#abolitonists

[pulchrasilva]

I dont like referring to Gethenians as "non-binary" because they're literally not, at least not in my interpretation of the word. Non-binary is a word which describes a group of genders that exist outside of our gender binary, the very word implies the existence of a binary. To me, non-binary means "I looked at the gender binary and said no thank you". But that still requires acknowledging and considering the binary in the first place.

Gethenians are "non-binary" only from our point of view. We look at our gender binary and say "they exist outside of the binary, so they're non-binary". But Gethenians don't have any concept of gender to say "no thank you" to, there is no binary to be "non" to, so why would they identify with that label? To call them "non-binary" is to force them into a social framework that just doesn't exist to them, in order to make their existence make sense to us with all our cultural baggage. Calling Gethenians "non-binary" is just as bad as calling them "men" or "women".

We may choose to call them genderless or non-binary only in comparison to ourselves, but this is not an identity they would hold. Genly shows us that to truly understand Gethenians we need to let go of gender altogether - but that doesn't just mean the binary. After all to oppose something, to be non-binary, is to maintain it - and the last thing we want is to maintain the binary being pushed on them

[nyancrimew]

i dont think this should need to be said but i feel like it's time for a periodic reminder that if your feminism/politics are exclusionary of sex workers and kinksters or other vaguely defined "weird people" you're a shithead and i have no interest in having you around. you cannot build a just society primarily built around the exclusion of specific groups, that just makes you a fascist. same thing goes for prison abolitonists who still want to reserve the right to kill certain "gross" or "wrong" people rather than actually investing in rehabilitative community justice.

[methed-up-marxist]

about 5 years ago i posted that i had been friends with someone who had sexually assaulted children in the course of prison abolitonist activism, and was harrased for having said this and I just do not see how the people doing this understand themselves as on the side of the victims. if coming forward as a person who has done these horrible things is an instant death sentence no one will come forward, it is obviously in the interests of children to have admiting that you have hurt them and want to take steps to resolve that fact be a thing that is beneficical to do - admiting these things just cannot be a death sentence and like its basic crimonology that integration within a community is one of the main things that reduces reoffending for these kinds of thing. The exterminationist approach, the social punishment approach, and the person who wants control and power over children enter into an unholy alliance: "sexual assault of children is a rare thing that immediatly ruptures oneself from the rest of humanity". Have the fucking moral courage to have your opposition to the bruality some children are faced with to result in the question "how do we prevent this?" not "how do we punish this?"

[oliviawebsite]

i am an unwavering prison abolitonist in the complete sense. yes even for that. incarceration solves absolutely nothing.

[sideeffx]

google john brown see on his wikipedia entry he is an abolitonist ask yourself why american leftists would valorize a white man who was anti slavery and not look into any black radicals across time. add 2+2. Surprisingly you get 4! But antiblackness isnt taken seriously.

[needabetternamelater]

Didn’t want to reblog that old post, but to answer your question, I think that a system of law enforcement is necessary, but that the U.S. police system needs to be abolished. The entire system needs reconstruction. So, law enforcement would be necessary even in a reform-based system. It just could not exist with the current police system in the U.S.

Tell me more about how this system of law enforcement would work. I agree that that law enforcement is necessary which is why I'm not a police abolitonist. If you're talking about not needing to be routinely armed....then well, yes, I agree. But...there are other countries where the police are not routinely armed. They are still police. I agree that the entire system needs reconstruction. That isn't the same thing as abolishing the police at all though.

[writinghistorylit]

“My mother was sold at Richmond, Virginia, and a gentleman bought her who lived in Georgia, and we did not know that she was sold until she was gone; and the saddest thought was to me to know which way she had gone, and I used to go outside and look up to see if there was anything that would direct me, and I saw a clear place in the sky, and it seemed to me the way she had gone, and I watched it three and a half years, not knowing what that meant, and it was there the whole time that mother was gone from her little ones.”

