melancholybrunette

[melancholybrunette]

Qu'il faut écouter la parole de Dieu avec humilité - Pierre Corneille

Mais ce n'est que pour moi qu'on est sourd volontaire ;

Tous ces cœurs endurcis ne le sont que pour moi,

Et suivent de leur chair la dangereuse loi

Beaucoup plus volontiers que celle de me plaire.

Ce que promet le monde est temporel et bas,

Ce sont biens passagers, ce sont foibles appas,

Et l'on y porte en foule une chaleur avide :

Tout ce que je promets est éternel et grand,

Et pour y parvenir chacun est si stupide

Qu'aucun ne l'entreprend.

[melancholybrunette]

Song for Chaim

By David Shapiro

If one saves a butterfly, has one saved the world?

Rabbi says: If one saves one butterfly, even with long wings,

one butterfly that has fallen into water, it may be said:

“He has saved the whole world.”

If one saves a motley moth, is it the same?

Rabbi: It is valid. If one saves a dirty monkey from a flame,

for example, it is as the saying is: He or she has saved the whole world.

It is valid for all creatures, and not more so for the creatures who know

how to recite the blessings. It is always valid, even on the Sabbath.

It is said: The creatures of the sky are owned by no one, like the land.

If one saves the Book from being destroyed, is it also saving a world?

Rabbi: God forbid, yes, saving the book from the fire,

saving the book or books from the fire, is known to be comparable.

He who saves a book and he who

writes a holy book, it should be said:

They have saved the whole world like a book.

If one saves a rose, one rose,

from the garden of your dead Teacher,

is it still appropriate to think:

She has saved the world.

The Rabbi was silent and seemed troubled. He replied:

If the house of the great teacher is in ruins,

and the garden is a scandal, and one saves

one rose from his garden it is said even

of one rose: It is like saving the world.

It is also said the rose will grow as large as the world.

[melancholybrunette]

all of breaking bad was just jesse being like "the next crumb of approval from an abusive father figure will fix me"

[melancholybrunette]

if I was Gale and someone who looked as sopping wet and broken as Jesse was pointing a gun in my face crying i probably would have been apologizing to him lmao like I am so sorry you have to kill me baby you're gonna be ok

[melancholybrunette]

a beautiful palestinian home that was destroyed by israeli forces

[melancholybrunette]

[melancholybrunette]

the day of writing a draft, at 4pm: oh my god i hate writing.... i am such a bad writer

the day after writing the draft, re-reading it at 10 am: oh my god i am a geniousf... i love writing

[melancholybrunette]

A Bug’s Life, 1998

[melancholybrunette]

and words are futile devices

[melancholybrunette]

Oh I love gender talk. If we have a patriarchal society, what’s like. The point of having men if we want to overturn it? So many ideals of What It Means To Be A Man seem to boil down to “don’t have traits that patriarchal society has deemed womanly” — so if being a man exists mainly in Not Being A Woman, then how can we like. Have men? In a non-patriarchal society? What does it mean for potential future gender systems if the existing power structure necessitates that manliness come from exerting power (esp over others)? Why not just like. Not have men anymore. Am I missing something essential here? I feel like I must be missing something

how exactly do you propose that we don't have men?

My argument would be that the coercive gendering of all infants is the real big bad here. Even I don't want to force parents not to gender their kids though. Like it or not, gender is a really important part of a variety of people's cultures and identities, and I don't believe in authoritarianism or fascism. So like. how do you think we just make there not be men? Especially without hurting any trans people in the blast radius.

[melancholybrunette]

growing up is knowing "oh I was right about being an angry kid at having those emotions invalidated and treated trivially" and then you have to go on indeed.com

[melancholybrunette]

i really hate that since talking about minors having sex is taboo that the biggest voices advocating for it are like grown adults who want to fuck 12 year olds. like i would love for us to be able to discuss this stuff more & with more nuance & take it away from people who actually do have it in mind to harm children

I mean, we're talking about the liberation of children, disabled people, and elders, not minors having sex. Yes there are people who focus on the age of consent specifically and for nefarious purposes -- but there are also scores of reactionary people (everyone from casual homophobes to outright fascists) who attempt to equate a belief in age liberation with a desire to prey upon youth, and we should bravely and resolutely dismiss that as complete nonsense at every possible opportunity. It is the social and legal disenfranchisement of children that makes abuse possible. Children having no legal rights and being the property of their parents is what makes sexual abuse so impossible fo them to escape. And so if we genuinely care about keeping young people safe from harm, we must discuss and advocate for the autonomy of all people who require support in our society -- be them disabled, elderly, or young.

[melancholybrunette]

I very nearly went to graduate school, then pulled out at the last minute. I still intended to go eventually because I (like a different anon) really love learning and the structure of school, and saw grad school as the logical "next step." Now I take community college classes for fun to scratch that itch. Would highly recommend it to anyone who craves the academic routine but not the debt or time commitment

there's also political education wings of mutual aid groups, libraries, anarchist skillshares, local workshops, and anything that you personally organize for you & your committee to learn things! so many ways to keep growing and learning outside the academy :D

[melancholybrunette]

As an author, I have to laugh whenever people bemoan that people are using their phones too much and not reading as many books because like. Have you seen how fucking insipid and reactionary most books are and basically have always been? It's not even a recent development, like the bestsellers of decades ago were things like Men Are From Mars and Who Moved My Cheese? and The Tipping Point and shit. When I was a teen, I divided my reading time equally between video game forums and the worst dreck from the Barnes and Noble psychology/self-help section. Psuedoscientific drivel on handwriting analysis and The Sociopath Next Door were my bread and butter, the exact same breed of nonsense that's still wildly popular online.

