Cannot recommend WDHDT highly enough. I’ve found it helpful not just for romantic relationships, but also for growing up w a “unexplainable/uncontrollable” dad.
IT HAS ALSO BEEN REALLY HELPFUL FOR UNDERSTANDING ONLINE MOB HARASSMENT.
So if you’ve ever been bombarded w threats to be raped/killed, (so…if you’re a minority and you’ve been on the Internet for a while), this book might be useful for getting clarity around the whole entitled, abusive mindset that drives certain kinds of people to behave that way. And by “getting clarity”, I mean (for me) being able to go “oh, that’s what’s happening” and not really feel scared anymore. Or angry, or drawn out into it, or anything.
And if you’re still standing around going “but how does something like GamerGate happen?” or “but why do men hit their wives?” or whatever – please read that book and learn something.
^^^^ truth WDHDT is fantastic at cutting down MRA bullshit and calling it what it really is
Please consider reading these. WDHDT is really, really helpful. And I know some of you are struggling with abusive relationships, friendships, families, etc. You’re not alone. There is help.
Yo. This family holiday, please, please take care of yourself. You aren’t there to be anybody else’s cushion.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
Reading any of these books does not mean you don’t love your parents or family. It’s just self care for helping you cope and not repeat the behaviors.
On a related note: we need to talk about the inaccessibility of homeless shelters.
This is relevant to a lot of groups. Shelters are often run by Christian groups and unwelcoming of LGBT people, for starters, or in a less obvious route they will often accept LGBT people into their shelters but do little to nothing to combat homophobic and transphobic harassment or violence that takes place within them. Sometimes that violence doesn’t happen inside- but in queues or simply within groups of people who frequent them. But the shelters know, and they know that they build up a reputation for not being safe for LGBT people, and they do nothing about it deliberately.
The buildings themselves are often inaccessible, especially with DV shelters. They’re built to be inconspicuous and often have stair cases just to enter the building- never mind that disabled people experience higher rates of abuse.
Most shelters will boot you out for drinking or consuming drugs, whether it be on premises or simply be that you are effected by it while on premises.
Plus, shelters often ignore violence and harassment towards those who are noticeably mentally ill. Many have strict rules such as enforced curfews, anti-swearing policies, etc. that often make mentally ill people feel unsafe and unwelcome. Imagine experiencing paranoia at the same moment that someone tells you you’re not allowed to get out of bed- in spite of being an adult who has paid for the privilege of being there.
And then, of course, is the big one. Shelters in my city vary costs between $12 and $30 a night. The money is used in part to fund the shelter, and in part as a form of triage to decide /who to turn away/, because there aren’t enough beds. Imagine not being able to afford to spend even a dollar on getting yourself something to eat but somehow having to scrounge up $30 to be able to sleep indoors that night. Seriously.
The shelter system is not ‘charitable’. Religious groups receive huge tax cuts for running them and still charge a fucking entry fee. This is a privatized business. They might claim they aren’t making a profit, but that’s /before you take the tax breaks into account/. Nothing about this system is designed to protect or serve vulnerable people, but to create the image of ‘helping’ while saving some cash.
@dreagentry oh fuck I forgot the underage bit! Yes! Okay, in my state you legally can not be forced to return to your family (or foster care) once you are over the age of 13. But in spite of that, you also can’t legally sign a lease, consent to just about any kind of guardianship situation without the signature of your legal guardians, and access the vast majority of shelters. Because legally you’re considered too high risk. And yeah, the few that will take in someone underage are usually the hyper religious ones.
Please reblog this complete version with this addition:
I failed to mention racism in discussing ways in which shelters are inaccessible, which really isn’t good enough. I don’t have the personal experience to comment on the ways in which this manifests, but shelters are 100% built for white people and that inaccessibility is a major issue which needs to be acknowledged.
