hi friends sorry i haven’t been on here much recently!!
cw - abuse mention, covid mention
earlier this year i lost my job because of covid (that i loved and took me over a year to get) as well as my housing. moving back in with my emotionally abusive mother has been the most difficult part of quarantine and unemployment took 7 months to give me any money, which is still not enough to move out.
yesterday my boyfriend lost his job as well, one that he moved across the country for, so this week has been especially rough.
my mom has denied my ability to go to therapy in any way even though i experience extreme trauma because of her that affects my daily life, and now she is trying to prevent me from getting covid tested before going to my boyfriend’s house next week for our anniversary. because of these things and much more, both my mental and physical health are constantly in danger.
this post is not to fish for sympathy but rather to provide some insight as to why i’ve been absent. i hope you all are staying as safe as you can and doing as well as possible. please know you can always reach out if you ever need anything.
I’m a feminist, I love women, but I’m really disturbed by stuff I’ve read lately about how women, women’s relationships, women’s spaces, are all magically naturally pure and free of oppression from violence.
The thing about feminist analysis we need to remember is that when we talk about men and women, we’re talking about statistical probability that’s not able to accurately predict life every time.
A randomly-selected man is more likely to be taller than a randomly-selected woman. A randomly-selected man is more likely to earn more money than a randomly-selected woman. That does not mean that any man is taller or richer than any woman, or that every man is richer or taller than every woman.
So many times in debates about sex and gender, these probabilities get hammered out into flat declarative sentences. We know it’s wrong when sexists say, “Men are stronger than women, so women could never play sports against men,” but somehow give it a pass when a feminist says “Women are less violent than men, so it’s not in a woman’s nature to be abusive.”
And as a feminist who’s worked in women’s shelters, I’m beyond disturbed by how feminists twist statistics about violence into the claim that women just don’t have the capacity to be violent or cruel.
Because what that really says is: Women aren’t fully human. We don’t fully exist in the world; our womanhood renders our anger and our aggression invalid. We’re not capable of the kind of moral choices men are.
That isn’t just bullshit, that’s dangerous bullshit. You know who makes that kind of argument?
A woman who wants to hurt other people and get away with it.
Understanding this is also a good way to spot who’s interested in breaking down the social hierarchy that hurts all of us, and who’s just interested in building a new social hierarchy that benefits them instead.
We can’t liberate everyone just by reversing the axis of oppression. If your goal is to hurt other people and get away with it, you aren’t really fighting to end things, you’re just fighting to take control.
All of the above can be directly applied to how white women treat black people, especially black women. White women (including liberals, including feminists,) are some of the worst when it comes to to upholding white supremacist ideas, especially in the face of black women. If you want to know more, go to the sources. Layla F. Saad @laylafsaad talks about this, check out her “Me and White Supremacy Workbook.” Others talk about it as well, but honestly, just google search “how white women uphold white supremacy” and there will be tons of articles.
There are a lot of ways for humans to be oppressed or hold power over each other. All of us exist in so many overlapping and interlocking social contexts, it just doesn’t make sense to think of ourselves as 100% The Victim All The Time; we usually always have someone who’s smaller or weaker or more marginal than us. We’ve got to understand both sides of the equation, and think critically about how we use the power we have.
[image description: a tweet by user @indigenousAI saying
“fun fact: as a DV survivor i cannot register to vote because doing so makes my address public. anyone who is fleeing or hiding from an abuser is automatically disenfranchised from the political process and this is a feature, not a bug”]
I don’t know of the original poster might not be aware
but!
if you’ve been a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, you can enroll into the address confidentiality program (free of cost!) and be registered to vote as an absentee voter and your name and address will not be made available for the public
it is super easy to get enrolled - the application takes like 5 minutes, but it has to be with someone who is certified to do it (most likely an advocate! try going to a family justice center in your area or calling the Attorney Generals office in your area!!!!)
ALSO :
you don’t need to have any police reports or have a protection order to qualify!!! you just have to sign stating that you’ve been a victim of one of the aforementioned crimes.
Links to the info for every state in the Wikipedia article:
Being loved is NOT a reward for being beneficial or useful in any way. You don’t become less deserving of being loved if you aren’t productive for a day or if you have a bad day and can’t get out of bed.
I promise. Being loved has nothing to do with how you “help” the world or those around you.
i don’t EVER want to hear “ughh why do people care about this celebrity drama they’re both bad it’s not that deep” again. if you cant see the sweeping ramifications of this you’re blind or dumb or both
in 10 years, people are gonna look back at this depp-heard trial, realize how awful the misogyny surrounding it was, and say, “we behaved horribly.” yeah, leave me and others out of that ‘we’, because a bunch of us have been warning about how awful the disinformation is and how harmful it is for survivors to see. but ofc, any reasonable takes are drowned out by ridiculous things like a viral tweet of amber blowing her nose which has been framed as her ‘snorting coke in court’. you people have been behaving like demons and i can’t wait for your asses to realize how stupid some of you acted.
i am backing this harder than ever. a precedent has been set in america that you can’t even talk about being abused, even if you don’t name your abuser, without it being labeled as defamatory. this is so so bad for dv victims. depp is still a certified wife beater in the uk btw.
This is a remake of my old post because it keeps stagnating. I became homeless again and had to move in with my aunt. My mom, who abused me, is around almost every single day. She is angry I went no contact with her and she’s been antagonizing me, which is exhausting and triggering. I’m sleeping poorly and I constantly feel on edge. I haven’t felt this unsafe or unhappy in years. Despite having a college degree, I’m having a hard time finding work in my rural hometown. Most of of the better paying jobs are in cities farther away. My aunt doesn’t have wifi and I can’t afford to pay for it, so working remotely isn’t an option right now. I really need help saving money for a reliable used car to find better paying work and get some time away from my abuser. It would give me some temporary relief and empower me to save money for a move. The target (calculated from the difference of my past donations and my new goal) is $7565 because I am in a lot of debt and I don’t think I can handle another bill right now. I want to own the car that I buy. My sister will put me on her car insurance and help me with taxes/gas. Please, I am really desperate. Anything helps. If I can find a car for less than my goal I will get it. I feel trapped.
I’m also moominhandsoncshapp/vnmo and I have a Ko-FiandCoffee account (I’ve been hoping people will tip me for this post.) I’ve made about $830/7565 as of 29 April 2022.
