#also every piece of media i have consumed recently being about gender. fuck you

[digirainebow]

opens the door. sighs. walks in with my clown shoes squeaking

so maybe my gender is weird after all

[mollymauk-teafleak]

top gun/daisy jones and the six au

So like the little magpie I am, I have once again stolen one of my lovely gf's hyperfixations in a piece of media I haven't even consumed. Because what better way to consume media than just having your gf @hangsters tell you all the best bits and then help you make a top gun au?

So there is an up and coming rock band in the 70s music scene called Top Gun, consisting of Nicholas 'Goose' Bradshaw on drums, Ron 'Slider' Kerner on bass and Tom 'Iceman' Kazansky on lead guitar and vocals. They've recently added a relative unknown called Alice Duong on keys to round out their sound (who keeps drawing the eye of their bassist) but they're struggling to climb the charts.

Their success and their struggle is all down to their lead and originator, Iceman Kazansky. Fellow musicians can't stop raving about the technical flourishes in the songs, the skill and effort put into every solo, the way Kazansky seems to live and breathe music. But that experimental nature is struggling to capture people who'd just be listening to the radio on their way to work.

So their manager has an idea. Guess who he also represents, whose was a massive hit before the drugs and alcohol and partying caught up with him, who works a crowd like no one else and just oozes raw charisma and just got out of rehab and needs a comeback? Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell. And he could be just what Top Gun needs.

Instantly, Mav and Ice struggle to get along. Mav comes into the recording studio like a hurricane, messing up Ice's perfect riffs and technical genius with improvised solos, lyric changes and a general disregard for anything Kazansky (or anyone who ins't him) has to say. The rest of the bad worry that this could wreck the band entirely rather than save them. But the songs that come out of this battle are genius and sell like gangbusters.

So they tour and Ice and Mav are still butting heads but it seems to have...shifted. Like they hate each other but they love it? So no one is really surprised when one of their arguments over a song turns into the hottest sex.

But there's a problem. Maverick has never ever had a relationship like this where it's with someone he actually might love? And he panics about not being good enough, about letting Ice down and the pressure of having a gay relationship in the 70s. And yeah, he's always bucked gender roles (he's trans but not out publicly) and played with sexuality in his music but Ice feels real and he's so scared.

So one night Ice finds him high and shaking in the bathroom after a show. And he just helps him into the bath, washes him, gets him to drink water and takes care of him. But he tells him 'you have until December 1st when the tour ends and then you're done with this. you're going to get clean and be a good man for me'. And Maverick does.

Meanwhile, Goose is struggling being away from his high school sweetheart and love of his life Carole. They get the whole adorable 'if I say I have a record deal will you marry me?' thing and they have a cute backyard wedding when they realise she's pregnant and then along comes little Bradley who Goose loves more than anything (I have hangster stuff in this AU also but this post is getting long)

And eventually, after show after show of Slider staring at her, Alice finally confronts him. She's met guys in this industry that see her as a muse, see her as a skirt and nothing else and she's so done with all that. She just wants someone who treats her like a person and if Ron's gonna be that person he'd better hurry the fuck up and kiss her before she gets sick of waiting. And slider was just scared to be like one of those guys so he was holding back but now he has the go ahead he's kissing her like there's no tomorrow.

But yes I'm so deep in this AU it's not even funny and I'm looking how I can get some fics or maybe even a multi chapter thing out of it so! Ask questions, send requests, please enjoy!

[jcmorrigan]

Do you support anti-harassment and pro-shipping?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: This is an issue I’ve been monitoring and grappling with for a long time, and I feel like while my core philosophy has been the same for a while now, the nuances I’ve held shift every so often. I don’t identify as an anti. I just don’t. I think shipping things - be it incest, adult/minor, or one of the many flavors of abusive - is an ENTIRELY separate issue from wanting to do that IRL. I think sometimes people just want to write taboo topics for various reasons. Because the topics themselves are taboo and that’s interesting, because they offer methods of coping, even because some people are kinda into projecting upon the person on the losing end of the power dynamic and being dominated and kicked around, since that’s not something you should really chase in real life (unless it’s during a roleplay with a network of safewords).

There are many ships I think are gross, but I don’t want people to stop shipping them because I don’t like them. I don’t like ships that involve anyone under 13 with anyone over 18. I don’t like ships that involve anyone under 18 with anyone over 30. (Aging up is a whole different matter; if you write the younger character older and legitimately have them behave the way you think they would as an adult, it’s all good.) I REALLY don’t like ships where a character is either confirmed homosexual or only shown onscreen to be attracted to the same gender in a big-deal reveal sort of way (if the character has crushes on many genders or the creator uses Word of God to say they’re bi/pan, it’s fine) and the ship involves putting them with someone of the opposite gender (shipping them with enbies is fine). And no, I don’t think it’s a double standard that I sometimes like to do same-sex ships for characters who are coded very very straight. But this is all to do with my tastes and beliefs, not with what I think the rest of you all should do. If you like something that falls in my personal no-no category, then go ahead and do it. I’ll decide how much I want to interact with you, and that says more about our potential chemistry as a unit than it does about you as a person. And if you have boundaries yourself - if age-gap ships skeeve you out - then that doesn’t make you a bad person or even an anti! Just block as needed, talk to friends if you feel betrayed by them, and recognize what it is you don’t like and that you don’t have to like it.

Selfshipping? Do what you want. Again, I might personally have reservations about shipping with somebody too young (I actually perceived my own main f/o as in his twenties when I first watched his source, then saw Word of God say he was NINETEEN actually, even though that invalidates many many jokes about how he’s bad at adulting, so I just said “fuck it” and he’s at least 24 to me because that makes more sense and is more of my comfort zone). But what I like shouldn’t dictate what YOU do. I might give you a little side-eye if you’re shipping with somebody young, but I don’t know your reasons for doing so and I don’t have the right to judge. I might distance myself from certain situations if I’m feeling skeeved out. Or I might not feel skeeved out depending on how it’s handled. I also again would raise a brow if you’re selfshipping with an opposite-gender gay character, but same principle: you have your reasons, you shouldn’t stop because some rando (me) has an issue with your ship, and if I have a problem with how you handle it, I’ll just peace out on my end and not make a deal out of it.

A lot of this comes from the fact that I have mega OCD and I already try to moralize everything I do and hyper-analyze my choices to make sure I am being a Good Person. If I try to follow the “rules” to make my ships palatable to everyone, then I start worrying that any deviation makes me unforgivable. The vast majority of ships in my deck are squeaky-clean and have no problems, but sometimes I’ll get, like...Ventus/Papyrus, where Ven is 15, and Papyrus is in age limbo but I always thought he was at least 18, and then I don’t want to spiral into a moral crisis because I really think it would be cute to put the anime boy with the skeleton and I think they’re both asexual anyway. Or when I aged up Zevon from Descendants in order to make him make more sense as Yzma’s son, and then I had to give him a ship with an adult and I found one I really like (Kamdor from Power Rangers). And this is not even scratching the very complex issue of “The writers of this piece of fiction were ACTUALLY horny for incest and I can see the subtext for it and now I gotta figure out what to do with this mess because I like the series and I do want the characters to have partners who will treat them right.”

That said...up until recently, I looked up to the more extreme proship community, even so far as to kinda be more of an “anti-anti.” But as time went on, that...didn’t seem to fit. I’ve unfollowed a few of those blogs now because first of all, proshipping as a “political party” seems to come with some things I don’t believe in, such as forming a parasocial relationship with AO3 or saying that freedom of fans to ship what they want means the creators of mainstream media should be allowed to portray whatever they want and that being “critical of media you consume” is an automatic dogwhistle for bullies. More importantly: I have at least one friend who I know leans more anti, and I value her a lot and I think it’s valid for her to have her boundaries. After a while, the things that anti-antis did to protect themselves from bullying started to feel a little bit like bullying right back. I can’t really call myself a traditional proshipper anymore, even though I’m definitely not an anti. But I don’t want to be an “anti-anti” either. Because actually, I USED to be an anti on a different social media platform long before Tumblr, and though I can’t tell you exactly why I was that way, I can understand what it’s like to feel that strongly about things that gross you out and want to get them out of your face. I don’t want to say I’m against a whole bunch of people who are probably as varied in intensity as proshippers are.

At the end of the day, what I want is for us all to CHILL OUT. Can we please, PLEASE just focus on having fun in whatever way that comes - problematic ships or no - so long as people IRL aren’t getting hurt? Can we respect that there are probably a LOT of people with OCD on social media who spiral easily if shamed too much (which is probably how the anti movement rose in the first place - I’m sure my anti phase was fueled by my secular scrupulosity)? Can we not assume that people who ship weird age gaps are Actual Pedophiles, which is an entirely separate issue? (Listen...I grew up in the Age of AkuRoku. I hated AkuRoku. But if all the AkuRoku shippers turned out to be pedos, well, the news sure didn’t cover it. I’m saying the majority of them didn’t. And it’s been a decade.) Can we not spread the fear of being cancelled or that having a certain fictional preference will ruin a budding friendship? Can we communicate with one another in private if a friend says or does something that makes you uncomfortable, such as shipping something that makes you question their moral stance? Can actual legitimate creators of media not take sides in the goddamn pro/anti war, thereby making groups of their fans feel alienated from being welcomed by the source? Can we just have fun PLEASE?

Also, just...stop fighting about Reylo. That’s the dumbest thing to fight over and we managed to somehow get the actual SW crew in on that dumbass fight. Some people like Reylo and some people hate Reylo and THAT’S IT. WE’RE DONE HERE.

It sure says something that I worry, before hitting the Post button, that this might ruin some of the relationships I have or inspire a mass exodus of the followers whose names I come to like seeing in my notifications. But it’s ultimately better for all of us if I’m honest.

[numinousnic]

I think it’s incredible, and honestly a little mind-boggling, that Hannibal Lecter is such an iconic pop culture villain when the vast majority of media he’s in is just... Not Good.

How “Not Good,” do you ask? Well, as someone who has read all four Hannibal Lecter novels and watched all six Hannibal Lecter screen adaptations (five films and one TV show) for one reason or another — either because I genuinely wanted to, or just had to in order to do due diligence with the Works Consulted portion of my honors thesis — I have opinions about every single one! And since I’ve finally succeeded in sitting down and articulating and organizing all those opinions that have been stewing in me for the past couple of years: let’s fucking go.

Before we dive into the details, you need to understand that my personal rankings of Hannibal Lecter media don’t make a whole lot of sense unless you know that I first had to group them into tiers and then rank them. And those larger tiers are as follows:

TIER 1: Hannibal Lecter Media That Is Generally Solid and I Have Minimal Reservations About Recommending

TIER 2: Hannibal Lecter Media That Is Widely Celebrated, But I Personally Hesitate to Recommend

TIER 3: Hannibal Lecter Media That Is Varying Degrees of Bad and I Just Do Not Recommend

and last, but definitely not least:

TIER 129840629486: Hannibal Lecter Media That Sucks Ass and Haunts My Every Waking Hour, and That I Would Not Recommend, Let Alone Re-Consume, Even If It Was the Last Piece of Media On the Planet

And which pieces of media falls in which tiers? You may be surprised! (Or not, depending on how much you know about Hannibal Lecter media.)

[CWs for minor discussion of (in order) copaganda, ableism, homophobia, serial killers, transphobia, Orientalism, racism, Nazis, cannibalism, gaslighting, drugging, lobotomies, and sexual activity of incredibly dubious consent under the cut.]

TIER 1: Hannibal Lecter Media That Is Generally Solid and I Have Minimal Reservations About Recommending

Hannibal (TV series, 2013-2015)

I will fully admit that I’m biased here in placing NBC’s Hannibal at the top of the list, because this was the very first piece of Hannibal Lecter media I ever consumed — I binged the entire thing during the first semester of my freshman year (because it had only just gotten canceled that August!), and my love of it would eventually lead me to write a whole-ass honors thesis on it my senior year, which would also lead me to consume every other piece of Hannibal Lecter media, with mixed results. Point is, it’s a gruesomely gorgeous, fascinatingly intertextual, absolutely buck fucking wild show, and I will never not have a place for it in my morbid little heart.

Admittedly, having picked it apart with a fine-toothed comb for my honors thesis and rewatching it more recently has made me glaringly aware of its many flaws — chief among them 1) being part of the federal law enforcement glorification subgenre of copaganda by virtue of (loosely) starting out as a police procedural (jury’s still out on if the plot of S2/3 ever do anything meaningful to subvert or challenge that), and 2) that ~classic~ modern crime show trope of “neuroatypical person helps solve crimes and gets nothing but ableist judgment from their coworkers in return.” (And its treatment of gender and sexuality is... complicated, to say the least.) Still, the sad, weird truth is that it does a lot better than other Hannibal Lecter media at rectifying the shortcomings of the books/movies with only occasionally feeding into the old problems or creating new problems, very likely because it’s the most modern piece of Hannibal Lecter media on this list!

