Hi, Toasties. I did most of this roundup on Saturday, and woke up Sunday to the horrible, heartbreaking news out of Orlando. Here’s what we currently know about the gay nightclub attack which is now the worst mass shooting in US history. It was an 18+ club. It was also Latin Night. This is a club started by a woman whose brother died of AIDS. What a fucking shitshow.
Toasties who want to help the queer community in Orlando, let’s give to the Orlando Youth Alliance and to The Center. And here’s a link to the Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence.
We’ve decided not to run any content today, so this post is an open thread. Please share what you’re reading about the events on Sunday (please do not link to people saying stupid shit about the events on Sunday.)
(I’m also leaving the pre-Orlando link roundup below, so you can read it if you need a break from tragedy.)
The LA Times talked to a bunch of trans people in North Carolina about what the mechanics of this stupid bathroom bill have resulted in for them:
McGarry, who is suing the state and the University of North Carolina system over the bathroom bill, wants to be a lawyer someday, so he wants to follow the law. But between going to the men’s room where he fits in or going to the women’s room where he sticks out, the choice is clear.
“This is a situation where I’m choosing between safety or breaking the law, and I’m going to choose my safety every time,” McGarry said. “So I go to the male restroom.”
North Carolina has become the epicenter of a national battle over transgender rights since the city of Charlotte passed an ordinance in February barring discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. State Republican lawmakers immediately recoiled — claiming Charlotte’s law allowed men and potential sexual predators into women’s bathrooms — and responded by passing House Bill 2, which also overrides local nondiscrimination packages like Charlotte’s.
Bathrooms have long been a source of anxiety for transgender men and women whose gender transitions are in progress. As their appearances change, it can be difficult to know when it’s best to stop using one gender’s bathroom and start using another.
OUR BELOVED TECH GOTH MARCO AND HIS GIRLFRIEND ARE GETTING MARRRRRRIED.
TIG. NOTARO. (also, this is the part of the interview everyone will share, but don’t miss all the non-Schumer parts bc Tig Notaro is incredible):
I tell her I was struck by something Amy Schumer once said to Vanity Fair about Notaro: “Looking masculine and being gay, the challenges of the road are 20 times harder for Tig than other female comedians. People fear what they don’t understand.” Has she found that to be true?
Anger sparks in Notaro’s normally calm eyes. “I don’t know what she was talking about. It sounds like offensive nonsense to me. I find that so offensive and weird,” she says, looking down, trying to control her very audible irritation. “If you knew me well, you would never say that.”
I thought the two of you were friends, I say, surprised. Schumer has spoken in the past about taking care of her “great friend Tig”.
“Ummm…” Notaro says, looking away. Did you just work with her? The atmosphere, previously relaxed, has palpably prickled.
“I’ve worked with her. I worked with her for the first season [of Inside Amy Schumer],” she replies curtly. Ironically, the episode in which Notaro appeared was about Schumer exaggerating their friendship and using Notaro’s cancer to look good in front of other people.
“Let’s leave it there,” Notaro says, closing down the subject.
bitches gotta eat (and leave):
1 park far away and keep forgetting stuff in your car. it’s a cloudless 82 degrees: birds are chirping, the hum of neighborhood lawnmowers drones in the distance, and mark and laura are hosting a party for their cat’s birthday at their house at 2pm sharp. you circle your sensible, fuel-efficient vehicle leisurely around their block a few times after your first driveby revealed that you indeed were the first person to arrive to a cat party, then park around the corner and pretend to be texting someone interesting until you see at least three other people arrive, arms heavily laden with scratching posts and catnip mice. get out, making a point to leave the shiny bags of meow mix party mix you got 2-for1 at target nestled safely in the back seat. as soon as they try to usher you out to the kiddie pool filled with melting ice and cans of coors light, bang the heel of your palm against your forehead the way people in the movies do when suddenly struck by a memory and conveniently excuse yourself to fetch the treats from the car. twenty minutes later, same goes for the boxes of wine. an hour after that: oh yeah, that jumbo tray of cheese cubes! you’ll either spend so much time rifling through your trunk that they’ll forget you were ever there to begin with or be so irritated that on your fourth trip out they’ll put you out of your misery and lock the door behind you. and, if all that doesn’t work, forget everything you offered to bring at the store, which will give you an excuse to actually get in your car and drive it away.
Friend of The Toast Carvell Wallace has some good thoughts on why Meghan Trainor’s “blaccent” bothers him (and why Amy Winehouse’s style didn’t):
Part of Trainor’s appeal is her relatability. She’s a charismatic vocalist with a knack for catchy songs full of personal empowerment and a wholesome kind of self-love. She makes the kind of music that you can imagine a drunken bachelorette party having a transcendent sing-along to in the back of a rented stretch Hummer. We return to artists like Trainor because they act and sing in ways that we wish we could; they give us the voice we wish we had. But what does it mean that Meghan Trainor’s voice is, technically, an approximated black one that comes from a white body? “NO” has more than 250 million views on YouTube. Is a black voice coming from a white face what 250 million people want? Skimming the comments raises further questions. In them, one comes across the typical bullshit — men body-shaming Trainor as though that were somehow funny or original, earnest comments thanking her for her voice and inspiration — but virtually no mention of her stilted use of black English. It makes me wonder if no one notices this kind of thing anymore in pop music, or if people notice but have concluded that it doesn’t matter. Or maybe people literally don’t know the roots of this song’s style, cadence, or tone. Maybe they just think it came from the internet.
This piece is horrifying and Tasers are not freaking Supersoakers, they can kill you:
Matt imagined the stop every day. He and Stacy had been assured by the FBI that what Runnels did crossed the line. As a cop, though, he couldn’t escape the thought that Bryce had somehow provoked him. “You don’t just get tased,” Matt remembered thinking. “He had to have done something.”
Bryce dealt with the perception that he was somehow to blame on a daily basis. Trying to go back to normal meant putting himself back in the community. The only thing the public knew was what had been reported, and what had been reported was that he resisted a lawful arrest, and his car smelled like marijuana. In every interaction, whether at school or out in public, the question of what he did, what responsibility he must have for his own injury, hung over him.
I am a few days late to Doree on how celeb mags cover domestic violence, but it’s excellent:
An examination of stories from the last 30 years shows that domestic violence narratives have been depressingly consistent — and often make it seem like both parties were at fault. The caption on a headshot of Mia Farrow on a “Sinatra & Women” People cover from September 1986 said, “Her independence made him violent.” A December 1987 cover featuring Madonna and Sean Penn was accompanied by the headline “DIARY OF A MAD MARRIAGE: Jealousy, booze and brawling sink Hollywood’s most outrageous couple.” And a March 1989 cover of actress Sean Young featured the caption “Sean Young & James Woods FATAL ATTRACTION: Their razor’s edge romance turned to rage, two of Hollywood’s hottest stars play out a real-life tale of love gone mad.”
THIS IS HORSESHIT, WALK HARD IS THE BEST APATOW MOVIE (they liked it I’m just upset it’s only 7th on the list):
7. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (writer/producer)
An intriguing and essential entry in the Apatow canon because it, unlike so much of his other work, never once attempts to be “serious” or emotional. This is just a flat-out spoof, and it’s a terrific one. John C. Reilly plays the eponymous Dewey Cox, a country singer who breaks big and becomes a perfect clothesline for an impressive series of gags about music biopics, particularly Ray, Walk the Line, and even the Doors. This is as close to an old Zucker Brothers joke-fest as you’re going to find anymore, and though not all the gags score, most of them do. And every scene with Tim Meadows trying to stop Dewey Cox from doing drugs is perfect. This is a dark fucking period!
Love is all around:
Greg Dick, owner of rest and fuel stop the Aileron Roadhouse in the Northern Territory, told the BBC the two animals have “been in love for a while”. He said the kangaroo, which according to Northern Territory News is named “Fuck It” for his libido, has been sleeping with, cuddling and “carrying on too busy” with Apples the pig.
Guardian US today announced that Carrie Fisher will contribute a regular advice column to the site. Fisher, star of films including the Star Wars trilogy, Star Wars: the Force Awakens, and When Harry Met Sally, will address readers’ questions and dilemmas and offer her unique perspective on life. Her first column has been published today and readers can email questions for future columns to [email protected].
Fisher, who has openly discussed her diagnosis of bipolar disorder and her battles with addiction, is also the author of a semi-autobiographical novel, Postcards from the Edge, and a play and non-fiction book, Wishful Drinking, which tackle some of the issues she has faced. Her new column will build on the honest and open approach she has taken to her own struggles, and will offer Guardian readers advice and guidance on how to navigate everything from heartbreak to addiction, to mental illness and gender equality.
In light of all the bullshit around the Orlando shooting, the gun control and the Islamophobia and the ceaseless opinions from straight people, I turn to my elders. In June of 1990, a group of anonymous queers published a pamphlet called Queers Read This, dealing with all the shit they had to go through. It’s a reminder that people have been hating and killing queers for decades, and queers have survived it for this long. It’s a howl of pain and a battle cry and the blockquote links to the full text. If you feel anything at all about this fucked-up world queer people have to survive in, read it. I want to quote the entire thing but this bit is particularly apt.
LET YOURSELF BE ANGRY. Let yourself be angry that the price of our visibility is the constant threat of violence, anti-queer violence to which practically every segment of this society contributes. Let yourself feel angry that THERE IS NO PLACE IN THIS COUNTRY WHERE WE ARE SAFE, no place where we are not targeted for hatred and attack, the self-hatred, the suicide — of the closet. The next time some straight person comes down on you for being angry, tell them that until things change, you don’t need any more evidence that the world turns at your expense. You don’t need to see only hetero couple grocery shopping on your TV … You don’t want any more baby pictures shoved in your face until you can have or keep your own. No more weddings, showers, anniversaries, please, unless they are our own brothers and sisters celebrating. And tell them not to dismiss you by saying “You have rights,” “You have privileges,” “You’re overreacting,” or “You have a victim’s mentality.” Tell them “GO AWAY FROM ME, until YOU can change.” Go away and try on a world without the brave, strong queers that are its backbone, that are its guts and brains and souls. Go tell them go away until they have spent a month walking hand in hand in public with someone of the same sex. After they survive that, then you’ll hear what they have to say about queer anger. Otherwise, tell them to shut up and listen.
I volunteered at Indy Pride for the third time the day before the shooting. I directed crowds through the check-in process and helped check bags for smuggled guns or the much higher priority, illicit outside booze. I knew that theoretically, some motherfucker could grab a gun and murder me for being queer where I was, but it never sunk in until yesterday. Just two days ago I was standing on a cement block in front of hundreds of people, yelling “Welcome to Pride!” and “Please dump your open drinks and have your bags ready to check!” while twirling my rainbow umbrella, not a care in the world. A perfect target if some motherfucker was looking for one.
And you know what? I was there. I was queer. And no goddamn way am I breaking my streak next year. You can find me at Circle City Indianapolis Pride Festival 2017 from 9-1, volunteering at the main entrance, hollering instructions at people and helping check bags to make sure our safe spaces can be something vaguely approaching safe.
Have some good writing about the importance of spaces like Pulse.
Dancing is SO IMPORTANT for queers and Latinos, even more so for queer Latinos
Gay clubs are SO IMPORTANT
Pulse specifically is SO IMPORTANT, # 1
Pulse specifically is SO IMPORTANT, # 2, the club is named after the founder’s brother who died of AIDS and queer people have been through so much shit
Our own Mallory on her formative experiences as a babyqueer at a gay bar, with Toasties commenting on their own First Gay Bars.
Thank you. Thank you for making this the first comment of the day.
*goes and fills out a volunteer app for her upcoming Pride*
That is a great idea– as soon as I know where I’ll be next summer, I’ll volunteer to do bag checks at Pride. Thank you for putting yourself out there, and thank you for the links.
I’m really interested to read your “Have some good writing about the importance of spaces like Pulse.” section, but it all just links to this post.
Posted fixed links below! Also, because Pride is happy and lovely and we need to brighten our days, here is a photo of a drag king who I saw do Uptown Funk yesterday. https://www.instagram.com/p/BGkUuYWpQ1p/
Apparently all my links are coming straight back here, so here’s Queer Spaces Are Important Roundup 2.0
Have some good writing about the importance of spaces like Pulse.
Dancing is SO IMPORTANT for queers and Latinos, even more so for queer Latinos
Gay clubs are SO IMPORTANT
Pulse specifically is SO IMPORTANT, # 1
Pulse specifically is SO IMPORTANT, # 2, the club is named after the founder’s brother who died of AIDS and queer people have been through so much shit
Our own Mallory on her formative experiences as a babyqueer at a gay bar, with Toasties commenting on their own First Gay Bars.
Thank you for these! And especially for Queers Read. I remember it, and [redacted big old memoryfest about 90s , Queer Nation, Pride, and Youth–back to reading your excellent linkage.]
Thank you.
Saturday I was so irritated at the DC Pride Parade for screwing up buses and traffic by my apartment. And then Sunday morning I woke up to the news. I forgot, I think, that Pride isn’t just a party or a celebration. It’s standing – dancing – in the face of violence and hatred. Thanks for this idea – I’ll be volunteering next year and donating money today.
You can find me at Circle City Indianapolis Pride Festival 2017 from 9-1
You know what? I might join you and maybe we could meet up. My parents live in Indy and I skipped my summer visit this year but attending Pride would be a good motivator to get out there again. If you don’t mind dropping me an email ([email protected]) so I’ll have your contact info for next year? If not, though, no hard feelings!
Need to say thank you because hell yes, thank you.
Thank you for posting this pamphlet.
Just emailed about volunteering at my city’s Pride. Thanks for posting this.
You are wonderful and amazing.
I wrote to my politicians. I am going to donate to a QUILTBAG organization today. I don’t know what else to do. I am so, so sad, and so, so angry for all of those who are hurting and mourning and scared right now. Tell me what I can do, friends. I want to help.
Some organizations if you’re looking for some to support/donate to:
Unity Coalition|Coalición Unida (for Hispanic/Latinx LGBTQIA) http://www.unitycoalition.org/
Equality Florida is working with the National Center for Victims of Crime to raise funds for victims and families https://www.gofundme.com/PulseVictimsFund
MASGD (for Muslim LGBTQIA) http://muslimalliance.org
Lambda Legal http://www.lambdalegal.org/about-us
Familia TQLM (for trans and queer Latinx) http://familiatqlm.org/
Thank you for this sub for link roundup. I ignored the news all day yesterday for my own mental well-being, but am catching up and grieving today.
In other sad-making (but relatively minor) news, if the Bartender (or anyone who else might know) is around this early on Monday morning, can they tell me if there will be an Open Thread on July 1, or if closing July 1 means closed on July 1?
We will have lots of content on July 1.
Oh thank god. I’m taking off work and everything! Mostly because I’d spend the whole day crying at my desk otherwise.
I have to work late that day, which is terrible timing.
I don’t feel sad really, I just feel tired. Which make me wonder if I’m a Bad Gay? God just how many more times can we do this.
When I first saw the news aroudn 5am Sunday morning, I shrugged and went on with things because it’s just another nightclub shooting, those happen all the time. (My city closed down a club because shootings were such a regular occurrence.) I would probably be in the same boat as you if I weren’t more personally connected to this particular shooting. I’m completely numb to it, which is a fucking awful thing to be, but there’s a point where you can’t gin up the outrage and furor anymore because it’s every day and… it happens.
I just want to tell you that you aren’t bad at all.
Don’t worry. I spent the Sunday morning making jokes with my co-workers about how some woman’s missing son had probably been eaten by a gator while no one was looking and making cracks about possible emotions Obama hadn’t expressed after a news caster said “we’ve seen him respond to these with the full range of emotions from being sad to angry”.
“Tired” is at least a negative emotion.
Which is to say that even if you do have skulls on your caps, rest assured there’s plenty of us over here marching under the flag of a rats anus.
A+ Mitchell and Webb Look reference
It’s okay. I’m tired too. It took me a while to build up my current anger, which I’m not enjoying but am trying to use productively… other than that, I don’t have any sadness or even fear. I woke up to the news and had no reaction. You’re not a Bad Gay or a bad person. This shit is exhausting.
There are so many things that happen that I have that similar fatigue feeling for. I’m certain it’s a legit thing and doesn’t make you a bad person!
There is no such thing as a wrong feeling right now. NO SUCH THING. Your feelings are legitimate.
I was saying on twitter, this is the “biggest mass shooting in American history” for the THIRD TIME in the last ten years. The record keeps getting broken. Oh for fuck’s sake not fucking again is a valid emotional reaction.
It’s so frequent, they had to compare this one to 9/11, just for variety. FFS, y’all.
To be honest, I very rarely get personally emotional about events in the news. It’s okay. You don’t need to cry or feel sick to prove that you are not a cold-hearted proponent of mass murder. Actually that’s the part that stresses me out on an individual level about national tragedy– am I supposed to say something? Do people think I’m not sad enough? Does anyone give a shit about my thoughts in a moment like this, anyway? I would like to think that it’s fine to just be quietly respectful.
I felt the same way, until I saw all the people being shitty about it, with one particuarly shitty example that my brother showed me, and now I have All The Anger. But I can definitely sympathise- my first reaction was just a sense of defeated tiredness at yet another shooting, and yet another hate crime against LGBTQ+ people.
I feel tired and almost . . . Bored. That might be the wrong word, but it is something like tired/bored/unwilling to keep engaging. And I do feel bad about it. (I sort of feel the same way about Trump.)
MARCO! Congratulations!
MARCO IS GETTING MARRIED AND TIG IS FINALLY GETTING TO BE A PARENT IF THAT’S NOT JOYOUS THEN I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT! I am legit sobbing joyfully for both of them and their partners.
Yes! Congratulations! Weddings are the best. 🙂
Today in (Feminist) History! [Archive]
On this day in 1879 was the birth of Lois Weber, an American actress, screenwriter, producer,and director, who was known as “one of the most important and prolific film directors in the era of silent film”, and “the most important female director the American film industry has known”. She is known as one of America’s first “auteurs” in the cinema; a woman who was involved in every aspect of the production of her films, all of which were imbued with her personal philosophies and ideas. The morals which she believed in lead to her creation of films involving marriage, women’s role in social, social disparity, hypocrisy, business corruption, religion, and politics.
Born Florence Lois Weber in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, she was considered a child prodigy in music, with her passion being piano playing. Born in a devout Christian family, she left home and lived in poverty for two years, working as a social activist and street corner evangelist with the Church Army Workers. Her work involved preaching and singing hymns, as well as playing the organ at rescue missions in red light districts. When the Church Army Workers disbanded, she went back home to her family and then began performing as a soprano singer and pianist. She quit when an incident with a broken piano key during a recital made her lose her nerve to play in public– though she also stated that the incident made her feel that this phase of her life was now over.
In 1904, Lois took up acting and moved to NYC. She worked for five years as a repertory and stock actress, during which time she traveled with a road company performing “Why Girls Leave Home”, before she ended up marrying the stage manager, Wendell Phillips Smalley. Smalley, a descendant of the human rights pioneer Wendell Phillips, encouraged Lois to keep her maiden name, and she did. It was also with him that she got involved in the pioneer motion picture industry; first with the Gaumont Company (where she was mentored by the world’s first female director, Alice Guy Blance of France), and then Universal. It was during her brief year working with her husband at the Bosworth company that Lois made her first full-length film of the style she became known for; films with social and moral messages. It was also at this studio that she made ‘Hypocrites, which would become one of her most famous; not the least of which because she was known for posing naked in it to represent “the naked truth”. Another of her films at this time, “The Spider and Her Web” featured Lois as “The Spider”, a vamp who seduces and ruins intellectual men. (Until she is frightened into adopting an orphan and saved by motherhood, ugh, you were doing so well Lois.)
After that year she and her husband returned to Universal pictures, where she was allowed to produce her own feature-length films, having been denied that previously. At Universal she made “Shoes” (1916) and “Where Are My Children?” (1916), the latter of which caused controversy for it’s message; a plea for birth control for women. This was in fact the last movie Lois would be seen is as an actress; the plot involved a doctor’s wife imprisoned for illegally giving out family planning information. In 1917 she was established enough to start her own studio, Lois Weber Productions. It was here she made numerous other movies, including one called “What Do Men Want?”, in 1921. Perhaps the title was telling, as the following year Lois’s eighteen year marriage ended in a divorce which gave her a nervous breakdown, though she did eventually recover to make numerous other films.
Though a large number of her films were not preserved, she is said to have directed 135 films, written 114, and acted in 100 in total. She is also known for having pioneered the “split screen” technique, and made one of the first sound films in the U.S. She was also the first American woman ever to direct a full-length feature film with “The Merchant of Venice” in 1914 (at Bosworth Company; the film is now considered “a lost film”) and when she opened her own studio in 1917, she was the first woman director to ever have done so. The nudity in her 1915 film “Hypocrites” was the first full-frontal female nude scenes ever. Though she continued to make movies, Lois lost her popularity in the 1920s, when her moral beliefs came to be at odds with the hedonism of the era of the “flapper girl”. Lois made her last film, “White Heat” in 1934, and died 5 years later at the age of 58, of a gastric hemorrhage. Despite the fact that much of what she accomplished is no longer remembered today, it is said that, “few men, before or since, have retained such absolute control over the films they have directed – and certainly no women directors have achieved the all-embracing, powerful status once held by Lois Weber.”
I was hoping there would be an LGBT woman/event for today, but alas. I still wanted to post this though, because Lois Weber is fascinating, and I thought maybe it would be something to read if you also needed a break from the other news (as I do).
I’m avoiding the Orlando stuff, I read some of the facts yesterday and I just can’t. Even scrolling through FB this morning and seeing the headlines was too much.
Coincidentally I went to give blood this morning, but turns out I can’t read and my perfect between tattoos timing was fucked up because its a 4 month wait not a 3 month wait like I thought. So I can’t even be a good person right these days.
I have a whole bunch of life shit and boy updates (TL:DR Went on beach date, did not go as planned and now I’m bummed.) that I’ll throw in a reply in a bit; but I am having a truly epic shit day and I don’t really want to cry at my desk in an open place office, so I might not get around to it.
Is anyone else constantly hungry at the moment? I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is and I am just constantly starving and hangry and I have some serious food planning fatigue and I’m pretty sure that its part of what causing my filthy mood at the moment (I just ate a massive amount of pasta, still hungry, still grumpy.)
Did your pasta have any protein in it? I have to make myself eat protein to stay full because carbs don’t keep you full enough. Also, are you sleeping well? I always feel ravenous all day long if I’m not getting enough sleep.
I’m sorry about all the other bummers in your life right now. Don’t feel bad if you can’t give blood! There’s other things you can do if you feel the need to, but you also need to take care of yourself right now too.
It had chicken and beef in it, and all last week I was eating pasta with tomato and beans sauce for this exact reason, I’m trying to load up on the protein to keep me full, but it literally only lasts 20 minutes and I’m hungry again, its not ‘I’m a bit bored so I’m gonna eat’ hungry, its the ‘my stomach hurts so much I’m gonna cry and then murder someone’ hungry, which I hate and makes me panic. I think its hormonal tbh, I missed a few BC pills last week and I’m technically on the ‘period’ week (except I don’t take them) and so I’m putting it down to PMS (The salt and sweet cravings are so strong!). I’m also very, very overweight at the moment, so eating has all sorts of guilt around it and I’m trying to eat healthy as much as possible, but then the ravenous hunger kicks in and in addition to the healthy salad or pasta dish, I end up eating a load of bread or something in an attempt to stop the hunger pangs.
I’m sleeping a lot, and sleeping through the night, but I am constantly tired and I think its depression related. All the crap in my life is culminating in inability to feed myself properly and yeah, its all a bit sucky right now.
Just wanted to let you know that I get this too, sometimes. Sometimes my response to stress/depression/hormonal issues is to become ravenously hungry, to the point of like, ‘I know I should have been full three slices of bread ago, but I really feel like I need the whole loaf.” This is not to say that you shouldn’t consult with your doctor if it continues to be an issue, but you are not alone in this particular thing. 🙁 I hope things get better, selma.
Thank you
When I got my depression medicated, my ravenous hungers dissipated – I’m pretty sure I was relying on the little spikes of blood sugar to keep my mood elevated to “functional”. If your depression is not treated, I recommend going to the doctor! (And if it is, maybe going to the doctor anyway for an adjustment?) I’ve been losing 1-2 pounds a week since I started Zoloft two months ago – still eating whatever I want, but I no longer want an entire pound of M&Ms for second breakfast. YMMV, etc. etc.
I’m currently in a really shitty spiral of un medicated ADD, shitty life circumstances, depression and anxiety, so yeah it’s probably related.
I think I’m doing the same thing, and have been for awhile. When I feel shut I think at least I can eat something tasty and feel slightly better for a bit, but that’s now caught up to me pretty bad in the form of obesity so now I don’t even have food and I’m hungry all the time
I need to go and collect my meds from the pharmacy and then hopefully something will improve
Go pick up your meds! It feels so nice to feel better. You are worth it.
<3 depression sucks. jerkbrains suck.
If you want advice: sometimes when I feel hungry, I am really dehydrated and it helps to drink a glass of water and then wait to see if I still feel hungry.
In addition to the meds and all that, I don’t know if you’re into holistic therapies at all, but my acupuncturist was great for me when I was experiencing (what she calls) “rapid hungering”.
(It actually fluctuated for me a bit when I was adjusting to my meds too, but then it evened out with her help and I don’t have that these days).
Good luck to you, I’ve been there and I am sending lots of positivity your way <3
I’ve discovered the joys of chia pudding (I’m sorry, I know it’s very pinterest Mormon housewife). I make mine with coconut milk and whatever flavor I’m craving (sometimes it’s key lime, sometimes it’s berry jam, sometimes it’s chocolate), and it’s high enough in protein to actually fill me up, but not so high in salt/sugar/nitrates/other “bad” stuff that I feel bloated or have to remind myself not to beat myself up about food. And I can prep it the night before and keep it in the fridge, so it’s there waiting for me if I need to snack on something high in protein.
I’m writing this from the bathroom at work because I literally cannot go 5 minutes without welling up. Between all the comments here and my own shit going on I am a hot tmes right now.
I’m so very tired of being told by the world that I am invisible and unimportant. I’m stuck in a familiar pattern right now and I know it will get better eventually but right now I see no way out of it. I hate my job, I get no recognition or support but I cannot for the life of me land another job (despite being in a city that has 10,000 of my job.), All the feedback is good, everyone is impressed with me and my experience but no one will give me a job. My house sucks and it’s stressing me out so much and I have nothing good in my life right now. Nothing at all that I’m looking forward too or enjoy doing (apart from sleeping).
I thought something good might happening because there was a boy; but our beach date turned out to be more ‘friends hanging out’ than first date. Queen of bad timing that I am, he’s a month out of a relationship and isn’t ready and ‘doesnt want to hurt me’. Which I get, and it isn’t his fault, BUT this is always what happens to me, on the rare occasion that I find someone I like who likes me, there is always another girl, either they’re in a relationship already or have recently left one and aren’t ‘ready’. And knowing me, he’s gonna meet someone else next week and marry them or will get back with his ex and yet again I’m the forgotten second choice. He wants us to be friends and I thought I was fine with it all buy turns out no. I am not fine.
I’m always forgotten and left alone, by friends, boys and family, everyone has their own life and friends and I’m alone.
I know it’s not the same, but we don’t forget you. Wishing you strength and a healthy lack of fucks to make it through until things look up.
You are not forgotten and alone to me! I am here with you selma. *HUGS*
My heart is breaking for you right now, because I’m generally content with my job (it can be boring but it’s stable and low stress), and I my relationships with my friends and family are good atm, and I have a Meetup I go to weekly that I look forward to, and there are STILL plenty of times when I feel really lonely, so I can only imagine how badly you’re feeling.
But if I can give some advice, I say stick up for yourself when you can. Start by telling boy that you’re not okay with being friends. Don’t accept a situation where you’re sacrificing your mental health to make someone else feel okay.
With the boy thing, I feel like its my own fault for building it up too quickly in my head; like yes he does like me and we’ve been texting a bit, but it wasn’t really anything more than that, so why did I expect us to have a big romantic date and then be together forever? (Because I have a stupid brain that is desperate for companionship thats why.)
I don’t think I can dump all this crap on him, its not his fault that I’m not in a good way and I don’t want to force him into a situation he doesn’t want to be in, he’s not a bad person for not being ready for a new relationship a month after being dumped. And I don’t want to be rebound girl yet again.
I don’t know, I’m just going to try and get on with my life, whatever happens with him happens, but I’m not holding my breath.
Regardless of what happens, try not to be too hard on yourself. If you had played it cool, he might have wondered why you weren’t being more effusive. You never know. But it’s perfectly normal to like someone and get excited about it.
I know it’s easier to overthink and blame yourself when you’re feeling isolated and alone with your thoughts, but try to not to beat yourself up about it. *hug*
You seem like an ace person and I always look for your comments on the Toast and I am sorry you are feeling sad. I know that is only a little thing but it is real. xx
Oh Selma! I’m so sorry. You deserve so much; you deserve to be happy, and validated, and to be seen. I know these feelings so well and I wish there was anything I could do for you. Sending you a bunch of hugs and good thoughts.
