#police don't protect
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ivygorgon · 1 year ago
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fjordfolk · 2 years ago
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i also think "police dogs are tools of police brutality" and "dogs are animals without ideas of ethics or morals that are acting according to their training" and "putting them in situations where they cause and/or sustain harm is also a welfare issue in addition to a human rights one" and also "maybe we have come to a point where sharp work for police dogs is no longer societally acceptable from either angle" is not an unnatural train of thought
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gxlden-angels · 10 months ago
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Bro I hate fundamentalists and culturally-fundie parents they'll say shit like "spare the rod spoil the child am I right haha yea my parents used to have to beat my ass with a switch almost everyday but I sure did learn my lesson" but like??? no you didn't??? you were hit multiple times for something you very obviously did not, in fact, learn
Like studies about how harmful even lightly spanking children is aside, you're literally contradicting yourself?? Some even admitted they got worse as they got older cause they wanted to see how far they could push their parents before they got punished
And studies not aside, you're gonna get child raising advice from the same book that tells you to stone your wife if her hymen doesn't break on your wedding night instead of the decades of research we have now?? Just say you're a bad parent and move on my guy. Skill issue
#bro I had a coworker go 'unpopular opinion I think some kids really do need beatings' and I'm like????#unprompted???? what's going on there????#well anyways I ended up going 'yea so I plan on specializing in play therapy with autistic children so I've been learning about talking#to children and the ways their parents and environment affects them'#and they're like hmmm but beating this kid with a stick after they broke something or I upset them to the point of yelling is good actually#had a boss say it taught him and his kids respect cause they were hard-headed#and I'm like?? that's fear not respect! they fear punishment! they do not act out of respect for you!#he's a conservative christian black man tho so he's like 'But Authority!' like bro I don't even respect you what are you on about#'You don't respect police and their authority?' Nope! I fear them! I do not respect cops and every cop/cop-adjacent person I personally know#has reinforced that for me#'We'll agree to disagree' Cool! Doesn't mean you're not wrong! I could believe trees aren't real but that is in fact incorrect#then he pulled out the bible verse and I was like ah okay I forgot you like 'here's how to treat slaves' book you're so right bestie#I'm totally wrong now and so sorry for doubting you and your 2000+ year old book I don't believe in <3#They'd go 'well I turned out fine!' then say something that directly contradicts that#anyways I need christians to get their grubby little hands off the current state of Child Protection and Rights in the U.S.#So we can actually start working on helping kids without the force of christian hands suffocating them#cause homeschooling and child raising by evangelicals are so fucked up bro I'm tired of this shit#I'd only stay in my current state to help children get out of that cycle since I'm in the bible belt#ex christian#religious trauma#child abuse tw
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tinystepsforward · 2 months ago
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ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".
like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!
on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.
returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body
literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence
#reblogs turned off because obviously i'm already bracing to be pilloried for saying one thing not quite correctly or whatever#and also bc i have zero interest in having this be boosted by trans dudes on their own transandrophobia agenda either#i'm just venting#but frankly the first time i got yelled at for saying that as an intersex person some of the immense violence i experienced as a child#was motivated by transmisogyny#i was a teenager and it was someone a fair bit older than me with more local clout so like. it's been a decade. how is it worse now.#intersex spaces have made SO much progress and yet#also yes i'm femme! i'm femme in a trans way! many dykes who aren't women are!#many of us got more comfortable w it as adults who had gender agency!#in literally the same way it took my wife ages after transitioning to work out she's also butch and doesn't actually want to do femme thing#bc that's a shared experience in how we've navigated the expectations of womanhood before opting out of the parts we don't want!