#and see what people think

[baronessblixen]

oh gosh, not the « william is jesus christ reincarnated » bullsh!t again too. listen if he wanted to do a biblical themed tv show that’s fine, but let your fbi agents be happy and at peace !!! ok im done talking about it but argh.

Of course he is. Wasn't Mulder Jesus at one point too? I often ignore religious imagery cause I just don't care 😂 let these two people be happy!

[maddiviner]

Why do people try to gatekeep words????? If you burn herbs you are burning herbs whether you call it smudging or something else. If people keep this up we are not going to have any words for things left to use that are “unproblematic

First off, sorry for such a late reply. I didn’t see this. Anyways…

Did you send this to the wrong blog? You pretty much did. I’m far from knowledgeable about this. I didn’t even know cultural appropriation was a thing until like 2010 at earliest. I didn’t start to understand it until I’d broken with Thelema about five years later. I still miss a lot of the nuance of this stuff. I don’t belong to any closed culture or tradition.

I’ve read that “smudging” is more than just “burning herbs,” though? It’s like referring to a bicycle as a car, because they both involve wheels. At least from what I understand? Gah. And there’s no reason you can’t just say “I’m burning herbs?”

A lot of the time, this word appropriation (I guess you’d call it that?) seems to come from Western occultists who either don’t know the proper term for what they’re doing, dislike it, or just don’t care. Or they want to sound ‘exotic’ 🤢.

So, they skim something from a closed culture (or more often, something written by an outsider about that culture). They pick a term only very vaguely related to the concept and just take it. It kind of seems like that’s what’s happening, anyways. See: that guy who labeled his rune-based stretching routine as “runic yoga,” etc? Sometimes it’s a completely unrelated concept, and they just lift the words.

Again, not part of any closed culture over here (and am white). I’m not the blog to ask. Maybe someone will reblog this and provide more context than I can. I’ll read it too, if they do. From my (current, probably pointless) perspective, the answer to the whine of buuut I don’t have a word to use waaah is just to invent your own word for what you’re doing.

Also, make that word as twee as possible, for the hell of it. That’s the kind of thing I do, anyways. I don’t know if it’s a good solution or not. It all merits further thought, for sure. Will be reading the replies if there are any.

I also want to note that this is 100% not a “free speech” thing. I don’t think anyone’s saying it should be illegal to call your sparkly bundle of lavender from the New Age shop a “smudge stick.” I’m not saying that. Nobody’s really controlling what you say or do except for you. I think people are just saying cultural appropriation’s rude and disrespectful and trying to push back against it.

Also, I bet the linguistic thing in particular makes it hard for people in closed cultures to research their own culture online and find things. I think it could be true, but I need to look into that more. Think about it. If someone lifts a term from a closed culture and it gets popular amongst other people, search engines get swamped with appropriative content. I bet then people probably can’t find what they actually need, the real information?

tl;dr ask someone else, sorry IDK enough yet! maybe someone else does?

[trans-androgyne]

Genuinely, what happened to “feminism is for everyone”?

That’s the feminism I grew up with: encouraging people to recognize that fighting sexism and restrictive gender roles helps folks of every gender. We’d push back on the idea that feminists hate men, pointing to inclusive feminist literature and how many men are feminists.

Now, there are so many people insisting that the solution to patriarchy is to openly hate and ostracize men no matter what. Why? What is the benefit? It’s certainly not effective in fighting oppressive structures to exclude half the population from your cause on the basis of immutable traits. It may feel cathartic to say horrible things about men and try to punish them for your frustrations with patriarchy. But the only actual effect I see is the increasing right-wing radicalization of young men, who are being told that the left hates them for the way they were born and presented with an abundance of proof that it’s true.

Why are we going back to treating men and women as different species? It doesn’t fix things to say “well women are the good gender and men are the bad one” this time. If you sincerely want to dismantle sexism, you’re going to have to unpack and let go of all sex and gender essentialism—even that which considers women inherently pure and men inherently immoral.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Hey now, Let her cook!

