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princess-spock · 7 months

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Pronouns and Gender in the Good Omens Universe

Neil recently said: “Angels aren't humans or mortals. They don't have genders. There isn't a pronoun you can use for them that's wrong, and unless you can speak in the tongue of the angels there's not a pronoun you can use for them that's actually right. Ditto Demons.”

Obviously, no one's going to debate Neil's pronouncements about the series! The thing is, though, that CONSISTENT gendered pronouns are used in the book, and in the series, and by Neil himself when referring to these characters. There's significant gray area here, no matter how you slice it. So...

(Who are we?

@Princess-Spock: I'm non-binary, specifically genderfluid. My pronouns are they/them for simplicity. My primary gender is agender, and is aroace; I have a wide range of other genders and sexualities.

@Twilightcitysky: I’m an allosexual, queer, cis woman with a background in healthcare, specifically sexual/reproductive health and mental health.)

Pronouns, ideally, should reflect gender… but what is gender? Gender is something we feel inside our heads. For most people, that matches up with their genitals… But not always!

Genitals do NOT determine gender!

Therefore:

A transwoman is a WOMAN, regardless of what genitals she has.

A transman is a MAN, regardless of what genitals he has.

A non-binary person is non-binary regardless of what genitals they have.

A genderfluid person might sometimes have gender that matches their genitals, but at least part of the time does not. (A gender that varies in intensity rather than going between genders is genderflux, not genderfluid.)

A couple of those terms need to be clarified:

• Non-binary means not having a “binary gender,” in other words not being one of the 2 most familiar genders, “exclusively male all the time” or “exclusively female all the time.” (Remember, bi = 2.) Non-binary does NOT mean being genderless! A non-binary person could be genderless/agender… or they might have partial gender, mixed genders, fluctuating genders (fluid or flux), xenogender, or non-specific gender.

Note: Not all non-binary people use they/them. Like everyone else, they get to choose their own pronouns. It's never acceptable to assign pronouns of your choosing to them, or to assume that they must be they/them without confirmation.

• Genderfluid means having a gender that changes periodically; a genderfluid person can have any number (other than 1) or combination of genders. The gender of a genderfluid person might change after a few minutes, or after hours, days, even months. Genderfluidity refers to gender ONLY; it does NOT refer to changes in presentation.

And what is presentation, aka gender presentation or gender expression? It’s what gender a person chooses to portray with their appearance. This can include choosing whether to wear male or female clothing, shoes and accessories… hair length and style… whether or not makeup is used… whether or not body shaping garments are worn, such as a binder to flatten the breasts, or padding to create curves... and whether or not there is facial hair, whether naturally grown or otherwise. If someone has a presentation that differs from their biological sex, they might be trans, or it could be cosplay, drag, cross-dressing, a costume, being gender non-conforming (GNC), as a sociopolitical statement (eg butch lesbians), or just for fun.

Presentation does NOT determine gender!

Some people are forced to wear whatever their culture dictates. Or whatever their family will accept. GNC people choose to not wear clothing that conforms to their gender. For some people, presentation is irrelevant, and they just wear whatever is easiest.

Because there are no elements of presentation that are specifically for any of the non-binary genders, non-binary people are typically left with some form of androgynous or GNC presentation. (@Princess-Spock: it's REALLY tricky to create a look that is neither male nor female, especially for those who, like me, don’t reshape their bodies.)

If a genderfluid person's gender changes when they aren't near their closet, their presentation might not match their gender, even if they’d prefer it to. Sometimes it's a matter of what they can afford; not everyone has the luxury of having multiple wardrobes. (@Princess-Spock: For those of us who are fortunate to have little or no dysphoria, we might skip customizing our presentation much of the time, just for simplicity.)

And just FYI:

Sexual orientation does NOT determine gender!

Specific to the fandom, there is no connection whatsoever between being asexual and being genderless/agender, or to not possessing genitals. Just because someone belongs in one of those categories does NOT mean or even suggest that they belong in the other categories. It is absolutely positively NOT correct to suggest that angels and demons are asexual simply because they don't have gender and/or genitals. (They might still be ace, of course!)

A few useful terms (these are not complete descriptions by any means):

• Asexual, sometimes abbreviated as ace, is a spectrum of sexual orientations in which a person feels little or no sexual attraction to anyone. Being asexual does NOT necessarily mean being aromantic. Also, being asexual does NOT mean not having sexual feelings, or not having and enjoying sex, although these things are true for those who are sex-averse.

• Aromantic is a spectrum of romantic attractions in which a person feels little or no romantic attraction to anyone. Being aromantic does NOT necessarily mean being asexual. And an aromantic person can still make loving connections, exchange affection like kissing or holding hands, and of course still have sex.

• Aroace refers to people who are both asexual and aromantic.

How does all this apply to the Good Omens universe? In the book, it says, “angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort”; Neil has referred to this for the series as well. Canon isn't explicit, but most of us interpret this as, "they don’t have genitals unless they choose to." Lack of GENITALS is then often wrongly seen as lack of GENDER. Neil said, "Neither the angels nor the demons, as far as I’m concerned, are actually gendered as humans are." But, he uses human gender terms; Crowley is genderfluid, angels are non-binary (it seems like he means that they’re genderless, but that's NOT what non-binary means). Confusingly, in a 2018 post, he said:

"The angels and demons in Good Omens aren’t human, they aren’t male (nor are they female). Not that they couldn’t be male etc if they wanted to make that effort. As it says in Good Omens: ‘For those of angel stock or demon breed, size, and shape, and composition, are simply options’."

That sure looks like, YES, they CAN have gender!

More confusingly, Neil also says that his personal headcanon is NOT canon, canon is only what's in the book and the series... and none of this appears in either place. This makes the gender and thus pronoun issues a tad ambiguous. We agree 100% with Neil that people should embrace their headcanons and allow others to do the same, and so use whatever pronouns they want, and allow others to do the same. Here's how WE see Crowley and Aziraphale's genders and pronouns:

It is absolutely impossible, by definition, for a genderfluid person to be genderless ALL the time. Therefore, if Crowley is genderfluid, he MUST have gender at least part of the time! (And if he can have gender, so can all other angels and demons!)

When Mrs. Sandwich tells Crowley that he's a good lad, and he responds that he's neither, that's in line with what most genderfluid people would say; having a gender some days but not others is different from BEING that gender. Crowley has chosen a male body (male genitals, hairy chest), facial hair, generally masculine attire, and male pronouns, so it's reasonable to assume that his chosen gender is male most of the time.

We assume that he was female when he chose to wear female clothing (an abaya) in the crucifixion scene. He may also have been female during his stint as Nanny Ashtoreth, but that might have just been presentation.

During the scene where he's in heaven in S2, he has a non-binary presentation; the tracksuit is androgynous, and the accessories (headband, sparkly gold tie, fingernails, and toenails) are feminine. He might be experiencing a non-binary gender at this time.

(@Princess-Spock: Genderfluidity is very complicated. Even when Crowley "looked" female, he might have been experiencing a variety of different genders; remember, neither genitals nor presentation determine gender! In fact, since Crowley had adopted a female appearance out of necessity, not because that was his true gender at that time, he might even never have actually BEEN female during the time he was "looking" female!)

What about Aziraphale? He has all the “male stuff” that Crowley does (facial and chest hair, deep voice, etc). He has an unwaveringly masculine presentation; his hair is ALWAYS short throughout history (even when Gabriel’s is long), and his sartorial choices are traditionally and formally male (pocket watch on a chain, French cuffs with cufflinks), with no hint of the modern androgyny of jeans and T-shirts… strong evidence that his chosen gender is male.

Neil always refers to Aziraphale and Crowley as he/him (he stated that Crowley was presenting female as Nanny Ashtoreth and at the crucifixion, but no pronoun is used either time). The book and the script book always refer to Aziraphale and Crowley as he/him. Aziraphale and Crowley always refer to each other as he/him. Michael and David have always referred to Aziraphale and Crowley as he/him. So, he/him is our personal choice.

What about the pronouns of other supernatural characters?

Beelzebub:

He/him in the book. She/her in the script book. For S1, Neil said, “I don’t think there were any. Probably Zzzzzzir.” They/them for S2 (“but they're always such a little ray of sunshine” in E3).

Dagon:

In the book, no pronouns are used, but all male titles; Lord, Master, Under-Duke. He/him in the script book. No pronouns used in the show or by Neil.

Muriel:

They/them canonically, but referred to by Quelin Sepulveda, the actress who plays Muriel, as she/they. It seems like the gender perception of the actor who embodies a character has to count for something; if Quelin was perceiving Muriel as partly female, that's an intrinsic part of who Muriel IS. We think we should honor that. (Neil has had plenty of opportunity to debate Quelin's usage, but never has.)

(Food for thought: If we accept this sort of "mixed" pronoun usage as valid in the Good Omens universe, it could apply to other angels or demons, not just to Muriel!)

Archangels played by actresses:

In the script book, when Aziraphale speaks to the 4 archangels, it says; “The room of angels in slick suits. There are four of them, male and female.” It doesn't specify WHO is female, though, and ALL the archangels have non-female pronouns elsewhere in the book, so...?

Uriel:

"He" in the script book, no pronouns otherwise.

Michael:

“He” in the script book. Neil has used "they."

Angels and demons played by male actors:

All of them are referred to with male pronouns, both within the series and by Neil. However:

Hastur:

Briefly had a female appearance in the scene where Aziraphale and Crowley are kidnapped, but no pronouns were used at the time. In the script book, the “lady tourist” is referred to as "she" when whacking Crowley… and then is referred to as "her" even AFTER transforming into Hastur with a wig.

Ligur:

In the book, Ligur was intriguingly referred to as “it” while he was dying, but immediately thereafter was referred to as "he." That paragraph appears almost word for word in the script book; it refers to him as "he" instead of "it."

Sandalphon:

Referred to in the script book as "it."

Metatron:

"He" in the book and season 2.

God:

Neil said: Jesus uses "Father". Aziraphale uses "She" pronouns for God and Crowley uses "They". I don't think the God in the Good Omens TV universe has a gender.

In the book, Aziraphale, Crowley and Metatron refer to God as He. In the script book, Aziraphale refers to God as She, and Crowley refers to God as They and She.

We think the bottom line is: These are FICTIONAL characters inhabiting a universe where there are few canonical rules for pronouns or gender for supernatural beings. This is a perfect vehicle for choice, which has so much importance to the story. You may start out on opposite sides, you may start out as a genderless being, you may start out as a sexless being, but you can choose something different for yourself. The importance of choice in Good Omens is one of the things that makes it great!

