One thing I have never understood is disdain for / disgust toward sex workers. Even when I was the Christianest Christian I've ever known, I never felt that. (Jesus treated full-service sex workers with respect so Jesus would say "it would be better if you drowned" to the so-called Christians who disdain sex workers -- because that is how you talk to religious bullies)

Last night I watched a scene in a show where a mom of a sick kid listens to a stripper describing how to swallow a pill so that you don't gag, which is something that the kid has been struggling with for months. Instead of being grateful that her kid now has a skill she needed to be healthy, and ashamed that she didn't previously treat the stripper character as a human, the sound faded out like it does in a panic attack. I was honestly worried that she was about to physically attack the stripper character.

In the next scene the mom is flipping the fuck out at someone else in clearly displaced rage. The mom describes her husband (bouncer at the strip club) as working at a job that makes *her* feel demeaned as a woman and as a mother. WHO THE FUCK THINKS LIKE THIS???

And the worst part is, the show writer is obviously sympathetic to that attitude because it is being portrayed as if it is the "natural" response! It's not fucking natural! It's horrifying and it makes no sense! And the stripper's explanation about the pill was clearly being written for "comedic" value because it was almost entirely double entendres including things you would never say to a child, like "just let it happen." This character is a goddamn caricature and I still like her way better than the mom. Your anti-sex-worker bullshit makes you a bad person, period. You are dangerous and gross.

To make it even fucking worse, the husband in the "demeaning" job of bouncer had just saved the stripper from getting raped the night before. She was bringing over a gift basket as thanks. How is your response not "oh my god, my partner's work is actually really important, now I can be happy he has this job, and also I want to offer support to this person who got attacked"?!?!?!? How do you see her as a threat instead?!?!?

I'm kinda over the whole show from this. Ugh. Yet it was really fucking good in the first two seasons. Like, groundbreaking excellence in some ways. *tears hair out*

Content note: general discussion of abuse, social fall-out from talking about abuse, and rape (no specifics)

Most of the caring people I have known rely on the same tool to manage any conflict: compassionate conversation. This is a fantastic tool for many interpersonal conflicts, and it can be life-alteringly good if you had previously only experienced antagonistic or competitive conflict.

However that tool is not a simple one and it simply will not run without all parties contributing respect, a willingness to be wrong, ability and willingness to put in effort, and a desire to create an outcome that is positive for everyone.

I recently got to listen to someone speak about restorative justice, as a concept opposed to punitive justice. I absolutely believe that punishment does nothing good, and that most harm can be best addressed with a focus on healing and providing solutions to the problems that created problematic behavior in the first place. I think there are too many times when we rush to discard a person rather than coming together as a community and explaining the harm they caused and guiding the person to safer behavior.

However, when we discussed it, all the solutions that were mentioned relied on the person who caused harm being willing to acknowledge that harm and work on a solution that would reduce future harm to the victim.

Unfortunately there are many cases where the person who caused harm does not care about the victim, or doesn't care enough to admit to fault or change their behavior. In these cases, a restorative justice approach will often result in further harm to the victim, because rather than doing the work, the abuser will lash out at the victim. They will call this person a liar, and often make up offenses to try and paint themselves as the victim. This happens so often that it has a name: D A R V O: deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.

Which brings me to another practice in social justice which can be skewed to cause harm: believing all victims without checking for truth. I am NOT suggesting that we EVER dismiss a claim out of hand. However, we need to do more than zero checking because if we don't, abusers get to control every situation. All they have to do is make up some shit about actually, they hit that person because the other one hit them first, etc.

When I say check, I don't mean for forensic evidence. I mean, talk to all parties who witnessed it and ask them to tell their version of the story. Then make your own decision about who is dangerous and who is not.

I once was told that a friend of mine, Cliff*, had raped someone. I was not at the place where this happened and I didn't know the victim, but a mutual friend, Mac*, told me (with permission) that this had happened because I had invited Cliff to a cuddle party, where consent is extra important. I was horrified that my friend Cliff might have done this but I also know that consent mistakes exist, and I hoped that there was some kind of explanation or at least remorse and reform.

So I reached out to Cliff and said hey, I have heard about a consent violation you did, can you explain please? Cliff then explained sort of vaguely and made it sound as if something relatively innocuous was all that had happened, and asked what exactly I had heard. I got permission from the victim via Mac and quoted the thing that the victim said that Cliff did (unambiguous rape), and Cliff did not deny it, but asked to move our talk to in person or via phone. I can't hear on the phone and I didn't have the gas money and time to drive to them so I said no.

I asked them to explain themselves further and they didn't -- they just stopped responding. (it didn't occur to me until later that they probably reacted this way to protect themselves legally) From this interaction I decided that Cliff was not a safe person and that it was likely that they did commit rape and then try to pass it off as something else when I confronted them. I waited several months, still hoping they would follow-up and have something worthwhile to say but they did not, so I unfriended them. Later I learned that they were not informing their sex partners about an STD they had, which I believed partly because they now have a history of consent violations.

Which brings me to my suggested community solution, which is listening to all stories and checking to get as much information as possible, then taking protective action if necessary. Whenever there is abuse, it almost always has happened to more than one person. In my opinion, patterns are the best evidence of someone being an abuser, but you can't notice these patterns without checking. And of course, in the meantime ask what you can do to support the person who has told you that they suffered abuse, and do what you can.

Then, when someone has been confirmed as an unrepentant, unchanged abuser, they should be removed from the social circle of the victim if that is what the victim wants. People don't have to stop interacting with the abuser entirely, but any gathering of the victim's social circle should not include them. This is not a punishment, but a protective measure to prevent the victim from being harmed further, and to protect others in the community.

What happens more often is ostracization of the victims, where people other than the abuser are continuously cut out of the social circle because it has become traumatic for them. Abusers should not get safety at the expense of their victims. We have to make a choice to remove the abusers so that we don't remove the victims by default.

*(these names are fake)

I keep thinking about the ways that stranger kindness and friendliness is reserved for those who are:

1) white,
2) "pretty" and/or "well dressed"
3) thinner than average (which is a size 14 btw), and
4) read as gender-conforming.

