#florida man being fascist

[seileach67]

Florida election police question voters who signed an abortion petition

[probablyasocialecologist]

The far right aren’t the only ones showing up armed. Across the country, marginalized individuals are forming groups like the John Brown Gun Club and Socialist Rifle Association that claim to be devoted to the idea of community defense. Their rationale is informed by the massacres at Colorado’s Club Q and Florida’s Pulse nightclub, and tempered by a long cultural distrust of the police, who they say have repeatedly failed to protect them from — and in some cases even perpetuated — right-wing hate. 

Many sources interviewed for this story — particularly those who conceal their identities at protests — asked to use pseudonyms, in fear of being targeted or doxxed by the far right. Others were happy to share their names, judging that their public presence — or concealed-carry permits — shield them from harm. All of them, however, agree on one thing: The other side has guns and is willing to use them. The only answer is to be prepared to shoot back. 

[...]

“My community, the South Asian community, has been dealing with this shit for 30 years,” Azad says. “Every year, some dude throws a Molotov into a temple, or spray-paints swastikas on our houses.” 

Gato chimes in. “I don’t want to own guns and do this,” he says. “But I also don’t want someone coming after my wife because she’s a person of color.” 

But in Texas, Azad and Gato say, guns are a necessity — the right wing has them, the law allows them, and being armed is the only way to stay safe. 

“This is the Wild fuckin’ West, man,” Azad says. “We kinda do what we gotta do.”

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: I may have activated my own trap card

Spoilers for a movie that's two months old and also out on home release.

So, Miles, Gwen, Pavitr (Spider-India), and Hobie (Spider-Punk) all seem to have modern left-wing politics, though Gwen's got edited out. Hobie's introduction specifically says he hates "fascists", which carries over from the original comics.

By the time Hobie came around, I assumed he was just another poser, cooler than the hero rival character, expressing generic leftie politics, and his punk ethos wasn't sincere.

Which is exactly what the writers wanted me to think.

Not only is Hobie perfectly sincere about being anti-authoritarian, but he's been helping Miles since before they even met. He's been blatantly stealing junk from the Spider Society to build his own universe-jumping watch, and disguising it as petty vandalism.

He even tries to talk Miles out of trying to join the Spider-Society before the reveal that Miles himself is an anomaly, and the SS (geddit?) tries to detain Miles.

When Hobie says he's against authoritarianism, he really means it.

Speaking of the left-wing politics, Miles has a "#BLM" pin on his bag. It's very visible while he sits next to his dad.

Who's a cop.

(TANGENT: A few years ago, someone drew a stupid, very bad comic where Spider-Man (Peter Parker) was a) black, b) hated cops, and c) assaulted and subdued riot cops when they asked him for help.

That the comic didn't even show the riot cops were wrong. We were just supposed to assume they deserve to be left to the mercy of an angry mob.

Also, in this comic, Uncle Ben was killed by a cop, not a random thug who Spidey could've stopped but chose not to. Which makes me wonder how that would shake out.

It's kind of weird for someone to look at a character who's about personal responsibility to an unhealthy degree, and use him to express their collectivist anti-cop terrorism fantasies. That, or they didn't think through their fantasies.)

During Spider-India's opening, Miles says "I love Chai Tea!" And Pavitr goes on a rant about how "Chai" means "tea". Later on, The Spot says he's been on a "journey of self-discovery", and Pavitr basically says he's racist.

Which is a tad ironic, because Spot is literally white. And also because Pavitr is the one making the racist assumptions.

And I personally go to a church - in England - that has a lot of non-white non-British people. Mostly Africans. And me, of course. I wonder if any Asians ever went on a journey of self discovery to South London.

And I don't just mean as a cab driver.

"Wait, SYABM, didn't you move to the UK for self-discovery?"

W-well, yes, partially.

Aside: I made the mistake of watching a Youtube video with the Chai Tea joke, and then I looked at the comments.

One guy said "tfw when Twitter users write a movie". An idiot (with much more upvotes) said "bro out here wanting blatant racism in movies".

...When the whole point of the joke is that the racism is not blatant.

It's only "blatant" if you're insufferably Twitterized. There are loads of redundant phrasings in English, like "ATM machine", and words often shift when they're adopted from other languages.

Also, "I dislike this joke" is not the same as "I want racism in this movie", when the "racism" in the movie is only there so it could be mocked.

One of the issues with putting real world movements in worlds that are drastically different - it's one of the main selling points of the franchise - is that it may seem odd that those movements exist in very similar form to the IRL version.

For example, Miles supports BLM in both his video game, and this. Which makes me think "did Trayvon Martin get shot in Florida? How about Mike Brown? Wouldn't the existence of supervillains throw things into a new perspective?"

Did I mention the giant George Floyd-style "REST IN POWER" mural to Miles' dead uncle? I cringed at that in the Wakanda Forever trailer, and I rolled my eyes at it here.

Floyd wasn't a saintly martyr, he was an unlucky violent thug.

Also, Aaron was a supervillain killed by another bad guy who nearly destroyed the city, not a cop.

Also, this is at a party to celebrate how Miles' dad is about to be promoted. Assuming Floyd died and the 2020 protests/riots also happened in Miles' universe, then it seems a tad tasteless to have a mural inspired by an anti-cop movement overlooking it, even if the party is not full of cops.

Spider-India lives in "Mumbattan".

The people who settled the Manhattan area were originally Indian. But the other type of Indian. The Indians we're not supposed to call Indians anymore.

The name "Manhattan" is even Native American.

The first permanent settlement was Dutch. Then the English got it. I guess the English could've shipped Indians to the other side of the world and eventually ceded the area to them, or maybe in this world India was a world-conquering superpower and Mumbattan is the result of...importing Native Americans?

Which would make Pavitr's complaint that "the British stole all of our stuff and put it in their museums" seem a tad hypocritical.

Of course, since I wrote all that, someone reminded me that Pavitr explicitly says the joint is in India.

"SYABM," you say, "you're overthinking this."

Yes, I am. Because the filmmakers didn't think it through. If you want to use ha-ha-funny to make a serious point, you invite examination of that point.

