The fight against sex slavery | Sunitha Krishnan

Wondermark on: dopamine manipulation, misogyny in literature

From Wondermark (1, 2)

Explaining emotional labor

“I had to tell him how much I appreciated the bathroom cleaning, but perhaps he could do it another time (like when our kids were in bed). Then I tried to gingerly explain the concept of emotional labor: that I was the manager of the household, and that being manager was a lot of thankless work. Delegating work to other people, i.e. telling him to do something he should instinctively know to do, is exhausting. I tried to tell him that I noticed the box at least 20 times over the past two days. He had noticed it only when I was heaving it onto the top shelf instead of asking for help. The whole explanation took a lot of restraint.

Walking that fine line to keep the peace and not upset your partner is something women are taught to accept as their duty from an early age. “In general, we gender emotions in our society by continuing to reinforce the false idea that women are always, naturally and biologically able to feel, express, and manage our emotions better than men,” says Dr. Lisa Huebner, a sociologist of gender, who both publishes and teaches on the subject of emotional labor at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. “This is not to say that some individuals do not manage emotion better than others as part of their own individual personality, but I would argue that we still have no firm evidence that this ability is biologically determined by sex. At the same time (and I would argue because it is not a natural difference) we find all kinds of ways in society to ensure that girls and women are responsible for emotions and, then, men get a pass.””

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal on: the physics of scale, Fermi’s Paradox, paleo diet

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (1, 2, 3)

Some problems of BDSM

“* subs get hurt, inevitably. this is pretty much a given entering any kind of bdsm community, it’s expected they will get hurt, thus they get a “safe word” in case they get hurt too severely, which brings me to my next point
* safe words are extremely hard to impossible to use. experience has shown that even subs confident about using their safe words, once put in a dangerous and harmful situation, couldn’t force themselves to it, and this is not subs fault. Doms will not always react kindly to a safe word when they hear it, and it risks abandonment, coldness and disappointment that would be too painful for subs to go thru
* pleasure in bdsm scenes is often derived from physical pain, injury, physical violence, humiliation, degrading behaviour, power imbalance, emotional abuse, dehumanization, control, insults and pushing the subs to the point of overwhelming their senses completely, until they’ve not able to even evaluate the damage they’re taking. This causes powerful releases of adrenaline, dopamine and endorphin – which is normal human reaction to intense pain and danger, but can be misinterpreted as pleasure in sexual situations – it also works like a drug. Participating in bdsm scene will cause addiction to those chemicals, the same way self-harming would cause one. This is a part of the reason why it’s so hard to stop doing it, and why participants fight very hard to defend it.
* Aftercare isn’t for subs to get the care they need, it’s trauma bonding. After a session of intense pain and abuse, having the same person who hurt you be the only source of comfort and safety will cause a powerful trauma-based bond, and ensure the sub’s continuous attachment to the dom, making it even harder to leave when it gets too dangerous and damaging. If the aftercare were for the sub, they would be able to get it without “earning” it by enduring a certain amount of pain and humiliation, and without sabotaging their ability to get away.
* Physical and emotional abuse during bdsm scene will have heavy psychological consequences for subs. What is true for the abuse without sex, is also true with abuse during sex, it is impossible to escape the consequences of abuse even if it’s sexualized and addictive. Damage caused during a sexual situation is even more frightening and dangerous because the person is the most vulnerable, and should not be exposed to harm in such state.
* A person’s resistance, boundaries, desires and free will should not be ignored, crushed or broken. Yet this is exactly what is being strived for in bdsm. Sub’s discomfort, resistance, unwillingness to participate in certain acts, reluctance to obey orders and asserting needs or desires of their own are viewed as obstacles to overcome, flaws that need correcting, ever heard of a term “breaking in a sub?” That’s exactly what doms do, and it’s normalized in the community. This is beneficial for doms and extremely dehumanizing and damaging for subs.
* BDSM is dangerous for abuse and trauma survivors, especially those who are already addicted to pain or need pain to cope, because they already have a hard time differentiating abuse from healthy relationship (not by their own fault!), and will be easy to convince they’re in a “safe, sane and consensual” situation when their trauma and addiction is being used against them, to keep them submissive and easy to use
* subs deserve attention, comfort and gentleness without putting themselves thru pain and being exposed to injuries, psychological damage, addiction, trauma bonding, or ptsd. However, after prolonged participation in intense, painful and violent scenes, healthy attention and no-abuse sex will no longer feel satisfying or intense enough for a period of time.
* this list is in no way meant to shame, intimidate or scare submissive participants in bdsm, and it does not come from the place of judgment, this is information I wish I had before I exposed myself to bdsm, and ended up with flashbacks and trauma symptoms.
* you should not be put in a situation where unless you have a shitton psychology knowledge you’re caught in a trap where you get hurt but you can’t even tell because it’s presented as safe and keeps you drugged into submission”

