who even Am I

bubble bubble could you take my dream fly to the wonderland?

this only worsened after seeing this segment on the school news that featured various stupid stuff caught on the hallway cameras, like people falling down or readjusting their underwear when they thought the hallways were empty. 

but they werent. there was someone watching, and they forgot to police their behavior and ended up getting embarrassed for it. everyone laughed at this segment. i remember the classroom being filled with snickers as someone fell flat on their face. i wasn’t a “superwoke” kid or anything, but i didnt think this was funny. i thought it was scary. what if that was me? what if i got caught fixing a wedgie on camera without even knowing it? 

i remember these cameras being used for everything – spotting dress code violations, catching students skipping class, etc. you can argue that they shouldnt have broken the rules, sure, but that doesnt excuse the concept of Being Constantly Watched. 

and what about the times when they weren’t doing something wrong? like when they were walking back from the bathroom or tripping over their own feet? did that warrant embarrassment and shame from their watchful spectators? does existing in a school hallway warrant surveillance? 

this brings me to the concept of anti-shooter architecture. there is a rising interest in school layouts that prepare for the possibility of a shooter roaming the halls. these improvements include bulletproof glass, concrete cover, and…. something scary. 

many of these highschool floor plans include some type of circular or central “watch tower” feature, and the designers actively boast about it being a panopticon. a panopticon. the same thing they use in prisons to enforce the idea that the prisoners are always being watched, though they can never really know when. 

what kind of effect will “anti-shooter architecture” have on kid’s minds? the constant threat of violence is already taking its toll on teenagers who have undergone active shooter drills, and this concept of air-tight security (clear backpacks, metal detectors, camera surveillance, constantly locked doors, etc) is not really an environment you would want to raise a child in, so why are we sticking kids in schools like that for 7-8 hours a day?

which leads into the next thing. many people’s solution to this is more guns, which equates to police presence in schools. ive already seen videos coming out of school cops beating black kids and ordering muslim girls to take off their hijabs. but beyond the racism and xenophobia, it’s another (now living) reminder of the unsafe environment these kids find themselves in. another reminder that theyre being watched and their behavior is being judged according to the law, or whatever the cop or teachers find inappropriate. that standing up for themselves or arguing can be taken as hostile and warrant physical intervention. 

police presence on campus grounds is DIRECTLY used to suppress student activism. you know that.i know that. we know that. you remember that photo of the cop spraying a line of peaceful protesters? you remember that cop that tackled a student for holding a sign? you remember the fucking car fuls of kids that were arrested for protesting? 

police are our enemy, but they can be found in plenty of highschools and colleges now. even in elementary schools, where young children are being taught to obey and trust cops. the conditioning is being started young, and if you don’t conform to it, you become a watched enemy on your own campus. 

That was the national response to Columbine. After the Columbine shooting, public schools all over the United States “upped security” to keep kids safer. Requiring students to use clear plastic backpacks was less common (the one in my city that did it issued them to the students directly, at least, rather than forcing parents to buy backpacks that were harder to find in stores and significantly more expensive than the basic ones). But armed police officers? Yeah, that was definitely a thing. (And before anyone comes at me with “you mean security guards”: No. We had those, too, but they were just that - security guards. There were six of them at my high school, but there were also two or three fully armed police officers patrolling the halls in body armor at any given time.) There were cameras everywhere, except the bathrooms and locker rooms - oh, but they pointed at the bathrooms, so you could monitor who was going in and who was going out. They would do “random searches” where a minimum of two security guards - one male, one female - would come into classrooms, plant a sign outside the door that said RANDOM SEARCH IN PROGRESS, and proceed to go through students’ backpacks looking for contraband, and also pat them down to make sure they didn’t have anything they weren’t supposed to, like weapons or drugs or cell phones. There were metal detectors at every door. During the school day, all the doors were locked from the outside; the only way you could get in if you were late was to buzz the office at the front door and wait for them to get around to letting you in. A friend of my brother’s once observed that another friend had sucked a candy cane to where the end was pointy and encouraged the other to stab him with it, and when it drew blood and a security officer saw that, they banned candy canes for being potentially deadly weapons.

Did it work? Absolutely goddamn not. There was a riot after a pep rally my freshman year (allegedly someone opened an exterior door by the gym and let in members of a rival gang); a bunch of kids got pepper sprayed because they ran to see the fight rather than backing away, but the only response from security and the SROs was “it wasn’t us, we weighed our cans of pepper spray to prove we didn’t loose any off, the kids must’ve brought some in”. My bike was stolen from the school parking lot and the SRO’s only response when we reported it to him was “wow, that’s an awful lot of bike for a high school student”. A friend’s car was stolen out of the school parking lot and the only reason she got it back was because of an anonymous tip. There were kids who routinely threatened others, one of whom had a literal pocketknife on hand, and the SROs would just shrug and go back to what they were doing when people complained.

like

listen

you’re free to take a ouija board out to the cemetery and try to explain the dizzying array of current queer terms and get a solid answer as to how he identifies within that framework but 

until then, I’m going to continue NOT definitively assigning someone identity terms they didn’t self-identify with, and might not have even known, when I’m responsible for representing them faithfully and they’re not here to correct me. even more so when they’re part of my own community

Gotta keep a straight face u guys

🏳️‍⚧️ What happens if your state won't allow you to access gender-affirming care, like HRT?

Some states are stepping up where others are stepping back. Connecticut is the first state to pass a "safe state" law that will protect people who are seeking gender-affirming care or abortion care if it becomes illegal in their home state. Connecticut's law also means criminalizing states can't use out-of-state warrants to arrest parents or guardians for helping their child get care there, and would restrict other states from subpoenaing the medical records of families who sought gender-affirming care outside of their home states.

Not because I’m lazy or unworthy or anything like that…

…but because one of my distant uncles was among the eight survivors of the Essex, the ship that inspired the ending of Moby Dick and sank after being rammed by a whale, and what do I fuckin do after my bloodline has this Ordeal at Sea?