Recently I was in a coffeeshop and the barista didn't look at me when taking my order and said as few words as possible to me. Then someone that was all four of those things came up to the register and the barista turned on the charm like a light switch.

I am ALWAYS friendly to service workers because I know how shitty it is to have to perform for people who don't return any of that energy. So I try to bring some and give some. I always smile, I always tip, I always give them my full attention. So I know it wasn't a reaction to me. Especially because the next person was mostly talking to their friend.

I don't think the barista had anything against me -- I think I just didn't register as a real person because I am fat, dress weird, and have a very assertive way of carrying myself (not gender-conforming).

For me the biggest change in how strangers treat me happened when I shaved my head. All of a sudden, when I smiled at white strangers they did NOT smile back. I never got casual smiles from white strangers of any age or gender when my hair was very short. (However, black women strangers smiled at me and even complimented my haircut on multiple occasions.)

I still am not sure why a buzz cut would have this much effect on how people treat me, but it really made me think about how much more effort it is to be in public when people look at you with a blank face, or stare. Every single time that happens it sucks away some energy.

And I think about this whenever I see children of color. I notice when older white people smile at young white children and look away or even frown at young children of color just for existing. I don't usually smile at strangers but if a child of color looks at me in a friendly or curious way I do smile. I don't want to be a dead staring face that saps some of their energy.

If I never hear breasts referred to as perky again, it will be too soon. They can't be perky because they are not sentient. Calling them perky is a groveling bow to misogyny because that's what endowed them with sentient characteristics in the first place.

It is no accident that young, immature breasts are usually the ones being called "perky." This is in the same category of language as calling a young person's clothes "provocative." It is stealing agency from the person and giving it to objects as a way of manipulating young people into thinking that they are to blame for being objectified.

Holy fuck the 4th episode of Shrill had me absolutely sobbing with joy. Bodies that look like mine, dancing and swimming and just happily existing in bathing suits and not a goddamn skirted 1-piece in sight.

If you have never been fat and you have hulu, please watch this show. It is literally the only show I have ever seen with multiple fat people in it and where being fat is never a joke and the usual trope of fetishizing food or eating a lot is not present. It's so goddamn real.

[vague spoilers ahead]
I'm so fucking annoyed with the piece of shit boyfriend but also that is such an important story to tell because I did that, and for similar reasons. I put up with greedy, selfish, useless, entitled fuckwads because for so many years it literally did not occur to me that I could say "no" to something my datefriend wanted. I felt like I had to make up for my "inferior" body by accommodating their every whim and soothing their every uncomfortable feeling. And this idea was so deeply embedded that I didn't realize I was thinking it until after I had stopped doing it. While I was doing it I could not recognize it.

Also I don't know if non-fat people would get this, but in the second scene of the first episode, when the barista and customer say that she reminds them of Rosie O'Donnell, that is almost as bad as the overt harassment. It says that the only thing they see is "fat woman." It was a second cut-down by people who were trying to be nice, and for me that hurts so much more. It is worse when people are trying to be nice and they reveal themselves as so ignorant and alienated from your experience that they accidentally stab you.

I don't like that the main character gets so self-involved that she doesn't listen to her friends' needs. I feel like this is a trope when fat (or fat-ish) femme characters start to assert themselves and value their own needs and I think it comes from the writers not actually knowing any people who go from full-time-comfort-blanket to actual-human-who-still-cares.

Every time I go to the gym, I am by far the fattest femme there and usually the fattest person, as well as the only one in a skirt. I feel like I am doing important work because if I was not me, and I saw someone my size and shape doing weight training in a skirt, it would encourage me and make me feel like I belong and like it is okay to be there. I want other femmes and fat people to feel empowered to take up space in a gym. Yesterday I did have a femme person come up and compliment me on my skirt, which made me happy. I'm worried that I gave them a "back the fuck off" look before they said that though because staff members keep on bothering me about it.

On my second visit to the gym one of the workers came and told me I couldn't work out in a skirt. The skirt fell to slightly below my knees: definitely long enough for "modesty" without being so long that it might create risk of tripping, and stretchy with no buttons or zippers to get caught on anything. I probably got an "I will FIGHT you" look on my face because it got my anti-discrimination hackles up. I was thinking of all the femmes who wouldn't feel able to talk back and would be effectively banned from weight training by this sexist bullshit, and all the people who don't have workout-specific clothes and can't afford to go buy them.

I asked to talk to their supervisor and when two tall barbie and ken people came over (seriously I was like "what is this, a surfer movie?") I said "this IS my athletic wear: I only wear skirts" (the worker was silent, probly embarrassed). Then ken said "well you can't have your midriff showing because of our rules about no skin on machines due to sweat" so I said I would pull my skirt up higher to cover the 1 inch strip of my belly that was showing, and did so. Then I returned to my workout.

It was a bullshit thing to enforce on me because many people in the room were wearing tiny shorts that were basically underwear and sleeveless racerback tops where their whole shoulderblades showed: they definitely had more skin touching the equipment. The worker who initially told me my skirt wasn't athletic wear didn't mention to the supervisors that that was what they meant, so we didn't even discuss that. Which was lucky for them cause I was ready to spend the whole night arguing.

Then the next week (last week) a different worker came over and told me I couldn't wear a skirt, and then called down their manager (2 steps up heirarchy wise), who I had the same argument with. They told me it was in the policy and I said no, skirts aren't mentioned (fact) and every argument they made I refuted but they kept on saying that it's against policy. Finally something seemed to get through and they said that I should email them and they would look in to getting the policy changed. This show of respect broke my self-illusion that this issue didn't affect me personally and I lost the ability to speak and left as quickly as I could because I knew an anxiety meltdown was imminent.

I went to the locker room and sobbed for a while, struggling to calm myself. Two people at different times talked to me and asked if they could help, and I said no it's anxiety and I just need to gather myself and focus on breathing to calm down. I was touched that they expressed concern and them asking what they could do reminded me of what I could do (breathing) so it did help indirectly.

