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#are children not allowed any bodily autonomy
selkiecoded · 2 years
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very sincerely believe that a lot of modern day issues are linked in part to the fact that children and adolescents are treated as second class citizens, without the respect, legal protection, and autonomy they deserve. just for example in regards to cutting off trans youths access to social and medical support is a blatant red flag to the fact that the bodily and decisive autonomy of minors is not respected.
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i have so many posts in my drafts about weird terf shit ive seen, but i don’t want to post them and risk summoning a ton of them to my blog to rant about how im always going to be female and trans women are misogynist men and gender neutral language is misogynistic and all men are dangerous by nature while all women are victims by nature and…………
#transphobia //#child abuse //#mostly in the tags#i saw a particularly unhinged terf post last night that made me so fucking angry#it was advocating for boys to get vasectomies as soon as they hit puberty.#and only being allowed to have it reversed if a woman gives written legal permission for him to impregnate her#cis boys hit puberty around age 9 to 14. that person thought that preforming a genital surgery on 9 year old boys….. is the solution to#men harming women.#and they said it’s not violating those boys bodily autonomy#god forbid trans kids get puberty blockers or hormones but yeah it’s fine to preform vasectomies on 9 year old boys#a particularly fucking insane example of the brainrot transphobia and thinking men are biologically evil#gives you#dove talks#like. do you know how they preform that surgery?? it’s not something that should be done to anyone who doesn’t want it.#if you think it’s totally normal and okay to cut into the scrotum of a little boy and mess with his reproductive organs#you are unwell and i hope you’re never around children of any sex#imagine if that was done to a little girl. it’s fucked up right?#little girls going through puberty shouldn’t have surgeries done on them?#yeah it’s JUST as fucked up to suggest that doing that to little boys is okay. fucking christ#little boys are not worse than little girls. they’re not inherently dangerous. they’re fucking children#if you think something is fucked up to do to a little girl. it’s just as fucked up to do to a little boy#because in both cases. they’re a child.#this is the ultimate result of thinking male = automatically genetically unchangably evil#it leads to dehumanizing and othering innocents like children#like. ive SEEN transphobes and terfs in specific say things to the effect of#‘all fetuses start off female so males are actually a biological mistake’ which is the most insane disgusting thing to believe#idk how to tell you that saying another human being is a mistake because of how they were born.#is fucking gross and despicable#idk maybe it’s being disabled and feeling like im a mistake that makes me wary of saying certain people are genetic mistakes.
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transmutationisms · 21 days
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Hi there! 👋 so there's a lot of discourse surrounding the "mature brain" pop science (eg., the brain doesn't "mature" until 25 and therefore we should move the age of consent, bodily autonomy, etc.. to 26). I have found this being peddled by a lot of kids and young adults. Why, in your opinion, are people so quick to self-infantilize (I really don't want to use that word but I couldn't think of anything better) and to take their rights away? Like it's really weird, I would think they'd want more rights, not less.
you could ask the same question about lots of groups: psychiatrically pathologised people advocating for increased medico-legal control over their own lives, for example—but i think it comes down to a few things:
meaningful coalition-building is often hindered by factors like intra-group racism, transphobia, &c ("there should be more control over Those People, but not me, i'm one of the good ones")
discursive constructions that position children's safety/protection and autonomy/rights as mutually exclusive, such that demands for political liberation are interpreted instead as calls for the group in question to be exposed to total social and economic violence ("so you think kids should be left to fend for themselves on the streets?")
the general disenfranchisement and isolation of kids and teens, which also makes coalition-building extremely difficult
the immanently enforced gap between working scientists and the lay public, which allows certain scientific discourses promulgated by public-facing journalists, ted-talkers, &c to maintain political legitimacy regardless of the strength of any empirical evidence for or against them
and relatedly the problem of such discourses having been already formulated by human beings with certain ideological and theoretical commitments and class interests, such that an assertion like "people are basically brain-children who should have my will imposed upon them until the age of 25" gets a lot more legs than "brains probably change throughout a person's entire life and maturity in this sense is largely socially constructed"
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How unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California
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Tonight (September 14), I'm hosting the EFF Awards in San Francisco. On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy.
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Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. 40 years of declining worker power shattered the American Dream (TM), producing multiple generations whose children fared worse than their parents, cratering faith in institutions and hope for a better future.
The American neoliberal malaise – celebrated in by "centrists" who insisted that everything was fine and nothing could be changed – didn't just lead to a sense of helplessness, but also hopelessness. Denialism and nihilism are Siamese twins, and the YOLO approach to the climate emergency, covid mitigation, the housing crisis and other pressing issues can't be disentangled from the Thatcherite maxim that "There is NoA lternative." If there's no alternative, then we're doomed. Dig a hole, climb inside, pull the dirt down on top of yourself.
But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. For decades, leftists have taken a back seat to liberals in the progressive coalition, allowing "unionize!" to be drowned out by "learn to code!" The liberal-led coalition ceded the mantle of radical change to fake populist demagogues on the right.
This opened a space for a mirror-world politics that insisted that "conservatives" were the true defenders of women (because they were transphobes), of bodily autonomy (because they were vaccine deniers), of the environment (because they opposed wind-farms) and of workers (because they opposed immigration):
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine
Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. A new coalition dedicated to fighting corporate power has emerged, tackling capitalism's monopoly power, and the corruption and abuse of workers it enables. That coalition is global, it's growing, and it's kicking ass.
Case in point: California just passed a law that will give every fast-food worker in the state a 30% raise. This law represents a profound improvement to the lives of the state's poorest workers – workers who spend long hours feeding their neighbors, but often can't afford to feed themselves at the end of a shift.
But just as remarkable as the substance of this new law is the path it took – a path that runs through a new sensibility, a new vibe, that is more powerful than mere political or legal procedure. The story is masterfully told in The American Prospect by veteran labor writer Harold Meyerson:
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-13-half-million-california-workers-get-raise/
The story starts with Governor Newsom signing a bill to create a new statewide labor-business board to mediate between workers and bosses, with the goal of elevating the working conditions of the state's large, minimum-wage workforce. The passage of this law triggered howls of outrage from the state's fast-food industry, who pledged to spend $200m to put forward a ballot initiative to permanently kill the labor-business board.
This is a familiar story. In 2019, California's state legislature passed AB-5, a bill designed to end the gig-work fiction that people whose boss is an algorithm are actually "independent businesses," rather than employees. AB5 wasn't perfect – it swept up all kinds of genuine freelancers, like writers who contributed articles to many publications – but the response wasn't aimed at fixing the bad parts. It was designed to destroy the good parts.
