My dad died so early in my life that I don’t remember him.

My dad abandoned my family so early in my life that I don’t remember him.

My dad and I had a good relationship but he died.

My dad and I had a good relationship but he abandoned me.

My dad was distant with me before he died.

My dad was distant with me before he abandoned me.

My dad abused me before he abandoned me.

My dad abused me and then he died.

My dad is distant towards me.

My dad abuses me.

My dad and I love each other very much, and I’m excited to show him I care today.

Losing Weight – Does It Mean Losing What Makes You Unique?

I don’t have to be as fat as I am, or get fatter than I am, in order to affirm my truth – the truth that I am queer, that I am sensitive, that I am an introvert. But I certainly do treat my fat body differently than I used to; I dress myself differently, I use more expressive body language, and I show more skin. I should have the right to change or maintain my body however I like. I cannot deny, however, that for most of the time I’ve ever lost weight intentionally that it was rooted at least in part in a sense of shame over my personality, my talents, needs, and desires. And much of the rhetoric I’ve used and I’ve heard other people use when it comes to the need to lose fat and maintain a thinner body is actually code for the real reason we all got so fat in the first place – an initial fear and grief over having been unacknowledged, mistreated, or ignored. Again, it isn’t necessary to be fat in order to reclaim our authenticity. There are some serious conversations to be had about mental and physical health. Exercise is objectively a good thing, and no one should have to feel like a prisoner in a cycle of food addiction or social isolation. We should have the right to experience a more social or physically active life if we want to. But the censorship and condemnation of fat bodies is a way to silence the hearts and minds of people of color, LGBTQA+ people, and people with psychological or physical impairments. We have to make sure that if we do try to become thinner, we aren’t losing more than our fat in the process.

Why I Wish I Could Shake Using Male Pronouns

The biggest incentive I have to stop gendering men is that I do not want to invite the opportunity for people to gender me as a man any more than they already do. To illustrate, in the situation I had at Target, these nice women associates teamed up to help me locate a backrest pillow. After a male associate informed one of these ladies over walkie-talkie that there was just a rather fluffy looking one, the lady stuttered for a moment and after regaining her composure pressed the associate to look for something else, claiming that the customer she was helping (me) was a male and that the item in question might be too “um… feminine”. After the initial shock I tried being nice and I leaned it and clapped my hands down and said: “that’s okay, it’s fine, it doesn’t matter to me, I’ll look at it”. This woman was what… trying to protect my shattered male ego? This is a more innocuous example; experiences with men have been far worse. If I stop people from gendering me, it’s not about “you need to get my pronoun right so I feel recognized” – it’s consequential in how you are going to treat me in a conversation. If you gender me as a man, you are almost certain to treat me differently. You’ll assume all sorts of things about me, like that I respect authority or traditionalism or nice suits or stocks or mechanics. You’ll tone down your emotional intelligence and assume I don’t want to receive affection or concern. You’ll have expectations of me to perform in a leadership role that I can’t fulfill, or worse, be emotionally stable, which is probably never going to happen.

What Can We Really Learn From Dragon Ball?

On the philosophy and legacy of Dragon Ball and the shonen genre.

As Wisecrack illustrates, Dragon Ball is not just a high-action brawler modeled after Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies; in essence, Dragon Ball aimed to teach Buddhist lessons of compassion and open-mindedness through its emulation of Journey to the West. Though a lot of people are getting buff at the gym, the aesthetic and ethics of Dragon Ball and the shonen titles heavily inspired by it (namely One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach) lie not in becoming the “very best” at something so you can beat an overpowered villain who’s vaguely trying to conquer or destroy the world. It’s not about being singularly focused on your goal. It’s about all the sidetracks along the way. It’s about the people you meet and learn about and helping them to solve their problems. It’s about relating your strife to the world around you. It’s about having new and surprising experiences that make you question your place in the world. In my opinion, people who use shonen to prop up their missions to excel at physical training or self-defense techniques in order to achieve a specific body type or become popular are not just shallow. Their super-controlled, super-individualist mindset is antithetical to Eastern philosophy and plays exactly into the hands of Western media values. They live in a space where flexibility, doubt, wonder, and diversity are undervalued or non-existent. Here, your unique talents shouldn’t be valued and put to good use in reciprocity with others – instead, you need to mold yourself into what the social structure deems to be the most valuable asset, because you know that achieving social dominance is the only thing that matters when you can’t trust anyone else to have your back.

Thanks for reading.

(Socially Sanctioned) Ego Is Making People Fear Guilt Instead of Making Society Less Awful

Conservatives and libertarians have a tendency to assume that every single thing you do is a personal choice, and a consequence of this thinking is that you assume that you choose to participate in systems of oppression. This is the reason why a white male may have a hard time understanding that he contributes to (or benefits from) racism or sexism. For these people, you choose to be racist or sexist. So the accusation is met with push-back. Unfortunately, this assumption of responsibility is an enormous barrier to the fight for racial and gender equity. You’ll deny the problem if you think you’re the cause. It seems that it’s more salient for them to believe they might be personally at fault for limiting other peoples’ freedoms than to believe that they just can’t control everything.

Questions The Internet Will Not Give Me An Answer To

Why is it in virtually every “after” photo or video I’ve seen of males on the internet or TV commercial involve becoming more muscular and not simply being less fat? I feel like it’s sometimes true that women’s after pics show “toned” figures, but that for men it’s a given that they have to have visible muscle definition and laud their dedication to fitness regimens. Why?

