#it is still socially acceptable if it's against women - even in “progressive” groups

[femvent]

I just checked the comments under Neil Gaiman's last post to see if anybody was even talking about the situation and saw someone say that not trusting cis men is TERF rhetoric. You all are a lost cause. You hate TERFs more than you care about women and their oppression at the hands of men.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

hate how problematic is used as a blanket term for everything that’s not perfectly up to date with modern social mores like it removes so much nuance because there’s degrees to everything that it erased.

like. i love rocky horror so fucking much but it has not aged the best in some aspects and i can totally understand why people might not like it because of that. but it was also a very deliberately queer movie made by queer people very obviously making fun of the way society saw queer people at the time (and still do now unfortunately) that had a message of acceptance that was utterly radical at the time, with gender nonconformity and open queer sexuality very explicit. the community around it was a safe haven for queer people at the time and it's influence on the queer scene is massive because it was a massively popular avenue for expression, and not only that but it was an open space for sexuality and expressiveness in general which was still awful even for cishet men and women in the seventies let’s be honest. it’s impact on media and on society has been, for the most part, very positive and well intentioned. I’m not saying it doesn’t have issues, and it doesn’t have negative impacts, but it’s been beloved so long because it was a well intentioned and incredibly progressive film for it’s time that still honestly hits home a lot in some ways even today.

and like, that’s obviously not the same thing as work that has had no positive impact on the world, works whos bigotry is virulent and poisonous, and works created by hatemongers spending active money on hurting people (yes, i know richard o brian has regressive views on trans people, but as far as i know money isn’t literally being donated to fund hate groups from that which is the issue with people like jk rowling.)! it’s absolutely not the same as works that, for instance, deliberately and unironically demonise the queer community. it’s honestly pretty problematic in itself to say a work by queer people very much making fun of their own oppression is the exact same as their oppressors making work about how they deserve to be oppressed. these are clearly very different! a film half a century old having views that were very progressive back then but just aren’t now is something that you should think critically about, but it’s an important part of history and it’s something that can absolutely be still worthwhile to many queer people because it was genuinely made with the intention of lifting up the community! stuff like troubled blood was made solely to oppress us, to keep us down and marginalised, and has no literary and positive impact. while, superficially, you could say these are problematic- and for the same reasons, even!- actually doing basic analysis makes it obvious that one is a result of changing social mores mixed with what was obvious fucking parody of how stupid the stereotype is, and one was written because jk rowling wants trans people dead and unironically thinks we're murderous loonies- the very thing rocky horror was making fun of.

idk man i just guess it fucking sucks to see a lack of critical thinking and i think it does a lot of harm. throwing out things that have genuinely really helped the queer community in the past entirely without critical thought is bad, and treating actual hate speech the same as stuff that’s aged poorly and has some outdated ideas only helps normalise calls for active oppression as merely a mistake, a bad idea, something that’s a problem on the same level as outdated but well meaning portrayals. i honestly think it’s playing into the hands of people who want us gone to do that, as they can paint hate speech as something the general public can tolerate, like they can media with outdated opinions and poor but genuine messaging. and these are just examples, this happens all the time. sometimes to shit that genuinely didn’t do anything wrong- I will never not be mad at the obviously homophobic and transphobic backlash against steven universe getting mimicked by people who are well meaning because it was wrapped up in the words of it being problematic. and that’s why critical thinking on this subject matter is important- else people will try and use it to manipulate you.

[myopicry]

I live somewhere I could likely get hurt. I am chronically ill, so need to take care of myself. I have been attacked by a man who thought he was a woman. He turned a whole group of people against me when I said I hold strong feminist values. I have decidedly leftist, progressive political beliefs, & have been a lifelong ally of LGBT people. I can’t wait until this delusional phase is over & I may feel safe again among friends, some of whom are now trans ideologues.

it is such an unfortunate fact that we live in a reality where people will still demonize and attack women for feminist beliefs. anon, I'm so sorry that happened to you. it also is quite a sad thing that especially in leftist spaces, despite the importance that people put on acceptance, compassion, and speaking your mind, there is still such a heavy level of scrutiny and a focus more and more on the optics of your politics and how they fit in with the crowd versus what kind of actual, tangible allyship you act on. furthermore, it's so so tough in progressive and leftist spaces to know that the friends you've made might completely drop you if you disagree specifically on this one issue of gender, just because all analysis and critique of gender ideology is likened to irredeemable hate, even when there are real issues in the ideology and community that should be pointed out for the betterment of everyone!

if it's any help, I would recommend that you always make sure you prioritize your own safety. it's obviously very important to stand by your beliefs and morals, and generally it's a good idea to be truthful to your friends. but sometimes, strategic lying is just kind of necessary to keep yourself safe! don't feel pressured to ever put yourself at risk because of your beliefs, and it's also okay to not be totally honest with friends and people in your social support network if you know they're mistakenly going to generalize what you say, especially if it could put you in danger. plus, as a woman, people are much harsher on any perceived "lapses" in a performance of agreeability, so from my perspective, I think it's good to keep a little distance from people who would care too much over "gender thought crimes" and don't let them get you into a vulnerable place with your beliefs.

there's an advantage in holding some part of your mind in private, and it sucks so much that in these spaces it can be hard to be yourself and trust people who should care about you and support you as a friend, but yeah, sometimes all you can do is protect yourself and wait it out until the popular opinions shift. of course, it's also good if you can find some outlet for your real beliefs and even find some semblance of community where you can engage in them, or whatever works for you (this is what this blog is for me !! essentially a coping mechanism for the fact I can't endlessly blab about my grievances with gender ideology in real life)

and just overall, anon, I hope you do find friends that will support you first and foremost and not be swayed by the pushing of popular ideology! I wish all the best for you and hope no more danger or harm comes your way. and of course, thank you for visiting my inbox, I believe in hearing people's testimonials, and finding a space to vent your frustrations is incredibly important as well. I can't promise to always have an amazing/enlightening/etc. response to every ask, I've always been just a little bit shit at comforting people in a rough spot because I myself can get quite cynical about the world, but I will try my best to offer some advice, or at least just a listening ear for anyone who wants to speak ♡♡♡

[pokeblader3]

You know that post that’s like “someone can call you ‘bitch’/’fag’ in a way that makes you feel so loved and affirmed, but no slur will hold as much malice as someone with homophobic beliefs saying ‘those people’ in a certain way (often polite and technically correct manner)? That’s how it feels reading how some of the posts on here use “Men”, often before spouting something with subtle underlying transmisogynstic/misandrist (or even outright patriarchal), not blinking twice while saying some shit to queer/trans men/men of color.

It’s not that I disagree with most of their points, I’ve been horribly traumatized and abused my many men and all marginalized men regularly deal with shitty men, both in and out of their community, and have a number of thoughts on the Patriarchy and all the fucked up, insidious ways it gets to you and creates the horrible parts of our society and culture that create traumas and abuse. I regularly spend a lot of day standing up to shitty men for being shitty using all the male-passing privilege I can muster (I still pass pretty well as a ‘cishet’ man). But the way a lot of these posts are phrased often feels... manipulative. Men and women are people, and the number one thing transitioning and being friends with more people opposite my assigned gender has taught me is that human behavior and emotions get ascribed to ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ when they’re just normal emotions we all have. Violence and aggression and cruelty aren’t “masculine”, wisdom and compassion and empathy aren’t “feminine”, even if these things are associated with them because of gender roles and how the Patriarchy has shaped the society around us.

And the fact that people regularly face opposition or get run out of queer groups for being ‘cishet men’ by afab people and (usually cis) women who don’t want to engage with any of our queerness or the fact that we’re feminine (honestly often due to still lingering trauma which makes them distrustful of other people who remind them of their abusers and a lack of actual good mascs in their life who, I get it, I was afraid of men and masculinity for a long time too and had a friend group of mostly women, but it wasn’t healthy and my world is much better for trying to reach out and be close with some who seemed to be kindhearted and genuine, and eventually not be so afraid of other normal people you see on the street)... I’ve probably been discouraged to express myself and my femininity (you know, anti-patriarchal things for a man to do) by women and femmes just as much as I have by men (not mascs, they Get It, and trans men often are adamantly against this behavior but get drowned out or bullied into staying quiet). And it’s so much worse if you’re a masc/enby/transfemme of color, who are demonized for existing and held to impossible beauty standards even by those in the community who are supposed to be ‘on their side’ (and who still hold them to being on their own side). And it’s not like I haven’t been groomed, sexually abused, manipulated, and physically/emotionally abused by women throughout my life, either.

The people who run my state are trying to make crossdressing a sex crime. I cannot go out dressed femininely without risking being queer bashed or made an example of. This is not abnormal in this country, and if you live in a world where men are encouraged to express gender nonconformity and femininity and androgyny is accepted, I hate to burst your bubble but you live in a socially progressive part of this country, and the rest of us get at best bullied relentlessly for any ‘femininity’ from all sides around us.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: David Moulton

Published: Mar 10, 2023

Last month, GLAAD wrote an open letter to The New York Times protesting the paper’s coverage of trans issues. In particular, the group took issue with the way the paper has covered medical sex changes or “gender affirmation” for minors. Contrary to clinicians and experts quoted in the Times, GLAAD asserted the science behind this practice is “SETTLED.” The letter was co-signed by a wide array of human rights groups as well as celebrities like Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow.

GLAAD is a media watchdog group that was founded in the ’80s to protest what they saw as the media’s homophobic coverage of the AIDS crisis. Their name was originally an acronym for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, but in 2013 they formally dropped the words “gay and lesbian” to reflect their advocacy for transgender people and the broader “LGBTQ community.” This shift in emphasis has been typical of gay rights organizations over the past decade, as what was once a movement focused on securing the rights and safety of gay men and women has transformed into a movement with different goals altogether.

The first time I announced my pronouns, “I’m David, he/him,” I was a freshman in college attending a transgender discussion group. It was 2005. At the time it seemed quite progressive—even for me, an openly gay 18-year-old volunteering at my liberal college’s resource center for gay rights. In the most progressive clique at one of the country’s most progressive schools, being transgender was still mostly a theoretical concept—a new frontier that college kids were just beginning to discover.

My next “trans encounter” happened half a decade later when I was living in San Francisco. My best friend in the city was another gay man, about 15 years older than me. In the late ’80s and ’90s, he had been involved with ACT UP, the confrontational activist group fighting against AIDS stigma, and he served as my guide to both the new city and its politics.

He had studied recondite critical and cultural theories at Berkeley and later in New York at NYU and Columbia. I looked to him as a mentor and a model of what it meant to be gay. His homosexuality was not just a random fact like eye color but rather a vehicle to defy and critique social norms. Put differently, he wasn’t just gay, he was queer. This entailed, among other duties, being the first person to explain the word “cis” to me.

