#and that misogynistic ideology can be used to appeal to men even when they are marginalized themselves

[telepathicfeline]

You all do know that there’s a middle ground between “men are inherently evil, society has nothing to do with it” and “men aren’t at fault for their actions, they are hurt just as much (if not more) by patriarchy than women?”

[lockedtombbrainworms]

Oh no a big long politics post that's only tangentially related to what I'm here to post about!

The realisation that there are actually terfs in the locked tomb fandom, who know the books well enough to have actually engaged in some level of analysis of them as texts, is fucking terrifying to me. I should've realised they'd be here, they're everywhere now, but like, it really sucks. Lemme explain... Ten years ago, when I was a recently-out trans woman, I was a lot less afraid of terfs in fandom spaces because they were just another kind of weird internet bigot, like the homophobes and the misogynist nerd bros. They could be a threat, sure, but they were the sort of threat you had a much better chance of avoiding. Now their movement has gained the sort of political traction where they're actually impacting policy and having a tangible negative effect on trans people offline and in the wider online world, the idea of having them in a social space with me fills me with actual fucking dread. I'm no stranger to fighting these fuckers, I've counter-protested them with my friends and my comrades, met them in the street when they came to my town and said "not here or anywhere, not now or ever". I'm not coming from the perspective of someone who thinks terfs are these incomprehensible eldritch horrors that will rend me asunder without me being able to do anything about it. I'm just pissed off because I don't like having to watch out for terfs in my fucking downtime when I'm on tumblr reading about my fucking blorbos and their gay little adventures with swords and necromancy.

Drive that shit out. Stand together and don't let your friends slide down the rabbit hole. The terf ideology is melding with the far right and it's not just trans people they've got their sights on. They're after all of us, and they try to pick people off and radicalise them against the rest of us, because if we're divided we don't stand together against them and they can run right over us.

I've been seeing this shit for ten years and it isn't always the cartoonishly obvious fuckery like "hey, the trans movement is making my daughter think she's a boy, how disgusting".

It starts with trying to demonise queers for anything - for the way we dress, the way we act, the way we talk, the way we fuck, the way we love. It works its way in through feminism, by saying "how dare these gay men make a mockery of womanhood through drag and then expose our children to such misogyny", or "how can you support women selling their bodies in the sex industry by suggesting sex workers should organise and work together to keep themselves safe".

They try coming in through leftist ideology like "how dare these transsexuals complain about being misgendered at work or raise money for something as bourgeois as cosmetic surgery when there are real working-class people who can't even pay their rent". They try and launder their ideas through appeals to reactionary tendency like "aren't polyamorous people just a bit... weird? Look at all these horror stories you hear of people turning a polycule into a miniature cult, surely that can't be good!". They appeal to your inner prude, "kink is weird and violent and how can people consent to that? Hey, don't you think these queers might be a bit dangerous? Look what they get off to!".

All that shit is leading you astray. Stop caring so much what other people do. Stop inventing convoluted justifications for pouncing on your fellow queers by playing 5D chess to come up with a way to explain that actually, a man dyeing his hair pink is doing misogynist violence and therefore you have to write 10,000 words online about him. Get out there. Find the people near you who are making the world a better place, who are running food banks and soup kitchens and homeless shelters and clothes exchanges and support groups and whatever else is out there and GET INVOLVED. If you can't physically go out there, see what logistical support those organisations need that you can do from home. Fuck, knit hats to keep people warm. Just do something.

It'll feel weird. You'll see some shit that'll absolutely smash your beliefs about how everyone outside of your little bubble is evil. Some 75 year old boomer will say the most radical shit you've ever heard about solidarity between oppressed people. The crustiest middle-aged cishet punk dude you'll ever meet will go on a drunken rant about how cool his trans friends are and how he wishes he could help them more. You'll think you're a lesbian and then suddenly you'll kiss this dude you met at a punk show that your buddies from the food bank took you to, because you liked the look in his eyes when the band played a song about queer joy and resistance and tearing down borders. Weird shit will happen to you and it'll be great.

This was about the locked tomb fandom at first I promise. It's turned into the post I always end up making on every social media platform I end up on, which is "I'm getting too Online because of this platform and I'm not gonna be around as much, you should try that maybe"

[katyspersonal]

because blorbos are for the girlies and waifus are for smelly men... or something like that idk

i just dont really like how some people convinced themselves their way of enjoying characters is better than that of others

i'd even go as far as to say some of thrm are just as shallow in their treatment of the charas they claim to treat better but thats another story

Hmmm... Very good take, anon. You nailed it. Poor Maria is basically a mascot of more shallow and toxic type of fans - they will think that "unlike us filthy misogynists" they AAAAACTUAAAAALY respect her... only to completely ignore her nuances as a complicated and tragic character and simplify her to angry, rude, badass woman that enjoys killing and being a bitch to all men but girlies are good. Like, okay, if all you can say about the character is how much she loves women and murder, and all you can draw for her is her smooching Adeline with a lesbian flag background - sorry, but this is ALSO pretty simple. This is ALSO one-dimensional, same as some gamer bros drooling about how much of a 'waifu' she is and not being able to draw anything of her besides horny fanart with her clothes being skin-tight so we all can see her boobies and oddly thin waist or something.

And yes, when you figure that the ONLY rebuttal they can use against the accusation of being simple AS WELL with their vision is 'well but [demographics] is not oppressed and horny gamers from reddit are worse just because they're cis het men lmaoooo 😭😭😭' - you also figure the problem. That they make it about ideology and some sort of activism, revealing that they do not care about "respecting the complexity of the character". They are very much okay with character being simplified and not explored past like 1 trait (2 if they are feeling REALLY generous)... but only as long as the way to simplify the character itself matches THEIR tastes. Reducing character's entire personality to masculinity and sexuality good!!! Reducing character's entire personality to being a potentially good gf/wife and sexual appeal bad!!!

No, you are not "respecting the character". You are doing feminism activism in front of my salad the fandom, which is a place for ALL types of fans to go to, and ALL takes to be shared. The only requirement to be part of the fandom is to be a fan of the source material - in it's entirety or a part of it!

_________________

At the end of the day, there is nothing criminal in simplifying the characters. I am not a fan of one-dimensional takes myself - I like to deep dive and analyse the characters, I like seeing every single corner of their life and personality and purpose in overall lore! I like complexity and various aspects of the characters shown, not only one side of them! I can be bitter in my own autistic way, but it is about preference, there is no point to be made about who is "right" and who is "wrong" in how they treat fictional characters. They are not real and do exist for our entertainment and happiness FIRST of all - whatever makes the person happy. Just like how I get sorta bitter when people draw Malenia with huge honkers and thin build - but I will also be bitter if Micolash is prettyfied (I mean the ingame status quo, he could have looked prettier when he was healthier). But do I also think artists are allowed to invest their time and effort in what they personally enjoy, without hassling over "respecting canon"? Of course!

The sentiments can coexist. They SHOULD coexist, in fact. Not having an opinion and preference and equally liking everything is probably not a good sign... unless you are a fan of a character so rarely acknowledged that you do love anything at ALL about them, ahahahah. Someone's way of enjoying the character is not "better" only by the virtue of being more representative or canon-accurate - objectively. It comes down to preference. What I love about us Mico simps a lot, actually, is that those of us that prefer canon Micolash in all his ugly, hideous, sickly glory is that we do not make it out to be some loud political statement, accusing artists of "lookism" or "ableism" or literally... anything you could pull out of the fact that a dude that looks like a corpse got a makeover fsdhfsdh Get creative! Maria fans can get creative with seeing "misogyny" and "dyke-hating" in the places where it doesn't exist! So, let's also use our imagination.... NOT!!!

We just pout and say 'you are not REAL fan' as a joke. It is always. just. a joke. The more avid fans of iconic female Soulsborne characters should learn from us to own up for their subjective preferences instead of starting weird ideological fight over whatever lady they claimed THIS time.

[wizardpink]

Something that has been on my mind is the way that this website is full of people who want to oppose TERFs more than they want to defend trans people and we are never gonna succeed by applying this method.

So many people have taken the stance that all TERFs are wrong about every belief they hold, that anything they say is one slippery slope into Nazism, and that is a fundamental misunderstanding of why TERFs are able to draw people to their side and how it is they operate.

TERFs are dangerous because they will tell you 99 truths to make you believe one lie.

TERFs appeal to potential converts by holding a LOT of the same beliefs and convictions that most of us who fall on the political left and who support social justice movements do.

So when a stealth TERF says something like "makeup bloggers, shady self-care gurus, and tiktok influencers getting plastic surgery who all appeal to one white western beauty standard isn't good for impressionable teens to be consuming constantly," and your response is to reactionarily oppose what they're saying because they're a TERF ala "fuck off, makeup rules and plastic surgery is great," you've fallen for their trap.

Because they've said something relatively sane sounding, and you've made yourself look like the unhinged one with shitty politics. And the person who hasn't been exposed to these TERF talking points and stealth missions, who also feels like maybe being bombarded by shallow looks-obsessed media isn't good for young girls' self-image, has one of two choices: believe what they see right in front of them, or take your word for it that OP is the secret villain and somehow you, who appear to hold the same values as a Fox News host, are right.

Like, some of the takes I have seen people on tumblr promote JUST to oppose a radfem are literally like something straight out of a Republican dude-bro's MAGA reddit channel. Telling women concerned about sexual assault and rape they're being sexist against men. That ANY discussion about patriarchy is transphobic and should be shut down. That all concerns about sexualizing women without their consent, or the role of violence in the porn industry, are just prudish anti-sex propaganda.

