#Jess was not ''meant'' to be trans but that was because like

[island-ofthelost]

omg idk if uve posted an explanation for transmasc chase but if u havent id LOVE to hear?!?!?! im trans and i love house so :3:3

I've never made an explanation, but here's my list of headcanons:

as for my explanation, I believe he struggles with his masculinity in a uniquely transmasc way. People that headcanon him as transfemme will notably say that he's "performing gender", overcompensating to portray a sense of masculinity that he doesn't feel internally. But I disagree (for one, he's not hypermasculine in any sense that could be construed as a performance). This is because he has to actively work to be perceived in a masculine manner, and be treated as a man within the structure of the society he lives in, which would almost always come automatically if he were cis (again, he's white, "straight", well off in the beginning of the series, and able bodied. these aspects should put him at an advantage he clearly doesn't have). While there aren't any particular examples, you can clearly tell that characters like House, Wilson, and Foreman really aren't being perceived in whatever way Chase is. He's almost treated like a woman in the context of the series, particularly by House. He's always being described as "pretty" (by everyone) and a lot of House's jabs come from this perception. And this is clearly something he's uncomfortable with. I believe if he were to be a closeted transfemme this would either ease into comfort or become more uncomfortable around season 6 when he does become much more visually masculine (buzz cut, stubble, etc). While he was in no means comfortable at this point (Cause, you know), it clearly isn't discomfort in his identity, it's the natural discomfort of being freshly divorced from a whirlwind marriage. His relationship with Cameron also highlights his transmasculinity. Obviously, Cameron has her dead ex husband. Chase struggles with the fact that Cameron will never view him in the same way as she did her ex husband, like he'll never be the same to her or even enough to her. Especially enough as a man. I think the choice to show Cameron's attachment to her ex through his sperm specifically is a very interesting choice. There's the easy route of going "haha get it he doesn't have his own sperm", which is valid, but sperm and using it to produce children was something that at the time was largely unique to men and traditional masculine gender roles. Showing Cameron keeping her ex's sperm not only conveys that she wouldn't view him as a good and adequate husband, but more specifically as a good and adequate man, which puts a serious strain on their relationship. The show could have just as easily used something else, like a ring, and would be just as cinematic. The choice of sperm specifcally is interesting to me. And killing Dibala, which leads Cameron to end their relationship, was another example of Chase's relationship with masculinity. Dibala tells Chase, who is clearly uncomfortable around him, that "real men stand up for their values", which leads to Chase killing him. And this still isn't enough for Cameron. His relationship with his father is another signifier of his gender. Clearly, his father doesn't view him as a son, going so far as to cut him out of the will. And his religious trauma again gives him a uniquely transmasc vibe, but I can't put my finger on it.

And I hate to bring this into it because I believe you don't need to look a certain way to be a gender, but yeah, he does have some pretty feminine traits physically (soft hair, baby face). But these traits do slowly disappear throughout the show, signifying him going further into his transition (although in reality Jesse Spencer is a cis man and this is just the natural aging process, however Chase is meant to be a few years older than Spencer). Also, Jesse Spencer is transphobic and headcanoning him as transmasc is, to me at least, a great way to reclaim the character, and I view it as fitting much better into the storyline and his character than him being transfemme (I do believe that only a small portion of the fandom actually does view him as a cis man). So yeah. I didn't mean to go on a total yapathon, nor did I mean to invalidate or be malicious to anyone with a different opinion. These are just my thoughts on the subject.

[farsight-the-char]

one of my irl friends had an insane outrage recently, and I feel like you're the perfect person to tell about it.

Ok, so this friend of mine is super mad that Spider Gwen is lightly hinted to being trans, like she's furious. She keeps saying that they shouldn't change a pre-existing character like that and they should have made an entirely new character instead.

I tried telling her that

this is a new story with new versions of preexisting characters

they won't make a canonically trans spider man for like a decade at least because of the current climate

Keep in mind that she is trans herself. And it's just wild to me that she gets so pissed about it, like it's fine to not like it. But getting this pissed? I just don't get it. The only reaction I had to it was like "huh, that's kinda neat"

Like it was just a hint, nothing was confirmed. Like girl just chill out

Technically we had Jessica Drew/Parker/Reilly from Ultimate, the girl clone of "Peter" who had "His" memories but remained happily a woman, but yeah.

Marvel is actually pretty annoying when it comes to canon trans rep, we only got proper Mutant Trans characters recently (Escape, and maybe Mother Rightous, but eh), plus they seem to ignore earlier efforts such as Loki's gender fluid status and Sera (Angela's Wife)

[noknowshame]

today years old when I learned the Usher lyrics are "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love Again" and NOT "the DJ God is Falling in Love Again"

[musashi]

is the eminem cosplayer from breaking bad actually a bisexual trans man or has tumblr mislead me about this show again

HFDKLJGHDFGDF ok i want to answer this genuinely and in earnest because a lot of tumblr sees the memes and i think might internalize some ideas that breaking bad deserves ridicule for being like, a show that middle aged men like, so i actually want to say this for anyone who might have even the slightest interest in the actual story--

jesse is literally homophobic in canon but has been adopted as a transmasc icon because even though he is a cishet man, a lot of his traditionally masculine bravado resonates with trans men who had that period of conforming to ideas of toxic masculinity in an attempt to feel secure in their gender. this is something men of all gender alignments often deal with, but for trans men it can hit twofold, as they obvious have more at stake in "proving" their manhood.

furthermore, jesse is not the hypermasculine facade he presents. he is sensitive, open-hearted, protective in ways that are more nurturing than combative. jesse does not stone-faced background noise the traumatic things he goes through in brba, he cries openly and breaks down often, in ways that even just the 'i see breaking bad memes' crowd knows because those scenes are often made fun of, bolstered by aaron paul's emmy-winning performance and the sheer amounts of raw emotion he puts into them:

the villain of breaking bad is toxic masculinity. full stop. it is not subtle, it is present throughout. jesse is meant to be one of walter's narrative foils and this is the biggest place they clash--walter is insistent on being hard and masculine and never letting his image or personal pride falter, but jesse cannot do that. jesse emulates an idea of masculinity to protect himself but when pushed to his limit this idea crumbles and he allows his true colours to show without shame--what he is is gentle. he is not hard, he is not destructive, he is not a killer. every crime he commits and every life he takes, he takes with tears in his eyes. he literally cannot find it in his heart to hurt even an insect.

jesse pinkman is not a trans icon without reason, even though he is a cis man. jesse is a trans icon because he is introduced as someone who wears toxic masculinity like armor, desperate to prove to not only the world but to himself that he is strong and worthy of his place in society. and while i will not say the things that happen to him in the series are deserved in ANY sense of the word (he is a victim--plain and simple) they do serve a function--teaching him to shed that ideal for himself and be who he really is. and who he really is, is a big brother with an open heart, who cries easily and loves wholly, who likes woodworking and comic books and making art, who just wants someone to tell him that he has done a good job.

tl;dr: no, jesse pinkman is not trans. but he is ours.

