A lot of the advice I got about learning to enforce my boundaries was framed as an adversarial thing. Like, ‘yes, it might upset and disappoint the people around you, but you have to learn to tell them ‘no’ anyway.’ At best, ‘good people will still like you if you enforce your boundaries’.
What I wish I’d been told is that good people will think it’s awesome that you enforce your boundaries, that there are people who will respect the hell out of you for it, that there are people who will admire you not despite you telling them no, but because of it. That most people don’t want to make you do something you don’t enjoy,and so they’ll actively be happier and more relaxed around you if they know they can trust you to decline to do things you don’t enjoy and to ask them to stop things that bother you.
It helped me a lot, personally, to stop thinking of ‘enforcing my boundaries’ as something I did for me and more as something I did to empower the people I was close with, to build a situation where they and I felt sure everything that was going on was something we all wanted.
Most advice isn’t good for everyone and this advice seems maybe bad for people in abusive situations, because sometimes you do need to learn to enforce boundaries against people who will try to violate them. But if there are other brains like me out there: your partner will be really happy you can say no to them. your friend will be really happy you change the subject when you hate it. your roommate will really appreciate that you tell them to turn down the music. most people will feel safer and more comfortable around you if they know you’ll reliably express your needs, AND they’ll feel better about voicing theirs.
Tag: important
I’m gonna depress the hell out of all of you. ready? ok go
so, that “stop devaluing feminized work post”
nice idea and all
but the thing is, as soon as a decent number of women enter any field, it becomes “feminized,” and it becomes devalued.
as women enter a field in greater number, people become less willing to pay for it, the respect for it drops, and it’s seen as less of a big deal. it’s not about the job- it’s about the number of women in the job.
observe what happened with biology. it’s STEM, sure, but anyone in a male-dominated science will sneer at the idea of it being ‘for real,’ nevermind that everyone sure took it more seriously when it was a male dominated field. so has happened with scores of other areas; nursing comes to mind
so the thing is, it’s not the work or the job that has to be uplifted and seen as more respectable. it will never work out, until people start seeing women as respectable
but there’s a doozy and who the fuck knows if it’s ever happening in my life time
“observe what happened with biology. it’s STEM, sure, but anyone in a male-dominated science will sneer at the idea of it being ‘for real,’ nevermind that everyone sure took it more seriously when it was a male dominated field.”
Personal anecdote time! I’m in a biology graduate program. An acquaintance wanted to introduce some guy to me because his son was thinking about becoming an undergrad science major. When he found out I was in the biology department, he grinned and said, “Well, I guess that’s kind of related to science.”
I gave him what I hope was an icy look and said, “Isn’t it strange how men outside the field started saying that right around the time biology majors shifted from mostly male to mostly female?”
The guy got this look on his face like he was about to play the “just a joke” card, and then an older woman who had been standing nearby, talking to someone else, turned to me and said, “The same thing happened with real estate.” She went on to explain that, over the course of the career, the male-to-female ratio among real estate agents had dropped, and the pay and “prestige factor” of that job dropped along with it.
This is also famous for happening to teaching. Keep an eye on medicine over the next fifteen years and watch as it becomes less prestigious and less well-paid.
It also happened to secretarial/administrative work – in the 19th century, clerical work was utterly respectable and seen as requiring quite a lot of talent and skill (which it still does!) but then along came the typewriter and women entering the field and HEY PRESTO “she’s just some secretary”
at my university, chemical engineering, or chem eng, was often referred to as “fem eng” why? because it’s an exact 50/50 ratio of women to men, which clearly makes it too feminine. in the 70s/80s chemical engineering was one of the most important and hardest engineering fields (plastics! pulp and paper! OIL) but now that there are more women in the field it’s considered an easier field, in comparison to other fields.
for example, i once heard a girl in mech eng list some of the engineering fields in the order she thought was hardest to easiest. you know what it was? electrical, mechanical, chemical. it’s absolutely no surprise that this list is also a handy ordering of fewest women in the field to most women in the field.
AND, another point! this happens the other way around too. computer science related fields used to be dominated by women, which made it not very important (switchboard operators? yup). once men started taking over the field, well that’s when the big money and prestige came in.
