#not looking good so far for a class that's about gender diversity !! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

zuzuyams · 1 year ago

Text

Jahari (House of None)

Meet my oc and first “tav” from bg3 Jahari, a half-orc paladin of Ilmater :3

More info about him below ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Age: 37 (beginning of bg3)

Race: Half-orc (Tanarukk blood)

Height: 7ft

Pronouns: he/she/them/it (comfortable mirroring pronouns with whoever is speaking to them)

Gender: genderfluid masc/fem presenting alternating

Class: Paladin of Ilmater (oath of devotion)

Alignment: Lawful Good

Notable Personality Traits:

Very regimented, methodical, and orderly (writes down everything from to-do lists, rules, and orders)

Loves children and has a soft spot for them (their playful side comes out when around young ones otherwise hides this part of themself)

Has OCD and compulsions come in the form of cleanliness and repetition in style (e.g. hair braiding has to be even, even number of laces, etc.)

Notable Ideals:

Care for children comes above all else

Self-sacrifice and pain go hand in hand, believes that if they are enduring tremendous pain then they are doing what is right

Forgiveness is important

Unnecessary cruelty, even in jest, is looked down upon

Notable Flaws:

Goes out of the way to help others even if it is at the cost of themself

Sometimes can’t take or understand a joke if it is too mean

Has to clean all equipment after a battle

Backstory

(Uses all pronouns but for the sake of simplicity will use they/them in this story)

Jahari was born into a family of mercenaries—or so they’re told. A kind human mother and a strong orc father. The mother was a decorated Harper soldier, and the orc, some brazen warrior from Waterdeep. And…that is all the information Jahari ever received about their biological parents. The truth stretched deeper than that, but headmaster Vino—of the Silver Lake Orphanage—never elaborated. And they never really bothered to ask. Details muddled over the years, and while there was a brief period of time where Jahari sought nothing but learning all they could about who abandoned them, ultimately they felt that the past is better left untouched. While the stories the orphan keepers told them to stave their curiosity were simple, the truth about their parents was far from it. The mother was a Harper soldier, that much is true. But the father was no ordinary orc. He was a demonic warlord orc–a Tanarukk. The circumstances of Jahari’s birth were never to be uttered, even if someone desperately wanted to tell them. For a pact was made between the mother and this orc, one that would grant the mother a powerful gift and her child’s safety, but in return she would have to forsake Jahari and never utter a word about the child’s demonic blood. The deal was set in stone, and the orphanage respected the rules of said pact or else suffered its consequences. And Jahari was only a baby when dropped off, so all they had to do was lie between their teeth, shave off the horns, and never tell a soul. The only physical evidence of Jahari’s demonic origins was their one devilish eye.

But the sanctuary of the orphanage did not last long for Jahari. After only 8 years they spent there, the orphanage would soon be foreclosed. The landlords were unhappy with the late payments and the government was no help either. With no funds, they had no choice but to close their doors and to everyone in it, the children were left to the harsh conditions of the lower city of Baldur’s Gate. The orphanage did not leave them completely defenseless, many were given opportunities of indentured servitude in the upper city—a choice many welcomed. However, for the less favorable children, this option was not available to them. Jahari was one of those less fortunate kids. Only being around 8 years old, they had no hard skills to offer and despite Baldur’s Gate boasting diversity and equality, very few half-orcs are accepted into high society unless there are extenuating circumstances—especially one with no formal education. No noble would take them in and many of their brethren from the orphanage were in the same boat. Some fled outside of the city’s borders, while others took to begging in the streets, but Jahari found refuge in a temple dedicated to Ilmater. A kind dwarven monk named René was making his rounds around the church when he found a not quite so little half-orc stuck in a barrel. Jahari, starving and cold, ran into the temple as soon as they smelled the egg tart pie being warmed in the oven and snuck their way in. Well, “snuck” in is being generous. Jahari was already quite huge at just 8 years old–a side effect of the demonic orc blood they carried, making them grow faster than even the average half-orc. Any other person might have scolded Jahari and told them to beat it but René was no ordinary person. He gently took the child in his arms, fed them the leftovers, drew a bath, and even fetched them some new clothes. It was all bizarre to Jahari, this dwarf’s willingness to take them in was one of the few acts of kindness Jahari has ever received while homeless and it was an act that would drastically change their life. They questioned René’s actions who replied, “To turn your back on the unfortunate is to lose yourself twice.”

René took the young half-orc in, teaching Jahari the ways of Ilmater. They had shelter, food, and even a job working and doing odd errands in the temple ranging from cleaning and cooking, to reading sermons or asking for donations. More importantly, René was the very first real family Jahari ever had. They were educated not only in the ways of Ilmater, but in the arts, maths, sciences, and history. They even learned the ways of the monk, practicing martial arts and studying the religion deeply. Honing their skills over several years made them a formidable warrior. Jahari took to swordsmanship and medicine the most readily. Easily able to carve out a blade in their enemies as they can suture up a wound with great tenderness. René was there with them every step of the way.

Jahari was greatly loved by everyone in the church and Jahari loved the church back. Very quickly did they charm and convince everyone that their skills are resourceful and necessary for the temple. Not that many argued with their presence to begin with—the few who did only had one complaint and it was that the doors were bruised from Jahari hitting their head on the frames so often. But it was a small problem that was, at most, mildly amusing. No, everyone appreciated Jahari’s bluntness and wit, but more importantly Rene was a valued member of Ilmater’s grace and they would not dare question his decisions. And under René’s teachings Jahari became a well-spoken and graceful member of society. They took the readings and lessons Ilmater imparted on the people to heart and it became the very life blood of who they are. Ilmater or The Crying God or even better known as The One Who Endures, is the patron god of the suffering and downtrodden. He says that the ultimate form of aid and generosity is to smite the suffering of any creature by any means possible, even if it means taking on and enduring the suffering oneself. Self-sacrifice, non-violence, and defending the helpless are all revered by Ilmater’s worshippers and Jahari was no different. At 15 years old a true test of their faith would be put to the test when a familiar tax collector arrived at the temple. His face echoed in Jahari’s mind and suddenly all the memories flooded in like a wave. This was the same tax collector that put the orphanage to ruin all those years ago. At the time Jahari didn’t think much of it. The collectors came for a debt that was owed and it wasn’t paid, while cruel to the children, it made sense to the little half-orc, logically. But all that trust in the system fell apart when they overheard the man making a deal with a magistrate. The tax collector and magistrate had been hoarding and withholding funds from several organizations across the lower city, orphanages and alienages included.

The story of Jahari’s justice is not as dramatic as the songs bards make it out to be—at least in Jahari’s eyes—all they did was bring those men to their knees by striking their sword and talking to a few politicians. And by striking their sword, no, they did not actually kill them. Possibly injured and roused them quite a bit, but after they learned where the coin was stashed, without hesitation Jahari crawled through a dank crypt underneath their home to find the hidden stash. It was in this crypt that they fought swarms of undead, diseased rats, and a few mangey badgers, oddly enough. The crypt battle accolade is the truest part of the songs heard in Baldur’s Gate, but that’s about where the truth ends. After finding the gold and apprehending the men, Jahari divided the coin evenly among all the businesses that were wronged. And for the abandoned orphanage Jahari hailed from? Vino was found dead of disease in their home, but Jahari did not want the coin to go to waste. Instead, they found a journal in the headmaster’s drawers that contained a list of all the children that ever graced Silver Lake Orphanage. Jahari made it their mission to personally grant all their brethren a piece of their childhood back. While it cannot make up for the years they lost, it was the least Jahari could do after undermining the wrongdoings of the corrupt system that failed them. Even the ones who made it to the upper city as servants, Jahari made sure they were given what they were owed. The ones who made it outside of Baldur’s Gate needed compensation too. This meant traveling outside of the city, a journey Jahari has never done. Just before they left, they sought René’s blessing—who gave it wholeheartedly. Despite Jahari’s young age, he knew that they were ready for this. But he did ask Jahari for one thing in return—a pledge of all pledges. Not only as extra protection—because despite his trust, he still loved his child and worried for their safety—but as a promise of return. Jahari made a pledge to the order of Ilmater and became a paladin. Making an oath of devotion, they became a holy warrior at just 16 years old. Now a paladin, they could protect not only themself but the people they care about under Ilmater’s watchful gaze. And since then the returning of gold and spreading of Ilmater’s word has become Jahari’s life goal. They were able to give most of the coin after traveling for 4 years but returned when they heard Rene had fallen ill. A few former orphans eluded them on their journey—but even if they were dead they felt obligated, no, destined to return it all. But Rene’s health was concerning and so they were here to stay in Baldur’s Gate to aid him. All the while, Jahari quickly grew a reputation as a kind holy warrior and tales spun of her adventures saving the innocent, slaying monsters, and serving justice.

Despite the pain and secrecy of Jahari’s past they were actually quite happy. They grew up strictly, with the church, which reflects in the habits they have today. They are regimented, detail-oriented, and cut-throat when it comes to their beliefs. Defending those who suffer and in turn experiencing suffering through pain was all of who Jahari came to be. They weren’t like other members of the church who chose self-flagellation as their penance, but by being a holy warrior they fought battles and took on others' pain by stepping in and facing whatever it is head on. But Jahari would have it no other way. Nothing makes them happier than knowing they can ease the pain for someone else in need. René eventually got better and Jahari would be able to continue their journey searching for everyone who needed their blood coin. But instead, they stuck around in Baldur’s Gate just for a little while…whether it was fate guiding them or some dumb luck, that decision would change just about everything Jahari knew about their faith and devotion, to even their diligence and sense of justice…………

Fun Bonus (Jahari and Astarion’s height difference)

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #my tav #half orc #dnd #astarion #baldur’s gate 3 fanart #my art #my oc #jahari

2 notes · View notes

jacktrammell · 1 year ago

Text

Why Being "Us" Matters

Why Being “Us” Matters

Jack Trammell, Ph.D.

It’s hard to look at my undergraduate students at the end of this fall semester and not have a great deal of trepidation and outright anxiety about the world they are inheriting. In the current world, I have tenure and they can take another class with me in the spring; I can choose the books they are assigned; I can discuss A.I. in the abstract and they aren’t frightened by the historical analogs; we can discuss globalization and diversity without fear of reprisal; we can engage in critical arguments about social justice and the welfare state; we can embrace the value of education for gainful employment and as an end in and of itself; we can discuss and debate the privileges of being American and/or studying in the United States.

But that is all possibly coming to an abrupt end. What exactly, they want to know, does it mean to be “us” these days?? And why should we protect it?

Normally, I would coach my undergraduate students on the merits of “NOT just being ‘us’” but instead being global citizens with an obligation to the greater human good that transcends identity politics (ex. being “American,” or being young or old, etc.) But with grinding war in Eastern Europe by proxy, renewed fighting in the Middle East, threats in the Asian Pacific region, protests all over the globe, and even very real domestic threats in the U.S.A. (according to F.B.I. Director Wray and others), it’s very difficult to resist the allure of protectionism, security, and an understandable desire to fall back on being on the “right side.” Safety and comfort are seductive companions.

But the world is not safe. America is not safe. And we must ask “what it means to be us.”

The recent protests on college and university campuses over the war in the Middle East illustrate the perils of defaulting to platitudes and simplicities. There are innocent people dying on all sides. It’s not good enough to be on the right side anymore. The world has “grown up” and we can’t escape our connections to “others” of all types. And still, my students keep asking me “why does being us matter?” and I feel a strong obligation to reply to them in some meaningful way, shape, or form. I can’t tell them “I don’t have an answer!” (That’s not acceptable for a Ph.D. with tenure, or a privileged white American male…)

As a sociologist, I have to go back to the “us” (and not the classic “I” and “me,” with all due respect to George Herbet Mead). I am looking at twenty-five people in front of me in my American university classroom that represent at least five major faith traditions; at least five different gender identifications; three with dual citizenship; seven with at least one parent born in another country; five that are first generation college students; a multiplicity of racial and ethnic backgrounds that I can’t and won’t guess at; some legacy students from wealthy alumni parents; and all of them are paying a significant amount to obtain a liberal arts bachelor’s degree at my institution. And they are here to get the answer to “what does it mean to be us?”

I suppose if you’ve read this far, or if you’re one of my students, you are demanding an answer. So here goes… To be us, in my opinion, means to be true to timeless American/human values: protect and cling to our fragile democracy; be slow to judge others and quick to assist those in need; embrace the value of education; cherish libertarian freedoms (like choosing my own textbooks for classes); try to make your voice be heard. And most of all, remember that the “us” we strive so hard to find automatically creates the “them” and perpetuates many of the things we all agree are destructive and unprofitable.

But the world is not likely to stop for pleasant discussions like this. In a democracy, you must vote to sustain the “us” and make your voice heard. That is how the “why being us” question really matters.