There’s a lot of fic and art that depicts the characters in different ways; everyone should feel comfortable portraying them the way they choose without the worry that someone is going to be upset with them. We’ve both seen a lot of comments to the tune of, “you’re not using the correct pronouns” or “that’s not the correct sexual orientation,” and that’s not good fandom etiquette. Being open-minded and kind to one another as we flesh out this universe for ourselves is just basic courtesy. Neil himself has said that in fandom, any interpretation is valid! The Good Omens fandom is largely a microcosm of the queer community; we need to practice acceptance amongst ourselves, so that we can stand together against those in the wider world who want to tear us down!

Anyone who wants to discuss personal gender issues can feel free to message @Princess-Spock; remember that if you ask anonymously, there's no way to reply to you!

#GoodOmens #GOS2 #Crowley #Aziraphale #NeilGaiman #IneffableGender #IneffablePronouns #GoodOmensGender #GoodOmensPronouns #GoodOmensMeta #GoodOmensSeason2

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starry-genome · 7 months

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If you have ever wondered why health insurance in the US is so messed up, I highly recommend checking out Dr. Glaucomflecken’s 30 days of Healthcare series. Click here for the YouTube playlist or click here for the TikTok playlist.

Each video is about 1-3 minutes and goes through different aspects of the healthcare industry explaining how it works and especially how corrupt it is.

I spent 5 years working hospital finance watching the way health insurance directly affected my patients, and oftentimes seeing the ways lack of access to affordable healthcare resulted in chronic and emergent conditions, and even death. I cannot stress enough that I literally saw people die because their insurance denied them treatment. And on the billing side, the things people would complain about to me as something the doctors or hospital were doing wrong were usually a direct result of the way health insurance runs everything. It’s disgusting.

At the end of the series, he has a call to action - ways we (as regular people) can help work to improve healthcare (other than pushing for universal healthcare/Medicare for all). A lot of people talk about how ridiculous US Healthcare is but rarely do I see anyone talking about what we can do to change it. I think this is the most important video of all, so I’m including it here.

This video series is probably the most comprehensive, easiest to understand breakdown of the way healthcare fucks everyone over - patients, doctors, and hospitals alike. Please check it out!

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anarchywoofwoof · 9 months

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in response to the drastically changing climate and AI creeping further and further into every day life, i keep seeing people bringing up UBI - universal basic income. and i get the inclination to believe that UBI is a solution to the problem, but it's really like plastering over a gaping wound.

UBI seems like a good idea, offering a financial cushion for everyone, but it's missing the point. capitalism is structured so that it'll just absorb that money right back into itself. you give people more money without changing anything else, and the landlords, the banks, they'll just increase prices. this is not simplified thinking, it is a fact in practice today.

look at the military housing allowance in the US as an example of how this works today. you can ask anyone enlisted who is stationed abroad. more money is provided, but the rent goes up to match. you think UBI will be any different? if there's a way for a capitalist to profit from a social program, they will stop at no cost to find it and exploit it. the whole system is rigged that way on purpose.

and then what about the way we go about funding ubi? it's a nice thought to tie it to taxes from the rich and corporations, but let's be real here. we can't even get a living wage set as the minimum wage. the idea that the government would just 'give away' money to people not working? it's laughable. we're a reactive society, not proactive. it's not going to happen.

from Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations:

"RENT, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances. In adjusting the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock."

it's all about what we can afford to pay. you increase wages or implement UBI, the rent will just go up. that's how the system works, that's how landlords operate. that is how it has always worked and always will work.

what we need to realize is that if we have the power to build support for UBI, we might as well go for full blown socialism. it's going to be just as hard, but it'll actually change things. you could look at something like universal basic services, where actual needs like healthcare, education, housing, and food are met. not just giving people money and hoping the market will magically solve the problems. but the fact of the matter is that this is not profitable and that is the crux of the capitalist dilemma.

UBI is just allowing people to play the game of capitalism. it doesn't change the rules, doesn't challenge the underlying causes or the issues or the problems or inequities. people will find themselves back in the same hole that they crawled out of because the boot on their neck is keeping them there. the boot is capitalism.

#text #bork bork thoughts #fuck capitalism #anarchy #anarchism #universal basic income #anti capitalist

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transcriptroopers · 6 months

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I have a tangent, troopers. I am shot-gunnin’ it, hitting like ten different topics. I think I have a point, bear with me.

Something I have found increasingly important to emphasize when engaging with theory is the ability to delineate overlapping types of violence and to clearly define which is a more immediate threat to life.

I have two personal facts to illustrate my point.

First, I recently began using a cane. This has changed my life significantly. I now need more accommodations to perform the same tasks. Even in a hospital, I have to tell doctors to slow down so I can keep up. My cane upsets able-bodied people and makes them nervous around me. There’s no denying that in being a case user, I face oppression.

Yet, in every way, my circumstances are better than someone who uses a wheelchair. Because I’m not sitting down, everything is still at my height. I may be forced to walk in the grass if there’s no sidewalk, but a wheelchair user is screwed. I can still walk and get exercise and not worry about atrophy like if I used a wheelchair. I would be inconvenienced having to use the stairs during an emergency, whereas in a wheelchair your life may be in danger.

We are both types of disabled people who face oppression at the hands of an ableist society, but we still have different experiences, and have different - sometimes competing - accessibility needs. It is not “oppression olympics” to be able to identify when one type of disenfranchisement is a more severe and immediate threat to life; I am not betraying cane users to advocate for better accessibility for wheelchair users.

Next, I’m a veteran of the United States Army. I am also LGBT, and I am being vague about the specifics of that on purpose. There is an inordinate number of people who think this is a good thing – that I am both LGBT and a veteran. Everyone thinks it looks good for #Diversity for there to be #Representation.

I understand where this is coming from, because I used to think this way. Being an oppressed group, LGBT people are hungry to see people like them being portrayed positively, and in the US, the military is almost universally revered. I have never been harassed for being a veteran IRL, always praised; in fact, being a veteran has often shielded me from harassment associated with being LGBT, using a cane, etc. But online, folks will very casually wish for your death in the most gruesome ways, accuse you of crimes you’ve never committed, and block you before you can explain that, actually, you purposely enlisted in your MOS in Air Defense (protection against incoming missiles) because you didn’t want to hurt anyone, and even before drone warfare the vast majority of soldiers will never see combat. And it hurts your feelings, because you’re Me, a sensitive LGBT who didn’t expect the people who I thought were my friends to want me violently killed, Just Like my oppressors did, right??

So, here’s how I got over all that and got to the root of the issue: It’s only online that people are free to unload, sometimes; they are frequently shadowbanned by social media. My material reality is that as a disabled veteran, even an LGBT one, I have innate privileges because I am a soldier first. I have free healthcare for the rest of my life, and if I need it, assistance with legal matters, education, and housing. I could get a 10 to 20% discount in almost any store or restaurant in the country. I could get a placard for my car and it would reduce my chances of being pulled over. I opted for the optional “Veteran” mark on my drivers license to endear any cop who pulls me over. There are like three different national holidays celebrating me where I can get free food. An angry person online who says “veterans kys” hurts my feelings, but doesn’t in any way make my life materially worse.

Meanwhile, I have very much been a victim of hate crimes for being LGBT, both online and IRL. Even in the PNW I was assaulted and encountered actual hate groups like Proud Boys. There are no hate groups against veterans. Even if veterans are high risk for homelessness and drug abuse, (just like for example, idk, LGBT people) it is very clear to me which group is more meaningfully affected by violence.

Like I said, when you’re a rather sensitive person, a stranger gruesomely wishing for your death is upsetting regardless of the reason. Obviously I would prefer that people don’t do this at all, just as I would prefer that there be no kind of oppression at all.

But there is, so they do. And because I have a Critical Thinking Brain, I was able to realize that there was a difference between an outburst from someone with the ability to act upon it and an outburst from someone with almost no ability to act upon it. A jailed prisoner heavily draped in chains yells “I’ll kill you!” A well-trained soldier pointing a gun at you says “I’ll kill you!” Which are you more afraid of?

If you answer “both,” you are being willfully obtuse. You know the prisoner has next to no chance of carrying out their threat, but you know the soldier’s gun is loaded, and they have killed before. We are all capable of understanding that there are degrees of power and violence. I don’t begrudge any person who casually wishes for the deaths of soldiers, even though the soldier is themselves a victim of a kind of violence by the state. In fact, you can read all about the various abuses endured by soldiers on my blog, but the woes and miseries of soldiers are not (and should not be) of consequence to their victims.

Now that I’ve made you read two pages of blathering, guess what this post is really about? That’s right – Palestine. Fuck.

Western colonial nations are responsible for the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, and it is with our manufactured consent that the US and Great Britain continue to escalate the violence. Thus, it is more important than ever for us to be able to critically examine the way oppression affects us.

Israel is a settler-colonial state: a group of settlers who have violently expelled indigenous people from their land. This is documented fact; even early on in the occupation, 1948-esque, comparisons to American cowboys were being made, implicitly stationing their enemies as dirty savages on untamed land which was being claimed for use by a pure and righteous civilization.

Unfortunately, even in modern times, US Americans still believe the above rationale for their own displacement of indigenous people. To do otherwise would be to admit that we ourselves do not belong on this land – land that we live and work on and sometimes have “owned” for generations. We choose to believe what matters is Now, and the other stuff is all in the past.

Sadly, it’s true that many Indigenous American Peoples are no more. But numerous Indigenous American Tribes and Nations are still around, their customs have endured, their languages are alive, and they are still working their lands, as best as they can given the circumstances we’ve given them. However far back the atrocities were, Indigenous Americans deserve not only recompense, but leniency for behaviors that we on our high horses may find uncouth but otherwise don’t materially affect us or our privileges.

This is my opinion for other settler-colonial states as well, including those of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, etc. If settlers cannot feasibly “return home,” as will often be the case, then they must at least concede ownership of what was never theirs to take and cease reaping the benefits from their settler status. This would involve returning land and power to their original peoples, (likely not all or even most of it, especially as so much is now destroyed and heavily populated) and laws being rewritten so that they are not settler-centric.

In that case, for me, the Palestinian Genocide has one starting and end point: this is a conflict between the colonized and the colonizer. It is essential to view all further analysis from this lens, lest we lose context and get confused when spin doctors tweak our media, or when our friends accuse us of supporting our own oppressors.

