“genitalia associated with cis women are harshly stigmatized and policed as part of misogyny, which can lead to violence” and “not all women have vaginas and not everyone with a vagina is a woman” and “trans peoples’ bodies are harshly stigmatized and policed as part of transphobia, which can lead to violence” are not mutually exclusive factsx and in fact all of these things are very much interlinked, and should not be used as gotchas! against each other
One thing I’ve learned in life, if you act really self-assured and confident you can pretty much get away with anything.
For example, I’ve watched someone walk on to a plane with no passport. Just walked right on.
Once walked out of a dude’s house with a pair of his pants slung over my shoulder. Did all the usual eye-contact, saying-goodbye movements and noises, just… while stealing his pants. He did not notice.
I told my English teacher that she graded my final paper(I did not turn one in) and that she told me it was well written. She scrambled 3 days trying to find the nonexistent paper, then apologized to me for losing it and gave me a 96%. Confidence is key
my dad’s mate just walked out of a shop with a canoe and didn’t get questioned
Humans are like bees: if they sense you’re an intruder all hell will break loose, but if you get inside the hive they just assume you belong there. Be confident.
Bee confident
This is funny but also true, and a huge tip when traveling. Act like you belong, and you won’t be bothered like other tourists might. Especially on public transportation… do your research ahead of time and look like a disinterested commuter and you’ll blend right in.
Fun Fact about Bees: they use pheromones to communicate and the pheromone to signal ALARMisthe same chemical that makes bananas smell like bananas so if you eat a banana and then breathe on a beehive you will regret it and this seemed relevant when i started writing it
Another realization: “disgust as morality” leads directly to “mere exposure leads to moral decay”
As you are exposed to something frequently, you become acclimatized to it. It stops eliciting disgust. This happens with everything from gore to porn.
There has been research after research showing that fictional depictions don’t lower empathy for real victims or decrease the perceived severity of the crime, but it does lower disgust reactions at fictional depictions of it.
To antis, this lack of disgust is the normalization they are fighting against, because disgust is how you know something is wrong. If you no longer feel disgust, your morality is compromised.
That’s what I mean when I say antis resemble Puritan Christian morality. Christianity has so many conflicting instructions regarding morality, and many areas where it’s flat-out vague. And yet they know exactly what is good and natural, and what is horrifying and sinful.
How? It’s disgusting.
Antis are impossible to argue with, because the logical arguments are made post hoc to defend what they already know: this disgusts me because it is wrong. The disgust is the true basis of their argument, and no reasoned argument will touch it.
“There has been research after research showing that fictional depictions don’t lower empathy for real victims or decrease the perceived severity of the crime, but it does lower disgust reactions at fictional depictions of it.”
This. This is another reason we have to fight.
Because disgust is a messy and destructive emotion, it doesn’t target perpetrators of violence – it leads to victim blaming.
Disgust is not empathy. It is a source of harm to vulnerable people. Reducing it is good.
I guess I have some…quibbles with this? Disgust is, in fact, a healthy emotion. It’s foundational to the human emotional spectrum and is extremely useful to human survival instincts. Often, you can’t control whether or not you feel it. And it’s okay to feel it. It means that your lizard brain is trying to protect you from a hazardous, unsanitary, or unwanted situation.
What you do with it, however, is what can lead to trouble. And that’s true of any emotion, even positive emotions. And, like any emotion, disgust can be a tool through which you experience empathy, but it’s not the same as empathy itself. It’s a tool that you have in your emotional toolbox, and you need to learn how to use it. Even if your lizard brain is screaming in repulsion, you thankfully have your human cognitive functions with which you can decide how – or even if – you should manifest your disgust.
You need to ask yourself: is my disgust warranted, or is it my lizard brain having a kneejerk reaction? Will showing my disgust hurt anyone, or otherwise harm them? To whom can I show my disgust, and where is it appropriate to express?
