I was explaining this to a friend recently and I think it's an important distinction to make: not all queerplatonic relationships look the same.
A good way I've found to illustrate what exactly a qpr is, is to say "a qpr is to relationships what nonbinary is to gender". While both of these traditionally function on a binary (male/female, platonic/romantic), by defining our personal outlooks and experiences of the concepts of gender and relationships with new terms, we challenge the boundaries that society has put in place.
And yes, whilst redefining what actually constitutes romantic or platonic relationships, or male and female identities, and what makes them different (and acknowledging where they overlap, or where they can expand past what we traditionally expect) is important to increasing our understanding, so is providing options entirely outside of those two boxes.
And that's what it is - options. It's very easy to trivialise the concept of nonbinary and simply make gender into a trinary, rather than a binary. Male/female/nonbinary, which goes against the very purpose of the nonbinary label. This further erases the spectrum of gender. It's the same with relationships - by giving a strict set of instructions on how a qpr must look and act, you are simply creating a trinary. The point of the concept of qprs is to acknowledge that there are relationships between people that may overlap platonic and romantic, or fall partially within one and partially outside, or ones that are entirely separate from either category.
There are an infinite amount of ways a relationship can manifest, and if the people in the relationship feel that queerplatonic best describes their partnership without romance, or their affection without commitment, or their feelings towards each other that aren't quite what romantic or platonic is to them, or any other reason that rebels against amatonormativity, then they can choose to use that term. Queerplatonic covers the widest range of relationships that come in all shapes and sizes.
I think it's so important when discussing topics like relationships and gender to consciously make the effort to keep queering our ideas of the concepts - to remember that a spectrum is a spectrum. Labels can be useful for finding community, identifying your experiences and validating your struggles, but as soon as you try to start hyper-defining them, you lose the radical nature of queering our understanding of ourselves and our relationships. We name these concepts in order to give a voice to our subversion of society's arbitrary rules and expectations, not to police each other into conforming to a particular understanding of how a person (with a certain label) "should" act or be.
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the bad thing about having unhealthy habits due to mental illness, is when you DO do something healthy style you can't brag about about it because then people will then know you've been doing it yucky style all along. Like you can't brag you changed your sheets or brushed your teeth because then ppl will be like oh did you not brush your teeth regularly before? Thats yucky disgusting! So you just gotta keep it to yourself. And be proud alone, I suppose.
The really unfortunate thing about mental health progress is that sometimes you realize you've made it in the form of "wow, I haven't felt this bad in a fucking while"
On the one hand it's a bit of a pick me up in a dark place to know that this will pass because it has passed before on the other hand sometimes it isn't entirely a pleasant thought to go "wow, I used to feel like this all the time. That was pretty fucking bad. It's pretty bad right now too also."
abortion clicker early game : you click the belly 50 times in order to perform one abortion. this lets you buy a doctor who performs 0.1 abortions a second.
abortion clicker mid game: you own hundreds of clinics as well as think-tanks which dismantle sex ed courses as well as politicians which strengthen pro choice institutions
abortion clicker late game: the solar systemās resources have been stripped to build a dyson sphere which incubates trillions of humans for the sole purpose of performing abortions on them. once we achieve hyperspace travel, other stars will power superintelligent machines which will simulate octillions of abortion a second
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I asked your boyfriend what her pronouns are and she looked away nervously and shrugged and said "i don't really care. anything is fine" so I called her "she" and she blushed a bit and said "thank you" and now she looks distressed and helpless whenever you call her "he" so I'm taking her home with me :)
ohhhh shit. target is recalling their up & up baby wipes (fragrance free & fresh cucumber scented) because they're contaminated with Burkholderia cepacia complex and Burkholderia gladioli, multiple people are reporting discoloration & infections. i just got a call about it cuz i had purchased those but i've already gone through them š so no refund for me. but im fine. if you have these they're saying you need to immediately stop using them and bring them back to target for a full refund. this bacteria can cause life threatening infections in children/infants and people with compromises immune systems (ESPECIALLY cystic fibrosis!!) and i know lots of other chronically ill people follow me!!!!
If there was a place near my home where they just batch cooked a fuck ton of food, and you could just turn up and have whatever meal they had made, I would be there every day and every meal.