After I gathered myself I went out to the weight room again and asked for the email address of the manager, they gave it to me and the following day I sent this (the binary language is so that there is less for them to argue with):

[long email]
Good afternoon [managers name],

You spoke with me yesterday and invited me to email you with my concerns after one of the staff interrupted my workout to tell me that my clothing was not acceptable.  Despite there being no mention of skirts in the policy (as defined here: [link to policies] ), my wearing a skirt has resulted in staff interrupting me multiple times to discuss whether or not it was acceptable.

My inclination is to just obey because I just want to work out in peace and it is very difficult for me to deal with these confrontations with staff.  But I can't in good conscience do that because this unspoken -- yet rigorously enforced -- skirt policy disproportionately affects women, particularly poor women. 

To restrict femme clothing and require pants or shorts excludes women who

1) do not own pants or shorts other than work pants (jeans / khakis / zippered pants) and can't afford to go out and buy them;

2) are modest and thus uncomfortable with displaying their legs all the way up to the crotch;

3) have body dysmorphia or dysphoria which make the exposure of pants a prohibitive barrier;

4) are religiously devout and wear skirts as part of their religious practice;

5) are fat and have a difficult time finding shorts/pants which fit (skirts are much easier);

and most likely women in additional situations which I can’t readily imagine.

You said that it was a safety hazard because my skirt might get caught in machines, but this is not true.  I am happy to try out every type of machine in the room while you watch so that you can see what I know from years of wearing skirts: as long as they are at least 8 inches above the ankle, it is practically impossible for them to get caught in the spokes of an exercise bike wheel. Skirts that are approximately knee-length do not get in the way of working out. There is no valid safety argument here, particularly given that loose pants are not banned and fabric around the ankle is far more likely to get caught in a machine.

In an environment which is already highly masculinized, putting additional financial and emotional burdens on women will result in women not participating; they will be excluded by default.  A no-skirts policy is plainly discriminatory. I propose that the clothing policy be amended to state that skirts worn must be at least 8 inches above the ankle to keep them from getting caught in any machines.  That should cover any actual safety issue while also making it clear to staff that any skirt that is shorter than mid-calf is acceptable.

I hope to hear back from you very soon on this matter.

Regards,
[my name and workplace]

Then I went in to the gym and spotted the manager, who nodded and waved me over to follow to their office, which I did. They then said they had been expecting an email, and I told them that I just sent one a bit ago, so they read it while I sat there so that I didn't have to say it all again. They were nodding a lot while reading (I watched out of the corner of my eye) and afterward they said that they totally agree and that they have made religious exemptions before so it is not an absolute rule. They said they will take my name off it for anonymity and send it to the director and get it discussed and that until it is settled I can wear my usual skirts. Then they gave me their card and went and talked to the workers so that no one would bother me.

I had initially interpreted them in a very negative light but now I'm realizing that that might have been due to my anxiety. I think they genuinely do agree that it is the right thing to do and will advocate for it. I hope this policy gets changed but I am pretty sure their bosses are old white men who want to discourage women from working out, so we'll see. I have title 9 (anti-sexism mandate) in my corner since this facility receives federal funds (I didn't mention it in the email because I was trying to be less hostile in tone).

If they end up not changing the policy, I'm gonna get a bunch of skorts and femmme the fuck out of them with fabric paint.

I've been watching "the Path" and the main character is having a crisis of faith because the leader of the religion might not have done a miracle. "What if this is all just a story someone wrote?" Which seemed so beside the point that I was like "why are you fixating on a magic trick? why does that matter if the moral code is good?" and then I realized that ALL the religions who follow some singular individual rely on a magic trick to validate them.

People don't follow Jesus because they think the teachings help them to be a more compassionate and ethical person -- they follow Jesus because "he proved he was the son of god" by "rising from the dead." A more logical explanation was that he was in a coma for 3 days and then woke up -- unlikely, but it happens! even if he was actually dead and then alive again, how the fuck does that prove anything at all about the value of the moral code Jesus espoused? It doesn't, that's how.

And if your entire belief system is based on a miracle, then as soon as someone else does a better one what, you're gonna switch? If some alien shows up and starts healing people's cancers by biting them you're gonna develop a new moral code around biting people?

If your whole belief system is based on taking some ancient people's word that someone did something that seemed magical, that is completely irresponsible and a TERRIBLE way to choose how to live your life. The same as it would be if some modern people said someone did a magic trick. That's basically relying on an appeal to authority (logical fallacy) as your justification for your moral code. It's using an inherently unreliable event (a miracle is only a miracle if it is not repeatable by other people) as a foundation for your actions in life -- why on earth would you do that??

When I identified as a Christian -- as a TEENAGER -- I remember people asking me "what if there really is no god, no heaven, no hell, and you spent your whole life like this?" and I said to them "then I used these teachings to live a better life, to be a better person!" The existence of a magical being wasn't the fucking point! I liked the things Jesus taught and I agreed that love was the most important and highest moral law through which a person can figure out the best choices to make.

It honestly boggles my mind to realize that most of the people who call themselves christians would stop doing so if it was proven that Jesus never rose from the dead. How can you base your morality on a completely unprovable story -- that is inherently amoral, for crying out loud!!! if Jesus rose from the dead, that wasn't an act of kindness or bravery or generosity, but a morally neutral act of self-preservation. And it is certainly not a better miracle than making one person's lunch feed a huge crowd. Why isn't that the miracle that gets its own holiday? I'll tell you why -- because it comes with a fucking MORAL that people should SHARE or else god does no good.

a question asked of me anonymously via sarahah: "Is it, or under what circumstances is it, fatphobic to congratulate someone on weight loss?"

Yes, it is always fatphobic to "congratulate" someone on weight loss or more accurately, size loss. First, it is never appropriate to comment on someone's bodily changes unless they have commented on it to you in a way that communicates their feelings about it and opens the space for you to comment also. Don't assume that anyone decreased in size on purpose. Don't assume that anyone is happy about decreasing in size. Don't assume that it is okay for you to comment on someone's body.

