#being a catholic in leftist spaces is fucking

[beatlesandbards]

That's not pedantic. You're begging people to see a form of prejudice that gets completely ignored bc Christian=privileged, and in a culturally Christian (protestant) society like the US, it gets you eye rolls at best to suggest nuance beyond that.

Nevermind that fundamentalist evangelical groups drive the bigoted efforts so many non-religious folks define Christianity and Catholicism by; the more conservative it is, the more Catholic it is, right?

It's been socially acceptable to be anti-Catholic in this country since its founding, and that sentiment is sneaky and persistent. Sneaky enough that people completely forget things like the KKK attacking Catholics as well as people of color.

Yes, we have much bigger prejudice fish to fry, but we have also got a Lot to unpack about the cultural assumptions we've internalized and the inter-sect prejudice we've inherited.

Time for my periodic "most Christians in the US are not Catholic, half of Christians globally are not Catholic, and most of the things Tumblr users refer to as 'Catholic' in a pejorative sense are not unique to Catholicism and are often just as if not more prevalent in various Protestant denominations, I know I am being pedantic but I am begging people from predominantly Protestant societies to examine why they tend to assume the most socially harmful negatives about Christian cultures are uniquely Catholic features" post.

[starlit-mansion]

I kind of wish that being a hardline atheist and skeptic hadnt circled back around to being seen as cringe and annoying

[gloopytits-chaosmod]

I've interfaced enough with anime fans to know that watching anime comes from a place of weakness, of refusing to engage with media, to seek the absolute lowest denominator of storytelling where there's nothing challenging and every character only exists though the trope you can discern from a glance.

Anime as an industry degenerates art itself. Twitter is filled with artists putting their whole pussy into making spunky colourful character designs of the same female to exist only for users to briefly acknowledge then discard from their brain forever. Spot, like, scroll. Fulfillment.

Anything that doesn't give an immediate dopamine release at the moment of impact between visual stimuli and the interpretation cortex is thrown out for being too challenging. Anime is the new medium by which people who understand they understand very little and refuse to do something about it express the world; through total and complete rejection of complexity, depth, personality, passion or meaning. Through the endless consumption of colour and voice acting throw together into a slop and churned through the corporate grinder.

What remains is a deeply political, radicalised cell with no awareness of the social values they embody as they allow conservative corporate culture define what is and isn't, only to turn around on the burner account to ask why the fuck they feel like shit all the time, why the dysphoria is so bad, why it's so hard to live with what you have. The state of anime is a race to the bottom to hack the human mind and create consumers that become dependent on their media like addicts to heroin.

from this we get idol industries and the toxic parasocial nature of Vtubers and their community. To a person adjusted to deal with reality as is these entities are off putting because they emulate a more infantile moment of life, but to the people whose malfunction is the lack of synchronicity between real life and their favourite media these are safe spaces where they can be groomed into ideal whales, ideal citizens, defenders of slop and Catholic, the isolation of the make believe social structure they've come to depend on further alienating them from the world they've lost track of.

For money.

If Axis Infinity is capitalism in its most raw form for the digital era, bourgeois dividing the means labour between workers recieving the bare minimum to go on living, then the Anime Industry is the late capitalism of the digital era, a mind numbing anaesthetic for coping with the radicalising political reality, praising your passivity and rewarding you for never challenging yourself and your peers. It's the makings of fascism, of a loyal herd, of an environment where critical voices are unwelcome. We know this because Anime communities are the most welcoming of sexists, racists and other bigots. It appeals to losers who need online communities to validate their reactionary political beliefs because as an inherently and deeply conservative industry it consciously chooses to suppress the reality of whatever conservatives dislike.

It's a safe space for the world's biggest fucking losers.

Not to mention shit fucking forums like reddit's "anime circle jerk" where they consume the exact same garbage but with a wink to the camera, with the authenticity of an ex smoker going "drunk cigs don't count haha". I don't care if you're performatively leftist, if you have no standards, if you have no boundaries, if corporate anime still appeals to you despite how uncomfortable it ought to make you as a queer person, as a woman, as anything that Japanese and western conservative culture wishes was either dead or repressed, your leftism is for naught and you'll justify anything as long as it appeals to what you want to like.

So no, I'm not fucking watching Chainsaw Man. Stop calling things peak just because it's the last thing you watched.

[alarajrogers]

Look, I am not Jewish -- I was raised Catholic and am now agnostic/atheist (I don’t know what there is but I know for a fact it’s not the Christian God) -- but I think it is important to point out that being a leftist, socialist/communist, anti-Semite is absolutely like carefully picking out a gun to protect your family with and then carefully and deliberately lining it up with your foot and pulling the trigger.

Anti-Semitism has been used for at least the last 120 years to deflect the working and impoverished classes’ absolutely justifiable rage against the wealthy elite into attacking another oppressed class, which does nothing at all to improve their situation and, in worst case scenarios, feeds the corporations  blood money. (IBM sold 1940′s-era computers to the Nazis.) By conflating “wealthy elite” (most of whom have always been Christian, in Europe and the US) with “Jews” (most of whom are not wealthy, although their strong emphasis on getting a good education and pursuing careers in fields where the demand is always strong, such as medicine and law, means that they are probably statistically more likely to be middle class than people who were allowed to own farmland, which for centuries Jews were not, who are now suffering because big agribusiness ate all the farms), the actual wealthy elite get to redirect the peasants with pitchforks off their doorstep. We can see it very, very clearly nowadays, where idiots like Marjorie Taylor Greene repeat misinformation about Jewish space lasers instead of demanding accountability from the giant barely-regulated utility that actually caused the California fires, thus attempting to preserve that utility’s stockholders’ fine dividends.

If you exist anywhere left of center in your beliefs, then anti-Semitism is a tool of your ideological enemies, and only helps them. You are not going to improve the situation of the Palestinians by conflating “the government of Israel” with “the Jewish people” (and if you’re American or British you’re a massive fucking hypocrite for doing so, given what Americans and what British colonialism in general has done to indigenous peoples worldwide.) All you are doing is feeding the misinformation machine that keeps poor white Christians -- and for that matter, middle-class white Christians -- from recognizing who the actual wealthy elites are and what they’re doing. In fact, you make it really hard to even talk about wealthy elites because of the extent to which “wealthy elite” has become an anti-Semitic dog whistle.

The Left can be, and often is, as anti-Semitic as the right... but the problem for the Left is that anti-Semitism is, in itself, a tool of corporatism and right-wing beliefs. Anti-Semitism, like racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc, is wrong because it’s wrong, because it’s morally bankrupt, incorrect, accomplishes nothing positive and causes enormous human misery, etc... but anti-Semites don’t care about that. Well, care about this. If you’re on the left, expressing prejudice against Jews, conflating Jews with the capitalist 1% (or hell, even the bourgeoisie), or conflating Jews with the government of Israel, is actively harming your cause. Actively. Harming.

