#generations of oppression

[news4dzhozhar]

[stil-lindigo]

an ex-zionist jewish man recently went a bit viral on tiktok for sharing exactly how he sees zionism tie israel to the jewish identity and his personal experience with breaking away from it - I think it’s a really great watch.

He also made a follow up talking specifically about how he learned to humanise Palestinians, and a really integral part of it was his school, which would often bring in Palestinian speakers who’d share their perspective (here’s a link to it).

[anghraine]

It's always been intriguing to me that, even when Elizabeth hates Darcy and thinks he's genuinely a monstrous, predatory human being, she does not ever perceive him as sexually predatory. In fact, literally no one in the novel suggests or believes he is sexually dangerous at any point. There's not the slightest hint of that as a factor in the rumors surrounding him, even though eighteenth-century fiction writers very often linked masculine villainy to a possibility of sexual predation in the subtext or just text*. Austen herself does this over and over when it comes to the true villains of her novels.

Even as a supposed villain, though, Darcy is broadly understood to be predatory and callous towards men who are weaker than him in status, power, and personality—with no real hint of sexual threat about it at all (certainly none towards women). Darcy's "villainy" is overwhelmingly about abusing his socioeconomic power over other men, like Wickham and Bingley. This can have secondhand effects on women's lives, but as collateral damage. Nobody thinks he's targeting women.

In addition, Elizabeth's interpretations of Darcy in the first half of the book tend to involve associating him with relatively prestigious women by contrast to the men in his life (he's seen as extremely dissimilar from his male friends and, as a villain, from his father). So Elizabeth understands Darcy-as-villain not in terms of the popular, often very sexualized images of masculine villainy at the time, but in terms of rich women she personally despises like Caroline Bingley and Lady Catherine de Bourgh (and even Georgiana Darcy; Elizabeth assumes a lot about Georgiana in service of her hatred of Darcy before ever meeting her).

The only people in Elizabeth's own community who side with Darcy at this time are, interestingly, both women, and likely the highest-status unmarried women in her community: Charlotte Lucas and Jane Bennet. Both have some temperamental affinities with Darcy, and while it's not clear if he recognizes this, he quietly approves of them without even knowing they've been sticking up for him behind the scenes.

This concept of Darcy-as-villain is not just Elizabeth's, either. Darcy is never seen by anyone as a sexual threat no matter how "bad" he's supposed to be. No one is concerned about any danger he might pose to their daughters or sisters. Kitty is afraid of him, but because she's easily intimidated rather than any sense of actual peril. Even another man, Mr Bennet, seems genuinely surprised to discover late in the novel that Darcy experiences attraction to anything other than his own ego.

I was thinking about this because of how often the concept of Darcy as an anti-hero before Elizabeth "fixes him" seems caught up in a hypermasculine, sexually dangerous, bad boy image of him that even people who actively hate him in the novel never subscribe to or remotely imply. Wickham doesn't suggest anything of the kind, Elizabeth doesn't, the various gossips of Meryton don't, Mr Bennet and the Gardiners don't, nobody does. If anything, he's perceived as cold and sexless.

Wickham in particular defines Darcy's villainy in opposition to the patriarchal ideal his father represented. Wickham's version of their history works to link Darcy to Lady Anne, Lady Catherine (primarily), and Georgiana rather than any kind of masculine sexuality. This version of Darcy is a villain who colludes with unsympathetic high-status women to harm men of less power than themselves, but villain!Darcy poses no direct threat to women of any kind.

It's always seemed to me that there's a very strong tendency among fans and academics to frame Darcy as this ultra-gendered figure with some kind of sexual menace going on, textually or subtextually. He's so often understood entirely in terms of masculinity and sexual desire, with his flaws closely tied to both (whether those flaws are his real ones, exaggerated, or entirely manufactured). Yet that doesn't seem to be his vibe to other characters in the story. There's a level at which he does not register to other characters as highly masculine in his affiliations, highly sexual, or in general as at all unsafe** to be around, even when they think he's a monster. And I kind of feel like this makes the revelations of his actual decency all along and his full-on heroism later easier to accept in the end.

