#again this might be me being a very specific kind of leftist but i think we could benefit from understanding that when talking about

[orangerosebush]

"Pick me" reads as a clumsy (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to articulate a kind of (gendered) class traitorship; although the way this term proliferated on social media was impotent and tedious in many ways, this does render the boom in usage at the very least worthy of investigation, imo

[i-love-your-light]

too many thoughts on the new hbomberguy video not to put them anywhere so:

with every app trying to turn into the clock app these days by feeding you endless short form content, *how many* pieces of misinformation does the average person consume day to day?? thinking a lot about how tons of people on social media go largely unquestioned about the information they provide just because they speak confidently into the camera. if you're scrolling through hundreds of pieces of content a day, how many are you realistically going to have the time and will to check? i think there's an unfortunate subconscious bias in liberal and leftist spaces that misinformation is something that is done only by the right, but it's a bipartisan issue babey. everybody's got their own agendas, even if they're on "your side". *insert you are not immune to propaganda garfield meme*

and speaking of fact checking, can't help but think about how much the current state of search engines Sucks So Bad right now. not that this excuses ANY of the misinformation at all, but i think it provides further context as to why these things become so prevalent in creators who become quick-turnaround-content-farms and cut corners when it comes to researching. when i was in high school and learning how to research and cite sources, google was a whole different landscape that was relatively easy to navigate. nowadays a search might give you an ad, a fake news article, somebody's random blog, a quora question, and another ad before actually giving you a relevant verifiable source. i was googling a question about 1920s technology the other day (for a fanfiction im writing lmao) and the VERY FIRST RESULT google gave me was some random fifth grader's school assignment on the topic???? like?????? WHAT????? it just makes it even harder for people to fact-check misinformation too.

going off the point of cutting corners when it comes to creating content, i can't help but think about capitalism's looming influence over all of this too. again, not as an excuse at all but just as further environmental context (because i really believe the takeaway shouldn't be "wow look how bad this one individual guy is" but rather "wow this is one specific example of a much larger systemic issue that is more pervasive than we realize"). a natural consequence of the inhumanity of capitalism is that people feel as if they have to step on or over eachother to get to 'the top'. if everybody is on this individualistic american dream race to success, everyone else around you just looks like collateral. of course then you're going to take shortcuts, and you're going to swindle labor and intellectual property from others, because your primary motivation is accruing capital (financial or social) over ethics or actual labor.

i've been thinking about this in relation to AI as well, and the notion that some people want to Be Artists without Doing Art. they want to Have Done Art but not labor through the process. to present something shiny to the world and benefit off of it. they don't want to go through the actual process of creating, they just want a product. Easy money. Winning the game of capitalism.

i can't even fully fault this mentality- as someone who has been struggling making barely minimum wage from art in one of the most expensive cities in america for the past two years, i can't say that i haven't been tempted on really difficult occasions to act in ways that would be morally bad but would give me a reprieve from the constant stress cycle of "how am i going to pay for my own survival for another month". the difference is i don't give in to those impulses.

tl;dr i hope that people realize that instead of this just being a time to dogpile on one guy (or a few people), that it's actually about a larger systemic problem, and the perfect breeding grounds society has created for this kind of behavior to largely go unchecked!!!

[transingthebourgeoisie]

hey your post about how black americans benefit from imperialism sucks.

l am like 90% this one specifically is bait to get me to say something that can be used as 'evidence' for that dumbfuck blocklist. My initial instinct was to reply to the dishonesty of all this with instructions on how to use a bit HTML knowledge to make me say anything you like, but I worry you might actually use that information. Anyway, here's a little breakdown for you.

Imperialism is a relation of power, and often violence, between nations. It is not act. There is not an imperialism button, you do not go into employment in imperialism, it is not a choice that you make, nor something you can hide from and not make use of. The US Government is an Imperial power; I will presume you understand this part, as you certainly seem very upset at being associated with it.

To begin, again, 'benefiting from Imperialism', is not a moral judgement. It is literally just a consequence of, being an american. I said in the other post, - which, despite your implication there, is not a targeted statement on black americans, I am myself included in it, - that the first and foremost promise made to anyone in this country, is a share of the benefits of imperialism, however small. There is no denying that these spoils are distributed unevenly, but they are distributed. This stolen prosperity permeates all levels of society. The street is paved with it. The buildings are mortared with the blood of the third world.

It is why people come here, to this country which has bombed, enslaved, and imperialized them. Because, here, as an American Citizen, they are the beneficiary of this global horror, even if not as much as a white, 'natural' citizen. Here, they may be beaten by police, - though they would likely also be beaten by police elsewhere, imperial devastation tends not to leave countries with kind policing, - but they will not be bombed. The US Military will never roll tanks into their neighborhood and topple the mayor for, opposing US oil expansion, or, being a leftist.

These systems operate around and without you; you cannot exclude yourself from them, you cannot absolve yourself of them. You can oppose imperialism, struggle against it, and you very much should, but you can't hardly do this meaningfully without understanding your own relationship with it.

Anyway, there's your evidence I suppose; I also think native americans in the US benefit from US imperialism as americans. Call me self-hating or something, I'm sure you'll come up with something.

[librarycards]

now that it seems (?) apparent that bushnell z’l actually was transfem I’m just thinking about how ppl, including trans ppl (and specifically tme people) will deliberately obfuscate stuff that is very often indicative of someone being transfem?

Like, if you told me that someone rejected / was rejected by family, joined the military out of desperation, was a very online [affectionate] leftist / reddit user / streamer who was willing and able to engage in serious and principled political activism, and then said you were talking about a transfem person, I’d be like, yeah, that tracks. Over reliance on generalizations isn’t a good thing, but understanding shared experiences and interests is a pretty inevitable part of gaining intimacy with some community/sociality whether your own or another’s

Given what I’ve only gotten glimpses of, it looks like mostly-time people have been, once again, ganging up on mostly-tma people for suspecting bushnell might have been trans, and I can only assume this has to do with

1) the evidently insatiable desire to harass trans women/transfems

2) deliberate & willful ignorance as to the aforementioned shared interests and social spaces, and thus,

3) a very grim picture of tme peoples’ actual social engagement with tma people, full stop — no shared spaces, communities, even individual friendships.

Like you’ll see trans misogynists going on and on about how “transmascs and transfems should be sucking and fucking” but your reactions to stuff like this just prove you can hardly stand to be in the same room as transfems, never mind cultivate any kind of relationship or understanding

[butchabouttown]

how can you be a lesbian who’s attracted to/fucks all genders? genuine question no hate just doesn’t align with my understanding

hi!! thanks for asking I LOVE this subject and am so happy to talk about it!! This reply might get kind of long so I apologize in advance hehe <3

I assume you're sending this in response to the ask I got the other day asking about if bisexual women can say dyke, to which I said that I am bisexual & also a dyke (woman is debatable). That's the first place I want to start—that bisexuality does not necessarily equal attraction to all genders. It can! And I have no problem with someone who is attracted to all variations of all genders identifying with the lesbian label if that's what makes sense for them. But for me, I am attracted to women, and men, and people who fall outside of that binary—but I am not necessarily attracted to gendered expressions.

