#who has deeply reactionary politics

[soldier-poet-king]

Like yes tokenism is Bad and does not count as queer rep, having a character on some mainstream primetime tv show be 'the gay one' is not progressive, having contestants on reality tv be 'the gay one' is not progressive, but also maybe it can still do some basic good in some cases.

My mother, a 50 something white Catholic housewife, was saying yesterday at the dinner table how disappointed she was that her fave team got eliminated from this season of the amazing race canada, and she said - in front of my kid brother even! - that the team had been a pair of drag queens. (Yes she did fall into the sassy black queer person trope in explaining this, but y'know, we're taking baby steps with her). And this isn't even the first time she's said smthn mildly positive about queer ppl! The gay intern from the later seasons of grey's anatomy? One of her favourites. Hallmark is even putting out terrible bland movies with generic white gay people instead of generic white straight people, and since she's seen every hallmark movie to ever exist, she's seen those ones too.

So. Idk where I was going with this. She still wouldn't say this stuff at the dinner table if my father were there at the time. But, I'm just. Hopeful? Yes it's (imo) terrible tv for middle aged moms, and often it's mediocre tokenism, but maybe that's a starting point and maybe it can still be a good thing. (It's not like someone like my mother is going to go start watching indie arthouse films or reading weird uncomfortable novels. If this gets her to reach out of her very insular bubble, I'm happy).

#franposting #idk just been. thinking. #its also just weird. for me personally. #to have my mother who caused me so much trauma as a child and teen #who still frustrates me and causes so much discord in our house bc of my father #to have the person who damaged me so deeply thru her own hurt and trauma and unwellness #to have her be the most normal and kind hearted of my adult relatives? #its disconcerting. and tbh it hurts a bit #i feel like eleanor from the good place. where was this mother when i was a child. when I needed her? #on the other hand. i got along well with my father as a teen #and now im like. ready to kill. #like sure we still get along ish #but hes becoming more reactionary and im becoming less tolerant of his unkind thoughts #not even just politically. somtimes he just says stuff and its like. HELLO?? #i know hes suffering too tho. idk. they both are #i just get the impression that my mother has worked on herself a lot more since i was a teen than he has #perhaps thats unfair of me. idk anyones true soul or heart #thats just my impression. #but yeah tldr i almost wept thinking about it #it is not even like. the bare minimum. but im out here starved for crumbs. so if my mother likes the drag queens on tv then good for her #anyway my family life continues to get weirder and somehow more and less painful at the same time #i desperately want to move out but also. i am saving SOOOO much money #i could in theory pay off my student loans entirely in only 1 more year #everything is complicated and it hurts #but maybe i have a little..hope. too. #not that i am ever leaving my glass closet but yknow. still. general compassion #my father on the other hand. more conservative. more trad. more anti union. work bffs with an opus dei military man #just. less kind in his speech in general. judging coworkers and acquaintances (not EVen on moral religiois stuff. just IN GENERAL) #also like. the casual low grade misogyny and racism.

[communistkenobi]

I’ve been thinking a lot about fandom recently, both as someone who has engaged with it regularly for over a decade on various platforms and also as someone who has increasingly become disenchanted with those spaces. Not only because of pervasive issues of (especially anti-Black) racism, misogyny, transphobia/homophobia, and the like, but the particular way those things take shape within fandom.

At the most basic level I think fandom has a fundamental methodological problem with the way it approaches texts, be they shows, books, movies, etc. What I mean is that people almost invariably approach fandom at the level of character, often at the level of ship - your primary way of viewing a text is filtered through favourite characters and favourite relationships, as opposed to, say, favourite scenes, favourite themes, favourite conflicts.

This is reinforced through the architecture of dominant platforms that host fan content, particularly AO3 - there are separate categories for fandom, character and ship, and everything else is lumped together in “Additional Tags.” You cannot, for example, filter for fics on AO3 by the category of “critical perspective” or “thematic exploration”. There is no dedicated space for fan authors to declare their analytical perspective on the text they are writing about. If an author declares these things, they do so individually, they must go out of their way to do so, because there are no dedicated or universally agreed-upon tags to indicate those things, and if your fanfiction has a lot of tags, that announcement of criticality gets mushed together in a sea of other tags, sharing the same space with tags like “fluff and angst” or “porn without plot.” Perhaps one of the few tags closest to approaching this is the tag “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat,” which doesn’t indicate perspective or theme but rather that there is, broadly, some kind of “problematic content” contained therein - often of a sexual nature, frequently as a warning about “bad” ships.

Now this is not an inherent problem, as in, it is not inherently incorrect to approach a text and primarily derive pleasure from it by focusing on a given character or relationship. And I think a lot of mainstream media encourages (even requires) audiences to engage with their stories at these character- and ship-levels. The political economy of the production of art (one which is capitalistic, one that seeks to generate comfort, titillation, controversy, nostalgia, or shock for the purposes of drawing in viewership, one that increasingly pursues social media metrics of “engagement” and “impressions”, one that allows for the Netflix model of making two-season shows before cancelling them, as well as a whole host of other things) enforces a particular narrative orthodoxy, one that heavily focuses on the individual interiority of specific characters, one that is deeply concerned with the maintenance of white bourgeois middle class values of property ownership, the nuclear family, normative heterosexual sexuality and gender, settler-colonial ideas about community and environment, etc. If you do not care about the familial drama surrounding Shauna cheating on her husband in Yellowjackets, for example, because you think the institution of monogamous marriage and the nuclear family is stupid and violent and heternormative, then you will have a difficult time engaging with the show in general. We exist within a deeply normative (and frequently reactionary) media environment that encourages us to approach art in a particular way, one that privileges the individual over other narrative components (settings, themes, conflicts, ideas, political and moral perspectives, structure, tone, etc).

All of which culminates in priming fans to engage with art at these levels and these levels alone, even when that scope is deeply inappropriate. A standout example I recently encountered was browsing the fandom tags on tumblr for the movie Prey - a movie that recontextualises the original Predator film by setting it in colonial America to make the argument that the horrific violence of white colonists and imperial soldiers is identical to the violence we see the Predator do to human beings. It is a movie that makes the argument that, despite this alien monster running around killing people, the villains of the franchise are these occupying soldiers and settlers, an alien force who themselves have just as little regard for (indigenous) human life.

