At first glance, this new bill proposed by Texas Sen. Konni Burton seems harmless. Do a little digging, however, and its intention is crystal clear: The bill would require teachers to out LGBTQ students to their parents. The public knows this because Burton said as much herself.
this is so vile
God this is disgusting
NO
WHATEVER YALL FUCKING DO DONT LET THIS BILL PASS
As a closeted queer kids, the only irl place I can be myself is at school. The people there know. I’m not quiet about it. And they’re okay with it. And that takes some of the pain of being closeted from my family okay because hey I have a community that accepts me.
I wouldn’t be affected by this bill but for all the kids that are like me, that consider school a save haven, this could fuck some major shit up.
Don’t let this bill pass. Please.
Texas what the fUCK… Please don’t let this be real
DON’T LET THIS PASS!!!
Okay, this post is for everyone who is on the fence about this stupid post or needs to face the reality of it, okay? Lets get real. Story time.
So when I was freshman in high school, I knew this sweet girl. We’ll call her Hailey. She was a high b-average student, and she wanted to be a veterinarian. She had a rough life but was like a younger sister to her friends, and got along well with about everyone because of her bubbly nature. And as you probably suspect, she was gay. She found herself around sixth grade, so she established to her friends. But her friends only.
But during her freshman year, something horrible happened. One of her friend’s parents told her parents she was gay. Now what you need to know about this woman is that she didn’t do this out of any sense of cruelty. Her own son was gay, and she’d really struggled with that for awhile before accepting him and openly supporting him. And their relationship was great now.
So she wanted to tell Hailey’s parents, as a conservative parent as a gay child herself, because she felt like her reaction had been extreme, and she’d acted cruely and had wronged her child. She wanted to be there for them if they had negative reactions, and talk them through her experience.
Now Hailey, she had begged this woman not to. She had even cried over it, because she knew her parents, but this woman really thought she knew what was best and everything would be better once she no longer had to hide. And went off and told them behind Hailey’s back, without listening to her or giving her *any warning.*
And this woman said Hailey’s parents were quiet when she gave them the news. They listened to her entire story and experiences. They even asked a question or two, and said they’d talk about this with Hailey. And the woman left feeling like she’d done the right thing.
But she the furthest thing from the right thing that you can imagine. Hailey’s parents didn’t pick her up at the bus stop, so she walked home all by herself. She didn’t know she’d been outed, or anything was off. She thought her parents might just be working late.
And as she’s told me of the account afterwards: “I was happy. I’d passed that math test and I was going to ask my Dad if he might help me practice driving when I get home because I was thinking about taking Driver’s Ed. I thought it weird they weren’t returning my texts to tell me they were going to be late because we don’t live in the safest neighborhood, and they don’t like me walking alone, but I wasn’t worried. And then I got home… And then I got home and my parents were waiting for me, and I just. Knew. I just KNEW. Something about their expressions and way they stood up gave it away.”
And what happened next I was forced to believe. She told me, she just ran to the front door, but her Dad grabbed her and held her down. And as he held her down, her Mom proceeded to beat the living shit out of her.
And I’m not talking a slap across the face, or being struck with a belt. It was so bad that her screams – she was lucky enough to have run and got to the front door to be heard by a passing neighbor walking his kids home – who called the police.
But until they arrived, for minutes on minutes she was beaten by Dad and Mom. When she came back to school, she had bruises on her wrists from where she’d thrashed trying to get away from her Dad’s iron grip, and a fractured wrist. She had an ugly bruised and STITCHED forehead from where her mom’s wedding ring had gotten her, and black and bruised skin across her stomach from where she’d been repeatedly stomped on.
And you must be thinking, oh my God what horrible parents. They must have been punished harshly.
No. They spent just a single night in jail, and I still don’t know if they were later charged. Hailey was forced to leave her home. She told me no one would take her in, and never told me where she ended up having to stay.
And did I mention she was made to come to school the next day? Because she did. She tried to hide the injuries, but you really can’t hide those. Especially when you aren’t even wearing your own clothes because you weren’t allowed to go home and get them.
And I could tell you more. I could tell you how her parents wouldn’t let her back in her house to get ANY of her things. I could tell you how aunts and uncles turned her away like she was ridden with an STD.
I could tell you about how she dropped out of high school, or apparently the girl who wanted to be a veterinarian one day because she wanted to take care of sick animals and make them better tried to take her own life months later.