So get the fuck out of your own way and stop clinging to anti-Semitic beliefs, expressing them, repeating them... just fucking stop, okay? It alienates your allies, it gives aid and comfort to your enemies, and oh yeah, it also makes you a bad person. But even if you don’t give a shit about being a good person, try to at least be a good Leftist, or liberal, or progressive, or whatever you define yourself as.

[spectogram]

Ok honestly for real how are so many young people such intense prudes. Like Legitimately people are so infected with bizarro right wing puritanical thinking but they’re still calling themselves “leftists” it’s so fucking nauseating. It’s the whole thing where in any given fandom space I feel like to talk about sex at all is to be accused of grooming if there a a chance a 16 year old could come across what ur writing, as if 16 year olds must be protected from the very concept of sex and sexuality which is objectively insane. U see this whole thing then where sex can only be talked about and treated like it’s porn or not mentioned at all. UGH. I think about this a lot also bc being raised catholic made me so weird about sex and my sexuality and now it’s like even spaces that have a veneer of being safe from that thinking are actually on the same spectrum of repression and guilt it’s gross

[soundwavefucker69]

At some point leftists especially in fandom spaces have to come to terms with the fact that morally we are a very confused group of people that don't know our left from our right. We want to get rid of the death penalty, but call for guillotines. We cry and shout for prison abolition, but we violently reject any radicalized veteran from our spaces because redemption is not something we want to give to people and yet we preach it all the same. Like as a whole, I have only seen one single redemption arc in media people by and large approved of, and if we're being honest, Zuko's redemption arc was less a redemption arc and more a story about a victim getting out of an abusive relationship with a couple of extra steps. The only fucking reason he was considered redeemable was because he was a child acting in the name of a man who was willing to permanently disfigure him bc he didn't meet his standards. That's it. Like, fandom in general has created a very warped sense of morality where you call for things to happen irl and then get infuriated when it happens in fiction. Do you or don't you want the death penalty? Do you or don't you want prison abolition? Do you or don't you realize the alternative to both of these is redemption for people who might not otherwise deserve it? When I see people in fandom throwing a fit, I see a very naive way of looking at the world in black and white. You want the world to work your way where no one ever did anything wrong, and when they did, you want them to prostate themselves in a show of Catholic guilt and work to gain your forgiveness, because forgiveness is something you believe must be earned if someone is to become a better person, rather than someone making the independent decision to just stop being a bad fucking person and decide that if people accept them, that's their right, and if they don't, that's their right, too. I'm just very tired of all of this moral confusion and lack of critical thinking going on in fandom. Especially when you start applying morality to fiction and then declare other people bad people for, say, liking Agent Kallus from Rebels when you yourself are an unashamed Anakin stan. Either stop fucking applying morality to fiction to the point of ostrachizing or harassing other people or start being fucking consistent in the morality you apply. You can't have it both ways. It doesn't work like that.

(Ps I'm not saying get rid of guillotines I am very much for guillotines but if you're gonna be inconsistent do it with your fucking chest don't just sweep it under the fucking rug.)

[bisluthq]

Ugh god I get so annoyed at leftist gatekeepers. This is the reason ppl don’t want to leave the right and join the left lmaoooo

So like I fell down the rabbit hole in high school and ended up leaning conservative. I never loved trump, thank god (I was a Rand Paul Republican which in hindsight is also gross bc he’s a trump shill now). I was complicit with trump but I mean I was 16 so lol what did I know right. I was one of the few conservatives in my high school.

And I’ll be the first to admit it. I’m privileged. I’m white, my family is pretty well off (well we used to be in debt and stuff but like my dad makes good money he’s just in an iffy business so he’s gotten laid off sometimes) and I was raised Catholic. I am bisexual but like I was confused in high school (who wasn’t). Still.

I went to college and I switched my major to nursing and then all this shit with COVID made me realize how awful conservative values are (especially when there’s a fucking pandemic!) and how we need a better healthcare system. Like should I have changed my values earlier? Probably. But it was covid that changed my mind and it was nursing school and like 🤷‍♀️ if it took Joe to change Taylor’s mind then it did. And I agree her attempts at political advocacy are horrendous lmao but like idk. There’s no point in nitpicking IMO. Like she’s on our side. Obviously she’s not going to be a communist ACAB person anytime soon (like I’m not either lol) but like if she voted blue in this election then maybe we shouldn’t be hurling vitriol at her lmao and focus on trying to convert more actual republicans. Like this is just so unproductive and it’s not the real issue.

And like idk do you want these people on your side? I get you shouldn’t baby these people, like if I had someone come argue with me and tell me I was wrong maybe I’d have snapped out of it years ago (and like obvi people like trump and Cruz should be punished). But like if they start coming over to the left and you’re like “well you USED TO believe this”. Like what does that do??? Nothing. And who cares how someone gets there as long as they get there right??? Lmao sorry for the novel but like this just irks me

No I really actively agree with you and I’m generally anti gatekeeping right like in all aspects of life. I’m not gonna decide how much of a progressive, or a queer, or a Jew, or a woman someone is. Like it’s not my call to make. I don’t think we should hurl shit at her either.

But I think we can make nuanced critiques from a place of love and respect and admiration IN THIS SPACE especially since we know gatekeeping lefties are gonna go do it on main and we may as well clarify our arguments to be able to respond to those people.

Like I hear you, I’m glad you changed your mind, and you’re like... enough.

I believed some weird shit too over the years. I’ve always been lefty leaning but I’ve said FUCKED UP SHIT and believed strange ideas tbh. It’s okay to change your mind about stuff.

But it’s also okay to like.... talk about this stuff because advocating for people to be better, especially when done from a place of love, can make the world a better place. Like yesterday we discussed religion and one of my favorite influencers is Adina Miles-Sash who is SO PASSIONATE about Judaism and being frum but she’s also REALLY KEEN TO MAKE FRUMKEIT PRO WOMEN. And when she criticizes people it’s not to say, “fuck this it’s not enough” it’s “fuck this I know you can be better”.

And honestly that’s me on Tay’s politics but I’m not even writing op eds about it because I genuinely love her too much like it is enough. But she can be better.

And I love your frontline, progressive, bi woman self being an active part of the community here!