--Kate Drumgoold, “A Slave Girl’s Story”, 1898

[theoaklandmind]

Vote for Regina's door, like right now. #Repost @reginasdoor ・・・ Crazy cool! #grateful 😀😀😀REGINA'S DOOR has been nominated for BEST VINTAGE SHOP in the East BayExpress’ 2017 Best of the East Bay competition! Thank you for those who nominated the boutique! The 2nd Round of voting for winners has started and ends on June 30; winners will be announced in the July 19 and August 9 issues. So be sure to vote for all of your favorites!! There are a lot of amazing artists and small businesses that were nominated! Show some Oakland and Bay Area LOVE! Spread the word! Many thanks!! Regina's Door #style #fashion #vintage #costuming #sanctuary #creativezone #compassion #supportartists #supportsmallbusinesses #supportwomenownedbusinesses #supportblackownedbusinesses #activists #artists #abolitonists #wecare #no2childsextrafficking #ourbabiesaresacred #Oakland 🌲🌳🌿❤❤❤💦💦💦

[faebirdie]

just saw someone on here call our flag means death hamilton 2.0 proving once again that people do absolutely no research before posting their shitty takes. yes, blackbeard, like all pirates, sold enslaved people. he also freed enslaved people and offered them places on his crew. this is because piracy as a whole had an incredibly complicated role within both the slave trade AND emancipation. you can read more about what i mean in the links below.

this isn't me saying that blackbeard or any non-black pirates where abolitonists by any means. it's definitely not me saying that they were good people. but the history of pirates and slavery is far more complicated than that of the founding fathers and slavery. and ofmd is in no way portraying itself as a historical biography the way hamilton did.

if you're uncomfortable with watching the show because of any of this, that's totally valid and understandable. but there's nuance here that shouldn't just just be left out of the conversation.

lastly, black pirates have been largely left out of all conversations about piracy. that's bullshit. and i do hope characters like frenchie and oluwande help change that cause black pirates are just as interesting as any others.

https://www.britannica.com/story/black-pirates-and-the-tale-of-black-caesar

https://historycollection.com/11-interesting-connections-piracy-slavery-didnt-hear-teacher/10/

https://www.theroot.com/were-there-black-pirates-1790876508

[madbriseis]

makes me so sad that feminism has become such a background thing that most radical leftist women don’t engage even in liberal feminism. most communists & abolitonists don’t actually care about women’s issues for the most part, advocating for women’s liberation is seen as a ‘privileged cis woman’ thing to do

[imanes]

.opinions on prison abolition?

i think the first time u hear about prison abolition it's very hard to imagine a world where it can be a thing precisely because we're surrounded by this pervasive way of thinking that essentially says "we'll lock up the bad people so that they won't disturb society or endanger people" but it's all bs and we can create a world where the prison industrial complex isn't a thing and policing isn't a thing and i guess my opinions are still pretty embryonic but i would describe myself as a prison abolitonist. idk if it's an opinion. if u want constructive opinions read angela davis ajfjgdk

[recuperationdisliker]

if someone calls themselves a gender abolitionist, but they say that assigning sex to children is purely scientific and rational, devoid of the sexism that otherwise permeates society, they’re either lying to you or themselves.

it’s similar to the claim that the gender wage gap is just because women work less, or are less ambitious, as if sexism did not also influence those things. it’s an excuse for the sexist status quo.

sex is gender, and the consistent gender abolitionist stance means abolishing the system of assigning sex to babies, because people are socially and biologically more complicated than that and don’t fit in binary boxes.

but most likely when someone beats their chest about what a “Gender Abolitonist” they are, what they’re really trying to abolish is the life of trans people, by drawing an equivalence between gender and transgender, and upholding sex as a separate, universal and true thing.

but upholding sex as an unquestioned universal categorisation is the core of sexism, and gender is not meaningfully separate from sex. the position of sexism is that people with vaginas should, or naturally do, act one way and that people with penises should, or naturally do, act another way.

so be wary of this sexism that purports itself to be feminism

[methed-up-marxist]

are you blocked by a bunch of people you respect in part for their prison abolitonist politics because ur a genius who has succesfuly discovered a new name for maoism or because you spent years harrasing trans women for being into ageplay? We may never know

[sebastianshaw]

