Incredibly proud of my average penis

There’s an entire world of oppressed women out there who have never heard of Tumblr arguments and Twitter hashtag campaigns or know what a TERF is, and they will also say “I hate men.”

Women will be dating women and never voting for men and never living with men and never working for a man and will say “I hate men”, and women will be married to men and vote for men and go to men’s bands concerts and also say “I hate men.”

That’s what happens you’re a member of a globally repressed group. You tend to vocally state that you dislike your oppressors as a class on occasion.

i recognize that this didn't happen in a vacuum, and a lot of us are responding to a culture that doesn't take our pain or discomfort seriously and has denied or downplayed real trauma for generations.

however, i strongly recommend trying out some of these framings and phrases in order to develop some healthier, more resilient understandings of ourselves and our relationships:

I would prefer not to

I had a bad experience

I don't like that

I would need more support to be able to do that

I'm not in the mood

That bothers me

I worry about [specific negative outcome]

I'm not up for that today

I'd rather do/talk about something else

I'm not the right audience for that

I need more information first

That doesn't seem worth the time/energy

not every personal preference or unpleasant emotion must be linked to a psychiatric diagnosis or a trauma trigger. constantly interpreting your experiences through this pathologized lens is not good for anyone.

if you are surrounded by people who do not take your "i'd rather not" seriously unless you can cite DSM chapter and verse, you have shitty friends and need to hang out with different people.

also, no matter who you are or how traumatized you are, you do not need to avoid every discomfort. it is true that for someone with severe trauma, a ptsd flashback can derail their whole day and cause genuine physical and psychological suffering. however. this is different than "someone mentioned a tv show that my shitty ex liked" or "someone at an event made me feel socially awkward." we all go through negative experiences, and convincing yourself that you are so damaged that the only safe way to live is by demanding protection from anything that could make you feel bad is extremely unhealthy.

you need to be able to function as a human being even when the world includes things that are unpleasant or even painful. if you train your brain to experience everything you don't like as a "trauma trigger," you will create a reality for yourself where you are constantly under threat and develop an identity as someone who cannot manage any situation not completely under your control. you are capable of feeling sad, startled, annoyed, offended, disgusted, or nervous. i promise.

excerpt:

After being entrusted to look after an underwater Shinto shrine, Hiroyuki Arakawa, 79, got to know the marine creatures that lived in the area. He started diving when he was 18.

Among the shrine’s residents is a female Asian sheepshead wrasse named Yoriko whom he became friends with about 30 years ago.

Whenever Arakawa dives to visit the shrine, all he needs to do is knock on metal, and Yoriko will be swimming toward him, Atlas Obscura said.

...At one point, when Yoriko was exhausted from struggling to find food, he fed her five crabs every day for 10 days. He also helped her on another occasion when she was badly injured.

For the priceless bond they’ve made, Arakawa couldn’t be more fulfilled.

Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made goes in for a high risk approach and delivers a complete finished film, ostensibly made in the 70s and never released, framed by brief opening and closing info bites to set the stage of it.

Somehow this thing was completely off my radar, which means I was taken fully off guard as an ominous warning about the content in white text on black appeared on screen, giving a thirty second count down to leave if I wanted.

Wonderful showmanship and canny filmmaking that got me right in the mood to enjoy what followed. While I wouldn't call it a scary movie, I found it almost delightful in the atmospheric dread and devotion to its aesthetic of low budget 70s films. Nothing in it feels like a curse on its own, but it does feel like the sort of movie that could easily prompt psychological distress for anyone under psychotropic influences, pre-existing emotional vulnerability, or prone to delusional states. Not through anything supernatural, more because it works hard to keep the viewer in constant doubt over what is and is not real for the characters in the film. Combined with the framing device of it being a movie somehow able to influence the real world of the viewer, and the use of fractionally visible flashes of occult symbols on the screen, it generates an intense feeling of unreality which for me was an almost drug-like high and an immersive pleasure.

The premise of Antrum is simply a brother and sister decide to dig a hole to hell, and the movie plays out around this event by surrounding it with disturbing sounds and imagery, as well as real world dangers that weave the protagonists between the supernatural and mundane while keeping them in a state of terror and madness that grows until it becomes unrelenting.

In a certain sense it also feels cursed, like the kind of film where there are elements that feel very transgressive - in particular the opening scene which to my mind evoked Un Chien Andalou - not the infamous eyeball slicing scene, but the use of rotting animals. The few and very basic visual effects remind me as well of the early Survival Research Laboratory devices engineered by Mark Pauline.

However, the core question for me is also always what is the movie about besides the plot. If I had to identify some rough themes, I would say it's trying to explore the idea of understanding death and violence through the eyes of children who do not yet have the psychological tools for processing such matters, but who have been left on their own to do so regardless.

Many of the unusual elements in the movie can relate to death rituals poorly understood, starting from the very premise of digging a hole into the earth. And the same act is surrounded by strange rituals unclear in their origin, ideas which might be logical drawn from watching words recited over a grave without having a connection of purpose. Their encounters with other people are fully without possibility of communication as none of them speak the same language, and these mundane threats feel at times akin to a satanic Alice in Wonderland, rituals and violence whose meaning cannot be understood by the protagonists.

Likewise the supernatural is full of unprocessed images of death. Demons with black skin who look like mummified corpses. River crossings and empty chains dragging through leaves. It's as if death itself has manifested through the ambient world, surrounding the two children and refusing to let them leave its circle.

The framing device also leads the viewer into this kind of more involved level of engagement, priming us to look for intercut material and unusual sound design, as well as concluding with a notation that every frame of the film has something inscribed on it. That's generally a good approach to any film, but creating a way to underline it for the audience is a clever decision. If I watched Antrum without the framing device, I suspect it would have still drawn me into watching it in the same way, but the short prelude and afterward give you some time to sink into the world where Antrum is a real film. It also serves to give layers to the background effects, contextualizing them as something done to the movie, which causes it to affect the real material world, rather than something done by a director, to make a spookier movie. Which results in a spookier movie, but in an interesting way.

Additionally, by creating the documentary framework, additional production involved in creating Antrum is hidden as credits of producing Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made. For example Antrum has its own credits, and the framing credits include further translation of the movie credits, plus an In Memorium card for the fictional people who died directly or indirectly as a result of watching Antrum. When being shown at festivals, Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made was also sometimes billed as the first showing of Antrum in several decades. In short, the framing and release of this movie not only guide the viewer into a richer experience, they also created an environment where it is exceedingly difficult to untangle yourself from the idea that Antrum is a real movie. Although it's very clear that it is not real, if you were to search Antrum online, a non-negligible amount of results are playing into the bit and, again, the movie itself never breaks character for the entire run time.

me: i promise i'll be regular

friend: okay as long as you promise

this is someone who is not transmasculine and is not a trans man, using us and associating with us to further her own agenda. she is using us as a shield, with absolutely no thought to the consequences this is going to have for us in particular.

the choice to exclude trans women and fem sexual violence victims and survivors only, while making room for cis people, cis men, is potentially the most upsetting thing about this. deeply reprehensible. this is really one of those moments you remember really anyone out there can make a blog and pass themselves off as a voice that has any idea of what they are talking about.