It's Actually Really Weird To Me That A Lot Of Adults Don't Seem To Remember The Worst Bits Of Being

My gripe with Euphoria.

Introduction

I remember my initial decision to cower away from this show. I discovered through review videos and articles that this was far from teen-friendly, despite having a teen-centric cast of characters. This show opposes my morals immensely, but I think I was only intrigued by the main plot of drug addiction, which is a slippery slope to take in the media. I had seen that the main show writer, Sam Levinson, also struggled with addiction, so I figured there would truth to this fictionalized tale.

Euphoria's (2019) concept is not particularly new, however. It is based on a 2012 Israeli show by the same name, directed by Ron Leshem. The original had some of the same elements: a troubled group of generation Z teens, somone with a drug addiction, a girl with weight issues, a drug dealer and his brother, etc.).

Cast of Israeli "Euphoria"

I don't know much about the Israeli version outside of that, especially without access to the show. I have heard that it takes on a bit of a more sympathetic approach to its characters. Levinson's adaptation seems to take on a different approach in the form of HBO style exploitation. As someone who is part of Generation Z and is aware of our statistics, I find it peculiar that a lot of these teen-centric shows portray us as hyper-sexual alcoholics who wouldn't give it a second thought to try drugs on the side. It's bee documented recently (in the years 1995-2015) that the opposite has been occurring. Of course, our world is being adapted from the mind of a thirty-four year old man. Older men, young teens, and sex seem to be a reoccurring theme. We see how female characters are treated versus the males. There is even the inclusion of a trans identified male character in the midst, who I found myself weary of throughout both seasons for reasons I will explain in later posts.

It is easy to see where Sam includes himself in the drug addiction plot. The other plots, however, are just as telling on the psyche of male directors and writers and how they view the women and girls that they construct in their narratives. His co-writers are Zendaya and Drake. Notably, Drake has been shown to have his own immoral actions on full display, so his influence is one to take heed to just as much. Zendaya's ideas of feminism are also warped, as she believes in males deserving the rights to be in female spaces. Someone who can simultaneously compare a man's mental illness to a women of color's biological status already sets me up to critique the debased "feminism" of this story.

It is no longer a matter of these female (and even male) characters being complex when we are simultaneously told they are empowered by their flawed actions. Or, on the opposite side of things, we are told that they should be discarded accordingly when it suits the narrative.

I will dive into this mess of glitter and shine and tear away this show's esthetics as I navigate my thoughts throughout my viewing of both seasons. I will explore the female (and one female presenting trans) characters and analyze what I see fit based off of what I took away from them.

Truth

Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 - April 12, 1975)

An American-born French dancer, Josephine Baker grew up in poverty. Between the ages of 8-10, she was out of school, helping to support her family, taking on jobs such as cleaning houses and babysitting for white families.

At age 16 she was touring with a dance troupe from Philadelphia. In 1923 she joined the chorus in a road company performing the musical comedy Shuffle Along and then moved to New York City, where she advanced steadily through the show Chocolate Dandies on Broadway and the floor show of the Plantation Club. In 1925 she performed in France at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where she introduced her danse sauvage. She went on to become one of the most popular music hall entertainers in France. In 1936 she returned to the states, but despite being a major celebrity in Europe, was not accepted by American audiences, who referred to her as a “Negro Wench”. So she returned to Europe.

In the late 1930s, she became a French citizen, and performed in several films before WWII halted her career. During the German occupation in France, Josephine worked with the Red Cross and the resistance, passing along secrets she had heard from the Nazis to French Military officials, after performing for them. Passing along said secrets by writing with invisible ink on music papers.

In the 1950s and 60s, she returned to the US to help the fight against racism. She refused to perform for segregated audiences, which forced some club owners to integrate their clubs. She also began to adopt many children of different nationalities and races, calling them “The Rainbow Tribe”.

Josephine was an amazing woman, who worked hard and did so much for the world, and we love her here. 💜

Extra Trivia

Josephine was a bisexual who had an affair with Frida Kahlo, the two having met in 1939.

In 1963 she was one of the few women allowed to speak at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Her opposition against segregation and discrimination was recognized by the NAACP

Unusual for her time, she was a woman who never had to depend on a man for financial stability, and was more than willing to leave a bad relationship (her first marriage only lasting a matter of weeks)

The human brain is always open to change. Even if it takes baby steps, acknowledging how porn has affected you can be the first step. Society has uplifted it for so long and many have fallen victim to it. Now is the time to seek help and improve our mental health💞.

taking back your mind: a radical feminist approach to recovering from porn use

as radical feminists, we know we live in a society poisoned by porn on a global scale. if you are one of the many women who has fallen prey to the porn industry and are trapped in the cycle of degrading participation in viewing porn, no matter the origins of your usage, just know that you are not alone and that there’s hope for you. read this essay with an open mind - take what works for you and leave the rest.

