#bigoted fragility

[describe-things]

new meme format.

[ID: A chart labeled, "Fragility scale", with three colums down the side. The first is labeled "Fragile" in yellow, and reads, "Glass". Next is "Very Fragile" in orange, for "The tail of a Batavian tear". Last is "The most fragile thing in the world" in red, for "Fandom when you criticize racism, misogyny, ableism, and other bigotry in media.". End ID.]

Download the HD template from the internet archive here. The image description should be copied and pasted whenever you use the meme, just edit whichever parts you're changing. No credit is necessary as long as you make your post accessible.

[chaos-in-one]

Hey, reminder, someone being ableist about one disorder does not excuse being ableist about their disorder jfc

[jackawful]

You really gotta understand that essentializing people is a tool of harm only & even if it weren't, it's at least a good way to ensure people bristle at you and get defensive instead of like, listening to your points. Even if someone has done a Bad Thing you cannot move the focus from the harm done to an Inherent Personal Trait without it being hella counterproductive & causing more harm.

[kats-play]

This is usually what I say when someone does something awful and they use the "past trauma" excuse: "That's your responsibility to manage." Trauma is called "baggage" for a reason. Yes, it can be heavy and cumbersome. It can be too much to carry on your own. It's okay to ask for help carrying or unloading it. But it's still your responsibility to manage. No one has to carry it for you or ensure it gets to its destination. If your trauma is affecting your life so much that a handful of homeless people minding their own business makes you fear for your life, you need to get help. If you don't, the only conclusion anyone has to draw is that you're a bully.

thinking about how my mom spent like 2 years getting downright vicious about the houseless folks who were camping in the woods past her house (to the point of getting a BB rifle that looked like a real fucking gun to threaten them with when they crossed in front of her house??) and justifying it with White Lady Fear a la "what if one of them does something to me! I am but a helpless white woman living all alone!!" and like...

y'all, she terrorized those people. every single time she saw someone outside, she was riling her dog up to bark, waving a gun in their faces (that for all intents & purposes they certainly thought was real), yelling at them, calling the cops (thank god the 2 rural-ass cops didn't actually give a shit), etc.

and she justified it with fears of womanly fragility & inability to defend herself, and I believe how afraid she was! she talked about fearing they would break into her house at night and sexually assault her, and I believe she was legitimately afraid of that. she's been victimized in many of the ways she was afraid of being victimized by them.

the thing is that it doesn't matter how real the fear is.

nothing ever happened, nobody ever tried to threaten her, nobody tried to break in, nobody even approached her. she initiated every single interaction. when she told them not to go through her yard, they did the best they could to respect that without giving up their camping spot; which was on someone else's property, who didn't mind them being there (not to mention one of them is actually indigenous to this specific land!)

she was a thousand times more threatening to those people than they ever were to her, but her fear of them was still real. and that's exactly what made her so dangerous.

I need cis women to internalize this ASAP. your fear is real, and it can and will hurt others. your fear is real, and it is harmful. your fear is real, and your hurt is not deserved, and you still need to grow & heal & prevent it from causing harm.

[gun-witch]

So you're a retard who resorts to childish insults who knows nothing about therian community history and why it should be preserved despite otherkin overlap. Okay. Got it. 👍

See, I know this is bullshit because people who are actually progressive enough to support alterhuman communities don't throw slurs. Actual progressives also don't appropriate "we don't hate you, we're just trying to protect ourselves from your weirdness" rhetoric from white supremacists, that's just TERF shit.

You're just some weirdo bigot trying to divide a community with in-fighting and you're very bad at it.

[dukeofankh]

If your vision for the deradicalization of right-wing men begins and ends with "other men telling them that that's gross and to stop it" then I'm sorry, you do not understand how masculinity works.

"Men who hold patriarchal status" and "men who are feminists" are two groups who overlap less than you want them to. I'm sorry. That's not solely because men are so happy with patriarchal status that they don't want to risk it by policing misogyny/queerphobia/racism, It's because being misogynistic, queerphobic, and racist, end expressing other forms of toxic masculinity(and often abusively so) are part of how people establish and maintain patriarchal status. The men who have the ability to stop this via nothing but peer pressure are the very people who are doing it. That's by design. And engaging in feminist intervention is, in and of itself, usually the abrupt end of that status and its associated power to persuade misogynistic men.