I just want a community canteen, why can't we have these things
literally everything people say about public defenders on the internet is so wrong and frustrating even when theyāre trying to be sympathetic to us. and I certainly said some of that same kind of shit before I did this job. I didnāt get it yet. I get it now. the only people who really do get it are the people whoāve done it and the people who are in or also working with the communities we serve. representing a factually guilty person is the absolute least of any public defenderās fucking problems at any given time and the last thing I would ever lose sleep over lol
what a lot of people in the notes on the post that inspired this train of thought seem to imagine public defenders struggling with and getting upset about: finding out a client committed the crime they're accused of and having to grapple with the morality of defending a person who Did Harm To Others and what that means for the attorney as an individual immortal soul or whatever the fuck
Things that I have actually struggled to deal with in my 2 years as a public defender so far (non-exhaustive list):
Having to put the criminal records and self-esteem and livelihoods of clients I believed were factually innocent, people I'd developed relationships with and knew how much they had to lose if something went wrong, in the hands of a group of strangers who I'd had no more than 20 minutes to question about their knowledge and beliefs and biases.
Worrying those strangers would favor the young, handsome white male prosecutors' arguments over my innocent clients who've had rough lives and it shows on their faces, because of whose voice sounds "authoritative" and who "looks like a criminal".
Never feeling like I had enough time to prepare a case for trial because I also had over 100 other cases pending at the same time.
Put simply, it is harder to represent a factually innocent person than a factually guilty person. I think basically all defense attorneys agree on this. It's more emotionally taxing because of the stakes. There are always material stakes for all of our clients, but for a factually innocent person there are also moral stakes.
Representing people who are technically guilty of the crimes they are charged with, but no one was actually harmed, and maybe the law itself is unfair, and also my client was certainly racially profiled and overcharged. And having to put that in the hands of a jury, because my client wants to maintain whatever dignity they can to the bitter end.
Not being able to just say to the jury, I don't give a fuck whether my client is technically guilty. He's a poor Black man, so he was guilty in the eyes of the American legal system before he was ever arrested. He gets that. I get that. Do you get that? Who gives a shit whether he's factually guilty of a technicality DUI that happened 2 or 3 years ago? What the fuck are we doing? Are we all just here to give another black father a criminal record? Fuck you all.
Representing multiple very young men charged with DV assaults who grew up with fathers who abused their mothers, or parents who abused them, in and out of foster care, multiple generations of cycles of violence and substance abuse passed down from parent to child. It doesn't excuse it. Of course it doesn't. They have done harm to their own partners and they know this isn't the example they want to set for their own kids. But they're human - the idea that abusers are somehow inhuman just sets you up to fail to recognize abuse when someone you love is the person doing it - and what the fuck other ways of dealing with difficult situations and relating to other people were these guys ever supposed to learn? They didn't have the opportunity to learn anything else. They never had a fucking chance.
And if they don't have a lot of history yet, maybe there's still time to turn it around. One of them talked to me about how badly he wanted to break the cycle and not have his kids grow up to be like that. I hope he can do it. I don't know if he will. That's what haunts me about that situation. Not the fact that I had to represent his interests in court. That's just my job.
Family after family after family who call 911 for help for a loved one in a mental health or substance-related crisis. And then the cops show up and throw their loved one in crisis in jail sometimes over the weekend because if you lash out at someone you live with for literally any reason that counts as domestic violence which means the cops legally have to arrest someone. And 24-72 hours later the family is in court upset telling the judge if they knew this would happen they never would have called 911. Cannot stress enough this happens like weekly in misdemeanor court.
A prosecutor submitting victim impact statements for the sentencing of a colleague's client who absolutely had killed their partner, and it was awful - but the victim impact statements were provided by the victim's family, many of whom she was estranged from, and many of them misgendered and deadnamed their dead "loved one". And the prosecutor just threw them all into the public record unredacted. Because of pressure to "listen to victims", in this case coming from the transphobic family.
A 16-year-old getting held in juvenile detention on unproven charges an 18-year-old would get released from adult jail on, because while the 18-year-old is presumed to have the autonomy to find another place to stay, if the charge is related to someone who lives in the 16-year-old's parents' house - or their parents straight-up just don't want them going home - well, then, they can't go home, which means they have nowhere to go. so let's keep them in jail.
