#i feel certain there must be a real word for the concept of... socially enforced emotional conformity

[brainrot-jikan]

im not the biggest alhaitham/kaveh shipper (because im a rare pair ho) but it seems to me that in alhaitham/kaveh getting-together fics tend to be... unequal.

the beautiful thing about alhaitham and kaveh is that they're both equally right and equally wrong and equally dicks about it. but the writers for alhaitham/kaveh much more frequently seem to give alhaitham the burden change (the burden of the character flaw) instead of kaveh.

in any good character arc, the main character has a fatal flaw or misconception, and by the end of that arc they have addressed that flaw in some definitive way. scrooge was a scrooge and learned that being that way was detrimental; merlin from finding nemo was overprotective to a fault and had to learn that he couldn't (and shouldn't) control everything and to let go; the wolf from little red riding hood learns that you should stop while you're ahead.

stories centering around romance tend to lean heavily on character arcs, which makes sense. and since romance generally requires two individuals to be vulnerable and open and emotional with each other, it makes double sense that alhaitham/kaveh authors zoom straight into alhaitham's lack of emotional vulnerability.

this bothers me.

in society, individuals are expected to experience and present emotions in a specific way. if someone dies, you cry. if someone smiles at you, you smile back. if you're at a party, you're supposed to be having fun. if you don't do these things, you're seen as impolite at best and a inhuman freak at worst. when these behaviors are frequent it's often viewed as emotional immaturity, or a lack of ability to feel at all. the inability or lack of willingness to conform to societies emotional expectations of you is seen as a flaw and a reason for exclusion.

alhaitham is canonically disliked and avoided for being the way he is. he prefers it this way, but that doesn't mean the people perpetuating this avoidance are in the right. they are the societal pressure to conform that alhaitham blows off. alhaitham could be the way he is for a lot of reasons: avoidant attachment style, trauma, following someone else's example (eg. his grandmother), or just his base personality. it doesn't MATTER. he is the way he is. kaveh having to accept that should be part of the story.

putting the burden of the fatal flaw on alhaitham, making the way alhaitham treats kaveh and the people around him the problem, feels invalidating. it implies heavily that alhaitham's way of interfacing with the world, alhaitham's very SELF, is incorrect. my suggestion is to flip a larger portion of that burden onto kaveh. kaveh 👏 character 👏 arcs 👏

some examples/recommendations:

- make kaveh project his insecurities onto other people but especially onto alhaitham; he's overly reliant on other people for his own self worth, and he perceives alhaitham's lack of positive feedback as a direct reflection of how alhaitham feels about him. but learns along the way that alhaitham doesn't hate him, kaveh's actual struggle is with hating himself and being unable to his own self as worthy of love. maybe throw in how you are responsible for your own recovery, other people can help but you can't rely on them to carry you through self actualization.

- or, kaveh tries to make alhaitham behave more like a "normal" person, to be more pleasant and emotive and forthcoming, and then realizes he's in the wrong for trying to make alhaitham into something he's not, possibly for all the wrong reasons (not because he likes alhaitham better like that, but bc society says that's healthier and a better/more conforming way to be)

- or you could go ahead make alhaitham's issues the main problem but they're too complicated to overcome in a short period of time, so kaveh has to accept alhaitham is doing his best in his own way and not push for unrealistic and unhealthy changes. he could alter his own behavior to give alhaitham space and time and a safe place to land.

that got sappy so it's past time for me to dip out. go forth and ship things; but maybe consider letting alhaitham be a rude stone-faced bastard if he wants to be.

[angstydevil]

The map is not the territory. In regards to geopolitics, this means a map of the world is a representation, not reality itself. Borders change. Landmasses change. The words used to label depictions of certain regions reflect temporal motivations. The landmasses labeled North America and South America are named after an Italian mapmaker and have not been named as such for many millennia. The names on the globe reflect historical ideological movements.

The concept of a world map entirely covered in nationstates with well-defined borders is relatively new. This reflects a particular ideology in which states are things that occupy landmasses and contain people, rather than material realities constructed by social agreements between individuals.

Even satellite maps are photographs: they are representations of reality, and they are distinct from the real world in various ways. If satellite maps are presented as the most cutting edge and accurate way of depicting Earth as it really is, that too reflects a bias toward seeing what the world “really is” in a particular way.

The map is not the territory. In regards to psychiatry, this means that a catalogue of behaviours maligned as syndromes written by clubs of predominantly white western cisgender men is not a holy almanac of extant neurological deviations from some universal standard of reason.

Psychiatry is a violent institution at its roots. The concepts of sanity and madness are inextricable from racism and colonialism. American psychiatry emerged from the practice of allowing slaveholders the “right” to have captive people they held in involuntary servitude declared “mentally unfit” or “insane”.

Psychiatry remains a violent institution. It is an extension of western fetishization of “rationalism”; it rationalizes unpersoning. It holds that madpeople are without “reason”, a notion that for many intents and purposes is a sanitized synonym of soul, and therefore madpeople must be caged. It offers a “scientific” and “rational” dogma of “degeneracy”.

Psychiatry is interlinked with the prison industrial complex and is one of the principal institutions to which the term “institutional racism” applies. American psychiatry diagnoses black bodied people with oppositional defiant disorder, antisocial personality disorder, schizophrenia, and cognitive disabilities at higher rates than white bodied people, simultaneously villainizing and constructing blackness as a social and material reality, villainizing and constructing particular categories of disability as categories to be marginalized and medically neglected, and perpetuating racialist ideologies while frequently aligning with eugenicist initiatives. Psychiatry is a part of a system that determines who is free and who is unfree, and that system serves and protects inequalities as its foundational purpose.

Psychiatry creates an idea of mental illness that's very attractive as a pejorative among liberals and conservatives, e.g., Conservativism/liberalism should be considered a mental illness (and therefore conservatives/liberals should be unfree). This kind of thinking also appears on the auth-left, e.g., I think money should be considered a delusion (and therefore capitalists should be unfree). Psychiatry constructs, enforces, and regulates categories of “undesirables”.

No one derives rights and validity from the DSM. American queer people did not feel protected by homosexuality's status as a diagnosis in the DSM, and they rioted and organized until it was removed as a diagnosis in 1974. Trans people deserve freedom and rights because everyone deserves freedom and rights, not because the American Psychiatric Association recognizes gender dysphoria as a diagnosis.

Psychiatry does not champion the rights of people it diagnoses. In the words of Frantz Fanon, “Psychiatry is an auxiliary of the police.” Psychiatrists police communities, and they do so with the same violent racist, sexist, cisheteronormative prejudices endogenous to police departments.

Psychiatrists, like police officers, have the right to arbitrarily detain people. Psychiatrists are gatekeepers between people and inalienable rights to medicine and drugs. Psychiatrists participate in the othering and erasure of people who experience trauma, especially generational and societal trauma. Psychiatrists actively construct a colonial narrative in which there exists an ideal (white, sane, able bodied) rational human standard from which there is (“degenerate”) deviation. Psychiatrists kidnap and imprison people. Psychiatrists swear oaths to kidnap and imprison people. Psychiatrists rarely face charges or even lose their licenses to practice when their abuses are well documented - and, in general, most abuses are not well documented.

Psychiatry’s existence as an institution opposes absolute rights to bodily autonomy. Psychiatry prohibits poor, sick, and disabled people people from accessing lifesaving medicine. Psychiatry disproportionately denies people of color access to treatments entirely by applying “untreatable” diagnoses.

Medicalist gatekeepers are bullies shilling for a cruel establishment. They routinely accuse their harassment targets of faking disorders, being delusional, and having personality disorders, and they routinely invalidate people using a variety of slurs originally directed at people diagnosed with psychosis, autism, cognitive impairment, and paraphilias as pejoratives.

All these pejoratives are associated with diagnoses in the DSM. Medicalist gatekeepers use them to invalidate and harass others because they’ve integrated the beliefs that psychiatric propagandists peddle: that belonging to those diagnostic criteria makes you ontologically worth less and less “rational” than a sane, abled being; deserving of unfreedom; “degenerate”—without “reason”.

At the crux of their arguments, they say, you’re not like me, you’re like those bad madpeople – or, even more insidiously, I don’t believe what you say about yourself as much as I believe what psychiatry says about you.

If you find yourself thinking, “well of course we have to have an objective viewpoint to really understand this phenomenon - people like that aren’t fully rational!” then you believe unpersoning propaganda.

[mojoflower]

WHY is fanfiction not the appropriate venue for your political or social battle?

We can all agree, I posit, that there are changes that need to be made in the world (racism, for example;  patriarchal inequalities;  rape culture;  capitalism;  plug in your personal cause here).

We can all ALSO agree, I think, that the way culture, media, etc. portray things influences a consumer on an unconscious level.

We can agree that, in real life, certain things are clearly bad:  abuse of others, non-consensual sex, systemic inequality, I can go on….

So.  Let me feel my way through this.  I, personally, feel like fanfiction (specifically on AO3, since that’s where I encounter it) is NOT an appropriate battleground for enforcing cultural change by:

Leaving comments about how someone’s work is (in your, the commenter’s, opinion) wrong, damaging, unfair, insensitive, etc.

Telling the writer they should change this or that.

Telling the writer they must add or delete tags.

Broadcasting your opinion of the writer’s egregiousness outside AO3 (twitter, for example, or here on tumblr).

Organizing a campaign of harassment against the author if they don’t change to suit your personal requirements.

First of all:

 Be the change you want to see.

Fanfiction, unlike any other media out there, is INDIVIDUAL.  It is one work, from one single person – voluntary and unpaid.  You yourself are one single person.  You can have as much influence as this writer.  Write the works you want to read, instead of demanding that the writer change to suit you.  This is how romance novels changed from non-con, non-condom-wearing, shudderingly unequal stories in the 70s and 80s to where they are now, for example.  New people started writing stories, and eventually established authors started changing, too (or dwindled away).

Remember that you know nothing about the author.

You don’t know their culture, their skin color, their age, their gender.  You don’t know their socioeconomic status or how much free time they have.  You don’t know their current mental or physical conditions.  You don’t know any of the things going on in their life.  AND.  You are not entitled to know these things.  When you lash out at an author for not doing research, for not editing, for… anything at all… you cannot assume that they’re not fourteen, not suicidal, not a native speaker, not disabled such that writing a single paragraph is a tremendous effort.  You don’t know they’re not in an abusive situation, or economic peril.  You do not have the right to tell them to change.  Whether you are asking them to change text, tone, tagging, ships, plot, you name it.  Anything.

Dead Dove:  Do Not Eat.

Don’t like, don’t read.  These are simple concepts, and the tagging system on AO3 helps you to avoid many triggers.  Simple common sense, once you're into a story that’s raising your hackles, will warn you away from the rest.  If you say, ‘no, this person can’t write that, it’s contributing to pain in the Real World’ then you are functioning as a censor.  I mean, at its most basic level, a censor is someone who strikes out passages in books or other media because it’s… immoral/bad/etc.  The problem is that morality is incredibly tailored to the group you’re in, and also incredibly fluid, shifting over time.  So… why do YOU get to be the censor and not the author?  What makes YOU the final word?  Seriously, think about it.

Fanfiction writers are the most vulnerable group you could target.

Which makes them easy prey, and possibly makes them the juiciest and most satisfying targets.  Address your anger to Hollywood or Simon & Schuster or Congress – and your voice will doubtless get lost in the shuffle.  Address it to an author on AO3 and you can deliver your blow personally, one on one, and witness the damage.  There is no professional buffer between your resentment and their reaction.

Who are fanfiction writers?  Overwhelmingly women, overwhelmingly queer, often very young and inexperienced.  Wow.  What a rewarding group to start slapping around.  You wouldn't be the only one to think so.  Seriously.  Aim your anger at someone who is STRONGER than you.  Not someone who is (likely) weaker than you.  You’re kicking a kitten, while a lion lounges behind you.

Censoring someone’s thoughts is bad.

People should be allowed to THINK.  And they can think whatever they want.  Whether and where and how it should be expressed is another matter.  AO3 is a safe place for whatever weird-ass thoughts you have.  It is expressly written into their mission statement.  AO3 was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED so that authors could have a place for their dead dove fics.

So.  Why is [your pet cause] okay on AO3 and not on a script in Hollywood?

AO3 requires membership before you can post anything, so it’s arguably private.  AO3 provides tools for readers to avoid works they might find triggering.  AO3 profits no one.  Follow the money, and there are your true culprits.  Not a housewife from Hoebokken.

Fanfiction writers make no money.  When they write, they are not lawmakers, filmmakers, teachers or preachers.  This is not their job.  They do not have a responsibility to the community, because they are vested with no power and no paycheck.  Please move your battlefield to one of these other venues.  Your fight will be harder, but it will also do a lot more good than traumatizing some naive  kid away from writing forever.

Fanfiction comprises an individual’s personal thoughts and personal works, written for their own enjoyment, shared only through AO3 to (presumably) like-minded readers.  Fanfics are a person’s fantasies and daydreams.  They might be an author’s therapeutic exercise.  Or someone trying to explore something new, whether it be cultures, ideas, sexualities or kinks.  Humans need a place where they can be wrong and make mistakes.  Think about that, I implore you.  If you are constantly pointing out someone’s errors, you may eventually either silence them forever, or instill in them permanent resentment.  This does not further your cause.

You have your personal cause.

I’ve seen a lot of them.  Incest is bad, you’re not allowed to write about it.  Pedophilia is bad, you’re not allowed to write about it.  Abusive relationships are bad, you’re not allowed to write about them.  Racism is bad, you’re not allowed to write about it.  Genderswap is transphobic, you’re not allowed to write about it.  A/B/O romanticizes damaging gender inequalities.  There are many.  If every single one of you got to stamp out your personal crusade, then fic would be scant on the ground and many people wouldn’t try to create anymore.  It’s stifling to creativity and terrifying to an author that they might slip up and be called out.  No one, as far as I know, likes to think of their fanfiction as something that will be turned in for a grade.

Your standards are your own.

What are the precise parameters of an abusive relationship?  Transphobia?  Racism?  Pedophilia?  Fetishism?  Where does dub-con become non-con?  No one is the mouthpiece for the whole world.  You are only the mouthpiece for yourself.

If you think to yourself that it’s not okay to tell someone they can’t write about, say, a gay relationship, but it IS okay to tell them they can’t write about a certain ship or dynamic (for Reasons), then maybe you should step back and check yourself and your entitlement to someone else’s endeavor.

In conclusion:

I’m not saying that racism doesn’t exist in fanfiction.  Or creepy sexual abuse, or glorification of harmful dynamics.  It certainly does.  I’m not trying to play semantics with you.

But when you see these things, when they bother you... back right out.

That’s it.  Just back out, ignore it and find a different fic.  (Or better yet, write your own!)  Shower the fics you approve of with love and comments about why you think they’re great.  Give them kudos and bookmarks and shout-outs on your blog.  Eventually, if your opinion is popular, authors who thought otherwise will realize that readership is looking for something different.  They’ll change or they won’t, but the body of work will change over time, and THAT is what you’re looking to accomplish.  Not to stamp out fanfiction altogether.

[xclusivetism]

Debunking ‘gender identity’ by gender ≠ sex.

Having gender identity may seem noble divergence from our gender rigid society, the solution to stop such and embrace self-expression.

However after examining it through, ‘gender identity’ the way the ideology says doesn’t really exist and actually still perpetuates gender conformity.

And no, there’s no need for “there’s only two sexes” or any science  argument at all to disprove gender identity. Gender ideology so f l a w e d that it can do it perfectly itself out of any of above the fastest just by Gender ≠ sex.

You probably read many things that try to disprove gender and thought it was wrong or outdated that scientist have discover there’s people with XXXY.

But after reading this, If it doesn’t peak you or at least make you question gender, then i honestly really don’t know what will other than to call you deluded.

What is Gender

Gender ≠ sex is the essential foundation of gender.

To order to know the difference, we need to know what individually each are.

Gender is a social construct

Gender Identity

Gender expression

That means.

Sex is a physical construct

Sex

Sexual orientation

The first thing that instantly break Gender ≠ sex

“Sex is not binary, Sex is a spectrum or intersex exist”

That already outed you as a hypocrite especially when responding to “there’s only two sexes” saying that they’re conflating sex and gender.

Why should sex being binary or not be relevant to gender identity?

LGB and T are antithetical.

Since Gender ≠ Sex, LGB and T shouldn’t be consider one.

Sexuality is a Sexual orientation not a gender orientation, to suggest it means gender too is conflation.

For a trans-woman to say they’re lesbian or a trans-man to say they’re gay is incorrect & impossible because they’re straight. Gender identity doesn’t shift sexuality status because they’re separate things and to suggest so is homophobic. For a trans to say that invalidates their identity is another conflation of gender and sex.

LGB is a sex-based group while T is a gender-based group. One’s based on sexual attraction and the other is based on changing gender, they are absolutely nothing alike.

‘Cis’ is enough entitlement to be trans exclusive.

Terfs don’t like being called ‘Cis’

But let’s say they drop the belief that “transwomen aren’t real women” and say “transwomen aren’t ciswomen” and want spaces of their own

They put the ‘Cis’ prefix 

Cis woman schools

Cis woman attracted

Cis woman bathroom

Cis woman sports

Cis woman locker rooms

Cis woman administrator 

Cis woman health

Cis women history

etc.

Instead of saying “only women can breastfeed” they use “only AFAB can breastfeed”.

According to TRA logic, all that would be valid.

To for one to say that’s segregation, you would also have to believe separation of men and women or other types groups is segregation as well. A Cis person doesn’t have the trans experience and that goes the other way around.

‘Transwo/man’ is transphobic itself.

Gender ≠ Sex physical transitioning would be a conflation.

If it’s not a conflation, that would imply that physical features are social constructs which includes reproduction, sexuality etc.

Gender is a social construct, all you need to be a gender is identify.

Gender dysphoria is only a social dysphoria, if it’s about the physical then it’s really sex dysphoria. To say it isn’t is conflation.

