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mi casa es su casa

@witticaster / witticaster.tumblr.com

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"i just don't like masculine women" literally i'm so sorry for you loss. i hope you get well soon

there are a NUMBER of folktale Woman-Creatures like selkies who exist to make the inherently coercive nature of heterosexual marriage explicit and to externalize male anxiety about how if your wife had actual autonomy she very well might disappear and you might never fucking hear from her again

which is a FASCINATING category of Woman-Creature imo

someone said it's also a cautionary tale about mistreating your wife and I think that's spot on especially for other related types of stories e.g. the crane wife. like I think these stories are very much Husband Anxiety Stories. the Woman-Creatures are black boxes whose interior experience it is impossible to know and who have strange and often seemingly arbitrary rules that you must follow or else they will disappear. idk. like. that's why I think that any empowering-to-women-ness qualities of these stories is incidental. I think they're externalized anxiety about coercive societal heterosexuality and the inability to truly Know one's wife in such circumstances.

you also see a variant of this formula a lot (generally at the more literary end of the fairy tale space) where it's not a creature you capture, but a magical lady who picks you for seemingly arbitrary reasons, bettering your fortune enormously with her magic and wealth and second-hand status.

and then, for reasons usually at least slightly less arbitrary, fucks off again.

the husbandly anxiety here is more about not having access to coercion as an option.

oooo yes absolutely!

was just talking to Story about this and he told me about one folktale where a guy meets a beautiful woman at a lake and she brings a bountiful dowry of like one million fat cows and such and she is of course a fairy so she's like "my one requirement in our bargain is that if you strike me three times I will leave" and in many versions of the story the husband doesn't ""actually"" strike her -- each time it's something like, one 'strike' involves her forgetting her gloves inside and he walks out and taps her on the shoulder with her gloves, but she tells him that counts as striking her. this sort of thing. which is TRANSPARENTLY like "whoa wouldn't it be fucked up if your wife could enforce consequences for behavior she said was harmful, even if according to your cultural norms it was fine, and you didn't see it as a big deal?" like... lol. what if women could actually be the ones who decided whether or not any given action their husbands took against them was harmful? IMAGINE... PREDEY SCARY....

every time someone realizes they dont have to pick between being a boy or a girl an angel gets its wings btw. and also extremely loud cheering can be heard in the distance from me specifically

btw if you've ever wondered why i make posts like this and get really obnoxious about nonbinary positivity. this is why

and for all of yall that are still figuring it out or aren't getting the support you deserve:

people wonder why i want sex work decriminalized. because when an adult consents to sex in exchange for currency, i deserve to be protected if im assaulted. if i agree to set terms and a client violates me, they should be prosecuted without me or other sex workers fearing for our own freedom

now i cant do anything. i just have to block his number, keep doing survival sex work and pray i dont get hurt anymore.

please support your local sex workers. protect us. help spread our voices.

When you hear the news that there is a growing life expectancy gap between republicans and democrats partially because of the right-wing anti-science conspiracies that have taken hold (especially after COVID) you’re like “Lol. They owned the libs so hard they died.” and then you remember these are the same people having 6+ kids to populate the polls with their white Christian children and medically neglecting them. Then you squint at the data and realize it is not measuring voter data and life expectancy but life expectancy in red areas vs. blue areas and you realize that voter suppression, corruption, racism and poverty is actually killing the people in these places faster than the national average, not their own reactionary views. And you’re so angry it’s being presented like it’s their fault they’re dying.

one of the biggest things I can advocate for (in academia, but also just in life) is to build credibility with yourself. It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of yourself as someone who does things last minute or who struggles to start tasks. people will tell you that you just need to build different habits, but I know for me at least the idea of ‘habit’ is sort of abstract and dehumanizing. Credibility is more like ‘I’ve done this before, so I know I can do it, and more importantly I trust myself to do it’. you set an assignment goal for the day and you meet it, and then you feel stronger setting one the next day. You establish a relationship with yourself that’s built on confidence and trust. That in turn starts to erode the barrier of insecurity and perfectionism and makes it easier to start and finish tasks. reframing the narrative as a process of building credibility makes it easier to celebrate each step and recognize how strong your relationship with yourself can become

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eridians are radially symmetrical and have no eyes, which means that it's normal and expected not to "face" someone to acknowledge them, and even engage in other activities while doing so, effectively dividing your attention between multiple points, so i wonder how long it took rocky to realise how frequently grace would just. look at him. direct his complete and entire ability to focus or protect himself towards unnecessarily fondly gazing at rocky, acknowledging him or just reminding himself that he's there and taking comfort from that. probably not very long, he's not stupid, but i'm willing to bet it never stopped feeling like something special, no matter how often grace did it - because of how often he was the focal point of grace's entire universe, even.

+ because there is no joy without suffering to define it i wonder how long it took rocky to stop wondering why won't you look at me when you're talking to me? about his fellow eridians after he returned. to stop feeling like a ghost in the life he once inhabited and can never return to. i think that one might have taken a while.