###

Jack Trammell is a professor, author, entrepreneur, and former (future) candidate for Congress in the Virginia 5th Congressional District. He can be reached at [email protected]

#4thbranch #VA05

0 notes

sinceraindia · 1 year ago

Text

Eliminating HR and Recruitment Bias with AI

Some of the biggest challenges in the field of recruitment stem from HR (Human Resources) bias, which impact the crucial aspects of diversity, inclusiveness and equality in the world of work. These issues can be hard to resolve since a lot of times certain prejudices or biases are so deep-seated and normalized, that one doesn’t even realize they are being biased. With a judicious use of AI (artificial Intelligence) in recruitment and HR, we can hope to create and sustain a more equal and diverse work space. And here is how.

Using AI to root out bias during recruitment This by far is one of the best uses of AI. While AI learns the patterns of recruitment by analyzing the past history, it is possible to mould the algorithms in a way so that while playing the necessary filters of finding probable candidates, it doesn’t stick to the past biases in recruitment. In this case, the result is having a much greater chance at a diverse work force, and at a fair recruitment process which keeps in mind only the necessary qualifications which defines the successful candidate. Thus, keeping at bay any and all biases related to gender, caste, class, religion, et al.

Using AI to identify gender biased job descriptions Here is something Amanda Bell, Director of Recruiting at Lever, has to say about Gender biased job descriptions:“Luckily, this can be pretty easy. Review your job descriptions with the lens of “Who is the audience here?” If your answer is “any qualified candidate, regardless of gender,” you’ve done a good job! It’s not just about the presence of gender-specific pronouns – it’s also about using language that is inclusive of all genders. Stay away from phrases like “kick ass,” “ninja,” and, believe it or not, “brah.” You can also ask a few employees of various genders to read the descriptions and solicit feedback.”In fact, this problem is deeper and more pervasive than we think. Even seemingly harmless words have an impact on how gender inclusive the descriptions are. With the help of AI, we can move a step closer to creating gender inclusive job descriptions. This is often the very first step of recruitment. And getting the beginning right, helps ensure the standards of fairness all through the process.

Using AI to see the “invisible bias” While bias in recruitment, and the way job descriptions are crafted can be identified to a certain extent, there are multiple other forms of biases which aren’t visible. These are often the more insidious ones. And are also often the mound of biases leading up to the formation of the glass ceiling.Turns out, it is very much possible to sniff these biases out with the help of AI. For example, Joonko, a new application powered by AI, acts as a diversity coach. Based on experiential learning of CEO and Co-founder of the product, Ilit Raz, she designed it after becoming aware of the several forms of unconscious biases she as a woman faced in her everyday work life. In contrast to the available AI tools which mostly look at recruitment biases, this tool aims at illuminating unconscious bias in workplace situations where very few people even think or feel it exists. “We try to catch these ‘micro-events and point them out to managers and workers immediately.”, says the co-founder on what the product aims at.This is a beautiful way of blending technology and human understanding to create a truly inclusive and fair workplace.

Using AI to eliminate biases from Performance Management Systems It is no secret that performance assessments are often shrouded by conscious and unconscious biases of the individual entrusted with the task. An unfair assessment of an individual’s contribution to the organization definitely impacts the overall work space environment, making it a less happy place for people to thrive and work in. A way of dealing with these biases is by using AI in performance management systems. It can take care of two main things that are often said to influence a manager’s decision making with respect to performance assessment:– Regency Effect: i.e., when a manager bases the performance of an individual on a recent event, rather than looking at his/her performance over a period of time, cumulatively. – Contrast Effect: i.e., when a manager compares or contrasts an individual’s performance against someone else’s, instead of comparing it to the pre-set standards for the given task role.

#Performance Management #sharepoint services #software development #1 data services #sincera 1 data services

0 notes

college-girl199328 · 2 years ago

Text

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made freedom his calling card, but some conservatives have become skeptical of how liberally the Republican leader's government power can impose his will.

Among GOP donors, leading conservative voices, and even some supporters, there is a growing concern that DeSantis has overstepped in his fight against wokeness as he seeks to shore up support ahead of a highly anticipated 2024 campaign for president. Potential rivals for the GOP nomination have seized on DeSantis’ brash approach and top-heavy governing style to draw sharp contrasts with the popular Republican.

As Florida state lawmakers met earlier this month to hand DeSantis new authority over Disney World as punishment for the company’s opposition to a measure restricting classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire took a shot at the power grab.

I’m a principled free-market conservative, said Sununu, who is also weighing a bid for president are others out there who think that the government should be penalizing your business because they disagree with you politically; that isn’t very conservative.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a right-of-center First Amendment group that argued for white nationalist Richard Spencer’s right to speak on a Florida campus, has joined DeSantis in opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs. Nevertheless, the group has repeatedly criticized Florida’s heavy-handed approach to forcing conservative beliefs on universities and is suing the state over the Stop WOKE Act measure that legislates how professors teach topics.

You cannot censor your way to freedom of expression, said Will Creeley, legal director. You cannot trade one orthodoxy for another. We’ve seen recently in Florida a troubling willingness to do just that.

DeSantis, though, has shown no signs of halting. In the little over a month, since he was sworn in for a second term, DeSantis has settled a score with Disney, threatened to end Advanced Placement classes in Florida, taken over a small liberal arts college, vowed to put guardrails on how banks lend money, punished political enemies, disrupted institutions, a consolidated power, and imposed his will on businesses--all in the name of stopping "wokeness."

His political committee did not respond to a request for comment on Sununu’s remarks. But DeSantis has defended his approach in the past.

"Corporatism is not the same as free enterprise, and I think too many Republicans have viewed limited government to basically mean whatever is best for corporate America is how we want to do the economy," the Florida governor said at a speech last year at the National Conservatism Conference. "You know free enterprise is the best economic system, but that is a means to an end."

While the record DeSantis is building is almost certain to play well with many GOP primary voters, a sense of concern is palpable, particularly on matters of race, among some Republicans who are supportive of the governor.

“Being perceived as racially insensitive is not a good place for him to be in the long term,” a Republican supporter of DeSantis said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about an area of rising worry.

The supporter pointed directly to the fight over an AP course on African American studies and DeSantis’ quarrel with the College Board, saying the governor could alienate some voters who would otherwise be supportive.

Another Republican fundraiser close to the governor told CNN that there is concern DeSantis is going overboard with “anti-woke stuff,” but added: “You’ve got to win the primary first.”

DeSantis is so far drawing the most support from Republicans looking to move on from former President Donald Trump, according to recent polls. Some have suggested DeSantis could be Trump without the baggage of his first term, his two campaigns, and his post-presidency obsession with the 2020 election. For one, he has privately told supporters that he believes Trump's divisiveness and addiction to political drama have kept him from advancing his agenda, but more effective is how some around the governor have outlined his path to defeating the former president in a primary.

But while Republican voters have yet to be introduced to many potential contenders for the party nomination, outside groups such as the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity have signalled they intend to get involved in the primary.

Frayda Levin, a member of the Club for Growth’s board of directors, said there is great interest in DeSantis, but she is increasingly concerned that he has become "too heavy-handed" in his pursuit of hot-button Social is one of six Republicans invited to a Club for Growth donor summit in Florida, as the conservative group distances itself from Trump Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and former South Carolina Gov. Haley are also invited.

“I’m a genuine libertarian; I’m kind of a live-and-let-live kind of girl,” Levin told CNN. She said she has no problem with candidates espousing strongly held personal beliefs on social issues but said she objects to DeSantis “putting the power of his state behind his socially conservative views.”

"I’m a genuine libertarian; I’m kind of a live-and-let-live kind of girl," Levin told CNN. She has no problem with candidates espousing strongly held personal beliefs on social issues, but said she objects to DeSantis "putting the power of his state behind his socially conservative views."

DeSantis’ pugilistic style has become a frequent topic of debate among free-market conservatives who believe the government shouldn’t interfere with businesses. He has often intervened if he accused a business of running afoul of his vision of freedom. He instigated a standoff with the cruise line industry during the pandemic over their vaccine policies, banned businesses from requiring masks and vaccines, and championed a bill that restricted how businesses train workers around topics such as race and gender.

"DeSantis is always talking about how he was not demanding that businesses do things, but he was telling the cruise lines what they had to do," former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a fellow Republican, said of DeSantis last year and has remained critical of the Florida governor as he weighs entering the race for the Republican nomination.

Meanwhile, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, another potential GOP contender, has also compared her COVID-19 record against DeSantis in ways that suggest Florida was too hands-on--for ideologically disparate reasons, she said Friday that it was her state, not Florida, that "set an example of freedom" by refusing to shut down at all, which DeSantis has called a "Citadel of Freedom," and closed schools, bars, and theme parks and restricted other economic activity early in the pandemic.

DeSantis' political persona revolves around the defence of liberties; his 2022 spending plan is the "Freedom First Budget," and he rebranded this year’s financial blueprint as the "Framework for Freedom." During the pandemic, he used the tourism slogan "Vacation to Freedom," and "Freedom over Faucism" as frequent applause lines in his speeches. On election night last fall, he stood victorious behind a podium adorned with the sign "Freedom Lives Here."

But his approach has often included more government programs (creating an office to pursue voter fraud and a new program to conduct missions to surveil, house, and transport migrants from border states to Democratic jurisdictions), more regulation (dictating bank lending practices), or flexing government power in unprecedented manners (ousting an elected state prosecutor).

"I’m troubled by this trend because what I think the interpretation will be is that this is working," Katherine Mangu-Ward, the editor-in-chief of the libertarian magazine Reason, said in a recent podcast episode centred around DeSantis’ tactics: "Raising his profile every single week is putting himself in a better position to potentially win the presidency." "He is doing it through the indiscriminate use of state power, not only to achieve some kind of broader end but also just to score points."

DeSantis’ allies have pushed back against the growing chatter. Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contended on Twitter recently that the governor was using his power as an elected leader--a job he was reelected to with a historic 19-point victory in November.

DeSantis last month appointed Rufo to the board of New College, a small liberal arts school that the governor has targeted for a drastic overhaul to become a more conservative university.

“The complaint about using "state power," meaning constitutionally mandated democratic governance, to correct the ideological corruption of "public universities," i.e., state institutions funded by taxpayers, is ridiculous,” Rufo tweeted. "The people can’t regulate the state."

And even where there is apprehension among allies, DeSantis has not necessarily lost support. Griffin, the billionaire hedge fund owner of Citadel and a major DeSantis donor, said he was "troubled" last year by the governor’s move against Disney.

"I don’t appreciate Gov. DeSantis going after Disney’s tax status," Griffin said at the time. "I believe that the people who serve our nation need to rise above these moments in time in their conduct and behaviour."

But later in 2022, Griffin touted DeSantis’ “tremendous record” in an interview with Politico and suggested he would back the Florida governor in the GOP primary for president.

"Would I support him? The question is, is he going to run? The bridge has to be crossed."

0 notes

twig-tea · 1 year ago

Text

Extremely self-indulgent reflection time: I started a GSA in my last year of high school (to date myself: this was the early 2000s) and the two pieces of feedback I got from people were either: "we don't need a GSA, there are no gay people in our high school" (to which I'd respond "there's at least one" and point to myself lol) or "we don't need a GSA, there is no homophobia anymore" (noting that this was in Canada, before the age of consent was made the same for gay sex in 2019, before the protection of gender identity and expression was added to the charter of rights and freedoms in 2017, before the 2005 marriage equality act and before the 2003 announcement that it was coming, before the banning of hate speech in 2004...it was 2002, literally every other word out of someone's mouth was "that's so gay"). And let's not even get into media representation of queerness and diversity; I used to hang out in the guidance counselor's office just so people could ask me questions in a relatively safe space, and more than one person asked me whether only white people were gay, or whether being gay was something someone could really be in real life, because they thought it was made up for tv. Those conversations just made it clear to me how badly the GSA was needed. [Also I need you all to know, this was not just Canada, this was Toronto; we had an out, lesbian, Asian couple in our school at the time. Just the one, but these arguments were baffling to me in this context. And yes they got slurs thrown at them, and yes it was one of the reasons I wanted to start the GSA.]

It was hard work getting off the ground because nobody would be my staff sponsor, and you needed one in order to form a club. I was told this was, "not homophobia, just bureaucracy". Eventually the guidance counselor agreed to be our staff sponsor if I required nothing of him.

Then we had to get a room, which required the faculty"owner" of that room to allow you to use it. The first room I got was the math classroom of an extremely well meaning and painfully straight teacher (who wanted to support his Extremely Gay Coded colleague, who stayed away from our club so that it would not be stigmatized for only having queer people in it...please take a moment to appreciate the irony of a gay teacher being a barrier to this club for our own good). This classroom had a door with a window, and people rubbernecked the entire time we had our first meeting, so we were told we could not meet there anymore for our own safety and the school moved us to a storage room with a table in it, with no windows and a solid door in the far corner of the school. Again, not homophobia, "for our protection".

