#liberal minds

[queerliblib]

Do you have a list of poly romances? I'm desperate to read actual in-text polyamorous stories and I keep coming up empty. QLL is phenomenal, thank y'all for everything you do!

hello! we are working on building up a list - purchasing a few more each month as we go, but we don’t have enough yet to post it up on Libby yet. however! i can give you a sneak peak from the drafts

Couplets by Maggie Miller

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao @xiranjayzhao

The Hunger Pangs & Crewel Intentions by Joy Demorra @thebibliosphere

we’re also growing up our poly non-fic! a few titles we’ve already got include Multiamory, Polysecure, & Entwined: Essays on polyamory and creating home

[sarahsinferno]

I Wish for Liberation

I sit in the dark, my thoughts a storm of fragments, and I wish, not with the innocence of a child but with the bitter clarity of experience, that you would feel the weight of every wound you gave.

do you know the sharp sting of betrayal, the cruel echo of a lie, the loneliness that wraps around the heart like a shroud?

I want you to know the hollow ache of waiting, the gnawing uncertainty that burrows deep, the sleepless nights stretched out in their endless, aching expanse.

I want the weight of your own choices to press down on you, heavy and relentless, until you understand the pressure that drove me to despair, until you feel a trace of my sorrow settling like dust in your own empty spaces.

you, who sculpted misery with your hands, who wielded cruelty like a blade, are you aware of the echoes you left? do you hear them whisper in your dreams, the ache you wove so effortlessly into my days?

i could wish for storms to ravage your calm, for the sky to crack open with lightning that rends the fabric of your peace, for the tremors of regret to shake your foundation.

yet, even as I wish this, I realize that suffering does not heal, that the flames of revenge only scorch the hands that wield them.

so, instead, I let the weight of my sorrow settle, a quiet confession to the universe that sometimes I crave for the scales to tip,

for the pain to be known, but mostly,

I wish for liberation, for the shackles of my anger to fall away, and for a heart that no longer clings to the shadows of the past.

so I let the wish drift, a bitter gust of wind that fades into the void, and I turn away, searching for a release from this desire, for a way to mend the broken pieces without adding more shards to the world’s already jagged heart.

S.T. 2024

santa rosalia by roberto ferri(1978) oil on canvas

the shepherd david by elizabeth bouguereau(1895)

dancers by franz von stuck(1896)

perseus slaying medusa by laurent-honore marqueste(1903)

[vintageseawitch]

this cannot be said enough: even if you voted for trump in both 2016 & 2020, but you're voting for Harris/Walz this year, YOU ARE MORE THAN WELCOME HERE. we need all the help we can get. if you've voted Republican for MULTIPLE decades but you plan on voting for Harris/Walz this year, YOU ARE MORE THAN WELCOME HERE.

centrists, moderates, libertarians, liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, even if you consider yourself far left, no matter how you politically identify but plan to make sure trump doesn't win: YOU ARE MORE THAN WELCOME HERE.

PLEASE DON'T BE AN ERNST THÄLMANN. DON'T STOP TALKING ABOUT PROJECT 2025/AGENDA 47. you're ALL welcome here if you want to fight for our democracy. check your voter registration status often (as many times as possible) & vote early if you can. talk to friends, make a day of it. LET'S DO THIS!!

[becasbelt]

if chloe beale isn't attracted to girls, why did she sing "just the way you are" the way that she did? if not gay, why sing her eyes make the stars look like they're not shining so earnestly while staring deeply into a girl's eyes? why would she do that if she wasn't a raging girl kisser huh

[kdramaspace]

POTW #98: LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT vs. SLOW BURN (as voted by our members and followers)

A Piece of Your Mind (2020) | My Liberation Notes (2022) | Just Between Lovers (2017) | Run On (2020) | The Eighth Sense (2023) | One Spring Night (2019) | Do You Like Brahms? (2020)

[mercifullymad]

i feel passionately about the need to enfold people experiencing (or diagnosed) with "just" depression or anxiety into the mad pride project. the more people who view themselves as mad, the better. much as the rhetorical move from "neurotypical" to "neuroconforming" emphasizes the artifice & social construction of "neurotypicality," so too will expanding identification as "mad" expose the sane/mad dichotomy as a false one.