But even identifying as a ‘wo/man’ itself also is transphobic because the meaning behind it is sex base.

the definition of wo/man.

Adult human fe/male being

What does fe/male mean?

(Female) of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.

(Male) of or denoting the sex that produces small, typically motile gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring.

One can go down in the definition to point that it also means this.

Relating to wo/men or the fe/male gender.

To say wo/man in the definition also refer to gender, isn’t that a conflation and breaking Gender ≠ Sex? My oh my so many usage of the word conflation.

Gender identity.

Non-binary is not a gender, nothing of it say it’s a gender. It’s just non-binary of something which is usually assumed of not being man or woman. But not being a man or woman doesn’t say of what it is only of what it is not. If the binary part is something else that mean a person who identifies as a woman or man (including cis) can be considered non-binary. Non-binary is really just a slot. 

So far the solid identifies are

Man

Woman

Neutrois

Queer

Agender 

Androgyne is both man and woman. Genderqueer wo/man is both of queer and wo/man. Pangender is all.

Everything else is either a flux, degree, combination of the above or based on a different concept. Things like such as bigender are umbrella because it doesn’t specify if it’s man or woman or something else.

That being said, the only one that’s truly gender non-conformist is agender. Queer is still gender conforming just not to man or woman.

What are the distinctive qualities of each identity?

It’s said that gender expression is different than identity and that someone who identifies as a boy can be very feminine still.

So we’re not gonna use association of masculinity, femininity etc. to define it then.

So what identity mean is it’s usually answered as someone’s ‘personal sense.’

If it’s a personal sense that mean it would be mean it’s a personal construct.

Personal or social construct regardless, it doesn’t say the characteristics. If you can’t point out what to define the labels become hallow. 

There’s many things that aren’t concrete that can show one it’s existence.

An abstract thing like 1, can present it’s existence.

A thing we cannot fully see of like the 4D can present it’s existence.

Even pseudo scientific like zodiacs signs have specific qualities to describe, personality types and even religion has something to define.

In the means of gender, all the identities really sums down to meaningless labels. In the means of sex, the word woman or man are names for physical characteristics that is observed at birth. 

Problem with “assigned gender identity at birth”

No one was “assigned” at birth, “cis” people don’t match what their doctors assign. Assign word implies duty and a job. Assign is often a thing that doesn’t always taking what the subject is to account, for example you being assigned to a seat is sometimes random and not based your rowdiness or attentiveness. 

The doctor characterised people a ‘wo/man’ based on observing them. Woman and Man are distinguisher (just like fruits and veggies) of physical characteristics.

People are assigned a gender expression at life.

Gender identity doesn’t exist other than being a label, gender identity is based on sex hence that label. What’s assigned is actually gender expression.

What Society does

(Biology) Sex → gender identity ↓ ←gender expression (Society)

↓ Gender identity → gender roles

What TRAs think to solve it

gender identity ←gender expression (society)

Gender identity → gender roles

Sex ← gender identity (society)

Sex Ⓧ gender identity (society)

Sex → gender identity (different)

↓ gender identity (different) → sex → society → expression = gender roles

What Gender critical think to solve it

Sex → gender identity → gender expression→ society = gender roles

Putting it to perspective

Whenever GC say this:

Sex → gender identity

This is how TRAs view it:

gender identity ←gender expression (society)

Gender identity → gender roles

Sex ← gender identity (society)

↓ 

Sex → gender identity = gender roles

and thus GC = society pushing gender norm

and the TRA misses this:

→ gender expression→ society = gender roles

Gender ideology pushes gender conformity, just in backwards.

Society enforces femininity on women and masculinity on men to maintain a heteronormative hierarchy aka patriarchy. 

Gender ideology is a patriarchal chest play to keep people from actually breaking such status quo by putting the gender role but backwards.

Societal gender roles

Women must be feminine

Men must be masculine

Gender ideology

Feminine is woman

Masculine is man

Neither is non-binary

Anything else it’s a new gender

‘Cis’ means comfortable of the societal gender role

‘Trans’ means not comfortable of societal gender role

GRA say expression is different from identity to hide the fact that it in a way still pushes gender conformity. They confuse the names for physical characteristics ‘wo/man’ as entire gender construct and expression. 

Here’s the damage Gender ideology does.

So far GRA activist blur what sex and gender is, despite their gender ≠ sex.

Blurring gender and sex create problems for the LGB and women, by making anyone able to appropriates them by identification and transing so long as they feel it, remember these two groups are on the oppressed side. There isn’t even a qualification (not even dyphoria) to be considered trans. Growing kids & teen are getting into this as well ruining their bodies, ask yourselves how are they old enough to block puberty but not drink alcohol?

People’s motivation for why they want to of certain gender is not look thorough enough. 

People in general again who again don’t fit with gender norms

Women with internal misogyny/trauma

Gay/Lesbian with internal homophobia/trauma

Men who want more access to women for misogynistic reasons.

You cannot ever feel something you cannot comprehend.

And you cannot ever comprehend not feeling it.

One’s thought of feeling or not like a boy/girl comes were form by the brain cells of XX or XY chromosome or whatever.

Here’s a color analogy i have to show case the difference between one who feels like wo/man vs someone who actually is.

Identifying as one.

Actually being one.

The gender dysphoric pandemic

The correct word for what people mean by gender dysphoria would be sex dysphoria people who are dysphoric of their physical sex body.

Sometimes transsexual need mechanical intervention to relief their sex dysphoria.

Most people who are ‘trans’ aren’t transsexual as that is rare and projecting the gender dysphoria to their bodies instead should be towards society. There’s some types of transwomen who have autogynephilia (reverse heterosexuality, which is nothing wrong in of itself but alot of them are doing bad with it) are motivated by sexuality and is projecting that thing of wanting to become the opposite sex.

Gender dysphoria

A lot of people in the world have gender dysphoria some in more degree than others. 

Many movement where brought out because of gender dyshoria 

LGB because gender roles often link to heteronormative.

Feminism/Women’s rights including the ‘Terfs’ is a inherently gender dysphoric movement.

Gender criticals are inherently gender dysphoric.

What trans movement doing is conflating gender dysphoria with sex dysphoria but they are actually perpetuating gender norms.

The only gender construct that matters is identity which is woman or man because that exist to distinguish people of certain biological characteristics. “Masculinity” and “Femininity” isn’t real, they’re just many expressions boxed into one or the other enforce to people into gender roles which are by large hierarchy called patriarchy. If there is natural patterns that’s sex behavior.

Most people in the trans community aren’t bad, they’re being exploited by the people who are bad. The people who are bad are motivated to destroy children, LGB and women’s rights, depressedly under all this is essentially a men’s right movement but left wing. We need to take those men (and few women) with evil intent to account now.

Right leaning and traditional etc. people role in this whole thing. 

Conservative/traditionalist/religious people who claim to be gender critical, are most of times far from it and are in fact gender rights activist but trans critical that’s the only different between them and the bad trans people above. The trans movement is mostly a side-effect and these people are kinda the reason for it. Gender roles are toxic considering that people especially have to resort in changing their bodies for not fitting in and the gender ideology is a outlet. 

So it’s pure insanity conservative/traditionalist/religious people to keep insisting that be men masculine and women be feminine and that’s it’s all fine and fail to acknowledge, comprehend or disregard people who are gender dysphoric to those roles (feminism being the biggest example) making them seem pathological abnormalities when complaining about them. 

There’s truly a lot of people who are non-conformist but were too scared to be themselves because people like them and it has been rampant for thousand of years. They use not seeing alot of them as prove to enforce their patriarchal rhetoric.

Conclusion

What people need to talk about is their gender dysphoria (but not ideology kind) but of the roles in society. Let transsexuals be their own group without the gender nonsense in peace. We need start embracing gender non-conformity without needing to change our biological identity.

[thecoleopterawithana]

The Beatles and Dysfunctional Family Roles

Humans are social animals. When one lives in a group, each has a part to play. A role in this great play that is life, if you will. 

All the worlds a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits, and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts.

— William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII.

These sets of adequate behaviors are determined by the expectations of everyone around us, eventually becoming internalized through socialization. This means that the role we play is also context-dependent, and should change and adapt according to different times and spaces. It’s only when we become too fixed in certain dynamics that there is a problem.

Humans are master profilers. We have to quickly know what role our scene-partner is playing, after all. Furthermore, we also have a tendency to generalize. To forget that these are merely parts and others and ourselves are much more complex than the character they present at any given situation.

Thus, humans are masters at creating tags (long before the ‘hash’ prefixed it). Each Beatle member has been attributed, from their very first days under the public gaze, a very specific part: the Smart One, the Cute One, the Quiet One and the Funny One. 

Like most labels, they are informative to a degree, which becomes limiting when one assumes that’s all there is to know. And even though there were infinitely complex individuals behind these fan nicknames, it’s curious how even within the band, in the privacy of their hotel rooms, these four young men fell into a very structured dynamic with very specific roles (which with time became stifling).

But it is wise to remember that the Beatles were more than a band.

They were a family.

This was something that they always identified with very keenly. They were brothers. (Of course, on top of this dynamic, John and Paul had the added complexity of also feeling like they were married.) 

But for now, let’s look upon them as the children that they were: four brothers in one big adventure. It probably pays to follow their self-denomination and examine what part each member played in this dynamic. And because I used the word “dysfunctional” in the title, let’s first establish what it entails.

One of the main distinguishers between healthy and dysfunctional family dynamics is just how fixed these structures are.

In any given family the individual members fulfill and act out roles….

While in healthy, functional families these roles are generally fluid, change over time, in different circumstances, at particular events and are age and developmental appropriate, in dysfunctional families the roles are much more rigid.

In a healthy family members are integrated and various parts may surface at different times at no threat to the family system. In functional families the roles are interdependent.

The various roles in a healthy family are parts of every person….

Healthy families in general retain functionality when individual members ‘leave’ the family system through ‘moving out’, starting their own families or even death of an individual member.

By contrast,

In dysfunctional families the roles are almost a form of continuity or stability of the family system, stifling development….

Members must submerge parts of their personalities and take on a role so they are less of a threat to the family system that must be kept in place. In the case of a dysfunctional family all the roles are characterized as co-dependent.

In a dysfunctional family each member takes a role, and/or is assigned one, to make up the whole which is the family. Rather than a family of fully (yet age appropriate) persons, the family system gears to create just one: the family itself.

In dysfunctional family systems when an individual member leaves, this creates an (almost) irreparable hole in the existing system… This is why dysfunctional families are often so enmeshed. The system needs all members to function as a unit, not as a community.

— “Healthy vs Dysfunctional Family Roles”, Out Of The Storm.

It displeases me to dish out a diagnosis, for the line between healthy and unhealthy is often quite subtle. 

But it’s hard not to argue that at times the Beatles tended towards the rigidity of a dysfunctional family. They have the resulting tensions and fallouts to prove it. Just the simple premise that the stability and continued existence of the family unit (the band) was more important than the wants and needs of its individual members is a sign of how prone they were to imprisoning themselves for the good of the whole.

In 1981 Weischeider identified five archetypes that children are assigned, originally relating to her work with alcoholic families. Since then the terms have evolved to cover other types of dysfunctional family systems: including the presence of other kinds of addictions; untreated mental health illnesses; sexual or physical abuse; fundamentalism or rigid dogmatism.

But what are these Dysfunctional Family Roles?

The Golden Child (The Hero)

This family member devotes his/her time and attention to making the family look “normal” and without problems. The Hero can mask or make up for the dysfunctional home life. Over-responsible and self-sufficient they are often perfectionistic, are over-achievers and look very good - on the outside.  The parents look to this child to prove that they are good parents and good people. Their goal in life is to achieve “success”, however that has been defined by the family;  they must always be “brave and strong”. The Hero’s compulsive drive to succeed may in turn lead to stress-related illness, and compulsive over-working. They learn at a young age to suffer the sadness of a parent and become a surrogate spouse or confidante.

While The Hero saves the family by being perfect and making it look good, the golden child may struggle to live up to his status.  In a Narcissistic Personality Disordered (NPD) family, The Golden Child is the recipient of all the narcissistic parent’s positive projections, and is their favourite child. The golden child is usually victim of emotional and (covert) sexual abuse by the narcissistic parent. (S)He is also witness to, and sometimes takes part in, the other children’s abuse. Many specialists believe that witnessing your sibling’s abuse is as damaging as receiving it.

The Caretaker (The Enabler)

Another descriptive word for this type of codependent family role is “the Caretaker.“ This is also a role a child can fulfill, especially in case the other parent/caregiver has not resigned to enable the dysfunctional Addicted or Narcissististic parent. The Enabler feels like they have to keep the family going. Over and over they take on the addict’s problems and responsibilities.

The Enabler is the martyr of the family, and often supports not only the dysfunctional behavior, but also a prime enforcer of the codependent roles that everyone else is required to play.

You often see this role in a family where the functioning of (one of) the parent(s) is impaired in some way, i.e. mental illness, substance abuse or a medical disability.  This child will attempt function as the surrogate parent. They worry and fret, nurture and support, listen and console. Their entire concept of their self is based on what they can provide for others.

The Enabler protects and takes care of the problem parent so that the parent is never allowed to experience the negative consequences of his or her actions. The Enabler feels he or she must act this way, because otherwise, the family might not survive. The paradoxical thing about The Enabler’s behavior is that by preventing the dysfunctional parent’s crisis, he or she also prevents the painful, corrective experience that crisis brings, which may be the only thing that makes the dysfunctional parent stop the downward spiral of addiction…

[Note: The Caretaker is often the “intra-familial counterpart” of The Golden Child, which can overlap and be played by the same person.]

The Problematic Child (The Scapegoat)

The Scapegoat is the “problem child” or the “trouble maker”. This family member always seems defiant, hostile and angry.  The Scapegoat is the truth-teller of the family and will often verbalize or act out the "problem” which the family is attempting to cover up or deny. This individual’s behavior warrants negative attention and is a great distraction for everyone from the real issues at hand. The Scapegoat usually has trouble in school because they get attention the only way they know how - which is negatively.  They can be very clever, may develop social skills within his or her circle of peers, and become leaders in their own peer groups. But often the groups that they choose to associate with are groups that do not present healthy relationships. The relationships he or she experiences tend to be shallow and inauthentic.

The Scapegoat is sacrificed for the family. The Scapegoat will be the “identified patient”. Scapegoats come in many different flavors, but two common ones are:  1) the picked, weak or sick child; or, 2) the angry, rebellious problem child who is constantly getting into conflicts. They are often self-destructive, cynical and even mean.

In an NPD family, The Scapegoat, or no good child is the recipient of the narcissist’s negative projections. They can never do anything right. The name ‘rebel’ implies that the child has chosen this role, which is debatable. The Scapegoat is usually victim of emotional and physical abuse by the narcissistic parent.

The Quiet One (The Lost Child)

The Lost Child is usually known as “the quiet one” or “the dreamer”. The Lost Child is the invisible child. They try to escape the family situation by making themselves very small and quiet. (S)He stays out of the way of problems and spends a lot of time alone. The purpose of having a lost child in the family is similar to that of The Hero. Because The Lost Child is rarely in trouble, the family can say, “He’s a good kid. Everything seems fine in his life, so things can’t be too bad in the family.”

This child avoids interactions with other family members and basically disappears. They become loners, or are very shy. The Lost Child seeks the privacy of his or her own company to be away from the family chaos. Because they don’t interact, they never have a chance to develop important social and communication skills. The Lost Child often has poor communication skills, difficulties with intimacy and in forming relationships. They deny that they have any feelings and "don’t bother getting upset.” They deal with reality by withdrawing from it.

In an NPD family, The Lost Child just doesn’t seem to matter to the narcissist, and avoids conflict by keeping a low profile. They are not perceived as a threat or a good source of supply, but they are usually victim of neglect and emotional abuse.

The Clown (The Family Mascot)

The goal of The Family Mascot is to break the tension and lighten the mood with humor or antics. (S)He is usually “the cute one.” This child feels powerless in the dynamics which are going on in the family and tries to interrupt tension, anger, conflict, violence or other unpleasant situations within the family by being the court jester. The Mascot seeks to be the center of attention in the family, often entertaining the family and making everyone feel better through his or her comedy. They may also use humor to communicate and to confront the family dysfunction, rather than address it directly. They also use humor to communicate repressed emotions in the family such as anger, grief, hostility or fear. This behavior is lighthearted and hilarious, just what a family twisted in pain needs — but the mascot’s clowning is not repairing the emotional wounds, only providing temporary balm. The rest of the family may actually try to protect their “class clown”. The Mascot is often busy-busy-busy.  They become anxious or depressed when things aren’t in constant motion. The Mascot commonly has difficulty concentrating and focusing in a sustained way on learning, and this makes school or work difficult. (Hence they also referred to as “The Slacker”.)

They often have case loads rather than friendships - and get involved in abusive relationships in an attempt to “save” the other person.  They have very low self-worth and feel a lot of guilt that they work very hard to overcome by being really “nice” (i.e. people pleasing, classically codependent) people.

— “Dysfunctional Family Roles”, Out Of The Storm.

Since then a sixth type is sometimes also considered:

The Manipulator (The Mastermind)

The Manipulator takes their experience of their hostile environment and uses it to their advantage. They capitalise on the family situation and play family members against each other. This individual will quickly become adept at recognising what the actual problem the parent suffers from. They’ll understand which one is the enabler, and which one is co-dependent.

Manipulators exercise this knowledge to control and influence family members. They’ll do it covertly, not directly. They never want to get caught. Gradually, they’ll learn what triggers the parents and their siblings and they will take shots at all of them…

Manipulators can turn into bullies, those who harass people and get a kick out of it. They are unable to form healthy relationships. If they are in one, they will be controlling with a partner who has low self-esteem.

They will only think of themselves and what they can get out of others. They feel that the world owes them for their lousy childhood and will go about getting it by any means.

— “6 Dysfunctional Family Roles People Take without Even Knowing”, Learning Mind.

