i think more characters should have canes actually. theyre cool. theyre sexy. they can have swords in them. they come in any color u want.
alright I’m rbing to add onto this bc it’s getting way more attention than I ever expected and people seem to be more likely to check the rbs than the replies. plus I want people to be able to rb this version.
the point of this post is not swords. it is not how well someone can fight w a cane. the point is I want to see more disabled representation and I want to see characters who use canes and I want them to use them correctly and I want them to be just as fleshed out and interesting as their abled counterparts.
my cane user friend and I were talking abt sword canes just before I made the post so I tossed it in. I collect blades—knives, daggers, swords—and I’m also a disabled cane user who collects fancy canes. so I think combining the two is cool. I don’t even think they’d be good for self defense, I just think they’re a fun thing to show off to friends!
but this post has always, first and foremost, been abt mobility aids. this is abt being a young cane user who doesn’t see rep. I’d love to see highschool dramas where a character uses a cane but it’s not used to make u pity them, it’s just a regular part of their life. I wanna see fantasy cane users where the animal head handle speaks. I wanna see sci-fi cane users and cane users in romances and cane users in main roles.
I know abt canne de combat and bartitsu and the other fighting styles u can use a cane for. that’s never been what this post is abt. I just want to see myself in media.
everyone who rbs this version gets a kiss on the forehead
daily reminder to distrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong
i notice ppl who are left wing say this type of thing a lot and honestly i dont really understand it. i cant seem to put my finger on what ppl who say this are actually meaning. i feel like im missing smth
ofc ppl who say this type of thing arent a monolith. ppl who say similar things dont always intend for those things to have the same meaning as each other. but tributary, if youre willing, could you explain what this sentiment means to you?
heres where im hung up, if it helps you explain what you mean better: arent ‘punishment’ and ‘fair negative consequences for your actions’ pretty much the same thing? a domestic abuser no longer being allowed to see the kids he beats is being punished but hes also facing fair consequences for his actions. someone white getting fired for calling his black coworker the n-word is, by the dictionary definition of punishment, being punished. so is a child rapist getting sent to prison. should we not give ppl negative consequences if they hurt someone?
im sorry if i sound really stupid. english isnt my first language. i just want to understand this belief since i see and hear it all the time and it really confuses me
when i say this, at least, i am making a distinction between (1) “we should take steps to stop people who are hurting others from being able to hurt others” and (2) “people who do bad things should have bad things done to them”.
examples of (1): i hit my children, and am no longer allowed to see them. i use a racial slur at work to a coworker, and am fired. <- these things might feel like punishments to me, because i want to see my children / i want to work so i have money, but the focus in doing them is not to punish me, but to keep the other people safe - i can no longer abuse my children or my coworker.
examples of (2): i hit my children, and so i get publicly beaten in return. i use a racial slur at work to a coworker, and am put in solitary confinement for five days. <- these are punishments. they do not materially make anyone i have hurt safer (i can still see my children; i can still go to work with my coworker), because the assumption that people won’t do something if they know they’ll get hurt for it is simply not true (we have a lot of good evidence that hurting people doesn’t make them change their behaviour, other than trying harder not to get caught).
of course, there’s the option to do (1) and (2). i could be banned from seeing my kids, and also publicly beaten, but… why? why do we need (2), if we are already doing (1)? what does (2) do to materially make my children (or other children, for that matter, or anyone) safer?
and that’s what “don’t trust people who want to punish” is getting at, because the urge to punish is often really strong - especially in christian, especially evangelical christian, spaces, where there’s this internalised “if you sin you go to hell” logic. people get hurt, and then they often turn around and say “well the person who hurt me should be hurt too”, rather than “i don’t want this person to be able to hurt me or others any more”.
the problem with that is that like… well then we just end up in a cycle of hurting people for hurting others, which has negative consequences for everyone involved. as opposed to consequences happening that make everyone safer, and then rehabilitation efforts to stop people being hurt/doing hurting again. and it’s also the same problem as the eternal “well it’s okay to do X to Y group” (e.g. it’s okay to remove voting rights from felons) - you are then motivated to turn anyone you want to do X to into a member of Y group (e.g. mass criminalisation (felonisation?) of black people via racially-selective policing and lawmaking). you start being led by “i want to do X to Y” as a knee-jerk response, rather than “what do we need to do to keep people safe?”. violence becomes acceptable as long as it’s for the Right Reasons.
tl;dr “punishment” and “your actions having consequences that you do not enjoy” do not mean the same thing here; there’s a difference in the motivation of the person doing the punishing/consequences, and this quote-thing is arguing that that’s important.
footnotes to this below the cut (bc they got longer than the actual post):
@hoodienanami they beat me to the punch here, but this is a really good explanation that i’m going to keep as a reference. thank you @sparxflame.
to add on to d) “what about punching literal nazis”, very few people who posture about that will show me their knuckles. put up or shut up—show me your knuckles or get out of my way. i am a member of a group targeted by nazis, and my priority is supporting other people targeted by nazis over punishing nazis. we want your support, and that is harder than punching but more valuable long-term. can these things overlap? sure, but in my experience they don’t usually.
someone said that if you ask a lot of people about a scenario in which you’re locked in a room with a nazi and a jew and limited resources, do you starve the nazi or feed the jew? and almost everyone answers ‘starve the nazi,’ because they don’t realize that feeding the jew accomplishes that too.
But the thing is often people haven’t written it because it’s not profitable to, or not feasible to make it widely accessible. It also serves as a tool for synthesising information in one central place, it’s common to see/hear people in education asking (mostly chatGPT) to explain things because the explanation at their level isn’t available, or the information is sparse, or hard to find. It’s like a search engine for human knowledge, which is an amazingly powerful tool.
It has flaws, yes, but shouldn’t be condemned by an unduly high value put on what humans have published
Sorry, but this is completely wrong.
Bots like chatGPT will straight up lie or make shit up or give demonstrably false answers when asked simple questions. It is not an information repository or search, it is a text generator. It is completely incapable of verifying if the text it generates has any correlation with reality, only with whatever text it’s trying to replicate the patterns of.
Do not buy into the idea that it is some revolutionary tool for writing or learning.
It is longform autofill.
It’s also not explaining things at a level folks can understand even when it’s right.
The professors I know have complained that they can tell very quickly when someone is using AI to help with their work, because even when they’re getting the answers right, they don’t understand the concepts behind them. They’re often using terms or theories that aren’t even in the text or lectures they’re covering in that class, but they’re including references to them without understanding what it means
And the teachers know that because when it comes time to take the test in class, to explain the how and the why is what they’re learning or to apply that knowledge to a new situation, the students using AI can’t. And ultimately, this is going to hurt them because not having that foundational knowledge will make understanding the next levels impossible.