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*The incompetently awful villain(?) in Sanditon, for instance, imagines himself another Lovelace (a reference to the famous rapist-villain of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa). Evelina's sheltered education and lack of protectors makes her vulnerable to sexual exploitation in Frances Burney's Evelina, though she ultimately manages to avoid it. There's frequently an element of sexual predation in Gothic novels even of very different kinds (e.g. Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Matthew Lewis's The Monk both lean into this, in their wildly dissimilar styles). William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams, a book mostly about the destructive evils of class hierarchies and landowning classes specifically, depicts the mutual obsession of the genteel villain Falkland and working class hero Caleb in notoriously homoerotic terms (Godwin himself added a preface in 1832 saying, "Falkland was my Bluebeard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes ... Caleb Williams was the wife"). This list could go on for a very long time.

**Darcy is also not usually perceived by other characters as a particularly sexual, highly masculine person in a safe way, either, even once his true character is known. Elizabeth emphasizes the resilience of Darcy's love for her more than the passionate intensity they both evidently feel; in the later book, she does sometimes makes assumptions about his true feelings or intentions based on his gender, but these assumptions are pretty much invariably shown to be wrong. In general the cast is completely oblivious to the attraction he does feel; even Charlotte, who wonders about something in that quarter, ends up doubting her own suspicions and wonders if he's just very absent-minded.

The novel emphasizes that he is physically attractive, but it goes to pains to distinguish this from Wickham's sex appeal or the charisma of a Bingley or Fitzwilliam. Mr Bennet (as mentioned above) seems to have assumed Darcy is functionally asexual, insofar as he has a concept of that. Most of the fandom-beloved moments in which Darcy is framed as highly sexual, or where he himself is sexualized for the audience, are very significantly changed in adaptation or just invented altogether for the adaptations they appear in. Darcy watching Elizabeth after his bath in the 1995 is invented for that version, him snapping at Elizabeth in their debates out of UST is a persistent change from his smiling banter with her in the book, the fencing to purge his feelings is invented, the pond swim/wet shirt is invented. In the 2005 P&P, the instant reaction to Elizabeth is invented, the hand flex of repressed passion is invented, the Netherfield Ball dance as anything but an exercise in mutual frustration is invented, the near-kiss after the proposal in invented, etc. And in those as well, he's never presented as sexually predatory, not even as a "villain."

[the-agent-of-blight]

also, i really find it interesting how people can genuinely go about saying "Well this group isn't attacked for their identity so they can't be queer " while then turning around and. attacking said group. for their identity. and exemplifying classic __-phobic tropes. It's really dumb. You are being the thing that you claim does not exist

[stoat-party]

[curly-cottage-girl]

I’m sorry but my Mother Mary, Terror of Demons, Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea, was not “REDUCED to motherhood” by God

[glitter-soda]

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we lived in a world where misogyny was universally recognized as a serious type of oppression

[hellothepixel]

I want to be able to discuss transmisogyny, both to be able to defend myself against it and to help other transfems suffering from it. But if the person talking about it goes out of their way to frame trans men as inherently more privileged than women, or dismiss transandrophobia, then- i have to be weary.

How can I trust that you're being accurate about the bigotry you experience, when you are being dismissive of the bigotry fellow trans people experience?

Truth is that transmasc people suffer a unique blend of transphobia, one that insists they are women and then enacts misogyny upon them based on that assertion. This is transandrophobia. Why shouldn't transmasc people be able to use this label to correctly identify their struggles, as we transfem people use transmisogyny to correctly identify ours?