Even as a high schooler I thought this was bullshit. I got so tired of the million paper cuts, the constant message that "we're good people and we need you to not be visible so that we can continue to feel like good people because your needs are a threat to that".

Mostly I focused on the kids in my GSA, but I did run two public events: I gave a presentation to my teachers (some of whom were still responsible for the grades I would need to submit for university, and let me tell you I wanted to throw up the whole time) about being inclusive in classes like math and science, and what that would look like--even simple things like not always assuming the people in your word problems are hetero can make a big difference to people who literally don't think gay people exist!

And the second thing I did was put on a movie night for the school, open to anyone, with free snacks. And showed The Birdcage. I held a Q&A after the movie too, where we talked about the themes.

It was a really great night, and it also caused (what felt to me anyway) like a shift. Because this movie was so effective at getting across the visceral pain of hiding yourself, and the way well-meaning people can do so much harm to their loved ones even ostensibly "for their own safety" by asking them to do so. I never heard "we don't have any gay people in our school" or "homophobia isn't a problem anymore" after that movie night (though it admittedly didn't address the representation problem).

IDK if I have a point, really, other than to say I really love The Birdcage, it's intricately tied up in my memory to this formative part of my teen years, and I'm so glad it's still getting love. It, maybe ironically, does such a good job of being a palatable movie about why forcing yourself to be palatable is painful for some and impossible for others. It's a visceral, painful message with a hilarious comedy candy coating, and I'm so grateful it existed to show at a time when anything else would have been a hard sell and I was exhausted from hard selling. It was also one of the only pieces of media I'd seen to that point that did not bury its gays, and honestly that alone made it so refreshing.

[In case you were wondering, as a club we mostly used our out of the way room and lack of teacher supervision to watch Queer as Folk US during school hours, and we also educated one another on our various life experiences but mostly it was deeply unserious in the best way, so we had the last laugh. I'm still friends with one of the members to this day.]

Bengiyo's Queer Cinema Syllabus

A few months back I was chatting with @bengiyo when the subject of queer cinema came up (unsurprising considering…ya know, the whole being BL buddies thing). As a semi-recent queerness realizer, and a Certified Baby Gay(™), Ben took it upon himself to share a post between himself and @shortpplfedup that inspired @the-conversation-pod and which also included a Completely Hypothetical Queer Cinema Syllabus Build Up to BL for Baby Gays. According to @bengiyo this started as a thought experiment.

But, unfortunately or…fortunately? for him, I constantly crave queer media, and @waitmyturtles and her Old GMMTV Challenge have inspired me to try my hand at working my way through this syllabus. I cannot guarantee that I will finish all these films. I have no idea how long it would even take, but I wanted to at least try!

I have been saying I would do this for months now, but I am inundated with BL content, and getting more every day, so I have been pushing it to the side. BUT! This evening a local movie theater played The Birdcage (1996) and I went and bought tickets and decided now was as good a time as any to get this started, I am hoping to take a page out of Turtle’s book and write notes/thoughts on the movies I end up watching. Forgive me the long winded introduction, but I figured some context would be nice if this ends up being a thing I stick with. So without further ado…

The Birdcage (1996) [Comedy]

Syllabus Unit 6: Gems

Summary: A gay cabaret owner and his drag queen companion agree to put up a false straight front so that their son can introduce them to his fiancée's right-wing moralistic parents.

Characters: Armand: Gay cabaret owner, played by Robin Williams Arnold: Drag queen partner, played by Nathan Lane Val: Armand’s son, played by Dan Futterman Agador: Armand and Arnold's maid? friend? live in slutty pool boy? played by Hank Azaria Katharine: Val's biological mother, played by Christine Baranski

Overall Reflection

This is a film I had never seen before. Hell, I didn’t even know it existed until around the time Ben shared his syllabus, and someone reblogged a scene from it that ended up on my dashboard. This was an interesting film to experience in theaters, because while watching with an audience made the funny bits funnier, there were also moments that I absolutely did not read as funny that other people did, and I didn’t know how I felt about that.

This film is set primarily in South Beach, Florida and partly in a drag club, which meant that the only thing I could think about whenever the drag club was on screen was Palace, the gay bar, drag brunch, queer club spot in Miami. On the other funny casual note, as a Floridian I feel seen by the moment where Katharine calls and says she’s going to be late, and it zooms out to show she is stuck at the bridge. Real.

I feel like the majority of gay media I have consumed in my life very much centers around two very masculine characters. So it was really nice to watch a story that involved more femme characters, and that the femme characters were not left as the butt of the joke. Which I recognize might be ironic considering this is a comedy and therefore there are jokes abound. But, when you compare the femme character in something like Legally Blonde, to the femme characters here, they are allowed to be dramatic, and they are allowed to trip and fall, but the love that Armand has for Arnold is palpable, they squabble and they get annoyed at each other, and they hurt each other, but they are partners, and they love each other too, and it shows throughout the film.

This sounds fucked up, I guess, but I love the undercurrent of pain that is threaded throughout the story. The way that Val starts off seeming like he is very content with the way he grew up, the parents that he had. The way that Val feels so so loved by his Dads, and he hurts them anyway. Because he is scared, because he loves Barbara and he knows that she is good, and that her parents aren’t, and that he has to hide his family. But in making them hide who they are, he is hurting them and at first you can see and feel the ways that Armand is trying to rebel against it. You can tell that initially he is angry, disappointed, upset, incredulous:

“Yes, I wear foundation. Yes, I live with a man. Yes, I'm a middle- aged fag. But I know who I am, Val. It took me twenty years to get here, and I'm not gonna let some idiot senator destroy that. Fuck the senator, I don't give a damn what he thinks.”

gifs by @hellboys

It is one of my favorite lines in the film. Because Val needs to be called out on exactly what he is asking his father to do for him. Because Armand's pain is visceral in this moment. But Armand loves his son and so eventually he relents.

Arnold’s presence and importance in Val’s life are constantly disregarded and he is allowed to be upset, and Armand is allowed to constantly put his son’s engagement and wedding in jeopardy to prioritize his partner and his partner’s feelings, because Arnold is a part of this family, and to hide him away is unfair.

I certainly had to grapple with some complicated emotions around the character of Val. I could understand where he was coming from, that he loves his fiancee and that their families have to meet, and that it is almost certainly physically safer for everyone if his parents are not visibly and obviously queer around the ultra conservative moralist senator. But the ways he ends up exhibiting casual disdain, anxiety, and judgment around the aspects of his parents�� home, his parents’ friends, his parents’ themselves makes me kinda hate him a little bit. It is hard for me not to see Val as entitled, not to consider him low-key dickish, because of how frequently he seems to get annoyed and disappointed that Armand and Arnold are not acting straight enough, that their house isn’t straight enough, that their family isn’t straight enough. But the film does not shy away from the mental toll it takes.

Were there aspects of the film itself I didn’t like? Honestly, not really. There are some jokes and terminology that do not fully stand the test of time, so if I watch it with a modern lens I think I would give it a 9.5. If I watch it in the context of the time it was written, I would probably give it a 9.8. But watching it in theaters certainly altered the way I engaged in certain scenes.

Mostly with the “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking dressed like this, I’m even more obvious” scene.

gif by @rosalie-starfall

Because people in the theater were laughing during this moment. Which is not to say I am judging them, I’m not mad at them for finding the moments leading up to that scene funny. I can understand how Arnold constantly having to catch himself and change his body language could come off as funny. But there is a weight to that scene for me that made the laughter feel incongruous. It is, in my opinion, an incredibly impactful scene. And it was hard for me to fully embrace that moment the way I know I would have if I was alone, after I realized that not everyone reads that scene as a serious one.

(Side Note: When I was looking for pictures of the movie poster, I found three different versions of it, and I chose the one above because it was the most intriguing to me in the way it presents Arnold. Because it is the only one of the posters that puts Arnold in a suit.)

The other moment, that I think I would have had a stronger response to if I was alone, was the moment near the end where Val takes off Arnold’s wig and introduces Arnold as his mother.

gif by @nicholasbritel

If I had watched this scene alone, I think there is a very high likelihood I would have gotten teary eyed during that moment. Because Val has spent so much time throughout this film trying to hide Arnold away. Wanting to send him off for the evening so they didn’t have to worry, trying to replace him with his biological mother, who he had never really met just for the sake of maintaining appearances.

Arnold LOVES Val. It is glaringly obvious from the first moment they share a screen that to Arnold, that is his kid. And I cannot imagine what it must have felt like for Arnold to literally have his every move critiqued and criticized for acceptable levels of gayness by his son and his partner. To feel unwanted by his son and his partner. To feel replaced by his son and his partner. He deserves to see and hear his son choose him, to know that Val considers Arnold his parent. Especially when Val’s biological mother is standing right there.

And as for the comedy aspect of this movie? I mean, it’s Robin WIlliams and Nathan Lane so it is obviously going to be a truly hilarious film all the way through.

gif by @argentinosaurus

Where does it fall in my By, For, About Queers Categorization?

For and About

Any piece of media that places queer characters at the center of it is something I would categorize as “About Queers”

As far as I can tell, the writers and director are not queer. I consider films to be made By Queers when a queer person has a role in controlling how the story unfolds, usually this means a writer or director for me, actors too if they have any influence over changing the story. (As an example, The Last of Us Episode 3 would be something that I would place in a By Queers category because Murray Bartlet who played Frank is gay and also was consulted to shape the way the characters were written and the story played out.) While Nathan Lane is gay, and I am sure a number of actors who play side characters are as well, I do not know how much influence they had over the film itself. Which is why I am currently excluding it from the By Queers categorization.

And as for the For Queers aspect? That moment where Arnold appears in a suit and tie before the dinner party, where he appears so much more obviously gay when he’s in “masculine clothes” that is written for the people who understand. The undercurrent of pain I mentioned, that exists to be recognized by the people who understand. Also, I watched this at the movie theater and I saw what kind of crowd it drew lmfao.

Favorite moment in the film?

Well, I could go sappy with it and pick one of the scenes I referenced above, but I would be lying. My absolute, hands down, no contest favorite moment in this film was seeing Agador in this cropped tank top:

gif by @thevelvetgoldmine

Now, I know that Ben told me that the Units could be done in any order, but I think I want to start from Unit 1 and work my way through from there, so stay tuned for a write-up about Pariah (2011) from Unit 1: Coming of Age Post Moonlight.

#the birdcage #self indulgent #2002 was ... a year #typed so I could stop thinking it

144 notes · View notes

d3nt4l-d4m4g3 · 4 years ago

Text

A few days ago, I emailed my former professor about a paper on women’s food practices in the middle ages. At least, that’s what I told him it was about, initially.

But actually, I wanted to discuss heresy. This professor teaches a women’s rights course every year. Every year at the beginning of the class, he calls attention to why he, a man, is talking about women’s rights. He looks us in the eyes and says, no one else is doing it, and I’m sorry it’s me.

This man made us read the SCUM manifesto, Gerda Lerner, Maria Mies. He grazed the subject of the Lesbian Sex Wars, delicately, so gingerly, posing the question: “Can sex work ever be just work?” And my (all woman) classmates, generally mute—in a Women’s Rights class, they all seemed averse to saying the word “woman,” at all. Then one woman raised her hand. and she said, “Sex work is real work.” A statement that, as I hope you know, is a deflection and a discussion killer.

At the time I was non-binary. Hah. I submitted a comic at the end of the year of my final project. My thesis for that project was this: the very language female people have to use for themselves was constructed by the patriarchy. for example, the english word “vagina” comes from the latin word for “sheath”. so the vagina invokes the act of penetration upon its utterance. Whereas the word “penis” has no clear etymological root, implying that it is original while the vagina is constructed for him. Why should I carry the fact that I will always be a tool, the hole, of the human that is man? My solution, at the end of the comic, was to continue using they/them pronouns, to shield myself from the horror of being a wo-man, a s-he—an appendage of Him.

I got a good grade. A stellar report. And it wasn’t a bad comic, for what I knew then. For my condition of blindness and deafness. I made a compelling argument, using sources from class. But oh, how much older I feel now. I’ve always felt old but now I feel almost like I’m dying. Like I don’t have enough time to fix the world before I disappear. And women’s stories never survive. They are not surviving. networks spring up like mycelium and then every century at least they are burned. Witchcraft is in the air shared by women in a room of their own, and witchcraft is doused in gasoline.

