#personal identity

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Colin Wright

Published: May 3, 2023

The transgender movement has left many intelligent Americans confused about sex. Asked to define the word “woman” during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings last year, Ketanji Brown Jackson demurred, saying “I’m not a biologist.” I am a biologist, and I’m here to help.

Are sex categories in humans empirically real, immutable and binary, or are they mere “social constructs”? The question has public-policy implications related to sex-based legal protections and medicine, including whether males should be allowed in female sports, prisons and other spaces that have historically been segregated by sex for reasons of fairness and safety.

Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union frequently claims that the binary concept of sex is a recent invention “exclusively for the purposes of excluding trans people from legal protections.” Scottish politician Maggie Chapman asserted in December that her rejection of the “binary and immutable” nature of sex was her motivation for pursuing “comprehensive gender recognition for nonbinary people in Scotland.” (“Nonbinary” people are those who “identify” as neither male nor female.)

When biologists claim that sex is binary, we mean something straightforward: There are only two sexes. This is true throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. An organism’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) it has the function of producing. Males have the function of producing sperm, or small gametes; females, ova, or large ones. Because there is no third gamete type, there are only two sexes. Sex is binary.

Intersex people, whose genitalia appear ambiguous or mixed, don’t undermine the sex binary. Many gender ideologues, however, falsely claim the existence of intersex conditions renders the categories “male” and “female” arbitrary and meaningless. In “Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex” (1998), the historian of science Alice Dreger writes: “Hermaphroditism causes a great deal of confusion, more than one might at first appreciate, because—as we will see again and again—the discovery of a ‘hermaphroditic’ body raises doubts not just about the particular body in question, but about all bodies. The questioned body forces us to ask what exactly it is—if anything—that makes the rest of us unquestionable.”

In reality, the existence of borderline cases no more raises questions about everyone else’s sex than the existence of dawn and dusk casts doubt on day and night. For the vast majority of people, their sex is obvious. And our society isn’t experiencing a sudden dramatic surge in people born with ambiguous genitalia. We are experiencing a surge in people who are unambiguously one sex claiming to “identify” as the opposite sex or as something other than male or female.

Gender ideology seeks to portray sex as so incomprehensibly complex and multivariable that our traditional practice of classifying people as simply either male or female is grossly outdated and should be abandoned for a revolutionary concept of “gender identity.” This entails that males wouldn’t be barred from female sports, women’s prisons or any other space previously segregated according to our supposedly antiquated notions of “biological sex,” so long as they “identify” as female.

But “intersex” and “transgender” mean entirely different things. Intersex people have rare developmental conditions that result in apparent sex ambiguity. Most transgender people aren’t sexually ambiguous at all but merely “identify” as something other than their biological sex.

Once you’re conscious of this distinction, you will begin to notice gender ideologues attempting to steer discussions away from whether men who identify as women should be allowed to compete in female sports toward prominent intersex athletes like South African runner Caster Semenya. Why? Because so long as they’ve got you on your heels making difficult judgment calls on a slew of complex intersex conditions, they’ve succeeded in drawing your attention away from easy calls on unquestionably male athletes like 2022 NCAA Division I women’s swimming and diving champion Lia Thomas. They shift the focus to intersex to distract from transgender.

Acknowledging the existence of rare difficult cases doesn’t weaken the position or arguments against allowing males in female sports, prisons, restrooms and other female-only spaces. In fact, it’s a much stronger approach because it makes a crucial distinction that the ideologues are at pains to obscure.

Crafting policy to exclude males who identify as women, or “trans women,” from female sports, prisons and other female-only spaces isn’t complicated. Trans women are unambiguously male, so the chances that a doctor incorrectly recorded their sex at birth is zero. Any “transgender policy” designed to protect female spaces need only specify that participants must have been recorded (or “assigned,” in the current jargon) female at birth.

Crafting effective intersex policies is more complicated, but the problem of intersex athletes in female sports is less pressing than that of males in female sports, and there seem to be no current concerns arising from intersex people using female spaces. It should be up to individual organizations to decide which criteria or cut-offs should be used to keep female spaces safe and, in the context of sports, safe and fair. It is imperative, however, that such policies be rooted in properties of bodies, not “identity.” Identity alone is irrelevant to issues of fairness and safety.

Ideologues are wrong to insist that the biology of sex is so complex as to defy all categorization. They’re also wrong to represent the sex binary in an overly simplistic way. The biology of sex isn’t quite as simple as common sense, but common sense will get you a long way in understanding it.

#Colin Wright #biology #queer theory #gender ideology #biological sex #sex is binary #intersex #sex denialism #biology denial #sex binary #gender identity #personal identity #identity #identity politics

[hadeantaiga]

People calling me a "gender defender just like the patriarchy is" is fucking hilarious.

"Gender" the way I use it is so, so far from its original definition. It is the word I'm using to mean "personal identity".

I'm here for the people who don't want a gender at ALL, who want to define their personal identity WITHOUT that word. I'm here to tear the concept of gender away from the patriarchy and pull it apart into a trillion pieces. No more gender roles! No more sex stereotypes!

I want the idea of what it means to have a gender to be personally defined by every individual who wants one. I want no woman or man or non-binary person to be the same. I want the biggest, gruffest dude you've ever seen to say he's an asexual nonbinary woman, and the femmest delicate dame to say she's a bi-lesbian man. I want no one to be able to guess your sex assigned at birth just by looking at you. What's in your pants? Mystery!

I'm here for body modification, HRT, surgery, all that shit. You wanna get elf ears? Sure! You want breast implants, a full body lizard tattoo, phalloplasty, and dermal implants? Hell yes. Full bodily autonomy is what I support.

I'm here for the neopronouns and nounself pronouns and xenogenders. I'm here for people identifying with the gender euphoria of clouds and trees. Fuck, half of the time I describe myself as "masculine like a misty mountain forest". I'm forest-gender. I'm they/them like the Pando Forest (a forest of aspen "trees" that are all technically one tree). I'm he/him like the snow you see walking through the woods when there's orange skyglow everywhere. I'm "it/its" like how you call the deer you see through the trees as you hush the person you're walking with - "Shhh- do you see it? Look!“

You know who hates this kind of shit? Transphobic radfems. Transphobic gender critical feminists. I think the original trans gender abolitionists would be on board with me, but that term has been stolen by a lot of terfs, radfems, and the GCers. That's why I use "gender liberation", to differentiate myself from transphobia.

I assure you, the patriarchy does not approve of any of this shit either, and while I use the word "gender" to mean "personal identity", I promise that the things I think "gender" encompasses is in defiance of anything the patriarchy would approve of.

The patriarchy only approves of two binary genders, that are rigidly based on birth sex, and are unchangeable. They believe being male makes you strong, and being female makes you weak. Their version of gender is based on those stereotypes about birth sexes, and comes with precise roles, behaviors, and places within a social hierarchy all based on your birth sex and the traits they think that biology gives you.

Transphobic radfems, terfs, and gender critical feminists also believe in two binary sexes that are rigidly based on birth sex and are unchangeable. Some of them believe just like the patriarchy that your birth sex determines your behaviors, that males are "inherently" violent, and females are "inherently" weaker. In fact, they believe that these biological qualities are WHY men invented the patriarchy in the first place: it's baked into their biology to oppress women. That's why so many of them are female separatists or female supremacists.

That is not what I'm here for. But I sure see a whole lot in common between the patriarchy and transphobic feminists.

#gender #gender identity #personal identity #gender abolition #gender liberation #transgender #feminism #revolutionary feminism

[zigmenthotep]

Saw this on the Blooskie and pretty much haven't stopped thinking about it since.

