#positionalities

[calamityquellerei]

positionality vs identity

making this post in response to circulating claims about "transmasc privilege" and a noticeable gap in some of y'alls understanding of oppression.

positionality can be thought of as the way society perceives and treats you, and what privileges you are afforded accordingly.

identity can be thought of as your internal sense of self.

for most people, the two do not line up perfectly. your positionality depends on what people immediately see, not what you tell them. your positionality may also vary day to day based on a number of factors including but not limited to the people you are surrounded by, the space you are in, and the positionalities and identities of those perceiving you.

privilege is based almost entirely on positionality, not identity.

a good example is the diversity within the transgender community. if you take three transgender men at different stages in their transition they will each have a different positionality. one may have the positionality of a gender conforming cisgender man, the second may have the positionality of a transgender man, the third may have the positionality of a gender conforming cisgender woman. the gendered privileges these three people are afforded are vastly different despite all three of them having an identical gender identity.

if you have the positionality of a certain marginalized group, you will be targeted with the same oppression as them whether or not you share an identity with them. the fact that you don't share the identity doesn't suddenly make that oppression go away. you can be oppressed based on a positionality that does not align with your identity.

if you have questions on positionality vs identity i urge you to reply to this post instead of ignoring the gap in your knowledge.

[bixels]

hey um. u sure make a lot of art about lesbians for a man. you're normal about us, right? ;;

What? Yeah, I’m normal about y’all.

[dxxtruction]

What I find dynamically interesting about Armand is he really is a victim of his own privileges, but his privileges are still privileges, and it kind of gets lost where exactly he stands in position to them. With Marius it's most clear, like he gets luxuries, money, an education but those don't cancel out how he was abused and prostituted by Marius. In the CoD, yes he is the leader, but he's a victim of being forced into the position against his will, having to take on, and become accustomed to, the role of killing other vampires who break The Great Laws, regardless of his own desire to, and further, having to uphold things he no longer believes in, in order to appease the larger group.

With the TdV the only main difference is that it's secular. He has control over the beliefs being presented, giving humans/the audience the illusion and vampires the grim reality of things. So he can now think for himself, but still has to appease a larger group he never wanted, who are labyrinthine depths of stuff he wishes he didn't have to put up with. He upholds the laws pretty much only in order to appease people, and to some extent reinforce his role as the leader. Keeping this order and peace isn't what he wants though, he doesn't want his leadership. But I think a part of him is aware how such a position can become abused, and can suspect how someone like Santiago would abuse the position. The Great Laws almost need someone who doesn't want to be the one to uphold them in order to not be abused.

And I think as well that this secularism puts him at greater risk, (greater perceived risk I should say?), since people aren't considering some kind of divine right to his ruling. He has to actually prove he deserves this position, and is strong enough to maintain it. The theatre was also established right around the time of the french revolution, where uncontested 'divine' leadership was toppled for enlightenment thinking. So he can garner the coven is disillusioned by how much power he really holds. He's probably rightfully paranoid. I think as well he's understandably fairly unaware of his true position in all of this, and how much power he actually holds, or could hold, especially given all of the various contentions he has with his own power.

The only part of things where he isn't a victim at all is with Louis, but I think he probably sees himself this way. (No Armand there's more to being a victim than simply not having your way). Like he has all the privilege of everything he ever wanted, but at a cost for something he never wanted - (The trail and Louis' tendency towards ideation and depression made worsened by said trail. Of which he partook in an unclear position of privilege. Though he tells it that he'd been forced to). He's still living a lie of himself, which I think is what fuels this sense of being partway the victim in all this. He still has to posture a role and appeasement towards his privileges in order to have a semblance of peace and what he wants. Though this is in a much more manageable and definitely desired way, he can be possessive over out of purely his own desire for it. But even if this is everything he wanted he's always going to be on edge with knowing it's all a lie that he conveniently earned Louis back. (If we're going with just the show there's something in the way the acting is done that says Armand was NOT expecting it, even upset.)

And he gets toppled out of this by Daniel, and for the first time has really no privileges at all, no position at all, but is completely free to simply be seen, and be himself. He wanted this in equal measure to wanting love. He wanted to be seen and heard, and to experience the world without being beholden to a lie of himself he'd developed to endure. I think he always feared this, and yet also desired this out of Daniel. He just couldn't fully admit it till he saw it. Daniel is the best thing to have ever happened to Armand, and I'm not sure how Armand is taking it. Probably with a lot of confusion, probably very lost. But he did change him, he is his fledgeling. So that must mean something, maybe something he can hold onto to maintain some type of thread to all he has ever been. Maybe for love for him, maybe a gift of reciprocity. It's speculation.

Also the fact Armand is not white in the TV adaptation adds many layers to his positionality. He is always going to be without the privileges of whiteness, even with a position to be granted some amnesty and privileges by appealing to whiteness. He is a victim as well of colonialist racism, first, before even ending up with Marius. Having then no privileges, not even that of himself.