[dykeulous]

well said lay, as always 🪄 you keep doing god’s work with all of your awesome thinkpieces. keeping me sane & hopeful that a truly nuanced-approach to trans topics is possible. if only more trans people were willing to listen to radfems, they undoubtedly would come to the conclusion that their ideas truly aren’t all that different. they’re just scared to death of actually conversating with radfems because they’ve been told all radfems are some evil bigoted fashies or whatever.

i know it was like that with me. being trans, i’ve always been very hesitant to enter radfem spaces, despite holding leftist-feminist beliefs. and when i did enter radfem spaces, i tried my absolute best to prove to everyone else that i was “safe” and “not crazy like all the other radfems”. it KILLED me. i was scared to speak up about gender abolition because i didn’t want to be excommunicated from my community, because i truly did love some of the liberal tra friends i had at that time. i called myself a tirf literally every time i spoke up, and would add “terfs stfu this is not for you!” disclaimers before making some slightly more-than-hazy feminist points. and i still got called a fascist, a transphobe, a catholic traditionalist, a right-winger, a bigot. when i would say, “guys i am literally trans wtf”, i’d be hit with a “trans people can be transphobic!”. yes, trans people can be transphobic…… but how the hell am i transphobic for acknowledging sexism & the patriarchy? if anything, i had way more internalized & unpackaged transphobia back when i would roam around transmed spaces, watch kalvin garrah religiously & constantly shit on myself for not passing & for not being able to pass. it destroyed me mentally, it drained me, it made me hate myself. and no matter how many times mainstream tras go, “oh brother you just hate yourself!! the evil radfems are teaching you that you’re just a confused little girl!! radfeminism is bad for your mental health!!”, i will always have the same response for them– radical feminism does not make me hate myself, radical feminism does not have a negative effect on my mental health in any way, radical feminism saved me. i have a unique voice within radfem spaces, because i can offer analysis on dysphoria & trans issues in general– and i assure you, radfems generally hear me out more thoroughly than what i’ve been given for the times i’ve spent in mainstream tra spaces. i know these people think i let myself get shit on by the portion of radfems who genuinely are hateful (keep in mind they believe this portion = all radfems), that i conversate with genuinely transphobic radfems 24/7 & just let them walk all over me. i know they think my conversations with radfems go like this, “oh you’re just a confused little female womanly girly girl girl autistic girl >:D”, and that i just respond, “yes oh my god so enlightening so true speak your mind!! i’m just a confused little girl you’re so right” or something. no. trust me, i know how to handle hateful radfems. i have interacted with them & i have told them to fuck right off on multiple occasions, lmao.

yes. i’ve seen a handful of radfems say a lot of downright gross & disgusting bs about trans bodies (both transmasc & transfem bodies), claim transitioned trans people are mutilated, insult doctors & surgeons and so and so on. but the generalizations from the tras are WILD. this is by no means the accurate representation of radfems, it is mostly people who tokenize the label & do no actual activism. hateful people will hate. a lot of self-proclaimed radfems are also ableist, racist, homophobic, misogynistic (see how a lot of them treat & speak of bisexual women (or even just non-separatist women in general) or gender conforming women, or transmascs which falls under the transphobia but it also undoubtedly is misogyny)– but it is dumb as hell to see all of those people as the Picture of Radfeminism, especially given that they just use the label despite no evidence of backing that shit up! like. bffr, they’re radical pieces of shit lmao, not radical feminists. there are horrible people within every political group. and this is so hypocritical & unfair on the part of tras, because they protect the people on “their side” who are heinous & bigoted. radfems generally try their best to eliminate the genuinely hateful people from their groups. (also we have to keep in mind that the people who tras use as evidence for “radfeminism taking over all political groups”, or “radfems making anti-trans laws”– are mostly just right-wing women who have nothing to do with radfeminism. a lot of them don’t even do the tokenizing i’ve mentioned, they just straight up call themselves right-wing & never utter the word “feminist” in their lives, yet alone do feminist activism).

anyway. sorry for going on a long ramble lmao i just felt the need to discuss this despite it being quite irrelevant to the original post. the point you make, about transmascs vocally supporting transfems 24/7 while barely ever getting anything in return– this might seem like a reach, generalization or whatever. but it really is true. the least transfems could do is acknowledge that a specific axis of oppression targets transmascs– but instead, a lot of them call us “transandrophobia truthers”. lol. it’s the new term they can use to target us. it’s being used as a “terf” equivalent– but for transmascs who are openly feminist or even just starting to acknowledge the way that transmascs are being treated in trans spaces. like ok i get it dysphoria sucks. but please step tf up and fight for “your family” or whatever you claim transmascs to be. transmascs genuinely do go out of their ways to defend & fight for transfems 24/7. to hell and back again. the least transfems can do is research the ways female-specific misogyny targets us. the least they can do is step down from their little thrones for a bit & listen to us. because we always listen to them. they owe it to us. we all owe it to each other, because we are all oppressed by the heteropatriarchy. now that you’ve acknowledged that fact, please swallow another pill– not all of us are oppressed in the exact same way! intersectionality is important! you always parade it! so why erase it when it’s about the different types of oppression different groups of society will face in regards to gender? hm? maybe ask yourself why you seem to believe transphobia is worse for trans women, why you think misogyny doesn’t affect trans men, why you think trans men are privileged & oppressive…… why?

when someone says that women weren't allowed to do xyz until a certain date mainstream tras might give a side look like hmm :/ this isn't inclusive of trans folks... but otherwise leave it alone.

but if you say that specifically cis/bio women and transmasc ppl weren't allowed to open their own bank account until 1974, suddenly you're making the transfems feel a bit too privileged and it causes a riot bc you're pointing out that amab/male folks used to have an INSANE amount of privilege on the basis of being born "amab" and even if they were super gnc, they still had that privilege from birth. to this day, cis/bio men and transfems do NOT go thru many specific struggles that cis/bio women and transmascs experience. but that's somehow controversial as FUCK to say in most tra spaces. why?

fr why is that? why?? why are transfems so fucking oversensitive to anyone pointing out that they're not oppressed on every single axis of oppression? meanwhile transmascs are bending over backwards being super fucking supportive of transfem rights and having so much nuance about things without much knee-jerk defensiveness at all. could it be that perhaps... hmm... "amab" upbringing does not teach amab/male folks what it's like to face misogyny, so they often do not enter feminist spaces, and now that they enter leftist spaces they don't know that we're all about intersectionality and nuance and acknowledging the ways one might be privileged in some ways and disprivileged in other ways? instead of showing allyship to cis/bio women and transmascs, transfems and their more extreme allies instead sit on their thrones and get offended whenever anyone implies that they might need to be good allies too. why is that?? why are cis/bio women and transmascs enabling that behavior so much?

hmmm it's almost like how afab/female folks are conditioned to excuse inappropriate behavior from amab/male people from a very young age... almost like the stereotypical One Of The Boys (in this case Males) trope, trying to be a Cool Girl (or Cool Trans Boy) to be validated by the ones in charge, the amabs, who are just poor sweet misunderstood cinnamon rolls uwu. i think mainstream tras really idolize transfems. which comes from a sweet place, and might feel good, but also means you're infantilizing them like precious perfect little princesses who can do no wrong. that might be validating for transfems ─ who doesn't like being coddled every now and then? ─ but also means not holding them accountable the way we're supposed to hold EVERYBODY accountable in leftist spaces. or at least that's what we generally pride ourselves in, right? isn't that supposed to be a leftist thing? intersectionality and all that?