I don’t have enough time to explain how the veil lifted for me. Maybe I forget the big moment. the days after were a blur of searching the no-no tags like radical feminist, GNC, gender critical. Amazed at the wealth of journals that these women linked to with real statistics showing that children are being sterilized for no reason. Mostly gay children. like me, a lesbian, who now lives in a house with three “non-binary afabs”. This summer, one of these women, who I have known since freshman year, will start taking testosterone, a procedure I took up for three turbulent months during my freshman year of college. I get to watch her become what I turned away from, knowing the experience fractured my sense of self to a point of terror and estrangement. I get to watch her hide from her problems and cut herself off from womanhood the way I did for 3 years. I am not a woman, so do I not feel Woman’s pain, she is telling me, I told myself, when I was in a dream. She has so many problems, she laughs. But trans is a separate problem that has nothing to do with those other problems. A coincidence.

(For any trans people reading this, you may think: This transtrender fake-trans never-was-trans woman is treating these nonbinary people as if they were dead! as if they weren’t happy people finally living their truth! —well. I put my mom through the process of trying to convince her that I should have always been a man. and I did lose her, for months. For her it was the height of cognitive dissonance that I should want to go on a life-altering hormone to cure my lifelong social awkwardness and self-hatred and self-harm and depression. And I blamed her for not accepting my real self. I was basically made to shun her and my family because of transphobia.. It is disrespectful to anyone’s sanity and integrity for me to perpetuate that cognitive dissonance in this post.)

So I eventually got through to the professor. I knew because of the texts he had us to read for class. He is gay. He has read all the theory, and lives by it. And no (woman) student wants to speak to him. To bring the theory alive. They cannot breathe into it and it sits dead in his mouth.

Maybe it is because he is a man. because the presence of one man in a space of all women immediately sends up alerts. lockdown. Certainly that is the case. Radical Feminists here: I know he’s a man. But I don’t have a woman. And I felt on the strength of the texts he’d given us that he would be my best bet. Maybe somewhere in the corrupted, rotting heart of my college there was a person who knew about thoughtcrimes and was thinking them anyway.

My professor starts with diversion. He starts by talking about my paper. I find it disconcerting that he starts that way. I worry that he won’t want to refer to my email. Where I say: I have woken up from a dream to the apocalypse—Does this man think I’m crazy? Chipper and kind of frantically, he lists off primary sources of medieval nuns and women saints. for my paper. Does this man think I’ve turned into a bigot? Am I confessing lunacy, like a flat-earther?

But I steer the conversation to the meat at his first tentative encouragement. I tell him something like: “children, mostly gay children, a whole generation of gay children, are being sterilized. Porn is a symptom of late-stage capitalism—men’s ownership of women’s bodies. trans is an extension of this. I was part of this. I was in a cult.” I was shaking a bit. I don’t think I’d uttered those words out loud. They sound crazy. Some of the things I said did sound far-fetched. disorganized, remote. But I prayed that my professor would believe some of it, any of it.

What I will say is that he believes me. Thank fuck, right?

He tells me something along the lines of this, vocalizing my fears:

that all of academia is being scrubbed of anything that doesn’t support Trans.

And it is trans-identified female students and women who are reporting him to Title IX, who spend all their time in his classes fuming at the lack of validation for trans women in the history of women. My sisters, footsoldiers for the cause. What cruel irony. This man is holding onto this class by his fingernails, speaking through his teeth, hoping any of the twenty young adult women staring blankly or angrily at him will hear him and listen.

Looking back, the professor’s responses to my emails are vague, completely refusing to acknowledge a point of view other than “WOW. I look forward to discussing this.” I think he thinks he could be blackmailed. Anything he says on gmail dot com can and would be used against him. It’s like, really, really, really that bad.

No ideology should involve a cultural cleaning of women’s history feat. witch hunts.

I will end here with an excerpt from my first email to this professor:

I'm sure you know what a total bummer it is to realize this.

#detransition #tra #gender critical #radical feminism #radfem #radblr #feminism #academia

4K notes · View notes

eastern-anarchist · 4 years ago

Text

Why intersectional theory doesn’t fit the description of ethnic discrimination in Eastern Europe (longread - I don't know if you will read this, but I think it's important)

Disclaimer 1: I am a historian, not a sociologist, and this affects my analysis. Disclaimer 2: I know best the history of the Russian Empire and least of all the Ottoman history. As we know, intersectional theory emerges from the concepts of "privilege" and "oppression". There are social categories that have greater access to benefits (education, good income, representation in art and media, etc.), and there are those that are oppressed for certain essentialist reasons, although the reasons are actually socially constructed (non-white skin color, non-straight sexuality, but you know about this without me). It’s important that such a system has been established for centuries, starting from about Early Modern times.

Intersectional theory is aimed at increasing the diversity of discourse and representing as many identities as possible in society. Also, the theory assumes a description of the intersections of various discrimination, where race, class, gender and sexuality aren’t separated from each other, but together form a person's identity. But ironically, this theory is very Americancentric, as it stemmed in large part from racial conflicts in the United States. It’s also partly Western Europeancentric, and includes mainly such colonial relations as between Britain and India, France and Algeria, etc.

But on the example of countries on the territory of the former Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, it doesn’t work well, and here's why.

Mostly, the intersectional theory assumes the same type of conflicts and relations (racial, class, gender) in society over the centuries, which began to be established precisely in the late 15th - early 16th centuries, and this isn’t at all obvious for Eastern Europe.

Eastern Europe has distinguished itself by its "long" feudalism. Feudalism, on the other hand, means political fragmentation instead of absolutism, a greater concentration on religious affiliation (hello to the beginning of secularization in Western Europe) and the priority of status over class. Yeah, in capitalism it was difficult for a peasant to become a worker, and a worker (even more difficult) to become a small entrepreneur. But feudalism, in principle, doesn’t imply any social mobility - everyone is literally obliged to remain within the framework of their social strata.

Thus, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth remained de facto politically fragmented up to partitions in 1795. The Russian Empire retained the priority of (Orthodox) religion over class until (!) the February Revolution in 1917. For example, in imperial Russia there was such a concept as the Pale of Settlement - a territory where Jews could live and were forbidden to move outside of it. At first glance, this looks like normal segregation, HOWEVER. Christianized Jews could live outside the Pale of Settlement, and especially rich and educated Jews had the right to do so. Yes, here it’s necessary to make disclaimers that there were such a minority and towards the end of the Russian Empire there was state discrimination of "privileged" Jews (for example, under tsar Alexander III). But we must take into account this "ambiguity" of social relations.

In the three empires, very different peoples lived side by side, who didn’t live segregated from each other, and built their identity not on "citizenship", but on the same religion or even on the area of residence. It can be said that Russians were an ethnic group in the Russian Empire, but this statement will tell you nothing about the relationship between Jews and Ukrainians, Poles and Romanians, Georgians and Armenians, etc. Moreover, empires had many mixed families, which significantly influenced attempts to build "nations" in these regions.

Serfdom existed for a long time in the Austro-Hungarian and especially in the Russian Empire. In fact, this is a form of slavery, but it extended to peasants, regardless of their ethnicity. In general, returning to the first point, the stratification here was very strict. In the Russian Empire, at the time the Bolsheviks came to power, 3/4 of the population were peasants and illiterate.

Oh yes, the Bolsheviks. The USSR in general confused everyone. At the beginning of the USSR, all nationalities were formally declared free (the Pale of Settlement and the priority of religion were abolished), but things went badly after the arrival of Stalin, under whose rule massive repressions were carried out against national minorities. At that time, many Germans lived in the USSR, who were a rather privileged community in the Russian Empire (recall that Catherine II was an ethnic German). But under Stalin, the Germans were among the first repressive and deported groups (largely due to the arrival of the Nazis in Germany and the invasion to the USSR). But by God, for reasoning about whether the USSR was an "empire" and what ethnic conflicts there were, 10 more posts are needed.

Finally, relations with the metropolises. Due to the redistribution of territories, the same territories with ethnic minorities belonged to different empires. The Balkans were part both of the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Russia also wanted to annex them. As for today, the Czech Republic or Western Ukraine are unlikely to have any conflicts with Austria (but I’m not saying here about the entire Western European world). What can’t be said unequivocally about the Balkans and Turkey, and even more so about Russia and Belarus, Ukraine and Central Asia. In general, guys, it is possible to operate with intersectional theory only in the case of countries which 1) colonies were far from the metropolises; 2) capitalism developed early; 3) racial and ethnic minorities were severely segregated. And it hardly applies to countries that have been feudal for a long time, have gone through a massive revolution, a Soviet / nationalist dictatorship and suddenly become neoliberal.

#eastern europe #intersectionality #intersectional politics #colonialism #neocolonialism #post colonialism #history #us #western europe #russian empire #austro-hungary #ottoman #post soviet #capitalism #racism #nationalism #chauvinism

298 notes · View notes

spencers-renaissance · 3 years ago

Text

you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy

Summary: Spencer's gay. He joins the BAU and befriends the team, but it is 2003. It's a secret he has to keep. He just didn't expect it to be this hard.

Tags: gay!spencer, coming out, hurt/comfort, insecure!spencer, misunderstandings, angst with a happy ending, dad hotch, protective!hotch, protective!derek, childhood trauma TW: one instance of explicit homophobia, but it is referenced a lot, as is Spencer's internalised homophobia at the start of this fic. A shit ton of heteronormativity but tbh that's just canon lol

Pairing: Spencer Reid/OMC, Spencer Reid & Derek Morgan, Spencer Reid & Aaron Hotchner, The BAU Team & Spencer Reid

Word Count: 6k

Masterlist // Read on AO3

Consider this my contribution to pride month 😌 I've waited so long to post it and I'm so glad I'm finally doing it because it's definitely one of my all time favourites <3 Gideon is here somewhere but just like with all my early season fics he's not really part of the plot I combined my moreid and gen taglists bc it was hard to know the audience for this, but just ignore it if you're not interested!

you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you didn’t do, because you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore. — richard siken, a primer for the small weird loves

Spencer has only told one person in his whole life.

His mother guessed. For as long as he can remember, she’s used gender neutral pronouns when talking about his future partner, read him all the gay literature she could find, promised him that he’s perfect just the way he is.

The trouble is that Spencer only believes her until the first grade, when Ryan Sampson shoves him over in the playground and calls him gay. His mom had only ever used that term in a sweet, loving way, taking care to associate such words with positivity, as long as his dad wasn’t around to hear. When that word comes out of Ryan Sampson’s mouth, it is not said with sweetness and love; it is said with venom, and Spencer learns quickly that his mom is wrong. He is not perfect just the way he is.

And so, he keeps it a secret. When his mom notices him getting uncomfortable at the mention of future partners, she stops bringing it up, though she refuses to give up the diverse education she provides for him outside of school. His dad tells him that one day he’ll be a strapping young man and marry a nice girl in a church, and Spencer nods along. He ignores the way his stomach turns with anxiety at the thought. Ignores the screaming match his parents have that night. Ignores the fact that it started because Diana chipped in with ‘or boy’.

He’s in high school by the time he’s twelve, and the only part he’s grateful for is the absence of pressure to get a girlfriend. His dad’s out of the picture now, and Spencer tries not to let himself think that maybe if he wasn’t like this he might have stayed. Diana’s so out of it most days that she doesn’t remember what she noticed about him when he was a child, only recalling the last few years of shoving himself so far back in the closet he can hardly see the door anymore.

It feels like he’s lost his last ally.

(He hates that a small part of him feels relieved she doesn’t remember; that he almost feels assured by the fact that the last person to know who he really is has forgotten. There is only this version of Spencer Reid now. No other exists.)

He makes the mistake during his second undergraduate degree. He’s just turned eighteen but he is already a doctor and, fortunately, this alienates him from most of his peers, but someone manages to slide past his defences. Ethan Miller is twenty, in the second year of his (first) undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering, and he’s nice. Spencer doesn’t have a lot of experience with friendship, but they get on well and Ethan makes him laugh. For the first time, he feels comfortable in the presence of anyone other than his mother.

They slip into an easy friendship: waiting for each other after class — Spencer back in the undergraduate buildings now he has his first PhD under his belt — and going out for ice cream and pizza and Thai food. Ethan goes to parties while Spencer studies, and then they reconvene to watch Doctor Who and play cards.

For almost a year, Spencer keeps his secret carefully locked up, hidden behind the mask he’s perfected after so many years. Even though he’s eighteen, nearly nineteen now, he doesn’t try and explore that side of himself. No, that’s far too risky. He doesn’t try and pretend any other way either, he just stays silent and lets people’s assumptions lie for him, but he can’t help the longing that claws up his throat when he locks eyes with a passing guy on campus. One time, he’d seen two men kiss on a bench in the city, and he’d run back to his dorm and had a panic attack. Why couldn’t he have that?

The feelings don’t stop, and he doesn’t know how to make them. He hates that he isn’t normal, but still longs for the touch of a man, the feeling of being wrapped up in strong arms, of being kissed by dry, chapped lips, and falling asleep to a heartbeat approximately 11% slower than that of a woman’s.

It’s a constant battle inside him, emotions raging, and he struggles to control it, suppress it, tame it.