One example that comes to mind is the medical field. A doctor might have to clean out a pus-filled wound, for example. Is it normal and healthy to feel disgust in that situation? Totally! Your lizard brain is telling you that it’s unsanitary and that you ought to stay away. However, because doctors have taken an oath to help people, they do not let themselves express their disgust in front of a patient – or, at least, the good ones don’t. For a doctor to treat a patient or their problems as disgusting is unethical and sometimes even abusive. Often, instead, they channel that pent up emotion into dark humour that they share privately with fellow doctors so as not to upset or hurt the patient. So there’s a big gap between the feeling, which is often involuntary, and the expression of that feeling, which is voluntary.
That’s where we get into emotional regulation. Learning emotional regulation doesn’t mean changing what you feel, it means changing how you process the feeling, both internally and externally. And it’s true: often people who’ve experienced trauma have a very hard time with emotional regulation, because the trauma has changed their neural pathways. Children and teenagers also have a very hard time with emotional regulation, because their neural pathways are still developing.* However, it can be learned. As with anything, practise makes perfect.
Disgust is not the same as morality, this is true, and if you let your disgust dictate what you believe to be moral or immoral, you’ll very often end up hurting others and making a hypocrite out of yourself. However, you are still allowed to feel disgust. You’re not a bad person for feeling disgusted. It does not, in and of itself, hurt anyone, because it’s just a neural response to stimuli. What you do with that neural response is what hurts people. Using disgust as a weapon in order to shame others is harmful. Using disgust as a foundation for ethics is harmful. That is what needs to be reduced, and it can be reduced by practising emotional regulation.
Don’t just react. Talk yourself through it. Kneejerk reactions do not make you a more ethical person, they just make you a more impulsive person.
* I’d wager that this is why so many antis are very reactionary. They’re usually young and often have experienced traumatic situations, which is a double whammy on their regulatory abilities.
Any emotion can be dangerous and harmful to yourself and others if taken to an unhealthy extreme; so I agree, disgust is a healthy emotion to have– it is vital to our survival even now, despite being “civilized.”
So calling a specific emotion dangerous or harmful just because some people take it too an extreme and cannot handle this specific emotion or their emotions in general isn’t a good thing to do.
Anger can be a harmful emotion– but it’s healthy to accept it and learn how to handle it to the point you do not harm yourself or others.
So, the emotion disgust isn’t at fault here– it’s the people who have not learned how to understand or handle their emotions, or someone who has such a huge fear regarding disgust they simply cannot control it, and thus need some type of professional help.
You know who isn’t disgusted by a serious problem? The people who actually fix it. A surgeon is not disgusted by putting their hands in a person’s guts, because they had to train away that emotion in order to do their job and save lives. A therapist is not disgusted by all the nasty shit that goes through your head, because they’re the person responsible for talking you through how to keep living and be a good and happy person in spite of that. Hell, a sanitation worker isn’t disgusted by your piles of garbage because it’s their job to get rid of that shit and keep the streets clean. Being disgusted by something is a sure sign that you’re not helping with that thing.
So for example, take pornography. There’s no question that there is some evil, despicable shit going on in that industry. But the people who are disgusted by porn, they don’t do jack shit to prevent abuse or stop sex trafficking or bring down criminal producers, because they’re too busy being nauseated by the idea that a woman might choose to be a sex worker and piling the entire industry, criminals and victims and honest folk alike, in the same category of ‘gross therefore evil’. The only way to actually help any of those victims or end any of those crimes is to look at the whole industry without being blinded by your disgust and sort out what’s actually happening.
Yeah, this.
I’m not saying “never find anything disgusting and you’re doing something wrong if you do”. Like, I am disgusted by things too! I can’t handle cleaning out slimy mold from things, for example – it makes me gag no matter how many gloves I wear.
But disgust is a barrier against fixing the problem. It’s harmful the way depression is harmful – it can be a completely understandable and blameless response to your circumstances, but if it dominates your life, those circumstances won’t get better. And it’s one thing to accept that negative experience as a neutral condition of your life and another thing to try to trap others in it. (See also: pro-eating-disorder communities.)
So teaching andenforcing disgust, telling other people “you should be disgusted”, etc, is what I’m decrying here. Telling people that they’re a bad person if they’re not disgusted by something – i.e. if they develop the kind of emotional regulation skills that @bai-xue is talking about, to move through it – that’s an act of harm.
