Everyday blog

instead ask:

is it SINCERE

was it CATHARTIC

was it FUN TO MAKE

is it MADE BY ME

But brushing your teeth for 30 seconds is better than not brushing them at all when that 2 minutes seems exhausting.  Doing ten minutes of yoga is better than 10 minutes of sitting when 30 minutes of cardio sounds impossible.  Changing my clothes is good when a whole shower is impossible.  Standing on the porch for a few minutes is worth it after being in the house for three straight days because I don’t have the energy to go anywhere.

The thing is, I have posted multiple paragraphs about why how we talk about CSA and its victims matters, and if I want to add an additional few paragraphs about how annoying performative people are, I can do that and it does not magically reduce my actual ire towards predators and it’s stupid to think that it does.

Like. Okay. Let’s use rape as an example.

I think, or I’d like to think, that the cultural consciousness towards rape has at least slightly improved so that now we no longer think of rape as some kind of violent act committed by random strangers tackling women in dark alleys. We are, I’d like to think, aware that we live in a culture that uses this specific image of rape in order to deny or underplay the actual assault because “Why didn’t you do this, why didn’t you do that, why would this nice person do such a thing when we all know that The Rapist a gun-toting maniac lying in wait in a copse after dark?” And I (like to) think that by expanding how we understand rape not as some kind of bizarre end result of some horrible perversion but rather a completely normalized function of a society that doesn’t value bodily autonomy (with The Rapist as a totem to forgive those who don’t match its characteristics), we have made it at least SLIGHTLY easier for victims to come forward about what happened to them and explain how the completely pleasant, friendly person nevertheless committed rape. There is no mental disorder of “rapism” that leads people to do it. Opportunity and selfishness and not viewing the other as a person leads people to do it.

And yet trying to explain that all of these principles are applicable towards how we talk about pedophilia/CSA is like, impossible to fucking do, because CSA is gross! It’s horrible! It’s uncomfortable, and if we’re too critical about the rhetoric surrounding it you’re suddenly allying yourself with those blithering sex criminals!! It’s moronic and childish and harmful but nobody gives a shit, they just care if you’re “insufficiently critical of pedophiles,” a stance taken up only by the biggest fucking idiots on the planet.

✧ write a character who spends the whole book chasing someone else's dream because it was easier than admitting they never had one of their own

✧ let a character be the villain in someone else's story and never find out

✧ write two people who could have been something, if either of them had just gone first

✧ let a character realize they've been grieving someone who's still alive

✧ write a character who was never taught how to be loved gently, only earned

✧ a character returns to the town they swore they'd never come back to, and finds out it was never the town's fault

✧ let a character discover the sacrifice they thought was noble was actually just fear wearing a nicer name

✧ write someone who finally says the thing out loud, only to realize the other person already knew

✧ a character spends years building a version of themselves no one asked for

✧ let two former best friends become strangers who are somehow still polite to each other

✧ write a character who realizes they've spent their whole life being someone's backup plan

✧ a character finally stops waiting for someone to change and has to decide what that means about staying