Recommended Reading: September 19th, 2015

Every other Saturday we will post links relevant to survivors. Please feel free to discuss these links in the comments, or post more links! Trigger warnings appreciated, and self-promotion welcome.

Blanket trigger warning for all of these posts.

Since there was an exceptionally large number of relevant posts in the past two weeks, I’m dividing the links up into sections this time. The more positive links are at the top, and the hardest reads are at the bottom.

Dealing with anxiety & other aspects of trauma:

• Lifehacker: No, I can’t “just relax”: How I learned to manage my anxiety disorder
• Skepchick: Adult Coloring. Does it actually have any mental health benefits? [moving images at link]
• Olivia: Using my Anxiety: A Neurodiversity Tale
• A small guide to Anxiety & Helping Someone Cope
• An app called Emergency Chat can help deal with nonverbal anxiety attacks
• Furry Friend, a relaxing online purr generator for those lonely times when a cat isn’t around
• Sensory overload and how to cope
• A tool for thinking about control
• The Guardian: Depersonalisation disorder: the condition you’ve never heard of that affects millions
• Olivia: Depersonalization vs. Dissociation
• Tips on how to escape from an abusive relationship

Ace & Queer:

• Smrf wrote about dealing with acephobia from therapists.
• Bi Women Support: #SelfCareSunday: Finding a Bi and Survivor Friendly Therapist
• (A)Sex and the City wrote about not being a gold star asexual and having a hysterectomy as an ace teenager.
• Siggy: Make an ass out of you and everyone is about assumptions in different queer spaces, signaling, and ask vs. guess culture [briefly mentions sexual assault]
• Black Girl Dangerous: Defining Your Gender as a Queer Black Femme is Revolutionary—Don’t Take That Away
• queerascat wrote about being a black, non-binary ace.
• Coyote wrote about asexuality as stasis and how that assumption interacts with flibanserin and the are aces queer debate.
• Swankivy wrote about an episode of Steven Universe that positively portrays a young woman setting boundaries, and having her boundaries respected.

News & activism:

• Business Insider: A new app that lets users’ friends ‘virtually walk them home at night’ is exploding in popularity
• PRI: Mumbai slum dwellers say ‘I have to help’ stop violence against women
• NY Times: Busting the Myths About Disability Fraud
• Feminace: Evidence, Anecdotes, and Disability
• Feministing: Stop Excluding Black Women from Fat Acceptance Movements

Trigger Warnings etc:

• Skepchick: Yes Trigger Warnings Do Help Me: Here’s How
• Very disappointing: President Obama made a statement implying that he is against the use of trigger warnings and denigrating those who ask for them, and Melissa McEwan responded to it.
• Everybody Hurts: Content for Kindness – This is really fantastic.

Rape Culture & Abuse: (These links are very hard reads, heavy tw for all of them)

• There was a really awful article published to which we will not link, and many people responded to it.
• Ally Fogg: Has Chicago Sun-Times published the worst article about sexual violence ever written?
• The Shoop’s Roost: There is no “perfect rape victim”
• Salon: When a sex worker is raped, it’s rape—not “theft of services”
• Ally Fogg: Sexual offending in schools: looking beyond the dramatic big number and Making a Dent in the narrative are both about misinterpreting and misusing statistics
• HJ Hornbeck: But they feel safe — [tw: TERFs] about MichFest’s hypocritical concept of a “safe space” while bullying trans women and covering up actual cases of sexual assault
• I’m Sarah Nyberg and I was a Teenage Edgelord [tw: transphobia, mass doxing, severe abuse, dead bodies]
• Without Scars: Domestic Abuse and the Tech Pipeline
• The Guardian: Money Isn’t the Only Reason Why Police Ignored 80,000 Rape Kits
• RH Reality Check: Advocates Urge White House to Implement Rape Kit Law

Edit: Removed a link that was included in error. We apologize to those who were hurt by its inclusion.