#FDSignifier

[militantinremission]

To Our Young Warriors- The Lions & Lionesses of 2Day:

The New Black Consciousness Movement is 100 Miles & Running! Understand that White Supremacy doesn't have a New Game Plan; it's the Same Ole, SAME OLE! Please do Ur Research & study the tactics of CoIntelPro! The Powers That B traditionally INSERT a Narcissist or loud mouthed Megalomaniac as The Leader or 'Voice' of The Movement. Just know that WHENEVER U hear [overly] aggressive & irresponsible language from these Folks, Ur dealing w/ an Agent of Our downfall. Real Revolutionaries R METHODICAL; We understand how White Supremacy works, so We take a Slow & Steady Pace 2 achieve Our Goals. ONLY FOOLS RUSH IN! I see a number of Cats trying 2 gaslight Our Beloved Warriors into being yet another Crop of Political Prisoners; QUESTION EVERYTHING! Ask these Loud Mouths their 'End Game'! Hold their feet 2 The Fire. Real Ones have REAL ANSWERS!

-The Silverbacks R w/ U 2 Our DYING BREATH!

[junequeer]

I watched fdsignifier's video on the manosphere a while ago, and it's changed how I look at identity politics and discourse.

He makes the argument that we as a society tend to look at straight, white, cis men as the 'default' experience, but maybe we should instead look at it as an intersection of identities, the way we do with minorities. Instead seeing straight white cis men as the 'control group' to base all other identities and experiences off of, we should look at it as a cross-section of those things--straight, white, and cis as separate things that come together to form a person's experience. The same way we use intersectionality to understand a black queer woman's experience and identity.

And maybe this feels like a rebranded "white men are the most oppressed class" argument, but really, I think (and fdsignifier says) that seeing straight, cis, white men as the Default actually makes other intersectionality less effective. He also talks a lot about how the lack of support and understanding for straight, cis, white men as a class or identity leads to things like mass shooters, but I won't be talking about that (please watch his videos they're amazing)

But I think this leads into the discourse around trans men and transandrophobia.

The idea that straight, white, and cis mean are the Default experience, the un-oppressed experience, means that it is impossible to be oppressed for any of those things. Taking it further, a lot of people seem to act like being straight, white, cis, or a man cannot inform or influence someone's internal identity. It is the 'blank slate,' the thing you are before you know what you are. And if you stay that way, well... you are the Oppressor, and that is the only identity a lot of people seem to assign you. So the idea of trans men being oppressed is ridiculous and insulting, because being a Man is the Default. It is the Oppressor State, not an identity that influences your life in anyway other than rewarding privilege.

But if you take these things as being separate identities, as being separate aspects that intersect, then things change. If straight, white, cis, and man are all separate things that intersect to make a person's life experience, then we're able to see things with more nuance.

It's no longer "Man is an impressive class" and more "Men have a life experience explicitly informed by their maleness, the external perception of maleness that the world perceives, and the cross-section of other identities changes and informs this experience of maleness."

I just think a lot of misunderstanding about trans men-specific discrimination and transphobia would be cleared up if people stopped acting like being a man is the default, net zero, non-reactive identity.

Being a straight, white, cis man is not the default. It is not a yard stick to measure all other experiences against. It is it's own intersection of identities, with it's own experiences. And this means that changing some of those things--not being straight, or not being white, or not being cis--fundamentally changes the experience. And to act like it doesn't, acting like just being a man is close enough, you are ignoring reality. If identities are chemicals reacting to each other, then it's changing one of the chemicals and saying that the results should be the same.

It isn't.

