Post No. 3,124 - A few miscellaneous thoughts

This is a post with a few brief, random points. 

 

The first is based on something from this week’s coming reflections and news post: 

GLAAD has reported on how dangerous (see here for some commentary on that) social media platforms are for LGBTQIASB+ people - and what those platforms should do to fix the matter;     

The recommendations GLAAD provide cover, IMO, the bare minimum that is required - and that includes training everyone. 

In addition to that, my opinion is that, if people will not complete that training, or do not do so genuinely, then they are a bad fit for the company, and the company should dismiss them (or maybe give them the option of resigning, although that does cover up their determination to be bigots). 

That does mean the company will lose some talent, which will be a short term hit to their performance, but in the longer term, they will be able to create a workplace where people can bring their authentic selves, and that is known to boost creativity and productivity. 

To some extent, this is perhaps a harder version of former US President Barack  Obama’s “don’t do stupid s**t” foreign affairs philosophy and a similar philosophy adopted by an AFL club and some businesses. 

If DEI policies had been given harder enforcement, it is quite possible that we would not still have so much racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination in workplaces.

Linked to this, I want to re-emphasise, regarding forgiveness of bigots/abusers, when those people have genuinely overcome their flaws of character, they MUST back off and allow time for their victims to grieve those who did not make it, and to heal. 

Insisting on celebrations is continued abuse, forces toxic forgiveness onto the victims, and will kill the future of such measures. 

On workplaces (and other situations - noting, in particular, a comment about political candidates being based on whose turn it is next, rather than merit, in some parties), I think I am going to start using the term “my turnism”, which mucks a lot of things up. 

 

Something else I might see if there is a catchy term for, or make one up, is the problem of those people who are so focused on their own priorities and what they consider important that they don’t notice more pressing issues - such as, to invent an example, the person focused on getting a valve closed who refuses to heed warning that the tank is splitting on the other side, or who is so focused on profit numbers they don’t notice the discrimination and abuse that will lead to a court case that will cost the company all its profits and possibly its very existence.

 

Another matter I have been thinking about is political party’s policy platforms. 

Nominally, these are important - in principle, they’re supposed to be complied with, but that may not happen for sometimes valid reasons (things like the GFC, or the COVIC-19 pandemic, or wars, etc - things that are major, but not good), and sometimes for shallow, superficial, contemptible political expediency - and Australia’s worst ever Prime Minister once invented a post-election division into core and non-core promises. 

In my opinion, those labels are not quite right:   

• non-core policies are those that will cost more votes than they will win - usually (in Australia’s past) as a result of being too progressive, but with younger voters coming through in increasing numbers, doing enough on things like climate change will have to become core, rather than non-core policies;
  

• “core” policies can also be those that can be snuck past voters without losing too many votes - or perhaps not losing a number of votes that cannot be made up by increased funds from corporations who like the “core” policies and have perhaps captured the party concerned. 

The big key here is that the dividing line is moving - it has to, if humans are to survive, or a reasonable number of us with a reasonable quality of life.

The next few points are, to quite an extent, related to children, and should be considered in light of this:

“The Propaganda We Teach Our Kids”   https://usamomingermany.substack.com/p/the-propaganda-we-teach-our-kids   “How Glittering Generalities Create Blind Loyalty”   from “USA Mom in Germany”     

The points are: 

• Critical thinking should be taught in schools (and the adults who are willing to learn - especially if they have been caught out by a scam), and the success of that teaching should be measured by the rate of people caught in scams (who have had the training, obviously). If the rates are lower in graduates of the critical thinking course, the course is probably good; if not, then tweak the course, rather than throw it out, until it does start to work.
  

• Children should also be taught flexibility regarding life aims and goals. They should be emotionally and mentally able to adapt, including giving up old goals when circumstances change - such as new, transformative inventions. This will help to future proof them and the jobs market.
  Examples of past changes that required such adaptation are the domestication of fire, agriculture, the invention of telephones, shifting from horses to cars (a lot of horse experts lost their careers), the Internet, smartphones, and AI.
  Older children should be taught that their children may have disabilities or differences, and they should be prepared for that if they are thinking about having children. (And their children may choose to have different values/worldview/life choices, which they should also be comfortable with.)
  

• On that, everyone needs to accept and be comfortable with diversity - which, for the sake of the benefits that DEI brings business, needs to be taught at school. 

 

And as a final, personal point, I am finding alternating nostrils with my breathing exercises is no longer as crucial as it once was: I get good results just from using the cycle. 

As a postscript, I have just written a poem:   The night cat café  

The experience that led to that poem, of sharing affection with one of the neighbourhood cats, was a good reminder for me that the purpose of life is spiritual love, and there are countless acts of kindness everywhere that express that purpose and lead to joy.

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below, and there’s also other options. 

Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here. 

(Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear)  

Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).