it's true that (some) people with "just" depression and/or anxiety have an easier time navigating the psych system than people who have more stigmatized diagnoses. but this is not to say that they necessarily have an easy time — the carceral psych system is hostile to everyone subsumed by it, even the most "privileged" patients. we should of course critique & examine how our experiences are shaped by various intersections of privilege, but we cannot forget or ignore how someone with "just" a depression/anxiety diagnosis can still experience the full force of the carceral psych system brought down upon them (including but not limited to involuntary institutionalization, police intervention, & forced medication or other forced treatment).

we must encourage, if not insist, that those with the least-stigmatized diagnoses view their difficult experiences navigating the psych system as bound up with the liberation of people who have more stigmatized diagnoses &, often, a more violent experience of the psych system. we need more people to drop the "i have anxiety/depression but i'm not crazy" line and say loudly, "i have anxiety/depression & i am crazy. my access to just treatment is linked to the conditions of all other crazy people, who are my allies, peers, & friends. we are united in our cause & we all deserve a more liberating system of care."

[galactic-rhea]

It's ranting hours sunday for me: Y' know, I think when people complain soooo much about Padmé getting with Anakin, they're failing to see a lot of things. BUT ESPECIALLY...That it was her choice, and if speaks a lot of her character and personality.

She was already done dirty by the movies by getting so many deleted scenes, but then if you try to take away the agency she had on marrying a human disaster or her choices, like her forgiveness/understanding, it's actually undermining and flattening her character.

The fact is that she's actually very similar to Anakin, she's stubborn, deeply traumatized, compromises a lot for the sake of others and loves beyond reasoning. We, the audience, know that Anakin will become Darth Vader and one of the most iconic villains of history; so everything he does can be seem as a red flag that really isn't there.

From Padmé's POV, Anakin has done terrible things, but it's capable of incredible acts of love and compassion. They're in circumstances that aren't normal at all, she was queen at 14, and he was born a slave and joined the space wizard monks and his normal is kill or be killed. Our modern and omniscient POV can't be applied onto them because there's no point of comparison in this sci-fi-shakespearen tragedy-soap-opera-fantasy.

Besides...she was actually right in the end, and I don't believe is "feminist" or progressive to take away a big part of her core personality, that actually had repercussions in the whole story, and make her out to be either unaware and naive of marrying a monster, or (the worst one, imo) being jedi-mind-tricked-brainwashed-abused by her husband.

The "right, correct, girlboss and queen" actitude does more damage than help, leave Padmé to be a person. A person who wanted to have a fairytale romance with some guy who would fight for her and makes her laugh.

Also, the hell why you wanna blame her for something Anakin does, come on. That's a whole other can of worms, though. My point is, that trying to avoid or re-work-or re-contextualize the fact that she chose Anakin despite him literally telling her about murdering a whole village, is actually changing a big chunk of her personality traits.

She was a child queen, then a politician at the edge of an inminent war, manipulated by the same guy that groomed Anakin into a massive murderer, saw her people being taken into camps, had assasination attempts weekly and had to rip off of her individualism by becoming a public figure, giving up her sense of being a person by having several almost identical decoys, she had to stop being just Padmé to be Queen and then Senator Amidala and she did all of that showing little to no emotion.

Then Anakin does all what she herself had to rip off of her in order to be a politician: Honest, passionate, and able to show emotions; like love or anger.

She has morals and she represents democracy and justice, in a way. But I fully believe that inside her she had the same passionate anger and love capable of burning the galaxy that we know Anakin had, which makes them different sides of the same coin, and I think she realized that. Anakin perhaps didn't , as he never stopped of seeing himself as a slave and therefore inferior, whereas he held Padmé very highly, but I think Padmé saw them both as equals. She didn't have a "I can fix him" mentality, she had a "We're the same, we're both lonely, confused, hurting and scared of losing everything. And if he's like me, then I know he can do the right thing for love."