Like, I have worked in blue collar jobs as a notably queer person. It was pretty much a constant deluge of verbal abuse. In my experience, most blue collar work environments are exploitative, abusive, and bigoted, and very gleefully so. On the occasions I have spoken up about someone saying something that was super fucking out of line (asking me which of the girls walking by was hottest. We were installing a portable classroom at a middle school), believe it or not, they completely failed to be shamed! Because nobody else on the crew gave a fuck. *I* was the weird one. They ghosted me. A full blown company ghosted me. I suddenly didn't have a job anymore because they just straightforwardly stopped telling me where the next job site was.

Like, this doesn't mean that it's your job to do it, but this vision you have of these big groups of men where everyone is on the fence and there is precisely one shit stirrer who can be shut down by a brave feminist man who can single handedly set the example for all these other guys...you are high. You are describing an "everybody clapped" level absurd scenario. Most of these truly virulent misogynistic guys either have zero friends, because, you know, our society is atomized to fuck, or they are in a group where the feminist guy is actually the weirdo who can be shut down and ostracized much, much easier than the misogynists, because there is no such thing as a man misogynists respect who stands up for women.

You might be saying "well, we're talking about longstanding personal relationships, actually. Like, they need to have to want to spend time with you and then, as a side effect, you can mind control them out of being a threat to us."

Problem with that being:

1: Many feminist men also have no friends, see the atomized society above.

2: Feminist men already stopped hanging out with men who make rape jokes because why the fuck would we want to spend time with them.

3: That isn't just because we respect women so hard. We are in many cases talking about men who are also deeply queerphobic, heirarchical, violent and abusive to other men. What initially drew me to feminism and women was a lack of heirarchical squabbling and constant bullying, and the ability to be openly queer. A lot of men who came to feminism did so because they knew that the patriarchy was not a place they would find success or acceptance. These are not the men who are gonna be able to change right wing minds.

4. Men do not view themselves as a monolith. There is no universal brotherhood of men. The actual meaning of the term "Fragile masculinity" is that men are constantly expected to prove that they are deserving of the status of being a member of their own gender. There are large swathes of men--including most of the men who you'd look to as examples of good, feminist men who you want to undertake this project--who are considered failed men, sissies, f****ts, soyboys, ect. They are. Not. Going. To. Convince. These. Men. Of. Jack. Shit. Much less successfully *shame* them. Jesus.

I know all of this sucks. I know it would be cool to be able to just point at a group and have them be responsible for the work. But nah. It's gonna have to be a societal project, one that will probably outlast all of us. Sorry. The thing you want these men to do is, absolutely, the morally correct thing to do. But presuming that it would be effective is, and once again I am so sorry about this, just ignorance of how these social groups function.

[vanilla-voyeur]

Deeply ironic that when complaining about how much of a minefield it is to correct people in my pronouns someone asked me why I was so triggered

[tehjleck]

Conservatives have a war on absolute truth because their racist core beliefs are not compatible with reality.

[anauwhere]

Imagine writing black people/ lesbians/ women / Americans dni in your DNI but of course men/ white people/ cishet creepy women/ [insert nationality for fun lol yk which one are allowed to be mocked] is totally fine. Yes I can be bigoted and exclusionist bc they are Majorities bc they are not oppressed TM. Fuck off idiot read an history book open that damn mind a bit

[roadimusprime]

Earthspark currently has a 3.8 imdb rating all because it dared to be an inclusive show and the bigots found out and got very angry

[thoughtsfromb4]

The Tenacity Of Hope

Now, in this land, in times beyond our forefathers,

Beyond those who were first and merely squatters– 

Those who crossed the Delaware’s frozen waters, 

Those brought and sold as economic fodder, 

Those who charged ashore into lead breakwaters–

These people were real, not the myths some now proffer. 

So in this day is it our intent to say 

(As, from our ideals, we’ve now run astray) 

That the reality of their truth has today

Such little value it can be cast away?

Of course, times have changed, and yet so have we,

So perhaps what we need is a reverie, 

A vision of a future that can still be seen,

Free from the authoritarian political machine,

A vision for you and me–for all to see– 

The path from here to where we should be,

One that can clarify and bring into view 

All the types of things we all must do.

So, what should be our new vision's theme? 

"Liberty or Death" or “I have a dream”? 

