i like boys who battle their inner demons, with tortured souls, dark pasts, who use their handsome features to mask these unwanted shades of themselves under a pretense of arrogance
So Herondales, basically.
taste of louisiana in a can.
amen.
whenever i watch a show with my family i like to throw in bits of trivia about the writers, actors, original script… that sort of thing
they’re never as awed as they should be tbh
omg i thought i was the only one who did this
We all hear it, the ones who are “strange”, “not normal”, living lives outside of what society understands. Usually from a troll, the phrase is very familiar to all of us. “You need help”. [tw: ableism, otherkin hate, trolling behind this link]
It always has bothered me, for reasons I tried to put together. One is that the people who say this are not sincere. They hide behind the idea that they are a concerned member of society wanting you to “get help”. But in reality they do not care whether you are helped or not. They clearly do not care about you or your mental health, or they would not be trolling. And I don’t believe for one moment that the people who say they are just trying “to snap people back to the reality”, really wish to do this. They know that their techniques only make people feel worse. They do it for the thrill of mocking someone.
So, of course it bothers me. But, there’s something else too, and a few days ago, I realised what this is.
Said by these people, “you need help” is a statement of violence.
Of course, it is not always. A concerned friend might say to you the words, “you need help” and really mean that. If it is truly misguided and based on a bad knowledge of that person’s experiences and needs, or if it is said to a person who genuinely does need to get help at that moment and is denying it, it is not aimed to hurt (though of course, it can still hurt). But, when said by these trolls, mostly it is a statement of violence.
And, we should be calling this out.
Why is it violence?
Because, the attitude behind these words always is, “you need to stop doing what you are doing”. The idea behind the words “get help” is this: the person finds you offensive, deluded or wrong, and they wish you to stop being that. “Get help” is, in other words, “change”. It is “there is something wrong with your thinking. Go to a doctor and get it fixed so you can be like the rest of us.”
Of course, in reality, “getting help” is not always about this. A good doctor will accept what you are and help you work to be more comfortable. A good doctor is not focused on changing you to fit society, they are concerned about your health and comfort. If you are happy, comfortable and not doing harm, a good doctor will say, this is not a problem. If you are comfortable with some parts of your nature (like being autistic) but you have issues that really are affecting your comfort, a good doctor will help you manage those issues as an autistic person, not trying to change everything about you. Of course, not all doctors (even most) are good doctors, but, that is the idea of medicine… to treat the problems of the patient, not shape them to fit society.
But, what these people are supporting, is the most dangerous and harmful kind of use of mental health medicine: the kind of “medicine”, the kind of “therapy”, that forces a person to be normal, against their desire and against their deep nature. The kind used by bad doctors, abusive doctors. [tw: link talks about painful treatment of autistic children and can be very triggering] The kind that destroys people and destroys lives, because the brain is not meant to be forced to work completely different from how it naturally works for that person.
When someone says “get help” to say your statements are worthless and deluded, they are trying to say, “I don’t like how you live. You are wrong, you are bad. You need drugs and therapy to make you normal”.
Except, we were never “normal”, otherkin, autistic people, other neurodiverse people, we were never the way that these people want us to be, and the only “treatment” for that is to erase our personalities and replace them with something “more acceptable”.
That is what they mean, when they say “get help”. The only “help” they imagine for us, is for doctors to beat us down until our personalities die.
Still some of the best advice I’ve ever read.
Wisdom.
•A woman in Utah gave birth to twins. When one was stillborn, she was arrested and charged with criminal homicide based on the claim that her decision to delay cesarean surgery was the cause of the stillbirth.
•After a hearing that lasted less than a day, a court issued an order requiring a critically-ill pregnant woman in Washington, D.C. to undergo cesarean surgery over her objections. Neither she nor her baby survived.
•A judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her from having an abortion.
•A woman in Oregon who did not comply with a doctor’s recommendation to have additional testing for gestational diabetes was subjected to involuntary civil commitment. During her detention, the additional testing was never performed.
•A Louisiana woman was charged with murder and spent approximately a year in jail before her counsel was able to show that what was deemed a murder of a fetus or newborn was actually a miscarriage that resulted from medication given to her by a health care provider.
•In Texas, a pregnant woman who sometimes smoked marijuana to ease nausea and boost her appetite gave birth to healthy twins. She was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance to a minor.
•A doctor in Wisconsin had concerns about a woman’s plans to have her birth attended by a midwife. As a result, a civil court order of protective custody for the woman’s fetus was obtained. The order authorized the sheriff’s department to take the woman into custody, transport her to a hospital, and subject her to involuntary testing and medical treatment.INTERSECTIONALITY CHECK OF THE DAY
It is very important to note that this sort of thing is happening not only to women, but all people capable of pregnancy.
Also, it’s very, VERY important to note WHICH women this is happening to, which I wrote about a few months ago:
When feminists decry the horrific new developments in regard to the criminalization of pregnancy, i.e. people with uteri who are prosecuted and/or sent to prison for refusing a c-section, having a miscarriage or stillbirth, having a mental illness, being perceived as “irresponsible”, et cetera.
White women: “this is happening to women!!!” News stories invariably show the pregnant bellies of white women. The stories are written by white women, and are addressed to white women. (Which is also cissexist.)
This is happening to Black and Native American women like Regina McKnight and Martha Greywind:
First, we describe characteristics of the women and the cases, finding that low-income women and women of color, especially African American women, are overrepresented among those who have been arrested or subjected to equivalent deprivations of liberty.
who are poor, and often living in the South, with its rich history of forced sterilizations and eugenics. South Carolina especially showed preference for sterilizing African American women.
From the report:
For example, in South Carolina thirty-four of ninety-three cases came from the contiguous counties of Charleston and Berkeley.
Regina McKnight suffered a miscarriage due to an infection. She served EIGHT YEARS of TWELVE-YEAR SENTENCE despite the fact that her counsel failed to provide adequate defense.
Martina Greywind was arrested 12 weeks into her pregnancy, and charged with reckless endangerment for being pregnant while homeless. She was able to gain release for a medical appointment. She summarily got an abortion, upon which the state offical position was “Defendant has made it known to the State that shehas terminated her pregnancy. Consequently, the controversial legal issues presented are no longer ripe for litigation.” and the prosecutor commented that it was, “no longer worth the time or expense to prosecute her.”
Michelle Marie Greenup was charged with second-degree murder after a miscarriage, and although the murder charge was eventually dropped, she was only released on the condition that she plead guilty to “improper disposal of human remains”, even though the miscarried fetus could only have been 11-15 weeks at the time.
Rachael Lowe was arrested when she went to try and receive treatment for an addiction to pain medication because she was found to be pregnant. She was forcibly committed to a mental hospital, where she received NO prenatal care and many prescription drugs like Xanax against her will. Despite the court announcing that she would be released, she nevertheless remained in custody for the remainder of her pregnancy under state supervision, and was fired from her job as a result.
Laura Pemberton was arrested at her home where she was attempting a home birth, under the pretext that she was “endangering the life” of her unborn child by refusing to have a caesarian section. A sheriff took her into custody, strapped her legs together, and took her to a hearing in progress, in which she was denied counsel AS SHE WAS BEING PREPPED FOR SURGERY. The judge compelled her to undergo surgery against her will. When she later sued for violation of her civil rights, the judge ruled that the rights of her unborn child outweighed her rights under the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
Out of all these women, only Laura Pemberton is white.
How about that shit.
