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molsno · 6 months

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I find the notion that trans women's oppression is at least partially based on a systemic hatred of men and masculinity troubling for many reasons. the biggest reason, of course, is that misandry is not real no matter how you attempt to label or define it. but moreover, it's just flat out wrong.

it is true that many forms of transmisogyny consist of some form of misgendering. however, it's ludicrous to call it misandry just because the underlying implication is that the trans woman in question is really a man; if that were the case, then cis men and trans men would be subjected to the same oppression on the basis of their manhood. but no, the misgendering is always simply a cover for something else - something far more insidious.

if a trans woman is loud, outspoken, and argumentative, then she's accused of demonstrating her "male socialization". she's told she's guilty of "mansplaining". when a trans woman is jealous or clingy with her partner, she's accused of expressing "male entitlement" over them, and being "manipulative" and "controlling". when a trans woman is attracted to cis women and talks about her desire to have sex with them, she's accused of being "creepy" or "predatory". she's told she's being "misogynistic" by reducing women (cis women, or "real women" as is usually the implication in this scenario) to just their bodies and valuing them only for their worthiness as sex objects.

if you think about it, though, these arguments mirror regular old misogyny pretty closely! if a cis woman is loud, outspoken, and argumentative, then she's a "bitch", she's "bossy". she's told she needs to "know her place". when a cis woman is jealous or clingy with her partner, she's accused of being "crazy" and "obsessive". and indeed, when a cis woman is attracted to other cis women and talks about her desire to have sex with them, she's accused of being "creepy" or "predatory"!

so why, then, if these statements are really a form of misogyny, does the justification for them hinge on trans women's supposed "maleness"? the answer is simple: biological essentialism. this ideology, in no small part popularized in feminist and queer spaces by terfs, states that "biological males" are predestined by their very nature to prey on and dominate "biological females". and since trans women are "biologically male", it follows then that they are wolves in sheeps' clothing. any presumption of innocence or harmlessness is discarded, and trans women's actions are painted in a new light.

if you accuse a trans woman of being an infiltrator in women's spaces due to her supposed "maleness", then what you've effectively accomplished is the subjugation of an underclass of women. trans women are not considered deserving of respect, compassion, or dignity whatsoever. if you paint a trans woman as a threat to other women, then you can drum up as much outrage and violence against her as you want, and she will have no recourse. and the simple fact of the matter is that the easiest way to do this is to draw attention to her alleged proximity to "maleness".

perhaps you might be thinking that proximity to maleness being used as a justification for oppression implies that misandry actually is real. after all, aren't women of color, butch lesbians, and even black men also subjected to violence due to their perceived proximity to "maleness"?

I understand how one could make that mistake, but that notion fails to engage with the actual material reasoning behind the forms of oppression these groups face: they pose a threat to the cishet white man's absolute dominion. the root of these disparate but related forms of oppression, biological essentialism, is inherently a white supremacist, misogynistic, and conservative ideology. its purpose, much like its ilk, eugenics and phrenology, is to establish a hierarchy in society that places cishet white christian men at the top by asserting that they are inherently biologically superior to all others in every respect.

if you observe people's behavior, you can see that this ideology permeates almost every level of society. cishet white men are elevated to positions of authority without question; their motives are never scrutinized and criticized in the same way that trans women's are, or any of the other oppressed groups mentioned above. if one of these men is misogynistic, if he views women as mere sex objects to be controlled to suit his liking, he will not be punished for it; he is exercising the right that has been given to him by the society people like him have created through centuries of colonialism. even in queer spaces, men are regularly coddled, their misdeeds forgiven or excused for no real reason other than that many queer people have not questioned the assumptions they've internalized.

the notion that trans women are oppressed by misandry is laughable, really, because we are constantly made aware that, due to biological essentialism, TME people will always trust a man over us.

#my writing #transmisogyny

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genderkoolaid · 7 months

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hey i was wondering something and i wanted to know your opinion on it

Why is it problematic to say i hate men but not white people or straight people

(i'm a trans south east asian man btw)

I'd say on, like, a casual exasperated level, its not problematic to say "I hate [x]." It gets problematic when your venting about a group becomes your sole lens of viewing + interacting with that group.

Like, its entirely alright to be frustrated with behaviors common to cishet white men and express that in a vent by saying you hate them. But... its like how people make the correct point that they shouldn't be expected or obligated to give all their energy to coddling people with power over them, but translate that into "i never have to care about a member of this group at all" which directly conflicts with just. being in a community? Like women should not be expected to be caretakers for men, but people in a community need to take care of each other. When the only way you engage with a group of people is by expressing hatred and asserting how much you aren't obligated to care about them, its easier than people think to find yourself dehumanizing them.

Which does not mean "you are just as bad as a racist/misogynist" or "you are oppressing them"; you are An Individual whose biases are not necessarily backed up by powerful systemic powers. But, for one, its very easy for those biases to be used by systemic forces: with men, misandry is very easily used to justify all kinds of violence towards marginalized men & people perceived as men. You also have situations where people will say the Holocaust "wasn't as bad" as, say, US slavery, because it was "white on white violence," or saying the Armenian genocide also wasn't that big of a deal because "it was done to Christians and Christians are always killing people" (two real things I have seen been said). And, again: if you are going to care about community and restorative/transformative justice and all that, you need to be able to give a shit about all kinds of people who you live with. You need to be able to see them as whole beings you are capable of connecting with on some level. You don't personally need to date or befriend men, but you do need to be able to give a shit about men in your community.

Its fine to feel annoyance and anger and use "hatred" to express that. But the problem occurs when people take "its okay to be angry with your oppressors and not spend all your energy coddling them" and make that the end-all be-all of their relationship with people of whatever group; revolutions can't accomplish compassionate goals when they are run on hatred. Very hooksian concept but "love" (as in "a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust", not in a strictly emotional sense but as an action) is a skill that is as vital as understanding class dynamics and protest tactics. Maybe you don't need to love everyone, but try to have the capacity to love anyone; the ability to physically care for someone you don't emotionally like is, I think, a vital step towards truly challenging and bringing down the kyriarchy.

Basically its about recognizing when your venting stops being an outlet and starts being a way for unproductive feelings to shape how you view other people.

#hooksian in reference to bell hooks btw #m.#ask box

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papirouge · 6 months

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I gave up on being pro life publicly and online. The genocide in the Congo and in Gaza have proved it to me that many western women who run those pro life accounts don’t care for children. Many babies have been lost due to hospital bombings. More children are displaced with no families.

I’ve tried reaching out when they talk about saving children in generic posts because very real babies are losing their lives by IDF terrorism. And I get blocked or I get told “that’s different/ they’re Muslim/they should have left already/I don’t care” over and over and over again. The countless videos are already out that have children begging and crying for their families they lost or the homes that can’t be saved. Some of the worst messages I read criticized and blame the Palestinian men too that they should be protecting the kids, so when they die, it’s actually Palestinians fault. Not the IDF. Meanwhile those “young men” are just teenagers because their parents are dead. The Congolese topic is worst. Many are begging people to stop buying the iPhone 15 to raise awareness over the issues there but I got told by one girl who likes to call herself an anti woke submissive wife that she couldn’t care less about the Congo, she’s going to do whatever her husband wants, if that means ignoring genocide then that’s what she will do too. It’s her god given to have freedom over dead bodies l…

I’m fed up. I’m sick of the hypocrisy. I’m sick of seeing stupid homestead content of how they’re at peace taking care of a home as they purposefully condone genocide. If some hacker group exposed all these “submissive Godly trad wife” accounts as being agents for Israel to distract the west from IDF war crimes, I wouldn’t be surprised the least. Their apathy is demonic

@not-your-average-prolifer is the only pro life blog who passed the vibe check as far as I know. She reblogged posts about the emergency of pregnant women in Palestine and also post about mental health of middle east women. I think she is left leaning (correct me if I'm wrong!) so I'm not surprised to see her with more empathy about whatever's happening to women abroad, unlike Conservatives who are extremely stupid & uneducated when it comes to foreign affairs, if not straight up xenophobic.