In other words: She was as insane as her husband, she only seems normal because she wasn't put into the monk warrior order and groomed by the devil for over a decade. (And I don't mean insane as, 'she's crazy for loving a murderer' harley quinn style, I just meant it on a daring, hopeless romantic and tenacious way)

[thichnhathanhgems]

[lazyyogi]

The first thing to remember is this: As long as you make an identity for yourself out of the pain, you cannot become free of it. As long as part of your sense of self is invested in your emotional pain, you will unconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt that you make to heal that pain.

Why? Quite simply because you want to keep yourself intact, and the pain has become an essential part of you. This is an unconscious process, and the only way to overcome it is to make it conscious.

To suddenly see that you are or have been attached to your pain can be quite a shocking realization. The moment you realize this, you have broken the attachment.

The pain-body is an energy field, almost like an entity, that has become temporarily lodged in your inner space. It is life energy that has become trapped, energy that is no longer flowing.

Of course, the pain-body is there because of certain things that happened in the past. It is the living past in you, and if you identify with it, you identify with the past.

A victim identity is the belief that the past is more powerful than the present, which is the opposite of the truth. It is the belief that other people and what they did to you are responsible for who you are now, for your emotional pain or your inability to be your true self.

The truth is that the only power there is is contained within this moment: It is the power of your presence. Once you know that, you also realize that you are responsible for your inner space now — nobody else is — and that the past cannot prevail against the power of the Now.

Eckhart Tolle

[marxistlesbianist]

It’s funny when liberals scold us for being so stupid as to think that not voting is a revolutionary act. Like, no I don’t actually think that I am doing anything impactful specifically by not voting. I just don’t think that I would be doing anything impactful by voting either.

[yasyassie]

As we enter pride month again,

let's remember that capitalism will never benefit queer people, as it is a system that will always prioritize profit over people.

Let's remember that corporate pride isn't real pride, that companies literally just see us as consumers and nothing more, that they don't care about our rights.

Let's support small buisnesses, small content creators, small writers and artists and musicians who make really queer and really good stuff, and who stand up against injustice.

Let's continue to boycott big brands for our palestinian, uyghur and congolese brothers and sisters.

Let our humanity guide us instead of the need to buy and fall into the capitalist trap of thinking that someone belongs more because they can buy more.

Please, boycott corporate pride and choose decolonisation this month.

None of us is free until we all are.

[ankle-beez]

"trump said to let israel finish the job so the genocide is only gonna get worse if he wins" as opposed to now where the genocide is going a-ok under biden

[saturngalore]

so many posts about community and grieving but how many of y’all wear a mask (kn95 or higher) everywhere you go? how many of y’all care about the disabled and elderly people around you? how many of y’all boycotted popular businesses like mcdonald’s, starbucks, and disney? how many of y’all reshared and donate to mutual aid campaigns from and outside of palestine especially for black and/or queer people? how many of y’all active try to avoid ai when it’s possible? how can i know y’all are serious about community and doing the work under him when you haven’t even done at least one of these things in your life ☹️

[ano-po]

The canon event where you move out of your Asian household and you realize you can throw your single-use plastic bags/containers because you have glass, ceramic, or woven baskets to keep your things. Your mind says "what if there is a new thing you must contain?" but you answer with "I don't have much to contain anyway." You have one eco bag that also works as a tote bag sometimes. It's holding on. It's very sturdy. You use it for books and groceries and gadgets. It's only one and you don't feel the need to buy another. You throw away the batteries (safely) that are empty, because what's the need to keep them around, only to be forgotten? Most of your things are solar-powered and rechargeable anyway. You don't buy clothes that you think you'll use somehow. You only have 5 sets of carefully thrifted clothes or heavily saved long-lasting designers. They're all adjustable. You accepted that the human body is ever flunctuating. You realize you don't have to keep that scrap of fabric. You bought one microfiber cloth you use for every kind of surface. You can squeeze it and it's all dry, not staying in the kitchen wet and slimy. You realize you can throw away the sticks you found in the woods NOPE NOPE I NEED THESE STICKS HERE thaNk you very much these are good sticks see KALI-KALI SIZE WOW nope these are staying!

[ashipiko]

MODERN BOYZ ☆

🫶 og img under cut

[cyberianpunks]

get-get-get-get-got-got-got-got