It is not always clear-cut what role each member has been assigned, and the positions can change over time (normally as a result of the loss of one of the members). But people are inherently complex and multi-faceted. They have within themselves bits of each archetype. The unhealthy factor derives from the attempt to fit and perform one single one-dimensional role.

For example, John clearly acted up The Problematic Child publicly, but privately he also certainly had elements of The Dreamer; not only on the sense of being imaginative and introspective but also in his tendency for escapism and withdrawing from reality. 

Also, when the fear and pain affected him the most, he became desperate enough to play The Manipulator. He did this from early on, but with the help of Yoko (who I now think, as a result of her particularly difficult childhood, became a “primary” Mastermind herself) he became even more effective at it from 1968 onwards. 

JOHN: I did a job on this banker that we were using, and on a few other people, and on the Beatles.

Q: What?

JOHN: How do you describe the job? You know, you know, my job – I maneuver people. That’s what leaders do, and I sit and make situations which will be of benefit to me with other people, it’s as simple as that. I had to do a job to get Allen in Apple. I did a job, so did Yoko.

YOKO: You do it with instinct, you know.

JOHN: Oh. God, Yoko, don’t say that. Maneuvering is what it is, let’s not be coy about it. It is a deliberate and thought-out maneuver of how to get a situation the way we want it. That’s how life’s about, isn’t it, is it not?

— The “Lennon Remembers” interview, by Jann Wenner for Rolling Stone (8 December 1970).

In regards to the occupied archetypes, often one member has to fulfill more than one role. But because the structures are incredibly rigid, they can only perform one role at a time. This can cause even more internal stress as a result of not knowing which facet is being demanded of them at any given time.

Paul seems to have needed to balance being both The Golden Child and The Caretaker. This could explain his apparently parental role, alternatively characterized as masculine (Paul being a God/Father-Figure) or feminine (Paul being called the mother of the group). The gendered side of it relates more to society’s associations with these responsibilities (being “successful, brave and strong” = father’s job; taking care, “worry and fret, nurture and support, listen and console” = mother’s job), than I believe was ever consciously played by Paul himself. He just had a responsibility void to fill and he did it.

It is also crucial to understand that these dysfunctional dynamics are “transgenerational.” Meaning that “individuals reared in dysfunctional families tend to gravitate toward 'dysfunctional’ partners and create dysfunctional families of their own.” 

This leads me to believe that it’s very likely that the Beatles replicated a dysfunctional family when they got together because they each individually came from dysfunctional families of their own. Or rather, one of the reasons why the Beatles got together in the first place was because they each came from dysfunctional families of their own, and thus were attracted to individuals who shared these patterns.

I loved my association with John and Paul because I had something in me which I recognized in them—which they must have or could have recognized in me, which is why we ended up together. And it was just great knowing there’s somebody else in life who feels similar to yourself.

— George Harrison, interviewed by Alan Freeman for BBC Radio 1 (6 December 1974).

Maybe this is why John, Paul, and George were such a strong front-line on their own but needed Ringo, and not Pete Best, to finally complete the set.

It may also be another factor as to why John and Paul bonded so tightly, as Paul knew how to “handle” John and John wanted to be taken care of. (There is of course much more to the dynamic; this is just one of its possible facets, which was at risk of becoming draining and a source of tension when to fixed in this co-dependent state.) 

Again, it is hard to make an objective evaluation of the dysfunctionality of the Beatles’ biological families. There wasn’t so much awareness of the unhealthiness of some dynamics at the time, so many of the participants may even lack the words (or the will) to describe them. But the symptoms seem to be present. I believe that alone makes it worth looking for a potential cause.

Also, these attempts to create fixed dynamics for the stability of the family unit all seem to happen as a response to the inner inconstancy and instability of the forces governing the unit itself (normally the dysfunctional parental figure, but maybe can be extended to the life-circumstances themselves). For example, could severe financial instability be enough to create these patterns? 

Either way, we can find in the Beatles’ childhood sources of dysfunction easily enough. 

One that makes a common and expected appearance, in a liquor-filled Liddypool, was drinking, particularly in Ringo and John’s childhoods.

Ringo

Johnny Starkey would play a crucial role in the raising of his grandson, and by all accounts he was a full-on “wacker” (a much-used word for working-class Liverpool men and boys), being a drinker, laborer, gambler and brawler.

— On Ringo’s grandfather, John Starkey. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

Elsie, Harry, relations, friends and workmates would drink and sing through the evening until closing time, and then, well bevvied, tumble into Elsie and Richy’s tiny terraced house where the party carried on—more singing, more drinking, more swearing, Johnny and Annie Starkey on banjo and mandolin, the steam rising ever higher into the night… The boy would always remember singing at home “not in front of a coal fire but in front of a bottle of gin and a large bottle of brown,” emphasizing the point that, as many children have experienced down the years, the bond of good-time music and booze was significant. Years later, he would admit, “My parents were alcoholics and I didn’t realize it.”

— On Ringo’s childhood. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

Dingle people actually had much in common with cockneys. Both were poor and working-class, both were predominantly English/Protestant, both suffered terrible bombing at the hands of the Germans, and both liked a good drink and boozy sing-song. One big reason Harry fit right at home in Liverpool 8 was because he liked nothing better than to go to the pubs and clubs, get a few ales inside him and sing.

— On Ringo’s stepfather, Harry Arthur Graves. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

Richy took the job because he still harbored hopes of joining the merchant navy… But the job also had another attraction: booze. Richy was now a confirmed drinker. Regular exposure to alcohol in and around the home was an influence, and it was what many boys did anyway, swear and smoke and drink at the first opportunity.

— On Ringo’s second job at the tramp steamer St. Tudno. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

John

He was an ale drinker, but once he started drinking he’d drink anything. If there was a bottle, he’d stay with it.

— On John’s father, Alf Lennon, as told by close friend Billy Hall. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

Alf Lennon didn’t begin the new decade very well either. The Dominion Monarch docked at Tilbury before Christmas, after which he tomfooled around London with a few shipmates, waiting for it to sail again in mid-January. Alcohol was surely a fixture, opening time to closing with bottles between sessions…

— On John’s father, Alf Lennon, as told by close friend Billy Hall. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013). 

John’s time with Julia was also complicated by the presence of “Twitchy.” His relationship with Bobby Dykins was not all bad but neither was it particularly rosy. Pete Shotton isn’t the only person to recall him as an alcoholic…

— On John’s “step-father”, Bobby “Twitchy” Dykins. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

John, of course, had the added factors of possible mental illness in his mother, and the abandonment by his parental figures (Alf, Julia and Uncle George).

Paul

Paul also had the loss of his mother and all the upheaval it brought. I’ve talked before how I thought the suddenness of Mary’s death and Jim’s inability to be visibly strong enough in the face of it, made Paul feel like he could not rely on the people around him to always be there, and that he needed to protect himself and be independent. 

But now I wonder if there weren’t other possible sources of instability, that made him feel the need to take on responsibility even more strongly:

Though given such a strong foundation, Jim could not be spared from a further vice. For Jim McCartney was something of a gambling man, fond of betting on the horses. He once got badly into debt, though for reasons that at least had motives other than selfishness; his mother, Florence McCartney, who was capable of coupling a strongly matriarchal role with a fondness for humor of a most prurient nature, was badly in need of a holiday.

— In Chris Salewicz’s McCartney (1986).

Jim McCartney also enjoyed a drink, but would never permit himself to become so intoxicated that he was no longer in control of his own actions. That he should always maintain his self-respect was one of the principles of his existence, and one which he later passed on to his sons.

— In Chris Salewicz’s McCartney (1986).

The McCartneys had money worries. After the war, Jim’s job at the armaments factory ended and he returned to the cotton exchange, as a salesman for A. Hannay and company, but the war had changed everything; the cotton market was in chaos, and lie was lucky to bring home £6 a week. It meant that Mary also had to work and it was always a cause of slight embarrassment that she earned a higher wage than he.

— In Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997).

Yet the education that Jim McCartney offered his sons was not always conventional; they couldn’t help but notice his inability to pass a slot machine without putting a coin in it, or the way he would give quadruple measures of undiluted alcohol to guests. Later, when the boys were in their teens, he would show them how to get away with drinking underage in pubs, slipping them the cash to buy rounds of drinks.

— In Chris Salewicz’s McCartney (1986). 

Mum was a working nurse. There wasn’t a lot of money around – and she was half the family pay packet. My reaction was: ‘How are we going to get by without her money?’ When I think back on it, I think, ‘Oh God, what? Did I really say that?’ It was a terrible logical thought which was preceded by the normal feelings of grief. It was very tough to take.

— Paul McCartney, in Ray Coleman’s McCartney: Yesterday & Today (1996).

The boys went to stay with Jim’s brother Joe and his wife Joan, while friends and relatives tried to calm their distraught father, whose first thought was to join his wife.

— In Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now (1997). 

A Hard Day’s Night had its London premiere on July 6, 1964, the day before Jim McCartney’s birthday… Then, as midnight chimed, Paul drew his father over to him. “Happy birthday, Dad,” he said, and produced a painting—perhaps the one mentioned to the Telegraph magazine—of a horse, which he handed to Jim.

“Thank you, son. Very nice,” muttered the somewhat confused father. (Later he was to tell Thomas Gaule about it. “I thought, ‘It’s very nice, but couldn’t he have done a bit better than that?’”). Then Paul revealed that this was a painting of the £1,050 racehorse, Drake’s Drum, that he had bought his father.

“You silly bugger,” was Jim’s joyous reply.

“My father likes a flutter [bet],” Paul said. “He’s one of the world’s greatest armchair punters.”

— In Chris Salewicz’s McCartney (1986).

Again, it’s hard to definitely label a situation problematic, but the impact it has on a developing person is more relative to how the person experienced it than to the experience itself. But perhaps Jim’s gambling habits, the family’s financial insecurity, Mary’s death, Jim’s consequent suicidal depression and/or possible self-medication with alcohol, all lead to the creation of an unreliable enough parent that the son had to occupy such roles. 

Also, it would be remiss not to mention the use of bodily punishment during their upbringing, which made enough of an impression on the McCartney brother’s that Mike would mention it often and Paul would never speak of it; until the early 2000′s, when he remarked how his father hit him across the face at 16/17 and he finally stood up to him and dared Jim to do it again. (I am getting ready a post specifically on it, so I hope to explore this subject further there.)

George

George’s situation is a bit harder to tell. He seemed to be the one most aware and most averse to his title as The Quiet One. Maybe it’s because he felt it was ill-fitted. He wasn’t the quiet one after all, among his own family:

I found Harry reticent and quiet; Lou was loud, vivacious, not shy at all—there wouldn’t be silence in the room when she was there—and George was bubbly like his mum. They all bounced off each other and would do anything for anyone, and they all had a wonderful sense of humor, George especially. I threw a strop one day and threatened to walk to Budleigh Salterton. I stayed away a bit but all I really did was go to the loo and kill some time before coming back. After that, whenever George went to the loo he’d say, “I’m just off to Budleigh Salterton…”

— Jenny Brewers, a family friend. In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

But maybe the silence was meant to be read as stoicism in his more public persona: 

George was cool. He dressed as an individual and often to shock, to goad reactions—usually admiration from his peers and dismay from adults. He could be quiet, and sometimes grumpy, but he was always honest and never intimidated or afraid, standing up for himself verbally and physically. “He was cocky,” Paul would say, admiringly. “He had a great sense of himself. He wasn’t cowed by anything.”

— In Mark Lewishon’s Tune In (2013).

Whatever it was, George fit right in with the rest of them and easily slipped into his role, even if he was also the first to overtly buck against it. He  clearly wanted to expand beyond these parts in a play they had created within the Beatles, these fixed dynamics for the greater good of the band, which he now felt stifled by:

Q: What was the conflict with Paul? I don’t understand.

GEORGE: It’s just a thing like, you know, he’d written all these songs for years and stuff, and Paul and I went to school together. I got the feeling that, you know, everybody changes and sometimes people don’t want other people to change, or even if you do change they won’t accept that you’ve changed. And they keep in their mind some other image of you, you know. Gandhi said, 'Create and preserve the image of your choice.’ And so different people have different images of their friends or people they see.

— George Harrison, interviewed by a New York City radio station (25 April 1970).

Perhaps the Beatles, the family unit, needed to collapse in order to free its members of the fixed dynamics they had built the band upon. Maybe it was time to grow and evolve beyond the images of the people they were when they met as teenagers. And because they were different, but their images of each other often didn’t match, there was tension.

Still, I don’t think this automatically means that it was impossible for them to ever be good friends again, work together again or even reform. Everything is possible if one just chooses so. 

It would certainly be different. It would not be the same. But that would be good.

-

[This post was born out of conversations with the wonderful @ljblueteak and is an exploration of the concept introduced by Michael Gerber in the follow-up discussion to the Hey Dullblog entry “John and Paul, Friends and Rivals”.]

[aspoonofsugar]

Hello! What are your thoughts on the latest chapter of AoT ?

Hello anon!

It happened what I thought it would aka Eren freeing Ymir and the Rumbling starting, so my general thoughts have not changed that much since the ones I had on chapter 121.

What this chapter added to the previous ones is Ymir’s backstory which touches on many concepts we have already met in the manga.

Ymir is a character who shares her main flaw with Historia like the chapter reminds us:

Frieda’s thesis is that since the world is full of suffering people should be kind with each other. This is also what society should ideally be about. However, the chapter presents a very different truth. Society and humans are the ones who end up creating much of the pain and suffering and Ymir’s story is in a sense the embodyment of this.

Ymir sacrifices herself for others’ sake, but it is precisely because of this that she ends up being used by others and suffers. At the same time her situation doesn’t change no matter how much power she obtains and how much her status rises.

As a matter of fact her backsory makes clear that it is not the lack of strength the reason why she doesn’t change her own situation:

Ironically, she is a character without a spine who is literally given one (and titan powers are said to be somehow connected with one’s will), but she still spends all her life as a slave despite having all the power and ability to free herself and to do what she wants.

In short, Ymir proves once and for all what the series has already made plenty clear aka that it is not through becoming stronger physically that a person becomes free. There needs to be an inner change.

At the same time, I would like to highlight two other and hopefully more interesting points.

1)

Once again, we are back to this line. King Fritz tells Ymir that she was born to be a slave, while Carla (and Eren completes her statement in the Return to Shiganshina arc) says that a person is perfect and free for the sole reason of being born.

It is obvious that these two philosophies are in opposition. Eren in this chapter conveys to Ymir his mother’s thoughts:

Ymir is a human and as a human she was not born for any particular reason. She was not born to be a monster, a slave or a God. There is no hidden meaning in her birth and so no specific destiny she must fulfill. She can choose. This is the beauty of Carla’s vision of the world. Her son does not have to be special or to prove that he is worthy. He can just be human and in this way free.

The same goes for Ymir and for Historia before and after her:

Eren is back at telling traumatized girls that they can just be people.

However, what about Eren himself?

As I have already mentioned when commenting chapter 121 Eren’s powers seem to enforce a vision of the world which is deterministic and impossible to change:

In short, Eren might go around trying to free individuals he sees suffering because of the weight of their fate, but he himself seems to accept a pre-determined future (even if we must first discover what he has seen and what he wants to do in reguards to it) and a specific role.

After all, Eren is called both a devil and a God and is dehumanized both by allies and enemies alike. However, he seems to have accepted it and he has actually encouraged such a behaviour by cutting ties with people who are genuinely trying to understand him and to help him. Hange, Mikasa, Armin and even Zeke all tried to communicate with him, but he has shut everyone down.

In short, it is as if Eren can clearly see that it is wrong to dehumanize others by giving them roles they don’t want to fulfill, but he accepts that such a thing is done to him.

I would like to highlight that this is not the first time something like this happens:

The whole point of Historia and Eren’s parallelism in the Uprising is exactly this. Eren thinks that it is alright for Historia to be a normal girl, but he is horrified when he turns out to be a normal person himself.

Eren overcomes the situation thanks to his loved ones’ encouragement and later on he seems to have accepted his mother’s point of view after talking with Shadis. I wonder if right now he has somehow gone back to his old habit. If it is so, I would not be surprised if in the end someone were to tell him what Carla did and what he himself told Ymir aka that he is just a human being.

2)

This is the only moment in her life Ymir was ever told that she was free. However, “freedom” here means that she is banned from her own community and forced to live in the forest alone waiting to be hunted (in a sense she is “sent to Paradis” before this term was invented).

In short, Ymir is given a pretty definite choice between being a slave in society and being free in the nature.

This idea of freedom as a reality without social restrictions or bonds seems to me a little bit too simplicistic and it is ironic because it reminds me of the world inhabited by titans our protagonists were determined to fight in the beginning of the series.

So what does the series want to convey? That the world dominated by natural forces which was seen as an obstacle in the beginning is actually better than human society? Or maybe there is an alternative the story must still explore?

What is sure is that this chapter seems to put a lot of focus on this opposition:

Eren says that he wants to destroy this world where individuals use each other and after Ymir wakes up and starts crying out of what is probably anger the rumbling starts. An angry and destructive reaction seems right when it comes to Ymir after all what she went through. However, an obvious question arises. What comes after the destruction?

This chapter underlines once again that society is wrong and that humans are the real monsters and Eren seems determined to destroy such a world. His feelings resonate with Ymir who accepts to help him.

However, the necessity of a change and to fight to obtain said change is an incomplete answer. It is incomplete because it does not consider the necessity of building something new and the positive things which are born by human connections (let’s also highlight that this is ironic also withint the chapter itself because in the end what gets through Ymir is not Eren shouting about changing the world and destruction, but he calmly telling her that she has been waiting for someone to help her hence it is his ability to establish a connection).

Eren reminds me of this definition of anarchism offered in Psycho Pass:

In the series this conversation continues by highlighting that a certain character fits only the first part of the definition. In short, this character was focused only on the destructive part and not on the constructive one. I would not be surprised if Eren were the same.