Miles (as Spidey) now works with his dad, though he disguises his voice. At one point, Miles tells his father that men bottle up mental health issues.

This is true (and ironic, considering Miles is hiding who he is from Jeff), but it's not the first time I've seen some progressive work try to address men's issues in an very awkward way. At least here, it's played for comedy.

Also, seems a tad hypocritical coming from a guy who wears a "#BLM" pin in the presence of his cop father.

Also, if you work the timeline, that would mean Miles was about 7 or 6 when BLM started. Which means he's gone most of his life knowing nothing else.

There was a controversy over a "protect trans kids" trans flag in Gwen's room, which was apparently edited out.

IMO, it seems a tad strange for a girl who feels estranged from everyone in her world to join a social movement, but what do I know? Maybe it was there before then.

Some people came to the extremely logical conclusion that Gwen herself is trans. Even though she's distinctly physically feminine and possibly too young for puberty blockers depending on Earth 65′s laws.

Like the "oh great, it's Liv" shippers, people are reaching really hard to see what they want to see.

Some people have said that Gwen's issues with her dad and herself seem awfully similar to the issues LGBTQIA2S+ kids go through.

Gee, it's not like, y'know, feeling estranged from one's family is a common theme in fiction about teenagers and superhero, and the whole "superpowers = minority" thing has been done to death for most of the past century.

Perhaps most notably - and clumsily - in X-Men.

I'm not saying this wasn't the intended subtext. I'm saying if it was, it would just be really, really cliche.

There's this recurring theme of people telling miles "how [his] story is supposed to go".

When he's at a meeting with his parents and his guidance counselor, the lady says his story of being a black-Latino son of an immigrant would sound great in the college application letters. His mom is a tad miffed, given that they're a) solidly middle class, and b) as a Puerto Rican, she considers herself American.

Miguel (Spider-Man 2099) doesn't want Miles in the multiversal council of Spiders, because Miles was bitten by the radioactive spider from a different universe. Which is why his local Spider-Man died, and the spider's home dimension has no Spider-Man.

Also, Miguel is fixated on "canon events". The idea that there are certain things, especially tragedies, that have to happen to Spiders, or their entire universe falls apart.

And he knows this, because he tried to take over for a version of him that got shot dead by a thug. Tried to raise his daughter.

And he watched as the universe collapsed in front of him.

So he's projecting his own guilt onto Miles, a tad.

According to TVtropes and other sources, this was actually about the people who didn't accept Miles as a replacement Spidey, possibly out of racism.

Yeah, that's real hard-hitting topical meta-commentary about a character who debuted 12 years ago. 8 years when the first movie came out.

I'd also like to point out that despite stereotypes of comic book fans, certain minority successors to banner superheros have been fairly well-received. Like Jaime Reyes, or Cassandra Cain.

(Note: I wrote that before the Blue Beetle movie came out. And flopped.)

And, of course, loads of people like Miles specifically because he's a minority Spidey, which is also racist, just from the other direction. In fact, a lot of his fans seem to forget the "Latino" part of "Afro-Latino". From what little I've seen of Miles early comics, they did actually put strong emphasis on his race.

I also suspect the filmmakers may be misinterpreting the usual successor knee-jerk reactions

as racism. If you're using an established brand name for your new hero, you're creating some expectations.

Also, you know the most popular meme about regular Spidey that I see? That Marvel's writers just keep making him suffer and don't want him to actually develop. Which would kinda make Marvel closer to Team Miguel than Team Miles.

Miles also gripes that Miguel is letting "some algorithm" tell him what to do. While I agree with the sentiment, I'd like to point out that, again, Miles supports BLM.

A movement popularized by an algorithm.

A movement made up of narratives and assumptions.

A movement which has never proven a single incident was because of racism.

During the big chase scene, we see a Spider girl in a wheelchair, aka Sun-Spider. She's from the comics. Same initiative that gave us "Web-Weaver".

Who is, of course, an extremely effete gay fashion designer Spidey. I kinda like his outfit, though the Spider-eyes with eyelashes is a little too far.

And Sun-Spider seems exactly like a character a stereotypical 90s executive and focus group would come up with. Down to the backward baseball cap.

(Turns out she's Dayn Broder's actual Spider-Sona.)

Also, while I was looking up that one black and white Spider who said "nowhere to run" (Metro-Spider, played by record producer Metro Boomin [/sic]), I found out that Aunt May's full name is "Maybelle", not just "May". TIL.

There's a bit of a double standard with this version of Spider-Woman, who's black and pregnant. -People in the movie - including Peter B - regularly point out how Peter B endangering his infant daughter Mayday by taking her along with him. But for some reason, nobody says a word about Jessica, who's an active-duty stunt-biking superhero.

Even regular motorbiking can be dangerous for pregnant women.

In fact, the movie portrays this as heroic and impressive. When Gwen sees  Jess is preggos, she asks if Jess can adopt her.

Not to mention the whole "afro and hoop earrings" thing, which seem like a bad idea for a type of hero who often gets into melee combat, even with Spider-Sense.

Yes, I'm aware that female heroes, including the Spider-Ladies, often have exposed hair. It's a genre convention. Incidentally, it was nice to see Batwoman wore a detachable decoy wig in the comics. Some bad guy tries to grab it in a fight? It comes right off.

Also, Jess doesn't have much actual character.

Being pregnant is not a character trait. In fact, her only real traits are basically "cool but stern sassy mentor", to contrast with Peter B. -Incidentally, someone on TVtropes pointed out the double standard. And when I saw the page again, a page-camper had deleted it, with no explanation.

Guess they couldn't stand someone pointing out the flaws of their waifu.

(One) Spider-UK in this movie is Muslim. I know she's Muslim because she wears a Spider-themed headdress. Note that regular Marvel 616 has a muslim lady Spider-UK, but her name is Zarina Zahari and she doesn't wear a hijabi.

(Also, she could be mistaken for Ms. Marvel.)

ms marvel.jpg

You might be thinking "wait, isn't a headdress impractical in a melee fight? Doesn't it give your enemy something to grab?" Yes, it is.

But so are Jess's earrings, afro, and being pregnant, so clearly there's a lot of artistic license going on.