(At this point, I would like to extend heartfelt apologies to people reading this rant who dislike NBC’s Hannibal. Because I genuinely regret to inform you that from this point on, every other piece of Hannibal Lecter media I discuss will get steadily worse.)

Red Dragon (book, 1981)

Fun fact: this is the only Thomas Harris book I actually own! My parents had two copies in our basement for some reason and I took one copy when I moved out, because it’s also the only Thomas Harris book I’ve mostly enjoyed all the way through (I say mostly because there’s some underlying homophobia, because Thomas Harris was out here linking violent, sadistic crime with deviance from cis/heteronormativity from Day 1 of Hannibal Lecter media!) There’s a reason this book has the most screen adaptations of it! It’s because it’s fucking fascinating and dark as all hell! It’s because Will Graham is such a compelling protagonist, and because Francis Dolarhyde is absolutely chilling, and because your notions of their characters are so thoroughly wrecked and second-guessed for both of them by the time you finish reading! And the detail (though dated by now) that goes into describing how the FBI was working to hunt down this serial killer is pretty accurate, because Thomas Harris was, in fact, doing research with federal law enforcement at the time when they were starting to quantify what makes a serial killer a serial killer! Which is a fun historical fact that I think shouldn’t be overlooked.

Anyway, I think Thomas Harris should have stopped after Red Dragon, because (the homophobia aside) it’s a generally solid book as far as ‘80s crime thrillers go. And that final page fucking haunts me to this day, in the best possible way.

Manhunter (movie, 1986)

I will fully confess to not liking Manhunter when I first saw it because I thought it was way too ridiculous (and even for the ‘80s, aggressively neon and synth-y in aesthetic) for an adaptation of, y’know, a psychological serial killer thriller that I really enjoyed. And I still don’t like how they changed the book’s ending to a more conventionally happy one that really doesn’t work with this kind of narrative! But I can honestly say that I respect it for Committing to the Bit with its color symbolism, and also that it works better than any other screen adaptation of Red Dragon because it was actually made in the same decade as the novel it was based on, so the plot still made sense from a technology standpoint. Because people were still sending out photos from their cameras to get developed by a third party, so there could totally have been a serial killer targeting people based on their family photos! Not so much in the early 2000s (when the other, and vastly inferior, film adaptation of Red Dragon was released) and definitely not in the mid-2010s (when NBC’s Hannibal was airing). So being stubbornly anchored in the ‘80s actually kind of works for Manhunter after all!

(Also, I think Brian Cox deserves more kudos for being the first actor to tackle the role of Hannibal Lecter. Where Anthony Hopkins’ take on Hannibal Lecter has been imitated/parodied to death, thereby rendering what was genuinely a menacing performance into something kind of hokey, Cox’s take on Lecter is very different and in my opinion, equally unsettling.)

TIER 2: Hannibal Lecter Media That Is Widely Celebrated, But I Personally Hesitate to Recommend

The Silence of the Lambs (book, 1988 / movie, 1991)

Are both the book and the movie (more so the movie) critically acclaimed and recognized as icons in horror media? Yeah. Have I enjoyed both the book and the movie in the past? Also yeah. But is Silence of the Lambs super-bad about gender when its focus isn’t Clarice Starling? YEAH and YIKES DOES IT EVER.

I’m sure that more intelligent critics than I have written at length about the transphobia and homophobia in Silence of the Lambs, so I’ll keep my personal thoughts fairly brief. If your plot doesn’t make a lick of sense without said transphobia and homophobia underpinning all its assumptions, you should write a different fucking plot. And not double down on it for the film adaptation.

TIER 3: Hannibal Lecter Media That Is Varying Degrees of Bad and I Just Do Not Recommend

Hannibal Rising (movie, 2007)

To be honest, I think the most shocking thing about Hannibal Rising is that, unlike the novel it’s based on, it’s not an unquenchable trash fire! (Which is doubly shocking considering Thomas Harris wrote the screenplay for this as well. More on that in a moment.) Yeah, it still has the terrible Hannibal Lecter backstory that has more or less become the Scrappy-Doo of Hannibal Lecter media, but it trims out a lot of the excess plot threads that make Hannibal Rising such a slog to read and minimizes the Orientalism, which is unfortunately the best-case scenario — as with Silence of the Lambs and transphobia, taking Lady Murasaki (Hannibal’s Japanese aunt) and all the associated Orientalism out of Hannibal Rising basically leaves the whole thing without half of its plot. (The other half is the Nazis. More on that in a moment, too!)

Also, Gaspard Ulliel (young and kinda hot Hannibal Lecter) and Gong Li (Lady Murasaki) get all of the kudos for making the still-ludicrous script kind of work in the first place. Because without their acting carrying the whole thing, Hannibal Rising: The Movie would probably have been on the same shit tier as Hannibal Rising: The Book.

Red Dragon (movie, 2002)

If there’s one thing that binds all the media in Tier 1 together, it’s that they’re 1) Red Dragon or 2) based on Red Dragon. That is very much not the case for this adaptation of Red Dragon, which is frankly terrible for reasons I unfortunately could not put my finger on until I saw it a second time.

The biggest reasons are this:

It’s boring and banal, shockingly so for an adaptation of a book with such a wild plot. Other adaptations, Manhunter and NBC’s Hannibal both have very distinctive aesthetics and interesting ways of adapting/retelling Red Dragon: The Book, but Red Dragon: The Movie has absolutely no flair! It has the drab palette and pacing of a mediocre thriller, and that’s exactly what it turned out to be.

It gives Hannibal Lecter way too much screen time. Lecter’s introduced in Red Dragon: The Book, yeah, but as a bit character — he’s pivotal to the plot, but he’s not a major character. But the filmmakers of Red Dragon: The Movie had Anthony Hopkins and by God, they were going to milk him for all the screen time he was worth!

Edward Norton is just. Really bad as Will Graham.

Hannibal Rising (book, 2006)

I have no idea whether or not it’s true that Dino de Laurentis told Thomas Harris “hey, we’re making a Hannibal Lecter backstory movie with or without you, so either write your own version or wave goodbye to the character rights forever,” but I have to believe it is because Hannibal Rising reads like the kind of book someone would write out of sheer spite. In many ways, this is the Springtime For Hitler of Hannibal Lecter media because Thomas Harris probably thought there was no way that anyone could make a good movie out of this (and then they almost did). And this is also like Springtime For Hitler in that there’s Nazis/Nazi collaborators. Who killed and cannibalized Hannibal’s younger sister Mischa. And had him eat her unknowingly. And that’s why Hannibal Is The Way He Is!

If that makes you want to read the book for some ungodly reason, I really must beg you not to; it’s the mother of all shitty, ~edgy~ backstories, and it takes everything that was interesting about Lecter in the previous books and just ruins the mystery forever. Also, Thomas Harris’ racism is really on full display in this one, with some Orientalism thrown in for awful, appropriative flavor! (Yes, this is also the novel where Hannibal uses a katana to behead a dude who was being a racist, misogynist creep towards Lady Murasaki; I literally cannot make this shit up.)

... That being said, it’s very important to me that you all know that according to Hannibal Rising, Hannibal Lecter is canonically a member of the French Communist Party. It’s a detail that comes up maybe twice in the whole novel, but it’s literally one of the only reasons he escapes a murder charge at the very end and it’s weirdly hilarious.

Hannibal (movie, 2001)

Honestly, the nicest thing I can say about Hannibal: The Movie is that the filmmakers looked at the ending of Hannibal: The Book and (as they should!) went, “What the fuck? No way are we doing this” and changed it entirely. (More on that ending when we get to the Final Tier!) But even with that, it’s no surprise to me that both Jonathan Demme (director of Silence of the Lambs) and Jodie Foster (Clarice Starling) bowed out of this dumpster fire as fast as they could. Even with the changed ending, it’s still a terrible movie, that, much like Silence of the Lambs, does absolutely jack shit to rectify the ways in which it is terrible!

(Wait, no, I have two vaguely nice things to say about Hannibal: The Movie! “Vide Cor Meum” is a genuinely beautiful piece of music that did not deserve to be composed specificially for this fucking film.)

TIER 129840629486: Hannibal Lecter Media That Sucks Ass and Haunts My Every Waking Hour, and That I Would Not Recommend, Let Alone Re-Consume, Even If It Was the Last Piece of Media On the Planet

Hannibal (book, 1999)

Oh God. Oh fuck. This fucking book. I hate it so much, you don’t even know. If you were to make a Bingo card of every single terrible Thomas Harris trademark, you would fucking fill it with this book. There’s racism. There’s sexism. There’s homophobia. There’s transphobia. There’s a villain specifically created to be So Evil as to make Hannibal fucking Lecter look like a semi-decent dude, but he just ends up being... I mean, Mason’s awful no matter which piece of Hannibal Lecter media he’s in, but in Hannibal: The Book, it’s just so specifically over-the-top that all of his believable awfulness as a rich white man abusing his power in every gross way imaginable becomes totally ludicrous.

And then there’s the ending. I can’t even bring myself to type it all out without gagging a little in my mouth, so here’s the Wikipedia summary! Get some bleach for your eyeballs in advance, because you’re gonna need it.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A screenshot of the Wikipedia summary for Hannibal by Thomas Harris (1999) that reads: “Using a regimen of psychotropic drugs and behavioral therapy, Lecter attempts to brainwash Starling, hoping to make her believe she is Mischa, returned to life. She ultimately resists, however, and tells him that Mischa will have to live on within him. Lecter captures Krendler and lobotomizes him, and then he and Starling eat Krendler’s prefrontal cortex before Lecter kills him. Starling undresses and offers her breast to Lecter, which he accepts. The two then become lovers and disappear together.”]

I so desperately wish I was making all of this up. But there is a Reason that this book is in its own special Tier of Terrible, and the ending is 90% of that Reason.

... So! It’s now nearly 2 AM and this has been my personal rankings of Hannibal Lecter media, which honestly, has been a long time coming! Obviously, different people are going to have different opinions from me, and I am flexible about most of this list... with the exception of Hannibal: The Book. Because it is The Worst Piece of Hannibal Lecter Media In Existence and as far as I’m concerned, that fact is not open for debate.

[amphtaminedreams]

J.K Rowling & The Echo Chamber of TERFs: Why Nobody Wants your Transphobic “Opinion”

TW// Discussion of Sexual Assault and Transphobia

SO...

I’ve seen the term “allyship fatigue” going round a lot lately on Twitter, since the issues of police brutality, institutional racism, and now transphobia have taken central stage.

And it’s weird. To be honest, hearing other white cis people calling themselves “allies” has always sounded kinda self-congratulatory. Taking this to the level of martyrdom that the phrase “allyship fatigue” evokes makes me want to heave. It’s shit that anyone even has to be saying Black Lives STILL Matter, but it does seem to unfortunately be the case that every time there is a highly publicised murder of a black individual by police, the explosion of us white people calling ourselves allies and retweeting and reblogging statements of solidarity only lasts so long before half revert back to being complacent with and uncritical of a world seeped with casual racism. Is that what “allyship fatigue” is? The excuse for that? Not only does the term take the focus off of the marginalised group the movement is centred around but it makes supporting equal rights sound like some kind of heroic burden we’ve chosen to take on rather than addressing a debt we owe and being not even good but just plain decent human beings. WE are not the ones shouldering the weight here, and if your mental health is suffering, that is not the fault of the people asking for their rights. Log off. We have the privilege to do that. It just doesn’t need to be a spectacle.

At the same time, this public onslaught of ignorance and hatred that the coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement has triggered (that let me again emphasise, black people have had to involuntarily be on the receiving end of their whole lives) and the frustration and anger that comes from seeing these absolute trash takes from people with no research into the subject who build their argument purely on “what about”isms is do-I-even-want-to-bring-children-into-this-fucking-world levels of miserable. In terms of earth beginning to look more and more like the prequel describing the events which lead up to a dystopian novel, the chaos of the last 4 weeks or so (2020 has not only shattered the illusion of time but also danced on the shards, I know) is the tip of the iceberg. I saw a thread about what’s going on in Yemen at the moment, which I had no idea about, and immediately felt consumed by guilt that I didn’t know. With the advent of social media, there’s been this sudden evolutionary shift where we’re almost required and expected to know about, have an opinion on, and be empathetic with every humanitarian crisis at once. I think young people feel this especially, which is why I say that sometimes it’s worth talking to an older person before you brush them off as a racist or a homophobe and see if they’re open to hearing different opinions-in general, I think we’re a generation that is used to being expected to consume a huge amount of information at once. They are not. For a lot (NOT all) of the older, middle-class, white population, ignorance isn’t a conscious choice, it is the natural way of life. The parameters of empathy until very recently have only had to extend just past your closest circle of friends to encompass people you “relate to”. That doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of caring about other things, and sometimes we owe them a chance to change their perspective first, if for no reason other than to advance the cause of, well, basic human rights for all.

