Me: yeah so I just don’t have the energy to get up and make myself a sandwich or wait for something to cook so I just. Don’t
Her: why don’t you just eat the sandwich components without putting them together
Me:
Her: you can just eat a handful of cheese and some sandwich meat. You don’t have to make a sandwich.
Me:
Me: what
Therapists finding loopholes for mental illness things is one of my favorite things about dealing with mental illness because it really helps me understand that just because a reaction is Common doesn’t mean it’s Right. Does doing dishes stress you out a lot? Buy paper plates. Do your obsessive thoughts make you worry about leaving your curling iron on so you drive home from work to check? Just put the curling iron in your purse and bring it to work with you while we work on tackling where this worry comes from. Symptom management doesn’t have to look like drudgery.
i used to go days without showering because seeing my body was so upsetting that i would end up spiraling and then i realized i could simply turn the lights out. it took some getting used to but i’ve been showering with the lights off for years and it’s now one of my favorite parts of my day.
do whatever you want nothing is real and there’s no need to inflict unnecessary suffering on yourself just to try to seem “normal”
I love this post
Hmmm
These kinds of loopholes make life so. Much. Better.
One of my favorite stories is this lady had extremely bad OCD. Every day she’d be late to work because she was convinced that her hair dryer was going to burn down the house so would always have to turn around and check it. Multiple times a day even. A bunch of doctors tied to “fix” her of that fear, until one day she got a doctor that suggested she bring the hair dryer with her. Other doctors were annoyed, saying that wasn’t a the correct way to help, but she gave it a go. When she had that fear, she’d look over and see the hair dryer unplugged in the seat next to her and was able to carry on. I think it’s such a perfect example of actually helping someone instead of forcing them into a neurotypical standard.
That story helped me stop repeatedly checking if my front door was locked. Instead of checking that the door was locked over and over I would check my security system app. If it’s on it will alert me if the front door opens.
“…actually helping someone instead of forcing them into a neurotypical standard” should be added to the Hippocratic Oath.
Started reading about the door and I thought they were gonna say they took the door with them
Lately I’ve been seeing people discuss why ‘genderbending’ isn’t transphobic, or why it’s something that’s fine and should be accepted. Most of the people who have been discussing this are cis, which is an issue right off the bat, so I’m going to preface this post by saying that if you are not trans, you do not have the right to determine what is or is not transphobic. Full. Stop. So if you’re cis, and your first instinct is to argue with me on this, I would like for you to consider why you believe that you can recognize transphobia better than someone who is routinely subject to it. That being said, let’s get into this.
To start off, what is ‘genderbending?’ Most fansites will define it as the act of ‘switching’ a character’s gender, but there’s already an issue with this. ‘Genderbending’, or ‘rule 63’ as is called in some circles, it not just about switching a character’s gender, it is about changing that character’s body as well. I have yet to see a ‘genderbent’ version of a male character who lacked breasts and a dfab body. This the first and most obvious reason why ‘genderbending’ is inherently transphobic - it assumes that physical traits and gender are the same thing, and that you cannot be female without also being dfab.This is cissexism, and this is transphobic. The message that ‘genderbending’ says is that you must have breasts and a vagina to be female, and you must have a penis and a flat chest to be male. I should not have to explain why that message is transphobic.
However, the way ‘genderbends’ are carried out also has distinctly transphobic implications in how it switches out the physical traits of characters to make them ‘the opposite gender’ ( the notion of there being ‘opposite genders’ is some fresh bullshit that I’ll cover later in this post ). For example, by giving a male character breasts and curves when ‘genderbending’ him, the message is clear that this character was cis to begin with. ‘Genderbending’ inherently implies that all characters are cisgender by default, and erases any possibility of these characters being trans.This is not as overtly transphobic as the first point, but it is harmful to trans people within fandom spaces, as the assumption that all characters are cis until explicitly stated otherwise pushes us out of media and removes whatever representation we might try to make for ourselves.
The third issue with ‘genderbending’ is that it is always cis male <—> cis female, and nothing else. I have never seen people ‘genderbend’ characters by making them nonbinary or intersex. I have never seen a genderbend of a female character which made her a trans male instead. ‘Genderbending’ implies that there are only two options when it comes to gender: cis male and cis female. There is no such thing as nonbinary people within this ideology. Intersex people are laughable at best. Agender people are little better than a distant myth. ‘Genderbending’ ignores that it is impossible to make a character ‘the opposite gender’, because there is no such thing as an ‘opposite gender’. Gender is a spectrum, not a binary, but you wouldn’t know that from the way fandom spaces treat it.
Of course, there are some reasons for ‘genderbending’ cis male characters into cis females that will always get brought up in discussions on the politics of ‘genderbending.’ The most frequent is that cis girls, who only see themselves as one-dimensional characters in media, want to have characters like them who are just as multifaceted and developed as the male characters that we are given, so they make their male faves female to give themselves the representation they desire. This is a decent reason for ‘genderbending’, but it does not excuse the fact that the way in which ‘genderbending’ is done is inherently transphobic, and it gives fans yet another excuse to ignore female characters in favor of focusing on their male faves.
Another reason for ‘genderbending’ that I’ve heard is ‘it’s for the sake of character exploration - like, what if this character had been born as male/female instead?’ This excuse is cissexist and transphobic from first blush. The idea behind it is that someone ‘born as female’, aka with breasts/vagina will automatically be a cis female, allowing fans to explore what that character’s life would have been like if they were female. Why not explore the possibility of a character being designated female at birth, but still identifying as male? Why do you need a character to be cis for you to find their personality and life interesting to explore? Why do you automatically reject the notion of your fave being trans? If you want to explore what it would have been like for your male fave to have struggled with sexism, consider them being a trans woman, or a closeted dfab trans person.
As a closing statement, I want to make one thing very clear. ‘Genderbending’ does harm trans people. It perpetuates dangerous cissexist notions and the idea of a gender binary being a valid construct, erases nonbinary and intersex people, and others trans people. These are what we call microaggressions - they are not as dangerous as outright harassment and assault, but they enforce and support a system and ideology in which we are other, and we are worthy of hate and violence because we do not fit in.
‘Genderbending’ is a transphobic practice, and if you engage in it, you need to be aware of and acknowledge this.
“People scare me. They change their minds so quick. One moment it’s “I love you” and “you make me happy” and the next it’s “I’m not sure anymore” and “this isn’t what I want.””
Funny how we regularly turn down job applications for law student internships for having a typo in their cover letters but having three different women publicly accuse you of sexual assault doesn’t stop you from being hired for the highest possible legal job in the country
