Saying “Gender is fake so how are people trans?” is like saying “Money is fake so how are people poor?” Like as much as we facetiously say gender is fake, “social construct” is not synonymous with “fake”
“Eventually you can’t help but figure out that, while gender is a construct, so is a traffic light, and if you ignore either of them, you get hit by cars. Which, also, are constructs.”
I work in a public library and there are times a book comes through circulation that is so awesome I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before.
Last week I came across this lovely children’s picture book called Why Johnny Doesn’t Flap: NT is OK! by Clay Morton, Gail Morton, and illustrated by Alex Merry. (Pardon the library barcode covering part of the title here.)
[Pictures of the front and back covers of the picture book. The back cover summary says: “My friend Johnny is different from me. We have fun together, but sometimes he acts pretty strangely. He is never exactly on time, he can;t seem to strict to a routine, he stares right into your eyes, and he often says puzzling things. Johnny is neurotypical. I like Johnny and I think being NT is OK.”]
The fact that I was seeing the term “NT” on the cover of a children’s book was enough to pique my interest. Upon further inspection, I discovered that the book is really quite lovely!
[Two page spread reads: “We have a lot of fun together, but sometimes he acts pretty strangely. Mom says it is because he is NT, or neurotypical. He doesn’t have autism, so his brain works differently from mine, but that’s OK.”]
It flips the typical “little Timmy has a special friend” narrative on its head. Instead, the narrator is an autistic boy who has an NT friend who he sometimes struggles to understand.
[Two page spread reads: It can be pretty interesting being friends with a kid who is NT. He has a lot of quirks that can be very frustrating until you get used to them. Mom says that everyone’s brain is different and different isn’t always wrong.”]
The book uses simple terms to describe a perspective not usually seen in any literature, let alone lit intended for children.
[Two page spread reads: “When something exciting happens, Johnny doesn’t respond like you would expect. He doesn’t flap his arms or jump up and down. He just moves the sides of his mouth up and slightly widens his eyes. Maybe he doesn’t know much about how to express emotions.”]
I think ultimately this flipping of the narrative is more effective in getting the message across that kids with autism are just like everyone else but with unique needs.
[Two page spread reads: “Johnny never has a meltdown when disasters happen, like a fire drill or art class being canceled. He is afraid of what people might think. It seems like he is bottling his feelings up, but he just has his own way of dealing with things, and that’s OK.”]
And this book is something autistic kids don’t usually have– it’s a book from their perspective! And it’s a non-offensive, matter-of-fact perspective, which is all the rarer.
[Two pages spread reads: “When he talks to you, Johnny looks directly into your eyes, which can make you pretty uncomfortable. He doesn’t mean any harm, though. That’s just the way he is, and that’s OK.”]
It talks about things that autistic people experience and can relate to.
[Page reads: “I like Johnny. I think that being NT is OK.”]
How awesome is that?
A book like this would have been so beneficial to me as a kid to help me not feel alien. If you want autistic people to relate to others in fiction, we need stories from our point of view too.
I NEED THIS BOOK
I love that it flips the narrative, that’s so clever.
And now I’m mad that nobody told us we were given cows. Cause that’s really f*cking nice and nobody mentioned it at all.
American media tends to disregard that anyone donates to the US. And then Amurricans complain about money going abroad because “nobody helped the US in our disasters.”
>.>
Also, do you know how much a cow costs? O.O
It isn’t just a matter of how much a cow costs, its a matter of considering that Masai life is based around their cattle. Its their wealth, their food, and a significant part of their religion. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:
“Traditional Maasai lifestyle centres around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. The measure of a man’s wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is respectable, and the more children the better. A man who has plenty of one but not the other is considered to be poor.[37] A Maasai religious belief relates that God gave them all the cattle on earth, leading to the belief that rustling cattle from other tribes is a matter of taking back what is rightfully theirs, a practice that has become much less common.[38]”
So its not just “they gave us 14 cows”, its that they gave us something that is very important and significant to them, it is more than just a kind gesture that definitely deserves to be known and its a genuine shame that more people don’t know about it.
Wait, you guys DON’T KNOW that we offer help to the US when you have disasters???????
Shit, down here in Brazil we not only offered to send tracking units and doctors to help in 9/11 but we wanted to send a whole lot of donations to help with Katrina (we have experience with floods down here so we knew what kind of medicine to send to prevent outbreaks).
We alone had like 2 army airplanes full of medicine and non-perishables like baby formula, diapers, bottled water, mosquito nets and other stuff that’s needed to fight opportunistic diseases that hit flooded areas, enough to assist a good few thousand people at least, ready to go the day after it hit, but your government refused the donations.
The same thing happened to the Canadians and Europeans who offered help, the US embassies around the world told us all to give money to Red Cross.
And so we did, we all gave hundreds of millions of dollars to them, and then this happened:
So please, don’t you go spreading misinformation and prejudice against the rest of the world, WE DID OFFER HELP AND ORGANIZED IT EVEN FASTER THAN BUSH DID, BUT Y’ALL REFUSED IT.
