Andi's Sideblog

And like... you do get that that is kinda insane, right?

Because this is something that so often leads to suffering. And I am saying this as someone disabled, who had so many issues due to this in his childhood.

Just three examples: when I was 7, I was supposed to get checked for autism. My mother did not want an autistic child. Since she just could have a "neurotypical" child by refusing diagnosis, she did just that.

When I was 12, my mother had decided I needed a certain plastic surgery (one that had a minor health benefit, but still was largely a beauty thing). I did not want it. I really, really did not want it. We still went through almost the entire process until thankfully there was a doctor who went: "Wait, this is elective. I am refusing to do this on a child that does not want it."

And when I was 14 my mother refused to get me to the hospital when I had severe food poisoning. She refused me hospital treatment for almost two weeks. By the time I got actually taken to the hospital I was almost dead.

And here is the thing: all of this should just not happen. The doctor when I was 12 was cool, but... he refused to do the surgery because he had the right to make a conscience call. Legally my mother was in the right to force me into that elective surgery. And that just should not be the case.

A lot of children die and suffer due to their legal inability to consent - or refuse consent - to medical treatments. And I wish y'all would understand that.

Consider: a parent takes a child in for a flu shot. The child is afraid it will hurt, so they refuse it. The child is now unprotected. If enough children refuse vaccination, we now have pandemics on our hands.

A child doesn't like the taste of their medicine (valid) and so refuses to take it, at all. Their illness gets worse.

A child has an accident that's not actually that bad from an adult standpoint but is horribly traumatic from a child's standpoint--let's say a broken arm. Touching the arm hurts horribly, but it can't be set or put in a cast without touching it. The child is still in hysterics because this is the worst thing that has ever happened to them, and injures themselves worse before calming down enough to consent to treatment.

She ran away from the hospital. Police tracked her down and she was handcuffed to a hospital bed, then given chemotherapy.

Now, I was the only person in the room who said that she should’ve been given her own choice there. Everyone else disagreed: “She’s not 18! It’s against the law!” A year later, she discontinued chemotherapy and died.

then for 10-13 its control over certain treatments considered more minor/less risky or more cosmetic require consent for example if the parents say no shot but the kid says yes shot the kid gets the shot unless there's serious risks (like say the kid is allergic to a type of shot then no amount of yes will override the fact the kids allergic) but if the kid was like no surgery for my broken leg but parents say yes surgery sorry Timmy you're getting surgery

then 14-16 it's for more serious medical stuff but not anything thats like "if you dont do this you'll die" not cosmetic dental stuff for example would be included here

and then 17+ is full control no exceptions

Kids deserve autonomy, kids lack a lot of experience to understand some topics like why they need to go to school, and kids of different age brackets may have extremely different needs/understandings of the world are all things that need to coexist. A one size fit all flat age simply does not works because an 8 year old and a 15 year old are going to have very little in common when it comes to understanding the world and their own bodies.

Define "less risky procedure."

A brief summary from the NSPCC website:

"There is no set of defined questions to assess Gillick competency. Professionals need to consider several things when assessing a child's capacity to consent, including:

the child's age, maturity and mental capacity

their understanding of the risks, implications and consequences that may arise from their decision

how well they understand any advice or information they have been given

their understanding of any alternative options, if available

their ability to explain a rationale around their reasoning and decision making.

Remember that consent is not valid if a young person is being pressured or influenced by someone else. Children's capacity to consent may be affected by different factors, for example stress, mental health conditions and the complexities of the decision they are making. The same child may be considered Gillick competent to make one decision but not competent to make a different decision.

Gillick competency can be used when young people wish to refuse medical treatment. However, if a young person refuses treatment which may lead to their death or severe permanent harm, their decision can be overruled."

(In theory, schools should teach it, too, since government guidance on the Relationships, Sex and Health Education Curriculum includes it as a health topic that "should be taught by the end of secondary education" (the year children turn 16). I have no idea how well the average school follows that guidance, though - RSHE is, in my experience with teaching primary and through anecdotal stories of most people's secondary education, often a neglected subject...)

Someone is complaining their child wants to cut their hair short or grow it long? Point out that it's the child's hair. Why shouldn't they have it how they want it? Why is that parent upset?