Maybe it's partially tearaway, like Batman's cape.

I gotta wonder about the religious rules of wearing a head covering over a mask that *already* covers your entire head. Did she go see her imam and go "Okay, I have a really weird question..."

Come to think, Spidey is usually slim, but a lot of lady Spideys in this movie seemed to have wide hips. Including muscular ladies. Kris Anka's concept art goes really hard on wide hips. I don't know why. Stronger, faster character reads during the big chase?

I guess Spiders could be expected to have strong legs.

BOTTOM LINE:

I liked the movie overall, though the progressive bits made me roll my eyes a little. I...want to see the third one, with reservations.

[gwopijon]

Donald Trump has won the president four years after he sat for months on Covid being deadly and after he incited an insurection.

He's an abjudicated rapist. He stole classified documents. He's a traitor. He is personally corrupt but it meant nothing to voters.

He hid the fact that Covid was deadly for months. We had empty shells and long lines at food banks but it meant nothing to voters.

He had zero ground game. He’s a felon. He incited an insurrection less than four years ago. But he was running against a woman again, and if there’s one thing Americans hate, it’s women.

In 2016, I still had some sense of hope that whatever happened during a Trump presidency, we could find a way to survive and recover. I don’t have that hope this time. Not after everything that’s happened, not after the past nine years of this utter sh-tshow. This is the American electorate looking at this orange clown and saying “that’s my guy.” This man spewed the most despicable, hate filled rhetoric and someone who is clearly declining physically and mentally. They heard “mass deportations” and they said “anything to bring down housing costs.” They heard every single warning about Trump’s authoritarian fascism and they said “sounds amazing.” They heard the promise of authoritarianism and they said “sign me up.”

What’s especially crazy is that Trump doesn’t even want to be president again. He was just running to avoid prison. This senile, hateful, disgusting 78-year-old man was exhausted and phoning it in for most of the campaign. He kept disappearing for weeks at a time to golf and sundown in peace. When he went to vote in Florida yesterday, he sounded almost resigned to losing. Even he underestimated the stupidity of Americans. Even he can’t believe that people fell for it again.

Kamala Harris was a great Democratic Presidential Candidate. She still lost.

In 2016, in the hours after Hillary Clinton lost, I was partly in a fugue state, half-numb and half-enraged. Accusations flew across the political spectrum – what if Hillary had done more in the Rust Belt, what if she did this or that differently, why did she run given the “Clinton Fatigue,” why did James Comey f–k her over in the final weeks. There’s really none of that eight years later. We couldn’t have asked for a better candidate than Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris was disciplined, joyful, wonkish, fun and cool. She energized the base and she had widespread cross-party appeal. The only things “wrong” with Kamala Harris were: she’s a woman, she’s a Black woman, and she isn’t Donald Trump.

This isn’t even because of one particular demographic – white women, men of all races, Latino voters, suburbanites, they all swung wildly against Kamala Harris.

I hope Kamala knows that she did the best she could with the hand she was dealt. The numbers don’t reflect a failure on her part, in my opinion. The numbers reflect a failure of the American electorate. Good news for the American electorate: Donald Trump promised that this would be the last votes you would ever have to cast, that he will “fix” everything so no one has to vote anymore. Congrats on making it count.

I’m terrified as a woman. As a biracial woman. As someone with complex healthcare needs. As a gay woman. As the friend of many LGBTQ+ people. And I’m genuinely scared for the many Republicans who had the courage to speak out against Trump, particularly Liz Cheney, Fascists do not deal lightly with perceived disloyalty.

Bibi and Putin are celebrating today. Gaza will be nuked into oblivion and Ukraine will be handed to Russia just like Taiwan will be handed to China. YOU did that!

I am struggling with my faith with feeling anger and hatred towards those ingrates who came and found the table set from the blood, sweat, tears, whipping, lynching and jailing of my ancestors and threatened us with a Trump/Vance/Heritage Foundation/ Project 2025 has Harris not tap danced on Gaza knowing full well, she was doing her job as VP she could not supersede the sitting President of this country. Some of ya'll knew she was personally against arming Israel and has always been for a 2 state solution. For those voters: FUCK YOU!

FUCK you if you voted 3rd Party.

FUCK you if you didn't vote at all while you could and should have.

In order it went white men, white Latino men, and white women who overwhelmingly voted for Trump. We should stop with “economic uncertainty” again as a cover.

Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas will fucking retire and this motherfucker will nominate who Leonard Leo orders him to nominate and the fucking Supreme Court will unleash on our asses for the next 40 years. Roe vs Wade and the overturning of Affirmative Action will be nothing to what is next to come...

We black people have no fucking allies. Folks been piggybacking off black blood, sweat and tears for too fucking long. We're tired. We're fucking done. DON'T fucking expect us anymore

What hurts most is, this is apparently who we are as a country. Racist. Misogynistic. It doesn’t happen twice unless that’s just who the fuck we are. The rest of us will continue to fight against it, but it just got a lot harder. I think MVP and others will still help guide us but DON'T fucking expect black women to fight our battles and YOURS. FUCK that. We're done. We're gonna fight our battles nowadays .

I will not protest anything Trump wishes to do. DON'T expect us black women to play Mammy and clean shit after you anymore. We're done playing Captain Save a Hoe for you ingrates. I think he should have full reign to do whatever he plans and America should get it good and hard. It's what they asked for.

This country is not the Eutopia some of you are foolishly hoping for. IF you think a unqualified backbench like AOC or corrupt Nina Turner (the OPPO dossier on her is out there) or Katie Porter or Warren would have fared better or will ever become president; think again. It will NEVER happen. NEVER gonna fucking happen!

We black women as of last night have done what Pontius Pilate did and to wash our hands with America:

[omgcatboi]

Here's one last political post because I have over 3k followers and I really think this is an extremely important message to spread around so PLEASE REBLOG but

Y'all... Do realize we can start petitions to fire the people in the supreme courts and all these legislators that are banning abortion and trans rights as well as erasing black and native history.... Right?

I see y'all talking about it .... But y'all don't actually do anything about it. Why not go directly for their jobs? Take they jobs!