After AB-5, Uber and Lyft poured more than $200m into Prop 22, a ballot initiative designed to permanently bar the California legislature from passing any law to protect "gig workers." Prop 22's corporate backers flooded the state with disinformation, and procured a victory in 2020. The aftermath was swift and vicious, with Prop 22 used as cover in mass-firings of unionized workers across the state's workforce:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/05/manorialism-feudalism-cycle/#prop22
Workers and the politicians who defend them were supposed to be crushed by Prop 22. Its message was "there is no alternative." "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." "Resistance is futile." Prop 22 was worth spending $200m on because it wouldn't just win this fight – it would win all fights, forever.
But that's not what happened. When the fast-food barons announced that they were going to pump another $200m into a state ballot initiative to kill fair wages for food service workers, they got a hell of a surprise. SEIU – a union that has long struggled to organize fast-food workers – collaborated with progressive legislators to introduce a pair of new, even further-reaching bills.
One bill would have made the corporate overseers of franchise businesses jointly liable for lawbreaking by franchisees – so if a McDonald's restaurant owner stole their employees' wages, McDonalds corporate would also be on the hook for the offense. The second bill would restore funding and power to the state Industrial Welfare Commission, which once routinely intervened to set wages and working standards in many state industries:
https://www.gtlaw-laborandemployment.com/2023/08/the-california-iwc-whats-old-is-new-again/
Fast-food bosses fucked around, and boy did they find out. Funding for the IWC passed the state budget, and the franchisee joint liability is set to pass the legislature this week. The fast-food bosses cried uncle and begged Newsom's office for a deal. In exchange for defunding the IWC and canceling the vote on the liability bill, the industry has agreed to an hourly wage increase for the state's 550,000 fast-food workers, from $15.50 to $20, taking effect in April.
The deal also includes annual raises of either 3.5% or the real rise in cost of living. It keeps the labor-management council that the original bill created (the referendum on killing that council has been cancelled). The council will include two franchisees, two fast food corporate reps, two union reps, two front-line fast-food workers and a member of the public. It will have the power to direct the state Department of Labor to directly regulate working conditions in fast-food restaurants, from health and safety to workplace violence.
It's been nearly a century since business/government/labor boards like this were commonplace. The revival is a step on the way to bringing back the practice of sectoral bargaining, where workers set contracts for all employers in an industry. Sectoral bargaining was largely abolished through the dismantling of the New Deal, though elements of it remain. Entertainment industry unions are called "guilds" because they bargain with all the employers in their sector – which is why all of the Hollywood studios are being struck by SAG-AFTRA and the WGA.
So what changed between 2020 – when rideshare bosses destroyed democratic protections for workers by flooding the zone with disinformation to pass Prop 22 – and 2023, when the fast food bosses folded like a cheap suit? It wasn't changes to the laws governing ballot initiatives, nor was it a lack of ready capital for demolishing worker rights. Fast food executives weren't visited by three ghosts in the night who convinced them to care for their workers. Their hearts didn't grow by three sizes.
What changed was the vibe. The Hot Labor Summer was a rager, and it's not showing any signs of slowing. Obviously that's true in California, where nurses and hotel workers are also striking, and where strikebreaking companies like Instawork ("Uber for #scabs") attract swift regulatory sanction, rather than demoralized capitulation:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork
The hot labor summer wasn't a season – it was a turning point. Everyone's forming unions. Think of Equity Strip NoHo, the first strippers' union in a generation, which won recognition from their scumbag bosses at North Hollywood's Star Garden Club, who used every dirty trick to kill workplace democracy.
The story of the Equity Strippers is amazing. Two organizers, Charlie and Lilith, appeared on Adam Conover's Factually podcast to describe the incredible creativity and solidarity they used to win recognition, and the continuing struggle to get a contract out of their bosses, who are still fucking around and assuming they will not find out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fgXihmHIZk
Like the fast-food bosses, the Star Garden's owners are in for a surprise. One of the most powerful elements of the Equity Strippers' story is the solidarity of their customers. Star Garden's owners assumed that their clientele were indiscriminate, horny assholes who didn't care about the wellbeing of the workers they patronized, and would therefore cross a picket-line because parts is parts.
Instead, the bar's clientele sided with the workers. People everywhere are siding with workers. A decade ago, when video game actors voted on a strike, the tech workers who coded the games were incredibly hostile to them. "Why should you get residuals for your contribution to this game when we don't?"
But SAG-AFTRA members who provide voice acting for games just overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike, and this time the story is very different. This time, tech workers are ride-or-die for their comrades in the sound booths:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-09-13/video-game-voice-actor-sag-strike-interactive-agreement-actors-strike
What explains the change in tech workers' animal sentiments? Well, on the one hand, labor rights are in the air. The decades of cartoonish, lazy dismissals of labor struggles have ended. And on the other hand, tech workers have been proletarianized, with 260,000 layoffs in the sector, including 12,000 layoffs at Google that came immediately after a stock buyback that would have paid those 12,000 salaries for the next 27 years:
https://doctorow.medium.com/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers-ad0a6b09f7e6
Larry Lessig once laid out a theory of change that holds that our society is governed by four forces: law (what's legal), norms (what's socially acceptable), markets (what's profitable) and code (what's technologically possible):
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/CodeAndRegulation/about.html
These four forces interact. When queer relationships were normalized, it made it easier to legalize them, too – and then the businesses that marriage equality became both a force for more normalization and legal defense.
When Lessig formulated this argument, much of the focus was on technology – how file-sharing changed norms, which changed law. But as the decades passed, I've come to appreciate what the argument says about norms, the conversations we have with one another.
Neoliberalism wants you to think that you're an individual, not a member of a polity. Neoliberalism wants you to bargain with your boss as a "free agent," not a union member. It wants you to address the climate emergency by recycling more carefully – not by demanding laws banning single-use plastics. It wants you to fight monopolies by shopping harder – not by busting trusts.
But that's not what we're doing – not anymore. We're forming unions. We're demanding a Green New Deal. And we're busting some trusts. The DoJ Antitrust Division case against Google is the (first) trial of the century, reviving the ancient and noble practice of fighting monopolies with courts, not empty platitudes.
The trial is incredible, and Yosef Weitzman's reporting on Big Tech On Trial is required reading. I'm following it closely (thankfully, there's a fulltext RSS feed):
https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/what-makes-google-great
The neoliberal project of instilling learned helplessness about corporate power has hit the wall, and it's wrecked. The same norms that made us furious enough to put Google on trial are the norms that made us angry – not cynical – about Clarence Thomas's bribery scandals:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow
And they're the same norms that made us support our striking comrades, from hotel housekeepers to Hollywood actors, from strippers to Starbucks baristas:
https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/09/13/Starbucks-Workers-Back-At-Strike/
Yes, Starbucks baristas. The Starbucks unions that won hard-fought recognition drives are now fighting the next phase of corporate fuckery: Starbucks corporate's refusal to bargain for a contract. Starbucks is betting that if they just stall long enough, the workers who support the union will move on and they'll be able to go back to abusing their workers without worrying about a union.