Eren and Ymir in this chapter seem to both grasp that there is something wrong with the way things are currently and are both trying to change that, but their wish for change asks for massive destruction (at least it is framed this way so far).

Basically, we come back to what I have written in the meta linked above:

In other words there is no doubt that what  Eren is doing will be fundamental to change the current corrupted  system, but at the same time I think his pov needs to be integrated. I  think Eren is missing a piece of the puzzle and that someone else should  give it to him.

Eren is a person who has decided to rebel to the way things are right now, but in this way he has started assuming some behaviours similar to the ones he is supposedly against. At the same time, his rightous anger at the world needs to be integrated with something else which is more constructive, but for this to happen other characters need to wake up as well and to open their eyes to what is really happening.

Thank you for the ask!

[blackwoolncrown]

But isn’t it lonely? To disconnect in that sense (or I’m probably misunderstanding your words) but don’t we as humans want to be part of a group? Then again, you’re right. I’m not even out as bi yet I cling to it so strongly that it can feel crippling sometimes, because it’s the only identity of mine that I gave acceptance to on my own terms compared to my really conservative culture and religion in which I was raised and forced to practice by other people. Idk what my end goal is anymore tbh

“Last anon and honestly I most likely just didn’t fully understand your post but now I’m sitting here just questioning my existence lol it’s tiring to live for others constantly. I wish I can disconnect from everyone but that will never be an option for me and I’m trying to find the positive in that instead of feeling so depressed this late at night“

Okay just on a skim you’re totally missing my point. I never said this was about apathy.

We’re all already part of a group. That’s the point. The group is humanity. The group is ‘all beings on earth’. 

Every other ‘group’ is illusory or at the least inherently fractured. You wanna join a group based on the media you like? Fine but then you’ll also find issues of race, or religion, or politics because the group wasn’t based on being like-minded in those aspects. Wanna join a group based on  your sexuality or shared experience? Ha. Which shared experience? Because not all people in one part of the Venn Diagram are going to line up exactly where you do, and it is in those gaps and mismatches arguments occur.

The human tendency to form groups starts with tribalism, but from there on out struggles to maintain group identity. If I wanted to ally with all Black people based on Blackness, I run into bible thumpers, transphobes, classist white ppl wannabes. Because we are all multifaceted beings, every attempt to connect to humans via one specific facet will inevitably lead to disharmony. It might work with isolated or limited population sizes but in the world we are now living in, we see how antiquated the notion is. That’s what’s tiring.

We cannot expect to find any real meaning in these subjective, surface parts of our humanity when our being is quite bigger and deeper than any of them. We were born human, made of the universe. Everything we learned after that was subjective cultural data. Everything you learned about race, religion, sexuality. It can be validating and emboldening to find acceptance, and I’m not holding that against anyone, but it’s like a training wheel, and eventually you realize that clinging to the acceptance the group once gave you at some point hinders your growth.

Furthermore the thing is, back when this instinct to group had more to do with tribes and territory, that was a tangible and easily identifiable thing. But now we’re grouping (and fighting) over ideas. There’s no actual way to enforce these things! I could have told you once my people’s land was from here to the river in the East. We, sharing the reality of that, can at least both see exactly what I’m talking about- even if we disagree and you want to share or even fight over that territory.

But even race and nationality has shown itself to be more idea than reality. And this is driving people nuts, inciting Fascism and Nationalism because the ideas are fragile and breaking and people whose identities and notions of self are based on them are terrified of losing what they feel to be their identity. But race and nationality are nebulous concepts humans made up. So too for sexuality. In a world without persecution, what is there to be persecuted? Basically every identity we’re dealing with now originates in a  false and imposed binary of ‘right and wrong’. My blacknesss is created by whiteness. Both are myth. There are just differently melanated types of human beings. My gender only exists in a social lexicon that assumes ‘heterosexuality’ is meaningfully real, and the norm. But that’s a myth. My sexuality is absolutely average and unimportant for a human being as an organism, but within culture it is seen as a ‘thing’ secondary and abnormal– but that, too, is a myth. Myth as in an idea, a story, a concept of human making.And in order for me to find pride and validity in any of these identities, I must simultaneously validate, re-experience and identify with my suffering and the opinions of my oppressors. The ‘black struggle’ and LGBT oppression become my story. Now, the thing is I can’t opt out of the reality that I am indeed seen a certain way and treated a certain way. Unlike some people, it doesn’t actually matter whether I divulge my identity to the world, I can be persecuted on sight. But what do I do when that happens? I can accept that I’m being persecuted because I’m black or LGBT….or I can see that people are suffering in their identities and projecting that on me.

White people suffer in their identity, cis people suffer in their identity, religious people suffer in their identities, this happens because each identity is ultimately so much smaller than what a person is in sum that it restricts, and unless it’s cast off (i.e. unless that person no longer holds that identity as fundamental to their being) cognitive dissonance sets in and they seek to reinforce the identity by projecting outward violence upon those who are ‘other’ so that they can validate their selfhood.

So cis people attack trans people bc the trans identity showing that gender and identity are not what they were told makes them uncomfortable. White people attack nonwhite people because our existence and successes threaten the myth of white supremacy. So on and so forth with oppressors and the people they oppress.

My point is not that discourse and social progress is pointless, but that these issues are not fundamental and operating within them still operates within a cultural norm that is self-validating. In the end people who do not know who- or what- they TRULY are are pretty dangerous because they will fight to assert their identity to avoid what they feel is loss of self.

The grand joke is that there is no self.

Let me ask you this, anon.

If you were born in completely different conditions, you would still be you- you understand that there is still a ‘you’ in this picture I am about to paint. So think of this– without your name, because your name could have been different, without your race, because race is a myth, without your orientation/identity, bc those are based on heteronormativity (another subjective myth), without your nationality, religious affiliation, job description….

Who are you?

Find that out, and operate from there, because whatever you are? Everyone else is, also. This is not about apathy at all. It is about much greater compassion.

[gaslitbyamadman]

Aphorisms On Madness, Philosophy, & Society (from my book, Gaslit By A Madman)

Aphorisms On Madness, Philosophy, & Society (from my book)

Wittgenstein on Otto Weininger.

Wittgenstein once said about Otto Weininger: “If you were to reverse all of his assertions, they would still be equally fascinating and worthwhile. ” That tends to be how I view all utterances. (If only SJWs thought like this about all utterances!) This is much closer to truth as aletheia, the Greek and Heideggerian notion, rather than strict formal, propositional veracity.

If you believe in truth, you are delusional!

.......Thus, as things became even more extreme, and relativism spread from ‘values’ to truth itself, we increasingly began to see the crazed spectacle of Professors of Psychiatry ‘scientifically’ labelling everyone who simply happens to have different beliefs from themselves as ‘sick’ and ‘delusional’i. e meaning they have a ‘fixed false belief’. while their prestigious, highly rewarded colleagues in the Humanities, Philosophy or Literary Studies department loudly proclaim there is ‘no truth, only interpretations’! No doubt somewhere or other, the two doctrines have been combined and solidified in the very same individuals such that if you still believe in ‘truth’, you are delusional, i. e you have a fixed ‘false’ belief and require urgent ‘treatment’! Pretty deranged, eh?

Truth as the best healer

Real truth saves lives; real truth works better than any pill. Especially for the honest.

On self-identity and freedom of conscience

Nowadays, if a ‘woman’ came into a psychiatrist’s office and professed to be a Champion Bull, raring to butt horns in the otherwise peaceful long-grassed meadows of her youth once more . the good Dr. would quite rightly feel obliged to continue the interview in aggressive snorts and threatening raking at the carpet, like any other modern, non-bigoted professional. But if this erstwhile proud Minator were to opine that there is no such thing as ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘mental illness’, someone’s professional opinion would be gravely offended and someone else’s dosage – that of the poor, once righteous monster -- would be judiciously and roundly quadrupled.

Excessive codes of 'civility' as cause of hateful outbreaks

Excessive codes of 'civility', which rule out certain antagonistic, strongly felt forms of speech, when such cosy 'civility' is not truly felt are one of the leadingyet most over-looked causes of hatred and violence. The reason that throughout society and on all social media websites especially there is enforced civility is because the powers-that-be were afraid of people's differences being worked out in a peaceful manner and them growing united and thus harder to control and dominate.

Psychiatry’s inversion of health and sickness.

In all discernment between healthy and pathological behaviors, the key thing to be aware of is that the nature of the former is to be a deliberate, willful action -- realizing one's 'true will' to quote Aleister Crowley -- whereas that the latter is to be picked up unconsciously or half-consciously from one's environment, sometimes with a dimly conscious but burgeoning awareness that it is vulgar, stupid or slavish. Psychiatry precisely inverts the true nature of this dichotomy, labelling healthy, i. e willful liberation as pathological, and unhealthy, slavish unthinking conformity as healthy: it is the exact opposite.  "Its sickness is for its traits and the traits of its parts to be traits by which the soul does not do its actions that come about by means of the body or its parts, or does them in a more diminished manner than it ought or not as was its wont to do them. Al Farabi

Harm, punish, or 'treat'.

If you harm, punish or 'treat' an bad man, he might just re-consider his wicked ways; but if you harm, punish or 'treat' a good one, he is often liable or prone to re-consider his good ways.

The disadvantages of self-control.

The exhortation to self-control is really an exhortation to obedience and submission. (When they said I lacked 'self-control', what they actually meant was I wasn't controlling myself according to their demands. and they proceeded to take actual selfcontrol away from me) If we are really going to free ourselves of the crippling influence of convention and actually arbitrary, oppressive socalled 'authority', we probably ought to rid ourselves of all self-control that is not absolutely necessary.

Real change.

The cave-dwelling masses and everyday non-mental -patients, while all too fatuously and recklessly embracing ideologies of social 'progress', are frightened of a real change in their Being and locked into a pattern of stagnation and decay. The madman, (remember, the etymological meaning of the word 'mad' is to 'change') at least in the normative, ideal sense of that term, (as well as often he or she who is solabelled), has awakened to the need for spiritual becoming, both in himself and others.

Madness and Art.

Madmen and poets are alike: they both give freer reign to their emotional and linguistic expressions than is considered decent. And, both of them too, do it largely for socially admirable, therapeutic reasons. Albeit the 'mad' one is more often misunderstood, since people forget that all life, and the unartistic life most of all, is a good opportunity for art, for therapy.

The unartistic life is the most drab, automatic, unredeemed kind of life, in which salutary disruptions are still possible No one blinks twice if they see an eviscerated heart in an art gallery nowadays. But if they see an eviscerated heart while it is still in someone's chest. That's magic.

Autobiography of values as requisite.

To counter-act the tide of artificial, false pretenses to expert, scientific 'objectivity', and the docile, herd-like conformity that actually entails within social science, within the healing professions, and within society a whole, I propose that a personal account of one's life-story, focusing on how one came to arrive at one's central, integral values, become a standard for all such careers. This would be a move towards bolstering the development of personality and character throughout society, preventing people from hiding entirely behind their professional veneers, and presencing the real-lived experience and actual, rather than false selves, of individuals. I don't propose this merely as a helpful task for the 'professional' on the way to qualifying, but as a central piece that he must present to his or her clients/patients. A kind of C. V., but, as I say, with the focus on HOW HE CAME TO HIS CENTRAL CONVICTIONS ABOUT LIFE

‘Recreational’ drug use is medicinal drug use.

The potential of currently illegal substances such as LSD and DMT, as well as more common and less potent ones such as marajuana, to provide radical new, mad vistas of consciousness, and so heal the mental sickness with which mainstream society is so disastrously afflicted ( see the work of Terence Mckenna), is no less important than their capacity to treat physical illness or relieve physical pain. While all substances can potentially be used ill-advisedly, the depreciation of supposed ‘recreational’ uses ignores the dire and gaping need even so-called ‘normal’ people have for fresh inspiration, hedonic sustenance, and the health benefits that all true enjoyment, relaxation or true insight brings. It merely repeats the fallacious and artifical seperation between these supposedly mutually alien aspects of ourselves, a long with the superstitious, ascetic and crude utilitarian privileging of the mere functionality of ‘health’, over the supposedly wicked nature of happiness in this world --- a sad residue of religious puritanism and centuries of slavery to sadistic dogmas of control --even though it is only Epicurean pleasure that ultimately justifies life itself. This attitude is so pervasive and so perverse that it simply cannot be under-stated.Ravi Das, a neuroscientist at University College London who is researching the effects of ketamine said: “The potential benefits are definitely downplayed in face of these drugs being used recreationally,” he said. “People view their use in a research setting as ‘people are just having a good time’. ”From this vantage point, must one not wager the theory that almost the whole of modern medicine, most obviously in terms of mental illness, but even in its approach to illness as such --- including physical illness- -- as simply a form of prolonged Christian hatred-ofthe-flesh and jaw-dropping sado-masochism on a mass scale ? That is why Prof. David Nutt equated the barriers to research to the Catholic church’s censorship of Galileo’s work in 1616. “We’ve banned research on psychedelic drugs and other drugs like cannabis for 50 years,” he said. “Truly, in terms of the amount of wasted opportunity, it’s way greater than the banning of the telescope. This is a truly appalling level of censorship. ” Ignoring the importance of psycho-active drugs for promoting health is bad enough, but to ignore or denigrate the importance of pleasure to this aim, is like discounting the use of the eyes in driving to work in the morning! --.

Beyond rational self-preservation ((lock him up! He's a danger to himself.

.!)

. Enlightenment thinkers such Thomas Hobbes and John Locke tried to appeal to and foster what is called man's rational selfpreservation, inserting it above all other goals as the centrepiece and pivot of the whole of society. Notice here the two concepts, reason, on the one hand, and self-preservation, on the other, are heavily intertwined, which still remains the case today. Madness, on the other hand, is commonly associated with throwing caution to the wind, tightrope walking over a precipice just for the sheer Hell of it, and embracing a variety of dangers that may very well end in personal extinction. However, when one considers the nature of our own inevitable mortality, is making selfpreservation our highest goal really so rational? In order to face life in all its grim reality, is it not necessary, at some point or other, to eschew 'rational' self-preservation for a bold leap, (if only in the imagination, if not outward practice), towards an affirmation and embrace of this inextricable fatality? Especially if one seeks to give birth to something greater than oneself, like the Christ, and take on the grave sacrifices that sometimes requires. In other words, rather than 'rational self-preservation', isn't the ability for the‘insane self-annihilation’ of loving sacrifice equally, or an even greater sign of maturity - or of true morality? Thus also the Buddha would seem to have it, who equally, in view of the passing away of all earthly things, preached 'Loss of self' rather than the steady incremental Lockean accumulation of an estate that is eventually destined to perish anyway; he who is said, out of compassion, to have given his life up to be voluntarily devoured by a starving tiger. Reminds me of those ‘voluntary patients’ on the ward that I was on!—.

Consequences of the dehumanization of madness on the collective mind.

The villifIcation of madness and the various phenomenon which are labelled as ‘mentally ill’ in our society, such as ‘grandiose delusions’, ‘hallucinations’, ‘paranoia’, etc. , a long with all the other countless  represents a form of collective repression that not only has unspeakably dire results for those so labelled, but wreaks utter havoc on the collective unconscious and the collective conscious. Rather than being the shamen, the spiritual leaders of society, such men and women are quietly tortured and cast into ignominy. Thereby, society is not only deprived of its natural guiding elite, but everyone in society is trained to feel a senseless (‘paranoid’) fear and hatred of their own deepest spiritual roots, that prevents them re-connecting with these forbidden aspects of themselves and manifesting their true potential. Take for instance ‘paranoia’. This stigmatization of questioning the benevolent motives and fundamental agendas of one’s government is one of the most cynical and blatant causes of that government getting out of control and the citizenry failing to protect their own rights and freedoms. The same applies to all the other associated phenomenon of madness, which as has been argued, represent a perenial bed-fellow and midwife of intellectual and spiritual awakening. Just as the criminalization of drugs produces an association between drug-use and general criminality that does not exist independently, re-validating society’s negative view of drug-use in its own eyes, so the category of mental illness and the inhumane, disabling treatments with which those who fall subject to it suffer, is not merely a product of but re-inforces and creates society’s negative attitude to those who manifest these various ‘mad’ phenomenon. All the while, the fact that the sacred key to everybody’s own selfrealization is so maligned and spat upon understandably produces a deep, unacknowledged sense of disconcertedness and pessimism in the population as a whole, the root cause of many other of society’s ailments and self-destructive tendencies. In truth, the real mental illness is the senseless conformity which the ‘mental health’ establishment sacralizes. This sanctified madness then, unconsciously aware of its own shortcomings, in order to sustain its own self-conception as reasonable and sane, is driven to ever more fervent quest to identity and persecute those it delusionally deems ‘mad’, for the sake of externalizing and thereby gaining some sense of control over its own deepest insecuries, and having an Other to label & stigmatize in opposition to which it can re-affirm its own false, insecure and groundless sense of Self  

The question is.

why do 'sane' family members (& Dr.s & nurses) have such an enormous problem correctly even identifying their 'unwell' relatives extremely normal human needs? ~Max Lewy 

[readyaiminquire]

Not my president? - Understanding charisma.

Note: While I’m reworking this blog’s format, I wanted first to finish a planned series of posts on charisma that I began publishing a while back. Rather than making it a series, I figured I might well play around with a long-form format instead. This post will re-hash some of the information from the earlier post, but this time I promise it will actually reach a conclusion!

With US election campaigns in full swing, and with Democrats hoping to oust Trump from the Oval Office, the question of how Trump won at all has re-emerged. After four chaotic years, no-one Blue would want another four. Despite a laundry list of failures, scandals, and broken promises, will Trump be able to galvanise enough voters – again? Though I am by no means an expert on US politics, I feel that one area that a lot of pundits and commentators have failed to consider is that of his charisma. At the end of the day, it is Trump’s charismatic leadership that allowed him to be elected in the first place - and bear with me on this! We must really begin to look and deconstruct charisma to get to the heart of it all. Make no mistake, charisma serves a fundamentally important function within any democratic system – they would not be able to operate without it. As oxymoronic as it might sound, charismatic leadership is not reserved for the despotic, but it is a process we all engage with.

