#not pro- or anti- socialism either

[influxovsnux]

Imagine thinking nobody in history accomplished anything before the advent of capitalism.

The above scenario never occurred, nor is it socialism, nor are specific economic systems required to inspire people to do good or important work.

The right-wing propaganda train has been doing this for a very long time. All in the name of transferring the world's wealth and power to a tiny group of unfamthomly rich people.

Sadly, it has been incredibly successful.

[omarwolaeth]

It's such a tiny innocuous thing that really doesn't matter, but I feel like calling duel monsters a children's card game (when it's fundamentally baked into everyday life, and your social existence is judged by what you play and how you play it so very intensely, for everyone in-universe) is an absolute injustice to what it is for that universe of people.

[lesbiten]

ive been finding myself really deep into various groups of dog people recently and can i just say that none of you people are normal

[psychiatricwarfare]

a friend of mine got a nose job because she had a deviated septum

my sister got a nose job because she didn't like her nose

my fiancée got a nose job because they felt their nose made them dysphoric

my sister was truly shocked when no one noticed the difference in her nose afterward, but at the end of the day, she said she didn't care if no one else noticed. she got the surgery for herself, not anyone else.

my fiancée said they considered getting ffs but decided their nose was the most dysphoria inducing part of their face and decided to just change that.

my friend said she never planned on changing the shape of her nose at all until her surgeon offered the option since she was fixing her deviated septum anyway. it wasn't done out of insecurity or a hatred of her looks. she just decided that if she's going to get this surgery, she may as well get her money's worth.

they all got the same surgery. they all got rhinoplasty. every one of them had a different reason. whether it be insecurity, dysphoria, or fixing a deviated septum. you do not get to choose which of them deserved to get surgery. they are allowed to. they have bodily autonomy. if you support bodily autonomy, you have to support it even if you don't like what a person does with Their Own body.

Yall do NOT hop on a cosmetic surgery hate train during an ongoing campaign against trans Healthcare I am fucking begging

[hussyknee]

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.¹

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats.² The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine that, five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything, the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems are all purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government under a pro-union left-wing President and an unmarried female LGBT rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history. (Edit: She was knocked off first place by a dude in the final result. Boo.)

(On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state. Uh.)

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points (Edit: from the previous 5% to 10% in the final result!) but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! There Is a representative for Malaiyaha Tamils in the Central Province for the first time in history and it's a young woman! (Edit: now it's two female Malaiyaha MPS!!) This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, the NPP coalition formed around the nucleus of the JVP that used to be communist but haven't been in 30 years, they're now just social democrats who are left of places like the US and UK, whose "left" is now center-right. They're only threatening to the Western mainstream media for some reason who can't stop bleating about how we have a "Marxist" government now. In reality, the actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is quite high with a super majority government regardless of affiliation.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

---

¹ Well, nearly. There are a few career politicians and a nepo baby but they aren't so bad either.

² Goddamn it, Baby Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka's answer to JD Vance have wormed their way in using the list of Constitutionally reserved party seats for non-elected members. FUCK the National List.

[inkskinned]

one of the things that i think we should pay attention to, socially, about the disney v. desantis thing is that it is really highlighting the importance of remembering nuance.

in a purely neutral sense, if you engage in something problematic, that does not mean you are necessarily agreeing with what makes it problematic. and i am worried that we have become... so afraid of any form of nuance.

disney isn't my friend, they're a corporate monopoly that bastardized copyright laws for their own benefit, ruin the environment, and abuse their workers (... and many other things). this isn't a hypothetical for me - i grew up in florida. i also worked for the actual Walt Disney World; like, in the parks. i am keenly aware of the ways they hurt people, because they hurt me. i fully believe that part of the reason florida is so conservative is because it's been an "open secret" for years now that disney lobbies the government to keep minimum wage down, and i know they worked hard to keep the parks unmasked and open during the worst parts of Covid. they purposefully keep their employees in poverty. they are in part responsible for the way the floridian government works.

desantis is still, by a margin that is frankly daunting, way worse. the alternative here isn't just "republicans win", it's actual fascism.

in a case like this, where the alternative is to allow actual fascism into united states legislation - where, if desantis wins, there are huge and legal ramifications - it's tempting to minimize the harm disney is also doing, because... well, it's not fascism. but disney isn't the good guy, either, which means republicans are having a field day asking activists oh, so you think their treatment of their employees is okay?

we have been trained there is a right answer. you're right! you're in the good group, and you're winning at having an opinion.

except i have the Internet Prophecy that in 2-3 months, even left-wing people will be ripping apart activists for having "taken disney's side". aren't i an anti-capitalist? aren't i pro-union? aren't i one of the good ones? removed from context and nuance (that in this particular situation i am forced to side with disney, until an other option reveals itself), my act of being like "i hope they have goofy rip his throat out onstage, shaking his lifeless body like a dog toy" - how quickly does that seem like i actually do support disney?

and what about you! at home, reading this. are you experiencing the Thought Crime of... actually liking some of the things disney has made? your memories of days at the parks, or of good movies, or of your favorite show growing up. maybe you are also evil, if you ever enjoyed anything, ever, at all.

to some degree, the binary idealization/vilification of individual motive and meaning already exists in the desantis case. i have seen people saying not to go to the disney pride events because they're cash grabs (they are). i've seen people saying you have to go because they're a way to protest. there isn't a lot of internet understanding of nuance. instead it's just "good show of support" or "evil bootlicking."

this binary understanding is how you can become radicalized. when we fear nuance and disorder, we're allowing ourselves the safety of assuming that the world must exist in binary - good or bad, problematic or "not" problematic. and unfortunately, bigots want you to see the world in this binary ideal. they want you to get mad at me because "disney is taking a risk for our community but you won't sing their praises" and they want me to get mad at you for not respecting the legit personal trauma that disney forced me through.

in a grander scheme outside of disney: what happens is a horrific splintering within activist groups. we bicker with each other about minimal-harm minimal-impact ideologies, like which depiction of bisexuality is the most-true. we gratuitously analyze the personal lives of activists for any sign they might be "problematic". we get spooked because someone was in a dog collar at pride. we wring our hands about setting an empty shopping mall on fire. we tell each other what words we may identify ourselves by. we get fuckin steven universe disk horse when in reality it is a waste of our collective time.

the bigots want you to spend all your time focusing on how pristine and pretty you and your interests are. they want us at each other's throats instead of hand in hand. they want to say see? nothing is ever fucking good enough for these people.

and they want their followers to think in binary as well - a binary that's much easier to follow. see, in our spaces, we attack each other over "proper" behavior. but in bigoted groups? they attack outwards. they have someone they hate, and it is us. they hate you, specifically, and you are why they have problems - not the other people in their group. and that's a part of how they fucking keep winning.

some of the things that are beloved to you have a backbone in something terrible. the music industry is a wasteland. the publishing industry is a bastion of white supremacy. video games run off of unpaid labor and abuse.

the point of activism was always to bring to light that abuse and try to stop it from happening, not to condemn those who engage in the content that comes from those industries. "there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism" also applies to media. your childhood (and maybe current!) love of the little mermaid isn't something you should now flinch from, worried you'll be a "disney adult". wanting the music industry to change for the better does not require that you reject all popular music until that change occurs. you can acknowledge the harm something might cause - and celebrate the love that it has brought into your life.

we must detach an acknowledgment of nuance from a sense of shame and disgust. we must. punishing individual people for their harmless passions is not doing good work. encouraging more thoughtful, empathetic consumption does not mean people should feel ashamed of their basic human capacities and desires. it should never have even been about the individual when the corporation is so obviously the actual evil. this sense that we must live in shame and dread of our personal nuances - it just makes people bitter and hopeless. do you have any idea how scared i am to post this? to just acknowledge the idea of nuance? that i might like something nuanced, and engage in it joyfully? and, at the same time, that i'm brutally aware of the harm that they're doing?

"so what do i do?" ... well, often there isn't a right answer. i mean in this case, i hope mickey chops off ron's head and then does a little giggle. but truth be told, often our opinions on nuanced subjects will differ. you might be able to engage in things that i can't because the nuance doesn't sit right with me. i might think taylor swift is a great performer and a lot of fun, and you might be like "raquel, the jet fuel emissions". we are both correct; neither of us have any actual sway in this. and i think it's important to remember that - the actual scope of individual responsibility. like, i also love going to the parks. Thunder Mountain is so fun. you (just a person) are not responsible for the harm that Disney (the billion dollar corporation) caused me. i don't know. i think it's possible to both enjoy your memories and interrogate the current state of their employment policies.

there is no right way to interrogate or engage with nuance - i just hope you embrace it readily.

