the "empathy fatigue" stuff is also very revealing because when you examine health professionals' self-reporting on the matter there is a specific type of person they describe losing empathy for- unsurprisingly, it's people with particularly chronic health issues and disability, drug users, people who "refuse to take care of themselves" and especially anyone with a health condition perceived to be "their own fault". very often what they describe as "empathy fatigue" is actually just the mask slipping on the seething contempt they already held
oh, during burnout you happen to feel less empathetic toward criminals, alcoholics, teens and drug users? that's really interesting and i feel so sorry for how hard your job must be that its caused these feelings in you.
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imo the way you feel about groups it's fully socially acceptable to hate (like children or polyamorous people, among others) is the canary in the coal mine for underlying bigoted beliefs. if you're only supportive of marginalized groups when it's cool to do so, probably you don't actually care about marginalized groups, you care about other people thinking you care
If you think "transemasculation" is an acceptable replacement term for transandrophobia, what you are saying is that you don't think trans men experience transphobia, and they are only upset at being "emasculated" or "feminized." You're comparing trans men talking about corrective rape to gym bros upset at female NFL referees. You're comparing trans men talking about being accused of being predators who are trying to corrupt girls into mutilating their bodies to Andrew Tate.
I think a lot of people hear "Misandry/hating men isn't a constructive use of time and does harm to marginalised men." and hear instead "You have no reason to be wary of men, they're all victims too".
I, as a trans man, am still wary of cis men I don't know. I am still very aware that a lot of peri-cis white men have not only priviledge, but power over others, including me.
I am also aware that I don't feel safe around people who recite things like "Kill all men" or are self proclaimed misanderists. And this mindset can lead to dangerous ideals of bio-essentialism and even gender-essentialism that labels any man evil, any woman pure, and treats trans men as traitors.
And a lot of these takes lump all men in together when intersex, disabled, trans and men of colour, etc, do not inherintly carry all the same privilege as the white, able bodied, peri-cis man you all default to. In fact they are all oppressed in their own ways. (Money, education and upbringing can also play a part in this)
No one is saying that you can't or shouldn't be wary of men in general, or you can't of had bad experiences with them. But acting as if it is the default of all men does not help anyone but excuse it as something all men do and not an active choice some men make. And something our society does not correctly punish or call out.
The problem is the patriarchy, not a random disabled trans man implying that maybe he understands what oppression feels like.
Insisting on lumping in marginalised men, and the rise in hatred towards trans men lately, does not help anyone. Its not punching up. It's punching sideways.
There's this common conception of gender I see: man and woman are often positioned as 'opposites' on a sliding scale and gender as a gradient, and any kind of transition as transitioning 'away' from one end of the scale and 'toward' the other, with 'transfeminine' people being anybody transitioning 'away' from masculinity (which is inherently toward femininity), and 'transmasculine' people being anybody transitioning 'away' from femininity (which is inherently toward masculinity).
This is an inherently exorsexist and intersexist worldview, in my opinion.
Bigender people are almost always forced to 'pick' which gender they are 'more', or have it automatically assigned for them. Their pronouns may be conditionally respected, but people get very uncomfortable, when a bigender person challenges the concept of man and woman as opposite. Constantly, you see "male spaces" and "female spaces", discourse about which labels are for men (and therefore not for women) or vice versa, and other similar conversations, inherently leave out men who are women, and women who are men. Bigender people are ignored, or spoken over, or pushed to 'pick' a gender so they can be neatly categorized, because man and woman are conceived as two opposite mutually exclusive ends of a spectrum that cannot intersect.
Agender/genderless/transneutral people are similarly erased or forced to pick sides, often sorted into a box either based on what people assume they're 'closer' to based on their physical traits (and i hope i dont need to stress how dysphoria inducing that can be) or told they're transfem/transmasc regardless because, well, "You're still transitioning away/toward something", because people conceptualize agender/genderless individuals as being not truly genderless at all, but as being merely at the center of the man to woman spectrum.
