#Personal and Societal Liberation

[ryanranney]

May Love Be Our Law

So little about this life we know Our past is written by victors of war Our education of life comes from them Why do we listen?   We hold onto our ideas our beliefs our agreements All of them came before us!   Name one of yours? Did your idea of what a man is come from you or from another? Did your belief in what a woman should be come from you or from someone else?   Did you choose what manners…

[musical-chick-13]

The problem is. When I go, "Oh, this system is bullshit" and try to live outside it. My choices are still defined by that system. And that makes me feel really weird.

[doctormastertardis]

Another personal take on today's Neo-liberalism-- how IT is the OTHER SIDE OF THE SAME COIN AS ALT-RIGHT WINGERS (ya know how "new age spirituality" is now becoming synonymous with CULTURAL APPROPRIATION and ABUSE APOLOGISM and NO ONE IS BATTING AN EYE ABOUT IT)....

Just saw a post from a "trans person" about how it's "ableism" to call out an abusive person who is IN THE HIGHER SPECTRUM OF NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER because "being a narcissist is a mental disorder"... are you fucking kidding me???

(fyi, mirroring is a form of MALEVOLENT manipulation - mirroring is something that a lot of ABUSIVE people in the HIGHER SPECTRUM OF NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER DO TO HARM OTHERS).

And I just smdh.... reactive liberalism will excuse anything these days.

...reminds me of American/"Western" kids who are groomed to think being "trans" is about ASSIMILATING to the hetero-normative PERSPECTIVE AND EXPECTATIONS of GENDER EXPRESSION.

it's the same type of oppressive heteronormativity???? (this is why I don't vibe with folks who say shit like "the youth today are kinder" -- NO THEY ARE NOT. they've become more SKILLED at mimicking societal conventions).

OPPRESSION TODAY HAS BECOME MORE INSIDIOUS.

Y'all really need to stop thinking in BINARY.

Just because someone's gay, doesn't mean they can't be racist, or classist, or oppressive??? Just like, just because someone adheres to the identity politics of "latinidad" or any other "non-white" identity doesn't mean they're "progressive"????

(I used to run decolonizeyourself.tumblr.com and decolonizeyourselfarchive.tumblr.com)

....Just because some "westerner" identifies as "trans" doesn't mean they know shit-all about "ableism"!

Please stop throwing around the word "ableism" whenever folks talk about ABUSE that are coming from a person with NPD.

[satoriberry]

tha terf paradox of promoting acceptance of oneself's biological nature and not changing it for societal ideologies but then turning around and criticizing any person that has a different perception of their biological nature that doesn't immediately enter the "male or female" binary hmmm,,,,

[madtomedgar]

The thing that's scaring me right now is how many well meaning gentiles just genuinely have no idea when something is an antisemitic canard and so they are internalizing and parrotting ideas that can will and do get Jews killed everywhere because it's couched in pro Palestinian rhetoric and all they know about this is that settler colonialism is bad and they are trusting any leftist or or professed leftists who are actually alt-right types actively using this horror to recruit. And all they knew about antisemitism is like. The Holocaust happened and right wingers are often antisemitic and that anti-zionism isn't necessarily antisemitism. So you have people who honestly do not know better reblogging excerpts from fucking Protocols and thinking it's good information that explains and supports the Palestinian struggle because someone replaced the word "Jew" with "Zionist," and misatributed it. And I know it sounds wrong to say that you need to learn about what antisemitism looks like and how it works in order to effectively advocate for the one group of people in history who are actually being oppressed by Jews-as-Jews, but if you can understand why you need to learn about and recognize transphobia in order to be an effective feminist, you can understand that.

Rootless cosmopolitan tropes, dual loyalty tropes, blood libel, accusations that (((they))) control the media, banks, or governments of other countries, assertions that it's all rich white privileged landlords from nyc/jersey, accusations of making up atrocities or causing their own oppression or using misplaced sympathy to silence criticism for nefarious ends or always lying doesn't stop being antisemitic just because someone used the word Zionist instead of Jews. Go read "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere" so you can avoid becoming Jackson Hinkle's stooge on accident.

[turiyatitta]

The Illusion of Spiritual Identity

Beyond Stories We Tell OurselvesSpirituality, at its core, is a profound journey toward understanding one’s place in the vast expanse of existence. However, in our attempt to grasp this elusive understanding, we often pigeonhole ourselves into labels: spiritual, materialistic, moral, and the like. But what if I were to suggest that these labels, these stories, are mere illusions? And that by…

[maplesyrupbloodfeud]

The ending of You made me feel better about myself but absolutely want to vomit about the state of the world. Good job for the horror genre? I guess?

[mesetacadre]

How can I stop my otherwise well-meaning friends and myself from falling into the trap of Adventurism?

Adventurism is so appealing because it interfaces with (1) an understandable impatience to see change and with (2) the individualism conditioned into people by growing up in and existing within liberal frameworks and common pathways for understanding societal and historical change. If, for the formative years of your life, the dominant ideology of capitalism, that being liberalism in all its branches, is educated into you through all possible channels, especially history, it's to be expected that an individual who decides to participate in some of that change will see themselves as an agent in and of themselves. If your perspective on both history and current events can be boiled down to a simple concatenation of events whose only common motor is the free will of the most remarkable individuals, then you will try to act like one of those remarkable individuals and create one of these events through the only motor of your free will. And, the set of actions and attitudes that fall under the category of adventurism meets those frameworks very neatly for the radical extremes of liberalism. It's both the far left of liberalism and far right of liberalism that find adventurist methods appealing, though for describing the attitudes of that far right, using accelerationism is more common and IMO more accurate, but at their core, adventurism and accelerationism are the same methods modified by the particulars of their corresponding ideologies.