[crevicedwelling]

hello! i am a relatively new user here on tumblr, less than a year, and i have heard a comment or two about a 'wasp discourse' that happened here, that wasps are much more nice than bees or something among those lines

this caught my curiosity as im writting a wasp based character whos just an ahole as i did it on what i knew abt them from general internet and im stuck on wether i should maaayybe change them up a bit

if its not too much to ask do you happen to know a bit abt this discourse? or have a link to it? or if not to the discourse itself some other link that elaborates abt the same topic? perhaps even someone else i can ask this?

thank you very much!

to start off, there are a lot of bees and wasps in this world and it is not easy to generalize about them. there are ~20,000 bee species, and the vast majority of these are solitary bees that nest in the ground, plant stems, or in holes in wood, and because they produce no honey or have a colony to guard, have no need to be defensive or aggressive towards humans (because “towards humans” seems to be what most people base this idea off of). colonial bees, like honeybees, are actually much more defensive than solitary ones; they have huge food stores and many defenseless larvae, hence their nasty stings (or bites, for the stingless bees) and swarm defense of their hives.

bees, however, are just a family of wasps. their closest relatives are believed to be the crabronid wasps (example: cicada killers) and sphecid thread-waisted wasps (ex. mud daubers). these wasps, and most others, are also largely solitary, and hunting prey aside, don’t typically use their stings for anything other than personal defense. of the hundreds of thousands of wasps, most of them (75%) are not just solitary but also parasitoids that develop inside other insects. it’s hard to say “all wasps are assholes [to people]” when some 100,000 of them are tiny specks smaller than sesame seeds that nobody other than scientists notice.

two parasitoids: a braconid ~3mm long & something else ~0.3mm long

the wasps most people take issue with are vespids, since they like the same foods we do (sweets, meat) and have powerful stings to defend their nests. these include the social hornets, yellowjackets, and paper wasps, but many mason wasps and the like are solitary (and, you guessed it, want nothing to do with people). vespids are great predators of caterpillars, flies, and other pests that humans don’t like in addition to being pollinators.

a yellowjacket: Vespula squamosa

the usual anti-wasp, pro-bee sentiments go: wasps attack for no reason, don’t pollinate, don’t make honey, and are “assholes.” wasps do pollinate (most wasps, bees and ants don’t eat solid food, and therefore largely drink flower nectar; some plants are only pollinated by wasps).

some tropical wasps do actually make honey, though it’s not harvested by humans. it’s sort of silly to say that making honey is what makes bees “good” though—a very selfish mindset, and for example butterflies are well-liked by people despite not making any edible products for us.

wasps also attack only when provoked, either because you’re near a wasp nest or when you lean on one accidentally. they are defending their baby sisters and themselves, same as bees would. at least in the US, I think the reason that wasps are so hated is that we have many species of paper wasp and yellowjacket that are willing to nest on or under houses, while the (invasive) honeybees prefer trees or are kept by beekeepers in artificial hives, so it’s just more likely you’ll run into problems with wasps than bees.

tl;dr:

wasps and bees are neither “nice” nor “mean.”

bees are mostly loners that don’t bother people. colonial bees will sting to defend their nests or themselves from predators. most bees are pollinators, who gather pollen to feed their larvae. a few species make honey that humans harvest.

wasps are mostly loners that don’t bother people. colonial wasps will sting to defend their nests or themselves from predators. most wasps are pollinators, and most hunt or parasitize other insects to feed their larvae.

[olderthannetfic]

Actually, sorry, nevermind with the pro ship stuff ! Did my research and I'm more informed abt it :) you dont need to post either of the asks I sent abt it (and I'm lowkey scared if coming across as a close minded purist prude whose disillusioned about being by one.)..either way ty!

--

*giggling*

The reality is that any new, viral thing from thirty seconds ago spreads easily on TikTok, most especially misinformation. Instagram is another pretty terrible platform just in terms of algorithms and how it's run. I wouldn't expect the prevailing understanding of such-and-such from within one bubble on either to necessarily be well informed.

The concept of "antis" under that name is pretty new, and the concept of "proshippers" is even newer. It has always meant "not antis". Some people have started mutating it to be about specific dark content, but it was always supposed to be about opposing censorship-happy idiots.

I don't find incestuous ships any freakier than other common fantasies people have. Same with adult/minor ships. You're seeing them in a distinct category because they upset you in particular. The feelings are fine, but they don't actually mean that these kinks are darker than all the other ones antis go after.

I know you think someone will be able to interpret "proshippers DNI" as "only the actually bad people should stay away", but that simply isn't what's going to happen. First, DNIs are moronic. Curating your online space means that you need to be the one blocking and avoiding. You can't ask random strangers, possibly your enemies, to do it for you. Second, people are going to have all kinds of opinions on which content is Bad Enough to count even assuming they share a similar definition of 'proshipper'.

This kind of "Well, we all know what the Bad Stuff is" attitude tends to have a chilling effect on a space. People are all paranoid that their kinks might count and self-censor far beyond what the person who said it expected.

Honestly, aside from the constant misuse of the terms, my assumption is that public proshippers on Instagram and TikTok are mostly into extreme things because anyone less extreme wouldn't have the balls to be public. The amount of death and rape threats from antis wouldn't be worth it.

--

As for my "rules", I don't have any. This is my personal tumblr, but since I leave anon on, people send me lots of things. I post most of them, but I get so many now, that I'll sometimes cut off a topic that has dragged on boringly. I usually don't post the threats I get unless they're funny and I want to mock them.

--

Re teens in fandom, I got into fandom at 13 on Usenet and set about reading all of the freakiest porn available. I read far worse stuff outside of fandom. I was curious, as many people that age are. It never did me any harm, and it won't do any harm to current 13-year-olds to read dark shit.

The people who get fucked up already have a lack of decent mentors in their offline life, are reading things as self harm, are actually being harmed by the social side of fandom where they've found some creep for horny roleplay, are the subject of a public hate campaign, etc. That sucks, but it's not something I can control or that will get better if we exclude them from fandom.

Teens would be better protected by their parents removing TikTok from their phones than by anything to do with fandom. Its short form makes it ideal for poorly fact-checked soundbites that sound good on the surface but discourage critical thinking or nuanced engagement with a topic. Youtube et al. are also cesspits, but TikTok has elevated predatory algorithms and viral misinformation to a whole new level.

Now back to rewatching miniminuteman. Hahaha.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

From April 2024. Covid denial is a bipartisan platform.

By Julia Doubleday

Viruses are bad for kids' health. Public health is a collective effort. Liberals no longer believe either.

There are few groups so reviled in liberal circles as the anti-vaxxers. Seen as embarrassingly anti-science and anti-social to boot, the popular anti-vaxxer archetype is a shrill, loudly wrong grifter straight out of YouTube Medical School. They are not only uninformed, but dangerous. And their specific brand of ignorance invites a mocking condescension from those of us who self-identify as “educated” and “pro-science.”

There’s one big problem with liberal media outlets, individuals and institutions expressing this disdain today: they have, themselves, adopted many foundational beliefs of the anti-vax movement without even realizing it. While they express continued appreciation for vaccines, their underlying ideas about immune systems, illness, herd immunity, and the social value of public health have all aligned with anti-vaxxer ideology. I’ll unpack each of these foundational beliefs individually, but first I’d like to address why this has happened.

After the release and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines, world governments, rather than waiting to see what sort of immunity these vaccines would produce in the long-term (would it be durable? How quickly would the virus mutate? Would people get infected? How often would they get infected?) gambled on the so-called “vax and relax” strategy. They bet everything that the vaccines would significantly limit infection and exposure to the point that everyday life could resume without any long-term disruption to society. They unwound every other virus mitigation tactic on this poor assumption.

In 2020, the Republicans had wanted to pursue “herd immunity” at any cost- meaning a quick reopening, massive die off of “the weak”, followed by the resumption of business-as-usual once the public was exposed. In early 2021, the Democrats’ approach was also a “herd immunity” strategy- but one accomplished by vaccinating the public. The only problem is that we’ve since learned that we cannot achieve herd immunity to COVID- ever.

Herd immunity would mean long-term, durable protection from infection, like we have for viruses like measles, mumps, and rubella. This society-wide protection would then enable vulnerable people to rejoin society without constant risk of infection. But since reopening, COVID has circulated year-round at high levels and the population is continually getting reinfected. Both the Republican and Democratic strategies to achieve herd immunity were doomed from the start. There are a variety of biological reasons for this.

The problem is that we cannot achieve herd immunity to COVID- ever. Herd immunity would mean long-term, durable protection from infection, like we have for viruses like measles, mumps, and rubella. This society-wide protection would then enable vulnerable people to rejoin society without constant risk of infection. But since reopening, COVID has circulated year-round at high levels and the population is continually getting reinfected. Both the Republican and Democratic strategies to achieve herd immunity were doomed from the start.

Firstly, infection with COVID does not produce durable immunity. That means that the experts who claimed a single infection would mean immunity for life, or immunity for a significant period of time like a decade, were wrong. These experts- the overly optimistic ones- were the experts continually platformed by both our governments and our media. In fact, COVID immunity is measured in months, not a lifetime or decades or even years, for the average person.

Secondly, vaccination against COVID also does not produce durable immunity. The CDC’s own vaccine efficacy data shows how rapidly protection declines- yet this rapid waning has never been properly explained to the public. Studies have repeatedly found that COVID protection dwindles over the course of mere months. This VE (Vaccine Efficacy) study looking at hospitalization rates found that:

"During the first 7–59 days after vaccination, compared with no vaccination, VE for receipt of a bivalent vaccine dose among adults aged ≥18 years was 62% (95% CI = 57%–67%) among adults without immunocompromising conditions and 28% (95% CI = 10%–42%) among adults with immunocompromising conditions. Among adults without immunocompromising conditions, VE declined to 24% (95% CI = 12%–33%) among those aged ≥18 years by 120–179 days after vaccination. VE was generally lower for adults with immunocompromising conditions."

