Once upon a time I had a friend who would get mad at me for being “thyroid tired,” aka hypothyroid. She would ask how it was different than being normal tired, and why I couldn’t just get over it, and why it was taking so long, etc… and since I was hypo, I couldn’t adequately explain it through the fog, and the inconvenience of it being such a hazy thing always made her so mad…
If It had to describe it now, it’d be like saying an eye mask of warm gel under your skin that goes through your eyes, up into your forehead, in your cheeks… a constant little humming heat of summer, sapping your energy little by little. No matter how much sleep you get, no matter how much coffee you drink, it’s always there. You can get momentary reprieves by taking naps and when you first turn on the fan, but it doesn’t last; pretty soon it settles back and your mind drifts back into the thick and murky water.
Your limbs don’t want to move… your eyes just want to close… you don’t necessarily want to sleep, you just can’t think straight, so you just sort of drift there until something stirs you again.
But I have prescription refills again. Not just for thyroid, but for bipolar mania insomnia, too. Because that has not helped me at all whatsoever nopenopenope. 8);
Surya Bonaly, world renowned French skater whose trademark move is her backflip, where she only lands on one blade in order to keep the move legal. She’s amazing!
Yoooooo
it always amuses me when I remember the ice skating community banned this phenomanal move because a black person literally had raised the bar and white people were too bitter to do better so they banned a move that would add progress to the sport.
and then she raised the bar again
someone make this into a movie. fuck it, i’ll do it
ok ok so every time this post shows up on my dash, i get a little miffed because it presents this narrative that isn’t consistent with reality. it misrepresents surya’s career. first, there seems to be this implication that the isu banned the backflip because surya was the first skater to perform the backflip, and they didn’t like that because she’s black.
i mean, surya did not pioneer the backflip. she herself stated that her coach suggested that she start doing backflips on ice because of a skater named norbert schramm who was performing them in europe at the time. scott cramer pulled off 10,032 backflips over the course of his career, and he retired seven years before surya even began competing. surya is THE FIRST AND ONLY skater in history to perform a backflip and land on one skate in competition, but the most important part of it wasn’t the feat itself but WHY SHE DID IT.
and ok, the first person to successfully do a backflip on ice was skippy baxter in an ice show in the 1940s. there has only been one legal backflip performed in actual competition by terry kubicka in 1976. immediately after he pulled it off, the isu banned the move from competitions. please note that yes, terry kubicka was a white male figure skater. and for context, surya was born in 1973. i sincerely doubt that the isu was banning the backflip because of a THREE-YEAR-OLD.
the isu had very good non-racism related reasons for banning the backflip because well, figure skating is fucking hard. i think we frequently underestimate just how difficult it is because of how easy they make it look. i mean top figure skaters are still working on consistently landing quad jumps in competition. it’s so easy to flub a jump and get injured, and it’s super common for skaters to spend huge chunks of the off season not training because they’ve injured themselves.
SO DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA JUST HOW FUCKING DANGEROUS IT WOULD BE IF BACKFLIPS WERE ALLOWED IN COMPETITIVE SKATING???? if you mess this move up, you’re not just going to break an ankle or fuck up your muscles, you’d break your neck on the ice. you could FUCKING DIE. and this is by no means the first or last move to get banned by the isu for being too dangerous. (the one that comes to mind is the head banger death spiral because seriously what a name).
the reason why this is just so upsetting to me is because i feel like you guys are really simplifying surya’s narrative. yes, surya was a FUCKING BADASS. LIKE HER FIRST SEASON IN SENIOR COMPETITIONS, SHE LANDED A BACKFLIP DURING PRACTICE RIGHT IN FRONT OF MIDORI ITO, THE FAVORITE FOR THE 1992 OLYMPICS. IN THE SAME COMPETITION, SHE BECAME THE ONLY WOMAN TO EVER ATTEMPT A QUAD TOE LOOP IN COMPETITION, and the first time anyone had even successfully pulled that off was a mere three years earlier.
and yes, surya had to deal with A LOT of racism. because of her skin color and her build and her athleticism and her style, she didn’t fit into the “ice princess”. they pegged her as a rebel, and they treated her as such. the judges were constantly nitpicking her skating style and criticizing her artistry because she wasn’t this light and graceful skater that they thought female figure skaters should be. (black ballerinas suffer from the same plight). she was constantly pushing the boundaries, but she consistently got lower scores than her white counterparts. and despite that, she was A THREE-TIME WORLD SILVER MEDALIST, A FIVE-TIME EUROPEAN CHAMPION, AND A NINE-TIME FRENCH NATIONAL CHAMPION.
in the 1994 world championships, surya’s final score tied for first place with yuka sato’s. it came down to a tiebreaker vote, and the judges picked yuka because she fit in better with the ice princess image. surya knew why she the judges didnt pick her. during the awards ceremony, she refused to step onto the medals podium and took off the silver medal. she was crying, and the crowd was booing at her.
the 1998 olympics was going to be surya’s last hurrah. she knew that the 97-98 season would be her last. when the judges gave her a low score on her short program for surprise surprise racist reasons, she knew that there was no way that she could win.
so surya decided to make a point.
she hadn’t planned to do this from the start because she knew that the move was illegal and doing it could get her disqualified, but after seeing her short program score, surya basically on the spot decided to replace the triple in her free skate with the backflip landing on one skate. she hadn’t been training for this move specifically, she just pulled it off right then and there on the olympic stage. and while the backflip was banned for being too dangerous, another reason for it to be banned was because the skater would land on both skates, and jumps are always landed with one skate.