Edit: Okay, missed this originally. Very important addition

#gender identity #personal identity

[bumpytoad]

Identifying as Alterhuman doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as identifying as non-human. It's an alternative way of experiencing humanity, and/or having experiences that transcend or go beyond the typically recognized human construct or stereotype of experience. This could be due to neurodivergence, plurality, feeling more connected to primal human traits, etc.

Regarding having a nonhuman identity, it's very much possible to feel nonhuman by nature and on a psychological and/or spiritual level regardless of whether one also identifies as Therian, Otherkin, or any other specific nonhuman identity. One can also have a highly complex and multifaceted experience of oneself and one's identity and identity expression, or one can simply feel nonhuman. One doesn't necessarily specifically have to have any Theriotypes or Kintypes at all to identify as nonhuman. One can feel nonhuman fundamentally and either connect this feeling with being a specific species or entity or not. It's also possible for someone to just feel like...themselves, not a certain other species, but also not exactly human.

It's very much possible to identify as or with concepts, objects, archetypes, certain phenomena, etc., and not only as or with certain species or entities. It's very much possible to feel strongly like the personification or embodiment of something. I can also see how a connection to an object could be so deep that it becomes part of you in some inextricable way.

It's possible for those in a system to feel Alterhuman because being plural is considered to be outside of the social construct of what it means to be "human," as well as the fact that some systems may contain nonhuman alters. It's also possible for one to feel Alterhuman on a deep level while having Kithtypes but not any specific Kintypes. Being Kith itself is a fundamental Alterhuman identity in its own right.

One can feel deeply nonhuman on some intangible level, either wholly or partially, or feel Alterhuman, and not involve any additional labels. It's all valid.

Some may feel as though they were always meant to be a certain very specific species in both mind and bodily form, or else one can feel as though they were meant to be more anthropomorphic. One can have multiple types and feel like their types are all separate or one can feel like a hybrid or chimera or simultaneously separate and hybridized, or one can feel like all of their types are connected through symbiotic relationships, or else one can simply be without types or have types that are fluid. One can have "unusual" types and rare types.

Being Alterhuman and/or nonhuman can mean different things for different individuals, though ultimately this experience is essential to who one is and this identity and the ways one might express it should thus be honored and respected.

#alterhuman #self expression #otherkin #therian #nonhuman identity #personal identity #kintype #unusual theriotypes #uncommon theriotypes #rare kintypes #plural community #plurality #multiplicity #alters #DID #theriotype #conceptkin #objectkin #neurodiversity #system stuff #you are valid #alterhuman positivity #endogenic #traumagenic system #anthropomorphic #kinsona #polytherian #polykin #kith #hearttype

[cult-of-artemis-and-athena]

get a fucking life

Stop trying to "re-invent" or "re-brand" yourself. A new aesthetic or "era" will not fix your life. Aesthetics-as-lifestyles is something that seems to have proliferated while people were locked in their houses for 2 years. Not necessarily your fault in all cases. I think I understand where it comes from, but I don't think it's healthy or a helpful way to fulfill the desire and longing for things to make sense.

I'm not saying you can't have aspirations, have role models and inspirations, try new things, have a personal style, or change your personal style.

I'm objecting to the idea that if you curate your life a certain way and gaslight yourself into behaving like a different person, it will fix any of a number of problems that present themselves in your life -- take your pick.

"If I wear certain clothes and eat certain things, I will become An Halthy Gorl (TM)"

"If I wear certain clothes and listen to certain music, I will become An Fartistic Gorl (TM)"

Etc.

Pursuing self-improvement - to become more health-conscious or creative - is not the problem. Pursuing these things in a way inauthentic to your Self is the problem.

Online trends are very neat because they are sometimes grassroots. Sometimes there is, but often there isn't a corporation or a brand behind everything with a motivation to sell you some absolute bullshit. It seems since the trend of "aesthetics" has taken off, however, corporations are jumping on the bandwagon and using influencers to astroturf their products to online trends.

Everyone and their dog, at this point, is onto Shein and their crap, but that's a great example I don't need to over-explain.

With the exceptions of what is astroturfed by a corporation, the origin point of a trend that everyone wants to jump on is often ONE person innovating, taking a risk, and being true to themselves. They may do that thing for years in spite of receiving no clout, being considered a weirdo, or getting shit on for what they're doing.

If you look at why punks wore Doc Martens, leather jackets, or military surplus, or clothes with awkward patches and holes, they all go back to practical reasons. Before punks were punks, lot of them were poor and worked in factories; if they were going to have one nice pair of shoes, it was going to be their work boots, and Doc Martens were the best investment for that purpose at the time.

Leather moto jackets were popular in the 1950s and 60s, after that trend passed, a lot of them ended up in thrift stores in the 70s and 80s. If you're a poor kid trying to look cool, you're going to do the best you can with what you can find in a thrift store.

They had holes in their clothes because they were, again, poor and their clothes were naturally worn-out. Perhaps the rebellion lay in the fact that even poor people did their best to be "presentable" and did not wear worn-out clothing in public if they could help it, but it's not like they were buying pre-ripped jeans from a store for $100.

The people who came after, who made a conscious decision to adopt the punk lifestyle, may have ripped up their pants to still piss off anyone who felt worn-out clothes in public was disrespectful.

Then the media makes movies about punks, and punk music starts getting radio play, and normies get exposed to a romanticized and context-free image of punk that they like, and it's still rebellious enough to piss off their parents. However at this time, there are still "real" punks from the original movement, so one foot is still grounded in reality, so to speak.

Then decades pass and punk has become fully commodified into a cartoon character meme. It's a trope that's been remixed, satirized, and deconstructed by Big Fashion. The bottom tip of the iceberg still exists, but the entry point - from where someone gets into Avril Lavigne or MGK at age 11 and they're shopping at Claire's and Hot Topic (I'm probably showing my age...) - is so far removed. And sometimes, people just fuckin stay there unless it was a phase and they move onto something else.

There's a difference between adopting punk almost accidentally because you went to the skate park and interacted with punks, and starting to skateboard because you just discovered The Ramones and you're checking off the punk checklist: "Put safety pins on my bag, check. Wear a dog collar, check. Next, I gotta get a CBGB shirt and dye my hair purple. I gotta get more piercings, because the more piercings I have the higher that my punk level is."

I'll be the first to admit 13-year old me was the latter one. Now, with 20 years of hindsight, my boomer father was 100% correct to make fun of my pre-ripped jeans and tell me I should buy non-ripped jeans and do chores in them to get rips. In my own defense, however, naturally-ripped jeans often rip in a way that makes them unwearable instead of derelique.

This is not a commentary on how to treat posers, but the poser-like thought process of curating a persona that checks off aesthetic boxes without regard for practicality or individuality. However, it's applied toward being a "clean girl" or "French girl" or "alt girl".

On one hand, "aesthetics" are self-aware in acknowledging their superficiality. On the other, that in itself is a red flag that they're about as attainable and sustainable as the artificial environments and scenarios in media that inspires them.

The only outcome of trying to check all the boxes of a "French girl" aesthetic in Peebles, Ohio is disappointment.

I'm not saying you have to embrace minimalism, but in the wardrobe minimalist community, there is the concept of dressing for your real life instead of your aspirational life.

In a way that men don't, women have a mysterious pressure put upon them to be everything and everyone except who they are. "Unattainable standards" gets thrown around a lot, and it's easy to dismiss as "someone who feels entitled to credit from a result without attaining it" but what's actually being lashed out at is not always the standard itself, but sometimes it's likely the moving of the goalposts once that's reached.

I don't know where this started, and going into the possible historical and cultural genesis of this mindset is out of scope, it's largely an internalization. It's the feminine impulse to disregard twenty people who consistently say positive things or don't care and then hyper-fixate on the one person who made an off-color comment once. How many of those people are in your head?

Perhaps it's true that females, on average, are predisposed to negative emotions and conformity. Perhaps it's true that society systemically conditions girls from a young age to be obedient social chameleons who view themselves in third person. Likely both have something to do with it.