On the flip side, having 18-year-olds get released to homelessness because their well-intentioned parents called the cops for whatever reason (see above) and now the court is imposing a no-contact order with someone who lives at their house.
A kid who got pulled over and charged with DUI/physical control of a motor vehicle while under the influence on her 18th birthday. She was a senior in high school. She had never been in trouble before. She had no criminal record. The law doesn't require someone to be booked and held in jail for a first-time DUI charge with no history, so the jail's policy is that they usually don't do that. If it was just the DUI she would have been cited and released. But the cop also cited her for 2 counts of minor in possession. So, because she had non-DUI charges, I guess, they booked and held her in jail. If it had been just one day earlier she would have been in juvenile detention. She cried. I almost cried. I sat in the attorney meeting booth with her for an extra half hour until they kicked us out for the lunchtime visiting area closure, just so she could be in a quiet space with a friendly face instead of back in the adult jail dorm. That was all I could do.
Tiny old people in jail. Tiny old people, deep in dementia, deeply upset, who got angry - personality changes including becoming very quick to anger are common with dementia - lashed out at family members and got arrested on domestic violence charges. (Again, see above.) And all I could see was my own late grandmother, who was a tiny old lady with dementia who lashed out all the time, but she was a rich white lady who could afford to live in a home with professional caregivers who were trained to handle those situations and deescalate, instead of having to rely on overwhelmed family members. And getting praise from teammates for how well I handled those clients and their jail hearings, and knowing it was because there but for the grace of god go we.
A guy who stole 2 beers from a grocery store, products that cost like $13 total, getting held on $1000 bail because he has warrants in other counties. $1000 bail when he's charged with taking $13 worth of beer. From a gigantic corporation. And he stayed in jail. Because if someone is stealing from a grocery store, they probably don't have $1000 to pay.
I think people who talk about the moral conundrum of public defenders get too stuck on the defender part and forget the public. Public defenders, by definition, simply do not represent the worst of the worst. People who hurt others because they can, quite literally can, because frankly most of them don't end up getting arrested and prosecuted for the ways they hurt people in the first place. And if they do, they can usually afford to hire a private defense attorney. I think most of us know the actual statistics about rape and abuse reporting, but for some reason that goes out the window when people talk about public defenders. (The reason is racism.)
Acting with (perceived) impunity is a privilege. It's for rich (and mostly white) people. The vast majority of crimes prosecuted in the U.S. are crimes of poverty and addiction (and that includes many violent crimes - yes, really), and that vast majority is where public defenders operate. There aren't moral quandaries in knowing what our clients did. The part that hurts is understanding the systems that have led them to this place, and knowing what those systems are going to keep doing to them once their case is resolved, and not being able to do jack shit to stop it.
a large majority of TMEs haven't unlearned the patriarchal idea that womanhood is a bad thing, and they do not believe trans women actually seek and embrace womanhood. a lot of them seem to think we only want (and experience) the surface level aesthetics of womanhood
I don't know a single trans woman who didn't know she would face a stark increase in misogyny when she started transition. I don't know a single trans woman who's ever seemed to think "I didn't know I would face misogyny too!" I've never met a trans woman who thought she should be exempt from misogyny because of her transness
and yet far far too many TMEs seem to think we are naive to the challenges of womanhood, that we are taken aback by them and regret opening ourselves up to them. the trans women I know embrace womanhood fully, difficulties and all. transfeminism is a movement of women planting our flags within womanhood and fighting misogyny. we are not keeping one foot in some exit door in case the going gets too tough. we are taking an active role in combatting the forces that oppress us as women
(and, by the way, there is no exit door the way a lot of people seem to think there is. there is no coming back from being a tranny in the eyes of the patriarchy. our womanhood is no more a removable costume than anyone else's)
gotta add it's especially surreal getting this kind of attitude about trans women being tourists to womanhood from trans men, because like... bro you left š we're over here taking up permanent residence
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"prison abolition" is a hilarious position, because proponents respond to obvious, vital questions like "how will you manage serial murderers and rapists?" with "d-don't worry about it, things will be different, and because they'll be different, they'll be BETTER!"
but there's a better hypothetical: ask what they would want to happen if they were a victim of a hate crime. should the perpetrator be merely rehabilitated? locked away for an arbitrary amount of time? executed on the spot?
obviously, when people are unwilling or unable to consider even first-order consequences of a policy, expecting them to comprehend a hypothetical is a tall order. but it at least makes them look even dumber ;)
"I've done zero reading by serious proponents of this position and have based my understanding entirely on internet shitposts, therefor the position itself is nonsensical"
I am a rape and murder attempt survivor. I am a hate crime survivor.
