#kill your local terf today

[orchidbreezefc]

never mind that last posttttt

i should really look into people who talk about abortion exclusively in terms of women before reblogging when im on mobile with no shinigami eyes

like what did i think it was, that this sj blogger on tumblr getting into reproductive discourse just hadn't heard the news about trans people existing--

anyway here's the same message from a non-terf: the right to an abortion is unconditional, even if it's because a fetus is disabled. there is a conversation to be had about how the social pressure to abort a disabled fetus is based in eugenics, and we should have that conversation, but no individual should be kept from an abortion or forced to bear a fetus, period. bodily autonomy is not conditional.

(but make it trans rights)

[raineyy]

Wow from a lot of posts on my dash its becoming kinda clear that a lot of you do not care about transwomen at all.

Staff did fuck all back when I was recieving harrassment from terfs telling me to kill myself.

You people really only care about making your haha funny car hammer explosion jokes while more and more transwomen are pushed out of "The Queerest place on the Internet"

Predstrogen was by far not the first and definitely won't be last. Hell this isnt even the first time so.ething like this has happened. Yall remember back when every POC blogger was being harrassed, especially Trans POC bloggers, and were pushed off the site as well?

Fuck Photomatt and fuck staff.

Its disgusting the way staff just allows bigotry and harassment to just. Happen. It's all justified because it's happening to those yucky icky nasty trans women.

There are literal, actual pedophiles on this app, and its become a serious problem, but staff can't be fucked to do anything because a trans woman had the nerve to post pictures of herself, which is obviously the more pressing matter at hand.

Do something to support your local trans woman today. Because who fucking knows if theyre still gonna be here tomorrow.

[neirawrites]

Since a certain author, who was my favorite growing up and who made me want to become a writer myself, just cannot stop being a terrible bigot, I have decided that my new favorite childhood writer is Branko Ćopić, an ex Yugoslavian writer who wrote the first book I ever read on my own. It was called the Adventures of Toše the Cat, and it’s about a cat, his alcoholic owner (who did try to kill him) and a mouse and a dog who follow him on his adventures. Ćopić remains one of the most popular local writers and he wrote books and stories and even movies, not only for children, but for adults too.  His most famous works include Eagles Fly Early,  The Marshmallow Color Garden, Hedgehog's House and many others. 

Was Branko Ćopić a TERF? I do not know, for he does not have twitter to tell me Nikoletina Bursać was actually gay he whole time. 

Sadly, Ćopić committed suicide in 1984. Given that he was a man from Yugoslavia in the 20th century, I can assume he has some ideas that would be considered problematic today, but, hear me out: he served in WWII and FOUGHT LITERAL NAZIS. That is all I need to hear. 

So, tell me, if you want, who was your favorite writer growing up? Especially if you aren’t from an English speaking country. I would like to know <3 

[the-passive-optimist]

 Tagged by @paper-juliens Thank you!

rules: answer 17 questions and tag someone. (or more than one if u want!)

1. nickname: Nixon (my last name: like the president - NO relation) or my self-appointed much cooler nickname “Nixonator”. 

2. zodiac sign: Gemini - but before people lay Gemini hate - i have been told by other people I’m not one of the bad ones.

3. height: 5′9

4. hogwarts house: Ugh JK Rowling is a TERF and she’s dead to me - but Hufflepuff without a doubt. 

5. last thing I googled: “Public Policy impacts in Canada due to COVID-19″ I’m trying to find a project topic so I can start some virtual hours of my social work placement. 

6. song stuck in my head: Dreamland by Glass Animals. Its very chill and I highly recommend. 

7. # of followers: Oh god, not a lot. Uhm 151

8. amount of sleep: Typically between 7-9 hours a night thanks to self-isolation!

9. lucky number: 15. The number has always resonated with me for reasons I can’t explain. I just think its neat I guess. 

10. dream job: Drummer in a Alt Rock / Indie Rock Band. But realistically a Social Worker working in Social Policy Analysis/Development.

