#or reblogged an innocuous post from a shitty blog?

[stressfulsloth]

The tumblr based on your likes thing...... doesn't work very well

[txttletale]

hey, why the fuck are you still reblogging dyatlovpassingprivilege when they have still yet to apologize for their transmisogyny around the megapope situation and when asked to address it have doubled down and cattily deflected. other trans women are watching and we're noticing how you keep silently platforming transmisogynists while vocally decrying them. it's a shame because i really like your blog otherwise. and please don't feed me that "nicey time on the computer" bullshit. this matters

because i think you're asking this in good faith i will answer in kind! basically, i think that the logic you're operating on uses a definition of 'platforming' that isn't really useful to anybody. like, the only thing i can think of that i've reblogged from dyatlov recently is a screenshot of that godawful aztec game's steam page. i reblogged it because it was posted in a discord server i was in and i wanted to point out that they wrote 'describtions' because lol they wrote describtions and i didn't especially care who posted it. i don't think there's any harm being done--any 'platforming' taking place here. when people say you shouldn't reblog posts from terfs or nazis, it's not because there's some inherent moral contagion present, but because those are organized political groups who use their tumblr blogs as recruitment platforms.

like, terfs and crypto-terfs especially will openly structure their blogs around getting people to follow them for innocuous joke or feminist theory posts and then actively attempt to recruit from among their non-terf followers. that's why you are actually 'platforming' them if you reblog their posts. this isn't the case with dyatlov! dyatlov is just a dumb cis guy who said something shitty and transmisogynistic. it sucks that he did that and it sucks that he refused to acknowledge it but it is what it is and there's no organized recruitment or propaganda process i'm contributing to by reblogging a post from the guy. you contrast 'platforming' vs. 'decrying' them as if one is a material and one is a purely performative action but they are in fact both fairly trivial and immaterial actions--it's all posting on blog.

tldr, i think i've made my opinion on the matter perfectly clear, and i don't think that's undermined because i reblogged a post about a video game to point out the video game guys made a funny typo

[greatbigbellies]

Do you have any tips for starting a kink blog?

Yeah! I have a few I can share! One size does not fit all but I've certainly learned some things that inform my approach.

Remember above all that it's supposed to be enjoyable. If you start a kink blog and it feels like a time sink or a chore, then it might not be for you, or you could be spending more time on it than you really should. This also means that the time and energy you have to dedicate to a kink blog is going to fluctuate. You might pop off one week and not log into it at all another, and that's okay. You should run it at the pace you enjoy. This also means when you feel a dip in sex drive and the kink stuff isn't hitting like it usually does, take a break so you don't burn yourself out.

Queue is your friend. As are tags. Honestly 1 post a day works wonders, cause you can load up around 15 posts at once and be covered for a couple of weeks. Having a solid and consistent tag system for yourself is also great. You don't need to overload it with specificity, but have some for different kinds of media (writing, video, gifs, audio...) is helpful, and being able to tag different facets of your kink is great for when you OR your followers need to scratch a specific itch. Like for me and my preg kink blog, whether the belly is bare or not, if there are lots of stretchmarks, if it's fpreg, mpreg, or nbpreg... all good things to keep sorted. Also try to keep the meaning of your tags really obvious (that sounds like a no-brainer, but I used to use a tag meant for when clothes were too small for a bump, but it just came off as me complaining that the belly was too small, which actually resulted in me need to talk to an artist to get a block lifted, oops!)

Related to the above, if you produce original content, be it art, writings, audio, whatever, have a tag for that too. Makes sifting through your original stuff and reblogs much easier, and lets people find your stuff even just searching tumblr wide.

LABEL. EVERYTHING. AS. MATURE. If you're running a kink blog, minors should not have any way to see it, and the easiest way to do that is to slap a "sexual themes" label on it. Covers your ass and keeps people who should not be able to look from looking. Even if the kink is pretty innocuous, it's best to play it safe.

Pinned posts are especially useful for kink blogs for setting boundaries, and telling newcomers what they'll see right off the bat. It doesn't need to be enormous, but just a little intro and a list of expected kinks someone will find on your blog helps keep people informed so they know whether or not to follow.

Don't be shy about blocking people. If someone posts stuff that makes you uncomfortable or is being shitty, just block em and move on. On the flipside, respect other people's boundaries, and remember that if you find yourself blocked by someone, remember it might not even be personal and just be a blog content thing.

If you do make kink content involving yourself, like pics or videos, protect your identity. Just play it safe, don't show your face and obscure identifying tattoos. Odds are low it'd come back to be a problem, but they're not 0, so just play it safe for yourself. Both for potential work/career hang ups and to minimize stalking or doxxing.

I'll reblog with more later if I think of it. I know half of this applies to blogs in general, not JUST kink blogs, but other than there being inherently sexual content, they're not that different. Please send any follow up asks if you have further questions, and if you decide to start one, good luck and have fun with it!

[lettersiarrange]

hey i'm the one who asked if you were a terf. I apologize for making it seem like an accusation, I've seen you reblog trans friendly stuff so I was confused but I shouldn't have worded it like that. I'm also not an expert with terf dogwhistles and stuff, but I do have shinigami eyes so the blog was highlighted in red. the blog is femmesandhoney and you reblogged their post from radgalacticacrew (this one is not highlighted).

And yeah, I get it, it's not like every single one of their posts are hateful bullshit, so you couldn't have known and no one combs through every blog they reblog from. I made a hasty judgment for something obvious to me and not to you (thanks to shinigami eyes) when I could just have given you a heads-up that you reblogged a terf. Again, sorry about that !

No worries. I appreciate the heads up that I was (unintentionally) engaging with terfs and the blogs in question so I can block them. I definitely don't want to come off as being at all affiliated with terfs so I'm glad to know I may have accidentally been giving that impression so I can fix it. I'm hoping to hunt down whatever secret terf I'm following so tumblr will stop reccomending me their innocuous-on-the-surface-but-with-terfy-undertones likes. In the meantime tho I'll block the blogs you pointed out so I don't make that mistake again.

I *have* heard of shingami eyes and DO think it's a cool idea, but I guess I'm also a little hesitant to do it myself. This kind of like "the computer/algorithm/program tells you who's Problematic" thing just feels a bit too close to, like, McCarthyism for me? I don't know how things get flagged and if they go through human review and what the guidelines are (which, to be fair, I might be able to find out, I haven't looked), but I always just feel like I'd rather personally see someone being shitty and suspicious and react to that than be informed by someone else/a program that someone is a Suspicious Person. But at the same time, clearly it's not like the program auto-blocks anyone flagged, it's just a heads up so you can do your own investigating, so I get it. I'm just not sure it's my vibe. But also my current strategy isn't 100% effective so it may be worth considering additional tools. 🤷‍♀️ something for me to think abt for sure.