He pays a sorry price.

Ethan makes him feel comfortable, and that turns out to be a detriment. He relaxes around the other boy: he tells him about growing up as a pre-teen in a high school, about how a child feels living 260 miles away from home, even about his mother’s illness.

And one day, it slips out. They’re on the beach, lying on towels as they look up at the blue sky, talking about what their futures will look like: Ethan will be a successful chemical engineer in Berlin, and Spencer will work for the FBI, profiling serial killers.

“You’ll have to marry a German girl,” he tells Ethan. “It’ll be tough to convince an American girl to move all the way to Germany as soon as you graduate.”

“Yeah, and what about you? You’ll be off fighting crime around the country, not much of a life for a family.”

“Oh, I imagine my husband will be the type to—”

“Husband?”

Spencer freezes. It shocks him as much as it shocks Ethan. He doesn’t even pay much attention to Ethan’s disgusted face and his outraged tirade. He hears slurs and insults, hears him say that he can’t believe Spencer tricked him like this, that he was probably waiting to make a move on him, that he was never to look in Ethan’s direction again, but Spencer is frozen in time.

He’s never allowed him to think much about what his personal life might look like in the future, but he’d said ‘husband’ on instinct, without thinking, and it’s clearly something he actually wants. Ethan’s words sting, but the moment brings about a realisation Spencer is thankful for; it instigates a journey of self-discovery and self-expression, of the joy of living as your true self.

He loses his first and only friend, but he gains something much more valuable. He visits gay bars — nervously sipping a non-alcoholic drink in the corner at first, before soon becoming confident enough to respond to the men who sidle up to him and ask for his name. He lets go and dances the night away, sometimes going home with one of the many dance partners he acquires during the night, sometimes heading back to his own dorm happily alone.

Makeup and dresses and skirts and heels make their way into his wardrobe, and he befriends girls and drag queens and other gay men who encourage him to be exactly the way he is. And the best part is, he never has to come out to any of them. All of them know, and that’s good enough for everyone.

The fun comes to a sad sort of slow, however, when he joins the BAU. Everyone knows law enforcement’s relationship with the LGBT community is less than adequate — Spencer’s seen it with his own eyes: butch lesbians and men in dresses getting roughed up by angry police officers for ‘lewd behaviour’ or ‘drunkenness’ when they’re just being themselves. It’s not safe for him to tell anyone, so he doesn’t.

He still goes out with his friends when he’s in town and wears makeup and dresses and crop tops when he’s at home, but presents as rigidly straight Dr Spencer Reid to his team at the BAU.

The hardest part about it is that he loves his team. He’s known Gideon for years — and he wouldn’t be surprised if he suspects something after coming over to his house unannounced one night, only to have a man other than Spencer open the door — but he settles into a comforting dynamic with Hotch. He can’t help but see him as something of a father figure, and he knows Hotch has a soft spot for him, always looking out for him and taking him under his wing without a moment’s hesitation.

Elle, JJ, and Penelope all take a shine to him, too, teasing him without a hint of malice in their tones, only the kind of playful kindness that reminds him of his mother. He forms a special bond with Penelope and they spend hours watching Doctor Who together and geeking out on all the areas their interests overlap, and the comfort he feels with her matches the comfort he’s found with his new group of queer friends.

(She doesn’t hold a candle to Ethan, he decides one night, after he’d cried at a movie she’d made him watch and she felt so bad she made him hot chocolate and jam toast and cuddled him until he felt better.)

Derek becomes a brother to him. He puts him in a headlock at least once a day — which Spencer has been reliably informed by multiple sources is a very brotherly thing to do — and teases him relentlessly, while simultaneously being fiercely protective of him. Enough so, that Spencer sometimes wonders if he even has Hotch beat in that department.

He loves his team and his team loves him. It should be simple. It is still 2003.

He comes in one morning late for a briefing, his shirt buttoned wrong and his hair is a mess, and he’s fairly sure that his attempt to cover the hickey at the base of his neck with concealer has been ultimately unsuccessful. It’s obvious why he’s late. Gideon is too engrossed in the case file to notice, but Hotch raises an eyebrow, an amused look on his face as everyone else immediately takes to teasing him.

“Who’s the lucky lady, pretty boy?”

Elle raises an eyebrow to match Derek’s shit-eating grin, “Someone definitely got some strange last night.”

“When do we get to meet her, Spence?” JJ asks, smirking as he takes a seat.

He’s bright red — as if he needed to look any more debauched — and Spencer tries to ignore the hurt that seizes his chest at the reminder of his need to stay quiet. This team respects him, and he can’t throw that away just because Spencer gets too comfortable.

God, he wishes Penelope was here.

“None of your business,” he mutters, trying to keep his tone light. He fails.

Naturally, Hotch notices and swiftly moves the briefing on, and Spencer keeps his gaze locked on the case file, not missing the absence of a reprimand from his superior. He’s constantly thankful for the older man, but in this moment, he wishes he could hug him.

(A voice that sounds dangerously close to Ethan’s rises up and taunts him in his ear: he wouldn’t want a dirty homo like you anywhere near him—)

Derek doesn’t let up on the case, continuing to bug him about the special lady in his life. He does concede that it could’ve been a one night stand, which is one front he’s right on, but a couple more concessions are necessary before Derek comes close to the truth of last night.

Eventually, Derek stops, and Spencer notes that the cessation of comments comes suspiciously close to the last time Derek and Hotch were alone together. He doesn’t have it in him to feel angry at Hotch for stepping in when he had it handled; doesn’t have the energy to act as though his pride is wounded, because really, neither of those things are true, and he doesn’t need to add another item to ‘Spencer Reid’s List of Things He Pretends to Be.’

The situation is forgotten, and time moves on.

Things change when he finds his first proper boyfriend. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the giddying rush of emotions it turns out to be, and Spencer spends his days smiling as he daydreams his time away.

His name is Oscar Wilkins, a History professor at Georgetown University, and Spencer falls quickly in love with him. Ever since their mutual friend had introduced them at a gay bar one evening, they’d spent all their free time together. He’s kind and gentle and understanding of Spencer’s hectic and unpredictable job, and he finally has the chance to experience everything he quietly and shamefully longed for as a teenager.

The only downside is the silent breaking of Spencer’s heart that the most important people in his life can’t meet his boyfriend. He longs to show Oscar off, to hold hands in front of his team, lean up to press a tender kiss to Oscar’s lips. He wants to put a framed picture of the two of them at the Washington Monument on his desk to remind him of why he needs to get through the hard days; he doesn’t want to have to sneak out of the hotel room he shares with Derek to whisper hushed, loving goodnights over the phone.

But he’s too scared. Too cowardly.

It’s different being who he is with his gay group of friends littered with wlws and drag queens and other gay and bisexual guys. They understand.

But Derek and Hotch are two extremely masculine, alpha men: Derek’s a ladies’ man and Hotch is married to a woman he met in college with a baby on the way and both have a strong and dominant energy that still sometimes manages to intimidate Spencer even after all these years. And Elle and JJ are lovely — some of his closest friends, really — but sometimes they remind him a little too much of the mean girls he went to high school with.

The hardest person to keep his secret from, though, is Penelope. She’s his best friend and he desperately wants to give her all of him, but he’s so scared. He’s lost a best friend to this secret before, and even though he’s certain she’d be fine with it, what if she accidentally let it slip to Derek? What if Hotch found out and didn’t see him in the same light anymore? What if the girls started teasing him? What if Gideon didn’t want to mentor him anymore?

The fear paralyses him. And it’s a cycle he doesn’t know how to break.

Fear, though, doesn't stop everyone from noticing his daydreaming, his dopey smile when he checks his messages, his urgency to get home where he would’ve stayed until the small hours of the morning before. As excellent as he is at hiding his sexuality, he’s fucking terrible at hiding the fact that he’s in love: it was easy enough to pretend he was straight, but hiding something this all-consuming is an impossible ask.

Derek comes over to perch on the edge of his desk one afternoon, sighing as he sits down. “Pretty boy, this is getting ridiculous,” he says, snatching Spencer’s attention away from his phone. “You’ve been grinning like an idiot for the last twenty minutes as you’ve texted Future Mrs Reid. When are we going to meet her?”

(He hates the new nickname the team has given his mystery significant other, although Oscar had found it hilarious. “It’s funny because when we get married, we’ll hardly be able to tell,” he’d argued through his laughter. “Neither of us will change our name because of our academic profiles, and we’ll both still be ‘Dr’. Our wedding rings will be the only indicator.”

Spencer hadn’t argued back, because he’d been too tongue-tied and flushed pink at Oscar’s use of ‘when’ in regards to their hypothetical nuptials. It was only made bearable by Oscar kissing him gently and tucking him under his arm, not embarrassing him any further as Spencer had sort of anticipated, warmth settling over his chest at the thought of their future together.)

“You won’t,” he replies, perhaps a little too curtly.

Derek starts at that, clearly not expecting it. He definitely should’ve tried to play it off as a joke. “What— should I be offended, pretty boy?”

You wouldn’t call me that if you knew who I really am.

“That’s up to you, Derek,” he says calmly, although he still can’t meet his eyes, “but you won’t meet the ‘Future Mrs Reid, so I think it would probably be best if you left it alone.”

“Damn,” Derek mutters under his breath, clearly pissed off and probably more hurt than Spencer ever intended. “Suit yourself.”

And with that, he gets up and leaves his desk. Spencer’s only solace is the text message he sees on his phone when he picks it back up: I love you so much. You know that, right?

The light-hearted ridicule comes to an abrupt halt after the incident with Derek, and it’s clear that he had been the biggest contributor to the teasing. He’s thankful that the jokes have stopped, but he wishes desperately that it didn’t come with the growing distance between him and his team. Loneliness takes the place of his previous irritated anxiety, and he isn’t sure what’s worse.

It all comes to a head at the end of a case in Michigan. They’re stuck in the lounge of the small inn they’d stayed in the last few days, a snowstorm having blocked them in and grounded the jet, although Gideon had long since retreated to his room. The fire’s going and they’re the only guests around, so it’s cosy enough, but Spencer can’t help but feel sick at the idea of another night away from home.

It’s only been two weeks since he’d snapped at Derek, but the chasm between him and the team is only widening with each passing day. He knows it’s not a case of ‘pick a side’, but the team’s morale relies on light-hearted banter and teasing, and him not being a part of that anymore has only brewed awkwardness. Everyone’s trying to give him space when space is the last thing he wants.

Oscar’s keeping him company over the phone at least, but it’s not quite enough to quell the loneliness swimming around his stomach, and the 'discrete' sideways looks he gets from the team only make him feel worse.

“At least it’s nice and toasty in here,” JJ sighs as she takes a sip of the hot chocolate the kindly inn owner had made for them all.

Elle hums in agreement. “There are worse places to be grounded.”

“I dunno, man, I just wanna get home,” Derek says, not taking his eyes off the fire. Spencer can’t help but agree.

“Oh, come on,” Hotch muses, considerably more jovial now the case is over, “we’re here, and that’s not going to change any time soon. We should make the most of it.”

“It’s at least nice to be somewhere sort-of Christmassy now it’s December,” Elle points out. “We could be stuck in a dingy police station like we probably will be next week.”

“Ooh, I noticed that Jemimah and Kiran started planning the Christmas party last week,” JJ says, smiling at them. “I offered my help, but they seem to have it covered.”

Hotch raises an eyebrow“That’s probably a good thing. You don’t need more work on your plate.”

“Not gonna argue with that,” she murmurs, smiling as she brings her mug to her lips again.

Spencer doesn’t miss that Derek is still stewing on the opposite side of the room.

“Are you looking forward to the Christmas party, Spencer? Will you come?” Hotch asks, clearly trying to rope him into the conversation, which he appreciates. He’s been making a lot of effort with him the past few weeks, and it’s just about the only thing that’s getting him through each day.

Before he can reply, though, Derek erupts from the other side of the room; an already pissed-off man being pushed over the edge. “He won’t even let us meet his fucking girlfriend, Hotch, he’s not gonna want to come to the Christmas party!” he yells, throwing his hands in the air as he glares at Spencer with a stormy expression raging across his face.

Suddenly, Spencer can’t stay silent anymore, and his retort shocks himself just as much as it does everyone else. “I don’t have a girlfriend!”

It might be the loudest he’s ever shouted in his whole life. He’s always been quiet and restrained, the type to state his feelings as calmly as possible no matter how he’s feeling on the inside. Even in the biggest fight he’s had with Oscar, his voice was barely loud enough to qualify as a shout.

There’s a brief stunned silence, but Derek quickly slices his way through it, voice raising to meet Spencer’s fiery emotion, fierce and loud. “Oh, don’t even go there, Reid, you’re really gonna try and argue that? You’re gonna lie about her as well as not let us meet her? What a boyfriend you are.”