Personally, someone's gender identity really doesn't impact whether or not I might be attracted to them. I am specifically attracted to people who's gender expressions align with or reflect my own in some way—so as a butch, as someone who moves through the world as a lesbian, as someone who identified as trans masculine for several years, who has been on T and may go on T again—that is pretty expansive. For me, I am attracted to queer versions of masculinity—in all its shapes & variations. I don't think that experience precludes me from using the lesbian label! There is not one person that sees me move through the world that does not immediately clock me as a butch lesbian. I cannot change that (and nor do I want to). Does the fact that sometimes I fuck & fall in love with men mean that they're wrong? Or that I am for feeling comfortable with that label?

And that really isn't a new experience!! I am absolutely not alone in that kind of attraction model, and I am not the only person who gets clocked as a lesbian that is attracted to people who aren't women.

I can think of many significant figures & authors & activists in lesbian history who have really traversed what has been coined the "butch/FTM borderlands" by author C. Jacob Hale in 1998. Identity categories do not have hard borders—there's a liminal space that exists between them, and it's impossible to draw a distinct line between them. Hell—even the poet & lesbian icon Sappho wrote about both same-sex and different-sex relationships.

I think of communist, activist & author Leslie Feinberg & the exploration of being a leftist, working class butch in the 60's & 70s in Stone Butch Blues. That novel in particular, although fictionalized, is very much a reflection of their own life and details relationships with many different kinds of people while being very much rooted in lesbian culture.

I think of Jen Manion's article in Transgender Studies Quarterly titled "Transbutch," (article begins on page 213 of the linked pfd) where they write the following:

‘‘Transbutch’’ signifies a gendered embodiment that is both butch and trans, not tied to any singular definition of butch or trans but rather falling somewhere in between. Transbutch marks a liminal space that embraces both the historical legacies of the category of butch and the more expansive possibilities created by the transgender rights movement for recognition, community, and empowerment."

(italics my own) In other words, transbutch is about that sticky place between two identities. Someone can have ties to both of these identities at once—particularly since they have been so historically tied in terms of community.

And the argument being made by Manion I think really connects to the discussion here - being a lesbian is about more than who you sleep with. It's a political identity, it is a gender in of itself, it's about your community and how you connect to it.

Many of the lesbian icons that the community holds dear trouble the "woman loving woman" definition of the identity. And besides—it's not like lesbian is a finite resource. We have infinite space to welcome all kinds of people, anyone who wants to be in community together. There are so many ways to move through the world and so many ways to come to this identity.

Anyway! I don't know how to end this! I hope it was helpful <3

[transmalewife]

does anyone have any leftist reading on the subject of tourism to recommend? Specifically about how travel for fun, education, sport, friendship or whatever might work in a communist or anarchist or socialist society. Because like yeah, open borders or no borders whatever, cool. But that usually only gets discussed in the context of permanent immigration

Idk I guess I just find it hard to imagine how it could be organized since where I live the most obvious ways capitalism has made things worse over my lifetime have all happened because of and through the lens of tourism. Rents literally doubling over the last five years, while the standard of living falls because apartments are bought, split into tiny pieces and renovated to accomodate a couple days of living at most. The specific kind of gentrification that is NOT being pushed out by richer people moving in permanently, who might cause more expensive shops and services to replace the affordable ones, but do still need the basic necessities everyone does to live. Instead, all hairdressers, repair shops, clothing stores (especially thrift shops), pharmacies, post offices etc etc close and are replaced by luxury boutiques, clubs and stores whre you can only buy snacks, alcohol and microwave meals. Restaurants and bars hiking up prices because most of their clients come from places with stronger currencies etc etc.

At the same time though I believe travel is a crucial part of a fulfilling life for most if not all people. I believe people have the right to see and appreciate the culture and history of other places and also like... maybe go somewhere warmer and lay on the beach sometimes, even if they prefer to live and work somewhere colder. Or go skiing even if they chose to live somewhere warm and without mountains. Or even just like... vacation in a big city if they live in the countryside and vice versa. Or pop over to another continent to visit an online friend maybe. Although obviously intercontinental travel would have to be hugely limited until and unless we find ways to do it that don't destroy our planet.

At the same time some precautions do have to be taken to protect historical and especially sacred sites. Like, I don't think endless crowds should be allowed to trample through historical buildings and also open borders obviously doesn't mean white tourists get to go camping on Uluru. But on some level I do believe everyone who wants to should get to see Venice at least once in their life. But that's probably not feasible so like... who gets to decide? On what merit? Are historians, artists, journalists privileged? Or should it be a lottery?

Also I think there's a significant amount of tourism that would simply die out if going to that place wasn't a status symbol. Like you cannot convince me that if you spend 2 weeks by the pool in an enclosed luxury resort it makes a difference that it's on Hawaii rather than like... in florida. And then theres places like the Hamptons. What the fuck is the point of the Hamptons, other than bragging rights?

Obviously I know none of this is even remotely the main pressing issue to solve about a potential communist society, but then again, that's why I'm asking for reading materials, because it so rarely gets discussed. I mean I bet Marx wrote about it, which, great, point me to the relevant fragments please and I'll have a look but also this is an issue where a modern perspective would be really important. I don't think Marx, for all his wisdom, really has a solution to "what are the ethics of taking an 8 hour flight to visit a tumblr mutual".

Or maybe this whole thing is me being cynical and this is another place where things would sort of just regulate themselves. Anyway. Send me reading recs and let's very unscientifically try to check if it could work. Do try to be honest, like I've been several times as a kid and I would still go again in a heartbeat.

btw the goal of the poll is to get some kind of percentage that can be compared with the world population and how many tourists venice can support per year, though I obviously know tumblr skews mainly american and european

[gotjacobian]

Minnie Bruce Pratt died last week, so I wanted to write about a book of hers that affected me - her memoir S/he, which I read while I was recovering from top surgery last year. I’m kind of surprised I read it, because the title turned me off, but I’m glad I did. It really helped with the complicated feelings I had around that time beyond anything I’d expected. It’s a fascinating and informative story of Pratt’s own life, of lesbian feminist and leftist movements in the 70s-90s, and a defiant and specific celebration of loving revolutionary communist and butch trans lesbian activist Leslie Feinberg as her partner. 

I don’t want to discount those first parts, at all, but the last is what affected me. I struggle to think positively about myself when it comes to gender identity and expression, especially in the context of my relationships with other people. Every time I try to write out why, it becomes this painfully discourse-poisoned ouroboros of an essay that makes me wish I could write like the aliens from Arrival, in a circle, with no place to begin and no conclusion to end on, and make myself understood. I struggle with the precision of my words, and the personal-ness of my evidence, so I’m gonna be blunt and loose and generalizing to give you the abbreviated version instead: 

A lot of masculine people who aren’t cis men struggle to feel valuable or desirable. We have no cultural models for how they could be those things, even in progressive spaces, that aren’t painful and reductive in one way or another. Gendered expression and association are held up to cis-ness as a ruler. (With or without conscious intent - I had a massive reckoning when I started T, and suddenly people around me were casually recognizing me in ways I’d wanted and asked for for years, even though nothing about me had changed besides how ‘cis’ I looked and sounded.) In my experience: if you can’t make yourself sufficiently cis-adjacent, your masculinity won’t be recognized, even by those who care about you. If you CAN manage it, then their recognition feels conditional on upholding that adjacency. You might even be accused of seeking undeserved privilege and comfort, the crime of replicating some limited conditions of cis-ness without the license of being cis yourself.