I hope for every single Christian I know to never open their mouth about uwu Christianism is from Middle east uwu ever again the next time someone calls Christianism white man's religion or I'll go berserk on them. They better shut up forever. They had no problem to keep their mouth shut witnessing the martyrdom of our brothers - they better keep it that way permanently and stop summoning their struggle once it's convenient to them. YES, they proved they definitely consider Christianism a white man thing, considering our little care they have for our (non white) Christian brothers overseas. They better keep them out of their mouth permanently.

"They're Muslim" it's been well documented that there are Christians in Palestine. But even if they weren't, Christ wants everyone to be saved and accept him as their lord and savior - refusing to extend some basic empathy to people being bombed and killed in their sin is not the way to go. Never forget that Jesus didn't heal or saved only Jews, but also pagans, prostitutes, etc. It's insane how so unemphatic "Christians" have become.

Christian Palestinians are actually some of the oldest Christians - like, where do they those idiots think Jerusalem was?? where did the Pentecost happen? IN MIAMI?? KANSAS?? "They should have left" WHERE?? aren't the ppl pulling out this argument the same crybabies whining about woke culture destroying western civilization? Why didn't they leave the western zone already??? Also aren't they the same against immigration and how men fleeing their country are lazy cowards? so why are they mad at Palestinians sticking to their land?? Damn, Western politicians/diplomacy have the opportunity to do the funniest thing possible and mass import Palestinians in western countries to abide Zionists requirements in Israel 💀

And LOL oh so now Palestinian men are supposed to protect children? what are they supposed to do when the IDF is bombing their house? Take weapons to defend/get back their land and shit? Oh my bad, that makes them terrorists (and let's be clear : what happened on October 7th is unjustifiable but let's not act like the Hamas wasn't called terrorist much earlier than that). It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't. If they do nothing, they're cowards, and if they do, they are terrorists - because in this case, resistance is defiance. Ultimately they just want to deflect from their own lack on empathy and find a rational explanation to that.

Conservative scrotes are the LAST people who should lecture anyone about defending the children when there are acting bullying kids young enough to be their grandchildren calling them wokes, leftists, or whatever. I won't even start about gun violence and how deflective they are about protecting the children only to protect their precious right to carry. Ghouls. They only care abt unborn babies because they are unable to call them out on their bs yet. Once they do, they'll cuss them, call them woke, and all sort of -ists.

On TikTok there was a Christian girl saying how Christians are "too emotional" and how we should keep supporting "God chosen people" (Israel). I already made a post calling out how this "god chosen people " narrative didn't stand now that we were in the NEW COVENANT. But let's follow her train of thought: isn't humankind made from God image? Where do emotions come from? Didn't God himself have emotion? Why? What's the right or wrong place to have emotion? She and all the clown who agreed with her would never be able to reply those questions. We've all seen the videos. I did what I could to avoid them but they're quite unavoidable at this point. What's the correct emotion after seeing 2 kids younger than 10 carrying a third one crying while one of his foot was hanging with only one tendon?? This girl, along with every single Christian unmoved by this disaster has to shut up. Their heart is a stone and they should stop trying to lecture people who still have a heart made of flesh. We're not the same. Christ is PEACE. Not war or violence.

And girl, you really shouldn't even engage with women labelling themselves "anti woke submissive wife" 💀 why would you expect them to care about anything but their idol (husband)? Stay focus on what really matters. Peace and God. We're in the end times and God is slowly but surely unfolding the truth. The masks are slipping. Take note of all the so called who remained silent witnessing satan action, take proper action, and go on.

#answered #Christian

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viviennelamb · 23 days

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I won't publish your message like you asked, but I'm wary of everybody who has sex for that reason. It's just too risky to get involved with them. At first, it's just about getting an orgasm, but once they're unable to get orgasms, they move onto increasingly depraved scenarios.

It always eventually escalates into sodomy, pedophilia and animal abuse, which is the point Andrea Dworkin reached as documented in her books. Everybody who advocates for Dworkin is a pedophile and is at the point of Satan Consciousness, which I talk about in depth in OTE.

This website, as well as every other one, and the world is teeming with pedophiles. Don't listen to people who say “the internet isn't real life,” it is if the same people in real life are using the internet. I used to make excuses for people and say, “well this person seems okay,” you're wasting your time with them because they will always turn against you because they hate innocence and are envious of it.

This slippery slope is very subdued, so it's common for people to say they're anti-abuse in the midst of advocating for it. You cannot communicate with these individuals, they're zombies who are only capable of peddling sex doctrine. They try to prove that they're intelligent, but they can't see that there's not enough research and reading in the world they can do to reverse their destroyed minds.

Feminists have never said they were against pedophilia, rape and abuse, they are looking for equality with men. You could say they're wrong for that, but protecting innocence has never ever been their focus, and joining their movement to demand of such made you the intruder. Sorry you had to find out the hard way. They only want the same “rights,” money and orgasms as men because they're men as well. The baseline of every single form of activism that exists is to create better conditions to have better sex.

This is the typical list of feminist philosophy:

This is all they care about.

Everything they're pro and anti is to benefit their heterosexuality personally. They want to force xys into finding their grotesqueness attractive. And none of them care about girls being harmed enough to change in their personal lives. I remember listening to a live stream where women were talking about how men were abusing girls, and in the same stream they were referring to how they masturbate. Now imagine if males did that.

I've seen feminists say that pedophile rings aren't real, there is no abuse against children, and that this is Christian propaganda. There was a fake lesbian who came after me for whatever reason and she was into daddy dom/little girl role-play. I knew a het female who said a 5-year-old boy was hot, and she wanted to *do something* to him. I knew a lesbian who said that wanting to be with a child is normal because people are attracted to youth... All of them were open about having sex or masturbating.

When I say find a God-Realized Guru and remain loyal to them, I mean it. Keep your mind as clean as possible, and make it a habit to only think of God. You need to get your mind out of hell and recover so you're mentally equipped to deal with it. The mercy of God allows us to rest as much as we need to.

Anon, I highly advise you stay away from groups/communities unless they are male-free and prioritize purity. You got your lesson and don't turn back on yourself. Nothing good comes out of swathes of sex addicts. Hobbies don't hold people together either, it's a façade to get like-minded people together. Once they break the ice and get to know each other sexual preferences, that's what creates their unbreakable bonds, and that's how these sex abuse rings start. It's a club you'll never be a part of. You're not missing out on anything, regardless of how much they try to convince you that you are. Beauty is exceedingly rare these days, so you have to become it yourself to experience it. Now you know it's not outside of you anymore.

P.S. I'm not reading anything on social media outside my page as a result of what I've said here... there are just far too many advocates for sex abuse. I'm at the point where I just don't want to risk coming across it. I'm drastically limiting social media use as a result.

Not only that, but I don't want to fearmonger, but things are getting more dystopian than ever. The only good news is these individuals are suffering immensely, even if all the laws they create are in their favor. In the Art of War, males make themselves look strong, when they're weak. Don't forget that.