Or something newer, a rallying call

Like the one we heard one glorious fall 

When, out of nowhere, came a politician;

and I tell you what, he was on a mission,

Because this guy had devised a simple plan 

The “Audacity of Hope” plus “Yes We Can.” 

He made us see that what we face 

Is not beyond our knowledge base,

That we have the strength to carry on 

And to lay down foundations whereupon 

We can build a new future–with all our hands–

And begin to enact all of the types of plans 

That shepherd that future and serve to guide it 

Down a path we can walk with Pride beside it. 

Of course, that was then, and this is now,

So we face the eternal question: how? 

How is it that we can respond to this 

When so many feel things are still so amiss?

When so many people live in a world without facts

While cheering on a demagogue's authoritarian acts? 

When majorities cry victim as they still oppress 

Any who dare to offend the fragile views they possess? 

Sadly, history shows these troubles have been seen before

Whenever bigots and despots blame the tired and poor,

So we must keep up the resistance and fight on once again, 

Just as those before us who worked to move us to Now from Then.

First, we must remember that "Yes We Can" 

Was simply so much more than a single man– 

That rallying call was built on aspiration,

Calling out to us all as if a gauntlet thrown,  

A challenge sent out to the entire nation 

To earn the ideals that we claim to own. 

Yes, we can meet this challenge, but to do so, we must rise

Up to meet the gaze of all those with hate within their eyes-

Just as those before us who stood up to all the tyrants of the past,

Ironclad in their convictions, hope unconstrained by class or caste.

So in this Now we must speak out, vote, and protest; 

We must summon our strength of will and refuse to shrink

From the unending trials of our democratic contest 

With all those who seek to push us to the brink. 

For it is in all of the faces of our can-be-great nation

That we see how it is we will cope, 

Showing all, through our audacity and determination, 

The true Tenacity Of Our Hope.

--@thoughtsfromb4

[brydeswhale]

See, here’s the thing, if they don’t accuse you of being a horrible abuser who violates people’s freeze peach over voicing your personal taste in entertainment, how are they going to silence you if you start talking about real issues with transformative fandom, like the proliferation of CSA material, the racism, the harassment of actors/creators and fellow fans?

If they don’t silence you on your own blog, how are they going to silence other people who might want to voice less than toxically positive opinions on transformative fandom?

Make no mistake, whatever @bibliodiscotheque tells themselves, that’s the end goal. To stifle anything that might be taken as a criticism of fandom in general, so no one has to venture into the scary territory of “improving society somewhat”. Up to and including personal opinions on personal blogs.

Because “fandom is a safe space”!

why do modern aus exist. what compels people to look at fun characters in unique fictional settings and go omg but imagine if they were boring young adults living in a generic suburb

[busket]

i don't think it's any mistake that many people in the queer community still hold great prejudice towards afab trans masculine or nonbinary people given that "blue haired liberal with pronouns" was a major strawman used to delegitimize the queer community in the mid 2010s. not always from alt right openly bigoted crazies, but the internet savvy smug libertarian/centrist folks. they used images of afab trans and gender nonconforming people to tell you that being queer is cringy, that feminists were hysterical and selfish and fragile snowflakes. a lot of you guys fell for the propaganda and you haven't done the work to unlearn it

[myfandomrealitea]

Me: Hey so actually maybe treating children like fragile stupid little things who need to be sheltered from even basic life concepts is doing more harm than good. Antis, bigots and religious nuts: So you wanna fuck them? You wanna fuck the kids? Pedo.

[tehjleck]

Klanned Parenthood.

[oldmannapping]

Headcanon:

Scarecrow is the most left-wing, progressive, banner-waving, protest-marching rogue in Gotham.

Why?

Because fears rooted in systemic abuses of power are boring.

He wants something juicy. He wants a fear rooted in a personal insecurity that cuts deep into an individual’s fragile psyche.

He doesn’t want every minority’s biggest fear to be the cops. That’s BORING.

He gets so upset when people’s biggest fears are being outed. He hates bigots because they make fears predictable.

So every time there’s a petition, every time there’s a protest, every time Gotham’s streets get closed for another march, Scarecrow’s there.

He’s handing out water bottles and sunscreen, he’s reminding everyone what the hashtags are, he’s coordinating with Red Hood’s goons to hold back the police presence and keep the protests peaceful.

Then he’s going back to his crazy lab to design a toxin that will obliterate the sanity of every single person in Gotham, and so help the city if someone hallucinates their transphobic uncle again.