I am also a prison abolitionist, because I have this crazy, stupid idea that they are human rights, not good person rights & that the golden thread of justice is Innocent Until Proven Guilty Beyond All Doubt. I would rather 10 guilty people go free than even 1 innocent person be wrongfully convicted.
I would prefer the man who raped me, the people who abused me, the man who tried to kill me, the people who assaulted and harrassed me for hateful reasons still retain their human rights, because they are still human beings. I don't want to go anywhere near them, and I would prefer that they see social consequences for their actions--because that's the thing. Prison abolition doesn't mean victims and their families don't get a say, doesn't mean I don't want consequences to be visited on them. To put it in a pithy, memey way:
This is a silly way of pointing out the difference between social consequences and legal ones, but there is a difference nonetheless. Do I have the emotion of anger at the people who have been cruel and sometimes left me with permanent harm? Yeah I'm pretty angry at them. I'm mean to them when they come up in conversation, I insult them a lot and I would insult them to their faces if I ever saw them again, and mock them openly and my friends would too, and if we lived in the same community anymore I would warn people about them and try my best to make sure they were shunned and avoided so others would be safer. But there's a vast chasm of difference between what I think I should be allowed to feel and think and say in social situations and what I think the State should be allowed to do to them.
I believe in Restorative Justice, because it prioritises repairing the harm done to the community and not punishing the sinful guilty. While you can't therapy someone into different morals, you'd be surprised how many people benefit from education and having their needs actually met. You know what I want from the man who tried to murder me? I want my cats and my stuff. You want to know what I want from the people who hate crimed me? I want them to be told what they did was a hate crime and that they owe me reparations.
See, us prison abolitionists want prison replaced with things like UBI, free food for all, universal healthcare, repealing harmful laws like those for loitering and sleeping in public, mental health crisis teams, conflict de-escalation + basic therapy skills and other life skills training being compulsory in public education, harm reduction centers, decriminalisation of sex work and drug use, free daycare, Montessori education, and other things that make sure people have what they need to thrive and don't have to live in a state of desperation and fear. And this is proven to cut down on ALL crime.
We also think slavery is wrong, no matter what you have done. Slavery is wrong. I cannot believe you are sitting there arguing that slavery is okay if you are deemed a bad enough person (because that's what prison IS). That's a very cruel point of view and I am tired of not calling the prison system what it is: slavery. It's slavery. Let's stop beating around the bush. It's slavery. "Slavery should be okay if someone is convicted of x crime" No. Slavery is evil and wrong PERIOD.
Further Reading:
@thelawfulchaotic is a public defender and has many good explainers on how the justice system works and how it is designed to further traumatize victims of crimes by shutting them out of the process of justice, as well as the way it's designed to dehumanise and enslave anyone convicted of a crime, and how easy it is to convict someone of a crime even when there is no evidence. If you have questions, her askbox is open and she is a very good educator who works with the sort of people you're talking about every day.
It's also worth pointing out that prison abolition is not trying to improve on a functioning system that already effectively manages rape. Because at least in the US where I live, the current incarceration justice system does absolutely fuck all to handle rape. The current rate of incarceration for rape in the US is <2.5%. And that's for any amount of prison time no matter how short, and doesn't include commuted sentences (very common for rape).
The rate of police intervening in rapes in progress is so low we can't even collect statistically meaningful data on it.
And while it's difficult to measure, repeat offenses for rapists before getting caught are incredibly common, but recidivism is very rare once they're caught if they face serious consequences of any form (not just prison). Meanwhile prison itself is a goddamn factory for rape. Guards frequently rape their captives and prisoners who commit rape have an incredibly enabling environment. And while prison rapes are poorly measured, what data we have shiws they almost certainly account for a massively disproportionate fraction of rape overall.
