#do they know actual queer people live in the us and are actively being harmed?

[seblrina]

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[tipytap]

reminder this pride month that labels are tools to describe and discover yourself, not rigid cages you need to be stuck in ❤️

reminder that it is always okay to change what labels you use 🧡

reminder that it is always ok to not identify with a label at all 💛

reminder that it is not your job to police how other people identify based on abstract criteria 💚

reminder that you are under no obligation to tell anyone how you identify 💙

reminder that if you do change your labels or discover something new about yourself, you werent “wrong” for identifying how you did, you have simply grown and changed as a person 💜

happy pride month yall 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

[drdemonprince]

In a piece for The New Inquiry from back in 2017, George Dust states that when queer people complain about there being a top shortage, what they really mean is “nobody is fucking me the way I want, and I have no agency in that.” Alongside co-authors Billy-Ray Belcourt and Kay Gabriel, Dust suggests that many queer people align themselves with a passive or “bottom” position because they believe that role will absolve them of the guilt of really wanting things. They present themselves as what they believe to be the sexual party with zero power; the receiver, the accepter of action rather than its cause.

This position is drawn in contrast to the bottom-identified person’s idea of a top: the one who approaches, the person with hungers and desires, the person who decides which sexual activities will happen and how intense they will get. The top, from this perspective, is the stronger, more capable, more dangerous person. They’re the only one who can ever be guilty of intruding or harming somebody else. This power is scary, but it’s also compelling.

Dust calls this fantastical version of a top a “brute” — and they are the most cartoonish stereotype of what it means in society to be a man. Because it’s a cartoonish stereotype, no human actually lives up to it — and we’d probably revile a person even if they could.

Though queer people know we are harmed by the gender binary and heteronormativity and all the social scripts those things force upon us, its biases are still embossed on our brains. Without meaning to, we reproduce tired gender stereotypes in our relationships. And so we see expressing a sexual want as masculine, and being masculine as being more capable of violence and coercive control, and thus bad. We see failing to communicate one’s desires openly as desirably feminine, as well as a sign of blamelessness and purity — because on some level we still feel it is wrong to have desires.

But this entire worldview is a complete lie. Desire is not evil. Expressing attraction is not a violation. Failing to express oneself can be just as dangerous as not listening to someone else’s limits. Women can be abusive. Bottoms can sexually assault. No matter our gender, presentation, or sexual role, we are each capable of harm. And the only way to make a safe, mutually pleasurable sexual encounter happen is by going after it, actively, and communicating from a position of inner strength.

So how do you do that, if society’s been telling you all your life that you’re meant to date by acting like a deer passively snapping twigs in the woods, waiting for some hunter to hear you, and pursue you? (That really is dating advice that Evangelical Christian counselors give to women, if you can believe it).

By not fixating so much on what you’re doing or not doing to draw other people toward you, and instead thinking in terms of what you want and what you observe beyond yourself.

[girlcalledwhatsername]

This shouldn't even be need to be said but don't fucking report people who express being suicidal. I don't care how much you think you're doing it for someone's own good, it does NOT help us it only harms further

READ that AGAIN

You are ACTIVELY harming those people when you try to be a goody two-shoes and tell on them when they get suicidal

Don't fucking report them to social media app features that have the report for self harm option. Don't fucking call a suicide hotline on them. Don't fucking report them to therapists, paychiatrists, cops, controlling parents or partners

It does not matter how uncomfortable it makes you - this isn't ABOUT you - it doesn't matter how much it goes against your cute little saviour complex thinking you're being oh such a wonderful kind heroic person by "saving" someone from themself.

When you report a person to any of those places it heavily risks hospitalisation and incarceration. Where I live it's technically still a crime to attempt suicide, they never overturned the law. And if you think being in a ward might help them - do everyone a favour and go check out the actual conditions in the wards and talk to psych survivors about how they actually are. Otherwise shut up about things you have no experience with.

Everyone should have a right to autonomy, especially bodily autonomy, and you don't have to like what they do with their own body for you to know not to take that away from someone. It's not your place to judge, it's not okay to be moralistic about bodily autonomy suddenly because you can't handle the reality of mentally ill people.

And it's not fucking okay to lock us in and remove us from society just because our disorders are too fucking ugly for you to look at.

If you absolutely have to help just talk to a suicidal person if they're up to it, just ask them what will help, and if you can't do that then leave us the fuck alone you snitches

And don't come at me with the law, if you had to be an ally to mentally ill people, to queer people, to women, to any kind of marginalised people, historically a lot of it has always included standing against the law and with us.

STOP REPORTING US

[kittyit]

One thing I don't like about trans critical spaces is how they are focused on trans women being unattractive and 'cringe.' this is just my personal experience, but I have been sexually victimized by multiple trans women, most of whom passed, many of whom were skinny and beautiful and most of which had high brow tastes and no interest in anime or other cringe topics. one of these TIMs was a serial sexual assailant and I think probably attracted to underage boys, and she was also beautiful and charismatic. Meanwhile, I also know multiple trans women who are good people and don't infringe on female spaces but who are conventionally "ugly", broad-shouldered, and have masculine interests. It also seems like the only thing TIMs criticize about each other publically is being "ugly", large, or fat.

my position has consistently been for about 15 years that mocking someone's appearance is not a feminist act. it simply isn't.

