I know what you are meaning but I can’t remember the exact term for it, but I think what you mean is activist exhaustion. It’s happening to quite a few people right now, especially this year, and little wonder considering all that is going on.
It sometimes feels like everything is a fight at the moment, which is why it’s important to stay active and woke, but to also take time for yourself and just try to shut your brain off for a while. Like I’m doing right now by watching reality tv and zoning out cause otherwise I’ll just start screaming at the thought of all the things I have to do tomorrow so instead I’m sitting here watching a bunch of idiots freeze their asses off in the middle of nowhere Canada dressed as pioneer settlers.
I often hear the word “slacktavist” thrown around the describe people who share things on social media outlets, but honestly I hate that term. Not everyone has the mental or physical capacity to volunteer and be boots on the ground when it comes to activism.
And that’s okay.
A lot of posts going round demanding people do XYZ to save the country/world or they are Bad People, tend to be incredibly ableist and neurotypical in their expectation and wording. Not all of us can do these things, not all of us are able to be physically present at rallies or give up time and energy for hours on end, either due to physical limitations or otherwise. But what they can do that day is reblog something or share something on facebook or retweet it and perhaps spread a message a little farther than it might haven gotten without them. And sometimes maybe you don’t want to reblog that post, sometimes the wording on it is guilt tripping, or maybe right there in that moment you don’t have the mental capacity to deal with making sure the post is a) accurate b) informative and c) offers valid resources.
The amount of stuff I get tagged in on a daily basis to signal boost? I spend time researching them before boosting them, and about a third of them turn out to be misinformed or just downright fake. Now I could just blindly reblog them and hope for the best, but honestly, that’s just one way to further stoke the fear, panic and feeling of being overwhelmed that so many people are feeling right now. So I take my time and try to vet things. Some days I don’t have the energy for that, and those are the days when you’ll see no signal boosting from me, but several fandom ramblings in quick succession. Because I am taking that day to self care and ensure that when the time comes, I’m not completely worn out and worthless for the big fights.
You need to do what you can do. Sometimes you will do more than you thought you ever could and you will be part of what saves the world.
Sometimes you’re gonna watch that same cat gif on a loop for five hours. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
Pace yourself and accept your limitations do not make you a bad person, they merely mean you are involved in other ways that enable you to take part.
A snippet from an article on Huffington Post about what it means to be working poor.
Pretty spot on…
I got into an argument today with someone who is a landlord, and they were outraged, outraged, to find that their evicted tenants owned an Xbox 360. Never mind that the console was ten years old and worth perhaps $50 on Craigslist, they were outraged that their evicted tenants did not sell it, along with the very clothes on their back, to pay their back rent. I tried to explain to him that when you are $1800 in back rent, $50 isn’t even a dent in that debt. Why bother? Why bother selling that $50 item if it isn’t going to get you any less evicted? If it’s not going to save you, you’ll hold on to it. Money becomes meaningless when you’ll never have enough to hold onto. You just let it flow like water through your hands. It’s all gone anyways, no matter what you do. It was gone before it ever touched you.
The other day I got very mad at someone because their justification of why a family didn’t deserve their council house was because they had decorated the front of their house with xmas lights. DO YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE TO LIVE WITH NO SMALL PLEASURES AT ALL?!?!? DO YOU REALLY?!?!
This is one of the great end results of capitalism: we treat people as if the only thing they should care about are their mechanical needs but without things to nourish the soul or the capacity to talk about same, we fall apart.
We aren’t meant to be things which sit in blank boxes waiting to be used by our employers. Nothing in nature acts that way. Nothing’s meant to.
The need rich people have for poor people to constantly perform some sort of Dickensian display of abject poverty is so goddamn disgusting and proves that, yes, it is all about status markers. Rich people want visible proof that others are beneath them. It’s malicious and nauseating. And the kicker is that they’re usually too busy being impressed with their own wealth and sense of superiority to use their brains, because as already stated in the other comments, having technology or a couple of small pleasures is *not* a reliable indicator of income. This anti-poor people shit is revolting.