:hug: I feel and have felt like this so many times. I wish I had something better to offer than :hug:.
Not being able to give blood doesn’t make you a bad person! It’s great that you are attempting to, and you’ll get the timing right next time. I have been turned away a few times, sometimes through stuff I couldn’t help (anaemia) and sometimes due to my inability to read the guidelines properly (did not realise that having an endoscopy meant I had to wait for a while before my next donation). You will manage it at some point, and it’s great that you’re doing it.
Adding to this, my understanding is a lot of the time it’s a couple months after something like this that the banks really need donations after the initial spike has gone down. Not being able to donate DEFINITELY doesn’t make you a bad person, but imo if you make a point of going to donate when you can, that’s still doing something in honor of/as a gesture about today.
I went on FB last night (I only check FB every couple months). A couple old LJ friends were posting about Orlando. Everyone else was posting pics of their kids. I give up on FB. I know there’s studies proving that watching other people curate their lives is depressing, but I just fucking can’t anymore, even in small doses.
Also, I feel you on the food thing. It’s great when I can identify what I need and go eat it. When the feeling is vague, though, I end up overeating from trying to figure out what the Magic Food is. Then I’m angry cuz I upset my stomach from overeating, and doubly angry, cuz I’m overfull and bellyachy but still unsatiated. 🙁
I have this same problem. 🙁
It is ridiculous and tragic and maddening that virtually no one in the US Republican party is willing to stand up and say that maybe civilians shouldn’t be able to buy MOTHERFUCKING ASSAULT RIFLES.
Did you see the guy on twitter who systematically named and called out every politician who tweeted about “prayers,” and cited the amount of $$$$ they’ve each accepted from the NRA?
Hadn’t seen it but Slate has a nice round-up here, where “nice” = “depressing as balls”.
This was important. I AM frustrated that he’s been doing that each time there is a mass shooting and there is no traction. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be Obama and have to give another fucking speech about senseless gun violence. One of our senators in NC has received 2.5 million dollars from the NRA and that just makes ME want to be violent. So much rage and sadness.
Oh God, I didn’t know this was a regular thing that he does. It struck me as really powerful, so if he does this every time and gets nowhere…
Wow, that is a LONG list. I can’t believe literally nothing is being done about this.
He seemed so defeated and exhausted when he spoke about Newtown, that I cried as much for him as I did for the victims, I think. And those Fox reporters who mocked him for crying over the senseless deaths of small children can fuck right off.
Right, “prayers”. IOW that thing you can offer to absolve yourself of actually doing anything.
My thoughts on prayers:
If prayer gives you comfort, go for it.
If you’re a clergy person and you want to hold a prayer vigil for the victims because that helps let other people know that your church is open and affirming, knock yourself out.
If you’re a politician and you’re using “prayers” as an exploitative hand wave in place of real action, you can fuck right off.
It’s not just congress. It’s also the gun industry. Part of what happens is that even when bills get passed banning this or that or regulating this or that the gun industry reads it pedanticly as possible and then invents a work around. A friend of my stepfathers recently showed me his… well it wasn’t an AR-15 because technically it was a pistol, however if he used the arm brace as a stock, or if the (obviously a stock) arm brace had been half a centimeter longer it would have been a rifle and thus under different regulations.
Here’s the fucked up cherry on that sundae though: if the companies don’t actively work to subvert regulations like that the gun buyers (who are fewer than ever these days but buy more than ever) will basically boycott them out of existence (see Colt in the late 90s).
AGH
My brother looooves his guns, he’s a single-issue voter. And when he first moved out of my parents’ house, the first thing he did was buy an AR-15, the civilian version of the military’s automatic M16. And then he ordered a kit online, because you can, that, in an afternoon, converts that AR-15 to an automatic rifle. There’s no background check for that kit, you just have to have a few hundred dollars and a burning desire for the ability to kill a whole bunch of people real quick. There’s a lot of fine print on the kits that if you bend this one thing a certain way it’s not their fault if WHOOPS that makes your gun automatic, we told you not to!
ughhhhhhhh i hate everything
right. and like I said, fucked up cherry: They then point to these hijinks that they themselves demanded and provided the financial incentive for and claim they’re proof that any sort of regulation is inherently unenforceable nonsense.
And they kill any attempts to even study the issue, so lawmakers can’t even back up their gun-control proposals with research and statistics and, like, concrete ideas on what would work and why. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE.
yyyyeah your bro’s a felon and so’s whatever silkroad scuzzball sold that to him, lightning links are the kind of thing that gets the cops burning your house down with your whole family inside if word gets out
that’s not ‘subversion’, that’s laws actively written to do nothing. There’s not a whole phenomenon of random strange dudes climbing down your chimney because laws against burglary specify that it must involved forced entry through a door or window; when cops flash the lights behind a drunk driver they’re not in the clear so long as they speed home, reach the front door, and yell ‘base’ before they can be breathalyzed.
National firearms legislation is exhaustively crafted to be do-nothing culture war signaling that lets politicians claim to be for or against “gun control” without actually having to stake out a position that might affect the status quo and risk their position. In the 30s they responded to the Capone types skulking around the city backshooting each other with guns in their pockets by restricting artillery cannons and rifles sawed down to under 26 inches to serve as improvised handguns but not actual handguns (this is where your stepdad’s buddy’s toy comes from, and why it matters if that’s called a stock); in the 90s they responded to fears of mass shootings by outlawing bayonet mounts and vertical bits you can grab onto like the guns in Rambo movies got. Apparently that one was the high water mark of gun control in America cause that’s all anyone’s been able to talk about since. These are not people invested in solving any actual problem or keeping you safe, they’re interested in keeping people frightened and confused to maintain their captive voter pool, and every time some new atrocity comes up both sides start braying about how gee shucks they’d like to keep it from happening again but those sick bastards on the other team just won’t let ’em, shame innit.
Well yes and I did blame congress (well okay I didn’t contest the blame) first, but there is the second amendment and until the supreme court decides to remember the first clause the sort of generalized language that would be effective would also be ruled unconstitutional in the same way that a bunch of anti-abortions laws SHOULD be as placing an undue burden on the woman/arm-bearer.
It’s an entire fucked sundae or parfait or onion is all I’m saying.
SCOTUS hasn’t really been the barrier. Omar Mateen was a licensed armed security guard who passed a background check at a federally licensed gunstore, I don’t see Diane Feinstein ever voting to disarm her security detail under any circumstances. He was also a wifebeater pledged to ISIS who’d apparently been under active FBI investigation for years over this kinda shit, but none of that slowed him down (but the NSA still needs to keep a backup copy of every sext you’ve sent your boyfriend just in case _____). Out where I’m at Seung-Hui Cho left a trail of 10rd magazines strewn behind him like breadcrumbs as he casually murdered his way through Blacksburg and in the wake of the shooting all anyone could talk about was assault weapons and how we should put anyone who’s ever seen a shrink under any circumstances on a registry, or possibly a raft to be pushed out to sea. Scalia didn’t make em do that, that’s just all they care to do.
People just change the subject, divert it to their prepackaged plan to outlaw stuff nobody actually hurts each other with or criminalize classes of people who weren’t involved in this or really any incident but are associated with the hated other party’s demographics, count the deaths as points their team’s scored and hope if they use enough handwaving and keywords nobody’ll notice they’ve got nothing and don’t care about any of it. Not just Congress, 90% of the idiots on Facebook.
You know that moment in The Body where Anya is having a breakdown because it just doesn’t make any sense? That’s pretty much how I feel right now about all of this.
Bristol Pride is next month, and I’m going to go out of my way to be there this year.
I know exactly what you mean.
Yes. That’s exactly how it feels. That numb confusion and anger because just — how?
Thank you for reminding me of that Anya speech. It sums up, more than anything I’ve seen or read, my basest emotions about death and these mindboggling, senseless acts that bring about so much death. It is nice to have something that does that for me when A) so many other things I’ve seen or read lately fall so very short, and B) when loads of people probably don’t have something that does that for them. What a complicated mess.
Edinburgh Pride for me. If I am well enough, and if there is no particular reason to suspect trouble, I will very much be there. But if it sounds risky (unlikely), I can’t, because you can’t run away when you’re a wheelchair user who can’t even self-propel.
I completely understand why you wouldn’t feel safe. I think it’s really unlikely that anything like this /could/ happen in the UK after the steps we took post-Dunblane (I don’t think we’ve had a mass shooting since?), but there’s always the possibility.
Yes, thankfully it’s extremely unlikely. And if I go, I can help support a QTIPOC friend of mine who is much more likely to experience harassment, and who is in one hell of a state today. But there’s a lot of ableism in the UK, I’ve had a fair bit of hate crime including a man trying to run me over for being out in a wheelchair, so yes, I’m cautious.
I’m so sorry that’s happened to you, that is… wow. I completely understand why you’d be cautious. It would be good to support your friend, but please don’t do it at the expense of more then you can give!
I feel like the govt’s “dialogue” around disability and benefits has really kicked up some demons in recent years. Not that it was great to begin with, but it’s got a good deal worse @_@
You’re in Bristol? Me too – I’m going to the vigil on College Green tomorrow.
Totally hear you re: Anya.
I didn’t realise there was going to be one until now. Sounds like I’m going to be going into Bristol as soon as I’ve finished work this afternoon.
I am so tired of this shit, so tired of impromptu gatherings to mourn the senselessly murdered, so tired of my fucking nation, where I can buy an assault rifle but not get birth control, tired of my state, where our motherfucking LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR posted the most obscenely repellent tweet in the history of Twitter yesterday, tired of my spineless fellow clergy who will never mention Orlando or LGBTQIA hate or gun violence or Islamophobia (or racial violence, economic justice, climate change, ANYTHING THAT FUCKING MATTERS) in their pulpits (to be fair some do, the best ones do), tired tired tired tired.
I’m trying to write an editorial for our local newspaper but I keep writing the word “FUCK” over and over which is unhelpful and will probably not be published.
Of all the moments to write an editorial which is just the word FUCK over and over, this one is one of the more apt…
I would read that editorial. I just feel mute right now: disassociated, and helpless and undone and unable to even formulate a response.
Marco Rubio, who has always done everything AGAINST LGBTQIA people, who now says “we need to support them” yeah okay riiight.
I don’t even know what the governor did or said yesterday. All I saw was “state of emergency” and “thoughts and prayers”. ????
I told my mom that she needed to call one of her friends in Orlando, and she was like “why? the shooting?” – she learned about it at church, but had no idea it was a gay club, so no idea why it would be relevant to her friend. Good going, church.
I’m trying to figure out the best way to right to Jacksonville’s city council about how their stance against expanding the city’s HRO to include sexual and gender minorities is complicit in encouraging the kind of righteous homophobia that caused the shooting, but I’m too angry.
I was kind of excited Saturday night about a decision I had made to be more visibly queer, and then waking up to this…my decision decades ago to just be quietly queer and not announce unless asked directly feels like maybe more wise. (I’m lucky that I’m also asexual, I guess. It’s easier to handwave it/hide it all for the homophobes.)
Here’s what the Lt Gov did: https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/12/patrick-c…
Basically, posted this horrendous quote (OF COURSE it was a scripture, this is why I’m a humanist agnostic minister) about “reaping what you sow”, deleted it when called on his crap, made the excuse that it was a “previously scheduled Tweet”, ignoring the fact that it didn’t follow the format/wording of his other Sunday Tweets, is basically a cancer on society.
So… can’t help but notice that his official response definitely still pushed “gays are sinful” and added “burdensome to good christians” AND repeated “will reap what they sow”.
I mean I have a long standing “fuck that dude” stance on Dan Patrick, but seriously: fuck that dude.
Oh, yeah; “Fuck that dude” is the only possible reaction to his massive asshattery and douche-canoery.
Oh, yeah, I saw that! And sort of shrugged cynically because what do you expect?
But I haven’t really seen anything about Rick Scott’s response? Like, he went down to Orlando to talk to the mayor, sheriff, etc. and established a state of emergency so that resources could be directed to the victims, but as far as I’m aware, that’s it – purely logistical (which yes is good but what is he going to do about future shootings? and there *will* be future ones if nothing is done!)
I see you, fellow Texan. This is exhausting and depressing and makes me so angry and sad.
Thanks for this Nicole! I was having a hard time yesterday and was hoping there’d be an OT. I’ll be keeping this page open today.
I came back from camping and limited internet to the news. It sucks that we can’t just mourn, because we have to be angry. I’m so angry that the GOP, whose homophobia and idiot gun control policies caused this, get to tweet about “thoughts and prayers” and that they’re already trying to capitalize on this as a “terrorism” thing, politically, instead of admitting that the blood is on their hands. You caused it you caused it you caused it.
(I also don’t want to make this about me, but I don’t know how to… publicly react, because I am still semi-closeted as a bisexual, and so I want to be a good “ally” and help out, but if I’m thinking about self-care, I don’t want to say anything at all, I just want to sit in my room, where there is no gender or sexuality or guns.)
I just want everyone here to know that I love and value you, as well as your sexuality, your gender, your race, and your religion or lack thereof. Those are all beautiful things about you. If anything bad happened to you, the world would be worse for it.
Yes, this.
If there’s an afterlife with any justice, the GOP and NRA will be spending it just…sitting in the immediate aftermath of these scenes. Sitting there, staring at the things they’ve done. Forever.
Oh my God, I am also a semi-closeted bisexual having a difficult time with this! Thank you for this post.
Same here! It was getting to the point where I was ready to start being more open about my sexuality… and then this happened. I can’t really describe my feelings now.
The GOP response makes me sick. Anyone who has ever cringed at the sight of two men kissing has more in common with the shooter than the people he murdered. Anyone who talks about Latinos and Mexicans the way Trump does has no business dishonouring the dead with claims of sympathy or a common political cause.
I am a semi-closeted bisexual because I am not allowed to be out and pursuing ordination in my denomination and because if I may not be allowed to have a relationship with my nieces and nephew if I am out to my husband’s family. It hurts my heart. I know I am not going to be able to hide much longer, and feel ashamed for doing so as long as I have.
I am so sorry. That is a shitty situation to be in. (I’m pastoring full-time while doing my MDiv and you aren’t alone, I have so many friends who have had to choose between their denomination and their sexuality/gender identity. It’s the WORST. All the hugs to you.) <3
Thanks. I hope that things change for us soon, but it’s not promising. Honestly, I think it would be way easier to do a denominational change, as much as it would hurt, than to be told I couldn’t see or talk to those kids.
That must be so hard. I can’t imagine training to work in an explicitly homophobic organisation, one that may require me to preach homophobia. I used to belong to the Edinburgh Liberal Jewish Community, and the rabbi there got halfway through training in an Orthodox seminary and then realised he really couldn’t, because he’s gay. He retrained as a Liberal rabbi and is bloody fabulous, helping blaze the path for LGBT rights. He’s one of the co-authors of the same-sex marriage service in Liberal Judaism. He’s in a mixed-faith relationship and fights for greater acceptance of those as well. (Also he’s a good scholar and amazing singer and generally lovely.) I run into them at Pride every year, and half the community goes along to hold up the rainbow banner and support them, even the straight ones.
If there turns out to be a better denomination you can move to, I really hope that’s possible for you.
Thanks. I am hoping a change will come through soon. I vote in favor of the GLBT community in our denominational meetings. I love our theology so much, it hurts to see it twisted to exclude and deny people dignity.
The news that the shooter was a practicing Muslim and may or may not have had BPD was probably like Christmas to a lot of people.
The fact that this shitheel managed to tick so many of the boxes that will inevitably drown out the fact that he MURDERED FIFTY PEOPLE WITH A LEGALLY OBTAINED ASSAULT RIFLE makes me fucking furious.
I was happy that one of CNN’s experts last night explained that there’s no statistical link between “mental illness” and terrorism (because everybody seems to mean hearing voices and whatever when they say mental illness, rather than eating an entire pizza and watching Netflix while sitting next to a pile of laundry).
Yes! And hearing voices doesn’t cause you to go out and shoot people, either! A good friend of mine has schizophrenia and is one of the gentlest souls I know. This demonisation of people with mental illness needs to stop. It makes us no more likely to be violent, but it makes us a hell of a lot more likely to be victims of violence.
I do, in fact, have a friend with intrusive violent thoughts, sometimes manifesting as voices telling him to hurt people. His response to this is to be absolutely horrified, and to work very hard at not listening to those voices, pursuing therapy, etc.
I thought Maria Bamford’s explanation on intrusive thoughts v. psychosis on Colbert was simple but effective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk1lbSDQXYo
And he was an abusive asshat to his ex wife.
Along with the victims’ families and friends and queer Latinxs, I feel for queer and trans Muslims in all this. 🙁
I saw a gleeful tweet (in an article, not someone I follow, thankfully) about how thrilled someone was that the shooter was both Muslim and a registered Democrat. It’s vile.
Jesus fuck. There’s nothing to be fucking gleeful about in this entire goddamn situation.
Seriously. Unfortunately it was part of a whole list of tweets from people celebrating the deaths of queer people. I felt physically sick after reading it.
I’ve been short of breath since Sunday, and I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence, or my lungs being too full of anger and despair to take in enough oxygen.
Well, if it keeps up, I hope you get it checked out, but I hear you. I didn’t sleep at all Sunday night, and while I’ve slept the last couple nights, I wake up feeling angry and sad and unrested, so I’m not sure how much good it’s doing. I’m also pretty bad about reading things that I know are going to upset me, (like an article about a North Carolina minister who preached a 45 sermon about Orlando, including a phrase along the lines of “I wish the government would line up the rest of them in front of a firing squad and finish the job) and my tendency to provoke myself into anger is NOT helping. I hope you’re smarter than I am, and please do take care of yourself. The planet needs as many of us non-horrible people as possible to stick around and put up a fight.
My asthma also tends to flare up around the time of my period, which I just started. Iron supplements seem to help, as do breathing and relaxation exercises.
But also, I have anger and sleeplessness. Those aren’t helping the whole issue.
I’m sure. So far I haven’t figured out how to be less angry, but I’m trying to allow extra time for sleep, so it’s not as bad if I have trouble sleeping. It helps a little. Take care.
I’ve found that Queen’s later work is pretty encouraging, and gives me a good outlet for the energy.
Semi-closeted bisexual married to a man…I’m right there with you. I’ve always been a righteous anger machine about this stuff even before I started acknowledging being bi, so it’s nothing new for me to do…but I found it much harder to respond to Facebook criticism last night. I had to nope on out of an argument because of my rage, while simultaneously feeling like I didn’t deserve to feel personally affronted and attacked because…nobody knows about me, really.
Just popping up to affirm you are 100% entitled to feeling personally affronted in case you need to hear it. You’re feeling personally affronted because it is about you even if nobody knows, now or ever.
Yes. I’m a not completely out bi woman married to a man and I feel this. I don’t want to make this about me, but I feel like this is an attack on my people and it feels like a punch to the gut. I don’t think I’ve cried about the news since 9/11, but I cried my heart out yesterday. And I don’t quite know how to react.
I’ve been slowly, slowly becoming more visibly queer and finding more queer and queer friendly communities (like the toast). I bought a bi pride t-shirt to wear to Chicago Pride in two weeks (you guys, I’m marching in Pride with my CHURCH and I still can’t believe it). I’ve been thinking I’d post a picture of myself at Pride to FB and let people draw their own conclusions.
I finally decided that I don’t need to make any big declarations on FB today (although I still may do it) – I just need to let myself grieve and do a few things that feel useful. There’s a vigil in Boystown in Chicago tonight and I think I may go, so I can be with my people and mourn our losses.
Sara Ryan (YA author) wrote this short blog post that kind of summed up my feelings about needing to feel visible – http://sararyan.com/2016/06/deep-cover/
Another semi-closeted bi woman here, married to a straight man. I have so many conflicted feelings about not wanting to avoid being appropriative and co-opting grief of the community, even though I fall under the umbrella. I’ve rarely gone to gay bars and clubs, especially in the years since being with my husband, and I’m pretty straight passing. However in the past few months, I’ve thought about coming out completely, mainly for the sake of visibility and being honest with myself, and now it feels more right than ever to own it.
I still think back to this dipshit childhood friend of my husband’s who said he couldn’t understand the point of Pride and that it was just an opportunity for people to look slutty and get drunk. Of course I ripped him a new one, but I can’t stop thinking about how very important Pride is and the necessity of safe physically spaces for queer people, and why can’t we just let people fucking live their lives without fear? Why is that so hard?
You are not obligated to publicly react if you feel unsafe or unwell doing it. You need to be your own ally before anyone else’s and that means prioritizing self-care.
Thank you the-toast (and associated communities) for being a safe space right now when it feels like everywhere else is garbage. I couldn’t even turn the radio on for my 10 minute drive to work this morning without hearing about how we just really need to focus on mental health care.
SO FRUSTRATING the mental health thing. It sounds to me like the guy wasn’t mentally unwell. Just your average rage machine domestic abuser type. Which isn’t exactly good or nice, but doesn’t count as mental illness.
Man, wouldn’t it be cool if public discussions about access to mental health care happened in contexts that weren’t “man look at this crazy* guy who just killed a bunch of people, sure must be crazy, huh.”
*they’ve learned to use the right clinical terms, but we all know that these folks mean “crazy” when they use them.
Man, if only anyone was going to ACTUALLY focus on mental health care.
You know, in a helpful way.
In a way that would, say, make it easier for people with mental illness to escape abusive relationships, and thus lower their chances of being murdered. For instance.
Oh Toasties. I hope everyone’s taking care of themselves as best they can. I’ve been quite on edge all morning, so I’ve been googling yarn shops and watching Brooklyn 99 to try and calm down.
I’ve also suddenly realised that I know next to nothing about queer history, aside from some vague notions about Stonewall, and was wondering if any Toasties had recommendations for books, films, etc. about any aspect of it? It’s basically an excuse to talk about awesome queer people from the past, but I’d love to hear about anything people wanted to share.
For a British perspective, the recent film Pride is a really interesting look at some queer stuff from the 80s, connected to Labour and the unions and the miners’ strike. Also it’s a really good film. So many emotions but ultimately uplifting.
Seconding Pride. That film was amazing.
But don’t see it if you’re not okay with crying lots.
Thank you! I saw Pride when it came out, and this seems like a good time to dig it out again. The part where they sing Bread and Roses in the town hall has stuck with me.
Autostraddle has a lesbian history series! http://www.autostraddle.com/read-a-fcking-book-od…. And this blog post offers a very good context for it. http://notchesblog.com/2016/05/18/the-question-of…
Can’t wait to read this, thank you! Really looking forward to the article about Vita Sackville-West.
There is a LOT of material to cover, what do you want to know?
For the 1800s queer experience and the emergence of nascent ideas that being queer was a Thing, an identity rather than a predilection, and that therefore being straight was also an opposite thing, I like Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb.
For finding out about historical figures you may not have known were queer, who had long-term and relatively functional same-sex relationships, read Outlaw Marriages by Rodger Streitmatter.
For a good overview on the 1900s in the US, watch Before Stonewall (1984) and After Stonewall (1999).
For how queers have been fucked over by society, read/watch Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, about intergenerational queer trauma (“Dykes To Watch Out For” is extra credit), everything by Audre Lorde and James Baldwin for how race and sexuality intersect, and watch Paris Is Burning and How To Survive A Plague to see how the queer community was impacted by HIV/AIDs.
I also like the book Coming Out Under Fire, which discusses how WWII brought queers together and created the template for what became queer communities, and Gay New York, which talks about the gay male scene in NYC from the late 1800s to the 1940s.
Important people to know are Audre Lorde, Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin, and Pauli Murray. Also, if you can name a poet from 1830-1930, or an Old Hollywood star, or anyone from the Harlem Renaissance, they were probably queer. Yep, even that person.
Thank you so much, that’s really helpful and informative. I’m not sure yet exactly what I’d like to know about, but they all sound interesting, especially Strangers and Coming Out Under Fire.
Also, finding out famous-person-from-the-past-I-admire was queer is one of my favourite things, so I’ll be sure to look into the Old Hollywood stars. (Oh, which reminds me: I found out recently that Siegfried Sassoon and Ivor Novello once had a fling, which makes me unbelievably happy.)
I took a Literature & AIDS class in college that was just fantastic for queer history — though focused on the 80s, of course, and mostly about gay men. A couple things that stand out from and about that time period:
Angels in America (both the play and the HBO miniseries)
My Own Country by Abraham Verghese (also about immigration and Appalachia and just generally underrepresented stuff)
Jeffrey, by Paul Rudnick
And the Band Played On, by Randy Shilts
The Normal Heart, by Larry Kramer
Oh, wow. My Own Country is about my college town, but I’d never heard of it. Thanks for the rec – I’m gonna have to track that down.
ETSU represent?? I grew up in another of the cities tri. It’s a good book.
Fantastic, thank you! That sounds like an amazing class.
Angels in America is amazingly powerful. Thanks for these other recs.
Highly recommend Stone Butch Blues by Lelie Feinberg. It’s fiction with some events taken from the author’s life, and parts of it are an absolute gut punch but it’s completely worth reading. Lots of trigger warnings, but it’s a beautiful piece of writing.
That sounds really interesting, thank you! I’ll take a look.
If you’re interested in some Canadian content here is a documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN4_8eurids
“Track Two is a documentary film about the 1981 Toronto bath house raids and riots and the events that precipitated them. It is a rare and unique record of a watershed moment in the gay liberation movement in Canada.”
Absolutely! I’m British, but definitely want to read about places other than here.
Charity and Sylvia by Rachel Hope Cleves (about a lesbian couple in colonial America and the community they were a part of), Passions Between Women by Emma Donoghue (lesbian/bisexual history of the early modern period), Outlaw Marriages by Rodger Streitmatter (profiles of various same-gender couples who contributed to American history and culture), The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood by Diana McLellan (about the early history of lesbians and bisexual women in Hollywood.) I’d also second grumblyqueer’s recommendation of Strangers.
Thank you, they all sounds excellent! I’m especially excited to look into The Girls.
For American lesbian/bisexual history, there’s Lillian Faderman’s Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, and To Believe in Women, as well as many of her other books, though those are the two I’ve read and can recommend. Also Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence is a great anthology.
Omg, Lesbian Nuns sounds amazing. Thank you so much!
If you want more of a potpourri to browse, my friend HBBO blogs semiregularly about queer history topics that come up in her reading and research, and the tag makes pretty great reading by itself or with the rest of the blog! Lots of book recommendations as well as article links and cool stuff.
Thank you, for friend has a really cool blog! I may well get lost in it this evening.
Two things:
1. John Boswell, a historian at Yale, focuses on European same-sex relations from pre-modern times and has several popular press books.
2. The first volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality has a great framework for thinking about it, although not much empirical/narrative
We as Americans have demonstrated that we’re really good at a few things: invading other countries, yelling at each other, and killing people with guns.
I wish we would cultivate some different values and hobbies.
Also enslaving people longer than most other nations, locking up record numbers of our citizens for non-violent crimes, and raping our female college students. A very impressive list.
And genocide. Ugh.
I mean, I know we’re good at some good things, too, but now you have me focused on the bad things and I can’t think of them right now. But I don’t think we’re hopeless. I think we DO have good things to offer. We just have to actually DO IT, which for way too many people, sadly, is easier said than done. 🙁
Please don’t group me in with a “We as Americans” statement. Yes, I’m an American. Yes the government that is supposed to represent me does terrible things. Yes, I am white and benefit from 500 years of settler colonialism, anti-blackness, and racism in general.
But the people who were killed in Orlando were queers – and mostly Latinix queers – people who are routinely seen as un-American or less than American or “other” to America. I am in American and of America and benefit from America, but America also wants to kill me. I don’t share those values.
I’m mostly just numb. But LMM’s sonnet at the Tonys got me.
Text here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/theater/lin-man…
If you can watch it, watch it: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/tonys-2016…
The Tonys was such a lovely respite last night. I cried with joy and sadness for three solid hours. James Corden was a true delight and it was just so inclusive and celebratory and so, so, so needed. Thank you all.
I was very glad that my friends and I had a party planned, that I got to hug some fellow queers and be reminded that there is love and joy and music and beauty in this world and that one asshole with a gun can’t stop all that.
IT ME. So many tears and laughs and all that. I was so thankful it was the Tonys airing and not some other awards shows that would just not get it right. Theater is quickly becoming my very favorite art form, because the people in it are not only immensely talented, but seem so warm and inclusive. <3<3
LMM National Treasure handled it gracefully and beautifully and perfectly. I’ve watched it so many times and cry each time.
And now I’m weeping in my cubicle at work again. Thank you for sharing this.
Oh my god. Oh my god. That beautiful man.
The Tonys ended up being exactly what I needed yesterday- there was so much focus on kindness and inclusivity, from the opening “this could be you” song to LMM’s sonnet to the opening address- it was note-perfect.
OT: I have only just now realized with that LMM does not stand for Lucy Maud Montgomery but actually stands for Lin-Manuel Miranda.
OOT: I love your username! #union
Heh, both work.
Thanks, it’s been my screen name since I found the internet, and I love it, though I occasionally get email for any number of different nonprofits in several countries.
