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#i really do not understand the antis argument when they say that
mx-paint · 6 months
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it's so funny how terfs will come up with ways to say "I'm not a terf! I don't call myself that! But I believe everything they say and agree with everything they do and also donate to specific funds that say trans people should die in a ditch that are run by terfs! But I'm sooooo not a terf!"
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gacorley · 2 months
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There’s some common threads I see in the anti-voting posts going around, and I feel like I need to discuss some of them. Let’s start with the biggest one:
Voting to punish evil. I see lots of variations of this. Biden is supporting Israel, therefore we can’t vote for him. Is there any viable candidate who would stop the genocide? I don’t think the anti voting crowd actually cares. They are appealing to moral feelings rather than political strategy, because strategically, you have to realize that voting is not going to change foreign policy, and that change has to be pushed by other means. It’ll probably be something in the long haul.
Democrats should run someone else. First of all, this is a shit strategy. You don’t primary your president in the second term unless your party is falling apart. This may come from people from countries where replacing the head of government is easier, but the POTUS is the de facto party head. Also, going to the lack of thought to the goal — do you know someone willing to primary Biden and able to win who would do the things you want?
Biden hasn’t done anything anyway. This is just a way to bat away pro arguments. There’s plenty of lists of progress on lots of things. Student loans, insulin price caps, regulations, anti-trust.
Putting the entire Palestinian genocide on Biden. I’m not saying there’s not culpability there, but understand that the entire US government is in support of Israel, on both sides. It was a miracle we got a handful of Senators to call for investigations. We should cut off aid, absolutely. Who’s running to do that? And keep in mind that Israel chose to engage. US officials would have liked a more limited response, not out of care for Palestinians, but because they know from experience that it will come back to bite Israel in the form of newly radicalized Hamas recruits.
Liberals just have no hope for change. This is a new one. Just some idea that people are stuck in a rut and that’s the reason the two party system exists. The two party system is a mathematical consequence of the way we vote. There is reason to hope for change. The change, though, whatever means you choose, will take decades. Keep working at it. The hope is not that this election will fundamentally change things. The hope is that many small political actions over the years will push things forward.
Funnily enough, I haven’t seen a whole lot of third party promotion, just lots of this rhetoric aiming to punish. When voting, ask yourself:
Is this problem I have with this candidate something that the other candidate would be better on?
Are there other political actions I can take that will help?
What things can change with a different President or Congress, and what needs to be pursued by other means?
Withholding your vote as a punishment isn’t really going to help. Biden doesn’t know who you are or why you are not voting for him, and there is no one with a chance of winning that will do everything you want. But you have other means. Protest, organize, donate, build up alternatives, advocate for a different system.
Vote to give yourself space and get a little bit. Do other things to keep things moving.
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asterosian · 3 months
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I’m watching Jesse Gender’s video acknowledging the criticism against that one line in her video and how she needs to address her own blind spots when it comes to trans men, which I think it’s awesome that we’re being listened to when I would’ve fully expected us to be written off by most other people, but one thing she mentioned got me thinking (read: distracted) about how exactly trans men challenge the gender power hierarchy. It’s something I’ve tried touching on before but it didn’t really take off as much as I wanted it to and I think that’s because I didn’t phrase it as well as I could have. And I don’t even know if I’ll succeed right now cause if I’m being honest, I’m not sure how to phrase it. Damn if I won’t try tho.
But like how nonbinary people challenge it by not even fitting into it and trans women challenge it by “lowering themselves,” I think trans men challenge it by making people question what sense or value the hierarchy has in the first place in a way that invokes a fear that those who wish to uphold that hierarchy clearly have but won’t say so too directly.
Dial your clock back to the women’s suffrage movement for a second. Have you seen the anti-suffragette posters? They certainly seem to imply that if women can vote, they can do basically anything else a man can do. She can put on pants, get a job, find a woman to marry, and - oh the horror! - live basically identically to a man. You don’t want women to become men, do you? Oh but let’s move forward. Inch by inch. Women did more things that men could do and this was a massive big deal and scared the shit out of people, but eventually it was sorta-okay. As long as they’re still women. We need to make sure they understand they are still women even if they do all these things. But of course, there’s still backwards asshats trying to turn time back to before all of this.
I’ve heard the arguments that people who think a woman’s proper place is in the kitchen wearing a dress and an apron, barefoot and pregnant with three kids already at her ankles, have made about these things. I can anyway and it’s smart to do so but I don’t even have to turn to historical writings to see it; they’re on YouTube and Rumble or whatever it’s called. They’re on Xitter. They’re even on tumblr of all places. I’ve noticed something about them; as soon as trans men are brought up, they sound exactly like the anti-suffragette posters. The hand-wringing about women getting jobs and bank accounts. One example I’ve heard from someone I’m not going to give the honor of promoting was a man who got so angry about a nonbinary person, who he believed was a trans man, being on the cover of a men’s fashion magazine. In his anger, he went on a rant that went something like “you just think men have it so much better than you cause you believe in male privilege so you wanna pretend to be one of us, but when another man tries to fight you over your girl, you’re gonna get your ass beat. You couldn’t handle being a real man!” And like, people like this guy thought women couldn’t handle most jobs out there. They thought women couldn’t be financially responsible enough to be allowed control over their own money. They thought women voting would lead to the worst candidates taking office and, even worse, then a woman could end up in office and there’s no way she could handle it. But uh. Plenty of women prove this wrong on a daily basis. This guy had to create a very specific scenario in which he believes a hypothetical trans man couldn’t handle it but any cis man should be able to. And quite frankly, it doesn’t work cause the number of cis women who’ve successfully beaten the shit out of cis men in various circumstances is a pretty good indicator that ASAB has nothing to do with fighting ability.
In short, in the eyes of a misogynist, if women can do literally anything a man can do, even become a man, then what fucking sense does patriarchy make in the first place? If you can become a man, thrive as a man, and fulfill the role of a man without issue, all while having been AFAB, then what makes (cis) men so much better than women? What was the point of all this in the first place?
What even makes a man a man?
I think those questions scare them. They don’t want to even try to answer it. They’re comfortable with the notion of those they think of as men are men, those they think of as women are women are women, this is a state as static and inflexible as a thick lead pole sticking out of the ground, and there is a natural place and role for the two genders. And every trans person no matter how they’re trans takes this notion and uproots it at multiple points at once.
The worst part is? If they just sat down with an open mind and asked these questions, a massive percentage of the trans community would be able to answer all of them. We already had to ask what makes a man a man or a woman a woman. We just don’t have simple answers most of the time.
Okay now that I’m done thinking way too much about that one point, I’m gonna keep watching the video.
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howtofightwrite · 6 months
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I love picking at plot holes like scabs so i want my fight scenes to be as realistic as possible. However. There’s a creature in my head that says a buster sword is SICK AS HELL. What modifications would it need to be even remotely wieldable while still keeping its central appeal (huge sword big blade cool and sexy) intact?
You’ve made a mistake. You mistook suspension of disbelief for realism. This is a common problem that gets in the way of a lot of fantasy and sci-fi authors. So, don’t worry. It isn’t just you. However, realism vs believability is where your hangup is. Stories don’t need to be realistic to be believable.
The quick and dirty (and possibly unhelpful) answer is to create a world that justifies your buster sword, not a buster sword that’s trying to justify itself in a world that doesn’t want it. You step back from the sword itself and away from a world where reality dictates that it’s too heavy, too clumsy, too slow, and ask yourself: “in what type of world does this thing make sense?” And there’s about a billion different ways to create that.