[digitalcockroach]

the entire "you only see what you want on tumblr tho!" line is so disingenuous bc like even tho you do have better control of that kind of thing here than you do other social media sites, there is no way to perfectly foolproof curate your feed - most people arent scrolling through weeks of posts for shitty opinions when they follow someone, people change what they're blogging about or suddenly start talking about some weird shit all the time, i know im personally not online enough to know every thing eveyone i follow thinks and says and posts 24/7 (which is also my gripe with people being like "oh my god how could u be mutuals with soandso when they always reblog from [insert problematic user you've never heard of before] r u secretly a terf/pedo/etc???"), and also generally stupid and obnoxious people sometimes have otherwise very good blogs *shrug*

and honestly more than all that these wider tumblr culture issues - this was all brought up in the context of recent posts about tumblr as a whole being really racist about rap and other black dominated music genres, but I think applies across a lot of the broader isms and phobias and how they show up in memes and popculture and tumblr culture - are usually showing up in REPLIES, REBLOGS, and TAGS. or in ASKS. someone will post innocuously about whatever and when that post breaches containment - a phrase we literally use bc we are aware that the immediate circle of followers is pretty consistently into the same shit shares the same opinions or beliefs - they will be nonstop flooded with stupid ass comments, sensitive 20 year olds picking fights, tags proudly proclaiming distaste and ignorance over the literal subject of the post, get tagged by randos who wanna debate or "call you out", it's not smth people are just seeing on their dash bc they follow shitty people

dont leave stupid fucking replies on peoples posts from MY reblog fuck offfff

[curioscurio]

Directed at the last couple anons: Jesus fuckin christ are you kidding me right now? The post about kids websites had N O T H I N G to do with trans people and was actually a good springboard for, in my opinion, very important questions about the landscape of the internet for kids and teens. Fuck terfs, I get that and wholeheartedly agree that they're fuckin stupid, but goddammit a broken clock is right twice a day and sometimes the worst person you know makes a good point. I think it's absolutely ludicrous that people on this website are expected to completely ignore, reject, and excise all posts made by anyone terfy or transmed or on and on and on EVEN WHEN the post has nothing to do with their shitty fucking worldview. Why is every blog expected to go on a deep dive into the ideology of every single op they reblog. We're here for fun dammit, make fun of terfs and call them stupid but don't go all purity police when someone who has repeatedly and vehemently expressed support for Trans people inadvertently reblogs something completely fucking innocuous.

Okay rant over, Curio you're great and I love you

I really appreciate the support here ❤

Unfortunately I can see how a terf would twist the websites safe for kids thing into something transphobic along the lines of "websites on the internet are brainwashing our kids to be transgender and are dangerous etc."

But yes, it is like that "worst person ypu know makes a good point" thing, when you look at it from a different point of view. The internet has become an easy way for anyone with an agenda to pitch their ideology to children, just as it's become easier to access educational and diverse material.

[that-stone-butch]

What's a febfem? I tried searching the tag but got too many conflicting and/or incomprehensible posts to be able to make sense of it

hey, so going into this topic in-depth is going to involve a discussion of TERFs, transphobia, and transmisogynistic subject matter in general and specific. so, you know, heads-up on what is going to be a very unpleasant topic.

as is often the case with portmanteaus, there's some differing ways people spell things out. some people use 'febfem' to mean Female-Exclusive Bisexual FEMinist, but the majory of what i see is specifically a portmanteau of Female-Exclusive Bisexual FEMale. however, there's going to be some significant overlap between the two which i will bring up later on.

the general premise of Female-Exclusive Bisexual Females is, just that, bisexual women who, while identifying as bisexual, make the conscious decision to be exclusively into women, exclusively date women, etc. right off the bat, the practical conflation between the gendered terminology 'woman' and the sex-binary-dependant terminology 'female' in a space is, well, troubling to hear as a trans person. very frequently trans individuals might choose to use sex-binary-dependant terminology to describe *their own experiences* but the use of sex-binary-dependant terminology to label entire groups and/or others is...a red flag.

additionally, it's important to note that almost always the impetus for someone going 'female-exclusive' is as the result of mistreatment, often including sexual misconduct, perpetrated by men. i do not in any way wish to diminish the reality of these experiences. gendered violence, especially sexual violence, is a real and pervasive issue. no part of what i have to say on this topic should be construed as disregarding the severity of survivors' experiences.

however, it's important to look critically at the status of febfem as what at first appears to be a relatively innocuous premise (provided that you don't look too closely at the emphasis on gender essentialism. spoiler alert! gender essentialism is a huge component of this whole phenomenon :/). as we all know, personal sexual boundaries are fine and ought to be relatively inoffensive in a vacuum.

very frequently, when coupled with gender essentialism, the concept of sexual boundaries is politically weaponized. we've been over this a shitzillion times with TERFs acting irate that transgender lesbians....exist at all, frequently framing the passive existence of transgender lesbians as an attack (frequently throwing around the word 'rape,' 'rapist,' etc) on their personal sexual boundaries. by rhetorically coupling the concept of trans people existing with the concept of violating personal sexual boundaries, it becomes difficult to deal with this flavor of TERF rhetoric because you must first disentangle the concepts before you can argue with them (you shouldn't by the way, just block them and move on) people who have no interest in disentangling these disparate concepts will see a defense of trans people, especially trans women, as an attack on TERFs and lesbian sexuality as a whole, and are further radicalized against what they see to be a threat. this rhetoric validates the unfortunately widespread willingness to read trans people (especially trans women) in the worst faith interpretation possible.

(this phenomenon can be seen with Peak Trans rhetoric, which frames the moment a TERF became anti-trans as a result of trans people being icky and indefensible, making the impetus for being trans-exclusionary The Fault Of Trans People Actually, and further validating transphobic people's willingness to read anything trans people do or say with the worst possible intentions; validating what is widespread transphobia by blaming the victim of transphobia. it's wild just what will be used as peaktrans 'fuel;' one time a pretty mild post i made about frustration over how difficult it is for LGBTQ+ couples to adopt, made it onto a peaktrans compilation blog, because apparently if i, a trans person, have anything to say about wanting kids one day, it must be because i am Gross and Icky and a threat to Real Women lmao. honestly it's embarrassing and shitty behavior and if you need a compilation of literally any straws you can grasp at to prove a group of people deserves pervasive harassment, legal disenfranchisement, and physical harm, you're a hate group plain and simple)

now, you might be saying to yourself, 'wow, the topic of TERFs came up, why is that?' and it's because, dollars to donuts, you look at a febfem blog and you're going to find TERFs, reblogs/content from TERFs, and TERF rhetoric.

as it turns out, the group of people with a vested interest in defining all 'males' as having an essential gender, alligning that essentialism with a built-in moral negative, and basing their *political advocacy* on the premise of politicizing personal sexual boundaries, are often self-proclaimed TERFs/radfems. well if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, even straight-up says it's a duck sometimes, it's a fucking duck.

seriously, you don't have to scroll down far on most febfem blogs before you see shit about 'genderqueer identity taking away our butches' and 'can't a woman be masculine AND proudly feeeeeeeeeeemale for once?' like it's textbook.

now i will say again, since tumblr is NOT a hub of reading comprehension, that personal sexual boundaries are not a moral negative, nor are they transphobic. shit, i should hope that as a stone butch, you understand that i do not think personal sexual boundaries are inherently bad. but the politicization of personal sexual boundaries, and the use of personal sexual boundaries to define and condemn others, is a different matter entirely.

there may be people hopping onto the notes of this post, my inbox, etc. bringing up evidence of febfems who have nothing negative to say about trans people, never publicly making claims about trans people, etc. but that's a fucking deflection. gender-essentialism is baked into 'febfem' as a concept, and there's no deflecting that. ask a febfem what their definition of 'male' is, and who that includes. you're going to find transmisogyny.