Despite his militancy—or perhaps because of it—my friend had a wicked sense of humor, and could be quite cutting toward the left-wing activist milieu that came to dominate queer and trans spaces. I remember once, when I was a bit under the weather, I complained about being congested and then apologized for whining. My friend deadpanned, “Sounds like a cisgender problem.” I laughed. “Trans people never get a stuffy nose?” I asked. He replied, “No, because they’re too busy snorting drugs to dull the pain of living in a transphobic world.” At the time (this would have been around 2012) it was still practically impossible to imagine these terms—cisgender, queer—being embraced and affirmed by Wall Street and the Pentagon. But my friend traveled in circles that had already moved beyond the mainstream acceptance of gays, and were advocating for new, more radical sexual and gender identities.

If trans was going to be the next civil rights movement (and make no mistake, before it was officially announced by Hollywood and the DEI offices of corporate America there was a vanguard pushing for it), it required not just an oppressed class but also an oppressor class. “Cis” filled this role even though it didn’t really mean anything other than “not trans.” Cis society became a battleground whose rules and norms had to be subverted.

It was in fact my friend who introduced me to the concept of “misgendering” as a personal offense. He told me that someone in his circles had been talking about me behind my back in glowing terms. He said that this person had been referring to me as “they,” so as not to assume my gender. I asked my friend if this person did that when talking about everyone. Not everyone, my friend said, just people who seem like they’re with it. This was deeply flattering. I was seen as cool and edgy enough to have a flashy new gender identity.

I started dating a man and my life became more stable and domestic. I ceased to desire being queer in the radical sense. I just happened to be a homosexual living my life. Meanwhile the public fortunes of gay people kept getting better and better. Obama became the first president in history to endorse gay marriage and it seemed to actually help his reelection campaign. In 2015 the Supreme Court ruled on Obergefell, identifying marriage as a fundamental right for all Americans, including gay ones. I had to marvel at the change in attitudes toward gay people in my lifetime. I first came out at 14, in 2001. My family was accepting, but there were still anti-sodomy laws on the books in some states. Homosexuals were not allowed to serve openly in the military. No viable presidential candidate from either party supported gay marriage. By 2015, in just a little over a decade, gay rights had won a total and unequivocal victory.

Today support for gay marriage is at an all-time high, with 71% of Americans backing it, including most Republicans. While left-wing causes like economic justice and equality have stalled, progressives can confidently claim to have won this culture war. If anything the victory was perhaps too sudden and total. In the fight for gay marriage, an activist infrastructure was built up; after Obergefell, the activists needed a new cause and found one in gender ideology.

The embrace of the transgender cause by America’s gay organizations is often presented as a matter of natural allyship between the closely related members of the LGBTQ coalition. In my view this is a misunderstanding. The interests of legacy gay rights organizations have increasingly become divorced from their traditional constituents, gay men and lesbians. For example: By 2016, the Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest gay rights organization, was using the word “transgender” more than “gay” and “lesbian” combined in its annual reports.

A number of states now have laws banning the practice of “conversion therapy” and an even broader stigma exists against efforts to medically alter the sexuality of gay people. But the same is not true when it comes to gender, where the situation is roughly reversed. Gender has become the point at which the interests of a professional activist class intersect with those of the pharmaceutical and medical tech industry.

According to GLAAD, gender identity is “one’s own internal sense of self and their gender,” and is separate from biological sex. This emphasis on the immaterial over the physical can lead to the body becoming fungible material for medical experiments. Physically healthy people can be turned into lifelong medical patients for profit. In the business press, trans tech is touted as a budding industry. One savvy entrepreneur has estimated the transition market as “in excess of $200B.”

The executive branch of the U.S. government actively supports pediatric gender transition. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine is a vocal proponent of medical transition as the appropriate treatment for youth with dysphoria; furthermore, the administration supports the right of K-12 public schools to socially transition students with or without their parents’ consent. Social transition is the practice of treating a prepubescent child as if they were literally a member of the opposite sex. While it does not involve any direct medical intervention, social transition has been shown to make it less likely for the child to resolve their dysphoria on their own. This can in turn lock them into a lifelong path of medicalization involving the off-label use of cancer drugs to block puberty as well as cross sex hormones and surgeries.

Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford, has said: “Given paucity of evidence, the off-label use of drugs … in gender dysphoria treatment largely means an unregulated live experiment on children.”

Gender is big business, but it would be a mistake to say this is all about the money. The ideology also provides a framework for young people coming of age in an increasingly disembodied culture. As a millennial born in the second half of the ’80s, I can remember adults warning me and my peers against spending too much time on the screen. Video games, TV, the early internet—the responsible adult world tried to ration our access to these things. They were united in their message that the real, physical world was superior. With the ubiquity of smartphones this became harder to maintain, and then in 2020 there was a normative shift with the pandemic response. Social distancing became the virtuous thing to do. The physical world was dangerous.

It should not be a surprise that a generation raised to think of physical reality as secondary to the personalized experience of digital reality would latch onto gender. According to one poll, 21% of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ+. This is an astonishingly high figure, but it makes sense when you consider that in its current use identity is conceived as an inner essence that has very little to do with sex or the body. The figure is consistent with other research showing teenagers today have much less sex than previous generations. In place of embodied experience, young people increasingly have incorporeal “identities.”

I can relate. I was as confused as anyone when COVID hit and San Francisco suddenly shut down in late March 2020. At first, I believed that I was just following the science, and was unaware of existing pandemic preparation guides that stressed the importance of maintaining a normal life as much as possible during an emergency. The new lockdown paradigm was to act as if it were possible to simply freeze society and move life online. This may have worked for some people but not everyone could see lockdowns that way. I had been working in the tourism industry and almost immediately lost my job. My boyfriend and I got into screaming fights that summer. Living in a cramped apartment I had always needed other places—cafes and bars—I could escape to. Without that our relationship unraveled.

I needed a vibrant city, and it was gone. San Francisco had been turned off like a light switch, and transformed into a faceless place. The life I’d built for myself after 10 years in San Francisco, humble as it was, had ended. By the end of the year I’d moved to Minneapolis where my family lived.

In summer 2020, before leaving the city, I would occasionally take to Facebook to voice doubts about the official COVID response. I was startled by the vehemence with which people I knew defended the lockdown model. I was accused of spreading Koch brother propaganda when I shared an article on herd immunity by Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff.

Virtually all the leftists I knew were strongly in favor of closing schools—and keeping them closed indefinitely. I found this hard to square with their supposed belief in public education as a human right. Any questioning of the official narrative, however, was caricatured as eugenics, science denial, or simply wanting people to die. The world came to be divided between the good people who “followed the science” and locked down and the bad ones who didn’t. I was on one side of that divide and the majority of the people in my life were on the other.

Seeing a pseudoscientific consensus manufactured in real time, I began to question everything else I thought I knew. Inevitably this brought me back to gender. Even before COVID I’d noticed that it was becoming more and more common to introduce your third person pronouns at the start of a meeting. The eccentric practice I’d first encountered as a teenager was widespread—sometimes even mandatory—by 2019. Now it was no longer just a select few; seemingly everyone had a gender identity.

As with COVID lockdowns, this is a radical new experiment being passed off as firmly established consensus. Researchers and clinicians who dissent are targeted by activists. Borderline fraudulent studies are trotted out as definitive proof. Just as it was for COVID, the manufactured consensus on gender gets enforced politically by the progressive left. It’s as if my old comrades on the left have given up on any optimistic vision of democratic social transformation. In lieu of that, they make do with technocratic social engineering.

I could choose to stop being a leftist but can’t stop being gay. It’s still the most fundamental part of who I am. I have to face the sickening fact that much of this medical abuse is being carried out in my name. All the major gay rights organizations support an affirmative model for transitioning minors. They could have closed shop after achieving full equality, but no. “Gay rights” became institutionalized and morphed into a permanent LGBTQ+ industry. The public goodwill built up for gays and lesbians over the past generation is now being channeled into an entirely different cause.

I think back to my old friend and mentor in San Francisco, always on the cutting edge of every social movement. In my 20s I wanted to emulate his wisdom and radical disposition. I could not foresee the ways this disposition would be coopted in less than a generation. These days, seemingly all of society is becoming “queer,” and Pride is now something that everyone is expected to celebrate, even NASCAR. This new regime is appallingly humorless and literal-minded, lacking my old friend’s intensity, creativity, and wit. Yet it uses a lot of the vocabulary I first learned from him—“cis” and “trans” as well as “misgendering,” and coopts this former vanguard’s moral courage.

We, as gay men, have gone from being outsiders to mascots of an ideology that’s pushing hideous medical experiments on children—the wedge, it almost seems, to a new medical dystopia. If I now feel the need to once again make my sexuality a political issue, to speak “as a gay man,” it’s for the sake of disavowing this turn of events.

[hoursofreading]

Some of Perry’s arguments, then, support the “biology is destiny” ticket that most feminists roundly reject. For her, women going out to work after having babies means “physically prising apart women from their children”. Men are biologically programmed to spread their seed, and so they primarily rape women aged between 12 and 25, because this group is most physically attractive to them. Perry also claims that most rape is committed by men who are at their sexual peak — even though we know that a significant minority of married men have sex with their wives when they are not consenting. To blame a biological “urge” for rape is no different from arguing that because some men are more likely to beat their wives when they are drunk, their behaviour is the fault of the alcohol. A pessimistic view of men runs through this book like a stick of Blackpool rock. Perry accuses radical feminists — barely mentioned, despite our impressive track record of putting the issue of male violence on the political, legal and social stage — of “utopianism”. I freely admit to having a vision of a world free from male violence, where rape, prostitution and femicide are distant memories. And although utopian thinking can never be a substitute for action, we cannot change the world without imagining a better one. Every single refusal to accept the status quo edges us a little bit closer to a world free of sexual violence, a world which I believe it is our imperative to strive for. Perry, on the other hand, seems to doubt that we can end male violence and suggests that all we can do is contain men’s behaviour, preferably via marriage. I struggle to see how this argument is any different from the suggestion that giving violent men an outlet through prostitution reduces violence against women; surely it simply designates a category of women whom it is acceptable for men to abuse? And I am too optimistic to think that women will always need to be protected by chivalrous men from their predatory counterparts; this is the antithesis of the freedom I crave and deserve. But for Perry, chivalry is a good thing and monogamous marriage is the best foundation to build a family. Girls and women should avoid being alone with men they don’t know or who give them the creeps; sexually aggressive men can often be readily spotted because they are impulsive, promiscuous, hyper-masculine and disagreeable. A woman should, she suggests, court a man for a few months without offering any sex and see if he plays nicely. If he does, he is husband and father material, so marry him, have the baby and stay married — even if you get a bit miserable and bored further down the line. Aside from transporting women back to the Victorian era, as a solution to the danger of rape and abuse, this completely defies logic. Men who beat and rape their wives are often Jekyll and Hyde. In the first few months of a relationship, they are charming, almost too good to be true. It is only when a woman is trapped as his wife and the mother of his children that the violence emerges. Prior to 1992, rape in marriage was not even a crime, and many women still feel that if they unwillingly have sex with their husband it doesn’t count as rape. Contrary to Perry’s view, getting married and staying married is perhaps the most straightforward way to ensure that a woman will be compelled to endure male sexual aggression and coercive control. Perry tells us that loveless sex is not “empowering” for women. So what? It can be fabulous fun. If our actions were guided by this depressing idea, as well as Perry’s passionate endorsement of marriage, we would indeed return to the status quo of the Fifties. We need not accept either the progressive creed that “all sex is good sex”, or the conservative recommendation that marriage and monogamy are best. There is another, bigger, much more daring and ambitious project that feminists have been engaged in — with some success, despite the huge misogynistic backlash we are facing at the moment — and that is the true liberation of women. If we fail to imagine a world free of all forms of male violence, we will never achieve it. Rather than tell women they should contain the beast, should we not rather be equipping her to slay him?