They're fucking around, and they're finding out. Starbucks workers at two shops in British Columbia – Clayton Crossing in Surrey and Valley Centre in Langley – have authorized strikes with a 91% majority:
https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/09/13/Starbucks-Workers-Back-At-Strike/
Where did the guts to do this come from? Not from labor law, which remains disgustingly hostile to workers (though that's changing, as we'll see below). It came from norms. It came from getting pissed off and talking about it. Shouting about it. Arguing about it.
Laws, markets and code matter, but they're nothing without norms. That's why Uber and Lyft were willing to spend $200m to fight fair labor practices. They didn't just want to keep their costs low – they wanted to snuff out the vibe, the idea that workers deserve a fair deal.
They failed. The idea didn't die. It thrived. It merged with the idea that corporations and the wealthy corrupt our society. It was joined by the idea that monopolies harm us all. They're losing. We're winning.
The BC Starbucks workers secured 91% majorities in their strike votes. This is what worker power looks like. As Jane McAlevey writes in her Collective Bargain, these supermajorities – ultramajorities – are how we win.
https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe
The neoliberal wing of the Democratic party hires high-priced consultants who advise them to seek 50.1% margins of victory – and then insist that nothing can be done because we live in the Manchin-Synematic Universe, where razor-thin majorities mean that there is no alternative. Labor organizers fight for 91% majorities – in the face of bosses' gerrymandering, disinformation and voter suppression – and get shit done.
Shifting the norms – having the conversations – is the tactic, but getting shit done is the goal. The Biden administration – a decidedly mixed bag – has some incredible, technically skilled, principled fighters who know how to get shit done. Take Lina Khan, who revived the long-dormant Section 5 of the Federal Trade Act, which gives her broad powers to ban "unfair and deceptive" practices:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge
Khan's wielding this broad power in all kinds of exciting ways. For example, she's seeking a ban on noncompetes, a form of bondage that shackles workers to shitty bosses by making it illegal to work for anyone else in the same industry:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal
Noncompete apologists argue that these merely protect employers' investment in training and willingness to share sensitive trade secrets with employees. But the majority of noncompetes are applied to fast food workers – yes, the same workers who just won a 30%, across-the-board raise – in order to prevent Burger King cashiers from seeking $0.25/hour more at a local Wendy's.
Meanwhile, the most trade-secret intensive, high-training industry in the world – tech – has no noncompetes. That's not because tech bosses are good eggs who want to do right by their employees – it's because noncompetes are banned in California, where tech is headquartered.
But in other states, where noncompetes are still allowed, bosses have figured out how to use them as a slippery slope to a form of bondage that beggars the imagination. I'm speaking of the Training Repayment Agreement Provision (AKA, the TRAP), a contractual term that forces workers who quit or get fired to pay their ex-bosses tens of thousands of dollars, supposedly to recoup the cost of training them:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose
Now, TRAPs aren't just evil, they're also bullshit. Bosses show pet-groomers or cannabis budtenders a few videos, throw them a three-ring binder, and declare that they've received a five-figure education that they must repay if they part ways with their employers. This gives bosses broad latitude to abuse their workers and even order them to break the law, on penalty of massive fines for quitting.
If this sounds like an Unfair Labor Practice to you, you're not alone. NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo agrees with you. She's another one of those Biden appointees with a principled commitment to making life better for American workers, and the technical chops to turn that principle into muscular action.
In a case against Juvly Aesthetics – an Ohio-based chain of "alternative medicine" and "aesthetic services" – Abruzzo argues that noncompetes and TRAPs are Unfair Labor Practices that violate the National Labor Relations Act and cannot be enforced:
https://www.nlrb.gov/case/09-CA-300239
Two ex-Juvly employees have been hit with $50-60k "repayment" bills for quitting – one after refusing to violate Ohio law by performing "microneedling," another for quitting after having their wages stolen and then refusing to sign an "exit agreement":
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-14-nlrb-complaint-calls-noncompete-agreement-unfair-labor-practice/
If the NLRB wins, the noncompete and TRAP clauses in the workers' contracts will be voided, and the workers will get fees, missed wages, and other penalties. More to the point, the case will set the precedent that noncompetes are generally unenforceable nationwide, delivering labor protection to every worker in every sector in America.
Abruzzo has been killing it lately: just a couple weeks ago, she set a precedent that any boss that breaks labor law during a union drive automatically loses, with instant recognition for the union as a penalty (rather than a small fine, as was customary):
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth
Abruzzo is amazing – as are her colleagues at the NLRB, FTC, DOJ, and other agencies. But the law they're making is downstream of the norms we set. From the California lawmakers who responded to fast food industry threats by introducing more regulations to the strip-bar patrons who refused to cross the picket-line to the legions of fans dragging Drew Barrymore for scabbing, the public mood is providing the political will for real action:
https://www.motherjones.com/media/2023/09/drew-barrymores-newest-role-scab/
The issues of corruption, worker rights and market concentration can't – and shouldn't – be teased apart. They're three facets of the same fight – the fight against oligarchy. Rarely do those issues come together more clearly than in the delicious petard-hoisting of Dave Clark, formerly the archvillain of Amazon, and now the victim of its bullying.
As Maureen Tkacik writes for The American Prospect, Clark had a long and storied career as Amazon's most vicious and unassuming ghoul, a sweatervested, Diet-Coke-swilling normie whose mild manner disguised a vicious streak a mile wide:
https://prospect.org/power/2023-09-14-catch-us-if-you-can-dave-clark-amazon/
Clark earned his nickname, "The Sniper," as a Kentucky warehouse supervisor; the name came from his habit of "lurking in the shadows [and] scoping out slackers he could fire." Clark created Amazon Flex, the "gig work" version of Amazon delivery drivers where randos in private vehicles were sent out to delivery parcels. Clark also oversaw tens of millions of dollars in wage-theft from those workers.
We have Clark to thank for the Amazon drivers who had to shit in bags and piss in bottles to make quota. Clark was behind the illegal union-busting tactics used against employees in the Bessamer, Alabama warehouse. We have Clark to thank for the Amazon chat app that banned users from posting the words "restroom," "slave labor," "plantation," and "union":
https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak
But Clark doesn't work for Amazon anymore. After losing a power-struggle to succeed Jeff Bezos – the job went to "longtime rival" Andy Jassy – he quit and went to work for Flexport, a logistics company that promised to provide sellers that used non-Amazon services with shipping. Flexport did a deal with Shopify, becoming its "sole official logistics partner."
But then Shopify did another logistics deal – with Amazon. Clark was ordered to tender his resignation or face immediate dismissal.
How did all this happen? Well, there are two theories. The first is that Shopify teamed up with Amazon to stab Flexport in the back, then purged all the ex-Amazonians from the Flexport upper ranks. The other is that Clark was a double-agent, who worked with Amazon to sabotage Flexport, and was caught and fired.