If someone tells you about their size loss in a way that shows they did it on purpose and they are happy about it, it is appropriate to make a positive comment. You can say something like "I am so happy you feel more comfortable in your skin now" or to express happiness for them about the positive causes or effects of this size loss. This is simply emphathizing with their feelings and there is nothing wrong with it.

Congratulating them, on the other hand, implies [all kinds of fat-phobic bullshit]

--- CN: fat-phobic ideas, this paragraph ---

that size loss is inherently a positive*, admirable* experience achievable* through hard work and perseverance, which is wrong, wrong, and WRONG. When people use nutrient-poor restrictive diets to lose size, this almost always causes health problems: this is not positive, even if they get the look they want for a short time. As for admirable, it is no more admirable than buying a new outfit. Changing your look is a personal decision and just like you wouldn't say congratulations if someone got a new haircut, you don't say congratulations when someone loses size.

--- end CN ---

Most of the factors that determine size are out of the control of a person, and size loss is mostly an accident or a fluke. Your body will return to what it is genetically comfortable with. Many people can achieve some form of athleticism but that does not usually mean a great size change. Fat bodies can be very athletic just as thin bodies can be very un-athletic, and your body thickness is almost as genetically determined as your height. Is it appropriate to congratulate someone for growing taller? no, because it is not an achievement. Size loss is not an achievement, it is merely a change.

The difference between getting on the shuttle (filled with living-on-campus college students) and the bus is stark. On the shuttle, people are fucking selfish as shit, always shoving in front, crowding, stinking (god I hate axe), generally being rotten toddlers. People will literally shove by me when I have been waiting since before the last shuttle arrived. Dealing with 5-foot and 6-foot toddlers is just infuriating. I may start scolding them out loud.

On the bus, people wait kindly based on who arrived first, even if you didn't get in line. There's an awareness and a care for each other. People sometimes greet me, share information like when a bus is late, etc. It's this intense difference between rich and poor, really, because to live on campus here you have to be rich, and people riding the bus for an hour's commute like me are usually doing it at least in part to save money. I'm sure it also has to do with how recently people were released from the prison that is USian high school, where literally everything is a competition.

I've rearranged my schedule now to let me take the bus every day, and as I was walking to the bus stop recently I was reflecting on how much it affects me and had the thought that I feel more whole now. A bizarre thought! But I think it comes from feeling unable to take public transit for most of my life, due partly to stress about deadlines / timetables and partly to strong trigger reactions to being left stranded in a public place, or feeling like I am stranded. I don't know why I have a reaction to that and I may never know, but coming to feel competent at navigating transit feels like the long, long awaited final step in being able to manage the fallout of the childhood abuse I endured.

I also felt looked down on by people for not being able to do it. Like people would think I don't care about the environment, or am a snob, or am a suburbanite. Uncool, apathetic, and elitist. So I feel safer from judgement and I feel a kind of relief because part of me was like "well maybe I am apathetic, maybe I am selfish and lazy." No. I was unskilled and hadn't had a chance to practice in a way where I could overcome my trauma.

I honestly feel reluctance to ever take another route to/from work, even if someone else is driving, because I love being on the bus so much. It gives me dedicated time to write or read LJ, but I can also just close my eyes and meditate. At home I can't just randomly close my eyes and meditate because disentangling from my surroundings is too difficult. On the bus I am disentangled instantly if I turn my phone screen off. I think my fondness for the bus has to do with the length of time I am on the bus, as well, because it is long enough that I don't feel stressed by rapid context changes, but just short enough that I don't get impatient.

And I think there is something magic to me about buses, especially ones that ride on a loop. They make me think of being a cell in the bloodstream of the city; it makes me feel like I belong. It makes me feel like I can tap in to the heartbeat of the city and I feel nourished by it.

( TW/CN: Aziz Ansari's sexually coercive behaviorCollapse )

Also highly relevant to this discussion:

the feigning ignorance consent violation tactic: if they care, they change their behavior. TW: rape

Why making it safe & comfortable to say 'no' is as necessary as respecting a plainly-stated 'no'

If you describe someone as fat in conjunction with telling a story that has nothing to do with their size, you're fatphobic and that's fuckin gross. If you use words that imply someone or someone's body part is too large (like huge or massive), you're fatphobic and that's fuckin gross.

Way too often, someone supposedly pro-justice tells a story about a privileged shitwad & uses that person's fatness against them, to start people out disliking the person. It is unacceptable to encourage people to judge others as morally evil because they are fat.

( it is very longCollapse )

I cannot relate to feeling like you need to add more danger or stress to your life in order to feel fully alive; I think you have to be damned cozy in your privilege to feel that way.* Certainly a lot of people are that cozy, which is why shit like volcano surfing exists. Some people actually get adrenaline jolts so rarely that they find them fun!? I can't imagine.

My daily life is a struggle. I struggle to maintain my identity through being constantly assigned gender and having my sexuality and relationships erased any time I am around people (other than my closest). I struggle to make enough money to feed myself and pay my bills. I struggle to maintain relationships because literally all of my people are drained constantly by oppression & other hardships. I struggle to understand what people are saying, both because of my auditory processing issues and because I am extremely literal. I struggle to feel understood and valued when the best parts of me seem to go undesired and unnoticed. I struggle to be social because it takes so much out of me and so often gives little back.

I am privileged in significant ways (being white, physically non-disabled, cis-passing, & college-educated) and yet still, I struggle every day. I don't want to struggle; the more I am struggling, the less I can give. I want my struggles to decrease so that I can give more. I want to be able to help others and not need to spend all of my resources on my own mere survival. I know that I will have to work to maintain empathy with others if/when my own struggles decrease, but I am not concerned because I am more dedicated to doing that than I am to life itself.

What makes me feel alive is not when I am wrestling with some issue. I feel most alive when I can put aside my struggles for a little while and rest in my little bubble with just my safe people who I know are going to do their best to not use slurs, infringe on consent, or enforce damaging norms. Oppressed and marginalized people don't get to feel fully alive very often. I want change this, so I create safer spaces when I organize events and I work to improve those spaces that I don't control.