and this is why so many cis/bio women and transmascs are joining radblr. this is why even some transfems are saying okay, this is too much now, and actually seek out female/afab voices and hear their povs and apologize for how they're treated by tras. the tables are starting to turn. people are too fed up with this shit. we are getting muzzled for talking about the most basic feminist stuff ever, things that back in the day oldschool trans folks were WAAYYYY more likely to see as common sense and feminism 101. systems of oppression are complex. you can talk about how hard transmisogyny is, and you'll get sympathy from most of us, but you gotta listen to how hard anti-female/afab misogyny is and how we're uniquely persecuted in specific ways you aren't. and you gotta work hard to learn how to be a good ally to us, you gotta research, you gotta learn. so many transfems have no fucking clue how to do that. so many cis/bio women and transmascs are acting like their loud guard dogs too, coddling them, speaking for them, enabling them. it's leading to really bad shit to happen. it's enabling transfems-on-female/afab abuse and bigotry... and you just sweep it all under the rug, say it was just a "terf" roleplaying, it must be a troll, it doesn't matter. it's just one or two victims, why should we even care about them? why make any changes to prevent further victims? that's such a classic male apologist mindset!!! this shit is not okay. we will never accept that bs.

you need to clean up all the misogyny and homophobia in your spaces or the only sane folks will come to radfems and find actual nuanced discussions about oppression, and you'll be left with crazies. if y'all are gonna act like oversensitive toddlers then radblr is gonna be where it's at for real leftist activism. enjoy your little tra circus ig 👋

[silvasaliva]

the thing that’s never really addressed about non religious people weighing in on stories about christians doing terrible things on social media and beyond is that they will absolutely and blatantly refuse to look at the religion through the lens of anything other than that 2019 cancelled culture leftist trendy train of thought.

like, to them, catholicism is like PETA. sure, it had a good intention when it started, but it’s leaders are so fucked up that you are complicit to secular sin for even saying you’re still catholic. they consistently and conveniently forget how religion is a worldview that is (for most religions) first and foremost a SEPARATE entity from its followers and their actions. nonreligious people fail to grasp the dillineation between leaders who fail to uphold their religions virtues, and the philosophies and teachings of the religion itself.

y’all will really act like you have a serious and new kind of mf point to make when you bring up the sins of christianity’s past or the failures of christianity’s present leaders, as if that isn’t a sore mf wound that devout christians havent already been floundering to address and correct and heal from and move the hell forward with and reconciling their feelings of betrayal and hurt and loss with their faith without your loud ass mouth walking in and interjecting in a space you actively despise.

and then y’all really have the nerve to deny and invalidate that this shit isn’t really being addressed within the church???? what christians do you follow on twitter that are gonna keep you on the up and up stacey????? what christian blogs and sites you subscribe to???????? all you know about christianity is what shonda rhimes and cnn and repetitive shitty sitcoms tell you christianity is. grow up and smell the propaganda linda.

[c-bassmeow]

I truly don't want this too sound like a generalization but I've never dated a Colombian and I can't figure him out. We've only been talking for about 2 weeks but I not sure if he's interested in me or just being friendly. Any advice?

this is why i hate tumblr cus yal act like people from one country or culture are the same. I know you didnt intend to generalize but .... what else are you fucking doing when asking me this?  i know this was asked in with good intentions but what do you think i would have said? It is important to see people as individuals and also to acknowledge that culture and ethnicity etc. do not determine what an individual will believe and act. They indeed may influence  a person even to the point that one can make statistical inferences about the probability of someone from a certain group believing or doing something BUT this does not negate the point that most people hold views that are contrary to the dominant form of their culture you know why? cus culture is severely overrated  and people have their own thoughts independent of what they are told they need to think or behave like. You know why? because we are all humans with brains that function the same and the differences we see are due to adaptations from our environment and a few genes here and there and culture is just the whip cream on top not the entire cake. This is why no culture remains static. yet the new-leftists on here think culture is so important it makes us SO incredibly different from one another that its almost impossible to understand each other - which I call bullshit on. now im not saying this is what you think, I went off topic because i had too much coffee, but nonetheless everything i said still stands. [yes i joke a lot about white people and their tendencies but these are just jokes i dont view white people as a monolith in real life] 

In order for me to be of any use, I would need more information. WHere from Colombia? Also... ... although statistically colombians are catholic is he practicing? did he “stray” and go into atheism like i did? I mean the possibilities are endless.  

even if i knew everything about him, at the end of the day the causal factor that would help you know if he was into you would most likely have nothing to do with his culture. [

Now one thing i can say is that Colombians have a tendency to be very flirty and kind and nice but then again so do all latinos but then again so do many many cultures claim this trait its almost as if its a human trait haha oops. and once again he can be an exception. so im sorry for sounding like a prick i cant help. “warm/friendly” cultures can give birth to cold individuals and “cold” cultures can give birth to warm and friendly and loud individuals. 

I can though say that you need to be bold and assertive and open.  Ask him  what hes looking for, ask him about what he wants in life, where he plans to go, what his plans are for next year, and see if any of them include you or if they have room to include you. Is he even looking for a relationship? only down to fuck? Does he find you attractive?  And if you want maybe try to see how he responds to non-sexual, non-intrusive touch like a light touch of the hand. also pay attention to how close he gets to you. One thing that is almost universal amongst latinos compared to americans is that they (i forgot the official academic term for this oops) have a tendency to remain closer to someone when socializing, basically they dont need as much “space” in proximity to the person they are socializing with. this is often misconstrued by americans as them being sexually interested in you. But once again cultural tendencies are general rules of thumbs and all general rules of thumbs have many many many exceptions and are always broken. hence why they are rules of thumb and not laws.  so i think the best thing when getting to know someone of another culture is just getting to know them as an individual and also try seeing how they stray from their culture and what things they hold in high esteem about their culture. this will give you insights on their personal values and an insight with how they navigate their beliefs and actions. some people indeed do follow their culture almost to a T but most people stray in many areas, you can never know unless you find out.  this is the true way to know someone to view them as an individual and not as a byproduct of cultural norms that this person has to abide by like some zombie, this is a fictitious, stupid, and harmful view of humans that i hope can be stopped soon. wow i hate drinking coffee i rant too much when this happens. 

[delusion-of-negation]

""you're capable of looking away" Yes, just as if they are wanking. You shouldn't have to. Shared public space."

hey, I have burn scars, I have been told by people I shouldn't be allowed to show any skin whatsoever in public because nobody should have to look away - but actually, yeah you should if you'd whine like a little bitch about some scars or clothing. I made the distinction between sex- which wanking is- and clothing, being naked (which isn't a danger to anyone jfc you're so american), or being on all fours. you actually should look away if you see stuff you're uncomfortable with in public- people have to do it for the triggers, for the stuff that grosses them out for whatever reason unrelated to this (ie food they find gross), this is no different.