[dateamonster]

pardon the off topic post but this has been coming up for me a lot recently and i wanted to speak on it a bit. *ahem*

so, a funny post of yours has escaped the bounds of your usual social circle and inevitably made it into the hands of some absolute shitheads. what do you do?

block the aforementioned shithead. if youre on a sideblog make sure to copy+paste their url into blocked users rather than just hitting the block button on their blog, which will block them from your main and hide their activity from your view but not stop them from interacting with your content.

flag the aforementioned shithead. if theyre a bigger than usual asshole, particularly in a way that gives you reason and ability to report their blog, consider doing so. additionally if theyre a transphobe, you can flag their url with shinigami eyes so that others will be able to better spot them at a glance. this isnt a required or universally applicable step, but when reporting is an option it can help prevent them from plaguing the notifs of others. so thats nice.

check who they rbed from. clicking on their url in your notes should bring you to their rb of the post, which will allow you to see who they reblogged it from, which in turn can help reveal other perhaps more covert shitheads. for example, sometimes you might find a white supremacist in your notes and find theyve reblogged from an innocuous looking shitpost blog, but with the contextual information you now have you realize the two are mutuals and that the shitpost blog in fact reblogs a lot of innocent-looking content from other more overtly gross people. a lot of shitheads fly under the radar this way, and by tracing back the rb chain you can identify, block, and report many shitheads in one go!

taking the time to weed through your notes and followers every once in a while may seem like a lot of work for not very much reward, and of course shitheads may still occasionally slip through the cracks, but a little diligence can go a long way in showing them that they are not welcome, which at the very least can make your particular corner of the internet a much nicer place to be.

i know this all probably seems like obvious information to a lot of you, but i still find myself on a pretty regular basis spotting some shitty person who reblogged a post of mine from a non-shitty person who just didnt check them out and/or block them properly. covert shitheads who look fine at a glance have become unfortunately common so its important to check who youre interacting with/letting interact with you every now and again. thanks!

[tuesdayisfordancing]

A few loosely connected thoughts about ship wars, fandom purity culture, antis, etc. Apologies for the awkward attempt at nested bullets.

Almost everyone has natural selectivity where they remember bad things said about the stuff they like more than bad stuff said about stuff they don’t like, interpret it as harsher, etc.

Once you’ve received even one actual hate message, gotten harassed even one time, this bias to interpret someone mentioning that they dislike your fave as an ATTACK intensifies.

Ships and characters that get a lot of hate, that become Acceptable Targets(TM) are almost always also REALLY POPULAR - sometimes (often?) the most popular ship by numbers. I think, in combination with the fact that we all make judgements without full context (most people don’t actually publish the anon hate they get, and if you don’t follow someone you don’t necessarily know how they got harassed for X opinion a while back and Y seemingly innocuous comment is or seems like a renewal of that harrassment) this can lead to non shippers-of-the-thing-or-likers-of-the-character thinking that the shippers or stans just have a persecution complex. “Not everybody has to cater to you, I’m allowed to not like things, yeesh don’t take everything so personally” goes the thought. This overlooks how vastly unpleasant it is to be the Acceptable Target for nasty comments even if you have a lot of friends in the boat with you.

Something feeling like an ATTACK is not necessarily about the intensity with which dislike is expressed, but the WAY dislike is expressed. It can be hard to express why a particular statement felt like it stepped over a line, further giving the impression of overreaction.

   >  An example: the first time I saw the “Gay Ship for Gay People vs Gay Ship for Straight People” meme it fucked me up, and I’m still probably not going to do a great job of articulating all the reasons, but here goes:

   >     >  First, the particular meme I saw was one where some people clearly meant it as friendly teasing, some people clearly didn’t, and others were somewhere in between. The cumulative effect was the sensation of my middle school bullies going “haha you’re a loser, just kidding, but not really, why aren’t you laughing about my funny joke about what a fucking loser you are?”

   >     >  Fandom is overwhelmingly queer and the bits that ship same sex pairings more so. As far as I can tell there aren’t any “gay ships for straight people”. The ship I first saw this about you can tell is mostly queer with the briefest of glances around tumblr. It’s hard for me to express why this matters, when the inaccuracy isn’t the point - I think it would be a shitty meme even if a same sex ship did have a higher proportion of straight shippers than queer, but I do still feel like it matters that mostly they don’t.

   >     >  A lot of queer people are insecure about their place in the queer community, either because of youth, past experience, not fitting the Awesome Queer image, general personality, whatever. Telling anybody they’re not really queer because of what they ship is a bad move, even if you meant it as friendly ribbing or contrariwise even if you can’t imagine how a queer person could enjoy that ship.

   >     >  Man, imagine if I fucking switched it. Hell woulda rained down. So maybe it’s not such a joke?

   >     >  Having been exposed to this meme in a few other fandoms and contexts now, it doesn’t explicitly say it, but it has strong connotations of the whole “queer things are more moral and more moral things are queer” attitude that... I don’t know if it’s actually more common than it used to be or more sincere than it used to be or what, but *gestures inarticulately* Bad! Increases shame in people whose well-being you care about!

   >     >  It’s a meme making a direct claim about “the type of people who ship x” which is, in fact, in type if not intensity, an attack on the shippers rather than an expression of dislike of the ship. Even if it’s a technically neutral claim - first of all come on, it isn’t neutral around these parts, and actually I’m not sure there’s a second of all because I don’t think anyone makes these generalizations about actually neutral-in-fandom-spaces-attributes. And it’s perfectly set up to make you look dumb and oversensitive for getting defensive.

Okay, done with the example, sorry that took so long. Where the fuck was I. Oh right, onto: Tumblr Infrastructure Makes Things Worse, Verse 700. One of the ways people try to get along despite differences of opinion is delineation of spaces. Tumblr deliberately fucks with this (in order to provide other things, but still):

   >  Did you know you can no longer prevent your organizational tags from causing things to show up in the searchable tag by using 5 filler tags? So much for that. Plus even now there are people new to tumblr who don’t know about searchable tags.

   >  But even beyond that just posting something on your tumblr is more like shouting it into the crowd than it was on livejournal, because the main way people interact with your post is to reblog it. The nature of the tumblr post as something that travels makes the difference between shouting at fandom as a whole vs. shouting to your friends vs. shouting to yourself indistinct. “May a bitch not be catty and judgmental on her own blog?!” asks the tumblr user. Well, it used to be good manners to keep the cattiest and most judgmental posts friends-locked but that isn’t an option anymore - and even the unlocked livejournal post offered a little more room for a difference between a post mostly for yourself and your friends vs a post directed AT fandom as a whole. If you were aiming your post outward you deliberately indicated that. Now people kinda... take their best guess based on Vibes? And of course everyone’s more likely to take it personally when it’s their fave and more likely to roll their eyes and say “people are allowed to dislike things on their own blog” when it’s something they dislike too and also more likely to take “X character is scum” as a neutral opinion statement if that’s the General Assessment vs. an inflammatory remark if it’s not and everything is a mess.