It's pretty much impossible to argue from the evidence that imprisonment reduces the incidence of rape, and in fact it likely *increases* how many rapes occur.
And you better believe the same trends apply to hate crimes. Fucking hells, prison is a hot bed for hate crime. And all this is without even touching on shit like police rape of queer people in jail.
We aren't trying to improve on a working system, we're trying to stop something that's *actively making things worse*. It would also be nice to improve things. But with regards to rape and hate crimes in particular, or current system is not some neutral/positive baseline we need to extensively justify improving on. It's literally worse than doing nothing.
Yesterday my little brother told me something very sweet and touching, that when he was a kid and had nightmares about monsters chasing him or whatever he would be able to end the nightmare by finding me in the dream and I would protect him by fighting off the zombies, or carrying him away. This is adorable, and makes me feel like the greatest older sibling in the world, but the hilarious thing is that when I was a kid I had nightmares of needing to save him from zombies and such. so many dreams where he was in trouble and I needed to save him. Like my nightmares began where his ended. Low key I think he mastered the ability to psychically transfer his nightmare to me as a child and I'm kind of annoyed with him.
Hi. Iām a therapist for kids/teens. I hate the therapy field but Iām kinda stuck with it for now so I just work hard to do no harm. Iām seeing a lot of posts about self harm scars and wanted to share. One of my therapy kids accidentally saw my self-harm scars and it seemed to change her life for the better. Up to that point she barely shared cus she was afraid I would lock her up like most therapists would. But once she saw my scars she was like waitā¦you hurt too? It opened up a whole beautiful dialogue about self harm and coping and growth and patterns and change and hope. She wanted to stop self-harming but was stuck in a cycle of shame. After that day she stopped and hasnāt self-harmed since Sept. Sometimes people need to see our scars to feel okay with their own. She said āSeeing your scars helped me feel like I can keep growing up too, like this isnāt the end of it.ā Anyway, I donāt hide my scars anymore and no one else should feel pressured to either :)
Genuinely like how are we expecting people to feel normal about having self harmed if we expect everyone to cover it up forever? How is anyone ever supposed to feel okay about their scars if they never see anyone else with similar bodies out in the open living their lives? You're doing something important by not hiding yours, especially in your field.
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Did I just employ the "Treat Them Like You are A Kindergarten Teacher Again" method with my insurance company today? I surely did. Did it work? Probably better than intended because I made an actual doctor feel contrite.
So, my insurance has been trying to not cover my SNRI because it is new on the market and no generic available yet, so pricey.
I apply for a refill and the request gets locked for review. Again. For the 3rd time.
This time I call and immediately ask to speak to the actual doctor making these clinical decisions. Very politely. Must be a slow day because they allow it.
ME: [Teacher voice] I'm calling in regards to the SNRI you have placed a lock on. Why was this decision made?
DOC: Well, there are dozens of other medications on the market in that tier, and far cheaper for you and [insurer]. We have sent a request to your doctor to consider alternatives.
ME: I am aware of that. So, can you do me a HUGE favor and look up my prescription history really quickly and tell me how many SSRIs and SNRIs were only filled once in 2022 for me, showing they were poorly tolerated?
DOC: It looks like eight.
ME: Great job! Now, can you please look at my genetic test for psychiatric drug tolerance and tell me how many medications are listed in the safe category?
DOC: Two.
ME: Awesome! Now, can you tell me what type that other drug is that I'm not taking?
DOC: Yeah, totally, it's an MAOI.
ME: That's correct, you're really knowledgeable! Should I be taking something as dangerous as an MAOI with my other medications, or even just in general?
DOC: It's contraindicated for sure.
ME: It is! So true! So, last question since you've been incredibly smart and helpful. Is it less expensive for [insurer] to pay out for the medication knowing they already get a huge manufacturer discount anyway, or is it more expensive for them to pay for me to need potentially long-term inpatient psychiatric care?
DOC: I'll clear the code, ma'am and flag it as medically necessary. I'm sorry about this.
ME: I appreciate you SO MUCH. You have a great day now.
WALGREENS PHARMACY TECH WITH 5 NOSE RINGS AND PURPLE HAIR STARING AT ME: ........... OKAY! It'll be ready in five minutes. You wanna come work here?