Oh wow I had no idea this happened it’s really not talked about in media at all wow this is something good to know about wow
I’m so angry.
I didn’t know that other countries tried to help after 9/11 or Katrina. Like, that’s something we, the people, should hear about and we don’t.
Please don’t blame us for the shitty decisions our government makes. We don’t have as much control over our government as we would like to think and they keep a lot from us.
Spread this shit.
After Katrina, Cuba donated several hundred blankets. Think about that. A country that is suffering economically due directly to the US embargo offered to help us when we needed it by sending what they could. And once again, it was refused. We have a government that is so self-righteous that we refuse to accept disaster aid in order to maintain this facade that we are the most generous nation on earth.
Okay, Katrina thing.
Only Texans really knows this? and even then it’s not wide spread. Mexico sent their army. They sent their army for relief efforts. Didn’t call ahead, they drove all the way to San Antonio with doctors and food and all sorts of supplies.
When people actually got a call from them saying “Hey, we’re sending people up.” The people who answered said “What? We can’t…” “Too late, already there.” This was while the government was turning down help.
So yeah, other countries send relief.
Forest fires up in Washington last year? Firefighters from Australia came up to assist.
Like… we don’t hear about this shit. At all.
I can second the above with the fires.
Most the time, when people say “oh FEMA or something sent people right?” re: fires, its actually people from other countries showing up and kinda ignoring the government telling them to fuck off and staying on behalf of local departments because we REALLY need them.
If there’s a huge ass disaster, and the government is sitting there with a thumb up it’s ass, help is offered and most the time– shit, it gets there! But then the feds do something really fucking dirty. They insist they were the help, if it’s talked about at all.
They insist those people putting out fires were federal people, because to most people a fireman’s a fireman. The people handing out water and food, a relief worker is a relief worker. So on and so forth.
We had people come up when the fires were so bad a while ago– not the Australians, but i think there was like a German group of like 3 guys that flew themselves over? They came out of sheer “this is horrible and we’re helping” and my dad [local fire chief] had them working with our guys and the feds lost no time telling every news outlet that it was THEIR people doing all the fire knockdowns and structure work when these guys were running into buildings and grabbing people, pets, and people’s important documents because they knew papers were a pain in the ass to replace.
What you gotta understand is that our government is very intent on selling us and the rest of the world [as much as possible] the idea of a powerful and self reliant country. All our reporting on disasters, starts with the scaremongering and then moves to “but our people can handle it because we’re the best at handling things” and then they move on before the idea it’s out of control comes to mind. The average person outside of the disaster has no idea, if they have never been around such an event or met someone who regularly deals with these things, they will kinda probably nod along with that. Because we have no real scope on the scale and impact– by design. Our media intake is very controlled to slant everything to the “eh, we can handle it and everyone else out there– they need our help because they’re not so good at handling disasters like we are.” People who know better, reading international news, interacting with international social groups, looking outside their sphere of community– we know better but that kinda slant is really hard to break from because of that grip American media has on information. So, taking that knowledge, we further have restricted reporting on certain disasters because they’re considered unimportant. Hurricanes are considered important, earthquakes are only considered important if it wrecks something the government cares about or somewhere a couple million people live that they’ll upset the national money flow/they can throw money at someone to make the news care, floods are only important if it’s in a similar manner to earthquakes but since they occur annually they’re rarely reported on nationally, mudslides that kill people or leave hundreds homeless aren’t important to the government even through they happen constantly, wildfires that consume most of the nation/continent each year generally are unimportant until they consume a town or threaten a government interest/money flow location. Terrorist attacks are always important because people will talk about them.
So, when we do get help for any of the above, it’s possible that most people may have no idea about what’s happened, let alone that help’s been sent. Or if people know something happened, the details are vague– the news don’t care to give the nitty gritty. You’ll know something happened and people are suffering and “gee, isn’t it good you’re not them” and then now the weather.
So, yeah, basically no one really knows we get help.
We got HELLA help, but nobody really talks about it
American Media really fails regularly
Hurricane Sandy, Quebec sends power line crews down to assist in restoring power. California gets rid of water bombers due to budget cuts, Canada sends theirs down to help fight wild fires. Amazing what living on the border and having outside TV News does to your information flow.
After Katrina, Denmark offered to donate water purification units so people wouldn’t get sick from drinking contaminated water, but the offer was declined.
A private Danish company built a mobile satellite phone booth and drove it around the poor neighbourhoods in Mississippi and Louisiana so people could call their families and insurance companies for free (apparently there was a deadline for reporting damages but people couldn’t call in because their mobile phones were dead and landlines were down).
American propaganda is not a thing of the past, nor is it a new thing. It has been around forever, telling stories of exceptionalism and self-reliance while our government tries its hardest to refuse the help of others and offer its own to them, to try and force other nations onto their back foot and remain aggressively benevolent in international matters, so that it can lord that shit over them in negotiations and the media in general.
