#discourse norms

[sandybrett]

Oh, dear god(s), please don't let "grape" become an actual synonym for rape. Please don't let grapes, the delicious, nutritious, innocent fruit, become associated with rape.

I'm not triggered by discussions of rape, so I can't really speak to that experience. But based on what I know about euphemism treadmills, I think this is more likely to lead to some people being triggered by the word "grape" in certain contexts, even when it's intended to refer to the fruit, than it is to make discussions of rape any easier.

Just the other day I was thinking about a particular scene in the children's novel The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin. Our protagonist, Mrs. Carillon, has been arrested, and several other characters march on the jail with hand-painted signs that say things like "Free Mrs. Carillon." One character intended to simply paint "Mrs. Carillon" on his sign, but he used a piece of cardboard from a box that had the word "Grape" on it, with the result that the sign ended up saying "Grape Mrs. Carillon." Nine-year-old me thought that was hilarious.

I would like for future generations to be able to enjoy that scene as I did, without their minds immediately jumping to "Rape Mrs. Carillon."

Hi new friends. Please don’t censor words, especially triggering ones. Seeing trigger words written l!ke th!s doesn’t stop them from being triggering.

It just stops Tumblr’s built in filter (see under settings) from working which many of us have in place to protect ourselves.

This has happened to me multiple times this week, and as someone currently struggling with suicidal ideation, has not been great.

You are not on TikTok or Insta, please use the full words so people can protect themselves. Thank you 💖

[tributary]

i think don’t pour fuel on the fire if you don’t want to get licked by flames

[liskantope]

Really appreciate your ability to *actually* say “I’m not informed enough to have an opinion”, something I think most of us hypothetically endorse doing way more often than we actually do. You also take on new information more gracefully than average in my opinion. A good role model for opinion-havers.

Thanks, that means a lot! I would definitely like our discursive culture to move in that direction, so I'm glad if I'm modeling that.

[knifearo]

"asexual discourse" is so funny cause dude that's not discourse and it's never been discourse. it's not an argument and it's not a conversation bitches are just yelling at us unprompted and then making up people to get mad at 😭

[sandybrett]

You've heard, "I didn't say it was good, I said I like it," now get ready for "I didn't say it was bad, I said I don't like it."

I don’t know how to say this in a way that doesn’t sound like I’m advocating for casual cruelty or whatever but something that grates so much about this current social moment is how many people are incapable of saying they dislike something or someone without cooking up some higher morally correct reason for their dislike. Sometimes you just disliked a book. Sometimes you don’t “get” an actor or a musician. There’s nothing morally wrong with your girl’s fuckass boyfriend he’s literally just annoying and you’re annoyed that you have to pretend you like him when you know he’ll be history in six months. It’s fine. You don’t need to justify your dislike.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

tfw people dismiss steven universe's queer representation because "they're just sentient rocks" or "they're genderless so it doesn't count as queer romance" but they're completely okay with shipping a girl and her abusive cat sister.

[transmaverique]

amab and afab, if they were used as shorthand for the actual full phrases that they signify, with emphasis on the "assigned" part, and an understanding that they are enforcements of normative (ie, dyadic and cisgender and binary) sex, would be like. really useful. but people took the terms and started using them as shorthand FOR normative sex instead of the ENFORCEMENT OF normative sex. so when other trans people (almost always dyadic trans people) ask for your agab they are almost always asking for your Original Genital Situation. your starting point, so to say. and the reason FOR asking is also almost always bc they are trying to also enforce a certain kind of normativity within queer spaces (which is stupid bc being queer is inherently non-normative but here we are). like, you cant be a lesbian if you're ftm, bc you ARE m, so if you ARE a lesbian, then that means you're lying about some aspect of your identity. does that make sense?

it is always always always incredibly.... i do not trust dyadic trans people that use cagab terms, even moreso than i do not trust dyadic trans people that just use agab terms. agab is also coopted intersex language, but the "coercive" part of cagab SPECIFICALLY refers to medical "intervention" of intersex characteristics, such as "corrective" surgeries and hrt. i am deeply fucking suspicious of any dyadic trans person that uses those terms exactly the same as described above, even moreso if they do so bc "all gender is coercive".

like. yeah. that's true. but you use these terms to erase and overtake intersex discussions on the medical abuse of intersex infants. and i cant help but wonder why you would feel the need to do that.