11. wearing: Dark blue jeans and a blue plaid flannel shirt. Lesbian realness today. Earlier I was wearing a backwards ball cap to hide how horrifically long my hair has gotten. When I wear that hat my partner tells me I’m serving “Chad realness”.

12. favorite song: Cosmic Love - Florence & the Machine 

13. favorite instrument: Going to go with my concert/marching band past and say Tuba :). 

14. aesthetic: Fall/Winter/Spring - Old Man Professor/Financial Accountant Dad. Summer - BBQ Dad. Plaid, tea, the ocean, converse shoes, the moon. 

15. favorite author: Stephen King, Neil Gibson, 

16. favorite animal noise: GOATS. 

17. random fact: When I was young (like 7 years old) I entered a look alike contest for the Spice Girls / Backstreet Boys (alone because none of my friends would join me). This was like 1998 so I had a great mushroom cut. I got a brand new track suit and was SO ready to kill it up on that stage, at my local mall, to Spice Up Your Life (as Sporty Spice). Only to get up there, feel the heat of the spotlights, get nervous, stand still for the intro, do a half-assed Sporty Spice kick and run off the stage crying. I was comforted by a Brian look alike from the Backstreet Boys until my parents came to get me. And that folks, was the beginning of a 13 year long fear of being the center of attention. 

Tagging my ever so lovely and amazing girlfriend @passion-and-poison and @happyto-behere. No pressure! 

[vergess]

The good Samaritan IS the 'localized' version. The thesis is, "your internal beliefs are less valuable than your external actions."

Another version, eg, is the Reason for the Atheist

It's a story about identifying a person's actions not their background data. And, I think it's worth emphasizing that the audience is, in fact, a specific character within the narrative, same as Jesus himself.

With that in mind, I have 2 points to make.

First: The people who pass the dying man aren't a cop and a priest. I get that "priest" is how people translate rabbi, but it really interferes with the way people conceptualize rabbis at all. And I'm certain christian Americans don't generally know who/what levites even are.

The people who pass the dying man are more accurately a teacher and a doctor. Both are, in this case, members of groups that are trained to save lives and handle emergencies around dead bodies (American school shooting statistics are... dismal).

Those are the people who turn away. Who don't even check if the thing on the side of the road is alive, though they would have obligations to a corpse too.

And THEN the foreigner from the other side of the war, stuck in the same neighborhood by careless colonizers. THEN, after a DOCTOR walked away from his maybe-dead body... this person we don't know, who walks like a soldier and clearly fought for the other side. This person that WE, THE AUDIENCE have been taught to see as the insurmountable Other comes along, and he walks towards the could-be corpse. At best WE expect him to be killed quicker.

But the Man We Distrust checks for a pulse. Cleans and bandages the wounds. Feeds and hydrates the body. We, the audience, know the traveller is alive. We never actually see the traveller respond to any of this treatment; we can only assume.

What matters is not the traveller, after all, but the kindness shown to the traveller. What matters is the shared respect for human beings, between the audience and the Samaritan. The "we're not so different after all."

It's a story about the hypocrisy that exhaustion breeds, and how to identify both failure of duty among each other, and the responsibility of kindness to each other.

Both Jews and Samaritans were exhausted, colonized peoples. And tension from that exhaustion could easily lead to Yet Another War.But resolving that tension allows one to direct the anger of exhaustion to the people responsible.

See, my second point is, we keep forgetting, there is a villain in the story.

Here's how I would localize it today, for the rural baptist area I grew up in.

Dying man: A little blond white child, still dying

Rabbi: Elementary school teacher, social worker, etc

Levite: Pediatric doctor, nurse etc

Samaritans: An "obvious gang of thugs." Mostly Latino and Black men. Wearing similar clothes and """walking aggressively"""

The gang of thugs from the actual story itself: Cops who thought the kid was a school shooter. TERFs who thought the kid was trans. Nazis who heard the kid was Jewish. Rich businessmen who starved the kid to death in the streets. Whatever actually hurt the dying child in the first place.

The moral is, simply, that our allies are not defined by the names they use or their mere proximity to us. They are defined by HELPING US AND EACH OTHER.

