#kvetching

[metamatar]

it's always upsetting to me when people find settler colonialism some kind of leftist meme while they won't bother to even learn anything about the actual policies of settler colonial states. like the violence is not in an esoteric historical record that requires sophisticated interpretation, it is quite obvious. the dispossession was violently done, children were stolen, people were starved and murdered and as always, treaties were signed under the barrel of the gun and then broken anyway.

#kvetching

[daughter-of-sapph0]

"kids are detransitioning"

no. actually, children now feel comfortable and accepted enough to experiment with their gender, pronouns, name, and presentation. and while some of them end up realizing they were cis the entire time, they now have a new understanding and appreciation for one of the most marginalized and abused groups of people in the world.

there, I fixed your shitty headline.

#dostxt #kvetching

[butchmartyr]

does anyone else find it kind of funny how when tme people look for “clockable” traits for purposes like this that they’ll usually use gender affirming traits for the other tmes while just linking trans women to their (real or imagined) dicks? im not flaming im just saying surely you know that a lot of trans women get dysphoric about this, right? you know not all trans women have dicks and many don’t want them, right

#kvetching #walking into the function and respectfully staring at every bulge i think Shouldn’t Normally Be There to show how much of an ally i am #just tone deaf lol

[molsno]

you all seriously need to stop pretending that having a trans girlfriend indicates ANYTHING about how good of an ally to trans women someone is. there's no shortage of people who violently abuse their trans girlfriends every day and face no consequences for it. they often talk openly about how easy trans women are to abuse! even disregarding outright abuse, I'd say it's HIGHLY unlikely you'll find a tme person of any gender who hasn't been transmisogynistic to their trans girlfriend at least once. if you seriously believe that dating a trans woman means someone couldn't possibly be transmisogynistic, or even that they're less likely to be, your worldview is wholly detached from reality. what's next, are you going to act surprised when a cis man abuses his cis wife because you didn't think someone who dates women could be a misogynist? get real.

#kvetching #transmisogyny #1k

[jewelleria]

I don’t usually talk about politics on here, if ever. But it’s been almost six months since the conflict in the Middle East flared up again, and I’m finally ready to start. Here are some of my thoughts.

I say ‘flared up’ because this has happened before and it’ll happen again. Because, even though what's currently going on is absolutely unprecedented, those of us who live in this part of the world are used to it. Let that sink in: we are used to this. And we shouldn’t have to be. 

But I use that term for another reason: I don't want to accidentally call it the wrong thing lest I come under fire for being a genocidal maniac or a terrorist or a propaganda machine, etc., etc.—so let’s just call it ‘the war’ or ‘the conflict.’ Because that’s what it is. Doesn’t matter which side you’re on, who you love, or who you hate. 

This post will, in all likelihood, sit in my drafts forever. If it does get posted, it certainly won’t be on my main, because I'm scared of being harassed (spoiler: she posted it on her main). I hate admitting that, but honestly? I’m fucking terrified. 

I also feel like in order for anything I say on here (i.e. the hellscape of the internet) to be taken seriously, I have to somehow prove that a) I’m “educated” enough to talk about the conflict, and b) that my opinion lines up with what has been deemed the correct one. So, tedious and unnecessary though it is, I will tell you about my experience, because I have a feeling most of the people reading this post are not nearly as close to what’s happening as I am.

How do I explain where I live without actually explaining where I live? How do I say “I live in the Red Zone of international conflicts” without saying what I actually think? How do I convey the fear that grips me when I try to decide between saying “I live in Palestine” and “I live in Israel”? I don't really know. But I do know that names are important. I also know that, due to the various clickbaity monikers ascribed to the conflict, it would probably just be easier to point to a map. 

I haven't always lived in the Middle East. I've lived in various places along America’s east coast, and traveled all over the world. But in short, I now live somewhere inside the crudely-drawn purple circle. 

If you know anything about these borders you probably blanched a bit in sympathy, or maybe condolence. But in truth, it’s a shockingly normal existence. I don't feel like I've lived through the shifting of international relations or a war or anything. I just kind of feel like I did when COVID hit, that dull sameness as I wondered if this would be the only world-altering event to shape my life, or if there would be more. 

