tonight, at 3am, while I was completely alone in the gym, it gave me a message i haven't seen before

For example, your friend opens up to you about the time he tried to have a nice dinner out with his partner, but restaurant staff were being racist/xenophobic and refusing to seat them, so he and his partner just left and found somewhere else to eat. Now is not the time to flex "Well if that were ME I wouldn't have just taken it and left, I would have totally put the staff in their place and not tolerated that!"

Or, for example your co-workers tells you about how she went to the grocery store last night and right as she was about to check out someone aggressively cut her in line, now is not the time to shame her / put her down with a response like "What, and you just took that? Oh come on you can't be such a pushover!"

First of all, you don't actually know how you would have responded in these situations. You don't know if you would have actually frozen or fawned in these situations. Many people do, even if they don't think they would. And that's okay. People don't just decide to freeze or fawn, it's an automatic reaction. Stopping behaviors like freezing or fawning can take years of therapy, not just a belittling lecture from a friend or co-worker.

Or even if someone didn't freeze or fawn, they just made the conscious choice to avoid a confrontation. That's also okay, and not your place to shame them. People can have all sorts of reasons for wanting to avoid a confrontation, such as not feeling it's safe, or feeling like it will just make the situation worse.

Second of all, responses like this can come across as belittling and generally insensitive. Even if you don't mean it that way, it can come across as though you're trying to insinuate that you think the other person is lesser than you for not reacting how you think you would have reacted. When someone has already dealt with being mistreated the last thing they need to is be lectured or put down, it's rubbing salt in the wound to respond insensitively when someone opens up to you about dealing with mistreatment.

Instead, show compassion. Tell them they didn't deserve to be treated that way, and what the other person did was wrong. If they're being mistreated by a boss or co-worker, kindly remind them that they have the right to report the behavior. Or if they're being mistreated by a classmate or teacher, kindly remind them that they can speak to someone at the school about it.

I think you're probably onto something there.

This is just me spitballing based on some of my observations, but I feel like a lot of people conflate bravery/heroism with being aggressive/violent/confrontational and aren't able to distinguish between the two.

I also think misogyny could play a part in this, but I fully acknowledge that could be a reach. Being aggressive/violent/confrontational are traits generally stereotypically associated with men, while being passive and non-confrontational are generally stereotypically associated with women. And people often do hate traits and behaviors stereotypically associated with women while idolizing traits and behaviors stereotypically associated with men.

I also think this is pretty likely for a lot of people.

If a friend or co-worker vents about say, someone cutting them in line at the store, and you actually wanted to help them by giving them advice, a genuinely helpful way to do that would be "You know you're allowed to speak up when someone cuts you in line, right? You don't have to tolerate that." That's the type of response I'd expect from someone genuinely trying to be helpful by actually giving advice.

Riding off of the examples above, if your co-worker tells you she went to the grocery store last night and some guy aggressively cut her in line right before she was about to check out, if you want to answer "well have you considered what kind of night that guy was having, or maybe he was just in a hurry, hmm?" re-consider if that's appropriate or necessary, or if the guy having a bad night or being in a hurry actually justifies him cutting others in line without even asking or apologizing.

Female firefighters at Pearl Harbor (1941).

Donna Tobias - the first woman to graduate from the US Navy’s Deep Sea Diving School in 1975.

Brave women of the Red Cross hitting the beach at Normandy.

Dottie Kamenshek was called the best player in women’s baseball and was once recruited to play for a men’s professional team.

Kate Warne - Private Detective. Born in New York City, almost nothing is known of her prior to 1856 when, as a young widow, she answered an employment advertisement placed by Alan Pinkerton. She was one of four new agents the Pinkerton Detective Agency hired that year and proved to be a natural, taking to undercover work easily. She had taken part in embezzlement and railroad security cases when in 1861 the Pinkertons developed the first lead about an anti-Lincoln conspiracy.

Catherine Leroy, female photographer in Vietnam.

