• 13 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: September 13th, 2023

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  • Troubled teen facilities have parents sign agreements which give them permission to physically restrain their child, and release them from liability if the child gets hurt. These “holds” can often kill.

    I was only put in a hold once. I was on the van, I was being kicked by two other children, the staff refused to intervene, so I opened the van door and attempted to escape. I was groped in this hold.

    I do not know how to convey how traumatizing physical restraint is. It happened to me again, in December, when I went voluntarily inpatient and was physically forced into the woman’s ward. I am a trans man, have had surgery and I’m legally recognized as male for more than a decade - I had asked if I could just sleep in the common area as a concession/to not be outed - nope! I got shoved around by four grown men and called “fucking retarded.” I’ll never reach out for help again.


  • Yeah - I wish more folks understood what the experience is like. It’s like my brain lights on fire. I get angry, extremely angry and can be verbally really aggressive. If I’m alone, I can usually self regulate, but when I’m around others it’s much harder.

    It’s been a struggle as I work to get this facility shut down. When I’m calling state agencies to get my torturer’s facility investigated, the second that I can pick up that they don’t believe, or if they minimize my experience - it ratchets me into a world of pure anger and panic.

    I knocked over a container earlier and it made a loud sound as it landed on the ground - it made me angry. Embarrassingly ridiculously angry. It’s stupid, but I had the urge to throw the thing at the wall! I wanted to cuss it out! It’s an inanimate object, it didn’t break, I just needed to pick it up and put the pencils back in. It wasn’t a big deal. But in that split second where I went to that lizard brain, I was furious!


  • That number of articles is still pretty impressive. I’d rather have fewer, high quality articles, than millions of terrible quality AI articles.

    The great thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can add articles! It also wouldn’t be too difficult to “translate” regular Wikipedia articles to simple ones. You could even use AI tools to help - there are text leveler tools that will help you recognize which words lower level readers would struggle with and can help you make those changes. But this cannot be an automated process.

    I’ve done graduate level course work on modifying text for “EMLs” - “emerging multilingual learners.” (“ELL” is still okay, but lots of folks in the field prefer EML because it is prioritizing the students “assets.”) I’ve made several assignments for students with reading difficulties. When I did experiment a bit with AI tools to help me with this process, I had to do a lot of fine tuning to get an acceptable product.

    Tbh, you just convinced me right now that I should start adding more articles myself.


  • I’ve successfully deradicalized at least a few. Not on FB but a couple of other social media sites.

    My mental health will never be good. I’m a gender minority in a state that wouldn’t even allow gay teachers until the Supreme Court forced them in the late 90s. I’m desperately broke because somehow a divorce can result in one person being a millionaire and one person being bankrupt. Most of the time seeking out mental health care makes my problem worse - past two nights have been nightmares about being physically assaulted at an inpatient facility in December.

    Arguing gives me my sense of power back. I read insanely fast, I can dunk chuds in the five minutes I have between clients sometimes. I learned enough about biology by arguing with creationists in middle school that I tested out of high school bio and clepped college bio. Arguments give me the opportunity to learn more and research. I know that chuds are stupid and will not change their mind or admit defeat, but the audience might.


  • As satisfying as fantasizing about arson is, I imagine these facilities are usually insured. It’s also easy to spin into a sob story - these places often take advantage of the fact that they work with underprivileged/foster youth to get community donations. “Oh no, we can’t help children anymore! Gib us money!”

    I got my facility taken off DonorsChoose - absolutely enraging that they were able to use that site as a for profit institution.

    It’s a problem that needs to be attacked at the root ultimately. Children should have their rights protected. Remember how the US refused to sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? We also need more parenting classes - I’ve never been given the opportunity to be a parent, but I’ve talked with lots of parents about things like Love and Logic. Or just even accepting the fact that kids can just be weird or different sometimes - I should not have been punished for being uncomfortable with eye contact.

    In the short term, educating people about these individual facilities. Making sure that the children who die in these places have their names remembered. I make signs with the name of the child my abusers killed, and just blanket surrounding neighborhoods with it.










  • I’ve never been physically violent as a person, but that didn’t stop her from telling these types of fuckers I was. I don’t think I’ve ever punched anyone. I’ve told her exactly what I think about her a few times, and maybe the punishment is that she has to live with the knowledge that her child hates her.

    I cut off contact in my early twenties, briefly tried “maybe she’s better, maybe I was actually a crazy kid” (it is very hard to wrap one’s head around the idea that their parent deliberately hurt them) then discovered that she had lied about my biological father all of my life. That was the final straw.

    She is an insane monster. When I wake up and hear she’s gone someday, it will be like the clear skies after a rough storm.















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