#cause its not 'discourse' its fucking wank

[olderthannetfic]

Re: discourse about using outliers / the worst examples of a group to justify generalizations-- this is also a problem with the femslash wank asks

I'm one of those filthy f/f folks who actually does want to see more femslash relative to mascslash, but I'm not anti-fujo or a terf or telling ppl to change their own tastes. I'm proship / SALS and kinkmato and I think fujoshi are great; I appreciate their massive contribution to fandom culture including AO3's existence itself

But some ppl seem like they just hate f/f fandoms generally and want a reason to bitch about us? and I've felt super demoralized by it whenever I read your blog lately

Like the complaints about f/f being too wholesome and fluffy and that this is somehow bad?? tumblr is C O V E R E D with cutesey fluffy bubbly m/m art using That Artstyle we all know and nobody complains about it. But when sapphic art is like this suddenly its cause we're boring sexless puritans who dont know what pussy should look like? The huge amount of kinky weird depraved f/f thats out there gets totally erased and the wholesome stuff gets scapegoated as a symbol of regressiveness.

Or the constant lecturing to "JuSt CrEaTe It YoUrSeLf" as if nobody who says they want more f/f would actually be making it??? How do you KNOW they're not making it? Are you stalking the tumblr of every ao3 f/f author to make sure they never expressed the opinion you hate , and vice versa??

Yeah a few awful ppl have been super obnoxious, terfy, or puritanical bullies with how they talk about this topic. But when you constantly bring those people up to demonize talking about it at all it feels like you're creating a taboo around it because you want those annoying lesbian feminists to shut the fuck up. Cause how dare we, right? How dare we express desire for something in a way that reminds you patriarchy exists.

You won't even let us express that we're bitter or sad about feeling like a minority even amongst other queer women. You won't let us express simple jealousy without interpreting that jealousy in the most terfy antiship bad faith way possible!

I won't defend those who actually harass ppl or moralize over ships. I won't defend anti-fujos. But when you constantly lump me in with those people just because I looked at AO3 stats and went "Hmmm, it would be cool if this was more balanced :/" or whatever it feels like you just don't want me to say anything at all

--

Is this about me personally? Yes, I agree that topics that are repetitive start to feel like an attack.

But with regards to AO3 stats, this is my pet peeve, as you probably know if you read here often, and I'm unlikely to stop being angry about it.

AO3 is extremely unusual in the history of fandom for being a very big, very multifandom site that is not m/m-specific but where m/m outnumbers other things. There have been large-ish slash archives before. There have been and still are other large, multifandom archives, from FFN and Wattpad, which are in AO3's weight class, to medium size ones like MediaMiner. The spaces that aren't m/m-specific generally have f/m vastly outnumbering m/m. They also make it harder to get stats than AO3 does.

I don't have an issue with people looking at overall fandom stats and complaining that f/f has the short end of the stick when it comes to fanfic broadly. I do object to people pulling only AO3 stats and going "The one anomalous clubhouse that looks like this is the problem" and pointing at m/m.

It's the same problem you point out, just in another direction. After being told "Okay, but the amount of m/m..." constantly for years, people are fed up and never want to hear it again. Even if it's phrased nicely. Even if the person saying it is also hurting.

[punk-aziraphale]

The fact that people let a cishet man create this HUGE rift in the mostly queer fandom for his book/show is seriously pissing me off today.

It's literally queer community infighting over characters we should ALL be able to relate to but the author went and pit us against each other.

LEARN TO THINK CRITICALLY YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES!!!

[hollyand-writes]

Just wanted to say that I saw your post about Blond Boy Romance discourse and wanted to thank you for such a succinct write-up about Anders. I got into the fandom in late 2019 and i was SO confused about this huge gap in art and fic. Like, dead links and missing blogs and deleted posts. And I couldn’t figure out what happened because no one was talking about it, and I’m very shy after a mess in my last fandom. So...yeah. Thank you for writing that up, it’s nice to finally know what happened even though it’s really depressing. Also, thanks for staying in this fandom. You’re a wonderful example to others and an amazing creator.

Hello wanderingnork, and a very belated welcome to the fandom! 🙌🏾 Well. Welcome to what’s left of the fandom anyway LOL ❤️ 

Thanks so much for reaching out and sending me this really kind ask message (the post being referred to is my addition/reblog here) but yeah, I guess for those who weren’t in Dragon Age 2 fandom or the Anders side of fandom between December 2017—July 2018 you wouldn’t have seen how horrifying the bullying got. I’ve seen at least 3 people who aren’t friends with me reblog my post saying that what I described was why they themselves quit DA fandom or the Anders side of fandom too. 

And those are the Anders fans who DIDN’T delete their Tumblr blogs. Obviously the ones who DID delete and/or quit aren’t here to confirm that they, too, quit over that Anders wank in 2018. 

The worst of it was that the wank was started entirely by a group of Anders fans who – to my knowledge – still see themselves as the real victims to this day, even though they only stopped their callout posts and bullying (both in public and behind the scenes in private) when they learned that the Anders fanartist they were bullying was considering taking legal action. (You KNOW things are bad when fandom wank gets so bad that it becomes actual harassment that breaks the law.) And like I said, they posted some pretty shitty things about those of us who were friends with this artist too, causing many of us to block them. 

They backtracked like fuck in July 2018, but after seven months (maybe more?) of constantly bullying this one popular Anders fanartist (who’d repeatedly apologised, deleted the NSFW sideblog AND the offending art, and posted how the whole thing had driven that artist to a breakdown and suicidal thoughts), maybe it should never have got that far?

I don’t know how active they are in DA fandom now – but I DO know one of them notoriously posted that us blocking them was “bullying”, and that “bullying is child abuse” for “children” like themselves... despite the fact that they admitted they were 23 and therefore were very much not a fucking minor or child. (They had a lot to say about how WE should have been responsible for their “online safety” as well, and that Anders was their “comfort character” whom they only wanted to see sweet fluff content for, and they regularly triggered themselves by searching out Anders content that was less than fluffy or sweet to complain about on their blog. Not to mention how many of us queer POC Anders creators in our 20s and 30s – including the Anders artist they bullied – were accused of being “white” and “boomer-passing” for defending Anders content they didn’t like LMAO)

I’m so sorry to hear about the huge gap in art and fic you experienced on coming in to Tumblr Dragon Age fandom, but given how many creators took one look at the bullying and thought “fuck this, I’m leaving” and either deleted their blogs or Anders posts/fic/art/meta or simply left for kink-friendlier fandoms, I am honestly not surprised to hear this. I am also sorry to hear that there was a mess in your last fandom too; and I hope that this fandom is better to you. 

Dragon Age fandom is a difficult fandom to be in, but trust me when I say there are lots of good people in it. They’re just harder to find, and often they’re not as prominent or in-your-face as the nastier types. But I know they’re there because I’ve found them, and I treasure them, and I’ve been here since 2014. 

I think really all we can do is block the haters as much as possible, and carry on creating whatever the fuck we like – and tagging appropriately. I learned my lesson from that wank in 2018: if someone(s) is really determined to destroy you and just wants you gone, there is no apology or deletion you can give that will be good enough. Besides, there are so many problematic themes and content in Dragon Age canon that I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask creators to completely shy away from exploring those if they want to, or from making OCs that mirror a canon character’s traumatic background, or from writing/drawing canon characters as anything less than healthy and wholesome and pure (which NONE of them are in canon, anyway) – especially if it’s tagged and warned for. 