I have plenty of reservations about social media but it's simply not the case that one medium for absorbing information is inherently more intellectual than the other. If anything, access to the internet has generally made it far easier for people to access both knowledge and critiques of that knowledge.

[melancholybrunette]

What do you think of the whole united healthcare CEO assassination thing?

i love it, i hope theres copycats, i hope it becomes popular, i hope it replaces school shootings for the thing disaffected ppl do when they want to be infamous, i hope someone breaks luigi out of jail joker 2 style and i hope its me and i get to fuck him

[melancholybrunette]

The word “vanilla” comes up a lot in your writing and it’s always with negative connotations.

I fully accept that my own reactions to it are my responsibility alone and no one is making me feel a certain way. But I do wonder if there are ways to have conversations around sexuality that don’t elevate one kind of sex over another in a demeaning way that make vanilla sex almost a running joke.

As someone with pretty severe sexual trauma history for me even having enjoyable vanilla sex is pushing boundaries. To actually be able to initiate, seek out and enjoy sex of any kind has been challenging.

The increased use and acceptance of vanilla as a derogatory term is unfortunate I think as it invalidates the experiences of many sa survivors and makes it feel like sex is only valid if it’s kinky.

In saying that having lots of friends in the kink/fet scene I know they’ve fought really hard to not have their sexual preferences demonized.

So I do understand.

I just wish my preferences weren’t always made out to be boring and dull, and thereby made me boring and dull.

This seems especially prevalent in queer spaces.

I think one of the biggest problems in how people conceive of diverse sexualities is by attempting to place all sex acts upon a single spectrum from "extremely kinky" to "tame." Under this framework, activities like PIV and oral are viewed as neutral precursors to the more racier and extreme forms of sex that a person must "work themselves up" to -- and this obscures that those supposedly neutral sexual activities can be both incredibly exciting to some, and downright disturbing and traumatizing to others.

I am also harmed by this and have written about it on this blog quite a lot.

Like you, I am harmed by the presumption that PIV, fingering, and oral are neutral sexual acts that are lower on the intensity spectrum than things like being slapped or choked. I find receiving oral to be far more intense, triggering, dysphoric, and disturbing than anything in the rape play/primal/dub con/intoxication/hypnosis realm that I enjoy -- because I like and want those things, and I do not want oral.

My problem with oral isn't that it's "boring." It's that it is fucking traumatic for me.

I also find completely un-kinky sex in general to be profoundly alienating and triggering in most instances.

I am harmed by the idea that PIV and oral are more benign, neutral forms of sex, just as you are.

I need language to articulate that the sex acts that most people view as the default are in fact alienating and disturbing to me *as a sexual assault survivor*. In fact, the most common form of sexual assault that I have experienced has been people forcing non-kinky sex on me that they assumed I had to be game for, since I liked the stuff on the more "intense" side of their imagined spectrum.

The cishet, nonkinky world has already created terminology for the views around sex that create these problems, and that's "vanilla." And so I use "no vanilla" to broadcast that I want absolutely nothing to do with anyone who holds that worldview.

I don't think expressing my boundaries (which people repeatedly and forcefully attempt to trample over in all sexual spaces, including kinky ones!) is me derogating people who do not share my kinks. I don't think I'm hurting anyone by rejecting the dominant viewpoint of society. And for what it's worth, I will reiterate again, I don't think people are boring for liking non-kinky sex.

I think that we all benefit from unpacking our assumptions surrounding what sex is or can be, and for many sexual assault survivors it is immensely healing to take pre-written societal expectations surrounding sex off the table.

It's not inherently kinky to reimagine what sexual pleasure might look like, I suppose, but anyone who is doing that kind of deep reflective and interpersonal work is already taking steps to liberate themselves from the cishet power structure that gave us the notion of obligatory "vanilla" sex.

I think that instead of feeling like the term "vanilla" is a thing that you have to defend, you might be better served by simply defending your own right to define your sexuality in whatever ways you choose.

People who are having weird hypnosis fantasy sex are not sneering at you for enjoying what you enjoy. We want you to be free and at ease in your body. What we're sneering at, when we criticize "vanilla," are the dictates that a person must have sex in a certain way, that some forms of sex are more neutral than others, and that we OWE sexual partners certain activities and sexual responses.

"Vanilla" sexual values and assumptions are the enemy of all sexual assault survivors. You don't have to be interested in any remotely freaky shit in order to benefit from us all collectively destroying the notion that certain forms of sex are the default that we owe to people. We ALL benefit from being able to reject the sex acts we do not like as loudly and proudly as we want.

[melancholybrunette]

there is no soul of an artist that distinguishes them from some 'non-artist' category of person that could simply never comprehend what it is like. anyone can make art. you should know this by now. from ratatouille