There is a specific and terrifying difference between “never were” monsters and “are not anymore” monsters
“The thing that was not a deer” implies a creature which mimics a deer but imperfectly and the details which are wrong are what makes it terrifying
“The thing that was not a deer anymore” on the other hand implies a thing that USED to be a deer before it was somehow mutated, possessed, parasitically controlled or reanimated improperly and what makes THAT terrifying is the details that are still right and recognizable poking out of all the wrong and horrible malformations.
hey I totally fucked up and forgot the 3rd type, which is “Is Not Anymore And Maybe Never Was” monsters
“The thing which was no longer a deer and maybe never was” implies a creature that, at first glance, completely appears to be a deer, but over time degrades very slowly until you realize (probably too late) that it is not a deer anymore, and had you seen it in this state first, you wouldn’t have recognized it as a deer at all, and there’s a decent chance that it was never actually a deer to begin with but only a very good mimic, and what makes this one scary is the slow change from everything being right to everything being wrong, happening slowly enough that you don’t even notice it until its too late, as well as the fact that something now so clearly not a deer could have fooled you to begin with.
And the fourth type, which is, “I dunno, but it sure ain’t a deer.” Which implies complete confusion about what the creature could be, to the point that even a person as comfortable in this world as someone who would use the word ain’t unironically is uncertain, which should horrify you to the deepest depths of your soul.
Stop all that “you attract what you are ready for” shit. Sometimes life is just terrible. It’s not always my fault.
“Life never gives you more than you can handle.” Yes, it does.
“People are placed in your life to teach you a valuable lesson that helps your soul on its way to enlightenment.” No, there are a just a lot of people who feel empowered when they act like assholes. We live in that kind of society.
“You keep finding yourself in the same situation because you haven’t discovered the message the universe is trying to send to you yet.” Sometimes unpleasant things are stuck on repeat, because you have a mental or physical condition, and it is a symptom. Symptoms are like that.
“The truth always hurts.” No, it doesn’t, and what hurts often isn’t the truth, but is instead someone’s biased opinion.
I really appreciate this comment. Thank you thank you thank you.
This is what I need to hear. I blamed myself for so long for the abuse I endured and for attracting the people that hurt me.
OK “the truth hurts” is a maxim that needs to die. It teaches us that “truth=pain” so when someone tells us something hurtful, we assume it must be true. Conversely, when someone says something nice to us, it must be a lie because truth hurts, right?
I can’t begin to calculate how many people have suffered because they assume someone who hurts them must be telling them the truth
Because some of them will be cool people and you will benefit from a world in which they are happy and make amazing things. This is true for basically everyone. If the distinguishing feature of the group is not “actively harming other people”, then caring about the group is useful.
Furthermore, everyone benefits from a society in which there are not special unprotected classes who do not enjoy basic civil rights, safety, etcetera. Because if there are such classes, everyone could potentially end up categorized as being in one of them. Not everyone beaten to death for “being gay” was actually gay!
That, and… If you want the 100% pure self-interest answer, in general, the correct answer is “the best strategy will be to consistently, persistently, and at multiple levels of motivation and decision-making, act as though you have goals other than 100% self-interest”. If the perception that you are motivated by 100% self-interest is every anything but a theoretical pure abstraction that obviously has nothing to do with how you behave, or your long-term goals as inferred from your actions and statements, you will probably be fucked over really badly by this. Because it is absolutely in everyone else’s best interests that (most) people who are motivated by 100% pure self-interest are fucked over as much as possible at all times, because any power they get will consistently harm other people.
So if you want to be happy and successful, care about other people, and oppose marginalization of humans at all times and with significant energy.
it’s all you americans talk about… liminal space this… cryptid that
america is big, we got.,.,.,. its a lot happening here
It’s at least 3,000 miles just from the East Coast to the West, depending on where you start.
If I try to drive from here in Maine to New Mexico, it’s 2,400 miles.
From here to Oregon, 800 miles from my current residence to my relatives in NJ, then another 3,000 miles after that.