in response to the crisis going on in chechnya right now, i wanted to underline how important it is to understand the complexity of russian homophobia, which has proven to be distinct from many western strains of homophobia due to historical circumstances. historically, same-sex attraction has been seen as non-russian due to its connection to bourgeois decadence of the west (which opposed proletarian values), as well as long-term invisibility of the LGBT+ community under stalin and its sudden reemergence in the 90s (when the soviet union collapsed) which shapes much of contemporary homophobia. there are also other factors, such as promotion of hypermasculinity within the soviet union after WWII and the generally sexphobic culture prevalent under the regime. while biological arguments (”it’s unnatural”) and religion have also played a role in modern russian homophobia, it is the association of LGBT+ existence with the west that has causes the most retaliation against LGBT+ activism. (we can see this most evidently with sochi olympics and now with the chechnya crisis; external activist efforts are rejected because ‘the west is trying to meddle with russian politics/values’ and internal efforts are rejected because ‘they’re brainwashed by the west’)
since i just finished my massive research paper on russian lgbt+ history, here are a few sources that i would highly recommend for learning more about how russia came to be so homophobic:
DAN HEALEY (aka the champion of russian LGBT+ history):
Book: Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent– excellent and meticulously detailed overview of the complexities of russian LGBT+ lives at the beginning of the 20th century; discusses both progressiveness of lenin’s regime and the violent repression and erasure of LGBT+ identity under stalin, as well as so much more
Journal: HOMOSEXUAL EXISTENCE AND EXISTING SOCIALISM: New Light on the Repression of Male Homosexuality in Stalin’s Russia; a more brief overview than the book; may be more easily accessible. strongly recommend if you’re interested in history and want a starting point for learning about early soviet politics and how they affected LGBT+ lives
BRIAN BAER:
Book: Other Russias: Homosexuality and the Crisis of Post-Soviet Identity; excellent examination in the role that invisibility of the LGBT+ community (due to stalin’s repression and sudden reappearance in the 80s and 90s after gorbachev’s reforms) has played in making russians believe that same-sex attraction is a product of western infiltration into russian society. offers excellent criticisms of discourse surrounding russian LGBT+ issues by western scholars.
DAVID TULLER:
Book: Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay and Lesbian Russia; offers a more accessible insight into russian LGBT+ society through recounting the author’s travels. over all a good book, but is not as far reaching or deeply analytical as some of the other sources. there’s a preview on google books, so you can easily skim through it.
MULTIPLE AUTHORS:
Book: Out of the Blue: Russia’s Hidden Gay Literature; An Anthology (ed. Kevin Moss); a wonderful read revealing numerous hidden gay/LGBT+ figures throughout russian literary scene. you’ll be surprised to find how many of the famous russian authors and poets were not straight.
Book: Gender in Russian History and Culture (ed. Edmondson); features a chapter by my man Healey discussing lesbianism and the medical/endocrinological discoveries of the 1910s-1920s that shaped russian discourse on homosexuality later on, as well as many interesting discussions about womanhood in russian and early soviet society.
if you went to discuss anything with me or have any questions about russian LGBT+ history, homophobia, or things about my personal experience as a same-gender attracted russian & ukrainian woman, my inbox/IM is available (just keep in mind that this is a highly sensitive subject for me and there may be some things i’m not comfortable disclosing)
Yes, i have a question. Why is the west always to blame for everything in the eyes of non-western countries? And why is homosexuality associated with the west in non-western countries?
Ok I cannot speak for yelyzaveta’s situation but since you are talking about non-western countries in general:
1. It’s not true everyone in non-western countries blames the west for everything. There is plenty of acknowledgement that the problems we face are complex and that inasmuch as we were affected by Western imperialism, we too had agency and it is not as simple.
2. HOWEVER, that rhetoric has at times been weaponised by certain politicians who wish to appeal to the notion that being LGBT+ is inherently foreign and alien, against our ‘traditional culture’ and therefore justifiably rejected. This is what I have encountered as an East & SEAsian. This is of course not true; same gender relationships are well-documented in Chinese history even as far back as the Han dynasty, for example. But it is a cheap and easy rhetoric to use in countries that either had a) a prior experience of Western imperialism/colonialism b) are in some ways seeing themselves opposed to some concept of ‘the West.’ The reason for this opposition differs depending on the country of course, but some sense of opposing Western-ness in general can feed this mentality. Unfortunately, as I’ve seen in my own family, a number of people fall for it.