Why am I putting all of this on my soldier blog?

Because it is us, soldiers, who are complicit with this genocide. Even American soldiers right now are complicit with Palestinian Genocide because it’s with our weapons, aircraft, finances, and strategies the genocide is being perpetrated. I remember being enlisted ten years ago trying to argue for the rights of Palestinians to At Least not be war crimed on a regular basis, and was mocked, because I was arguing for rights for “inhumane terrorists,” and aren’t I a hypocrite because aren’t I LGBT, and don’t I know that Palestines hate LGBT people? It frightens me to see how much worse it has gotten in ten years, and how many otherwise peaceful people have bought into this pinkwashing: using LGBT rights as a cudgel to determine who “deserves” human rights and who deserves violence. Palestinians do not have to be perfect victims to deserve human rights, and I find the thought that a person in any context deserves to die to be abhorrent.

I feel obliged to state here that I am not Jewish, though I have been considering conversion for a few years. I first sought out a rabbi in 2020 and paused my journey due to the pandemic. I still do self-study but don’t consider myself capable of speaking on behalf of Judaism.

I do feel capable of speaking on pinkwashing soldiers, and this is very simple: an LGBT soldier is still a soldier. Being a soldier overshadows all of our other identities, be they gender, sexuality, race, religion, wealth, or ability. This is drilled into us. People tell us to go away and die (if they feel safe to do so) because we are complicit in the overwhelming, overarching violence that is the state. We are no different than cops in this regard. Israeli soldiers, too, are soldiers before they are anything else. Women, LGBT, POC, Poor, Jewish. Often, the oppressor has themselves been oppressed. That's why it's so easy to convince people that their actions are just.

But here we see the same situation as before. The Palestinian, after eighty years of violent apartheid and genocide, bombed, starved, half-dead, says, “I’ll kill you!” The Israeli Soldier, with billions in US aid, who controls the Palestinian’s water, food, fuel, medicine, roads, air, and borders, calls the hospital and tells them, “We will bomb you in sixty seconds.” And then they do, and they want my sympathy because I too am a Soldier, and so I must understand that they have Lost, and it is So hard to lose people in war; so hard.

Of course they have my damn sympathy! I can’t help it; I have plenty of it to go around! Of course I’m opposed to religious persecution, to the killing of innocents, the destruction of culture! That is why I stand with Palestine in the first place! I hate violence, that’s why I joined a strictly defensive branch of the army, and don’t believe in the death penalty even for “really bad crimes" because I know how easily people can manipulate the public opinion against people who’ve committed “really bad crimes” for real this time I promise guys this time. And you don’t have to believe me, you can still tell me to kill myself and that I’m a murderer and I won’t begrudge you for that either.

We are currently seeing an unprecedented rise in antisemitism globally. Indeed, Israel only exists because of antisemitism in countless other nations across millenia. Even the US, Israel’s greatest ally, has deeply embedded antisemitic roots. Unless every other major country in the world immediately and aggressively begins to tackle their own antisemitism within their own borders, something akin to Israel will continue to exist, which in turn makes us responsible for the Palestinian Genocide.

Until that is addressed, we’re left with the original fact: Israel as it exists is a settler-colonial state, built on stolen land amidst an on-going genocide, and because Israel’s military is conscripted, that makes even ordinary civilians complicit in the war crimes of their armed forces.

American civilians cannot allow this violence to continue. We must reject genocidal rhetoric and demand that we return indigenous land not only to Palestine, but all Indigenous Peoples everywhere.

Lacking a punchy ending to this tangent, I’ll leave a list of links to various organizations that you can support in this time.

UNRWA United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East. Currently on the ground in Gaza attempting to deliver humanitarian aid despite bombings.

Jewish Voices for Peace - This was one of the groups who marched on Capitol Hill declaring “Not in our name.” A civil rights’ group.

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund - They specialize in emergency medical care, training surgeons, and even sending children to the US for otherwise inaccessible treatment.

Decolonize Palestine - A basic resource to start with if you want to learn more about why this violence is inextricable from colonialism.

#free palestine #long post

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crucipuzzled · 2 years

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About Psychiatry stuff in SPYxFAMILY. Part 1

Part 2 here / Part 3 here / Part 4 here

I'm a dumb and I just realized that ch. 29 of the manga will be animated, since Fiona appears for the 1st time in that chapter and she's in the key visual for the 2nd cour.

I'm aware this isn't the first analysis made on this chapter but so far I haven't seen anyone from the Psy world speaking about this. I'm a Clinical Psychologist grounded on Freudian-Lacanian Psychoanalitic theory and I think I can share some knowledge over several aspects of Psychiatry that are depicted in the manga. I've worked with Psychiatrists in the past, albeit for a short amount of time, in a public healthcare institution, so I have a notion of what Psychiatrists do in a public setting like a Hospital.

If there's a Psychiatrist out there who wants to refute this analysis, PLEASE DO SO. I'm more than pleased to learn and have a nice debate.

This is one of the most hilarious chapters in the whole SxF series, so if you don't want the fun to be spoiled, please skip this post!

Let's begin. 1. Working in a Hospital

I'm not sure if this is universal, as healthcare systems around the world differ in several aspects, but the consensus is that a Hospital, which is a public healthcare institution, is specialized in the treatment of the most complex diseases.

In Psychiatry, this usually means dealing with psychosis, drug intoxication, major depressive episodes with suicide attempts and serious personality disorders. Most of these conditions require hospitalization, as the risk of giving just ambulatory care is not enough to guarantee the patient's safety or that of the others's.

There are Hospitals that provide ambulatory care though. Again, it varies from where in the world you are. In my country (Chile) you usually go to the Hospital when your life is at risk, but if you are suffering from a less serious condition (for example, dealing with panic attacks), you'll be transferred to a primary healthcare institution. Unless you live in a rural area.

Indeed, working in a healthcare institution means gaining access to any patient's clinical record. But for the objective of Operation Strix, and Loid being a Psychiatrist, I don't think that's of much use, for reasons that I'll cover in Point 3.

2. Specialty in Psychiatry

Psychiatry has several subspecialties, like any other healthcare career. You have Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Adult Psychiatry (I believe these two are mandatory to become a Psychiatrist but I can't say it for sure), Addictions, Forensics, Emergencies... Loid said that he wants to help people affected by the war, veterans specially, so it's a polite guess to say that he's an Adult Psychiatrist. Then again, we have this panel:

The sand box is a diagnostic tool used for children. It's mostly used by Psychologists, as they have more time per session to analyze it. I'll cover the sand box in more detail in Part 4 of this series of analysis, but for now let's say that analyzing it consumes a lot of time that Psychiatrists, in a Hospital, usually don't have.

This panel suggests that Loid has worked with children before as a Psychiatrist, and we see him later in chapter 67 with a child (although it's not clear if the child is his patient), so here are another 2 polite guesses:

-Loid's a General Psychiatrist -Berlint General Hospital's Psychiatric Ward is understaffed and they put their Psychiatrists to do whatever is needed at the moment, regardless of their specialties. It sure doesn't look that poor of a Hospital to me, but who knows... My bet is option 1. Poor guy.

3. Donovan Desmond as a potential psychiatric patient

In the first chapter of the manga, Donovan is described as a hikikomori, meaning someone who withdraws from social interaction. This word also describes a psychopathological condition of japanese young lads that spend months, even years, holled up in their homes without interacting with anybody aside from their families (if they have). The word itself doesn't have a pathological connotation tough. In English, the closest concept to "hikikomori" as a psychpathological meaning would be Autism, which isn't equivalent at all. And, when a person is so reclused, we tend to pair it with paranoia, as it often leads to social withdrawal as well. The important thing here is, as you probably are thinking right now, the reason fo such decision. And this reason is always given by the symptoms. Paranoia is a type of psychosis in which a person suffers from delirium and hallucinations related to being endangered or threatened by something. Of course, a proof of reality is useless for these patients, as their perception of reality itself is disturbed. An UFO is watching over you at all times? I can't precisely prove that it's false, as I lack proof of the very existence of UFO, and even if I have it, the delirium would probably shift to attack me as I turn into a conspirator against the patient's truth.

Not that we clinicians waste time trying to do so, though. In these cases, the Psychiatrist kicks in and administers a dose of antipsychotic drugs. Psychotic paranoia often needs hospitalization and a strong compromise from the patient's family to constantly supervise him/her. After that, comes a long process of social rehab. A very characteristic feat of paranoid people is that THEY NEVER SEEK FOR PROFESSIONAL MENTAL HEALTH CARE HELP BY THEMSELVES. Paranoids often arrive to a Psychiatric Emergency Room dragged by a third party due to bizarre behaviour, self-aggression and/or attempts to hurt others.

There are people that is not psychotic and suffer from this kind of fear of pretty much everything as well, but it's hard to determine if they really aren't psychotics, as their reasons to recluse themselves strongly resemble a delirium. The key that helps to discern if it's a psychotic paranoia or not is finding the hole in which a patient allows himself to doubt. In paranoid psychosis there's absolute certainty, while in neurosis there is room for doubt.

These "neurotic paranoids", as we'll call them for now (it doesn't exist as a nosograhical entity anywhere; please don't waste your time looking it up in the DSM xD), tend to abandon therapy pretty soon, as they fight for sticking with their motives to recluse themselves. They don't want to realize what drive them to behave like that. Patients suffering from obsessions will probably act this way, as well as some hypochondriac and anorexic patients. Bear in mind that this is not a norm; everything depends on the symptoms.

All of this begs the question: Would Donovan Desmond ever need Psychiatric help from Dr. Loid Forger?

His interaction with Loid in chapter 38 suggests that he's not reclusive for a mental condition, but he does have a certain level of "neurotic paranoia", as he can't bring himself to really trust any other person much. If nobody is truly sympathetic to each other, they could pose a threat at any moment, right? Since he's clearly not psychotic, because he can hold an interaction with Loid in the same shared reality (not a dellirium, I mean), one can safely assume that he does trust someone, at least one single person. When a psychotic person suffers from paranoia, there's not a single hole in their life that is not filled with suspicions of others being dangerous. This isn't the case for Donovan.

We see him walking with a lot of guards, so he must trusts them. And he seems to be closer to Demetrius as he goes with him to the Imperial Scholar get-togethers, so that also counts. He even takes a detour to meet Damian. Seems like he can trust his family members, and that alone could be a measure of love, albeit in a really weird scale.