A brisk 8 day drive that meanders through mountains, forests, corn fields, dry, flat, empty plains, more mountains, and then a temperate rain forest in Oregon.
The land has some seriously creepy stuff, even just right outside our doors.
There is often barking sounds on the other side of our back door.
At 3 am.
When no one would let their dog out.
It’s a consensus not to even look out the fucking windows at night.
Especially during the winter months.
Nothing chills your heart faster than sitting in front of a window and hearing footsteps breaking through the snow behind you, only to look and not see anything.
I live in a tiny town whose distance from larger cities ranges from 30 miles, to 70 miles. What is in between?
Giant stretches of forests, swamps, pockets of civilization, more trees, farms, wildlife, and winding roads. All of which gives the feeling of nature merely tolerating humans, and that we are one frost heave away from our houses being destroyed, one stretch of undergrowth away from our roads being pulled back into the earth.
And almost every night, we have to convince ourselves that the popping, echoing gunshot sounds are really fireworks, because we have no idea what they might be shooting at.
There’s a reason Stephen King sets almost all his stories in Maine.
New Mexico, stuck under Colorado, next to Texas, and uncomfortably close to Arizona. I grew up there. The air is so dry your skin splits and doesn’t bleed. Coyotes sing at night. It starts off in the distance, but the response comes from all around. The sky, my gods, the sky. In the day it is vast and unfeeling. At night the stars show how little you truly are.
This is the gentle stuff. I’m not going to talk about the whispered tales from those that live on, or close, to the reservations. I’m not going to go on about the years of drought, or how the ground gives way once the rain falls. The frost in the winter stays in the shadows, you can see the line where the sun stops. It will stay there until spring. People don’t tell you about the elevation, or how thin the air truly is. The stretches of empty road with only husks of houses to dot the side of the horizon. There’s no one around for miles except those three houses. How do they live out here? The closest town is half an hour away and it’s just a gas station with a laundry attached.
No one wants to be there. They’re just stuck. It has a talent for pulling people back to it. I’ve been across the country for years, but part of me is still there. The few that do get out don’t return. A visit to family turns into an extended stay. Car troubles, a missed flight, and then suddenly there’s a health scare. Can’t leave Aunt/Uncle/Grandparent alone in their time of need. It’s got you.
Roswell is a joke. A failed National Inquirer article slapped with bumperstickers and half-assed tourist junk. The places that really run that chill down the spine are in the spaces between the sprawling mesas and hidden arroyos. Stand at the top of the Carlsbad Caverns trail. Look a mile down into the darkness. Don’t step off the path. just don’t.
The Land of Entrapment
here in minnesota we’re making jokes about how bad is the limescale in your sink
pretending we don’t know we’re sitting on top of limestone caverns filled with icy water
pretending we don’t suspect something lives down there
dammit jesse now I want to read about the things that live down there
meanwhile in maryland the summer is killing-hot, the air made of wet flannel, white heat-haze glazing the horizon, and the endless cicadas shrilling in every single tree sound like a vast engine revving and falling off, revving and falling off, slow and repeated, and everything is so green, lush poison-green, and you could swear you can hear the things growing, hear the fibrous creak and swell of tendrils flexing
and sometimes in the old places, the oldest places, where the salt-odor of woodsmoke and tobacco never quite go away, there is unexplained music in the night, and you should not try to find out where it’s coming from.
The intense and permanent haunting of a land upon which countess horrors have been visited, and that is too large and wild for us to really comprehend is probably the most intense and universal American feeling.
it’s all you americans talk about… liminal space this… cryptid that
america is big, we got.,.,.,. its a lot happening here
It’s at least 3,000 miles just from the East Coast to the West, depending on where you start.
If I try to drive from here in Maine to New Mexico, it’s 2,400 miles.
From here to Oregon, 800 miles from my current residence to my relatives in NJ, then another 3,000 miles after that.
A brisk 8 day drive that meanders through mountains, forests, corn fields, dry, flat, empty plains, more mountains, and then a temperate rain forest in Oregon.
The land has some seriously creepy stuff, even just right outside our doors.
