i simultaneously despise and criticize tiktok while also often enjoying tiktoks because i acknowledge that any medium of human expression will inevitably spawn things both marvelous and abhorrent. tiktok in particular is pretty sucks bad though i stand by this
imagine if aliens found the dead body of a human being exploded in the vacuum of space and they started making fun of the mutilated corpse calling it “splatter alien” and saying it was the ugliest alien in the whole galexy. and then made stuffed animals of it to sell to their alien kids. that’s what happened on this planet to the blob fish
the thing is about trans women is that even in ostensibly “pro trans women” spaces, it is socially unacceptable to be attracted to trans women. like for example, on this website, if cis women talk about how they like trans women with stubble, or broad shoulders, or deep voices, or even just that they like girls with dicks, they are treated like chasers. and like, no, actually, a chaser means somebody who specifically objectifies trans women in a degrading way and refuses to integrate their trans girlfriends into their lives like introduce her to their parents etc. and just uses her as a sexual object. you can’t just moralise being physically attracted to trans women as wrong and objectifying and fetishistic. we are attractive, we are sexy; why are you so afraid of people expressing that?
and the thing is, if you think open and enthusiastic attraction to trans women is fetishistic then it’s actually you who is objectifying us by seeing attraction to us as a kink.
#that’s kind of the issue with trying to talk about raw sexual attraction in online queer spaces #normal horny behavior gets pathologized as fetishization and objectification #now obviously you need be respectful in how you express sexual feelings. but having sexual feelings isn’t fucking pathological (via fluorescentbrains)
I cannot emphasize enough how much of a life hack it is to exclusively be friends with, date and marry people who are not constantly mean assholes to you.
This may seem like basic common sense, but one interesting (and kind of terrifying) thing I recently read was that some individuals who grew up in an emotionally abusive environment find that their anxiety level actually decreases in the presence of those who are mean or overly critical of them because it’s familiar. Their nervous systems are hard wired to react to that kind of treatment as “normal” in the sense that it knows what to do with it–what defense mechanisms to employ when, etc.
Meanwhile, kinder, more peaceful, and healthier relationships are quite a dramatic adjustment, and ironically feel less predictable because of all the threats that are absent and never materialize. It feels suspicious or too good to be true, which in turn ratchets up hypervigilance and hyper-arousal. Instead of knowing what BS is coming because it always does, there’s the nebulous sense that the other shoe is just waiting to drop. Safety and respect can feel the most unsafe for a while, because as far as the traumatized nervous system is concerned, those things don’t exist, or if they do in any form, there must be a million unseen strings attached.
This is part of what traps a lot of people in abusive relationships, consistently draws them to want to please assholes, or keeps them moving from one unhealthy environment to the next–a highly toxic comfort of familiarity where being on the receiving end of cruelty feels like “home”.
