Honestly I Don't Understand People Who Are Like "you HAVE To Read All These Books Or Anything You Say

honestly i don't understand people who are like "you HAVE to read all these books or anything you say about your experiences is meaningless and unimportant" as someone who not only understands things better but is more easily convinced of things when people can point to real-world experiences and material consequences of phenomena. like if you just say a bunch of shit that sounds good and don't actually give examples or evidence i don't think i have any reason to trust what you're saying and i don't get why it seems to be the exact opposite for these people (people's lived experiences and evidence like statistics don't matter if they're not using the right words to talk about it), it just doesn't make any sense

They're ridiculous clown people who should be laughed at and ridiculed into giving up their terrible clownish behavior.

I moral lesson I wish literally everybody would learn is this: the very same actions that keep you safe when you are powerless can be abusive when you hold power over someone. The difference between resisting subjugation and subjugating others is often more a matter of context than anything else. And when context changes, it can be hard to relearn one's behavior—it requires an active effort. Probably all of us have hurt others needlessly, in some way or another, by doing things out of a reactive instinct for self-preservation. Probably all of us have been hurt by others, sometimes very deeply, when they were acting out of the same instinct.

I don't like speaking about ethics in the language of blame, but insofar as blame is a coherent notion to begin with, I'll say this: neither is anyone evil for the failure to fully rework themselves and free themselves of bad habit after struggle, nor does the difficulty of reworking oneself excuse the abuse of others. Nor, though we may wish otherwise, is it always epistemically possible to our own actions with confidence in one camp or the other. We can only do our best to treat others well and at the same time ourselves, though it is often not clear how.

I’m always amazed and humbled every time I come across a piece of writing that so perfectly and succinctly predicted the future. It proves to me there is clairvoyance in art. Heller wrote this in the late 1950’s. It was published in 1961.

“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Bell says that, for many young people in a similar position to her own, “Regret is really what we’re talking about, as opposed to detransition itself, which has an abstract sort of meaning, and people interpret it in different ways. 

“There are people that are technically still transitioned, who have those regrets, and they wouldn’t dare mention it. So it’s a much bigger issue than people realise.

“It can be painful for people to turn back. And I don’t think a lot of people will. They’ll continue with it out of fear. People wouldn’t dare speak up because suddenly they’d be called transphobic and ousted from their friendship group.” 

She adds that it is not only trans rights campaigners who can cloud the conversation. “In an ideal world I would want political influence to be taken out of these services that are dealing with vulnerable people,” she says. “I worry about political influence on both sides. The trans rights side and the people that are more focused on women’s rights, which can sometimes get in the way of real care in this sort of area.” 

Today, Bell, who has been so honest about what she has been through, is now trying to spend some time out of the limelight. 

“I want to feel I’m in a bit more of a stable place. But I’m making moves. I don’t want a crazy life. My life has been so up and down, from a young age, so I’m just trying to find peace. It’s a work in progress.” (x)

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

Elizabeth Holmes set women in STEM back 20 years and you really hate to see it

Sometimes it boggles my mind that women can spend decades of campaigning and get hardly anywhere, still have their rights up for debate as a political ploy or chipped away over time, and can have statistics and research to back up every claim and be laughed at, but some males go “actually, we’re women because we say so” and they’re let into female spaces like ????