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UPDATE: New Year, Same White Fragility: Cathy Brennan is still a Fake Goth

Back in July of last year, I wrote a post about Cathy Brennan. Since then, I and several friends have gotten 1, 3 and 7 day bans. Several friends have had their jobs called in the hopes my friends would be fired. They weren’t.
My last ban lasted a week back a few months ago. I was banned for simply posting “Cathy Brennan is a fake goth”.

It is now February 9th 2017, and I have just gotten a 30 day ban for that blog post from July ’16.

I am no one. I have this blog and Mandesty. I have my tumblr and Twitter accounts. I do not have many followers. So why the fuck does Cathy Brennan care so much if I call her a fake goth? It really is like white people JUST LOVE feeling oppressed.

My Facebook profile is a huge source of emotional support. Let’s talk about that, Cathy. I am a Latina, trans, single mom, disabled and poor. I blog about the oppression I face in my daily life.
You are a well off white cis lesbian who I’m told is a lawyer but all you seem to fucking do is go after people calling you a fake goth.

Don’t you claim to care about women, or is it just cis women you care about? No answer needed here. We’re all aware of Gender Identity Watch.
Don’t you espouse supposedly intersectional feminism? Is it in your feminism that you find it’s OK to get a Latina blogger banned on Facebook? Is that sisterhood?

Do you go this hard after the racist, sexist, misogynist posts? After the posts that make light of rape? The homophobic posts? Or do you only care that some small time blogger called you a “mean” name a few times?

Keep getting me banned on Facebook. You can’t ban me on all my social media. You can try but it’s not a good look, gringa. COME AFTER ME, I FUCKING DARE YOU.

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UPDATE FEBRUARY 9TH 2017

Cathy graced us with her presence over on my blog’s Facebook page. Below are screenshots of this. Of course she misgenders me and assumes I am male.

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According to her, I got banned for “bullying behavior”. If that was the case then how come Facebook never takes down pages or posts which post bigotry? Is she saying that bigotry is not bullying?

As the Blue commenter noted, this Catherine Brennan profile is new. My friends and I had her Cathy Brennan profile blocked. Can it be called bullying when we don’t go to her with this silly name? We post on our own pages, and she’s the one who finds us. That is not bullying. That’s abusing whatever influence or privilege she has to get vulnerable people banned.

As I noted, she insinuates I’m emotional, but again, all I did was post something months ago, and then this post today. Who’s emotional now?

UPDATE: New Year, Same White Fragility: Cathy Brennan is still a Fake Goth

Children and Boundaries

CN: brief mentions of SA, CSA, use of the word r*pe uncensored

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I recently saw the above image on Facebook. Long story short it’s talking about not forcing children to hug people that they don’t want to. To give children a choice and a say in how and when they interact and show affection to known adults. It explains that by teaching children they have a right to say no, that lesson could keep a child from being abused, or it gives them tools to be able to speak up about it.

While most of the comments were positive there was one commenter who balked at the notion of a child not hugging a grandparent, for example. They basically implied that teaching bodily autonomy in the form of hug refusal could lead to intimacy issues or emotional divides. They questioned what kind of family is it that would respect a child’s wishes to hug or not be hugged. They alleged that unless the child is Autistic or has some sort of other sensory issue then that child should always hug someone even if they don’t want to. Otherwise it is disrespectful.

Now please explain this to me: how is it respectful of me to force my child to hug someone she doesn’t want to? Is my child not worthy of respect?

The same person said that the idea of children having boundaries is silly because something about being potty-trained, so that obviously  children do not have the cognitive ability to make boundaries.

This person kept going on and on about respect. When I was little my family forced me to hug a certain family member. That didn’t teach me respect. It taught me I had no say, it taught me that anybody had a right to my body. I do not find it a coincidence that I’ve been raped and sexually assaulted. I was taught not to say no. Is that what we want to teach our children?

If I want to model good behavior to my child, if I want to teach them that they have bodily autonomy, if I want them to grow up to be people who respect others’ autonomy; then childhood is the perfect time to do so. It is in childhood when you set the foundation for who they will become as adults.

This goes back to an older post I wrote in which I said that as a culture we do not respect children. We don’t see them as fully fledged people with ideas and dreams and hopes of their own. We don’t think of them as people who can have opinions, wants, dislikes and likes. We see them as carbon copies of ourselves but they’re not.

If we want this current generation of children to grow into compassionate, emphatic adults then we need to teach them that they have value; they have worth. That they have bodily autonomy and that they have to respect others’ right to space and privacy.

We cannot tell them (whether through words or actions) that they are not worthy of respect. As parents, educators, as elders we owe it to our children to show them respect because otherwise,  why should we expect them to respect us?

Children and Boundaries