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swolesome · 1 month

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What if I told you that the antidote to Islamophobia isn't Antisemitism?

CW for this post (you have seen the title.) I feel like this shouldn't need explaining, but merciful Brigid, some of the shit I have seen. It's time for Led Tasso to come out. I'm not Jewish, let's just get that out of the way first, but my position on Palestine is largely informed by Jewish people who have been protesting for decades about the horrific treatment of Palestinians being done by a settler colonial state appropriating their religion, culture, language, and trauma. Fascist governments weaponizing fear and hiding behind religion is a well known tactic, and the fact that so many people have put this readily available information from their minds, specifically in this conversation, speaks to how incredibly pernicious antisemitism really is. I'm treading lightly here because as someone who's not Jewish, it really isn't my place to explain the cultural complexities, trauma, or general experiences of Jewish people. But if you haven't seen those discussions crossing your feed, you should be looking inward and asking why. Because if you're not invested in Jewish voices right now (or in general), that's a red flag for the kind of rhetoric you've internalized and the struggles you take seriously. The position I can speak from, however, is one of being committed to challenging all forms of systemic violence and oppression. So from that stance, and I cannot stress this enough: If you are fighting for some at cost to others, you are reinforcing oppression. It is wild to me that "Nazi" has come to mean "The worst thing a person can be" without recognition of the fact that the ideology is inherently antisemitic, that this is its centrepiece, that Jews are the number one target. This separation is, once again, an example of how insidious this brand of hatred really is--blatant erasure of the way Jewish people are uniquely targeted. I know a lot of trans people follow me, so here's a fun fact: You know the "Doctors are transing our kids to damage fertility rates!" conspiracy? You can thank antisemitism for that, too! It's literally just a rebrand of the Great Replacement conspiracy, which is modernized "protection of Aryan bloodlines." The most recent chapter of "My Life as A Bigot" by Joanne Klan Rowling isn't just another gleeful display of her hatred of trans people, it's another addition to the laundry list of antisemitic beliefs and talking points she's been peddling for years. The Charlottesville "unite the right" Nazi rally was spurred on by the removal of confederate statues and anti-Black racism. What is it they were chanting, again? Anyone remember? Any of this ringing a bell? OH RIGHT. "Jews will not replace us." So many other forms of systemic violence are steeped in the poisonous rhetoric of antisemitism. Acting like this isn't the case damns our Jewish siblings who need us while weakening our understanding of the oppressive forces we're fighting. "One struggle" includes all of us. The fact that the Likud government uses accusations of antisemitism as a cover for their violence should make you more diligent about condemning antisemitism, not less. Because letting them weaponize something that is already so widespread and destructive makes it that much harder to dismantle.

Do not stop talking about Palestine. Do not stop speaking up against the horrors of settler colonial violence. But if you can't do this without throwing another group of oppressed people under the bus, you need to question where you learned your resistance tactics, because the company you're keeping there should disgust and terrify you.

#enough is enough #antisemitsm tw #seriously what the fuck #fuck jkr #none of us are free until all of us are free #stop antisemitism

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 7 months

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By: Colin Wright

Published: Oct 2, 2023

On September 25, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) announced that they were cancelling a panel discussion titled “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why Biological Sex Remains a Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology,” originally scheduled as part of their annual conference in Toronto from November 15–19. The cancellation and subsequent response by the two organizations shows the extent to which gender ideology has captured academic anthropology.

The panel would have featured six female scientists, specializing in biology and anthropology, to address their profession’s growing denial of biological sex as a valid and relevant category. While terminological confusion surrounding the distinction between sex and gender roles has been a persistent issue within anthropology for decades, the total refusal of some to recognize sex as a real biological variable is a more recent phenomenon. The panel organizers, eager to facilitate an open discussion among anthropologists and entertain diverse perspectives on a contentious issue, considered the AAA/CASCA conference an optimal venue to host such a conversation.

The organizations accepted the “Let’s Talk About Sex” panel without incident on July 13, and planned to feature it alongside other panels including those on politically oriented subjects, such as “Trans Latinx Methodologies,” “Exploring Activist Anthropology,” and “Reimagining Anthropology as Restorative Justice.” Elizabeth Weiss, a professor of anthropology at San José State University, was one of the slated panelists. She had intended to discuss the significance in bio-archaeology and forensic anthropology of using skeletal remains to establish a decedent’s sex. While a 2018 article in Discover titled “Skeletal Studies Show Sex, Like Gender, Exists Along a Spectrum” reached different conclusions, Weiss planned to discuss how scientific breakthroughs have made determining the sex of skeletal remains a more exact science. Her presentation was to be moderate; she titled it “No Bones About It: Skeletons Are Binary; People May Not Be,” and conceded in her abstract the growing need in forensics to “to ensure that skeletal finds are identified by both biological sex and their gender identity” due to “the current rise in transitioning individuals and their overrepresentation as crime victims.”

Despite having already approved the panel, the presidents of the AAA (Ramona Pérez) and CASCA (Monica Heller) unexpectedly issued a joint letter on September 25 notifying the “Let’s Talk About Sex” presenters that their panel was cancelled. They claimed that the panel’s subject matter conflicted with their organizations’ values, jeopardized “the safety and dignity of our members,” and eroded the program’s “scientific integrity.” They further asserted the panel’s ideas (i.e., that sex is a real and important biological variable) would “cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large.” To ensure that similar discussions would not be approved in the future, the AAA/CASCA vowed to “undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings.”

The following day, the panelists issued a response letter, expressing their disappointment that the AAA and CASCA presidents had “chosen to forbid scholarly dialogue” on the topic. They rejected the “false accusation” that supporting the “continued use of biological sex categories (e.g., male and female; man and woman) is to imperil the safety of the LGBTQI community.” The panelists called “particularly egregious” the AAA/CASCA’s assertion that the panel would compromise the program’s “scientific integrity.” They noted that, ironically, the AAA/CASCA’s “decision to anathematize our panel looks very much like an anti-science response to a politicized lobbying campaign.”

I spoke with Weiss, who expressed her frustration over the canceled panel and the two presidents’ stifling of honest discussion about sex. She was concerned about the continual shifting of goalposts on the issue:

We used to say there’s sex, and gender. Sex is biological, and gender is not. Then it’s no, you can no longer talk about sex. Sex and gender are one, and separating the two makes you a transphobe, when of course it doesn’t. In anthropology and many topics, the goalposts are continuously moved. And, because of that, we need to stand up and say, “I’m not moving from my place unless there’s good scientific evidence that my place is wrong.” And I don’t think there is good scientific evidence that there are more than two sexes.

Weiss was not the only person to object. When I broke news of the cancellation on X, it immediately went viral. At the time of writing, my post has more than 2.4 million views, and the episode has ignited public outcry from individuals and academics across the political spectrum. Science writer Michael Shermer called the AAA and CASCA’s presidents’ letter “shameful” and an “utterly absurd blank slate denial of human nature.” Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and political science at Duke University, described it as “absolutely appalling.” Jeffrey Flier, the Harvard University distinguished service professor and former dean of the Harvard Medical School, viewed it as “a chilling declaration of war on scholarly controversy.” Even Elon Musk expressed his disbelief with a single word: “Wow.”

Despite the backlash, the AAA and CASCA have held firm. On September 28, the AAA posted a statement on its website titled “No Place For Transphobia in Anthropology: Session Pulled from Annual Meeting Program.” The statement reiterated the stance outlined in the initial letter, declaring the “Let’s Talk About Sex” panel an affront to its values and claiming that it endangered AAA members’ safety and lacked scientific rigor.

The AAA’s statement claimed that the now-canceled panel was at odds with their first ethical principle of professional responsibility: “Do no harm.” It likened the scuttled panel’s “gender critical scholarship” to the “race science of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” the main goal of which was to “advance a ‘scientific’ reason to question the humanity of already marginalized groups of people.” In this instance, the AAA argued, “those who exist outside a strict and narrow sex/gender binary” are being targeted.

Weiss remains unconvinced by this moral posturing. “If the panel was so egregious,” she asked, “why had it been accepted in the first place?”

The AAA also claimed that Weiss’s panel lacked “scientific integrity,” and that she and her fellow panelists “relied on assumptions that ran contrary to the settled science in our discipline.” The panelists, the AAA argued, had committed “one of the cardinal sins of scholarship” by “assum[ing] the truth of the proposition that . . . sex and gender are simplistically binary, and that this is a fact with meaningful implications for the discipline.” In fact, the AAA claimed, the panelists’ views “contradict scientific evidence” about sex and gender, since “[a]round the world and throughout history, there have always been people whose gender roles do not align neatly with their reproductive anatomy.”

There is much to respond to in this portion of AAA’s statement. First, it’s ironic for the organization to accuse scientists of committing the “cardinal sin” of “assuming the truth” of something, and then to justify cancelling those scientists’ panel on the grounds that the panelists refuse to accept purportedly “settled science.” Second, the panel was organized to discuss biological sex (i.e., the biology of males and females), not “gender roles”; pivoting from discussions of basic biology to murkier debates about sex-related social roles and expectations is a common tactic of gender ideologues. Third, the AAA’s argument that a person’s “gender role” might not “align neatly” with his or her reproductive anatomy implies the existence of normative behaviors for members of each sex. Indeed, this is a central tenet of gender ideology that many people dispute and warrants the kind of discussion the panel intended to provide.