This isn't the time to be compassionate or sympathetic towards anybody who isn't on the right team. Be wary of anybody who advocates for compassion towards males and pedophiles as well as the individuals who claim to be their victims. If they got out, great, but let's see what they do with their lesson. God doesn't make mistakes.

#reply

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coentinim · 6 months

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You know current normalisation of torture-porn is bad when both the far right and the far left decide it needs to go, and often times for the same reason. Also, I think left-wing guys, those who are more politcally active, are often oppenly creepier than guys who are on the more left-side of the political spectrum. Like, I heard one of the guys who studies in the same class he would like to marry a jewish woman to show her the position of Palestine. Or that epicly famous Vaush drama. Many more conservative guy support group do have nice messages. Not incels. F-ck incels. MGTOWs are barely healthier, and mostly seem like a group of traumatized guys who distrust anyone with an XX chromosome. But like the No-Nut november (because trying to quit porn addiction for a month challenge) and neo-stoician groups who don't think chugging alcohol makes one manly. Heck, most support groups who try to help men quit violent porn are right-wing, at least from what I noticed.

That's one of the reasons, but not the only one, why I don't care about the political stances of authors. I myself lean more traditionalist.

Anyways, I am an Innocent fan, and while I think it's messages were a bit cringe at the end...It's a good manga, relatively speaking. I also noticed, when he stuck to historical accuracy, everything was fine, plot-wise. I prefer his non-linear story telling actually. Because manga and comic are a medium that does serve you everything you need to know on a platter. Doesn't leave a lot of room for imagination and speculation, and it's this plot structure that I think work very well for manga.

Okay... that's a lot.

I also think there's a problem with violent porn, I haven't seen any because I don't enjoy looking at people going at it, but from descriptions it is quite disturbing. I'm glad I never seeked it out lol. I'm not sure what classifies as torture porn, but I guess it's the more abusive or disgusting type... that would legally qualify as torture in a different setting?

Yeah leftist men are scum a lot of the time, I've read somewhere that conservative men view women as private property and leftists as public property, and that's kind of how it is. I don't know what MGTOWs are, but incels honestly scare me... and, the antisemitism of that guy?? What the actual fuck. He should be medicated lol I'm sick of men thinking rape is a weapon of war, it helps no one, fixes nothing, just makes civillians suffer...

Oh and the conservatives are anti porn mostly because they find most porn immoral and against Christianity and not because it harms individuals, so like good for them but their reasons aren't perfect either.

And yeah authors can lie about their political stance and they do it quite a lot, so I also don't care about it. I don't care about Sakamoto's political stance, too, though I do think he has some questionable fetishes going on... he likes drawing torture, gore and creepy sex wayyy too much.

I also liked the structure! I didn't like Rouge though, I've read Innocent really quickly but with Rouge it took weeks. It was way too confusing. I wanna know what he smoked when writing this lol.

#nika gets political

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threetrenchcoatsinatrenchcoat · 24 days

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was just scrolling thru one of those tag games and saw this!

Penny for ur thoughts? 0.0

OK SO!(tm)

I. first the data. in 1978, a gallup poll found that 11% of american adults believe in ghosts. today it's around 40%. that's an incredibly fast rise, so let's look closer. women are much more likely than men to believe in ghosts. democrats are more likely than republicans. less educated people and northwestern americans and almost every minority ethnic group (Latinos are an exception) are more likely to believe in ghosts. also non-christians. i stared at this set of demographics for a long time originally. modern, non-christian, female, liberal, poorer people tend overall to have beliefs i agree with. i don't believe in ghosts. no shade if you do. but does this data mean i should start? i'll fast-forward through my crisis for you. my conclusion is almost all of these correlations are actually just a result of one of them. the non-christians. non-christians tend to be female and liberal and non-white and more common today than the 70s. the same people who don't have a jesus to believe in have something else.

II. so the big question, what causes a belief in ghosts? we know gas leaks help. and there's a huge leap in the late nineteenth century. and christianity seems to anticorrelate. perhaps humans just need to believe in bullshit! maybe! maybe a belief in ghosts is a sublimation of spirituality in want of a religion. and maybe that's fine. maybe we need faith more than we need a god. i think this is why it's so hard to meet other queers who aren't into astrology. maybe one of the constant societal struggles is finding something to worship that won't cause harm. i'm still looking for mine.

III. let's step back. life lesson in all of science and meaning-making: any time you notice a system has two factors heavily correlating, ask if causation could be going both ways or if there's a confounding factor (and sample size and if you trust the source etc.). it makes sense to say leaving the church makes you more susceptible to believing in ghosts, and it also makes sense to say believing in ghosts would make you doubt a tripartite afterlife. and i think it very much makes sense to say when a culture based in christianity goes through a major change for any reason, maybe people get shaken out of the dominant religion and start believing in something else in tandem. this change is what would be called a confounding factor in statistics, and a statistician would now look for what it exactly is. but i don't think there's a big single moral here, i think it's a lot of change happening for any reason change happens, then patterns existing only in the wake lines.

IV. let's step further back. let's look at that late nineteenth century part i mentioned. a lot was changing and industrializing, especially science's relationship with religion. a bunch of deliberate hoaxes led by women convinced the public ghosts were real and could be spoken with. this was by no means an american exclusive, but the late nineteenth century is when many americans had just suffered a war and for the first time had to learn to mourn a loved one without a body to bury, just a letter they were told to trust. this was a people primed for a haunting. another reason mediums gained so much credibility is because of misogyny itself: it was an informal religious movement without gates to keep, and it favored feminine intuition and mystique. and these lowly servants from the simpler sex were regularly seen channeling eloquent, confident speeches. what explanation could there be but possession?

and yet this misogyny meant the weekly life of an upstanding gentleman began to include going to a woman's house, shutting up, and listening to her explain the ways of the world. it was not even a secret that almost all such mediums were advocates for women's rights. one clairvoyant named Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to found a newspaper, became the first woman to address a congressional committee when petitioning for suffrage, she supported paid sex work, she was against abortion, she was against several other spiritualists, and she believed all sex should be consensual. and so the first wave distanced themselves from her for these extremely radical, not-entirely-progressive beliefs. but if you know her, it's probably because she, largely as a stunt, was the first woman to run for president of the united states. her background was as a carnival medium. one might say she could see the future.

on the opposite side of first wave feminism, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth (the latter reluctantly) publicly embraced spiritualism. Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, in History of Woman Suffrage write “…the only religious sect in the world that has recognized the equality of the woman is the spiritualists.”

V. i don't know that ghosts aren't real. i do believe that a currently rising belief in ghosts speaks less to an afterlife than it does to a cultural, spiritual inflection point among us living. i don't know if i'd say faith is necessary. i think faith definitely makes a lot of living easier. but if i have a point, my point is everything you do believe comes from somewhere.

