Marissa's writings about individual rights, justice, neurodiversity, and being different from the norm
Um, yeah, it is actually really important for people who are different from the norm to be allowed to exist.
It is actually really important not to inflict excruciating, unbearable pain on innocent people.
It is actually really important to, like, not destroy everything that makes life worth living.
I’m not sure why this is such a difficult concept to grasp.
Thanks, Michael Fix, for this moronic, thoughtless, mean-spirited, idiotic, morally bankrupt, and senseless comment. Much appreciated.
Excruciating pain coursing through my entire body.
Rage and grief combined in a tsunami of anguish.
Agony more severe than what the pervious version of myself even believed it was possible for a person to experience.
My chest feels like it’s being crushed in a vice, my stomach feels like it’s filled with rocks, my soul feels as if it’s being eviscerated.
Again and again, I’ve tried to find words strong enough to capture these feelings. Although I consider myself a good writer, with a large vocabulary, again and again I fail.
I could scream at the top of my lungs until my throat bled and my voice became hoarse, I could punch and kick until every object in my house was destroyed and my hands and feet were shattered into a million pieces, and it still wouldn’t be enough to express the pain that I feel inside.
Images of horror seared forever into my consciousness.
Hideous, gaping wounds that will never heal.
What was once a normal city square with a war memorial a century old, a war memorial that had never hurt anyone, now turned into something profoundly dark, contaminated, evil. An abomination.
Just one example among dozens, hundreds, all combining to fundamentally change the world from good to bad.
Actions that should never have taken place, leaving permanent scars on the landscape.
Actions so horrifying, so repulsive, so reprehensible, that a part of my brain cannot fully comprehend that they actually happened. Perhaps it never will.
One sickening act after another. Display after display of vicious intolerance. All part of a slow, inexorable chipping away at beauty, at happiness, at goodness. All part of an effort to destroy me, to destroy people like me, everywhere. All part of a brutal campaign to obliterate from the world everything that makes life worth living.
A city, a state, a country, an entire world transformed so that only people who are like the majority can feel welcome there. Only those who fit in, only those who obey authority, only those who conform to social norms, allowed to exist.
More times than I can count, I’ve considered suicide. Death has often seemed preferable to continuing on into a bleak future, slogging through day after day of a meaningless and miserable existence.
Five years of this agonizing pain. This weekend, in fact, marks the anniversary. A holiday that most people associate with cookouts, beach days, or remembering our soldiers, is forever associated with genocide for me. (Many will argue that this word is too strong, but I believe it is entirely appropriate.)
To someone named Gerard, this entire situation is funny.
The situation that I’ve described above is humorous, amusing, entertaining, even hilarious to him.
Clearly, Gerard has never experienced pain, and has never experienced suffering. If he had, he would not consider the pain and suffering of other people to be funny.
Seeing symbols of yourself, symbols of inclusion, symbols of your right to exist, smashed to pieces with sledgehammers as a mob rejoices and a brass band plays. Knowing that the bullies who want to eradicate you from existence will never be punished, will never be held accountable, will never even be criticized by anyone but yourself, will forever be perceived as holding the moral high ground in the eyes of society.
This is something that Gerard has never experienced, but I have.
There are no words that can fully describe what this does to a person, the pain that it inflicts, how profoundly it changes a person, forever.
Gerard’s jeering, cruel laughing face emoji does not reflect negatively on me; it reflects negatively on him. Gerard lacks empathy, he lacks morality, he lacks logic, and I would go so far as to argue that he lacks both a mind and a soul. Gerard does not hold the moral high ground. I do.
A recent op-ed in Teen Vogue by professor of “women, gender, and sexuality studies” Caroline Light purported to “explain the dangers of so-called Constitutional carry laws.” The op-ed claims that “national reciprocity is a race to the bottom, forcing all of us into a deadly ‘guns everywhere’ dystopia.” (source here)
There are a few things that need to be pointed out:
First, it is irrelevant that there (allegedly) are “dangers” of Constitutional carry laws. Constitutional carry laws are necessary, because anything else violates people’s rights. And people’s rights must be respected, regardless of how much danger is involved in doing so.
Second, Constitutional carry laws are, well, Constitutional carry laws. There is no need to use the term “so-called” to describe them.
Third, national reciprocity is by no means a race to the bottom. National reciprocity means that states would be required to actually respect people’s fundamental rights. To characterize this as a “race to the bottom” implies that respecting people’s fundamental rights is somehow bad. And this, of course, is the opposite of the truth. It shouldn’t even need to be stated, but respecting people’s fundamental rights is not a race to the bottom, but rather the exact opposite.
And fourth, yes, national reciprocity does “force” all states to actually respect people’s fundamental rights. I fail to see how this is a bad thing. Respecting people’s fundamental rights is a basic moral obligation, so all states should be forced to do this. What exactly is the problem here?
Fifth, it is irrelevant that national reciprocity would (allegedly) create a “deadly” situation. As I stated above, rights must be respected, regardless of how safe or dangerous it is to do so.
Sixth and finally, a nation in which people’s fundamental rights are respected is not a “dystopia.” To characterize it as such implies that respecting people’s fundamental rights is somehow bad. And as I stated above, that is the exact opposite of the truth. A nation in which people’s rights are respected would be the antithesis of a dystopia. A nation in which people’s rights are respected is exactly the type of nation that everyone should be working towards.
A recent article in The Hill, about the reintroduction of an assault weapons ban in the Senate, states that:
“A November Gallup poll showed that 52 percent of Americans said they favor a ban on assault weapons, although higher percentages of Americans supported the idea in the past. Overall, 56 percent of Americans think gun control laws should be more strict.” (source here)
Just a reminder that the percentage of people who favor assault weapons bans is irrelevant. How popular or unpopular something is, has nothing to do with whether it is good or bad. Assault weapons bans violate people’s rights; therefore they are bad and should not be enacted, regardless of what percentage of the population supports them.
And this is bad how??
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People have a fundamental right to purchase any object that they wish to, so I don’t understand why Everytown seems to consider this a bad thing.
Source here
“Our patience is wearing thin.”
Nearly four years after Joe Biden said these words, they still send a chill down my spine. I recently came across a Substack post from a writer called Holly MathNerd, which does a great job of articulating what was so disturbing about Biden’s speech:
“That speech triggered my PTSD from sexual assault. I sat there, slack-jawed and horrified, listening as the President of the United States — a male authority figure — declared that if I wanted to keep my job, I had to enter a room, remove part of my clothing, and have my body penetrated with a medical instrument of his choosing. My will and my consent were irrelevant.
He was making the rules. My body, his choice.”
You can read the rest here.
Although I myself am not a survivor of sexual assault, these words resonate with me. There is something about being told that you are required to have your body penetrated – and that you don’t have the right to opt out or decline – that is profoundly, enormously, and fundamentally wrong. Sickening. Horrifying. The right to control your own body is the most fundamental right that there is, but this right did not matter at all to Joe Biden and his supporters. In their eyes, my will and my consent were, indeed, irrelevant. For reasons that I will never be able to fully comprehend, Biden and his administration believed that when it comes to my body, what happens should be their choice. There are no words that can adequately explain how completely and utterly messed up that is. But Holly MathNerd’s explanation comes pretty close.