marjaerwin: (Default)
When police fire tear gas and concussion grenades at protesters, that doesn’t mean the protesters were or are committing violence. It means the police are committing violence.

I wasn’t able to participate in today’s protests, due to my disabilities, but while peacefully protesting years ago, police attacked the group I was with, and someone knocked me to the ground, and police repeatedly sprayed pain into my eyes and mouth. Judging by photos of the beating, and bruises afterwards, they also beat me with an improvised club. I have severe asthma, and I could have died if it had gone down my throat instead of my esophagus. I don’t have epilepsy, but I had some kind of seizure due to the pain.

Blaming protesters is victim-blaming. Bullying survivors to try to figure out what we must have done to deserve the violence can be triggering for some of us with ptsd from this violence. It’s not right, factually or morally.
marjaerwin: (Default)
I don't know what to think of this discussion:

http://arletterocks.tumblr.com/post/26452521377/on-creepiness

http://radtransfem.tumblr.com/post/79174724869/the-only-way-were-given-to-deal-with-it-is

Point one: there are genuinely threatening people out there.

Point two: I'll always have trouble recognizing the genuinely threatening people, without overtly threatening acts. I can't really define that. I'll always have fight-or-flight responses but these aren't restricted to the genuinely threatening people [someone in a police uniform, some man in no shirt, someone walking a dog, some several men talking together]. I mean I have a fairly strong 'creepdar' but it is prone to false positives and false negatives.

Point three: I'm going to suggest that some of our 'creepdar' is actually 'xenodar' and rooted in unconscious xenophobia. If our first reaction is to be afraid of someone, we ought to ask ourselves why we're afraid of them. A lot of the time, it is a bad reason, rooted in racism, or sexism, or fear of 'strange' behavior. A lot of the time it can mean hurting someone when we need to help them. At one point I heard a woman shouting and saw a man staggering and not speaking. I was confused and scared until she explained that he was having some kind of medical emergency and needed water. So I got water. I worry that trusting in our 'creepdar' can mean ignoring people in genuine emergencies, and ostracizing people with disabilities.
marjaerwin: (Default)
A word to those of you unfamiliar with tumblr: it collects together all the blogs of the people you follow, and automatically adds them to your dashboard. So here, it's easier to decide whether to check up on friends who post on important-but-triggering topics, or wait another day, but there's it's automated. it allows users to post stuff below the fold/behind a link, and to post tags. At present, the usual expectation is that it's each user's responsibility to install special software to block tags which they associate with triggering material. I think this puts too much of the responsibility on victims/survivors and too little on posters.

First off, blocking entire tags means blocking supportive posts, hostile posts, peripherally-related posts, and directly related ones.

We all have good days and bad days, and can handle some posts but really need to avoid other posts.

Second, it’s a pain to tag everything, a literal pain for those of us with arm injuries, and I don’t usually bother. It’s no more of a pain and a good deal more helpful to insert a fold with an intro above fold and the likely-to-be-triggering sections below the fold.

We don’t all have the same triggers, but many of us have common triggers involving sexual assault and common situations which may have exposed us or our friends to sexual assault. A ten-paragraph essay on sexual assault can probably go below the fold.

Third, most of the tag-blocking software is written for Chrome, and the rest is indecipherably documented.
marjaerwin: (Default)
Finally reach doctor's office.

Struggle with bright lights and noises.

Search for a corner to curl up in.

Profile

marjaerwin: (Default)
marjaerwin

May 2025

S M T W T F S
    123
45678910
11121314151617
1819202122 2324
25262728293031

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 14th, 2025 06:20 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios