southsamurai

What's the CAQ? My us based ass can't tell which of the search results are relevant lol

\m/

That's my take on what she said as well.

Not that I necessarily think pragmatism is the only option, but it is the option most likely to make immediate progress that can be built on, if revolution isn't in the cards.

I've seen a lot of slow, but significant progress in my life. Most of the real change didn't come from laws down, it came from people having just enough room to be out and gain familiarity with the ignorant masses. Happened with black and white people getting married eventually leading to less division and more unity there. Happened with gay men in specific, but lesbians as well being out and living life changing family member's minds about the real world face of the abstract idea; eventually leading up marriage rights being recognized.

Each time, regressive wings and bigots have struggled against that kind of change in people's hearts, and failed because most people are going to keep loving their kids and grandkids. Trying to tell granny that her grandbabies are bad tends to alienate granny rather than send her off against people she loves.

It isn't always like that, you run into people that don't care about family enough to overcome hate and ignorance. But it is a pattern. Humanizing people to each other is a powerful tool of change.

That's pragmatic to me, just as much as making political compromises. Accepting that only part of the war can be won in legislatures, that the generation in the fight now isn't likely to see the full benefits of the fight, and working away, chipping at the wall of bigotry anyway.

Without pragmatists like Ms McBride, the rest don't have that bare minimum of protection to change people's hearts out in regular life. Yeah, we all want full equality under the law now. But it isn't a failure to move the needle a little in small ways until it happens.

I don't think McBride would roll over at all. I think she's fought hard to be in a place to fight a different kind of battle.

Being real, there's not much in the way of easy to get things that are painless, even if they're fast. Such options have been legislated away. Others have been limited by additions that make them difficult or impossible to take in quantity.

So you really can't rely on anything you're likely to have available without also having the knowledge to change them into a form that removes those barriers. And, if you had that already, you wouldn't be here asking this.

Now, I'm not giving anyone instructions on how to off themselves. It's illegal in enough places there's no way I'm risking that for a total stranger.

What I can say is that the things you've listed here either wouldn't work at all, would be painful, or won't work the way you want.

You'll have to do your own research on this kind of thing. Nobody that would give you advice in the open could be trusted to give you good advice. I'm not even talking about someone fucking with you, it's just that it's kinda specialized knowledge in terms of knowing what to do to achieve the goal of a fast and painless death that will also not fuck you up if it fails.

Like, there's plenty of stuff that's fast, plenty that's painless (or so fast that the pain isn't a factor), but damn near everything that's going to be available to the average Joe is going to have a chance of failure. Most of those will fuck up your brain or body, and you'll be even worse off than before.

So you have to independently verify shit. Even someone well meaning may not have awareness of possible outcomes. Even someone that's 100% behind right to death can still be wrong in their knowledge.

Creeps me out?

Tbh, it depends on what you mean exactly, and still there's a barrier for me that I don't get creeped out by much of anything as an adult. Didn't as a kid tbh, but it did happen here and there.

I think the one that's going to fit what most people would think of as creepy, rather than just being a very imaginative kid that could scare himself silly, is this old guy that lived nearby.

There was a trail in the neighborhood that ran across several little batches of trees and hidden sections of yards that kids would use instead of walking on roads. It was faster for one thing, and there were sections that older kids couldn't get through, much less adults. So it was ours.

Anyway, the guy lived on one edge of the trail. One of the few open sections, it ran alongside his yard and into a ditch.

He was a nice guy. He'd wave, say howdy, that kind of thing. Sometimes I'd join him for a spell on his porch if it was super hot. He'd usually offer something cold to drink, we'd talk a while, and that was that.

One day, I was wearing some swimming trunks. They swished a lot when I ran. When I stopped to set a spell with him, he joked about hearing me before he saw me because of the fabric. I explained I had been swimming earlier, and didn't want to change.

He said something along the lines of "oh, swim shorts, right?"

To which I said yes. He asked if they were the kind with built in underwear. It so happened they were, so I said yes. He then slid a hand up the leg of the shorts to feel the built in underwear. Needless to say, there were things in those shorts being supported by the built-in undies, and he ran his fingers over them.

Very gently, and only for a moment before pulling away and saying they seemed comfortable. He offered me some tea, and I had some.

It wasn't in any way traumatic for me. Now, I knew enough to not go back. This was the eighties, and we were being taught about good and bad touches, and I didn't like what he did. I thought it was very rude for one, but everyone was saying that grownups weren't supposed to be touching kids "down there". So I figured he might not stop there, even though he didn't do it aggressively, or even in what seemed like a bad way at the time.

It just tickled a little, and he didn't ask permission. So it was rude.

Nothing else ever happened. Didn't think to tell anyone about it at the time. Mainly because I forgot it had happened until a few days later when I was going by and he waved. I remembered it, and just waved as I went about my business. It really didn't bother me, it was more that you don't hang around people that do that kind of thing.

As an adult, it's a little creepy in that it could have gone way worse. And I wish young me had told someone purely because I doubt he would have been that brazen to grope a kid on his porch if he wasn't in that habit already. But, he was old old, as in well into his eighties, so he didn't last much longer. Had a stroke maybe a year or so later, though I didn't know that part until a few years ago, only that he had died.

Thing is, back a decade or so ago, I ran into some of the kids from the neighborhood and the subject of the trail came up, and he got mentioned. I told the story about him, and everyone was surprised. He hadn't tried it with any of them, though all of us had had drinks with him alone a few times. One of the guys said his brother complained about the man and told him not to be alone with him, but didn't say why at the time.

Eventually, word got around and the most the guy ever did was touch. Never for long, never enough to really scare anyone, but enough that they would stop visiting with him. It's one of those things where nobody he fondled really thought it was the same thing we were being warned about. It was bad, but the instructions we were getting back then made it seem like the bad people that liked doing sexual things to kids were going to kidnap you or be really aggressive. This was just a dude on his porch.

Which is pretty insidious, and makes it creepier looking back on it than it was at the time. Like, the guy was flying under the radar, and probably kept it that way on purpose. That's creepier to me than someone going all Chester Molester and trying to undress you or get you to do sexual things. The stealth is creepy, the more aggressive stuff is "just" evil, if you get the distinction.

I'm still kind of surprised how little it bothered me. It doesn't even bother me now tbh. It's just something that happened, akin to getting a sunburn. Not good, but no real emotional impact. It was more disappointing than anything else. Dude had always been nice, and a cold drink on a shaded porch was a great thing, and now that was over because he couldn't keep his hands to himself.

Most of the time I talk about it, folks around me have more emotional responses than I had in the moment. I uses to wonder if that means I'm just extra weird, but I've run into enough people who had similar experiences that weren't traumatized either that I figure it's more about the details of how things go than the simple fact of it happening.

Pero, yo no soy marinero. Soy capitan!

Soy capitan!

Edit: this song remains stuck in my head from high school Spanish, even though I managed to retain almost nothing else. As should be obvious from this edit being in english.

Dammit Harbor Freight! Always ruining a mid tier joke with affordable pricing on acceptable quality goods!

Coming to this fairly late, so I hope that means things have eased up for you.

But, fwiw, I'm happy when I see a post you've made, even one like this.

That headline/title is misleading though.

The overall point of what she says is a lot more complex.

1337 comments?

You are truly uber

A button fly's what?

That's probably true regarding the dangers; but as far as I've ever seen, it doesn't link to the etymology of it at all. Batty or similar things have a fairly established record. Batshit is less than a hundred years old as a term for crazy, and has solid origins in print that aren't related to that.