""there's no sex going on" I guess you are doing it wrong, then. Because the reason kinky people do kink is because it is kinky. Maybe you are just bad at it."

surely it was an accident that you took half a sentence out of its context, "you're not part of the action if you walk past someone on fours [...] there's no sex going on whenever that's happening" because it ended with whenever that is happening, referring to people walking on all fours in public- that's not sex. things that a person does during sex are not sex, people kiss during sex and I have yet to hear more than like two people claim that kissing in public is equivalent to a kind of sex in public. I'm doing sex great however you're apparently unaware of what that word means.

"can't even read this wall of text, but, man, do you need to learn about whitespace."

um this is leftist tumblr we don't like white spaces here uwu

"strangely it's not the christians, but the muslims, who physically kill gay people right now at this moment."

I think you're confused about what conservatives and the right actually are if you think it means christians but not muslims lol (note: it's neither, and both, depends on the person, fun facts)

"There's no country where Christians aren't the majority where gay people are safe."

yes there are lmao, and it isn't christianity that protects gays it's democratic left leaning countries following civil rights protests

"Stuff like this is rallying parents who see a threat to their children."

stuff like a person in drag, which isn't kink, who is fully clothed, with literally no skin showing and is just chilling with some cool rainbows? any parent who sees that as a threat is a cunt lmao

"Adults sexually interacting with children might seem desirable to Leftists,"

that's fascinating because you said christians were conservative however I was abused and tortured by catholics for the first few years of my life, in my experience it's the right who desire kids. I know, I was one of the kids. that's not what I've ever supported. (note: neither side of a political compass inherently abuses kids) buddy, you're twisting people's words, cropping sentences, and posting pictures of fully clothed people doing jack shit then you claim they deserve to be killed for it, all to justify your absurd as fuck, backwards view of the world and politics that's downright homicidal of your opponents, projecting as hell, and needs crap tactics like cutting my sentence in half. you're just pathetic.

"And if your kink means you want to get people involved without their consent, then you deserve exactly the fate we used to dish out to such folk."

see, this is why "happens to exist near" can't be the definition of "involve", and why I said people need to justify what they say the definition of these things is. because saying that somebody that went outside without shoes on because their partner has a foot fetish and they're being a tease is "involving people without any consent" means people get to put that on par with rape and say people's twisted sense of vengeful justice around rape could be legitimately targeted at that. these hazy definitions are the grey areas bigots like the above enjoy taking advantage of to spin a narrative that may seem compelling to the uninformed layman.

"If Leftists keep pushing, the bloodbath that follows will be terrible."

I appreciate hearing what you jack off thinking about, but I gotta honestly say I could've guessed it by your username, ultramaga.

edit: oh and to the person above that

"Right or wrong is not as much of a factor as 'if you give up acceptance and start making demands, you're going to be shocked at what happens when the straights remember they can say no and make it hurt us.'"

literally saying stop making posts on tumblr about morality, guy who studied and is interested in moral philosophy, because the normies might decide to kill us. like? my guy? right or wrong is a topic I talk about. if you think weird threats that there will come violent revenge if the minorities get too uppity changes that, idk what to tell you. I wanted to leave this post alone but bitches be tagging me. your responses honestly would sound far far more unhinged to normies than mine. you're talking about killing folks because they wore puppy masks or had bare feet or drag, dude.

This is just drip.

[shinden-rants]

Racial supremacists and the political spectrum

Racial supremacists today are generally authoritarians with a double standard. They generally view authoritarianism as a necessary evil to maintain the hegemony of a certain race over others, or to deport, imprison, or even murder the undesired race. However they are generally relaxed about the treatment of their desired race by authorities. They should be able to start any business they want. Why the double standard? Well, racial supremacists are quite simply radical race realists. They take the idiotic theories of race realism and use them to spell out why a society has problems. Generally they will come up with a term or terms for the "problematic" aspect that is introduced by the undesirable race. White supremacists cite "degeneracy" which is wholly the responsibility of the Jews and Blacks. Anti-white Academia cite "whiteness" or "imperialism" which is wholly the invention of white people. Racial supremacy is also introduced in stages when the race is considering themselves to be opressed by a majority race. Because of this, they preach unity and redefine their race. Take for example these terms: "white" and "poc". Both of these terms are most definitively not races, they are wildly generalized appearances and are very new concepts. I'll take a personal slant here as an example: fifty years ago, I would not be considered white. White was specifically referring to people from "advanced western european cultures," even so far as being strictly Protestant in the case of the US, such as the English, French (debatable), Germans, Nordics, etc. Since I have celtic and eastern European blood and much of my family was catholic, people like me, in my family, were not considered fully "white", even though we can sunburn under an LED. Irish, Italians, Greeks, Spanish, Slavs, even Scots were considered "too ethnic" to be white. Suddenly we see a rebranding effort by people like Richard Spencer, where white is judged (much like the new term "People of Color") simply on appearance and a pretended European united identity. This is a poorly forged façade, because they know that this is only a temporary view in order to garner support to gain clout. They cite crime, cultural 'degeneracy', and the ideals of a tiny but vocal subset of extremist civil rights advocates and opposing race realists as a plot to destroy Western civilisation and force us interbreed until a race of "mongrel idiots" without the "genetic predisposition" for ingenuity and objectivity and intelligence becomes dominant, as a small group of oligarch overlords forces them into a revised version of slavery. If these white supremacists really understand the natural progression of this ideology with their "genetic predisposition", and can identify patterns, they know that if this ideology became mainstream enough, and Richard Spencer's white America was realized through "peaceful cleansing", that after the jews, blacks, hispanics, asians, etc were gone, that the old dusty tomes would be pulled out from under the wobbly desk legs and the next targets would be the Irish, Italians, Greeks, etc... if anyone is a "mongrel", it's the white American ("oh, I'm 1/4 French, 1/8 Irish, 1/4 Italian...") They're seeing it with the idiotic segregationist policies and ideals of runaway leftists. The "PoC" zones in institutions are already discussing limiting these zones to deny "light skinned PoC" from engaging, forcing Asians (a moderately well off demographic in the US which still faces a ton of discrimination and insensitivity, especially from the media. Name three Hollywood movies with an Asian protagonist who wasn't a side character or antagonist) out of their 'spaces'. What makes white supremacy any different? In an authoritarian white supremacist nation, most of these torch-wavers would be in the lower castes. Extremism is bad. Objectively bad. Bad for personal liberty, bad for humanity, bad for the people who justify it. We were finally getting within reaching distance of societies where appearance was not a judge of character or ability, but now these idiots come out of the woodwork to expel garbage and divide us up into fucking color coded camps with plans for further divisions. We can't point to one event that started this horrible resurgence, and I pray decades from now we won't be able to point to one event that ended it.

