starc@t

mika ･ personal blog. ♡ art blog @mikao ･ good vibes rb, cats, lupin iii, pokemon, gintama, star wars, mushishi.

glumshoe:

bogleech:

Yes, I know some people have phobias they can’t help, but a phobia doesn’t force you to hate spiders or snakes or deep sea fish. I am completely baffled by people who just insist certain animals are horrible and wish they would all die rather than just wishing they weren’t scared of them.

And then there’s people with no “phobia” at all who still scream “KILL IT WITH FIRE” and the clickbait articles or even previously reputable science blogs feeding into that with “THIS NEWLY DISCOVERED TURTLE IS A NIGHTMARE FROM HELL!!!”

This is one thing I try very hard to nip in the bud with my students and one thing I’ll really be focusing on this season. I had a big wakeup call last fall during our pond class - I’d let the kids run around catching bugs in nets and putting them in buckets to examine and identity.

I thought it was all going really well… the kids had found tons of neat shit and were asking all kinds of questions about it. We even found a giant water beetle the size of my palm, which I couldn’t resist whipping out my phone to take a video of. As we were about to end class and return our finds to the water, this kid just… upturned the bucket onto the grass and stomped on the beetle, killing it.

I was stunned. I had no idea what to do or say. I barely managed to contain my fury and a number of expletives. Why the fuck had he done that? “It was gross,” was all he had to say.

So what? “Gross” is subjective. “Gross” isn’t a threat to you. “Gross” is not hurting you. If you are afraid of it, I understand. But your fear of it does not mean it has lost the right to exist, especially in a place where it is meant to be, where you are fully capable of avoiding it.

Working with and around phobias, I can do. Most people I know with insect or spider phobias, even children, recognize that they have a right to exist and that their fear is disproportionate. But the fact that “kill it with fire” is a normalized reaction to the strange or ugly upsets me greatly.

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  9. pickylxve said: nah man cockroaches need to go extinct asap literally make me stop doing the most basic stuff in the world because they are in the specific room
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