[derpymidnight]

shitty alignment chart i did

[ganondoodle]

"(that one arcane writer guy) drew inspiration from the US two party system and how they fail to communicate with each other"

what what what, yes of course thats totally comparable, you know, piltover, the rich powerful oppressor class living in paradise and zaun, the poor and exploited, that are literally made to live underground in poisoned air and water and waste created by the maschinery that makes piltover rich, rats in their garbage, that have no power anywhere and the second they resist get run over by enforcers of the rich and powerful

they just have a communication problem uwu, which is why putting 3 zaunites into the uniforms of their opressors and have them fight and die for a stupid otherworldy threat together makes them understand each other, which is why getting rid of any counceler that even mildly cared about zaun, reinstate that system, and giving a single seat to sevika instead makes sense, and look, the rich upper class powerful lesbian that turned into a dictator for a time gets to keep her power and the poor zaunite lesbian that lost everything get to be together!! we did it! we solved politics!

[nando161mando]

An Anti-fascist Guide to the US 2024 Election https://www.anarchistfederation.net/an-anti-fascist-guide-to-the-us-2024-election/

[mollysunder]

The one thing I don't understand about the theory where Piltover and Zaun are teaming up to fight Noxus in the end, is why are Vi and Ekko flying towards Jinx's supposed airship if they're on the same team? Why does Vi NEED to confront Jinx in the middle of a warzone?

We see Ekko in garb that looks like he's on Jinx's side, but we mostly see him with the Firelights in those scenes, and they not decorated in Jinx's colors. Even minor background characters that are on Jinx/Sevika's side have a pink X on the right side of their chest. The Firelights are completely free of any graffiti or markers that would identify them with Jinx, and Vi is in an enforcer uniform. We don't see any other Zaunites in the crowd, but for some reason Vi and Ekko are centering their concentration on Jinx.

I think what's happening is that Ambessa's forces are fighting against Piltover's enforcers, but Jinx isn't helping, she's taking advantage of the chaos. Jinx is probably in Piltover to do something big that Piltover can't defend against since they're preoccupied with Noxus. Jinx will probably think the fight between Noxus and Piltover is the best opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Vi and Ekko will probably object, they'll say her plan goes too far, and it'll get people killed. The whole scenario will probably be a more extreme mirror to whatever the Silco flashback will reveal about what went down on the Day of Ash and why Vander tried to kill Silco, except this time with magic.

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Qimir: The Jedi are oppressing me by not letting me use my power freely.

Sol: You were "using your power freely" by murdering people.

Qimir: .....I fail to see the issue here.

[pinbones]

There's two types of people who use transandrophobia to decribe transmascs' and trans mens' experiences:

- Simply specificity, language used to hone in on a specific way being trans affects people who just happen to be men

- As both the above and as a springboard to discuss how societal misogyny, radical feminism, gender stereotypes, and bioessentalism affect all people who can be pecieved as men or masculine by others, and how bigotries compound in meaningful ways with stereotypes and bigotry surrounding maleness and manhood

Like. Half of you are saying "maleness is a hollow experience which is standard, and exists in opposition to gendered oppression, and transandrophobia is therefore when dudes experience misogyny and transphobia"

and half of you are saying "Being percieved and/or transitioning towards male uniquely affects how I am treated, because, for example, how people perceive my blackness or mental illness or kinkiness or femininity is compounded with my manhood in ways that don't usually happen to gender conforming cisperi women"

Which are two fundamentally different approaches to transandrophobia as a concept. One suggests that maleness is a simple downy layer of privilege that coats a person through their male life, and the other acknowledges that a man (or somebody perceived as masculine/male) can experience oppression in ways that those NOT perceived male may not.

Only one of these interpretations is intersectional. Black individuals who are policed more hashly when interpreted as masc know they are risking dangerous experiences when transitioning to male, as has been discussed before on here (to no avail). Male or percieved male people with personality disorders are treated as more dangerous than women with similar symptoms, and are sometiems diagnosed with different disorders entirely based on percieved gender differences. This affects transmascs too, especially considering the already dire state of queerness in psychiatric institutions. Being a male birthing parent is a whole shitshow of transphobia because men are not supposed to give birth, and transmascs are lucky to access related healthcare at all, let alone access it without being ceaselessly misgendered and treated as a stigmatised 'other' to deleterious affects on parent and baby. These are just a few examples, there are many more ways maleness can screw a person over. And that's not to say that female privilege is a thing instead of male privilege, but rather to emphasise that men are not supposed to be minorities. Men are not supposed to be assaulted, men are not supposed to be outliers, men are absolutely not supposed to be trans.