Then there are perisex nonbinary people who identify closely with their agab, perisex nonbinary women/fems afab and perisex nonbinary men amab. Gender essentialists either try to cut these people out of trans identity entirely, fakeclaiming them, insisting they're basically cisgender, engaging in intense transmedicalist rhetoric dressed up in a slightly more 'acceptable' font now that transmedicalism is somewhat less accepted in the community..or they insist that, despite many not being at all masculine, perisex nonbinary people afab are all transmasc, and vice versa.
I consider all of these things to be misgendering! Forcing any nonbinary person toward any binary or gendered term they do not identify with is misgendering! And it's done constantly by other trans people who would rather be openly and violently exorsexist than rethink their gender essentialist simplistic reductive sliding scale framework for how extremely complex societal structures and personal identities work.
And, as with any genderessentialist/bioessentialist worldview, this type of rhetoric is also incredibly unsafe for intersex people, who, despite what perisex trans people (and the occasional intersexist intersex person they tokenize) like to insist when they scream over us in these discussions, have a much more complicated relationship with agab and sig than perisex people do, and therefore are also frequently hurt and erased by any model that tries to pose things like man/woman, masculine/feminine, androgenized/estrogenized, amab/afab, etc, as opposite and mutually exclusive. "Intersex people are still [insert agab] despite their 'disorders' and therefore fit into my model the same way any [agab] perisex person would!" is a worldview that will always always be intersexist and extremely harmful.
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One thing I've grown sick of when it comes to how people talk about others, especially children and the mentally ill, is when 'behaviors' are focused on way too much.
This is especially true when it results in the person being criticised or harmed for having 'behaviors' when, actually, motives and internal experiences also matter!
Focusing entirely on outward behavior gives you an incomplete picture and when that fact is ignored to hurt someone, it fucking boils my blood.
Sometimes I'm even tempted to be cruel about this subject and just be like "if you focus primarily on your kid's 'bad behaviors' and then your kid kills themself, you have no right to expect any kind of empathy or sympathy from me because you practically dug that kid's grave" but I know saying that to a parent would just make them clutch harder at their victim mentality.
Though I do have a massive point with that cruel comment. Emotional neglect can have an immense impact on kids, especially if that kid's struggling with a mental illness that's being worsened via criticism over 'bad behaviors' that are actually just basic symptoms.
So yeah, I'm gonna sympathize with the kid that was in so much mental pain that they died way more than I'm gonna sympathize with the adult who, knowingly or unknowingly, let that kid drown with no real support.
& just btw, aromantic erasure is so bad that on pubmed, many of the very few studies that have looked into aspec people specifically, categorize us as a type of asexuality. from this study:
Our findings highlight that aromantic people wish for aromanticism not to be considered a part of asexualityâa practice that has dominated contemporary literature (Antonsen et al. 2020; Carvalho & Rodrigues, 2022; Clark & Zimmerman, 2022; Hall & Knox, 2022; Zheng & Su, 2018). Many participants clarified the distinction between their sexual identity and romantic identity and highlighted that though they may be connected for some, they should be considered independently as unique contributors to an individualâs identity and experience. This aligns with a previous aromantic community survey that showed 72% of the sample did not identify with asexual terminology (AUREA, 2021a). In combination with our findings, this suggests that a tendency to conflate and describe these identities as the same or linked may be to the disadvantage of a significant portion of the aromantic community.
this is why it is so important to include aromantic people as our own group and to specifically include non-asexual aromantics. i hope y'all can understand how frustrating it is to be erased through a group that is already erased.
asexual representation is sparse? all aromantic rep is asexual and most of the time people don't even bother to remember that "aromantic" is its own thing. i can't count how many times i've seen a character talk about not experiencing romantic attraction, only for people to go "wow asexual rep!" even though sexual attraction was never brought up.