[mutualhighmaintenancemachin-blog]

I need a fix cus I'm going down

Made the mistake of appraising myself sufficiently healthy to attend a bonfire with normal decent tax-payer type folks. Stood up too fast in my chair and blacked out completely, hit my head on concrete. When I came to i had no earthly fucking memory of having driven to the bonfire, nor could i really recall the names of the three concerned hipsters perched over my limp doughy abscessed jaundiced shit heap of a body. Told them it was a problem with blood sugar, i had forgotten to imbibe my afternoon orange juice! Translation-haven’t slept in four days, taking in roughly two hundred calories a day all in ginger ale. Meth heads opt to sustain themselves on a diet of paranoid resentment in lieu of proteins and grains. The cook gets super spun and lectures us like we’re babes about the dark leftist forces presently waging war on the masculinity of the white man-for one thing, he's convinced that jews run the porn industry and that fucking pornhub is riddled with overtures both overt and subliminal intended to brainwash white guys into identifying as weak and feminine and to associate men of color with heroism and strength. He also believes that soy causes gender dysphoria. All of these batshit crazy delusions act like stars in the broad constellation of the cooks worst dystopian fears-a workforce with no room left for traditionally male-centered leadership characteristics dominated from top-down by a host of future ladies who make their trade in creative collaboration, rather than fear and theft of other peoples ideas. Without a need for a provider, our nazi-bespectacled methamphetamine cook envisions a new sexual economy in which women will jettison their attachments to the family structure in favor of like, industrialism, i guess, and men will have no other resort but a desperate turn to cross-dressing and dick-taking and i guess maybe stitching scarves. It was at this point that i was really tempted to tell the cook something he needs to hear-if you really believe that large shadow societies are orchestrating history just cus they want to make you some dudes boyfriend, its probably cus part of you wants to be. I get that, sucking dick is a blast. if you’re terrified that you can’t compete in a post-modern job market, it might just be because you aren’t. There’s no place left for cowboys or outlaws or methcooks cus those professions only make sense in the context of an insanely violent frontier. You feel obsolete and useless because you are, but make no mistake, that hurt has nothing to do with the world everything to do with your soul being severely malnourished. I know cus mine is too! Real moral christian courage is showing up to your crucifixion with a smile on your face ready to graciously thank the romans for every nail they put through your wrist. You feel empty because your a paranoid fascist meth cook, i feel bad cus I'm a junkie. We are bad. The nazi pilots who blitzed france in two sleepless, speed-fueled nights probably felt fucking fantastic, as if they were aloft on the trade winds of history itself and their momentum across europe must have seemed like proof enough of the moral righteousness of the german cause. But then the morning comes and the meth wears off and your skin smells like piss and your back aches and you can’t stop grinding your jaw and the first wave of survivors begin to trickle out from the camps and presumably in that moment a few nazis had the epiphany-that the very same starved beaten traumatized jewish women and men and children they had aspired to extinguish from human memory were now going to tell the story of what had happened. Power loses, grace is its own kingdom, etc etc. Furthermore those german officers who managed to transition back to civilian life and start families must have experienced a very strange new parental dynamic-can you imagine a family at a dinner table and the proud head of household instructs his small son to finish his vegetables and after pausing to mull it over for a few moments his son turns to him and says Father having thought about it a great deal i don’t think ill be following your instructions-after all you were only following instructions yourself when you helped to engineer the greatest cruelty in human history! To which ostensibly the father mumbles to clear his throat and asks his wife to pass the potato salad. Not even to invoke the possibility that the Fuhrer himself Mr. Adolph Hitler probably died surrounded by a swarm of shadow people, fucking hilarious just the thought, him yelling in that distinctive manic patois of his that he’s the leader and the abeyance of his will is sacrosanct blah blah blah while the little invisible mites under his pale skin shift and swell and scratch and the shadow people dancing around his peripheral vision taunting and cajoling and ridiculing him and the absurdity of his final solution and because he didn’t know speed the way we now know speed he probably didn’t know anything about the shadow people at all from his perspective they might just as well have been the ghosts of his victims come to taunt and ridicule him in his lowest hour pointing and laughing and daring him to pull the trigger!   

The same entitlement motivates the mass shooter who imagines a world full of seven billion perfect strangers as an attack on his rightful pursuit of happiness. No one will sleep with him and he can’t make sense of his place in a world built on fucking so he begins to indulge in fantasies of coercion, revenging himself on the very public space he so craved Now if our hypothetical douchebag had any pretense of self-awareness he might have looked into the possibility of adopting several dogs, and in turn coming to see his life as a story about caring unconditionally for animals. That’s a helluva life-Saint Francis got into the catholic hall of fame for doing not a whole lot more. Or perhaps he could adjust his expectations of intimacy in consideration of the countless plain-to middling-to ugly folks who are forced to come to terms with the truth early on that all of our bodies are grotesque and hideously deformed billboard advertisements for our big beautiful impossibly dense souls-come see a kernel of divine inspiration made self-aware, shimmering in the glory of creation,  just two exits past the tits and chin and ankles and all the rest of our faulty parts. 

Now a discerning reader(however unlikely you’d be to find one in an audience consisting of absolutely fucking nobody lol) might have already begun to detect a certain heady strain of hypocrisy in this authors conclusion. Because while I'm not much of anything the one thing i certainly am is a self-destructive drug addict. So maybe its one thing for me to make fun of the cook for his wrath-filled flu-stricken infants tantrum of a way of viewing the world, assigning to his solipsism a generation-hopping solidarity with his nazi forefathers who came before and identifying in his politics the germinal seed of fascisms future, a politics so personal and self-contained that every divorce will be debated as if it were a stand in for larger cultural decay, every morning hangover a portent of spiritual decline, the vitals of the stock market remeasured and reassessed each time someone finds on the sidewalk a loose dollar bill. Political assemblies with real largesse exclusively devoted to trolling the instagram of a nebraskan man named doug’s now ex-wife  for pictures of her maui vacation with husband number two drinking mojitos on a beach with sand bleached white as bone and both of them grinning with surgical precision an opulent almost confrontational kind of public grinning Doug couldn't recall that bitch ever having felt for him and the kids off playing in the surf and well how could any concerned and conscientious citizen fail to see the basic threat to democracy that whole scene represents? Donald Trump is probably the loneliest man in the world. He’s never met another person. He spends his time wandering the halls of his head checking for reoccurrences of his own reflection, a lifetime spent pathologically re-telling the same story about how he came to be the most powerful person in the world, so that by the time he really became who he had always pretended to be, the most influential figure in the free world, he had long-since bought into his own fraud to such a great extent that even the real thing couldn’t compare. Only a selfishness and self-centeredness as grandiloquent as his could explain the mindset of the modern mass shooter and the micro-politics informing him. He confuses his head for the world and then becomes enraged when it won’t do as he wishes, cursing the rain for its cold lash against his shoulder where he’d rather there have rested warm summer glow, furious at the thought of all the people he would never meet in far-off places he would never see who never paid him any attention whatsoever. Playing peek-a-boo a little bit of cheating peer through chubby fingers arrayed like a geisha’s fan and for the first time see that objects don’t disappear without our gaze to ontologically anchor them to earth. What a hurt. Now it might be technically correct that my addiction does to my loving family what the selfishness of the mass shooter does to public space. It intrudes like an alien thing and turns the air chilly in our childhood home and it transforms the medicine cabinet into a contested territory in need of defensive fortification and now that Cassies marriage has crashed on the rocks of addiction nobody could blame her if she never allowed another addict to darken her doorstep again and there was the sight of Jan opening my trucks passenger side door and a few rigs fell out onto the floor and all the spoons in the house have one side burnt-and-bruised like a black-eye you say you got from falling down a flight of stairs despite body language that says something entirely else why is it we don’t have a single spoon in the house what ghost spends all night punching the walls full of holes 