I mean... we all paid Bioware to purchase and play this 18+ game with its uncomfortable, difficult and sometimes problematic themes and content. I feel that if the Dragon Age franchise was so terrible and traumatic and problematic for someone when playing, then I do question why they joined the fandom afterwards. And I don’t think the onus should fall solely on fandom creators – who are doing this for free, unpaid, in our spare times – to create perfect, unproblematic, wholesome content that just wasn’t in the games themselves. Different people have different definitions of what is “perfect”, “unproblematic” or “wholesome” anyway. 

(On that last point: look at how the people behind The Mess callout tried to accuse people of being racist for romancing Cullen with pale-skinned Lavellans; back in 2016/2017 you got accused of being racist for romancing Cullen with darker-skinned Lavellans. How times have changed 🤔  There’s a LOT of content in this fandom that I don’t like, or that squicks/repulses me, but as long as it’s tagged in a way that I can avoid it, I’m not gonna police what people create. And if there’s one thing I’ve noticed the Dragon Age fandom IS very good about doing, it’s that most people are careful about handling problematic topics and content in a sensitive way. So that’s not a thing I worry about.) 

Anyway. I’m rambling. But yeah, that recap of 2018 (which several people have confirmed is true now) sums up why there is such a huge gap in Anders fanart and fic, and is why very few people create Anders content anymore – I know I myself abandoned a Garrett Hawke/Anders longfic in 2018 because I didn’t want to create for Handers fans if the only ones around were bullies who believed they were victims. But it’s been well over 2 years now, so.... I might get back to writing that fic. The Gym AU is still very much alive in my brain 👀 

So! That’s what happened... but despite everything I want to emphasise that there IS much good in this fandom, even if it’s harder to find among all the shit there is 💩 and that I hope your stay here is a good one. Thank you so much for saying you think I’m a wonderful example to others and an amazing creator, though! ❤️ I don’t know how many people will agree, but I do try! 

But yeah, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being here since 2014 – and from surviving several attempts to run me out of fandom (including for having an elf/human OTP) and off this platform – it’s this: The people change, and the characters and subjects being wanked over change, but fandom wank itself never ever changes. 

[maryellencarter]

I was recently reminded of a trend I loathe, which I assume is still around in some form I'm mostly managing to avoid, but in about 2011 it seemed to be the primary form of fannish discourse. Namely, high-ranking bloggers being snide about whatever minor echo-chamber effect in fic had annoyed them most recently -- three fingers in the ass, vomiting as a response to emotional trauma, incorrectly formatted Russian nicknames.

At the time, I assumed these posts bothered me because I was a Bad Writer who was doing things Wrong, and also hypersensitive to criticism. Coming back years later, with much thicker skin, as one of the most technically proficient writers I know... nope. Still obnoxious. :P Even when they had a valid point like "vomiting from heartbreak, why?", there was this particular tone. Sanctimonious, dogmatic, for some reason all the terms that come to mind are religious. It wasn't there to help anybody, it was... concern trolling, of a sort? Pretending to be Valuable Advice but mostly just wanking.

Anyway. This is me vagueblogging because I'm irritated that I ran across some of those old posts again, and irritated that they still make me feel like that. I speculate there are two ways people react to that kind of post, either "haha yeah look at those losers, of whom I am clearly not one" or "oh no they're talking about me I'm a failure". And interestingly, that doesn't change based on your actual or self-perceived writing ability, or at least not mine. I wonder if it's an innate temperament thing?

(I changed *fanon*. Just putting that out there. Sure, one piece of fanon in one very small fandom, but do you know what kind of a tenacious bugger fanon is? It's like the ocean, it has a will of its own. I still twitch at the sheer audacity of claiming a mere mortal could singlehandedly change it, but... it sure has changed, and in a direction I advocated for, and I can't put my finger on any other cause I can credit instead or even in addition. What the actual flying fuck. I am a human being who has changed fanon, and I still get all self-doubting over "oh no maybe my characters are being Unrealistically Feminine in their emotional range!" Blergle. Like, yes, I'm having the anxieties because today's planned writing includes a scene where I break the cutie *hard*, but...)

[janiedean]

Why do you think the SW fandom is so knee-deep in SJ Calvinism? Because I understand wanting representation or being upset because a movie didn’t fulfill your expectations, but the “if you don’t ship X you’re racist” “if you don’t stan Y you’re bigoted” and the harassment over a disappointing movie is surprising just because of how pervasive it is. I was trying to find some St*rmpilot blogs to follow and the amount of hate is Yikes, especially the hate for Rose and the stans of a Certain Ship

eeeeeeh I think it’s because ep. 7 came out at the height of the... well, reaping the seeds the social justice calvinism had sown since 2014 so to speak? I mean, SW is hardly the one fandom where it happened (*cough* voltron and SU *cough*) but as SW is way broader in audience than those other shows that certainly didn’t help, but like, if you think on it, since 2013-ish (but I think before as well, I mean, I’ve been here since 2011 and already when I got here I felt like something was going very wrong when it came to politics-in-fandom-attitude), basically people on tumblr have progressively, when it came to fandoms:

pushed the idea that you have to over-analyze everything you consume through political lens;

pushed the idea that what you like and how you like it also has to be pushed through political lens and what you like says things about who you are as a person or your political leanings;

pushed the idea that if you care for something *problematic* just because you like it you’re excusing it;

pushed the idea that if you were problematic once you can’t ever not be problematic, you can’t change your mind and you can’t learn also because ‘it’s not my job to educate you’ so people either learn themselves or idek what but again, calvinism.

now obviously those politics are tumblr-politics which are also US centric like woah and are also high-school petty like woah, and since more or less then people have:

continuously other-ed lgbt people from *straight*/heterosexual people pushing a narrative where straight = bad and therefore putting it before anything automatically makes it a valid insult which added to the above means that if you ship het you’re already problematic regardless of whether you’re straight or not (and if you are.. lol);

pushed the performative feminism of Doom TM that says men and women should be equal but is like, an excuse to shit on men and on women who like men (see the rampant biphobia around and the whole ‘straight girls are so stupid if they’re into men they should try women’ discourse);

pushed the US terminology when it comes to the POC discourse, in the sense that everything works on the US-centered context where white people = white anglosaxon protestant, poc = everything else without realizing that in the rest of the world white does not equal wasp, that poc = black people only in most of europe (and no one who’s actually black or not white who lives in africa or asia and so on would describe themselves as poc because why the hell would you when your skin color/ethinicity is the norm where you live?), which also goes with the whole white passing debate which where I live would not exist but in that context is a mess because again, oscar i*saac is schroedinger’s poc (as in, he’s poc automatically for american standards because he’s latin-american but like he has the same skin tone as my mother and my mother in italy is white same as 90% of us, which means endless confusion) and assumed that all of us have to accept that terminology/context regardless of whether it’s valid in our countries;

kept on progressively putting minorities against each other in an endless loop of WHO HAS IT WORST/oppression olympics;

kept on progressively split hairs on issues that aren’t exactly, like, that important if there’s more urgent stuff to deal with because 90% of the activism here is performative;

made the 180° turn for which headcanons and shit are seen as, like, doing representation instead of, you know, supporting what rep is there never mind when people decide *one* ship is the right one and if another is canonized and it’s rep it gets thoroughly ignored;

pushed on a mindset for which if something isn’t perfect at the get-go then it’s canceled.

and so on.

