#i know people have used this situation to try to create division in the trans community and an unfortunate number of people took the bait

[weed-cat]

.

#if you find predstrogen/avery's blog annoying or her opinions stale or whatever #this is a great time to shut up and keep it to yourself. people arent talking about how she got nuked because they love her #they're talking about how she got nuked bcs she was a popular transfem blogger who took great care not to break tos for this extact reason #and she still got termed and her appeal still got denied after an organized surge of transphobic hate and mass reporting #this conversation is about how poorly tumblr staff treat transfems who use their site. #i know people have used this situation to try to create division in the trans community and an unfortunate number of people took the bait #I'm seeing it happen on my dash right now #but that's what you're doing if you engage with the infighting about which part of the trans community is responsible here. #you're taking the bait. #just stop it and focus on making tumblr safer for everyone #including safety from insular violence. #what I'm saying is stop fucking arguing guys oh my god. certain members of our community are being vicimized by hostile outside parties! #why are we yelling at each other???!?!?

[hearthandhomemagick]

Food For Thought - Steven Universe

Hello there, I would like to tell you my story and journey with the amazingly beautiful, and wonderfully written TV Show...

Steven Universe.

I started watching this show when it first came out in High School. I mean, I was so excited to watch it that I anticipated the very first episode and sat down with snacks to observe it’s premier. I had become immediately enthralled not only with the art style, but also with the genuine wholesomeness and elucidations of processing emotions and life experiences. I was astounded that a kids show could express to me how to manage my emotions as well as connect with my moral standings. It’s a show I recommended to everyone, but often didn’t talk about because of it being a kids show, and me being almost being grown. It was my secret love until someone else brought it up.

This show stuck with me through the years, and helped me through some of my hardest moments in life. 

I remember watching the episode, “Mindful Education” and melting into Garnet’s lesson of mindfulness and self-awareness. I had been going through a lot at the end of 2016, graduating and going through a rough election along with having to move states for college. My opinions were forming in the extreme area and I had a fire to protect my thoughts and opinions with no restrain or any form of control of my emotional reality. I was rambunctious as much as I was head-strong and, at times, hard-headed all together. 

When this episode aired, I didn’t know why I loved Garnet and Stevonnie’s song, “Here Comes a Thought.” But I did, and it still carries with me into my life today. 

I want to discuss a specific time, though, that this episode saved my sanity and opened my eyes to a concept I didn’t understand when I first watched it. I was on social media, and was defending my opinions against quite a few people by myself. Eventually, I was getting nasty comments from a bunch of millennials telling me, 

“You’re too fucking stupid to understand, maybe you should go back to school, child.”

“You’re so emotional, and your emotions don’t matter here. Imagine being this dumb.”

“Imagine being a dumb bitch like Carly and saying you wanted to cut your penis off to look like a woman.” *NOTE I am not transgender, there is nothing wrong with being transgender and her insinuating such did not bother me. Her rhetoric insinuating trans was wrong is what irked me, this bitch was transphobic and had issues that she needs to repair in her own time. She wrote an entire post based around this context on her personal page using my real name, and she didn’t even know who I was.*

and my personal favorite, “Here’s the suicide hotline, I know your generation is prone to killing themselves and are overly emotional.”

Now, there were over 50, under 100, messages going back and forth where these people were just bullying me and I refused to back down. I wound up in a panic attack in my bedroom, literally wanting to kill myself because they were bullying me. The hotline would have come in handy if it were the actual hotline. I ended up going to my dad and older sister (my older sisters friend was the main one I was arguing with and her posy showed up on my post), because no one on the post was on my side.

Both told me, “If you can’t handle the heat, stay out of the kitchen.” My sister told her friend to stop, and threatened the other girl for her nasty posts and comments. My dad tried to mediate on the post itself, but the people wouldn’t stop. I eventually had to take it down.

My family didn’t calm me down in this moment. Not even a little bit. It felt like a back-handed helping hand. Like they wanted to protect me, but also somewhat agreed with the people on the post.

The only thing that calmed my nerves in this moment, ultimately, was the song, “Here Comes a Thought.” 

I sat in my room, sobbing, hoping to myself that it would make sense as to why it was okay for these things to happen. The song soothed over my nerves, eventually releasing my muscles and giving me a sense ease. I was able to process and realized a few personal things as well. I didn’t realize it, but before long, I was meditating to the song on repeat. I kept telling myself, “I’m okay, this is a thought. A moment. I am not my thoughts. I am not this moment.”

This was simply one of the ways Steven Universe has helped me process and understand myself more. I bring this up because I came across and article today that disappointed me to the core.

The Steven Universe Fandom has toxic tendencies.

I was shook.

How could a child’s show be turned into something so negative? Something that was meant to promote self-awareness, self-love, acceptance of character, and understanding of others had been morphed into a gatekeepers safe haven.

Now I know this isn’t the majority, and before you get offended, hurt or start defending yourself, I want you to ask yourself if what you are defending is an action you would defend from anyone else. If it is, by all means defend your ground.

But the one concept that eludes me, and offers zero substance in terms of valid arguments, is that men can not watch this show. Let me explain why men NEED to watch this fucking show.

My boyfriend watched this entire show, episode for episode, and benefitted from it. This show offered him coping techniques, an understanding of why love should come before war, and mediating every situation so you see and understand every perspective. These are things children shows didn’t offer him growing up, he has often and openly verbalized his need for this show in his childhood because of certain traumas, and we often continue watching it even after seeing every single episode and movie.

This show was never meant for one or two groups of people, and if you feel that way then refer back to the writers themselves who were literally trying to teach the lesson in the show over and over again to NEVER EXCLUDE PEOPLE FROM YOUR GROUP. You exclude people, and you create a division, a war of sorts. You immediately have become the thing Steven Universe advocated against in the first place.

This also leads into the whole “art” situation in the fandom. 

This show is anti-bully. There are commercials for it and everything. It is expressed in multiple episodes why bullying is never a good thing in any situation. 

You simply cannot justify the hypocrisy in bullying someone out of self-expression that literally harms no one. You can’t justify it.

Think about it. You draw or sketch a piece of art that took you hours, or even a few minutes. It’s your favorite character, and maybe you yourself are going through some mental thoughts regarding your weight that lead you to draw the character thinner or bigger. Size shouldn’t matter in any capacity when relating a character to ones self. 

If you’re skinny, you’re beautiful. If you are thick or curvy, you are beautiful. If you are obese or overweight, you are beautiful. Weight doesn’t matter, but representation of body types in different characters does matter.

Imagine a child falls in love with a bigger character, but is experiencing body challenges where she is being picked on for being too thin or scrawny (it happens, I’ve seen it with my nieces). Who are you to say that making her favorite character look like her own body is wrong? Especially if art is a coping mechanism they use for mental health reasons.

Like Malachite, a fusion that was devastating and abusive in every way, you are taking the choice and voice of an entire being to make your actions and opinions “right” or “okay”.

There is so much more I could say on this show, and so much more I could say about the fandom. And I know it is not the majority of the fandom, but I did want to make everyone in the fandom aware that we are human.

None of us are stoic and balanced like Garnet, and even Garnet had problems in her relationship. None of us are strong and laid back like Amethyst, and even she had self-love issues. None of us are as analytical and organized as Pearl, and yet she had problems throughout the series. 

None of you are perfect, and to act as if you are is defeating the purpose of a show trying to teach you how to be responsible for yourself and your actions. I’m not perfect either, and preaching about a fandom I’m not a huge part of sounds counter-intuitive, I’m aware.

But my nieces want to watch this show. My nephew watches this show with me. My boyfriend’s niece is going to start watching the show. 

Please do not make a toxic environment for kids who need this show to grow up. Kids who experience trauma, and learn from this show deserve a safe space without people trying to justify bullying or force them to think that because they are a boy or girl, they can or can’t watch the show. Without people making people feel bad for being themselves.

Why don’t we create a new space? A space where everyone is accepted as they are, and negative behavior is addressed the same way the gems or Steven would address them. With education, perception awareness, and PATIENCE. 

I know some will say, “It’s not my job to raise your child.” and “It’s not my responsibility to make people aware of their tendencies.”

You’re right. It’s also not your responsibility to bully people into changing themselves to fit your dialogue. Simply put, you’re responsible for yourself alone. But you have no right to complain on someone's behavior, art or experiences if you are not willing to be patient with correcting said behavior in yourself first.  

Who knows, maybe I’m in the wrong here for not knowing the full story. All I’m saying is, if you see someone being a bully, being mean or even being a hypocrite, call them out in the sweetest way possible. Let them know we are facilitating a safe space for people who need a community rather than a closed off club.

Be the change you want to see in this world.

Learn, grow and prosper. 

I wish you all well and genuinely hope we can all expand our perspectives to fully understand each other in healthier and more communicative based ways. We deserve that sort of kindness from each other.

#steven #stevenuniverse #amethyst #pearl #garnet #malachite #cartoonshow #art #love #patience #understanding #herecomesathought #foodforthought

[carpathxanridge]

im so torn between deep empathy for elliot page and... continued disappointment. i want her to be happy with transition, i really do, but she looks pained. i couldn’t read that interview and look at those photos without feeling a deep sense of turmoil, especially when the article discussed her early acting career and discomfort with being sexualized and forced to be feminine. that breaks my heart because i get it, really. feeling like your body isn’t your own, being sexually harassed and objectified all while dealing with internalized and external homophobia... i can’t even imagine how much her dysphoria was exacerbated by working in such a misogynistic industry, where her body was a product for consumption in a somewhat literal sense.

but there comes a point where i have to say... i feel for her, i really really hope she’s okay, but the way she’s using her platform is unacceptable. “Many of the political attacks on trans people—whether it is a mandate that bathroom use be determined by birth sex, a blanket ban on medical interventions for trans kids or the suggestion that trans men are simply wayward women beguiled by male privilege—carry the same subtext: that trans people are mistaken about who they are. ‘We know who we are,’ Page says. ‘People cling to these firm ideas [about gender] because it makes people feel safe. But if we could just celebrate all the wonderful complexities of people, the world would be such a better place.’” it’s entirely dishonest in its framing of these issues. for example, the part about her wanting to play in boys’ sports as a kid... does she not understand that it was fair and acceptable because she’s female? like oh my god there is a difference between ‘playing up’— in age or in sex division— and playing down which is not allowed for a reason. fuck, my childhood soccer team (which i was already playing up by a year in) occasionally arranged to play against boys’ teams, or girls’ teams two years older. and my sister played baseball in a boys’ league because she didn’t want to play softball. those situations are completely different from males playing in women’s and girls’ leagues where they have a clear unfair advantage, and u have to be an idiot to compare the experiences.

and then the suicide guilting part of the interview... what happened to telling queer youth “it gets better?” instead you’re creating an alarmist narrative that trans people will be inevitably driven to suicide if they can’t medically transition. and it’s so fucked when you know statistically that there’s no real evidence that medical transition reduces suicidality. but most random people reading this in time don’t know that, all they hear is “trans people r killing themselves and we can help them by allowing them to transition!” because the argument is presented in this way, there’s no room for thought to whether any of this is evidence based treatment. no recognition to many trans and detrans people alike speaking out against the negative health effects, no consideration of who profits off of the medicalization of gender nonconformity, no skepticism or desire to protect trans people from medical abuse. and then the trans kids argument... that argument alone is so manipulative and misrepresented that i can’t give the benefit of the doubt that elliot is saying all this in good faith, i can’t help but wonder what imperative has driven her to speak so strongly and without nuance on this issue.

and then you frame acceptance of gender identity as accepting human complexity?? when gender critical feminists recognize that all people are complex and don’t fit into sex-based stereotypes. we aren’t the ones trying to put people in boxes. and no, i don’t think you’re “mistaken about who you are,” elliot. in fact, i hope you’re happy with transition and don’t come to regret it, just as i hope the same for all my trans friends. i just don’t believe that your own identity and self-conception should precede my right to talk about and name sex-based oppression, should precede the rights of all women and girls to safety, privacy, bodily autonomy. i reject the idea that having clear definitions of sex and sexuality are somehow clinging to outdated ideas. i believe that the desire for legal and ideological clarity isn’t a meaningless pursuit. and you’d realize that radical feminists’ ideas about gender are actually not “rigid” at all if you listened to what we are saying. we’re saying you can do what you want, express yourself how you want, present socially as a man and ask for your dysphoria to be accommodated interpersonally... all while being female, while being a woman.

i’m really sad that elliot’s realty causes her so much pain. i wish her healing and i hope that the choices she’s made will bring her happiness and comfort and relief. and health! i wish her wellbeing, both physical and mental. and i wish the same for all trans people. but i think we can balance those wishes with acceptance of the reality of biological sex.

also it should go without saying not to mock a gnc woman’s appearance jesus fuck. if you think her haircut looks like a little boy, think about the fact that a lot of butch lesbians have faced the same mockery. ive literally been insulted in the exact same way by homophobic bullies in high school lmaoo. when you mock someone for their appearance, even if you think they deserve it or aren’t impacted by it because of their celebrity status, you’re also mocking all the people reading it who share those traits (e.g. gender nonconformity.) and if you’re saying she looks emaciated and sick and speculating disordered eating... literally don’t. like i get it bc seeing her photos i thought she didn’t look at all healthy or happy and it made my heart break for her. but jesus fuck don’t speculate about people’s bodies and eating behaviors, especially vulnerable dysphoric women’s.

#sorry for the rant #maybe don’t reblog lol #i just had a lot of thoughts on this #the lack of empathy from some radfems toward her is really upsetting #but i also really understand the frustration because christ #what a difficult read

[emstrekblogfun]

My Take on Trans Julian hcs:

1. Pop culture needs better trans representation. Because of the lack of it, trans people tend to make it, seeing lots of characters as trans. This is no different from seeing characters as gay or bi, even if not explicitly written as such. This is a legit thing to do.

