does the mortifying ordeal of being known guy know that his paragraph from a six year old NYT opinion piece about emailing pictures of goats to coworkers has become God Tier Tumblr Gospel ? like does he KNOW though

WOW thank you @inkstrangle​ for bringing it to my attention that as of last August, which is to say the chronological peak of the “mortifying ordeal” meme on tumblr, tim kreider absolutely DOES know and in fact wrote an entire brilliant essay reflecting on the phenomenon:

But what I wish I could tell all those children of the internet, holed up in their rooms, isolated online, is that they can only imagine the worst of relationships: they think that what another person will learn about them is what they see in themselves — the squirming, icky, insecure mess inside. They don’t know yet that the ways in which they’re secretly screwed up and repulsive are boringly ordinary. The issue isn’t that you’ll be despised for who you really are — that, as a friend and I used to say about girls we were dating, “she’ll realize.” It’s scarier than that: it’s that you lose control over who you are. Other people get to decide. And it may turn out that you’re not who you thought you were.

As an artist, you don’t get to decide why people love your work. […] I would describe my reaction to seeing my writing reanimated as meme as “nonplussed,” maybe “bemused.” It always does some slight violence to a writer’s intentions to yank a sentence out of its context and present it as if it were a complete, isolated thought, like a maxim or commandment. I am not in the business of pretending to be in possession of any wisdom, or of telling other people what to do: this is the realm of self-help and advice writers — in other words, of charlatans. Part of me worries it’s an indictment of my prose that it should lend itself so well to Tumblr memes, the digital equivalent of needlepoint samplers. […]

But the things people love about you aren’t necessarily the things you want to be loved for. They decide they like you for reasons completely outside your control, of which you’re often not even conscious: it’s certainly not because of the big act you put on, all the charm and anecdotes you’ve calculated for effect. (And if your act does fool someone, it only makes you feel like a successful fraud, and harbor some secret contempt for them — the contempt of a con artist for his mark — plus now you’re condemned to keep up that act forever, lest she Realize.) My last girlfriend found my flaws, the things that annoy even me about me, amusing. When you break up with someone, you don’t just lose them, but a version of yourself. You don’t even get to know what your children will remember you for; it probably won’t be what you thought were the important moments. […]

As The Velveteen Rabbit teaches, we don’t become fully real except in other people’s eyes, and in their affections. At some point you have to accept that other people’s perceptions of you are as valid as (and probably a lot more objective than) your own.

“Do you know what I mean? I always feel like I have to prove I’m like other women, but in the dream I didn’t feel that way. I’m not even sure I felt like a woman.” The moonlight illuminated Theresa’s frown. “Did you feel like a man?”

I shook my head. “No. That’s the strange part. I didn’t feel like a woman or a man, and I liked how I was different.”

Leslie Feinburg - Stone Butch Blues

we act silly and playful, teasing and prodding and joking with each other constantly. when i am with you, it’s easy to let go, to bring down the walls and be the child it was never safe enough to be. we make stupid jokes and laugh so hard we nearly cry. it feels easy. it feels safe. by bringing out our inner children, we are growing and healing in ways we never thought we could. after years with you, when i look at old scars, i see smooth skin.

I like the word gay. But I like “lesbian” better.

I like it because of Sappho of Lesbos, a lesbian and a Lesbian whose memory reminds us that women who loved women existed long before any time on earth that any living person can remember.

I like it because of Sappho’s poetry, the sweet prose she wrote for the goddess Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Aphrodite has her counterpart in the Roman goddess Venus, whose symbol has evolved to represent the woman, the female, the feminine.

I like it because of its culture and history. Butch, fem, stud, dyke. Bars where women drink and dance and laugh and kiss other women. Boston marriages. Women’s colleges. They wanted Ellen to get a puppy but she wanted to kiss a lady.

It hasn’t all been pretty. This word has been taken from us, made into a fetish, a porn category, fuel for men’s libidos. Hysterical. Asocial. Deviants. Lesbians.

But that makes me love it all the more—to spite them, to spite the men who salivate over us, to spite the churches that rally against us, to spite it all. But I wear this badge for more than just spite. I wear it for love. Love for women, love for our history, love for love for… lesbian.

It’s not a dirty word. It’s beautiful, and I am proud to call myself a lesbian.

stop worrying if you are showing people the “real you”, or worrying that you behave differently around different people

there is no one true self, every person is all at once selfish and generous, brave and cowardly, stoic and emotional, outgoing and reclusive… we respond differently in different situations as a matter of survival, we contain all potentialities within us, it is only the external world that determines which side of your infinitely faceted existence is required

do not attempt to force an inorganic version of an idealized personality into all parts of your life, instead seek out those people and situations which organically bring out the qualities in yourself which you most admire and desire to show

this singular line makes me so emotional.