But being loved for your trans-ness isn’t better. Often it means others reading femininity or gender-nonconformity into your existence based solely on the fact you are not a cis man - traits you may not want assumed of you, that may not even exist inside you, but that people invent because they want a way to see you without having to reckon with the ways in which your body misaligns with what they’ve been taught to expect. In our rites of passage, in our families, in romance, in sex, we have no scripts for loving a person who does not relate to their embodiment as prescribed. Inventing new ones takes effort and creativity and care that many people are not willing to expend, and to exist as a trans or GNC person is to see people decline to expend it over and over and over again. (As in: if you don’t want pearls for graduation, and your family doesn’t want to give you a watch, you get nothing. But for everything.) You can get closer to cis-ness, any kind of cis-ness, in an attempt to mitigate it. That’s a process with painful stakes and a painful limit. 

Sorry for the “abbreviated” wall of text - but it lets me say what I wanted to: Pratt writes about gender, and about Feinberg, with no script to work off. And she does it with certainty, with love, with reverence, with poetry, in the face of what often seems like an entire world that wishes she wouldn’t. She builds it into the very structure of the memoir. I teared up halfway through, when the “You” used to refer to Feinberg throughout the rest of the book appears. It read to me as a statement of recognition and intimacy. That the story of their relationship wasn’t being told to prove anything to an audience, but for Feinberg hirself. Seeing that use of “you” felt honoring, in a way I can barely communicate.*

*(To try: Growing up, I frequently felt like I was only ‘real’ to one person, a partner, and would disappear completely if she stopped seeing me. In those times, arguably, there was no correct third-person pronoun she could use for me. No reference that could have made me visible or interpretable to an outside party.  And no way for me to be heard speaking for myself, because “I” to an audience is a trap, opaque and unreliable. A tree falling in the forest. “You” hears.)

There’s a lot in the book, both theoretical and concrete, about loving people and their bodies, about loving their relationships to their bodies, about loving their relationship to the world those bodies live in, in ways that honor those people without reduction or misrepresentation. All as told through autobiographical vignettes about love stories, sex, political rallying, intimate conversations. It’s messy and holistic and unflinching. I love Stone Butch Blues, and it deserves every accolade it gets - but honestly, of the two books, this one hit me harder.

I have a deep respect for Pratt. She was outspoken and tireless, and refused to tolerate anything less than complete intersectionality in her activism. There were many points in the book that I was forced to realize (sheepishly, then joyously) that what I thought were nascent radical causes had been alive in activism, hers and others, for years. She was optimistic without being uncritical, and was unafraid to live in complexity. She was also, obviously, an incredible writer. I hope her legacy gets the recognition it deserves.

[proofofburden]

Not to be a cringelib, but I think saying you're optimistic about America is winning rhetoric

I know why a certain kind of progressive side-eyes this---it's me, I'm a certain kind of progressive. Having to worry that pointing out garbage problems with America will make squishy centrists feel bad and vote for the opposition party is painful! Getting anything addressed in this country means telling hard truths and getting people to internalize that, actually, it's bad the leading cause of death for kids is firearms and that is pretty much the exact opposite of living in a country where responsible gun ownership is the norm. And once you convince people of the problem, implementing policy, and through our rickety system of conservative chokepoints, is pretty demoralizing. Oh, and if you want to stop talking about guns for a bit, we can talk about the growing risk of a trans genocide---no I'm not being hyperbolic, why are you accusing me of hyperbole?

Like, we're on the same page that there's a lot to be pessimistic about here!

But!

I think this kind of dour "consciousness raising" or "getting woke" can be a vice in and of itself, even aside from its effectiveness. There is definitely a kind of leftist whose idea of praxis is wallowing in how bad America is while ignoring any realistic appraisal of the US and insisting that the only way forward is their specific panacea or everyone dies. This is badfor your mental health. The fact that it's mostly good for the posdcaster-doomer complex and online posturing means that the upside for people harmed by the issues being discussed has been---its actually hard to find an example of this kind of cynical semi-engagement masking as education moving people to any kind of positive change.

Biden benefits from a low bar here: Any kind of progress is good. And if there were a viable primary challenger who could progress us faster, I might welcome the risks, but he's a successful first term president with a proven electoral track record against his presumed opponent. I think pragmatism here means I take the modest Ws from his first two years in office and give him another shot and consider it a good outcome where America improves. 2028 won't have an incumbent in the primary and I intend to nudge the party left again because I am optimistic that we can bend the arc of history towards justice.

And I talk to normies about politics sometimes and I'd much rather needle them with, "America has some of the best promises about justice on Earth...but it doesn't really seem like we're upholding them when the police can get away with shooting people because they were scared. I'm not allowed to get scared at work and kill a teenager, why are they?" "ACAB, defund, fuck the police!" feels good, but it makes normies feel sad, makes the police into the sympathetic party, and doesn't change very many minds. I'm not saying my way is magically successful, but the thing about squishy centrists is that if you know where to push, they squish into a useful shape.

This is a long-winded way to say I think having Biden saying he believes in America while proposing substantial policy seems like a qualified progressive win and a good strategy. You don't have to love it---I sure don't---but stop drinking the Haterade and focus your attention on any Congressional or state primaries you might be able to move the party left with, there's plenty of work to be done

[stellardeer]

TL;DR - How would you kick someone out of your house without involving police? and Should you?

My no-note blog is probably not the best place to ask this question, but maybe someone will come along and answer, who knows.

So in the ideal circumstance that we abolish the police, I've been wondering about a specific scenario. Say there is a person in your home, for whatever reason, who has no legal right to be there, and you do not want them there (again, for whatever reason) but they refuse to leave and you want to forcibly remove them from your home.

Most people nowadays would threaten to call the cops on them, and usually that alone is enough to get people to leave. I've never actually had this problem myself, but I've known numerous people who've talked about these kinds of situations (and coincidentally they were all middle class, if that tells you anything...) I, personally, would think twice (or a million times) about calling the cops on someone, especially if the person in question is particularly vulnerable to police brutality. So, even if the police aren't abolished, I still want to know the proper alternative to handle this kind of situation.

I'm a pretty weak, easily overpowered person, so my first instinct would be to like.. call someone I know or go get a strong neighbor or something to help me get this person off of my property.

I know that the specifics of the situation also play a key role here, too, on how to handle it. Like, if the person is reasonable, I would hope that just telling them to leave would get them to go - easy enough. But if they refuse to move.. what do I even do? If it's someone that I know very well, I might think to take a break and just walk away from them and hope we can sort things out once we've calmed down. If it's someone that I don't know very well, though, (not even necessarily an intruder, but just say someone who is overstaying their welcome) and especially if tensions are not even high, I wouldn't really know what to do. Some states even have squatters rights, so like.. sometimes you literally CAN'T do anything about this person being in your home, and in some cases they can even get you kicked out. I think it's kind of obvious that if the person clearly has violent intentions towards me, then I have a right to defend myself, but again, I am not going to be able to do that by myself, and I don't know what the legalities are around asking for help from another citizen, i.e. not a cop, if someone means to do you harm?

And what if you do ask for help and your helper ends up injuring the person in the process of trying to get them out?? I'd imagine it's still better than calling a cop, and risking getting a life-ruining criminal record, or worse, shot and killed. But I'd also imagine there could be grounds for them to sue if they get injured by the helper since the helper is not a professional of any kind and not protected in anyway. Only some states have protections against self defense anyway, and I don't know if it even counts if you invited the person into your home willingly and they weren't being violent to begin with. Like.. if they person is just stubbornly standing there and then your burly neighbor puts hands on them first, I don't think that even counts as self defense for the homeowner? At that point if the person fights back then they have a case for self-defense.

