a thing that relaxed me, and a thing that's making me tense

[kindkit]

I've been sleeping badly for a couple of months (sleeping restlessly and waking up too early) and for the last week or so, having persistent back pain.

So yesterday I finally remembered the stash of muscle relaxants that I still have from my bout with sciatica last winter. Took a cyclobenzaprine at bedtime, slept for nine hours, took a four hour nap this afternoon, and I feel almost human again. Plus my back barely hurts. Thank you, Big Pharma!

I'm going to take another one tonight, and hope that two solid nights of sleep will reset me to sleep normally.


Unrelated, a thing that will only make sense if you're on Twitter: I just had occasion to recall a time when somebody posted on Twitter about how bookstore customers should take politically-bad books and hide them elsewhere in the store. And I responded that this only hurts bookstore workers and isn't actually a politically radical act.

I got told that this was the moral equivalent of Eichmann's "just following orders."

(Okay, a brief primer: there is Discourse happening right now, because a disabled trans person who can sometimes be very irritating about social justice* got doxxed by actual fascists and was revealed to work [part time, as an admin, because he needs health insurance] for Lockheed-Martin. Cue a whole bunch of "leftists," many of whom are neither disabled nor trans, gleefully calling him a collaborator, a murderer, and comparing him to secretarial staff in a concentration camp. Also trotting this out for anyone defending him in any way whatsoever, including just pointing out that a weapons-making corporation is still not a concentration camp.

*And who's been the target of transphobes for a while, at least since he did a big thread about the transphobia and racism and general awfulness of That One Book Where Everyone With A Y Chromosome Dies and Is Sent to Literal Hell.

If you're not on Twitter and this is the first you're hearing of the whole mess, be glad.)


In cheerier news, my story is really truly almost done. I'm halfway through the final edit. Will probably post it tomorrow.

Comments

[sovay]

That One Book Where Everyone With An X Chromosome Dies and Is Sent to Literal Hell.

I know it's not the point of this anecdote and I am sure I can find it for myself if I muck around on the internet, but what.

Too many people like to fling around Holocaust allusions in the confidence that they would have been sent up in smoke for being moral, virtuous, unproblematic people, which as we know is what being oppressed by the Nazis was all about.

[kindkit]

That should have read "everyone with a Y chromosome." I'll edit to fix. The book is called The Men, author Sandra Newman. And yeah, everyone with a Y chromosome (including trans women) is taken to hell by demons. And then the world is paradise, except for things the author apparently didn't see as bad, like the sexual assault of trans men.

Full disclosure: I haven't read it, but I have read the long critique of it by Ana Mardoll (the person getting piled on for working for Lockheed Martin), which included plentiful quotes. And it seemed incredibly awful on many levels, both politically and artistically.

Too many people like to fling around Holocaust allusions in the confidence that they would have been sent up in smoke for being moral, virtuous, unproblematic people

Yep. It sure must be nice for them to be so unproblematic. I wish I could manage it.

[sovay]

And it seemed incredibly awful on many levels, both politically and artistically.

I must say, your summary is not recommending it to me.

(I am sorry Ana Mardoll is being piled on for working for Lockheed Martin, which is not commensurate with being irritating about social justice.)

I wish I could manage it.

But at what cost!

[rydra_wong]

I haven't read Mardoll's critique, but I have read Gretchen Felker-Martin's takedown, which is devastating (and deserving of reading for sheer razor-blade incisiveness):

https://www.patreon.com/posts/in-flesh-men-63782522?cid=79856646

[lilacsigil]

I remember when it was the first person to invoke Godwin's Law lost the argument! Sigh. And I do find that person very irritating but guess what, it's easy not to give him any attention and go about my day!

I had a bout with sciatica earlier this year thanks to arthritis in my SI joint getting out of control and it was fucking awful, I'm glad that big pharma is providing you a way around it.

[kindkit]

Sciatica is the worst. I hope you're feeling better now. My current back pain isn't sciatica, just some kind of muscle spasm-y thing, for which I'm duly grateful.

I do find that person very irritating but guess what, it's easy not to give him any attention

There's a disturbing combination happening of left puritanism and people being delighted to find a "good" reason to hate on a trans person.

[lilliburlero]

There is definitely a kind of milkshake-duck-adjacent phenomenon whereby a silly, popcorn-worthy Very Online "scandal" that is completely nugatory in actual systemic social justice terms turns out to have been far-right doxxers all along ("milkshake k*wi", maybe?)...

[kindkit]

I've seen screenshots of recent comments at KF--they're rejoicing in their success.

[silveradept]

Hooray for the muscle relaxer providing relief.

You're entirely right that hiding the books isn't a grand political act - people do it at the library as well and it only annoys the workers. If you want to see a book gone from the shelves, there's process to follow, and you have to be willing to attach your name to it, which is often more than the people who feel confident they would never collaborate with fascists are willing to do.

The situation with the doxxing and the sudden moral "outrage" that disabled people still need to survive is all the proof anyone ever needs to disprove anyone's belief that we always punch up and put our effort into making the world better for everyone and holding the real people responsible for their actions.

(That Book Where Everyone with a Y Chromosome Went To Hell is terrible just from the excerpts.)

[kindkit]

the sudden moral "outrage" that disabled people still need to survive is all the proof anyone ever needs to disprove anyone's belief that we always punch up and put our effort into making the world better for everyone

It's funny how it always seems to be marginalized people who end up getting the outrage, too. It happens over and over, that the people in the hardest position are expected to be morally pure, while cishet abled white men get a pass for anything.

[silveradept]

It's so consistent, you might even believe there's something systemic and deeply rotten in the concept of virtue in our society and how quick condemnation comes to anyone trying to point out that this is not, in fact, the best of all possible worlds.