Beauty in the apertures of pain

‘Men are taught not to be emotional’

Pal men are taught to throw tables across the room if they’re angry and punch people who mildly disrespect them— all of these things are emotional responses they’re just incongruous with what we consider emotional to be i.e. a sniffling teenage girl. Men are super emotional. They’re selfishly emotional. They’re so emotional that they *have* to let any living creature around them feel the pain they feel inside even for a sec.

I can’t wait for the day a woman’s strength isn’t dictated by how much abuse she can endure

I am so so utterly fed up of how oblivious men seem to be (and if they’re not oblivious it’s conscious selfishness which is even worse) when it comes to their taking of women’s time. i’m talking strange women, women who have no connection with these men except to be unfortunate enough to be a captive audience.

This morning i made a nine hour journey from one country to another, beginning with a 6am tram ride to the train station. I was the only person at the tram stop apart from a middle-aged man, no one anywhere else around (to be expected that early on a sunday). He asked me when the tram was coming, i politely told him, and then went back to checking train times on my phone. He proceeded to ask me where i was going, where was i coming from, what was i doing in the city, did i have family here, how long had i been staying, where was i born, what was i studying. i kept my answers short, not wanting to refuse to engage with him (as there was no one else around and i didn’t want to aggravate him) but not in any way trying to encourage him. He then sat down next to me and started telling me his life story until the tram arrived.

Later, i’m on the plane and this one guy is standing next to the queue and trying to banter with the air stewardesses while they’re boarding people. The same man ends up sat in the row behind me, next to a woman maybe 5-10 years older than me. same thing happened to her: this man talked at her for the entire two hour plane journey, ignoring her short, blunt responses and obvious lack of interest. he talked at her about his children, his opinion about schools these days, about national service, about politics. He made full use of his captive audience- she had quite literally nowhere to go, and women are taught to be polite. we cannot bring ourselves to say “I’m not interested in talking to you, please leave me alone.” In some situations, it could be dangerous to say that. 

A few months ago I was on a train to Coventry, a long journey for which I’d brought a book to read, so I could use the time to study. I took the window, and a man sat in the aisle seat next to me. He talked at me for the entire journey. I was polite, I nodded, I responded where expected, and every time the subject was clearly over, I opened my book up and began to read again. Literally every time, for the whole journey, no sooner had I started to read than this man would begin a new topic of conversation. At one point he’d clearly run out of topics and asked me about the book, and I quite bluntly told him it was something I needed to read for my studies, and turned back to the page. He launched into his opinions about philosophy. The cycle continued.

Another time, I was on the train from King’s Cross to Cambridge and a man sat next to me and struck up conversation with me quite at random- he would stop and turn back to his newspaper when he felt like it, and I would start reading my book, but then he would start talking to me again when he got bored of his paper. The entire interaction was on his terms, for his benefit; he didn’t care that I was reading, he only cared that he didn’t want to read, but wanted to talk to the strange woman sitting next to him.

I am so tired of men assuming they are entitled to women’s time as a form of entertainment when they want, of men seeing women as receptacles for male opinions, of men taking advantage of social situations that women can’t easily leave. It doesn’t seem to matter if you don’t engage in the conversation, if your body language says you’re not comfortable, if you’ve got a book or headphones or some other prop that clearly shows you’re doing something else and don’t want to interact with them. I am so tired of social conventions that teach women to feel ashamed if they don’t politely accept these intrusions. 

I’ve started saying flat out that I’m not interested in chatting. I was on a long train trip from Chicago to DC & had taken a seat in the observatory car to write. (Headphones, laptop, snacks on hand, even cuddled up in my favorite hoodie) Some guy sat down across from me, asked what I was doing, wanted to talk about my writing, wanted me to write his life story, and after about 10 minutes of this, I said “I have to get back to work, nice talking to you.” and put my headphones back on. He got so mad, but he really couldn’t do anything but fume. So he sat there and glared at me for a while & then finally fucked off to another seat. A woman sitting across from me had the best laugh with me without either of us having to say a word after he left. 

The famous La Marseillaise scene from Casablanca.

You know, this scene is so powerful to me that sometimes I forget that not everyone who watches it will understand its significance, or will have seen Casablanca. So, because this scene means so much to me, I hope it’s okay if I take a minute to explain what’s going on here for anyone who’s feeling left out.

Casablanca takes place in, well, Casablanca, the largest city in (neutral) Morocco in 1941, at Rick’s American Cafe (Rick is Humphrey Bogart’s character you see there). In 1941, America was also still neutral, and Rick’s establishment is open to everyone: Nazi German officials, officials from Vichy (occupied) France, and refugees from all across Europe desperate to escape the German war engine. A neutral cafe in a netural country is probably the only place you’d have seen a cross-section like this in 1941, only six months after the fall of France.

So, the scene opens with Rick arguing with Laszlo, who is a Czech Resistance fighter fleeing from the Nazis (if you’re wondering what they’re arguing about: Rick has illegal transit papers which would allow Laszlo and his wife, Ilsa, to escape to America, so he could continue raising support against the Germans. Rick refuses to sell because he’s in love with Laszlo’s wife). They’re interrupted by that cadre of German officers singing Die Wacht am Rhein: a German patriotic hymn which was adopted with great verve by the Nazi regime, and which is particularly steeped in anti-French history. This depresses the hell out of everybody at the club, and infuriates Laszlo, who storms downstairs and orders the house band to play La Marseillaise: the national anthem of France.

