the anger in the face of injustice is a righteous one.
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recent studies show i'd fucking die for dick grayson
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i’m not making a value judgment on this, like it isn’t a big deal or anything, but one of the more interesting parts of travel recently is that whenever you ask someone where they’re from, 99.999% of the time, someone who is from like, sweden or ireland or india or canada or anywhere will say the country they’re from, whereas americans will say their city or sometimes their state. if you ask an american abroad where they’re from they’ll almost never say “the US” they’ll say like missouri or chicago or some shit. it’s interesting
so far the main responses to this are like 1) ‘the USA is really big’, and 2) ‘if you just say the country they’ll ask you what city so it’s skipping a step and being helpful’ and… i know i said this wasn’t really a bad thing before but this is actively changing my mind. american brainrot is thinking the US is the only country that’s large and has regional cultural identities or that people won’t ask polite followup questions to folks from any other country
this should be a tweet but I don’t want to deal with people on Twitter. everyone stop having every character in your fiction talk like their goal is to get an A in therapy.
I love cathartic conversations too and that is why I am begging you: stop hunting them to extinction by making them constant, characterless, and corny as hell
“Most of all, I am inspired by Haris’ fearlessness, her courage to share with the world her true self. She has taught me and our family so much about bravery, about truth. About what it means to live authentically. I know this process was painful for her, fraught with grief and anxiety. She is sober to the cruelty trans people are subjected to daily. But she is strong and undaunted.“
“The more psychotherapy an abusive man has participated in, the more impossible I usually find it is to work with him.
The highly “therapized” abuser tends to be slick, condescending, and manipulative. He uses the psychological concepts
he has learned to dissect his partner’s flaws and dismiss her perceptions of abuse. He takes responsibility for nothing that he does; he moves in a world where there are only unfortunate dynamics, miscommunications, symbolic acts. He expects to be rewarded for his emotional openness, handled gingerly because of his “vulnerability,” colluded with in skirting the damage he has done, and congratulated for his insight. Many years ago, a violent abuser in my program shared the following with us: “From working in therapy on my issues about anger toward my mother, I realized that when I punched my wife, it wasn’t really her I was hitting. It was my mother!” He sat back, ready for us to express our approval of his self-awareness. My colleague
peered through his glasses at the man, unimpressed by this revelation. “No,” he said, “you were hitting your wife.”
I have yet to meet an abuser who has made any meaningful and lasting changes in his behavior toward female partners through therapy, regardless of how much “insight”—most of it false—that he may have gained. The fact is that if an abuser finds a particularly skilled therapist and if the therapy is especially successful, when he is finished he will be a happy, well-adjusted abuser—good news for him, perhaps, but not such good news for his partner. Psychotherapy can be very valuable for the issues it is devised to address, but partner abuse is not one of them; an abusive man needs to be in a specialized program.
Therapy focuses on the man’s feelings and gives him empathy and support, no matter how unreasonable the attitudes that are giving rise to those feelings. An abusive man’s therapist usually will not speak to the abused woman, whereas the counselor of a high-quality abuser program always does.
Therapy typically will not address any of the central causes of abusiveness, including entitlement, coercive control, disrespect, superiority, selfishness, or victim blaming.
It is also impossible to persuade an abusive man to change by convincing him that he would benefit from it, because he perceives the benefits of controlling his partner as vastly outweighing the losses. This is part of why so many men initially take steps to change their abusive behavior but then return to their old ways. There is another reason why appealing to his self-interest doesn’t work: The abusive man’s belief that his own needs should come ahead of his partner’s is at the core of his problem.
Therefore when anyone, including therapists, tells an abusive man that he should change because that’s what’s best for him, they are inadvertently feeding his selfish focus on himself: You can’t simultaneously contribute to a problem and solve it.
Women speak to me with shocked voices of betrayal as they tell me how their couples therapist, or the abuser’s individual therapist, or a therapist for one of their children, has become a vocal advocate for him and a harsh and superior critic of her. I have saved for years a letter that a psychologist wrote about one of my clients, a man who admitted to me that his wife was covered with blood and had broken bones when he was done beating her and that she could have died. The psychologist’s letter ridiculed the system for labeling this man a “batterer,” saying that he was too reasonable and insightful and should not be participating in my abuser program any further.
The content of the letter indicated to me that the psychologist had neglected to ever ask the client to describe the brutal beating that he had been convicted of.
