I found this rant in my notes from that time a couple months ago when the pharmacy lost my birth control prescription right before a holiday weekend and made me deal with unmedicated PMDD for a week and I was scared out of my mind. Have an angry rant about the inadequacies of the American healthcare system.

When Julian Bashir was a child, he thought that if he was bad, the doctors would make sure he got sick. He grew out of it. But… if you live with a chronic medical condition that requires medical attention to manage, this is kind of just how your life works.

You have to do all the right paperwork and go to all the right appointments and say the right things in order to maintain access to the treatment you need to be healthy. Especially if the meds you need are a controlled substance. You have to be the good patient. You have to, or you’re in for a significant amount of pain and suffering. It feels like a threat hanging over your head.

And sometimes, you’ll do everything right, and then something happens outside of your control to screw everything up. Maybe there’s a shortage of the medication you need. Maybe the pharmacy loses your prescription. But suddenly you don’t have what you need to be okay, and you hurt. More than that, you’re terrified. You don’t want to be in pain. You don’t want to suffer.

You just want to be okay; why is that so hard?

And the doctors don’t mean to hurt anyone! They don’t understand the amount of power they hold over us. They really do, for the most part, want to help. But the system is a mess of power imbalances and red tape and fear fear fear. There are too many bureaucratic road blocks that keep people from getting medical attention. There are too many doctors who don’t give a shit. Who don’t listen to their patients. Who assume the worst of us. We just don’t want to hurt anymore. We don’t mean to be a bother, we just want to be okay.

And we have to put our wellbeing in their hands. We have to hand them our lives and our sanity and hope they hold them gently. And if they don’t? We have to pick a new doctor and do it all over again. What other choice do we have?

hi so our last post died, and things have gotten kinda worse with the arrival of our other cat, my elder brothers homelessness, and the racial abuse getting hurled my way

we’re two disabled black lesbians trying to navigate employment discrimination and the American healthcare system, and tbh we’re losing. we originally had to split everything between 6 people, but due to my brothers getting evicted, everything we have (and everything we don’t) also goes to them

like last time, I’m still waiting for a doctor but recently they told me to call back in November. I’ve been calling since April. I believe the stress of everything is causing a flare up of something and I have no idea how to manage it, on top of my new seemingly random food sensitivities that keep popping up. I’m exhausted all the time and sometimes can’t even get out of bed.

on a brighter note, my girlfriend applied to five jobs, but their phone was shut off this morning so it’s urgent that they pay their bill.

we were able to get some necessities early last month due to peoples help, but we can’t make it stretch with 8 people. it’s a shitty situation all around and I wish we didn’t have to ask but until my gf can get a job and I can find out exactly what’s wrong with me, this is literally all we have.

I’m not gonna link my PayPal anymore because people are harassing me with my deadname

my cashapp is $silvertheestallion and my gfs is $Peachjammn

my Venmo is cherryadventure2

thank you so much for reading

I understand now. I understand all of it.

All those times politicians claimed something was "too complicated" "not that simple" "we don't have the money" it's all lies to keep us complacent.

They did it about the situation is Israel. "It's too complicated" everyone said. It didn't look complicated when I did my own research, away from those shitty think pieces talking down to me. Israel was a state built off the blood of Palestinians, and they simply do not want you to think about it. Because there is oil in the middle east and Israel is our only "Ally"

Wow, so complicated! The complicated part being that our media is tricking us into thinking this is so complex so they can be evil in plain sight: yes, so complicated of a situation!!

And today I wake up to find that the House of Representatives (the lowest level of US government) has passed a bill offering 14 billion to Israel! It will go to the Senate to vote. Wow, billion with a B huh? I got a question for you.

Where the fuck did we get enough money to fund genocide? Where the hell was all this money when it comes to supporting the Americans you politicians claim to be representing? Where was this money for free college, universal Healthcare, covid precautions, the climate crisis??

"It's just too complicated! You'll make us do cuts on other programs! You'll make us raise taxes!! Think of the taxes!!!"

Then where did this money come from? Oh, the IRS, the fucking company that handles our taxes??? Yeah????? That was an option? Why wasn't it an option before but it is now? Were they over funded and we just didn't notice until now? Or are you taking advantage of the situation to cut funding to another service you hate?? The point being: if they really want something, they can find the fucking money. They haven't because they don't want to.

It's never been complicated. It's their job to move money around. It's their fucking job to raise our taxes and provide for us, but the only people they truly represent are the ones filling their pockets with lobby money. They could have done this long ago, given us what we've been demanding, but they coddled us and said it was too complicated and our baby brains couldn't handle it. And God forbid you be a woman!! That means you're double unable to understand!

Enough. Fucking enough. Every year congress votes to increase their wages and refuses to raise our minimum wage. Every year they take advantage of their medical insurance and benefits they get for "representing" us when nearly every adult I know is left to suffer with their conditions: untreated sicknesses, chronic conditions, the depression that looms over us because we live in the most wealthy country in the world but we can't make ends meet and our government is more concern with funding armies that feeding and housing us

Politics was never complicated. They just told us it was. To shut us up. To make us feel young and idealistic and stupid. And we fell for it. And now evil is moving through the wills of our leaders IN OUR FUCKING NAMES to support a genocide in the middle east. Their only crime was being born on that land. Their only crime is being Arab. That's not a fucking crime.

Our system isn't complicated. It's working as intended. Keep the people blind and claim that it's too hard, leave all the details to them. But we are smarter than they are. We are informed. The world is connected like never before and I refuse to let their propaganda ever reach me again.

Hold them accountable. Know their names. Write it in the history books. Let their legacy be known to the end of times.

Be loud about your anger. Go to protests. Write your reps to tell them your vote is on the line. And for God's sake vote in the damned elections!

THE IDEA THAT YOUR VOTE DOESN'T MATTER IS PROPOGANDA. THEY WANT YOU TO FEEL USELESS. THEY WANT YOU TO GIVE UP SO THEY STAY IN POWER.

They want you to think it's complicated. It never has been. Be loud. Vote. Use your right to protest. Use your right to free speech. Use your right to petition. Next Tuesday is election day. Make it fucking count.

So, it finally clicked that while the average person does in fact broadly comprehend that people are neither good nor evil - they're good and bad, and have free will - they also can't understand why some people would fully commit themselves to completely awful causes or to being a terrible person throughout their entire lives. They can't really picture how this works, because they can't imagine themselves choosing to die on a hill of Being A Terrible Person.

This void in their comprehension is where the myth of the Ontologically Evil Person is very likely to come and settle in sooner or later, because it seems to finally provide an answer that makes sense of otherwise senseless cruelty and violence. Agonizing questions like "Why would my boyfriend spend so much energy on making me feel like shit and breaking me down?" "Why would this historical figure decided to kill all of these people?" and "Why would this guy go start a cult and murder everyone?" are finally given an answer, and the formerly-bewildered person finally has some peace of mind.

Because of this, the myth of the Ontologically Evil Person is incredibly hard to get out of people's minds once it takes root. For one thing, bad ideas are like bad habits; it doesn't really work to tell people to Just Stop With Them, because without something else to take its place? They're going to fall back on it.