3. One common reason they see it as emanating from ‘Western’ culture because for example, if I compare UK and Malaysia, the UK is a lot more progressive on LGBT+ rights today. These things are associated with Western-ness. The fact that many major human rights organisations that criticise these abuses are headquartered in Western countries feeds their claim that it is ‘cultural imperialism’ (as a side note, this is why it is extremely important to give visibility and awareness to the many non-western human rights and LGBT+ activists from those very countries). This, I must emphasise, is not only erasure of history but exceedingly ironic, and not only because LGBT+ people have existed in our societies throughout history. Because the UK in the past used to treat same gender attraction as either criminal or a mental illness. It has changed today because of the efforts of activists. But many of our countries that used to be part of the British Empire actually still have the homophobic colonial-era laws enacted by colonial governments in the books. Like section 377. Our societies were not necessarily utopian or totally accepting of LGBT+ people before that, but those British colonial laws are in fact used to oppress people today and did play a role in institutionalising homophobia as it exists in the present day. But that colonial origin is often conveniently forgotten by people who claim LGBT+ rights are ‘western’, and instead we get a reductive idea that LGBT+ rights is a ‘Western’ idea because of the modern situation.
I will underscore that the exact nuances of this narrative that ‘LGBT+ rights = foreign Western idea that should be rejected’ also takes on different nuances and contours, depending on the society in question.
The fact that this woman continues to have professional success is proof that there is no justice in the universe.
Trotting all this out again in light of her newest plagarism bullshit :))) It’s shit like this that keeps me ALIVE and living.
omg, sometimes I go a long time between re-reading and I somehow FORGET the dept of the batshit WTAF of the Msscribe sockpuppet saga, like HOW DO I FORGET, it is INCREDIBLE
Oh my god THERE’S NEW CASSIE CLARE PLAGIARISM SHIT GOING DOWN? SOMEBODY LINK ME
This is a great book, all about the work of spinning and weaving, how it developed, and how and why it was women’s work. It makes the great point that women’s work is ephemeral – food, cloth, it’s all things that don’t survive archaeologically, so that it’s something that gets overlooked. The author also knows how to weave herself, and has tried out weaving some ancient cloths, pointing out that it’s only by doing something like that that you can work out practical issues.
One of the things that was really great was the author pointing out that the most plausible reconstruction for the Venus de Milo is of her spinning:
Even better, is that since the book has been written, an artist who makes 3D printed sculpture has made a 3D model of what she would have looked like – and you can buy one for yourself:
anyway, you gotta think that experience will stay with him. all these people clutching him like family, desperate for him to live, simply because he’s a human being and that alone is precious beyond price.
Ancient Egypt was repeatedly attacked by
a mysterious army of massive warships.
The raiders suddenly showed up around
1250 BCE and continued attacking until
they were defeated by Ramesses III. No
record of them exists past 1178 BCE,
and scholars continue to debate theories
about where they went, where they came
from, and who they were- so everyone
just calls them the Sea Peoples. SourceSource 2Source 3
*puts on historian hat*
Okay but this fails to mention the fact that this was part of an enormous phenomenon called the Bronze Age Collapse, which affected basically every civilization in the region.
It’s not just that Ancient Egypt got attacked by unknown people who we refer to currently as the Sea Peoples. It’s that some sort of mysterious Bad Stuff involving unspecified raiders was going down everywhere. Egypt fragmented under the pressure, while the Mycenaean kingdoms and the Hittite empire collapsed entirely. Cities all up and down Asia Minor were destroyed completely. Think of it as an early equivalent to the fall of the Roman Empire: a collapse so monumental that it left an actual dark age in its wake.
The aspect of this collapse that laypeople are most familiar with is probably the destruction of Troy.
Okay, history rant over.
*puts on tiny snake-of-history hat*
Not all historians think the Bronze Age Collapse was as simple as “The Sea Peoples did it” however, particularly these days.
Here are Two videos of two talks by the same guy (Eric Cline) discussing the event and its larger context. He’s pretty funny in a Dad-Joke sort of way :p He’s not the only scholar who thinks this, obvsl, but he’s written a fairly successful lay-audience book on the subject, and he does a good job of summarizing the alternate arguments.
just moving along like everyone else 