I think women who adopt the persona of being a staunch "man repeller" are just as obsessed with their image and potentially Self-denying as the pick me's who would break their feet in half if someone told them it's what attracts High Value Menz. None of this should be about cultivating approval or revulsion in a social audience.

This issue intersects heavily with consumerism, which is why I invoked the example of early punks. We have to get out of the mindset that we can go on Amazon and, within a few hours, order a brand new personality of new clothes and hobby supplies that will be used for a few months then discarded.

"Just be yourself" is advice that's given lazily, and abused frequently as a cope for not improving, but I believe that's close to the solution. Nietzsche said it better, though: become who you are. This could involve discarding and deconstructing forms of identity that come from destructive and schizophrenia-inducing sources such as mass media, social media, and consumerism and affiliating yourself with timeless identities based in culture, craft, spirituality, the natural world, and immutable personal characteristics and talents.

"Show me the face you had before you were born" -- The Buddha

#feminism #amazon feminism #beauty culture #beauty standards #identity #personal identity #aesthetic #aesthetics #trends #fast fashion #posers #poseurs #personal branding #personas #inauthenticity #authenticity #consumerism #consumer culture #mass media #social media #performative femininity #performative identity

[disease]

"There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of distracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely, and make us consider their influence on self either by their pain or pleasure. To attempt a farther proof of this were to weaken its evidence; since no proof can be deriv'd from any fact, of which we are so intimately conscious; nor is there any thing, of which we can be certain, if we doubt of this."

—DAVID HUME | TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE >> BOOK I: 'OF THE UNDERSTANDING' >> SECTION VI: 'OF PERSONAL IDENTITY'

#text #quotes #david hume #philosophy #literature #treatise of human nature #personal identity #u

[mariannacr99]

𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐀 𝐏𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐁𝐄 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄 🇵🇸🕊️

⋆*･ﾟ☽ {𝑾𝒆𝒍𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒎𝒚 𝑷𝒂𝒈𝒆!} ☾ ⋆*･ﾟ

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

˙✧˖°📷 ⋆｡˚꩜

˚₊‧꒰ა 𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚎 ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

  ✦ -ˋˏ (💜) 𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒂 (💜) ˎˊ- ✦

𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘𝚘 :

       ₊˚⊹( 𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒂 / 𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒚 )⊹˚₊

.𖥔 ݁ ˖𖦹⭒°｡⋆

જ⁀➴

✦ 𝑰𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒕𝒚 ✦. ⊹ ˚ .

|  𝐀𝐆𝐄➳ 17 𝒚.𝒐

|  𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇𝐃𝐀𝐘➳ 11 / 19

|  𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑➳ ♡𝑭𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒆♡

╰ ➤ 𝐌𝐁𝐓𝐈➳ 𝑰𝑵𝑭𝑷

✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩

🎧 𝑰 𝒈𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒗𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒐, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒐 𝒔𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒔 𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 ıllılı.ıllı.ılılıı

✮⋆˙♡₊˚ 🦢・₊✧🦭✧˖°

—---------------------------- ✉︎

⚠︎𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰⚠︎!!

—---------------------------- ✉︎

✧─ ･ ｡ﾟ★: *✦ * :★ﾟ｡･ ─✧

☆ | 𝐌𝐲 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐚𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧'𝐭 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐢𝐫𝐝 𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐬𝐨 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐞 (๑˘◞‸◟˘)ˢᵒʳʳʸ

𖤐⋆｡˚༘⋆𖦹✮⋆✧˖°⭒˚₊𖤐

╭  →  ❝ 𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐄 ❞

┊‎♡ ‧₊˚

✧ - - - - 𝑰'𝒗𝒆 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒈𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒂 𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒂 𝒌𝒊𝒅 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑰 𝒅𝒊𝒅𝒏'𝒕 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒊𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒅𝒊𝒅𝒏'𝒕 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒊𝒕𝒔 𝒇𝒂𝒏 𝒃𝒂𝒔𝒆, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝑰'𝒎 𝒐𝒍𝒅 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑰'𝒎 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒂 𝒇𝒂𝒏 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒈𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒎𝒚 𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝑨𝑼 (੭˶> ᗜ <˶)੭ ˚₊·—̳͟͞♡

☆ 𝙸 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝙰𝙳𝙷𝙳 | 𝙳𝙽𝙸: 𝙽𝚂𝙵𝚆┊‎𝙿𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚑𝚒𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜┊‎𝙵𝚞𝚛𝚛𝚢

╰  → 𝑯𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒇𝒖𝒏 ෆ

𖤐⋆｡˚༘⋆𖦹✮⋆✧˖°⭒˚₊𖤐

—---------------------------- ✉︎

✮˚. ᵎᵎ 𖦹彡⋆｡˚

જ⁀➴

| 『 𝕄𝕪 𝔸𝕌𝕤』💜₊˚⊹𝑼𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝑴𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔⊹˚₊💜

✦ 𝑴𝒚 𝒑𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕: ⊹ ࣪ ˖

•𝙸𝚝'𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚎  𝙰𝚄 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙸 𝚠𝚛𝚘𝚝𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚒𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚍𝚒𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚊 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚎𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝚍𝚒𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢. ٩(ˊᗜˋ )و

•𝙸𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚋𝚊𝚜𝚒𝚌 𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚊 𝚘𝚏 𝚄𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚎 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚎𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚜 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚎𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝚍𝚒𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚝 (๑•̀o•́ ๑)!

•𝙾𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚜𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝙰𝚄 𝙸 𝚠𝚛𝚘𝚝𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚏𝚞𝚗 ₍ ᐢ.ˬ.ᐢ₎

| ₊˚⊹💜 『𝕄𝕪 𝕆𝕣𝕚𝕘𝕚𝕟𝕒𝕝 ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕤』 💜⊹˚₊

•𝙸 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚊 𝚕𝚘𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝙾𝙲𝚜 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝𝚕𝚢 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚊, 𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚖 𝚛𝚎𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚜 𝚊 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚢 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚢 ヽ(´▽`)/ .ᐟ.ᐟ

•𝚂𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚛𝚎𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚖𝚎 (๑•̀o•́ ๑)!

| 『𝔾𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕤/𝕄𝕒𝕟𝕘𝕒 𝕀 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖』💜⊹˚₊

𝚄𝚃/𝙳𝚃/𝚄𝚃𝚈/𝙰𝚄𝚜┆ 𝙵𝙽𝙰𝙵┆ 𝙱𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙼┆ 𝙿𝙿𝚃┆ 𝙻𝙽┆ 𝙷𝙺┆ 𝙾𝙼𝙾𝚁𝙸┆ 𝙿𝙽┆ 𝙷𝙽𝙺 (*^^*)‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚.

╰ ➤ 𝑰 𝒉𝒐𝒑𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒊𝒕 ⊹˚₊

ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ            

‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚🎧⊹♡🕸

𖤐 𝑰 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒉𝒊𝒅𝒆, 𝒊𝒕 𝒅𝒐𝒆𝒔𝒏'𝒕 𝒈𝒐 𝒂𝒘𝒂𝒚 🔗𖥔 ݁ ˖