So where does J.K Rowling come into all this? I hear you ask. Why doesn’t she just stop rambling? You potentially wonder. Well, I’m getting to it. 

J.K Rowling isn’t an unconsciously ignorant people. She is what I would call consciously ignorant. And of all weeks to flaunt this ignorance, she chose a time when people are already drowning in a cesspit of hatred. The woman whose whole book series supposedly revolves around the battle between good and evil didn’t even try to drain the swamp. She instead added a bucket of her transphobic vitriol into it. 

Let me preface this by saying that I wouldn’t wipe my arse with the Sun. What they did with the statement she made regarding her previous abusive relationship, seeking out said abusive partner for an interview and putting it on the front page with the headline “I slapped J.K”, whilst expected from the bunch of cretinous bottom feeders who work there, is disgusting. That being said, the pattern of behaviour J.K Rowling has exhibited since she first became an online presence is equally disgusting, and just because the Sun have been their usual shithead selves, doesn’t mean we should forget the issue at hand, that issue being her ongoing transphobia and erasure of trans women from women’s rights.

As I’m sure is the case for many people on Tumblr, J.K Rowling has always been such a huge inspiration for me, and Harry Potter was my entire childhood. My obsession with it continued until I was at least 16 and is what got me through the very shit years of being a teenager, and that will forever be the case. I’m not here to discuss the whole separation of the art from the artist thing because whilst I ordinarily don’t think that’s really possible, at this point the “Harry Potter universe” has become much bigger than J.K herself. I was so pleased to see Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint all affirm their support for trans rights-I was raised on the films up until the 4th one which I wasn’t old enough to see at the cinema, and the DVD was at the top of my Christmas list. They were always my Harry, Hermione and Ron. It was only between the fourth and fifth films that I started to read the books to fill that gaping in-between-movies hole, but as I grew up, I read them over and over and over again. Any of the subtext that people are talking about now in light of her antisemitism and transphobia went completely over my head, though who knows, whilst I can sit here and write that I’m certain I didn’t, maybe I did pick up some unconscious biases along the way? The art/artist discussion is a complex one and I don’t know if I’ll ever read the books again at this point.

There was absolutely no subtext, however, in the “think piece” on J.K’s website addressing the response to her transphobic tweets. There wasn’t all that much to unpack in the first tirade, they were quite openly dismissive-first that womanhood is defined by whether or not one experiences menstruation (I currently don’t due to health issues but I’m betting this wouldn’t make me any less woman in her eyes), and second, regurgitating an article which furthers the fallacy that trans women simply existing erases the existence of cisgender lesbian women. Rowling’s initial response to the backlash was to blame it on a glass of red wine, I think? Which is such a weird go-to excuse for celebrities because not once have I ever got drunk and completely changed my belief system. If you’re not transphobic sober, you don’t suddenly become transphobic drunk. What you are saying is that you’re not usually publicly transphobic (which isn’t even the case with Rowling because this is hardly her first flirtation with bigotry via social media) but that whoopsies! You drank some wine and suddenly thought it was acceptable!

Now what is her excuse for the formal response she wrote to the backlash, dripping with transphobic dog whistles and straight up misinformation (UPDATE: and as of yesterday, blocking Stephen King quite literally for replying to her with the tweet “trans women are women”, in case you thought that this whole thing was a case of her intentions being misconstrued)? Drunk tweets are one thing but if she managed to write a whole fucking essay whilst pissed I imagine there’s a lot of university students out there who’d pay her good money to learn that skill.

Here is the bottom line. TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN. There is no discussion around that. And if you don’t understand why, at the very least, you can be respectful of the way a person chooses to identify, especially when that person is an already targeted minority.

Obviously, sex and gender are complex things. Based on the fact that we don’t walk around with our nether-regions out, we generally navigate our way through the world using our gender and the way we present our gender. Gender of course means many different things to many different people; some see it as a sliding scale kind of thing whereas some people can’t see themselves on the scale at all, and choose to use terms other than man or woman to express how they identify. But, whatever gender one chooses to identify as, we live in a modern world-with all the scientific advancements we’ve made and all that we now know about the brain, using what is between people’s legs to define them is an ignorant, outdated copout. You’ll find that a lot of transphobes can live in harmony with trans women who conform, who have classically feminine features, maybe facial feminisation surgery, trans women who keep quiet about how they’re seen by cis women and don’t kick up “too much of a fuss” (which is in itself still a perfectly valid, brave and understandable way to live your life after years of feeling like you don’t fit in btw). The trans women that Joanne and her friends take the most issue with is the ones who want to expand what womanhood means and stretch the boundaries of what is and isn’t acceptable, destroying the confines of simplistic model that TERFs feel comfortable operating within. The ones who fight to be recognised as no “lesser” than cis women. Calling a person a TERF is quite literally just asserting that they are someone who wants to exclude trans women from their definition of womanhood, or in other words wants to cling to the old, obsolete model. If J.K Rowling cannot let the statement “trans women are women” go unchallenged (which we’ve seen from her response to Stephen King’s tweet she cannot), then she is by definition a TERF. It’s not a slur. It’s a descriptor indicating the movement she has chosen to associate herself with. Associating the descriptor of the position you so vehemently refuse to denounce in spite of all evidence and information offered to you with the concept of a “witch hunt” when trans women are ACTUALLY brutally murdered for an innate part of their identity is insulting, at the very least.

Let’s get this straight: despite transphobes trying to conflate sex with gender and arguing that sex is the only “real” identifier of the two, our existence on this planet and our perception of this world is a gendered experience. It is our brain, where the majority of researchers agree that gender lies, which decides and dictates not only who we are and how we feel but also how we interact with everyone around us. I don’t think it’s an outlandish statement to say that when it comes to who we are as people, that flesh machine protected by our skull is the key player.  PSA for transphobes everywhere: when people say penises have a mind of their own, they are NOT talking literally. The more you know. 

Gender is obviously a much newer concept than sex-it is both influenced by and interacts with every element of our lives. It’s also much more complex, in that there are still many gaps in our understanding. I assume these two factors combined with the familiarity of the (usually) binary model of biological sex are a part of why TERFS fundamentally reject the importance of gender in favour of the latter. Yes, most of the time, we feel our gender corresponds with our sex, but not always, and nor is there any concrete proof that this has to be the case. Most studies tend to agree that our brains start out as blank slates, that we grow into the gender we are assigned based on our bodies. In other words, our sex only defines our gender insofar as the historical assumption that they are the same thing, which in turn exposes us to certain cultural expectations. To any TERFs that have somehow ended up here-if you haven’t already, I suggest looking into the research of Gina Rippon, a neuroscientist whom has spent a large portion of her professional career analysing the data of sex differences in the brain. Whilst she originally set out to find some kind of consistent variance between the brains of the 2 prominent sexes to back up the idea that the brains of men and women are inherently different, she found nothing of significance-individual differences, yes, but no consistent similarities in the brains of one sex that were not present in the other. Once differences in brain size were accounted for, “well-known” sex differences in key structures disappeared-in terms of proportion, these structures take up the same amount of space in the brain regardless of sex. Her findings are best summed up by her response to the question: are there any significant differences in the brain based on sex alone? Her answer is no. To suggest otherwise is “neurofoolishness”. Not only does her research help put to bed the myth that our brains are sexed along with the rest of our bodies during development (this is now believed to happen separately, meaning the sex of our bodies and brains may not correspond), but also the idea propagated by the patriarchy for centuries that basically boils down to “boys will be boys”-a myth used to condone male sexual violence against women and even against each other on the basis that it is inherent and “can't be helped”. That they are just “built differently”. Maybe at one point in human evolution, men were conditioned to fight and women were conditioned to protect, but whilst the idea remains and continues to affect our societal structures (and thus said cultural expectations), we’ve moved on. I mean we evolved from fish for fuck’s sake but you don’t see us breathing underwater. 

Gender identity is based on many things and admittedly we don’t fully have the complete picture yet. The effects that socialisation and gender norms in particular, as much as we don’t want them to exist, have on our brain are huge; there’s evidence that they can leave epigenetic marks, or in other words cause structural changes in the brain which drive biological functions and features as diverse as memory, development and disease susceptibility. Socialisation alters the way our individual brains develop as we grow up, and as much as I’d love to see gender norms disappear, they’ll probably be around for a long time to come, as will their ramifications. The gap between explaining how socialisation affects the brain of cisgender individuals compared to the brains of transgender or non-binary individuals is not yet totally clear, but as with every supposed cause and effect psychology tries to uncover, there are outliers and individual differences. No, brains are not inherently male or female at birth but they are all different, and can be affected by socialisation differently. In one particularly groundbreaking study conducted by Dick Swaab of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, postmortems of the brains of transgender women revealed that the structure of one of the areas in the brain most important to sexual behaviour more closely resembled the postmortem brains of cisgender women than those of cisgender men-it’s also important that these differences did not appear to be attributable to the influence of endogenous sex hormone fluctuations or hormone treatment in adulthood.

Maybe dysphoria is something that evolves organically and environmental factors don’t even come into it. Like I said, we don’t have the whole picture. What we DO know is that for some people, as soon as they become self-aware, that dysphoria is there, and the evidence for THAT, for there being common variations between the brains of cisgender individuals and transgender individuals, is overwhelming. You can be trapped in a body that does not correspond with how your brain functions, or how you wish to see yourself. Do individuals like J.K Rowling really believe it is ethical to reinforce the idea that we are defined by our sex and that our sex should decide the course of our lives, should decide how we are treated? That we should reduce people to genitals and chromosomes when our gender, the lens through which we see and interact with the world, could be completely different? Do they not see anything wrong with perpetuating the feelings of “otherness” and dysphoria in trans individuals that results from society’s refusal to see them as anything more than what body parts they have? In a collaboration between UCLA MA neuroscience student Jonathan Vanhoecke and Ivanka Savic at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, the statistics collected pointed to what trans activists have always been trying to get at-the areas of the brain responsible for our sense of our identity showed far more neural activity in the brains of trans individuals when they were looking at depictions of their body that had been changed to match their gender identity than when this wasn’t the case; when they saw themselves with a body that corresponded with their gender identity, when they were “valid” by society’s definition, they felt more themselves. When J.K Rowling tells trans people that their “real identity” is the sex they were born with, she is denying them this right to be themselves and due to her large platform, encouraging others to do the same. YOU are doing that, J.K. And who knows why? Where does your transphobia come from? Peel back the bullshit layers of waffle about feeling silenced and threatened, which you know you are directing at the wrong group of people, and admit it’s for less noble reasons. Taking the time to unlearn the instinct embedded into your generation to see people according to the cultural status quo of biological determinism is effort, I know-but you wrote a 700+ page book. I’m sure you can manage it. Or is it an ego thing? You don’t want to admit that you may have been uneducated on gender and sex in the past, and now have to stick by your reductive position so your image as an “intellectual” isn’t compromised. I don’t know. Only you do. But your position is irresponsible and dangerous either way. You can make up bullshit reasons as to why the link between trans individuals and the incidence of suicide attempts and completions isn’t relevant or representative of the struggle that trans people face due to the hatred that people like you propagate but it is there, and you J.K Rowling, someone who has spoken in the past about the horror of depression, should know better. You should know better than to CLAIM you know better than the experienced researchers who have found the same pattern time and time again-that the likelihood of trans individuals committing suicide is significantly higher than that of cis people. 

No, Rowling’s transphobia has never been as upfront as saying “I don’t believe transgender people exist” but she continues to imply that when she makes claims such as womanhood being defined by whether or not one experiences menstruation, and the completely subjective concept of whether an individual has faced sex-based violence from cisgender men. I’m sure she’d be out here taking chromosome proof cards like Oysters if it wasn’t for intersex individuals throwing her whole binary jam into a tailspin. Yep, there’s even suggestions that the binary biological model might not be so binary these days-just because two people have, say, XY chromosomes, does not mean that these chromosomes are genetically identical between individuals-the genes they carry can, and do, vary and so their actions and expressions of sex vary. 

