#especially kids in vulnerable populations

[muddypolitics]

(via RFK Jr., anti-vaxxers, and a measles outbreak: Mehdi’s deep dive)

a very bad person doing very bad things

...when your nonsense anti-science bullshit kills a LOT of kids and decimates local populations.

I don’t understand why - but please read the facts, and learn, and spread the truth. 

[faerune]

if you bring children into the ICU I am judging you just know that

[txttletale]

sorry if you have answered a question like this before, but what do you think of critiques from liberals/other leftists whether they be calling themselves socialist, communist, or anarchist, on the "disastrous/genocidal" effect of a "glorious revolution" on populations like children, the elderly, and the disabled? would any revolutionary action necessitate destruction of infrastructure? what kind of conversations are being had among communists about protecting these vulnerable populations? i see a lot of stuff about not wanting to watch kids die in hospitals just for a power vacuum that could go the wrong way and stuff like that and i agree with wanting to protect these populations especially, but something about the conversation in general seems off to me, since kids are already dying all over the world because of the lack of access to healthcare because of things like usimperialism or the insane costs even for people living in the us and the supply chain is already showing many cracks because of climate change and capitalism, with no global "violent revolution" to speak of. am i missing something crucial here? what can i say to my fellow disabled friends who have these concerns, partially born from dealing with ableism in leftist spaces? -- thank you, a baby communist

i mean first of all yes, it is disingenuous to pretend that the most vulnerable people are not dying constantly under capitalism. secondly, revolutions do not usually involve blowing up hospitals and care homes for no reason.

but most crucially of all this entire argument relies on a childish view of revolution inspired by the most tedious reactionary propaganda--an understanding gained from shen yun and anastasia. communist revolutions (like any revolution!) don't happen in times of unremarkable peace and prosperity--they necessarily happen in times of mass discontent and instability, because that's when large segments of the population become radicalised!

genuinely, the best antidote to all these silly liberal ideas about revolution is to read about the history of real revolutions, socialist or otherwise. actual historical knowledge trumps mind palace hystericizing every time. i recommend walter rodney's the russian revolution: a view from the third world.

[tinystepsforward]

automattic vs wp engine mastterpost

adrienne's GitHub recap is probably the best place to see a comprehensive timeline of what's going down. it's been kept up to date. my (very out of date) previous writeup is here.

what's happened/other links

Matt has not logged off, just switched platforms, so there's lots on X/Twitter, Reddit, and Hacker News. it's really not worth wading through.

WP Engine actually filed suit.

the complaint includes some truly remarkable screenshots of Matt trying to blackmail the CEO of WP Engine.

which... personally i would not happily work for someone who just blackmailed me while not even my boss, but that's just me. he hasn't denied this at all, in fact confirming on Hacker News:

I haven't doxxed any private texts from other parties like they have. [source]

and, notably,

I even invited her to my 40th birthday on Jan 11, another text message she decided not to share. [source]

this gives me the creeps. in the context of the rest of the way he's talking to her, and the ways in which he's interacted with women in general, it's. not great.

also he slid into an ex-employee (also a woman)'s DMs asking why she was being mean to him bc he'd never been nothing but nice to her, while also making legal threats. so y'know, pattern of behaviour.

a good writeup of the social side of things

if you don't care so much about the open-source stuff, Steph Lundberg's writeup is, like her previous one on Matt's Tumblr meltdown, pretty solid and people-focused.

Mullenweg has already demonstrated egregious lapses in judgment and abuses of power, it’s just that up until now he’s wielded his power against vulnerable populations without access to high-powered lawyers and their own massive platforms.

a more technical writeup

this one is melodramatic in the same ways Matt was (uses war terminology), which i don't agree with, and which led to some... internal arguments at Automattic. that part's not my story to tell, but a little more on that later. it's a solid writeup of the actual WordPress side of things. there's some seriously dodgy trademark behaviour going on here.

of note: this blogger locked comments on his post:

and then Matt, uh, found a way around that:

wild!

10% of Automattic leaves

that's a link to Matt's blog post. here's an Internet Archive link.

in short, staff were offered a severance deal of the higher of $30k or six months' salary. while that's very generous, it's still very risky in today's tech market, especially (for the same reasons i mentioned when Matt was melting down on here) for people outside the US, people who need the health insurance, or people with young kids. despite that, 10% decided with very little notice (they had two days to decide) to leave.

However now, I feel much lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. As the kids say, LFG!

i'm thrilled to see some of my ex-colleagues make it out. i'm keeping the rest who have stayed on in my thoughts. i don't know anyone who's wholesale shilling for Matt.

Matt's been pressuring staff to post in support of him, @-ing the entire company to vote on Twitter polls in his favor, and so on. many of the people who stayed have written blog posts about it, all starting with "I stayed". people on social media have pointed out the very clear pattern of Automatticians jumping into discourse to defend Matt, and it doesn't look good.

i don't have a lot to say about those posts, except to highlight Jeffrey Zeldman, whose "I stayed" post is perhaps one of the more honest ones. (his Rodney King reference was in poor taste, and he... i don't like his role at automattic, tbc) but like. he's nearly 70. he helped shape the modern internet and develop its accessibility standards. he has often put his neck on the line for disabled staff who don't have as much clout as he does. given the financial troubles he talks about and the state of this market and how old he is, i personally have read between the lines of what he's saying in a particular way.

fuck, man. i'm sad. i'm sad for all my friends who are creaking under the strain and watching others leave but who can't do that. i'm sad that many of them are left in teams which are half-empty or divisions where significant senior leadership are just gone, with no time to document what they had in progress.

i'm sad for Josepha Haden Chomphosy, the former executive director of the WordPress Foundation, who was dealing with a personal emergency and ended up having to miss WordCamp US (where Matt started publicly starting shit with WPE). she came back from that to a gigantic fire in the community she's invested a decade of careful, Matt-negotiating, stewardship to, and decided to take the severance offer. she deserved better.

