Practice Ethical Fishing

Trans women: Hi 👋

let me share a memory with y’all. it’s from i guess 1978 or thereabouts. it’s high summer. i don’t remember where my mom was driving me, in our avocado green chevette, i just know there was a traffic jam that turned 35w northbound into a parking lot from horizon to horizon.

picture it – wait, you don’t have to use your imagination, this happened all the damn time back then.

every one of those damn cars was burning leaded gasoline. there were no emissions regulations. there were no safety regulations. there were just thousands and thousands of detroit steel shoeboxes belching visible smoke as they idled, engines loud and hot, here and there a radiator giving up in the heat, a cloud of burning oil rising.

i, a smeet of five or six, was choking on toxic smog.

i reckon it was about a half hour into the traffic jam that i first threw up. i remember a blinding headache, i remember being confused, i remember dry heaving with my arms and head hanging out the window, the green metal of the car burning my hands and my chin. i don’t remember passing out, but i’m told i lost consciousness before mom was able to get to an off-ramp, because there were no emergency lanes on the highways back then.

i lived. and life went on. what were we going to do, complain? if i’d died, the cause of death probably would’ve been recorded as heatstroke, not carbon monoxide poisoning.

i know i’m probably preaching to the choir here on tumblr. but i really wish i could tell that story to the people who think deregulation is no big deal. i wish they’d put themselves in my mom’s shoes.

or even just look at some old pictures, then look out the window.

ever notice how cityscapes used to have that orange tint and hazy aura? yeah, that’s poison gas.

remember how the mississippi river used to be a stinking soup of baby-shit yellow sludge covered with disturbingly stiff rafts of light orange foam?

i can’t even find pictures of the sludge and foam, i guess they didn’t end up on the internet. the smell was indescribable. that oily shimmer. the reek of dead things. people didn’t boat on the river for pleasure; it smelled too bad, it was too ugly, and you could get super super sick if you touched the water.

and now look at it.

i still wouldn’t want to drink it, but if i fell in i wouldn’t bolt for the shower in a panic, you know?

if the thieving billionaires get their way, we can kiss those sailboats goodbye, and learn the smell of toxic foam once more. the ultra-rich won’t even feel the extra money, they’ve already got more than they could ever touch, they just stash it in offshore accounts to rot, but the rest of us will return to a time of neverending nausea and weird cancers. a time when every elementary school class had at least one kind who’d been born with no fingers or their heart outside their body, and this was just… the way things were.

When I was learning my trade, when my classmates and I were having a chuckle over the “well duh” level of specificity written into the Code of Federal Regulations (try “no hazardous material shall be stored in crew berthing” on for size), I will never forget the silence that followed when our instructor spoke these words:

“Your regulations are written in blood.”

These regulations were not written on a whim. They were written because someone thought they could cut costs by storing however many more pounds of a radioactive, toxic, carcinogenic, or whatever else material in the same rooms where the human beings they paid to transport those materials slept, and then did that, because no one was telling them not to. 

They were written because people died. Horrifically. Because unregulated capitalism values profit over human life and suffering. 

Can I say it again, for those not paying attention? 

United States Radium Corporation that knew radium was lethal, and hired factory girls to work at painting watches with glow-in-the-dark radium faces. To emphasize - they knew radium was lethal and dangerous. Scientists who worked with it wore safety equipment and knew better than to touch it with bare skin. The factory girls, on the other hand, were instructed by their employers to keep the tips of their paint brushes pointed by sucking them between their lips. An act that guaranteed that they were ingesting small amounts of radium daily. They were told that radium was safe, and in small doses even good for you - United States Radium Corporation had paid for ‘studies’ and promoted other products which used small amounts of radium, and had branded at as, basically, a medicinal curative that just need to be doled out in appropriate dosages.

This was bullshit, and not even bullshit which the company higher ups could reasonably be expected to actually believe on all levels, with the information that they had readily at hand. What they knew was that a small amount of radium wouldn’t kill you right away, and that there was a two year statute of limitations on workers compensation claims. When the girls began dying and the finger was pointed at radium, the president of the United States Radium Corporation had an independent researcher investigate the claim. The research established that the link between the girls’ deaths and radium was clear. The company, not liking that result, covered up the independent research and hired other people to simply state that this was not the case.

Of course, by this point there were dying factory workers who were literally glowing in the goddamn dark, whose bones had become so infused with radium that they were visibly radioactive in their autopsies (when said bones weren’t just falling out of them while they were alive, anyway), so of course the company was forced to admit - oh wait, no, they started stealing dead women’s bones from morgues so that they could dispute their causes of death.

Like. Let’s be clear. United States Radium Corporation didn’t just fail to keep their workers sufficiently informed, they didn’t just not investigate things well enough, which would have been bad enough on its own. They told their employees to ingest a deadly substance, and when those DYING WOMEN got together with their last breaths to try and make the world aware of what was going on, purely to try and keep it from killing all the other girls who might get jobs in factories (because they were all doomed to painful cancerous death themselves), they paid for hush-ups and cover-ups and fake studies, and stooped to full-on grave robbing to keep people from finding out that they were killing women in droves.