We are losing ground by ignoring what WE stand for in favor of only paying attention to what radfems stand for and opposing it. This is the exact tactic we mock Republicans and Democrats for doing, running a campaign based solely on what your opponent is doing wrong without offering any solutions or positions on issues. "TERF bad!" is not an ideology! "Trans people are human beings who deserve the same rights as their cisgender peers," is an ideology.

One thing I love to see is someone finding a good post by a radfem and refusing to engage with it, and potentially spreading OP's blog to more people, and instead making a whole new post with the same point that ISN'T going to potentially lead people down the radfem pipeline. Hell you can even leave a link to the new post in the replies of the original. I know saying "OP is right about this topic but they're a radfem so block them" probably doesn't feel as good as just leaving "die radfem scum" but when the topic is "women should be able to walk alone at night without being afraid" are you really doing a service to our cause by looking like you disagree with that? TERFs WANT to spread the message that trans people and their allies hate cis women and are a danger to them. Don't do their work for them...

It fucking SUCKS playing their game. It feels like being baited into a no-win situation. But making yourself look like a traditional misogynist isn't an L you have to take. There are other approaches.

[sakebytheriver]

Okay.

So to be completely candid and honest with you all, I don't really care too much about this particular twitter drama going on about the left and disaffected white men and boys and how better to appeal to them, I think it's petty and kind of dumb and most of the people weighing in on it are the same that attacked that person for cooking for their neighbors, because ultimately this issue is about being neighborly and about how capitalism has separated all of us, including white men, from our sense of community and building good relationships/allyships with the people around us, but you know what, here it is, my two cents

The system is set up in such a way that falling into this alt-right stuff is the default for all human beings, when we talk about how there is systematic racism and patriarchal constructs ingrained into our societal structure we mean that they are so embedded that they have basically become the systems themselves, resisting them is out of the norm, resisting them is supposed to be hard, it takes even people they directly oppress years to dismantle the racist and misogynistic beliefs they've subconsciously absorbed into their own minds and biases, so for white men who seemingly reep all the benefits going against these systems is especially difficult and these alt-right pipelines target them when they're young and they're brains are still squishy and moldable, it's hard to break away from something you learned to believe as a kid, but it's not impossible and anything that can be done to pull them back is something we should do. That's what diversity of tactics is supposed to mean, for the time being we have to work within these systems and so yeah that means pretty much the only way these kids will get deradicalized is by some dumbfuck leftist streamer, I'm real sorry, but the revolution is not going to come to dismantle these systems in the blink of an eye and fix everything, the leftist movement in America and in the world in general is still so small, there's basically no mainstream leftist news channels, but Fox News is considered one of the most reputable sources of information while actively employing scare tactics, openly lying, and even encouraging genocidal ideologies straight into the brains of over half the population of the entire country, the enemy is so much bigger than us, guys, at this point we dont even have one foot to stand on, we have to engage in guerilla warfare here, our methods are not their methods, we do not want to exterminate or punish, we want to rehabilitate and unify

The fact of the matter is the way these systems are set up is meant to look glamorous to white men in particular while they subjugate everyone else, but at the same time they are absolutely debilitating to those same white men and we need to be able to reach those white men/boys and show them how their lives would be better without them and at the same time talk about the way these systems compounded with the late stage capitalism we are living under means that they're lives suck even more, because corporations are taking away all sense of community and ramping up the division between all groups of the working class to make it easier to exploit them, hence the disaffection, and look, let's be real with ourselves here, when one side is telling you that you're the cream of the crop and it's everyone else who is the problem while the other is seemingly blaming you for every problem it's not exactly a surprise that some dumb fuck teenagers fall down an edgy alt-right youtube rabbit hole and grow up into even worse men.

These systems are the way almost everyone has lived for centuries the dismantling of them is going to be hard and it can't be done without unity, to steal someone else's words who was a much better speaker than I am,

"We're going to fight racism not with racism, but we're going to fight with solidarity. We say we're not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we're going to fight it with socialism." ~Fred Hampton

We must appeal to every person in the world on the left, a better world must involve everyone, and that includes white men, I'm gonna be real I don't really care to police any leftist in the way they talk about white men as a force for oppression, but I do think sometimes talking directly to them in particular is good too, we need to talk to every single group of people on this god's green earth directly and show them the ways escaping from the systemic oppression inflicted by racism and patriarchy and dismantling capitalism will be a net good for every single human being, including white men, that the feelings of disaffectedness these white men and teenage boys in particular are feeling is coming from these systems and their lives would be better without them, not by becoming a pawn in service of them

It is so easy to reduce white men/boys to The Enemy, but they're not, part of leftist ideology is dismantling the prison/justice system's emphasis on punishment which often boarders on cruel and unusual and has been proven to only make the problem worse and cause more reoffenders rather than letting people reintegrate into society to lead healthy productive lives (of course we need to talk about how to reinvest in our underfunded communities and social service programs to combat the prison system problem but that's a different post), we cannot state to want to build a united and kinder world where we focus on rehabilitative justice while turning our noses up on a group of people who need just that kind of rehabilitation

Are white men's issues the biggest issues the left should be focusing on?

God no.

But that doesn't mean it isn't one of the problems that should be on the list, just because it's not high priority doesn't mean we ignore it completely, the world exists in shades of grey, no issue is ever as black and white as you think it is, allow nuance into your life or we will never reach the perfect leftist utopia you so desparately say you want

[gisidaronta]

The Democratic Party must fight for the male vote. And they can do so without a conservative shift.

The 2024 Democratic campaign completely missed the fact that men are very fed up with their situation as men. The Republican Party has invested heavily in women voting for the Democrats. The Republican Party has done a lot to make women hate them. But the Democratic Party has not invested in men voting for them. There is a problem that manhood, in a very vulgarized interpretation of intersectionality theory, is perceived unambiguously in the same row with heterosexuality, whiteness, cisness. This means that if you are a man, then based on gender, you have nothing to wish for except for further increase of your privileges, in case you are a sexist. Really - a politician will not say "I will improve your situation as a white person." It feels like the Democratic Party members think like that. What does the Democratic Party do? Appeal to men in the style of "vote for us, otherwise we will call you sexists." Moreover, in this election they did it in the rhetoric of "you have to be man enough to vote for us." Which sounds very conservative - aren't all men real? Aren't men diverse in their preferred gender expressions? Isn't there scientific research that gender policing harms men's mental state? And when men for some reason don't vote for them, they start talking in the spirit of "American men are still misogynists, we haven't spanked them enough." Meanwhile, American men simply stopped believing that Democrats are really for gender equality.

Many have already forgotten that the Democratic Party has a serious and successful history of improving men's rights. Ruth Bader Ginsburg sought to repeal laws that discriminated against men. Cases like Moritz v. Commissioner, Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, Orr v. Orr are something that should not be forgotten.

This does not mean that the Republican Party now acts in the interests of men. In red states, a man is more likely to die by suicide. In red states, a man is more likely to face gender policing. Why don't Democrats talk more about these facts? The Republican Party does not act in the interests of men. But the Republican Party gets men's votes because the minds of Americans today have an associative series, supported to a large extent by the Democrats themselves and even more so by that part of their electorate who understands feminist theory in a simplified way: patriarchy is in the interests of men, Trump personifies patriarchy, so if a man votes for Trump, he votes in his gender interests and achieves what he needs. Democrats should pay attention to this. They should appeal to men, emphasizing that conservative ideology is not useful, but harmful to men. They should invite more specialists in men's mental health to their studios who will talk about the harm of gender policing to the male mental health. They need to learn to say the word "man" in that context, not in the context of "a person who will probably vote Republican, especially if he's white, cis, and straight, because we haven't taught him not to be sexist yet."

[a-court-of-moonlight-and-ire]

Oh yeah, this is definitely an extension of that culture war bullshit

I mean, Rhysand being progressive is very much a tell-dont show thing on SJM's part. Hes made Feyres High Lady of the Night which is supposed to be different from her just being Lady (like she was in the spring court) and is supposed to show how much more progressive he is than all the other High Lords, but then she ends up the exact same things as any other Lady (birthing an heir, being Rhys' armcandy at public appearances etc)

Or with illyria, hes banned wing-clipping but it doesnt seem like he's actually properly enforcing it, it seems like the camplords who do it just kinda get scolded a little but no further consequences to disinsentivise them from doing it (like maybe having their wings clipped themselves, or even just getting killed to set an example for the other camplords). And its not because he thinks enforcing it would require excessive cruelty or because he thinks theres some good inside these guys he can appeal to, because he was fine slaughtering all the illyrians who were with him UTM and because he seems to think theyre just inherently evil

Then theres the fact that women in illyria are allowed to train to fight, but only for an hour after their 'chores' are done, and thats seemingly the only move Rhysand has made towards giving them rights equal to men. And its an incredibly bad move too because we hear from one of the camplords that women who are seen training are declared unmmariable, which is a good insentive to keep them from actually doing it. But even without that, the idea behind it seems to be that it'll empower these women by giving them the option of 'fighting back' against their abusers, but women in a society this misogynistic cant just do stuff like that without massive consequences that, once again, disinsentivise them from actually doing that.