#PsychicABetterWorld   and  

Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2025     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-ShareAlike basis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/  

 

Post No. 2,996 - Recovering from human rights abuses

The topic of recovering from human rights abuses is something that has been foremost in my awareness of late: I have complex trauma and PTSD from the abuses I underwent in various workplaces - especially from transphobes, too often aided and abetted by HR departments that were, frankly, either amathiac and/or incompetent and/or transphobic themselves (and one of the reasons I became so involved in workplace DEI was to overcome, reverse, and prevent the continuation of the hate that HR departments and transphobes were enacting ... but others were exemplary and admirable examples of how to be supportive, affirming, and human rights enabling).

So from personal experience, I know that recovering from human rights abuses is not easy. 

I recently wrote a poem about this, including the need for past abusers to apologise for their acts of evil. 

Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen, but their refusal to acknowledge is going to hurt them far more than it will hurt me - and the amathiac nonsense about “having” to forgive abusers is just human rights abusing nonsense: it enables further abuses, making those advocating for it abusers themselves (their acts of evil in such instances go way beyond just being accessories).

The Truth and Reconciliation Commissions of South Africa after the end of apartheid were different: there forgiveness was restricted only to those who showed genuine contrition (this news report refers to the six officers who likely committed four particularly notorious murders not being granted amnesty, for instance), which of essential necessity includes an understanding of the wrongs that were done and why they were wrong ... but the healing there was largely societal: the benefits for victims was present, but more is needed. (See here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

To illustrate that with an analogy, if an attacker stabs someone in a street and then is forced to stop, the active perpetuation of harm is stopped, but at that instant the attacker has not shown any contrition (they did not stop of their own volition, they were forced to stop in this example), and the victim is still bleeding and in need of medical attention.

Those who insist on toxic forgiveness - I’ll call them “forgiveneks” - could be compared to people who come in at that point and get the people and evidence off the street so traffic can flow as it was before: the attacker has still not shown any contrition, and the victim is still bleeding and in need of medical attention, and the forgiveneks are making the victim’s suffering worse by invalidating the victim’s experiences.

The next level up is those who arrange for healing of the physical wounds of the victim, but refuse to accept the existence of trauma/PTSD - especially trauma/PTSD that results in the victim acting (or “acting out”) in ways that are considered unusual, abnormal, or unacceptable. 

Those amathiac refuseniks are incompetent at being human, and should be shut out of all healing processes for the sake of the victims of those incompetent amathiac refuseniks - who are the victims of other attacks that the incompetent amathiac refuseniks wrongly think they are “healing”. 

Above those are the people who do acknowledge the trauma/PTSD, and seek to address that by healing the victim. 

The problem with this as a sole or predominant focus is the denial of the need for broader changes to prevent such attacks occurring in the first place (which, when it comes to human rights abuses - including misogyny and other gendered violence, such as domestic violence [including murder] and transphobia [including murder] - can ONLY occur if abusers change themselves as human beings), possibly because those victim “healers” (pseudo-healers) have found a way to help that gives the victim “healers” (pseudo-healers) satisfaction/fulfillment, and they do not wish to support anything that could possibly reduce their ability to continue doing something that they really really liiike doing - a LOT 😉. 

Which is similar to   those corporate people who refuse to cut back on unnecessary travel because they really really liiike being able to travel - a LOT 😉,   and   the electrical engineers who attack (which I have written about previously) anyone who advocates for local solar panel solutions (such attacks including denying that there is any evidence of people buying solar panels for any reason other than money ... which is climate change denialism) because they really really liiike being able to design large scale electrical systems - a LOT 😉. 

All three examples of victim “healers” (pseudo-healers) are acts of obstructionist/denialist/retrograde evil. 

Slightly above the victim “healers” (pseudo-healers), and off to one side a bit, are those who do recognise the need to address the causes of the attack (which might also include, in this example, managing access to bladed weapons, addressing whatever motivated the attacker in the first place, etc - but does NOT involve telling the victim to change their life to be less vulnerable, such as those authority figures who tell women to not dress “provocatively” or not go out without a male protector and other such viciously misogynistic, paternalistic, patriarchal rubbish), people such as activists and human rights lawyers and what are now termed human rights defenders. 

My experience is that many, if not most, of these people who do recognise the need to address the causes of the attack also acknowledge the need for individual healing - which tends to be an inherent outcome of taking a broader perspective (and leads to, in the case of the example above, support for adequate health care including emergency services), but I have also come across a few who fail to understand the need to address healing as a specific issue in its own right, as justice is a key part of healing, but not ALL of healing. 

The only acceptable approach is to address all the needs and causes that apply - including the personal inadequacies/character flaws of the attacker, and their need to change as a human being. 

And those who can address such matters on nonphysical  levels of reality need to do so for those who cannot. 

And all of this is just starting in Gaza, and has yet to be able to be started in places like Sudan, Yemen, the DRC, the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, etc. 

As a personal note, the lead up to this post involved around a couple of weeks of a personal hell of flashbacks and similar problems. Hopefully my efforts to manage those will now be successful. 

PS - something I have chosen to try is writing a Statutory Declaration about what happened to me in the workplace, beginning with a statement that the Declaration is not for legal action, it is for healing, and then have my GP witness it and scan it onto my medical record.

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below, and there’s also Instagram. 

Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here. 

(Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear)  

Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).

#PsychicABetterWorld   and   

Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2025     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-ShareAlike basis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/