I've been emailing legislators regularly telling them they're shit heads for passing these bills but they don't want to listen to one single fat trans man so why don't we start a petition to remove them?

A petition to reverse abortion bans in Florida recently got ONE MILLION SIGNATURES. THATS... UNHEARD OF.

and guess what? The bill is being challenged by legislatiors in FL.

I promise I won't make anymore political posts, I just... Think it's important we all know that we can take these mfs jobs.

It's good to talk about it but just talking about it doesn't do anything to stop these fascist bills. Tumblr queers work your magic with me, maybe we can get the Trever project on board?

[renthony]

i dont even really like it here (im just not a hot-weather girl) but like what do ppl even think 'cutting off' florida would even do to help. like we live here its not like we're the ones responsible for our governor being shit. fash is gonna fash help us stop them instead of using us as a punchline. some people..

Florida's been a punchline for so long now that I think people forget that real, living, breathing people actually live here. All people know about Florida is Florida Man, Disney, and extremely dead jokes from the Bush era about hanging chads (which I genuinely saw someone make the other day, which is just fucking baffling).

I wish I could show people the Florida that I know, full of incredible people and the most beautiful ecosystems I have ever seen. Florida has been absolutely ravaged by its history of colonization and an increasingly fascist state government, but god damn it, it's not "too far gone" to be nurtured and stewarded and loved.

Right now there are organizations fighting for the Everglades and all Florida's wetlands, there are cleanup efforts to help reduce effects of red tide, there are legal battles against sugar corporations and land developers, there are mutual aid networks spanning the entire goddamn state. There are people fighting for the land and for each other. Just in my own city I can name multiple groups dedicated to feeding people, getting clothes and toiletries in the hands of those who need it, fighting for immigration protections, uplifting the marginalized, and waging quiet unglorious war against the system that's currently brutalizing everything.

And god help us, we do it all while getting called "crazy crackheads" and "idiot swamp hicks" by everyone else in the entire fucking world.

[lazy-to-an-l]

The current times are a reflection of the 1920's in more ways than one

the false confidence the U.S Government has in their ability to control their public is astounding. They support Ukraine, a country invaded with the goals on annexing it by a hostile military campaign with no care for Geneva Conventions. But try to paint Israel as the true victim in this scenario, when they are not. They are a hostile military force committing genocide for the purpose of annexing more land.

Could the U.S. absolutely annihilate every single one of their citizens? Yes, they could. They have the military weapons necessary to do so and have no qualms letting their people die.

The timing of Covid-19, Ukraine, the BLM movements, the resurgence of The Hunger Games which is based upon a future U.S., and the U.S. trying to back Israel has only further painted every representative within this country with a target. It is truly shocking they do not see the lack of control they have over Gen-z, a generation they freely let die in school shootings, and who were shown grotesque violence yearly for 9/11 remembrance. Who grew up polarized by a war in the East, that was truly for oil, and who's teachers taught us that the U.S. put the people in charge who later attacked our doorstep.

All eyes on Rafah, keep watching, we cannot forget who has condoned it. The people funding this genocide will die before we do, and it is our job to make sure their history and their wrong doings are never forgotten. The victors can write history, but those who outlive them will always have the last word.

I do not know who we can vote for this election, there is genocide supporters and there are fascists in the voting poll. There is no good option, and no 3rd party will win right now unfortunately they are not doing enough to get publicity in order to do so. I wish they were, but they aren't, not to win a presidential election. Either we elect someone complacent in genocide who will try to protect minorities rights and the environment, a fascist who has banned books for being about minorities who tried to write into law that he could still be in charge of Florida even as a president, or a man who quite literally was kicked out of New York's business sphere and is facing federal court for crimes he truly committed. There IS no morally good option, only varying shades of "who has done the least morally awful and dangerous thing" and who could actually win.

[commiepinkofag]

How the anti-gender movement is bringing us closer to authoritarianism

Judith Butler / March 16, 2024

In the United States, gender has been considered a relatively ordinary term. We are asked to check a box on a form, and most of us do so without giving it too much thought. But some of us don’t like checking the box and think there should be either many more boxes or perhaps none at all. The myriad, continuing debates about gender show that no one approach to defining or understanding it reigns. It’s no longer a mundane box to be checked on official forms.

The anti-gender ideology movement, however, treats the range of sometimes conflicting ideas about gender as a monolith, frightening in its power and reach.

The fear of “gender” allows existing powers — states, churches, political movements — to frighten people to come back into their ranks, to accept censorship and to externalize their fear and hatred onto vulnerable communities. Those powers not only appeal to existing fears that many working people have about the future of their work or the sanctity of their family life but also incite those fears, insisting, as it were, that people conveniently identify gender as the true cause of their feelings of anxiety and trepidation about the world.

The project of restoring the world to a phantasmatic time before gender promises a return to a patriarchal dream order that only a strong state can restore. The shoring up of state powers, including the courts, implicates the anti-gender movement in a broader authoritarian, even fascist project. We see the rolling back of progressive legislation and the targeting of sexual and gender minorities as dangers to society, as exemplifying the most destructive force in the world, in order to strip them of their fundamental rights, protections and freedoms.

Consider the allegation that “gender” — whatever it is — puts children at risk through programs such as reading books with queer characters cast as examples of indoctrination or seduction. The fear of children being harmed, the fear that the family, or one’s own family, will be destroyed, that “man” will be dismantled, including the men and man that some of us are, that a new totalitarianism is descending upon us, are all fears that are felt quite deeply by those who have committed themselves to the eradication of “gender” — the word, the concept, the academic field and the various social movements it has come to signify.

The resulting authoritarian restrictions on freedom abound, whether through establishing LGBTQ+-free zones in Poland or strangling progressive educational curricula in Florida that address gender freedom and sexuality in sex education. But no matter how intently authoritarian forces attempt to restrict freedoms, the fact that the categories of women and men shift historically and contextually is undeniable. New gender formations are part of history and reality. Gender is, in reality, minimally the rubric under which we consider changes in the way that men, women and other such categories have been understood.