In other words, a mere four months after receiving their first booster (so their third shot overall in the series), immunocompetent people’s protection from hospitalization with COVID was 24%. With three shots, only months out from their booster, they were 24% less likely to be hospitalized than a fully unvaccinated person. This is a significant percentage, and surely worth receiving a vaccine for- but it’s nowhere near the public’s perceived vaccine efficacy, which would be much closer to 100%.

That perceived efficacy- the idea that we are all well protected from serious outcomes of COVID in the long-term- is a perception that was deliberately promoted and cultivated by institutions that do not want to see any additional attention on pandemic control or COVID mitigation. “Vax and relax” as a strategy is less appealing when people understand how temporary and weak that protection really is.

Thirdly, COVID mutates around vaccine protection quickly. For example, upon their release, the Moderna shots were 92% effective against infection with the ancestral strain, but only 48% effective against infection with Omicron BA.1. Last year, a study looking at data from 2022-2023 found that children under 5 who received the bivalent boosters had an 80% reduction in risk of ER visits, whereas those who received the original series Moderna shots had only a 29% reduction in risk of ER visits. Studies continually find that new subvariants “escape neutralizing antibodies induced by both vaccination and infection”.

The mRNA vaccines were a great leap forward in vaccine technology because they can be quickly updated with new strains of COVID as they emerge. But “quickly” is still a matter of months, not minutes. And COVID keeps outpacing our ability to update the vaccines. In the winter of ‘22-23, we were encouraged to get bivalent vaccines that included both the original strain and Omicron BA.1. By the time people could get the shots, the currently dominant variant was XBB.1.5- a recombinant descendent of BA.2.

Similarly, this past winter we finally got the XBB-specific booster shots. By the time they were released, JN.1 was the dominant variant, a descendent of BA.2.86. Again, there is still efficacy associated with updated vaccines; it makes sense that a vaccine formulated for a strain that is genetically closer to the dominant one would protect better than the original vaccine. But the virus is still outpacing us. Additionally, thanks to (purposefully) poor communication about boosters, variants, and strains, most people do not understand why they need a booster, nor do they seek them out.

When politicians lost their gamble that we would achieve herd immunity to COVID, they didn’t admit they were wrong or explain that, without any mitigation, our “new normal” would be continual reinfection with a blood vessel, organ, immune system and brain damaging virus. Instead, they doubled down and worked to normalize this continual reinfection- and all the negative downstream outcomes that come along with it, like overwhelmed hospitals, record student and teacher absences, constant illness, record rates of worker sickness and long-term illness, re-emergence of controlled pathogens, dropping test scores, high excess deaths, and increasing heart attacks and strokes among younger people.

This normalization process relies on a few tactics. One is burying data, like refusing to test for COVID and failing to report on excess deaths. Another is misinformation: promoting false, pseudo-scientific explanations for the clear results of uncontrolled transmission we see all around us. This is the juncture at which the goals of COVID normalizers intersect with the goals of anti-vaxxers; both want to manufacture broad consent to destroy collective belief in public health. And this is the point at which their tactics, explanations and justifications become nearly identical. Since 2021, our institutions, with the help of our media watchdogs, have mainstreamed nearly every foundational belief of anti-vaxxers and brought them into ascendence over scientific reality. I’m going to explore each one below.

Mainstreamed anti-vaxxer belief #1:

Viral and bacterial infections are good for the immune system

This has long been a foundational belief of anti-vaxxers. They claim that not only can vaccines harm the body, but that illness itself is a boon to health, training and building a hardy immune system. They insist that natural infection is important for the growth and development of children. Visit any anti-vaxxer facebook group; you’ll find parents boasting of their decisions to purposely expose their kids to chickenpox, tips on how to navigate measles, and collective back-patting for the “wisdom” of purposely sickening children.

The belief that illness makes us well is completely false and incredibly dangerous. It comes from the also-controversial Hygiene Hypothesis- the belief that exposure to certain microorganisms is an important part of the development of babies. Even were we to accept the hygiene hypothesis- which again, is itself debated, with a recent study finding lockdown-era babies have healthier microbiomes and fewer allergies - the microbes in question are healthy or neutral types of bacteria that occur in our environments and thrive in our guts; they do not equate to pathogenic viruses. There has never been any serious contention that a pathogen- meaning a microbe that is harmful to humans- would somehow be healthy for you. It is simply a complete fabrication.

However, liberal outlets adopted and adapted this anti-vaxxer belief in the glorious healthful effects of viral illness and laundered it to their audience of scientifically minded liberals. They did so because children became notably sicker after reopening. As parents began to question the levels of illness they were observing in their kids, media outlets and elected officials rushed to rebrand illness as a positive sign that kids’ immune systems are developing well. This brings us to:

Mainstreamed anti-vaxxer belief #2:

Public health measures and disease mitigation harms people

As part of their push to handwave away record childhood illnesses and absences, the press also embraced the completely fabricated “immunity debt” idea. This is the idea that, because children were kept at home and/or wore masks, their immune systems were harmed. Their weak immune systems therefore have more trouble fighting off common childhood diseases- a phenomenon that will surely abate with time (but hasn’t yet, three years on).

Implicit in the claim that kids’ immune systems were harmed by masks is the idea that masks and quarantines- basic mitigation measures, in other words, are bad for your health. In fact, if people need pathogenic infections to build up their immune systems, any form of disease mitigation at all could be construed as negative for public health. This claim was first promoted by anti-vaxxers in Spring of 2020 and beyond; at the time, outlets corrected the misinformation, asserting that no, masks and isolation measures could not harm people’s health.

But as 2022 dragged on and the effects of continual COVID spread became apparent, our governments and media had only two options: clearly, something had changed since 2019. People were sicker. The two possible culprits- the only things that had dramatically changed- were the spread of COVID, and the adoption of COVID mitigations. Our institutions chose to throw mitigations under the bus, rather than admit that continual COVID spread was a mistake, a bad decision, and a social catastrophe. On to:

Mainstreamed anti-vaxxer belief #3:

Public health shouldn’t pursue the elimination of pathogens

The fact that pathogens are harmful for humans underlies the entirety of modern public health. It is why mitigation has always been not only a goal, but in fact, the ultimate goal, of public health itself. The CDC itself was first founded as a malaria elimination project. HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB projects worldwide openly pursue the goal of elimination, and they are never seen as irrational or extremist for doing so. Elimination was the goal of vaccination campaigns that all-but-eradicated polio and other common infections like diphtheria, typhoid, measles, mumps, and rubella in developed countries.

In the age of COVID, elimination has become a dirty word. Absurd labels like “Zero COVID extremists” came from the far-right, but this attitude toward those of us still advocating mitigations has been adopted by the press, Democrats, and the liberal public. No press outlet would label people advocating for the elimination of a deadly disease as a “Zero HIV extremist” or a “Zero measles extremist” or a “Zero cholera extremist”. That’s because it’s well understood that elimination is the highest goal of public health; once elimination is achieved, all the resources devoted to mitigation can be repurposed. It’s ultimately far cheaper to eliminate a disease than it is to attempt to continually mitigate and manage it; however, neither goal is now being pursued by our public health institutions in regard to SARS-COV-2. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any public health goal at all in regard to the spread of a highly infectious, highly disabling, incredibly disruptive and widespread airborne virus.

Instead, completely abandoning its public health obligations, our institutions have embraced the ideologically extremist, libertarian “Let it Rip” approach to COVID. In other words, zero attempts to mitigate, zero attempts to halt, zero attempts to eliminate, just a complete disease free-for-all. Normalizing this non-approach to disease to a science-embracing liberal audience required a ton of ideological messaging. From there it’s a short leap to:

Mainstreamed anti-vaxxer belief #4:

Health is an individual choice, not a collective practice

Much has been made of anti-vaxxers refusal to understand that their choices impact others. Ok, yes, your kid may be fine if they contract measles- maybe. But even if your kid is fine, you’re contributing to community spread. Viral spread threatens herd immunity (to viruses like measles, where herd immunity is possible and was attained decades ago). Contributing to disease spread means that vulnerable people- people who cannot get vaccinated, do not mount an immune response to vaccination, and/or will die if infected, can no longer be safe and protected.

This reality is the crux of the criticism us pro-science folks lob at anti-vaxxers. You frame this decision as your individual choice, we point out, but your decision is affecting and harming the collective. It shouldn’t be your right to afflict harm on others because you think you will be okay.

Now that it’s clear COVID will require additional mitigations aside from vaccines alone, liberal institutions have adopted and mainstreamed the worldview that disease mitigation is a personal choice that must be left to the individual. If some people want to wear a mask, that’s fine, but I’m pretty sure I’m low risk for Long COVID- so why should I have to mask? This is exactly and precisely the same logic used by anti-vaxxers to justify their personal choices not to participate in protecting collective health. If other people want to mask- 24/7, amidst unmitigated COVID spread- that’s not any of my business! This bleeds directly into:

Mainstreamed anti-vaxxer belief #5:

If vulnerable people are so weak, they should simply hide forever or die

One of the major things people seem to have memory-holed about the early pandemic is that mitigation measures, from day one, were first and foremost about protecting the vulnerable. Even in the earliest, pre-vaccine days, COVID infection was never highly deadly to young, healthy people. It was dangerous for the elderly, new babies, immunocompromised folks, folks with underlying conditions, and our decisions to collectively adopt mitigation measures were explicitly done to care for our vulnerable populations.

