specialagentartemis

[specialagentartemis]

The Chosen One Trope

At its best I think speaks to that universal need of having to do something you don't want to (from holding down a shitty job to protesting an unjust law) for the benefit others, while mixing in the fantasy of what if you could be recognised for that sacrifice

At its worst it's like. what if you were special because the universe said you were special and everyone loved you for your specialness

[specialagentartemis]

Here’s what I’ve been working on these past couple weeks that I’ve been very excited to share!!

RAINBOW RAVEN 🌈🪶 A FORMLINE STICKER COLLECTION!

These are now available on my Ko-fi store for 4$ CAD each! (divided into two separate item types since ko-fi has a cap on how many variants of one item you can have)

V1🌈 and V2🌈

[specialagentartemis]

Do not make eye contact. Do not give them your name. Do not take anything they offer you. Do not ask them any questions, and do not answer any of theirs. If you keep your eyes straight ahead and keep walking, they cannot harm you. If they snare you, smile demurely and say nothing but no, thank you, and you may escape. Street-corner proselytizers are basically fae when you think about it

[specialagentartemis]

@hi-fi-planetoid These are all really interesting thoughts, but I actually do want to counter your last assertion: there are scenarios where someone recognized as white by the system can have their whiteness revoked.

A white woman who converts to Islam and starts wearing hijab is no longer treated as “white” by most people or systems. White Jews or white Latinos can be treated as white until they start wearing yarmulkes or speaking Spanish, and then their whiteness can be re-evaluated and subsequently denied to them. The book One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race by Yaba Blay is full of super interesting interviews with mixed-race Black people, light-skinned Black people, Black adoptees, Black people with albinism or vitiligo, about how racial identification was in some ways a choice for them, and how people will assume they’re white until they actively express their Blackness, that they had a choice to pass as white or be Black but they couldn’t be both.

Whiteness, like patriarchy, is built on assimilation and enforcement of norms; stepping outside those norms gets you punished. With whiteness, some people never had the opportunity to be incorporated within those hegemonic norms at all, while others do have that option, but when they express their own culture or ethnic background that’s not the “unmarked” assimilated Whiteness, they lose the protections that assimilation into Whiteness could have afforded them. It is a little bit different as well because there are definitely also people whose whiteness is unquestionable, and I think you’re right that certain types of people will never have their whiteness revoked for “stepping out of line.” It is different from gender in that regard. But there are a lot of people kind of in the “middle” tier of that racial hierarchy where individual actions can get their claim to whiteness revoked, and they become treated like a racialized person instead—because they stepped out of line by reminding people that they have a culture that matters to them that’s not the hegemonic white one.

(and then that’s not to mention the geopolitical shifts that can get whole groups, like certain Middle Easterners, revoked from whiteness overnight where they previously had some access to it.)

I definitely don’t think it’s a hierarchy of oppressions per se, and they do operate differently— but I don’t think whiteness is immutable either, and like maleness, there are ways that it can be revoked if you “do it wrong.” I’s not necessarily tied to other distinct axes of marginalization (though religion/ethnicity/national origin are definitely elements that can get whiteness stripped from you if you have the “wrong” ones and express that it matters to you), but it can be still predicated on “doing whiteness right.”

Alrighty! Let's talk about race and gender by unpacking this post!

This is gonna be a long one, so buckle in.

"Why are some trans men so insistent that white privilege is so much stronger than male privilege?

The idea of a "matrix of domination" or "matrix of oppression" where multiple forms of oppression are interconnected is credited to Black Feminist author, Patricia Hill Collins. In her 1990 book, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, Collins collected, connected, and synthesized the works of several notable Black Feminists and suggested the idea that social identities such as race, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, religion, age, etc. and all the power structures enforcing them all are interconnected.

Kimberlè Crenshaw expanded on Collins' work and coined the term "intersectionality" to encompass the concept in her 1991 legal paper, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.

Essentially, intersectional theory was created by Black women to describe their own experiences, as well as create a framework for discussing other intersections of identity outside of race and gender as well.