And when browsing the tags on tumblr, what I found was dozens upon dozens of horny posts about how hot the predator monster was. Certainly there were discussion of the film’s narrative, and these posts got a good amount of notes, but the tags were heavily dominated with a focus on the Predator itself. People were engaging with this film not as a solid action movie with interesting and compelling anti-colonial themes, but as a way to be horny about a creature that is, ironically, a stand-in for white settler indifference to (and perpetuation of) indigenous suffering. And if this is your takeaway from an extremely straightforward film with a very clear message, this is not merely a failure to comprehend the content of a text, this is something beyond it - a problem that I think is due in part to the methodological problem of approaching all texts as vessels for bourgeois interiority, individual but ultimately interchangeable expressions of sexuality, perhaps best-expressed by the term “roving slash fandom,” a phenomenon wherein fans will move from one fandom to the next in search of two (usually white, usually skinny) guys to draw and write porn of, uncaring of any of the surrounding context of the stories they are embedded in, and consequently dominating a large sector of fandom discussion.

This even gets expressed in the primary ideological battleground of fandom itself, the ridiculous partitioning of all fan conflict into “pro-“ and “anti-“ shipping compartments. Your stance on engagement with fandom itself historically was (and still is) always first filtered through one of these two labels, describing your fundamental perspective on all texts you engage with. And both of these two labels are only concerned with shipping, as if all disagreements about art can only be interpreted through the lens of what characters you think are acceptable to draw or write having sex. Nowhere in this binary is space to describe any other perspective you might take, what approaches you think are valuable when interacting with art, what themes or stories you think are worth exploring. It’s not just that the pro/anti divide is juvenile and overly-simplistic, it is a declaration that all fan conflict must be read through the lens of shipping and shipping only - the implication being that any objections raised, and criticisms offered, is ultimately just bitching about ships you don’t like.

Which, again, I think is a fundamental error of methodology. It leaves no space for people to discuss the political and moral content of a work, the themes of a piece of art, the thorny issues of representation not just as expressed through individual characters but entire worlds, narratives, settings, and themes. You are always hopelessly stuck in the quagmire of “shipping discourse,” and even rejecting that framework will inevitably get you labelled as either pro- or anti-ship anyway - and you will almost invariably be labelled an “anti” if you express any kind of distaste for the bigoted behaviour of fans or the content of the text itself, again reinforcing the idea that this is all just pointless whining online about icky ships you personally hate.

And this issue is best perhaps epitomised by reader insert fanfiction, circumventing any need for you to project onto a character by literally inserting yourself into fiction, primarily in order to write/read about a character you want to fuck. This then intersects in particularly disgusting ways with real world politics, such as reader insert fics about Pedro Pascal going with you to BLM protests. Even if this is (incredibly over-generously) interpreted as a very poor attempt at being “progressive,” it still demonstrates that many (white) fans are often incapable of thinking about anything outside of a character-centric perspective, quite literally centring themselves in the process, and consequently they think it’s totally appropriate to do things like that. The fact that this is also frequently a racist lens is not coincidental, because again, a chronic focus on (fictional) individuality prohibits any structural perspective from entering the discussion, which necessarily excludes a coherent or useful perspective on systemic issues, where people come to the conclusion that the topic of police brutality is little more than a fun stage to enact whatever romantic shenanigans you want to get up to with a hot guy.

I will stress, again, that it is not a moral sin to have a favourite character, nor is it bad to enjoy reading about two guys having sex in fanfiction. I enjoy and do those things, I engage with fandom often through a character-centric lens (see my url) - because it’s fun! But I think that this being the dominant mode of engagement inherently excludes and marginalises all other approaches, and creates a fandom space where the most valuable way to talk about media is to discuss which two characters you most enjoy imagining fucking each other

#media #effortpost #fandom discussion

[transmutationisms]

what do u dislike plato

deeply uninterested in any position promising access to a higher, hidden, divine realm of truth ontologically in tension with the material existence of things and their relations to one another. it's a position that appeals to supra-natural handwaving in order to resolve a perceived disjunction between perception and reality without making any effort to historicise or problematise such a disjunction, say perhaps in relation to estranged labour. kant also does this but at least he has the decency to pretend it's constitutive of human psychology and not a regulatory principle of reality in itself. i also think the ethical positions plato expresses through socrates's mouth are laughably optimistic about the existence of a pure and unconditioned truth, the human ability to perceive such a thing, and the immediate rational acceptance of it, which leads most obviously to the deeply annoying socratic solution to "why do people act against their own interests" being "they are deceived, and i don't need to prove that or engage with expressed desires that are contradictory or self-destructive, because i can simply assume these people are deceived, because if they were not then they would do the transcendentally correct thing and be happy and experience no inner conflict". politically reactionary in the way all philosophical idealism is, and more than incidentally psychiatry minded, in the sense of the etymology ψυχή ιατρεία, 'soul healing' (cf nietzsche: socrates as the "mystagogue of science", who lived and died 'scientifically', namely, delivered from the fear of death by conviction in the mission to make existence appear comprehensible and therefore justifiable).

sucks hate him think the world needs more insane unruly people unashamed to exist bodily and uninterested in extolling the virtue of self-restraint. "socially contextualise that thang" --karl marx 1844

#plato

[direquail]

You know the point of "protecting the children" dogwhistles, right? It's a reference to the idea that all queer people are child abusers. Super common belief among homophobes and transphobes, including (sometimes especially) gay ones.

It's also not just "a dogwhistle". When pressed to explain what exactly they want to protect children from, it's a ready-made emotional appeal to something that has broad social support. Most people, even if they don't like being around kids, are also not pro-child abuse. That's why conservatives go out of their way to invent (even if it's completely fictional) "reasons" why acceptance of gay and trans people amounts to child abuse. It helps them create an emotional connection with their target audience, and can be leveraged into logically ridiculous arguments like "well, if you don't agree with my platform, you must be pro child abuse, because I'm on the side of The Children".

"Protecting the children" is also super appealing to parents in particular, not because all parents are secretly authoritarians, but because it's super common to have a child and realize "Oh shit, I brought this person who can't defend themselves into the world and the world kind of sucks", and to feel horribly, horribly inadequate in the face of that.

I get very tired of people who mock, scorn, and ridicule people for falling for these rhetorical traps, or being snared by something that seems common-sense but disguises something ugly underneath. They are traps. That is what they're meant to be. That is why there are gay people who fall for anti-queer rhetoric, and get pulled into exclusionist or violently reactionary circles. We all have things we are vulnerable to, whether that is a history of being abused or a deep fear that we cannot protect our own children, who we brought into the world and are responsible for the protection of. And we gain nothing by mocking the latter.