I've been told that, in order for my brain to process all the horrific details of the past six months, there needs to be some element of cognitive dissonance—that falling into a sort of dissociative mindset is the only way to not go insane under the weight of it all. I think in some ways that’s true. I have been terrifyingly close to bus stop shootings when my commute wasn’t over; I have felt my apartment building shake with the reverberations of a missile strike; I have spent hours in underground shelters waiting for air raid sirens to stop. 

But. I have also gone grocery shopping, and skipped class, and stayed up too late watching TV, and fed the cats on the street corner, and cried over a boy, and got myself AirPods just because, and taken out the trash, and done laundry on a delicate cycle, and bought overpriced lattes one too many days a week. I have looked at pretty things and taken out my phone because, despite it all, I still think that life is too short not to freeze the small moments. 

So I'd say, all things considered, I live an incredibly privileged life—compared, of course, to those suffering in Gaza—one filled with sunsets and over-sweetened knafeh and every different color of sand. One that allows me to throw myself into a fandom-induced hyperfixation (or, alternatively, escape method) as I sit on the couch and crack open my laptop to write the next chapter of the fic I'm working on. 

But there are bits of not-normalness that wheedle their way through the cracks. I pretend these moments are avoidable, even if they’re not. 

They look like this: reading the news and seeing another idiotic, careless choice on Netanyahu’s part and groaning into my morning coffee. Watching Palestinian and Jewish children’s needless suffering posted on Instagram reels and feeling helpless. Opening my Tumblr DMs to find a message telling me to exterminate myself for reblogging a post that only seems like it’s about the war if you squint and tilt your head sideways. 

These moments look like all the tiny ways I am reminded that I'm living in a post-October seventh world, where hearing a car backfire makes me jump out of my skin and the sound of a suitcase on pavement makes me look up at the sky and search for the war planes. They look like the heavy grief that is, and also isn’t, mine. 

Here's the thing, though. I know you’re wondering when the ball will drop and my true opinion will be revealed. I know you’re waiting for me to reveal what demographic I'm a part of so that you, dear reader, can neatly slap a label on my head and sort me into some oversimplified category that lets you continue to think you understand this war. 

No one wants to sit and ruminate on the difficult questions, the ones that make you wonder if maybe you’ve been tinkered with by the propaganda machine, if you might need to go back on what you’ve said or change your mind. We all strive for our perception of complicated issues to be a comfortable one.

But I know that no matter what I do, there will always be assumptions. So, while I shudder to reveal this information online, I think that maybe my most significant contribution to this meta-discussion spanning every facet of the internet is this: 

I am a Jew. 

Or, alternatively, I am: Jewish, יהודית, يَهُودِيٌّ, etc. Point is, I come from Jews. And, like any given person, I am a product of generation after generation of love. 

I'm not going to take time to explain my heritage to you, or to prove that before all the expulsions and pogroms, there was an origin point. If you don’t believe that, perhaps it’s less of a factual problem and more of an ‘I don’t give weight to the beliefs of indigenous people’ problem. But, in case you want to spend time uselessly refuting this tiny point in a larger argument, you can inspect the photos below (it’s just a small chunk of my DNA test results). Alternatively, you can remember that interrogating someone in an attempt to make their indigeneity match your arbitrary criteria is generally not seen as good manners. 

Now, let’s go back to thathateful message (read: poorly disguised death threat) I received in my Tumblr DMs. I think it was like two or three weeks ago. I had recently gained a new follower whose blog’s primary focus was the fandom I contribute to, so I followed them back. I saw in my notes that they were going through my posts and liking them—as one does when gaining a new mutual. Yippee! 

Then they sent me this: 

I tried to explain that hate speech is not a way to go about participating in political discourse, but the person had already blocked me immediately after sending that message. Then, assured by the fact that I surely would never see them complaining about me on their blog (because, as I said, they blocked me), they posted a shouting rant accusing me of sympathizing with colonizing settlers and declaring me a “racist Zionist fuck.” Oh, the wonders of incognito tabs.

Where this person drew these conclusions after reading my (reblogged) post about antisemitism…. I'm not actually sure. But I greatly sympathize with them, and hope that they weren’t too personally offended by my desire to not die. 

For a while I contemplated this experience in my righteous anger, and tried to figure out a way to message this person. I wanted to explain that a) seeing a post about being Jewish and choosing to harass the creator about Israel is literally the definition of antisemitism and b) that sending a hateful DM and refusing to be held accountable is just childish and immature. But I gave up soon after—because, honestly, I knew it wasn’t worth my effort or energy. And I knew that I wouldn't be able to change their mind. 