In defence of loveless sex - UnHerd

[crackspinewornpages]

Les Misérables 160/365 -Victor Hugo

151

The gamin loves the city all things of interest and souvenirs. Anyone who goes through Paris sees the group of children free and playing, “this constitutes all the earth to those children. They never venture beyond this. They can no more escape from the Parisian atmosphere than fish can escape from water.”p.374 (they are a product of their environment it’s all they know and they can't escape for anywhere else)

152

Stray children are around an estimated 2609 homeless, a disastrous social system. “All crimes of the man begin in the vagabond of the child.”p.374 In any other city a vagabond child is left for itself in Paris they have an almost intact interior. While it doesn’t diminish the anguish to see fractured families. The monarchy didn’t discourage discarding children, it was in sometimes need of them, so they skimmed the streets. Lois XIV had a fleet and a need of galley slaves, so parliament made as many convicts as possible if a street child was fifteen there he went. (this just reminds me of the American prison industrial complex and how the courts are prejudice against the poor and minorities and how convicted felons aren’t allowed to vote so the politicians that allow this stay in power)  

153

The street Arabs in Paris are almost a caste. (yeah that makes sense even the streets have a social order)

154

The police keep an eye on the gamin, in 1830 they cried warnings to each other. The gamin knows all the police and faces of anyone he meets, studying habits. (kid’s got street smarts)

155

The Paris gamin is respectful and insolent, all beliefs are possible to him, he is one that finds amusement because he is unhappy.

156

The gamin today is gone, cured by light, universal education, men make men. Paris is the top of the human race, it accepts everything royally. “All civilizations are there in an abridged form, all barbarians also, Paris would greatly regret it if it had not a guilotine.”p.379 (I think it has some regrets of the guillotine)

157

There is no limit to Paris, it makes law fashion, routine if it’s fit to be stupid the universe it stupid company. Tempered explosions, masterpieces, pedigrees, all forms sublime, though scolding or laughing, Paris shows its teeth, it’s immense and daring, the price of progress and conquests and the prize. “It is necessity, for the sole of the forward march of the human race,”p.380

158

To paint the child is to paint the city, (a country is only as rich as its poorest citizen) suffering and toil, the two faces of man, would you abandon the barefoot and illiterate, can light not penetrate them.  

159

Nine years after the second part of the story people noticed a boy on the Boulevard du Temple, he was about twelve, dressed in rags of charity because his parents didn’t love or think of him. He was better off on the street because he was free. Every few months he went back to the Gorbeau hovel, to Madame Bourgon who let out the space which now housed a family with two daughters. While dismissive of him his mother loved his sisters, the boy was called Little Gavroche. Next to the family’s room was one belonging to M. Marius.

BOOK SECOND THE GREAT BOURGEOIS

160

There are a few old inhabitants who remember a man named M. Gillenormand, in 1831 he was a curiosity simply because he was so old. A bourgeois of the eighteenth century, ninety with all his teeth and claimed to be too poor for women. An old man in good health and still threw into passions on subjects and beat people with his cane and had a daughter in her fifties. His philosophy was nature gives specimens of amusing barbarism so civilization can have a little of everything.

NEXT

[qqueenofhades]

Okay, I’ve read Joe Biden’s plans.

I’ve just sat down and spent several hours actually reading all the damn plans on his website, the whole thing, so you don’t have to. And here’s the conclusion:

They’re pretty good.

Are they absolutely everything we want immediately? Maybe not. Are they a solid Democratic agenda anyway? Yes they are. Are they better than Trump?

Light years!

His Violence Against Women plan is lengthy, detailed, and pays specific attention to violence against Native, lesbian and bisexual, low-income, disabled, rural, transgender (especially trans women of color) immigrant, domestic abuse victims, and other vulnerable women. He calls for replacing and expanding Obama-era policies and funding for campus sexual assault programs that DeVos trashed, and for providing money for culturally specific services that are sensitive to the diverse backgrounds of survivors. He also notes that sexual assault, while it predominantly affects women and girls, needs to be taken seriously and addressed for people of all gender identities.

His gun safety plan is forceful and lays out several steps for banning assault weapons, taking existing weapons from offenders, closing gun purchase background check and other legal loopholes, addressing the intersection between domestic violence and weapons ownership, and reducing or eliminating weapons and ammunition stockpiling.

His plan for tackling climate change and creating green jobs is also lengthy. He makes the connection between economic, environmental, and racial justice. He pledges to immediately rejoin the Paris Agreement and restore American leadership on the issue in pushing for even stronger climate standards, make climate change a central part of our trade, international, and justice goals, demand a worldwide ban on fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks (!!!) and if the Green New Deal is passed, to sign it, as well as for the U.S. to achieve 100% clean energy and zero percent net emissions by 2050.

His healthcare plan is decent. It offers an immediate public option for all Americans regardless of private, employer, or no coverage, and generous new tax credits to put toward the cost of coverage. It strongly protects abortion rights and federal funding for Planned Parenthood, as well as rescinding the “gag rule” that prevents U.S. federal aid money from being used to provide or even talk about abortions in NGOs abroad. It attacks generic and drug price gouging. It calls for doubling the capital gains tax on the super-wealthy (from 20% to 39.5% paid on capital gains by anyone making over $1 million) to help fund healthcare reform. He also has a separate plan on the opioid crisis in America, and on older Americans and retirement, including the protection and re-funding of Medicare and Social Security.

His immigration plan is lengthy and detailed. He apologizes for and acknowledges the excessive deportation that occured during the Obama-Biden administrations, pledges to do better, and attacks Trump’s current inhumane acitivities on every front. The policy of children in cages, indefinite detention, the metered asylum system, and the Muslim Ban are gone on day one. In this and his LGBTQ plan, he notes the vulnerability of LGBTQ refugees, incuding LGBTQ refugees of color. He proposes streamlining of visa applications and prioritizing the immediate reunification of families. It also specifically states that ICE and CBP agents will be held directly accountable for inhumane treatment.

Speaking of which, his LGBTQ plan is comprehensive. It pays attention to multiple intersectional issues, down to the high rates of incarceration among trans people of color. (He also notes the rates of violence against trans women of color particularly.) He calls for a complete ban on conversion therapy and the discrimination against HIV-status individuals, as well as removing the ban on blood donation from gay and bisexual men. He will remove the transgender military ban immediately. He calls for funding for mental health and suicide prevention among LGBTQ populations.

His plan to empower workers calls for raising the federal minimum wage to $15, as well as indexing this to median hourly wages to ensure that working-class and middle-class wages grow closer to parity, and implementing strong legal protections for unions. He expresses support for striking workers and to empower the National Labor Relations Board in workplace advocacy. Farmworkers, domestic workers, gig economy workers, and other non-traditional labor groups are included in this. He will restore all Obama-Biden policies related to workplace safety and regulation.

His plan to restore American dignity and leadership in the world calls for immediately investing in election security and reform, restoration of the Voting Rights Act, immediately restoring White House press briefings and other Trump refusals of information, tackling criminal justice reform and systematic racial discrimination, calling for campaign finance reform, and basically blowing up all the stupid things the Trump administration does on a daily basis. It also calls for an end to all ongoing wars in the Middle East, restoring the Iran nuclear deal, and new arms control treaties with Russia, among general repairing of international alliances.

His plans for K-12 education and post-high school education call for greatly expanded funding across all levels of 2-year, 4-year, and other educational options. There will be no student loan payments for anyone making under $25,000 a year; everyone else will pay a capped amount and be completely forgiven after a certain period. Public servants qualify for up to $50,000 in loan forgiveness. This is not total loan forgiveness for everyone, which is obviously important for me and many of us, but it’s acceptable to start with. Additionally, his wife is a teacher and has a proven track record of calling for education investment and supporting public school funding.

His plan for housing addresses the needs of formerly incarcerated, LGBTQ, veteran, low-income, sexual assault survivor, black and Hispanic, and other vulnerable populations at risk of losing housing. It calls for a tax on companies and corporations with in excess of $50 billion in assets to fund comprehensive new housing initiatives, including $100 billion in accessible and low-income housing development. It includes extensive investment in public transportation and a high-speed rail system. This ties into his plan to repair infrastructure and invest in new technologies across the country.

His plan for criminal justice reform calls for the end of mass incarceration, the decriminalization of marijuana, the automatic expunging of all cannabis convictions, and an end on jail sentences for drug use. It highlights systematic institutional racism and the impact on black and brown people particularly. It calls for an end on all profiteering and private prisons. It focuses on reintegrating offenders into society and funding the needs of people released from prison. It proposes to “expand and use the power of the U.S. Justice Department to address systemic misconduct in police departments and prosecutors’ offices.” It broadens funding for social services and other programs for people who are otherwise placed into the prison pipeline.

There are more plans, which you can find here. These are the ones I read top to bottom. I am not by any means a Joe Biden fangirl; he was not my first choice, my second choice, or really anywhere on my list. However, having carefully read through his policy documents, I can say that:

He has at the least a good team of advisors who are keenly aware of the political climate, and is willing to both restore Obama-era standards and to improve on them where necessary. Obviously, all politicians’ promises are politicians’ promises, but this is a solid Democratic platform with obvious awareness of the progressive wing of the party.

If progressive legislation is passed in the House and Senate, he will sign it, including the Green New Deal.

He represents a clear and definite improvement over Donald Trump.

Is he everything we want? No. Are his policies better than I was expecting? Yes. I advise you to read through them for yourself. It has made me at least feel better about the likelihood of voting for him.