The AAA’s statement made another faulty allegation, this time against Weiss for using “sex identification” instead of “sex estimation” when assessing the sex of skeletal remains. The AAA claimed that Weiss’s choice of terminology was problematic and unscholarly because it assumes a “determinative” process that “is easily influenced by cognitive bias on the part of the researcher.”

Weiss, however, rejects the AAA’s notion that the term “sex determination” is outdated or improper. She emphasized that “sex determination” is frequently used in the literature, as demonstrated in numerous contemporary anthropology papers, along with “sex estimation.” Weiss said, “I tend not to use the term ‘sex estimation’ because to estimate is usually associated with a numeric value; thus, I do use the term ‘age estimation.’ But just as ‘age estimation’ does not mean that there is no actual age of an individual and that biological age changes don’t exist, ‘sex estimation’ does not mean that there isn’t a biological sex binary.” She also contested the AAA’s claim that anthropologists’ use of “sex estimation” is meant to accommodate people who identify as transgender or non-binary. Rather, she said, “sex estimation” is used when “anthropologists are not 100 [percent] sure of their accuracy for a variety of reasons, including that the remains may be fragmented.” But as these methods improve—which was a focus of her talk—such “estimations” become increasingly determinative.

After making that unfounded allegation against Weiss, the AAA further embarrasses itself by claiming that “There is no single biological standard by which all humans can be reliably sorted into a binary male/female sex classification,” and that sex and gender are “historically and geographically contextual, deeply entangled, and dynamically mutable categories.”

Each of these assertions is empirically false. An individual’s sex can be determined by observing their primary sex organs, or gonads, as these organs determine the type of gamete an individual can or would have the function to produce. The existence of a very rare subset of individuals with developmental conditions that make their sex difficult to assess does not substantiate the existence of a third sex. Sex is binary because are only two sexes, not because every human in existence is neatly classifiable. Additionally, while some organisms are capable of changing sex, humans are not among them. Therefore, the assertion that human sex is “dynamically mutable” is false.

Weiss appropriately highlights the “false equivalency” inherent in the claim that the existence of people with intersex conditions disproves the binary nature of sex. “People who are born intersex or with disorders of sex development are not nonbinary or transgender, they are individuals with medical pathologies,” she said. “We would not argue that because some people are born with polydactyly (extra fingers or toes), often seen in inbred populations, that you can’t say that humans have ten fingers and ten toes. It's an absurd conclusion.”

On September 29, the AAA posted a Letter of Support on its website, penned by anthropologists Agustin Fuentes, Kathryn Clancy, and Robin Nelson, endorsing the decision to cancel the “Let’s Talk About Sex” session. Again, the primary motivation cited was the panel’s opposition to the supposed “settled science” concerning sex. The authors disputed the panelists’ claim that the term “sex” was being supplanted by “gender” in anthropology, claiming instead that there is “massive work on these terms, and their entanglements and nuances.” They also reiterated the AAA’s false accusation that the term “sex determination” was problematic and outdated. Nonetheless, the canceled panel could have served as a prime venue to discuss these issues.

In response to these calls for censorship, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) issued an open letter to the AAA and CASCA. FIRE characterized the groups’ decision to cancel the panel as a “retreat” from their scientific mission, which “requires unwavering dedication to free inquiry and open dialogue.” It argued that this mission “cannot coexist with inherently subjective standards of ‘harm,’ ‘safety,’ and ‘dignity,’ which are inevitably used to suppress ideas that cause discomfort or conflict with certain political or ideological commitments.” FIRE implored the AAA and CASCA to “reconsider this decision and to recommit to the principles of intellectual freedom and open discourse that are essential to the organizations’ academic missions.” FIRE’s open letter has garnered signatures from nearly 100 academics, including Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and Princeton University’s Robert P. George. FIRE invites additional academic faculty to add their names.

The initial letter and subsequent statement by the AAA/CASCA present a particularly jarring illustration of the undermining of science in the name of “social justice.” The organizations have embarrassed themselves yet lack the self-awareness to realize it. The historian of science Alice Dreger called the AAA and CASCA presidents’ use of the term “cardinal sin” appropriate “because Pérez and Heller are working from dogma so heavy it is worthy of the Vatican.” Indeed, they have fallen prey to gender ideologues, driven into a moral panic by the purported dangers of defending the existence of biological sex to people whose sex distresses them. The AAA/CASCA have determined that it is necessary not only to lie to these people about their sex but also to deceive the rest of us about longstanding, foundational, and universal truths about sex.

Science can advance only within a system and culture that values open inquiry and robust debate. The AAA and CASCA are not just barring a panel of experts with diverse and valid perspectives on biological sex from expressing their well-considered conclusions; they are denying conference attendees the opportunity to hear diverse viewpoints and partake in constructive conversations on a controversial subject. Such actions obstruct the path of scientific progress.

“When you move away from the truth, no good can come from it,” Weiss says. The AAA and CASCA would be wise to ponder that reality.

I miss the days when anti-science meant creationists with "Intelligent Design," flat Earthers, and Jenny McCarthy-style MMR anti-vaxers.

It's weird that archaeologists are now denying evolution and pretending not to know how babies are made. Looks like creationists aren't the only evolution-denial game in town any more.

#Colin Wright #anti science #gender ideology #queer theory #anthropology #biology denial #sex is binary #censorship #disinvitation #cancel culture #genderwang #moral panic #biological sex #biology #human biology #ideological corruption #ideological capture #gametes #religion is a mental illness

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let-me-be-or-perish · 5 months

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sarah j maas cannot write.

she created this weird standars in fanatsy literature and in romance that if you're not a sexually active straight white woman you feel like you're back in the 1800 century.

the way than that female characters are treated both by the men, or should i say males? and the fandom is disgusting.

but i kind of get why the fandom treat them like that, she was the one that make them seen like that.having no agency at all.

and she pushes this old and dateted ideology of women that instead of use that as a lent to show how women till now have been seen and live is seen as a stadnard, something that should be idolized and wanted. when it's not.

for her a women can be only stong if she pick up a sword, fight and it's rude, but at the same time are so recessive and submessive to their male mates and ready to be nothing in orther to be with him

becuse of that women then, women who does not fit this mold are seen as less, they are not women.

maybe, her problem is that she doesn't understand women.

not every women has the same dreams as others,but that doesn't mean that are less important.

strenght can be found not only in physicality, but in being gentle and caring, intelligence, wanting to have a family, by blood or not.

for a woman wating to have children shouldn't be seen as dreadful as it seem, there is nothing wrong with that.

but again, her execution of it is really questionable, making you hate soemthing like that

her ideology is that for a woman, the only way to reach an happy ending is: findning a male, marry, have tons and tons of sex till you're pregnant and then becaming a shadow of yourself; becuse once you're pregnant and have a baby, you can't do anything greater anymore. leeaching to her male mate, making him look even greater

happiness doesn't always mean that, being coupled up and with children.

there, this enter a really harmful sterotype.

women who watns to live quiet lives, creating a family.

there are sapphics that don't end up with men, them and other women who doesn't what to have children, cannt have them, so they relay in other ways to create a family.

there are women who don't want to settle down, not wanting to be confined in a relationship, wheather is it out of sexuality or want.

and then aromatic, asexual and demisexual people that i assume she cannot even phantom the exsitence, same goes for non-binary and trans folks.

some, who are confident in themselves, that are sexually active, but not in relation of a relationship, but becasue they want and can do it. that then are not painted as monsters for it.

another thing that she doesn't understand is indipendency and emancipation. all of her female characters are strong, not because they have real strenght because we are told that they are, they never show us this "strenght", they never anything by themselves, wather is it powers or titles, or anything at all; because they're always given to them; usually by a man. so are they actually indipendent?

she only see white and straight, that well, as a fantasy autor is ridiculous.

for sarah, females are only used as a tool to make the males stand out, to make the males the greatest characters. she does not tell stories about the empowerment of women, she tells stories about males though females eyes.

now to the males.

they are the worst male characters ever.

toxic and abusive, but this behaviors are excused and cheered, not frown and seen as what they are.

this males do not posses any flawas, they're perfect. i get that they are faes but at least give them layers to feel like they are more humans, in the sense of tangilbe creatures that you'll really believe to exist, that are three dimensional and not only walking dicks. beautiful walking dicks with six packs.

give me a reason to believe on why they would act that way, why they would say those things, but don't find a way to excuse when they do soemthing wrong, let them be in the wrong and find a way to be redeemed if they need to be it.

let some males be less leaning on the toxinc masculinity, and more in the normal. there is no need to fit in this category to be seen as a men, a real one.

like there are many different ways to be a women there are differnt ways to be a men.

and the whole age gap being centuries? why? i trulty cannot grasp why someone would actually enjoy that. it's so weird, especially given that her characters don't really act like their given age but like horny teenagers, so why make them this old if she cannot understnd how to write immortlity and how someone taht age would act?

but then the dynamics, because she created such big gaps between them are so iffy and weird; and actually disgusting.

then, she really ableist. those things cannot and should not be cured with magic.

create a magic system/a world that value them more, that make them accepted.

the treatment given to pocs and queers is utterly disgusting and unecessary. the pocs all die and the queers are trown there only to get the "diversity" point.

again, everything could be solved, she has the possibility to. if only she did wanted that.

she is a rinomated author, she as the means and the possibility to make her books enjoyable for everyone.

she doesn't know how to write poc? she doen't know how to write queer people? yes, every attempt that she did was disastrous, but again the internet is there for everyone and she could always pay to have beta readers; again she has all the means to do it, the thing is, she doesn't want to.

and her books are put on a pedestol as peak literature, setting a standard. when in fact are actually less than mediocre.