But either way, this is a huge win for Amazon, a monopolist who is in the FTC's crosshairs thanks to the anti-corporate vibe-shift that has consumed the nation and the world. As the sole major employer for this kind of logistics, Amazon is a de facto labor regulator, deciding who can work in the sector. The FTC's enforcement action isn't just about monopoly – it's about labor.
Now, Clark is a rich, powerful white dude, not the sort of person who needs a lot of federal help to protect his labor rights. When liberals called the shot in the progressive coalition, they scolded leftists not to speak of class, but rather to focus on identity – to be intersectionalists.
That was a trick. There's no incompatibility between caring about class and caring about gender, race and sexual orientation. Those fast food workers who are about to get a 30% wage-hike in California? Overwhelmingly Black or brown, overwhelmingly female.
The liberal version of intersectionalism observes a world run by 150 rich white men and resolves to replace half of them with women, queers and people of color. The leftist version seeks to abolish the system altogether. The leftist version of intersectionalism cares about bias and discrimination not just because of how it makes people feel, but because of how it makes them live. It cares about wages, housing, vacations, child care – the things you can't get because of your identity.
The fight for social justice is a fight for worker justice. Eminently guillotineable monsters like Tim "Avocado Toast" Gurner advocate for increasing unemployment by "40-50%" – but Gurner is just saying what other bosses are thinking:
https://jacobin.com/2023/09/tim-gurner-capitalists-neoliberalism-unemployment-precarity
Garner is 100% right when he says: "There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around."
And then he says this: "So it’s a dynamic that has to change. We’ve got to kill that attitude, and that has to come through hurt in the economy."
Garner knows that the vibes are upstream of the change. The capitalist dream starts with killing our imagination, to make us believe that "there is no alternative." If we can dream bigger than "better representation among oligarchs" when we might someday dream of no oligarchs. That's what he fears the most.
Watch the video of Garner. Look past the dollar-store Gordon Gecko styling. That piece of shit is terrified.
And he should be.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets
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EFF Awards, San Francisco, September 14
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transmascissues · 3 months
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as an intersex woman- it'd be real nice if these people stopped throwing around the word "mutilation" and ignoring IGM (which is still practiced en mass even in "first world" countries) and our lack of bodily autonomy. a trans person (or even a cis person getting elective reconstructive surgery for a myriad of reasons, including IGM) getting bottom surgery is in no way comparable to actual mutilation against your will and it's such a slap in the face to see these people bitch about it while ignoring us. our medical records are literally hidden, destroyed, and altered for the sake of non-intersex people never having to contend with the reality of sex variations.
I bet they'd probably look at the stats on Intersex human rights and try to justify it away though, they sound like the types who want Intersex people to fit into their two perfect sex and gender boxes and never complain! thank you for not backing down, muddying the waters on mutilation- while the intersex community is still trying to fight to get IGM recognized and banned- harms IGM victims worldwide and disgusts me to my core.
Not to mention how many recent american bills banning or limiting elective trans surgeries conveniently still allow for IGM and the pushing of hormones on intersex children and adults who don't need them (again for the comfort of non-intersex people and the assumption we must be "fixed"...) very convenient for these people to ignore!
all of this! these people will act like the “western world” was totally against genital mutilation practices until the big bad trans people came along, when in reality it’s been happening right here at home the whole time.
the only reason they don’t see it (or at least act like they don’t see it) is because of intersexism and racism — intersexism that tells them that whatever’s being done to intersex people must be beneficial and medically sound because of course intersex traits should be “fixed”, and racism that validates their belief that the things happening where they live must be better than what’s happening “over there” because of course there are more human rights abuses happening in non-western places than in their good progressive home.
fearmongering about anything that changes the clitoris or vulva in any way being a form of FGM + downplaying the harms of IGM and saying it’s just good medicine = the perfect way to uphold their precious pseudoscientific sex binary for another day, i guess. as long as we’re all living with the genitals they think we should have, they don’t care who it hurts.
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batmanisagatewaydrug · 3 months
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I like how anon makes it sound like you said pedophilia was okay when what you said was you didn't care what people write about fictional characters. Amazing
so what's being employed there is an extremely common tactic used by people trying to make their opposition sound like they're doing something that no reasonable person would agree with. accusations of pedophilia are extremely popular for this, since it's an issue that most people, understandably, are extremely opposed to and disgusted by, and very few people want to publicly label themselves as "guy who thinks pedophilia is fine." it's a tactic designed to put people on the defensive and (ideally) isolate them from potential support, which fortunately doesn't work on me because I'm not apologizing for something that wasn't wrong and I don't care who on this hellsite likes me.
it's the motivation behind the right's recently rekindled (although never entirely vanished) obsession with portraying trans people and drag performers, other queer people, and queer-friendly educators generally, as groomers who want to give children forbidden knowledge about sex that their parents don't approve of.
in the particular instance you're referencing, re: my anon, people will level accusations of "pedophilia" at fiction depicting anything from an adult sexually assaulting a child to two teenagers consensually having sex to someone in their 20s consensually hooking up with someone in their 40s. only one of those things - the first - is actually a depiction of pedophilia, and all three are things that people are perfectly allowed to write about without having to go before a tribunal to prove that their intentions are pure. it's also just fucking baffling to me that this is only applied to depictions of sex; if you assumed that every fictional depiction of murder or violence is an admission of actual desire to do such thing, writers would be getting rounded up in droves.
this hardly needs to be said, but: yes, I do find ring cameras - surveillance technology owned by a deeply evil megacorporation that abuses the rights of its employees and freely turns over camera footage to police - more objectionable than Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower or Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita or Alissa Nutting's Tampa or any other fictional depictions of sex, because a book doesn't harm anyone and surveillance state police collusion does.
as someone lucky enough to teach youth sex education, with sessions focused especially on media literacy, teaching the self-advocacy skills to recognize potentially unsafe situations and the right to tell adults no, and emphasizing bodily autonomy, the entire thing is exhausting. which is the point, they very much want you to get so tired that you just stop saying anything, but once again I am an insane bitch who thrives on negativity so I shan't be stopping any time soon.
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emmitaaa4 · 2 months
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Addressing some fandom BS inconsistencies
Gwyn was shadow mommy, Az was shadow daddy, they were gonna have shadow babies with her extra super pliable bones.
I audibly chocked when I read this @nikethestatue (btw everything said in this post was on point). No but seriously this is how they sound, too many of them insisting that there is nothing wrong with basing the likelihood of a ship on who has the more suitable uterus to be with a man... cause supposedly they're just picking up on the hints SJM wrote for them? She likes babies for HEAs so ofc children are the end all be all of a relationship, plus there's absolutely no way that she could ever write an adoption plot SJM is literally adopted and has done it in other series. Selective reading strikes again.