There were factory workers giving testimonies as they physically fell apart on their death beds. The company’s response was not to even revise workers’ regulations to be more safe. It was entirely, 100%, to lie about it, so they could keep making money and keep killing their workers.

And do you want to know what happened to that company? To the United States Radium Corporation?

It eventually became The Safety Light Corporation, and was decommissioned in 2005. The radium girls were dying in the late 1920′s. The company that killed them didn’t even go under with them, didn’t even die when their efforts to raise awareness actually resulted in better and more stringent regulations. So the prospect that better regulations will hurt a corporation are laughable. Even the corporations that deserve to be destroyed by them still manage to do alright when they’re forced to make less money and kill fewer people. Boo hoo, how sad for them.

But inadequate regulations will kill actual human people. Full stop. Some companies will still adhere to ethics, sure, some will have people in charge or on various levels who care and can intervene. But not all of them. And the United States Radium Corporation was just ONE company. One company, that had no regulations to hold it accountable, that decided it didn’t care - and so many women died horrible, horrible deaths for it.

Which means you now have an active warrant out for your arrest.  And just like that, you’re now a part of the criminal justice system. A silly mistake that a middle-class teenager could have solved with Mommy and Daddy’s chequebook in a single afternoon has caused you weeks or months of stress and headaches over a process you don’t fully understand, and has ended in criminal charges. Instead of having a funny story to tell over dinner when you come home from college next Thanksgiving, you are now facing additional fines (that you still can’t pay), the possibility of a couple of nights in jail, the possible suspension of your driver’s license, and the possibility of being taken into custody any time you interact with the police. The next time your parent comes home drunk and violent, or someone breaks into the house, you think twice about calling the cops - you now have to decide if every emergency is “worth” the possibility of being hauled off to jail. And in the meantime, the circumstances that caused that first mistake haven’t gone away - you still don’t have the money to pay for the subway, you are still more likely to live in a house filled with smokers, you still can’t afford quit-smoking aids, you still live in a chaotic household that deeply affects your mental health, and you still don’t understand the legal system or who you’re supposed to talk to for information and resources. So while those other teenagers get to go through life believing that they were “good kids who sometimes made silly mistakes”, you now get to go through life thinking of yourself as a criminal. And that might be the most damaging thing of all. 

When I worked with homeless teenagers and young adults, I saw this process play out again and again and again and again. The kids often considered themselves “criminals” or “bad kids” because they had arrest warrants and criminal records, but few of them had ever actually committed a serious or violent crime - the vast majority were simply unlucky kids who did something stupid and didn’t have the skills or resources (or wealthy parents) required to get them off the hook. I had classmates in my upper-middle-class high school who did far worse things with far fewer consequences, because Mommy was a lawyer or Daddy was an RCMP officer, and some of those kids grew up to be lawyers or police officers themselves. The kids I worked with never got that opportunity. Second chances cost money, and the difference between a “crime” and a “mistake” has less to do with the offense, and more to do with the circumstances you were born into. 

Where’s that post that explains this succinctly? Oh right:

An action being “punishable by a fine” basically means “legal for rich people”.

ok so if everythings normal, your phone camera should have a manual mode (sometimes called pro mode). in it, change the settings of the shutter lag to 20 seconds, then put the phone down on some stable, plane surface and press the photo button (usually when using your camera, the volume buttons can be used as photo button) and let the phone still for the whole 20 seconds. 

Additionally, adjust your ISO to the highest number (mimics the film used for very low light and low speed images)

And set your shutter speed to the longest time possible (on my phone it’s 10 seconds).

Leave your focus settings on Auto, and if your phone camera has a timer option, turn that on (five seconds is generally enough).

Plan your shot first, then find a place to set your phone down so you can get the image you want. The less light pollution, the better; you’ll pick up FAR more stars in your picture.

Once you know what you want to shoot, tap your screen to “focus” it, then hit the button to take the picture, set your phone down, and back away from the “tripod”. Don’t touch your phone for a good 15 seconds, just to be sure.

You will not be disappointed in the results, let me assure you.

Not even a little bit.

https://twitter.com/LeftAtLondon/status/1079001153579343873

How to Recognize Abuse

**Emotional Abuse of Men

**Sexual Assault of Men and Boys

**Men Can Be Victims of Abuse, Too

**Domestic Violence Against Men - Know the Signs

**Information for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse

**Help for Battered Men

**Battered Men, Battered Husbands

**For Male Survivors of Rape and Sexual Abuse

**Male Survivors of Incest and Sexual Child Abuse

**Help for Men Who Are Being Abused

Help Lines (Phone and Text Chat)

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 (or 1-800-787-3224 for TTY)

National Dating Abuse Hotline: 1-866-331-9474

National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-237-8255

Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men: 1-888-743-5754 (US and Canada)