#this is the short version if you can believe it i cut a fair bit out that was not coherent #spiritualism #theology #feminism #european mythology #history

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theuncannytruthteller · 2 years

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You black parents better teach your kids about the system. This system wasn't designed for us, so it's up to you parents to teach your children their real history little black children need to know the truth. Don't sugarcoat anything teach them about their history, and the laws of this land. There is no guarantee if you cooperate with the overseers that's you'll come out alive. No matter what in this country they see color, if you don't look like them then you living the American horror story. And let them tell you their is no racism in this country because of the year when you still have racism in the world people oppressing everyone who look like you and I worldwide the only difference is they hide it. Amerikkka the land of the oppressed and racist. Amerikkka the corporation Amerikkka the war mongers, Amerikkka the land where you can steal land, kill the indigenous, oppress and yell get out my country when you aren't indigenous to no lands of the world. The sheep are the masses they vote for the same hand that kill them. Yep that's the real America. Better teach your children who they are because of a fool with let the same enemy that hates them teach their children. They don't care if you a woman, man dark skin or light skinned as long as you black they want you dead. They don't care if you Baptist, Christian, Buddhist, Catholic, Muslim, Jehovah Witness, Seven day adventist. If you have look look like the people of Africa, the people of Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Asia and the original Europeans brown ranging to black skin even light skin then you are a target. They don't care if you identify as Moor, Hebrew or any of that just your skin color alone makes you a target. They aren't stopping to ask what are you they kill us all the same. It's also up to us as adults to unite as one nation of blackness and don't get me wrong when just say blackness I mean the essence of your soul. Your roots the place we all originated, we are all different by like you can't say all Africans are the same we all aren't the same we share the same roots but as we spread out new nations rose, new traditions, new beliefs in our spiritual system. But in the end our roots still come from Africa, and that you cannot deny. So we here in Amerikkka need to get on the ball, we need to put our differences aside and unite. People in Africa need get rid of the corrupt politicians, and all of the Americas need to unite when the true majority looks like us they are the minority. We need our own so we don't have to rely on them each major city in each state, then we rotate that money in those major cities through each state to each area black people are in give jobs to black women and men who need it. We need to build hotels, motels, hospitals our own companies that design laptops, desktops, cell phones, get our own Internet browser make our own Facebook, Instagram, Twitter anything that makes money we need our own of, and instead of making medicine we need to sell natural cures stop trying to profit off the sick. We have cures for diabetes, aids/hiv, cancer etcetera we have the technology we have the numbers we have machines, machanics, electricians, we have it all, we have the greatest teachers of the world. It's up to us to make a better future for the children. If you have a idea you and a group of friends need to get together and put money towards that because when you win we all win.

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bijoumikhawal · 7 months

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Karaites are not a were (there are probably around 50,000 of them today), and they aren't biblical literalists. Karaites still interpret the Torah. They do not try to read the most obvious meaning out of it (which is still interpretation), they try to read what would have been obvious in Antiquity (which is also interpretation). Community leaders may often be Ḥakhamim (scholars) who are consulted regarding the Torah, and in the past compiled volumes of different interpretations (most have been lost). However, the only exaltation they have, to my understanding, is as scholars, filling an advising role. Every Jew in Karaite Judaism is encouraged to study the Torah and interpret it. All interpretations are held to the same scrutiny. The interpretations I've read from Karaites can be very satisfyingly logical (such as the "Tekhelet is woad" argument).

They reject that the Talmud is equal to or above the Torah, and I've seen a few different opinions from Karaites about what that means. One person I've bumped into said you shouldn't consult the Talmud at all, but the stance on the official site for American Karaites is as follows: "Rejection of the authority of the Talmud does not mean that the Karaites consider it unlawful to consult it or to rely on it; it means only that they deny its heavenly origin and regard it as an original work of the Sages in interpretation of the written Torah, and therefore subject to the shortcomings inherent in any handiwork of mortal men uninspired by heaven." Not to be controversial or anything, but I agree with them on that point. Further, that which directly contradicts the Torah is to be discarded as a custom, which is a contention with some Talmudic interpretations.

The rejection of the Talmud wasn't done for shits and giggles- it was likely a political choice reacting to the introduction of Islam, or in reaction to the consolidation of power among rabbis and how difficult the Talmud and additional interpretations risked becoming to learn, preserve, and transmit. There's a reason Sa'adiah Gaon was praised because “Were it not for Sa’adiah, the Torah might have disappeared from the midst of Israel", and it is notable that he was also a major opponent of Karaites. We don't actually know, because figuring out the beginning of Karaite Judaism is hard- some say it was a dispute over the Exilarch position (which Karaites say is made up, and some contemporary sources lack mention of), we have a document from 641 (i.e. the previous century) mentioning Karaites in Egypt, some think they were connected to Philo, others to some other group. But you don't break off from a major sect of your religion for fun!

Further calling Karaites biblical literalists invites one to think of Christian biblical literalists, which really isn't the case. For example in some ways Karaite women have better protections than Rabbinic women- they can initiate divorces! And if necessary, a court could issue a divorce order by itself. Fundamentalist can be a more accurate term, but still implies something false- Karaites did not arise in reaction to modernism, secularism, liberalism, etc. Most religious scholars will tell you fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. Karaites are a decidedly, very old community. Further, "fundamentalist", in most cases, is being used as a pejorative for Karaites, not intended as an accurate description. People who don't use eithef of these terms also like to use the word "extremist".

#cipher talk #There are definitely problems inside of Karaite Judaism because every group has problems but the utter lack of curiosity #And self assuredness that a community which has lasted for at least 1300 years and possibly more must be terrible and such entirely #There have been dozens of Jewish sects including ones that existed around the time Karaites start popping up in the historical record #None of them have lasted as long as the Karaites (usually because they were messianic sects and not in the modern sense #In the sense that their leaders claimed to be the Messiah or prophets and often promised to create an independent Jewish state #Or something else similar)#If Karaites were as horrible as how people talk about them people would just do something different like what happened with the other sects #It's a very annoying and kind of despicable attitude whenever I see a Hewish person say this about another culture of Jews #I've seen people say it about Sephardic culture as well as Karaites- you're dead roll over and assimilate to my thing

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redwineconversation · 6 months

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say something babe, do something (Olympique Lyonnais 2024 Contracts)

"You're Losing Me" is about the events which led up to what happened in "Maroon" and I will not entertain theories to the contrary.

Anyway, let's have a chat about Lyon's 2024 contracts, which I have addressed a little in the past and privately, but with Hegerberg's comments, it's worth revisiting.

Here are the major 2024 contracts: Ada Hegerberg, Griedge M'Bock, Delphine Cascarino, Perle Morroni, Christiane Endler, Vanessa Gilles, Vicki Becho, Eugenie Le Sommer.

Those are pretty considerable players. We're talking about the club's best and second best goal scorer, their starting goalkeeper, one of the best center backs in the world, a world class right winger, a world class left back, and arguably a very talented youngster. Losing those players would be catastrophic for the club, especially because there aren't really any equivalent players wandering around.

But why are we in a situation where we could lose such an important part of the roster?

First factor: John Textor taking over Olympique Lyonnais.

Nothing good has come from John Textor being the new owner. He fired Aulas, decided not to pay Aulas' separation agreement, decided to sell the women's team to a friend of his but a stranger to the team, failed to pass the financial watchdog not once not twice but three times, caused massive upheaval in the club, and is more hung up on Botafogo than Beth Mead stans are about the thought of Ellie Carpenter breathing.

John Textor fired Aulas because he didn't want Aulas' influence at the club anymore, and while you can argue that as majority owner he has the right to do what he wants with the club's personnel, Lyon's men team is also sitting bottom of the league and is about to have their third coach in as many months. There is enormous turmoil at Olympique Lyonnais and John Textor is the sole reason for it. He doesn't know what it means to run a successful European club and thinks he can do whatever he wants just like he did with Botofago. European clubs work different.

Perhaps John Textor's only saving grace is that he sold Lyon Feminin to Michele Kang. That's a good thing.

Or, well, is it?

Obviously given the choice between John Textor running Olympique Lyonnais Feminin or Michele Kang running it, I will choose Michele Kang. She is invested in women's soccer, believes in running it like a business, and seems to, at the very least, have some sort of interest in the sports. She has Lyon's interest at heart from a business perspective. She shows up to games, has plans, has ambitions.

All good things.

