i think if we’re going to have conversations about consent we should talk about how consenting to something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be a good experience, and having a bad experience doesn’t necessarily mean someone violated your consent. this can apply to a lot of situations but the two i’m thinking of right now are sex and transition.
you’re getting it on with someone. you enthusiastically consent to having sex with them. afterward, you feel a little weird about it. maybe even distressed. maybe they did something you didn’t enjoy and in the moment you just didn’t say anything. maybe you just realized after the fact that you were not in a good headspace for sex and now your mental health is declining. that doesn’t inherently mean the person you had sex with violated your consent. sometimes it just means you need to take a break from sex or work on communicating your needs or boundaries better during sex.
and with transition, i feel like this is something that gets consistently overlooked but like. there will never be zero detransitioners. there will always be people who decide that actually transition wasn’t right for them. they could have had the best most thorough doctors in the world who did everything by the book and got full informed consent at every step. and some people are still going to decide they don’t like the changes and wish they hadn’t transitioned. that doesn’t mean that the doctors violated their consent, and that doesn’t mean that transition shouldn’t be available to anyone. it just means that we need to have more resources available for folks who detransition.
regret does not automatically mean someone did something wrong. regret is simply one possible result of having bodily autonomy, and i think we need to get more comfortable with that.
anyway, here’s some things i’ve learned and some things i’m working on as a survivor of sexual assault/rape and prolonged abuse that might help people.
one of the things i struggle with is communicating what i want during sex, because it was something i was punished for while i was in an abusive relationship. this means whenever i want something during sex, instead of just asking for it, i panic and start overthinking about how to ask for it and if my partner will be upset if i ask for it and what if they say no and am i a bad person for even asking and maybe i should just shut up and wait for it to be over and you see how this can make sex very unpleasant, yes?
one way i’m working on coping with this is trying to talk to whoever i’m having sex with before we have sex. it’s easier if you have a partner, but really anyone you’re going to sleep with should be cool with you talking about your likes and dislikes before you have sex. sometimes it even helps to write it out, a list of likes or dislikes or things you want to try or things you notice that trigger you. for me, it’s hair pulling, so i always make sure to say something before i hook up with someone. it can feel really really awkward at first, so this one just takes practice.
another thing is i used to get triggered during sex, and occasionally still do, and the biggest issue i had was asking the person to stop. usually i’d just be frozen in place and they’d have no idea anything was even happening. instead of trying to figure out what to do when i got triggered, i practiced telling them to stop while i wasn’t triggered so i could practice what i was going to say and do and how i was going to handle it. once i had that skill on my roster, it was easier to say or do something if i did get triggered during sex, whether that was saying “stop” or tapping their arm to let them know to stop. this, again, is even easier if you have a partner or a consistent sexual partner you trust.
another thing i’ve started doing is telling my fwb anytime he does something i do like. it’s a lot easier to communicate because i’m not worried about rejection, and once i got more comfortable communicating that way during sex, communicating what i wanted got a little easier.
it’s still an uphill battle for me sometimes, there are still times during sex when i just can’t get the words to come out of my mouth, and i’m working on being gentle with myself. if you struggle with this stuff too, it’s not your fault, and you also don’t have to be afraid of sex. focus on getting to know yourself and your limits, practice communicating, check in with yourself after sex, and know that it does get easier!
pulling this out of the tags bc this is also a really good point!!!
this! it’s ok to revoke consent anytime during sex. and it’s important to know how to do that. your partner can’t read your mind. if you don’t indicate that you want them to stop, they won’t know what you need. which is why it’s so important to practice how you want to ask them to stop, talk about non verbal cues you can use, teach them what to look for if you get triggered so they know what to do, etc.
this is something i’ve said before, but i feel like it’s super relevant here: your trauma is not your fault, but unfortunately it is your responsibility to manage when interacting with others. and managing it is so much easier when you find coping techniques that are consistent and simple to use even when you’re triggered.