The three women pictured in this incredible photograph from 1885 – Anandibai Joshi of India, Keiko Okami of Japan, and Sabat Islambouli of Syria – each became the first licensed female doctors in their respective countries. The three were students at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania; one of the only places in the world at the time where women could study medicine.

Female Samurai Warrior - Onno-Bugeisha - Female warrior belonging to the Japanese upper class. Many women engaged in battle, commonly alongside samurai men. They were members of the bushi (samurai) class in feudal Japan and were trained in the use of weapons to protect their household, family, and honour in times of war.

One of the most feared of all London street gangs from the late 1880’s was a group of female toughs known as the Clockwork Oranges. They woulde later inspire Anthony burgess’ most notorious novel. Their main Rivals were the All-female “the Forty Elephants” gang.

Maureen Dunlop de Popp, Pioneering female pilot who flew Spitfires during Second World War. She joined the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) in 1942 and became one of a small group of female pilots who were trained to fly 38 types of aircraft.

Take inspiration from our foremothers and continue breaking down barriers, wherever you are. 

Born in 1845.

In 1868, fought at the Battle of Aizu. Her father was the gunnery instructor, and she was trained on a Spencer carbine, which she used to defend the castle.

1871, divorced her husband and went to Kyoto to find her brother, who had been taken as a POW.

1871-1898, remarried a western-educated man, co-founded two schools (including a girls’ school), became a certified Tea Master and flower arranging instructor.

1890, following the death of her husband, became a Red Cross nurse. Served in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-5) leading a team of 40 nurses, and the Russo-Japanese War (1904). Decorated for her service in both.

What if the children go to schools unafraid of tear gas and bullets?

What if the birds come back, and the bees are healed, and every species moves from endangered, to threatened, to thriving?

What if the rainforest ADVANCES?

What if every parking lot had solar panels? What if every structure had solar panels? What if we built climbing gyms and terraced gardens in the skeletons of old coal power plants?

What if you baked your neighbor bread, and they shared their home-grown blackberries?

What if every person who needed a home, had one? What if every person who needed healing was healed?

What if every body was treasured for what it was, not what it should be?

What if every trans child's parents attended their graduation, their wedding, their new-name-day?

What if every warehouse became a closed-circle repair station? Goods flowing out, and back, and out again? What if landfills started to SHRINK?

What if the water and air were clean? What if there was enough public transit that the cars dwindled, leaving the streets safe for kids on bikes, evening deer, midnight cats and foxes?

What if we win?

The condors are back. The whales are saved. The sea turtles are no longer endangered. The cranes are back. The bees are recovering. The air in LA and Tokyo and London is clean again. The aquifers in the LA Basin are refilling.

Children are kinder than previous generations. Parents are stopping the abuse cycle. Being trans and queer is more acceptable than ever on a ground level.

It's hard to see if you're young, if you don't know how to step back from social media and the news. But remember--bad news sells, and the algorithm knows despair keeps you scrolling. It's a skewed lens.

We are fighting and we are winning against this adminstration's bullying. We are coming together against the bullies and they are running away scared because they don't understand that we will do that.

People are working hard every day to find ways to make sure fewer animals get hit by cars and planes and rockets.

Maker spaces are more common than ever. Solar and wind are more common than ever. Coal plants are shutting down every day.

Unprecedented numbers of acres are being bought back or given back to their rightful stewards, and the world heals because of it. People are working hard every day to learn how to help a forest recover faster.

We are not at zero. We are at decades of effort to heal the world. We've come SO far.

In 1982 there were only 22 California Condors left in the world. In 1992, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with its public and private partners, began reintroducing captive-bred condors to the wild. In 2001 the first wild nesting occurred in Grand Canyon National Park since re-introduction. In 2002 there were only 8 pairs of wild nesting birds population-wide. In 2008, for the first time since the program began, more California condors were flying free in the wild than in captivity. Today there are nearly 500 – more than half of them flying free in Arizona, Utah, California, and Baja Mexico.

