Despite halloween coming up, this is an important issue to look into.
This is an important video.
However, I feel like I should add to this because I thought this video was going to go in a completely different direction – Forms of self harm that might not always be obvious, because they don’t occur externally.
Let me explain.
I self harmed in High School to cope with parental abuse. I made a promise to myself that I have yet to break on Christmas Eve, age 17, that I would never do that to myself again. I am now 23 and happier than ever, having moved out, graduated from college, and found the love of my life.
However, even tho no blade came to my wrist, I continued to self harm in ways that did not manifest in cuts or bruises for a good 5+ years afterwards.
I would self harm in words. Saying things to myself and others like “I’m a piece of shit,” “nothing I do matters,” “I’m worthless,” etc., and although those words never leave a mark, they’re still hurting you on the inside.
I know people who have, by the physical definition, have never self harmed, but by my definition self harm every single day.
In short, we need to expand the definition of self harm.
My grandmother is the first person that comes to mind.
She is on her way out of this world, she’s 81 atm, her husband is losing his memory, and in that way, she is losing her husband.
She is arguably the closest thing to a perfect person I have ever met in my entire life. And I don’t just say that because she is my grandparent. She is incredibly talented, keeps her house cleaner than a hospital, cooks incredible meals, is sharp as a tack and has enough intelligence for the next 10 people, and has the cutest highland Scottish accent you’ve ever heard, especially when she swears ❤
There’s only one problem. She’s never been mean to another living soul, but she’s mean to herself every day.
Every mistake she may make, she says “I’m so stupid,” “I’m just a waste of space,” and other things that just make me wanna cry on the spot when I hear them.
I finally told her, ”Grammy, you don’t have much time left. And if I have one wish for you, it’s that before you go, you see how truly amazing and incredible you are. I look up to you. In my mind, you are the best at everything in the entire world and the adult I could only dream of ever being.”
She started crying. (My Grammy does not cry in front of people first of all so this is already a huge deal.) I could tell this message really resonated with her.
Because she lives in Scotland and I live in America, I can only afford to see her once a year. I came back the next year and she was still treating herself the same way.
I still wish, before she leaves us, that she will stop hurting herself the way she does.
When we expand the definition of self harm to include people like my grandmother, we can start bringing awareness to how harmful words can be not only to others, which is discussed all the time, but to ourselves, which is very rarely discussed.
We have already thoroughly acknowledged that words from others can hurt, words can even kill in the form of suicide from bullying, but we never talk about the harm that negative words used for ourselves can hurt or even kill.
Listen to how people talk about themselves. Observe if they express pride in their achievements, or dismiss them onsite. You’ll start to see patterns of self harm in a lot of people this way. Under my definition of self harm, a lot more people self harm than meets the eye. And nobody is talking about it.
TLDR: We need to expand the definition of self harm to include words and actions towards the self, because those wounds, although not visible, do not mean they don’t exist or don’t cause pain.
Tyrannosaurus was not the most dangerous animal in the park. Having imprinted on its handler since infancy, the creature maintained a docile temperament all the way to adulthood, and indeed seemed to prefer feeding from its designated trough to pursuing prey. Its interactions with staff and guests showed at most a mild curiosity, and the only real terror the beast inspired was when it snuck up on trainers to sniff their hats.
The raptors were not the most dangerous animals in the park. Hollywood had greatly exaggerated their size, first of all, and while they had a mischievous streak (one individual in particular was fond of stealin zookeepers’ wallets), they were far from the hyper-intelligent murder lizards everyone expected. Their intelligence was less of the predatory sort and more the comical intelligence of a corvid, devoted mostly to play and caring for their fellow flock members.
The mosasaur was not the most dangerous animal in the park. Though it held no loyalty to the zookeepers, it had taken to training well enough, and would dutifully move to a specific section of the tank when signaled, giving the keepers space to carry out any business they needed to accomplish in its tank without fear of harm.
No, by far the most dangerous animal in the park was the Struthiomimus. Everyone expected it to be easy – what were these animals in pop culture beyond being fodder for the carnivores? Surely the bird-mimics couldn’t be much of a hassle. Sadly, they weren’t just any bird mimics.
No, in temperament, the Struthiomimus mimicked a swan.
Highly territorial and vicious to the bone, more keepers had suffering brutal beatings by the struthis than had been hurt by the rest of the park’s fauna combined. And when they learned to chew through the fences…
Well, let’s just say the Tyrannosaurus never experienced a more terrifying day in her life.
“queer” is such a useless term. if i tell someone im bisexual, they know i am attracted to men and women. if a man tells me he is gay, i know he is a man exclusively attracted to other men. if someone tells me they are queer, it tells me nothing about them. it doesnt tell me who they attracted to. it tells me nothing about that person.
It tells me they’re trying to be a extra lil bitch and that I shouldn’t be friends with them
No, you probably shouldn’t, for their sake.
yall realise thats exactly the point, right
queer covers everyone who is noncis or nonstraight
it covers the identities you want to erase or disallow from the community
it doesn’t immediately tell you private information about someone’s sexuality or gender that you aren’t entitled to
and the person in question may not even know themselves, but queer is what they know they can always use if they’re not sure except they know theyre definitely not cis/straight
you hate it because it’s too inclusive and too broad. It’s supposed to be inclusive and broad. If someone tells you they’re queer then all you need to know is that they are in some way not cis or straight and other than that it aint your business. If being told someone’s identity is none of your business pisses you off, thats a you problem
Imagine saying you wont be friends with someone unless they disclose all details of their gender and orientation immediately upon meeting you and still feeling that you’re morally superior
Speaking of prey drive, I saw some interesting experiments done by a guy who worked at a big cat rescue center. I don’t know if they were conducted scientifically, but even anecdotally they were very interesting.
He found that even the friendliest, healthiest, most socialized big cats would revert to ambush behaviors when their keepers were sitting on the ground with their backs to the cats. The lions, tigers, and leopards could be approached confidently from the front just fine, and would even be friendly, but ‘vulnerable and unaware’ positions triggered opportunist hunting instincts. None of the keepers were actually within reach, of course, so they didn’t find out if the pouncing instincts extended to killing and eating them, but all the cats responded with a prey drive.
Except the cheetahs. Cheetahs, being pursuit hunters rather than solitary ambush predators, did not react to the sight of defenseless human keepers on the ground at all – except to come over and nuzzle up against them affectionately. Some even flopped over beside them, apparently agreeing that it was nap time.
That’s the kind of variation and complexity in predator instincts I am talking about when I complain about animals and monsters in movies going after any and every prey they lay eyes on. Even when real animals chase prey out of instinct rather than hunger or defense, it’s not this mindless Destroy Everything rage – it reflects the evolution of their predation habits and the behavior of their natural prey. I would love to see more monster movies where there’s actual thoughtful world-building in the predatory behaviors beyond ‘big scary gnash teeth crash through wall run’.
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