Prison turns people into career criminals.

From The Onion: 15 Years In Environment Of Constant Fear Somehow Fails To Rehabilitate Prisoner

“WOODBOURNE, NY—Reportedly left dumbfounded by the news that recent parolee Terry Raney had been reincarcerated on charges of assault and battery, officials at Woodbourne Correctional Facility struggled Tuesday to make sense of how the prisoner had not been rehabilitated by 15 years of constant threats, physical abuse, and periodic isolation. “It just doesn’t seem possible that an inmate could live for a decade and a half in a completely dehumanizing environment in which violent felons were constantly on the verge of attacking or even killing him and not emerge an emotionally stable, productive member of society,” said chief warden Albert Gunderson, who noted that, as hard as it was to believe, Raney’s recidivism proved that his criminal impulses had not in fact been corrected by the sense of grave distrust he felt toward every other person in the facility, including both fellow inmates and prison authorities, every day since 1999. “We surrounded him with a combustible mix of rival gangs and made sure that he was consumed by a round-the-clock sense of terror that the slightest misstep on his part could result in a sharpened piece of scrap metal being shoved into his neck, and yet he still leaves this facility with the same criminal thoughts and violent mindset as before? I’m truly at a loss for how this could have happened.” Gunderson then noted his additional confusion at how the man’s criminal record and the social stigma of his prison sentence had somehow failed to land him a steady job immediately upon his release.”

Gender roles change in space and time… so how can gender be innate?

“If “cisgender” means that you’re comfortable with the gender roles you are assigned and gender roles vary depending on culture, religion, etc. then is it possible for someone to be “cis” in one country and trans in another? Like are there people out here with regional genders? Does their gender have a jurisdiction?

Let’s say a guy is fine with the western gender roles but takes a trip to a “primitive” village in the deepest, darkest corner of the Tundra and is not cool with their expectations for men, would he then fall under the trans/non binary umbrella? Does he have to check boundary lines before he can be sure about his gender? If he straddles the boundary line, is he then bigender?

What if he’s cool with Baptist gender roles but can’t get down with Catholicism? Does his gender change every time someone mentions the pope?

Inquiring minds would like to know”

Therapy doesn’t fix social problems, it only eliminates the symptoms in the individuals affected.

“Divide and conquer is the oldest trick in the oppressor’s book, and it is working against us. In her 1975 book, Psychotherapy: The Hazardous Cure, Dorothy Tennov detailed what therapy truly is, in terms of a profession and study, demonstrating how difficult it is to prove that it’s helpful at all, at a time when psychology was gaining traction. Many of her concerns for the continued normalization of psychotherapy have come true, as it has become more and more socially accepted for women to see therapists, and become therapists themselves. But the destigmatization of therapy is not a positive for the feminist movement. As Tennov concluded:

“There is no question that the person who goes to a psychotherapist and learns to adapt to a situation, to adjust herself, is less likely to apply pressure outward in an attempt to bring about change in society. Psychotherapy is a distraction from other pressures.”

We have been taught, through the normalization of therapy, to individualize our struggles and look inward, rather than outward. Therapy works to prevent us from connecting with one another. It isolates us — each of us is appointed our own therapist, who teaches us how to cope with our “issues” privately. We learn we must take care of ourselves, and work on our personalities in order to better cope with the world around us, before we can act. What therapy doesn’t teach us is that women’s anger is justified, that our suffering is real, and that what we often describe as “mental health issues” are mostly caused — or greatly exacerbated — by structural oppression. Psychology pretends that the solution to — or “treatment” for — our problems is in improving our attitudes and ability to cope, instead of tackling the problems together.”