#from a place of privilege

[jadagul]

Excerpts from dating profiles I swiped left on:

"If you're a white man who's lucky enough to match with me, make sure to bring offerings".

"I heal my ancestral trauma by dominating white men and making them do things that improve the environment."

(These were two different profiles, seen within the space of a day or two.)

[jadagul]

This feels like it does a great job of a tension in the way we talk about gender.

Gender abolition makes a lot of sense to me. There are very few cases where it matters to me whether the person I'm talking to has a penis or a vagina or something else. (Those cases exist, and are important! OKCupid should definitely have a checkbox for it or something.) But it makes sense to say "no one cares, it's not structurally different from 'is blonde' or whatever, we don't need it baked into our grammar and all our bureaucratic forms".

Conversely, it also makes sense to say, no, we have a rigid caste-based system, and everyone needs to know which caste you belong to. Maybe you can never change the caste you were born into, or maybe there's a specific ritual you can undergo to change caste, but either way we need to know at all times, because it determines large amounts about how everyone will treat you.

I don't support this, obviously, but it's totally coherent and I understand why in that system you'd want to record gender everywhere. Mike Pence really needs to know at all times who is a man and who is a woman, because he has a rule that he can't be alone in a room with a woman, and he needs to know when that does or doesn't apply.

But we mostly don't do either of these things today. (At least, in my social circles.) We don't say men can't be schoolteachers, or women can't be pilots. And we also don't say there are objective correlates of gender: you can have facial hair and a penis and still be a girl. So it's very important that you pick one of these two (or three, or N) labels, but the only thing it means is "that's the label you picked".

And the fact that it's not clear what these labels are doing, other than, like, "sitting around being labels", makes them potentially kind of contentious. There's no facts-in-the-world the resolve to, other than the fact of which label the labelee has chosen.

I've written before about how the modern gender paradigm sits uncomfortably for me—because it makes gender into a label/identity rather than a predicate roughly cutting out a set of physical facts. And one reasonable response to this is just say to hell with the whole thing, I don't even gender any more.

My elderly father started talking about how frustrating he finds “the pronouns thing” and I was like. Oh no. He had such a good stand on this, he’s been they/them-ing his cishet siblings for god’s sake! Is he regressing?? And he was talking about how difficult it is to remember, and how onerous it feels to expect strangers to keep track of it, and I’m like oh no oh no.

Then he says, “I mean, the problem isn’t the gender thing. The problem is four words: she, her, he, and him. We got rid of stewardess and turned it into flight attendant. It doesn’t matter if the flight attendant is a man or woman, so we got rid of it. We just need to get rid of those. I don’t need to know.”

“You don’t need to know… people’s gender?”

“No. I don’t care, I don’t need to know, and I don’t want to remember it.”

So we can relax. It’s just a continuation of his crusade to they/them the world. He doesn’t want to remember anyone’s gender. He’s abolishing the genders.

[perrieedwards]

i feel like people are skimming over the uk riots in a way that makes me want to tear my hair out. muslims in the uk are in active danger. immigrants in the uk are in active danger. refugees in the uk are in active danger. people of colour in the uk are in active danger. asian communities in the uk are in active danger. black communities in the uk are in active danger.

there are massive far right riots throughout the country right now and people like fucking elon musk and nigel farage are inciting it and still have a platform to speak. people have used three young girls deaths, people's genuine grief in southport, to try and gain traction for their own racist bullshit and it's working.

a lot of refugee charities have been forced to close leaving many people without support, homes, funding, food, etc. if you aren't able to donate please consider sending a message via the conversation over borders campaign! it will send a hopeful, welcoming letter to a refugee in the uk. there is also a guide to staying safe here.

please do your own research and donate to refugee charities, anti-islamophobia charities, mosques who are trying to rebuild after being destroyed, counter protesters, here are some i've heard positive things about but the list is extensive; southport strong together (support for the southport victims and their families), southport mosque rebuilding, riot repair fund, middlesbrough vulnerable residents, nasir mosque rebuilding, hull help for refugees, bristol welcomes migrants,

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Burning Rotten Bridges

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[lazylittledragon]

i refuse to believe that boycotting is hard. my favourite thing in the world is ordering maccies after a late night at work/a concert/getting drunk. yes i do miss it sometimes. but the other night i ordered from a small place near my house instead and it was the most orgasmic burger i've ever had in my life. i very rarely say this but fucking suck it up people are DEAD

[jadagul]

I feel this, and complain about it, so often.