I’m just kind of numb in that way that means the real grief is coming later when I’m not expecting it. It probably doesn’t help that I’m not out in real life, so most of the things I’ve seen in my social media circles is very… othering. And of course this is just reinforcing my fear about coming out at all. I’d been working myself up to it when all the bathroom laws passed, so I backed away. And now… sigh. I just don’t know. I’m scared. Yet staying in the closet is starting to feel like a lie that won’t let me breathe.
Oh honey. I wish I could give you a hug.
The thing that is so hard to see from that terror of coming out place where you are is how GOOD it feels to authentically connect with people once the truth is out. If it goes well, it can feel incredible. Of course no one can guarantee it will go well, and I don’t know your situation or if it is practically safe for you (could you lose housing or funding for school or are the people you know likely to become violent?) but if you can come out to just one person you trust first, that might help.
If it helps, there is good news, too. Often this shit comes as retaliation, of course. The same weekend, (not claiming this is causally related, btw) a judge in Oregon ruled that “nonbinary” is a legal gender there, now, since apparently their language for sex/gender change was just “change to another sex/gender”, not specifically “the opposite” or anything.
So thing’s are looking up in Oregon!
And, I don’t know what your situation is, but I came out fully when I announced the Oregon good news on Facebook, which I think was Saturday (it seems like forever ago), or rather completely fully, when I told my boyfriend last night. He said he knew, and was surprised and dismayed that I’d been afraid to tell him (for a year I was afraid)
Nothing’s changed for me. The relatives that hated me and cut off contact from me months ago still hate me. The friends and family who loved me still do. The abusive ones are still abusive.
I can’t claim that you don’t risk violence against you – I don’t even have a job right now, and I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I would come out at work – but I do know that not coming out can hurt, and as this tragedy shows, even people who are closeted, going to a safe space can be hurt. I know that sounds like the opposite of comforting, but if there’s a risk you might die anyway, die being yourself. Live being yourself.
I’m sorry if this is rambling or preachy or too too inspirational (TM) but right now I can’t help it. I’m trying my best. I’m saying I understand. I wasn’t out until just now. It is risky. It could be worth it. There is a huge chance it’ll change nothing (except coming out at work). Make your own decision, but know that I support you, that the rest of us at The Toast support you, that there is support within the LGBTQ+ community, even when it goes back to its normal, insular, rest-of-the-acronym-other-than-gay ways.
*hug*
oh haha sorry that was really long oops
I had the same feeling as I’d only told a few of my closest friends that I’m bi. Sharing the news on facebook yesterday I found myself choosing my words very carefully so as not to align myself as part of the LGBT community or other myself from it, instead tiptoeing ambiguously around it. After some thought, I wrote a post explaining that I felt the need to stand openly with my LGBT brothers and sisters at this time, and publically identified myself as bisexual for the first time.
The post has been liked by colleagues, former teachers, aunties, cousins, old friends and even my grandma. They have all been overwhelmingly positive. I feel guilty for “making it about me” but I’d like to think I’m adding my voice at a time when it’s most needed. Obviously I’m lucky to be in a position where it’s possible for me to do this, and I’m glad I did.
Oh, I’m so glad you did too! Thank you so much for sharing that story.
That’s awesome. Congratulations!
People like you doing this are making it easier for people in my kid’s generation to live as themselves. Thanks for being so brave and for being you. 🙂
Congratulations. Welcome to Bi Club, we have the best flag. <3
That’s funny. My best friend is bi (I’m lesbian) and she HATES the bi flag and wants the rainbow one because she hates pink. 😀 Takes all sorts….
When you were posting this 2 hours ago I was also commenting downthread how worried I was for people like you, and how this will make it even harder for you, especially if you live in central Florida where it’s super conservative everywhere you turn and you probably know someone personally affected (if not yourself!) because Pulse is so major.
I’m so sorry, I wish I could make it better. I myself had started to consider being more visibly queer, because I was feeling pretty safe, and now I’m wondering if I should, if it’s too much politicized identity to embrace. None of us want to make it about ourselves, but this kind of major terrorism will have an impact on us, so we have to think about these things and consider carefully.
It’s OK to be scared. I wish you didn’t have to be. But you have very good reason for fear. It’s OK to stay closeted as long as you need to be, as long as it protects you. It’s not a lie to hide from hateful murderers. And I understand how hard it is to stay in the closet, too. Come out to breathe free here and anywhere else you feel you can. Any choices you make have my support. Even when those choices change. I trust your judgment. ::Toasthugs::
Sunday morning I was playing candy crush in bed surrounded by soft, fluffy cats when a fb notification popped up “[friend] has checked in safe in Orlando” and I just felt angry and resigned that we were here once again. And of course, as I learned more all those feelings just snowballed and it seems so trite but I don’t want to live on this planet anymore! I don’t! I’m so sick of this bullshit.
And then we watched The VVitch because we’d rented it the night before but I stipulated it had to be watched during daylight hours, and it didn’t deliver what I wanted it to (though it was good) but it felt appropriate to watch a movie about how fear and hatred can rip you apart.
I spent the day hiding from the news by watching Poldark. I can’t be online when tragedies are happening any more, and I can’t regurgitate the same thing everyone else is saying on facebook. Grief is personal. Obviously this is a horrible thing, my friends list doesn’t need to see what I have to say about it. I’m still processing it myself. When the Paris terror attacks happened I spent two days in utter, utter fury, cleaned my house like it never has been before because I was just so mad and didn’t really sleep because I was trying to figure out how we, collectively, all of us, could stop everything going to shit further and stop terrorism in general. After two days of frightening my cat and my housemate the best answer I could come up with is love and inclusivity, and not for the usual peace-loving hippy reasons. You don’t fight terror by bombing the shit out of where you think terrorists are hiding out. You erode their power base by making sure the likely recruits (poor, uneducated, young people) are not isolated and alienated to the point where they’re rich pickins for the first charismatic leader to cross their path. They need a stake in the community and a place where they belong. And probably some good mental health care too. Oh, and education.
So. Yeah. I don’t know what to say or think about today yet, apart from the obvious. Strong gay ally. I’ve rescued a lesbian from her abusive family and now she’s been living in my house for two years. I read that stuff was happening at the club last night and I’ve barely left my bed in the twenty-four hours since. She hasn’t either. I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t know what to say to my young bi friend who told me today that the world is a shit place to be in apart from “Absolutely.”
So. I marathoned Poldark in the hopes that a good bonnet drama would be sufficiently distracting and maybe the ~romance~ of it all would sweep me away, as I’m half-heartedly attempting to be less of a robot, emotionally speaking.
The romance didn’t sweep me away. All the ladies in the show need to kick Ross out of the farmhouse and shack up together, raising their kids in perfect harmony. That idiot wastrel can drink himself into the grave. That other idiot who proposed to the wonderful spinster while she was stuck in the middle of a riot and scared out of her mind can take to the sea. Ross himself can bugger right off on whatever stupid white knight bullshit he’s gotten himself into this time and just be pretty all the way over there. He can come home sometimes but he needs to be out of the house by morning.
In short: Team Tilney all the way when it comes to hot dudes in bonnet dramas.
TEAM TILNEY FOREVER.
I tried to watch Poldark as it aired. I only made it a couple of episodes in before I was done with Ross and just didn’t tune in again.
I’ll probably keep watching but I just don’t know that I’ve got it in me to be all swoony about it or him. I love the lefty socialism anti-class system perspective he has but I think I must be just that far over listening to dudes in general. (Gonna take more than some good shoulders and a pretty chest rug to keep me interested in your shenanigans, buddy.) I’m looking forward to his wife getting all empowered and making it all work smoothly on the farm while he’s away because she has to.
Tilney, however. How great would he be to have around the house!? He’d be the best! Excellent social skills. Empathy. Gentleness. A job. Danceability. *Such* an understanding of muslin. Dream man.
No dark, anti-social brooding!
Don’t forget Tilney’s wit and sarcasm! He can hold a real conversation and will happily (or ironically) discuss trashy novels!
I think half of my problem with Ross was the actor. I still haven’t forgiven the terrible storyline from The Hobbit movies. (I realize it’s not his fault, but just UGH.)
Thanks so much for this. I’m so far removed from the situation that my social media statuses would be a useless echo. But sometimes I selfishly worry about what people think when I’m the only person not incessantly posting about the tragedy.
I’m really worried about the people in Central Florida who I personally know are in the closet and struggling with accepting their queerness because they are very conservative and believe that it’s Wrong, and who might be slowly getting therapy and working towards being happier, and now they have this huge act of homophobia in their faces. Plus they’re already super conservative (and a little bit racist), and it’s someone with a Middle Eastern name and Muslim faith? I can’t reach out to these people because they don’t want anyone to know that they’re queer (I found out because friends of friends know that I’m queer and asked me for advice, but the people in question don’t know that about me), and all I can do is tell my friends they need to call and be there to talk to. But what about all the other people who don’t have someone who knows and who has a non-straight view of it??? I’m so so worried for all the closeted kids. Central Florida can be incredibly conservative outside the Orlando and Tampa-St Pete metro areas (and even inside them).
Oh Toasties, I cannot with the shooting, so here’s something else:
How do I deal with a colleague who believes in psychics? Is there some magical thing I can say to fix them?
Probably not!
People want to believe all kinds of impossible things — like eating outside for brunch or that albums by The Beatles are good. The human heart and the human brain are both equally weird.
Dear Mike Bevel,
Ouch.
Love,
A Beatles Fan
The point is, I love you.
“eating outside for brunch”
I like to think I’m pretty open-minded, but I DO NOT get those people. Don’t they know about bees??
Don’t think so, and not sure why you would need to. Can you nod and politely change the subject?
The Venn diagram of people who listen to rational arguments about why psychics are bullshit and people who believe in psychics is two entirely separate circles.
I do not think I would cope well with a colleague who believes in psychics; you have my sympathies.
I am extremely cynical about most (if not all) forms of supernatural/spiritual belief, and often feel like there must be, as you say, some magical thing to say to fix people. I do my best to remind myself that the number of people who have had their minds changed by people pointing out that what they believe is nonsense is almost certainly very low. It’s also quite possibly the case that they have already thought deeply about it themselves; part of me thinks “but if I just pointed it out, they’d realise! What if they’ve never heard this argument before!”. They probably have. I am unlikely to be able to say anything that they’ve never heard or considered before, and will not magically change their mind by presenting them with a new way to think about things. All I can suggest is to not bring the subject up, and try to remind yourself (through gritted teeth, if necessary), that life is a rich tapestry.
I misread this as “physics” and thought you were stuck working with a very enthusiastic physicist.
Me too…
And if so, you probably can’t fix them.
Better chance with the psychics.
“Yanno what? I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be ‘physicists’.” *bonk* *bonk* *bonk*
It’s possible that believing in psychics helps your colleague cope with what is, objectively speaking, a pretty fucked-up world. Unless the belief is hurting them, why would you want to take that away?
Now, actually listening to your colleague TALK about psychics is something else entirely, up with which you should not have to put. But hopefully you can just gently turn the conversation if it comes up.
I love that you made sure not to leave that preposition dangling, this English teacher bows to you
Ha, I just really like the glorious but sadly apocryphal Winston Churchill quote about contorting a sentence so it won’t end with a preposition: “That is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put”. I’m a mellow descriptivist type* and don’t actually mind terminal prepositions!
*mostly.
Are they bothering you about psychics? Or just believing in psychic abilities in general?
I don’t understand what the problem is, except that you want to “fix” someone else to conform to your worldview (which, may or may not be empirically right, but what difference does it make?). Is your colleague’s belief in psychics affecting your work? Then address the part about the work, and roll your eyes when they bring it up. Are they harassing you about attending a seance? Then firmly but politely decline.
I happen to hang out with a lot of psychics–and astrologers, witches, tarot readers, mediums, reiki healers, etc. Personally, I fall into the spectrum of skepticism, but have met a few people in there who have opened the door a little. My favorite psychic calls it, “hyper-intuition,” which, if you’ve ever met someone who just *knows* things they couldn’t possibly know, this is a pretty good way of describing it. Being hyper intuitive is based in reading micro cues like body language, and being able to understand how events will unfold in a split-second assessment of circumstances, without really thinking through the logic of it. It’s not magic, just a talent/inclination, like drawing. I’m like, “How you do make your hand go the way the line in your brain goes?!” It’s kind of like, “How do you understand things in a situation that are invisible to me?!” And other than that, it’s just fun, as long as you’re not putting yourself into debt with scam artists.
Yes. There is nothing here to fix and it’s sort of condescending to assume there is. I am a skeptic but also find a lot of value in tarot and in horoscopes. I’d love to pay to have a professional reading done sometime because I think it would be really interesting. That doesn’t mean I’m totally irrational or need fixing.
see also: hardcore atheists asking how they can argue people out of religious beliefs
you know what, you’re absolutely right. there is no point in arguing because they (you?) were almost certainly not argued into their religious beliefs in the first place. it is a lost cause.
just resign yourself to walking that minefield every time you meet someone new. of wondering whether they’ll hate you if they find out you’re queer, if they’re one of the people who voted to try to pass those anti-abortion amendments in your state–three in the last decade–if they think a fetus is a person but a woman, well, who knows!, if they think men and women are “made for” different things, if they think the literal apocalypse is coming any day now (wishful thinking!) and therefore we don’t need to worry about the future, if they’re going to look at a natural disaster and say, “god did that because they were sinners”.
watch someone beat themselves up because they don’t feel their god and they want to so badly and not being able to makes them think they’re worthless. or because they think their faith not being strong enough is why they suffered some random horrible misfortune, or because they think they must have deserved it but they don’t know why, or because they have pinpointed whatever sin made them “deserve” it. or because they think there must be some reason they’re alive, some plan, if only someone would tell them what it is. know that they most likely won’t believe or accept any attempt at comfort or reassurance that isn’t framed as coming from their religious tenets.
but whatever you do, don’t try to argue with them, because religious beliefs are special and important and that would be disrespectful. or if you’re going to anyway, at least couch your argument in terms of them being totally right! about the broad strokes of whatever it is they believe, and just misinterpreting god’s will. they won’t listen to anything else, so either lie and humor and validate at every turn, tie yourself into knots trying to fit whatever you’re saying into their rigid framework, or don’t engage at all. they can quote scripture to justify ruining people’s lives, but don’t you dare say their god isn’t real and therefore they have no business using “what god wants” as the basis for laws, for violence, because that will just make people hate you and cling even harder to their beliefs and pretend that other people’s screams of anguish are persecution.
look, this isn’t sarcasm. it’s despair.
The reason isn’t because particular beliefs are special and important, it’s because it really isn’t possible to change another person’s philosophy of life by way of pithy remarks and diagrams. Sorry, but human relationships will never not be a minefield, no matter what the prevailing social views are. People are unpredictable and irrational–yes, you and me too. We like to think that there is such a thing as substantive debate or incontrovertible argument, but usually the best we can hope for is that people will come to recognize your point of view and good intentions simply by getting to know you as a person. You’re not obligated to try and change anyone’s mind, but don’t pretend that you’re accomplishing anything by provoking arguments.
Also I would argue that “reading horoscopes and mentioning it sometimes” is a substantively different ball of wax than campaigning for harmful public policy
Right. There’s a substantive difference between “believes in a deity of some sort” and “Pat Robertson.”
I had a neighbor’s daughter ask me once about whether she should listen to the psychic who told her there were “bad vibes” about the electrical work in the kitchen- I went with the classic “people who have sensitivities to things the rest of us don’t might think of it as being supernatural. It’s very possible she can smell bad electrical stuff and the rest of us can’t so you might want to get that checked out.” But I was really worried they would bring up “unlucky” stuff or the catch-all “evil spirits.” I guess I worry more about the abuse of the belief than the belief itself?
I’m reaaaally unclear on the specifics of your colleague’s behaviour.
If they’re being inappropriate or offensive to you: that sucks, and I don’t know if there’s much you can do other than firmly state that you don’t believe in it and that while you respect their beliefs, you’d rather that they didn’t try to tell what you do based on them.
If they’re hurting themselves based on their belief: that also sucks. The first helpful thing you can do is drop the idea that you have to “fix” your colleague. Then you can try to offer them support with whatever it is they’re struggling with, and maybe gently ask them questions.
If they’re doing neither of the above: sometimes people just have beliefs that you (and I) don’t have. It’s ok. Life is a rich tapestry. Nod politely, change the subject as soon as you can, and let it go.
My home care agency has a massive staff turnover, and I’ve had a few support workers recently who are into all sorts of woo. One is a massage therapist and has been giving me massages. She’s an excellent massage therapist, very gentle and intuitive and great at working with chronic pain (which is bloody tricky), but good grief, I wish she’d stop going on about shamanism. (Yes, she’s white British.)
I’m test-driving a theory. Less than a decade into the test-drive, so I feel evidence is insufficient, even if it is strongly in support, so far. My theory is:
We humans believe what we *want* to believe.
So changing a belief is about changing the believer’s desires, which only, properly, comes from withing the believer. I do use this theory as a springboard to push back against hateful/bigoted people. I ask, “Why would you want to believe that?”
Otherwise, others’ beliefs are none of my concern. My life improved exponentially after I accepted that concept.
What do you think of the theory I’m test-driving? Other Toastfriends are welcome to weigh in.
I think there is fear-conditioning, too, based on past experiences or things they saw happen and misunderstood/overextrapolated from.
Otherwise I agree.
I like this theory. And I think it’s true. What they want to believe and sometimes what they need to believe (religious funeral services drove this point home).
That’s a wonderful metric, tying belief to desire.
Hoo boy! I love you all for responding.
To give context to this, I would need to have been smart enough to use a burner account in the first place, so let me just say thank you to everyone, no matter what you said.
I’m just commenting in solidarity because someone I can’t avoid has started talking a LOT about astral projection lately. While I’ve listened and supported some of their logic and respectfully explained why said logic does not convince me, personally, that astral projection is a scientific fact, they seem very dedicated to proving to me that it is real. (previous similar conversations have involved me politely agreeing to disagree while they yell at me that everything is not a competition, so this is going to be a fun summer)
I suppose that would depend on how their beliefs are impacting how you currently deal with them. Is it in your responsibilities as a colleague to “fix” them? In what ways are those beliefs impacting your professional relationship? Is their belief harming you personally? Are they hurting themselves or someone else? Are they making it impossible to accomplish your professional responsibilities?
If they insist on burning up non-work related chatter with discussion of their beliefs, are you comfortable asking them to not discuss the spiritual/metaphysical/religious?
Oh, my Toasties. My heart just hurts. I’m so tired and I don’t have words anymore for all the anger and exhaustion, and I’m so…part of me wants to sit down and give up for an hour or two, and part of me just wants to rage. Is it possible to do both at once?
I grew up in Orlando, and went to Pulse. I even had my first kiss there! I was just in total shock yesterday morning. Rage and hate flooded my senses as well. I had to turn off Facebook notifications because seeing people that had never been and never will step foot inside a gay bar mark themselves “safe” made me a bit sick. Yes, I know why they did it because Facebook pushes a notification to your phone but still. This was especially garbage because an old friend of mine is Latino and goes to gay clubs in the area – luckily he’s safe.
I’ve already written my state reps and Congressional representatives. I was unsure of going to Pride in October because I couldn’t get a concealed carry permit for a few more months, but then I realized Pride will be secure because of what has happened. So even if it’ll be a bit of a drive from college, I’ll go, because we must stay and fight.
I’m so sorry, hugs if you want them.
Why do you feel you won’t be safe at Pride without a concealed carry permit when the gunman who shot Pulse up had a concealed carry permit for his guns? Your measure to feel safer would make everyone else feel less safe, and possibly hurt more people if you felt the need to use that gun. Plus, a lot of Prides don’t allow guns at all.
Seconding all of this. Please leave your gun at home.
Not to mention Pulse had ARMED security, and this still happened.
Jacob, if you feel you’re not going to be safe at Pride without a gun, maybe you shouldn’t go. Otherwise, yes, leave it at home.
Many hugs for you and those you know.
I strongly encourage you to wear a bulletproof vest rather than bring a gun to Pride. That gun will not keep you safe. Also, as others said, it’s very much not allowed.
I’ll try to explain why that thought passed through my head. I grew up in a conservative household, and have received firearms training. Guns are not anathema to me. I hate the idea of carrying a gun, but if that’s what I have to do in an era where gay clubs and Planned Parenthood clinics are being shot up, with no recourse in sight, so it goes.
But hell, Pride this year will be more secure than Disney, and as mentioned by other commenters, I couldn’t even bring in a gun if I wanted to.
It’s useful in this instance to understand what happens in shootings like this one, I think. I read a piece about it after the November attacks here in Paris, but I can’t find it now. I’ll try to summarize. The first people who show up in the event of this sort of tragedy are explicitly trained to take out the gunman. If you’re shooting, too, they’ll take you out as well. It’s their first job. They aren’t supposed to stop to help victims and they definitely don’t have time to determine who’s the villain and who decided to play the hero. I can totally understand wanting some sort of sense of security, but I’d recommend investing in a bulletproof vest in that case, not a weapon.
mmmm yeah it doesn’t make a difference to me what your intentions are or how you were raised or what your orientation is; if you decide to arm yourself in a public place, at a celebratory festival no less, then I will be scared of you. There’s no possible way for me to pick you out as one of the “good guys.” You will just be another man with a gun, which to me is always something to be afraid of.
Yeah a big public protest/parade is like the one situation where if you get attacked the cops are gonna show up in time to actually stop it before it’s over, don’t worry about it there and don’t bring anything that’s liable to attract their negative attention
We’re on vacation right now, and I’m so upset we’ll miss Chicago Pride. At first I was bummed but ok with it, but now….
Everyone, please keep posting ideas for what we can do to help. I’ve got to have something positive and constructive to do with this helpless anguish, or I’ll lose my sanity.
i almost immediately started seeing people decrying the use of the rainbow flag in memorials/news/what have you. Because the shooter only attacked “people”. Yes, GAY people. A group that is not new to being targeted by terrorists (remember Eric Rudolph? You know, Christian terrorist?) or having to fear physical harm for merely existing. Stop trying to remove us from our own story.
(general you, not the toast or anyone specific)
My husband, who is normally v v good about this stuff, was immediately like “Why did they have to specify that the shooting was at a gay club, couldn’t they have just said it was at a club” and I was too damn tired to go into it.
A Guardian journalist walked out of a discussion on Sky News for just that reason:
http://gu.com/p/4yvjj?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_t…
I was coming here to post that. Good man.
Good to know the “All Lives Matter!!!!!!” people are consistent I guess.
That’s what I was going to say — these people just MISS THE POINT that there are specific groups of people being targeted and whose lives are marginalized. That’s why we use the rainbow flag, or say black lives matter. All people are people, but not all people are being targeted.
Exactly. Just as all people don’t need special television channels and pride events and history months to ensure their representation. Every month is men’s history month, nearly every station is White Entertainment Television, and straight, cis people aren’t made to feel shame for who they are, so Pride is important. Some people are just never going to get it.
I got in a long and bitter fight on FB with my friend’s relative about this same topic. He would not acknowledge that the victims’ LGBT status was a motivating factor, and then proceeded to misinterpret everything I said. I have never wanted to slap a person so badly in my life.
A friend from my college days posted a picture from a local vigil and had previously posted about how many Saturday nights he has been one of the people partying down around closing time at the local gay club. First comment was a guy saying “why are they flying rainbow flags? they should be red white and blue, etc.” It took all of my restraint not to go off on that guy (not close enough to friend to go attacking people on his facebook page).
I managed to hold it together, mainly worrying about what the retaliation will be like against Muslims and POC (I’m white and LGBT myself), and then I saw how the news is erasing us, and that’s when I started crying.
There’s absolutely no reason to think it wasn’t a homophobic killing. Most of the victims were also Latinx. It doesn’t appear as if they were targeted for that reason, as far as I know, but that doesn’t mean their race should be erased any more than their sexuality, and it will make a difference to how safe the community feels with increased police action. Few enough media people and politicians are discussing the homophobia; practically none of them are mentioning the race of the victims, and that is absolutely wrong.
Agreed, but I think it’s also important to note that what advertisement I’ve seen for the night’s scheduled events DOES make it clear that it was Latin night, that there was a drag show planned, and that there was trans involvement. Especially considering how often people who aren’t white and within the LB portion of the acronym are already erased within the LGBTQ+ community.
Thanks, good to know. I hope that’s properly investigated.
Basically, there were several overlapping sets of vulnerable populations, and this bastard chose to attack them all.
i don’t, what. as opposed to murdering rainbows, or the abstract concept of homosexuality, or what? dude targeted a gay club and announced he was motivated by homophobia, how does that sentence even sound good to someone as it comes out of their mouth
A fair number of Republican politicians have left out who the victims were, too. It makes my blood boil….
Other feelings in reply(triggers, yo)
Yeah, so. Because of a giant mound of medical bullshit, I had to go cold turkey on my ssris. And this is the weekend where I seem to have hit the pointy end of that stick.
Spent Saturday fighting off the sudden crushing depression, up to urges to self harm and a call to a crisis hotline. And then Sunday. I feel like I’ve been punched in the solar plexus. Literally. It hurts.
2 things. Being uninsuraned and not having a doctor, how can I get my meds refilled asafp? And please to be telling me that this is transient and nuerochemical. Not in fact as my lizard brain keeps yelling, a sign that I’m broken and always will be.
<3 you aren’t broken. This is chemical and fixable.
I don’t know about where you could get your meds refilled. Maybe post on the main thread, not as a reply, so more people who might know will see it?
Crisis centers/clinics in your area may be able to help you with meds. If you hit a dead end, can you call the hotline again and ask for recs? It can’t be the first time they’ve come across this. Don’t let that inner monologue win. You know what works and it’s not working right now because it’s not there. All the hugs, if you want them.
You’re not broken. If you were in need of insulin, would that be a sign of failure or brokenness? I view my depression as diabetes of the brain, rather than a personal failing. You have a medical problem, you need medicine, you’re not getting that medicine, and your body is responding accordingly.
Also, *hugs*. I’ve been through SSRI withdrawal, and it’s horrible. I’m not sure what your best options are for quick refills (but do you have a local free clinic? I found my local free clinic to be quite helpful when I was in that situation), but I do have internet hugs.
THIS THIS THIS. Someone once said the exact same thing to me regarding treating SSRIs as insulin. It’s helped immensely when I come up against people who don’t think they’re necessary. They are for me.
I’m so sorry. I wish that I could help.
I second checking with a free clinic. You are going through some difficult physical things what with going cold turkey, and your body / brain doesn’t know what to do exactly. But you can get new meds, and they will make you feel better!
SSRI withdrawal is the worst! except that I find SNRI withdrawal to be its own unique version of the worst.
Luckily, the acute withdrawal does get better. It’s slow and annoying, and you will struggle with amped up depression and/or anxiety symptoms that you may have got used to not feeling so strongly while on the drugs. (In my experience, at least. It’s like the anxiety is always worse because of the physical withdrawal symptoms, as well as because I’ve got used to having its yelling in my head be a bit more muted.)
Try calling a crisis hotline, and see if there’s a low-income/no-insurance medical clinic near you. We have “Volunteers in Medicine” in NEFL and they’re specifically around to help people who aren’t on Medicaid but can’t afford insurance or the ACA exchanges. There’s often a waiting list to be seen, but I found (5 years ago, granted) that calling them and explaining the situation made it possible to find a faster solution.
Hugs. SSRI discontinuation suuucks. Also, lizard brains are lying liars what lie (mine still thinks I’m in a war zone, and it’s been almost a decade), so don’t listen to yours.
Does anybody know the best way to donate to the victims in Orlando? I want to but have a lot of anxiety about sending well-meant donations to the wrong place and it not actually helping anyone… Is the gofundme (https://www.gofundme.com/pulsevictimsfund) the best place to donate?
I might hold off on gofundmes for the moment. Maybe focus on organizations that support LGBT people in the area?
The GoFundMe linked there was set up by an LGBT group in Florida. http://www.eqfl.org/
Okay, that’s good. I read that there were some scam gofundme links being circulated yesterday.
From everything I read, the gofundme is linked with the Zebra Coalition and some other organizations doing direct help to the victims and families.
What about the Red Cross? Someone suggested donating there because they likely would need the money to organize local blood donations? (If anyone can give me a link to an organization they can vouch for as legitimately helping, and that will take my money, I would really appreciate it because I don’t feel at all qualified to figure this out on my own…)
Sadly I don’t have a ton of trust in the Red Cross as a larger organization any more after situations like this…
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cr…
I want to look into giving money to a local LGBT group where I can be more sure that the money will go to at least a LGBT-related cause. Thank you for prompting me to figure out how to do that.
I’m not too fond of the Red Cross, tbh. Working in a non-profit myself makes me more willing to accept that so many of their funds go to administrative/professional costs instead of direct aid, but they’re still a bit sketchy in the way they don’t fully publicize it or the way they divert funds, as that propublica article DeepBueC linked.
OneBlood is the blood drive of choice for Orlando, it appears. They have over 200 buses around FL right now, and centers in five cities. The bus in my neighorbood this morning had an hour+ wait when I got over there, and it’s in a pretty out of the way quiet place (not a lot of people driving by to see it, and it was the early morning period). The phlebotomists in the bus were talking about how their trainers were being pulled in to work hands-on, and some people were being asked to come in on their days off, so they’d have enough staff available. They would probably appreciate assistance to pay overtime or get more buses scheduled this week.
