#I'm not even going to bother going into the nuances of how the community itself affected psychotic people

[anti-transphobia]

I have so many rants about the kin community saved up. I'm not anti kin as in the initial form of it but I'm anti all the bullshit that's come from ableists mocking it. Like non psychotics mocked psychotic people endlessly and then decided to as a joke invade their community and steal their terms all the while mocking people who take it "too seriously" and continually pushed the psychotic people out until they were forced to eventually make new terms like "delusional attachment"

Huge rant about the past 5-10 years of kin community stuff on Tumblr incoming. Including a LOT of reality checking. Be warned

I see a lot of arguments from non psychotic people that like to "kin" that its not a psychotic thing. And hell, I've seen it from actually psychotic people who do kin who say it too! But while the ableism was evil and unwarranted, what was being said was true: it is a delusion. That is a fact. And part of the old community was....generally not acknowledging this. Because that's reality checking. Which can be dangerous. But the facts still remain - it was a mostly psychotic group. That doesn't make the beliefs any less real or important to the people involved. That's what a delusion is. And there's a lot of a deeper nuance to the kin community and psychosis and how to an extent it helped people with their delusions, but getting too involved made countless people worse. Double edged sword. I remember talking to many other psychotic people in the past who described their troubled relationship to a community that fed into delusions too much and could make it worse. But I'm not going to go into that right now.

Point is most kinners were either psychotic as a whole, part of a system and didn't realize it, had trauma that led to it being a coping mechanism, or hell even an animal regressor. It's a mentally ill thing, and that's okay! And there have always been people that struggled to acknowledge that, which I fully understand, because not only is that the nature of a delusion, but it really really sucks to be constantly bombarded with "it's not real, it's all in your head" and violent harassment from bigots and be told that yeah technically that's correct. Like a gay person being called gay as an insult. Just because it's correct it doesn't make it any less homophobic to mock someone for it. Doesn't mean the response needs to be to deny it though (though once again - I understand delusional people denying it because THAT'S LITERALLY PART OF DELUSIONS. Many people don't acknowledge it's a delusion until they've been out of the community for a while and have gotten better about it, from my experience)

I hate that I have to establish that it's a psychotic thing so hard but I do. Because people want to ignore it. Non psychotics want to downplay their role in what happened to the community. They made fun of kinners. They mocked a group of mentally ill people that were simply too weird for them. "I kin this" wasn't a pro kin joke. It was using that term to reference and make fun of otherkin by saying it whenever you related to something. This idea of "it's just relating to a character" became so pervasive that non psychotic people started to "kin"! They'd say they relate to a character (perfectly normal!!!) or have a strong attachment to one (perfectly normal esp for autistics!!!) and put them in a "kin list"!! So in that sense yeah the "kin" community is non psychotic because non psychotic people started using it for fun. As a joke

They even took "no doubles". Yeah. No doubles is ridiculous in a lot of contexts. Because that context was non psychotics taking it. Psychotic fictionkin said no doubles because it's a fucking delusion. And seeing someone else say they're the same person as you is one, reality checking, and two, *god damned terrifying*. Plenty of psychotic people are paranoid, that only makes it so much worse! "No doubles" was for mental safety. But of course down the line it just meant "I'm the boss of this character you're not allowed to like them as much as I do". It was entitlement. Sheer entitlement from non psychotics who saw the term, didn't even care to understand why people actually said it, and took it for their petty bullshit

The community grew more and more into people who either used kins as a completely lighthearted joke or just to mean characters they're really attached to/are part of their special interests. The problem isn't that people felt deep connections to characters. That's okay. The problem is taking another community's terms to do it. The problem is saying you're kin but then mocking the people who are "too" into it. The problem is kin being reduced to "relatable" so badly that people had to start using IRLs/delusional attachments. To start EMPHASIZING that it was a PSYCHOTIC ONLY THING. People have to beg to not be called kin now because the non psychotic associations make people not take it as seriously as it needs to be. Whether they were never part of the kin community before things got so much worse and genuinely don't know that it did used to be for them, or they are one of the people that were and were forced to abandon their old language. Regardless it's happened. And it's infuriating

I'm tired of non psychotics denying this history. Especially because I'm only referring to events that happened within the past 6-10 years. Not even the older history. Just the fairly recent stuff. They want to hold no accountability. They don't want to acknowledge that their "kinnie" jokes have always just been ableism. They don't want to remember that before they made their kin list, they mocked people for thinking they were animals. Take some accountability. Stop making shitty jokes. Even though there are PLENTY of people who still use kin genuinely, who still have a community, the damage has been done. They have to use disclaimers like "no kin for fun". And unlike the rest of you, still have to be careful and live in fear of harassment

[tewwor]

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send🍒 for nice words >:) ( accepting ) — whoever sent this, ilu

anon, you're so goated 4 this. gotta crack my hand knuckles and brain knuckles for this because WHEW....... i do have that many folks i'd love to yap about in no particular order. also, this is so long — that's my only warning ❤️️

🍒 @desalvar idc if we've only written 1 thing together. i don't care if we haven't chatted an exuberant amount. i'm here to say i love nik sm and i love how passionate you are about him. those hcs i see floating around? eat them up instantly. i cannot wait to yap and explore more no matter how long it takes!!!!!!

🍒 @interxstitial YAINT SLICK. I SAW THAT OTHER ASK SO I MUST PUT YOU ON BLAST about how much i've come to cherish you. fr fr i haven't hehe'd haha'd with a relatively newish mutual this fast in a Long time. but you take the cake. the entire bakery, even. the way you just... okay, look, i said it literally when i first imed you, but your verses are so CHEFS KISS GOOD. THE WAY YOU WRITE IS SO INCREDIBLY GOOD. JIWON AS A ENTIRE CHARACTER IS SO SENSATIONAL.

you're so silly, he's so silly, we're all so silly together. the marked literally became a whole ass community because of your enthusiasm. it genuinely encouraged me to not hold back and continue to yap about all of their stupid nuanced dynamics. and the way we have soooooo many threads together, but they all feel different? juniper's just babey!!!! he's the marked's babey!!!!! don't even get me started on ravi.... i did not think anyone would pick him up by the scruff and hang onto that bro frat man bro. hes so ridiculous but you RAN WITH IT AND WE KEPT SPRINTING. you're amazing, i'm so so happy i followed you all those months ago ❤️️❤️️❤️️❤️️

🍒 @gollldrush okay, not going to lie. you're currently an inspiration for my writing. there, i said it. you're so well-rounded with so many genres — like how can you write the most visceral angst, fluff, action, and eerily atmospheric threads? hello? i'm knocking on your blog door, teach me?????? i absolutely adore leo and ellory both SO much. but the way you write rilen specifically has me fascinated.

also, not to mention, it's a field day to chat with you in the best way possible. you're SO nice and you, too, have contributed greatly to the inner dynamics of the marked. i can't wait to see what other shenanigans we come up in the future ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

