#kyriarchy eleison

[starfieldcanvas]

watching someone i’ve followed for quite a while descend into “stop using queer as an umbrella term, not everyone has reclaimed the word~ #lgbt #q slur” territory after a few weeks of posting progressively more and more ace-negative posts is intensely distressing.

because of course the two go hand in hand, right? it’s all about gatekeeping.

[hardcorefornerds]

Guillaume de Machaut, Messe de Nostre Dame: Kyrie - Diabolus in Musica, Antoine Guerber (YouTube)

“Kyrie, eleison” (Lord, have mercy)

“...my interest is in emphasizing the potentiality and movement of exodus within power relations themselves, their reversal and the flight from them that is always possible, but never leads to an outside of power. This is the reason for stressing the ambivalent constitution of self-government of governmental modes of subjectivation. An exodus from neoliberal governmentality arises from the rejection of capitalizable self-government and the turn to a self-conduct that test new modes of living in disobedience. These kinds of rejections are not a deliverance from all previous neoliberal entanglements, but rather the beginning of engagements and struggles to no longer be governed and no longer govern oneself in this way, at this price.”

Isabell Lorey, State of Insecurity

I’ve been thinking more about how to connect spiritual music with political theory (except it’s not really ‘connection’, but polyphony, a kind of intellectual counterpoint... with apologies to those more versed in musical theory than I’ve become in several weeks of watching YouTube videos... mainly from Adam Neely).

This would probably work better if the line was ‘Lord, deliver us’, but meditating on the use of the word Kyrie is enough (cf. “kyriarchy”, a word that I always thought was redundant - how can you have arche without kyrie? - but I guess that’s the point). Given how intertwined Christianity is with the development of political power in Western civilisation - not just in the formal exercise of power, but its cultural understanding, the models of obedience and dedication (and of course, confession, as Foucault argues) - does it not make sense to also study the ars spiritualis as a means to understanding and illuminating the concept of power? And perhaps to convert that experience into a new kind of liberation?

[swordsoprano]

unstoppable force vs immovable object: “being lgbt+, even if your identity is highly complicated or specific, isn’t abnormal” vs “destroy the concept of normalcy, all it does is uphold oppressive standards”

[swordsoprano]

also…like…pretending that bad people are incapable of making good art is how you get “no, we can’t possibly remove this person from their position of power, and/or stop platforming them! they make such good art! they can’t possibly be bad if they make good art, and anyone who says they’ve done bad things must be lying!”

I think we need to get more comfortable with the idea that sometimes shitty, racist, homophobic, bigoted people are still incredibly talented.

I feel like every time I see a post addressing someone’s shitty behavior the post also takes the time to mention that they’re not even good at [x] anyway. And that’s just not always true? Equating being good at a skill as being morally good is just not necessary. Someone can be a fantastic writer, can have a beautiful singing voice, can create breathtaking artwork, and still be a horrible person.

I know part of this is probably just the instinct to dislike everything about a person when you dislike them, but I also think this mindset leads to people defending creatives way past where they should, because if bad people create bad art, then if this person creates art that I like and resonates with me, then they can’t be a bad person!

And you know. That’s just not true. Those two things are simply completely unconnected and I think it’d be healthier if we all started disconnecting them in our heads.

[swordsoprano]

something else i thought of in relation to this post: there are different degrees of being suicidal, and no one really takes that into account.

“i wish i was dead” is not the same thing as “i want to die.”

“i want to die” is not the same thing as “i want to kill myself.”

“i want to kill myself” is not the same thing as “i have a plan to kill myself.”

“i have a plan to kill myself” is not the same thing as “i will kill myself.”

for example, i want to die, but i’d never actually kill myself, and i feel like that doesn’t require the same approach as someone who has actually attempted suicide, but that’s something that i really don’t see professionals taking into account.

[swordsoprano]

when you see an article about an olympic athlete who has depression and is talking about mental health things

when the article's title talks about how "depression doesn't have to hold you back"

[swordsoprano]

tonight’s shower epiphany

if you have been told to hate yourself, if you have been told that your existence is wrong 

happiness is resistance. self-preservation is resistance. existing is resistance.

no one ever has the right to say that your activism is inferior or invalid if you do not feel miserable and threatened.