The field of anthropology, which is becoming female dominated from what I can see, has been determined to be useless by some. (I’ve even had girls in STEM fields tell me I don’t study a “real science” so how’s about that internalized misogyny for ya) When I was majoring in anthropology, Gov. Rick Scott determined that Florida didn’t need any more anthropologists and wanted to reduce funding to programs and increase funding to STEM programs. While not considered a STEM field, anthropologists have contributed to the research behind STEM programs and provide a wide variety of services to Florida alone. A team of anthropologists created a powerpoint “This is Anthropology“ to talk about dozens of programs and services they contribute to in Florida which include healthcare programs, education programs, disaster relief, forensic investigation, environmental programs and conservation efforts, research for fortune 500 businesses, agricultural programs, immigration programs, programs and services for the elderly, etc. I’m also in the field of education, and we’re constantly made out to be overpaid (we’re not) and made out to be incapable of doing our jobs without very strict guidance.
It’s all very insulting, really. No matter what we study. No matter what we do to earn a living. It will never be good enough.
It isn’t limited to the US either. In my father’s home country, medicine is mainly pursued by women, and thus, being a doctor isn’t seen as prestigious or respectable.
I’ve had the same thoughts, especially in regards to bio and anthro.
I noticed a lot of the “vet Barbie” jokes started up around the time women started to outnumber men in animal science, too. My class was 60%-70% female. The companion animal class I taught was 90% female. Heck, both classes I taught this year were >70% female. Animal science is quickly becoming a woman’s field, at least in terms of sheer # of graduates turned out….and now you keep hearing comments about girls who never outgrew the horse crazy phase, or girls who just want to cuddle all the cute animals but freak out at the sight of blood…..*heavy sigh*
(incidentally, I know mean vet pay has been going down for a number of reasons, but I’d be curious as to see if there was any correlation to mean pay and number of women vet graduates, because I know most vet schools are turning out cohorts that are 70-80% women, if not higher)
I feel like a lot of margianalized people, especially younger ones, have this idea that there’s a limit to the number of things they can ID with. And I think it comes from those anti-sjw posts mocking things for being “too diverse.” Like, if you’re trans and bisexual and disabled, you can’t be autistic too, you’re already over your quota. Or if you’re brown and asexual and have bpd, you can’t be nonbinary as well because that would be too much.
So this is me telling me that there is your identity has no limits. Do not bury pieces of yourself because you’re afraid of what other people will think. Do not break yourself in order to fit into a too small mold. You do not have to hide or shrink or alter yourself to satisfy a statis quo of who is and isn’t “normal enough.” You are you
Kid on tumblr: we are so much more informed than old people, and tumblr has taught me so much. Believes fake mgm lion, drunk girl video, girl attacked on playground, cnn screenshot, ect.
Adult in real life: we are so much more informed than teens, and life has taught me so much. Believes Obama was born outside the U.S., that black people are lazy, that Bush should be elected twice, that the picture of Joda Cain holding a gun and cash is Michael Brown and that his past justified his murder, that if everyone just “works hard” that they can succeed regardless of situation, that lgbtqia+ people can be “fixed”, that the Iraq had chemical weapons, that sexism is over, that teens use their iphones to send instasnaps on the facebook, that global warming is fake, etc.
Are kids on tumblr more informed than many adults on certain issues? Yes
Are they more informed on every topic? No
Is there false information that is circulated on Tumblr? Yes
Is there false information circulated outside the internet? Yes
The important thing to remember is that no one is an expert on everything. Experience and education are valuable but one’s experiences don’t necessarily mean you are always right.
Disagreement and discussion is going to happen, and that’s good. Don’t ignore what people experience and think, whether they are older or younger. Their viewpoint is different and understanding that is so valuable.
Also, the wisdom gained by life experience is personal and may not be universally relatable. Plenty of older people don’t fully understand that the world has changed since they were growing up in it and what worked for them wouldn’t work today. Or might not have even worked back then for someone of a different background, different gender, those with disabilities, etc.
It’s a shame because these experiences can be really helpful and constructive: but so many people choose to weaponize them against those they feel to be under them.
listen: I promise to you therapists can be wrong. therapists can be wrong. I am sorry your world is fucking rocked right now but therapists can literally be wrong.
An important thing to remember is that up until only a few years ago, the internet was like a sea of tiny, isolated islands. The biggest social outlets were forums, each with its own status quo, and the biggest, most visible ones were most often run by ambivalent moderators who encouraged “civil discussion” even if it meant letting grotesquely prejudiced shitheads have their “equal say.”