And if somebody's been traumatized from abuse? The last thing they want to hear is that they're basically dehumanizing their abuser and that's not cool, because it feels to them like the other person is taking their abuser's side and telling them to get fucked. Even if this not what's happening, the survivor's brain is currently operating on fight/flight/fawn/freeze mode, and a brain operating fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode is keyed to making snap decisions to try and remove you from the danger as soon as possible, which means categorizing everything into black and white. This person couldn't care less about the history of eugenics right now; literally all they care about is being safe.

"Okay, so if the Ontologically Evil Person doesn't exist, how the hell do you explain those fuckers over there?" some of you are probably asking.

Here's the deal. Literally every human being alive can and will do terrible things if they're sufficiently scared and desperate. They're in no position to appreciate that nearly all asshole behavior can be explained by a lack of critical social and self-management skills, or by a lack of access to self-improvement (including being too traumatized to trust means of self-improvement).

People who are scared, insecure, and under high levels of stress will often cling to anything that makes them feel better, because they want to feel safe and secure and not in psychological and/or physical agony. (Stress does an absolute number on your body, too.)

Being reliant on a shitty behavior, belief system, or product for some measure of feeling secure and safe is how you get people saying things like "If I didn't act mean, everyone would just walk all over me!" or "I was really depressed before I found this, so if I gave it up I'm going to get depressed again, and I might hurt myself." (And there might be some truth to this one! This might indeed happen if they give it up cold turkey, and without finding an alternative!) It's how you get people conducting """scientific""" studies to """prove""" that their bigotry is totally justified and not at all irrational. ("Well of course these people are genetically inferior, they wouldn't be poor and disease-ridden if they weren't... what do you mean, systemic inequality and uneven healthcare access? No that's obviously fake and made up by More Bad People.")

People also act in unhealthy ways to deal with personal insecurities implanted by parents or society. You have people out there whose parents drummed it into their heads that second place was for worthless losers, or that no one would love them if they didn't look or act a certain way. You have people who absorbed the idea that acknowledging the basic humanity of shitty people means that they have to forgive them and personally help them get better and just suffer through the abuse in the meantime.

This is how people choose to die on the hill of Being A Terrible Person. They weren't ontologically evil. They were scared, and they thought they saw a fortress on the top of that hill that would keep them (and perhaps also their loved ones) safe.

I feel like I'm constantly talking like a broken record, lol, leftists this, leftists that.

Sometimes it's surreal to see myself typing that and agreeing with it, given I used to be very left wing myself until the response on the left to October 7th. And I hate the idea that it's giving other people the impression that I'm conservative--I'm not. I have some views that I'd share with conservatives--being a Zionist being one of them... obviously.

But I'm literally bisexual. I support same-sex marriage. I think democracy is the best form of government, that the US should have universal healthcare, should abolish the Electoral College (National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, I'm praying for you). I think the invasion of Ukraine is a monstrous crime and Putin is a threat to world peace. I think systemic racism is a real thing in the United States, as is police brutality against black people. I think vaccines work, and mandates are a good idea. I think most right-wing politicians are right-wing populists more interested in causing democratic backsliding and peddling conspiracies than they are in fixing literally anything.

But I can't call myself a leftist anymore, even with this set of values. Why? Because--oh, God--I believe Israel has the right to exist. And to defend itself.

I'm not even some radical on Israel unlike some friends of mine--I think it's a travesty that Israel hasn't yet legalized same-sex marriage or established a civil marriage system. I think the 2018 Nation-State Law was racist in making Arabic no longer a co-official language with Hebrew. I think Bibi is one of those aforementioned populists. I think Israel has a democratic backsliding problem.

But the rest of the left--the rest of the queer community, especially--has made it clear in no uncertain terms that I am not welcome among them anymore. Like, they genuinely think I'm a genocide defending fascist, which is just so weird to me sometimes. Yeah, me, the fascist who thinks queer rights should be non-negotiable in any society. And they, who are posting pro-Hamas slogans, are the ones standing against genocide and bigotry. Uh huh. Oo-kay.

I don't want to constantly be saying 'Oh, the left...' and 'Leftists when...' like I'm some boomer posting shitty memes on Facebook. The right has its share of problems, too. And I'm sure they'll do something soon to make their antisemitism known as well--especially as the 2024 presidential election draws nearer.

But right now, the immediate threat isn't in Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, or whoever. I'm more worried about being accosted by pro-Palestine protestors with something to prove than I am about neo-Nazi gangs. And so are most Jews right now. And that's why I'm posting about the left more than the right here... even though my values are mostly left.

Oh, the wonders of being politically homeless!

tell one of these guys that their children only have free breakfast at school and food programs in general at school bc the american government didn’t like that black people were feeding their kids and others before school for free and they don’t care, tell one of these guys that redlining is fucking up the grocery stores and cheap healthy food options they are given and they don’t care, tell these guys that hey the road system like the way highways and streets r built are so shitty and congested bc of segregation and they don’t care, hate black people all you want man i’m used to it, but it shocks me to my core that you cant atleast care about your own life, you deserve free healthcare, you deserve good public transit, you deserve healthy and fresh food that doesnt require you paying 40 dollars more at a luxury grocery chain to get it, i have no idea why you would ever think otherwise

trick or treat 👻🎃❤️

thank you @whinlatter 💕

you get a snippet of my shitty first draft of the Beasts tribute fic i started. for non-whinlatters, Beasts is her absolutely astonishing Ginny & the Weasley family fic that follows her postwar seventh year at Hogwarts, intertwined with glimpses of her development as a child & teenager, and there's a brief mention of a care facility where recipients of the Dementor's kiss live out the rest of their lives. Highly recommend this fic - it's just such a rich portrayal of the whole Weasley family, the fraught rebuilding process after the war, and Ginny's emotional & intellectual life.

tw: illness, death, and very unpleasant hospital stuff

this idea of what happens to people after they've been kissed by a dementor really spoke to me for a few reasons - i couldn't help but think about some of the things i've seen in my professional life. i work in a healthcare specialty i can't really name without potentially doxing myself (it's a small world) and early in my career i occasionally participated in testing to determine death by neurologic criteria - essentially, flat lines on an eeg, which is a really terrible thing to see if you know what you're looking at. it's a difficult thing to even comprehend, especially for a parent - that a child who was splashing in the pool a few hours ago, now seemingly asleep, will not wake up, is damaged so profoundly that they they will never take another unassisted breath. i also regularly worked with people who were incarcerated in the state prison system. it taught me a lot about - let's keep it short and just say inhumanity: in the american healthcare system and especially where it intersects with the criminal justice system, and, unfortunately, in some of my colleagues and the way they cared for their incarcerated patients.

in my current role i work with a lot of patients who just aren't going to get better, who are entirely dependent on caregivers to keep them alive and maintain their quality of life. and it is - i hope you'll understand when i say this i say it as someone who is devoted and privileged to do it - often difficult and demoralizing work. for families and for staff.

my youngest sister was one of these people: she suffered a hemorrhage in infancy which resulted in serious damage to her brain. she never spoke, walked, fed or bathed herself. it was difficult to know what she understood, perceived, felt, wanted. she was a beautiful, calm, sweet-natured child who was easy to love; not every family in our position is so fortunate. it was also easy for us to project on her an interior life that may or may not have really been there, which was a great comfort to my mother. but her daily care needs were enormous, taxing, frustrating, and her inevitable deterioration and death were devastating to witness.