And it turns poor and working-class people against each other. Like I knew a guy who installed cable TV for a living and barely could make a living, and resented that some people who got cable TV were on welfare. I tried to explain that you actually have to spend a certain amount of money in order to qualify for such basic thing as Medicaid – if you save money you’ll get thrown off the system, even though you won’t magically be able to survive outside the system with the amount of money you have to save in order to be thrown off it. He didn’t care. He told me poor people should be given nothing more than food, clothing, and shelter. He grew up poorer than most poor people have ever been. All this combination of shit made me furious and still does. Not to mention the cultural ideals of being too proud to accept help of any kind and how people think this is a good thing even when it kills people.
The poorest people in the world forgo some amount of necessities for staying alive in order to have some money for recreation or things that connect them to the world. During the Depression, many people surveyed said they would rather give up their beds than their radios – radio being how people stayed connected to the outside world in the same way Internet does today. And does anyone need to bring up Rat Park again? Holy crap this stuff pisses me off.
(– Poor person who has Internet & Netflix & smartphone & other so-called luxuries. And does anyone really think the extra $100ish a month I’d get giving all that up would catapult me out of poverty and solve all my problems? Not to mention the Internet has literally saved my life before. As in, I was in the hospital being mistreated in a way that was life-threatening, and blogging allowed me and another poor person who was making decisions for me, to get other people to call the hospital and say “We’re watching you.” Other poor people get food and rent and etc. money by asking on the Internet and receiving food money through the Internet. Many people on disability supplement their income by selling art or small crafts online – how much you’re allowed to sell before they start cutting benefits depends on what part of the system you’re in, but it’s a common thing.)
It hurts, and it’s bloody, and sometimes that blood isn’t metaphorical. You have to face things about yourself you didn’t want to face and admit the lies you had comforted yourself with were the most vicious lies of them all, and you’re going to wonder why you haven’t just settled the matter once and for all.
Do it anyway.
The mold you have been forced to fit into never fitted you, never fitted anyone, and was created for the sole reason for making you comfortable for other people but never for you to be comfortable for yourself.
Once you break the mold, what you refashion yourself into will fit your self a little better, but it won’t be perfect. You won’t be this “new self” forever, but it will allow you to see a little more clear, and to speak a little more loud, and to be a little more what you are comfortable being.
You will remake yourself often.
Each time you take a hammer to the form, it will be because you found another lie you can’t live with anymore, or you found another leech you won’t tolerate anymore, or you realize that even though you’re a little better than before, you need to keep working at yourself if you are going to survive.
You will survive.
After a few iterations of this, you’ll look back and not recognize yourself. You’ll see who you were in the distant past and realize that is not the person you are now, and the person you are now is not likely to be the person you will become this time next year.
And that’s okay.
That’s how you will survive.
It’s okay if you can’t stand who you are right now. Because that is the launching point. That is the clearing of the work table and the gathering of the tools. This is how you start: Identify what you want to change and start breaking the mold off of it.
It will hurt and it will be bloody and your personal connections will change and you will lose friends and “friends” and that’s okay.
As long as you are doing this for you, that’s okay.
Criticizing Joss Whedon’s problematic writing choices does not translate to hate.