But what she is lacking is European experience. The fact of the matter is Washington Spirit is not a heavyweight club like Olympique Lyonnais Feminin is and you cannot recruit players for Washington Spirit at all because of the fucking draft the way Lyon needs their recruitment to be run. This club, with its European ambitions, cannot and should be run based on the premise of youth promise or trades.

What works with Washington Spirit is fine because that is restricted to the NWSL where there are no consequences for bad draft decisions. Bad recruitment for a European team can, has, and will cost a team the Champions League. It can, has, and will cost a team the league which affects their ability to go in the UWCL group stages and instead a team will find themselves against the likes of a scalp hunting team like Paris FC.

A team can finish rock bottom in the NWSL and there are absolutely zero consequences for the following season. It's a closed league with nothing at stake. If a team doesn't make the playoffs one season, who cares? There's always the next season. You don't win the Shield, that's a shame. You don't get the winner's bonus but that's it, really. You get another shot at it next season.

Camille Abily raised this concern about the playoffs in her recent OL Night Systems interview. Because of the structure, there is an actual possibility that Lyon might not even qualify for the UWCL playoffs, much less the group stage.

And that is always, always, always going to affect recruitment for a team of Lyon's calibre. I don't have the calendar in front of me, but I think the playoffs are May 12 and May 16 (or somewhere around those dates). Let's just roll with that. Now, Lyon has too many experienced players, too many international players, to be satisfied with not playing UWCL one season.

Ada Hegerberg is not going to stick around for a team who is not going to play Champions League, she just won't. Christiane Endler probably won't. Griedge M'Bock won't. Delphine Cascarino won't. I'm not even sure if the 2025 contracts would stick around - Selma Bacha definitely won't.

The type of players Lyon have just aren't going to accept chilling at home during the weekdays and watching other teams play the UWCL the entire season. That's just not going to happen.

Even if you can lock down these players prior to May 12, 2024 - and that's a massive if - any player with self-esteem is going to have an escape clause. As I said, Hegerberg isn't going to stick around for a team not playing in the Champions League all season. It's not going to happen. So how do you prepare for a team whose significant amount of players will be gun-shy to sign and then will want an escape clause even if they do?

It affects the recruitment. I've been vocal about wanting Leuchter, but would Lyon really be able to attract her? Not as things stand. They can't promise UWCL until May 12 at best, can't guarantee playing time, can't really say anything other than "okay... but like ... maybe... think about it?"

So we're back to the Michele Kang dilemma: what can she do, exactly?

At the moment, absolutely nothing, because she doesn't even officially own this team, and can't own it until OL Reign is officially sold. Seattle Sounders FC have officially entered negotiations to purchase the team but nothing has been finalized, and we are back to John Textor's "trust me, bro" in terms of seeing if it even occurs.

Even Textor had kept on Aulas until the sale of OL Reign was officially completed then there would have been an element of stability which is missing right now. Kang can't even make guarantees because she doesn't even own them. Yes, she's there, yes, she's behind the scenes, and yes, she is showing up.

But she doesn't own them. She can't make those final decisions.

But there is one other major factor: crowd attendance.

It's not a super persuasive argument in my mind, but it's still there. Lyon players deserve bigger crowds than they have. Now, there are factors which do explain the crowd attendance: Lyon's men team are absolutely shit. That does influence crowd attendance for female teams. If the men's team is successful, then people will care about other parts of the club. This will upset certain fan clubs, but let's be quite frank about it.

When Lyon men were capable of winning games, Lyon Fem was hitting in the 25k-30k range attendance at the Groupama Stadium. Then COVID hit, the men started being shit, Lyon Fem went through a season where they were trophyless, and that leads us to today. I'm not saying all of those are great arguments, but they are factors we need to take into consideration.

Lyon Fem gets ripped into for bad performances. The crowd is extremely unforgiving. Lyon had one (1) bad season where they didn't win anything and it did affect crowd attendance at the women's games for the following seasons. There are consequences to not living up to expectations. Lyon's shitty start to the 2022-2023 had consequences which we're still feeling to this day.

The crowd wants to get behind a team who wins. Lyon (Fem) fans have always cared about the football more than the social gathering at games. When Lyon had those wins, the football was a given, and the players didn't have to ask for people to show up. Fans showed up because winning was almost a guarantee.

2020-2021; Fall 2022 took those guarantees away.

It's not to say Lyon isn't trying to rebuild that trust. They are. And I think Kang's idea of building a midsize stadium (10-15k) is the right one. But again there are logistics behind it. Groupama is not the easiest stadium to get to, and the scheduling, especially of the women's games, makes it even more complicated as well. A majority of Lyon fans are 18+ and therefore have actual responsibilities, such as their education or jobs. A 9pm game on a Sunday night is going to affect attendance for fans who work full time. A novel concept for some, but that is the truth. People will (should?) choose to pay bills over attending a game. Though maybe there is a correlation between football social gatherings and unemployment rates.

So yeah, fan attendance is higher in other leagues, and there's reasons for that, amongst which are scheduling (which can be changed by the FFF), and success of the men's teams (in the hands of the Sports Gods).

Hegerberg's comments were annoying and, if I am frank, a little offensive to Lyon. She made it seem like Lyon is deliberately being passive about her contract situation rather than the club having its hands tied due to John Textor's lax definition of management.

Is Lyon's recruitment going to be really, really painful as long as the playoffs exist? Is Lyon's crowd attendance going to suffer while the men have won one (1) game in 12 attempts?

Yes.

It's really, really hard to predict what will happen with the 2024 contracts because these players will only play for UWCL teams. For the first time since 2006, Lyon doesn't know if they will be one.

#all good love stories start in the rain #michele kang #John textor

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cruelsister-moved2 · 2 years

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if it's not much trouble and I only trust whatever you have to rec since your posts are great! but essays/books would you rec if i want to know more about top bottom history regarding lesbians?

tbh, no... like if this is about arguing if lesbians "can" say top/bottom or whatever then i dont think u need to read historical essays or something bc the insistence lesbians 'can't' use those words doesn't come frm history, it comes from the homophobic and misogynistic notion that lesbians don't penetrate eachother, and the erasure and desexualisation of lesbian sex (I know!) by men, very much including gay men. the men who are arguing this, it isn't ABOUT history, it's about indignance to the idea of women as sexual beings, women as "real gays", women as party to an exclusive boys club. the dynamic between us and gay men ISNT symmetrical, bc they hold power over us (misogyny) but we hold nothing in return, you get the picture.

the words top and bottom arent sacred history, they aren't a community or an art form that one group worked tirelessly to establish and another group with power over them came and took out of their hands. so I think lesbians "can" say top and bottom because well. we can BE tops and bottoms, and there's no reason not to use the language that exists for describing that. i can give you books where lesbians penetrate eachother and essays where lesbians communicate their desire to either penetrate or be penetrated to other lesbians, but ultimately i would just ask why you need to see that.. what IS ‘top/bottom history’ ?? you mean you want to know more about the history of women fucking? you need historical proof that women fucked eachother? or you need to see specific usage of the terms top and bottom??