Ideally, what TERFs want to do with their language of “real womanhood” is create an exclusive club that trans women are left out of when they too suffer under the same patriarchal society that those who are born female do. Yes, they might not experience ALL the issues a person born with female genitalia do, but no two women’s life experiences are the same anyway. Trans women also have their own horrible experiences with the patriarchy, and are often victims of a specific kind of gendered violence that is purported by the idea of “real womanhood”. Don’t throw trans sisters under the bus because you’re angry about your experience as a woman on this planet-direct your anger at the fucking bus. Don’t claim that “many trans people regret their decision to transition” when the statistics overwhelmingly show that this is the EXACT FUCKING OPPOSITE of the truth (according to British charity organisation Mermaids, surgical regret is proportionately very low amongst gender affirmation outpatients and research suggesting otherwise has been broadly disproven) because you’ve spoken to a selective group of trans individuals probably handpicked by the TERFS you associate with to confirm their biases, and then have the nerve to claim that trans-activists live in echo chambers on top of that. Don’t use anecdotes and one-off incidences where “trans women” (I say trans women in quotation marks because we’re pretty much talking about a completely statistically insignificant group of perverted cis men who have, according to TERFs, somehow come to the conclusion that going through transition will make their already easy-to-get-away-with hobby of assaulting women even...easier to get away with?) have committed sexual crimes to demonise and paint as predatory group who are largely at risk and in 99.9% of situations, the ones being preyed on. It’s a point so disgusting that trans activists shouldn’t even have to respond to it, but the idea that an individual would go to the pains of legally changing their gender and potentially the hell of the harassment that trans people face, the multiple year long NHS waiting lists to see specialist doctors,  just so that they can gain access to women only spaces is ridiculous. It’s worth noting here just how sinister you repeatedly bringing up this phantom threat of cis men becoming trans women in order to assault women in “women only” spaces is. The implication here is that they should use the toilet corresponding to the sex they were born as, right? Because it’s all about safety? Well, statistically speaking, far more trans women are abused whilst having to use men’s toilets than when they use women’s ones and the same goes for trans men, and yet you don’t mention it once. Your suggestion also puts people born female who identify as women but maybe do not dress or present in a typically feminine way at risk of being ostracised when THEY need to use the women’s bathroom. The idea that by ceasing to uphold values like yours we are putting women at risk is quite simply, unsubstantiated; the legislation to allow individuals to use the bathroom corresponding to whichever gender they legally identify as has been around since 2010 in the UK and yet we’ve yet to see the sudden spike in the number of women being assaulted in bathrooms you imply will exist if we create looser rules around gender identity and let people use whichever toilet they feel the need to. Similarly, in a study of US school districts, Media Matters found that 17 around the country with protections for trans people, which collectively cover more than 600,000 students, had no problems with harassment in bathrooms or locker rooms after implementing their policies. If cis men want to assault women, they will. They don’t need to pretend to be trans to do so. Don’t pretend to be speaking as a concerned ally of LGBTQ+ individuals when you’re ignoring the thoughts of the majority of individuals who come under that category.

(Just Some of the Trans Women Murdered for Being Trans Over the Last Couple of Years, L-R: Serena Valzquez, Riah Milton, Bee Love Slater, Naomi Hersi, Layla Pelaez, and Dominique Fells)

Trans women are not the threat here. Bigots like you are the threat. HOW DARE you use your platform to reinforce this rhetoric that gets trans people killed when there are so many much MUCH more important things going on right now. Two black trans women had been murdered just for being black trans women in the week you wrote your essay defending those initial tweets. This is an ongoing issue. As a cis woman, my opinion should read as sacred texts to you right, Joanne? Because I’ll say with my whole chest that I feel far more threatened by bigots like you who do not care for the harmful impact of their words than I do by trans women. I do not feel threatened by trans women AT ALL. And yeah, to me, unless they tell me otherwise that they like to go out their way to affirm their trans-ness (which I completely respect-it takes a lot of courage to be proud about your past in a world that condemns you for it), they’re just WOMEN like any other. Yes their experience of “womanhood” may be different to mine but no two individuals experiences are the same anyway and our gender related suffering has the same cause. As a rich, white, cis woman, it’s wild that you are painting yourself as the victim in this debate when trans people can face life in prison and in some places a death sentence for openly identifying with a gender different to their sex in a lot of countries. Nobody is saying that you can’t talk about cis women. Nobody is saying you can’t talk about lesbian issues either, though it’s a bit of a piss-take that you like to throw that whole trans women erase lesbian existence argument out there as a kind of trump card to say “look, I can’t be a transphobe, I’m an LGBTQ+ ally!”, an argument akin to the racist’s age old “I can’t be racist, I have black friends!”. You know from the responses you get to your transphobia that majority of the LGBTQ+ community are very much adamant that trans women are “real women” and that the same goes for trans men being “real men”, so don’t claim to speak for them. You cannot simultaneously care about LGBTQ+ rights and deny trans people their right to live as who they are, however veiled your sentiments around that may be. The whole gay rights movement of the 60s and 70s exist partially BECAUSE of black trans women such as Martha P Johnson if you didn’t know, and though it’s kinda common knowledge I’m doubting that you do because very little of what you tout is backed up by any kind of research. The articles you retweet, echoing the views of lesbians who also happen to be TERFs do not count-the idea that trans people existing simultaneously erases the existence of lesbians only applies to individuals such as yourself who don’t see trans women as women in the first place. That is the problem! Most people don’t have an issue with the fact that you may have a preference for certain genitalia, but I would argue that ignoring exceptional circumstances related to trauma or some other complex issue, relationships are supposed to be with the person as a whole, not their “organic” penis or vagina and it’s kind of insulting to anyone in a same sex relationship to reduce their bond to that.

Back to my point though, of course there are issues that cis women and lesbians face that need talking about, but trans people are affected by the same patriarchal system. You don’t need to go out of your way to mention that they’re not included in whichever given specific issue when there are also cis women who may not have experienced some of the things TERFs reference. You especially don’t need to act as if trans women are the reason we need to have these discussions in the first place. As I’ve said, as MANY women have said, repeatedly-they are NOT the threat here. It is disgusting to see someone I once had so much admiration for constantly punch down at a group that is already marginalised.  It’s 2020, J.K, there’s so much info out there. YOU’RE A FULLY GROWN WOMAN. There’s no justification. We get it, you had a tomboy phase. You weren’t like “other girls”. You didn’t like living under a patriarchal system. So you think you understand the mindset of people who want to transition. You think you’re not doing anything wrong by helping to slow the advancement of trans rights because well, you turned out fine? But you clearly fundamentally misunderstand what being trans is. It’s not about your likes and dislikes and having issues with the experience of being a woman (god knows we all do but I doubt anyone truly thinks for one moment that being trans would be any easier), it’s about how you think and feel at your core. It’s such a complex issue, and all the majority of trans people are asking you to do is LISTEN to them. You may be determined to live in binaries, yet the bigger picture is always more complex and fluid and it’s ever-changing, so all we can do is keep an open mind and keep wanting to know more and gather more evidence. If you’re capable of the mental gymnastics required to retcon the piece of work you wrote in the 90s to make it seem as if you were “ahead of the diversity game”, to the extent that you are now claiming Voldermort’s snake has always actually been a Korean woman and see nothing wrong with that when paired with the fact that the only Asian character you originally included was called Cho Chang, then well…I’m sure you can put your ego aside and do the groundwork to understand what trans people are trying to tell you too. You inspired a lot of children and teenagers and even adults, and got them through some very difficult times, taught that the strength of one’s character matters far more than what anyone thinks of you. You claimed you wanted to stand up for the outcasts.

Well, stand up for the outcasts. Now’s a better time than any. And once again: TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN AND TRANS MEN ARE MEN. They shouldn’t have to hear anything else.

Lauren x

[DISCLAIMER: shitty collages are mine but the background is not, let me know if you are aware of the artist so I can credit!]

[whitehotharlots]

No one is gonna “gaslight” you about the pandemic. They don’t need to

I took a break from my daylong panic attack to read through a piece that I saw dozens of people sharing on social media. If you’re in the mood to take a glimpse into the abyss of hopelessness, give it a read. 

This is one of the dumbest things I have ever read, but it’s instructive in the sense that it shows us just how absolutely liberalism is not prepared to handle the current moment. If this is the intellectual vanguard of the #Resistance (and judging by those who have shared it, it seems to be), then we should begin mentally preparing ourselves not just for Trump’s reelection but for the very real possibility that he’s just going to be president forever. 

The piece is called “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting,” so right away you know where it’s coming from. “Gaslighting,” has recently surpassed “mansplaining” as the liberal buzzterm that’s become the most meaningless due to overuse. It used to refer specifically to emotional manipulation. Now it basically means “anything that a liberal doesn’t like.” Liberals read a neurotic amount of importance into petty matters of taste and interpersonal relations. They begin, at times, to understand social problems in a structural sense, but they always--always--turn their analysis back to meaningless bullshit that takes place on an individual level. The liberal would never be so gauche as to indict an entire system, no matter how at fault it may obviously be. Instead, he will place blame upon the individuals within the system, those selfish and savage brutes who betrayed the magnanimous intentions of society’s elite engineers. 

This author’s analysis is unsurprisingly very muddy. He mentions, correctly, that there is an eerie serenity to scenes of American cityscapes already being reclaimed by nature. He cannot, however, decide whether or not this is a good thing. This is because of the liberal’s fundamental ambivalence toward malignant social structures. Their ethos is founded on pretending to sympathize with society’s misbegotten, but their status and jobs and personal standing demand that they also apologize profusely for the institutions that reap so much misery upon us. This neurosis is somewhat politically viable only because it usually goes unspoken--and that’s why this piece is worth digging into, since it’s so rare to see them attempt to actually articulate this shit.

The author realizes that our society is deeply poisoned. In a twist, he says that such a sad state is not due to any of the litany of usual, intersectional reasons, but because of the pace at which our social lives are conducted. I am dead serious:

The cat is out of the bag. We, as a nation, have deeply disturbing problems. You’re right. That’s not news. They are problems we ignore every day, not because we’re terrible people or because we don’t care about fixing them, but because we don’t have time. Sorry, we have other shit to do. The plain truth is that no matter our ethnicity, religion, gender, political party (the list goes on), nor even our socioeconomic status, as Americans we share this: We are busy. We’re out and about hustling to make our own lives work. We have goals to meet and meetings to attend and mortgages to pay — all while the phone is ringing and the laptop is pinging.

The problem is, see, that we’re thinking about stuff wrong. Not that the ruling elite are openly corrupt or anything. Oh no. I mean, they must be since they’re about to gaslight us, but also they’re not, they’re basically okay:

The greatest misconception among us, which causes deep and painful social and political tension every day in this country, is that we somehow don’t care about each other. White people don’t care about the problems of black America. Men don’t care about women’s rights. Cops don’t care about the communities they serve. Humans don’t care about the environment. These couldn’t be further from the truth. We do care. We just don’t have the time to do anything about it. Maybe that’s just me. But maybe it’s you, too.

Again, he’s coming to the precipice of a worthwhile realization--that we all know society is unsustainable but we can’t do anything about it--but he has to pull back so as to avoid implicating any of the people who actually wield power. That’s the main thrust of contemporary liberalism: sure, society may be fucked, but that’s your fault, not ours.

The ending is a tour de force of empty liberal platitudes that is breathtaking in its ability to place blame upon anyone and anything aside from the people and things that are actually to blame:

From one citizen to another, I beg of you: take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. [ … ]

We can do that on a personal scale in our homes, in how we choose to spend our family time on nights and weekends, what we watch, what we listen to, what we eat, and what we choose to spend our dollars on and where. We can do it locally in our communities, in what organizations we support, what truths we tell, and what events we attend. And we can do it nationally in our government, in which leaders we vote in and to whom we give power. If we want cleaner air, we can make it happen. If we want to protect our doctors and nurses from the next virus — and protect all Americans — we can make it happen. If we want our neighbors and friends to earn a dignified income, we can make that happen. If we want millions of kids to be able to eat if suddenly their school is closed, we can make that happen. And, yes, if we just want to live a simpler life, we can make that happen, too. But only if we resist the massive gaslighting that is about to come. It’s on its way. Look out.

Just… dear god. Dear god. 

We are not facing a crisis of conscientiousness. We are not suffering through mass existential dread because we weren’t mindful enough or didn’t make the right consumer choices or didn’t, like, live in the moment, man. We are staring down the absolute end stage of global capitalism and the complete abandonment of all the pretenses associated with liberal democracy. We are at the start of a very different and much worse stage of existence.

This is why the piece’s central conceit, gaslighting, is so fucking annoying. Because if we’ve learned nothing else from the past 12 years (and apparently we haven’t), it’s that the ruling elite do not need to bother establishing pretense any longer. No one thought the recent Corona bailout was anything other than an upward transfer of wealth and a complete abandonment of the wretched--no one even bothered to argue otherwise, because they knew they didn’t need to. At least a half dozen US senators received advance notice of the pandemic’s severity, and instead of warning people or otherwise working to help their constituents, they sold off stock and kept mum. None of them have received any formal censure, as their behavior was absolutely within the realm of what is acceptable in 2020. Andrew Cuomo, the man presently being lauded as the firm and competent opposite of Trump, used the pandemic as a pretense to push through cuts to social services and renege on bail reform that was past just weeks ago--undoing the last vestiges of progressivism both old and new. Even bleaker: an EU member state is now being ruled by dictatorial fiat under the pretense of the virus, and everyone’s just kind of rolling with it. I mean, really, what’s gonna happen? Brussels gonna step in? NATO gonna invade? Pfft… Not for such a trifling matter as the abandonment of democracy. If they missed a debt payment, on the other hand…

The point is, you’re not going to get gaslit because there’s no need for that any longer. The people who are profiting off of the collapse and destruction of society don’t even have to bother to lie about it. And the only ones doing any gaslighting are the smug liberal twerps who are too scared of upsetting their boss to allow anyone to point out this fact.

