#meaning is constructed socially

[belugalord]

Also worth asking here who decides which surgeries are purely cosmetic. Like, people will get plastic surgery after a really bad burn to try to cover up the scar, which can decrease skin irritation. People get “cosmetic” breast surgery in order to decrease back pain. People have many reasons to get surgery, the human experience is vast, but have you never put on makeup just to feel pretty?

I think the straight up worst take on gender abolitionism by far is like "in the gender abolitionist utopia nobody would feel the need to transition medically"

Fuck you. That's completely backwards. True gender abolition can't be achieved without total bodily autonomy and genuine freedom to have whichever bodies we want.

The suggested "utopia" here is just a cisnormative one where you're not allowed to accurately name it as such.

[thriftdyke]

it really does bother me how no one can seem to answer the question “what even is romantic attraction, really.” like some people are like “it’s who you wanna kiss and cuddle <3” and I’m like ok well kisses and cuddles can be either sexual or platonic depending on context. “It’s who you feel passion/desire/arousal for” well that just sounds like sexual attraction which you can have without even knowing somebody so I fail to see how that’s romantic. “It’s who you want to go on dates with” I go on dates with friends all the time plus “date” is a social construct anyway there’s really no innate difference between a date and hanging out. “it’s who you have deep feelings for” great news for you that can be literally any type of relationship. my friend told me she defined it as “who you wanna give roses to” and I’m like do u hear urself??? like the more I talk to people the more I’m convinced romance and romantic attraction is an elaborate socially fabricated illusion that has no real defining characteristics. and like there’s nothing Wrong with it being a constuct but why people are so attached to defending the supremacy of it is something I cannot for the life of me figure out

[kosher-salt]

I'm sorry but if Sami people can be understood as other-than-white and lighter featured First Nations people can be understood as other-than-white and individuals of our sisters the Romani when similarly afflicted by melanin deficiency can be understood as other-than-white....

Your classification of Jews, who span the whole gamut of color but share the racialization and experience of being othered among any majority, including whiteness in the north/west, is only further evidence of your racism. Because in doing so you continue to perpetuate double standards for Jewish people, which is dangerous when merged with perspectives that view whiteness as a merit signifier. Not that our identity isn't a fair bit older than this pretty reductive view, but

Regardless, I'll remind that the minority indigenous groups I mentioned are in the context of a white majority, but white people do not have a monopoly on colonialism. Plenty of people don't want to be called Arab in MENA and plenty of people aren't sure that they'd classify themselves as Chinese or Russian in the sense that the West views national identity. But that kind of nuance probably isn't something I should bother with if we haven't made it past point 1.

[knifearo]

this year my challenge for everyone is to unlearn the association between love and morality. love is not something that is inherently morally good, and the absence of love is not something that is inherently bad. sex without love isn't morally bankrupt, it's just an action. people without love aren't less kind or less good, they're just people. when we can get past this false (and often unnoticed) dichotomy of good love/evil lovelessness then i think we are going to be able to take leaps and bounds in sex positivity, aro advocacy, certain discussions of mental health...

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

we need to take away "is a social construct" because it's just not useful anymore

everything is a social construct, once upon a time we would call these things "customs" or "traditions" or "laws," and this is just how humans behave

[tinkerbitch69]

I gotta say, as a trans woman, seeing misaki in terminator zero, an a.i. that described herself upon creation as ‘neither male or female’ actively choose to be a woman and ask to be considered as one cuz she felt like it aligned more with her idea of who she is or at least would like to become was so validating, especially in an online climate of ‘gender is bullshit and made up therefore it doesn’t matter’ 🥹

[menlove]

man the other thing that drives me crazy abt the whole "claiming judaism is an ethnicity and religion is race science just like the NAZIS" is that like....

what the nazis believed in was a mythical race of white europeans who were stronger and better than everyone else. they had 0 scientific, historic, or archeological proof of this. it was just a crackpot theory proposed to explain why white europeans were "better" than everyone else and provided an ideal for them to strive back to bc they thought that "pure" race had been tainted by racial "interbreeding"

jews saying judaism is an ethnicity is not bc it's in the fucking tanakh that they came from judea. it's bc there's MOUNTAINS of historical and archeological proof that jews came from that area. there's historical proof of people encountering jews in the middle east. there's firsthand accounts from jews themselves that survived diaspora that lived in that area. jewish DNA, regardless of other race, has a great deal of similarity w arabic DNA. there's MOUNTAINS of historical and archeological evidence that traces the movement of jews OUT of the area and into the rest of the world and the subsequent movement of jews for the next few thousand years as they kept getting kicked out or murdered

does any of that mean that israel should have displaced the people already living there and subjected them to decades of inequality and atrocity? fucking obviously not. but 1) denying historical and archeological fact to throw around your pet antisemitic conspiracy theory makes you sound like a qanon fuckass and 2) comparing that to white supremacists making up a mythical pure white race is just fucking insane and incredibly deeply antisemitic

like you don't have to make shit up to condemn what israel is doing, I promise you. you can acknowledge the nuance and hardship of history without condoning what israel does. israel doesn't need to be made up of pure europeans for you to criticize it. bc believe it or not, europeans are not the only people on earth capable of committing atrocities or having enough autonomy to do so.