Also, word of advice, if you want people to stop accusing you of being racist or sexist, then you might want to stay away from the following:
Having the lead female protagonist of your show almost raped by her love interest and then have the showrunner praise the rapist as being his favorite character and having the best character development (Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Plan to have a prostitute gang raped to feed into the character development of her male love interest (Inara, Firefly)
Have a show that heavily features Asian culture and religions, but then fail to cast any Asian actors (Firefly)
Claim that having Asian actors was unnecessary because one of your white actors “kind of looked Asian.” (Summer Glau, Firefly)
Fire your lead actress for getting pregnant and then spend the next season shitting all over her character (Charisma Carpenter, Angel)
Inviting that lead actress to come back to the show, promising her that she’ll stick around until the final episode, only to turn around and kill her character off at the last moment as revenge (Charisma Carpenter, Angel)
Creating the single most racist depiction of a black female character by making her violent, savage, animalistic and so dumb that she isn’t even able to speak, and then reveal that the way she became the first slayer, was by having a group of old men force a demon into her body without her consent (The First Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Have one of the most popular female superheroes referred to as a “cunt” by the main villain (Natasha Romanoff, Avengers)
Claim that because a female character was unable to have children, that she was considered a monster (Natasha Romanoff, Avengers: Age of Ultron)
Taking one of the strongest female superheroes in the MCU and turning her into an outlet for her male love interest to pour his man angst all over and then completely dump her in the end without any expression of gratitude for all she did for him (Natasha Romanoff, Avengers: Age of Ultron)
Have one of the most popular superheroes in the MCU joke about raping women (Tony Stark, Avengers: Age of Ultron)
Feature two characters who were originally of Jewish-Romani descent and then have them whitewashed by hiring white actors to play them (Wanda Maximoff and Pietro Maximoff, Avengers: Age of Ultron)
Having two Jewish-Romani characters volunteer for a Nazi organization, despite the fact that Jewish and Romani people were victims of the Holocaust (Wanda Maximoff and Pietro Maximoff,Avengers: Age of Ultron)
Have the audacity to redefine feminism and re-brand it because he found feminism distasteful.
Constantly using the “break the cutie” trope to punish his supposedly “strong female characters.” (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Avengers: Age of Ultron)
Using the threat of sexual violence against his lead female protagonists on multiple occasions (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Avengers)
Check yourself, fandom. These criticisms of Joss Whedon’s work have been long-standing and are completely valid. So, before you get on your high horse and try to accuse his detractors of being bitter fangirls, take a look at all the fucked up shit your problematic fav has said and done, and then we’ll talk.
I hate making posts like this one. I feel mean and like I’m being overly aggressive. Denying other people a good time.
But I really feel like I have to say something in this case. So lets talk about the hongi/honi, and fandom culture (particularly shipping culture).
(Image description: Pictured above is a still from
James Cameron’s Avatar where two aliens are leaning in to press their noses and foreheads together. Bellow it is a photo of a Maori person and a white person engaging in a Hongi with their foreheads and noses pressed together.)
Said Hongi in New Zealand, and Honi in Hawai’i, the custom of pressing ones forehead and nose to that of another person is a traditional greeting.
It’s used widely in New Zealand in all situations. From formal events at parliament, graduation, a gathering at a marae (meetinghouse). To casual situations like visiting ones uncles, aunties, and couzies. Or welcoming an interviewee on a midday TV show.
A Hongi represents equality, trust, the sharing of ha (breath of life), the sharing of communal responsibilities and duties, belonging, respect, and conveys a welcoming spirit.
It’s considered to be somewhat like a handshake, and often accompanies a handshake. The one thing it doesn’t imply? Romance between the participants.
Except with the greater visibility of Pasifika culture late last year and early this year (2016-2017), fandoms have been picking up on the Hongi. But the problem is I’m only seeing it depicted in ship art.
This is harmful. It’s appropriating, and divorcing it from it’s true cultural function. And it’s creating some awkward associations for people trying to participate naturally in their cultural customs. Yes a fan artist might think “It’s just one picture.” But their one picture is one of many that are having the effect of misrepresenting and fetashizing the Hongi for use as ship fuel.
And in fact, this colonization has been in effect longer than one might think. Consider that the Honi is often translated or explained as “The Hawaiian kiss.”
So this is just a request to fan artist, to be careful, and to practice cultural sensitivity.