Tsundere? That aside, given the social status of the Desmonds, if they ever need psychiatric help, they probably would consult a private clinic instead of going to a public hospital. Unless they find themselves in a reeeeaaaally desperate situation. So, the answer is no... for the most part. Good try, though, Twilight.

I'll cover more stuff in the next part. This one turned out unexpectedly long. It's been fun ruining the fun for those who don't know about mental health though.

#spy x family #spy x family manga #psychiatry #analysis #This is what happens when I don't have a job

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Turbotax is blitzing Congress for the right to tax YOU

Every year, Americans spend billions on tax prep services, paying a heavily concentrated industry of giant, wildly profitable firms to send the IRS information it already has. Despite the fact that most other rich countries have a far more efficient process, many Americans believe that adopting this process here is either impossible, immoral, or both.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/20/turbotaxed/#counter-intuit

That puts tax preparation in the same bucket as other forms of weird American exceptionalism — like the belief that we’re too untrustworthy to have universal healthcare, or that we’re so violent that we must all have assault rifles to protect ourselves from one another.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with how they do it in, say, the UK, here’s how it works: your employer submits all of your paystubs to the tax authorities; likewise the custodians of your pension and other people who send you money. The tax authority also knows about your major deductions, like your kids or other dependents.

The tax authority uses this information to fill in a tax return for you and they mail it to you. It’s simple and easy to understand. If they missed some information, or if your tax status has changed, or if you’ve got new deductions, you can amend this return — or throw it away and start over by yourself or with a tax professional.

For the vast majority of Britons, filing their tax returns takes a few minutes once a year, and it’s free. For the minority who don’t fit the standard form, the system works like it does in the US — you either tackle it alone, or do it with professional help.

The IRS could easily do the same thing. Even in a world where many of us are being “casualized” and have income coming in as independent contractors, the IRS knows about it, thanks to the 1099 form. Sure, the IRS might make mistakes, and if you’re worried about that, you can either manually review the precompleted return or pay someone to do it.

It’s a no-brainer, or it would be — if it wasn’t for decades of lobbying by the massively concentrated tax-prep industry — wildly profitable corporate giants like HR Block and Intuit, the parent company of Turbotax, who spent 20 years lobbying congress, spending millions to ensure that Americans would have to pay the Turbotax tax in order to pay their income tax.

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free

The tax-prep industry couldn’t have done this on their own — their astroturf campaigns were joined by a grassroots of useful idiots, betwetters like Grover Norquist and his acolytes, who openly demand that tax preparation be as difficult and painful as possible, to drum up support for their campaign to “get the US government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

These extremists are joined by many independent tax-prep specialists, who are seemingly convinced that every taxpayer has 11 dependents, four different kinds of pension savings, and six all-cash side-hustles, two of them international. Some people do have complicated taxes — as a writer with income from all over the world, I’m one of them — but most people don’t.

The point of getting the IRS to send you pre-populated tax returns isn’t to deny you the opportunity to pay excellent, knowledgeable tax-prep specialists if you need them — it’s to spare most of us from the needless expense of paying Intuit and HR Block to perform the rote form-filling by which the rake in billions in profits.

In reality, the campaign to defund the IRS isn’t — and will never be — about helping “the little guy.” As Propublica’s IRS Files demonstrate, the defunded, shriveled IRS is a billionaire’s plaything, which is why America’s top 400 earners pay less tax than you do:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/13/taxes-are-for-the-little-people/#leona-helmsley-2022

The commonsense utility of the IRS supplying you with prepopulated returns is so obvious that the tax-prep industry has had to really work to hold it at bay. The most successful scam was Freefile, a program cooked up by the tax-prep cartel that claimed it would provide free tax-prep to low-income Americans.

Freefile was a literal fraud: Intuit and its co-monopolists used a raft of deceptive “dark patterns” to trick people — students, veterans, retirees, and the poorest among us — into paying for services that they were entitled to use for free. Almost no one managed to find and use the Freefile offerings they’d hidden in a locked filing cabinet in a disused subbasement behind a sign reading “Beward Of the Leopard.”

This was so obviously crooked that the companies were eventually forced to give it up, but they weren’t done — their eye-watering, voluminous terms of service contained buried binding arbitration clauses that prohibited the people they ripped off from suing them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/24/uber-for-arbitration/#nibbled-to-death-by-ducks

Despite — or, more realistically, because of — the rising fury at the tax-prep industry’s years of unchecked corruption, Intuit has actually increased its lobbying spending this year: Open Secrets reports that in 2022, Intuit showered lawmakers with a record $3.5m:

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/02/turbotax-parent-company-intuit-is-pouring-more-money-than-ever-into-lobbying-amid-push-for-free-government-run-tax-filing/

Their target? The $15m that the Inflation Reduction Act allocated to the Treasury Department to explore free tax filing. Intuit’s line is that this would be “a waste of taxpayer money” and a “conflict of interest” — the same tired boomer nonsense that Norquist has been shoveling since the Reagan administration. Once again, the proposal isn’t to ban Intuit from offering tax prep services — it’s to create a public option that lets people freely choose to pay for tax prep if they think they need it. It’s a breathtaking act of paternalism to claim that we’re all sheeple, too stupid to spot the IRS’s greedy attacks on our pocketbooks.

Here’s a choice quote from Intuit: “Creating a government run tax preparation program would be a waste of taxpayer dollars and further disenfranchise low income taxpayers. A direct to IRS tax prep system is a multi-billion dollar solution looking for a problem.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/turbotax-free-tax-filing-biden-inflation-reduction-act-hr-block-2023-1

Unsaid: the tax prep industry rakes in billions of dollars from American taxpayers every single year. The $44.8m the cartel has spent lobbying against free filing since 1998 is a fantastic investment — for them. The dividends they reap from it come out of all of our pockets.

Another bargain? Hiring ex-government officials to work for Intuit, lobbying their former colleagues:

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/lobbyists?cycle=2022&id=D000026667&t0-Revolving+Door+Profiles=Revolving+Door+Profiles

Or, as Senator Elizabeth Warren bluntly put it, “adroit influence peddling”:

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/06/members-of-congress-call-for-an-investigation-of-intuits-lobbying-practices-amid-mounting-turbotax-controversies/

The neoliberal economists’ theory of regulatory capture is a kind of helpless nihilism, grounded in the Public Choice Theory doctrine that says that regulators will always be captured, so we should just get rid of regulators or make them as weak as possible, so they won’t become cordyceps-ridden puppets of the industries they oversee:

https://doctorow.medium.com/regulatory-capture-59b2013e2526

But capture isn’t inevitable. Sure, if you have a referee that’s weaker than the teams, you’ll never get a fair game — nevermind what happens when the ref either used to work for one of the teams or is sure of a cushy job with them when the season’s over. If you want a small government, you need small corporations — need to block the anticompetitive mergers and predatory conduct that lets companies grow so large that they can fit their regulators into the little change pocket in their blue-jeans.

https://doctorow.medium.com/small-government-fd5870a9462e

Anyone who lived through witchhunts, torture and mass surveillance after 9/11 has good reason to want their government small enough to be accountable — but a doctrine of small governments and giant corporations is a plutocrat’s charter — a recipe for regulatory capture so grotesque it is indistinguishable from farce.

[Image ID: An ogrish, tophatted, cigar-chomping giant holds the US Capitol building aloft contemptuously, pinched between the thumb and forefinger of a white-gloved hand. He stands at a podium bearing the Turbotax checkmark logo, yanking a lever in the form of a golden dollar-sign. He stands before a IRS 1040 tax form.]

intuit, turbotax, irs, taxes, death and taxes, corruption, monopoly, freefile, grover norquist, regulatory capture,

#pluralistic #intuit #turbotax #irs #taxes #death and taxes #corruption #monopoly #freefile #grover norquist #regulatory capture

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stillwintering · 5 months

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All's Fair in Love and Politics (a modern Nessian AU - where Rhys is running for president)

Summary: In the ruthless arena of politics, victory demands risking everything, even one's own heart. Rhysand has his eyes on the presidency. Feyre convinces her estranged sister, Nesta, to join the political campaign. Nesta and Cassian find themselves forging an unexpected bond as the campaign intensifies. But can their budding romance survive the treacherous waters of modern political warfare?

Read on AO3 / Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5

CW for this chapter: discussions of parental death

Chapter 6

"Balthazar Alvarez, ma'am," A fresh-faced young man introduced himself to Nesta. He was tall and lanky, with tanned skin and dark hair. His eyes were wide as he shook Nesta's hand. "Thank you for coming."

Cassian clasped the young man by his shoulders, smiling at him fondly. "Baz here has been recruiting volunteers for us in Iowa."

"Ms. Archeron," Baz said, looking at her nervously. "Would you like to go over the information packets that we'll be sending out to the local activists?"

"Please," she said. "Call me Nesta." She accepted the open laptop he handed her.

Baz nodded automatically. "Yes, ma'am."

"The voters in Iowa don't really know anything about the Congressman except that he's a Starborn," Nesta said, her eyes scanning through the screen. "We need to lead with the basic -- his biography, his values. The Democratic base needs to connect with his story first. What do you know about Rhysand, Baz?"

The young man shifted on his feet. "The Congressman is a decorated military veteran," Baz started. "He believes in immigration reform, pro-choice, universal healthcare, more stringent gun laws -- "

Nesta held up a hand. "Anyone can read about where Rhys stands on the issues by looking up his Wikipedia page," she stopped him. "But what do you know about him as a person?"

"Well, I've never met him in person, ma'am," Baz replied sheepishly.

Nesta looked the young man up and down. He wore an ill-fitting blue dress shirt, like something he bought in a department store without trying on different sizes. "Did you just graduate college, Baz?" she asked.

"This spring, ma'am," Baz confirmed. "I majored in political science at the University of Chicago."

"You could have worked for any number of political campaigns this cycle. There are many more established candidates," Nesta continued. "So why did you choose Rhysand Starborn?"

Baz considered and then replied, "Because the Congressman seems like he wants to do something new. He seems like someone who will lead with integrity. I think he's in politics for the right reasons, like he actually has principles."

"Good," Nesta approved. "That's what we need to communicate. When you're meeting with the local activists, start with that." She hands back the laptop.

Cassian grinned. "This is why we need you out here," he said. "Let's get started."