A minimum amount of critical thinking would tell you that 1) the infamous *magical uterus change* scene was about nessian (& feysand), not about any ship; 2) if SJM had written Nesta changing Elain's uterus, it would have given too much away, not to mention 3) how disturbing/violating it would have been for Nesta to change her sister's reproductive anatomy WITHOUT HER CONSENT?! None of it makes sense narratively; my girl Nes would never, especially given the trauma they both suffered from having their bodily autonomy--and so much more--ripped away by the Cauldron.
This argument is so trivialized that I see it every other day on reddit/tiktok/*insert media app*, and yet elriels are the toxic side of the fandom? The ones whom people are allowed to insult, to ridicule for theories all made in good fun, the women that are villainized over a difference of opinion? Don't get me wrong, there's assholes on both sides and people keep calling one another variations of delulu (and the nastier personal attacks). But by painting this fandom-wide villain there is such a lack of accountability for the plethora of harmful talking points spread by other portions of the fandom. (I've been silently reading the anti-elain & anti-elriel tags for like a year, and I'm on tiktok. Yes, I have self-destructive tendencies).
Anyways.
I never understood either how people ever actually thought (or well still think) that gwynriel would happen BEFORE elucien?? It makes no sense logically, narratively, or in terms of characterization & the arc she's set up for Elain, Azriel, and Lucien. Yet it took one controversial bonus chapter for people to decenter Elain in her own story, that is make her choice of romantic partner--which SJM spent 3+ books setting up--Azriel's. It took one bonus chapter that soo many readers are still unaware of, to brush Elain off as a "sexual object" Az is using to distract himself until his therapist-extraordinaire Gwyn comes in and heals him all up. Because ofc she will: she's badass and not the "passive and weak and boring" Eplain (aka "Plant" or "brain dead gardener"), she fits the YA archetype of the spunky warrior-girl so she can handle his darkness, and SJM supposedly spent time fleshing her out because she wrote her as a LI for Azriel; she's made for him, she is what he needs to grow (I actually enjoyed Gwyn's character btw, just pointing out how silly it all sounds). “Next book is a love triangle between Elain/Az/Gwyn” “Elain will turn evil or is secretly evil”. So you're telling me that SJM would pit Elain & Gwyn against each other in a love triangle over a man... all because of a necklace that was not even mentioned once in the actual books? Please, let's be logical for a second.
All this because instead of reading the bonus chapter in the context of the books, some people are reading the books in the context of the bonus chapter. Which now that I think of it is probably why so many people mischaracterize Az the way they do--because yes we know enough of his character to know half of the stuff the fandom diagnoses him with is questionable. Azriel? Entitled incel x fuckboy hybrid (gotta be the first of his kind, minute slay ig)? Interesting tell me more. No joke I saw a semi-popular post on here where a gwynriel said they read the bonus WITHOUT HAVING READ ANY OF THE BOOKS. I'm sorry, ship wars are silly and believe it or not idc who ppl ship, but it makes it hard to take some of the things they say seriously.
All this to say that the fandom isn't even debating the right thing. If you consider everything SJM has said in her interviews:
(she's been planting seeds for Nesta & Elain's book since acomaf; she knows who she is writing the first 2 books about + is keeping things open for the 3rd one--with 5 different ship options--which automatically rules out "Elain will close the series"; she said she's doing research for Elain's book in the ACOFAS bonus & there's seeds for future bookS in acofas; all she said recently about her beloved *heroines* and the themes of fate/true love/choice she finds *very* interesting & wants to discuss)
and if you also consider all she's written in the actual books (elain's characterization + the overarching plot in general & how she fits into it), then it's pretty evident that Elain's book is next.
The question then would be who is the MMC / 2nd PoV in her book, aka would acotar 5 be an elucien or an elriel story? Because logically, gwynriel was always a consequence of elucien. I honestly do not understand how people don't see that.
Oh and they always think they're gagging elriels with the "obviously Azriel is the next MC" as if elriels aren't saying the same thing? And we're the ones twisting info and not making sense. It's just funny at this point.
---sidenote: I realize that this post generalizes some things, and I just wanted to say that I have interacted with lovely eluciens / people on either side of this headache of a ship war. My hard limit is Elain haters though... back off I say 🤺 BACK OFF 🤺
---sidenote 2: I would have written this as a reblog except im not entirely sure how tumblr works and I get no visibility from them rip.
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emeraldspiral · 2 months
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Thinking about Irkens having little to no concept of bodily autonomy. They don't get to chose whether or not they want children, they're bred to be sterile. They're bred to be unable to experience sexual pleasure or desire or even platonic affection. They're bred to be incapable of living without an invasive inorganic life-support system implanted at birth and then coded and re-encoded throughout their lives to serve the Empire in whatever way the Control Brains see fit. They spend their entire childhood being trained for a career they weren't allowed to choose. Jobs are assigned to them and they can't leave unless they are fired or transferred to another position by someone with higher authority. They don't even get to choose how they dress. Everyone wears either a generic uniform or a uniform specific to their job.
Is it any wonder then why "Invader" is such a coveted job? It's the only one that allows Irkens any amount of freedom.
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shaanks · 4 months
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hey so I'm literally starting to hate the word "radical" in its political usage.
it is not radical to think that people deserve food and clean water.
it is not radical to think that people deserve safe housing, full stop.
it is not radical to think that bodily autonomy is a human right.
it is not radical to think that queer and trans folks should be allowed to exist comfortably and happily, be allowed to marry each other, and have access to medical care, gender-affirming or otherwise.
it is not radical to think that children shouldn't be going into debt over school lunches.
it is not radical to think that education should be free.
it is not radical to think that nobody should have to die of preventable/treatable illnesses.
it is not radical to think that poverty shouldn't fucking exist.
belief in basic human rights and dignities for everyone that exists is not a radical stance, we're a cooperative species, we are LITERALLY built to care for and help each other.
attaching the term "radical" to any stance that approaches compassionate and decent is a tool of the oppressor class, and we are literally 200 years behind the curve. we HAVE to re-frame the way we talk about these things and throw the fucking shackles off.
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anamericangirl · 3 months
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The pro death side keeps saying "Abortion is a woman's right! Abortion is a woman's right!" Have you ever heard any explanations as to why they consider abortion to be a right? Or what they believe constitutes something as a right? If you have then I would be interested in hearing, I'd like to understand their reasoning. Personally I just see it as a nothing-excuse for "I deserve an abortion because I want one!"
I have a degree in philosophy and I study law so being involved with legal philosophy I'm quite familiar with what a right is. A right exists as either an entitlement to have something or as an authority over somebody. I can't see how an abortion could be justified on those grounds though. Rights are intrinsic because they are given to us by God our Creator and everyone has equal rights. Where do pro deathers get the idea then that God gives all women the right to kill their children? Does the right always exist with a female or is the right gained once a girl has fully matured into a woman and is thus able to bear children? I have the impression that pro deathers believe rights are ultimately given to us by the legislature and anything can be made into a right if we want it to be.