BE AWARE OF NEUROPLASTICITY first off - your brain is not in stasis (like scientists used to believe!). discovering and understanding the concept of neuroplasticity was a first step in my healing process. neuroplasticity is defined as the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment. neural pathways are simply connections between parts of your nervous system that have formed from patterns of thinking. i’d suggest taking some time to learn about neuroplasticity - there’s some very good articles & videos online!

so what does neuroplasticity mean in relation to porn use? we know that your brain is affected by porn, but you are not permanently pornsick. you are not doomed! here’s what happened: every time you had an orgasm to porn, the neural pathway between groinal response/arousal/orgasm and the stimuli of porn use was strengthened. the neural pathway for groinal responses/arousal/orgasm from stimuli that ISN’T porn is weaker and not in use. that’s why it can feel like porn is the only thing that turns you on or that gets you off, or you can lose groinal response to situations (like consensual & healthy sexual interaction with people you’re actually attracted to) that you feel like you should be turned on by.

 if you’ve been using porn since a really young age and/or extremely heavily, your brain will be more affected, because the effects on your brain are culumative and neuroplasticity is more intense before adulthood. even still: you are not doomed. it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to rewire your brain by avoiding the old neural pathways and using and establishing the new and healthy ones, but with that time and effort there will be progress. a healthy, loving sexuality is worth fighting for.

DON’T HAVE ORGASMS TO PORN so now that we know about neuroplasticity and neural pathways, we know they can be tackled. not having any orgasms to thoughts about porn or porn is the way to do this, combined with working on having orgasms to thoughts of healthy sex! i’m going to share how i did this on a personal level. again, feel free to take what works for you and leave the rest.

when i was having sex or masturbating, if i had any intrusive thoughts about porn or violent/pornagraphic sex, i had a process for stopping those neural pathways from activating. when trying to have an orgasm, if i was thinking about porn/violence, i would physically stop trying to orgasm and then try to clear my mind. when i wasn’t thinking about the porn imagery any more, i would continue. if this was happening over and over again, i would stop all the way and decide i would try again later.

i’ve been asked what to think about instead and it really varies person to person. if you’re not ready to fantasize, try to just focus on the physical sensations and keep your mind clear of thoughts of sex. when you’re feeling ready and less in danger of fantasizing about porn or violent sex, using healthy & loving sexual fantasies is great too, especially if you use them while you orgasm. it is normal to not have the same intense groinal response to these fantasies as you do to porn and doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong or that you’ll never have normal arousal responses. it just takes time.

an important detail: if you have sexual partners, it’s very important to be aware of how your reliance on porn affects the sex you have with them. if you are unable to orgasm with another partner without thoughts of porn, it will most likely be necessary to stop having sex while you work on healing your sexuality, which brings us to the next section. SUPPORT FROM LOVED ONES when you are struggling with porn, you need people on your side. if you have a sexual partner(s), you especially need them on your side. this is an intense journey and involves a lot of shame, especially if you’re a woman with radical politics. shame and isolation are huge barriers to recovery for any person struggling with any kind of addiction. if people don’t know what you’re going through and how you’re trying to fix it, how can they help you?

if your sexual partner is not understanding of this situation, i would urge you to examine that relationship. if you don’t seem to be able to make them understand the seriousness of this situation or if you struggling with this causes serious sexual incompatibility, it may not be the right relationship for you.

dependency on porn for sexual arousal is a very painful and frightening thing to combat, especially when so much of it is accompanied by sexual abuse and trauma. finding friends who are struggling the way you are and having a plan of action together can be really helpful. for example, having a friend who has the information to some sort of parental lock or filter on your phone or computer can be a good barrier. yes, pretty much any filter is by-passable, but that extra step can sometimes be all you need to say wait, i don’t want to do this, and reach out to a friend for help. that help can be serious talk about how porn has affected you or doing something fun and distracting until the urge has passed. feel it out.

KNOW THAT POLITICAL AWARENESS MAY NOT BE A FIX i’ve had multiple women confess miserably that understanding what the women in porn are going through didn’t stop their porn use, and the continued use after that knowledge made them feel even more ashamed and isolated than before. being a female person that uses porn doesn’t make you immune to the effects of it - it causes us to see women as objects. i’ve found that often the lack of empathy for the women we are watching mirrors the lack of empathy we feel for ourselves. many women consume porn that mirrors the kind of sexual abuse they’ve experienced or fetishizes specific oppressions that they face. i don’t think this is a coincidence.

it is frightening and disturbing when your eyes are open to the horror that is the porn industry, the physical and mental toll performing in pornography takes, the sex trafficking involved, and all the other details, and still once that video is on, it doesn’t make a difference. that is what porn does to your brain. it’s an awful truth that you cannot rely on your sense of empathy to help you stop watching porn, because the porn itself has attacked that empathy so wholly. but that brings us to our next tip

MOTIVATE YOURSELF THROUGH RAGE righteous female anger and spite are an excellent motivators. framing your actions to yourself as actions of defiance is helpful in a lot of situations, but i think especially helpful in this one.