mocking appearance is essentially a cruel hobby, it's primate social aggression we're using our huge brains for. it's really fun, and that's why almost everyone does it. i sometimes do it too, in private, in intimate company, and it's enjoyable. i say this to clarify that despite my position, i don't set myself apart or above from women who do it. i do it too. and it's constant in basically every subculture online. julie bindel actually posted on her facebook recently troubled about this same thing. as you said, it's so common in queer/trans circles too, the long-forgotten 2013 values of tenderqueerism fallen to the wayside. stan culture, politics, just basically everything...i really can't stress enough that in my opinion, it is a hobby

mocking appearances is not feminist or activism. it quite often is anti-feminist. it's kindergarten stuff to not judge a book by its cover. it doesn't matter what a male person looks like - he is still male and all considerations that apply to male people apply to him. i don't need to think a male person has a hideous appearance to criticize him for any of the oppressive acts he's doing. focus on appearance (or other unrelated personal attacks) often takes the sting out of a criticism of someone's character, morals or actions and makes your argument easier to dismiss. and of course the now mocked & dismissed concept that when you rip into someone's appearance, you do friendly fire to anyone around who shares those features. but of course this doesn't matter to anyone because it's 1. so fun 2. we're so used to it 3. everyone is doing it 4. so who cares? (I do. However)

i also just can't really scrape up that much finger wagging anymore at women who do spend a huge amount of time blowing off steam mocking the insane parodies that trans women present as. it's basically evil imaginative play. it's just not activism and acting like it is, as you said, is really detrimental to radical feminism being understood as a feminist way of thought that deeply affects women's lives.

as for the rest of this, have you read pronouns are rohypnol? you do not have to call a serial rapist pedophile you knew she. there is no one here but us, he cannot hear you. i encourage you to free up processing power in your mind, especially if you've survived trans male violence. calling the men who harmed you he can be a turning point in reclaiming your own sense of reality, it was for me

[deramin2]

Essek constantly gushing about his partner but pointedly not giving his name hits me so hard in the feels.

Two formative childhood experiences for me:

ONE

I was severely, mercilessly bullied as a child at every school I went to even if they're was no overlap of kids, and authority figures either ignored me or directly told me it was my fault. I was socially toxic. Any other kid who publicly associated with me was also targeted for harassment. I was best friends with a girl around the corner but because I was a couple years younger (in itself an invitation for bullying) and a parish, we could never let anyone know we were friends.

I've been told I should be upset at her for this, but it wasn't her fault. It was the other children who made it a fact that she would be harmed by publicly being my friend. She didn't make those rules, we were both just honest that it existed and there was nothing we could do to change that. The best we could do to survive was at least protect her. And that benefited me by actually having a friend.

So if we talked about each other it was"my friend." No names. No acknowledging we knew each other in public. No introductions to other friends. Keeping that divide up was necessary to survival. I had a couple friends on the same freak level as we and we were in fact targeted with additional harassment to get to the other person. It was a legitimate threat to live with. At some point I just stopped thinking it was ever necessary to reveal who my friends or family are unless it's both explicitly relevant and necessary.

TWO

I learned to use the internet in the late 1990s when anonymity was considered a best practice. Don't give out your age, sex, location, or other identifying information. You don't know who is on the other side of that screen or what they will do to you if they know. Sperate your online and offline worlds to protect yourself.

This helped reinforce experience one because clearly adults also acted like those kids and this just normal human behavior no one will ever put a stop to that you need to be on guard for at all times. Build in air gaps so if one of you is compromised it's harder for the perpetrator to get to other people you care about. Defending them through anonymity is a way of showing you love them.

Also since some family are searchable through have state government jobs that right-wing nut jobs chips target them for, I wanted to make sure they couldn't be connected to me as a queer trans disabled person active online. In case something I said led to them being targeted.

(This is correct advice, even though it flies in the face of modern online conventions. There are tons of malicious people on three internet who will target you and anyone you love if they decide to hurt you.)

RESULT

By default, I refer to people by their relationship to me, not their name. My friend, my partner, my parent, my family, someone I know, etc. Often I avoid gendering them to make it even harder to identify them. I have to consciously consider if the person I'm talking to has any reason to know my associate's name. Blacklist everyone, then whitelist exceptions.

I do this even if both people know each other because the specific association feels dangerous. Better to be viewed as acquaintances than a meaningful relationship that changes how either of us could be viewed. It's not even really a judgement on thinking the person is untrustworthy, I just don't want to spend any extra energy thinking about it. It doesn't even feel relevant because my relationship to this person fellas like it conveys more information that actually matters.

ESSEK

Essek knows both he and Caleb are being targeted by powerful people who have shown they will target loved ones to get to them. Additionally, tensions between the Empire and Dynasty are still high and it could very easily compromise how their own sides view them if it's known that they're romantically entangled with someone from the other side. It could also blow each other's cover and make their meeting places more vulnerable to attack. Especially if their enemies know they could hit both of them at once.

It's genuinely dangerous for their connection to be known, so they don't name names. It's not even a matter of whether Bell's Hells would intentionally misuse that information, but what they also could just let slip to the wrong person. It's not really worth the risk when "my partner" is all the information they actually need to understand him.

My guess is that Essek said "Bren" is hiss partner because they already know a Bren sent them to Astrid. And since Caleb no longer uses the name Bren it would be much harder to connect them. It would have caused more questions, more prying, and more risk to give no name for his partner when directly pressed. So he gives a truthful but less dangerous answer. The anonymity is an act of love.

[terror-punk]

On safety:

I didn't want to go off about this but it keeps happening, so. @ the people in our notes repeatedly asking if we're trying to get people hatecrimed or killed or telling us to shut up because we're talking about people being more open about stigmatised things: No, we absolutely are not trying to get people hurt. That's the literal opposite of what we want.

We're not telling people to put themselves in danger. We're not telling people to walk up to people who hate whatever they are and scream "I'm the very thing you hate, here I am!" or what have you in their faces. We can't control what people do, but... A very important part of the post people keep having issues with has clearly outlined within the body text itself a note about safety.