Sorry for the late response I'm not sure how I missed this in my inbox but I somehow did!
I actually haven't heard any of them explain what they think a right is or what makes something a right, they just scream the line because it's one of the talking points. The closest thing I've ever gotten from any of them when asking what makes abortion a right is just because the Supreme Court had decided it was one. So legally it's a constitutional right. Even though that's been overturned now they still claim it's a right but I've yet to hear any of them try to articulate what a right is and how abortion fits the definition.
And I think like with most things they talk about, they simply do not know. They have no idea what rights are and they ignore and dismiss actual fundamental human rights because bodily autonomy is a right. Abortion is a right! Ok but so is the right to life? But for some reason that right doesn't matter to them. And it seems like it should if their main line for abortion is "it's a right!" They act like being a right is the most important thing but strange how there's only one right they act that way about.
"You must allow me to kill my child because it's a right!"
"What about your child's rights?"
"You must allow me to kill my child because it's a right!"
I'm convinced they 100% do not know what they are saying.
I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head "I deserve an abortion because I want one." From the way they talk I think they think rights are defined by what they personally want. Abortion? It's a right because they want it. And that's as deep as it goes for them. It's a completely selfish ideology from beginning to end. It's an ideology where you have two people and one gets all the rights and the other person gets none.
They don't know what rights are and they don't actually care. They just use the line because they think it will get them what they want.
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balkanradfem · 1 year
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Holy practices and tradition that are okay and universally good:
making trees, forests, mountains, rivers, seas and springs holy places
protecting them and going there for special occasions
planting holy trees as a religious practice
making animals sacred and protected
promoting the communal instinct to help others who need help
solving the housing and starvation crisis
promoting peace
promoting the freedom of choice, human rights, healthy boundaries, freedom of thought, and survival resources and safety for everyone
meeting up to listen to stories and legends of the past, which come with wisdom and promote healthy morals and community
meeting up to sing together
celebrating life, freedom and happiness
creating art in celebration of life and happiness
connecting with cycles in nature, celebrating natural occurrences
acknowledging that women are the source of human life and that they have the sole right to make decisions over that sphere
rituals and decorations to cheer people up when the seasonal depression is up due to the lack of sunlight
Holy practices and traditions that are absolutely unacceptable:
promoting suffering, subservience, poverty, starvation, sacrifice and endless servitude as the only ‘correct’ and moral way to exist
rituals where everyone has to listen to a man speaking for an hour or longer
repeating stories where the moral is to submit, to give away your personality, identity, even friends and family, in order to serve ‘the greater good’, promotion of ‘don’t think, don’t doubt, don’t ask questions’, or, stories talking about the horrors that would happen to non-believers, where the goal is to terrorize children who ‘don’t believe enough’
promoting the depictions, statues and art, of suffering, body harm, slow and torturous death, glorifying such images as ‘holy’, celebrating torture and death in essence
promoting an idea that the only humans who are ‘pure and saint’ earned their sainthood by being brutally murdered or tortured
limiting what women can and cannot do, punishing and shaming women’s bodily functions, or telling them that certain body functions must be used for the sake of ‘god’ or cannot be intervened with because of ‘god’
shaming women’s normal and healthy feelings, emotions, urges, desires, sexuality and appearance
telling women that their rightful place is to be ‘property’ or ‘servants’ to the other half of population
suppressing women’s freedom of thought, women’s freedom of mind, women’s bodily autonomy, and the important decisions of her life
joining a man and a woman to live in an isolated private space where the man is in control of all major decisions, and the path of her life, while she gets to be in control of nothing
putting women’s sexuality under men’s control, allowing men to violate it or ignore it at their own will
telling women they’re responsible for male’s predatory and perverse urges, telling women to take steps to ‘prevent it’, in which the goal is to make men not accountable for their own actions, and women ashamed for being unable to control something beyond their control
making rape of women mandatory, or normal, or acceptable, or permitted or something that should in any world be going on
threatening women and children that god can ‘hear their thoughts’ and that they are to be punished if it goes against god’s ideals
encouraging people to bond and communicate with an imaginary ‘father figure’ who takes credit for the creation of human population (which women actually did), who then argues that women should suppress themselves and be convenient and pleasing to men if they want to reach the imaginary afterlife
promoting the beliefs of any book that men wrote
claiming to promote peace while having a history of religious wars and spreading the idea that people of all other religions are ‘less’ or ‘sinful’ or ‘needing to be saved (converted)’
putting men in charge of anything
equating male desires to god’s desires while female desires are condemned and punished
equating purity, innocence and value in women with inexperience with physical intimacy
punishing and shaming women both for accepting and refusing physical intimacy (if they accept they lose value and are seen as tainted, if they refuse they displeased the man who wanted it, she doesn’t get any agency and whether she wants it or not is irrelevant to religion, except if she does she’s sinful)
failing to promote well-being, satisfaction, health, freedom, human rights, bodily autonomy, natural rights to administrate or refuse to administrate a human life, and overall safety and happiness of women
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bettsfic · 9 days
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I have a fear of including things I like in my stories. For example: Female rage, romance, etc… because I feel that makes me inflexible and a less talented writer. I’ve always felt like “real” writers can write in any genre and don’t have the same elements in every one of their novels. The idea of writing what you love is a beautiful thing but for me I worry that in writing what I love, I may not get to the level that I want to be at as a writer. I guess I equate enjoying writing and being free with it to = not being worthy. And being complex in ways that I may not necessarily love and is challenging = good work from me.
is it possible that some of your apprehension toward writing what you love has to do with fear of vulnerability? writing what you love exposes you. it feels like walking around naked. it allows people to perceive you, and conversely, it allows people to misperceive you. both of those things are terrifying. it's much more comfortable to catch a wide, distant net of an aesthetic. that way, it doesn't matter what a reader thinks of it; you don't care that much about it anyway, right?
it's interesting that you say "real" writers can write in any genre. i'm looking at my bookshelf right now and there's not a single author on it that goes beyond their established genre, or even writes particularly varying stories with an ensemble of complex characters. go to the bibliography of any prolific author and see how wide their variation is. sometimes you'll see writers write in short form and long form. occasionally a writer will write children's literature and adult literature. there are writers who live in the venn diagram overlap of genres but don't tend to stray in either direction. sometimes screenwriters become novelists and vice versa. but otherwise, it's impractical to write so widely, so consistently. your agent and editors will all have their niche and it will be difficult for them to represent you and support your work if you have three sci fi bestsellers and all of a sudden you want to write some subsubsubgenre of true crime.
