Tag: trauma

my body is not a public institution

lenyberry:

fierceawakening:

skye-writing:

So lately I’ve been seeing a few posts that go like this:

[W]hile everyone, including sex workers, can decline to fuck whomever
they do not wish to fuck for any reason whatsoever, that does not
magically render those reasons unexaminable or uncritizeable. If you
don’t want to fuck people because they’re not white, you’re a gross
bigot and you’re not welcome here.

The fact that your no is sacrosanct doesn’t mean it’s not racist. And disgusting.

Or this:

If you have never seen a black woman that you find attractive

You are either racist

Or blind there is no other option

commanderfraya wrote an excellent, comprehensive post about the ways in which abusers couch their manipulation in social justice rhetoric, and I think I’ve found another permutation: “if you really cared about my liberation, you’d fuck me.”

You know, I understand that impulse. I really do. Desexualization sucks. I’ve written about it before, particularly about the ways in which it affects the disabled and the socially awkward. (And those are far from the only groups affected: see also fat people, trans people, certain ethnicities, etc.) It’s awful when an entire media system portrays attraction to you and people like you as something inherently absurd. It’s doubly awful when those around you ape those perspectives in ways they might not even realize are hurtful. I get it. I do.

But the proper battleground for that is society writ large, not individual bedrooms. Support media with sexually empowered trans and poc and disabled characters. Call people out when they deride a whole group of people as unequivocally unattractive. Don’t stand for dehumanization. But shaming and yelling at individuals, telling them they’re all sorts
of -ist if their personal attractions don’t line up with your recipe for
an idea society, isn’t activism. It isn’t speaking truth to power. It’s inserting yourself, a stranger on the internet, into another person’s desires and demanding they justify them to you.

Attaching passive-aggressive, guilt-tripping conditions to someone’s “no” seems like the opposite of holding it sacrosanct. It might feel more righteous, but “you can say no – just know that you’re a racist” isn’t any better than “you can say no – just know that you’re a frigid bitch”. This holds especially true in social justice circles, where being seen as any variation of -ist or -phobic is something to be avoided scrupulously. If your social standing is contingent on not being racist or transphobic, and not being racist or transphobic is contingent on your sexual availability, how is that anything but coercive?

I can support someone and advocate for their rights without having to find
them sexually attractive. Attraction is so weird, squidgy,
personal. It shouldn’t be taken as evidence of your beliefs in other
contexts. Wanting to be tied up in the bedroom doesn’t mean I think
women ought to be subservient, and not finding certain skin colors or
features attractive does NOT mean I deny the humanity and equality of
people with those attributes.

This isn’t even about me. I personally find men of all races attractive, but that isn’t the point. The point is that demanding sexual availability in the guise of activism is intrusive and – dare I say? – abusive. I have seen a woman reduced to tears, piledriven and harassed, because she admitted to being triggered by men of a certain ethnic group
after being assaulted by one such man. If you are so caught up in some
abstract notion of equality that you cannot see the wrong in demanding that a rape victim be more sexually available, then I’m not sure I can help you.

I will fight tooth and nail for anyone’s rights and access to public institutions. But my body is not a public institution.

Also… what are people supposed to do exactly? Like, an old bf of mine and I had the following conversation

Me: Gina Torres is too hot to exist

Him: She’s okay.

Me: WHAT.

Him: I honestly just… I don’t think black features are sexy, tbh.

Me: That’s fucked up.

But okay, so that’s fucked up. So then what? What exactly is supposed to make him see Gina Torres as blisteringly hot at that point?

I mean, I don’t think this is an impossible project. If he, say, looked at pictures of black models every day I’m pretty sure he’d notice not all of them look the same, such that blanket saying none of them are hot is weird as fuck. And that he’d likely eventually find one or two he thought were hot, and his mind might expand from there.

But are we demanding he do this? How do we appropriately punish him if his response is “that’s silly, I’m happy with my attractions as they are, you drool over her twice as hard for me, okay?”

I don’t mean that I think there isn’t something iffy about “no black women are hot.” There is!

I just don’t think there is a way to “fix this” that doesn’t involve brainwashing unless someone is already voluntarily interested in expanding their erotic tastes.