recently went to an Alanon meeting to sneak a glimpse of how the other half lives...this lady said my addiction is to loving my addict. Bawled rivers out from red raw-rubbed rubber eyes and said my addiction is to my addict Not her person or qualifier or partner but her addict. Syntax almost seeming to suggest that something about the existential plight of the addict gets her intoxicated dizzy on pain. It’s quaint though cus that sort of sentiment is for fucking rookies-guarantee you no ones crying over me like a romantic. Not anymore. My thing these days is of a distinctly more shakespearian strand of tragedy, with wittgenstein and derrida’s influences also undeniable. I’m sick now in a way where people stop crying and praying you’ll find God and change and decide instead it’d be easier to just cross the street. Schizophrenics lost in a chorus meant only just for them, apocalyptic street preachers who stand on soap boxes while reeking of shit and give voice to visions of an America not our own, an alternate dimension where european arrival at the shores of the new world stalled out somewhere halfway across the pacific ocean on a wave so tall it scraped the heavens and America grew up a nation of nomads who set their watches to the rumbling migration of herds of buffalo and not even the highest priest could dream of a more beautiful idea than that of motion, movement without cease, the only acceptable fixed still frozen property being the burial mounds where the dead went after all their motion had gone-if they could view us on the other side of the looking glass stolen away in our own personal homes they would almost certainly come to the conclusion that this place where we live is just the land of the dead, a negative photograph of everything vital and good. Who would i be to disagree though, right? 

The point is anyway that some alchemical reaction of A. Mental illness and B. Amphetamine abuse has more or less stranded me in words. Verbs and nouns and adjectives and adverbs in place of sky and grass. What Fredric Jameson called the prison house of language. Where derrida’s difference goes to play for eternity, never quite meaning what it had meant to say. What shook wittgenstein speechless. The president’s rhetoric so hollow that you can almost see him suffering a kind of dementia or spiritual torpor that results from the badness of his faith. Chewing and chomping consonants and sounds till they all are made to mush and shearing syllable after syllable off the network of signification until all that’s left is one satellite pinging a distress call hello is anyone there off of its own side. It’s own side like Adam plucked Eve from his rib and said put on this dress-after they ate the fruit and God cast him/her out to walk the world alone reportedly God said have fun all alone you worthless slut. Imagine trumps final state of the union-i am very sick, i have been alone for as long as I can remember, i wish i hadn’t lied so often, i wish i had occasionally told the truth, i would trade all of it to have known just one person. 

Anyways, barring that miracle of political theater, the body gets sick and dissolves while the spirit is lost in words. I’d like to die in a bathroom stall in haughville with a rig stuck in my arm and the words I'm sorry stuck at the tip of my tongue and God decides to show some compassion and makes me a deal says you were never much good to people didn’t believe in a thing but you sure could do some impressive vomiting up of nonsense words and so what ill do is your soul will dissolve and turn into ink and for the rest of eternity you’ll be a naughty joke or a half-scribbled doggerel scrawled on the wall of a piss-soaked bathroom stall in the ghetto or you could say call this number here for a good time and don’t forget to ask for large marge and nobody’d ever suspect you were trapped in there or maybe a joke like this favorite of mine about my son it goes something like Jesus Christ was a God-awful carpenter, couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. Christ was a God-awful, couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. Couldn't pull a nail. Christ was God-awful. Couldn’t nail his own couldn’t save a carpenter terrible couldn’t pull god-awful a terrible carpenter he couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. I can’t pull this nail to save my own life. It’s right there sticking out of my wrist, but for whatever reason I just can’t find the right words to pull it out he was a carpenter who couldn’t pull a nail even if his life depended on it couldn't save his own life he couldn't-

For a good time call this number 1-555-555-5555 and don’t forget to ask for-

[eightyonekilograms]

I'm sorry that tonight is one of those nights where I have to be a little fighty, but this post is very irritating to me, particularly your list of "things that are aligned with right-memetic space."

"Being motivated by freedom of expression is right-coded" is the worst one. This is just offensive, as well as being pretty ahistorical and subject to some really bad recency bias. Averaged over everybody, whoever holds the levers of culture and society is against freedom of expression, and the people who currently don't hold these levers say they're for it. It's all contingent, because everybody is a hypocrite with no convictions who will flip as soon as their side gets or loses power (and of course, intersectionality means that you can have more or less power in different places at the same time, and people do indeed move accordingly). For a long, long time, the people holding those levers were either the explicit right, or at least the small-c conservative status quo establishment, and so they were the ones who insisted we needed "reasonable limits" on freedom of expression, which is why in my Only 90s Kids Will Get This youth it was abundantly clear to me that the left was the freedom-of-expression fighters we needed. It's only very recently that those levers changed hands; whether the left reluctantly acknowledged the ugly realities of having responsibility in a complex world, or just because they went drunk with power, they went kind of off the rails with it, but the right's resulting complaints reek much more of resentment that they're not getting to put the boots on the faces. Indeed, I think a major strategic failure of the American right at the moment is that they can barely hold up the pretense that they care about freedom of expression, and the cracks in the facade show through constantly. The "scary, dogmatic" hiring/firing policies at "leftist" universities still have not caught up to what has always been SOP at Liberty, BYU, every Catholic school, etc.; under its new ownership Twitter has now more-or-less equalized the incidence of partisan social media attack mobs; everything Ron DeSantis has ever said and done; this shitpost I made where in reply, mitigated literally couldn't contain his glee at voicing all the crackdown revenge fantasies they plan to do when they get power again, and so on. We'd be in a much worse and scarier place if they were disciplined enough to actually try and put the effort in to differentiate themselves from the illiberal segments of the left, but fortunately they don't bother. I can't speak for Scott, but if I personally take snipes at the left more than the right for trying to undermine freedom of expression even though they're equally guilty, it's because they have always been my camp and I really bought into it back when they were holding it up as paramount. Which, again, was not that long ago! So, y'know, fuck me for actually believing it, right?

