support survivors, even the ace ones

(context: [cw for BS] link link )

You know……  How shallow is your support/allyship/solidarity/whatever the in-crowd is calling it, when it doesn’t even seem to occur to you that the person you’re talking to might well be a trauma survivor themselves*?  How limited is your willingness to understand the stories of survivors beside yourself, when you think it’s “insulting” for a trauma survivor bring up the #seriouslysurvivor and #actuallytraumatized tags as a point of reference, in a way that’s genuinely relevant to the argument being made — because the argument being made would be say that those are bad and wrong and stealing?

What use is that, to finally concede “I’m not saying there isn’t overlap” [between being ace & being traumatized and/or abused] but to persist in treating designated online ace tags as an Offense — while pretending that isn’t an invalidation to some survivors in and of itself?

What good is that?  Why act like having trauma and wanting designated ace safe spaces can’t possibly be related, as if there’s anything trauma can’t be related to?

Just… blows my mind, that someone, ostensibly thinking they’re standing up for/prioritizing trauma survivors, can think they have the moral high ground by placing that ideal second to criticizing those dirty, icky aces.

*I checked and yes, at least one of the people I’m reacting to w/ this is a survivor themselves.  Doesn’t change my mind, since that doesn’t make anyone infallible, but yes I did bother to confirm this.  And my thoughts here are more in general about how these conversations go down than about these specific individuals.

Appeal in Asymmetry

A post on relationship asymmetry, whether long-term or situational, because everything else written on the subject drains me and apparently if you want something done you have to do it yourself.

Open Question

[cw: self-harm talk, D/s and pain play talk]

Christianity as Trauma

A few days ago, I came across Cinderace’s comment on one of Siggy’s posts, regarding the “What if I’m really this way just because of _____?” question (and why people ask it).  Maybe it would make more sense to reply to the comment directly, but I’m not really replying so much as branching off of it, and anyhow Christianity and asexuality are my pet subject and so naturally this has to go on my blog.

The Sick Role

Remember that short post I wrote about how health is not morality?

In my rhetoric class this semester, we’ve been assigned some reading that touches on the same subject.  It’s good stuff, but I thought y’all might be interested in this segment in particular, on page 32 of a book on deviance and medicalization by Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Schneider:

As Talcott Parsons pointed out in his classic writings on the “sick role,” both crime and illness are designations for deviant behavior (Parsons, 1951, pp. 428-479)… Parsons further argues that there exists for the sick a culturally available “sick role” that serves to conditionally legitimate the deviance of illness and channel the sick into the reintegrating physician-patient relationship.  It is this relationship that serves the key social control function of minimizing the disruptiveness of sickness to the group or society.  The sick role has four components, two exemptions from normal responsibilities and two new obligations.  First, the sick person is exempted from normal responsibilities, at least to the extent necessary to “get well.”  Second, the individual is not held responsible for his or her [sic] condition and cannot be expected to recover by an act of will.  Third, the person must recognize that being ill is an inherently undesirable state and must want to recover.  Fourth, the sick person is obligated to seek and cooperate with a competent treatment agent (usually a physician).

Sound familiar at all?