It also willfully ignores the fact that illyria's current setup, where every able-bodied male is essentially forcibly drafted from the age of 9 to become a soldier and theyre all constantly training to fight even when there arent any wars being fought, is incredibly fucked up and the best thing to do would be to make it so that no one has to live like that, not forcing all the females to do it as well

And Velaris definitely seems like the best place to live but it has its own ethical issues even beyond the fact that Rhysand is essentially using the rest of his court as a big meatshield factory for the sake of protecting a single city. Because its meant to be secret, no one except for the ic (and their guests) is allowed to come in or out, and the only people who are allowed come in are the traumatized priestesses that stay in the House of Wind, but you just cant leave. And its like, what if you wanted to travel? What if youre one of those priestesses and you had family members outside of the city that you wanted to see again? You just cant do thlse things. And obviously those things are nothing compared to the shit that everyone outside of Velaris has to endure but it still sucks that they have no choice in the matter

And the stuff with the CoN is just. Atleast with Illyria theres some attempt at fixing things and some implication that Rhysand believes that maybe not all of them are inherently evil, but with the CoN its just "yeah no, these people are born evil and they will stay evil forever, Mor (who just happens to be related to Rhys) the only possible good person there" which is a line of thought thats incredibly conservative. dare I say its even a little fascist

And like, it would make sense for Rhysand to think this way and to have this kind of ideology considering the society that he grew up in, but according to meta-narrative of these books, hes not supposed to be a guy with beliefs that are typical for his incredibly conservative culture, hes not even supposed to be a guy whos progressive by the standards of his culture, but that we as the audience would consider conservative by our own standards, hes supposed to be progressive by our own contemporary real world standards, but SJM just completely at writing him as such, either because shes incompetent or because her views of what being progressive means are just backwards like that

ohhhhhhhhhmy god I just saw someone say "ugh, cant believe all those rhys stans who voted democrat have the audacity to be upset about trump when they wouldve probably voted for him if he was hot" and I just. grips you firmly by the shoulders. You understand that fiction does not equal reality right. And you understand that you very likely cannot acertain anything about a stranger online just based on their taste in fiction or their takes on certain book. And thats not to say that their tastes or opinions on fiction are completely meaningless and that they cant tell you anything about them, but those things are rarely obvious because what people enjoy in fiction and what people enjoy in real life dont perfectly match up a lot of the time. Most women who like to read about being the husband of a sexy rapey vaguely-pedophilic rich fae tyrant and justify his actions online would not justify his actions if he were a person who existed in the real world and that they knew. The reason they defend and justify Rhysand's actions so vehemently is 1) because they dont like the thing they enjoy being attacked or criticised and 2) because theres no real stakes because HE is not real and defending him has no effect on the real world and does literally nothing exceot maybe make random strangers on the internet be judgemental towards you

[autolenaphilia]

One thing that I noticed about transmedicalist communities is how they further a kind of toxic masculinity. It’s no secret that transmedicalist communities are dominated by trans men. It’s especially obvious on reddit. General trans spaces there are dominated by transfemmes, but not the transmed/truscum ones.

Therefore a lot of truscum rhetoric appeals to a masculine mindset. I have some insight into how boys and men think from my deep undercover investigations into manhood in school (so deep undercover that I didn’t even know myself fghfhh).

Okay this got dark rather quick. So I’m gonna put the rest under a cut. Discussions of misogyny, bullying, violence and mentions of the f-slur. I do show some transmed art that is transphobic and misogynist in order to criticize it.

Anyway, as a kid, I got to listen to some literal locker room talk. And a large part of masculinity is proving your masculinity to other men and boys. Masculinity is fragile, you have to prove yourself as a manly man. You can do this by dominating women and girls or by bullying others you deem male who are feminine or insufficiently masculine. I was beaten up for being a “faggot”(well the Swedish equivalent, “bög”), an effeminate nerdy autistic weakling. That was my “male socialization”, famed of story and song.

Even if there are no girls or women involved, it’s still rooted in misogyny, a disgust of femininity in men is a disgust at men being woman-like.

So when I see truscum rhetoric, I think I recognize it as a similar transmasc specific expression of that. Transmed/truscum rhetoric loves to paint an enemy figure of “the transtrender”. And they are quite literally a transmasc person deemed insufficiently masculine. They are either NB so not literally a man, or an effeminate trans man. No matter their identity, they present too femininely and are described as “actually a woman pretending to be transmasc”.

It’s most clearly expressed in the infamous “true trans vs trender” art that was popular during the transmedicalist heyday a few years ago. It literally depicts a conventionally masculine trans man, who is a “true trans” contrasted with a feminine trender, who is painted as gross because of their feminine gender expression.

So it’s a specifically trans expression of a common male way of proving masculinity. “I am a man, a very manly man, just look at me putting down this effeminate faggot”. It’s the specific transmasc fear of being misgendered by being confused for a gnc woman that’s taken a very common masculine way of expression. Transmasc people who aren’t conventionally masculine seem to activate this fear, so they are dismissed as “trender girls who are pretending to be transmasc for clout” (an absurd figure, really).

Their gatekeeping rhetoric has a very masculine tone in general. It creates an image of the speaker as tough, but rational and objective. It’s put in opposition to “tucute” beliefs which are too inclusive of weird and irrational trans identities, due to being misled by soft feminine emotions, and thus not rational and discriminatory enough.

I think that explains why transmed/truscum ideology has comparatively little sway with transfems. We of course dislike being misgendered and called crossdressing men. But every transfeminine person is very much aware of the severe social penalties that comes with being viewed as male and then not performing masculinity. You are denied access to male privilege, yet lack any cis privilege. The idea that a man would fake being transfem to chase a trend or view social acceptance is thus even more absurd than the transmasc trender.

There is some transmed rhetoric which seems to mainly exist among straight gender-conforming trans women. It’s those who accept Blanchard’s typology despite it being extremely transmisogynistic and misgendering even them as “homosexuals” for liking men. They use it to dismiss non-straight trans women as autogynephillic fetishists. But that’s a different form of misogyny, dismissing certain trans women for not being feminine enough, instead of insufficient masculinity. It is a form of internalization that furthers the transmisogyny and lesbophobia of Blanchard’s work. Of course it’s not always internalized. I’ve seen trans men transmedicalists that believe in Blanchardism, but that’s just straight-up male transmisogyny and lesbophobia.

Anyway, I’m so happy that transmed bullshit seems to be fading away online.

[ex-terf-anti-terf]

Hey (don't worry, this isn't anonymous hate). Basically, the past few weeks, I've found myself getting more and more attracted to radfem ideologies. I'm a cis lesbian, and the radfem community has given me something I've been without for a long time: an explanation that doesn’t treat me like I’m a terrible person for being a cis women who asks questions. (part one)

What they say just… feels right, but one of my best friends is a transwomen. I can slowly feel myself starting to hate her because I know that, if I were to discuss any of the issues I’m troubling over with her (like her excessive use of porn, her over sexualization of womanhood, her wanting to be called female slurs, etc.), she would shun me and I would be considered a hateful.

I just want answers. I want the truth. I want for womanhood to not be corrupted or erased by the men who oppressed us for so long. Am I a terrible person for having these thoughts? I promise I don’t hold real hate in my heart towards anyone, but maybe I’m snowballing. What advice would you give me as an ex-terf?

[WOAH this got long. Prepare for many many paragraphs below the cut anon, I am so sorry. Also a TW for a very brief mention of CSA below the cut, as well as two uncensored misogynistic slurs; the b slur and the c slur]

Hey! First of all, let me just say I really do understand those feelings. Even now I still sometimes find myself drifting back toward radfem beliefs, and I want you to know you're not a terrible person.

It sounds to me like this is a friend that you are generally able to confide in and want to be able to confide in. My first thought reading this was 'how can you discuss these things with your friend without making it about her specifically?' It may help to begin with broader conversations about the topics themselves (porn, sexualization, slurs, etc.) rather than specifically your concerns about how they relate to her. If that goes well, then you can gently ease into a different sort of approach, if you feel it's necessary. It may not be, and that's fine too!

I don't know all the details of your friend's life or your relationship with her, so I can only respond to what you've said here, but I do have some thoughts on the specific things you listed.

On the topic of porn, I find that while it's not specifically appealing to me, it is a way for many trans people to both explore and express their identities. I have a transmasc friend who watched straight porn for a while, initially imagining himself in the role of the woman, and one day found that he was imagining himself as the man, and that was his first big aha moment about his identity. It's not always harmful, in terms of creation or consumption, but I am personally still wary of it because I know how harmful it can be.

I find your second example complicated, because again I don't know the details, but I keep getting stuck on this one thought; if a cis woman treated her relationship to her body / womanhood / sexuality the same way, would you have the same reaction? Maybe you would, and that's fine, I just don't know, and it's what I keep catching on. That's how I used to figure out which thought patterns were transphobic when I was taking my tumblr break. "If a cis person did this, would I have a problem with it?" If the answer was no, it was generally transphobic.

One of the worst things radfems did to me was teach me that it's not okay for women to sexualize our own bodies. It really fucked up my relationship to my sexuality for a long time, and still messes with me on occasion. Women are allowed to interact with our own bodies however we want, as long as we don't force others to interact with our bodies -- or theirs -- the same way. Personally, I found that the most radical thing I could do, in the face of a world that wants to sexualize me uncomfortably as much as possible, was to reclaim that sexualization in a way that makes me feel comfortable. For me that meant dresses and cleavage (pre-op, at least) but no makeup and no fancy hairdos. It means different things to my various women friends, cis and trans alike. On that topic, I would advise you to start by asking what specifically feels empowering or satisfying to her about that behavior, before you begin to pass judgments on whether it has value.

