#and this is exactly why you should!

[otaku553]

I got a haircut today and I’m so giddy about it,,,, it is so difficult to explain to my mom why I feel so giddy about the undercut sideburns I got

[gibbearish]

so this post has been made unrebloggable now (shocker) but ive been feeling the need to address it since i saw it on my dash multiple times, so let's explore how lying on the internet works. more specifically, how blending truth, lies, and omissions to whip uninvolved people into anger works, because i think this is an excellent example and that pointing out the misinformation and the tactics used to spread it here is important, both in correcting the specific falsities but also in helping recognize similar tactics in the future.

so here we have several things that are technically true: staff has been very openly shitty to trans women for a long time and them banning predstrogen is clearly part of that, there is currently a movement regarding discussing transmisandry/transandrophobia, transmisogyny and transphobes sending transphobic asks is by far nothing new, and baeddel is/was a slur. however, among all of this are half-truths, unprovable speculation, or outright lies made to make you believe these events are originating specifically from transmascs.

firstly, the transandrophobia movement has been drastically misrepresented here in the same way it has been for the whole argument, "they're just trans MRAs" has been repeated so many times now that i'm gonna be hearing it in my dreams when i'm 80. i can understand not being willing to address the nuance of that whole discourse in one post that isn't directly focused on that, i'm certainly not, but in this example it's not unwillingness to address a complicated topic, it's a deliberate misrepresentation to frame one side of the discussion as The Evil Bad Ones That Can't Be Trusted. additionally, this post IS about that discourse and is just pretending it isn't to mislead a wider audience, so refusing to address it at all beyond this brief mention is deliberately misleading people about the goals of the group because They're The Other Side Of The Discourse. "transmisogynists" is used as a buzzword here, it doesn't actually refer to Anyone Who Hates Transfemmes, it refers to Transmascs Who Discuss Transmasc-Specific Oppression Using A Word They Coined To Point Out That Queer Spaces Have A Big Problem With Masculinity and just. doesn't tell you that's what it means, relying on the structure and framing of the post to create the Transmisogynist = Transmasc association in the audience's head so op doesn't have to say it outright (and of course the implied Transmasc = Transmisogynist association that follows because creating THAT association is the Actual Point of this post). the mentions of transmascs in this post are designed to look like afterthoughts, op says "typically those who espouse transandrophobia" to make it look like they're saying there's other people they're referring to here too, but almost everything in this post draws from the transandrophobia discourse. some random cis transphobe in texas has never heard the term baeddel in their entire life much less used it in a debate about transphobia, this is an intercommunity argument through and through, but op is trying to mask the fact that they're just referring to "transmascs who disagree with me specifically" and make it look like it's part of a wider trend. and again, i'm not going to go into the nuances of transandrophobia here, but i highly recommend reading some of the theory on it by @nothorses (x) and @genderkoolaid (x) because the "theyre just trans MRAs" argument kinda just collapses under its own weight as soon as you look into it even a smidgen. i've linked a couple broad overviews there but they both discuss it frequently and in-depth, specifically nothorses has a pinned post linking to many different discussion threads that i would recommend checking out if you do want to learn more about what the actual conversation surrounding these words is.

so, after framing the movement this way, they go on to say that the reason predstrogen was banned wasn't /just/ because staff has a long and established hate boner for trans women, but because the transandrophobia movement was teaming up with TERFs to mass-report her and other transfemmes, and implies that this is part of a deliberate conspiracy between Transandrophobia Truthers™, TERFs, and staff. you'll notice that there are no, say, screenshots of transmascs saying theyre deliberately reporting her or of that they're working with TERFs, behind-the-scenes lists of people who reported a certain account, or any evidence for this beyond "she was a trans woman, they're trans men who hate trans women, she got banned, so these must be related". which i find especially funny now given that photomatt has continued melting down about this since it happened and made it pretty clear it yknow. was just part of staffs ongoing hate campaign against trans women that has been going on much longer than the transandrophobia debate? and that maybe the fact that The Literal CEO is having a personal meltdown about this might explain where that could be coming from or at least why it's been allowed to continue for so long, moreso than any individual users reporting someone could? but i digress.