And I don't know what the leftist attitude is towards personal property like that anyway, like should we even have a right to our own home? I don't know the leftist view on that, I get the idea that individualism is not the move, but like.. do we still have our own personal space? Space that we are allowed to bar others from entering? Even if that space extends to the entirety of a 2-bedroom home? I'm asking sincerely, because I really haven't read enough socialist theory, so I don't know what the opinions are on home ownership in general. Like in an ideal society, would we supposedly just allow the person to stay for as long as they like, as long as they aren't hurting anything? That's another part of it, like what if they aren't doing any harm but I still don't want them there? Am I wrong for wanting them to leave, even if I don't know them? Supposing even if they are an intruder, if they haven't stolen anything or hurt me or my animals, but they just... won't leave, should I even be mad about that?

But again, forget an ideal society, let's take it back to reality, assuming that I live in the US and the laws are exactly the same as they are in this moment, police are not abolished, but I am choosing to not involve the police in this matter... what is the right thing to do???? Should I just resolve myself to accept that this person lives with me now?? I don't even live in a state with squatters rights, so I don't legally have to, but.. should I? (more thoughts and anecdotes if the tags if you feel like reading)

[dragoninatardis]

Today I actually went out and had lunch with someone I knew as a kid! In fact, one of 7-8 people who shared a particular foundational experience. Specifically, one of my classmates from Religious School. We've been trying to get together for ages and it was just so great to talk to her, and we're in very similar places in our lives. To the point where we had similar issues working in the two schooling systems operating out of our synagogue, and might work together on something at some point. She's bi, we're both adhd and autistic with adult diagnoses (though she's still trying to find somewhere to get an official autism diagnosis as an adult). So yeah, we clicked on a lot of things and were able to mutually appreciate inevitable tangents.

We also talked about gender and sexuality and how that was treated, because our town is very liberal and leftist and our rabbi set up a talk for our class about those subjects when we were eleven or so, and both the sex positivity and the specific refutation of the parts of scripture that were being used (and still are) very much stuck with us...but it was still 2006. Even spaces that were more overt in acceptance of gay people were extremely hetero- and cis-normative. When the speaker told us that sex between man and wife on Shabbos was something holy, none of us were going to ask "Hey, what about gay couples?" because gay marriage wasn't even legal in most of the US. But those are questions kids are going to ask now, and even if they don't, we need to make a space to talk about them.

All of this is a conversation I could happen with a lot of people though, and it was just great to talk about *our synagogue* and its place in *our lives* having grown up there together. But one of the best parts was honesty the moment when we were talking about school early on and *she* said that she is always kind of like "ehhhh...not really though?" when people talk about our class being this all-girl class. Because that was unusual and kind of how we were identified by the community, and we were generally considered this really great group of kids to the point that teachers specifically changed years or put off retirement to get to teach again. But of course, we weren't. And I'm really unsure of how to feel about that, because the class was great and important to me, but it basically made my identity in the community fundamentally based on my gender, while my unidentified gender dysphoria grew. It's just one more thing to reconcile in a very gendered religion, and I'm sure I'll post about it again like 300 times, because the original point wasn't really about the details of that struggle.

My original point is that my friend understands the experience that went with that specific group, the weight that it had, what the community was like in a way that someone who didn't experience it can't, even if my experience was still much different to hers, especially since I was, to my knowledge, the only one that actually *wasn't* a girl. And I haven't talked to someone who shared that on a serious level for at least ten years, before I even realized that "nonbinary" was really an identity I could have.

My second original point was that in telling me that she had basically the same "cringe and kind of correct" response to people describing our class this way, and doing it before me, she showed me that she thinks about me and thinks of me as being *not a girl* to the extent that she will immediately recognize a phrase that refers to a group identity that we shared for a huge portion of our childhood, even without me being mentioned specifically, as incorrect. And will say something (ish; I don't know her exact response but even if a kind of cringe and shake of the head or something is all she does, I would be happy with that. My response would be pretty similar and it's honestly just not worth it to get into a conversation about that with anyone who talks about our class and isn't going to respond to that body language, at least for such a small thing (or at least, small for them.)

[fletchingsandstars]

Ollie and Kon for the ask game

Ollie

What made me like them in the first place

Tbh I don’t remember but I think it might have been his sheer dad energy

Who I ship them with

Hal and Dinah….and also kind of Eddie just because I think it’s funny

Random headcanon I have about them

Ollie whistles the song from Disney’s Robin Hood all the time. Drives his family nuts

My favorite moment of theirs

Only one?? Uh…chili is God’s perfect food. Or any time he hugs his kids. Or making gay marriage legal as his first act as mayor. THERES TOO MANY

Plotline/story I want to happen

I just want him to be treated well again and to be an actual shouty leftist again

Any issues or insecurities I think they have

SO MANY HES SO INSECURE but mostly I think he just has a timer counting down to when he’s going to disappoint everyone that they’ll abandon him

Favorite quote

Once again. God’s perfect food

Kiss, marry, hug, or kill

Hug. I think it would fix me

Random thing that reminds me of them

Cabled sweaters

Any talents I think they might have

I think he can sing really well

On a rate from 1 to 10 how much I love them

10

What I think about their family

Love them. They’re all great

Who I think should be their bff

Eddie. Uh tbh I personally can’t think of anyone he gets along with other than Hal and Dinah and I ship them so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What animal they would be

Honestly a fox. They’re both clever and fixes can also scream so they have the loud factor. And the Robin Hood reference is right there too

Three songs that remind me of them

Land of the Free by the Killers

Welcome to the Black Parade by MCR

Archers by the Ballroom Theives

Favorite episode/issue/thing centered around them

Grell run. I’ve heard good things about JLU but I need to watch it

How badly they need hugs

1000000000/10. He needs hugs always

Favorite thing about their personality

He’s an asshole (affectionate)

Favorite thing about their appearance

The goatee. It would look dumb on anyone else but it’s Ollie’s source of personality

Why I love them so much

We are very similar in a lot of ways but also in some ways he’s who I want to be. Also he’s dad

Kon

My boy!! I don’t talk about him enough! This is specifically about 90s Kon. I don’t acknowledge t shirt Conner

What made me like them in the first place

I actually first saw Kon in the animated Young Justice cartoon and I latched onto him like a baby duck as soon as he came on screen. @thequiver can verify. There really wasn’t a reason, I just went “that one” and it stuck. Then I read his comics and it got even worse

Who I ship them with

No one. Kon dates a lot in his solo comics and there’s a lot I could say about it but pretty much they’re not good relationships. So I’d really rather see Kon be single and become more comfortable with himself than see him in a romantic relationship

Random headcanon I have about them

He has Lex’s eyes, so he wears the sunglasses to cover them because he’s insecure about it.

My favorite moment of theirs

This is a good one I have saved

But I also just love every moment he’s on page so. All of them?

Plotline/story I want to happen

I want 90s Kon and Jon and Chris sibling bonding

Any issues or insecurities I think they have

Kon also has a lot of them, mostly centered around living up to the Super name and being related to Lex.