2. I am not trans. My perspective on trans issues will always be that of an outsider who often doesn’t understand certain things, but understands that they are real and it’s not my place to say they aren’t. I don’t understand jack shit about physics but I’m not going to deny the existence of gravity.

3. It’s easy to argue for or against Julian as trans. It’s even easier to see some of his experiences as a trans allegory, namely the Jules/Julian argument. These are both masculine names, but the dead naming quality is still there. I can get why trans people would relate to this moment.

4. I admit that Trans Julian is hard for me to go along with. It’s not that it’s a trans headcanon. I’ve already explained that those are legit and THIS ESSAY IS NOT AN ARGUMENT AGAINST THE HEADCANON OR A REJECTION OF PEOPLE WHO LIKE IT. There are actually other things about it that don’t work FOR ME PERSONALLY. It’s shown (admittedly in a terrible episode) that gender reassignment in the 24th century is ridiculously easy. If Julian is trans, his experience wouldn’t resemble that of the trans people who relate to him.

5. The implications of “his gender was changed along with his augmentations” has a kind of weird connotation to it. That would mean that Julian’s gender was changed against his will and he identifies as the male he became. The gender reassignment becomes another invasive, involuntary surgery.

6. Ultimately, though, my reason for not really being into this hc is petty and I apologize in advance. I’m not trans, but I autistic and Julian’s disability and “therapy” to “fix” him remind me a lot of the sorts of things autistic people go through, especially if they were diagnosed as children, as I was. There’s no reason that different people can’t relate to the same story for different reasons. If both trans and autistic people see something relatable in this, their feelings are equally valid. For people who are both autistic/neurodivergent and trans, this is even better. 

7. My issue tends to be the phrasing of trans hcs. It’s completely accidental, but it sticks with me. Whenever people talk about Julian’s gender being modified along with his other genetic enhancements, it feels like a dismissal of everything else. “It sucks that they fucked with his brain to make him smarter, but you know what would be REALLY bad? If they changed his gender!”. Nobody actually means this and I’M NOT ACCUSING ANYONE OF ABLEISM IF THEY LIKE STORIES OR HEADCANONS ABOUT THIS. This is an explanation of my own complicated feelings on the matter, and really more a critique of myself. It’s petty and irrational to feel like the trans headcanon somehow delegitimizes the autistic headcanon because they’re not mutually exclusive. I guess this one thing brings out my frustration on autistic/nd issues in general and how even progressive media and culture tends to ignore it. The people who remember transpeople still forget autistic people, making it feel like I’m lower on some sort of minority totem pole, which isn’t true, nor is it in any way productive.

8. My issue isn’t with Julian or the Trek fandom at all. It just becomes an easy target when I’m mad about something else. I’m mad that when my dad’s theatre students want to do a play with a trans character, they make sure to consult actual transpeople, but when it’s an autistic character, they first think of interviewing neurotypical psychologists. Historically, trans issues have been treated as medical case studies instead of aspects of the lives of real human-beings, but we’re starting to move beyond that. That’s a great thing. But, transpeople aren’t the only type of people to have their voices taken away in that manner. The fact that one group’s situation, at least in that regard, is getting better, but my group’s situation isn’t creates an irrational feeling of jealousy, even though there are many ways trans people actually have it harder. At least I can decide which bathroom to use without having to factor in whether people might question my right to be there to the point of violence. That’s a cis privilege that I have. Playing a game of Whose Life Sucks More is pointless. It creates a division between people who are all victims of the same system and who should work with each other, not against each other.

tldr: I often have to remind myself not to be offended by a perfectly legit headcanon because it reminds me of my own feelings of mariginalization. I apologize for this and I try to avoid mentioning said headcanon to keep from being a dick to people who definitely DON’T deserve it 

#i did an essay #on something other than the jack pack #julian bashir #autistic julian bashir #trans julian bashir #trans issues #trans rights #neurodiversity #autistic acceptence #the false hierarchy of the oppressed #i'm sorry if this sucks i'm cis #autistic angst

[ariainstars]

TRoS Speculation: Maybe It Was Intentional…

All right, since the subject obviously doesn’t let me go, new speculation on my side. WARNING: this is a longer post.

 Ever since the 80es, Star Wars has become a universal phenomenon with millions of fans all over the world. And while fans often agree, they more often than not disagree about the characters, the themes, the different turn of events etc. Star Wars touches very many different kinds of people deep down due to the emotions it provokes. Many of us have grown up with the saga, some with one trilogy, others with another. Others have read the EU novels or watched the TV shows first. The saga’s themes are so many that they appeal to all kinds of people, and the approaches are varying. There are very many topics on which we will never make everybody agree. Being the foundation for many fan’s view of the world, the root to a lot of their ideals, the source of many a dream, the saga has become a hugely personal matter. No wonder viewers all over the world can quarrel about it so venomously and get downright aggressive if you only introduce a new line of thoughts. Many fans feel that the saga belongs to them and not to the man who created it and the creative studios who are now employing it to develop new stories.

We have made our mistakes in our fandom, too, in the years since The Force Awakens came out. We were so excited in what we believed was investing into a redemption arc, love story and happy ending, connecting all kinds of dots throughout the saga and analyzing it from almost every angle. Some of us simply thought that who didn’t think like us was stupid. But many other fans believe that this saga is only about Good against Evil and not about human feelings. They keep seeing it as some superhero story, a comforting world where to retire when reality got too much, a place where bad things happen but then the hero eventually comes to take care of it. They stick to their conviction that the good guy (or the one you root for even if he’s a villain) is the one who’s the coolest. Many of them love the OT above all and plainly refuse to see anything positive about the PT or ST because they always expected to see the New Adventures of Han, Luke and Leia. Some of them have waited for literally decades for the OT’s continuation. We, who also love the other trilogies (or at least the sequels) were at times disrespectful and arrogant looking down on them and believing that they simply don’t know what the saga actually is about. And all of us need heroes. We apply our own problems, needs and expectations to them and wait for them to fix the problem as an example for us. That’s also why we expect them to get their happy ending.

I have seen videos and read articles about how highly divisive The Last Jedi was. Some fans (a few of them even with tears in their eyes) openly declared that the saga was ruined for them. Similarly to us, who identify with Ben Solo and / or Rey, they had often found courage in the examples set by their heroes and it was offensive and hurtful to them to see Luke Skywalker reduced to a hermit who drinks green milk, rejects the ways of the Jedi and was personally responsible for his nephew’s fall into his abuser’s clutches. They were entitled to their feelings of disappointment and inner numbness as we are now. I know of people who actually survived many ugly periods in their lives finding solace in the saga. Some in one part of it, some in another. And we all got duped and let down, each by one chapter of the sequel trilogy, like some naughty, sadistic kid was kicking apart our favorite doll house a few days before Christmas.

I assume now that The Last Jedi was an experiment to gauge the audience’s reaction. It touched many a sensitive issue. My personal approach is that in order to like it, you don’t only have to be a fan of the sequel trilogy and its characters in general, or a hopeless romantic who wanted to see Rey and Ben Solo’s love story. You have to accept in the first place what the prequel trilogy painstakingly tried to explain to us (though it wasn’t actually said but more shown): that the Jedi were no heroes but got destroyed by their own hubris, and that Anakin Skywalker was largely a victim and not someone who became a villain because he enjoyed being evil, like the typical Batman or Superman villains. The prequels are not a fairy tale like the original trilogy but a cautionary tale following the lines of “society creates its own monsters.” It was only logical to deduce that if the Jedi were so perfect and the Old Republic so idyllic as Obi-Wan described them to Luke when they first met on Tatooine, Vader’s rise and the creation of the Empire couldn’t have happened in the first place. This was never said as clearly and concisely as by Luke to Rey during their second lesson on Ahch-To:

“Now that they’re extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified. But strip away the myth and look at their deeds: the legacy of the Jedi is failure, hypocrisy, hubris. At the height of their power they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire and wipe them out. It was a Jedi who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.”

This is the message of the prequels in a few sentences, and a pivotal change to the “superhero approach” to the Jedi which might qualified if you only watch the OT and never question its themes on a larger scale. If you accept the Jedi’s failure for a fact, all of the rest falls into place - Vader being but a broken, sad old guy, Luke’s disillusion, his decision to give up the ways of the Jedi, his first lesson teaching Rey that the Force is not some kind of superpower, his forgiveness towards his nephew, the glimpses of goodness we saw foreshadowing Ben Solo’s redemption. The prequels also make much more sense this way than watching them expecting to see the Jedi being super-cool heroes and Anakin becoming Vader because he thought it might be fun.

But many fans chose not to see or accept what The Last Jedi actually was trying to say: that things couldn’t continue the way they did, because the Old Republic and the Jedi (though they didn’t actually have bad intentions) were deeply flawed. Leia tried to build another republic without any major changes that we are aware of, and Luke wanted to rebuild the Jedi Order without effectuating the considerable changes their Code would have needed. Both failed. It was e.g. never explained why Luke spirited his students away to a lonely planet for their training, but the fact that they were taken from their families when they were too small to make a choice and stick to it - Ben e.g. wanted to be a pilot like his father and not a Jedi - already shows the same pattern. Luke had not learned from the faults of his teachers until his exile. Logically, Episode IX ought to have continued these themes and showed the ST protagonist finding a new and better approach to the Force. Instead, what we got was another (in my opinion: redundant) Ultimate Battle of Good Against Evil, in other words some kind of superhero film which largely ignores the themes of its predecessor.

Any fan is entitled to his opinion. If someone hates the PT because it shows a stagnant society and the Jedi as highly flawed, because they didn’t get to see Darth Vader becoming over-the-top cool but were confronted, in Anakin, with a deeply compassionate person crushed by expectations he never could meet in the first place, if they judged him a whiny brat instead of an intelligent guy who clearly saw through the flaws of the society he was forced to live in and simply didn’t find the right words to express it: they’re entitled to it. Same goes for not feeling the tension between Rey and Kylo in the ST, for judging Kylo quickly (again) as a whiny brat instead of a complex, tormented character, for not appreciating new characters like Rose on account of not being Star-Wars-y enough. These feelings mostly stem from the fans’ long-standing wish to see an actual continuation of the original trilogy, not a new instalment where a new generation takes over and the old heroes are relegated to the background and, additionally, their characters and past decisions are openly criticized.

We may claim that fanbros are simply too stupid to understand what the saga is actually about. Well, maybe they are, or they are just too lazy to look at the bigger picture. But they have a right to that.  Of course, it doesn’t entitle them to harass the studios, directors, creative team or actors the way they were, mind you: what e.g. Kelly Marie Tran, Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd had to endure was a disgrace. There are very many fans who disagree with the PT and ST without getting bitter or even vicious.

This doesn’t mean I have changed my mind. I still believe that the Jedi were everything but heroes, that Darth Vader is a tragic figure, that the main themes of the saga are family, hope and new beginnings and not “the coolest ones win, ka-boom, the end”; that what it means to say is that human feelings are in the end more important than power, even an enormous power like the one the Force can provide.

We who are angry and disappointed with TRoS now like to blame how it went that way due to the influence of angry white dudebros, misogyny, Calvinism, racism, the overall political situation, the Mouse only wanting to make money etc.

But we ought to consider that The Last Jedi, which was so deeply controversial, hit theatres only two years ago. Have mentalities, politics and social structures and Disney’s overall approached changed so considerably, in so short a time, to produce two so radically different approaches to the saga within the scope of two years?

Sorry, I can’t believe it. it doesn’t really make sense.

The Mandalorian is met with universal acclaim, no doubt partly due to the fact that it’s a standalone story without the huge dynastic weight the saga has on its shoulders. Being a TV show, it had more time to introduce characters and situations and develop them. And it worked out fine. It had all the Star Wars themes - a lot of action scenes, sure, but it was also about belonging, family, redemption, protectiveness, friendship. Meaning that the studios didn’t lose track or are too dumb to think up a good story.

The Rise of Skywalker seems to bring the saga to a closure, but it could also be a wholly new beginning; the beginning of what I was foreseeing and still believe was in the cards - a new galaxy with a new and better political order kept together by a common belief in the Force as a whole; a new Jedi order where Force-sensitive children are not torn away from their families but can choose whether they want to become Jedi or not; and where Jedi are not taught emotional detachment. This would mean balance at last, a balance from which everyone would benefit. I have no idea how Ben Solo could be revived but I still am certain that he would be an excellent father figure, the perfect foil to his grandfather; and that the best thing for Rey would be to take care of children who are lost and abandoned the way she once was. And with Rey being a Palpatine, there is an interesting ground from which to explore her character’s tendency to the Dark, mirroring Ben’s. The basic approaches for this kind of development were all there in The Last Jedi. But a project like that would be something completely different from the original saga, and it would take a lot of time. Maybe that’s why the studios dropped it in favor of appeasing the angry fanbros who didn’t receive The Last Jedi well at all.

Anyone has the right to think that the original trilogy is the one and only and that the rest is rubbish. But the heroes of that story had their friendship, their family, their adventures, their successes, their happy ending. Even the heroes of the prequel trilogy had their moments, including Anakin Skywalker. Our heroes didn’t. That’s why this ending is so bitter for us and so hard to stomach. Essentially, we were right - we knew that Ben and Rey belong together, that Ben would redeem himself and make peace with his family, that balance would come. What we didn’t get was our happy ending.

The Force Awakens was still more or less accepted, because despite the many new themes and choices it wasn’t subversive and controversial in its approach. The actual wasps’ nest was stirred with The Last Jedi. No argumentation could convince antis that it is actually a well-made film and that their personal approach on the saga is too narrow-minded to appreciate it. They wanted the same villains, the same settings and costumes, the same heroes (or at least rehashes). And they had a right to want that, exactly as we had the right to expect a better development and ending for our new heroes. The hardcore OT fans wanted and expected The New Adventures of Han, Luke and Leia kicking ass. Well, it seems The Rise of Skywalker took care of that, finally giving them what they wanted and ignoring or “correcting” the course of events from The Last Jedi.

