Category: Uncategorized

anotherjadedwriter:

anotherjadedwriter:

history fucked me up

oxford was built and operational as a college before the rise of the mayans and cleopatra lived in a time nearer to pizza hut’s invention than to the pyramids being built

I need a noncomprehensive history book that covers Known World History in time periods, like “in this century, all this shit was happening concurrently” and not just all spread out so I have to piece it together like some unpaid uneducated scholar

kaity–did:

There was a little girl in church, about 5, and her parents obviously let her get dressed herself that day because she came waddling in with the puffiest coat on in the summer in North Carolina. She comes and sits in the pew in front of us. 15 minutes into mass she turns around and hands my husand an orange. Her parents are mortified.

“Savannah not again!” They sold! (Again kills me)

They appologize and she turns back around. A few moments later she goes to hand me an orange but her parents grab it from her before she can.

Savannah is determined. She reaches her tiny fists into her puffy coat and pulls out two more ornages. She begins to distribute them. Her parents are now beat red and in shock.

This small child proceeds to laugh a laugh I can only call manical (in a Catholic church) unzip the inner line of her coat and releases what had to have been 20-30 of those little kid oranges into the pews.

WE EAT Savannah yells cackeling

The priest can no longer contain his glee

The entire church is dying with laughter

She felt like Jesus on the moutian with the baskets of fish that day I’m sure.

Children are amazing.

jemthecrystalgem:

dragon-in-a-fez:

why “spanking is harmful” studies will, ultimately, never matter to parents who want to hit their kids:

@fandomsandfeminism wrote a great post recently about the fact that we have, essentially, a scientific consensus on the fact that all forms of hitting children, including those euphemistically referred to as “spanking”, are psychologically harmful. they’ve also done an amazing job responding to a lot of parents self-admitted abusers who think “I hit my child and I’m okay with that” and/or “I was hit as a child and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me” are more meaningful than 60 years of peer-reviewed research.

unfortunately, I’m here to tell you why all of that makes very little difference.

in 2014, a couple of researchers from UCLA and MIT named Alan Fiske and Tage Rai published a book called Virtuous Violence, the result of a major study of the motivations for interpersonal violence. Rai wrote a shorter piece about it in Quartz, which is a pretty light but still illuminating (hah, I did not see that pun coming but I’m gonna leave it) read.

the upshot of Fiske and Rai’s work is that most violence is fundamentally misunderstood because we think it is inherently outside the norms of a supposedly moral society. we presume that when someone commits a mass shooting or beats their spouse they are somehow intrinsically broken, either incapable of telling right from wrong or too lacking in self-control to prevent themselves from doing the wrong thing.

but what Fiske and Rai found was that, in fact, the opposite is true: most violence is morally motivated. people who commit violent acts aren’t lacking moral compasses – they believe those violent acts are not only morally acceptable, but morally obligatory. usually, these feelings emerge in the context of a relationship which is culturally defined as hierarchical. in other words, parents who commit violence against their children do so because they believe it is necessary that they do so in order to establish or affirm the dominance which they feel they are owed by both tradition and moral right.

when abusive parents say that they are “hitting children for their own good”, they are not speaking in terms of any rational predictions for the child’s future, but rather from a place of believing that the child must learn to be submissive in order to be a “good” child, to fulfill their place in the relationship.

this kind of violence is not the result of calm, intellectually reasoned deliberation about the child’s well-being.

for that reason and that reason alone it will never be ended by scientific evidence.

history tells us more than we need to verify this. the slave trade and the institution of racial slavery, and their attendant forms of “corrective” physical violence, for instance, did not end because someone demonstrated they were physically or psychologically harmful to slaves – that was never a question in people’s minds to begin with. for generations, slavery was upheld as right and good not because it was viewed as harmless, but because it was viewed as morally necessary that one category of people should be “kept in their place” below another by any means necessary, because they were lower beings by natural order and god’s law. this violence ended because western society became gradually less convinced of the whole moral framework at play, not because we needed scientists to come along and demonstrate that chain gangs and whippings were psychologically detrimental. this is only one example from a world history filled with many, many forms of violence, both interpersonal and structural, which ultimately were founded on the idea that moral hierarchies must be maintained through someone’s idea of judiciously meted-out suffering.