other things Matt's been up to

mostly linking to comments or posts which compile things here, bc it's too scattered otherwise.

blocking people from the official WordPress X account if they disapprove of his actions.

publicly talking about a vulnerability in ACF, a plugin WPE maintains, which could put thousands of sites at risk. this is not normal, and he met with so much horror even from current staff that he deleted his post.

saying he comes across badly because he's "a little ASD", which is driving me personally up the fucking wall. he's never once said it before and he really is turning into Temu Elon.

generally bragging that he still has more planned. jesus fucking christ

continually saying that WPE's suit is against WordPress.org and the community, which is not true. on which note, his pinned tweet is certainly something:

his choice of lawyer is uh. the kind of guy to defend nestle against literal child slaves.

as always, while i think WordPress crumbling will disproportionately affect websites in poorer parts of the world, there are certainly tyrants who are causing much more immediate and potent suffering. if you've read this far, please do send anything you have spare to gazafunds.com.

[nightlyrequiem]

General and Relationship Headcanons

Mostly just me rambling about Valeria because she’s all I think about all day everyday <3

This is pretty unstructured

Valeria Garza was a mean girl in high school. She wasn’t popular by any means, she was just really mean and aggressive. She had a habit of getting into physical fights. She’d swing on anybody, boy or girl.

She’s a raging lesbian. (I don’t make the rules.) She probably hasn’t had many girlfriends though because Las Almas has a smaller, more traditional population. During her military days I can definitely see her hooking up with at least one of the other women in her unit, fraternization be damned. It ended when the woman didn’t want anything serious.

She had no romantic or sexual relations with Alejandro. I refuse to entertain the idea at all for my own sake.

I like to think she’s 5’6 to 5’7 and around 135lbs. Perhaps 140lbs. Shes around the same age as Alejandro and Rudy. You have to have around 22 years of experience to become a colonel, which Alejandro is, so that sets them around their late thirties to forties. I think Valeria sits at 38.

She has a short temper and not much patience. Especially with the men who work for her. (And men in general.) She feels pressured to make them afraid of her because since she’s a woman she knows they don’t respect her as much as they would a man. She’s not afraid to stab people in the back and she believes everyone is like that. Loyalty can be bought by the highest bidder so she’s always prepared for a betrayal.

The general public don’t know that she’s El Sin Nombre, and most of her own cartel are unaware as well. Only three or four get the privilege of knowing and even then she doesn’t trust them completely.

The cartel wasn’t as influential before she took it over. La Araña liked to do business under the table and out of sight if he could. Because of that, it was smaller. Still making bank but not as much as it could in Valeria’s opinion. She saw an opportunity to line her own pockets and make Las Almas just a little stronger. She used bribery, violence, and fear to her advantage. Killing and displaying anyone who got in her way and building important building to gain public support. All while hiding behind the Sicaria title.

She grew up poorer than the other children. Money is one of her biggest motivators. She was always envious of the other kids who got to go on trips or get new things often. She felt she was dealt a bad hand in life and it turned her bitter. Because she didn’t grow up with a lot of money I think she has spending guilt. She’ll splurge sometimes but she doesn’t own five fancy cars and a huge house. She probably has a smaller private property somewhere and conducts her business at Diego’s villa.

She’s an attractive woman, and she knows it. She’ll still put on a little makeup though. She’ll touch up her brows and put on mascara. She has no one to impress but she knows she’ll be taken more seriously if she’s perceived as attractive.

Valeria doesn’t do flings. Shes not some hopeless romantic, she doesn’t date around hoping to find the one. But, if she’s going to make herself vulnerable to another human being, physically or emotionally then she isn’t going to do it for someone who’s not going to appreciate it. The payoff needs to be worth the price. She learned her lesson.

She’s not the type to be soft and sweet in a relationship. She has her moments of course, but I can’t see her constantly calling you pet names and clinging to you. Her love language is acts of service. She’ll cook you food, bring you something to drink if you mention being thirsty, simple things she can do to make your life a little more convenient. If her you happen to be someone in her cartel she’ll show she cares by keeping a closer eye on you.

One of the men keeps making you uncomfortable? She’ll make sure you don’t have to interact with him. She’ll give you safer tasks and pay you a little more than the others. She might try to convince you to just quit all together. You’d be safer and happier tending to the home, she’s sure. She also just wants you to be financially dependent on her to make it harder to leave. Not that you’d want to. Shes a great girlfriend.

Just not during fights. She loves you but she has a nasty habit of blowing up at you. She’ll say things she knows will hurt you. There’s also the fact that she works a lot. She puts a lot of her time into the cartel. In keeping it going. You might feel lonely and neglected while with her.

She does love you. Even if she calls you replaceable she doesn’t mean it. If you get fed up and try to leave she’ll pull out the crocodile tears. It’s undignified, but she’s convincing enough with her promises to change and her woe-is-me act that you’d feel too guilty to leave.

If that doesn’t work she’ll turn to the only other thing she knows, threats of violence.

She also has jealously issues. She is territorial. She doesn’t make it obvious but she’s jealous of your friends. She doesn’t like your male friends even if you’re a lesbian yourself, and she views your female friends as potential competition regardless of their sexual orientation.

She won’t whine about it, but if you spend too much time with your friends she’ll take it out on you without telling you why. She’ll be snappy, give you the cold shoulder. Which ultimately leads into another fight. She doesn’t understand why you need friends. She doesn’t have friends and she’s fine.

She’ll make it up to you by buying you gifts. She’s not one to spend frivolously but she’ll drop a pretty penny on something if she thinks it will make you forgive her. You mentioned an article of clothing in a passing conversation five weeks ago? Well Valeria remembered and now it’s carefully folded up on the bed waiting for you. She sees a piece of jewellery that she knows you’ll like? It’s yours, but only if you forgive her.

Her favourite colour is pink. Her bedsheets are pink. Her nails are canonically pink. I don’t make the rules, her favourite colour is pink.