[princesssarcastia]

things i’m still thinking about after my second showing of across the spider-verse

Ham and Noir never showed up at headquarters, but they showed up at the end when Gwen and Miles needed them.  I’m actually very curious about that—they both enjoyed working with Miles, Peter B., Gwen, and Peni in the first movie, so they don;t object to working with others on principle.   I wonder if their spidey senses pinged when Miguel or Jess showed up to recruit them, and they said no.  Or: they got all the way to headquarters, caught the vibe, and refused to sign up, not even to see their new friends.  Certainly, Noir is enough like Hobie to see the problematic elements of this place quickly and refuse to take part in it.  And Ham really loves Miles.  If he made it all the way to the part where they explain the anomaly, and how Miguel believes Miles fits in...I think he’d walk out.  My boy Ham would not have stood for that chase bullshit

(Or:  Miguel took one look at Ham and Ham’s world and said “Fuck that, no way.”)

(Or: Peter B. didn’t push for Miguel and Jess to recruit Ham and Noir.  Didn’t push for them to recruit any of the people he grew to love and love working with, during the collider incident, because he knows Miguel, and knows deep down that this environment is toxic, and not at all what he wants for them)

Which brings me to another thing I can’t stop thinking about: how Peter B. definitely knew Miguel before this whole inter-dimensional spider club got started.  They are definitely friends, or they were.  It gives Peter more leeway to fuck around with Miguel, and it gives Miguel more leeway to be an uptight fascist with Peter.

I also think that the reason Peter B. and so many other Spider-People buy into that bullshit narrative about canon events is because they, like so many traumatized people before them, want it all to have meant something.  They want there to be a reason, a divine purpose, a plan, so that their suffering isn’t pointless.  Peter B. has convinced himself that purpose makes the loss hurt less—and it’s not until Miles rightfully calls them all out on it that he starts to realize it actually makes it hurt more.

“All this loss makes us who we are!”  Bullshit, Peter B., you should know better.

We never meet another Miles, not once.  I know some people are speculating that 42!Miles was supposed to get bitten by that spider, but I don’t think that’s true.  

I think the Miles Morales in 1610 is something wholly new in the entire multiverse, and I think that should and does terrify the everloving pants off of everyone involved in the status quo.  In every peter who likes feeling special, who likes being The One And Only Spider-Man, In Every Universe.  In Miguel, who’s clinging desperately to the boxes he’s shoved the universe into so he doesn’t have to try and get better.

And Miles Morales is...oh, he’s mind-blowing.  I can’t stop thinking about the way he! plows! through! an! entire! multi-verse’s! worth! of! spider-people!  All of them!  It’s hard, but he fucking does it and he beats them and he’s RIGHT.   They should fucking crown him king.

Not only that—he beats them at the violence from the moral high ground!  He doesn’t give into despair, doesn’t take the easy route of “I couldn’t stop it, leads to, I shouldn’t stop it.”  He puts the onus on himself to do both.  To save the world and his father.

Miles Morales Is Better Than You

The way that Miles and Gwen seem to have some sort of trans-dimensional spider-sense hookup is so fucking cool.  Gwen stands in his room long enough to spider-sense out through the whole UNIVERSE and tell that he’s. not.  here.  they’re CONNECTED they have a CONNECTION.

Speaking of, Gwen Stacy is trans as fuck.  Claiming her now.

Hobie is a delight.  He sees, I think, what Peter B. sees (and what I think Ham and Noir see) which is that there’s something special about these kids.  (Obviously, that something special is that they’re the main characters.  But for the most part, Miles and Gwen are fighting head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd, and on their way to thinking head and shoulders above the crowd, too)

I wasn’t expecting the movie to focus on Gwen so much, but her story was heart-wrenching.  Her dad, picking her job over his daughter.  Getting a second chance, with some people she clearly desperately wants to be her new family, but that second chance is contingent on her ability to perform for the Mission—and comes at the expense of the only friend she’s made since Peter died.  And then...then she fucks up the mission.  And loses everything.  Big oof.  She gets punched in the face so many times, but every time she gets up angrier than before and starts hitting back.

[oransloran]

Watching SM:ATSV, cause it's been a long time, and I need a pick-me-up. And I've noticed how Miles, Gwen, and Spots' stories are all connected by one theme.

"Being Good Enough"/Being put down by other people's perception, or expectation, of them, and finding a way to overcome that.

They all do what they do because of someone else's idea of them. Spot becomes more powerful/dangerous because of Miles' "Just a villain of the week!" Comment. Because nobody else in his life is taking him seriously anymore. He doesn't know who he is now because he was forced to be the Spot. It doesn't matter what he was before, and he believes what he is now is what he'll always be to everybody else. Spot thinks he will never be taken seriously ever again, and so he acts on that.

Spot takes initiative to change himself not because he actually found anything wrong with himself, but because he took problem with some surface level jab/comment to his abilities as a person. A final comment that broke the back to his patience. He didn't wanna be taken lightly anymore. He will be the number nemesis to his Spider-Man if that's the last thing he does. To finally show everybody that he isn't some joke. To show everybody what they think of him has never been more false, because he is capable of hurting multiple, MULTIPLE people across many worlds, and he will do just that to be feared like he thinks he should be. Just like he thinks he should become a criminal at the start of the movie because of the discrimination he's gotten.

Miles doesn't wanna disappoint his parents, and others, like Gwen, for not being who they think he is. So then he tries to do what they want, what they expect of him because he thinks that's the only way for them to accept him. But he is also struggling with who he wants to be, and who other people want him to be.

Yet he cannot betray himself, and what he stands for. What he has built himself up to be. Miles has been pushed, and tugged into so many directions, he has been told over, and over again who he's supposed to be (by Miguel, by Gwen, By Peter, By his parents, and by so many others), and because he didn't comply, he was betrayed. Even though those close go him thought it was what was best for him, that they had all the good intentions in the world to choose who he is for him. It obviously wasn't. And realizing that bending himself over for people who won't do the same for him was not worth it.

He wanted to be with his friends, he wanted to be with Gwen, but he also wanted to be with his family. He wanted to bake two cakes, and have them both. But that meant he had to throw away everything he is, everything he thought he knew/wanted. Forced to sit back, and just let things happen. (LIKE THE FIRST MOVIE WHEN GOING TO SHUT DOWN THE COLLIDER, AND PETER WAS GONNA STAY BEHIND, AND MILES WAS WEBBED TO THE CHAIR. OH. THIS FUCKING MOVIE FRANCHISE). He had to choose either between his family, and friends, but he didn't want to choose because he knew there was a way to have both. He just needs to figure out the how, (and the how being that trans-dimensional watch).

Like Miles says in the movie. Who decides what he is, or who gets to tell him what. He's his own person. His own Spider-Man.

