#i don't even understand my own country's politics

[sunsetconcert]

Y'know what? I was going to write a longer post. I was. But I'll own that. I'll own Black and White with a smile on my goddamned face. I can't believe I entertained this for as long as I did, especially seeing as how I fucking despise N. You want to know where I stand? You want to know why people think N is a hypocrite edgelord piece of shit? Fine, here's my goddamn manifesto.

He talks about Pokemon liberation. He believes that people use Pokemon as tools and that they will become perfect beings once seperated from humanity. Of course, N will still have Pokemon because he knows better, because N isn't like the rest of those humans, he Understands better than any of them. Thus, he will still have his Pokemon to use as tools when he enforces worldwide segregation.

And it would be segregation. While N is stupid enough to believe that people would willingly do as he says just because he's on a dragon, this won't work on everyone. So many people will resist out of basic morality, out of hatred for Team Plasma, or even just for the sake of a good fight. So eventually, N will be forced to lay down the law. Can't have people using Pokemon as tools, right? He's got to stop them. And when he does, people will be seperated from their Pokemon at - effectively - gunpoint.

And yes, it would be worldwide. You think N would stop at just Unova? You think the sort of person who would enforce his worldview by force would stop after just one country?

Hey, let's talk about those Pokemon, shall we? Most media in this franchise shows that people treat Pokemon as family. Some people treat them as pets, sure, but it is clear in many circumstances that people outright adopt Pokemon into their family unit. As children. As siblings. As parents. N wants to destroy this, tearing families apart on a whim because he thinks you, as a human being, do not deserve to have them.

He's Ghetsis in a fancy coat. He has the exact same plan as his father, to disarm the populace and then enforce his opinions and politics on people by means of force. The only difference is that N will do it for "the right reasons", even though it's fundamentally identical to what his lunatic father would do.

I am opposed to this. All of it. I refuse to accept ANY excuse for it. I am opposed to anyone anywhere in all realities who thinks that any of this is okay in any capacity. N is a monster for even considering this as a plan, but the fact that he goes through with it marks him as beyond redemption. I don't give a shit about what he's been through. He isn't Giovanni or Cyrus in some distant office apathetically plotting out how to achieve their goals, N looked people in the goddamned eyes and saw how much they loved their families and friends and decided that he had the right to hurt them.

He's a bad person. That's black and white.

That's my goddamn stance. I won't debate it any further, not with you and not with fucking ANYONE.

Wow, I can't believe some of the old message boards for Pokemon gen 5, especially for the characters. It's full of people saying stuff like: "All the characters are so awful. N is a preachy hypocritical little neckbeard just like everyone else in Team Plasma, the guy just watched Death note once and thinks he is so edgy", like, you're free to not like gen five or the characters, but these comments just seem like they come from people who haven't played the game in ages and are going off incredibly fuzzy memories, or did the whole story of being raised by wild animals and then being taken in and lied to, manipulated by a cult to be groomed into a puppet leader and the inherent pain and complications that come with it just completely go over their heads? As I've heard, N acts a lot like real people who were raised in cults and them got out of it eventually. Not to mention Bianca standing up to her overbearing father or her and Cheren's issues in general, or Hugh's entire reason he is so abrasive despite being a genuinely good person. I just really don't understand what could have been missed here or why anyone would think there's any reason to genuinely hate these characters?

[callmesel]

A hockey player's move

(part 3 baby!!)

Maybe Oliver was a bit of an idiot for not recognise that the pretty Skater was Charlie's relative. And maybe a bigger idiot for not noticing him before this point. Well, he did see him in some of the games he played but he paid attention to any of the crowd. He was to busy being the goaltender.

It was obvious from a mile away that he was a Weasley but he didn't know that any of them was an ice Skater, not like he asked anyway.

He did knew the Weasley's quite well and to not know this one was just weird. Maybe he was a cousin? But he looked too familiar to be one. Agh he was going mad thinking about him. He should just ask Penny, they seem pretty close back at the performance.

After the competition ended, Oliver walked to the locker rooms looking for his friend when he noticed that outside of this where a kind of a waiting room where Penny was sitting and... And the pretty boy?!? Well, Percy, now that he did know his name.

It might have been a bad idea to walk up to them, they looked like they were having a conversation and Penny doesn't like to get interrupted but this time, she looked very pleased to see Oliver. Odd...

"Penny! I filmed your performance." he said as to got near them.

"Oh sweet! Did you got my good side?" She said jokingly, Percy stayed silence. "Oh! I should introduce you two."

