You are not safe from this. You, the person reading this, are not safe from this. No matter how educated or open minded you think you are, you are not safe from this. The moment you think you are safe from it is the moment you become the most susceptible.
Its similar to why you cannot put bad people in a class of their own. The moment you do that you stop being able to see the bad things that the people closest to you do a la “my best friend couldn’t have said that racist thing, they’re not evil.”
The moment you think you are immune from this type of backslide into right wing nonsense is the moment you stop questioning yourself enough to keep yourself from backsliding into right wing nonsense a la “I mean im not antiscience, im vaccinated, I just think that fluoride in our water supply is imparting children’s ability to learn as fast as they otherwise could without it.”
Remember, being progressive means progressing, its about always moving forward. The moment you rest on your laurels and stop putting in effort to keep the progression is the moment you start becoming left behind.
For the last like 2000 years you could get pussy just by being a guy. Now with divorce and the pill and women having jobs and bank accounts and shit, things have changed. If youre a dude and you want pussy you actually have to ask nicely. This will lead to the collapse of several nation states.
No amount of ideology will save you. If you want pussy from a woman, they actually gotta like you. Your wife divorced you at 55 for a bishounen boytoy with a CS degree, and you don’t know how to use a washing machine. This is proof you are a loser.
I’m white so obviously take what I have to say with a grain of salt but it does set off some alarm bells for me to be casting a Black man to play a character who is:
* Repeatedly described in the text as extremely ugly
* In part defined by an unrequited romantic and sexual obsession with the (white) protagonist’s mother
* Textually a former member of a racial supremacist organization, only defecting after the death of aforementioned white woman
Also who has a backstory where he gets tormented and bullied by a group of white kids, including being hung upside down (!!!), which I cannot possibly imagine they will handle at all tactfully given the massive change in connotation this casting brings
This is yet another example of how making a character Black without considering how that affects the entire perception of the narrative, can lead to racist consequences that could have been avoided if anyone had just… Thought about it. There are many characters that can be recast as Black and that leads to similar or even better narrative development! This is not that.
There will be millions of actions like this over the coming years. An important thing to remember is that for them to work (anywhere, not just libraries) is people absolutely can’t announce that this is what they are doing.
Not seeing constant acts of resistance doesn’t mean it isn’t happening all around you all the time. Some very effective methods require silence and secrecy.
i love you USPS I love you NASA i love you taxpayer funded services that actually contribute positively to society i love you libraries i love you public transport
reminder to all 14-19 year olds girls. that grown man does not like you. you are a victim
He doesn’t like you, he likes your naivety and willingness to put up with shit most women his age probably won’t
“you’re mature for your age” “you’re so special” “you’re so different from other girls” pls run in the other direction!
I don’t actually care if someone thinks this is derailing because it’s important.
This applies to all genders on both sides. Teen boys often get left out of these posts, but they are also preyed upon like this, by men and women and also people who are neither because no one is incapable of being a predator. This post shouldn’t be gendered. You can say it happens to girls more, and it could be true. But it happens to boys and they are less likely to talk about it when they get hurt. Less likely to get support if they do, especially if the older person was a woman. I don’t think we have an accurate statistic on how often it happens to boys because of this.
But regardless. Don’t you think they should be told how to stay safe too?
One of my coworkers told me about a good friend of his, a guy that ‘had a thing’ with an older woman in her mid-twenties that started when he was about fifteen. He talked about how their friend group thought it was cool, how they were a little jealous of him. She was pretty and interested, which is any fifteen year old boy’s dream.
The older they got, though, the weirder it got. She got pregnant by this kid when he was still seventeen. Thankfully he went to the authorities and got custody of the baby when he was an adult, but my coworker kind of laughed it off as kids being stupid. I think he thought I would just dismiss it, which is heartbreaking.
I asked him if it would have been okay if it was a fifteen year old female friend and a twenty five year old guy. He immediately replied that it would NOT have been okay, he and his friends would have beaten the guy up.
The dissonance is real, guys. There’s a kid who was groomed at fifteen and a single dad at nineteen because his friends and family only gave this message to girls. This message matters to everyone- no matter your gender, no matter the gender of the other person- if you are a child and an adult is ‘interested’ in you, RUN AWAY. They don’t have your best interests at heart, and that’s not love at all.
ALT