Many people seem to misinterpret intersectionality as "a social tool that exists to find the most oppressed demographic of people to ever exist" but it's ultimately an academic tool that is used to give language to people's complex lived experiences under multiple forms of systemic injustice. As such, I think it's a useful exercise to look at intersectional theory through the lense of the impact of systemic powers, rather than solely looking at it through the lense of identity. I think you're often able to find a more robust understanding of human experience under oppressive systems in that way.

For example: if we are discussing the axes of race and gender, I think it is more telling to approach the subject holistically through the impact of the systems of Patriarchy and White Supremacy on someone's identity and find where those two systems of power aid and reinforce each other, rather than dissect someone's entire identity apart and act as though into can be neatly sorted into piles of "oppressed" and "privileged", or as though one axis of oppression can be "stronger" than another, like they don't all impact each other simultaneously.

What does that holistic approach look like in regards to race and gender? Well, it might look like understanding gender less as a personal identity and more as a socially constructed tool for systemic oppression — same with race. It's investigating the way Patriarchy and White Supremacy work hand in hand to intrinsically tie gender and race to personhood, and how that impacts the personhood of non-white people across the gender spectrum and also how that impacts the personhood of white people across the gender spectrum in comparison.

The idea that Patriarchy acts as a tool of enforcement for both White Supremacy and Colonialism is a common concept in a lot of Black and Indigenous feminism. When discussing Patriarchy under that context, it is important to discuss the way gender is racialized. It is important to talk about how the way many white people view and discuss gender is racist. It is important to discuss the fact gendered motivated violence against non-white men does exist and it is important to discuss the fact that many non-white women literally started multiple movements to combat the racist feminism that did not consider the differences in the material realities of white and non-white women and men.

I also personally bring up race often in these conversations, especially with other white people, because there are two very common phenomenon that happen among white people in discussions on race where we:

Always view all of our experiences as the default, especially within our own marginalized identity groups.

And always get really uncomfortable when someone says that quiet part out loud. Especially when it's another white person who says it, because they're breaking an unspoken social contract regarding talking about race.

And like. We should do something to change that. Actively.

So maybe. . . "some trans men" are not necessarily trying to say that "white privilege is so much stronger than male privilege"* but that whiteness inherently informs gendered experiences, due to the fact that race in general inherently informs gendered experiences. Maybe "some trans men" are saying this because the idea of intersectionality, the idea of someone having multiple axes of identity and oppression, directly comes from Black theory about the intersection of race and gender. You cannot have a robust discussion on intersectionality without discussing race.

*Also in the United States white women who are employed full time literally have a higher average salary than Black and Hispanic men who are also employed full time [ x ]. Yes, those men statistically make more money than women of the same demographic, but not more than white women. Black men and women also, according to that same source, have the smallest gendered wage gap out of any demographic, with Black women making about 80-90% of what Black men make. So yes, actually, sometimes white privilege is """stronger""" than male privilege. We clearly need to examine both simultaneously, rather than one at a time.

"Could it perhaps be that regardless of the axis of racial oppression, the axis of gendered oppression still exists? Maybe could it be the axes of oppression that impact men that expose them to violence from the power structures around them? Such as race, ability, transition status? Rather than gender?"

So there's this thing that Radical Feminism/Truscum beliefs/Transmedicalism/any other gender essentialist ideologies do, where they flatten gender like a pancake. They act as though gender exists in this little vacuum untouched by other axes of oppression, or that marginalized men's experiences with marginalization are somehow completely void of gender — even when those men are literally transgender. This is not intersectionality. This is an ignorant and shortsighted view of gender that will not lead to genuine liberation from systemic oppression.

Identifying the fact that a marginalized man's inability to be a "model patriarchal man" under white cishetero patriarchal standards directly impacts his experience with gender negates absolutely nothing about the experiences of marginalized women. It is a "yes and—" not a "no but—". It's literally a further examination of the way patriarchal power is used to control people in conjunction with other forms of oppression across multiple marginalized experiences.

"#this is exhausting #the "you're being racist" whenever anyone calls out this blatantly transphobic and misogynistic AND transmisogynistic rhetoric strikes again"

Or maybe you're literally just being a racist white person intentionally misinterpreting a concept rooted in racial theory for your own benefit — something that white feminists have been doing for decades.