That is an erroneous way to look at the world of course, history is moved by the forces exerted by massified classes, themselves defined by their role in the mode of production, as well as the historical forces that serve as a precedent. It's not remarkable individuals who move history in any direction that they please, it's history and the weight of the context in which they exist that limits and expands the possibility of their action. It's more than the simple sum of all individual parts. Individuals are not agents, they are constituent parts that can only effect change when they act like so, organized as constituent parts, aware of the limitations and possibilities afforded by the past and present context. If you want to avoid the pitfalls of liberalism and individualism, such as adventurism, you should commit to a conscious change in the framework through which you see history, because adventurism is logical in one framework, and isn't in another.

This whole CEO murder business has had people of all stripes (such as myself, even if you think I'm a wet blanket) making fun of the situation. I also don't particularly care for the life of a capitalist. But there is also a smaller group of people who seem to believe this is significant. And within that, I think there is another division. First, the people who think this is significant because they believe that healthcare insurance providers have now been bullied into giving a better service, or because they believe that now all CEOs across the board will be scared themselves and do better things (or even because apparently now everyone will be hunting their nearest CEO). These are all various forms of engagement with adventurism. The second group of people, who I think are being much more reasonable, see the generalized perspective on this being that of celebration, that such a bad person got their comeuppance, and that this is first a proof that it's still very possible to stimulate class consciousness in the US working class, and that it is second a good opportunity to stimulate it.

While this is in some ways true, the class consciousness in display ("even by trump supporters", as if the difference between them and US democrats even existed) is one that's extremely unconscious. People dislike this guy because he's notorious among healthcare insurance providers and even his predecessors for denying a lot of claims. This is individualism again, people dislike him individually and maybe they dislike all individual healthcare insurance providers CEOs, or even all individual CEOs regardless of sector. The vast majority of people celebrating who you wouldn't expect aren't class conscious, they're class unconscious from decades of consequent liberal punches to their liver, heart, and head. Most people dislike him as an individual, and it's not very difficult to hate all CEOs without ever stepping off the wide bounds of liberalism and individualism. In fact, it's the placing that of pointless hate at the center of your ideology that's preventing you from shedding the ideology of capitalism.

And no, I don't mean to say that it's pointless to talk to your lifelong republican uncle about this or whoever, and I would encourage my USamerican followers to use this event to their advantage. But you can't think that just hating CEOs is a good enough base to develop a revolutionary consciousness. You need to begin seeing the world through a class lens, only then can you only really understand the impotence of adventurism, and that it lies in the fact that it does not engage with change through class, but through the individual, who by itself is an insignificant agent of change.

[arijackz]

PICK A CARD: What Era Is Your Beauty From?

☯︎ “A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Disclaimer: This is a general reading, take what resonates. I am not suggesting any of these descriptions are cannon to your ancestral history, these are just how my intuition perceived, and then presented your beauty’s energy.

p1 → p2 ↙︎ p3 → p4

🂽 Pile One 🂽 (the devil, 2oC rev., ace of cups rev., 4oW, 3oC, king of swords, the tower, the world)

❖ Pile one, I feel like I’m watching the Game of Thrones out of context. Just flashes of people from around the Medieval 1400s living their day-to-day; singing, dancing, eating together, and then… not.

❖ The imagery I got when I asked what era your beauty came from, was very longing in nature. There was a lot of joy and celebration but it felt like I was watching the film through teary eyes and a heavy heart.

❖ The “movie” flashed between a thriving culture sharing tales of triumph and having happy, drunk sing-song moments together; and then those same people under a war-torn regime of a very cruel but powerful man. I sense themes of religious persecution, nationwide government-forced famine, and general desecration of the once-peaceful way of life. The population was going through collective mourning.

❖ People lamented over their unfulfillable desire to reconnect with their homeland and all of their loved ones. With the World card at the end of the spread and the Empress at the bottom of the deck, I get the clear image that your beauty is the physical embodiment of a large collective’s longing for the sanctity of their community. You invoke that feeling people get when they remember a bitter-sweet memory that hums fervor in their chest and gives them the fire they need to push forward.

❖ Your beauty comes from an era where the genuine smile and cheer of a pretty girl sparked a nation’s hope for reformation. You are the last remaining connection to long-lost celebration and the heart of a forgotten city.

How Do You Paint The Divine Image of Hope?

🂽 Pile Two 🂽 (7oC rev., 4oP rev., full moon, leo, sacral chakra)

❖ WHOOOAAaaaaa Ammberrr is the collluuhhhhh of ya enneergyyy!! WHOoaaA, shades of gaawwllddd displayyy naturraalllyyyyyy…..

❖ Just know I was HOLLERING that. This is my hippie pile. My people. Yea that’s right, I’m talking the late 1960s - early 1970s.

❖ Your beauty arose at a time when society desperately needed color (specifically seeing some of you wearing a lot of bright colors or eye-catching jewelry or hairstyles). The world was bleak and the war’s aftermath on the overall mental and emotional welfare of the general public pushed people to radical ideals and birthed a revolution centered around liberation, pleasure, and community.