๋࣭ .𖥔 ݁ ˖🕷✧˖°

—---------------------------- ✉︎

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･𐦍༘⋆

જ⁀➴

✦ 𝑨𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒎𝒆:

| ⊹˚₊ 𝙸'𝚖 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚏 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗 𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚎𝚜 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚘𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚒𝚘𝚗, 𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚊𝚜, 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚌𝚎𝚙𝚝𝚜, 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚌𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚗𝚜, 𝚎𝚝𝚌... 𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚕𝚢.       o(〒﹏〒)o

| ⊹˚₊ 𝙸'𝚖 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚊 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚏𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚒𝚜𝚝, 𝙸 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚍𝚛𝚊𝚠 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚏𝚞𝚗 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚖𝚢 𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚜𝚝𝚢𝚕𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎𝚜 𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚜𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚝, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚒𝚝 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚎 𝚊 𝚕𝚘𝚝 𝚒𝚗 𝚊 𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚑𝚜. (๑•́‧̫•̀๑)

| ⊹˚₊ 𝙸 𝚊𝚖 𝚊 𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗, 𝙸 𝚛𝚎𝚓𝚘𝚒𝚌𝚎 𝚊𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚒𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚛𝚢 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚊𝚕 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚜, 𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝙸 𝚊𝚖 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚔, 𝙸 𝚖𝚊𝚢 𝚋𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚢, 𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚘𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚗𝚍 𝚖𝚎 𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚘 𝚊𝚗𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚍𝚎𝚊𝚛 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚎, 𝚍𝚘 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚎𝚡𝚙𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚝 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚢 𝚜𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚝. (งಠ_ಠ)ง

| ⊹˚₊ 𝙸 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝙰𝙳𝙷𝙳 𝚜𝚘 𝙸 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝚒𝚝 𝚍𝚒𝚏𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚞𝚕𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚏𝚘𝚌𝚞𝚜 𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚊 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎, 𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚌𝚒𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝙸 𝚐𝚎𝚝 𝚋𝚘𝚛𝚎𝚍, 𝚜𝚘 𝚜𝚘𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝚒𝚏 𝙸 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗'𝚝 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚎𝚝𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝙸 𝚍𝚒𝚍. (｡╯︵╰｡)

| ⊹˚₊ 𝙸 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚋𝚕𝚎𝚖𝚜 𝚞𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚃𝚞𝚖𝚋𝚕𝚛 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚔 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚝 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚖𝚢 𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚋𝚒𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚝𝚘 𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚒𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚊 𝚅𝙿𝙽, 𝚜𝚘 𝙸'𝚖 𝚜𝚘𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝚒𝚏 𝙸 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗'𝚝 𝚙𝚞𝚋𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚑 𝚘𝚛 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚊 𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚕𝚎. ｡°(°.◜ᯅ◝°)°｡

| ⊹˚₊ 𝙸𝚏 𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚊𝚔𝚜 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚘𝚗𝚍, 𝚒𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚖𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝚋𝚎 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎:

•𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚊𝚢. （／_＼）

•𝙼𝚢 𝚜𝚘𝚌𝚒𝚊𝚕 𝚋𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚒𝚜 𝚍𝚎𝚊𝚍. (╯3╰)

•𝙸 𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚘𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚛 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚞𝚗𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚘𝚗𝚍, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙸 𝚜𝚊𝚠 𝚒𝚝 𝚊𝚏𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚏𝚎𝚕𝚝 𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚘𝚗𝚍. (∩︵∩)

•𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙵**𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚝 𝚍𝚘𝚎𝚜𝚗'𝚝 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔 𝚘𝚛 𝚒𝚜 𝚍𝚎𝚊𝚍. ( `ε´ )@#!

╰ ➤ 𝑴𝒚 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒏𝒆𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒃𝒂𝒅 𝐓𝐧𝐓

☁️ . ˙ 𖧧 ₊ ˚ 🐇

—---------------------------- ✉︎

‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚🎧⊹♡🕸

જ⁀➴

✦ 𝑩𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 !!

|  𝐍𝐎⊹˚₊:

•❝ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕔𝕒𝕟𝕠𝕟❞

𝙳𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚛𝚞𝚗 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚎𝚡𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝙸 𝚍𝚛𝚊𝚠 𝚘𝚛 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚖𝚢 𝚘𝚠𝚗 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚜. (ᗒᗣᗕ) ᵎᵎᵎ

•❝𝕊𝕙𝕚𝕡𝕤❞

𝙳𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚂𝚑𝚒𝚙𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚢 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚊𝚗 𝚒𝚗 𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚠𝚊𝚢, 𝚊𝚜 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚜 𝙸 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎𝚗'𝚝 𝚊𝚍𝚖𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚛  𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎'𝚜 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚋𝚎𝚝𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚖. (・`n´・)!!

•❝ℕ𝕊𝔽𝕎❞

𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚏𝚎𝚎𝚕 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚜𝚎 𝚝𝚘𝚙𝚒𝚌𝚜, 𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚌𝚒𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚛𝚎𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚞𝚐𝚐𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚙𝚒𝚌𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎𝚜, 𝚊 𝚕𝚘𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚗𝚞𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚢, 𝚟𝚞𝚕𝚐𝚊𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚜𝚎𝚡,

𝚜𝚘 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚗 ��𝚑𝚎𝚖 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚢 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚖𝚢 𝚊𝚛𝚝. ヽ(`⌒´メ)ノ×××

•❝ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕚𝕒𝕝 𝕥𝕠𝕡𝕚𝕔𝕤❞

𝙳𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚛𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚒𝚊𝚕 𝚝𝚘𝚙𝚒𝚌𝚜 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝙸 𝚘𝚏𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚖𝚢 𝚘𝚠𝚗 𝚘𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚠𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚋𝚞𝚛𝚍𝚎𝚗 𝚖𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍'𝚜 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚋𝚕𝚎𝚖𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚞𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚜 𝚝𝚘𝚙𝚒𝚌𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚢 𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚡𝚒𝚎𝚝𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐. ( `ε´ )@#!&*$

|  𝐀𝐒𝐊⊹˚₊:

•❝𝕌𝕤𝕖 𝕞𝕪 𝕒𝕣𝕥❞

𝚊𝚜𝚔 𝚖𝚎 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚖𝚢 𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚒𝚗 𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚠𝚊𝚢.

⋌༼ •̀ ⌂ •́ ༽⋋

|  𝐘𝐄𝐒⊹˚₊: 

•❝𝔽𝕒𝕟𝔸𝕣𝕥❞

𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚍𝚛𝚊𝚠 𝚖𝚢 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚊𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚊𝚜 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚜 𝚒𝚝'𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚒𝚗 𝚊𝚗 𝚘𝚋𝚜𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚎 𝚘𝚛 𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚢. (≧◡≦)𖦹彡⋆｡

•❝𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕜 𝕥𝕠 𝕞𝕖❞

𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙸 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚗𝚘 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚋𝚕𝚎𝚖 𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚘 𝚊𝚗𝚢𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚊𝚜 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚎 𝚙𝚘𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚏𝚞𝚕𝚕𝚢. (*´▽`*)🗝₊˚⊹♡

((𝙰𝚗𝚍 𝚒𝚗 𝚊 𝚗𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚕 𝚠𝚊𝚢))

•❝𝔸𝕤𝕜 𝕞𝕖❞

𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚊𝚜𝚔 𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚜 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚜 𝚒𝚝'𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚘𝚛 𝚘𝚋𝚜𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚎. (ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ)♡⊹˚₊

╰ ➤ 𝑰 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌 𝒕𝒐 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆

꒰��. .ᐢ꒱₊˚⊹ ᰔ♡⊹˚₊

✮˚. ᵎᵎ 𖦹彡⋆｡˚

☁️⊹ ࣪ ˖ 𝑰𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒃𝒆𝒅 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒎𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒂𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒆✦. ⊹ ˚ .

—---------------------------- ✉︎

⋆ ˚˖·˳⋆.ೃ˚ ༘ ೀ⋆ ˚.˖·˳.๋࣭⋆.ೃ࿔*:･☕︎

—⁺˖°ʚ🕸ɞ°⁺˖—

✦ 𝑺𝒐𝒄𝒊𝒂𝒍𝒔

|  𝐓𝐢𝐤𝐓𝐨𝐤: marianna_cr99

|  𝕏: MariannaCR99

|  𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦: marianna_cr99

╰ ➤ 𝕏  𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝑰 𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒊𝒏, 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒔 𝑰 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒊𝒏 𝒊𝒕. ( ͒ ́ඉ .̫ ඉ ̀ ͒)|||

—---------------------------- ✉︎

⚠︎𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐬

𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲⚠︎!!

