YKNOW WHAT. I've Been Sitting On It Too Long. Too Many Of Yalls Discussions Of Gender Basically Just

YKNOW WHAT. I've been sitting on it too long. too many of yalls discussions of gender basically just admit you don't actually see black men as men, or you don't see them as people at all.

"Men don't get punished for being masculine" unless they're black

"Men don't have to be afraid walking home alone at night" unless they're black.

"Men don't have to worry about the doctor not taking them seriously" unless they're black.

"Men don't have to worry about being assaulted and then ignored by the police/other authority figure" DO YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELF

Sky is so fond of Rain. He just wants his friend to be happy and work hard, and he's just happy to see Rain happy.

What do you think of the "I'm a survivor of X and writing about it is my coping mechanism"

Usually this reponse comes up when writing exploitative media of your trauma. As someone who used to do that, let me make the obvious known: It doesn't work.

Reclaiming your trauma through porn is one of the worst coping mechanisms you could develop, because you end up getting caught in a feedback loop where the thing that traumatized you is where your brain is trying to get its happy chemicals.

You might think that's a solution until you remember the refractory period exists and now you just feel even worse than you did before. Now your brain is completely focused on the thing that traumatized you.

And most of us who tried this coping mechanism did it because someone online suggested it to us. Not because a doctor did.

Furthermore this is usually at the stage of trauma recovery where you're still focused on what happened, and not why it happened. You can only write media based on what you understand, and the truth is those of us in trauma recovery don't understand a whole lot. If we did we wouldn't be in recovery.

So there's a world of difference between what you create two years in and what you create fifteen years in, depending on how diligent you are with therapy.

The vent art I made when I was twenty and the vent art I make today are very different beasts.

I file "writing porn to cope with trauma" right beside "cutting yourself" in terms of the quality of the coping mechanism. This isn't even a moral judgement. It just doesn't work.

Do something else.

"Was it the unfamiliar fever, or was it because I let my guard down after revealing a bit of my true feelings, so I feel relaxed? Maybe it's because of his strangely vague atmosphere. I don't know anything about him except his name. Just what is this powerless feeling?"

MY PERSONAL WEATHERMAN (2023). Episode 7.