As an educator, I am inclined to say to these people, “Let’s read some key texts in gender studies together and see what gender does and does not mean and whether the caricature holds up.” Reading is a precondition of democratic life, keeping debate and disagreement grounded and productive.

Sadly, such a strategy rarely works.

A woman in Switzerland once came up to me after a talk I gave and said, “I pray for you.” I asked why. She explained that the Scripture says that God created man and woman and that I, through my books, had denied the Scripture. She added that male and female are natural and that nature was God’s creation. I pointed out that nature admits of complexity and that the Bible itself is open to some differing interpretations, and she scoffed. I then asked if she had read my work, and she replied, “No! I would never read such a book!” I realized that reading a book on gender would be, for her, trafficking with the devil. Her view resonates with the demand to take books on gender out of the classroom and the fear that those who read such books are contaminated by them or subject to an ideological inculcation, even though those who seek to restrict these books have typically never read them.

To refuse gender is, sadly, to refuse to encounter the complexity that one finds in contemporary life across the world. The anti-gender movement opposes thought itself as a danger to society — fertile soil for the horrid collaboration of fascist passions with authoritarian regimes.

We need to take a stand against the anti-gender movement in the name of breathing and living free from the fear of violence.

Transnational coalitions should gather and mobilize everyone the anti-gender ideology movement has targeted. The internecine fights within the field must become dynamic and productive conversations and confrontations, however difficult, within an expansive movement dedicated to equality and justice. Coalitions are never easy, but where conflicts cannot be resolved, movements can still move ahead together with an eye focused on the common sources of oppression.

Whether or not people are assigned a gender at birth or assume one in time, they can really love being the gender that they are and reject any effort to disturb that pleasure. They seek to strut and celebrate, express themselves and communicate the reality of who they are. No one should take away that joy, as long as those people do not insist that their joy is the only possible one. Importantly, however, many endure suffering, ambivalence and disorientation within existing categories, especially the one to which they were assigned at birth. They can be genderqueer or trans, or something else, and they are seeking to live life as the body that makes sense to them and lets life be livable, if not joyous. Whatever else gender means, it surely names for some a felt sense of the body, in its surfaces and depths, a lived sense of being a body in the world in this way.

As much as someone might want to clutch a single idea of what it is to be a woman or a man, the historical reality defeats that project and makes matters worse by insisting on genders that have all along exceeded the binary alternatives. How we live that complexity, and how we let others live, thus becomes of paramount importance.

There is still much to be understood about gender as a structural problem in society, as an identity, as a field of study, as an enigmatic and highly invested term that circulates in ways that inspire some and terrify others. We have to keep thinking about what we mean by it and what others mean when they find themselves up in arms about the term.

Judith Butler is a professor of comparative literature at UC Berkeley. This essay was adapted from their forthcoming book “Who’s Afraid of Gender?”

[sekhithefops]

The World is Run by Jerry Smiths

So, its a popular idea that there's a shadowy cabal of rulers running the world. The Illuminati, the Deep State, the Lizard People, what have you.

Personally, I have my own theory on this one.

They're not shadowy or secret.

They really don't run the world in any sense but running it into the ground.

They're all basically Jerry Smith from Rick & Morty.

Now hear me out.

In Rick & Morty, Jerry Smith is Morty's father. He is an insecure little tit who is forever trying and failing to prove his worth, because he doesn't realize he has no worth to prove. He's pretty pathetic.

He almost gets murdered by Meeseeks when he tries (and fails) to improve his golf game, the short-lived helper creatures realizing that they can be free of their existence if they get rid of him and (technically) fulfill his request by doing so ("we can't take two strokes off his game, but we can take all strokes off it!")

He gets used by the ruler of Pluto to try to get people to ignore the fact that their planet is being destroyed by their own abuses of it and goes along with it because his ego is getting stroked the entire way, to the point of humiliating his son on stage.

And he's such a man-child that he winds up in a literal daycare for Jerrys that an alternate version of Rick established to take care of them while a universe's Rick and Morty were off having adventures.

Every time I see Jerry, I'm reminded of... honestly a lot of political figures in the United States (probably other countries too, but I try to avoid political news that doesn't directly affect me as it would only stress me out horribly.)

Lately America has been on one of it's regular Moral Panics that will, more often than not, blow up in the GOP's face in the end. We've had the Satanic Panic, the Porn Rock hearings of the 80s, and the like... now we're on to Transpeople. Politicians are trying to mandate how gender works because... I dunno, they're afraid of getting cooties or something (or more likely the usual 'we're trying to incite a culture war to avoid the class war that will likely happen one day.')

One of the worst offenders of this is Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida. A little toad of a man who is so insecure that he wears stealth high heels in order to make himself appear taller than he is as he attacks anything and everything he considers "woke" in revenge for... well, whatever. Probably losing the 2024 nomination to a pile of Cheetos in an ill-fitting suit.

Moving away from the political sphere we can find Jerries in the leadership of the business world as well. A prime example is one of the reasons I reactivated my Tumblr account in the first place. Everyone's favorite little shit, Elon "Elongated Muskrat" Musk.

Elon is 100% what Jerry would be if he had a lot of money. He got laughed at on Twitter, so he bought it and bans everyone who looks at him funny. He buys up companies and claims he's a genius scientist for inventions he had no hand in designing (and that come out far worse for his involvement post-takeover.)

A closer to home example would be Tumblr's own Photomatt, who I didn't even know existed until recently and having found out about them I wish I could return to that happy place of ignorance.

Because a transperson was... honestly as far as I can tell existing to them for more than a few minutes they banned their account, then did so again when they made a burner account, then once more with feeling, then possibly a few more times (I lost count.)

Of course he's now getting dunked on from all sides and has only his millions of dollars and the ability to threaten siccing the FBI on offenders while screaming incoherently like a toddler who was told they can't have a cookie.

Again, Jerry Smith, but with money.

So yeah. Got a bit rambly there, but thats how I see the world really. Its not a bunch of tyrannical fascists, its a bunch of insecure little men who can't handle even the tiniest bits of criticism without having a panic attack.

Where's Rick when you need him?

[dirt-goth]

I'm so in love with Bert every day of my life.