Gwen doesn't want to be seen as a murderer by her dad, and as a disappointment to Jess, and by extension Miguel(though I won't be talking much on him). So that leads to her, throughout the entire movie, to be constantly trying to escape her decisions. From showing her dad her identity, to going to meet Miles on her mission, to leading Miles into Pavtir's dimension, to holding Miles back from the canon event. And when finally when she accepts she cannot run away anymore, it's already too late to go back since Miles realizes her betrayal.

Miles is someone who Gwen cannot handle looking at her any differently. Cause she knows he thinks so highly of her, like no nobody else, that even at the slightest change to how he thinks about her makes her so distinctively sad, and desperate to be there for him while also trying to keep the peace with her employer, and mentor.

Gwen was so strung-up in the expectations Jess had for her, she thought lying was the best option for keeping everybody she had around close, or maybe the only thing she could do was lie. Because at that time she thought she was doing the right thing. She had the best intentions, she thought she what she believed in, and what she was doing was for a really good cause. A cause that helped people, people that got her, so they didn't lose their connections. Even if that did mean an unnecessary death, or deaths, that could've been stopped would happen. And maybe if she did that enough times then maybe, MAYBE she couldn't lose the only connection to the one person she thought would always understand her. And maybe that means they get to meet again!

So when she got the chance to finally go back to 1610, she kept trying to do both things at once without telling Miles about what's going on because she thought that was better than actually trying to explain anything (because that went so well for her the first time with her dad).

Jess was always the one telling Gwen that they'd be forced to kick her out "if Miguel knew", when she had direct power over if she told Miguel or not. Knowing damn well he already likely knew. So when Jess showed up, Gwen was constantly trying to save face, was always trying to push herself out to be something she's not. Same thing with Gwen's dad! Trying to be someone she wasn't for his sake, and when she finally let him in on who she truly was, it backfired.

(Also can we talk about how Jess manipulates, and takes advantage of Gwen's need for parental guidance/support. Cause Gwen is definitely a victim of the grown-ups around her. They really looked at this traumatized teenager, and went "yeah. We should definitely threaten this one to comply to our mission, and if she doesn't we'll send her home to a dad who wants her arrested :)". LIKE FUCK OFF?? Love to see the ones combating the system are teenagers effected by shitty actions done by said system.)

AND ALSO. What I love so much about the movie is that it's so pro-individual, in a sense, bare with me, cause it doesn't matter what has happened to you, what has changed you, and it doesn't matter who others think you're supposed to be. If YOU, yourself, know who you are

No sudden powers, no costume, no trauma/canon event gets to force you to change into something, into someone, you are not. It feels as if it flips the scene where in ITSV Peter tells Miles that he doesn't have a choice, and that he's Spider-man no matter what he does, or tries to change, upside down.

Miles is only ever changed because he doesn't force himself to be Spider-Man, it's because he BELIEVES he is. He believes in himself that yes, he wants to do this, not just for anybody else, but for himself, and this potential he holds. Miles believes he deserves to be Spider-Man because he chooses to be Spider-Man. Because he believes, and chooses for that title to be his responsibility!

He was given the opportunity, and he took it. And NOBODY ELSE is gonna rip that away from him. And nothing that he does, or that others do, is gonna rip that away from him too.

[ricewithbunnies]

Saul Goodman Pet Play Headcanons

I have no where else to post all the deranged and deplorable ideas that come to my head </3

Probably a part 1 to a series if i think this is good enough :3

This accidentally devolved into a pet play post woopsies (it was meant to be just regular hcs)

Content: Transmasc Reader, Masculine Terms for reader, Dom!Saul, Hes either bi or pan I haven't decided yet :3

CW: Pet play

You guys met from either being friends with Jesse Pinkman, a client, or working with him

First time he saw you he looked you up and down, confused with himself. "Why am i attracted to a man??" type thoughts in his head (poor babygirl)

Upon finding out you're trans, he tries to justify his attractions "W-well its not REALLY gay!!" (it is)

(Also after a while of you two being close he'd probably get PISSED if anyone misgendered you)

Cutting the fluff crap tho he would be an absolute simp for you.

Service Dom whenever hes not feeling rough 🫣

"That feels good, huh? You like that sweetheart? Mmh.. tell me what makes you feel good handsome."

Thigh. Fucking. He'd have you sit in his lap with your pants off during a 15 minute break, pushing his cock inbetween your warm thighs and holding onto you for dear life.

He would buck his hips up into you as he makes out with you and whimpers and when he cums on your thighs he'd clean it up for you ❤️

"Fuck.. f-fuck.. that feels so good darling" as he thighfucks you.

He absent-mindedly says "Good boy" to you one day and you fold.

After that he'd fuck you filthy while saying it

"Good boy.. thats my good boy.. taking it all like a champ.. you like being my good boy, huh?"

Will. Not. Shut. Up.

Constantly in your ear during sex, whispering, moaning, anything to feel your hole tighten around him.

After a while of your intimate relationship, he'd open up about some absolutely filthy kinks.

You'd be unsure at first, but after tje first session, you'd be at his feet begging for more, and he'd eat that shit UPP.

"Yeah? You liked that fucking from Master, huh? You wanna be my good boytoy?"

After that he would get you to quit your job and be a house husband full time, spoiling you with goodies and also in bed.

He'd BEG like a bitch to put a leash on you, giving you the worst case of puppydog eyes.

"Pretty pleaseee 🥺🥺🥺"

He'd make you learn hand commands such as rolling over, taking off clothes, bending over, etcetera.

He'd DEFINITELY put a large pet bed for you under his desk at home.

If he's at home working and having an especially frustrating task to do, afterwards he'd make you take his dick down his throat.

"Ahh.. good boy.. you really know how to make Master feel better huh, pet?"

Would probably get some bougie diamond encrusted pet bowl for you LOL

If you were good for him he'd get you stupidly expensive gifts, just because he can and he enjoys spoiling you.

Possessive as fuck. You two are out and you are talking to someone a little too long? Hoo boy you'll spend the rest of the night tied to his bed with him pounding you into the next day.

"Mine.. all mine.. my pup.. my sweet pet.. you belong to me.. right? Say it. Say you're mine.."

His aftercare would be so sweet though, running a warm, scented bath for you and washing you.

Thank you for reading!

This is my first proper post on here, so i appreciate anyone who read it and even more if you enjoyed. I'm just now getting back into writing fanfic from when i was younger so i appreciate any constructive criticism or advice :3

[alicepao13]

Hudson and Rex S02E02 - Over Ice

Eh, yes that definitely needs to be under the cut because it's long.

It feels wrong that this show had an ice skating episode before a hockey episode lol

"You should keep your dog on the carpet. It's slippier than it looks". He has four legs. And claws.

Charlie and Sarah are flirting over the body again. This is unacceptable (please continue). And we learn about Sarah's figure skating past.

"Who's afraid of little old me?"

The mom was so annoying for most of the episode.

"Enjoying" figure skating.

In the first couple of seasons there must have been about a dozen references about Jesse never going home.