[coquelicoq]

we get a lot of really great stuff in system collapse about murderbot's relationships with ART and ratthi, which makes sense, because it spends almost the entire book with them. but i also love how even though mensah isn't there for most of the story, other people keep reminding mb of her:

chapter 2, page 25: “From ART’s personnel file, she [Karime] was older than Mensah and she didn’t look like an intrepid space explorer, either, even in the protective environmental suit.”

2, 27: “It took Karime three seconds to process the abrupt statement. (She was almost as good at not looking annoyed as Mensah was.) She kept her expression neutral and patient.”

2, 28: “In the underground colony room, Karime lifted her brows. ‘Another occupied site?’ I thought she was being careful not to show too much reaction. It was the way Mensah would have played it.”

4, 70: “Iris looked at me and I saw her hesitate, because her hesitation looked a lot like Dr. Mensah’s hesitation. And I realized I really didn’t want to go down there.”

5, 104: "Iris has that same thing as Dr. Mensah, the thing where she’s able to look and sound calm under circumstances where shit is possibly about to go down.”

it's spent so much time with her and it knows her so well and respects her so much that she's the model against which it compares all other humans. it thinks about her when they're not together. it's protective of her. it has such total faith in her competence. it (non-romantically) loves her and doesn't want to not see her again. idk man, it just gets to me! and they were teammates (oh my god they were teammates!!)

bonus:

I said, aloud, "You have to be kidding me." (ch. 2, p. 28)

seven pages later, in reaction to the same thing:

Mensah had had time to review the feed video. She muttered, "Oh, you have to be kidding me." Yeah.

twinsies 🥰

[childrensrightsrehumanrights]

If you aren't prepared to have a disabled child you aren't prepared to have a child. If you would be greatly disappointed by having a child with certain traits, gender, ability, appearance, you are not ready to have a child.

A child is an individual you are ready to guide and care for, for the rest of your life. A child is not a customisable accessory.

Most people will become disabled in their lifetime.

Your child can be born able bodied and then be diagnosed with autism. Your child can have chronic pain from a back injury playing sports as a teenager.

And if you have an ableist or otherwise oppressive mindset, your child could have a trauma disorder or mental illness.

Your child is not a character you're customising to be how you want them to be. They are a human being you are building a parent-child relationship with. This is a person separate from you, even if you created them.

And if you are not willing to accept any child of your own as they are, you are not ready to be a parent.

Your children deserve acceptance and unconditional love, you can't add on conditions.

[medufasa]

Yeah I'm sad to admit it but yes I am officially coming out as a McLennon stan I'm so sorry

[florallylly]

steve harrington so used to people's eyes on him, doesn't notice when someone is watching him OR hyper vigilant but also really good at reading people, knows eddie has been sneaking peeks at him from behind his textbook

[mxtxfanatic]

There’s something to be said about how gender is weaponized in tgcf. Like, the gods can transform between different physical genders, but their powers aren’t divided into “girl weak, boy strong.” Ling Wen is more powerful in her male form because her followers worship her as a male god. The Brocade Immortal forces her into her male form when she wears it not because that affords it more martial skill and power but because it can’t handle being pressed against the female form of the woman it loves. Shi Qingxuan is the opposite: his female form is more powerful because he is worshipped as a female god, and he enjoys that. The gods go between their forms depending on which one brings the most benefit, making gender into a weapon.

Then we have Xie Lian who, though never physically transforming into a female form, repeatedly and successfully uses people’s gender assumptions as a shield. He makes himself into a bride as to not use an innocent civilian as bait to catch a ghost, and he later disguises himself as a mother to hide from the crowd of cultivators. Because his enemies in both cases perceived women as weak and fragile, the ghost bride did not think to see if Xie Lian was a threat, and the cultivators were embarrassed at having barged in on a “defenseless woman” dressing with her “child.” The shield of “woman” allowed Xie Lian to fool his enemies and complete his goals in both cases.

Anyways, just thought this was cool.

[wanderingcritter]

Poll time! :3 Interested in hearing community thoughts on this

[disasterhimbo]

The difference between day clothes and night clothes is made up btw. You can do whatever you want forever

[divinekangaroo]

there is a thing in how Steven Knight wrote the format for 'Who Wants to Be A Millionaire' and also this upwardly-rising social mobility thing with Tommy; yet inherent in both is an utter humiliation and mortification of the one who wants to be that millionaire (because of their fundamental IGNORANCE which will be found out at some point)

your aspirations become the visual and mental fodder of those who know their place (that place of the voyeur as above or below is irrelevant, but woe to the one who attempts to rise out of their place)

[knifearo]

guy who says he's "going through a rough patch with love" but he means his relationship with the concept of love itself