Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
"Great!" Danny says, clapping his hands together to get everyone's attention. The dinner table falls silent as everyone looks towards him. It's a full house today and, honestly, Danny's a little nervous. "I'm sure you're all wondering why I gathered you here today."
"It's dinnertime. In our house." Duke mutters, while doing a very bad job of concealing his yawn. He holds his fork poised over the braised beef, but, just like everyone else, still looks towards Danny before tucking in. It's intriguing enough to wait.
"Yeah, no one misses Alfie's dinner." Dick says, with a brilliant smile that Danny can't help but return.
"Precisely! What better time to talk to you all than when you're all actually here!"
"Wait, I thought you came round to work on our English essays?" Tim asks, blinking owlishly.
"I'm afraid I've lured you here under false pretences, Tim."
"This is where I live."
"I would still really appreciate help on that essay though, I mean, what the hell is Hamlet even about? I just don't get that old time-y language, like 'Hark! A ghost hath killed me!' - absolute rubbish, what does that even mean?"
"The ghost never kills anyone in Hamlet, he's there to tell Hamlet that he was murdered. Have you actually read it?"
"No, but it sounds like you have. Tim, I want this guy to help me with my essay instead. I know for a fact that you haven't read Hamlet, either."
"So? We don't need Jason, I've read the Sparknotes."
"Hi Jason, I'm Danny, pleasure to meet you, summarise Hamlet in three sentences or less."
"Am I auditioning to help you write your essays? I can't believe you’ve gone through your whole school life without reading it, it’s good!"
"Hamlet, along with a number of other classics, was banned in our house because it portrayed ghosts as intelligent and sympathetic beings rather than evil, animalistic beasts. I didn’t even get to see The Muppet's Christmas Carol until last year with Tim! It was surprisingly good, and I hate Christmas because everyone always argued and it sucked. But we're getting off topic. I—"
"No, no, please go back to that, because what the fu—"
"Boys, please." Bruce interrupts, looking to the world as if he wants to hang his head in his hands. "Danny, you were about to say something?"
"Oh, yeah, Mr. Wayne! Thanks!"
"Please, call me Bruce."
"Well, that very succinctly brings me to my point, because I'd actually really like to call you dad."
Nobody says a word. Nobody even blinks, all as shocked as the other, watching open-mouthed as Danny pulls his laptop out from beside his chair. Bruce can definitely feel a headache coming on.
"Before you say anything, I've prepared a 69 slide PowerPoint presentation on why you, Bruce Wayne, should adopt me, Danny Last-Name-Pending. Please save your questions, comments, and verdict until the end, thank you."
the fact that reboots used to be like thirty or forty years apart and are now instead like 3-10 years apart is absolutely ridiculous. like are we so trapped in a capitalist hellscape that instead of us naturally cherishing a beloved piece of media like it deserves and looking forward to NEW stories with NEW universes we have to watch the same thing over and over and over again with reboot after reboot after reboot until that media has been so sucked dry that us as an audience are literally sick at the mere mention of it
so much happened in this whole episode but i’m still on fig infiltrating ruben’s dream, making it look like the place where his friend was murdered, and then disguising herself as kipperlilly & repeatedly saying different variants of “somebody needs to take the fall for this, and it’s not going to be me. it’s going to be you.” while adaine as the elven oracle shows up next to her. can you imagine waking up from that, the idea of a horrible truth being pinned on you by your friend to save her own skin while the personification of fate and destiny stands there, almost as a promise that this is GOING to happen to you. we don’t even know if this kid is guilty. my god.
Not a day goes by where I do not think about the advent of medicine like PrEP and wonder just what the people - especially queer people - who passed from HIV/AIDs during the AIDs crisis would think
And then, I read this survivor's testimony and it just makes me emotional. I think this is the closest answer we have. HIV has changed, and we must always remember the people who didn't see that change before it happened.
Alright let's imagine a scene that is all too normal in palestine. A palestinian business owner finds his building covered in graffiti stars of Davids and Hebrew that says "gas the arabs" and "death to arabs"
Now imagine there's a reporter there and asks the palestinian business owner what happens and they say "the jews attacked my business"
Pause. Now your response might be "uncle no. Say israelis not jews" and then this is when he would look at you like youre stupid because the israelis doing this are jewish. They are not the Christians or the druze or the palestinian ones with Israeli citizenship. They are Jewish israelis who believe in their religious supremacy. When you graffiti stars of david all over a palestinian business, car, or the street you seek that conflation. it sends a message, this is jewish land and you're next.
The problem is that these videos circulate in zionist circles. "Watch this video of children in gaza calling for the death of jews" "watch how they say they want to fight and kill jews" those children are referring to Israeli soldiers that come in night and do their raids with the star of David attached to their uniform or the ones that bomb them. It's easy to watch those videos and assume that palestinians are indoctrinating their children on anti semitism or you can realize that those children's only interaction with jewish ppl is through violence and parents cannot protect their children from this. Doesn't matter context is lost
Abby Martin went to Jerusalem and interviewed israelis for 2 hours and she says every israeli was extremely confident to say that this land is for them and that they should push the Arabs out and when she interviewed palestinians they spoke of freedom from occupation and their dreams. That's reality. Not the soundbites.
And yet we have invasive youtubers and interviewers constantly in the street of ramallah or wherever in palestine asking palestinians "do you hate jews?" And in those videos you hear those palestinians say "no we have no problem with jews we have a problem with occupation and we have a problem with zionism." Bc this is how we are trained to respond to this trope. Palestinians are very aware what the world thinks of us and the reality is that many palestinians have internalized it and we grow up reading books on the Holocaust and train ourselves to recognize anti semitic dog whistles so zionists don't get the soundbites they want.
So we say "anti zionism is not anti semitism" and we say "israeli zionists" and we do not say "jewish supremacy" even thought it exists in palestine but "zionist supremacy" and in these carefully worded speech we water down what is happening to us in an effort to not deter people away from solidarity. But it means nothing. The world categorically blames palestinians for rising anti semitism they blame us for jewish insecurity globally.
I think it's so adorable that early humans took wild gourds - a tiny fruit that hollows out as it dries, making it float - and decided to make something out of it
they thought the tiny fruit was so good that they bred it for thousands of years, making it larger to form into bowls and cups, and different shapes to become bottles and spoons
and musical instruments
And then, people took the hollow gourds they farmed, and they turned them into houses for birds. We adapted them into the perfect houses for birds, and now there are specific breeds of birdhouse gourd just for making into birdhouses
And humans dedicated gardening space and time and thousands of years of breeding to make the gourds so absolutely perfect for birds, that there is a species of bird that lives almost exclusively in them
I think we need a return to 2000s-era "word of god is a cop out" attitudes. Like... it's one thing if someone clarifies something supported by canon or adds character details in interviews, and but like. Even before jkr revealed herself to be horribly transphobic we were side-eyeing the "Dumbledore is gay I just never wrote a single word indicating that in the text" statement and now people will be like hello creator could you confirm my crack ships and unevidenced headcanons as if that means anything.
Every day I’m haunted by the fact the boys happily swim in sewer water
Even if it’s filtered somehow there’s no way it’s not still nasty 😭 Bet they can defeat any of their villains just by accidentally giving them diseases I swear