Who are our charismatic leaders? We think of Gaddafi, Stalin, the Kims in North Korea, or indeed the Ayatollahs in Iran – alongside questionable undercurrents of fooling the masses, abusing one’s power, and the creeping, assured emergence of ever more oppression. Charisma’s negative political baggage, however, doesn’t really help us to understand what it functionally is. So let’s shed all judgement, positive or negative, and instead look at charisma as a process. German sociologist Max Weber succinctly defined charisma as

“a certain quality of an individual person by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men”

In other words, charisma is a sort-of otherworldly quality that sets you apart from the masses. Authority is derived from charismatic qualities. Unlike other forms of authority, such as legal-rational authority (which relies on some sort of legal code, such as, a constitution) or traditional power (where authority is derived from something outside of the system itself, like the divine right to rule), charismatic authority comes from the very simple fact that people want to follow you.

It’s quite evident that Weber effectively sees charisma as some innate and mystical power – some sort of magic you have that makes people want to follow you. So, let’s look at Weber’s definition from a different perspective. Let’s consider charisma as something you do, rather than something you have. Charisma must always be the result of a set of rhetorical actions intended to convince the ‘common man’ that the charismatic person is indeed not common. Through such conviction, the ‘common man’ becomes a willing follower. In his book How to do things with words, J. L. Austin outlines that there are two different kinds of rhetorical actions: referential and performative. Referential actions simply describe the world, which means that it is either right or wrong. Performative actions, on the other hand, doesn’t describe anything at all and therefore cannot be right or wrong, merely successful or unsuccessful. To shamelessly steal an example from Alexei Yurchuk:

“If one makes an oath under appropriate conditions, while internally not intending to keep it, the oath is not made any less powerful in the eyes of those who accept it as such”.

Assuming you accept the above, charisma as something performed has some broad implications in the real world. But to make sense of that, we need to look at the typical Western democratic system.

Democracy comes with an awkward promise: that all people are created equal, and that the whole system is run by the people and for the people, while at the same time requiring elected hierarchies and leaders to effectively function. In other words, democracy only works because we’re willingly giving up our sovereignty to the system – something which, in most situations, might be perceived as deeply undemocratic. This tension, obviously, needs to be resolved somehow. The relationship between the State and the leader is roughly analogous with the relationship between power and authority. The State has power, and without diving far too deep into Foucault, power is inherently relational rather than what we might classify as material. Put simply, it emerges from social structures. In the case of the State, this relational power is very clear when you consider the different experiences and interactions different people – minorities, the homeless, immigrants, the privileged, and so on – have with its representatives. They all have a very different relationship to the State as an entity (anthropologists Veena Das and Deborah Poole refer to this as the ‘centre and the peripheries’, arguing that the best place to ‘see’ the State is the border at which its power breaks down). 

In the same way, the State as an entity is also immaterial – we only interact with representatives of the State (civil servants, politicians, police officers) or we see the outcome of these representatives enforcing the power of the State upon us (laws, regulation, taxes). Authority, on the other hand, is effectively the ability to ‘direct’ power. The leader of the State relates in the same way to its structure, coming to embody the system as a whole, while the structure itself maintains the overarching power relations. 

It is commonly understood that states only ‘work’ as a concept if the people within them act as if they do, something akin to the thought experiment of ‘would war end if all soldiers refused to fight?’. The leader, as the embodiment of the whole structure, begins to play a key role in maintaining this illusion. Much work has been done on this idea of ‘two bodies’. Alexei Yurchuk wrote that this set-up is traditionally very common among kings and other monarchs – in some cases very literally, with dolls being made of the monarch upon their deaths to quite literally give them a second body. The bodies a king inhabited were their ‘individual’ body, i.e. the person itself, and the second being that of the ‘office’ of Kingship, a divine-like body. It is this second regal body, in full regalia upon their throne, surrounded by servants and gold and pomp and circumstance, who is truly the king; the individual person will always simply be the person. This process is largely the same within the modern democratic state: there is the elected individual – the person – then there is the leader (president, prime minister, etc.), the embodiment of authority. 

It is here we must return to what I wrote above about voluntarily submitting. When imagined, the idea of a leader as an embodiment of authority immediately sounds inherently un-democratic; non-democratic at best. It is this tension, alluded to previously, that charisma serves to reconcile. 

It may sound contradictory, but in these cases charisma functions to dictate how – for example – a President can behave. It is what causes world leaders to attend particular events, or why they partake in completely-natural-totally-not-staged photo-ops. It’s not necessarily because they want to, or indeed because they think it’s fooling anyone, but rather because it is what the system requires the leader to do. It is, in other words, charismatic performance. Even more importantly, it is not the individual which fulfils the requirement, but rather them in the function as President. It is their second body, so to speak, which is having their photos taken beside some national memorial. This leads us to the crux of the whole situation: returning to the issue of democracy and leadership. We the people need to willingly submit ourselves to the leader’s authority. This is often done through voting. However, to effectively convince people, the leader must not only follow a particular agenda, philosophy, or give the correct promises, but they must also follow along in the ‘dance’. They must act statesmanlike (stateswomanlike?), to fulfil what we can in practical terms call ‘the minimum amount’ of charisma needed to be considered for leadership at all. In this sense, all democratic leaders are (somewhat) charismatic, by necessity.

Nonetheless, this of course highlights that charisma isn’t binary, despite often being spoken of in terms of haves and have-nots. Instead, we should imagine charisma as a spectrum: two people can be charismatic, and one more so than the other. Indeed, it also means that charisma is individually understood, that is to say, that different people are differently charismatic to different people. Despite the initial Weberian definition, it isn’t a magic spell. It is a performance, a dance, which functions as a safety-vale in Western political systems, a means to reconcile what is seemingly a fundamental contradiction. 

This, of course, has very real-world implications. Let’s turn to an example. A rather thinly veiled metaphor, if you will, but such a reduction of an (obvious) example can help give some grounding – while playing with some nuance. You have Mr Red and Ms Blue, two presidential candidates in a totally hypothetical country. Ms Blue is a well-established politician, with a strong pedigree of various political posts. She’s experienced, educated, well-spoken, intelligent, and internationally respected. Mr Red, a newcomer on the stage, has no background in politics. He is radically outspoken, blunt even, criticised for his lack of experience, his limited rhetoric. His background is as a somewhat successful businessman, a stereotype he fully embraces. He’s divisive, to say the least. I’m sure you’re seeing where I’m going with this.

Within this completely hypothetical country, you have a traditionally large working class, which used to be strong in the past but has since declined as production jobs moved overseas. The perception among this group is that they have been abandoned by the powers that be – abandoned for several generations. They feel they’ve been systematically shut out of politics, unable to make themselves heard (lack of education, money, and so on), while the politicians – across the board – have continued toeing the same line. The established body politic, like Ms Blue, doesn’t much represent, let alone understand, them. Stage right: Enter Mr Red, down a gilded escalator. His rhetoric is outrageous, his promises ridiculous, his beliefs morally bankrupt. No-one believes what he says, not really. But it doesn’t matter. Mr Red wins anyway. He wins every time. Why? Because he dances to the tune of these otherwise marginalised voters. He speaks to them, makes promises for them, and whether he intends to keep these promises or not, or indeed whether he is expected to keep them, is irrelevant. At this stage, it was no longer about his promises but rather because he acted to this otherwise downtrodden group as the State, the leader, is expected to act: he listened to their issues, spoke to them directly, in a language they could connect with, made them a part of his wider political discourse, stepped out of the ivory tower, extended his hand as a candidate for the Presidency. He at this stage fulfilled the minimum amount of necessary charisma to even be considered as someone to follow. To counterweight this, Ms Blue maintained her distance and stance, equating herself with previous ‘establishment’ politicians, and as a result became unelectable: not because of having a worse programme, or lack of political merit, but rather because she became someone impossible for these voters to follow at all. She could not have been voted for, because she didn’t dance at all.

Charisma, though a funny thing, something we’ve all heard of and often instinctively see and understand, operates in not only a perhaps more complex way when dissected, but also with much more material force. In a sense, society as we know it requires a particular ebb and flow of charisma. But even then, it is not as random or magical as often believed; instead, it is simply the result of certain actions, of convincing people that you are indeed charismatic. Weber throughout most of his career maintained that charisma cannot be learned, that it was something you were born with, though he might have changed his mind on this, as an unfinished paper (sadly only a collection of notes) showed that he intended to write a paper on learning charisma after all. This isn’t the topic here, though, but rather to understand charisma as a social performance, a dance, which lies at the heart of the Western political system and discourse. It is a force rarely considered, not often analysed, and if even invoked, done more so to paint a mystical picture of the person in question. 

The funny thing, of course, is that all leaders are charismatic, and necessarily so. Some do it better than others, of course, but without it democracy as we know it wouldn’t be able to function. Without charisma, we would all simply vote for ourselves. 

 Selected bibliography / recommended reading:

Austin, J. L. 1955. How to do things with Words (J. O. Urmson & M. Sbisàeds ). Oxford University Press. 

Das, V. & Poole, D. (eds.) 2004 'Anthropology in the Margins of the State' Santa Fe: Scool of American Research Press; Oxford: James Currey Ltd. 

Hansen, T. & Stepputat, F. 2006 'Sovereignty revisited' Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 35 

Weber, M. 1946 [1919] 'Politics as a vocation'. In Gerth, H.H. and Wright Mills, C. (trans. & eds.) Max Weber: Essays in Sociology pp. 77-128. New York: Oxford University Press

Yurchak, A. 2003 ‘The Soviet hegemony of form’ in ‘Everything was forever, until it was no more’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 45(3): 480-510

Yurchak, A. 2015 'Bodies of Lenin' in Representations vol. 2(2015) pp.116-157 215

[indomitablekushite]

Progression and Regression in Reconstruction History

Many of us Black Studies who are reconstructing history (the history of the United States) think that we are entering a new era in American history. We may think that the things we are witnessing today, i.e., the election of Blacks to political office and their appointments to various positions, their accomplishments in various corporations and so forth, are something new in American history. Yet the study of reconstruction history should quickly convince us that we are currently undergoing deja vu.

Many of us view history as a continuing progression upward and onward. We have bought the American concept of progress: the idea that things must over time necessarily get better. There is no law in the universe that tells us our future survival is assured: that we will continue to exist now and into the future. There have been races and ethnic groups who have been virtually wiped out on this planet. There is no guarantee that our own group will not be wiped out as well. the idea that we must necessarily arrive at a point greater than that reached by our ancestors could possibly be an illusion. The idea that somehow according to some great universal principle we are going to be in a better condition than our ancestors is an recognizing that progressions and regression occur; that integration and disintegration occur in history.

History is not a fairy tale wherein certain things are accomplished and people live happily ever after. Many of us think the accomplishment we have made up to this point means that we are only going to expand them in the future. We had better think about that again. I will point out today why we must not be so optimistic as to be foolish.

Let us go back for a moment to an article written in Ebony magazine, October 1982, wherein Lerone Bennett wrote (I think) his conclusion to his book Black Power U. S. A. When I finished reading that book, I felt that that last chapter was missing. It went on to laud Black Power during the Reconstruction era and so forth and yet, somehow, its logical conclusions weren't arrived at. The lessons that the book brought to mind were not expressed openly and completely. Consequently, I think some people would have been left with the wrong impression. But lo and behold he did write the final chapter, not within the book itself but in Ebony magazine under the front cover heading heading"The Second Reconstruction: Is History Repeating Itself?"

He titled the article, "The Second Time Around. Will History Repeat Itself and Rob Black og Gains of 1960s?" So he's dealing with the issue again. We gained it [freedom] once and we lost it. Is there any law in the universe that says that we will not lose it again? He introduced the topic:

OVER. It was, at long last over and done with. How could anyone doubt it? How could anyone fail to see that the race problem has been solved forever? One man who had no doubt said, "All distinctions founded upon race or color have been forever abolished in the United States." Another who saw things this way said the category of race has been abolished by law and that "there [were] no more colored people in this country." Thus spoke the dreamers and the prophets--and victims---in the first Reconstruction of 1860s and the 1870s.

I don't think I have to elaborate on this kind of attitude. We run into too many youngsters today who say, "Oh, that was in slavery time. Oh those were things we talked in the 1960s and 70s; we're in a new day now." We're not in a new day ladies and gentlemen. The same words that we are saying today are the same words that people were saying over 100 years ago. Why are we in a new day saying the same thing that someone said 100 years ago? Bennett goes on to say:

And it is worth emphasizing here, at the very beginning, that these flights into fantasy were based on the same "hard" facts that grip the imagination of Blacks in the second Reconstruction of the 1960s and 1970s. There was, for example, a Black man in the U.S. Senate in 1870s and there was a Black governor in louisiana. In the 1860s and the 1870s--as in the 1960s and 1970s--there were Black sheriffs and mayors in the South and there was open speculation about a Black vice presidential candidate. [So the Jesse Jackson run is not new in Black American history]. There was moreover,a network of civil rights laws that seemed to settle the issue beyond all possibility of dispute or recall..

There are so many of us who believe that fair housing laws, anti-discrimination laws, civil rights laws, voting laws and so forth, guarantee our freedom. that is a illusion. What a fight into fantasy! Laws are no stronger than their enforcers. The same people who pass those laws are the same people who are responsible for enforcing them. If the people who enforce the laws no longer decide to do so, the laws are of no value and have no power. Ultimately, then fairness rests not in laws but in the activities of people and in the attitude and consciousness of people. Therefore, if the people who are responsible for enforcing those laws change their attitudes then the treatment of those people whose freedom is protected by those so-called laws is changed as well.

We cannot put our faith in White man's law and laws enforced by whites. I have warned and it bears repeating that if there comes a day when the society has to make a choice between feeding White children and feeding Black children, no amount of civil rights laws or any other laws on the books will prevent those people from feeding their children first. It is a silly faith we have in laws. For Black people in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to still rest their freedom on the basis of laws when history itself shows us that this cannot be done, we must question our sanity and what we have learned from the study of our history.

"Back there, 100 years ago there was a federal law protecting voting rights in the South--- Does this all sound vaguely familiar?---- and there was a national public accommodations act."

"So the public accommodations law didn't begin with the freedom rides in the 1960s. We had those rights in the 1860s and 1870s as well.."

Such, in broad outline, was the racial situation 100 years ago--in the 1860s and 1870s--when racism was "forever abolished" in America for the first time.... It was a short "forever."

I'll just read other selected excerpts from Bennett's article.

"As almost every schoolboy knows, the first Reconstruction ended in a major historical catastrophe that wiped out the gains of the 1860s. As a consequence, it required 100 years and oceans of blood for Black people to climb back up to the political plateau they had occupied in 1860-70."

So, as I stated earlier, history contains both progress and regress. However, regressing at this point in history will not be a situation where we will be able to fight the battle all over again. Regressing at this point in history essentially spells annihilation for Afrikans, not only in America but for Afrikans the world over.

"For as I said in Black Power U.S.A., and as Dubois said before me in Black Reconstruction, "Reconstruction in all of its various facets was the supreme lesson for America, the right reading of which might still mark a turning point in our history."

The election of Black mayors and governors and our getting jobs in White corporations can in no way ensure the survival of Black people. We cannot make the progress of Black people synonymous with our qualifying for degrees and we've had this game played upon us before. Lerone Bennett mentions the founding of,

"..a prototypical War on Poverty [from the 1860s-1879s] (the Freedman's Bureau) and putting on the books civil rights laws which were in some instances stronger than civil laws passed in the 1969s and 1979s. In the wake of these events, there were many gains which surpassed, in many instances, the political gains Blacks made in the 1960s and 1970s. ********************************************* At one time, in fact, Black legislators were in the majority in the South Carolina legislature. In the same period, as in the comparable period in the 1960s and 1979s, poor Whites received social and economic benefits rich Whites had denied them."

Once we got in we were even good to poor White-folks. We set up school systems and a whole lot of other things. I'll conclude this portion by reading this:

"Long discussions about the morals and educational equivocations of Blacks obscure the main point--power or the lack of power. The worst thing that can be said about some leaders of the reconstruction period is that they did not seem to understand that the only issue was power."

We don't talk about that issue very much today either; it seems to frighten many of us.

"One final point is relevant to an understanding of the power realities of the social movements of both the first and second Reconstructions. In both cases, social and political leaders failed to provide the economic ballots that made political ballots viable. no one understands this better than the Black masses of the 1860s who said in marches and demonstrations that their freedom was not secure without a firm economic foundation."

Therefore, think again when we celebrate Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, king, and others. We should begin to look at the central issues. If our study of Black history is merely an exercise in feeling good about ourselves, then we will die feeling good. We must look at the lessons tat history teaches us. We must understand the tremendous value of the study of history for the re-gaining of power. If our education is not about gaining real power, we are being miseducated and misled and we will die "educated" and misled.

The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness..

~Dr. Amos N Wilson Pg 8-13

[gigomko]

The trans experience

Witnessed a lot of truscum and transmed discourse recently-especially attacks against non conforming ppl. I dont experience a lot of that kind of discrimination in my life as a tgnc but it affects my community, my friends, and by assumption me as well. I want to discuss some of my own views on gender and expression in hopes of folks reading it and maybe seeing it a different way for the intention of loving your mind and body in a healthy and positive way.

The concept of gender is first really enforced with specific religions for more economic reasons. Like the catholic church being promised the second born sons to become priests, etc. This enforcement was created before it was real. Gender to many indigenous communities (across the entire world) has records of people who never conformed to these roles! Gender to them was an abstract concept that each individual took into their lives and used it however they liked.

But that was hundreds of years ago. We like right now in this moment and our ideas, societies, structures, systems, and languages have changed drastically. But we still use these ideas onto ourselves with no valid explanation. We still use these ideas and abstract them around ourselves to fit our lives. We take all these words thrown at us to try and create an identity when there already is one inside of us.