and this, ultimately, is why we cannot end violence against children by pointing out that it is harmful – because the question of whether or not it is harmful does not enter into parents’ decisions about whether or not to commit violence in the first place. what they care about is not the hypothetical harm done to the child, but the reinforcement of the authority-ranked nature of the relationship itself. the reason these people so often sound like their primary concern is maintaining their “right” to hit their children is because it is. they believe that anyone telling them they can’t hit their children is attempting to undermine the moral structure of that individual relationship and, in a broader sense, the natural order of adult-child relations in society.

and that’s why the movement has to be greater than one against hitting kids. it has to be a movement against treating them as inferior, in general. it has to be a movement that says, children are people, that says children’s rights are human rights, that says the near-absolute authority of parents, coupled with the general social supremacy of adults and the marginalization of youth, have to all be torn down at once as an ideology of injustice and violence. anything less is ultimately pointless.

^^^

how to deal with conservative parents as an lgbt+ kid

autistictaramaclay:

cromaka:

sallyride:

autistictaramaclay:

i dont see this kinda stuff at all on this site so i thought id share what ive learned

some of yall know that conservative parents (not all of them, but a lot, probably most) of lgbt+ kids have the potential to become very horrible and abusive when they find out. these next few things are mostly for After theyve already found out. i dont have any tips for not being outed to ur parents because i fuckin failed at that so

– if you’re a kid, 13-15, youre gonna want to argue with them. don’t. that’s a horrible idea

– seriously just go along with whatever they say

– if youve been outed to them, make up a story about how youre trying to change from your disgusting ways and youre becoming a better person now and blah blah blah

– if you were outed as trans, wait a month or so (that way it seems less fake, theyll think you grew out of your phase), then start presenting as your assigned gender. make it Extreme. for example: if you were assigned female, be as. stereotypical. as. possible. call yourself a girl a lot. do stereotypical girly things. get personalized things with your deadname on them. it will hurt you, but they could hurt you more. the internet is your best friend, tell everyone on there to call you by your chosen name and pronouns as often as possible. if youre transmasculine, i cant stress this enough, /do not bind if you are somewhere your parents will see you. they will notice your lack of chest. wear loose clothing or multiple layers. but do not bind/. if you need to feel less dysphoric, wear deodorant thats scented in whatever way makes u feel comfortable. it’s cool and pretty subtle (unless you drowned yourself in old lady perfume or axe body spray) but itll make you feel good without giving away your Secret

– if you were outed as gay, and theyre religious, go to church. theres always another gay teen thats being forced to go there. talk to everyone, make friends with everyone. try to find someone else who’s gay (or trans, or nonbinary, or ace/aro, or honestly just someone who’s accepting but it is preferred that they r not cishet that way u both get somethin out of it u kno? help a fellow lgbt+ teen out). if you can pass for a hetero couple™, pretend to date. go ALL OUT. keep this up as long as you find necessary, then, if you want, you can stage a breakup. this isnt necessary but crying to your mom about how he left you for that b*tch in chemistry can bring you two closer and make your act more convincing

– i dont have advice for being outed as bi bc im not bi but please feel free to add any advice. u can try the last tip, since lots of conservatives dont believe bisexuality is A Thing and will assume if ur with the “opposite gender” ur not bi anymore

– you’re not a bad person if you pretend to agree with all the homophobic/transphobic shit they say. you’re not in the wrong here. they are. youre just trying to stay safe, ok? dont feel guilty

pls add on, this might not work for Every parent & it rly does depend on ur age (for example theyre less likely to write it off as a phase & eventually get over it if youre 17 than they are if youre 12)

I just have one thing to add: don’t come out! Honestly this should be obvious but maybe you’re a dumbass like me like I was so I’m telling you that if you have homophobic conservative parents, don’t do it. You don’t owe to tell your parents anything, you don’t need to come out ever, coming out is not the most important thing for you to do as an lgbt+ person, literally it is none of your parents’ business. You have everything to lose and it is not worth the risk.

– the pretending to date idea is really good!! i did this with my best friend and while it was uncomfortable having to pass as straight, it gave me a lot of opportunities to hang out with someone who understood what i was going through. i actually didn’t want to pretend break-up because it was so nice being around someone who could understand and relate. we also had other friends who did this and by the time they pretend broke-up, people were convinced they’d “turned each other straight” because they stayed close bffs afterwards! carefully avoid suspicion and also make new best friends!