#anyway the lawcomm shit was fucked bc honestl i don't give a shit if someone lost their gonads as an adult in an accident#they should be protected even if they don't consider themselves intersex#and we know that gender as an axis of oppression comes back to the reproduction of the nuclear family#and that cis women who can't have kids sometimes become the political football though ofc not as much by far and like#idk. y'all ever heard about solidarity? sometimes i feel like i'm back in the place where the loudest traumatised person at the party#is yelling at another young woman like “you'll never understand what it's like to be a victim”#when said young woman was assaulted the week before.#a politics that starts by defending and defining oneself w oppression kinda fucking sucks actually#and intersex people stopped policing intersexness by who got mutilated a long time ago#bc actually we want the generations ahead to not get that treatment#and when i see “trans elders” going on about how “if you pass and got on hrt before 18 you're not trans like i am” i'm like. why! what!#anyway. tired.#may regret this. we shall see#tony muses
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fuckmeyer · 2 years ago
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girl please, Charlie Swan is Team Werewolf and you know it
#it's like Bella has no conception of the socioeconomic symbolism attached to these monsters!!#girl why on earth would the middleclass police chief of a tiny rural town in Washington#choose the wealthy murderous parasites?????#OK besties as i'm typing that out i see why charlie might side with the wealthy murderous parasites#yes he IS an american cop so siding with the parasites does make sense#but think of all the paperwork he would have to do when the cullens kill someone! i mean. come on.#also it aint like cullen out there paying off the pigs so really what is Charlie getting out of this relationship#it's no bribes all paperwork? i don't care how American this cop is he is Anti Vamp and that's that on that#WEREWOLVES on the other hand......... besties let's review the cold fax ok#they're a blue collar blue jeans blue skies all day baby kinda monster. crack open a cold one with the boys kinda monster.#pull over on the road to lend you some spark plugs kinda monster. bring a dairy-based dip to the charity softball game kinda monster#big plus: they're on the DL. neat & tidy cover story. no killing. protect & serve yeah baby. no parasites here my boys WORK for a living#the boys are 0% paperwork (no killing) and 100% bribes (dairy-based dips)#Charlie's deffo Team Werewolf at best and turning a blind eye at worst#as far as this man's concerned the werewolves are the Olympic Natl Park rangers' problem#bear who???? don't know em#twilight#twilight renaissance#bella swan#the twilight saga#jacob black#charlie swan#eclipse read
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tuttle-did-it · 7 months ago
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First of all, Scotland, for passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act and trying to protect trans people, thank you. Thank you for treating us as humans, thank you for recognising our identities.
However....
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fuck you JK Rowling. fuck your TERF rants that endanger our lives. fuck your Nazi attitudes.
fuck you Police Scotland for proving that you're fucks and will not take this law seriously, even when someone intentionally, repeatedly, maliciously and gleefully breaks this law in a very, very public forum.
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fuck you Police Scotland for not only refusing to take action when someone is breaking this law intentionally, repeatedly, maliciously and gleefully, but also proving that 1) this new law will NOT be taken seriously by you 2) this tells every TERF and Tory out there that the law is NOT valid, and that the law does NOT include queer people, specifically in this case Trans people; and 3) this tells every queer/Trans/enby/multi-sex/hermaphrodite person that we are NOT actually protected as this new law promises, and you can and will continue abusing us and destroying our lives. Fucking thanks. Cos it wasn't obvious enough that every day gets more and more dangerous for us trans/enby people, so thanks for just making it clear to the fucking world that even when someone mocks this law openly, you don't fucking care because we are not fucking people. Got it. So fuck you Police Scotland, specifically, for doing NOTHING when someone blatantly flouts this law. Fuck every one of you ACAB fuckers.
fuck everyone who still works with you, Rowling and still even speaks to you after knowing what you are.
fuck everyone who still buys anything related to the Harry Potter franchise knowing the money is going into the pocket of someone like this. Because she sends that money back out to fucking Anti-Trans orgs that hurt us.
fuck you HP fans who plan to watch her new tv show. You cannot be a fan of a massive transphobe trying to destroy us, and an ally at the same time. so fuck you.
fuck harry potter fans who wear HP merchandise stuff knowing what she has said and done, yes I don't care if you bought it before she said it, fuck you because you know exactly what she represents. Not apologising. Yeah, I'm totally judging you if you're wearing HP merch, even if especially if you're queer. I don't care how much HP meant to you as a child. I don't care about fucking nostalgia. I care about the Trans lives that are in danger every day because of monsters like this fucking woman.