The hangup with the realistic argument is that all of fiction is a lie. Good or bad, that’s what stories are. They can be very compelling, addicting, manipulative, feel incredibly good, and still be fake. The goal of a creator isn’t just to create stories that are believable, but for your audience to want to believe in them. Storytelling is always a joint venture between you and your reader. You are the salesperson asking your audience to come along for the ride. To keep their attention, you’ve got to spin up a good yarn. Build trust. The world has to feel right, but it doesn’t have to be right. Reasonable, not right. The goal is to take a cool idea and work backwards to how your society got here so that when seen from an outside perspective, the choice ultimately looks like a reasonable conclusion given the surrounding context. One of the better ways to build your reasonable conclusions is by studying the history of technological invention from the beginning to the midpoint rather than starting with the end point—the results.
History is full of weird, wacky, wild attempts and failures at creation. You’re not the first person to look at a human sized sword and wonder if it could, in fact, hit good. Or, really, better than swords that currently exist. Or, fulfill a battlefield role the sword was currently not occupying. Or, as we like to say, have real battlefield applications. The Claymore, the Zwhihander, the Zhanmadao are all real weapons that saw real, if not necessarily extensive, use. Like all weapons, they were specialized tools meant for particular battlefield uses. In this case, mainly as anti-cavalry support.
Ask yourself, why? Not just, why would I want it? Ask, why would I use it?
What actual purpose does the big cool blade serve beyond looking big and cool? What function does it fill on the battlefield? Why use the big cool blade instead of other weapons? What does it do better? What are some offsets which might account for the massive size? Technology? Superhuman enhancements, mystical or otherwise? Gravitic fields? Magic? Why is the big cool blade better suited to ensuring a character’s survival? What advantages does it provide? What is its practical value to warriors within your setting?
The initial defensive reaction is that we don’t need a reason because we have the Rule of Cool. That could be the reason, but I challenge you to go deeper. Go deeper than, “this was the weapon my character was trained to use.” The followup question is: why were they trained to use it?
In the real world, we can answer these questions both from a personal and from a larger social perspective. We may not be able to answer whether we’d use a gun, but we understand why humanity developed guns, why we use guns, and the purpose they serve both for personal protection and in their military applications. The answers don’t necessarily need to be good or smart. What matters is that an answer exists to feed your audience. When your reader starts struggling to believe, they begin to ask questions, they pick at the fabric of the narrative trying to figure out why their mind has rejected the story they were previously enjoying. What we, the writer, want to create is a chain of logic underpinning the narrative and its world. This way, when questions are asked, a reasonable answer is ready and waiting. While we won’t win over everyone, trust that your audience wants to believe. Trust that they’re smart enough to figure it out without being spoon fed. That way, you won’t fall into the trap of infodumping.
Worldbuilding always involves a lot more happening under the surface than ever makes it onto the page. Your characters will be the ones to demonstrate and act on the internal logic that’s been created for them without needing a billion questions to lead us from Point A to Point B.
If we look at human history in a wide view, we find that weapons are a fairly steady march forward that matches a civilization’s technological growth. We keep what works and discards what doesn’t. The crossbow replaced the bow as the main form of artillery in martial combat, but we still kept the bow. The bow still had practical applications. Guns eventually replaced the crossbow just like they replaced the sword, but it actually took a very long time. We had functional firearms in the Middle Ages.
Ease of Use
Ease of Training
Lethality
From a military standpoint, these are the three most important aspects for widespread adoption of any weapon. Easy to use. Easy to train. Lethal. The longer it takes to train a soldier on a weapon the more time your army is losing out on using that soldier and the more effective the weapon needs to be in order to justify its expense. Why give your soldier a big cool sword if they’ll never get close enough to reach the forward line to make the assault? Why have them use the big cool sword if operating the laser cannon is more efficient, effective, and keeps them alive longer? In the coldness of battlefield calculus, it’s often better to have cheap, efficient units rather than more expensive ones that might be more lethal but take longer to produce. No matter how good they are, you’re eventually going to lose them. Therefore, easy replaceability becomes a factor.
If you can answer those questions (and the myriad of other similar ones) you won’t just have a weapon, you’ll have a world. You’ll have more than a justification, you’ll have battlefield strategy, tactics, and a greater understanding of how the average layman characters in your setting beyond your main character approach warfare and possibly a technological history. You might even have several functional armies.
Ultimately, this is a game of value versus cost. Most settings that use big cool swords sacrifice ease of use and ease of training to amp up lethality. The weapon having a specialized function or only being usable by a specialized unit helps if that unit’s battlefield effectiveness is justified. Or, you could just have a weird technological outlier where its effectiveness doesn’t quite justify its cost even if the individual warrior is effective. A good example of this is in shounen anime where one character has a specialty that no one else has, a really cool, effective weapon that never appears anywhere else, because the length of training, high skill floor, and finicky nature of its use make it difficult to justify widespread adoption.
The danger is assuming there’s a right answer. There isn’t one. The value in learning the rules of real world violence is so you can break them. This way you can tell the difference between the vital rules necessary for suspending disbelief and don’t accidentally break the ones you needed to keep your audience invested.
-Michi
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sawasawako · 16 days
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do you by chance have any advice for someone who wants to try and start reading theory and more non fiction but has a hard time due to being very overwhelmed?
I would like to be more well read but, it's just so confusing for me finding to read and look into.
I feel like this is too vauge but I don't know how else to word it
hi!! don't worry, i understand what you mean. i'm glad you asked.
firstly, i'd like to reframe things a bit and say that the goal of reading theory and nonfiction is not to be more "well-read." at least, that shouldn't be your primary motivation. the idea that one reads in order to project an image of know-how (to be seen as well-read) is what puts people off from reading, and drives people to insincerely engage with texts. reading should be enjoyable, not a chore. by "enjoyable" i mean you must enjoy the act of reading itself, rather than seeing it as an instrument for something else.
i think understanding reading as an end in itself - even if you don't "get" something out of it, even if you don't fully understand what you read - goes a long way to lessen how overwhelming it can be. texts - provided they're written earnestly and, hopefully, from a place of expansiveness - being difficult to parse is not really the issue here; what makes them seem difficult and insurmountable is this idea that if you don't profit from the reading somehow, if you can't extract some easily summarisable "lesson" or "message" or feeling from it afterwards, then there's no point to it and its function cannot be explained.
this is simply not true. what you gain from a text is what you bring to it. you don't have to understand everything, or even anything, on the first try. literary scholars can talk about a single text or author for their whole careers and still not reach anything close to full or perfect understanding, because that's just not possible, nor is it desirable. i've said this many times before and i'll say it again: the goal of reading, of textual analysis, is not to achieve transparency (at least, not all the time). this is true of reading theory and criticism, too. any good piece of writing will resist total, and easy, understanding somehow (though knowing when to be clear and straightforward is important, too). it's just a question of how patient you can be with a particular theory or text, how willing you are to slough through it because you want to understand, not because you want it to serve your ego or intellect or comfort.
theory exists primarily as a way of understanding the world and its systems and structures. theorists may use a lot of fancy language, but that's because they're trying to find a means of expression adequate to their ideas and arguments. sometimes, this obscures understanding (i usually find this is the case with white authors, frankly). which is why i think theory cannot be created or understood in isolation, it has to be (and is) a communal endeavour. but the difficulty is something you have to accept and learn to work with, if you're serious about reading nonfiction (and fiction!).
and in fact, not all theory is stuffy and obscure like the common conception is. some theory is very clear in what its arguments and aims are and even includes calls to action. complexity does not necessarily correlate with difficulty (what's so difficult to understand about anti-racism and feminism, for example? if people actually engaged seriously / sincerely with their arguments and frameworks, there would be no reason not to understand what these critics are proposing). and sometimes the language is difficult because the ideas are difficult - they're getting at something you do not yet understand and thus have to imagine.