who reported what account is completely unprovable as a casual user unless people directly admit they did it, so to bring it up like this begs the question of what actual reasoning they have for saying it beyond trying to tie a current display of bigotry into an unrelated discourse. that's not to say it's impossible people who discuss transandrophobia were wrongfully reporting her, because again, thats something we have no way of knowing, and the internet is a shit place so i wouldn't be surprised. but given the circumstances and the rest of the lies here, i have my doubts about this being an actual yknow. Thing That Happened rather than just another lie to make people mad at transmascs. now one could make the argument that op wasn't saying transmascs are /deliberately/ teaming up with TERFs/staff, that "teaming up" was just a poor choice of words to refer to multiple groups who happen to have the same goals in mind at the same time but aren't actually coordinating with one another, but given the deliberate misinformative slant of the rest of the post and the overall phrasing in this section, i have trouble extending that grace. regardless, however, that doesn't change that who is reporting who isn't something verifiable, so stating it here as a confirmed fact is disingenuous at the absolute best, and a lie chosen specifically because it's unprovable at worst. if op /does/ have proof that transmascs have been teaming up with TERFs to get trans women banned, not including that with this post is just uhhhhh dumb, and if op /doesn't/ have proof then Why Would You Go Around Telling People That's What Happened Unless You Were Lying To Them On Purpose With Ulterior Motives.

next, op goes on to discuss the rise of the term baeddel. now as i said before, the truth here is that it certainly was a slur and certainly can still be used as one, again the internet is a shit place so i would be a fool if i tried to say "no one is using this as a slur". however, this is once again a drastic misrepresentation of the situation. baeddel's rising use is due to certain trans women reclaiming it and aligning themselves with the original group's politics, namely that femininity is good and masculinity is bad (aka terfism 101), with the added caveat that by abandoning femininity for masculinity, transmascs are evil and betraying devine womanhood and their community by putting more Evil Manhood into the world. of course that in turn is a drastic oversimplification of their politics and i highly recommend checking out this post with an actual in-depth exploration of the history (and without my added flavor), but the important part to note here is that this is not a term transmascs just Started Using one day because they hate transfems so very much as is implied here, its use is directly tied to a group of people saying "hello, here is what i am, and here is what this word means about what i believe," so others went "ok, these specific beliefs are called this." bringing up the fact that it historically was a slur is misdirection here, when you look closer this is almost a 1 to 1 translation of TERFs crying that TERF and radfem are slurs because People Don't Like Their Politics And Therefore Them, so the name for their politics is used negatively, so therefore it's a slur. that argument just has a little more oomph behind it this time because It Was A Slur Originally. and again, that isnt to say no one is now using it as a slur, the rate of decay for online discourse is ridiculous so it being boiled down to and used as "evil transfemme" has certainly already happened, but to act like /every/ use of it is a slur is literally just a lie, when you self-identify with a term based on your shared politics with the original group then you do not get to claim everyone using that term to describe those politics is doing so exclusively to attack you. also this part is entirely speculation but given that op's url is basically just. baeddel switched around to dae bel, i would hazard a guess that they perhaps are indeed aware of the origins of its re-use? but again, that's entirely unprovable and based just on wordplay, but like. given the Everything here i wouldn't be surprised. now, there's definitely an argument to be made about calling users baeddels based just off of their politics when they don't personally self-identify with it, if that constitutes calling someone a slur and if TIRF should be used instead, but crucially, that is not the argument being made here. the argument being made is "ANY AND ALL use of this term is calling someone a slur," and that literally just Isn't The Case.

finally, to tie the whole post off, op reminds us 1) if you hear anything bad about any trans woman ever, it's probably a lie to make her look bad, and 2) if you hear anyone say anything about transandrophobia, disregard everything else they have to say because they hate trans women. not "be critical of the things you see or get sent" or "be on the lookout for things following a certain pattern," a unilateral "anything bad is probably fake and anyone who uses the bad words is probably evil." that is not something someone does if they are genuinely trying to raise awareness of an ongoing trend, that is what someone does when they want you to turn your brain off and be mad at a group no matter what they say.

so yeah, in summary, do be critical of the things you see and be on the lookout for certain patterns, because sometimes people will just Lie to you. or, sometimes people will tell you portions of the truth while leaving out crucial bits so that you'll come to the conclusion they want without anyone being able to say they lied to you without typing up a thirty paragraph long hell post. transmisogyny is absolutely a problem on this site and there are 100% valuable conversations to be had about it and its presence within the trans community, but this post is not that. this post uses real transmisogyny and the wrongful termination of a trans woman's account as set dressing to say that it was all because of evil transmascs who run the trans community behind the scenes conspiring to take out transfemmes, so you should ignore anything they have to say because All of it is secretly motivated by transmisogyny. they're never discussing transandrophobia because it's something that actually effects them, they're doing it to hurt trans women by saying they have it worse. they're never telling you about shitty things a trans woman did to spread awareness, they're lying to make her look bad, or even if it's true they're only talking about it as part of a hate campaign because she's trans, they wouldn't care otherwise. they're never using a specific term because People Use That Term For Themselves, they're calling someone a slur because they hate trans women. there's always an explanation you can think up that ties it back to transmisogyny, and op says that instead of assessing all of what someone says and the context behind it to determine if that's what's happening, you should assume transmisogyny is the answer and refuse to engage any further as soon as you see a word you've been told is bad.

