Catskill Collective

I DON'T CARE HOW BAD A PERSON THEY ARE

"If we wonder why we see very young teenage women dating older partners who clearly or likely are exploiting them or putting them at risk, rather than just looking to that teen or that adult, we should also look at what they get from that situation which they are not finding elsewhere. If the only person stating or recognizing a developing maturity (whether or not that is earnest or manipulative) is the 25-year-old guy who lives with Mom and picks up teen girls at the mall, it’s no wonder a young person moving into adulthood is very drawn to that person, despite their flaws or manipulations which may even be known to teens pairing up with them. If we feel like youth are spending too much time in online communities and too little in real-life, we might look at the differences through this lens, considering what kind of acceptance they are or are not getting here or there. If we’re wondering things like why we’re seeing an increase in abusive YA relationships we might also look to where they are learning those patterns in the first place, why those relationships seem to be so easy for teens to fall into and why they seem so normal and familiar. If it seems completely incomprehensible that young people wind up with addictions to hard drugs (self-injury is also pertinent here), we might look at the differences in how a person feels on a drug and off of it: if a drug seems the only way to feel comfortable socially, to care less about feelings of hatred for oneself, or to find something to shake a person out of feeling numb, why look to the drugs or the addiction first, and to what’s being escaped from second, if at all?"

i was talking to ship about this yesterday but I have realized that like... like, re: being an ant that smells like termites to the other ants, the kind of relational trauma I have from being autistic etc means that whenever I am actually received by other people in the way I am intending to come across, it's almost shocking to me. having people take me in good faith and like, see and recognize and appreciate the qualities that I am working really hard to prioritize and value and reflect in my behavior and stuff, is shocking to me. I am not used to it. I've spent my whole life having people react TERRIBLY to everything and take everything in the worst possible faith and punish me for things I wasn't trying to do, constantly, so fucking much, that as an adult just like... showing up somewhere and having people be like :) Oh yay it's Pip we like Pip and we are glad Pip is here and interacting with us! :) is like. insane. for me. to experience. like I am used to experiencing it with trusted close friends and loved ones, but from people I don't know super well? from STRANGERS? almost never.

I have "joked" since I was a kid that my secret superpower is the ability to piss people off. I am the Antagonizer. I can literally just sit there, minding my own goddamned business, and people will get upset with that and come at me. They smell neurodivergence like blood in the water and they can not STAND it.

god. yeah.

Validating that there is indeed a thing neurotypicals are doing wrong in these interactions, there is a horrid cognitive bias many neurotypicals carry that they could choose to work on in themselves:

I was 23 before it even occurred to me that not starting with sex ever was an option. The feeling of relief was so great I actually cried. 

Also, it’s okay to never date anyone ever. It’s okay to never even try it if you don’t want to. 

"The fact that socialization is a specious argument became obvious to me during an exchange I had with a trans-woman-exclusionist who insisted that my being raised male was the sole reason in her mind for me to be disqualified from entering women-only spaces. So I asked her if she was open to allowing trans women who are anatomically male but who have been socialized female — something that’s not all that uncommon for MTF children these days. She admitted to having concerns about their attending. Then, I asked how she would feel about a person who was born female yet raised male against her will, and who, after a lifetime of pretending to be male in order to survive, finally reclaimed her female identity upon reaching adulthood. After being confronted with this scenario, the woman conceded that she would be inclined to let this person enter women-only space, thus demonstrating that her argument about male socialization was really an argument about biology after all. In fact, after being pressed a bit further, she admitted that the scenario of a young girl who was forced against her will into boyhood made her realize how traumatic and dehumanizing male socialization could be for someone who was female-identified. This, of course, is exactly how many trans women experience their own childhoods."

 tbh i fully believe that healthy kids should be getting in some stupid trouble.

Wait, you were actually born in the 1900's? Thats so cool