She stood up to gesture to both of them. "Percy, this is Oliver but I suppose you already know. Oliver, Percy." She said teasing both men, making them both blush from embarrassment.

"Hi" Percy said awkwardly, showing a soft side smile that made Oliver's head dizzy.

"Hi." He tried to match that soft smile. Weasley's blush spread to his ears and neck, Oliver wondered where did the blush stopped.

"Well, I let you guys alone. I told Cedric that I was taking him home." "But-" "Bye guys, send me the video later Oliver." She blow them kisses to rapidly disappear around the corner.

The remaining boys could only look at each other in disbelieve. Quickly, the awkward silance was starting to feel to heavy and Oliver had to think of something, anything at this point.

"So... You are a ice skater? Cool, I'm a hockey player my self."

"I know, you play in my siblings's team."

"Oh, really? Who is your sibling?"

"Siblings, I think you are playing with Fred and George now." Oh, so he IS their brother.

"I didn't know that they had an older brother, apart from Charlie of course." Percy looked away embarrassed.

"I don't really go to their games anymore, the university is keeping me busy." That is why he doesn't see him that often as the others.

"And you do dance skating competitions on the side. You guys are a family full of talented people. What are you studying?"

"It's not like that. I normally only skate in my free time now and-"

"Now? What do you mean by now?"

"It's just that I don't really have the time. I going to stop competing at the end of this season."

"Why? You did great! I'm sure you could go profesional if you wanted." The soft simle from before appeared once again in his lips, making Oliver blush a little.

"Thanks, but I want to become a prime misnister some day. That is why I have picked Interational Relations as my degree in collage."

"Well, hello mister future prime minister." Oliver bowed to Percy as he could just laught. Oliver thought that it was the cutest laught he have heard in his life.

That day Oliver went home with a wide smile, happy to have been a brave boy and asked for Percy's phone number. But maybe he should tell his firends yet, Fred and George may murder him if they knew. And he definetely didn't want to know what Charlie might do if he knew.

[mangopit]

"guys we're so screwed" "democracy is dead" girl we've BEEN screwed. it's BEEN dead. if you're only feeling it now, i'm afraid you haven't been paying enough attention. however that doesn't mean the progress we've made so far wasn't progress, nor that the fight ends here just because it feels harder now. we've all had our own worst day ever and we all lived through it. don't lump me in with your hopeless, doomer ass statements. feel what you feel and take all the time you need, but if you're not gonna use your grief or anger or dread or whatever to fuel you into making actual change, be it big or small, then stop projecting your debilitation onto people who have never had a choice but to fight for a better life for themselves and the ones they love. if you're not going to partake, the least you could do is to stop giving up a fight that doesn't even belong to you.

[thejokulatrix]

You're the first person to acknowledge I'm an ex radfem, though to be fair, I hate noting that as well.

I never had a peak trans moment - or rather, I was that moment, I guess? I couldn't accept that I wasn't only a woman or only a man, and spent years struggling to force myself into one box or the other and failing. In exhaustion I turned to the people who promised to make the whole entire question go away permanently. I spent most of my time in the detransitioner circle, because that was where I felt most comfortable. But as I spent years with radfems, reading and reciting their views, questions started to arise.

If dysphoria could be cured by ignoring it, why were the facebook groups constantly full of posts of people on the verge of killing themselves in misery? Why did none of them get better like what they promised?

If males are innately evil and females are innately weak, what is the point of feminism? Radical feminism is built on the concept nothing can change and the only way to be safe is to hide away and shun.

Who is this 'average woman' and why does every radfem insist on limiting themselves to her capabilities? Every time anything was brought up, like lifting weights, I'd get tons of replies that the 'average woman' can not do that, despite statistics like that not even being meant to be used in that context! Its supposed to track trends!

If sex is so solid, why does science keep showing how a lot of women have 'male' traits and vice versa. Back when I was around the radfems of this site rejected the sexed brain theory, but just a casual scan shows ya'll accept it now? Even today I keep finding new studied showing how our bodies are basically the exact same, just with different parts active due to hormones.

I'm not sure if yall still do this, but back in my day there used to be these lists of physical features only males and females have, and I became so insecure because my skull was male-coded! And that was with me being too white to understand the other racist undertones to those lists.

If you can not identify into an experience that is not your own, why is one of the base tenants of radical feminism political lesbianism?

All the books and essays write real pretty - but the only thing they do is take trauma response and spread them further, convincing you your fear response isn't paranoia, but a legitimate threat response, to the point a lot of radfems I knew on a one to one basis were afraid to leave their house.