Now, people have been persuaded to not only ignore, but even openly despise vulnerable people. Defenses of refusals to mask often expressly state that “only vulnerable people” are dying from COVID- even though vulnerable people were always the ones dying from COVID. Our public figures like former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky commented that she’s “encouraged” those dying have underlying conditions, while just this past winter, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that “the vulnerable will fall by the wayside”- framing this as an okay, or even positive thing.

Media outlets continue to push that narrative that “most” people won’t get Long COVID, while encouraging everyone to assume that the unfortunate outliers will be, simply, somebody else. Vulnerable people, left with zero public protection, have had to adopt extreme measures to protect themselves, including isolation, constant masking, avoiding medical care and abandoning professional careers. These measures are not only ignored by liberals; they are mocked and derided by liberals, and sometimes even leftists.

The message is loud and clear to disabled and immunocompromised people who cannot afford a COVID infection (or in the case of Long COVID patients, another COVID infection): shut up and/or disappear. It’s the message vulnerable folks have always received from anti-vaxxers, and an explicitly eugenicist one. This brings us to the end with:

Mainstreamed anti-vaxxer belief #6:

The strong will survive, the weak won’t, and that’s a good thing

The anti-vax movement has always been eugenicist. The logic goes that, if your kid is healthy, they will not only recover, but build strength from infectious disease exposure. The people who die- well sadly, they just weren’t built for survival. They’re the necessary sacrifices of a stronger collective, weeding out the weak and embracing a Darwinian, survival of the fittest model. It’s no surprise that anti-vaxxer beliefs overlap heavily with other fascist beliefs, like white nationalism, great replacement conspiracies, and fear of diversity and inclusion. Fundamentally, anti-vaxxers believe that some people should survive, and others should not. Some people should have rights and privileges, others should not. Some people are superior, others inferior.

This deeply fascist belief is the beating heart of COVID normalization. Without it, all the other beliefs listed above don’t gel together and form the poisonous worldview now adopted across the political spectrum: some people are going to die, and it’s not our job to prevent that or care.

Now, morally, this view is abhorrent. It’s also completely wrong on a practical level. As mentioned above, COVID infections are not harmless, but are directly harmful to anyone with a vascular system, a brain, an immune system, and organs (that’s you). You may feel okay after your COVID infection, and you may not. You may develop microclots in your blood, a new onset heart problem, and you may sustain cognitive damage, no matter how healthy you were prior to COVID. You may develop new onset autoimmune disorders, and/or become more vulnerable to other infections.

In other words, the “strong” who survive COVID are becoming slightly less strong all the time. They are not beating COVID and becoming a super-race of Übermenschen, destined to rule over a newly healthy population with an incredible life expectancy. Instead, they too are becoming sicker. They too are missing work and school at record rates. They too are becoming vulnerable. Different people may tolerate different numbers of infections, but one thing is certain; continue to get infected with SARS-COV-2, every year, over and over again, and you will eventually move into the category of disposable people. You will have become the vulnerable, who don’t deserve protection. Who don’t deserve mitigation. Who don’t deserve to live.

The story of COVID normalization is ultimately a story of breaking solidarity. We went from embracing a social model of public health that prioritized the safety of vulnerable people as the greatest priority, to one that explicitly denies them safety and promotes harming them. In essence, public health itself, the concept of collectively combatting disease for the collective benefit of all, is what we’ve lost. It’s been replaced by a cruel, sadistic, eugenicist program of deliberate elimination of the weak as a named and accepted cost of abandoning all attempts to control COVID.

This social normalization of the anti-vaxxer worldview, the mainstreaming of the idea that illness is good and the weak must die, has implications that will follow us well past the normalization of this virus. What does a society look like when parents believe making their children sick is good for them? Is that a society that effectively controls measles outbreaks? What does a society look like if the people in it believe lockdowns and masks can physically harm them? Is that a society that willingly adopts those measures again during an outbreak of a highly pathogenic disease like H5N1, now spreading uncontrolled among America’s dairy cows?

What does a society that no longer “believes the science” do when science is our greatest disease fighting weapon?

What does a society full of people who think disease elimination is stupid and silly do about other diseases?

What does a society trained to hate the vulnerable do to the vulnerable?

Anti-vaxxers are certainly a threat to the collective. So are the mainstream liberals who’ve adopted every one of their beliefs about viruses, disease mitigation, public health, and who deserves safety.

[16woodsequ]

Things People Seem to Forget About Steve Rogers (aka the past is complex)

Things in the future didn't happen in a vacuum, and while Steve missed a lot of stuff while he was in the ice, he would have seen the roots of things like the Civil Rights, Women's Rights and even LGBTQ+ Rights movements in his time.

While I'm sure Steve encountered a lot of people expecting certain right-wing behaviours from him, due to his birth year and the things he missed in the ice, this doesn't mean he would act that way—even right out of the ice.

But first lets take a look at the things Steve missed and see what he did in fact know:

The atom bomb. Steve never saw the atomic fallout, but what did he see? Hydra bombs literally being flown to his home city. There is also a possibility that as a specialty team, he learned about the German Nuclear Program during the war. His unit was tied to the Strategic Science Reserve, so I wouldn't be surprised if between that, and Hydra's bomb initiatives, Steve was well aware of the potential of a bomb threat. I doubt Steve has clearance to know about the Manhattan project, and I think he would be horrified to learn about the impact of the atom bomb on Japan (especially since he essentially thwarted the same thing from happening to New York) but majorly powerful bombs would not surprise him.

• The Cold War. Steve may not have experience the Cold War, but he grew up surrounded by the outcome of the First World War after the Communist take over of Russia. The debates surrounding Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism aren't new. Steve would have grown up with them and would probably be familiar with American pro-capitalist, anti-communist rhetoric. But would he agree?

Here's some things we know about Steve: He's an artist, he grew up during the Depression which was heavily mitigated by socialist measures, he grew up poor, he grew up disabled. As an artist Steve would be well aware of the debates between the political movements, and with his background, and the success of Roosevelt's New Deal reforms, it would not surprise me if Steve leaned more towards the Socialist side of the scale.

All this to say: Steve would not be unfamiliar with the tension between Russia and the USA. Especially since even though they were allies during the war, there were already concerns that the USSR wasn't so much 'liberating' the countries they drove Germany out of, as putting them under new management.

Steve would be familiar with the tensions underlying the Cold War, and his background might lead him to have a critical view of some of the pro-Capitalist propaganda that came out during the Cold War. While I don't think Steve would approve of Russia's methods and the ultimate outcome of Communism there, I don't think he would approve of the Red Scare Witch Hunt that happened in the States either.

• Civil Rights Movement. While Steve missed the major changes that occurred during the 50s and 60s, he would not be unfamiliar with movements for equality. Steve would also not be unaware of the inequality that minorities faced in his country.

For example:

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was established in 1909 and is still run today. The NAACP fought and fights against discrimination and advocates for equality.

In the 30s President Roosevelt responded to "to charges that many blacks were the "last hired and first fired," [his administration] instituted changes that enabled people of all races to obtain needed job training and employment. These programs brought public works employment opportunities to African Americans, especially in the North" (Link)

"The first precedent-setting local and state level court cases to desegregate Mexican and African American schooling were decided during [the late 1930s]" (Link)

In 1941 thousands of Black Americans threatened to march on Washington for equal employments rights which pushed Roosevelt to issue an executive order that "opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans regardless of race, creed, color or national origin." (Link)

The Double Victory or Double V Campaign during the war was an explicit campaign to win the war against fascism in Europe and the war against racism as home.

All this to say, Steve would not be unfamiliar with many of the issues tackled during the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s.

Not only that, but Steve led a multi-racial special unit during the war during a time of active army segregation. Not only does he have a Black man on his team, but also a Japanese man. This would have most definitely led to backlash from higher command as well as discrimination from other units against Jones and Morita. Steve and the entire Howling Commandos would be explicitly aware of prejudice against two of their members and likely had to fight for them many times.

• Anything space travel. It's true Steve wouldn't know anything about attempts to reach the moon. But there were still several space discoveries he could know about, especially since he and Bucky are clearly interested in scientific discoveries, considering how they went to the Stark Exbo before Bucky shipped out.

Some discoveries:

Hubble's Law: In 1929 Hubble published evidence for an ever expanding universe, and thus provided evidence of the Big Bang theory.

1930: Discovery of Pluto (makes me chuckle to think this is a relatively new discovery for Steve and he wakes up to find it is a dwarf-planet now. You think Millennials are protective of Pluto? I think Steve would be too 😆.)

1937: "the first intimation that most matter in the universe is `dark matter'"

Personally I think Steve would be absolutely amazed by the advances in space travel.

• Women's Rights. Like with Civil Rights, while Steve may have missed the large movements during the 50s and 60s, he was around for the early movements. The 60s movement is called Second Wave Feminism for a reason. This is because there was already many pushes for women equality in Steve's time.