When a man is autistic, he's not just autistic, he's an autistic male, and that makes him more likely to be killed by cops (especially if black). When someone says "you claim you're not ableist but you're scared of the homeless x on a bus talking to xself", they always say the person is a man, because that sounds more significant (and cops think so too). Consider when a person's rape/abuse is considered to not be all that serious due to the victim being male, or when a man's attraction is considered to be more exploitative than a woman's, or when a fat man is considered more creepy/sexist than a thin man or a fat woman. Consider why so many caricatures of evil and creepiness are men with deformities. Consider the fact that men's bathrooms don't have baby changing tables, and that a man may get less support from others after their child's death than the mother might. Maleness can negatively compound with things like minority status, vulnerability, aggression, sexuality, etc. in ways that screw that person over, both in social spaces (such as queer communities that dislike/distrust maleness and masculinity, or how isolation affects men harder), and in more tangible ways, like their rates of suicide and being murdered.

There are tangible ways in which transitioning to male can negatively affect a person's life even if you remove (hypothetically, not really possible) the transphobia element, and these also constitute as worthwhile topics of discussion. If you think maleness is the lack of gendered oppression, then you're not intersectional in your feminism at all. If your life as a male is genuinely sunshine and rainbows (apart from the transphobia if trans), then good for you, genuinely that's great, but not everyone lives in a radfem fantasy world.

Being unable to tell the difference between men talking about mens issues/liberation, and right wingers talking about oppressing women more, isn't feminist. It's ignorant and antifeminist. (MRAs don't care about actual mens lib, and are actively worsening it because they are sexist and opposed to gender lib. You guys know that, right? That male and female liberation aren't oppositional or binary, but the same gender liberation that is entirely oppositional to patriarchy?)

These men and mascs talking about issues facing men aren't ignorant womanhaters who deny misogyny and want ultraprivileged men to be coddled, they are good faith members of your community with experiences just as varied and valid as yours. Treat them like it.

[theeternalwombtarot]

My sister said something to me earlier today that further solidified the idea that generations before mine have been constantly made to feel intimidated or afraid of this government and the horrible people who work for it and push its agendas. “They’re watching your social media if you’re not careful about what you say they won’t allow you to get a job or be successful.” Is one of the main things they’ve taught my sisters generation. I told her that you couldn’t intimidate a generation of people who’ve never had this countries protection, care, or protection. I couldn’t give a fuck less if I’m being completely honest with you right now. There’s absolutely nothing this country or the people in it could threaten me with in order to make me shut the fuck up about what they’re doing and the shitty choices they’ve made as a collective. You’ve told generations of Americans that if they don’t shut up and submit to what you’re doing and pushing that their family members would need to move into a state of fear and be afraid for them and that they should be afraid for their livelihoods, their success and their ability to create and build foundations for themselves and it’s about time people get to hear that loud and clear. The fear mongering and the oppression and the silencing of people in this world has got to stop and you only stop cycles of behavior by no longer participating them and changing the way that you behave and react.

They’re trying to make your children uneducated and ignorant by stopping the creation of educational television programs and creating shows and media meant for them that start fucking with their minds from an early age, our teachers are severely underpaid, the curriculum in schools is lacking, they pass laws to take race theory out of the curriculum and stop teaching about the history and oppression of people of color. They ban and attempt to sell apps to American companies so that they can better censor the content that over 1 billion people are consuming every single day that has allowed the truth to spread faster than lies for the first time since this country was founded.

You fucked up letting our generations students with progressive and out of the box ideas into Ivy Leagues to climb your elitist ladder and subjecting generations of individuals to generational trauma and oppression. People have been waiting over forty years for this generation to come into existence. We’re here now. It’s too late.

[bitchesgetriches]

Credit Scoring Is a Racist, Classist System that Has Us All Trapped