Because again — the thing being called "blatantly transphobic and misogynistic AND transmisogynistic" here is literally just stating that trans men are raped and murdered for being men [ X ] and that trans men's experiences are inseparable from their transness [ image below ]. No mention of trans women. No denial of trans women's experiences. Just a statement about trans men.

Before anything else, white trans people are white. I say this as a white trans person. Under White Supremacy, especially right now in our current political climate, we are still white before we are our genders. It's palpable in the way racism is rampant in white trans communities and the way racist white trans people can absolutely do a grift being the token racist right wing trans person, just like every other white queer community is able to do as well.

If you are trans, your transness is inseparable from your gender which is inseparable from your race which is inseparable from your economic class and ability and sexuality and every other intersecting aspect of your life and that is what intersectional theory is trying to discuss.

You cannot neatly separate out different axes of identity and oppression, that's literally antithetical to discussing their intersections. The places where they intersect. You can try to pry them apart but it's literally not going to help anyone.

[specialagentartemis]

to everyone who doesn't follow class action lawsuits as much as i do (lol), just an FYI that the criterion channel has agreed to pay $4.5mil to resolve claims the fact it violated several privacy laws by selling your data to third parties like meta — if you were a registered user (you had a subscription) to the criterion channel and streamed at least one piece of content between sept 27 2022 – dec 27 2024, go file a claim and get your bag! claim submissions are open through aug 19

[specialagentartemis]

I may have ended up going into tech, but getting a pre-law degree and working for attorneys for a few years repeatedly saved me from getting totally ripped off in my early 20s. So many charlatans are only able to get away with their bullshit because they expect you to not know what your rights are or how to create a paper trail.

I once had a landlord try to withhold my entire security deposit after I moved out despite leaving the place in good shape. Just by writing a letter that A) cited the state statute saying a landlord must provide an itemized list with invoices for any repairs they deduct from a tenant’s security deposit, B) bluffed by declaring my intention to file suit if they did not (and cited the same statute again, which says that tenants are entitled to recover DOUBLE what the landlord withheld if they did so in bad faith) , and C) sending it via certified mail with return receipt (so they couldn’t claim not to have received it), they sent me back a check for like 2/3 of what they tried to withhold, plus the itemized list, plus an apology. I spent $2 on postage and half an hour on the letter and got back $300.

Another time, I got into a car accident (in which I was officially found not at fault) where the other person was driving a rental car. Over a year after the fact, I received a letter from some sketchy claims adjuster demanding immediate payment for around $2000 in damages to the other car. Once I stopped panicking, I gathered the info from my old insurance claim and called the adjuster, and some very snippy lady told me the letter was sent in error and I should disregard it. I followed up with her by email restating exactly what she told me on the phone, instructing them to work with my insurance company on any future inquiries about the accident, and threatening to involve my attorney (which I did not have) if they ever directly contacted me about it again. And again, I got an apology and saved myself a crazy amount of money.

If you are getting ripped off (or sense you are about to be), you want to ask yourself two things:

1. Can I indisputably prove that I said/did this? That they said/did this? When?

2. What rights do I have under the law? (For a lot of issues, googling “can X legally do Y” + your jurisdiction is a good place to start.)

And then, if you’re in the right, bluff. Act like you’re going to sue even if you know you don’t have the time or resources to do it. They don’t know you won’t, and even if they think they’d win, they know that would cost them more in attorney’s fees than just letting this go.

[specialagentartemis]

Calling it, this is the fucking Information Age Collapse. Bronze Age Collapse 2.0. We have three or so generations of this shit while everything slowly breaks and then in 1k years archaeologists will be unearthing hard drives and cursing us for putting all our information in such shitty, easily degraded media instead of etching it into metal and stone like a sensible civilisation.

[specialagentartemis]

A lot of otherwise intelligent people are scared to criticize chatGPT because they think there is an observed pattern in history where new technology is always either good or inevitable, and people who are skeptical of new technology always look like fools, and they are scared to look foolish when AI is The New Technology That Revolutionized Everything.

I am not scared of any of that nonsense. The first reason, is that chatGPT isn't a "new technology" at all, both because it is just a scaled-up version of stuff that already existed, and because "technology" implies a thing that does something useful and ChatGPT doesn't appear to do anything useful.