In regards to slurs, I do tend to find that a red flag, but since I'm making a very conscious effort to also try and think about where she's coming from, I want to give her the benefit of the doubt. In my opinion, it depends on what those slurs are. For example, if she's embracing the term 'bitch' I personally wouldn't have a problem with that -- plenty of queer folk I know, men and women alike, identify with 'bitch' playfully. For myself, it depends on context. If someone says "hey bitch!" in greeting, I'm okay with that, but it's a whole different ball game if someone tells me "don't be such a bitch." On the other hand, if she wants to be called a cunt, I genuinely cannot see any reason for you to oblige that request, especially if that's a word that makes you personally uncomfortable. (I'm uncomfortable just typing it out and having to look at it.)

A big part of having relationships with trans people as a cis or cis-adjacent person is setting boundaries on both sides and ensuring that those boundaries are mutually respected and enforced. (Actually that's just a big part of having relationships, but I see it especially emphasized in relationships between a trans person and a cis-ish person.) You shouldn't need to use language that you're uncomfortable with or wouldn't use in an ordinary context, and she deserves to feel that her identity is respected. How that middle ground is reached depends entirely on the two of you.

To round this out, I want to briefly address your third ask. I'm curious what answers you're seeking, and what truth it is that you specifically desire. What are the questions? What exactly do you feel deceived by? I also want to gently remind you of two things. First of all, men have been trying to corrupt, erase, and appropriate womanhood for all of history, because they, as our oppressors, don't want us to have any kind of common ground, community, or identity that is independent of them. And yet women still exist, and there are still many experiences that are common among women, regardless of AGAB (assigned gender at birth). Secondly, if you are afraid of cis men corrupting womanhood, infiltrating women's spaces, or hurting women, you are still afraid of cis men. I find it highly illogical to assume that a man will spend several years and thousands of dollars on intensive therapies and hormone replacements and plastic surgery to have a body that he doesn't actually want, just so that he can get into a women's bathroom and sexually assault a little girl. Unfortunately -- and I know this better than anyone -- if a man wants to sexually assault a little girl, he's just gonna do it. (And make no mistake, that is the claim. And it makes zero sense.)

I won't tell you what to do, anon, but I want you to know that there are those of us out here that will listen and support you and respect your viewpoints and even share them without belonging to a violent right-wing hate group. Also, it's okay to be friends with radical feminists and to respect some of their opinions while disagreeing with others. If that helps you build a community where you feel safe, that's totally fine! You don't have to become a radfem to do that.

I'm saying all of this because I feel as though you don't really want to be a radfem. I don't think you'd have come to me if you were totally on board with the prospect. So just know you do have other options. And you can DM me any time :)

I hope this helps!

[d3nt4l-d4m4g3]

Consider: The effeminists

Effeminist—(historical) A member of a male homosexual movement opposing prejudices against effeminate behaviour.  —Wikipedia

The next quote is from Jeanne Cordova’s When We Were Outlaws. She was a major figure in the lesbian feminist movement and created the most prominent lesbian newspaper of the time, The Lesbian Tide. This part of her autobiography is set when the lesbians employeed at the gay center (who created some of the first health care programs for women alcoholics, btw)  are shoved out of power. Most of the gay male employees at the GCSC were fine with what was clearly manipulative and misogynistic bullshit that would disempower an entire neighborhood of poor, lower-class women. However, one group of men stood by the lesbians:

“In recent weeks a handful of the gay male employees [at the Gay Community Services Center] had begun to support us, calling themselves “effeminists,” a term used by radical left wing of the gay movement. Effeminists glorified in the name “gay faeries” and understood that the straight world mocked them because they as (f-slur)  identified with women. They championed feminist principles like lesbian equality in the gay movement. They were usually feminine, rather than butch gay men, and they became our natural allies.” (Cordova 97-98)

The Effeminists’ 1973 Manifesto is below, transcribed from this archive:

The Effeminist Manifesto (1973) Steven Dansky, John Knoebel, Kenneth Pitchford

We, the undersigned Effeminists of Double-F hereby invite all like-minded men to join with us in making our declaration of independence from Gay Liberation and all other Male-Ideologies by unalterably asserting our stand of revolutionary commitment to the following Thirteen Principles that form the quintessential substance of our politics:

       On the oppression of women. 1. SEXISM. All women are oppressed by all men, including ourselves. This systematic oppression is called sexism. 2. MALE SUPREMACY. Sexism itself is the product of male supremacy, which produces all other forms of oppression that patriarchal societies exhibit: racism, classism, ageism, economic exploitation, ecological imbalance. 3. GYNARCHISM. Only that revolution which strikes at the root of all oppression can end any and all of its forms. That is why we are gynarchists; that is, we are among those who believe that women will seize power from the patriarchy and, thereby, totally change life on this planet as we know it. 4. WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP. Exactly how women will go about seizing power is no business of ours, being men. But as effeminate men oppressed by masculinist standards, we ourselves have a stake in the destruction of the patriarchy, and thus we must struggle with the dilemma of being partisans – as effeminists – of a revolution opposed to us – as men. To conceal our partisanship and remain inactive for fear of women’s leadership or to tamper with questions which women will decide would be no less despicable. Therefore, we have a duty to take sides, to struggle to change ourselves, to act.

       On the oppression of effeminate men. 5. MASCULINISM. Faggots and all effeminate men are oppressed by the patriarchy’s systematic enforcement of masculinist standards, whether these standards are expressed as physical, mental, emotional, or sexual stereotypes of what is desirable in a man. 6. EFFEMINISM. Our purpose is to urge all such men as ourselves (whether celibate, homosexual, or heterosexual) to become traitors to the class of men by uniting in a movement of Revolutionary Effeminism so that collectively we can struggle to change ourselves from non-masculinists into anti-masculinists and begin attacking those aspects of the patriarchal system that most directly oppress us. 7. PREVIOUS MALE-IDEOLOGIES. Three previous attempts by men to create a politics of fighting oppression have failed because of their incomplete analysis: the Male Left, Male Liberation, and Gay Liberation. These and other formations, such as sexual libertarianism and the counter-culture, are all tactics for preserving power in men’s hands by pretending to struggle for change. We specifically reject a hands by pretending to struggle for change. We specifically reject a carry-over from one or more of these earlier ideologies – the damaging combination of ultra-egalitarianism, anti-leadership, anti-technology, and downward mobility. All are based on a politics of guilt and a hypocritical attitude towards power which prevents us from developing skills urgently needed in our struggle and which confuses the competence needed for revolutionary work with the careerism of those who seek personal accommodation within the patriarchal system. 8. COLLABORATORS AND CAMP FOLLOWERS. Even we effeminate men are given an option by the patriarchy: to become collaborators in the task of keeping women in their place. Faggots, especially, are offered a subculture by the patriarchy which is designed to keep us oppressed and also increase the oppression of women. This subculture includes a combination of anti-women mimicry and self-mockery known as camp which, to its trivializing effect, would deny us any chance of awakening to our own suffering, the expression of which can be recognized as revolutionary sanity by the oppressed. 9.SADO-MASCULINITY: ROLE PLAYING AND OBJECTIFICATION. The Male Principle, as exhibited in the last ten thousand years, is chiefly characterized by an appetite for objectification, role-playing, and sadism. First, the masculine preference for thinking as opposed to feeling encourages men to regard other people as things, and to use them accordingly. Second, inflicting pain upon people and animals has come to be deemed a mark of manhood, thereby explaining the well-known proclivity for rape and torture. Finally, a lust for power-dominance is rewarded in the playing out of that ultimate role, The Man, whose rapacity is amply displayed in witch-hunts, lynchings, pogroms, and episodes of genocide, not to mention the day-to-day (often life-long) subservience that he exacts from those closest to him. Masculine bias, thus, appears in our behavior whenever we act out the following categories, regardless of which element in each pair we are most drawn to at any moment: subject/object; dominant/submissive; master/slave; butch/femme. All of these false dichotomies are inherently sexist, since they express the desire to be masculine or to possess the masculine in someone else. The racism of white faggots often reveals the same set of polarities, regardless of whether they choose to act out the dominant or submissive role with black or third-world men. In all cases, only by rejecting the very terms of these categories can we become effeminists. This means explicitly rejecting, as well, the objectification of people based on such things as age; body; build; color; size or shape of facial features, eyes, hair, genitals; ethnicity or race; physical and mental handicap; life-style; sex. We must therefore strive to detect and expose every embodiment of The Male Principle, no matter how and where it may be enshrined and glorified, including those arenas of faggot objectification (baths, bars, docks, parks) where power-dominance, as it operates in the selecting of roles and objects, is known as “cruising.” 10. MASOCH-EONISM. Among those aspects of our oppression which The Man has foisted upon us, two male heterosexual perversions, in particular, are popularly thought of as being “acceptable” behavior for effeminate men: eonism (that is, male transvestitism) and masochism. Just as sadism and masculinism, by merging into one identity, tend to become indistinguishable one from the other, so masochism and eonism are born of an identical impulse to mock subservience in men, as a way to project intense anti-women feelings and also to pressure women into conformity by providing those degrading stereotypes most appealing to the sado-masculinist. Certainly, sado-masoch-eonism is in all its forms the very anti-thesis of effeminism. Both the masochist and the eonist are particularly an insult to women since they overtly parody female oppression and pose as object lessons in servility. 11. LIFE-STYLE: APPEARANCE AND REALITY. We must learn to discover and value The Female Principle in men as something inherent, beyond roles or superficial decoration, and thus beyond definition by any one particular life-style (such as the recent androgeny fad, transsexuality, or other purely personal solutions). Therefore, we do not automatically support or condemn faggots or effeminists who live alone, who live together in couples, who live together in all-male collectives, who live with women, or who live in any other way – since all these modes of living in and of themselves can be sexist but also can conceivably come to function as bases for anti-sexist struggle. Even as we learn to affirm in ourselves the cooperative impulse and to admire in each other what is tender and gentle, what is aesthetic, considerate, affectionate, lyrical, sweet, we should not confuse our own time with that post-revolutionary world when our effeminist natures will be free to express themselves openly without fear or punishment or danger of oppressing others. Above all, we must remember that it is not merely a change of appearance that we seek, but a change in reality. 12. TACTICS. We mean to support, defend and promote effeminism in all men everywhere by any means except those inherently male supremacist or those in conflict with the goals of feminists intent on seizing power. We hope to find militant ways for fighting our oppression that will meet these requirements. Obviously, we do not seek the legalization of faggotry, quotas, or civil-rights for faggots or other measures designed to reform the patriarchy. Practically, we see three phases of activity: naming our enemies to start with, next confronting them, and ultimately divesting them of their power. This means both the Cock Rocker and the Drag Rocker among counter-cultist heroes, both the Radical Therapist and the Faggot-Torturer among effemiphobic psychiatrists, both the creators of beefcake pornography and of eonistic travesties. It also means all branches of the patriarchy that institutionalize the persecution of faggots (schools, church, army, prison, asylum, old-age home). But whatever the immediate target, we would be wise to prepare for all forms of sabotage and rebellion which women might ask of us, since it is not as pacifists that we can expect to serve in the emerging world-wide anti-gender revolution. We must also constantly ask ourselves and each other for a greater measure of risk and commitment than we may have dreamt was possible yesterday. Above all, our joining in this struggle must discover in us a new respect for women, a new ability to love each other as effeminists, both of which have previously been denied us by our misogyny and effemiphobia, so that our bonding until now has been the traditional male solidarity that is always inimical to the interests of women and pernicious of our own sense of effeminist self-hood. 13. DRUDGERY AND CHILDCARE: RE-DEFINING GENDER. Our first and most important step, however, must be to take upon ourselves at least our own share of the day-to-day life-sustaining drudgery that is usually consigned to women alone. To be useful in this way can release women to do other work of their choosing and can also begin to re-define gender for the next generation. Of paramount concern here, we ask to be included in the time-consuming work of raising and caring for children, as a duty, right and privilege.