Hopeline Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-784-2433

National Hotline for Victims of Crimes: 1-855-484-2846

National Human Trafficking Hotline: 1-888-373-7888

Polaris Human Trafficking Text Line: Text “BEFREE” to 233733

**1in6/RAINN Chat for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse

Support Groups

**1in6 Support Groups

Male Survivor Support Groups

Pandora’s Aquarium - Chat (includes chats specifically for men)

Pandora’s Aquarium - Forums (includes forums specifically for men)

How to Find a Shelter

Domestic Shelters Search (shelter locator with filters to find shelters specifically for male survivors)

SAFE (located in Austin, TX, but states they can help people find resources/shelters in their area)

How to Find a Therapist

**Male Survivor Therapist Directory

Mental Health Services Locator

Resources for and About the Abuse of Kids/Teens

Love is Respect Hotline: 1-866-331-9474 (Hotline for teens)

Darkness to Light Helpline (Sexual Abuse): 1-866-367-5444

Darkness to Light Text Line: Text “LIGHT” to 741741

ChildHelp USA National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-422-4453

Children of the Night Hotline (Children in Prostitution): 1-800-551-1300

National Runaway Safeline: 1-800-786-2929

Covenant House Nineline (Homeless Youth): 1-800-999-9999

Stop it Now Hotline: 1-888-773-2362 (for adults concerned about the welfare of a child)

Jennifer Ann’s Group (for teens experiencing dating violence)

Other Resource Lists 

(While I tried to include the most helpful resources I could here (i.e., resources that lend themselves to one-on-one communication, individual reading, etc.), there are plenty of other great resources, including regional resources, listed in these links. Some of the resources are specific to men and others aren’t, but they are all helpful for male survivors.)

**Male Survivor (regional, international, and online resources)

**Husband Battering: Men and Domestic Violence

**Help for Battered Men: Online Resources

**Help for Battered Men: National and International Resources

Tarot

Playing cards

“Throwing bones”

Smoke signals

Whatever other mess people are coming up with on Instagram to get divination clients.

The only ways to receive divination with the Orisha is through their sacred oracles:

Diloggun (specially prepared cowrie shells) from an initiated and trained Olorisha (Santero/Santera)

Opele from an initiated and trained Babalawo

Ikin from an initiated and trained Babalawo

Coconut from an initiated and trained Santero or Babalawo.

Each of those methods of divination (except coconuts) are only possible when you have been initiated because the very materials used to divine are made during your initiation. It then takes years of study to learn how to properly divine for others as it requires memorizing an oral tradition containing 256 signs, each of which could merit its own book, in thousands of combinations.

That’s it. No uninitiated person has the right or even the ability to divine with the Orisha for others, and we absolutely do not use tarot or anything other non-traditional oracle to speak to the Orisha.

The only legitimate means of divination in Haitian Vodou is a leson kat/literally ‘card lesson’ done with a specific set of traditional playing cards. There is no other system–no Tarot, no shells, no opele, no coconut or kola nut, no candle-gazing, no runes….nothing. A leson can only be done for you by a priest who has been consecrated for that task: some houses only consecrate asogwe for divination, some will consecrate both sou pwen and asogwe. A person cannot be consecrated for this outside of kanzo, full stop, and how the cards are read and how the lwa speak through the cards is only available after kanzo. A priest is basically the telephone that can call the lwa for you to consult on your situation or questions because the lwa have given them the right to do that work via their kanzo and consecration.

In short, this means your local rootworker who reads playing cards is not reading the same system or consulting the lwa for you. Your favorite Instagram reader–houngan/manbo or not–is not consulting the lwa for you when they pull out their Tarot cards. Someone who throws bones is not contacting the lwa for you (and the offensiveness of that in particular in the religion is off the charts). If you have questions for the lwa, an ethical diviner who is not a houngan/manbo should tell you that you need a priest from the religion.

This recipe comes from a compendium of spells, which you can read more about here (link). This is an amateur attempt at translating from German, so please correct me if I make any mistakes (2): 

If you want to make yourself invisible or want to see demons in a dream without them being able to do you any harm, go to the river where the water gushes, and take three smooth stones from there, put them in a new vessel, and pour water over them. Let this stand for nine days. Then take the stones, wrap them in canvas, and put them under the threshold near the doorpost. There they stay for three days. Afterwards, take them and hammer them until they are smashed to dust, put them back in the canvas they were in, hold them under your left loin and say three times:

“It may please you, Lord, my God, to send me the angels ‘Argi’el and Bargi’el and Gabri’el and Sandalfon, the prince of the forest, to watch over me in the hour I order [them to], that no creature sees me, be it with good or with malicious intent,”

and take this canvas with the stones and put the whole thing on smooth paper and write on the other side of the paper this figure (שר in a Shield of David, attached to a circle with רשי). Then throw everything into the fire and let it burn. This benefits with God’s help; tried and tested.

In Jewish lore, Gabriel is often portrayed as God’s instrument and messenger (and counterpart of Michael), while Sandalfon is an archangel prominent in Merkabah (”Chariot”) mysticism (1) (3).

The bibliography and original German text are below the cut (2).