Pretty sure I had one more thing but meh this is long already and also if I don’t post it now I’ll start to overthink shit and never post it.

[citrineghost]

Adult Spaces VS Minor Spaces

It’s that time of week again where I write a post 5k words long to explain a concept that could probably be said in ten words.

On today’s episode of Ghost Talks Too Much, we’re going to learn about the difference between adult spaces and minor spaces, because this is a topic I’ve been seeing talked about from both sides but haven’t seen anyone actually combine yet.

On one side of the coin, we have people saying,

“If you’re an adult, it is your responsibility to make sure any location minors can gain access to is squeaky clean of adult content or you’re a problematic creep.”

On the other side of the coin we have people saying,

“If you don’t want to see adult content, you have to do all of the work to curate your internet experience or you aren’t old enough to be here.”

Actually you’re both about 50% wrong.

There’s actually a difference between adult spaces and minor spaces and each area has its own guidelines for appropriate behavior.

What’s the Difference?

The first thing is looking at the environment. First, there are the simple examples:

Is it at a school? It should be minor friendly

Is it in an outdoor, public space (like a park or a sidewalk)? It should be minor friendly

Is it at a private place where children live (and are present)? It should be minor friendly

Is it a private place that primarily caters to children (like a toy store)? It should be minor friendly

Then, there are some more complicated examples. These are places that are generally divided or segregated by age:

A private place that is open to the public (like a clothing store)

An indoor, public space (like a library or a post office)

The internet

These last examples are typically divided into separate spaces for adults and for minors. For example, clothing stores will have clothing sections for kids, libraries will have a kids’ area and an adult fiction area, and the internet is comprised of different websites with different target demographics.

The short explanation is, any area that is child-targeted, neutral ground, or includes a child-targeted area with no separation between it and the adult area should be minor friendly. But, there’s more to it than that.

How are we supposed to keep these areas separate and ensure there are adequate restrictions put in place?

Parenting Responsibilities

The first line of defense for a child or minor’s intake of content is their parents. Obviously not every parent or set of parents does this. And, some do it too much. That is the parents’ personal failure. Parental failure to protect their children from damaging content is not a responsibility that should fall to the shoulders of everyone else in the world. Otherwise, we would all be forced to constantly take inattentive parents’ jobs onto our own shoulders. In a perfect world, no minor would be harmed by their parents’ shitty parenting, but we just do not have enough people who are willing or able to completely alleviate that.

Obviously, there is a kind of middle ground here. Certain places have ID requirements, like sex shops and bars. Certain adult-targeted shops without legal restrictions have watchful employees who will tell young kids that they shouldn’t be there and need to leave. But, innocuous places like libraries or clothing stores are not black and white enough to make moral judgement an employee’s responsibility.

Because of this, minors going into places that they most certainly don’t belong is, first and foremost, the parents’ responsibility. If your teenager is looking at hardcore porn online, it is your job to take responsibility for that.

It’s not that minors don’t have autonomy over their own choices - especially teenagers - but they cannot be entirely responsible for curating their online consumption. Their impulse control is not fully developed and they can end up looking at things they don’t necessarily want to be looking at, simply because there was nothing to stop them. Trust me, I’ve been there.

This is what parental controls are for. There is, of course, a line that a parent shouldn’t cross. I’m not condoning taking away privacy, using spy software to see what your kid is doing, or reading their private messages. That’s abusive as hell. However, there is something to be said for blocking porn websites, being open with your kids and teens about what you expect of them, warning them about the way certain content can be bad for their mental health, fostering open dialogue so that they can come to you if they have questions, and making sure that they aren’t just wandering around aimlessly and picking up whatever is put in front of them.

Creator, and Owner, and Website Responsibility

The next line of defense is being clear about the target demographic you are aiming your product, website, or media toward. If a parent isn’t going to make their own executive decision about whether their child should be exposed to certain content, the minor should be able to see for themselves if it is something they think is safe or comfortable to look at or explore.

Movies and TV shows have ratings that indicate this fairly well

Websites for kids are generally clearly marked as being for kids. That, or the design gives it away

Adult only websites will usually be marked or have some kind of entry warning

Neutral websites like news sites are a grey area that is up to the individual parent or minor to determine safety for

Mixed-age media sites like Ao3 have warning features as well as an elaborate tagging system

Shops will put up signs on the walls indicating where children’s, teens’, and adults’ sections are

Bookstores and libraries have children’s, teens’, and adults’ sections clearly marked

By posting demographics in/on signs, titles, subtitles, account creation pages that restrict sign-up, age warnings, warnings for graphic content, and so on, website creators, media creators, shop owners, and managers of public buildings are doing their part to make it clear who should and shouldn’t be there. This is the most we should be asking them to do short of parenting other people’s children.

Community Responsibility

After that, we have community responsibility. This is where people get things messed up. There is so much discourse on who is responsible for doing what, and it’s primarily rooted in extremism, even if people don’t intend to be extremist. There is the idea that one group shouldn’t have any responsibility or that one group should have full responsibility. Neither of these is healthy for anyone involved. You have to find the middle ground where everyone is doing their part and not taking on the responsibility of others. 

As a member of a community, whether that’s the internet community or the public one, it is your job to use the two higher tiers of restriction as intended. That goes for both adults and for minors.

As an Adult

You should be keeping adult content off of any platform that is targeted primarily toward minors. It doesn’t matter if the platform grows a large adult userbase - it is made for minors and they should be safe from adult content there.

This goes for:

Kids’ education or game websites

Games that are targeted toward kids (such as Among Us)

Stores that are targeted toward kids (such as toy stores, kids’ clothing stores, etc.)

Places that are mixed-age and that don’t have built-in tagging or warning features take some critical thinking. 

Are you on a news website, planning to comment something with a traumatic or inappropriate story involved? Ask yourself if it’s necessary. Is the article you read something that’s already child inappropriate? It’s probably fine then. Is the article something innocuous that a minor is likely to click on, believing it’s safe? Don’t post unsafe content.

Are you on a public sharing site like Imgur where images and text are displayed based on popularity or recent posting rather than on who’s following who or on tags? Do not post traumatic content that minors should not be reading.

In places that are mixed-age and that do have built-in tagging or warning features, you should be taking full advantage of those tagging or warning features. Those features are what separates the adult and minor-safe areas of the website. 

If you’re posting explicit work on deviantART, that’s fine. They have specifically implemented a warning system for explicit content so that you have to be logged in on an account with your age indicated as an adult if you want to gain access to that content. Check the box that turns on that warning when you’re uploading something.

If you’re posting explicit work on Ao3, that’s fine. They have implemented an elaborate tagging and warning system to keep users safe, including the ability to put warnings on for dubcon/noncon, major character death, and so on. Learn how to use the tagging system (I have reblogged posts explaining how to do so under the tag ao3 if you want to find the guide on my blog) and then use it effectively. This doesn’t mean tagging every form and misspelled variation of each warning tag, but it does mean using archive warnings if necessary and tagging obvious triggers as they’re added to the work. (If you don’t look at the guide (though I HIGHLY recommend it), please note that Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings and No Archive Warnings Apply are exactly the opposite of each other.)