🍒 @justsurvival KEVA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! gosh. DARN. sorry if this comes across as too much, but i was so incredibly excited to see you back. would also like to thank the stars for aligning, because i literally got flashbacks to hatsune miku ORYN THE OTHER DAY OUT OF NOWHERE? the picture... haunts me....... anyways. you're a phenomenal writer across the board. you're so fun to chat with and your creativity's off the fucking charts. when i said i couldn't pick who to write a starter for, i meant it. the concepts are all so GOOD it amkes me ( wails on the floor )

🍒 @cordoliae vic, this is my official appreciate blog post tweet story. i cannot for the life of me... even begin to explain / do justice to how wonderful you are. like, as a person AND a writer — i am bowing down at the steepest degree. your writing is TOP TIER and it has influenced my writing so, so much. a lot of the prosier things i type has 10000% been from our earlier threads where mister no-good chanyeol plonked himself in baby jail to bother THE love his life 💗

also, idk if i've ever told you this but i got into botw because of you. like off to the sidelines, i got that game to relive some nostalgia and try to understand that world more and got dunked into getting lost in everything for an eternity. i would also like to POINT OUT that your understanding of ANY canon you write floors me. vincenzo? that's quite literally him pulled from the kdrama itself. BONGGIL? THAT'S HIM DIRECTLY FROM THE SCREEN ITSELF — ACTUALLY? I would like to also point out how ecstatic i was when you reached out about mutually loving exh.uma. i quite literally haven't tunneled that fast before, and while my focus is severally scattered right now — the best shamans are still in my brain. also, you're one of the 3 people that got me into op, so thank you sm for that ♡♡

🍒 @huntershowl ( kicks thru the wall big bird style ). raine... you.. i cannot describe everything i adore about you, but i sure can try. let's get the obvious out of the way, alright? seph, the creature that you are........ fantastic.. feral..... so for real with the cards you've been dealt............. i want to dub you and seph as THE ones that got me to progress jie so much. also litho HELLO? NOT TO DRAG THAT BEATEN HORSE BACK IN but i'm so serious when i say this, he's like so close to being a single ship with seph. highkey the reason why he only crawls out of his stupid cave when seph's around. it still might end up happening, but either way — the influence and sheer devotion and love he has for seph clocks me over the head every single time.

NOW FOR THE NEWERISH DEVELOPMENT. i might not be immersed in jj.k and only have a pinky toe dipped into wb / bn.ha BUT i know you're taking everything and everyone by storm. anytime i see one of your posts about anxiety ( which is so totally understandable ), i'd like to try and reassure you that there's an entire group of folks that love and adore your version of canons and ocs. and if anyone else tries to muck around like a fucking buffoon, i'll send a mathematical plague upon them i s2g

🍒 @xinxiins this is my confession.... not featuring usher, hi, it's just me. i'm clearing out the entire room to say that you have reconnected jie with his culture and i am so forever grateful for that. his slice of life verse version is currently hibernating, but i Did Not Forget about our yapping and immersion in a community he so desperately wanted to be a part of. and as someone that's also struggled with that connection, i thank you so so so SO much from the bottom of my heart. it's truly so incredibly special to have experienced that, and i hope to continue that in the future!!!!!!!!!!!! ALSO, YOUR WRITING IS BREATHTAKING. I FEEL LIKE THAT'S A GIVEN BUT I HAVE TO SAY IT ANYWAYS. AND YOU'RE A GEM TO TALK TO ❣❣❣❣❣❣❣

🍒 @fangmother don't mind me scooting on by, but hi, yes, hello. i know we recently started to interact, but a) love the way you write b) love the lore you have surrounding rainer b.1) i was so immersed reading up on her bio / verses — like, truly, thank you for the meal c) cannot wait to explore more dynamics because already, i'm buckled up for more replies and will eventually reach out just to yap yap yap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

🍒 @miidnighters brodie.... 100 golden stars for you. just.. gosh..... i can say with full confidence, i will never tire of your characters ever. i don't care if we have a million dynamics with the x amount of characters i have. i still want more!!!!!!!!! you're so talented. honestly very inspirational. idr if i told you this before, but you are also 100000% part of the reason why i got so involved with the marked. OH? ALSO? LETS NOT FORGET HARBORVIEW TOO? before the marked consumed me BUT HELLO???? FLYNN IS HARBORVIEW'S COLLECTIVE GROWN MAN BUT ALSO BABEY. ahem, anyways, i've learned so many new things about my own characters because of our interactions. and i always, always wish the best for you / am so grateful we're pals.

🍒 @catfcng going to be so fr, idk most of the fandoms you run with but i want to ( eventually )!!!!!!!!!! there's just something so captivating with the way you write and bring attention to your characters in the best way possible. also? your blog's entire aesthetic is So Good. i hope to write more with you and will always cheer loudly from the sidelines !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[anyroads]

It's really difficult to get leftists in the U.S. to understand this, not just people who've been traumatized by Christianity, but also people who didn't grow up religious at all. They think they can't be culturally Christian if they didn't grow up going to church, and I think there's a significant lack of questioning of culture in general.

If you live in the U.S. then you hear religious ideas discussed in public forums regularly. The right has forced Christian topics into mainstream debate for decades. Christianity and culture are inseparable in the U.S., but that's not what cultural Christianity means, at its core. What it means - and I say this because I've see way too many people on this hellsite misunderstand - is that the basic culture of the country is informed by the religious ideas and interpretations of the people who that culture traces back to and is built on. You can perpetuate cultural Christianity without being affiliated with Christian institutions or communities or even being Christian at all. There is a specifically Calvinist approach to how ideas are discussed in the U.S. - even secular ones - and the ways in which engaging with others is socially acceptable. The more you read up on Calvinism and how the early Puritans interpreted it, the more you recognize contemporary American culture, political discourse, and the way the political left polices itself. Everything in the thread above is an accurate and brilliant assessment of this.

I also think it's important to mention the impact of the Bush era on all of this. Their political PR machine was devastatingly effective. Years before Twitter they boiled down political rhetoric to short sound bites. They did this by sending their representatives out to news shows, interviews, campaign events, basically any public forum, and ensuring that on any given issue every one of those people would repeat the prescribed sound bite or phrase that had been pre-written for them. They argued their positions clearly, succinctly, and ensured it was saved in people's memories through the power of repetition. If they were asked diverging questions their job was to repeat the sound bite and avoid engaging with any other probing questions. It was infuriating, because this appealed to their own voter base (the single-issue Christians) while also making it difficult, if not impossible, for their opponents to offer counter arguments, because once you offer people an idea that's terse, clean, and easy to remember, most won't be interested in a complex and nuanced counter-perspective. It also appealed to people who weren't interested in politics but found it hard to remain neutral in a time of war, because it validated their ignorance while giving them easy to remember sound bites to regurgitate. To round this out, Bush constantly pushed the idea that belief isn't exclusive to religious faith, but can also be the basis of convictions in all aspects of life. The vibe was, "I don't have to know if I'm right, I just have to feel like I am."