All of the things I remember radfems screaming for is happening now, and just like trans people tried to warn them, it has led to awful things for everybody, to the point we now live in a fascist country. No I'm not saying radfems solely caused project 2025 and all that, I'm saying they worked real, real hard on adding to the fire that led to all this.

Honestly, despite this, I still stuck around far long than I should have. The breaking point was when I joined spinster and left the cozy little cache of tumblr rad feminism. See, here, yall are still somewhat seated in reality, and those who start to become extreme are ran out of the community. You reject polilesbianism and still try to be open to everybody (except trans people....). But elsewhere, that is far from the truth. I became somewhat known on spinster, which allowed me to see all of the community that had gathered there at once, and it terrified me. The transvestigators on twitter screaming how everybody around them is trans and personally out to get her and writing big long diagrams to show Marilyn Monroe was born a man? THAT is late stage radical feminism. That is what all of the people here are headed for if they don't get out. And the sheer vile hatred towards everyone was overwhelming. Those radical feminists were gloves off about how they thought detransitioners were disgusting mutilated freaks, how actual lesbians were predators who were basically men because they were attracted to women physically instead of it being a political movement, even the mobs against women who dared to have sons. There were women bragging about having nazi friends because they supported her transphobia.

I left 5 years ago. A lot of my initial post is aimed at the fears and doubts I had walking away, that I would be alone and shunned and considered tainted by anyone I met. I was used to the treatment already from radfems for not being a gold star lesbian and they had done everything they could to convince me the outside world hated me, only they would ever tolerate my presence, and I believed them. And to be fair, even when I got out, with my obligatory thread about how I was actually innately evil, a spy, not really a radfem, a male this whole time!, all the favourite mental disorders that every exiting radfem gets saddled with, I was still half rabid and not fit for civilization. I did not leave to go become a trans ally or whatever, but to just get away before I was permanently broken too. It took a lot of time for me to pull all those fears and self hatred and ignorance out of my head, and ironically, it took an abusive relationship to make me realize how far I had fallen as a person. Before radfeminism, I prided myself in how I was never afraid to step up and even physically fight anybody who tried to hurt me, considering myself immune to abuse because of that. But as one of the radfem's pet detransitioners, I had became small, meek, and afraid, and since she too was a radfem, she was good at tearing me down in ways I was still raw about. Even though I saw what was happening to me, I still reacted the way i had been trained to in my time in this community, slicing parts off of me and trying desperately to force myself into the shape she demanded I be so she'd stop hurting me, and it just grew worst and worst. She finally abandoned me after I stopped being fun to emotionally kick around, and then I felt as alone as I had feared I would be.

But. . . it was then, separated completely from the radfem sphere, with only myself and my beloved brother to pick me up, was I able to start to heal. Without the constant feedback of be afraid be afraid be afraid and going out and having good interactions, I began to relax. I found that my obnoxious judgements of people based off something as stupid as a misspeak on their part or not matching MY political purity or even their sex was stopping me from getting friends, so I dropped them. I gave them room to be people around me, and I found I loved them, and in return they loved me, and through their eyes, I came to love myself in a way I never had before. And when I approached people as people, instead of just the labels I was taught to straddle them with, I learned and it expanded my world so much. I truly hadn't realized how tiny and grey my world had become, how isolated and shut in I was. And now I'm engaged, I have things I do every week with my friends, I'm greeted when I go out and am invited to things. Hell, the depression I was convinced was chronic hasn't popped up in almost 2 years now? Turns out it was situational, and I just never managed to get out of the Situations long enough to figure it out before, haha. I finally got over my internalized transphobia and accepted I'm both man and woman, and its okay. All of the mental strain and distress I had put myself under resolved immediately and I'm so much healthier now. And that was before I found out I'm intersex and physically both too. I embraced my transness and in that other trans people found me and became my friends, even when I admitted my past mistakes, because they see how I strive constantly to be better and to make up for them. The people who knew me as a terf and now tell me I'm a completely different person. Even the really bad misogny I had picked up from radical feminism because it puts womanhood on a too high to reach pillar then punishes anybody who can't reach it disappeared. By seeing women as people first and foremost instead of just their sex, I let go off the weird assumptions I was trying to hold them too. That makes me a million times the feminist I pretended to be back then. In short, I finally grew up emotionally.

Damn, I was hoping I could answer all your questions in my story, but I can't see where to slot them in.