like, all of that shit has been continuously not criticized because criticizing it especially if you don’t belong to a minority means that you’re out of line/discussing things that don’t concern you, but if you’re a minority and you criticize it then it’s suddenly YOU BETRAYED OUR CAUSE *INSERT SLUR HERE ABOUT PANDERING TO THE MAJORITY*, and the result exploded in toxic af fandoms, but like... if you look at the issues of the SW sequel trilogy fandom it’s all of that in a nutshell because:

k/ylo ren is automatically the worst because he’s white (horrible), a man (even worse), not canonically attractive (I didn’t touch on that topic bc I’m honestly not up for it mentally but lmao that counts too) and presumably heterosexual (or well, no one said he’s not but you know, since he’s a white dude on the bad side [supposedly] then we don’t give him the benefit of the doubt that he might be bi), so if you like ky/lo ren or relate to him you’re automatically problematic;

shipping re/ylo because automatically problematic because it’s a *straight* (evil) ship made of two white people (when there’s options to ship them both with people that aren’t white, so IT’S RACIST), they have an age gap (BAD BECAUSE POWER IMBALANCE) and it’s enemies to lovers, so it’s a context where people who don’t conceive redemption or that people can become better are basically crying problematic all the time, and the fact that people decided it’s *abusive* when it has like nothing that can equate it to a really abusive relationship says all;

ky/lux being the most popular slash ship immediately means that it’s the fault of the horrible straight (white) women fetishizing the (white) men on the dark side (when it’s most likely because for a while ky/lux was literally the only side of that fandom where people were chill/there wasn’t wank every other moment);

st/ormpilot has been declared The Right Ship because it’s two non-white men and it’s not straight which automatically turns into what I said before about hating other ships that would be rep anyway and feeds into the lowkey oppression olympics racism, because like if finn/rose becomes canon it’s still a mixed/biracial ship because he’s black and she’s asian....... except that it’s not the right ship for people who decided that finn has to be either with rey or poe (and guess what rey is white and poe is... schroedinger’s poc because oscar isaac in europe wouldn’t pass for *poc*), which to me has stank of lowkey racism since tlj came out because sorry but if ‘finn deserves better than rose’ or ‘finn should be with rey because if he doesn’t get rey then it’s unfair’ and the various other bullshit I read on the topic basically says that the white woman is *worthier* than the asian woman or that rose is a downgrade from rey which is fucking bullshit, rose isn’t even a bad character all the contrary. and that’s for the het side of it, but like then it’s not as good as stormpilot because it’s a straight ship (NOOOO THEY MADE FINN STRAIGHT/THEY’RE NOT MAKING THEM GAY THIS IS SUCH BULLSHIT = stuff I legit saw on the tag) and ngl I’m 100% sure that the fact that daisy is Standard Attractive and kelly marie t/ran is lovely but doesn't conform to the usual beauty standard western-viewers apply on asian women did play a role in there, but: what did I say before? the slash ship is automatically better than the het ship never mind that they’re both biracial and rose is actually a rep (asian girls who don’t adhere to stereotypical body shapes - and like, the rep for all body types and shapes should be valid for all women, not just white) that isn’t exactly popular especially in mainstream cinema, so people should be happy.... but since rose is Not A Dude and Not Rey and Not The Right Kind Of Representation For That Crowd, automatically rose is a shit character and deserves to be viciously hated on. and this is a thing done by people who most likely then turn on the other side and talk shit about horrible straight women who hate the only female character for getting in the way of their slash ship without realizing that their rose hate is exactly that. and of course since sto/rmpilot is the two good guys, if you ship that then you also have to hate re/ylo because how can you, a person who ships The Good Ship On The Light Side, support such a problematic enemies to lovers thing? yeah, right, hahaha.

this also tbqh also pairs up with how on tumblr people only recognize mental health issues/abuse victims when the narrative suits them - like, being a bad victim automatically means you lose sympathy and mental health issues are only valid if you aren’t ***privileged*** otherwise why would you have them, which shows transparently in how a lot of people absolutely deny that ky/lo ren is a) an abuse victim, b) obviously mentally ill however it is that he deals with it, but no, he has to be The Most Horrible In Existence Because Otherwise We Should Have Empathy For A Bad Guy Who Also Might Get Redeemed And Redemption Is Not Happening Ever Because Bad People Don’t Deserve it.

like, all of the issues sw sequel trilogy has when it comes to the fandom are direct consequences of the nonsensical social justice calvinism climate on tumblr dot com that no one took care to put a stop to since 2013 and of its ridiculous oppression olympics and pitting people against each other and that was my take. cheers.

(ps: I also ship sto/rmpilot like woah and it’s my otp but there’s a reason why I unfollowed most SP blogs I followed and why I don’t go into the tag anymore - I’m not here for the anti-rose racism dressed up as performative wokeness, I’m not here to get lectured about as a white person I fetishize poc gay men if I ship it - yes I read that too - and I’m not here to read a bunch of meta about how re/ylo is a bad ship and blah blah blah, so yeah. I feel you.) (pps: ky/lo ren isn’t even my favorite character and I care relatively but gdi the way the fandom approaches him is honestly mindboggling in that sense, and I don’t mean people who actually dislike him because fair reasons, I mean people who can’t recognize his abuse victim status and the precarious status of his mental health. like, not all abuse victims and mentally ill people are the right victim or come from the right background and you can be cool motive still murder and still recognize that he’s like that because he has issues, not because he was drawn that way. /bye)

[permian-tropos]

essay which eventually makes an argument about which fandom discourse is good political praxis and which is ungood

I know it’s crass to connect inane fandom crap to real world atrocities so to be just minimally crass: recent real world atrocities have indeed made me think of inane fandom crap I’ve seen, but then I wondered what the right way to discuss the parallels even is. Stories resemble reality and things fans say diegetically about fiction (like, the thing we all do where we phrase it like it’s real) can resemble things people say about reality. Diegetic opinions can resemble shitty real world opinions. And we argue constantly about what to do about it.

I’m feeling fucking pissed about some real world opinions, but I don’t think dumb Star Wars fandom arguments technically cause the real world opinions I’m super fucking pissed about, the way people think they do. So this isn’t about that. (spoilers it eventually is about that but I’ll say it’s not for now)

I want to argue that discourse should be about examining every diegetic opinion that feels possible. Everything from baseless nonsense, to things you agree with, to things you are comfortable agreeing to disagree about, to opinions canon tries to slip by unquestioned, like, “there’s nothing to be done about the fact that Coruscant has billions of poor people buried underground like a wealth inequality layer cake”. 

I’m reframing the inflammatory “your diegetic opinions describe your real world ones” or the moral panicky “your diegetic opinions will become your real ones”: The more possible it feels that you’d find fans with the diegetic opinion, the more valid your society/culture treats the real-world counterpart.

So I’m angry, because our society treats horrible opinions about state violence now being applied to the recent Gaza massacre as valid, and it has treated them as valid for a long time, and it’s reflected in some diegetic opinions on the Jakku massacre. Opinions which I now am extra disgusted by. But the people with those opinions might not have the same bad opinions about the real world; it doesn’t work like that. I want the discourse to stop focusing on that.

The ease with which people could, if not justify, minimize, the awfulness of Kylo killing of the Jakku villagers, shows some culturally non-taboo things to say about state violence (“they were fighting back, the villagers were protecting the Resistance/were armed by them, maybe they weren’t a threat in that moment but they clearly would have threatened the Order if they’d had the means, and the Resistance was wrong to use them as a shield”) and its actors (”Kylo didn’t really want to do it, he had to prove he was tough in front of Phasma, he’s desensitized to this because everyone in the Order does it”).