When I was born, there were no condors in the wild. I'm 37 now, and there are over 250 condors flying free.

When my mom was born in 1955, there were days when she wasn't allowed to go outside to play, because of the air pollution. When I was born, that never happened anymore.

When I was born, humpback whales were critically endangered, and people thought they were going to go extinct. Today, they've recovered to exceed their recorded numbers. Other whales too!

We fixed it.

Since 1990 extreme poverty has decreased worldwide by over HALF.

And it's that thing where you mentally place yourself as the second, auxiliary party to someone else that you consider to be "In Charge" of whatever space or occupation or responsibility you are assigned to

And when you are IN that mindset, it *feels* like you're being responsible. It *feels* like you're being respectful, and helpful, and contributing to the load.

But what you don't SEE- because it *feels* like deference- is that the other person who you're seeing as The Authority you report to- by being assigned that role, has also been assigned the invisible load of BEING YOUR MANAGER.

This is by FAR most commonly seen in husband-and-wife relationships, where the man says, "just tell me what I can do to HELP- you don't have to do it all by yourself, but it's like you won't even tell me when you NEED help. You just do everything and then get mad at me for not doing it first. I can help clean. I can help with the kids. I can help"

But I also see it- and am guilty myself of doing it- at work, at school, in public- that mental, "this is THEIR space, and i will be respectful and helpful to THEM"- without realizing that subservience in this manner isn't actually a good thing. That it actually shifts the burden of responsibility to the other person. That aspect was totally invisible to me.

I didn't understand that when I was told, "if you see something that needs to be done, just DO it", or, "take the initiative", what they ACTUALLY meant was, "I am not above you", or "you have equal say in what kind of environment you want to live or work in", or "I do not want full control over what happens here, I do not want to order you around, I do not want to be in charge, what I WANT is to co-command WITH you"

Being in The Assigned Authority position NOW, that is all so much clearer.

I am the senior member of my team at work, and now, every time I train a newbie, every time I finish catching them up to speed and giving them a list of everything that needs to be done, my next big hurdle seems to always be, "now take pride in the space when I'm not around". "Now don't assume I'll tell you when something is due or what orders to plan things in".

Now, having been on both sides of the struggle, I can appreciate the sticking points here

TO THE PERSON "IN CHARGE": The person deferring to you doesn't understand the invisible labor you're doing. They genuinely believe you know more, you WANT more, you see things they don't, and that they are being respectful and good by staying out of your way and waiting on your orders. THAT is the bit that's not clicking.

TO THE PERSON "WANTING TO HELP": "Help" implies that you are providing assistance to a problem that belongs to somebody else. Stop thinking like that. Understand that the problem belongs to BOTH of you equally, and consider what kind of shared space you BOTH want. What is your SHARED GOAL? Not THEIR goal, but a goal that belongs to you too. Own your space.

This is not a Commander-Lieutenant problem. This is a Partnership problem.

I can see how, from the perspective of a cop who has grown up in Preservation culture, this must be incredibly annoying, and means even setting aside any prejudices over a SecUnit being a deadly weapon, it kind of comes across to Indah as someone who she can't trust to follow basic standards of professional ethics if it thinks it knows better.

It's a lot, for books aimed at eleven year olds who want to read about kids turning into fun animals.

On the podcast, the two (American) hosts happened to get onto the topic of the post-9/11 Iraq War and their reactions to it. They were both children at the time and as such could not be expected to have particularly nuanced views of US military policy. The person who hadn't read Animorphs was unsurprised by the declaration of war; that's what you did. Someone attacks America, America goes to war. That's how a country protects itself, through military revenge. The Animorphs fan, about the same age, had been devastated and against the war from the start. War was a Big Deal and, while sometimes unavoidable, should be a last resort; a lot of people were going to die, and a lot more were going to get hurt, and no matter how the war shook out it was still going to be horrible. They attributed this perspective, of course, to the series that had taught them about the horrors endemic to war in an engaging way at such a young age -- to Animorphs.

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.