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Does someone want to send me some mkney so I can afford a new power strip, a few bags of ice, kratom for my sore joints, and a new hairbrush so my nieces and I don't have to use the same one (which I disinfect after every use). I figure $70-80 should cover everything, although any extra funds I receive will go towards covering my summer class textbooks, restoring the state of my savings account as something with more than $3.15 in it, giving my 14 year old niece money for transportation to and from appointments in Long Island, since her student metrocard is set to expire next week.

I spent most of the day running various errands at the hardware store, dragging a full sized air conditioner up two flights of stairs, and putting it in my bedroom window. Consequently, my joints are killing me and I've been having really bad chest pain since I got home. I am really tired.

I managed to fundraise enough money to pay the fine I received for having a grab and go barbecue in my front yard for Juneteenth, but I only raised enough to pay the fine.

Cashapp: $gentianviolet

Venmo: nwils0n

Gmail: [email protected]

#signal boost

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CONTINUED LOCKDOWN STRIKE?

So the country’s idiot leaders, death cultists that they are, are pushing for reopening, even as the death tolls are spiking. Small (and not so small) business owners tired of not siphoning off consumer money are falling in line, expressing their irritation with the stay at home orders and too selfish and ignorant to take fault- if any- with the government that has refused to actually give money to the people in any decent way, instead throwing it all at bailing out airlines and shit.

A vast majority of people want to continue staying at home, because the Coronavirus is nowhere near restrained and circulating will increase the risk of contagion for all of us, and put further strain on our healthcare workers.

So here’s the thing: Capitalists want us back in the shops. They want people to die for money. They are blinded by greed, and we don’t want to catch or spread Covid19. 

So can we all make a point to spread the word and encourage people to refrain from ending any stay-at-home orders-

-Do not go to restaurants or non-essential businesses

-Do not return to work (if possible)

-Do not ease up on physical distancing measures

-Do EXACTLY as you have been doing for the past month or so because Covid19 is *just now* peaking and is nowhere near over

-RESOLVE NOT TO DIE FOR A DOLLAR

Putting pressure on the country to return to work just because people who want your money are tired of not getting it is ridiculous, and THEY are lacking serious empathy. This has been stressful and dangerous for all of us, it is unconscionable that a bunch of non-essential business owners and even more just plain entitled privileged people are literally throwing a tantrum like selfish children because they’re ~tired of having to care about other people~ more than their bottom line and their personal convenience.

Any thoughts, ideas, additions? I know a lot of people feel this in their hearts but in a situation where the Entitled Minority is willing to organize and shout it out I think people  who want to stay-at-home should have some sort of interior movement as well, to bolster people’s fortitude, encourage them to stick it out, and show solidarity with all manner of workers who would unfairly be put on the front lines at the highest risk just because capitalists have no empathy.

 Reopening the country would also put other business owners at steeper risk, as once businesses are considered ‘reopened’ they will be expected to pay rent again, despite the crisis and whether or not they reopen. Furthermore healthcare and food service workers are dying at a ridiculous rate due to exposure– we should absolutely NOT ‘open up the country’ no matter what no matter what no matter what.

Don’t Die For A Dollar.

#covid19 #psa #general strike #signal boost

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#signal boost #us politics

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I also suffered from being treated as a child in my teens, but part of me worries about infantilisation being a privilege. For instance, many teens of colour are treated as adults- as hardened criminals, or as sexual prey blamed for their own abuse. But is this really the only alternative to infantilisation?

Oh yes, the opposite case absolutely exists and is part of the same system of oppression, just like the expectation that women will always be emotional and men will never be emotional are two opposite harms done as part of the same system.

These differing experiences are ultimately "let's you and him fight" games - oppressors inflicting different kinds of trauma on different people in order to keep those people from rising up together.

Also, some people experience both kinds at once: having to take on adult responsibilities at 16-17, having to make hard decisions while still being treated socially as if they can't make decisions, for example. That's happened to several people I know.

There's a post somewhere on this website - a number of years ago, from a disability perspective, about how desexualization is ultimately just another kind of sexual objectification and is involved in the way rape culture targets disabled folks, and while non-identical, this reminds me of that.

#kyriarchy #intersectionality #infantilization #rape culture mention #asks

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Good post.

I'll add, as a side note, most of the times I've spoken to a person who thinks there shouldn't be any kind of noncon or dubcon fic, and asked about their opinions of alcohol/drug use in smut fic, they act appalled that that would even *count*.