I would really encourage young lgbt people to question this notion you have been given that historical justification is necessary for anything to exist. we aren't christians and stone butch blues isn't the bible. if you think about it for a second this both creates a paradox where nothing is allowed to happen for the first time, and also means that ig bigotry and nonsense is fine as long as you can find historical justification?? plus what even happens if you find contradicting historical accounts which you know, you will constantly..... history matters inasmuch as it affects the present, when it comes to honouring the labour of marginalised people - for example, its significant that poor black gay people were instrumental in the development of vogueing and it was subsequently ripped off by rich white straight people; its important to honour the black trans women who were instrumental in the modern gay rights movement that we all benefit from, etc. HOWEVER, if there hadn’t been a single black trans woman at stonewall it WOULDNT mean black trans women in the modern day arent an incredibly vulnerable group that the lgbt community needs to support. whats the difference if the first lesbian to call herself a top was in 2010, or 2000, or 1990, or 1960??? at what point in time do gay people’s lives stop being scripture and start being fraud? i dont believe in the segregation of useful language over some kind of weird intellectual property thing....the issue is terms being misused & the only cases where a term can only be used by a certain group is when it describes an experience exclusive to that group, like white lesbians cant be studs bc it describes a relationship to black masculinity that nb people simply dont have any experience of. lesbians calling ourselves tops/bottoms correctly is not the same thing bc like we do have access to the experience of penetratively fucking eachother in a non-normative way, the dynamic of which cant just be assumed by default, and that being important to communicate... the direction of privilege is also important bc when a privileged group appropriates terminology from a more marginalised group, they often become the new authorities over a term they did not create because their voices are more prominent than those they took the term from - and it often results in the warping of its meaning especially in cases where it was coined to describe a specific experience of that group, leaving them without a term to describe that experience effectively. lesbians using a term coined by gay men is NOT that because .... men are not a marginalised group. lesbians calling ourselves tops and bottoms is in literally no way hindering gay men communicating their sexual preferences to other gay men. i feel like im starting to repeat myself here but omg this weird dogmatic insistence on historical evidence for everything feels straight up reactionary at this point & feels no different than american conservatives needing to find a clause of the constitution or christians needing a bible verse for everything. like none of this is definitive its just gay people who existed in the past just like i am a gay person who exists today.... some gay people in the past were wrong, or bigots, or stupid, and so are some today. theres no magical historical document u can find to prove ur point, ur just going to have to argue for it on its own merits. like in 10 years this post will be history so ill be right then?

#ask #anon #sorry if this is mean i dont mean to be mean #but i dont understand why ur asking me this question like what would i have to give you #like no i dont have a BOOK all about lesbians using the word top bc thats such a nothing subject to write a book on and no one would do that #faq

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phyllitta · 1 year

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Some of my truth

It was only a matter of time before liberals, democrats, progressives started to rip themselves apart clearing the way for more cracks in an already broken system.

I hate it here. I'm tired and sick

I'm a few months shy of 40 with 2 degrees and yet I have no idea what to do with life.

I've lost my motivation to write, read, or even sleep.

Do I know why?

World events, debt, constant wondering what the fuck is happening in this country and how that's going to effect my kids, our lives, my husband, his job...

You know:

Helping people with student debt while 1%'s and repubs/dems get their not needed ppp loans forgiven, tax breaks, money from lobbyists, shouldn't be an issue that breaks these groups apart.

Helping people with medical needs and Medicare shouldn't sound like our country would be taking a knife in the back.

Standing with the marginalized shouldn't be killing people.

The state of law enforcement and what is, once again, is on display for the world to see how regular people are charged by a different set of rules versus those with money. Doesn't matter the crime.

The Bible? The misguided teachings of Christianity, once again being used to kill people.

Really in 2023?

At 40 I saw way too fucken late that as a Mexican American, my vote, my voice, doesn't matter.

I wish I could go back.

Because no, I wouldn't of taken out a school loan that has more than doubled due to interest. I'm not saying I shouldn't pay it. That's not my argument. My argument is..at eightfuckenteen I couldn't get a car loan for 12 grand and 230 bucks a month, but that same year I was able to sign for a 20 thousand dollar school loan.

Did I understand what I was signing?

No. Because the idea of going to school was one of the few choices I had. School, menial job, or military.

Is that my fault, yes? Because I was easy prey and uneducated.

Then, I watch my parents struggle even though they've worked hard all their lives and now scraping by on retirement/security. My dad is 70 and yet can't afford to retire. But in that same note can't get his retirement/social fully if he still works part time?

Wtf? Social security? Something we pay into since we first start working.

Medicare? My mom can't afford tooth surgery although on insurance and social security.

GUNS...hey they're being used to kill children and minorities, and because Jim Bob fuckstick feels threatened he can go to fucken subway with more guns and ammo on him than a marine, but fuck it right. Second Amendment

And that's just a few..pfff...

I've voted red. I've voted blue till I was blue in the face for men and women promising, using our/my plight for their soapbox.

I'm fucken done with all this bullshit.

I needed my own soap box today. Of course this sounds so whiny and one sided but I'm so fed up. Insomnia, anxiety, depression aren't helping.

Maybe ignorance is bliss cause these fucktards with the loudest voices seem to be enjoying the good life.

#politics #im done #democracy #bluevsred #democrats #republican #medicare #student debt #social security #progressives

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thewolfseries · 2 years

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What was the most stupid example of racism you experienced that left you too confused to realize that it was racist?

Okay. So. Real talk time. How about I take you down memory lane for me in real life? This is a very long answer ...

I was in kindergarten and all the class except myself and an Asian child (can't remember if it was a boy or girl) were white. My teacher, Ms. Chambers was teaching about different cultures and she called me up and the Asian boy (pretty sure the kid was a boy) and started pointing out all the ways we were different to the rest of the kids. Our hair, our skin, our eyes. She even made the comment about my stepfather not being my real father (which is how I found out by the way).

So I went home feeling a mix of confusion, embarrassment (who wants to be singled out?) and admittedly, curiosity and concern. Of course I was way too young to put words to those emotions and it was all one big soup. I can remember my mother being furious and going after Ms. Chambers head and nearly getting her job. My mother, to her credit, did not hide the truth from me and told me everything and explained it, including about my real father, whom I've never met and likely never will.

She explained how he was a migrant worker from Mexico, named Frank Roman Vasquez (spelling we aren't sure of) and that she and he had what I would later learn was an affair (he was engaged she wasn't and she told me in terms a kid could get, not blatantly). She told me I was half white and half Mexican and should be proud of both sides of myself, and fuck what everyone else thought. (She didn't use the word fuck but she was mad enough to at the teacher). My mother had always raised me to love everyone, no matter what, to see the good in people, not just their outside.

So I was about six when I experienced racism the first time and knew something about it was wrong and hurtful. I was confused as I was a kid and didn't understand why it mattered.

I learned that such things, as I grew older, with that experience shaping every interaction I had after that, especially when I still lived in east Tennessee and the majority of people were Christian, white low income folks (mostly good people but with undeniably cruel streak running through it all), that skin color and "breeding" as it was sometimes called, mattered to them, for what reasons only they know. I later learned that before I was born, my mother's friend tried to get her to abort me, stating that I would never have a life, I'd be a half-breed, a mutt and it would be better off to just get rid of me, get married and have a nice white baby. The friend that said that was extremely religious, very Christian (the woman thought women wearing pants and cutting their hair was slutty and that Power Rangers, Star Wars and anything else was literally the spawn of Satan).

Looking back, I always experienced racism, from friends, family, employees of stores I went to, all of it casual and just up front in your face, sometimes laced with pretty words, all because to them, if I didn't go out in the sun for too long, I was white enough to pass; they'd say horrible things about the migrant workers and the black men and women and kids that were around, the Asians and expect me to agree with them, to which I would never respond or would sometimes bite back so to speak but I never had the courage for years to tell them that I was part of the people and groups they hated. I just didn't know it at the time because I was too young and sadly, it was the norm. It was politely accepted by so many I never knew what it was until I was in my early teens. It probably accounts for a good unspoken chunk of my self-esteem issues.