[Image ID: A screenshot of a tumblr post reading: Don't make yourself small because others can't handle you. Be open where safe. Be you. Be scary. /end ID.]

"Be open where safe". We literally said that on the post. It has no ulterior meaning behind it. I genuinely don't know what other meaning it could have.

We're advocating for people to be open where they're able to. We're advocating for the destigmatisation of things like psychosis or "weird" LGBT identities or things society hates in general, because these things SHOULDN'T result in people getting harmed. We're advocating for people to have their voices heard if they so choose to speak, we're advocating to boost the voices of marginalised communities of all sorts. But we are NOT advocating for people to be forced out of safety and into the spotlight if they don't choose that themselves.

It's a post about positivity surrounding those identities or disorders, about how your voice as someone marginalised DESERVES to be heard, and about how if you have the choice (specifically if you are SAFE TO), being who you are and not masking things you can hardly control is what we're aiming for. People shouldn't have to hide.

Are we, as a heavily stigmatised psychotic, queer and generally disabled system, being a little "too open" to be considered safe sometimes? Sure, but that's our experience and our decision. We can't hide half of what we are anyway--it actively hurts to do that most of the time. And hell, we want to be open because sometimes? People who are hurting and shunned by society end up thanking us or reaching out for making them feel less alone. Something we sorely needed growing up--a way to feel less like the entire world was against us. We're not here to tell you what to do, we're here to tell people they aren't alone, and there are some safe spaces out there, even if few. If other people want to do the same, that's their decision.

We're here for solidarity, NOT harm, and this is OUR choice. The unfortunate reality is that we're unsafe anyway, but we're not going to live our life personally trying to hide things that change the very fundamental reality of what we are. WE get to do what we want. WE get to choose to speak. So does anyone else--and they get to choose to remain quiet, too. We literally never told anyone to put themselves in the line of fire, and we wouldn't expect you to.

If you can't be open, or you're unsafe, you're no lesser and you aren't excluded from the label "terrorpunk", that's for sure. It's not about getting yourself hurt.

Please read what we're saying before hitting us with "as a psychotic person, this is putting us in danger"--we specified "where safe" and we never said people should get hurt. We're also psychotic, and tired of the way the world is, so we're not going to shut up, we're not going to hide anymore, because that's our decision.

I don't know how we got from "be openly you where safe because these things shouldn't be so shunned" to "wow these guys want people hurt", but we're not putting up with words being put in our mouth. Please actually read and digest what we're saying.

[butmakeitgayblog]

Just to throw in a couple points real quick (because I can never keep an opinion to myself 😔 sorry), I personally kind of dislike the idea of a male and female gaze — not because I disagree with the concept of fetishism and objectification existing, they ABSOLUTELY do, but because of what people, particularly online, have come to accept they mean.

There has recently been discourse surrounding Love Lies Bleeding, a film created almost solely by queer women, “catering to the male gaze” which… I’m sure I don’t need to explain how silly that is lmao. I think this new wave of leftists clutching their pearls over literally any sign of sexual attraction and considering it to be synonymous with objectification has distorted people’s views of what these terms actually mean and have resulted in their gross misuse. Not to make this about me 💅🏻 but I see a lot of this similar discourse about trans people BY CIS PEOPLE whom are trying to be good allies by basically claiming that any sign of sexual attraction towards a trans person’s body is inherently fetishistic which I can’t lie… I kind of consider to be transphobic itself lol? You’re allowed to be sexually attracted to trans people and express that, no matter how their bodies look! The point at which it becomes fetishistic relies primarily on the WAY you express that and the language used — and I think that can apply to queer people in general too. I personally (and others may feel differently!) have zero issue with cis people enjoying trans NSFW content, and I also have no problem with straight women enjoying MLM content; because most of the time, I can tell from the LANGUAGE they use whether or not they are fetishising.

Point being, fetishism and objectification can go ALL ways and I don’t think people need to give excuses as to why they enjoy a certain type of content as long as it isn’t actively harming anyone. But I obviously can’t speak for everyone (especially queer women, I only identified as one for a year or two when I was a preteen lol) and people’s experiences tend to shape their opinions on these things 😅

Right and that's why I firmly stand behind my initial post about how it's no one's job to police people for what kind of content they consume! Because we don't know their motivations for how ot why they personally are interacting/consuming the work. It's incredibly easy to write off all enjoyment of a specific brand of content as fetishizing or sexualization when in reality, for the consumer it isn't that at all. My only point on the last ask was that sometimes, sometimes, it's easy to actually be doing exactly that (fetishizing etc) and not realizing it.

Intentions matter absolutely, but they're not the be-all-end-all of reality. It's like if I as a white person were to say something racist without realizing it was racist. That doesn't negate the racism, and it doesn't absolve me of my culpability, because my ignorance to my actions doesn't supercede my impact. You can be guilty of something without knowing that you are, and that's something you as person have to evaluate and confront on a personal basis. That was my only point in relation to what that anon said.

Again to reiterate, that is NOT saying that everyone who prefers queer work to straight work is guilty of that, because they're not. Full stop. And that alone is why I don't think anyone has or should have the authority to pass judgment on who can and can't consume certain kinds of media. Because, like you said, then you start wading into the murky waters of painting everyone with a broad brush, throwing accusations around that are universally damning despite not actually being universally true. And considering we're living in a period where puritan anti-sex brainrot is on the rise (alongside a deeply unsettling culture of condemnation over every little thing), opening that door can become very dangerous very fast. We're seeing it already.