obviously i don't really want to equate people with brain injuries and whatever other special needs with people in the hp universe who no longer have souls - that's part of the reason i've struggled with this fic. there are a lot of potentially-unanswerable questions about the humanity and interiority of victims of soul-removal in this fictional context, but i think the only responsible practice for a clinician working with such patients would be to assume that they still feel, experience, and need what any other person who cannot care for themselves would. including not just nutrition, hygiene, etc. but also company and touch and positive regard. and that whatever crime, even atrocity, they might have committed is irrelevant to my duty to them as a caregiver. but that is easier to say than to do, consistently, every day, at home or in a medical facility, and i know from experience that it won't always happen that way.

anyway, if for some reason you have read this far, here's an excerpt from the story, complete with first-draft placeholders where i decided to rethink some dumb on-the-nose character names, lol. it needs to be rewritten from scratch, honestly. it's set at the end of GoF, when Madame Pomfrey is tasked with removing the house-elf Winky from Barty Crouch, Jr.'s side after he has received the kiss, and I've decided for the purposes of this silly little fic that she has experience in the care facility where he'll end up.

working title is My Beautiful Dead Friends.

Minerva saw the whole horrible thing and it was all over her face, what it had done to her. Poppy has never seen it happen, and neither had [supervisor], which seemed to irritate him; he'd read about it in books. The soul emits a colourless glow as it exits, he said, visible for an instant before it is consumed. For some time in the eighteenth century the Kiss was performed in public, on a platform raised above Diagon Alley. People would bring their children. There were woodcuts depicting the moment, dementors in swirling curlicues, the bound hands and dark mouth of the convicted, and the soul, represented as a star or sometimes a tiny naked man, caught in the moment of transit. It was striking how carefully, how delicately, the little soul was etched, with lines of light coming off it. Even the soul of a murderer, a beautiful shining thing. Minerva had marched Barty to the infirmary dozens of times in his schooldays. Sometimes because Horace wasn't fond of the long walk, nor of standing up to his own students, but often because it was one of her Gryffindors who'd done it to him. He was there all the time, hexed, cursed, punched in the face. It seemed, at first, simply the lot of the delicate-featured son of the head of law enforcement to be regularly trounced. He gave at least as good as he got and sometimes there'd be an entire queue of students behind him covered in boils, missing or extra limbs, pinching their nostrils to stop the bats from flapping out. Barty might chuckle through a mouth of blood while she saw to him, or he might writhe and moan as if in agony; Poppy had a suspicion that it depended on whether there was a Hogmeade weekend or an exam coming up. It wasn't only the usual interhouse skirmishes with Barty—Once, he limped to the hospital wing on his own, so badly beaten she had to put him out for a while and repair his perforated intestines with dozens of tiny movements of the tip of her wand. When he came to, she asked him what had happened, who had done this. He grinned at her with half his teeth gone. "Jusht the cosht of doing businesh, Madame," he said. Bubbles of red on his lips as he spoke. She found out later from Filius that he'd scammed a bunch of Ravenclaws into a sort of pyramid scheme, buying and reselling junk from Zonko's to each other. She was sure he didn't need the money: his robes were clasped with real-silver fasteners in the shapes of snakes. His mother came to take him home for the weekend after that one. He pressed the side of his face into the bosom of her robes and sobbed pitifully while Poppy left them to it behind a screen. On his way out the door, later, he waved to her, like, see you soon! Now he looks content, drowsy, like he's just had a meal. It was always hard to square the faces of the Kissed with what they'd done. Barty could almost be his seventh-year self, resting in the lull of a potion—though he might have already been a murderer by then, she realised. His hands, which had once aimed waves of pain so brutal they'd evicted poor Alice and Frank Longbottom from their own minds, are laced together at rest on his stomach. His thumbnail picks occasionally at the wand-callus on his forefinger. Some unlucky trainee healer will be alarmed by that one day. The Kissed do those little things. Their eyes follow you, sometimes, across the room. They smack their lips when they swallow the bubblemint-flavoured nutrition potion. They sit up in bed. "Look—he's doing it—I've told you—" Llanzo's mother had once cried, summoning the whole staff to come and see. She was tickling Llanzo's ribs with her fingers, and his lips had pulled back, his chest was jerking with spasms of laughter, no sound but a sort of clicking in his throat. "It's a reflex," [supervisor] told her. Llanzo's younger brother slumped in his bedside chair and stared sourly at his mother. She got angry, understandably, and shouted a bit before storming out.

"A rat will make a rhythmic sound if you tickle its belly," [supervisor] told Poppy in private. "You can call it laughter, if you like."

Llanzo was the only one who ever got visitors. He'd been accused of leading a nine-year-old witch away from her parents at Gray's beach and leaving her face-down, strangled, in the shallow mud of the Thames. His mother had given an alibi, which wasn't enough to keep him from being arrested, and he'd been shipped off to Azkaban to be held pending trial. As they'd approached the jagged rocks of the island he'd broken his bonds somehow and heaved himself over the side of the boat. Escape, suicide, or just some motiveless panic, it wasn't clear, but when they'd caught him and hauled him onshore the Dementors had fallen on him at once. He was seventeen, on his summer holidays. Lying in bed on the ward a year later he still looked like a child. Poppy wasn't sentimental, as a rule, but at the end of shift after those visits she'd sometimes have to have a little cry in the car park before she apparated home. "If you ask me I think she's on to something," Catherine told her once, in low tones, eyes on [supervisor]'s office door. "I've seen things. The way they look up at you. You can leave them on the pot for an hour, they won't do a thing, then as soon as they're back on the bed, haven't even had time to get a nappy out—" she made a squelching sound in her cheek. "Pure spite, I swear."

His mother came back the following week, brother in tow, and sat with him reading from Quidditch Through the Ages, turning the book to show him the moving illustrations. Sometimes his gaze moved to land on them and sometimes it didn't. "He was a Chaser," she told Catherine, who'd come to give him a bath. "Fast as anything. His Dad and I were both hopeless on a broom, but he's—" She swallowed hard. Llanzo was smiling faintly, as he often did when he got his bath. His breath came in soft vocal sounds that were almost sighs. "—he's my superstar," she finished. When they left, she made his brother say goodbye to him. Poppy was scrubbing up at the bedside sink to do his skin integrity assessment. Llanzo's brother gripped his hand, and leaned down as if to kiss him on the cheek. "Fucking die," he whispered, lips almost touching Llanzo's motionless face.

When Empire supports a wannabe Empire

War in Ukraine and Genocide in Gaza are two examples of how USA as a country chooses who to support. Ukrainians and Gazans are both victims of oppressors that want to KILL them all. If USA was a normal country that cares about people, they'd support Gazans as much as they do Ukrainians. But unfortunately, USA is not such a country, and it was known long before now. USA as a country only supports those that suit their political and capitalist agenda at the time. USA hates Russia, so they support Ukraine, but I can as well imagine that if USA was ever in a good relationship with Russia and had a lot of money to make from supporting them, they wouldn't support Ukrainians at all, just like they don't support Gazans dying in the most horrifying act of genocide we saw in recent history. Israel is shooting at civilians, who they call "human animals" and USA's president is proud to support it.