I feel like these days I run across it a lot with trans issues. Villains may be terrible mass-murdering psychopaths but not one of them would ever deadname anyone, or speak in anything other than totally acceptable 2020s-coastal-liberal language about them.

And like sure, if you don't want to deal with any of those issues I get it, and that makes sense. Like, Practical Guide to Evil is just set in a world where no one has any issues with gay or trans people at all; none of the villains are transphobic because transphobia doesn't exist. (There are [at least] three trans people in the narrative. Two of them I missed on the first readthrough, because the only way you know they're trans is a throwaway comment like "people had once thought she was a man".)

But I've read a bunch of other stories that want to be very clear (a) transphobia exists (b) it's very common (c) but none of our villains would ever do that, because genocidal mass murder is one thing but none of them are that gauche.

And like there's nothing exactly wrong with that, especially in any specific case, but I feel like on some level that's the Thing To Do in a lot of fiction circles these days and something about it rubs me the wrong way.

"he would not fucking say that" but its about a character being a leftist. he would not fucking believe that

[jadagul]

While I'm getting myself in trouble over gender:

I matched with someone on OKCupid yesterday. By which I mean she liked my profile and messaged me to tell me how much she liked it, and I agreed to the match and responded.

And her first followup message was to quote my list of movies and books I like and "gently ask me my fave women/POC creators".

And like there are various ways I could answer that question. (I just enjoyed Gideon the Ninth. I subscribe to KB Spangler's patreon at like ten dollars a month. I love Unpretty's fanfic here on tumblr. Ursula LeGuin is amazing. Etc.)

But my real answer is, I think that's kind of a poisonous way of engaging with media; I mostly don't care about the demographics of the author, and I mostly don't think you should either. I find the question, and the tone in which it was asked (""gently""), so offputting that my interest is now at zero.

[fluentisonus]

I've said this before but valjean's view of the bishop throughout the book gets me so bad because like. he knew him for what, a day maybe? and it absolutely had a vast & profound & positive impact on him. but then he goes on to spend the whole book comparing himself to his idealized vision of the bishop & finding himself wanting & feeling guilty and miserable about every petty or selfish thought that crosses his mind. but it's so fucked up because like we as the readers know the bishop better! we've read the whole first book and we know he came from a privileged & wealthy background, that he was a rake when he was young, it wasn't til he was in his 40s or 50s to have some sort of change of heart & become a priest (a similar age to valjean when he met him!), that he has moments that seriously shake him, that he has some dubious politics left over, that he still has moments of pettiness he has to work through on the page (his initial approach to the member of the convention, e.g.). and also he's just kind of a weird old guy (affectionate). and like this is not to criticize the bishop, I think he's a genuinely really good guy, just that while the bishop has a realistic view of himself & his past ("he described himself with a smile, an ex-sinner,"), valjean is not getting any of this except maybe like. what would be mentioned in the newspaper when the bishop died. so his whole view of him is of this one shining moment where he changed his life and he feels he doesn't live up to that. which is sad! because the bishop understood him more than he realized & wouldn't have wanted him to feel that way

[ellstersmash]

seeing a lot of posts about being prepared to avoid fandom discourse this time around and while I will also be bobbing and weaving that bullshit, let's also make it a point to gear up and watch out for the bigotry and abuse that will inevitably come to light--and not to avoid it, but to actively participate in making fandom a hostile place for it to thrive.

challenge your friends when they say something transphobic on the discord server. ask your fave if they meant to whitewash that character in their art. watch for harmful tropes and stereotypes in the fic (and source material!) that you read. when other people bring it up, don't dismiss it as discourse. most importantly, when trans people, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, people of color, and victims of abuse share their experiences, listen.

[jadagul]

This might be an excuse to register my prediction that in like ten years, the majority of my social circle will be some form of nonbinary or something.

A couple years I wrote this post, where I argued basically that in a traditional trans-naive paradigm I am clearly a man, but in a modern paradigm I'm arguably not? Like if what you're asking about is my physical biology there's a clear answer, and honestly if you're asking about my social presentation there's a pretty clear answer, but if you ask about my identity and internal experience I'm not!