[himejoshiangels]

I feel like blessed I feel like I've found treasure and magic is real like YIPPEEEEI think like no offense but full offense sooo many of the ppl who talked abt this beef did so w NOOOO cultural context or real interest/investment in rap n hiphop culture like I'm not gnna pretend to be the biggest rap connoisseur or whatever but the research and knowledge and most of all RESPECT for black art absent from soo many outsider discussions and this video essay is here to save me.like so many of yall don't know who the "not like us" in "not like us" is

[anansislibrary]

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[dappersautismcreature]

i am mad at this tiktok trend of video essay recommendations, and not just because i have a very very intense special interest in video essays and youtube commentary. -___- guyssss, a video essay does not have to be scary or unsettling to be a GOOD video essay. all of yalls reccs are like, 20-something minute videos about "gadagoobies left toe: a creepypasta turned real" and tbh thats like, a sphere of video 'essay'. imma say it, and imma be a lil time-elitist here, but 20 minutes is a video, not a video essay. if youve chosen a topic, and said topic cannot fill more than like half an hour, consider me unimpressed in either your research skills or topic choice. not to mention, again, horror internet video essays are like fuckin, 1/10th of the video essays out there. show me breadtube video essays, movie video essays, whatever the hell Jenny Nicholson is doing, Ro Ramdin, Contrapoints??

do yall want me to show you my spreadsheet O___O ill show u my fuckin spreadsheet, theres so much more out there besides your half furry sprites talking about internet horror from 2011 for 23 minutes.

my reccs? literally anything by Ladyknightthebrave. she has very very in depth and emotional video essays about media, including a big focus on holocaust media as she is Jewish. her Jojo Rabbit/The Book Thief video makes me cry EVERY time, and i cry like ten times a year. ough, she has a video about Cowboy Bebop that focuses SO MUCH on the music! A video essay about a bad holocaust movie where she literally interviews holocaust expertsss! Her video on MASH made me go watch the whole thing, same with Stargate. and gods, her video about Fleabag blew me away. just pleeease go check ANY of her videos out.

Jenny Nicholson. you want random? she's got it. she has a video where she reviews every single Land of Time movie, and theres a LOT of those. She deep dives into the brony fandom. etc etc. i know she's popular but still, theres a reason for that.

Contrapoints. absolutely gorgeous video making about politics, self, etc. and she's queer as hell, amazing. I just can't describe the depth she puts into her videos.

FDSignifier. a huge part of breadtube (or leftist youtube) who makes a lottt of excellent video essays on black masculinity. Big, full videos, with a good perspective to see if you are a white viewer.

CJ the X just has a ton of excellent video essays as well. They are very intellectual.

Ro Ramdin, my gods, most of her videos are not what i would call video essays, but she tows the line. Emotional, funny, to the point, amazingly shot, and compassionate to the bone.

i probably have more but here's my point, branch out, dont put non-horror video essays down. we get it, you watch gore on liveleak and draw ur edgy fursona with scars all over them. (was that harsh? sorry, just uhhh please consider perspective and the culture of creepypasta/horror online being a cesspool of self harm via forcing ones self to watch upsetting things)

[thoth-the-thoughtful]

I have mixed feelings about content creators as a whole.

I'm really glad that the internet has given every twitchy, couch potato, who consumes WAY too much television and Video games a means to profit from their leisure activities.

You can just blerb on tiktok or instagram about anime or 2000s CartoonNetwork and get paid by like-minded enthusiasts who want to hear other ppl talk about their favorite things

One the one hand this is good because it gives young ppl who can't sustain themselves in our fucked up US job economy a means of supporting themselves. Fuck traditional jobs anyway. Our terrible wages force ppl to make unconventional concessions to get by and I support that 100%. Make your money fam. By any means.

On the other hand this props up mindless consumerism and encourages these content creators not to gain any actual skills to sustain themselves in the event that their favorite platforms lose relevance or bann them for any random unexplained reason.

In the worst extreme, it allows talentless ppl to pretend they're celebrities and demand celebrity treatment when, unlike most celebrities, they aren't skilled or talented. And their fan bases are usually teenagers, children and young adults who want to emulate them.

This doesn't apply to online educators and video essayist like FDSignifier or comedians like RDC World or food and service critics like Keith Lee. But there's a reason I was able to situate these ppl in their own categories. Food critic, video essayist, game journalists, comedians, makeup artists. ect. These are jobs which require skill, forethought and talent.

But WAY too many ppl want the money and clout that comes with celebrity, while putting in non of the work necessary to be talented or skilled. This is how we get ppl like Kevin Samuels.

It doesn't matter to me how hard it was to get the angles and light right during your "slice of life" content episode where you go to the mall. You going to the mall isn't an activity worth the effort of vidoegraphing. It's mindless, talentless consumerism.