---

Over the afternoon, Nesta met with more volunteers and staffers. They discussed field strategy and planned campaign events through the summer and fall. Nesta asked for a litany of changes to canvassing materials and campaign literature. After the initial nervousness wore off, Baz demonstrated himself to be a capable and sharp operative.

Cassian took a late meeting with the leadership of the Iowa Democratic Party and left Nesta in charge of the field office. She held a volunteer training session over takeout. After she sent everyone home after dinner and Cassian was nowhere to be seen, Nesta called a taxi to take her back to the hotel.

It was dark when Nesta opened the door to her hotel room. The room's stillness enveloped her as she kicked off her heels and laid down in bed. She was tired from talking all day and meeting new people. She wanted to go to sleep early but found that she was restless. Finally, Nesta decided that she needed to move her body after, essentially, sitting all day. She fished her running gear out of her bag, smiling to herself that at least her best friends would be happy that she was training.

There was a paved trail along the Des Moines River, just a few blocks down the road from the hotel. The city had settled down for the evening. Storefronts were closed, and the roads were vacant. It was peaceful as she headed down towards the lit path along the riverfront, launching her body into movement.

Nesta had only run a mile when she started to feel out of breath. She frowned as she slowed to a walk, panting heavily and feeling out of shape. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots a tall man running on an adjacent trail. The long black hair was unmistakable.

"You couldn't sleep either?" Cassian called to her. His pace was brisque as he made the turn to meet her.

Nesta felt her face flush, even though she was already red from the exercise. "Do you always run at night?" she asked him instead.

Cassian's voice was steady, betraying no hint of fatigue. "I try to make time for as many workouts as I can," he answered.

"Of course you do," Nesta muttered.

Cassian slowed to jog in place near her. He was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, his muscles subtly flexed with each movement. He cocked his head towards the path leading to a bridge in the distance. "Mind if I join you?" he asked.

"I'll only slow you down," she said quickly.

Cassian smiled. "It's not a problem."

"Really," Nesta's heart was pounding. "You should go ahead."

"Come on, Nes," he was still smiling, but his eyes were issuing a challenge. "I won't show you up."

Nesta looked down the trail towards the lights from the bridge sparkling in the river water. It must only be a mile away. She knew continuing the run would be grueling, but she also couldn't resist the tacit challenge.

"Don't call me that," Nesta said as she propelled herself forward.

Cassian fell in step beside her, a soft chuckle escaping him as they ran side by side. Nesta willed herself to put one foot ahead of the other, even though every muscle in her body screamed in protest. She tried to remember the last time she had a real cardio workout -- it must have been months ago. The half-marathon she had committed to suddenly felt daunting.

Cassian didn't try to overtake her, allowing her to set the pace for both of them. Nesta did not falter. She couldn't let him know how utterly unprepared she was for this run. When they finally reached the bridge, Nesta felt like she was about to collapse.

"We can walk back to the hotel," Cassian offered.

Nesta's heart pounded in her ears, her body aching and roaring with exertion. Nesta shook her head. She didn't want him to have the satisfaction of seeing her weak and defeated from a measly two-mile run. She turned back the way they'd come.

Cassian followed wordlessly and matched her pace again. She could see a smirk on the edges of her vision. It irritated her, but it was also the push she needed to return to the trailhead. Only then did Nesta allow herself to bend over, bracing her hands over her knees, panting heavily. She felt like she was going to pass out, having pushed her body to its limits.

"Good run," Cassian commented, stopping beside her. He didn't even break a sweat -- the bastard.

Nesta flipped him off in reply.

Cassian chuckled and pushed a water bottle into her hand. "Drink up, sweetheart," he said.

She gave him a scathing glare that would have cut down a lesser man. But she was too out of breath to form words. She took his water bottle, tipped it back, and drained the whole thing.

He watched her throat work as she drank. "You're crossing your arms too much when you run," Cassian said, glancing away. "It tires you out faster."

"And you're some kind of running expert?" Nesta choked out, still breathless.

"I am actually," he looked back at her with a cocky grin. "We could train together, if you want."

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and returned the empty bottle. "No thanks," she replied, almost reflexively.

Nesta started back towards the hotel.

---

Cassian had the undeniable sense that he had been dismissed. But the trouble was that they were staying at the same hotel, so he trailed behind her across the street. He could tell Nesta had pushed herself to finish that run -- that unyielding determination, it was captivating.

"How did the volunteer meeting go?" Cassian asked as he fell back into step beside Nesta.

"Fine," she replied, her breathing still ragged.

Cassian forced himself to keep his eyes ahead, not daring his gaze to linger over Nesta's body. She was clad in form-fitting leggings and a sleek racerback top, her skin glowing with a warm flush and her chest rising and falling rapidly from the run. The sight almost threatened to overwhelm him.

They walked in silence for a whole city block.

"I came back after my meeting," Cassian finally said, clearing his throat. "But the office was shut."

"Was there something you needed?"

"Not really," Cassian replied, trying to explain. "I wanted to check whether you had a ride. Since I took the truck."

"I called a taxi."

They reached the entrance of the hotel, where Nesta's breathing had become more even, though her cheeks still bore a rosy glow. Her hair shimmered like burnished gold under the artificial lights. A single drop of sweat traced a path from her neck down to her chest, disappearing beneath the neckline of her tank top. Cassian swallowed, feeling a rush of warmth despite the cool night air.

"Is there anything else?" she asked, a hint of impatience in her voice.

Cassian, momentarily lost for words, suggested, "You should stretch now or else you'll be extra sore tomorrow." He instinctively moved into his post-workout routine.

Nesta seemed to hesitate, her eyes darting towards the hotel lobby before settling back on him. She then gracefully sunk into a deep lunge, mirroring his movements. Cassian silently led her through a sequence of stretches.

"Happy?" she asked as they wrapped up.

Cassian only grinned. "You'll thank me tomorrow."

"I doubt that," Nesta said, turning on her heels and walking into the lobby.

Cassian trailed behind her again. They reached the elevator bay, where Nesta stepped into an already waiting elevator. She looked back at him, a question in her eyes, "Which floor?"

Cassian stood frozen at the threshold. The confined space of the elevator suddenly struck him as dangerously intimate. He felt an urge to close the gap between the two of them.

"I'll take the stairs," he quickly declared.

"Show off," Nesta retorted as the elevator doors closed, separating them.

Cassian turned towards the stairwell with his heart threatening to leap out of his chest.

---

The following day, Nesta felt aching throughout her body. She groaned as she climbed into the truck for their trip to Cedar Rapids. Cassian smirked at her knowingly but held his tongue.

They quickly settled into a driving routine: Cassian got them drinks and snacks, and then Nesta worked on her laptop while he drove. Cassian let Nesta pick the music. She liked that Cassian never seemed to mind the silence between them -- he mostly left her to her work, keeping the truck steady.

It wasn't until halfway through the drive, when Nesta shut her laptop, that Cassian spoke up, "Have you ever been to this part of Iowa before?"

Nesta stowed her laptop away. "Only once, as a child," she said, a tad wistful. Nesta watched the endless fields of young corn stretched out around them.

"Really?" Cassian reached to turn down the music.

"I must have just finished the fifth grade. Feyre was barely starting school," Nesta replied, letting the memory flood through her.

"What brought you all out here?" Cassian asked, his eyes sparked with curiosity.

Nesta leaned towards the passenger side window, taking in the monotonous green landscape under the vast, indifferent sky. Cassian's presence beside her was warm and comforting. "That summer, our father, in a rare moment of whimsy, decided to take us all on a cross-country road trip from Virginia to California," Nesta began, voice soft and contemplative. "It was a few years before our mother's passing. She despised road trips; I've never understood why she came. And the three of us -- Feyre, Elain, and I -- were crammed in the backseat, squabbling and bickering nonstop for ten days. These cornfields... they haven't changed a bit."

Cassian nodded, his voice tender, "Must've been quite a trip, with three kids in tow."

Turning towards him, Nesta's eyes held something like a flicker of old pain. "Did Feyre ever speak to you about how our mother died?"

"Feyre mentioned it was cancer," Cassian replied quietly. "And that she was too young to remember much."

The truck continued its steady course, carving through the expanse of the blue sky and green fields. Nesta fell silent for a moment. She didn't know why she had revealed so much to him. Except, Nesta knew it wasn't cancer that took their mother, not really.

"Feyre was..." Nesta stopped herself, not sure how to continue.

Cassian gave her an encouraging smile. "Your mother, what was she like?" he asked, his voice a whisper against the backdrop of the road's hum.

Nesta sighed, a sound filled with memory and loss. "She was... complicated. Strong in her own way, yet fragile towards the end," Nesta said. She hadn't talked about her mother in so long that the words were tumbling out of her.

"Our parents did not have a happy marriage, you see, so our mother, she had poured all her energy into us. She was very demanding..." Nesta continued. "Expected nothing less than perfection. We went to the best schools, had the best tutors. But it was never enough. Especially after the financial crisis, our father lost everything, and all his businesses folded. We were -- we lost our house, I think that was the last straw. She died shortly after."

"I'm sorry, Nesta," Cassian glanced at her with empathy etched on his face. "Losing a parent when you were so young, that's a lot for anyone to handle."

Nesta scanned the horizon in the distance. She suddenly felt like that little girl in the backseat of her family's car, looking out at a world too big and too confusing to understand.

Nesta had often found herself thinking about that year when her mother died. It was as if their mother's illness, her passing, it was a fulcrum on which the sisters' lives were balanced. After she was gone, everything tilted, and Nesta felt like she had been scattered, trying to find her footing in a world that was off-kilter ever since.

"And what was your family like?" Nesta looked away from the empty landscape outside.

"I never knew my parents," Cassian replied, frowning. "My mother gave me up when I was a baby. I grew up being passed from one foster home to another. In a way, I had many families, or maybe none at all."

Nesta's eyes widened. "I'm sorry. I had no idea," she said. "Did you ever want to find your birth mother?"

"I tried when I was old enough," Cassian said, his voice detached. "But she had died shortly after giving birth to me -- in a car accident. From what I could piece together... my birth father was an alcoholic. I think maybe that's why she had given me up. He was driving drunk when they crashed into a highway barrier at night."

"I'm so sorry," Nesta repeated, not sure what else she could say. "It must have been a difficult childhood."

"I turned out okay," Cassian shrugged, turning slightly to give her a reassuring smirk. "The Starborns sort of took me in during college."

Nesta took a moment to process the information. She watched Cassian's right hand drop to sit on top of the gear shift. "Do you ever think about what life would've been like if things had been different? If your mother hadn't..." Her voice trailed off, not needing to complete the question.