[endusviolence]

Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of a group of people. Some are smiling at the camera, others have serious expressions. Either way, they all seem to be happy. On the right side, an older gentleman in glasses- Magnus Hirschfeld- is sitting. He has short hair and a bushy mustache. He is resting one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. His other hand is being held by a person to his left. Another person to his right is holding his shoulder.]

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of the May Nazi book burning of the Institute of Sexology's library. A soldier, back facing the camera, is throwing a stack of books into the fire. In the background of the right side, a crowd is watching.]

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

Edit: Added image IDs. I apologize to those using screen readers for forgetting them. Please reblog this version instead.

[spitblaze]

I guess Chilchuck has brought us right back to 'adults who are short are child-coded and if you like them you're a pedophile' discourse huh

[joshuamj]

Okay, but what if EoW!Zelda had to impersonate Link

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF movie Vanessa’s thoughts when meeting Abby..

[thisiswhereikeepmyseratonin]

People keep saying that the TARDIS shouldn’t have malfunctioned just from a cup of coffee but I have two theories

• The TARDIS heard that her darling newly regenerated little time Lord wasn’t going to get a cool adventure with his bestie and engineered an excuse so that he could

• The TARDIS having newly refurbished herself had coffee thrown at her nice new circuits and decided to throw a bitch fit

Look the TARDIS is the longest running female character in doctor who, has proven to be sentient, and regularly takes the Doctor to places she thinks he’d like without warning. It had to be her right?

[apollos-boyfriend]

so my younger cousin is flying in to visit from brazil on sunday, and will be staying here for like, the entirety of july. which, don't get me wrong, is super cool! i love the kid! but it felt like a super weird move, considering his parents are the SUPER strict and borderline helicopter parents. even the smallest prank/roughousing with him/his little sister would lead to a strict talking to from his parents, he couldn't ever do anything without their clear permission, that sort of stuff. so letting him fly at alone at 16 to a whole different country and stay there for a whole month seemed WILDLY out of character. additionally, it just felt like a super last-minute trip. it's not like we have any plans to do when he gets here, and the flight itself and stuff only got booked like, midway through june.

and i was talking to my mom about it, kind of trying to nudge some answers out of her, and after a while she went, "yeah, i think they're sending him over here to get away for his boyfriend. see if the distance breaks them off." which, first of all, surprised me because last i checked, they didn't KNOW he had a boyfriend. literally everyone in the family did EXCEPT for them because while that entire side of the family being semi-conservative, his parents (mostly his dad) are EXTREMELY old-fashioned. so clearly something already went wrong. and considering the only reason the rest of the family knew is because one person found out and it spread like wildfire, i have a sneaking suspicion he wasn't the one to tell them, either.

and second of all. they're sending him HERE. to try to make him forget his homosexuality. i couldn't do anything but just wordlessly gesture to the multiple pride flags scattered around my room, then to myself, because really? he has like two other cousins in the us and they're sending him to me? honey i am about to introduce this kid to queer scenes you have never even heard of. he'll be returning home with labels only shrimp can perceive

[bruciemilf]

“Bruce is emotionally incompetent and can’t step outside his own morality” yeah it’s a character flaw.

“Dick is extremely stubborn and thinks he’s right all the time” yeah it’s a character flaw.

“Jason has hypocritical tendencies” yeah it’s a character flaw.

“ Tim is entitled and doesn’t think about people when seeking results, and often acts uncaring” yeah it’s a character flaw.

“Damian is rude and bratty” yeah, it’s a character flaw.

Also, some people may not even regard everything listed above as flaws.

Having negative traits allows incredible flexibility within your characters, what makes them intriguing, what makes them easy to relate to. If you want to write people, then write people. But they can’t be good and clean all the time.

[coolerdracula]

saying “visual style" because, for example, if you would swap your current wardrobe for an identical, ethically made counterpart, there would be no visible change