[five-thousand-loaves-of-bread]

see lot criticism about autism criteria how it describe how other people experience autistic person not how autistic person experience own autism & that definitely true & yeah there problematic issue abt that & this post not say there isn’t but

need people realize especially self diagnose late diagnose autistic realize that it initial that way for reason. it historic been how other people outward experience autistic person because so long it diagnose on toddler on young child who not able really talk lot about own inside experience own experience of autism because, well, they young. non autistic kid same age not able do that too. some may be able talk some but not in extensive way diagnostic need where can solely rely.

& also many whom developmental delay who significant communication or intellectual or social struggle who cannot (yet or ever) explain how inside feel. cannot self advocate. not aware enough of own experience. not understand own experience.

because that, criteria develop on behavior, base on outside look, base on other people describe. for these population, diagnose look like interview parents and teachers on how they view child & clinician also try engage in play look behavior.

which again not erase fact now that… autistic kids they researched in 90s for example grew up into adults + more adults who late/not diagnose with age of internet, realize hey am autistic too. & so research should keep up language should keep up how we see autism should keep up. & by not keep up they failing lot people. & even if there may be reason for leave out it not excuse it not erase harm.

or that these behavior these observe, often was & is describe in negative way.

or that these report of behavior or experience often biased by clinician/family/society view of race & gender & class.

but think just need realize. there so many autistic people who not fit in mainstream autism community idea of autism diagnosis journey of “realize in adult by self,” and treat as if “realize in adult” as only experience. do disservice to so many autistic people often more vulnerable member in community.

[ninelivesastrology]

So there's this whole thinkpiece I have in my head about The Hunger Games and childism. I want to go in deeply, but after a reread I think my points will be clearer. There's something very poignant about the way that children are preyed upon by the Capitol because of the Rebellion since they are the most vulnerable population. I think Suzanne really sprinkles this in layers throughout the books until you can't avoid it and it really makes me feel as if The Hunger Games series is not just a Young Adult series.

I think reading The Hunger Games as an adult and especially as a parent gives you brand new eyes. You see how children have no rights and even in Catching Fire how much older some of the Victors are and only then do they realize they are stronger together, but man, by then, does it feel all so preventable, but in reality, it wasn't because they were just kids at the time of the Reaping.

I think Suzanne subtly makes the argument that 18 is still a child and it's very interesting to contrast this with how you have to be 18 to join a military, kind of makes me wonder if she believes it is too young to kill others. If that is too young, she is doubling down.

Don't even get me started on Finnick and Johanna, don't you even... I'll get there.

[stobinesque]

The last post I reblogged has me thinking about how Lucas is treated by his friends/the wider UD gang in-universe/from a more Watsonian perspective. Because here are the facts:

Lucas has spent most of his childhood being explicitly/overtly bullied for his race [being called "Midnight" by their season 1 bullies]¹

At the beginning of Season 2, Mike clearly assumes that Lucas agreed to go as Winston for no other reason than both of them being black. But when called on this, Mike cannot bring himself to admit that's what he was thinking. (He also does not apologize to Lucas.)

Until Billy attacks him, Lucas doesn't really know why Max is trying to avoid being seen with him when Billy picks her up/at her house, but having been on the receiving end of "my family is racist so I can't be seen with you," whether or not you actively know the reason someone is trying to hide you from another person, it feels alienating. Also, he absolutely figures it out in hindsight.

But since at first he doesn't know that Billy inexplicably and aggressively hates him/doesn't want him interacting with Max, from Lucas' perspective he gets attacked by a white boy 4-5 years his senior and almost twice his size out of literally nowhere. Said boy explicitly declares to him "You're dead, Sinclair."²

Lucas, upon entering high school, decides that he wants to acquire enough social pressure to protect him and his friends from the bullying they had to deal with throughout middle school. Neither Mike nor Dustin seem willing/able to understand why he might be interested in that protection.

There are a couple different ways to interpret Lucas (and Patrick)³ choosing to stay with Jason and Andy, but I think it's reasonable to assume that Lucas would be able to recognize a mob/witch hunt forming, and I also think it is reasonable to assume that Lucas knows that mobs tend to target the most vulnerable members of a population, and that he himself both as a black kid and a member of Hellfire is at risk.

Nancy knows for a fact that Jason was at the army surplus store in search of a gun, and while it is implied that she informs the group of this, they seem not to take that into any consideration when planning because

Taken altogether, this paints a picture that in-universe, all of Lucas' friends should be intimately aware that he has experienced overt racism for his entire life. But, the Halloween costume argument also suggests that even though they're all aware of said racism, none of the white members of the group really feel comfortable talking about it. Lucas does explicitly call Mike out on thinking that he would be Winston (or that Mike can't be) "because he's black," and Mike flat out lies to his face. If this is one of the first times Lucas has confronted one of the Party members about their own implicit racism, I think it would be reasonable for him to walk away from that exchange deciding that race isn't something he can have honest conversations with his friends about.

We also never see Billy attacking Lucas addressed on-screen after it happens. Which means we never get to see anyone check-in with Lucas about what happened, or see him process what happened.

So come season 4 Lucas has great reason both to want more social capital/protection and to feel uncomfortable explicitly talking to his friends about why that might be. (Especially with the added baggage of Billy having just been killed, which assuredly inspired a lot of complicated feelings for Lucas, especially because of how much his death impacted Max.) Instead, he makes one simple request of his friends (who he both wants at his game and still wants to play D&D with them): get Eddie to reschedule the game. And, sure, it's Eddie's fault that the game doesn't get rescheduled. But it is absolutely on Mike and Dustin that they didn't choose to skip (which honestly probably would have forced Eddie to reschedule anyway??).