on a political level: learning about what women go through in the sex industry isn’t enough - but learning about the men who have created this, fostered this, and prospered from this is a whole new ball game. pimps, pornographers, and sex traffickers want you to watch porn. pornography corporations and pornography CEOs want you to watch porn. they want the ad revenue. they want you to be pornsick so you come back for more. they don’t care how much harm they do to performers or porn consumers, all they care about is the money. on this level, not watching porn is an act of resistance against a violent industry, a capitalist venture that has left nothing but ruin on an unimaginable scale in its wake. they don’t care about rapes or serial murders committed by porn addicts. they don’t care about the new rise of child on child sexual abuse where little kids are molesting and violently raping each other. they don’t care about the suicides and the drug addiction and the trafficking. they just want your mind so they can have your money. are you going to give it to them?

on a personal level, if you were exposed to porn by someone who sexually abused you and/or someone who was sexually abused and just passing it on, i am so fucking angry for you, and i hope you can get angry too. that never should have happened. if someone wanted you to act out porn, or wanted you to think porn was normal, i’m angry at them, and i’m angry at whoever taught them that, and back into that lineage of rape culture forever. porn wants you to feel like a fuckhole. porn wants you to feel like your worth is what a man wants to do to you. porn wants you to feel like an object. and not just you - all your female friends, your female relatives, little tiny girls. do you want us all to feel like fuckholes? no. that’s NOT what we are. get angry. grief comes in many forms and righteous female rage is one of them.

if you get the urge to look up porn - turn to these emotions instead. be angry at who did this to you on a personal or political level. say fuck you, i’m not going to do what you told me i should do, i’m not who you told me i was.

MAINTENANCE ORGASMS your mileage may vary wildly on this point but i’ve known many people who have a lot of trouble falling asleep without having an orgasm, or have their mood affected negatively from not having regular orgasms. but when you’re trying to stop being pornsick, reaching orgasm without porn can become extremely frustrating, causing relapses because you feel like you can’t have an orgasm without porn.

my suggestion is an powerful vibrator and/or lube. i regularly recommend the hitachi magic wand for this purpose. i used it a lot in recovery and when i’m struggling because you can simply induce an orgasm in a really small amount of time, giving you less time to struggle with not using old neural pathways as possible. i know there are debatable downsides of heavy vibrator use so i don’t want to say this is the most awesome solution ever, but if you need regular orgasms to keep an even keel, this can be a solution to that.

IT’S TIME TO STOP USING PORN

you can do this. we can do this! about 3 years after quitting porn (after being introduced to it at a very young age) i started to have normal sexual arousal come back. i still struggle with relapse, especially when re-traumatized or when trauma is coming up hard. this is a journey we’re undertaking, a reclamation of our brains from a sexually violent industry that seeks to destroy us. you can heal your sexuality from porn with time and energy, and it is absolutely worth it.

this year, get angry, get real, and get clean of porn. much love to you all.

Trans projection

Cosmic intelligence is the same intelligence that creates the stars, planets, trees, flowers, mammals, and man. It also operates within human consciousness. It courses through the mind to direct its development. The mature state recognizes its part in the fundamental flow of life. Existence is made up of three states or identities. The first state is at a lowest level. To be whole requires advancement from the original base state through two more states of mind. The unconscious state begins in an animal nature (ego) that is self-absorbed. It wants its needs met and uses others to meet those needs. It is characterized by three traits: insensitivity to others, ignorance of the mind’s life cycle, and indifference to its impact on the environment. The ego lacks basic awareness of interconnections among things, how each fits into the other. It fails to put things in a context where meaning is revealed through relations of one thing to another. It is unable to see parts as belonging to the interdependent wholeness of life. A universal current flows through all three states of existence to fix them on a timeline. In terms of self-awareness, the ego that is unconscious is urged to reach the second state of human nature (self). This state of mind is aware of its impact on others and on the world. It takes responsibility for its own growth. Open to mythical communication, it seeks unity. Conscious of being conscious, it is attuned to inner directives that upgrade perception until the ideal vision manifests. By assimilating the whole truth, the subject becomes the Object (divine humanity). The popular translation for the endgame is “to be made in God’s image.” Enlightened awareness manifests as human goodness.

The first mind does not know it doesn’t know. The second mind is ready to let symbols and insights teach it what there is to know. In short, the first mind does not know it. The second mind does know it. The third mind not only knows it but becomes it.

-The Winged Serpent by Marilyn Kraft

Stylist

The shocking trailer for HBO’s new docuseries lifts the lid on the beauty industry’s dirty secrets

Want to know what really goes into your beauty products?

“In one scene, a scientist reports finding traces of asbestos in samples of products, while other experts report a catalogue of shocking issues on the rise such as changes in brain development, birth defects, ovarian failure and infant mortality.

We also see Palmer meet with individuals who have exhibited severe reactions to certain beauty products and hear their emotional accounts of devastating medical issues such as hair loss, speech problems and infertility. The scale of the issue, one commentator gravely declares, is an “overlooked epidemic”.”

reblog if freud would have diagnosed you with female hysteria in the 1800s

At the bare minimum, becoming a first-class parent requires years of studying human development, having real-world experience/knowledge of the circumstances you're birthing your child into, transformation of Self and the ability to consistently maintain the frequency of Love.

Since this is not the case for most parents, it is completely understandable why the world is what it is today and why parents feel as if they are devalued in their "contributions"... their contributions simply are not valuable to the world.