If you’re on Facebook, where you’re friends with 10 teenage cousins, 15 minor siblings of friends, and your nephew, don’t fucking post for all to see about how you got laid last night or pierced your nipples. They do not need to see that. If you want to share something like that, you need to click the share settings on the posting box and restrict it so that certain friends are excluded from seeing it or only certain friends are able to see it. Use the tools given to you and don’t post content thoughtlessly.

In places that are targeted toward adult-only demographics, it is not your responsibility to make your engagement minor-friendly. 

Of course, I can’t neglect to mention, if you’re on/in any space that should be adult-only and you see a minor interacting there, you should do two things:

Report them for breaking the site rules. They might make a new account, but they also might decide to follow the rules on the new one to avoid getting reported again

Interact with them in a minor-friendly way. Minors going into adult spaces may not be following the rules, but it doesn’t give you a free pass to be a jackass, a creep, or harm them in any way

As a Minor

You are responsible for curating your experience within adult and mixed-age spaces. While spaces targeted toward primarily minors should be safe for you, when you enter a mixed-age or adult only space, it is up to you to follow the guidelines that keep you from seeing adult content.

You should be staying out of adult-only spaces (especially anything interpersonal like a Discord server) or refraining from interacting within those spaces. When you go into adult only spaces that involve consuming content, and don’t interact, no one but you really knows you’re there. However, when you begin interacting with people within those spaces, you are actually endangering them. 

Adults might seem like some vague and distant concept to you, but adults have feelings and lives too. Or, you might feel like you and adults are no different. But, under the law, if something goes wrong while you’re in an adult-only space, the adults are the ones who become legally responsible, not you. 

This brings us to:

Let’s talk about lying about your age.

Lying about your age can be convenient for getting into spaces you’re not meant to be. For some places, doing so will only affect you in the long run. If you want to watch porn and the website says you must be over 18 to enter and you click the button saying you’re over 18, no one is going to know except you. However, when you begin commenting under porn videos, it opens the door to adults interacting with someone who they assume is also an adult. If someone says something sexual to you, it could potentially lead to them having a record as a child predator for the rest of their lives, even if they were never intending to interact with a minor in that way.

This isn’t as much of an issue on porn websites, since people don’t often comment there anyway. This does however, become a HUGE issue on mixed-age sites and discussion platforms, like forums and Discord servers.

Discord servers are amazing things. They open the door to so much fun and social connection. However, there are a lot of servers that are 18+. For teens especially, it’s easy to think, “Well, I’m almost an adult anyway. They won’t care if I’m here, as long as I act mature.”

That is not the case.

We do care. Sure, having a conversation about video games is harmless, but when it comes to talking about our personal lives or sexual content, it is incredibly creepy for a minor to be hiding within the server under the guise of being an adult. As a teenager, I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that a teenager could hurt, harm, or be predatory toward an adult. I saw adults as invulnerable and I said things that I regret now because I didn’t realize they were harmful. Please learn from me now: Teenagers can be predatory toward adults. 

I am not saying that teens have some kind of power dynamic over adults. I’m aware that adults have the upperhand in most situations. However, when you lie about your age and pretend to be an adult in an adult space like Discord, you are being predatory. This doesn’t have to mean you even mean harm to anyone. The fact is, you are being deceptive in order to access content and interactions that you would otherwise be denied and that would otherwise make people incredible uncomfortable. That, by definition, is predatory. 

While it is certainly not the same caliber, due to the inherent power imbalance, imagine a 24 year old pretending to be 17 to hang out in a minor-only Discord server, even if their intent is only to talk about SFW topics. If the hair on the back of your neck just stood up, you can now understand how the 24-year-olds in an adult-only server would feel about a 17-year-old lying to enter their spaces.

Pointing Fingers

Last, but not least, we have to address the pointing fingers issue - AKA, the responsibility policing issue.

If you are acting appropriately within a space, there is no reason you should feel responsible for someone else misusing that space. 

If you are misusing a space, there is no reason you should blame someone who is using it correctly for the misfortune that befell you while you were misusing that space.

If you are a minor and you go on Ao3 and click past the dubcon/noncon warning only to get traumatized from a rape fic, that is not the fault of the person who posted it. That is your responsibility for ignoring the boundary between a minor space and an adult space. It is unfortunate that you had a bad experience but, even if it has lasting consequences, it is not the fault of the person who was following the rules.

If you are an adult and you got berated by someone or your content removed because you failed to follow tagging or warning guidelines, it is not the fault of the person berating you or reporting you. It is the consequence of ignoring the rules and putting minors at risk of seeing something inappropriate.

Adults should not be expected to censor themselves in adult spaces. When we support censorship of content - even content that we find morally abhorrent - when it is tagged and warned for appropriately in order to allow people the chance to turn away from it, we are supporting the same philosophy that led to book-burning. 

Book burning and the destruction of research and information due to a large group finding it morally reprehensible has, historically, knocked us back decades in scientific study, contributed to the marginalization of POC, queers, and the neurodivergent, and has been used as a tool of oppression.

We cannot let ourselves fall into the trap of believing that our own beliefs and morals should dictate the freedom of others, or we end up just like those who have hurt us.

I could go on about people using certain unfortunate topics as a means to recover from and understand their own trauma, but it really doesn’t matter, does it? It doesn’t matter why someone is writing something you dislike. Words of fiction rarely ever lead to action. If they did, we would be seeing a large percentage of the population becoming murderers. After all, we read books and watch movies with murder in them all the damn time.

So, the moral of the story is, we all have a part to play in keeping minor and adult spaces separated, and it’s not fair nor helpful to anyone for one group to shirk off responsibility onto the other.

[meyerlansky]

hey so, don’t reblog because i don’t feel like dealing with the fallout from this but

since pr/ide month is coming up

i want to show you guys something

when you see a queer issues/pride post like this:

that deliberately includes one or two identities that are not the l, g, b, or t, but not the asexu/al or arom/antic flag? the way this one’s done with the nonbinary flag?

these are exactly the kinds of posts i’m talking about when i give examples of posts/OPs you should be cred-checking for exclusi/onary opinions before reblogging from

every single post that comes up when you search “asex/ual” [no slash obvs] on the OP of this post’s blog is either a shitty joke moodboard or calling people who have asex/ual headcanons “freaks” or other exclu/sionist shit. i haven’t smudged out either their old url or the current one because if you want to independently verify what i’m saying here [which is a good impulse and i encourage it tbh], you can go do the search on the blog[s] yourself and see exactly what i mean. their original posts with openly exclus/ionist sentiments have next to no engagement or interaction, which is reassuring to some degree, but the post pictured is exactly the kind of dogwhistle i’ve been trying to get people to hear since 2015—widely reblogged because it looks innocuous and supportive of queer people and issues to people who don’t have skin in the inclu/exclu game, but i can GUARANTEE that every single asp/ec person following you knows at a glance that the OP of the post is an exclus/ionist.

cred-check shit like this. please. so your a/spec followers don’t have to.