For example:

1920: White women win the right to vote. This means Steve's mother first voted in his lifetime. I feel this alone would make Steve heavily aware of inequality faced by women. (As a side note I feel that Sarah always emphasized voting to Steve since it was such a major development in her lifetime.)

Also in the 20s the Flapper trend rose, along with hemlines. Women's skirts were shorter and they smoked and drank with men. Middle-class and working-class women also worked outside of the home. The 1920s-1930s 'modern' woman is very different from the Victorian vision of a woman in petticoats and skirts.

Early Birth Control movement: Was "initiated by a public health nurse, Margaret Sanger, just as the suffrage drive was nearing its victory. The idea of woman’s right to control her own body, and especially to control her own reproduction and sexuality, added a visionary new dimension to the ideas of women’s emancipation. This movement not only endorsed educating women about existing birth control methods. It also spread the conviction that meaningful freedom for modern women meant they must be able to decide for themselves whether they would become mothers, and when."

1936: A Supreme Court decision declassified birth control information as obscene. Legalised doctor-prescribed contraceptives.

WW2 Watershed: Women serve in the army and work factory jobs. The government establishes universal childcare while women work.

Women also wore pants and form fitting clothes to work in factories. We also see Peggy wearing pants during the last assault on Hydra. While Steve may need to get used to modern fashion, he would already be familiar with the 'morale outrage' over women's clothes in his time, and probably try to manage his surprise in private as well as possible.

• LGBTQ+ Rights. Like with the rest of the equality movements, LGBTQ+ rights movements also started before the late 1900s.

1924: "Society for Human Rights is founded by Henry Gerber in Chicago. The society is the first gay rights organization as well as the oldest documented in America." This organisation was broken up soon after founding due to arrests, but it published "the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom."

In the 1920s and 30s "the gay and lesbian movement started taking shape. Social analysts began rejecting prior medical definitions of "inversion" or "homosexuality" as deviant.

Communities of men and women with same-sex affiliations began to grow in urban areas. Their right to gather in public places such as bars was tenuous, and police raids and harassment were common." (Link)

WW2 Watershed: While many LGBTQ people lived in rural areas or outside 'queer neighbourhoods' the war brought people from all backgrounds together. "As with most young soldiers, many had never left their homes before, and the war provided them an opportunity to find community, camaraderie, and, in some cases, first loves. These new friendships gave gay and lesbian GIs refuge from the hostility that surrounded them and allowed for a distinct subculture to develop within the military."

They still had to hide their identities for fear of persecution and a 'blue discharge', however "Gay and lesbian veterans of World War II became some of the first to fight military discrimination and blue discharges in the years following the war."

It's unclear how much Steve would have known about the gay and lesbian rights movement. But in the comics he has a gay friend Arnie Roth, and there are many meta posts (X X X) about how Steve may have lived in a queer neighbourhood.

And, according to my history professor, gay and lesbian soldiers were often protected by their friends in the army instead of outed. This is not to downplay the discrimination and pain outed veterans faced, but there was a comaraderie and understanding that developed between soldiers that protected many gay soldiers.

• Computer and the internet. The seeds of modern computers began during World War Two. Arguably it began earlier with Ada Lovelace. While technology has changed a lot for Steve, there is a long history of it's development.

Colossus Computer: Kept secret until the 70s, it's unclear if Steve's association with the SSR, Peggy (who was a code breaker before SSR) and Howard, would have led him to know anything about the "the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer", but we see electric screens and machines being used in Captain America: The First Avenger. So he would know something of those mechanisms.

Also the first American TV was broadcasted in the 1939 World Fair, And since Steve and Bucky are already shown going to a science fair, I believe it is reasonable for Steve to know about the concept of television, though it looks much different in modern day.

• Rise of Neo-Nazis. Steve already saw the rise of fascism in his own country before the war, so while I think he would be horrified and saddened to learn of the Neo-Nazi movement, I don't think he would be surprised.

Because:

Eugenics: A large part of the Nazi campaign, this part of the movement originated and was inspired by the United States Eugenics movement. "It is important to appreciate that within the U.S. and European scientific communities these ideas were not fringe but widely held and taught in universities."

Lobotomies and institutionalisations were part of the treatments for disabled and 'weak-minded' individuals during Steve's time. With Sarah being a nurse it is likely Steve knew of these treatments and more. And as a disabled child of immigrants, I have no doubts Steve brushed up with eugenics beliefs many times.

1939: More than 20,000 people attended a Nazi rally in Madison Square while "[a]bout 100,000 anti-Nazi protesters gathered around the arena in protest".

In the comics Steve canonically has a Jewish friend, Arnie Roth. If he wasn't part of the protests against the Nazi rally, he would have heard about it and known about the rise of antisemitic sentiment in the US before the outbreak of the war.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

Steve has a history of anti-racist behaviour. While he would still have a lot to learn from the Civil Rights Movement and no doubt has unconscious biases he grew up with, he also explicitly builds a multi-racial team that would have led to clashes with systemic racism in the army. This would have inevitably led to him and the Howling Commandos taking an anti-racist stance in protection of their members.

Would Steve say the N-word? Likely not. The N-Word already held negative connotations by the 19th and early-20th century. I doubt Jones would be willing to follow a man who would knowing use the insult. 'Coloured' or 'Negro' were seen as the more acceptable terms. So Steve may use those words at first, instead of 'Black' or 'African-American'. 'Negro' is a controversial term for some Black Americans, so this would be something for him to learn, but he would not purposely by insulting or hurtful. And I believe he would adapt as quickly as possible upon learning.

Steve saw the early steps of many social movements. Given what we know about Steve—artist, disabled, immigrant, poor, raised by a single mom, gay and Jewish friend, potentially lived around queer people, worked with Peggy and smiled when she punched a sexiest, and built a multi-racial team—Steve would not only be aware of the social movements of his time, but he would be happy to learn of the developments after he went into the ice.

While it would take some time for him to learn all the changes that happened, Steve's background would led him to be pleased with the changes in society. This is the opposite of being racist, sexist, and homophobic. Some things might take some adjusting for Steve to get used to, but he is already open-minded and has a frame of reference for many of the social changes that happened.

People sometimes bring up Steve's Catholic upbringing to argue about some beliefs he might have. But while I do think this upbringing would lead to some biases, I think Steve's life experience helped counter, or helped him unlearn some of those biases, even before he hit the ice.

Also, as an Irish-Catholic, Steve would have faced some discrimination of his own. It is most certainly not on the same level as other minorities, and things were better in the 20th century. Being very clear, any discrimination Steve faced for being Irish-Catholic would not be systemic or commonplace like racism. But adding his heritage to the rest of Steve's background helps give us a better idea of why he was already open to social movements like the Civil Rights movement before the ice. And it may have made him already more understanding of LGBTQ+ people, who he may have lived around, even if he grew up being taught certain biases.

Other Things We Forget About Steve

He is quite tech-savvy. While Steve would have a lot to learn, we know he is capable. There are a lot of jokes about his technical know-how in Avengers, but I think he's actually managing very well considering it's probably only been a few weeks or months since he came out of the ice.

Examples:

Deleted scene where we see Steve using a laptop in his apartment. He presses the spacebar to pause a video, which is a keyboard shortcut. So not only can he set up a laptop to watch a video, but he already knows key shortcuts.

Deleted scene where waitress mentions 'wireless'. Steve is confused and thinks she means radio. But I think he actually knows about wi-fi at this point, but probably had never heard it referred to as 'wireless' before. By this point he knows radio is not as common, so his real confusion is why the waitress is offering him 'free radio'. If she had said free wi-fi (the more typical phrase in my opinion) I think he would have understood.

Canon scene of Steve helping Tony fix the Helicarrier engines. This is my favourite evidence because Tony asks Steve to look at the relays and Steve makes a quip that they 'seem to run on some sort of electricity' indicating he is out of his depth. But we never see Tony tell Steve what to do. Steve figures out how to fix the relays himself. Tony is busy with the debris in the rotors and the next thing we see is Steve telling Tony the relays are all good.

Steve is much better at adapting and figuring out technology than we give him credit for. This doesn't mean he won't be anxious or uncomfortable with the sheer amount of stuff he has to learn (especially if everyone keeps making jokes about it to him). But by 2014, it's clear he's already mastered all of it, which is amazing when you think about it, because that's only two years of learning.

Steve is very book smart. In the comics Steve goes to art college, implying he finished high school. Even if he did drop out of high school to work, we know Steve is very smart.

We see him unloading a whole suitcase of books in the barracks before he got the serum.

The mental math is must take to throw the shield at the right angles for it to bounce back is insane.

Steve is also known as a master tactician. So it is clear he has the brains and smarts to run his team during the war. Not only that, but he is not just Captain in name. He actually has that rank, which means he passed the Captain's exam. I also have a feeling he would have needed to pass some kind of evaluation to get the serum in the first place.

We see in Steve's 2014 apartment that his bookshelves are full of history books. Steve is a veracious reader and spends a lot of his time catching up on what he missed. Things he didn't learn or were taught differently growing up would definitely exist, but Steve is actively working to counter that.

Steve would swear. Swearing has been a constant throughout all of history. So too, the backlash against profanity. Even if Steve grew up being told not to swear he would have heard it. And, Steve became a soldier. If he didn't swear before the war, he most definitely picked up some of it then.