I pray for the youth.

[gianttunaring]

Just wanting to respond to your tags - I very much get where you're coming from, and I do want to clarify that I don't think the zero follower blog out there that sometimes says "I hate men" when frustrated is doing this. I don't believe a blame-based frame of mind is very helpful when trying to solve problems like these; blame tends to play into a cognitive bias where we point a finger at people rather than at patterns or behaviors, and every person is gonna get frustrated sometimes. It's even kind of a joke for gay guys to say, "Ugh, men are pigs" and such things. But these kids? I have met these kids, and they are not okay, and I DO see people talk DIRECTLY TO THEM THIS WAY. Not just random people, but friends. And not just friends, but often kids with disabilities like depression, or kids who live in poverty - kids who do not have the language to say what's wrong with their lives yet. And algorithms are a huge, and probably the biggest part of it, but algorithms don't make people directly talk to their friends this way; normalization of the behavior does. It's worth saying that the one form of oppression i see continually ignored when it comes to white boys is ablism. White boys are not supposed to be disabled, ever. White boys are not supposed to have depression that tells them they shouldn't even be alive, and if that's what they hear when somebody says, "Ugh, I wish all white boys would just die already," it is somehow never read as ablism to say, "well, he shouldn't take it that way. The world was made for him, so he should just cheer up and stop being an ass." If you're screaming into the void, or talking with friends for support, that's one thing. If you're making "This type of person is bad regardless of behavior or other factors" part of your every day speech, there are going to be consequences. And unfortunately, I do see that happen all too often. I've had friendgroups split because of it.

I see, I understand your point better now! I took your argument in bad faith and I completely agree, acting like a demographic is inherently bad does something to kids who have little understanding or stake in learning about the oppression of others. A part of me felt frustrated because lots of people in the tags of that post kept talking about how “the left doesn’t provide resources for these young men” which just doesn’t feel… true? (see: content creators like hbomberguy, contrapoints, philosophytube, fdsignifier, etc., people who care enough to break this shit down) And so often political movements shift to center whiteness (cough cough white feminism) that it’s sometimes difficult to see posts that “sympathize” (or at least humanize) those who often dehumanize people of color. As someone who’s felt stereotyped and objectified by my peers because I’m a person of color by a bunch of white kids, it’s hard to not see that post and not have alarm bells go off, but there’s clearly more nuance in the points they’re trying to make. I’m straying from the point. At the end of the day, kids need sympathy and understanding and care.

I think a part of it, at the end of the day, has to do with how political movements are branded into “left versus right” like there aren’t different sides to how identity politics affects people? Like, it is completely performative to act like the 6th grade white boy who genuinely seems to respect his peers is someone that should be blamed for an entire demographic’s oppression, and adults shouldn’t act that way towards a kid. Racism is still seen as some sort of “inherent evil” or whatever that means. And yeah, it is more productive to shift more focus towards how patterns of thinking and behavior affect and uphold systemic injustice.

All this talk reminds me of this Tiktok (ik that sounds bad but please bear with me) I saw of this person talking about the ways communities are defined, like how ones more centered on the validity of an identity will always turn against itself (posted below)

And the creator points out a lot of flaws with the ways “community” is defined. You see this everywhere with shit like the “he/him lesbians” debate (non-binary lesbians exist) or “are ace/aro people a part of the queer community” and other pointless infighting that I don’t have the energy to get into.

Thank you for being civil with me, and I apologize for dumping all of that into the tags of your post. Have a good day/night/afternoon!

[intransheart]

Listen to #219 Black Male Agenda feat Fiq @fdsignifier He speaks with @DiamondStylz about Black masculinity, LGBTQ & Cishet male clashes, and our perspective agendas #PodcastAndChill pod.link/1293033444 We are a trans podcast that covers #queer current events and politics from a pro black feminist lens. Follow. Listen. Share #blackpodcast #transwomen #transmen #blackfeminism #transnews #transgender #blackmen #dopeblackpods #patriarchy https://www.instagram.com/p/CZyiSnUONkv/?utm_medium=tumblr