They have these extremely rigid and selective ideas of what might be triggering to someone, and often don't deign to tag outside of that, for fear of a false friend posting a callout.

thanks for ruining my post you disgusting waste of life

You posted an opinion on a social media platform that’s explicitly designed to enable reblogs and commentary from other users, including people who disagree. If you want to write in a broadcast medium where you have total control over replies and their visibility, get a Wordpress blog - but even then, the whole point of the internet is that other people get to share their opinions, too.

I appreciate that you think this is a black and white issue, but it isn’t. You, personally, do not get veto power over what the rest of the world imagines when they masturbate or the kind of stories they write for fun, nor do you get to determine where the acceptable overlap between those categories lies, because individual stories impact individual readers differently. No narrative is universally positive or negative, which is why tags exist in fanfiction: to help individuals navigate their needs and preferences safely. 

That you, personally, cannot fathom a benign or logical reason why some people enjoy the sorts of fantasies or narratives that you find abhorrent does not mean no such reason exists; nor does it mean that every single person who enjoys those things is as morally pure as the driven snow. What it does mean is that there’s no way to tell at a glance, purely on the basis of the content, which type reader is which, such that you can’t functionally ban the latter kind without also banning the former - and if you’re okay with demonising innocents for the sake of punishing the guilty, then you don’t get to claim moral purity, either. 

Which is the crux of the argument, here; the reason why it’s not black and white, even though it looks like it should be. Who decides what fictional content stays or goes, and why? It’s easy to say “no underage, no incest, no paedophilia, no rape,” but if you want to follow through, you have to define those terms in practical, specific ways, and that isn’t easy at all - not for published novels, and not for fanfic. Here’s what I mean:

No underage - okay, so does that mean no romance or sexual content for characters younger than 18, or just younger than 16? Whose definition of ‘underage’ are we using? Are there exceptions for teen characters within three or so years of each other, as there are legally in real life, or not? What are the limits of ‘acceptable’ content for younger characters - can they hug and kiss and talk about sex, so long as they aren’t implied to be having it? What if they are implied to be having it, but there’s a tasteful fade to black? What about stories where a younger character is making realistic bad decisions about sex or is being taken advantage of - can we tell those stories, or are they banned, too? If we do tell them, what are the guidelines for how graphic the content can be?

No incest - okay, does that include characters who weren’t raised together and don’t know they’re siblings? Step-siblings? Half-siblings? Does it include a ban on historical figures who really engaged in incest? What about characters who have an incestuous relationship in the source material - can we write fic about them, provided we take an explicitly anti-incest stance? What degree of separation are we allowing - does it start at first cousins, or do we go beyond that? Are all these things okay so long as it’s explicitly written as abusive and bad in the narrative, or is there leeway? What about people who expressly want to engage in daddy kink, which uses incest-adjacent language without necessarily being incestuous? Is that banned, too? What about fics where the characters aren’t related in the source material, but have been written that way in the story, such that a romantic relationship is turned into a familial one? What about fics where the characters are related in the source material, but aren’t in the fic, such that a familial relationship becomes a romantic one? Is any of this allowed?

No paedophilia - okay, does that include stories about survivors of child abuse? What about stories where the source material includes child abuse; is fic not allowed to mention it? Can you portray it if it’s very clearly a Bad Thing, even though some readers might still get off to it anyway? Can you imply that it happened so long as it isn’t discussed in detail or depicted graphically? What if survivors of child abuse want to write graphically about their experiences as a way to process trauma - is that allowed, or not? If so, how do you go about policing content creators to make sure that writers have suffered the Right Kind Of Abuse to be allowed to write those stories? If not, how do you justify the decision to exclude victims from their own narratives? If some victims find it traumatising to read fics that contain paedophilia, but others find it cathartic and helpful to write them, do you acknowledge that all victims have different experiences and try to create a platform where everyone can navigate those differences safely, or do you think it’s better to just close that door altogether? 

No rape - okay, does that mean no stories about rape recovery? Can you show rape provided it isn’t graphic? Can it be mentioned at all, or only in passing? What if two characters consent to enacting a rape fantasy in the text - is that still morally wrong? Can rape occur provided that it’s obviously bad and wrong and clearcut throughout, or is the character being victimised allowed to feel conflicted or confused about their experience? What about instances where consent is potentially dubious, such as sex between characters who are drunk, or where one party is drunker than the other? What if a story’s source material is ambiguous about whether sex between two characters was consensual - is fanfic allowed to explore that?