Meanwhile, they defunded education aggressively, so after 8 years of pushing these ideas and changing the cultural narrative and approach to discourse in horrifically effective ways, they had public schools nationwide churning out students who had been deprived of basic media literacy skills and critical thinking skills, who are thus much easier to appeal to with simplistic ideas and lack of nuance. This, coupled with the cultural Calvinism of the U.S., is what enabled social media to succeed in the format it has. Before Facebook there was Friendster, which started with the format of leaving "testimonials" on friends' pages. Instagram started out with people sharing photos of their daily lives. Facebook itself took more than a leaf out of Friendster's book (including aesthetic and branding).

Social media started out as a way for people to connect with each other, catch up with old friends they otherwise wouldn't have bothered to find, share their lives, and be nice to each other. As it slowly shifted to the dogpiling, insecurity breeding, soulless money-grabbing hellscape these sites are now most people didn't question it, because they were used to not questioning. As fake news and propaganda became widespread, people didn't get angry at being deceived, or log off a site that was feeding them lies, because most of them had internalized the ideas the Bush administration sold them: what they read was true because they believed it was, the actual truth was irrelevant because their personal beliefs were just as valid as facts. They liked the dopamine hit they chased on social media, and they could validate themselves enough to continue.

And the left is not immune from this. The approach to social justice work that entails posturing and moral policing is clearly rooted in Calvinism, but the wilful lack of nuance and the dismissal of anyone who dares to suggest considering the complex aspects of an issue are rooted in how the Bush administration established a new standard for political discourse. In the same way Meryl Streep dresses down Anne Hathaway in Devil Wears Prada by telling her that as disconnected as she thinks she is from fashion, the sweater she's wearing was chosen for her by the very people in that room, every single person in the U.S. in the last quarter of a century has had their political engagement approach chosen for them by Karl Rove, including leftists and anarchists and even tankies. Younger millenials and Gen Z have a lot to unpack and unlearn, because they're the ones who grew up in the underfunded schools that stopped teaching critical thinking and media literacy. They, like every other generation of Americans, are not immune to the internalized Calvinism that is the foundation of U.S. culture. And because of the way American culture influences the world, especially since the internet has connected it more, the influence of these factors on how political issues are discussed has gone far beyond just the U.S.

I genuinely believe that a lot of the reason that the American left is so ineffectual and self-sabotaging is because of how deeply and unrepentantly calvinist it is.

[hillbillyoracle]

If your boundary is such a hard line that someone can’t so much as have a feeling that might be mistaken as a challenge, that’s not a boundary - that’s a threat. 

my bounderies: don't abuse me, rape me, or be a Bigot to me.

So...i should let people think it's a challenge to break me as a person? That's not fucking ok. Bounderies are important.

Every time that post gets more traction, I get messages like these. I get frustrated folks are so willfully misinterpreting what it means.

But on the flip side, they're really good artifacts of why the mindset I'm pushing back against is so wildly shitty.

People hear anything suggesting nuance, contextualizing, or appropriateness with regards to boundaries and instantly take it as a threat.

And I get that a lot of that comes from individual trauma and for a certain phase of recovery is very understandable and even encouraged.

But on a community scale, this black and white thinking that boundaries are always good and nuance is bad means people can weaponize what's effectively a neutral tool to situate their behaviors as morally good and other people's feelings as bad. Which just replicates oppressive systems inside our communities that devalue individual humans and incentivize a certain kind of rhetoric. It's hot garbage nonsense.

This is also the classic tactic - "my boundaries are the bare minimum broad categories I don't bother to define in concrete terms". So when someone says something merely harsh or unpleasant, it's easily classifiable as abuse and someone is reasonable and morally justified in their anger. They can rally a community into punishing or ostracizing a person over it. And now everyone in that community, whether they admit it or not, is now a little more afraid of interacting which becomes a barrier to community strength and intimacy.

Other people have developed much better critiques of cancel culture and how it's very much an extension of the state's influence even in Leftist and progressive spaces - check out Clementine Morrigan's "Fuck the Police Means We Don't Act Like Cops To Each Other" zine and "Fucking Canceled" podcast for more. But one thing I've not seen touched on as much is the intersection of how psychology still hasn't fully rid itself of it's carceral past and how the languages it develops can sync quite nicely cancel culture for it's own purposes.

Which brings me back to my whole point with that post - be mindful in the ways in which you use that language, especially with people who are not threats. One thing I hate about the boundary language is that it - by it's very nature - conjures images and sensations of an impending threat and a need to rally resources to defend. Which isn't very healing for those of us who've survived some truly awful shit. To go around feeling like so many people are on the same level as our worst abusers is living in hell and retraumatizing in it's own way.

An alternative? I'm not sure what others use, but I've been switching to evaluating needs, values, and concrete harms. What are my and the other person's needs right now and how are we attempting to meet them? What are our values and how are they in conflict? What concrete harms do we pose to each other if any? It might not give me the moral thrill of boundary language but you know what it does do? Calms my nervous system and helps me feel capable of maintaining relationships AND avoiding harm/getting my needs met.

TL;DR: Anon, I know this kind of anger might feel empowering, but I'd really urge you to reflect on a better outlet for it. I genuinely don't know how you took what effectively amounts to "stop taking people having their own feelings as challenges to your boundaries when it's not" and made it "so I just shouldn't have boundaries?" If your boundaries become pointless should you let folks have their own feelings about them - or you can't distinguish between feelings and behavior - there are larger issues. Please go do your healing some place that isn't my inbox.

[theelliottsmiths]

I honestly didn't really know where else to send this, so I'm sorry if this is a bit strange. I've been in the R+ fandom since I was like, 11, and have always really looked up to Till because of his ability to make music and poetry from his hardest moments, as well as the other members of the band for their talent and perseverance. Now after all the new Lindemann videos, Till The End, and the whole blood/piss thing, I'm starting to feel a bit icky for lack of a better word. (cont)

Apologies if this sounds... preachy. Consider ignoring me and just turning into a Richard/Emigrate Stan account exclusively. Or Flake, he's not very problematic and there's a lot to dive into.

This is completely understandable and I'm sorry you're having to experience it. Because of the nature of Special Interests/hyperfixations and just general feelings of dependance, I guess you could say, anything disappointing or otherwise bothersome is going to be harder to ignore. That's mostly just me expressing my personal experiences with similar things (including the recent Till stuff) but I'm getting the same vibe from this and I'm autistic, swapping experiences is kind of how we empathise.

Out of curiosity, have you tried just writing a big long ramble about how it makes you feel and why etc and just have a good deep messy cathartic rant? In a word document you can delete, or to me, or on your blog, or whatever else just really laying into him and his decisions and why it's bothering you.

