[Image ID: a typography edit with a black background. in it reads “im not a man or a woman. i am a muppet” in white text in all caps. in the center of the image are, from left to right, gonzo, miss piggy, kermit the frog, and fozzie bear. the muppets are embracing and smiling. the background is lightly textured to look photocopied. /End ID]
it’s another one of those evenings where I’m really mad about the fact that society tells little kids “Being uncomfortable is good because it means you’re growing! You have to face your fears in order to overcome them! Life is going to continuously get harder so you have to learn to deal with scary and uncomfortable stuff!” and at no point does it occur to them to screen the little kids for relentless extreme terror disease they just say that shit to 6 year olds and fuck them up for life
In the popular view, anxiety is one of the most basic, well-understood, treatable, and non-disabling mental illnesses, but in reality it’s like, you turn 21 and your brain is 90% stuff that you can’t consciously think about or you start spiraling, so you focus really intensely on working and staying busy but stimuli that are tangentially related to something that triggers you give you intrusive thoughts that feel like they’re brutally prying open your brain cells, and you feel intense horrible paralyzing guilt about the fact that your body is screaming with distress constantly because you’ve never had a legitimately “traumatic” experience even though every memory of your childhood is tainted by the background radiation of sick, horrible knowledge that the universe is an evil place and something awful is about to happen to you
And when you try to seek therapy about it, they tell you to do Cognitive Behavioral Therapy aka “gaslight yourself into believing you’re not actually feeling the way you do, dismiss all your anxious thoughts until you can’t consciously think them, and train yourself out of the symptoms of panic attacks” and the result is that you feel horrible 24/7 in a monolithic, opaque, indescribable way that you cannot change or act upon, and you forge on ahead through your life totally oblivious to your own discomfort until your body and mind start frantically activating random Symptoms and shutting down essential functions in a desperate effort to stop you from killing your self dead.
Some people are baffled by the concept that there really are people who actually like children but don’t want any of their own. “Childfree” doesn’t automatically mean someone who simply hates children. The thing is, I do like kids, and I will absolutely not compromise on my stance that each and every child deserves to grow up in a safe, stable and supportive environment. I also know that I get aggressive if I’m constantly sleep-deprived or overstimulated. People generally don’t regard me as someone capable of violence, but if I can’t get 15 minutes of silence each day and at least 5 hours of sleep every night, I will start throwing things. And I know kids won’t let you have that. Ever.
Kids deserve to grow up feeling safe and cherished, unafraid to express themselves and without worry that they’re unwelcome or unwanted. And that’s why they should be doing that somewhere else than in my fucking house.
Ruth Marcus does an excellent job of pointing out how another Trump appointed judge (from Texas) is stomping on the Constitution when it comes to the separation of church and state. The judge in this case doesn’t seem to understand the difference between people being allowed to hold religious beliefs and religious people harassing others who don’t share their religious beliefs. The article is well worth reading. Here are some excerpts:
Another day, another extremist ruling by another extremist Trump judge, and this decision — from Texas, no surprise — is straight out of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The judge held lawyers for Southwest Airlines in contempt of court for their actions in a religious-discrimination case brought by a former flight attendant and ordered them to undergo “religious liberty training.” And not just any instruction, but training conducted by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative group that litigates against same-sex marriage, transgender rights and abortion rights. [emphasis added]
The issue arises from a lawsuit filed by Charlene Carter, a flight attendant for more than 20 years and a longtime antagonist of the Southwest flight attendants union. In 2017, after union members attended the Women’s March under a “Southwest Airlines Flight Attendants” banner, Carter sent Facebook messages to the union president containing graphic antiabortion messages.
