#Swolesome

[mothshrub]

Anyway, the latest hobby here is 'watching video essays by trans authors particularly but not exclusively if they have an essay on masculinity or gender and society'.

Recs:

Contrapoints

Jesse Gender

Lily Alexandre

Lady Emily

RickiHirsch

Alexander Avila

Oakwyrm

Shanspeare

KazRowe

Philosophy Tube

Swolesome

Khadija Mbowe

[asm5129]

QUEER INTERSECTIONALITY PANEL w/ QUESTING REFUGE, OLU ONLINE & SWOLESOME & LUNA LEBLEU

A discussion about gatekeeping, community needs, erasure and more!

https://www.youtube.com/live/4zN4yAGz8eU?si=rOGoUmvW-0Itq0f5

Https://www.twitch.tv/adamplaysagame123

[thelindenpapers]

Video Weekend

Kathrin -- Whiteness Sucks for White People Too, Actually:

How Law Enforcement Taught Me to Dehumanize | That Dang Dad:

Swolesome -- Is Batman Gay?:

[germ-t-ripper]

25AUG24 Mid workout self portrait.

[jaidotbands-blog]

I love the morning wake up face. Everything be swole

[dcmcboxers]

My shout-out to queer youtubers

Hbombs list was great but obviously not comprehensive. I watch a lot of video essayists and wanted to give a little love to the smaller channels that fall under the radar. Please feel free to add to this list!

let's talk about stuff/Sarah Zedig

If you've seen Jesse Gender's videos on the Matrix movies you may already be familiar with Sarah. She does excellent film and culture analysis with a lot of great conversations on paratext and outside influence in engaging with text. Her video on Tunic is one of my favorites.

Pamphleteer

No one makes videos like hers, which has the side effect making them a bit hard to describe. I will link one of my favorites which describes the disconnected temporality of being older when you discover you're queer.

Turbo Queer

Really really under watched channel. Skylar covers a lot of topics from video games, to anarchist history and modern events, to autistic life, to current politics. For a fun one check out her video on the SpongeBob strike episode.

Kaz Rowe

Kaz does a fantastic job examining modern myths and manufactured history primarily pertaining to western Europe, Victorian & Edwardian England, and 1800-1900s US. And of course, talking about historical queerness in all its ambiguities and evolutions. I highly recommend their video on Weimar Germany.

drapetomania

drapetomania interrogates the politics of low class and high class art and entertainment from a queer and Black perspective. Their art history videos alone cover many angles of white supremacist history I haven't seen anyone else discuss and I'm very excited to see more from them. They are also a very under viewed channel that more people should see!

I am error

Evelynn's channel primarily discusses video games in a presentation style and voice most similar to Action Button reviews. There's something just a bit more personal here though. I hesitate to say cozy since that word has a bit of an infantilizing connotation, maybe comforting is closer. She puts an immense amount of thought and empathy into the experience of playing video games and the personal narratives we build with them.

Swolesome

For more transmasc perspectives there's Swolesome. He has a lot of interesting insights into the more traditionally masculine and "broish" communities like fitness as well as commentary on recent trans issues.

Shonalika

Music, disability, and aggressively non-binary. Their video on gender presentation in heavy metal was really insightful. I would also check out the video "Why I Wear Gloves" for more insight on invisible disabilities.

Vivian Strange

Vivian delights in being a bit of a contrarian- something I really appreciate. She's probably going to challenge you and you're probably going to disagree at times, which is what makes her channel so important. Her video on Marquis De Sade is powerful and a must watch (if you can stomach the subject material, although I would encourage you to try). I haven't seen her most recent video on Saw yet but I am extremely excited to.

[aranock]

Seeing people fall for the "left doesnt speak enough to young men, and I the most sexist creep whos platform is devoted to harassing women and who thinks you need tactical n words am definitely a good source on this" stuff again and I just am so sick of it. There are actually a lot of leftist people, particularly leftist men, who are speaking and reaching out and trying to help young men grow.

Please go watch; F.D. Signifier or Swolesome or Colormind or Babila or Noah Samsen or 50 other of my colleagues who do good work online.

Trying to find a progressive way of doing sexism is not a solution and seeing multiple people sharing a fucking v**sh tweet on here is disheartening. Like no actually the racist sexist creep does not have a point, catering to sexism is not going to help young men. Yes of course the right appeals more to young white men, because power is appealing, being told that "you deserve everything and you are better than everyone else and actually women not having sex with you, which obviously you are entitled to, is because traditional gender roles(ones which benefit you) are being taken away" is more appealing then "actually you do need to work on yourself, you are not entitled to sex or power" then idk what to say. But theres no world in which you should want to cater more to the first thing and still genuinely call yourself feminist.