I could tell you that after that day, I didn’t see her again until I ran into her a YEAR later by chance. This girl VANISHED for a year. Her friends clammed up about her, like they were afraid and determined to not tell anyone where she was at any time. Ever.
So the next time you say OUTING someone couldn’t be that bad, or that making it law for a child’s safe place to out them is right or doesn’t concern you – remember Hailey. Remember the little sister-like girl who wanted to be a vet and once only seriously worried about math tests and learning to drive.
And you what? Hailey told me she still sees herself as someone lucky. Because she lives with her Grandpa now who flew down from Florida to take care of her. And she feels lucky because she still has someone, and because she’s still ALIVE.
So you remember that when they try to pass this law. You remember Hailey, and all those like her who were treated worse and aren’t here anymore. You probably know of someone. Remember people like Hailey, and protect them. Because when they say it IT ISN’T SAFE FOR THEM TO BE OUTED, believe them!!!
Because all it took was ONE person feeling obligated to out her, who didn’t believe Hailey, and before she was ready to leave home safely to cause all this.
This bill has made it to the senate but it’s still in committee, it’s close but not quite passed yet. There’s still time
Native parents from around the world held their very young children’s hands as they walked them to boarding schools and residential schools. Some Native parents were forced to completely sign away their guardianship to principals of these “schools”, or face jail time. Others were visited by policemen, who forcibly seized their children from them. A few were undermined by “Indian Agents” on reservations, who withheld their rations on ration days. Some children never saw their parents again.
Boarding schools were built to “assimilate” the Native population into a white society, targeting their children. It had been assumed that conversion to Christianity and assimilation was “for the best interests” of Native and Indigenous people in Australia, the US, and Canada. The Native children were not allowed to practice skills relevant and appreciated to their cultures, such as carving. They were disallowed to speak in their native tongues, and were often physically, sexually, and psychologically tormented for doing so.
A five year old Native boy is raised by his family to know his hair as an extension of his soul, and that people only cut their hair if they experienced a loss of a loved one, a loss of a relationship, or a loss of oneself. As a stranger cuts off the little boy’s hair in order to better assimilate the child into the sex-based roles of a white male, the Native child is left quietly wondering who it is that has died, where his family went, and why the other children are being beaten for speaking to one another.
Only a small portion of each day was spent learning academically at these “schools”. Most of the day the children were exploited for their labor.
How the labor was divided was based upon the Native child’s sex.
Native girls were expected to do the domestic labor that was expected of white girls and women, such as cooking and cleaning, and Native boys were expected to perform manual labor, such as farm work, blacksmithing, and shoemaking. The children would reach a point where they would be “phased out” of these boarding schools for a summer or year at a time and forced to perform labor for private white and wealthy families who did not want these jobs and duties themselves.
Many boarding schools and residential homes had an overwhelming death rate from Tuberculosis, which swept through these schools and homes. Tuberculosis kills it’s victim within ten days. Native children were forced to play and sleep alongside other Native children who had contracted tuberculosis so that they, too, would die. Boarding schools suffered a 50% or higher death rate because of this, effectively reducing the Native population in an attempt to eradicate them.
Maisie Shaw, age 14, was kicked down a flight of stairs by Alfred Caldwell, the principal of the residential school she was forced to stay in and killed.
Other small skeletons of Native children have been found in church basements, which served as residential homes and boarding schools.
Other children were forced into prostitution rings.
Over fifty thousand children in Canada’s First Nations residential schools were beaten, raped, suffered from electrocutions and electroshock therapy, were forcibly sterilized, often medically experimented on, starved, and murdered.
It wasn’t until 1978 in the US that Native parents won the rights to deny sending their children to boarding schools. This wasn’t that long ago. In 1978, my mother was 21 years old.
In Australia, the residential homes lasted until 1984.
In Canada, the last residential home was closed in 1996.
To me, John is absolutely reminiscent of a lot of the… slightly scarier vets?
Like he absolutely is hyper vigilant
Like… people only picture that as like scared and eyes darting all over the place, panicky, but … it also manifests in a much… slower… more deliberate way of looking around. Walking into a room and taking a quick scan of it to pick out the best way to escape, the most likely looking people to start trouble, mood of the room so you know if you need to play it cool.
So he walks through the door, quick glare at everyone, then a forced smile as he loosens his posture and plays it cool. But the SECOND anything starts turning he isn’t remotely startled, just moves right towards that stack of beer bottles he noticed on his way in, palms it and positions himself where he needs to be in order to take someone out. When the situation cools he’s reluctant to put the bottle down, but he does it anyways. Either spends the rest of the evening hovering near the bottles or else purposely stays away from them, while being incredibly aware of how far away they are.
