#I have no defense for this strawman I just made up btw!

[redhotarsenic]

The reason why I designed Valantinez with those blood tendrils/ribbons in the first place is because I love vash the stampede billowing coattails images so much that I wanted to make up a guy who I can draw so I can do that stuff All The Time

[elftwink]

re: "moralizing disliking bugs" I believe this is a strawman reference to people saying it's bad to say that specific pest bugs are a "worthless species," ignoring the key role they play in their ecosystem. not to drag you into any discourse, it's just that i have seen this whole conversation play out

see thats my feeling too, bc all the bug content i see is like "i love bugs theyre so cool 😎 🪲" "🐞 [photo of bug] here's what kind of bug this is!" and occasionally "i wish people would respect bugs more for their vital role in the ecosystem and stop reacting with automatic fear and disgust without knowing anything about the insect in question" or even "i wish people would stop saying cruel things about bugs when i mention my interest in them, and if you talked about any other animal this way it would be obvious why that isn't appropriate behaviour"

but the post in question specifically said it wasn't about those people, and that talking about their role in the ecosystem was NOT what they were complaining about. which implies a person who specifically is claiming that you are a bad person if you personally dislike bugs for any reason

i have NEVER seen this implied person and their position is inherently ridiculous to me. my impulse is to immediately agree with you and say this is a strawman of posts asking you to interrogate your own fear of bugs because so many people really do not know anything about insects and say things like "kill it with fire!!" when they see a perfectly harmless creature that moves in a way that makes them slightly uncomfortable. to me, defensiveness of this request is the biggest reason you would be compelled to make a post about how you're not a bad person if you dislike bugs and bugs can be dangerous and you have good reason to be scared (because to me this is so obvious it need not be stated. like if you brought up dog attacks in every discussion about dogs. just not relevant so it feels like a deflection)

but... if you showed me a post that literally said "you're actually a terrible person if you hate bugs btw yes even if you're allergic yes even if you're literally currently in the hospital getting treatment for an extremely serious insect bite if you don't love bugs you ARE going to hell and all the bugs will be in heaven and the live ones will dance over your grave when you die which is hopefully soon" id be like 'yeah of course you'd be on here'. like. typical opinion in the replies of a post with 25k notes. but also that's how i talk about people who dislike carly rae jepsen so. actually i think i made my hypothetical post too funny because i would reblog that if it was on my dash

what im trying to say is: because of the nature of this site i cannot rule out that there does exist people who will send you anon hate for your personal dislike of bugs—even if you express it on your own blog without bothering anyone who does like bugs and making several disclaimers about the importance of bugs to the environment and what have you—even if ive never seen them and cannot imagine anyone sincerely acting that way. because people on this website sincerely believe a great many opinions that would literally never naturally occur to me. what i will say is that i hope this person and i continue to travel onwards on our journeys, blissfully unaware of each other forevermore

[chiripepe]

I just spend like almost 2 hours watching this fucking opportunist clown Laci Green interview both Meghan Murphy and ContraPoints about radical feminism and transgenderism and neither of them seemed to pick up on the fact that Laci was essentially setting the tone of the 'debate' by constantly chipping away at both of their perspectives because her own politics sit squarely on the lap of her conservative upbringing. This woman makes such a fucking scene out of playing this kind of... liberal middle of the road worthless moderate... she knows all the terminology, terms that have been developed BY marginalized people to position their gotdamn oppression as if she in any shape or form gives a flying fuck any about that. All the while she's projecting this super fake hyper friendliness and almost squealing, tbh. Neither of them shot anything back at her, especially ContraPoints. Murphy stood by her guns whenever Green used her shit in an attempt to declaw radical feminism, which is the only feminism that's ever fucking mattered, but would not go a step BEYOND that.

The most telling thing about the ‘debate’ is how Laci centered the differences between what Contra and Murphy were saying as if there’s some massive gulf that separates them when there clearly isn’t, they have more in common with each other than they do with Laci herself who would take ANY opportunity to pander to her newfound reactionary audience, which is fucking pounding her Patreon with cash, btw, by undermining what both of them had to say in the most passive but effective way possible. At one point she even cut off Contra when he worked up the balls to actually talk about the difference between how women and trans people are actually affected by the patriarchal power structure, which matters. That ACTUALLY matters, folks who don’t want to be reminded of that, that defensiveness is not analogous to actual structural oppression...

They keep falling for this shit and I’m especially disappointed in Contra, cuz just recently he did a whole interview with fucking Sargon. I think this guy might just be an opportunist tryna make a buck because he should be very aware that man made an entire career out of harassing women. What is there to gain from that? Other than presenting Sargon as somebody worth having a good faith exchange with about issues he knows nothing about but is constantly railing against and strawmanning to fuck and back? Are these folks unaware that the entire fucking line of ‘open dialogue’ the right is always going on about is complete bullshit because it’s simply a mechanism for painting those on the left, especially folks who actually have something to say about actual issues affecting marginalized people, as unreasonable for being unwilling to have ostensibly good faith conversations with people who want to prevent them from escaping oppressive systems?

I was surprised at Murphy as well but I know very little about her other than she is the editor of Feminist Current and her radical feminism is VERY trans exclusionary. Though the things she had were relatively mild compared to folks on the right. She made me think though, because it seems undue amounts of energy are spent attacking these women who have very little relative power to affect trans issues compared to the men who are dedicated to preventing all LGBT people from having any kind of movement towards equality in our society. Anyway, maybe she felt any platform that would give her visibility would be worth it but has she no idea about Green’s politics? I would have thought she’d have something to say about an actual pop feminist with finger depth interest in what feminism has EVER been concerned with... Odd...