PLEASEEEEE HELP 😔 I'm a single mother , me and my son is biracial. I'm in a tough situation. I have a 5 year old that I don't want to see me hurting. During this time I lost my job and I continued to go back to school. I need some help. I'm in a situation I want to get out of and have no money. I'm asking for a small donation. Anything helps. I usually turn to my mom but she has passed away this year and also my brother. Please. Please if anyone could help. I don't want my child to keep seeing me down and that's not how a man supposed to treat a woman. Please any donation will help 🙏🏼😢 I feel like I'm trapped I NEED out my situation. Sorry I'm just in DESPERATE need 💗 I'm drained 😪 my cash app is $yellowgirl1993, I have other options below. Thanks so much anyone that helps I just want to leave and be able to leave with my son. He doesn't need to see this, he was a victim of his own Dad's abuse 😥😥😢😭 Please Reblog as much as you can this is my only hope 🙏🏼

My Venmo: @ Dionna-Willoughby

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Genuine question?? Im a 19 y/o lesbian and ?? I dont find p*nis attractive does that make me a TERF?

I’m happy you sent this ask, because it’s a perfect place to talk about how someone can get hurt, feel wronged, and become susceptible to extremist recruiting.

First off, treat this as a simple yes or no question, asked with zero surrounding context, the platonic idea of penis preference if you will. “I don’t find penises attractive” is not a sentiment that makes you a TERF. You’re okay not liking them. My nonbinary wife doesn’t particularly like them, yet they are married to me (who has one) and we love each other more than anything in the world. 

In fact, in the abstract, I don’t like ‘em much either, and I own one! Ridiculous looking thing, wish I didn’t have to deal with it. A general dislike of genitals doesn’t make you a TERF… not by itself.

Now, here is where the critical thinking comes in, because if you posted something like that on Tumblr or something, it has a different context. You might not even know! It could be a totally innocent mistake, and it happens, and some women either get criticized in ways that makes them feel attacked, or actually attacked because you never know if what you post online is hitting someone on a bad day or a good day. 

The context first of all is, without any clarifying statements, saying you don’t like a genital could imply you’re reducing anyone with that particular set of genitals down to their genitals only. And it could result in either someone telling you it sounds TERFy (if they’re trying to be gentle) or calling you a TERF (if they’re out of spoons) because that’s what TERFs do. Here’s where it becomes a recruit pitch.

You say “I don’t like penises.” This doesn’t mean you’re saying you dislike trans women (not all of whom have penises anyway), but if you get the above lecture/yelling, a radfem can come along and empathetically agree how unfair it is that someone made you hurt for saying you don’t like a genital, and it’s not fair to tell a lesbian she has to sleep with a male or she’s a TERF and- OH WAIT A MINUTE!

Hold up, it looks like they were just being nice but wait wait, they just slid cozily from “it’s okay not to like a penis” to “anyone with a penis is male.” See that? Like a sleight of hand, once you’ve agreed with that premises, saying “I don’t like penises” suddenly becomes attached to “and anyone with a penis is male.”

Alright now in context, going back this kind of equivalency is so common with radfems that at this point saying you don’t like a genital is what we call a dogwhistle. It’s a phrase which is seemingly innocent, and can be innocent, which has been so widely appropriated by a hate group that it carries extra connotations in a certain context. Contexts like posting on Tumblr, which happens to have a particularly large trans population.

Now you can’t know every single dogwhistle because that’s the whole reason they exist - so normal people don’t spot someone’s bigotry and it looks like a disenfranchised group is getting angry over an innocent statement.

And lastly, which you probably already know, but generally not being interested in something doesn’t have to equate to disliking anyone with that trait, or even not being attracted to someone with that trait. I bring this up because the difference between a lesbian who just generally doesn’t like a genital and a TERF is that the TERF things anyone with a penis is automatically bad and a male and probably reading this right now thinks I’m saying you have to have sex with men or like penises, somehow, despite saying exactly the opposite.

You may have a general preference, but in practice I’m sure you’ve already found a difference between “I am physically attracted to how this person looks” and “Holy shit I think this person is amazing and everything about them is wonderful.” If you haven’t had that experience yet, I can promise you some day you will. Not necessarily over genitals, but some day someone, or many someones, will be part of your life and you’ll value every part of them, whether or not it’s something you normally find abstractly attractive.