Support all kids' rights to do sports or dance or whatever - be a little judgemental, make concerned faces, if someone is pressuring their child toward an activity they don't want.

Let kids play with whatever toys they feel like.

Exclude creepy uncles or similar entirely from family gatherings.

Teach kids language to advocate for themselves. Respect their no, encourage them to express their feelings, listen when they cry. Criticise and argue with people who automatically ignore or shut children down.

Stand against beating and other forms of physical "discipline"

Every child deserves to feel ownership and autonomy over their own body, and regardless of their gender, an issue some trans ppl run into as they grow older is a sense of tension between what they want and who it feels like their body "belongs" to - their family, their future spouse, society

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

It can also be found on Google Drive here and on Bluesky here.

Conversation up until now underneath cut:

Well, for starters, yes, I do think lynchings are worse than minstrel shows? Do you not? I mean, I don't think it's actually useful to compare the harms caused by both as better or worse than the other, but since I've been asked outright then, yeah, I don't think even an extremely harmful form of theatre and propaganda is as bad as the normalisation of outright killing people?

And I don't think minstrel shows are at all comparable to fanfiction. They were a national artform, the first uniquely US-ian form of theatre; they were front and centre of the USA's music industry in the early-mid 1800s, and were popular for a long time after. They were more or less the only exposure that many white Americans had to Black "culture" - and of course, it was no true representation. Their legacy includes perpetuating stereotypes of Black people as being lazy and uneducated, but cheerful and eager to please their masters, as well as allowing for the entertainment industry to ignore Black actors in favour of white actors in blackface, to name just two long-term harms.

I do not think that fanfiction is in any way in the same league in terms of the either cultural impact it is able to impress, or in the real, material harms it causes. Despite the fact that, yes, fanfiction has become more mainstream than it was ten years ago, it is still, at it's core, a fringe hobby, and often written by marginalised people who are, in one way or another, looking to reclaim a beloved piece of media for themselves. I am honestly astounded that you think it's appropriate to compare fanfiction to minstrel shows.

Of course, fiction is something that can affect the way that we think. Most media made in the USA, for example, carries either an implicit or explicit assumption that the armed forces are necessary and good - an assumption that one has to stop and actively question to prevent it from becoming one of your own biases. Consuming fanfiction uncritically could also certainly affect your biases, despite the fact that it most certainly does not have the same reach as mainstream media - but crucially, the vast majority of explicit fanfic about incest, rape, pedophilia etc. carries the assumption that this is a bad thing. Taboo kink isn't about normalising these as things that should happen in real life - it's about exploring extreme, total powerlessness with the knowledge that this is a bad thing that's happening!

I know that there is a chance that abusers might use fics like these to groom children. That is a horrifying atrocity, and something that should be stopped. But getting rid of this sort of fic would not stop groomers from finding a way to get to children. Should we say that children should not be given gifts, because groomers often use the normalisation of gift-giving to get to children? Abusers have been known to infiltrate the anti community, to enable them to appear to be a "safe" adult, since they're loudly arguing against "unsafe" fanfic.

You shouldn't be?

As someone so 'educated' as yourself, you should know that rape, pedophillia, & incest, are all things deeply rooted in the white supremacist power structure &—especially with incest—purity culture.

And the trouble is, with what you've called the "pro-fiction community", is that there isn't one: certainly, there are fans who've attached themselves to the label and like to loudly speak for the rest of us, but by and large, many "proshippers" only begrudgingly use that term to signal that we aren't "anti-ship" - and when it comes to calling out racism, mileage will vary as to whether fans are good or bad at it. The corner of it in DS9 that I inhabit happens to be very vocal about racism and calling it out in the source material, and in the fandom. There are a good amount of fans of colour who also enjoy writing fic about rape, though the other two are definitely less common - for one fan I can think of, at least, the interest is in part because of the intertwining nature of the white supremacist power structure.

I'm not saying that to discredit you. They can't speak for all fans of colour, and just because a Black fan enjoys rape fiction in a kinky way, doesn't mean it's Right. But equally, just because you think it's wrong, doesn't mean it is.

