researchers discover correlation between increased exposure to psychiatry and increased incidence of suicide.
my reactions to my own failure to release preconceptions about people when i meet them is my issue, not theirs.
i wonder how much of the "behavioral illness" in the developed world is the result of a handful of people insisting that someone in their group isn't "like them good enough", and the person they're singling out, of course being precisely and predictably exactly like them... and you, and me, and every other human being... and wanting so much to belong that they end up letting themselves get put through the wringer? i'm not saying mental illness isn't a thing. i'm saying i'd like to know what the ratio of "i think there's something wrong" to "everyone keeps telling me there's something wrong" is. no mental health professional is even going to suggest "maybe they're wrong", either for pride or liability's sake. that's a blind spot in therapy, and when it's the truth (which it has a good chance of being. people are wrong all the time), it's a tragedy.
the only mental health condition someone being coerced into mental health treatment should be presumed to have is ptsd, because you do not want to know what i been through to get here.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Saturday, October 25, 2014
"hey, wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?"
"Talking While Female" - NPR video
they left out "argumentative" and "yelling". if a woman's voice isn't "squeaky" or "childlike" enough, everything she says gets interpreted as "aggressive". it's why i don't use capital letters in my informal writing anymore. i'm honestly just that tired of being told how i'm "yelling" all the time.
and people, i'm sorry to say, aren't kind about it either. people seem to decide that since i continue to sound like me even though they've randomly chosen to believe i'm yelling (seriously, i've been told i was yelling when i was whispering, and i wish i were exaggerating about that), i'm being purposely antagonistic with them. it's actually quite scary for me to initiate conversations with people i don't already know well because i never know how "threatened" they're going to decide to be, and i don't really want to get shot over the length of my vocal cords.
i'm not the only woman with a deeper voice that i know of, but we all tend to use the same tactic to "diffuse" the "threat" we "impose" on people by... idunno, existing? we talk like we're mildly retarded. we all take on that forrest gump inflection and hope that if people think we're kinda stupid, they won't feel "threatened" enough by our voices to attack us.
they left out "argumentative" and "yelling". if a woman's voice isn't "squeaky" or "childlike" enough, everything she says gets interpreted as "aggressive". it's why i don't use capital letters in my informal writing anymore. i'm honestly just that tired of being told how i'm "yelling" all the time.
and people, i'm sorry to say, aren't kind about it either. people seem to decide that since i continue to sound like me even though they've randomly chosen to believe i'm yelling (seriously, i've been told i was yelling when i was whispering, and i wish i were exaggerating about that), i'm being purposely antagonistic with them. it's actually quite scary for me to initiate conversations with people i don't already know well because i never know how "threatened" they're going to decide to be, and i don't really want to get shot over the length of my vocal cords.
i'm not the only woman with a deeper voice that i know of, but we all tend to use the same tactic to "diffuse" the "threat" we "impose" on people by... idunno, existing? we talk like we're mildly retarded. we all take on that forrest gump inflection and hope that if people think we're kinda stupid, they won't feel "threatened" enough by our voices to attack us.
Friday, October 17, 2014
to: all the young dudes... and all the other dudes, too.
woman in detroit shot dead for rejecting a man's advances.
when you try to chat up a woman who hasn't been properly introduced to you, we still wonder a little if you might be The One, but unfortunately, we mostly just worry about what might happen to us if you aren't... and i'm going to be honest, you probably aren't The One for anywhere near as many girls as you might want.
it scares the hell out of women to have a man we don't know approach us and start talking, especially if he starts talking sex right out the gate. women know right up front if the answer is going to be 'yes' or 'no', most of the time it's 'no', and too often, violence is the result.
i'm not saying don't ever flirt with women. i'm just asking you to keep in mind that the women you're flirting with have a good reason to be concerned for their safety in that moment, and if you're "not that guy", then just keep being "not that guy". women aren't unreasonable, and believe it or not, we're not even that difficult, but brute force won't turn a 'no' into a 'yes'. it'll only turn it into a prison sentence or a funeral...