Diegetic opinion: What Kylo did was not excusable. It was completely brutal and unnecessary. The villagers had been disarmed, Kylo killed not just the men combatants but the women noncombatants and children too, and the villagers fought back in the first place because the Order was imposing entirely illegitimate authority. Kylo did not have the right to use military force to get a map to find a man who was hiding because didn’t want to fight, to enact personal revenge because that man held a weapon over his head for a hot second. What would that even be, a cosmically strained stand-your-ground defense? Anyway it was definitely an evil thing to do. 

And those opinions aren’t super radical so they’re treated by society as valid too. As people have pointed out, though, when “war crime good” and “war crime bad” are treated as equally valid, it actually favors war crimes. People have to waste time justifying not doing war crimes. War crimes can be done before facing the court of public opinion, and then the noise of the debate can go on until the next war crime happens. And the same is true of “racism good”/”racism bad” and so on. 

But okay now I want to make an even more complicated-ass point about villain stanning. The more prevalent the garbage stan opinion is, the more support it gives to the overarching stan opinion: “this villain is a normal person”.

Cause I think there are three strains of fan apologia:

1) I forgive it because it’d be excusable in real life (not always wrong! but with the Jakku massacre it does indicate offensively crap politics) 

2) I forgive it because it’s not real and enjoying the thing doesn’t significantly affect my moral judgement or anyone else’s (basically always valid when true)

And the one that intrigues me, 

3) I forgive it not because it’d be excusable in real life but because a normal person could excuse it

If you’re excusing actions the narrative doesn’t present as wrong, the person you’re imagining as normal isn’t the character but the writer. Or, using Death of the Author, some hypothetical authorial intent -- but only if it’s possible to conceive of a writer with this intent. And it’s only palatable when the projected (if not actual) author is a decent person. Their opinions might be bad but it’s from a failing of society, not the individual. This is what so many of us use for the HanLeia kiss in ESB to avoid hating Han for what would count as sexual assault IRL, or to avoid deeply loathing the writers or the movie. 

Also if you project opinions onto a narrative that either aren’t there or aren’t provably intentional or explicit, and construct the hypothetical authorial intent behind it and find it unforgivably abnormal, and then decide the actual writer must be as well, that’s called Rian Johnson Retire Bitching. 

Imagining the writer as normal is one way we can forgive fictional bad behavior, if we think the writer intended it to be excusable. If we think they might not, we can turn to another version -- the character excuses their own behavior, and under certain circumstances we believe a normal person could make those excuses, so the character can be normal (we empathize with normal people, we want them to redeem themselves).

Type 3 stanning arguments about the actors of state violence (eg. what people argue the bottom line of Ben Solo’s moral capacity is), show that we think decent people can be actors in state violence. With the justifications people make, Kylo Ren could technically be a “normal” person because “normal” people can be convinced of all these justifications. And you know what, I’d say that’s true. Nearly every human is born with a healthy ability to develop good morals, so societies where tons of people condone or excuse atrocities do not have abnormally evil people. They have abnormally evil culture.

But the more people repeat the justifications as valid, the more it shows that Kylo is normal. Kylo has a lot of fans, and if enough of them express these diegetic beliefs, it’s sort of evident that “normal” people can have them. The part where I think fiction does end up maybe affecting reality is that diegetic opinions are treated as more potent if the real-world counterparts are good ones. And it’s moral purists and antis and ~discoursers~ that keep encouraging this perspective. 

So the antis give the stans a reason to present their diegetic opinions with real world opinions. Or to defend them without talking about real world opinions. To show that lots of people can have this opinion. Normal people. Good people, decent people. People who, even if they don’t have all the right morals, could have them in a healthy society. But they’re not really clarifying that these aren’t the right morals. Even people in the kylux fandom slipped into this from time to time despite a big push to make “we know they’re evil” the motto.

It’s tempting to use a more potent argument. Push the fandom Overton Window. “Kylo killed those villagers and it was evil but I can imagine him justifying it in ways that show he’s capable of good, and I want to see him become good” is just not as potent as “it was a wartime execution and if the stormtroopers are people maybe the villagers are also bad for killing them” when it comes to making people more sympathetic towards Kylo. 

Thanks to the anti framework of “your faves must be unproblematic” (nice work folks :/) and thanks to people who care too much about their problematic faves and don’t pay attention to the real world, diegetic opinions can end up implicitly encouraging people to push real world opinions for the sake of protecting Your Misunderstood Cinnamon Woobie who you’re very emotionally invested in but doesn’t actually exist, and that is kind of how I’m seeing fandom team up with bad politics when it doesn’t need to. Your Evil Woobie Boi can represent something good for you and you can express this and enjoy yourself. I have an evil woobie boi. He’s a great creative outlet. I absolutely stan the institution of loving villains. 

Which means we have to a) get rid of the purity wank framework and b) prioritize getting good opinions through ongoing interrogation of the real world and not expecting that we can indirectly absorb wokeness through media crafted to convey only the right messages. 

To ensure that people absorb those messages you have to get them to take all messages in media as correct. If your idea of media criticism is, when you get down to it, “criticize the things I think are wrong until they’re all gone and then make fiction tell people the right way to think”, your logical end goal is a society completely uncritical of media. A benevolent dictatorship of woke fiction. Forgive me if I don’t find that so reassuring. 

And you know what? Because so many normal people (like me, before I discoursed myself) toy with this dystopic underlying ideology, our society clearly treats the idea of a benevolent media dictatorship as valid. 

A creepy realization, but look how we got there with the “what opinions feel normal?” method. That’s why I think this model of discourse is one that actually gets us somewhere.

[expurgatedversion]

I hate explaining things, especially if they are transparent to everyone who participated, but Mads was kind enough to think it might make a difference to lay out exactly how that theme won. The funny thing is that none of those complaints or appeals had shit all to do with our methodology. Weird, right? It's almost like they were concerned with a completely unrelated thing. Unpossible!

With that in mind, this is not a post about The Theme That Dare Not Speak Its Name or Steter Week. This isn't even a post addressed to the people with all of those concerns.

This is (mostly) a post for anyone who has no idea what the Scerek Anon or anti-Scott sentiment has to do with Steter fandom.

The very short answer is that they don't.

If you want the longer answer, there is an entire investigative report that happened. No, I'm not fucking with you. It totally happened, and you can read it here. 

If you want the other long answer about racism affecting fandom trends and favorite characters, you’ll have to do your own homework.

So am I saying that no one left Steter fandom over Scott-hate? Nope. I don't know everyone. I've also been told that learning about the Scerek Anon caused a lot of a big feelings in people who weren't even the targets. 

Speaking of targets, let's not forget that the Steter fandom was barely touched by these events. The Scerek Anon seemed to enjoy several different Stiles-ships as long as Scott or Malia weren't involved, and they were known to leave positive comments on Steter fics. Steter writers were not the ones being harassed for their correct use of AO3 tags. They weren’t sent horrible messages wishing they or their families would die for daring to include Scott or write Derek in a less than perfect light. I find it infuriating that anyone would try to say that the Steter fandom ever faced the same kind of treatment that the Scott, Braeden, and Malia fandoms did.

But Nyx made some extraordinary claims, particularly about the “biggest Steter fans”.