JOhn’s the type of vet that seems pretty much to be fine, but his family will say hes secretive and more intense than he used to be.
John is the kind that stays completely calm and quiet while someone yells at him, but everything in the set of his jaw and the way he’s shifted his balance, screams out silently ‘please give me a reason, any reason, you have no idea who you’re picking a fight with’
i ADORE john but anytime i see a fic where he is nothing but sweet and understanding, all i can think is how much, to me, JOhn is playing the role of a civilian. He knows how to do it, and most people probably think he plays it flawlessly.
(((sorry mycroft, you have no idea what you’re talking about. PTSD manifests in a lot of ways, and John’s particular version isn’t even rare))
I love this and agree it is so, so John. I come from a military family and there is so much about him that I recognise.
Thank you for writing this! I know next to nothing about PTSD but I’d like to know more.
If you don’t mind me asking: What is your take on John beating Sherlock in The Lying Detective?
First paragraph is my background, skip it if you want to hear my extended John thoughts. Long as SHIT because i have STRONG feelings on the subject and I am a rambler
My job included occasionally interacting with Vets in-person and make scheduling phone calls if staff was tight, but about 95% of my work was reading therapy notes, nightmare diaries, letters, incident reports, and the confidential stuff even the patients don’t get to see. Things like ‘find every single page in this 7,000 page file about their mental state as related to the X incident in X’ so i would have to ACTUALLY READ all of it, it was heavy, i had a breakdown after 3 years, etc, another worker committed suicide doing it, another went gun crazy in the building. HARD job. After all that, my level of empathy here is VERY HIGH, especially since i would follow peoples life-long recovery, so WARNING I GUESS for strong opinions about stuff
In my opinion, John has a form of PTSD that is lifelong, changes the way you see the world so you have to judge everything on the basis of ‘threat’ and ‘not a threat’ and ‘potential threat’. I think he needed help, and while John hadn’t opened up to Ella after a few months home, many vets dont open up for YEARS but they still need the support system. They need to find stability and safety, and as much as i believe he loves Sherlock, sherlock’s life could only exacerbate the problem. His house might be blown up at any minute, he might be thrown in a fire, his friend might shoot guns at the wall.
So John ALWAYS had a near-guarantee of eventually having an ‘episode’
The Fall was traumatizing, Mary turning out to be a Secret Threat was traumatizing, forcing himself to trust her at Sherlock’s reassurances (sherlock telling him that he’s SAFE with her, shes not a threat, shes a comrade-in-arms) and then to have her bleed out? INCREDIBLY traumatic.
I know people dont like the phrase ‘trigger’ but thats the REAL WORD and it doesnt always mean ‘break into sobs’ and it doesnt always mean ‘right now’.
So John, not sleeping, recently in a shoot-out again, had another comrade-in-arms die on him, Sherlock didnt come for him (he said he thought sherlock would but hadnt been interested), John is having auditory and visual hallucinations. He knows he cant trust what he’s seeing or doing, isnt safe, sends Rosie away to somewhere SAFE because he doesn’t know what he will (or wont) do.
Tries to go to therapy, only for the world to crash in on him and tell him he needs to be responsible, sherlock is his responsibility. Sherlock appears to be in an altered, untrustworthy state, John trusts him anyways.
Smith is taunting him, threatening, threatening women and children and doctors and nurses, mocking them, takes them to the morgue, plays with the dead body of a woman in front of him, suddenly Sherlock appears to snap and go into his own episode, wielding a knife, no longer trustworthy
John tries to disarm him, goes too far, locks into fighting, locks into his feelings of not being safe, of being surrounded by threat, having no one trust, not trusting himself, thinking ever since ghost-mary arrived that hes Not Safe
And goes too far
and EPISODE
I know yall think that it was ‘a beating’ and ‘abusive’ but from what i’ve seen (and ive seen a LOT) ptsd vets can do some wild shit that only barely makes sense to them, even afterwards. Thats usually the sort of thing that makes them admit they need help and go to get medication and finally submit themselves to therapy, the therapy John has needed for YEARS. And they almost ALWAYS improve with it, or at least do better, even if thye never get back to ‘normal’
JOhn was left completely adrift with no support system, and honestly beating up a friend that was ALSO having a breakdown while brandishing a knife???? that shit happens so often in active warzones that John probably wouldnt even go off-duty for it.