i think the way forward is to think about gaps in your knowledge and what specifically you would like to know more about (in other words, reflect on what you are ignorant about). sometimes we're overwhelmed because we don't know what we don't know, or we know what we don't know, and it's a lot. start small. read an online article or essay about a topic of interest - lots of these are passed around on tumblr (check out my readings and resources tags). you don't have to get through it all in a day if it's particularly long. but you should aim to finish reading the piece, so that you can read more and more and accumulate knowledge to make future readings easier (it will still be hard). let your curiosity and instincts guide you. embark on your own research! search engines are deeply imperfect but they're there for you to use, and you can ask them dumb questions. they work better the more you know what you know and what you don't know. some websites i would recommend you start exploring are the new inquiry, believer mag, real life, electric lit, another gaze, and lux mag.
also! another tip is to subscribe to newsletters. if you want to reduce the workload of doing your own digging, then newsletters are basically a shortcut to recommended reading (electric lit does curated lists particularly well). me personally, i like self-directed research, so newsletters don't really work for me even though i'm subscribed to them. follow writers, particularly scholars and critics, on twitter (only those with a moral backbone, though). or do the next best thing and follow uni/grad students on tumblr, they share readings all the time (like me, for example). my mutuals are a great starting point (some i can think of now are @womenintheirwebs @notchainedtotrauma @brownpaperhag @butchniqabi @akajustmerry @anneemay @heavenlyyshecomes @fairuzfan @librarycards). i have a quotes tag and a whole archived blog with even MORE readings you can browse at your own pace (but you have to commit, ofc).
i hope this helps! i'm here if you have any more questions :)
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A New Tradition [Sebek Zigvolt]
You had never seen Sebek look this serious in your life.
And that said a lot, considering you’d known him all throughout your years in NRC and a few years into his adult life where you had subsequently dated. Sebek was a partner who regarded romance with an intensity that was unsurprising yet appreciated. He made every date special, even in tiny ways, he remembered significant days in your relationship without needing to be reminded, he tried to be as open with his communication as possible (which still resulted in fumbling, as he couldn’t always accurately define the emotions he was feeling). Either way, you could see the intense look of concentration on his face now after your request.
You had hesitated on asking him to participate in a Christmas tradition as you had correctly guessed it wasn’t something he really cared for. He was part human, and his dad celebrated it a bit, but had always left it up to Sebek on if he wanted to join. Sebek’s mother was far more interested in the little holiday traditions, helping his father set up the glass tree he took from the attic every year (it caused little mess, and was still customizable enough that they could change out the decorations on it). There was an exchanging of presents that always included Sebek, and as an adult he felt the need to give back as well, but that was the extent of his interaction with the holiday. His mother always seemed to light up the night before, excited as she looked at the colorful wrapping paper around her presents and mused on what they might be. Sebek couldn’t help but consider it a tradition that was more his parents than his, as they seemed more disgustingly in love on that day compared to every other day of the year (and they were pretty much always openly affectionate, so that was saying something).
Sebek was far too aware of the change of energy as he answered your question, the disappointed look being a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moment but he noticed. He knew when your smile was forced, that you were simply not making him to do something he didn’t want to, and he had always appreciated the side of you that was understanding. He had come to learn that relationships had a give and take, that as stubborn as he could be there were moments he had to yield to you because it was truly not a serious enough issue that an argument should continue on. And it’s not like he was anti-human tradition, he had to nix that when he started dating one a few years ago, so there was no reason he couldn’t agree to making your own personalized tradition like his parents had.
“I want to… I’ll decorate with you,” Sebek finally stated, regarding the tree he had just pulled into your home. He was still on his knees in front of it, having arranged the skirt around the bottom as you had directed, so now the green pine stood proud at the center of your dining room. “The tree. We can find something in the nearby shops to put on them… I heard there are enchantments that make the lights change color, or sparkle, whichever you’d like…”
He was talking to himself more than you now, seeming to think of all the way he could make this unique for the two of you to enjoy. The thought of a shopping trip was an exciting one, especially when you knew Sebek was thinking of human tradition alternatives that might be found in the fae world; you’d never enchanted a tree before but you wondered what kind of magical baubles might be in the shops, just waiting to find a loving home.
“Ah! But, I do have a rule.”
Sebek tilted his head in acknowledgement despite staying in his thinking pose, to let you know he was listening.
“Do not bring an ornament into this house with Malleus’ face on it.” Sebek went to open his mouth, his eyebrows knitted together on his head, a retort on the tip of his tongue when you cut him off again, “Not a tree topper, either!”
Sebek huffed, arms crossed as he wondered what other way he might make tribute to Malleus on the tree without you noticing.
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nothorses · 8 days
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I think there's a Thing where any transphobia known to be against a transfem gets called "transmisogyny", which is fine I guess, but idk I feel like transmisogyny is supposed to be the word for the Specific Type of oppression that trans women face, not "transphobia that in this case is against a trans women". Does that make sense? Like if somebody misgenders a trans woman and that's it, that isn't anything more specific than "transphobia", right? Like if somebody were to call me a faggot, I wouldn't consider That transandrophobia simply because I Am a trans man, I would just think of it as generally anti-queer. Does that make sense, or am I misunderstanding the terms transmisogyny, transandrophobia, etc?
No I think you're right, and tbh I think it's a manifestation (and a really good example) of the "identity = oppression" framework a lot of folks are operating under in these conversations.
It's not something anyone really says out loud, but I've noticed it as a pattern in certain circles; mostly a lot of primarily young, online queer circles.
It's the same framework that, imo, spawned "Transmisogyny Exempt/Transmisogyny Affected" (or "TME/TMA") in which one's identity is directly equivalent to the oppression they experience.
The logic goes: If you identify as X, you experience anti-X oppression. If your identity is not X, you do not, and cannot, experience anti-X oppression.
This is also where we get, like, "misdirected misogyny" as a concept: the logic is that trans men* do not identify as women, therefore they cannot experience oppression meant for women.
Or "slur discourse": if you do not identify as X, you do not experience anti-X oppression, you have never been called this anti-X slur, and therefore you cannot reclaim this anti-X slur.
A lot of other gatekeeping arguments follow similar logic, as do a lot of arguments against acknowledging "transandrophobia" (or anti-transmasc bigotry as a specific concept). Personal identity is understood to be directly equivalent to experiences with oppression, and trans men's identities are thus broken down into their two parts, and assigned corresponding experiences:
Trans experiences
Man experiences
Even understanding "trans man" to be a third identity, with additional, unique "trans man experiences", creates a lot of friction within this framework: a lot of the unique "trans man experiences" we talk about arise from interactions between transphobia and misogyny. But misogyny must be woman-only; our experiences with misogyny are considered incidental, or "misdirected".
If we consider identity to be directly equivalent to oppression, then what, exactly, could these unique "trans man experiences" be?
In this framework, they can only ever be the combination of "trans experiences" and "man experiences"; and "man experiences" cannot contain any unique "man oppression" (unless all men are oppressed just for being men), so "trans man experiences" can only ever be "trans experiences".
When people say "transmisogyny" to refer to any and all oppression that impacts trans women, it's because they understand identity and oppression to be one and the same. Trans women's experiences with oppression cannot be understood as complex & nuanced interactions between different systems of oppression- they are always considered transmisogyny, because the person experiencing them is a trans women, and the oppression of trans women is called "transmisogyny".