Favorite quote

The scene from YJ98 where he gives the quote from Peter Pan about dying being a great adventure hits hard. It’s not technically a quote from him but it so quickly shows you how much of his personality is a front

Kiss, marry, hug, or kill

Hug and kiss on the forehead

Random thing that reminds me of them

Sunglasses, undercuts, red pants

Any talents I think they might have

Can quote any Buddy the Vampire Slayer episode at the drop of a hat. 90% of his brain space is dedicated to TV from the 90s. I also think he’s pretty good at geography

On a rate from 1 to 10 how much I love them

Also a 10

What I think about their family

The Supers? Fantastic, love them. Lex sucks and so does Dabney, though Dabney can occasionally be funny

Who I think should be their bff

Literally all of Young Justice. I love they.

What animal they would be

Dog. Im trying to think of a specific breed and I’m blanking rn. But something fluffy and eager to please but also able to be scary

Three songs that remind me of them

I Don’t Care by FOB

Some Nights by fun.

Numb by Linkin Park

I have a playlist for him here if you’re interested

Favorite episode/issue/thing centered around them

The Reign of the Supermen movie. It’s one of my comfort movies

How badly they need hugs

So, so badly. Let me hug him, DC. Please.

Favorite thing about their personality

He’s funny!

Favorite thing about their appearance

Uh everything? I have a lot of gender envy for him and am trying to put together a cosplay for him

Why I love them so much

Idk, he just hits the right buttons. I like his personality and his look. He blorbo shaped

Game here

[diifacto]

In honour of the recent release of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, let me just drop some thoughts about Hunger Games.

I’ve been reading a lot of reviews lately, and one thing they all seem to have in common is that most people loved The Hunger Games itself, but lost interest after the actual “games” portion of the novels disappeared. That the complicated politics got boring and the propos were so fake and the love triangle was unsatifisying and out of place amid all this war; that Katniss acted like a puppet in Mockingjay—I’ve seen people complain about how present her PTSD is and how it’s confusing to read; about how everything she did was for show; I’ve even seen her compared to Bella Swan. And I’m here to tell you that all that is the point.

So many authors have tried to replicate what Suzanne Collins did with Hunger Games—she created an entire YA subgenre. But nothing’s gotten it right. Why? Why do so many people love The Hunger Games, but drop the sequels as “boring” and “fake”? Why do so many authors trying to replicate Hunger Games’ sensationalism go off the rails in their third installment? (Looking at you for that one, Divergent.)

To put it simply: politics.

Gonna get a bit English student/history major-ish here, but Suzanne Collins’ writing of the political climate and power struggle in Hunger Games is absolutely fantastic. In Mockingjay particularly, Collins presents a fascinating commentary on authoritarianism through contrasting President Coin with President Snow, showing the former to be—true to her name—just another side of the same coin as Panem’s dictator. If you’d like, connections can certainly be drawn to specific political parties, with Snow, of course, being your far-right fascist, and Coin your far-left communist, but Collins’ message in this commentary isn’t centered on labels like that. In a way, her handling of the issue reminds me of George Orwell’s 1984, with the Party never being specified as leftist or rightist, just totalitarian. The message is the same: whether communist, fascist, far-left, far-right, whatever you want to call yourself—totalitarianism is bad, kids. Authoritarianism is bad. Remember, the political spectrum isn’t a line, it’s a circle—and it all comes down to dictatorships and tyrannical rulers.

And that’s where everyone goes wrong, readers and authors alike. Because Suzanne Collins does what the media does: hides it under all these layers of drama, intrigue, bloodbaths, horror, love triangles, until the politics get all blurry. That’s art imitating life, right there.

Gonna drag poor Divergent along for sec, because it reminded me of The Hunger Games, in a lot of ways. Dystopian YA with some really nice commentary on society. Loved the first book; I still go back and reread it, and while lacking in certain qualities, what novel isn’t? But Roth lost that thread in the conclusion, because I feel, like so many others, she fell into Collins’ trap about what makes Hunger Games so good. The drama. The love triangle. The horror. The bloody, shocking plot twist. Not politics.

Let’s unpack the rest of it, here, too:

The love triangle is supposed to feel fake and out of place, because it is. (I mean, I’d argue there isn’t even a real love triangle, but that’s a whole other debate I’ll bring up again sometime.) It’s a fabrication used by those in power throughout the novel to distract from the Capitol’s crimes, and the fact real people fixate on it in Hunger Games to this is extent means Collins’ commentary on the issue is entirely correct. And similarly, this sort of media war District 13 and the Capital have in Mockingjay, with Katniss doing propos and Peeta being tortured into interviews—yes, it is fake. It’s propaganda; that’s the whole point.

As for Katniss acting like a puppet, I’d argue that as illustrated by a notable plot twist near the end of the novel (and numerous events throughout, on that note), Katniss was acting and thinking independently. I’d also take care to point out that Katniss is seventeen years old and deeply traumatized. One of the things I love about YA are the young, teenaged protagonists doing incredible things, and living through impossible horrors—but I’ll be the first to admit sometimes it gets unrealistic. Collins takes a more realistic approach. Katniss has PTSD; Collins writes this. Katniss has been used as a puppet by the rebellion so long, can she even consider not acting as their figurehead; Collins discusses this. Katniss is a seventeen-year-old whose main concern is protecting the people she loves, one of whom is Peeta; Collins writes her actions to reflect this. Just because Katniss doesn’t go full-badass-archer, front-lines-in-the-war-effort like we saw in the actual Games of the first two installments—and have seen many protagonists do in other series—doesn’t mean she’s not fighting back and staying true to herself the whole time.

Again, it’s a different kind of fight, politics.

So my point is, Hunger Games is driven by politics. Suzanne Collins presents some very intelligent points on politics, to a YA audience. And, ten years after she published Mockingjay, she’s back with a novel on the early life and rise of a dictator. So what, pray tell, might she be trying to say?

[flying-elliska]

one of the most impactful things I have read lately are two of French author Edouard Louis' books, Pour en finir avec Eddy Bellegueule and Qui a tué mon père (translated into English as The End of Eddy and Who Killed my Father). It's been two months and I'm still thinking about it.

The first book is an 'autobiographical novel' about the author's childhood growing up as an obviously gay boy in one of the poorest areas of France, until he leaves and reinvents himself as a writer. It's fraught with bigotry, abuse, bullying, violence, deprivation and social despair, and it's one of the most harrowing things I have ever read. It reads as many things as once : a recognition of trauma, an angry exorcism, a cry for society at large to pay attention, and to be honest, as a horror story.

It was criticized by some in France as portraying the working class in a manner that was too negative, which tells me they missed the point entirely...ironic for a book by someone who actually grew up poor - one of my least favorite things ever is progressives telling a marginalized person they can't talk about their own experiences because they don't fit the desired mold. (The French love to romanticize the working class and I'm pretty sure it's often an avoidance mechanism.)

The point of the book is so obviously not about 'look at how terrible and bigoted those poor people are'. Little Eddy spends a big part of the narrative trying to escape - himself at first, then his family/circumstances and the persistent homophobia everywhere. In the end of the book, he finally manages to get accepted into a fancy high school in the city on a scholarship and tries really hard to fit in. The last scene of the book is a bunch of his - educated, upper/middle class - classmates throwing homophobic taunts at him, starting the cycle anew. I can't think of a clearer way to say 'this is not a story about a sad gay boy escaping the evil bigoted countryside for the city and then everything was wonderful!!!! this is a story about a systemic, pervasive problem.'