❖ Your beauty is all sunshine and rainbows. Psychedelics and organic food. The best music in human history (feel free to argue with me, but know that it is going straight out the other ear, mama) and week-long outdoor festivals full of peace, love, and vulnerability with total strangers.

❖ Your beauty brushes people with the chilling winds of shameless pleasure. The taste of unadulterated personal freedom that is almost a societal taboo. Your beauty is so purely liberating.

❖ Lmao, I imagine a guitar riff going off everytime you walk into a room.

❖ You are the physical embodiment of eccentric love and vivacious rebellion.

Play That Funky Music

🂽 Pile Three 🂽 (The lovers rev., the High Priestess rev., Ace of Swords., 4oC. 7)

❖ Revolution is a running theme for all of the piles. This collective’s beauty awakens people.

❖ I’m seeing a brilliant man going mad at the lack of creative intelligence around him and pushing for societal rebirth. A complete cultural shift from the Dark Ages (pile one), to modernity. This is my Renaissance pile.

❖ You embody the mystical fusion of art, religion, architecture, and science. You are all the world’s intrinsic beauty rolled up into one figure. You are the art that attracts painters, inventors, and philosophers alike.

❖ You have the beauty of an all-around muse. You invoke the spirit of creative passion. It is like people see you and get a stroke of inspiration. Something that kicks them in the ass and tells them to go outside and create.

❖ This pile is very romantic. A classical beauty, like red roses and bottle poems. The universal innate desire to dream big.

❖ Shoutout to my Aquarians, 11th housers, and Shatabhisha natives.

The Medieval-Modern Muse

🂽 Pile Four 🂽 (king of pentacles, 2oP, 5oP rev., 9oP)

❖ OKAY PLOTWIST?? I don’t know what era this pile’s beauty is from because it’s set in the future.

❖ It’s funny how the last piles were all set in periods of revolution (putting in the WORK) and your pile, the final pile, is set in a better world full of financial stability, the end of inequality, economic fairness, and universal abundance (the fruits of the labor).

❖ Dude, I was trying to read the message at first and was just scratching my head. I was like, “When has anywhere, literally ever been this good???” Then I saw the ace of wands reversed at the bottom of the deck and saw impending change and it clicked.

❖ I also saw some star semblance, and see that your beauty is a reminder to mankind that the “impossible” is already set in motion. The hell we have created will crumble.

❖ You are a physical embodiment of society’s future triumph. You radiate wealth and fairness. My Venusians, especially Libra. You also look regal, something about you makes people want to stand taller.

❖ You got the pride card, I see that you give people the feeling of victory. You are living proof of future triumph in a better world where greed and sorrow are eradicated.

❖ You are the harbinger of the next era.

Introducing The First Titanium Man On The Moon!

[communist-ojou-sama]

It feels like not enough people understand this in general so I'll attempt to explain in my own terms:

The notion that "gender" and "biological sex" are different concepts is ahistorical and has done nothing but harm to trans people.

Gender, correctly defined, is one hierarchical axis of a class society in which power, prestige, and wealth accrue disproportionately to one class, which we know as "men" from a number of lower classes, the best known among them being "women" but this is the reality for all genders outside of manhood.

Now, if you know anything about history, you know that the origin of biological sex is in the modern period. "Biological sex" is the reductive, pseudo-scientific narrative produced by the modern era to ascribe the societal system of patriarchal domination as arising from some fundamental, prediscursive biological reality. This is a lie.

The core of labelling "biological sex" is Exactly the same as that of gender: it is looking at a person's body and then ascribing social meaning to their physical features. The source of liberation then is Not in the changing of How we non-consentually read meaning into the bodies of others, but in ending the process of attributing social meaning into Literally All physical features.

[wisesoultarot]

Your life in the next 3 months

Instagram | Want to tip me for my work? | For personal reading

🌸Image 1

You might find yourself grappling with body image issues or feelings of low self-worth, which can often manifest in a preoccupation with your appearance. This focus on looks may lead you to scrutinize every detail of your physical self, from your skin and hair to your fashion choices. As you navigate these feelings, you may become increasingly aware of societal standards of beauty and how they influence your self-perception.

This heightened self-awareness can serve as a double-edged sword; while it may initially lead to feelings of inadequacy, it can also ignite a powerful desire for change. You may begin to seek out ways to enhance your well-being, whether through adopting healthier lifestyle habits, exploring new fashion styles that resonate with your personality, or investing time in self-care practices that nurture your body and mind.

As you embark on this journey of self-discovery and transformation, you may find that embracing your unique features—your skin tone, hair texture, and body shape—becomes a source of empowerment. This process can help you cultivate a deeper appreciation for yourself, allowing you to celebrate your individuality rather than conforming to external expectations.

With each step you take towards self-acceptance, you may notice a shift in your confidence levels. The more you prioritize your health and well-being, the more you may feel empowered to express yourself authentically through your appearance. Ultimately, this journey can lead to a profound sense of liberation, enabling you to embrace your true self with pride and confidence, regardless of societal pressures or beauty standards.

🌸Image 2

I can sense your heart and spirit brimming with an overwhelming sense of joy, happiness, positivity, and optimism. It’s as if you are a vessel overflowing with light, ready to embrace all the wonderful experiences life has to offer. You are wholeheartedly committed to embracing deep joy, allowing it to permeate every aspect of your life. This commitment will guide you toward achieving success in your endeavors, whether they be personal, professional, or creative.