So, that’s it now. The OT fanbros got “their” Star Wars. I hope they’re finally appeased. They can ignore anything that happens next. That the saga is finished does not mean that the Star Wars universe came to a standstill.

If fans of the original trilogy felt entitled to ask for The Last Jedi to be removed from canon, or at least to be “fixed” in some way, so can we. In case you didn’t see it yet, the petition is already there: https://www.change.org/p/lucasfilm-continue-ben-solo-s-story

Let’s tell the studios to keep TRoS the way they prefer, but that we wish to have our Star Wars now. Let us not steep down to the level of who made the lives of actors who played characters they disapproved of a living hell (see above) or say over and over “Star Wars is dead” when we don’t know what’s in store for the future. With the Star Wars universe, you always have to be patient. In the meantime, we can write and read fanfiction and other stories and purse our own lives, telling our own happy endings.

Happy New Year everyone. Feel free to reblog. 😊

  P.P.S. On a side note: Rey’s last scene shows her where Luke used to be, on Tatooine watching the suns set. The twin suns. In A New Hope, this was shortly before he met the other half of his soul who had been separated from him right after birth - his twin sister. Considering that it was explicitly said that Rey and Ben Solo share the same soul, it might be a hint about the future. I’m not trying to make false promises or to fuel wrong expectations here. Just sayin’. 😉

#the rise of skywalker #episode IX #star wars #bendemption #save ben solo #rey palpatine #rey #luke skywalker #darth vader #ahch-to #anakin skywalker #reylo #disney studios #DLF #the last jedi #rian johnson #online petition #tatooine #binary sunset #george lucas #read more

[alexanderpusheen]

long rambling incoherent babbling abt something im probably not experienced enough on the matter to discuss but i really want to hear what you think

look i dont think it should be controversial for any socialist to say that 

capitalism is not just an economic system but a political and social one;

communism is a stateless society radically different from capitalism where all are provided for and have leisure time;

we have no idea what said stateless society will look like but it will be radically different than our present one because it wont be based on exploitation;

gender as we know it might change radically as the sexual division of labor will definitely be abolished;

and sex work probably isnt going to be around by the time true communism comes about because of all these things

i dont think this is a sex worker savior fantasy either. like even if you just do nothing but work on the whole ‘lets get rid of misogyny but legalize sex work and let that continue’ angle while building socialism, we’ll have laid the foundations for a society to not really require sex work. and i dont mean casual sex as people try to imply. i mean survival sex work that most sex workers on earth are involved in. today if we use force to stop it, it will endanger women by driving them further underground and make it easier for them to be exploited by making it far more difficult for them to control when and where they work. as for communism, i really doubt by the time a society has advanced to the point of communism that we will even need force. 

plus, walter rodney said it best but the moment you stop leveraging force on a people, the second they start going back to doing the Thing. this was the exact case with the first attempt at collectivization: it failed miserably bc poor peasants murdered rich peasants in revenge after subjecting them to years of brutal slave-like conditions and stalin was like oh my fucking god this was a bad idea stop but the genie was already out of the bag. notably, when the USSR attempted collectivization once more a few years later with economic incentives, this time it stuck, and no one was massacred. it became official soviet policy and they never had another famine either.

on top of all that, is it even worth doing if its done through force? we are socialists after all, and we’re not talking about preventing counterrevolution here. this is policy. walter rodney also raises the point that implementing policy via force is something all too familiar among the capitalists. we should never forget our humanity. (really, you guys gotta read walter rodneys stuff.) so for this reason alone, those who believe that sex work MUST be abolished under socialism because of moral reasons are not only destined to fail, but acting to harm women who have essentially done nothing wrong. what we as socialists seek to do is stop victimizing and harming and exploiting workers. to seek punitive measures of sex workers under socialism is literally a moral act, nothing else.

for this reason i see my way of ‘dealing with’ sex work more in line with marx’s vision. its not about ‘dealing with’ the issue but more about creating a society of equals from the bottom up and sustaining it. if women are coerced into sex work for economic reasons then penalizing them EVER is not just evil but counterproductive. of course it will continue under a class society. but in a society where states dont exist, classes dont exist....i personally cannot imagine anything being the same, let alone modern conceptions of sex. 

anyway. the above argument makes me a swerf cuz i didnt say ‘communism means capitalism but free stuff’. btw i dont think they need to be ‘saved’. but it angers me when i see companies refusing to hire trans women in my country which is why so many of them are on the street. something like 90% of brazilian trans women and travesti are/have been sex workers at some point and thats a near direct result of how they are not viewed as human beings, only as sex objects. you cant say ‘stop trying to save us’ while also acting like this is an acceptable situation. people in shitty situations dont need to be saved. the workers of this shitty fucking planet need socialism. and that includes sex workers.

#heavenly decree

[aion-rsa]

Donuts & Demons: Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars

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Shizuka Satomi, a violin teacher known as the Queen of Hell, owes one more soul to demons due to an infernal bargain she struck. Young violinist Katrina Nguyen needs to escape her homelife, where her transness is rejected by her family, and to start anew, hopefully making videos with her music. And Lan Tran and her crew are striving to build a stargate—before the Galactic Empire falls to the Endplauge—while selling donuts at Starrgate Donuts in Los Angeles. Light from Uncommon Stars is the story of how these three women’s lives intersect, and is a novel filled to the brim with music so beautifully described, readers can almost hear it in the narrative.

Katrina opens the novel with her flight and her passion for music; Shizuka comes in quickly after with her soul-contract deadline and her desire to find one last musician to condemn to hell. When readers first encounter Lan and her alien crew, they may wonder how author Ryka Aoki can pull off a story that is at once soul-bargaining-with-demons and refugee-aliens-building-a-stargate. But as the story progresses, the themes and characters dovetail together so beautifully that readers will wonder how they ever doubted. 

Aoki explores what it means to be human, the nature of souls, and the importance of hope and love even in the face of what may seem hopeless, filling the novel with both good humor and acknowledgment of suffering. There is pain, and yet a sense that better things are to come. The love and care with which the characters imbue parts of their lives—whether it’s the music they play, the instruments they shape, or the food they create—gains a greater meaning by virtue of that love. The result is an incredibly powerful story of hope and redemption, of small voices shouting into dissonance and being heard. Ahead of the novel’s September 28th release, Den of Geek had the chance to pick Aoki’s brain about how this novel came together, and insights into her inspiration…

Den of Geek: First, what brought together the two very different speculative fiction tropes—soul-bargaining and stargates—together into the same story for you? How did you create a universe in your head where both things worked without contradicting each other?

Ryka Aoki: I respect both science fiction and fantasy, but I had honest intentions and reasons to mix them in Light from Uncommon Stars. I was a little bit worried about how people would accept this—or not. But I’ve been thrilled with how readers have embraced and accepted this book.

I think this book might resonate with readers because we all hold seeming contradictions. In the book, Shizuka Satomi mentions how great pieces of music contain such different-sounding sections and movements. And, as music reflects the soul, doesn’t that say something about us, and our own shifting arrays of motifs and counterpoints?

In my case, being of Japanese descent, and being queer, and being trans, means that I play a lot of different things to a lot of different worlds. Yet working toward true acceptance and love of self can be like composing your own sonata—you’re striving to express and share your entire music. The person who I am with my family lives in a different world than the person who teaches English and Critical Thinking. And that person seems very different from the writer, or the martial artist.

And yet, I don’t feel fragmented. I feel pretty whole.

And so, when I wrote Light from Uncommon Stars, I always had faith that it would work out, somehow—because I worked out, somehow.

(At least I’d like to think so…) 

Demon Tremon Philippe and Shizuka’s relationship may bring to mind more of Mephistopheles and Faust than the devil at the crossroads. But there is a long tradition of musicians trading souls for greatness, brought into American folklore via blues musicians, who may have drawn on tales of Papa Legba rather than the European devil-bargaining stories. In the novel, you’ve brought many cultural traditions into play—where did you start from in the soul-selling elements? What did you borrow from earlier tales, and what did you invent whole cloth?

Thank you for asking this question because it lets me talk about another tradition. The early days of Internet message boards were the first time ever that trans people could speak freely yet relatively anonymously with people like them around the world. In fact, one of my dearest friends had such a board and they live in Iceland. We needed each other. We helped each other go through some horrible times… But there were also some goofy and fun times come as well—it was the first time that we realized that we’re all a bunch of science fiction and fantasy geeks. I mean, anywhere we can dream, right?

And I remember at the time being struck by how many trans women had created their own creation myths, to explain how their soul was placed in this other body. Many religions ignore trans people. Yet to know where one came from—and why—is a necessary question for many human beings.

In these stories, and the discussion surrounding them, there was much talk about having the soul of a woman, or the soul of a man if one were a trans man. “Do you have a female soul?” was a very relevant question to those with trans binary identities. (Discussions of nonbinary identities and gender fluidity were happening as well—entire vocabularies were being invented. Those were some exciting times.)

I think that even now many trans women, perhaps when first trying to make sense of who they are, still ask themselves this question.

And so, the cursed Shizuka Satomi, precisely because she is so focused on acquiring souls that she finds bodies irrelevant—offers Katrina the space and place to find her answers.

The descriptions and understanding of music and violins—and violin competitions—in the story are tangible. What is your music background?

I love writing music. I used to play in a band, and when I do my spoken word pieces, I compose all my own soundtracks. My main instrument is the piano, but I also play guitar, and some flute, and harmonica. For the most part, I am self-taught. However, I’ve been taking lessons for the past couple of years with a wonderful piano teacher—the irony is because I’m promoting this book, I’m on a brief hiatus from that.

However, I had no idea how to play the violin. I remember the first time I went into a violin shop. There were violins, but violins of different sizes, and cellos and violas and basses, and I was laughing to myself that I have no idea how to make music with any of this. I couldn’t put a tune together with one of these instruments to save my own life.

I did manage to teach myself some violin. And I really love the instrument. I have an acoustic violin from eBay, and I also have an electric violin now. This Christmas season, I am looking forward to jamming to some holiday music. We may never be ready for a committed relationship, but the violin and I have become good friends.

So, although I didn’t grow up in violin culture, as I researched violin culture, I found many parallels with a culture that I was familiar with—martial arts. Like many communities with overachieving children and parents with unrequited dreams, I found that in violin competitions, it was sometimes difficult to tell which was more important, the violin or the competition. This was so much like what I had seen as an annoying little martial arts kid. And so, those were the experiences upon which I drew.  

The posturing, the pressure, the mind games…the nausea in the bathroom…so different, but not so different at all.

In addition to being a writer, you are a teacher. Are any of your own feelings about teaching reflected in Shizuka’s feelings about mentoring?

*giggle* ALL of them…the good, the bad, the obsessive, the self-serving, and the hopeful.

This novel felt, in many ways, like a pandemic novel–in a situation that should be full of hopelessness (the Endplague, a coming soul-deadline), there’s still this tonal quality, even in the early pages, that things will turn out right, even if we have no idea how that will happen. Was any part of the novel written during the pandemic? Do you see it differently now that it’s coming out as we’re still dealing with the coronavirus?

During the first few months of pandemic, most of the novel had already been written, and we were deep in edits. I was pushing so hard to get my story just right that the first part of the lockdown went by unnoticed. Plot hole here, inconsistency there…even without a lockdown, I don’t think I would have gone out, anyway.

These days, I’m feeling the pandemic more, especially because this is when I was to tour, sign books, and meet people in person. And, as I engage with the lockdown more actively, I do notice how the pandemic does seem to echo the themes of the Endplague. Although Covid-19 did not inspire the Endplague, I based the Endplague on how civilizations can often fall, not from outside cataclysms themselves, but from the conflicts and fissures they cause their populace…and a collective loss of hope.

In the book, without going into too many spoilers, Lan and her family come from a very advanced civilization that has conquered many diseases and social ills, but is still battling with divisions, suspicions, and fatalism.

Looking around at world today, the parallels are hard to escape.

Late in the novel, you use Bartók as a way of framing and understanding transness in a beautiful way. Could you talk about the theme of Katrina finding her voice through the violin, and about how music and self-intertwine in the novel?

Provided the instrument is well-maintained, when you play the piano, you’ll automatically play in tune. A violin can be perfectly in tune, but that is far from enough—you need to be in tune with yourself.  

Furthermore, when I actually played the violin, I learned that certain notes resonate very well with other strings. In fact, sympathetic resonance is one way that a student can know if she’s in tune. If we listen for the resonances, we can feel the entire violin glow. There’s no better way to say it—it seems like the instrument glows.

This is very important to Katrina’s development, for human voices—and human souls—don’t have keys, or even frets, either. And when you’re playing in tune with yourself and others, you do get this internal glow. I think feeling this is very important to Katrina. It gives her security, weaves her into the songs of others.

But we are not always in harmony, nor should we be. Sometimes, our true songs are dissonant, or expressed in notes between notes. At that point, for all the rest of the world knows, your composition is wrong, or your intonation sucks. So, when your own music is so insistent, yet so at odds with what people expect—what do you do? Well, there goes Bartók.

There is a difference between playing with people in harmony and speaking to them in melody, after all. What does this mean for Katrina?

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

I think I’ll just leave it there.

Starrgate Donuts cannot fulfil online orders for their delicious donuts, unfortunately, as it is fictional, and videos of Shizuka Satomi’s performances are still not available to watch, due to interference from demonic forces, but Light from Uncommon Stars is available at bookstores everywhere on September 28, 2021. Find out more here.

The post Donuts & Demons: Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[dolly-decadatia]

Witch journal: 2/2/21

“The word February is based on the Latin februa and refers to the Roman festival of purification of the same name. .. Since ancient times, February has been observed as a month of cleansing, cleaning, and preparation for the warm months ahead... Do whatever it takes to stay on top of your game, keep energized, cultivate happiness and embrace February’s cleansing rebirth!”

