been.
I don’t like overgeneralizing teenagers, I mean many anti-antis are teenagers, many of my followers are teenagers. But when talking about broad generational differences I believe Roach Patrol or one of their friends once said something kinda potent about how being born after the world trade center attack could shape the beliefs of some people into thinking it’s normal for any freedoms or potential dangers to be squashed in the name of public safety.
The rational here being that they were kinda born into a world where that is widely the response to danger.
But I think many people now are aware that a lot of the extra security we’ve put in place since 9/11 is mostly for show so that people feel safe, ie; security theater.
So sometimes what antis are asking for amounts to security theater for the Internet. Where they think that if we can squash these fan fictions, fan arts and pairings the world will have less rapists, domestic abusers and child molesters.
I may have been responsible for the ur-post of the 9/11 Generational Hypothesis. Or one iteration of it, anyway; I assume it’s been suggested independently multiple times. I’ve seen some of the critiques that have emerged since, many of them sensible, others not so much, but the one that’s stuck with me is: the people who are old enough to remember 9/11 are just as susceptible to the black-and-white fear mentality; hell, we’re the ones who inflicted it on the next generation. The difference is that we have an alternate mental model available. If a bunch of the kids who are just starting to graduate college have trouble conceptualizing it as anything but Bad People Danger World, well, they’re not the ones whose choices brought that about.
I’ve grown fond of that description of the problem because I like problems that suggest their own solutions.
In any case, “security theater for the internet” is a fucking brilliant summation of this particular instance of the problem.
just moving along like everyone else 