I realize it’s an unsexy position, especially on tumblr, to advocate for an old centrist white man. I’m not thrilled about having to do it. However, speaking as someone who was very resistant to Biden and still doesn’t agree with all of his previous legislative track record, that’s my consensus. He is a candidate who broadly aligns with values that I care about. His policies represent a concrete end to the damage of the Trump administration and gets us on the right track again.

Joe Biden, if he is the Democratic nominee, will receive my vote on November 3, 2020. I urge you to consider what I’ve laid out above and join me.

[radsloth95]

I think what really breaks my heart about the way that gender identity/trans ideology being lumped in with sexual orientation is how it further polarizes political, social and religious groups. When we perceive our close held values as being attacked, our immediate defense is to double down and use confirmation bias to find evidence that supports our worldview.

For example, we see these religious groups like catholicism and mormonism that are against gay marriage, where progress might have changed some more minds with time. But now people can just take any legitimate story about transgender debate (e.g. trans athletes taking over women's sports or people claiming their 7 year old is transgender because he likes to wear dresses) and use it as their evidence. It would sound something like 'Look at what the LGBTQ community is doing now, this is what will happen everywhere if we support them'. And because it's all lumped together, their solid reasoning for being against gender ideology becomes an automatic defense against the lgb community.

You can see the exact opposite mindset occurring in any liberal group where to have an accepting mindset now means you must not only accept all persons but you must also refer to them the way they want to be referred to, lest you cause children to commit suicide. (And the increased incidence of suicide or attempted suicide was and still is a very real problem for gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens and young adults, so the idea that 'misgendering' someone could cause the same problem has a very real effect on people who want to be accepting of others.)

Just look at the new employee orientation for my job, which had a fake scenario wherein two employees joked to each other after a patient left about how weird it was that the patient used they/them pronouns when 'everyone could clearly see he was a man'. This scenario was there to point out how 'extremely disrespectful' it was to joke about the man's pronouns. Later this week, I get to take a course on gender affirming Healthcare. I work for a major Healthcare provider that claims to support evidence based practices. (Insert eyeroll emoji here.) These are examples of a major provider trying to appear as accepting of everyone and not wanting to show hostility against future patients and their future money. By lumping in gender identity with sexual orientation, it makes the idea of gender identity seem like just as much of a hot button issue in need of protection against discrimination, so large corporations want to prove their worth in being supportive of gender ideology.

My point is that I feel like 10 years ago, we were actually well on our way to a more accepting world where members of some conservative groups were starting to accept gay marriage and the idea of sexual orientation being innate might have one day become an extremely common view point and generally well accepted idea in society. Look at how progressive changes 100 years ago become the normal viewpoint in time, like how polarizing the idea of giving women the right to vote was, but now no one would ever argue with it. I think we could have had an more accepting world in supporting the lgb community, but then gender ideology went and married itself (themselves?) to sexual orientation, for better or for worse. And now if sexual orientation wants out of the deal, are we even surprised that no one believes us about gender ideology being abusive? When have they ever believed the victim in a marriage dispute before?

[fatliberation]

I’m Abandoning Body Positivity and Here’s Why

In short: it’s fatphobic.

“A rallying cry for a shift in societal norms has now become the skinny girl’s reassurance that she isn’t really fat. Fatness, through this lens of ‘body positivity’, remains the worst thing a person can be.” (Kayleigh Donaldson)

•  •  •

I have always had a lot of conflicting opinions about the body positivity movement, but it’s much more widely known (and accepted, go figure) than the fat liberation movement, so I often used the two terms interchangeably in conversation about anti-fatness. But the longer I’ve been following the body positivity movement, the more I’ve realized how much it has strayed from its fat lib origins. It has been hijacked; deluded to center thin, able, white, socially acceptable bodies.

Bopo’s origins are undoubtedly grounded in fat liberation. The fat activists of the 1960s paved the way for the shred of size acceptance we see in media today, initially protesting the discrimination and lack of access to equal opportunities for fat people specifically. This early movement highlighted the abuse, mental health struggles, malpractice in the medical field, and called for equal pay, equal access, equal respect, an end to fatphobic structures and ideas. It saddens me that it hasn’t made much progress in those regards. 

Today, the #bopo movement encapsulates more the idea of loving your own body versus ensuring that individuals regardless of their weight and appearance are given equal opportunities in the workplace, schools, fashion and media. Somehow those demands never made it outside of the ‘taboo’ category, and privileged people would much more readily accept the warm and fuzzy, sugar-coated message of “love yourself!” But as @yrfatfriend once said, this idea reduces fat people’s struggles to a problem of mindset, rather than a product of external oppressors that need to be abolished in order for fat people to live freely.

That generalized statement, “love yourself,” is how a movement started by fat people for the rights of fat people was diluted so much, it now serves a thin model on Instagram posting about how she has a tummy roll and cellulite on her thighs - then getting praised for loving her body despite *gasp!* its minor resemblance to a fat body. 

Look. Pretty much everyone has insecurities about their bodies, especially those of us who belong to marginalized groups. If you don’t have body issues, you’re a privileged miracle, but our beauty-obsessed society has conditioned us to want to look a certain way, and if we have any features that the western beauty standard considers as “flaws,” yeah! We feel bad about it! So it’s not surprising that people who feel bad about themselves would want to hop on a movement that says ‘hey, you’re beautiful as you are!’ That’s a message everyone would like to hear. Any person who has once thought of themselves as less than beautiful now feels that this movement is theirs. And everyone has insecurities, so everyone feels entitled to the safe space. And when a space made for a minority includes the majority, the cycle happens again and the majority oppresses the minority. What I’m trying to explain here is that thin people now feel a sense of ownership over body positive spaces. 

Regardless of how badly thin people feel about their bodies, they still experience thin privilege. They can sit down in a theater or an airplane without even thinking about it, they can eat in front of others without judgement, they can go the doctor with a problem and actually have it fixed right away, they can find cute clothes in their size with ease, they do not suffer from assumptions of laziness/failure based on stereotype, they see their body type represented everywhere in media, the list goes on and on. They do not face discrimination based off of the size of their body. 

Yet diet culture and fatphobia affects everyone, and of course thin people do still feel bad about the little fat they have on their bodies. But the failure to examine WHY they feel bad about it, is what perpetuates fatphobia within the bopo movement. They’re labeled “brave” for showing a pinch of chub, yet fail to address what makes it so acceptably daring, and how damaging it is to people who are shamed for living in fat bodies. Much like the rest of society, thin body positivity is still driven by the fear of fat, and does nothing to dismantle fatphobia within structures or within themselves.

Evette Dionne sums it up perfectly in her article, “The Fragility of Body Positivity: How a Radical Movement Lost Its Way.”

“The body-positive media economy centers these affirming, empowering, let-me-pinch-a-fat-roll-to-show-how-much-I-love-myself stories while failing to actually challenge institutions to stop discriminating against fat people. More importantly, most of those stories center thin, white, cisgender, heterosexual women who have co-opted the movement to build their brands. Rutter has labeled this erasure ‘Socially Acceptable Body Positivity.’

“On social media, it actually gets worse for fat bodies: We’re not just being erased from body positivity, fat women are being actively vilified. Health has become the stick with which to beat fat people with [sic], and the benchmark for whether body positivity should include someone” (Dionne).

Ah, yes. The medicalization of fat bodies, and the moralization of health. I’ve ranted about this before. Countless comments on posts of big women that say stuff like “I’m all for body positivity, but this is just unhealthy and it shouldn’t be celebrated.” I’ve heard writer/activist Aubrey Gordon once say that body positivity has become something like a shield for anti-fatness. It’s anti-fatness that has been repackaged as empowerment. It’s a striking double-standard. Fat people are told to be comfortable in their bodies (as if that’s what’s going to fix things) but in turn are punished when they’re okay with being fat. Make it make sense.

Since thin people feel a sense of ownership over body positive spaces, and they get to hide behind “health” when they are picking and choosing who can and cannot be body positive, they base it off of who looks the most socially acceptable. And I’m sure they aren’t consciously picking and choosing, it comes from implicit bias. But the socially acceptable bodies they center are small to medium fat, with an hourglass shape. They have shaped a new beauty standard specifically FOR FAT PEOPLE. (Have you ever seen a plus sized model with neck fat?? I’m genuinely asking because I have yet to find one!) The bopo movement works to exclude and silence people who are on the largest end of the weight spectrum. 

Speaking of exclusion, let’s talk about fashion for a minute.

For some reason, (COUGH COUGH CAPITALISM) body positivity is largely centered around fashion. And surprise surprise, it’s still not inclusive to fat people. Fashion companies get a pat on the back for expanding their sizing two sizes up from what they previously offered, when they are still leaving out larger fat people completely. In general, clothing companies charge more for clothes with more fabric, so people who need the largest sizes are left high and dry. It’s next to impossible to find affordable clothes that also look nice. Fashion piggybacks on the bopo movement as a marketing tactic, and exploits the very bodies it claims to be serving. (Need I mention the time Urban Outfitters used a "curvy” model to sell a size it doesn’t even carry?)

The movement also works to exclude and silence fat Black activists.

In her article, “The Body Positivity Movement Both Takes From and Erases Fat Black Women” Donyae Coles explains how both white people and thin celebrities such as Jameela Jamil profit from the movement that Black women built.

“Since long before blogging was a thing, fat Black women have been vocal about body acceptance, with women like Sharon Quinn and Marie Denee, or the work of Sonya Renee Taylor with The Body Is Not An Apology. We’ve been out here, and we’re still here, but the overwhelming face of the movement is white and thin because the mainstream still craves it, and white and thin people have no problem with profiting off the work of fat, non-white bodies.”

“There is a persistent belief that when thin and/or white people enter the body positive realm and begin to repeat the messages that Black women have been saying for years in some cases, when they imitate the labor that Black women have already put in that we should be thankful that they are “boosting” our message. This completely ignores the fact that in doing so they are profiting off of that labor. They are gaining the notoriety, the mark of an expert in something they learned from an ignored Black woman” (Coles).

My next essay will go into detail about this and illuminate key figures who paved the way for body acceptance in communities of color. 

The true purpose of this movement has gotten completely lost. So where the fuck do we go from here? 

We break up with it, and run back to the faithful ex our parents disapproved of. We go back to the roots of the fat liberation movement, carved out for us by the fat feminists, the queer fat activists, the fat Black community, and the allies it began with. Everything they have preached since the 1960s and 70s is one hundred percent applicable today. We get educated. We examine diet culture through a capitalist lens. We tackle thin, white-supremacist systems and weight based discrimination, as well as internalized bias. We challenge our healthcare workers to unlearn their bias, treat, and support fat patients accordingly. We make our homes and spaces accessible and welcoming to people of any size, or any (dis)ability. “We must first protect and uplift people in marginalized bodies, only then can we mandate self-love” (Gordon).