That is so significant to me at this time. I’m spending February (and beyond probably) detoxing from 3 different substances with horrid discontinuation effects/ withdrawals, regrowing my hair, losing weight, and the painful rebirth of not only gender identity from binary to nonbinary but also as a person because I’m going to be a completely different person by the end of this year. It feels significant that February, the month I enter my cocoon, has historically always been about cleansing and rebirth.

The actual spell of the day has me “peeking my head out to see what lies ahead” on honor of Groundhog Day and saying a cute little rhyming couplet. It says I can use a tarot or oracle deck. I don’t yet own tarot cards but I do have a vampire themed oracle deck that I got for Krampusnacht. I haven’t yet learned to read it but this seems like a good nudge to do so.

This is the first time I’ve read anything about oracle cards. There’s guardian vampiric spirits called Les Vampires who are attached to the guards and want to work with me/ help me. I almost cried reading about them. I’ve been so lonely and so disconnected and now I’m about to have guardian vampires. That’s all I’ve wanted literally my entire life. I’ve been devastated since I’ve been unable to get home to my astral world Decadatia to see all my tulpas. I need this so badly.

Under “What Les Vampires Will Help You With”:

“One of their wonderful attributes, because of their own struggle in overcoming their hunger, is that they can help you to overcome habits that have held you back, or created illness, division and discord in your life. They also allow you to honestly undertake a kind of self inventory, where you will forgive yourself for the seemingly harmful or selfish actions you may have taken throughout this lifetime.”

I cannot express how badly I need Les Vampires love.

I will need to ceremonially bless my deck before using it.

1) cleanse your reading space with smoke or candle burning.

2) light incense. When the smoke is billowing nicely, pass your cards through thrice saying

“Les Vampires of thee I ask

To help me now with this my task”

3) shuffle with intention, stirring your current energy into the cards. (If reading for someone else, have them shuffle)

4) choose between a three card reading (The Trinity), 1 card (Light in the Darkness), 13 card (the Path through the Night) or 5 card (Byzantine Cross).

4b) Then (today only because of Spell a Day) recite:

“Groundhog groundhog

Get out of your bed

And help me to see

Just what lies ahead”

5) Thank the vampires for working with you. (And Deities if you have any.)

Today’s reading:

I chose The Trinity layout. My cards were sequential so I was afraid that my shuffle was bad but all 3 ended up being relevant.

Card 1 to the left: the Underneath: the past

Card 2 middle: The Heart- what is taking place right now/ central issue in the situation.

Card 3: The Promise- the future manifestation of the situation currently taking place.

Underneath: Rebellion

First impression without reading book- I vibed. I had Spike as a tulpa for 13 years. I see fangs and Rebellion and I instantly think of him not only for his extraordinary victory during the Boxer Rebellion, but also his core personality.

Actual Meaning: I’m tired of following the rules when this following is bringing me no closer to the adventures and solutions I wish to discover. I must rebel. I must forge my own path. “What lies before you is a fork in the road, which you will not take to be defiant, or to create dissonance. You follow it because it is the path of your heart... you simply take the the turn the others do not, and you begin to walk alone. It is lonely but the false camaraderie of conformity you leave behind frees you and offers you true moments of joy rather than false comforts.

In the very recent past I let go of the hrt despite being trans. I am pro hrt for other people and always will be but I got sick from it, abdominally obese, and bald. The only positive effect was the stopped periods and I live in dread of them returning. Beyond that I fought. I fought so hard to pass. It consumes me. I wore painful binders before my top surgery, I wore uncomfortable and ugly masc clothing, I eschewed makeup and nail polish and kept my nails and hair short and ugly. I let it go. I’m wearing what I want, using they/ them pronouns, and healing up from what hrt and ssri did to me. This is a very recent rebellion so I’m not surprised it’s in my immediate past card. And yes, it is lonely. There’s certain shitheads both cis AND trans that are terrible to nonbinary people. I’m opening myself up their mockery and aggression. I’m opening myself to constant misgendering and micro aggressions because I like to look good more than I am desperate to be called Sir. I feel very isolated.

Heart: Hunter

“There is a part of you that feels this falsehood that in order to become some thing there must be a death of which you will be the cause. That there is competition in need and that you can only have what you long for if someone else can no longer have it... there is always a way to find what we need without taking it from another. There is without you now an urge to win a competition where you feel there may be only one survivor but there are other ways through to the goal you desire...

The Chase must be of that part of your character which when hunted down and integrated will give you what you like in order to create what you need.... It is natural and wise to allow the part of you that is active and strong and forceful to have expression it is time to actively seek that what you want to see how far your strength can take you.”

I must chase what I desire in me. Time for reflection and Shadow Work. I don’t know exactly what I want. In this moment I think I want

1.) attention

2:) admiration

3:) Simps

4:) friendship

5:) inner peace

6:) painless body

7:) attractiveness

These are all things I need to hunt in myself. I must befriend myself after being self critical and self cruel forever. I must lavish myself with love, validation, and praise. I must do what I can to heal my body with food, rest, etc.

Promise: Prey

“ And your culture at this time there is a theory that those were harmed or hurt have somehow attracted that to themselves. oh how the hunters love this argument.”

Oh fuck this resonates so deeply.

“And this is what we have come to warn you of. we have come to tell you that there’s one who sees you as prey and they see themselves as a hunter and the more they can persuade you that you wish to play this role and that is your fault the more powerful they will become. This card comes forth when one has been groomed to be hurt.”

This is me. I’m the groomer. I’ve been so desperate for attention I’ve been trolling the hard kink side of nsfw Twitter. I’m trying to sink myself into subspace which is fine when it’s done healthily but I’m doing it self destructively. I’m putting myself in danger again. I’m literally acting like prey.

The cards say it’s time to stand up to a bully but the only one bullying me is me. I’m going to stand up to myself.

“Do not allow yourself to be prey for another’s hunger. Do not refuse to help yourself or fall into patterns of victimhood. Take good advice, demand what is yours by rights- including innocence and be strong in the face of the one who devour you. You cannot always win but the greatest battle you face at present is the one within you that says I give up nothing ever goes my way. It can and it will when you believe you’re worth fighting for. “

So I can interpret two meanings. 1) I need to stop putting myself in actual sexual/ emotional danger online. 2) I need to stop bullying and devouring myself. If I don’t steer off the path I’m on my future is me being victimized by myself and the world.

Thank you Les Vampires for the warning. I will heed your wisdom.

#les vampires #vampire oracle cards #oracle cards #nonbinary witch #trans witch #babywitch #atheist witch #secular witchcraft #terfs fuck off

[infuseddopamine]

26 and feel content (maybe for awhile)

It’s been awhile. Nothing I want to sort out actually in the past months. I usually write when my mind scattered.

So once in a while, I’m gonna write things when I’m in a good mood and have things sorted out aaaand I got nothing to do amid this corona. It’s a #coronawriting! 

Lately I feel content with what I have now. I think things going on on its right track. Love, Career, Money, Peers, and Health (?), well, I rarely get sick lately lol.

So since I’m not that kind who likes to brag around, let’s brag things to myself with my writings.

Love

After the hurricane in June 2019, my relationship with Woof is getting so much better. Somehow I think the hurricane makes us get back on the healthy track. No drama, just enough healthy jealousy, and the most prominent part, we’re not co-dependent anymore, though in the first place he’s never co-dependent, I’m the one who was co-dependent. 

Here’s why I can get out from that co-dependent behaviour. That moment when we had a break makes me realise that I am my own self. I don’t need anyone to stay by my side to prove how worthy I am and those who stay with me stay because they’re attracted to my worth, not because I’m begging them to stay. No more begging someone to stay, they need to choose to stay with me because they want to. 

Before the big storm happened, I think we developed an unhealthy relationship which about to sink even without that bitch came around. I tried too hard to catch him, somehow I suffocated him with my unintentional nags. And he also got too pre-occupied with his new life (he got into a new job and new colleagues that he likes so much) and his plate had got too full for me to be included in there (?).

Woof is trying so much harder now. He’s trying his best to be with me. I really appreciate his effort to show how much he loves me and also to prove himself that he’s worthy to stay by my side. Well, part of it maybe he’s still feeling guilty. Let’s just take advantage of it, no one gets hurt tho. Love you! And I hope we can stay by each other side until we got super old and go to our retirement home together yet still enjoy each other company. Amen.

Career

I’m so grateful that I took a big leap at that moment. I like my current job, my colleagues, my boss (who’s about to leave, so sad), my clients, and especially the new things I learn each day in my current job. 

Things are super great, my boss and clients are very satisfied with what I do. My boss said it’s the first time ever for the past years that this client ever said they’re satisfied with our job. Even my boss got hijacked to my client’s company, to the division that I handle, while my client’s other division cut their contract to us. It’s a valid evidence that the division that I handled is the only one that works and actually makes my boss looks awesome. But I tried not to got a big head. Somehow, I tend to work even harder, to not let them disappointed. My inner child is still a people pleaser, lol. One day I might got a mental health problem because of this. 

Beside that, I also got to implement the things I learned in my current job to my own business. So, even the job that I have now is in line with my business now. I can just copy and modify it a little, since my business is still too small. But I just feel so grateful for this. 

While my current business is still too small and I think I wrongly choose one of the partners to join the business, but I hope for the best that it still can going bigger and my partner can change her bossy and don’t-want-to-get-her-hand-dirty behaviours. Amen.

Money

I have savings now! I can pay an annual rent for an apartment, invest a little, have a liquid money for unpredicted urgent matters, and also buy a designer bag (with installment of course, how come I can get everything at one time). 

I still need to manage my wasteful behaviour tho. I still buy unnecessary clothes every month, but now I only buy one or two things and it has to be something I can still wear for another 10 years. 

Woof also said that I have this lavish lifestyle where I buy stuff just because it’s expensive even if there’s a cheaper option, funny right. I just realised that after he said that to me. It is true tho. If there are two brands of tissues for example, I will choose the more expensive one, because I always think pricier product has a better quality, even if it’s not proven so. I just like the idea that I can buy a good quality product. That’s one of mindsets that I need to improve.

For the next financial plan, I hope that I can have a bigger savings & investment and letting my money growing itself so I can have a financial freedom. Amen.

Just-right Peer-pressure

I think things are going great also with my friend. Sometimes jealousy still come in my head that some of my friends are doing super great with their career. But no, I don’t get jealous with my married friends, I know I’m not there yet lol.

But I realise it’s not something that I need to dwell about. Comparing yourself to your peer will never be enough. Even if you got a very good career, you will always compare yourself with those who has even cooler career, especially those with privilege backgrounds. Of course they’ll get there quicker since their ladder are so much higher since they were born. The education they got, the lavish lifestyle they have since they don’t need to pay any more money for housing, cars & transportation, and even designer bags, it’s just incomparable with my situation. 

I can simply compare myself to the unfortunates but it makes me uncomfortable because by then I should give my money to the unfortunates. Since I don’t give much, I like it better to just ignore the idea that there are someone has so much worse situation than me, to make myself not to feel guilty. Capitalism is my new god, sorry. I only give things to those whom I love. 

Beside that, I think I need to focus on myself path. I need to find my own path. 

Some people are doing great with their career but take a side their love life. Some people have no other choice but to put their career above else because they don’t have other things to be spared their focus on. They might find love when they got the chance to do so, or choose to expand their focus on that later. That’s their path.

Some people are doing great with their marriage life, even if their career is still not in good track, they still need to live under their parent’s house and got monthly money from their parent to pay their kids need. But that’s the path they got. It’s not that they will stuck there forever, they will grow on their own way. 

Some people stuck on a big stone, they do not move anywhere for awhile. But they can unstuck themselves if they find the right way to climb that stone or to turn around and to find another path, so they can move forward. It’s their path. 

My path is something that I create myself, not sure if it’s intentional or not. But one thing for sure, my path is not that unique, so I don’t need to feel bad about it and to think that I took a path to failure. 

I took a path where I don’t really study hard that I got a mediocre first job, so I develop a career path myself, not by promotions from my company.  I took a path where my previous job maybe makes me had a career stuck for awhile, but I develop myself to have a certain standard to work and to live my life. My first job might make me not having much progress, but it creates a situation where I have enough savings (because they got me to save double pension funds, where can you find another company that makes you have two pension institutions?), so I can start my own business with enough capital even when I have this reckless spending money since my young age.

I took a path where I somehow always have a boyfriend, so I don’t get to do much interesting single life things. But because of that, amid corona, I don’t feel lonely, because I have him by my side. I don’t even get to worry whom I’m gonna marry when the society forces me to get married. I can simply say that I already got my man and we just need to wait the right time and enough money to have our wedding. 

So my next plan is to stay have this mindset even if I got left behind, I believe I have my own path and I don’t want to feel sorry about it ever again. Amen.

Health

I tried my best to decrease my sugar intake now. And since I got fat easier due to my age now, I also examine what I eat more thoroughly. I also work out and religiously go to wellness studio to have a good body. My body is my temple (?). I tried to avoid unhealthy lifestyle because I don’t want to pay much money when I got sick in the future. Well you never know in the future tho. But at least I tried. I still eat junk food and trans fat tho. Hopefully I can change it to healthier diet. Amen.

Now I’m tired writing, it’s already 2 hours I write this thing I guess. I’m hungry and gonna make beef curry with rice. Ttly if I got the time and effort. Can I get an amen for all my prayers above?

#amen

[xtruss]

Iran’s Turning into India’s Proxy by Taunting and Threatening Pakistan?

Major General Qassem Soleimani, the famed commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC), proved that his country is increasingly turning into India’s proxy after he taunted and threatened Pakistan, resulting in the Islamic Republic incredibly taking some of the same positions as its American and “Israeli” enemies (both of whom are its new Indian patron’s allies) in spite of its official “principled” opposition to every manifestation of their policies.

