beauty queen on a silver screen

when I switched from one form of a medication to another, my doctor and I both googled the dose conversion. I came up with a better source, which is great because that spared me from getting prescribed 2/3rds of what I needed for months + having to run the dose increase gauntlet (they do not like doing that) to get back to where I started.

when I brought up autism, that same doctor argued with me and told me I "didn't seem autistic" and, when pressed, admitted that she didn't know much about autism.

I learned how to make eye contact in my late teens, I have severe textural aversions, history of public meltdowns, etc. I don't intend to seek an autism diagnosis because it can only harm me.

Either way, I am getting distracted. The point was actually: someone dropped into my comments at this going: "Ha! I would argue children were more oppressed when it was legal to beat them!" And mind you. This person was American. And, uhm... Well.

I do not know how I should tell y'all. But you... do understand that it is still legal in all of the US to physically punish children as a parent, right? Like, the US never ratified the rights of children. A lot of places never did that, actually.

This is the map from Wikipedia about where children can legally be beaten by their parents or in some cases even teachers. The key is: in Green countries it is illegal alltogether, in yellow countries it is legal for parents/guardians at home to physically beat children, bright orange allows it for parents/guardians and within private schools, dark orange is generally parents/guardians and people at school, and red countries allow violence against children in pretty much any institution.

And, like, you might say: "Oh, that is actually more green countries than I thought." But... I should remind you that in the end, even in the green countries, the law against violence through parents/guardians tends to not be enforced until it reaches a level where adjacent adults will be uncomfortable.

And pretty much no country protects children and minors from non-physical stuff. Having your privacy stripped? Yeah, tough luck, nobody cares. Your parents or teachers verbally abusing and humiliating you? Yeah, tough luck, fuck you.

And many of the rules that are currently pushed for to "protect" children from evil things like *checks notes* porn and horror movies and serial kidnappers that do not actually exist pushes children into a situation where they have way, way less abilities to escape abusive homes, or abusive schooling situations. Because children and minors in general are right now heavily restricted in their freedom of movement and freedom of education.

Like 85% of tumblr users hate and loathe embarrassment based comedy with every fiber of their beings, but never in my life have I ever seen an author reassure their audience that the embarrassing scenes are skippable.

Lots of people dislike tragedy but never in my life have I ever seen an author reassure the audience that the death and grieving scenes are skippable.

Stop trying to pass off self-censorship as “accommodation.” Stop trying to pass off pandering as “inclusivity.”