There are certainly far too many fans who stay quiet about racism, or who are happy to overlook it because it's too much "effort" or "spoils their escapism" - that is a real problem that I've seen talked about a lot in various posts. I try to not be one of those fans, and to listen to those of colour in my community and engage thoughtfully in the discussions fans of all colours have about racism in our fandom. I certainly have my blindspots, and there have been analyses looking at aspects in a light I'd never have thought of, to my shame - I try to educate myself and weed those blindspots out for myself, but there are times where I'll admit that I've fallen short.

This might be one such blind spot. Perhaps I am on the wrong side of history here. But, I have absolutely done my best to look and learn and engage with other arguments and from all the information I currently have, I stand by what I said. Perhaps that will change in the future, but as it is, to me it seems that sometimes kink comes from fear and power imbalances and systemic injustices; perhaps rape fantasies would be less common if we weren't still living under a patriarchal system under which every woman wonders if it's going to happen to her, and if she'd get any justice if it did. Some people who've suffered sexual abuse have spoken quite openly about how they now have kinks related to that abuse - and the shame that they feel at finding anything related to the trauma sexy. Human brains are Weird, sex is Super Weird, and wires absolutely get crossed in ways that we do not necessarily choose, but are real. For some reason, it is hotter for me if I pretend I am under duress during sex than if I'm not - I couldn't tell you why, but it is not causing anyone else any harm to engage in that sort of role-play so long as my partner is into it and consenting.

Conversation up until now underneath cut:

Well, for starters, yes, I do think lynchings are worse than minstrel shows? Do you not? I mean, I don't think it's actually useful to compare the harms caused by both as better or worse than the other, but since I've been asked outright then, yeah, I don't think even an extremely harmful form of theatre and propaganda is as bad as the normalisation of outright killing people?

And I don't think minstrel shows are at all comparable to fanfiction. They were a national artform, the first uniquely US-ian form of theatre; they were front and centre of the USA's music industry in the early-mid 1800s, and were popular for a long time after. They were more or less the only exposure that many white Americans had to Black "culture" - and of course, it was no true representation. Their legacy includes perpetuating stereotypes of Black people as being lazy and uneducated, but cheerful and eager to please their masters, as well as allowing for the entertainment industry to ignore Black actors in favour of white actors in blackface, to name just two long-term harms.

I do not think that fanfiction is in any way in the same league in terms of the either cultural impact it is able to impress, or in the real, material harms it causes. Despite the fact that, yes, fanfiction has become more mainstream than it was ten years ago, it is still, at it's core, a fringe hobby, and often written by marginalised people who are, in one way or another, looking to reclaim a beloved piece of media for themselves. I am honestly astounded that you think it's appropriate to compare fanfiction to minstrel shows.

Of course, fiction is something that can affect the way that we think. Most media made in the USA, for example, carries either an implicit or explicit assumption that the armed forces are necessary and good - an assumption that one has to stop and actively question to prevent it from becoming one of your own biases. Consuming fanfiction uncritically could also certainly affect your biases, despite the fact that it most certainly does not have the same reach as mainstream media - but crucially, the vast majority of explicit fanfic about incest, rape, pedophilia etc. carries the assumption that this is a bad thing. Taboo kink isn't about normalising these as things that should happen in real life - it's about exploring extreme, total powerlessness with the knowledge that this is a bad thing that's happening!

I know that there is a chance that abusers might use fics like these to groom children. That is a horrifying atrocity, and something that should be stopped. But getting rid of this sort of fic would not stop groomers from finding a way to get to children. Should we say that children should not be given gifts, because groomers often use the normalisation of gift-giving to get to children? Abusers have been known to infiltrate the anti community, to enable them to appear to be a "safe" adult, since they're loudly arguing against "unsafe" fanfic.

The counter-argument: Not having UBI is in the interests of those in power who want to do anything to the people they are in power over in order to remain in power.

1- I don't wanna doxx us so I'm not telling you where we live, but suffice to say, neither of us are American, and gay marriage has been legal here for less than five years. For both of us, this is the first relationship we've had where marriage was even an OPTION, and I think that's where we've been getting some of that whole 'this has to be a REAL proposal with EVERYTHING' idea.