I'm sure it makes some people feel great to say "well if you were really who you claim to be, you wouldn't fall for this shit", but frankly, that's a stupid-ass take. It misses entirely that these messages are carefully crafted by the people who hate us! They workshop these statements! They spend months or years trying to find the right message and when they find it they use the hell out of it, because it works. Because they are listening to the public conversations people are having online, and it doesn't take any level of basic agreement to be capable of regurgitating the party line word-for-word.

I am so sick of people who look at a deeply-embedded struggle over social and political ideals and think that this fight won't demand our whole brains and hearts and souls and yeah, we might fuck up because we care deeply and sometimes, people with bad intentions prey on that. On our grief and our fear and our rage.

And I'm frankly a lot more nervous around people who refuse to be aware of that, especially when they loudly mock the people who are willing to acknowledge their own fallibility and explore how they got ensnared in something. People are not moral machines, they are people.

#that post was pure moral purity police and it was so aggravating #the WHOLE point of that post was to shame every single person who saw it for being fallible and the net effect will not be to make us bette #it will be to make us less willing to interrogate ourselves and whether we're on the right track

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for laughing at my conservative uncle?

This is an incident that made half of my family go no/low contact with each other, and some still think I was an asshole for it (I think I wasn't), but I wanna get tumblr's perspective. I was 24(F) when this happened, my uncle was 58.

Thanksgiving 2021 my family wanted a big weekend long get together after not being able to do Thanksgiving in 2020 due to lockdowns. Family members took time off work and drove in from out of state so we could all hang out from Thursday to Sunday.

We all have that one uncle who spends every family event saying the most out there racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/whatever shit, and mine I feel is worse than most. He has some truly shitty takes like "It should be legal to hunt the homeless for sport", and "If a woman doesn't wanna get raped she should get married at like 16 and never go anywhere without her husband," and "If I ever saw a man pretending to be a woman I would kill him with my bare hands, and most of this nation would agree with me". Truly a piece of shit. Meanwhile my family knows I am extremely progressive, so they do their best to keep me and my uncle separate during family events or else it could (and has in the past) lead to shouting matches.

But here's the thing: I would happily avoid him and not talk to him during get togethers, but he loves arguing. He seeks me out. He'll follow me to the bathroom and bring up transphobic things happening in the news. He'll get up from the dinner table to walk over to me and shove an news article about Trump in my face. If he sees me enter the room he'll start talking LOUDLY about his political opinions. He WANTS to argue with me, and the family considers it my duty to ignore him and calls me an asshole when I engage, because that's just giving him what he wants. But he somehow never gets called out for hounding me, because "that's just how he is".

So it's Thanksgiving 2021. And maybe it's because of the therapy, or maybe it's just because I'm getting tired of avoiding him, or maybe it's the lockdowns that eroded my social graces, but I see him spot me from across the room and get that "ohhh I'm gonna make her sooooo mad" little glint in his eye and start to make his way over, and I don't find it infuriating anymore. I find it deeply funny that this divorced, no job, no bitches, deadbeat dad, that everyone secretly hates, has decided the only way he can get a drop of serotonin in his sad miserable life that HE ruined all by himself, is to turn to reactionary politics in a desperate attempt to get a rise out of his niece.

He starts in on the regular vile transphobic shit (I don't need to repeat it we've heard it all before, imagine the worst anti-trans rhetoric you've ever heard and yup. That's what he was saying) and I don't try to counter his points like I usually do. I just laugh. He keeps going, looking more and more puzzled, and I keep laughing.

He thinks I didn't hear him right. No no, I heard it all, and it was funny. He decides I must be too triggered to speak. No I promise, I'm having the time of my life. He guesses I'm not as smart as I think I am then, if I can't come up with a good counterpoint. Oh I'm plenty smart, and you're plenty hilarious.

Long story short he gets madder and madder that I won't engage until he's red faced and yelling. Family members are trying to calm him down and telling me to stop. I don't. I'm not mad that they're again blaming me for the interaction when I was just standing there and HE came up to ME, it's just really funny at that point. Really funny that the entire family walks on eggshells to protect his precious feelings when they could just laugh in his face like I am. My uncle punches a hole in my grandmother's wall and storms off cussing. The mood of the entire Thanksgiving weekend is ruined, and even my most left leaning family members think I'm an asshole because I KNOW how he is and I should have just walked away.

Should I have just walked away to save everyone's Thanksgiving weekend?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[historicity-was-already-taken]

hi! hope you're doing okay—I've got a holocaust-history-in-media question for you. I was talking to my brother the other day, and he mentioned how his 10-year-old son tried out "Anne Frank mode" on the meta VR headset. I was kind of horrified, because that sounds deeply exploitative and disrespectful—but he went on to say it's just a VR version of the Anne Frank house, and that it let my nephew explore history in a new way. He was able to touch things and move them around in a way he wouldn't be able to IRL, not to mention the accessibility of not having to travel.

My nephew's kind of an unusual kid, and he chose this "game" while at a friend's house. All the other kids got bored and left pretty much immediately, but he stayed to learn, and my brother says that at the end his takeaway was, "It's so sad. It's so sad and awful what human beings do to each other."

Part of me is just like "No, absolutely not, that is not for VR companies to profit off of in any way, this feels inherently exploitative." But idk. If it increases accessibility and education in a meaningful way, then perhaps that disquiet is simply reactionary.

Then I remembered I have access to an actual Holocaust historian, someone who even specializes in women's narratives and the media portrayals of same.

So, no worries if you're busy/don't have time to respond to this, but I thought it might be an interesting question for you. Do you think the VR Anne Frank house is a good thing?

Ooooooh this is an interesting one. It's also a question that I think I would have answered differently a few years ago. I mean, I've posted here about my issues with central role Anne Frank has been accorded within Holocaust memory, I've posted about the politics of people playing Pokemon Go at sites of atrocities and disasters...

But. Technology changes SO quickly. I read this fantastic article probably 10+ years ago now about how the millennial generation began to express collective nostalgia SO quickly and so young, because technology and the norms it introduces change so quickly. I'm 34 and while that's hardly ancient, the technological world inhabited by children and adolescents is effectively alien to me because of this massive, rapid, ongoing change.

Moreover, I think the pandemic gave us all an...unwanted but helpful bootcamp in what works wrt education over the phone/computer, and what doesn't. In my personal and professional life, I've met and spoken with STEM companies/individuals who specialize in working with museums, historical societies, etc. And they're not just in it to make a buck--they're there to work with museums etc in increasing access and keeping up with educational trends because they know it's important and smart people value STEAM education.