As you journey through this vibrant phase, you will find yourself celebrating victories, both big and small, recognizing the importance of each achievement along the way. You will revel in the abundance that surrounds you, appreciating the richness of life and all the blessings it brings. Your focus on enhancing your health will lead you to make choices that nourish your body and mind, fostering a sense of vitality and well-being that radiates from within.

In addition to these profound pursuits, you will also discover a playful side to yourself, allowing for moments of lightheartedness and fun. This playful spirit will invite joy into your daily life, reminding you to savor the little things and find delight in the present moment.

As the seasons change and summer approaches, you will find that your heart opens even wider, leading you to a deeper connection with your soulmate. This connection will be marked by understanding, love, and shared experiences that enrich your lives together. You will truly feel the magic of companionship, as you both embark on a journey filled with love, laughter, and mutual growth. Embrace this beautiful path ahead, for it is filled with endless possibilities and the promise of a fulfilling life.

🌸Image 3

You will embody tact, diplomacy, and a sense of balance that will shine through in your interactions with everyone around you, be it friends, coworkers, a romantic partner, or family. Your ability to navigate conversations with grace and understanding will create an atmosphere of warmth and openness, allowing others to feel comfortable and valued in your presence. This skill will not only enhance your relationships but also foster a sense of community wherever you go.

I envision you enjoying social gatherings, celebrating with drinks, and relishing reunions with school or college friends. These moments will be filled with laughter, shared memories, and the joy of reconnecting with those who have played significant roles in your life. You will find yourself surrounded by a vibrant circle of friends, each bringing their unique energy and stories to the table, creating an environment that feels both nostalgic and exhilarating.

As you immerse yourself in these lively interactions, you'll find yourself in a state of pure joy, perhaps the happiest you've ever been. The simple pleasures of life—lively conversations, shared meals, and spontaneous adventures—will fill your days with a sense of fulfillment and contentment. You'll discover a renewed appreciation for the connections you have cultivated over the years, and this will deepen your sense of belonging and happiness.

Amidst this lively group, one individual will capture your heart. This person will stand out, drawing you in with their charm, wit, and shared interests. The two of you will feel an undeniable attraction, a magnetic pull that seems to transcend the ordinary. As you spend time together, the chemistry will ignite a whirlwind of passion, romance, and deep connection. You will find yourselves lost in conversations that stretch late into the night, sharing dreams and aspirations, and discovering the beauty of vulnerability in each other’s company.

This blossoming relationship will not only bring excitement but also a profound sense of understanding and support. You will feel seen and appreciated in ways you may not have experienced before, and this connection will encourage you to grow and explore new facets of yourself. Together, you will create cherished memories, embark on adventures, and build a partnership that is both exhilarating and deeply fulfilling. In this journey of love, you will find not just a partner but a confidant, a teammate, and a source of unwavering joy.

[drdemonprince]

The word “vanilla” comes up a lot in your writing and it’s always with negative connotations.

I fully accept that my own reactions to it are my responsibility alone and no one is making me feel a certain way. But I do wonder if there are ways to have conversations around sexuality that don’t elevate one kind of sex over another in a demeaning way that make vanilla sex almost a running joke.

As someone with pretty severe sexual trauma history for me even having enjoyable vanilla sex is pushing boundaries. To actually be able to initiate, seek out and enjoy sex of any kind has been challenging.

The increased use and acceptance of vanilla as a derogatory term is unfortunate I think as it invalidates the experiences of many sa survivors and makes it feel like sex is only valid if it’s kinky.

In saying that having lots of friends in the kink/fet scene I know they’ve fought really hard to not have their sexual preferences demonized.

So I do understand.

I just wish my preferences weren’t always made out to be boring and dull, and thereby made me boring and dull.

This seems especially prevalent in queer spaces.

I think one of the biggest problems in how people conceive of diverse sexualities is by attempting to place all sex acts upon a single spectrum from "extremely kinky" to "tame." Under this framework, activities like PIV and oral are viewed as neutral precursors to the more racier and extreme forms of sex that a person must "work themselves up" to -- and this obscures that those supposedly neutral sexual activities can be both incredibly exciting to some, and downright disturbing and traumatizing to others.

I am also harmed by this and have written about it on this blog quite a lot.

Like you, I am harmed by the presumption that PIV, fingering, and oral are neutral sexual acts that are lower on the intensity spectrum than things like being slapped or choked. I find receiving oral to be far more intense, triggering, dysphoric, and disturbing than anything in the rape play/primal/dub con/intoxication/hypnosis realm that I enjoy -- because I like and want those things, and I do not want oral.

My problem with oral isn't that it's "boring." It's that it is fucking traumatic for me.

I also find completely un-kinky sex in general to be profoundly alienating and triggering in most instances.

I am harmed by the idea that PIV and oral are more benign, neutral forms of sex, just as you are.

I need language to articulate that the sex acts that most people view as the default are in fact alienating and disturbing to me *as a sexual assault survivor*. In fact, the most common form of sexual assault that I have experienced has been people forcing non-kinky sex on me that they assumed I had to be game for, since I liked the stuff on the more "intense" side of their imagined spectrum.

The cishet, nonkinky world has already created terminology for the views around sex that create these problems, and that's "vanilla." And so I use "no vanilla" to broadcast that I want absolutely nothing to do with anyone who holds that worldview.