"Societal collapse" - I'm completely aware that "societal collapse" is the standard thing the right retreats to when they want to outlaw some social trend they hate but cannot point to any demonstrable harm (and can neither point to deontological rules, because they're aware that doesn't sway anybody anymore and they have no choice but to argue on utilitarian grounds). But like... societal collapse is a thing which can happen even if The Gays aren't to blame. It has happened several times before, and although I don't think something like the Bronze Age Collapse or the post-Roman Empire is going to happen again, there are plenty of contemporary examples like 90s Russia, to indicate we can not simply sit back and assume, Fukuyama-style, that things are going to get better forever and there's no point in worrying. If you can make a case that this or that really could result in societal collapse, you should present your case! The fact that the right abuses this concept tremendously does not mean it isn't real.

"heterodox gender takes" - man, what? "The categories were made..." is still, years later, the go-to essay people use for defending trans rights specifically and unorthodox genderstuff in general, if they're not specifically preaching to the choir of a leftist audience. To the best of my knowledge Scott still completely stands behind that essay, to the point where Zack Davis devoted something like a fifth of his 50,000-word rant to it and him in particular. This is the list element I don't understand at all. If Scott also sometimes mouths off at gender takes, well, sometimes people online really do have awful gender takes, and for gender specifically I will point out that nobody can even agree on what its ontological status is, never mind what its definition is; its not reasonable to expect you'll never find a single take you disagree with.

"Government overreach" - again, it is difficult for me to square the claim this is a particularly animating principle for Scott with the fact that he wrote the Moloch essay, whose entire thesis is how systems without coercive central coordination typically run amok, and could easily if uncharitably be read as a defense of authoritarian government. As for me, I'm a big-government tax-and-spend soc-dem who still thinks it's important to notice and complain about government overreach, if for no other reason than because a soc-dem government needs to maintain legitimacy in a democracy, and so cannot afford to take bruises from visible overreach or incompetence.

This all just seems like a weird double-standard to me. Like, Freddie de Boer takes aim at leftist attacks on freedom of speech, leftist phenomena he thinks are fraying the social fabric, leftist gendertakes, etc. way more than Scott does, but nobody accuses him of being a secret right-winger. They might think he's dumb and that he needs a better filter, but not that.

I remember a while back Noah Smith (the econ writer) described Scott Alexander as a "right-wing" writer, which is a stretch (its binary thinking, he is grey tribe) but I thought was pretty prescient overall. It Igot a lot of pushback at the time - Scott ofc is an ace, poly, liberal who is, if he votes, voting Democrat 95% of the time.

But who you are as a person is not who you are as a writer, and he really nailed that the things Scott is most motivated about align with the right-memetic space. Freedom of expression, "societal collapse", government overreach, a generalized deep instinct to defend any target of leftist attack, heterodox gender takes, etc. And a little bit of that...conspiracy mind, just a touch of that fervor. Again I don't want to overreach, he is grey tribe, but once Noah pointed it out you really see it. As @triviallytrue said, naming Venezuela specifically is a very telling example of what fears motivate you.

Which isn't a criticism ofc, I am heterodox enough myself and think there is a lot of value in those idea-spaces even if its primarily not my ideology (its why the decay of the right in the US has been so tragic, its not only that they are powerful but that they also used to be valuable). Its just interesting to note, since its not something you would see if you read his work in say 2013.

[nicanario]

#hooooooly shit this person#is#i cant even fucking#yes the criminal justice system in america sucks shit! YES its bad!#NO‚ YOU SHOULDNT trust a cop when they pull you over at the side of the road#BUT ALSO. we go to an EXTREMELY LIBERAL UNIVERSITY#and. well there is some EXTREMELY well known history that happened at this specific school#that means that i would be Fucking ASTOUNDED if a cop actually got away with killing a person in this fucking town#ESPECIALLY on campus#like I'm serious. That would be... very‚ *very* surprising. The political history here is... not compatible with that. At all.#(btw no im NOT just saying that. this is 1000% a special case just if i said why id be doxxing myself)#like. there would be an UNGODLY amount of uproar if a cop ever did that here!#and YES its okay for YOU PERSONALLY to not be comfy with talking to cops#but when our LGBTQ center hosts an event w the on campus police. THAT IS A SAFE SPACE. AND IT IS *GOOD* IF QUEER KIDS WANNA GO#THAT FUCKING MEANS ITS GETTING BETTER#politics /#negativity /#IT DOES. N O T.#MEAN THAT THE LGBTQ CENTER SUPPORTS FUCKING FASCISTS!!!!!!!!#SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP#EVERY FUCKING TIME A QUEER KID GOES TO AN EVENT LIKE THAT THATS ONE LESS TIME A COP KILLS SOMEONE!!!!!!!#they seriously accused us of supporting fascists like WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU. /Y O U/ BROUGHT THAT UP!!!! /YOU/ DID!!!!!!!!#WE'RE JUST SAYING NOT TO GENERALIZE INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE JESUS FUCKING CHRIST#not who#ari opinion hour

as a very queer, very online person, yes I totally agree. like, there is a lot of shit in the world. and there can be trends. but especially since we try and preach about how stereotyping and generalising is bad, and not to assume something about someone based on preconceptions... fucking don't automatically assume a conservative you just met in real life is going to be a fucking facsist based on people you "debated" in YouTube comment sections. for example, I recently met a conservative catholic in college and we're reading a lot of very progressive texts together and he likely understood them better than me and the only thing he said to me yet regarding that was something a long the lines of "this sounds kinda leftist" followed by "you should know, I'm a conservative catholic but I know when I should start criticising the beliefs I might hold".

don't automatically assume that someone that doesn't know shit about a topic is a bigot. for example, a while ago, my aunt and I talked about trans issues and she said a few things that could be considered transphobic, but that's because she's over 50, probably has never met an openly trans person in her life, and was actually trying to connect what I was saying with something she had already heard somewhere in the loveliest, most understanding way possible; I politely corrected her without much issue and without going full TED Talk mode.

also, do not, under any circumstance, categorically assume what another person's beliefs are. I hate when someone says something kinda bigoted and the response is "but you know that they also think..." no. you don't fucking know. you know what you should do? ask them what they think.

I'm not trying to defend conservatives here. I'm trying to understand people. we're not going to convince anyone by preaching, though that is definitely necessary sometimes. we're going to do that by being kind.

that means, when a person you know says something bigoted, definitely correct them. but also, put yourself in their shoes. are they really an irredeemable fascist? or are they someone who doesn't know better and who, with kindness and understanding, might grow to be a better person?

this obviously doesn't mean every single person deserves kindness. this just means... be open-minded. isn't that what we're trying to do?

jesus fucking christ do you ever see a queer person in an online space that like so clearly is so terminally online that they seem to have completely lost the ability to think in a nuanced way beyond black and white good/bad binaries