CantTrip [she/her]

Did you try to find a new home on Reddit after the ban? What’s the scene there for ex-CTH posters? I’ve noticed r/blackwolffeed has a lot more activity now, full on conversations that expand beyond the posted episode.

Anyway I’m glad you found your way here!

Torture is awful and should be abolished everywhere. What better place to start than at home? After all, isn’t our efforts best spent using our ‘democratic systems’ to see our desire to end torture realized? The U.S. doesn’t meet any of the published benchmarks for Vietnam in that link lmao:

1. Prohibition of the practices of holding prisoners and detainees for prolonged periods in incommunicado detention and solitary confinement, which not only facilitate and perpetuate the torture of detainees, but in some circumstances can themselves amount to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatmen . [U.S. has more people in solitary per capita than Vietnam]

2. Commitment to a timetable by which the government will authorize independent monitoring of all prisons, re-education centers, and other places of detention in Vietnam by both international and domestic monitoring bodies to investigate allegations of physical abuse and torture of prisoners and detainees and enforce the absolute prohibition on such abuses by police, security officials, prison and detention center staff, and other detainees. [We do not have oversight or follow- up for reported torture/ abuse in our prisons]

3. Acceptance of country visits by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and officials of the International Labor Organization, with unrestricted access to prisons, detention centers, psychiatric institutions, re-education camps, drug detention centers, jails, police lock-ups, and other places of detention. [No one gets unrestricted access to prisons in the U.S. for investigative/ oversight purposes]

4. Ratification and implementation of Work Convention No. 105 (Abolition of Forced Labor), which prohibits forced or compulsory labor of prisoners convicted of political offenses or because of racial, social, national, or religious discrimination; and publication of a list of all forms of work in which prisoners and detainees are involved (just lol)

As someone who hates torture, I can’t imagine spending any time lecturing Americans about the happenings in a SE Asian country i don’t even share a language with, when there is so so so much torture right here at home

Existing in our heteronormative, transphobic society can breed a lot of self loathing. When dealing with that, there’s a fear that every good thought and feeling you have about yourself is self- delusion. This is compounded by watching the liberal, shallow exaltation of queer people in our culture. So it makes perfect sense when a fash says "I have nothing against you personally, but cmon your identity is ridiculous and is bad for society. " It’s a hard truth, but at least it’s not self- delusion.

And then there’s validation as well. They get to be One of the Good Ones. One of the ones that’s grounded and realistic, not delusional. It’s a toxic mix.

I’m not trying to frame any fascist as sympathetic - or do the “they’re racist because they hate themselves” thing. There’s of course a base of political ideology that’s ripe for far right radicalization. But I think the above is a big reason why there’s attraction to existing, transphobic groups.

Haha, no, I’m a recovered heroin addict and work with addicts and this approach of “I’ll only ever help you if you submit to a round of withdrawals to show you’re worth helping,” is only one attitude among many.

I think some recovered addicts look back on their own experience and think “yes when I got sober it was because things were really awful and I finally got serious and other addicts can only get clean if things are awful enough [rock bottom myth] …and if they fail they are not ‘serious.’”

Perhaps that was indeed true for you, but it wasn’t for me and it’s not for many people. I made several extremely serious attempts at sobriety before I was successful. The time I got and stayed clean was not the lowest point in my addiction history.

The most important thing in my mind for helping addicts is making them feel like they are still a part of a community and they have value and that getting sober would mean they could connect to that community even more and fufill all that potential. So… treating them as adult human beings.: “If I had the money to spare to help you, I would, because i know you’re in a tough spot, but I’m trying to be there for a few different people… and I can’t be of financial assistance, only emotional and transport assistance.” Which is true… if I were a millionaire I’d absolutely give them money. Withholding money and resources does not cure addiction. We wish it were that simple. Research shows addicts are more likely to recover if they have more resources. actually. So much for rock bottom…

I also hope you’ll look at the research on different ways of treating opiate addiction. “Inpatient” is usually not the most effective treatment model. Outpatient, Medication- Assisted Therapy (buprenorphine/Suboxone) over 1-2 years combined with one- on- one addiction counseling has the highest success rate. It allows addicts to learn how to be sober in the context of their own lives, and avoids withdrawals - severe withdrawals decrease success.

I respect you and your experience, which is why I think it’s worth discussing the differences in approach.