For the record, I think this comes with idolising or even just liking pretty much anyone. There is always a point when you realise there's something disappointing because people are multifaceted and morally grey and generally very strange creatures. The things you liked and admired are still there. Their history hasn't changed just because Till has been making some iffy decisions. In some ways I think that's what a lot of the recent stuff is about, him trying to show that idolisation never turns out well because humans are human and it's hard to see the nuance when you're eleven so it can be even more jarring with that background.

It's totally possible to separate the art from the artist in this case: Till being Nasty doesn't actually change his poetry or his work with Rammstein. If it feels necessary you can do what we Sylvia Plath/Anne Sexton/HP Lovecraft fans do to acknowledge the unsavoury aspects whilst still enjoying the art itself, though in his case it's not bigotry or abuse, it's just Grossness, which is arguably easier to reconcile.

You could also try just completely blocking that side of it off and making yourself a bubble of the stuff you still enjoy: Tumblr is great for being able to curate your experiences so blacklisting words like Messer or Peter Tägtgren (which would hide Lindemann content without also hiding Till Lindemann) might be enough to give you space and time to digest it, or just generally distance yourself from it. If you'd like me to tag certain things so they're blockable I can do that. You don't have to engage with anything you don't want to.

If you do decide to leave it'd probably be a good idea not to delete blogs/accounts or anything since it's been such a longstanding thing you've invested a lot in and it's something you could potentially work through and come to some kind of peace with, if that makes sense. You have more options if you just leave it active and just ignore it than if you delete and regret it later.

At least a little bit of this is selfish, it hurts to see someone leave a community you love and it'd be sad for a lot of people to see you go, so I guess keep that bias in mind as you read my lukewarm I Think I'm Always Right take.

I love you and I hope you can find a way to reconcile or separate or whatever else will be most beneficial to your happiness.

[roxilalonde]

Whilst I love the queer rep characters like Klaus give us, I'm fucking sick of queer characters, especially if they're gnc, always being the "devient" characters. We are more than just devients. I feel like it feeds into a harmful, stereotypical narrative. Idk. Like, even Hogarth in Jessica Jones who is a lawyer still has that whole bit where she hires sex workers and just... I appreciate characters having nuances and being imperfect but I wanna see queer characters who are socially acceptable

i get it. klaus reads as an uncomfortable character for me in a number of ways, not the least of which was that he’s a drug addict, which is a narrative that’s not... great.... to give to your only gay character, for reasons that should have been apparent to anyone doing the appropriate amount of research beforehand.

it’s a harmful narrative that has roots in the AIDS crisis, where the stigmatization of HIV and AIDS was heavily tied to gay men, since HIV & AIDS were transmitted primarily through the use of unclean needles (and drug use is and has historically been statistically higher in LGBT communities). of course, i’ll give the writers the benefit of the doubt and assume they didn’t know that, but it’s still probably where their subconscious association of being gay and doing drugs comes from. the fact that klaus is popping pills instead of shooting up doesn’t exactly help, given that the connotations of illicit substance abuse, which itself is a fictional (and ONLY fictional, to be clear) marker of deviancy or socially unacceptable behavior, is still there.

and the thing is, a lot of that bad representation happens at the subconscious level! that’s why it’s so hard to catch! writers don’t think about why they associate being gay with being an addict, they just write the character and then don’t screen it for sensitivity because they feel so good about the representation they don’t bother to ask whether it’s good rep or not. which is dangerous, because in critiquing them, often they’ll get defensive and withdraw from writing representation at all out of fear of messing up. but on the other hand, bad representation doesn’t really help us in the popular view. these subconscious associations do not crystallize out of nowhere -- the reason the writers of UA associated being gay with substance abuse is because of the multitude of characters just like klaus that they’ve have read and inadvertently internalized over the years. in writing him as they have, they are contributing to that trend, and it’s not healthy, nor will it help represent us well to their audience. character flaws are one thing; character flaws that play into malicious stereotypes about how a group thinks and behaves are another.

now, of course, gay drug addicts do exist, and their stories deserve to be told. but i think it’s a stretch to argue that klaus is a meaningful representation of that narrative, seeing as his grapple with drugs is a) a side plot given respectively little attention and no resolution besides ‘he’s sober now! isn’t that great?’ and b) not explored to much extent besides ‘trauma sometimes leads to addiction,’ which is, again, not a meaningful use of the character. the thing is, there’s a difference between writing a trope deliberately in order to explore it and writing a trope accidentally because of a lack of forethought. klaus reads as the latter.

and -- just to complicate this still further -- i like klaus! i think he’s funny and charismatic. he’s my favorite character, and even the somewhat ham-fisted addiction storyline wasn’t enough to ruin the scenes he has that are centered around his family, which are actually kind of sweet. he has enough of a personality outside of his addiction to constitute a good character for me. the fact that he’s gay is nice for me, because i’m very used to characters like him being coded as such, but the writers will often dance around the subject of his actual sexuality out of either fear of censorship or just plain reluctance to actually represent gay people (while still borrowing their aesthetics and mannerisms to make their character interesting). at the very least the Umbrella Academy writers had the decency to confirm that he is gay, and take a stab at representation. i know i certainly don’t speak for everyone on this subject, but personally i do think that writers can get points for trying, even if they mess up. so i’m probably going to watch season 2, and klaus is probably going to remain my favorite character, and i’m probably going to remain lowkey pissed about how he’s written, but hey! that’s what critique is for.

[but-thats-its-own-story]

Alright, I'mma take this on directly.

Given the above explanation from the top, my general understanding of the situation tumblr (and the rest of the internet at large) presently finds itself in seems to be relatively correct, with one caveat; Apparently payment processors (i.e. credit card companies) are a bigger threat to adult content than advertisers. Point taken.

While I'm sure a whole bunch of disenfranchised adult content creators who once found safe haven on this platform before being tossed out on the street would disagree with me on this,

the lack of literal porn on tumblr (in an internet age where it's apparently not feasible anymore) isn't the problem.

The problem is claiming you want a "more nuanced future" when all the 'community labels' feature does is make it easier for advertisers *credit card companies* to decide "hey, you know what, we don't really like artistic nudity or written erotica either, so how about you ban those too?"

Meanwhile the porn bots are just as spammy as ever, and the 'filtering' feature is still full of holes, while artists and uploaders who, and I can't stress this enough, remain compliant with the unchanged policy are still getting shadowbanned.

I want filters to work, I really do, but it wasn't all that long ago that users self-identifying their content as 'for mature audiences' to keep others safe from stuff they didn't want to see basically amounted to handing over the keys to lock them out of interaction with the rest of the platform. Maybe some people will fall for that again if you convince the userbase that porn is coming back to tumblr for 5 minutes (before clarifying that the policy itself hasn't changed), but I won't.

I understand advertisers *credit card companies* are forcing your hand, and I'll even give you that you probably can't afford the personnel you'd need to actually fairly regulate content with actual human eyes (you probably have your hands full with appeals from all the users with incorrectly-flagged blogs), but the target you're asking users to place on their own backs doesn't go away; users can't withdraw consent to be algorithmically targeted once the censorship treadmill grinds on and forces your hand again.