[sam-keeper]

at this point I'm just unfollowing anyone who engages in left-punching nonsense. zero patience for the liberal refusal to self-critique or hold their leadership accountable.

[depreciated-dragon]

[Image description: You are not immune to "I am feel uncomfortable when we are not about me?" End I.D.]

A friendly reminder that

[specialagentartemis]

"Odysseus never once cheated on his wife!" wrong "Odysseus spent 10 years slutting it up around the Mediterranean sleeping around with every women he met" also wrong. can we move on now

[epiphainie]

i'll try to say this in the kindest way possible but what if we don't post bucktommy critical or bucktommy negative posts that people originally censored/kept out of the bucktommy tag by screenshotting them and putting them in the tag? people are allowed to hate a ship. idk what to tell you but they're allowed to have their opinions even if their reasoning seems stupid to you or it very obviously comes with bad faith arguments. as long as they're being decent enough to not cross the line and do keep it in their own tags/blogs, you don't have to be fighting them in our tags. if you so want to, sure do it on your blog, in your dms, in your discord servers. but i'm tired of seeing the blogs i know i have blocked for their silly takes because we keep circulating what they're posting in our own tags. seeing a collage of the stupid, negative, downright homophobic comments curated from all sorts platforms in the bucktommy tag, in fact, feels no different in practice than seeing the antis post in the bucktommy tag, especially when you don't add the useful tags like "discourse" or "fandom criticism" to your posts.

just my own two cents, hell maybe it just bothers me idk, then keep doing it i guess.

[sandybrett]

"At the center of Shenker-Osorio’s work is the notion of “persuadability.” For Shenker-Osorio, a “centrist” isn’t someone who wants a little bit of both; they’re someone who hasn’t made up their mind about which option they prefer. To illustrate this point, Shenker-Osorio asks us to imagine a family trying to decide what to order for dinner. Some members of the family want pizza, others want burgers. Could that family be satisfied with a pizzaburger? The point is, the family is undecided . It’s not that they want to converge on a compromise solution that mixes the two options. That won’t please everyone — it pleases no one."

Shenker-Osorio says the left’s enemy isn’t the right, it’s cynicism. The problem isn’t that authoritarians want to erase the division between church and state, or take away our right to control our bodies. The problem is that this minority can get away with these unpopular proposals because the people who disagree with them think nothing can be done to stop them. For Shenker-Osorio, the tonic for this is to switch from the negative framing (“abolish ICE”) to positive ones: “respect all families.” Rather than saying “end the climate emergency,” she wants us to call for “ensuring clean, safe air to breathe and water to drink.” When the right says they want to cut taxes to improve the economy, we counter with, “we’ll raise wages and increase consumption, which is better for the economy.” Shenker-Osorio proposes a three-step method for changing minds. First, identify a shared value (“people who work for living ought to earn a living”). Move on to a problem (“our divisions distract us while rich people pick our pockets and hand the spoils to their corporate cronies”). And then, the solution: “rewrite the rules so that the wealthiest few pay what they owe and all of us have what we need for generations to come.”

-Pizzaburgers: “Everybody hates this idea, so it must be great”

[t4tpumpkinduo]

tbh i do think the way you interact w fanbase can be and often is political. i do think you should unpack why you think certain things. i do think you should confront why you either ignore or objectify or treat poc like abusers. i do think you should look into why you can't bother to care about women characters. like i do think that matters lmao lol lmao. it's not raining on anyone's parade to rightfully point that out.

[nanamis-bigtie]

not to be a bitch on main again but. i really don't like how the topic of realistic sex mechanisms is often reduced to mocking people who have a different experience than average one or don't have experience at all

[bandtrees]

thats one way to avoid getting shot??? 💜💛

[depreciated-dragon]

#not 100% endorsed but I'm more to this end of things than the other#I get that a lot of things were never really meant to take off the way they do for one thing

yall gotta start qualifying your thoughts with some sort of admission of subjectivity, i feel like every post i see is some declaration of subjective opinion stated like its a fact and its making me deranged