[ID: a screenshot an interview that reads "I have the upper hand, the quality of life here in Australia is just worlds beyond what I get to experience in the US. Not to be completely doomer, but I feel like this could be the end of our democracy as we know it. There's a there's just a lot of fascists in the US who are maybe not aware that they're fascists, but they're fascists one and the same. You see videos of Trump supporters just being like, the craziest people since Florida man. They're all Florida man in my mind. So yeah, let's all just hope for the best but we'll take what comes. There’s a song on the new record called ‘People are Vomit’ that’s one of my favourites that is inspired by the state of America right now."]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jesse Duquette, The Daily Don :: [Scott Horton]

* * * *

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, November 22, former president Trump hosted the antisemitic artist Ye, also known as Kanye West, for dinner at a public table at Mar-a-Lago along with political operative Karen Giorno, who was the Trump campaign’s 2016 state director in Florida. Ye brought with him 24-year-old far-right white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Fuentes attended the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in its wake, he committed to moving the Republican Party farther to the right. Fuentes has openly admired Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin, who is currently making war on Russia’s neighbor Ukraine. A Holocaust denier, Fuentes is associated with America’s neo-Nazis. In February 2020, Fuentes launched the America First Political Action Conference to compete from the right with the Conservative Political Action Conference. In May 2021, on a livestream, Fuentes said: “My job…is to keep pushing things further. We, because nobody else will, have to push the envelope. And we’re gonna get called names. We’re gonna get called racist, sexist, antisemitic, bigoted, whatever.… When the party is where we are two years later, we’re not gonna get the credit for the ideas that become popular. But that’s okay. That’s our job. We are the right-wing flank of the Republican Party. And if we didn’t exist, the Republican Party would be falling backwards all the time.” Fuentes and his “America First” followers, called “Groypers” after a cartoon amphibian (I’m not kidding), backed Trump’s lies that he had actually won the 2020 election. At a rally shortly after the election, Fuentes told his followers to “storm every state capitol until Jan. 20, 2021, until President Trump is inaugurated for four more years.” Fuentes and Groypers were at the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, and at least seven of them have been charged with federal crimes for their association with that attack. The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol subpoenaed Fuentes himself. Accounts of the dinner suggest that Trump and Fuentes hit it off, with Trump allegedly saying, “I like this guy, he gets me,” after Fuentes urged Trump to speak freely off the cuff rather than reading teleprompters and trying to appear presidential as his handlers advise. But Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2024 just days ago, and being seen publicly with far-right white supremacist Fuentes—in addition to Ye—indicates his embrace of the far right. His team told NBC’s Marc Caputo that the dinner was a “f**king nightmare.” Trump tried to distance himself from the meeting by saying he didn’t know who Fuentes was, and that he was just trying to help Ye out by giving the “seriously troubled” man advice, but observers noted that he did not distance himself from Fuentes’s positions. Republican lawmakers have been silent about Trump’s apparent open embrace of the far right, illustrating the growing power of that far right in the Republican Party. Representatives Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have affiliated themselves with Fuentes, and while their appearances with him at the America First Political Action Conference last February drew condemnation from Republican leader Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), now McCarthy desperately needs the votes of far-right Republicans to make him speaker of the House. To get that support, he has been promising to deliver their wish list—including an investigation into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter—and appears willing to accept Fuentes and his followers into the party, exactly as Fuentes hoped. Today, after the news of Trump’s dinner and the thundering silence that followed it, conservative anti-Trumper Bill Kristol tweeted: “Aren’t there five decent Republicans in the House who will announce they won’t vote for anyone for Speaker who doesn’t denounce their party’s current leader, Donald Trump, for consorting with the repulsive neo-Nazi Fuentes?” So far, at least, the answer is no.

[Heather Cox Richardson :: Letters From An American]

[lesbiangummybearmafia]

Ok so 1953 was 70 years ago... 2053 is only 29 years away. This is my point the conservatives and Republicans in this country want to drag us all back 70 years ago if they had their way. I chose 1953 out of thin air, but pretty much any year of 50s. Because white men controlled everything back then. It's the 21st century for fuck sake, we're closer to 2053 now, are we all going to sit idly by allow them to this? Y'all realize we could easily vote all those old white bastards out of congress if enough got up off our butts and actually went out and voted, no matter what it takes. The only reason they stay in Congress and everywhere else is because more old conservatives and Republicans get out and vote. And I get those fuckers make impossible in alot of places to vote if we aren't one of them. But we gotta be fuck you, we're stronger, smarter, better, younger, more determined to have a better future. So we're not going to let their bullshit trickery and straight up cheating stop us from voting we'll get it done. Even just to piss those motherfuckers off. Vote for people of color, lgbtqia+ candidates, trans candidates, vote for not Republicans or Democratic candidates (if they get enough votes they'll win), vote for candidates that are younger then 50!! Just fucking vote, because even if think it does nothing, if dislike/hate conservatives/republican/fascist politicians voting against them will piss them the fuck off, prove them wrong about all of us, make them look stupid (which is always fun) and hopefully save our democracy. Because those motherfuckers are chipping away at it, it now huge fucking pieces their taking off not little pebbles. Just look at all laws they've passed at the state level to restrict our civil liberties, control free speech by banning books, passing laws to control women's reproductive rights, first the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade now having state after state passing insane laws banning abortions. In every case is a clear indication how much conservatives man don't care about women or our lives. Then the onslaught of laws targeting the trans community, limiting their access to health care they need and unleashing a wave of transphobic all over ourcountry. Also laws targeting the lgbtqia+ community, banning drag shows, that in theit history never hurt anyone. There a celebration.

We the people, remember there are way more of us then any political party, any amount of politicians, no matter how much powerful they think they are. We our number them! We are louder, we are angry, we are feed up, we are tried of the lies, we are tried of all the bullshit, we done being told what America should be like. Because that definition doesn't work anymore, we're gonna give America a new definition for right now! For the 21st century, for 2023 because we're not going the fuck backwards no fucking more. The only direction is forward, into the future, we want to know what America can be in 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now. That is not some conservative, Republican, fascist, authoritarian old white man wet dream!!! Nope, not happening not on our watch assholes!