surya pulling off this banned move was basically her last FUCK YOU to the judges because they’d been screwing her over since the start of her career. she was challenging them by making a previously illegal move technically legal. the judges didn’t disqualify her, but they didn’t accept the move as legal either, and they deducted points from her score, so surya placed 10th overall. BUT THAT DIDNT MATTER. when surya finished her program, she turned her back on the judges (a huge no-no because it is highly disrespectful) because she didn’t care about their opinion at this point. SHE’D MADE HISTORY. their decision wouldn’t change that.
i fucking hate dating nerds one single time i wore a star wars shirt to see a dude and he was like, “wow are u wearing that to impress me” and i said, “star wars episode 4 was seen by approximately 110 million people during its initial theatrical run in 1977”
Congratulations. You’re dating people who for the longest time have been putting up with bullying, mocking, and scorn for most of their lives. That kind of shit stays with people. So imagine their surprise when they see a member of the opposite sex, who I’m assuming is really attractive in comparison to most people, wear attire that reps nerd culture. Which even though is accepted by the masses (if you’re reasonably attractive) is still rare. Now I’m not saying that you’re not allowed to be scornful I’m just saying expect it and don’t be surprised when you hear it. Ok? OK.
why i dont date fucking nerds: exhibit B
Bolded emphasis mine. Gross.
Stands on nearest chair: ATTENTION MALE NERDS. YOU ARE NOT SUFFERING FROM A SHORTAGE OF FEMALE NERDS. THERE ARE VAST NUMBERS OF US, AND WE RARELY HAVE A HARD TIME FINDING EACH OTHER. YOU ARE WITHOUT FEMALE COMPANY BECAUSE YOU ARE WHINEY ASSBABIES WHO THINK YOU OWN THINGS BECAUSE YOU LIKE THEM, AND BECAUSE YOU SOMEHOW THINK YOU SUFFER BULLYING WHEREAS GIRL NERDS SOMEHOW NEVER DO. STOP PRETENDING YOU GET TO BE ASSHOLES BECAUSE YOU HAVE A “TRAGIC PAST” OR YOU WILL DIE ALONE. IF YOU THINK GIRL NERDS DON’T GET BULLIED IT’S LIKELY BECAUSE THOSE GIRLS DON’T WANT TO TALK TO YOU, BECAUSE OF THIS SORT OF ATTITUDE.
also: fucking no one mocks nerds anymore. Game of thrones is the most watched show on tv, everyone and their mom is playing video games, dungeons and dragons is more popular than it’s ever been.
To conclude
i’m obligated to reblog the Critical Whale
Fucking thank you
SCREAMING ^^^ THIS
I was ALWAYS nice to the nerds and sometimes they were nice back (like the guy I married; he’s super chill!), but most of the time they had this HUGE CHIP ON THEIR SHOULDER AND TOOK IT OUT ON ME even though I was nothing but REALLY NICE and PATIENT and KIND and it was like WTF? we’re into the same things and I’m trying to be friends?? CAN YOU LIKE… NOT… BITE MY FACE OFF FOR TWO SECONDS? I’M SORRY if someone hurt you in the past but you need to NOT ATTACK PEOPLE if you want to make new friends there are plenty of people out there for you but NO ONE WILL WANT TO if you are a HUGE ASSHOLE, END OF STORY.
For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.
No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morning’s live 3-D reenactment of “Invasion of AstroMonster.” This is what they’d say repeatedly:
“You know! Boys will be boys!”
“He’s just going through a phase!”
“He’s such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!”
“Oh my god! Girls and boys are SO different!”
“He. Just. Can’t. Help himself!”
I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, “What red-blooded boy wouldn’t knock it down?”
Her consent didn’t matter. Besides, it’s not like she made a big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasn’t a “legitimate” knocking over if she didn’t throw a tantrum.
His desire — for power, destruction, control, whatever- – was understandable.
I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t “get raped” and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of “don’t rape.”
Not once did his parents talk to him about invading another person’s space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning. How much of the boy’s behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the “rules” his parents kept repeating?
There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did it his mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasn’t much fun for him, but he did not do it again.
There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up.
Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”
This is so brilliant. We learn things from socialization process. What our parents, friends and peers do, media and all. I think perhaps rape is because parents think boys will be boys, they bully, fight and destroy things, it’s their characteristics so they don’t bother to stop them. But it manifests in them, knowing or unknowingly, they will just think, because I’m a boy and boys tend to do these, so it doesn’t matter even if the girl hates it, says no, because I’m a boy.
Just reblog this, this message is really powerful. For parents and future parents.
What’s also interesting, is if you frame this as about spoiling your children, and about spoiled children, people tend to agree and get it. They’ll agree that children whose parents lay down no boundaries for them when they hurt others, who let them have whatever they want at the expense of others, and justify away the harm they do, will probably grow up thinking they can do this to others (usually weaker than them, or they perceive as weaker) as adults. But if you mention the word “privilege”, “entitlement” or anything relating to gender, everybody freaks the f- out and will deny up, down, back, forth, and sideways that how you raise a child, what you allow them to get away with, or training them that their hurtful behaviour will always be justified, can affect them at all.