Oh fuck comrade I’m sorry. I was arrested long after getting clean on the bullshit ‘we found something suspicious in your car’ which they searched because dogs signaled, who were brought because I “seemed nervous.” It was a weekend morning. My boyfriend was sleeping in so I took the car to get donuts and run by the dollar store - it was rare for me to go off alone at that time. $300 to get the car out.

So my boyfriend was you.

We also went through a post-traumatic phase where we both preferred I not go anywhere alone. I felt - and still feel - that if I get pulled over, it’s game over. They see the history of addiction and find a way to find “something.” It’s stressful to always go together, stressful to worry when you’re apart.

But at least my history is something I made some choices to create - your gf being trans is just an inherent quality of who she is.

Fuck all of that. I hope things get better. Know that PTSD, stress, anxiety, anger, is 100% a common and reasonable reaction and may last a long time. Talk to each other about how you’re feeling (as soon as you can). You guys are tough, your gf is hella tough with the things she’s been through.

Things get better the longer you get from being totally justice non- involved. One thing that helps is even though we’re poor, we save to an emergency fund, so if I get fucked over again the financial element can’t be held over us. That’s empowering and stress relieving.

The guys on American Pickers are usually quite kind to the old, lonely, rural dudes who sometimes have mild hoarding disorders. At least the shows portrays them as being appreciative of their things and interested in their stories.

Which must be baffling and cringe to Chuck who finds those people gross and disposable.

Also: ugh women suck… always wanting to watch one of the most common programs on the channel you turned on… why aren’t they interested in the hypothetical history program you imagined could be on???

On NPR early on, they talked to two ‘experts’ who were medical doctors, a listener-submitted question was about the efficacy of masks. Both said the droplets carrying the virus would escape through the gaps around the nose, rendering them useless. In Asian countries, you see a lot of masks, that’s more of a cultural thing, one said.

A couple weeks later masks were being recommended by the CDC but of course NPR never publicized a redaction, just pretended that of course they were saying it all along - they are the bastion of Good Information, bestowed upon them by God, immune to the failings that non-liberal journalism can suffer.

Gotta take issue with the “addicts don’t recover unless something drastic happens” - that’s the ‘rock bottom’ type myth that prevents addicts from getting the support they need and incentivizes further alienating them from society.

I was a heroin addict and then a hard-core alcoholic and I’m two years sober. The ‘drastic thing’ that happened was that in the misery of addiction I would try to get clean and fail and then try… and fail… and try another way… and fail… until one day I tried…and succeeded. The silver bullet was actually just that I had enough support and the bare bones resources so that my attempts had a fighting chance of working.

I think all this says is your interactions with homeless people have been limited - they are all complete strangers to you and you only talk to the most socially brazen ones beggjng (when you’re forced to) - and that’s just a function of your relatively high socioeconomic level.

If you were born into a poorer family, you’d have friends-of-friends and maybe even family who’ve dealt with homelessness and see a whole lot of “common ground”. Homelessness would have been a very real possibility during portions of your life, your parents thinking about how living in the car or at motels would work, or which people if any they could stomach to ask to move in with briefly.

In the last neighborhood I lived in, there was a man who lived in a few of my neighbors houses, in almost a rotation, with doing handy work in their yards as thinly veiled optics for everyone’s sake, and he was like just another neighbor in every way.

Anyway I was wrong before - your comment does say one more thing about you… you gotta redevelop your empathy! Even if your only interaction has been with “pushy” strangers, you should feel for that suffering, acknowledge how you don’t understand the path to that point very well because of the circumstances you were born into/some good luck, and feel the urge to fight and protect the most vulnerable among us. Your focus on your own inconvenience is a result of decades of capitalist propaganda that has been very effective on you.

People are opining about the validity of the room set-up, but the type of sexist bullshit in the title is really harmful: *Women are too superficial, too spiteful, too attention- seeking to be supportive of a man taking pleasure in simple, pared down things. Women’s lives revolve around men, so any women would have a strong opinion about how my room is. Women are incapable of experiencing contentment from having only what you need. *

Like there is bitter divorce guy sexism, but this is worse. This is a young guy who could be exploring new kinds of emotional intimacy with romantic partners (or friends, sexual partners, etc) but has been taught to compulsively think of women as non-human entities, incapable of human joy and therfore wanting to prevent him from happiness as well.

○"(Of course his psyche is so obsessed with women he imagines how awful they would be during a purportedly solitary, happy moment lol)