So, despite my acknowledged concerns issued in the first paragraph, and the kneejerk negative reaction I think you and I share, I think my conclusion is that this is a good thing. Like, as a Holocaust historian, pubic historian, educator, and now a Hebrew School teacher of 7-11 year olds, I think whatever gets kids interested and engaged is Good; whatever draws them and gets them thinking about it is Good; even if the tech and infrastructure involved is something that I previously took (philosophical) issue with.

This doesn't mean I don't still have concerns about the centrality of Anne Frank, but let's be real: I lost that battle a long time ago. I've said my piece, and if Anne Frank is going to be kids' gateway into learning about the Holocaust, I'm glad to see that it's being done responsibly, well, and in keeping with how kids engage with education and tech in 2024.

There are, obviously, many theoretical conversations to be had about the implications of this kind of thing, and I hope a grad student applies like, Walter Benjamin to it for a first year paper, but this is my answer purely in terms of access and education.

[gaystan]

PRESENTING ME AND @11x13kyle's FIRESIDE CHATS WITH KYLE AND ERIC AKA NICHE INTERNET MICROCELEBRITY AU:

cartman and kyle host a podcast called fireside chats with kyle and eric that’s basically just red scare, cartman is dasha and kyle is anna

they're constantly beefing with each other on twitter and some people are convinced it's staged to promote the show but kyle just hates cartman That Much

a majority of their listeners are just there for the occasional mention of their batshit childhood experiences amongst all the terrible political takes

like "umm i don't wanna hear this insane opinion on al gore i want to know more about how you guys swear that he tried to get you to help him kill manbearpig when you were 8"

fans wonder if these events are true or if they're enabling each other's schizophrenia

cartman is always saying the worst reactionary things while kyle's takes are deceptively normal until he hits them with one that makes listeners go hey WHAT?

kyle resents being called a reactionary but cartman LOVES it, wears the label like a badge of pride

there is CONSTANT discourse about whether or not cartman's antisemitism is ironic or not, with the reasoning "why would kyle be friends with him if it was genuine," and kyle regularly takes to twitter to say "IT IS NOT IRONIC."

kyle peaks the mic multiple times an ep yelling at cartman, says they'll edit it out in post, never gets cut because neither of them can edit

reddit posts go up are after every episode giving timestamp warnings for when kyle gets super loud

cartman has a christian music era, gets tradcath allegations and does little to discourage them

there are people who rpf ship kyman. cartman knows about this and tweets at fans asking them to send him fic recs

secretly jacks off to them

has a bit where he gives a shout out to his favorite kyman fic of the week and kyle breaks the mic every single time screaming at him

he posts unbelievably cringy "ironic" thirst traps to his instagram story at night and "ironic" drag pictures but the outfits and makeup are too good to be a joke

he also posts pictures of butters in bed with like bites on his neck to brag about getting hot tail but it's also just as unsexy

this is how he accidentally comes out, he was so distracted by the need to flex that he forgot he's still trying to beat the gay allegations

the "ironic" kyman fic jokes stop being funny

butters is adam friedland and kenny is the girl he cheated with

the butters show is cohosted with dougie and part of the alt right pipeline

stan is kyle's offline boyfriend in a B list rock band and wears fireside merch on stage sometimes

this includes the isis shirts which he swears up and down he didn't know were isis shirts

deeply apolitical by choice so whenever kyle talks to him about podcast stuff he nods along like whatever you say honey

he still listens to it he just tunes out of the political talk

the day his fans find out he's gay is the biggest day for them since his 2021 single hit the hot 100

everyone analyzing his old lyrics like oh my god. this was about a MAN. it all makes sense.

kenny is a twitter microceleb and socialite, much like with cartman controversy is part of the brand

gained thousands of followers over the butters cheating discourse

thirst tweets about kyle and they're secretly unironic

comes on fireside and rates youtubers he's slept with, kyle is disgusted and cartman is delighted

chapo trap house is craig and those guys

#it was so hard to narrow my favorites down like i said this went on for hours #south park #more cartman centric than i expected but i mean. Come On #suggestive #jic #a personal favorite #microceleb au

[princess-nobody]

I hate Quaritch but I also really adore him but I also want to bash his head open with a rock

So I have a lot of thoughts on Quaritch as a character as well as what he represents in the greater message of Avatar; I want to clarify that I admit that I have many biases, due to my very strong connection to my ethnic background, many of the themes of Avatar affect me on a more personal level. Though I usually try to put my own reactionary feelings to the side and stay objective, when it comes to this character I simply cannot do so, and therefore this will probably be my most emotionally charged Avatar take 😭

So I hate Quaritch, like deeply, as in my biggest dream is for his story to end with him being shot in the chest 2384884933 times by na'vi arrows, preferably Neytiri's arrows. Now, I've tried to unpack why he of all villains gets to me so much, because despite all of his infractions, he's not as bad as other villains that don't nearly get as much visceral hatred from me. Quaritch is far from the only unempathetic, xenophobic maniac that jumps with glee at the chance to kill some natives if it benefits his side in media, yet he's the one I want to strangle with my bare hands the most. After some deep reflection I've finally realized why.

It's because he's so real.

It's a simple answer, but it really opened my eyes to how and why so many of Avatar's themes hit such a personal cord with me; it's all so real. I remember being told by an old history professor of mine that many people have the capability to be Hitler, but few have the power to do so. He said that there are many diet Hitlers walking around, people with the same ideology, people with the same thirst for power, people with the same hatred and bigotry. It could be your barista, it could be the lady sitting beside you on the train. Hitler is not a rare individual, he was simply a politically powerful version of an individual we encounter everyday. That is to say, these evil people in history are not really uniquely evil nor are they these one dimensional beings, they are in fact what you get if you give some ordinary people more power than they need.

Now what does any of that have to do with Quaritch and how "real" I claim he is? Well, it all makes me understand that the reason my dislike for Quaritch is so much more deep-rooted than most villains is because he represents a very real, very common person. He is the overly patriotic military fanboy that treats indigenous lives as disposable, he is the America first guy that defends any and all invasions into other (often times less powerful) countries if he feels it benefits the nation. He is the anti-indigenous racist who thinks modern natives are larpers and believes historical natives were savages and that they deserved what they got. He is the terrifyingly ignorant guy who's views are so outdated that you wonder how he functions in modern society.