And who is "Us?"

Not the people actually hurting us, that's for damn sure.

The closest a cop is getting to being in this story is as the gang of thugs who nearly killed the traveller in the first place.

I'm attaching an English la copy of the parable below.

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested [Jesus], saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

He said to [the lawyer], "What is written in the law? How do you read it?"

[The lawyer] answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself."

[Jesus] said to him, "You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live."

But [the lawyer], desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?"

Jesus answered:

He said to [the lawyer], "What is written in the law? How do you read it?"

[The lawyer] answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself."

[Jesus] said to him, "You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live."

Random thought brought on by seeing a veterinarian sign on the drive to Coffee Land, but I think Jesus would really appreciate people localizing his parable of the Good Samaritan.

Because, like, it's a good story, right? When the administrator-guy and the holy man wouldn't help the injured, the Samaritan went out of their way to make sure the injured man was able to get the help they needed, paid out of their own pocket. And that's good and all, but what even is a Samaritan? Do you know?

Well, they're a ethnoreligious group from northern Israel who follow Samaritanism, which split from Judaism sometime around the 11th century BCE. There's only about a thousand of them left. But around the time of Jesus, they were not very popular with your average Hebrew. Remember the Seleucid empire that was oppressing jews? There's a yearly celebration about it, involving a candle that lasted for 8 nights. Yeah. So at the time the Samaritans had taken the opportunity to point out they're not Jewish, they're Samaritans, so they wouldn't be persecuted. So they were seen as, like, selling out their brothers and sisters in the faith. Then by the time the Romans took over the whole area, the province of Judaea contained Samaria.

So basically the Jews and the seen-to-have-sold-them-out Samaritans were stuck in the same province, thanks to some Romans consolidating the areas they'd conquered. Tensions between the two groups were high, and I don't imagine either of them liked each other very much at all.

To a Jew of the first century CE, a Samaritan is basically the worst kind of person you could be, and that's exactly why Jesus used them in the parable of the Good Samaritan!

The parable isn't about Samaritans. It's about how the worst person you can imagine is a better person than the people you idolize and uplift, if that person takes care of their fellow man. It's about how you should love your neighbor as yourself, and who is your neighbor? Everyone. All people are your neighbors. Help them when they need help!

And that's why I say it should really be localized. You should tell this parable differently than it was told in AD 29 or whenever. Do you hate Samaritans? Probably not! You probably barely know who they are, even after I did some explaining up there. So why use them as your example? If Jesus was here, I don't think he would have done that.

So like, if you were giving a sermon on the good Samaritan in the 1960s to a white church, you should be like "so the policeman walked past, and the pastor walked past, but then a poor black guy saw the injured man, and got him help at the local hospital."

In the 80s, his rescuer is Soviet. In the 2000s, they're a Muslim, from Afghanistan or Iran.

Today? Maybe they're trans.

As an American, there's been many times that "Mexican" would have been the best choice. Maybe even today, especially if you specifically make them an undocumented migrant.

But yeah, the point is that you pick the group of people most hated by the audience you're talking to, and make the point that THEY ARE A BETTER PERSON THAN YOU and ALL THOSE YOU UPHOLD AS PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY if they help their fellow man. If your worst enemy is lying injured in the street, you call the ambulance, you pay their doctor, you get them help. That's what Jesus says you should do. That's loving your neighbor, that's the Great Commandment.

And in the Roman province of Judea back in the first half of the first century, when talking to a Jewish audience, that meant the rescuer was a Samaritan helping a Jew. That was just the context for that one particular telling of the story. It shouldn't be told the same way today, or in the future. It should be an evolving parable, always changing, always adjusting the nationalities and situations and genders and everything. It's not a story about a specific event, it doesn't pretend to be history, it's a metaphorical lesson about what makes you a good person.

This parable is basically in the form of an "X, Y and Z walk into a bar" joke, and just like jokes, it should be updated over time. Those don't stay funny though the decades, as cultural attitudes shift. And this parable hasn't been updated in nearly two millenia, so it's long overdue.