And I’m not sure shamey articles actually induce voluntary self-improvement projects very often.

yeah, that. Frankly, “individual human x does not want to fuck me or people like me” is not oppression. 

Yes, it sucks to want people to want to fuck you and to not be able to achieve that as much as you’d like, and yes sometimes that problem is tied in to bigoted bullshit. But none of that gives you the right to try to enforce sexual availability on people who don’t want to be sexually available. 

Also worth considering splash damage. I’m sure when someone says “you’re racist if you find no black people hot” they don’t mean “asexuals who find nobody at all hot are automatically racist for not being attracted to black people even though they’re also not attracted to literally anyone else either” but that IS a possible reading of the statement for an insecure asexual person with anxiety and/or scrupulosity issues, particularly one who may or may not yet have realized that they ARE asexual. 

The trauma aspect for people who were raped or assaulted by someone of X race who now has a trigger regarding people of that race has already been addressed, but I think it bears repeating because yes it happens, it sucks (I have a trigger of that sort so I know from personal experience that it sucks to live with), and no it’s not an excuse for treating people of that race horribly in general but it’s DEFINITELY a valid reason to not be willing to have sex with them. “I’m going to have a panic attack if I try to do this” is a valid reason to not want to do ANYTHING, frankly. Wanting to force someone who’s already been traumatized to go through another traumatic and upsetting experience for the sake of your personal benefit is shitty as fuck. If they WANT to work through that trigger they’re allowed to make that decision, but you don’t get to pressure them or try to force them or tell them they’re a bad person for not being ready to do that now or maybe ever (I personally wouldn’t necessarily be averse to working through mine if the situation was right, but if you try to tell me I’m *morally obligated* to want to fuck someone whose face reminds me of the guy who assaulted me repeatedly as a kid, you can instead go fuck yourself).

The trauma aspect for people who were raped or assaulted by someone of X race who now has a trigger regarding people of that race has already been addressed, but I think it bears repeating 

Uh yeah, sorry, me having severe issues with features that read as hispanic and/or black because of my molester-y, shitty younger brother, the man my abuser literally sold me to, and my emotionally abusive/gaslighting exhusband do not, in any way, make me fuckin racist. 

They make me traumatized. 

And as someone who has two wonderful fucking partners that JUST SO HAPPEN to be “white passing” regardless of their actual bloodlines, also doesn’t make me fucking racist. It means there is no solid reason why, even as a polyamorous person, that I should force myself to interact sexually with people who have those features. I’m more than happy with my desires as they are, and there is no reason on this earth why I should go out of my way  to “deal with that” when I’m already in two good relationships with no need for “extra on the side” HOWEVER you want to term it. 

Yeah there are attractive people with that ancestry. I do my best not to treat people like shit because of my past. But I’m also not gonna sit here and say “people of this skin type/bloodline/racial heritage are perfect angels who do no wrong~” because that is just patently UNTRUE~

I want to reply to your addition to the “White Women’s Tears” discussion (ugh, that phrase), but… as a Black girl I think I have run out of energy for explaining why pushing back against bigotry is not “bullying” and asserting that we are human too is not expecting people to “perform allyship”. I am sick at heart and, ironically, crying again, and I tell you this in hopes that maybe it will induce you to see a Black woman like me as worth not hurting as that theoretical White guy.

Uhm…..? Ok. Look. There’s a LOT going on with that post, and I’d suggest you take a look in the notes to see more of what people are saying, particularly ones @lenyberry has reblogged because there’s good information there. 

Now, since you DID decide to address me with this… we’re going to Talk.
The point is that, regardless of your personal feelings, bullying people and revelling in their pain is a shitty thing to do. Yes, even if they’re white and male. It’s most emphatically NOT ABOUT equating push back as bullying, it’s saying, specifically, “Hey. Someone breaks down in tears because you’re confronting them? Don’t give them shit for that on top of everything else. Give them a god damned minute to compose themselves because emotions are COMPLICATED damn it and you can’t automatically assume they’re being manipulative unless you know FOR A FACT that they are manipulative human beings who have that much control over their physiological responses to stimuli” 

It’s not saying that people don’t manipulate others by using emotions, and in particular, tears. It’s saying that a lot of times, tears are the body’s way of releasing emotion; not just sadness or “depressive” feelings. A lot of emotions end up in tears because it’s a valve for emotional release. 
Yeah, you’re worth not hurting. The point is, SO ARE WHITE GUYS. 