Israel and USA want to create Greater Israel together at the cost of civilian lives of innocent Palestinians, because they only care about power and power alone. They don't see Palestinians as people at all.

Israel spreads propaganda about Palestinians that says they are less than human, that Israel should have been ashamed to even create, because it's the exact copy and paste of nazi propaganda that killed THEIR people around the world, and USA stands and claps at their genius ideas. But I guess they don't care as long as Israel can acquire that land for their precious country and USA can get someone in the Middle East that they can use to control it. I don't know & can't even comprehend how both USA's government and Israel's government can live with themselves knowing that they are building their alliance and political presence in the region on genocide of innocent people.

Oh, and if you doubted my Russia = Israel comparison, then know that Israel is doing something fishy on Lebanon/Israel border. Specifically, they're lighting fields and mountains on fire, not letting firefighters in to put down those fires and are killing anybody who comes closer.

And you know what is the most annoying? That if Americans don't use the narration of "our tax dollars pay for it" then they won't have enough people actually caring about the issue. For some unfathomable reason people care more when they know their money was used to do this. Because people think that taxes are stealing the money from people, and hell, maybe in USA that's real, looking at their shitty healthcare system, education system etc. but it's still vile to some extent that some people can only care if their money were taken from them and used to do something horrible, and wouldn't care otherwise. Wouldn't care that bombs are dropped on innocent people if those bombs were not funded by their money. And funnily the exact same argument can be used against them to make them despise helping Ukraine, because "why should their tax dollars go to some foreign country", yes? I saw people like this. I don't know what is wrong with those people at all.

Are there better ways to use American dollars than to help genocidal maniacs? Of course, but maybe don't make it a core of your argument when people are dying. It distracts from the real issue: the genocide.

Still, it's important to stop the USA from funding this genocide. Not because American citizens' money were taken, but because funding genocides is evil. Nobody should be doing that, especially not the country that is supposedly standing for freedom. The most powerful country in the world could destroy many other countries by simply funding the wrong people, and we can see that now in Gaza. USA's help is contributing to saving Ukraine, but in Gaza the same kind of help offered to Israel is a reason why this genocide happens so quickly. The reason why Gaza is leveled into rubble as we speak. It's terrifying.

And yet...

USA's president is denying the genocide. He is claiming that people are lying about how many Palestinians were killed. To the point that the Health Ministry in Gaza had to release a 212 pages long document including all the names of victims of Israeli attack (and those don't include people that are missing or whose bodies can't be identified).

The UN Security Council voted recently on a resolution to condemn violence against ALL civilians, while calling for humanitarian pauses to the fighting in order to get aid into Gaza. You know what was the ONLY country that voted against it? Yes, United States of America.

USA vetoed the resolution that was supposed to help people.

USA's government doesn't care about people. They are caring only about their own interests. And I'd really want to say that EU is better, but it's not when the EU's President Ursula von der Leyen claims that "Europe stands with Israel" to the absolute outrage of people and European countries like for example Ireland whose EU representative almost screamed that von der Leyen doesn't speak for her country and doesn't speak for Europe. She doesn't. There are people in Europe who deny the genocides too. People of my own nationality saying shit that makes me ashamed I share the country with them. Because how can someone say something like this when innocent people are dying? Do they have no empathy, no heart? I can only hope there are more people who care than those who fall for propaganda and spread lies.

Israel now cut off internet in Gaza, so we couldn't see what they are about to do to the people. They were targeting journalists and their families before that... but now? They are going to keep bombing the innocents. And if someone is still alive after, that feels like it will be a miracle. Imagine you live in Gaza and know you may not survive what is going to happen and have no way to say goodbye to your family living abroad, or a way to tell your story before you are gone.

Is that really "justice" USA fights for? Because it doesn't feel like any type of justice. If they support what Israel is doing right now, they're not supporting justice. They're supporting genocide of innocent ppl. And I will say it as many times as it's needed. Because it's the truth.

I'm loosing hope in humanity, but we need to keep it alive. Because if not we, then who will stop those govs from committing crimes? We're powerful, but often don't realize how much power we wield. We have to use it to help in any way we can. Scream, show them we all care.

Here are some links that may help to stop it all:

https://linktr.ee/nooraldayeh

https://linktr.ee/justgraciegrace

Vent post.

Id put it behind a cut but I’m on mobile :/ also this is very ramble and not at all coherent but oh well.

I always have a bit of an issue with posts like this that are like “your trauma and how you react to it doesn’t make you a bad person” because. Uh. Cycles of abuse are a thing, you can absolutely do bad things out of trauma responses. You can absolutely be a shitty, hurtful person from a place of pain. (Staring at the entire state of Israel and its treatment of Palestine). Especially in the context of that post, which specifically mentions anger issues and addiction.

I’m not replying or reblogging said post because I truly don’t think that’s what op was going for, the greater point was “autism isn’t just sunshine and roses but can create real issues for people,” it’s just… an accidental unfortunate implication. But it’s late and I’m dealing with my own neuroatyoical issues flaring up atm so. Yelling about implications and the need for nuance and space for caretaker burnout on my own blog. Probably dealing with some buried trauma of my own.

(Also the USA healthcare system sucks for people who can’t easily take care of themselves, I dunno what it’s like outside the country but in here you need SO Much Money just to get barely adequate care for TBIs or Alzheimer’s or shit. )

There’s a little byplay in the notes that I think is important—someone says “I don’t have autism but I got secondhand trauma because my sibling does,” someone else responds “fuck you, of course allistic is making it all about them self” and a third person goes “hey it’s very common for the siblings of disabled people to be neglected in favor of the ‘squeaky wheel,’ I know it hurts to hear but disability hurts more than just the disabled person.” That plus some of the notes describing damage that autistic people have done (and largely regretted) to others… Disabled people can cause harm. That’s a thing!!! Being disabled does not make you blameless! Cool motive still murder!

And your disability can absolutely cause secondhand harm even if you don’t mean it to! My little sister no longer feels like the smaller sibling because my parents spend more emotional energy on me—and that’s a mild case, my disability only really began being an issue when we were both in college. It’s nothing compared to her friend, whose adult brother suffered a TBI and can’t live at home because it’s not safe to have a huge man around who can’t regulate his strength when he’s upset. It’s not at all his fault that he’s like this, but it’s a horrible situation and ALL involved should be able to say that it’s horrible.

I have done shitty things because of trauma responses, and I have worked really hard to create strategies to keep those shitty behaviors from happening again. I give myself—and others—a bit of a pass when a situation is truly uncontrollable. Or when someone is actively trying to ignore boundaries I’ve set to protect myself, but… that’s not the same as going “I have anger issues. Huh. Oh well! I will continue having destructive trauma responses and do nothing to mitigate it!”

I dunno. I’m sure some of this strong reaction of mine comes from being lashed out at by people in the midst of their own meltdowns, even though those have been more TBI related than autism related. Still. The meltdown was unavoidable but the ways they acted during were… hm. Not great.

At least stay away from vulnerable entities when you’re like this. My partner removes himself from the dog when he’s having a meltdown because the dog can provoke him into physically lashing out. (The dog has no idea, of course. The dog is very stupid and only barely understands what me crying means. ) He can’t control the meltdown happening but he can step away from things he could hurt. I really wish the people who hurt me had stepped away from the child I was.