So for the most important game of the season, Lucas winds up without his friends or his sister there to watch him make the winning shot, and he misses out on the D&D game that he wanted to play with his friends. It's entirely possible that Lucas still would have decided to go to the afterparty even if Mike and Dustin had come to the game. But I think it's reasonably likely that he'd have gone to celebrate separately with them! Or at least would have left the party early, rather than getting so drunk he pukes the next morning. So when Jason riles the whole team into becoming a mob out for blood, Lucas ends up stuck between a rock and a hard place. He can't really say or do anything to stop Jason that doesn't also put a target on his back. Sticking with him is the best way to 1) ensure his own physical safety and 2) have any hope of protecting Eddie/his friends.

And then Lucas risks his life to lead Jason & co. off Eddie's scent and bikes eight miles to come warn Dustin that he's in danger. He actually explicitly says that Dustin is in terrible danger. Lucas (and, honestly, all of the Party--except arguably Will) at this point is intimately aware of the fact that a white boy fueled by rage can been homicidally dangerous. So the fact that even after knowing for a fact that Jason has acquired a gun, the whole team send Lucas, Erica and Max to the Creel house without weapons, protection, or any sort of plan as to how to deal with Jason & co. if they turn up is not only baffling, but honestly feels downright callous.

From a purely Watsonian perspective, Lucas has every right and reason to be absolutely livid with his friends. Their consistent inability to recognize or acknowledge the racism Lucas experiences directly results in Lucas and his sister being attacked and nearly killed--and not even by the supernatural bad guy.

¹The show never returns to this, but to me it is broadly illustrative of the racial climate in Hawkins

²Please do not waste your breath trying to argue with me that Billy "wasn't really trying to kill him." I honestly don't care either way. He threatened to kill a 13-year-old boy whose only "crime" was being black. There is no other explanation for Billy's treatment of Lucas that makes sense, since he explicitly targets him, and not Dustin or Mike. Regardless of whether or not Billy had genuine homicidal intent, Lucas had no reason to think otherwise in that moment. I have no interest in arguing this point with anyone.

³Patrick is another excellent example of the show being unable to meaningfully reckon with with its racial implications, but that's its own post.

[intheholler]

do you think its wrong to use the word coon to refer to the animal? ive always grown up with that word being used and i dont want to kill that part of my dialect, it feels like a murder, but i also know the history surrounding the word and how it was used as a slur. what do you think?

yes, i definitely think its wrong to continue using that word. words and their meanings shift, and that word has definitely taken on a meaning that is inextricable from its racist roots. especially because it is still used as a slur.

i think, as appalachians, that is a part of the self-work we have to do--disentangling from ourselves the negative aspects of our culture (including manners of speech) that are inherently harmful, including casual racism, while retaining the positives.

what i mean is: you should absolutely keep your dialectal vocabulary for other, innocuous words n phrases, but not for the ones that actively harm others, like this one.

we shouldn't want to hold onto that word. yes, there was a point for almost all of us, learning and repeating harmful shit when we didn't know better as kids. and then, there is now, when we do. it's our job to recognize these aspects and get rid of them. our sense of familiarity for lack of a better word is not as important as the safety and the comfort of vulnerable populations targeted by such language.

thanks for the question and for doing the work to think about these parts of yourself, i know from experience it can be very uncomfortable. but, again, our comfort is not more important than those oppressed by such language.

take care <33

[old-school-butch]

The shrinking global population

This is something that is getting lots of media attention, especially in anything focused on economics and global growth.

The narrative goes like this: as a country’s wealth grows and living gets more expensive, women get more educated and push back the age of marriage and opt to have fewer kids.

There is an incoming deluge of think pieces and policies too to ‘encourage larger families’ that will range from abortion bans to baby subsidies.

As feminists, we must insist that these discussions focus on the reality of women’s labor as the unpaid resource that is being exploited in our society.

Some key points:

1. Even women working full-time jobs do more housework and childcare than their male partners. This is called the ‘double-shift’ and it’s been observed since the 60s.

2, Women in advanced economies that have more supportive programs for mothers, (where having a child doesn’t mean abandoning your career) have more kids that women in advanced economies that offer no support. In nations where those measures - like parental leave - extend to fathers, dads take on more of the work of raising kids and ultimately... this also leads to more kids. So the patriarchal argument that women’s rights need to end so women will return to being barefoot and pregnant can be rebutted with the simple notion of ‘maybe try making motherhood less shitty for women?’

3. Even without government subsidies, women around the world who have male partners who take on more of the house work and childcare have more children. A specific complaint of South Korean feminists, for example, is that men have not changed their attitudes about the role of wives as domestic servants. Why marry a man and have your workload triple - caring for yourself, him and a baby too? Women are making rational choices.

4. Limiting those choices will be attempted. Bans on birth control, abortion rights will be a theme for the next decade.

5. Appealing to racism and/or weird guilt trips will be attempted. Resist all messaging to ‘save’ whatever ethnic, religious, racial or cultural group you are in by having more children than you want.

6. We must resist another rational choice that will be available for some women - to offload the work of child-raising onto an underclass of women. From using surrogates, maids, or low-paid childcare workers - the ‘solutions’ available to upper/middle-class women will continue to exploit economically vulnerable women as a group. Men already exploit these women as mail-order brides, and this practice will increase since so many countries have aborted so many girl fetuses that there’s an excess population of males. Instead, we need to examine how to make childcare more efficient and extend health care for all families to protect women and children’s health.

7. A shrinking population is always framed as a disaster in the making, but surely some economists can come up with ways to manage this process in a way that makes a bit more room on this planet for plants and animals. Growing populations have driven famines and wars for millennia, surely it’s time for humans to learn to how to create a slower, more stable impact on the earth.