Keep your heart open to kindness and caring for other people, keep your mind open to constructive criticism, and you’ll never be a radfem or TERF or SWERF or whatever. That’s all.

Could you elaborate on the 80% of morphine addicts do the drugs less or quit after 5 years bit? I'd never heard of that and it seems pretty counter-intuitive what little i know of drug addiction but I would love to hear more, I'd love to be proven wrong.

yeah so basically drug addiction, across the board, actually has the best prognosis of any mental illness without any treatment whatsoever. The vast majority of people who meet criteria for addiction to any drug (75-95%) do not seek treatment and no longer meet criteria within 5-10 years. Depending on the drug in question, about half of this population becomes abstinent and half continues to use their drug of choice and/or other drugs without meeting criteria for addiction. These are federal statistics published by NIDA. 

Here is the stereotype: drug addiction is a progressive, incurable brain disease that will cause worsening dysfunction without a 12-step inspired treatment plan and lifelong abstinence. Once you are an addict, you are always an addict, because it is a brain disease. The addiction brain disease is caused by exposure to drugs. This may certainly be true for some people, but it is obviously false for the vast majority of people who meet criteria for addiction, for any drug. It is not based on evidence, it is based on dogma. It is also a self-fulfilling prophecy that teaches patients they are powerless and must practice lifelong vigilance - if they don’t feel like that’s true for them, it’s because they’re dangerously reckless and their judgement is distorted by their brain disease! Studies have shown that addicts who believe in the medical model of addiction are more likely to relapse than those who do not.

This dogma arose from the origin and intensification of the racist drug war, and to a lesser degree from the temperance movement. For a variety of material reasons, social violence and dysfunction arising from race, class and economic disparity was attributed to the intrinsic properties of drugs rather than these factors. (To be fair, abundant cheap alcohol did not exactly improve matters much.) During the victorian era, addiction was commonplace and viewed as a harmless eccentricity of the wealthy. Indeed, the surgeon my hospital is named for was a lifelong morphine addict himself. Everyone just thought he had really steady hands. It is only once drugs became associated with poor people, black people, asian and hispanic people, and communists that they became evil. The stereotype is reinforced by the fact that addiction professionals see only the people who see addiction professionals. Our society stigmatizes the hell out of addiction, and addiction treatment is notoriously punitive and inadequate. If you’re an addict and you do not absolutely need to seek this form of treatment, you don’t. Because for the vast majority of people, addiction simply is not like that.

In fact, drug addiction is best described as a developmental disorder caused by trauma and untreated physical or emotional pain. In the classic “rat park” experiment used to uphold the classical addiction model, a rat in a cage self-injects cocaine until it dies, forsaking food, water, and sex. When you place that rat in a larger cage, with other rats and shit to do besides inject cocaine, the rats ignore the cocaine or use it sparingly. I could talk your ear off about all that and its implications but yeah. We have all been really fantastically lied to about addiction and drugs, and our approach to the problems these things do cause makes them worse. Read up on Carl Hart and Bruce K Alexander to learn more.

there is not a single role chris pratt does that jack black couldn’t do better

Sapphic affection, you love to see it

We all love petting cats. This kid loves his cat to another degree mashallah!😊😆😆

We watch a little girl about my daughter’s age while her mom works. A real cute, sweet thing who only communicates by humming and smiling and waving. Precious beyond words and so, so gentle.

She has this odd quirk where if you tell her “no,” which has only happened about twice or three times in the month and a half we’ve been watching her, she freezes and looks like you’ve ripped her little heart out and stomped on it. We have since tried to avoid saying it because she looks so upset and scared.

Today we found out why and my heart is breaking.

When her mom dropped her off, the little girl saw our neighbor’s potted plant on the doorstep. She went over and ripped a leaf off, because she’s a child and doesn’t know better. Her mom told her “no” and hit her hands. The girl immediately lost her smile, became very reserved, and didn’t want to come in and play, where usually she bounds up the stairs to see her best friend (my daughter).