Cassian turned to her, his eyes a storm of gold and green. "All the time," he replied. "I wonder who we would have been, and the choices we would have made. Don't you?"

Nesta nodded, finding her throat dry. Unable to speak, she only reached over and rested her hand on top of his. Her hands looked so small and delicate against his. Cassian went wholly still. His other hand clutched the steering wheel, and his eyes remained straight ahead as if afraid to look down at their joined hands.

"Thank you," Nesta finally said, taking her hand back and letting the soft silence envelop them once again for the remainder of the trip.

#fanfic #a court of silver flames #a court of thorns and roses #acosf #acotar #cassian #nessian #nesta #nesta archeron #nesta x cassian #all's fair in love and politics #acotar fanfiction #rhysand #feyre archeron #acomaf #acowar #modern au #political au

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thepro-lifemovement · 1 year

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Pro-abortion activists fight for abortion throughout pregnancy for any reason—no exceptions. Their fundamental argument centers on women’s health.

But stunning research shows this concern is all smoke and mirrors.

Pro-abortion activists have long tried to claim that abortion is safer than childbirth. For years they’ve touted manipulated numbers, trying in vain to bolster this myth. We’ve always known those statistics were bogus, and a study by Dr. Priscilla Coleman and Dr. David Reardon reveals abortion is much more dangerous to women than giving birth. And the results are sadly even more devastating to women’s health than even I had anticipated.

First, let me vouch for the authors of this research. I know them both to be solid individuals with a reputation for thoroughness. I met Dr. Coleman in Santiago, Chile where we lectured at their largest university. We again shared an academic podium in Quito, Ecuador the following year.

Second, allow me to explain why this study is so important. It’s compelling because of its unmatched scope:

The study includes a large number of women—nearly one-half-million—experiencing first-time pregnancies.

The medical records are profoundly reliable because the data was compiled from Danish government sources including fertility records of births and stillbirths, the national abortion registry and cause of death registry.

The study covers an extensive ten-year time period, providing comprehensive long-term data.

It analyzes both early and late-term abortion compared to childbirth.

In other words, this isn’t a biased study with a relatively small sample size produced to cater to pro-abortion activists—or any side for that matter. This research was conducted at the national level, over the course of a decade, providing substantial credibility, a comprehensive level of detail, as well as earning publication in respected medical journals. The reliability has been substantiated, which is why the results are even more troubling.

When it comes to which is safer—abortion or childbirth—the results speak loudly and clearly:

During the first six months after an early abortion (12 weeks or less), a woman has double the risk of death compared to giving birth.

During the first year following a late abortion (after 12 weeks) a woman has over three times the risk of death compared to giving birth.

Here’s a link to the entire study if you’d like to read it.

Pro-abortion activists prey on the fear of Americans by perpetuating the myth that if Roe v. Wade is reversed, women will suffer horrific back-alley abortions and tragic deaths. The reality is that under legalized abortion, women are being killed on a much larger scale.

Remember when we heard the news that Planned Parenthood is responsible for 24-year-old Tonya Reaves’ death following a botched abortion. Reports showed that a devastating five-and-a-half hours passed between the time of her abortion and her transport to a local hospital.

There’s no record that a 911 call was placed by Planned Parenthood. The autopsy report indicated that her injuries were survivable if she had received proper emergency care in a timely manner. The only difference between her death and a back-alley abortion death is that Ms. Reaves’ abortion was sanctioned by the US Supreme Court, giving her a false sense of security that the procedure was safe.

Now Tonya’s one-year-old son will grow up without a mother. Sadly, there have been additional victims after Tonya’s death. And don’t forget the Gosnell “house of horrors.”

Planned Parenthood and other abortion facilities continue to lure young women under the false premise that they perform “women’s healthcare services.” Abortion isn’t healthcare. It’s killing. In fact, they’re an industry of death—killing unborn babies and exposing their mothers to a staggering increased risk of death. Let’s not let this grave injustice continue. Share this with those you know and take a stand.

You now have compelling proof that abortion is not safer than childbirth

#maternal mortality rate #abortion hurts women #abortion harms women #prolife #pro life #pro-life #anti abortion #abortion #pro women #anti planned parenthood #Pp #planned parenthood #sources #studies #life news #prolife news

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beardedmrbean · 7 months

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The Left: "I'm pro choice. It's her body her choice. No uterus no opinion.

Also the Left: "Justin Timberlake forcing Britney Spears to have an abortion was actually a good thing, because it shows us how wonderful abortion is because it can benefit men and help them stop their girlfriends from ruining his career with her pregnancy. Remember this fellas next time you vote."

(please do not attempt to read an opinion on the subject of abortion in my response here, it's not something I discuss publicly on here, because I don't want to be accused of pissing on the poor)

Wait what?

In excerpts of her upcoming memoir, shared by People, Britney Spears wrote that she became pregnant with Justin Timberlake’s baby and had an abortion because he wasn’t ready to become a father.

“Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young,” Spears writes in her book, according to People. "If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father."

“To this day,” Spears continues, “it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life."

Spears’ statements underscore the benefits that male partners receive from having access to abortion care — an often overlooked aspect of reproductive health in light of Roe v. Wade’s downfall last year that, if ignored in society and politics alike, perpetuates the idea that abortion is solely a women’s issue.

“Abortion is a highly stigmatized form of healthcare, and women almost always bear the brunt of the stigma and shame around abortion,” said Bethany Everett, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Utah. “Yet, there are likely many people, including male partners, who don’t want to become parents or have another child, who also benefit from abortion access — benefits that are rarely recognized by the broader public or policy makers.”

Everett, who studies the social and political implications of reproductive health, said Spears' claim that Timberlake did not want to become a parent suggests he was aware that a child could “derail his career,” a reality that “men rarely publicly acknowledge” but is critical to recognize in a post-Roe world.

......

No uterus no opinion,

I suppose the rules change depending on if the guy is for or against the abortion because why wouldn't they.

...................

Andréa Becker, a medical sociologist and postdoctoral research fellow with the University of California San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health program, said this example is “consistent with the literature,” in that “men don’t necessarily have to come forward and tell their abortion stories if they don’t want to, even though it would benefit them immensely.”

This pattern is due in part to a lack of research analyzing how access to abortion impacts male partners, a shortfall that Becker said “reinforces the way we talk about birth control, condom use and pregnancy avoidance as a woman’s responsibility and issue.”

**I usually see two to tango from the pro life side and man needs to control himself from the pro choice side so not sure where they get this from, they must know different people I guess**

“We just forget about the sperm involved in creating a pregnancy,” Becker said.

As a result, stigmas associated with abortion disproportionately impact women.

“Men are rarely acknowledged as beneficiaries from abortion access so it is much easier for them to avoid the stigma and shame around abortion if they don’t think it’s something that impacts them personally,” Everett said.

“When men don’t speak up, the burden of having to make decisions about unplanned pregnancies and access to abortion falls exclusively on women — and that’s an equity issue,” said Dr. Brian Nguyen, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. Nguyen runs a research group called the EMERGE Lab that conducts studies aimed at ensuring men recognize their responsibility in women’s reproductive health and gender equity.

While questions still abound about what role male partners should have in the abortion landscape, it’s important to recognize the general lack of knowledge about abortion in the U.S., particularly among some men, Becker said. Consequently, research shows many policy decisions now in place threaten the lives of women and girls who would benefit from abortion care, especially for people of color, migrants, people with disabilities, and those living on low incomes or in rural areas.

"Men do have a place in advocating for reproductive rights,” Everett said. “They can donate to abortion funds and reproductive health care organizations, and, importantly, with the consent of their partners, acknowledge how abortion access has benefited them.”

There it is, which strangely doesn't cover JT pressuring Brittney into having an abortion at all,

I hate double standards, unless they benefit me......(joke)

Make up your mind people, do men have a say or not?

#anonymous #this is so confusing

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widthofmytongue · 1 year

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The other night, ahead of Purim, I had some drinks with colleagues. Later in the evening, a conversation with one of them turned to politics. Obviously. I asked her why she’s not a member of a union, and she said pretty bluntly ‘well, I’m a lot more right wing than you’. In the spirit of the mitzvah to drink until unable to distinguish between Mordechai and Haman, friend and foe, I decided to hold back my impulse to hiss, and simply asked her ‘in what ways?’

In truth, she and I agreed on most basic political points. The Tories are abusive, selfish pricks; Labour is wet and stands for nothing; privatisation has all but destroyed Britain; everyone deserves basic necessities like food, housing, even education; we have more in common with each other and with the homeless than we ever will with either Charles III or our bosses. She was also very supportive (far more so than most Brits I meet) of my experiences of antisemitism and transphobia.

Here’s where her right leanings shone through:

1) She obviously believes in meritocracy; those who are best suited to specific tasks deserve recognition. But then this is hardly an alien sentiment on the left, is it?

2) She believes hierarchies are necessary for systems to function; certain people are required to take responsibility for the group, and they supposedly must therefore be above the others. This directly contradicted something she said earlier, that we should all take more responsibility for our shared situation, with which I agreed, but she considered a right wing view. I also gave peer-review as an example of a fully functional non-hierarchical system, which she essentially ignored. An odd response given we work at a university.

3) She believes ‘socialism has never worked’. When I responded to this by saying ‘it’s working right now’ and pointed out that Cuba is thriving and has passed the most progressive LGBT and family rights legislation to date, and that China is the most populace country on earth with the highest GPD and a sitting communist party, she said she’s not informed enough about either of those, ‘but Nordic countries...’ which I interrupted, and we agreed that Nordic countries are not socialist, nor especially good examples of capitalism. We also agreed that capitalism isn’t very viable in the long term, and I made the point that any criticisms of socialism can be made tenfold of capitalism, plus dozens more condemnable. So I think this is just about a fundamental misunderstanding of what ‘socialism’ even refers to, resultant of hegemonic propaganda?

4) She believes issues like transphobia and antisemitism (etc.) are problems on ‘both sides’. Now, I agree with this, but what I said was, the difference is that such prejudice or hate is a betrayal of leftist principles, whereas the same prejudice and hate actually props up many - if not all - right wing values.