But I still remember staring at that rather unfortunate meme, accompanied by an all-caps message demanding for me to Free Palestine, and thinking: the post didn’t even have any buzzwords. I remember the swoop of dread and guilt and fear. I remember wondering why this kind of antisemitism felt worse, in that moment, than the kind that leaves bodies in its wake. 

I remember thinking, I don’t have the power to free anyone.

I remember thinking, I’m so fucking tired. 

And before you tell me that this conflict isn’t about religion—let me ask you some questions. Why is it that Israel is even called Israel? (Here’s why.) Why do Jews even want it? (Here’s why.) But also, if you actually read the charters of Islamist terrorist organizations like ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah (among others), they equate the modern state of Israel with the Jewish people, and they use the two entities interchangeably. So of course this conflict is religious. It’s never been anything but that.

But I do wonder, when faced with those who deny this fact: how do I prove, through an endless slew of what-about-isms and victim blaming, that I too am hurting? How do I show that empathy is dialectical, that I can care deeply for Palestinians and Gazans while also grieving my own people? 

There's this thing that humans do, when we’re frustrated about politics and need to howl our opinions about it into the void until we feel better. We find like-minded souls, usually our friends and neighbors, and fret about the state of the world to each other until we’ve gone around in a satisfactory amount of circles. But these conversations never truly accomplish anything. They’re just a substitute, a stand-in catharsis, for what we really wish we could do: find someone who embodies the spirit of every Jew-hating internet troll, every ignorant justifier of terrorism, and scream ourselves hoarse at them until we change their mind.

But, of course, minds cannot be changed when they are determined to live in a state of irrational dislike. In Judaism, this way of thinking has a name: שנאת חינם (sinat hinam), or baseless hatred. It's a parasite with no definite cure, and it makes people bend over backwards to justify things like the massacre on October seventh, simply because the blame always needs to be placed on the Jews. 

So when a Jew is faced with this unsolvable problem, there is only one response to be had, only one feeling to be felt: anger. And we are angry. Carrying around rage with nowhere to put it is exhausting. It's like a weight at the base of our neck that pushes down on our spine, bending it until we will inevitably snap under the pressure. I’m still waiting to break, even now.

I wish I could explain to someone who needs to hear it that terrorism against Israelis happens every single day here, and that we are never more than one degree of separation away from the brutal slaughter of a friend, lover, parent, sibling. I wish it would be enough to say that the majority of Israelis (which includes Arab-Israeli citizens who have the exact same rights as Jewish-Israelis) wish for peace every day without ever having seen what it looks like. 

I wish I could show the world that Israel was founded as a socialist state, that it was built on communal values and born from a cluster of kibbutzim (small farming communities based on collective responsibility), and that what it is now isn’t what its people stand for. 

I wish the world could open their eyes to what we Israelis have seen since the beginning: that Hamas is the enemy, Hamas is the one starving Palestinians and denying them aid, Hamas is the one who keeps rejecting ceasefire terms and denying their citizens basic human rights. Hamas is the governing body of Gaza, not Israel. Hamas is responsible for the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And Hamas are the ones who are more determined to murder Jews—over and over and over again, in the most animalistic ways possible—than to look inwards and see the suffering they’ve inflicted on their own people. I wish it was easier to see that.

But the wishing, the asking how can people be so blind, is never enough. I can never just say, I promise I don't want war. 

When I bear witness to this baseless hatred, I think of the victims of October seventh. I think of the women and girls who were raped and then murdered, forever unable to tell their stories. I think of the hostages, trapped underneath Gaza in dark tunnels, wondering if anyone will come for them. I think of Ori Ansbacher, of Ezra Schwartz, of Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali, of Lucy, Rina, and Maia Dee, of the Paley boys, of Ari Fuld and of Nachshon Wachsman. I think of all the innocent blood spilled because of terror-fueled hatred and the virus of antisemitism. I think of all the thousands of people who were brutally murdered in Israel, Jews and Muslims and Christians and humans, who will never see peace.

My ties to this land are knotted a thousand times over. Even when I leave, a part of me is left behind, waiting for me to claim it when I return. But when I see the grit it takes to live through this pain, when I see the suffering that paints the world the color of blood, I look to the heavens and I wonder why. 

I ask God: is it worth all this? He doesn't answer. So I am the one, in the end, to answer my own question. I say, it has to be. 