Thank you! I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to donate money to OneBlood, but so far am only coming up with ways to donate blood (which I can’t, for many reasons). If anyone can link me to this let me know- in the meantime I’m searching.
I was looking around, too. Maybe try calling the number on their website? oneblood.org – it’s a toll-free one at the bottom, they might be able to connect you to a development officer who can help.
NO.
Give it directly to LGBTQ orgs or people in the area.
Would you mind telling me why? Sorry if this is a very clueless question. But I still don’t know why this gofundme is bad. Are all gofundme’s bad? In what ways?
(This is why I freak out about donating money to causes I care about. There are so many places that will take my money and I have no idea how to figure out which ones are good and which aren’t.)
My “NO” had nothing to do with the GoFundMe (neither this one specifically nor in general). When I said “NO”, that was me saying don’t donate to the Red Cross, because of the shit way they handled donations after the earthquake in Haiti. Virtually none of it went to relief efforts.
The GFM link is legit and IS going to a local LGBTQ org. That’s fine.
How about these folks? http://www.americasblood.org/where-to-donate.aspx
“ABOUT US:
Founded in 1962, America’s Blood Centers is North America’s largest network of community-based, independent blood programs. Recognized by the U.S. Congress for its critical work in patient care and disaster preparedness and response, the federation operates more than 600 blood collection sites providing half of the U.S., and a quarter of the Canadian blood supply. These blood centers serve more than 150 million people and provide blood products and services to more than 3,500 hospitals and healthcare facilities across North America. America’s Blood Centers’ U.S. members are licensed and regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Our Canadian member is regulated by Health Canada. America’s Blood Centers is not affiliated with the American Red Cross.”
– My anger at this shooting is focused by Igor Volsky, who (further down in his Twitter feed) notes which of the politicians offering their “thoughts and prayers” got big bucks from the NRA.
– Adele has something to say to her critics.
I have been loving Volsky’s posts, but I think there’s something misleading about focusing on NRA donations. Politicians’ votes on this aren’t motivated primarily by NRA money, though it certainly helps. It’s because the NRA can turn out HIGHLY motivated voters against them if they don’t toe the line. If it were just money, we could counter it with donations of our own. But we have to vote like we care as much as the gun nuts do.
I am angry and sad today, and planning on hiding from all social media for a while. Love and hugs and safety and self-care to all my toastie friends.
I will not link to it, as per Nicole’s request, but there is a clip from Sky News of the journalist Owen Jones getting progressively more angry that the presenters he is talking to refuse to acknowledge that the Florida shooting is an explicitly anti-LGBT hate crime. It is so infuriating and vile, but also comforting to see someone challenging their nonsense and refusing to stand for it.
I feel really strange about the news. It is horrible, but for some reason it doesn’t seem quite real; part of my brain is just filing it away under “another US mass shooting; how terrible”. The initial stories reporting ~20 deaths make the new figures even more impossible to grasp. I can’t fully accept that something quite so awful has happened.
I also feel like I’m not allowed to be upset, somehow. So many people are talking about how as queer people they feel even more unsafe, and sharing memories of the clubs they went to to dance and get to feel like themselves. As a bi woman who has only ever been in a relationship with a man, who’s never been to gay clubs or hung out much in majority-LGBT environments (and who lives in the UK, where mass shootings are rare enough not to be on my radar as a threat), I feel guiltily like I’m appropriating other people’s pain and fear. I might be queer, but the way it manifests itself in my life doesn’t really put me in danger. It feels wrong to try to act like I have anything in common with the victims. I want to show solidarity, but I’m scared of being a hypocrite.
I’m super straight, but I have gay friends and family members, and even if I didn’t this would still be killing me because these are people. Real people with lives, real people just like my friends and family and now they’re gone and my heart hurts.
I don’t think you have to be similar to people or know them to feel sad about people dying. (Or maybe I’m just super sensitive because literally any news about people dying kills me. I can’t even watch senseless death on TV. And if there’s even a mention of war I’m crying for at least 10 minutes.)
Of course you don’t need to be similar to people to be sad about them dying, but there’s a different kind of grief and anger when people from a community you are a part of died because they were a part of that community. Like, I can be outraged and sad and disgusted by police murdering black people with impunity, but I am white so I can’t understand how it must feel to be a black person when it happens.
What makes it complicated in this case is that you can identify under the umbrella of LGBT but not be entrenched in the queer community because there’s nothing as visible as skin color to immediately identify us. So for me personally, I feel like it’s my community that’s been attacked but I also know that because I am not loudly out that I am not really in danger of being targeted because of my identity so I feel weirdly like I don’t have the right to be personally outraged.
Of course they are real people and of course it is sad – I would never say that a non-queer person wasn’t allowed to feel sad about people dying just because they weren’t similar to them – but I have seen a lot of members of the LGBT community talking about the visceral distress and fear this has sparked in them because it could easily happen to them. And part of me feels that this is my community and it is an attack on people like me, but another part of me is well aware that I pass for straight 99% of the time and don’t have a lot of experiences in common (like going to gay nightclubs) with many queer people. I just feel very conflicted about my identity, seeing so many people talking about how very personal this feels to them.
You are allowed to be scared that someone might want to kill you if they found out you were queer. You can be scared without talking over other people’s pain. I’m also conflicted. I am straight, but I do feel some of that visceral distress. It’s largely fear for people I’m close to, but also, I do have a lot of those experiences in the community. I’ve been to gay nightclubs with queer boyfriends, I’m close enough that I’m not allowed to give blood because of homophobic regulations. But at the same time, I can always opt out and be safe. So, I’ve mostly stuck with checking in with queer loved ones, retweeting queer people on the way this follows from our general societal homophobia, and dealing with my feelings on my own and now on the Toast.
I struggled with the same thoughts yesterday. I’m non-binary but not really visibly queer. The idea of “coming out” is really sticky to me because I live my life authentically and I don’t hide who I am but I don’t really talk about it either. On the one hand it is realllllyyyy frustrating that my queerness is invisible and that if I want to be seen as anything but cishet I have to basically make a whole thing about telling everyone I meet, but on the other hand I know that I benefit from my ability to pass without even trying, and therefore am a lot more able to be safe from this kind of bullshit. That made me feel really shitty yesterday because it’s not fair and I feel like a coward just allowing people to assume things so I decided to be more forthright about my identity going forward. I don’t really know what form that will take yet but even just tweeting about it to my tiny pool of followers yesterday made me feel better so that was a start at least.
The balance between being able to pass and benefit from that and feeling invisible is so difficult sometimes. I realise that I have it very easy – I am never likely to be in the frontline of anti-LGBT stuff – but it also makes me feel like my identity doesn’t count. Like you, I am trying to be more forthright, but it’s hard.
I’ve been feeling like this, too. I don’t like crowds and noise, so pride parades and bars are not my scene. I’m ace, and I know there’s some arguments going on (on tumblr, which is my main social media stomping grounds) about whether I even qualify as queer. I can’t figure out how to respond authentically to Orlando. One sort of response is expected from allies, another from members. What does all of this make me?
I know I should “just respond from the heart” or whatever, but I don’t know how to do that. I watch how other people act and use that as a baseline for what’s expected of me! I’ve mostly been silent out of confusion, but I know that’s a crappy response, too.
Ace people ARE queer, and any of those Tumblrites who say you aren’t can shove it up their aceantagonistic, gatekeeping pieholes.
Tumblr is honestly one of the most toxic places I’ve ever seen when it comes to identity politics and gatekeeping. I once watched, feeling a bit like I was goggling at an impending trainwreck, a discussion unfold over the course of three or four days that started out with ‘hey, why don’t we use THIS term to describe this sexuality?’, continued to ‘okay, we’re now using this term’, to ‘how dare you use any other term?’, to ‘oh, this term is -phobic maybe, let’s not use it after all’, to ‘how dare you use this new term, it’s -phobic and everybody knows that!?’. Too ready to attack, too ready to exclude.
You’re ace, you’re queer, and the ridiculousness on tumblr be damned. And it’s okay to be confused about how to respond.
Yeah, tumblr discussions, especially on queer topics, are ridiculous. I can’t keep up, and I don’t really try. The people I follow all seem chill but I get the definite feeling that, outside of my little bubble, there are mobs who be all too happy to bother me if I did something they considered wrong.
I’m so glad for toasties. Thank you for the reassurance <3
Listen, the thing to get you through those annoying pedantic Tumblr arguments is this simple truth:
Those are teenage children.
That’s it.
That’s why THOSE specific people are like that.
Why they overreact and tend to perceive anger where there is none.
Why they change their minds about how they define their identities constantly, and how to change the framework of the those identities within those communities
Why they gatekeep and accuse others of being fake or poseurs (Holden Caulfield much?)
They’re teens.
Relax.
It’s a natural teen thing.
Just don’t follow them. Or, if you do, intervene, and facilitate the discussion as you would a confused, hurt teen.
Because that is what they are.
Stop hating them. Stop being angry at them. Do not call them toxic.
They are confused, angry, pubescent children.
The reason your corner of Tumblr is nice and sensible is that your corner is full of adults like us.
Try to remember (and it’s hard to do, and i had to be reminded of this too) that children exist on social media too, and on Tumblr? Their parents aren’t there. They are, essentially, unsupervised.
They.
Are.
Children.
K?
I don’t think the sort of people I’m thinking of are all (or even mostly) teens, though? There definitely are a lot of teens, but the sort of people who are TERFs, or who remember a time where “queer” was mostly used as a slur, do not strike me as teenagers. They’re more likely to also be victims of these people.
I’m pretty sure we’re mutuals but no you’re right, the people you’re thinking of are /way/ more likely to to be 20+ & attacking minors.
Yeah, my experience has been a fair number of adults (some slightly younger or my age–31, and some significantly older) behaving like teenagers rather than actual adolescents.
Oh! From your other comment it seemed you were implying something else, somehow. Sorry. Yes, they’re for sure a separate category. But they’re not the general discourse on gender identity on Tumblr, you know. Not the actual discourse within trans or nonbinary communities. (except see “truscum”)
This is gonna sound conspiracy-theory-ish, but honestly they’re from Reddit, they came to Tumblr b/c they hate “Social Justice Warriors” and they literally stage harassment raids against activists and nonbinary people. The transmedicalists/truscum are, at least.
The TERFs for sure represent an older generation gatekeeping to save their particular *way* of identifying as women, as feminine, as female. You’re right.
(I think they’re bleed-over from followers of TERFy websites tho, and maybe less prevalent than truscums)
But I disagree that it’s limited to Tumblr. This is the situation wherever people freely and often discuss these identities. It’s probably fairly true that Tumblr was where trans and nonbinary trans people took a stand, and therefore where the battle is primarily raging though.
I guess those sound like contradictory things. I hope you understand. If not, I’ll try again later, haha
What with all this, I literally haven’t slept Sunday, 6 AM – 4 PM, and it’s looking like I’ll have to stay up longer. Tbf, I’ve had lifelong insomnia, and my sleep schedule’s been like this for weeks. But now it’s just… <insomnia INTENSIFIES>
Thing is, they aren’t all teenagers. There are plenty of grown adults – well past the age when I’m willing to be lenient – being hateful. Tracking down people in order to be hateful at them. This isn’t tumblr-specific, it’s just that as a platform, tumblr lacks a lot of the tools we used to be able to use to create and maintain healthy environments for everyone.
And I try to be understanding with teenagers when I’m looking at queer-related tags because yes, it does take time to grow and mature, and it can be a scary thing especially if you’re queer. But if you’re old enough to be online, you’re old enough to know that other people have feelings too, and being an adult doesn’t make you immune to being upset.
What makes you think I’m asking you to forgive them or that I’m apologizing for harassment? I’m not. And I apparently misunderstood the person I was replying to. You really don’t need to explain to me, an agender nonbinary trans person, what the fuck it’s like on Tumblr for people like me. Don’t do that, please. I do understand that adult truscums and TERFs stage raids. But most of even the ones who seem adult are not, or are but only barely. That doesn’t excuse actual harassment. I wasn’t talking about that.
I thought that the OP was simply talking about the more harmless but still frustrating way that confused nonbinary kids on Tumblr try to define and redefine their identities, and then enforce those redefinitions on others in a misguided attempt to create community and protect vulnerable people. Which. You know. IS LITERALLY what the OP said.
You and the OP changed the subject or else were talking about two different things. Little kids gatekeeping their own identities in increasingly more specific ways is not the same thing as adult TERFs and truscums staging hate speech harassment raids against trans and specifically nonbinary people, ok?
OKAY. GOOD.
I’m sorry. I’m not trying to talk about how trans people are treated on tumblr. You’re absolutely correct that you know a lot more about that than I do.
I was thinking about the anti-asexual stuff, very vehemently anti-ace, and arguments about whether asexuals are allowed in the queer community that have popped up a lot on tumblr recently. Not honest confusion or gatekeeping within a particular identity.
I let some of my own emotions and teenage memories color my response and I was harsher towards you than was called for. You aren’t the people who put their pain on me when I was younger and it was wrong of me to react like that. Again, I’m sorry.
Tumblr feels so very high school to me. I have a hard time navigating it as an adult. I follow a couple pages that I check occasionally, (there are a couple really good resources/sounding boards for writing diverse characters into one’s stories without being offensive) but I won’t use it as a social media site. It’s absolutely toxic. I made the mistake of disagreeing with someone on there once, and the next thing I knew, all her followers were reblogging what I’d said and her response and basically ganging up on me. Even knowing that the few people I followed were adults, I still felt like the chaperone at the party….
I very carefully follow only Toasties, a rl friend, and some single-topic blogs and fandom people that aren’t inclined towards the drama, so I generally have a very pleasant time on tumblr these days. I used to venture out in some of the tags, but it’s just not worth it most of the time because it really can be weirdly high schoolish even when everyone’s a grown adult.
I miss livejournal communities. Still could be just as ridiculous, but it was easier to avoid.
Point one: Yeah I’ve seen a lot of posts /blaming the shooting on us/, which is bullshit, it’s our community too & we’re allowed to grieve.
Point two: “I watch how other people act and use that as a baseline for what’s expected of me!” As an autistic person this hit me /hard/ because this is how i handle literally every situation thrown at me. You’re /allowed/ to stay quiet because you haven’t processed your emotions, information, or the socially appropriate response yet. Nothing you are doing is wrong and you /are/ part of the community.
Yes, I think we are mutuals! Thank you <3 On one hand, in general, I definitely consider asexuals to be queer! On the other hand, for myself, I feel like I haven’t spent enough time in queer spaces to feel comfortable *taking up space* in queer spaces. I don’t know the people, don’t know the social protocols, don’t feel like I have anything of substance to add…I’m a lurker. Maybe if I lurk long enough that’ll change.
(oh my god I’m so sorry I didn’t see this earlier there is something wrong w/ my email) no that totally makes sense, I wish I had advice but really the only thing I can think of us “make friends with people who will include you” which is–less than helpful, but best of luck in finding something that works for you
SAME not even kidding exactly the same
Re: being not visibly queer. I’m also a bi woman (early 30s) who has only ever had relationships with men and is currently married to one, I feel similarly. I mean, last week I came out to a more visible bi woman, which was the first time I’ve talked about it with anyone but my husband or my therapist.
I just don’t know how to react. I am furious…but I don’t feel like I can (or like I’m ready to) talk about it as hate that directly affects me, because right now it doesn’t. Homophobia and biphobia do affect me, but on a level that isn’t obvious, as it’s never been personally directed straight at me. And I’m not ready to come out, especially not on Facebook…my parents aren’t there, but plenty of coworkers and relatives are.
I posted a link to a post that pinpoints the hypocrisy of Huckabee, Cruz and all for sending prayers while championing homophobic legislation and having sat through a lecture where a pastor called for the death of gay Americans. Then, a conservative high school friend commented by saying that she thought that liberals unfairly paint conservatives as hateful, when they just disagree. Both sides do it, etc.
This led to too much wine. Which led to getting a little salty when I realized she had deleted some of her posts. Which led to me crying from trying to be civil and nearly crying through the Hamilton performance.
Evangelicals are so good at making it all about themselves and their fucking persecution complex. Meanwhile I feel torn to bits and still not able to be civil (my SO and a friend stepped in to argue and did no better), while all she can do is cry about intolerant liberals and both sides do it.
I don’t know. If anybody has any ideas on how to deal with this…
I have a blanket policy that if somebody posts something hateful and ignorant on FB and I am tempted to respond and argue with them I just unfriend them instead. It saves me the headache of trying to reason with awful people who don’t want to hear it, and it also makes my feed a lot less likely to send me into a Hulk-like rage.
Unfollowing is also good. You can ignore them for however long you need the space (or forever) and they’ll never know it, never feel slighted (good if you have an obligation to be “friends” with this person for networking or family reasons or whatever, or you’re just socially anxious).
You could give a blanket “this is not the time for this, please be respectful of the feelings of the families in this tragedy” kind of statement.
Take time for self-care. That involves ignoring people. Unfollow them.
I understand, about feeling like it doesn’t directly affect you. I’m queer and genderqueer with a boyfriend, so I’m cis/het passing most of the time. I understand. It’s ok to still be reeling. You’ve a right to your emotions, and you’ve a right to take time to process them. Never feel guilt for an emotion; guilt should only come of actions, not emotions. And honestly I don’t think you could probably do anything you should feel guilty for, especially if you were brave enough to stand up for the more disadvantaged in our queer community even when you were feeling vulnerable, hurt, and saddened.
I’ll add to the unfollow recommendation with the suggestion of also creating a “limited profile” list. Some people on my friend list don’t need access to everything I post. Be it due to political differences or something that might be triggering for them, or just temporarily preventing someone from seeing posts about a planned surprise. Lists are an underutilized, but extremely helpful Facebook feature.
Huh. I didn’t even know you could do that! How amazingly useful!
You can’t argue with some people. My mother’s cousin’s husband decided to chime in–we aren’t even friends, but had a mutual friend in one of my cousins–on an LGBTQ+ related discussion once with the whole “the Bible’s stance is clear spiel.” I responded with why the claim for Biblical support for anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric isn’t particularly accurate, and used Bible verses as my sources. His response was a complete 180 and the statement “well, it doesn’t really matter what the Bible actually SAYS, it’s what you know in your heart to be morally right.” After he’d just used the Bible to support his initial argument. In order to see reason, people have to be behaving reasonably. Some are just a lost cause….
I feel you. I identify bisexual but rarely say anything to anyone because I’m married to a man. Not that this is a pertinent point in this particular tragedy, but it’s hard to explain sometimes why it hurts more. And I guess things like this are exactly why we don’t want to be open about those feelings.
It’s ok. Showing solidarity isn’t what a lot of people think it is. It isn’t unity. It isn’t oneness. It isn’t sympathy or pity. It’s empathy. “I do not experience what you do, but I understand. I cannot feel the same, but I feel for you. Tell me and I will listen. Stay silent and I will send silent support.” That kind of thing.
Solidarity, like empathy, is, to me, a recognition of difference, a recognition of a different lived experience, while still showing support. Solidarity is saying “I vow to stand by your individual needs, acknowledging that those needs might be different from my own”>
People who think Solidarity (TM) is Unity (TM) and Unity (TM) is Peace (TM) and Peace (TM) is Love (TM) have no fucking clue what they’re talking about.
You go ahead. You take that stand, and you announce your solidarity. Go ahead. You’ll be doing the right thing.
And it’s important to recognize the difference between people and communities within QUILTBAG/LGBTQ+. It’s important to recognize the ways this does and doesn’t affect you and people like you. And me. To not do so would be counterproductive, imho. How can we address the myriad intersections of oppression, when, at the moment when the oppression is at its most violent, we pretend they don’t exist, in order to – what? “Be respectful in light of the tragedy”?
No. Your urge is correct.
Stand in solidarity. Recognize those differences. Respect them.
(I’m not, like, angry or whatever with you. I’m sorry if my tone is strident, but I’m talking as much to the asshole American media and backwater acquaintances as to you. Prolly moreso, really.)
Anyhow. I’m in a very similar boat as you. I’m a US citizen, but I live in the opposite corner of the US. I’m white-passing white/black mixed race person. I’m agender and androgenous, but pass for my assigned sex. I’m pansexual, and polyamorous, but in a monogamous relationship with a very gender-conforming, cis/het white guy. I don’t go clubbing or go to gay bars. I, like you, am largely unaffected directly by this. My life is never threatened like this. But I maintain we’ve still got a role to play in the discussion, and in inter-community allyship and support.
sorry for what’s probably a really long comment
Of course you’re allowed, hon. I’m a bi woman who’s only had one relationship with a woman and has mostly had relationships with men, including my current one. My previous partner was a closeted bisexual man who effectively kept me in the closet quite a bit as well, so after we broke up I got back in touch with the LGBT community. A year later I met my partner, who’s a straight man and who has been to two Prides with me so far. We have been made to feel very welcome, people are always pleased that there are allies, and the more bisexuals in mixed-sex relationships who go, the more the other bisexuals feel they’re allowed to join in. You are very welcome in whatever part of the LGBT community you wish to hang around in, my dear, even if that’s just the comments section on The Toast.
HuffPo reposted a form letter to send to elected officials to act on gun violence:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicole-silverberg/g…
You know, I never wanted to go to Pride. I’m a bougie white cis lady married to same, in one of the most queer-friendly cities in the U.S., and I’ve never had a moment of anxiety here about being perceived as queer. Pride seemed like just another street festival, nice but not for me.
Now I get it, viscerally. It’s never safe to show up, but people do anyway. I wish I had gone this year.
I skipped it because I don’t like huge crowds and I had a baby shower and a birthday party to go to that day. I feel bad about that now. I’m going to be in London during their Pride and I’m reconsidering my stance on large crowds.
I’m just guessing here, not knowing where you might normally attend Pride or what London’s Pride is like, but as an American who’s only attended Pride in France, I was STUNNED to learn that most American Pride events have to deal with protesters. I shouldn’t have been stunned, having grown up in the culture and heard–and unfortunately internalized–some of the rhetoric, but I’ve never seen that in Paris and I guess it wasn’t something I thought to consider. I don’t know if you’re used to seeing Pride with opposition, or whether or not London has any, but I’d imagine if you are accustomed to seeing groups of protesters being held back, that the absence of such negativity would be refreshing and worth braving the crowds. Also, in that regard, I’ve found that showing up early or at the very end helps a little bit with the sizes of the crowds.
I grew up in London, not that I really remember the one Pride I went to there, and live in Edinburgh. Yes, there’s a police presence at Pride here. I grew up Jewish, with security at the synagogue for major festivals, so I mentally file it away as normal, whereas my (straight) partner was shocked to see it.
The crowds are tricky, but you can join in some bits and not others.
Oh, no, we have police presence, too. I was referring more to the protesters. The Prides my friends in the States attend all seem to have lines of protesters with hateful, bigoted signs and whatnot.
This one got to me. I didn’t cry for Newtown, for Aurora, for San Bernardino, but this one, yesterday, left me a weeping mess. Maybe it was all the stories of mothers waiting for news, of frantic final texts and phone calls, me being able to feel a mother’s pain and fear. But I think it’s really that mental illness did not enter into this, it was pure, white-hot hatred, more targeted than San Bernardino. I’m at a complete loss for words.
I stayed up late last night working on school stuff, flipping back and forth between the Tonys and 20/20, sobbing all the while. This morning I woke up exhausted and scrambled to get out the door. I forgot about the whole thing until I got in the car and NPR was doing coverage. I feel guilty for forgetting, but at the same time, I want to go back to that half hour where I didn’t have all this pain weighing on me.
It was the bathroom texts that did it for me. I keep seeing them, and I can’t control myself.
People keep posting those, and it keeps being really upsetting.
It was also the mothers and the texts from the bathroom that did it for me. I keep trying not to think about it, to drown it out, but it keeps coming back. I have coping mechanisms I normally use in these situations, but they can only do so much good during a deluge of anger and sadness.
I also know how you feel about forgetting, the same thing happened to me this morning and then it all came back when I checked my Facebook feed.
I’m anger inside a human skin and the only way I can think of to get it out is to write letters. So far I have:
All the state and federal senators and representatives for my current address
Ditto for my previous address, because I voted for/against them
My governor
The administration of my Catholic university, which doesn’t include sexual orientation or gender identity in the non-discrimination policy
Possibly the NYT
Should I write to Clinton and tell her how badly gun control and LGBT acceptance need to be enacted? Who else should I contact?
I thought about Clinton too. Like, I support her, but she’d better have something to say about guns or I’m going to have a real problem. I checked her website and she appears to be strong-ish on gun control, but I think I’m going to write her anyway.
I think I will too.
I’m happy to report that Clinton has been on the right side of gun control for awhile now and was endorsed by Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety. She GETS IT.
I just can’t do work today, or stop thinking about it at all, so I wrote to Clinton, stressed gun control, LGBT acceptance, and that she MUST push back against attempts to make this ‘about’ Islamic terrorism.
I’m going to borrow the last third of your talking points, if I may. I’m going to be physically ill if the country scapegoats Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent again, because that’s not what happened.
please please please do. I think I have no more hope about us on the first point: the second and third, though — (well, to be honest I don’t have much hope for those either) — I’m just so upset and scared that Certain Parties are going to successfully frame this so as to ignore the LGTB community and self-aggrandize on a politically convenient scapegoat. And I *know* that means that Clinton is going to be pressured to go along with it or be painted as weak. Anything people can do to be more voices that say “no listen there are a lot of us out here who DO NOT want this to be redirected from what it’s actually about. DO NOT let the focus be taken away from the fact that this was a hate crime abetted by the fact that a known domestic abuser can buy an assault weapon.”
Good and holy God, well, after her choice of terminology when responding to the attack I’m DEFINITELY writing to her, and including a plea to not demonize an entire religion.
Hey, this is late but I hope you see it… how did you contact Clinton? The form on her website has a word limit and I have many words.
I admit that I trimmed my words to stay within the word limit…
Heh, OK. I’m going to do snail mail.
As a DC resident who has worked in electoral politics (and is therefore very comfortable doing that “call a politician’s office” conversational mode), I CAN’T do this. I can write to the mayor of my very pro-gun control city. I can write to Eleanor, who I screamed support for on Saturday in the pride parade, and I’m considering that just for the emotional release of it. But fuck if that’s going to count as even a drop of something.
Fuck the same fuckers who continuously fuck over half a million Americans for their own personal enjoyment (and go ahead and compare those vote lists to the ones on gun control).
You could always go for broke and write an open letter to the world. (I’m not joking; it could be cathartic, and if well written or poignant, might go viral – you never know)
Write to the archdiocese themselves maybe?? (i can’t believe i actually spelled that correctly the first time wow)
Write to thank the Oregon judge, who, a day or two beforehand, had concluded that since Oregon law merely states that a person may change their sex/gender to another sex/gender (not specifying “the opposite” in other words; just leaving the wording vague and open) that Oregon must include the option to legally identify as “nonbinary”, thus extending, with little fanfare, trans nondescrimination Title VII protections to nonbinary (and intersex) individuals. (caveat: still have to transition medically urgh)
Have some positivity and light in all this though. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/us/oregon-nonbi…
Might do the open letter. Writing to my school did jack shit. I’m working on a list of prominent, liberal Catholics who should do the right thing too.
I’m very happy about Oregon.
It wasn’t a great weekend. I didn’t make it to the gym at all, I formally disowned my dad on Saturday, and then I woke up to the news on Sunday. I LIVE in Orlando. I’m very lucky, my friends are all okay, but it’s horrible, and on every tv channel, and everyone is talking about it everywhere because how could they not. Social media is a trashfire and I just want to sleep and sleep and sleep. I don’t know whether they’ll let me donate blood (medication issues), so all I can do is hug people. And wait for a chance to sleep.
Sleep. Be good to yourself. If you feel the need to hug and be with others, do that. If you feel overwhelmed and exhausted, just let yourself feel that too; there are as many reactions to these traumas as there are people they touch, there’s no one path out and away from it. But you *will* come out of it, you will feel rested and restored and you *will* feel better.
signed, a Parisian who was out in a bar the night of the attacks, and who remembers (so. well.) the exhaustion and the goddamn media trashfire and the endless *talking* and the days of feeling like I couldn’t breathe, and who is so, so much better now. I am sending you every hug, every wish for strength and peace.
Thank you so much. I keep swerving between fine and Completely Not Fine, but I know it will get better eventually.
(Also, hugs for you if you want them.)
Seconded by another Parisian who was in a restaurant/bar five minutes from one that was hit. You’ll start to feel consistently okay again eventually, but allow yourself to just feel whatever you’re feeling in the meantime.
Love and love and love to you. If you feel up to other ways to get involved besides giving blood, there are going to be many ways to help and reach out; if you don’t have the capacity for that, that’s okay. Take care of yourself and your friends. <3
Thank you. 🙂
*hugs* I just passed the five year anniversary of severing contact with my abusive mother. It was bloody hard at the time, but it was the best decision of my life. Well done you for doing that.
Thank you VERY much! it’s really hard, but the funny-awfulest bit is my mom’s insistence that I’ll regret it and that, you know, *nice* Christian ladies are just sposed to suck it up. Too bad I’m a bitchy agnostic. 😉
Bah, niceness is what women and marginalised people are trained to do in order to make us submit to shitty treatment. You keep on being a bitchy agnostic!