I guarantee you America would have a less jingoistic, less xenophobic populace overall if this sort of information were actually reported to us. If we weren’t always fed the lie of helping the world without any gratitude or help in return. If the media didn’t present us as world police and instead as a part of the community, as other countries try hard to include us as, then maybe Americans would actually act like they’re part of a fucking community.
But global citizens are hard to monger fear and distrust and xenophobia and nationalism with. They’re hard to control with propaganda and hate. They’re hard to keep ignorant and docile and saying “this is fine” while the empire burns.
A lot of Americans wonder why our country is seen as a worldwide bully. Shit like that, my friends. Shit like that. Its hubris is seemingly limitless.
C O M M E N T A R Y
…makes me wanna start a news broadcast in the U.S. that reports on good stories and truth in the news.
I learned something new and horrifying today which is… that… no submarine is ever considered “lost” … there is apparently a tradition in the U.S. Navy that no submarine is ever lost. Those that go to sea and do not return are considered to be “still on patrol.”
?????
There is a monument about this along a canal near here its… the worst thing I have ever seen. it says “STILL ON PATROL” in huge letters and then goes on to specify exactly how many WWII submarine ghosts are STILL OUT THERE, ON PATROL (it is almost 2000 WWII submarine ghosts, ftr). Here is the text from it:
“U.S. Navy Submarines paid heavily for their success in WWII. A total of 374 officers and 3131 men are still on board these 52 U.S. submarines still on patrol.”
THANKS A LOT, U.S. NAVY, FOR HAVING THIS TOTALLY NORMAL AND NOT AT ALL HORRIFYING TRADITION, AND TELLING ALL OF US ABOUT IT. THANKS. THANK YOU
anyway now my mother and I cannot stop saying STILL ON PATROL to each other in ominous tones of voice
There’s definitely something ominous about that—the implication that, one day, they will return from patrol.
Actually, it’s rather sweet. I don’t know if this is common across the board, but my dad’s friend is a radio op for subs launched off the east coast, and he always is excited for Christmas, because they go through the list of SoP subs and hail them, wishing them a merry Christmas and telling them they’re remembered.
Imagine a country whose seamen never die, and whose submarines can’t be destroyed…because no ones sure if they exist or not.
No but imagine. It’s Christmas. A black, rotting corridor in a forgotten submarine. The sound of dripping water echoes coldly through the hull. You can’t see very far down the corridor but then, a man appears, he’s running, in a panic, but his footsteps make no noise. The spectral seaman dashes around the corner and slips through a rusty wall. He finds himself at the back of a crowd of his cadaverous crew-mates. They part to let him through. He feels the weight of their hollow gaze as he reaches the coms station. Even after all these years a sickly green light glistens in the dark. The captain’s skeleton lays a sharp hand on his shoulder and nods at him encouragingly, the light sliding over the bones of his skull. The ghost of the seaman steadies himself and slips his fingers into the dials of the radio, possessing it. It wails and screeches. A bombardment of static. And then silence. The deathly crew mates look at each other with worry, with sadness; could this be the year where there is no voice in the dark? No memory of home? The phantasm of the sailor pushes his hand deeper into the workings of the radio, the signal clears, and then a strong voice, distant with the static but warm and kind, echoes from the darkness; “Merry Christmas boys, we’re all thinking of you here at home, have a good one.” A sepulchral tear wafts it’s way down the seaman’s face. The bony captain embraces him. The crew grin through rotten jaws, laughing silently in their joy. They haven’t forgotten us. They haven’t forgotten.
I am completely on board with this. It’s not horrifying, it’s heartwarming.
Personal story time: whenever I go to Field Museum’s Egypt exhibit, I stop by the plaque at the entrance to the underground rooms. It has an English translation of a prayer to feed the dead, and a list of all the names they know of the mummies on display there. I always recite the prayer and read aloud the list of names. They wanted to live forever, to always have their souls fed and their names spoken. How would they feel about being behind glass, among strangers? Every little thing you can do to give respect for the dead is warranted.
I love the idea of lost subs still being on patrol. Though if you really want something ominous, let me say that the superstitious part of me wonders: why are they still on patrol? If they haven’t been found, do they not consider their mission completed? What is it out there that they are protecting us from?
There’s been something in the water since we first learned to float on it. Not marine life, although there’s more of that than we’ll ever know. Not rocks and currents and sand bars and icebergs either, although they’ve all taken more than their share of human life.
But something deeper. Something Other. Something not natural.
Sailors have always been superstitious.
Not one of them described it right.
You don’t hear about it so much now that we don’t lose ships anymore, really, not like we did at the height of the sea trade when barely an inch of ocean floor didn’t bear some wreck or other. And better ships and GPS and weather satellites have all played their part in that.
But we have protection now that we didn’t before. They don’t interfere with war and battle, even on behalf of what used to be their country, or with rocks and weather and human stupidity. Those are concerns for the living.
But the Other Things, the Things that shouldn’t be there - They can’t get to us now without a fight. It’s a fight They haven’t won in a very long time.
As long as we remember them, as long as we call out to them - not very often, just once a year will do - they will keep protecting us from the Things that go bump in the deep.