Y’all know that individual health behaviors – choices around nutrition, exercise, smoking, etc. – only account for about 25% of a person’s health status? The determinants of health are largely social: income and education level, the safety of one’s physical environment (e.g. working conditions, clean water), and degree of social support. Trauma is far worse for health than fast food.
It’s tempting to subscribe to a just world theory, where good things happen to good people (or people who make good decisions), and problems befall problem people, but that just isn’t the world we live in.
Most sick people have spent their lives fighting against oppressive circumstances. They don’t invite illness and hardship with their bad decisions, they are miracles of survival in a sociopolitical environment that’s hostile to their very existence.
(oh look it’s my grad program in a nutshell!)
Yes, this!
People talk a lot about health behaviors – what you choose to eat, whether you exercise, whether you drink/smoke – because they’re believed to be modifiable risk factors that you can change in order to improve your health. You can control how much you exercise, but you can’t control your genes, so let’s talk about exercise! That kind of thing.
But there is a LOT that goes into whether or not a person CAN modify those seemingly-modifiable risk factors. If a person is working two jobs for 18 hours a day and lives in a neighborhood with no sidewalks or streetlights and high crime rates, then as much as they may WANT to exercise to improve their health, they do not have the ABILITY to do so. They know they need to. They know it’s important. But it is literally impossible.
Similarly, if someone lives in an area with no nearby supermarkets, where fresh food is expensive, when they don’t have time (or supplies, or a kitchen) to cook it, then as much as they may WANT to eat healthy homemade meals, they do not have the ABILITY to do so.
In America, we’re all about individualism. We like to think we have All The Choices, and that we can choose to be happy/sad, rich/poor, good/bad, and it’s that easy. But it’s not. Because the ethos of individualism ignores the fact that we live in a society, that we live in a specific context, and that that society and context has far more of an impact on us than it wants to admit.
Example: As individuals, we can all choose to take shorter showers and save a few gallons of water. But commercial organizations, factories, etc waste thousands upon thousands of gallons of water every day. Individuals making the choice every day to save water will have very little impact on the water supply. Regulations forcing companies to save water? GIANT impact.
How this works when it comes to health: We can talk and talk and talk about individuals choosing to change their modifiable risk factors (nutrition, exercise, smoking) until we’re blue in the face, and it’s going to have very little impact on health. There just aren’t a lot of gallons there. People are already doing the best they can within the context of our society.
But if we change that context? Anything goes. ANYTHING GOES.
If we change regulations: Require municipalities to clean up their drinking water. Install sidewalks and streetlights. Ban toxic substances from agricultural, commercial, individual, and all other use. Increase the minimum wage so that people only have to work one full-time job to survive. Subsidize grocery stores in food deserts. Subsidize fresh food in food deserts.
Or if we change access: Provide health insurance for everyone. Improve the quality of health care provided. Provide preventative care.
Or if we change society: Improve our education system. Increase equity. Eliminate discrimination.
….then health will automatically improve. It will automatically improve, on a population level. And individuals? Will automatically engage in those modifiable health behaviors that improve their health status. Because there will be nothing – access, ability, time, and 100 other things – to stand in their way.
Please understand that they gave a 33% tip, in cash instead of on a card, to increase the odds that the server could keep all of it.
What they mean by ‘taxation is theft’ is that servers are taxed on the ASSUMPTION that they will be tipped. If they don’t make those tips, they get taxed on them anyway. It is literally theft. By leaving cash and not writing it on the receipt, they’ve allowed the server the option of quietly slipping that 20 into their pocket and therefore not being taxed on it.
I am allowed to occupy space. If someone has a problem with me merely existing, that is their problem not mine. That person is the one who needs to work out their emotions. I do not have to make myself small for the comfort of someone else.
I am allowed to recover. Anyone who tears me down for recovering is not someone I want around me. The people I want around me will celebrate my recovery with me.
I am allowed to be comfortable. I do not have to put someone else’s comfort before mine, especially when it comes to my health. I do not have to stay silent when someone makes me feel uncomfortable.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 