"Steter fandom is so much smaller and quieter today than it used to be is because some of the biggest Steter fans of several years ago were bullied into silence or out of the fandom"

"One of the leaders and many of the biggest proponents of lolscerekanon were big Steter fans"

Okay. Credit where it’s due. The second one is pretty accurate. But the first is not remotely based in reality. With the mention of lolscerekanon, I have to believe that Nyx is specifically talking about Taylorpotato, and I'm sorry. Is this seriously an assertion that he was silenced or bullied by anti-Scott fans? I guess he was so bullied that he proceeded to write Scott-centric fic for the better part of a year. Yes, he was so petrified by the overwhelming hatred for Scott fics that he spearheaded a project to mock the Scerek Anon and eventually declared that they had won against the troll. 

But no, he and all of those other unnamed Steter writers fled the fandom because the Scott hatred was too powerful.

There are plenty of older fans who are still here, but I can also think of several well-known people who no longer create Steter content. Some of them still read and comment on Steter fics. Many of them are writing in other fandoms. A lot of these people are awfully findable for being “in hiding”.

You know who I do remember being harassed over fics/blog posts and actually left fandom? Kinkyfics and Morallydubious. I can’t say if it was Scott-related. It seemed to involve several issues, including nasty comments, but regardless of their motives, it would be a huge stretch to call them Steter writers as most of their work was for other pairings.

Is Steter fandom smaller and quieter? The AO3 tag updates more frequently than ever. The @steternetwork gets new followers everyday, and they mostly don’t look like spam bots. The Network chat almost always has someone online, ready to talk about Steter, and there are some other Steter chats around.

None of that sounds smaller or quieter to me, but hey. Your mileage may vary.

Now, I'm going to get a little personal here. It wasn’t part of the original plan, but my annoyance level has increased a lot as I’ve watched the wank unfold.

Maybe it’s coincidental or just a case of weird optics, but I find it positively fascinating that Nyx hasn’t mentioned Steter Week since arguing with me and Bxdcubes about fandom’s ability to come to their own conclusions.  Isn’t it funny how she claims that this will be the year... now that Mar isn’t involved and I’m on a different blog? I guess Nyx is ready to release about two years' worth of thwarted Steter smut. After all, there's no way that anyone has ever managed to continue posting fic in a fandom after disagreeing with people.

Looks pointedly at 220k of Sterek fic on Nyx's AO3. 

Well, fuck me running. I guess the realization that the Steter fandom won't blindly agree with anything was harder to take than the frequent debates and callouts Nyx deals with now.

Folks, I am beyond tired of the character/ship squads and pro-anti-whatever fighting. I am done crusading for anything, even trash. I no longer have it in me to engage in The Discourse 24/7. One of the reasons I made a new tumblr home was to get away from the endless wank.

Yes, there are people in the fandom who hate Scott. Maybe they dislike his crooked jaw, or they disapprove of the actor’s life choices. I don’t care. They’re allowed. Plenty of people hate Peter/Ian Bohen, and I sleep just fine at night. I don’t even harass them or hijack their event posts, and from what I’ve seen of fandom, that’s downright amazing.

*My apologies if this winds up in the tag. Hopefully, it won’t show up if you use tagged/steter instead of the search bar. *Regarding the creators I’m aware of who no longer contribute to Steter: I don't name them here because they don't deserve to be dragged into this ridiculous shit. Quite frankly, none of us do. *I hope everyone realizes that I'm not minimizing what happened to the people who felt unable to continue in fandom because of any kind of ship or character hate, but the post specified "the biggest Steter fans", so that's what I examined. *I have answered and received more than my share of questions about Taylorpotato. If I receive any personal or intrusive asks on that topic, I will delete them. Anything I’ve said about him in this post is available on tumblr and ao3.

[iamanartichoke]

I've been DMed a few times asking me to participate in this, which further makes me wonder exactly what the perception of me is in this fandom bc if you think this is something I'd participate in, well, you're not correct. It's one of those things that I am aware of and have ignored, as if I don't have an opinion on it, but fuck it. I do have an opinion, a rather strong one. I agree w/ the commentary on this post and I'm honestly so exhausted, like -

(I am going to apologize in advanec as this may not be as coherent as I'd like it to be, but I'm super tired and the adderall hasn't kicked in yet.)

For one thing, it is definitely about shipping. Watching the discourse evolve over the months since the show aired has been fascinating in a very twisted kind of way bc I feel like I watched it go from "Loki is ooc" to "Loki is being underutilized" and TVA-framing wank to evolving (or devolving) into being about ships ... and making it about ships, especially when the argument against said ships is so nonsensical, undermines the real, valid complaints and criticisms that maybe, in another universe, would have possibly been addressed and/or corrected had the fandom not gone entirely insane in the interim.

What I mean is, I agree that there are issues regarding the show's implications in regards to minority characters. Boastful Loki, as @thelightofthingshopedfor pointed out, is a prime example of the handling of a minority character being tone-deaf at best. There is a nuanced conversation to be had on the topic.

The genderfluidity is another legitimate criticism. The interviews from the showrunners/actors and the promotional materials made it seem like Loki's genderfluidity would be an aspect of his character that would be - if not fully explored - addressed. Instead, my honest opinion is that the showrunners think genderswapping (generally a fictional trope) and genderfluidity (an actual identity for actual real people) are interchangable, and they explored the former, kind of, while calling it the latter. I mean, that is fucked up there is a conversation to be had on this topic, as well.

So it's not like there isn't valid criticism that the showrunners should be aware of, is what I'm saying. But irl harrassment isn't the way to make them aware of it, nor is a letter-writing campaign that is so obviously rooted in shipping war discourse that has, by now, become so convoluted and frankly ridiculous that there is no chance of anything legit being taken seriously.

I have said this before (yknow, kinda), but selfcest is not a legitimate thing and even if it was, the Sylkie ship is not an example of it bc nothing in the series implies that Loki variants share genetics and, in fact, it goes out of its way to establish that Lokis come in all shapes, sizes, and species. (Again. ALLIGATOR. Like, if TVA Loki and Croki fucked, there'd be a lot of wtf-ing about that and I guarantee not a single bit of it would have anything to do with selfcest and everything to do with Croki being a literal alligator.) What Loki variants are, are incarnations of the same soul or energy. They exist in different universes and timelines, and they all play the same role: they're the chaotic entities, the tricksters, the monkey wrenches which turn everything on its head and make things generally more complicated.

And, according to the TVA, the root of their chaotic nature is to cause destruction and death and to ultimately be defeated so that the heroes around them can become better versions of themselves. (Don't come at me, I don't agree that this is the role Lokis are supposed to play, I'm saying that's the role Lokis have been assigned by the wizard of fascism behind the TVA curtain.)

(For the record, though, I do agree that Lokis exist to be the trickster archetype, I'm just saying that existing as a trickster has nothing to do with being the designated villain and that the latter is something that has been forced on them under the guise of it being a natural consequence of their nature being the former.)

That's what a variant is. An incarnation of energy that plays a specific role in the overall universe in which they exist. I mean. There's a reason why one of the processing steps at the TVA is to have one's soul photographed (I don't actually remember what that machine was supposed to do and everyone was so caught up in the whole "what if I didn't know I was a robot" thing to pay attention to the actual purpose of that step).