– i was outed as bi (i’m a lesbian) and i had other friends who were outed as bi. my parents assaulted me and sent me to live with my far-less-conservative mother and while it may have taken her time to realize its not just a phase, i never had to fear for my life. all of my bi friends had uncomfortable talks with their parents but since their parents didnt believe bisexuality is real, they stayed safe by always being in het-passing relationships. and since ppl who don’t believe bisexuality is real think you’re either secretly gay or straight and trying to be cool, these friends didn’t stay single because the more time they spent single the more their parents started to believe they were secretly gay. they sought out straight boys and they sold that shit until their parents switched to “straight but trying to be cool”

– this is gonna sound weird but if you have a big enough circle of closeted kids, summer church camps are actually really fun. there were about 7-8 of us and church camp was the best part of our summers because our parents weren’t there and there were only a limited amount of adults to supervise us, and none of them were really trying that hard to anyway because we were teenagers in a closed environment we’d have to try pretty hard to get lost. it’s not fun being the only gay kid and i imagine it’s also not fun when you have vigilant chaperones so try to find out who else is going and who your chaperones are before you make a decision.

– i never got to go to other summer camps but i’ve heard they’re far more enjoyable than church camp if you can also bring your circle of closeted friends to those, because you also get to be away from your parents and in this case it’s without any risk of “gays are going to hell” sermons. summer camp was the only time for any of us that we could actually be ourselves without much filter or restriction and it’s a good break for your mental health

– if you’re talking to your trans friend and referring to them by their chosen name and someone they don’t want to be out to asks who you’re talking to, pick a random object. i’m serious. teens are already considered ~random~ and goofy so if you tell someone you assigned a completely serious name to a keychain or a bag or a plastic fork they’ll believe you. and it works if you have to use the same name for multiple objects because you can just tell people you just like that name. and if all your friends start doing it, people will assume it’s some weird inside joke. my friends and i did this for each other and kids sure looked at us weird, but none of us got outed as trans.

– if you’re outed as ace make up a story about how its because you’re scared about what you learned in sex ed or you’re saving it for marriage or you’re scared because you heard someone at your school is pregnant. those worked for my friend but not really for me, but in my case i was expecting my parents to be okay with me being ace so i wasn’t really trying that hard to sell it.

– if your parents monitor your internet history, try to avoid lgbtqia+ content on your computer unless it’s a personal computer you’re positive they don’t have access to (and even then, make sure they aren’t home, because if they walk in and see anything remotely gay on the monitor it’s pretty hard to explain it away). even if you always clear your browsing history, 1) you’ll look suspicious and 2) there are applications they can install that’ll track your browsing history separately. try to use a smartphone if you can. when you clear your history on that you can say it’s to make your phone run smoother or to keep from cluttering your storage. and if they happen to walk in the room while you’re looking at something, you’ll probably have a chance to switch to a completely not-gay-at-all app and pretend you’ve been doing that the whole time.

– never forget this isn’t forever. it’s hard and it’s long and when i was still a teen i thought my life was always going to be having to hide who i am and i wanted to give up on myself. don’t. there are so many of us who went through everything you’re going through now, and we survived and get to live as ourselves now. you’ll survive too. it might not feel like it, but you will. don’t be afraid to ask for help, especially on a site like this where there are so many lgbtqia+ users and there’s certain to be someone who can give you advice about your exact situation.

all good advice!!

i can also say firsthand that church camp is fun if your counselors are cool. in 2016 my counselor liked girls (she didnt give me any more detail than that) & so did like, 4 of my cabin-mates. it was awesome, we’re still friends to this day. but u gotta either 1) have a group of friends that are going already or 2) casually bring up The Gays to make sure everyones safe to come out to

id say like, at my camp personally, probably 1/8 of the kids are lgbt+, unless my randomly assigned gay cabin-mates were always the only gay people in camp. there are probably .. less Gay at other camps but im just sayin, there are tons of kids in your like exact situation

redheadgleek:

As yet another fanfic writer deleted all of their writing in the last couple of weeks, I wonder how many people are aware that you can disassociate and orphan your fics on archiveofourown once you’ve decided to leave a particular fandom.

“Orphaning is a way to remove your connection to your works without taking them away from fandom altogether.  We hope this account will be used by people who wish (for whatever reasons) to retire from fandom but are willing to allow their works to remain in the Archive.  Works orphaned in this way will be maintained by the Archive to be enjoyed by future fans; existing bookmarks and links will not break.  This function means that users can continue to share their contributions to fandom while having their privacy respected.”

AO3 has a great FAQ on how to do it here.