[ayalanaylo]

i’m really confused about the writing in supergirl?

and i’ve tried to google my confusion away, but it led me to places i didn’t intend to reach and tumblr searching is leading me to spoilers (which i don’t actually mind that much, but i’m here for meta answers that i don’t find).

mainly i’m just baffled by james olsen and all the romantic arcs.

i’m turning to tumblr’s fandom expertise for answers but i need you to understand my zero point ground before i ask any substantial q’s - i did not read any supergirl comics before (have read some dc in general and am a huge young justice fan, yes) so comparison to the source material means close to nothing for me. i generally don’t watch superhero related stuff. so why did i even start watching supergirl?

i’m just a Simple Gay™. yeah, i’ve been bombarded for the past year or so with supercop gifs and whatnot - and don’t get me wrong, i absolutely know i’m not going to get any gay content out of this show - but i have a bit of free time and thought i’d give this series a shot because it had wandered the realms of my mind for so long, thanks to tumblr supercop fanbase.

also regarding expectations - i did not expect this show to be a stellar example of top tier writing. i knew this is a light hearted, carefree show i’ll watch for simple fun, and that meets my expectations quite well. i’m not, per se, disappointed of the writing - not every damn piece of consumable media needs to be shakespearean poetry (and people who dismiss those things on the merit of that alone are missing so much, imo) - but it bothers me to the core when i recognize a poor written character being paraded on the plot lines. what i mean by that - a character that seems so meaningless still stands on a pedestal the creators of said character created for it. it’s like a curator putting up his son’s kindergarten crayon doodle on the fine arts exhibition - like, i get that you love your son, but my dude this is so out of place.

i’m 13 episodes in (more than half a season?) and i think this is really early to be frustrated with james olsen, given there are 3 seasons out, but i find myself not indifferent but annoyed with his character and how it affects this perplexed romantic hexagon arc. now, this is the time i worry the thought of ‘you’re only here for the gay’ to come up, so let me put up a disclaimer - the fact that i considered watching this show in the first place because of a non-existent gay ship doesn’t mean i don’t get to criticize an existent (and prominent, mind you) romantic arc. yes, i crave for lgbt content that is not complete crap in mainstream media, but there are so many written and showcased fictional couples i appreciate regardless the gender and\or sexual orientation of the characters involved. but it’s not ‘despite’, it’s because i’m a gay person who lives in a time of decent and even good lgbt romantic arcs representation that i find it very hard to be forgiving for poor written cis-het ones. it’s because lgbt people endured the years upon years of piss writing of lgbt characters in romantic arcs that were generally concluded with ‘this personality-less gay character 1′ and ‘this personality-less gay character 2′ should end up together on the merit of their dictated sexual orientation alone, that i find myself angry of lazy writing of cis-het ones that try to condition the viewer to ship two characters together because the script said they will touch hands and camera direction said to zoom on their face. this is not writing and properly developing a relationship between two characters this is directed instructions from the production down, as opposed to from the writing up.

after my supposed establishment of why i’m an Angry Lesbian™ about hetero ships writing i want to get to the nitty gritty - james olsen and the oh so many other problems with other characters.

i get characters crushing on each other, it’s got real cute potential, but can someone explain to me, enlighten me please - why do i get to live through cringe worthy anguished characters with a crush that doesn’t let me on anything other than ‘okay, i get that they’re attracted to each other’. what is their human connection based on and why the story didn’t bother showing me? because literally every scene he has with kara (that isn’t his given alone screen time or the professional ‘friends helping supergirl with mission’) is either him telling her about superman in the first episodes or him giving her this eyebrow-frown look while she talks. we know nothing about this character and his dialog doesn’t make him voluntarily informative about himself - how am i supposed to connect with him and understand that kara finds his personality endearing if i know zero facts about him as a human being? i know he’s a photographer and he knows superman. when lucy lane is introduced it’s because 1. she was there and he didn’t voluntarily let the viewers know who she is, and 2. she was there to serve the romantic weird entanglement and nothing more. what it did give us? some info about their brake up and life together - it is still nothing about james’ personality traits. i don’t want a sad back-story as much as i want a well rounded character in the present-story.

i was just brushing it off or groaning in frustration most of the time, but somewhere in the middle of season 1 (don’t remember exact episode) alex referred to james as kara’s family. that ticks so many tickey things in me - alex is her sister since she was 13, winn is her good friend for presumably all years she’s working at catco, and james arrived a week ago and suddenly he’s family because kara is crushing on him? no. no. no, story, you need to show me and explain to me in so much detail why a week-long crush is someone’s family along side an actual sister and a very good friend, you don’t tell me about it retrospectively.

and for the ever loving fuck why does he keep advancing on kara when he’s in a relationship with lucy? winn even acknowledges this verbally to his face (episode 12 i think) saying he can go get kara if he wanted to, that he just need to end things with lucy - yet he sees that as a sign to gather up the courage for romantic advancement right after the kara-adam brake up before talking with lucy? that’s a big nope.

and adam. oh, adam, sweet summer child. he really is just a harmless side character who crushes on kara, and she reciprocates, for about an episode and a half - and then comes the time in a superhero’s journey for ‘my identity is known and that puts people in my immediate surrounding in jeopardy’ - ... while she’s on a date with adam? don’t get me wrong, it’s all fine, but it’s just fine. why did this moment have to come when our main hero is in a barely second date relationship? the brake up literally meant nothing to me because we had no time to get to know adam. who is he? he was there to advance cat’s character, we didn’t learn anything about him in his screen time that wasn’t already told to us by cat. we know 1. what cat told kara (that was confirmed in his screen time), and 2. that he thinks kara is amazing. all he talks about is her, never himself. i know gurnisht about this character - why should i care about him when kara brakes things up?

and then we have *spooky voice* the friendzoned guy. first, can someone please make this phrase disappear from existence, yet second, while winn is written with some mistakes (using ‘friendzone’, kissing without confirming mutual feelings) - he is the most developed character of this disastrous romantic blah and he is written is such way that makes me care about him. kara doesn’t reciprocates his feelings? fine and valid, i just wish i could care about who she likes because they would be rounded developed characters as the ones she doesn’t.

in conclusion - please explain to me why should i ship a guy-character and a girl-character if their only connection is shared screen time and not the blessed character and relationship development a lot of lgbt ships get on mainstream media recently?

*banging pots and pans* I’M A GAY WHO’S PRO WELL DEVELOPED HETERO-SHIPS.

[ark-of-eden]

R is drunk and raving (not in the party way).

(R:) Additionally, I’m procrastinating like a fucking champion at working on fic construction, so you know the best use of my time is going off about random social media crap on the internet.

tl;dr: Putting all commentary in tags on Tumblr makes R cry and shit thousands of words into the Internet.

Every social media site inevitably develops sets of unwritten social conventions. Some of them actually make sense as being derived from meatspace etiquette and therefore you don’t really have to stress about remembering them as long as you play nice like a decent creature.

And some of them just don’t make any fucking sense that I can see. Folks on Twitter using a deliberately space-limited form of media to write a page’s worth or more in a string of 30+ rapidfire tweets? This is just how it’s done over there? (Tweetlonger exists but for some reason these massive chain-tweeters never seem to use it. Same with posting the whole thing in a long-form site like LJ/DW/Tumblr and just linking it to a tweet.)

And Tumblr has things that I literally had to put effort into learning after I migrated here, and after I learned about them I frankly decided to ignore them because I couldn’t see the point in them. Tumblr has this bizarre allergy to commentary and, likely derived from that, the practice of instead commenting by putting it all in awkward tags that render the tagging system not especially useful and are harder to get to if you’re actually interested in an individual’s thoughts about a thing and not just the twelfth instance of the same post crossing your dash in a day or two. It’s not like you can’t engage with people, because asks and messaging and such exist, but like...there’s this strong sense that it’s Terribly Ill-Mannered to weigh in with your own impressions right there, in the body of the post, typing your own words in that seductive, wide-open text box that appears all on its own when you go to reblog something. The properly-socialized Tumblrite eschews that tempting text field and instead posts weird sentence fragments in tag form (interspersed with actual tags that might serve to usefully categorize the post’s content), to the extent that some people can add on a good couple paragraphs of material down among the hashtags where others need to go looking for it on purpose if they want it. (I, at least, haven’t been able to find a plugin or something that automatically expands full tags on all posts so that I don’t have to fuck around with extra interface elements to get to them. I admit that I haven’t looked super hard, though.)

Preserving the original form of the OP’s post is a noble practice that I heartily support, but how is adding commentary a problem if you’re only adding a separate thing, not taking away or altering anything in the original...? This was already a practice/convention/code of social interaction on Tumblr when I got here, so I was never in the front row to witness this element taking shape. I suppose it must have made good sense at the time, but every time I see ten people reblogging the same post with no additions and a paragraph of tags appended to it, it’s like a splinter in my brain that has been digging into me for years now.

And I’m not hating on people who do that! I get that that’s The Way It’s Done Here and I am the deviant weirdo for continually adding comments directly onto things that I reblog. Tags are where individuality lives here, unless you’re producing your own original posts, which I guess other people are then supposed to reblog without commentary so that you have to go hunting after all the reblogs individually if you want to get an actual sense of what these people were all thinking when they reblogged your thing. It all just seems...so...WORK INTENSIVE, refusing to use site functions as they were intended??

Look, I absolutely know that my commentary is not the work of incisive genius that unfailingly adds value to every post I find worthy of my attention. We’re pretty much solid shitposting on this blog. Because I’m a little loaded at the moment and that gives me a handy excuse to run my fingers like an idiot (plus I put that readmore up there, so if your eyes are actually consuming these words, you have only yourself to blame for being here), let me run down relevant history of how we got here.

LJ was home for a good long while. Then shit got seriously messed up and Dreamwidth was created as a better LJ, so we migrated all our stuff over there. And journaling sites along those lines still feel like a native environment. I, in particular, am the most long-winded piece of shit we know and I am honestly incapable of talking about anything of worth in short form. It’s a sickness and I just sort of have to own it. :/ But that’s why journaling sites are a good place for me to live, because that’s where people go when they have the inclination to read meandering scrawls about the depths of other people’s lives or whatever.

We went to Twitter for a good while because all the cool people we knew from LJ were going there for some unfathomable reason. These people wrote things that were complex and fascinating to read, so all of them jumping ship to a place that limited them to 140-character chunks made no damn sense, but we loved those people and wanted to trust that they knew what the hell they were doing. And they probably did, and a couple of us were actually okay with Twitter, but I, being the long-winded shitpiece, spent a lot of time frustrated and kind of overstimulated.

Then things started going to hell more and more consistently for me personally (and us generally by extension, but that’s unnecessary detail). Bunkering down specifically to protect people that you care about from the fallout of your crazy is a fairly common thing for mentally-ill people to do, I think. So I’d shut up online until I felt stable enough to talk to people again. Those periods lasted a few days, then a week or more, then a month, then eventually I stopped talking entirely. I missed the LJ/DW format, but in the past I’d written about life events and things I was thinking about and such, so...at the time, all I really had to write about was the bad stuff. So LJ/DW was basically unusable as well.

I literally came here to be as shallow as I could possibly manage. Tumblr had a rapid, chaotic flow similar to Twitter, but could hold longer content like LJ/DW. We’ve never really used the site’s full functionality at any point, though. For at least a year, all we were following was the most lightweight, zero-calorie entertainment that we could find. (We actually came here for Flight Rising content, so there was a lot of that.) Being engaged with fandom in any consistent respect is an extremely recent thing.

And I’m not saying that fandom hasn’t got depth and complexity because it absolutely does and that’s one of the beautiful things about shared fan experiences. I kind of got into that sort of fandom by accident after getting here and rediscovering Transformers. But the unvoiced policy that I’ve always had here is to avoid the Too Real and dodge serious topics whenever possible. Thus, no gender theory, no neurodivergence or multiplicity, no nonhumanity, no religion or UPG, nothing with real substance behind it that bared real vulnerabilities. (Apparently this was a good move anyway because the nonhuman and multiplicity situation here on Tumblr is a bit of a clusterfuck? I honestly wouldn’t know, as I haven’t made a lot of effort to link up with those folks.) That’s still the policy. That might remain the policy forever until I reach some vaguely-defined threshold of sanity that makes me worthy of talking about those things in places and formats that other people can interact with.

And I’m sorry for all this talk about mental illness, but it’s simpler just to explain things clearly. I likely won’t go into any more detail about it on Tumblr. Or anywhere else, because I care about people even if I’ve never met them or talked to them at all and I still want to keep it all in the bunker to protect good people from the crazy. Sometimes, all you can do is just prevent the damage from spilling out into other people’s lives, and that’s the place that I usually operate from.

