hot take: ‘chivalry’ is fine as long as it’s adapted to 21st century values. if you are a male, you SHOULD be aware that your female friends face certain issues that you as a male dont. acting on that awareness in a way that keeps your female friends safe, isn’t a bad thing.
like… opening doors isn’t rly chivalrous when it’s just a thing you ought to do for everyone. but real 21st century chivalry might be, like, standing between your female friend and the guy that’s trying to get her drunk, or offering to walk her home when it’s late.
if the ‘chivalry’ inconveniences everyone involved and you’re just doing it for your over-inflated male ego — ie, “no you’re the girl here, you HAVE to let me hold this door for you and do all these things for you even when you can do it yourself and im just slowing you down” — then it’s just outdated misogyny.
alright don’t be mad but. i never read the great gatsby. i know i was supposed to. yes, it was assigned to us. i even know, more or less, what happens in the book. technically, i wrote an essay about it, i think, once or twice.
at the time, i hadn’t read any book assigned to me. ever. it wasn’t that i didn’t like to read. i loved reading. but homework took place in a function of my brain that i couldn’t access. i would sit in libraries or at my desk and just. not do my homework. i spent hours like this, days like this, years like this. just not doing what was assigned to me, no matter the consequences, no matter how badly i wanted to be doing it. i just wouldn’t. and i wouldn’t go to class because i didn’t want to deal with the fact i didn’t do the homework. and then i wouldn’t get the homework. so i didn’t do it.
i remember realizing while i was doing college applications that i had actually, real-life fucked up. that it was permanent, what i had done. that i had a C- of an average and no future to look rosy at. and i still couldn’t make myself do things. i tried to submit applications only to realize i’d shoved off the date to the very last moment. and i was fucked.
it takes me three years and two transfers and three new starts before i am actually real-life trained how to study, how to read, how to enjoy being assigned things.
and i watch parents of my students yell at students for being the same person i was six years ago: screaming at an A-, confused at skipped classes, punishing missed homework. and these students don’t have an answer. they just don’t do things. even if they want to. and they look at me, confused and defeated and without an answer for their parents. “i just can’t,” i hear a lot, and i understand.
parents don’t like “executive dysfunction” as a reason. “anxiety” and “depression” are often misdiagnosed as “procrastinating” and “lazy”. kids just learn they’re like this. that they’re always going to be. that it’s their fault, permanently. they are surrounded by books they didn’t read. and it doesn’t feel good. it feels like suffocating.
today i started “the great gatsby.” i promise. one day, it’ll feel easy.
Man losing stuff when you have ADHD is the worst. Stuff just like… vanishes. People will ask: when did you last have it? Well I don’t know dude. I just know it exists and I don’t know where it is currently doing that.
The Gashadokuro is a spirit created from the bones of fallen soldiers who were never buried and never found rest, it roams around at midnight and as it’s invisible, your only warning will be a sharp ringing inside your ears that grows ever louder as it closes in.
