I've tried to talk around the puppygirl article as much as possible. To minimize the time I spend dwelling on negativity toward the article and maximize the time I spend giving positivity to the puppygirl. When I made my post last night about how the puppygirl is loved, I wrote it in such a way that it directly refuted the article without ever needing the context of the article to justify its existence. This was on purpose, because we cannot spend all of our time merely reacting to the cruel world around us. We must be proactive in creating a kinder, gentler world for us.
The article is a cognitohazard. It was a cognitohazard last night, and it is a cognitohazard today after parts of it have been reworded, but not rewritten or removed. "Breakdowns" are now "crises". "Costumes" are now "aesthetics". The comparison to men performing weaponized incompetence remains, because the article does not function without conflating learned helplessness with weaponized incompetence.
Do not read the article. I have not linked the article. I have not properly named the article. I have not named the author. This is on purpose. Harm reduction is good. Harm prevention is better.
I'm gonna talk about the article now.
So much of this article is masterfully crafted in such a way that it will trigger the anxieties of almost any disabled trans girl. The author knows this. If she did not know this before posting the article, she knows this now. She knows this because she has been told this, and she has responded to me specifically telling her this. The article is still up. The article has not been rewritten.
The article will make you feel bad for not doing the dishes. You do not need to feel bad because you can't do the dishes. The article will make you feel bad for having breakdowns and crises. You should not feel bad for having breakdowns and crises. The article will make you feel bad for coming up short on rent. You do not need to feel bad for coming up short on rent.
You, who sees yourself in the puppygirl, are disabled. By definition, the world is constructed against you. Disability is not a thing that happens because you are born with it. Disability is a thing that happens because the world has failed to accommodate you. The low-hanging fruit here is to ask whose duty it is to accommodate you, but this misses the point that it is a systemic failure and not an individual one. The dishes, for example, would not be so pressing of an issue if 40 hours of our lives were not robbed each week.
I said it yesterday, but it bears repeating, especially because I have more to add. When you are disabled, you are actively punished for making an attempt to escape your disabilities. Escaping your disabilities is risky and costly. The systems that are in place to protect the disabled, shallow as they may be, are confiscated from those who prove they have the capacity to work or the capacity to pay for oneself, even if that capacity is too limited to be sustainable. One would think that this risk of losing these systems is nullified if you aren't so lucky as to receive them in the first place, but that is where the cost of escape comes into play, because if you do not have the safety of the system, you cannot front the cost on your own. I assume, that because the puppygirl cannot pay rent, that the puppygirl is not a recipient of these systems to begin with.
In the article, the protagonist, cast as a hypothetical reader, is the caregiver for the puppygirl. One would assume that this would make the caregiver the provider of the puppygirl's safety net, but the article has another character, the polycule. The caregiver is frustrated. She is frustrated that she bears the majority of the emotional labor spent on the puppygirl. She is frustrated that she bears the majority of the physical labor spent on the puppygirl. She is frustrated that she bears the financial cost of the puppygirl.
These frustrations could be alleviated by more evenly distributing the labor among the polycule, but this supposedly materialist trans feminist, when discussing a communal structure, has dismissed the community. These frustrations are not cast upon the polycule. The polycule is regularly criticized, but the polycule is only ever criticized for its desire to defend the puppygirl. The problem with the polycule, you see, is that the puppygirl is in the polycule.
In this way, the faults of the polycule are project directly onto the puppygirl, and only the puppygirl. Through this feat, we can view even those frustrations that the puppygirl could not possibly cause on her own as being the fault of the puppygirl. It is through this that the caregiver is able to be made guiltless.
When I had made this point yesterday, I had not yet finished reading the article. I have since finished reading the article, and my point is much clearer with that in mind. At the end of the article, the caregiver does not leave the polycule. Instead, the polycule leaves the puppygirl. It is at this point that the finances of rent are evenly split between the members of the polycule. It is at this point that the emotional labor and the physical labor is divided equally. It is at this point that a few extra dishes in the sink are not a problem. I feel the need to quote the article here, because while additional dishes from the puppygirl are painted as an immediate threat at the beginning of the article, at the end of the article it is stated
The dishes get done less often. There are sometimes dishes in the sink for two days. No one cares. You do them when you do them. The world does not end.
The problem with the polycule, you see, is the puppygirl. And the problem with the puppygirl, you see, is that she is disabled.