Tensions are high and John has been taught to treat London as a war zone.
Then afterwards he doesnt beg forgiveness, because he doesnt think he deserves it, doesnt say he wont ever do it again because he didnt intend to do it in the first place. He just tries to push himself away from sherlock (just like rosie, who he also doesnt feel safe with) and get help.
I think when sherlock said ‘maybe we are human– even you’ i think he meant that JOhn had done well trying to hold himself together without any support for so long, and that cracks were inevitable. It is, quite literally, impossible for John to not have ptsd after all that he went through, and the fact that he held together this long is AMAZING and i do NOT judge him for losing control. His control is ALWAYS on, 100% all the time, CONCIOUS control, in martins voice ,eyes, stance, hands, and overall mannerisms. Hes HOLDING himself together. Since Day 1.
HOLDING himself together, CONTROLLED, active effort, not passively ‘fine’ without trying.
He goes right back to therapy days afterwards, too, he doesnt CANCEL his appointment despite ghost-mary going away and sherlocks forgiving him for irrational delusions, he still knows he needs help.
And what happens?
Wow, thank you SO much! This explains so much.
The thing is, I really feel that Martin Freeman has been able to convey all that to me emotionally without me even knowing the first thing about PTSD. I am even more in awe of his acting now.
he does an AMAZING job of conveying it, thats part of what got me into it. Even if the writing, the script itself, doesnt show much evidence of PTSD, Martin jsut freaking /nails/ it, he’s super amazing.
If you would be interested in doing some sort of collection of signs of John’s PTSD as played by Martin Freeman or something like that (maybe with some added info on PTSD?), I would love to do and infographic of it. You can check out the stuff I’ve made so far at www.obotligtnyfiken.se or (less organised) my Tumblr. It would be really nice to use these fandom experiences to help spread awareness or knowledge. Or just Martin Freeman appreciation, there isn’t enough of that in the world. 🙂
This post is fucking offensive and I’m tired of fucking seeing it
None of you are fucking veterans
I am a god damned veteran
WE DON’T LIKE BEING CALLED “SCARY”.
WE’RE NOT FUCKING SCARY IF WE HAVE PTSD
STOP FUCKING DEMONIZING/ROMANTISIZING VETERANS AND PTSD
FUCK
OFF
I am a god damned veteran, @trappist1-tony. 23 years, Army and Navy. @merindab is a veteran, too. She didn’t serve as long as I did, but that’s not the point. She is a veteran.
You’re more than welcome to fuck right off and block this post. Hell, block me, too. That’s the beauty of this site- you can block shit you find offensive. I know plenty of people that have stuff blacklisted so they aren’t exposed to it. I do, too. That’s called taking responsibility for your online experience.
PTSD can be scary – both to those who have PTSD and to those whose loved ones have PTSD.
There are people on this post talking about their own experiences with veterans who were dealing with PTSD.
This post is analyzing a character, who is a veteran, who has PTSD, and people see things in the character that ring true – and Martin Freeman is a damned good actor to be able to convey these nuances.
@trappist1-tony I hate to be the one to tell you this, but no two vets or people with PTSD react the same way. There are those who are scary, it’s a fact. It’s not a happy fact, but it is a fact.
I have PTSD, I am not a vet. My step-dad has PTSD he did a tour in Iraq. We both have each and every one of those traits. We both scared other people because of it. We both got treatment, because the people around us tried to be supportive rather than trying to make us ashamed.
There are those vets who don’t get treatment for their PTSD and end up killing someone, accidently more often than not, on instinct. It is a side of PTSD that is not often spoken of, that doesn’t make it any less real. Instead of trying to shame people for having a different experience, try offering compassion. Those who have that type of PTSD need help, not to be made to feel like they can’t be fixed or should hide it. That just makes things worse.
*hugs* @jaimistoryteller. I’m sorry you have to deal with that. I know folks with PTSD, both field-related and non-military. It can be scary, and it can be embarrassing, and it can be sad. I’d like to see more PTSD awareness for people to get help when they need it.
(Left to Right): Peter Buffett, Jimmie Briggs, Joe Ehrmann, Tony Porter, Dave Zirin and Moderator Eve Ensler.
MIC DROP
I 100% agree with the intent of this statement, (that women shouldn’t have to fix everything and that the overwhelming majority of rapists are men), but I just want people to know that if you have been raped by a woman, I’m sorry this happened to you and your experience is valid. I hope you get all the support you need too. Pandora’s Project has resources and forums to help.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 