[Image IDs: Image #1: Tumblr tags reading: #i think this ties in really closely with the idea of dignity of risk #that’s a concept that comes up a lot in disability rights particularly for people with developmental or intellectual disabilities #it means that there’s always a risk of making a mistake or a bad decision or getting scammed #but that having parents or caretakers take away decision-making ability of our fear of what might happen is infantilizing that person #anyway i think everyone needs to understand that choosing something doesn’t mean it’s going to turn out well #but it’s still better than not having a choice at all #and the best thing you can do to avoid bad choices without giving up the dignity of making your own choices #is to make sure your decisions are being made with as much information as you get get and that you have a plan for it things go bad #consent #sex #dignity of risk #disability #trauma. Image #2: Tumblr tags reading: #want to point out that revoking consent does not need to be verbal #you can agree beforehand that tapping them maybe a certain number of times means stop #if its easier to tap than get words out your mouth in the moment #and doesn’t hurt to have multiple kinds of safewords anyway #comment /End IDs]
gonna start saying “you couldn’t make x movie today” but for reasons unrelated to political correctness
you couldn’t make Home Alone 2: Lost in New York today because the strict airport regulations put into place after 9/11 make it nigh impossible for a child to simply walk onto the wrong plane
You couldn’t make American psycho today because Christian Bale would actually kill Jared Leto for real
somehow instead of saying “as a treat”, I’ve started using the phrase “for morale”, as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.
and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.
I’m not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me
Unfortunately— and literally no one is talking about this— if you buy many many little treats for yourself, cumulatively, this can add up to a larger amount of money, if you add the numbers together. I’m not sure if there’s anything to be done about this but thought I would bring it to the attention of my beloved and far-reaching audience
I got very loudly deadnamed and misgendered multiple times at the doctors office today. This new receptionist ignored the preferred name on my profile to deadname and misgender me loudly, louder than she talked about anyone else in the waiting room. My birth certificate says “F” nex to sex, my medical documentation reflects this, and I was still deadnamed and misgendered.
And the saving grace was a woman and her child. I wear cat-ears and the child too young to speak loved them, and kept pointing and looking at me. I’m assuming her mother kept saying “yeah, she’s wearing cat-ears”, “yeah, that woman has cute cat-ears”, and the like. Her child was enamoured with them, and that woman didn’t misgender me once. And each time my very obviously masculine deadname name came up, she looked upset at the receptionist, but not once did she give me a bad look.
It doesn’t have to be much. You don’t need to be a knight in shining armour, or in someones face. Simply a quiet refusal to play along with someone elses bullshit is enough. It was enough to turn a trying and tiring moment into something that put a smile on my face and joy back into my life. It wasn’t a lot but it mattered to me.
In a statement to The Post, a spokesperson for NBCUniversal claimed the tree work is simply an annual ritual at this time of year. “We understand that the safety tree trimming of the Ficus trees we did on Barham Blvd. has created unintended challenges for demonstrators, that was not our intention. In partnership with licensed arborists, we have pruned these trees annually at this time of year to ensure that the canopies are light ahead of the high wind season,” they wrote. “We support the WGA and SAG’s right to demonstrate and are working to provide some shade coverage. We continue to openly communicate with the labor leaders on-site to work together during this time.”
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If those trees were pollarded annually, the cut areas would NOT look like that. There would be big knobs of old growth at the trimming sites. Not seeing any of that here. The way those trees were topped (not pollarded, which is a very careful process that has to begin when the tree is immature) is excellent way to kill them due to loss of hydration, open sites to infection and parasitism during the best time of year for both, lack of nutrition due to so little greenery and new budding growth being left, sunburn and other exposure damage, and a myriad of other possibilities. Plus, if they were topped annually, they would not have the lovely drooping branches seen in the other picture but would have tons of vertical suckers instead.
This is what an annually pollarded mature tree should look like:
If this was done by the city, the public works arborists should be protesting in front of city hall and screaming their heads off right now. I’m not hearing about that, so… Tree law!
The Studios: *speak*
Botanists and other Tree Experts:
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Update and confirmation of Imminent Tree Law:
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He mentions later in the thread that not only do they not trim the trees annually, they’re trimmed at best once every 18 years. Supposed to be every five, and only in dormancy, which even my layman’s ass knows about tree trimming.
And yes, Universal can probably eat the fine. But it’s gonna be a whopper even if the trees survive (which is as mentioned kinda unlikely), California is a triple damage state for tree law, and it may increase dramatically if there were nesting birds in the trees.
All this to be a Captain Planet filler villain to some writers. And yes, it’s currently just the writers officially picketing there; SAG-AFTRA recommended against it for petty bullshit like this and the suddenly necessary sidewalk construction.
I hate the “Oh ur posting without tags? how is anyone supposed to find ur post🥺” warning shit tumblr does now. the hand of god will deliver me unto others
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