---

*there are other reasons to seek out danger or the simulation of it, I know: depression for instance can be so numbing that a shock of any feeling is a relief.

The worst person I ever had the displeasure to meet (and I'm including people who abused me as a child) was a boss I had at a retail job. [the failings of this mediocre, nasty, creepy, despotic cheap plastic knock-off]Unlike the people who abused me as a child, this person was cruel on purpose and I consider that far worse. He was a racist, sexist, cissexist, ableist, fat-phobic looksist who never showed compassion, had no sense of humor and literally zero good qualities. He talked about the sex he imagined his teenage son having in a way that made it clear to me that the only reason this shitwad wasn't assaulting young girls was that he didn't think he could get away with it. I can only hope that saves people from becoming his victims.

And this dude thought people liked him. He thought his employees were his friends because they laughed at his awful jokes and pretended to take an interest in his alternately brain-scrapingly boring or skin-crawlingly creepy stories. He hated me because 1) I violated his sexist beliefs by existing 2) I didn't allow him to mock me or put me in my place and 3) I did not laugh at his fat-phobia, islamophobia, racism, or other 'jokes' he made.

He deadnamed me and refused to call me by my real name, and told people hired after me that they could also deadname me. (to which I responded, "you can -- I won't answer to it but you can call me that." None of my coworkers were that disrespectful, at least not to my face) Lest you think that he was rude 'to everyone equally,' let me tell you that at least three other people went by a name that was not their birth name and he respected that fine because they were cis (although, the cis girl with a 'boy' name was always called "miss [name]" but I don't think she minded). When I was saving bottle caps for an art project (with all my co-workers aware and setting the caps aside for me), he asked why they were in a cup on the counter and when I explained that I was saving them, took it and threw it away. In full view of everyone, with no explanation; my coworkers privately expressed empathy for me after that blatant meanness (and symbolic violence). He knew that I lived an hour away and he continually gave me 4-hour shifts, even after I requested longer shifts to make the drive worthwhile, and he gave me shifts that ended at 5 so that I would have two hours to drive rather than one. He lived in the same city as I did, and he left every day at 3. He worked with most people's schedules, even the one who left the city for months at a time.

But it wasn't JUST me who was scapegoated. He also mistreated my Persian coworker partly because she was a transfer and he was angry that he didn't get to pick, partly because he wanted to give her shifts to his 'friends' and partly because he's a fucking racist. She reported him to HR and he responded by cutting her hours until she couldn't afford her apartment and had to move. He mistreated my Jewish coworker by continually scheduling her for Saturday morning, which was the one time she had asked not to be scheduled, even though she was fine with working Saturday evenings after sundown (when other people would rather not work). He did this over and over until she quit. He mistreated my black queer coworker by continually logging her as a regular employee when she was a shift manager so that he could cheat her out of a dollar an hour. She'd have to go in and fix it every time, or he'd steal her money. He mistreated another black coworker by continually belittling him and making him prove himself with tests despite the fact that literally no one else had to do these tests.


When I finally quit (after months of that shitwad trying to get me to do it), I felt panic at the thought of work even for months after. It wasn't until I'd been working for an actually supportive boss for a while that I stopped being terrified. To be scared of doing what you need to do in order to live and to have food and shelter is a profound problem. And I know it would have been at least three times as bad if I hadn't had a safety net.

Insecure abusive bosses require a scapegoat/drudge so that they can maintain social capital with the other employees. They pick one person (or maybe two) and give that person all the worst tasks, the things no one else wants to do. They give them fucking awful schedules so that they can give great ones to others. They make every problem into the scapegoat/drudge's fault. I have seen it not only with the unbearable waste of space that called himself my boss, but also with the bosses of my friends. One friend's boss literally gives them three people's jobs worth of work so that everyone else in the office can do nothing but chat with the boss all day.

This is what happens when you put dysempathetic, mediocre non-leaders in positions of authority. They don't care who they hurt, and they don't care or even realize that they're doing a shit job -- until an underling shows them up, and then they take the credit and punish the underling. Mediocre people respond to their inadequacies by lashing out rather than re-evaluating their behavior or trying to learn. If this happens more than once, that poor underling is the permanent scapegoat/drudge.

Unfortunately a lot of us underlings respond to attack from a boss by trying to do an even better job, which shows up the boss more and makes them more prone to attack rather than less. So honestly, it is often the best workers who are made into the scapegoat/drudges. Mediocre bosses want mediocre or even bad workers and they'll drive the good ones away so that they don't look bad in comparison. Capitalism: making mediocrity profitable.

I've said much of this before, but I am going to try to make it more specific and plain-spoken.

If I judge your actions as bad, that does not mean I am judging you as bad. Almost every action I rail against as harmful in some way is a thing I have done in the past. I have believed wrongly and damaged people with my actions. I have been classist, racist, sexist, fatphobic, ableist, looksist, anti-sexworker, queerphobic, and gender essentialist, and acted on those ideologies in my actions toward others. I have believed in rape myths and imperialist dogma. I have manipulated and disrespected my partners.

[specific examples of my wrongs: CN/TW for violence, oppressive attitudes, and slurs]
---specific examples of my wrongs: CN/TW for violence, oppressive attitudes, and slurs---

I judged poor people if they bought a small luxury. I avoided people of color because I thought they were too different and I could not relate. I thought women should submit to their husbands. I thought fatness was ugly and that fat people should hide their bodies. I expected all people to be able to learn and perform in the way that I do. I thought cleverness and education made a person more worthwhile. I ranked people on a scale of attractive to not attractive. I assumed that people could not choose to sell sex and that if they did they were forced or acting out of damage. I compared queer sex to sticking your hand in a blender: 'misuse' of intended purpose. I assumed everyone's gender matched what they were assigned at birth, and I assumed that there were only two sexes. I used slurs, especially ableist ones like 'stupid' and 'crazy.'

