go into the air and nuhmunuhghgh, hughnuhdghuhbh YEAH!!

Firstly the article is about sex, as a lens through which to discuss privacy and the way we all interact with each other, imo its definitely worth reading even if sex isnt something youre interested in.

Second-

"But in order to facilitate a return to situational eroticism, we need to kill the panopticon in our heads. That means first killing the panopticon we’ve built for others"

Its really interesting that she talks about how online sharing everything to shame others and free oneself from shame (ie "heres a text from my boyfriend, Im not the crazy one, right?") is a social control thats previously come from eg religion.

Because it very much reminds me of a realisation I had as a religious teen, that I was, not that I had these words at the time, part of the panopticon built for others. There this odd tension in a focus on the internal experience that is nevertheless expressed and evaluated externally, meaning, a girl/womans religious care and devotion was theoretically expressed in the length of her skirt. One day I consciously caught myself, as anyone walked into synagogue, looking first at their hem length and making a judgement about them from it. And I realised Id been doing this for years. No idea when I started. Not a single clue. And with that realisation I started training myself out of it. Consciously not looking at skirt hems and their proximity to knees, looking somewhere else. Repeating to myself when I did look "and that tells me nothing about their internal experience or their worth as a person, thats none of my business".

Personally im not so much a fan of the framing of "kill the x in your head", the cop, the inner critic, the panopticon. Im more a fan of the "no bad parts" model, meaning, all these judgemental voices in your head are trying to protect you. Their methods are not the healthiest or most effective, often they were learned when you were young and were the best you could do at the time. You hear your moms voice admonishing you because that part is reminding you, moms gonna be mad and we're gonna get in trouble. The panopticon in your head says the internet is gonna judge us for this and we will be shamed forever and eternally. Because they dont want that to happen to you, so they make you avoid it. Whats more effective for me than trying to kill those parts is to try more gentle parent/deprogram them.

"I see youre trying to protect me/us and thats a very important job. Thank you for doing your best. The truth is, this method isnt actually helping, we dont live with mom anymore and we can do whatever we want, we're not going to get in trouble. We're safe. You dont have to carry this burden anymore".

Talking through the panopticon is a little more tricky, something like "sure people can judge me online, but they dont know the real me. They cant actually cast judgement on me as me, just on a very shallow representation of the tiniest fraction of me. They do not decide my worth. And I dont decide theirs. We are all gonna put down the spy cameras and stop judging each other. We're gonna stop demanding people share their traumas to justify anything and everything, and we're going to stop sharing our own traumas to win status or arguments. " etc etc theres a lot more but im running out of energy for this. You get the idea.

If the kill the cop in your head works for you then by all means.

mid 2026 pacific rim rewatch: grace would be the third member of the k-sci division and he and newton would have the biggest interpersonal academic beef in the history of xenobiology. they want to strangle each other every day. newton calls him "teach" to piss him off. "heyhey he's the microbiologist, I'm the macrobiologist. you know. size matters?" before the breach newton was the scholar grace called a staggering waste of carbon at the UNESCO conference in denmark.

the same bitches who see a man trying on candy scented perfume rather than axe body spray and go "omg you go girl!!" "see you during your transition sweetie! 😘" "which could mean nothing!" are the same bitches who decry the gender binary and say shit like "makeup has no gender!" "clothes have no gender!" "your self expression doesn't equal your gender!" it's almost like y'all see queerness as inherently feminine. hmm.

maybe this is a hot take, but goofing around with gender expression isn't restricted to queer people, nor should it be. cishet men can wear skirts and eyeliner. cishet girls can bind and cut their hair short. cishet people can get funky with presentation and still be happy as their agab. stop reinforcing gender binaries by calling every seemingly cishet person who decides to deviate from gender norms an egg

Tricky one cause the kernel's built around creating the need for salvation from a higher power, and you'll have to change up a lot of the systems for evaluating your own and others' moral worth to avoid operating with a deficit when there's no inbuilt release valve.