I honestly don’t know why you decided to message me, of all people, about being “sick at heart” unless it’s because you see me as an easier target than everyone else discussing the issue. Since, you know, I reblogged the part I wanted on my specific blog, and did not otherwise get involved beyond parroting the words of a friend, because I feel they are important. My own history is complicated, and even matters of race aren’t; ha; black and white. For instance~

You wouldn’t know just by looking at me that my white abuser sold me to a black man to have his way with when I was sixteen as part of a three year hell from 15-18.
You wouldn’t know that my half Black half Hispanic brother tried to rape me and molested me repeatedly throughout my childhood until around seventeen.
You wouldn’t know that it was always middle eastern men who disrespected me the most at every job I’ve ever had and made the worst comments about my body.
You wouldn’t know that I’m still uncomfortable around large men of color; not because of stereotypes, but because of my own PERSONAL HISTORY. 
You wouldn’t know that, despite all that, I married a Hispanic Jew and spent five years of my life with him…. years that I regret; not only for his entitlement and arrogance, but because he gaslit, emotionally abused, and denied not only MY mental health issues, but his own at the cost of my physical safety.
You wouldn’t know that my own half sister; whose father was Jamaican; has browbeat me about my “lack of faith” and every so often, tells me I’m not actually male and I need to grow up and accept myself. I still love her, but gods know I fight not to block her for her inability to accept my polyamorous heart, transgender identity, and my pagan faith. 

The truth is, just like many people on that thread stated, YOU DO NOT KNOW ANOTHER PERSON’S HISTORY OR JOURNEY UNTIL YOU KNOW THEM. I’m not generally one to play “Oppression Olympics” but I was told about my “white privilege” while starving in section 8 housing while her prissy ass had a brand new apartment in one of the nicest areas of the city, two cars, and a full time job in management, with parents willing to pay for her schooling. 

In light of that, I’d like to quote the post above mine, from my friend Leny: 

it’s not ok to weaponize your marginalizations to justify bullying someone you perceive as having more privilege than you – even if they really do, even if the one axis you’re leveraging is the only one relevant, but sometimes the white person is neurodivergent and/or chronically ill/disabled, sometimes the man is a gay trans dude, sometimes the straight person isn’t white and/or is an abuse survivor with PTSD. You probably don’t actually know unless you actually know that person fairly well, and regardless. Even if that person is actually all at once white, cisgender, straight, able-bodied, neurotypical, and male with no history of trauma. It’s still not ok to bully that person just for not immediately dropping everything to perform allyship perfectly the moment you snap your fingers. It’s still not ok to laugh at their distress, or mock them for being distressed, even if you really have lived through far worse.  Criticize where it’s warranted, certainly, but acknowledge that most people want to be good people and experience at least some degree of emotional turmoil when it’s suggested to them that they might not be, and most people have trouble accepting sudden unanticipated criticism entirely gracefully. And have the basic decency to refrain from taking cheap shots. 

I’m not worth less because I’m white, because I ID male, or because my relationships while I’m pre-op/HRT read “heterosexual.” No, you don’t deserve to be bullied. And neither do I.

#relatable trauma survivor feels

c-ptsdofficial:

  • “i dont know”
  • inconvenient flashbacks and panic attacks
  • randomly being reminded of your trauma
  • dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty
  • bad bad bad bad bad
  • either having the mindset of a young child or an adult, no in between
  • “i thought you were older! you’re so mature!”
  • being legitimately terrified of small sudden movements and everyone thinks it’s hilarious
  • immediately losing trust in whoever thinks it’s hilarious
  • the absolute terror of becoming like your abuser one day
  • it’s my fault
  • Constant Vigilance
  • that self-doubt due to repressed memories
  • “do i hate them or do i hate myself?”
  • Guilt™