I wish I’d gotten an apology, too. Like at least apologize for your shitty behavior, please!

(This whole “writing my own separate post and not tagging op” is one of those “hm. Am having Emotion. How to express it without causing pain to others” things I’ve tried to cultivate.)

If you don’t fucking MANAGE damage to others, others won’t want to be around you. If you hurt someone they are absolutely within their rights to set boundaries to protect themselves.

I dunno. I started at point A and I’m not sure where I went from there. Don’t be a dick I guess.

I just need to vent a little, ignore this ask if you're not in the mood for that.

I just got a letter stating that there's a waiting time of about 2 years for the gender clinic, so I sent that in my group chat of friends with a lighthearted joke asking for f's in the chat. And this one guy I don't really get along with immediately responds with "well I have to wait 2 and a half years!" Which like. Okay. I'm sorry to hear that but it's not a competition. But I try to laugh it off and just be like "yeah our healthcare system is pretty clogged up I guess!" But then another guy joins in to complain about his shit too and then they both start this whole fatalistic thing of like "oh our entire political system is broken and there's nothing we can do and the older generation is ruining everything for us" and I'm just so tired.

Really? Really? I know I started this off in a jokey way but this is like an actual problem for the next 2 years(!) of my life that I'm going to have to deal with. And your response to that is to go "I see that you're sad about your situation! Have you considered that it's a hopeless situation that will never get any better? Also let me tell you about MY problems!"

Is it really so much to ask for a little sensitivity and sympathy? Crazy idea, maybe try to cheer up the person who just received bad news? Not to mention that they do this whole song and dance about every other day in the group chat. I'm so sick of them constantly dragging each other into discussions about politics and clogging up the whole chat no matter what the previous topic was. I dunno. I already have a history with one of these two and the fact that everybody just sits and watches this shit happen like it's normal functional behaviour just frustrates the shit out of me. It makes me never want to share things on a group level again and honestly makes me trust the others in the group on individual level less, too. And before you ask yes I have communicated with them about similar issues in the past and all it's done is convince me that it's not worth the energy. Obviously this whole thing is one-sided and isn't a fair reflection of them as people and I'm biased and in a bad mood and there might be ways to interpret their behaviour more favourably but I'm just. so. tired.

I think I need to get more active in looking for new friends.

Yeah maybe you do, but that being said, to me it honestly sounds like you're reading too much intentional harm into what to me mostly sounds like a genuine attempt to relate to a shitty situation. That being said, I don't actually know these people and I don't know the details so take my words with a grain of salt.

im trying to cut ties with a former high school friend who is a diehard "fiscally conservative" capitalist. one of the main things about her shitty politics that struck me was her penchant for basically licking the boots of the status quo (realities of capitalism) even when she was indirectly or directly experiencing negative effects of that status quo. she was essentially brainwashed.

she used to work at a mcdonalds for a year and a bit. before she started her job there, she kept telling me to apply at a local mcdonalds as well, insisting that they offered good benefits for healthcare as well as scholarship money. however, she soon realized that these apparent (rare) benefits did not make up for the inarguably shitty aspects of her job.

she got no raise despite being given more jobs as time went on; she remained at exactly minimum wage. she complained about this. her boss would call her at like, noon on a weekday knowing full well she was at school demanding her to take another person's hours at an incovenient time slot, and she would complain about this. her coworkers were constantly subjected to racist harrassment during their shifts and they were expected to serve their racist customers with a smile regardless. she spoke about this as well; she mentioned how she felt like it was taking a mental toll on them.

but the problem was never "the economic system mcdonalds adheres to is fundamentally built on having employers get away with giving their employees low pay and other unfair treatment." it was just "oh mcdonalds is just like this." it was never "the company i work for expects me to heed to their every whim and greatly inconvience myself even though i am a student who has to attend class." it was just "oh mcdonalds is just like this; my boss is just mean." the problem was never "fast food workers of lower paid positions are expected to treat all of their customers like angels even if they mistreat them or risk getting fired, and even if their mental health is worsened by it." it was just "this mcdonalds is located in a downtown area with lots of junkies."

i tried to explain how the "junkies," the boss, and the store itself did not represent the actual underlying cause of these issues, but it was like talking to a brick wall. anti-capitalist sentiment to her was nothing more than semantics. she was utterly obsessed with this idea that the Real problem were the taxes imposed by the canadian liberals and "socialist policies" that lead to inflation. she felt robbed from the wages she deserved, and all of her political beliefs circled around her personal desire to get more money and nothing more. she believed that the solution to all economic issues was to reduce taxes so that you could "keep what you earned," and that it was socialism, not capitalism, that prevented you from keeping what you were owed. she was anti-union because the ones she experienced had a fee. she would make fun of me for not having a job because i couldn't find one. she would ignore when i talked about other things but suddenly perked up when i talked about going to a job interview or earning money in some other way. none of her political beliefs were influenced by compassion, just her desire to make money for herself.

she read conservative newspapers; she listened to conservative podcasts. in 2020 she even briefly fell down a conspiracy theorist rabbit hole and began spitting nonsense about how covid was a "man-made disease." she thought of herself as smarter than i was politics-wise despite all of this. she believed that there were "common sense conservatives" who were not bigoted in any way and just cared about preserving money for the working class. she saw nothing wrong with the existence of billionaires because they "worked hard to get there" and yada yada yada.

she eventually quit her job at mcdonalds and got another job at a cafe. she was paid slightly better wages. one of her higher-ups who was middle-aged pressured her into taking her out to drinks and then groped her multiple times. she spoke about this to me with this very strange tone, like she was describing high school gossip divorced from an actual experience she had. at one point she almost seemed to treat it like some kind of acheivement, saying "Now i can say #metoo haha!" she told me that reporting the man who groped her would be next to useless because he was in such a high-ranking position in the company. her assaulter even knew the location of her apartment because he forced her to walk home with him, but she did not seem to care about that detail at all. the assaulter was also apparently the head of the sort of union that the cafe had, suggesting that even the union organization in that place was rotten to the core.

she had literally just faced one of the worst things that can happen in a workplace governed by the capitalist playbook. the lower-pay workers can only smile and nod as their higher-ups mistreat them in horrifying ways. but she was still convinced that it was good for her to be treated in that way. that the world needed to continue to adhere to the system that took advantage of her literal body. that the solution was just to work harder and have less taxes.

she was a student with a stable home life and a roof over her head in the form of her parents' apartment. but she was still someone who paid for basically everything she needed except for food and occasionally school costs. regardless of her status, she'd bought into the lie that work was necessary and good for her, even though it wasnt at all.

i will never understand it

Just gonna say that the UK situation is far better than the situation we got here in the US y’all have free healthcare for example, benefits etc. Y’all didn’t have an insurrection by an ex president happen too, School shootings, literal Fascism, abortion outlawed. I know plenty that would happily swap places with y’all in a blink

I understand that completely. There are plenty of of other places that are less fortunate than the U.K. and I think until you are living through those things you can't really appreciate what people are going through. Like I honestly have no idea how people in the US deal with that kind of stress. I think for me, this is a new experience and it just feels crazy and uncertain because that is my experience. I think both of our experiences are incomparable. Shit has happened to you that I can't imagine and vice versa.