Also it gets better. It gets so much better. It’s unbelievably restful, and it becomes easier to spot abusive people and avoid them, and you feel happier about yourself when you’re not having miserable fights with the horrible parent in question. Hang in there.
If you need a penpal who understands: [email protected]. I severed ties with my father just over a year ago. It’s been hard. Wishing you deep, dreamless, restorative sleep tonight.
My stomach has been turning not just for the families of those killed and for the LGBTQ+ community, but for every brown person now anxiously waiting to see the reaction against them for the horrible hate crime committed by a man who came from a Muslim background. I am not shocked that this is being link to islamaphobia. I am not shocked that news outlets are screaming that this was a terrorist attack. We are too used to scapegoating this way and it’s hurting everyone because we’re not getting to the root of the problem–homophobia and hatred.
Please please be careful and stay safe–and continue to practice your beliefs and lifestyles openly in peace.
I absolutely agree with you that there is so much islamophobia in the response, and my heart hurts too for every POC fearing a reprisal (I’m sure that includes, ironically, many who resemble the victims in that club), but I’ve also gotta say that every shooting is a terrorist attack.
Seconding all the comments about just feeling tired and sad to the core. I’m 32 weeks pregnant and truly fear bringing a child into this insane world. I am disgusted by the rhetoric from some circles that this isn’t about gun control, it’s about “radicalism.” If we actually had some gun control, then “radicals” would not be able to purchase assault rifles and kill 49 people. Basic cause and effect.
Same. Down to the 32 weeks. This, after the Stanford rapist hoopla last week. Just discouraging and horrifying.
And guns — I live in KY, so I have to hear the gun shit so often. I just want to be like, YOU DO NOT NEED AN ASSAULT WEAPON. NO ONE NEEDS AN ASSAULT WEAPON.
Huzzah 32 weeks! This is the fun part where people tell me I look like I’m about to “pop” even though I’ve got another month and a half, thanks. Have you found out the sex of your baby? I’m having a girl and I totally hear you on the Stanford rape case stuff, though the pressure would surely be on no matter what, to both raise decent human beings and to help them navigate a world filled with indecent ones.
I’m also having a girl! Yay, girls!!
Yes, some lady at work just eyed my belly and grinned, and started to say, “You know, YOU’RE — ”
And I cut her off and said, “Are you about to make a pregnancy comment that’s going to make me mad?”
And she went, “Yeah, never mind.”
HAH. It felt amazing.
Hope you are feeling well as is possible. I’m having a (semi) Bad Pregnancy Day myself — nothing terrible, just didn’t sleep pretty much AT ALL, and had a hard time getting ready for work, and felt headachey and flushed all morning. I get to leave work early, though, and go home and take a nap. That will help!
Gabby Giffords was shot when I was pregnant and it made me sob for a week, that someone’s son could grow in them, come out, be loved and cared for and grow up to think he had the right to kill so many people, that people aren’t safe in a gd grocery store parking lot meeting their elected officials, that a woman speaking about guns could be shot. And now that fetus is turning five and I’ve had to talk to him about multiple mass shootings before he’s even started kindergarten, where he’ll go through active shooter drills because we can’t get a handle on gun control in this goddamn trash fire culture.
I joked for years that I’d come out to my family out of spite — while I was closeted, I heard the most awful, horrendous, brutal things. I mean, I grew up hearing about the ~homosexual agenda~ and how the only thing that went wrong with the AIDS crisis is that it didn’t finish the job, that AIDS was a punishment from god, that the wages of sin are death.
Anyway, yeah, I came out publicly and loudly on facebook yesterday, so, uh… /jazzhands
I was already more or less out to my mom and sister (I told them I was bi last year, the lesbianism thing has been a more recent development), and my mom outed me to a bunch of my relatives, but — just waking up to a fucking hate crime, and then seeing my aunt (my own flesh and blood! Who fucking KNEW! My mom TOLD her!) share an article talking about how it’s EXTRA important to ban trans people from public bathrooms because Evil Lesbians are already there, one full bladder away from raping some innocent str8, and those two things just — I don’t know. I don’t know!!!
I’ve spent most of the last 24 hours crying, first because I’m so angry/scared/something, and then with every nice thing people said to me, and I’m determined to go to Pride and party twice as hard, and hey! One of my very conservative cousins commented. so that’s something. It kind of makes up a little, I guess, from literally everything else.
And, one other thing — god my heart fucking breaks for every closeted teen and young adult, sitting there watching the news next to their loved ones, listening to people who are supposed to love them talking about how this is what you get for being gay. My friends are being driven back into the closet over this shit, because it’s too much. I don’t know. It just sucks so much.
Oh my god, THIS. I remember every single homophobic comment my parents made in my vicinity before I came out, even though it’s been 13 years. It’s horrifying to think about the kids being forced to hear that shit in connection with what is already a tragedy.
Oh honey. Oh, honey. Sending so much love and many gentle thoughts.
Jesus, I am so sorry about your aunt. MORE IMPORTANTLY: congrats on coming out and have an amazing time at Pride.
(If you want it.)
Congratulations on coming out. I am glad there have been at least some good reactions! You are brave and strong and bigots should go directly to hell.
Oh my god. Oh, honey, that’s horrible. This entire situation is horrible but forced outing is especially awful and I hope you get to party extra hard and maybe get a cute girl’s number. The LGBToasties are here and queer and willing to lend an ear.
*hugs* I’m so proud of you for coming out. I hope you’ll hear lots more support, like from that cousin.
So, I can kinda relate to this, to your story, and kinda not.
I finally came all the way out the day *before* yesterday, oddly, to announce the GLAD tidings that a judge in Oregon had ruled that “nonbinary” was a legal sex/gender designation (still have to medically transition though urgh, but it’s an important legal step, and the first of its kind in US history, so huge)
Which is a weird turn of events. This tragedy would’ve made me spite-come-out though, too.
But the only relatives of mine who sound like your’s cut *me* out of *their* lives a few months ago (even more bizarrely, because they found out I’d played Dungeons & Dragons with my step-nephew, their son/grandson, all the way last year; they tried to file no contact order against me on his behalf even). My life continues to unfold in bizarre ways.
In the mean time, I’m really sorry for your potentially actually dangerous life situation. I support you in coming out in all this, and I hope you’re safe. *hugs*
Oh my goodness, whatnow? I’m sorry your relatives are horrible. Dungeons and Dragons is awesome. And so are you! Jazz hands on the coming out!
I don’t know where you’re writing from, but it sounds like we may have very similar experiences. I was born in Georgia and raised in Tennessee by Southern Baptist Republicans. I’ve heard so many people who are supposed to love me say both intentional and unintentional hateful things. If you want someone to talk to, my username is the same on Twitter as it is here. I’m happy to commiserate and/or help if I can.
I’m 100% empty on Orlando. There is nothing to say yet. Eventually I’ll give some people some money in a hopeless kind of way.
Unrelatedly: people think Meghan Trainor sounds black? What? She is like the whitest-sounding white girl on my daughter’s pop station.
edit–OK, I read the piece and apparently I don’t recognize when linguistic features of Black English are being appropriated anymore. Maybe too old. But maybe it happens too fast now. It’s an interesting question whether even Trainor knows that she is doing that.
It is not that she sounds black but that she sounds like she is trying to sound black. The article has specifics.
But the specifics felt like aspects of AAVE that have diffused into general American slang. There’s a lot of de facto segregation in the US, but it’s still not like we’re in sealed off bubbles.
That said, the music video made me uncomfortable. So I also see where the author was coming from.
I’m going to have to read the Trainor piece, too. I frequently have the experience of hearing someone on the radio and being surprised that they’re not what they “sounded” like to me when I see them, but she looks EXACTLY like what she sounded like.
Honestly, *every single time* I hear I new Meghan Trainor song for the first time, I think she’s some black pop star I can’t quite place. EVERY SINGLE TIME. And I’m always a little disappointed to find out it’s her. It just doesn’t feel like she should be doing these songs, even though she does them so well, vocally.
Yesterday was Loving Day, which celebrates the legalization of interracial marriage in America. More than one person told me it wasn’t worth talking about because “that’s over now and no one cares.”
I really, really wish that in 50 years the legalization of same-sex marriage will be so normal and so mainstream that idiots will feel free to denigrate its celebrations and markers because they’ve never experienced any sort of dissension or trouble or fear surrounding it. I want to live in a world where people are clueless that it was ever a problem. I want to be able to dress down people for thinking that it’s not a big deal because it’s so common and normal and accepted that it wasn’t a terrible and frightening fight at the beginning. God, I want to get there one day. I want the opposite of the problems we have–I want people to have to learn that struggles were ever even A Thing. I want kids to grow up not even realizing people died in the effort and think “God, why was everyone so stupid back then?”
Yesterday was Loving Day, which celebrates the legalization of interracial marriage in America. More than one person told me it wasn’t worth talking about because “that’s over now and no one cares.”
Person in an interracial relationship here, friends with many more people in interracial relationships (once you date outside your race, it’s like there’s a bat-signal for other people who do the same), and all I can do is laugh sadly at the idea that that’s over now and no one cares. Thank you for dressing that person down.
As am I, hence the dressing down. I wish I didn’t have to, though.
Ditto and thank you.
After all the awful news, I came straight to the Toast, knowing this was the place I would find tgat was full of support and goodness and the kind of anger that comes from anguished caring.
Same, in an interracial relationship, and so glad you said something. It’s so sadly necessary still.
I didn’t even realize it was Loving Day, too. On top of falling on Pride Month, and Ramadan. So much symbolically, politically at stake here. (And I mean symbolically, not in that the stakes aren’t real, but in that these abstract ideas are very real, and are very really a part of all the history and background leading up to this, and causing other events like it)
I’m a little ashamed I didn’t know it was Loving Day. My sisters and I are mixed race, and our Dad was mixed race. When his older sister, my aunt, was in utero, and my black gramma announced to her extremely respectable, middle-class, college -educated parents in the 1950s that she was pregnant out of wedlock with the baby of a white musician who she intended to marry, her father, the first black judge admitted to the bar in the State of Washington, slapped her so hard she fell, and refused to ever speak to her again.
It certainly affected my family. Has for generations. The last slave ancestor we had ran away with the next-door white plantation owner’s daughter. They had what must’ve been a common-law type marriage, had five kids. How quickly their college-educated, middle-class, respectable descendants had – *had* – to forget that, bury it, to be respectable, to have and keep their jobs. And now, we can afford to remember.
But, naturally, racism still exists, and it still affects interracial marriages, interracial families, and mixed race people.
Thank you for the reminder.
Hi Toast it is my birthday! I am determined to have a good birthday even if hate crimes are coming at our community. So! This is a thread only for nice things. I just ate a fruit salad with mango, strawberries, and raspberries. I went to a lake yesterday. I have a new second-favorite dress (it doesn’t have pockets so it can’t unseat my favorite dress but it’s very good) http://www.forever21.com/images/default_750/00203…
What is nice for you?
I got a haircut for the first time in 18 months this weekend. They blew my hair out like a proper adult lady and gave me a head massage and it was 100% worth the exorbitant fee.
Good idea–and happy birthday! Sending you Toast hugs. Hope your day is filled with desserts and gemstones.
Things that are nice for me:
1) I have a leftover samosa from delivery last night waiting in the fridge at home
2) Monday nights are yoga nights
3) Following this instagram was a great decision. If you need sweet and calming videos, go watch these two dogs take a bath.
I’m having some delicious chocolate raspberry coffee.
I got four new Pride shirts, an art print, half a dozen buttons, a paperback, two five-foot-long Pride flags, and also my entire life two days ago at CCINP, which was fun and great and I never once thought about people shooting me for being there.
mangoes and blueberries are such a heavenly combination that I am shocked nature didn’t find a way to make them grow on the same plant.
Good things: snuggles from a small tousle-headed boy with a new word (“Yah”), delicious latte, sunny morning, and a party tonight.
Happy Birthday!!! Great thread idea.
After owning a kayak for a year with no way to haul it to water, I finally used it yesterday on the Milwaukee River. I also saw TWO owls and a baltimore oriole – I’ve never seen either of those before, so it was a good birding day. I was pumped.
I will never forget the first time I saw a Baltimore oriole! My breath caught in my throat – the color is unbelievable.
Right? Thankfully it stuck around long enough for me to inch a little closer so I could be extra sure as to what I was seeing 🙂 It was a good day for colorful birds – I also saw several bluebirds and a scarlet tanager.
this is wonderful 🙂 I really wanted to get into birding after having a great time casually birdwatching on my honeymoon in santa barbara a couple years ago, and you have reminded me, in my post-baby haze, that this is something i want more of in my life.
Yay! I highly recommend it. New baby can be a birder!
babies love birds!
I hope you have a good birthday! That is one fancy fruit salad – raspberries are just the best fruit ever. Urg I know the pocket feeling – I got used to a few dresses with pockets and now I keep trying to shove my hands into the sides of all my dresses and being so disappointed when I realise they are pocket-free. It also makes me kind of want to hang things like my phone and ID card around my neck…I’d look super weird but it’s sorely tempting.
I saved a bunch of stag beetles on Saturday – they’re endangered here so I felt super virtuous moving them all out of harm’s way (also kind of badass because they look like super creepy aliens).
I made homemade pasta last night and ate yogurt panna cotta with fancy French raspberry jam. Also, there was a badger by my front door this morning, which wasn’t terribly nice, but it did make for an exciting start to the week!
I don’t know if it will stand in the face of the true HellSummer we get here, but I went to the forever21 sales and got lots of lace tights and boat neck/off the shoulder tops to hopefully combine with fluffy skirts in lieu of last year’s summer uniform of “the only way I could feel less happy is getting up early enough to shave my tender overworked skin once a-friggin’-gain, jeans and t-shirt it is”
Happy birthday! My friends and I had a Tony Awards party last night and awarded fake categories and drank Federalist Wine. It was pretty great!
Happy birthday!
Happy Birthday!
I have a job interview Wednesday, for a position doing only the better parts of my current job, and not the really annoying ones, at a firm where I’m told no one yells.
Also a rep is buying us fancy lunch today, and tomorrow I have a fancy birthday party to attend, and Thursday free box seats with catered dinner at the baseball game, and Friday is lock-in at daycare, so we can leave the toddler there til MIDNIGHT and have a date or take a nap or something.
All in all, shaping up to be an exciting week.
I saw a turtle crawling across a golf course while I was jogging, and then watched it until it dove safely into a pond where there were several other turtles.
Turtles are nice, and surprisingly swift turtles going swimming with their friends is even nicer.
Happy birthday!! I just ate a delicious apricot (my third of the season!) and the sweetness is cheering me up.
I’m maybe changing jobs at work and share a cube wall with my supervisor’s wife. I was very nervous that expressing a need for change would have social repercussions here at the office, but she has been very nice and chatty all morning so I feel good about that too.
Happy birthday!!!
I too have a new favorite dress and also from Forever21 of all places. It looks SPECTACULAR on me, if I do say so myself. I just have to figure out an appropriate occasion to wear it…
http://www.forever21.com/Product/Product.aspx?br=…
Happy birthday!
I was in Denver on vacation this weekend, and among other things, had a delicious vodka gimlet that I will remember fondly.
Happy Birthday, you of the wonderful username!!!!
I got my haircut Saturday for the first time since I had my baby and I feel about 20% more like Me so that is A+!
I took a really nice walk in the park this morning and ran into a neighbor and had a chat.
We are flying back to my hometown this week! Sadly it’s to celebrate the life of my stepmother, who passed in April, but even that is a sort of joy amidst sadness thing. I get to see my dog for the first time in 18 months, plus my dad, and my mom and step dad, and many extended family and friends. I get to let my baby have her first splash in Lake Superior. I get to not be in NYC for 5 days.
Coffee!!!
New Flavia DeLuce book on my Kindle. Woo!
Happiest of birthdays to you and that is a lovely dress–I am a sucker for anything with a poppy on it.
I am happy because I have been able to pick several tomatoes over the past few days (I live in New Mexico where spring pretty much starts in February) and yesterday I greedily ate the first black cherry tomato fresh off the plant and it was perfect. (I told my husband he can have the next one.) The husband also picked several palettes of peaches yesterday morning and while most will be used for brewing, I took a bunch and baked a spectacular peach crumble last night which we served with cinnamon horchata ice cream. 10/10, would eat again.
Happy birthday, lilsebastian01!
Here is what is nice for me:
– Lots of cuddle times with beloved datefriend
– Garlic noodle soup with dumplings
– My beloved Pokémon leveling up/evolving
– Being able to offer support to my fellow nonbinary people here in [city] without wearing myself out
– Mango juice was on sale at my local Asian market
Happy birthday! I got a basket of rasp- black- and loganberries from the farmers market and have been adding them to green salads, lemonade, and white wine, all with very nice results. Enjoy your day to the fullest!
I tried avocado and bacon on toast for the first time ever yesterday and it was so delicious. I feel like the guy who finally likes Green Eggs and Ham at the end of the book.
Happy birthday! Hope you have a good day. I got my undercut fixed up on Saturday, and last night my friend came over for dinner and the Tonys, and I made perfect beef and broccoli.
Happy birthday! There were two adorable twin boys (of about…3?) at church yesterday with their parents, and one of the boys shouted “yeah!” after most of the hymns, anthems, or service music ended. There’s really nothing better than that, as a chorister.
(Also, kids hardly ever get that excited about Renaissance music, so it’s nice when they do.)
The boys were also roaming fairly freely during the service, since we’ve made efforts to Suffer the Little Children better in the last year or so. I love it when toddlers hang out by the altar.
I dug out a long-neglected knitting project. I figured out where I was and starting knitting again. And the moths haven’t gotten to it! Yay!
I am enjoying delicious homemade jam in vanilla yogurt.
Happy birthday! A small, fun thing , relevant to your username that is nice for me: I bought a Johnny Karate shirt yesterday. 🙂
This is a good thread and I hope you have a nice birthday and your username is from my #1 most beloved comfort TV show of all time.
I have gone to the beach 4 weekends in a row and I think it might be 5 this coming weekend. I am very happy about this trend, and I have a new red 2-piece that makes me feel like a 1940s pinup, AND an excellent sun hat.
I also quit drinking 2 weeks ago, because even in small amounts alcohol was aggravating some depressive tendencies, and it has been completely amazing. I feel happy and relieved and grateful.
Isn’t it the best when you find small lifestyle changes that yield huge health results? It always makes me feel like a rock star.
Yesterday my roommate’s cat graciously permitted me to curl around him on the couch and snuggle for a pleasant half-hour. Today I have sweet milky coffee, no really urgent tasks to handle at work, and a soft blazer (cardigan in disguise, really) to snuggle into.
The cakiest cake post for you! http://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2016/6/12/sunday-s…
Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to a nice Indian restaurant downtown and went full out. We ordered the Dinner For Two Non-Vegetarian combo, which included lamb samosas, lamb curry masala, a dish whose name I can’t recall that involved fried cheese rounds stuffed with veges in a curried cashew and saffron sauce (yum!), tandoori chicken on a bed of steamed mostly onion, jasmine rice, naan bread, and pistachio rice pudding. We still have leftovers. It was a fucking feast. It was great.
What else is good: I got a neato new venti cold-cup from Starbucks featuring Gas Works Park, my fave Seattle landmark (I already have the ceramic hot-cup version, don’t worry)
Fallen London, one of my fave ever games, is teasing a new Election event, which might be more literally hellish than our real American elections, but will be 100x more entertaining and 10,000xinfinity less dangerous irl
My aunt is visiting from Utah, and she’s great, and she loves showing us pics of her two cats, three dogs, and two horses (one of which is the cutest short lil Norwegian Fjord Horse! look up pics of those seriously), so that’s pretty nice
The GOG Summer Game Sale is going on (not nice for my wallet, but oooooo lookit all the games)
I bought a hundred bucks worth of comfy clothes, patches, and pins, from a store/blog called Stay Home Club, which is everything you hope it is. Do yourself a birthday gift-to-self shopping spree, if you can, I highly recommend: http://stayhomeclub.com/
Oh! And I’m finally getting a much-awaited, just-released book in a YA series I like, from the library today! The Luck Uglies: Rise Of The Ragged Clover, by Paul Durham. Lotsa fun. Girl protagonist is a sneaky rogue and clever person, saves day and family in every book. This’ number three. Would recommend.
Found an indie game for a dollar online. Detective Chirpums. Bout a hard-boiled (ahaha) detective who is a bird, in a city of birds. Pseudo noir. Looks completely adorable and hilarious. https://detective.itch.io/chirpums
It is my birthday too! Happy birthday to us!
My friend just went and adopted two kittens from a shelter this afternoon!
That IS a nice dress and even if you are only moderately crafty could easily be modded to add pockets along the side seam!
Nice things: i finished making a grey corduroy skirt w pockets, have cut out a black drill skirt which will have cargo pockets for travel and dancing, and it is 1 week till I get on a plane to America for a visit.
I think Orlando is too big, too sad for me to comprehend fully right now. I keep orbiting it in my thoughts but I don’t yet have the courage to take it all in.
So instead I’ll chat about the third concert in my life that I attended on Saturday. Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band.
I do not attend concerts to listen to live music. I attend concerts because 1. someone bought me tickets, or 2. I wanted to see a Beatle before I (or the Beatle) died. Paul McCartney used to be my favorite Beatle but I’m kind of over him and also Ringo is so cute.
So yes I may have been one of 10% of the crowd who was under 50 but it was still fun, Ringo was great, he and his band all wore skinny jeans like I expect any man who came to fame in the 70s would, and they all acted how I expected them to act which was pretty much like Bill Nighy in Love Actually but less aggressively sexual. I was transported back to middle school when the biggest love of my life was everything Beatles. It was fun. It was cute.
A+, would not do again because I still don’t understand the point of concerts, but I am very glad I went. If anyone else has great concert stories, I would love to hear them!
(my second concert was Ghostface Killah last year- my niece bought me tickets when I visited her- and that was an A+ would do again experience, it was the pinnacle of beer and a good time)
Oooh, I love Ringo live so much! They just seem to enjoy themselves so.
I have been to many many concerts, too many to share, but I did see The Cure last night! It was a great show, but, oh, there were technical difficulties and mis-timed fireworks, so I felt really bad for the poor tech team backstage who were clearly having an awful night.
They played for two and a half hours at a festival, which was INTENSE, and we had to go and find comfy grass to sit in halfway through.
Holy hell yes Ghostface Killah, that sounds like a GREAT time.
I feel bad posting something that’s just about me when the news is so awful, but I was a bit late for Friday’s Open Thread and it’s the sort of thing that I would welcome a Toast input on. For quite a long time recently, I have been feeling very unmotivated and directionless. This is the first time in years I haven’t had a clear goal to work towards (GCSEs -> A Levels -> university -> library graduate trainee placement -> MA course -> dissertation ->job); I have felt unmotivated in the past, but I had an externally-imposed next step to work towards, so it was doable. Right now i just want to do nothing. My partner said to me the other day that he worries about my lack of ambition, because I talk so frequently about feeling like I’m too stupid to learn anything new – when considering trying new things, I can’t imagine being able to get my head around it and succeed. I am in a relatively low-level job at the moment, and the thought of progressing into a role where I have more responsibility fills me with fear, as I assume I would just be terrible at it. I don’t socialise much, or really have hobbies; all I want to do at the weekends and in the evenings is read and sleep. I sometimes feel so overwhelmed by the thought of the future and all of the decisions that will need making and new things that I will need to learn that I feel like killing myself would be easier. I don’t feel excited about the idea of doing anything.
(For information, I have been taking antidepressants for about five years. I don’t feel particularly bad at the moment; the future just feels scary and bleak when I try to think about it, so I prefer not to. This is not a very good way to live; I would like to care about things. I would appreciate any advice.)
oh dear, it sounds like the antidepressant levels might need some adjusting.
Let me also say that there are so many wonderful activities in life that one can and should do without needing to be “good” at them. Sometimes the whole point is the process of doing them, not the outcome. Yoga is a very big example (might help to choose your studio carefully so that you’re at one that reinforces this), but so is art: drawing, coloring books, painting classes — I feel it might really help being around big washes of color right now to draw you back to yourself. It is summer — a botanical garden and just quieting the mind and being quiet with the flowers might also be a good thing. Or long walks somewhere in nature.
I strongly think you are very clearly selling yourself short and your intelligence and worth, but it doesn’t help for me to say it if you don’t believe it yet. So maybe try some activities where process is important, not end result, and see how you find yourself reacting to that, and if it lets you be a bit gentler with yourself? Just as we are kind to our friends, especially our friends who are struggling, it is important to be kind to ourselves and have a kind internal dialogue with ourselves — even if it is hard. You deserve that and you are worth that. Wishing you the very very best.
Thank you for this. Being outside in nature does lift my spirits, and I should try to do more of it (ridiculously, even things like colouring make me feel a bit stressed – so many opportunities to fall short of what I want – but I should try to find more low-stakes activities to enjoy). I realy appreciate your comment.
This might be a good thing to talk to a counsellor about? I have another friend who was in exactly that situation – high achiever, accountant, and she started art classes because it stressed her out to do something she couldn’t “succeed” at, and she wanted something where the point was to “do”, not to “achieve”. It’s not uncommon for high-achievey people. But if you’re finding that the stress of just-doing is enough to upset you – rather than “this is outside my comfort zone but I’m ok” – that could be a good indication that it’s interfering with daily life and that’s a good time to ask for help.
It sounds like you have many problems;
1. That your job is low-level and progressing scares you
2. That you don’t have any enthusiasm for learning new things/the future
3. Not socialising/having hobbies/doing new things
First of all, before any of that; I really think you should talk to someone professionally (are you in the UK, given A-levels, can you use the NHS?) about the ‘killing [yourself] would be easier’ thing. That’s not a healthy thought and a therapist would be qualified to help with that, if you don’t already have one. Without wanting to scare you, that’s pretty heavy and I know when I was last having a bad depressive period I wrote off my suicidal inclination as thinking that way; that death was easier or better than working things out and I used that as a cover for my thoughts so I could avoid facing how bad things were.
Beyond that I have advice for all three, though take what you will:
1. Job wise, low level might be ok; do you need more money and therefore need to advance? Do you need more to do so that you’re not bored and need to advance? Do you just hate the idea of doing what you’re doing until you die/maybe retire? If you answered no to all of those, then worrying about progress is futile (not that this will stop you, but I find it helps to know fears are unfounded) Keep strolling along and if/when you get a promotion you can try it out and ask to move back/not be promoted in the first place if new responsibility is too much.
If you do need money/stimulation/etc. then it may be worth looking at what sorts of jobs you can get into and which of those will involve what awful things as far as presentations/managing people/data input go and which of those you’d hate to do and which you feel you maybe able to manage. The benefit of low level is that you can chose how your career progresses from here and if you know you want to do some element later on (or to desperately avoid another) you can target yourself to that.
2. There’s a difference between learning new things as a 2nd degree and learning new things just for the joy of discovering a new skill/area of interest. The second is a lot more relaxed/non-structured and has a lot less of a chance of failure. Are there things that are more in the line of knitting/languages/art that are interesting to you? Maybe try a language on duolingo, which has a level progression so there’s some structure, but there’s not an option of failing/flunking like if you did more language a-levels or anything. Or watch some Khan Academy videos on youtube to see if there’s an area of them that interests you Does any of that sound appealing? What level of unmotivation are we talking about?
3. There’s nothing wrong with living a quiet life and not doing very much, but depression can put you in a cycle of inactivity. If you talk to your partner, maybe you can agree on a fortnightly/monthly activity to do, so that you don’t feel like you’re losing every Sunday or every evening to a particular event. You might have to try a variety of things; salsa dancing/Italian cooking/sailing until you find something that you enjoy enough.
I have tried CBT a few times in the past (yes, I’m in the UK, so this was on the NHS), but just found it really stressful and unhelpful; the thought of attempting therapy again fills me with dread. (I know suicidal thoughts are not particularly healthy, but it’s not a particularly rare one for me.)
1. My job is completely fine for me at the moment, and I’m not unhappy about it or anxious about needing to progress in the near future. I’m just feeling completely overwhelmed at the thought of ever moving on to a position with more responsibility and requiring more skill, whenever it is. And I would like to have goals to aim for, and learn more about the aspects of the field I find interesting (I did an MA last year in order to have a career in this field – librarianship – and it is interesting), but it just feels far too daunting.
2. I have been wondering about Duolingo; it’s ages since I did any language learning, and it would be nice to try to get back into it. My confidence has just been so shaken since starting university eight years ago (I was an extremely high achiever throughout my school years, so to go into an environment where I struggled and was surrounded by a lot of people much smarter than me was very jarring), and the thought of doing badly makes me feel even worse about myself. (My boyfriend knits, but I am too anxious about failure to try; I worry I would just see him being better at it than me and feel useless.)
3. Making a firm committment to going out and doing stuff would probably be good (and I am in London, so there’s no shortage of stuff); I am just on the introverted side, and a day at work (most of which is spent on my library’s enquiry desk, so with lots of interpersonal interaction) leaves me wanting to go home and be solitary. But that’s not brilliant for me in the long run.