[dabistits]

when do u think bnha became unsalvageable?

i think bnha might've always been slated to become that way from the get-go, with the protagonist being an aspiring hero and heroes being superpowered cops.......

that said while copaganda shows will always be suspect to me, i'm willing to watch them for entertainment value if not moral backbone lol. so i think bnha could've still been a somewhat fun show about these kids going to superpowers school and learning how to use superpowers better. the major failure points that stand out to me are:

mva

endemption

i'll talk about #1 first since i'm sure that's gonna be the most controversial coming from me lol. dgmw i actually love mva and i think it's one of the better-written (if not best) arc of the series, BUT it was so good and set up so many expectations that the series ultimately just could not live up to. mva was very strong imo because, in giving its villains depth, it dug into the fabric of bnha's society and tried to illustrate, like, how did this happen, why are these people villains? and by and large, the answer to that was poverty and the societal alienation of vulnerable populations (children, abuse victims, mentally ill ppl, queer ppl, "mutants," etc.)

and this was good and interesting but this was Also Bad because mva added complexity to the world of bnha but that was ultimately a complexity that horikoshi couldn't execute. i'm not interested in a story that makes systemic change secondary to scolding marginalized people for reacting to how they've been treated. i would even prefer some kind of liberal "change from the inside" story that at least focuses more on the theme of systemic flaws than one that focuses on how the people systemically wronged are actually the bad ones and we have to fight them for 400 chapters.

look, i'll even drop the whole "the lov did nothing wrong" bit for a moment. sure, bnha doesn't have to throw away all believability and have everyone forgive the lov just like that, but it's always going to be fucked to me that bnha's story and fans are obsessed with the lov ~owning their crimes~ when (takes a deep breath) the government ordered the clandestine executions of people who would make the hero system look bad. and the story barely wastes any breath talking about the corruption of the hero system and higherups lol. which brings me to the second point.

endeavor started out as a character that embodied everything that was wrong with quirk/hero society. he was one of those very early downsides we saw of bnha's world: the publicity/public image of heroes superseding the contents of their actual character, and the value of quirks superseding the value attributed to their human bearers, to the point that domestic abuse and rape is seen as an option to make one's genes/one's power stronger. this was a good set-up! i was intrigued! but again, horikoshi couldn't follow through.

endeavor's character eventually shifted away from making a point about hero society to becoming one of the emotional focal points of the story, especially in the todofam subplot. "waaah tumblr user dabistits you just hate when people change for the better!" and yeah i do kind of hate how an abuser having sad feelings immediately gets him prioritized over the people who suffered because of him tbh! but personal feelings aside, i would say that endemption really marked the point where bnha swung hard into depicting characters as good or bad not through the actions they take but through their alignment with either heroes or villains.

endeavor and hawks are the most obvious in this. in contrast to the obsession of making sure villains repent and "do the right thing," endeavor/hawks' actions are either forgivable, pitiable, or simply necessary. several years of spousal abuse and at least 10 years of child abuse don't earn endeavor so much as a lecture (no, being told to stop being pathetic doesn't count), and hawks' execution of twice—not much different than lady n's executions—is dismissed through a press conference and never addressed again. there's a distinct line drawn between "heroes (who sometimes do bad things!)" and "villains," such that anyone aligned with the heroes is deemed to be "good, deep down," and generally more morally superior or redeemable than villains. consider the fact that someone like gentle (youtube crimes) or aoyama (blackmailed 16 y.o) were held to higher standards of proving themselves than someone like endeavor or hawks. i'm not gonna lie, these story beats are all uncomfortably real, except that when real live people do endeavor or hawks things i see them unquestionably as counterrevolutionary enemies, not protectors of the peace lol.

the decision to have endeavor transition from minor antagonist to a major supporting character was, imo, a big turning point in the ethos of bnha. i think in many ways it was a symbolic shift, but also a mechanical one in terms of how the story was going to be told going forward. the problems about hero society that were continually introduced at the beginning (ostracizing quirkless people and ppl with "dangerous" quirks, the valuation of powerful quirks over people, "fake heroes," all of the lov stuff) took a backseat to Stopping The Big Bads, with marginalization as flavor text instead of a genuine area of contention between heroes. think about the difference in deku confronting endeavor during the sports festival compared to how all other injustices were dealt with afterward... because the readers have to be convinced that endeavor is Ultimately Good, the heroes stopped challenging him, and in stopping challenging him, they lost one of the major ways through which the heroes of the series wrestled with societal issues.

but whereas the way the heroes handled corruption and violence within their own ranks became simplistic and non-confrontational, with mva, so many aspects of dealing with and interrogating the status quo and societally-accepted injustices were pushed onto the villains instead. but since the villains must be defeated as villains, despite being the main carriers of social critique now, their messages were also torn down/deprioritized in favor of enacting bnha's vision of a cohesive conclusion wherein the villains answer for their crimes. so instead of making the heroes challenge anything, hori shifted this burden onto the villains, in the process making most of them some kind of vulnerable/marginalized and with opinions on the matter, only to ultimately assert that the issues they raise are less narratively important than a restoration of peace.

[elysisticism]

Dear Queer Kids: It Doesn’t Get Better

The news cycle from the past few months could break your heart, over and over and over again. It consistently spits out stories of our community’s most painful incidents of directed hate, in violent and gory detail. And there’s a new one every time you turn around.

Lately, the theme has been transphobic fear mongering and increased restriction on an even more vulnerable subset: trans youth. The vitriol has always been there, it just wasn’t always so blatantly acted upon, especially so close to home. The hate speech has moved from whispers behind closed doors to shouts in the street, to the mouths of our politicians, to the ink spilled out on our legislation. The consequences are dire: suicide, assault, murder.

This pride month, as I reflect on the past year, I remember the tragic assault and subsequent death of Nex Benedict, a 15-year-old non-binary student just trying to use the school bathroom. I am reminded of my days as a queer and trans kid. It has been over a decade since I was stuck attending public school, but I vividly remember the uncertainty, the fear, and the hopelessness. When my carefully built scaffolding of adult queer life is stripped away, these are the emotions that remain.

At that time, there was a popular campaign, mostly by out gay celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres (we didn’t have a lot of visible trans adults back then) featuring them assuring queer kids, from their mansions, sports cars, or Hollywood sets, that it gets better. I remember the sentiment ringing quite hollow. When you are so immensely vulnerable and in pain in the very present moment, it doesn’t help hearing that it will get better in some far-off imaginary future. We didn’t know if we’d survive until then.