I have violated people's consent (thankfully not in ways that caused lots of damage, but I was lucky). I have been invalidating of people's identities. I have considered myself to have the 'one true' god and dismissed others as false. I have made relationship expectations without discussion or agreement, and manipulated people into the performance I wanted. I have assumed the worst motives of people I loved and not bothered to check. I have screamed at partners. I have called names. I have hit children (I was a child also at the time, but it was damaging and terrible).

---end TW/CN---


All those things are things I consider deeply wrong and I am profoundly ashamed of them. I mention them because I do not think of myself as a bad person, yet I have done all these bad things. There is not a thing that I say "don't do this" that I haven't done to some extent. So, I cannot think of other people as bad because they do them.

For me, there is only one sin that makes you a bad person: not making any effort to reduce the harm you cause to others and the harms that you benefit from. You don't have to make the efforts I suggest; you just have to make SOME effort, repeatedly, to reduce the harm you cause and/or benefit from in order to not be a bad person. You have to consider carefully if your behavior needs changing when someone says that you are causing harm.

When it comes to creating justice, intention means nothing; your harm-reduction needs to be effective in order to matter at all. When it comes to a judgement of moral character, intention + effort is everything. If you keep on trying to get better, and you keep on trying to learn from a variety of sources, I believe you will eventually get to a place where your efforts are effective and you do reduce harm. So I don't care where you are now; I care if you are repeatedly learning and trying. The more you try, the better a person I think you are.

( TW: discussion of rape without malicious intentCollapse )

Further discussion of this kind of rape: the 'feigning ignorance' consent violation tactic: if they care, they change their behavior. TW: rape

This is a great illustration of why I don't read 'classic' sci-fi. I also generally* do not read books written by defaults (straight white cis non-disabled non-poor neurotypical men), because they are almost guaranteed to be mediocre and full of Gary-Stus and women-as-props. There are some notable exceptions, such as Stephen Leigh (Mictlan series) and Nick O'Donohoe (Crossroads series), but generally, after a lifetime of being a default, you're trained to be terrible at perspective-taking which is the exact skill you need to write good characters. And when you never need to figure out your own solution to problems, you don't develop your imagination, so most aren't very imaginative either. (Alan Dean Foster is an exception to this -- wonderful imagination, sadly tainted by constant, condescending 'benevolent' sexism)

On the other hand, practically everyone else has to be exceptional in order to get published. Now there may be some who are exceptional only in who they know or how much money they have, but because it is so much more difficult to succeed as someone who is a person of color, female, trans, queer, disabled, etc, the available books are automatically higher quality than the average book written by a default (may not be true of self-publishing). And, as an oppressed and/or marginalized person, you automatically have more practice at perspective-taking, as you need it to live, so you write better characters. And if you have very limited resources, you have more practice at making shit work in ways it wasn't meant to, so you're more imaginative.

So the first thing I look at when I am scanning books at a used bookstore is the name of the author, and if available the author bio. Then I check to see who the main character is, and flip through the book until I see that person talking to someone else. By that dialogue I judge if the book is worth it. Most books will have a male main character who talks to other people like they don't matter -- instant nope. If the book has a female main character, I will scan to see if the dialogue centers around men -- if it does, nope. If the book has a main character who is neither male nor female I will get it regardless, because I don't get to see people like me in print and that is the closest I'll get.

When I am looking through books online, I look at the author first. If it's an oppressed person, I read the overview to see if the main character is a default: if they are, I won't read it (unless I already love the author) even if it is good because there are too many books with default main characters. If the main character is not a default, I look at the reviews. I look in positive reviews to see if anyone said that it made them realize new things or it kept them intently engaged, and I look in negative reviews for any criticisms that I consider legitimate, like a lack of thoroughness in world-building or rape being treated as titillating or harmless. Here is my wishlist of sci-fi, fantasy, magical realism, & speculative fiction by & about women & girls of color &/or trans/queer people -- I've shared it so that others can find good books without having to go through this intense process. I plan to add to it as I find new ones, so if you have any to recommend feel free (I'd love to add disabled authors & main characters). I also want to share a list of the books I HAVE read which are amazing, but I'm getting stuck on thoroughness there and finding it difficult to get started, because I want to do reviews of all of them.

I do still read books by defaults if they are exceptional and if they do not have a default main character (and sometimes even if they do); it's just rare.

[*]*this is not a hard rule across the board, and sci-fi/fantasy is actually better about this than many other genres. The only one which is a hard rule is that I will not ever purchase a book on self-help or spirituality written by a default, not even for ten cents. I consider such books to be somewhat blasphemous, due to so much desecration done by defaults. I feel that if a default genuinely wants to be a good person, they aren't going to profit off of self-help and spirituality. If they were giving away their book or making zero profit, I would take it and read it with interest. Otherwise they need to be silent. Their voices have been far out of balance for far too long and they need to not contribute to maintaining that imbalance.

( TW: discussion of boundary violation, manipulation, and lack of effort to avoid rapeCollapse )

[TW: brief but specific account of rape]Emma Lindsay writes about this tactic (TW: link contains descriptions of rape) -- "...despite whatever lie he told me or told himself, he knew I didn’t want to have sex with him. He knew I didn’t usually lie there like a dead fish. He could tell when I was wincing in pain. When I told him I had been in pain afterwards, he showed no surprise. I had only articulated what he already knew but was pretending he didn’t."

(This is modified from something I wrote to someone who says negative things about their looks -- but it applies even if you only do the 'positive' side of calling some people attractive.)

When you say you are ugly, I hear that you believe in a such thing as ugliness, and I know that I am not safe to be beautiful in your eyes. I know that if you call me beautiful, you might be using that as a way to harm your own self with comparison. How can I appreciate admiration if I know it might not be about me at all, but just the underside of you condemning yourself? I can't bear to be looked at through a lens of relative ugliness. If you hate your belly for not being flat, my poky belly is not safe in your gaze. If you take issue with the shape of your jawline, my 'double chin' is not safe in your gaze. You might not see it as ugly, but since you believe in ugly I can never be sure.

