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jerky/imprints

TANG Two Ways

For Quirky Jerky, it is $50 a pound. We sell by the pound. Our bulk deal is $200 for 5 pounds. Remember, we cannot do more than 5 pounds per order! For Princess Imprints, please make sure you have chosen (1) a source, (2) a tier, and (3) any extras. Remember, each imprint order gets you a free 2ml decant of your choice from my full bottles of fragrance, which you can view here: michaelistvan.com/olfactory

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Vulvic Eagles Accepted!

Dr. istvan

SAFETY FIRST!

Keeping in mind that triggers are INVOLUNTARY and deeply SUBJECTIVE, do not reach out to me with any triggering content. The autoimmune flare ups, the depression, the isolation, the self-harm, the drug use, the brain fog, the startle reflex—it all goes through the roof, to the point where I can barely get up to feed my own kids. I DO NOT NEED TO BE RE-VICTIMIZED! White-hetero sounding names as well as references to sailboat wallpaper, let me just say upfront, are absolute no-nos. In fact, reach out ONLY IF the following points—all of them—are true: (1) you think artists, academics, ancient texts, and so on should be CENSORED—and, when appropriate, REVISED—in the name of protecting people, especially the most vulnerable, from being traumatized by wrong think, alien values, unusual gaits, or so on; (2) you support the cancel-ethos of CENSORING and SILENCING and SHAMING, of SHOUTING DOWN and straight RUINING, all sources of discomfort—even merely ALLEGED sources of discomfort; (3) you find, in line with HR-orthodoxy, that unsettling someone is such a mortal sin that employees should be fired without due process for what they said even in LITERAL past lives; (4) you understand that, especially because you are a victim (never forget), the world needs to adapt to YOU; (5) you believe that to promote free speech and artistic liberty and intellectual diversity and the like is to enable ABUSIVE practices to flourish under the cover of nice-sounding phrases, phrases regarded for far too long as denoting values for which to aim; (6) you realize (a) that even just a MENTION of a MENTION of a traumatic subject could be traumatizing and (b) that statistics that do not support what you believe are IMMORAL (no matter how uncontroversial those statistics are); (7) you promise (a) to have no connections, known or unknown, with problematic individuals and (b) to value ACTIVISM over truth

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NO JARRING EMAIL ADDRESSES! There is a tension between comfort, on the one hand, and diversity, on the other. It is clear which side has to go. Your exceptionality exists in violation of the principle that no one should be offended. It has long been said, of course, that our differences from other people make us valuable. After all, bartering would be impossible if everyone had nothing unique to bring to the table. But the deeper question is: why assume, in the first place, that bartering is desirable? All trade is inherently violent. Aside from the extreme violence we have witnessed in the massacre-full histories of the drug and spice trades (where armed forces compete for control of production and territory), any give-and-take is going to involve contact, the meeting of boundaries, and so at least micro-aggression.

SAY IT WITH CARE!

Please read the following carefully to ensure that your message does not contain anything triggering. Anyone can be triggered by anything. What counts as a trigger is relative to the individual. For those in group A, a pro-life pamphlet is a trigger that can hurl them into the months-long clutch of chronic fatigue. For people beaten all their lives with a belt, a belt is a trigger that can make them void their bowels in front of everyone as if they were suddenly lynched. For a person who always heard her father crack open beers until he got violent, the crack of the can is a trigger that can awaken involuntary hiccupping or orgasms uncured by drinking water upside down. For my partner, a victim of intended suicide, the phrase “trigger warning” is so rife with violence that she cannot help but feel the cold barrel of the handgun against her teeth again, along with the breathless weeping. It gets her so upset that each day she scours the internet for syllabuses and confronts any professor who uses the phrase “trigger warning” instead of more caring expressions like “content forecast” or—to give her preferred way to neuter the metonymic bully that is the phrase “trigger warning”—simply “safecast.” In my case, although I refuse to be retraumatized by going into the reasons why, sailboat wallpaper and pronouncing “harassment” as “HAR-ass-ment” instead of “ha-RASS-ment” are the absolute worst. We must be careful, in this case, who gets to define what a trigger is. Never stand for people telling you what is genuinely harmful to you! What presses your buttons is a personal matter. Just think of how much violence there is in a history professor allowing students to opt out of assignments that talk about the Nazis (because of the terror they inflicted), but not allowing students to opt out of assignments that talk about the British or the Comanches (despite the terror they inflicted). We can all agree at least that novelty, diversity, is a basic trigger for all of us. Anything new makes us uneasy. That is not a choice. What is new, what is alien, sends our blood pumping and our adrenaline coursing. It is felt in the joints. It can cause headaches and vomiting. It can trigger an autoimmune flareup.

Note of Thanks

As a note of thanks for reaching out to Dr. Istvan, we would like to share the following words of encouragement.

Do not let the feel-good drugs of gratitude or inclusivism or laughter or mantras (“sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me”) numb you to how much you have been traumatized. Those who love and respect themselves will pay attention to what gets under their skin. They will be ever awaiting to be offended, relentlessly monitoring their spaces for any degree of persecution, so that they can jump up and protest right away! Never stand for someone trying to write you off as a “cry bully” or as a “bigot in disguise” just because you have the strength of character to shout down what is jarring to your manner of being. To fail to shout down and cancel whatever disrespects you is to fail to respect yourself, love yourself. The research is clear. The more you see yourself as a victim, the more you see the world as owing you something. And the more you see the world as owing you something, the more you are prioritizing self-care. A professional victim is not a bad thing. You simply take self-care seriously! But this is not a pure matter of being self-oriented. Those whose livelihoods you ruin for offending you will walk on eggshells not just around you but other would-be victims. You are protecting all the silent voices in protecting yourself!