fuck you Rishi Sunak for backing and legitimising this horrible woman and her bigotry.
fuck you British politics, fuck you Tories. Fuck you all for destroying this country and making every day more dangerous for Queer people.
fuck you CEO David Zaslav. fuck you Warner Bros. for being willing and happy to work with this fucking woman for her fucking franchise so she can continue to fucking make millions and fucking fund anti-trans orgs.
fuck every single one of who who protects, excuses and funds this fucking behaviour. And fuck every one of you who doesn't give a fuck at everything that is happening.
fuck these fucking fucks. fuck you TERFs and transphobes and fuck every single one of you fucking fucks.
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Thank you for trying, Scotland. Thank you.
But please explain to the fucking POLICE and the fucking evil POLITICIANS that this new law means we are legally recognised as protected under the Scottish Hate Crime Act, so they all need to stop fucking about and treat it seriously.
and the fucking PRIME FUCKING MINISTER fucking backing this fucking TERF. I'm not surprised, just angry.
This is on you. so, fuck you if you are supporting these fuckery fucking fucks.
As is EVERY SINGLE FUCKING INCIDENT a trans person has in this fucking country. Every time someone fucking deadnames us, every time someone intentionally misgenders us, every time someone threatens our safety, every time someone fucking assaults us? every single incident is on your fucking head, you fucking fucks.
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softquietsteadylove · 6 months ago
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If you have the muse for it, could we maybe get a circus au or life interrupted update? Missing those two lately! Thank you!!! 😘
"Gil?...Gil!"
"Huh?" he turned, ruffling his hair with his free hand. "Uh, s-sorry, what were you saying?"
But his friend just frowned, "you sure you're okay? I know you're a doc to the animals, but are you really qualified to diagnose yourself?"
Gil subconsciously shifted his arm in his sling. He was no expert, but he did know how to reset a shoulder. Granted, it was because of getting into fights in his school days, but still. "Yeah, it'll be fine, really."
He shrugged, picking up some of the coiled ropes, "y'know you can take it easy if you want. We can finish setting things up for tonight."
Gil nodded, looking around them. Technically, all he did was light stuff to help out here and there. He wasn't really a regular crewman. But he had hung around all morning on the excuse of checking on the animals and helping out wherever his one good hand could help. "You, uh, seen Thena yet?"
He heard a few quiet chuckles and blushed; everyone knew why he was hanging around. He was eagerly and desperately trying to get even a glimpse of Thena. He hadn't seen her since the night she had admonished Kro - and her beast of a husband had dragged her away by the arm - and he was going nuts.
Of course, no one else knew that she had kissed him, either.
He was lying awake at night! And part of it was the pain, but another part was thinking about how she had leaned in and kissed him. It wasn't just a mistake of a peck, either, it was a real kiss. He could feel how she meant it, no matter what that really meant for them. She was a married woman, and married to the man who was both their boss, in a way.
"No one's seen her," another crewman shrugged. "Assumed boss had given her some time, I guess."
It was a reasonable guess. She had suffered quite a scare, after all. But her husband was not a reasonable man, and Gil was confident in guessing that Kro would sooner put on her costume himself than give her a day of rehearsal off without injury.
Gil picked himself up and tugged at one of his suspenders. "Thanks guys, I'll grab some lunch I guess."
They sent him off with well wishes. He wasn't in any shape to do any of the usual heavy lifting he could be asked for anyway. But rather than go in search of the group lunch being cooked behind the main tents, he slipped away towards the train.
He hadn't seen Thena in two whole days. She had once said that Kro would never really hurt her, but that was the only time when Gil wasn't really inclined to have confidence in what she said. He didn't trust anything about Kro. And he was really trying not to let the kiss influence that thinking in him, either.
He couldn't let it. She was a married woman. Whether she had kissed him or not, it wasn't his place. And he was concerned about her regardless. This wasn't about him and his feelings, it was about making sure she was okay.