asexual community & resources are sparse? when i try to look up groups for aromantics, i get resources on "ace & aro groups" that are literally all asexual-focused. at best asexual-focused with a mention of aromantic people. which isn't really helpful when you are aroallo and don't really want or need a group that is clearly meant for alloro asexuals and aroaces.
asexual history is sparse? i've literally never seen anything even trying to talk about aromantic history. the most impactful thing on aro history is that one tumblr post talking about a woman at a nursing home who heard the term and realized her best friend was likely aro. see above with the character situation as well.
my point here is not "aros have it worse than aces" because we are both aspec and both get fucked over by the same forces and in fact, a LOT of asexual aromantics are also very frustrated by aromantic erasure! i've even heard some people talk about not identifying as strongly as asexual, even though it fits them, because they feel their aro identity is more important to them but gets constantly erased by their asexuality.
my point is that it is so fucking disheartening to be aro even in queer spaces that are trying to be asexual-inclusive, even in supposedly aspec spaces, because it swiftly becomes apparent that people see your entire identity as just a footnote for asexuality. so many people never even realize they are aro because they aren't asexual and don't realize that you can be aro but not ace. i dealt with some really intense arophobia as a teen after realizing i was aro, feeling broken and alone. it hit much harder than any internalized homophobia or transphobia did for me at the time. i did not meet another person who identified as aromantic irl until this year. any resources and community that i had as a queer teen, as a trans teen, did not exist for me as an aro teen and does not exist for me as an aro adult, really.
and big problem is that, because people think of aromanticism as just a footnote of asexuality, they implicitly assume that more asexual rep, more asexual resources, more asexual visibility will automatically serve aromantics too. and when it doesn't work like that, aro people continue to suffer as a result.
things have improved over the years and i hope will continue to! but i really need every queer person to become more aware of aromanticism & arophobia & how the queer community contributes to it & hurts aro people. hence why i am so testy about when people will include the ace flag but not the aro one. YOU 𫵠will care about your aromantic siblings and consider us this pride month!!!!!
"Queer space" as in "this space is created with the needs of queer people in mind and you should expect to encounter queerness here", not "you have to be queer enough to be allowed in"
"Queer space" as in "this space centers queerness", not "queers only"
Brazil legislation: Digital Statute For Children And Adolescents
Apple App Store Age Verification
These are not tumblr specific policies. Tumblr is implementing age verification in response to legislative moves that were made months ago.
Tumblr is a failing social media site that has escaped death multiple times already; they do not have the social cachet to defy state regulatory agencies. We know they won't say no to Apple, either--the porn ban on tumblr was in response to Apple's crackdown on explicit content.
If you did not know this was happening, you were behind the curve. That is fine. You're caught up now. The next step is to link up with people in your country who are working to preserve privacy, to roll back these laws where they exist, and to prevent their passage where they do not. In the US the organization you want is Stop KOSA--in the EU you can start with Fight Chat Control.
Repealing ID verification and blocking chat control will help everyone, especially the most vulnerable. We can push this back, but we cannot get it done through the Feedback form. We have to get it done at the legislative level and lock it down so it cannot be forced upon us. I see lots of anger out there. Good. Put it to use.
I hate it that there's common advice that reinforces my unhealthy ways of thinking and coping and even though I know it's irrational, I still feel the pain anyway whenever I see the advice.
One example of advice that does this for me is: you don't choose your emotions, but you're responsible for your actions.
It just makes me feel even more ashamed of every single mental health symptom I have that's considered an action.
Like, panic attacks are technically actions because they aren't fully internal, parts of them consist of physical actions.
When I see someone say this kind of advice, aka the type that seems to not have room for nuance in a way that makes it seem illogical, there's no way I'm trusting their words unless they're listing the nuances with zero prompting.
I know this might be unreasonable of me but I don't care anymore. Having to feel guilty over mental health symptoms I can't safely control really sucks, so I've lost patience for people who don't remember that the word 'actions' can also include involuntary actions.