or both.
when you try to chat up a woman who hasn't been properly introduced to you, we still wonder a little if you might be The One, but unfortunately, we mostly just worry about what might happen to us if you aren't... and i'm going to be honest, you probably aren't The One for anywhere near as many girls as you might want.
it scares the hell out of women to have a man we don't know approach us and start talking, especially if he starts talking sex right out the gate. women know right up front if the answer is going to be 'yes' or 'no', most of the time it's 'no', and too often, violence is the result.
i'm not saying don't ever flirt with women. i'm just asking you to keep in mind that the women you're flirting with have a good reason to be concerned for their safety in that moment, and if you're "not that guy", then just keep being "not that guy". women aren't unreasonable, and believe it or not, we're not even that difficult, but brute force won't turn a 'no' into a 'yes'. it'll only turn it into a prison sentence or a funeral...
or both.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
methinks he takes the 'war on germs' too literally
obama authorizes national guard deployment to west africa because ebola
sending the national guard to "fight the outbreak"? with what? little tiny guns that shoot purell at individual viruses? what could he possibly be thinking? let's take a look at what will actually happen if guardsmen are sent to africa:
1) a bunch of national guardsmen will contract ebola, okay? let's just be realistic about that... and remember, we're still at the 50/50 point with this disease. half the people who get it die, not because we have no treatment, but because the virus is moving faster than our medicine. national guardsmen aren't thoroughly trained in medical care or quarantine protocol. so what are they gonna do? they're just going to go over there with gigantic guns and stand around making the problem worse, which leads me to point
2) a bunch of africans are going to get killed by national guardsmen and/or bunch of guardsmen will be killed by african patriots. if they'll kill american doctors for trying to teach them how to cut transmission rates, they'll run up on a guardsman no doubt. africans already think ebola is being brought by America the BigBad for some nefarious purpose. imagine how they'll react when they start seeing american military personnel clomping around their villages with gigantic guns.
oh, and you know that word in front of "guardsman"? it's "national". "national guard"... as in guarding the nation. those troops aren't supposed to ever leave american soil. they're meant to guard... defend... the united states from within her own borders. they're never supposed to be sent away, not one of them. we need them all here, all the time. the president should either send the army or consider non-military responses, and if he's bound by treaty not to send his army, that doesn't mean he should turn around and send ours.
this is not what the United States National Guard is for.
sending the national guard to "fight the outbreak"? with what? little tiny guns that shoot purell at individual viruses? what could he possibly be thinking? let's take a look at what will actually happen if guardsmen are sent to africa:
1) a bunch of national guardsmen will contract ebola, okay? let's just be realistic about that... and remember, we're still at the 50/50 point with this disease. half the people who get it die, not because we have no treatment, but because the virus is moving faster than our medicine. national guardsmen aren't thoroughly trained in medical care or quarantine protocol. so what are they gonna do? they're just going to go over there with gigantic guns and stand around making the problem worse, which leads me to point
2) a bunch of africans are going to get killed by national guardsmen and/or bunch of guardsmen will be killed by african patriots. if they'll kill american doctors for trying to teach them how to cut transmission rates, they'll run up on a guardsman no doubt. africans already think ebola is being brought by America the BigBad for some nefarious purpose. imagine how they'll react when they start seeing american military personnel clomping around their villages with gigantic guns.
oh, and you know that word in front of "guardsman"? it's "national". "national guard"... as in guarding the nation. those troops aren't supposed to ever leave american soil. they're meant to guard... defend... the united states from within her own borders. they're never supposed to be sent away, not one of them. we need them all here, all the time. the president should either send the army or consider non-military responses, and if he's bound by treaty not to send his army, that doesn't mean he should turn around and send ours.
this is not what the United States National Guard is for.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
the religion *is* the problem
so there was that lemon party about muslims recently on bill maher's show. i still can't figure out which side is which. in fact, the arguments presented sound exactly the same to me, it's just that one of them was offered to a group of conversants by a scholar in the field and the other was a loud, barely relevant soliloquy delivered to an audience by an actor.