Energy isn't genetics. If you believe in reincarnation (that is, that your soul or energy comes back again and again), you wouldn't say that you share genetics with a past life version of yourself because you don't. (Granted, it might be a little weird if you time traveled and fell in love with your past life self, but objectively there'd be nothing wrong with it, and also it could never fucking happen, just like selfcest can never fucking happen bc it isn't real -)

ANWYAY my point is, objecting to ships on the basis of morality is a flawed approach in the first place but taking that flawed approach and using it as a foundation to scream about how ~problematique~ the Sylki ship is for months, and then adding, oh yeah, and also the show is racist and genderfluidphobic and Loki is ooc and we demand that you change this, right now, is like -

Those letters are going to get tossed in the trash three sentences in, and that's being generous enough to assume they get opened in the first place.

I didn't mean to rant, and I'm sorry this is so long and disorganized. @lazy-cat-corner if you'd like me to make my own post instead of reblogging, let me know and I'll do that and delete this.

But I'm just. So beyond frustrated at this point.

I share people's criticisms, to an extent. I do not, in any way, shape, or form, think that this series was the best it could be in regards to Loki's character (both personal development and external journey). I think there are conversations to be had. I do not agree with the bullying and the vitriol that is now becoming rampant on both sides of the wank. I kinda hate what this fandom space has become and I'm only sticking around in the hopes that it'll get better; if I didn't think it would, eventually, I'd have peaced out months ago.

I just also think that the series was good in a lot of ways, too. I think that a lot more critical thinking needs to be applied to certain aspects of it (again, on both sides). I think that people should be expressing their opinions and talking about them, positive or negative. It should be done on people's blogs, it can be done in twitter threads that do not tag or involve anyone involved in the show. One could even write a formal review and submit it to websites like Screenrant or Buzzfeed (not objective sites but when you're not a professional reviewer your options are limited) if they want their opinions to be heard by a larger platform or be noticed by the showrunners.

Writing letters demanding change isn't going to do shit. Furthermore, a campaign like this that is rooted in people being salty about their stupid ships, and the inherent ~immorality~ therein, is only going to undermine the legitimate criticisms that should be addressed. The people writing these letters don't speak for the entire fandom and, in fact, are making it harder for constructive criticisms and discussions to take place.

So can we just fucking not.

God that letters twitter thing 🤦‍♀️ people will just search for any type of oppression on google and write an email saying marvel is doing it. I worry for all the young people that think they can learn what transphobia and racism is from a bunch of randoms online. Instead of yk. searching for actual specialists on the subject that are most definitely outside of the fandom echo chamber.

In all seriousness it baffles me how some people deem themselves capable of giving unbiased opinions on social issues when they haven’t interacted with anyone that isn’t a marvel stan in ages.

Yeah, those letters in my opinion are going too far. I understand wanting the writers to see your opinions but the best way to do that is through creating content that they will see. Videos, articles, podcasts. Those are productive and meaningful ways to express one’s opinion without harming anyone.

I think sometimes when a person’s expectations are not met they feel disappointment so their knee-jerk response is to blame something or someone. It’s happened again and again in other fandoms, just not in the same way. How I Met Your Mother, Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Star Wars (all of the trilogies lol) and Lost. These are just some that come to mind. I think this half-baked queer theory criticism is a new one though.

Film analysis and examining film/television through a queer lens is fun and all but I think fans are misunderstanding that this type of analysis is not meant to express hostility or anger on the creator, more so rhetorically asking “how could this be improved?” What is it about the way this story was framed says our values and understandings about the LGBTQ+ community? It’s meant to ask a bigger question than “is movie good?” It’s meant to look at ourselves and how we perceive the world.

Furthermore, saying that someone is transphobic or biphobic because they don’t align with your viewpoints is not only childish but an ignorant thing to say that further harms those in the community. You don’t know these people you’re talking to and you’re not making the impact you think you are.

[omegawizardposting]

Speaking of aphobia (again), one of the arguments I saw from that certain someone and his followers was that I am “unhinged” for being able to separate The Discourse and aphobia as a concept.

I want to talk about that mindset--not with him specifically in mind, he and his followers are just a good segway into this discussion, because they demonstrated the mindset I’m going to talk about last night.

I said last night that the problem wasn’t “the discourse,” the problem was the aphobia--and, apparently, they’re one in the same to a lot of people, including the individual I was railing against. Aphobia has become so conflated with the controversy surrounding it that people oftentimes don’t recognize it as a form of bigotry. When they look at it, all they see is tumblr wank.

The tumblr wank isn’t really relevant to the LGBT+ community at large, because the LGBT+ community at large accepts ace and aro folks as parts of itself. The people you see causing problems here on tumblr don’t exist offline in near the numbers their seemingly immense presence on tumblr would suggest. This whole discussion, about whether or not aces belong, isn’t a thing outside of tumblr.

So, in that sense, the discourse doesn’t matter all that much, because it’s just exclusionists trying to exclude and being told, “No, fuck you,” by the greater community.

At the same time, that doesn’t mean aphobia doesn’t exist. Bigotry towards genders and sexualities doesn’t cease to exist when the greater community accepts us. An exclusionist is still a bigot, even if they’re in the minority, even if their opinion isn’t going to change how the greater community feels.

A bigot, is a bigot, is a bigot.

Take cis gay men, for example. They’ve been accepted as LGBT+ pretty much since the beginning. However, I’ve still encountered people saying, without a shred of irony, that we should ban cis gay men from the community, because they are “no longer oppressed.”

Of course, the greater community thinks that’s ridiculous, so it’s never going to happen, it’s just a loud, nonsensical minority spouting rhetoric based largely on anti-male sentiment.

But it’s still homophobia.

No, the dumb things they’re saying aren’t really particularly relevant. They aren’t important, and they won’t shake the foundation of the community. Nothing is going to change by them saying these things. The Discourse, in this instance, is meaningless and moot.

The homophobia, however, is still very real. “Cis gay men shouldn’t be allowed in the LGBT+ community,” is still a homophobic statement, and the sentiment behind it is still homophobic, regardless of whether or not the statement is going to be taken seriously by the greater community.

It’s still homophobic.

Now replace cis gay men with ace/aro people, and homophobia with aphobia, and you’ve got the unfortunate current state of things.

When I say, “It’s not about the discourse, it’s about aphobia,” I mean it. It’s not about tumblr wank. It’s not about saving asexuals, because they don’t need saving, the community already loves and accepts them. It’s not about crusading for their inclusion, they’re already included.

(Though I do spend a lot of time reaffirming this and speaking out against exclusionists, simply because I fucking want to.)

The kerfuffle surrounding ace/aro folks has nothing to do with it.

“Ace people shouldn’t be allowed in the LGBT+ community,” is an aphobic statement--period. Even without the discourse, it’s an aphobic statement. It’s a statement made to exclude and belittle and demean.

It doesn’t matter if the statement is going to change anything.

It’s still aphobic.

The point is, crying, “WHATEVER, IT’S JUST DISCOURSE!” is an obvious attempt at conflating actual bigotry with something largely meaningless on a grander scale. Aphobia isn’t “just discourse.” As a concept, it existed long before the discourse surrounding ace/aro people, and it is a legitimate form of bigotry against a sexual minority.

So when you say, “WHATEVER, IT’S JUST DISCOURSE!” you’re operating under the assumption that aphobia, as a concept, is “just discourse.” It’s not. It exists beyond the discourse. The discourse and aphobia are not inherently linked to one another, inseparable, forever one in the same.

Which is what I’m talking about when I say, “It’s not about the discourse, it’s about aphobia.”

I guess this concept is a little complex, and maybe it’s hard to follow for people who are so stuck in their ways that they feel the two are inseparable, but, honestly, if you’re uneducated on the matter, you probably shouldn’t be speaking so flippantly on it in the first place--especially if you aren’t a member of the community.