And then you'll blame us for complaining about it again like you did before and you're doing above literally right now.

You get one positive note before the bottom line: Giving users more precise control over what types of content is blocked, and more importantly how it is blocked, would be a huge step in the right direction, if the filters worked as intended in the first place. They don't. But it's still worth something.

But you've got to call a spade a spade.

Even if the policy itself hasn't changed (for better or worse) yet, to say the 'community labels' feature will accomplish something beyond making it easier for tumblr to comply with increasingly restrictive internet censorship in the future is just disingenuous.

And yes, that bothers me more than the lack of nuts.

It's great that you can show data to support the claim that you fight for your users,

but if fighting for your users doesn't extend to pushing back against the censorship treadmill when advertisers *credit card companies* inevitably decide they don't like 'icky drawings' and 'nasty words' either, then don't blame your userbase for "attacking companies" when "following legal and business realities" just means asking us to throw ourselves under a bus for you again.

For the sake of the only platform I consider worth using, I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

Why “Go Nuts, Show Nuts” Doesn’t Work in 2022

For those who don’t know or remember, Tumblr used to have a policy around porn that was literally “Go nuts, show nuts. Whatever.” That was memorable and hilarious, and for many people, Tumblr both hosted and helped with the discovery of a unique type of adult content.

In 2018, when Tumblr was owned by Verizon, they swung in the other direction and instituted an adult content ban that took out not only porn but also a ton of art and artists – including a ban on what must have been fun for a lawyer to write, female presenting nipples. This policy is currently still in place, though the Tumblr and Automattic teams are working to make it more open and common-sense, and the community labels launch is a first step toward that.

That said, no modern internet service in 2022 can have the rules that Tumblr did in 2007. I am personally extremely libertarian in terms of what consenting adults should be able to share, and I agree with “go nuts, show nuts” in principle, but the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible. Here’s why:

Credit card companies are anti-porn. You’ve probably heard how Pornhub can’t accept credit cards anymore. Or seen the new rules from Mastercard. Whatever crypto-utopia might come in the coming decades, today if you are blocked from banks, credit card processing, and financial services, you’re blocked from the modern economy. The vast majority of Automattic’s revenue comes from people buying our services and auto-renewing on credit cards, including the ads-free browsing upgrade that Tumblr recently launched. If we lost the ability to process credit cards, it wouldn’t just threaten Tumblr, but also the 2,000+ people in 97 countries that work at Automattic across all our products.

App stores, particularly Apple’s, are anti-porn. Tumblr started in 2007, the same year the iPhone was released. Originally, the iPhone didn’t have an App Store, and the speed of connectivity and quality of the screen meant that people didn’t use their smartphone very much and mostly interacted with Tumblr on the web, using desktop and laptop computers (really). Today 40% of our signups and 85% of our page views come from people on mobile apps, not on the web. Apple has its own rules for what’s allowed in their App Store, and the interpretation of those rules can vary depending on who is reviewing your app on any given day. Previous decisions on what’s allowed can be reversed any time you submit an app update, which we do several times a month. If Apple permanently banned Tumblr from the App Store, we’d probably have to shut the service down. If you want apps to allow more adult content, please lobby Apple. No one in the App Store has any effective power, even multi-hundred-billion companies like Facebook/Meta can be devastated when Apple changes its policies. Aside: Why do Twitter and Reddit get away with tons of super hardcore content? Ask Apple, because I don’t know. My guess is that Twitter and Reddit are too big for Apple to block so they decided to make an example out of Tumblr, which has “only” 102 million monthly visitors. Maybe Twitter gets blocked by Apple sometimes too but can’t talk about it because they’re a public company and it would scare investors.

There are lots of new rules around verifying consent and age in adult content. The rise of smartphones also means that everyone has a camera that can capture pictures and video at any time. Non-consensual sharing has grown exponentially and has been a huge problem on dedicated porn sites like Pornhub – and governments have rightly been expanding laws and regulations to make sure everyone being shown in online adult content is of legal age and has consented to the material being shared. Tumblr has no way to go back and identify the featured persons or the legality of every piece of adult content that was shared on the platform and taken down in 2018, nor does it have the resources or expertise to do that for new uploads.

Porn requires different service providers up and down the stack. In addition to a company primarily serving adult content not having access to normal financial services and being blocked by app stores, they also need specialized service providers – for example, for their bandwidth and network connections. Most traditional investors won’t fund primarily adult businesses, and may not even be allowed to by their LP agreements. (When Starbucks started selling alcohol at select stores, some investors were forced to sell their stock.)

If you wanted to start an adult social network in 2022, you’d need to be web-only on iOS and side load on Android, take payment in crypto, have a way to convert crypto to fiat for business operations without being blocked, do a ton of work in age and identity verification and compliance so you don’t go to jail, protect all of that identity information so you don’t dox your users, and make a ton of money. I estimate you’d need at least $7 million a year for every 1 million daily active users to support server storage and bandwidth (the GIFs and videos shared on Tumblr use a ton of both) in addition to hosting, moderation, compliance, and developer costs. 

I do hope that a dedicated service or company is started that will replace what people used to get from porn on Tumblr. It may already exist and I don’t know about it. They’ll have an uphill battle under current regimes, and if you think that’s a bad thing please try to change the regimes. Don’t attack companies following legal and business realities as they exist.

[cassatine]

Wait, I've been reading your posts on Macron (I'm not really well-versed in the nuances of French politics, so I may be getting something wrong here) but it seems you're saying that he's acting like a dictator, refusing to cede power, using the army to maintain his control... but when that scottish blogger cybersmith said it, you said that was wrong. Is Macron a tyrant or not? (also, I hope yor okay, some people have been hurt)

Yeah huh what “that scottish blogger” actually said, and I quote:

Does it not alarm you that Macron has announced his intention to rule your homeland and countrymen in perpetuity as an eternal dictator, even going so far as to proclaim himself a manifestation of divinity? Or do you still find this preferable to the possibility of a (humanely implemented) regime change carried out by concerned neighbour-states?

and

I did warn you about Macron. Now he has openly declared his intention to rule France as an immortal god-king.

and

He… Literally compared himself to a pagan sky-father. I’m not being a conspiracy theorist. He makes no secret of it now that he has won the election.

and

As a French person, would you be in favour of a New Reconquista to rescue the lands of Europe from Illuminati-Backed Jihadism? I am planning to ask my MP to bring this up on the House Of Commons (because of the upcoming GE in the UK) but it occurs to me that such an endeavour would necessarily start in France, and I hadn't discussed this with any French People. Do you think foreign intervention -from the Occidental nations that yet remain free- will be necessary to unseat the vile Satrap Macron? 

and, from an unanswered ask because I HAVE FUCKING LIMITS.