Feel free to send any genuine, respectful, and clarifying questions you may have to my inbox!

EDIT: just coming on here to say that I'm really touched & grateful for the love on this post. When I wrote it, I felt hopeless; I logged off of Tumblr for Shabbat, dreading the moment I would turn off my phone to find more hate in my inbox. Granted, I did find some, and responding to it was exhausting, but it wasn’t all hate. I read every kind reblog and comment, and the love was so much louder. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 🤍

Source Reading

The Whispered in Gaza Project by The Center for Peace Communications

Why Jews Cannot Stop Shaking Right Now by Dara Horn

Hamas Kidnapped My Father for Refusing to Be Their Puppet by Ala Mohammed Mushtaha

I Hope Someone Somewhere Is Being Kind to My Boy by Rachel Goldberg

The Struggle for Black Freedom Has Nothing to Do with Israel by Coleman Hughes

Israel Can Defend Itself and Uphold Its Values by The New York Times Editorial Board

There Is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive by Peter Beinart

The Long Wait of the Hostages’ Families by Ruth Margalit

“By Any Means Necessary”: Hamas, Iran, and the Left by Armin Navabi

When People Tell You Who They Are, Believe Them by Bari Weiss

Hunger in Gaza: Blame Hamas, Not Israel by Yvette Miller

Benjamin Netanyahu Is Israel’s Worst Prime Minister Ever by Anshel Pfeffer

What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas by Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins

The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology by Bruce Hoffman

The Wisdom of Hamas by Matti Friedman

How the UN Discriminates Against Israel by Dina Rovner

This Muslim Israeli Woman Is the Future of the Middle East by The Free Press

Why Are Feminists Silent on Rape and Murder? by Bari Weiss

#palestine #israel hamas war #israel hamas conflict #hamas #on war #essay writing #personal essay #rant post #stop terrorism #israel #writing #palestinian lives matter #jewish lives matter #jewish and proud #jewish identity #jewish muslim solidarity #on grief #on religion #antisemitism #anti zionisim #purim 2024 #chag purim sameach #judaism #israeli palestinian conflict #am yisrael chai #kvetching #jumblr #mims on middle east #המצב

[apollo-cackling]

I know a bunch of people have made this point already but it really is remarkable how when talking about a thing they like it's all it's so anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist/progressive etc. but the moment someone criticises it for idk the framework through which it views the world/articulates its critiques/etc. it's suddenly all it's not that deep mate why're you taking it so seriously

#my rambles #media #kvetching #10n #20n #50n #100n

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

I just want *one* person to google it before they comment. One person.

#kvetching #0 days since last nonsense

[zwoelffarben]

Those silly customary unit system users. Minutes, Hours? Why do you insist on being so archaic and confusing. Just use hectoseconds and kiloseconds like a normal person.

A day? 86.4 Kiloseconds.

A year? I think you mean 3.154 Petaseconds.

Why would you insist on using such an outdated system of measurement invented before atomic circuit boards, before clockwork when time was measured with sundials, candles that exploded every third and a half kilosecond, and a shoulder's-shrug.

Highly divisable numbers make cleaner numbers when doing divisions? Nothing's cleaner than the number ten. You have ten fingers don't you. DONT YOU? It's just so much easier. You need a 'third of an hour'? That's just a 1.2 kiloseconds. It's easy once you're used to it. THINK MARK! THINK.

What's a third of a kilosecond? It's ~3.3333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333 hectoseconds, obviously. What's not clicking.

#kvetching

[grammarpedant]

*gripping myself by the scruff of the neck* i will not blame casuals on tumblr for not knowing how to use diegetic vs non-diegetic frames of analysis. i will not get mad when they don't even know what Watsonian and Doylist are. i am not going to pick fights with scrubs just because they can't read my posts. i will block and move on. i will not waste my energy on idiocy. i will not let my day be ruined by smug idiots who think feeling good about a thought is the same thing as thinking critically about it. i will block, let it go, do something worthwhile instead, and accept the fact that I'm not put on this earth to kick the asses of smug airheads spouting off their ignorance even though they're doing it on my posts

#litany against getting mad on the internet #verso talks #kvetching #i WISH that i could just turn off rbs for SOME SPECIFIC STUPID ADDITIONS to some of my posts #if only blocking someone also meant no on could reblog their idiot additions to your fucking posts