but she could better, if she undertood her strengths and relayed on them.

if she wanted to write fantasy erotica, then she sould have directy went with that and not try to hide that as a fanatsy or romantasy, becuse they are not.

this is full on erotica.

to end all of this long ass thread.

manon was lesbian, and is a crime that she ended with a men. if you love them, then you're a lesbophobe. elide was there, and so were the 13.

chaol was gay, and should have ended up with dorian.

feyre sucks as protagonist, she does not posses a defined personality, changing solely for plot purposes. she doesn't have personal goals nor wants, everything is given her. is extremly annoying becuse extremly entitled, making everything about her; not seeing that other were suffering too, at times directly from her hands too. she was supposed to be pragmatic, showing a different kind of intelligence, but she showed the lack of any type of it. getting excused for things that shouldn't be excused. acting all highty and mighty when she is nothing, she has nothing and know nothing. she's probably one of the worst female characters written, being extremly flimsy and insufrable and annoying.

nesta, didn't deserve to be treated like that, she was wrong, yes, but all of those who pointed their finger at her did so much worse, and she at the end was only harming herself not others. and she was suffering.

elaine too was suffering, but in all of that she stayed strong for herslef and for others. she screamed in silence. she was ready to give an hand but everyone pushed that way. you can reach to someone only if they want to be reached. she could do great things if they only let her. even if in pain and suffering she was ready to help, putting others needs before her own, but you cannot resent her for wanting to keep a tiny part, to be even for a bit selfish.

feyre and rhys sucks at rulers, for her it makes sense, she learned how to read two months ago, she is no position to rule, especially from a title that she doesn't deserve. while for him, well, well.

tamlin didn't deserve the treatment he recived by both everyone and the fandom. he was bad, becuse sjm made him bad. making him out of character. but that's a normal thing for her, so it doesn't matter. if you hate him, you cannot stand him, that you should feel the same about rhys and feyre, especially becuse they were so much worse then he was.

lastly, elain should have actually ended with rhys, he would have changed for her, she would have understood him, but she wouldn't have sit there letting him do things that she didn't approved of. overall they would have been much better, he would helped her coming out of her shell and she would have toned him down. they would have actually bulit a relationship by comuticating, bulding trust and understanding; not relaying solely on flirting and sex, and calling that a relationship. she would have respected the fact that he was tramautized and would have waited for him, being here to listen, not rushing him in physical things. he would have learned to appriacte more tiny things and gestures; she would have learn to ask more that what was given her, what she deserves.

azriel and nesta should have ended respectivly with a man and a woman, someone that could have understood and appriciated them. cassain should have ended alone and ferye should have died in the first book.

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pigeonflavouredcake · 1 year

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Here's my unwanted opinion on some witchcraft books

This is a list of opinions I have on some popular witchcraft, occult and practitioner related books. I don't talk about anything I haven't read myself.

This is in no way stopping you from reading them yourself, it's just what I think of them as an experienced practitioner and pagan.

I now have a Goodreads account you can look at if you're curious what else I've read but it's a mess and I've just added my bookshelf on in bulk.

Lisa Lister - Witch

To get this out of the way. It's bio essentialist crap and we all know this by know but it bears repeating. This is an example I've used in my grimoire of how transphobia seeps into spiritual spaces and goes unchecked under the guise of feminism and women empowerment. Arguing that a witch's power comes from her womb as a bowl of nature and creative magic. If that's what you like to draw from then all power to you, I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is that Lister directly infers that the title of 'witch' is exclusive to this specific demographic of women.

I find her statements gross and dehumanising to women and her argument falls apart completely when you remember that not every woman has a womb, big duh moment I know. It correlates with TERF ideology that certain women are inherently more powerful because of a female reproductive system as opposed to women as a whole being powerful because of their autonomy as human beings. "But if that's true then what's stopping cis men, trans and nonbinary people from being practitioners?" LITERALLY NOTHING!

Sky Alexander - The Modern Witchcraft Spell Book and The Modern Witchcraft Grimoire

Very simple. Pretty cover. Overall they make for ok resources for beginners but once you're out of the beginner phase they really fall flat. Alexander doesn't provide much context when referencing certain tools and practices and tends to confuse witchcraft with wicca.

The Farrars - A Witches' Bible

Dated. Uses the G slur. Their books are all mislabelled wicca which makes sense because these books have been around since the 90's when there wasn't much of a difference and you can tell. They do not hold up to today's standards. They are a good example of how practices have historically been conflated in pop culture.

Does discuss ritual nUdity (they call it skyclad) and includes pictures. I wanted to mention it here to not surprise anyone in case any of you aren't comfortable with it.

Rachel Patterson - Grimoire of a Kitchen Witch

A book about kitchen witchcraft that doesn't include any kitchen witchcraft. It's more like a basic beginners grimoire. Very repetitive.

Features a chapter on hoodoo which I'm unsure about. I don't know anything about hoodoo or rootwork but I'm assuming it's a practice exclusive to the black community in America due to it developing during the period of enslavement in the US. I'm also assuming that Patterson isn't a part of this community due to being white and British. If I'm wrong and Patterson is genuinely part of the practice and can honestly speak on the topic please correct me.

Scott Cunningham - Encyclopaedia of Magical Herbs

A good resource for correspondences, easy to digest but Cunningham focuses on wicca (again) using wiccan practices like complementarianism and gendering nature which to me makes no sense (I know about the law of polarity but I do not agree with it). The pictures of plants are nice but the folklore provided for them is pretty minimal. You can find all the same info for free online.

Judika Illes - Encyclopaedia of Spirits

Honestly not that bad. There's a lot of information and it's pretty consistent throughout. It's a huge book though, it can be kind of overwhelming but they take from multiple sources when discussing the mythos of deities which is a plus. The pages are very thin and delicate which can make it hard to read the text.

Joey Hulin - Your Spiritual Almanac

it's eh in the broadest sense. I liked the folklore and the eco action sections but I didn't really absorb any of it. a lot of the corresponce lists was information I already knew about. It felt very repetitive. Would have loved to have seen more detailed information about the changes happening in nature each month.

Rachel Pollack - Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom

Pollack is very informative, and honestly a great resource for tarot work, she knows her shit and isn't afraid to info dump. The only thing I didn't really like is all the mentions of dualism like of mother v father, male v female but that's entirely my issue and it's the nature of tarot to be dualistic, It just isn't a necessity to me and my practice. Still a great book.

Aleister Crowley - Magick

A great example of what not to do. Appropriates dharmic practices and Jewish mysticism. When he wasn't stealing from other cultures or being a massive contrarian Crowley was writing about sex magic and it's discussed here in uncomfortable detail.

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creature-wizard · 1 year

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Tips for maintaining algorithmic hygiene on YouTube and avoiding conspiratorial/far right content

It's true that it's very easy to get YouTube to show you increasingly right wing content. But this can also be mitigated somewhat with care.

Understand what's going on in the algorithm's "brain." Algorithms recommend content based on stuff like whether it's associated with the stuff you just clicked on, and whether it's popular. If you click on a video where actual xenobiologists speculate on what alien life might look like, understand that the algorithm might choose a popular video about ancient astronaut theory to show you.

Here's more examples of paths the algorithm can potentially take:

Herbal remedies -> Alternative medicine -> Energy Healing -> Law of Attraction -> Illuminati conspiracy theories -> Antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Astrology -> History of astrology -> Ancient astronaut theory -> Starseeds -> Reptilian alien conspiracy theories -> Antisemitism.

Gun safety -> General gun info -> Joe Rogan.

Fortunately, just because this can happen, doesn't mean it will happen. Sliding down a right wing/conspiratorial rabbithole is never inevitable. Here's what you can do:

Be cautious with content that might be conspiratorial. For example, a video titled "Does life on Earth come from another world?" could either be about panspermia (not necessarily conspiratorial) or ancient astronaut theory (definitely conspiratorial). If you're not sure, open the video in a private tab to watch it.

If the video does contain conspiratorial content, close the private tab. If it's a video that YouTube recommended for you, click the meatball menu next to the video's title and choose "Don't recommend video" or "Don't recommend channel."

Carefully inspect unfamiliar channels in private windows. Open the channel page in a private tab and see what all they're posting about. Can you see a number of videos griping about stuff right wingers are wont to gripe about, like 'the woke mob,' the 'trans agenda,' 'angry feminists,' or whatever? Then it's a right wing channel. If there's content about 'Secrets THEY don't want you to know,' 'The secret history of the world,' or "Big government cover up! Truth revealed!", then it's conspiratorial.

If you can't tell the political slant of the channel by way of the titles, watch a few videos in your private tab. If you see them advocating right wing talking points, or pushing conspiratorial content, there's your answer. Close the private window and tell YouTube not to recommend this channel.

If you're still not sure about the channel's political or ideological bent, I recommend going to RationalWiki and looking up whatever or whoever they're advocating. RationalWiki isn't a perfect site, but it's a decent starting point. For example, if a video claims that Graham Hancock has a lot of evidence for Atlantis, you could go to the site and look him up, and see what else Graham Hancock is associated with.

Other resources you can check out are the Southern Poverty Law Center's article What You Need To Know About QAnon, their list of hate groups, and the ADL's hate symbol database.

Delete dodgy videos from your history. If you accidentally click a video with right wing or conspiratorial content, you can go and delete it from your history so YouTube doesn't use it to recommend more videos.

Watch videos from people who aren't right wingers or conspiracists. There's plenty of non-conspiratorial, non-right wing content out there, and the more you engage with it the more you'll get that kind of content recommended to you. I have some listed over on my resources page.