—---------------------------- ✉︎

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

𖤐𝑶𝒑𝒆𝒏-𝒆𝒚𝒆𝒅, 𝒃𝒖𝒓𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒂𝒈𝒆, 𝒎𝒚 𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒍𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒌 𝒂𝒈𝒆✶𓆩𓁺𓆪✶

₊˚⊹ ᰔ✮⋆˙₊˚

━ ✦ 𝑳𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒍𝒆 𝑫𝒂𝒓𝒌 𝑨𝒈𝒆 ✦ ━━━━━━━━━

:¨ ·.· ¨:

`· . ꔫ 𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒌 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈~

┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ┊

┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ˚★⋆｡˚ ⋆

┊ ┊ ┊ ⋆

┊ ┊ ★⋆

┊ ◦

★⋆ ┊ . ˚

           ˚★

#personal #personal identity #personal identification #bio #info #information

[belinhagamer999]

Belinhagamer999'sid/Belinhagamer999's gender

A set of identities that form a whole identity or gender that feels like belinhagamer999's blog or identities posted here.

#lgbtq community #lgbtqia #mogai #personal identity #flag coining #self indulgent #term coining #coining #coining terms

[theramusen]

My friend doesn’t have tumblr, but wanted to share this!!

Idealisexual

A sexuality on the asexual spectrum that describes those who have sexual thoughts or feelings and enjoy their “idealized” versions of fantasies and actions, but actually partaking in sexual acts causes them to be repulsed or uncomfortable. This can also cause them to avoid sexual interactions again due to the disgust they feel. (Either disgust in themselves or general actions).

Color Symbolism:

YELLOW - euphoria from the thoughts, joy and excitement

ORANGE - clarity, realization the thoughts are idealized but still enjoying them

WHITE - purity, the middle ground of idealization and reality

RED - danger, uncomfortability

BLACK - avoidance, disgust and repulsion

The flag colors go in order of the realization of the cycle, from the highest point (yellow, euphoria) to the lowest point (black, repulsion).

The white circle in the middle symbolizes the cycle itself, an endless and nonstop cycle of confusion and mood swings.

╭── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╮

This label is mainly for those on the asexual spectrum with sexual trauma, but is not exclusive for them to use.

╰── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╯

Made by @ yujinsalad on all platforms!

#identity #asexual #ace spec #personal identity #ramu FRIEND identity #sexuality #flag #cool #lgbtqia #queer #queer community #hello lgbt community #as someone on the ace spec i super feel this #so cool #follow my friend on tiktok and twitter! #ok bye bye

[artifactseeker-myr99]

I’m from the age group that keeps their legal/ real name off the internet but the struggle is real

Being transneutral, I don’t really get to use my chosen names without explaining about them

Like, as both a transneutral/ trans-agender/ agender-genderqueer person and an aroace person I literally *have* to out myself if I want to get gendered/ addressed/ recognised correctly

But that urge to hear/ read my chosen names conflicts with my urge to stay anonymous/ not share too many identifiers on the internet

Which is why my blog description on several blogs is kinda vague, although it is relatively easy to cross-reference my tumblr URLs and figure out the blogs are run by the same person

But so far neither of my chosen names is in any way connected to my legal documents/ my official identity

So I suppose it’s fine if I occasionally mention that my chosen name’s Léonid Yanis

But I probably will go back to some internet-only pseud once I get the legal paperwork into motion

#name reveal #you will meet people who accept you as transneutral transmasc and who celebrate you being agender genderqueer #transneutral #trans neutral #agender genderqueer #trans agender #trans-agender #about me #personal identity #personal whiny shit #personal whining

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jon Haidt

Published: Mar 9, 2023

In May 2014, Greg Lukianoff invited me to lunch to talk about something he was seeing on college campuses that disturbed him. Greg is the president of FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), and he has worked tirelessly since 2001 to defend the free speech rights of college students. That almost always meant pushing back against administrators who didn’t want students to cause trouble, and who justified their suppression of speech with appeals to the emotional “safety” of students—appeals that the students themselves didn’t buy. But in late 2013, Greg began to encounter new cases in which students were pushing to ban speakers, punish people for ordinary speech, or implement policies that would chill free speech. These students arrived on campus in the fall of 2013 already accepting the idea that books, words, and ideas could hurt them. Why did so many students in 2013 believe this, when there was little sign of such beliefs in 2011?

Greg is prone to depression, and after hospitalization for a serious episode in 2007, Greg learned CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). In CBT you learn to recognize when your ruminations and automatic thinking patterns exemplify one or more of about a dozen “cognitive distortions,” such as catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, fortune telling, or emotional reasoning. Thinking in these ways causes depression, as well as being a symptom of depression. Breaking out of these painful distortions is a cure for depression. 

What Greg saw in 2013 were students justifying the suppression of speech and the punishment of dissent using the exact distortions that Greg had learned to free himself from. Students were saying that an unorthodox speaker on campus would cause severe harm to vulnerable students (catastrophizing); they were using their emotions as proof that a text should be removed from a syllabus (emotional reasoning). Greg hypothesized that if colleges supported the use of these cognitive distortions, rather than teaching students skills of critical thinking (which is basically what CBT is), then this could cause students to become depressed. Greg feared that colleges were performing reverse CBT. 

I thought the idea was brilliant because I had just begun to see these new ways of thinking among some students at NYU. I volunteered to help Greg write it up, and in August 2015 our essay appeared in The Atlantic with the title: The Coddling of the American Mind. Greg did not like that title; his original suggestion was “Arguing Towards Misery: How Campuses Teach Cognitive Distortions.” He wanted to put the reverse CBT hypothesis in the title.

After our essay came out, things on campus got much worse. The fall of 2015 marked the beginning of a period of protests and high-profile conflicts on campus that led many or most universities to implement policies that embedded this new way of thinking into campus culture with administrative expansions such as “bias response teams” to investigate reports of “microaggressions.” Surveys began to show that most students and professors felt that they had to self-censor. The phrase “walking on eggshells” became common. Trust in higher ed plummeted, along with the joy of intellectual discovery and sense of goodwill that had marked university life throughout my career. 

Greg and I decided to expand our original essay into a book in which we delved into the many causes of the sudden change in campus culture. Our book focused on three “great untruths” that seemed to be widely believed by the students who were trying to shut down speech and prosecute dissent:

1. What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker 2. Always trust your feelings 3. Life is a battle between good people and evil people. 

Each of these untruths was the exact opposite of a chapter in my first book, The Happiness Hypothesis, which explored ten Great Truths passed down to us from ancient societies east and west. We published our book in 2018 with the title, once again, of The Coddling of the American Mind. Once again, Greg did not like the title. He wanted the book to be called “Disempowered,” to capture the way that students who embrace the three great untruths lose their sense of agency. He wanted to capture reverse CBT. 

The Discovery of the Gender-by-Politics Interaction

In September 2020, Zach Goldberg, who was then a graduate student at Georgia State University, discovered something interesting in a dataset made public by Pew Research. Pew surveyed about 12,000 people in March 2020, during the first month of the Covid shutdowns. The survey included this item: “Has a doctor or other healthcare provider EVER told you that you have a mental health condition?” Goldberg graphed the percentage of respondents who said “yes” to that item as a function of their self-placement on the liberal-conservative 5-point scale and found that white liberals were much more likely to say yes than white moderates and conservatives. (His analyses for non-white groups generally found small or inconsistent relationships with politics.) 

I wrote to Goldberg and asked him to redo it for men and women separately, and for young vs. old separately. He did, and he found that the relationship to politics was much stronger for young (white) women. You can see Goldberg’s graph here, but I find it hard to interpret a three-way interaction using bar charts, so I downloaded the Pew dataset and created line graphs, which make it easier to interpret. 

Here’s the same data, showing three main effects: gender (women higher), age (youngest groups higher), and politics (liberals higher). The graphs also show three two-way interactions (young women higher, liberal women higher, young liberals higher). And there’s an important three-way interaction: it is the young liberal women who are highest. They are so high that a majority of them said yes, they had been told that they have a mental health condition. 