Attested to this twenty-seventh day of Teves and first day of January, in the year of our falthering Judeo-Christian Patriarchy, 5733 and 1973, by Steven Dansky, John Knoebel, and Kenneth Pitchford.

[ouyangzizhensdad]

The discourse abt female characters in Mxtx's novels reminds me of the issue a few have when poc make films abt their issues in west and there are only a few white characters. Some even argue if they're living in a white country they should have more white characters. So if someone feels like reading a novel with alot of strong female characters they should read w/w, a few popular chinese are translated too. I hope ppl look for them and not blame a m/m writer for focusing on men in ancient china

I have to say that I think the two examples are not exactly equivalent. Contrary to white people in the West, which to this day still form the majority of the cast of most movies and tv series, there is a pattern of having women characters under-represented in media. The reaction of white people to seeing narratives that do not include them or only include them as side characters is to a perceived “loss”: these white people are so used to having all stories be about them that they see the apparition of more stories that are not about them as taking something away from them, when in reality it’s just about evening out the playing field and finally allowing these stories to be told. It’s a tantrum, not an appeal to have their stories given an equal share of attention. It’s about holding onto the power and privileges of white supremacy. 

I do sympathise with the desire to see a more equal and nuanced and complex representation of women across media, because I want that too. We can look at individual pieces of fiction and consider how many female characters there are in it, and how they are represented. But to accuse someone of being a sexist/misogynist purely based on the fact that their novel includes 1) more male characters 2) many female characters die, without considering the context and the portrayal of female characters, is missing the forest for the trees. While, yes, individual pieces of fiction can depict women in a manner that is flagrantly sexist, when we are talking about the issue of the underrepresentation of women in narratives (and how they seem more disposable than male characters), we’re talking about patterns and trends. Not a single piece of media is at fault, and not a single author can be blamed for it. Because the goal is not to say that stories with more male characters or even only male characters cannot and should not exist, but to grapple with the status quo where these stories are the norm, are the default. And justifying an odd level of vitriol against a female author for the crime of not writing “enough” female characters in one of her novels as ‘feminism’ is not activism: it’s using a movement and an ideology to disguise your hate into something seemingly more morally just.

[lastsonlost]

So I was half-right.

Instead of misogyny it's Nazis because of course it is.

If you spend a lot of time in certain Extremely Online corners of the internet ecosystem, you’ve likely stumbled onto #NoNutNovember, or just #NNN for short. An annual challenge encouraging men to refrain from masturbating (or even, for many, having any sex) for the month, No Nut November was initially created as a parody of internet-borne phenomena such as the Ice Bucket Challenge or Movember, skewering the silliness of viral internet challenges along with the more extreme claims made by proponents of NoFap, an anti-porn subreddit with half a million members. (According to one of the moderators of the NoNutNovember subreddit, /u/yeeval, the subreddit has no connection to NoFap, though the two are often conflated.)

For most participants, the challenge is essentially an excuse to shitpost, as well as tweet memes skewering some of the more exaggerated purported benefits of abstaining from masturbation. But there are many who take it seriously, with at least 52,000 people as of this writing diligently documenting their day-by-day progress (and setbacks) on the subreddit r/NoNutNovember. Per /u/yeeval, “I’d say 90% of the posts are from people actively participating and also there’s the occasional fallen member who stays on the subreddit for the community and laughs.”

On its surface, No Nut November is a fairly innocuous challenge: while it may seem silly to abstain from masturbation for virtually no reason, some of the memes are pretty funny, and a month of abstinence (whether it be from sex or masturbation) certainly isn’t going to kill anyone. u/yeeval says the goal isn’t to demonize porn or masturbation per se, but to prompt men to examine their own masturbation habits and whether or not they’re healthy. “In my opinion, most originally participate in NNN for the meme aspect of the challenge but as the days go on people begin to see how big their porn or masturbation dependency is,” he says.

"Neither of those things are bad or immoral in themselves but just like any outlet can become excessive in times of depression and loneliness.” Yet it would be naive to ignore that there’s significant overlap between the general anti-porn ideology behind NoFap — and, to a degree, No Nut November — and that of the far right, which has increasingly coopted the movement. (NoFap’s website states that, with the exception of a small number of users who may abstain for religious or moral reasons, they do not have an anti-masturbation stance.)

Because the challenge is  associated with abstaining from porn, some people associated with the movement have taken the extra step of harassing adult performers on social media, giving it an additional layer of troubling implications. “In the past [No Nut November] has always been like, ‘Oh, look at this ridiculous thing some people are participating in,'” says adult performer and director Casey Calvert. “This year, people [in the industry] are talking about, ‘Oh, actually this is connected to the far right and maybe we shouldn’t just be saying hahaha, No Nut November.'”

A new meme brings these implications into sharp relief. Coomer is a reference to a meme of an unkempt, skeezy-looking bearded man in a white tank top with vaguely Semitic features, accompanied by descriptive text like “doesn’t even know anything about politics,” “extremely aesthetic right arm (huge muscle),” and “has never heard of NoFap"

It’s been circulating on 4chan for the past year, but Alex Hawkins, the vice president of the porn tube site xHamster, says he started seeing it in the replies on his company’s Twitter feed back in September, when presidential candidate Andrew Yang tweeted about limiting access to pornography. At first, “we didn’t really know what it meant and thought it was funny,” he tells Rolling Stone. Then, in late October, the coomer resurfaced thanks to a Twitter campaign led by a user named TeapotLad, in which users vowed to change their avatars to the coomer should they fail No Nut November. PewDiePie shouted out the campaign in a recent YouTube video, as did far-right YouTuber Paul Joseph Watson, who is perhaps best known for being one of the many extremist figures, including Milo Yiannopolous and Alex Jones, to be banned from Facebook. “No Nut November and the Coomer meme represent a deeper meaning,” he said in a tweet. “Porn is evil. It literally re-wires your brain and causes erectile dysfunction. Take the pledge. Don’t be a Coomer.”

The term has also been used in the context of “OK coomer,” a play on the “OK boomer” meme, in response to tweets critical of No Nut November or masturbation abstinence in general. “It’s positioned as this epic battle between the weak beta masturbators and the strong, alpha NoFappers,” says Hawkins.

Like most memes, “coomer” carries with it more than a tinge of irony, and it’s not always easy to determine whether it’s being used flippantly or to actually deride men who masturbate. But the implication is clear: masturbating is an urge that should be resisted at all costs. David Ley, PhD, a clinical psychologist and sex therapist who studies pornography and mental health, saw the meme after he tweeted his criticism of No Nut November, referring to it as “a creepy little smorgasbord of insecurity-driven hate with anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia all rolled up in one,” he tells Rolling Stone. (Ley has partnered with the cam website Stripchat to do AMAs about sexual health, and plans to appear in one debunking some of the myths associated with No Nut November.)

The idea that there are significant health benefits from abstaining from masturbation is partially based on the (primarily internet-propagated) theory that semen retention is linked to an increase in testosterone and male virility, an idea that has been widely debunked. For the most part, however, the idea that masturbation is somehow feminizing is “rooted in extremely antiquated ideas of masculinity,” many of which are also promoted by far-right groups, says Ley. The Proud Boys, for instance, a far-right extremist group known for its propensity toward violence, has long advocated for its members to abstain from masturbation on the grounds that it boosts testosterone and makes them more appealing to women; indeed, founder Gavin McInnes gave a shoutout to NoFap in a 2015 article for the far-right publication Taki’s Magazine. (The organizers of NoFap have strongly refuted any connection to the Proud Boys.)