One of the key arguments of the book, to me, is how homophobia, sexism and bigotry in general are both a product and a reproduction mechanism of social and economic exclusion. For instance, he describes how the norms around what it means to be a man in his village (being tough, disobeying authority, quitting school early to go work at the factory, drinking alcohol, neglecting your own health, fighting over women, repressing your feelings, etc) perpetuates the cycle of poverty ; but again this isn't 'oh these people are so stupid' and more 'these people are trapped'. Because he makes it evident how degrading and dehumanizing poverty can be, this masculinity reads as a desperate attempt to cling to a certain amount of dignity - it's an extremely dysfunctional coping mechanism. At the same time, anyone falling outside of the mold is violently ostracized (like Eddy, who tries and fails to fit in). So the system keeps reproducing itself.

In Who Killed my Father, the author makes his political argument clearer. This is more of an essay, centering on his father, arguably the most complex figure in the first novel. The man is an angry, bigoted alcoholic who makes his family miserable ; at the same time he is the son of an abusive father who makes a point of honor to never hit his kids or wife even though it's very normalized in this context. In this essay the author keeps talking about the moments of almost tenderness with his father that haunt him, the picture he has of him doing drag in his youth, the fact that the father tried to leave the village when he was young to find a better life for himself with a close friend but failed and had to come back - the moments of what-ifs, of trying to struggle free from the cycle, when the system appears almost fragile and not so unbreakable after all, that the son kept holding close like a sort of talisman.

The narrative is structured around the fact that his father injured his back working in a factory and that he had to keep doing physical labor afterwards for money, instead of resting to recover, until it completely destroyed his body. Now he finds himself bed-bound at 53. Louis inquires into who is responsible for this premature 'death'. After considering individual choices, he turns towards political decisions - the successive governments, left and right, who have been destroying the French welfare system for decades and accelerating inequality. The point is to step out of the neoliberal obsession with personal responsibility and who is guilty and who is a bad or good person, and look at systems.

An element that isn't focused on but hovers over the story constantly is that this village is one where the majority of the population consistently votes for the extreme right National Front party in most elections. The book is too angry and nuanced to be some stupid "it's not their fault that they're racist because they're poor!" argument. It doesn't make any excuses for how awful this is but instead illustrates how dehumanization replicates itself, how people being denied basic dignity leads to them wanting to deny it to others. If you want to really understand the rise of the far right you have to look at where the inequality comes from in the first place, and how easy it is for people in power to wash their hands of it by blaming the bigoted masses. (Just like you can blame societal ills on minorities ! Two for one strategy.)

Towards the end of the essay, the author talks about how proud his father is of his son's literary success - for a book who clearly depicts him as a horrible person ! And this is a man who has spent his life openly despising anything cultural, because it never showed him a life like his own. But maybe now he feels seen, now he knows people want to read about these things. Maybe there is a reclamation of dignity through looking at the horror head on. Maybe his son somehow slipping through the cracks of the cycle gives him more room. The man stops making racist comments, and instead asks his son about his boyfriend. Most importantly, he asks his son about the leftist politics he's engaged in. They talk about the need for a revolution.

I think what strikes me the most is this attitude of "wounded compassion" that permeates the book. What do you do when your parents are abusive but even after you grow up, you can't help but still love them, and you know they've been shaped by the system that surrounds them ? Recognizing, speaking the harm is essential. You need to find your own freedom, sense of worth, and safety. You need to dissect the mechanisms at hand so they lose at least some of their power over you. You need to find people who love and believe you. But then what? Do you dismiss your persistent feelings of affection and care for those who hurt you as a sign you're just fucked up in the head ? You could just decide to never speak to them again, and it would be justified, but is that really what is going to heal you the most? It's important to realize you have the choice. But there are no easy conclusions.

This makes me think of a passage I have just read in Aversive Democracy by Aletta Norval. The essential ethos of radical democracy, she says, is about taking responsibility for your society, even the bad parts, instead of seeing them as a foreign element you have to cleanse yourself of. It's too fucking easy for queer progressives, especially the middle class urban kind, to talk about dumb evil hicks, to turn pride into a simple morality tale, and forget that any politics that don't center the basic dignity and needs of people are just shit. The injury is to you and by you and you have a duty of care just as much as a duty of criticism. (And this is obviously not only applicable to class matters.) You can't just walk away and save your sense of moral purity. (This is not an argument that the oppressed are responsible for educating the oppressors ; it's about how privilege is not an easy simple ranking and it is too damn easy to only focus on the ways in which you are oppressed and forget the ways in which you may have more leeway.)

There is no absolute equivalence between political and family dynamics but the parallel feel very relevant somehow. Several truths can coexist at once : you needed help and it was not given. You were let down. It's important to recognize that people are responsible of how they treat each other. You need to call out what isn't ok and stand up for yourself. At the same time, there is a reason why things are like this. Making people into villains is often bad strategy (within reason!), and in the end, easy dichotomies are often an instrument of power. The horrors you have been through might have given you a very specific wisdom and grace you do not have to be afraid of ; you are not tainted by your compassion (it is very much the opposite of forced forgiveness ; it has walked through the fire of truth.)

To me these books fit into what French literature does best, sociological storytelling a la Zola or Victor Hugo - the arguments aren't new and they can come across as heavy handed, even melodramatic. But I'll argue that the viscerality is the point, how the raw experience of misery punches through any clever arguments about how exploitation persists for the greater good of society. Really worth reading if you can do so with nuance.

[wisteria-lodge]

lion primary + badger secondary (bird model)

ie A HOUSE MATCH !!

Hellooo, I’m sorry for bothering you but I’ve found this blog and I absolutely love your character analysis and overall thought about the SHC system, and I could use some help?

I’ve known the system for a while now, since the old SHC tumblr times, and while understanding my current primary situation has been quite easy, I’m having A LOT of trouble with my secondary and it’s becoming a bit of a issue for me because the more I think about it, the more confused I become, to the point where it’s upsetting me a bit.

First thing first, my Primary is a very “standard” Lion, the whole “you feel if something is right or not and if you do something that’s not right to you you feel bad/ill/it’s wrong” is extremely me. I had some doubts about a Badger model, but I think it’s just that my personal ideals and values align a lot with a Badger worldview, since I grew in a very Badger society and family (very leftist, a lot of emphasis on equality and valuing and creating communities). Reading various description/interpretations of primary Lion always feels right, while reading primary Badger always makes me think “yeah, this is all good and nice, BUT…” so this was quite easy to sort out (no pun intended).

Are you me? So far... I could have written this. It’s possible I *might* be biased going forward. 

When it comes to secondaries, I see a lot of myself in Bird descriptions: I make spreadsheets for everything.

 Pretty Bird.

I am a crafter with an apparently endless supply of books and tutorials and supplies ready, and the enthusiasm to share them. 

That sounds more Badger. 

I am the mom friend 

Badger.

who always has what’s needed in their bag. 

Bird.

I am that one person you can count on knowing a funny or interesting anecdote about almost any topic, from the mundane to the truly obscure. Learning new things, about any topic, is literally one of my biggest pleasures in life. 

Bird [model?] Whichever one isn’t your secondary is a model you clearly love.

I take pride in all these things, but I honestly have trouble understanding if I like using them as tools because they help me with my ADHD and so I received a very strong positive enforcement using them and I kept the ones I like, or if I started doing them because they are what I like doing and coincidentally they help me managing my symptoms or better navigate the world in my day to day life.