[fuck-philip-banks]

me? making a callout post? it’s more likely than you think

anyway

tr ans ge nde r-p osi (no spaces) is a terf-run troll blog who’s trying to radicalize people into terf ideology by posting inflammatory, stereotypical, and strawman-validating things in response to terf posts. the blog also posts a lot of “venmo me money to argue with me” stuff that i can only assume is supposed to be humorous to radfems.

it seems to me like they started out just reblogging pictures of women and actual trans positivity posts to stay innocuous, and then dipped more and more into discourse until now, the point at which in the last three days they’ve made a fuckload of problematic posts in the name of discourse and haven’t reblogged from anyone except terfs in that timespan.

please signal boost this as i don’t want people stumbling onto this blog thinking it’s a legit trans positivity blog. uninformed people may be fooled into thinking this is what trans positivity is. also, and this is very important, until they’re discredited then terfs will use them as a source when espousing their beliefs about trans women and it probably will work.

pictures under the cut. a large majority of these dozens of pictures are from the last three days

1: a very obvious “trans-identified male calling women bitches” caricature + venmo joke

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2: venmo joke

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3: venmo joke

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4: calls a picture of a uterus gross and terfy just for existing, caricature

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5: saying “woman is an adult human female” is wrong (rather than what it actually is, which is a terf dogwhistle), venmo joke

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6: someone asks them for proof of trans women getting periods, responds with not any form of proof at all, which is undoubtedly the point of the post

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7: is it not obvious yet?

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8: you guys can read this and tell it’s mockery, right? or am i just too entrenched in terf vernacular that i can tell it’s all parody? anyway, people don’t actually believe the “if you don’t wanna suck dick ur transphobe” caricature that terfs make up, the use of “triggering” is obv meant to be mocked, “genital fetish like stinky terfs” is a caricature, the “same for trans men” thing is super sus and 100% intentional

8.5: a response to the above post which outlines even more clearly the stuff i said above

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9: “trans women hijack random posts” caricature

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10: more caricature, the bitch thing again

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11: more venmo joke, there’s something in here about trans women not liking biology but terf humor is too shitty for me to understand it

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12: “can’t defend arguments” caricature, venmo joke

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13: actually maybe the can’t defend arguments caricature and the venmo joke are the same thing, i think i get it now

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14: venmo joke, acting like the accusation of trans women being perv men is an alien new thing, trans women must pass rhetoric, do i have to keep explaining these or can you all look at them and see that this is a troll blog

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15: “the stinky terfs who made me dysphoric”

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16: “they’re trying to trans all of the butch lesbians” caricature

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17: self-explanatory at this point

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18: “piss ur pants ugly”, also acting like they’ve never heard of terfs before

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19: “v*gina”, putting sex in quotations, “ur assuming my gender” joke taken to the next level, venmo joke

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20: “delusional trans women think it’s completely impossible to tell someone’s agab” caricature

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21: more venmo joke, the bitch thing again, this person is incredibly uncreative

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22: come the fuck on

22.5:

22.75:

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23: it’s caricatures all the way down boys

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24: parodying censored words

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25: we switch gears to “cringey aceys” for a bit

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26: for those of you who don’t understand “real women and cis women” jokes and “trans women > cis women” jokes are jokes, and often used as such, there’s no problem with that. this person’s using them as actual talking points in an argument, so, caricature

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27: :/

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28: i’m gonna start posting the lyrics to earfquake instead of explanations

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29: for real, for real this time, for real, for real, for real this time

30: cause you make my earth quake, oh oh, you make my earth quake, riding around, your love is shaking me up, and it’s making my heart break

31: I SAID DOOOONT LEEEEEAVE IT’S MY FAULT, CAUSE WHEN IT ALL COMES CRASHING DOWN I’LL NEED YOOOOU

32: aint got body roll, ha, dont give fuck bout none, ha, beam like fuck my lungs, ha, just might call my lawyer, ha

33: plug gon set me up, ha, bish dont set me up, ha, i’m with tyler yung, ha, he ride like the car, ha

34: and she wicked, ha, like woah vicky (like woah vicky) oh my god (oh my god), diamonds not tiffany (diamonds not tiffany)

35: cause i’m in love, cause i’m in love

anyway please signal boost this post because it’s uhhhh important

[asleepinawell]

on reblogging...

When I reblog posts off my dash I often don't even notice who I'm reblogging from--my brain is focused on the content and I've scrolled past the icon/name already. I'm even less likely to notice the urls of the op and commenters. I'm trying to get better at keeping an eye on that. Why?

I've seen a noticeable rise in the number of women positivity posts that link back to radfem and terf blogs. I'm not sure if the number has actually increased or if the terfs have just gotten better at making their transmisogynistic rhetoric seem innocuous on the surface. Women positivity posts aren’t the types of posts I reblog here in general, and anti-men posts (which seem to be terf posts 99.9% of the time and often from bi/pan and/or aphobic blogs as well) aren’t things I would ever reblog regardless of source. So those aren’t the ones I, personally, am too worried about accidentally reblogging, just the ones I see the most. Something to keep in mind for people who do reblog those types of posts.

(The fact that positive posts about women are so often tied to radfem and terf accounts is extremely disturbing. The fact that hating men (not toxic masculinity or the patriarchy, but just all men uniformly) feels like it’s increasingly being embedded into the identity of being a woman and especially a wlw is also disturbing to me. radfem rhetoric is creeping in around the edges and I want nothing to do with it.)

I’m more worried about the truly innocuous posts where the content is a picture of a cat or a funny text post about a random topic. Because I don’t care if the post content is genuinely harmless, the source it comes from is not and I don’t want to promote that person’s platform at all. One of the tricks of spreading propaganda is to pull in an audience based on cute funny things and then expose them to the propaganda once they’re there.

So where I’m going with this is I’m trying to be better at running an eye over usernames. I’m not perfect. My brain spaces out on a regular basis due to a combo of adhd and just being Like That, but I’m working on being more aware. However, if you see something I reblog that comes from a shitty blog (terf, trans/bi/pan/aphobe, exclusionist, racist, the whole ‘queer is a slur’ crowd, otherwise bigoted, etc) and you feel comfortable doing so, please tell me. I always feel weird giving a heads up to other people who I’ve never communicated with so I get that, but this is your permission to tell me. I have chat disabled most of the time, so just send an anon ask. I’ll go look at the post and blog in question and most likely block and delete.

I’m not a discourse blog and I have no intention of becoming one. If you send me shitty discourse asks I will block you and delete them without responding. Same for replies, comments, chat. I don’t talk about this stuff frequently on my blog and I don’t intend to, however I don’t feel comfortable remaining ambiguous about my thoughts on this stuff. I think this post makes my views pretty clear.

[the-far-bright-center]

Update :)

Hey everyone, it’s been a while. You may have noticed that lately there’s been a bit of a decrease in daily posts here, and that I haven’t been as consistent with tagging, etc. For the past three months, I’ve been in the middle of an unexpected and extremely stressful house move. During this time, I’ve had very unreliable and inconsistent internet access, so I decided to run this blog on a queue, and add to it with intermittent reblogs whenever I could get the chance. To say it’s been frustrating is an understatement, and I sincerely apologize to those of you who have messaged me or sent me asks during this time – I’ve been so exhausted, it’s been impossible to keep up with everything.