To be honest I feel like the UK is on a bit of a downslide, we have politicians trying to over turn the human rights law that will set LGBT rights back, and give them the op to ban abortion. We also have politicians trying to privatise the NHS which means we will have to pay for treatment. As for the NHS itself the system is buckling under the sheer demand. The number of children in care has gone up dramatically because people aren't coping and the system can not accommodate it in a way that helps these kids so they are going to fall through the cracks and are at a huge risk of homelessness, CSE and country lines operations. In my overall county we have gangs popping off at each other more and more and kids literally stabbing or shooting each other over bull shit.

On top of that people are literally having to choose between heating and feeding their kids. The amount of people using food banks has risen dramatically.

I can not fully appreciate what the US is going to because frankly I am not there but here, I see it every day and to me yea it feels shitty.

Go to fighters all of it gone away the important thing the important thing the important fucking motherfucking thing Teresa that’s not the important thing important thing is that I maintain my integrity and remember that I am daddy and that means that I’m not gonna let you guys fucking walk all over me but if you do I’ll make the best of it I’m an extraordinary machine and all that I want another shot it’s probably not in my best interest I don’t think my butt hole would appreciate it my grandmother will now there’s no well but you guys are way more embarrassed and I am so I’m just through it so anyway that’s gonna suck for next car because he’s gonna wanna fuck every he’s probably fucked like 8 billion people just to be a star just to look like a fucking loser and never actually a grand slam and then he still fucking stuck on Dexter Morgan and I wonder why why are you watching Dexter Morgan I already know the doctor knows what I’m thinking it’s very gassy territory I don’t like that makes you wish that there is Dustin psychologist open up and then if you know you know I am so much more I think that he has it now what is your brain you guys are very clever you’re getting well ha ha I don’t like it why not it doesn’t mean that I am asking on my own thought… It’s a little bit like that but what else because he didn’t really want to give me the money but probably for a reason that I can’t explain kind of like you guys understand from your own American perspective and sure what is up with that Radisson blue blood garbage right there and I thought I got all the girls off at the park that line though I never would I can’t great English well the only one that well sure that one boy I love that I felt a little out of place but then I remembered that you’re you’re both right I just don’t like when you give me any better that’s it I love you so much about you guys I’m just so amazed by the stupidity of people I don’t wanna write an essay about it but they probably want to read it David is upset and he was talking and talking and we used to be friends yesterday and I’m upset about it and I don’t need necessarily that anything whatever is happened they just want to fuck no is it worth it Truman show traffic date situation American yourself off all that possible garbage cans that all about the lame Stream Limon unfortunately in the healthcare system is about to go get a huge walk… Question for Italian he’s almost wonder if y’all get stuck in road test and say you want the perfect child and then you want to pain and alcohol at you know alcohol syndrome so then we can Iglesias and all of those assholes and have a fun time for flight arrives by the pepperoni pizza from Papa John boy but I’m going out with mine one day I’m sure I know them off the wall I like Siri

So if you guys are like really dark in Bellevue already figured out the cure to everything right 000 you can use Georgia I think that’s a brilliant idea ha ha ha ha probably kind a let all of you fucking crash even if it means letting you murder yourself… I feel like I owe you get what I’m saying do you I don’t think you know you really really don’t when you guys fucking fuck people over like that there’s always like an a and everything right we are mathematician anymore than you but because I probably should’ve been here all the bullshit like they don’t know I gotta dance… if you got a dance it’s because you need a little more confidence than I need for perhaps the other way around I like dancing I don’t dance he’s like the weatherman a quiet evening yes I could buy for four but I don’t feel great for my self yeah let’s set it kind of shitty shitty weather be in my TickTock I think that some of the guys that they need so much… And if if you if you think that you know so much about the color blue or something like that then I suppose you know go to town but I think that I could probably fuck you up and start a war end in your children’s life and all that jazz because it’s that serious right yeah yeah so it’s awfully nice this is grandpa are you today that is that at least you know where I shouldn’t I shouldn’t need me like that anymore sure that there are people with your own pace but it is your job actually. If you actually work on social bullying hazing if you do actually have bipolar disorder loosely quoted because let’s not forget it savings bank… It’s not even all day or you guys were like oh that’s so unfair maybe in some ways that’s true but probably not emote really now I get it like that is awful though it’s necessary it’s a necessary evil I know more about whiskey and those guys Everwood exactly what I think ever what do you write that’s what I’m saying and then like OK dude I’m not even allowed to go there never mind whatever it takes is in there like oh my god she’s wearing Mercedes just wanna wear me out where are you fucking to you little fuckhead fuck you fuck you and you’re not even Canadian Mercedes that’s not even cool you’re fucking a little bitch a hoe Mercedes she’s just a fucking human trafficking car is that what you think Josh after all somebody else probably had you by the balls Disney group I don’t wanna talk about this OK like I just wanna be whatever fuck you excuse me what do you want to talk about can we talk about Rachel… Is that shit for real I saw her looking at the New Zealand catalog and I said hell the fuck goddamnit no I got really very very serious for a very goddamn important reason and it pissed me off I know the Portuguese kids are like OK go on and I’m like well all right hold on hold on hold on what was it what was it that made me know where to find myself wherever I was besides that that was not fair that is a misrepresentation of the land… That may as well be hard Syria that’s disgusting… Oh adorable luckily enough we have the batteries for them to… Thumbs up bro‘s… Actually that’s weird that’s what I said to it it it text Rose like yeah I know if you have like surroundsound in your house it feels better it feels like more serene and more it’s just trust me you guys

My friend says not to vote in the upcoming election because our liberal establishment is no different from fascism and because Trump's policies are merely an extension of existing policies (like the ICE concentration camps that were established under Obama). How would you, being a leftist like me and my friend, respond to this attitude?

When I was in high school there was one cataclysmic, catastrophic, Very Important school board meeting.

It was a perfect storm of religious freedom, LGBT Rights, and Holy Shit You’re Talking About Taking Daycare Away from Students Who Are Parents.

The first thing, religious freedom, was exceptionally stupid but I think it’s a great example of how shitty the suburb I lived in was and what we were dealing with. Basically the D&D club that I started was accused of being Satanists and the Campus Christian Club was trying to get us shut down for worshipping satan. (I live in the fucking WORST part of LA County, I swear). The defense for the D&D club was pretty simple: If we’re worshipping satan as an on-campus activity at lunchtime we have every right to do so just like the Campus Christian Club an in fact if the Campus Christian Club got us shut down for practicing a different religion they’d made a very effective argument for shutting down their Praising Christ on-campus lunchtime activity.

The second thing was ANOTHER conflict with the Campus Christian Club - this was more serious. This was “High schoolers shouldn’t be exposed to deviant lifestyles and therefore we need to shut down the Gay/Straight Alliance.” At that point the GSA was also very new and I was also the VP of it. Spoilers: we were allowed to continue existing and we had speakers come in from time to time - we had grownups who talked to us about dealing with homophobia and resources for what happened if your parents kicked you out; we had a trans woman in her 50s come and talk to us (in 2003!) about transphobia and dysphoria and how to cope. The adviser handed out a packet to all of us that had the suicide hotline number right at the top, I know at least three people used that number the first year. The defense for the GSA was actually another handy-dandy page out of the ACLU handbook: The Campus Christian Club’s definition of deviance is something they have a right to hold but not to impose on other people - if you ban the GSA based on being ‘deviants’ you are imposing someone else’s belief system on us so knock it off unless you want to be a fun LA Times story.