Now, Quaritch himself isn't really all of those things and doesn't outwardly ascribe to all of those things in either film, but his personality, position in the military and his role in the narrative of Avatar seem to – at least to me – represent what happens when you give this archetype of person the power he has. With that, as much as I hate him, I also love him for this.

Quaritch isn't unrealistic, he isn't this cartoonishly evil bad guy who only feels rage and hatred and wants to destroy Pandora just because, in fact he doesn't even want to destroy Pandora. James Cameron could have easily went with making both him and the RDA out to be these soulless evil entities that destroy and kill everything just for the fuck of it. Instead, he went with the more realistic approach, the RDA represents real life corporate greed that destroys the planet and seeks to devour anything that can make it a quick buck, and Quaritch represents the sort of bigoted, ignorant and VIOLENT man you may encounter at least once or twice a week depending.

The only difference is the one you think of when you read those words is just some guy, whilst Miles Quaritch has the power to actually act on those things. I genuinely adore this type of writing, because I feel it's very easy to detach ourselves from stories like Avatar because the antagonists are always so one dimensional and evil just because. You can't do that with Avatar, because most of what you are watching is based on and inspired by reality; there are many Quaritch-like people walking around, they just don't have the power and backing he does.

So yeah, TLDR: I hate Quaritch because of how evil he is but I also love him because of how evil he is. He's a really good villain that makes my blood boil and I actually don't mind him being the antagonist in the coming films.

#long post #tw: hitler mention #avatar #atwow #avatar the way of water #avatar: the way of water #miles quaritch #jake sully #neytiri #lo'ak #neteyam #tsireya #na'vi #na'vi avatar #aonung #avatar recoms #spider socorro #miles spider socorro #pandora avatar #avatar pandora #resource development administration #avatar rda #the rda #recom quaritch #avatar quaritch #Nobody's Avatar Analysis #<- gave myself a tag for my takes lol

[creature-wizard]

FAQs & Newbie Orientation (Updated February 21!)

“What do you mean when you say ‘New Age’?” I am specifically referring to forms of spirituality that revolve around the idea that the Earth is about to enter an actual new age, commonly referred to as the Age of Aquarius, Fifth Density, or Fifth Round. If a belief system doesn’t include this, it ain’t New Age, even if it did emerge in the 20th century, even if Barnes & Noble puts books on it on the New Age shelf. (A Wiccan can be a New Ager, but the idea of a new age not a central part of Wiccan beliefs.)

“Why are you so critical of New Age and starseeds?” The short answer is, it's a belief system built on white colonialism, Orientalism, eugenics, hateful conspiracy theories, and always has been.

If you want longer answers, check these out: The Deal with New Age, in a nutshell New Age beliefs that derive from racist pseudoscience A quick intro to starseeds Various ways the New Age movement is shitty The New Age concept of ascension - what is it? Why New Age is thinly-veiled antisemitism/nazism Why David Icke’s reptilian aliens are sparkling antisemitism Starseeds: Nazis in Space? (Not my article) What is the New Age to Alt Right pipeline, and how do you stay out of it?

I also recommend checking out the #new age to alt right pipeline and #spiritual eugenics tags.

Now I want to be clear here, I'm not saying that everything associated with New Age is bad simply because it's associated with New Age. Many practices are harmless in and of themselves - the problem is the conspiratorial, morally polarized framework they're practiced in. For more info, see Some things associated with New Age that aren't inherently bad.

”What do you think of reincarnation, in general?” I think it’s fine to believe in reincarnation so long as you don’t act like it gives you special knowledge or wisdom, or entitles you to tell other people what to do, or entitles you to appropriate and misrepresent other people’s cultures and spiritual traditions, or tie it in with a conspiracist worldview. (Starseeds do all of these.)

“What if I’m alienkin, or I believe my soul comes from another planet?” Nothing inherently wrong with that! The problem with the starseed movement is its politics - it’s founded on a bunch of racist, ableist, colonialist garbage. (It’s no coincidence that a number of starseeds are outright Nazis.)

“What if I want to call myself a starseed, though?” That’s like wanting to call yourself a Nazi. There is something deeply wrong with you if you do. “Why are you so critical of ancient aliens?” See Spencer McDaniel’s excellent post.

“Do you think it’s wrong to believe in alien life?” No, I just think it’s important to be critical of what you believe about it, and why you believe it. If you believe in aliens, question your assumptions about them. What are you projecting onto them? Why are you projecting that? Is that projection a bit self-centered, whether positively or negatively?

“Why are you so critical of conspiracy theories?” Simply put, because conspiracy theories are tools of reactionary violence. Most conspiracy theories are derived from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a known hoax created to demonize Jews and blame them for the world's problems while justifying a return to monarchy; or early modern witch panic and blood libel. BTW, I recommend Justin Sledge's video on the Satanic Panic. "But isn’t there a bunch of evidence?” 'Fraid not. All of it's either fabricated (EG, the aforementioned Protocols), taken out of context (EG, the Dendera “light”), extremely subjective (EG, someone’s mystical experience), based on absurd standards of what constitutes "evidence" (being a depressed teen who liked heavy metal and D&D was taken as a sure sign being involved in a satanic cult in the 80's and 90's), or produced through flawed methods (EG, so-called recovered memory therapy), or questioning vulnerable people until the interviewers or psychologists finally got what they wanted to hear. (If you want to get an idea of just how much of a mess this was, and just how unethical and irresponsible things could get, I recommend checking out the You're Wrong About podcast's episodes on Michelle Remembers.)

"Wait, do you have actual evidence that false memories exist?" Yep, you only have to peek in on the starseeds to see hundreds of 'em. See my posts hypnosis is unreliable for memory recovery, and this is one way we know and false past life memories among the starseed movement. You might also take a look at Abducted by Susan A. Clancy. Also read my post here’s the trouble with hypnotic regression for an explanation of why it's so easy to generate false memories.

“But aren’t starseeds part of ancient traditional beliefs?” Literally no one has been able to produce a single scrap of evidence that anything like the New Age concept of starseeds existed before the Victorian period. However, New Agers are well-known for bullshitting about the age and origins of their beliefs. If you’re going to assert that starseeds are genuinely part of some ancient tradition, you need to provide some real evidence.

“What’s your problem with the Law of Assumption?” See this post and this post. See also: The prosperity gospel, explained: Why Joel Osteen believes that prayer can make you rich. (The Law of Assumption is closely related to prosperity gospel.) Why you should know about the New Thought movement (another closely related movement) "If the Law of Assumption is fake, what about the success stories?" Was Neville Goddard really trustworthy? No, modern witchcraft and the Law of Assumption are not "the same."

