Bubblymoon

"I review books for a living, and I’ve noticed a worrying trend of what I call “instagramming the Holocaust.” (1 / 9)"

"Bestselling novels about the Holocaust tend to be “uplifting” and sentimental. They have romantic subplots. Jewish characters only exist to be rescued by the (often American) protagonist. The cinematic, three-act structure culminates in a redemptive ending."

"What these books offer (and they sell in the millions) is a sanitized version of the Shoah in which brave Americans bravely battle Hitler, the reader learns a lesson about Kindness and Not Being Prejudiced, and there are no sticky questions about who did the killings, and why."

"Jewish novelist Dara Horn has observed that memoirs and novels written by actual Holocaust survivors typically don’t sell—because there are no pat resolutions, no redemptions, no heartwarming moments where the Jewish prisoners see the good in their Nazi captors."

"Anne Frank’s (excellent) diary became the entry point into the Holocaust for most of us because she had not yet experienced the worst of it – because she hadn’t yet learned that some people aren’t “truly good at heart.” It’s just safe enough not to disturb us."

"And we love “uplifting” Holocaust novels because we don’t want to be disturbed, not really. This is the real reason why books like Maus offend the sensibilities of middle-class parents, because they bear witness to a truth about human nature that we don’t want to confront."

"And the “message” of the Holocaust is not that people are truly good, or that we need to be kind and tolerant (though that is true). The message is that six million people were murdered, and millions of ordinary folk were complicit, and millions of others looked away."

"This compulsion to sanitize the past, to sanitize the world, is one of the overlooked roots of white nationalism. We want to seal ourselves away from the experiences of others because we fear what they might say to us. We want reality to be pastel-hued and instagram-filtered."

But I'm not sure that the common idea of having a damaged, unhappy "inner child" has anything to do with.. well.. children. Or even necessarily with someone's childhood. It has far more to do with how we treat adults and how adults treat themselves.

Adults are told and feel like they must not be overwhelmed by emotions, must always bear the responsibilities of surviving under capitalism, must not seek joy in unproductive activities like play, must not be vulnerable and full of raw emotion, must 'have their shit together', must have resolved all their bad experiences and memories. All of which is utterly unrealistic.

Faced with the reality of actually being are vulnerable adult who is frequently overwhelmed by emotions and responsibilities, who finds joy in play, who doesn't have all their shit together and hasn't processed everything, I think a lot of adults choose to separate that reality from their sense of self and project it onto a second, inner identity: the damaged, unhappy "inner child".

In such cases, the "inner child" can have the raw emotions that they deny themselves. The "inner child" can be flawed and vulnerable and hurt. But the "inner child" isn't actually a child, it's just an adult unshackled from the unrealistic model of maturity imposed on them.

We are not 'biologically nonbinary', it's actually fairly rare for us to be assigned X at birth, the majority of us are given an assigned sex.

Intersex is a catch-all for a huge number of variations, so there is no singular 'intersex body', in fact a large number of us do not have ambiguous genitalia.

You cannot transition to become intersex. You can transition to have a mix of sex characteristics. The current most accepted word for this I've seen is Salmacian. Because intersex is an umbrella term for many many variations and conditions, saying this is similar to saying you'd like to transition to being autistic or having EDS.

A lot of us go through medical abuse in childhood, including forced hormone replacement therapy and gender reassignment surgeries, often as infants. I, for example, was forced onto estrogen as a teenager. This is something we are still fighting to make illegal without impacting trans youths access to treatment.

Not every intersex person is trans. Just like everyone else, we can be cis or trans or feel a mix of the two. Some of us are just intersex and aren't interested in further labels.

Being intersex is not really that rare. Most estimates put it about as common as red hair or green eyes. Some estimates even higher.

And finally, because I am genuinely stunned by the amount of people that don't know this. Hermaphrodite is an intersexist slur. You should not be using it if you are not intersex.

what if... our chemicals....

regardless I like it better than some of the more mean spirited stuff I've seen associated with American April Fool's day