We will not go gentle into that good night! We will rage, rage against the dying of the light!! In other words will not allow our democracy to be killed by traitors to our country that even now spit fascist ideals in Congress, in Governor offices, state legislators, mayors officials, city councils, school districts. Just look at horrors that been unleashed on Florida because of Ron DeSantis who is without doubt a fascist and an authoritarian!

That why the next elections are so important. Why it's so important to register to vote at

And go out vote or to make it easier if your state allows voting by mail, that what I do. I'm in Arizona, they send me a ballot in mail, I fill it out. I can either mail it or drop it off. It's great!! To see if your state has voting by mail go to.

Some other voting resources:

https://rockthevote.org

https://vote411.org

(Helps if your homeless and want to vote)

(Helps people with disabilities to vote)

[clarktooncrossing]

Blue Beetle vs Moana

HEY THERE PEOPLE OF TODAY AND ROBOTS OF TOMORROW!

IT'S ME, CLARK, BACK WITH ANOTHER DOSE OF WEIRDNESS!

Man, March is gone. Good riddance! The first three months of this year have sucked! The weather sucked, my health has sucked, it's been a non-stop suck fest! Yet here April is, already off to a kick@$$ start! Little Caesars brought the Pretzel Pizza back, Disney clap backed hard against Florida, and DC released a trailer for a superhero movie I've been dying to see! Ladies, gentlemen, and weirdos, may I present to you the Blue Beetle!

The Positives:

+ That perfect photo-realistic translation of the costume! Not since Raimi's Spider-Man or the original Iron Man have I seen a supersuit this sexy!

+ Apparently the actor chosen to play Jaime is a fan favorite. I haven't seen Cobra Kai, so I have no prior exposure to Xolo Maridueña, but he seems to be having a blast!

+ Emphasis is placed on Jaime's family life, making it very clear from the start they're as essential to the story here as they were in the comics.

+ Dang, that initial suit-up is something out of a horror story! Nice!

+ So many references to the prior Blue Beetles, Ted Kord and Dan Garrett, including The Bug! Heck yeah!

+ More representation for non-white superheroes is always a win!

+ DC is releasing all of his original adventures from the Pre-Flashpoint universe! FINALLY!

The Negatives:

+ Suffers from 'generic trailer' disorder, meaning I don't know a ton about the plot or Jaime's antagonists. Then again, I actually haven't read a ton of his books. Yet. Here's hoping Trailer #2 is more interesting.

+ George Lopez's stupid joke about Batman being a fascist. First of all, how dare you waste the comic genius of Lopez! Second, unless Frank Miller wrote this, Batman is not a fascist!

All that said, I am super excited for this movie! Let it be known that were it not for Across the Spider-Verse, Blue Beetle would be my most anticipated film of 2023! Good lord, I am so hyped for this! This trailer had me riding high this morning. Only for Disney and Dwayne Johnson to have me crashing down to Earth.

Much to my shock, this is not a late April Fool's Day prank on behalf of the Mouse House and Ex-Black Adam. This is actually happening. Disney is remaking an animated movie that's not even a decade old. Now I'm not a huge fan of Moana, but even I think this feels desperate on Disney and The Rock's part. In terms of Disney, it feels like they finally realized they're running out of classic cartoons to 'reimagine', forcing them to result in current critical darlings. Sure, they could bring retell stories like The Black Cauldron or Atlantis, but they didn't make money the first time! Why take creative risks when you can make stupidly safe ones? Mark my words, Frozen is next. As for The Rock, this feels kinduv' insulting following the praises he sang towards animation at this year's Oscars. I guess his alliances changed following Shazam: The Prequel securing the final death nail on the DCEU's coffin. Maui needs moola. No matter which way ya' look at it, it looks pretty freak'n stupid. Thankfully I'm not alone on that though. Currently the like to dislike ratio leans heavily on the later and there are plenty of comments wondering why this is happening. What about you weirdos?

Are you excited for a live-action Moana or do you think it should stay in the realm of animation? Furthermore, are you eager for Blue Beetle's first big screen adventure? Leave your thoughts in the comments below! Until then-

MAY THE GLASSES BE WITH YOU!

[littleapocalypsekitten]

I've never had the courage to vandalize my neighborhood and I feel a bit bad about it. So, I was just reading about someone who takes their dog out to have a poop in the yard of a neighbor with a pro-life / anti-choice bumper-sticker on their car as a form of silent protest. Reading the comments on that made me think about neighbors I used to have. It's too late to do playful vandalism now, as they've picked up and moved far away to Florida, but, ooooh, the temptation. So, on the corner near the sub-divided house where I live in an apartment was what me and my own referred to as The Trump House. We would shout "Truuuuuuump House!" while shaking our fists in the air when they had overly loud parties in in imitation of a scene in Futurama where the dean of Mars University complained about the Robot House fraternity. This house, man... they put a huge Trump / Pence flag out on their porch. I cannot emphasize enough to you how huge this flag was. It was the one where the logo looked like the T in Trump was anally-fucking the P in Pence, too. The thing lasted until it wore out and they got another one. They got them in different colors. When Trump lost in 2020, I saw a Trump flag with a lion-head logo, which I was informed was basically a kind of Trump-loyalty fascist flag, as in a "screw the electoral process, we want revolution" flag. The house had VERY loud parties. Every once in a while, loads of vehicles from Oklahoma (we are not on OK) would show up and there were huge family parties. Their kids would spill out into the streets and not let cars pass, just being purposeful, uncontrolled brats. They'd set off illegal fireworks and the cops came to the house more than once. I heard from neighbors that the father of the family was a candidate for local office - he was running for the state legislature. I looked him up and got one of his ads on Youtube in which he was ranting and railing about opening up schools again and being against masking during Covid - his whole thing was "Open up the state!" and it's like... as someone with a restaurant-job I *got* during Covid and living with someone who was retail and "essential" and had to work despite actual health problems and great risk of Covid, the state NEVER "shut-down," my guy. He was rumored to have torn up some Black Lives Matter signs that someone had put up at the local Starbucks, making an ass of himself. According to the neighbors I actually talked to, he was at the Capitol on January 6 and had taken a whole busload of idiots down there. Apparently, he wasn't one of the ones who stormed the Capitol, his people just hung back, were the outskirts protestors, but...still. He and the family moved, probably having taken a financial hit after losing spectacularly in the local-legislature vote. I had been tempted many times to, say, make silly flags out of large rolls of heavy-duty sign-print paper that we have and my art-skills to replace the house's flags in the middle of the night, or something of that ilk, but never had the courage to. You see, I worried I'd be caught on a security-camera and before we knew it, me and my own, being poor (we really are in a neighborhood that's too good for us due to a lucky apartment-find), we'd get in trouble with the local law and get kicked out. I'm pretty sure our landlord would side with Trump House on the matter if I'd do anything to goof on them.