I don't think expressing my boundaries (which people repeatedly and forcefully attempt to trample over in all sexual spaces, including kinky ones!) is me derogating people who do not share my kinks. I don't think I'm hurting anyone by rejecting the dominant viewpoint of society. And for what it's worth, I will reiterate again, I don't think people are boring for liking non-kinky sex.

I think that we all benefit from unpacking our assumptions surrounding what sex is or can be, and for many sexual assault survivors it is immensely healing to take pre-written societal expectations surrounding sex off the table.

It's not inherently kinky to reimagine what sexual pleasure might look like, I suppose, but anyone who is doing that kind of deep reflective and interpersonal work is already taking steps to liberate themselves from the cishet power structure that gave us the notion of obligatory "vanilla" sex.

I think that instead of feeling like the term "vanilla" is a thing that you have to defend, you might be better served by simply defending your own right to define your sexuality in whatever ways you choose.

People who are having weird hypnosis fantasy sex are not sneering at you for enjoying what you enjoy. We want you to be free and at ease in your body. What we're sneering at, when we criticize "vanilla," are the dictates that a person must have sex in a certain way, that some forms of sex are more neutral than others, and that we OWE sexual partners certain activities and sexual responses.

"Vanilla" sexual values and assumptions are the enemy of all sexual assault survivors. You don't have to be interested in any remotely freaky shit in order to benefit from us all collectively destroying the notion that certain forms of sex are the default that we owe to people. We ALL benefit from being able to reject the sex acts we do not like as loudly and proudly as we want.

[vaguely-concerned]

To the ‘themes I am picking up on in Veilguard’ list, let's go ahead and add what I have a sneaking suspicion will actually turn out to be The theme:

— the world has changed and can never be as it was again.

— I have been changed and can never be who I was again.

— in this simple unavoidable truth there is endless grief and endless hope.

And I… may be getting a bit emotional about it haha. Let me show my work a bit: 

if da:o is a game about people who are already dead or half ghosts in some form (through societal forces, psychologically, functionally, literally, in body, through the joining etc.) coming together anyway to save the world from being swallowed by total nihilism and despair (symbolized by the blight) through the power of love and friendship and also this sword/potential heroic sacrifice that I found, da2 is a game about people who have lost their homes and been set adrift finding and building new homes in each other (while completely failing to save the world. also through the power of love and friendship. as well as years of petty bickering <3 we must imagine kirkwall if not happy then worth having been because the love was there the love was there and that's the only sanctifying force we can ever have in this doomed world and city of ours), and da:i is a game about old stabilizing-but-unjust comfortable lies vs. disruptive but potentially liberating uncomfortable truths, and the power of friendship to help us distinguish the one from the other and navigate through them...

folks… I'm starting to think that veilguard might be a game specifically about moving towards recovery and acceptance after trauma — about how even in this flawed, severed, scarred state, what is here right now is worth loving and worth caring for. even in an imperfect and impermanent world and self, there is worth and joy. and of course the first real tragedy — and threat — of Solas is that he just cannot find it in himself to accept this and move on, to let go of what was, the regret won’t let him go or he won’t let go of it. which means that even though on the surface it’s Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain (and the will to subjugate and violate they represent) who are the main villains, the real antagonistic force in this story beneath that is the Dread Wolf’s despair. A despair Rook must make an answer to by the end of the game, one way or another, compassionately or with righteous fury, triumphant or pyrrhic.

The world will change again and again and so will you — BUT the crucial element is that so will everyone else who exists along with you, you are fundamentally not alone in this existential truth. all we’ll ever have is each other and my god that is plenty, my god that is enough!!! Which is the second thing Solas just can’t accept, he keeps himself separate and completely alone out of an awful mix of fear and pride and feeling himself unworthy of anything else. Rook and the player want to save the world of Thedas because it’s where everyone we love lives, Solas wants to go back to the past because that’s the only neighbourhood where he can still visit those he loved — and the person he himself was, before. A very sympathetic and human instinct/trap to fall into when touched by trauma, I think, if only it wasn’t backed by godlike power, a fundamentally oppositional personality, and a catastrophic lack of therapy to make it literally everyone else’s problem too lol. It’s varric and solas’ banter about the man on the island and where meaning in a life comes from all over again, writ large and with detail work — and the added idea of ‘what if there are also other islands out there, though. With other people on them that you could find if you reach for each other’. Rook with the best of intentions has to make choices to which there are no perfect outcomes and live with what happens — and not cut themselves off from everyone else around them even when there is regret or shame. You get back up every day and you make a life with other people doing the same and you do your best, and that’s the only victory this world will give you. In the end, that is more than enough, that is essential. And I um. I love that. So much. It’s why some of the writing clumsiness on top can’t hurt me because this thematic spine is so solid and so beautiful to me. It’s DA2 all over again that way for me personally — I forgive this story for what it isn’t and couldn’t be, and I love it with my whole stupid open heart for what it actually is. Thank you for coming to my TED-talk and goodbye etc.      

(For my fellow TLT heads out there — you know what this story is reminding me of most of all, actually? It has some big Nona the Ninth vibes down there in the deep. It’s about… the horror and unspeakable beauty that can only be found in liminality, and the role of love in making that basic fact of existence bearable. And also even more unbearable at the same time. I'm so sorry.)

[communistkenobi]

could you expand / share reading materials on "gender is a structure that mediates access to personhood"? i feel like that's an important point that i don't fully grasp. especially because it is my understanding that until relatively recently even white, bourgeois, cis-heterosexual, perisex etc women were also denied personhood, but were already gendered as women, right?

thanks in advance!

