u/like_alivealive

in light of the recent conversation, gimme ur best books w strange, isolated, unpleasant older women. preferably w MCs over 60. Here are the ones I know:

Cat Brushing by Jane Campbell
The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

not literary fiction

How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley

under 60 but still older than most WGL MCs

Masks by Fumiko Enchi
The New Animals by Pip Adam
Lolly WIllowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

by men but still good

Terry Pratchett's witch books
Killing Time by Alan Bennett

Like it's obviously true that patriarchy harms men. But so are the following:

Racism hurts white people too - people vote against their economic interests because of it, feel fear when its unnecessary, waste taxpayer money on prisons, exclude important perspectives, etc.

Income inequality hurts rich people too - countries with higher income inequality have worse health outcomes across all income brackets

Like I bring up these examples bc in spaces that are primarily/completely people of color, discussing racism, I have literally never heard that shit. And I've really never heard it said about rich people. I can see why someone might make this point (and people do!) to try to convince the dominant group but like, why are we saying it in spaces where everybody is already bought in?

I feel it gets in the way (more irl than online) of having better, more in-depth conversation.

If feminist men feel left out then like, okay?? Be a good ally. cope. feeling left out doesn't mean you deserve coddling. I feel left out when my autistic friends discuss problems specific to their community but I shut up bc not everything is about me. And trans women are for sure expected to cope w feeling left out when feminists discuss reproductive rights.

Does anybody have a theory of why this point is brought up so often in feminist spaces? Do you think women would feel 'selfish' if they focused more on how feminism helps them?

I just read the book The Managed Heart by Arlie Russell Hochschild*.* It was written before DBT was invented, before the current dominance of behavioral therapy and the biobiobio model of mental illness. However, I connected to it quite a lot in terms of 'emotion work', the idea that we have to do 'deep acting', basically convince ourselves we're feeling a more appropriate emotion, in order to have a more convincing act.

It really reminds me of DBT emotion regulation, the idea that you shouldn't just 'fake' not being angry/ashamed/envious, but willingly act opposite to that emotion so it goes away. i wonder how people who've done DBT relate to this? did you have a period of actually checking if emotions were 'justified' or just automatically act opposite to any difficult or 'ineffective' emotion? The Managed Heart discusses how this creates alienation, difficulty actually knowing what one's emotion is and when they are 'deep acting' vs being genuine. it can make it harder to identify the meaning of emotions.

as someone who was abused (enmeshed relationship, named his kid after me, said he was the only thing keeping me alive, promised to walk me down the aisle at my wedding, would call the cops if i was late to zoom session, regularly told me he loved me and said that there were "his family, his friends back home, then [me]" etc.) by a DBT practitioner I've been reflecting on this a lot. I feel like such a failure when my deep acting lets up and the suppressed emotion comes forth ('ineffectively' as self-injury or running away).

Would love to hear what rly anybody thinks

I'm really interested in ways to understand self-injury that aren't basically "it's a symptom"

The books I've found helpful for this are:
Amy Chandler - Self-Injury, Medicine, and Society
Sarah Cheney - Psyche on the Skin
Kay Inckle - Safe with Self-Injury

Anybody have other recommendations? Or ways that you've personally come to understand self-injury, either why you do it or why people do it in general?

Self-injury has been a big part of my experience for like 2/3 of my life and even though I've abstained for several months, and though it's weird to say, I consider everyone who self-injures to be part of my community. I want to make the world safer for us and give those of us who can't afford private therapy (or didn't find it helpful) chances to recover or use harm reduction. especially those of us who are in prisons/state hospitals/refugee camps (which are all populations with rly high rates of NSSI), or are socially isolated/rejected. Like it kind of feels like my driving force in life. And to do that (or do it more effectively than I am) I feel like I have to understand it.

Hi,

I want to share some of what I've read that has helped me put words+context to my experiences. I spent ~7 years in institutions at various "levels of care" and have now been free for nearly 3 years.

La Marr Jurelle Bruce - How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind
Jonathan Foiles - (Mis)Diagnosed
Michel Foucault - Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
Miranda Fricker - Epistemic Injustice
R.D. Liang - The Divided Self
Jonathan M. Metzl - The Protest Psychosis
Joanna Moncrieff - The Myth of the Chemical Cure
Maya Schenwar & Victoria Law - Prison By Any Other Name
Thomas Szasz - The Myth of Mental Illness
Katie Tastrom - A People’s Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice
Robert Whitaker - Mad In America

Please add on!

yk that trope of "men writing women"? The weirdly sexualized passages, the 1st person narration that imagines women are constantly thinking about how sexy they are, etc. well, I notice a similar thing w thin ppl writing fat people, and in both cases it's a major strike against it (3 strikes DNF).

I wonder if anybody knows of novels that don't do this?

I really liked Dietland, Milk Fed, Nothing Tastes as Good, Her Body and Other Parties, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits, The Lady Sherlock Series, and Terry Pratchett generally. and honestly I have quibbles w/ several of these (I enjoy criticizing the things I love, this isn't meant to denigrate any of them).

Please recommend me a book! Absolutely does not have to be intentionally positive, literally just not immediately taking me out of the book would be plenty, but those where fat characters are beautiful, intelligent, ambitious etc. are definitely my top priority. Maybe others would appreciate this too!

ALSO LMK if there's a better sub for this, I just trust people who I already know have good podcast taste 😛