this post is discourse recruitment masquerading as a public service announcement that doesn't offer you any routes to actually learn more about what's going on, it just tells you Here's What's Happening, Here's Who's Evil And Should Be Ignored, And If You Disagree You're Also Evil And Should Be Ignored. content of the actual post aside, i think anything framed that way should be taken with a MASSIVE grain of salt and this would have raised my alarm bells even if i wasn't already pretty familiar with the arguments, people who genuinely want you to know something just because it's good to know will give you options to learn more or encourage you to actually use your critical thinking to assess things, not tell you to sit down and shut up and ignore anyone who disagrees with them.

anyways i guess tldr

[moeblob]

A lil guy !

[stil-lindigo]

when people talk about educating yourself on the origins of ideologies like zionism, it isn’t to ask for sympathy but to show that fascism always hinges on the same rules - dehumanisation and other-ing of scapegoat populations in the pursuit of power.

fascism is, at the end of the day, uncreative and there is value in recognising the signs. When an entire ideology is dependent on the inherent depravity of a certain identity, it is worth some scrutiny.

[werepires]

Fic in which Mary tries extra hard to bond with Cas to show Dean she supports him and their relationship, except that relationship doesn’t exist in the way she thinks it does and because none of them ever use their words Dean is now faced with the horrifying thought Cas might become his stepdad

[a2zillustration]

Brain was working overtime trying to solve this one ahead of time so I could make good choices

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[[ All Croissant Adventures (chronological, desktop) ]]

[[ All Croissant Adventures (app) ]]

[luck-of-the-drawings]

EDYN TIDESTRIDER, CHALLENGER OF THE UNDERSEA, RIVAL OF THE DEEP. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR BROTHER WAS CHOSEN TO BE A WEAPON OF THE GODS? HOW WILL YOU UNDO WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO HIM?

[luuxxart]

evil win! the ones plotting for your mysterious death are uncle and nephew!

[tritoch]

in general trying to write a fully canon-compliant wol, as i conceive it, is an interesting project because the wol's life involves such a staggering amount of direct interpersonal violence it is almost beyond comprehension. the only people in the real world who did anything comparable are like, certain executioners for totalitarian states, and that's obviously a very different form of violence.

and like obviously combat in FFXIV should not in any way be taken as a 1:1 with real world violence, not least because the game repeatedly points to the idea that combat can in some sense be a joyous and glorious form of personal expression (as with ravana, susano, zenos, etc.), which doesn't really square with the reality of doing violence. but to even begin to conceive of a character who's capable of doing what the WoL does from ARR on and trying to take it somewhat seriously means basically making an extremely detached killing machine, who's fine using those skills for any rando willing to call the hit they're hiring you for a "quest".

it ends up dovetailing really nicely with the games as written, though; you start ARR being like "i am an instrument of violence directed by others :)" and not talking much or ever registering your own thoughts on anything, because who cares? you're a violence-doing machine. and then one of your friends gets mind-controlled and you gotta fight a might-makes-right fascist and you meet multiple people who think you personally are a really cool person with inherent value in their own right just by being a person and it's like, hm. maybe there are other ways to live. and that parallels really nicely with DRK in HW, and then you and alphinaud deciding that you are tired of endless sacrifices in the name of progress and you are going to save estinien, and then the WoL getting to walk into stormblood having really consciously chosen this fight rather than letting someone else choose for them.

obviously there are a lot of stories you can tell with your WoL but to me this is a big part of why my approach to it necessarily revolves primarily around violence and regret. you spend the core game and two expansions becoming a terrible angel of death and then get teleported to another world where you learn that some people literally consider you a psychopomp who escorts the dead to their final rests. then in the next expansion you meet someone who was unfortunate enough to be on the other end of things during your implacable killing machine days. THEN you accidentally cause the flower that symbolizes grief to be invented. the wol's whole life is haunted by overwhelming grief (mostly that of other people) and terrible violence (mostly their own).