[alrightoddity]

video essays i love by smaller creators

i see so many posts about video essays but they feature mostly videos by youtubers with sub counts above 100k, so i made it a mission to collect some of my favorite video essays by smaller creators because there's good stuff out there no matter the channel size!

All creators featured here have subscriber counts under 100k. I also suggest these channels for their other videos/topics, just picking one video each.

Media Literacy is DEAD: Attack on Titan is Still Fascist – Lost Futures

Can We Stop Cosplaying As Poor People – Louis McClung

True Crime, False Morality: True Crime YouTubers Making Money Off Tragedy – Mika’s Rhetoric

Hunger Hurts: Cannibals and Why We’re Obsessed With Them – Lola Sebastian 

Was Red White and Royal Blue originally Social Network fanfiction?-- Jane Mulcahy

Spider-verse, Identity Politics, Leftist Infighting, and the Oppression Olympics – The Leftist Cooks

FNaF & Undertale: How to/NOT Tell A Story – Spaceman Scott

I'm obsessed with this evangelical review of Hereditary – max teeth

The LIES Behind 'Sound of Freedom' - How Tim Ballard Continues To Hurt Victims – Dead Domain

Frozen 2 Was A Mess, Here's Why – hoots

Escam: A Eulogy - maradia 

Why doesn’t The Left offer solutions? – Swolesome

The Strange World of Medical Commercials – thealrightoddity (okay LOOK i had to do self promo here haha)

[socksonat3am]

This is me @ you @swolesome

My PERSONAL list is gonna be a few peeps:

Alexander Alvia - Essayist - focuses on both trans stuff and non trans stuff Luxander - Streamer who clips and uploads content to youtube - Focuses on mostly Queer stuff Saturniidead - Essayist - focuses on trans stuff - Hasn't posted in about 2 years but a decent bit of his content is rad Theo's Ghost - Essayist and Vlogger - focuses mostly on trans stuff but occasional other things Sam Collins - "Chill vide" react videos - mostly queer politics but some other stuff in there Jammiedoger - Another "Chill vibes" react video person - Mostly Queer politics with the occasional other stuff Ty Turner - Lost of react stuff but some other videos - Mostly Queer centered content adesso.laurenzo - Focussed on Queer educationonal videos! NOAHFINCE - Music, Trans stuff, react content he has it all!

Transmasc Tumblr, I need you.

I dunno if there's a rallying cry or some kind of ancient incantation I gotta bust out, but HEY TRANSMASC FOLKS AND TRANS MEN, EXCUSE ME PLEASE. I'm a trans dude with a small-ish YouTube channel working on a video about the erasure of transmasculinity, particularly in the wake of the recent debacle involving a former YouTuber who I won't mention directly but his name rhymes with Sames Jomerton. His plagiarism of Alexander Avila and Jes Tom, and outright misgendering of ND Stevenson got me fired up about how often we're overlooked or merely an asterisk in queer discourse, so much so that even those of us in this community need to search high and low for resources on our history and health care. So I'd like to hear from you. If you're comfortable, I'd love for anyone who's part of this community (and not a transmedicalist) to message me directly with something you wish more people knew about us, or an anecdote about one of your experiences (happy, sad, angering, your call.) A paragraph or two is ideal--for longer posts, I will likely not be able to include them in their entirety, but I will quote them where I can. If you'd like to be involved, please let me know if you'd prefer to be anonymous or to have your name dropped and socials linked; I'm hoping for the latter given that the idea is to shout out more artists and creators, but I want to give the anons space to be heard, too. You can also help by recommending transmasc YouTubers (especially essayists) who could use more eyes! I'm looking for more creators to enjoy personally, and I'd love to shout them out if it would help them. If y'all could reblog this, I'd be very appreciative, and if you read all of this, dog bless you. 💙 And an extra special thanks to @socksonat3am for being such a great friend with exceptional meme game. He blindsided me with a compliment so now I'm getting him back because he needs to know how talented and delightful and magical he is. Take that, Socks. Get absolutely treasured.

[smilesrobotlover]

How would the LBL boys interact with your OC Links if they joined the team?

Oh boy, I think about this so much I’m so cringe XD but I am freee

Cursed is one of the horse girls, with Wars, Twi, and Wild. He’s also a sorta big bro to the little ones. And swolesome.