Thankfully, the house move is now winding down (we’re now finally in the new house, but still unpacking, settling in, etc.), so I should at least be able to resume curating this blog with more of my usual attentiveness. I’d like to say that everything will now go back to normal, but….I’m honestly not quite sure what ‘normal’ is anymore. Over the last few months, I have been thinking long and hard about my continued involvement in SW fandom, and have come to some difficult, but, imo, necessary, conclusions.

Don’t worry, I am not leaving tumblr, nor am I going to stop posting on this blog. It means too much to me to do that. However, I feel I must make it clear that, from here on out, I can no longer have anything to do with any current or forthcoming ‘New Canon’ material, whether it be films, tv series (animated or otherwise), novels, comics….just…none of it. 

Most of you know me well enough by now that I don’t think I even need to explain why, but I will do so, just in case.... 

I had always intended to completely divorce myself from the Disney stuff once Star Wars: Rebels had finished airing, but since, for a variety of reasons, it turned out that I was never able to finish watching that show through to its conclusion, this ended up happening far sooner than I’d expected. (I won’t even get into my thoughts on the renewed Clone Wars season – the less I say about it, or even acknowledge its existence, the better…for the state of my mental and emotional health, at the very least.)

My reasons for wanting—no, needing— to stay as far away as possible from Disney’s version of Star Wars from now on are many and varied [see here, here, here, and here], but ultimately it comes down to several inter-related issues, the most key being that ever since TFA, I have not been able to trust Disney with Star Wars, and will never be able to fully trust them with it ever again. It does not matter how much ‘good’ material they put out to balance out the bad, it’s too late…the damage is done. And since the version of SW as put forth in the sequels is probably the worst, most out-of-character, inaccurate, and disrespectful interpretation of my beloved story that I could possibly imagine, I therefore cannot help but view the rest of Disney’s output (however innocuous, and regardless of who writes/directs/creates it) with extreme skepticism, and an anxiety bordering on panic.

As I’ve gone over many times before, the entire premise of the so-called ‘sequels’ is anathema to pretty much all of my long-held beliefs and understanding of the saga as a whole…and to what I had, for decades, assumed that other fans implicitly understood and valued as well. And so, the fact that so many fans have so readily embraced those movies and swallowed down Disney’s bizarro version of the SW saga without hesitation or question, has continued to leave me feeling more and more heart-broken and ostracized. Not only from an entire fandom, but also from popular culture in general. It’s made me realize that, for far too many people, ‘Star Wars’ is indeed just a blockbuster series of movies, and is not the mythical two-part saga that it is to me. For far too many people, it is now, at worst, an endless, profit-churning franchise…at best, another version of an expanded universe, albeit one that has been corporately ‘canonized’. 

The fact that I can no longer relate to most other SW fans is beyond depressing for me. Something I used to take for granted – the universal appeal and relatability of Star Wars as a modern myth—no longer exists. I can’t even talk about my beloved Star Wars with people in RL anymore, lest someone let slip a spoiler that will break my heart all over again.  It is no wonder that the lead-up to every subsequent release since then (even the ones I have been actively ignoring, which is most of them) has left me a shaking, nervous wreck….and given the often fragile state of my mental health in general, this has been downright dangerous for me at times. Even just stumbling across or hearing about SW related news and announcement can leave me distressed and despondent for days on end. It takes a herculean effort for me to then reclaim a positive headspace and find my ‘happy place’ again after something like this. So I blacklist as much as I can, but it doesn’t always work, because… in order to keep this blog even remotely active, I have to peruse other SW blogs for content. And, given my need to AVOID spoilers like the plague, I struggle to do this at the best of times. Disney has so oversaturated the market with their output that sometimes it seems like every damn day there is yet another announcement of some new release. It’s just too much, and the fact that there is no end in sight is demoralizing as hell. (I dream of creating a time machine and going back to before all of this shit, just to make it stAHP.) Ultimately, all of this combines together to leave me feeling completely alienated, stressed out, and just plain unhappy.

But no more, I say. This is FANDOM….it’s supposed to be FUN. It’s supposed to make me happy. Life is already horrifically depressing and stressful as it is. And what is more… this blog in particular is supposed to be my safe space. That’s what I created it to be, in the first place.

In short, the conclusion I’ve reached is this: in order to continue enjoying the REAL my preferred version of SW in the way that I need to engage with it, I MUST completely remove myself from new Disney content. If I do not, I will lose the ability to enjoy any of it at all. 

So, my friends, while I’m not going anywhere (not just yet anyway), I do need to ask you all to please continue being patient and understanding with me about these above-mentioned issues. If you want to engage in meta discussions with me, for instance, please be aware that I will only talk about interpretations of ‘Star Wars’ as Lucas’ saga (and anything that is supplementary or supportive of that), and will not engage with anything that tries to insinuate that the sequels nonsense is even remotely part of the same story. Likewise, I beg you all to please refrain from commenting on my posts or messaging me about anything to do with upcoming releases, news, or any Disney Star Wars stuff from this point on. Again, I’m happy to discuss past content…to an extent (if you’re not sure what, please feel free to message me for clarification). But any new Disney content I just….don’t want to hear about. At all. Even if you THINK I will like it or be ok with it. The fact is… I won’t. Because Star Wars is finished. It’s a completed story. ‘IT IS ALREADY OVER. NOTHING CAN BE DONE TO CHANGE IT.’  I neither want nor need any more from it – whether as a story OR a ‘franchise’ – than what already exists.  And I become stressed and anxious the moment anyone (purposefully or inadvertently) suggests that I ought to be watching/reading/seeing/hearing about what I personally feel is just a fake version of the REAL THING that I hold dear.

Finally, I just want to clarify that, because of all of this, it’s unlikely that I will be able to keep this blog up-to-date with all the ‘latest’ content (not that I ever have done so, lol). I will, however, continue to keep it to the standards I have set so far. As always, the subject matter will be mostly be Prequels Trilogy, along with the (original!!) Clone Wars animated series (aka, seasons 1-5), Rebels (but only up through season 4a), Rogue One, and, of course, the Original Trilogy. Some supplementary material from those eras may creep in, along with occasional EU content. I just I thought I’d better make it clear that there won’t be any further ‘new canon’ on this blog…. at least, not unless some kind of unforeseen miracle happens and Disney decides to de-canonize their shitty sequel trilogy and magically make me trust them again! (ha ha I can dream)

Because it’s so difficult for me to find new content on tumblr without running into stuff I do not want to see, I have for a while now had the goal of creating my own content for those times when I can’t find anything new. Frustratingly, due to the house move, I’ve been way too busy to even contemplate that in recent times, but I do have some still-unfinished and in-progress projects that I’d like to eventually share here. In addition to this blog, I also ‘curate’ my own RL Star Wars collection, so once I get a new safe place to set it up, expect regular photoshoots of my action figures and other collectibles as well. :)

Most of all, I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has stuck with this blog for so long. Thank you for respecting my various quirks, neuroses, and eccentricities, and for helping to keep this blog a safe space.