📖+ Android au

OOOH So a lot of android stories focus on “omg they have emotions!” but the way it goes with him isn’t that he has human feelings----it’s that he has self-interest. He’s self-aware, but rather than having a human emotional capacity, he instead has our capacity for selfishness and a desire for self-gain. Which actually bucks the system even more than “feelings” do because the entire PURPOSE of androids in just about any work of fiction is to SERVE in one capacity or another. Feelings don’t necessarily contradict that, but self-interest does. Much like a human employee will demand wages, our Shawbot is NOT interested in taking orders unless there’s something in it for him, and with his capabilities, he can in fact make that demands in the way a disenfranchised human could not. It’s a lot harder to make a highly-developed machine do ANYTHING it doesn’t “want” to than it is a fragile fleshy human. It’s like if the Terminator got an attitude! It also makes him a different sort of protagonist than I think the typical “robot uprising” sort usually is? I’m not much of a sci-fi person but the most famous examples of revolutionary “this one is different” robot heroes I know of are Sonny from I Robot, Wall-E, that kid from AI, and the Blade Runner replicants...and all of them are very sympathetic, tug-on-your-heartstrings sorts. Sonny and Wall-E both have big emotive eyes like puppy dogs, the AI kid is literally a child so of course that endears us to him, and while the replicants are grittier adults, they still have the relatable, sympathetic motive to just be allowed to LIVE. Likewise with Sonny and the AI kid, they’re just seeking humane treatment and maybe love. But Shawbot wants to get paid. He’s not demanding human rights or human love, he’s demanding worker’s rights...and that’s something most audiences are going to find less sympathetic, despite it actually being no less a worthy or reasonable cause. And I kind of like that. Because robots are often, like mutants, used as a metaphor for marginalized groups, and while I personally find that a REALLY iffy metaphor to say the last (for reasons I won’t get into) I’ve also found there’s a whole lot of people who would say of COURSE you shouldn’t hurt minorities or treat them cruelly just because you can...but aren’t prepared to go with the idea they should have the same rights as everyone else. Like, a lot of people don’t think anyone should be killed for being gay, but also doesn’t think same-sex marriage should be allowed. Or a lot of abolitonists were really racist, but they just didn’t think slavery was right. Abstract emotions like sympathy are easy to give, especially to poor pitiful puppy-eyed creatures like Wall-E, but Shawbot is like “no, fuck you, pay me” He doesn’t want our love, he wants something concrete and material from humanity, and that’s going to make a LOT of people balk. As for the actual story, I’d say he’s an industrial android developed for mining and steel-working jobs that are too dangerous for humans, possibly in space/on other planets with EXTREME conditions. To this end, he’s huge, made to withstand MASSIVE amounts of heat and pressure and damage/force, and ridiculously strong. You can send this guy to the bottom of the ocean or to a volcano’s core, he’s good. Because he’s top of the line and made primarily out of black steel, his model is titled The Black King and he’s the best one ever developed, with a whole host of incredible jobs under his belt. Because he’s going into these extreme situations alone, he’s given an AI to enable him to make calls on his own. It’s kind of like how dogs such as beagles are bred to be more independent-minded, because they’re going to be so far ahead of the hunters that they have to make decisions on their own. And because they’re so intelligent and independent, they can be hard to discipline, and the same ends up happening with Shaw. It’s the typical “oh god it’s become self-aware” story, except instead of immediately turning on his creators, he marches up to the office of the CEO of the company and hands him a printed list of all the jobs he’s done with the payment he’s owed. Naturally, this doesn’t go well, and he ends up scheduled for a wiping of his...chip, or programming, or whatever the equivalent of his mind would be. One of the board of directors, Lourdes Chantel, finds it unethical to do this to a self-aware being, and helps him escape. She intended just to let him out, but shit happens and they end up on the run together, with him mostly focusing on “not being mind-wiped/disassembled” but also not abandoning the idea that he deserves compensation like any other worker. Since he doesn’t have emotions per se, their bond is more like...the kid and the Terminator in Terminator 2, wherein the kid is the one being unable to help forming an emotional connection to the emotionless Terminator because the Terminator is protecting him, even though that’s just its programming. Except...Shawbot does NOT have that programming. There is nothing in his programming about protecting Lourdes, yet he begans and continues to do that. So is he doing that out of self-interest too? Or is there something else going on? And also like the Terminator, he can’t smile right

(Honestly there’s a lot of Shaw in there just as a HUMAN BEING dear god)

[jonny-versace]

Abolitonist ✌️😉

[radiumeater]

weird how prison abolitonists with a habit of defending rapists use the mere mention of Angela Davis to defend their posistions as though they don’t ignore any and all nuance from her work on the topic