I’m so sorry you sent me this ask like three months ago and I’m only getting around to it now lol

This is going to be a long post. I will be talking a lot about citizenship and rights in this post. I’ll include citations, but two overarching texts I will be engaging with a lot are Unequal Freedom (2004) by Evelyn Nakano Glenn and The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1989) by Gøsta Esping-Andersen.

This is also not meant to be a comprehensive answer to your question. I am much less familiar with migration & refugee scholarship, which is obviously deeply engaged with the concept of citizenship as an apparatus for granting rights. I’m flagging this because my answer has a particular focus that is not generalisable. Everything I say is not “the answer” to your question, but an answer informed by specific domains of scholarship.

First, I think a good place to start is that when we talk about ‘personhood’ as a status that a human being can or cannot possess, we are often talking about a status that is realisable through citizenship. ‘Personhood’ is itself a legal term, and we can see this in how stateless people (i.e. people with no citizenship) are treated - because rights are granted by and administered through states, being without state citizenship means you are unable to realise any set of rights, and therefore, you are rendered as a non-person. The UN has two separate conventions on the rights of stateless people for example, as being stateless is necessarily an international issue. I think this approach helps makes sense of why “human rights” is a popular framing in discussions of how to remediate inequality (e.g. “trans rights are human rights”). The “human” part of that equation is only realised through the attainment of “rights,” i.e., through citizenship. Citizenship = personhood can also be seen when people invoke “second class citizens” as an articulation of legal, political, and societal discrimination - i.e., groups of people who have less/no access to rights compared to other groups within a state. Systems of classed citizenship often emerge from regimes of settler colonialism, slavery, and apartheid (Glenn discusses this in her book).

The basic Marxist intervention in this discussion is that this class system still exists even in places that have abolished slavery, abolished apartheid, and/or gone through formal decolonisation, because state law under capitalism is fundamentally unjust. Marx calls law the “mystification of power” (I believe he says this in The German Ideology? I'm rusty on my Marx readings lol) - he argues that law is a bourgeois system of justice that caters to the wealthy and powerful and disenfranchises the poor and marginal, but appears as neutral and fair through a liberal “theater” (Marx’s term from The 18th Brumaire) of equality and democracy, mystifying its actual effects and purpose (The Red Demiurge (2015) by Scott Newton is a book about Soviet legal history that goes into some of this. His focus is on the evolution of the Bolshevik relationship to law as the USSR developed and encountered quite literally new legal problems that emerged as a result of the formation of a socialist state). This is also part of the Marxist critique of nationalism - if state citizenship is what grants access to rights, and citizenship is classed (through your relationship to production, through white supremacy, through patriarchy, through colonial status, through religious status, through etc), then equality does not legally exist, that all equality is bourgeois equality, i.e., not universal, not equal.

Gøsta Esping-Andersen provides a really helpful theory of thinking about citizenship rights within a capitalist state (his book only focuses on Western imperial core states, so just flagging that lol). He begins by arguing that:

all markets are regulated by the state, there is no actual “free” or anarcho-capitalist market,

because of this necessary regulatory function provided by the state, the commodity of wage-labour (i.e., the process of selling your labour-power as a “good” or commodity on a market in exchange for money in the form of wages) is likewise always regulated to some degree, and so finally,

welfare should be understood as the regulatory system of the commodity of wage-labour.

This regulatory apparatus is what grants people “social citizenship rights” - sick leave, pensions, disability and unemployment insurance, welfare payments, food stamps, tax bracket placements, childcare, healthcare, education, housing, so on and so on. Within this framework, Esping-Andersen demonstrates that various welfare regimes produce different citizenship classes - Canada, Australia and the US, for example, explicitly reproduce an impoverished “welfare class” through a marginal, means-tested welfare regime that only provides benefits to the very poorest. Various European countries by contrast tend to have what he calls a “corporatist” welfare regime that often grants different social citizenship rights based on which occupation you have, which he argues emerged from feudal and pre-capitalist religious (esp. Catholic) social forms of organisation.

ANYWAY, the purpose of doing all that set-up is to contextualise how we arrive at the question of gender. Feminists make the basic point that citizenship is also classed by gender - in Unequal Freedom, Glenn talks about this in the US, where white women were legally treated as extensions of their husbands and had no access to property rights, voting rights, and so on. Black women, in contrast, were treated sexually as women by slaveholders (i.e., raped and abused) but denied any and all personhood on the basis of their slave status. Citizenship in the US was historically based first on your ability to hold property (reserved for white bourgeois men), and then on your ability to “freely sell” your labour-power on the market - white women were denied citizenship on this basis because they were consigned to managing what was defined as the “private realm,” i.e., the realm that houses free labourers (white men). This public/private distinction emerges through capitalist markets and the commodity of wage-labour, which produces a sharp distinction where productive labour takes place “out there” (paid for in wages by the capitalist class) and reproductive labour takes place “in here” (i.e., labour that is not paid for in wages* by the capitalist class and forms the social basis of reproducing the public labour pool). 