"Is X spiritual person a conspiracy theorist?" See this post, Is the spiritual person a conspiracy theorist? A list of red flags.

"I'm trying to get out of a shitty situation, what can I do?" See my post, "I'm in a bad place and need to get out, what can I do?"

"Why haven't you posted anything about X? Probably for one of the following reasons:

My primary focus is right wing conspiracy theories, and the beliefs/narratives that surround them.

I am a forgetful fuck; things can slip my mind indefinitely.

I literally do not know enough on this topic to say anything meaningful on it at this time.

I have simply never heard of X.

I literally did (maybe even post about it semi-regularly), but you missed it.

Please understand that researching conspiracy theories takes a lot of time and can be pretty draining. There's an immense amount of media to go through, and that media is often some of the most hateful shit you'll ever find. Sometimes I need days to decompress from it.

“Do you recommend any resources?” Yup, over here!

#pinned post

[femmespoiled]

The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader by Joan Nestle

ID - text reading:

"For many years now, I have been trying to figure out how to explain the special nature of butch-femme relationships to feminists and lesbian-feminists who consider butch-femme a reproduction of heterosexual models, and therefore dismiss lesbian communities both of the past and of the present that assert this style. Before I continue, my editor wants me to define the term butch-femme, and I am overwhelmed at the complexity of the task. Living a butch-femme life was not an intellectual exercise; it was not a set of theories. Deep in my gut I know what being a femme has meant to me, but it is very hard to articulate this identity in a way that does justice to its fullest nature and yet answers the questions of a curious reader. In the most basic terms, butch-femme means a way of looking, loving, and living that can be expressed by individuals, couples, or a community. In the past, the butch has been labeled too simplistically the masculine partner and the femme her feminine counterpart. This labeling forgets two women who have developed their styles for specific erotic, emotional, and social reasons. Butch-femme relationships, as I experienced them, were complex erotic and social statements, not phony heterosexual replicas. They were filled with a deeply lesbian language of stance, dress, gesture, love, courage, and autonomy. In the 1950s particularly, butch-femme couples were the front-line warriors against sexual bigotry. Because they were so visible, they suffered the brunt of street violence. The irony of social change has made a radical, sexual, political statement of the 1950s appear today a reactionary, nonfeminist experience."

END ID

#sharing the knowledge series #the persistent desire #bellas butch/femme tag #was queuing and editing and couldn't stop myself from posting this one early

[communistkenobi]

re: Trek: I was hit with a lot of the same feelings when I finally went and watched TOS a couple of years ago. There's a brand of Star Trek fan who really believe in what the show wants or at least claims it wants to be--a progressive vision of the future--but are incapable of seeing it for what it was lest they cede ground to the fans on the reactionary end of the spectrum who like it for pew pew guns and sexy green ladies. For what it's worth, the Federation isn't portrayed as a post-scarcity post-money society until TNG but it's not something they do more than pay lip service to

I think this gets into the limitations with individual character representation as a metric for “good” politics in a show. It has a comparatively diverse cast and that is historically significant, I understand that it’s groundbreaking, and I’m not downplaying that or saying those things don’t matter or had no impact culturally. but those individual representations are imbedded within the undergirding logic of the show, which is that the Enterprise is a ship meant to make contact with “new” “undiscovered” civilisations, measure their “development” on a singular scale that is premised on settler colonial ideas of land development & capitalist logics of expansion and growth, and then force those societies to fit into that particularly colonial mould. Multiple times the resolution to the plot of an episode is destroying any unique aspects of a culture that cannot be captured by those development metrics, and this is unambiguously presented as a good thing. This show is deeply invested in the maintenance of racial hierarchy and western hegemony, and its diversity and progressive elements must always be placed within that context. It’s racially progressive in some ways yes, but only narrowly, and in fact the necessity for good racial representation is the fault of those undergirding logics! We wouldn’t need good racial representation in the first place if those systems did not exist. “Good intentions” on the part of the writers do not negate the fact that the final product uncritically reproduces a western vision of culture, one that sees the west as manager, mother, teacher, and policeman to the rest of humanity.

I think Said’s discussion of Orientalism is once again very instructive: it’s not just that the show might be individually racist or sexist to particular characters or groups of people in a given episode. These things are bad yes, but they are surface level bad, and focusing only on them obscures the larger issue at hand. The deeper problem is that it operates on an orientalist epistemology, a way of knowing and seeing the world, one that necessarily excludes the basic conclusion that, like, the measure of a civilisation does not need to be premised on economic growth or European cultural modes, & in fact the idea that you can “measure” a culture unilaterally is itself a western construction. that scale is a tool of colonial development, one that is backed by a system of racial hierarchy that must be violently enforced to be realised in the world. Star Trek is by no means unique or special in this regard; this is the state of western media in total. I’m just uncomfortable with how uncritically fawning people are about it.

I’m also not privy to the discourse around this show, I’m an outsider encountering Star Trek for the first time as an adult and I’m largely ignorant of the 8-odd decades of discussion about it. But like, you don’t have to allow the reactionary crowd to control your understanding of the show! Saying it’s a fundamentally colonial narrative does not dismiss or diminish claims about racial diversity or representation in other areas, nor does it mean a reactionary interpretation of the show holds more weight. Those people are not worth considering, they have nothing of value to contribute to the discussion of the show’s politics. Like you can accuse me of having high standards or that my demands are ridiculous given the show is old, but I’m being bombarded (and have been bombarded) with claims that Star Trek is socialist, is progressive, is better than Star Wars politically, etc. and I don’t think those claims stand up to basic scrutiny unless you are willing to downplay or dismiss how deeply racist, ableist, misogynist, etc the show is, and further you have to ignore the basic fact that the show does not work if you reject or take umbridge with its imperial framework

#asks #star trek lb #orientalism #< saving this in my book tag

[self-winding]

One of my YA novels which I've been trying forever (unsuccessfully) to sell involves a teenage girl whose parents (and especially her father) are political extremists. Her dad is an eccentric brand of right-winger who has some neo-reactionary leanings, negative views on democracy and modernity in general, and also (most relevant to the narrative) some racist views, and he hosts a group of similarly-minded people who meet in his home.

The main character is very opposed to her parents politically and has, for years, defined herself almost exclusively in terms of her opposition to their views, and also harbors a lot of anger toward them to a point that it's destructive to her mental health. She struggles with guilt and confusion over the mixture of love and hate she feels for her dad, she self-harms in an attempt to deal with it, etc. There is a point in the narrative where some bullies at school discover this particular weakness of hers and use it against her.