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people have this tendency to believe that fandom discourse exists because people in fandoms are Stupid Nerdy Losers, but in fact fandom discourse exists because anytime you get a group of more than 100 people together, they will start creating interpersonal bullshit. fandom is not special in this regard
There is sports discourse. There is yarn discourse. There is food discourse. There is academic discourse (dear sweet god is there academic discourse). If there are people out there collecting brass buttons specifically from 1921, they are going to have discourse about which buttons are trash and whether Person A cheated person B. To be human is to engage in pointless wankery sometimes.
A large amount of people, when confronted with inhumane social systems, end up believing the systems regrettably aim at incorrect targets, but by themselves are fine.
A fascist might say that a healthy and strong nation is represented by a white traditional family. A liberal will disagree on the surface - they'd be likely to say that gender diversity and cultural diversity are signs of health and strength. But they're still operating under assumption that "nation", "health", and "strength" are neutral or positive political concepts.
And once you start noticing it, you notice it everywhere. People aren't arguing whether sorting people into ranks by quality is acceptable, they're arguing who's the real superman and who's the diseased collection of abnormalities.
That's what I see when someone says politicians are fat and mentally ill, men are dangerous emotion-driven beasts, shaving body hair invites sexual assault of children, and liking blondes is a sign of moral corruption.
You do not like fascists, but you very much like fascism.
And the norm, how could I forget about that. They're obsessed with it, trying to act like they can reclaim and redeem it. Like there's a viable reality where trans people are normal and transphobia isn't.
I guess it's an inevitable consequence if you walk away from social justice talks with an impression that there's a finite list of minorities you should respect. And then just add more items to that list one by one. Because there's always more bigotry you're not yet aware of and end up perpetuating. And you could have significantly lessened it if you went to the root and accepted that it's shitty to create hierarchies out of physical or mental features. Including when you think you're being subversive, because 9 times out of 10 you're not as subversive as you think.
âOnly someone who grasps what [their] beliefs imply and how [their] various beliefs hang together possesses knowledge.â
â Heda Segvic, in âNo One Errs Willingly: The Meaning of Socratic Intellectualismâ
what is synjectivism?
Click here for the glossary.
Synjectivism is a framework that uses âsynjectivityâ (a way of knowing that comes from the synthesis of objective and subjective knowledge) as a tool to understand society, morality, politics, culture, religion, philosophy, and experience.
Synjectivism holds that all knowledge begins not as objective or subjective, but as experience. On the most basic level, when we go about our lives, we do not see or feel anything that tells us directly whether an experience is âobjectiveâ or âsubjective.â We just have experiences, and then make sense of them.
That doesnât mean the division isnât relevantâjust that it isnât natural or ahistorical! We donât stumble upon objectivity and subjectivity. We create these categories so that we can make sense of our experiences, communicate with each other, and make effective decisions. Sometimes it is easier to label an experience as one or the other (data from a scientific study with rigorous planning) and sometimes it is harder (events of a hallucination or a lucid dream).
Objective knowledge is information that is most useful when understanding what is being experienced is more important than whoâs perspective the experience is from. Objective knowledge is âstrongâ when it has been repeatedly experienced by many people, and can make universal predictions based on collective observation and skepticism
Subjective knowledge is the information that is most useful when understanding who is having the experience is more important than defining what is being experienced. Subjective knowledge is âstrongâ when it resonates strongly with the original experience, and allows people to express their experience/s in communicable terms and engage in worldview work.
Synjectivism is about understanding objective and subjective knowledge as
equally valuable
distinct ways of creating knowledge
which often overlap
and rely on each other to make sense.
The goal is not to pretend there is no difference, or to prioritize one way of knowing over the other. It is to understand objectivity and subjectivity on their own terms, and then bring those two forms of knowledge back together, on purpose, for practical use.
what is âworldview studiesâ?
