SoH Mercy

homunculus-argument:

There’s a fascinating phenomenon that isn’t unique to tumblr, but which I have certainly seen here a lot, which I’m going to call the Default Assumption of Incompetence. It’s when somebody has the baffling habit of always starting from the assumption that other people do not know anything about anything, or at least that having more knowledge than the assumer is extremely rare and statistically unlikely. To do this, they will frequently go out of their way to ignore context clues that indicate otherwise, or in some cases the assumer simply doesn’t know enough about the subject at hand to be able to estimate whether or not this person knows what they are doing.

The assumer will see a social media post about someone’s mushroom harvest, which clearly only contains exactly two distinct kinds of mushrooms, which the poster has identified and correctly named in the post itself, and the assumer will feel compelled to warn the forager to be careful out there! Some mushrooms are poisonous and they should be very careful to only pick ones they can identify! The assumer, who has ignored the fact that the poster did identify both of the mushroom species they had picked, and can most likely be trusted to do so in the future as well, has naturally assumed that the person showing off the results of their latest mushroom haul must have been obliviously picking them at random like an unsupervised toddler who is lucky to be alive.

If someone makes a post talking about how they just got a new job as a bus driver, the assumer might swoop in to warn them that driving a bus is extremely dangerous! It’s so dangerous that it’s literally illegal to do that unless you have a specific special training for doing that! Even a normal driver’s license isn’t good enough, you need a special license for it! And when the person who just got hired as a bus driver verifies that yes, they know that, they do have the license to drive a bus, and that they wouldn’t have even hired someone who doesn’t. The first question of the job interview was about making sure that they have a valid license for driving this type of vehicle.

“Well how was I supposed to know that?” is the assumer’s standard answer to being corrected. Not embarrassed or apologetic, only defensive and insulted, as if the other person here is the one being unreasonably rude for implying that it was stupid of the assumer to assume that someone who just got a job driving a bus might not know how to drive a bus.

(via butchcurious)

capseycartwright:

perhaps one of my hotter takes as a queer person but i’m never coming out again. you can figure it out or live in pure ignorance but either way it’s not my problem. the worst thing society ever tried to teach us was that coming out is an obligation. it’s not. it’s a privilege for you to know the depths of who i am, my sexuality included.

(via saucepanguy)

quasi-normalcy:

quasi-normalcy:

If you have bodily autonomy, then there is always a chance that you will do something to your body that you will regret. This is not an argument for taking that autonomy away.

There is a much, much higher chance that someone who is not you will do something to your body that you regret.

(via butchcurious)

think-queer:

If you think that an agender person who was AFAB and an agender person who is AMAB are two separate genders then I inherently don’t trust you about trans issues.

Someone’s genitals or AGAB does not determine their gender, and I find it concerning how many people seem to forget this when it comes to non-binary people.

(via saucepanguy)

mewchao:

Tiger kitty

(via mewchao)

slfcare:

How something feels isn’t always how something is. Sometimes what feels like the end of the world is just the end of an era, and what feels impossible is just difficult, and what feels like betrayal is just miscommunication. One of the most important things you’ll learn in life is to not limit the world to your perception of it.

autismandstuff:

Honestly, probably the best social tip I could ever give you guys is literally just ask. Need to make a doctor’s appointment but don’t know how? Call the doctor’s office and ask. Don’t know the meaning of what someone said? Ask them. Don’t understand the instructions you were given? Ask them to repeat or clarify. This has literally never failed me, no one’s gotten angry, no one’s refused to answer.

Even in situations where you think it might not work, I once accidentally missed a deadline to accept a job offer, so I called and asked if they could reset it and they did. Just today I called a doctor and asked how to schedule an appointment, the lady told me how, and then I did it. Didn’t know if someone was being sarcastic or not, so I asked and they told me. Just ask.

(via theamazingrin)

bundibird:

One of the best and most helpful things anyone ever said to me was: Don’t advertise your mistakes.

You will often notice when you’ve made an error, or when there’s something you could have done better, or etc, and sometimes other people will notice too. But often, they won’t. So don’t point it out.

It’s really a sign of a lack of self confidence – you think that if you point out the error first, it will save someone else from having to point it out for you. That by being self-depreciating, no one else will feel obliged to point out your flaws.

But here’s the thing. People don’t notice jack shit, most of the time. Sure, yeah, sometimes you’ll fuck up and people will notice and mention it, and thats fine, but 95% of your errors will go unnoticed. Unless you choose to point them out, in which case, you ensure that 100% of your errors get noticed.

The above sentence was said to me during a dance rehearsal. I’m not a pro dancer by any stretch of the imagination – this was a fun little between-friends dance that we were going to perform at a medium sized function full of people we knew. Half the people in the group did have dance experience, which made me - a non-dancer - feel self concious. So every time I messed up the steps, I would laugh at myself or made an “agh” sound or be verbally frustrated with myself that I was struggling to get that move, or whatever. Which drew peoples attention to the fact that I’d made an error.