When I pointed out that your country would be better of under a monarch, or with externally-imposed regime change, you scoffed at me. Now the aspiring god-king is readying his merciless troops to slaughter your countrymen, cementing his iron rule with a mortar of blood and tears. I was correct, from the very beginning.

I mean I don’t want to sound mean, anon, but there is a difference between "Macron & his gvt are flirting with authoritarianism by exploiting the weakness of the Vth Republics institutions and of representative democracy because he’s fucked, with on one side a population that doesn’t want his reforms and on the other the private interests that helped him get where he is (+the actually hard-to-avoid obligations that come with being part of the EU)" and "immortal god-king” bullshit. 

I bolded the important parts. Look, what Macron & co are doing is gaming the system, so to speak (see first bolded part), and not to establish some kind of dictatorship headed by an immortal god-king or whatever, but because overall the french are chauvinists attached to their conception of social and economic justice who have been noping in the face of unchecked neoliberalism, and that’s no good for das kapital. Macron’s doing exactly what’s been done by many others -- he went from banking to public service, and he probably intends to go back to banking, and the point of his public stint isn’t politics or even ruling or power, it’s to enact reforms benefitting his class and open the door wide to that unchecked neoliberalism the general public doesn’t like much. His plans for Europe are in the continuity of this. 

But the thing is, Macron didn’t really do anything our previous gvts. didn’t do (beyond not bothering to hide his class disdain, which certainly helped to get people against him. most politicians at least have the sense to use lube before fucking us over, but his party is amazingly shitty on that end), he’s just... accelerated the cadence. And sure he got where he is and did what he’s been doing not without some very illegal shit, but mostly because systemically the conditions were already there for him or someone like him -- there’s this old joke that everyone here knows and that says it all: we don’t have a president, we have a king.

Now don’t get me wrong, what’s going on here is shitty, and I’m afraid because it’s far from over, but we still have quiiite a way to go before dictatorship (we do have counterpowers, even the Senate got in on it), and I hate to admit it but if Macron’s refusing to step down of like, his own initiative, there is no ongoing procedure or motion or whatever that would obligate him to. As to the army, that shit is scary af but again, there’s a nuance to make -- although I’m really fucking scared that they might end up firing on people during protests and the communication around their deployment at the last protest was abysmal, the gvt. doesn’t want them to fire. I’m afraid it will happen not in the sense that they will be ordered to fire, I’m not quite there yet, but in the sense that the Sentinelle (the concerned unit) are not trained for crowd control. The gvt. also doesn’t want to use them outside of the specific context of GJ protests (and yknow, their actual duties). The Sentinelle people are an anti-terrorism brigade, and calling them specifically is part of the ongoing effort to depict GJ as... well, terrorists, or at the very least definitely dangerous. 

It was also a gambit. They’re still hoping they’ll find THE thing to keep the GJ home, and the fact that they’re down to waving the threat of the army around (and again, I Worry, but that’s what putting the Sentinelle specifically where the GJ are not supposed to protest amounts to, abysmal communication notwithstanding) when people are already aware protesting might kill them (because it happened!!), among other ugly consequences is scary af, yes, but it’s also a sign that the gvt.’s options to maintain itself have dwindled something crazy. You call the army when you’re losing control, not when you have it. 

Because again, our man Manu is kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, he’s got the GJ and little popular support, and an actual politician would have to factor that. But on the other hand, that boy owes. He owes to those who helped put him where he is to defend their interests and who keep helping him so that he keeps doing exactly that. He can’t give the GJ what they want without losing that support, he can’t leave without losing that support, and without it he’s just plain fucked. 

So basically we’re in a complicated situation! The specters of full-blown authoritarianism, plutocratic dictatorship, and who knows what other horrors loom on the horizon. But so do others, like the specter of our victory, and now that we’ve seen it...

The thing is that we’ve won a huge battle already, because Macron was supposed to deliver a success story. He was supposed to reform the unreformable! To maintain the oh so practical ‘populism’ (ie. the far right and the left -- it’s not quite the same here as in the US, but we’re seeing a similar displacement of meaning wrt. the left, the far left and the ‘center’) vs ‘liberalism’ (ie. unchecked neoliberalism basically) pseudo-opposition, in which one is the only solution to the other, the only alternative! He was supposed to be the youthful, energic face of progressism, a Mozart of finance who would deliver where traditional politicians couldn’t. He was supposed to unite ze french beyond political and social divides (and he kinda did do that, ironically enough), and a bunch of shit besides. 

We fucked that up, and we fucked it up good. Most of the merit is his, though -- he got us to the current situation. He got us to people asking for his head (metaphorically), but more than that, he got us to realize what’s become a slogan: fin du monde, fin du mois, même combat -- end of the world, end of the month, same fight, and he got us talking about the relative merits of participative and representative democracy and how our institutions should work and for whom because collective intelligence is actually a thing and we realized he is a symptom and it’s the root we need to go after. Not that no one knew it before, but the trajectory from protests against an oil tax to the protests we have now, that’s a victory unto itself.  

Anyway, I forgot the point somewhere, but overall, going from the symbolic “jupiterian presidency” WHICH IS WHAT TCS WAS REFERRING TO FFS to the painfully literal “Macron has announced his intention to rule your homeland and countrymen in perpetuity as an eternal dictator, even going so far as to proclaim himself a manifestation of divinity“ etc etc is still a really bad take (and I’m not Going There but “New Reconquista” is not an innocuous term). Reality is weird and shitty enough as it is, thanks.

[izzyovercoffee]

Reading through all of your stuff about mando'a and toxic masculinity etc...has it ever bothered you that the word for sheath is an awful lot like the word for woman? Cause that bothers me. Idk if I'm reading too much into it or if it's because I'm used to looking for subconscious sexism stuff in languages.

Oh yes, lmao … this has bothered me for a very, very long time. It’s very … well, it’s very offensive. There isn’t any which-way about it, and it’s not subtle whatsoever. I actually find it fairly upsetting, in the way that once you actually see misogyny for what it is, it’s impossible to then return to being blind to it.

So, I’m gonna do what I do best, and come up with an alternative word first, and then break down why that word in the mando’a dictionary is a shitty fucking word and just an overall shitty thing to do that has no context and no basis in the language, and why it has no place in mando’a. 

Mostly because I intend to put the breakdown on why the word sheath, derived from the word for woman, is fucked up beneath a cut in the event people don’t want to be accidentally triggered—the fact is there are a lot of uncomfortable to violently misogynistic implications in that vocabulary decision, and while I don’t want to mince words, I also don’t want to accidentally harm anyone who’s just looking to have the alternative word.

So … Let’s find other words for sheath.

kad’gam / kal’gam / kald’gam — sword sheath / knife sheath / blade sheath

From the words for sword, blade, a smush of sword and blade bc I liked how it sounded (very scientific), and from ‘gam, a suffix used to indicate skin or a physical cover. ‘gam is not so much a word that exists on its own but rather a modifier, and its uses in beskar’gam, armor (lit. mandalorian iron skin), and pel’gam, (lit. soft yielding skin), we can infer what ‘gam is meant to indicate.