the only problem i had with anything that was said was that they were still talking about religion as though it were a thing that actually exists and not just an ignorant interpretation of neuropsychology by cavemen who didn't know where their thoughts came from.
so did i miss something? when did any party to the discussion suggest that we kill all the muslims or whatever? because i don't remember hearing the thing everyone appears to be arguing about right now. i heard one guy say that islam is damaging to those who identify with it, and then i heard the other guy hollering about how islam is damaging to those who identify with it. in what way are those two opinions different from one another? yeah, in the first one, the thing doing the damage is the religion and in the second, the thing doing the damage is society... because of the religion.
seems to me that the problem is religion. the islamic state has beheaded four western journalists. every day, a squadron of american drone pilots (who are forced to profess a belief in the christian god as a condition of their employment) kiss their crucifix pendants before larping toddlers to death on the other side of the planet for being brown. looking at the evidence, i know i certainly couldn't defend the claim that either of these religions are less violent than the other.
the only problem i had with anything that was said was that they were still talking about religion as though it were a thing that actually exists and not just an ignorant interpretation of neuropsychology by cavemen who didn't know where their thoughts came from.
so did i miss something? when did any party to the discussion suggest that we kill all the muslims or whatever? because i don't remember hearing the thing everyone appears to be arguing about right now. i heard one guy say that islam is damaging to those who identify with it, and then i heard the other guy hollering about how islam is damaging to those who identify with it. in what way are those two opinions different from one another? yeah, in the first one, the thing doing the damage is the religion and in the second, the thing doing the damage is society... because of the religion.
seems to me that the problem is religion. the islamic state has beheaded four western journalists. every day, a squadron of american drone pilots (who are forced to profess a belief in the christian god as a condition of their employment) kiss their crucifix pendants before larping toddlers to death on the other side of the planet for being brown. looking at the evidence, i know i certainly couldn't defend the claim that either of these religions are less violent than the other.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
how an intrauterine device works: an analogy for republicans
GOP goobernatorial candidate calls the iud an 'abortifacient' - The Rachel Maddow Show
say you're a human sperm.
(har - u just sed u wuz a hoomin spermz... neway)
you're a healthy sperm from an "active" gentleman, so everything works just fine with you. you're out on the town looking for a lovely round lady to make a baby with, so you get yourself deposited at the door of your favorite pub and...
THE MUSIC IS SO GODDAMN LOUD THAT IT SHAKES YOUR EYEBALLS IN YOUR LITTLE SPERMY HEAD. EVEN IF THERE WAS AN EGG HERE, YOU'D NEED A BLOODHOUND TO FIND HER AND WELL-DEVELOPED TELEPATHY TO TALK TO HER.
and so you leave, you and her both, right out the same door, completely unable to have conceived your Destiny (or Steve, or Elizabeth, or whoever) because the environment where you were supposed to meet was just too hostile.
an intrauterine device works by altering the chemistry of the uterine environment such that the sperm and egg can't do what they're supposed to do. because no baby is ever conceived, the iud is, by definition and function, not an "abortifacient". in fact, it is the complete opposite. women can and do conceive children while using the iud. the problem is that those fertilized eggs then implant in parts of the woman that aren't her uterus. ectopic pregnancies aren't just painful. they can take the woman's fertility... and sometimes her life.
if republicans wanted to argue that iud's were dangerous, they could, but they can't call something an "abortifacient" when the danger it poses comes as the result of its inability to terminate a pregnancy.
say you're a human sperm.
(har - u just sed u wuz a hoomin spermz... neway)
you're a healthy sperm from an "active" gentleman, so everything works just fine with you. you're out on the town looking for a lovely round lady to make a baby with, so you get yourself deposited at the door of your favorite pub and...