I will tack on just as a thought regarding the trans character issue, I think that's kind of a perfect example of all these ideas aligning. Just in the most bare bones way of putting it: there is nothing inherently fetishizing about a cis person enjoying work including trans characters. There's nothing inherently fetishizing about a cis person enjoying, specifically, smut involving trans characters. There is nothing inherently fetishizing about a cis person preferring trans character stories over other kinds of media. However, if all they as a cis person consume is extremely sexualized renditions of trans characters, if their only interest in trans characters is porn - generally mostly devoid of complex storylines that create a fully rounded character -, then yeah I do think that's something they on an individual basis need to evaluate about themselves, because it's the difference between having a sexual attraction to a subsection of people versus seeing those same people as purely sexual objects. Does that make sense?

Same can be true for any other queer content being consumed by people that aren't historically the target audience.

But again, it's not really anyone else's place to make that call for anyone else.

[vincent-marie]

Hot Take: "Equal Fights" Predicted Online Faketivism

In some ways "Equal Fights" hasn't aged well in its effort to teach about feminism, that the execution wasn't handled as well as it could have been & that it wound up painting the feminists as straw men stereotypes. Rumor has it that even Lauren Faust, who did storyboards on the episode, isn't a fan of it in hindsight.

However this episode feels a lot more relevant to me now in our current age of online purity culture.

We live in an age of social media where young people, who had little to no power before, now have a tool at their fingertips to signal boost for those who need help the most. Teenagers can be everyday heroes in their own right. Frankly I respect you kids for being motivated in your sense of kindness & nobility.

However the problem is that unfortunately what good that can actually be done gets drowned out by a lot of harassment & bullying in the name of social justice. Especially if these young people's sources are very dubious & self-serving.

That's basically what Femme Fatale is as a character. She's a grifter who uses a progressive movement, feminism in this case, as her means for her own gain. Namely, robbing banks.

It's understandable that every super villain has a gimmick. Two-Face has the Number 2 & duality, FF could've just been a devious collector of currency with women imprinted on them. (I myself wish they would discontinue the bulky, useless penny & bring back the Sacagawea dollar.) But beyond that, she uses it as an excuse to get out of getting arrested, to claim that what she's doing is good for society at large, & above all to manipulate & influence the young & impressionable Powerpuff Girls.

The girls, being literal children, take her words to heart & implement them in ways that do more harm than good. From bullying boys in the schoolyard to letting Femme Fatale get away with her crimes.

Reminds me an awful lot of kids & young people on Tumblr & Twitter who get riled up by the words of self-proclaimed progressives who turn out to be TERFs, grifters, or members of the Leopards Eating My Face Party. Namely, the people who use progressivism & online activism to their own end.

And it's not just the Youtubers with the large subscriber base. It's also the individuals who reblog, retweet & bully even on a small scale to make themselves look good or feel like they're making a difference. Not to mention the burner & bot accounts being used to fan the flames of discord within progressive circles.

But what I find the most telling is that FF claims to be a feminist, she collects Susan B. Anthony coins, but she doesn't even know who Susan B. even was & why she was so important to American history.

Reminds me an awful lot of certain gay or trans Youtubers who would try to have you believe that "queer" is a slur, when in reality we not only reclaimed it as an umbrella term to include bisexual, trans, intersex, asexual, etc. people, but is an important part of our very history.

The slogan chanted demanding our basic human rights:

"We're here, we're queer

Get used to it."

It makes me sick that there are multiple generations of people who don't understand our own history. That there are people within our community who would promote & capitalize on that ignorance.

That's who Femme Fatale is. Willingly ignorant herself, selfish, manipulative, & would promote such lack of values to the next generation for her own gain.

And that's why she deserves to serve time in prison, while online faketivist grifters deserve to lose followers, go broke, & disappear into obscurity so they can't do any more damage.

[myragewillendworlds]

I really just can't express enough my distaste for what "activism" and "acceptance" for people with transsexualism has turned into on social media. It's become nothing but memes and jokes making light of sex dysphoria and medical transitioning, treating transsexualism as a joke or a cosplay, turning it into a "look" or a "vibe" or something sexual.

People only relate to it in a way that relates to their own identity or opinions; as "gender inspiration", as a "fuck you" to "the system", as a statement on gender or society as a whole, as a funny meme, as a sexual object, as a means to form your own hollow (sexual) identity around experiences of others that have nothing to do with you. Fetishized into a product, something for you to consume.

I feel like the only time people seem to acknowledge we are living, breathing human beings, actually affected by our sex dysphoria, is when there's another dead transsexual teenager to remind them.

Nobody even sees transsexual people anymore as people born with the wrong sex organs, undergoing or having undergone medical procedures to change their sex. They are "genderfucking" people now, automatically and unchangingly interpreted as having the genitals opposite of their gender – and then either joked about or sexualized for it too. The sex-changing part isn't even part of the general definition anymore.

Non-transsexual people act like they have as much right to form and defend their opinions on it as actually transsexual people do, speak like they think they know as much about it, opinions formed from posts on social media written by "they/them trans nb queer" teenagers – which they reblog as fact just as readily as they do posts from actually transsexual people, because it's not like they have a basis from which to draw a distinction.

The distinctions they do draw are all the wrong ones. Over-mentioning of "cisgender" and "cishet" attributes in the most irrelevant ways excludes us from being considered regular men and women more openly than ever before. In this age of obsessive "inclusion", the only groups we are consistently grouped in with by the internet "allies" are under the banner of "queer", made-up 'third sex' labels (that have no relation to the experience of sex dysphoria or sex-reassignment), or simply with our birth sex. The same conservative discrimination as always, now wrapped in progressive language.

The internet is so oversaturated with this topic, with most of it just harmful, all I wish for at this point is that people would just shut up. We've had enough discourse on it to last us the rest of the century. Just make it stop. Stop making your jokes about us, stop making us your fetish objects, stop treating us as your fandom. I'm just so tired.