Now, reflecting on the last ten years from a vantage point above the chaos of teenage life, it would still ring hollow. You need to know that it doesn’t get better – it gets different.

As a non-binary teenager, one of my biggest hurdles wasn’t hate, it was invisibility. It may be because of my privilege as a less feminine, middle-class white kid, or my propensity to people-please, stay quiet, and focus on academics, but I was rarely a victim of deliberate and directed transphobia or discrimination. This doesn’t mean that those teenage years were easy for me. Invisibility comes with its own set of hardships: constant misgendering, gaslighted excuses for why it was ‘too difficult to understand,’ and a reputation as the ‘weird kid’ ate at me each day, nibble by nibble. Illegibility shielded me from targeted violence, but it also shielded my true self from the world. From underneath the covers, I could peak out at a world that was barely beginning to accept cisgender gay couples, and pretend to be asleep (deny my truth and project myself as girl) when the wrong type of attention was drawn, dreaming of a time when it would get better, and I would be recognized for who I am.

Slowly, the transgender community has gained societal awareness through campaigns, media attention, and the hard work of queer activists. However, not all attention is good attention. With an increase in general dialogue surrounding the transgender community has come an increase in hateful dialogue, misinformation, bigoted rhetoric, and violent actions. To be clear, the hate is not new: gender non-conformity has been seen as unacceptable for generations of Western society. However, the hate has evolved and gained traction amongst those who can use it for their own gain.

In the present moment, hate against such a miniscule but exposed minority of the general population is a rallying point, a dog-whistle, and a distraction. Fueled by disinformation, purposeful misunderstandings, and exaggerated or blatantly false claims, transgender people have become a common enemy. To the loudest of our critics, we never were individual humans with unique actions, aspirations, and lives we are attempting to live free of violence. Instead, we symbolize an attack on the status quo and everyone who belongs to it or benefits from it. Truly, I do not believe that most people have an ingrained motive to hate our community; what they hate is the feelings of vulnerability that emerge within themselves as a reaction to societal changes beyond their control. Spurred on by certain faith leaders, politicians, and influencers, they have turned this fear into anger and have directed it those more marginalized than themselves.

The consequences of this movement are now beginning to come to fruition. Transgender youth looking to participate in sports, get an education, or merely go to the bathroom face a barrage of restrictions, discrimination, and violence. The most vulnerable members of our community who do not experience outright beatings will absorb the environment of hate that has seeped into our institutions and transform it into self-loathing. At best, self-loathing shuts tight and locks the closet door, preventing queer kids from ever experiencing and sharing their true selves. At worst, self-loathing turns to careless risk-taking, self-harm, and suicide. Simply put, transphobia on the societal level leads to trans death again and again and again.

Perhaps this age-old song of hate will decrescendo, but it will always be audible in the background of our lives. The privileged fearful will find a new victim-enemy, re-concentrate on another vulnerable group, and begin to ignore us once again. Then, just as we did after the second world war, after the government purge, and after the HIV/AIDS crisis we will quietly emerge from the shadows, take stock of our circumstances, mourn our dead, and continue to live. We will learn their new rhetoric, we will educate a new generation, and we will advocate for the most vulnerable amongst us. We will survive again and again and again.

It doesn’t get better - it gets different. Yet we adapt to this difference every time and every time we continue to survive.

But if it doesn’t get better, if the hate continues to circulate, evolving and reforming each time, why must we endure? Why should our community, and our youth, continue to subject themselves to the same violence experienced by our queer ancestors?

Queer youth of today, you must know that there is more to life than perpetual hate. The storm may rage around us, but there will be moments where you find yourself in the eye. When you finally put on that item of clothing and the mirror reflects back the true essence of who you are; when you find the group of friends and chosen family that stick with you, no matter what; when you look your partner in the eye and spark that feeling of belonging, feeling of home.

These islands of queer joy sustain us, nurture us, and remind us of why we fight again and again and again.

You don’t need to listen to those privileged celebrities in their mansions, sports cars, and Hollywood sets telling you it gets better in some distant future. You also don’t need to listen to the hate-mongering faith-leaders, politicians, and influencers. What you need, and what I know is out there for you, is a community of allies, peers, and queer elders that will assure you that you are welcome, just the way you are.

This is how we continue in the face of hate, violence, and death. We gather – in secret, in public, online, in person, covertly, in colourful displays, at protests, at memorials, out loud, and in whispers. We find each other and we hold fast to one another, we support each other, we care for each other, and we ensure our own survival.

I must tell you that it doesn’t get better. The hate never goes away. But you will grow into a community of resilience, a community of hope, and a community fueled by moments of your very own queer joy.

[the-world-annealing]

A thought I commonly see in analyses of Terra Ignota is, loosely paraphrased: "Why would a third of the world population join up with the quasifascist rome larpers when there's a hive that made pokemon real."

Now of course, we're all on the Gay Sex And Pokemon website, there's a bias here and we might be wrong about what the average person is like, but even so the point still stands! What is it about the Masons that attracts people to them over all six to nine alternatives, especially given how little they actually offer except nice architecture and absolutist power structures?

Well, recall how a fact of Terra Ignota's world, one we run into time and time again, is: "Having everyone stop talking about gender and religion did not actually prevent discrimination or end oppression or otherwise solve any problems". Mycroft applies he/him to masons wherever possible, they're led by an emperor-even-when-female, they wear suits, they're powerful, they draw their symbology from supremely patriarchal times and places. It's clear that Masons are gendered more than any hive except the cousins, and one of the few organizations (the only?) to be gendered masculine.

(I think it's relevant to remark how blacklaws could have been presented as masculine tooth-and-claw survivalists, but instead we get chagatai and madame and dominic as the most prominent examples, which don't read very traditionally-masculine to us)

The cousins are explicitly identified as a sort of aggregate of feminine people, but they certainly aren't the sum total of them. And that makes sense; all the stereotypical feminine traits (caring for others, playing diplomat, cooking) are still relevant in the world that Terra Ignota presents; if you care deeply about Performing Feminine Roles you don't have to join the cousins, you can just be a mom friend or the one at the bash who doesn't work and focuses on raising the kids.