*for white women. see below

As Glenn argues, this public/private distinction in the US is fundamentally racialised. We can see this difference in the emergence of the suffragette movement, where white women appeal to their whiteness (i.e., free labour status) as the rationale for being granted the right to vote. Black women were disqualified from this movement, and did not benefit from white women’s demands for equal citizenship on the basis of them providing all this unpaid reproductive labour to their white husbands, as Black and other racialised women often provided domestic housekeeping labour for white women (unpaid during slavery and for indentured servants, for wages after its abolition). This leaves Black women without a private realm, subjecting them to a “purely public” arena that is uniquely difficult to organise for unionisation and/or improve working conditions (Deborah King talks about this further in Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness (1988)).

Trans-feminism explicates this further - coercive sex assignment at birth classes people on the basis of reproductive capacity. “Females” are impregnated, “males” do the impregnating. This particular system of sex assignment is deeply tied to colonial population management concerns, where measuring the labour capacity of colonised subjects was a matter of managing white wealth (as well as making sure “there weren’t too many of them” compared to white people in colonies - this was especially a major white anxiety after the Haitian Revolution at the turn of the 19th century, the largest slave revolt in history. See Settlers by J Sakai). You can read Maria Lugones’ papers The Coloniality of Gender (2016) and Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System (2007), Alex Adamson's (2022) paper Beyond the Coloniality of Gender, and Guirkinger & Villar's (2022) paper Pro-birth policies, missions, and fertility for some introductory reading.

(Note: patriarchal gender hierarchies predate and exist outside of European colonial domination - it is a popular white queer talking point that Europe invented gender, that indigenous peoples actually all had epic radically equal genderfuck systems that were destroyed by Europe, and this is a very patronising and racist historical generalisation that I want to avoid making. Third World/Global South feminism is a necessary corrective to this - an arena of scholarship I am sadly not well versed in. Sylvia Wynter is the only scholar I’ve engaged with on this topic, which again, is a very limited slice. I welcome reading recommendations in this area).

While sex assignment is coercive for everyone, it is a particular problem for trans people, who are accused of impersonation and ID fraud if our sex markets conflict with our gender presentation, or we don’t “look like” our sex marker to cis people. Because you need a government ID to do basically anything - getting a job, applying for an apartment, getting a driver’s license, going to school, buying a phone plan, being on unemployment, applying for disability, filing an insurance claim, doing your taxes, opening a bank account, getting married, going to the hospital, buying lottery tickets at the corner store, etc - and sex markers appear on basically all government ID in many countries, trans people are systematically denied a whole range of citizenship rights (and thus personhood) on the basis of this sex assignment. Trans people are not merely treated as the wrong gender, they are ungendered, and by this process, rendered ineligible for personhood. Like just as an example, gay marriage is a luxury to trans people, as gay marriage is based on the state recognising both you and your partner’s gender in the first place. (See Heath Fogg Davis’ paper Sex-Classification Policies as Transgender Discrimination (2014) for example. Butler also talks about this on a more fundamental level in Bodies That Matter (1993), and Stryker & Sullivan also discuss this in The Queen's Body, the King's Member (2009)).  

This is likewise the impetus behind anti-trans bathroom bills and sports bans - citizenship guarantees, among other things, a right to public space, and these bans are meant to deprive transgender people access to those spaces. These bans should be understood as a way of circumventing the much more difficult process of revoking the citizenship of trans people outright by using a component of citizenship (sex assignment at birth) to impoverish the quality of citizenship that trans people have access to. This is why bans on medical transition are not actually just about medical oppression, but the oppression of trans peoples’ abilities to live in society in general. An instructive parallel is abortion bans for pregnant people, who, in addition to facing medical oppression and violence by being denied healthcare, are likewise systemically marginalised through being forced into the role of “mother” (again we see how cissexualism reduces people to reproductive capacity), economically marginalising them by reducing their capacity to earn a wage, tying them to partners/spouses that now have greater economic and social leverage over them (and thus have greater capacity to assault, rape, and murder them), depriving them of the choice of alternative life paths, and so on.

It’s generally much more difficult to get the state to sign off on unilaterally oppressing a group of citizens by depriving them of citizenship completely, so attacking a group through more narrow and particular policies like healthcare or the use of public space (with the ultimate goal of depriving them of their rights in general) is often much easier and more productive. See Beauchamp's 2019 book Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and US Surveillance Practices, who talks about this in the context of anti-trans bathroom bills in chapter 3. This is also a common thread in disability scholarship, as disabled people are likewise denied much of the same citizenship rights through similar logics - the book Absent Citizens (2009) by Michal J Prince talks about this in the Canadian context. To give an example he uses in the book, in Canada, accessible voting stations were only federally mandated in I believe the 90s, meaning that disabled people were practically disenfranchised until about 30 years ago in Canada, even though there were no laws explicitly banning disabled people from voting.

As a result, any barriers put in place by the state to change your legal name and sex marker should be understood as a comprehensive denial of personhood, not only because we as trans people want our IDs to reflect who we are, but because those barriers make it difficult to do literally anything in civil society. This the basis behind the cry of “trans rights are human rights” - taking away our healthcare rights also fundamentally denies us equal citizenship (and thus personhood), because healthcare is where we get all those little permission slips from doctors and psychologists to change our name and gender marker in the first place. This is of course not remotely the same as being made stateless (trans refugees are placed in a particularly harrowing and violent legal black hole, for example) - I as a white trans person living in the imperial core still benefit from a massive range of material, political and social privileges not afforded to many others, but my transness positions me at a deficit relative to cis people who have the same state citizenship as I do. As I hope I've made clear, it's not a binary case of either having or not having citizenship, but that citizenship is classed, and the quality of your citizenship is heavily dependent on a whole range of social, political, legal, economic, and historical factors that are all largely out of your control.