Figure 1.  Data from Pew Research, American Trends Panel Wave 64. The survey was fielded March 19-24, 2020. Graphed by Jon Haidt.

In recent weeks—since the publication of the CDC’s report on the high and rising rates of depression and anxiety among teens—there has been a lot of attention to a different study that shows the gender-by-politics interaction: Gimbrone, Bates, Prins, & Keyes (2022), titled: “The politics of depression: Diverging trends in internalizing symptoms among US adolescents by political beliefs.” Gimbrone et al. examined trends in the Monitoring the Future dataset, which is the only major US survey of adolescents that asks high school students (seniors) to self-identify as liberal or conservative (using a 5-point scale). The survey asks four items about mood/depression. Gimbrone et al. found that prior to 2012 there were no sex differences and only a small difference between liberals and conservatives. But beginning in 2012, the liberal girls began to rise, and they rose the most. The other three groups followed suit, although none rose as much, in absolute terms, as did the liberal girls (who rose .73 points since 2010, on a 5-point scale where the standard deviation is .89). 

Figure 2. Data from Monitoring the Future, graphed by Gimbrone et al. (2022). The scale runs from 1 (minimum) to 5 (maximum).

The authors of the study try to explain the fact that liberals rise first and most in terms of the terrible things that conservatives were doing during Obama’s second term, e.g., 

Liberal adolescents may have therefore experienced alienation within a growing conservative political climate such that their mental health suffered in comparison to that of their conservative peers whose hegemonic views were flourishing.

The progressive New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg took up the question and wrote a superb essay making the argument that teen mental health is not and must not become a partisan issue. She dismissed Gimbrone et al.’s explanation as having a poor fit with their own data: 

Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012. In 2013, the Supreme Court extended gay marriage rights. It was hard to draw a direct link between that period’s political events and teenage depression, which in 2012 started an increase that has continued, unabated, until today.

After examining the evidence, including the fact that the same trends happened at the same time in Britain, Canada, and Australia, Goldberg concluded that “Technology, not politics, was what changed in all these countries around 2012. That was the year that Facebook bought Instagram and the word “selfie” entered the popular lexicon.”

Journalist Matt Yglesias also took up the puzzle of why liberal girls became more depressed than others, and in a long and self-reflective Substack post, he described what he has learned about depression from his own struggles involving many kinds of treatment. Like Michelle Goldberg, he briefly considered the hypothesis that liberals are depressed because they’re the only ones who see that “we’re living in a late-stage capitalist hellscape during an ongoing deadly pandemic w record wealth inequality, 0 social safety net/job security, as climate change cooks the world,” to quote a tweet from the Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz. Yglesias agreed with Goldberg and other writers that the Lorenz explanation—reality makes Gen Z depressed—doesn’t fit the data, and, because of his knowledge of depression, he focused on the reverse path: depression makes reality look terrible. As he put it: “Mentally processing ambiguous events with a negative spin is just what depression is.”

Yglesias tells us what he has learned from years of therapy, which clearly involved CBT:

It’s important to reframe your emotional response as something that’s under your control: • Stop saying “so-and-so made me angry by doing X.” • Instead say “so-and-so did X, and I reacted by becoming angry.” And the question you then ask yourself is whether becoming angry made things better? Did it solve the problem? 

Yglesias wrote that “part of helping people get out of their trap is teaching them not to catastrophize.” He then described an essay by progressive journalist Jill Filipovic that argued, in Yglesias’s words, that “progressive institutional leaders have specifically taught young progressives that catastrophizing is a good way to get what they want.”

Yglesias quoted a passage from Filipovic that expressed exactly the concern that Greg had expressed to me back in 2014: 

I am increasingly convinced that there are tremendously negative long-term consequences, especially to young people, coming from this reliance on the language of harm and accusations that things one finds offensive are “deeply problematic” or even violent. Just about everything researchers understand about resilience and mental well-being suggests that people who feel like they are the chief architects of their own life — to mix metaphors, that they captain their own ship, not that they are simply being tossed around by an uncontrollable ocean — are vastly better off than people whose default position is victimization, hurt, and a sense that life simply happens to them and they have no control over their response. 

I have italicized Filipovic’s text about the benefits of feeling like you captain your own ship because it points to a psychological construct with a long history of research and measurement: Locus of control. As first laid out by Julian Rotter in the 1950s, this is a malleable personality trait referring to the fact that some people have an internal locus of control—they feel as if they have the power to choose a course of action and make it happen, while other people have an external locus of control—they have little sense of agency and they believe that strong forces or agents outside of themselves will determine what happens to them. Sixty years of research show that people with an internal locus of control are happier and achieve more. People with an external locus of control are more passive and more likely to become depressed.

How a Phone-Based Childhood Breeds Passivity

There are at least two ways to explain why liberal girls became depressed faster than other groups at the exact time (around 2012) when teens traded in their flip phones for smartphones and the girls joined Instagram en masse. The first and simplest explanation is that liberal girls simply used social media more than any other group. Jean Twenge’s forthcoming book, Generations, is full of amazing graphs and insightful explanations of generational differences. In her chapter on Gen Z, she shows that liberal teen girls are by far the most likely to report that they spend five or more hours a day on social media (31% in recent years, compared to 22% for conservative girls, 18% for liberal boys, and just 13% for conservative boys). Being an ultra-heavy user means that you have less time available for everything else, including time “in real life” with your friends. Twenge shows in another graph that from the 1970s through the early 2000s, liberal girls spent more time with friends than conservative girls. But after 2010 their time with friends drops so fast that by 2016 they are spending less time with friends than are conservative girls. So part of the story may be that social media took over the lives of liberal girls more than any other group, and it is now clear that heavy use of social media damages mental health, especially during early puberty. 

But I think there’s more going on here than the quantity of time on social media. Like Filipovic, Yglesias, Goldberg, and Lukianoff, I think there’s something about the messages liberal girls consume that is more damaging to mental health than those consumed by other groups. 

The Monitoring the Future dataset happens to have within it an 8-item Locus of Control scale. With Twenge’s permission, I reprint one such graph from Generations showing responses to one of the items: “Every time I try to get ahead, something or somebody stops me.” This item is a good proxy for Filipovic’s hypothesis about the disempowering effects of progressive institutions. If you agree with that item, you have a more external locus of control. As you can see in Figure 3, from the 1970s until the mid-2000s, boys were a bit more likely to agree with that item, but then girls rose to match boys, and then both sexes rose continuously throughout the 2010s—the era when teen social life became far more heavily phone-based. 

Figure 3. Percentage of boys and girls (high school seniors) who agree with (or are neutral about) the statement “Every time I try to get ahead, something or somebody stops me.” From Monitoring the Future, graphed by Jean Twenge in her forthcoming book Generations.

When the discussion of the gender-by-politics interaction broke out a few weeks ago, I thought back to Twenge’s graph and wondered what would happen if we broke up the sexes by politics. Would it give us the pattern in the Gimbrone et al. graphs, where the liberal girls rise first and most? Twenge sent me her data file (it’s a tricky one to assemble, across the many years), and Zach Rausch and I started looking for the interaction. We found some exciting hints, and I began writing this post on the assumption that we had a major discovery. For example, Figure 4 shows the item that Twenge analyzed. We see something like the Gimbrone et al. pattern in which it’s the liberal girls who depart from everyone else, in the unhealthy (external) direction, starting in the early 2000s. 

Figure 4. Percentage of liberal and conservative high school senior boys (left panel) and girls (right panel) who agree with the statement “Every time I try to get ahead, something or somebody stops me.” From Monitoring the Future, graphed by Zach Rausch.

It sure looks like the liberal girls are getting more external while the conservative girls are, if anything, trending slightly more internal in the last decade, and the boys are just bouncing around randomly. But that was just for this one item. We also found a similar pattern for a second item, “People like me don’t have much of a chance at a successful life.” (You can see graphs of all 8 items here.) 