I’m still pretty drunk, so I’m allowed to ramble from too much truth serum, but all of that explanation was to get around to saying that the format of online communication that is most intuitive to me is the long, oversharing gut-spill of random people talking about things that are really meaningful to them - not in the sense of elaborate philosophy or artsy epistles to the cosmos, but just people being super real about things that are meaningful to them and going into lots of detail about them because gushing about things you love is great. And it’s possible to get that sort of discussion and gushing in Tumblr fandom, and I love it because it reminds me of better times, and the fact that I love it is WHY IT MAKES ME SO GODDAMN FRUSTRATED that Tumblr culture is basically stifling discussion and feedback and RESPONSE to things that people find interesting!!

Like, here’s how I see it. Unlike on LJ/DW, where you were limited to hyperlinking to a cool post in one of your own posts if you wanted your readers to go check it out, on Tumblr, if you find a super cool thing, you can pull it directly into your space and let other people experience it directly, exactly as you experienced it. But the thing is, I also subscribe to the My Blog My House concept. If I pull a thing into my “home,” I do it because there’s something homelike about it; it belongs in my home for some specific reason. I don’t take “ownership” of an item in the sense that I’m claiming it in place of its creator, but I’m taking ownership of it in the sense that it’s part of my Stuff now and it’ll get my fingerprints all over it and be blended into the general morass of Stuff that I recognize as my home. I don’t just pull random crap into my home for no reason at all.

And I just figure that other people are similar in the sense that they reblog things for distinct, unique reasons, not in the sense that they have some master plan for their blog content (some do, but it’s not necessary), but just that they have compelling reasons why they pick certain bits of content out of the larger river of their dashboard and put it in their own space for people to experience with them. I follow people based on the interesting things that they find interesting. I’m interested in why they’re interested in those things. They seem like interesting people to me because they’re interested in what they’re interested in.

But the WHY is a really important part of the equation for me. Did this person reblog that photo because they’ve been to that place themselves, because they like that kind of tree, because they reblog photos with that color scheme every Thursday? Did that person reblog that piece of art because they love that character, because they’re studying that art medium, because it reminded them of something funny they saw somewhere else? People attach their own context to things that they latch onto. It’s so freaking weird to me that people have to hide their interpretations or impressions in tags here on Tumblr, making them unimportant and optional in the process of sharing things they like with others. (Okay, people also share a lot of things they hate, but reasons for outrage are still part of the context that one adds to content.)

I WANT TO KNOW WHY YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE SHOWING ME. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT MAKES IT IMPORTANT TO YOU. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT MAKES YOU THINK AND FEEL. Even if it’s a blurb about how giant robots fuck or a cute kitten video, I NEED TO KNOW THESE THINGS.

Not in excruciating detail or with insightful analysis or even a lot of text at all. Mostly, the things that people put in tags are things that, to me, are a really crucial part of the experience of being able to go into someone’s “home” and see the Stuff that they chose to put in it. Reducing oneself to a glorified signal repeater is...okay, I guess, though it turns a Tumblr blog into a kind of faceless stream of other people’s material a lot of the time. The personal touch is what makes it all interesting. And I’m just unutterably frustrated that, somewhere along the line, it was decided that personalizing an experience by sharing one’s own impressions of it became rude enough that polite society decided that it had to be hidden away in tags. I want all of it, so I do go looking for it, but omg it requires MORE EFFORT and BURNING CALORIES and BODILY MOVEMENT and WAAAAH, you know what I mean. :P

And possibly Tumblr society is right and it’s done for a good, decent purpose and I’m being pigheaded and uncool by insisting on doing things my way without bothering to try and understand the local customs. I’m not usually that much of an asshole, but I am about this, for some reason. And I admit that my craving for those personal touches could very well spring from how utterly isolated and lonely I am, so maybe normal people really don’t need all the extra info and actually do just want mostly-impersonal streams of content. And that’s fine, since I know I’m kind of a weirdo even on my best days.

I’m pretty sure that that was all that I really wanted to say. I’m probably overreacting about the whole comments-in-tags thing. Like I said, it’s kind of an irrational irritation. Also, I need to stop before I write myself sober and no longer have an excuse for all of this. If you actually read all of that, you are an awesome, generous person and I’m pretty damn certain that I love you even though I have no idea who you are.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Since the FBI never inspected the DNC’s computers first-hand, the only evidence comes from an Irvine, California, cyber-security firm known as CrowdStrike whose chief technical officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, a well-known Putin-phobe, is a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank that is also vehemently anti-Russian as well as a close Hillary Clinton ally. — Daniel Lazare, Consortium News The masses did not mistakenly choose fascism. Rather, there is a more fundamental nonidentity between class consciousness and mass movements. Fascism was not a Falschkauf (mistaken purchase) followed by buyer’s remorse. The people fought for it, fiercely and stubbornly—though this desire for fascism is also a desire for suppression, a “fight for servitude,” if you will, or an “escape from freedom,” as Erich Fromm put it in the title of his 1941 book. — Ana Teixeira Pinto, E-Flux This week an angry dead end kid named Nikolas Cruz took his legally purchased AR 15 and walked into a school and opened fire. The FBI knew about Cruz because he had been reported to them. Cruz had been reported to the school, too. But nobody followed up. Cruz himself is one of those unpleasant looking young men that are visibly angry, and who exhibit, even in photographs, a quality of emotional disturbance. But nobody followed up. The FBI is too busy writing narrative fiction about Russia. The FBI is more concerned with constructing terrorist threats and then busting various patsies and making a big show of their success. This same week the US has continued to bomb Yemen alongside Saudi Arabia. This same week Mike Pence stomped around the site of the Winter Olympics and managed to insult most every foreign leader in attendance, but most acutely the hosts of this event. But then Pence is a vulgar rube from the hinterlands of Indiana. A fundamentalist Christian whose knowledge of the world is even smaller than his boss, the President. The Hill reported….“Approval of the FBI has increased among Democrats and decreased among Republicans since President Trump took office, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.” So, uh, Dems and liberals are fawning over the FBI because, presumably, Mueller is after Satan-in-Chief The Donald, while Republicans are pouting because, presumably, the FBI isn’t dropping the fictitious investigation of Russian collusion. Meanwhile, the FBI, famed for various cluster fucks like Waco and Ruby Ridge, not to mention COINTELPRO and countless undercover surveillances on journalists and dissidents of all kinds, is being embraced by liberal America. (COINTELPRO, as a reminder, attacked the Black Panther party, and among its victims were Fred Hampton, Geronimo Pratt, and Mumia Abu Jamal. And it was J.Edgar Hoover who wrote letters that described Hampton as the ‘new black messiah’ — one that needed to be dealt with). That is your virtuous FBI. Now part of this is just the desire among liberals for the status quo. At all costs. It is liberals far more than Republicans who want a Norman Rockwell America. The arch conservative wants something closer to gated communities of whiteness and armed privatized security roaming the streets keeping their property safe. It is the liberal Democratic voter who WANTS TO BELIEVE in the goodness of America. Who wants to believe in all that progress in civil rights and gender equality. But both will in the end default to authoritarian political control. They always have. Joseph Kishore over at WSWS wrote back in 2016 already: … the Times’ article set the tone for a wave of war-mongering commentary in the American media. Lipton was interviewed on the cable news channels and the Public Broadcasting System’s evening news program. Democratic Senator Ben Cardin declared on MSNBC that the US had been “attacked by Russia.” He called for an independent commission, citing the bipartisan panel set up after 9/11. CNN commentator Jake Tapper referred to Russia as the “enemy” and openly wondered, in the course of interviewing former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, whether President-elect Trump was “siding with the enemy. But most Democrats believe in Russian evil doing. They believe Putin is a tyrant. They WANT TO BELIEVE. Now, the logic of Crowdstrike and all those US security experts on cyber warfare is that only the most sophisticated hackers could have penetrated the protections of the U.S. government, while at the same time only the most unsophisticated cyber hackers, revealing their amateurish clumsiness by leaving a variety of Russian language clues in the meta data, could have done such a thing. It is the same logic that posits Taliban or ISIS commanders, cunning…evil geniuses..who plot the overthrow of western civilization..but who are also simultaneously primitives living in caves. The Russians are also evil geniuses but also primitives. On one level the U.S. loves the uneducated. America has never trusted intelligence or education. But they have to at the same time be the best. The best at everything. The best killers. The most violent soldiers. Etc. But not the most educated. Trump’s approval ratings climb as he cuts funding to libraries and the arts. Such actions have always been an electoral winner in the USA. Edward Luce had a cogent piece at Financial Times of all places. He wrote America’s elites have stored more wealth than they can consume. This creates three problems for everyone else. First, elites invest their surpluses in replicating their advantages. Kids raised in poorer neighbourhoods with mediocre schools stand little chance. Their parents cannot match the social capital of their wealthier peers. The drawbridge is rising. The gap between the self image of meritocratic openness and reality is wide. Psychologists call this “self-discrepancy”. Economists call it barriers to entry. This is an important observation. He also added: …Social capital is about knowing what to say to whom and when, which is a sophisticated skill. Technical learning is for others. Children of the elites are learning how to raise money for philanthropic causes. Economists define this as a positional good. Sociologists call it virtue signalling. Mr Trump calls it political correctness. And finally, Luce points out that the new bourgeoisie (not his word) are suffering from a loss of even the appearance of a meritocracy. Too few jobs for what are now the over-educated (well, over degreed). And Luce concludes with a particularly astute insight. The bourgeoisie are finding they need Trump. Without him there is no distraction. And then he poses the question for these aspiring classes; do they really love the highly educated as they claim? Do they deserve admiration because of their degrees? And here we touch upon the core issues at work socially in the Trump phenomenon. Trump is easy and even enjoyable to make fun of. He IS a distraction. But Trump also serves a very clear purpose for the 1%. Those who reign above the haute bourgeoisie. For Trump is still implementing the same policies that Hillary Clinton would have. The same wars, by and large. The same military build up. All the right people are still making money. The difference is in Trump’s less important appointments. The difference is Jeff Sessions for one. And the various minor cabinet hacks and flunkies he has installed in positions of limited but not insignificant power. He is normalizing in a way unprecedented, the weaponized ignorance of the Christian right. And this includes, of course, the open racism and xenophobia on display and perhaps crystalized in Mike Pence’s boorish crassness at the Olympics. Pence suffers no doubts. The new Christians of televangilism never do. These are creationists and believers in the rapture. That they are barking mad has been known for a while now, but never before have they entered the corridors of power. The 1% carry on as before. So does the Pentagon and CIA — though the infilitration of the Christian extremists in the Air Force is well documented. Remember, all Presidents must have prayer breakfasts for fuck sake. They must go to Church. They get a dog, and they put on leather bomber jackets for photo ops. And they have a spiritual advisor. There is a whole laundry list of must do’s. What is different now is that stupidity is being not just normalized but accepted as, perhaps, a virtue. Beevis and Butthead go to Washington. Bill & Ted’s excellent adventure on Capital Hill. How different, really, was George W. Bush? (the newly rehabilitated GWB, in a curious charm make over…but I digress…). So, no, the aspiring haute bourgeoisie do not REALLY love education. The hard work of studying is for proles. For Asian kids and social climbers and those quota scholarship kids. The idea of learning having some inherent value is now fully gone from the public imagination. Socrates who? He played *soccer* for Brazil, no? Literally nobody reads. I mean book stores are closing en mass. The Gutenberg era is over. I wrote recently on my blog about Hugh Kenner. I used to sneak into his lectures at UCSB in the early 70s. There are no Hugh Kenners anymore. Erudition is to become an obsolete word. The state of Minnesota is taking Huckleberry Finn off high school reading lists. Harper Lee is being taken off, too. No doubt others will follow. Hurtful. Twain’s epic novel is, apparently, “hurtful”. I am coming, I have to admit, to just not care about who has hurt feelings. All those social correctives that looked to rid the culture of racist images and language are now appropriated for other purposes. For narcissistic vehicles for anger. For America is as angry a society as the world may have ever seen. All that I see now, the new McCarthyism, the Russophobic propaganda that is swallowed wholesale, and not just swallowed but used as a kind of narcotic — is carried along and draws energy from a deep reservoir of rage. The old Puritan consciousness that wants nothing more than to chastise and shun is alive in the U.S. today. All these hurt feelings are expressions of the narcissistic desire to believe in our own uniqueness and specialness. And such subjective manufacture helps distract from the increasing sadism of American society overall. The real violence of a system based on inequality is buried. It is obscured. The violence of capital, of wage slavery is mystified. All relations under capitalism are coercive. And when the early Capitalist class collaborated with the Church to burn a few hundred thousand women as witches in the early 1700s, across Europe, they were setting a structural dynamic in motion. The Inquisition and witch burning were not the result of magic, but of the need for scapegoats and for ridding the system of autonomous women and small craftspeople. It set up a class war, essentially, one mediated in that case by a deep hatred of women. And fear. The destruction of various celebrities (mostly) for sexual *misconduct* has already been appropriated by NATO and CAA and even Paul Kagame got in the act (see Emma Watson and the Rwandian war criminal share a dais…all to *help* women in war torn areas, or something. I mean who knows. But its mind numbing how quickly such things are activated). Angelina Jolie, who never saw a country she didn’t want to bomb or quarantine (see marriage and honeymoon in Namibia) is also is out stumping for NATO aggressions under cover of protecting women in war zones. No mention of stopping war zones from being created, of course. MeToo became, as quick as you can write hashtag, a vehicle for the exact opposite of that for which it began. And this was predictable. Today the system has other scapegoats and other needs than it did during the witch trials in Europe. But the violence of capital is alive throughout the carceral system, alive in black communities where cops operate as anti insurgency soldiers bent on pacification. Fallujah or Baltimore, there is not a lot of difference. And the violence of Nikolas Cruz will cause great oceans of tears and hand wringing. Get rid of guns. Okay, how about those in the hands of cops — or those in the army or marine corps? Those are OK, because they don’t shoot up schools. Well, not *our* schools, anyway. There is a sort of pattern recognition in the public now. Shoot up a school is a certain class of irrational violence. People will posit notions about anti depressants or whatever. And it might have some truth to it. Maybe a lot, but I can guarantee that few will read anything about the beliefs of these *sick* shooters. That they all, like Anders Breivik, adhere to classic fascistic values and ideology. They do not fall out of the sky. They are the product of a vast number of forces, but they also kill not just because they suffer humiliation and are frustrated and emotionally disfigured. Or, rather, that emotional disfigurement creates the fascist sensibility. They do not think it is wrong, what they do. Cruz had a history of aggressive behaviour toward women. He was a member of ROTC and posted constantly on social media with various guns and weapons. Those who knew him said he was obsessed with guns. The chilling photos of cops in SWAT attire arresting a kid who wanted to be just like them. There is a strange closed loop of morbid mimetic activity on display. The U.S. today creates enemies. It often seems the primary activity of America, the manufacturing of global enemies and threats. Of late it is Putin and Kim Jong Il. But they are only the latest in a long line. U.S. police departments, heavily militarized, and increasingly trained in Israel for counter insurgency, are no longer in the policing business but rather in the soldiering business. They are militia, not peace officers. The dysfunctional extreme for what this produces is Nikolas Cruz. But how far is Cruz from the Florida cop who murdered a begging man, on his knees, on video? How far from George Zimmerman? One suspects those three might enjoy a beer together and share many of the same values. I am always struck when reading about these alleged lone wolf shooters how NOT alone they are. Klaus Thewelit’s seminal work Male Fantasies should be required reading. But if male-female relations of production under patriarchy are relations of oppression, it is appropriate to understand the sexuality created by, and active within, those relations as a sexuality of the oppressor and the oppressed. If the social nature of such “gender-distinctions” isn’t expressly emphasized, it seems grievously wrong to distinguish these sexualities according to the categories “male” and “female.” The sexuality of the patriarch is less “male” than it is deadly, just as that of the subjected women is not so much “female” as suppressed, devivified. — Klaus Thewelit Theweleit didn’t see genocide as the thwarted expression of inhibited sexual energies. His point was rather that the production of gender and sexuality are intimately tied to the content of anti-Semitism and overt racism—both before, during, and after the fall of the Weimar Republic. Fascist sexuality is not so much repressed as it is ideological: it idealizes virility and fertility as political imperatives. — Ana Teixeira Pinto The cultural post-modernism of today, at least in the U.S., is technologically sophisticated and socially hyper conservative. The neoliberal system might marginalize white nationalists but they cultivate their symbolism and much of their rhetoric. A Nikolas Cruz desired completion as the captain of capitalist manhood. His failures, his lack of productive labor, his relative poverty, escalated his hatred of those he saw as responsible — and at the head of that list one would guess would be women. But the indoctrination of men like Cruz, or boys, begins earlier. As Theweleit writes: “No man is forced to turn political fascist for reasons of economic devaluation or degradation. His fascism develops much earlier, from his feelings; he is a fascist from the inside.” The violence of the U.S. military, globally, inflicted on the most defenseless nations and people cannot be separated from cops in Chicago or Baltimore or Los Angeles, nor from Fallujuh and Libya and Syria. I mean, the U.S. has occupied Afghanistan for sixteen years. The U.S. military metaphorically rapes these countries. And it is a kind of re-colonializing. Sylvia Federici called the World Bank and IMF “the new Conquistadors”. Nor can it be separated, finally, from Harvey Weinstein or James Toback. Nor from the lynch mob hysteria that has coopted the entire #metoo* phenomenon. Nikolas Cruz sensed he was broken, and his longing for restoration was reflected back at him by those men who would later capture him. Kevlar and weaponry, helmeted faceless phallic superbodies. He could only merge with his fantasy through mimetic approximation. Cruz may be seen as insane, but he was not *only* insane. The anti-Russian propaganda that is spewed out daily by mainstream media is an insidious and destructive force that also cannot really be separated from the tidal swell of violence on the streets and in the institutions of U.S. society. Manufacturing contempt for North Korea or Yemen or Libya is not *only* propaganda. It has consequences to the psyches of the people that must absorb that inculcating assault. (Go back and read Ben Judah’s bizarre and lurid anti Putin piece at Newsweek,July 2014 — the one with Putin in shades on the cover, his eyes reflecting a burning …we presume…America. Read it now and just try to digest that this is what passes for *real* news as opposed to fake news). In March of last year Brian Cloughly began an article on this massive anti Russian propaganda this way… On January 30 NBC News reported that “On a snowy Polish plain dominated by Russian forces for decades, American tanks and troops sent a message to Moscow and demonstrated the firepower of the NATO alliance. Amid concerns that President Donald Trump’s commitment to NATO is wavering, the tanks fired salvos that declared the 28-nation alliance a vital deterrent in a dangerous new world. One intriguing aspect of this slanted account are the phrases “dominated by Russian forces for decades” and “vital deterrent” which are used by NBC to imply that Russia yearns, for some unspecified reason, to invade Poland. As is common in the Western media there is no justification or evidence to substantiate the suggestion that Russia is hell-bent on domination, and the fact that US troops are far from home, operating along the Russian border, is regarded as normal behaviour on the part of the world’s “indispensable nation”. This is just one example of out of literally hundreds and hundreds. One could find the same against Maduro and Venezuela and against the DPRK. It hardly needs pointing out that Hollywood produces endless paeans of love for militarism and male destructiveness. Capitalism produces economic inequality and as such cannot exist without political and social oppression. The contradictions of Hollywood’s endless fascist product and its equally endless hand wringing over sexual harassment or gun control should be obvious. The sexual harassment in Hollywood goes back to Shirley Temple. It is built into a system in which all parties are there to monetize themselves. It is also true that men with power must punish those beneath them. They cannot exist without subordinates. What Theweleit wrote of the *soldier male* (his term for the prototype ur fascist) that the most urgent task facing him…“is to pursue, to dam in, and to subdue any force that threatens to transform him back into the horribly disorganized jumble of flesh, hair, skin, bones, intestines, and feelings that calls itself human.” Hollywood produces narratives that make the non human heroic. The first Terminator was a watershed moment in that respect. A film whose message was that an android…no, a ‘killer’ android…made a better parent that the human version. Propaganda that creates phantom enemies is justified because Trump is now the perfect villain. And as such, is a tool of the ruling class. He is the justification for the abandonment of all notions of integrity and honesty, compassion or honour. One case of harassment I know of included a woman who had signed a non disclosure agreement and took payment of tens of thousands of dollars. She disclosed anyway and was applauded as heroic. It is not heroic to break your word. To take a payoff and then snitch anyway. But punishment is its own justification. Trump’s vulgarity is a kind of pride in ignorance trope. He intentionally chooses to be crude, because that is what his base desires. They may not admit it, those suburban small businessmen and managerial white class — but they do. A sense of shunning the soft and sensitive. Stories about escorts and golden showers only adds to his appeal. Those guys wish they could afford escorts. Trump is the grandson of a whore house owner, after all. He never sold himself as Adlai Stevenson. So, Mark Twain is hurtful. Libraries are being shuttered across the country. Book stores are closing. The U.S. poverty levels have exceeded those of many developing countries. The compulsive hatred of Putin by many who have almost zero idea about Putin or Russian history is disproportionate to any rational analysis, but not surprising. Trump and Putin are like weird doppelgangers in the liberal imagination. For the propagandists of the exceptional and indispensable nation the by-product of their creative activities is Nikolas Cruz. Trump shares with the far right parties growing across Europe the open disdain for democracy and free speech. Cruz was wearing a Trump cap in one of his Instagram photos. He wasn’t wearing a Che t-shirt. He wanted to kill antifa. He was not an isolated mentally disturbed killer. He was a fascist killer. He wanted to be made whole and inviolate. The way all fascists want to be whole, but cannot. http://clubof.info/