Digging A Deeper Hole

Iran recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, but instead of marking this momentous occasion by showcasing its sovereign gains over the past four decades, it ended up being manipulated into becoming India’ s proxy and paradoxically undermining the very independence that it’s so proud to have supposedly achieved. The author wrote about this at length in his piece earlier this week about how “Iran’s Being Tricked Into Making Balochistan The New Kurdistan”, explaining that the Islamic Republic’s “deep state” divisions are being masterfully exploited by India in order to turn Iran against Pakistan in the aftermath of a recent terrorist attack along the two Muslim countries’ shared border in the transnational region of Balochistan.

Instead of de-escalating the situation behind the scenes by walking back some of its officials’ anti-Pakistani rhetoric and actively commencing joint anti-terrorist operations like the author suggested that it do in order to make the best out of a bad situation, Major General Qassem Soleimani – the famed commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – upped the ante by taunting and threatening Pakistan, proving that Iran is indeed on the path of becoming India’s proxy and apparently has no problem with this. His words dealt enormous damage to Pakistani-Iranian relations after he called into question the professionalism of his neighbor’s armed forces and portrayed the country as being on the brink of dissolution.

Soleimani’s Statement

Here are his abridged comments as reported by the Fars News Agency:

— “We have always offered Pakistan help in the region, but I have this question from the Pakistani government: where are you heading to? You have caused unrest along borders with all your neighbors and do you have any other neighbor left that you want to stir insecurity for?

— Are you, who have atomic bombs, unable to destroy a terrorist group with several hundred members in the region? How many of your own people have been killed in different terrorist operations? We do not want your condolences, how could your condolence help the people of Iran?

— I tell the Pakistani people that the Saudi cash has influenced Pakistan and they want to destroy Pakistan with such measures.

— I warn you not to test Iran and anyone who has tested Iran has received firm response. We are speaking to Pakistan with a friendly tone and we are telling that country not to allow their borders to become a source of insecurity for the neighboring countries; anyone who has made this plot for Pakistan is seeking to disintegrate that country, the Islamic Republic of Iran will take revenge of its martyrs from those mercenaries who have committed this crime no matter where they are in the world.”

Soleimani’s statement revealed a lot about Iran’s current outlook and deserves to be analyzed in depth.

Interpreting Iran’s Intentions

Firstly, Soleimani implied that Pakistan backstabbed Iran after he said that Tehran always offered to help it, after which he remarked that Islamabad is responsible for regional unrest. The General then taunted the Pakistani Armed Forces by rhetorically asking why their nuclear weapons can’t defeat a small armed group that’s supposedly operating within its borders, despite knowing fully well that those armaments are irrelevant when dealing with hybrid threats. That was a cheap attack against the military and meant to make it an international laughingstock. He also portrayed Pakistan as hypocritical by reminding it of how many people it lost to this same type of terrorism that he says its government is responsible for, after which he disrespectfully rejected its condolences.

Soleimani then directly addressed the Pakistani people and tried to impugn Prime Minister Khan’s integrity by making it seem as though their leader is concealing an existentially dangerous conspiracy from them that involves Saudi Arabia paying the country to become a regional exporter of terrorism, which he implied the authorities recklessly agreed to even though he arrogantly predicted that this will result in Pakistan’s “disintegration”. He then proceeded to threaten Pakistan while disingenuously assuring it that he’s “speaking with a friendly tone” by promising that his military will “take revenge of its martyrs…no matter where they are in the world”, or in other words, might pull an Indian-like “surgical strike” against its neighbor (whether claiming it did or actually trying to).

Ruining The Regional Balance

Whether Iran realizes it or not, its representatives’ statements – and especially the latest ones from General Soleimani – have reversed the recent progress in bilateral relations with Pakistan and shown the world that their country has been successfully manipulated by a foreign power’s psy-ops into turning against its neighbor. Some members of the Iranian “deep state” probably don’t mind, however, since they might cynically believe that this serves the purpose of distracting their population from their many internal problems that have been exacerbated by the US’ unilateral re-implementation of sanctions and getting them to redirect their critical focus away from Iran’s setbacks in the Mashriq and towards the new externally aggravated fault line with Pakistan instead.

Iran Is Being Tricked into Making Balochistan the New Kurdistan

Worse still, all of this is occurring in the context of pronounced Indian-Pakistani tensions after the Pulwama attack, which suggests that Iran’s rhetoric is actually part of India’s regional Hybrid War against Pakistan and further reinforcing the notion that the Islamic Republic has become New Delhi’s proxy against Islamabad. This increasingly hostile state of affairs is making it impossible for Pakistan to maintain its desired balance between Iran and Saudi Arabia and mediate between them like Islamabad previously offered to do. As a result, pro-Saudi sentiment is surging in Pakistani society while previously friendly attitudes towards Iran are rapidly disappearing, which is no one’s fault other than Tehran’s for implementing such an irresponsibly partisan policy against Pakistan.

Indian Strategic Interests

India didn’t manipulate Iran’s response to the artificial security dilemma that the joint Indo-American Hybrid War on CPEC eventually created between it and Pakistan just for the sake of “deep state” satisfaction, but to achieve tangible strategic outcomes that work out to its long-term advantage. The worsening of Pakistani-Iranian relations greatly hinders the creation of the Golden Ring of Multipolar Great Powers between those two Muslim countries, Turkey, Russia, and China, and it gives India a direct inroad into this geopolitical construction’s Central Asian core through the trans-Iranian North-South Transport Corridor’s (NSTC)’s eastern branch. Furthermore, India could take advantage of this situation to obtain basing rights for its navy in Chabahar, as well as pull Iran away from the Taliban.

By unprecedentedly becoming strategically dependent on India, however, Iran is also coming under the indirect influence of its patron’s American and “Israeli” allies too. About that, it can be said that Iran has currently come to share the same position towards Pakistan as India’s two aforementioned allies despite being their sworn enemy after all four of them accused Islamabad of hosting terrorists and being responsible for regional unrest. It’s almost surreal that the Islamic Republic celebrated the 40thanniversary of its revolution by aligning itself with what it refers to as the “Great and Little Satans”, an outcome that was brought about by India’s clandestine “facilitation” and which the Islamic Republic might wrongly believe will relieve their growing pressure upon it.

Dealing With The “Devils’” Best Friend

It’s the height of hypocrisy that Iran is now on the same side as its American and “Israeli” enemies vis-à-vis Pakistan because it’s invested so heavily since the revolution to establish the international reputation that it will always oppose the manifestation of both of their policies on principle. This “politically incorrect” observation draws into question everything that the Iranian leadership said that it stood for since 1979 and confirms that there are indeed “exceptions” to its “principled stance” of never aligning with the “Great and Little Satans”. Apparently, it’s okay to do so as a form of protest against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s (MBS) recent visit to Pakistan and as a sign of appreciation for India’s NSTC investments.

Still, Iran didn’t overreact when MBS went to India afterwards, probably because New Delhi has basically “paid off” Iran with the promise (key word) of those said megaproject investments as a form of implicit sanctions relief. This, however, ignores the fact that the US’ NSTC sanctions waiver to India and Saudi Arabia’s planned energy deals with it both work out to the Islamic Republic’s long-term detriment by making it so that New Delhi achieves historically unparalleled “good cop/bad cop” influence over its economy. Tellingly, while Iran harshly criticizes Saudi Arabia for its secret ties with “Israel”, it’s silent about Modi publicly strolling with Netanayhu barefoot on a Mediterranean beach in summer 2017, proving how “exceptional” Iran regards India as being.

Russia To The Rescue?

While it might seem like all hope is lost in Pakistani-Iranian relations after the latter danced along to America’s strategic choreography by becoming India’s proxy in exchange for the promise (key word) of de-facto sanctions relief, there’s a chance that Russia’s recent return to the region can at the very least stop the situation from reaching rock bottom. Russia is regarded as being just as “exceptional” as India is in Iran’s eyes and therefore “allowed” to enjoy high-level strategic relations with both of the Islamic Republic’s “Israeli” and Saudi foes (despite growing Russian-Iranian disagreements over Syria) because Tehran considers Moscow to be an irreplaceable “pressure valve” by virtue of its geography, impending free trade deal, and a possible $5 billion loan.

Russia is so indispensable to Iran that there’s no way that Tehran could pressure Moscow to suspend its planned $10 billion undersea pipeline between itself, Pakistan, and India until Pakistani-Iranian relations improve. Nor, for that matter, could it stop Russian businessmen from using the NSTC to facilitate their country’s trade with Pakistan, meaning that Moscow is unquestionably in a position to “balance” between both Muslim Great Powers in accordance with its envisaged 21st-century grand strategy and therefore keep the situation from spiraling out of control. In fact, Russia might even be able to exert some “moderating influence” over Iran and get it to reconsider its current hostility against Pakistan, which could eventually set the basis for it to broker a rapprochement.

Concluding Thoughts

Iran was surprisingly manipulated on the occasion of none other than the 40thanniversary of its revolution into abandoning its commitment to independent policies and becoming India’s proxy instead, which it did in response to New Delhi’s wildly successful psy-op after a recent terrorist attack and in exchange for the promise (key word) of de-facto sanctions relief. IRGC commander General Soleimani publicly taunted and threatened Pakistan as a sign of fealty to his country’s new patron, which ruined any chances of Islamabad mediating between Tehran and Riyadh like it previously offered to do in pursuit of regional peace and incredibly aligned the Islamic Republic with its American and “Israeli” enemies, all of which works out to India’s ultimate strategic benefit.

All isn’t lost, however, since Russia could conceivably leverage its impressive influence over Iran and hefty investments in its economy (both current and forthcoming) to ensure that Pakistani-Iranian relations stabilize and avoid reaching rock bottom, though it’ll still remain immensely difficult for Moscow to counteract New Delhi’s influence and get Tehran to improve its ties with Islamabad in the near future. As unbelievable as it may sound, “Israel’s” Haaretz almost got the regional state of affairs right when it released an article titled “Pakistan Just Became Saudi Arabia’s Client State, and Turned Its Back on Tehran”, except they mixed up the subjects and it should have been that “Iran Just Became India’s Client State, and Turned Its Back on Islamabad”.

— Andre Korybko, Global Research, February 22, 2019

— This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

— Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

[justfinishedreading]

Part 1 – Historical Background

The most important thing to know about Felizmente há luar! is that it was a product of its time; this play was written in 1961 during the rule of Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, and it is now studied in Portuguese secondary schools because of its themes on politics, corruption and censorship. In researching the historical background of this work I’ve… ended up writing an essay on Salazar and in the process learnt quite a bit about my country. The following is information I found interesting from Wikipedia and which I’ve copy and pasted, and reworded and condensed:

The End of the Portuguese Monarchy

After the revolution in 1910 when the Portuguese monarchy was overthrown, the country fell into chaos with continual anarchy, government corruption, arbitrary imprisonment and religious persecution. The next 18 years saw the inauguration of 8 presidents, 44 cabinet re-organisations and 21 revolutions. According to official police figures, 325 bombs burst in the streets of Lisbon between 1920 and 1925. The public began to view political parties as elements of division and become more tolerant to the idea of being governed by an authoritarian regime.

António de Oliveira Salazar

Salazar became Minister of Finance in 1928, before that others had tried to persuade him to enter politics, but he found the state of parliament so chaotic that he refused. He finally agreed when the state of Portugal become too dire to be ignored. He agreed under the condition that he would have a free hand to veto expenditure in all government departments, not only his own. Within a year Salazar balanced the budget and stabilised Portugal's currency.

In 1932 he became Prime Minster. Now Salazar is quite an interesting figure to study, he did a lot of good for Portugal, but every good sentence written about him can be countered with something bad. He brought order to a country in chaos, but he did not believe in democracy, he used censorship and a secret police to crush opposition and ensure that he continued to be Prime Minister from 1932 until 1968.

World War II

Salazar had lived through the hard times of World War I, in which Portugal participated, so when it came to World War II Salazar kept Portugal neutral. From the very beginning Salazar was convinced that Britain would suffer in the war but remain undefeated and that the United States would step in and the Allies would win. However because Portugal was neutral, the country was forced to supply materials used for military purposes to both the Allies AND the Axis. In May 1943, the USA wanted to take control of Portuguese islands for strategic military use, the British responded that forceful measures weren’t necessary, Salazar would honour the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. In August of that year when the British requested military use of those islands, Portugal allowed it.

Salazar’s upbringing was religious, he studied at a seminary for eight years and considered becoming a priest. He was a devote catholic and nationalist but argued that Portuguese nationalism did not glorify a single race because such a notion was pagan and anti-human. In 1938, he sent a telegram to the Portuguese Embassy in Berlin, ordering that it should be made clear to the German Reich that Portuguese law did not allow any distinction based on race, and that therefore, Portuguese Jewish citizens could not be discriminated against. On 26 June 1940, four days after France's surrender to Germany, Salazar authorised the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in Paris to transfer its main office to Lisbon.

In July 1940, the civilian population of Gibraltar was evacuated due to imminent attacks expected from Nazi Germany. At that time, Portuguese Madeira agreed to host about 2,500 Gibraltarian refugees, mostly women and children, who remained there until the end of the war. Portugal, particularly Lisbon, was one of the last European exit points to the USA and a few hundred thousand to one million refugees found shelter in Portugal and escaped through there.

Portuguese Colonial Rule

Portugal can be proud of its action during the Second World War, but not so much of its colonial rule (…can any country ever be proud of colonialism?). Portugal had an extensive colonial empire that included Cape Verde, São Tomé e Príncipe, Angola (including Cabinda), Portuguese Guinea, Mozambique in Africa, Portuguese India in South Asia, and Macau and Timor in the Far East.

In 1947, Captain Henrique Galvão, a Portuguese parliamentarian, submitted a report disclosing the situation of forced labour and precarious health services in the Portuguese colonies of Africa. The natives, it said, were simply regarded as beasts of burden. All African men had to pay a tax in Portuguese currency, the government created a situation in which a large percentage of men in any given year could only earn the amount needed to pay the tax by going to work for a colonial employer. In practice, this enabled settlers to use forced labour on a massive scale, frequently leading to horrific abuses. Galvão's courageous report eventually led to his downfall, and in 1952, he was arrested for subversive activities.