The third thing didn’t have ANYTHING to do with the Campus Christian Club and was much worse because it had to do with funding and teen moms. The third thing was “The district believes it’s a waste of money to continue to pay for childcare at the district continuation school; if you can’t afford childcare you should have thought of that before becoming a teen mom, good luck getting a babysitter while you’re trying to finish high school.” Four of the students from the continuation school had showed up with their children and their defense of the daycare program was basically (and understandably) “What the fuck you fucking ghouls we just want to finish school and it’s one fucking daycare provider on campus you already have to pay the insurance for childcare providers for other schools in the district what the fucking fuck.”

The D&D Club, GSA, and Childcare for Teen Parents Program were all allowed to continue existing.

By one vote.

By someone who had recently been elected to the school board.

By four votes.

Four people went out and voted that November. Four people filled in a bubble on a ballot.

The GSA did fundraisers to pay for STI testing and suicide prevention. My friend Michelle graduated on time with her daughter waiting in the crowd. Knowing that adult trans people could survive and exist and thrive and love themselves was lifesaving information for a few kids in the GSA.

Four votes. If four people stayed home that’s a hundred fewer STI tests, that’s wondering if Michelle would ever be able to get a job when she didn’t have a diploma and couldn’t hire a babysitter. That’s three dead queer kids and another two homeless.

And it didn’t happen. Because four people filled in a couple of bubbles one night in November.

Voting is not activism but it is by no means useless. If your friend is incapable of distinguishing fascism and liberalism that sounds like a them problem and it sucks to be them; that amount of nihilism is hard to carry around.

People who criticize leftists for “electoral apologism” or whatever for voting are the “yet you participate in society, curious. I am very intelligent” comic

Yeah, the system’s shitty. Yeah, it sucks and should be overthrown. But it’s not overthrown YET so we may as well take advantage of the few areas of harm reduction the system allows. Voting doesn’t mean you STOP doing direct action or that you stop pushing for change, it just means you’re doing the single easiest real-world thing to alleviate suffering. And if it doesn’t work who gives a fuck - you did the bare minimum and it cost you a small amount of time.

Vote and then go hand out food in the park or cut the valve stems off a cop car if you’re feeling angsty about conceding to the system.

(also FUCK, you have no idea how much I hate having to defend the Obama administration but please go talk to a trans person about whether it is easier or harder to get healthcare in their state under Trump or under Obama. I fucking hate liberals but I don’t think that they’re actively interested in overturning Roe V. Wade. Fuck this political purity culture and go learn about harm reduction.)

psa about book piracy

the publishing industry does not work like the film/tv industry or whatever other industries you’ve decided make piracy a victimless crime. it does actively and directly hurt authors

many authors are paid an “advance”. this is occasionally large, but more frequently is small (~£2k) and even more frequently is somewhere in the middle (~£10k). this may be the only payment they receive for what is frequently years of work. in order to earn any royalties, they need to sell enough books to “earn out” (make the publisher back the money they spent on the advance). if they don’t earn out, they will never get royalties. also, the advance for their next book will probably be smaller.

if their book is part of a series, later books in the series may be cancelled because the first book didn’t sell well enough

even if a book isn’t cancelled, the print run may be reduced (=how many copies are printed) which means the book will be in fewer bookshops which mean there are fewer opportunities for it to sell copies

all of that conspires to mean... the author’s next advance is smaller, a series gets cancelled before it’s finished, and generally you have fucked over the person whose work you were stealing

(if they have earned out already, it may not directly fuck over their future books as much, but you are directly taking royalties out of their pocket, so)

if you’ve ever been mad because the 3rd book in a trilogy you were reading never got published, it’ll be because the first two didn’t sell enough. maybe the market was wrong at the time, maybe they took a while to take off, or maybe -- and increasingly frequently -- it’s because too many people pirated them instead of buying them.

(this is also why waiting until a series is complete to buy any of them is more likely to result in the series never being complete. the publishers need to know it’s a good investment. better to buy the books and wait to read them, if you’re concerned about cliffhangers, than to refrain from buying them entirely.)

“but the book is still there after i download it so i haven’t technically stolen anything” read the above bullet points again and understand that what you have stolen is not the book per se, it’s the sale, and therefore the goodwill with the publisher that makes them buy that author’s future books and pay that author money

do not @ me about “but what if it’s the only way to access english-language books in your country” because that is not the situation i’m talking about or the majority situation in the general scheme of things. 90% of people who pirate books do so either because they don’t realise it hurts authors or they don’t give a shit

also if your justification is that authors are “rich” i would like to point out that a recent report showed average earnings for an author in the uk to be £10.5k/yr in 2018. that is substantially below minimum wage (for full-time work), so genuinely, fuck off with that

you have no idea what somebody else’s financial situation is, and i know several authors who have been told to their faces that it was okay to pirate from them because they were rich when those people were in fact struggling to make ends meet

(not to mention that authors are technically self employed which means no benefits; this is particularly challenging in countries without universal healthcare)

whatever bullshit “net worth” estimate you’ve found online or whatever bears absolutely no resemblance to most people’s financial reality

so if you think you’re being clever by only targeting authors you’ve decided are wealthy, consider that there’s a high chance you’re wrong

yes books are expensive and yes big publishing companies are the ones seeing most of the benefit of that. but it’s not the big publishing companies that get hurt when you steal them, because they just squeeze that money out of the authors instead to make up their bottom line. does it suck as a system? obviously! does that make piracy a good way to resist it? no, because it only hurts the people on the bottom

some people think that piracy doesn’t affect sales. it does. it has been demonstrated over and over again that piracy impacts sales (see maggie stiefvater’s experiment with the raven king for an example). “it’s helping people discover the books” doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. all an author gains from this is more people who will steal from them. exposure doesn’t pay the bills. exposure just kills ya.

many places have libraries. libraries benefit authors, because they buy books. in some countries, like the UK, authors receive money based on how many times their books are borrowed. libraries frequently offer ebooks, so if you’re not able to access them in-person you can still get books. libraries are good! if you can use your local library, you should. free books for you, without fucking over the creators. you can often request books that they don’t carry, which then means that other people also get to read that book.