"Thena?" he whispered, sticking his head out and between cars and looking around like a common cat burglar. He crept around, picking his boots up lightly.
Maybe Kro had her chained up like a ruffian. Not that he really thought he would, but he wouldn't be as surprised as he would like to be by something so barbaric.
"Thena!" he whispered again, slowly making his way to their shared sleeper car. If he was found, Kro would probably feed him to the lions. But he had to know.
Once at their sleeper car, he checked around him one more time. He knew Kro was in the main tent, snapping his cane against the ring and shouting up a storm. No one had been able to ask how Thena was without getting a real earful.
Gil knocked on the door with his good hand, pressing his ear close, "Thena, are you in there?"
"Gil?"
She didn't sound hurt, or teary or anything. He gulped, "can...are you hurt? Can I see you?"
"I'm fine Gil, you can come in."
Part of him still imagined a nightmare in which he would walk in and find her on the floor, sitting crumpled like a bird fallen from the sky. But Thena was no fallen angel. He closed the door behind him as he saw her seated at the little table barely big enough for a single plate.
He had never seen her in a normal dress, but the soft, creamy fabric looked just like her hair.
"I'm sorry I worried you," she professed immediately, still sitting primly at the table. "Kro told me I wasn't to leave for the next two days. People should think I'm in recovery."
Which was very different from actually wanting her to recover from her fall, but it would make people think of the monster more favourably.
"Have you eaten anything?" he asked, still almost whispering as he dared to come a little closer. "Are you resting?"
She smiled at him, like having not seen him for days was completely normal and expected. "I'm resting fine. Kro has been bringing me food twice a day."
So, she was missing a meal, Gil surmised. He frowned, but that was the least of his worries. "Why won't he let you out?"
Thena's expression finally cracked, and he saw her eyes drift to his shoulder. "He asked if there was anything...with you."
The words she didn't say weighed a lot more than the ones she did, and Gil found himself flustered again. He had always known what his feelings for Thena meant. But he had thought it was a harmless crush on his unattainable and lovely boss' wife. The implication that she cared for him too...it was enough to have his stethoscope picking up his own heartbeat from ten paces.
"I assured him there wasn't," she looked down at the little table, tucking some hair behind her ear. "He said then there should be no reason I should want to leave."
There should be no reason for her to ask to see him--that was the threat that had kept her in here. If she asked to see him, or probably even ran into him accidentally, Kro would have grounds to suspicions. And Gil wasn't sure which one of them would face worse consequences for them.
Gil looked around the sleeper car. It was larger than the others, of course, or maybe it was just arranged neater. It had a small but proper bed, rather than just a cot and some hay. The little table, there was a trunk that probably held their collective things. There was even a little radio on top of it, as well as an oil lamp.
"It's not a prison."
He didn't feel comforted by that. She was unharmed, sure, in a physical sense. But sometimes animals could seem fine, then they'd give out the next day of a broken heart or some such. He moved even closer, even kneeling down to face her better (he wouldn't dare move the chair across from hers). "Birds get real down if they're in cages too much."
She laughed a little at the insinuation.
"Really," he whispered. Without him telling it to, his free hand drifted up to hers, feeling the softness of her pretty linen dress. "They're meant to be free. Clipping their wings...it seems harmless, but it really hurts them, even just a little bit, everyday."
Thena tilted her head at him, her hair slipping over her shoulder. She was so beautiful, and far too delicate for a cage like this.
Gil sighed as she brought his hand from resting over hers on her lap to her lips. In another life, he could imagine this would be a beautiful moment.
It was brief, but for just a split second, her lip wobbled. She whispered, "I wish I had met you a lifetime ago."
Gil's heart broke inside his chest. It fractured, just like his stupid shoulder. Oh, to have met her a lifetime ago. To have met her as a student, to have scraped and scrimped for pennies so he could buy her flowers and take her on swan boats on the lake. To have swooned over her everyday until he could kneel just like this and hold up an embarrassingly modest ring and ask for another lifetime.