If you’ve never been all that disobedient before, you can and should start really, really small. For example, you can wear the slightly revealing or gloriously trashy-looking garment that makes your mom roll her eyes and sigh despondently every time she sees you put it on. You will feel judged and disapproved of when you put it on, but that is fine. Your goal is to sit with the uncomfortable feelings and continue with your desired behavior anyway.  Saunter down the steps in that highlighter-yellow Garfield crop top with your chest hair flowing over the neckline, and harness as much courage as you can muster. It’s okay if you feel like a beacon of sin. Just keep it moving. Your emotions are not the target here. Your behavior is. You can feel however you are feeling in the moment so long as you keep acting like you’re free.  Do you have a favorite TV show that a partner or roommate vocally hates? Try watching that show around them without apologizing or defensively joining them in mocking the program. At first, you probably won’t be able to enjoy the show while in their presence. You’ll feel self-conscious about everything they find annoying or cringe-inducing about the show, and so focused on their reactions that you can’t relax. That’s okay. Allow those feelings of embarrassment and guilt to exist and pass through you without giving up. In time, you will be able to ignore these reactions more, and enjoy the activity.  You want to see the needle of discomfort moving down just a little, like Link’s body temperature meter in Tears of the Kingdom when he puts on a breathable outfit in a hot climate. You’re not gonna go from roiling hot to frosty cold in an instant. But after a certain point, you won’t be actively in pain anymore. Things are just gonna slowly suck less, bit by bit, until they are finally okay. That’s true of most major life adjustments, I find.  Probably the best way to develop self-advocacy skills while growing in your distress tolerance is simply by telling other people no. Do this without explanation or hedging. Nitpicky aunt wants to hear all about your dating life? “No, I don’t want to talk about that.” Unreliable ex-friend wants you to do them the tiny favor of moving their entire home gymnasium into a new third story walk-up? “No, I’m not available.” Manipulative shift supervisor wants to cajole you into sticking around for another three hours to close? “No.”  As many advice columnists smarter than me have already intoned, “no” is a complete sentence. “No” requires no explanation. “No” is not subject to debate. “No” can be repeated over and over like a broken record if a disrespectful person acts like they can’t hear it. And you can walk away at any time to make your “no” physical and impossible to argue with, when someone has proven they don’t respect your boundaries. 
Feeling unsafe is not the same thing as actually being under threat — and if we mask and people-please reflexively, we are likely treating many completely harmless situations of disagreement as if they were mortal threats. It’s important to learn to distinguish between a situation where you have no freedom to speak up, and one where you can live authentically as yourself, and simply get more comfortable with not pleasing everyone. So in any situation where you are free to, try saying “no” and riding out how scary it might feel.  When you first say “no” without explanation or apology, you will feel anxiety. That’s okay. In fact, you should pat yourself on the back for reaching the borders of your comfort zone. It is in this area of unfamiliar, slightly scary, yet possible action that we are able to grow.  You might panic the first time you tell your spouse you’re not cooking dinner every night anymore, and he’ll have to figure out the meal planning himself, or the first time you let a call from a manager go unanswered while you’re off the clock. Great! You are training your body to recognize that nothing bad happens when somebody is a little peeved at you. You’re detaching your sense of safety from another person’s feelings, and tearing apart that enmeshment hurts the way ripping off a band-aid does. 

My recommendation for you would be to slow down the process. If your instinct is to automatically say yes, just don't say anything for a second. It's okay if the moment feels awkward. It's not a weird thing to stop for a moment and think. You can even say "I need a moment to think about that." when someone throws you a question or recommends a course of action that you aren't sure how you feel about.

If those options fail, and you still reflexively say yes, you get to change your mind! You can call back and say "I need to change the time for an appointment." You can text your friend and say "Actually, I decided I don't want to see that slasher movie, sorry." You are allowed to speak up after the fact! That is just as legitimate! If you can't access your feelings in the heat of the moment, give yourself some time and space, and then do what you wanna do.

There are external, structural factors that influence how easily we can say no, of course. It’s far riskier to turn down the demands of a manager who has the power to fire you or a caregiver whom you rely on to stay bathed and fed. And you should never feel ashamed of recognizing such pressures and acting strategically when you’re under them. You’re not a failure for acting with your own self-protection in mind, and giving a potential abuser less ground to mistreat you is sometimes the healthiest boundary-setting that you can do.

Someone will say "as a queer person in the heart of empire, my life is in danger every day" and you'll find out they're a developer for Amazon and live in San Francisco or Seattle or some shit, and then you'll meet a trans girl from Alva, OK who's like "Yeah, things are pretty good. AutoZone moved me to full-time."

Someone in a queer group in my current blue city said that they didn't like expressions of solidarity because it "diluted their oppression".

frodo getting criticized for decades for not doing much / not being a hero compared to sam is fitting when you consider mental health and strength is often trivialized. frodo carried the most dangerous and insidious item in middle earth for YEARS. ancient beings (elves, gandalf, etc) were taunted and tempted by it. boromir was corrupted within weeks without even touching it. men and hobbits turned against their brethren for it. killed for it. and frodo, with a wound from a morgul knife, bore it’s weight when no one else could. had it been anyone else, middle earth would have fallen.

no, he couldn’t have done it without his samwise. but isn’t that a lesson in itself?