Later in the morning, I was watching as our little friend tried to take something out of my daughter’s hands, so I told her “no-no” in a gentle voice, just as I do to my daughter when she’s trying to take something. She jumped back and held her little hands, and looked absolutely terrified. I immediately knelt down to offer a hug and tell her sorry, but she flinched away from me and was scared to let me touch her. So I just talked to her soothingly and eventually put a hand on her arm and rubbed it softly, and she launched herself at my neck to hug me and demanded I hold her off-and-on throughout the rest of the time she was with us today.

This tiny child is afraid of getting her hands hit when she hears the word “no.” It doesn’t leave bruises when her mom does it, it doesn’t even leave visible redness or marks, but it has absolutely left a mark on this tiny baby’s mind.

How is a child supposed to know why they’re not allowed to hit when you hit them? How is a child supposed to know why the person they go to for comfort is suddenly trying to make them uncomfortable and scared? How is fear and pain a teaching tool? And if it’s not about hurting or scaring them, why do you have to hit them at all? Because they don’t like it– and why don’t they like it? Because their trust in you is being undermined, because they’re afraid, because it hurts in their heart.

This little girl can’t even talk, but she hears one word and instantly freezes up and feels terror because the hands that are supposed to help and comfort and hold her suddenly turn into something scary, and she doesn’t understand why.

My husband and I had a good cry about it, but I’m still just sad, and mad. That sweet little thing who beams and hums and giggles when she sees us in the mornings, who runs up to my daughter and gives her little bunny kisses, who takes my finger and leads me around the house just because she wants me to hang out with her…

Don’t hit kids. Spanking, swatting, whatever you want to call it– a) it’s been shown to actually increase problem behaviors, and b) it’s wrong. Why do you have to put a hand on a child to teach them? If it hurts, that’s wrong- we don’t hurt people to get what we want. If it doesn’t hurt, then what are you doing it for?

And I guarantee you it does hurt, even if it’s not physical. The look on that little girl’s face is going to haunt me for a long, long time.

Discipline is the goal- teaching, not punishing. And hitting, no matter how soft, doesn’t teach. Rather, if it does, it teaches the wrong things.

thinking about how liberals claim the rest of us won’t settle for the lesser of two evils when so many of us were ready to settle for exactly that in the form of bernie sanders but by lesser of two evils they meant the same kind of evil but smiling politely and only whispering instead of screaming racist things

you ever realize how able bodied people just are not expected to do things that cause them excruciating physical pain? like they’re just. not

if i shouldn’t use my cane because i can sometimes technically walk without it, it would just hurt like a motherfucker then abled people should no longer be allowed to use potholders to take things out of the oven because i mean

well they could technically pick up a hot pan with their bare hands. it would just hurt like a motherfucker

A lot of Nice Guys wonder why women reject them and instead chase after Bad Boys.

It’s because the Bad Boy really isn’t that bad, and the Nice Guy really isn’t that nice.

The Bad Boy moves on when he’s rejected. He does not ask for a reason. He does not try to make her feel guilty. He does not say “you’re ugly anyway” in order to save his ego. He knows that not everyone is going to like him. He’s more than happy to have women as friends.

The Nice Guy complains when he’s rejected. He won’t accept any reason other than “I have a boyfriend.” Even if she does have a boyfriend, he’ll wait until the boyfriend does something wrong then expect her to dump her boyfriend and date the Nice Guy instead (a common theme of “romantic” songs). He whines about women being stuck up b***hes who won’t give him a chance. He thinks he’s perfect for her because he thinks he knows her better than she knows herself. He complains about women having standards even though he has standards. He complains about the “friend zone”. He expects a reward for every nice thing he does.

For women who are constantly worried about men harassing them, the Bad Boy is a hell of a lot safer than the Nice Guy. The Bad Boy who flirts with many women but makes sure it’s consensual, doesn’t pretend he wants a commitment when he doesn’t, and moves on without question when rejected is a hell of a lot less threatening than the Nice Guy who feels entitled to a woman’s affection.

Most abusive men are not Bad Boys. Most abusive men are Nice Guys who “turned into” assholes because they didn’t get what they feel entitled to.