Another word for sheath:

cab’gam — protective skin

So … do we need multiple words for sheath? Actually, yes. I’d even go so far as to suggest it’s weird to only have the one.

First of all, mando’a has multiple words for blades. There are specific words that refer to very specific blades. Knives and swords are differentiated. Sheath, just as a word, should not have a one-size-fits-all term when mandalorians are very specific when it comes to the type of weapon they’re using to do battle,

Departing from the weapon terminology, mandalorians also have many words for stab. It’s to the point that it’s joked they have 80 words that are just variations of stab and the act of stabbing, of inserting a blade into a person with intent to do bodily harm.

Stabbing, to mandalorians, is a nuanced thing. It requires many different words for specificity.

Again, wrt the development of words, usually one or two is enough. To have more than that? Means that mandalorians, as a community, view nuance with weapons, and the act done with that weapon, as necessary.

So, again, because of the above … there should not be only one word for sheath. It just doesn’t fit, pardon the pun, because just as there are many different types of blades … there are also different types of sheaths. It does not do to have a requirement of specificity for the weapon, and the different ways in which to fully utilize that weapon, and then not also be specific for the protective cover of that weapon.

The logic just doesn’t follow.

And now … my breakdown on why the word for sheath, derived from the word for woman, is misogynistic, transmisogynistic, heterosexist, and homophobic all in one piss poor conlang decision.

I want to say … strong warnings for: transphobia, misogyny, cissexism, homophobia, mentions of assault, victim blaming

And yeah, I know. “All those warnings for one word?” 

Yes, unfortunately. This is one of those moments where on first glance, you might know something is wrong but not how wrong, and why it’s wrong. I am going to try to explain the why alongside the how clearly, and to do that is going to touch on a lot of topics and references that are or can be upsetting.

I also just want to say when I say “you” I’m referring to a general you, and not you, the anon, specifically. In case that gets confusing. Sorry lol.

All right, here we go.

My very, very first issue: mando’a is gender neutral. Gender, as a rule, is not emphasized—it is, effectively, gender neutral. 

The implications of this are, in fact, many, but at its foundations are one of two things. If a language is gender neutral, then that means:

all genders are recognized, or

no genders are recognized

There isn’t any way around that, because the language itself does not acknowledge gender except in clinical terms of “Man / Woman” that are used next to never. Anyone who uses those specific words, casually? Are imposing a gender bias onto the language that, literally, does not exist.

It’s been argued that “well you might need to know” and … I still argue that that’s just not true.

If you have two people in front of you, and you’re trying to indicate which one you’re talking about, if you’re incapable of indicating who you’re talking about without assigning them a sex or gender that you, yourself, cannot know? 

Then that’s a problem with you, personally. Not a problem with the language.

This is where, if you said you need that, I would gently ask you to take a step back and consider why you think you need it. Why are you so razor focused on sex that you’re incapable of first thinking of something simple like person on the left/right, and instead immediately define someone by “apparent” sex characteristics that are not related to gender?

The originators of mando’a, the original mandalorians, in-universe, were all aliens. And they weren’t even near-humans. They were humanoid simians called Taung. Actual walking, talking, bipedal bonobos with tentacles for hair. If someone argues they also have a white, western, earth-human concepts for a sex and gender binary … I’m just going to laugh, to be perfectly honest. 

First, gender neutral language doesn’t spring up by accident — it has to be reinforced by the culture to maintain its neutrality, repeatedly reinforced over centuries to millennia and, truly, value everyone in that culture regardless of gender identity. 

One of the main facets of mandalorian culture? Adopting literally everyone who fits what is believed to have “the right stuff” to be a mandalorian.

I mean, not even getting into the fact that armor — real combat-purposed armor — could potentially hide or skew the person in question’s gender. Or the fact that mandalorians, as a people, regularly adopt aliens into their community — and not all alien women share the same sex characteristics. No avian species would. No reptilian species would. No amphibious species would.

So. First false assumption:

women = having a vagina

First of all, lmao. This is, factually, incorrect.

It is an outdated concept that only serves to reinforce a white, western, earth human social construction of sex and gender that is

not universal

heavily politicized

heavily policed

Here on earth, we already have countless examples of animals who are both female and don’t have “sheaths.” I’m disgusted I even had to write that, tbh, but here it is. To then impose vaginas as a standard of being women on alien species that don’t share the same gender social constructions? To assume that all men have dicks and all women have vaginas, always, forever?

A culture that literally decided that there was NO need to differentiate gender of any number … would then associate woman, a human concept, with cissexist human sexual organs that a large swathe of their population might not even have?

Well, it just doesn’t make sense. It’s not even an idea supported here on earth. There’s actually a great National Geographic article that breaks it down into simple language with a ton of resources — and I’m going to link it so I don’t have to do the same. Before this article? A metric fuckton of academic literature and studies, published articles, dissertations, books. Steeped in very heavy academic language, though, but I mean … my point is that, in space, if you’re transphobic, or a TERF, you are not a mandalorian. 

I don’t make the rules, but if I did, every TERF and transphobe would be banned. Forever. Dar’manda, fuckfaces.

Furthermore, if mandalorians are known to regularly adopt in a widely varied mix of humans and aliens into their population … then having human indicators of man / woman is fucking useless.

It’s completely fucking useless.

I would actually argue that the only real use for these words is for something I’m sure the originator did not intend: which is to indicate if someone who once identified as a man has transitioned to woman, or vice versa. Then, and only then, does it actually become relevant. Before then? Irrelevant, and fucking useless to indicate.

“The woman!” “Which one, Tom?”“The one with breasts!”“How do you know they’re a woman, Tom? Did you fucking ask them?”“No, but—”“Did you think they may just have a condition, Tom?”“Well, no, but—”“What if they’re a fuckin’ lizard, Tom? What if it’s their fuckin mating season and they just happen to expanding their chests, Tom?”“I didn’t—”“Fuck off, Tom, you ori’mirsh'kyramud (fucking brain assassin).”

Here’s the thing. Human earth ideas of gender, and its associations with “sex,” are null and void, because mando’a is gender neutral and concepts tied in with how we perceive gender do not exist in the language. At all.

And, actually, going even beyond that? The above points to a severe lack of creativity, and a fear of science. Mandalorians are literally space-faring aliens who adopt other aliens of all different species and communities, and have a culture whose very foundation is emphatically gender neutral. A fear of science has no place here.

Anyway. Moving on.

Our culture, here on earth, does not value women to the fullest. It just isn’t so, as much as that grieves me to say. And I know it’s hard, but I really wish that fandom, as a whole, would stop projecting their shitty, toxic masculine views on mandalorians as “fact,” because it’s just not there. It’s, seriously, not there.