I don't have any radical feminism beliefs anymore, and will never have any of them ever again, because they don't mesh with material reality.

The woods thing isn't related to paganism, but both a reference to the female only radfem camping trips that used to happen yearly up in California and a weird message I got on Spinster inviting me out into some woods close to me in order to (I always forget the exact word she used! I wish i remembered) center my feminity, reconnect with Womanhood, something like that. Is the camping trips cancelled? To be fair, a lot of the rad fems I hung around and knew by name were Californian for some reason lol.

I avoided men so hard that the first time I heard Markiplier speak I had the cat fear response because I was so unaccustomed to deep male voices at that time, lmao.

Really, I wrote this post as a love letter to the me that existed 5 years ago. I wish I hadn't started with a sarcastic meme joke, but when I started that post I figured I'd delete it and it wouldn't matter, but then decided what the hell. Radfems can't hurt me anymore, and who knows, maybe something I write there will resonate with other people wanting out but hasn't mustered the courage yet.

I wish all current and future radical feminists a very quick escape your cult.

Don't believe their lies.

People leave the cult all the time. They just memoryhole them to keep up the lie of 'nobody stops being a radfem'.

They are NOT the majority, there is a reason you find the same faces on every site and group. Once you escape, you won't believe how big and wonderful the world is.

There is forgiveness and healing for you.

Being afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing is NOT normal or feminism!

You won't be alone if you leave. There are plenty of people out here willing to embrace you, even as you're going through your healing pains as you get deprogrammed.

You cannot power your way to being cis, regardless of what they say. You can't divine goddess weird forest female only ritual your way out of dysphoria, and looking back, it will honestly just be weird and embarassing lol

I know most of the deep in the sauce radfems will ignore/mock this, but those of you who want out and are afraid of being alone or hated because of your past, it is a lie. Don't be afraid to jump for freedom. My messenger/inbox is always open if you need a helping hand.

[girlivealwaysbean]

i think growing up is just life repeatedly sucker punching you and saying bitch you thought things were gonna better lmao no you're so naive and stupid for having hope in 20 years the world will be flaming bag of garbage and no matter how hard you work you'll get eliminated at some point

[ettadunham]

sometimes i remember the hunger games and how nobody actually paid attention to what was in those books

[secret--history]

the whole 'there are not very many Great Causes worth fighting for these days' from Julian scanned as WAY more out of touch than the moon landing thing for me the first time i read tsh

[obituarybug]

Everytime I tell someone I'm independent/no party and they immediately start spouting bullshit to me about the importance of voting and why I should vote and that "a vote for third party is a vote for x" an angel loses its wings

Like sorry I wasn't aware that only Republicans & Democrats are allowed to vote for their respective parties and independents can't and that if they see you're registered independent they fucking rip up your ballot in front of you and don't count it

I AM STILL GOING TO FUCKING VOTE SHUT YOUR BITCH ASS UP.

[lucianinsanity]

Every time some science fact is mentioned and it's something that was discovered thanks to the help or invention of your country and you die a little for the lack of acknowledgment

Anyway if you’re from the US and you ever wanted to know what tumblr feels like from a non-USAmerican perspective (please note that the rest of the world is not a monolith either and none of these apply without exception):

Everybody’s talking about brands and stores you’ve never seen in real life. You generally assume they exist, but they might as well be one giant prank the rest of the internet is in on.

You find a post that just sounds wrong. It makes no sense. It’s like OP lives in a weird alternate reality. 9/10 times, it’s just some USAmerican Thing.

You’re still not entirely sure how much an inch is. Or a foot. Or even how many of the former there are in the latter. You maybe know your height in feet and inches.

You have no idea how much a pound is. You’d also like to know how the fuck pound shortens to lbs.

What the fuck is “military time”

Somebody talks about some legal process or something similar. They don’t mention which country’s legal system this pertains to. You know anyway.

People talk about politics. None of it pertains to you. Many posts contain guilt tripping. “How can you not care about this?? Why won’t you reblog this?? People need to know this about x candidate for y position!” You’re busy trying to stay on top of the political landscape in your own country.

You pick up some random slang from the internet. Monkey see monkey do. You’re called racist. You didn’t know it was AAVE. You learnt it from black letters on white background, not from the mouths of people whose faces you could see. How would you have known? You try to unlearn it.

People tell you that you must publicly denounce Chick-fil-A or you’re homophobic. You don’t even know what a Chick-fil-A is.

People say you don’t know LGBTQ+ history. What they mean is you don’t know USAmerican LGBTQ+ history. Nobody cares about your country’s history.