An even more extremist version of this far-right anti-masturbation philosophy has been promoted by David Duke, the former head of the Ku Klux Klan, who has propagated the conspiracy theory that Jews dominate the porn industry and use pornography as a way to control white men. On far-right threads on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, this sentiment is fairly widespread. “Jews not only control most of the pornography industry, they also rely on the goyim to maintain a routine of ejaculation in order to stay docile and non-violent,” one comment reads. Another shared a viral Pornhub tweet poking fun at viewers who’d failed No Nut November, writing, “the Jew mocks you as they poison the minds of millions.” (Pornhub is owned by the Canadian company MindGeek, the CEO of which, Feras Antoon, does not appear to be Jewish, even though there are numerous 4chan /pol/ threads speculating as such.)

This anti -Semitism is also often accompanied by healthy doses of homophobia and racism as well: on these threads, you’ll frequently see users deriding men who masturbate to heterosexual porn, on the grounds that being aroused by another man’s penis makes you gay (even if said penis is depicted going into a vagina). And because mainstream porn often features white women paired with black men, there’s also a virulently racist element to much of this discourse, such as the suggestion that interracial porn is intended to steer white women away from procreating with white men and toward men of color.

The irony of this strain of the anti-masturbation movement is that, while it’s ostensibly intended to fight the larger porn industry’s attempts to brainwash and emasculate white men, anti-masturbation ideology has historically been used as a tool by fascist figures to gain social control. Cultural stigma associated with masturbation, combined with the fact that pretty much everyone masturbates, invariably leads to a lot of men “developing a lot of internal shame,” says Ley. “And that makes them open to manipulation and social control.” As an example, he cited the National Socialist Party in 1930s Germany, which strongly discouraged Hitler Youth members from engaging in masturbation. Because anti-porn and anti-masturbation movements tend to be comprised of young heterosexual males, they could potentially be viewed by some on the far right as ideal recruitment grounds. The fact that something like No Nut November appears to be a joke on its face “appears to serve as this interesting front door recruiting kind of strategy to bring folks into this deeper, much more insidious and shaming movement,” says Ley.

Of course, it goes without saying that not everyone who participates in No Nut November or NoFap is a white supremacist or religious fundamentalist, and that the founders of these groups explicitly reject any suggestions of overlap between the two communities. u/yeeval says he has seen no hint of any anti-Semitic or misogynistic commentary on the subreddit, chalking any suggestions of Jewish porn conspiracy theories to “someone trying to make a bad / overtly offensive joke.” “NoNutNovember isn’t a political movement. We are not anti-porn. We are not anti-woman. We are not anti-masturbation or anti-sex,” he says. “In its most simple form NoNutNovember just a fun internet challenge that has grown in popularity due to many memes that circulate the internet…However, I also think that the reason that it has become so widespread is that it has given many the opportunity to look within themselves and realize that they might be relying on masturbation and porn for comfort.”

The  coomer meme is also, at least inherently, apolitical, says Alice Vaughn, host of Two Girls One Mic, a podcast about porn tropes. “The concept surrounding ‘Coomer’ is neither right nor left politically. The urge to shame those with higher sex drives is nothing new, and is a subject many are uncomfortable with, especially adolescents (which is predominately 4Chan’s user base),” she says. But the rise of “coomer,” with its distinctly conservative implications about male sexuality, would seem to refute that the anti-masturbation movement is totally innocent or entirely intended in jest. The fact that it’s often used in the context of “OK coomer,” a play on a meme intended to skewer boomers’ criticism of Gen Z, also indicates that this is primarily a youth-driven phenomenon. When you consider how younger generations have typically adopted a more healthy, progressive view of sexuality than previous ones, this doesn’t make a lot of intuitive sense — but it actually tracks with current data, which indicates that younger generations are having less sex, Ley says.

Usually, this phenomenon is attributed to male millennials and zoomers (members of Gen Z) spending more time watching porn, and to an extent this may be true; when it comes to determining the effects of pornography viewing on male sex lives, research is somewhat mixed. But it’s also just as likely that sociocultural factors like economic unrest and fear-mongering abstinence-only education have also played a role in these declining sexual activity rates. “We’ve spent decades telling these young kids be afraid of sex, and that only hereto monogamous sex is OK and moral,” says Ley. “Now all of a sudden they are really conflicted about sex and their own sexuality.”

That said, there’s also an awful lot of men who are not participating in No Nut November in earnest, and many more who aren’t participating at all. In an email to Rolling Stone, Pornhub vice president Corey Price said that traffic is virtually unaffected by No Nut November, and few of the adult performers Rolling Stone spoke with said that they hadn’t seen their engagement go down considerably during the month either. Considering that annual Pornhub traffic numbers are in the tens of billions, if there is indeed a wider porn conspiracy to sap men of their virility, that conspiracy appears to be working pretty well. But for those who are participating in the challenge, and may have stumbled along the way, Calvert has a comforting message: “I personally think No Nut November is very silly,” she says. “Not masturbating for a month does not make you a better man or a stronger man.”

............

Let me see if I got this straight.

Porn is evil

And not fapping makes you a racist homophobic Nazi

Did I... Did I fucking miss something?

[hamliet]

chat anon

This is BSD Chat Anon. I admit that as an Asian-American inundated by western media, I haven’t had much exposure to eastern literary mediums. That being said, I’m uncomfortable with people elevating Eastern takes on redemption while ignoring the ways in which the idea of redemption has been whitewashed and used to deny ongoing racism against marginalized ethnic communities, including mine.               

People can change. Take Mark Wahlberg, who committed hate crimes against two Vietnamese men and three black children and became a millionaire. Who supposedly regrets what he did, but then applies for a pardon for his convictions. Who never acknowledged his own racial motives. Meanwhile, people insist racism against black people ended with the Civil Rights movement. That Asians are an untouched model minority.                                  

(3) While you assert that a comfortable black and white morality is a defense mechanism that enables people to claim a moral high ground, I argue that redemption narratives are similarly self-serving. I also feel inclined to tell you that I distrust redemption stories produced by a country that continues to deny responsibility for war crimes committed against Taiwan, Korea, and China (and instead incite trade wars).                                                                                       

(4) That’s not to say Japanese people are bad (I mostly blame their government, media, and military). Rather, we should always be critical of any culture’s narratives, including our own and foreign ones we admire. That being said, Horikoshi did insert an insensitive war crime reference in MHA, and though he removed it after backlash, this incident should be a reminder that authors from any country are flawed.                                                                                        

(5) In my last box, I want to share how my heritage has influenced my perception of a person/character’s “redeemability.” I admit that I haven’t watched the entire Star Wars series, but Kylo Ren so closely resembling a military dictator discourages me, the granddaughter of survivors of Japanese imperialism, from ever supporting his redemption. Perhaps that makes me a “purist,” but it’s not for the Anglophone reasons you speak of.                             

(6) I was not expecting to stay up long enough to add more thoughts: Obviously I can’t speak for others, but I think you should also consider the ways in which history and current events condition people to believe that perpetrators, even war criminals and those serving life sentences, will find ways to hurt people again (oftentimes aided and abetted by the negligence, self-interest, and stupidity of racist, misogynist government, judges, police).    

(7) Honestly, one case is too many. I do not believe giving a person a second chance is worth risking someone else’s life and well-being. Removing an offender from this world is a matter of ensuring physical security and peace of mind. To deny that would be unjust.          

I do think it’s important to address ways in which other cultures have been shaped by and shape their narratives; I wasn’t speaking to them and certainly did not mean to imply their media is “better” inherently, and I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer. I was speaking to the culture I’m most familiar with and expressing what appeals to me about stories outside of our cultural norm, not implying that these stories are somehow inherently morally superior, and again, I’m sorry for not specifying this.

I also think this is an oversimplification of what I was saying, though I also think what I was saying could also very much seem oversimplified because it’s a tumblr post, not a moral philosophy treatise. The question was specifically regarding BNHA fans around those two characters, so I was attempting to analyze within that context. The reality is that we each bring unique experiences and pains to life and that’s why nuance and empathy are kind of the keys.

When you say you don’t support redemption, what are you meaning? Because I was certainly not saying each and every person has to write or enjoy consuming such a story; it’s fine to be like yeah not for me. I personally dislike Endeavor’s redemption in BNHA and have said I get why Jewish people would not like SnK because of its allusions to the Holocaust (which I do think are a poor and insensitive decision). However, were you saying it is morally wrong/insensitive to write or consume such stories? Because that’s the mindset I was addressing. Competing needs are a thing. No one person has to enjoy stories in the exact same way.

The point is that we need more stories. We need stories to address all kinds of human needs from all kinds of backgrounds. I’ve brought this up before, but I do have an issue with how most of western redemption stories are white men; I want to see more women, nonbinary people, and people of color in those roles, but that doesn’t mean I hate having a white man get redemption; it means I hate that it’s only those characters. A story that meets my needs may well trigger others, and vice versa. The world isn’t perfect and stories are going to reflect that (and there’s a difference between saying this and saying “go ahead and don’t care about triggering others!” You should care).