There were like 10 of us doing this dance; me missing one step went largely unnoticed in the scheme of things, because with ten of us, anyone watching the dance had so much to look at that the likelihood of them seeing me misstep was extremely low. Unless I made a big deal about it, which would draw their attention to me, and ensure that they were made aware.

I used to point out my mistakes all the time. Not just with the dance, but across the board in general life, too. “Agh, whoops,” or handing over a completed project like “I know I could have done [thing] better, but hopefully the rest is ok,” or whatever. People were often frustrated with me, and I feel, in hindsight, that they were frustrated with me because in their eyes, with me constantly highlighting my own errors, they knew I could do better but instead here I was, giving them a shoddy, half-assed, error-filled effort. By me pointing out my every mistake, they were aware of how many I was making, and they were frustrated by my seemingly endless errors.

Then I got told to “stop advertising your mistakes,” and it was a bit of a revelation moment for me. I made a concious effort that day to minimise my reaction to my own mistakes – for the rest of the rehearsal and into the final performance – and you know what happened??

After the performance, countless people said some iteration of the phrase, “I didn’t know you could dance!!”

They thought I was a dancer. That I’d been dancing for years. They hadn’t noticed any of my missteps.

I messed up multiple times during the final performance. If I watch the recording and focus on me, I can see my missed steps, the time I span clockwise on the spot instead of anticlockwise, the time I was slightly out of alignment with the other dancers, etc. But if I watch the dance as a whole, watching all 10 dancers instead of just me….. I dont notice the mistakes I made. They blend in. Theres too much other stuff going on for anyone to notice the one dancer who spun on the spot in the opposite direction to everyone else.

And everyone thought i was brilliant. All I noticed, while dancing, were my mistakes, but no one else saw them, and everyone who saw the dance was super impressed with it and with me. That would not have been the case had I reacted to every one of my errors as I’d made them.

So I took that concept and applied it to the rest of my life. And you know what???? People were less frustrated with me. Because they weren’t noticing my minor errors, and I wasn’t pointing them out any more, so from their perspective, it looked like my output had improved. It looked like I was making “less errors.” I wasn’t, its just that before, I was pointing every one of them out, and now, I was letting people notice them on their own. And they didnt notice them.

You are always going to be hyperaware of yourself and your own mistakes, but other people are way too distracted by their own crap and have too much other stuff drawing their attention to notice your every misstep. So stop pointing your mistakes out. Stop being your own worst critic. Everyone fucks up now and then, its fine. You fix the error if you can, and you move on. You dont have to pre-empt someone else pointing out your mistakes, because its extremely likely that they wont notice your errors. Unless you point them out.

So stop advertising your mistakes, people.

(via saucepanguy)

theunitofcaring:

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.

(via ao3commentoftheday)

ao3commentoftheday:

Destroy the idea that you need to have a fandom “brand”

Post whatever you want. Be chaotic. Consistency? I don’t know her.

You are a complex human who enjoys many things. So is everyone you know. Allow your blog or your AO3 or your twitter to be as messy and jumbled as you are.

profictionpuppy-deactivated2022:

The asexual spectrum is, get this, a spectrum. Wild, I know. We’re not all the same. Some of us are sex repulsed, some of us are sex indifferent, and some of us love sex.

The defining trait of asexuality ISN’T disliking sex, it’s not fully or consistently being sexually attracted to people.

(via foxgirlfeet)

star-anise:

star-anise:

Professors aren’t doing you a special favour by accommodating your mental illness. They have the legal responsibility to accommodate students whose disability is documented and registered with the school.

Plain text version: Professors aren’t doing you a special favour by accommodating your mental illness. They have the legal responsibility to accommodate students whose disability is documented and registered with the school.

(via aevios)

gostaks:

[This has been on my mind for… a couple years now actually but it’s not fully polished quite yet]

My problem with fictional characters using magical aids and getting magical cures is less that either of those things exist and more that those things existing often indicates a failure to think about how disability exists in a world beyond that magic.

Like, hovering mobility chairs solve the problem of stairs and rough terrain, but for people who self-propel, getting around in a wheelchair is part of how they exercise. How do people compensate for that? What do they do if the hovering stops working? And what about people who can’t use stairs because they use a walker or crutches or have knee problems?

Similarly, if you can go to your local cleric and get your blindness cured, what does that mean? Can they cast ‘Bestow Normal Vision’ or does it only set your body to the best state your genetics will allow (eg you can remove cataracts, but colorblind people are still colorblind)? Is it a widely available option or very limited, difficult, or expensive? Are there people who choose not to undergo treatment for some reason? Will magic permanently cure degenerative conditions, or is it only a stopgap?

And, maybe most importantly, if disabled people’s lives are commonly changed by magic, how does that impact the way societies treat them? Are there accessibility issues that are commonly ignored because it’s assumed everyone is using a magical aid? Are people who can’t or don’t get a magical cure for their disability further marginalized? Or held up as inspirations, religious figures, or saints? Would magical societies draw the lines of disability in different places than we do today?

Worldbuilding that engages with disability in a nuanced and interesting way? Great. Magic used to cure characters or fix a perceived problem without considering a population’s needs and  broader implications of that intervention? Not so much.