Call me Aang — Queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent Jew who’s just tired of things
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⚠️DON’T MAKE ME TAP THE SIGN: I refuse to engage with people who insist on twisting my words, misrepresenting my arguments, or putting words in my mouth. Go be an asshat elsewhere.
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I used to never check notes but I guess I’m doing discourse again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t think I’ve ever had a lower tolerance for stupid political opinions than I do right now.
I’m in the mood to indulge in some trashy fan fiction for the rest of the year and just totally block that shit out. What’s the opposite of an echo chamber? I want that noise-cancelling room so all I can hear is the sound of hurt/comfort.
I was like, ok, pause button. This sounds fake and designed to get me riled up.
No
It’s fucking real
It was in February.
Update 3/14/2023: luckily it hasn’t gotten past “introduced” but the fact it’s even on the table??? Horrifying, really.
It was never about protecting the children or upward mobility via capitalism.
They couldn’t strong-arm enough school districts into abusing children and banning material they didn’t like, so now they’re trying to burn the whole thing down.
From what I understand about the US, most of the child/teen population attends public schools, and privates schools are only affordable for the very high upper class unless you have a scholarship? (This knowledge is only from tv shows and movies so don’t quote me on it)
So if that’s the case, abolishing public education would create an unachievable level of demand for homeschooling teachers and leave most of said population unable to access any kind of education
which would leave future adults in a much more difficult, if not impossible, position to get higher (or even decent) paying jobs since they lack the skills to do the job, and would create a deficit in capable staff for said jobs which would damage companies as well bc either they hire unqualified people or they fight over the lower amount of qualified people
(Most of which will probably come from the upper class since it’s the one that can afford private schools, therefore increasing the disparagement of opportunities between economical status)
And since people can’t get enough money to fucking live, it would drastically increase homelessness and make people unable to buy stuff of any kind
which would lower the sales of many businesses and companies, therefore sinking their profit levels, making them have to fire people (which adds to the previous problem), putting said companies and business out of, well, business, etc.
Tell me if there’s a mistake on my line of thinking, but I can’t see how abolishing the education system most of the country depends on is going to help anyone
Thankfully, everything you said was untrue
Anyway, let’s abolish the department of education.
This bill doesn’t get rid of the education system. I don’t know if you’re deliberately fearmongering or if your public school just did a terrible job of teaching you civics, but the federal Department of Education doesn’t provide schools. Public schools are provided and run by states, not the federal government.
The federal DoE sets regulations and acts as a pass through to distribute federal dollars to schools that come with strings attached to force the states to comply with whatever laws the feds want to impose but don’t technically have the authority to enforce (often things entirely unrelated to education). Meanwhile thousands of federal DoE employees chew up the funds that pass through their offices because they of course need salaries and that funding pays for them first so by the time your strings-attached-funding is ready to actually go to schools, it’s been substantially reduced. Then when it gets to the schools, they have to spend large portions of that money to pay salaries of people who spend all their time filling out paperwork to prove they are complying with the DoE’s regulations. The money that was supposed to go to educating kids gets eaten up by bureaucrats who don’t care that your kid has never been in a class of less than 35 and their teacher has to use her own salary to buy pencils for her students and the school only has enough textbooks for a third of the kids.
Nevermind the fact that the federal Department of Education had absolutely no constitutional justification for its existence, they actively make education worse and divert desperately needed funds away from public school classrooms. Yeah, they’re first on my chopping block too.
The US was first in the world in education before the DoE was established.
It’s a layer of bureaucratic bullshit, nothing more. Thay people think the DoE and public education are one in the same is a prime example of how badly the system has failed.
The DoE implemented things like No Child Left Behind — widely considered to be a bad move for education — and that new math curriculum that actual educators said was a ridiculous way to teach children.
I was very close to doing my MA in education, but decided that there was no way I’d ever want to work for the public school system. No matter what I learned about the best ways to teach kids, I knew I’d be hobbled on what and how and when I taught things. Which sounded like a giant nightmare, tbh. Why spend all that time and money (student teaching is mandatory, full time, and unpaid, on top of paying for your degree) learning things I won’t even be able to use in the classroom?
It’s 50/50 if this is someone who doesn’t know what proship means (I’ve seen some brain dead takes), or someone winning a gold medal in cognitive dissonance.
When I worked retail there was a time when I was in the middle of fixing a shelving unit under rather unreasonable time pressure when a customer walked right past three salespeople who were actively trying to get their attention, came up to me and was halfway through a question about the minutae of a product I have never touched in a department we were not in when they stopped to say “sorry, you aren’t busy are you?”