It's a reductive and honestly immature understanding of how identity and oppression interact with and relate to one another, but I find it really helpful to understand it when breaking down the flaws in arguments like these ones.
*Some trans men (as well as other transmasculine people) can and do identify as women, and this logic is often applied to transmasculine people as a whole, which erases those folks as well. I'm just not sure what the most accurate term to use here is, honestly.
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cupcraft · 16 days
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And since im sick of seeing it. Calling out misogyny and understanding how misogyny as a system of power influences and rewards abuse is not "hating men cryptoterf bioessentialism" on principle. Please please pleasee stop. TERFs win when you narrow down their violent white supremacy and patriarchy as just "hating men", terfs win when you refuse to acknowledge the patriarchy as a system critically and how it rewards certain abusers, terfs win when you cannot see that misogyny does inform some abuse. Terfs win when you see bioessentialism as calling out misogyny and not what bioessentialism really is (which is why bioessentialism is so fucking horrific of a place to go down). TERFs win when you water down their arguments and refuse to engage with feminism at all.
TERFs are a group that reinforce white supremacist patriarchical systems and are not feminists. You being uncomfortable saying misogyny exists and can inform abuse is not the "fight against the terfs" you think it is. You must be able to dissect and talka bout misogynistic abuse and patriarchy and you cannot let terfs existing pull you away from that, because if you do they are winning their propaganda war.
We can live in a world where we critique terf talking points because they are in fact dangerous and violent and contribute to anti-trans violence and laws being on the rise. But we also need to NOT let terfs disallow us to speak up against misogyny (a system they happily reinforce, making it that much more important to engage in). Also seeing patriarchy as a social system does not equate bioessentialism, and please dont water that term down (because again, it is equally important we speak out against those dangerous arguments when they happen).
I say all of this because for the past two weeks i have seen discourse after discourse upset misogyny in MCYT is being called out by tumblr users, even fellow trans tumblr users, and whenever ccs come forward about it it is crickets to critiquing them like people are doing on here. Please get comfortable engaging with conversations about misogyny and how it intersects with the abuse allegations that have come out, Please get comfortable engaging with how misogyny has influenced normalizing abuse in these cc circles (as stated by multiple victims and witnesses). Please get comfortable because it is important you unpack it for the safety of victims.
And if you come out of this thinking "well i guess you're a terf who hates men" you have missed my point and this post is not about hating men it is about unpacking misogyny as it intersects with abuse in the cases that have come up in the past few weeks. If a terf sees this post please dont interact I do not want your bigoted bullshit staining this point at all.
You are free to add on and educate me on anything by the way. My anons are only off because of the harassment I had already gotten two weeks ago.
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saintsenara · 2 months
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Thoughts on remadora?
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thank you very much for the asks, anons!
while they are by no means my otp, i really enjoy remadora as pairing - and i think they’re fully up there among the canon couples in terms of being an amazing vehicle through which to explore all sorts of questions about life and love - which i am aware is a sufficiently controversial statement that it involves an immediate engagement with some discourse…
because remadora girlies [gender neutral] get an enormous amount of shit within the fandom, particularly from fans who consider wolfstar to be a more plausible pairing for lupin than tonks. i have seen remadora shippers called homophobes for simply enjoying the couple, justified with the bizarre idea that it disrespects remus' relationship with sirius [so... the non-canon one?] to put them together. i have seen tonks turned into a pathetic shrew who is trying to keep remus from the real love of his life by trapping him with an unwanted baby. i have seen remadora shippers get a lot of the usual stuff that people who prefer the canon-endgame couples do [that to ship a canon pair is boring, that it is indicative of a lack of talent, that it indicates an uncritical support for jkr] magnified to eleven because tonks has the temerity to be a barrier to remus’ relationship with the fandom’s favourite hot and brooding man.
obviously, this is bullshit - primarily because its unreasonable and cruel to invest so much time and energy being mean to people because of their harry potter shipping preferences [fandom should never be that deep].
but it’s also a disappointment to me personally because it means that it can be very hard to find the sort of remadora i like without looking like i’m coming to contribute to the pile-on. because where many remadora fans and i don’t see eye-to-eye is that i have absolutely no interest in thinking about them as a relationship which is actually functional. and, all too often, i find myself sifting through fics which do prefer to interpret them like this - as romantic and passionate and stable - largely, i think it’s fair to say, as a defensive move against the tide of “urgh, imagine shipping that” nonsense - even though all the evidence of canon is that they are… very much not.
i am aware of the pottermore article which smoothes the edges of lupin’s canonical reaction to tonks’ feelings for him in half-blood prince - but, while i read this as something of a retcon to make the relationship more palatable, i also don’t think that assuming that both tonks and lupin’s attraction to each other was sincere precludes them being as dysfunctional as they canonically are. i don’t go in for the common anti-remadora argument that tonks “forces” him into a relationship with her - it’s clear in half-blood prince that it’s not only her who has discussed her feelings with molly and arthur weasley, lupin is definitely flirting with her when they pick harry up in order of the phoenix, lupin is an adult man [no matter other power imbalances between him and tonks - such as the fact that she is an agent of the state which oppresses him] who possesses the capacity to refuse her advances, and - since teddy’s conception is not immaculate - he has no issue with enjoying a sexual relationship with her even if he then wants to run away from the product of that.
instead, what i like with remadora is that they reveal something which goes against the grain of the rest of the series: that love is not always enough. throughout the seven-book canon, we see time and time again the idea that love - and, crucially, love-as-noble-suffering and love-as-sacrifice - is enough to overcome any problem. entire civil service collaborating with a terrorist regime? don’t trouble yourself, love has won. your mother dying in childbirth leaving you to be neglected in a state institution? your own fault you’re not interested in love.
i understand the genre reasons for this, but i also love the way in which lupin especially exists on the margins of these genre conventions [just as he exists on the margins of wizarding society!]. i’m always struck in deathly hallows that he’s the only person who’s actually realistic about the demands of war - particularly when he tells harry that it is breathtakingly naive for him to think he can get through the fighting without having to shoot to kill - and that part of him having to be shuffled out of the way when harry tells him to return to the pregnant tonks is because, were the story focused on realism, the idea that a wanted man who is considered an unhuman by the state fleeing in order to guarantee the safety of his wife and unborn child becomes eminently reasonable and harry's defense of the nuclear family embarrassingly unradical.
and so i like the idea of lupin seeing tonks - and tonks seeing lupin - initially as just a bit of fun, as the two of them being just two chill single people who think the other is hot and interesting and want to bang because of it.
[which is something fandoms in general really struggle with as a concept. we like epic love stories - and you won't find me objecting to that! - but we're less good at thinking about casual sexual attraction or transient friendships, and how these can be transformative and meaningful without having to end up going any sort of distance.]
and i then like the idea of the relationship being forced into a profundity it doesn’t really have the juice to sustain by the sheer avalanche of grief which besets the two of them - sirius, dumbledore, mad-eye, ted - and by the pressure of the war and the fact that the order is scrambling and the hangover of remus' self-destruction in half-blood prince which makes each cling to the other as a life-raft. i like remadora as something codependent and messy and strange and sad, and i don’t think this prevents it being sincere and fun and based in mutual attraction, but instead that these positive qualities can exist in conjunction with the fact that, without the war, it would have been a summer of fucking and that was probably it.
on tonks herself, i don’t think i can say it better than @evesaintyves in this meta on her character. i’ve been really uncomfortable with quite a lot of stuff i’ve seen recently which has taken against the idea that tonks can be meaningfully read as queer on the basis of what we find in the text, above all because it so often comes with the implication that one cannot imagine her in her canon endgame pairing and presume that she’s something other than straight or cisgender. eve sets out an excellent case for tonks as bolshy and liberated and in tune with herself and fun and confused and in flux and still figuring stuff out about who she is and where she’s going - and this translates, may i say, to an astonishingly beautiful way of writing her, lupin, and the dysfunction inherent between them which i highly recommend you read.
