A. M. Herrington

"Rainbow Milk" by Paul Mendez also might be of interest.

Josiah Hesse's "On Fire for God"?

Tell your lawmakers to oppose the Kids Online Safety Act- there are better ways to protect kids online without throwing other vulnerable people under the bus.

www.stopkosa.com

This is a 300x300 pixel illustration piece from The Last Unicorn movie.

"We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream" #pixelart

Today is the day to repost this meme about International Men's Day, one of the most unironically wholesome memes that has ever been made.

Shoutout to all my fellow champs, chiefs, and kings. ✊

...and that no one benefits from media — and fear — controlling the narrative.

It won't solve everything, but it would strip away some of the avoidance when it comes to talking about sex and power. And hopefully it will become clear that between us, none of it is true, that the conversation is between decent people...

We are all human beings. We observe each other, receiving and reflecting each other's emotions, processing them. The ways we react may be different, but most of us want positive relationships with each other, as a general rule.

I think we (society) can start by having conversations with people we trust about the anxiety of being at risk of assault. Likewise, we can listen and take it seriously when they tell us about their own, reflexive anxiety, resisting the urge to judge.

There's so much I could say, so much I want to add. There are many facets to the subject, unsuitable for this format. This thread is long enough, and I've got to get on with the rest of my life. So let me put a thought out there for the people asking, "What should we do?"

...because it doesn't make for a juicy story.

"Hole complex" didn't encompass this side of the equation, but "violation anxiety" does. And I think... well, we probably have to talk about it. Why do we let media corporations who profit off of violence control how we relate to and see each other?

Some withdraw from society entirely; others become frustrated and vulnerable to extremist beliefs. This isn't the fault of SA survivors, obviously. It's the fault of a society that refuses to have honest conversations about sex and power, that doesn't value the recovery of survivors...

They see all the same stories of sexual violence online, on TV, in the paper. And, I mean, it's stressful for people to walk around with that on their shoulders. To think that they're destined to prey on others for the simple, random fact of their birth.

I've spoken to several folks like this — people who are shy about pursuing women because they're afraid of being perceived as a sexual predator for the body they were born with. They can sense the nervousness coming off women late at night, early in the morning, alone with them in any situation.

In conversations like this, little has been said of the young men — and people growing up as boys or men in this time, who will identify as otherwise in the future — who respond to the anxiety around them of violation, with *anxiety about being the person doing the violating.*

But now, the pendulum is swinging in the other direction — now people are beginning to understand that it's wrong to sexually interact with another person if that contact isn't desired.

Again, a good thing. But another problem arises, as well.

In general, we do not blame AFABs for their fear of men, especially not survivors. We try to be empathetic, because we understand that men often are the problem. Many men have been taught that we are entitled to what we want, including the bodies of people we desire.

The snowball effect of generations of (mostly) AFAB people being assaulted by (mostly) men is what contributes to what my server then called "hole complex," and what I now think of as "violation anxiety" — the pathological fear of being future victim. The fear of men as potential predators.

Of course, being disturbed by something isn't the same as being traumatised — but even so, sexual violation just haunts us, as it should. It's a cruel, angry, senseless act.

We're inundated, day in and day out, by stories of sexual violence — bad things happening to good people.

SA has the highest rate of PTSD diagnosis, anywhere from 33% of survivors to >50%, per the DSM-5-TR. Hardly surprising. Short of murder, it's the most direct violation of a person we can think of. PTSD can also arise from secondary exposure — hearing it from a friend or loved one, for example.

However, I'm concerned about the effect the sensationalism of sexual violence — how we talk about it — is having on everyone watching.

...to name the systemic abuse of power over people younger, weaker, poorer than them.

This is a good thing. Survivors of SA are traditionally slapped with societal shame, mockery (especially men), victim blaming. They're not used to being believed.

Sexuality scares aren't new, particularly in the US. What is new are social media and the omnipresence of sexual violence and assault. It seems every week a new story about abuse comes out, and there's a catharsis in that — for survivors to step out of their shame into the light...

This happened even when they weren't themselves survivors. It sufficed to hear, growing up, that they were prime targets for victimisation — that if they didn't protect themselves, the sexual predator lurking in the shadows would find, overpower, and violate them.

In one of my servers, we sometimes talk about "hole complex." It's crude, but at the time we were trying to describe it, we didn't have a shorthand for the pathological anxiety of some of the people we knew (mostly AFAB) around the idea of their body integrity being sexually violated.

In this thread: thoughts about violation anxiety and the effects of sensationalised sexual violence.

They're good for that ;^)

「とんがり帽子のアトリエ」来年4月放送開始　ココ役は本村玲奈、キーフリー役は花江夏樹（動画あり / コメントあり）

▼新たに公開されたティザーPVを見る！
https://natalie.mu/comic/news/648637?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social

#とんがり帽子のアトリエ #Δ帽子

I also apparently never posted these. Remedying that now.