Agate's Book Hoard

Like just @ me at this point I'm literally the only person in iceland (and very possibly the world) who has the first name Lauf

Yes it did. I just let it slide because I was taught that I'm "too sensitive" anytime something bothered me. But now I'm finally standing up for myself.

"You never struggled with this when you were a kid."

Odysseus: Regret it why?

Cassandra: You won’t believe me if I tell you. If I prophecy, nobody believes me. That is my curse.

Odysseus: … I’m Nobody. Fill me in. 

*A couple of months later* 

Odysseus: HELLO PENELOPE, I AM HERE PRECISELY ON TIME AND NOT YEARS LATE incidentally I rescued and adopted a Trojan seer while I was away, she’s great, got me home really fast, Cassandra this is your new mother who’s not going to treat you like shit. 

Penelope: … I’m going to need more details, but okay, sure. 

Honestly, they mostly do not. Generally their areas of interests, expertise and duty overlap very little, if at all, so there is not that much opportunity to meet, let along mingle. In fact, it seems that most empty beings somehow, consciously or not, tend to stick to their brethren and not actively interact with other types of such beings. Not really sure what causes that. Immediately knowing at least a little about another being because it is similar to you, as the rupture at your cores that hollowed you both out is more or less of the same shape? And familiarity is soothing. Even if it hurts, which is, luckily, usually not the case here.

Dolls, including combat ones, seem to commonly lack a full, living soul (just like most other empty things), so there really is not much reason for an angel to expend grace on any sort of actively altering interventions. However, if a whole bunch of dolls or somebody more ensouled pour in enough of themselves into a "prayer" to an angel, god-commander or just the heavens, an angel might descend, the low-altitude supersonic flyby rattling what feels like reality itself as a sword blazes through the enemy with the heat of a coronal ejecta, dumping the energy freed from the cleaved bonds into the surrounding air, only to disappear as suddenly as it appeared. Entire trench, armored vehicle formation, incoming ballistic missile, nothing is safe from being sold for prayer.

We know vaccines painful, and by comparing horses at rest with horses getting vaccinated, we've been able to determine how they express pain visually. By looking at horses with disorders like colic, broken bones, wounds, and so on, we can determine their facial expressions during more severe pain.

At zookeeper school we were drilled through the pain faces of the most common lab animals and livestock. Nowadays I believe this has become a routine lesson in all animal related fields, but the general public still doesn't know that this is a thing that exists.

Here are all the pain face/grimace scales I've been able to find. Please study them if you interact with any of these animals on a regular basis:

To avoid more punishment, the child sits still and is quiet. But they have to actively remind themself constantly to sit still and be quiet.

The teacher sees the child sitting still and being quiet. The teacher treats this as the baseline.

Since the child is putting a lot of effort into sitting still and being quiet, doing so distracts from paying attention to what the teacher is teaching. The child then is punished for not paying attention.

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.

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.

NOT people with the mental disorder pedophilia. They can receive help.

I am not exaggerating when I say THAT is LITERALLY how you get fascism.

So many people have explained it better than me but

1) how exactly are you determining the line between acting out of mental illness vs. acting in sound mind and willful intent to hurt

2) straight up you might not like it but every single human on this planet has the capacity to BOTH a) commit unspeakable acts of horror, AND b) regret those acts and change and try to help those who've been hurt OR those who can hurt others from doing so. Not just Good People Having A Mental Episode. Yes, even rapists. Yes, even Nazis.

3) also tbh I'm still not over what you think the difference is between "mental disorder pedophilia" and "pedophilia that's been acted on." let's go back to that one again actually like. This isnt some Gold Star Mental Disorder Haver thing where as long as you only have Thoughts it's a mental disorder worthy of help but as soon as you exhibit physical symptoms of the disorder you're beyond saving. NO mental disorder is like that. It's an illness REGARDLESS of if you've hurt someone or not. Outright, there IS no difference between "mental illness pedophilia" and "regular pedophilia." That is NOT a thing. The only differences come down to if someone was able to have a moment of clarity in which they realize they need help and seek treatment, don't realize at all that they're hurting others because of how their mental illness presents itself, or don't care that they're hurting others because of either how their mental illness presents itself OR they are too rich to ever face any consequences for their actions so why would they bother to care in the first place which I would frankly and genuinely posit is it's own kind of disorder

4) the All Pedophiles Must Die gutwrench reaction is understandable, especially if you've been personal affected by rape, but HAS to be put down. Not just because there's no real way to "prove" if someone's mentally ill and/or in which way, if it's about the sex or the violence or the lack of understanding or what EVER. But because anytime you get that broad paintbrush stroke of This Group Deserves Nothing But Death, then ANY group who thinks any OTHER group should be killed off will USE that.