I, balancing 40lb of sharp metal on one shoulder as I tried to jimmy a broken fastener loose with my own pocketknife (management refused to provide any kind of tools) responded with “a little bit, yeah”
And the customer got this look of utter Rage on her face, glared at me for a moment before spinning around and stomping directly out of the store.
I started to get back to work when I noticed that the salespeople were all staring at me with expressions of horror. I asked what was wrong, and one of them responded with a hushed, fearful “you can’t say that!” and nothing more. Like they had witnessed me rip somebody’s throat out with my teeth instead of provide an honest answer to a question asked by a dick.
When I worked at Walmart, I was an overnight stocker, I was assigned to the frozen foods section, I was the only one assigned to the frozen foods section, now for anyone who doesn’t know this is actually against company rules, you are to have a minimum of three people stocking a section, at least when I was working there.
Well, I wasn’t aware I was the only one assigned to the section, as on my first few nights I was shown the ropes by 2 senior stockers, so I assumed they were assigned to the section with me.
After five days they appeared in my section less and less, the work load began to gradually increase too, I inquired with my manager about where my coworkers went, and they said the produce area needed help.
After a week it became abundantly clear I was not gonna get any help in my section, so I soldiered on, I could get the section done by myself each night, but it took the entire shift.
Eventually I was asked to help every so often with the produce area, I thought nothing of it, but it did cause me to have to skip my lunch break to keep up with my section.
Eventually my manager began to demand that I finish my section by 1 am and then move to produce to help them, I told him if he wanted that he’d need to assign my section the proper amount of stockers.
I was assigned to worker conduct training as apparently I was rude to him, needless to say I missed my lunch, and didn’t get any new people in my section.
To put it in perspective, frozen is supposed to have 3 people, produce is supposed to have 3-10, so how many did each have? Frozen had 1 and produce had 26.
So I bypassed the manager and negotiated with my coworkers, we came to an agreement, I’d get 2 workers to help me, and then I’d go to produce and help them by midnight, the manager found out and found it unacceptable that I’d deprive produce of 2 whole stockers.
I then went over his head to HR, got some new kid assigned to my section, manager now hates me, but I don’t care, I was doing my job and it didn’t matter to me if he liked it.
Me and the new kid got along, we would joke, share stories about school and so on, eventually I was reported for harassment to HR, turns out the kid was the day manager’s son, and he told the day manager everything I said.
I got sent to a sensitivity seminar and was down a frozen section stocker yet again, it’s now Christmas, everyone is panicking, they are running around stocking every section, I was pushed around the store to every section but was still the only one in frozen.
It was now the new year, the new pallette of ice cream came in during the day shift, they crammed it in the freezer in such a way that it was balanced atop old barrels, it reached the ceiling, I tried to ask for help moving it and was told to move it myself.
The ice cream collapsed on me, I was pinned for an hour and a half under it, the force busted the freezer door, knocked it off its tracks, I was wearing so many layers I barely felt it.
A week later I was told I was being let go, their reason officially was I was too slow in my section, their unofficial reason was that my attitude and conduct was unbecoming of a Walmart employee.
They said if I made a fuss I wouldn’t get my pay, so I took my pay, finished my section and left.
That’s like seven different flavors of illegal. You could have sued the company just for making you skip lunch breaks, before we get into all that shit about how you were buried in a freezer for over an hour because they violated two dozen safety regulations, and threatening to deny you pay for time you’ve already worked is the kind of thing that smaller companies have been destroyed by; it would definitely have gotten the manager fired by home office if you’d made a fuss.
This is one of those situations where I understand that, just because a company can’t do something legally, doesn’t mean they won’t do it and try to get away with it. But also, you kind of just need to channel your spite and make it a problem.
I wonder what the statute of limitations is on that shit?? I’d be petty enough to still try to nail them for that.
if you use the word “horrorcore” or “cozy horror” i am biting you
Do I want to know what that even is?
From what I can understand, its an attempt to create horror specially for women & minorities that excludes anything that could be considered icky/controversial like say, CSA, incest, rape etc etc. Basically the kind of fucked up shit you can find anywhere in the horror genre is excluded from that.