Worldview studies is the working term for a framework to discuss beliefs, values, and belief systems. It is part of a project that aims to:
bridge the gap between âreligion,â âspirituality,â âphilosophy,â and âideology,â and
create a framework that can both help people understand themselves, each other, and society better, through
the shared language of âworldview,â âbeliefs,â âvalues,â and âpracticesâ
This blog will specifically be about âsynjective worldview studies,â which essentially means seeking knowledge by looking at belief systems in a way which synthesizes objective and subjective experiences.
what is a worldview?
A worldview (or a âcredal webâ) is the whole picture or system created by someoneâs notions and practices, which helps them make sense of their experiences and make decisions throughout their life.
Everyone has a worldview. It develops naturally as we live, grow, and have new experiences. Worldviews are not just collections of discrete ideas, but the relationship between ideas, how they interact with and inform each other, and how they create oneâs disposition.
Individual people have worldviews, but so do communities and entire societies. Understanding worldviews helps us understand both individual people and societies.
Your worldview is like a map for navigating being alive and self-conscious. We are very self-conscious animals, and consciousness is a very weird thing! So we need many conceptual tools to figure out how to make sense out of life and figure out what to do next.
Here are some questions that our worldviews help us answer, often without us even realizing it:
Who are you? What are you?
What matters to you?
Who & what are other people?
How does the world work?
How should the world work?
What is normal? What is abnormal?
What is desirable? What is undesirable?
What should you do? What shouldnât you do?
What has happened to you? What does it mean?
What is happening to you? What does it mean?
What could happen to you? What does it mean?
What is the meaning of the universe?
What is the purpose of (your) life?
Our worldviews develop through our experiences, so they always have multiple sources. These sources can be social (coming from our communities), relation (coming from our relationships with others), and personal (coming from ourselves). These include but are not limited to:
Your personal lived experiences
Your personal spiritual/existential inclinations
Your personal political inclinations
Your familyâs/friendâs/communityâs worldview(s)
Your religious environment
Your cultural environment
Your political environment
Your social environment
Your environment-environment (geography, ecosystems, etc.)
The worldview(s) promoted by the media you engage with
When our worldviews are strong and productive, we are able to make sense of our experiences, make decisions effectively, and we feel secure and grounded in reality. When worldviews help us stay mentally and emotionally stable, flexible, and engaged in our lives, this is called credal competence.
But many of us struggle with credal competence because we were never taught to be active in our own belief systemsâmost of us werenât even taught how to examine our own beliefs and values! The skill of recognizing, examining, and actively engaging with worldviews is called credal literacy. It is the goal of this blog to help people develop this skill, apply it to their lives, and bring it to their communities.
what are notions and practices?
âNotionsâ in this context, are defined as interpretations of experience. âInterpretationâ refers to any time a person uses abstract concepts in their mind to make sense out of information, whether that information is sensory or emotional or intellectual. This holds true for mathematics, logic, and reason as it does politics, ethics, and religion.
Notions can take on different roles:
descriptive notions or beliefs (which describe what we think the world is like, what kinds of things there are, and how things work). These often influence our behavior indirectly, by shaping how we see the world.
Examples: âThe earth is roundâ; âPeople have soulsâ; âAmerica is specialâ
prescriptive notions or values (which prescribe to us how the world should be, what kind of things should exist, and how we should behave). These often influence our behavior directly, by advising us on how we should act.
Examples: âYou should eat lessâ; âLying is a sinâ; âEveryone deserves healthcareâ
When multiple notions build on each other and work together to make sense, these notions are threaded. These connect notions across the credal web and often show up in common trends and themes, both in our personal lives and in society.
Example: belief in sex being dirty & dangerous + virginity associated with moral purity = thread of sexual conservatism; strong value of community + belief in the functioning of political system = thread of civic engagement
Certain experiences of reality have a narrower window of useful interpretation. When it comes to mathematics or logic, for example, if you take in the experience of those problems and data (using your brain, which is physical!) the window of useful interpretations is pretty slim. You could interpret 1 + 1 as 4, but that would not be a useful interpretation because it doesnât align well with material reality. If you rely on that interpretation of mathematics (say, when doing calculations for building a house), it is likely to fail you.