Hey, CBT won’t be for everyone, I know – but your doctor should know, even if it’s adjusting meds without CBT and there is non-CBT therapy and not all therapists are made equal etc. etc. – I guess I look at therapy in a Mallory-as-Prudence ‘pay someone to listen to your problems and advise way’ so that you don’t end up resenting your partner/your friends if they give harsh but well meaning advise or take time away from you for their own well being.
1. I do want to second that its fine to put progression on the backburner if you’re in a good place atm. If you want to have goals eventually and to learn more about what you’re interested in, I’d recommend talking to managers and colleages to discuss what progression would look like, so you can get more of a sense if it’s for you – now, in two years, in five whenever and so that you Know, so that if you get an itch in a little while, you have a place to go.
2. Duolingo is good for stress free learning and game-ified vocab acquisition. Since you’re in London, maybe pick a European language that’s also a place you’d like to holiday? And don’t think you have to end up talking politics or deep literary analysis with the locals, but it should get you through conversational stuff.
Ah, I totally feel “being surrounded by people smarter than me” I know it, I hate it and then am cross with myself for letting it upset me. Definitely not knitting – if you want not to be pressured you want something that you can do alone that he doesn’t do so that there’s no competition. Even learning to cook chicken really well of itself is a useful skill or doing cakes (as long as you don’t compare yourself to the Bake Off guys) Art, in all its forms is so subjective that it’s nice to know there isn’t always a Good and a Bad.
3. Yeah, weekdays don’t have to be going out days. There are plenty of at home things you can commit to; watching a box set of something you’d both like, reading some classics you’ve not go to (or some new books) Maybe a monthly book club, if you like reading and would like to do that and feel like you’re achieving at the same time. On weekends and not even every weekend, then yes, all of London is available but you don’t have to do it all in one go; pick one or two things and have a long term plan to go see them. Most of London isn’t going anywhere.
Also; if you’re free Sunday I will be Passing Through London so if you need to meet someone for coffee and just have a chat and an unload, that’s an option. I too wish you all the best and would be happy to help (and to hear how it’s going) with whatever you need in the future
Hi friend, thanks for posting this. I’m experiencing a lot of the same feelings, so I will be reading the replies too. Hugs to you.
Thank you; hugs to you too. I’m sorry you’re experiencing it. I hope some of the replies here are helpful.
It sounds like your meds need tweaking. Please tell your doctor how you’ve been feeling so they can help you feel better.
Sending you Toast hugs. I know this feeling, the intersection of depression and ambition (or lack thereof) and it’s so tough. Seconding other peoples’ sentiments that you should talk to your doctor about adjusting your medication, because you do not need to feel that way, you do not have to deal with feeling like you’d rather be dead than face the future. We love you very much and want you to be both alive and happy to be alive. Also, talking to a therapist might be helpful, because it sounds like your partner doesn’t quite “get” where you are right now. (Not a knock on partner, just saying that it is sometimes hard for non-depressed people to see where you’re coming from, and that’s why therapists exist.)
More generally, it is totally ok to take a breather for a couple years. You don’t always have to be planning your ascent, it’s ok to spend a year or five at the entry level. Everyone moves at a different pace. However, if you have a good relationship with your manager, you could talk to them about gradually adding more responsibility. A good manager will know how to ramp up responsibility in a way that you can handle, and you might feel less anxious about it if you have a clear road map of how things will go. Uncertainty can be so scary! If you don’t have a lot of faith in your manager, maybe you could find tangential responsibilities to take on at work, like planning events for a professional group, or an organizational task that everyone wants to get done but nobody wants to take the time to do. You might be able to find little things that you take well to, that you’re passionate about, and that will naturally lead to ambition.
But take care of yourself first. If you want my email, I’m happy to talk whenever you feel overwhelmed or scared. I’m sending you good vibes for the rest of the day, ok?
It is 100% OK to be in a job where things are kind of OK and you like it on a day-to-day basis and you don’t feel any great urge to move up to the next level. Especially after you’ve spent the last 10 years going “exams! next step! exams! new level! more exams! dissertation!” If you want to just relax a bit and settle in at work for a few years and earn some money and read books and sleep that is totally 100% OK. You might find that in five years’ time you’re ready for a promotion; you might find that in one year’s time you are; you might find that in ten years’ time you’re still working at the same level but you’re the person in your department where everyone says, “seriously, ask bookwormv, she knows *everything*.” All of these things are cool!
If you actually feel bleak about the future and overwhelmed and *not* feeling ambitious or going for the next step feels like a problem for you, then it is probably a good thing to get your medication reviewed and to see whether that makes any difference for you. But an outcome of that might be, “new medication, feel kind of positive about the future, still don’t really feel like climbing the greasy pole at work”. Maybe you’ll have a bit more energy and you’ll want to invest that in developing new social groups, or learning a new hobby, or going to an evening class, or volunteering, or just re-reading your favourite fantasy series or whatever – there are so, so, so many things to do with your time and your life that are not “get promoted”. All of these things are totally cool.
But it is good if *you* feel good about them, so it is worth getting it checked out to see if a tweak gives you more energy and expands the range of things that you are interested in. But remember that “not wanting a promotion” is not, in itself, a symptom of anything bad. <3
I’m definitely fine with my job at the moment – it’s the first job I’ve had post-MA, and the first “proper” job (full-time, permanent) I’ve ever had, so starting off at the lower levels is just fine with me. I just feel concerned that I currently have no motivation whatsoever to progress; I find the thought of moving on in a year or two and doing something more than just checking in new arrivals and dealing with simple enquiries really daunting. I don’t want to read up on developments in the field, or network, or go to conferences; it just feels like too much. And I don’t want to feel this way, because I do think that the stuff is objectively interesting, and it would be nice to learn more, and have goals; I just feel like I am not up to the challenge, now or ever, and I can’t motivate myself to care. It’s not that I have any burning desire to get promoted in the near future, but I would like to have some aspirations for the future, and an interest in learning more about my field, rather than just feeling so tired and afraid. But I can’t see myself being capable of it.
(Last time I saw my dad I got quizzed extensively about what exactly my job involves and what the next steps normally are for someone in my position, and what my dream job is. I know I should be thinking about these things, but I just don’t know what I want.)
Official careers adviser advice (I mean, not, because you’re not my client, but w/e): there is no “should”. You may want to advance in two years’ time: if that’s how you feel in two years’ time, you can go to your manager and say, “hey, all of that networking and conferencing that I wasn’t ready for before? I’m ready now!” No problem! If it isn’t, you can keep on enjoying the job you have now. And you can tell your father that’s officially what a careers adviser told you.
I think your perspective is probably pretty biased because you’ve been a very high achiever in school and university, and it’s expected that you’ll carry on being goal-driven and aspirational and climb climb climb, and you’re probably used to being surrounded by people like that. But to give you a wider perspective: you’re in your twenties, with a postgrad qualification in a field you love and a job in that field: things are good. I wasn’t in your position until my early thirties, and I’m not an underachiever either! 🙂 It’s OK to not be reaching straight for the next rung on the ladder and enjoy where you are now. Super-duper Ok. Happy to talk to you about this more from a careers-y perspective, though, if it would help to get a very gentle, slow, long-term, non-threatening career plan in place to stave off the anxiety.
Also, I forgot to say before, but I agree with the commenter above that when suicide feels like a good option, even if only in extremis and not as something you’d *really* do, that’s something to take seriously. Could you talk to someone about that? I will worry about you just a little. x
Dear bookworm,
I think that it is not so uncommon for feelings of fear and failure and overwhelm to surface once you’ve reached the plateau of first post study job. I’ve seen that happen to myself and to many of my friends. Sometimes the past we think we’ve left behind comes back to haunt us, sometimes imposter syndrome sets in, sometimes that first naked, unsheltered and unschooled confrontation with the cruel optimism (Berlant) and vanishing horizon (Durkeheim) is simply more than we know how to bear without external structures and timelines and goals.
I don’t have any answers for you. Therapy (even bog standard NHS CBT) might help – you might spontaneously feel better (it does happen) – six weeks from now, something could happen that would make the world a completely different place for you. But therapy is not the only place to learn to feel better and crossing one’s fingers and hoping is not reliable either.
Being a wordy person, I want to tell you to start writing and reading like you never have let yourself before (your MA is over – you can read and write whatever you like). But maybe you’re a dancing person or a painting person or a music person. Whichever combination, you can always try to break your eye and re-invision the world by throwing yourself at art. Go and look for your self, for your joy and your sense of a future. Go to everything – even in the direst amateur poetry reading there is always something, even if it’s just the sense that you are here, alive among all the other mixed up humans. You are not alone; there are plenty of others of us who feel as you do, muddling along, here better, there worse.
We live in an era where anxiety is the dominant political affect, just as misery was during the Industrial Revolution and trauma marked the post war period and narcissism the post Cold War. Your feelings of anomie are genuinely your own but they are also part of the zeitgeist. I don’t know how we all move from here to the future (Corbyn? Doubtful…still less Farage or even Sturgeon) but you and I and everyone else are not alone and I find comfort in knowing that I feel this way partly because this is how we mostly feel now, this is what our world produces and it means something larger than merely my own pointless self loathing and navel gazing despair, even if I don’t always know what, exactly, to do with it.
tl;dr – a practical thing would be to read the archives of Dear Sugar or the archives of the New Inquiry or Plan C and then take a walk in the glorious late evening drizzly sunshine. Good luck – forward is a fearsome journey ever – don’t go anymore alone than you must.
Bookworm, I’m so sorry that you are feeling this way. Thinking about suicide (even passingly and passively – if you are thinking about it more actively, if you have a plan, if you for a moment are thinking about acting on your plan, please immediately notify your significant other, your therapist, and your medical prescriber, and keep notifying people until someone has done something meaningful to help you – don’t hesitate to call a crisis line or 911) because your life and future feel too overwhelming feels to me like an indication (fully acknowledging that I am not your doctor or therapist and not specialized and don’t know your situation) that your depression is not being treated adequately. You say that you’re on medication – are you also in therapy? How long since your dose has been adjusted? Does your doctor know that you’re feeling this way? Don’t be afraid to let him/her know how you are feeling. I think you might need more support than you are getting around your depression.
I don’t mean to ignore that you feel overwhelmed and inadequate – but to me, again, that feels like an indication that you need some really, really good support (therapy) to help you figure out why you’re so convinced that you’re not good enough to progress in your field – or do you want to stay at your current level job, moderate your financial expectations, and put your energy elsewhere? Because that’s OK, and it doesn’t mean you’re a failure, but it sounds like you have a “failure” script in your head. To me, that’s a red flag that your depression may be under-treated (MAY be – again, please don’t think I’m trying to assume that I know more about your mental or medical health than you do). But the bigger red flag is what you say about thinking about killing yourself – please let the people who love you know how much you’re struggling.
I was camping in a no-signal wilderness this weekend. Welcome back to “civilization,” blueblazes.
Decided to buy myself a Gender Is Over! tank top as self-care.
A question on mass shootings: How often do you all think of them, in your daily life? I’m at the point now where I do worry, sometimes, when I’m out and about. Not consistently or particularly logically — I don’t think of it, say, at the grocery store, but I do at my local sandwich shop. Definitely when I go to a movie theater.
I know that statistically, dying in a mass shooting is rare, blahblahblah, but I’m wondering how common it is to just have this niggling thing in the back of your head, like, yeah, this could happen at any moment.
I think about them almost daily. Not in a fearful way just because my brain likes to circle around and check in with everything it knows as frequently as it can. I’m not afraid of them at all I just get angry about them for a couple minutes a day everyday since the Oregon shooting back in what was that 96?
That may be because I’m a fairly burly guy and have spent exactly none of my life being taught to have a legitimate fear of basically anything (I often say I’m not allowed to visit India because I will refuse to take tigers seriously).
I had a bad time last time I went to a movie theater. There were about four white guys standing in the back when the lights went down, and I kept turning around to look at them in case one pulled out a weapon. They didn’t, and it was fine, but it took me a long time to relax.
Yeah, I rarely go to the movies anymore, but I did see the new Star Wars in theaters and I was scanning for emergency exits. I felt like it was enough of an ‘event’ movie to attract that sort of thing.
Why were people just standing in the back of a movie theater? That is super weird. A regular theater that has standing-only tickets, sure, but a movie theater… I would have been freaked out too.
They sat down eventually – i think it might have just been that they were looking for seats. I was just on edge.
I’m a particularly anxious and fearful person, so I tend to ruminate on things and I think of mass shootings on a nearly everyday basis (though frequency definitely ebbs and flows.) Not in a debilitating way, but definitely in a way that probably isn’t great and is certainly not rational.
That thought in the back of your head is always in mine. Sometimes it screams loudly. And then I get so, so angry.
I think about it every time I go to the movies, for sure. And a few times since grad school, I’ve gone back to my alma mater to teach or meet with someone & I look around and realize I’m genuinely freaked out by all the boys with backpacks.
My workplace has added a lot of shooting safety protocol recently (changing specific door locks and adding doors to facilitate egress, increasing security, etc) and it hadn’t really been on my mind until that started. Now I think about it whenever I go to work.
Yep — had to go through active shooter training at work and now I think about it constantly. :/
Occasionally? I live in Boston and so it definitely comes up around big events (especially the marathon), which these days have tons of security (which to me seems futile – can you really lock down 26 miles of city street?). It happens more when there are killings around the country, and less when things are quiet. But it’s definitely a thought that crosses my mind now and again, sometimes seemingly completely unprompted.
I … like to be near an emergency exit when I’m in a dark place (like a club, or a movie theatre).
tbh, I started doing that in clubs after I read about the Station Club fire, and now, I’m anxious about going into any dark venue at all…
Oh gosh, a lot? I’m an engineer, and whenever I’m the only woman in a conference room or classroom (basically every day), I think about the Ecole Polytechnique massacre and whether the men in the room would leave if a gunman ordered them to. I think about it whenever I go to a mall with more than one floor, and whenever I visit Washington, DC, (where I’m moving this year, oh boy) because the Beltway sniper attacks happened at such an impressionable age.
These sniper attacks are pretty insidious to me partly because a big theory re. motivation was that he was killing people to throw law enforcement off of the fact that he was trying to kill his ex-girlfriend? No shooting ever makes “sense” but that was pretty well circulated once they caught him and it’s just a particularly unusual twist. (I thought that theory was actually fact but judging from the wikipedia page I just referenced, it isn’t.)
More than I want to, definitely. It could be that columbine is in a nearby school district for me, and happened in the first couple years of my elementary education, and sometimes I would kinda wake up and realize how much of my schooling was affected by it.
Like, a big construction project at my school to transform what was a potential “vantage point” for shooters into a security office, a full-school evacuation and cancellation because a backpack was left on a lawn on 4/20 (columbine anniversary), schools giving parents the option to keep kids home if something vaguely threatening appeared on a bathroom door (or people staying home on 4/20 regardless of if there was a threat or not), teachers who would stress to us about where we’d have to hide in case of a shooter (my choir teacher who didn’t have a good safe exit for her room, who would figure out how many people she could hide in the music library, in her office, in the lighting closet), it was just /constant/.
It was confined to schools for me, just lots of times in the back of my mind, assessing the danger of lecture halls. Then after the aurora theater shooting, which was also just so so close to home for me, I have that niggling “god what if” in the back of my mind if I ever want to see a movie premiere. The more this kind of thing happens, the more often I just spend my first couple of minutes anywhere just thinking about what I’d do.
I know it’s statistically unlikely, and it hasn’t affected how I live (theaters, concerts, etc) and I don’t worry or get scared about it, even with how often I think about it, but it’s just sickening that I can use the word “often” when I describe my thinking about it. I don’t know, I probably focus on small things way to much, but I just always notice them.
This is a lot like where I am with it – and we must live in the same metro area. You know what quietly haunts me? The Arapahoe High shooting of 2013. It was barely a blip, nationally, because only one victim (and the shooter) died. I just imagine being the parents of that girl, and you don’t even get counted on the list of mass shootings because the gunman “failed.” I worry about how I’m going to handle sending my kids to school, sometimes.
I was a freshman in high school when Columbine happened, and then we instituted a “red folder” protocol so teachers and administrators could communicate without alerting a shooter to the fact that anybody was aware of the presence of a shooter.
Oh, and being depressed and angry made administrators very suspicious of you.
It’s not something that’s normally on my radar, but there was a shooter in my neighborhood over Memorial Day and several friends-of were affected (a couple shot, several sheltering-in-place until the shooter was shot) and it was so *weird* to look at the news and go ‘oh, yeah, that car wash I pass a few times a month, okay’ that it’s bumped the idea up in my brain.
Depending on what’s in the news, I think about it when going to synagogue, too, but not generally to other places in my world.
Every time I go to the movies, certainly. And especially, when my husband goes without me, especially to a big movie (I was so nervous when he went to Star Wars). I have a 4 month old baby and I think about it when I imagine sending her off to school someday. I think about it sometimes on the subway (NYC), since everyone has bags and coats and just, who knows what’s in them and we are all trapped.
I didn’t think about them much in the past. . .but they seem like they get closer and closer to me. First San Bernadino, when I live in LA, then UCLA, where my boyfriend works, then one targeted at queer people when my boyfriend is trans (which felt like a bit of stretch in my anxiety-brain until they found that man with explosives on his way to LA pride. . .). I’m definitely starting to feel jumpy and I’m not sure what to do about it.
Ditto. They’re getting closer and closer.
I just read through the comments on this post, and it’s basically this. Everyone’s like well, I didn’t think about it often until X event that happened near me. Which is the thing – it could happen anywhere now.
I’ve been ruminating on this a little bit this morning and having a lot of mixed feelings about it. I’m born and raised in the Bmore-DC metro swath (woo woo, Central MD) and an older millennial so I grew up with: 1) Columbine shootings taking place when I was in HS, 2) 9/11 my freshman year of college, 3) the DC metro shooter my sophomore year of college.
That being said, I think about it now more often than I would like (at least once a week, and more after a mass shooting) because I now work in DC, work near a major transit hub, take mass transit to work, etc. I don’t think about it as much when I go to a movie theater but it does cross my mind. I think about vis a vis my commute and work. The fact that my org just had ALICE training (mandatory, but it was a webinar so ehhh effectivness in my opinion) doesn’t help.
I had a series of tweets about this, this am, but basically I thought I was kind of jaded about this kind of stuff prior to starting this job in DC 8 months ago but w all of the recent events and working in DC, I’m realizing that I’m not. I also think about how I would communicate/connect with my husband (who works in Central MD) in case something happens.
I feel a little guilty thinking about this in the context of the Pulse attack though because I feel like I’m taking something that happened at a QPOC event and making it about myself. :/ Yes, I’m def in solidarity with them but I wonder if my own handwringing is missing the point.
Also: other, related things background worries I have been contemplating for the past few years:
-what if law enforcement decides to target my husband bc of mistaken identity, generally being racist assholes, or both? (if any of you have followed my comments on here, you know this is an ongoing concern and I’m being perhaps annoying repetitive on this point)
-are these the naive/sheltered anxieties of a USian, neglecting the fact that other communities around the world live with similar worries on a regular basis, oftentimes due to our own foreign policies? I think about my parents growing up in south VN and going to college in Sai Gon in the 60s and 70s, as well as so many US foreign interventions since then.
My mind is such a comforting place to be, isn’t it? :/ But yeah, I guess this is tallying up to a background consideration the potential for violence and shootings by individual actors or even by the state through my daily life.
Thank you for all these thoughts. I have very similar feelings and concerns and you summarized them quite well! I don’t have (any) answers, but I really appreciate your thoughtful response.
Thank you for replying! It’s all pretty complicated. I still wonder if the other background thoughts I mention might be de-centering the conversation about LGBTQ safety, which is really what I think the Pulse shootings are about. :/
FWIW, I worry about the law enforcement thing for pretty much every one of my non-white, non-dude friends, including FB/internet friends like y’all. I definitely don’t think you are annoying or repetitive. If we don’t talk about these fears, and these issues, then we won’t act, and nothing changes. I’m glad you are speaking about this stuff.
Pretty often. I teach at Big State U, and mostly imagine school shootings. Lots of wtf would I do worries.
I don’t fear mass shootings, but I have never lived in a country where guns are legal (beyond shot guns for hunting), even the police aren’t armed. I do have a fear about visiting the US though, that if I go I will get shot. Just the fact that the police have guns and are allowed to use them for almost any reason freaks me out, and then that there’s just ‘normal’ people walking around with loaded guns? Hell fucking no.
I get that some people think its a ‘cultural’ thing or that its their right, but I honestly think that almost all of those people are fucking idiots and the thought of them having a gun on them is scary. (Personally, I can think of maybe 3 reasons to own a gun, and they are all animal related and only cover shot guns/rifles. I cannot see any reason that someone would want to own a handgun. The protection argument is bullshit.)
I’m a veteran. I was an infantry officer, and I trained with (and trained) a platoon of infantry daily. I qualified as an expert on literally every weapon we had qualifications for, from handguns up to tanks. We went to the range/live fire courses 1-2 times per week and drilled gun usage and safety. Having seen how hard it is for even highly trained personnel who get regular training to use guns safely and effectively, I have zero confidence in any civilians using guns for self defence. And that includes cops. I think nobody should have access to guns but active duty military (including, when they are called up for training *only*, our well-regulated militia aka National Guard). Not even hunters, to be honest.
All this is to say that I’ve got a lot of gun experience, and I agree with your points.
People keep using “home protection” as an excuse for handgun ownership but it just doesn’t hold up, in my opinion? Because if someone is following all the regulations and guidelines about how to store your gun (disassembled, in a locked cabinet, with ammunition in a separate locked cabinet) that gun is not going to save you during a home invasion anyway!
I grew up in a family that had a lot of guns. It never, ever made me feel safe. It just gave me one more thing to be scared of when my stepdad was angry.
I have hypervigilance from CPTSD anyway, so going through daily life and thinking what-if and having reaction plans in place is basically background processing for me.
So, while I think about mass shootings in the same, abstract planning-mode as a bunch of other potential things, I don’t think about mass shootings in a particularly visceral or fear-laden way. They’re just one more shitty thing that could happen, and if it should happen to me, there is realistically absolutely nothing I could do than try to deal with it.
YES this was what I was trying to describe but really couldn’t articulate so thank you
Ditto this.
I’m a high school teacher, so if I started thinking about mass shootings too much, I’d probably go crazy. So no, not really. I guess I’ve made the choice not to.
Almost daily. I live in NYC and commute through one of the largest transit hubs every day (and often see SWAT teams with assault rifles just hanging out in the station near my work…), so the low level risk/fear is in the back of my mind most of the time. And of course it also crops up at the movies, concerts, etc., as others have mentioned.
However, I will say that this level of fear *for me* is not healthy! Whenever I start to feel this nagging worry, I try to look around at the other people in the subway with me and think about the sheer number of people I have commuted with every day for the past year. And, wow, there are so many of them! And there haven’t been any shootings! In fact, most of the people are probably at least somewhat kind, and somewhat generous, and have people they love and people who love them. It doesn’t always work, and sometimes it feel very cheesy, but focusing on the good and trying to stop the bad from taking up undue weight in my thoughts helps, sometimes.
I think about it all the time. Not so much that I have really changed my life (I don’t go to midnight movie releases anymore, though), but I work at a large public university, my dad and my sister work in elementary/high schools, and I think about my safety, their safety, and the safety of my students a lot.
it usually doesn’t occur to me? which, I don’t know, I’m not the most observant person to begin with. It may also be a coping mechanism, idk.
I was about to say, maybe if it happened somewhere closer to me personally, but then I remembered that it literally did happen in my hometown and – granted I was ten years old & my parents kept me away from the coverage, but… I still forget, all the time, that it’s a real threat.
Similar–I think my anxiety brain just shuts down on it completely.
I know four people who have either been actively involved (like, hiding from the shooter) in a mass shooting or attended school where there was one (anywhere from junior high to college). I work in a public library with one entrance, and our active shooter drill is basically “try to herd a library full of people into the single-occupancy bathroom and hope for the best”. Every time I have to ask someone to leave I wonder if they’ll come back with a gun. We had three excluded patrons threaten to come back and shoot up the library in our system this year, all within a month. At another area system, a woman walked in with a shotgun and walked through the library while people hid and called 911. My neighborhood branch has an obnoxious open-carry patron who never checks anything out, just swaggers around the lobby ostentatiously touching his gun. Because we’re city property, we can’t ban guns or concealed carry, just set rules on how it’s done. Because a man carrying a gun into a goddamn library is really going to take kindly to being told how to handle his weapon.
Oh my goodness. I’m so sorry that you are asked to deal with this kind of garbage. BLERG.
I…may have unofficially told all my desk students that “if, er, anything were to, you know, happen” THIS is the quickest way out of the library from the circ desk.
I worry about a shooter at work every day (the way we’ve been getting bomb threats during finals lately hasn’t helped.) My front-of-house colleagues and I make sick jokes about how, should we get a shooter, it’s not a question of whether we’ll get shot, it’s whether we’ll be able to hit the panic button before we get shot.
I think about it nearly every single day. Any time I’m in a theater, at a concert, walking down the city street.
It’s crazy how used to it you get, your mind just constantly going “OK if there was a shooter here right now what would happen”
Just last week I thought to myself – “We actually haven’t had a tragic mass shooting in a few months now.” And the thought scared me because I knew it would happen again and I didn’t know where or when.
Okay disclaimer: I’m autistic and have ocd, so I do tend to fixate on things and obsess over them so this may not be relatable, but honestly at least once a day, especially when school’s in and I’m living on campus, even when people /aren’t/ walking around in NRA shirts that say “keep calm and carry a gun”, or when my sister in high school doesn’t text back as fast as she usually does.
It’s always jarring to me coming back to America from Japan and having that worry-sense reawaken. Every time, it takes me a few weeks to readjust to living with that baseline of fear humming in the background.
I can really relate to that humming fear, which for me reemerges about earthquakes whenever I return to CA from some less trembly place.
Incredibly rarely, when there’s an unusually bad one in the US and it dominates the international news. I live in Scotland, where the last mass shooting was in the nineties and we promptly banned handguns. I can’t get my head around the idea of living with that fear. I know it happens, but it’s a completely alien thought, just like the idea of having the death penalty or a serious risk that the police will kill someone (it happens, but it’s incredibly rare). I am so sorry that you all have to live with those risks.
Every single day I am at work because I teach at a major university and I know people who teach (or taught) at three schools that have already had mass shootings adn I am terrified we will be next. I even had a random student walk into my classroom in the middle of the third week of class and my first thought was not “Hey, where you been, you missed some class” but rather “today is the day I die.”
So. Every fucking day.
I don’t worry about mass shootings. I worry about how a dude will react when I turn him down. I worry about if I answer an innocuous question from a taxi driver or an Uber driver in a way that outs me as queer, what their response will be because very best case they’re cool and then there’s a wide spectrum of bad cases: “oh I have an <x family member> who is gay” “oh that’s really hot” “who do you like more?” “Ew that’s gross and sinful” or even flat-out violence.
All the time since we had the November attacks. Police presence is everywhere. Today a protest turned violent–26 people injured–and they were out in full riot gear. They closed several metro stations in the area I was in, as well as the large Jardin du Luxembourg, (a park) and that’s not something that normally happens for protests. Before I knew what was going on, and especially so soon after Orlando, I was terrified that I’d just walked into some sort of attack. (Not that what was happening wasn’t also, awful, but it was easier to avoid than a gunman would be.) I’m constantly looking for exits and places to hide, too. I never used to do that, but November changed things….
Sometimes, like you. I actually called the police (non-emergency line) once regarding a guy who gave me the screaming heebie-jeebies on the playground (after removing myself and my son from the area). He was an adult white male wearing coveralls sitting high up on top of some playground equipment just staring at everyone in an unsettling way. It was super crowded there that day and my brain just told me “HE MIGHT BE ABOUT TO SHOOT EVERYONE”. No idea if the cops found him or not.
Knocked Up is sexist and the two dudes who ranked the Apatow movies are sexist for throwing shade at Heigl for saying so.
Just gonna focus all my feelings on that zero-stakes issue this morning.
Your opinions are good and you should feel good about them.
I’ve only seen part of The 40-Year Old Virgin and I think I probably wouldn’t mind Bridesmaids, but I have no desire to see any more of Apatow’s movies and basically everything I’ve read/heard about them makes me think I would hate them them all.
Unpopular opinion strongly held: Steve Carell is a terrible comedic actor and his entire career annoys me.
I think his strongest work is actually when he’s more earnest, like in Crazy, Stupid, Love aka the movie with Ryan Gosling doing the Dirty Dancing lift.
I loved him in Dan in Real Life and Little Miss Sunshine. He does sad/earnest really well.
You have voiced my feelings about Steve Carell perfectly. I will not watch him. Ugh. I do like Bridesmaids and Knocked Up, but I like a lot of dumb movies (Supertroopers! Etc.) I also hate Will Ferrell and Jim Carey, which makes me a bit odd for a fan of bad comedies.
Agreed. I hated that movie with the power of a thousand suns.
Oh man, I am here for some low-stakes anger.