There is often barking sounds on the other side of our back door.
At 3 am.
When no one would let their dog out.
It’s a consensus not to even look out the fucking windows at night.
Especially during the winter months.
Nothing chills your heart faster than sitting in front of a window and hearing footsteps breaking through the snow behind you, only to look and not see anything.
I live in a tiny town whose distance from larger cities ranges from 30 miles, to 70 miles. What is in between?
Giant stretches of forests, swamps, pockets of civilization, more trees, farms, wildlife, and winding roads. All of which gives the feeling of nature merely tolerating humans, and that we are one frost heave away from our houses being destroyed, one stretch of undergrowth away from our roads being pulled back into the earth.
And almost every night, we have to convince ourselves that the popping, echoing gunshot sounds are really fireworks, because we have no idea what they might be shooting at.
There’s a reason Stephen King sets almost all his stories in Maine.
New Mexico, stuck under Colorado, next to Texas, and uncomfortably close to Arizona. I grew up there. The air is so dry your skin splits and doesn’t bleed. Coyotes sing at night. It starts off in the distance, but the response comes from all around. The sky, my gods, the sky. In the day it is vast and unfeeling. At night the stars show how little you truly are.
This is the gentle stuff. I’m not going to talk about the whispered tales from those that live on, or close, to the reservations. I’m not going to go on about the years of drought, or how the ground gives way once the rain falls. The frost in the winter stays in the shadows, you can see the line where the sun stops. It will stay there until spring. People don’t tell you about the elevation, or how thin the air truly is. The stretches of empty road with only husks of houses to dot the side of the horizon. There’s no one around for miles except those three houses. How do they live out here? The closest town is half an hour away and it’s just a gas station with a laundry attached.
No one wants to be there. They’re just stuck. It has a talent for pulling people back to it. I’ve been across the country for years, but part of me is still there. The few that do get out don’t return. A visit to family turns into an extended stay. Car troubles, a missed flight, and then suddenly there’s a health scare. Can’t leave Aunt/Uncle/Grandparent alone in their time of need. It’s got you.
Roswell is a joke. A failed National Inquirer article slapped with bumperstickers and half-assed tourist junk. The places that really run that chill down the spine are in the spaces between the sprawling mesas and hidden arroyos. Stand at the top of the Carlsbad Caverns trail. Look a mile down into the darkness. Don’t step off the path. just don’t.
The Land of Entrapment
here in minnesota we’re making jokes about how bad is the limescale in your sink
pretending we don’t know we’re sitting on top of limestone caverns filled with icy water
pretending we don’t suspect something lives down there
i’ve mentioned this here before, but it will remain one of the most ideologically influential experiences of my life: when i was in fifth grade i did a report on post traumatic stress as manifested in veterans of the vietnam war, and my father did me the huge favor of connecting me w/ a vietnam vet friend of his who was diagnosed with PTSD, assuring him that while i was only ten i was bright and curious and he should be as honest with me about his experience as possible.
i remember entering his office with my tape recorder, sitting in a chair that was too big, and asking him questions about war, and his life after war, while swinging my legs over the edge of the chair. i remember being very, very quiet as he spoke of pulling the car over on the highway for fear of crashing when his hands would shake uncontrollably in response to song on the radio or a smell that he couldn’t be sure was real or sense-memory. and of ruined relationships and anger and american hypocrisy.
and i also remember that was the day i learned what “valor” meant. he used “valor” in a sentence and i didn’t know that word, and when i asked him to explain “valor” he became very quiet. and i can’t remember precisely what he said, if he ever offered me the dictionary definition or not, but i do remember him looking very sad, and saying something about our country’s idea of “valor”, and also something about a broken promise. and there was an edge to his words that i couldn’t parse at the time that i would later come to understand was bitterness, that he sounded bitter.
to this day i can’t hear or read the word “valor” without seeing sunlight coming through his office window at a slant, close-to-sunset light, and feeling the kind of quiet, confused, completely internalized panic a child feels when they sense that a grown up is trying very hard not to weep in their presence.
just moving along like everyone else 