You’re “called out” on using an “offensive” term. It’s (a direct translation of) a completely harmless word where you live.

People expect you to have an idea of how far apart 2 USAmerican states are. You barely know geography past your country’s immediate neighbors.

You randomly switch between British and American spellings. Nothing’s real and there are no rules.

People talk about multiple hour car rides and you get twitchy just thinking about it. You suddenly understand why USAmerican cars are so big.

Somebody talks about school shooting drills. You only ever had fire alarm drills.

You see a cool statistic. The study’s only about the US. It’s unfortunately of no use to you.

People misuse/misspell words and names from your native language. It’s tiring.

(You feel sorry for the French. Nobody should be allowed to mangle the word déjà vu like that.)

You’re still not over the fact that USAmerican school children are supposed to say that pledge thing every morning. You’re never getting over that.

You still don’t know why the men are fresh or what the fuck a sophomore is.

Who the fuck pays up first and then fills up gas??? That’s made up, right??

Everybody has a weird obsession with some comfort food you’d never even heard of before you signed up here.

Fellow non-USAmericans, please add anything else you can think of.

[little-vimpress]

.....

[doberbutts]

And speaking of being black in majority-white spaces, here's something else I've learned first from my black family and then from direct experience:

I absolutely understand if you don't have the energy or ability to put yourself at risk and open yourself up to being the first [marginalized delographic] to do something or the only one to exist in a [empowered demopraphic] space, but also.

Sometimes that person does have to be you. Sometimes you have to do it for those who come after you. Sometimes you have to do it if you want that space to change.

A friend of mine has a husband who attends a country club. Formerly mostly populated by truly ancient racist ass white men as a Good Ol Boys Club, except... my friend's husband is not racist and does not like this behavior, but does like the perks of the country club. So he got his friends of color into the club, and is slowly taking over the club dynamic and politics with his significantly more diverse friend group. And the guys he brought in are A: very pleasant people and B: becoming official members and then bringing *their* friends in, and slowly they're pushing out the racist assholes that dominated the club not even a few years ago. Soon it will be a country club where the average color is mine and not that of milk.

Dobermans are an incredibly white, right-wing, racist- and nazi-dominated breed. It is a serious problem and a major reason that I am very incredibly choosey about my doberman contacts. I joke all the time that Fenris' breeder is amassing a black doberman owner army to chase out all of the white racists, and a queer doberman army to chase away the homophobes and transphobes, and it's only like. Half of a joke. Because the more of us that she collects and are making waves on the breed, the more others behind us will know that if nothing else we'll keep them safe from Those Jerks. There was a woman in a hijab at the last UDC event I went to- 10 years ago I genuinely don't think she would have lasted more than an hour or two without someone making it very clear that she was not welcome. I certainly had people open their mouths to say something and then my more experienced, more accomplished friends would stare and wait and the offender in question would shut their mouth and walk away.

If you're unhappy with the social or political climate of a community space you want to occupy, sometimes you do have to occupy it anyway and collect people who are like minded until you have a collective to start changing minds. And it sucks but like. Those are your options. Occupy the space anyway and make waves by refusing to budge, make your own space, or avoid it forever and miss out on something you wanted to do.

[inkskinned]

one of the things that's the most fucking frustrating for me about arguing with climate change deniers is the sheer fucking scope of how much it matters. sweating in my father's car, thinking about how it's the "hottest summer so far," every summer. and there's this deep, roiling rage that comes over me, every time.

the stakes are wrong, is the thing. that's part of what makes it not an actual debate: the other side isn't coming to the table with anything to fucking lose.

like okay. i am obviously pro gun control. but there is a basic human part of me that can understand and empathize with someone who says, "i'm worried that would lead to the law-abiding citizens being punished while criminals now essentially have a superpower." i don't agree, but i can tell the stakes for them are also very high.

but let's say the science is wrong and i'm wrong and the visible reality is wrong and every climate disaster refugee is wrong. let's say you're right, humans aren't causing it or it's not happening or whatever else. let's just say that, for fun.

so we spend hundreds of millions of dollars making the earth cleaner, and then it turns out we didn't need to do that. oops! we cleaned the earth. our children grow up with skies full of more butterflies and bees. lawns are taken over with rich local biodiversity. we don't cry over our electric bills anymore. and, if you're staunchly capitalist and i need to speak ROI with you - we've created so many jobs in developing sectors and we have exciting new investment opportunities.