As for your final point, I think ppl are entitled to feel what they feel and can’t be told their feelings are wrong; for example I would never tell a mother who lost a child that the killer of her child should be inherently given a second chance and she should believe he deserves one because that is not empathy. Practice and ideology are not inherently parallels and every situation and human are different. Nuance and empathy are important to all aspects of life but certainly the practice of fiction and real life justice are markedly different. I suspect you are the same person who sent me moral philosophy questions over the summer, so my answer is the same (if you’re not, you can likely find those!). I’m not going to say I think it’s morally okay to deny second chances because I don’t think it is (we’ll have to agree to disagree); at the same time, I also agree that you cannot put people at risk and to do so isn’t justice at all. I also don’t agree that “removing” someone from the world itself (just say killing; you’re discussing a human) is going to protect someone else when there are other options to remove their ability to hurt someone. Are these fundamental opposite beliefs or is there a way to hold them in a paradox?

Those aren’t questions with easy answers. We certainly aren’t going to answer them in a Tumblr post, and I’m not looking to have an in-depth moral conversation right now, sorry!

[discyours]

I really don't mean to be offensive so if I am please call me out. My question is do you think some trans men being anti feminist could have something to do with their desire to pass as male? As someone who grew up female it surprises me that some trans men repeat MRA's talking points. Sometimes it feels like they think it's what it takes to be (seen as) a real man.

You’re not being offensive at all. I’ll be honest that I’ve seen numerous radfems use the existence of these trans men to write FTMs off altogether (or to accuse me of “acting male” for no goddamn reason just to shut down my argument) and that that makes this a slightly touchy subject for me, but that doesn’t mean there’s no truth to it and that it doesn’t deserve to be addressed. 

I don’t think it’s as conscious as a lot of people are making it out to be. There’s definitely such a thing as being misogynistic and shitting on feminism just to show that you’re “one of the guys” - a lot of women I know went through that phase at some point, I did before I came out as trans and I don’t see why that wouldn’t apply to trans men too. But for trans men it definitely goes beyond just that. 

When you’re dysphoric it’s very easy to subconsciously become angry at anything that even remotely triggers it. For trans men, feminism can be one of those things. Every even remotely logical feminist analysis is going to make it very very hard to deny that trans men are, in at least some ways, the same as cis women. And it’s not just being grouped in together that’s painful; the existence of feminism shows all the bad parts of being female. If you already hate being female to begin with you absolutely don’t want to be reminded that it makes you vulnerable. 

Most MRAs couldn’t be further from “trans inclusive”, but at least their ideology believes that women are anything but vulnerable, and actually hold a lot of power in society. When you’re a trans man who’s highly dysphoric about being thought of as vulnerable, that can be quite appealing. 

I’m not gonna act like anti feminist trans men are incapable of thinking for themselves though. Society absolutely affects the way that you act and social dysphoria can strengthen that, but that doesn’t mean that none of them have good reasons (to them) for being anti feminists that can’t just be explained away with blanket social analysis.

[red-diaper-babies]

Reclaiming Red Pill

Online, a person who has “accepted” certain traditionalist myths about men and women and the roles they ought to play in society is said to have “take the red pill” or are “redpilled” (a reference to that scene from The Matrix). The Red Pill presents itself as a complex philosophy that is brutally honest about the nature of sexual relationships between men and women and the countless dangers of feminism which have conspired in scores of unhappy men and women. Most of it is just rehashed biological essentialism, with perhaps a touch of postmodern nihilism.

Thanks to my morbid curiosity, I’ve been exposure to this ugly, misogynistic subculture through it’s now “quarantined” home on Reddit and the several watchdog/satire subreddits, such as r/thebluepill, that keep an eye on it and the several related internet subcultures it has spawned (incels, Men Going Their Own Way, etc.). These online communities are known collectively as “the manosphere.”

Red Pill evangelicals insist that their movement is about male self-improvement, which is a fascinating angle for a women-hating philosophy to adopt, but upon further inspection it makes perfect sense that they lead with this. Proto- and Crypto-Fascist ideologies (and The Red Pill absolutely is one of these) are extremely opportunistic; they seize upon important and emerging fissures in society and supplant a critical materialist explanation with reactionary dogma and, as always, use this dogma to prescribe as a fix both wanton cruelty and a return to a Golden Past that is distorted or nonexistent. They sell a vision of a time when a man could sit comfortably on a couch in a clean house after a hard day of work, well behaved children out of earshot, homemade meal in his stomach, and awaiting the delivery of a cold beer from his grateful wife, and feel like he deserved this, that he'd earned it. They sell a fantasy.

Why does the fantasy appeal to so many heterosexual, cis-men? What fissure has this ideology grown out of? Men in Western society, and perhaps particularly in America, find themselves in a crisis of identity. The roots of this crisis are primarily economic, and as complex as they are, can be simplified in this way: as the rate of profit has steadily fallen in the postwar era, more and more social labor is required from families (or per individual), and less and less net pay it making its way into the family's checking account. By social labor, we mean labor done outside the home that is traded for wages. As we know, real wages are stagnant and prices are rising; preserving a standard of living requires bringing in more income. The natural consequence is that dual income households have become more common (and necessary), from the working poor all the way through the upper-middle class, for the last five decades. A notable side effect is that, as the presence of women in professional careers has been normalized, women are more often finding themselves the primary breadwinner in the family, supplanting a host of traditional expectations about familial roles. Fifteen years ago this tension was a favorite source of material for stand-up comics and sitcoms; now it's passe to even comment on, but the insecurities and dislocation persist.

Heterosexual, cis-men's traditional and patriarchal role in the family, which was often imbued with the power to unilaterally direct the family's resources, was tightly interwoven with their prescribed role as "provider." The social order of the day was at the time tasked with preserving this status quo; putting up glass ceilings, limiting access to higher education, permitting rampant sexual harassment/assault, legalized discrimination, on and on. This is not to say that women haven't always worked, especially in the working class, but by and large they had access only to a few professions and were otherwise capped at lower wages and lower ranks. 

To whatever extent this role was actually realized by men of previous generations, it seems this has been turned upside down. This has been very disorienting for many men, not least of all because they are also finding themselves expected to do more and more of the "reproductive labor" that used to be taken care of by a stay-at-home spouse (or servant) just a generation or two ago. By reproductive labor, we mean the labor that maintains the workers themselves and provides for the nurturance of the next generation of workers. Reproductive labor is often referred to as household labor.

It will come as no surprise to many women that, as their share of social labor has increased, they nonetheless continue to perform the majority of reproductive labor, both globally and domestically. Those figures get even more stark if you factor in emotional labor and the facilitation and managerial tasks we've come to call "mental load." This strip by French cartoonist Emma demonstrates the significant weight of mental load, and the repercussions it's inequitable distribution has had on women and Heterosexual marriages. 

Indeed, Red Pillers acknowledge this inequity right off the bat. They gleefully ridicule other heterosexual cis-men for being irresponsible, lazy, selfish, gluttonous, and unattractive. They see it as an unfortunate norm that fathers are directed by wives on where to go, what to do, what to wear, or are altogether left out as the woman goes about the business of running a family while simultaneously pulling a full-time job. They bemoan the "Homer Simpson-ification" of the western man, who has, we're to believe, been transformed by feminism and mainstream media into an extra child that the wife/mother must care for, instead of the "captain" that she needs and truely desires (the Nazi's promised each man would be the "Fuhrer" of their household). Their diagnosis is based on biological essentialist dogma; their prescription is based on an idealist return to a time that never really existed; but the problem they identify is a real one. Men by and large struggle with relating to their families in positive ways, particularly as their role has shifted, and we on the Left, particularly we cis-men in Heterosexual relationships, must address this problem ideologically, through our political work, and in our own lives.

Wolfgang Willrich, The Aryan Family (1930)

The answer, of course, lies not in moving society backwards, but forwards. An inequitable division of labor, particularly founded on the oppression of women, is unacceptable. So to is a world that enforces strict gender role conformity and uses a division of labor to drive a wedge between men and women. In everything we do, we must assert the scientific truth: all major differences between men and women in ideology, ability, and behavior are acculturated or perceived, not biologically determined. We must be self-critical about the assumptions we make about who should do what and how much/how often. We should promote a vision of fatherhood and parenthood which is dedicated, affectionate, nurturing, disciplined, collaborative, and as communal as our society allows. We should invest our mental and emotional energy and time as dutifully at home as we do at work. We should hold each other accountable (gracefully and supportively). And we must do this as much for our activist spaces as well as our social and work spaces.

I’ve always been salty that the right has appropriated “red” in this instance. Red should belong to us. The real Red Pill reveals a world full of ideological justifications for the exploitation of women and the infantilism of men, and once you see it, it's impossible to unsee. Women really can do it all, perhaps not all the time or forever, but they do it everyday; the question is, who does this benefit? Men's discomfort with their changing role in the world suggests that we are beginning to see the danger in our own dependency (as opposed to interdependency) and increasing irrelevance, all because we lack the imagination necessary to break out of the outdated patterns and expectations and weave new kinds of bonds with our wives and children. 

So whatever the color, it’s time for men to swallow whatever pill is necessary to see our responsibilities towards domestic life for what it is, and what it could be. This is not about making men “men,” again, but about being an adult. Are we full, equal, responsible participants in the managing of our homes and the rearing of our children? The order of the day is partnership, and this is a good thing, for the liberation of women and the formulation of a new, positive identity for men. 

[fatehbaz]

Intro to the Neoreactionary Movement, including Dugin’s Traditionalism and Nick Land’s Dark Enlightenment (for non-weirdos and non-fascists)

Engaged in some discussion today that included Nick Land and his transhumanist movement, the “Dark Enlightenment.”

Just wanted to provide some sources to learn about the Neoreactionary movement. I think these articles/essays are accessible enough for people just learning about this quasi-fascist movement, but still thorough enough to be really informative.