This emotional conflict is not the entirety of the story, there's a lot of other stuff going on, but it is crucial to her character arch.

By the end of the novel, she has...not forgiven her parents, and is still just as opposed to their beliefs, but she's also realized that her own feelings of anger and guilt are poisoning her. She's learned to let go and start to form her own identity in a way that's separate from her opposition to their views, and in her case this involves physically moving to a different town and also a mental shift away from being immersed in political frameworks.

I've generally gotten a lot of responses praising the writing itself but saying "there is no way in hell this would sell in today's market," and pretty much every specific response I've gotten as to why it would be impossible to sell is centered around the perceived centrist-liberal politics of the book and the fear that the MC's emotional arch and her decision to focus on her own mental health (as opposed to becoming even more progressive by the end and dedicating her life to fighting her parents' views) could come across as condoning or downplaying the badness of her parents views and making them seem too "sympathetic." I've done several rounds of edits in an attempt to address these concerns or clarify that that is not, in fact, what I'm doing, but I've accepted that there's probably no edit I could make that would make this book sellable. It's going to figuratively sit in my drawer forever.

Which is deeply frustrating to me because (in my admittedly biased opinion as the story's writer) I think this speaks to something relevant that I almost never see addressed in YA fiction. Or really in any modern fiction.

#vent post

[transfenris-truther]

Don't you think there's something off about the way conservative women subsume their ideology into aesthetic? Like, it's most obvious on Tumblr where there's a large contingent of completely unhinged conservative women posting pink and blue doilies and photos of white babies. But obviously, if you look at the most prominent conservative influencers who are women, you see the same echo.

It's prominent in everyone from Abby Shapiro to Brittney Dawn. They all present a curated aesthetic which is their primary selling point, and import their right wing ideas as a secondary. Like Abby Shapiro is really the "classic" example of this. She brands herself like a lifestyle channel and relagates her hateful ideology to a component of that lifestyle.

And honestly, now that I'm thinking about it, it's not just women. The male influencers center "debate" "conversation" and "ideas" but when you look into how they make their money- from Joe Rogan all the way to Alex Jones- it's all lifestyle products.

There's definitely a major gender affirmation aspect here. Like, the rightwing lifestyles being marketed online are by and large binary hypermasc and hyperfem. But I think the biggest component is an embrace of the narrative that consumption and identity are the same. Because the right is so deeply vested in capitalism and imbibing it in every aspect of their lives, the aesthetic and the lifestyle brand has to be at the center of the conversation.

Decentering consumption for even a moment acknowledges that there is possibility outside the capitalist mode- and that just can't be allowed. So aesthetic and the consumption of products to affirm that aesthetic is fundamental to reactionary politics.

#idk im just thinking

[boyfridged]

Y'know I really wish Jason's team ups don't involve heroes, super or not, all the time (or ever), but instead just normal people whose experiences may mirror his/whose background creates a common ground through which he can insert himself. I just prefer him being grounded by the hellish reality that civilians are the ones suffering the most, who are stuck in this continuous and endless battle between capes and villains. I just think that Jason could have been the perfect pov character to bring focus the opinions of the common people regarding this whole fiasco.

It's part of why I wish we had more insight to Jason's thoughts in Batman: The Cult. The bit wherein multiple people were being interviewed and how a lot of them were in support of what Blackfire's cult is doing (not to say that the intentions behind it are all for righteousness or whatever cause we all know it's not), and how people in the first place were debating whether the killings were justified or not shows that the general public has so much distrust with the police and the law which to me was a perfect opportunity to show Jason's ever growing distrust of the system. He may not support Blackfire but he definitely can see & understand the sentiment of the public. And I think this should have had more impact to Jason going forward.

i really wanted to take my time to answer this ask properly because while i agree in the most general terms, i think there's some very specific nuance to it.

the civilian cast – yes! i am always in favour of a civilian life, as i am in favour of jason finding his way back into living in general, which necessities a civilian arc for him too. and it is true that jay is a perfect character to explore it, because i believe that in a way he is a victim of vigilantism. he's collateral damage turned martyr; and as the red hood he's stuck in self-affirming this status. it's all interconnected... and it all always leads back to the crime alley. except i think there's another part to it, and it's the class conflict.

here is where the cult comes in, and oh, i very much see what you're trying to do! except i would not go about it this way... simply because i have a huge issue with the cult itself, as in my opinion it's very ill-fitting into the narrative of batman at the time and as it, in total, is built on a reactionary and conspiracy theory-esque plotline... an ostensibly racist one on top of that. which makes me wonder if there is a way to fix it at all.

it could be an opportunity for some sort of development for jay, absolutely – but ironically, i think the part i liked best in it was when jason wanted to get to blackfire to save him from the raging crowd while bruce was standing back because of his personal victimisation and even stopped jay from intervening. i think i enjoyed this part because it shows how isolated from the people jason became in his robin days, and also brings to the light some hypocrisy on bruce's side. there's such dissonance there that just works perfectly into moulding jason into the confusion of the justice, revenge and the no kill rule in total...

but i digress. for jay to be taken seriously in this story he would have to be at the centre of it. perhaps it should have even been him who went undercover, since he used to be homeless himself and would know how to talk to people. perhaps he should have been the one to pay attention to it and notice it altogether. but i think the issue i have with the idea that this is what would make him distrust the system is a bit contrary to my reading of him in general. i think jay only ever trusts the system when he has bruce urging him to do it at his back and when he internalises these teachings, and even then there remains a deeply buried skepticism in him. because at the end of the day jay has a tendency to trust, but to trust people, not the authority. this is something that would be very difficult to properly portray in the cult, where the general politics (? if it can be called politics) is: people at the bottom are actually the ones in charge via secret organisations. and even when they are manipulated they are ugly and evil at their core. their violence is always random and they barely punch back, only recreating the power structures. and at the end, we get back to the status quo.

i guess the cult is too confused and bigoted in its plotline to offer much. hence there's no lesson for jay there at all. mayhaps because i don't think jay needs to learn to question the authority; on the contrary, a somewhat hidden stream of narrative that exists (or that i read into it) in his robin run is that he knows all about it but represses it because of his implicit trust in bruce and his judgement.