As a routine part of my assessment of an abusive man, I contacted his private therapist to compare impressions. The therapist turned out to have strong opinions about the case:
THERAPIST: I think it’s a big mistake for Martin to be attending your abuser program. He has very low self-esteem; he believes anything bad that anyone says about him. If you tell him he’s abusive, that will just tear him down further. His partner slams him with the word abusive all the time, for reasons of her own. His wife’s got huge control issues, and she has obsessive-compulsive disorder. She needs treatment. I think having Martin in your program just gets her what she wants.
BANCROFT: So you have been doing couples counseling with them?
THERAPIST: No, I see him individually.
BANCROFT: How many times have you met with her?
THERAPIST: She hasn’t been in at all.
BANCROFT: You must have had quite extensive phone contact with her, then.
THERAPIST: No, I haven’t spoken to her.
BANCROFT: You haven’t spoken to her? You have assigned his wife a clinical diagnosis based only on Martin’s descriptions of her?
THERAPIST: Yes, but you need to understand, we’re talking about an unusually insightful man. Martin has told me many details, and he is perceptive and sensitive.
BANCROFT: But he admits to serious psychological abuse of his wife, although he doesn’t call it that. An abusive man is not a reliable source of information about his partner. What the abuser was getting from individual therapy, unfortunately, was an official seal of approval for his denial, and for his view that his wife was mentally ill.”
—“Why does he do that ? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling men”
i think the sickest moment for me in the series of sick moments that this trial has been was when amber had to testify about being raped and broke down beforehand saying “i don’t want to do this” or “i can’t believe i have to do this” or something to that effect, and elaine was saying “i’m so sorry, i’m so sorry” as she asked the questions that she had to ask. i know from personal experience that recounting the details of rape, even confidentially to just two or three professionals who have no reason to disbelieve you, can be unbelievably humiliating, distressing, and re-traumatizing. having do it in a court room full of people, including lawyers ready to accuse me of lying and rip my story apart, including MY RAPIST himself, and having it live-streamed to a world of people ready and delighted to openly mock and dismiss it, would have sent me to levels of despair that i cannot fathom. i think making her do that is johnny depp’s most deeply evil action so far, which is saying something. he cannot burn in hell soon enough, and neither can that judge that allowed a domestic violence trial to be live-streamed. i’m so sick
and the idea that he might actually profit off of this heinous abuse in addition to the way his reputation has benefitted genuinely makes me feel like i might throw up. please please god if you’re out there listening let there be justice and in the absence of justice let there be riots
so now women legally cannot even mention having been victims of domestic violence or sexual assault without it being defamation. I hope y’all demons fucking die in the most painful way imaginable.
in 10 years, people are gonna look back at this depp-heard trial, realize how awful the misogyny surrounding it was, and say, “we behaved horribly.” yeah, leave me and others out of that ‘we’, because a bunch of us have been warning about how awful the disinformation is and how harmful it is for survivors to see. but ofc, any reasonable takes are drowned out by ridiculous things like a viral tweet of amber blowing her nose which has been framed as her ‘snorting coke in court’. you people have been behaving like demons and i can’t wait for your asses to realize how stupid some of you acted.
Man I wish universal basic income was a thing so people could just leave jobs they’re unhappy at and wouldn’t have to worry about not affording their basic needs while they look for something new or so that people could actually explore their passion projects like only the rich and powerful can just take time off to write or work on art or go back to school and even if you’re having mental health problems you can’t just take an extended vacation a lot of places still don’t consider mental health as actual illness anyway fuck capitalism am i right brother?
The best part of UBI is that you don’t need to see a cent of that money to enjoy the benefits it would provide. Just the shear ability to be able say “I don’t have to work here if I don’t want to” would give ALL workers the bargaining power to demand more from their employers, higher pay, more benefits. It would be amazing!
good news if you’re a European citizen: there’s a European Citizens’ Initiative currently collecting signatures to establish unconditional basic income in the EU!
i quote,
Our aim is to establish the introduction of unconditional basic incomes throughout the EU which ensure every person’s material existence and opportunity to participate in society as part of its economic policy. This aim shall be reached while remaining within the competences conferred to the EU by the Treaties.
[…]
We request the EU Commission to make a proposal for unconditional basic incomes throughout the EU, which reduce regional disparities in order to strengthen the economic, social and territorial cohesion in the EU. [x]
for it to pass, it needs at least 1 million signatures total + minimal participation threshold in at least 7 countries. as of today (September 9th 2021) it’s at a little bit above 146k signatures total and 6 more countries need to reach the participation threshold
if you’re a EU citizen please consider signing here (it’s a quick process! you enter your nationality then follow the instructions, took me 5 minutes yesterday)
if you’re not or can’t sign please consider passing on the info to EU citizens you know!! if we manage to get this implemented, it could really improve quality of life for everyone living in the EU
Even though i dont live in europe i hope they make this happen
I think one of the most important parts about film and tv analysis is never forgetting that no matter the genre or setting, the story is probably being filtered through the perspective of a person who lives in California
lemme just give u a lil context on some things that might be missing from social media content in the depp v heard trial. for background, i’m an attorney. i’m from california. i’m a certified domestic violence victim advocate. i work for a domestic violence shelter that provides services to both male and female survivors of domestic violence.