[thedeafprophet]

my want to give mask another shot at some point with the update vs knowing just how irritated ill be if i have to deal with the forced christanity stuff again ajdjfjgggkhkjj (was pacing in a circle and thinking about random stuff so dont mind me)

and i mean like if they really felt the only way for the plot to proceed was to have the player work with the church at least like.... put different dialogue options for the PC to have thoughts on it...

like in SH, you interact with a priest/religious characters and the simple thing of having a dialogue option just saying that it wasn't your background, no specifics needed, made a world of difference.

i really dont get why no thoughts were put in towards this, especially with a) the constant sharing during masks development on researching other backgrounds, and b) already being aware that non christian people play the games? and have voiced these issues already with FL? and CLEARLY with the npcs in the game the writing know there were people of different backgrounds in the city in the time?

idk, if you're gonna have a game with a set (white) british anglician character, just say that i guess. probably wouldve been better off comitting to set protagonist instead of the wishy washy stuff.

#okay ill stop complaining about this now i swear #it just makes me sad #its the one thing that makes me completely turned off the game #its like no thought was even considered about the PC #like everything else i guess it feels hamfisted. just pushed to the side for focus on mechanics #ah well the people who put more money into it have expressed more apt disapointment then me XD #fl crit #motr crit #kvetching #im allowed 10% of being a hater and this is it tonight

[jewishtransfantasy]

jew on tumblr: talks about their experience being jewish

goyim in the notes, inevitably: i'm not jewish but--

#jumblr #kvetching #like. why

[metamatar]

racism understanders on this website be like don't be racist those poor brown people are so noble their religions and cultures must be so liberating no way there is any complexity to their lives

#kvetching

[daughter-of-sapph0]

you know how the game corner was taken out of pokemon because people said it promoted gambling in children?

I find it kinda odd how modern games marketed towards kids have lootboxes, game passes, pay to win, microtransactions, and in app purchases. that like actual real life gambling. not fictional video game gambling.

#dostxt #kvetching

[butchmartyr]

can you guys do me a favor and stop putting fluoresensitive on my dash Forever did everyone forget when they pedojacketed a trans woman’s small blog? it is seriously driving me nuts. and theyre still spreading shit about other transfems even while reblogging shit about how terrible transmisogyny is and how callouts are bad. it’s ghoulish!

#kvetching #&thesituation. fuck them too I see that url way too often

[molsno]

whenever a "well-meaning" tme person starts criticizing trans women for being overly sexual or consuming too much porn or whatever it's obvious they're full of shit and a transmisogynist but it always feels so cruel because a lot of us genuinely did have no other option besides porn to explore transfemininity. like maybe that sounds gross to you but how the fuck do you think it feels growing up your entire life with your ONLY exposure to trans womanhood being fetishistic and dehumanizing porn? do you know how badly that fucks with our minds? how much trauma that leaves us with? have you ever even considered it?

it's so easy for you to sit there and look down on us for being "addicted to porn". of course it is, because it's people like you who created the conditions that banned us from every other avenue of gender expression by calling us sissies and faggots and beating us for something as simple as growing out our hair. if you don't like it maybe you should fucking do something to make it safe for the people around you to explore transfemininity in non-sexual settings. I know you won't, though, because it's much easier to call us pornsick males and laugh at us for being unable to conceptualize ourselves as fully autonomous human beings with value beyond just how sexually desirable we are as fetish objects.

it's fucking infuriating honestly. they'll say they don't believe any of those things and then start talking about how their criticisms of "porn addiction" come from concerns about how it objectifies "females". you know, REAL females, not like those "porn-addicted males- I mean trans women". they're so close to saying the quiet part out loud and it's not fucking subtle at all. next time you wanna talk about how disgusted you are by trannies jerking off why don't you go tell it to your crypto-terf besties, I'm sure they'll happily agree with you.

#kvetching #transmisogyny #1k

[yeahprobablyh]

i am SO glad to see people redesign leon with red hair .. like .. why would you name your anthro fox man leon REDBEARD and NOT give his human design a RED BEARD ⁉️⁉️⁉️😭 most obvious design choice ever

i think we as a fandom have just. collectively stricken Brunette Leon from canon. he's like the homestuck epilogues. or the live action ATLA adaptation directed by n night shyalaman. neither of which exist, by the way

#amulet series #amulet #graphic novel #atla #avatar the last airbender #homestuck #kvetching #i like amulet. very few complaints. i just think this is funny