And like, I don't "identify as nonbinary". But that's because "identifying as nonbinary" seems more effort and more, like, gender-ful than just not saying anything and letting people default to "male". In contexts where I have to make an explicit claim about "my identity" I'm increasingly answering "prefer not to state" or "whatever" or something. (But still not "nonbinary" because that feels like an affirmative statement.)

But over the past year especially, I've been hearing a lot of other people express similar ideas, and have clear superficial presentations but when asked say that their identity is something like "what are you, a cop?" or "meh, whatever". And if you take the modern liberal tumblr gender paradigm seriously, I suspect that a huge fraction of people """objectively are""" not-cis. And as the paradigm gets more entrenched and also as people realize the implications, they'll start to respond.

If your goal is to normalize gender-nonconformity you’re gonna have to accept that some people will fuck with gender as hard as they can while still being unequivocally, 100% cis and that is okay. There’s no egg to crack or callout to write. This is a good thing actually.

[yarrayora]

the thing about people calling laios white is that theyre somehow framing it with the mindset of real world's political and social justice context where white privilege exists but this is a fantasy world written by a japanese living in japan where most of the time white privilege isn't something you can utilize so is it any surprise that the manga doesn't discuss race by making it a metaphor for racism in the west?

the black skinned elves are depicted as royals, we've never seen kabru got shit for his skin color but he did got shit for having blue eyes back in his hometown, shuro was never depicted as a victim of anti-asian racism because hey. get this. asia as a concept doesn't exist in dungeon meshi's world. in fact im not sure colorism is even a thing in dungeon meshi world? most of the time we see it based on whether they're long-lived or not, and. well. the racial biases of fantasy races that have nothing to do with skin color.

laios is white in the sense that his skin color is pale, but he's not white the same way white americans are more privileged than poc

[aleksanderscult]

Leigh Bardugo should become universally criticized just for the fact that she presented a victim of persecution and his actions as worse and more important to deal with than the genocide that takes place in that world.

She really said: "It's not the genocide we should worry about. It's that man and his efforts to stop it".

And people applaud her for it instead. Wow. You're all seriously fucked up.

[nederlandsespoorwegen]

I've made this post before but I don't wanna dig through all my old posts. But. From the bottom of my heart, to everyone who doesn't have a drivers license because they don't want to or they cannot get one for any reason, and everyone who does have one but can't get a car or just doesn't want to drive,

I love you! And I know things are not fair towards you and you don't deserve that. And I can't offer you anything, but know that you're not alone ❤️

[king-of-men]

That's better than the other dystopias you describe, but I opine that if you need to use PTO for a two-hour errand you don't have a job, you have one of those Ironic Punishments where they don't tell you that you're dead and in Hell, and also you likely have it coming for being some kind of bureaucrat before you died. If I need to go afk for two hours I don't even notify my manager; come the fuck on.

Do not fall for the trap (moreso for salary workers), also known as fto (flexible time off)

[jadagul]

Was reading this kinda mediocre post on gender and trans stuff, and found this passage striking because it makes a certain common error really explicit (emphasis mine):

To be clear, it's true that categories exist in our model of the world, rather than the world itself—categories are "map", not "territory"—and it's possible that trans women might be women with respect to some genuinely useful definition of the word "woman." However, Alexander goes much further, claiming that we can redefine gender categories to make trans people feel better:

> “I ought to accept an unexpected man or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered female if it'll save someone's life. There's no rule of rationality saying that I shouldn't, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that I should.”

This is wrong because categories exist in our model of the world in order to capture empirical regularities in the world itself: the map is supposed to reflect the territory, and there are "rules of rationality" governing what kinds of word and category usages correspond to correct probabilistic inferences. 

And the fundamental error is the assumption that language is only for one thing.  Language has lots of purposes!  And so do categories.

I think this is a thing that actually gives a lot of neurodivergent/autism spectrum people trouble with certain types of social norms.  There’s a sense that language is supposed to work in a specific way, and using it in any other way is wrong, or lying, or something like that.

It’s not lying to say “great to see you, let’s get coffee some time!” to someone you found super boring and don’t want to hang out with again.  Because that happens to be a standard American English idiom that translates roughly to “goodbye!”  It doesn’t mean that it was great to see them, or that you want to get coffee.

And even beyond that, there’s phatic communication, and signalling communication, and speech acts, and none of those things are about communicating content or efficiently demarcating boundaries.  That’s a thing language does, but it’s not the only thing.

[otaku553]

Have you seen this man???

Now you have