[gowns]

In regards to your repression post: aside from the obvious answer (therapy) what are some exercises or things we can do to tackle/acknowledge/defeat repression? If you can suggest any.

i think it really is so individual to different people. therapy will help (it helped me; i found a very progressive therapist who is familiar with trauma). a lot of self-reflection.

for me: reading about zen helped. i'm not very good at meditating (too much bonkers stuff going on up there) but i really like reading about zen concepts and what people get out of it. books that i read that helped me grasp zen were, in this order, the long quiet highway, you are here, nothing special, then goodbye things and the concept of minimalism (what are the things in your life that matter to you, and what is clutter?). also, previously i have been helped by reading books about how trauma manifests in your body, like "the body keeps the score," but now i know that guy is problematique so i would check out alternative books like what my bones know.

that was all kind of like the baseline stuff that was scaffolding for helping me get to a better position to grasp what came to me last year...

... which was a deeper understanding of my own sexuality, identity, how i relate to other people, how i present, feeling embodied instead of disassociating, actually feeling sensations instead of it all being mental. in other words, a deeper acceptance of the fact that i am gay and that queer sex makes me whole.

now, for me, that all started with deep vulnerable conversations with friends about sexuality, identity, desires, dreams. long, long conversations. having more LGBTQ friends. being more in community with people. putting myself out there more, not isolating myself, feeling like an island unto myself.

--

i must repeat: i think that the seed for unrooting repression can be many different things, for many different people.

for me, i found myself in a position where i was a parent of two, in a seemingly cis hetero marriage, experiencing years of isolation. this isolation was mostly self-imposed! my partner has always been very supportive of me in anything i wanted to do. i just had no concept of my own wants and desires anymore. i had been in a caretaker role for so long that any concept of a personal "want" was buried deep underground.

how did this happen? i have always been against the status quo, in concept. but i felt a nebulous social pressure to "perform" motherhood, marriage, nuclear family structure, to wear makeup a certain way, to have sex a certain way... i was living in an unquestioned "normalcy" which was actually actively harmful to me.

i am usually coy about this on this blog, but i'll tell you right out, i started actively dating again and engaging with new sexual ideas and i was astonished that it just... made me feel so real, so myself, in a way that years of therapy and different medications have never done.

over the past several years, in periods of re-experiencing trauma or being triggered, i felt asexual. i would often have to be very drunk or very high to enjoy sex. i felt separate from my body.

now i feel whole again. i feel lit up all over.

like: i sat down and tried to learn the piano this year, and i was amazed that for the first time, in a very long time, there was a connection between my brain, my hands, my ears, and i was capable of being fully embodied in that way too, being able to use my hands to make music, having the plasticity in my brain to learn new things.

--

tldr: i think the answer is different for everyone. for me, it was embracing my nature as an unabashed flirt and local lothario. for you? it could be writing a love song and performing it. it could be finally writing the book laced with details of family secrets you've always been afraid to write. it could be just, like, buying a leather harness, and enjoying the sensation of the leather against your skin. we're only here once (in this form of consciousness)! enjoy the ride!

[daughter-of-sapph0]

1) Detroit become human was about how white robots have it just as bad as African American slaves. cyberpunk 2077 alongside its glitches had racist elements such as orientalism, demonizing black men in the main story, and a horrible implantation of black features in the character customization. the Stanley parable had an in game video of a white man lighting a black child on fire. all games in the grand theft auto series showcase racist stereotypes of black criminals. all south park games have multiple racist "jokes" that are just as offensive and stupid as the show. minecraft on consoles had skin packs, one of which featuring the main character Steve wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, and being one of only two skins where Steve is depicted as Black.

Black people have been telling you about games that are racist for years. but you simply refuse to listen or care.

2) BLM is not an organization that all Black people are a part of. BLM stand for Black Lives Matter, and is a movement, not an organization, that is against police brutality. of course you don't understand the difference between a movement and an organization because you think all people you disagree must all be friends and all agree with each other and are secretly plotting to ruin your life. there is that Black Lives Matter Global Organization Fund, which IS an organization. that is a collective of far-left anticapitalists activists who are part of the Black Lives Matter movement. but not everyone who is part of the movement is part of the BLMGOF. when you say "BLM has never done this", who are you referring to? all Black people ever?

3)

4) "sex class" holy fuck kill yourself

5) "wait till tras find out..." firstly, stop with the tra shit. say tranny with your whole chest. because that's what you mean. you want to call us a slur, but you don't want to face the consequences of calling people slurs. so you make up weird words and acronyms, which are just tranny spelt different ways. it's the same energy as calling someone a fag and then saying "what? all I did was call you a bundle of sticks! there's nothing offensive about sticks, is there?". it's middle school level bigotry. and it's pathetic and makes you look insane.

6) you're trying to make the argument that trans people don't know that markus pearson sucks. but minecraft is the most popular game in the world. every already knows that markus pearson is a terrible person. he's a stupid racist sexist antisemitic transphobic cunt and I hope he fucking kills himself. but a) he hasn't had anything to do with the game in years, and b) he isn't actively funding for the death of trans people.