You are a victim. Report your victimizers! Silence is complicity.

Safe Space Press

SAFETY FIRST!

Do not reach out to Safe Space Press with any triggering content (see the Dr. Istvan contact form above for more on this). *** If Safe Space Press has published the work of someone who has unsettled you in any way, please let us know (when you feel comfortable, of course). After removing all their content and banning them from submitting in the future (as well as doing whatever we can to deplatform them from EVERY publication in which they appear), we will discuss with you additional courses of action. We might contact their employers and family members, for example. Or we might denunciate them on social media. We might even report them to the police if we can work up a good enough story (which likely we can: we are creative writers, after all). Whatever we do, we will definitely add the offender to the litmag blocklist: a list that many editors review to find out what submissions should be rejected outright and with no refund. Remember: your trauma is worthy of REVENGE. LET’S GET CREATIVE! ***

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EMAIL ADDRESS

Please do not use an upsetting email address (see the Dr. Istvan contact form above for more on this). When selecting your email address, please consider that ANYONE CAN BE TRIGGERED BY ANYTHING. You might think that jazz hands, for example, is always better than the patriarchal bullhorn of old-school clapping. Not always. What about those people who have no hands? How might they feel seeing the rest of their peers ableistically flaunting their privilege? Or what about students who cannot help but call to mind blackface performances when they see such a gesture?

SAY IT WITH CARE!

Categories are essential to who we are. ANY MESSAGE THAT MISGENDERS OR MISRACES ANY OF THE EDITORS WILL GO UNREAD AND YOU WILL BE PERMANENTLY BANNED *** REMEMBER to use euphemism whenever possible to soften what you have to say. Here are some examples: “safecast” for “trigger warning,” “borrowing” for “stealing,” “dream center” for “gas chamber,” “water therapy” for “waterboarding,” “selfless service” for “chattel slavery,” “air questioning” for “strangling torture,” “pink sock from the love cloud” for “rectal prolapse from the gang bang,” “feather name” for “euphemism,” “assembly centers” for “extermination camps,” “innovative love” for “child abuse,” “material liberation” for “looting,” “manifold glazing” for “bukkake,” “self-loving and self-respecting and self-caring” instead of “sissy and hypersensitive and prudish.” ***

Note of Thanks

As a note of thanks for reaching out to Safe Space Press, the editors would like to share the following words of encouragement.

It is not your choice that you are sensitive. It does not matter why you are sensitive. Whether you are sensitive from repeated rapes or sensitive from having been brought up with bumpers on every corner to ensure the most sterilized play, it does not matter. We are here now. Do not let people who are not as sensitive make you feel bad. Fragility is grounds not for embarrassment but for entitlement. You should never have to tolerate violence. It is the responsibility of each of us to root it out, nip it in the bud. And sometimes that means speaking on behalf of others who are affected but too intimidated to say anything.

Report anyone who has traumatized—including, and especially, your teachers! Turn them in NOW. The trauma does not have to be based around gender, race, ethnicity, or sexuality. It does not matter if the aggression was intentional. Turn them in. Stand together as a community.

Do not think that your trauma does not count. Trauma is trauma. For so long students have swallowed their trauma, thinking that it was not worthy of recognition and retaliation. Termination and censure is warranted not merely for the wildest extremes of abuse. To deserve public denunciation and loss of their careers, your teacher, for example, does not have to be as disgustingly abusive as, say, Ward Churchill, who exposed students to the traumatic idea that one of the biggest acts of terror in US history was at least partly a retaliation for violence that he dared to claim—with absolutely no consideration of his audience—the US inflicted on people in the Middle East! Your professor does not have to lay out the horrors endured by chickens and cows for our sustenance. Your professor does not have to defend Palestine, or describe what was done in the holocaust, or expose you to political cartoons that mock religious figures, or show you the secret parts of the human anatomy to be destroying your life! Just as the freshman who was raped a few weeks ago is not ready to face course readings that mention rape, the freshman who witnessed her mother on the deathbed a few weeks ago groaning “and and and and and and” is not ready to face course readings where the word “and” is thrown about as if no big deal (insensitively appearing almost in every sentence).

Does your trauma count? It is a judgment call. Did your blood pressure shoot up seeing the shirt color of the man sitting next to you on the bus or smelling his predatory musk? Was your disability, obesity, addiction, queerness, marginality, or so on not respected? Were you exposed to difficulty? Did you not get your way? Was the abuse you suffered at the hands of your parents for getting any other mark aside from an A not honored with an automatic A in your current class? If so, you have suffered psychological damage. Remember: It is the perspective of the victim, not the perspective or intent of the alleged harasser, that is considered in evaluating complaints.

It is a Twilight-Zone nightmare that, still to this day, we must continually remind people that they are being victimized. Ever wonder why you are depressed? You might not be able to put your finger on the explanation. But here is what is going on, at root. You have been, and continue to be, a victim of violence and persecution. Focusing only on the high-profile cases of the most egregious abuse has blinded us to the systemic victimization of people across the globe.

The victimization starts so early that we all have been groomed to accept the abuse. It goes back to elementary school recess when a classmate scored a goal on you. The teachers all said that you would be okay, right? These teachers were abuse loyalists. Understand that. You are never going to be completely okay if someone scores a goal on you. How can you be okay if you lose? The culture has been shifting for some time, slowly but surely. Why do you think we had the wherewithal to buck the system by establishing the participation-trophy program?

You are a victim. Report your victimizers! Silence is complicity.

contact

jerky/imprints

Dr. istvan

Note of Thanks

Safe Space Press

Note of Thanks

Dr. Istvan

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