But not all experiences have such a narrow window of useful interpretation, and not all experiences can be objectively labeled useful or useless. Someoneâs subjective beliefs about the nature of being has a pretty wide potential window of useful interpretations. What is most useful is highly specific to that person, their needs, their experiences, and the overall context of their live.
âPracticesâ are the ways in which notions guide our actions and behaviors. When our notions play a role in how we act, that is a practice of those notions. A personâs disposition refers to patterns in their practices over time, and how these patterns reinforce and/or re-shape their beliefs and values.
Examples: Voting Republican because of a belief in the danger of immigrants; Praying the rosary because of you value piety; dieting because of a belief that it will make you healthy, and being healthy is a obligatory value
why does it matter?
Everyone has a worldview. But that doesnât mean everyone understands their worldview. Much less other peopleâs!
The big problem is: when you donât understand your own beliefs and values, someone will decide them for you.
Culturally, there are many skills we fail to teach our youth. Many of these are skills that have to do with emotional intelligence, critical thinking, introspection, and political imagination. As mentioned, this blogâs main goal is to encourage people to develop their credal literacy and credal competence.
Right now, people around the world are suffering from a crisis of faith. Not just religiousâpolitical, social, cultural, existential. Know it or not, we are all beginning to feel that intense yearning for an alternative to the current world.
That alternative must necessarily start with new ways of acting, thinking, and before all of thatâbelieving.
âââ
Recommended reading:
Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Beliefs by Ninian Smart
Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World's Beliefs by Ninian Smart
Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective by Peter L. Berger
The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion by Peter L. Berger
The Social Construction of Reality by Peter L. Berger
Alternative Sociologies of Religion: Through Non-Western Eyes by James V. Spickard
Hope without Hope: Rojava and Revolutionary Commitment by Matt Broomfield
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binary trans people are like "yeah, girl hormones will make you look like a girl!" "testosterone will give you male puberty and make you look like a man!"
have you considered for even one minute that you're not the only damn people in the universe?
"oestrogen is a girly girl hormone" except there are nonbinary people and trans men whose dominant sex hormone is oestrogen and who may not want to go on T. it doesn't mean our hormones are "female" or "girly".
"testosterone is a manly man hormone" except there are nonbinary people and trans women whose dominant sex hormone is testosterone and who may not want to go on E. it doesn't mean their hormones are "male" or "manly".
just because cis people insist every single bodily function must be gendered does NOT mean trans people have to do the same.
like it's great you find your HRT affirming for your manhood or womanhood but it doesn't mean they're inherently male or female.
it's just misgendering based on biology. it's the exact same logic that cis people use to misgender us. it harms other binary trans people and it especially harms nonbinary people because no matter our dominant sex hormone, you're always gonna call it boy hormone or girl hormone.
when a government bans young people from using social media, and then categorises messenger apps like Signal and WhatsApp as "social media", they are pushing those young people toward using text messages, a fundamentally insecure form of communication. texts are not encrypted in transit and can be read by both the sender's mobile carrier and the recipient's. that also means they can be leaked in data breaches, subpoenaed, or just handed over willingly to law enforcement at the carriers' discretion.
this is not JUST about destroying kids' privacy by the way, although that is bad on its own! but think about it: if you can push everyone to spend their formative social years communicating through an insecure protocol, most of them are not going to do the work of moving to a secure one the moment they're legally allowed! banning everyone under 16 from Signal and WhatsApp creates a whole population of people more likely to continue, for the rest of their lives, to communicate using a tool the government can access at the drop of a hat
fantastically poignant that the person in the replies saying "actually WhatsApp IS social media and that means children need to be kept off it" has basically their entire blog dedicated to anti-Palestinian propaganda. like I would have put in the effort to explain how trying to isolate young people from community and information is connected with authoritarianism but thanks for doing all the work for me