So yeah, YouTube's algorithm is an absolute disaster right now, but there are steps you can take to avoid conspiratorial and hateful content. Be careful what you click on, use private tabs to investigate videos and channels you aren't sure about, use the "do not recommend" feature on the homepage, delete any sketchy videos from your history, and make sure you're subscribing to and watching content that isn't pushing garbage.

#new age to alt right pipeline #youtube #safety #internet safety #online safety #conspiracism #conspiracy theories

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coochiequeens · 2 years

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Only men could be so up their own asses that they think they are creating art on the “edges of hetero-patriarchal thinking” while using babies as props.

A disturbing picture featuring a seemingly nude man “breastfeeding” a baby is going viral on social media, with many raising child safeguarding concerns and calling it “depraved.”

The photo originates from post on an “intersectional” Instagram community. Feminist, which has over 6.5 million followers on the platform, describes itself as “amplifying a diverse network of change-makers.”

On November 15, 2021, Feminist featured the work of Argentina-based photographer Kenny Lemes. While five pieces of Lemes’ art were posted in total, one in particular featured a seemingly naked male cradling a baby, which was suckling at a rubber nipple that had been affixed to the male model’s own.

The post has since been deleted from Feminist‘s Instagram catalogue, but still appears on Lemes’ account

In the post description, Feminist featured a mini-interview with Lemes, who told the outlet that the purpose of the photo was to “[expand] the gaze on bodies,” claiming it was a “very important political act one discovers the potency of existing, proudly, on the edges of hetero-patriarchal thinking.”

While the response to Lemes’ work varied, a number of users pointed out that the image of the male model breastfeeding the baby, which had been the second photo in the set, was “disturbing.”

“Please don’t use babies as props for your art.” One user wrote, her comment getting over 400 likes with a response chiming in response “Agreed! The second photo is not okay.”

Another user said: “You lost me on the second photo. The disrespect and mockery is insane. Being a woman is not getting into some sort of character. Not to mention, breastfeeding is hard and a journey on its own.” With more users noticing that Lemes’ work was advertised as being “feminist art” and yet primarily utilized and promoted male models.

Feminist had limited the ability for people to comment on the post shortly after it was uploaded due to the high proportion of negative replies, but appears to have wiped the post from their feed sometime in late November or early December of 2021, according to the Internet Archive.

This weekend, Lemes’ photo began to circulate on social media once again, with some popular commentators expressing disgust and outrage at what some called “child abuse.”

“This is deep, deep misogyny—reducing female biology to a fetish practice It is child abuse—using a baby as a prop in his psychosexual drama Disordered man Horrible behavior,” Wild Woman Writing Club said in response to the photo, which had been posted by popular commentator Seth Dillon.

“It’s completely disgusting and it’s abusing the dignity of that poor child. Where is the mother?! How can anyone allow their innocent child to be used as a fetish prop?!” Japanese feminist We Are Women replied.

Some said the photo recalled a previous controversial snap featuring similar themes in which a naked male model was photographed with a distressed baby on his lap.

The photo, taken by and featuring American artist Michael Bailey Gates, was displayed in New Yorker Magazine in 2020, but has similarly begun making the rounds on social media as people renewed interest.

While both of the pictures are intended to be artistic representations, they have both resulted in discussions and renewed concerns about gender ideology and its impact on child safeguarding.

There have recently been multiple incidents in which trans-identified males sought to validate their gender identity through the use of childrearing and breastfeeding. Earlier this year, Reduxx reported on a viral Reddit post in which a trans-identified male photographed himself with a newborn baby latched to his chest.

The post, titled “Oh my God I’m breastfeeding my daughter,” detailed how the user worked with a lactation consultant and his gender physician for several months prior to his female partner giving birth. The baby had been born just one week before the photo was taken, and the user stated the child has been alternating feedings between his wife, formula, and himself.

At the time, Reduxx spoke to retired family physician Dr. Maja Bowen, who expressed “several concerns” about the trend in trans-identified males seeking to “feed” children.

“What comes out of a man’s nipple is not mother’s milk, but a watery substance devoid of antibodies and nutrients that are found in mother’s milk, the composition of which changes as the baby grows up,” Dr. Bowen explained. She noted that the few studies which had been done on the nutritional composition of “male breastmilk” were inadequate at demonstrating its nutritional value or safety.

In 2017, trans-identified male author Dana Fried reported that he had been “breastfeeding” his wife’s baby, and reported that he had “gotten off” on it.

#Wild woman writing club #We are women #Men make bad art #Michael Bailey Gates needs to stop using babies has props #Babies can’t consent to this

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antiterf · 6 months

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While trying to find literature on how sex and gender are distinctly separate categories but with sex being gendered and gender being sexed (certain sex characteristics automatically implying different gendered norms, like facial hair=masc gender expression, more respect given to trans people who medically transition compared to the ones who don't, intersex traits leading a lot of people to feel insecure regarding how they fit into gender, etc.) Because I feel like it's an obvious connection to make, but it's usually not pointed out directly. Probably because of the fear that people will take sex and gender to mean the same thing when they're not. It's just that we can't accurately describe the experiences people go through without proper acknowledgement that they're separate, but that doesn't change the fact that society still pushes for them to be the same and the consequences of that.

Found a book when I put in "sexed embodiment" and looked at it since it was one of the few sources that came up.

It was a fucking terf book disguised as a typical gender theory book. I look through it and the writers call themselves gender critical before complaining about transgender ideology. Part of that ideology apparently being that we think the sex binary is oppressive. Which kind of proves why I want to push forward with how people enforce the socially constructed and scientifically inaccurate sex binary, as I'm looking for literature that has possibly already done so.

But yeah, uh... scary. Dressing up your hate movement as mainstream gender and feminist theory isn't the best. It could have easily been titled as a gender critical approach to ____ or whatever to help their intended audience find it better, but it's not.

#notaterftip #not sarcasm #anti terf

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peter-guy · 7 months

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How Peter Griffin helped me realize I was trans.

No, that title isn't a joke. My heavy Peter Griffin kin geniunely helped guide my path to realizing I was a transgender male.

I'm not gonna lie- I used to make fun of kinning when I was younger when I was a kid with unrestricted internet access & made fun of all these concepts that were fairly new to me at the time. I think I realized kinning wasn't bad when I was 12 but acted like I hated it because I didn't want my friends to make fun of me. Said friends donot talk to me or atleast changed their mindset on kinning. When I was around 14/15, I became more invested in the kin community. I realized that most of the things that described kin fit me perfectly. I always related to Peter Griffin- He was my favorite character in Family Guy, besides Brian & Lois. Yet, the word "relate" didn't fit strong enough to me. I felt "related" to Peter to a more spiritual connection sort of way. Even to this day, it's a bit hard to explain but that's a story for another day when I can find the words to say it. Anywho, I eventually realized my feelings aligned with kin. I won't lie, I was in heavy denial since kinning Family Guy is considered cringe & we're not quite at that point where it's considered normal. I tried to identify with my kin of Stan Marsh more since South Park kin is considered less embarassing. I do kin Stan, but it's not as heavy as Peter so I felt like I was being someone else. Sounds familiar to another experience of pretending to be someone you're not, right? Anywho.. I was known as a Stan Marsh kin for about 3-ish years or so. Yet I couldn't hide the Peter kin I was hiding. By the time I was 18,I accepted it. I realized I can't hide who I truly identify with, and accepted it. I told some friends- They were more accepting than I expected. I felt so happy. I decided to go by Peter as a second name (Keep in mind, I identified as a female at the time but I thought of Peter as a gender neutral name (If you think about it, all names are inherently gender neutral.). Yet, I still didn't feel right. There was a weight off my chest, but it wasn't fully off. I started feeling uncomfortable with my deadname being used & started using Peter as my first name. But then I realized she/her pronouns weren't working for me either once I made the leap to being called Peter- I asked people to refer to me by any, but secretly I meant don't call me she/her. I started asking those close to me to use he/him and they/them interchangeably for a week, and I realized he/him made me more comfortable than both she/her and they/them. It was at that moment I realized I wasn't a female. I was a male, born in the wrong body. (I know I realized I was FtM pretty late in life, but keep in mind during my teen years I was coerced into following some pretty crappy ideologies + the environment I grew up in IRL just wasn't for trans people + Just had an incredibly low self esteem growing up to realize the reason I felt miserable was because of dysphoria.). And then I realized.. Embracing my Peter kin was the core reason that led me to figuring out my true identity. If I hadn't accepted it & let cringe culture take over my life, I would've never realized my true self. I would've stayed closeted and self conscious my whole life. I'm proud to say I'm a happier person now after coming to terms with both things.. I'm planning on starting testorone once everything in my life is settled- I'm currently in college and work a 9-5 job, so once I graduate & move from my state I'm excited to start the path of turning into my true self. I'm glad I got to share this story with yall, I used to be embarassed about it but I've learned to embrace the "cringe " sides of me, realizing I was much happier.

#family guy #kin #peter griffin

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lily-orchard · 2 months

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i was scrolling on YouTube looking for cute animal videos then a short from Blaire White pops out with the title 'Trans Ideology Preys on Teen Girls'

the immense frustration i can feel radiating off of me over how this woman would do that to people like her

Try putting "cute" in quotes.

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monstromax · 11 months

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Bigots Really Want Mr. Rogers to be Transphobic

...But they're wrong

While taking a look at right wing social media spaces, as I often do to keep an eye on what the chuds are up to (and because I am a digital masochist I guess), I came across this video: "Mr. Rogers on Gender Orientation."