There’s no shame in asking folks to educate you. If you want to speak on this issue, but you don’t know how to separate the discourse from aphobia, or what struggles ace/aro people face, just ask someone who does know. Hell, ask me. I’ll talk to you about it, I’ll get a conversation going here on the blog.

I’m here to help people better understand issues like this one, and I sincerely hope people take me and others up on our offers of education.

Bigotry isn’t limited to or by the discourse surrounding it. It has its own life, its own foul breath, and its own evil place in our society.

[olderthannetfic]

This may be a touch grass moment but i also am not sharing this on my dash :D

It's surreal people falling for Deadpool & wolverine queerbaiting while at the same time hating that people ship two male best friends.

Cause like d&w point is that the are bros but... also....maybe... they are like bros who fuck. And the whole marketing was around that and like it feels like everyone treats it as a haha moment.

While when someone is shipping two men who are 'best friends' suddenly its a reach and you're looking too much into things. And queercoding is not a thing anymore suddenly.

--

Well...

Deadpool has long been able to get away with canonically referring to the homoeroticism of comic books because he's played for laughs and he's always meta and weird. I haven't seen the latest one, but having Deadpool movies do yet more of this is no surprise.

Queercoding is indeed a thing. If you watch The Celluloid Closet, it talks a lot about the history of this and the kinds of either subcultural markers or negative stereotypes that are usually involved.

But most epic, heroic male best friends are intended as non-romantic. They don't have nods to cis gay culture like the things discussed in The Celluloid Closet. They don't engage with common negative stereotypes seen in villains. They just care deeply about each other.

Fandom reads this as significant subtext. In a BL manga, it would mean something. In cis gay culture, the most you'll usually get is "Yeah, they're hot, and they should fuck about it".

How we read subtext—whether there is subtext—depends heavily on your exact culture and discourse community. (Like, the actual meaning of "discourse community", not the fandom wank meaning.) It's easy to think someone is reaching when they say something has subtext or is near-canonical if you come from a totally different culture with a different set of assumptions. That can be true even if you like the idea of a ship or wish it would become canon.

If someone enjoys Deadpool's gay chicken vibes but yells at Stucky shippers, they're a jerk. They're not necessarily a hypocrite though.

[gaywoodwraith]

@nederys “i won’t block you if you can show me even one instance of your ability to exercise critical thinking” okay, fine, Person Who Keeps Sealioning Me, here’s my analysis of basically every interaction i’ve had with you

you’ll notice i never actually used the word “problematic;” i avoid it because of its non-specificity. i think maybe you’re trying to box me in, same as you say i’m trying to do to you

all this stuff about “i’m not a transmisogynist, you accusing me of such is a derail, i’m trans myself, calling out harmful things that affect you is victimizing yourself and grasping at straws” sounds exactly like the nb and transmasc crypto-twefs i’ve seen elsewhere in this site, talking about “those mean trans women priming people to hate us,” except you seem particularly unskilled at the “crypto” part

and no, i’m not letting the “diphallia” remark go, because guess what, any woman-aligned person with a penis is seen as having “atypical genitals,” intersex or no; where do you think the pattern of fetishizing trans women comes from, all the jokes about “traps,” the aghast gasps of “that’s a penis”

and before you come in trying to say “this is more neopuritan wank and ‘fetishization discourse’,” have you heard any of the number of accounts from trans women about how thoroughly dehumanizing transmisogyny is, how many of us eventually become willing to completely sell out our dignity for just the illusion of human contact in the form of sex with men who will likely enact violence against us afterward on account of their insecure masculinity, or any of the corresponding talk from chasers about how they literally seek out the trans women with empty, dead eyes specifically because they’re the most easily manipulated into doing what these chasers want, because i can assure you, fetishization causes real harm to real people

and no, i can’t cite a paper on that because no one fucking does research on the subject, as i’ve said before, academia only gives voice to those in power; anecdata’s all i’ve got, just like anything that has to do with “aphobia,” but this isn’t actually an equivalence because there is actual legislation targeting trans women

[anonymousblueberry]

I feel like a lot of the people upset by it being "incest" were never around for fandoms like LoTR or The Hobbit (although, that might be a bad example because one of the most popular pairings was blood related incest) or like, Troy or King Arthur (by which I mean the one with hugh and mads).

Blood/shield brothers are everywhere in fiction, ranging from "we grew up together" - the witcher or king arthur, to "we serve together or just got forced together but are brothers in cause" - LoTR) and its just like, a thing.

(I would be more eloquent but I'm on my phone at work)

(also fandom wank is the greatest phrase ever and I'm forever sad that it's been replaced with "discourse" which is boring as fuck)

TW: Discussion of incest (not explicit, but the definition of it and it’s cultural… relevance?); reflections on “fandom wank” (I love this phrase, I learned it today, can you tell?)

Reflective post. On recent stuff. Witcher related, but not. I would suggest going and reblogging some lovely art or fanfic instead of reading! 

This is more of a Rawr muses type thing…

Keep reading

[dearyallfrommatt]

Never Give A Fascist An Even Break.

 So you’ve probably seen the above floating around Twitter, maybe it’s made its way to Tumblr, I don’t know. In a nutshell, it’s a recording of alt-right butthole Richard Spencer having a full-on meltdown after being escorted away by police from the “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA, back in 2017 that resulted in the death of activist Heather Heyer.

 What’s particularly interesting about this audio, about a minute in length, is how unambiguously it shows just what Spencer really is and what he champions, especially when he faces any sort of resistance. Apparently, this will come as a shock to some people. I know, right?

 Previously, Spencer had been normalized in the mainstream press like The New York Times as a fresh new kind of hate monger, one that kept his cool and looked sharp doing it, a Nazi you could have a drink with. CNN, the network so loathed by the very people who think Spencer is worth listening to, had him on as a guest as recently as this past July. Even liberal magazine Mother Jones, in a stunning display of poor judgement, referred to him as a “dapper white nationalist”. We have to listen, they said. Marketplace of ideas or something like that, they said. Or maybe it was free speech, I don’t know.

 And of course, everyone has seen him take that well-deserved punch last January that launched a thousand memes, which apparently hurt his delicate feels more than the sock to the jaw. Even so, by October he was speaking at the University of Florida, my alma mater for whatever that’s worth, as the president of the National Policy Institute, a “think tank” based in Arlington, VA. He wasn’t invited by the university, though. Indeed, they denounced Spencer because he’s a fascist douchenozzle and a smelly racist, but being a state university they had to rent him the space and just had to charge students and alumni up to $500,000 for added security. 

 Amusingly enough, this audio was released by former ally and two-bit grifter Milo Yiannopolous. Formerly good buddies, the two had a falling out after Milo went all pro-pedophile, blowing his con and causing American conservatives to abandoned their Gay Best Friend. Milo’s fall from grace has seen him recently begging for money and losing book deals while pissing on his former fanboys.

 Here’s a quote from Spencer’s whine. Trigger Warning: All sorts of racism and antisemitism.

“I win! They fucking lose!” he continued, before railing against Jews and non-whites, whom he said should be subservient to people like himself. “Little fucking kikes, they get ruled by people like me,” he snarled. “Little fucking octoroons! … My ancestors fucking enslaved those fucking pieces of fucking shit! I rule the fucking world! Those pieces of shit get ruled by people like me!” 