I think Captain America isn't supposed to swear, and I think Steve would be aware of this perception of the symbol of him. But I think when Steve is comfortable with people, he would swear. We see in Avengers he doesn't swear, but in Avengers: Age of Ultron, he does.

We joke about Steve and the "Language" line, but I think that line has something to do with Steve's history of being perceived as a symbol and as Captain America since he said it 'just slipped out'. So, while Steve may have been encouraged not to swear growing up, and expected not to swear as Captain America, I fully believe that soldier, veteran, and Irish man Steve Rogers does swear.

Wrap up

I hope you liked this deep dive into Steve's history and character.

I think it can be easy to take the past as a lump sum and view everyone in the past through one lens. We know the past was racist, sexist, and homophobic, so we view everyone from the past that way.

And while it's true things were different back then, people were most definitely fighting for change and aware of the issues. There is also a lot of nuance to the past, and a lot that can be gleaned from what we know about Steve.

It's true that Steve would have a lot to learn when it comes to terminology and specific technology, but I believe Steve's background would prepare him for a lot of the social changes that happened after he went into the ice.

[hamliet]

the notion that bnha is pro authoritarianism or social hierarchies is nonsensical not to mention acting like being pro cop is bad

Err... BNHA is pretty pro-authoritarian. I actually find it pretty disturbing. And that's even if the story turns out with the League alive at the end.

As for being pro-cop--cops are human individuals, yes. But people have in recent years in multiple countries (including Japan, by the way) protested against cops being used as tools to maintain social hierarchies wherein people who are not part of that hierarchy suffer for daring to want to be treated as human beings. When I say I'm anti-cop, I'm not saying I hate anyone on the basis of being a cop. But I am saying that the ways in which the police force are used in many countries does societal harm. Critical thinking, yo.

Honestly I feel like this whole story (BNHA) and fans reactions throughout (especially when compared to other stories) demonstrate how people are not using critical thinking. And that can have real world consequences, though it doesn't have to.

I just find it weird that people are okay with a story where the ruling class is always right and always wins. Like... how have they not? I mean, even stories that end up suggesting the ruling class isn't entirely wrong or show flaws in rebellions generally don't go hard on the authoritarianism. But Horikoshi... is doing this.

The whole thing is so weird to me personally, too, because Horikoshi's wishy-washy framing and switches in coding generally seem to be the result of him caring, deeply, what his audience thinks and feels. Too much, really, but it also seems like he genuinely doesn't want to hurt people. Except this ending--even if Tenko does reappear as New Character and saves the League--is the exact opposite. (If Tenko doesn't reappear, then everything I'm about to say is multiplied by a thousand.)

It's catering to mean-spiritedness, and while I do understand fiction isn't reality, the side he's catering to now is making the argument that fictional crimes are real crimes and thus must meet real penalties.

I can play this game too.

If people are gonna make those arguments, I'm going to say they're the problem and the reason we have wars, genocides, assaults, and more.

If you ever want a cycle of violence/abuse to stop, someone has to accept that they've taken the last punch. Not keep going until the other side is WIPED OUT.

If you equate justice with equalizing losses, then you are enacting Dazai from BSD's statement on justice: justice is a weapon. You can never heal by it.

If you want to heal, you have to stop fighting and bandage wounds. And maybe you are too injured to do the bandaging. That's okay. But someone else can, and if you try to stop them on the premise of "but no one bandaged my wounds" you're a bitter person who makes the world a worser place.

If you say a tragedy is the story, sure. But you have to set up tragedies from the start. See, Attack on Titan, which's ending I love. It began with someone crying and an ominous message to the future. You don't set up your first chapter with "this is the story of how I become the greatest hero!" spend 200+ chapters criticizing hero society and have the hero fail at the goal he'd been repeating for 200 chapters in the end and join hero society and still think you wrote a story that delivered in what you promised. You failed.

Either you wrote a tragedy and are trying to pass it off as a happy story (see how well that works usually) or your understanding of a happy story is pretty much just fascist propaganda. And yes, BNHA does have fascist themes at this point. Way more than AoT ever did. But they have smiles and cute frog girls so it's not nearly as dangerous, right? (sarcastic).

The thing is, this is where the lack of critical thinking comes in. While I've seen people talk a bit about how BNHA seems like copaganda, it's taking things much, much further than other stories usually do and into territory where I'm frankly disturbed.

Yes, BNHA started out as a clever critique of hero society and of the very idea it's now seeming to uphold: that the human instinct (which is universal in real life to) to idolize people leads to a lack of humanity for those who do not have those traits we idolize, whether their fault or not, and for people to become villains in response. But not only has it failed to deliver on this premise by upholding society (hey, Naruto and to a degree Tokyo Ghoul also failed to completely change society), it's gone so far as to endorse what it previously criticized.

It's more akin to Game of Thrones Season 8 upholding racism, sexism, and classism, than it is to Naruto or Tokyo Ghoul. GoT ended with a joke about prioritizing brothels being open, as if the misogyny was actually a good thing and not what caused a lot of the problems. There's no critical lens here. It's just like "hey, there was no point in struggling. Monarchies that abuse women, rah rah, let's go!"

BNHA seems to be going a similar route. Deku's murder of Shigaraki, Ochaco's crying over Toga, the way Shouto reaches out to Touya--it's sad, but not framed as something the audience should see as a wrong done on behalf of heroes. In fact, the heroes are not criticized at all. Frickin' Edgeshot, whom no one cares about, is fine. All of them are fine. Their statuses are generally fine, too, except maybe Enji's and even then he's not like going to face the fate of the League and die alone. His family still supports him. Hawks is completely fine and framed positively. His regret over Twice is pure lipservice. Deku really did just need to kill Shigaraki, and all his "I want to save" spiel, much like Ochaco's, is for naught. He just needed to learn to grow up and get in line.

Even if Tenko comes back, and even if Deku like... somehow knew this would happen via vestiges or whatnot (let's be real, he will if this is the case), and the message is just that society isn't ready to move forward, but at least they can live, then... I don't know, y'all. That's still depressing. I don't see how Deku is a hero for that, much less the greatest number one hero. He decided to be a hero at the cost of his own integrity, and if this was a gritty story about the realistic struggle of living in a capitalistic society where ethics are always compromised that would make sense, but... it's not. Even until the final battle, the characters were endorsing idealism.

At the very least, Horikoshi didn't deliver on his promise in the first chapter. At the very worst, he's endorsing fascist ideals.

Like, I'm sorry, but "kill this person for the good of society," the violent upholding of oppressive societal hierarchies, the importance of being a cop hero and the way the military hero brutalities are worshipped, the way heroes are lauded and everyone who doesn't get in line with this is punished, went from being criticized to being endorsed. Those are all central elements of fascism.

The little guy deserves to lose, but, but Deku is the little guy, so it can't be! Except it can be. Because it's actually pretty common irl even to trot out examples of people like Candace Owens to be like "hey, you can't possibly say Republicans are racist!"

And don't you dare say "but Japanese culture makes it unreasonable to expect a non retributive justice!" The Japanese people are not a monolith. Not to mention... Naruto, Bungou Stray Dogs, Monster, Hunter x Hunter, Yu Yu Hakusho, Mawaru Penguindrum, Oshi no Ko, Dragon Ball, Attack on Titan, and Tokyo Ghoul all say hi.

I hated the TG ending, and still hate it, but I'm not going to say that it upheld the CCG as right all along because it didn't. BNHA thus far is doing that with hero society. And even if the answer is for the League be revived and to leave society or whatever, then how can we be happy Deku is a part of this society? How can we root for him, or his classmates? Is he going to work from the inside to change it? Why wasn't that emphasized beforehand as a theme or struggle?

tl;dr Horikoshi has cooked his story no matter what he does now, and I don't think it's salvageable. Either way it has themes that are disturbing especially considering real world events across the globe, and that people should be more aware of instead of focusing solely on stories that have fascism and monsters in them but don't uphold it.

[transmutationisms]

being reductive here but i do think the covid pandemic has & continues to expose a very specific strain of techno-optimistic or utopian thinking wrt medical technologies in particular---this idea that you can simply solve a massive socio-technical problem (disease spread) through a solely technical intervention that thus requires no input or cooperation from the average person besides a vague sort of 'pro-science' stance. you see this first with the crowd who thought the 'post-vaccine world' was one in which things ought to immediately 'get back to normal' but you also see it with those who seem to believe that eg a risky recreational event (parties, bars, &c) would be magically transformed in a binary manner into a wholly 'safe' one if only people were to wear masks. in this sort of politics there is no real understanding of risk as being along a spectrum or varying according to numerous factors including people's social behaviours; instead it is a technical problem solved instantly by a singular technical intervention. there's no need then to engage in larger and messier conversations about things like capitalist de/valuation of biopower, or disabled people's right or ability to participate in society. you sidestep the whole issue because you have applied the right technical means to simply dispense with the political problem. obligatory i wear masks when i have to be in public and i am boosted and blah blah but i'm under no illusion this means i can't get or spread covid (or other diseases). but more to my point here, i think this mode of thinking has dangerous consequences for all manner of social theorising that's simply answered with a lazy appeal to technological 'development' or advance---assumed to be something we can magic away if we throw enough money at pharma companies or weapons manufacturers or whoever else. what this ultimately does is stifle political consciousness and bolster the power and epistemological authority granted to institutions tasked with producing and protecting hegemonic forms. and my point here is not 'anti-science' or techno-pessimistic either; again, i am profoundly grateful for many a technological intervention into my life and i will continue to avail myself of them, including medtech. however the fantasy that problems of political and social forms and arrangements can be solved by sufficiently advanced technology is both foolish and dangerous.