“I don’t! I don’t have a girlfriend!” he repeats, voice catching this time as tears rise unbidden to the backs of his eyes and all the emotions of the journey he’s taken with his sexuality over the years flood him in a wave of intensity he’s not prepared for.

“You’re fucking lying—!”

“I have a boyfriend!” he yells. “Alright? I have a boyfriend. I’m gay.”

The anger and emotion quickly dissipates, and he’s left standing alone in front of the team he’s put so much effort into hiding this from, watching shock spell out across everyone’s expressions. He’s never felt smaller than he does in that moment, and he quickly grabs his phone before running upstairs to his room, locking the door behind him.

“Oh God, Oscar, I fucked up so bad,” he cries over the phone as soon as his boyfriend picks up.

“Hey, hey, breathe, baby,” Oscar says gently, but Spencer can hear the anxious concern in his voice, “it’s gonna be okay, I promise. I’m here. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“I just— Oh God, I just told the team.” A new wave of horror rolls over him as he realises what he’s done. Times might be changing, but it’s still only 2006, and he doesn’t know each and every nuance of his team members’ political positions and, fuck, he hates that his existence is a fucking political position.

Oscar’s been so understanding of his reluctance to not tell the team, even though Spencer’s met pretty much everyone in his life. He isn’t sure what he’s done to earn such a gracious and understanding boyfriend, but he’s not about to question it.

“Baby, I know it’s scary, and I know you’re really worked up right now,” he counsels, voice soft and reassuring, using the nickname he knows Spencer loves the most to make him feel as safe as he can from 700 miles away, “but it’s probably not as bad as you think. From what you’ve told me about the team, they love you so much, and even in the case that in the past they've had some issue with gay people, I can't imagine they’d ever actually think of you any differently when it comes down to it, Spencer.”

He’s crying too hard to reply, and Oscar understands immediately, gently transitioning into a story about his day that slowly starts to calm him down, and by the time he’s wrapping it up, his tears are starting to subside.

“Thank you, Ozzy,” he whispers into the phone, lifting himself up off the floor and making his way to sit on the bed instead.

“You know I’d do anything for you, sweetheart,” he murmurs warmly. “Do you want me to stay on the phone for a bit?”

“Yes please,” he whispers again, holding it as close to himself as possible, drawing all the comfort he can from his boyfriend’s voice.

He lies there listening to Oscar’s voice and trying not to think about the disaster downstairs for a good ten minutes before there’s a tap at the door.

“Oz, there’s someone here,” he says, voice panicked.

“I think you should probably speak to them, baby,” he urges. “I’ll stay on the phone with you while you do, if you like?”

“Please.” He gets up from the bed gingerly, keeping his phone tightly gripped in his right hand as he slowly unlocks the door with his left, revealing Hotch on the other side.

“Hey, Spencer. Do you mind if I come in?”

He’s riddled with nerves, but Hotch is smiling warmly, and he’s never said a harsh word to Spencer, so he steps aside and lets him into his room.

Hotch quickly notices the phone in his hand, visibly still on a call. “Is that your boyfriend?”

Spencer nods.

“Do you mind if I talk to him?”

His brows knit in confusion and his lips part slightly in surprise, but it’s all he can do to hand the phone over, watching Hotch carefully.

“Hi, Spencer tells me this is his boyfriend?” Hotch inquires politely into the phone, his tone still warm. “I’m Hotch, Spencer’s boss.”

He can vaguely hear Oscar speaking on the other end of the line, and he worries slightly that Oscar will somehow give away the familial feelings he holds for Hotch, but the conversation doesn’t last long enough for the anxiety to really take over.

“Everything’s fine here, I just want to have a conversation with Spencer, so is it alright if we hang up and I talk to him alone for a minute? He can call you straight back afterwards.” After a brief pause in which Oscar says something, Hotch looks back up at him. “Are you okay with that, Spencer?”

He nods hesitantly, and Hotch says a quick goodbye to Oscar before surging forwards and wrapping Spencer in a hug. It catches him off guard, but he doesn’t waste any time in burying his face into Hotch’s neck and soaking in the comfort and warmth that always radiates from his father figure.

“Come on,” Hotch says softly as they pull away a good minute or so later, “let’s sit down, shall we?”

“You’re not mad?” Spencer can’t help but ask, the question burning his tongue as anxiety — however quietened from Hotch’s hug — still swims around in his stomach.

“There are many things that could make me mad, Spencer,” he says earnestly, “but this is not one of them. I would never be angry at you for being who you are, okay? I might… I might be overstepping here, and if I am, then tell me and I’ll back off, but I’ve always seen you as a mentee, and over the years that’s developed— well, I see you more as a son these days. And part of that is wanting to protect and support you no matter what you do or say or who you are.”

Spencer wastes no time in diving back in for a hug, clinging onto Hotch for dear life as he hugs back, rubbing his back gently.

“I’m so sorry you didn’t feel like you could tell us sooner, Spencer,” he says in a voice soft with affection and regret. “But I’m so glad you’ve told us now.”

He only presses closer at that, tears springing back to his eyes. “I didn’t want to lose you.” He knows what he’s implying, and even in a roundabout way, he’s glad he’s telling Hotch.

“Oh, Spence,” he sighs sadly, “you couldn’t do a single thing to lose me. I’m in it for the long haul.”

“Really?” he asks, hating how insecure he sounds.

“Really,” Hotch promises, pulling away as Spencer does. “Now, you have a whole team of agents downstairs who are feeling very sorry for themselves and really want to see you.”

Nausea rolls in his stomach and panic springs back up as he looks at Hotch, desperate for some sort of grounding. “Are they angry at me? Do they hate me now?”

“No one hates you, Spencer,” he says firmly. “I promise you that. Everyone just wishes that they’d made you feel more welcome and comfortable. We all hate that you felt you had to lock up something so integral to who you are, and we can’t help but feel we played a part in it.”

“No,” he protests — the last thing he wants is family blaming themselves when it has nothing to do with them, “it’s not your fault, it’s just…”

Hotch nods. “I understand, it’s okay. Now, do you want to go down and see them? You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it might help ease your mind to see that they really don’t hate you.”

Spencer pauses, taking a moment to think. “Can I see Derek first?”

“Of course,” Hotch says understandingly, and the comforting smile that crosses his face makes Spencer feel safe and taken care of. “I’ll send him up?”

Spencer nods and Hotch hugs him once more before leaving the room almost reluctantly. He wastes no time in picking up his phone and sending a text to Oscar. You were right. Hotch is fine. He’s just sending Derek up before I go and see the team but he says that no one’s angry and I think I believe him. Thank you, Oscar. I love you.

Not even half a minute goes past before his phone lights up with a text back. I’m so glad, baby. Call me later, okay? I want to make sure you’re okay before I go to bed. I love you more.

Before Spencer can argue that actually, he is the one more in love with the other, a hesitant knock sounds on his door. Nerves suddenly flip his stomach, and he clenches and unclenches his fists a couple of times before forcing himself to cross the room, revealing a very worried and regretful-looking Derek.

“Oh, pretty boy,” he says sadly, before crushing Spencer in a warm and tender hug. Immediately, he relaxes into the arms of one of his best friends, and relief courses through his blood at Derek’s reaction. “I am so sorry that I ever made you feel like you couldn’t tell me that you were gay or had a boyfriend. That’s completely on me. I don’t care who you love, Spencer, I just want you to be happy, okay? And if this guy makes you happy, then that’s fine by me. But if he ever lays a hand on you or—”

“Derek, Derek,” he laughs, “it’s fine I get it. Thank you, though, I’m… I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you earlier and for snapping at you in the bullpen that time…”

“I understand, Spence,” he promises. “It’s in the past, okay? And I’m sorry for pushing so hard. I mean, I’d love to meet him but if you don’t feel comfortable or you don’t want to, that’s fine, too. It’s your life, man.”

“No, I… I think I want you guys to meet him. It’s been so hard to keep him away from the people I consider my family, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. Maybe after Christmas, we can all have dinner or something.”

Spencer smiles shyly. “Well, Oscar’s a great cook, so I reckon we could work something out.”

Derek grins, throwing an arm around his shoulders as he immediately jumps back into teasing him as they make their way to the door to go downstairs and see the rest of the team. “Ooh, lover boy’s got him a chef, hey? What else does this Oscar have going for him?”

Spencer chatters eagerly about his boyfriend to Derek, barely skipping a beat when he joins everyone downstairs, his friends taking his cues and joining in with the conversation seamlessly. He’s had enough fuss for one night, and the warmth and understanding on everyone’s faces tells him everything he needs to know.

“Do you have any pictures of him?” JJ asks, raising an eyebrow with eager expectancy as they all settle back into their seats by the fire, a warm and unbelievably happy feeling settling in Spencer’s stomach.

He blushes, digging out his phone from his pocket and unlocking it. “More than a few, I think.”

He finds the most recent picture of his boyfriend — a candid shot of him cooking in the kitchen, spatula aloft, and a huge grin on his face — and hands the phone around.

“Oh wow, you like them buff, huh, pretty boy?” Derek teases as soon as he gets his hands on it, and Spencer’s stomach twists in a sudden bout of fear, expecting to see some hesitancy or even disgust on his friend’s face. What if he thinks that Spencer has a crush on him? What if he’s uncomfortable around him now?

But if Derek’s having any of those thoughts, they don’t show on his face. He’s smiling widely and openly, all the pent-up anxiety and frustration borne from hurt gone from his body language, and he looks completely comfortable sat next to Spencer, his arm stretched out behind him on the back of the sofa.

They sit happily around the fire for a couple of hours, settling into a happy, intimate familiarity Spencer hadn’t realised was missing when he was hiding something so integral to his being from his family, and he’s still smiling when they finally part ways to head to bed, the clock ticking closer and closer to 1 am.

He gets ready for bed quickly, brushing his teeth and throwing on the top he’d stolen from Oscar the first time he’d stayed at his place; a welcome change from his worn and wrinkled suit. As soon as his teeth are brushed and the lights are all off except for his bedside lamp, he pulls out his phone, knowing there’s one more thing he has to do before he goes to sleep.

“Spencer?” Penelope’s voice sounds down the line, clearly concerned. “It’s almost 2 am here, are you okay?”

“I’m gay,” he says, getting straight to the point. The main reason he ever kept it from her was because of his fear of it accidentally getting out to the team rather than fear over her reaction. After all, multiple of his drag queen friends are also hers.

“Oh my God,” she says in that small voice she uses when she’s not actually talking to you, before finally actually replying to me. “Spencer, I’m so happy you told me!”

He doesn’t miss her choice of words, or the way she says them and he tilts his head suspiciously. “You already knew, didn’t you?”

She sighs. “Yeah. I’m sorry, a couple of months ago I saw a text from Oscar on your phone when you went to the bathroom during one of our Doctor Who marathons, and it wasn’t hard to figure out the relationship.”

“And… wait, you’re not mad at me for not telling you sooner?”

“Spencer! Of course not. I was waiting for you to be comfortable enough to share it with me. I felt awful that I knew without your consent but I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to catch you off guard or make you feel uncomfortable. It’s fine that you waited, baby genius, I’m just so happy you told me now. What finally gave you the courage?”

“Well, it might have slipped out in front of the team this evening,” he admits sheepishly, “and the only reason I never told you was because I was scared that it would slip out somehow — accidentally, of course, I didn’t think you’d tell anyone on purpose — and now everyone knows. It’s been killing me not to tell you, Penelope, it really has because I love you so much and you’re my best friend and I trust you with my life, it’s just…”

“Whoa, slow down, Spence,” she laughs fondly, “you don’t have to explain yourself to me, I understand. But I’m glad you finally told everyone and you can be yourself completely with us, now. We all love you no matter what, you know that right?”

“I do now.”

“Good. You should get some sleep, baby boy, it’s late and you’ve had an emotional evening.”

Spencer smiles. “Yeah, I know. You should, too, Pen. I’ll see you when we can finally make it home, okay? Love you.”

“Love you, too, 187,” she says softly, and Spencer can hear the smile in her voice. “Goodnight.”

As soon as he hangs up, he settles down into the bed, turning off the light and pulling the duvet up over his shoulders before dialling one more number.

“Hey, baby,” Oscar says, voice as gentle and caring as it always is, although thicker with tiredness now. “I take it everything went okay?”

“Yeah,” Spencer murmurs, already feeling tired as the safety he always feels at the sound of Oscar’s voice settles into the fibres of his being. “It went so well. I can’t wait for you to meet everyone.”

“I can’t wait either, sweetheart. Are you in bed now?”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Can you talk to me as I fall asleep?”