These are only some of the questions you’d need to answer in order to implement your desired changes on a future, hypothetical website. I say again: it’s easy to sit there and say, “No porn involving these four things,” as though AO3 need only delete every work containing those tags in order to save itself from damnation, but functionally, practically, it doesn’t work like that. The wrong story at the wrong age or time can fuck anyone up, just as the right one at the right age or time can be revolutionary, and those might both be the same story to different people. Explicit stories on AO3 are expressly restricted to those over 18 - if younger people are reading those fics, then that’s a risk they’re taking upon themselves: in which case, it’s their responsibility to use the tags to safely curate their own experience.

I understand the worry that paedophiles will use fanfic to groom their victims, and I don’t deny that this has happened to some people. But at the same time, abusers use a lot of things to groom their victims - historical precedents, flattery, novels, movies, lies - and at the end of the day, the only commonality between those things is the abuser themselves, not the content; so unless you’re arguing that the content creates the abuser, removing the content neither removes the abuser nor curtails the abuse. By the same token, it’s also true that fanfic has helped a great many people to recognise or recover from their own abuse, by showing what it looks like or enabling them to write about their own experiences. I know multiple ficwriters who’ve written their own rapes or sexual assaults into fics, or their own mental health diagnoses, as a way to process those things safely, in a cathartic manner. You really want to take that away from them?

People are complex. Sex is complex. Fantasies are complex. Pretending otherwise is how you end up with books being banned or burned, to say nothing of a host of related social evils. 

And if pointing all that out ruined your post, then maybe it needed ruining.

#fiction discourse #adolescent sexuality #rape mention #csa mention #anti discourse

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I'm kind of wondering if Amanda Marcotte has ever actually watched more than a brief clip of Triumph of the Will, though?

I feel like this article could have been stronger acknowledging additional layers of comparison. Because TotW is draped in insidious "wholesome" imagery too. No open antisemitism, even. Good local boys and family people all excited to stand tall for their Führer.

I've said this before, but watching uncensored Third Reich propaganda films with critical awareness is extremely instructive.

Fifteen years ago, around the same time I watched a bunch of Riefenstahl, I went to Germany, and went to the museum in the old half-finished Nazi stadium in Nuremberg. The museum uses its space hauntingly well, built on glass walkways through this cavernous monument to hubris. The paths take you through a chronicle of the rise and fall, including newsreels of Hitler - shaking hands and kissing babies like the doofy-looking, roguish politician he relied on everyone seeing him as.

In America, I observed, they only ever show you the same ten seconds of Hitler yelling, because they want you to think you can identify a monster when you see one.

They don't show you that most of the footage is not like that at all. That fascism in progress mostly isn't militaristic shouting, it's an endearingly slovenly reality TV star taking office and holding "grassroots" rallies to stir up something that thinks it's civic pride. They definitely don't want you to recognize that a monster can look like the kind of regular dude that conservatives want to go drinking with.

I worried about it fifteen years ago and I wish I hadn't been right.

i’m shrieking.

#triumph of the will #nazi germany #propaganda #fascism #authoritarianism

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Please help my cat?

This precious little girl right here? Is Shelby. Shelby needs your help.

I’ll get right to the point. She needs some teeth pulled, and we’ve got a pretty whopping vet bill coming up, like ~$1800. Partner and I are two trans women (one employed, one not) and this is going to absolutely destroy our savings, and quite possibly put us back into debt if they find anything else wrong whole they’re working on her mouth.

I know things are bad for a lot of people right now, and people need help. I’m asking anyway, because we’ve been in much worse places financially and I’d like not to wind up back there. Here’s my Paypal.

Shelby is an absolute sweetheart, and the most affectionate and chill cat I’ve ever had. She is young, otherwise in good health, and probably has many years ahead of her yet if we can get this taken care of. I’d super appreciate any shares, donations or reblogs.

Thanks for your time. Have another bonus cat pic.

#hi #please help my friend if you can! #signal boost #not discourse

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#I'm just gonna reblog this by way of venting thx

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Thank you for translating!

PSA to teenagers and young adults

I have just seen something I have been predicting would happen for a while and I am ENRAGED.

An over-25 adult just convinced a high school student that dating someone in their own age range was pedophilia. (Implication: they should be dating older adults instead.)

The predatory adult has convinced the teenager that they're right and the teen should cut off contact with other teens.

I'm utterly livid.

I don't make callout posts here. I would make an exception for this kind of situation, except the teen has now been gaslighted into supporting the older adult, which suggests they expect retaliation if the older adult faces any consequences.

So I will instead ask that people please circulate this post that warns about behavior without naming names, as a warning to other teens.

If you're a teenager or young adult, and someone gets in your face and tries to tell you that you're too mature to be dating other people within a few years of your age, especially if they try to suggest that this makes you predatory, block and report them and talk to a trusted adult about it. Please.

#pedophilia libel #grooming #warnings #portuguese #I think?