Following the Second World War, the colonial system was subject to growing dissatisfaction, and in the early 1950s the United Kingdom launched a process of decolonization. Belgium and France followed suit. Unlike the other European colonial powers, Salazar attempted to resist this tide and maintain the integrity of the empire. In order to justify it and Portugal's alleged civilising mission, Salazar ended up adopting Gilberto Freyre's theories of Lusotropicalism, which propose that the Portuguese were better colonizers than other European nations because they had a special talent for adapting to environments, cultures and the peoples who lived in the tropics, this talent helped them build harmonious multiracial societies and promote pro-miscegenation.

Side note, we Portuguese are very proud of our history during the 15th century, the age of discovery, when we set out to map the world, many consider it our golden age. Less talked about is our involvement in the slave trade, the first European to actually buy enslaves was Antão Gonçalves, a Portuguese explorer in 1441 AD. The Spanish were the first Europeans to use enslaved Africans in the New World. I’ve just done a little googling to try to find out how many slaves the Portuguese took from Africa, it’s not easy finding a straight answer, about 20 websites later I find three that agree that officially the total number of Africans shipped by the Portuguese is conservatively put at 4.2 million. However this excludes the millions that died crossing land to get to the Portuguese slave ships or during the horrible Atlantic passage. Just to be clear these facts are regarding Trans-Atlantic Slavery, unfortunately the concept of slavery has existed in all societies long before that.

Anyway that’s a bit of a digression from the main topic of Salazar, moving forward to 1960-1, armed revolutionaries and scattered guerrillas were starting to become active in Mozambique, Angola, and Portuguese Guinea. The Portuguese just about managed to keep control in some parts but the Portuguese military warned the government that this was not a long term solution, the military would not be able to keep order for long.

1961

And now finally I’ve reached 1961, the year Felizmente há luar! was written. For the western world the 60s were the decade of cultural revolution: ‘Make Love, Not War’, just like the American hippies were protesting against the Vietnam war, the Portuguese were protesting against colonial wars they could not win and which were wrong to begin with. This was an age of liberalism, of drug and sexual experimentation, of artistic creativity. And yet those liberals and free thinkers were being governed by a 72-year-old Salazar, a conservative, nationalist and catholic whose motto was "Deus, Pátria e Familia" (meaning "God, Fatherland, and Family"). There was no free speech, anyone opposing the dictatorship was imprisoned and tortured. Portuguese laws and government procedures were changed to enable those in power to stay in power. Felizmente há luar! was written by Luís de Sttau Monteiro and censored, prohibited from ever being performed. That is until 1975, the year after the government was overthrown.

Wrapping Up Part 1

Phew, I haven’t even started reviewing Felizmente há luar! yet, I could have just written “the play was written during a time of great oppression of freedom of speech and during a reign of political dictatorship” and left it at that. But, it’s curious to know how things came about, extreme political movements don’t just suddenly manifest, they are born out of circumstance, and it is important to understand what gives raise to the systems that change our lives.

In Part 2, I’ll actually review Felizmente há luar! By the way it’s actually set in 1817, when real life general Gomes Freire de Andrade was accused of leading a revolt against the Portuguese government – so... yay even more history XS 

Most of this text on Salazar was taken from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/António_de_Oliveira_Salazar

Review by Book Hamster

#just finished reading #felizmente ha luar #luis de sttau monteiro #theatre #portuguese #portuguese history #salazar #antonio de oliveira salazar #censorship #dictatorship #political justice #political history #Portuguese literature #portugal #gomes freire de andrade #freedom of speech #freedom of information #war #second world war #world war ii #colonialism #empires #protest #portuguese government #revolution #political revolution #portuguese education #teatro #educação #historia de portugal

[ice--screaming]

In regards to ‘clovergender’ and ‘kindergender’

||Warning; this will be fairly text heavy and I will be talking about possibly triggering topics, namely pedophillia|| 

   In case you don’t know, clover/kinder ‘gender’ is someone who identifies as a child ‘trapped’ in an adult body and is attracted to a child. First of, this is not a gender, without going into the gender subject to much gender is.

Either the male or female division of a species, especially as differentiated by social and cultural roles and behavior

a similar category of human beings that is outside the male/female binary classification and is based on the individual’s personal awareness or identity.

(Yes non-binary genders exist, this is a topic for another time.) Simply, age is not a gender. which is not something that I thought I would have to clarify ever, but here we are. Second of this ‘gender’ is also a sexual orientation (it doesn’t work like that, but ok) I don’t think I have to point out why that is wrong, or at least I hope not. There is one more points I would like to hit before moving on, mentally being a child, otherwise known as age regression or sometimes simple regression, this is actually a real thing, a psychological problem in which someone mentally regresses in age, normally as a defensive mechanism caused by childhood trauma and note, these people aren’t attracted to children. This is clearly not what these people are. also, in case you were wondering the terms ‘clovergender’ and ‘kindergender’ was a term created by trolls to mock non-binary and binary trans people along with non heterosexual people and people who age regress. However there are people who are using these terms that are not trolls, in an attempt to insert themselves into the aforementioned communities as a way to try and avoid hate and hide behind the people who actually are in these communities, those said people are, you guest it! Pedophiles! Pedophiles are claiming this term to try and look harmless and probably thanking the stupid ass trolls that made these terms. So now that you know a bit more about this situation, I suggest you steer clear of anyone who uses either of these ‘genders’ to describe themselves, but also if you are someone who age regresses and have accidentally joined these communities and have started to use these terms, please stop, these are not good or safe people to be around. These people are pedophiles, Like wise if you know someone who age regresses that has joined this community please inform them of what this actually is, try and help them or yourself to find safe places were people who actually age regress can connect. Be careful and don’t fall in with these kinds of people. I also suggest you stay away from the dd/lg community. Please stay safe and be careful about who and what you get involved in!

P.S: All pedophiles deserve death, bye. 

#info #important #clovergender #kindergender #pedophillia mention #death mention #personal.txt #kinda a vent #mine #☆

[adambethyname-blog]

NFL Protests Reek of Leftist Nonsense

I have been a Tampa Bay Buccaneers season ticket holder since 2005, the first year I could afford season tickets after starting my career. I have been a die-hard Bucs fan since I moved to Tampa Bay in 1980 as a five year-old kid from New York.

Even now, I sit in an office that is painted pewter and red and adorned with all kinds of Bucs memorabilia. When something newsworthy happens with the Bucs, my phone usually rings from friends or family asking what I think about this or that. "Did you see so-and-so got cut?" "Did you see so-and-so got arrested?" "Who are the Bucs going to draft?" My reputation as a fan of the team gave me some kind of unofficial and undeserved credibility as some kind of expert in all things Buccaneers.

Which brings us to Sunday and the fervor surrounding Kneel-gate. Naturally, I was inundated with questions about my own team allegiance. Would I give up my season tickets? Would I repaint the office?

A little backstory: last year, Buccaneers wide receiver Mike Evans sat for the National Anthem for one game. I owned a Mike Evans jersey. When we got home from the game, I threw it on the barbecue and broadcast it on Facebook live. I was never going to wear that jersey again. My father is a veteran. My stepfather is a Vietnam War veteran.  I couldn't wear that jersey in front of them without feeling a sense of shame. So I cooked it up nice and crispy.

But after Sunday, I wasn't quite as impulsive. ESPN's Darren Rovell estimated on Twitter that "approximately 12%" of NFL players sat for the National Anthem on Sunday. That's about 180 players total. Some players knelt, some players locked arms, some teams stayed in the locker room (Pittsburgh). Again, Mike Evans took a knee (even after promising last year that he was done with the protests) with new Bucs wide receiver Desean Jackson.

In the aftermath of the Sunday games, I read all of the news sources chronicling what happened. People analyzed and scrutinized the gesture and what it meant, but a pattern started to develop: there wasn't any clear message that was being sent. The pattern was there was NO pattern. There wasn't a unified message.

Then it hit me. This is all nonsense.

All I kept seeing was this giant word salad of key terms being spouted by sweaty, barely educated man-babies in shoulder pads. Words like "oppression," phrases like "systematic racism," and catch-all terms like "equality" were being tossed around by these players. They were saying so much, but saying nothing at all.

It reminded me of another "movement" that seemingly had no purpose. The Women's March.

Like Kneel-Fest 2017, I have no idea what all those women in pink vagina hats were marching for, but again, I heard terms like "equality" (which they have), to fight "oppression" (pretty vague), and "women's rights," (huh?).

The Huffington Post ran a photo essay of "89 Badass Signs From the Women's March." Here's a collection of some of the signs that they featured:

"Support your sisters, not just your cis-ters." (Some kind of pro-trans message)

"Black Lives Matter, Women's Rights Matter, Too! #ImWithHer (Pro women's rights plus black people's rights and being for Hillary simultaneously while white men get nothing.)

"I March For My Daughter - All Women With Disabilities (Pro-disabled rights, who knew that was a thing?)

"Trump" : (n) Anti-woman (Anti-Trump, obviously)

"Sexual Assault Is Not A Joke - Words Matter" (Anti-sexual assault. Then again, who is "pro-sexual assault?")

And on and on it goes, but the point is, there's no coherent point or message here. It's just a crowd of women dressed as genitalia spouting off about random topics. Ask yourself, in the wake of the piles of garbage left behind by the Women's March, what changed? What was the end result of that mass of screeching humanity? The answer is nothing. Which brings us back to the NFL and the genesis of where this whole kneeling-for-the-Anthem blather started.

Colin Kaepernick.

Go all the way back to the first time Kaepernick sat for the National Anthem. After the game, he told the press the following:

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

While the comment is vague and non-specific, Kaepernick is referring to cases like Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, etc. where black people ended up dying after altercations with police (we won't debate the circumstances of those deaths here, but we will acknowledge Kaepernick's protests are related to those situations). And this next comment may shock you, I'm actually okay with that. If someone sees an epidemic of black people dying at the hands of police officers for whatever the reason and they feel the need to stand up and do something about it, I'm okay with that. In the end it means less work for our cops and less crime on the streets.

But here's the thing: don't take your anger out on the flag and the National Anthem. First, the police are local and municipal, not federal. Second, you've now made attacking the flag a sign of your protest and I want nothing to do with that, regardless of how noble your cause is.

It turns out, Kaepernick has never even voted in his life. The Sacramento Bee reported that Kaepernick turned 18 while living in California but never registered to vote.

“You know, I think it would be hypocritical of me to vote,” Kaepernick said. “I said from the beginning I was against oppression, I was against the system of oppression. I’m not going to show support for that system. And to me, the oppressor isn’t going to allow you to vote your way out of your oppression.”

Actually, Kap. That's exactly what voting does. Voting isn't showing support for the system. It's just a tool, the people are the machine. You find a like-minded candidate and you vote for them. Or better yet, run for office yourself. You've got money. You've been donating to social justice causes. Get a campaign together and facilitate change on your own.

I mean (snicker), it's not like you're playing pro football or anything....  (too soon?)

Regardless, Kaepernick is out of football and isn't taking a knee anywhere this season.

But as Week 3 in the NFL opened this past week, we started to see the Kneelers crawl out of the baseboards, coming to a huge crescendo on Sunday, even garnering criticism from President Donald Trump who said that he would love to see the kneeling S.O.B.s "fired."  

This prompted a statement from the NFL condemning Trump's comments. "Divisive comments like these demonstrate an unfortunate lack of respect for the NFL, our great game and all of our players, and a failure to understand the overwhelming force for good our clubs and players represent in our communities."

But with all of these teams linking arms, players kneeling, etc., it is starting to look like this is more of an anti-Trump movement or a "free speech" movement which is silly because no one is being arrested for these protests.

"He's supposed to be running our country, not tweeting, texting and speaking on NFL guys and what their rights are. It's crazy to me. He's a joke. He's a clown and I speak how I see it," said Buccaneers receiver Desean Jackson, who knelt on Sunday.

"It was very childish on his part. It seems like he's trying to divide us. I think this is an opportunity for me to do what I can. A lot of guys around the league did it and I understand why," said Jackson's teammate Evans who also knelt.

Wait a second, I thought this was about police brutality, or oppression, or something....? Now it's an anti-Trump rally? This is beginning to sound suspiciously like....

.... The Women's March.

That's when I realized that all this kneeling and staying in the locker room is all just idiocy. None of these weak-willed cretins who are kneeling know what the hell they're doing and the one guy who had half a clue is out of football. I'm not angry at the players. In an odd sort of way, I pity them. They're getting used by progressive left-wing activists to push a cause; essentially sour grapes for an election that didn't quite go the way it was supposed to.

So, no. I'm not burning my jersey this time. I'm not canceling my season tickets. Why? Because this is just noise. Noise created for the sake of noise. It's a tantrum. It's the kid in the Target aisle being dragged by his arm toward the door as he wails for the toy from the latest Marvel movie. Eventually, it will be over, the tears will dry, and like the Women's March, no one will care anymore and we will eventually forget what the heck anyone was ever complaining about in the first place.  I'll just shake my side to side and say "Bless your heart, you dopey little morons."

In a few months, everyone will be standing for the Anthem or we'll just stop caring because the truth is, nothing is going to change and nothing is going to change because no one knows what they're even trying to change. Trump will still be president (quite frankly, this will help his re-election campaign) and all anyone will remember is that a bunch of overpaid crybabies disrespected the flag and the country because of .... something.