The being is not just this body, we are beyond this. Identity comes with what feels good to our hearts. But we are conditioned and socialized constantly throughout our entire lives. It is so hard to break past that. I know I’m so conditioned and i struggle a lot living my own life and expressing myself. There are days I know it is safer for my health to not wear what i really like. Whenever i go places with a lot of people like the city i wear masculine clothing rather than my skirts and jewellry. I shouldnt ever feel like this. I deserve to feel comfortable everywhere i go. I deserve love and compassion!

Being who I am should not be dangerous. It is people who believe you must look a certain way that is dangerous. And those binary ideas were created by people who claimed to be cis and heterosexual to oppress indigenous non conforming identities. It was used to directly eradicate the tradition of ancient societies. Trans people today still enforce these beliefs as form of self-harm (at least that’s what i witness). Its a direct form to mutilate ones soul. Believing all trans people should experience pain and suffering towards their bodies to truly be trans is a horrifying idea. We all experience trauma in way or another but a self-depricating trauma is so overwhelmingly painful. Our bodies are what we have and we must must must learn to use them to our own benefits.

I feel so lucky to have been surrounded by trans folk who love their bodies no matter how others percieved them. My philosphical truth here is that each person is interpretting the perceptions we have of the perceptions other people have us. We are all constantly guessing what other people are thinking and i find this usually occurs as a survival tactic. We do not want to be near people who are dangerous to us. But to become that dangerous person to someone cannot be healthy on the psyche. Please take this time to really consider what i’m trying to say. I am saying this from my heart and my soul that especially in the trans and non conforming community we should help each other, protect each other, worship each other, and feed each other only love.

[xtruss]

Are You Ready and Willing to Be Free Again?

“Care what other people think of you and you will always be their prisoner.” — Lao Tzu

— By Stacey Rudin | September 16, 2021

The modern West’s sudden and near universal acceptance of “lockdowns” — a novel concept of government-enforced house arrest — signifies a far-reaching and sinister shift away from bedrock democratic values. When fear was injected into the atmosphere by the media, the West was a sitting duck, ready to accept any lifeline offered by any politician — even the communist dictator — in a stunning reversal of our nation’s founding principles.

“Give me liberty or give me death” was our original rallying cry. Oppressed by British rule, Americans rebelled. They fought for independence, for the right to live their own lives in their own way. This passion for liberty created the most successful republic in history, a nation to be proud of — a beacon of hope and prosperity for people of all nations.

Today’s Americans behave in a diametrically opposed manner, trusting the government with blind allegiance and giving it full and total control over their wellbeing. Even personal health decisions like whether or not to receive a quickly-developed vaccination are entrusted to politicians to mandate. Any neighbor who disagrees is marginalized and rejected: “She’s an antivaxxer; she must be an ignorant Trump supporter.”

You cannot betray the concept of “give me liberty or give me death” any further than by adopting the premise that no one can disagree with you and still be a reasonable person. When you are on board with a plan that includes subverting your neighbors’ autonomy and violating their bodies as you deem necessary to satisfy the people on TV, you’ve rejected the American experiment. You’re a collectivist, and I wonder: have you looked into how well collectivist systems have worked out for regular people lately?

It is shocking how many people appear to want to live in a world where everyone thinks just like they do. The average person quickly distances himself even from political opponents, as if it would be desirable to have just one political party that everyone votes for. Yet in 2021, in affluent coastal communities, republicans have to pretend to be democrats, and they actually do it. When even this commonplace difference of opinion cannot be accepted and dealt with, it’s clear we’ve moved far away from prizing eccentricity as John Stuart Mill did in 1859, back when Liberty was cool:

“[T]he mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.”

“The mind-bending part of conformist behavior is this: we all know the truth. We know. We just aren’t saying or doing it”

This fear of eccentricity — which I’d argue is tantamount to freedom — was laid bare in March 2020. Even when the “deadly disease” propaganda out of China was thickest, the average person really did not want to lock herself at home and pull her children out of school, let alone force people out of work. Yet it was only the very rare person who made this desire public. Everyone else pretended to agree — they decided to “go along to get along.” They put the “stay home, save lives” sticker on their Facebook profiles. They did drive-by birthday parades (my God.) And now that the failure of lockdowns is irrefutable, they refuse to admit they were wrong, afraid to face the damage they helped to cause.

To summarize, the appearance of universal agreement with lockdown was just that: an appearance. Agreement was depicted because most people do “what’s cool,” and because mass media is everywhere, and because social media astroturf propaganda efforts are very effective. A society that wants to “be cool” is very easy to manipulate. The dissenters will betray themselves to stay cool, so just make something appear cool, and the conformists will jump on board.

To today’s Americans, appearances are everything — we are afraid to be different, lest it make our friends uncomfortable (maybe we will lose one, whatever will we do?!) We have ceased caring about truth and authenticity entirely. We have tacitly agreed as a society that true things should be hidden whenever they conflict with what is “popular”; with what everyone “smart” and “cool” is doing. Anyone acting outside of these boundaries — the “eccentrics” of centuries past, considered by Mill to be geniuses — are today’s untouchables.

In a nation founded by rebels, somehow it has become cool to be a conformist.

Thanks to lockdowns, we know that people want to “stay cool” more than they want they want their kids educated, more than they want to open their businesses, and more than they want to breathe freely. They will even accept open-ended vaccine dosages for an illness that poses less risk to them than driving a car — anything to “stay cool.” Disagreeing with someone is too much for Americans today. Confrontation is so scary that we’d rather let society dictate who we are; that way, everyone else will feel comfortable.

“Care what other people think of you and you will always be their prisoner.” — Lao Tzu

This is how the West sacrificed freedom before lockdowns were ever imposed. We care far too much what other people think of us. We fear freedom. Freedom is truth and authenticity and acting in your own interest, as your own person, even when — especially when — it makes other people uncomfortable. Why would you want a bunch of fake “friends” who only like the image you’re projecting? They will leave you the second your social power is tarnished. If you’ve never burned a bridge in your life, these are the people you’re surrounded by, guaranteed.

Speaking the truth, even when it burns bridges, will dissatisfy just the people you want to be rid of: the people who want you in a box, who resent having to follow onerous rules themselves, and mean to force you to do the same. The only power they have is the power to reject you, and once you don’t care about that, you’re free. You say the truth, accept the results, walk away from the wrong people and end up with the right ones.

Trade truth for popularity, by contrast, and you kill yourself in a sense. All that’s left of “you” is what society finds acceptable, which isn’t “you” at all. It’s completely external to you and has nothing to do with you. By conforming, you betray yourself by accepting the premise that there is something wrong with the real you. Maybe you’re so bent on being perfect (as defined by others) that you don’t even know what “you” is. That would make you the perfect cog in a machine, but as for your personal well-being, there is nothing worse. You will suffer.

“We defraud ourselves out of what is actually useful to us in order to make appearances conform to common opinion. We care less about the real truth of our inner selves than about how we are known to the public.” — Montaigne

The mind-bending part of conformist behavior is this: we all know the truth. We know. We just aren’t saying or doing it. There are dozens, hundreds of people who email me thanking me for opposing lockdowns and for standing up for medical choice and privacy. So why aren’t they doing this themselves, if they admire it so much, and know it needs to be done? If everyone did it, there could be no repercussions for any of us. Yet it isn’t happening because we are scared of telling the truth, which means we fear freedom. Far too many of us fear freedom.

We fear freedom and authentic humanity so much that we pretend people are robots. One glimpse of human frailty and a person can be blacklisted without a trial. Humanity is barbaric at present, demanding a certain perfect image and absolute cooperation with majority rule or social death. It isn’t hard to understand why people eventually crack in such a system, or develop severe anxiety disorders. Consider one of my favorite passages of literature from modern philosopher Karl Ove Knausgaard, discussing how he was banished by his family for simply telling the truth in his epic autobiographical novel:

“The social dimension is what keeps us in our places, which makes it possible for us to live together; the individual dimension is what ensures that we don’t merge into each other. The social dimension is based on taking one another into consideration. We also do this by hiding our feelings, not saying what we think, if what we feel or think affects others. The social dimension is also based on showing some things and hiding others. What should be shown and what should be hidden are not subject to disagreement . . . the regulatory mechanism is shame. One of the questions this book raised for me when I was writing it was what was there to gain by contravening social norms, by describing what no one wants to be described, in other words, the secret and the hidden. Let me put it another way: what value is there in not taking others into account? The social dimension is the world as it should be. Everything that is not as it should be is hidden. My father drank himself to death, that is not how it should be, that has to be hidden. My heart yearned for another woman, that is not how it should be, it must be hidden. But he was my father and it was my heart.”

“He was my father and it was my heart.” What is there to gain by calling Knausgaard a freak and rejecting him, when we know these things happen all the time — alcoholism and infidelity? Shouldn’t we revere him for his brave example, for his confidence? I find his display of human vulnerability incredibly attractive, perhaps because I see so little of it in my daily life. I’m tired of the display of perfect people with perfect lives and perfectly-scheduled, perfect kids on the path to Harvard. I want the mess, and I want to show my mess and still be accepted and loved.

Knausgaard, I guess, is the rare modern eccentric. He puts it all out there. Here he is again, discussing the purpose of publishing a novel so true that he lost family members over it:

“I was there, turning 40. I had a beautiful wife, three beautiful kids, I loved them all. But still I wasn’t truly happy. It’s not necessarily the curse of the writer, this. But maybe it’s the curse of the writer to be aware of it, to ask: why is all this, all I’ve got, not enough? That’s really what I’m searching for, in this whole thing, an answer to that question.”

Maybe that’s the heart of it all — even the heart of the current crisis. We are all so empty despite “having it all,” because “it all” has been defined by something other than us. Hollywood, the media, popular politicians — they are telling us what to be, and we have listened, and we are miserable. We are lying, pretending, putting on a show; hiding our pain with drugs, drink, porn, overspending. Things that they sell us.

The end result of this entire exercise in anti-self-development is lockdowns and forced perpetual vaccinations, a segregated society with everyone suspicious of everyone else, and technological apartheid on the horizon. Slavery. If we had all defined ourselves, instead of turning into a mass with one hive mind, afraid of any differences — of freedom — would we be here? I don’t think so. We’d be happy, healthy, and free.

“To be satiated with the ‘necessities’ of external success is no doubt an inestimable source of happiness, yet the inner man continues to raise his claim, and this can be satisfied by no outward possessions. And the less this voice is heard in the chase after the brilliant things of this world, the more the inner man becomes a source of inexplicable misfortune and uncomprehended unhappiness.” — Carl Jung

We’ve neglected individuality in pursuit of perfect conformity, and as a result we’ve become a miserable society filled with miserable people who will never feel safe enough. There is no boundary they will not cross in pursuit of perfect compliance with the rules, doing anything and everything that’s needed to “be cool” today, as defined by The Today Show. “Come to our all-vaccinated wedding!” “I won’t play tennis with ‘the unvaccinated,’ regardless of the fact that I took my own vaccine and stand 40 feet away.”

This is what we’ve become.

We simply must revisit truth and authenticity sometime very soon. We urgently need to find what’s real in all of this fake, and that can’t be done without individual human voices. If you care about liberty, you must do this one scary thing: embrace it. Be free. “But to be free, you have to be inconsiderate.” Yes. Inconsiderate to others, but considerate to yourself. Speak now or forever hold your peace.

— Stacey Rudin is an attorney and writer in New Jersey, USA

[centaurrential]

The first.

The nice thing about blogging is that one doesn’t need to follow a strict academic essay structure: the issues and concepts I want to write about are always architectures built upon some underlying causal, foundational plot. It would be nice if we could hyperlink the written representations of our thought processes, but alas, that is one domain in which modern technology has fallen short. You might see that I jump around between topics, but I promise there are connections everywhere. So, here we go!

I’ve been hesitant to write about what ignites my passion the most.  

There are a couple of reasons for this.

For one, save for some semblance of a university degree I attempted to put together years ago, I have little in the way of ‘respectable’ credentials. I rely on my own observations of what is happening around me. A high school friend once revealed to me a technique in visual arts that has stuck with me since. “Draw what you see, not what you know to be there.” I have applied this not only to achieve realism in the scant visual artworks I have produced and which have gone unseen by most others, but also to compose a coherent understanding of my world--or in other words, everything I feel. This “motto” of sorts shows that we often ignore details about our experience that are in plain sight. Despite holding this key, I am well aware that I have not necessarily earned any institutional authority to write on the matters that compel me so--yet, as a person who has simply lived and observed, I still feel that I should express myself, for what ever it may be worth.

Second, though my risk of legal and political persecution in some form or another is not as dire as was obviously the case in the past with established thinkers, I’ve felt compelled to dress my thoughts in verse, marching what I think are critical ideas down the runway, letting the audience gently scrutinize the layers of different conceptual fabrics in motion rather than to place what is thought to be controversial on a podium, open to the personalized savagery of modern “progressive” critique. Misunderstanding is a very real fear of mine as I believe it is one of the greatest tragedies of the human condition. I suppose, as a sensitive person who is deeply emotional and deeply invested in my own thought as a means to a better world, my intent up to now has been to create a buffer of some sort between what I theorize and the ideology-driven hate that tends to characterize Internet culture (which, incidentally now, always carries a ‘social media’ component with it). But I don’t wanna hide anymore.

Something I’ve noticed about that very vehicle for thought is how utterly unforgiving it is. Someone uncovers a person’s past involving a stupid, ignorant mistake along the lines of political incorrectness and suddenly all the good they may have recently put into the world evaporates because there is some sort of twisted expectation of social perfection we’ve adopted--even though there is some overlap between this absolutist, impossible approach to other, equally fallible human beings and the tendency to wax poetic about one’s own cathartic emotional experience, along with a new awareness emerging from the remnants of self-destruction, and forcing ‘compassion’ toward oneself in light of one’s mistakes.

The message is that “I” can learn, but “you” cannot. It seems that people are so volatile these days, they’re ready to pounce without really thinking about what a person is trying to say in earnest. And while I believe that we should work hard at our collective and individual duties to skepticism, I cannot condone, to the furthest reaches of any influence I may have, the deadlock of pseudo-critical thinking when it involves scapegoating and self-righteousness.

I sense (and feel) a lot of (justified) anger, and many well-meaning individuals are looking for a place to which they can direct such intensity. The unfortunate thing is that the fire mutates into hostility toward people who don’t deserve it. Shuffle formless anger into boxes designed to look nicely and glamorously radical, and chuck it at those who--excluding the really terrible people in the world--are honest and serious about answering the questions of “how to achieve the maximum possible distance from pain”, and, “what is, essentially”, and you’ve got a problem on your hands. Nothing is ever as simple as we’d like it to be.

And by the way, I find the dismissive “ok, boomer” attitude reprehensible. Like, OBVIOUSLY there are going to be differences among generations in “opinion” and lifestyles and so on. And obviously past generations have made what we now deem to be ‘mistakes’. But just like any individual who may regret past actions, whether personal or professional, one makes decisions supported by the most convincing reasons they can muster, and so they do the best they can with the knowledge they have at hand, at some particular moment. Maybe some visionaries in the past were able to extrapolate from the contemporary and predict what would happen in the future. Even if their equivalents exist in society today, we will not know for certain the downright traumatizing effects current societal mechanisms could force to manifestation in the years beyond, until they actually become fact. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And, there is wisdom that only comes through living life. That, I’m afraid, is not up for debate.

I must say this here, now. I realize I’m walking on eggshells with what I’m about to say.  But, while it is clear that there is a significant degree of ‘white privilege’ in North American society, I’d be careful to declare ‘privilege’ an inherently white experience.  It is an historical reality (and is therefore biased). Not all ‘white people’ are the same; and it is CERTAINLY not the case that it has only been ‘white people’ that enforced slavery, for example. And it is definitely true that different members of different religions and different races and different ethnicities and different cultures and different dialects have, historically, perpetuated evil across many axes. Furthermore, I believe that the explicit and intentional denigration of ‘white people’ MADE BY WHITE PEOPLE THEMSELVES is probably one of the greatest expressions of white privilege. How secure must one feel if they can freely diss their ‘own kind’ and know that nothing diabolical will happen to them? We owe justice through opportunity to people we have marginalized, but that is not the way. I just think that people are either willfully ignorant, accidentally ignorant, or have forgotten that all kinds of people can be villains, and further that a truly corrupt person will even torture people with whom they may have a great deal in common.

I tend to think that ‘intersectionality’ is a seriously important concept and is most empirically aligned with individualism. People move around more, cross-cultural contact happens more; global connection ushers cuisine, rituals and traditions, spiritual beliefs, and languages into landscapes that were previously barren of particular social technologies. The result is a person who may have many characteristics sort of in common with others who share those qualities in a scattered manner, but unless one of those forces was exceptionally prominent in the person’s life, the commonality is negligible.

Emergent from this phenomenon is the serious tension between individual self-actualization and the requirements for so-called proper functioning of the broader ‘community’ to which one feels they belong. The needs of each can often be at odds with one another, and it doesn’t appear to be an easy task to resolve this conflict. I do know that sacrifices will have to be made, as there is always a price to pay; I almost think of that as a universal law.

When I was 19 and took a philosophy of feminism class, I started noticing what problems arise when a mode of thinking is assumed to apply to a particular “community” (loosely speaking), just because its members all share some intrinsic quality. In the particular case I’m talking about, it was “being female”. When someone speaks the word ‘feminism’, it is loaded. You have liberal feminism, eco-feminism, radical feminism, third-wave feminism, black feminism, post-colonial feminism, and so on. The relevance of these various types is stretched so thinly throughout the human landscape that one could legitimately wonder why those theories should even be considered to have anything in common. In other words, how can you possibly come up with an ethic of revolution that applies universally to, I dunno, how many billion people in the world? Here’s a situation: women in the West, particularly in the Deep South, are fighting for their choice to have an abortion. Meanwhile, in some parts of India and China, female infanticide is more common than a decent person should like to admit, and that’s not because Indian and Chinese women want it! Asking someone who is thoughtful in ANY respect if they are a feminist is like asking someone if they believe in God, and that is not, nor should it be, an easy question to answer.