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first of all what is "gender orientation" even supposed to be gender is not sexuality you numblings

The clip is from a 1980 interview with Fred Rogers on The Tonight Show, where Rogers talks about his song, "Everybody's Fancy," which includes the lyrics "Boys are boys from the beginning / Girls are girls right from the start." Rogers says these lyrics are about addressing small children's fears that they might change into the opposite gender.

The clip's title frames this moment as an example of Fred Rogers being "anti-woke" and speaking "the truth" that gender and sex are binary and fixed. Indeed, the comments on this and similar videos have a lot of people saying things like "Was he trying to warn us???" and "This was once common sense!"

This isn't the only video like this. A glance at YouTube revealed that clips of Mr. Rogers singing this song has been making the rounds among right wing pundits like Glen Beck, Ben Shapiro and even the God-Forsaken Atlas Society.

After Glen Beck and his co-host make some hi-lar-i-ous comments about how Mr. Rogers should be dug up and beaten by the left wing mob, they mention how "I think everyone still knows this, but they're afraid to say it."

These clips stuck out to me because of how strangely they try to bring nostalgia into today's culture war on trans and queer people.

I noticed first of all that, even though all of these commentators are shouting about how Mr. Rogers would be absolutely canceled by the woke mob if he were around today, there is in fact no one in the queer community I can find who is actually denouncing Rogers as a transphobe.

No, Mr. Rogers still remains beloved as the quintessential wholesome media figure 20 years after his death in 2003. Which is precisely why right-wing bigots are holding this particular song up now - to say, "You woke moralists are so sick, you'd even hate Mr. Rogers!" They aren't defending Fred Rogers from anything; in fact they would love for people to get mad over these clips.

But of course, there are actually some people getting mad over this, and it's these pundits' audiences. By holding up this media from the past, the commentators and their audience get to lament to each other about the way things used to be, before "gender ideology," when people knew the truth about the world. It's one of the reactionaries' favourite pastimes.

What makes the use of these clips particularly insidious is precisely the fact that they are old media and Fred Rogers is not available to respond to or clarify them. Any objection that someone could make about Rogers' intentions or attitude can be dismissed immediately as second-hand interpretations.

But am I denying that what Fred Rogers said would be called problematic today? Well, no. The original words to that song don't align with modern understandings of gender identity, and the verse that follows about how "only girls can be the mommies" has some sexist undertones about gender norms. If these words were written today, they would indeed be called capital-P Problematic.

So why has the cancellation not commenced? Why no digital woke mob? As hard as this may be for the right to understand, queer people and their allies can understand context clues. While these comments were very much Not Good, most people are aware that Fred Rogers said these things from the social perspective of the 1970s and 80s, with an intended audience of very young children who were learning about their bodies. It's clear from how he says these things that he was not speaking from the perspective of an anti-trans moral panic. It seems likely that Rogers wrote these lyrics the way he did because, like most people at that time, he simply was not aware of the trans experience.

Another major context clue that Rogers was well-intentioned is that

This is FRED WON'T-YOU-BE-MY-NEIGHBOUR ROGERS

The thing that transphobic, homophobic pundits leave out of this discourse, which most other observers already understand, is that Fred Rogers was one of the most understanding and radically compassionate people anyone can think of.

Fred Rogers dedicated his TV show and much of his life's work to showing children - and in fact people of all ages - that they are valuable just the way they are. He featured people of all abilities, races, genders and backgrounds in positive roles on the show.

Most famously, this included dipping his feet in a pool along with a black man at a time when white segregationists were organizing against letting black people share swimming pools with white people.

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Mr. Rogers was not afraid to make political statements with his programming, and importantly, he was also not afraid to learn and change.

Glen Beck and company chose to highlight an early recording of the "Everybody's Fancy" song, but what they won't tell you is how that song gradually evolved over the years that Mr. Rogers was on the air. As Rogers spoke to more people with feminist perspectives, he saw some of the issues with the strict gender norms of his original words and began to change them.

Later on, he began to sing a version with these words...

I am not saying that Fred Rogers was perfect. He was a human being and a product of his own time and environment, and he has likely said or done other things that did not age well. He is not immune to criticism or reconsideration.

What I am saying is that Fred Rogers was certainly not acting from the place of sneering, culture war bigotry from which these right wing pundits are acting.

Commenters such as Beck, Shapiro, and the chuds at the Atlas Society have none of the compassion and radical inclusion that made Mr. Rogers a cultural icon. This makes it all the more profane when they take selective clips of his work and use them for purposes that are opposed to Fred Rogers' stated intentions.

And it's no secret that the right is opposed to Mr. Rogers' intentions. In 2007, Fox and Friends aired their notorious segment about how Mr. Roger's message on the value of every child was EVIL.

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So, don't let the right try to claim Mr. Rogers or other dead celebrities for their own bigotry. They resented what he said while he was alive on Earth; they don't get to repackage his words now that he is not available to address them.

The right has tried to do similar things with other late celebrities whose views actually opposed their own - people ranging all the way from George Carlin to Martin Luther King, Jr. Thankfully, there are many people who have resisted these appropriations, but it's important to keep pushing back for the people who may not be aware, especially now that conservatives are pushing hard against trans and non-binary people, and the LGBTQ+ community in general.

The right wing wants their transphobic, queerphobic ideas to be more popular than they really are. They want to make trans people and drag queens into boogeymen so that you will vote for right wing candidates and let them gut labour protections and social safety nets. All of this is ultimately in service to capitalist owners who are concerned about keeping their control over an unsteady, changing workforce. Don't let them do it.

If you've read this far, you probably already know that LGBTQ+ people are not your enemy. This pride month especially, it's time to stand in solidarity with queer people, immigrants, the unhoused, sex workers, people of colour, and all marginalized people to make a more equitable and loving world together.

On that note, I'll end with some of Mr. Rogers' real messages to children everywhere...

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autolenaphilia · 2 years

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The Sisters of Dorley

I love the web serialized novel The Sisters of Dorley by Alyson Greaves. Still I’m reluctant to talk about it, because well, it’s a story about forced feminization. The title refers to Dorley Hall, which is that old trope of the genre, the facility which forcibly turns bad boys into good girls. It masquerades as a girls university dorm in a fictional English town.

Forced feminization fiction is as a rule, trashy fetish porn. And It’s often trashy fetish porn built on the extremely problematic idea that being a woman or woman-like is degrading and humiliating, especially if you are a man that gets feminized. It’s the sado-masochistic thrill of the idea that such porn works on.

Yet many closeted trans women eggs do read such stuff, because it’s usually the first result if you search for fiction about the forbidden but fascinating subject of “transgender” or “transsexuals”, or more directly “men being turned into women”. At least that used to be the case years ago, we have options for better fiction nowadays. But not that many years ago, you’ll probably end up on sites like fictionmania. And because of internalized transmisogyny, we do feel shame about our transfeminine desires, do fetishize our own womanhood (in ways that usually hurt ourselves more than anyone else), and do develop submissive and masochistic tendencies. And so forced fem fiction, as bad as it usually is, does speak to us. When you are ashamed of being transfem, exploring such feelings in reading fiction is easier. The fantasy of being forced into womanhood is appealing, when you don’t have the courage yet to transition yourself.

The appeal of forced fem fiction usually goes away when transfems actually transition, which inherently means overcoming to some extent the internalized transmisogyny that makes one feel ashamed of who one is. Instead one must develop pride in ones womanhood, to feel that being a woman is not degrading but actually awesome.

Yet I did read The Sisters of Dorley on the recommendation of some trans people on twitter. And the fact that it was written by Alyson Greaves who is a proud trans woman writer meant something. And I was extremely pleasantly surprised. This is not trashy fetish porn, but an actual novel, with good writing and characters who develop and you care about. It’s forced fem as literary fiction.

It does actually deal with and interrogate the genre in very interesting ways. Greaves has noticed while so much forced fem deals with womanhood as degrading, the trope of “bad boys turned into good girls” does have the possibility of another view of womanhood, as redemptive, as an improvement for the person being feminized.

So there are actually two different Dorley Halls in the world of the novel, one is the system run in the present day of the story by Aunt Beatrice, and the one in the novel’s backstory, that was run by the mysterious “Grandmother”. Both are facilities that basically kidnap young men and forcibly transition them, but they are very different.

Grandmother’s Dorley Hall ran according to the idea of “womanhood as inherently degrading, at least when applied to those who’d been assigned male.“ It was basically a torture facility, ran by a sadistic woman who wanted to torture and degrade disadvantaged young men by forcing womanhood on them. One of the rich aristocrats who funded it used it as a source of feminized men to rape. Grandmother’s Dorley is basically how much of forced fem porn stories work, at least on an ideological level.

Yet there were a few victims who survived the ordeal and came to embrace womanhood against all odds. And because the goal of Grandmother’s Dorley was to abuse and humiliate them, their gender identities were not respected and instead denigrated to further hurt them. And this points out a contradiction in forced fem fiction. If the goal of the feminization is to punish and humiliate, a victim of forced fem that comes to embrace womanhood would not be respected.

One of the victims of Grandmother’s Dorley is Beatrice, who is one of those who not only leaves and survive the place of torture, but comes to embrace the womanhood that was initially forced on her. She uses her connections, most importantly a romantic-sexual relationship with the aristocratic heiress to the family fortune which largely funds Dorley, to take over the facility from Grandmother.