Think about it. In the face of discrimination, mistreatment, and emotional abuse, we as a society are telling fat people to love their bodies, when we should be putting our energy toward removing those fatphobic ideas and structures so that fat people can live in a world that doesn’t require them to feel bad about their bodies. It’s like hitting someone with a rock and telling them not to bruise!

While learning to love and care for the body that you’re in is important, I think that body positivity also fails in teaching that because it puts even more emphasis on beauty. Instead of saying, “you don’t have to be ‘beautiful’ to be loved and appreciated,” its main lesson is that “all bodies are beautiful.” We live in a society obsessed with appearance, and it is irresponsible to ignore the hierarchy of beauty standards that exist in every space. Although it should be relative, “beautiful” has been given a meaning. And that meaning is thin, abled, symmetric, and eurocentric. 

Beauty and ugliness are irrelevant, made-up constructs. People will always be drawn to you no matter what, so you deserve to exist in your body without struggling to conform to an impossible and bigoted standard. Love and accept your body for YOURSELF AND NO ONE ELSE, because you do not exist to please the eyes of other people. That’s what I wish we were teaching instead. Radical self acceptance!

As of today, the ultimate message of the body positivity movement is: Love your body “despite its imperfections.” Or people with “perfect and imperfect bodies both deserve love.” As long as we are upholding the notion that there IS a perfect body that looks a certain way, and every body that falls outside of that category is imperfect, we are upholding white supremacy, eugenics, anti-fatness, and ableism.

[lastsonlost]

Monica Young always dreamed of being a teacher despite grim school years

She claims she was bullied, sexually assaulted and ostracised as a teenager

And yet, she went on to sexually assault a 14-year-old three months into teaching

She claims boyfriend at the time was abusive and his family didn't accept her

But he says the allegations are false - and even vows to still 'be there for her'

Monica Young always dreamed of becoming a teacher despite years of classroom bullying, sexual abuse in the playground and struggling with her grades.

And yet, within three months of landing her dream role at an all-boys school in Sydney's southwest, she started to groom and sexually abuse a 'vulnerable' 14-year-old boy.

The 24-year-old was sentenced in the New South Wales District Court on Wednesday after pleading guilty to three counts of aggravated sexual intercourse with a minor.

Throughout the proceedings, the court heard details of her lonely six years of high school, beginning in grade seven when she was sexually assaulted by a peer.

There was little sympathy for the convicted child abuser as she was led to her cell on Wednesday to begin her four year and nine month sentence, but Judge Kate Traill told the court she was given an insight into the root cause of the offending.

Young struck up a relationship with the boy at the school where she was employed as his teacher, groomed him online and eventually encouraged him to have sex with her - on and off campus - on several occasions.

He was too young to give consent and has since told the court the offending ruined his life.

The boy was forced to drop out of school after his peers found out, and his relationship with his brother, parents and extended family has been strained by the proceedings.

The court heard that Young admitted to knowing the feeling. When she was aged 12 and in grade seven, a boy of a similar age sexually assaulted her by pulling her by the ponytail to his crotch area, and holding her face there.

She reported the assault and the boy was subsequently expelled from school.

But her peers, she claims, bullied her incessantly for 'being a snitch' after the assault and the court heard Young struggled to make any friends at school in the years to follow.

One of her only friends came when she was in year 12 and studying for her HSC with dreams of becoming a school teacher.

The friend was a boy two grades younger than her who repeated year 10 because he struggled academically. He sought her out and what begun as a tutoring dynamic developed into a close friendship.

Eventually the duo became involved romantically, but his traditional Lebanese, Muslim family never approved.

Young agreed to a bureaucratic conversion to Islam in an attempt to gain their trust and with that came concessions for the relationship. She was able to begin sleeping in the same room as her partner and travelling away on holidays together.

They later got engaged and Young was again on the outer with his family, the court heard.

A traditional Islamic ceremony took place, but the court heard the union is not recognised in Australian law.

Young's lawyer claims the relationship soured when her partner began cheating on her, took control of her finances, isolated her from friends and family and 'became abusive'.

He denies the allegations, telling Daily Mail Australia he has 'the utmost respect for women' and only ever treated Young the same way he would want his mother or sister to be treated in a relationship.

Despite the serious claims levelled against him, Young's ex maintains he will continue to offer her support even while behind bars - and despite the fact that she is now single.

But he won't be paying her a visit any time soon, acknowledging inmates get little time to accept visitors and that her immediate family deserve priority access to her.

The court previously heard that Young was not particularly bright, exemplified by her Higher School Certificate ATAR score of just 44.

That mark is just 14 points shy of a 'mystery mark' - a black dot which is generally issued on the testamurs of students who score 30 or below.

Most teaching degrees in Australia have a minimum ATAR acceptance ranking of about 65, but schools have been known to accept lower scores in recent years.

Young's lawyer, Margaret Cunneen SC, previously told the court she would not be considered a 'mature person' for somebody her age and struggled to develop both academically and socially.

Read the raunchy texts Young sent her victim begging for sordid hook-ups before having sex with the boy in the school's stairwell - and even a classroom while the rest of the year nine class watched DISNEY

Young initiated contact with the boy on Snapchat, sending him a message which asked him to 'send pics' in exchange for provocative photos of herself, the NSW District Court's agreed set of facts reveal.

She would also FaceTime the year nine student as she performed sex acts on herself.

Young struck up a relationship with a boy who she taught six times a fortnight in geography, PDHPE and science when they began communicating closely because of the Covid lockdown which shut the school.

On one occasion, she messaged him asking him to hug her at school the next day, and when he didn't, she sent a follow up accusing him of 'not having the balls'.

The dare became a frequent tactic Young used to convince the boy to lure the boy into sexual liaisons.

On another occasion, she sent a message which read: 'It's dangerous if we get caught, but if you do it it'll be worth it'.

The duo exchanged messages about the sex acts they wanted to perform on each other, with Young initiated the 'sexting' on several occasions.

The most brazen of her offending occurred inside the school's classrooms, once where she messaged her victim to meet him in an English room to perform a sex act on him, and a second time where she groped the boy at the back of the classroom while the rest of the year nine class watched Disney movie, WALL-E.

During the movie, a friend of the boy even sat on the other side of him as the sex act took place.

The victim was also encouraged to lie about his whereabouts, telling his mother on one occasion he stayed back late at school to get help on an assignment, and even skipped afternoon classes to spend time with Young.

On the last day of school, the duo met on the staircase at 3.20pm to kiss goodbye, and Young performed oral sex on the 14-year-old.

She then returned to the staff room, the statement of facts read.

When she finally landed her first job at an all boys high school in Sydney's southwest, she was a new graduate specialising in PDHPE, a coveted role among teachers.

Instead, she was assigned 23 geography classes, with a smattering of science and PDHPE classes.

When she took to the stand during her sentencing hearing two weeks ago, she admitted to being overwhelmed by the workload.

Young didn't want to admit she was struggling and ask for help, so she did her best to stay one page ahead of her students by studying the textbooks and teachers' notes each night before class.

Within three weeks, the Covid pandemic closed the schools and Young, along with all of her students, was forced online.

It was during this time that the line between student and teacher was 'criminally blurred', and after years of struggling to bond with people her own age, Young claims she befriended her victim.

But there was no 'friendship'. The boy admitted in a victim impact statement supplied to the court that he never expected Young could hurt him and that he learned to trust her.

To him, she was the 'cool' teacher.

She sought him out on Snapchat and the relationship progressed from there. At one point, there was a group chat between Young, the victim and his friend, the court heard.

They had sex on multiple occasions between June 24 and July 6 2020, including at least twice on the school's grounds and once in her car at a local park.

On one occasion, she messaged him asking him to hug her at school the next day, and when he didn't, she sent a follow up accusing him of 'not having the balls'.

The dare became a frequent tactic Young used to convince the boy to lure the boy into sexual liaisons.

Teenage sexual abuse victim reveals how his life was 'ruined'

In a victim impact statement read to the court, the boy described how his relationship with his brother, parents, only friend and cousin deteriorated when they found out about his relationship with Young.

The boy said he 'feels like a failure who let his entire family down' and has only recently realised the extent of the abuse.

'He says the offender has ruined his dreams… ruined his school and his relationship with his family and friends and trust in others and ruined his life,' Judge Traill said.

The court heard the boy constantly hears his parents bicker and blame each other for not noticing the abuse sooner.

His brother 'hates him for embarrassing him in front of his friends at school' and the victim says he can no longer go on family holidays due to a strained relationship with extended family.

The victim never returned to the school he once loved because all of his peers were aware of the court case, and he is now enrolled at TAFE, despite once having aspirations of becoming a physiotherapist.

'He struggles to smile about anything anymore,' the court heard.

On another occasion, she sent a message which read: 'It's dangerous if we get caught, but if you do it it'll be worth it'.

The duo exchanged messages about the sex acts they wanted to perform on each other, with Young initiated the 'sexting' on several occasions.

The most brazen of her offending occurred inside the school's classrooms, once where she messaged her victim to meet him in an English room to perform a sex act on him, and a second time where she groped the boy at the back of the classroom while the rest of the year nine class watched Disney movie, WALL-E.

During the movie, a friend of the boy even sat on the other side of him as the sex act took place.

On the last day of school, the duo met on the staircase at 3.20pm to kiss goodbye, and Young performed oral sex on the 14-year-old.

At the beginning of her sentencing hearing, she tearfully told the court: 'I just never imagined I'd be one of those people… I've never been in trouble with the law. I hope he and his family can forgive me.

'I was foolish.'

She wrote an apologetic letter to the victim and his family in which she said she regrets letting the relationship progress and understands that both her victim and his family will carry the trauma of the offence 'for the rest of their lives'.

'I knew it was wrong, I knew my actions were inappropriate but I couldn't let myself believe it,' she said. 'He trusted me and I abused that trust.'

On Wednesday, the court agreed.

Judge Kate Traill described her offending as a 'violation of trust' before delivering her sentence. Young will be eligible for parole on October 31st, 2023.

'[You] exploited his vulnerability and manipulated him,' Judge Traill said.

Young was ultimately sentenced to four years and nine months' custody, but with time served she will be eligible for parole in a little more than two years.

She will never be employed as a teacher again, and Judge Traill acknowledged she would need to be reintegrated into the community and her life post-sentence.

'But for these very serious offences she is a very impressive young lady… she was in a very bad relationship and made very bad decisions,' Judge Traill said.

[epicene-humanoid]

some trans Jeff thoughts:

he realized he was trans in elementary school and just went fuck it I'll just start introducing myself as Jeffery and see if anyone decides to stop me (as we know, jeff winger can get away with almost anything)

he got top surgery the second he could afford it (around the same time he started at his law firm), and probably bribed someone to keep it a secret

"I'm jeff winger and i would rather look at myself naked than the women I sleep with" are the words of a man proud of his transition

he's really insecure about his fashion sense, which is why he mostly dresses like the douchey guys at his firm in the start of the show, he thought you can't go wrong with the sleazy lawyer look

he will never admit it but he feels super good about the dean hitting on him, because the dean is a (cis) guy, acknowledging that Jeff is more manly than him

i think he starts out stealth and comes out to everyone one by one, probably starting with abed because he knows abed won't judge him and will probably just see it as an interesting backstory.

abed just says it's cool and maybe worth a prequel exploring Jeff's transition, and jeff asks him to predict how all of the members of the group will react to him coming out.

abed's predictions:

britta will be over-the-top supportive and do a ton of research about trans history, probably put together a slideshow just to prove how progressive she is, and jeff will be a little bit weirded out, but also touched that she did all that for him, though he would never let her know that

shirley will be confused, because she doesn't know how someone she trusts and knows so well could be part of a group she was raised to hate, but ultimately realizes that there's nothing actually against the lgbtq people in the bible, and, as a cool character development arch, starts to advocate against use of the bible to justify bigotry

troy will just think it over and decide that Jeff's physique and coolness are even awesomer knowing how much work he'd had to put in to be like that, and respects Jeff's manliness even more

annie will give him a hug, say something sweet about how she'll always love him, and worry about his health, because even she read somewhere that taking testosterone makes you more likely to have a heart attack, jeff will explain that the risk is still only as high a cis guy, and she'll be the one to always remind him to take his shots

peirce will say at best say "jeff winger used to be a chick?" and at worst call him a slur, either way there's sure to be a lot of misgendering from him, and pestering to know Jeff's deadname (needless to say, Jeff just doesn't tell peirce)

the whole group goes out of their way to keep their beach trips a secret from pierce (the girls don't want him there anyways, he's too liable to be creepy) even though jeff knows that even if pierce saw his scars, all he would have to do is make up a story about some childhood accident and pierce would never question it

sorry this ended up being super long. can I hear some of your headcanons for him?

YES ALL THIS!!! yes yes i’m fully accepting this as canon oh my god

i’m about to type a whole ass ESSAY at midnight because i have been DYING to talk about this for months ajfdksljk,,, this is going to be obscenely long and i might end up adding even more to it as i continue to rewatch the show because there is truly no shortage of trans jeff content (especially when you’re trans and see transness in every little thing ajdkslfkjs)

spoiler warning for literally everything about this show under the cut <3

i 100% agree, i feel like he realized he was trans super young, especially since in the show we see him as a little kid a couple of times. 

like look at little jeff with the oversized sweatshirt and little ponytail!! that’s childhood trans fashion. not to be dramatic but part of me thinks that jeff’s dad left before he fully came out to his family (which gives him even more angst about it, because until that one Thanksgiving episode, he’s never able to prove to his dad that he’s a better man), but part of me thinks that his dad left after he came out (which adds that spicy i-should-have-stayed-in-the-closet guilt that he has to work through). 

either way, because his dad wasn’t there, he had to base his concept of masculinity on something else, which was becoming a lawyer!! there’s some line that’s like “after the dust and divorce papers were settled the only man i looked up to was [the lawyer guy]”. like, replacing your father figure in your mind with the concept of “a job where you can talk your way in and out of anything and distort other people’s concept of reality”? that’s trans.

 and the fucking THANKSGIVING EPISODE... i struggle to watch it without crying hehe <3 yeowch! the dichotomy of willy jr. being the “wrong” kind of man because he’s “too soft” but jeff also not being enough despite adhering to all the social standards of masculinity... fuck!! this whole scene of him telling his dad “i am Not well adjusted” and talking about how he gave himself an “appendix surgery scar” when he was a kid and he still keeps the get-well-soon letters from his classmates under his bed? oh my god. the implication of people loving him not despite his scars but because of them?? trans. i can’t think about this episode for too long or i’ll start yelling.

OH and this scene? where he talks about how his mom got him a girl costume for halloween?? and everyone said “what a cute little girl” and after a few houses he stopped correcting them?? and “once the shame and the fear wore off, i was just glad they thought i was pretty”?? THAT’S TRANS... the man needs validation oh my god... and then in all the halloween episodes we see he has these ultra-masculine costumes (a cowboy, David Beckham, one of the fast and furious guys even though he never watched the movies, a boxer with his DAD’S boxing gloves... god) costumes are about becoming something else and he always chooses to be hypermasculine and that is trans.

THE PHYSICAL EDUCATION EPISODE!!!!!!! being uncomfortable during P.E. is a queer experience. period. but him being specifically uncomfortable in the clothes someone else is assigning to him? trans. “are we gonna talk about clothes like a girl? or use tapered sticks to hit balls around a cushioned mat like a man?” TRANS. and him eventually stripping in public? celebration of transness. and the fact that he eventually becomes comfortable in both the uniform and his own style!! trans!! god i love this episode. 

AND AND AND!!! the gay dean coming out episode!!! where it’s the three of them discussing the best way for the dean to come out as gay despite not entirely identifying with that label!! so we have both frankie and the dean who are sort of ambiguously queer, and jeff who’s a stealth trans man who’s probably only out to only the study group at this point. this scene where the dean and jeff have this like eyebrow communication while frankie is talking is just so cute. queer-to-queer communication. “I am so curious” “oh?” “intellectually.” “oh...” ajfdksljfk this scene just screams high school GSA to me and i love it so much.

and SPEAKING of the dean!! i totally see you on that. i feel like jeff has some internalized homophobia/biphobia (like he’d throw punches over someone else, but when it comes to himself he has a lot of shame). and also seeing the dean so confident in all his different outfits/costumes has a weird affect on him bc it’s like “okay, the dean, a cis guy, can do that, but i as a trans guy could Not because that’s Breaking the Rules”. which, like, throwback to the halloween thing. of course there’s no right way to be masculine, but mr. winger does not know that.

another thing!! the episode where their emails get leaked? that includes his emails with his therapist. fuck!! he was outed to the whole world in that episode!! no wonder he was so fucking angry!! this whole episode (and really any time he mentions his therapist) is so interesting when you think about them as a person he talks to about his transition. OH which adds to the thing with the dean!! “and you told your therapist you wanted to be alone this weekend” and “not you jeff, i know you’ll be visiting your dad” ”I told you to stop reading my emails”. luckily his study group has his back and just makes fun of him for emailing astronauts lmao

and WHO can forget “they’re giving out an award for most handsome young man!!!!” what else is there to say about this line besides: he’s trans. you know he didn’t get awarded enough for being a handsome young man when he was a kid, and no amount of compliments when he’s fully-grown can really make up for that. some people crash a kid’s bar mitzvah to cope with the fact that they struggled to be seen as themselves when they were a teenager <3

also his weird relationship with pierce? where he kind of hates him (understandably lmao) but at times has this almost-friends-almost-father-son relationship with him? especially in this episode where he’s forced to bond with him and ends up having a good time by accident (at a barber shop no less, the perfect place to Be A Man with your Man Friend). idk what to say about him besides the fact that pierce says his mom wanted a girl when he was born and made him dress like a girl (and his middle name is anastasia!) so if they’re gonna do any bonding over transness it’s gonna be that. 

okay one last thing and then i’ll shut up for the night. this episode kills me (and almost kills jeff hahahahelpi’mcrying). it’s a very Trans thing to not be able to visualize your future self, it just is. growing up trans at the time he did? i don’t know what kind of future he saw for himself, but i’m so happy that he ended up with a group of friends who became his family and love him the way they all do. i’m so emotional over this asshole it’s ridiculous. 

in conclusion:

they’re trans, your honor <3

[fandom-oracle]

Wait wdym? Do you think fic is bad?

i'm getting canceled tonight i guess.

if you actually did a good a faith interpretation of my post you know it's not really ABOUT fanfiction at all, i actually write fanfiction myself. i'm not sharing here because it's overwhelmingly bad fic that i write exclusively as wish-fulfilment or for self-projection, but at least i'm self-aware about it. i am ALSO one of the people who reads ze Books™️, although most of the academic material i consume are nonfiction, so this whole thing is particularly annoying to me. the crux of the matter is that, if you're a little younger you might've missed it, but this website was a hotbed of scalding takes like 'dante's divine comedy is literally fanfiction', 'something something is literally fanfiction' when the thing in question barely counts as a transformative work and, in fact, it weakens the definition of transformative work in itself to try to apply it to literally anything that exhibits an ounce of intertextuality. plenty of takes that are... true, but require some nuance, focused on the idea of transformative fandom as a place defined by its presence of overwhelmingly female and disproportionately queer (occasionally, though disputedly, nonwhite) content creators and the ways in which transformative fan content could be interpreted as a space of defiance to cisheteropatriarchy in the way it permeates traditional media. a third, less common but still relevant take was the focus on how certain fandoms such as trek and doctor who have a long history of involvement in real-world civil rights issues and progressive politics. so this kind of take has been the dominant view on tumblr and transformative fandom for a good decade now, perhaps longer, and the people with this kind of takes can sometimes be a little... obnoxious. and the majority of people on transformative fandom (regardless of wether or not the fandom is disproportionately composed of nonwhite individuals or not, by sheer virtue of american demographics and this site`s heaily skewed userbase, the majority will still be white) are white, and like any other space dominated by white people, fandom has often been a vehicle for white supremacy. "Stitch Media Mix" talks about this in-depth. the discourse on fandom racism and ways in which transformative fandom as a whole contribute to racialized stereotypes, hierarchies, and deeper problems within online culture has led to a lot of people with grievances with fandom, many of whom are women of color, to develop an entire online identity built around the concept of being "critical of fandom", which is a very weird thing to do with fandom is literally billions of people, not a unified demographic, and that being critical of something can mean a WIDE amount of things; which in turn has led to a lot of people insulating themselves completely from any criticism of fandom as being inherently in bad faith, which a weird thing to do when literally ANY sphere of society should be open to criticism. people taking critiques of media they consume and taking critiques of their own critiques as personal attacks are abound here and make everything worse. so a fairly recent (mid2018ish, definitely post the insanity of reylo discourse but before sarah z blew up in popularity) trend has been that people in these communities isolate more and more and the general discourse has effetively resulted in people with differing takes in fanfiction specifically but fandom as a Whole (which is, again very weird to say because fandom is not 'a Whole' because there's no unifying element to different fandoms) only interacting with each other in hostile ways. and increasingly, in my personal sphere, a lot of people are positioning themselves in the "fandom critical" (AGAIN, WEIRD THING TO SAY, WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN, PLEASE USE WORDS WITH PRECISION) sphere, and I tend to take that "side" myself, but i specifically do not think framing this as a team A or team B thing is useful. this culture war was in the buildup.

last week a post by a user i follow recently became popular. the post itself was a critique that i.. do not necessarily agree with. it was ultimately about the idea of easily-consumable popular media being seen as an acceptable form of exclusive media engagement by people in the "pro-fandom" sphere, and how the insidiousness of this line of thinking has to do with how capitalist media production is designed to spread, and how fandom AS A TREND, not specifically any individuals or any fanworks, can empower capitalism. the post specifically did NOT use the kindest possible words, but that was what they were trying to say. howelljenkins also has really good takes on the subject, albeit from a different angle.

anyway because this is a circular culture war, the result was as follows: 1) a bunch of pro-fandom types refuse to actually make a charitable reading of the post and insist the user in question hates fandom and thinks people under capitalism shouldn't have things that are Fun, and should Only Read Theory and keep sending anon hate to several blogs in the opposing sphere, therefore proving the point that fandom sometimes prevent people from being able to engage critically with things; 2) a bunch of anti-fandom types who defined their entire identity on hating fandom being like "haha look at these cringe people" instead of trying to understand why a demographic overwhelmingly composed of marginalized people would feel strongly to posts that use inflammatory language against an interest of theirs, thereby proving the point that most criticism of fandom is divorced from actual fan content and is vaguely defined. the reason this is a culture war that actually deserves attention (unlike most fandom culture wars, which are just really granular ship wars made into social justice issues for clout) is that, for the most part, both of these groups are mostly people with college degrees, many of whom will contirbute to academia in the coming years. fan studies is a relevant field. these discussions have repercussions in wider media criticism trends, and this is why i can't really stand it or just passively ignoring it the way i do with most other inconsequential discourse. like it's genuinely upsetting seeing almost every single tumblr user, most of whom should know better, patting themselves in the back for their inability to read things in a way that doesn't feed into preexisting cultural hostilities in fan spaces.

[adrianeringmarc]

Jjba x Twisted wonderland

La squadra is a ragtag group of friends that have come together through their common trait of being held back one or more times. Each has been feared, respected, or disliked strongly thus amounting to their very limited number of friends. 

Though talented in their own sense, they are well known for causing trouble with rumors of them being merciless and cruel.

Melone

Unique Magic: Baby Face

Best subject: Astrology

Club: Science Club

Notorious for being one of the creepiest students in all of NRC. He seems to have every secret every student is trying to hide with excessive knowledge of everyone’s internet history. Everyone strays clear of Melone, for talking to him encourages him to bring up one’s more vulnerable secrets partnered with very personal questions. However, he seems to get along with Rook fairly well, the two coming hand-in-hand with their...hobbies. 

Idia fears him the most with Melone knowing about everything Idia has looked up along with what kind of animes/mangas and games he keeps up with. Leona dislikes him the most due to his association with Rook. 

Crowley has held him back due to his breach of privacy but fears him too much to stop him for the same reason. Melone is considered a menace to all women due to his unique magic and is only allowed in all boys academies. However, he still finds ways to contact women for his magic experiments. 

Risotto Nero

Unique Magic: Metallica

Best subject: Summoning

Club: Gargoyle Research Society

Having probably killed a man, Risotto is wildly feared and respected, almost as much as Malleus. His innate, powerful magic and keen mind make him a man to be appreciated, but his scary appearance and large frame scare off many who have tried to approach him. He has very little friends past the members of la squadra, but he seems to get along with Malleus fairly well. They are in no means friends, being that they are never seen together or talk together when they are seen, but he has confirmed that there is a sense of...comradory between them due to their similar situations. However, due to Risotto’s very open taste in music, they do not progress past that.

He likes Kalim, one of the few that have been kind to him, but he strongly dislikes Jamil for his two-faced nature. Since the two are often seen together, Risotto does not interact with them often. 

He has been held back many times, but Crowley refuses to answer why.

Prosciutto

Unique Magic: Grateful Dead

Best subject: Magical Pharmaceuticals

Club: none

Hidden beneath his younger brother’s shadow, Prosciutto had been known to be a little off from Vil. Beautiful, but not quite as beautiful as Vil. Smart, but not quite as smart as Vil. Reliable, but not quite as reliable as Vil. Graceful, feared, loved, and respected...but not as much as Vil, Prosciutto had found himself falling short to his younger brother. This had built envy in the man Prosciutto began to adopt a more hostile and cold personality when he had lost his position of Dorm Head to him. 

He despises Rook for his blinding praise of Vil and his backhanded compliments to Prosciutto. He has come to take a liking for Epel, even bringing him under his wing along with Pesci when Vil is not there to steal him away from him. He seems to get along well with the Leech twins and Azul due to his excessive knowledge of bars and well-assorted drinks (he had insisted on adding alcoholic beverages once or twice before).

Prosciutto had been held back due to the assault of another student. However, the details on that have been vague, dwindling to only rumors. 

Pesci

Unique Magic: Beach Boy

Best subject: Arts

Club: Boardgame club

Shy and withdrawn, it is a miracle and shocking to find that he had been held back just like his other friends. He tends to keep to himself, stumbling around as a helpless waiter but a fairly talented chef when dealing with seafood. Pesci can be seen being bullied by many students, mainly Savaclaw for his cowardice, and Pomefiore for his distasteful appearance. He has even been scammed by his own Dorm Head, Azul. Though shy, he is skilled with his unique magic being something greatly feared when used right. 

This potential is not lost to Prosciutto who had often used his free time to train and teach Pesci. Due to this result, Pesci gets along well with Epel who finds themselves together more often than not, and when he is picked on by other Savanaclaw students, Jack Howl had come in, defending him and urging him to fight back. The two become fast friends. On the side, Sebek also tries to train him through vigorous yelling and loud encouragement. However, he is often pushed away by Prosciutto. He also seems to get along well with Jamil and Trey as they share notes on various recipes. 

He had been held back due to accidental property damages. He is to work at Octavinelle’s cafe until he can pay back the repairs. He has taken extra classes due to Prosciutto’s encouragement to strengthen himself. 

Formaggio

Unique Magic: Little Feet

Best subject: Practical Magic

Club: Magical Shift club

Formaggio is one of the rougher and tougher members of the Squadra group. With his unique magic, he takes pride in conquering others with his larger size, but his often misuse his magic gets him into a lot of trouble with other students and even professors. He is constantly trying to prove how he is stronger than another and that his magic is useful. He has a harsh mouth and a silver tongue which pushes a lot of people away with his taunting. Despite his passion for Magic Shift, he is lazy and was not accepted onto the team. 

Surprisingly, he gets along with Ace and Deuce, the three getting into a lot of trouble and then Formaggio subsequently shrinking them out of trouble in turn. He also gets along with Ruggie, the two often pickpocketing unsuspecting students and seeing what they could get out of it. He also often gets on Sebeks’ nervous with his continuous disrespect and taunting and is on bad terms with the Leech twins due to many conflicts. 

He had been held back due to his many cases of aggression against other students and failing classes. 

Illuso

Unique Magic: Man in the Mirror

Best subject: Magic History

Club: movie-study club

One of the students that NRC has never seen just seems to know everything about everyone regardless. Illuso is withdrawn, prideful, and cold with many first and second years never having seen him before. This is due to the fact that he often resides in the mirror world due to his unique magic. He dislikes dealing with people and dislikes professors even more. He has many absences and failing grades due to this. 

Though, surprisingly, he gets along with Cater. Despite how much Illuso complains about how self-absorbed and loud Cater is, he enjoys the pictures and momentary attention from social media posts and hashtags. Though, he doesn’t like Cater enough to consider him a friend despite the fact that Cater considers him such anyways. He also seems to know a lot about Vil, the two gettings along shockingly well. Rumors have it that this is because Illuso’s constant in staying in the mirrors world and Vil’s insistence on looking at himself in mirrors. He often shares information with Melone, but he refuses to talk to Rook at all. 

Illuso had been held back obviously due to his many abscesses. 

Ghiaccio

Unique Magic: White Album

Best subject: Defensive Magic

Club: Basketball club

The short-tempered, hot-headed Ghiaccio is one Heartslabyul student to steer clear of. He gets frustrated about many things, often seen arguing with Riddle who argues just as much back until both of their faces get red. It is a miracle that the dorm had not been set on fire just yet. Ghiaccio is quick to find something to be frustrated about, and he will cling to it. This obviously pushes many people away, but he doesn’t seem to care all too much. He often gets in fights with students in Savanaclaw, and he really...really hates Jack’s last name. 

It is no surprise that he and Riddle often get into arguments, but Trey is usually there to dissolve some conflicts with his keen baking skills, but this usually only diffuses the argument temporarily. While Riddle is a stickler for many of the Queen’s rules, Ghiaccio is adamant to call them ridiculous. This causes Riddle to temporarily disperse Ghiaccio’s magic, but Ghiaccio don’t need no magic to punch a twink in the face. 

He seems to only be quiet when Silver is around, for he enjoys the animals Silver brings to him, and Ghiaccio seems to be gentle only when he is around. He rambles and Silver listens silently often, but it hard to tell if he is just a good listener or if he’s asleep. 

Ghiaccio had been held back due to his aggression towards professors and students.

[bondsmagii]

What the hell is "minor-coded?" The f*ck??? Like Legal Minor? Like under the age of 18 not-a-legal-adult Minor????? ...Do these people..do they...do they realize that children... Grow.. into... Adults? *horrified gasp* The way some people divide adults (18/21/25+) and almost-adults honestly seems like they think they are two different species. Having boundaries =/= Boomer logic about their teenage kids coming from a different planet? Nope, no use trying to understand a teenager, they only get the gift to speak Adult on their 21st birthday.

Even if minor-coding actual people by something like freaking height could somehow, possible exist, what would be the point of "minor-coding?" Is some weird sex thing to somehow come to the conclusion that a tall guy dating a short girl has p*do urges or something? There are so many mental hoops to jump through for this kind of thinking to make sense?? Someone sat down and really was like "short women are basically kids," and thought "wow, I have been enlightened and am now burdened with a glorious purpose🙏🏼😌" before taking to twitter to share their bullshittery. I'm afraid to ask "Washire RP Tips" how tall their mother is wtf

Honest to f... I understand general coding in media where there's some sensoring stuff to get around, but people realize that they can relate to someone's actions without the person having the same label as them, right?

But tHIS?? MINOR-CODING???? I'm happy to know that I'm minor-coded because of my height, I guess this means that I'm a naive child and no one can get mad at me having my tantrum whole I lose my shit over this!!! :)

I don't think I've ever seen an attempt at "thinking critically" go so wrong...

honestly first of all go off I love this energy and second of all yeah. like. I can’t even find it in myself to be shocked? I’ve seen so many rancid takes online and they’re as hilarious as they are infuriating.