[vague-humanoid]

Though calling out antisemitism is central to the commissioners’ role, it’s unclear what qualifies these officials to adjudicate anti-Jewish bigotry. Klein, for instance, came to his current position after a stint working as the German government’s representative to Jewish organizations, but prior to that, he spent most of his career in Germany’s foreign service working on unrelated issues, stationed in places like Cameroon and Italy. When I visited him in his office in Berlin last April, only a menorah decal pasted on one of the windows hinted at the nature of his position. Klein told me that there are no standardized training programs for the commissioners or educational requirements that they must fulfill before their appointments. Schüler-Springorum pointed out that, though references to the Holocaust underlie every aspect of Germany’s antisemitism system, many of the commissioners are far from experts on the history in question. “It’s amazing how little they know about National Socialism,” she lamented. None of the antisemitism commissioners for either the German Federal Government or its Bundesländer, or states, is ethnically Jewish—which, according to Klein, is by design. “The fight against antisemitism is a problem for the whole of society. It isn’t a problem for the Jewish community to face by itself,” he told me. “I mean, it’s not as though the most pressing problem with antisemitism in Germany is among Jews.”

Indeed, when Jews interact directly with the system, it is often as its targets: Klein told the Berliner Zeitung in a January 2021 interview that “tendentially left-leaning Israelis in Berlin” should “be sensitive to Germany’s special historical responsibility” when they criticize Israel. In the eyes of the commissioners, this seems to be all the more true of Muslims and Arabs—especially Palestinians—who voice support for the Palestinian cause. “Palestinians are like a thorn in the side of Germany’s memory culture,” Palestinian German lawyer Nadija Samour told Jewish Currents. They’re “disposable,” but also “crucial for the German identity . . . If you really want to prove how civilized you are, and how philosemitic or pro-Israel you are, you get the chance to prove that by throwing Palestinians under the bus.”

This commitment to Israel advocacy—which requires disciplining the state’s Jewish critics as well as suppressing Palestinian speech—has led observers to argue that the system of antisemitism commissioners exists less to ensure the safety of Jews than to placate Germans’ feelings of guilt for the Holocaust. Indeed, last summer, in the course of admonishing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for comparing Israel’s crimes to the Holocaust during his visit to Germany, Klein emphasized the way that antisemitism hurts Germans. “By relativizing the Holocaust, President Abbas lacked any sensitivity towards us German hosts,” Klein said. Emily Dische-Becker, a left-wing Jewish curator and journalist in Berlin, told Jewish Currents that German antisemitism efforts are ultimately not driven by a concern for Jews. “It basically is an issue of German identity politics at the end of the day,” she said. Neiman—whose 2019 book Learning from the Germans argues that the nation provides a model for other countries struggling with the weight of collective memory—told me that the creation of the commissioner system, and the passage of the anti-BDS resolution the following year, had caused her to question her previous evaluation. “Things have changed really dramatically since the book came out,” she said. “I still think that Germany did something historically unique by putting its crimes in the center of its national narrative, but I also think it’s gone haywire in the last three years. This system of antisemitism commissioners basically went in all the wrong directions.”

[saintsenara]

I actually hear "the order of the phoenix is not a gang of child soldiers" a lot, and I agree to some level - especially because I like to use Dorcas and Marlene to explore corners of the wizard world and its timeline that the marauders scooby gang doesn't reach.

But isn't it also true that a lot of resistances and guerrillas through history have been manned mostly by young idealists, often university students and recent graduates?

Young, agile, energetic people to do the work older people don't have the disposition for, and that important people can't do because that would compromise their important positions?

i think there's an interesting quirk when it comes to the order and its demographic make-up which stems from jkr's own politics.

because the order is a resistance organisation, sure... but what it's resisting is revolution. its aims, across canon, are the maintenance of the status quo, with the state and its institutions [including the class system] left broadly untouched, except for the fact of a minor expansion of wizarding society's parameters to accommodate muggleborns [or, at least, muggleborns who also bear the markers of class-based acceptability]. its politics, across canon, are gradualist, liberal, pro-state, and demonstrably unradical.

that is to say, it represents the "adults in the room" - the sensible, rational, intelligent, considerate people who disapprove both of the reactionary, emotionally-led conservatism of fudge et al. and the radicalism of voldemort.

[he literally wants to rip up the principles by which the wizarding world is governed! he wants to tear everything about its social fabric apart!]

and so it makes perfect sense that its members would predominantly be adults - and adults directly involved in the maintenance of the state and its institutions.

whereas the death eaters do conform to the more typical make-up of revolutionary [and/or terrorist] organisations. huge numbers of the death eaters we meet in canon are people who are decades younger than voldemort and who, during the first war, were canonically in their teens or twenties - snape, mulciber, avery, wilkes, evan rosier, bellatrix, lucius malfoy, rodolphus [and presumably rabastan] lestrange, barty crouch jr., regulus black, peter pettigrew, and so on.

many of these death eaters are either stated or implied to be the children of voldemort's school friends and/or the knights of walpurgis, which invites the suggestion that they supersede their fathers in importance once voldemort returns to britain in the later 1960s because their attitudes are much more radical, zealous, and revolutionary, while their fathers want voldemort to take a more traditional political route to achieving his aims.

[which helps explain why voldemort is so furious about half of them claiming to be under the imperius curse in order not to face punishment, allowing them to live according to the social convention they once claimed to want to destroy...]

and voldemort's ability to recruit young, eager men continues during the second war - crabbe, goyle, draco malfoy, stan shunpike, the snatchers, and so on. the order, in contrast, only takes on young members due to the accident of proximity - the weasley children, who become part of it entirely because their parents are involved; fleur, who becomes part of it entirely because of her marriage.

the anti-voldemort resistance organisation which actually attracts young recruits is - despite the fact that harry spends half-blood prince and most of deathly hallows thinking of it as completely irrelevant to voldemort's defeat - dumbledore's army.

[sophieinwonderland]

A Roadmap and Why Anti-Endos Are Getting Left Behind

A recent post of mine was controversial and has been making waves. That post was the short un-nuanced version of a pro-endo future that's coming. It was phrased to sound threatening and inflammatory because it feels like that's all anti-endos will listen to anymore. But now that I've successfully gotten your attention, let's talk seriously about what's been set into motion, why it's bad for anti-endos, and why there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

Positions on endogenic plurality in psychiatry

The nature of DID has been the subject of much debate within the psychiatric community for a long time. Most experts have agreed that the cause of DID is virtually always trauma. (Although many doctors are hesitant to assert this cause 100% of the time because edge cases can exist with anything.) But there's a smaller group that views it as sociogenic or iatrogenic, being caused by suggestion or doctors themselves.

I tend to agree with the majority.

But that majority group that believes DID itself is caused by trauma has also consistently acknowledged that there are, or at least could be, other forms of plurality beyond DID. This includes Dr. Colin Ross, who in the 90s speculated that there could be a non-pathological endogenous form of multiplicity. This was also echoed by Kluft, another DID expert who holds the traumagenic view of DID.

In the early 2010s, the creators of the theory of structural dissociation mentioned in a paper that mediumship and hypnosis may involve self-conscious dissociative parts of the personality.

By 2019, the World Health Organization's ICD-11's DID entry stated that you can experience multiple distinct personality states without a disorder.

Every source you can find about endogenic and non-disordered plurality either affirms it as a real thing or is at least neutral on it.

There is no hard anti-endo papers in psychiatry or psychology.

You can look through peer reviewed sources if you want for a single one that supports the idea that all plurality is traumagenic, and I promise that you won't find one.

A growing trend in research.

Like I said, in the 90s, there were a couple doctors talking about non-pathological multiplicity as something that may or may not exist. But this was largely un-studied. Later, this phenomenon got more attention, but there were no studies into non-pathological multiplicity, outside of spiritual possession, until 2016 with Varieties of Tulpa Experiences.

That was only 8 years ago.

The year after, in 2017, came a small interview study into online multiples that concluded this:

2018 saw the publication of Transgender Mental Health by The American Psychiatric Association, which asserted plurality could be non-traumagenic.

And again, 2019 saw the ICD-11 worded to say that one could experience the presence of multiple distinct personality states without a disorder.

There have been so many studies conducted in the intervening years that this post would go on forever were I to list them all.

If you want to see more, you can look at Guardians Systems' doc. Progress is happening at a rapid pace with new studies published every year.

This leads us to the next big milestone... actual fMRI research and brain scans. Because THAT'S HAPPENING.

Stanford University conducted a massive $50k study (not including the payment to researchers themselves) into tulpa systems, and the people running those studies recently did an AMA about it on Reddit.

The results are promising, showing neurological changes during possession. (Possession is a tulpamancy term for a headmate taking control over a single part of the body without fronting.)

Once this is published, it's only going to further pique interest in tulpamancy and endogenic plurality in psychology.

Are you scared yet? Because Rod Dreher is...