To be clear: what I am talking about is definition, and if you break down the etymological components of that word, you see that it is about deciding what sorts of conceptual boundaries must be drawn (the finiteness)--to determine what is included, and also what is excluded. My belief is that it is actually the interplay between those qualities intrinsic to a person and external forces placed upon us that dictate the degrees of self-satisfaction and happiness we experience.

That pain is to be avoided is generally unquestionable, though the finer details of rational action (because I do see the treatment of pain as an issue of rationality, and as something more fundamental to the exercising of rational action than market economics is) are still up for debate. And, I suppose, that is the case for many injustices that an active, voluntarily thinking society wishes to eradicate. I’d like to return to that topic some time in the future, but what concerns me today is the issue of essentialism.

Essentialism has been a problem for philosophers for a really long time. Often it is conceptualized as “what makes something that thing”, but in my view, Essence seems to lie in the realm of the experiential. In one minor paper I wrote for a metaphysics class, I argued (incompletely) that an object’s ‘essence’ could be partly defined by the function one identifies when they come into contact with said object. For example, because even though chairs can be made up of different numbers of legs, or be of different colours, or be upholstered or not, we place them into a category of ‘something to be seated upon’. But then again, there are many things that can be sat upon, and, on the other hand, one does not look at a real life dog and think of it as an object that innately serves a purpose, let alone is built for one.

So why am I talking about what seems to be an obscure and useless topic?

It is the utility of Essence that gives form to our experience. And for those who believe that we erroneously categorize and judge every single damn thing we come across in our lives, go ahead and try to reverse neurological evolution through time of geologic scale. I mean, this mode of existence came to be before we even defined what ‘values’ were.

Tangentially, my introduction to the study of philosophy started with the great divide between ‘rationalism’ (ie. some inherent structure which creates the capacity to ‘know’ already exists in a person at the time of birth) and ‘empiricism’ (the school of thought where a person only collected knowledge through experience after they were born with a ‘blank slate’ of a mind). I never understood why the distinction between rationalism and empiricism was so important, because it seemed so obvious that our system of moving through the world was a combination of the two. We see now that the belief in one to the exclusion of the other is just plain stupid: genetics, epigenetics, logarithmic counting in BABIES, education, debate, and research, all contribute to an individual’s understanding of the world. (It is this idea, too, that contributes to my belief that free will is an illusion [though a helpful one at that] and that ‘luck’ is an epistemological concept. I will also use this idea to, eventually, communicate my argument that astrology is theoretically plausible, but that involves discussing archetypes and the cyclical nature of our known world...) Note: “Epistemology” is the study of knowledge and how we come to accumulate it. I went on this tangent because I think we need to demonstrate a great deal of respect for both pre-existing neurological realities and the staggering potential of science to teach us about our environments and ourselves. There are some core things about us that we would be wrong to ignore, and unforgivably so if the sound science is right there.

We do not typically go through life coming into contact with objects or people and checking off items on a list that comprise criteria for something being what it is (unless, of course, you’re prone to collect little hints as to whether a potential lover loves you back or not.....). To do so would reduce the fluidity with which we interact with externalities. That being said, I can conceive of a time when one goes outside for a cigarette in the night and watches a creature (as I just did) that may be a cat, or that may be a raccoon, cross the road. You peer at this creature for several seconds, up until the point that you conclude, and are certain, that it is, indeed, a cat. It is then that you can move on with your life. Perhaps what helped you to come to this conclusion was a short list of criteria that separate catness from raccoonness. Obviously that would be more efficient than consulting an exhaustive mental list of “cat properties” and comparing it to a similar list, but of “raccoon properties”. But even so, by the time you’ve witnessed the cat/raccoon, you’ve already filtered out any possibility that the creature might be something else, like a stray dog, or a lizard, or a floating chair. In conclusion, I propose here that context is essential to Essence. And Essence is a fully whole sensory experience, insofar as your sensory faculties work. This is why it is so hard to define.

The social relevance of the concept of Essence is becoming more important with the emergence of identity politics, the crises in feminism, “queerness”, the feminine/masculine dichotomy, and even paradigms in psychological health. Inherent to Essence is continuity, and no one can argue against the notion that we rely on general continuity to go about our daily lives.

But out of continuity develops expectation. Expectation is immensely helpful for the reason I laid out above. Additionally, in public, we rely on a common yet tacit understanding that individual members of the public will behave in a way that is safe and appropriate for everyone. The problem is, if you have experienced a good chunk of your life, well into adulthood, having never seen an unfamiliar and idiosyncratic expression of certain properties, why WOULD you do anything else other than fumble in your acceptance that that is the way something is? Your mind scrambles to organize what you are interacting with in the way that makes the most sense.

I was once accused of being an essentialist because of some remark I made referencing biological differences between men and women. I wondered if the dude was joking because I really cannot grasp why someone would think that the differences are trivial. Lately I’ve toyed with the conclusion that there must be something essential, something bounded, about the way we express ourselves, which matches what we are that isn’t seen by absolutely everyone, including exuding femininity or masculinity. If there wasn’t something essential about these “descriptions”, why would anyone make an effort to look a certain way in the first place? Or, why would anyone have a subconscious tendency to adopt certain characteristics? The point I’m trying to make is that communication in the form of appearance is just as important as a verbal explanation of something, and can in fact be more truthful than what is verbally expressed. Whether one wants to admit it or not, you are offering information that allows others to draw conclusions about you. And it’s not that you merely fulfill a checklist of the sort that I mentioned earlier. It is that, often, though not always, each separate quality supports all the others, forming a sort of “mesh-like” coherence. If there wasn’t something essentially feminine that you identified with, or something essentially masculine that you identified with--if these things didn’t matter--there would be no point in going to great lengths to change your appearance to communicate something. (And I think this holds even in the case of the non-binary person.)

Of course, judgments are made all the time about people, which have nothing to do with being transgendered or cisgendered. A person asks you your age. Why? Because they’re collecting information about you and the particulars in the category of “age” should reveal something about you that you’re not stating explicitly. And this information is only grounded in other information the inquirer has about you. And the only reason this information might be reliable is because a consolidation of an individual’s past experiences tells them that a certain age represents an axis of consistency of mentality and/or behaviour. The deductions we make are not always accurate, but if we didn’t instinctively think of this information as important, we wouldn’t seek it!

I will now apply the above problem to sort out why we are in such a mess, socially. First of all, the person is born into expectation of behaviour. That expectation depends on their sex at birth (assuming the person is not intersex), their social, economic, political class, the levels of education their immediate family members have achieved, their spiritual practices, et cetera. It seems to me that feminism arose in the first place because of the particular kind of anticipation of behaviour that swirls around whether you have a testicle-penis or a uterus-vagina combination. The traditionally ‘male’ realm was the unexplored frontier to many women; it was one of excitement, possibility, and opportunity, and arguably more freedom than the domain to which women were typically assigned: the home. Women can produce babies, and if you could produce babies then you SHOULD produce babies, and you should care for them too. And not only that, but by virtue of the fact that you are a mother you can’t even fathom leaving your babies behind. I haven’t yet come across a proper articulation of why this point is so crucial to understand. The women who have the term “TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) slung at them are attacked by people who don’t understand that this fundamental difference in expectation between female-born individuals and male-born individuals is looming in the background, and how damn well important it really is, because it inevitably shapes a person’s perception of the world and quite possibly the expectations they have of other people! And the perception that falls upon you isn’t just something you can shed on a whim. And also, why are people surprised that this is still an issue? Even as advanced creatures we still succumb to evolutionary forces. I don’t think any reasonable person could say that “you aren’t female even if you feel female”, but it’s not about how you “feel”. It’s about what happens between you and people once they figure out a vital fact about you. It’s about the context in which you, a whole being, operate. You want to talk about oppression? I think your self-identity being misaligned with how other people think you should be is pretty high up there in the ranks.

So, to digress a little: the notion of changing yourself and making an impression on strangers, making a difference in the world, is intoxicating. But we enter dangerous territory when visions of child-rearing and home care become afterthoughts. Child psychologists have identified the age range between 2 and 4 to be particularly crucial in socializing children; it is at that age that they are the most impressionable with regard to how they learn to interact with others. That’s not really a huge window to make sure you ‘get it right’. I think the family unit, whatever its configuration may be, is pretty foundational to the rest of society. While many people presently carry harmful opinions about things we don’t understand, and changing those opinions tends to be rather difficult, the most radical, most powerful thing we can do to initiate reform is to make sure the children we are responsible for grow up valuing honour, kindness, and a sense of duty and justice, not just in relation to themselves and their immediate families, but to society as a whole.

People are throwing tantrums because society hasn’t given itself an overnight makeover. I think that anyone involved in politics understands, either consciously or unconsciously, that even though political institutions and bureaucracies were created by real people, they’ve sort of become fragmented away from human life and are entities of their own, floating above our heads like clouds in the higher atmosphere, and which do not have any readily identifiable boundaries. It appears that the various bodies of legislation and bureaucracies have become so bloody complex in correlation with the complexity of human interaction that they seem almost impossible to disentangle. Furthermore, ideas take a long time to die...if they ever even do.

Rather than viewing child-rearing as a burden, I choose to view it as the greatest responsibility and the greatest tool we have for genuine change. I feel, honestly, that sometimes we waste energy trying to convince people of something where there is no convincing possible. We often preach to the choir because they’re the only people who make us feel heard--but our own little choirs already know and believe what we know and believe.

So. I think, once I reviewed what I said above, that I’ve attempted to illuminate a conundrum about simultaneous utility and danger found in the act of expecting. This “study” of sorts is a microcosm of a world where darkness and light are aspects of all things. I’m convinced that the formulation of potential is expressed in binaries, but unlike computers, we are able to interpret ambiguities, and in many pockets of society people are tolerant of self-expression. With so many belief systems up for grabs, and with the world as it is in its ebbs and flows, it is up to the individual to craft their own transcendent values as a way to “orient themselves”, as Dr. Jordan B. Peterson put it. Be mature and do not dismiss nuance. Challenge yourself. And for God’s sake, the next time you’re thinking of buying that innocuous avocado that’s become the symbol for the Millennial generation, ask yourself what is more important: dismantling violent and antisocial Mexican drug cartels, or supporting Mexican farmers who are trying to make their ways through life, just like every. last. one of us.

[phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess]

listen people, bisexuals face people telling them to ‘pick a side’ and ‘it’s a phase’ or ‘but you’ve never been with ____ how can you be sure you’re not straight?’ and ‘this is an attention thing, right?’, and those gross straight couples asking for threesomes or telling you they think you liking the same gender is HOT (bc they’re imagining something clearly sexual)... 

or worse, when the gay community accuses them of straight passing privilege, only accept same-gender relationships, ask if maybe bi/pan means ‘can’t commit’, lesbians talking about how they could never date a girl who’d had a male lover and gay dudes saying similar shit about bi dudes, everyone saying bi peeps cheat more than usual, etc.

pan people get this shit too, + those stupid ‘so you think this frying pan is hot, right?’, and there’s always that one person who starts stringing random things together as a hypothetial ‘could you like this type of person’ in an incredulous tone, (e.g. as if say, an asian-american disabled, neurodivergent bi  non-binary person was some long, ridiculous joke and not, say, a percentage of the population that exists)... 

bi and pan are seen as inherently sexual, wrong, aberrations, etc.  it’s either going to get condemned, or treated like a fetish, or a (ugh) ‘challenge’ (where either a gay or straight individual tries to ‘fix’ the bi/pan person into confirming gay or straight status), etc.

however, the other side of the triangle of invisible sexualities that gets a lot of shit from both sides, gay and straight, are the aces.

the thing is, if the other two are seen as oversexual and treated like shit for it... then the aces have the opposite problem; everyone is on their case about being (for lack of a better term) undersexual.

maybe it’s because people can’t quite come at this idea, considering the hypersexualisation of the world we live in today; where a little boy and girl interacting is seen as romantic, and the word gay/lesbian/bi/pan is not a label, but some sort of hush-hush lewd code word. 

people who thought 50shites was hot, despite the intensely abusive and rape-apologist overtones blatantly plastered throughout the book, will lose their minds if anyone so much as thinks about being non-hetero or non-cis in their general vicinity. Everyone who falls under LGBPTA+ knows that feel, has heard hate from these people... and yet, a lot of LG like to perpetuate similar ideologies towards the B,P, T &A parts of the community (and, it must be said, also towards non-white/POC L & G members -not to mention any members who are disabled, for which additional stigma is involved). 

bi and pan get the ‘pick a side’, ‘you’re tainted by the opposite gender relationships you’ve had’ and ‘just admit you’re gay’ / ‘you’re lying to cover up being a whore’ style of things.

aces get ‘you’re not oppressed’/ ‘not part of the community’. but the thing is, people treat them just as badly, in a different way to that which the rest of the community experiences.

lesbians deal with men fetishising them, and any intimacy is seen as sinful/lewd/an invitation for straight guys to request threesomes or fantasise about them. gay men deal with the fetishisation of their real-life relationships by (especially recently) straight girls, who project their fantasies about fictional characters, onto them and attribute traits to fit.  Aces, of all orientations, deal with people assuming they’re just waiting to be ‘fixed’, or they’re ‘nervous’/ ‘shy’ / ‘inexperienced’ and need someone who knows how to fuck, to show them the way. they are treated as broken, especially by the medical profession; therapists and doctors consider lack of desire in intimacy to be a sign that there is something wrong.

some just assume that if they sleep with someone, they’ll learn to like it eventually, and that can lead to all sorts of mental health concerns later on; because not everyone is told the term. especially as, when stated before, the world is very focused on sexuality...

people like to use a simplified version of maslow’s hierarchy to say ‘but sex is a basic need’. mate, nah, the reality is that argument has been misconstrued by utilising information based on wanna-fuck-my-mother-dudebroFreud’s nonsense, and he’s been (fucking finally) discredited as a whackjob...

the real maslow’s hierarchy e.g.

states that the basic NEEDS of a human being pertain to physical needs, and the safety in which one can obtain them. Intimacy is on there, a few tiers up, but the reality is that can mean basic socialisation, being able to hug a friend, having family to talk to, etc. 

Aces come in many forms. some are aromantic (experience no romantic attraction at all), some are asexual (no sexual attraction) and some are both. asexuals can be romantically attracted; e.g. biromantic asexual, but this is not a generalisation. ask the ace, if uncertain, they can tell you their preferences.

some asexuals have partners, some choose not to bc that’s not necessary to fulfil them as a person... some are sex positive, others are not. some don’t mind doing certain things with a partner, others do. aces are as individualistic as the rest of the lgbpta+ community, and the human race. never assume.

but to boil the argument down... they face stigma. they are seen as just as wrong/weird/incorrect/to be fixed as the rest of us. 

you’ve heard the stupid things people say:

lesbian? you probably have daddy issues, you just need some dick to put you on the right track/who hurt you that scared you off men? Dyke, c***, etc. gay? no father figure/pushy mother figure, need a good woman and to toughen up! you just need to meet the right gal! Fairy, freak, etc. bi? that’s hot!!! u wanna have a threesome?/there’s no such thing, you’re just doing it for attention/can’t commit to being gay! Whore! pan? so you like kitchenware?/there’s no such thing as ‘all genders’, you’re a slut and using cut labels to cover it up, cheater, pretending trans? depending on orientation, one parent is blamed for being the wrong influence, you’re told it’s the influence of something (tv/media/etc), freak/etc. ace? well you’re just being silly, everyone needs sex! how can you not look at (person) and not wanna fuck ‘em??? frigid, liar, broken, etc.

-

maybe it’s because humans are naturally egocentric (we’re supposed to grow out of it by age 8-10 according to Piaget) but apparently that hasn’t happened for some people... which means, we experience life through our own lens, our own understanding, which is what we consider ‘normal’. E.g. it is why there is such a vast difference between opinions from say, a rich man, and that of someone below the poverty line. Because their ‘normal’ is based on their worldview, their experience.

If you grow up with your parent working four jobs, knowing frugality and sometimes hunger, you will be inclined to understand that life is hard; but to work hard is to succeed. To be born rich, and never want, to be awarded things at the merest whim... that teaches nothing but the idea that you deserve such things, that those who have yet to achieve wealth or stability, are not trying hard enough. Etc.

And when you mix the predominant personal understanding, the worldview, with that of what society considers normal; then you get this population-wide concept of normality, a definition that doesn’t represent many populations within the whole, but a vast majority. The ones with the loudest voices.

E.g. social norms are defined by -socioeconomic factors, culture, gender roles and adherence (flaunted/enforced), predominant ideologies (political/religious), attitudes, resilience, etc.