We were excited to have found such clear evidence of the interaction, but when we plotted responses to the whole scale, we found only a hint of the predicted interaction, and only in the last few years, as you can see in Figure 5. After trying a few different graphing strategies, and after seeing if there was a good statistical justification for dropping any items, we reached the tentative conclusion that the big story about locus of control is not about liberal girls, it’s about Gen Z as a whole. Everyone—boys and girls, left and right—developed a more external locus of control gradually, beginning in the 1990s. I’ll come back to this finding in future posts as I explore the second strand of the After Babel Substack: the loss of “play-based childhood” which happened in the 1990s when American parents (and British, and Canadian) stopped letting their children out to play and explore, unsupervised. (See Frank Furedi’s important book Paranoid Parenting. I believe that the loss of free play and self-supervised risk-taking blocked the development of a healthy, normal, internal locus of control. That is the reason I teamed up with Lenore Skenazy, Peter Gray, and Daniel Shuchman to found LetGrow.org.) 

Figure 5. Locus of Control has shifted slightly but steadily toward external since the 1990s. Scores are on a 5-point scale from 1 = most internal to 5 = most external. 

We kept looking in the Monitoring the Future dataset and the Gimbrone et al. paper for other items that would allow us to test Filipovic’s hypothesis. We found an ideal second set of variables: The Monitoring the Future dataset has a set of items on “self derogation” which is closely related to disempowerment, as you can see from the four statements that comprise the scale:

I feel I do not have much to be proud of. Sometimes I think I am no good at all. I feel that I can't do anything right. I feel that my life is not very useful.

Gimbrone et al. had graphed the self-derogation scale, as you can see in their appendix (Figure  A.4). But Zach and I re-graphed the original data so that we could show a larger range of years, from 1977 through 2021. As you can see in Figure 6, we find the gender-by-politics interaction. Once again, and as with nearly all of the mental health indicators I examined in a previous post, there’s no sign of trouble before 2010. But right around 2012 the line for liberal girls starts to rise. It rises first, and it rises most, with liberal boys not far behind (as in Gimbrone et al.).

Figure 6. Self-derogation scale, averaging four items from the Monitoring the Future study. Graphed by Zach Rausch. The scale runs from 1 (strongly disagree with each statement) to 5 (strongly agree). 

In other words, we have support for Filipovic’s “captain their own ship” concern, and for Lukianoff’s disempowerment concern: Gen Z has become more external in its locus of control, and Gen Z liberals (of both sexes) have become more self-derogating. They are more likely to agree that they “can’t do anything right.” Furthermore, most of the young people in the progressive institutions that Filipovic mentioned are women, and that has become even more true since 2014 when, according to Gallup data, young women began to move to the left while young men did not move either way. As Gen Z women became more progressive and more involved in political activism in the 2010s, it seems to have changed them psychologically. It wasn’t just that their locus of control shifted toward external—that happened to all subsets of Gen Z.  Rather, young liberals (including young men) seem to have taken into themselves the specific depressive cognitions and distorted ways of thinking that CBT is designed to expunge.

But where did they learn to think this way? And why did it start so suddenly around 2012 or 2013, as Greg observed, and as Figures 2 and 6 confirm?

Tumblr Was the Petri Dish for Disempowering Beliefs

I recently listened to a brilliant podcast series, The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling, hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper, created within Bari Weiss’s Free Press. Phelps-Roper interviews Rowling about her difficult years developing the Harry Potter stories in the early 1990s, before the internet; her rollout of the books in the late 90s and early 2000s, during the early years of the internet; and her observations about the Harry Potter superfan communities that the internet fostered. These groups had streaks of cruelty and exclusion in them from the beginning, along with a great deal of love, joy, and community. But in the stunning third episode, Phelps-Roper and Rowling take us through the dizzying events of the early 2010s as the social media site Tumblr exploded in popularity (reaching its peak in early 2014), and also in viciousness. Tumblr was different from Facebook and other sites because it was not based on anyone’s social network; it brought together people from anywhere in the world who shared an interest, and often an obsession.

Phelps-Roper interviewed several experts who all pointed to Tumblr as the main petri dish in which nascent ideas of identity, fragility, language, harm, and victimhood evolved and intermixed. Angela Nagle (author of Kill All Normies) described the culture that emerged among young activists on Tumblr, especially around gender identity, in this way:

There was a culture that was encouraged on Tumblr, which was to be able to describe your unique non-normative self… And that’s to some extent a feature of modern society anyway. But it was taken to such an extreme that people began to describe this as the snowflake [referring to the idea that each snowflake is unique], the person who constructs a totally kind of boutique identity for themselves, and then guards that identity in a very, very sensitive way and reacts in an enraged way when anyone does not respect the uniqueness of their identity. 

Nagle described how on the other side of the political spectrum, there was “the most insensitive culture imaginable, which was the culture of 4chan.” The communities involved in gender activism on Tumblr were mostly young progressive women while 4Chan was mostly used by right-leaning young men, so there was an increasingly gendered nature to the online conflict. The two communities supercharged each other with their mutual hatred, as often happens in a culture war. The young identity activists on Tumblr embraced their new notions of identity, fragility, and trauma all the more tightly, increasingly saying that words are a form of violence, while the young men on 4chan moved in the opposite direction: they brandished a rough and rude masculinity in which status was gained by using words more insensitively than the next guy. It was out of this reciprocal dynamic, the experts on the podcast suggest, that today’s cancel culture was born in the early 2010s. Then, in 2013, it escaped from Tumblr into the much larger Twitterverse. Once on Twitter, it went national and even global (at least within the English-speaking countries), producing the mess we all live with today.

I don’t want to tell that entire story here; please listen to the Witch Trials podcast for yourself. It is among the most enlightening things I’ve read or heard in all my years studying the American culture war (along with Jon Ronson’s podcast Things Fell Apart). I just want to note that this story fits perfectly with both the timing and the psychology of Greg’s reverse CBT hypothesis. 

Implications and Policy Changes

In conclusion, I believe that Greg Lukianoff was exactly right in the diagnosis he shared with me in 2014. Many young people had suddenly—around 2013—embraced three great untruths:

They came to believe that they were fragile and would be harmed by books, speakers, and words, which they learned were forms of violence (Great Untruth #1). 

They came to believe that their emotions—especially their anxieties—were reliable guides to reality (Great Untruth #2).

They came to see society as comprised of victims and oppressors—good people and bad people (Great Untruth #3).

Liberals embraced these beliefs more than conservatives. Young liberal women adopted them more than any other group due to their heavier use of social media and their participation in online communities that developed new disempowering ideas. These cognitive distortions then caused them to become more anxious and depressed than other groups. Just as Greg had feared, many universities and progressive institutions embraced these three untruths and implemented programs that performed reverse CBT on young people, in violation of their duty to care for them and educate them. 

I welcome challenges to this conclusion from scholars, journalists, and subscribers, and I will address such challenges in future posts. I must also repeat that I don’t blame everything on smartphones and social media; the other strand of my story is the loss of play-based childhood, with its free play and self-governed risk-taking. But if this conclusion stands (along with my conclusions in previous posts), then I think there are two big policy changes that should be implemented as soon as possible: 

1) Universities and other schools should stop performing reverse CBT on their students

As Greg and I showed in The Coddling of the American Mind, most of the programs put in place after the campus protests of 2015 are based on one or more of the three Great Untruths, and these programs have been imported into many K-12 schools. From mandatory diversity training to bias response teams and trigger warnings, there is little evidence that these programs do what they say they do, and there are some findings that they backfire. In any case, there are reasons, as I have shown, to worry that they teach children and adolescents to embrace harmful, depressogenic cognitive distortions.