[themadameditor]

There is something to be said in making a graceful exit and it comes from knowing when its time to leave the party.

Lucinda Chambers was fired from VOGUE UK where she served for thirty-six years, twenty-five of those as its Fashion Director, amongst other positions she held. She didn’t see it coming and the process took all of three minutes. It must’ve been unpleasant; for your entire career to be reduced to three minutes. She was fired by newly appointed VOGUE UK Editor Edward Enninful who replaces Alexander Shulman who exited the magazine after twenty-five years as its Editor-In-Chief. Post firing she went on to give an interview about the whole deal.

I suppose this is what we do now, this is a thing?

VOGUE. When you trace fashion’s many problems, most can be laid at the Louboutin clad, pardon the cliché, foot of VOGUE; from its cliques to its continued lack of diversity, cultural density, lack of awareness… the list goes on. Not all roads lead to VOGUE, but most roads often start from there, take a look at the recent mess with the Gigi Hadid and whatshisname on the cover of VOGUE US, with their ill conceived Gender fluidity theme. They got it wrong. SO DAMN WRONG and as is par for the course have issued a lacklustre apology only after being called out by all of social media- with the vast resources in its arsenal, one has to wonder how and why a magazine that prides itself on being at the forefront of all relevance can make such a misstep. Not the first either.

In her interview, where she takes well aimed shots at the industry and its key players, Ms Chambers talks about this fantasy publication which is meant to inspire not bully its readers into acquiring irrelevant, expensive and often times nonsensical stuff, as VOGUE and most other magazines are akin to doing. Fashion, she acknowledges, will “chew you up and spit you out” tell us something the Hills and the City didn’t already make us aware of. Or Gossip Girl, there is no newness in this nugget, but I can appreciate the candour. Sometimes fashion can feel like the death of creativity because most “creativity” is only as relative as the amount of bang you have for your buck as a stylist, a designer, an editor or whatever your position on the food chain. In addition, the handcuff between the magazines and their advertisers, only hinders any growth and uniqueness. This is not helped by the power plays enabled by contacts in chic Smythson’s diaries residing in Chanel 2.55 purses; who you know to get in the door. Enter one Ms Anna Wintour, Fashion’s high priestess. Advertisers are enthralled by Anna Wintour and with her as one of those contacts, your level of play is elevated to a higher frequency, one where talent is secondary, Ms Chambers alludes.

But on the flip side, failure is not an option-

You’re not allowed to fail in fashion – especially in this age of social media, when everything is about leading a successful, amazing life. Nobody today is allowed to fail, instead the prospect causes anxiety and terror.

Fashion sails on the idea of perfection, therefore there is no room for the alternative, it is not about selling the idea that you might suck at something it is about pressuring you into doing the “right thing” for the season; wear that silly dress that looks like it was sewn in the dark because we say its cool, wear those shoes that would likely see you topple over but what the hell its McQueen… everything in fashion is of the moment because one has to be in the know, nothing ostracises quite like fashion can with its expectations to be a part of something. From the fashion shows to the parties and all the carnival in between, there is an increased desire to be in this world that looks like the ultimate fairytale from the outside looking in and “a million girls would die” to make the cut. But then no one takes into account the toll on those who are in the eye of this vortex, the designers, creatives. A great onus is placed on designers to make magic happen for a fashion house, hence it is little suprise at the rapid changes brands like YSL, Calvin, Jil Sanders, to name a few have gone through recently in order to keep up with the demands of their investors. From the overly extravagant shows, to sales, consumer reaction, digital footprints, campaigns etc. A lot is asked of these designers but not a lot of thought is given to how this affects their psyche. She hits the nail on the head when she makes this point and I for one couldn’t agree more.