THE MUSIC IS SO GODDAMN LOUD THAT IT SHAKES YOUR EYEBALLS IN YOUR LITTLE SPERMY HEAD. EVEN IF THERE WAS AN EGG HERE, YOU'D NEED A BLOODHOUND TO FIND HER AND WELL-DEVELOPED TELEPATHY TO TALK TO HER.
and so you leave, you and her both, right out the same door, completely unable to have conceived your Destiny (or Steve, or Elizabeth, or whoever) because the environment where you were supposed to meet was just too hostile.
an intrauterine device works by altering the chemistry of the uterine environment such that the sperm and egg can't do what they're supposed to do. because no baby is ever conceived, the iud is, by definition and function, not an "abortifacient". in fact, it is the complete opposite. women can and do conceive children while using the iud. the problem is that those fertilized eggs then implant in parts of the woman that aren't her uterus. ectopic pregnancies aren't just painful. they can take the woman's fertility... and sometimes her life.
if republicans wanted to argue that iud's were dangerous, they could, but they can't call something an "abortifacient" when the danger it poses comes as the result of its inability to terminate a pregnancy.
Friday, October 3, 2014
Commentary on News Commentary... Commentary
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/10/03/352815113/isis-captives-tell-of-rapes-and-beatings-plead-for-help
okay, so boko haram kidnaps girls from a school en masse, now these guys. and these are forced marriages, i'm thinking. "perhaps thousands" of women getting "secret phones"? they're not being shuffled off to buffalo. if i were guessing, i'd guess some manner of reproductive exploitation is going on.
see, and my news media has kept me specifically in the dark about what, exactly, it is that isis is after. what their mission objectives are. to be fair, it's mostly okay with my government if nobody ever questions anybody's mission objectives... ever, so i admit to being kind of in the center of a media blackout on what's going on sometimes.
what i'm led to understand is their major malfunctions are all variations on "they hate ur freedumb." the message hasn't really changed in fifteen years. in fact, one of the major networks here just had dubya on to trigger our collective ptsd by mentioning 9-11 a whole bunch of times right in a row, and then connected it to isis so everyone would be good and scared and confused about everything. i'm surprised he didn't repeat the CONSUME message along with that FEAR and OBEY.
so my info on why isis is doing what it's doing is sketchy at best. i can't really make any judgments i would trust with the information i have. when i hear about what they do, i assume that no reasonable man behaves in that way unless he has grievous cause, but the only thing i know about what those grievances actually are is that what i think i know is probably inaccurate.
because why is my news media trying to convince me that the greatest threat to my "freedumb" is a group of people who seem to only really do harm to one another and not the people inside my own country who are doing harm to the people here? hey, let's ask mike brown what he thinks of the threat isis poses to regular americans' lives.
... oh.
okay, so boko haram kidnaps girls from a school en masse, now these guys. and these are forced marriages, i'm thinking. "perhaps thousands" of women getting "secret phones"? they're not being shuffled off to buffalo. if i were guessing, i'd guess some manner of reproductive exploitation is going on.
see, and my news media has kept me specifically in the dark about what, exactly, it is that isis is after. what their mission objectives are. to be fair, it's mostly okay with my government if nobody ever questions anybody's mission objectives... ever, so i admit to being kind of in the center of a media blackout on what's going on sometimes.
what i'm led to understand is their major malfunctions are all variations on "they hate ur freedumb." the message hasn't really changed in fifteen years. in fact, one of the major networks here just had dubya on to trigger our collective ptsd by mentioning 9-11 a whole bunch of times right in a row, and then connected it to isis so everyone would be good and scared and confused about everything. i'm surprised he didn't repeat the CONSUME message along with that FEAR and OBEY.
so my info on why isis is doing what it's doing is sketchy at best. i can't really make any judgments i would trust with the information i have. when i hear about what they do, i assume that no reasonable man behaves in that way unless he has grievous cause, but the only thing i know about what those grievances actually are is that what i think i know is probably inaccurate.
because why is my news media trying to convince me that the greatest threat to my "freedumb" is a group of people who seem to only really do harm to one another and not the people inside my own country who are doing harm to the people here? hey, let's ask mike brown what he thinks of the threat isis poses to regular americans' lives.
... oh.
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