One of our main talking points was my assertion that things like the NHS or Right To Buy council housing or tuition fees or whatever are really a question of priorities. I said that there are some things everyone deserves: healthcare, housing, food, power, education, transport, and we should prioritise them, especially as it’s entirely within our (or the state’s) capacity to provide these things. She agreed. However, she seemed stuck on the idea that the government should be expected to provide food. I am entirely unclear on why, but when I mentioned that supermarkets throw away enormous quantities of food she agreed it was despicable. I suggested that such food waste could be legislated against and/or wasted food could be claimed by local authorities to redistribute to those in need, but she seemed dubious. She did agree that local food programmes would be possible, though, yet she called this ‘traditional conservatism’, relating it to some imagined precept of charity. Now I don’t know what kind of topsy-turvy Bizarro world conservatism invests in practical charitable measures (rather than e.g. laundering the money of the rich), but I did assert: ‘when the Black Panthers were doing it, I don’t think anyone called it conservative’.

Anyway, my point about priorities was that strengthening the NHS or ensuring people are housed and fed are simply more important to me than the military, for example, so I suggested we could defund the military in order to re-allocate funding to more important services. Her response to this was, I kid you not, ‘well we can’t just tax the rich and assume that will solve all our problems’. I replied ‘well we could actually, and it would certainly go toward solving some problems, but my suggestion was to defund the military, not tax the rich.’

Now what can we learn from all this? As I said, I actually agree that we should all take more responsibility for our shared plight. The crucial difference, in my mind, is that the reason for doing that is so that we can all lessen one another’s loads, make things easier and more comfortable and even enjoyable for one another. C'est assez, languir en tutelle; l'égalité veut d'autres lois! But the conservative psyche has no desire to make things easier. Perhaps this is obvious from the constant overcomplication of adding obstacles in the form of strawmen. ‘Socialism has never worked!’ It has and it does, but who mentioned socialism? ‘We can’t just tax the rich!’ Yes we can, but who mentioned taxing the rich? ‘The money necessary to keep the NHS going is more than we have available!’ How much is being spent on the Coronation, and where is that money coming from? (spoiler: not ‘the rich’) ‘Helping the needy is a conservative value!’ Okay seriously WTF dude, but also, why then do conservatives stop leftists from doing it every time we try?

These aren’t just rehearsed talking points. These are symptoms of targeted hegemonic misinformation. No one is born conservative, one is made conservative, perhaps even by force. But to be conservative is also at odds with the fundamental experience of social beings; caring for one another, empathy. Part of right wing psychology is the desire to impose one’s own trauma on others, because after all one’s own experience, however brutal, must be the natural order.

Of course, dialectical materialism illuminates precisely the opposite. My experience and hers and indeed yours are not the same, and yet they are all true, even if they are at odds. The difference is that where the right wing practices an ongoing separation into ever smaller in-groups, our immortal science teaches us to understand, to reach out, to gather together and to unite. The revolutionary personality is driven by love, a desire to confront injustice, to heal the world. This is the final struggle, so let each stand in our place...

And tomorrow the International union shall be the human race!

#politics #c'est la chai #chag Purim sameach

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abigail-pent · 1 year

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a donation post, but not for me.

so. the graduate workers at the school I'm about to graduate from are on strike. they* have been on strike for 3 weeks at this point. this has happened because our university administration has shown up all year long to gaslight us at the bargaining table. we showed up, passed proposals, and they refused to pass us back any counteroffers. they spent most of this past year arguing with us about whether or not union members would be allowed to observe the bargaining process. they called in multiple mediators at multiple different times, trying to paint our union as acting unfairly/uncooperatively in this situation, and every time the impartial mediator was like "no this is fine, you should bargain with them, in fact what is your problem here exactly?"

this university is making a big performative deal out of DEI efforts, but pays its workers below the poverty line,** which of course means that graduate education here is effectively inaccessible for people who don't have family money. grad students I know have sold their plasma to make ends meet. and we are asking for many extremely reasonable things: like "don't cut our real wages"*** and "make adjustments to the childcare vouchers so people can actually use them" and "do better with protecting healthcare for trans grad workers and also with protections for survivors of sexual assault and harrassment"****. we are also asking for the creation of a nonviolent crisis response team. it's a lot of things, but a lot of them are pretty fucking basic, and we have gotten nowhere on any of that.

well, that's not entirely true. we have gotten to court. multiple times. because this administration hired fancy and expensive lawyers to sue us instead of bargaining. one of them actually said in court that they could not find more than one undergrad witness that says they have been harmed because we, their classroom instructors, are scaring them the same way a domestic abuser terrorizes their victim. literally the Larry Nasser sex abuse lawyers compared us to domestic abusers. we won one injunction and lost another (nonbinding) case.

and now, the university has decided to pay grad workers only $100 for the entire April paycheck. they saw my colleagues were starving and they said, instead of your regular salary that you already say can't cover rent, have $100. they are doing this not only to striking workers who didn't fill out this bullshit "attestation form" to say they are working, but also to workers who did fill out the form and are scabbing. also a ton of grad workers didn't even see this form because it went straight to the spam folder. this admin is extremely bad at their jobs, except when the job is to be cruel.

all of which is to say, if you have anything to spare, send it over to our union's strike fund. a bunch of folks, myself included, gave $101 just to say we paid a grad student more than the university did this month.

*not me, I'm on fellowship

** for a single-person household, as defined by the city where we live

*** nominal wage = real wage + inflation. inflation has been going absolutely hogwild lately, and admin is offering a small % wage increase that doesn't keep up with the inflation rate. and in fact is so small relative to inflation that it would erase the gains of our past 2 contract cycles.

**** our institution has had big, public problems with this recently

#academia #solidarity #like. is there also a ton of union drama? yes. do i loathe a lot of our union leadership? also yes #but we have people who are really struggling and suffering and all because they asked to please be able to eat and get housing

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nick-close · 10 months

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Do you think Dndads would have been noticeably different if the dads were Canadian as opposed to Americans from LA? Involving themes and points of tension in the plot, I mean.

I've thought about how preforming masculinity would have taken up a lot more narrative space if the dads were in the Southern US, and it dawned on me that I could ask if you may have noticed differences if the location was different as well, like how Frank might not have returned to work if universal healthcare was available.

Regardless, hope you're well

Damn, interesting question all around!! As a Canadian I’ll use my thinker here. It absolutely depends on the province they’re from (like if these fuckers were from Quebec???? Yikes lmao) but honestly as someone from small town BC, I’d say the main differences are just weather and sports. LA is pretty well known to be progressive and things right?

Pretty much everybody here is into hiking, skiing, biking, and the environment. (my town literally banned plastic bags.) and Darryl would probably be a hockey guy rather than a football guy. (Which, side note, there’s an entire genre of guy we call ‘hockey boys’- which is specifically for shitty teen boys into hockey. I pray the teens wouldn’t be that.) they’d probably have to go somewhere icy for the anchor arc, but hockey is very violent so grants stuff would be the same. Hockey is also kind of gay but that’s irrelevant.

Again, as a BC person- Glenn and Henry would probably be super similar. This is the stoner hippie area of Canada. But again, I think there’s just an added layer of politeness when approaching scenarios. And a lot more apologizing. I know it’s a stereotype but like, it’s true- we fucking hate stepping on each others toes. Ofc some Canadians suck but whatevs. I think Ron would be less assured in his attempts to be big and masculine- but overall pretty similar. Darryl the same- I just think he’d start more things off with ‘sorry to bother you but-‘

I also think it’s possible Ron’s mom could’ve gotten better medical attention with available healthcare- though I don’t know how that would’ve ended up for Ron. And to be real? I forgot Frank’s entire deal, so whatever you said is probably right. I live right by the border so really Canada and the US isn’t that different tho.

I think also they would know who bonhomme is and that would be cool. They could have an entire festival ep that would feel incredibly out of place, while they eat maple syrup on a stick they made in the snow. That would be awesome.

#singing MOII J’AIME SKIIER #and they would say pencil crayons #AND TOUQUE #sorry I just woke up I have no real input #ty for asking I hope ur well too!!#dndads #dungeons and daddies #asks

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kendrixtermina · 6 months

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Israel is the ultimate Omelas

I always thought that Israel was a perfect microcosm of the duality of man because on the one hand they had brutal oppression and on the other it had all those brilliant futurists and scientists, and a great healthcare system that had one of the best responses to covid.

It always baffled me how those two things could coexist in the same country. How those brutal stories of oppression and books of revolutionary thought could be coming from the same place.

Now I'm realizing that this kind of makes it the perfect tyranny.

In totalitarian states like the Nazi dictatorship or sovjet communist states, the population was severely oppressed. We associate the Nazis with blind obedience but actually there was an assassination attempt on him every few months or so, 42 in the 12 years he was Dictator. Bastard kept surviving due to bad luck, like a speech being cancelled due to rain or some intern moving the suitcase with the bomb. The Nazis demanded total obedience and would execute people for speaking French or drawing modern art.

Then there is the USA's corporate rule - not as bad as dictatorships maybe, but much of the population is dirt poor and know their options to vote for are largely corporate stooges. They don't have health care, decent education or consumer protection, so they have reasons to resent their taxes being used for war.

But Israel? The population lives in one of the most advanced utopias on earth! There is healthcare, luxury, culture, even relative freedom as long as you don't say "palestine". If you don't go in the westbank, you don't realize what's going on. The insidious trick of what segregation does is that it keeps the oppressed out of sight.

If you really want to be ignorant, you can probably manage to stay that way, comfortably, and live with all the same comforts as Swedes Canadians and Japanese.

The tyranny does not touch you unless you become a soldier or there happens to be a resistance attack near you, and even in those cases, the propaganda machine has comforting answers for you. Or at least, you're told that ending the tyranny means destroying your utopia - if it's you or a stranger, many people will pick themselves their lifestyle and their family.

Of course the big lie here, or the point where the analogy totally breaks down, is that doing away with appartment and giving equal citizen rights to everyone will not actually do away with the world-class universities and hospitals or even safety... indeed you'd be safer if you didn't keep producing angry traumatized people by butchering their families. It's a false dichotomy. A trap that presents the status quo as some lesser evil.

Euro-americans are fine without Jim Crow laws; Germans did not perish without conquerring Poland; Afrikaners are fine without apartheid - indeed the former disenfranchised people are still catching up economically exty years later. There should probably be affirmative action or reparations, once Palestinians get equal rights.

