andro

andro wrote

Reply to Friday Free Talk by ziq

My cousins ex wife who I'm still very close with has been slowly dissolving. My cousin and her moved far away from home to be in a poly relationship. The situation was toxic from the start, but it all got worse when whe got pregnant with the other guys kid. My cousin was so mad at her. The four ended up just switching partners and hating the other couple. Then her baby daddy broke up with her and she moved back home (where i live) once the baby was born. She has developed a pretty terrible drinking problem through all of this. Then she got raped in December. I just found out today that last week a male friend of 10+ years who has also been spiraling into alcoholism came to her place shit faced and beat the shit out of her when she said something he didn't like. She is dissolving as a human being, despondent. Sometimes our conversations just devolve into thought loops going around and around and I can't break the cycle. I worry that her drinking will get her kid taken away.

Her family sucks, and she doesn't have anybody except for me and my parents, but we don't know what to do. I almost can't believe the world can be so cruel to someone. I'm in recovery and I've tried so many times to get her to come to meetings with me, but she always flakes out last minute. I got her to agree to go to a progressive queer recovery group tomorrow, and I've lined up a backup babysitter so she has no reason to back out, but I just don't know if it's enough. I don't know how I can help her.

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andro wrote

Reply to comment by tuesday in Friday Free Talk by tuesday

Are you working in activism/advocacy? Or do you mean that have a job just enables you to continue living and being an activist?

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andro wrote

I do think that it is important to keep in mind that, aside from the concentration of sociopaths in the incel community, a lot of incels really are just lonely, insecure young men who have fallen down a terrible hole and are hurting. The patriarchy makes these men feel like they are constitutionally incapable of attaining its ideal, and they become susceptible to the sinister recruitment of incels.

I think a lot of incels can be brought back to the light, and I think a lot of times it takes some kindness in their personal life to do it, but it definetly also takes criticism and mockery of prominent misogynist and incels. As you said, criticizing creepy, misogynistic actions is helpful, but being generally cruel to incels is not helpful unless they have a platform that they are using to spread their ideology. They need to understand that this shit is unacceptable while also being made to feel like it's not too late for them.

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andro wrote

Reply to comment by ruinsociety in Friday Free Talk by ziq

Bro I lived like 21 years with this, plus all the other symptoms of adhd, but not knowing I had adhd and thinking that it was all just something wrong with me or was a moral failing or something. I'm so glad so many other people also have this and that it's not just me as I thought for so long.

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andro wrote

Just remember that the way you are also comes with its advantages. That guy is a stranger to the kid, and maybe the conversation will have an impact but maybe it won't. But when you and I as quiet people slowly (for me very slowly) get to know people, we build credibility and relationships through having basic human decency and being laid back. Then, even it takes months, the perfect moment comes to say something important, and people listen to us because we've shown that we aren't hot-headed or reactive.

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andro OP wrote

Reply to comment by SnowCode in How to take action? by andro

I agree that you need to be clear in your feelings, beliefs, and what you think the world needs before you can act, but lately I feel like all I do is think and survive.

I agree that relationships and community are the basis of everything, especially anarchism, and I'm very active in my community which in a way is direct action, but I long to do more.

You mention zines - I've made a lot of community/variety zines in the past, so I've been working on content for a gurella zine that presents anti-authoritarianism very diplomatically, avoiding all loaded language, with the idea of just leaving them anonymously around town. I have no idea if it's even enough to be counted as action, but if nothing else screaming into the void is cathartic.

Ultimately, living well and nourishing community are activism, and anyone doing so is doing enough, but I wish I could do more.

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andro wrote

Absolutely. Nihilism is a place to start. A philosophically blank slate, where you are freed of all meaning pushed on you by the outside world. But you don't just sit there in the void. It's a jumping off point from which you get to decide for yourself what is valuable, important, and worth living life for.

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andro wrote

I can't narrow it down to one, so:

2666 - an immensely wide ranging book that covers an epidemic of violence against women in Mexico, what its like to slowly go insane, the criminal underworld of mexican narcos, all the way back to the experience of a drafted nazi soldier slowly realizing what the nazis are doing back home and eventually getting revenge by killing war criminals in an American POW camp. A flawless condemnation of fascism.

Invisible Cities - the most fantastic, surreal, beautiful book I've ever read. Consists of the fantastic stories Marco Polo tells Kublai Kahn.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - covers hundreds of years in the life of a Colombian family, from all the way back before the Spanish occupied, through wars of independence, up to just 60 years ago.

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andro wrote

I literally fantasize daily about retiring (as if) out in the country and having a little permaculture food forest and hobby ranch, except the animals would just be my friends and I would not eat them.

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