Basically, in modern society the idea has placed being (cishet)/straight as synonymous with ‘normal’. It has placed the idea of the world being male-centric, as normal, and added male power fantasies as the ideal physical physique for men (even though they are nearly as impossible to achieve as the ‘standards of beauty’ are for women). It creates the concept that glass ceilings and sexism in the workplace are ‘to be expected’; that men being sexual being is an inherent genetic trait (so if they assault someone, then what did the victim do to provoke it?). Society puts emphasis on sexuality, but shames women for taking up on it/shames men for not being all that inclined towards it. Mocks anyone who realises they are not heterosexual as being incorrect or wrong, something to be destroyed or fixed... in any way possible.  It is the reason why people assume that lesbians and bi/pan f/f couples exist solely as a porn category, and can’t be taken seriously in real life. How can two women like each other? How do they *lowers voice* you know... without a man? there is such an inherent focus on them as sexual objects, not people... not two people together, and more a living thing some creep can jack off to. [seriously, the amount of articles about the wonder woman movie implying the amazons were sexless considering the island had no men... was very tellingly hetero tbh]  the audacity of guys who feel that “can i watch?” is an appropriate question, and that two ladies holding hands is an invitation to imagine them fucking...

and similarly, gay men are considered an aberration. especially anyone who identifies as a ‘bottom’, because that’s somehow entirely emasculating, and weak... to straight guys. associating the role with ‘being the woman’ perplexingly enough. they are ‘the gay best friend’ who has to fit a certain role or the heterogirls who pick up with them for the sole purpose of having a token gay bro... will destroy them. or worse, they are fetishised by those same girls. or people automatically assuming that gay men are child molesters, even though the metric fucktonne of people who actually prey on kids are straight guys in positions of power (the very priests who condemn the gay, ironically)...

bi and pan peeps are called whores, called indecisive, told to pick a side, told they’re tainted. asked if they wanted to be in on threesomes, etc. as if they weren’t people, but living, breathing fetishes that will be 100% on board and dtf with anyone who makes a lewd suggestion...

and aces, they deal with society asking why they are broken. women are not performing ‘their function’ if they don’t want to partner up and have kids; men are seen as defective somehow if they aren’t interested in sex, even vaguely. people always offer to fix them in some vulgar way, or tell them they’ll meet the right person... and yet, fail to comprehend reality that these people are fully functioning human beings in their own right. happy and whole, without needing to be sexual.  -are they ABLE to have sex?  if that’s a question of biology, then likely yes (although some people cannot, but that does not often have bearing on sexuality in most cases) but if they don’t have the inclination or do not want to, or are repulsed by it, that’s got shit-all to do with you, buddy.  -what if they do it with their partner every so often? well, that’s their choice. some aces are sex positive, and are okay with doing certain things with their partners. though not all, and it is a continuous conversation between these people... also none of your business. -but what if their partner wants sex, won’t they leave? be pretty shithouse to leave just for that. most people could just have some alone time, rather than say, pressuring someone who doesn’t want to do something, into doing it, for their own gratification.  -so what if the ace masturbates? this actually seems to be brought up in aphobic posts a lot (why are you all so focused on this) but like... they can do that if it works for them and they like it? who are you, the jerk-it police? in all actuality, beating your meat releases certain neurochemicals that have a positive effect on a person physiologically... and there is a significant difference between self-pleasure and anything relating to having a secondary person involved. it is not indicative of anything. -so it’s like celibacy? nah. celibacy is “I will not go for a swim bc (belief)” and ace is (in general) “I am not a huge fan of swimming”. [Can also be “I might dip my toes in when by myself” or “If my partner feels like swimming and I’ve had a good day, I might do it too. I’m not a huge fan, but I am happy to swim with them, to make them happy.”] -so, they’re like, childish and innocent? ah, one of you. there are people out there who latch onto childish, innocent characters and decide they portray the best example of asexuality. but the reality is no, they don’t. in fact, that’s a harmful stereotype right there. asexuals, aromantics, they’re just people. your librarian, a wrestler, the most vulgar bloke down the docks, a person in your uni class right now... it changes nothing about the fact they’re an individual human being.  -isn’t sex a basic need? no. scroll up, you post-skimming motherfucker.  -so what defines ace? "a lack of sexual attraction to any gender”

-but what if i’m great in bed, can i fix them? ...that’s not how it works. that’s not how any of this works. stay right there, i’m coming to explain this in person, with my army of murderbirb cassowaries. don’t ever tell an ace person you can ‘fix them’

-is there a chance that sometimes their asexuality can be related to trauma? that is a big question, really. some people of all orientations, when the victim of significant trauma (esp. sexual, or familial -e.g. destroys ability to form intimacy bonds) can experience a lack of attraction. lack of sexual desire  can be a side effect of certain mental illnesses and/or medications... but it’s important to note that a) the person may have been ace first, b) in the case of med/mh this person can identify as something else (e.g. pan), and most importantly c) it’s not your place to question someone who identifies as Ace.

Please ask an asexual directly for more specific, and informative answers, there are fantastic posts on this site about the topic please look for them. 

[Also, this post uses men and women frequently, but does not mean to erase the experiences of nonbinary persons, there is simply a lot of additional stigma attached that may stray the topic. Men and Women refers to both cis and trans under these circumstances, btw.]

- - - 

In short, everyone who falls under LGBPTA+ faces a lot of shit from people outside the community, and even inside it as well. The stigma facing each particular population (and the subgroups within that include considerations of race, ability, neurodivergence, cultural and religious ideologies, etc) has unique aspects, but still maintains the singular reality that people who are not what you are, hate you for being born this way.

From the hypersexualisation of the LGBP (and T, the fetishisation never ends), is just as devastating, demoralising and harmful as the stereotypes and stigma facing the aces.

We all get “It’s a phase” and “You’re Going to Hell” lobbed at us by someone.

There’s always someone who feels they can ‘fix us’ into being straight, cis, sexual. 

Our labels find their way onto porn sites, and suddenly you can’t even whisper your orientation to the wind without someone assuming your existence is shameful, lewd or ‘hot’. 

And hey, that’s not okay.

We’ve gotta band together here, protect everyone under the umbrella. Unite to form some sort of fucking Captain Rainbow using the power of the LGBPTA+...

Stop fucking telling heteroromantic aces or bi/pan people in opposite-gender relationship they’re straight and to kill themselves.  Can’t you see that’s perpetuating the hate used against the rest of the community?

If we fight, then the people who would rather see us dead and buried are half-way to victory. So enough with the discourse. Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Pan, Trans, Ace, and anyone who fits more than one of those categories... they exist, and they have a place in the community. 

United Front, people.

[brazenautomaton]

... so I realize that that other anon was pretty rude to you but if you don't mind, I'd like some clarification on what you think useless means, too. And I know you said "in contrast to doing useful things" but like, that just begets the question of useful in what way? as well.

Either cause people to say “I am glad someone did that!” or its absence causes people to say “Why can’t someone do this?”

Not all popular people never do anything that is called work (and not all popular people are popular enough to be able to subsist entirely on punishing others), but just because something is “work” does not mean it is useful.

The central example of ‘work’ disassociated from the concept of doing useful things is political punditry. Pundits provide absolutely zero value to the world. They are wrong all of the time. Words coming from them have no information value and cannot be used to make predictions about anything. If they all stopped, absolutely nothing would change. But because punditry is popularity, not only do they make a living doing that, they are inherently worthy of respect, deference, and consideration. Because they are popular. Because they are utility monsters.

Reality-TV show stars are very close to the central example of people who do not do useful things. Even if the show they are on is not about exalting them in particular, even if the show is ostensibly about a job in general or them doing a job in specific, they do as little useful things at that job as possible and spend most of their time being popular, destroying utility made by others in order to feel emotional rewards. I know, I know, there is editing and “storytelling” involved, but I’m not counting just screen time, as I know someone who spent 95% of her time styling hair and 5% of her time talking shit about other hairstylists would be put on TV as someone spending 100% of her time talking shit about other hairstylists. I’m talking about how they actively take effort to undermine each other and destroy utility, the priorities they evince when they talk about their actions, the kinds of things that are not able to be made up by editing -- their actions and priorities are always to punish people for doing useful things, and are incompatible with doing useful things. But they are rewarded. Because they are popular. Because they are utility monsters.

Those are rare examples, though, there are not many of either of those types of people in the world. But the pattern repeats fractally. In normal workplaces, of any type, the popular are the ones adding little or negative value to the work done by the people who have to actually do useful things to sustain themselves. That coworker you hate who does nothing but make problems for you and increase your workload, who I know you have if you have any coworkers. The fact they are useless in and of itself isn’t the indication they are popular, but the fact they don’t get fired for it when other people are fired for less is. Any time it comes down to “discretion” whether to punish them, they will not be punished; if they break a rule that does not allow leeway in firing them, they will land on their feet and start destroying another workplace. Because giving them resources and respect is something they are entitled to regardless of the useful things they do. Because they are utility monsters. 

A great many managers are popular: “management” / coordination as a concept is not worthless and is needed, but everyone who has ever worked in an organization of more than five people knows why the concept that coordination is worthless is so widespread. Because so many coordinators and managers do not do useful things and only cause damage to other people’s ability to do useful things, while being rewarded for their lack of doing useful things. And they keep their jobs and they keep getting their jobs. Because they are popular. Because they inherently should be given power and utility and respect and deference. Because they are utility monsters.

I know what your objection is. You are going to say that it’s absurd that I am positing some invisible trait governing whether people inherently want to reward you or punish you regardless of your actions, and you will say this is “social skills”. People like to say the popular have “social skills” allowing them to do this, and they are able to navigate the ‘real’ rules governing the social structures. This is no more parsimonious or observable than “popularity as trait governing whether people inherently want to reward you or punish you”; it’s phlostigon. It’s nonsense. It’s nothing but after the fact justification, because the “real” rules are always utterly invisible and completely unable to be derived ahead of time by even the most intense study. The theory just goes “well they never get punished for doing things other people get punished for, so there must be a real rule, that somehow everyone is able to perceive instantly and enforce despite never being aware of it and not being able to articulate any part of it and nobody being able to predict any portion of it. When your theory posits astonishing, instant, and totally undetectable powers of perception in everyone that allow them to do everything your theory needs them to do while leaving no evidence, your theory is not as parsimonous as “certain people make others want to punish them, different people make others want to reward them, regardless of what they do.”

The ultimate proof is popular people of low economic class, because these guys can’t deftly navigate systems, they can’t masterfully play around rules. They have terrible impulse control and understanding of things around them and don’t work with rules at all and people keep shoveling utility into their gaping maws because they are popular. What “social skills” are exhibited by Henry, the patient of @slatestarscratchpad who’s always in and out of jail because he constantly physically abuses his endless stream of girlfriends, and Scott noticed “this guy can get another girlfriend with absolutely no effort expended even though they all know about his history, while nerds are going insane from loneliness and rejection”. Henry was popular, inherently popular, and nerds are inherently unpopular. What possible model of “social skills” can you have that can allow Henry to be such a savant while being so deficient in every skill that can actually be observed? He couldn’t control his temper, was in and out of jail, I bet you he couldn’t hold down a job at all and just parasitized his many girlfriends. I bet you he couldn’t deal with subtlety or rules systems at all. Do you really think the best explanation for his sexual success is really “well even though he has terrible impulse control and is violently abusive and can’t deal with subtle cues and can’t deal with systems of rules in anything we can observe, he must really have a SECRET skill, utterly dissociated from every other trait about his personality, that is really good at navigating a system of rules that is so complex it cannot be observed or predicted by anyone”? You really think the simplest, best explanation for why people keep giving him things despite not doing any observable actions that warrant being given things isn’t “he is a person who people want to give things to despite not doing any observable actions that warrant being given things?”

Shitty, abusive people in the low economic class always seem to come out better than their class compatriots, don’t they? When there’s omnidirecitonal punishment around, they seem to land on their feet the fastest, don’t they? Punishment happens to those who aren’t popular enough to make the punishment stop and they always seem to make the punishment stop faster than anyone else, don’t they? The system keeps giving them breaks while it punishes poor unpopular people for trying to do useful things. A poor, unpopular, trying to be useful person gets their life ruined by one incident, but the abusive pieces of shit always have a really long history of being abusive pieces of shit and getting away with it. Because they are popular. Because within that economic class, they are utility monsters. They can’t hold down a job because of their impulsivity, their unintelligence, or their economic class markers, but people keep giving them things anyway. 

[findingathirdway]

Reflection: The Third Way

This commonplace blog is a collection of ideas and powerful women who have informed my learning about feminism and religion/tradition. It was valuable to me to learn about a third way (not one, but any and all alternatives) outside of the dichotomy of religion and progressive thinking. I have always believed, like many, that the two are mutually exclusive. Using some examples from the class and some examples from my own research, this blog will explore many different ways of thinking about a third way.

First, I found myself incredibly influenced by Kavita Ramdas’ TEDtalk, Radical women, embracing tradition. I had experience thinking about faith in this way, mainly from other academic studies of religion, but never the traditions of a nation. For instance, Le Zbor, a lesbian folk choir, who sing traditional songs while advocating for the acceptance of LGBTQ+. This is a fantastic example of arts activism, similar to how Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton advocates for equity, diversity, and inclusion for BIPOC in theatre through a piece about American history. Both of these pieces look at a tradition that has excluded them in the past and make it their primary focus. In doing this, they expand the reach of their message to the people who need to hear it most- the older generations, who are the most likely to hold prejudices against LGBTQ+ people and BIPOC. Le Zbor talks about how they sing Christmas songs despite the fact that the Catholic church has strong beliefs against homosexuality, because they as a group are open to religious practices. Here, we see that it doesn’t need to be a choice between religion/tradition and progressiveness. Art is a living thing that can change with time, just like people.

She also spoke of Sakeena Yacoobi, who leaned into Muslim beliefs on the importance of literacy to further her mission of education for women and girls, a mission that has but her on the Taliban’s hit list. Cherry-picking from the same book has lead to women’s oppression (this is referring, of course, to the situations in which women do not have a choice in their religious expression, and men are enforcing sexist policies through religion and government), which makes her religious reasoning behind education that much more powerful. She serves as an incredibly important example of how a woman can choose to be Muslim, veil, and use all of these things to act in the name of women’s rights. In Ramdas’ talk, she recalls Yacoobi’s words, "This headscarf and these clothes give me the freedom to do what I need to do to speak to those whose support and assistance are critical for this work. When I had to open the school in the refugee camp, I went to see the imam. I told him, 'I'm a believer, and women and children in these terrible conditions need their faith to survive.'" This is a third way. Though it is more religious leaning than a lot of alternatives to the religion-feminism dichotomy, it is still a way of creating a space in which the two are not mutually exclusive. Through embracing the tradition of veiling, Yacoobi is getting into spaces she wouldn’t otherwise, and creating real change for women.

Leymah Gbowee, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, organized a group of women in Liberia (Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace), embracing the traditions of both Christianity and Islam, to protest against the civil war and call for peace. She had them all wear white as a way of calling attention to themselves, because the tradition in Liberia is to wear bright, beautiful colors. She purposefully broke tradition to cause a stir. In her TEDtalk, Ramdas talks about how when a senior officer approached Gbowee, she started to remove her headscarf, which caused the officer to get embarrassed and leave. In Liberia, it’s a commonly held belief that if an older woman undresses in front of you by choice, then it leaves a curse on your family. She used that belief, and that tradition, to advance the issue at hand- peace in Liberia. Though the belief itself might be something sexist (why only if the woman chooses to undress?), the act of her leaning into it was empowering.

For another way of looking at religion, I did some research into feminist interpretations of the Bible, and found a book called “Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible” by Musa Dube, a Botswanan feminist, theologian, and scholar. I was excited to see such a straight-forward and relevant title. I didn’t have the chance to read the book because there was no way I could order it and get it in time (who still uses Amazon, ew!), so I read some reviews and summaries of it. She critically assesses the stories of the Bible, not only re-interpreting the messages, but also noting when it’s characters act in ways that encourage colonialism or sexism. Through her work, she allows Christians to take a third way and believe their faith while also thinking critically about the things they learn. It creates a space for Christians in feminism and feminism in Christianity.

In the same vein of recontextualizing the messages of the Bible, I thought of Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees, in which her main character Ijeoma, a queer Nigerian girl to woman, does just that. Growing up with her religious mother, working as a house girl for a religious family, and then attending a religious school, she is constantly confronted with people using the bible as a way to demonize and dismiss homosexuality. From a young age, however, she thinks critically about the Bible and the messages it means to convey. Okparanta speaks herself, in the interview I included, about the importance of re-interpreting the text as time goes on and not blindly accepting the ideas that organized religion enforces. In many cases, the passages cherry-picked to condemn homosexuality in particular can very easily be interpreted to have other lessons. Through doing this, it creates a religious space in which ideas can be progressive and makes space for queer Christians.

All of this informs the idea that in order to gain rights for womxn in all spaces, there needs to be strong womxn fighting for rights in all spaces. While before I might have said “If a church doesn’t support me, I won’t support it by being a part,” these examples have made me see that sometimes being a part of an organization that might not support you while also bravely ushering in the ideas that you believe are right is the most meaningful way you can support an organization and create change. Thinking about this from the viewpoint of a queer woman, if I were to be a Christian (I’m not, but for the sake of elucidation), and I believed strongly that I should support a church that didn’t support me, then the best way to support it is by being a part and changing their tune. The strongest advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community, in that instance, would be bravely showing up as myself in that space. Just by occupying that space, one creates a third way, and begins to change the minds of others and make a difference.

Another aspect of the third way that should be examined is a philosophy encouraged by Elif Shafak, author of Three Daughters of Eve, which is the belief that faith can be reclaimed from religion. Oftentimes, there can be a disconnect between pre-established organized religion and someone who has faith in God. This happens with her main character, Peri, who finds she cannot relate to her mother’s Islam, nor her father’s secularism. She has an agnostic belief informed by mysticism in her life. Through this, she is allowed to understand the concept of a God and be open to it, while still maintaining her belief in science and education. She breaks the dichotomy between religious and secular education.

Shafak embraces the ambiguity of religion, and all of the complexities of it applied to different cultures and social contexts. There is no way that every person who says they are of a certain religious belief actually believes the same exact thing. Due to the complexity of human beings, religion, being a product of human beings, must mirror them in complexity and nuance. Following this logic, each person should have the opportunity to “choose their own adventure” in a sense and understand their faith in a personalized way. If we look at religion in this way, and a body of worship doesn’t share the same exact thoughts but only similar ones, then there is less of a chance of hate being a product of that.

In this commonplace book, I included a TEDtalk from Lesley Hazleton that I came across in an Introduction to Islam course in my first semester freshman year. It has always stuck with me because of the conclusion she draws that doubt is essential to any kind of faith. In order to have faith in something, one needs to make a conscious decision to believe it in spite of doubt. Too often, in religion, it can feel like either you have blind faith and you’re a good practitioner of said faith, or you have doubt and are a transgressor. Hazleton, agnostic herself, offers a third way out of this. Blind faith is easy. Real faith is choosing to believe something despite your doubt otherwise.