#nfl #kneeling #national football league #colin kaepernick #take a stand #donald trump #women's march #kneel #take a knee #protests #nfl protests #nfl protest

[nicemango-feed]

A Foot in Both Worlds: How it feels to see the Suffering of Muslim women used to Undermine Feminism in the West

If you're on atheist Twitter, you've probably heard the terrifying and heartbreaking tale of Dina Ali, a young Saudi woman, trying to escape an abusive family...on her way to Australia to seek asylum, but stopped in the Philippines and hauled back to danger by male relatives. I have seen many good people rally behind this worthy cause. I hope creating all this noise will be of some use and we can help her find freedom somehow. At least her family knows there are people looking out for her and want accountability. I can only hope, that one day women in the place I grew up, Saudi Arabia, will have the freedom to move and travel as they please. Please use the hashtag #SaveDinaAli to continue making noise about this, and to keep the pressure up.

A Saudi Arabian woman says she was stopped at a Philippines airport ... and that her life would be in danger if she returned home. http://pic.twitter.com/4BCEwkYpyh

— AJ+ (@ajplus) April 12, 2017

****

What else can we do besides making noise? I know it feels like you're helpless and oceans away. But sometimes campaigning and distributing information to those who simply don't know about the situation, is invaluable... The topic of anything relating to Islam is fraught with baggage in the current global climate. People who were reluctant to touch this subject before, will be even more reluctant now. If we, as liberals, actually want valid critiques to be heard on a wider scale, this is the time to build bridges with the mainstream left - who control most mainstream, credible media. If you care for the rights of Muslim women, this is the time to vocally oppose anti-Muslim sentiment, anti-immigrant/anti-migrant sentiment, so that when and if such women get a chance to leave...they don't continue to suffer. Honestly, in the Islam-critical scene, I don't see enough of that. One thing that makes this situation even worse is people using this instance to dump on, discredit and minimize the struggles of Western feminists as a whole. It's wrong on many levels, but its also just strategically flawed and counterproductive. Granted, many Western feminists may not be aware of the struggles of women in Islamic theocracies - and may indeed view the subject through a Western lens. I myself have been a critic of this time and time again....on specific topics like hijab for example.

From a previous post, you can see the full thing here

There are definitely some *specific* instances where the response of Western feminists can be criticized. And I'm perfectly happy to do that when its relevant - but what I'm seeing a lot of now is a blanket condemnation of Western feminism as a whole.

Sure yeah, no other issues here in the west for women. 

(click to enlarge) Not to mention there are western feminists supporting, reporting and creating awareness on this very topic.

Well no, you don't have to dump on Western feminists to highlight the suffering of Saudi women. It would be far more effective if you raised awareness about it on it's own...as it's a very worthy cause. Should not be used as a tool to score cheap points. "To create controversy" ? so there's a desire to purposefully create controversy by dragging others down? Am I misunderstanding something?

Here's just one example of a Western feminist drawing national attention to a problem like FGM. Of course much more can be done, but this will be achieved through bridging the gaps in understanding, not through alienating Western feminists.

Why are Western feminists viewed as privileged? Well, because Western feminists do not live under Sharia, and aren't being held captive by a male guardianship system. What a privilege!

They aren't being stoned to death...so their struggles aren't real. Trivial non-issues. 

right, because being liked by everyone is the biggest problem Western feminists have

Who's saying they are comparable? I know I'm not...yet this is a response to me.

Now of course, theres no comparison between the types of struggles faced in the West and those under Islamic theocracy. But who, other than anti-feminist types are equating the two? Women saying "we should be heard too" isn't equating or saying they are comparable. This is another manifestation of the "But what about Islam" nonsense - nothing else can ever be criticized, thanks Islam. :/ What a divisive way to look at things. Identity politics being used by anti-sjw type critics of such things. 1) Western feminist? Bah...you don't have problems. 2) Also, (white) privilege isn't real, and oppression olympics are stupid. < Same people, probably.

Who was equating here? Not me... 'disrespect first-world feminists' :(

Ok maybe not all these types deny the existence of 'privilege', especially when it suits them:

Truly a disgusting and unhelpful way to look at things. Not a single Saudi woman is helped with this attitude. 

****

Sure Sharia is THE worst for women...but this is not to say that Western feminism as a whole is frivolous and silly. Don't give me the tired crap about manspreading as if that's what the whole movement is based on. I've heard more anti-feminists obsess over manspreading than feminists. Yes there have been some silly instances, which I have no issue with criticizing....but that is not representative of the whole of Western feminism. By this standard every woman who escapes life in a theocracy and moves to the West...and wants to continue fighting for her rights even in the West, against Western misogynists...is now just engaging in trivial BS. So basically: 'we'll have your back till you leave sharia...after that, you're a joke, your concerns are non-issues.'   Free speech is a major topic of concern in our circles, but this 'anti-Western-feminist' argument can be used there too. If it's not sharia-level bad, it's not worth worrying about I guess...total non-issue:

****

I can't describe how awful it is to see this as someone with one foot in both worlds. To see women's suffering being used against women in other contexts. I've been forced to veil in the past, but this doesn't mean I won't care about workplace sexual harassment in a Toronto office. Stop using the pain of women abused under Islamic regimes to undermine feminists in the West. Women's rights and the fight for those rights extends across the globe. Women are not pawns to pit against each other in some stupid imagined rivalry. I have spent roughly half my life in the West and half of it in the East...in a theocracy. I can tell you that even though there isn't morality police here, women's problems are not magically erased. Women are still struggling for equality all over the world, to different degrees obviously (yes, calm down, not equating). If you care for women's rights, and aren't just interested in weaponizing the *idea* of women's rights to express your hatred for Islam...then you should care about those rights everywhere. Islam can be criticized without throwing Western feminists under the bus. Some may seem reluctant to criticize Islam now, and boy...minimizing their struggles will definitely change their minds! Most importantly, this approach is a disservice to people like Dina Ali, if Muslim women's rights are continued to be seen as a cause hijacked by anti-feminists, right-wingers, etc. to undermine progress and women's rights in their own parts of the world...these critiques and calls to action will never fully resonate with the mainstream...they will always be a taboo topic to touch, they will always be tainted by associations with those seen as having illiberal views in a Western context. And this is why ex-muslims in the West like me...and women who continue to exist under sharia, often feel like we are shouting into the wind. How can any of us be heard like this? So...how do we help women like Dina? We talk about these issues...without using her heartbreaking situation to undermine others.

****

Here are some examples of the battles Western feminism is facing today...for those who think it's just non-issues:

Full story here

Full story here

Full story here

Full story here

Full story here

Full story here

Full story here

Full story here 

Full story here

And all this continues in a climate where alt-right sexism/misogyny is becoming hip, trendy and acceptable in a way it hasn't been in decades...In a climate where a self-professed sexual predator is sitting in the most powerful position in the world. Accusations of sexual assault certainly didn't damage his 'career'.

Full story here

We are in a time, where it's acceptable to say women should be taken out of positions of political power, "we need to establish a fierce and strong patriarchy". This is not some obscure alt-right woman btw, this is someone praised as an ally by our very own leading atheist figure, Dave Rubin.

"women must be removed from political power" (although still of course backs Le Pen) in order to "reestablish a fierce & strong patriarchy". http://pic.twitter.com/veGhSMX0c3

— Nikolashvili (@ViniKako) February 14, 2017

So Rubin goes on a podcast with an alt-right Trump fan called "libtard America" & praises them as an "ally" producing "good stuff". http://pic.twitter.com/P1Mx6CSRhV

— Nikolashvili (@ViniKako) February 1, 2017

****

Somewhere along the way, many crossed over from rightfully criticizing the left for dealing with Islam-related topics poorly, to opposing every liberal left value...feminism, diversity, standing up for minorities, trans rights, etc. How did we get here? :(

------------------------------------------ Thanks to all my Patrons, new and old....you make my work possible. If you enjoy my regressive feminist cuckery, please consider supporting here. from Nice Mangos http://ift.tt/2pvcgd6 via IFTTT

[thomdunn]

On “Hamilton,” Brexit, and Irish Independence

In June 2016, my wife and I headed to Ireland for a week-long vacation. It was my first time on Emerald soil, despite my unabashed affection for my cultural heritage. While I certainly wish I’d had the chance to visit earlier, there was also something poetic about making the trip during the centennial celebration of the Easter Rising, the first major conflict in the struggle for Irish Independence.

For those who don’t know their Irish history, the Easter Rising was actually kind of a massive failure. But that horrible defeat is also what made the rest of the soon-to-be-Republic wake up and realize that their sovereignty was no longer optional. In a way, it was also the beginning of the end of the British Empire — Ireland was the first major colony since the United States to fight for its freedom, and over the next half-century or so, the crown would its relinquish its rule on pretty much everywhere else.

(Admittedly, Ireland is still not entirely free, but that’s a whole other complicated topic. Tiocfaidh ár lá, as they say.)

My wife and I did not intentionally plan our trip around this centennial celebration, but it did add a certain heft of historical importance to the whole thing.

On that same note, we didn’t expect to hop on a plane to Ireland the day after the Brexit vote, either.

Ireland is now comfortably a part of the European Union, of course, so Brexit didn’t impact most of the people we met on our journey across the southern half of the island; indeed, most of them heard our American accents and immediately asked, “Are yourselves from the States? Sure, sure. What the fuck is up with Donald Trump?” to which we both replied with eyerolls, shrugs, sighs, and “I’m gonna need another pint for this.”

But the talk radio and newspaper headlines told a different story: Brexit had the potential to radically change the relationship between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, since they share the only physical land border between the UK and the EU. See, while the fight for Irish Independence began in 1916, the battle wasn’t over until 1923, and the conflict between the the Republic and the British-controlled North raged through 90s (though there are some who are still fighting war today). The border there was heavily militarized until 1998, when the Good Fridayagreement was signed, marking an endpoint to a long and complicated peace process —in which, coincidentally, the Clintons played a small but not unsubstantial role.

Also coincidentally, that trip to Ireland was the first time I listened to “Hamilton.”

We spent 2+ hours in the car every day, alternating between “Hamilton” and The Pogues because relationships are built on compromise (but it was mostly “Hamilton” because I understand and accept that Shane MacGowan’s toothless drunken ramblings don’t appeal to everyone in the same way).

Between “Hamilton,” Brexit, the Easter Rising centennial, and all of the other stunning history we saw as we made our way across the Irish countryside, this got me thinking about politics and revolution, and the roots of where we today—which of course is the kind of stuff I tend to think about anyway, but especially as we enter the third month of Donald Trump’s presidency and celebrate Irish heritage along with St. Pádraig’s Day here in the United States.

As someone who has spent their life in liberal New England, “State’s Rights” had always seemed like something the South made up in order to pretend the Civil War wasn’t about slavery (it was).

More recently, “state’s rights” have been used to block any efforts to curb gun violence, and also to punish trans* people for having to poop (yet somehow not weed?). But listening to the story of our nation’s founding as so eloquently rapped by Lin-Manuel Miranda while driving around Ireland, I came to realize that perhaps the original intention of “state’s rights” was to essentially create 13 separate countries on American soil that had pre-established trade, border, and immigration agreements.

In that context, states like Massachusetts and North Carolina could be as radically different as Germany and France, each with their own unique culture and language or dialect. State identity would not just be an arbitrary moniker; Rhode Islanders and Virginians would almost be separate nationalities, with their shared label of “American” being almost as vague and non-committal as it is on, well, any other continent. The United States would be less of a “country,” in the sense that we know it now, and more of an economic union.

The US then would have been what the EU is today.

An EU citizen can live, work, or travel in any EU nation. They share the same currency, and observe the same charter of fundamental human rights, but other than that, each country is pretty much free to do what it’s going to do, with culture and traditions and other specifics of living that remain unique to them and them alone.

That’s pretty much what Thomas Jefferson argues for in “Hamilton” when the eponymous immigrant first tries to establish the national bank. But it’s not at all what happened — for better, or for worse. Our governors today are not at all comparable to European Presidents, and the power that is currently yielded by Donald Trump is vastly different from Donald Tusk’s authority and influence.

The question of state’s rights could have changed our trajectory 250 years ago. But that didn’t happen.

If the United States had actually been setup to recognize the cultural autonomy of each individual nation-state, we probably wouldn’t be where we are today. We probably wouldn’t have grown as fast as we did (also for better or for worse; remember, our early growth and success was also intrinsically tied to slavery), and the distribution of our wealth and economy would be even more radical than it is right now, reshaping the domino chain of events that we currently know to be the foundational moments in the story of our nation.

Because of this, it’s almost impossible to imagine what this alternate history version of the US would be like today, with 50 separate nation-states working together while also forging their own paths (assuming that we still “collected” those nation-states the way we’ve done with our current spread of states, which may or may not have happened).

And that’s the thing: that divisive tension of potentially-50 different countries, and the fractured state of our collective national identity, are intrinsic parts of America. When Trump supporters opine that we need to “come together as country,” they’re willfully ignoring the fact that we’ve never been together as a country. And that fact has shaped everything about the United States. (To be fair, Trump supporters tend to willfully ignore all facts in general. Ba-dum-tisch!)

How much time, energy, and resources have we spent trying to define and lock down a singular vision of “America the Beautiful Abstract Concept?”

Guns. Religion. Marriage equality. Whiteness and race in general. Immigration, and the overall influx of Spanish language and culture. Taxes. Welfare. Healthcare. Crime, Free Speech, and Policing. Education and “choice.” Basic science. Environmental issues. Land rights. Public or private services? Innovation! Are we a society that looks out for each other, and the individual choice embodiment of everyman-for-himself? Do laws exist to protect the people, or to serve businesses? What would my personal sense of abstract identity be then, as a Nutmegger by birth and a Masshole by choice (and soon-to-be-New Yorker)?

American identity is intrinsically fractured, because it’s always been fractured, because that’s how our country was formed, regardless of the original intention. By this point, we’re too large and unwieldy to steer ourselves smoothly as we bumble towards the future. And so these divisive socio-political issues are trapped in a constant state of tug-of-war, and it’s only made worse by the fact that our cultural obsession with binary thinking (perhaps the only thing we’re unified on) has forced us all to conform to one choice, or the other, jerking back and forth forever. Whichever side you’re on is socially expected to dictate your concept of American identity for you.