And she continues the forced feminization, but now in a different way and with a different purpose. Its target is now young men, whose masculinity makes them hurt other people and themselves, and whose misogynistic violence is rewarded by a patriarchal society. And Dorley kidnaps these young men and turns them into women to redeem them and make them into good people. Beatrice and her helpers (who are almost exclusively the women the system creates) in this mission believe this is justified because forcibly separating these bad men from their masculinity and manhood is the only way they’ll become better people. These men can only become feminists if they first become women. The Dorley system uses force and violence to do so, but not more than is necessary.

And the Sisters of Dorley believe this because they are proof that the system works. They were once men who hurt others and themselves, were forced femmed, accepted their womanhood and became good people. And once they fully reform, they are free people who can leave Dorley hall forever if they wish. And even if they are taught traditional femininity, the graduates of the program are free to become butch lesbians and while none become men again (although they seem to have the freedom to do so), many become non-binary and that is respected by Beatrice and the Dorley sisters.

In Beatrice’s Dorley, womanhood is redemptive, a way of improving people, not a source of humiliation. It’s surprisingly appealing for a system that is built on kidnapping and forcibly transitioning people in a literal torture basement. The men often deserve it by being the perpetrators of misogynistic violence. I have both experienced violence and verbal harassment from these men and I have hated them since childhood. There is a part of me that wants to take such men to a torture basement, castrate them and forcibly turn them into the women they hate. And in the world of the novel, it’s a way of reforming them, they become better, happier people by the end of the process. It sounds better than prison. It’s easy to become Dorleypilled (as some of the characters call it in Beatrice’s system) reading this novel. Despite it arguably being a brainwashing cult, I tend to dislike the victims and share what they are trying to brainwash them into.

Of course a believability problem for forced fem fiction is the question of how it would even be effective? Wouldn’t the forcibly transitioned people just feel dysphoria from being forced into womanhood and be either unhappy in their new gender or detransition?

But The Sisters of Dorley confronts that question and tries to make it plausible. And the writing is good enough that it succeeds. The system has a lot of “wash-outs” that can’t accept being made into women and who disappear, are killed. The system instead tries to target men for whom masculinity is “a double-edged sword”. It also hurts them as well as others. Men who are able to feel such guilt about what the bad things they did as men and want change so badly that they are able to accept becoming women to escape their former selves.

The novel also makes the very valid observation that a lot of cis people are not that attached to their gender. Trans people generally care very much what gender they are. And some cis people have strong feelings about being men or women, but other cis people don’t care. They are fine being men or women, but they are fundamentally indifferent to their gender and they are men or women just because that’s what they were given, because that is the gender assigned to them at birth. Such people are able to accept the Dorley transition.

Some people just choose to accept becoming women, especially when the alternative is death, it’s as simple as that.

This intelligent discussion of gender is one of the delights of the novel and shows how Alyson Greaves has a good handle on human psychology. Her characters, despite their implausible circumstances feel real. One of the main characters is Christine, who is one of the Sisters who were forcibly transitioned by Dorley. And by grounding her change in the very understandable desire to become a better person and leaving your old self behind, it makes this gender journey feel real, she feels like a believable character.

If the Dorley women are trans or not is a question the novel grapples with. But the novel also deals with the kind of transfemininity that exists in the real world. The book’s premise is that a closeted trans woman, Stef Riley, infiltrates the Dorley feminization programme. This is the main driving source of the plot and story. Stef does some detective work after a close friend is taken and transformed by Dorley, and comes close to figuring out Dorley’s deal. But Stef thinks it might be a secret programme providing transition care to trans women, and tries to find it. Stef is close enough to the truth that when she tells Christine, a Dorley woman, she panics and gets Stef’s kidnapped by the program. But even after the truth is revealed, Stef decides to stay, because Dorley will help her.

And I think her interactions with Dorley is a good examination of why forced fem fiction is so appealing to trans women, especially those who are pre-transition, despite the genre’s deep-rooted transmisogyny. Stef is caught in a depressive spiral and bad circle that probably feels familiar to many trans people. Her dysphoria causes depression and yet her depression saps of the energy to transition, to make that brave step. So she wants to be forced to transition by Dorley, as she feels she can’t do it herself. And it’s real for the character, but this is a good illustration of why the fantasy of forced fem is an appealing one to trans women.

And there is another reason. As all good forced fem facilities do, Dorley provides free transition healthcare, including expensive facial feminization surgery, with no waiting list. Dorley women are usually cis passing because of that. Stef is a poor student living in England. If she was to transition the normal way, she would have to use the NHS which is infamously terrible trans healthcare, with long waiting lists and provides limited healthcare options. So Dorley would give her a much better transition than the NHS would. It’s a dark joke: “The fictional forced fem facility might kidnap and mutilate people against their will, but it does provide much better medical transition care than the NHS”. And it’s funny because it’s true. I live in Sweden and not the UK, but our system has pretty much the same problems. It’s great biting satire of how badly the NHS in particular and the world in general treats trans people. It’s an under-discussed appeal of the forced fem fantasy for trans people: part of it is that someone else will pay for your transition.

It’s a novel that has some really insightful things to say about being a trans woman in general. It has some of the best and most hard-hitting depictions of dysphoria I’ve read. You can tell this is a story written by a trans woman. You don’t have to be one to write good trans women characters, but it sure does help and this novel clearly benefits from some insider knowledge of being transfem.

And it’s just a really good novel in general. There is some great prose here with some interesting and challenging and intelligent observations on gender. There are engaging characters who change and grow and interact in interesting ways, there is mystery, there is humour (I love the jokes written on the mugs the Dorley people have). It’s just a damn good read that I became addicted to. It’s a long novel at over 33 000 words and my e-reader puts the page count at almost 900 pages, and will become even longer before it is finished, but it is so well-written that reading it is a pleasure.

Granted its ideal audience is kind of limited: trans women who once read forced fem fiction during their repressed egg phase and now wants a serious novel dealing with that genre. I don’t know how other people will take this, but it’s unironically a really good book. It redeems one of the most dubious porn fiction genres by giving it a trans woman’s mature perspective and some great writing.

#the sisters of dorley #my writings

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 month

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By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Mar 11, 2024

As a child of the Eighties and Nineties, I remember well that homosexuals were fair game in the mainstream media. One columnist in The Star railed against “Wooftahs, pooftahs, nancy boys, queers, lezzies — the perverts whose moral sin is to so abuse the delightful word ‘gay’ as to render it unfit for human consumption”. After the death of Freddie Mercury, sympathy in The Mail on Sunday was limited. “If you treat as a hero a man who died because of his own sordid sexual perversions,” one writer cautioned, “aren’t you infinitely more likely to persuade some of the gullible young to follow in his example?”

It was sadly inevitable that the AIDS crisis would exacerbate this ancient prejudice. A headline in The Sun declared that “perverts are to blame for the killer plague”. And while a writer for the Express held “those who choose unnatural methods of self-gratification” responsible for the disease, letters published in its pages followed suit. One reader called for the incarceration of homosexuals. “Burning is too good for them,” wrote another. “Bury them in a pit and pour on quicklime.” Someone had been reading his Dante.

I happened to come out in a much less hostile climate. In the early 2000s, we were enjoying a kind of Goldilocks moment, neither too hot nor too cold. We weren’t generally on the receiving end of homophobic slurs, but nor were we patronised by well-meaning progressives. My memory of this time was that no one particularly cared, and I was more than happy with that. Being gay for me has never been an identity, it’s simply a fact, as unremarkable as being blue-eyed or right-handed.

And so it has been troubling to see a resurgence in the last few years of the kind of anti-gay rhetoric that was commonplace in my childhood. Of course, it could be argued that the rise of social media has simply exposed sentiments that were previously only expressed in private. As Ricky Gervais has pointed out, before the digital era “we couldn’t read every toilet wall in the world. And now we can.”

Yet the most virulent homophobia appears to be coming from a new source. Whereas we have always been accustomed to this kind of thing from the far-Right — one recalls Nick Griffin’s remark on Question Time about how he finds the sight of two men kissing “really creepy” — but now the most objectionable anti-gay comments arise in online spheres occupied by gender ideologues, from those who claim to be progressive, Left-wing and “on the right side of history”. The significant difference is that the word “cis” has been added to the homophobe’s lexicon. Some examples:

“Cis gay men are a disease.”

“Cis gay men are truly some of the most grotesque creatures to burden this earth.”

“I hate cis gay people with a burning passion.”

“If you’re a cis gay man and your sexuality revolves around you not liking female genitalia I hope you die and I will spit on your grave.”

“Cis gays don’t deserve rights.”

“There’s so many reasons to hate gay people, most specifically white gays, but there’s never a reason to be a transphobe.”

“It’s time to normalise homophobia.”

Of course, any bile can be found on the internet, but these kinds of phrases are remarkably commonplace among certain online communities. Even a cursory search will reveal innumerable examples of gender ideologues casually branding gay men “fags” or “faggots”, praising the murder of gays and lesbians, and claiming that the AIDS epidemic was a positive thing. Many thousands of examples had been collated on Google Photos under the title “Woke homophobia: anti-gay hatred & boxer ceiling abuse from trans activists & gender-identity ideologues”. The site was taken down last year, presumably because it violated Google’s policy on hate speech — or perhaps because it revealed the toxicity of the ideology the company has spent so long promoting.

If such ideas were restricted to the demented world of internet activism, we might be justified in simply ignoring it. But we now know that the overwhelming majority of adolescents referred to the Tavistock paediatric gender clinic were same-sex attracted. Whistleblowers have spoken out about the endemic homophobia, not simply among clinicians but also parents who were keen to “fix” their gay offspring. And of course there was the running joke among staff that soon “there would be no gay people left”.