Moon is kind of a grump, and Sky would try to be friendly with him but he wouldn’t let him. Which is funny cuz Moon is related to Sky (which makes me realize that he’s related to the royal family in a way 🤔 guess that’s why he’s so magically inclined) but I feel like he’d get along with Time. Both grumpy. He’d also enjoy talking to Hyrule and Rift cuz they both know sign language :)

Uuuugh Flower my baby 😭😭😭 he’s just the sweetest guy ever. I’m sure he’d get along with everyooooone. Idk who in particular, but he’s a little soft boy and would probably like Twi’s vibes. He needs a big bro mentor figure you know?

Real is a toon Link so he’d get along swell with the toons. Particularly Windy who’d big brother him like crazy. They also both have a Linebeck soooooo….

Man I haven’t thought about Malakan like, at all, idk if he even exists anymore 😞 but he’s also pretty sweet and would get along with generally everyone. Idk who in particular.

Fluffy would be the ultimate dad friend cuz he’s the most dad ever. He’d dad everyone. I think some would like his calm dad vibes, but I don’t think Minish would like it. He hates being babied

Now Mushroom and Autumn, my newer Links 🤔 mushroom is a SUPER hyper child so anyone that would play with him he’d love. Which I think would be Windy and Twilight. Big bros!

And I think Autumn would like Rift and Wild. Rift is kinda my inspo for Autumn and Wild has Sheikah technology that he likes to see.

I don’t think I missed anyone but good grief I have so many links 😵‍💫

[star-wars-multiverse]

I wanna write a long rant soon but this finale was so perfect, it tied everything up in the season so well that I’ll be basking in this swolesome moment for a long long time

[thelindenpapers]

Yep.

It's pretty clear that redpill podcasts have been used throughout the past decades by the far-right to brainwash the next generation of men to be COMICALLY misogynistic, transphobic, and homophobic: so that the rich and powerful can keep heteropatriarchy and capitalism going.

It sure explains the way young men in the US voted recently. The owning class made them the same old promises that older men have been trying to deconstruct with the help of feminists...

Unfortunately, they're going to realize too late that they're simply being exploited and betrayed, or at least, too late for them to join forces with their working class peers.

[plasmktan]

Positive Masculinity is just a nicer version of Patriarchy

I've seen a lot of focus on the idea of positive masculinity a lot in leftist circles and I've always found this focus on masculinity a bit weird but I think I've finally found what I disliked about it. Now, not to say that masculinity is bad that's not my opinion so I will make it clear when I talk about masculinity here I mean the social norms of masculine gender roles in men and male-aligned people in society today which is what I see commonly supported to have a more positive version in a lot of leftist circles. So, the thing is that these typical masculine/male gender roles that these supporters of Positive Masculinity want to make more positive are roles and systems that are intended to oppress and control women and other gender minorities by using these roles and norms of what roles men are supposed to take, which also hurts and limits men, but more significantly the way these roles function hurt women the most of all, particularly in heterosexual relationships where gender roles are created in particular for men to have power over women. This is patriarchy through the nuclear family.

Large supporters of this positive masculinity like Vaush and FD Signifer ultimately are supporting just a new version of patriarchy where they are unwilling to lose the advantage that their male roles have given them. Ultimately, these two are really not advocating properly for Femenism because of their unwillingness to not properly deconstruct and dismantle male social roles by just saying an image of "Positive Masculinity" will fix it. The issue here is to properly achieve gender liberation for all is that it is necessary to separate the ideas of femininity from female genders and masculinity from male genders, this is not a matter of trying to make either men or women less masculine or feminine but rather to make these connections less inherent to deconstruct patriarchy and reach the largest amount of freedom in gender expression and expression in general for everybody regardless of their gender. Positive Masculinity stands in the way of this.

The inherent problem with this is how it seems to me many on the Left seem concerned sometimes with men feeling good enough about their masculinity to feel confident rather than actually fighting for social change through minorities that actually need it. Plenty of content creators as well as the previously mentioned do this, to name a few, Jessie Gender, Swolesome, and Salari, and yes this is a call out of these creators and their general shitty behavior. Vaush, FD Signifer in particular but also Jessie Gender for calling Shark30zero a housen**** on Twitter. For god's sake sometimes I'm like yeah I know that men are important to care about too but to be honest at this point in the world their position is only to improve and there are more important things to care about particularly in the USA with the current Trans Genocide and the gradual erasion of abortion rights along with the repeal of Roe vs. Wade. The Left needs to stop caring about men's feelings more than they care about actual social change period. Men tend to learn to be good people primarily and then they can learn to be good men!