The second reason, is that the people frightened of looking like Luddites assume that because we are all alive, the feared bad outcomes of new technology have never happened, and that is just completely false. New technologies have sometimes had awful impacts upon human quality of life and the environment. Sometimes, unilaterally inferior technologies have replaced superior technologies for economic or other reasons. Almost always new technologies have a mix of positive and negative impacts.

In fact, I think the uncontrolled, rapid growth of generative AI and large language models is happening because of the common belief that "new technology" is always inevitable and good. This is a new technology, therefore "developing" it is inherently leading towards Something. But instead, the amount of resources and environmental and human devastation is simply accelerating and accelerating. The new technology takes everything and gives us nothing.

[specialagentartemis]

see on one hand i wanna be like. i am holding your face gently and telling you all of these things are super cheap and they are not hard to find and if you possess functional hands and some level of dexterity this is something that involves minimal skill and minimal time

on the other hand it is objectively funny that everyone treats me like a witch for using a pair of pliers to join two pieces of metal with a third bit of metal (which is made for the express purpose of joining things together)

[specialagentartemis]

wasnt jkr the guy who got assassinated by the president? why is he bad?

i. ive been thinking about how to reply to this for like ten minutes. i can’t even add anything. it’s already perfect .

[specialagentartemis]

i simply don't think nonbinary people should have to see having our gender/s respected and acknowledged as a luxury. i think it's frankly sickening that that's the state of things tbh.

[specialagentartemis]

I love when I’m watching a tv show that’s supposed to show me something futuristic and sci fi and it’s just this stuff glued to something else

Like you can’t fool me. That’s my friend the tube. We are well acquanted

[specialagentartemis]

you can be a trans woman and be butch! you can be nonbinary and be butch! a cis woman can be butch! a trans man can be butch! intersex folks can be butch! apparently a cis man can be butch too or idk what Bruce Springsteen is doing. butch is a thing you can be :3

[specialagentartemis]

not a wolf, not a dog, but a secret third thing

[specialagentartemis]

100/7 is 14.3. Statistically, each option should be 14.3%. In reality, as of right now, they range from 10.5%-17.7%, which is about 3% on each side (and in fact two of them are 14.4%!) and at first glance to me seems to be normal random variation.

But gut instincts on statistics can be deceiving, so I actually got curious and calculated the standard deviation and the variance. (I’m not actually sure what tests to use for analysis of variance or population correlations that aren’t based on means, so this’ll have to do to see if any are notably outliers.) The standard deviation is 2.32, so Wednesday is a bit higher than that and Saturday is a bit lower than that—an interesting observation! It could be influenced by people going “haha yeah I’m full of woe/man I don’t want to work hard for a living” but with overall this is a mostly unsurprising distribution.

It's a little surprising that the "Monday's child is fair of face" nursery rhyme never caught on as an arbitrary personality-assigner in the same way astrology did. It makes the same amount of sense.

[specialagentartemis]

it's insane how normalized 3d printing is i don't think people born post 2005 can comprehend how fantastical "appearing things with machines" was as an idea. kind of like cryogenics or VR indistinguishable from being somewhere. like i remember learning about 3d printing about 10 years ago and feeling like it was a little bit sci fi teletransportation magic like it was truly a mind=blown technological moment and now it's just like. do you want to buy this figurine of dawyne the rock johnson as pikachu on etsy

[specialagentartemis]

A ban has not happened yet. Please note the following from the Reuters article on this:

The foundation said if it was subject to so-called Category 1 duties – which would require Wikipedia's users and contributors' identities to be verified – it would need to drastically reduce the number of British users who can access the site.

Please read the ruling proper.

Again, from the Reuters article:

Judge Jeremy Johnson dismissed its case on Monday, but said the Wikimedia Foundation could bring a further challenge if regulator Ofcom "(impermissibly) concludes that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service". He added that his decision "does not give Ofcom and the Secretary of State a green light to implement a regime that would significantly impede Wikipedia's operations".

This is, therefore, a good time for UK users to make their feelings about this known to their MPs. Repeatedly and loudly.