every artist has two things: their medium and their subject. instead of thinking of "things you love" think of them as your subjects, in the way a painter's subject can be nature, or a poet's subject can be grief. unless you're only writing for money, you have no choice but to write your subjects. even if you try not to, they'll bleed into your work. here's an example: one time in workshop my good buddy Chris said to me, "you write a lot about class." to which i thought, i love you Chris but this is porn. but he was right. all my characters have a conflict with money. often they're blue collar workers or don't have a job at all. most of my characters don't even go to college. after he said that, i started to lean into it and become more aware of it. the more aware of it i became, the more strongly i felt about it. you can go through my AO3 and scroll through my fics and see how important money is in them. and if it's not money, it's the military. and if it's not the military, it's some other loss of bodily autonomy at the hands of a greater institution.
think outside of writing. chefs have types of food they prefer to cook. scholars have their fields. athletes have their sport. musicians have their instrument. the more you zero in on something, the better you become at it. as a writer, the more you write your subject, the better you'll become at depicting it.
your subjects may grow and change over time. they may not. you may have some subjects you wear out, and you may have others that you sew into everything you write. you may have repetitions of images, characters, resolutions, and conflicts. it's good to experiment and move beyond your comfort zone sometimes, but you have to find comfort in your comfort zone first. and you do that by embracing your subjects.
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gatheringbones · 5 months
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[“Thanks in large part to the Violence Against Women Act—supposedly the definitive federal law to address sexual and domestic violence, passed in 1994—cops have been tasked and culturally entrusted with the role of protecting women and abuse victims. The damage of this to victims, particularly poor, non-white, queer, or non-citizen victims, is immeasurable.
In January 2021 a Louisiana woman working with local police entered a drug house wearing a hidden microphone and camera to help police gather information about the dealer. Once inside, the Associated Press reported that the woman’s police handlers essentially abandoned her, allowing the dealer to rape her twice as he threatened to put her “in the hospital.” Police were able to use the intel gathered by the woman to arrest the drug dealer on charges of second-degree rape, false imprisonment, and distribution of meth. But weeks after the sting, they arrested the woman who had been their informant and charged her with possession of drug paraphernalia—after she had been raped while successfully helping them build a case against a drug dealer. In defense of the incident, an officer who helped lead the operation told the AP: “We’ve always done it this way. She was an addict and we just used her as an informant like we’ve done a million times before.” One local official who saw footage of the assaults described it as “one of the worst depictions of sexual abuse I have ever seen.”
The operation itself is a jarring display of incompetence that resulted in a woman being raped, while officers’ flippant language shrugs the woman off as “an addict,” her trauma a minor mistake they can “learn from” to “do better next time.” Her subsequent arrest is a stark reminder, too, that criminalized and incarcerated people are often survivors of sexual assault, further harmed by law enforcement agencies that—as in this Louisiana woman’s case—do nothing to protect them.
If galling stories like this surprise you or challenge any of your preconceived notions about law enforcement, then pro-cop propaganda, or copaganda, might just be to blame. It exists all around us, with tremendous implications for how the public understands (or rather, misunderstands) gender-based violence and all violence. Copaganda starts early—think children’s shows like Paw Patrol. Growing up on dramas like Law and Order: SVU and Castle, even iconic comedies like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I’m one of many Americans who was socialized to see law enforcement and the court system as being decisively, nobly on our side, the be-all and end-all for justice and community safety.”]
kylie cheung, from survivor injustice: state-sanctioned abuse, domestic violence, and the fight for bodily autonomy, 2023
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transmutationisms · 11 months
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wanted to ask what your thoughts are about the show’s subtextual implications of csa? its never mentioned really but it kind of just hangs in the air with the other abuse and the cultural of sexual violence and abuse of everyone and everything else. i personally don’t believe logan even abused any of them that way, but obviously with people like mo and that whole group of men at the funeral, it was still something the kid’s grew up around and were vulnerable to, and i think because of that logan Did perpetuate csa against them, in a way. like even if He never touched them, by putting them in such close proximity to predators and he himself being complicit in a culture of sexual violence both in his personal life and his company, he still betrayed their trust that he would protect them from that.
but idk, do you think there’s a possibility any of them were actually victims of an assault or harassment?
this is kind of a huge topic, but: i think what the show is getting at wrt sexual violence and childhood trauma is the idea that growing up in a context that enables and even encourages rape is itself sexually traumatic, and that type of immersion in systemic violence has a profound impact on the psyche with or without specific or discrete instances of direct interpersonal violence. which is to say, yes, i agree that there is a very real way in which all of logan's children have experienced sexual violence simply by virtue of being part of his company and his family (part of the capitalist structure).
i do agree that the presence of the 'wolf pack' is significant (the kids weren't allowed to get in the pool around them, etc), but even beyond that, i think the show is suggesting that it would be impossible to grow up in an environment where 1) sex is equivalent to violence, and 2) business is expressed through this language, and 3) familial love is secondary to the business concerns and so also expressed through this violent language—and not be traumatised by that. capitalism is itself already traumatic, homophobia and transmisogyny / transphobia are traumatic, and logan's rigid hierarchical ideas of masculinity and strength are elevated expressions of these systems.
anybody in waystar's orbit will have a relationship to sexual violence and trauma—and a child, who lacks legal personhood and bodily autonomy, is quite clearly going to experience this entire upbringing as violent and traumatic. like, even if logan's childrearing was 'successful' on his terms, ie produced an heir capable of the kind of emotional repression and capacity to inflict violence that logan valorises, that would still itself be a traumatic outcome for that person. the ideology governing waystar is alienating and intrinsically violent. how could you grow up in a world where the powerless are denied personhood and subject to rape and murder and not have that shape how you—again, a child denied autonomy and power—relate to your body, your sexuality, and your concept of self?
so, as to whether the kids did experience specific and direct events of child sexual assault, rape, etc—i honestly just find this line of questioning uninteresting because it's speculation. i've already said i don't find the 'explicit' csa reading necessary in understanding roman's character, and that the incestuous sub/text with him is there on purpose not to indicate that the roys are uniquely incestuous but to suggest that capitalist family structures inherently create this type of desire and propensity for abuse. i would extend basically analogous arguments to the other roy kids, and indeed, to any character on the show. all of the roy kids are sexually traumatised and this is explicitly because they grew up in a company (which is to say also a family and an economic system) that is violent, specifically sexually and specifically to those designated weaker and lesser-than.
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schafpudel · 7 months
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Swan Maidens, Swan Princes
So Duck is the ugly duckling and Tutu is Odette but in her entirety she's the little mermaid. A water-creature falls in love with a prince and would do anything to be with him as a human girl (but also there's the implication that her reasons are deeper than infatuation - the mermaid looks sadly at her fish's tail and is interested in humanity long before meeting the prince; the duck complains about her looks and voice, and you can imagine a human cradling a throat the wrong shape) and makes a faustian deal with a witch or sorcerer. Her fate is said to be to dissolve into sea-foam/turn into a speck of light and vanish, leaving neither soul nor body behind.