It is not fucking true that you are 'ugly'! If you are not willing to accept that it is a lie shoved into your head by cruel evil people, you can't get rid of the idea. It's a lie it's a lie it's a lie it's a LIE. Reject it. Even if you can't help that it repeats in your head, please decide it is a lie repeating instead of truth repeating. Please. You holding this lie close to your chest keeps people from being able to communicate with you about how they feel about you. It's like a giant shield that blocks out affection and admiration. You probably can't just throw it out. It probably feels like a kind of protection. But you can turn it sideways (decide it's a lie) so that people can get past it. You can accept that the people who love you are more honest than the people who want to abuse and control you. You can decide that all ratings are LIES. EVIL, CRUEL lies.

There is NO SUCH THING as ugly. There is no such thing as a body 'flaw.' YOU ARE PERFECT. Variety is beauty. You could not be more beautiful if you were different. People who think that there is a such thing as more attractive and less attractive have fucked up wrong perceptions that they need to change. No one gets to fucking rank people's attractiveness! NO ONE EVER. Not even you.

Also, that celebrity or model or whoever is NOT more attractive than you. This is as wrong to say as it is to say that they're uglier than you. It's creepy to compare like that. Nobody is more beautiful than you. There is no such thing as objective beauty. "You are beautiful" always and ONLY means "looking at you is enjoyable for me." Rotten people might get more enjoyment out of looking at people who resemble the societal ideal of the moment, but doesn't make it objective. Rotten people's opinions are irrelevant to actual life and love.

Do you compare you and me? do I gain attractiveness if I lose weight? If my belly is smaller? if my neck is thinner? if I wear makeup? If you judge everyone as more attractive than you or not, I have a really hard time believing that you don't judge me. I have a really hard time believing that you can do this comparison thing so often and yet have it not apply to me. Even if you did though, I would still be really bothered by the comparison for others. And because you believe in 'ugly' every time you use an attraction word (pretty beautiful cute gorgeous) as if it is objective, it feels AWFUL to me. I feel hurt for myself, for you, and for whoever you are judging as 'more attractive.' If attractiveness can be ranked, then I can only be beautiful at the expense of others. That is never something I want.

Related:

As with telling me you love me, only tell me I’m beautiful if you mean it. And challenge yourself to mean it. Recognize the way it stretches you to call a fat person beautiful, not as an exception, but as a shifting, growing rule. Feel all the things you are rejecting by saying such a simple, common word. - "What happens when you call your fat friend beautiful" by thefatshadow on Medium

I LOATHE the idea of a 'honeymoon phase' or 'new relationship energy' (NRE). I hate it like I hate the idea of men being less emotional than women (which, in case you didn't know, is empirically untrue). It implies a lie. It is true that some relationships are only good for the first 1-2 years. What is false is the idea that this shift is naturally occurring or inevitable. It is NOT AT ALL 'natural' to stop being excited about your lover. It's a sign that one or both of you need to develop your intimacy skills and/or personhood (or it may be a symptom of general lack of nourishment, or lack of common ground). The only thing that you have at the beginning that you can't have forever is novelty. If you crave novelty, just call it novelty. Stop acting like it is a part of every relationship or that every relationship has a 'honeymoon' and 'post-honeymoon' stage.

Reality can't dull anything that is real. I realized today that probably some people begin relationships with a fantasy of perfection. Starting out with fantasies and trying to see how much of each others' fantasy you can fulfill is not remotely appealing to me. I prefer to start out with nothing but questions and figure out what potential currently exists based on who each person is now (not who they want to be, not who the other person imagines them to one day be). Starting out with the idea of 'perfect' and working backwards to 'possible' seems inherently disappointing to me. Of course you're going to lose excitement that way -- but it's a loss of your ability to pretend, not an actual loss of something real. This is why in my relationships, I want to figure out if I have compatible values, goals, skills, and needs with a person BEFORE I invest deeply in them. Otherwise I'm likely to end up putting pressure on them to be what I want and need, and vice versa, and we're both going to end up hungry and drained.

Going back to the idea of NRE -- I don't believe in it. What people call NRE is actually IFE -- intimate focus energy. The giddy, excited, highly-nourished state is not caused by novelty, and does not have to dissipate with time. It gets associated with newness because in the beginning of a relationship there is a lot of fear and anxiety -- fear of losing this person, anxiety about making mistakes, etc -- and that gets channeled into focusing intensely on the other person (Abby coined the term "fear-spark" to describe this). You watch their every move because you're trying to figure out how to interact with them in a safely intimate way, and BECAUSE you're watching their every move, you're enchanted by them. Everyone is amazing if you look closely enough (well, everyone who isn't evil). Then, when you know them well enough to feel safely intimate, you stop looking so closely, and you stop noticing their amazingness. You take them for granted, because you can. And you call that the end of NRE and assume it is a natural phase of relationships. It's common, but it is NOT inevitable and it is NOT biological.

I realized today that I give a lot of seemingly compassionate people the benefit of the doubt when they don't deserve it. I assume that the reason that they don't talk about or publicly express any empathy for the many, many black people, trans people, disabled people, and women who are murdered in their own country, state, city (often at the hands of those who are supposed to protect or love them) is that they don't want to talk about death or murder or torture. I subconsciously assumed that they maybe can't deal with how awful it is, maybe they are too emotionally fragile. I can understand that; sometimes that is me.

But no. Now that some white people got killed in a different city, a different country, a different continent, these same people are all focusing on death with expressions of deep emotion, showing solidarity by covering their face with a flag. Clearly they are capable of talking about suffering, of expressing empathy publicly. They just don't feel like that about black people. Maybe they don't know that trans, disabled, and female people are murdered regularly and that's why they don't show any care about that, but there has been enough national coverage of the death toll of being black in the US that I really doubt that could be true about black people. So if you're a white person who hasn't shown any empathy or mourning or symbols of solidarity for black people killed in the US in the past year and you're doing that for those killed in Paris*, I'm noticing, and I'm judging you.