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To clarify: I don't believe in policing fiction because I don't believe in policing.

I do believe in presenting it with framing information that helps the reader contextualize it: for example, the foreword to Naked Lunch that addresses the matter of its obscenity trial, both the question of why the book was tried and some of the framing arguments that won the case.

I also don't believe every platform has to be a place for every kind of fiction (and I think that we should all collectively move away from our near-total reliance on massively centralized, commercialized, public platforms like Twitter and Facebook and probably Tumblr, because not everything that should be allowed to exist should be getting flung at your head at 80 mph, jfc.)

I believe that it's possible to hold the opinion "it's bad to post untagged, un-warned-for rapefic" while also holding the opinion "abuse and harassment are always wrong, even if the subject has also done something wrong."

See also my post on Mein Kampf, media responsibility, mitzvahs, and libraries.

“All fictional content is just fine and totally harmless to everyone” is not my actual position; I believe in nuance and social responsibility and that a lot of things are up for debate.

But as long as there are people out there who think it’s OK to harrass and threaten kids for exploring their sexuality in fiction, and as long as the community that just wants to criticize is not actively taking steps to oust these predatory individuals, they are pushing people who are horrified by the stalking and harrassment to adopt that as a fall-back position.

Or, in other words, matter how not-OK any particular piece of fiction or art might be, it is always more OK than targeted harm to actual human beings, especially vulnerable children. And that’s a hard line.

And as long as that’s happening on as large of a scale as it is right now, anyone who cares about the safety of minors online should be concentrating on cleaning that up, and people who focus on the contents of purely fictional works instead, or put far greater emphasis on these, are at best misguided and at worst trying to take the attention off their own predatory behavior. This focus is a red flag.

I’ll be happy to discuss the potential indirect harms of more and less permissive stances on media content with a community that demonstrates a commitment to fixing their missing stairs, not ignoring that they exist.

Hint: The missing stairs are the ones engaging in harrassment and abuse, not the ones who reblogged a “bad” fanart once.

#fiction vs reality #fandom meta #fiction meta #libraries #social responsibility #harm to minors

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i think the adult was 100% convinced they were doing something good and imo, was not trying to groom the kid. having said that, accusing the kid of being a pedo and giving them a reason to hate themselves over literally nothing was vile. why can't this grown-ass adult just mind their own business and not interfere with the relationship of two strangers they know absolutely nothing about? christ.

Yeah, in all likelihood you are correct.

Over the last few years I've become more and more... consequentialist? in how I define people and their actions.

Being forcibly reassigned to an "adult" category when they're not ready for it yet makes a teenager more vulnerable to predators.

If someone genuinely believes in their heart that they're a leftist, but uses fascist jargon to promote fascist ideas and drag the Overton window to the right, then it's appropriate to identify the impact of their behavior as fascist.

Similarly, if an older adult genuinely has no personal interest in dating a teenager, but intervenes in that teenager's life in a way that forcibly separates them from their peers, redefines their identity and influences them to seek romantic attention from people they do not yet perceive as their peers, the impact is that the teenager will be more vulnerable to sexual abuse from older adults in the future.

#ethics #grooming #predatory behavior

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PSA to teenagers and young adults

I have just seen something I have been predicting would happen for a while and I am ENRAGED.

An over-25 adult just convinced a high school student that dating someone in their own age range was pedophilia. (Implication: they should be dating older adults instead.)

The predatory adult has convinced the teenager that they're right and the teen should cut off contact with other teens.

I'm utterly livid.

I don't make callout posts here. I would make an exception for this kind of situation, except the teen has now been gaslighted into supporting the older adult, which suggests they expect retaliation if the older adult faces any consequences.

So I will instead ask that people please circulate this post that warns about behavior without naming names, as a warning to other teens.

If you're a teenager or young adult, and someone gets in your face and tries to tell you that you're too mature to be dating other people within a few years of your age, especially if they try to suggest that this makes you predatory, block and report them and talk to a trusted adult about it. Please.

#good additions #pedophilia mention #grooming mention #predatory behavior #anti discourse #harm to minors

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"time to protect teenagers by convincing a teenager to trust only me and isolate themselves from other teenagers" FAM THAT'S STEP ONE OF GROOMING, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT PERSON

Yeah like. Danger Will Robinson. 🚨

*Best* case scenario here is the older adult is only trying to undermine the teen's self-esteem for unrelated reasons. Which is still abusive behavior and leaves them vulnerable to other abusers.

#grooming mention #abuse #harm to minors

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PSA to teenagers and young adults

I have just seen something I have been predicting would happen for a while and I am ENRAGED.