As I got older I found my voice and I will never stay silent about it again out of fear. I took two years of Spanish in high school, learning from this amazing fire cracker of a little Panamanian woman who learned about my past and took a special interest in me, wanting to help me find the lost part of my history and culture that I'm still learning about. (love you, Senora Haefle).

And that's how I both learned about racism and was confused by it and later realized it was racist.

#discrimination #race and ethnicity #social justice

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papirouge · 1 year

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There’s infighting in my church group 🥴

The topic of Islam came up and like multiple of these Christians in my group were hyping it up like “we are against the same things and believe the same things!” Like…my brothers and sisters in Christ, they literally follow a demonically possessed violent pedophile who condoned slavery and rape of Christian and Jewish women and children. They openly denounce Christ as King. They literally deny girls to go to school , rather they get raped by older men. There is a literal suicide epidemic in Afghanistan currently among women because of Islam. They literally fantasize about war and destroying our churches and faith for theirs. They literally force the scarf on girls heads because hair is sexual to them. They literally call us non believers and believe all non believers must be killed. How we the same? 🥲

That meeting was a lot for me. Like half us were shocked and grossed out, the other half was trying to argue that we’re all the same as if calling Jesus /just/ a prophet meant we were still Christian. I think a few girls in my group are easily influenced by muslim girls on social media because I follow a few of them. I noticed that those girls were following “hijabis” and fashion advice for hijabs. I remember finding one page and of the girls my group commented asking if Christians can wear kohl, buy an abaya, or take black seed oil for sickness 😑

I think Christians really need guidance and better judgement.

Don't you find interesting that the Christian girls influenced by Muslim girls are influenced by Muslim girls....... living in the West?? 🤣

No one looks up the Muslim women living in actual Muslim countries because they can't affort the fanciness and freedom of non Muslim countries. Western Muslim who see that and think Islam is gaining influence are really clowning themselves bc what these brainwashed Christians girls like are a whitewashed version of Muslim culture.

Never forget girls in Iran were literally fighting to go outside uncovered. And let's no forget how Islam forbids women to do anything outside without a man. Or that documentary with Middle East men saying they'd rather KILL THEIR OWN SISTER if she was caught being outside alone at night. Those Christian girls truly aren't ready for this.

Where were you when that crazy Muslima literally lost her mind and started harassing me when I stated Mohamed was a pedophile? I kept blocking her but made 4 news accounts to keep replying to me bc she didn't accept I owned her ass lmao. She kept rehashing the stale argument that Christianism was pro slavery (yeah the same religion whose God literally fred a whole population out of slavery) when the only place where slavery is still a thing.....are MUSLIM COUNTRIES💀💀💀

That's the thing with Muslim, they will switch between those 3 behavior

1) victimization

2) arrogance (mocking of Christianism, says they know the Bible better than actual Christian, "jEsUs wAs a PrOphEt nOt gOd🤪")

3) aggressiveness

The crazy Muslima was 1 and 2 because she's a woman, but Muslim men are mostly 2 and 3. Muslim men are VERY aggressive because their religion grooms them to be as such.

#answered #Christian

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cult-of-artemis-and-athena · 3 years

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What the fuck is "femininity", anyway? Pt. 2

I was watching a video a few months ago about Evangelical Christians complaining about what they perceived as androgyny - women wearing pants and not having long hair, men not going fishing or wearing beards - and then said something to the effect of "These people are straying from God's design!"

I suppose the Bible does have some parts that can be construed as saying that women should have long hair, men should have short hair, and they should both look different and do different things. However, wearing certain clothes or hairstyles, or doing the majority of tasks don't have a biological component. If men were naturally, biologically, by-God supposed to have short hair, it should grow to be an inch long and stop, right? I've seen some Christians rebut the "only men can wear pants" argument on the basis that the stereotypical Christian man wouldn't like, nor properly fit into a pair of women's pants. I would take that a step further, because I think it's hilarious, and say that if women wearing pants were a 100%, by-God biological impossibility, they would have one leg, or be like nagas or mermaids and it would be physically impossible to make pants for them.

Another example: musical instruments are assigned gender stereotypes for some fucking reason. A friend from middle school said she wanted to play the trumpet, but was given a clarinet because it was a "feminine" instrument. Conversely, I've seen boys who started school band on a flute or clarinet either switch instruments, or quit band altogether. Perhaps small hands make it easier to play the piccolo, and it's less annoying for a strong person to carry around a tuba, upright bass, or bari sax, but there's no reason for the player's genitals to enter the equation. During the 18th century, the acceptability of an instrument for women was based on whether the player had to spread their legs to play it. Pianos, violins/violas, and flutes were allowed, but a cello was indecent. I'm not sure, then, how harps became stereotyped as "feminine instruments" when they're both gigantic and require the player to straddle them...but here I am trying to make sense of nonsense again...

Finally - and this is the big one - there is the downright schizophrenic relationship some male communities have with female attractiveness and things women do, or have done to them, to change how they look in pictures and videos.

I feel I must preface the rest of this point with something: "men" and "women" are not hive minds, and it's important to not strawman half the population based on a conglomeration of the worst representatives you have experienced. If you go outside, in real life, and think about the couples you see, it becomes very obvious that the majority of men you will see are attracted to women who aren't skinny blondes with big boobs/asses and the majority of women you see are attracted to men who aren't 6-/7-figure earners. People who seem to express that they are totally alone and perpetually shit-on by a world of "Chads" and "Staceys" feels like the same type of mindset school kids have, where they obsess over not being included by the popular kids while they're befriended and included just fine by kids they actually have more in common with. It's not a healthy mindset to have, but excusable in school kids because kids are immature by nature and they mostly grow out of it; however, to be an adult and still think like this is a good sign to get help.

I'm talking primarily about the incel community and perhaps some of the groups that this mentality spills into.

A post was going around several years ago and I think the photos were taken from a clickbait which was taken from a makeup artist's portfolio. The MUA might actually have been Goar Avetisyan (https://www.goaronline.com/courses) but the before and after pictures resembled the ones on the link above -- one with absolutely no makeup or hair styling, and then the other with full glam, special occasion makeup and styled hair, a wig, extensions, etc. The way it was presented was "LOOK! HERE'S PROOF W*MEN AREN'T ACTUALLY HOT! WAKE UP SHEEPLE! THEY'RE LYING TO YOU! ILLUMINATI EXPOSED!!!!"

I can see why they're mad, because the dishonesty surrounding makeup, but especially photoshop, plastic surgery, posing, and airbrushing can get toxic. I'm old enough to remember the old-fashioned mindset where women were supposed to hide their "beauty secrets". Don't apply makeup in public, keep your roots touched up so nobody knows they're dyed, and if you have any treatments or surgery always deny having them. Wear your makeup to bed, then wake up early and fix it before your guy sees you.

I couldn't imagine how awful I would feel if I had Instagram or TikTok when I was growing up. I had enough moments of feeling frustrated because I didn't naturally look how other people looked, and I didn't realize that people in TV and movies were wearing makeup, that magazine ads were photoshopped, etc. Just being an extremely average-looking human being with no concept of basic grooming, comparing myself to other kids at school was hard enough without the rapist-run media adding another layer of bullshit.

When I realized the layers of lies, it was like...how long have I been wasting my time and money on this totally made-up problem? How much did I actually improve my life and happiness chasing it? Or, did it actually make me more miserable? How much could I have accomplished if I put the same amount of angst into a different pursuit -- instead of fixing my face, I could have been fixing my art...When it comes to pursuing an unattainable ideal, there is no end to the horror.