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lovemyromance · 22 days
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Im curious about your take on how azriel is “overprotective”
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I honestly don't understand how we got to this point where a male love interest being protective is a bad thing. Overprotective, sure. But I don't think any of the bat boys are overprotective.
There are really two parts to to understanding this argument:
Azriel's protectiveness
Elain's personality/character itself
Let's begin:
Azriel's protectiveness
Homeboy is protective, no one can deny this. But he is protective of them all. He attacked Eris to defend Mor's honor, he is Mr. "Careful how you speak of my High Lady", he handles even Nesta with the utmost care and respect. If there is danger, I'd sooner believe he'd throw himself into it rather than it get close to any of his pretty friends' heads.
But there is a difference between him, and let's say, Tamlin for example. Tamlin literally locks up Feyre in her room, doesn't let her train her own powers, keeps her far away from courtly affairs.
And I know what you are going to say - "Oh, but Azriel stopped Elain from scrying for the troves" - um yeah, no shit.
The Cauldron literally kidnapped Elain? You think he's going to let that dangerous thing in her presence again? He snarls at Eris everytime he shows his face, you think he's going to let that evil crockpot anywhere near her?
It's not like he said "Elain can't train." or "Elain should be locked up in a tower". All he said was, "Elain should not be exposed to that darkness". Which - brings me to my second point.
2. Elain's entire character
Elain is not a warrior. She does not want to be violent. She has no desire to train like her sisters, but she does want to be helpful. There are ways to be helpful without physically going into the Bog or Prison or fighting on the frontlines of battle.
But again, she is untrained. Even if she does want to be helpful, nobody is willing to send her into a situation that might turn violent without any training. They are not willing to risk losing her, because of what happened last time.
The IC is even more protective of Elain as a whole because of who she is. It is not a stretch that Azriel, someone who cares dearly for her, is also protective of her.
And again, let's not forget that all of the bat boys are protective over their women. If we keep reading past when Azriel says, "Elain should not be exposed to the darkness of the troves", you will see Cassian protest and ask "and Nesta should?"
Even Cassian is reluctant to let Nesta be exposed to that darkness. The difference is in Nesta & Elain's core personalities, more so than the protectiveness of Azriel and Cassian. Elain will pick up a dagger as the last resort only to defend someone else/herself, but Nesta? Nesta will charge at you with her sword, probably even if you look at her wrong.
That's the difference. It's not a question about protectiveness, it's about currently, what is Elain capable of.
Azriel is protective of Elain, as he should be. In case you forgot, he was the one who saved her from Hybern's camp. His wings were shredded, he was swaying on his feet, he was warned he would die, but he still went after her. Of course he would be afraid to let that Cauldron anywhere near Elain after that.
And by the way, that is the only instance the anti-s are using to call him "overprotective" and "he stifles her, doesn't let her do anything".
Azriel may not be shoving her off a cliff to fly (sorry Feyre lol), but he is still giving Elain the tools she needs to grow. Azriel is the one who figures out she is a Seer, freeing her from her murky realm and depression. Azriel saw her, understood her, when everyone else including her own sisters and mate saw her as crazy. Azriel gives her his own dagger (the one he NEVER let anyone else touch), to defend herself. Azriel sits with her in the garden, allows her to feel peace and calm.
I think SJMs past male love interests have created a kind of blueprint in the mind of antis, so much so that they are unable to comprehend a different kind of relationship, a different kind of love. Just because Rhys sends Feyre into the Weaver cottage with a "good luck lol" and Rowan punched Aelin in the face, doesn't mean all her MMC have to have the same brutish approach. Have they ever considered that love can be shown in different ways?
Even in HOFAS, Hunt cautions Bryce and voices several times how they should just give up in their plans against the Asteri. Is he being overprotective? Is he stifling Bryce? No. He is simply trying to keep the person he cares about alive and safe. Because he loves her.
Love can be spending time with the one you care for, in small quiet moments in the background, in the garden. Love can be soft embraces under the cover of the darkness, where only the Mother may witness them.
Like, I thought it was obvious.
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metamatar · 3 months
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One of the key things that I was encountering in popular discourse, as well as in official discourse, as well as in some scholarly discourse on caste, was what I would say is a liberal understanding of caste from an anti-caste position, which interestingly, and very dangerously in some way, coincided with the right-wing understanding of caste, with right-wing too thinking of themselves as anti-caste.
So I captured this as the five tropes [...] And the first one is that caste has modernized, and it's even in some way democratized because of the political ways in which previously historically marginalized castes have come in a big way into Indian politics. And so we really need not worry much about caste today, it's a thing of the past. It's also got its economic equivalent, which plays out in some kind of an argument that says, well, for an underdeveloped economy like India, caste is actually good for the growth of capitalism because you have trust when you actually make transactions and you save transactional costs. So there's a literature arguing that.
And then there's a third trope, which is what I actually focused on, which is that caste is now no longer just the hierarchy, in fact, it is not the hierarchy. It has become from a vertical into a horizontal structure, and it's just a benign difference. And this I call as the culturalization, which I'll say a little bit more about, but there are to these three political, economic and cultural tropes, I see two bookends. One is that admittedly caste exists, but it is existing in a benign, normal way. It is defined, so it exists in those cute matrimonial columns where people ask for the same caste. And so it just exists in these privatized spaces, and that really doesn't have a whole deal to dictate in terms of monopolization of wealth or inequality. It's just there.
And then on the other hand there's another bookend, which I call the brutal abnormal to the benign normal. You have the brutal abnormal, which has to admit that there are some incredible violent things that erupt from time to time, and it's only from time to time. And therefore the even more, pretty troubling word is the Atrocities Act, atrocity in some way connoting exceptional or extraordinary, whereas caste violence is ordinary violence, everyday violence. So when those things happen, it always happens in some backward part of India, not in the rest of India.
[...] And that we have to pose the question and ask the question, how does caste persist and what is the durability of caste, which then helps us understand how caste legitimizes itself. And I think in the legitimization aspect, that is where I unwrap some of the things on culturalization. So -- what indeed is culturalization?
The book is largely written against a scholarly trend that I saw, and still see, of asking us to think about the transformations in caste as an ethnicization of caste. That is, instead of a vertical hierarchy, which is what we think of when we think about caste, we are invited to consider that caste is now just about difference, it's on the horizontal plane. And so we can devote ourselves to thinking about how caste has ethnicized. Now, that to me is not at all what is happening on the ground [...] there is hierarchy, there are all kinds of inequalities, and there are appeals to fairly traditional forms of belonging, such as blood and purity and things like that. [...]
So culturalization then is really caste repackaging itself as culture. Caste in some way taking up the grammar of culture in order to present itself as benign horizontal difference/identity. And in doing that, what culturalization is is a depoliticization of caste. It is, in fact, I have even called it a counterrevolution of caste. It is the most recent form of the legitimation of caste.
Balamurli Natarajan on Recall This Book Podcast
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nerdpoe · 1 year
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Of Kindness and Empathy part 3
Danny all but collapsed in his and Tucker's hotel room, just as the sun was peeking over the horizon.
After he had removed the neck brace and ice, he’d made himself scarce. The…Wayne family, and wasn’t that a wild piece of knowledge, would need time to themselves for a bit. Besides, it wasn’t like they didn’t know how to contact him. After that, deciding that the local vigilantes would be a…little preoccupied, he decided to stay invisible and do sweeps of Gotham.
Gotham, as it turned out, was painfully huge.
He’d done what he could; stopped a few muggings, messed up a bank robbers plans so he’d set off every single alarm in the building and then locked him in the vault, talked down Poison Ivy and Harley (which was pretty easy, he just had to reveal himself and say that the Batman Brigade had almost suffered a pretty bad loss and needed a night), stopped a few jumpers, stopped some really rude guy from shooting ketchup and mayo at fast food workers, and overshadowed Joker in the middle of him about to kill a bunch of hostages, turned him around, and marched him down to the local precinct.
That last one had been extraordinarily difficult. Joker had a good grasp on who and what he was, and did not take kindly to being taken over and diverted away from his activities. 
He felt like he needed to take a shower after that, but he was just so tired he’d deal with it later.
Oh, right, before he went to sleep he had to, uh…the thing. He had to do the thing.
Danny quietly lifted Tucker’s phone off of the bedside table and unlocked it, shooting a text to himself.
‘Hey, it’s Danny. This is my friends phone, and I don’t know if my parents will let me have another one since I keep losing or breaking them, so if u wanna talk just get Tuck to call me out. Hope you-know-who is healing up! :) :)’
Done and done.
Danny collapsed on the bed, eyes closing blissfully. There was nowhere to be and nothing to do, a true vacation if he did say so himself.
As he was falling asleep, he missed Tucker’s phone going off.
‘Thank you for your hard work, we saw the results. He is healing. Sleep well.’
~~~~~
Bruce was idly scrolling through the documents on Phantom and Daniel Fenton he’d pulled up on his tablet, leaning against Tim’s bed as Tim got into a logistical argument with Damian about whether or not Phantom could see when he went intangible.
Phantom was called a menace, apparently. Not quite a villain, but definitely a rule-breaker and a danger to public property.
There was page after page of news reports about him fighting other ‘ghosts’ and laying waste to the town, unable to hold in his need for conflict. Ghost hunters named him target number one, and there were multiple traps laid out for the kid.
But what Bruce saw was an entirely different story.
Bruce saw a kid who barely knew how to control his powers trying to defend the town against opponents who did know how to use their powers.
Bruce saw that every fight had less and less property damage.
Bruce saw that this kid, with no mentor in sight and all alone in fighting apparent interdimensional beings, was slowly improving and doing the best that he could with what he had.
Against all odds, with almost everything against him, Daniel had managed to keep the town safe. Not a single one of his fights had resulted in a casualty. He had never fallen to hatred or revenge as far as Bruce could tell.
One instant of cheating on a test not-withstanding, but it looked like he’d fessed up and retaken it.
He clearly needed training, and looking at his grades he definitely needed help keeping the ‘ghosts’ at bay.
But then Bruce had come across something disturbing.
“Anti-Ecto Acts?” He murmured, pulling it up and getting his mind into the proper place to understand legalese.
This…was horrible.
How had Daniel been living with this hanging over him?
It had probably only passed because most politicians didn’t believe in ghosts, so they didn’t bother to look into it, but the problem was it had passed. This was literally a downward slope into getting meta rights removed.
This…was something that needed news coverage.
How lucky Bruce was that he happened to know a fantastic reporter.
~~~~~
“Hello?” Clark answered his phone without checking who was calling, too busy editing his last story to meet the fast approaching deadline.
“Bad time?”
Oh. That was Bruce. Whelp, the story was good enough Clark supposed.
Stretching his arms above his head, the Super leaned back in his office chair.
“No, not at all. Something I can help you with?”
What followed was a bombshell. 
There was a law that was passed to practically legally obligate people to discriminate against ‘ghosts’, and it would be very, very easy for that to roll down to metas. A town called Amity Park had the worst of it, and if he wanted to drop the story to bring attention to it he’d have to see if Lois would want to go there for interviews, as if there really were ghosts a possessed superman was the last thing they needed.
“Uh, this sounds pretty serious. I mean Meta rights are…yeah, sure, I can ask Lois-”
“Ask me what?”
Clark jumped, lost balance, fell over with the chair, broke the arm off of it, and broke his desk when he reached out to catch himself.
The entire office went quiet.
“Kent.”
Clark had no idea how his completely normal human manager managed to sound scarier than Darkseid.
“My office.”
Clark sighed, stood up, handed the phone to Lois, and dragged his feet into the office.
“Why yes, he did break his desk again,” Lois said into the phone, her smile in her voice as she waved goodbye to him, “Now what’s this about Meta rights violations?”
~~~~~
Danny was woken up by Tucker rubbing his face with his ridiculously teched-out phone with one hand and loud smacking noises as said techie ate a rotisserie chicken wing with the other.
“Wake up dude, it’s for you.”
Danny just laid there with the phone precariously balanced on his face, trying to come to terms with being awake, before managing a guttural and slurred greeting.
“...Hewwo?”
There was a pregnant pause on the other end.
“Daniel Fenton?”
Oh shit that was Bruce Wayne.
“Yes, sir?” Danny shot up, eyes wide and looking at the time.
It was about three, so he’d slept for a pretty long time.
“I believe you dropped your phone. Would you like for me to drop it off at the Orchard for you?”
“Oh, um you don’t have to, I can just come pick it up if you want to tell me where-”
“That’s a pity then, because I’m in the lobby.”
Danny blinked, bewildered.
“I…guess I’m on my way? I just need to get dressed real quick.”
“I’ll be in the Tiki Breakfast Bar.”
The line went dead, and Danny decided to use the next thirty or so seconds to question reality.
Then it was a whirlwind of finding his clothes, putting them on, hoping that the Mansons didn’t see him in his ratty everyday wear (suits had been part of the agreement), and bolting out the door.
He barely noticed Tucker jogging after him, plate full of rotisserie chicken now occupying both hands.
He did completely hear Sam’s parents' shocked gasps and even locked eyes with her dad as he slid into the elevator and slammed on the button for the second floor. 
Sam used their momentary distraction to dart in after him and Tucker as the doors were closing.
So. Danny had his friends in the same elevator as himself.
And they didn’t know he was about to meet The Bruce Wayne.
Sam and Tucker stared at him expectantly.
Danny caved with a put upon sigh.
“So long story short I saved one of Mr. Wayne’s kids last night and gave him my phone because he needed an Emotional Support Jazz.”
There was no way he’d out Mr. Wayne's secret identity. No. Freakin. Way.
“Wait so that playboy idiot knows who you are?” Sam immediately snapped, glaring at Danny.
“So I don’t think he’s actually that ditzy-”
“The owner of Wayne Industries is indebted to you?” Tucker asked with stars in his eyes, the gears in his head already turning for potential experimental tech he could get his hands on.
“No, I don’t intend to use the man’s kid’s life as a bargaining chip-”
“Wait,” Sam interrupted, staring at the ground. No, not the ground. She was….
“Tucker, where are your pants?” Danny whispered in horror.
The world seemed to stand still as the plate full of chicken was dropped on the floor.
“Go back up go back up!” Tucker wailed, slapping the button for the floor with their rooms and trying to hide his Aquaman boxers from the stares of any of the other patrons through the glass walls of the elevator. Sam, meanwhile, started repeatedly punching the button for the second floor.
“We can’t go back Tucker, my parents won’t let us leave again if we do! Just suck it up!”
Danny started reaching between them to hit the elevator stop button.
“Guys I don’t think we should-” the elevator gave a horrific shutter, a grinding noise, and then came to a complete stop between floors, “Do…that.”
“Dude why would you stop the elevator?” 