notes on previous cases & the type of legal action johnny depp filed
this is not a legal proceeding initiated by AH. it was initiated by Johnny Depp. it is not the first proceeding initiated by Johnny Depp.
once a victim ends a relationship and cuts off contact with an abuser, it is not uncommon for an abuser to use the legal system to continue to exert power and control over their victim. it’s called litigation abuse.
in the most recent completed legal proceeding (Johnny Depp sued a british tabloid for defamation for referring to him as an abuser), the judicial officer determined that AH had proved at least 12 of 14 alleged incidents of abuse to a civil legal standard, making it perfectly appropriate for a news organization to refer to Johnny Depp as an abuser.
this is a defamation case, not a case about abuse. its about whether or not AH defamed Johnny Depp by writing an article about *her* experience as a public figure associated with domestic violence, an article that did not mention Johnny Depp by name.
notes on forum shopping by depp’s legal team
interestingly, this defamation case was NOT filed in California, the state where AH and Johnny Depp lived during their relationship, and was NOT filed in DC, where the WaPo, the publication that published AH’s article, is based. it was filed in the state of virginia.
because this trial is about defamation, not domestic violence, there has been a significant lack of expert testimony about domestic violence. let me just tell you a few things about the concept of mutual abuse.
in california, it is possible for two people to get restraining orders against each other if they have both committed acts of domestic abuse. HOWEVER, this type of legal outcome is heavily regulated because the legislature and judicial system understand that true cases of “mutual abuse” are exceedingly rare. therefore, california law requires that a judicial officer make “detailed findings of fact indicating that both parties acted primarily as aggressors and that neither party acted primarily in self-defense”.
in making this determination, caselaw directs judicial officers to consider the entire history of abuse in a relationship, rather than taking each incident as a single isolated event. this is because, say after 6 months of being choked, threatened with death, and having objects thrown at your head, when a drunk angry partner comes towards you, hitting them first, in and of itself, does not make you the primary aggressor. it is considered “reactive” violence, done in self defense, and can only be evaluated in taking the entire history of abuse in the relationship into account.
the fact that one party was injured during an altercation, in and of itself, does not make the injured party the victim and the injury inflicting party the primary aggressor. this is based on long established legal principals that a victim of physical aggression can employ reasonable physical force to defend themselves, even if that application of force results in injury to the aggressor
that AH admitted to striking Johnny Depp, in and of itself, does not legally mean that AH is “equally guilty” of domestic abuse, does not mean that she is not a victim of domestic abuse, and does not negate that Johnny Depp was the primary aggressor throughout the relationship
a few other notes:
johnny depp is not captain jack sparrow, edward scissorhands, or any other famous character you love. he is an almost 60 year old man with a documented history of frivolous litigation, alcohol and drug abuse, and physically violent outbursts dating back decades.
johnny depp is a cisgender heterosexual male, a multi-millionaire, a well established actor, and was in his 50s when he married a bisexual woman, an up-and-coming actress 20 years his junior. there is an ENORMOUS power differential here. which is not to say that it is inherently abusive, but it is context that needs to be part of the discussion.
petty but whatever, AH’s lawyer never said she used that specific makeup product brand to cover her bruises. AH’s lawyer said she used a product that did color correction, like that makeup product brand has, holding up their product for visual emphasis in the courtroom. it’s not evidence of any kind of lie and it’s extremely bad faith on that makeup brand’s part to insinuate otherwise
that lady who diagnosed AH, claimed she doesn’t have PTSD, and claimed that she has histrionic personality disorder and BPD, is NOT a board certified mental health professional, was hired by Depp’s legal team, AFTER drinking with Depp’s legal team, is paid by Depp’s legal team, and spent less than 12 hours evaluating AH in person. Not a credible reputable source of impartial, science-based evidence.
correction: first version had NYT/NY not WaPo/DC bc lol that article was a while ago and i forgot
believe women unless you don’t feel like it then whatever. believe women unless she happens to suck a bit and you don’t like her. believe women except when you’re friends with the perpetrator. believe women unless you disagree with her on other things. believe women except when they don’t always use politically correct language. believe women except if you think she is being hysterical. believe women unless you think she should’ve made herself or her world smaller in order to protect herself. believe women
