i-know-the-cost-of-happiness:

One of the things that bother me the most is the way mental illness terms are used in our society today. This morning, a I heard a girl describe her previously thinner body as “looking anorexic”. Someone in my anthropology class described their mom as “bipolar” because she was angry at him. Phrases like “I want to die”, “I’m gonna commit suicide” or “I just wanna kill myself” get thrown around constantly, without care. Being triggered is now a joke to describe overreacting. Even though these people probably don’t mean to hurt anyone, the truth is they are. They are hurting countless people.

They may casually say that they looked “anorexic”, but for me to hear that, being someone who is diagnosed with anorexia, with depression, with anxiety, who self harms, who has suicidal ideations and invasive thoughts, these words hurt. For you, being triggered is just a joke, but to me, being triggered means having to deal with a torrent of fear, anxiety, and self hatred every time something as simple as food, or weight is brought up. It means lying in bed at 3:00 in the morning replaying what you said about killing yourself, knowing you didn’t mean it. Except, the difference between you and me is that I am genuinely considering killing my self, and your comments made me feel so fucking invalid for having these thoughts. <p>

And I’m not alone in this. I am not the only one who feels this way. These things aren’t jokes, and they shouldn’t be used lightly. <p>

You would never make a joke like that about cancer or other physical illnesses. Just because you don’t see the effect of my illness, doesn’t mean it’s not there. Just because you can’t see the effects of my illness, doesn’t make it any less deadly than a physical illness.

In fact, when you joke about cancer, a person’s cancer isn’t going to get worse. But when you joke about a mental illness, that person’s mental illness can get worse.

So if you wouldn’t joke about cancer, then don’t joke about mental illnesses.

An illness is an illness, regardless of whether you can see it or not. Suffering is still suffering, regardless of whether you can see it or not.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can fucking hurt me.

darkrainbow333:

If you haven’t heard already, the fcc has admitted to not caring about the 22 million emails they’ve received unless they were in ‘legal terms’ meaning unless you talked like a lawyer who specializes in this specific category, they ignored your email. It doesn’t look like they plan on changing their mind, no matter what we do.
As hopeless as that sounds, we might still have a way to fight back. I’ve heard a few states are trying to make Internet access a state provided utility like electricity and water. If that happens, companies like Verizon would take massive blows. Spread the word, if we can convince our local governments to make internet a state provided utility, it would help not only to sway the votes, but help preserve the Internet in general.
I’m posting this on multiple fandoms because the net neutrality tag gets censored. Remember, without net neutrality your fandom will be completely destroyed.

sexologist:

Censorship of sexuality, especially while simultaneously violence, particularly sexual violence, is left uncensored, and the harmful implication this juxtaposition has on our collective sexual wellness, is something I’ve written a lot about, like here and here. Hell, I’ve even written a book about it.

So when I found out there is a new “kid safe” search engine called Kiddle designed to block adult search returns for children, I feared it had sex-is-bad-and-violence-is-normal disaster written all over it. When I learned the results are handpicked by humans and not a computer broadly banning based on keywords, I was extra curious to see if I was still right. I was.

I typed in a bunch of different searches that a child might reasonably want or *need* to anonymously ask the Internet. Well, I’ll let you see the results for yourself:

“My girlfriend hits me” is also a bad word.

Inquiries about vaginal discharge are, you guessed it, also bad words.

Related bad words: menstrual care, menstrual pads, menstruation, and uterus.

When avoiding a gay dating website in the search results is considered a higher priority of “safety” for children than their homelessness, and you recommend confronting their abusive parents, we have a tish bit of a problem.

If I was 12, typed this into a search engine, and instead of results got
a “bad word” finger wagging, I would take the answer to the “is it ok
to be bisexual” question as a big fat NO it’s not OK 😦 

But the human censors apparently allows kids to search for this one under their “kid safe” censorship policies:

So questions about puberty, health, identity, and seeking help for sexual abuse is not “safe”, but kids buying guns is. I feel like a broken record, so I’m going to let you all unpack it this time. Discuss:

just-shower-thoughts:

Why doesn’t Head and Shoulders make a body wash named Knees and Toes?