Pedro Pascal praises his father on SNL

More of Pedro Pascal on his father

@laurierrose Sure! What’s crazy is, I actually remember the exact context of why I said this; it was because I had just watched Demi Lovato’s documentary on her own life. (Disclaimer: I could be conflating some stuff, in terms of what info was in it vs. what I found out from other sources later–it’s been a long time since I watched it, but I do remember the effect it had on me.)

In it, she talked about having an eating disorder, being addicted to drugs, experiencing bullying, mental illness, and toxic work environments as a child star, to the point of being raped by a co-star, who never saw justice and wasn’t even removed from the project. This doc was also after her phase of identifying as nonbinary and using they/them pronouns, which, the sociological reasons there jump out I think.

In the documentary, I remember being struck about how every single thing she talked about was, “my trauma, my trauma, my trauma.” Every experience either went back to her past trauma or was in itself a trauma. There was no particular commentary in terms of gender–being targeted specifically as a female person, for sexual assault, damaging standards of thinness and beauty, etc–nor even commentary in terms of child actors as a group, their vulnerability to harm and exploitation. She was just narrating a story of harms done to her as a kind of explanation to the public, but with no particular analysis.

It struck me at the time, and it’s stuck with me since then, that framing life events like the ones she experienced as “trauma” is a way of shrinking and psychologizing and personalizing a phenomenon that is larger and political. “The personal is political,” right? Except that it seemed to me then, and to a large extent now, that what had previously been understood to have political dimensions (maybe that’s a fantasy, maybe it was never thought of that way) had been shrunk down to individual instances of harm with no particular pattern in the larger society and no particular social meaning. This was just stuff that was done to her. And why her? There was nothing in it about being a young girl specifically in an extremely vulnerable and exploitable position under the thumb of one of the largest media companies in the world. Just about her trauma.

She had kind of been the biggest example of this phenomenon that I saw at the time, but especially in this fairly early Tiktok/other shortform media just-after-covid era, I felt I was seeing this therapized language absolutely everywhere. This is right around when terms like “gaslighting” got super popular and present in the public consciousness as well. All of this is still everywhere tbh, and shows up in a million different places, because therapyspeak, whether we like it or not, is embedded in our day-to-day language and is what we’re using to describe everything.

if you've ever had to fight off a man, either for your safety or another woman's, you would realize how insanely strong even the most sedentary man is. in addition to natural upper body strength, they have longer arms, larger hands, and stronger grip strength—it's easier for them to grab you, and when they do, you are not getting away without fighting dirty.

it's why women's self-defense classes teach unique incapacitation methods that do not rely on upper body strength, but on weak spots, dexterity, and making use of our legs.

i want all these feminists who have an issue with this to ask a man in their lives to subdue them without holding their strength back. then i want them to try and get away. then i want them to come back to me with how it went.

now, imagine a situation where a man's full intent is to hurt you, where he is exercising the full extent of his strength in an attempt to victimize you, and ask yourself how that would go.

The woman in the video explains that a lot of women's expectations was to only be doing it for a short while, until they get out of a bad situation, and then quit, being more financially stable and on their feet. She explains that even if you have only 12 subscribers, that is 12 m*n who are used to having continuous intimate access to you, and if you one day decide to stop, they are immediately going to get offended and upset. Because they've been paying for this, they'll feel entitled to keep having continuous access, and they'll find a way to make it happen.

She then goes on to say that if you want to make money at all, you'll have to show your face in the videos, and they'll be able to use AI tools to find your identity almost immediately. What happens next is they find your friends, family members, and your job site, and blackmail you; you either return to onlyfans, or they send the content to everyone you know. And if you say no, they will harass all your friends and family, and if you get any kind of job, this will get harassed too. Women then face the immense pressure of having not just themselves, but everyone in their life harassed to the point where they can't stand it anymore, and return to OnlyFans just to make it stop. They'll become isolated and have everyone in their life turned against them.

This effectively stops them for having any other kind of job or profession because it's impossible to stop the subscribers from finding out and sabotaging the entire thing. She explained a woman was put through this and forced to continue onlyfans, when she only had 12 subscribers. Two of them were blackmailing her. So thinking you can try it out and get out, you can't really, it's not just that the content might get out, but you're entire family and friend group and coworkers and job site might get involved.

The other meaningful fact she brings on is that you are unlikely to reach any success if you look like an adult women; it only works if you can pass as a child. I can't link the video because in the other half she berates women, and I don't want that content on my blog, but I found this story important, because it wouldn't cross my mind how big the danger is. I didn't know that if you get even one crazy subscriber, it's impossible to quit.

The other thing I saw women who previously had an OnlyFans account say, is how awful it was for their mental health, and the perception of their own bodies. They noted that even if it felt okay at the start, it keeps feeling worse and worse and they were deteriorating the entire time it was going on. It's impossible to not be affected. And the general, putting yourself in the harm's way, getting stalked, having to move often, having m*n break into your place, and delude themselves into thinking you want them and are specifically interested in them so any invasion in your life is welcome and warranted, is something women might not be aware they're exposing themselves to.

saw this under a post arguing for transwomen in women's sports.

can we PLEAAAASSEEEE stop girbossifying the documented history of female oppression??? literally where did this idea come from and why do ppl keep repeating it like it's fact?

the category of women's sports was created because women weren't able to participate in sports. they weren't even able to play against men to beat them in the first place. women weren't even allowed to compete in the olympics until 1920!!! this is not a secret. the history is so well-documented that it goes all the way back to fucking artistotle.

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