I have my own criticisms of minecraft. mainly the antisemitism with the villagers. because, surprise, they were created by an antisemite. but despite trying to distance themselves from pearson, Microsoft has done absolutely nothing to change this gross part of the game. I have been vocal about this for years, yet people like you don't give a shit.

also, minecraft is incredibly popular with autistic people, and people who are autistic and people who are trans overlap a lot.

also also, Lena Raine, famous for her work on soundtracks for Celeste and Deltarune, also composed some of the best songs ever for minecraft. why is the important? let me direct you to the best and shortest "personal life" section on wikipedia I've ever seen

actual trans people work on minecraft. minecraft and mojang are filled with queer devs who actively support and are part of the queer community.

so when the current dev team of a game has trans people actively working on it, doesn't invite the creator to the 10th anniversary celebration, does literally everything they can to get rid of all mentions or ties to the creator, and have gone on record saying they want nothing to do with pearson and have cut ties with him completely, I think that means that the game is not transphobic like you want it to be. it's not that no one cares because "he's a man". it's that minecraft isnt a franchise that uses its profits to fund genocide.

also, as I was saying before, minecraft isn't perfect. it still has antisemitism, it still has a racist past, and it still has a shitty ex dev. and while they can't change the past, they can change the future by removing the antisemitic tropes that surround the villagers. yet they don't, and I am very vocally upset and have expressed my views on this subject many times.

7) but you know a game with far worse antisemitism? hogwarts legacy. far more antisemitism than any transphobia. this game is literally the blood libel myth of Jews stealing the blood of white children. the goblins, which have large noses and control the banks and have a shofar and kidnap white wizard children and are secretly working with the wizard nazis are quite literally based off the antisemitic lies and conspiracy theories of the new world order, blood libel, greedy Jew, and holocaust denial. even on their own, these tropes would be absolutely disgusting and repulsive to any person with half a brain. but even though this game has more antisemitic lies and myths than a 4chan /pol/ thread, people like you don't care at all. because "it's hairy potty! and I love hairy potty! the creator hates trans people and that's based ... uh... I mean... I have nostalgia for the series! (and I don't give a shit at all about Jews)"

interestingly though, when this was pointed out to you in the replies, you said "no that's not true" and "so what? that's no reason to get mad" and "actually YOU'RE antisemitic for thinking that goblins are supposed to be Jews". and personally I think that anyone who says that last one deserves a bullet though their skull.

8) also, I find it very interesting that you're complaining and crying and pissing their pants when trans people boycott one (1) game, yet they refuse to listen to anyone else, especially Black people or Jews, when they suggest boycotts, and also refuse to boycott any games with extreme sexism and misogyny in them, despite pretending to care about women.

I have never seen a radfem say anything negative about fat princess, the guy game, dead island, overwatch, persona 5, grand theft auto, and hell, even hogwarts legacy.

if you didn't know, this game was developed by people who were part of gamergate. and if you don't know what gamergate was, it was a massive controversy online where women were saying how sexism in online games is bad, and a bunch of men said "no, and you're wrong! my opinion is worth more than your lived experience". and then some of those men went on to make what you think is the best game of all time, that contains extreme amounts of racism and antisemitism, and sales of which are actively funding a genocide against trans people. but I'm assuming that none of those things are negatives to people like you.

tldr: op need to kill themselves

[rawliverandgoronspice]

This is not me defending Nintendo's shoddy writing when it comes to heavy parts of the Gerudo lore. But I do wonder if some of their really bad missteps are because of their lack of knowledge of Western racial politics. A lot of Japan is still heavily xenophobic, and racial diversity is almost zero, so they might just not actually think about the implications because they just... don't know they exist. It's not an excuse, because Nintendo IS a global company, and there should be some extra research done, since stuff like that is just really fucking iffy. I'm just trying to figure out where that stuff comes from tbh, and why it's still around, instead of being weeded out. So maybe that's a reason, in which case... maybe get some writers who can write depth into their characters.

Hey, thanks for the ask!

So... I feel many things about this, and I completely see where you're coming from, and I think you have hit the nail on the head about why Nintendo do not feel like handling this issue is necessary, or that it doesn't concern them altogether... but I have to be honest, I feel like we give Japan way too much slack on these issues in general, and it's a very common problem (thinking of the controversy on FF16 for just another recent example, or the way queerness is handled in a lot of anime and games). Regardless of, just, the artistic integrity to incorporate the rest of the world as existing alongside you which isn't... mandatory of course, but I believe is important for the sake of honesty: there are japanese people of color, there exists a queer japanese community, and a lot of immigrants living in Japan have to deal with rejection and being considered a second-rate citizen all of the time. Not to mention anything about the new generations of people who were victims of their occupation not so long ago, a subject which is still regularly repressed and ignored by their government (and by the world at large, the US had interests in quieting down some of the worst things they did due to Cold War stuff, and in the West we mostly focused on Germany and collaboration --which makes sense, it's what we knew, but anyway it's complicated and not the topic). This is not a case of mere innocence, it is a case of politically construed ignorance; which is very different, and should not be regarded as equivalent.

But even beyond their own internal socio-political issues, which I am not qualify to speak about beyond what I know from second-hand stories I heard and what I have personally researched, The Legend of Zelda is an IP that is tailored for the West (TM). It is incredibly more popular here than it ever was in Japan. It is a product designed for export. Trying to anticipate what the western market enjoys and fitting right in is part of their responsibilities as a brand if they want to succeed. So, either they did not consider this aspect, which was absolutely something they should be criticized for, as subjects of diversity are hot and trending right now (even without getting into their moral implication) and they did what I consider to be the bare, cynical minimum in this department; or they had an inkling, and considered their choices wouldn't be a dealbreaker. Which... they clearly were not.

Again, I am sorry to be a little cynical here, but while I certainly don't think Nintendo was being consciously malicious here, like making choices to actively play into harmful stereotypes and strict gender roles as some form of active ploy in some sort of culture war, Nintendo is run by conservative japanese men with capitalist interests and a responsibility towards their own government as a major player for japanese soft power. The company will *never* question its own biases, especially if the West just eats up whatever they do and build a human wall of excuses to justify their absence of accountability. This, beyond the game itself which is good and fine and also kind of soulless the more I think about it (in my opinion), is what depresses me and what makes it hard for me to move on: to give them a free pass on these subjects is a choice everyone is collectively making, because it is the Nostalgia and the Childhood and we are desperate for wonder and joy --and it ultimately makes us somewhat toothless as consumers.