Wait, but when I say “it’s the national anthem of France,” I don’t want you to think of your national anthem, okay? Wherever you’re from. Because France’s anthem isn’t talking about some glorious long-ago battle, or France’s beautiful hills and countrysides. La Marseillaise is FUCKING BRUTAL. Here’s a translation of what they’re singing:

Arise, children of the Fatherland! The day of glory has arrived! Against us, tyranny raises its bloody banner. Do you hear, in the countryside, the roar of those ferocious soldiers? They’re coming to your land to cut the throats of your women and children!

To arms, citizens! Form your battalions! Let’s march, let’s march! Let their impure blood water our fields!

BRUTAL, like I said. DEFIANT, in these circumstances. And the entire cafe stands up and sings it passionately, drowning out the Germans. The Germans who are, in 1941, still terrifyingly ascendant, and seemingly invincible.

“Vive la France! Vive la France!” the crowd cries when it’s over. France has already been defeated, the German war machine roars on, and the people still refuse to give up hope.

But here’s the real kicker, for me: Casablanca came out in 1942. None of this was ‘history’ to the people who first saw it. Real refugees from the Nazis, afraid for their lives, watched this movie and took heart. These were current events when this aired. Victory over Germany was still far from certain. The hope it gave to people then was as desperately needed as it has been at any time in history.

God I love this scene.

It’s really one step more than this. Paul Henried, Conrad Veidt and Peter Lorre had all escapes Nazi Germany. Most of the speaking roles were done by refugees. Almost all of the extras were refugees. This scene was shot in a room full of actual refugees, every teary eye is real.

Children Don’t Have Gender Identity - Blibli Blogging

How most people with invisible illnesses are treated by health care “professionals”

The Golden Girls didn’t fuck around

pls watch

My mom actually shared this on Facebook and it made me literally cry. Because it’s so TRUE. This aired 20 years ago, and it’s my life. Every doctor. Over and over and over, dozens of times. Watch it. Please. We are so tired.

Every. Single. Word. Of. This.

Johann Hari, Does Capitalism Drive Drug Addiction?

Alexander Chee, in a story on Catapult (2015)

I honestly hate how art and media have kind of romanticised the idea of like “going off your meds and being your true self again” because like I started taking antidepressants and like immediately got a new job, found a place to live, improved my relationships with people in my life and completely reconciled with my sort of estranged ex-girlfriend? Medication can be rad and while I realise that it’s not for everybody I don’t think anything should be trying to convince anyone that being on medication inherently makes you less of who you are.

(Most) Medication is for helping you to be you again. The real me isn’t tired by just walking to the train station. The real me is not my anxiety or depression. They don’t define me.

The real me is who I am when I’m not anxious and feeling worthless 24/7.

Medication is supposed to be the chemical equivalent of glasses or a wheelchair, depending on the severity of impairment. It tries to help you compensate for what has been taken, been broken, or is missing.

In particular, i always hear the myth that anti-depressants give you “artificial happiness”… no, no, no. They give your brain the ability to be happy. You won’t always be happy, and sometimes you’ll be sad. But the happiness you’re able to feel when you’re on meds is your own, real, happiness.

SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE NEUROTYPICALS IN THE BACK!!!

I’ve been dealing with depression, anxiety, and bipolar my entire life, and I fought going on medication all the way up to this year for this exact reason: because I was conditioned to believe that medication would be nothing but bad for me and stifle the ‘real me’.

Once they got the dosage right for my mood stabiliser, I was finally placed onto antidepressants. I don’t want to jinx it, but since I’ve been on them, my sleep schedule has improved, as has my appetite, and this is the first time I can ever recall feeling so clear-headed and optimistic. Like, yes I still am having my moments and low spells, but lately they no longer feel like the end of the world, and on the whole, I feel like such a more level-headed person who finally feels NORMAL for a change in terms of my emotions and being able to feel things again like HOPE.

I feel like it’s already been helping me so much that I’m scared it’ll turn out to be a fluke - that’s how big of a difference I feel it’s already making. So for someone to criticize that sort of progress when it can literally turn some people’s lives around is just: 1) misinformed, and 2) unbelievably cynical and cruel.

For some people, medication is the difference between feeling overwhelmed by the depression/anxiety/etc 24/7 and feeling like a functioning human being with a future in this world.

(via princess-aesthetics)

With No Immediate Cause by Ntozake Shange.

it is so upsetting listening to so many males talk about all of the times they have gone on road trips alone and slept in their cars alone or on the side of the road, or travelled overseas alone and slept on the floor of strangers homes or in parks or at hostels, and they appear to have such freedom in that they are able to be alone in ways that females, unfortunately, cannot. and there is an ignorance surrounding this in that these boys never seem to comprehend just how fortunate they are that strange people and unfamiliar places and the dark of night are not their enemies but rather exciting, promising things.

“Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night…”

― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Roxane Gay. What Men Want, America Delivers (via lucykshaw)

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

The Pervocracy - “Teenage Panic.” (via klonazepam)