Could be either, but modeling Bird because you’re neurodivergent is very much a thing.

Also, while I love planning, when it comes to making decisions I tend to gather all information and summarize it in a way that makes sense to me so I can visualize the issue in my mind as complete and detailed as possible, but the final decision tends to feel a bit… impulsive, to me?, there’s always A LOT of gut feeling involved, and when I don’t follow it usually it ends up being a wrong or subpar decision. I do need to gather all the available information about the issue/situation/item/people, but rather than making my decision by comparison, I use the information to make sure that I’m “seeing” the truth (or as close to it as it is possible) and then once I feel safe that I’m not overlooking anything important I just KNOW what is the correct decision.

That’s a Lion primary making a call. 

Could this simply be a very strong primary interfering with the decision-making, even when it’s not about ideals but more mundane things?

Decision making is always a primary thing. Mundane stuff included. Mundane stuff is important. 

On the other hand, I am an extremely hard working person (I am changing jobs right now because I feel like my old bosses are making more and more difficult for me to just do my job properly and without needing to cut corners, and it just feels wrong to me). 

Oh good lord. I am ready to sort you as a Badger secondary solely on the basis of THAT. 

People tell me I’m a very good listener and that I am especially good at helping others unravel their thoughts when they’re all confused and tangled because I ask the right questions. I seem to gain other people’s trust easily and often I get told gossip or secrets before others. 

Badger. Also DAMN but that’s relatable. I think you might house-match me. 

I got told several times by previous bosses that I should look into becoming a team leader because people like me and I make them get along better. 

Sounds like a Lion/Badger combo. 

People get attached to me very quickly and when I have problems the stream of folks asking if they can help or just checking in is always way more than I expect.

Isn’t it weird how that happens? 

This all sounds like Badger stuff, from the descriptions I read, but many of them are not things I actively enjoy doing, I just.. do them because it would be weird to do otherwise? Or it feels like they happen to me with no effort on my part.

Because they’re just you. It’s just who you are. 

I think they might be simply a result of me growing up in a society that values hard work and being kind to others, or just me being a likeable person

Not everyone finds this easy. Not even close. I have read so many testimonials written by people in Badger secondary households killing themselves trying to fit into this model. Wanting isn’t enough. Having examples around you isn’t enough. 

or maybe coping mechanisms I had to learn in order to “pass” as neurotypical but as I wrote the more think and read about Birds and Badgers and their differences, the more I get confused and frustrated.

Now I know I’m projecting, but all my neurotypical coping mechanisms come out of the Bird secondary toolbox. 

But it would make sense since I burned out badly in my teens from trying to always try to be perfect for my family, my friends, my teachers, society 

That sounds like a young Badger secondary, more than a young Bird secondary.

and when I finally found who I really wanted to be I resolved to never let anyone define what or how I should be ever again (hello there, Lion primary!)

I hear that. 

After a lifetime of beating myself up for not living up to the absurdly high expectations I set up for myself, I have decided that the only way to stay sane for me is to do the groundwork, be as prepared as I can

Bird

 put in the work I should

Badger

 but once I’m in the thick of it just… ride the wave. And now I got to the point where I have the confidence that I am smart enough to learn the basics of a new skill on the fly, if needed.

To me, this is so fundamentally, so spiritually Badger secondary. You don’t have tools. You are a tool. You made yourself into one. And that moment where you can just trust yourself to catch the world, absorb it into yourself, and become whatever it needs you to be... it’s ecstasy. 

I’d say that lack of time is my worst enemy, but due/thanks to the ADHD that’s not true most of the time, since lack of time is what enables me to get past the executive dysfunction in the first place, so I’ll say I have a love-hate relationship with it. Doing things just before a deadline is it’s own kind of high, after all (I’m not saying it’s healthy).

At the base of your soul, you’re not really a Bird prepper/planner. 

A practical example: I usually don’t like platforming games much, but I am LOVING Immortals: Fenyx Rising because in most situations, there is a “best” way to do things but you can also get creative by using different skills, using specific items, finding loopholes, or a combination of all of them.

Sounds like a Bird secondary having fun. [a fun model?]

When I fail a level/combat I don’t get frustrated because I know that I just have to try a few more times until I find the solution that feels right FOR ME, even if it’s not the most efficient ones. And when I do it feels great, even if I look a at guide afterwards and there’s a waaay easier solution! I usually feel a bit silly for not “seeing it” but also think something like “well, I think MY way is more fun!”

Oh yeah, a Bird secondary would not have that reaction. That is the sacred Badger consistency of method. How you do something matters equally as much as the final product. 

When I cook, I usually find a recipe I like and try it as written, then I make small adjustments to improve it, see how it turns out, and so on until I have a recipe that is MY recipe, one I really like and that I know well enough to use as a basis to be changed if needed, knowing exactly how the change will affect the end result. I think this is why I prefer baking to other kinds of cooking, since it’s much more akin to chemistry I feel like I have more control over what a change will do. 

On it’s own this could be a description of rapid-fire Bird. And you clearly have Bird, you have a lot of it. You love it. 

So I guess that what really matters to me is being able to do things my way so that I can enjoy the process and live up to my standards instead of external ones? 

But then you say something like this... it’s about the process... it’s about the method... it’s about something coming up to your own personal standards. And that’s so Badger. 

This ended up being very lengthy… I’ve tried shortening it but English isn’t my first language and I was afraid I might come across not clearly. 

Your English is perfect, and insanely clear. You’re clearer than I am. 

Thank you again for the blog, I especially like your DS9 characters’ analysis and I am low-key hoping for more :)

I’m particularly proud of those ones. I’d love to do more, but before that I would have to go back and re-watch the show, or at least key character episodes. I’m not going to sort from memory. That would be doing a show I love, and a number of extremely complex characters a disservice. And it wouldn’t be nearly as fun. 

(it’s that whole Badger integrity-of-method thing, you know how it goes.) 

[truffledmadness]

Millenial Trad Politics: A Modest Proposal

So, based on this post and after the go-ahead from @funereal-disease, I’ve got a pet theory about the tendency of both the Millenial Hard Right AND the Millenial Hard Left to contain a strong undercurrent (and, in the case of the right, overcurrent) of trad social mores.

I don’t think it’s actually about politics at all.

Internet Millenial Leftists and the Internet Millenial Right seem to share quite a few commonalities, if you read between the lines. Specifically, in the demographics and personality quirks of some of their members. They all appear to have been raised by (or at least, in very close proximity to) what might be described as Whole Foods Liberalism--well-off, majority-white, neoliberal suburban American culture. Both the left and the right will imply that this is the dominant American (or even global!) culture. It’s not, not even remotely, but that you would ever make the mistake of thinking so suggests that you were raised in that culture, and that you were very, very sheltered within it. But this not only explains a lot of the rhetoric, but also the weird tendency to imply that sexism and particularly racism are things that one learns about in college courses (and the deeper implication that everyone goes to college).