I am a little depressed by how some people are withholding their compassion at Orlando because of the identity of those who were killed. My sibling is scheduled to donate blood this weekend, and when I congratulated him on the good timing because there had been blood shortages in Orlando, he said that he had scheduled this a long time ago and that was not why he was doing it. And then radio silence, which is not normally his style — he is a christian and normally will talk about holding people in his prayers etc.
Actually it’s not the first time he’s done this. He also objects to good health care for all and spending more money on the (mostly African-Americal) urban schools near him because “he needs to take care of his children” — like it will take something away from them. As he is very well off and a christian, I really don’t get this attitude, nor why he thinks it is morally decent. I’ve said to him that it is directly to his children’s benefit to not live in a society where people don’t get basic health care and live on the streets — but he doesn’t hear/get that. Though I strongly believe it is true, especially when I watch his kids react with sadness and fear to seeing a homeless person in the city, etc. He is also very stubborn, so discussion is not always helpful. It makes me very sad, because I really see it as a kind of indecency. These are not the values we were raised with — it developed later in life, through exposure to conservative Republican talking points. Is there a way to get through to someone like that?
Have you tried yelling?
(sorry, not very constructive, but it might make you feel better?)
hahaha, tried that in the past, felt worse after, but know what you mean.
sometimes things get through to him, but it’s unpredictable and it can take a while.
Is there a way to get through to someone like that?
In my experience, no.
Nor in mine. Especially since it’s clear she’s already tried plenty.
Hon, being a Christian actually makes people more likely to behave this way, sadly. Same for being well-off. There’s nothing you can do. As for holding people in your prayers, there’s a hell of a lot of anger towards people who smugly offer “prayers and thoughts” but no action, and Congress for thinking that (literal) silence is the most appropriate response to a preventable tragedy.
He doesn’t sound like someone following the teachings of Christ. When people pull this I just like to deadpan “It’s what Jesus would have done.” Other options: Next time he asks you for anything, tell him you’ll pray for it to come his way. “Could you pass the potatoes?” “Dear Lord, I beseech thee to find a way to move the potatoes to my brother, if you see fit to do so. Amen.” Do not touch the potatoes, famously God has at least one hand for doing stuff, he can pass ’em.
That must be so difficult for you to hear – it’s horrible when people close to us exhibit unpleasant attitudes. I don’t know if you can get through to him, but I think if you just keep being a kind person and modelling thoughtful, compassionate behaviour, that will be good for his kids to witness: their dad’s attitude isn’t the only one out there.
I work through the same things with my conservative Christian family.
“Getting through” to them may not be the best goal to set, in the long run. I did this at Thanksgiving this past year, as all good Americans do, getting into a few argu-debates with a particular uncle about everything from LGBTQ rights to gun control to ordaining women in the church. (It was a fun Thanksgiving.)
What I ended up realizing is that these family members likely live in an echo chamber. They hear the same thing from the members of their church, from the parents their kids go to school with, the people in their workplaces etc. So even if I’m doing nothing else, I’m able to introduce an alternate viewpoint that maybe sticks with them long enough for them to question things the next time they hear the same platitudes that I refuted.
More importantly, as we were having that conversation, which I hope was firm but loving, my young cousins heard me too. They learned that not everyone thinks the same things their dad does, and that people with opposing views can be people that you love, and not just politicians that your parents demonize.
As for a specific point of reference for Christian folk, I’ve found that it’s best to go back to their understanding of what it means that all people were created in the image of God. If you can walk them back to that, then you have a foundation for explaining that we are all fundamentally equal, because we are all created in the image of the same God. And that if you see people being treated as though they were not “image bearers” then it should upset you as a Christian.
It’s not the whole complete How To Talk To Christians About Being Decent People playbook, but it’s a start.
This was interesting. We did not grow up christian (he is an adult convert), so it is all extra-strange for me.
I do model alternative ways of thinking to his kids, which is really important to me. Unfortunately I am also the Weird Auntie Who Lives in the City for them, so my influence on them is a bit bracketed — but I’m there.
I wish I had new potato pictures to provide a break for everyone but I don’t and I’m sad and tired and a friend almost went to Pulse that night and I had an argument with my mom about job searching and basically I want my dog to sitting next to me and licking my face whenever I turn towards him.
It is so exhausting to not feel like you have a home. I am paying the same in rent for one room at my mom’s as I was for an entire suite at my other place and she still feels entitled to judge everything about how I live. I’m sleeping on two entirely insufficient foam mattresses because my air mattress sprung a leak (again) and I need to deal with that but I’m just so tired and I want my own bed and my own space.
Oh, that’s so so rough. Having your own space — safe, secure, free from parents harassing you — is incredibly important for any adult. I’m furious that she’s charging you that much rent and won’t leave you alone. I hope your situation changes for the better soon.
I know how crummy it can feel to be unmoored from home and not helped by family. I hope you are reunited with our beloved Tater soon and get all the face-licks from his little smiley face.
:(((((((
that is so so tough. is there any way you can spend more time out (with potato? surely no one can object to him being walked. dogs need lots of walking and like to go many places) and away from her? take up an evening class? multiple evening classes? ‘take up an evening class’ that is actually going to a coffee shop with a book?
I’m sorry to read how frustrating life is for you lately. Just want to let you know that I always look eagerly for potato pix. Give both him and yourself a hug from this Toastie, please.
The NYT is talking about Orlando as a terrorist attack, and I’m having a really hard time with that. It feels like a hate crime to me, and it feels marginalizing to not use that phrase. Am I out in left field or are other people feeling this way too?
Calling it terrorism means focussing on the religious identity of the perpetrator. If it’s ” he’s Muslim, therefore terrorism”, mainstream white Christianity is off the hook. Calling it a hate-crime means recognising the ethnic and sexual and gender identities of the victims. It means mainstream white Christianity is just as complicit as Islam.
Thank you for saying that. I am hearing so many Christians saying “oh, no REAL Christian is homophobic” today, and it is horribly unpleasant.
Fuck that noise. Loads of “real” Christians are homophobic. Historically, we’re really, really homophobic. It’s a huge problem that we, as a Church, have to acknowledge and discuss before we can actually fix a damn thing.
^^ THIS. If it’s a “terrorist attack” then the conservatives can get all fired up about how we all need to be concealed carrying 18 guns at any given time to protect ourselves from the Muslims, but if it’s a hate crime, then that can’t be twisted to support their ideas, because they don’t care if a bunch of gay ppl got killed. It’s blatant and disgusting. I’m just so done with my country. I feel like America has failed, at everything. What’s the point anymore? We’re just going to spiral into a constant state of anarchy and shootings if we haven’t already.
It’s definitely a hate crime. In a vacuum, “terrorist attack” would also be an entirely appropriate and accurate description – it was an attack intended to terrorize. But we don’t live in a vacuum, and we know that it’s only being called terrorism because the murderer was Muslim, and I am right there feeling disgusted alongside you.
All shootings are terrorist attacks. I know that’s often used a dog whistle to stir up islamophobia, but we really need to start calling these shootings terrorist attacks, because that’s what they are defined by the impact they have on communities.
Agreed. If we are going to push to refer to the SC church shooting as an act of terror, which we did, then this is also an act of terror.
Yes. And also because we have a track record of taking action when it’s identified as terrorism.
I appreciated that when Mayor Dyer said outright that it was an act of terrorism, he was explicit that it was “domestic terrorism”. It’s terrorism against LGBTQIA people, and it’s homegrown.
I get what the folks upthread are saying about how the word “terrorism” has shifted to connote specifically religious-based violence, but I think the “domestic” addition helps negate that and still retains the meaning and import of “terrorism”, since that’s what it is for the community affected.
(How is it that hate crime and terrorism are mutually exclusive??)
“Mass murder” still has a ring to it. Let’s use that too.
Excellent suggestion!
Unfortunately in this case it definitely qualifies as both. I wish the media would call it a hate crime more often too, but they aren’t wrong in calling it a terrorist attack. Obama/the FBI used the same terminology, and they don’t use it lightly.
My FB feed has a tone-deaf if not untrue swath of comments picking apart the “worst mass shooting in US history” claim and pointing to the American Indian genocide. While I feel it’s a weird choice to interject that while people are raw in their grief, identities of the dead are still being released, etc., it is of course true, and people forcibly erased from history can reassert their place in it whenever the hell they want to. What I’m wondering is, what’s a better/more accurate way to phrase what has happened that takes that into account? My best guess would be “in modern US history,” to distinguish it from, you know, historical history, though its legacies are still with us. Ideas?
You could say that Orlando is the deadliest mass shooting by an individual perpetrator – that would be accurate AND emphasizes the reasons that we need to ban assault weapons.
Last night my father and I were talking about this and we settled on “single-shooter mass shooting”. Because yes, several of the incidents of Native American genocide were larger than this event.
This isn’t an unimportant thing to bring up because the news now is history later. And accuracy is always important in journalism.
I find myself wondering about the purpose behind someone debating whether the shooting/terrorist act/hate crime in Orlando was really the worst mass shooting in US history or not. Is their intention to ensure that the slaughter of Native Americans isn’t lost to history? Is it to get involved in a good old-fashioned semantic argument (which I believe is one of the three original purposes of the internet)? Or is it to pull attention from the horrific crime that targeted a marginalized group that has fewer truly safe spaces in the entire country than I have in, like, my neighborhood?
In your place I think my reaction would be to look at who’s arguing about the label of “worst mass shooting.” If it’s someone of Native American origin, or if it’s someone from the LGBT community, then it feels like it could be a conversation worth having. On the other hand, if it’s someone who looks like me (straight middle-aged white dude), then I really feel like they should STFU.
Having said all of that, I am in a pretty cynical frame of mind right now, and that’s coloring my reaction to just about everything I interact with, so it’s possible that I am completely off base here. I just feel like everywhere I turn, I’m seeing those derailing tactics (some intentional, some probably not). That might not be what’s happening here at all.
All of these are helpful responses, thanks. I think in my feed it was a mix of people who hold our original citizenry here with care and also some derailing assholes. That’s why I: 1) said nothing on FB about it, and 2) asked here in order to get my head straight and language on point. No, no, my life will be totally fine when The Toast is gone, don’t worry about old heathered…
agree
(sorry no more to add – just – i think your assessment is accurate)
(also, i was gonna be one of the queer/genderqueer people pointing out genocides, but bit my tongue, so i’m glad it was brought up and discussed here, you guys are the actual best)
Oh, thank you very much for mentioning this.
Everything just feels like a dystopia to me nowadays 🙁
I assumed peoples’ goal is to not let said genocide go forgotten – but yeah, I like “modern US history” as a means of distinguishing.
Except modern history actually means something else. The modern period starts in the 16th century and runs through the present. Some historians will break it down to early modern (16th century-French Revolution, more or less) and late modern (French revolution-present, more or less).
It makes me a little twitchy because I understand the impulse, and I truly believe people are making a good-faith effort to be more precise, and still that’s not quite right. (I also get twitchy when all the non-archivists out there refer to things that are not archives as archives.) I’m also not sure what would be better, and I’ve been thinking about it since I saw the first “modern US history” headline.
From what I understand, a lot of the slaughter involved in westward expansion was committed by the state: either by the army, or by executioners, as at the end of the US-Dakota war. Orlando might well be the worst attack by a civilian.
Well, the genocide against American Indians was (at the absolute bare fucking minimum) encouraged by state and local governments, even in cases where civilians were doing the killing (this was the case in California.) The various Indian Wars were actual wars — two political entities engaging in violence. Removal was a state policy, as were boarding schools, adoption, etc. So the comparison is not quite apt. Or, to look at it slightly differently, it’s not particularly surprising when the state employs violence — that is one of the functions of the state.
That being said, probably the phrasing you’re looking for is “in post-war US history,” because mass shootings by a small number of people acting in a non-official capacity is, so far as I’m aware, a phenomenon of the latter half of the 20th century.
My university has multiple official Twitter accounts (for various divisions, programs, etc) and one of them posted a response to the NYT claim of “worst mass shooting in U.S. history” that said, “Really?” and linked to the Wikipedia page for…either mass shootings or genocide (I can’t remember which). I replied and asked them what they were trying to say, and called them out for minimizing Orlando’s grief. The original tweet is no longer there and my response doesn’t even have a “this tweet has been deleted” box to show that I was replying to something in particular.
I wish I’d thought to take a screen shot. I’d send it to the fucking chancellor.
honestly my reaction to that is just “oh you suddenly care about First Nations ppl? Since when?” like the same ppl that post that shit post really racist stuff against Native Americans every other day of the year. They’re not posting it bc they care. It’s a distraction technique. IDK maybe the ppl on your facebook are better and do actually care about the continuing genocide of Native Americans but the ppl on mine are just a holes.
I am sad about the number of white LGBT people I’m seeing in the UK who are shouting about how much it matters that these were LGBT people who died, who are not shouting about the fact that they were also Black and Latinx people who died. I think that this is because they are mostly not aware, so I am trying to amplify the voices of POC who are saying that, and saying it myself in other places, but it is sad to see LGBT people obscuring the ethnic identities of the dead whilst insisting on the importance of their sexual and gender identities.
I am furious about any white LGBT people saying “If this was black people or Jews or …, you wouldn’t hear people saying it doesn’t matter” because YES YOU FUCKING WOULD, THAT IS HOW THIS WORKS, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
Anyone saying that has definitely not been paying attention, damn.
Ugh yes. Everyone is posting Owen Jones’ walk off and missing the point that what he said was also pretty ~problematic~ and he himself has not always been there for racial minorities in a way that includes substantively considering race alongside class.
I think some of it will be down to the media deliberately obscuring this. I had to go hunting for quite a while to find this out, and I was too exhausted and miserable to do that in the early stages, I was just overwhelmed by it all. But that excuse only takes you so far, and a lot of it will be racism, yep. Especially if they’re saying “if this was black people or Jews”, which is totally fucking inappropriate. Apart from anything else, my initial concern on hearing the news wasn’t for the LGBT community (I’m white LGBT), it was for POC and Muslims who are now at risk of retaliatory attacks, so they have no excuse for missing the racism going on here.
I think it’s legit that UK people haven’t processed that a Latin night in Orlando means POC until it’s mentioned explicitly, but I’m still sad to see the white-washing. There’s just no excuse for “if it were any other group” though.
I initially wondered if it just meant Latin music, but then I looked it up.
i’m having a hard time absorbing all the details of yesterday (deadliest mass shooting outside of, y’know, an actual wartime battle; worst attack since 9/11; the Latino LGBT community in a southern state impacted).
But I need help dealing with a specific and very close jab that came, of course, out of that wasteland known as FB. The only reason I visit FB is to stay in touch with my long-distance friends (and I miss my Houston queer group more than EVER now), but I saw something from my grandmother-figure, the badass woman who taught me karate for more than a decade, who was one of my pillars of support during the worst years of my life.
She’s a Christian raised in Mississippi sixty years ago, and so she shared a text image that compared this event to those one-time-only terrorist events like Timothy McVeigh and 9/11, and then put the blame for this not on guns, but our “godless society.”
She taught not only me karate, but also my brother for close to a decade, until he purchased the gun he used to end his life. She knows this, I know it rocked her as it does whenever she loses a student this way.
I am so angry and hurt and I know the futility of starting a FB fight with her, my mentor and a woman I love. I know I’ll just feel sick all day if I call her out, waiting for a response, trying to modulate my own in a way that expresses my feelings while not disrespecting her or escalating it unnecessarily (and also just wanting to stop, I hate fighting, especially online).
But how can I let this go unchallenged? After thinking about it for the last two hours, I’ve mentally drafted something very simple and as non-confrontational as I can get, where I don’t actually yell at her for how those words are trash and godless people can be just as fucking moral as any Christian — ahem, no, this is all I want to say: “Hi ma’am. I was wondering if you would support a law prohibiting gun sales to a man who’s on an FBI watch list, or one who’s been charged with domestic violence, or mentally ill people, like my brother?”
I think I can do that much. I just want to make her think about it. We used to teach women’s self defense workshops together, she knows what women especially face from domestic abusers.
FUCK IT. Here is what I also want to say: “I’m having a hard time dealing with the suggestion that this happened because our society is ‘godless.’ I don’t think you’d agree that nearly every other developed country, like the U.K., Canada, Australia, or those in Europe, are godlier than us. And the other terrorist attacks mentioned only happened once because there was an immediate government response to strengthen building and airport security. People didn’t respond to drunk driving deaths by saying we need to become ‘godlier,’ we made laws and regulations to drastically lower the number of those deaths. I don’t know why we can’t do something similar with guns.”
I am so sorry, about your brother, and about the way our mentors and heroes can let us down sometimes. I’d second the suggestion to go with a DM/messenger approach, as it doesn’t force her to save face in front of the world.
PS: Do as I say, not as I’d do, for sure. I’d start a damn fire, and I think that’d not be helpful :/
Aha, thank you for that advice and condolences, seriously. It’s helpful.
Yes, I will take the DM approach, and I’ll also finish my soap box message by asking her to take it down out of respect for me/my dead brother. That would be a concrete response that would feel like an accomplishment.
I think this second message is actually better than the first, if it’s the “godless” thing you’re reacting to more than the gun control business. Probably better to focus on just one point if you really want to her to hear you — and via private message is most effective for that, too. It is admirable to stick up for your principles — bravo and hoping she is able to hear you.
And all my sympathies about your brother.
No, the issue of mass-murder weapons as freely available as candy and Coca-cola is what makes me want to scream and scream and scream, more than the insult to atheists (though it also pisses me off). It’s futile, but I want to make her see the complete lack of logic in that message.
Might I suggest you do it via private message if you do so? I have some religious conservative relatives that I love dearly myself, and I’ve always found that public responses DO escalate things despite my best intentions, and that if I want to reach someone’s heart and mind, the way to do it is in private conversation. (My apologies if that’s what you were already planning to do.)
No, that’s a good point. Thanks. (Though I kind of also want it to be “on the record” that I am speaking out against this shittery, but maybe that’s not the most important point.)
Excuse me, I’ve got to go set several discrete and contained fires as a way of relieving my feelings.
Considering how violent Christianity tends to be, and that I don’t think it’s any coincidence that America is a very Christian country and also a very violent country, I am not remotely impressed with her, and wouldn’t be staying friends with her if it were me.
Sure, that’s a logical conclusion to come to when you don’t have a decade-plus relationship with a mentor who gave you a reason to live for the aforementioned hardest years of your life, and also went to bat for you against your abuser. These relationships are complicated. She’s broken my heart sometimes by sharing dumb shit on FB, but I know where her stances come from, and it’s not out of malice.
Also, while I completely agree that Christianity is often warped into toxicity and violence, like with the KKK, a version of your comment is appearing lots of places these days except with the word “Islam” in place of Christianity (“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that —- is a Muslim country and also a very violent country”).
I don’t think that kind of generalization should be used against any religion. There are a lot of factors at play in every violent country.
I’m so, so sorry. That really sucks.
I like the suggestion of doing a private message. I personally do better when I write my angry message and then wait 12 to 24 hours to decide whether or not to send it.
The other thing that I (sometimes remember to) do is to be clear on my goals. What do want to happen? Do you want her to know she hurt you? Take down the post? Apologize? Change her mind about godlessness and gun control? Tell her how you feel so you can continue your relationship with her without feeling like a hypocrite / so angry that you can’t see? Some of these are easier to achieve than others.
Toastie hugs if you want them.
Yes, I will definitely be waiting at least 12 hours, since I’m still holding out against FB Messenger and I don’t really log in to FB at work (The Toast is totally legit, though!).
Goals are also a good thing when the overwhelming impulse is just to scream truth to make her see.
Hey I need to overshare with someone
And I don’t want to do it at work
I saw the news yesterday and I saw headlines went like
There was a shooting in Orlando
There was a shooting in a gay bar in Orlando
And then I saw the numbers it was a lot more people than i thought and I called my brother until he picked up and it was a long two phone calls and eventually he picked up I kinda lost it and it didn’t get it back yesterday And I’m faking it today because he’s safe but other people didn’t ever get an answer
And I just need to spew that at someone I’m sorry I fel like I feel like I’m gonna blow up at every person on Facebook who refuses to say that they are gay poc
You can delete this if it’s too much of a bummer
Sending love to you. I can’t imagine your fear. Grateful your brother is OK, so sorry to anyone who had to even wonder and worry about a loved one.
I am so, so glad your brother is safe. I hope his friends are too, and much love to you all. <3
It is definitely, definitely not too much of a bummer.
Massive hugs directed your way. Your feelings are so legitimate.
Big hugs. I’m so happy your brother is safe. And spewing is a completely legitimate reasonable human reaction to this shit.
So, I got hooded yesterday! As is typical when you have a day of celebration planned and then a huge tragedy happens to coincide with it, I felt conflicted. I’m posting all these pictures of smiling faces on Facebook, in between my friends’ posts of anguish and anger. There was a moment of silence during commencement for Orlando, and my husband’s giving blood today (I can’t for medical reasons), but I still feel a bit disconnected from it.
(I won’t actually receive my PhD until I file in September, but I walked yesterday anyway.)
Congrats on graduation!
Congrats!! That’s a big huge step, and in my experience as an observer, one of the best modern rituals with dignified outfits and occasionally silly Hogwartsian hats.
Oh, absolutely! I didn’t get a spiffy tam (they cost a few hundred dollars), but my friends and I were definitely passing time at the ceremony trying to find the most Hogwartsian regalia among the professors.
Congratulations!
Also, the conflict is awful. My brother graduated from university the same day as Sandy Hook, and we were all catching the news snippets as we drove down to UCF and started gathering in the arena. It was really, well, weird. It’s hard to reconcile the two, and uncomfortable to hold such two different emotions at the same time.
I imagine one of my friends must feel similarly to you. He got married the day before.
Honestly, as a bystander on Facebook, who didn’t go to his wedding out of state, who was feeling mired in the anguish and visceral fear and anger it was nice to a have a break every once in a while, to see those wedding pics. Esp since, for me, that same day the eldery dad of a good friend died, and a friend from highschool wrote an emotional letter on Facebook to his baby, born dead, also that day. I’d just come out the day before, blissfully unaware, and ohmygod, Facebook was just a trashfire of anguish.
It was nice to see the blissfully ignorant, happy wedding pics.
Don’t feel so bad.
Others aren’t judging you.
(But you’ve got a right to still feel conflicted, of course; I’m just speaking from the perspective of likely outsiders and so on)
My reaction to crappy world/ life events is to hide in books. So yesterday I read The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers which is wonderful, funny, queer friendly, and just feels like a hug most of the way through. It kind of helped me feel less like my insides were made of angry tornadoes yesterday.
Yes! That’s a good book.
I love that book so much. “Just feels like a hug most of the way through” is a perfect description.
Thank you! Bought the book
In addition to contacting your representatives to urge stronger gun regulation, here’s another small thing you can do to combat the feeling of helplessness we all have: Contact your 401k manager and urge them to divest in gun companies: http://unloadyour401k.com/.
It makes me ill to think my 401k probably profited (a little) from the Orlando shooting, because gun stocks always go up right after a mass shooting, and my 401k is with a big management company that includes gun companies in its investment profiles.
Oh, I like this strategy! Thank you.
This is a great idea, thank you.
Thank you for this! I just spent half an hour digging through all the funds in my 401k to make sure none were gun companies. They aren’t, as near as I can tell, but there are plenty of other terrible companies in there.
In response to a lot of the comments and questions in this OT, here is a good local (to Orlando) resource for information and how you can help: http://bungalower.com/2016/06/12/pulse-shooting-l…
It is being updated as new information comes in.
LGBTQ+ theology thread?
I was brought up fundamentalist Christian and told all the usual stuff about a ‘gay agenda’ etc; believed it till I was in my late teens; have since then not really known what I think theologically about LGBTQ+ issues but have basically held the position that I want to love people and stand by them, and let them live their lives; that I’m called to support others, not to condemn them. But that’s not good enough for me, after Sunday. I feel I need to read a lot more LGBTQ+ theology, gain more understanding of those viewpoints, and find a position supporting and loving LGBTQ+ people that I can stand behind when talking to my conservative Christian family and friends. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while, but now it feels urgent.
I have a day off today and am going to use that time to start. I already read Samantha Field; going to read more of Eliel Cruz and Nadia Bolz-Weber, Broderick Greer and Dianna Anderson. Any recommendations for books, theologians, websites, exegesis would be so very much appreciated.
Queer Toasties, all of the hugs and love to you.
I’m sorry I didn’t do this sooner.
There’s a documentary called Fish Out Of Water that might help. http://www.fishoutofwaterfilm.com/
Thank you!
When I was going through a similar issue in my early college years, a very wise elderly woman in my congregation said this to me about her own struggles with this – “When I get to the pearly gates, I would rather tell Jesus I chose love over hate. I’d rather be wrong loving people than right hating them.” It really helped me and while it probably isn’t 100% theologically sound, it’s what I’ve chosen to do.
I hope this helps.
YES. That is what I think too. I just want to be clearer on how that works out theologically, because I know it can and should.
You already know a lot of great people whose words are very much worth reading.
I was also brought up fundamentalist Christian, even went to a fundie college, so I have many friends and family who still are fundamentalist. I have found that theological debates are not helpful. Ultimately, no matter how good your exegesis is, it’s just too scary for some people to entertain the thought of stepping away from what they have been taught is absolute truth and a matter of eternal life or death.
You can trot out great scriptures like Ezekiel 16:48-50 where God says that the sin of Sodom was that “She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me.” Not homosexuality– lack of care for the poor and needy. But people will come back with their own “bully verses” or other arguments. It’s often fruitless and frustrating. That said, it is helpful to read for one’s own education.
Also, I think it’s important to keep reminding my friends and family that all people deserve love and deserve to be valued. I talk a lot about how Jesus displayed radical love and hospitality to people whom the religious leaders of the day considered to be the worst sinners, so I see a modern parallel in offering that radical love and acceptance to the LGBTQ+ community. When they tell me that I am wrong and will be accountable to God for leading others astray, I say that if one day I am before the throne of God, it turns out I’m wrong, and I have to account for my beliefs and actions, I am 100% confident in the answer I will have– that over and over I see examples of radical love in the scripture, and that I would much rather be held accountable for erring on the side of love. That has actually stopped quite a few people in their tracks more than any exegesis ever has.
<3 very helpful, thank you.
I <3 Nadia Bolz-Weber. Somewhat more academic, but I would also like to recommend the queer, embodied theology of Marcella Althaus-Reid.
The Rev. Yvette Flunder, who spoke at the vigil I attended last night, has written a book about radical inclusion that you might also enjoy.
Thanks!
Matthew Vines is great (and has a wonderful piece about the Orlando shooting that I link to tomorrow.)
Personally, As a Christian, I am wholly and utterly confident that gay relationships mirror the love of God for his children just like straight ones and are great and beautiful and if God does not feel that way I do not want to hang with him for eternity anyway.
I agree. A God who’s not loving is not the God I know.
Desmond Tutu agrees with you on that.
Mary Daly! She is a brilliant lesbian feminist Catholic theologian.
Beyond God the Father (1973) is probably her best-known work, though Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978) is pretty great, too. She was a professor at Boston College for over 30 years, and they repeatedly tried to fire her because they are a conservative Jesuit institution, but her (all-male) students, faculty, and the community protested each time and made sure she was able to stay and teach.
Ditto!
Not great on trans people, though, unfortunately.
Thanks!
She was an awful transmisogynist, unfortunately.
Thanks for the warning.
Sara Maitland is a queer feminist theologian and novelist, and one of my favourite writers.
I couldn’t remain part of a homophobic religion. There are a lot of branches of different faiths around, and if you think one is acting unethically, by all means move to another one. I was lucky enough to be in a denomination of Judaism that’s generally pretty good on human rights (including same-sex marriage), UK Liberal Judaism, but while realising that I was an atheist was the main reason I left, I don’t think I could have continued to support an organisation that mandates circumcision.
I would say that Christianity is nt necessarily homophobic (though those who practice it can be!). My faith means a great deal to me and it would be very difficult to walk away from that, and I am convinced that there is a way to be loving and LGBTQ+ affirming and Christian. Many seem to be.
That’s why I was talking about different denominations. As far as I know, the majority of Christian denominations are actively homophobic. If a denomination is preaching homophobia, if it’s refusing to ordain LGBT people, if it’s making LGBT congregants unwelcome, if it’s teaching homophobia to children, then yes, it is homophobic. You can’t say that the Christians are homophobic but that Christianity isn’t, or that they’re “not real Christians”, as I keep hearing today. There are denominations of Christianity which are very different, which are actively working in favour of human rights, which led the campaigns for same-sex marriage, such as the Quakers and the Unitarians.
I grew up in UK Judaism. The denomination I grew up in, Reform Judaism (not the same as US Reform, closer to US Conservative) was not too bad with human rights, though with a tendency to sit on the fence. My family is homophobic, not in a big way, the type where you’re quietly told to stay in the closet in case you upset your uncle rather than the type where they attack you, where some family members supported my cousin when she married a woman and others refused to go to the wedding. The community I was part of as an adult, Liberal Judaism, was generally excellent with human rights, including being the third religious group in the UK to lead the religious campaign for same-sex marriage. I run into them at Pride every year. It’s also the smallest of the three main denominations in the UK. Two-third of UK Jews are Orthodox, and Orthodox Judaism is undeniably both homophobic and misogynistic. So yes, it’s perfectly fair to say that overall, Judaism is homophobic. Not all Orthodox Jews are, sure, although that doesn’t mean they’re not continuing to prop up a homophobic institution. My childhood best friend was gay and Orthodox, is still attending synagogue (despite his atheism) and semi-closeted at 38, and I think this was a major influence in his suicide attempt prior to coming out at seventeen. Quite a nice family, really, but he still nearly ended up dead at seventeen.