And now a series of leaked internal messages and videos from WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health), has revealed that clinicians in the leading global organisation for transgender healthcare have openly admitted in private that some teenagers mistake being same-sex attracted for gender dysphoria. The result of the “gender-affirming” approach has amounted to what one former Tavistock clinician recently described as “conversion therapy for gay kids”. Homosexuality was removed from the World Health Organisation’s list of psychiatric disorders in 1993, and yet here we are medicalising it all over again.

So how did we reach the point where gay conversion therapy is being practised in plain sight by the NHS? Much of the responsibility has to lie with Stonewall, a group that once promoted equal rights for gay people but now actively works against their interests. It has even gone so far as to redefine “homosexual” on its website and resource materials as “same-gender attracted”. It should go without saying that gay men are not attracted to women who identify as men, any more than lesbians should be denounced for excluding those with penises from their dating pools. What trans activists call discrimination, most of us call homosexuality.

Indeed, activists often claim that “genital preferences are transphobic”, or that sexual orientation based on biological sex is a form of “trauma”. The idea that homosexuality is a sickness was one of the first homophobic tropes I encountered as a child. Now it is being rebranded as progressive.

As for Stonewall, its former CEO Nancy Kelley went so far as to argue that women who exclude trans people as potential partners are analogous to “sexual racists”. She claimed that “if you are writing off entire groups of people, like people of colour, fat people, disabled people or trans people, then it’s worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions”. It is worth remembering that Stonewall is deeply embedded in many governmental departments and quangos, as well as corporate and civic institutions. Anti-gay propaganda is being reintroduced into society from the very top.

Meanwhile, the Crown Prosecution Service has been meeting with trans lobby groups such as Mermaids and Stonewall to discuss changes to prosecutorial policy in cases of sex by deception. Since these meetings — only revealed after sustained pressure from a feminist campaigner who submitted Freedom of Information requests — the CPS has recommended what Dennis Kavanagh of the Gay Men’s Network has described as “a radical trans activist approach to sex by deception prosecutions that would see them all but vanish”. In trans activist parlance, the barriers to having sex with lesbians and gay men are known as the “cotton ceiling” and “boxer ceiling”. Now it seems the establishment is attempting to support the coercion of gay people into heterosexual activity.

Consider a recent post on X by Stephen Whittle, OBE, a professor of equalities law at Manchester Metropolitan University. In a reply to LGB Alliance’s Bev Jackson, Whittle took issue with the notion that “love is all about genitals” (an argument that Jackson has never made). Having dismissed this straw man as “a very hetero/homo-normative perspective”, Whittle then claimed that “a lot of gay men can’t resist a young furry ftm [female-to-male] cub”.

While it is true that there are some bisexuals who identify as gay, it is simply not the case that homosexual men “can’t resist” certain kinds of women. As Jackson rightly noted in her response, this is rank homophobia, “disturbed and disturbing on every level”. Yet it has been expressed by an individual who has been described as a “hero for LGBTQ+ equality”. With heroes like these, who needs villains?

Another example is Davey Wavey, a popular online influencer, who has encouraged gay men to perform heterosexual acts in a video called “How to Eat Pussy — For Gay Men”. It may as well have been called “Gay Conversion Therapy 2.0”. We are firmly back in the Eighties, where gays are being told that they “just haven’t found the right girl yet” and lesbians are assured that they just “need a good dick”. And yet now these demeaning ideas are being propagated by those who claim to be defending the rights of sexual minorities.

The Government’s recent guidance on how schools are to accommodate trans-identified pupils — in which biological sex will take precedence over identity — has been met with horror from gender ideologues. One of the common refrains one hears from activists is that it represents “this generation’s Section 28”. But this is to get it precisely backwards. Gay rights were secured on the recognition that a minority of the population are same-sex attracted. In dismantling the very notion of sex and substituting it for this nebulous concept of “gender identity”, activists and their disciples in parliament are undoing all of the achievements of previous gay rights movements.

The widespread homophobia of the Eighties, epitomised by Section 28, was based on the notion that homosexuality was unnatural, dangerous and ought to be corrected. Present-day gender identity ideology perceives homosexuality as evidence of misalignment between soul and body. In other words, it seeks to “fix” gay people so that they fit into a heterosexual framework. It is no coincidence that so many detransitioners are gay people who were simply struggling with their sexuality. Gender identity ideology is the true successor to Section 28.

The proponents of this revamped gay conversion therapy dismiss our concerns as “transphobia” and “bigotry”, or as part of a manufactured “culture war”. Worse still, the new homophobia is being cheered on by those it will hurt most. While prominent gay figures continue to feed the beast that wishes to devour them, we are unlikely to see this dire situation improve any time soon. It was bad enough in the Eighties, when gay people were demonised and harassed by the establishment. Who thought we would have to fight these battles all over again?

#Andrew Doyle #woke homophobia #homophobia 2.0 #gay conversion therapy #gay conversion #conversion therapy #anti gay #gender ideology #gender identity ideology #queer theory #intersectional feminism #religion is a mental illness

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liskantope · 5 months

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Since I have a continuing history of keeping up with IDW-ish podcasters on YouTube (Glenn Loury, Coleman Hughes, etc.) who occasionally do episodes on trans issues as well as a spotty history of clicking on videos with clips of Jordan Peterson, the algorithm recommends a lot of videos on "transgenderism" and "the trans debate" and so on to me. A noticeable and (to my thinking) really concerning aspect of the whole set of issues is how reliably anyone who expresses interest in debating or even critically discussing trans issues is, um, on one general side of them, and how little debating or critical discussion there seems to be available. I avoid clicking on videos with titles involving "transgenderism" or "transgender ideology" or "the trans debate" and other tribal buzzwords for a bunch of reasons, but I decided to make an exception the other day when I saw a video entitled "DEBATE: does transgender ideology threaten liberal values?" (a terribly-phrased question, like most debate questions are) because it appeared to be... an actual debate! With people on both sides showing up! (Though apparently not among the audience, which by the sound of it was entirely on the anti-trans side.)

So of course, as I should have fully expected, this debate only supported my conviction that the rhetoric of nearly everyone on all sides of this is just terrible. The only nuanced and halfway decent debater here was Peter Tatchell (on the trans rights side), and some of even his arguments were used to catch him in a bind later on (more on that later). The debate as a whole was generally a bit of a -- I can only use the term shitshow here -- with debaters (mainly Freda) interrupting each other, the (seemingly entirely anti-trans) audience heckling the trans-rights debaters, and the somewhat awkward and ineffectual moderator mostly failing to keep everyone in order. Well, what better could I have expected?

Marc Glendening (on the anti-trans-rights side) had less to say than everyone else and was basically just a robot trying to churn out dry legal summaries of the situation and spouting claims about free speech rights being taken away that I find extremely dubious as phrased by him (I don't know too much about what's going on in the UK, but if we took Marc's depictions of the situation at face value, they do not jibe with his teammate Helen's completely lack of inhibition in misgendering Freda in a video-recorded debate!).

Helen Joyce was the only person involved that I was familiar with from before, since many months ago I watched an episode of Coleman Hughes' podcast where he interviewed her, thought she had some reasonable points and liked her overall rational manner of arguing, but lost any sense of her credibility because of her completely unbending and extreme absolutism. YouTube had been recommending me videos with her ever since (I really hate how stubborn the algorithm is), and I had refused up until now to click on anything involving her again. In this debate I saw the same extremist tendencies and genuine TERFiness (up until fairly recently my exposure to TERF ideology was mostly indirect as something people on Tumblr criticized and I was beginning to wonder how much of it was actually out there in force and what it really looks like -- it seems to have plenty of force in the UK and Joyce is probably one of the gentler examples I suppose!) and also saw a rational and dignified approach which I admire but unfortunately didn't lead to actually good arguments. There is plenty of room for rebuttal to Helen's arguments from my perspective, and of course almost none of that material was ever rebutted by the other side, which again doesn't surprise me given how little (in my experience of watching/reading criticisms of, say, JKR's arguments) people on the trans rights side seem to actually directly address certain types of opposing arguments. I can't decide which bothers me more: Helen's repeated comments about how the rest of the debaters went through male puberty and therefore their male voices enabled them to talk over her (easily refuted, mainly in the case of the trans women sitting on the other side, and meanwhile neither of the men ever interrupted or talked over her, but nobody addressed this, and it places Helen across my personal "too borderline-misandristic for me to feel comfortable hanging around her" line), or her claim that those men who do insist on trespassing women-only spaces have proved that they are among the dangerous ones because they don't care about women's boundaries (a very dangerous mentality, and displaying exquisite lack of theory of mind, and again nobody tried to rebut it).

