you belong in this world

What is Misophonia? - Misophonia, also known as Sound Rage is a neurological condition that causes certain sounds to trigger a moderate to severe emotional response, usually anxiety or anger. Individuals with Misophonia feel panic and rage from hearing certain sounds. They may need to move away from the sounds or wear earbuds to block the noise. Other people with Misophonia feel compelled to mimic the trigger sound, a natural response that causes an empathetic reaction in the brain and reduces the hostility the noise can cause. Severe Misophonia can even cause outbursts of violence upon a trigger. The disorder is linked to both Tourette Syndrome and Synesthesia among other neurological conditions. There is no cure or treatment so individuals with it must learn to live with it. 

What does Misophonia feel like? - Imagine somebody dragging their fingernails down a chalkboard. Does it give you chills? Make you block your ears? Shudder? How long can you listen to that noise? For people with Misophonia the response is similar. Hearing trigger noises causes the body to tense up. It can make the person feel angry, hostile, stressed, anxious, panicky and trapped. It can also cause the person to feel the impulse to be violent or to self injure. 

What are Misophonia triggers? - The triggers range for every individual but here are some common ones:

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Please be mindful that many of these noises can trigger strong unpleasant emotional responses from the people around you and that those with Misophonia, who “snap” at you for making these sounds, do not mean to be rude and harsh, it is a reaction they cannot control. If there is anyway to keep these sounds to a minimum, all of those with Misophonia will be very appreciative! 

And I gotta disagree on the fingernails-on-the-chalkboard analogy. I’ve heard fingernails on a chalkboard, silverware scaping plates, etc. They’re very irritating sounds. They’re also not even in the same category as a misophonic trigger. For me, it’s more like – think of the fear and shock and violation you would feel if someone slapped you in the face. It’s like that. It’s a face slap, but without the physical impact. I physically reel from sounds. Not saying your way of experiencing it is invalid, I’m just saying there’s some variation in presentation.

It’s also not called “sound rage” as any kind of consistent term. The alternate term is Selective Sound Sensitivity Syndrome, or 4S. There’s no proven link to Tourette’s or Synesthesia.

I’m pretty embarrassed to have to do this, but at this point in the game there are not many options left. I know programs like this have helped other people so maybe it can help us, too. My wife, Jen, got laid off from her job because the organization is going under. On top of them laying her off, they have also not paid her in over a month despite her still actively working for them up until the 18th of September. Every week there’s a new promised pay day, and every week that day comes and goes and they make up another excuse as to why they can’t pay her. This has been going on for a month now and it has been incredibly stressful. While Jen is currently job searching, September is the slowest month of the year for most businesses in our area and a new job is proving hard to come by. I’m lucky enough to work full-time but my income alone has not been enough to keep us afloat. On top of the usual household bills I am type 1 diabetic and I’m running out of insulin pump supplies and we don’t have the money to order more. We have been trying for months now to keep up with our bills but we simply can’t anymore. We’re struggling badly and I’m scared that this is finally the month that we won’t be able to pay rent and get evicted, or that I might run out of pump supplies and have no way to get my insulin. Please know that I would not be doing this if we had any other options. Some of the things that your donations would be going towards include rent, our car note, electric bill, medical supplies, groceries, and trying to repair our bank accounts so that we can get our lives back to normal. We appreciate any help you can throw our way.

He was just spectacularly interested in life, in a really great way.

“The only time I was really happy was when I was hanging out with my brother. […]

I worked in a cafe, and he composed music. […]

Queer was widely used at that point among LGBT+ people to refer to ourselves and our community, and while you’d look askance at a straight person using that word, it was most definitely acceptable to call another LGBT+ person queer.

And now y’all are telling me “Queer” isn’t an acceptable umbrella term to use and it just feels like another way you’re using subtle language policing to tell me that really the only people you want in your community are gold-star LG folks. 

Those of us who like the word queer because it accurately reflects our misfit status are basically being told that this self-identifier is dirty and wrong, this is no longer the “queer community”, and the message yet again is that we don’t really belong.

I get it if someone doesn’t want to be called queer, and I would never call another person queer against their will but holy hell please stop acting like it’s common knowledge that queer can’t be used as an umbrella term for our community when it was for DECADES

When I first started participating in any kind of LGBTQ+ stuff online (so, 10 years ago), “queer” was by far the most common descriptor. It was pretty much agreed it had been reclaimed enough to be safe (I mean, show me an active slur that has academic disciplines named after it?) and people seemed much more keen to explore the ambiguity the term offers, rather than sticking with predefined categories. By “q-slur” logic, we should’ve been much less accepting of it back then if we simultaneously believe that LGBTQ+ rights are advancing over time, but the opposite is true.

So I would say that the current stigmatization of queer is based on two things: 1) reactionary essentialism (seeing “queer” as too dangerous for the more clear-cut categories), and 2) respectability politics.

Now by taking away “queer”, we don’t have any other term that’s both catchy (no version of the abbreviation is) and broad enough to actually be inclusive. Gay is not an umbrella term. It always has a default connotation that’s very specific. It only reminds me of all the time I wasted on bad gay-only discourse when I was first questioning my own identity, and for this reason it took ages to arrive at the conclusion that I’m just attracted to multiple genders and also trans without dysphoria (because the other bullshit I had to contend with was the truscum narrative of transness). So, gay is not a safe term for me. It doesn’t describe me and if I used it, it would actually misgender my own relationship. I’m not doing that for any of you, sorry.

Do you know who the majority of the people who still use “queer” are? Trans and MGA. Yet again, we have a political line that privileges cis LG people who are fine with binary categories over the most routinely erased parts of the community. Of course.

This, I imagine, is also why so many bi/pan and trans/nonbinary people aren’t against aces being included. Chances are most of us, at least those who are 25+ or so, have experiences like this, with either being actively policed out or just unable to find the right identifiers for ages because of the stigma and general ignorance surrounding them.

And now you’re telling us we HAVE TO use gay, which isn’t a functional umbrella term, because queer suddenly isn’t acceptable based on this new logic? Do you even hear yourselves?

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“But!” I can already hear the gatekeepers protest, “This all relies on a bunch of personal anecdotes!”

And Queer, more so than other words, felt inclusive of people who, at the time, referred to themselves as “genderqueer” as well as people outside the binary, as well as bisexuals, who couldn’t claim gay or lesbian.

It was, at the time, being reclaimed at a time when all the words were being used as slurs, so there was a real reason to reclaim them.

When you campaign against words like “queer”, to those of us in the older generations, what it looks like you’re doing is trying to roll the nomenclature back to the bad old days when cisgender gay men were treated as the only “real” members of the community, and everybody else was lumped together as this peripheral pack of weirdos who were expected to be slobberingly grateful to their betters just to be acknowledged at all.

Hell, I clearly recall a time when the leaders of mainstream gay rights activism would routinely castigate even lesbians as parasites and invaders - and be applauded for doing so. It’s difficult to overstate just how deep it went.

heath ledger was a method actor too. as most people know, before his role as the joker heath put countless hours into his character and locked himself away in a hotel so he could practice different versions of the joker (he even kept a diary on it). heath put everything he had in that role, just like he did with all his other roles. HOWEVER heath ledger was an actor, and what people don’t understand is that he knew the difference between acting and real life. a make-up artist on the set of the dark knight even said that “he’d only be in character when filming. Ledger would skateboard around, goof off, smoke cigarettes, and give out bear hugs at the beginning and the end of every workday” like he knew the difference between playing a character and being a normal person who was respectful to his coworkers and fellow actors. he was a talented person and a good man. he didn’t “go crazy” and scare people and he certainly didn't “become the joker”