 Well... what can you say? Are you really surprised? You shouldn’t be. Though tech-savvy and media smart (supposedly), Spencer and his alt-right are the same foul racists, antisemitic poltroons, and general bigots we’ve seen from the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party and Christian Identity adherents and John Birchers and any manner of human garbage that has infested the American soul since the country started. 

 It should be noted, of course, that this has yet to be independently verified (as of 2 a.m. Monday morning) and, naturally, we shouldn’t believe Milo goofy ass as far as we can throw him. Nevertheless, whoever’s voice that is, that’s what white supremacy says. That’s what Richard Spencer has been espousing since he broke on the scene, even if he said it nicer and calmer  and more controlled manner than that. Well-spoken racist dickbags are still racist dickbags.

 Even though this was released late Sunday evening, so we don’t have the corporate media’s take on this particular egg on their face, wingnuts are already starting to cut their losses. Sleazy wank stain Jack Prosobiec is trying to distance himself and blame everything on Jake Tapper. Well, Bumble Jack, believe you me, there’s plenty of blame to go around, so buckle up. Your time is going to come eventually, I imagine.

 Now, children, what can we learn from all of this? Well, for one, when someone tells you what they are, believe them. If we, as a culture, reject bigotry, white nationalism, white supremacy, antisemitism, general hatred, and all the rest like we say we do, why should we even give cheap rats like Spencer a second look? After the aforementioned suckerpunch, conservatives and not a few liberals wrung their hands and clutched their pearls at the incivility. “Why must we engage in violence,” they mewled. “Can’t we defeat his ideas with discourse and debate?”

 See, here’s the thing: his ideas have already been discredited and discarded, so everything the geek says should be disregarded no matter how sharp his suit is or how friendly is. This may come as a shock to you, fellow honkies, but there is no “debate” with someone who wants to eliminate rights for large segments of the population or, if they’re being honest, just full on eliminate those segments of the population. In the ‘90s, we called Richard Spencer “David Duke”. This ain’t the first rodeo with this sort of clown.

 We owe him no consideration and no debate. Read your Karl Popper, specifically the Paradox of Tolerance, if you need more persuasion. However, after treating these guys as the pitiful butt of jokes and guilt-free villains in video games at best and the outright scum of the Earth at worst, I really can’t understand why it’d behoove us to even bother.

 I know I’m not the only one to say it, but Donald Trump did not bring us Richard Spencer. When it comes to America’s bigotry against historically oppressed groups, he is merely a symptom, not the cause of the disease. Indeed, it could be argued that Richard Spencer - the people who agree with him outright or just those who tacitly allow the sufferance of his ideology - brought us Donald Trump. Way, way too many people were just waiting on someone in “charge” to give them the okay; treating guys like Spencer seriously helped encourage that environment

 The scales should not be falling from our eyes on this one. We really, really should know better. We shouldn’t allow the corporate media to get away with shit like this. We all share a little guilt on this one. Next time, don’t be so easy on complete bastards, okay?

[manwhyyouevengottadoathing-blog]

the sexuality issue

(you see, it is a double entendre as it’s me talking about issues around sexuality, but it’s also a play on this being a fake zine and this could be the issue about sexuality

i’m so funny)

hello

fair warning this is gonna be rambly as fuck but when has it not been. idk, just don’t expect top level D I S C O U R S E or nothin

so put on your face eyes and sit in your body chair cause its time for history class and school is fuckin IN SESSION

once upon a time there was a boy in the UK and that boy had a few experiences. like, his folks split up reasonably early and he got a stepsister. this wouldn’t be notable but that meant that he had easy access to “girls” clothing that sort of just about fit. this led to fun stuff like the time he stole his stepsister’s ballet stuff and tried it on in a garage and loved it but also got stuck in it so had to ask for help (boy HOWDY did that one help with some fantasies i tell ya wut). there’d be many a crossdressing experience in the years going on until properly caught at home, and between a homophobic af stepdad (still is) and a mum who thought it was weird to experiment with clothing because it was 1998 or whatever that suppressed things fairly good

a little later on in all teenage years and shit there was the odd sexual experience. mainly with women but there was one time round a local friend’s house (who was so far in the closet it hurt) where things went a lot of the way to getting a good ol buttfucking but hey we’re 13 or whatever we’re not good at sex and nothing happened

and speaking of so far in the closet this boy (me) still thought he was a straight cis boy, good job there. turns out not having reference points (read: role models) for this stuff fucks you up. wheeeeeee

anyway time goes on and there’s some adult experiences, like asking an internet pal who was domming me at the time to “force” me to seduce a gay friend and suck his dick, which was hella fun. but through all that i’m still here like “yeah i’m pretty open-minded sexually but i’m still a straight cis guy”, despite wanting to suck some guy’s dick and getting to crossdress a whole bunch because now i live on my own and who cares if my wardrobe has girly fetishwear in it?

anyway it eventually all came to a head ~3 years ago when i started getting too many “guy crushes” to handwave away. there was this cute af actor, there was this stunning youtube guitar player, there was this hot femmy twitter buddy (who came out as trans not soon after) and i just had to go “huh, this is too many to be just be random crushes” and bam, i’m out as bi as a married monogamous dude. partner was fine (again, she’s bi so it’s not like i’m gonna get worries of cheating due to stereotypes), mum was like “i dunno why i should care?” and dad thought i’d cheated and that’s how i found out. good job, pops.

being all married and monogamous and stuff i didn’t think it’d make much of a difference learning this about myself but booooooy-howdy did it. the floodgates fucking opened and so did i, just suddenly so much more open to my femininity, long-suppressed. turns out when you’re not trying to present as a straight guy you don’t feel such a need to present as a guy, go figure. so in the time since i’ve put a lot more effort in and messed around with hair and fashion and nail polish and make up and it’s great. i’m not trans, i’m pretty certain of that, but i wear a bunch of gender hats at different times so have settled on queer (side note, i cannot fucking wait to stop wearing shirt/tie/suit every fucking day and get down with some fucking nail polish)

in the same vein, i’ve moved over to queer for sexuality. especially with joining this choir i’m hanging around with a lot of gay men, some cute, a couple that really would quite like to put their dicks* in and/or around me. that’s cool but it’s like it ever was with seeing cute women around: you’re hot, i’m glad i get to look at you and hey, there’s maybe some good wank material there, but i ain’t gonna look to hook up. i’m very much with someone and they’re great and i don’t wanna make them sad, like, ever

being with the gay crew (cause that’s what happens when you join the bass section of an lgbt choir) has been sorta weird, like getting the education in being a queer guy that i never got as a young’un. learning all the subcultures and mainstream cultures and all that guff. gonna come out here and say i still don’t get or like drag, but i ain’t gonna crap on you unless you’re being really misogynistic

sidenote, gay guys stop being fucking misogynists, tia

anyway, this was My History, thanks for reading or not. i think the takeaway going forward is that i’m just a lot more comfortable in who i am and feel way less pressure to put forward a particular presentation or persona. that’s why i’ve grown to like queer - i like the part of queer theory that presents this stuff as hats we wear and that sort of is what we’re doing, playing roles and wearing costumes. it means i’m happier to just do and wear what feels right at the time.

oh look, there, we got a small amount of discourse. well done me

whatever, i’ll keep on keeping on and finding whoever attractive and look hot af doing whatever gender presentation i feel hottest as

peace

* - assuming they are dick havers, we aint trans-exclusionary up in this place, all genitals welcome in and/or around me, just put them in my face thanks