“Anything for you, Spence,” he says softly, before transitioning seamlessly into a story about the professors on campus, and his gentle comfort and the knowledge of the unconditional love his family has for him finally lulls Spencer into the best sleep he’s had in weeks.

taglist : @criminalmindsvibez @moreidstrobed @suburban--gothic @strippersenseii @takeyourleap-of-faith @negativefouriq @makaylajadewrites @iamrenstark @livrere-blue @hotchseyebrows @reidology @i-like-buttons @spencerspecifics @bau-gremlin @hotchedyke @tobias-hankel @goobzoop @marsjareau @garcias-bitch @oliverbrnch @physics-magic @sbeno22 @temily @enbyspencer @im-autistic @anxious-enby @kuolonsyoja @reidreids (add yourself to my taglist via this form!!)

170 notes · View notes

havana-great-time · 2 years ago

Text

September 3rd, 2022. La Habana.

My dearest darlings —

I was so deeply exhausted yesterday that I slept for nearly ten hours, more than I have in a good long time. Luckily, such restful sleep granted me the energy I needed to get through the day.

After a lovely breakfast (my friends, the juice here is made fresh daily. Today it was guyava; yesterday mango), I met with my program once more, and together we walked throughout el Vedado, our university neighborhood of Habana.

El Vedado is truly lovely. The amalgamation of architectural styles would, I am sure, charm anyone with half a mind to that kind of thing. I hardly know anything about architecture and nonetheless found myself affected. The university, in particular, consists of enormous buildings with imposing columns and highly symbolic statues, the different faculties joined by a grand staircase. I am so looking forward to entering it as a student.

We ended our refreshing walk at the ETECSA office, the residence of our supposed SIM cards. Despite having purchased one in August, there continued to be no permanent lines available — and, when I checked my accounts, I found my purchase had been returned to me due to low stock. Tomorrow we shall return here and purchase 30-day options, at the least. We did also stop by an internet park, where I have purchased myself 5 hours of internet for 125 pesos, or about a dollar, usable at any such internet park. The exchange rate at the moment is highly in my favor.

As another note on walking, piropos are unfortunately quite common here. I was warned by the program, but it was still somewhat shocking to hear two calls while walking the several blocks to my program. Interestingly, the "qué niña más linda" was followed up by an enquiring "¿y gracias?". Apparently certain people will demand a thank you for the unsolicited compliment. While unfortunate in its existence, it is interesting to observe.

Another aspect of gendered existence I have found fascinating here is in terms of housework. So far, only A and her mother N have helped with any of it, that I can see; several other students report similar dynamics within their host families. By now, after strong insistence, they let me help with my own dishes; not so for the other students, and I wonder if part of that is down to gender.

After further reflections and a diversity presentation, a hurried lunch, and yet another stop at ETECSA, we were given a strange and quite unclear presentation on academics in Cuba. Although I am still unsure how to navigate the system, the classes are certainly looking fascinating.

With several of the students who live nearby, we finally went to the Malecón, the sea-wall, and saw my most beloved ocean, turbulent and restless as ever. As always, her beauty knows no bounds, and the jagged rocks below the wall only add to her loveliness.

Our first program-led cultural activity occurred in the evening, with a visit to the Fábrica de Arte Cubana. FAC is a combination of nightclub, dance floor, and art gallery, with both a fashion show and cheap alcohol. Our program could not, by law, pay for our alcohol, but they did pay for everything else and did not discourage us from drinking. I did not purchase any drinks there, for their quality reflected their price and I am not fond of cerveza in any case. The dance floor, too, was somewhat crowded for my taste. The art, however, was fascinating — it ranged from photography to collages, printmaking, and paper mache made pf old history textbooks. With plenty of wall art and quotes, I was kept plenty entertained.

Our program leader called us a taxi in an old American car at eleven, not wishing us to stay out so late; yet once in the car, all ten of us jammed together in a very small space and needing to make use of laps, most of us decided to return to the Malecón rather than our homes. The late-night ocean walk was truly wonderful, and I entered into some quite entertaining political discussions with an eternal optimist and a strong pessimist.

One last fun fact: road safety is next to nonexistent here. Crossing the street is entirely up to the walker, with the constant knowledge that "el carro es el rey"; the cars will stop for nothing and no one. If they are honking, it is a symbol to run. Within the cars themselves, there are no seatbelts to be seen, and everyone here really does take advantage of every space in the car imaginable, resulting in extremely crowded vehicles. Good thing Habana is such a walkable city; I could hardly imagine driving here.

Again sending all my love,

MICHA.

2 notes · View notes

dwellordream · 3 years ago

Text

“…The common work of American pioneer children has become an essential story of frontier life. Less well known or acknowledged is that gender boundaries were often disregarded in the course of this experience. Daniel worked not only at tasks with his father but also at those normally seen as women’s work. To help his mother, he dyed cloth, carried water from the spring, helped to nurse the younger children, and cooked. His work was indeed diverse as he did what was needed with little complaint—or so he remembered years later when writing his memoir. Then at fifteen, he was separated from all of it—from his physical labor and from his pious parents (his mother’s favorite word was “wicked”). She was hardly indulgent of him, either in the work he was required to do or in the virtues he was expected to display while doing them.

Many boys did female work. Henry Clarke Wright, who became an outspoken educator and a radical abolitionist, spent his childhood helping his stepmother by babysitting, and much more. “He cleaned, he cooked, he washed.” In upstate New York, where his family lived in the early nineteenth century, he also did more masculine work “riding the horses, yoking and driving the oxen, bringing in the cows, harnessing and all the rest of the hard labor of the frontier farmer.” After his farming experience, Wright was left to become an apprentice in April 1814. Lonely, “home-sick” and with a “feeling of wretched- ness,” Wright learned to grow up fast. He also learned his own mind and how later to defend his extremely independent and unpopular views.

The American boys of the early republic grew early into independence. They were neither indulged nor coddled. They were given some say in the objects of their labor and, when possible, free time to play. But the children were also seen as “little citizens”—persons with capacity as well as potential. Some visitors were shocked by the results, but others were impressed. One Englishwoman observed, “You will see a little being that has not seen the sun make one circle of seasons, lay hold on a toy, not to cram it in his mouth and look stupidly at it, but to turn it curiously over, open it if he can, and peep in with a look as wise as that of a raven peeping into a marrow bone. One mark of early observation and comprehension never failed to excite my wonder. Little creatures feed themselves very early, and are trusted with cups of glass and china, which they grasp firmly, and carry about the rooms carefully, and deposit unbroken.”

There is, perhaps, a degree of exaggeration in such observations, finding the precocious engineer within the child not yet a year old. But in light of current findings by cognitive psychologists about the “scientist in the crib,” perhaps it is less a matter of exaggeration than a willingness to see even young children as more fully capable of independent thought and action than most Americans are accustomed to today. Americans at this time assumed that children needed less supervision and direction. This was true for girls as well as boys. By the time she was six years of age, Caroline Stickney (later Creevey), who grew up to be a nature writer, was expected to go to the doctor alone after she had fallen and severely injured her arm. It turned out to be broken.

“Mother was too busy to accompany me and there was nobody else. Besides children were taught to stand upon their own feet in these days.” Caroline’s regular tasks included bringing the cow to pasture in the morning and retrieving her at night, and, like Ulysses Grant, she was able from an early age to roam freely in the woodland that this future botanical enthusiast loved to explore and whose trees she climbed regardless of risk. At ten, she was allowed to ride the family horse; when she asked her father for directions to find a certain path, he made clear to her that she could find her own way.

Anna Howard Shaw had a more extreme experience, as her father sent his young family from Lawrence, Massachusetts, to which the family had migrated from England after Thomas Shaw’s bankruptcy, to the north woods of Michigan. There the children and their mother were left alone to establish her father’s claim to the 360 acres he had acquired, while he remained East to settle his affairs. Shaw’s mother, overwhelmed by grief and disbelief at the raw and trying circumstances, collapsed emotionally and was “practically an invalid.” This left the enterprise entirely to the five children. Barely twenty years old, Shaw’s oldest brother, James, was in charge. Anna was recruited to lay floorboards on the earth and frame windows and doors.

When even James left because he needed an operation that took him back to Massachusetts, the young children were left to fend for themselves, through a variety of “nerve-wracking” conditions and winters that “offered few diversions and many hardships.” Anna eventually took advantage of opportunities for schooling that led to her unflinching grasp at independence as a professional woman. In later life, Shaw was a crusader for women’s suffrage, and managed to become both a medical doctor and a minister. This kind of brutal induction into resourcefulness and independence, while not representative, was also not uncommon.

Girls and boys matured early, and Tocqueville, for one, believed that American children did not have or need an adolescence. The very young child, given the right to handle glassware or crockery, is a child invested with the capacity to act responsibly. Dr. Spock would note more than a century later that such confidence acknowledged that a child is eager to do “grown up things,” like feeding herself in the same way as the adults around her. And early work laid the basis for later habits. Anna Shaw noted that work had “always been my favorite form of recreation.”

The English commentator who saw precocious infant explorers poking around their toys was observing a different model of child development, one that was becoming as alien to middle- and upper-class Europeans of the nineteenth century as it is to us today. While European children of the middle classes were being treated as precious objects of solicitude, needing careful protection, American children who later became presidents, doctors, writers, and reformers were exposed to adult work and responsibility. And they were far less supervised. It was not only that class was more fluid in the United States in this period but that the specific expectations about children remained more fluid than in Europe.

Later in the nineteenth century, middle-class Americans, too, would begin to separate children from adult activities and treat them, as we usually do today, as fragile beings who needed special toys and risk-proof furnishings. But during this initial period when American society was being formed and the culture was laying down historical tracks, children were much more integrated into adult activities and given both more responsibility and more freedom. Most Americans in the first half of the nineteenth century viewed their children’s early maturity as natural, an expression of both the helping qualities they required in the young and beliefs about children’s abilities to be useful from an early age. It was a widespread phe- nomenon in many parts of the new country and remained an active part of the culture up to the end of the century, while elsewhere in the Western world, children were sentimentalized.

It was true for girls as well as for boys, observed in the eastern United States as well as the West, common among rural folk especially but in cities as well. Rachel Buttz’s father, Tunis Quick, was raised in the Shenandoah Valley in the early nineteenth century. His father was a well-meaning “generous, kindhearted man,” but his decision to back a neighbor’s loan impoverished the family, and soon after his mother’s death young Tunis was “hired to a neighbor who required him to do almost as much work as a full-grown man.” Just past ten years of age, Tunis quickly became responsible in other ways as well. Tunis objected to the slavery that was a feature of the area in which they lived, so at fifteen he urged his father to move the family to the North.

They stopped first in Ohio “where [he] was variously employed in farming, hauling goods and keeping a ferry on the Scioto River.” Having worked hard and impressed his employer, young Tunis obtained the means to buy a home in Indiana where the family finally settled. Tunis Quick learned early to assist his family as they struggled, and his sense of responsibility also gave him the ability to think independently and to have his views heard and respected. By what we would consider his mid-adolescence, he had not only directed his family’s migration north, but he was buying property for them. Tunis’s desire to leave a section dominated by slavery is also noteworthy, since it was the South, where slave ownership defined the society, that was the major exception to the developing democracy within families.

To some extent, the independence given to children grew from the ideals and values expressed in the Revolution since Americans believed that future generations had to acquire the characteristics that would maintain the principles enunciated in that event. But more than ideology was involved. No simple commitment to an idea can completely explain the behaviors so widely observed and the general willingness to heed children’s independent judgment. Ideology will not necessarily loosen a father’s grip over his sons when he had always expected to be obeyed and to have his commands met, even when he is committed to republican ideals. In the Southern United States, of course, this loosening of paternal power never happened, since slavery reinforced its grip.

And even in other parts of the United States, some observed the loosening of parental reins with concern and attempted to inhibit the young through new institutions of supervision, such as schools, as they recognized how much mischief could be loosed in a world guided by revolutionary principles. Not all Americans took kindly to the idea of children acting on their own. But a widespread independence among the young continued nevertheless. American life in the first half of the nineteenth century was defined by conditions that made such views about children necessary while the restless temperament of Americans made them ready for change and improvement. Together, these conditions provided children with the leeway to become more independent as they became more useful. Utility as well as ideology needs to be taken into account if we are to understand the families that produced a Grant, Drake, Quick, Shaw, or Wright.

The changing circumstances of the early republic resulted from both material conditions and political institutions. Together, these were widely understood as fundamental to the difference between Americans and Europeans. A shrewd, early observer of the difference, the Reverend Enos Hitchcock, sought to sustain the new revolutionary ideology through appropriate childrearing and education. “The systems of education written in Europe, are too local to be transferred to America; they are generally designed for a style of life, different from that, which is necessary for the inhabitants of the United States to adopt: they do not reach our circumstances, and are not suited to the genius of our government.”