So not only is gender a barrier to citizenship, it mediates access to realising the full range of personhood within a regime of state citizenship. Trans people are not the only group effected by this, as I described above, but trans people are a group that makes obvious the arbitrary, coercive, and unequal nature of sex assignment through its connection to state citizenship.

[olympianbutch]

(Ranting about a comment I saw on TikTok.)

I genuinely need people to stop blaming ancient Greek religion/the gods for ancient Greek societal conventions like infanticide, slavery, and misogyny.

Exposed infants were protected by Kourotrophos gods!

Versions of the gods exist who were liberators of enslaved persons!

Women undeniably found the most freedom in the religious sphere!

For all of ancient Greece's sociocultural conservatism, the gods virtually demanded that worshippers subvert customs. In the words of my professor, "The Greek gods are a lot more progressive than you'd expect from the conservative ancient Greeks."

[fairuzfan]

Hey, I've read your post reply on the ask about the Standing together movement, and there you mentioned that it's incorrect to separate Palestinians and Jews and create a false dichotomy when speaking about liberating Palestine and anti-occupation movement. Could you please elaborate on that? It's a very interesting take that I haven't heard before yet.

So I generally don't understand why we are separating "Palestinian" and "Jews" with no potential for overlap between the two. By separating them, this implies, fundamentally, that there can be no Jewish Palestinians which... is not true. Just even historically, Jewish Palestinians exist and continue to exist.

Why are they mutually exclusive terms within their mission statement when they wish to "stand together"? And I'm not saying this in a condescending manner, I'm saying this because I know there are Palestinians who live in Israel who insist on being referred to as Palestinian. They won't let their Palestinian identity be erased under any circumstances. But they're the only group at risk of having that happen to them. Jewish people are not at risk of having their Jewishness erased for being Palestinian. So how can it be "standing together" when you acknowledge that there is a divide, societally, between perceptions of identity where one is at risk of total destruction by another and you, yourself, do not risk anything?

Where do Jewish Palestinians fall in this dichotomy, exactly? Does that mean no Palestinian will be able to convert to Judiasm without giving up their Palestinian identity? Are Jewish people just innately separated from Palestinians as a whole? If so, what is the thing that categorizes "Palestinian" in their eyes? Is it their religion? Well it can't be, because Palestinians have a diverse array of religions and like I said, people who identity as Palestinian and Jewish exist and are at risk of having their "Palestinian" erased in favor of their "Jewish" one.

Is it their ethnicity? Also can't be, because there is a vast array of ethnicities within Palestinian society. Unless they mean Palestinian=Arab, which is erasure. It erases Armenian Palestinians who play an integral part in Palestinian culture, for example.

So like what is the separation exactly? How are these mutually exclusive categories and how are we defining them? Unless, which is the reason that underlies all this, you mean to say that there is a difference between people who are Palestinians and people are Jewish innately in some unidentifiable manner?

Now, many Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship are not really subject to equal rights lol. And those rights are taken away *because* they are Palestinian. You have to acknowledge that. So when we say "Jewish and Palestinian" in a mission statement where you intend to """solve""" inequality, you're already setting that distinction in your mind that there is an actual difference between these people. So it's problematic in that vein.

But also, the group doesn't address the systematic abuses Palestinians face for YEARS, even before the Likud government. You can't erase that and attribute it to Netanyahu only. You have to address that the very system of Israel was founded on the mass expulsion and erasure of Palestinians, that includes Palestinian Jews.

But again, we have this dichotomy of "Jewish" and "Palestinian," setting into motion that "Palestinian" is somehow an identity that is separate from "Jewish." And through what definitions are we imposing that difference? Through... race science? Through cultural differences? Well, again, what about people who have cultural overlaps. Like if a nonJewish Palestinian marries a Jewish person who is not Palestinian and their child is growing up with both cultures? What does that mean for them? What does that mean for the two people who got married? And even Jewish Palestinians, are they having to give up their Palestinian side for marrying someone Jewish? Won't that cause further inequality within our groups? Isn't this separation just a nicer worded version of segregation in that way?

We have to acknowledge that it is within the state of Israel's interests, at their core, to separate these two identities. So by playing into this narrative, we're continuing the very colonization of history as they try to rewrite the past, implying that Jewish Palestinians especially were not considered a part of Palestinian culture and werent allowed to partake in it.

And it's just, to me, very racist to assume that there can't be overlap between these two types of people. It's happened in Palestine for centuries. But when Balfour comes in and is like "here you go, Jewish people of European cultural heritage, here is your homeland, nevermind the other people who have customs and traditions here, just do whatever you want and get out of Europe," everyone just nods their head like yeah that's reasonable. They didn't even try to learn Palestinian culture and life they just kicked us out. I'd argue that Palestinians would have welcomed Jewish immigrants who sought a safe homeland, so long as they didn't kick us out and enact nearly a century of violence. Palestine is the holy land for a reason! This land is the convergence of faiths and ideas and culture in such a unique way. Labeling it "Palestine" emphasizes that Palestinians are diverse and allow for an overlap of identities!

Essentially, when you try to separate groups of people like this, particularly when the separation of "Palestinians" (or more commonly referred to as "arabs" in Israeli society. Even our identities are erased to homogenize us) and "Jews," it makes it seem like Palestinians are fundamentally anti-jewish and antisemitic. And historically, just doesn't even make any sense.