[tautline-hitch]

also realized while rereading Aeneid 6 that the way Horace uses Orpheus-summoning-Eurydice to address Virgil in Odes 1.24 really matches nothing in Georgics 4 so closely as it matches Aeneas's plea to the sibyl:

si potuit Manis accersere coniugis Orpheus Threicia fretus cithara fidibusque canoris (Aen. 6.119–20)

"If Orpheus availed to summon his wife's shade, strong in his Thracian lyre and tuneful strings..." (Fairclough)

quid si Threicio blandius Orpheo auditam moderere arboribus fidem num vanae redeat sanguis imagini...? (Odes 1.24.13–15)

"What if you could play more charmingly than Thracian Orpheus the lyre once heeded by the trees? Would blood return to the empty wraith...?" (Rudd)

the conditional, the epithet, fidem / fidibus, the fact that V cuts off the question (the next line moves off to Castor & Pollux) but H completes the thought (a very Horatian 'well, and?').......

thinking about what this means in light of dates (probably just that H was reading Aeneid 6 in early draft, which doesn't seem implausible at all; less likely but more interesting, V responding to H responding to V). but also thinking about Odes 4.12 again. what it means to address the dead man whom you instructed not to mourn too long for the dead. and, because This Is How Literature Works—at least if you insist on striking your head on the stars—to keep doing it after you yourself have died.

... Eurydicen vox ipsa et frigida lingua, a miseram Eurydicen! anima fugiente vocabat Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripae. (Geo. 4.525–27)

Eurydice that voice and cold tongue called Ah poor Eurydice with dying breath Eurydice the riverbanks returned

[lenjaminmacbuttons]

does anyone know where i might find a post about how post-apocalyptic scavenging stories, specifically noting the last of us and the walking dead, are fundamentally reflective of a fear of homelessness. i know i saw one when the tlou series was first releasing but i cannot for the life of me think of where to find it

[five-thousand-loaves-of-bread]

keep trying write brief intro summary about life because drastic decline of health stuff because keep being paranoid about not-so-kind & conservative & ableist people who knew me before that all happened finding me now and thinking am faking all of it

and keep failing!!! on how many draft now n been working on it for past year or maybe even more!!!! communication disability strikes again (it strikes every day)

[sendmyresignation]

truly nothing on this earth is more foul than supernatural familial abuse discourse but specifically the discourse people have about if sam or dean "had it worse" like ok cool you have already missed the point of this show very hard.

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Dear grantees who want to work with a public library:

We don't need to know the history of your project.

We don't need to hear about "liberatory spaces" or the "coloniality of learning".

We certainly don't need to hear about "feminisms" (are there more than one?), "methods of survivance" (why not "survival"?), or "intersectional positionality in the world" ("positionality"? Are you ok?).

We need to hear about what people will actually be DOING at the event you are proposing to hold at the library.

xoxo

A librarian

PS: Please do yourself a favor and touch grass.

[bixels]

everyone already sucking ya dick in the notes so to clarify it’s fine if you draw lesbian shit but if it’s the ONLY thing you draw and it’s the ONLY shit that makes you so popular and you’re literally only known for your lesbian art that’s weird man. “uuu we need more lesbian content uu” yeah from LESBIANS! lesbians in the notes stand up like why u want man-made lesbian content so bad. also put your pronouns somewhere dude it’s not hard

Alright, I agree. I should be doing more, so I'm gonna be expanding my art content.

[suenitos]

unfortunately hes kind of right in some ways like q being a better figurehead for spanish and english communities but thats just it. BILINUGAL. i personally do not believe that his intention from the beginning was to create a MULTILINGUAL server because he said himself in his initial promo that his intention was to connect his english and spanish communities. projects can evolve and change and he couldve added new languages naturally obviously but in my mind i believe if dream hadnt released his video when he did q wouldnt have changed his messaging to be about bridging multiple communities so quickly. and that feels really nasty from an audience pov

[aeide-thea]

sometimes it really is just like. is this all there is. feeling oversensitive & undersocialized—too sensitive to socialize—forever, bc you never got enough ~affirmation~ growing up (poor, pathetic baby; how long will you persist in singing the same self-pitying song…), & so never developed the proper emotional cushioning against the heartache & the thousand natural shocks, &c, &c, &c, &c, &c…

[yonpote]

i think dan and phil are both bottoms so phan isn't real.

sorry youre so boring you cant even conceptualize two bottoms in a relationship.

[femmeofarc]

i hate when someone makes a genuinely good critique of patriarchy and then terfs are like yasss so true its because of the Trans

like no shut up it’s actually not!!! 😝😝

[seven-thewanderer]

Okay I'm bored imma share this

I drew Fandroid the Musical Robot

but I also drew....

Fandrew!!

(I gave him drill hands cus why not) (it was because of when he explained in the Adhoc Pride special stream that he escaped by spinning really fast & drilled through it, so I randomly gave him hidden drill hands for goofs and laughs.. and he probably wouldn't know how to activate them)

(also I made their headphones both have gears on the side cus why not)

[deadciv]

listening to all my sister’s new songs on repeat to unpack and re-process whichever shared trauma is on the docket this time

[shalegas34]

accidentally uncovered a fuck up in my boss’s project where they ordered instrument air positioners for two new flow control valves instead of instrument gas. Lol. i was talking to the supplier about an unrelated issue and bro casually dropped this tidbit in conversation. i was just like

don’t let anyone trick you into believing engineers know what they’re doing..