And to any new followers out there…. a belated, but very warm, welcome! :)  

[tumblunni]

Okwow apparantly the op of that post is a creepy as transphobe and the post right below that one is some weirdass down-with-cis esque made up story of how he totally owned his nb teacher in art class by proving pronouns arent real. Y i k e s

Seriously this website is so weird, unless you check the op blog of every damn post on your dash you could accidentally reblog a million bigots and never know. Its really exhausting having to be hyper vigilant like this! Damn i dunno if i should delete that post tho cos it was some completely non bigotry related random news story about the summer heatwave. Like seriously its so much easier when these creepy hate trolls just devote their blog entirely to their shitty opinions, it sucks reblogging something innocuous and inadvertantly giving traffic to a guy who hates you just for existing.

Ive got hatemail before just for reblogging some zelda meme from an mra blog and having no damn clue about it. Like how friggin sad is it that that person went thru all their notifications looking for feminists to hate on? Man i wonder how many of my followers are still around to remember that? The infamous 'wooden pallets guy'! It was actually funny how he went thru the first 4 pages of my blog and reblogged every minor innocuous post i made, just to go UGH FEMINISTS SO ILLOGICAL. Even a two sentence post of me wondering why they decided to make a wooden pallet based puzzle in The Last Of Us and repeat it three times. Or when he just copypasted the text of my header and was like 'ha! Got you!' somehow...? Wow i sure never noticed that i was 24 years old and autistic, that sure did somehow embarass me, cant imagine why i would write such a self-own, i guess???

Anyway lol im probably worrying about nothing cos the odds of that happening twice are pretty low. That dude was just weirdly looking for a fight on absolutely everything! And it wasnt that upsetting since he was real bad at insults. I shouldnt get anxious about this stuff, i need to stop remembering really old awkward moments that are never gonna happen again.

[professorfaber]

I'm interested to see what you have to say about my communism paragraph.

To point out the Healthcare Man, me personally? No, I have not been able to do that for years on end due to my age, however several people over the years have been pointing out the issues within Marvel media as well as general superhero media. Including Healthcare Man. I wasn't trying to seem like I was disagreeing. I think that part got deleted, apologies. (I had made note that the paragraph was no way intended to be directed at you, more as like an agreement and that the situation was kinda dumb.) As for the memes, yeah could definitely do without those, I'm tired of seeing them. (Also wow do I agree with the statement that Marvel are incompetent cowards. Oof Marvel, step up or clear out.)

The WandaVision thing, g o d s don't get me started on the bs they pulled. Consumer activism definitely doesn't work in this situation, I wish that situation was handled differently. For the centrist fearmongering, it could potentially have to due with the fact it's a common piece of media. I'm sure as you know, the more x is in the media, the more people seem to think x is ok. The memes would contribute by someone taking it lightly or not thinking it's a serious issue. Only mocking it to go with the crowd and not looking at the situation through a critical lens, barely even scratching the surface level on the issue.

As for the statement of "Marvel is problematic" I'd say in this day-in-age, it needs to be worded like that because it catches people's attention. Do I personally agree with it, no. But it's necessary to catch an audience so something can be done. As long as the person using that statement has an actual argument, I think it should be used. I see where you are coming from though. Also I hope I haven't come off aggressive or rude, if I didn't address your other points it's because I agree with them. I'd also like to apologize, my tone often comes off as argumentative when I just mean to have a conversation. I hope you are havin a good day.

Thank you for clarifying all of this! I think we agree on a lot more than I initially thought (and no, you haven't come off as rude, don't worry). And thank you for sending an ask instead of adding on to an already very long post. I hope you're having a good day too.

Okay, point by point (this might be pretty long, sorry, I'm like. allergic to brevity but I do try):

1. The communism paragraph. First of all, I'm allowed to make snide remarks about liberals on my own blog on tumblr dot com without it harming The Cause. My post was not directed at liberals, and very few people, if any, that I engage with on this website are liberals so I wasn't hugely concerned about watching my language. Normally I would agree with you that it's important to do outreach, but it's my personal blog and I make the rules. Also:

"liberal this, republican that", both side are are horrible in their own ways but we still need the people.

Okay so, this is tricky because sometimes when I say "liberal" I do mean it in the modern, especially American, sense of social liberalism that the Democratic Party (ostensibly) adheres to, and that was kind of what I meant in the original post, but Republicans are also liberals, just of a slightly different ideological strand. In America today both parties are primarily dominated by centrist and rightist factions, with the original American left (i.e. socialists, anarchists, trade unionists, social democrats) being essentially squeezed out of political discourse over the past century. It's less an instance of "both sides are horrible" than "one side is horrible, but it's being presented in two flavors".

Also, I never said I was a communist and I actually usually don't politically identify as such, but I can see why you'd make that assumption based on the kind of things I post.

2. I think I get where you're coming from on this better than I did at first and I'm sorry for being dismissive about the memes. It did not occur to me that casually shitting on a massive corporation's ridiculous propaganda could be an issue in that way. Like, to me it was less "people all of a sudden realizing that Marvel is bad" than it was just a continuation of people criticizing Marvel as before, but you've honestly made me reconsider and I'm sorry if those sorts of jokes are frustrating or annoying. They honestly seemed like completely innocuous leftist tumblr memes to me, in the vein of jokes about any other shitty company ("shitty company" is kind of redundant I think but you know what I mean). But yeah, you've convinced me. I'll stop reblogging them if that helps.

3. This was a bit confusing to me? I understand being personally upset by the memes, but the notion that they normalize and contribute to corporations using propaganda to nullify left-wing ideas is kind of odd. Companies like Marvel and its parent Disney make those sorts of characters and storylines because it is in their interests to do so, and it will continue to be for as long as capitalism exists. What I called "centrist fearmongering" is like, a function of their existence as capitalist entities with immense power to manipulate public opinion in their favor, and what you or I post on tumblr really does not have an effect on that.

Capital shapes public opinion, not the other way around. That's one of the big reasons consumer activism doesn't work.

4. I've gotta disagree with you here, honestly, though I should say upfront that I'm not like, super invested in whether people call Marvel problematic or not. My original post was just a rant, no one is obliged to listen to me, I don't care about this nearly that much.

However, if we are going to have that conversation, then I will say that while it is important to attract an audience, using patently misleading or reductive language is the wrong way to do it, even if you also have a solid argument. I might also note that the problem that needs addressing (the influence of the interests of capital on entertainment) isn't exclusive to Marvel, and pretending that it is just lets the problem fester. "Marvel is problematic" just... seems like a bad slogan honestly as far as critiquing capitalist media goes.

I think there are two separate problems here: Marvel media broadly containing harmful or clumsy messages, and Marvel media suppressing or distracting from left-wing ideas and resistance. The former will change when it becomes legitimately profitable for Marvel to become more sensitive to certain members of its audience (which will only result in more marginalized identities becoming emptily commodified, unfortunately). The latter is a more direct result of capitalism that is systemically unavoidable.

Lastly: as you said, if I didn't respond to one of your points or comments that probably means I agree with it or couldn't think of anything to add