The other day I was washing my hands and another woman came out the stall a couple seconds after I did. She wasn’t cis, and a different woman waiting for someone to finish up looked angry and opened her mouth to say something. Before she could, I smiled real friendly a this woman who’s just trynna wash her hands and told her I loved her skirt, and we started talking clothes.
The waiting woman was still clearly pissed but she didn’t say anything because she knew I wouldn’t have her back. That’s all it took to keep some poor lady just trynna scrub up from getting harassed.
Sometimes doing the right thing is really hard and kinda scary. Other times all it takes is making it clear that you won’t support someone’s nastiness. It’s a little enough thing to do your part.
Cis women: read this.
Great tip, thank you. I like to think that I’d have no problem standing up and telling someone to go fuck themselves in the event they did actually say something nasty, but preventing that situation is clearly 100 million times better than defending a harassed person after the fact.
i saw this post earlier about therapists and it reminded me of my old therapist paul, who in my opinion is one of the greatest men alive and who did not put up with my bullshit for even one second
anyway i go in to see paul one week in the summer of 2016, and i’m doing my usual bullshit which consists of me talking shit about myself, and paul is staring at me, and then he cuts me off and says that he’s got a new tool for helping people recognize when they’re using negative language, and gets up and goes over to his desk
and i’m like alright hit me with that sweet sweet self-help article my man, because i’m a linguistic learner and whenever paul’s like here i have a tool for you to use it’s pretty much always an article or a book or something
paul opens a drawer, takes something out, and turns back around. i stare.
i say, paul.
is that a nerf gun.
yeah, says paul.
i say, are you gonna shoot me with a nerf gun in this professional setting.
he happily informs me that that’s really up to me, isn’t it. and sits back down. and gestures, like, go ahead, what were you saying?
and i squint suspiciously and start back up about how i’m having too much anxiety to leave the house to run errands, like it was a miracle to even get here, like i’ve forgone getting groceries for the past week and that’s so stupid, what a stupid issue, i’m an idiot, how could i–
a foam dart hits me in the leg.
i go, hey! because my therapist just shot me in the leg. paul blinks at me placidly and raises an eyebrow. i squint again.
i say, slowly, it’s– not a stupid issue, i’m not stupid, but it’s frustrating me and i don’t want it to be a problem i’m having.
no dart this time. okay. sweet.
so the rest of the hour passes with me intermittently getting nailed with tiny foam darts and then swearing and then fixing my language and, wouldn’t you know it, i start liking myself a little more by the end of the session, which is mildly infuriating because paul can tell and he’s very smug about it
anyway i leave his office and the lady having the next appointment walks in and i hear what’s all over the floor? and paul very seriously says cognitive behavioral therapy tools.
This is NOT okay, do ya`ll see how small and brittle the new nibs are?? I usually only draw in weekends (I don`t press hard either) and now I have to change them every 3 weeks.
Complain. Tell them this isn`t okay. Don`t let big companies rob artists because they have the most reliable products.
when your husband’s administration collaborates with russian oligarchs to influence the 1996 russian presidential election to keep communist gennady zyuganov out of power and rig the vote in favor of the wildly unpopular incumbent boris yeltsin, which resulted in a resurgence of russian nationalism that ultimately led to the rise of vladimir putin and his own aggressively autocratic nationalist & imperialist agenda which 20 years later will cost you the presidency of the united states due to putin’s government hacking the DNC and exposing you and your party to sway public opinion against you which might not even had made a difference in the end since you were just THAT unpopular and out of touch with the political climate of your own base
gifted student™ brains are about as functional as horses when you get right down to it
which sounds like a shit post but consider: horses? hypothetically MADE for running. look at this magnificent muscle beasts. look at those legs. they must be so good at running, right? wrong. horses are fragile as fuck. horses break their gotdamn legs so so easily, and if they break their legs you just have to fucking shoot them. if they run, the thing they are MADE FOR, too fast their lungs will start bleeding. I just googled horses to see if I was missing anything and apparently if they lie down for a day their organs start collapsing or something so they can’t rest from their One Horse Purpose even when they’re hurt. they’re made to do one thing but they can only do it under Very Specific Conditions and if a single thing changes they just die.
which, you know. gifted students™ get applauded for being naturally smart when we’re five or whatever and then develop a terrible inflated sense of self that makes us highly averse to anything we’re not naturally good at, because it challenges our fragile childbrain egos and if we wait too long we’ll develop mental fences around entire subjects and skillsets (mine are math and studying) because we think we’re Bad at them, when in reality we just need to practice but are frustrated by that because it’s harder than being ~naturally talented~ was. we get applauded for doing One Thing but the second we run into slightly different things that our brains don’t comprehend as readily? it’s a Bad Time. I still have so much anxiety over things I don’t feel Naturally Talented at that I’ve been sitting here writing this post for like 10 minutes rather than read the feedback on my religion paper. I got a 100% on it, but I’m still That Scared of anything other than straight heaps of praise because that’s what my childbrain was acclimated to. just send me to the glue factory already.
do you ever get mad at yourself because youre not even good at the things you thought you were good at
you absolute fuckers i made this post fuckifn 5 years ago bc i spilled mac on my favorite shirt at the time n every day. every fucking day notifications spill in abt people being sad and thinking theyre not enough. listen. i made this post when i was 13 and spilling mac n cheese on my shirt. mayb right now u are 13 year old me right now, and thats okay, but absorbing these messages isnt gonna help u. u can get good n be good and telling yourself otherwise only hurts yourself and your mental health progress. be kind and good to yourself. we’ll all spill mac. but sometimes u just gotta change yr shirt and make a new bowl. its okay.
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