i am reminded of kodak, and how they did not make "the switch" to digital photography; how within 20 years kodak was no longer a household brand. do we, as a nation, feel comfortable watching as the world makes "the switch" while we ride the laurels of oil? this boggles me. i have heard so much propaganda about how america cannot "fall behind" other countries, but in this crucial sector - the one that could actually influence our own monopolies - suddenly we turn the other cheek. but maybe you're right! maybe it will collapse like just another silicone valley dream. but isn't that the crux of capitalism? that some economies will peter out eventually?

but let's say you're right, and i'm wrong, and we stopped fracking for no good reason. that they re-seed quarries. that we tear down unused corporate-owned buildings or at least repurpose them for communities. that we make an effort, and that effort doesn't really help. what happens then? what are the stakes. what have we lost, and what have we gained?

sometimes we take our cars through a car wash and then later, it rains. "oh," we laugh to ourselves. we gripe about it over coffee with our coworkers. what a shame! but we are also aware: the car is cleaner. is that what you are worried about? that you'll make the effort but things will resolve naturally? that it will just be "a waste"?

and what i'm right. what if we're already seeing people lose their houses and their lives. what if it is happening everywhere, not just in coastal towns or equatorial countries you don't care about. what if i'm right and you're wrong but you're yelling and rich and powerful. so we ignore all of the bellwethers and all of the indicators and all of the sirens. what if we say - well, if it happens, it's fate.

nevermind. you wouldn't even wear a mask, anyway. i know what happens when you see disaster. you think the disaster will flinch if you just shout louder. that you can toss enough lives into the storm for the storm to recognize your sacrifice and balk. you argue because it feels good to stand up against "the liberals" even when the situation should not be political. you are busy crying for jesus with a bullhorn while i am trying to usher people into a shelter. you've already locked the doors, even on the church.

the stakes are skewed. you think this is some intellectual "debate" to win, some funny banter. you fuel up your huge unmuddied truck and say suck it to every citizen of that shitbird state california. serves them right for voting blue!

and the rest of us are terrified of the entire fucking environment collapsing.

[thebiballerina]

I mostly concur with the above reblogger, but I wanted to add one thing:

I wouldn't say that anything you do will have zero impact. There are SOME things you can do that will have an impact, if you choose to put your time and energy into this issue. (Which you are not obligated to do, to be clear, unless you have some sort of role or job which implies that sort of responsibility.)

You aren't necessarily helpless. But subscribing to OP's mindset is a really good way to make yourself helpless.

I've seen that mindset, repeatedly. I had that mindset, at one point in time. You know what changed that, more than anything else? Becoming an actual activist.

The activists who hold on to the mindset that a mental health break is selfish? The ones that can't or won't emotionally distance themselves? The ones that don't acknowledge their right to care for themselves because someone, somewhere is suffering worse than them? They don't last, and they don't help.

The good ending for that road is to burn out, and then not be able to help anymore. The bad ending is to fall heavily into compassion fatigue, and then be so desensitized and unable to care that you cause real harm. Or there's the other bad ending, which is that you neglect yourself so thoroughly that you end up hurt, sick, or dead (and maybe hurt others while you are at it). You might even manage to do all three of these things.

If you want to make a real impact on more than a minuscule scale, you not only need to allow yourself mental health breaks (which, yes, sometimes include disengaging completely), you need to accept that they aren't selfish at all. They are sometimes the only way you'll be able to preserve your ability to help. Feeling personally affected by an issue is valid, and sometimes unavoidable, but it doesn't correlate to how much of a difference you make.

Hurting yourself doesn't automatically help others. Many of us have heard metaphor which references the airplane safety instruction to put on your oxygen mask before helping others do so. It's a good metaphor. A suffocating person isn't going to thank you for the valiant gesture of suffocating yourself alongside them, when you had the option to save the both of you.

I believe in sacrifice, in some cases. I believe in acknowledging my privilege. But sacrifice generally implies that you are giving something up to help someone else. If you are just giving something up… it's more suffering in the world, not less.

Do you want to actually help? I bet you there are activism campaigns that would love to have you, in a variety of forms and levels of commitment. Including entirely remote efforts, if you aren't in a position or location to engage in in-person efforts. That goes for any cause, not just this one.

