CIRCLE WITH A DOT

Not gonna lie, one of the most amazing revelations I'm getting out of a degree in counselling is that it's possible to fall out with someone and then patch things up. But wait, it gets better: you can end up with a better relationship for it.

Love all of my fellow traumatised nerds, but that's something we really could do with learning? Or rather, unlearning— that sick feeling in your stomach when you see something that either they or you have written, and think to yourself "well, that's it. We have to hate each other forever now."

I'm starting to understand the viciousness of this circle— 1. relationships feel precarious 2. we become hypervigilant for any rupture 3. at the first sight of one we panic and throw the relationship away 4. our relationships are precarious. And with every loop we retraumatise ourselves.

(The other option is we ignore any sign of a rupture, pretend they didn't say something that they did, and it eats away at us until it blows up with a "well, two weeks ago you...")

"Can we talk about that?" feels terrifying at first, but the more often I use it, the more I've discovered that relationships don't have to feel brittle.

@jincks the context was a woman's rights conference, which is why they're specifically talking about trans women.

But yeah. Trans men are men. And non-binary people are beyond the binary.
@Geri

@iris_meredith humanity dysphoria

@ninawillburger is it gummy? It looks gummy 🥺

@artemis the best thing about it is it'll increase their paranoia. They'll all be wondering "is Bob just kinda incompetent and lazy, or is he a saboteur??? What about Joe?"

Reni Eddo-Lodge on white feminism:

It’s clear that equality doesn’t quite cut it. Asking for a sliver of disproportional power is too polite a request. I don’t want to be included. Instead, I want to question who created the standard in the first place. After a lifetime of embodying difference, I have no desire to be equal. I want to deconstruct the structural power of a system that marked me out as different. I don’t wish to be assimilated into the status quo. I want to be liberated from all negative assumptions that my characteristics bring. The onus is not on me to change. Instead, it’s the world around me.
Equality is fine as a transitional demand, but it’s dishonest not to recognise it for what it is – the easy route. There is a difference between saying ‘we want to be included’ and saying ‘we want to reconstruct your exclusive system’. The former is more readily accepted into the mainstream.