There are two ironies to this situation that both stand to sting the most adamant Trump supporters:

According to that traditionally reductive left-right spectrum of America, liberals are the ones who are supposed to favor centralized or “big” government. This is demonstrably untrue, but I digress. Because now under President 45, Blue States are finally reaping the residual benefits of the same state’s rights that we once found futile, for perhaps the first significant time in US history.

I’m still not sure how I feel about that, though it certainly makes me appreciate the Devil’s Advocate arguments I’d been hearing from my Libertarian friends for years. For the most part, I’ve always thought that those who most adamantly insist on flying the standard of “state’s rights” were fighting a losing battle, and only ever using it to hold onto power. I certainly don’t think US states will ever enjoy the same autonomy as the countries of the European Union; but I still think it’s something worth noticing, and thinking about.

The other irony is of course the overlap of Brexit and Trump campaign in their shared appeals to economic strife and xenophobic philosophy. Despite the fact that the British Empire literally ruled the majority of the world—and thus, that any immigration or cultural mix that they might be facing in the UK is their own doing—Nigel Farage and company were somehow still able to convince people that the European Union (and by extension, all countries outside of the British Isles) were bad, evil things.

Trumpers share a disdain with their Brexit Brethren for “The Establishment” and “New World Order,” as embodied by NATO, I guess, and the UN as a whole (and also Muslims, and false flag psyops, or something). And yet, for Trumpers, particularly in the South and Midwest, the autonomy of the European Union actually represents everything they’d supposedly desired for years: cultural autonomy. Except that the EU also expects all of its member-nations to uphold the same respectful standards of equality for all people regardless of race, religion, gender, creed, or sexual orientation—which, sadly, is not an agreement that half the US would be willing to uphold.

This is not to say that all Trumpers and Brexiteers are homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic jerks, of course; just that the politicians at the forefront of their respective campaigns capitalized on these qualities and fears, and that even in the absence of any conscious intent of discrimination, it’s not hard to follow the path from all their other rhetorical arguments and end up right smack in the middle of Bigotry Road.

(Best case scenario, it was an appeal to their basest, animalistic instincts to preserve the self at the sake of others, and they all fell for it.)

And that brings me back to 1916 Ireland.

Pádraig Pearse was among the men who fought and died in the Easter Rising. He was a poet and a thinker, who believed in democratic socialism and feminism, and who struggled to retain his indigenous tongue in the face of colonial oppression.

He also had a gun. (It didn’t help him, but still.)

Hamilton had a gun, too. So did George Washington. Hercules Mulligan had pants and some dopeass rhymes, and presumably a gun as well.

As we drove through Ireland last June, I was reminded of how these revolutionary leaders were all philosophers, sensitive souls who still fought physically for freedom because they saw it as their only choice. It’s not unlike the great Sioux leaders such as Sitting Bull, who walked with a chanunpa in one hand and a skullcracker in the other, always offering the peace pipe first, but keeping his club handy, just in case.

And yet, in the modern day United States, guns and militarization have been almost exclusively associated with right-wing culture and violent white extremism…until now.

Suddenly we’re debating whether it’s okay to punch Nazis. Antifa is starting to get the same news coverage as the alt-right, and gun sales are up among liberal women and minorities, but down across the rest of the country (it’s almost like…all those right-wing gun sales were previously driven by irrational fears of crime and racial paranoia?).

Now the same people who used to tout their Second Amendment rights are more upset about property damage than human rights violations. Now they’re willing to outlaw the rights of the people to assemble and subject citizens to arbitrary purity tests before those same people are allowed to defend themselves from violence, all because they think it helps to uphold some semblance of “order”—or at least, order as it serves them.

The implicit message here is that our American exceptionalism is the central rule of the land.

It’s as if to say that the fight for Civil Rights was won some 50 years ago, and now things are totally different and will still that way forever so every historical example of self-defense or armed insurgence is irrelevant. It’s okay for “real” Americans to stand their ground, but everyone else is just disrupting the “natural” order of things, just like they have at every other point in history.

Except that sense of status quo order has only ever worked to keep a chosen few people in power. Or, as Sinclair Lewis once prophetically said, “It can’t happen here.”

But it can happen here. The only thing exceptional about America is that it hasn’t happened recently in our collective cultural memory.

Europeans understand the serious dangers of fascism, violence, and war, because they’re constantly surrounded by reminders of its horrors. In the United States, anything that predates World War II is practically ancient history. Our American grandparents went off to fight in Europe, then came back to unprecedented levels of prosperity—because Europe was ravaged, and not for the first time, either. By the time the US was born, most European countries had seen their centuries-old landmarks ransacked and destroyed several times over.

Barring a few horrifically tragic but isolated attacks, the US has not.

So what seems so distant to us is a natural part of their lives. The ruined remnants of feudal castles dot the Irish landscape with little preservation or oversight, for example; the woman we stayed with outside of Dublin had a grandfather who was killed in the Easter Rising, and kept a photo of him hanging over the stairs next to a copy of Forógra na Poblachta.

Sure, we have American Civil War re-enactors. But that’s all about false sense of nostalgia (a distinctly American psychosis, to be sure). In Europe, on the other hand, the wounds are genuinely more fresh, the historical damage all within eyesight.

Yet for some reason, here in the States, we think history is settled; that any seemingly-important moment will be remembered and preserved forever, even though we can barely remember what happened when our parents were teenagers. Our political system is great and all, but that doesn’t make it the One True Way that perseveres without question or conflict.

The only thing exceptional about America is our size, and that we’ve had the same identity crisis for 250 years, taking two steps forward and one step back.

Our insistence on being so “exceptional”—on being naive enough to think that we’ve somehow evolved to the point that we’re immune to the same failings of every empire and revolution that came before—is exactly what prevents us from seeing the patterns of history staring back at us.

But “The past isn’t past; it isn’t even over;” “As above, so below;” “This has all happened before;” et cetera, et cetera. Basically this is all a long-winded way of quoting a 30-year old Billy Bragg song:

“The cities of Europe have burned before, and they may yet burn again. But if they do, I hope you’ll understand that Washington will burn with them; Omaha will burn with them; Los Alamos will burn with them.”

None of this is to say that I’m condoning (or condemning) insurrection of any kind. This is all just to say that we should not ignore history.

Let us not conserve or recreate the past, but learn from its lessons, and expect that we’re all inclined to fall back into its worst patterns — then do everything we can to make sure we don’t make those mistakes.

#political discourse #politics #history #america #American history #irish #ireland #hamilton #state's rights #civil war #gun violence #guns #revolution #independence day #brexit

[spiceukonline]

How it feels to be LGBT around the world

BY GEORGIA CHAMBERS and KYLE GRIZZELL

  There is no doubt that LGBT people have had much to celebrate in the past few years. In 2013 and 2015, same-sex marriage was legalised in the UK and the US retrospectively. The LGBT community was being represented in the media more than ever before. Turn the channel over, however, and hostility was clearly still in the air. From the horrific shooting of an LGBT nightclub in Orlando to a bakery refusing to make a cake for a gay couple, too often, where there is progression, there is a regression in attitude just around the corner.

  Global laws regarding homosexuality in 2016. Source: Independent

The world is a scary place for minorities right now. The election of Donald Trump leaves LGBT Americans in a state of uncertainty and fear. Globalisation must be used to our advantage, and the equality of LGBT individuals lies in our ability to maintain a universal connection and understanding in the LGBT community and beyond. This is why the ‘LGBT Worldwide’ project was created. It hopes to draw on the diverse and unique experiences of LGBT individuals who are tirelessly fighting for their equal rights in their home countries, and hopefully bring people closer together in an emerging political sphere that is intent on creating division.

Pride celebrations in the UK. Photograph: Georgia Chambers

Pride celebrations in the UK. Source: Georgia Chambers

Speaking to five individuals about their experiences as an LGBT person, I hope that after reading their stories, others will be encouraged to share theirs.

  RUSSIA: Svetlana Zakharova, 28, lesbian

“Being an open lesbian in Russia, you get used to a very hostile environment,”

                    “Being an open lesbian in Russia, you get used to a very hostile environment. You feel the difference when you leave the country and go to a place where homosexuality is treated differently. I recall going to the Pride events in Rome and the organisers looked bemused when I asked them if it was safe to wear an LGBT emblazoned T-shirt.

Even though homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, violence and discrimination against LGBT people is still a massive problem. In the last few weeks before Russia hosted the Winter Olympic Games, Putin insisted that Russia was safe for LGBT people, but recent statistics suggest otherwise. A 2015 survey by the Russian LGBT Network reported 82% of respondents had experienced some form of physical, psychological or sexual violence as a result of their sexual orientation or gender identity.  

Despite the constant fear and isolation experienced by Russia’s LGBT community, I do not believe that the Russian people are homophobic by nature. The hatred is state-sponsored. Russia’s propaganda law is supposed to “protect” children from being exposed to homonormativity- content recognising homosexuality as being a societal norm.

Of course, there is hope. The Russian LGBT Network work with mass media to try and show that LGBT rights are human rights- we are no different from everyone else. Right now, Russia is experiencing a huge backlash in terms of human rights as well as LGBT rights. However, things can change, and they will change. It just takes time.”

Svetlana is the communications manager at the Russian LGBT Network. For more information, visit their website or follow them on Twitter. 

  SHANGHAI, CHINA: Summer Wu 

“It’s not uncommon to receive comments like ‘you are fat, ugly and not sexy- it must be why you turn to women,'” 

“Coming out as LGBT is extremely difficult in China. Being filial and obedient to parents is traditional in Chinese culture, so coming out can be seen as offensive to the family honour. Coming out is especially difficult for Chinese women. Single heterosexual women are discriminated enough as it is, but gay women coming out to their parents make them worry about their daughter’s future and the future of their family.

Gay women face serious discrimination. It’s not uncommon to receive comments like ‘no man wants to marry you because you are ugly, fat and not sexy,’ ‘you don’t look ugly. You must have had your heart broken by an ex-boyfriend and now you turn to women’ or ‘you don’t look like a lesbian.’

As it stands, LGBT people can not get married or adopt children. Although the LGBT community continues to advocate for our rights, the Chinese government ignore our pleas. We need to change attitudes, and that is why putting LGBT rights on the mainstream map is so important.”

Summer Wu is the Key Organiser of ShanghaiPRIDE. For more information, visit their website or follow them on Twitter. 

  TEXAS: Lou Weaver, 46, Transgender

“I’ve witnessed transgender friends be denied jobs, housing and medical care,”

“Compared to other transgender people, I see myself as lucky. The whole purpose of my job is to elevate the voices of transgender people in the state of Texas, but I have witnessed my transgender friends be denied jobs, housing and medical care.

The Southern and Northern states of the US have differing attitudes to a lot of things- and their approach towards LGBT individuals is no different. Texas is unique in that we tend to be a bit more conservative and religious. Lawmakers in Texas have proposed similar laws to North Carolina’s HB2 law (which prohibits transgender people from using the bathroom consistent with their gender identity), for instance. Sometimes people want to maintain the status quo and fight to keep things the same.

With the Texas Transvisible Project, I hope to educate Texans that transgender people are our neighbours, families, co-workers and friends.”

Lou is the Transgender Programmes Coordinator at Equality Texas. For more information, visit their website or follow them on Twitter. 

  INDIA: Harish Iyer, 37 

“Bollywood is slowly coming out of the closet,”

Photograph: The Times of India

“In India, the legal status of ‘LGB’ is very different from ‘T.’ Whilst being LGBT is not illegal, having sex against the order of nature is a crime under the colonial law- Section 377. The transgender community is recognised as a minority community and is seen as a ‘backward’ class.

Instances of homophobia vary depending on what situation and what location you are in. In metros like Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi there is a thriving community of LGBT persons, but there are still cases of extortion and police harassment.

That is not to say that progress has not been made. Bollywood is slowly coming out of the closet, and English language media has been largely supportive of taking a stand for LGBT rights. This year’s LGBT pride in Mumbai attracted thousands and is exactly the reason whilst visibility is so important. It shows LGBT people that they are not alone.

In my activism, I have worked with Stephen Fry in his BBC2 documentary ‘OUT THERE’ and Ellen Page in her web series ‘Gaycation.'”

Harish is a social activist and was featured in the Guardian’s most influential LGBT of 2013. Follow Harish on Twitter 

Source: The Wall Street Journal 

  IRELAND: Toryn Glavin, 22, Transgender

“be the person you know you are rather than who society expects you to be.”

                    “I think Ireland has always been a hugely accepting place but with a little too much religious influence at times. Transgender people are allowed the right to self-determine their gender. Unfortunately, this right is not extended to people under the age of 18. Trans youth are one of the most visible populations in Ireland, yet are treated in a degrading way and forced to live as a gender which is not their own, which is never okay.

There’s so many misconceptions about trans people; that we’re all straight, that we feel trapped in our own bodies, that we all have ‘the surgery.’ There are also a lot of social obstacles. The healthcare system is unnecessarily complicated and confusing, and there’s also disproportionate levels of unemployment and underemployment. We’ve made progress, yes, but there’s still a lot of educating to do.

National organisations like Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI; which works to advance the rights and equality of trans people), have also had an international responsibility. I’ve met trans activists from across Europe, many of whom come from countries very far removed from our privileged oasis here on the edge of the continent. I think it would be a terrible shame if we became insular and removed from the plight of LGBTQI+ people across the globe.

My message for trans people out there who feel alone or afraid, as cliche as it sounds, is that it does get better. Life will still have its trials and tribulations but it’s better to face them head on as the person you know you are rather than who society expects you to be. In the words of our queen, Laverne Cox, trans is beautiful.”

Toryn works with TENI advocating for the rights and equality of trans people. For more information, visit their website or follow them on Twitter. 

  Thank you to all of our contributors. To share your experiences, use the hashtag #LGBTWorldwide or email [email protected]

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