2- I gotta figure out how to explain this properly. So, I'm pretty used to being the GUY guy in relationships? I was always the one who did the nice gestures, not the one they got done for. Before I met my dream guy, I didn't really notice or care that it was such a thing, I just assumed that's how shit worked. Also, I promised I wouldn't talk a lot about his stuff here, but his last boyfriend before me SUCKED. Anyway point here is, it turns out we both REALLY like feeling swept off our feet sometimes, and a big part of finding each other has been getting to feel special for once? That's a stupid sappy way of putting it the point here is I think all that's what morphed into "I need to be the one getting proposed to, also it has to be completely perfect", and then our Petty & Extra genes got involved.

So I'm sitting in bed thinking about all that up there, and watching all the comments coming in basically being like "Dude, you are BLOWING this" on repeat, and telling me to compromise, and I look up and see him flossing in the bathroom and making all these doofy faces at the mirror, and it's like a switch just flips in my brain, and I'm like "Oh, I'd rather he gets to have his perfect proposal than we both have an okay one". I'm gonna do it.

Morning rolls around, and while I'm 'out for my jog like normal' I hit up a pawn shop for a temp ring (the ring pop thing is cute but NOT HIM). I found one I was at least confident wouldn't get ruined the first time he got his hands greasy (he fixes old machines as a hobby it's hot as hell), got back home, and hid the box in the toe of my nasty ass workout shoes in the bedroom closet, since I figured he'd check there last.

He was still asleep, because he stays up late no matter what and then is SHOCKED he's tired the next day, so I called and booked a table at our usual anniversary spot. (Side note about the 'he picks bad restaurants' thing. This isn't an 'I like Greek, you like Chinese' situation, dude's just BAD at finding places. He either assumes pricey is tasty and I get to eat some overrated gourmet bullshit, or he'll try and find something hip and underground and risk giving us food poisoning again, and he REFUSES to give up and pick somewhere we've been before when it's his turn to plan date night. I'm obsessed with him <3.) Date was set, I'd propose on the 21st.

Some of you might have noticed this, but fun fact! It's currently the 16th.

Last night I'm doing dishes and he's been sent to our room for mug collection duty, and he's taking FOREVER, so I go check just in case he found the ring, because the man's a gift tracking BLOODHOUND. Turns out he hasn't, he's found my Angry Box.

I assume other people have an Angry Box? Basically, we had this huge messy fight right when we first moved in together, and I never wanna let it get that bad again, so I have this shoebox where I keep a bunch of our stuff I can look at if we're fighting and hopefully cool off. There's one of those photo booth roll things, letters we wrote when he moved back with his parents for COVID, the wine cork from our first date, shit like that. Anyway, he's just sitting on the floor staring at it, and I explain about the Angry Box, and then he! Proposes!!! Kind of.

He definitely didn't have anything prepared, because by 'propose' I mean 'ugly cried & rambled at me for several minutes before I figured out it WAS a proposal', but once I got on the same page it was amazing. I said yes, and he had to admit he didn't have a ring for me because he was CONVINCED he'd win and I'd do it, so I grabbed mine because, yeah, he was right. He was like "this is the ugliest ring I've ever seen" and I was like yeah well the plan is to replace it later and he went "No. You can pry this off my cold dead fingers. After I'm buried with it." So I guess it's not a temporary ring anymore.

I'm just gonna go ahead and skip to this morning. I pointed out we still have the reservation, and he said I should propose there anyway because "We can get a free dessert. They have those creme brulee shot glasses you like. And for love, or something" and I said ok deal, but that means you gotta get me a ring to keep it fair, and his eyes LIT UP. When I swung by his work for lunch he was still on the phone with a jeweler and he had a whole page of notes on three other ones. Pray for me.

OH PS: I was RIGHT that he'd been the one behind the cat biting me, but it wasn't about the proposal stuff, it's because I paid my baby sister three dollars to shout 'fuck you' every single time he enters a room she's in for (if you ask me, he should be madder at my sister for charging so little), and he did it by giving her a bunch of treats for biting his hands too, so now neither of us can pet our baby girl without oven mitts on. HOLY SHIT I love this man.

Oh my goddddddd I love everything about this <333 I awwww'd out loud on a voice call, like, six times while reading. You two are friggin perfect for each other and so obviously smitten with each other and I wish y'all all the happiness in the world

PS Are y'all planning to have a big wedding? If so oh boy I can't WAIT to get that one in the inbox