And I want to add I am absolutely not immune to this, and it doesn't mean I'm condemning the practice of fandom or the possibility, or even the necessity, of holding several simultaneous truths about a piece of media at the same time and navigating them depending on what is being discussed; but Nintendo is obsessed with controlling its image as a company, curating things as acceptable or unnacceptable as they see fit, approving or disapproving of their consumers' behavior and punishing them accordingly (as well as the rest of the industry *side-eyes the thirty patents on basic gameplay actions*), and it's to say nothing of how employees may be treated beyond the perfectly curated Pikachu yellow walls. This corporate image of being non-controversial is enforced. It doesn't mean I don't admire them for a lot of things, their genuine commitment to game design innovation, their virtuosity when it comes to level design in particular, the way they foster pools of raw talent, their devotion to open up the market to new demographics of gamers, or for the risk they took with the Switch and the wonderful venues it opened for indie devs. I love their games, profoundly, and I owe the company a lot of my joy.

But again, I think it's important to consider several realities simultaneously; and this joy, this goodness, this beauty, while absolutely wonderful and worth preserving, always runs the risk of getting in the way of our discernment in what is getting sidelined.

[mmmthornton]

i don't hate gay people, i am a gay person and i.love gay people. i didn't smear her, i rightfully called her out on her transphobia, because people need to know she (and you) align yourself with those who smear people like me as pedophiles and rapists.

For context: https://www.tumblr.com/butch-reidentified/719311495708753921/pajrc1234-blocked-me-before-even-commenting-that I'm not sure why you sent this anon; i thought at first that maybe @pajrc1234 is a side blog but its the one you replied on? In any case, since my message to YOU was off anon and you used "I" to address yourself, for transparency I'm keeping your information here.

Hey, i'm really angry about this but I'm holding myself back from being mean and sarcastic to make a point.

The whataboutism? Stops fucking here. There ARE issues in the gay community. There ARE issues with lesbophobia, misogyny, there is petty drama, there is stupid bullshit, there is every conceivable kind of human flaw and foible to be found in human beings under the LGBT umbrella. Do you know why that is? Its because we're human beings, with all the variety that that entails.

That means that, for a community to still be able to come together, we need to recognize we'll bruise some elbows and even come across Genuine Bad Actors in all areas of life. We deserve to look out for OTHERS in our community by calling out behavior - BEHAVIOR - itself that is harmful.

What that does NOT MEAN. Is that you start a witch hunt, targeting almost EXCLUSIVELY same-sex attracted woman. for THINKING or ASSOCIATING with the "wrong" ideas or people.

Do you notice what I did there? Do you recognize theres a difference between "BEHAVIOR" and "THINKING"? or even "CRITIQUING"? Because I don't know that you do! And i don't know if a lot of the loudest voices in "queer activism" these days knows that either. Because it seems to me its pretty clear the people who are actually COMMITING the hate crimes that target gay people (uhhhh including trans women, because thats the only demographic anyone wants to talk about when they go into a lesbians inbox), are NOT people IN the community sharing tragic and traumatic events from their own lives.

Lesbians are members of the LGBT Community. Lesbians have a RIGHT to to be here, and we have a RIGHT to discus the things that are hurting us, same as anyone else.

What you DON'T have a right to do, is police the lived experiences of lesbians on the internet or otherwise, to play out your own victim complex. If YOU BELIEVE that eeeeveryone is out to get you, and that SOMEHOW the worst participants are lesbians on tumblr, I need you to know that is pathetic of you.

Women to start with - Cis women even, if you want to be specific - have the lowest possible numbers for violence. Cis women have the lowest numbers for supporting conservative ideas - by voting records! We have that data. Add on top of that, lesbians are a TINY minority of all cis women. So, a minority of a population that is more frequently targeted for violence is SO SCARY to you, that you HAVE to defensively smear their name before they can get you?

Grow the fuck up. I don't actually believe you're "afraid" of violence from lesbian women. I think you just found a way to be a bully and have your victim cake too. Women aren't required to be extra special niceys to you, the only thing we have to do is survive amidst the other factors that make that difficult, and honestly if you have to turn any attempt at LGBT healing into "But what if you maybe someday possibly align yourself with my actual enemies?!" I think you're a wuss. If you actually cared about chasing out bad actors and right wing extremists, you wouldn't go after the demographic that is the LEAST likely to vote republican.

You don't go after the real enemies, because you KNOW that men are more likely to be violent and abusive and harass you and do all the things that you accuse "TERF"s of doing. You're more afraid of them than you are willing to face the problem, and women are an easy target to you because of that. That is the definition of a coward. Hell, that's probably what got you so mad! @butch-reidentified was in a horrifying situation and survived, WHILE helping someone else, and it triggered you so badly you just dug deep into your ugly woman-hating soul to immediately slander her name and make it about YOU.

You. Are. Pathetic. Get better or shut up.

[neverwritewhatyouknow]

Ok hi respectfully I think your “hypothetical” question on twitter was not the best way to get your point across. This movie is a really big deal for queer Latine folks and treating the reduction of background character’s religion as something worse than a fully white British actor playing an ethnically Latine character was very selfish of you. If Nora’s Jewish identity was more central to her identity in the book it might have made it into the movie but that’s not my point. Alex is a canonically Mexican character being played by TZP who is actually Mexican himself. That doesn’t happen often. Latine characters get played by actors who aren’t from their countries all the fucking time (not that you or any non-latine notice, much less care) and finally that’s not the case with this movie. It makes me really sick how you are trying to overshadow what this means to queer Mexicans, Mixtec and queer Latines. If you want Jewish representation that’s fair but you should fully understand the significance of this first, acknowledge that the method you used to make your point was harmful, and stop making it all about you.