Freda Wallace is... a complete mess, and I think an embarrassment to her cause. She spoke a lot (while delusionally muttering that Helen wouldn't stop talking), and very little of what she had to say comprised actual argumentation but was more of a semi-incoherent jumble of points that often ended in punchlines that seemed to be deliberately phrased into ridiculous and bizarre statements perhaps crafted to be provocative and eliciting scorn from the audience. She frequently interrupted all three of the debaters generally with childish and semi-irrelevant ad hominems, even eventually visibly pissing off her own teammate Peter. Freda appears to be exactly the caricature of aggressive, loud, attention-seeking, obnoxious, shameless, hedonistic, fetishistic trans woman that J. K. Rowling types seem to imagine among trans activists. ("So, when I fuck men, with my female penis, in fetish clubs, it is my choice. It doesn't matter what you think. And those men support Sex Matters, because in public they will, but in private, they'll fuck me [ending in a smug grin]" is... I guess technically a way that someone can talk during a recorded public debate, but maybe shouldn't be recommended? I didn't notice until I read the comments later how a minute or two after that, her teammate Peter repeated tries to get her to stop interrupting, then gently grabs her arm as she lifts her glass of wine again saying, "No more drink.") If the trans-rights organization involved wanted to strengthen transphobia and transmisogyny in particular, they probably could not have chosen a better trans woman to put on their team. There's something to discuss here (although if I tried to develop where I speculatively want to go with this, I might quickly get myself into hot water) about how difficult it seems to be to get a member of the trans community to participate in an event like this, and how it requires the very thickest-skinned type of personality which unfortunately in this case also coincides with the most loud and shameless. (This is a very under-developed and perhaps sloppily-phrased point that I probably shouldn't be leaving in this post!)

As I said earlier, Peter Tatchell, along with many of his arguments, I actually liked; he seems like a pretty cool guy all around. He did get backed into a corner at one point through an audience member's question: he had repeatedly made the argument that excluding male-bodied people from women's shelters because men are more likely to be violent was choosing to treat an entire group based on a generalization and that he was against this on principle (compare to refusing to allow immigration from certain groups because some tiny minority of them is more likely to be dangerous, etc.), and he was asked whether he wasn't generalizing in the exact same way by being in favor of excluding cis men ("all men, as you identify who's a man") from women's spaces. At first Peter seems to misunderstand that the questioner is talking about cis men and be trying to duck the question, but eventually he is backed into acknowledging the question and taking the stance that "people who present as men" should be excluded from women's bathrooms but trans women shouldn't -- a position that sounds quite blatantly transphobic in more than one way by the lights of much of trans activism! Also, Peter's stern coldness in stopping Freda from interrupting him with disagreement during his point about transness showing in people's brains says all we really need to know about his opinion of his own teammate, and I do kind of feel bad for him for having been paired with her, which I imagine was not his choice.

I looked briefly through the comments section to see if there was any discussion of why the video (annoyingly) cuts off abruptly before the end of the event (which wound up mentioned only once that I could see). Never have I seen a sea of comments so 100% skewed in favor of one side of an issue and in one direction: how amazing Helen Joyce is (and with a heap of derogatory and sometimes extremely transmisogynistic comments about Freda Wallace -- they go further than Joyce did by naming her Fred, a few do call her Freda and use feminine pronouns, but in at least one instance someone's use of "her" was "corrected" in a one-word response by another commenter!). It makes me wonder what happens to create a section of hundreds of comments that are literally 100% on one side -- is there a sort of tipping point when one side becomes a strong enough majority that everyone on the other side is just afraid to comment, or gets downvoted to invisibility by the rating system? Either way, this debate strikes me as weak enough on the pro-trans side that trans right activists probably wouldn't want to advertise it on YouTube.

Anyway, very very discouraging for anyone who would like our public discourse on this set of issues to stop being more of a complete mess than the public discourse on pretty much every other contentious social issue has been.

#trans issues #terfs #helen joyce #freda wallace #immigration #trans women are women and freda is a woman #but sorry the validity of “female penis” is going too far for me #and is deliberately provocative like most of freda's language

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spiritfeelingspiritfelt · 11 months

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# the nature of what it is to be trans is just that: natural

It’s been around for as long as us human animals have been around.

We need to be careful in acknowledging it as inherently queer not cis mandated it should adhere to the queer spirit for queer bodies not the cis hets perspective that was born from brutal colonisation

An issue I don’t see getting the light it deserves is how the cis normative world, propagated by colonialism, and by this I mean how colonialism was excused and executed under the title of ‘the civilisation mission’. A mission that was to forcibly indoctrinate the entire globe to take on the culture of Europe aka Eurocentric values. Such values included their two way gender system.

With that being said, as a gnc brown skin individual, right from as early as pre school I’ve been subject to how this European cultural view of gender confuses the cis.

Are you a boy or a girl? What are you? A child I would think to myself, but the aggression of their confusion made my little empathetic self unable to speak up.

Since growing up and finding my way into the trans community in my early teens I have also experienced cis strangers telling me it is obvious I was born male and trying to be female when I never could. I have also been told by cis strangers it’s obvious I was born female and trying to be male when I never could.

What I have learnt from this is:

Cis hets: we are allowed to tell you in an array of ways how you do not fit our two way gender system, but don’t you dare ever declare this yourself, do not find your own label to be defined as, as we will tell you it does not exist.

To the cis I cannot exist as their female nor their male but I MUST try to and accept their criticism as never being able to. To them it is obvious I can not fit in either box but I am not allowed to declare this I am not allowed to make my own space I just have to be victim to their standards and European ideologies harming my body and identity.

It is frustrating how their own self admitted confusion to them is not confusion but proof of their own egotistical righteousness over all the bodies that do not fit what they feel theirs do.

I have learned that a large body of the medical community related to the care of trans bodies will push for you to fit into the European two way gender system. Creating guidelines such as presenting as one particular gender a year before being prescribed hrt or obtaining surgery. To have surgeries that fall in line with how a cis body would look. That to fight these things means being pushed back, being labelled as not ready or mentally able and so on.

I have found that in contrast to the history of the what it meant to be transgender now the focus more revolves around the ability or at least intent to pass as a cis body to cis eyes. To pass in the Eurocentric ideals of a gender identity. This has been one of the hardest realisations (don’t get me wrong there’s been many) to know that for the longest time the state that is being transgender was about acknowledging the vast array of NATURAL states that exist outside of the Eurocentric two way gender ideals. To know that I missed out on that and came to be in a time where it was catered to the Eurocentric gender ideals. Sort of feels like “fine fine, we acknowledge this trans thing but only if it adheres to Eurocentric gender ideals as much as possible and we will mercifully push for this as much as possible”. It’s sad. It makes me mourn for the little me, being heavily attacked by the eyes of Eurocentric ideals (in virtually all ways) and having my birth right (humans as social animals are communal animals, the first of us lived nomadic lifestyles in ‘family-bands’ aka little communities and I believe we are all born to have this as is our birth right) - my community being invaded and remoulded by Eurocentric values before I even had a chance to take my first steps within it.

I believe it wasted a lot of my time and created unnecessary amounts of confusion which makes it so much more infuriating when they accuse the state of being trans as WHY there is confusion. It also blocked me from learning and honouring my natural states (always more than one state to every body I won’t argue on this) for far too long when it existed to be the opposite. Our communities exist as natural formations of natural connections to natural states of being that align and harmonise in ways that become a safe space and type of home.

I think it’s exciting now in my late twenties seeing more of my community using terms such as ‘he him lesbian’ ‘girl cock’ ‘dick clit’ ‘girlfriendboyfriend’ ‘butch boys’ and the like. The queer and trans community stem from the space that existed to permit those terms. The space that existed to acknowledge and provide a home and voice to the incredible amounts of variance within any one body. So make up words if you find yourself indoctrinated into a language that does not describe you enough to be able to speak your truths. Remember that one thing colonisation left us with is European languages dominate the globe still. Remember that in order for this to happen many languages were brutally changed and eradicated (books and educational spaces burnt to ash). It makes sense to have to create your own language to survive in the post colonial world. Remember that although once the USA was colonised it successfully and lawfully divorced itself from Europe so whites could be recognised as American only, they still all come from Europe and so mainly speak English (most successfully globalised European language) .

So don’t be embarrassed and don’t sweat how much the Eurocentric world will throw fits at your neo pronouns or how you rearrange and reconstruct and disable and reinvent the words they assign to you with languages that our ancestors were beaten into submission of. Of course it will rattle them. It’s living breathing proof that despite how well colonisation globalised European culture to take over ALL cultures and their beliefs/languages/paradigms aka sense of reality, bodies, souls, minds, hormones, biology continue to grow unable to fit their space. It’s proof that having one culture dominate ALL cultures is what is actually unnatural. That even with generations and generations of nations swearing to raise everyone to submit into European culture, it still cannot hold us all. That there are still an immeasurable amount of us that can not, that will not, that would rather die, that those who well fit european culture even acknowledge- we can not be held by - their cultural ideals. That there are natural forces that can not be reckoned with no matter how many generations you try to beat it from us.

I cuddle younger me with this knowledge and by seeing all of you exist as yourselves even when having to fight daily to be able to do so because the world around you continually tries to reconstruct what your words, feelings, bodies, minds and souls natural states are.

Please keep fighting. Be unapologetic. Keep showing up as you. Even though I’m not a little butch gnc child anymore I still benefit wholeheartedly from seeing it just as you do. We all do. Our community has existed for eons, expressed in all cultures. Remember that it was only one culture that has had so much self hate for who we are and that it was through the brutalities of colonialism and globalising their culture that we even have to fight to be seen or heard. Do not give up. The only weird thing is telling a whole globe of souls to adhere to one culture that was so out of sync with all the other cultures. It is weird to see a thing and say it does not exist and weird still to see another of that thing and another and another and deny it’s existence and weirder still to see it go further back than whoever first said it does not exist and still persist IT DOES NOT EXIST. That’s weird. Not you. Thank you for existing in a world that constantly tried to erase, you, your community and our rich history. Remember that those against you are slaves to a culture that harmed their own people too, there’s no real power in that but there ir is sadness and sickness and they will try to project this onto you. Don’t let them.

-Tahari Spirt

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