@yayfeminism / yayfeminism.tumblr.com
if you're feeling powerless right now—and god knows I am—here's a reminder you can donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, the Trans Law Center, Gaza Soup Kitchen, the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, and hundreds of other charities that will work to mitigate the damage that has been and will continue to be inflicted
life continues. we still have the capacity to do good, important work. that matters
When we’re new to adulthood, it doesn’t immediately occur to all of us that you’re almost always allowed to leave a situation, because growing up we’re forced to stay in situations until someone dismisses us and/or takes us home, or if we do leave on our own accord there’s someone waiting at home to say “we don’t quit in this family!” Boring party? You can leave. You don’t like the lecture? You can walk out. New doctor not working out? You can end the appointment, you don’t need to wait for them to dismiss you. Bad date? You can just go home. Leaving a situation prematurely might have consequences, but unless you’re under arrest or serving prison time, it’s pretty much always allowed.
–commenter Allison @ askamanager
A while back, I called for a Lyft ride home from the airport. The lyft pulled up, he called my name, and I opened the door and climbed in. While I was climbing in he was getting out, which I didn’t realize until he opened the back door on the other side.
Him: I’ll put your bag in the trunk. Me: Oh, there’s no need. Him: I’ll just put it back there. Me: I prefer to keep my bag with me.
I was also still holding onto it so he couldn’t just grab it, and when I said “I prefer to keep it with me” this cloud of rage crossed his face.
Him: Then get out. Me: Excuse me? Him: Get out, I don’t want your bag fucking up my upholstery.
Now, this was a weekender – essentially an upscale duffle bag. Small, almost brand new, easily fitting on the middle-seat beside me. I don’t know if he was just really intense about his upholstery or if he was running some kind of scam, but either way I now DEFINITELY was not going to let him separate me from my bag.
So I said “Okay,” and I picked up my bag and got out, took out my phone, and cancelled him as my driver.
He looked at me like I’d grown a second head. There was this moment of total disconnect in his face, and then he started ranting about how someone had damaged his upholstery and they needed to put their bags in the back and he wasn’t going to have me getting his upholstery dirty.
I said, “I’m out of your car. Drive on, I’ll get another,” and held up my phone.
This had clearly never happened before – it looked like plenty of people had thought “This guy is crazy” but went the “so I’d better let him do what he wants” route instead of “so I’m getting out of his car”. Which is totally normal! We’re socialized to prioritize “not making a scene” over personal safety. But when you do call that bluff, when you defy the social convention that the other person is counting on to make you do what they want you to do, they don’t know how to react, which gives you time for a clean getaway. And maybe he thought I was a dickhead but what do I care what an asshole thinks of me?
Anyway the moral of the story is yes, you should know that you can almost always leave a situation and often it’s in your best interest to do so.
(Right after I called for another car he picked up a fare using Quick Match or whatever it’s called, peeled out of the Lyft lane, and hit another car well nigh immediately.)
[ID: The Benefits of walking away. (Illustration of the back of a person walking away. ) 1. Makes bad things disappear quickly. 2. Gives everyone optimal view of your back. 3. Answers question, “I wonder what would happen if I just walked away”]
Image credit @thatsbelievable
children also deserve the right to leave uncomfortable/unsafe situations too. The next adult who gatekeeps basic human rights like safety or autonomy or decision-making with “im an adult let me do what i want” or “youre an adult, youre no longer a child you can make your own decisions” or “being an adult is all abt freedom” or “dont infantilize disabled people and treat them like children, theyre not inferiors” im fucking laying it into them
reading a paper on quality of life among 45-to-70-year-olds with Down syndrome:
“Individuals expressed a desire to be allowed to go to bed when they wanted to.”
:(
Imagine.
I lived in a room and board that failed the burrito test. (”If you’re not allowed to get up in the middle of the night to microwave a burrito, you live in an institution.”) No one stopped me from going to bed, but they did tell me I had to have my lights out by 10, and that I had to be out of the house by 10 the next morning. When I complained to my outpatient program that I needed more help than I was getting, they threatened me with board and care, where my cell phone would be taken away and I would lose contact with the outside world. My case manager sounded so damn smug, like he had caught me out, when he said, “if you’re really as helpless as you say, then you need to be in a board and care.” Like my only options were struggling to do things I couldn’t do, or surrendering my life to an institution.
When I tried to talk about these things with other people, they always rationalized it away. (I told my dad once that my caseworker was reading my e-mails as I wrote them, demonstrating extreme disrespect for my privacy, and he said, “Well, she’s probably making sure you don’t use the internet to goof off.” I was 22 years old.)
People tend to mock the idea that telling an adult when to go to bed, when to eat, etc., is a human rights violation, even though they would find it outrageous and absurd if anyone came into their lives to do the same thing to them.
And this is what people seem to think when they tell disabled activists we’re just not disabled enough to understand that some people really do need to be locked up and deprived of all autonomy.
They don’t want *any* activists for mentally/developmentally disabled people. If you’re able to advocate for your rights, you’re not “disabled enough” - and if you were disabled enough you wouldn’t be able to advocate for your rights.
GRADE SCHOOL SJWS stop using social justice language to explain shit to your conservative parents IT’S NOT GONNA GO THROUGH now all they have are some new words to make fun of. don’t tell your mom she’s being fatphobic tell her she’s being a dick
No, this is for real.
"I don't think you raised me to treat/talk about/ talk to people like that" is an extremely powerful sentence. So is "it makes me sad when you say mean things like that." There's also "I wouldn't like it if someone said rude things like that about you/my sibling/[other parent]/loved family figure."
My parents don't get that a lot of the comments they make about people are fatphobic, perisexist, transphobic, etc. (I'd say that my dad doesn't know that the things he says are homophobic, but he does.) But they do understand that they told me to treat people respectfully all my life, and they hate being shown up as acting hypocritical.
(And for real I hate little more in this world than @mistresskabooms telling me I'm not acting the way I raised her to act.)
For real though, this also (surprisingly?) applies to telling your white racist relatives they're being racist when you're white yourself. Like a word as simple and old as that, you'd think it wasn't on anyone's I don't Get It -list anymore. And yet.
The thing with a lot of people who casually throw around these old school "jokes" about minorities is that they do know those big words like racist and transphobic and fatphobic. They "know" those words mean that it's a bad thing. But they don't understand how and why that is it because the mechanics are strange to them and don't fit into what they've been taught. And if they're really conservative, they know those words mean you're talking Leftist ideologies, which is just about as bad as being the Bad Word. Which results in an immediate shutdown. You're talking extremist gobbledygook. You can't be taken seriously. You've been radicalized.
When you start trying to talk someone out of being an asshole to others, you gotta do it in baby steps. Do the 101. Use small words. Appeal to their sense of needing to be considered a good person instead of immediately using academic jargon, no matter how succinct and tempting it might be. We're here to make people care, make them consider hurting others less first, before you can spring on the "oh yeah this all is called X-phobia, academically speaking" on them.
^^^^^^
Deescalation and communication without blame is SO useful!!!!
This is FANTASTIC for communicating important ideas with others, but is also super useful for diffusing fights, avoiding fights, and communicating feelings!
10/10 DO RECOMMEND
like 99% of "men and women are soooo different!!!" comedy is literally just describing the experience of not understanding other people. like it's not that women never say what they mean talking to other people is just like that. it can be hard to understand what other people are thinking. bioessentialism really rots the brain
"women will say I'm fine and then not mean it" yeah that's something literally everybody does. is this your first time interacting with another human being my guy
this is one of the only funny responses on this hell of a post
If your apology involves degrading yourself, calling yourself shit or insulting yourself, its not an apology, try again.
Can someone translate this?
Don’t try to guilt people by saying “I’m sorry I fucking suck.” “I’m sorry I’m just the worst and I should die” Because thats not an apology, thats trying to guilt the other person into dropping the subject.
“I’m not trying to guilt anyone! I just feel so terrible!”
Then that is a separate problem from the apology. Apologize to the person you owe and apology to, and then find someone else to talk to about the self-loathing. It’s not fair to ask someone to juggle both things.
“But I want them to know how bad I feel!”
Then you can say, “I feel really awful about it.” You don’t have to go into any more detail than that.
“But what if they won’t accept my apology unless I really grovel for it?”
If you apologized sincerely and they don’t accept it, that doesn’t mean you apologized wrong. Forgiveness isn’t owed.
All of this.
And also, I get it. When I realize I’ve fucked up and hurt someone in a way I never intended it suckssssss and all of my worst self hatred and harming thoughts and behaviors SURGE. So I understand so so so so fully WHY you want to say shit like this.
But guess was what, you can’t, it’s just how it goes. If you want to support healthy relationships in your life, you need to get this.
So I’m clarifying this for you AND me and anyone else who shares that^ goal: when you are truly in the wrong and have apologized, the “sitting with those awful feelings” is part of the apology work. YOU did the harm so now YOU sit with the consequences. One of the consequences is that you may feel like shit. It’s not fair to take that feeling and place it back to the person you originally harmed.
Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.
It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.
Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.
Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.
Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)
Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!
You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!
If you want it in a simple phrase:
You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.
Fun fact, that was literally what inspired me to make this post!
A number of factors are sending markets into a tailspin, but the most prominent is fear that the US economy is in much worse shape than previously believed — evidenced by Friday's unexpected jump in the unemployment rate.
The stock market had hit record after record this year, buoyed by falling inflation and the growing sense that the Fed would shift to rate cuts, which can boost corporate profits. Stocks had also been flying high because of big bets on tech companies involved in artificial intelligence:
Many hoped that Al would create another global industrial revolution.
But the Fed didn't cut rates as many had hoped last week. Friday's jobs report was significantly weaker than expected. And Al profits are basically nonexistent, and the unproven technology isn't yet ready for prime time — and some fear it'll never get there.
So, investors are running for the hills. They're selling off oil, crypto and especially tech stocks.
Instead, they're pouring into safe havens like bonds, sending Treasury yields lower.
imagine going for the past several years thinking the economy is great. gaze at that yawning gap of cluelessness and wonder. wtf
i can’t imagine being that detached from reality
I'm not surprised it happened but I am somewhat surprised that this is how I found out about it. I guess I briefly forgot which website I'm on
Driving the rout: Sharp declines in high-flying tech stocks including Nvidia, Apple, and Amazon, and a disappointing jobs report. As investors ran to buy U.S. treasuries, mortgage rates declined, opening the door for some borrowers to refinance, experts said. Follow along for live USA TODAY updates.
Imagine how hard news of upcoming strikes & boycotts would go rn
oh my god i occasionally look at instagram exclusively to gawk at altmed scammers and this kind of stuff is EVERYWHERE. they straight up think that women and men have completely distinct non-overlapping endocrine systems
What? A lot of people experience an overnoon dip in energy....eat an apple, have a snack....drink some water....regardless of what hormones are flying around your insides.
I honestly think that is precisely how they catch a lot of folks (especially cis women) in their trap. Because you'll get a lot of cis women (especially when they're young) seeing the original thing and going like 'omg I do feel a real dip at 3pm; this must be true' not realizing it's just a general human thing and not at all gendered.
Whereas if the bullshit was more obviously bullshit, fewer people would fall for it.
Good point. People really should try asking people they know. I swear the amount of things I found out are normal by asking others or having someone ask me is unbelievable.
Common Frank Bidart banger (from "In the Ruins," in Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016)
it really hurts me to see so many gazans asking us for help, though that's through no fault of their own. they've been forced to use a social media site that they're probably not familiar with (because tumblr has kind of faded out of popular consciousness), to interact with us in a second language, to distinguish themselves from the scammers who are taking advantage of genocide, and to ask strangers for help. i don't think there are any cultures where it's easy to ask for help like this, but i'm intimately familiar with how humiliating it can be in arab culture. please be kind, gracious and helpful to the gazans in your inbox. this is a desperate time for them, and in addition to the physical danger inflicted by "israel", the prices of basic resources in gaza are extremely high due to scarcity, and those that manage to escape to egypt are financially exploited by landlords there and have an extremely difficult time finding work due to their unofficial status as refugees. these families will continue to need our help and i hope we can all continue to provide it to the best of our ability.
Saying "voting doesn't matter" might reach your younger peers online but it certainly hasn't reached Clangus Hargbarg who was part of the kkk in 1951 and still sends in his ballot. He hasn't missed a one.
Please register and vote.
I want this BLAZED across tumblr like a banner at the top of the screen, permanently