So, I suppose, when a group of men (...boys, whatever) realize that "hot women" are a spook, and the the ethereal creature they've been told by society to put on a pedestal is actually not far removed from them, and it shits and farts, it seems very reasonable to feel angry and like you've been taken for a ride by "the system". It can be easy to blame women for this, and hate them. And it's probably easy to get stuck here.

Instead of being perpetually angry, they have to mourn the death of this ethereal spook-woman, and move on with an acceptance of reality as it is. Women, too, have to kill and mourn the spook-woman as part of self-acceptance.

One positive evolution of the makeup fandom is that while the makeup has gotten more intense and elaborate, makeup tutorials have demystified makeup. When tutorials started to become popular, there was a lot of "Excuse my eye-circles, excuse my pimple, excuse my skin, excuse my hair, excuse my lighting, excuse my room, excuse my, excuse my, excuse, excuse, excexcexcexCEXEXEXEXEXEX- *boom*" and thankfully someone eventually came along ($10 says it was a drag queen) and said, "SHUT THE FUCK UP, NOBODY CARES," and eventually the makeup fandom became okay with letting a bare face be a bare face. You wear the makeup, you don't wear the makeup. It doesn't matter. It's just a hobby.

To refer back to my original point, the confusion of makeup (something culturally feminine) with biological femininity has really fucked up both men and women. Everyone is better off extracting the two from one another, and it seems like many people are in the process of doing that. It helps women hate themselves less, and it helps men humanize women and have better relationships.

However, the image of the spook-woman, "10/10 model" is so ingrained in some parts of the culture, as the apex of the vertex of femininity, that despite complaints about how makeup is a lie, discarding that in favor of just a healthy, bare-faced woman feels like embracing post-modernity and a slippery slope to embracing ugliness as beauty. I think the lack of exaggerated femininity that spook-woman makeup provides feels threatening because the woman's face looks more masculine in a purely relative sense. The exaggerated femininity of the spook-woman, as it is for the Evangelical Christians who follow strict gender roles, provides additional separation between the sexes which serves to reassure men who are A) preoccupied with their level of masculinity and B) hyper-aware of their standing toward the bottom of this hierarchy of masculinity. I think the entire hierarchy benefits from them being placated by more separation from women, because if the bottom whatever percent of men are too dissatisfied with their standing, they may start punching upwards or wanting to attack the hierarchy itself. The men at the top don't want that because of the benefits they receive for being at the top.

MGTOW and the incel movement really kicked off after Gamergate, and intensified with subsequent "waves" of feminism. The discontent men direct their frustration at women, but they also direct their frustration at the men not troubled by what women do. There's suddenly a lot of interest in whether you're an alpha, a beta, a gamma, omega, a sigma, a ligma male, etc. and which one is the better type of male to be. There's a lot of hatred for "Chads" and I see a lot of jealousy directed toward men who are married and have families, usually in the form of "She's just gonna divorce you, take half your shit, and then manipulate your kids to hate you. You'll see...you'll realize you should have spent your whole life banging whores."

This all seems like the result of the ol' spending money we don't have to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like. This is undoubtedly the idealist in me, men and women would be better off to cut each other some slack. We could see one another as fellow tragic, flawed individuals instead of fleshlights and ATMs, escape the Matrix and spit in the faces of our rapist, media elite overlords.

#femininity #performative femininity #mgtow #mass media #makeup #spooks #traditional gender roles #women don't exist #gender roles are a spook #hollywood rapists #jordan peterson #stop putting women on pedestals

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sephiroths-stuff · 3 years

Text

Something I relearned today

Cishet, able bodied, white, well off, educated, neurotypical, christian/a-religious* men, and this goes for cis/het/NT/able-bodied/white christian/a-religious, well off, and educated women** too, will never understand the pain that those who are different from them go through, and they will generally think your claims of bigotry, persecution, and attacks being leveled against you are being exaggerated, because they have never been attacked for existing the way you have.

Never let that dissuade you from speaking out, calling out injustice, taking action when it needs to happen, and being unrelenting in standing up for yourself when at all possible. When people call you a liar for exposing injustice, hold your head high, and cut them from your life with no regrets.

To my siblings of color and other minorities: are not obligated to tell anyone anything to prove your experience as a minority is valid. You should not have to defend your voice in spaces when it belongs there.***

Those with privilege who do not actively try to embetter those who suffer are part of an oppressive system. If you have privilege, you are obligated to help others, because having great power comes great responsibility and having the ability to help and choosing not to and that inaction leading to suffering puts the blame in your court.****

EXTRA THINGS TO NOTE BELOW:

* a-religious just means the general deist/agnostic/atheist etc.

**People who are some subset of the privileged I listed above obviously have different amounts of privilege than someone who is all of the above types of prigileged, and women are generally less privileged than men of the same race who have the same other categories of privilege, meanwhile, a white cis woman inherently is generally more privileged than a black cis man etc.

I am in none of these categories of privilege outside of education, and I only have that because I got scholarship haha and I might not even get to finish college due to illness and money. I'm a trans, asian/pacific islander, bisexual, Neurodivergent (autistic/schizophrenic), disabled, poor, and Sikh but also looking into Jewishness as an exploration of my adopted family's ethnicity and religious background (I personally don't feel like any one religion holds all answers for me, plz don't start discourse with me abt that on this post this isn't the place)

*** this is in reference to gatekeeping people, not, for instance, people claiming to be things they aren't for clout. For instance, people (mainly goyim) have attacked me for saying I'm of jewish descent because my adopted family is Jewish. (Which would imply that they don't see me as actually related to my own family) Jewish beliefs through the ages have mixed opinions on adoption, but MY JEWISH FAMILY had me take their last name (which did but no longer sounds jewish because it was anglicized for... Well they immigrated in the early 1900s so take a guess), and I have been told by multiple people of my family as well as other members of the Jewish community that especially as I'm exploring the religion and have Jewish parentage, I have the right to say I am Jewish. I shouldn't even have to say that but this is Tumblr and someone's gonna take this out of context someday on my resume lmao. But anyhow. Don't gatekeep. This goes for white passing poc, closeted people, ace inclusion, people with invisible disabilities and illnesses who want accommodations, etc. They are all valid and members of their communities.

**** If that was worded weirdly, basically, if let's say someone knew someone was dying and was the only one who could save them, and knew this, and still actively chose to let them die, they would be responsible for their death. Same concept.

~ being poor/uneducated/disabled is a weird issue because it's something that could happen to anyone, even white, able bodied and or educated people, especially with our medical system, but it disproportionately effects bipoc/poor/disabled people and often intersects them and is because of one or both things. White people can be poor and be an oppressed group due to it, but their poverty is NOT due to their race, which is an important factor. It's the poorness that's oppressed not the race.

~ if you are white or otherwise privileged and feel that this post is calling you out for treating your bipoc/disabled/lgbtq+/etc friends poorly, it probably is, and you should step back and rethink your internalized prejudices~

There is no TLDR. Because people need to read and fucking understand this. To be a good ally you don't just reblog posts that say "fuck terfs" and "I hate nazis" and "eat the rich" you amplify minority voices, you aid people when you can materially or even by giving time or emotional support if that's your capability (EMPHASIS ON IF YOU CAN. IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO DUE TO A VALID ISSUE I'M NOT GUILTING YOU). And above all, you let the people in your life know that you are there not as someone who will silence them when they say uncomfortable truths or call out injustice, but boost them up and help them and defend them as they make the best of a world determined to tamp out the lesser privileged.

#lgbtq #poc #bipoc #queer #oppression #rant #vagueposting #no one here #i got angry tonight #disabled #poverty #nt #nd #social justice #intersectionality #being an ally #allyship #long post #privilege

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