Rod Dreher is a transphobic conservative pundit and reactionary. I'll preface this by saying it's unclear how much of his fear is legitimate and how much is playing to a transphobic base as a way of saying "look what these liberals are doing now." Personally, I think it's probably a bit of both.

I'll be linking the archived version to avoid giving him clicks.

What conservative pundit Rod Dreher believes is that tulpamancy and plurality are going to be the next frontier of identity politics, as he makes the case for here.

He's of course NOT in support of this, but he's afraid of it.

And he's not wrong either.

In another quote from the AMA, Dr. Lifshitz mentions how much interest he gets from colleagues when he discusses tulpamancy.

The awareness of plurality and interest in it in medical spaces is rapidly spreading, and current studies do show tulpamancy improves mental health.

While it would be easy to dismiss Dreher's predictions as typical conservative fearmongering, the current trends clearly support what he's predicting.

He may be on the wrong side of the debate, but he can see the same signs and trends I do.

Plural Acceptance In Therapy

As said above, studies have shown thus far that tulpamancy is healthy, as are other forms of plurality. Plural awareness and interest is spreading quickly through academic circles.

And in one interview, Lifshitz mentions that they're interested in using research into tulpamancy to develop better DID treatment.

This will take a while to apply, and I don't know when they'll start using knowledge from tulpamancy in clinical settings, but there's a good chance that within the next decade, this research into tulpamancy may start to influence the treatment of DID systems.

How this will manifest is still unclear. Perhaps it won't go further than the advanced inner world exercises tulpamancers use to immerse themselves in inner worlds to communicate with tulpas.

But... a number of DID systems with tulpas have reported positive benefits from creating tulpas to help their systems. So maybe we'll see studies into using tulpamancy to intentionally make alters for DID systems and see how that benefits their mental health. If results are positive, this could be used in treatment.

Speaking of which, we're probably also going to see studies into having singlets create tulpas intentionally.

They're already having children make imagined companions, and have recorded these imagined companions are able to act seemingly autonomously, possessing their own thoughts and feelings.

This research cited research into tulpamancy, and suggested future studies should be carried out on adults to see if there are benefits.

I can already see the path from having adult singlets make tulpas to test for benefits of plurality, and then to testing on DID systems to see if this could be used to help strengthen communication in those systems.

And if these studies are done and the methods are proven effective and put into practice, anti-endos won't even know that the methods that are being used to treat them were derived from tulpamancy studies.

But as more anti-endos are being treated by therapists who are working to get them into healthier mindsets, it's likely you'll see a trickle down from the opinions of therapists to their patients, helping dismantle their bigotry towards endogenic systems and internalized pluralphobia.

If you're anti-endo and have seen other anti-endos complaining that their therapists seem pro-endo, know that it only gets worse from here.

Plural Acceptance and Gender

Plurality is also likely to become an increasingly big thing in topics around gender.

Just last year in 2023, we saw a study into the intersection of living as plural and transgender.

This study also marked a major milestone for plurals, being the first time ever that a system name (The Redwoods) was used as an author on an academic paper. Authors in this study worked across multiple universities, a hospital, and a gender wellness center.

This will almost definitely not be the last.

Additionally, we've lately been seeing live gender conferences with plural speakers speaking about plurality and this intersection. No longer is this community based entirely online.

Plural acceptance is going to quickly spread within the LGBT community. And anti-endos will be tolerated in those spaces less and less.

A Stranglehold on Resources

Another reason anti-endos are going to lose is because most resources are already pro-endo. Simply Plural and Pluralkit both support endogenic systems, with Simply Plural having links discussing endogenic plurality, linking young systems to the information.

There have been anti-endo attempts at breaking this stranglehold, but it always comes down to copying a more popular pro-endo thing and making it more hateful and exclusive, and it never gets close to enough traction.

Anti-endos contribute nothing to the community and are reliant on pro-endo resources, and every person they suggest Simply Plural to brings them closer to those pro-endo articles from The Plural Association.

Confidence in Being Out as Plural Means Plural Role Models

I don't know who these role models will be. Aimkid came out as a DID system and is pro-endo. Unfortunately, anti-endos have had success in bullying Aimkid off of social media.

But some studies have shown about 3% of the population is plural, only about half of which have DID, and I believe the real numbers are actually much higher.

As plural acceptance increases, it's only a matter of time before you start seeing some of your favorite celebrities come out as plural.

It's only a matter of time before plurals have their equivalent of "The Puppy Episode" where Ellen came out as lesbian on television.

I can't predict when this will happen. Things like that tend to come out of the blue. But I do believe it will happen and when it does, plurality will suddenly be pushed to the mainstream conversation.

This is Going to Quickly Become a Left-Right Issue

When plurality hits the mainstream, conservatives will fiercely oppose it. Because of the way reactions tend to work, that means liberals are going to fiercely defend it. Each side feeds into the other and results in more support in liberal spaces and more opposition in conservatives ones.

I'm not going to sugarcoat this. If you stand by bigotry in these liberal spaces, especially queer spaces, you're going to find your social circle shrinking unless you keep that bigotry to yourself. When this is part of the national conversation, you will find yourself cutoff by people you care about and spaces you previously would be accepted.

Intolerance to plural systems of any kind will no longer be tolerated. There will be no safe space for hate in those communities.

And with the overwhelming science and doctors supporting the existence of non-disordered and endogenic systems, with the support of the psych community, anti-endos will soon find themselves regarded the same way we regard anti-vaxxers and flat-Earthers in liberal spaces.

A Choice to Make

You're not doomed. This isn't hopeless. You can make a change.

System medicalism is The Titanic but you have life rafts you can hop on before it goes down.

Plenty of anti-endos have changed their ways. But if you stay on your current course, this is where it ends. You either maintain your bigotry, as you're cast out of queer communities, watching endogenic plurality infiltrate your favorite media, and with therapists who are pro-endo, all while your own hate and isolation destroy you...

Or you can choose to be better before it's too late. Because the longer you maintain your hate, the more people you hurt along the way, the more guilt you'll carry with you after you break away.

Or... I guess there's a secret third thing. A worse choice. You could join with the Rod Drehers of the world, because the Alt-Right will probably accept you gladly if you're willing to toe the party line, and turn against both fellow systems and the queer community.

I'm sure they would love systems with internalized pluralphobia who speak out against a plural future that they can hold up as examples, the same way they love homophobic gay people like Milo Yiannopoulos.

If that's what you want to be, I suppose that's an option too. 🤷‍♀️

If you do make right choice...

You can find acceptance. Your past mistakes won't be held against you.

Admitting that you're wrong and choosing to be better can be scary. But that's no excuse to continue down a path of hate.

If you do choose to make a change, we can build a plural future together. One where we won't have to hide or fear discrimination for being plural.

One where future plural children won't have to grow up feeling crazy and hating themselves and their headmates for being different, and they'll have real people to look up to who have been where they are.

My Part...

For myself, I'm going to do everything I can to push this future forward, to help bring it about. This future is an inevitability. But the more of us that spread awareness of the science and what's happening, the sooner it gets here.

But with or without my involvement... anti-endos... you're losing. Bit by bit, every single day, and you don't even realize it because you're surrounded by an echo chamber that refuses to see the reality of what's happening.

But We see it. Dr. Lifshitz sees it. Even conservative Rod Dreher sees it.

And you are so far behind in this battle that there's no way you can possibly prevent what is coming. Maybe you could have stopped it had you started paying attention half a decade ago. But you've walled yourselves off from anything that contradicted your worldview and that willful ignorance has left you playing catch-up.

Your echo chamber will tell you that you're safe to keep being who you are, to keep spreading hate and hurting innocent people because of what we are. That the future I promise won't happen. They'll tell you to ignore all the signs.

But the reality is that the world is changing and the future is plural, and you are going to have to make a choice.

I sincerely hope you will choose the right thing. But for those who don't...

Well, like I said, it's up to you. I can't stop you from choosing hate. I'm not going to try to make you into a better person either. That's up to you.

But I think you at least deserve to know what's happening and how it will end up affecting you if you don't make a change.

[iwillbreakyourfuckingskull]

The "anti misinfo" DID blogs i've had the misfortune to see are so full misinfo themselves that it's honestly giving me 2nd hand embarrassment to go through the DID-related tags

My pro tip as an almost 30 y/o who's been online since I was 11 is don't trust some random person on social media and always practice source criticism. I've definitely learned a lot from lived experiences on tumblr and other websites, but I've also been misinformed by people in the past. I think we need to look more at actual research (and we need to learn how to read and analyse research, because a lot of people don't know how). We need to look more at grown adult people with this disorder who's also been diagnosed/treated for years and therefore has knowledge about it. A newly diagnosed 20 y/o person is not the place to look for info, honestly. We need to listen to expert professionals who've got years of experience in the field of treating DID. We need to read books by these people

Like, I personally struggle with reading - especially about complex dissociation since it's triggering - but we fucking need to get some actual facts into the community. I feel like it's mostly misinformed kids/young adults who are either newly diagnosed or undiagnosed who are trying to educate others on DID. The discussions (or "discourse") I see at least come across as pretty juvenile and also just the same talking points brought up over and over again

Whatever man, just needed to air my frustrations a bit ig and hopefully I'm not alone in feeling like online DID spaces are awful