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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2450 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 12, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I have a hard time viewing these people as crazy strangers, since they've apparently been citizens in good standing, and anyone else I talk about this with gives me the "You just don't understand the threats that women face every day, hypervigilance, something-something patriarchy" speech, so I don't talk about it.

I'm also confused as to the cringing thing; wouldn't that piss off a threatening man and invite further harassment? In my case, it just crushed me emotionally. I'm apparently so unpleasant as to need warding-off, but not scary enough to avoid provoking. So scary that women sprint away, not scary enough that they don't try to get me to pay for their food or bilk me for attention.

Yeah, the responses to this kind of issue are really one sided. Female attitudes around this issue (at a societal level) will not change in your lifetime, so all you can do is change how you react to it.

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