[starfieldcanvas]

by sheer coincidence courtney milan has a bsky thread today about people who manipulate the social dynamics of civility, which is worth a read if you're thinking about how to spot bad actors from the outside:

and may peterson had an excellent follow-up thread about the existence of care hierarchies that may or may not align with expected mainstream power dynamics, and how that can make it more difficult to spot abusers:

i highly recommend reading both threads all the way through!

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[swordsoprano]

did you know: critiquing the assumption that when women dress up it's to please men/the society that pressures women to dress up to please men is not the same thing as shaming women who dress up to please men

[swordsoprano]

i also find it really gross that sometimes the only thing affirming that i (and people like me) matter is complicated theoretical stuff that i can’t understand

[swordsoprano]

some asshole: there are only two genders!

me: 

[starfieldcanvas]

it's so infuriating because people these days frequently use it to mean the EXACT OPPOSITE of what it was coined to express

there are two ways i see this happen.

first is the one OP alludes to, which is where they've picked up on the fact that it's something to do with multiple marginalizations interacting with each other, and jump from there to "whoever can add up the most marginalized identities at once wins the Oppression Olympics" and this is ridiculous because the core principle of intersectionality theory is that identity ISN'T additive

but then there's also the more subtle warping of the term, wherein they use it to mean "when you are doing activism based on your own identity, keep in mind the needs and goals of the other marginalized identities that you don't share!" and like, that's a great goal, in the abstract! but "solidarity" would probably be a more appropriate term for working together across movements. intersectionality is explicitly about blurring the lines between movements because you can't draw a line down the middle of a person.

I'm taking the word "intersectionality" away from internet discourse and putting it on the shelf until people learn that the meaning is "the sum of your identity can not be split into pieces and sorted neatly into easy-to-understand boxes because each piece influences the rest" and not "these people are The Most Oppressed"

[swordsoprano]

coming up with a really good nuanced apology because impact =/= intent and all that stuff is super important 

but it's also important to remember that the standards for apologies in most sj spaces tend to be really exclusive of people who have trouble crafting an apology with that sort of nuance (whether it's because of neurodivergence, lack of familiarity with sj spaces, lack of access to education, etc.) 

obviously there's not a perfect solution to this i'm just thinking out loud and will probably get hate for it

[swordsoprano]

they made a horror movie about the suicide forest in japan and gave the two main parts to Natalie Dormer and another white woman. are you fucking kidding me

[starfieldcanvas]

What does your tag "kieriarchy eleison" refer to? I know the phrase "kyrie eleison" but??

Basically, “kyrie” means “lord,” and “kyriarchy” is a word coined in the 90s to describe interlocking systems of dominance where people could “lord” over each other for reasons like race, gender, sexuality, class, etc. It���s a way of referring to all the various kinds of oppression at once. So since “kyrie eleison” means “Lord, have mercy!” ... “kyriarchy eleison” means something like “hey oppressive systems, ease up a bit, wouldja?”I use it for posts that are complaining about multiple kinds of oppression working together, or for types of oppression I don’t have a dedicated tag for, like ageism.P.S.: I guess it’d be impossible to figure this out on tumblr mobile, but I actually have a whole page dedicated to explaining my weird tags! It’s the “unique tags” link on my homepage, or you can put /tagstories after my URL. 

[infiniteglitterfall]

this is why I've always supported it/its.

(i mean, besides the obvious reason that IN THIS HOUSE, WE SUPPORT PEOPLE'S PRONOUNS.)

as enbies, it is our holy and sacred right, NAY, RESPONSIBILITY, to utterly destroy every fucking line that anyone attempts to draw around or within the concept of gender.

the way people lose their shit when they hear about it/its pronouns, and the fact that calling us "it" is easily the first thing that bigots go to when they want to insult us, means there is TREMEMDOUS power in fucking with cis people by MAKING them use those pronouns for us.

Take their weapons. Break them. Take their assumptions, and smash them over their damnfool heads.

non-it/its users need to get their shit together fr