Personal Responsibility and a Globalist Pandemic

One of my issues with personal responsibility is that oftentimes you the individual are made to feel responsible for things that are actually out of your control. In reality, these things can be caused by nature or by other people who have power over you. For many people in the West, this is a difficult concept to grasp. We feel so personally liable for our failures that we’ll hesitate to make a change if it risks acknowledging we messed up.

We would rather feel shame for our failures than admit we’ve been powerless.

That’s why much of our time is spent acting on the premise that we are shameful instead of the premise that circumstances are (currently) not under our control. For me, this has resulted in much of my life being a state of addiction or isolation.

When it comes to a problem like the COVID pandemic, individualist thinking truly becomes a curse. I was walking into an elevator to go up to my apartment and two guys, chatting, came in nonchalantly as I turned around. I figured they were going down so I said truthfully that I was going up. They were like, “oh ok” and left. I came back to my place thinking I should have said, “What are you people, stupid?” I anticipate they may have responded with indignation. Would they have? I don’t know. I’m not confrontational with strangers. The point is, we seem to have disagreed as to whether you should get in an elevator with someone during the pandemic. My current thinking is, no. What reason would they have to share an elevator with me instead of waiting for an empty car? Aren’t they concerned I could have the virus? Couldn’t they have it? Maybe it’s too scary to think about, so they’re in denial. I know that when I go to see my mom, sometimes I’m reluctant to wash my hands BEFORE leaving. When I get to her place I wash before I do anything else. But to wash my hands before I leave my apartment is to suggest that I may have the virus. Guilt usually wins over, and I end up washing both times. I think sometimes, “I’m a careful person. I know I’M clean.” But the truth is, we slip up, and little exposures to people and surfaces accumulate over time. We just can’t KNOW every little thing that affects us. And why would we want to anyway? How exhausting. That’s why I just wash my hands. I don’t have the power to not get infected. I do have the power to help prevent infecting others. Besides, would I be suggesting that I only care about not getting my family sick? That’s not just selfish, it’s stupid. My immediate family doesn’t form the entirety of my support network. In times like this we are forced to realize we live in a much bigger world then we think. The actions of people on the other side of the planet have come to impact all of our lives.

We have been lied to about what has been under our control. As such, we have been made responsible for increasingly ridiculous things. To survive the pandemic, and to fight for true freedom in the future, we must respond to these forces that have held up late-20th century society in a matter-of-fact way. We were always this powerless. We just never knew how much.

COVID Pan…demonium – The Real Way It’s Messing With Our Lives

I was going to post about my grievances toward China and the United States on how their infrastructures have enabled the spread of COVID and failed to accommodate people who are at risk. But I realized today that the biggest threat we face is actually from shitty human behavior. I am socially and germ-averse, so initially I was quite sympathetic to the shutdown of modern life as we know it. I don’t like crowds and I’ve wanted people to wash their hands properly for years. At long last, state and local governments have stepped in and made coping with going to work less ambiguous. And it’s only fair, given that the workplaces and schools and public transportation we have today are ill equipped to handle the spread of dangerous viruses. But unfortunately, while the rate of severe complications from SARS-CoV2 is low for most people, the fact is that the hoarding behaviors we’re seeing all around us are putting many more people’s livelihoods at risk. I’m talking about the elderly, children, the poor, and the disabled. Human greed and fear will now negatively impact more lives than any virus ever could.

P.S.: Has South Park taught us nothing? Fear and distrust often leads to more people making erratic, reckless decisions and causing more problems than the thing we’re actually afraid of.

Despite the facade of abundance when we go into supermarkets, there is a process that keeps goods in stock seemingly all of the time. When I went into my local market I was taken aback by all the empty gaps in the shelves, and I also experienced this sinking fear. It’s abnormal. There’s always stuff, so if I don’t see any, does that mean there will ever be more stuff? I understand the impulse. The systems in place exist in part by concealing all its complicated workings and giving consumers the impression of dependability and regularity. But this means we’re all largely ignorant to the forces that shape our world, and when systems experience a disturbance, we have no choice but to reckon with the truly mutable nature of these working parts and the aims of their design. … My point is, there WILL be more toilet paper, everyone.

P.S.S.: I’m going to post some resources for COVID-19 as they come up.

My thanks to Cheddar for this informative video about hand washing. I was surprised to learn this.

Being Fat Means… What, Exactly?

This post is inspired by Virgie Tovar’s No I Won’t Cut You A Smaller Slice of Cake.

People look for rational ways to justify their prejudice toward being fat and certain forms of consumption, noting how being too fat and eating too many processed foods can negatively affect your physical health and your cognition (which suggests a rationale for the belief that fat people have poor moral character). But there’s ample evidence that fat affects everyone differently depending on where they store it and how much they have. Many of the “negative” psychological traits associated with eating a Western diet are due to the emotional and psychosocial consequences of fat discrimination, which takes the form of ridicule, food policing, social exclusion, lack of physical accommodation, and poor media representation. To a great extent, fat prejudice is arbitrary. Signals of body fat and signals of eating habits are symbols; they are a form of social compliance. Keeping to a specific window of body fat and eating certain foods are ways to indicate you’re part of the group. The opposite may as well be the norm – and in fact, in some cultures it is. Not being fat or not eating large quantities of food… these things can make you look untrustworthy, unreliable, and ungrateful. Also, it’s important to keep in mind that fat prejudice is often code for racism and sexism. From what I’ve read, bodies that are non-White or non-male may be more comfortable with fatter bodies and larger portion sizes, and so stigmatizing those bodies and behaviors is a subversive way to discriminate against these groups.