An over-25 adult just convinced a high school student that dating someone in their own age range was pedophilia. (Implication: they should be dating older adults instead.)

The predatory adult has convinced the teenager that they're right and the teen should cut off contact with other teens.

I'm utterly livid.

I don't make callout posts here. I would make an exception for this kind of situation, except the teen has now been gaslighted into supporting the older adult, which suggests they expect retaliation if the older adult faces any consequences.

So I will instead ask that people please circulate this post that warns about behavior without naming names, as a warning to other teens.

If you're a teenager or young adult, and someone gets in your face and tries to tell you that you're too mature to be dating other people within a few years of your age, especially if they try to suggest that this makes you predatory, block and report them and talk to a trusted adult about it. Please.

#cw gaslighting #child predators #pedophilia mention #age politics #psa

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urgent help needed (time sensitive!!)

awhile back, my significant other was arrested for smoking a bowl in a park, and then taken back to the nearest precinct for a while. none of the other individuals who’d been doing the same thing in the same place got arrested. few of them even received a weed ticket.

given that, i am almost certain she was singled out and detained because she is a trans woman.

at any rate, she ended up being released on her own recognizance, possibly because i went down to the precinct and asked all kinds of uncomfortable questions, refused to leave, and generally annoyed them until they decided that keeping her was more trouble than it seemed. 

weeks later, when she went to trial, she ended up receiving a charge of disorderly conduct and a fine of $220. this fine must be paid by the fifth of august, otherwise, to my understanding, the NYPD can issue a warrant for her arrest.

being that me and mine are all broke ass queer college students, most of whom are estranged from their parents - making it difficult for us to turn to them - i am asking y’all for some help. 

of the 220 she needs by monday, i have 80. i had more set aside, but since my bills are on autopay and today is the first of the month, my checking account is currently playing the smallest, saddest violin.  

this means that i would need $140 total by monday, 8/5.

i am making this post on her behalf because she does not use tumblr or paypal, but i do.

if you’re going to reblog to ask why i didn’t get the $220 together sooner, i did. then some other expense came up, probably for medication. i am the embodiment of living paycheck to paycheck. if you’re going to call me irresponsible due to how little notice i am giving, yes, i know. i really should have made this post earlier, but school, work, and a depressive episode have made my mind rather foggy as of late. i’m sorry.

if you would like to hit me up to ask me for some kind of proof of the situation, i can provide it. 

my paypal, which unfortunately uses my deadname, is right here. 

please help, if you can. if you’re unable to, please consider reblogging this post. i really want to keep my girlfriend out of jail. 

#signal boost #not discourse

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Things to do with a list such as this:

Spread it.

Download it, keep a back up.

Publish it offline as well, put it in your local anarchist zine, print posters.

Things to do with the location of camps near you:

Spread that specific information in your area.

Get people together. Talk about this. Consider what you can do to spread more information and get more people together. Maybe distribute information at crowded local places.

When you have a good lot of people, hold some solidarity rallies outside the camps. Inform yourself about your rights before hand. Don’t get yourself all arrested if this is your first step into action and you don’t know each other well.

If you have a good reliable group of people together and have done some minor actions, start first talking about and then training for more direct actions. Learn your legal rights. Invite activists who can help you as a medic, legal team, etc.

When you’re ready, blockade the traffic going in and out of these camps.

Consider moving to more disruptive actions from there.

-

#signal boost #concentration camps #activism

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the thing about queer history is if you’re looking for yourself in the past as you see yourself now it’s not gonna work, or it will work but um badly and often sloppily 

my FAVORITE thing about queer history is looking to the past and seeing it doesn’t have to be like it is in my current moment. “the closet”? Historical construction that appears in the 50s. a divide between gay and lesbian identity and trans identity (ie “trans” is a distinct category from “gay”)? so fucking recent there are ALMOST DEFINITELY communities where that hasn’t happened, and there are 1000% people living who struggle with that divide because it is actually *new* to them

we *have* to be flexible–to be QUEER–with our genealogies because queer genealogy doesn’t WORK the same way genealogies do for other marginalized identities. most of us (not all of us!) don’t have queer parents who taught us how to be queer. we don’t have literal queer ancestors; and honestly even if we do, we might not recognize them on their own terms. 

is that unsatisfying? yeah it can be, if what you want is proof you had a past in this specific way. but you are a product of your present moment. things are possible now that weren’t, and things were possible then that are not now. looking to the past at its best for me is recognizing that there are different ways of being, which means we can imagine different ways for the future. they may not be modeled directly on the past, but IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE IT IS NOW, AND HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN. 

#lgbtqia #queer history