Where did I see this again?

I’m sure there are more foot fetishists than furries, but they lack some essential ingredient to turn themselves into a community. I think feet are just too simple to become a lifestyle. Whereas with furries or kinksters, you can act out scenes, write stories, draw imaginative art, make the whole thing a real part of your identity. You can do that with feet, but only to a much lesser extent.

off the top of my head there’s erotic hypnosis, ageplay (lots of nonsexual in here but to my knowledge the two tend to go to the same conventions and all), I think tickling fetish, and I don’t know if feederism has its own convention(s) atm but there’s definitely a community thing going on.

So the other bit is ‘visible’, which makes me wonder what the ingredient for that is.

(Also in my experience a lot of things that might otherwise be off on their own are currently being a part of the BDSM community moreso - the ones I listed definitely also cross into that too, to varying amounts, though also have their own stuff.)

fantasizing about noncon obviously, or just imagine stigmas for stuff that everyone is actually fine with

I feel like the latter doesn’t really work – it takes a lot of work to trick your brain into thinking something is badwrong without external social feedback.

The nice future should have sex stigma resorts where both attendees and hired actors pretend [thing] is shameful and have disgust reactions to it, and then you and your partner/s sneak around and get the illicit thrill of doing something forbidden.

Like resorts this also has the feature that you can customize your stigmas better. With real stigmas you can really only work with the ones (and the framework) your society has, which might not suit you. If you get to pick them you can do so much more variety! Would you like to use stigmas of different historical society? Would you like to worldbuild your own society and then use their stigmas? you can!

That doesn’t make them righter, and only permitting those kind of responses just advantages whoever happens to be good at those things, and disadvantages whoever needs other kinds of responses to push back against bad ideas. (And will in fact totally advantage bad ideas over good ones if people with bad ideas already have some advantage in that area for whatever reason).

The important question tends to be what the ridicule is rooted in, but the same is true for rhetoric and the like. Like, ridicule that boils down to ‘those people are Weird haha’ is a problem, but rhetoric that boils down to ‘Weird people are dangerous/should have less rights than Normal people/etc’ isn’t *less* of a problem (and in fact there’s harm it’s way better suited to doing).

There are a bunch of people for whom bubble baths, scented candles, and chocolate is self-care. 

There are a bunch of people for whom early-morning yoga, vegetable smoothies, and aggressively minimalist redecorating is self-care.

There are a bunch of people for whom playing with kids is self-care, and a bunch of people for whom dressing up and going to a fancy restaurant where no kids are allowed is self-care, and a bunch of people for whom sleeping in late is self-care and a bunch of people for whom getting up early is self-care. 

Lately I’ve been moving from ‘yeah, humans are vast and varied’ to a sense that there’s a similar underlying thing in all of these cases.

I think something tends to be more restorative - to be an activity that leaves you more energized than you started it, more okay than when you started it - the more of these criteria it meets:

- restorative things are often things you associate with being prioritized, valued and valuable. This is why some people find chores restorative - it hits ‘valued and valuable’f or them - while other people find them draining - their association with doing chores is being incapable or not-good-enough or ordered-around,

- restorative things are usually things that don’t draw on the resources you feel constrained on - if you’re tired from being on your feet all day, running sure won’t do it, and if you’re lonely and isolated then bubble baths probably won’t help. Dong stuff that causes you anxiety won’t often be restorative.

- restorative things tend to fit into your understanding of what a good life for you looks like. early-morning yoga works for people who find it empowering to think of themselves as someone who does early-morning yoga. prayer and attending religious services tends to work for people who are like ‘my best self attends religious services’ and not so well for people ho are like ‘ugh I’m supposed to do that’ or ‘doing that just reminds me how much I disagree with my community about what my best self looks like’

- restorative things are pleasant in their own right. It’s astonishing how often this one gets passed-over. If you do not enjoy something - if the experience of doing it isn’t a good experience - then it’s really unlikely to be restorative. Making yourself do yoga when you find every minute awful will not be restorative. It might sometimes be valuable but it won’t be restorative. (Things that are unpleasant to start, but pleasant and rewarding once you’re doing them, can be restorative).

And “if the experience of doing it isn’t a good experience” hm, so *not synonymous* with ‘is a good experience’, it’s like - something can be a good experience and not this thing. (Not that I thought otherwise but - helps me actually understand better, to hear explicitly and said etc.)

My boss knows, mostly through a coincidence- Scott linked my post about trying to get ADHD meds in his post about the prescription of ADHD meds, and my boss reads Scott’s blog. (I have given Scott permission to link my posts and was fine with this series of events). He let me know during our next meeting that Workplace is happy with my work and that he’s learned a lot about how to set yourself up to be able to accomplish stuff by running a startup and would love to be a resource for me if I’d like that. He’s been a fantastic resource.

The most important accommodation I have at Workplace, though, isn’t something I have because they know I’m disabled, it’s just something I have because Workplace is a healthy environment - it’s that, generally, people respond to problems with ‘how do we set things up so this doesn’t happen’ instead of ‘why did you do that’. 

For example, it used to be that an important part of my work would load in preview mode but not save, and therefore that on two different occasions I submitted work with that part missing. This was my fault, and I expected someone to say ‘be more careful’, but instead my boss’s immediate reaction was ‘that shouldn’t load in preview mode unless it’s saved’. Which made perfect sense in hindsight - that’s actually hard to prevent on my end, and easy to prevent with a software fix - but it just hadn’t occurred to me at all that my difficulty attending to this specific detail would best be fixed by making it easier than by telling me to be more careful. 

But there’s always like, this line, where beyond the line I feel like no, I can’t say that part. Which kind of impedes stuff. But like - a lot of people have a line at which they’ll say ‘ok that’s just not a real problem’ or ‘well you should just deal with that’. And presumably there’s lines about like - when I need something they can’t really give me, or can’t do things at which point I’m not useful enough, in general my costs exceed my potential benefits, etc.

And if I say a thing I can’t take it back, can’t go back to not-really-managing-well-but-something the same way, even if it turns out to have in fact been better not to say. (And then on my end I’m still figuring things out, and it’s all mixed up with internalized ableism etc, so I don’t even feel like I can say things with confidence etc.)

The reason you will find people who swear by every possible diet, who say any given productivity tool saved their career, or each and every anti depressant saved their life is that people vary a ton. People vary in psychology and biology. People differ in how much money they have, in what kind of social life, even things that might seem trivial like the layout of someone’s house can be a relevant variable. People’s goals, options, and obstacles are all different, sometimes blatantly and sometimes subtly.

under the cut is starvation, discussion of major character death, and way too much fluff considering the characters and point in the timeline.