#think piece

Hey Tumblrs,

If you think you're being punished for speaking up about sexual harassment at work, or fear you'd get whisked away to retaliation town if you did, you're probably not wrong.

So I wanted to share this thoughtful piece on retaliation and how to protect yourself. It gets its hard talk facts right, contains solid practical advice, and overall, I found it quite thought-provoking.

Would love to hear your perspectives on this super relevant and divisive topic, if you feel like sharing.

Okay, be well. 💙💖

I constantly see people mourn the innocent and carefree days of the high school era and I just… don’t? it of course does have its charm and especially is fun to see if you did not have the American high school experience, 90s one as well. But it also is quite dark too, s2 is really hard to watch in the second half when Buffy is going through psychological horrors of Angelus.

It starts with them posing, then they face each other and start to talk. Their conversation is not audible, but you can see Bianca shaking her head no and readjusting her large fur coat to cover herself. After three or four words are exchanged, she turns away from the camera and starts taking off her coat slowly. Revealing her naked shoulders, then her back, then her buttocks. She turns around to finally show off the dress she's wearing, a tight, see-through piece of nylon (designed by Kanye himself, according to a post he made on his Instagram) that leaves her breasts, genitals and ass exposed. She's essentially naked. During this whole scene, Kanye is just facing the cameras with sunglasses on, neutral expression on his face.

Now, I'm not shocked by nudity. Censori is definitely not the first celebrity to walk the red carpet wearing a very revealing outfit (and she won't be the last). What disgusts me is the scene they built around the outfit.

First, the little conversation they have. You can clearly see Bianca shaking her head no and tightening her coat around her before being made to undress. There's two possibilities here:

A) Either this wasn't rehearsed, so we essentially witnessed Bianca being pressured into undressing herself in front of dozens of cameras or;

B) It was rehearsed (the most likely option, in my opinion). But then why? Why act out this discomfort before the reveal?

Some could argue they were talking about something totally unrelated, but I very much doubt it. It's their big moment on the red carpet, in front of cameras, it's not the time to talk about the groceries.

What I think is happening is that they (but most likely Kanye) voluntarily chose to paint a scene of a woman being forced to undress herself in front of thousands for the amusement of her husband. It's essentially a brag, a show of force for Kanye. He's saying: "Look at my wife and what she'll do for me. Look what I can make her do. "

The last thing I haven't mentioned, and the scariest, is Censori's facial expression through it all. Neutral expression, no smile. Her eyebrows are trimmed downwards in a way where she looks slightly worried. And her stare is totally vacant. I've seen people say she looks drugged, dissociated, downright "stupid."

I think this is the main difference between Bianca's look and others who have worn skimpy outfits in front of the cameras. Whether it be Lady Gaga, Kendall Jenner, or Madonna, they all share something: confidence. A sultry look, a cheeky smirk, hell, at least a smile! Something to show that they feel desirable, that they're in control. That they choose to show us their bodies.

Whereas Bianca looks dead inside as she's posing.

After standing in front of the cameras for a little while, Kanye takes her hand and leads her away.

The whole sequence (no matter how much Bianca has consented to it) feels like a humiliation ritual. Kayne, standing there fully dressed, pressing his wife to expose her body to the entire world before parading her around. A gross display of chauvinist male domination on the body of a woman. Like, I don't know how else to say it, but it looks like he's walking around with his sex doll, still partially in her plastic wrapping.

Why are we seeing this? What is the point? I can't help but relate this to Elon's n*zi salute. It feels like we're witnessing more and more rich and powerful men pushing the boundaries of what is socially acceptable, trying to see how far they can go. How much of their toxic, repressive views they can share before we come for them.

gonna use this anon to push out my own personal narry about wm. buckle up this may be a novel.

TY!!! And Yes I can: On a first pass through the game, Kim’s relationship to his sidearm is easy to read as basic cop vigilance, but once you start watching for it, any time a situation threatens to go bad, his hand goes to the gun. Sometimes even when nothing has happened yet, only when he is on edge, like walking into the book club. And sometimes that vigilance does escalate things, like with The Pigs, where he pulls his gun and starts shouting.

The badge is abstract authority. The gun is authority you can touch. It has weight. It sits on his body. It's physical security and responsibility in one.

The sidearm is the RCM saying: we trust your judgment in the final second.

The gun is symbolically physical in a way the badge is not. Kim is already a seolite man in an institution and a city that does not let him forget it: his authority is conditional. He has to be sharper, and calmer, and more correct, but worse is that the badge does not protect him from being scrutinized. in some ways, it also makes the scrutiny worse. It means he is someone who has been allowed into power, which means people are always waiting to decide he has misused it, failed it, or never deserved it.

So after Eyes dies, that matters in a truly awful way, because grief makes Kim extremely administratively vulnerable. If he is too numb, too angry, too honest, too strange, too changed by it, then suddenly his grief becomes a liability, and the first thing they would take is the gun. Without it, he is behind a desk. Without it, he is no longer trusted to be the person he has spent his entire adult life proving he can be. And worse: without it, he loses the choice of it. The finality. The terrible comfort of knowing that, whatever else has been taken from him, there is still one decision no one else can make on his behalf.

If I wanted to read into it further, I could also talk about juxtaposition. Harry loses his gun, willingly. or, more accurately: Harry disposes of his gun during the bender, along with his badge, his ledger, his memory, his name, and almost every object that proves he exists in the world as a detective except his green coat, and the interesting thing is that Harry does not treat the lost gun with normal professional alarm at first. Everyone around him understands it as a disaster, but Harry’s relationship to it is slippery and avoidant. The gun is gone because the part of Harry that could be trusted with it was also gone. Harry is the nightmare version of what happens when the performance fails, so Kim clings to the gun because it means he is still fit to choose. Harry loses the gun because he has already tried to abdicate choice entirely. And I think this is one of the reasons Kim is so fascinated by Harry, maybe even envious in some humiliating way. Harry has already done the unthinkable. He has become the institutional cautionary tale. He has made his grief, addiction, instability and suicidal ideation so public that everyone knows. The RCM knows. The union knows. The cafeteria manager knows. Strangers know. Children know. And somehow he is still standing there. Still a lieutenant double-yefreitor. Still allowed to come back.