Please do not try to make us forgive religions for being homophobic. They are causing us immeasurable harm.
I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to excuse the tremendous hurt done by religion. I just… try to have hope that it can be done better.
I don’t have any useful advice, I’m afraid, but I want to wish you the best of luck with being pro-LGBTQ+ and Christian – seeing the comments on this thread, it looks like many people have thought very deeply about it and it’s absolutely possible.
Here is an essay of biblical exegesis from a Methodist pastor, Walter Wink, from 1979. He was really ostracized for it at the time, but definitely wound up on the right side of history & provided a foundational argument for many of the writers you listed. And it’s a beautiful essay besides.
http://www.reconcilingworks.org/wp-content/upload…
Thank you!
queertheology.com would have some resources, too.
Also:
Shannon Kearns (trans minister/priest in the Old Catholic Church) – http://www.shannontlkearns.com; he co-created the Queer Theology website, IIRC.
Sarah Moon (bigender & bisexual; hasn’t blogged much recently but her/their writing that does exist is fantastic) – @grumpytheology on Twitter; patheos.com/blog/sarahoverthemoon
Thank you!
I loved Fred Clark’s series of essays on this topic: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2010/05/… http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2010/05/… http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2010/05/…
Thanks!
I’ve always really loved I Have No Title For This by Gordon Atkinson (or Real Live Preacher, as he was anonymously known at the time he wrote it). It’s not a piece of scholarship, but it reframes the topic in a way that’s really powerful.
Thank you!
I’ve heard good things about Virginia Ramey Mollenkott (and that they sell her books in the UCC bookstore)–Omnigender and Sensuous Spirituality, iirc.
Thanks!
Since you have so many great, thoughtful responses, I’ll put in my less theologically sound answer.
I always quote my mother’s response – that Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself, not love your neighbor only if you approve of everything they do.
(Background – it was the late 80s and there was some controversy at our parish about gay rights and the minister called for a series of bible study groups on the subject. My mother is and was a supporter of all civil rights, including gay rights (although she honestly wasn’t that great when I came out, but that’s another story) and the first bible study group made her so angry that she couldn’t speak. So after a few sleepless nights, she came to the next one with her statement prepared. I was so proud of he when she told me about it.)
I do believe that one key to changing people’s minds is to connect to them, so I love that you’re using your shared faith as a way to talk about this.
Thank you for your helpful words. <3
You might find Kelvin Holdsworth an interesting person to read. He’s an out gay man serving as a priest in the Scottish Episcopalian Church. He wrote a great piece on Orlando and religious responses to LGBTQ issues: http://stv.tv/news/politics/1357273-it-s-not-enou…
Thanks!
Yesterday I wept, I mourned, I wailed. I also went for a walk, sat by the pool, went to yoga, made zucchini panckes that turned into zucchini hash browns, watched the Tony Awards and read my collection of short stories about women being battered over the last 140 years. And I pondered if the human race is getting worse, better, or pretty much staying the same.
And here are some gems from Melody Beattie that may or may not resonate with you:
“God, help me let go of my need to meet dysfunctional challenges in my relationships.”
And…
“It doesn’t matter if they’re hurting themselves. It doesn’t matter that we could help them if they’d only listen to, and cooperate with us. IT DOESN’T MATTER, DOESN’T MATTER, DOESN’T MATTER, DOESN’T MATTER.”
i’m tired, angry, and hurt. i’m also beyond grateful for my community. remember you are loved.
I can’t really process everything from Orlando right now.
But I do feel particularly glad that the childcare provider I just decided on was very open about how she reads books to the kids about having two moms or two dads and how she talks with them about that. It’s really small, but it’s a step towards a better world and better empathy and understanding.
I’m so glad to hear that. Chances are she’s missed jobs because of that. She is a good person.
That’s really great – I hope when we need childcare I will be able to find someone/someplace similarly loving and open and wonderful. In the end, a caretaker like that could have a huge impact on hundreds of kids and the way they treat each other. Maybe not so small after all!
Our pediatrician’s office has a big Human Rights Campaign “Open to All” sticker right in the middle of the front door (our doc is a gay man and I believe it’s his husband manages the practice), and when we were interviewing it immediately made me feel like it was going to be a great place for our daughter, and a place I am happy to support as a patient. Probably all of the local peds are technically open to all, but I love that our office is vocal about it and creates a safe space for all kinds of families before you’re even inside. They have a really diverse selection of books in the waiting area, like your childcare provider, and when we were in on Friday they were flying a rainbow flag in the front window for Pride, which I just saw they plan to now leave up all week in support of the Orlando families. Every single last person there, from the front desk to the nurses to the doctors are just the most wonderful, friendly, supportive people, and you can tell they value their place as caretakers of the neighborhood. As you said, it’s small, but I am so so glad these places and people exist. I am sad we have to move away from them, but glad they will be in the neighborhood for a good long time making it a better place.
I’m going to pose something completely OT, because honestly I can’t think about it anymore or I will cry:
Does anyone have any good resources for a teenage girl (who is, iirc, autistic if that makes any difference – which it might do) who wants to get into tabletop gaming? I’m looking for stuff on how to DM well, setting up adventures, dealing with tough players, etc. etc. I’m trying not to terrify her with essays like ‘tabletop has a white male terrorist problem’, because it sounds like she’s going to be playing with people who are her age in a school environment, but if there’s anything age-appropriate (for someone who’s about sixteen) on how to safely push back on that sort of crap I’ll add it to the list.
I don’t have that much specific links, but both the Apocalypse World and Numenera/Cypher System rulebooks have large sections on how to GM well, beyond just “how to use the rules” and written at a level that would make sense to a 16 year old.
I’m pretty sure Geek and Sundry has a good amount of GMing advice. At a quick look, here’s an article that seems like it could be helpful http://geekandsundry.com/unlock-your-storytelling…
And the general roleplaying article section: http://geekandsundry.com/tag/rpg/ You might need to comb through for specific advice stuff, since it’s mixed in with reviews and their campaign-related info.
If possible, I’d maybe steer her towards being a player for a bit before GMing, if she’s never done tabletop gaming before, since the player side is significantly less overwhelming. I didn’t really feel comfortable GMing until I’d been on the player side for a couple of years, but if there’s not enough people to GM, it’s not terrible to jump in feet first.
I will consider pulling my copy of Numenera out of the garage to lend her! I do remember it being pretty good for that. IIRC, there’s some helpful stuff in the front of the CoC sourcebook as well. It sounds like she’s picked up the starter set of 5th ed DnD, which I assume will be helpful, but I often find DnD mechanics baffling (grappling! no one has EVER successfully used those rules, and it is /lies/ to say otherwise!). I noticed Twentysided had GMinars as an ongoing series, and I might dig out some of their other content like DM of the Rings which might appeal. Thanks for the indicator of where to look, I really appreciate it – I’m a little out of the loop on this stuff at the moment.
It sounds like (considering her mum is reaching out to me, an ex-co-worker, about it – her mum is lovely and generally super supportive of her, in a ’has no idea what it’s for but worked really hard to sew a cosplay costume for her’ way) she doesn’t know anyone who plays at the moment, and is setting it all up herself, which makes it a bit harder to steer her towards just playing and not running. I’d offer to run for her/her friends, but it sounds like it’s going to be a school club and I don’t know them super well, so it would be a little inappropriate.
Ah, yeah, I thought it might be a case of “no one’s done this before, let’s figure it out”.
In that case, I might also direct her to youtube/podcast videos of people playing 5e (I don’t know any specific ones, but it’s probably not too hard to find some, and probably at least a couple of them are all- or majority- female, which would probably be a good thing.) That’s a good way to get a sense of DnD specifically, and also an example of how GMing can work. Watching a couple different groups might also help her get a sense of what style of GMing appeals to her. I know having examples of how to handle things helped me a lot, although mine were coming from people who’d GMed my games.
If she’s down for it, maybe you could offer to run a one-shot for her and a couple of friends before the club starts up? That way you can sort of show her some basics and answer any questions face-to-face without the appropriateness question.
Good luck! I always kind of wanted to try tabletop gaming in high school, but didn’t have any resources for it, so I’m happy you’re there to help her out!
I have seem some stuff about podcasts lately, that’s a good shout – I remember seeing one taking off on tumblr with some fanart, I’ll see if I can track that down because it sounds like it would be the right demographic, and I’ll see if I can track down some youtubers. Yeah, likewise – I was lucky enough to play with some pretty experienced players for my first couple of goes around (like, ‘had been running that system longer then I had been alive’ kind of experienced, and in retrospect he was lovely – he invited me to his house for a spin-off game with another group, but suggested that I bring a friend so that I felt comfortable and not like he was going to kidnap teenage me).
I might offer! I don’t know how comfortable she’d be with it, but offering can’t do any harm.
Thanks, you’ve been really helpful with suggestions. I’m going to try and compile a list of resources and suggestions for her, which I might put up elsewhere (tumblr?) as well. I’ll link to it when I do!
I”ve never gotten into tabletop gaming (there was a club at my high school but I wasn’t allowed to join because mother said it was “antisocial”) but I AM autistic & honestly even if it wasn’t a commonly misogynist atmosphere, being in groups, especially school groups, can be unsafe for us becuase people are /really ableist/ and that is never something that gets commented on as much as sexism, or punished, so honestly I think the best thing would, if she’ll listen (my sister is 16, so I know that there’s about a 50/50 chance she’ll actually take you advice) talk her into making sure she has at least one friend there who’s already in her corner becuase chances are an authority figure won’t listen to her, but they’ll listen to a non autistic person pointing out the same gross behavior. (edit: fixed a typo)
That was an angle I hadn’t considered :< I’m not sure how I would bring that up – I’ve only spoken to her a couple of times in passing when she’s come into work with her mother, so I don’t know her terribly well. I had the impression that her boyfriend would be one of the players, which probably covers the ‘someone in your corner’ angle, and it sounds like she’s setting up the club herself and can control who’s coming in, so she may be on top of that, but I’ll see if I can work out a way to add in ‘oh, by the way, for your first game you should absolutely play with people who you know already and get on with!’ or something similar.
Ahhhh, sorry I misunderstood, thought it was lead by a teacher or something, if she’s running it herself it should probably be fine.
I really enjoyed John Wick’s Play Dirty GMing books. I think they’re collections of his columns, but I enjoyed them so much more than I expected to.
MEGHAN TRAINOR’S VOICE omygoooooddd i have been so bothered by it for YEARS ever since i first heard one of her songs on the radio and thought ‘this girl better not be white’ and then she WAS. and then no one else noticed or said anything??? Thank you for this article!!!
Likewise! Every new song by her that comes on the radio, I always think she’s some black pop star I can’t quite place, and then it’s her!
Yes! Iike I can’t exactly articulate why she does not sound white to me but she doesn’t. And when I watched the music video for “all about that bass” I really felt like she was mocking Black people. I’m thankful for that article.
This weekend our 5yo nephew spent the night. He asked how we knew our cat Tesla was a boy. My husband, bless him, said we asked Tesla and Tesla told us he identified as a boy.
Your husband shall be spared in the coming Misandrist Revolution.
Please do, he is amazeballs and helps me be a better person.
Wonderful. I am filing that away to use with any kids I may come across (including my own when she is older).
I cannot confront my coworker, whom I just heard discussing the shooting with another coworker and dismissing the importance of gun control, so I’m just going to type out what I WANT to say to him here:
“I am sure you are a responsible gun owner. But the problem is that there’s so many people out there who aren’t, and they have the same access to guns that you do. My brother was mentally ill and he legally purchased the gun he used to end his life, and it’s only by the grace of God that he didn’t take anyone else out along the way.”
Sometimes I check myself and am like, redheadedwolf, are you using your brother’s death as an ace card or tool in these convos? But the thing is, it really did happen because of our lax gun laws. Everything I just said is 100% true, and I don’t think I should hide this truth or limit how I talk about it (when the subject arises). I think I’m allowed to make people uncomfortable when they’re arguing against any changes in gun regulation.
Of course you are, and they shouldn’t be trying to hide the effects of having guns everywhere. I’m not up to reading up on suicide stats right now, but we don’t really have guns in the UK and I have never heard of a single person killing themselves here with a gun. I strongly suspect countries without gun use have a lower rate of successful suicides. People I know who’ve attempted suicide did it with methods that were not immediately fatal, that were able to be treated in hospital.
“I have never heard of a single person killing themselves here with a gun.”
That astonishes me. It’s heartbreakingly common here.
The thing is, guns make it so easy to kill impulsively, in an instant. My brother was truly mentally ill, it wasn’t a passing mood, and I actually do believe he would have done it some other way if not by a shotgun. But the thing is, we’ll never know. And he should never have been allowed to purchase a firearm while suffering a serious mental illness like paranoid schizophrenia. It could have gone much, much worse.
It’s probably happened, but I’ve never heard of it, and my guess would be that it’s vanishingly rare. I found a stat of 1.8% of suicides in England and Wales in 2011. Apparently it’s over half of suicides in the US. I’ve never seen a gun in this country, including TV footage of polis etc. (not that I have a TV). I have known a lot of people who have attempted suicide. I’ve never personally known anyone who completed it, though I’ve had friends lose people that way (again, not to guns). Apparently 4% of UK households have guns, which is surprisingly high to me, and which is possibly about (mostly wealthy) types who go hunting in rural areas, but honestly I have no idea as no one ever sees them. The only time I’ve known someone carrying a gun was when my Israeli family were doing their military service, and I’m including an old family friend who’s a copper in that.
A good friend of mine has schizophrenia. It is such a hard illness to have, and so horribly stigmatised to boot. She had to drop out of her postgrad degree when it flared up after her ex-wife left her, she’s too ill to work, she’s had the odd spell in hospital (where the food was crap so we were all sending her care packages). We are also lucky enough to live in a country with free healthcare, and while it’s not perfect, I’m guessing she may have access to better resources than your brother did. Women are more likely than men to be socialised to turn our distress in on ourselves rather than taking it out on other people, too, and I don’t think she’s ever been violent, not even when having a shitty time of it with psychosis. I know she’s been suicidal, but I don’t know whether she’s ever attempted anything.
I’ve also known a lot of people who have been victims of domestic violence, as I have myself, as my mother was. If guns had been around, not all of these people would be alive today. As you say, it can be done on an impulse.
Possibly the fact that the other side is so unimaginable, from both sides, is why so many Americans can’t think their way through the possibility of living in a society without guns everywhere? A friend of a friend on Facebook today told me to use the US as a warning when people here advocate more guns, not realising that we don’t actually have that problem. There’s some wrangling over whether fox-hunting should be banned (yes, it should!) and that’s the nearest thing I can think of.
I mentioned the supposed 4% to my partner, and his immediate response was, “Bullshit.” Neither of us thinks it’s at all likely. Although possibly there’s something we’re missing about farmers? I mean, even the cops don’t carry guns.
If it is accurate, it’s about shotguns. Suicide is actually pretty high amongst farmers and vets IIRC (in the uk sense, not the US sense), and in both cases experts believe that’s partly attributed to their having access to shotguns.
I’m also in the UK, and the people I know with guns are either Farmers, or wealthy middle class hunter shootery types. Or both. But yeah, there aren’t many of them, and they don’t parade around toting guns.
The number of suicides by gun is one of the three main reasons I wish we had better gun laws in the U.S. (the other two are household accidents and domestic violence). Because as much as pro-gun folks like to claim that the world is safer if the good guys have just as much access to guns as the bad guys, the fact is that sometimes the “good guys” obtain guns totally legally and still do tremendous harm with them.
My boyfriend’s brother committed suicide by gun. My boyfriend owns six guns. He’s a grown man, and he’s allowed to have a different emotional reaction than what I would have had in his place. But I don’t know that I’ll ever fully wrap my mind around that one. :/
I’m so sorry to hear about your brother.
I am sorry about your brother, and I am very glad you came here to share your thoughts with us even if your co-worker would not understand or appreciate them.
Just a quick note to say that everyone who posted today to say they either came out or are were afraid to do so as a result of this shitty action by a very misguided person, I feel for you all and can’t stop thinking about your posts. Last year I remember when marriage equality passed I couldn’t do much to celebrate but I went out that Saturday and bought two newspapers with it as a headline. Today I haven’t left my apartment because I don’t want to see or hear any more. I’m out but I’m also old–sometimes even the exhilaration of progress scares me at this point because I’m so used to it not happening. So I’m grateful to The Toast for holding space for us all today, and I want you to know wherever you are with your identity that I’ve got your back and pray for your safety, acceptance and love.
I’m feeling completely overwhelmed by this tragedy…just heartbroken.
I tried to express this sentiment and that I felt there were no useful words on facebook and one of my guy friends decided to comment that “No” there were lots of useful words and I need to call my reps, etc. I responded that yes I know there is action to take and I have done so, but I hadn’t had adequate words to express my grief the night before. He then responded again that it was our collective responsibility or something to make these resources known.
I’m really frustrated by this interaction, but maybe I’m in the wrong.
I just feel like I have no perspective right now.
Sounds like you’re both upset and clashing because of that. Give each other space and hopefully it’ll be fine. You’re both on the same side, you’re just processing an incredibly difficult thing differently.
Thanks. I think you’re right and the tenderness I’m feeling is making me more upset/angry than I might normally be.
He’s in the wrong. It is not everyone’s collective responsibility to always be an activist, even immediately after a tragedy. You’re allowed to react and feel and shut down for a while, and you don’t ever have to take up the activist role either if you don’t want to. It’s not our moral duty, no.
I think that is what upset me because I did email my reps and gun violence is something I’ve continued to speak out against, but I just needed some freaking space. Maybe it felt a little man-splainy. And I’m a queer woman and he’s a straight man and sometimes being an ally means shutting up every now and then.
I guess in the end it’s not so much about me being wrong or right but I needed to check in as I’m feeling especially tender.
Thanks for your thoughts.
He’s being a dirtbag mansplainer, ugh. Forget him. You’re part of the demographic actually impacted by this event; he has no idea what you’re going through.
I mean, he’s being a bit of a prat, but it’s understandable.
There is NO wrong way to grieve.
I actually posted almost the exact same thing in FB yesterday and I wouldn’t have reacted well to that response either.
I am reminded of a scene in L.A. Story in which the characters (white, aflluent, on their way to a sterotypical Hollywood It-Scene dinner party) realize it is rush hour and everyone gets out their guns on the freeway and starts shouting out their windows and shooting wildly at one another. It was a commentary at the time of the perception of how blase Angelenos were about violence in their city and how faceless everyone who was not, but I just had a terrifying moment of seeing that as a reality.
Incredibly rarely, when there's an unusually bad one in the US and it dominates the international news. I live in Scotland, where the last mass shooting was in the nineties and we promptly banned handguns. I can't get my head around the idea of living with that fear. I know it happens, but it's a completely alien thought, just like the idea of having the death penalty or a serious risk that the police will kill someone (it happens, but it's incredibly rare). I am so sorry that you all have to live with those risks.
Thank you for saying that. I am hearing so many Christians saying "oh, no REAL Christian is homophobic" today, and it is horribly unpleasant.
For those who can stand it… NPR has a tribute running to all the victims, as information is coming out. Most have pictures and a few details about who they were. It really brings it home. I feel a crushing weight on my chest.
Thanks for posting that. I like this list better than Buzzfeed’s
ETA – just don’t read the comments.
I wondered earlier how many of them were being outed postmortem by the release of their names. It sounds like most of them were already out, but then there’s one 30-year-old who’s described as “married with three children” and I’m not sure. This is already so painful.
(There was another victim who was at Pulse “with his girlfriend,” so yeah, no one should assume that every attendee must be LGBT.)
So many couples were killed together. Fuck, fuck, my heart. One couple had just bought a house, another were business partners too who owned a salon and spa. Can you even imagine what it must be like for all those who worked for them — I hope there’s an enormous tribute outside those doors.
It’s so difficult to think of how much they overcome, how far they succeeded, to have everything robbed from them. And, likewise, for the younger victims, including a 19-year-old: they hadn’t even started their lives yet.
(The pictures make it harder, but they’re also so fucking good because they challenge a lot of stereotypes of gay/masculine culture. I particularly love the one of Anthony Laureanodisla in and out of drag.)
Thank you. It feels important to me to say their names out loud.
I am sorry about your brother, and I am very glad you came here to share your thoughts with us even if your co-worker would not understand or appreciate them.
Hey, CBT won't be for everyone, I know – but your doctor should know, even if it's adjusting meds without CBT and there is non-CBT therapy and not all therapists are made equal etc. etc. – I guess I look at therapy in a Mallory-as-Prudence 'pay someone to listen to your problems and advise way' so that you don't end up resenting your partner/your friends if they give harsh but well meaning advise or take time away from you for their own well being.
1. I do want to second that its fine to put progression on the backburner if you're in a good place atm. If you want to have goals eventually and to learn more about what you're interested in, I'd recommend talking to managers and colleages to discuss what progression would look like, so you can get more of a sense if it's for you – now, in two years, in five whenever and so that you Know, so that if you get an itch in a little while, you have a place to go.
2. Duolingo is good for stress free learning and game-ified vocab acquisition. Since you're in London, maybe pick a European language that's also a place you'd like to holiday? And don't think you have to end up talking politics or deep literary analysis with the locals, but it should get you through conversational stuff.
Ah, I totally feel "being surrounded by people smarter than me" I know it, I hate it and then am cross with myself for letting it upset me. Definitely not knitting – if you want not to be pressured you want something that you can do alone that he doesn't do so that there's no competition. Even learning to cook chicken really well of itself is a useful skill or doing cakes (as long as you don't compare yourself to the Bake Off guys) Art, in all its forms is so subjective that it's nice to know there isn't always a Good and a Bad.
3. Yeah, weekdays don't have to be going out days. There are plenty of at home things you can commit to; watching a box set of something you'd both like, reading some classics you've not go to (or some new books) Maybe a monthly book club, if you like reading and would like to do that and feel like you're achieving at the same time. On weekends and not even every weekend, then yes, all of London is available but you don't have to do it all in one go; pick one or two things and have a long term plan to go see them. Most of London isn't going anywhere.
Also; if you're free Sunday I will be Passing Through London so if you need to meet someone for coffee and just have a chat and an unload, that's an option. I too wish you all the best and would be happy to help (and to hear how it's going) with whatever you need in the future
Thanks for posting that. I like this list better than Buzzfeed's
It's probably happened, but I've never heard of it, and my guess would be that it's vanishingly rare. I found a stat of 1.8% of suicides in England and Wales in 2011. Apparently it's over half of suicides in the US. I've never seen a gun in this country, including TV footage of polis etc. (not that I have a TV). I have known a lot of people who have attempted suicide. I've never personally known anyone who completed it, though I've had friends lose people that way (again, not to guns). Apparently 4% of UK households have guns, which is surprisingly high to me, and which is possibly about (mostly wealthy) types who go hunting in rural areas, but honestly I have no idea as no one ever sees them. The only time I've known someone carrying a gun was when my Israeli family were doing their military service, and I'm including an old family friend who's a copper in that.
A good friend of mine has schizophrenia. It is such a hard illness to have, and so horribly stigmatised to boot. She had to drop out of her postgrad degree when it flared up after her ex-wife left her, she's too ill to work, she's had the odd spell in hospital (where the food was crap so we were all sending her care packages). We are also lucky enough to live in a country with free healthcare, and while it's not perfect, I'm guessing she may have access to better resources than your brother did. Women are more likely than men to be socialised to turn our distress in on ourselves rather than taking it out on other people, too, and I don't think she's ever been violent, not even when having a shitty time of it with psychosis. I know she's been suicidal, but I don't know whether she's ever attempted anything.
I've also known a lot of people who have been victims of domestic violence, as I have myself, as my mother was. If guns had been around, not all of these people would be alive today. As you say, it can be done on an impulse.
Possibly the fact that the other side is so unimaginable, from both sides, is why so many Americans can't think their way through the possibility of living in a society without guns everywhere? A friend of a friend on Facebook today told me to use the US as a warning when people here advocate more guns, not realising that we don't actually have that problem. There's some wrangling over whether fox-hunting should be banned (yes, it should!) and that's the nearest thing I can think of.
You guys. I’ve been posting about feeling unseen as a bi woman married woman. And guess what?! My mother in law just texted me with her condolences!
I am not particularly out to my husband’s family – it just never seemed appropriate to bring up and now that it’s been like 14 years it’s a bit awkward. But I came out to my MIL a couple years ago when she said something about my husband’s bi cousin dating a woman that made me mad. I just blurted it out and then we never spoke about it again (we’re both white Midwestern women and that is culturally appropriate behavior).
But SHE texted me. And I feel seen. It’s a good start.
*nods*
I’m glad for that. You deserve to be seen by the people in your life (so long as being seen makes you feel safe and okay).
Yay! It is so important to feel seen when you want to be (from another bi woman married to a straight man, also feeling unseen)
From Michigan, live in Missouri now. My mom called me last night, out of the blue, “Just to talk. No reason. Just to talk.” She eventually asked about the vigil I attended Sunday night in my city. That was it. I didn’t say much, but she actually asked and acknowledged it in a roundabout way and that’s huge.
So I feel you on the white midwesterner thing.
That is huge!
You guys. I've been posting about feeling unseen as a bi woman married woman. And guess what?! My mother in law just texted me with her condolences!
I am not particularly out to my husband's family – it just never seemed appropriate to bring up and now that it's been like 14 years it's a bit awkward. But I came out to my MIL a couple years ago when she said something about my husband's bi cousin dating a woman that made me mad. I just blurted it out and then we never spoke about it again (we're both white Midwestern women and that is culturally appropriate behavior).
But SHE texted me. And I feel seen. It's a good start.
One more thing, a little more uplifting…
I saw one post about how someone found some reason to hope after this tragedy, because now gun violence has impacted the wrong group: LGBT people. We have proven we can get shit done, and if we organize now the way we did for marriage equality, the NRA is going down.
(I find that a little simplistic, of course — there is no equivalent of the NRA opposing marriage equality — but I like the thought of the LGBT community as a force to be reckoned with.)
This is the first photo in the tribute link OnceAHeroine posted on this morning’s link roundup. Which is to say, you are not alone in feeling this:
Awww. What a gorgeous photograph.
I’m not sure how to feel right now. I’m angry and I’m hurt and I don’t know if I get to be. Living in Australia provides a different queer experience. But watching the news this morning and seeing people talking about standing in solidarity while trying to absolve themselves of their lack of support makes me so angry. We’re dying and people are taking this moment to expand on our spilled blood for their own gain. Even here our politicians are making appearances tosay we aren’t as bad as america and it’s just, you know what no.
And watcing the news, hearing the director of the FBI say they haven’t found any concrete links to any terrorist conspiracy yet, but they’ll keep looking til they do because they must exist makes me so angry. How dare we be made the cornerstone of Islamophobic support. How dare these people cheapen our pain and hurt and death to advance their Islamophobic agendas.
And you know what? Someone say homophobia, just one person on a tv screen say it. Just say the word and to hell with every single person feeling uncomfortable about having something about themselves be linked o someone who’s committed the worst shooting in the U.S’ history. We are worth more than your comfort and your hatred and your political gains.
And I feel so powerless. I want to help, I want to do something. I could write things for journals here and I don’t know if I get to, if my voice matters over here in a different environment of queer experience. I don’t know what to do and I’m scared and I’m hurt and I’m angry and I don’t know if any of that is justified.
I’m sorry this is so long and if it sounds like unjustified complaining, I just didn’t know where else to vent.
Honestly, it kind of helps to know that there are queer people around the world mourning and raging about this.
Our thoughts are with you and we hope you stay safe over there
So I was in a restaurant on Sunday, and they had the news on. My boyfriend and I were sitting there watching the news, just sitting in silence because nothing could really be said. Suddenly the restaurant radio started playing “Another One Bites the Dust.”
And that song has officially been ruined for me.
If it were me, the restaurant would be ruined too. That is some prohibitively bad timing on the part of the cosmos, or whatever other agent governs coincidence. Eeek.
Oh gods, the article about the taser… Fuck the police.
I know, it's so absurdly sad. They go up because people immediately rush out to buy guns, just in case gun sales are about to become more restrictive. (Hint: THEY DON'T.)
There should be a word for the feeling of waking up to news of another mass shooting. It starts as an ordinary day, you stumble out of bed, go through whatever morning routine as usual, not knowing that the second you tune back in to the wider world, it’s waiting. And then you do, and you see the headlines, and your stomach drops. And there is a terrible sense of sadness, of anger, but no surprise.
Something needs to change.
This is what I wrote immediately after seeing the headlines that morning.
As a woman who is creeping around the edges of maybe being bi, despite having only dated men, I have all the weird feelings. I don’t know if it should feel personal. I feel guilty for feeling scared and upset more than empathetic if that makes sense. Do I even get to say bi? Is this the time? I don’t know. I’m so tired.