He wasn't sure when it happened, but he rose from his knee, tilting her head with his palm and kissing her as if she weren't married. As if they had this lifetime to get it right. Which wasn't true, but it wouldn't be something he would regret, either.
Thena sighed against his lips, her hand moving to his hair. She kissed like she hadn't drank in days and he was an ice cold lemonade. "I wish I could love you."
He loved her anyway, wishes be damned. "Thena-"
She pressed her fingers to his lips, breaking the spell around them and forcing him a precious few inches away. "He'll be back soon. If he catches you in here-"
He gripped her shoulder, "I won't let him hurt you, Thena. Never-"
She grasped his hand between hers, "I am not worried about what he will do to me."
So, Kro had threatened him to get her to comply with his sick delusions of ownership. And Gil hated to admit it, but in his current state, he wasn't so sure he would in a fight against the ring leader.
His heart groaned in his chest, begging not to be separated from her. He made a face, "I can't just leave you like this."
She looked him square in the eyes, and the frosty, fiery acrobat he knew - and loved - was back. "You can, and you will--for both our sake."
She was right, he would because it would be best for her, if not both of them. But he didn't have to like it. He gave her hand another squeeze, even as he picked up his feet again. "When will he let you out of here?"
"I don't know," she whispered back, their hands dragging apart like lines of a frayed rope snapping string by string. "Until he's satisfied he has nothing to fear from you."
Kro had everything to fear from him, and as soon as his shoulder was better, Gil would see to it, too.
"I'll try and find you when he does."
He turned back to her, his hand on the car door. "Don't do anything risky. If he tries anything-"
Their eyes both shot to the side. It wasn't dangerously close yet, but it was definitely Kro's voice drawing nearer. Thena eyed him, begging him to leave before their lives were changed irreparably.
Gil nodded, dragging himself out and closing the door as quietly as possible. He held his arm as he slipped away, the muscles screaming at him like a storm was on the horizon. He stopped on the other side of the car.
"Well?"
"What?" Thena's softer voice came, but Gil was relieved to hear her usual sharpness in the demand.
"Usually you're begging to know how your little boyfriend is doing!" Kro barked at her. Gil heard the rattle of a container being tossed down, perhaps one of Thena's meals for the day.
"You told me to stop bringing him up," she fired right back at him. There was a pause before she added, "dearest."
Gil felt his gut clench. He had seen Kro use that term of endearment for her, and it never failed to make her squeamish.
"Very well then," Kro snarled back at her, "darling."
Gil waited a little more, but that seemed the end of it. And he had no choice but to leave it at that, at least for now. He dragged himself away, feeling just a little bit of a coward for it, too. His shoulder was aching again.
"Hey, Gil, you get some yet?"
It was lunch time. He eyed the pot of stew. Maybe that would be just the thing. "Say, will you do something for me?"
He was heard out as he explained that he was worried about Thena--heard she was on bed rest and all. It didn't come from him, but maybe - just if there were leftovers after everyone had their share - if someone could ask the boss nice and casual if Miss Thena would like it...?
Again, everyone saw right through him. But Thena was not her husband, and the crew agreed readily that they would ask in a very normal and friendly way if Miss Thena wanted any of their extra portions for the day. The lady needed her strength and all.
And Gil needed his too. The quicker his shoulder healed, the faster Thena could stop worrying about him, and the faster he could confront Kro about the treatment of his wife.
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almoststedytimetravel · 8 months ago
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We all got that one friend who we sacrificed to the time skip cop factory.
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voskhozhdeniye · 10 months ago
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aquamarineglow · 1 year ago
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puppetsoftomorrow · 9 months ago
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i think arrow struggles in that you are forced to hold a lot of conflicting ideas in your mind at once, like : the police are ineffectual at preventing crime, thats why we need vigilantes. the police are good and our friends. the police can't do their jobs and thats why need vigilantes. the police are prevented from doing their job through red tape. vigilantes help the police by providing them with information collected. the police cant use this information because it was collected illegally or coerced. the police should prevent crime. being a vigilante is a crime. the police should not prevent vigilantes. the police aren't effective. the police are effective but there are corrupt police. vigilantes can root out the corrupt police.