(Hans Christian Andersen was in love with a man. "I languish for you as for a pretty Calabrian wench… my sentiments for you are those of a woman. The femininity of my nature and our friendship must remain a mystery." He mailed a copy of The Little Mermaid to the man. The man was engaged to a woman. The love was doomed.)
Tutu is also a swan maiden. The typical narrative for the swan maiden is this: there is a woman who is also a swan. Naked, she is human, but when she puts on her cloak or shirt of feathers, she is a swan, and she prefers to live as a swan, taking off the garment mainly to bathe. A man finds her human form beautiful, steals her skin, and coerces her into a heterosexual marriage and a human life. She may even be forced to bear his children. Eventually, though, she finds her swan skin stashed away, and makes her escape, never to be seen again.
(I imagine many people can sympathise with the swan.)
But there are exceptions to this narrative, that lend themselves to different subtext. One intriguing one is found in the Dolopathos. In this version, the swan-woman's naked form is that of a swan, and she turns into a human by the means of a golden chain-necklace. Her marriage to the human man is consensual. Their children, explicitly, inherit the swan-maiden nature: they are born as human babies, but with gold chain-necklaces like their mother. The schemes of a wicked stepmother lead to the boy children immediately having their gold chains revoked, forcing them into their swan forms. The sister (whose chain was never stolen, and thus grew up human while still being able to join her brothers on the lake), later, manages to steal back her brothers' gold chains, and they take human form for the first time since birth.
Except one swan-boy continues to be denied his human form, for his gold chain is damages. He goes on to be the animal companion of Lohengrin, the Knight of the Swan, pulling the knight's boat-chariot through water with his golden chain.
In both the typical "human into swan via clothing" narrative and Dolpathos' "swan into human via a necklace" narrative, the naked form is not the shapeshifters preferred form. Being denied that which allows their transformation, whether into swan or man, is an act of coercion and violence, a denial of identity and bodily autonomy.
The heart shard necklace is what lets the duck become a girl and a swan-maiden ballerina. When returned to the prince, Mythos gains magical powers - and some of these, such as the summoning of flurries of pink petals, are exactly the same as Tutu's.
And yet duck is able to invoke Tutu's form and power, if only briefly, without the pendant. Duck is also written a lot less animalistically than other animal characters, and the obvious Doylist reason is that the show frames animalistic behavior as weird/creepy and Duck is supposed to be relatable to the human audience by contrast, but. She was literally conceptualized as human girl before Itoh developed the idea to make her a duck, and she is no more strange or inhuman than any other clumsy, ditzy, goodhearted mahou-shoujo heroine. She's just a quacking girl.
Yet the show says, "you were born in a duck's body. Back to a duck you must go."
Mytho is returned to his full princehood, but is still bound into a marriage by obligation. Intriguingly, for such an amatonormative show, Princess Tutu suggest to the audience that Mytho's obsession with Tutu was something other than (romantic) "love" all along; rather, the "feeling that burned in my breast when i thought of tutu" was Hope. It was simply construed as romantic by everyone around him.
(There's a brief shot of a younger Siegfried, presumably pre-heart-shattering, being told about Princess Tutu by an old man, within the pages of The Prince and The Raven. Siegfried expresses the desire to marry the fairy-creature. I wonder if that could be read as a displaced, misunderstood emotion as well, articulated as heterosexual love because a fairy tale character has no other way to understand a boy being mesmerized by a girl.)
Anyways it's literally not in the text but if you pointed at Mytho and told me he's actually the same kind of being as Princess Tutu - some sort of swan maiden fairy being - but was just raised as a human boy I'd like, buy it. It's a headcanon I can accept. If some birds want to be girls then some boys can long to be birds? hashtag gender envy
Also Fakir can't understand Duck's gender b/c hes the only tutu character who unambigiously isnt a bird in any way. Itoh and Sato put princess tutu in the public domain so the transgender furries can poop and twist it up. what was that. goodnight
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the-badger-mole · 4 months
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Reaching for Hope
These last few months have been filled with the most horrifying stories and images coming out of Palestine, DRC, Sudan, Yemen, and too many other places around the world. We, in the US, have seen our president- our political leaders- roll over and not only allow the atrocities to continue, but to actually financially support and arm the perpetrators, despite the majority of us screaming for them to stop. To me, there is little difference between the Democrats and the Republicans at this point. Both parties are bought and paid for by the same people. As a new presidential election is coming up, I can't in good conscious vote Democrat. Not after what I've seen. Not as long as they refuse to hear us when we tell them we don't want Genocide Joe Biden or any of his cabinet to run.
But what is the solution?
I hate the feeling of helplessness I feel. I hate watching the horrors being carried out with my tax dollars. I hate that our "leaders" are more concerned with keeping the money from groups like AIPAC than actually representing the people who voted for them. They have put my finger on the trigger and they won't let me let go.
I'm trying to figure out how to make my voice heard. I've reached out to my representatives. I've done what I can to amplify voices that need to be heard more than mine. I can't claim any special effort in following BDS boycotts because the truth is, these aren't brands I have a whole lot of intentional contact with in the first place. As for Starbucks and McDonald's, I don't like either place so, cutting them off took very little for my part. I do encourage you to avoid all of these businesses, though. I don't know what else to do.
I will not vote for Joe Biden if he runs again. I will do my best to find down ballot candidates who's values are more in line with mine, but I will not give my support to a man who sees the atrocities being committed in Palestine and gives billions and weapons to the people committing these crimes against humanity. If the DNC is smart, they will be actively looking for candidates who don't openly support genocide, but let's face it, we ALL know how smart the DNC is. So, barring some drastic change, barring the DNC running a candidate who isn't on the take from AIPAC, who will actually pull support from Israel as they try to wipe out an entire culture for the sake of oil, I will be voting third party. I'm considering voting for Claudia De la Cruz of the PSL party, but there's nearly a year left, so I'm open to shopping around.
I know there are those that will say that pulling votes away from Biden is essentially voting for Trump. I know that there are those that will say that if the Republicans take the office again, they'll gut our rights. To that, I say, a vote for Trump is a vote for Trump and a vote for Biden is a vote for Biden. If the DNC can't come up with a better candidate and a better reason to vote for them than the same fear mongering tactics they've been using for years, then Trump is the DNC's fault. What has the Democratic party done to ensure our rights? What protections for voting rights have they passed at a federal level? What protections for education? For bodily autonomy? How do we have FOURTEEN BILLION to spare for freakin ISRAEL, but nothing for public schools? Nothing for student loan relief? Nothing for public health? Police reform? What good is the Democratic party if their only real platform is "Vote Democrat because we're not that guy"? If your conscious tells you to vote for Biden in November, so be it. As for me, I can't look at the man without seeing the blood of innocent men, women and children dripping off of him.
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