*Note: obviously if you have a personal connection, that's different. It always hurts more when it is your friend who is hurt or in danger.

See also:
http://www.outwithgeorge.com/blog/2015/11/14/our-mourning-is-broken-paris-and-privilege
http://stateofmind13.com/2015/11/14/from-beirut-this-is-paris-in-a-world-that-doesnt-care-about-arab-lives/
http://m.mic.com/articles/128551/terrorist-suicide-bombing-attack-on-beirut-lebanon-kills-43-and-injures-hundreds
https://newmatilda.com/2015/11/14/paris-attacks-highlight-western-vulnerability-and-our-selective-grief-and-outrage/
http://www.countercurrents.org/swanson141115.htm
http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/why-our-conversations-about-paris-have-been-broken-from-the-start/

Dear 'intellectually-minded' white men who just want to have a 'reasonable conversation':

You start out by asking me a question after I have pointed out something problematic. Even though I know that it's rare that people in general are willing to learn from a stranger, and that as a white dude you're far less likely than average to be willing to learn, I give you the benefit of the doubt. Just in case you're sincere (and for the sake of non-responsive readers who might actually seek knowledge), I offer you a starting point for you to self-educate. This is partly because it would take a minimum of several verbal hours or 20 written pages to explain even the basics, and partly to test your willingness to learn. You respond by explaining why that starting point is wrong (after a max of 20 minutes of web searching). You think this is a conversation between equals.

I know it's really fun for you to have a theoretical discussion where you get to feel all 'edgy' with your advocating for the devil. You feel mentally stimulated and awake for the first time in who-knows-how-long. It's a startling novelty to you for someone to bluntly disagree and it's refreshing to go down new neural pathways. You're excited to find yourself on a new intellectual jungle gym. Also, you feel really sure you can win because you think clever conversation is about playing tricks and laying traps and you think there is no objective answer, so you can claim to win no matter what. In fact, your rule for winning is "get the last word."

But then I don't want to play, and at first you just don't take my no seriously. Then, when you realize I mean it, you're deeply offended. You just offered me the greatest gift of all - your attention - and you expected me to respond with eager attempts to persuade you to join my side. You really feel I owe you my attention because you gave me yours. You handed me a one-in-a-million chance to affect your thinking and I just threw that treasure in the trash! You feel insulted that I didn't cradle and nurture that rare chance - after all, you rarely give it to someone who isn't of your class. It's like your opinion doesn't even matter! On top of all that offense, you feel cheated out of your fun, and worst of all there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Not that that stops you.

I tell you I don't want to talk to you, and like a bad telemarketer you respond by pulling out all the stops to try and force me to talk to you. You trot out a few carefully-aimed insults and explain to me all the wonders I'm missing out on by not talking to you more. You're super reasonable and if only I had tried a little harder you probably would have given me that carrot. Instead, my obstinence has removed the chance of you giving a shit about justice. I've ruined everything by not convincing you, the bastion of reason and kindness, that there is a problem you should notice and act on. Too bad for all those people suffering injustice (who were nonexistent before I stopped bothering with you).

Too bad for you, I've heard every single bit of this bullshit already.

I don't care about winning and I genuinely don't care what motive you ascribe to my disengagement. I know you will refuse to believe that it's because your ignorant regurgitation of societal norms bores me and talking to you wastes my time and effort. You, boring? Inconceivable! Literally! You can't imagine it! Instead, you decide (and you let me know) that I just don't care enough about my causes, because if I did I would put in the work to win you over (and you pretend that's a possibility; you may even fool yourself). Your ideas are unique and vital and of course I've never been in this situation before. Or perhaps you decide that I don't know enough to argue, that if I did I wouldn't be able to resist laying it all out to win. Maybe you decide I'm lazy, or that I was lying.

Guess what? I don't give a shit, because I know the difference between an argument and a conversation. I will not argue, especially with someone whose ratio of knowledge to me is kindergartner to PhD. You cannot contribute anything meaningful with such a knowledge imbalance, any more than a U.S. kindergartener could tell a Swedish history professor about the various aspects of Swedish government over time. When you act like your ideas have relevance it's just annoying. I know that if I try to explain that your ignorance makes your opinion useless, you will get excited by further argument without even considering the possibility that you might actually be ignorant.

I know damn well what an actually reasonable person does when they learn of an injustice they were previously unaware of. They do not try to 'disprove' it: that is not a reasonable reaction to learning something new. They self-educate. If it sounds ridiculous to them, they look up what experts on the subject who agree with this position say*. A reasonable person knows they cannot learn about a topic by looking up things that contradict it. If it is a faulty position, you can discover that by the lack of evidence (if you know enough about the subject to create a decent search). If it's true, you won't find that out by searching for how to argue against it.

When you reacted to my initial offer of resources with "those aren't legit because..." I knew that you weren't speaking from years of study. I knew you weren't actually interested in learning. You're just trying to win. You want to play with other people's lives like game pieces and wax on about your ludicrously fact-less theories instead of discussing practical methods of righting injustice. I will not give you pleasure at my expense.

[an example of reasonable effort to understand]* For example, when someone told me that men are oppressed by women, I responded by looking up articles in support of such a theory, even though as an expert on the subject I could safely assume that they were simply wrong. Their legitimate examples of oppression were misattributed to women when in reality they were caused by sexism and racism (unable to dress how they want, getting imprisoned more often, etc.) Most of their examples were illegitimate because they were factually wrong. For instance, white men tend to get custody when they ever make an effort and the apparent disparity in custody disputes is primarily due to lack of desire. There was nothing I hadn't heard before, and the whole concept displayed a ludicrous lack of understanding as to how oppression works. If I hadn't already known the statistics involved I would have needed to look them up. If I hadn't already done many hours of study on how oppression works, I would need to have done that in order to tell that what they were calling 'oppression by women' was not.

See also: The White Folks Who Need “Proof of Racism”: "The whole point of them asking me to convince them is so that could pretend and tout that they made a good-faith effort all while hiding the fact that the goal was always to never be convinced."