And you'll make a lot more difference in that sphere if you prioritize your impact, instead of your devotion to the issue.

i think anyone who is genuinely worried about their mental health bc of the situation in gaza probably needs to reformat their way of thinking about it. the answer is not to take a “mental health break” where you pretend whats happening in gaza doesnt exist and stop being vocal and refuse to hear people around you who are vocal. the way to do that “mental health break” much more effectively and not selfishly would be to remove yourself from constant streams of idiotic and/or murderously evil people. stop watching tiktok debates. stop reading genocidal reddit comments and news articles from sources you KNOW want palestine dead. stop putting the focus on the murderers and keep your attention on sympathy and love for the murdered, on hope and optimism (even if naive) and activism to do your part in making things better. dont get me wrong the murderers still need to be dealt with but if you as an individual feel like you’re getting too overwhelmed with despair to be helpful, the answer is to shift your focus away from those causing the despair, not to ignore and abandon those who have to actually live through it.

[thebreakfastgenie]

This is going to get me screencapped and ridiculed by leftblr but at this point I don't care.

The way people talk about Ruth Bader Ginsburg is misogynistic. This post is not about the merits of her decision to remain in her seat. I've discussed that before and I'm happy to go through it again with anyone who is genuinely interested in the complexities of that situation, but for the sake of this post, I am not arguing that it's unreasonable to believe, with the benefit of hindsight, that the country would be a in a better position today if Ginsburg had retired in 2012. The issue I want to address is how people talk about it.

People who blame Ginsburg for the current state of the Supreme Court tend to throw around words like greedy, selfish, and ambitious, echoing a familiar form of misogyny. Ambition is only bad when women demonstrate it, and women in politics are regularly punished for ambition. Even more disturbingly, people tend to blame not just Ginsburg, but the women and girls who looked up to her. I've seen the "Notorious RBG" nickname derided as a cult of personality, when the reality is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a trailblazer and a role model to a lot of women and girls. I've seen leftists try to hide behind valid criticisms of some of Ginsburg's positions (and it should, but doesn't, go without saying that you can see someone as a role model without believing they are correct about every issue all the time) but you barely have to scratch the surface to see that the real complaint is that they think women who admire her are cringe. I don't know if people understand how significant she was; she was only the second woman on the Supreme Court and the first, Sandra Day O'Connor, was a conservative Reagan appointee. Even so, Justice O'Connor spoke about the significance of Justice Ginsburg joining her and reality that women faced in their position being more apparent when she could see it happening to someone else. It's the same old anti-feminist story of dismissing women and their desires.

This particular case rankles me because it's underscored by the complete silence about Anthony Kennedy. Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a judgment call about her health that didn't work out--and barely; she died four months before Trump left office. Anthony Kennedy, a supposed moderate justice who claimed to not want Roe v Wade to be overturned, retired in 2018, knowing full well Trump would replace him with someone who would overturn Roe v Wade. It was Kennedy's replacement, not Ginsburg's, that doomed Roe. The decision was 6-3. If Ginsburg had lived four more months, or retired in 2012 and been replaced with an Obama appointee, the Dobbs v Jackson decision would have been 5-4 in the same direction. Anthony Kennedy was replaced with Brett Kavanaugh, a white man who sobbed crocodile tears when confronted with credible allegations of sexual assault and ultimately faced no consequences. Anthony Kennedy let all of this happen and slunk off into his cushy retirement. Where is the anger for him? He's alive! Being angrier at Ginsburg than Kennedy makes absolutely no sense. There is no logic to explain it, only misogyny.

It doesn't escape my notice that the anger at Ginsburg goes hand-in-hand with blaming women for their own suffering as a result of the Dobbs decision and with blaming Hillary Clinton for the 2016 election, while making any excuse for not voting for her or deriding her for months. It's emblematic of a political system that does not care about women and despises women trying to speak up and make our issues known.

[txttletale]

"you, specifically, are a bad and evil person that all my posts are written to condemn" this is not what i said. i'm sorry for not being clearer. i just feel like everyone in this space, not just you, look down on people who live in the first world as people who willingly don't change anything about how the world works when it's just not that simple. i know you all love to combat this and say otherwise but it will never change the simple reality that for some people it really is very hard, if not impossible, to do anything politically, for a variety of reasons. i'm disabled, i live in a remote part of the country, and i'm bad at talking to people. i don't have the money to just move to a population center or get lessons on how to speak to people. i can't do anything and i feel like every time you or one of the other communists on tumblr talks about the imperial core, i feel like i, personally, am being held to an unreasonable standard that i would not hold anyone else to, if i were in one of your situations. obviously i want things to change. i don't want genocide to be a thing that's constantly happening, i don't want my country to have its tendrils dug into every other country, i want socialism and eventually global communism, and if i could do anything meaningful-- anything at all-- to achieve those goals i would be working on that. but right now that just is not the case for me, and i feel like i'm not alone in that either. i just wish you had like a smidgen of empathy for some of the people living here who don't fit into your stereotype of what a member of the imperial core looks like-- i'm not even trying to say that sarcastically, it genuinely feels like you all don't see us as human. like nyanguard especially seems to think of us as incapable of saving ourselves, and one of the reblogs to my first ask just said they "like to imagine that (i'm) crying as i type this". how am i supposed to react to that? is this how all of you feel about people like me? would your feelings about me change if i lived in another country, or would you find some other excuse to talk down to me? is it really just the country i live in that's the problem, here? i'm not trying to accuse you, i'm asking this question genuinely.

