#posting while angry

So, yesterday I saw a post going around arguing that high rates of autoimmune disease, chronic pain etc among women are linked to/caused by women suppressing anger more than men, and I guess promoting the importance of...idk, accepting your anger? Feeling your feelings? Getting therapy? It might not have actually gotten to what you’re supposed to do with the idea, I don’t remember.

It’s completely plausible there’s a connection there. Chronic stress contributes to a wide range of health problems, and acute stress becomes stress when people have their sympathetic nervous system triggered (fight or flight response) and don’t “complete the cycle”. Stress management is actually very important for managing a lot of health conditions including mine, and preventing health conditions from forming.

And. It also rubs me the wrong way. Because, you see, just like the world we live in thinks being cishet is normal and being queer demands some sort of explanation, the world we live in thinks that certain types of bodies and abilities are normal and anything that deviates from that is anomalous and doesn’t really fit and shouldn’t you just be able to do yoga or something and make it go away?

I haven’t been getting much in the way of “what about yoga” or “what about kale” or what about vitamins or whatever. I’ve personally been getting “what about therapy.”

And moreover, “what about therapy” from doctors who seemed to not hear the bit about “some days I can’t shower.” Like. Even if therapy was going to cure me eventually, I’d still be DISABLED and need help with activities of daily living in the meantime.

I wish I could trust that everyone just understood that “chronic stress can contribute to chronic illnesses” does NOT mean that people with chronic illnesses could just cure themselves by figuring out their feelings better and therefor anyone who’s still sick just isn’t trying hard enough. But you know a lot of people are going to take it that way.

And another one down

Another one bites the dust.

...if it’s privilege that’s making people say they won’t vote for Biden/won’t vote in general. Then why are so many people saying this NOT privileged? Seriously, I don’t think I shared the link about WEB DuBois refusing to vote, but point is: extremely marginalized and vulnerable people rejecting the idea that there can be enough good done by voting to outweigh the harm of buying into a corrupt and oppressive system, goes WAY back.

Many marginalized groups have mixed opinions on this and have for a long time. This isn’t a privilege people vs marginalized people thing. It’s just not.

And I’m STILL not advocating that people not vote! I vote! I encourage people to vote! I just want there to be some respect in the discussion, so that people aren’t going around saying “if this is your position, you don’t care about marginalized people.” That’s a shit argument.

And in case you missed this the first twenty million times I said this: insulting people online is not GOTV. It is not an effective campaign tactic. For people who believe that Biden getting elected is really important, there are real actual things you can do to make that outcome more likely, and being a dick to people who disagree with you is not one of them. Even if you just want to promote the idea of voting Biden over social media. That’s fine. Knock yourself out. You can do that without even acknowledging people who have a different opinion than you on the value of voting Biden. Going out of your way to make things up about people who disagree with you, is completely unnecessary.