But back to VOGUE, the problem with VOGUE, and there are many, but the single and most defining problem with VOGUE, is its absolute disrespect for its readers. Fashion, an industry where talent often times loses out to influence, it is this attitude, belief, that allows magazines to peddle shit to its readers. A disrespect that has led to a disconnect between the publication and its audience. There was a time when VOGUE embodied its status as a “fashion bible” but those days are long gone, now it leaves you feeling empty, you read an issue and come away thinking what the fuck was that? It makes little impression upon you, there is no voice of authority, it has become a follower of the masses, no authenticity, no empowerment. Which is why I suppose VOGUE editors will always have a problem with the rise of bloggers and influencers because they are the alternative. Blogging has democratised fashion in a  way that has publications like VOGUE doubting their game. Thanks to the rise of these influencers, we can look elsewhere for our news, their sources are more viable, spaces are more fun and inclusive and there is a mutual relationship built here. Websites like Fashionista, The Cut, GoFugYourself, BoF… there is something for everyone, we no longer need to rely on the glossy pages of magazines who have since lost footing on their influence.

BRITISH VOGUE. Its no secret, this is my most loathed of VOGUEs. I often find myself irrationally irritated at the publication, chief amongst my many reasons is its absolute, lack of imagination. The last British VOGUE I bought was the Jourdan Dunn issue in February of 2015, which I couldn’t bring myself to read because of the bullshit content. VOGUE UK is always one step behind its flagship, and has remained firmly in its shadow, like its unsure of itself or would like to be careful not to offend. Don’t even get me started on its diversity problem: for twelve years it did not have a Black woman on the cover, and when it did, it made her look anything but. Fashion magazines like VOGUE perpetuate a density that not only undermines the intelligence of its readers but also undercuts its influence in the long run, it loses its right to empower when it finds it hard to elevate a conversation, influence a moment, be culturally astute. These are interesting times we live in yet VOGUE is several steps behind the curve, in my opinion. Teen Vogue has become a moral compass of our time because it recognises the way of this new world and understands that its readers, now more than ever, need more than clothes which we don’t need to buy, shoes and handbags… it respects the intelligence of its readers and has adopted a balanced approached in its content. That balance, that intelligence, that authoritative tone of voice, is lacking in VOGUE’s flagship publications. And that silly Breton tee shirt on the cover was an abomination but “Michael Kors is a big advertiser”. But of all the pieces, of all the Michael Kors garment in the world, that piece was what was chosen for the front cover…

I’ve said it too many times and will say it again; VOGUE has become increasingly redundant, as a brand and as a magazine, its influence is on the wane which is why it continues to battle with bloggers and influencers, editors and their reductive and borderline bitchy comments about their place in the fashion world. VOGUE is no longer the voice of fashion it once was and British VOGUE, never really was, let’s be honest, it hardly resonates with its readers, doesn’t have that influence like its American counterpart, although that too is not without its set of issues, but it has Anna Wintour at the helm. Unfair it might be to judge the influence of both magazines as they differ in demographics and pander to a completely different audience but a magazine should get you, sip deep into your soul and connect with you on a personal level, because anything worth its influence should do so, but British VOGUE, lacks. With every issue, every tired cover, every one of its pedestrian content, it falls flat, and using the same formula for however many years, it wasn’t going to come up or be dragged up.  So something had to give, the old guard has to make way for new. And that Michael Kors tee-shirt was really the A-ha! moment. In addition to the fact that Ms Chambers admits not having read the magazine in a long time which about sums it all up.

A rebirth. One is needed in British VOGUE, to make it relevant again and give it some ground to stand on. Anything, anything is better than what it is today; a roaster for socialites and the Sloane set. Enninful as the new Editor obviously has a different vision for the magazine, it might work, it might not work, but it is moving the post forward some, in his vision, which no longer involves looking back.

VOGUE & The Problem With Fashion There is something to be said in making a graceful exit and it comes from knowing when its time to leave the party.

[katherine-rambles]

lately i’ve been learning a lotta things that.... make me wonder if i have low-key add/adhd?

evidence in the “probably” pile:

i learned recently that becoming angry at interruptions can be a symptom of focus issues, and that many add/adhd folks HATE interruptions.

guess who has literally scheduled her entire life around avoiding interruptions, since as long as i can remember???

like No Joke i would do homework in the early afternoon so my parents wouldn’t bother me whenever to do chores (because to them homework was Above interruptions, but nothing else was???) and then after they went to sleep i would read/play videogames/art/etc. all of which, had i done during the day, they would have felt ABSOLUTELY FREE to interrupt me and then get mad when i got mad at them for interrupting me and didn’t immediately drop it because i’m a stubborn asshat

from research of the above, i’ve learned about (and immediately converted to) the school of thought that “attention deficit disorder” might be inaccurate, and “attention regulation disorder” might be a better way of phrasing it. see this link for more info

from that link: “But with people with ADD, who have impaired executive functioning, the inability to self-regulate appears as laziness or lack of willpower. It clearly is not.”

i’ve always had IMMENSE trouble self-regulating. without places to be, work structures and schedules to support me? i 100% fall apart. i’m still having trouble, as a 23 yr old adult, at setting up bedtime and wakeup routines!!!

from a list of ADD symptoms, inattention: “Be easily distracted by things like trivial noises or events that are usually ignored by others.”

i can’t often stand music or tv or whatever while i work. either i just Stop Doing What I’m Doing and pay attention to the music or tv show (and thus waste a couple hours on tv shows i don’t even like) or i turn it off. 

relatedly: i cannot go to bed with the tv or music on, despite it being a regular occurance for many of my friends. (guess who stays wired up on sleepovers while other ppl fall asleep to media.... :^) )

from a list of ADD symptoms, inattention: “Be forgetful about daily activities (for example, missing appointments, forgetting to bring lunch)”

i circumvent this now by writing a bajillion lists all the time, but when i was younger... i almost failed sixth grade because i wouldn’t bring my homework to turn in. 

which is to say: i would take it home, i would DO all of the work, but i literally forgot to bring my homework to turn in, on a regular basis, for the better part of a year. 

my teachers were confused at my great grades but lack of homework, so they talked to my parents about it, and that got drilled the fuck outta me, but... yeah

also? i can’t sit anywhere but at the front of classes. if i am not at the front i cannot pay attention, due to all the shit that people get up to. i’d love to join u at the back of class my delinquent friends playing games on your phones, but i cannot or I Will Fail. 

from a list of ADD symptoms, inattention: “Have a hard time paying attention to details and a tendency to make careless mistakes. Their work might be messy and seem careless.”

there’s a job in libraries that i cannot do. it is called Shelfreading, and basically, the idea is that you read the collection numbers on the shelf (that bit on the end of the spine libraries use to keep things in order) and make sure that the books are, indeed, in order.

i begin falling asleep maybe four feet into shelfreading. i literally cannot do it when i am Any degree of tired in the first place, but even when i am at my Tippity Toppity Best i’m the absolute worst at that job. it is my least favorite part of libraries-- even including the time I had to be a part of moving a library, and i wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. 

from a list of ADD symptoms, hyperactivity: Fidget and squirm when seated.Get up frequently to walk or run around.

me. 

i can’t sit/stand still. 

from a list of ADD symptoms, hyperactivity: Always be "on the go"

when i’m not depressed, i ALWAYS need something to do. i have ‘patience’, but only if i’m doing something else in the meanwhile. 

for most of my childhood, i had drawing as a “something else”.

from a list of ADD symptoms, hyperactivity: Talk excessively

hhahhaaaahahhaha i’m so insecure about this but basically i can and often will babble on until you tell me to stop. case in point: look at how long this post is getting. i do that in speech, too

from a list of ADD symptoms, impulsivity: Impatience

fufufuuuuuuuck it me. i literally cannot play some games because of how slowly the characters walk. i will never be able to replay the older pokemon games because of this. rip me

from a list of ADD symptoms, impulsivity: Having a hard time waiting to talk or react

!!! i’ve channeled this into “interrupting folks to help them find words”!!!!!! 

from a list of ADD symptoms, impulsivity: Have a hard time waiting for their turn.

hhhhahmmmmm this might be a reason why i strongly prefer single-player sports. 

in tabletop, “waiting for my turn” doubles as “watch other people make fun things happen”. and any other time i need to wait i can usually do something else while i do so.

from a list of ADD symptoms, impulsivity: Blurt out answers before someone finishes asking them a question.

yes. but it’s kinda rare, i wonder if this is one of those semi-gendered symptoms.

but also, did you mean, “raising my hand before the professor is done with their thought”? 

from a list of ADD symptoms, impulsivity: Start conversations at inappropriate times.

hhhhaaaa i’m sure becca can attest to my inability to wait five seconds before beginnning a conversation that’s awkward while the person who reminded me of something is still around. 

something that seems like impulsivity might have a hand in:

right now, i really don’t want to be spending money. and yet??? i have like ten purchases in the past three days or so around 10 bucks a piece. for random videogames, toys, books, a tiara, a hat i found at a storage store, a couple of things i thought would make great gifts for specific folks in the future.... why tf can i not wait until i get my goddamn paycheck at the end of the week????

something else that seems like impulsivity might have a hand in:

i am a Serial Procrastinator. the only way i get things done is by procrastinating on one thing by doing something else. very few of my tasks are both Proactive and Not A Part Of Putting Off Something Else. 

from a different list of add symptoms in adults: Restlessness, Trouble Relaxing

i’ve said that i literally cannot relax. that is: actual relaxation occurs so rarely for me that i treat it more or less like a myth. 

from a different list of add symptoms in adults: Trouble Starting a Task

hey, did you know that this (in addition to being super tired) was literally what kickstarted my depression? now ya know

welp

more generally, i am a ninety-per-center. which is to say: i got a’s in school, but it wasn’t because i studied and memorized every last detail. getting 100% on anything was extremely rare for me, even though you’d think i’d have a higher chance at it with my average so high. 

i hate straight-up memorizing. i’m terrible at it. if learning only happened like that, i would be a highschool dropout. 

what i AM good at is being a magpie of knowledge. learning is legitimately a hobby for me. 

so learning MORE for me is often about contextualizing something new in terms of what i already know. 

one of my other hobbies? READING FUCKING EVERYTHIGN as a child. i read so much that my average reading-words-per-minute is 700 (w/ 100% retention-- that’s an easy reading pace for me), but i can jack it up to 1k with 80% retention. theoretically, if i could keep that up, the internet tells me i could read the entire bible in 24 hours at that rate.

my good grades also gave me a positive feedback loop: having good grades meant that teachers didn’t care if you doodled during class, and doodling during class is apparently a huge coping mechanism for ADHD/ADD.

uh. 

so. 

in researching and writing all this out.... i’ve basically convinced myself that i probably have some degree of add/adhd, but i had really good coping mechanisms that developed early. 

when some of the things i’d relied upon began falling apart, i spiralled into Depression because executive functioning is hard

oh my god now i’m taking a test and.... SHIT IT ME http://totallyadd.com/adhd-quiz-start/

ESPECIALLY 

My home or workspace is cluttered, piles everywhere.  Things have to be out where I can see them, otherwise I worry that I’ll forget about them.

When I am alone I talk out loud to myself to stay on track.  I have sticky-notes everywhere.  I’ve bought things and then realized I already owned one.

You probably don’t bounce around like a hyperactive child, but perhaps you often feel restless.  Driven.  Like there’s a dynamo inside you. Maybe you’re impatient.  On the go.  Thoughts race, sometimes tumbling, ricocheting as you pour out one idea after another.

I walk faster than others and have to wait for them.  I like to be in action, on the move.

this only applies in crowds; in other situations i’m small and can’t keep up the same with folks. But in crowds if I’m not moving forward i want to tear my hair out

I find myself stirring things up. Teasing. 

auuugh i’ve been trying so hard to stop this one because it’s often really rude and invasive but I HAVE SO MUCH TROUBLE STOPPING MYSELF

I’m drawn to one hobby or obsession after another. 

did you mean “project”? did you mean “life consuming goal projects that take ~80 hours during a month when i’m also in school full time and work part time??” 

I have more stamina and enthusiasm than anyone else if it’s something I find interesting.  I dive in whole hog, like a whirling dervish, with tons of energy.  But then suddenly crash. 

I always have lots to say, but I’m not so great at listening.  I can be an enthusiastic chatterbox who just can’t stop. If someone else tries to speak I get louder because I feel pressure to get it out. 

I am full of ideas – my mind jumps and races ahead.  I don’t sit quietly and consider, but immediately offer one idea or opinion after another. 

I may seem impatient or dominating, always adding my two cents, having to contribute my ideas… and I have lots of them. 

I’m instantly enthusiastic and interested in new challenges.  I say yes to everything, then end up overwhelmed with commitments.

HOLY FUCK

HOLY FUCKITY FUCK

I SCORED AN 18/18 ON A SCALE THAT’S MEANT TO BE 10/18 “YOU SHOULD MAYBE CHECK WITH YOUR DOCTOR”

you mean to say, i have been dealing with this all on my own, for TWENTY GODDAMNED YEARS, AND PEOPLE DIDN”T NOTICE OR CARE JUST BECAUSE I GOT A’S IN CLASS

i may be, more than a little pissed at this. hguhgugh