i know it's tempting to respond to this with a snarky comment but please just try to understand where i am coming from. i really am willing to help if i can.

i don't think any marxist seriously has a political theory of imperialism that amounts to "citizens of the imperial core simply choose not to do anything because they are all individually bad people". i mean the whole point of marxism is that economic relations are the ultimate drivers of historical change, not abstract psychological or moral qualities of people.

i'm sympathetic to your situation! the imperial core is a very atomizing place to live, and there are places and situations where there's just no practical path to getting organized and taking meaningful political action in the near future. however, your problem here is:

i feel like i, personally, am being held to an unreasonable standard that i would not hold anyone else to

nobody is posting about you, personally. like at the end of the day you have to learn to either not take posts like that personally or just block everyone who makes them to manage your own time on the computer vis a vis niceness--i don't think it's the responsibility of me or any other communist to constantly provide asterisks and carveouts that we're not talking about the Good Ones Who Have Extenuating Circumstances when we talk about the usa and its material political base.

& in the same way that you ask for empathy for your situation i would ask you to extend a level of understanding to people whose homelands and countrymen and communities have been devastated by US coups and sanctions and invasions, that they have as much a right to express the rage and fury and hurt of that cultural legacy as you do to express your own sadness about your own situation. imagine, for example, how you would feel if your grandparents could not reliably get medicine because of us sanctions. & of course the correct target for these feelings are not random usamericans--but these posts are also not serious politcal platforms, they are venting from people who live their lives under the weight of empire.

if you think what they're saying is unfair to you, then you need to develop the ability to say 'well, i understand why they would feel that way' and move on. like i understand why you are upset, and i don't say this to be dismissive, but as real advice: it is not fair (especially to bloggers from the global south) to essentially rest your happiness and self-worth at their feet and demand that they validate you.

genuinely, i hope this helps. it's all i really have to say on the matter.

[sayruq]

I want everyone to understand that even if Israel wins this (I mean it won't but just imagine), it won't recover from this. It won't recover from getting caught off guard on Oct 7th. The government and the IDF spent days unable to have a strategic response to the Palestinian fighters while their own soldiers deserted and their allies openly questioned the wisdom of a ground invasion in Gaza. That's why they're bombing Gaza, it is the only way to project strength to the world but it is also alienating billions of people. The world has never been more pro Palestine than this moment in time.

Just like how America being forced to flee Afghanistan led to a series of Ls globally, Israel struggling against Hamas, PFLP, Islamic Jihad, and other groups will have disastrous effects locally and internationally. I mean, the political class is already falling apart with Netanyahu blaming government officials for this disaster. The Israeli government have no unity or cohesion which is not a great sign to put it lightly. War usually binds people, even rival political groups, and especially allies. America has been hinting that it doesn't approve of some of actions taken by Israel. It could be just Biden and his people trying to softly distance him from the genocide in Gaza but you also have former and current military leaders disapproving of Israel's military strategy.

The thing is you don't see Iran openly questioning the Palestinians. You don't see Hezbollah running to the press to let them know they think Hamas' strategy is weak. Every single Palestinian militia group, including the ones in the West Bank, are working together. Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinians are all coordinating. In the past week, they would attack Israeli settlements and military bases and American bases in Iraq and Syria at the same time. They've even managed to get new support from the Yemeni Ansar Allah group.

Israel's main export is security- meaning weapons manufacturing and training. How many countries will rush to have their police or soldiers train with the IDF after witnessing them fold while in battle (in the latest ground incursion, the IDF lasted only 15 minutes inside Gaza according to Al Jazeera)? How many countries will line up to buy Israeli tanks after seeing them get taken out easily by guerilla fighters? How many countries and individual investors will want to invest in Israel when it can't go 5 years without a war or genocide?

I believe with all my heart we will soon see a liberated Palestine.