One initiative that has become popular in the last few years is particularly suspect: efforts to tell college students to avoid common English words and phrases that are said to be “harmful.” Brandeis University took the lead in 2021 with its “oppressive language list.” Brandeis urged its students to stop saying that they would “take a stab at” something because it was unnecessarily violent. For the same reason, they urged that nobody ask for a “trigger warning” because, well, guns. Students should ask for “content warnings” instead, to keep themselves safe from violent words like “stab.” Many universities have followed suit, including Colorado State University, The University of British Columbia, The University of Washington, and Stanford, which eventually withdrew its “harmful language list” because of the adverse publicity. Stanford had urged students to avoid words like “American,” “Immigrant,” and “submit,” as in “submit your homework.” Why? because the word “submit” can “imply allowing others to have power over you.” The irony here is that it may be these very programs that are causing liberal students to feel disempowered, as if they are floating in a sea of harmful words and people when, in reality, they are living in some of the most welcoming and safe environments ever created.

2) The US Congress should raise the age of “internet adulthood” from 13 to 16 or 18

What do you think should be the minimum age at which children can sign a legally binding contract to give away their data and their rights,  and expose themselves to harmful content, without the consent or knowledge of their parents? I asked that question as a Twitter poll, and you can see the results here:

Image: See my original tweet.

Of course, this poll of my own Twitter followers is far from a valid survey, and I phrased my question in a leading way, but my phrasing was an accurate statement of today’s status quo. I think that most people now understand that the age of 13, which was set back in 1998 when we didn’t know what the internet would become, is just too low, and it is not even enforced. When my kids started 6th grade in NYC public schools, they each told me that “everyone” was on Instagram.

We are now 11 years into the largest epidemic of adolescent mental illness ever recorded. I know so many families that have been thrown into fear and turmoil by a child’s suicide attempt. You probably do too, given that the recent CDC report tells us that one in ten adolescents now say they have made an attempt to kill themselves. It is hitting all political and demographic groups. The evidence is abundant that social media is a major cause of the epidemic, and perhaps the major cause. It's time we started treating social media and other apps designed for “engagement” (i.e., addiction) like alcohol, tobacco, and gambling, or, because they can harm society as well as their users, perhaps like automobiles and firearms. Adults should have wide latitude to make their own choices, but legislators and governors who care about mental health, women’s health, or children’s health need to step up.

It’s not enough to find more money for mental health services, although that is sorely needed. In addition, we must shut down the conveyer belt so that today’s toddlers will not suffer the same fate in twelve years. Congress should set a reasonable minimum age for minors to sign contracts and open accounts without explicit parental consent, and the age needs to be after teens have progressed most of the way through puberty. (The harm caused by social media seems to be greatest during puberty.) If Congress won’t do it then state legislatures should act. There are many ways to rapidly verify people’s ages online, and I’ll discuss age verification processes in a future post. 

In conclusion: All of Gen Z got more anxious and depressed after 2012. But Lukianoff’s reverse CBT hypothesis is the best explanation I have found for Why the mental health of liberal girls sank first and fastest.

#Jonathan Haidt #Greg Lukianoff #Reverse CBT #reverse cognitive behavioral therapy #cognitive behavioral therapy #emotional fragility #fragility #emotional reasoning #external locus #internal locus #victimhood #victimhood culture #Generation Z #Gen Z #anxiety #depression #mental health #mental health issues #trauma #personal identity #hellsite #Tumblr culture #religion is a mental illness

[hotbitrash]

People who haven't had to change their name will never truly understand how much it hurts to hear your deadname. I wish people had the heart to understand that 😔

#transgender #name change #changing names #gender #gender identity #gender identification #lgbtq #lgbtqia #lgbtqi community #trans people #transisbeautiful #lgbtq community #lgbt pride #lgbtq issues #lgbtpeople #personal identity #personal #deadname #names #have a heart #love #love each other #be compassionate #be kind #this is painful #lgbtqia issues

[gaussmultimedia]

Máster Diseño Gráfico 2021-22. Portfolio de Sergio Cañestro Sánchez. Fotografías de Laura Flores.

#diseño gráfico #graphic design #diseño #portfolio de Sergio Cañestro #Sergio Cañestro #ejemplo de portfolio #los portfolios de La Gauss #marca personal #personal identity #personal branding #branding #portfolio

[bumpytoad]

I don't judge based on appearances, or based on anything that the majority tends to react to fearfully without much thought. On the contrary, I am fascinated by anything different. It offends me when others can't get past the superficial. It hurts me. It makes me feel very unhappy and even greatly distressed when others dismiss the things that I care about on a deep level and are actually comforting to me by saying they’re "too scary" as if that means there's nothing more to them that is of any value and I should stop liking them. I really feel hurt when the things I care about, love and like a lot, connect to/connect with and identify with and as are wrongfully regarded as "evil" and "hideous." I don't have negative visceral gut reactions to things that are different. I don't get repulsed or afraid or distrustful just on the basis of someone or something being different. I don't see things as "too garish" or distasteful, either, just based on being visually "loud" and exuberant in their creativity. I don't see the things most tend to regard as being "extreme" (as though there's anything wrong with that) as being "too much." I consider "extreme" to be a relative term. I don't reject anyone or feel harshly towards anyone based on appearances, and it's the same with interests and Dark things. I don't see "ugly," or "scary," or "weird" as in bad. I generally see the things that others view as ugly and scary and weird as beautiful and wholesome and fascinating. I don't want to associate with those who judge based on appearances. I would never want to be friends with them unless they are willing to learn to be open-minded, or unlearn their harmful biases. I wouldn't want to be exposed to those judgmental individuals trying to influence me to be and think like them as though I'm naive if I don't or that there must be something terribly wrong with me. I can't tolerate any of the cruelties and biases that for most humans are just considered "normal." I can't and I won't. They just don't make any sense to me, and all they end up doing is harming the innocent folks and lifeforms who just happen to be different or misunderstood. Life isn't what it used to be when those primitive responses were more essential to survival. Those who are different in appearance are generally not a threat at all -- rather, we are most often the ones being severely victimized.

#self expression #appearance discrimination #alterhuman #otherkin #therian #gothic #non traditional identity #face paint #personal identity #autism #marginalization #stigma #social activism #social stigma #flamboyant self expression #darkly inclined #dark is not evil #special interests #hyperfixation #not just a choice #way of life #goth #goth rights activist #body art #professionalism #freedom of expression #aesthetic #xenogender #xenophobia #alterophobia

[stellarvisionary]

So I went to the TOOL tour concert in my state a few days ago, spent the night with the couple who's ticket I'd bought. On the way home, the subject of queerness and queer identities came up when I spoke about an ex I had who, during the course of our relationship, had tried essentially to feminize me. Like...she didn't want me, she wanted a woman with my mind and personality. She dressed me in drag for a drag ball at her college, and it caused me to have an anxiety attack about an hour in.

All this got me thinking about my gender identity as I currently see it, which I've summed up as "¯\_(ツ)_/¯". I don't really feel any kind of attachment in either direction, nor do I feel any desire to change who I am on the outside. If anything, the last few years I've started to reclaim parts of my outward presentation that got left behind for whatever reason (my rings, bracelets, necklaces, etc.), so I can feel more comfortable as myself. It's for this reason that on terms of labeling, I've settled on agender asexual for who I am as a queer.

#queerness #personal identity #my biggest defining feature is my apathy for societal conventions that don't serve me

[dabblingreturns]

Just to make things clear, I don't care how you identify yourself as long as you don't identify as a fascist. I might mess up your identification the first time by accident, I might get confused by the lables you choose. But that's my problem not yours.

We are all just doing our best

#lgbtq #queer #personal identity #fuck facists #thus blog is a safe place unless you get triggered by cannibalism #if you have serious issues with discussions of cannablism.....well then you may not enjoy the fandom im in....sorry