I remember I had a lot of trouble finding the killer in this one. They all seemed very suspicious.

So it's not illegal to be in possessions of steroids, you just get in trouble if you use one while competing for stuff?

Julia's confession to Sarah is a nice scene. And I like Sarah's subtle reaction and support. It's not anything too dramatic, or shallow, and I honestly don't understand why some of the audience react the way they did (imdb reviews can give a hint). Not to mention that this episode gets "wokeness warning" (I can't think of any other way to put it) in backwards countries like... the US. Do you know how ridiculous it is for an episode with a minor trans character to be treated like that in the US while in countries that are a hundred years back in social issues like Greece no one bats an eye? Eh, a lot. (In Greece it aired in a major free broadcasting network and was a bit before legislation protecting trans people had passed, so I thought that we'd be the ones to cut it or we'd remove stuff in the subtitles. We didn't cut it and the subtitles were normal, plus that season was repeated like 3-4 times.)

Sarah: "I'm not a cop". You're not a cop now. In S4 you will be carrying a badge and gun.

Ah, the freezer, finally.

I am simultaneously happy and sad that this shipper moment happened so early. Happy because it was well made and if you don't put crumbs early enough, then who's going to ship it? And sad because, well, imagine this happening in S4 for example. It would have been so good and it would have been laced with an extra layer of angst.

No but Charlie was very quick to panic.

Charlie: Rex, open the door buddy! || Rex: Once again, Charlie, I don't have thumbs.

I love Charlie's detailed instructions to Rex. Sir, he's a dog. You're lucky he actually knew where to go for help. And I have to note that the most helpful suggestion came from Sarah.

Work never ends, not even when you're trapped in a freezer.

Getting to the good stuff. Couples whump, yes please.

How can anyone claim that they weren't meant to be a couple like???

"I guess I peaked early." "Hardly".

Meanwhile, Rex is trying to find the right people who will understand that when he's without Charlie, Charlie is in trouble.

Sharing body heat (and coat).

Jesse: Rex, wait up! || Rex: No, my humans are in danger! Can't those two legs of yours go any faster?

Oh, you know, just chilling.

And then Charlie asks Rex what took so long? I'd have left and locked the door again. Joking, Charlie thanks him afterwards. Just globber him in saliva, Rex, that will show him.

Random thoughts: Charlie's arm around Sarah. Also Jesse dying from all the running in the back, and no one paying attention to him lol

S4!Charlie would have at least knocked Lucas unconscious for locking him and Sarah in the freezer. At least Rex bit him and threw him on the ground.

The following interrogation scene is lookwarm and they don't mention the fact that Lucas tried to kill two more people after that. The jury is not going to like the fact that he moved the body afterwards? What about trying to kill two cops?

I like the ending scene. It ends on a high note. As for the "wokeness", just as I remembered, it doesn't present anything other than that trans people exist. It doesn't make any statements. So, I'm confused by people's reactions yet again.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Yascha Mounk

Published: Dec 21, 2024

After Donald Trump won reelection, scores of Americans once again failed to make good on their loudly shared and oft-repeated plan of moving to Canada; but a good number of them did partake in a different, rather less cumbersome, exodus. Complaining that Twitter had been unrecognizably transformed under the ownership of Elon Musk—whom they also blame for supporting Trump—hundreds of thousands of progressives decamped to Bluesky.

Widely touted as a “kinder, gentler” alternative to X, Bluesky aims to emulate the up-to-date news and specialized information-sharing in which Twitter has traditionally excelled. It also promises to cut all the toxicity. In the past weeks, the platform announced plans to quadruple the number of moderators it employs. "We’re trying to go above what the legal requirements are, because we decided that we wanted to be a safe and welcoming space,” Aaron Rodericks, the head of the Trust and Safety Team at Bluesky Social, vowed.

The platform has some features that really do put the user in charge in appealing ways. In traditional social media networks, the executives of profit-driven companies control the algorithm that governs the content which is presented to individual users. Especially on micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, this feature—since well before Musk turned it into X—meant privileging controversial posts that elicit angry debate over milder, more consensual ones. On Bluesky, each user can choose between a great variety of open-source algorithms, which theoretically makes it possible to curate a less rage-inducing experience.

When Bluesky launched, I hoped that it would succeed. But the platform has quickly shown that it is hard for any social network to deliver on its promise of being the place for a kinder or gentler discourse. At its best, Bluesky has become a giant progressive echo chamber, with Blue MAGA accounts freely sharing “misinformation” such as the notion that the vote count in the 2024 election was fraudulent because millions of Democratic votes inexplicably went missing. At its worst, it openly revels in violence—so long as that violence can make a claim, however tenuous, to defend or avenge righteous victims.

In accordance with the platform’s policy of moderating content much more aggressively than X has done under Musk, Bluesky’s moderators have been quick to act when users flout the site’s ideological consensus. In the last weeks, both small accounts with few followers and well-known writers with an established audience have seemingly been banned for such trivial “infractions” as suggesting that the Democratic Party leaving X would be a counterproductive form of “purity politics.” And yet, it was on Bluesky that prominent journalists—including, but not limited to, the infamous Taylor Lorenz—openly rejoiced in the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. As long as progressives perceive the victim of a crime to be morally evil, the moderators on Bluesky appear to believe that threatening violence against them is justifiable.

More recently, Bluesky users with major followings reveled in the prospect of violence against Jesse Singal, a center-left journalist who has ended up in progressive crosshairs because of his reporting about detransitioners and involvement in other heated debates regarding trans issues. Some consisted in crude death threats: “I think Jesse Singal should be beat to death in the streets,” one wrote. But a surprising number explicitly justified calls for violence as being necessary to defend themselves against the ways in which he supposedly put them at risk. “Jesse Singal and assorted grifters want us dead so i similarly want him dead,” another user wrote.1

Though they blatantly violated Bluesky’s restrictive community guidelines, the platform hardly took action against such accounts. It even failed to ban users who shared what they believed to be Singal’s private address or made especially graphic threats against him. Evidently, the people making decisions for the kinder, gentler platform don’t mind actual death threats—as long as they are directed against those who, in their judgment, have it coming to them.

What can possibly explain the descent of a platform populated by progressives who claim to abhor all forms of violence into an echo chamber that revels in violence against anyone who defies its taboos or threatens its ideological conformity?

Some of the dynamic likely has to do with the nature of social media in general, and of microblogging platforms like Twitter and Bluesky in particular. There is also an ideological element—a justification of violence has been interwoven with far-left ideology for well over a century. But as I puzzled over the strange transformation of Bluesky, I was also reminded of a series of interesting social science papers published over the course of the last years. They suggest that the tendency to justify violence by the need to help virtuous victims serves a strategic purpose that is less than benign—and may even have worrying psychological roots.

-

Traditionally, most people have wanted to avoid being seen as a victim.