#i feel like this is a bit on a non-answer but it's been in my inbox for so long... #i actually don't really like the cult. in general. for a lot of reasons. #outbox

[gaystan]

stan notes:

B list closted musician of rock band crimson dawn

wrote his magnum opus (which was about kyle) at 19 and has been trying (and failing) to top it ever since

his most iconic album is something like american boyfriend by kevin abstract except white and not explicitly gay

musical style is very midwestern emo and 90s rock

somewhere between ajj, mccafferty, car seat headrest, joy division, and the homophones

deeply uninterested in politics, believes they don't affect him

industry plant (his DAD is LORDE)

has opened for fall out boy

TERRIBLE at pr but has a good image anyways because he’s a good guy

his activism isn't for clout he's just genuinely passionate about things he supports

his reputation depletes when it comes out that he is dating conversational podcaster and reactionary kyle broflovski

the public appearance of their relationship is much like that of the liberal girl with a nonblack boyfriend who says the n word

has some straight songs, after coming out changes the "girls" to "boys" in performances

randy is his producer

technically the most famous person here

#couple of these are reposts of things we've already mentioned but i want them all in one place #microceleb au #south park #nadia when you see this lmk what i need to add

[qqueenofhades]

Do you think climate change denial exits in Europe at all, and to the degree with which it exists in America?

Yes, it does exist. In fact, the European Sociological Review just published an article which you can happily read in its entirety for free: 'Socioeconomic Roots of Climate Change Denial and Uncertainty among the European Population', from February 2022. The introduction helpfully sums up what I think is the correct tack to take in considering climate change denialism, and places it into the wider context of far-right, ideologically reactionary beliefs with which it is often found:

There is clear evidence that climate change disbelief is not just the result of a lack of awareness or understanding (Whitmarsh, 2011; Lockwood, 2018). Instead, climate change disbelief appears to be part of a broader, cross-national ideology that is characterized by opposing what is called ‘the mainstream’ and challenges basic human rights, scientific facts, and democratic principles (Lockwood, 2018; Huber, 2020). Evidence of such an anti-mainstream ideology has also been observed on issues other than the environment, such as immigration, globalization, and pluralism. The spread of this ideology has been held responsible for the increasing popularity of populist radical right parties (Inglehart and Norris, 2017; De Vries, 2018). Explanations for this development typically refer to a backlash against modernization (Inglehart and Norris, 2016; McCright et al., 2016; De Vries, 2018; Gidron and Hall, 2020). Climate change disbelief is assumed to be an ideological counter-reaction among some social groups, especially those who hold conservative values and support populist radical right parties (Poortinga et al., 2011; Whitmarsh, 2011; Lockwood, 2018; Krange, Kaltenborn and Hultman, 2019).

In other words, climate change denial is part of a matrix of larger "anti-modernist" or regressionist beliefs that form far-right or reactionary ideals. A climate change denier is more likely to also oppose COVID vaccines, believe in conspiracy theories, hold xenophobic/anti-immigrant beliefs, etc etc. These are cross-national and international belief systems, and not regionally or geographically specific. A militant climate-change denier and COVID vaccine misinformation-spreader who lives in Alabama has much more in common with someone from California who also believes that, even though the Alabaman and the Californian are from stereotypical "red" and "blue" states and both probably have next-door neighbors who think they're nuts. Basically, where someone lives is no longer a strong predictor of what they believe, and traditional conservative vs. liberal designations are largely meaningless for understanding these patterns. These beliefs, thanks to the internet and social media, are able to gain a foothold regardless of where someone physically lives and what the prevailing ideological environment in that region has traditionally been. Europe is by no means exempt.

This is also, in my view, part of the disingenuous leftist argument that "the Democrats would be right-wing in Europe!" and "Europe is more progressive!" and etc etc. As someone who has lived and worked in both America and Europe, this, uh, isn't true. Europeans are fond of positioning themselves as the "sane and grown up" alternative to America, especially as America has slid down the slippery slope to outright crazytown. But Europe has no right to act as if it doesn't have its own problems, its own rightwing hate-mongers and wannabe fascists (looking at you, Orban!), its own reactionary political parties that are gaining footholds in various parliaments, and its own deeply rooted social issues that shape its response to postmodern challenges in both similar and different ways to the US. Yes, Americans are often awful, myopic, insular, and functionally unaware of anything outside their own experience or system, but.... again, that doesn't give Europe any kind of permanent moral high ground. Giving the EU the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, after they actually, finally refrained from causing most of the major wars in history for centuries, plus slavery, colonialism, imperialism, etc, was just a touch too much on the nose.

For example: Emmanuel Macron, president of France, runs and markets himself as a center-leftist, and due to prevailing French political precedents, there are things in France (such as labor rights and workers' strikes) that are much stronger than they are in America. We make jokes about the French going on their annual strike because there is, in fact, a strong tradition in France to simply walk off the job if you aren't happy with it, and aggressively push for reforms as a result. But Macron would struggle HARD to get elected as a Democrat in America, thanks to his pro-big-business and deregulation agenda. His other beliefs certainly aren't notably more leftist than American Democrats, and just because the only political element that leftists can focus on, i.e. Marxist economics, is stronger in one context in France than it is in America doesn't mean that all of Europe is magically more left-wing and the Democrats are terrible etc etc. In terms of economics and democratic socialism, yes, Europe tends to have a much stronger social safety net than "all libertarianism all the time!" America. But yet again, that is not the only factor in quantifying what counts as leftism, and Europe's ongoing problems with racism, xenophobia, anti-immigration, nationalism, etc are just as bad as they are in America.

The religious right is not a mobilized political factor in Europe the way it is in America, and thus the American right's favorite culture wars aren't as hot-button, but did you know, for example, that abortion is still technically illegal in the UK? They usually don't prosecute it, and laws passed in 1967 and 1991 made it essentially permissible, but you can be jailed (as a woman recently was) for aborting via pills by yourself, without formal medical supervision. Two doctors need to sign off on the termination request and if they don't then you don't get it, and the only strictly legally valid reasons are for the health of the mother or in the event of a deformity or serious medical condition. Ironically, Northern Ireland is the only place in the UK where abortion is fully decriminalized, and even then only thanks to the Stormont (regional parliament) collapse. Abortion clinics in the UK have also reported an upswing of harassment and threats, and Brexit is a self-explanatory example of insular, protectionist xenophobia as (disastrous) political policy. Even though it has gone nothing but badly, there are still separatist movements within other EU nations, who want to be free from the overall collective responsibility to the rest of the continent and able to go back to their bad old ways as they please.

Anyway: yes, climate change denialism exists in Europe, no, they are not automatically better or smarter than Americans, and have plenty of their own social, cultural, and political problems that require addressing. So there you have it.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts