#just misdefined

[mariacallous]

It’s telling that both Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais decided to end 2023 by releasing specials in which their comedy pivots to poking fun at the disabled. Could they be more obvious about finding new ways to punch down than targeting people physically unable to fight back?

In a false promise near the opening of his brand-new special and seventh for Netflix, The Dreamer, Chappelle boasts: “Tonight, I’m doing all handicapped jokes,” because “well, they’re not as organized as the gays, and I love punching down.”

Similarly, Gervais decides to have a bit of fun at how we’ve decided as a society to say “disabled” instead of “handicapped” and what that says about us, and suggests further in his special Armageddon, released on Christmas Day, that he’d mock Make-A-Wish kids if given the chance to make videos for them.

And, of course, both men take yet more cracks at the trans community.

Early in The Dreamer, Chappelle tells the audience trans people make him feel like he has to go along with them pretending, as if they’re method acting like Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman: “If you came here to this show tonight thinking that I’m gonna make fun of those people again, you’ve come to the wrong show,” only to keep going back on his word.

He says he hoped to “repair” his relationship with the LGTBQ+ community – by writing a play for them in which a black trans woman only identifies as the N-word to trip up liberals. He also jokes that if he went to jail in California, he’d identify as a woman so he could tell the other inmates to “suck my lady dick.”

But it’s all just jokes, right? Can’t we just take a joke? Have we lost our sense of humor? Or have they?

Earlier this month, we lost two pillars not just of the comedy community but of our American community writ, as Norman Lear and Tommy Smothers stood taller than most anyone and everyone else in television, standing up to the establishment and protesting the powers that be for the sake of civil rights and humanity.

Now we’re left with Chappelle and Gervais—two titans in terms of Netflix ratings and paychecks—who are fighting for… the right to utter slurs onstage and tell already marginalized people that their existence is a joke for reasons that are nearly impossible to divine. Especially when there’s so much in the world to talk about right now, that they’ve chosen anti-trans rights as their comedy cause célèbre is dispiriting. As Mae Martin said in their 2023 Netflix special, Sap: “Big multimillionaire comedians in their stand-up specials are, like, taking shots and punching down at a time when trans rights are so tenuous and slipping backwards.”

Lear and Smothers used their clout on TV to speak truth to power about America’s involvement in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, the hypocrisy of religion, racism, abortion, homosexuality and civil rights. While great trans comedians such as River Butcher and Jaye McBride resorted to releasing their stand-up specials straight to YouTube this year, which famous straight comedians can you recall sticking up for the rights of trans people in America?

It feels so frustrating to sit and watch comedians with the stature of Chappelle and Gervais devote so much of their time and energy to bullying the LGBTQ+ community when they could be doing anything else on stage. And then they have the temerity to question us, the audience, for not laughing with them.

For his part, Gervais willingly misdefines and misuses “woke” by suggesting, “if woke now means being a puritanical, authoritarian bully who gets people fired for an honest opinion or even a fact, then no, I’m not woke. Fuck that.” Is Nazism or transphobia an honest opinion that shouldn’t get you fired? He then claims in his closing bit that “all laughter’s good,” a concept that would be news to 2005-era Chappelle when he cut ties with Comedy Central precisely because he could hear racism in the laughs during a taping of Chappelle’s Show.

In his Grammy-nominated lecture to students at his alma mater, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, What’s In A Name?, Chappelle claimed: “The more you say I can’t say something, the more urgent it is for me to say it. It has nothing to do with what you’re saying I can’t say. It has everything to do with my right and my freedom of artistic expression.”

But that’s not comedy, either—much like Gervais’ admission in his special that as a university student, his idea of a joke was calling his mother and pranking her by saying he was hospitalized and potentially blind. Gervais said her mom could’ve had a heart attack, but in his mind, he remembers it now as “they could take a fucking joke, right?”

At least Sam Jay, in her 2023 HBO special Salute Me Or Shoot Me, wrestles with her conscience and moral compass over the use of certain words in her act and concludes that having empathy for others is key. “How do the rest of us get here? I don’t know… I’m not going to pretend that I have the answers,” Jay says, adding: “So we’re doing things like we’re policing words, but we’re not policing behavior.”

Anthony Jeselnik, who has built his comedy career on brandishing himself as an offensive caricature of a comedian, told fellow comedian and podcaster Theo Von earlier this year that too many stand-ups would rather get into trouble by saying the wrong thing instead of focusing on their job and saying funny things.

“People think — oh, as a comic your job is to get in trouble. But they don’t want to get yelled at. It’s like, it’s OK to make people mad, but they don’t want any push back. And I think that’s wrong,” Jeselnik said. “As a comedian, you want to make people laugh. This is a quote attributed to Andy Warhol that I love: ‘Art is getting away with it.’ You know, if you put out a special and everyone’s pissed, like, you didn’t get away with it. You know. You need to make everyone laugh that they’re like, ‘Yeah, he talked about some fucked up stuff, but we’re all happy.’ That’s art. Otherwise, you’re just a troll.”

Kliph Nesteroff, a comedy historian whose newest book is Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars, similarly told me last month that some while comedians see themselves sometimes as “philosophers” he believes they are “betraying their job description because you’re supposed to make people laugh, and philosophers are supposed to philosophize.”

Comedians may claim they can’t joke about anything anymore, but they joke about more now than ever before. The real problem with stand-up today is that too many comedians would rather kick people when they’re down, then lecture us on how we’re too sensitive for not laughing about it.

When Chappelle, Gervais or their acolytes have to incessantly explain that their jokes are just jokes, then they cease to be great comedians—or even comedians at all.

[spacelazarwolf]

lmao k we’re gonna talk abt ashkenormativity and the weird hostility some of y’all have toward non ashki jews.

so yesterday i was trying to have a discussion on this post, and the person responded with this:

and then promptly blocked me.

after which they posted a bunch of bullshit that i am now going to tear to shreds.

regarding the above screenshot:

- if you’re defining yiddish culture as “ashkenazi jews who speak yiddish” you are still erasing multiple communities of ashkenazi jews. italian ashkenazi jews migrated or fled to northern italy during the middle ages, long before the establishment of the pale of settlement, and have a culture that is distinctly influenced by italian culture, not eastern european culture.

- sounds like you’re outright excluding any group of ashkenazi jews who don’t speak yiddish or live in central or eastern europe. which is literally the reason i started the dialogue in the first place.

- talking down to me as if i don’t know what the difference between ashkenazi and sephardi is.

- immediately followed by incorrectly defining ashkenazi. ashkenazim are a group of diaspora jews who originally settled in the ashkenaz. there are many different diaspora languages that ashkenazi jews spoke, including judeo-french, judeo-provençal, judeo-czech, and different dialects of judeo-italian.

- kinda sounds like ur saying eastern european jews who speak yiddish are the only “true” ashkenazi jews????????

- yeah there’s lots of issues surrounding the way eastern european jews were viewed, but that’s not what the conversation was about?????

- it’s not really up to you to have or not have an issue with who identifies as ashkenazi.

- there are many ashkenazi groups that have ties in eastern europe. there are also plenty who don’t. there’s overarching similarities between a lot of different diaspora groups, but that doesn’t make them the same. and that’s ok.

- kinda weird how you say “this is a conversation for the jewish community, infuriating how people disagree with us about our own culture” as if i’m not also jewish?? do you not consider me jewish enough to talk about jewish culture or history?

- it’s clear you’ve researched a lot about eastern european jews. it’s also clear that’s the only group you know anything about.

- this conversation had nothing to do with zionism?????? very fucking weird for u to say this??????? especially when i was literally trying to express that ashkenazi jews are incredibly diverse and can’t just be boiled down to “basically eastern european”??????????

- also again homogenizing all ashkenazi jews under “yiddish culture” when you’ve defined yiddish culture as being distinctly eastern european. which. again. not all ashkenazi jews are.

- didn’t try to correct u on ur own culture bud! tried to get u to see that ur own culture is not actually The Only One.

- “because only a non ashkenazi jew can ever accurately represent ashkenazi culture right?” you’ve got some weird aggression toward non ashki jews you should prob unpack.

- again trying to make this abt zionism when i was literally arguing the opposite.

- also i don’t have a “giant blog” lmfao.

- this is funny to me bc u r literally the one who misdefined ashkenazi?????? and attempted to homogenize all ashkenazim under the label of eastern european????? hello?????????

- “irredeemable zionists” yikes bro.

- literally just me when i can’t read and have no critical thinking skills.

- this to me reads like someone who is trying to invert the concept of ashkenormativity and position themself as a victim of non ashki jews. which is absolutely fucking bizarre.

- you’re claiming i’m “denying yiddish culture” while many of your posts actively erase multiple ashkenazi groups from this culture while simultaneously lumping them all in underneath one umbrella eastern european label. like idk how you managed to be so ashkenormative that you managed to erase other ashkenazi jews but it’s almost impressive.

- gee i wonder what it’s like to have ur culture denied surely as a member of a tiny diaspora group that makes up 0.4% of the global jewish population i have no idea what that’s like!

- you are not advocating for diasporism. you are advocating for your culture and your culture only.

anyway, on to my other rant.

if i want to know how to recite a prayer in the ashkenazi rite, i google it. if i want to learn how to speak yiddish, i download duolingo. it’s easy to find these things because people have worked hard to preserve them. and also because ashkenazi jews make up over 60% of the global jewish population and over 70% of the us jewish population.

italian jews, however, including italian ashkenazim, make up 0.4% of the global jewish population. and i couldn’t even find a number for how many of us there are in the us bc there are that few. if i want to know how a certain prayer is chanted in the italian rite, i have to find 70 year old recordings of italian cantors and rabbis singing them for a musicologist who dedicated his life to keeping the italian rite and italki culture alive after it was devastated by the holocaust, bc the only synagogues that still follow the italian rite are in rome and israel. if i want to know how to speak the language my ancestors would have spoken, i have to take a zoom class at oxford at 6am where we study manuscripts from hundreds of years ago. in 1900, there were 20,000 native speakers of judeo-italian dialects. in 2023 there are almost none.

in order to participate in any sort of jewish life where i live, i have to know ashkenazi culture. i have to know the prayers and the songs and the customs. i have to know the food and the language and history.

but y’all don’t have to know mine.

and every time i try to infuse my own heritage into my practice i’m reminded of that. when i make italian jewish food, people don’t see it as “jewish food.” people hear my last name and assume i’m not jewish because it’s not a “jewish name.” when i use italki hebrew, people try to correct me. i frequently encounter other jews who don’t even know italkim exist. so yeah. it is infuriating when i experience constant pressure to assimilate into the dominant jewish culture of where i live only to be a excluded from discussions about that culture because i’m not part of it. i am part of it. i have to be.

ashkenazi culture is beautiful and diverse and i do genuinely enjoy taking part in it. but it is painful to get constant reminders that i don’t really have a choice. it is painful to have people in your own community see your knowledge of their culture as a given but their knowledge of your culture as optional or doing you a favor.

so basically,

you are not being erased by the reminder that jews who are not like you exist.

[fairuzfan]

You didn't even provide me a rebuttal you just said "his plans are delusional" and continues to misdefine indigineity I'm not going to take you seriously lol

[akajustmerry]

i'm sorry you're getting rude asks in your inbox, but at risk of being another rude ask- fair or unfair, you understand that many people have been called zionists because they shared misinformation with good intentions or tried to clear up misconceptions even if it fit the wrong narrative? or they made a mistake with wording? there's a lot of jewish bloggers i know who have been pro-palestine since the start and were quickly called zionists anyway because they misspoke at some point. there were self-proclaimed antizionists, some indigenousto to other regions, on a zionist blocklkst spread around on here. one of my swana mutuals was called a zionist for making a similar post to yours, sobthis reminded me of that. I'm not trying to cheapen the word "zionist" in your inbox or anything, but I think it's been cheapened and/or misdefined for a while now. it doesnt just mean "bad person". you're easily one off the most pro-palestinian non-palestinian posters on this site, always sharing timely information, and you still got called one. I just think there's something wrong with that and it isn't right. I feel dumb saying "words have meanings" , but they do. for ex., it's kind of like calling every transmisogynist a terf when they're not even a feminist. we all want the same things so we shouldn't lose the plot. felt like that needed to be said and hopefully your inbox gets less weird.

yes absolutely! thank u for saying :) I understand where my mistake was, why it was harmful, and apologise sincerely. people have every right to be upset so I'm not making excuses, and folks have every right to unfollow me. when it comes to genocide, spreading misinformation however it was intended means life or death and I won't be making that mistake again. in the meantime, I'll keep trying to help as much as I can and be more considerate.

[pansexual-pied-piper]

Y'know, it was pretty annoying when most aspec content on here was just the definitions of aspec terms or "you are valid" posts, but considering how much of the aphobia I see people spew is based on misdefining what it means to be aspec, I catch myself thinking that maybe we gotta bring back those Aspec Terminology for Beginners type posts

Then again, most of those people probably don't want to know the real meaning of the words they mock and get mad at, they just want something to be mad about and acceptable targets they feel they can get away with being dicks to

[tinybirdsupporter]

IT'S THE TYPE OF THING THAT...

you become religious over. It’s the type of feeling that you’d lose everything over.

It’s the type of thing that knocks your trajectory into an unrecognizable shape, a new path forged by the sheer power of a feeling, of a connection, of a thing.

A thing that doesn’t ask for permission, a thing that knocks your fucking door down and takes everything with it. You can’t say no. You’ll always say yes.

A thing that rocks you so vividly that you’ll never let it in again. A thing that scars you so bad that you’ll only bring it up in a whispered monotone, shoving back the screaming sobs that could burst from your throat at any given push.

It’s the type of relationship that permanently exes you out from any casual game, cause casualness hides intention, and casualness gives you a pretend sense of security. Casualness pretends you’re on the same page, pretends you’re so in sync that nothing needs be spoken. Casualness pretends for you, beckons a reliance on its continued illusion. Casualness pretends something is there, for you, and you know now that there is always a moment where you’ll find out. You don’t flirt casually again, and your heart thumps in a worrying way when someone does it to you. They don’t know. They haven’t been where I’ve been.

It’s the type of thing that makes you shut your eyes closed for three years. It’s the type of thing that only can be looked back on by the fourth.

It’s the type of thing to make you dash blindly, screaming the whole way through. To sear hysteria from your lungs to feel some type of vindication in response to the pain you’ve been exposed to. To have any way of expressing how deeply the wound runs.

To scream, just so others might hear. Because this type of wound needs community to heal.

It’s the type of thing that grips your heart so viciously that you write forty million sentences over the course of these three years trying to pin it down, wash it out. It’s the type of thing that if you really try to remember, you could write infinitely more, anyway. Cause it’s fucking unexplainable. And you just hope that whoever’s reading has had it, you wish that they’ve had it so bad, cause forty million fingers gesturing to an immaterial mass still doesn’t make out anything solid. I’ll spend my life vicious gesticulating to express the languageless, to identify that which cannot be defined— as “to define is to limit,”— and to limit is to misdefine.

The type of wound that you’d avoid even looking at— somehow it would cause it to bleed. The type of wound that takes a lifetime to heal.

Three years pass and the grief is not summoned so easily anymore. You’ll run your palm over it— the old diary passages that rabid you drowned in a red marker, some remnants of pages that you tore out from the seams— and after three years, you don’t even remember the first word of what they might’ve said. You cannot remember what might’ve hurt so bad. You only remember that it did; you’ll get flashes of those quiet breakdowns in your childhood bathroom, memories mere vestiges of you in the forgotten moment. You only remember that it, whatever it was, hurt, and now it, whatever it was, doesn’t.

You’ll clean out your childhood room when your parents move— in this economy, who is doing anything but renting, of course— and some polaroids fall out. These are the only tangible memories left, and there used to be around eight of them. You have two now. Rabid you knew that you’d want one piece of proof, and then also two, cause he was cute enough, too. They’re on the floor now, and you get hit with some pang of fear— maybe his mere face is a trigger, now, cause it conjures just the weirdest feeling. You can’t define it. You wonder where he is, and how you got here— better, how you got there, in that room, **blue walls, blue plaid bed in the corner. It’s indefinable, the feeling. The feeling that comes when you ask how you were lucky enough for that to happen, for two circumstances to acutely cross, for your seventeen-year-old-self to experience deep, true, unadulterated love. You were seventeen, and he was eighteen. How did we get so lucky?

Of course, we were each other’s worst nightmare, each other’s worst shadow self come to life— anxious, avoidant, emotional, detached— this is all encompassed in the feeling that comes after, however it never denies the feeling that came before. I fucking hated him and I’m sure he fucking hated me. It is phenomenal how these cycles of hurt we put each other through never came close to tainting the requisite, the necessity, the inpurgable need to love each other— I finally conjured the balls to break up with him, but only after proof, after proof, after proof of us being wholly, determinately, irrevocably horrible for each other. A mere trust that there must certainly be a different way to find that kind of love than to experience heartbreak over and over and over again. Bargaining your way into acceptance.

It’s the type of thing that’ll break your brain. It’s the type of thing you’ll find your faith from. You’ll say I already said that, but religion and faith are different. You’d know that if you could feel it.

I will never know what my diary pages said— some shit surely about losing my virginity, definitely some passages about lovelorn fanaticism— I guess it is okay to not know. Looking back is something I don’t do much anymore— it is like trying to capture a photo of the moon with your phone’s camera— no re-imaging will ever capture the moment, no reimagining could ever bring what was.

The love cannot be summoned, but it means that the pain can’t either.

It is okay with me.

I know I have the capacity for it— whatever it is— and that makes me feel it anyway. Remembering the chance encounters that enformed it all— I am reminded that simply living life will bring all this love back to me. And this, this is the faith I found in its wake— the chance for it, it being something better, too, to exist again.

[fagsystem]

I do just want to say something that has been bugging me.

You do know there is a reason the category in the DSM is trauma and stressors, right? And that the definition scientifically of what is trauma is actually very specific and narrow? Things that do not qualify as traumatic but cause PTSD-like responses get classified as a different disorder in that category.

Things can be harmful developmentally without necessarily being considered trauma medically. From a like colloquial standpoint, anything that damaging that a CDD system formed would absolutely be considered trauma. It wouldn't be endogenic and it'd be traumagenic kind of like how all trauma and stresser disorders are, does that make sense?

Like I'm pretty far removed from syscourse, I've never engaged. It is pointless. But it does irk me specifically when people who are very all high and mighty about mEdIcaL tErMs only to misdefine what trauma is medically.

Like endogenic as a term for CDDs specifically disgusts me as AFAIK the origin of CDDs getting called that is actually that whole like fantasy model or whatever it is which said the alters and even the trauma memories were fake. So I'm definitely not advocating for that. And I mean unless you consider yourself plural before trauma or something it really doesn't fit what CDD systems are

(Note, all this info about terms is coming from my psychologist, who is a trauma specialist. I actually listen to her and not strangers on tumblr shocker shocker (others in this system REALLY should learn to do that by literally not engaging its so pointless but whatevs). That said, strangers on Tumblr are able to find reliable sources of information and cite them! If you want to commentate or disagree, please do so with some form of reference. I'd properly cite my psych but I don't want to dox us, and also you all really need to learn to fact check what you see anyway so I would actually strongly suggest researching bold claims like this for yourself! Critical thinking skills are great and I will be very happy if you all excerise them, because absolutely NO ONE in our system who syscourses does so while thining<3(i love them theyre just stupid))

- mikey probably

[willmike-what]

What in the victim-blaming? This has to be bait, there is no way you actually think like this. Nobody is advocating to bully antis, unprompted or not, but their WHOLE DEAL is hurting people, and I'm not going to lay down and take it quietly. NOBODY should, and you're a dick for turning this around on victims and villainizing us. Responding to abuse is NOT the same as bullying.

Antis are abusers, by their very nature. That's what an anti IS. If they don't go after people? Then they aren't an anti. It's about the behavior, not the viewpoint. You can hate whatever problematic content you want and still be proship. What makes someone in anti is the abusive way they treat people who DO like those things, not just how they themselves feel about it. You can't misdefine a group to justify talking down to the victims of that group.

You're just proving my point that you care more about "making proshippers look good" than you do about the safety of the actual people in online spaces, including proship ones. You are prioritizing the feelings of abusers over the safety of victims, and acting morally superior to those of us who have enough of a spine to actually DEFEND victims like ourselves. You are vile for that.

Really, no one? Not a single proshipper has ever told an anti to off themselves, or even once tried to bully them off of tumblr? I care about victims and I understand them never wanting to talk to their abusers. But, again if we want to see change and I’m not even talking about the community, the internet would straight up be a better place if everyone was nicer and open minded.

Yes there will be terrible people and innocent people will be abused unfortunately. And we need to help the ones in need of it. I myself cannot offer that help personally. This topic isn’t “I care about antis so much more than victims” this topic is “Help the people falling down a dangerous mindset, instead of letting them lock themselves in an echo chamber”

I want everyone to be safe, talking it out with people and letting them understand their wrongdoings is in the long run is a good thing.

I don’t understand where you get that I don’t care about victims, I do care about them. I’m not asking victims, I’m asking the community to be a community. And I fundamentally disagree with your thoughts on what an anti is. An anti is someone who is against proshippers and problematic media, they don’t have to be abusers, or doxxer’s or anything like that. They just have to be against them and the works.

Just like proshippers, they don’t have to be nice people, but they have to be okay with problematic media. They can be awful as well. But they’re also against antis.

But my point is that if we can show antis that we aren’t condoning what we consume then we can stop potential death threats, doxxing and harassment. And all it takes is not being a terrible person to everyone around you.

It boils down to: Treat others how you want to be treated.

[usernameproxy]

you’re so right about the t*ylor sw*ft post. do you have any objectively bad song recs that i haven’t heard yet? :3

ok i dont know about ones that you haven't heard yet. but here are some that i think could potentially fit the bill. im actually beginning to think i misdefined what i was saying earlier but whatever

How Bad Can I Be? (tha lorax movie) - i like this song. i would never say i liked in front of people

Mixed Messages (tom cardy) - i actually really really enjoy tom cardy's music. its very very silly. in this song he mentions punching your dad in the dick like 3 times.

Witness (mindless self indulgence) - the intro to witness is this: SON OF A BITCH! GOD LIKES ME! I AM THE BEST! FUCK EVERY. BODY. ELSE! SUCK ON MY DICK! I'M PERFECT! I AM THE BEST! FUCK. EVERY. BODY! E-E-E-E-E-ELSE! (GOD LIKES ME!) nuff said. very fun to sing.

here are some objectively good songs just for fun.

The Villain I Appear To Be (connor spiotto) - not going to shut up about this one. great violin, great drums, great vocals. yes i can hit the high note. would be very good for an animatic.

TikTok (ke$ha) - its ke$ha.

a lot of the phineas and ferb songs - im right okay. these are legitimately good songs.

[sweetums0kitty]

Listen ever since I watched The Batman I've been foaming at the mouth wanting to make Edward read some actual anarchist literature aldksk

Like babe I respect the motive but I'm on my hands and knees begging you to read some Emma Goldman so you actually know what you're talking about, but it's such a niche need I haven't seen anyone else talking about this concept 😔 (and honestly I'm down bad enough I'd probably read it aloud to him myself if need be)

I love him so much too hdjdjjdjd

Honestly… make this man read some theory. Just duct tape him to a chair with a power point on “Why your flood is the dumbest idea to ever exist. What in the everloving hell are you thinking Eddie?????”

It’s about 150 slides, there’s an entire section on how he’s misdefining his actions as anarchist. And one on how the only people who will be majorly impacted by the flood are the folks he’s claiming to protect.

[majinalia]

Thisthisthisthisthisthis. Please please please please. When you jam historical figures into modern systems of sexuality you are making the same assumptions that heteronormative Victorians made. Those heteronormative 19th and 20th century historians were not trying to fucking misportray the guys they dedicated their lives to studying, they just put them in their modern senses.

To them, if a young person had gay sex but later married, he was a straight person who “went through a phase.” Overcame their animal instincts. Because that’s how they understood that to work.

Meanwhile, we in our era would call that same person Bisexual. Yes, this take reads as less problematic and even logical to us. Because it is fit to our sensibilities. But for all you know they would have identified more with the first biphobic ass take more, or have a completely alien sense of self that made perfect sense within their life’s context.

You misdefine the 17th century Balkan sworn virgin if you were to call them a trans man. You misdefine the 19th century BCE Egyptian sekhet when you call them asexual. There’s not even a comparable modern label for how a Eunuch’s gender was treated in China or the Byzantine Empire, so you can be damn sure your 21st century queer boot doesn’t fit.

In personal conversation, feel free to use equivalencies to help others understand. In academic and professional speech, please understand that the entire world fits as neatly in 21st century culture as it did in the 19th Century’s.

seriously I had some little TikTok teenybopper burst out laughing on my tour because I said that a historical figure was “most likely what we’d now call gay”

like

listen

you’re free to take a ouija board out to the cemetery and try to explain the dizzying array of current queer terms and get a solid answer as to how he identifies within that framework but 

until then, I’m going to continue NOT definitively assigning someone identity terms they didn’t self-identify with, and might not have even known, when I’m responsible for representing them faithfully and they’re not here to correct me. even more so when they’re part of my own community

I mean, you know, as long as that’s okay with you. Bestie.

[the-bi-line]

🩷💜💙bi separatism🩷💜💙

☞ what is bi separatism? simply put, i think bi people should leave lgbt groups and organizations to form their own separate social circles and organizations

☞ i believe bisexuals being separate from gender ideology would greatly aid in reaffirming that bisexuality is and always has been attraction to the two biological sexes of female and male. bi DOES mean two! gender ideology is just as harmful to bisexuals as every one else, as it fetishizes and misdefines our sexuality and encourages non-bisexuals to incorrectly claim our label. gender ideology further harms bisexuals by encouraging us to dis-identify with our biological sex and alienate ourselves from our dual-sex attraction. the strict definition and boundaries of bisexuality deserve to be defended and celebrated!

☞ separating from gay men and lesbians would reduce their exposure to our OSA and homophobia and it would reduce our exposure to their biphobia. separating would benefit both groups immensely as it would allow us to form distinct groups free of prejudice against our natural orientations, where neither side would get derailed by the needs of the other group.

☞ bi separatism would also encourage prioritizing bi4bi relationships. where a bi person is single or in a relationship with a non-bisexual, separatism would encourage bisexuals making an effort to seek out bisexual friends and community as a single person or outside of their mixed-orientation relationships.

☞ bi separatism would allow bisexuals the space to focus on and accept both their SSA and OSA and would facilitate the development of bi theory. bisexuals from all walks of life could come together to form a more coherent and unified picture of bisexuality, which i believe would greatly improve our class consciousness and mitigate both harm to ourselves and others.

what’s the harm in trying?

[autumnrory]

god i love going through a discourse blog or someone's tag for shit i agree with there's so much shit i can't articulate and then i'm just like yep that's exactly it like i don't reblog too much of it - okay maybe the bisexual stuff and how it's misdefined and everything bc it's personal lol - and i couldn't fathom running a whole blog of it (though i'm not gonna just sit there and assume that's all the person behind it does with their time lol like why do people think that, you can have multiple blogs for multiple things) but honestly i just like the validation

[abra-ka-dammit]

in the most publicly familiar story of Lot, the men of sodom sought to rape the "male" angels (in appearance only, as angels do not have sexes. oh but let's not mention THAT or we might get too woke about gender,) who visited Lot and Abram, and somehow christians interpreted that as Gay Is Bad, and not Rape Is Bad. As a woman, this should trouble me--and it very much does.

because i guess never mind the fact that he offered them his virgin (many translations of the original word insinuate they were CHILD) daughters to rape instead, ~because the wickedness of that city had overtaken his mind~. Apparently that's acceptable sinfulness, being under the influence of a wicked city and all, bc he was not punished for that. despite the fact that his was not a gay offer, it was still the influence of sodom's very bad gayness tho. funnily, none of the other men of sodom, who may have been fine before they were also impacted by the wickedness and became (gay) rapists, did not get this opportunity for redemption.

later Lot fled the city and his wife got turned into salt for looking back instead of just fleeing as commanded. then later, wifeless, he himself raped his daughters--or, per the bible, they were like oh no theres no men to marry now :( we better fuck daddy so we can have babies and continue the family line :(( guess we better get him drunk and fuck him because it is way more important to us to bear offspring than it is the fact that having sex with ur own dad is bad and wrong and really gross. oh also we DEFINITELY came up with this idea ourselves and it wasnt just Lot's later victim-blaming excuse for how his daughters both got pregnant living with only him. Clearly they got him drunk on purpose and then seduced and forced themselves him, and he didnt just get really drunk and horny and the only vaginas around happened to had sprung from his late wife's womb so he said fuck it and jizzed in his own kids. because he was a holy man, he would NEVER!!

I doubt anyone ever heard the girls' side of the story. Or cared to, because pfft, they're just females.

so the man who offered his daughters for rape, and slept with them himself, creating incestuous children, was The Good Guy of the story and Gays Were The Villains. tho suppose it tracks, given the christian-catholic complex has made it clear they see no problem with sexually assaulting children. you only need to look at the numbers; it's sickening what these Holy People we're meant to trust are doing. but the fact they wanted to rape a MAN is the sin, guys, just remember. THATS the point of the story. god hates fags, he burned them for wanting to stick dicks in male assholes and not the rampant, violent rape apologist mindset. also fuck women who dont listen to commands amirite guys lululul

i'm just saying. if you are a christian woman. and you hear these stories. youre told Lot did these things to his daughters, that the wife was killed for something that wasnt even a sin or harmful in ANY way but only for "disobeying", then youre told Lot is the good and righteous person. how can you stomach that? how can you nod along and go like oh yes the fact that gays and women are the problems in these stories and not the reprehensible actions of the male protagonists makes total sense and i believe it entirely. yes, women are so bad and naughty and need their daddies and hubbies to keep them in line, and make sure they get married and have babies like good girls, i totally agree. kick my ass bc i disobeyed you, husband, the bible says its fine bc im lesser than you :) I'm fine with that :) i dont want rights, dont worry, hubby. YOU decide if i have babies, not me, tee hee. i better not voice any opinions because my girl brain is too stupid and prone to sin. i definitely shouldnt speak up in church against the extreme and obvious sexism, god forbid i be a FEMINIST, a word that has been purposefully misdefined and vilified by my church so i don't realize it isn't what I think it is. we suffer not for the sins of our fathers, but i'm still physically suffering for original sin for a week or so every month bc i'm a woman and we deserve it :) ah damn i was raped i guess im impure and unworthy of my husband now bc i didnt fight hard enough or scream loud enough to prevent it :) can't wait to go to heaven to serve my husband eternally while worshipping the lord for blessing me with the chance to be a lesser being on earth for X years

like fucking face it! christianity is nothing but a man's guide to bullshit to justify shitty behavior towards anyone besides another straight cis man. see, i can get away with this, my god says its righteous. but if you do it with your uterus and tits it's bad, so sit down. see, god killed a buncha gay rapists. thats what they get for being gay. i can go rape a woman tho, and hell, i can even say she used demonic seduction and forced me into it and she's the bad guy, too. and you gotta agree, bc im a christian so im a good person so im definitely not lying or anything.

anyways the point is if youre a christian woman, willingly, youre fucking blind. frankly, but in the most gentle and loving way possible, youre a fucking moron.

open your goddamned eyes and get the fuck out of there. why are you allowing people to justify hurting you?? these values didnt end in genesis. they are maintained today. christian men to this day blame the woman for coaxing them into extramarital affairs they willingly and hornily enter. christian men to this day believe women are lesser and should be subservient to them, the Given leader of the household by merit of wiener. christian men to this day blame women for their own rapes and hold them accountable for pregnancies they never wanted bc they're MEANT to be baby bakeries and refusing is against your Purpose. christian men to this day believe you're weaker, less skilled, less powerful, less capable, just Lesser, because of the body you were born in--one that does amazing things theirs could never do, like bring fucking LIFE INTO THE WORLD. christian men to this day justify breaking modern laws and moral codes because women nod along agreeing that this ancient book written in a long dead language based on word of mouth stories in places today considered third-world that nobody you know has ever been to, most or all of which happened before the advent of written language, and was all 100% written by men and only contains a number of female characters you can count on your fingers despite covering supposedly thousands of years of stories, is a valid reason for it all.

I'm begging you to open your eyes and see. I'm begging you to value and love yourself. even if you think none of these things have ever applied to you; because i bet they have and you're just too used to it to realize. It's not even progressive to appreciate your right to equality as a human being!! you dont need to change all your values! the things you really love about church--community, kindness, love, service, gratitude and celebration of the life you have been given--can all be maintained without religion. all you need to do is wake up and see that you're being systemically abused. if there is a God, which I welcome you to continue to believe, he wouldnt want this for you. If he loves his children, ALL his children equally, anyone who says man is superior is outright speaking against that very idea! In God's eyes, we are all the same, so why do men get to say "but we're a little more special"? If you need to shut your mouth and keep shit to yourself, that's not love and peace and harmony and salvation. That's being oppressed. Please. PLEASE wake up.

Sincerely,

A much happier now ex-Christian Woman, who never doubted her faith to be real for a moment until one day something spurred her to actually start REALLY looking at what she was raised to believe

[a-snails-pace-1917]

This is a common misunderstanding of the NEP I think,which comes from Deng and Gorbachev trying to use that period of time as a justification for their privatization schemes.

The NEP came about in response to war communism,a model of expropriations,conscription of labor for wartime production,and taking grain tributes from the peasants. A major issue was a decline in available food because the peasants had no incentive to produce surplus as they couldn’t profit from it (the peasantry in this way is comparable to the petit bourgeois). The NEP allowed the peasants to privately trade their surplus grain,which the state would instead purchase from them rather than just seize. It also allowed for small-scale private enterprise while most of the railways and big industry was owned by the state. This was not socialism,as Lenin clarified,the Soviet Union was not operating in the socialist mode of production.

The difference after the Great Break when Stalin’s clique took power was that the state had nationalized all industry (and collectivized the peasant agriculture but that’s a whole other complicated topic). It still fit within a state capitalist paradigm,just with all property nationalized and operating within the state’s planning. Eventually this for various reasons started to fall short,and in conjunction with political crises led Gorbachev to launch a two-pronged reform,liberalizing the government and liberalizing the economy. In the economy they privatized a bunch of industry and production,allowed more stuff to be done for profit,and invited western firms to come in and do business there. This is seen by most Marxist-Leninists as a bad move and a betrayal of socialism as established under Stalin (=\).

In China the primary difference was that they didn’t liberalize the government,the regime didn’t collapse like the USSR,and they’ve carried on the growth of private capitalism to a much larger extent. In China,wealthy business owners,capitalists,and bankers can all join the ruling communist party,workers have to form opposition groups, and the government does not recognize the necessity of class struggle,instead offering common prosperity (a line more befitting Mussolini or FDR than a “socialist” government!). China clearly falls in the schema laid pit by Lenin and others of a State Capitalist country ,and one dominated by capitalists and bureaucrats rather than the working class party. I think most of this derives from a misunderstanding of what socialism is that comes from Stalin and the USSR’s official line,which loses crucial elements from Marx and Lenin’s works,as well as most of the other Bolsheviks. In the future I’ll write about what I think socialism is and why Stalin completely misdefines it for his own gain.

Fun how the people who hue and cry the loudest about China's "Reform and Opening Up", condemning it as some sort great betrayal of socialism, so often consider themselves aligned with Lenin. Like some sort of defender of true socialism from the golden era against all those later revisionists. As though like the NEP wasn't something that Lenin himself very much supported and implemented. Our wise and tactical introduction of capitalist elements VS their revisionist selling out to the bourgeoisie, something like that

There's probably a couple of things at play here. One contributing factor likely the fetishism of defeat you see all too often among Western socialists, treating the dead and failed experiments of the past as somehow being more pure and truly communist than any still living socialist regime. Another is the excessive attachment to specific individuals you see among those who accept communist ideas without truly embracing dialectical materialist thinking; treating certain thinkers and leaders (i.e. Lenin, Trotsky, Mao) as though they were divine prophets while others (i.e. Deng) are devils sent to lead us astray. Policies are not evaluated in terms of their material effects, the prevailing conditions they were taken in or even their theoretical basis. Rather the focus is on who proposed them; similar policies are good when a good guy supports them and bad when backed by a villain. Finally there's likely an element of underlying racism to all this; these people have faith in the ability of Europeans make the right decisions and build a better society, while no such trust is extended to those "less enlightened" peoples of the world. Surely the end of Socialism in Europe meant the end of any Socialism that matters? Like any nation still calling itself Socialist must be lying or deluded; there's no way those barbarians could have anything to teach us...

[stregoniconiconii]

just saw a post that so completely misdefined emotional infidelity they said it’s basically just being friends. in juxtaposition to the do you guys have any friends question have you guys ever dated anyone?????