But if you care deeply about Performing Masculine Roles, you're a lot more limited in your options! Society is safe and peaceful, physical labor is increasingly rare, and at any rate nobody will depend on your labor to survive; you aren't 'working hard to put food on the table' because the food literally grows on trees!

The most 'masculine' career path remaining is probably policing (and I think it's relevant that the most prominent cop in the story gets gendered male!) but that's hardly an option for everyone.

So everyone who feels like a man, who watches fragmented bits of pop culture and half-forgotten references and constructs this ideal of masculinity out of it, who might meet the definition for gender dysphoria depending on how you look at it, who the text implies is made vulnerable by these unfulfilled desires... yeah, I think such a person would join the Masons in a heartbeat, because the Masons represent one of the few outlets for masculine urges (them and madame's roleplay scenarios). And if that describes a significant fraction of the population, it becomes absolutely unsurprising to see a 33% mason plurality at the start of the series.

[marblecakemix]

hey, about your blog intro you said that you don't hate trans people but you hate their ideology, do you mind explaining what you mean?

Not at all! It came out kinda long, I hope you don't mind.

The first thing I hate the most about gender ideology is "trans kids". I'm strongly against stuffing children with hormones that their young and still developing bodies do not need. I believe that children cannot give consent to irreversible hormonal therapy and surgeries. Especially when hormones have a huge impact on their mental and physical development (just look at how different levels of estrogen in a woman's body change how she acts). A lot of adults aren't sure about transitioning and sometimes regret parts of it, how can a child make such a difficult and life-altering decision? There are safer and healthier ways of testing the waters (that should last at least 2 years to be sure), like changing the style of clothes, using different pronouns and assimilating more with the opposite sex. Why is that not the first thing recommended to those kids?

And to the people who deny any of that happening. Today at the mall I saw a 14/15 y/o girl on testosterone (I and my friend could tell by how uncharacteristically low her voice was). She clearly was not doing well, she had that empty look in her eyes (speaking from experience). She was maybe a head smaller than me (I'm 155cm/5'1) and she'll most likely never grow taller and will probably end up obese, because of taking testosterone so early. In my country gay marriage is illegal, but you are free to butcher a child's natural growth with hormones? That does not seem right.

The second thing is how transness is presented nowadays. You don't need to have gender dysphoria (even though it's the first thing you would need to be diagnosed with a decade ago to transition which was the essential thing in transsexualism)! You don't even have to want to change at all! Now all you need to do is to check the criteria of "feeling trans/like different gender" which is deeply rooted in sexism and operates on stereotypes. What does "feeling like a woman" mean? Women-feelers want to wear all pink, revealing clothing, have big bouncy boobs, act stupid, and be annoying? That sounds pretty sexist to me. Same with "feeling like a man". A man is not someone who likes bears, fishing, and cars, we all know that. You can't feel like a man/woman, because sex is not based on feelings, interests, and personality which the opposite is one of the fundamentals of being trans according to gender ideology. The most harmful thing I see that comes out of it is women (usually identifying as non-binary) say things like, I don't feel like a woman, because I have a complex personality and can think on a higher level than a toddler. That's sexism all throughout that gender ideology supports wholeheartedly.

Another thing is borderline occultic behaviors I see in gender ideology believers. They pray on the young and vulnerable and tell them that the irreversible change to their body will fix all their problems (that have usually nothing to do with gender dysphoria). The activity discourages people from looking into research on topics that questions the ideology and show the negative side of it. They vandalize, attack, and kill people who are against their ideology. They expect that their minority rights will have more power than 99% of the world's population. They usually are only or mostly friends with themselves. They advocate for children to be taken away from their families just because the family is questioning their child's behavior. Straight-up lying about statistics and research results like how the newest research says that people who transition are more likely to take their own lives than before transitioning and I don't think you'll ever hear about that from gender ideologist. There's a lot more, but I can't think of another example now.

Those are the main reasons why I hate gender ideology. I hope that this answers your question. If you want to ask about anything more specific, go ahead!

[dhaaruni]

I don’t disagree with keeping classics like Jane Eyre in school curriculums at all, but other than trying to move from classics to YA, what have teachers’ unions done?

Not trying to come at you or pick a fight. I’m just confused bc I thought during the height of the pandemic, teachers were being overworked and underpaid and that they had been for a long time (thinking of teachers who had to pay out of pocket for extra school supplies for kids whose parents couldn’t afford it or teachers who make themselves available outside of school hours for students who need that extra time or attention), and were asking to be fairly compensated. I thought similarly of nurses’ unions. Is there something I’m missing?

Uh.

I swear I don't mean to be contentious but basically, one major reason that the teachers' unions have become massively unpopular is because during COVID, the unions argued for teachers to be vaccinated first since they were front line workers (true) and in-person schooling is really important (It absolutely is, just look at the massive learning losses post COVID), but even after teachers got vaccinated, often before vulnerable populations like the elderly, a lot of them still refused to return to in-person schooling, especially in blue states, where schools were sometimes closed almost a year after they opened in red states because Republican governors made students go back to school.

In Virginia, Glenn Youngkin won the governor's' race in 2021, nebulously due to "parents' rights", which obviously included Terry McAuliffe very dumbly saying that parents shouldn't have a say in their kids' public education, but also because parents in Virginia were FURIOUS at school closures. Public schools were shut down in parts of NoVa until well into 2021 and kids were falling way behind academically, and super involved parents of high achieving kids were obviously freaking out. If you look at the Virginia precinct maps between 2020 and 2021, Youngkin didn't do better than Trump in the rurals and actually did slightly worse in many places, but he massively improved on Trump's margins in affluent suburbs, especially in NoVa which all went big for Biden a year prior.