In “honor” societies, like the aristocratic milieus of early modern Europe, the impression that you could not defend yourself spelled dishonor and invited further attacks. When someone failed to pay you the respect to which you believed to be entitled, you did not claim to be a victim; you challenged them to a duel.

The same aversion to casting yourself as a victim persisted even after feudalism gave way to capitalism, and aristocratic “honor cultures” transformed into bourgeois “dignity cultures.” For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, people who were maltreated in some way would insist that such forms of disrespect did not have the power to undermine the dignity we all have as humans. If the duel is the canonical encapsulation of honor culture, the canonical encapsulations of dignity culture are an adult’s determination to keep a “stiff upper lip” in the face of adversity or a child’s resolve that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words shall never hurt me.”

But as Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning have argued in The Rise of Victimhood Culture, we are now entering a new era. Dignity culture is waning rapidly. In its place, we are witnessing the rise of victimhood culture. This new dispensation “differs from both honor and dignity cultures in highlighting rather than downplaying the complainants’ victimhood.” Under these circumstances, people who portray themselves as victims enjoy an elevated moral status. And that, Campbell and Manning write in one of their papers, “only increases the incentive to publicize grievances, and it means aggrieved parties are especially likely to highlight their identity as victims, emphasizing their own suffering and innocence.” (Anyone who has spent time on social media—whether it be Bluesky or Instagram or TikTok—in the decade since Campbell and Manning first wrote that line can’t help but feel that it has proven to be prophetic.)

Ekin Ok and three co-authors from the University of British Columbia pick up on this thread in a 2021 paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Because of the spread of egalitarian values and the paramount importance they give to alleviating suffering, Ok et al argue, contemporary Western democracies have become highly responsive to people who are perceived as victims. Under these circumstances, making a claim to victim status may allow a great variety of people “to pursue an environmental resource extraction strategy that helps them survive, flourish, and achieve their goals.” As a result, “claiming one is a victim has become increasingly advantageous and even fashionable.”

But being a victim may not be enough. Even in contemporary Western societies, the perceived moral status of the victim is likely to influence how much assistance they will receive. As Ok et al demonstrate, for example, respondents are more likely to offer financial assistance to a man who gets shot while volunteering at a charity softball game than they are to a man who gets shot while patronizing a strip club. For “victim-signalling” to have the desired effect, it needs to be accompanied by “virtue-signalling.”

Some people, of course, really are “virtuous victims.” They have suffered genuine injustice. But since managing to establish your status as a virtuous victim is potentially lucrative, it also stands to reason that others will falsely claim to fall into this category. As Ok et al write, some people “intentionally and repeatedly convey their victim status as a manipulative strategy with the explicit aim of altering the behavior of receivers to the signaler’s advantage.”

The authors of the study even have a hypothesis about who is most likely to do that. People with Dark Triad traits such as narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, they argue, are especially likely to engage in “self-promotion, emotional callousness, duplicity and [a] tendency to take advantage of others.” Narcissists seek the limelight. Machiavellians are obsessed with gaining and exercising power over others. Psychopaths don’t care about social norms and disregard others’ emotions. People with all three traits are thus likely to be hugely overrepresented in the “subset of the population both adept at and comfortable with using deception and manipulation to attain personal goals.”

In a succession of clever tests, Ok et al provide plausible evidence that their theory is borne out by reality. Their first striking empirical finding is that people with dark personality traits are also more likely to falsely portray themselves as victims. In one of their studies, they ask you to imagine that you are an intern who is asked to work closely on a project with a peer who is competing for the same full-time job. The other intern is friendly to your face but you get a bad vibe from him. He doesn’t take your suggestions seriously, and you suspect that he may be talking badly about you behind your back. How do you respond?

That seems to depend on who you are. Asked to report on the behavior of the other intern, most participants in the experiment shared some negative opinions but refrained from making false or exaggerated statements. Respondents who had scored high on the dark personality triad, by contrast, were more likely to falsely report that the other intern had engaged in discriminatory behaviour such as making “demeaning or derogatory comments.”

The paper’s second striking empirical finding shows that the tendency of people with dark personality traits to falsely claim being a virtuous victim may also give them cover for engaging in bad behavior. In another experiment, they asked respondents to play a simple coin flip game, which was manipulated in such a way that its participants could easily use deception to increase their monetary payoff. It turns out that people who have portrayed themselves as virtuous victims were far more likely than their peers to lie and to cheat.

This helps to explain some of the features about Bluesky and other social media platforms that might otherwise feel puzzling. The kinds of claims to virtuous victimhood that are so common on that forum don’t just create cover for manipulative people to serve their own ends; they also seem to create license for disregarding moral norms—whether these consist in a prohibition of lying about others to ostracize them or (apparently) even calling for them to be killed.

-

When the study by Ok et al first came out, it made some minor waves. My fellow Substacker and recent podcast guest Rob Henderson argued that people with dark personality traits do what they can in any particular social environment to obtain benefits like prestige or material wealth. In current circumstances, he concluded, “those with dark triad traits might find that the best way to extract rewards is by making a public spectacle of their victimhood and virtue.” The psychologist and podcaster Scott Barry Kaufman put a similar conclusion even more starkly: “Some people,” he wrote, just “aren't good-faith actors in this ‘victimhood space.’”

At the time, I found the paper by Ok et al to be intriguing. And I knew that both Henderson and Kaufman usually have a good nose for bullshit. And yet, I have refrained from writing about its findings until now. After all, social psychology suffers from a serious replication crisis. Time and again, findings that are a little too neat or pleasing—from the idea that a child’s ability to resist the temptation of eating a marshmallow predicts later life outcomes to the promise that striking a “power pose” can set you up for success in a job interview—turned out to be dubious or outright false. And isn’t there something a little too neat about the idea that all of those people attesting to their superior virtue are secretly just narcissists and psychopaths trying to manipulate you?

It also seemed to me that a piece of the puzzle was still missing. Some of the people who target others on social media really do portray themselves as virtuous victims. They claim that they are part of the group which the victim of their attacks has supposedly targeted. And many of them clearly have self-serving goals, ranging from increasing their social clout to asking followers to donate cold, hard cash. But others who gang up on, or even threaten violence against, anybody who breaks perceived community norms don’t claim to be victims themselves; rather, they invoke the existence of supposed victims as an excuse to engage in cruel behavior. For all of its strength, there is something about the phenomenon I’ve been trying to make sense of that Ok’s paper can’t quite explain.

But then my research assistant sent me a new paper about the same subject. In a major effort, Timothy C. Bates and five of his colleagues at the University of Edinburgh set out to test whether the finding by Ok et al would replicate. Based on a larger dataset and employing alternative ways to measure key concepts like virtuous victim signalling, they came to an unambiguous conclusion: virtuous victim signalling really does seem to be driven by what they call “narcissistic Machiavellianism.”