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sskk-manifesto · 1 month ago
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:)
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just so you know how normal the UK is, left wing climate change activists and anti-monarchy protesters are getting jail time and beaten for simply holding up banners and being considered disruptive whilst right wing bullshitters against shit like ULEZ (literally about having areas that are specifically for ultra low emissions so we, y'know, don't constantly have to breathe in fucking car fumes and other pollutants because some fucking people actually bizarrely want to???) and road safety limits EVEN FUCKING RIGHT NEAR SCHOOLS are driving basically massive vehicles through the streets and are not considered a disruptive protest
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nebulouscoffee · 1 year ago
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That scene between Tuvok and B'Elanna from 'Resistance' wrecks me actually... It's such a great moment for both characters (and actors, Tim Russ is SO underrated ugh) which highlights the differences between the two of them so well- yet, ultimately shows that under certain circumstances (in this case, torture) the distinctions between people... don't really matter. In an episode full of political violence, this moment is so significant, and I don't even really think I have the smarts to articulate why but I'll try lol.
TORRES: We told you already. We don't know anything about the Resistance.  AUGRIS: I've heard that many times, from many people. Take him.  (The forcefield is lowered, and Torres grabs the guard that steps through.)  TUVOK: Lieutenant, stop! That will not help either of us.  AUGRIS: He's right.
Everything about the way this scene (and the final shot where she's shoved back into her seat) is framed makes B'Elanna appear small, helpless- and embarrassed at her own helplessness- in that cell. We see her fidgeting, unable to sit down, constantly trying to break out or improvise her way out of the situation (she gets electrocuted earlier while trying to tamper with the circuitry)- it makes me wonder whether Tuvok was chosen to be tortured not because they believed he was more likely to have information, but because B'Elanna was more likely to be demoralised watching helplessly as he's dragged off. Augris's line implies that he's "broken" a great many people in the past; a tactic to instil fear and a helpless sense of inevitability in them both (torture doesn't work as a reliable way of extracting information; this is stated in dialogue in other Trek episodes such as 'Chain of Command' so the assertion here is at least not that- but what it does do is demoralise the public involved in resistances like this one.)
Later, B'Elanna is still trying to escape (do the guards know she's doing this? Are they just not intervening?) and she hears him screaming. Tuvok is someone who considers letting others witness him lose control over his exterior a huge (indecent, violating, humiliating) vulnerability, and the fact that he's the one being tortured is Not Insignificant in this context but like- it could've been the other way round. And B'Elanna knows that. It could've been her, and perhaps a small, scared part of her is relieved that it wasn't her, which is an awful way to feel (and if there's one thing B'Elanna hates, it's feeling like a coward). Also- the sheer violation of this, for B'Elanna to have witnessed him in this state, against her will- to later see him bloodied and weakened and flung in a cell, to have heard him screaming in pain- without his consent, knowing she can never un-witness it, knowing it wasn't her fault but still being put in such a situation where she has now played that role... Does this experience forcibly rewrite their respective conceptualisations of each other? Was Tuvok even thinking of her- somewhere outside, listening, worrying, blaming herself, fearing for herself, feeling ashamed, feeling so aware of him and her and the shared humiliation of this- when he was in there? Did seeing her upon coming back out change things? Could it ever change things? Did her presence, even as an outsider, whose memories of this event will always be (visually, at least) the constructs of her imagination- somehow make what happened in there real? Does her role as witness- and her memory thereby carrying some sort of legitimisation of what happened to him now, however warped and coloured by her own perspective and fears and embarrassment- make things better for Tuvok? Does it make things worse? Would he rather have endured this in secret? Would it have been better if she were a total stranger? Would it have been worse? And does any of this even matter when, for a moment, your life (your personhood, your goals, your presence) was completely reduced to what you "must endure"?
