or, this is not super common in my social context in these exact terms but es. one of my best friends lives in new delhi, his parents had an arranged marriage and his mother was one of many women married into the husband's family with the explicit expectation, inter alia, to serve his parents in their every need, including possible caregiving ones, were they to arise. which she ended up doing for 20+ years, often forbidden to physically leave the house lest something happen to them in her absence. i do think it has merit to stress it's kind of incredibly dismissive of a whole range of experiences to talk about caregiving only under a certain lens

i can't stop thinking that around 40% of girls i knew throughout high school were engaged in some sort of domestic caregiving position and how strange it is that this is evidently not a common experience everywhere. that people in many places think this particular form of child labour is uncommon/have had little contact with it/don't factor it at all in their considerations. i grew up used to another kind of invisibility, the invisibility of acts so widespread they are not worth mentioning, and socially sanctioned to boot. the invisibility of them being unknown i only started encountering later in life and it is a fresh kind of pain

to make a slightly better post: people keep acting as if the content of caregiving creates inherent power configurations instead of being embedded in them. this is true of many other things: providing domestic work for someone in general has no inherent property that tells you whether someone is dependent on or exploiting that work. you do need to look elsewhere to get that

idk i am constantly trying to break down internal resistances mapping where ableism intersects my own interests and/or where ableism is to my interest as counterleverage to other forms of oppression to which i would otherwise succumb. i don't think this fraught position, when disclosed, makes me a particularly reassuring presence for other disabled people and this does pain me i just haven't quite yet figured out how to position myself better than this in my current circumstances. i value a lot of relationships i have built here so yk sorry for that, always feel free to unfollow over anything i write on the topic i do know those resistances exist

talking with a volunteer in community homes for children: "and you know a lot of them have eating disorders due to years of issues accessing food in their previous homes. so of course we are 'teaching' them to eat 'right' by forcing them to eat 2 healthy meals a day. we all sit down and tell them no one of the other children is allowed to get up until everyone has eaten everything on their plate. it's been working wonders". i want to explode you with my mind

it really is so common in fandom spaces to see the question "who has The Power in the relationship?". as if there can only be one recipient of it at a time, as if all power has the same content and conditions. and sure sometimes things really are that unilateral but the assumption of this is hardly a neutral place to start your questioning