More importantly, the paper by Bates et al also adds the missing piece of the puzzle. The “willingness to assert victimhood,” they hypothesize, may also “be amplified by the motive of sadistic pleasure in the downfall of weakened opponents.” In other words, the people who invoke the need to defend victims in order to justify treating others poorly don’t necessarily have a concrete strategic goal in mind; some of them do so because they are looking for a socially sanctioned outlet for their sadistic instincts. In those cases, the cruelty is the point.

To demonstrate that this is indeed the case, Bates et al use a standard battery of questions to measure respondents’ tendencies towards sadism, asking them such questions as whether they would be willing to purposely hurt people if they didn’t like them. They then test whether people with such sadistic tendencies are also more likely to score high on what they call the “victimizer scale,” which asks them to report on such questions as whether they have recently “enjoyed helping cancel someone;” whether they have “joined in on the persecution and condemnation of an individual or group accused of victimizing others;” and whether they have “sought to hurt the reputation of someone accused by others of victimizing.”

Two things are especially notable about this. First, not all sadists claimed that they themselves were virtuous victims. But second, the claim that they were acting on behalf of such victims—whether themselves or others—was the crucial fig leaf they needed to get away with their behavior. This finding, Bates et al argue, supports

the suggestion that sadism may be adapted to exploit strategic opportunities, specifically the legitimization of punishing and inflicting harm on individuals or groups which is created by successful virtuous victim signalling. If individuals high on Machiavellianism and narcissism exploit the resource-release response of nonvictims, sadism appears, as predicted, to exploit the opportunity created by victims in the form of the moral license granted by non-victims, legitimizing attacks on the victimizer by removing moral protection from those accused.

-

Many people really do suffer genuine injustices. It is on the whole a good thing that contemporary societies are much more likely to give people who claim to have suffered undeserved misfortune a respectful hearing than they might have gotten in the past. While trying to keep a “stiff upper lip” may have its uses, we certainly wouldn’t want people to fear advocating for a more just society, or coming forward about ways in which they have been maltreated, because doing so might undermine their dignity or bring shame upon them.

But to be sensible and sustainable, every social dispensation—whether it consists in an explicit set of rules or an implicit set of norms—must protect itself against bad actors. When a platform or political subculture allows anyone to portray themselves as victims without any real evidence, bad actors will recognize an opportunity to swoop in. And then these bad actors will quickly weaponize false claims to victimization as an excuse to harass or physically threaten people who supposedly have it coming to them. In a culture of victimhood that has no inbuilt defenses against bad actors, things will—as the recent blowup on Bluesky reminds us—always eventually get out of hand.

Every community, however noble its stated intentions and however progressive its purported values, needs a mechanism for defending itself against the small minority of people who are prone to exploit and manipulate their social environment. If yours doesn’t have one, it’s inviting the sadists, the narcissists and the psychopaths to run the show.

-

1 Like many of the things that are said or written about Singal, this claim of course lacks any basis in objective reality.

==

When victimhood is currency, expect counterfeiters.

We must fully depreciate "victimhood" as a form of social currency.

[shedontsmelltoogooddarious]

ChromeskullxOC (SMUT)

Shameless self indulgent first time writing actual smut between my OC, an eldritch mafia boss and Chromeskull from Laid To Rest. Two bad rich older men sdhdhdhd

(Black is trans)

He picked the most upscale club in town to discuss business with his partner, within a private room, drinks going in and out as Ivanov barely paid attention, his wallet was too fat to care. He lit another cigarette, offering one to the man sitting across from himself. He took it, his mangled face lowering to light it- barely acknowledging the desperation bursting through the mafia boss’s seems. “So tell me, are those girls beneath your knife satisfying you enough?” 

Black purred, prompting Jesse to look up, his hands suddenly going into motion; “Very much so, thank you for asking.” He signed, before smirking- knowingly at the face of danger. If he wanted, Black could snap the experienced serial killer like a twig. 

“Nice to know that our rendezvous meant nothing to you, but I guess we’re here to strictly discuss business.” 

He poured himself another drink, taking a swig before slamming it down to the table. “Preston emailed me about you needing another place to “play”, I supposed I could allow you to have free reign on one of my properties in the city- but why should I give you that privilege?” 

“Because you still want to fuck me.” 

Jesse signed once more, before taking a drag off his cigarette, smoke whisping out of the holes where his nose should have been. A low growl could be heard, his human form slipping. But Jesse remained nonchalant, ignoring it like his former lover ignored him when his face melted off. 

Muffled techno music could be heard, filling in the silence between both men. “You’re right, and I always get what I want when I want,” 

His hand shot across the table between them as he grabbed Jesse’s shirt, ripping expensive silk in the process as his lips feverishly collided with his ex’s. Instead of fighting back, he allowed it- his long, boney fingers entwining with Ivanov’s black hair. The don was expanding, sickly popping and crunching sounds being heard as he contorted into his true, monstrous form. Tendrils wrapped around Jesse’s legs, parting them, the sharp blade of a knife suddenly against Black’s throat. 

“No.” An electronic voice commanded, the blade biting into his skin- right above his jugulars. Don Ivanonov was shoved down to the floor, a human dominating a monster, a predator of his species. He undid his belt buckle, his cock throbbing out as it was erect. Jesse’s free hand traveled down to Black’s pants, undoing them to reveal a familiar sight, his fervid pussy already seeping. His face flushed in embarrassment as he turned his head away, forgetting the blade held to his throat before feeling sharp pain as Jesse shoved it deeper. 

“You’re so pathetic- look at me!” He growled, before his black leather glove hand grabbed his bottom jaw and forced him to look into his mangled face. “You’re mine- you’ve always been mine.” 

WIthout warning, his member slid inside Black’s warm insides as he needily thrusted into him. How long has it been since he last was inside one of the most notoriously dangerous dons in this city? Too long. The knife against Black’s throat trailed down to his own dress shirt, cutting it open as the blade slid across his skin, causing inky black blood to bead out against his pale white skin. 

The thrusting gradually turned to a steady pace, syncing with the rhythm of the music outside, stretching Black’s insides out as his claws dug deep into the tiled flooring, leaving deep grooves behind. Jesse lifted his partner’s hips up, gripping his large thighs tightly, shoving himself deeper yet. “I’ve heard you’re whoring yourself out in this city- tell me, what happened to your playthings Ivanov?”

Jesse growled, sparing no mercy for Black as he continued, going faster with the tempo. Black gritted his teeth, his pride now in shambles as he was drunk on pleasure and pain. 

“Answer me!” His fingers dug deeper, Black’s tendrils going limp. 

“You killed them.” He moaned, recoiling in disgust internally. 

Jesse grinned, going slower with the tempo change, but still keeping a firm hold on the man larger than himself. His cock throbbed, he knew he was about to come soon- but he wanted to keep going, to reclaim what was his and his alone. “You’ve been fucking around with my toys as well, you can’t share can you? You’re a greedy old bastard.” 