I have no idea what inspires this, but it’s incredibly alarming that people seem to think that this kind of purity culture, overly sensitive bullshit is in any way progressive. the extremely online left is absolutely indecipherable to the Q conspiracy nuts at this point. literally both sides are so obsessed with rooting out the pedophiles, with people being pedophiles, with everything pointing to hidden pedophilia... it all comes back to pedophiles. and this is seen as progressive, but I don’t know how to tell you that it’s not normal to think about pedophiles this much! literally the only people thinking this deeply about it are professing to be doing it for the safety of children, but normal people do not look at kids and immediately start thinking about all the ways they could, hypothetically, be taken advantage of. nor do normal people look at any interaction anyone has with children (or short people, apparently!) and immediately start thinking about how it’s a dogwhistle for pedophilia, or how it’s obvious proof of pedophilic urges. like. I cannot stress enough how a) not normal that is and b) it actually makes the person doing it look more suspicious. nobody thinks about taking advantage of kids more than these people. they’re literally a hop skip and a jump away from doing what those Q nuts do, where they literally pass around illegal material in their social groups so they can “learn what they’re up against” and “keep it out of circulation”. mark my words, soon enough some woke Twitter group is going to be busted for illegal material they were keeping to show people The Truth™.

of course it’s possible for characters to be coded certain ways, but height just baffles me. I do not know what country the OP of that post was from, but where I’m from adult women are lucky to reach 5′5, and I cannot remember reaching 5′7 until I was well into my teens. and I’m a guy; I knew girls who were in their mid-teens and were deadass still barely 5ft tall. where I live now, again, most adult women are 5′4 and below. I tower over pretty much the entire population and I’m only 6ft. according to OP, if somebody set a story anywhere in Scotland or Ireland, they would apparently be a mega pedo. 

people really do increasingly assume that children are another species, and every day the boundary of what makes a person a child grows further. I’m literally begging everyone to just accept they’re growing up at this point. I’m just like. you’re not a 33-year-old minor-coded person or whatever people are saying these days my dude. you’re a grown adult spending too much time on Twitter. log off.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 278 “Miss Kaeko and the free-swinging vagrant boy”

Okay, so we’ve a new chapter that continues the flashback and as we read it we should all remember that...

... the choices we make shouldn’t do us more harm than good and joining the army when a war is about to start is SURELY a very harmful decision.

So we start with Sugimoto kicking away Tsurumi’s gun, a type 26 revolver by the way, which means he hadn’t managed to have Arisaka give him a Borchardt yet. Maybe the two weren’t friend yet or maybe Arisaka just didn’t have it yet.

Anyway, as Ogata enjoys what’s going on as he thinks he’s witnessing Yuusaku making a show, Sugimoto tries to reach for the gun and is stopped by Usami. While poor Kaeko gets a close look to Sugimoto’s privates from assorted angles and gets scolded by Hamako who tells her not to look, Tsukishima joins the fight telling Ogata to quit grinning and help. Not that Ogata is even considering to do it, as he has a lot more fun enjoying the show.

As Sugimoto beats Usami and Tsukishima Tsurumi realizes, to Ogata’s disappointment, he’s not Yuusaku…

and my mind goes back to chap 95, when Sugimoto wanted Suzukawa to dress up as a high-ranking officer, Ogata said they would see through the guise immediately and Sugimoto just makes an interesting expression.

I get the feeling when Sugi suggested it he was thinking at this experience and when Ogata shoot the idea down he was thinking at how Sugimoto got recognized by Tsurumi rather quickly.

I swear back then I would have never figured this was what was behind that exchange…

Anyway disappointed Ogata just doesn’t make a move to go and help Usami and Tsukishima. Noda in the fanbook said Ogata isn’t so bad at fighting but he clearly isn’t in Tsukishima or Usami’s league and Sugimoto is holding his ground against them both so he figured if he were to take part to the battle he would only get beaten.

Anyway as the fight progresses Tsukishima grabs the gun and is about to shoot Sugimoto but Kikuta, who was observing the scene not knowing what was going on as he had no idea who Tsurumi and his gang were, pushes Sugimoto away and tells him to run.

Hamako volunteers to keep them busy so as to allow them to escape and… stops Ogata, who had no intention whatsoever to do something right from the beginning...

Hamako, really, stop either Tsukishima or Usami, not him.

Sugimoto runs away with Kaeko (who only manages to grab his shirt). Tsukishima would like to chase them but Tsurumi stops him.

He has figured the man who got in the way should be Kikuta, and that this means Kikuta was doing his job properly.

This meeting probably gave Tsurumi a measure of the kind of man Kikuta is.

Capable but also self sacrificing for his men since he took a bullet for Sugimoto.

Meanwhile, as Sugimoto’s group escape they cross path with Yuusaku. Kaeko, from Sugimoto and Yuusaku’s conversation, realizes Sugimoto is a fake but doesn’t care. She’s now the one that pulls Sugimoto away as they escape.

I love how Yuusaku believes he has recognized Kikuta and Kikuta tells him he has the wrong guy.

Once they’re out Sugimoto wore his shirt and covered his privates with his hat. Really, I would have just bought him pants instead of stopping in the middle of the way to talk with Sugimoto’s lower half naked but whatever, let’s go on.

Sugimoto asks Kikuta who were those guys and Kikuta says he has no idea but maybe they were men working for Hanazawa.

Sugimoto explains he believed that was Kikuta’s “plan B” and at this Kikuta says his “plan B” actually involves fake Mr. and Mrs. Hanazawa, which Sugimoto still judges pretty horrible.

His worry though is all for Kaeko. Will someone come to try to silence her?

Kaeko, blushing and smiling, says there’s no need for someone to try to silence her because, to Sugimoto’s shock she now wants to marry him.

Sugimoto is clearly not interested though as he points out he’s a nobody with no parents, family, home or everything.

Kaeko says her family has money so he shouldn’t worry but Sugimoto points out that his world is just too different from her own and he has no place in Kaeko’s luxurious world.

This ties in an interesting way with how Sugimoto early in the story was chasing the gold to cure Umeko, yes, but also to get rich. Maybe a side of him, with time, started to long for a place in such a luxurious world and while he’s clearly not interesting in Kaeko but still holding a candle for Umeko, he clearly wanted to improve his social standing.

Kaeko tries to persuade him by telling him he could get used to it and starts living with her, especially since he has anywhere to stay, asking him what he plans to do otherwise.

She doesn’t look like she’s attempting to manipulate him, she just seems really invested in having him with her. She really got a big crush on Sugimoto if she’s willing to take him even if he has nothing.

Sugimoto confirms he thinks to join the army so he can at least have white rice to eat.

A side of me feels bad for him, life for him was very harsh before and now he’s saying he’s joining the army with such a big smile as if this were to fix everything but really, I get he was starved and desperate previously but Yuusaku just told him a war is about to start, joining the army is the last thing he should consider as his previous life will look like heaven once he’s thrown on the battlefield.

For as harsh as it was, his previous life didn’t gave him nightmares, countless scars and traumas. War is hell, thinking the opposite is naive.

Anyway Kikuta’s face darkens at this.

He took part to the Sino-Japanese war and lost a brother during it, he can see that’s not a bright decision.

Meanwhile Hamako joins them and informs Kaeko his family would never allow her to marry Sugimoto.

She then tells her she understands Kaeko is so focused on getting a good looking man because she feels inferior to her friends who already got married. As we learnt in the past chapter in fact, there was a certain pressure in getting married before finishing school, but Hamako points out how Kaeko doesn’t need an handsome man at her side as a decoration, she’s already an awesome woman excellent in both scholarly and athletic abilities.

It’s a rather strong talk, especially for a time in which a woman was viewed as nothing if she didn’t have a man by her side. Hamako surely has a modern mindsetting and I love how Noda included such a talk in his work.

Kaeko accepts Hamako’s statement and suggests to leave. Sugimoto bows deeply, apologizes to her for deceiving her and thanks her for showing him a short glimpse of a different, gorgeous world.

Although it’s nice Sugimoto apologizes, I’ll say it’s clear he isn’t interested in Kaeko, as he doesn’t have a single nice thing to say about her, not even he’s sure she’ll find someone better than him or that she’ll make it on her own, or that she’s a nice person or that he enjoyed being with her.

Kaeko instead, saying goodbye to him, tells him to become a truly dashing soldier, showing she’s interested in his future and that’s not all.

Kaeko will marry a big name in the world of finance (this big name likely based on Shibusawa Eiichi), ending up on being called ‘Empress’ but what’s more relevant is she joined the women’s association and dedicated her energies nursing injured soldiers returning from war and supporting their widows.

Although many rich women would do so, the reference here is likely to how she volunteered because a side of her still cared for Sugimoto and this pushed her to take care of the soldiers as a whole.

Meanwhile at the hotel Ogata, who’s alone for some reason, happens to cross path with Yuusaku. Yuusaku salutes him and then they walk separates way but we can see Ogata is giving his a sideway glance and it’s possible Yuusaku too is doing the same. There’s a chance they both have understood who the other is as Ogata might have suspected Yuusaku would be around and Yuusaku might have noticed how Ogata looked like his father.

Back to Sugimoto and Kikuta, Kikuta is sore due to the bullet he took and Sugimoto tells him he should be a carzy man to take a bullet for him. Kikuta says he’s responsible for involving Sugimoto in this mess and that it doesn’t matter anyway as he has got VIP seats on the train headed straight to hell so Sugimoto should forget about him and Yuusaku, which was the scene we saw in chap 274, the one that started this flashback.

Kikuta then tells him Sugimoto couldn’t have been serious when he said that would join the army, thanks him for his hard work and asks for his cap back. It’s worth to remember that cap was his brother’s cap so it has a sentimental value for Kikuta.

The chapter ends here.

I love how it remarked Kaeko’s value as a person who doesn’t need a man at her side in order to be wonderful. On the other side, although Sugimoto protected her, he really didn’t seem to be interested in her. At all.

Tsurumi and Kikuta’s first meeting was interesting and, as I’ve already said, how Ogata came to figure out that people would easily recognize fakes in the army was pretty unexpected.

I’m still not sure what Tsurumi planned to do when he got involved in the whole Yuusaku thing, he clearly wasn’t there due to Hanazawa’s orders as he had no idea of the scandal before Okuda mentioned it. Did he want to make Hanazawa feel indebted to him in the same way as he did with Koito? Did he want Yuusaku to join his collection of soldiers he groomed with love?

Hard to say.

On another side… really Sugi, Kikuta is right, joining the army is a dumb idea.

On another side I love how protective Kikuta is of him. He didn’t ask his name, which is a sign he tried to keep distance, yet he was willing to take a bullet for him. Kikuta is a good guy in his own way.