(“my library doesn’t carry queer books” i sympathise and i realise it can be challenging to request those in a conservative area but also consider that books by marginalised authors are exactly the ones that publishers will yeet if they think they’re not making a return on their investment, so unfortunately, pirating those is extra bad. publishers will drop “risky” shit like a hot potato if it’s not making them money. those are exactly the books we need to show up for.)

obviously in an ideal world we would have UBI or whatever and therefore people’s ability to put food on the table would not be dependent on monetising creative pursuits but that’s not the world we live in. in the world we live in, writing is work and work deserves to be paid for. stealing people’s labour because you feel entitled to it is not more justifiable just because that labour is creative.

the fact that people write as a hobby does not negate the challenges of writing as a profession. the two are actually pretty different. writing as a hobby isn’t easy, but writing as a profession has a whole heap of extra behind-the-scenes work that you don’t see, in case you’re tempted to take the “but it’s not real work” argument. besides which, “but people do it for free on the internet” is a shitty reason not to pay people for their work.

if you can’t afford a particular book, that sucks, i often cannot afford a book i would like. the solution: read other books that you can afford / which your library does carry / which are out of copyright. not: steal the book because obviously you should have whatever you want whenever you want it.

don’t be a dick

stealing screws authors over 

in conclusion: stop trying to justify piracy in my notes or in the replies to authors who complain about it. stop telling authors to their face that you don’t value their work and their time. it’s not cool, it’s not clever, it’s not revolutionary. it’s just fucking over people who are already underpaid and living precariously.

Hi bitches, I'm a bit nervous to ask this but I'm being genuine I promise. I don't want you to think I'm some biggoted old fool.

Could you please help me understand how sex work isn't exploitative? I hear a lot of people saying "it's just the same as normal work, it's better than my job at Amazon/target/wherever and no one is calling that work exploitative" or "well you wouldn't do YOUR job if you didn't have to either" but like, checkout work IS hella exploitative??? Most work IS hella bullshit that only exists to feed the capitalist machine. I DO fight for a world where work is a choice. I understand why The Right would love onlyfans, but why is The Left lining up to defend it?

Sex work - especially things like onlyfans - is overwhelmingly done by the poor or as a way to escape poverty ("I was being paid shit in my previous job, now I can afford an apartment" is something I hear a lot). But in doing so it transfers all the risks to them, it's essentially turning sex work into the gig/hustle economy, isn't it? You end up on a zero hour contract with no union, health, benefit, maternity protection, in a job that can be hella dangerous and have serious emotional repercussions and requires huge emotional labour and/or disconnect and I don't really understand why we're just cheering this along?

I don't object on moral grounds. Sex is sex. Consenting adults do what you want. People are well within their moral and legal rights to choose to sell sex, (or the emotional labour that comes with it), or photos, or whatever they want - just like they are free to go work for target. I absolutely understand the need to - and support - decriminalisation of sex work, the need to make it safe and secure for sex workers, but I just can't see why ~the world at large~ sees huge numbers of young 18 year old women being herded and encouraged into joining Onlyfans - in several cases with people saying "can't wait for you to turn 18 so you can have an OF" so the patriarchy can pay £3-4 a month to see their tits and people cheer this along? One or two get rich, I'm sure, but who is getting REALLY rich? It's the old white men that own onlyfans and take a 20% cut, as always. It's the patriarchy working as it always has. Allowing one or two women to succeed while holding the rest down for exploitation. Except now it's mixing with the worst bits of 21st C capitalism, too. Surely all OnlyFans is is Uber for Sex work, using the gig economy to de-unionise and isolate workers, strip them of benefits, make them into independent contractors and profit off them?

Sure, it's a step up from kidnapping girls from Romania to have them do porn, but is that really the bar? Can we maybe just stop for a second and imagine a world where rich white men don't get richer off the emotional and physical labour of women? Where the other available work options aren't so shit that a zero-hour career with no employment protections, a limited lifespan, in a dangerous industry doesnt look like heaven in comparison? Sure, you can work for three years, sell your emotional labour, and pay for college. But why are we cheering that instead of asking why this has to happen in the first place? We're fiddling around the edges of the system, giving it a makeover, and rebadging it "female empowerment" instead of actually changing anything fundamental. Poor women sell sex. A few are allowed to break out. Men get to leer at naked women for pennies a year. Rich men get richer. Plus ça change. Not even to mention that because of the ~emotional~ connection that onlyfans gives beyond porn, we're embedding the idea that women are "money in, girlfriend out" machines. I know several girls that won't even *talk* to men in any situation without a minimum $50 fee. And apparently the fact we also have a crisis of men so lonely they're willing to pay this isn't a problem either? Where's our luxury communism dreams bitches?

Bitches, I trust you. What am I missing?

I don’t think you’re a bigoted old fool. Nor a prude! I think you’re incredibly enlightened about the dangers of unfettered capitalism and labor exploitation.

Almost all of the issues you highlight about exploitative sex work can be said about exploitative labor in any industry. Poor people taking shitty jobs that don’t pay enough and enrich capitalist, patriarchal corporate overlords? That happens all over the world in industries from meat packing to clothing sweat shops to, yes, sex work. The exploitation of a person’s body for labor is an ethical stain on our culture at large. It’s why we’re so in favor of labor rights advances including a higher minimum wage, unions, and humane work environments. 

Raising the Minimum Wage Would Make Our Lives Better 

Are Unions Good or Bad? 

Coronavirus Reveals America’s Pre-existing Conditions, Part 1: Healthcare, Housing, and Labor Rights 

Sex work is not unique in that it opens desperate and poor people up to labor exploitation. It’s not even uniquely dangerous to the bodies of workers--John Oliver did a bit on the US meat packing industry recently that made me faint with body horror. 

So we agree that labor exploitation is bad. And it’s something that we should work towards ending in every industry. But I can see why some people would view exploitative sex work to be a different kind of bad. Because sex is sensitive! It can be used to punish and hurt. See revenge porn and the way synonyms for “sex worker” are stigmatized and used as insults throughout society. 

Now, a few clarifications. When I refer to sex work, I’m not just talking about cam work on OnlyFans. There are lots of other outlets for many different kinds of sex work. And I’m also not just talking about women sex workers. People of all gender identities and sexualities do sex work, and we should advocate for fair labor practices and safety for all of them. I am firmly pro- decriminalizing sex work so that the industry can be made safe, regulated, and destigmatized in an effort to reduce exploitation. I want sex workers to have the power of collective bargaining! I want them to be protected by law enforcement and our justice system, instead of targeted by it! I want them to pay taxes and have the privileges associated with all tax paying workers! I want them to have the power and protection of a regulatory industry that will purge abusive and violent clients from their field!

I also disagree with the characterization that choosing sex work freely, even out of desperation, is a “step up from kidnapping a girl from Romania to have them do porn.” Human trafficking is not sex work. It’s slavery and torture. Even when the choice is between making $7.25 an hour working at WalMart and making $7.25 as a cam girl, there’s still a choice involved, even if it’s a shitty one. There’s consent. Trafficking victims have no choice, no consent, only violence. 

I honestly don’t want to start a debate here. We’re all on the same page that labor exploitation is bad. So I’ll just end with this: not all sex work is inherently exploitative. Which I guess is your real question!

I’ve mentioned before that I have friends who are former sex workers. Specifically strippers and a specialty dominatrix. As with any job, they had their ups and downs, their good nights and bad nights. But they all agree that they freely chose the work not out of desperation or a lack of other options. And they even enjoyed the work in some cases. If someone prefers sex work, thrives in giving that emotional labor to others, I’m not going to judge and I’m certainly not going to tell them they’re being exploited. It would frankly be insulting, condescending, to tell someone that their choice of work (when it truly is a choice) is bad for them. 

It’s a fine line, but the line does exist. Sex work CAN BE exploitative. But it is not inherently exploitative, as far as I’m concerned.