The sheltered perspective of this brings in the second commonality: shelteredness more generally. Again, a lot of this is reading between the lines, but the Internet Millenial Right is often quite famous for being a space where socially alienated young white men come because they feel starved of community, and I’ve noticed similar tendencies on some of the left, especially tankies. I think that this tendency is fundamentally inextricable with the trend towards affluent neoliberal upbringing. And inextricable with a third thing, that might be the most important: a certain amount of rebellion as an adolescent, as we switch from being parent-oriented to peer-oriented, can be a very important developmental milestone. And a HUGE number of millenials never really got to have that. This is not an original point, although while most will argue that this is because of parenting trends (”helicopter parents”) or blame social media in some nebulous way, I think there’s actually an overlooked economic aspect--in the 2000s, particularly post-GFC, a lot of the traditional “safe” ways for teenagers to slouch around and feel dangerous became too expensive for teenagers to actually do. Fast food, clothes, movies, etc., all got more expensive, while part-time job opportunities got scarcer, leaving a lot of the “traditional teenage experience” effectively out of the price range of actual teenagers.

So, what you’re left with is a bunch of people who feel that they were deprived of an adolescence, living in a culture that (VERY VERY WRONGLY, in my opinion) glorifies adolescence, and are looking for outlets for that. Now, there are healthy ways to explore that (gay male culture has long provided an outlet of this kind for people who were deprived of an adolescence because they were closeted at the time) or merely aesthetically unpleasant but basically harmless (see: the entirety of so-called “Instagram culture”). But there is a faction that’s interested not merely in adolescence, but in rebellion, specifically.

Enter politics. Now, a LOT of factors go into whether or not you end up on the left or right wing of this, but the Angry Trad thing seems to me to be fundamentally rooted in rebellion. When you’re raised by neoliberals, most “traditional” outlets for rebellion don’t actually feel like a departure from your native culture and its expectations. If your parents are aging hippies with a “Coexist” bumper sticker on their Prius, joining a weird band or doing some spiritual exploration through different faiths won’t shock them--they think that’s normal. Being trad, however, does feel legitimately shocking and rebellious. Especially if, on some level, it’s all completely theoretical.

Which brings me to my last point: none of these people have read a history book. And let me be clear, I am not actually faulting them for that, and I don’t think their ignorance is because they’re stupid--generally, they’re not. Since around the 1990s, with the advent of Common Core American education has undergone a major push to legitimize math and the hard sciences (and, to a lesser extent, “reading levels”) as the only legitimate subjects of study, while gutting the humanities, especially history and civics. While certain events are obvious and broad enough that collective understanding of them has survived, more or less, most hasn’t. This is why so many people think that feminism began and ended with the suffrage movement, and racism began with slavery and ended with the Civil Rights movement, and why they’re less likely to understand why these ideas are still important or relevant. The right then glosses this over by saying that women and minorities are inferior, and the left glosses it over by saying these are nebulous distractions from class struggle (never mind that issues of racism and sexism are often most immediate and pressing for people who are also struggling economically). But the root of this appears to be a genuine ignorance.

[kimabutch]

A kind anon encouraged me to share some of my thoughts about the portrayal of religion in Skyjacks, so I thought I’d talk about the parallels between the Church of the Slain God and some aspects of Christianity. 

But I’m prefacing this with a few warnings. First, I’m going to talk about some of my own beliefs and feelings as a Christian, and this will involve discussions of Christianity in both a negative and a positive light. I am not going to get into any debates about my beliefs; some of them are maybe a little unconventional (and some would probably have certain groups saying I’m not a Christian.) 

Second, a bit about my background — I was raised in a very liberal church and family, and have since joined an explicitly leftist church. I have some peripheral experiences with more conservative branches of Christianity, but most of my knowledge of them comes from my own research and listening to friends who were formerly part of conservative churches. I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert in theology or all branches of Christianity. 

Also, spoilers up to episode 61!

Okay, so it’s no secret that the Church of the Slain God (CSG) borrows or adapts elements from Christianity — and particularly Roman Catholicism — from their angels to the Swiss guards to some of the church structure, such as the existence of “bishops.” But I think that specifically, the CSG is a cool take on Christian theology that’s completely devoid of the resurrection. 

I’m fairly sure that in an early episode, James explicitly said that the CSG’s basic message of ‘God is dead and we killed him’ is reminiscent of Christianity, and it is — it‘s just that Christianity also says ‘God was dead, we killed him, but he came back for us, too.’ Or well, theoretically Christianity says that. 

Because I think there are certain branches of Christianity (particularly those that are extremely right-leaning) that are much more focussed on Jesus’s death than his resurrection — and in general, on death over life. There is a tendency to focus on how he suffered for us sinners, who were so guilty that only the sacrifice of God’s son could save us — and then skip right to the Second Coming (in which there will be more death) or what will happen after we die, which is presented as more important than our lives on Earth. 

Now, I don’t personally agree with a lot of that interpretation on its own (I tend to have a very different view of “why” Jesus died), but I don’t think all parts of it are necessarily harmful, and I’m certainly not about to argue about whether they’re right or wrong. What I will dispute, however, is how these narratives tend to erase the most important part of that story to me — the resurrection. The fact that love was infinitely more important than anything humans could have done wrong, that love lives even when it’s been stamped down, that love is deathless and rises again. 

Without God’s unending love and hope, without the resurrection, Christianity becomes about death, guilt, sadness, and fear — about focussing on humanity’s sins and worthlessness in the face of a suffering God. And those emotions, particularly guilt, are ones that can be manipulated, especially in times of crisis; they can become a tool with which you can beat down an entire population. Particularly if you, like the CSG, give the tiniest glimmer of hope that by suffering enough, you might be able to alleviate some of your guilt at being born a human who caused your God pain, to (in Adrian in Skyjacks says, “to make things as right as we can.”)

I’m not saying that all conservative Christianity is like this, but I do think that by removing the resurrection from their narrative, CSG offers a sort of mirror to how certain Christian groups emphasize death, destruction, and suffering even when infinite hope, renewal, and life are important themes in the Gospel. 

Anyways, I started thinking about this parallel before I got to the Nordia arc, and I gotta say, the arc’s only made me think about it more. Particularly the church service in episodes 60-61, which has so many parallels to Roman Catholic services, but twisted into the most death- and guilt-focussed lens possible. The only stated purpose of the service is because the congregants have all “done something wrong.” Confessions are an opportunity to “expunge” sins by ‘admitting’ that you helped kill a God who died nearly 200 years ago. Offerings are simply giving up something valuable to you so that it can stay in a cave, becoming salt-crusted. 

And, most poignantly to me, they have something like communion, in which the congregation drinks together — but the drink is sea water, and they drink to “suffer as the Sovereign suffered [...] suffer because that will bring us closer to him.” There are, of course, interpretations of Christian communion that can similarly emphasize Jesus’s suffering and our part in it by drinking his blood and eating his body (although I have no plans to argue about transubstantiation here) — but communion can also be about “the bread of life,” about satiating physical and spiritual hunger together and thus furthering all aspects of life. The CSG’s communion, where congregants choke down their drink as a punishment, takes all the worst potential implications of Christian communion and magnifies/warps them until it becomes only about suffering and God’s death, not about God sharing life.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say on that particular subject (although I do have another idea for a more broad post about the things that Skyjacks does well on religion specifically.) I really appreciate Skyjacks for sparking me to do some self-reflection about my own beliefs and religious practices. The lore of this show is so incredibly thoughtfully constructed and constantly leaves me impressed. And once again, just to be clear — I sincerely don’t hold any ill-will toward people who disagree with me on the takes, and I don’t want to debate them; I just want to share my thoughts.

Thanks for reading!