[caligula9997]

"Sorry your family got bombed, but I need you to vote for the man who is directly responsible, or *real* people are going to suffer too."

perfectly encapsulates the liberal mindset in a sentence.

if the dems wanted to win, they would put up a viable candidate, instead of running the most unpopular president in US history for a second time.

remember back in 2016 when the democrats ran hillary despite her being massively unpopular and kicked bernie out of the democratic party? the 2024 democratic primary in florida has already been shutdown in favor of another biden campaign.

if you want to be angry at someone for trump's victory, look to the fascists in blue.

Fundamentally, if the democrats lose the presidency in 2024, it will not be because of "voter apathy" or "the idealistic left" or Cornell West or whatever third party candidate the liberals end up blaming. It will be because the democrats have failed to meet the lowest standards of many Americans.

You can talk about strategic voting until you're blue in the face, but fundamentally, people need reasons to vote for a candidate. There are people in this country watching as their family members get slaughtered by American arms, sent to Israel by Joe Biden. The people watching their families get murdered in Palestine have no reason to support Joe Biden. How can you ask them to?

"Sorry your family got bombed, but I need you to vote for the man who is directly responsible, or *real* people are going to suffer too."

It was at this point While I was drafting this post that I heard he just started bombing Yemen. It's like he's doing everything in his power to sink his own fucking campaign, are you shitting me? This isn't a matter of "stupid commies not being realistic enough", he's not just working for the status quo; just about every action he has taken since October 7th has been an escalation of conflict in the Middle East and made it worse for everyone living there. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

You can scold people for voting wrong as much as you want, but fundamentally the way that democrats can win elections is by pursuing good policy. If the only argument you can come up with in favor of Joe Biden is that he won't do 1 or 2 of the terrible things that Trump wants to do, then that will simply not appeal to the people who are most intensely affected by Biden's failures (not to mention people who have moral objections to genocide, even when it doesn't affect them). You can scream and cry all you want, people are not going to just overlook his role in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza just because he is the Less Bad Genocider.

If a republican wins the presidency in November, you can blame the hundreds of thousands of voters/nonvoters who should've agreed with you and put aside every moral concern they ever had about the Biden administration... or you can blame the one fucking guy whose massive foreign policy failures are going to tank his re-election campaign.

[ignoblefury]

Shit is looking bleak. Again.

I want to escape so fucking badly, I want to be rid of this shit fucking hell country. But I know the political climate of the US always leaves reverberations across the world, both for better and worse.

I remember in 2016 hearing about the golden dawn in Greece and what happened in the wake of Trump's first outing. I remember emboldened fascists patrolling the streets of Florida, waving the flag of traitors and butchers while I was still in that pit of a state. I remember being strong for the queer people I surrounded myself with at school, long before I ever reckoned with my own identity. Long before I allowed myself to even think about my identity because of the anxiety I gave myself. The assumption that the young transmasc person that clung to my side at lunch was so fragile as to need protection. The assumption that if I were queer myself, I would need protection. And the sobering realization that nobody was ever truly safe, regardless of any preconceptions of safety a supposed straight man (even if heavily in denial) was able to grant to his peers.

And now I'm here, years and years later. Feeling a vulnerability that I never had before, because now I don't have that rotten concept of masculinity to shield myself. A double edged sword of being able to call the flesh I reside in home, in tune with my femininity, and being a beacon for the bigots to torch all the same. I live in a state of self that the me of 2016 couldn't conceive of, couldn't dream of, couldn't understand, with friends and family closer to me than I ever could be with my own blood. But now I feel like I'm beginning to understand why that friend of mine clung so close to my side so many years ago, and now I realize I have nobody near to cling to like they did with me and feel that same comfort that at any given moment, and now i feel small.

Small in the face of billionaires that break rules, small in the face of debts needing payment, small in the face of people close to me dying stupid needless deaths, small in the face of a world that is already full of refugees in more need of assistance than a trans girl in a first world country. The entitlement in the face of all this isn't lost on me, but is it so bad to want better? I want to say we've bled and cried and stressed enough. I think as much at least. Haven't we earned a break already? I'm so tired of being told to stay alive because my continued existence is an act of rebellion. I know it is, it shouldn't have to be, I don't want it to be. Joy as an act of rebellion is such a bitter medicine to prescribe to someone who is already jaded. Who sees it all and wants to feel apathy, but can only muster heartbreak.

Iunno. I'm tired, I'm going to be homeless soon, my car barely works, and my job breaks my body faster than I can recover. I have ties to a place I feel nothing for, responsibilities both financial and social, court dates, and not enough damn time to juggle it all. Being apathetic at this point isn't even a "fuck you, got mine" move anymore, its just a coping mechanism. Lord knows my hairline has already crept back enough without mango mussolini at the white House doorstep, and now we're in for round two.

It's so hard to be enthusiastic about being not even a thorn in the side of the capitalist juggernaut we call the US presidency. The gung ho attitude and fake smiles get heavy, and i haven't even been doing it that long. Despite it all though, I still feel some annoying, unyielding, frankly unrealistic urge, yet another responsibility, to spit in the face of the fascists at the helm. So I guess I'll be living a bit longer than I planned.

Stay safe. Love each other. Fight that apathy with whatever you can. Doesn't matter if it's joy or rage or spite. And above all else, bitter medicine be damned, survive.