That is LITERALLY what maga and Christian conservatives (and Nazis) did/are trying to do again with queer people. The target used to be mainly gay men, now it's shifted primarily to trans women - brand them as pedophiles, then it'll be easy. People will BEG us to kill them, and we can get away with it totally legally because no one's going to want to defend pedophiles - so all we have to do is call them pedophiles.

5) there's a HUGE difference between saying All X Should Die versus If I Find X Hurting/Attacking Someone I'm Going To Kill Them First.

I find somebody creeping on my nephew? I'm beating the shit out of them until they are no longer a threat. If that means they don't get back then that means they don't get back up. Is that necessarily Good or Righteous? Not particularly. Will I have taken the time to understand their motivations and cleared up any misunderstandings so I'm not actually hurting someone who doesn't deserve it? So I even have the right to DECIDE if they deserve it? NOPE.

Im not in any way saying that it's hands down 100% the right thing to do. At all. Just that realistically, it's what I probably WOULD do.

But that is an INDIVIDUAL reaction, to an immediate, personal situation. That is handling an active threat, protecting someone right there in the moment.

THAT'S the difference between like... the punching out any Nazi on the street things versus the whole kill all pedos rhetoric. With the exception of the kind of wealthy so out of touch with reality that nothing seems to matter, like, Donald Trump, pedophiles aren't out here on street corners actively and intentionally threatening what they're gonna do. They aren't an organized group of militants (wannabe or not) out here self identifying and telling you, to your face, how they're gonna hurt your kids. How they view them. They are not BY DEFAULT actively threatening you and yours in a way that warrants that "stop them NOW by any means before they can mobilize and gain power and expand their platform across my community" response by just existing, the way that fascists are.

The actual THREAT comes at the individual level - when the OTHER ADULTS in these kids lives don't do what they're supposed to fucking do and watch and pay attention to what's going on, and don't step in when they're needed, and now some kid is alone with somebody who no one questioned or reported or ever taught this kid what behaviors weren't acceptable from an adult so the kids could even know to tell somebody what was going on in the first place. The threat is from That Person, Specifically, and only because SO MANY OTHER AVENUES of this kid's support system they were supposed to have FAILED THEM.

So yeah that got a little ramble and long but the main point of my last bit is like.

I'm not telling you not to put a hurting on somebody you find abusing your kids or anybody's kids. I'd kill somebody myself if I came across that situation. But that's someBODY. An individual situation where it's time to act on the moment. Just like if it were somebody breaking into my house or trying to kill me or somebody I care about. On a SINGULAR, individual level. And it may not even be the Right Thing To Do but it's probably what I'm doing. Realistically.

It makes it so fucking easy for them to COMPLETELY derail reasoning on "HEY, this kind of broad brush thinking is DANGEROUS and has been and continues to be used to target people completedly unrelated to pedophilia, as well as promise dangerous assumptions about what we can and can't tell is related to mental illness or not"

with

"LMAO can you believe this person is actually defending child rape?"

To play on the fact that because everyone CAN actually agree that pedophilia is awful and needs to be taken fucking seriously, the ones who don't bother to actually, you know... read and comprehend reasoning, will just hop right onboard the outrage train and agree with whatever they have to say next.

"wrote a whole essay about why people should be allowed to" WHERE. WHERE. at no point did I talk about anything other than why "-and they should all be killed about it because it's so bad it makes them basically not human" is dangerous and unacceptable and exactly what op was talking about with that's eugenics, it's literally Nazi eugenics, historically and factually.

Honestly outright PROVING the ENTIRE POINT of the original post. Literally, that is Nazi playbook 101. Start with easily agreeable blanket statements, sliiiiiiide them into deeper and deeper pointed attacks.

"rape and sexual violence is a genuinely terrible thing, its abohorrent and horrifying" -> "any one who DOES this thing is abohorrent and terrible" -> "in fact these people are so bad their barely even human and don't deserve to procreate. they should all be locked up in asylums and forcibly castrated or outright killed" -> "hey I heard XYZ group is particularly people to those kids of behaviors. we need to focus on them and get them off the streets."

And this is NOT an exaggeration OR a hypothetical. America LITERALLY DID THIS almost ENTIRELY through the 20th century, focusing primarily on Black, Indigenous, Gay, and Autistic people painting them as idiots and rapists, and then kept TRYING throughout the entire AIDs crisis and gay panic with painting gay men as pedophiles, specifically.

I've got a day job and my lunch is almost up, but later on (if I haven't just wanted my hands in frustration by that point) I can grab a few more articles than the ones below:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwijpdG92eGVAxWF0PACHaHEBXwQFnoECD8QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdigitalcommons.chapman.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1127%26context%3Dvocesnovae&usg=AOvVaw0EihVTYL4TgHo5yPTLYG4F&opi=89978449

But in a nutshell,

this is extra important to remember. most people who prey on kids aren't even pedophiles! we all need to get less paramisic NOW

This never ends well. (Or, you know, works.)