Just look at this map from May 2021. Like, there's a reason Ron DeSantis won by almost 20 points in 2022, and it's not because Florida is an R+20 state or because he's super duper likable lol. Americans, especially parents, HATED lockdowns and masks (I'm very liberal and I haven't worn a mask since the federal mandate was lifted in May 2022 because of how hot I run) and some of their hatred was irrational and obnoxious (I obviously never yelled at anybody who asked me to wear a mask unlike many others) but in the case of school closures, there's some merit to it.

[thunderheadfred]

Im sick and crabby and don’t have a healthier outlet so I’m gonna a rant about a bunch of random shit okay? Cool

The world

Do I have to? It’s horrible. Every day it’s more horrible

Why is America like this

Why are all these powerful despots doing the shit they are doing

Why are literal children being exploded

Why is the earth on fire

Just stop

I think about Jesus a lot

Like a lot a lot

I’m not Christian but sometimes you just gotta think about Jesus

The fact that we gotta just like… do the day to day rigmarole despite the global panopticon broadcasting suffering directly into our consciousness, to the point that if you don’t take up volunteering or meditation or healthy religion or radical love you will in fact go insane

How do we fix it? Without becoming what we fight against

Jesus Jesus Jesus

Anyway. Breastfeeding

It’s ironic because I was so afraid of breastfeeding triggering body dysphoria. It’s triggered a lot of things, but not that

We have a bad latch, and I underproduce milk, probably because of my CFS

So whenever I try to breastfeed her, she ends up miserable and crying in a way you can only understand if you’ve been in this exact situation, and it feels like I am holding a knife and stabbing my own heart again and again

Because I can’t breast feed exclusively, we feed 50/50 formula and pumped breast milk, and she’s perfectly healthy and so so so happy, but I still feel like an axe murdering psychopath

These days I pretty much don’t directly breast feed her at all, and if you’d asked me before baby, I’d have thought that would be ideal. But no. I just feel guilt.

WHY DOES IT MAKE YOU SO SWEATY?? No one warned me about this, but apparently everyone gets postpartum sweats for like. months and months. it's so gross. I'm just moist. damp. wet. all the time. I thought I was going insane but no. it's just another one of those Pregnancy Things. thanks body

Child Free People vs. Pro Natalists

Why these new terminally online identity categories???

I didn’t get the idea of declaring myself “child free” before kids, even when I MYSELF thought I could never want kids

Calling children “parasites????” WTF unhinged

Calling childless people "psychopaths????" equally without hinge

Yes pregnancy is pure body horror but that doesn’t make it the BABY’S FAULT. A fetus is not some kind of malicious alien, it’s a human being in progress??? All human beings are consumers in nature but that doesn’t make us inherently evil, especially those of us who are the most tiny, ignorant, and vulnerable. A baby is just… trying to survive

Yes childbirth is transformative and awe-inspiring but why are a certain subset of rich imperialists so fucking gross about wanting to impregnate as many women as possible. Shut up until you can push the baby out yourself, then get back to me

Look. If you don’t want kids, don’t have kids? Don’t think about kids? Move on and solve world peace or something. Why is there a subreddit pathologically obsessed with hating children and shouting it loudly as part of their bio? I get that the world is full of horrors and it’s hard to imagine the future sometimes. “How could you bring children into the world” Yadda yadda. Climate change or WWIII or whatever existential threat appears tomorrow, every human being dies eventually. Death isn’t really an excuse to give up on the continuity of life writ large

but also? a declining population isn't the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, Elon you ketamine-addled incel shitface. It just means capitalism might break under the strain of the way we devalue and fail to care collectively for elders. even elders who currently HAVE children

You can just. Ignore children and live your life. Making it an identity reeks of insecurity, doubt, and a weird nihilistic doomed mindset

If the counterargument is “well parents make parenting their whole identity and that’s equally stupid and annoying” no it isn’t.

Unless we're talking about the equally deranged opposite end of the spectrum. Everyone is unhinged about kids these days, almost as if capitalism and individuation and the "nuclear family" have imploded the basic inter-generational human village that makes having children desirable and healthy for people on the whole

Having children is a huge amount of labor, never mind the emotional importance of family to uhhh most people? So yeah, it’ll be a huge focus for most. Whereas being childless is just. That. Focus on something else more interesting, since you don’t have to worry about kids. No need to make a thing of it. It seems counterintuitive. Don’t like kids? Stop thinking about them so much

For women especially, having an unnecessary hysterectomy or doing other damage to yourself seems so… self harm adjacent? You truly DONT know if you will change your mind (I did) but even more importantly, removing or altering your organs can have consequences on your hormones and quality of life. There are other forms of birth control that seem far less invasive and destructive. Your body your choice, always. But. These seem like unnecessarily harmful choices.

I’m not interested in confronting anyone about this trend which is why it is all behind a cowardly “read more” cut but I just find the whole aggressively child free identity mind boggling

Anyway back to thinking about childless MVP Jesus again

Jesus

Fuck. Did not expect having a baby to make me so conscious of Christ.

My unmedicated labor was a religious experience, so now I have to Deal With That

Still not Christian, but increasingly a fan of Buddy Christ

Christian nationalists need to get his name out of their mouths

Trump is the Antichrist. If not THE Antichrist, at least AN anti-Christian

How do we reprogram all these people who think they are heroic righteous saviors when they are about as violent and power seeking as it is possible to get

See “how to fix it without becoming the bad guy”? (Real Jesus had answers. Sorry MAGA, but most of them involve being forgiving, generous, vulnerable, introspective, or gentle)

They have so many guns

The idea that you could think Jesus is with you while you talk about rounding up migrants and killing criminals and hating your neighbor like. Jesus was very much not a fan of these things?? Jesus did not have an AK-47, he um. He rode a donkey.

Jesus liked to sit with kids under trees and wash feet and famously rejected power and wealth and kings and uhhhhh KINDA DIED ABOUT IT

LEAVE JESUS ALONE

I’m having a normal one, clearly

Here’s a happy baby