So I’m paraphrasing the text of a Tungle dot com blog-post I made back in June. Here ya go:

I think I have some fun recommendations for (1) introductions to the two branches of the Neoreactionary movement; (2) New Atheism’s fusion with the movement; and (3) the degree to which Neoreactionaries are gaining influence in popular culture. 1 – Introduction to the two branches of the Neoreactioanry movement: Sources for exploring the Neoreactioanry (NRx) movement would depend on which “half” of the movement you are interested in, since NRx is split into two distinct ideologies: (1) the Dark Enlightenment, and (2) the Traditionalists. Both branches of NRx are united in how they both openly hate modernity; are passionately Counter-Enlightnement; irrationalist; want to disband democracy; explicitly abhor multiculturalism; want to reverse egalitarianism; are Social Darwinists and biological determinists; and value meritocracy and hierarchy. Both movements also subscribe to a sort of nihilistic mysticism based influenced by object-oriented ontology, which began as a left-ish or post-left-ish thing in the 90′s before being co-opted when Nick Land defected from the group of theorists to become the founder and leader of the Dark Enlightenment. Nick Land is probably the single most important individual to learn about when studying the NRx; he is definitely the thought-leader of NRx, and his writing has certainly been the most influential in attracting new recruits. He’s like an honest-to-god apocalypse-cultist and cyberpunk villain; however, that description would genuinely flatter him, because he’s pretty self-aware of his role, he loves cyberpunk as a genre, and much of his writing makes use of cyberpunk tropes. So, the current alliance-of-convenience between the Dark Enlightenment’s techno-commercialist transhumanists and Traditionalism’s tribalistic, ethnonationalist neopagans is because both groups genuinely want to facilitate the acceleration of neoliberal decay to provoke an apocalyptic collapse of global economic order. Following such a collapse, Dark Enlightenment people hope to establish a global technocracy ruled by “high-IQ” Silicon Valley-type tech geniuses to implement unfettered commercialism; whereas Traditionalists would establish tribal ethnostates under the ultimate leadership of a Russia-type military defender of its status quo. One good and thorough introductions to the quasi-mystical ideology of the NRx, and the alliance-of-convenience relationship between both branches of NRx, is a 2017 article in Salvage -- Harrison Fluss and Landon Frim, Salvage magazine, December 2017, “Behemoth and Leviathan: The Fascist Bestiary of the Alt-Right”: http://salvage.zone/in-print/behemoth-and-leviathan-the-fascist-bestiary-of-the-alt-right/   A quick summary of the distinctions between the two branches of NRx: (1) Traditionalists – value Orthodoxy, especially religious; kind of isolationist and primitivist; love ethnonationalism; races are inherently different; want to escape modernity by reverting to the past with pre-Enlightenment values; describe themselves philosophically as Arctogaians; think of themselves as earth-bound and tribalistic; believe civilization decays and collapses naturally; idealize modern Russia as a model; includes many occultists, neopagans, and mystical fascists in the vein of Julius Evola (2) The Dark Enlightenment / techo-commercialists – value secular hierarchy; want to escape modernity and Enlightenment by propelling into a technocratic future; believe the masses should be left to starve and only the smartest should hold power (to be fair, they propose giving “the plebs” a universal basic income to keep them satiated and prevent revolt); think of themselves as contemporary pirates, like corporate raiders; idealize modern Chinese authoritarian capitalism as a model Thought-leader of Traditionalists: Aleksandr Dugin Thought-leaders of the Dark Enlightenment: Nick Land, Mencius Moldbug A quick note about the relationship between Silicon Valley and the Dark Enlightenment: Peter Thiel is the notorious co-founder of Paypal, the founder of Palantir, a close friend of Trump, the guy who personally paid for the lawsuit that took-down Gawker, and a close friend of Nick Land. Thiel’s Palantir literally tracks online movements and behavior of everyone it comes into contact with, creating behavior profiles of pretty much anyone online. Thiel is open about his desire to have authoritarian capitalist governments use similar technology to enforce social order in times of upheaval.  He’s a good example of what the Dark Enlightenment envisions for the future: technocratic micro-states and wholly unregulated corporate control. This isn’t an un-fair characterization; they are open about these desires.

Another quick note about Land: these Dark Enlightenment folk, Land included, basically argue that the primary focus of humanity ought to be on achieving the Singularity as fast as possible. Therefore, to that end, all resources should be put toward achieving technological progress towards the Singularity, even if that means that millions of people starve or go homeless. The argument is that the sooner we achieve the Singularity, the faster all those starving masses can be given a Universal Basic Income once full-automation of labor occurs during the Singularity. This ties-into Land’s obsession with the authoritarian capitalism of modern China. After all, look at Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chongqing -- three cities that were effectively rice-farming villages twenty-five years ago, but now have over 10 million people a-piece, covered in high-tech industry development and beautiful skyscrapers, and all 3 cities are in the Top 15 biggest and most populous cities on Earth -- all in a few years! Of course, millions were displaced, starved, and worked to death to make it happen. Land basically sees that kind of technological progress as the model the whole world should follow. And he’s a nihilist, so there’s no convincing him and his followers that all people “deserve” food and shelter. Nope. Instead, if you don’t contribute to the labor, and if your high-IQ-mind isn’t designing tech or whatever ... then you don’t matter.

2 – New Atheist fusion with NRx: During Gamergate, it seems that (1) New Atheists merged with (2) the Manosphere, (3) the ethnonationalist Traditionalists, and (4) the Dark Enlightenment transhumanists to form a more clearly-defined core of what we now collectively call “the Neoreactionary Movement.” So, by taking a look at how formerly moderate internet communities gradually coalesced into a powerful, ambitious movement, we can identify some of the core values and concerns of the Neoreactionary movement generally, using New Atheists as a case study in radicalization. A brief but accessible description of how this coalescing happened is nicely explored in Alex Dibranco’s “Mobilizing Misogyny” (2017), which traces the gradual fusion of internet atheists with pick-up-artist communities and Traditionalists until the alt-right emerged. Ani Dibranco, 2017, “Mobilizing Misogyny” – http://www.politicalresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/PE_Winter2017_DiBranco.pdf   DiBranco does a good job recounting how the internet, even in the 90′s, had always been a cesspool of misognyny and a hub of radicalization for misogynists. She recounts how the early internet pick-up-artist (PUA) culture and Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) slowly evolved and gradually became mainstream. Meanwhile, on a different trajectory, the already-radical racial-identitarians and neofascist communities began to deliberately recruit and radicalize moderate, “average” misogynists by appealing to their frustration with empowered women. This proved an effective recruiting tactic.DiBranco demonstrates how formerly moderate “skeptics” and “rationalists” were deliberately targeted by more-radical racist communities; they lured New Atheists into their fold by appealing first to misogynist language and masculine posturing of Gamergate, before ultimately persuading them with additional racist rhetoric. Another fine discussion of this coalescing is this more-informal but still-thorough 2017 Salon (I KNOW, I KNOW...) article -- Phil Torres, Salon, 2017, “From the Enlightenment to the Dark Ages: How ‘new atheism’ slid into the alt-right”: https://www.salon.com/2017/07/29/from-the-enlightenment-to-the-dark-ages-how-new-atheism-slid-into-the-alt-right/   It is specifically the Dark Enlightenment branch of NRx which has attracted the New Atheists. The Dark Enlightenment branch is attractive to New Atheists because the movement is secular, nihilistic, led by Silicon Valley tech-bros, and believes in unregulated commercialism and governance by those with the highest IQ - qualities shared by the “skeptic” community. 3 – To what extent does NRx influence popular culture? How serious is this movement? Should we be worried?

I’d say we should be worried. The Dark Enlightenment part of the NRx movement seems especially worrisome, because it is very appealing to young, internet-savvy men and makes its argument from a point of pragmatism I think it’s important to note that the NRx movement is the truer, grander ideological force behind the relatively cruder alt-right and Trumpism. The Dark Enlightenment in particular, through the sardonic, self-aware, and tech-savvy writing of Nick Land, has attracted the most young men to the movement. I think two of the very best introductions to the cultural appeal, and ideology of the Dark Enlightenment are these. Yuk Hui, e-flux, 2017, “On the Unhappy Consciousness of Neoreactionaries”:  https://www.e-flux.com/journal/81/125815/on-the-unhappy-consciousness-of-neoreactionaries/   Park MacDougald, The Awl, 2015, “The Darkness Before the Right”    https://www.theawl.com/2015/09/the-darkness-before-the-right/   A good measure of how NRx is quickly becoming a formidable cultural force would be to observe how the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) led by Jordan Peterson has lately been legitimizing in mainstream media over the past year. The IDW is the “moderate, safe, respectable” public face of the Western world’s drift toward the right-wing. People like Peterson ostensibly appear more moderate than people like Land, but the IDW creates a pipeline that attracts more moderate white men and radicalizes them towards Dark Enlightenment-type thinking. I think that this following article is a great exploration of the cultural power of the Intellectual Dark Web. Brent Cooper, Medium, 2018, “Enlightening the Intellectual Dark Web: Calling Out the Public Discourse for Lack of Criticality” https://medium.com/the-abs-tract-organization/enlightening-the-intellectual-dark-web-41f3a1e81b3e 

(I also think this aforementioned article is the most thorough dismantling of Jordan Peterson I have ever seen! Very cathartic! I don’t know if the author is, like, kind of a neoliberal, but he debates Jordan Peterson very well, so... Oh, and this article’s really long.)

--

So, anyway. Just wanted to share for anyone interested.