He was about to come too, his legs shaking- insides clenching around Jesse’s cock. They squeezed, kneading against him. He needed more. His claws found themselves in Jesse’s shoulders, gripping for dear life as his lips once more collided with the human’s, but this time his sharp teeth were prominent. He bit down on Jesse’s lower lip, instantly drawing blood, savoring the familiar taste. “You’re like a damn drug.” Black snarled, 

Jesse was unable to hold it back any longer, his back arching as he came into Black, his hot seed spilling deep inside. As if on cue, Black too came, his name sake’s goo spilling out as it leaked from every orifice, mixing with his partner’s crimson red blood. Black made an attempt to pull away, but his partner had other ideas. He locked in his grip, coming again into Black before thrusting once more. 

“What are you-” 

“I want you pregnant.” 

A new track was placed down, faster and harder.

[sirfrogsworth]

So I followed Sabine Hossenfelder a few weeks ago thinking, "Here is a cool science lady" and then out of nowhere she releases a video on trans people where she is all, "Trans people are crazy and I'm normal!" and then dubiously interprets trans studies for 20 minutes. Then, while claiming she is the levelheaded centrist only seeking objective scientific facts, she references Jesse Signal, a bad faith anti-trans "journalist", as a scientific source.

I also hate this notion that the only metric for the success of gender affirming care is a decrease in depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. Those are certainly goals. But...I mean, life is tough out here even if you aren't transgender. You can feel you've had a positive outcome with your transition and still struggle with mental health. I think that is clear by the low regret rate. And even when people are able to tackle their gender dysphoria via transition, we cannot discount the effects of poor societal acceptance. Not to mention the cruel legislative onslaught currently underway.

It's like, "Yay! I'm finally who I'm meant to be!"

But also, "Ack, these transphobic dipshits are trying to kill me!"

No other treatment is held to the standard of creating shiny happy people at a 100% success rate.

And yes, drugs sometimes have side effects. All drugs. Even over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol. There is no medical treatment without risks. And if we banned every treatment that had the possibility of a bad outcome, we would have literally no medications at all. She was very serious about all the bad things that can happen with blockers and hormone therapy but didn't mention how uncommon those risks are. She didn't mention that bone density is closely monitored. And the risk of heart trouble she mentioned was for older patients getting treatment for prostate issues.

Which makes me wonder why in the world she did not at least consult an actual trans person? Or even a doctor that provides gender affirming care? She just googled everything and interpreted the data with her physics brain and didn't even think to run her interpretations by people with actual expertise.

I'm not even sure a purely scientific analysis of trans issues is possible due to so many variables not being quantifiable. You can't just toss out the politics and focus on the science. The politics are a huge part of transgender existence right now.

And I don't even know what to say about her giving credence to the "social contagion" theory. Her only evidence was a theory concocted by a single person. No studies. No peer review. When I was in high school, none of us knew anything about being queer aside from the existence of gay people. We'd never even heard the words transgender or nonbinary. And even my friends who were gay didn't even consider that as a possibility until they went to college. There just wasn't any information available to teenagers. All they knew was that something was different and they had no resources to help them figure out what that different feeling was.

Teens are not being infected by a social contagion, they just have better access to information. They can also find more support and acceptance in online communities. Not to mention any competent gender affirming care program will do extensive evaluations to rule out things like peer pressure or someone seeking attention. Contrary to conservative belief, they don't just throw hormones and puberty blockers at everyone during their first appointment.

She quickly discounted the left handed analogy because some gender affirming treatments have lasting effects. Which didn't make much sense to me. All that analogy is meant to explain is that teens are more comfortable with queer introspection and feel less pressure to repress said queerness. The huge increase in queer teens matches almost perfectly with the dawn of the information age.

She also said that biological sex is "simple" (it is not) and then handwaved the existence of intersex people as "rare." First, I think the number of intersex folks is undercounted, but also, they are just as prevalent as people with red hair. When there are 8 billion people on the planet, even small percentages add up to a lot of people.

It was just a mess of a video.

I am disappointed in what I thought was a cool science lady.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jess Piper at The View from Rural Missouri:

I was raised as a Baptist, and depending on where I was living at the time, it was often a Southern Baptist flavor. The strictest form of the denomination.

My grandpa was a strict adherent to the faith and believed that women should dress in skirts or dresses. I had a collection of prairie dresses and jumpers. They hit mid-calf or lower to keep my shins from making my brothers in Christ stumble. My shirts were buttoned high so my shoulders didn’t tempt men even though I was a child. My grandpa thought we shouldn’t cut our hair and we shouldn’t wear makeup. He didn’t like women wearing jeans, but he approved of culottes if we needed to do something immodest like ride a bike or work outside.

[...]

I grew up with men who were going to protect me whether I liked it or not and in general that meant they were going to monitor my comings and goings. They were going to monitor my dress and my speech and my hair and makeup. They were going to monitor my virginity and sexuality. They had the final call on my life and my body. “The Old Rugged Cross” and cross your legs. “Go Tell it on the Mountain” and then be quiet.

They were going to tell me how to behave and scorn me if anything happened to me because they told me what to do and if I were raped or assaulted, it was likely the jeans I had on or the way I showed off my shoulders. My fault. They were going to “protect” me whether I liked it or not, and if I didn’t follow their commandments, I got what was coming to me. Your body. My choice. Women in countries like Afghanistan and Iran and Sudan and Syria are protected whether they like it or not. You are familiar with their plights and their codes and their forced way of living…they are being “protected” whether they like it or not.

You likely recognize that there are men in our own country who would like to “protect” American women in much of the same manner. There are men on the right-wing fringe who have openly spoken of revoking the 19th amendment. There are men in the mainstream GOP who openly speak of forced birth and ending no-fault divorce. It is not protection. It is predatory. Women's rights in some countries are not respected: restricted freedom of movement, restrictive dress codes, no protection from male sexual violence, forced marriage, and forced birth. Women in these countries can’t vote. They can’t attend school. They can’t raise their voices in public. They are openly discriminated against and have been pressed out of politics and life outside of their homes. These women are being “protected.” Or so the men in government and the religions they are in partnership with will tell you. The Taliban will swear that forcing women into burkas protects women just like the GOP will swear that abortion bans protect women. They both use their religion to mistreat and oppress women. They both harm women while suggesting they are protecting women.

Republicans, and those who will be part of the Trump administration, talk non-stop of groomers and pedophiles and rapists while nominating alleged groomers and pedophiles and rapists for roles in government. Republican lawmakers want to “protect” us from trans women in bathrooms while they elevate an adjudicated sexual abuser to the highest office in the land. A man who brags about grabbing random women by the p*ssy. Republican lawmakers want to “protect” us from immigrants while Trump picked a man to be in his cabinet accused of child trafficking — Matt Gaetz has since withdrawn his nomination for AG.