Hi, respectfully

Jewish isn’t just a religion. Judaism is the religion. Jewish people can be followers of Judaism, but you don’t have to be religious to be Jewish.

It’s an ethnicity, a culture, a people, a tribe.

I am in NO way trying to devalue the importance this movie is for Latine people. I’m so fucking happy that they actually cast an actor for Alex who actually fits Alex. That was the first thing I checked when the whole cast was revealed. I literally couldn’t be happier.

I do notice every single time that a minority in anything is played by the wrong minority, so thank you for assuming I don’t. I actively work in the Hollywood industry, I live in LA, and I’m a part of various organizations that fight for the rights of all minorities to have equal and positive representation in media, that always includes Latine people.

The question, in question was to prove that it’s wrong to erase any minority. People, a lot of the time, don’t seem to want to really understand where others come from unless you make a super big and wild example. Do I want a white guy to be Alex? FUCK NO! Literally even when I was typing it, I was like, there’s nobody who would agree with this, it’s fucking insane. (Luckily, it only looks like 2 people agreed and I’d claim those as bots before thinking anyone would agree).

Was it the best comparison? Probably not. But was it effective to get people to understand that canon ethnicities can’t just be erased when the production wants a cool actor? Yes. And it’s not to take away from Alex or his story or anything even related to him, it’s to show that the question is So blindly upsetting, because it is really upsetting when your ethnicity and culture get erased. It’s so painful and upsetting and terrible. No matter who it is. Jewish characters are so rarely played by Jewish actors, non-Jews play them all the fucking time. So yeah, I get it, Anon. We’re fighting the same fight. We both want representation for who we are, and we both deserve that a million times over

Nora also isn’t a background character. She was one of the biggest characters in the book. She was in just about every important scene that wasn’t just Alex and Henry. She’s kinda a big deal (don’t know if they made her smaller in the movie, especially with the whole June thing). Her Jewishness was on every page, it was central to her because it’s who she was. She was smart and awesome and cool, and Jewish. It shouldn’t have to be central to her story to be worthy of representation. Jews don’t have to “play Jewish” to be seen as such. We exist just like you, it’s just a part of who we are. We don’t have to constantly be, what? Eating bagels and talking about pogroms? to be seen as Jewish. We’re normal people. It not being central to her is actually what makes her so different from other Jewish characters, because she’s not a Jewish joke.

Queer Latine people SHOULD celebrate this movie. I’m celebrating with you, for you. But two things can be true at once, Alex is fucking great and obviously should only ever be played by a Latino actor. Not even a question. And, that it was wrong of the movie to erase Nora’s ethnicity too. Because Jews deserve rep.

And honestly, if you want to be mad at anyone for the hypothetical existing at all, blame the production. Not for removing Nora (I mean, yeah, that’s the reason for all of this), but because for the past year I’ve been trying to show them how what they did was wrong and I’ve been educating on Jew-erasure and antisemitism, and informing them on all things everything. And they have remained silent or blocked when questioned at all. I wouldn’t have had to post it, had the movie acknowledged at any point what they did, besides the blocking.

But anyway, welcome to my Tumblr, Anon. Please take a look around. If you have any questions, you know where my Ask box is. I’m way more likely to see messages on here than Twitter.

[deramin2]

I've started actively blocking people who are like, "Either you care about every problem in the world so much that it destroys your ability to cope with or you're a fake ally and complicit!"

It breeds scrupulosity OCD, as in explicitly seeks to induce a debilitating mental illness in people to perform purity on social media. It's also totally ineffective from an activism stand point. It spreads you so thin that all you can do is share social media posts you haven't fact checked. No one actually has time and bandwidth to care about everything. Our brains were never built to hold so many relentless horrors. We burn out and can't handle any of it at all because we do actually have limited energy.

If you want to be effective instead of performative, you have to pick one or two things to really care about and put your energy into really understanding what's going on and what steps we can take to make that better. Sometimes those are incremental inadequate steps because that's what you can persuade people to spend resources on right then. But those changes can matter a lot to people on the ground even though it doesn't fix everything. And then you fight for the next step. And slowly you change things. Sometimes you win big. (And then spend a lot of energy convincing people that isn't a discrete happy ending and you have to keep fighting for more.)

I highly encourage people to pick issues that aren't getting a lot of attention and need hands the most. You can also think about how a fight you're not focusing on is intersectional with what you are doing and how to support other groups through your work. Like if you're working on supporting your local queer community but are concerned about the Sudanese genocide, you might see how your resources or networking or grant writing skills can support Sudanese immigrants coming into town. Or work to support organizations like Doctors Without Borders that has over mission but supports many places through it.

Which is not to say you ignore everything else in the world and go into a bubble. But you have to forgive yourself for being human and having human capacity. You CAN'T know everything. You CAN'T absorb every horror of the world. You have limited time to actually work on things. Being a witness can be useful, but if all you have time for is watching the horrors helplessly then you aren't actually helping. Absorbing less but doing more is way more effective.

There's certainly something to be said about who actually gets attention and help and how that plays into biases and people only helping themselves or their in group. But destroying your ability to cope with the world to the point of constant guilt spiralling is not an effective solution to that problem. If you want absolution, care more about less.

So I'm done with internet armchair activists who think guilt tripping will change the world. They're not just useless, they're actively harmful. Don't follow people just because you think you deserve to be yelled at constantly to absolver your sins and keep you on the straight and narrow. Figure out how you can make a real impact in people's lives.