Never before had Tucker looked so betrayed as in that moment.
Danny slowly turned his head to meet Tucker’s eyes.
“I didn’t actually get to push the button.”
“...No.”
“I…think we’re actually stuck?”
“Are you kidding me right now?”
Danny was not.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is now on AO3
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olderthannetfic · 10 months
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Fanfic with noncon/dubcon, underage, and incest did not lead to me being preyed upon by my father. It took a lot of smooth talking, boundary-testing, manipulation of my perspective of events and myself (the "you're special therefore it's okay" approach to convincing a child to do something society has firmly established is wrong) and years of ongoing bursts of affection, gifts and spoiling in order to get me to "consent" (to whatever degree a ten year old can) to sleep with him. Fanfic did not teach me that incest, adult/child romance, or sex with an underage person by an adult were okay.
Fanfic authors who got really fucking concerned when I kicked in the door to yell about how A/B as a pairing was just like my dad and I hit my DMs hard and asked for details and urged me to get away from him as quickly as possible. I say authors plural because I blocked the first couple of people who tried to talk sense into me but somewhere around the fourth person gently asking for details I started to doubt the "you're special and therefore it's okay" narrative and within six months of being into A/B, a father/daughter incest pairing with an underaged character, the fic authors had untangled for me a lot of complicated feelings and planted doubts in me so successfully about how my father was using his power that I spilled the beans to my mom.
There's this idea in fandom that fic did it, fic made people get abused. Actually, though, fic didn't do it. My father did. He had more input on my life than every fanfic I had ever read and put in a lot of work to get me to a place where he could pitch sex as a loving act between two people who love and adore one another in a society that's too backwards to understand that there are exceptions to the normal rules of what's right and what's wrong. I didn't get groomed by a fanfic, I got groomed by the one family member I lived with, who by virtue of being the only family member I had spent more than a few days with had inherently a very large amount of power over me.
Fic authors, unrelated women from other states and other countries, all acting independently of one another, stopped it.
I get that antis love the idea that my dad wasn't responsible for my abuse, some 25 year old writing A/B in their studio apartment is, but no matter how hard they try to take blame off of him to put it onto someone neither of us ever met, at the end of the day the person responsible for pedophilic, incestuous abuse... is the pedophile fucking his only child. It's him. He did it. He put in a lot of work to do it, it wasn't an idea a fic put in his head that he randomly acted on, he worked at making it happen in a way his conscience could live with for years, and he would not have been stopped if only media didn't write so many father/daughter couples with ten year olds that we were meant to support. Media doesn't show that, for one thing, but more importantly, even if media did, the man made years' worth of repeated decisions to get me onboard with it so he could (he thought) get away with it and do it without guilt.
To me, the "fic did it" argument is basically the "your dad didn't do it" argument. It does not blame a grown man for acts of abuse that he undertook knowingly and willingly. It doesn't blame him for anything.
And to me, that's what dangerous about antis. The abuser is never at fault for abusing someone, even a child, according to their worldview and the abuser had no choice in the matter, somehow. The real culprit is someone who wrote something that has a hundred hits on FFN or AO3, not the man who crawled into bed with a ten year old.
The last person who told me it wasn't his choice to do what he did was my dad. That's what anti rhetoric reminds me of.
--
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matan4il · 3 months
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It's very interesting that anti-Zionists claim to be "anti-colonial" given the arguments I routinely see them use against Jews. For years, I've seen them use full scale blood quantum arguments, for one. Most recently, now that we're fully in "Jesus was a Palestinian" season again, I saw a famous economist claim that "Jesus is genetically closer to Palestinians, (particularly Christians) than to Israelis (0 connection to most groups)," which is false to begin with.
Personally, I'm very sensitive to this kind of argument because I'm a ger. These people go after Jews like us very hard because to them we have the wrong DNA and thus undermine Jewish indigeneity, peoplehood, and history. Even if they concede the genetic evidence of born Jews' ancestral origins, they still point at gerim and any of our descendants as the "fake Jews" who don't belong… anywhere, actually. We don't belong in Israel because we're "foreign interlopers," and we don't belong outside of Israel because we had the gall to become Jews.
It's one type of antisemitism I can't seem to numb myself toward.
Hi Nonnie! Thank you for the ask, and my apologies about how long it's taking me to reply these days. Real life is not currently kind... :(
Okay, I had to roll my eyes so hard at that propaganda lie about Jesus. (found the economist in question, love it when someone who is living as a colonizer on stolen Native American land, has the audacity to goysplain a Jewish man to Jews, who support Jewish native rights. There really is no end to how much Jews just don't count to such people, is there?)
And it really is remarkable how many things he could get wrong in just that one part of his tweet...
Jesus was not a Palestinian, he was a Jew.
If you traveled back in time, and wanted to ask him about being Palestinian, you wouldn't be able to speak to Jesus in Arabic, which is the language of the Palestinians as Arabs, you would have to speak to him in either Hebrew or Aramaic (which is so close to ancient Hebrew, that I can speak some Aramaic simply by virtue of being a native Hebrew speaker) for him to understand you. Because he was a Jew.
If you did speak to Jesus in Hebrew or Aramaic, and asked him about being Palestinian, he wouldn't know what you're talking about, because the Romans would only rename the land Provincia Syria Palaestina in 136 AD, over 100 years after his death. Calling Jesus Palestinian is like saying that Chief Powhatan (probably best known as Pocahontas' father) was a Virginian, just because he was born and lived on territory that would later become Virginia. It's anachronistic, blatantly untrue, and totally imposing colonialist inventions on native people.
To the best of my knowledge NO ONE has dug up Jesus' DNA to compare it to ANY group. This is how you can tell that when he gets to that part, this guy is just blatantly making propaganda up.
Israelis are not one group, but Israeli Jews do test close to other Middle Eastern groups, and closest to other Jewish groups from around the world.
I guess, why settle for one bit of bullshit, when you can go for five?
I find it so interesting that you used the term "blood quantum." For non-Americans, who may not know it, here's a short introduction:
A person's Blood Quantum is the fraction of their ancestors, out of their total ancestors, who are documented as full-blood Native Americans. The blood quantum policy was first implemented by the federal government within tribes to limit native citizenship. However, since 1934, tribes were granted the authority/ability to create their own enrollment qualifications.
I find it interesting, because I keep thinking Jews and First Nations have so much in common, as native peoples. I remember coming across at least two different stories of people being adopted into Native American tribes. Obviously, each first nation has its own rules about it, before and after the colonization of America, but the point is... there is room for someone to become a member of the tribe, not based on blood. Most of the time, membership of the tribe IS based on ancestry, but it isn't limited to that. Some people come and live with the tribe, adopt its customs and way of life, emerge themselves in the values and heritage, embrace its spiritual beliefs, become a member of this community, and then they are adopted in. It's the same with Jews. Most of us are born Jewish, some of us choose to live this lifestyle, embrace the customs, beliefs and culture, go to synagogue, get to know the community, and eventually adopt and are adopted by it. That's the thing. Converting to Judaism isn't just changing your belief system. It's joining a tribe, and changing one's identity through this process of mutual adoption. Converts to Judaism don't take away ANYTHING from the native rights of Jews. On the contrary, this process of conversion is so different to when someone moves from one religion to another (think of how much simpler baptism is, to the long journey of converting to Judaism), precisely because Judaism isn't just a religion, unlike Christianity and Islam. It is an entire, intricate identity that combines multiple aspects, as all ancient, native identities do.