AUGRIS: We don't have to ask your friend any more questions, if you give us the answers.  TORRES: I told you I don't.  (Torres stops herself from hitting Augris, who leaves.)  TORRES: I'm sorry. I guess I always assumed that Vulcans didn't feel pain like the rest of us. That you were able to block it out somehow. Until I heard. Was that you I heard?
And the way B'Elanna's voice breaks when she asks this, as if she was still somehow hoping the answer would be no... There are complexities to this which again I don't feel like I'm smart enough to articulate, but like- yes, B'Elanna would like to hear that it wasn't him because that would mean her friend wasn't tortured "that badly", he wasn't put through "enough pain" to scream that way, and it's easier and more comfortable to think of violence (and violation) as something you can rank on a scale, and the lower on it Tuvok's experience ranks, the better! the more easy it will be for them to "move past" this! - but also, there's this element of "I want the answer to be no because that would mean I would not have been a participant in your humiliation, just some stranger's whose voice I don't have a face to put to, which is much better than having to know what you (my friend, my colleague, my respected senior officer, someone I will have to see every day on the bridge, someone I know prefers to keep vulnerabilities hidden even deeper than anyone else I know) sound like when you scream. But also... it doesn't really matter, does it...? Whatever he says, there always was still a moment- however brief- where B'Elanna heard a man screaming in agony, and thought it could've been Tuvok. And in that moment, that possibility was created. Now, it will always exist. That moment will always have happened. It will always have done something to her. It will always exist between them; an ugly, uncomfortable bond.
And this is getting into even more things I'm not smart enough to articulate, but like- it's pretty significant to me that B'Elanna is one of the few characters who never actually tries to poke Tuvok into Doing An Emotion, even normally. She doesn't consider trying to get him to crack an entertaining pastime, unlike others (and I'm sure her experiences of feeling like an outsider- always- feeling Very Visible As Klingon, play a role in this- "all they ever saw was my forehead" does not lend itself so kindly to "let's see if we can get Mr. Vulcan to smile", "why, Tuvok, it seems you've been corrupted by Human (read: default) rituals after all!"- it's a light-hearted joke for many, sure, but what if Tuvok genuinely considers the idea of smiling in the presence of others reflective of a humiliating loss of control and deeply debasing?) I think it's pretty clear from canon that he's just being himself; he's not trying to be a killjoy or trying to be mean, he's just Vulcan. And this is one of the few moments in Trek I can think of when a Vulcan's perceived "control" over their emotions is not connected with their reluctance to laugh or cry or say something sentimental, but... this. B'Elanna is shocked, she's horrified, she demands an explanation as to how he can possibly go through something like this and not feel the desire to "fight back" in a way she understands- and the way she cannot grant him the pretence of not having witnessed, here, the way she can't just shove this in a box, pretend she never heard, because she's just so fundamentally honest- and Tuvok (who is also so fundamentally honest), in a painful moment of openness, tells her exactly what his reasoning is. He lets her see. He lets her hear; on his own terms. He wants for her to understand (for her to witness?) his (very Vulcan) distinction between resistance and endurance; his understanding of endurance as its own form of resistance. Idk it's such a quietly powerful and like- devastating- moment for me... So many people try, over and over, thoughout the show, to get Tuvok to break his Vulcansona- try to make him smile, make him say tender things, make him get irritated- just to see if they can do it. Just to see if he'll ever crack. I bet B'Elanna wishes she never had.
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ladymazzy · 1 year ago
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France has ignored racist police violence for decades. This uprising is the price of that denial
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sweaters-and-vertigo · 1 year ago
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a few days ago i went on a ride along with two police officers, as extra credit for my criminal justice class. i never liked cops but i saw this as an opportunity to change my perspective on the issue. after the ride along though….. i realized……
i was absolutely correct. cops are terrible. they do not care about people at all. you should not trust them ever.
i don’t think citizens have an automatic obligation to trust or respect police. i think that police have a RESPONSIBILITY to prove their trustworthiness and then citizens can respect them. until then, fuck em.
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