Nationalism is a myth cooked up as recent as the 19th century. Historically there have never been "pure, unmixed" peoples. People mix and trade and emigrate and copy each other, as long as people have been. You are going to have to live with people different from you & share with them. It's ok. The rest of us learned that lesson too (albeit imperfectly and often at a great cost; The EU is not clean-handed at all and is unforgivable fucking up in many ways as we speak) - No one needs ethnostates. No one is entitled to ethnostates - not Germans, not Euro-Americans, not Hindus, not the Japanese, not Israelis. Ethnostates do not make you safe. Moreover: Ethnostates are not practically feasible.

Look at the area slightly east of where I live and all the bloodshed that came from being unable to draw a line so that all Poles are on one side & all Germans on the other. And now there's still Poles living here and not even a real border anymore. If only we could have made the EU straight away instead of having all those wars, displacements & slaughter!

One day in the far future when there is peace ppl will look back at today and ask "why didn't they stop it sooner why all this waste?"

Eventually you're just gonna have to SHARE the god damn country. Like EVERY OTHER COUNTRY on earth that has multiple languages, religions and ethnic groups.

The Rwandans managed to make peace! And in that case there wasn't even a detachment of technology involved, ppl killed their neighbors (and those who refused to participate in the killing) with bare hands and machetes. But it's a prosperous, orderly country now. They opened many malls recetly & had a great response to covid.

It can be done. There's nothing special about the middle east. People there are not uniquely depraved, the region has been stable & prosperous before.

#palestine #gaza #free gaza #free palestine #israel #one-state solution #apartheid

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leoinjapan · 2 months

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A week in Colombia

Day 1

i arrived at El Dorado Airport at 4am, having slept not that great on a six-hour overnight flight from Toronto. my friend had booked me a taxi straight from the airport to her apartment; taxis here are really cheap, around 4 pounds to get across the entire city. Uber is also widely used here, although you should sit in the front seat as they are not actually allowed in Bogotá. apartments in Bogotá are really well protected, with different security measures to keep you safe. first i napped for a few hours and then had a delicious vegan bowl made by my friend's lovely mom. then my friend showed me around her neighbourhood, Chapinero, a historically queer district in north Bogotá. i learned how Colombia is a really queer and trans-friendly country, where gay marriage is legal and trans people have complete right of self-determination to change their documents, even with non-binary options, as well as gender-affirming healthcare!

for lunch my friend treated me to patacones, a mashed plantain baked to a crisp and topped with delicious toppings. she also showed me some awesome bookstores, such as Nada and Tornamesa. i tried delicious local chocolate from Fruto de Cacao. the weather was amazing at around 23 degrees celcius, not too sunny but pleasantly warm with no wind. luckily i did not suffer immediately from the altitude sickness that many tourists get when they arrive, as Bogotá is the highest capital city above sea level in the world.

we went back to watch a documentary about Lemebel, a queer icon in latin america (my friend was scandalized i had not heard of him). then i napped a bit more, which was a mistake; i woke up feeling so sick that i couldn't eat!

then we went to Theatron, latin america's biggest queer club. the streets that were empty before came alive with music and thousands of people. we had hotdogs from Nomáda Bogotá which were lovely, but sadly i was too sick to eat. Theatron has over 15 rooms with different types of music and live shows, and a capacity of over 6000. entry is less than £10 on saturdays (cheaper on other days) and includes a drink (gatorade for me)! my friend tells me more and more straight people come to the club now, but it was still very queer-friendly and one of the coolest club experiences i have ever had.

Day 2

for lunch my friend took me to a delicious vegan restaurant that does all traditional Colombian food, called Maria Candela. i tried ajiaco, a Bogotán dish of a herbal soup made with different kinds of local potatoes and chicken. it was so yummy, cheap and super filling!

i then went on a general tour of Bogotá hosted by Beyond Colombia. the guide was super enthusiastic and taught me so many things i didn't know about Colombia. we walked around important sights in its history, tasted the local traditional alcohol called chicha (fermented corn and sugar), and walked around the iconic La Candelária district. it was so colourful, full of street art and intricate crafts.

we then went to see Past Lives (again) at the cinema. the cinema quality was amazing, and the popcorn tasted really good! during Oscars season, you can get a pass to all the Oscars movies in february.

Day 3

in the morning i took an Uber to the bottom of the Monserrate, a mountain in Bogotá. it costs about £6 for a return journey on the cable car up the mountain to its peak, where you will find a church, a tourist market, and some restaurants. you can hike up the mountain yourself, but it takes around 2 hours. on the holy week, people walk up barefoot or on their knees on a sacrificial pilgrimage up the mountain to the church. in the church is the Black Madonna, based on the same iconic statue on the Montserrat mountain in Catalonia.

(this is also when i found out i got into the university of tokyo starting in april!)

it was super foggy on the 3000 metre high mountain and we could barely see the city. it started to pour with rain and my umbrella was not enough. unfortunately i got cold and wet without a coat, and was also exposed to high levels of UV up on the mountain, which led me to develop a fever later that evening...

i tried a bit of coca tea on the mountain. in Colombia and other countries in the Andes mountain range, people have been consuming coca leaves for centuries. coca tea contains a small amount of cocaine with mild stimulant effects, much like caffeine in coffee, and is completely harmless. Colombians use it to cure altitude sickness, nausea, and other stomach upsets.

i took my friends i made on the tour to Maria Candela again and i tried frijolada, which is a wholesome bean soup that i really loved. after that, i went to the Botero Museum/MAMU which has some really unique art from international artists, paintings by the iconic Colombian painter Botero, and a current exhibition highlighting indigenous culture and art (all in Spanish). it's free to visit so i definitely recommend going!

when my friend heard i felt sick, she took me to get aguapanela. panela is unrefined sugar, which you put in hot water for a nice soothing beverage. the Bogotá tradition is to put pieces of cheese in it, let them melt and then eat them! since i'm vegan i had it with bread. it was very delicious

Day 4

i had a restless night with my fever and decided to stay at home for the day. my tour guide even cancelled, so it felt like a sign not to go anywhere.

my friend's mom was an absolute angel and made me delicious vegan food and hot drinks and before long i felt a lot better

Day 5

in the morning i went on a war and peace-themed walking tour, also operated by Beyond Colombia. our guide was super knowledgeable, condensing centuries' worth of history into three hours. i learned so much about Colombia's recent history and controversies and i highly recommend this tour.

after that, i went to the Gold Museum (or Museo del Oro), which houses pre-Hispanic golden artefacts. in the indigenous culture, gold represented the sun and did not have monetary value; it was used in crafting and often offered back to nature. El Dorado is not a place, but an ancient ritual in which gold is thrown into the water, particularly a large lake near Bogotá; the Spanish dug up a lot of it and melted it into gold bars, but this museum still holds a large collection of 35,000, which is still only about 1% of the original artifacts that have been sacrificed in the ritual over the millennia.

at the end of the day my friend invited me to a collage-making workshop, which was really fun and therapeutic!

Day 6

at 8am in the morning, i took an Uber to the Paloquemao fruit market, where i was to have an AirBnB Experiences tour with my friend's brother, Victor. i was stunned by the amount of fruit i had never seen before. i tried different avocados, guavas, berries, cactus fruit, melons, and more. my favourite was the guanabana, or custard apple, which tastes exactly like custard!

the market is also full of beautiful flowers, vegetables, souvenirs and all sorts. i recommend visiting, though take an Uber as apparently it is not in the safest of neighborhoods.

in the evening i went to the National Museum, which houses an impressive amount of information about Colombian history. there are currently a few exhibitions about indigenous cultural revival. i was most excited to see a small exhibition about Las Traviesas, a collective of displaced indigenous trans women in Colombia, which was a beautiful and inspiring display of art.

towards the end of my visit, i developed a migraine. i got a tasty dinner at Wok and then went home to recover. thank you again to my friend and her mom for taking care of me!

on the day there was a big protest in the city centre in support of the current president. it's better to try and avoid the city centre when there are big protests.

Day 7

me and my friend went on a day trip to Villa de Leyva, a town north of Bogotá in the beautiful Boyacá region, famous for its emeralds. the bus trip took between 4 and 5 hours each way.

the town is absolutely gorgeous, full of cobbled streets and old colonial architecture. it was more touristy than Bogotá, with lots of tourist shops and some tasty food options. i got gelato made with tamarind and tajín (chilli flakes). for lunch, we went to La Maria Bistro which had an incredible brocolli dish that was the best thing i've eaten in a long while.

we went to Casa Terracota, the world's largest ceramic structure. it took 15 years for the architect to bake the house, during which it fell down three times. the construction was incredible and it was a very unique experience. usually the tour is only in spanish, but the guide did a great job translating it to english for me. the crazy thing was that he did his study abroad in Paignton, which is the town next to my hometown!

Day 8

on the last day, my friend and i went into the city to buy souvenirs for my family. there are tons of tourist shops and stalls in La Candelária, and we did our best research to find out which crafts were authentic. for lunch we want to Maria Candela again as the whole city was having a vegan burger festival with several restaurants participating.

in the afternoon we went to see Perfect Days, a really beautiful japanese movie. the cinema in Bogotá was really nice, with great quality screens and tasty snacks.

in the evening we went to my friend's favourite taco place, Insurgentes. the vibe was great and the tacos were delicious (mostly meat but some vegan).

for our final stop, we went to Chiquita. much smaller than Theatron but with a majority queer crowd, the music was on point and the atmosphere was great. there were even a couple of drag performances which apparently happen every night. i really loved this bar, which had a mixture of 90s/2000s pop and latin pop. i could have stayed there much longer but i had to get home to sleep before my flight at 9am.

i am the first to admit i knew nothing about Colombia (or even South America in general) before coming to Bogotá. i was eager to learn, and yet i learned far more than i ever imagined. Colombia exceeded my expectations 100 times over.

the internet is full of scary stories about Colombia, yet i felt safer here than i ever have in the US, for example. the city is so vibrant, colourful, and creative, full of life and soul. it is also the most queer-friendly capital i have been to, with the most amazing clubs you could imagine.

i learned so much about the history of the country, the language, the food, the art, and the gorgeous nature that's around every corner.

but what makes Colombia so, so great is the people. everybody here was so friendly and made such an effort to make me feel welcome, even though i know barely any Spanish. the city feels so alive with passion, hope, and resistance. i am so, so grateful to my friend Estefanía for taking care of me while i was there, looking after me and showing me the real Bogotá, making sure i knew where to go and what to do. she really is the best of us, and i will never forget her kindness 💕

i am so grateful to her incredible mother as well for nursing me back to health when i was sick!

i would come back to Colombia in a heartbeat, but until then, i have to get on the language apps!

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