And in this context, think of Americans who are mostly of European descent, and have nothing to do with Native American culture, or way of life, but they can point to having an "exotic" great great great grandfather, who was a Native American chief. From what I've gathered, they would not be considered members of the tribe by most Native American nations. But the person who lives with the tribe, and shares its ways and its fate? That person is recognized as such by the tribe members.
Jews are the same. We are not native just because our ancestors are from Israel. We are also native, because we are the people who have preserved that Israelite identity. We have carried its torch, and passed it on along the generations, and we have shared our light with those, who chose to stand with us, to share our ways, our fate, and the consequences of the horrible hatred aimed at us.
I love you, my fellow tribe member. Thank you for sharing the light, and the burden, together! *sending so much love* xoxox
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
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viaviv124 · 2 months
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What argument anti rayfrog shippers (or nayfrogs as i've learned, which is 10x more hillarious) that just makes me question if these people actually pay attention and is also lowkey funny to me is "Bullfrog said he watched Rayman since he was a tadpole!" That is literally not what he said. He said "i used to watch you as a tadpole"
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Considering the Rayman show is probably the only or biggest kids program in Eden and Rayman is literally everywhere i doubt Bullfrog couldn't not watch him, espacially if it's mandatory viewing (which it most likely is). To me this just makes it like their Spongebob but forced, you get what i mean? I don't think this really proves a point. Bullfrog didn't even mention ever being a fan or liking the show. Just that he watched it. It's also funny to me how he dropped that line right after calling him "Eden's favorite Poster boy" like it's such a random thing to add lol, i don't think he wanted to imply he ever idolized him considering he was just mocking him the entire way through. Either way, at the time they met both of them were consenting adults able to think clearly and, again, Bullfrog hated Rayman with a passion at that point and did not idolize him, i mean, look at that glare:
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If that's not pure spite and mockery i don't know what is.
What people need to understand is that no sane rayfrog shipper goes "Bullfrog likes Rayman/Ramon because he loved watching him on TV like 25 - 30+ years ago!" Pretty much all concepts/headcanons are hurt/comfort because the consensus of them bonding consists of them supporting eachother and becoming a shoulder to lean on to work out their mental stuff like Ramon's guilt about literally everything and Bullfrog's survivors guilt and eldest sister syndrome. Also, Bullfrog is quite literally a trained assassin of a group that quite literally has been fighting the templars/Eden since pretty much the beginning of human history. Pretty sure if anything his mind would default to spiting and distrusting Ramon at every turn instead of idolizing him for something he saw on tv when he was a literal toddler i mean come on are you serious. Also pretty sure his mind is clear enough to think about shit rationally.
Another point i love is "they shared only one scene." People have done more with less. Ramon and Dolph have not exchanged a single glance and Laserray (rayhawk? Idk) is a thing. People will ship anything as long as it has a good dynamic in their eyes. I'm just saying Mordetwi and other crossships.
Its genuinely hillarious to me how people hate on the popular ship instead of everything else. The two canon predators? Nope! Sarah x Jade that would, if it would be canon, be nothing but abuse considering all of their interactions in the show, as few as they were, are pretty abusive? Nope! But god forbid two consenting adults with an age gap that support eachother kiss! I absolutely do have certain problems with rayfrog but considering the lack of material we have to work with these problems are all speculations i can headcanon them away.
Also as a small note in case the conkai crowd pins me on this because of the posts i made several months ago, no, two consenting adults with an age gap are not the same as a 17 year old banging a physically 6 - 8 year old even if he has the mind of a 17 year old, thank you.
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gffa · 7 months
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I saw your post defending the way Jedi adopt the children/accept them into their culture, and I absolutely loved it! It was so well-informed, and you are right: It is all there in the original content!
I find it very ironic that many people spew these lies about the Jedi when that’s exactly what the Empire did. Iirc, this argument of Jedi being “kidnappers” was actually fueled by Emperor Palpatine and the Empire in their campaign against the Jedi. They wanted to discredit them and make the people turn against them so that they could erase them all more easily. So I find it very ironic that these lies are now being upheld by some people as the truth. (Really, have people forgotten the Empire was created bases on the Nazi’s and their own racist strategies?)
You are not inmune to the Empire’s propaganda.
Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’m not as good at pulling examples and proof from all the SW content as you are.
Hi! Thank you for the very sweet ask! Navigating stuff in fandom like this can be difficult at times, because there has to be room for compassion and tolerance for disagreement, like it's fine if people disagree with my views, I'm not your mom, I'm not telling you want to do or say, especially since this is fiction, these are made up space stories. But there also has to be room to understand that sometimes our commentary on fictional stories are echoes of reflection of real world attitudes--we can't just go around spewing racist, sexist, homophobic commentary and be like, "It's just fiction, you can't get upset!" There's no easy line for any of this, no single hard set in stone rule for when it's truly just fiction and when it's an echo of a real world attitude, especially in Star Wars, which often draws influence from a lot of non-Western sources and traditional Western sources. (My general rule of thumb is: I think it's fair to criticize those things through the influences they have, but if your criticism is then ended with, "So that's why we shouldn't have or acknowledge any Buddhism/Black people/queer people/women in Star Wars!" then fuck right on off with that.) And I also understand a lot of the anti-Jedi attitudes (or at least what I've personally experienced of them) because I've talked a bunch of times about how I started out as pretty Jedi-critical myself! I did the whole, "They had grown stagnant and refused to evolve with the galaxy, so they needed to be wiped out." thing because nobody had framed it explicitly as what it was: a genocide. It wasn't until a friend and I were talking and they mentioned that lens of it that it just sort of crashed down on me, oh, that's literally what it was and genocide is never justifiable. I did the whole, "The Jedi failed Anakin and taught him to repress his emotions." thing as well, because I saw it all over the place in fandom and just automatically folded it into my view, until I went back and actually watched Lucas' movies and Lucas' animation (first six movies + first six seasons of TCW) and read his interviews, which blew me onto my ass when I saw Obi-Wan being supportive of Anakin, when I saw Anakin not listening to the advice he was given, when I saw that Jedi were expressing emotion all over the place, when I saw they were respecting other Force traditions in the galaxy. I can't speak to why so many people think badly of the Jedi, there's probably a thousand reasons and I'm only vaguely aware of like half of them, but I do think that it's often unpopular to promote the idea of emotional regulation already being achieved, instead of something to be struggled with. I think we're all primed by a lot of mainstream media saying that an explosion of anger is what will save the day. I think there's so much anger in the world today that we're all angry and being told to let go of it feels really insulting at times. (But, as someone who has lost years of my life when I was younger to anger, I gotta say, I am so much better off having let go of as much of that shit as I can. It was poison in my veins, carrying that anger around. I lost so many friendships and opportunities and just time to being miserably mad about stuff.)
I'm getting off topic of the kidnapping aspect about the Jedi, but a lot of it starts to swirl together in what I've experienced (especially people who try to put this stuff on my posts--thankfully, that's died down/I block the people who won't respect boundaries) and so I kind of bounce from one aspect of it to another.
I do think it's good to talk about these things--both from "it's fun to analyze the content of the story on a meta level" perspective and "here's how this echoes into and from the real world" perspective, like I enjoy saying, okay, here's what's actually said in the movies/TCW, but also I think talking about how the Jedi are Buddhist influenced is important because that means they're going to have values that are meant to be reflected in that and Western fandom has a really big problem of being derisive about non-Western influences or automatically saying they're wrong. (I come from anime/manga fandoms, let me tell you, it's a big problem.)
And, yeah, in a way where it's really awful, but I think one of the most well-done things Disney's Star Wars has done is that it's really focused on showing that the Empire was a fascist one and the propaganda they used about the Jedi are ones that are super relevant to the conversation.
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