[...] Women aren’t safe when abusers are elevated to positions of power. Women aren’t safe when essential healthcare is banned. Women aren’t safe when men say we shouldn’t have the vote or we should “step aside” in the workplace. Women aren’t safe in Trump’s America. I know this intimately because I grew up in misogyny…in the church. I internalized it for years. I thought I was truly being protected until I didn’t want the protection anymore and then I found out what it truly was. I grew up with men who wanted to make me a second-class citizen and they did this by “protecting” me. By oppressing me. By marginalizing me. By abusing me. I am not the only one…there are too many of us who have already learned this lesson. They are not protecting us. We don’t need protection.

This Jess Piper Substack post is so frighteningly spot-on about the harmful and predatorial Christian Patriarchy attitudes dressed up as “protecting women”.

[hadesoftheladies]

i just saw jessie gender's "trans women are not biological males" video and . . .

it's so catastrophically awful. like one hour of strawmen and flat out inaccurate and false constructions of what is meant by the term "male" and "female" and "biology"

and isn't it funny how the goal with the trans movement as headed by these guys is about erasing distinction rather than providing clarity? we say, fine, transwomen are transwomen, and they can go by she/her, but no, they need to be called "women." okay. then we call transwomen "women", but male, and they say, "no, we must be called female."

woman and female are not inclusive terms. they are descriptive. i don't care who doesn't like to be "defined" if you exist, behave and are percievable in this dimension, you will get a fucking label because no one has the time to pretend to see you as an "essence." no matter how many times we move the goal posts, we are still going to need language for those distinctions between trans women and women, but oh wait . . . hold on, there are distinctions that are acceptable. we can use "trans" and "cis" for women.

and that's the thing isn't it? women can no longer define themselves as they want, centering their biology and struggles as the female sex, because they must define themselves as trans women want.

acknowledging sex differences, which is vital to women's rights and liberation, the core of their oppression, is now secondary to the comfort of transwomen.

it's an affront on feminist consciousness-raising. screw up the language so much and so successfully that you can't meaningfully discuss women's oppression.

feminist-materialist ideas are incompatible with genderqueer-metaphysical fantasies. jesse literally starts railing on "naturalism" being some kind of "belief" that how we are born is "is the only way we should exist" or some shit, which is like . . . not what naturalism is.

As indicated by the above characterization of the mid-twentieth-century American movement, naturalism can be separated into an ontological and a methodological component. The ontological component is concerned with the contents of reality, asserting that reality has no place for “supernatural” or other “spooky” kinds of entity. By contrast, the methodological component is concerned with ways of investigating reality, and claims some kind of general authority for the scientific method.

naturalism is literally about investigating reality: it's constraints and capacities. no "naturalist" is arguing that people are born perfect, but that they are born male or female, which is a biological system, not a fucking dress code or magical aura. it means, jesse, that even if you took more estrogen or got implanted with ovaries or feminized your face or got a vaginoplasty, your MALE BIOLOGICAL SYSTEM will react accordingly. this is why transmen can't just take testosterone without it causing serious physical risks. this is why trans women still can't fucking gestate a baby. STOP LYING TO PEOPLE ABOUT WHAT MALENESS AND FEMALENESS MEANS.

and top comment was some shit like "They just replaced ‘In the eyes of god’ with ‘biologically’ and thought we wouldn’t notice that it makes no sense because it invokes science".

It is a literal religious trick to refer to scientific endeavor or non-religious philosophy as its own religion. you are the ones thinking religiously. christians and young-earthers literally call "atheism" and "science" religions. like . . . what are you on right now?

biology is not a language game. it's a fucking reality. if you called water "spoof" it wouldn't change what water is or how it behaves, for fuck's sake. even if you believed really hard that the ocean was calling to you, it wouldn't change the fact that oceans cannot physically form a mouth and consciousness. i don't care what judith butler or forest valkai or whatever a pedo-queer theorist man said. women's oppression is not due to pronouns, fashion, or the english language.

trans women are biological males or they wouldn't be trans, jesse. you're fucking up your own lore.

[mla0]

You should talk more about this oc you ship with Patrick

well basically to be brief, it's tied to this idea that the clock is a bridge to another society where entities exist. and there's a very old-school monarchy there. because of this the story can either be tied to mla0 or it can be separate, depending on the way i'm writing it

the OC i made is the "prince," but more accurately he's more like a dog of the state or a servant who doesn't know anything beyond what he was meant to do

but he used to know patrick a long time ago, they were close friends before they split off because patrick ended up betraying this monarchy he's so loyal to. they have a very love/hate, or more accurately "i love you but your beliefs i can't stand for" relationship. it's very on-and-off but they always love each other regardless, even though they can't always find each other

his name's jesse and he's a trans guy. patrick kinda taught him all he knows about dressing like a fancy masc dude and even though he'll never admit it he does emulate patrick's style a lot and envies his supposed confidence

here's an old picrew of him. usually he has white hair but the longer he's away from the queen, the more it fades to a natural dark brown (there are Lore reasons for this)

[monkeeyuri]

🎩when we first went through drv3 we got so upset by how they treated Kaede that we skipped to the end of the game just to see what the ending was. At that point the only showcases of it were in Japanese though, so Shuichi suddenly was without a hat AND had a female VA. We thought this meant that there was a meta commentary twist sometime in the game where it was revealed Shuichi was actually a woman, like how female VA’s often play young male protags. I wish Shuichi was canonically a girl instead of actual canon dbdjxnd

unfortunately if shuichi was canonically a girl they probably would have made her cis. slightly better but still bad bc the trans aspect of her being a girl is pretty important i think. i think my problem isnt with the game but with the fact that no one sees the really obvious transfem interpretation because theyre still clinging to their transmasc headcanons from 2018 and havent played the game in 5 years. and also dont think trans women are real people. many such cases (cough dave strider jesse pinkman cough)

[aposematic-jessica]

Fuuuuck. I’ve started skipping all the egg and trans talk posts I come across. I was at a place of like “I can just listen to everyone else’s experience and compile them to figure out what I need to do” but then a friend was like Jess you need to start doing before you can actually figure. Which like fuck you I hate that but also fuck, you’re right. Which, for the record, I hate the idea of and do NOT wanna do. Because like what if I realize who I am and I don’t like it? What if i don’t mind it but it holds me back? What if I have to change a lot of things to be honest about myself? And god, worst of all: what if I have to keep asking people to try new things for me? I want to get it right immediately. I want to be linear, I go from what I am now to the person im meant to die as. No in between. I don’t want to let people watch me discover myself publicly. I can think my way into doing this right.

… even if maybe there isn’t a right way. Even if maybe im not meant to cut myself into before and done. Like. Maybe it’s caterpillar to chrysalis to cocoon to butterfly. And maybe there’s more stuff. Maybe my life cycle is more than two steps. I mean. I don’t have to be simple or straightforward. I can have multiple stages. Sometimes Pokémon have alinear evolution and stuff. That could be okay.

Hm. That could be okay maybe. Huh. Wow. Maybe it’s okay to let people watch. Or maybe it just won’t hurt me at least. And maybe it’s okay to not go right to the end. The act of creation… drafting is part of the writing process after all. Huh. Something to think about.