To understand the American regime of domestic relations, we need to grasp just how unsettled, raw, and unpredictable the American land and the developing economy were during the important first half of the nineteenth century, since the experiences of American children and their parents were an expression of that reality. This dynamic new economy revised expectations about youth and what it could achieve. So did the laws governing inheritance and generational relations. The changes in American domestic life also transformed power relations between men and women, husbands and wives, and this, too, affected generational relationships in important ways.”

- Paula S. Fass, “Childhood and Parenting in the New Republic Sowing the Seeds of Independence, 1800–1860.” in The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child

#american #the end of american childhood #paula s. fass #history

8 notes · View notes

hadtochangemyurlquick · 3 years ago

Note

you have said that you know how s2 will end and i would like the spoilers please

okay so i wrote the post you're referring to awhile ago and i don't really stand by it entirely but i'm gonna give you some thoughts.

thought one: the wilds is saying something. it is making a statement. it is not just a show about teenage girls making out and being on a deserted island. there's more to it.

thought two: figuring out what the show is saying is key to understanding what will happen

thought three: the show is definitely saying more than one thing but there is an overall message we can use as a lens to predict where the show will go in general. no specifics, but at least to figure out the arcs of each character

my biggest question since starting the show, literally since the first episode has been: so. what?

like, what is the point of this show. why. what are they saying?

if they're trying to be an anti-feminist, "feminism is going too far, sjws suck" kinda thing, they're not doing very well. one of the top reviews is literally: "More Social injustice propaganda thrown in our faces."

so their theoretical target conservative audience doesn't seem to be biting. i'm not saying a liberal show Can't have a message that feminism has gone too far these days, but i Am saying a smart good liberal show can't have a message that feminism has gone too far these days.

And the wilds is probably some of the best writing i've come across in a long time, especially with the accuracy they depict teenagers.

so it's not anti-feminist. but maybe it's more specific than that. maybe it's anti-white feminist. after all, gretchen is white, she abuses children of color, and she's a feminist. doesn't that make for a perfect white feminist?

except that doesn't make a huge amount of sense either, huh? bc gretchen's staff, just running the numbers, is half white people and half poc.

Gretchen, Thom, Alex, Faber

Audrey, Susan, Lihn, Young

even looking at her supporters: alice and leonard, we have a white guy and a black woman.

and would it be less racist if gretchen didn't have any poc on her island? she would argue it'd be more racist. i'm sure in her mind she was trying to be diverse, not to abuse children. bc she doesn't think it's abuse bc she's got the lights on but no one's home.

so white feminism as the critique this show is making just doesn't. it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either.

so then it's like. what. terfism? maybe? and like, that tracks a little closer. but it'd be weird if a show's entire critique was terfism and there was literally not a single trans person on the entire cast. like maybe dot or nora will have an arc coming to terms with a sexy new gender but. idk bro. it just feels off to me, you know? it's still like, you made an entire show on a major platform criticizing a specific aspect of feminism that's not even that widely known? that's the point of the wilds?

maybe i have good place brain rot, or she ra brain rot, or some other type of brainrot and just expect my morals to be handed to me on a silver platter.

but it's still like. what was the fucking point. why make gretchen an evil feminist villain who abuses children?

this show is too smart and well written to just be that dumb. there's gotta be some justification, some deeper reason why they'd make a show just to point out that lord of the flies wasn't just about british rich boys, it is about all of society and feminism is wrong.

like take black panther for example. as much as i enjoyed it way more than any other marvel movie i've seen, it was still--essentially--dumb. this is an ice cold take but obviously killmonger was a good guy. the rich execs made him a bad guy like every rich person makes every radical revolutionary a bad guy so the good guy can create change but only in a way that encourages people to create change within the corrupt system we all live in.

but marvel is not particularly known for its writing. it's a superhero franchise, it hasn't taken itself very seriously since guardians of the galaxy. its goal is to get you to spend 15$ in a theater watching billionaires blow each other up while wise cracking with some of the prettiest visuals money can buy. it's not supposed to make you think and that's okay.

but the wilds feels like a show that wants you to think. with the careful way they handle eating disorders to the complexities of the sibling relationships, the characters are more than just wise cracking billionaires taking off their shirts the first chance they get.

so why. why. i'd understand evil feminist gretchen if it was the latter but why put so much energy into writing this complex well done show if their villain and thus their message was just gonna be: haha feminism too far these days.

here's the only thing i can come up with, my friend.

class.

yeah i fucking know, there's nothing in the show, but bear with me. all of the people working for gretch are rich, or present as rich. or at least of a higher class.

except for one.

lihn might be getting a fancy education but she works at a bar while she's doing it, and it doesn't seem like she's that close with her parents anymore. her trauma would likely cause some major health problem so i'm not having an issue with thinking that maybe, financially, our lihn wasn't doing excellently.

and to have lihn be straddling these two worlds, as she effectively straddles girlhood and adulthood working as the confederate, makes a large amount of sense.

gretchen doesn't want to upend the actual system, which is capitalism, she wants to upend the patriarchy--which is a product of capitalism. lord of the flies was, in a large part, about class. so looking at that we might see a boys island act similarly to a girls island, especially if they keep the class diversification the same for the boys.

what's also interesting is that young is not really of the same class as faber. gretchen talked about him being on that "gin soaked sofa" or something like that, and that could track if we continue to see him help the girls.

idk i'm just. i'm definitely grasping at straws here. but i have no idea what this show is saying and it drives me crazy.

why is gretchen their villain? why is she a feminist doing this for feminist reasons? it's so dumb, i can't believe they wrote it. so why did they write it. why. what am i missing here.

maybe it's something about parenthood? gretchen's a bad parent and it's a critique of the nuclear family? but couldn't they have done that without the evil feminist aspect?

like that's what gets me. what's the point of the evil feminist aspect. why include that when it was so unnecessary and honestly shoe horned in. i could've written something in ten minutes without the weird antifeminism aspect, and definitely they're better writers than me so what's the point of gretchen's motivations

what. is. the. point.

#so like clearly we'll learn more as the series progresses #i have no doubt the experiment isn't over yet #and i'm sure that will reveal things #but like #what is the point #there is no way i can see it going that isn't still #haha feminism gone too far these days #like why does gretchen as a character exist and what are her motivations #how do they write this in such a way that it isn't relentleslly dumb #i don't get it #misuser-of-the-speaking-weight #gus answers #gus analyzes #the wilds

8 notes · View notes

comrade-meow · 3 years ago

Link

Capitalism, the New, New Left and the Gender Industry

“Inclusivity is more than a social cause, it’s a business opportunity. It’s time to maximize your business growth.”

- dmi Consulting

Let me get this out of the way, because it seems more than a few people still need to hear this.

CORPORATIONS DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU!

“Diversity and inclusion ”(D&I) comprise a new business mantra. Programs and language, based on the normalization of body dissociation, are being corporately cultivated, around the world. The programs being instituted appeal to our emotions, to entice us to believe that companies care about people and just want to create one big happy, diverse, work-family, which include marginalized sectors of society - most importantly, those who imagine they have a sex (gender is a euphemism) that is not male or female. The overlooked are finally being given a place at the table!

Or are they?

The new, new liberal left in America, the left that has emerged out of a traditional new left, which cared about the working class, blacks and women’s rights, who yearned for a more equal and just social order, is unrecognizable to many of us who’ve long been of the traditional left. That left, just a decade ago, sparked a potentially revolutionary movement on Wall street, calling out the financial industry and the monopolies ruining our lives and our planet. Emerging out of the carcass of that potentially revolutionary movement, is a left that has recently climbed into bed with those same big banks. Snuggled up in bed with them, fluffing their pillows, are Big Pharma and Big Tech. The left, are running around screaming at protests, get wide media coverage, voices in our universities and institutions, crying that people claiming their sex is not male or female, need human rights. These manufactured sexes are being supported by, promoted by, and advertised by Big Pharma, Big Tech and Big Banking. This new, unrecognizable left sees no irony at all in their behavior.

These purported new sexes, ostensibly requiring special human rights, depend on a narrative that sexual dimorphism isn’t real, that it exists on a spectrum of sexes. This is the gender industry and with projected profit margins reaching into the billions by 2026, for surgeries on healthy sex organs alone, and the amount of advertising curated to sell it, it is going to be very profitable indeed.

How has the left been so duped about new markets being manifested out of sex, that they scream liberation every time someone dares to mention the glaring inconsistency of human rights for corporate profiteering off of young adults and children’s bodies?

The left knows corporations do not care about the color of our skin, whether we are oppressed because of said color of our skin, whether we live in an igloo or a cardboard box, whether the icebergs are melting, or whether Fukushima nuclear plant is dumping millions of tons of radioactive waste into the oceans, externalizing the cost of doing business. How do they not understand that corporations do not give a fu*k about anybody’s identity? Unless those identities are opening markets.

The constant business-woke-posing (D&I), for Black Lives Matter (BLM), the LGBT Inc, and the often, corporate mixing of both under the “Black Trans Lives Matter” slogan, is about profit. Every little advertising slogan, every word, is carefully selected to appeal to an ever-increasing fragmentation of humanity, into subcategories, to be marketed to. It is all about the corporate bottom line. If they can convince us that the disembodiment movement of “gender identity” is akin to the civil rights movement for black Americans, or has anything at all to do with LGB, they’ve roped us into their narrative of care. Further, if they can convince more black Americans of their insane narrative of disembodiment-as-progress, it supports the illusion they are selling to all of us. Fortunately, that isn’t going well, so far. Despite their efforts to corral black youth, and the relentless corporate propaganda aimed at them, black youth are not crying about their “gender identities” or clamoring for cross sex hormones.

The left knows corporations don’t care. The working class knows this. It’s why the Occupy Wall Street movement evolved so quickly. I was there, a decade ago, at ground zero, with 40,000 people from every walk of life, as we traversed the Brooklyn Bridge, in protest of the choke hold the financial sector had on us. Now these same people are waving flags in traditional, baby-colored, pink, blue and white, screaming about human emancipation through medical identities, while many sew themselves to the techno-medical complex for life.

For a concise and readily comprehensible explanation of how capitalism functions, I urge you to examine the work of Stephanie McMillan, a life-long activist and an anti-capitalist. She explains, in language that is completely accessible, how corporations are set up to compete in the global marketplace: “To care about people over profits would jeopardize the corporatist’s position within that system, and their own livelihood.” Corporate heads, consist of those with the greatest wealth and depend on an exploited working class not just to function, but to suck wealth upward, from the bottom, creating ever more wealth for a few, leaving the masses at the bottom, with less and less. This is a worse crisis for women across the world, who, according to UN stats, put in 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each day — a contribution to the global economy of at least $10.8 trillion a year. The reporting of these statistics will no longer be a true measure of what is transpiring globally, since men will be included in the stats for women, under the new corporate gender regime.

We are living in an oligarchic gulag, one that isn’t very private. Our communities, as I addressed in an interview last year, are being opened to the acceptance and normalization of a male fetish based on disembodiment, creating a sexual psycho drama of our corporate and civil landscapes, for profit, while literally dismembering people and creating more identities to market to.

Because we are governed by corporate monopolies, and the billionaires behind them, driving a steady stream of propaganda through our media, we no longer know what fake news is and what is real news. We don’t know what men and women are (or we pretend not to know to fit in). We don’t know if people on social media or advertising are real or computer generated and our ability to speak about anything outside the corporately generated illusions plaguing us, are being penalized in myriad ways, not the least of which is controlled and censored speech. Yet suddenly, we are to believe, and many on the new, new liberal left do believe, these monstrous monopolies that have colonized the entire natural world, have suddenly changed their ways and care about people. They especially care about these new imaginary sexes being manufactured out of philanthropic funding, corporate cash, and the techno-medical complex.

Will Meyer, in a recent issue of Business Insider, gives us a look at the corporate woke hypocrisy, posing as care about the marginalized. “IBM and Microsoft,” he reports, “claimed they would no longer sell facial recognition software to law enforcement, signaling their alignment with Soros backed, BLM movement, despite the fact both corporations remaining deeply invested in punitive systems that continue to harm Black and brown lives.” The BLM movement has the same capitalists behind it as the gender industry.

Selling D&I to the public, is such big business, that there are corporations that teach other companies how to market it effectively. This fracturing of humanity, via the colonization of human sex, is how capitalism functions. It splits everything into smaller and smaller fragments to open markets. Where we once had a single-family physician to help us heal, we now have a plethora of specialists to treat everything from lung cancer to toenail fungus. Where we have had a sexually dimorphic species, we now have medical identities that deconstruct sex, being foisted upon us, to open markets.

Those with wealth create more wealth for themselves, while underlings, not having access to wealth, land or goods, are forced to sell their labor for less and less money. The wealth, goods and land are all siphoned off by the corporatists. Well now the corporatists, with little left to extract, have come for human sex and they are not leaving until they have it, or we rise in resistance and reclaim what is left after their ravaging.

#Anglo.txt

3 notes · View notes