[fastianini]

Valentino Rossi & Marc Márquez

[ happy (belated) 9 year anniversary to sepang 2015 aka the one weekend everything went wrong, everything changed and that still haunts motogp to this day <3 ]

history of man by maisie peters

[himejoshiangels]

obsessed w how bitter and upset duke is w Bruce in this arc. and he has every right to be! he knew Bruce almost personally at that point, and his parents were joker gassed in a recreation of the wayne murders in an effort to get to batman. they were collateral damage and duke had been suffering pretty much alone as a result. his whole ideology is that robin doesn't need batman but on a more personal scale, you can see why he thinks that! when he needed Bruce he wasn't there, when he needed batman he wasn't there either. And he'll fret like he didn't care like it didn't matter but it DID

Ik I talk abt this panel often but that's bcs KTZZZZ ITS SO CRUCIAL TO DUKES CHARACTER!! He becomes completely self reliant, isolates himself he can't wait on batman to save the city, can't wait on batman to find his parents or wait on batman to save him, he's all he could rely on, and that self-reliance later grew into an almost cynical worldview. it's why his whole "emphasis on the word 'we'" thing at the we of WAR meant so much. he had hope in not just his own beliefs but in others' as well.

ANDDD it's why his and bruce's dynamic drives me up a wall but that's another post for another time..

[crimeronan]

VERY NON-CANON SHITPOST:

amity finding out that her parents were involved in Whatever The Fuck You Call Whatever They Had Going On with darius & having a moment of sheer panic like. "what if darius is my biological dad. oh titan. is that why he puts up with me. is that why he's somehow been more present in the few years i've been in the coven than my actual dad has been my whole life. what are we"

at some point she lets this worry slip around hunter. hunter, trying not to look like the cat who ate the canary, is like. [thoughtfully] [not laughing at All] [Good Friend Emotional Support Voice] hmm. i guess you could just ask him?? i mean, if it's really bugging you. pretty sure he'll tell you the truth. then at least you'll know one way or the other

amity sits on this for a while because in some rational part of her brain, she IS aware she is being stupid. but after a few weeks of "what if," she finally DOES go to darius like HI. HEY. REALLY QUICK AREYOUMYDAD ACTUALLY DON't anSWER THAT. BYE FOREVER

darius, eyeing this kid who looks so much like alador you could mistake their childhood photos for each other: ....yes.

amity: oh. shit. like actually?? for real???

darius: yup. carried you myself. alador was way more attentive than he was to odalia with your siblings. well. half-siblings, i suppose. that must be why she's so awful to be around. jealousy doesn't look good on anyone. shame your dad never got over me, it must throw Such a wrench in their marriage. haven't you ever wondered why your mother is such a massive bitch??

amity: ......OH. okay. you're fucking with me.

darius, very patiently: yes, amity. I Am Fucking With You.

[andi-o-geyser]

something about the show treating percy's use as only being to serve vex's joy kinda fucking hurts. like vex is distraught, she was in the stream and she was here, that's true. but they are framing this as if it's a romantic loss only and it's making me lose my mind. people don't lose their use to others when they enter a relationship. they don't just become somebody's partner. they're still a person. percy was a full person and vox machina is a family and everyone loved him. that was the point of tearing ripley apart in the original glintshore fight, they were nothing but pure rage because they just watched somebody they love die and at the end of the day, past the monsters and world ending threats everything is about their love with each other, as a group; platonic, familial, romantic, but love as a FAMILY. that is critical to understand. they are who they are because they all love each other, they love each other to the ends of the earth. and the show just. doesn't acknowledge that. percy died so vex could feel sad and that's it. truly what even is the point if nobody else cares. the death doesn't matter if nobody else cares. so percy's death doesn't matter.

[triglycercule]

horror being very specific with table manners and he berates people (dust and killer) for eating like fucking pigs

i think it'd be morbidly funny that because there was no food in horrortale but the cutlery and stuff was all there that maybe he would pretend to eat with no food on the plate. it was in a satirical way that he would joke maybe around horror paps or alone where he would pretend to eat and have really good table manners but then the satire joke became REAL and now horror is incredibly specific about how to eat food

you MUST hold the fork in the left and knife in right says horror. no killer you can't duel wield the fucking knives this is a table not a slaughterhouse. dust pick up your elbows off the table. actually how about you get your entire upper body off the table tf why are you SLEEPING ON THE FOOD??? killer's sitting fetal position in the chair because of course he wouldn't sit normally like the idiot he is. dust is forced to put his hood down and reveal his face no more mysterious shadow style because it puts horror at ease. they cannot have a single peaceful meal because once they get past the table manners phase it then becomes a completion to see who can eat the least (because they suck at everything including eating)

[halflifebutawesome]

you used to be such a baby.

[macaroni-stars]

they are actually my roman empire