I only know this because of this one author who got harassed over this discourse BECAUSE her books featured topics like these
This is the first comprehensive explanation I have seen for this post and FUCKING YIKES what in the Victorian era is this-
It’s about silencing people. It’s about stopping people from talking about trauma and hoping that you will let it happen as long as you are allowed to keep the ~vibesss~ and ignore the absence of substance. I have studied horror and you know what we talked about a lot? How a lot of creators and consumers of horror have been told by society that they are wrong or monstrous. It’s people processing that their body doesn’t feel like it belongs to them or that what they see in the mirror isn’t what the world sees. It’s people who have been deeply afraid writing about fear. It’s people who have been wrongly feared saying I’ll show you what scary is. It’s a fucking necessary part of human expression and wether you like to engage with it or not, you should want it to still exist.
One of the podcasts I listen to had a fantastic breakdown of WHY people like horror as a genre — it’s a way to engage with all the gross and scary and taboo and uncomfortable ideas, while being totally controlled and safe.
No one is really being hurt. You can put down the book/controller or close the browser tab/media player any time you want, and step away.
You can write about something awful but this time you’re in control. It’s victimless.
And it seems sort of weird to gut that of all meaning and wear its skin and call all the people who just want a controlled and safe way to engage with the horrifying, monsters.
“Should trans women be allowed to compete in women’s sports” I don’t think there should be women’s sports. I think it’s a silly artificial construction that only upholds the gender binary while it’s benefits are incidental and would be better addressed directly.
Care about giving people with different body types and muscle mass a shot? Split your league by weight categories like boxing, or some other direct physical measurement. Gender is at best a poor proxy for these and we only do it because we still treat women are a different species. “But that still wouldn’t be fully fair to everyone?” Sport isn’t fully fair, it’s about rewarding people with the most biological advantage. That’s the whole point of it.
You want to give more sporting opportunity to women and minorities specifically? Okay then do that. Create your own opportunities league, but if we’re giving up the pretense that it’s about essential biological advantage then you better let trans women in.
What’s that, the extra league would be treated as a novelty afterthought and would lack the prestige of the real main event? You mean like how women’s events were treated when they were introduced? True! In fact women’s leagues are still largely treated as secondary now, and you know how we can fix it? Make the main leagues open to everyone with weight, height or muscle mass categories so that people with different body types can excel. Like I suggested before. Problem solved.
Women’s sport is bad actually.
Can’t wait for the terfs to find this and be like “mask off!!! The TRAs want to abolish women’s sport!” Yeah lol die mad about it. You may be happy with your condescending secondary leagues but not me. Open up sport categories based on attributes that actually matter to the sport, not binarist fiction.
If you are convinced that all woman would still universally lose to all men even when correcting for things like gross muscle mass difference, then you’re a misogynist by the way.
It’s like everyone forgot this was literally the theme of 90’s feminism. We were even pushing for women to be allowed into the NFL.
Splitting most sports into weight/build classes would basically take care of all the existing gripes about trans women having an advantage. It would be way more interesting to watch.
I think the only thing that gets a pass is wrestling, since it boils down to choreographed stunt people wailing on each other, and there’s no archetypical body that gives you an advantage, so long as you can drop someone and pin them. (Seriously — start watching wrestling. It’s fucking wild. Sometimes you’ll get some psycho little 5’-nothing BEAST who just flies through the air, grabs some giant like a face-hugger, and takes them the fuck out. I know it’s all scripted storylines but it’s GREAT.)
resisting arrest shouldn’t be a crime. it should be a human right to resist being arrested
When someone is grabbing you and holding you down and shit, resistance isn’t even a conscious decision. Your body automatically tries to remain in place against outside forces, and if you’ve ever just tried to position another person’s hands for them or had someone do so to you, you know it’s finicky and requires concerted effort. “Resisting arrest” isn’t even limited to active struggle but can be invoked whenever the pig thinks someone simply wasn’t submitting as smoothly as they wanted. Add to this the fact that the degree of resistance is typically impossible to prove, define or even support with any kind of evidence and it is just 100% an intentionally generic nonsense charge invented so they can punish anybody at all that they’ve arrested.
Genuinely, any time I’ve seen someone struggling against being restrained, I can’t imagine I wouldn’t do the same. I would be so absolutely freaked out if someone tried to grab me, pin me, toss me in the back of a car. We’re taught to fight back against that kind of thing in literally any other situation.
Not to mention, I do not trust what happens after police take you into custody. Nobody should. My family’s neighbor — middle class white guy — was reported missing. He was suicidal. Picked up while sitting along the waterfront, unarmed, was following instructions.
He disappeared for around a week and while he 1000000% has a case against those bastards, he’s too traumatized to even tell anyone what happened to him.
So yeah. If a cop tried to take me into custody, I’d be a ball of raw nerves and instincts. I expect basically everyone would.
ALT