Now, I don’t know if most people are familiar with some parts of linguistic theory, but the basic thing is this: if a word doesn’t exist in language, then the people who speak that language don’t really have a conceptualization of this … well, concept. Language literally affects thinking. It affects perception. It affects how we understand and view the world. How we see and construct the world is shaped by language.

Which is why the word for sheath, derived from woman, given all the above? Is fucking garbage. It’s built entirely on false assumptions steeped in human-earth western thinking that are not, and cannot, be supported by mando’a because these concepts literally do not exist, or are even actively, and passively, contradicted in the language and the culture itself. 

If you don’t get it, reread the Brain Assassin conversation, read the NatGeo article, and then come back, because I’m literally going to beat this idea to death, resurrect it, and then kill it again, in true mandalorian fashion.

Mandalorians, from every impression on the culture built from a language that is inclusive to its core, would accept easily and readily people of all gender identities, because the language literally tells us this. These things are, literally, non-issues—or they should be this way, because the gender neutrality of the language itself sets this as the very very basic foundation.

The idea that Mandalorians aren’t inclusive isn’t supported by canon. But mandalorian fandom’s inability to separate toxic assumptions from actual context, and projects toxic masculinity, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, stereotypes again and again on an entire body of people with little-to-no textual support, purely because they fit the definition of Proud Warrior Race, is a really serious problem.

How many people find interacting with the larger, more male-populated mandalorian fandom, to be threatening? How many people are more than a little concerned for the well-being of girls who, having seen Sabine, decided they want to be a mandalorian — and then went online?

I could name more than a few online mandalorian fan communities, and tbh I am very, very wary with ever recommending them to teenage girls, or even adult women, or anyone who isn’t cisgender. 

There is a very real, very serious problem with fandom, specifically the men of fandom, defining and setting the tone of Proud Warrior Race as inherently as toxic as our society — when it doesn’t need to be that way. It’s just assumed, even when they’re written as diametrically opposed to the necessary beliefs that are required in order for a culture built on toxic masculinity to survive.

Anyway. Next false assumption:

woman = to be penetrated

A sheath, a scabbard, exists to be penetrated by the weapon it’s meant to cover and protect.

To then derive the worth sheath directly from the word for woman is to directly indicate that women exist to be penetrated. It also directly indicates that men are the one who do the penetrating, not women, by virtue of that above association.

God forbid the idea that women don’t exist for men, let alone that lesbians exist, or that women are more than their apparent sheath purpose.

I can’t believe I have to write this, but here I am.

How can someone purport to be creating a culture in which everyone is equal, if you’re literally sticking a word in here that directly infers that that isn’t the case. You cannot say that a woman is valued for her worth as a person, if you then create a word that reduces her personhood to her vagina — which she may or may not even have?

Listen. There isn’t an alternative way to interpret this. You cannot create a language in which the word for sheath is derived from woman without directly, blatantly, obviously inferring that women are sheaths. 

Dala — womanDalab — sheath

There is no other inference. You can try to defend it, but the meaning and the intent is still inherent, and it is inherently fucked up.

There are also countless studies out there that have shown how this line of thinking can and does build a foundation in our culture for women to be victimized. To be assaulted. This is one of the major thought processes that contribute to rape — it is one of the major defenses of rape.

It implies this: if a woman exists to be penetrated, then consent is automatically given, because that is her purpose, and cannot be revoked.

And, you know, I’m sure this wasn’t intentional. I’m sure that someone who’s grown up steeped in a sexist culture would then be okay in thinking this way, and not see an issue with the above — but that doesn’t make it okay. It still contributes to a culture that actively harms more than half of its population. Intent is meaningless when it’s in support of further victimization. Intent is meaningless when it is in support of violence.

This is in support of violence. Thoughtlessly, maybe. Unintentionally, maybe. But that doesn’t change what it is, and what it implies.

I know that this is uncomfortable to think about. I know that it’s upsetting. But if your impulse is to immediately jump to “you’re overreacting!” then … I would ask that you take a step back, and ask yourself why you want to rush to accuse me that I’m overreacting. I want you to actually consider what I’m saying, to do the research, and to ask yourself if what I’m saying is true, how does it affect you? And the people around you? 

Furthermore, it doesn’t make sense contextually. 

Like, let’s forget, for a moment, that we live in a culture that actively promotes rape in very real, very insidious ways at multiple levels of society, that reduces women’s worth only in their relation to men, that has been concisely and clearly documented and studied for decades, and look instead at it in the in-universe context:

Once again. In a culture whose very language, the building blocks of thoughts and concepts that structure the world, does not separate people by gender in any way, why would you then have a word that inextricably links women with being penetrated? There is no consistent internal logic. It literally does not make sense within the context of the culture. 

Here’s National Geographic article on gender, again. 

Here’s the Tom conversation, again:

“The woman!” “Which one, Tom?”“The one with breasts!”“How do you know they’re a woman, Tom? Did you fucking ask them?”“No, but—”“Did you think they may just have a condition, Tom?”“Well, no, but—”“What if they’re a fuckin’ lizard, Tom? What if it’s their fuckin mating season and they just happen to expanding their chests, Tom?”“I didn’t—”“Fuck off, Tom, you ori’mirsh'kyramud (fucking brain assassin).”

the false assumptions

the culture only recognizes 2 genders based on western, white, earth-human conceptualization of sex and gender

women exist to be penetrated

everyone is straight as fuck, I guess

Imposing straight, cis, heterocentric gender roles on a society that doesn’t even have the words to think this way makes zero sense. 

IT’S SHIT WRITING, KAREN. 

It’s already afternoon where I am, and yet … it is too early for this kind of insidious transphobic homophobic sexism. 

It has no place in mando’a. Full stop.

Unfortunately, unless we can petition to have it removed officially from the mando’a dictionary, or unless we as a whole community agree to never use that word, it’s going to continue existing — and being used, and probably accidentally and without any realization of the implications of that word.

I would love to never see that word again. To promptly, effectively, never use it. Personally, I don’t trust people who use it casually. Accidentally? I’m sure it happens … but. In my opinion? Given that the larger mandalorian fandom is heavily steeped in toxic masculinity and casual misogyny, I have a hard time justifying its use in any context, because of the toxic masculinity and the casual misogyny. And, sadly, I don’t really have the energy to go through this again and again.

Do I have an in-universe explanation?

Yes, actually. 

I posit this: dalab is a word that came as a result of misogynistic men being adopted into the fold of mandalorian society, and felt that they needed a gendered slur that would fly under the radar. 

And, you know, maybe it did. Maybe it was reclaimed by cisgender human women. Maybe there’s a complicated history behind the word, and that women are divided over whether that slur has ever been reclaimed, or not. 

But, I would rather we didn’t have to do that. Why do we need to introduce sexism to a culture that doesn’t support it? Why do we need a gendered slur in a language that doesn’t recognize gender in that way?

The fact is, we don’t. We don’t need to further victimize marginalized people in the one society that goes out of its way not to do that.

So. I would rather remove dalab from the dictionary entirely.