People who had any sensitivity to a lot of issues were often just run off and had to stick to smaller, more private outlets. Forums for trans people, abuse survivors, anyone different from the acceptable mainstream were treated as trolling targets and often crumbled under the onslaught.
What we’re NOW seeing, across all this social media like tumblr and twitter, are people coming out of hiding, showing their true feelings and identities as they discover they’re not as alone as they thought.
The people who chalk this up to some kind of SJW special snowflake bandwagon are people still living in the internet’s dark ages. They don’t get that this diversity and compassion was always there, but hidden under their mountains of fake edgy bullshit. That’s what pisses them off so much: they thought the internet was a free-for-all paradise to take nothing seriously and be as big an asshole as you want, but that was nothing but a facade all along. It was the result of people who thought they HAD to act that way in order to avoid becoming targets.
Now we’re finding out which ones were just legitimately terrible people to the core and they’re all in panic mode over it.
if you see someone active on social media or something, and you message them, and they don’t reply, they don’t have to. just because they are awake and alive does not mean they have to engage with you whenever you want them to. you are not entitled to someone else’s time.
in the past, an abuser would see me post online and then hound me on aim until i answered. i felt like i had to hide. they also lived in my building and would pound on my door if they saw me online and i wasn’t responding to them. i had to completely ditch a screenname, lie about having skype, and turn off my phone to hide. if i saw they were online i couldn’t post on facebook or interact with anyone without them demanding to interact with me. the only legitimate excuse not to talk to them was being asleep. in their eyes, if i were really their friend, i would always want to engage no matter what, even if i had a migraine or work to do or wasn’t feeling very social. it didn’t matter.
please do not do this. if someone doesn’t write you back, don’t guilt them about where they are or what they’re doing. if you see someone posting on tumblr or facebook and they aren’t signed into aim or google or skype or whatever, that’s their business. if they are signed on but don’t write you back, it’s okay. sometimes people can’t talk to everyone all the time every time. some people can only talk to one person at a time without getting overloaded. some people are signed on in case someone needs to contact them with something important and not to be social. they’re not always hiding from you, and you shouldn’t make them feel like they HAVE to hide from you.
this is probably jumbled and i’m probably missing a lot here, but pressuring people to always be available to you every hour of the day and always answer the phone or text or chat or pm or whatever…if you require that of someone, you might need to take a step back.
everyone here is so quick to preach about how aromantics, demiromantics, and grayromantics are erased, but what about the rest of the arospec kids?
what about the quoiromantic kids, who can’t tell if the attraction they’re feeling is romantic or platonic?
what about the cupioromantic kids, who don’t experience romantic attraction but want to be in a romantic relationship?
what about the lithromantic kids, who feel romantic attraction but don’t want it reciprocated or lose the attraction when it is reciprocated?
and especially, what about the aroflux kids, whose romantic orientations are always on the aromantic spectrum but whose position on it fluctuates?
we’re doing a great job of making sure that everyone on this site knows that aro, demi, and gray aro kids exist, but please remember that those are not the only three places you can be on the aromantic spectrum. the rest of us are here and we matter just as much as the other arospec kids.
Here for this!
i noticed that alot of queer kids feel like they have to tell their friends and family that theyre queer. even if theyll be rejected
and i want to remind u all that nobody is entitled to knowing your romantic, sexual or gender orientations. nobody. you have no moral obligation to share that information if youre not comfortable with doing so
youre not “lying” by not telling people or “hiding”. cause its honestly no ones business but your own
you come out on your own terms when you feel safe and comfortable doing so!! or you can come out to a few trusted people if you want before telling a larger group
dont feel like you owe that information to anyone ok??
Are you against cis people?
beckettisme-deactivated20150716:
Not particularly.
When I refer to someone as ‘cis’ in a negative tone, I’m using it the same as one might say ‘men’.
One might say something like, “Ugh, Cis people are so annoying”, but really they are only talking about a specific group of cis people.
This does not mean the person inherently thinks all cis people are annoying.
I disapprove of a lot of the behaviors that most cisgender people might act with, but not the people themselves.
(In most cases, they tend to have a lot of incorrect information, and that can be tedious and irritating to deal with from the position of a trans person.)
If anything, I’m a little bitter about the type of privileges they receive, simply because they are cis.
Short Answer: No.
Cisgender people are people just like every other person, regardless of their gender identity.
Just in the case of trans people, neither can change their identity.
They should be treated with the same amount of respect and humanity all people are given.
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