#postcolonialism does not exist

[burnyouwithacigarettelighter]

KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR ─── jonathan crane ✧♤

ೃ⁀➷ “Finally, a sin worth hurting for, a fervor, a sweet--you are mine.” — ‘Postcolonial Love Poem’, Natalie Diaz.

pairing. yandere!jonathan crane x reader

summary. a few months ago, you found out about your close friend’s… habit, of “cleaning up” creeps who hung around you. you use this to your advantage, but can you deal with the repercussions when your words backfire?

warnings. swearing, stalking, jonathan being creepy & delusional, manipulative but naive reader, mention of murder, p in v, creampie, breeding kink/forced breeding/babytrapping, unprotected sex, mild somno, oral sex (f), panty kink, forced cockwarming, drugging, heavy dubcon/noncon, SMUT UNDER THE CUT! 

word count. 6.1k

a/n. this is definitely the darkest thing ive ever written. pls read w caution everyone!!! this is also inspired by these headcanons by @babybluebex and this alphabet by @scorpiussage !!

i.

You covered your face with your palms, sniffling. “Maybe I’m just being overdramatic. I was always too nice to him, y’know? Maybe I did lead him on.”

Jonathan’s head snapped to you, swiftly stepping toward the couch and kneeling down in front of you. “No, no, that’s what he wants you to think. You did nothing wrong,” he assured, pulling your hands away from your face and wiping a sneaky, non-existent tear from the corner of your eye. 

You pouted at Jonathan, big doe eyes glistening with grief. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow… and everyday after that,” you lamented, “because it’ll be so - upsetting, seeing him.”

Jonathan’s large hands clasped around your own, delicate and warm. “Does it scare you? Him being there?” he murmured softly, peering deeply into you with an indecipherable look.

You nodded pitifully, looking down at his hands wrapped in yours so your hair would fall in front of your face, hopefully shielding the glee sparkling in your eyes. Thank god Jonathan had taken the bait -- it was only a matter of time before your dear, obsessive friend would get rid of your competitor for you. 

It was late evening, and you’d called Jonathan, pretending to rant about a coworker who confessed and got slightly violent at the fact you did not reciprocate his feelings. In truth, none of that had happened at all— said coworker was vying for the same promotion opportunity as you were, and it was just your luck that a few months ago you discovered your sweet friend from college had made it a habit to “clean up” any creeps and freaks hanging around you. 

What kind of ambitious career-woman would you be if you didn’t take advantage of that, huh? So there you were, crying on the phone so devastatingly that Jonathan would have no choice but to come over, comfort you, and later, be your knight in shining armor and kill, kidnap or maim your coworker. 

You didn’t think it immoral to do so, y’know, even though it clearly was. To you, it was just… indulging his little hero-fantasy, while also making your life just that much easier. It made you happy, and it made Jonathan happy. 

It was all harmless (to you, anyway), because you knew how reserved Jonathan was… how logical he was. You were positive he’d never cross that line, go too far; stray out of the shadows with that possibility of losing you still hanging over him like a cloud. 

You wrapped your arms around Jonathan’s thin neck, hugging him tightly. “Thank you for coming tonight,” you murmured, your lips ghosting the shell of his ear. He shuddered under your touch, and you knew you had him whipped; probably already so deep within a plan to kill your coworker nothing could stop him.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said, pulling away and letting his hand come up to the hand-print sized bruises on your shoulder. “I can’t believe that - that monster hurt you.” Jonathan shook his head aghast, and you didn’t miss the way his eyes moved from your bruised shoulder to the strap of your lacy bra, trailing down your breasts before snapping back up to your face.

Your coworker hadn’t actually hurt you, obviously, but you had asked him to knead out a knot in your shoulder at lunch, and made him pinch harder ‘till you knew it would bruise. You’d known him for a couple of years now, coming from the same training batch, and had been involved in plenty of tit-for-tat exchanges, “scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” type of deals. 

So you were close enough to be comfortable massaging the other-- but you’d be fucking damned if he got the promotion and you didn’t. 

“It’s not that bad,” you murmured, ducking your head like you were ashamed. 

“You don’t need to downplay it -- least of all to me,” Jonathan tutted softly, two fingers tilting your chin up to meet his gaze again. 

You pressed your lips into a thin line, brows knitting. “I know, I’m sorry, I just…” you blinked rapidly, as if you were trying to do away with on-coming tears, “I thought you wouldn’t believe me. He said… he said that nobody would believe me.”

And just like that, it was like a shadow had passed over him. Jonathan’s expression contorted almost frighteningly quickly, and gone were the delicate, comforting sweetness of his sharp features; thus came the darkened eyes, clenched jaw, frown digging into his cheeks. 

“…He said that?” Jonathan whispered, voice low, barely containing the rage seeping into his words.

“He said that - he could do… do whatever he wanted to me, and I’d never convince a soul.” You confided, letting your face get weepy, tear tracks running along the curve of your cheeks. 

At that, you suddenly pulled Jonathan close to you, pressing your face to his chest and making anguished cries leave your throat. His hands shakily came up to pet your hair, and you could hear his heartbeat; skipping beats and growing faster the longer you clutched onto him. 

“I believe you,” Jonathan insisted, and went from petting you to holding you so tight you could barely breathe, “I believe you.”

ii.

You never saw your coworker again. He’d sent in a notice of “vacation” that nobody could really object to… considering he also informed your boss he’d already gone, and was sending said notice from his hotel.

Sure, that was incredibly suspicious anywhere else, but that’s the thing— you weren’t “anywhere else”, you were in Gotham. If your coworker had actually gone on a split-second vacation, nobody would blame him; everyone you knew who lived in Gotham had snapped, at least once, and had to get away. Most temporarily, some permanently -- in which, chalking his fate up to Jonathan, your coworker was definitely the latter. 

Honestly, you weren’t very surprised when you found out Jonathan was, for lack of better word, murdering people. Specifically, people he deemed a “threat” to you. 

Jonathan had always been… a touch too overprotective. Territorial, even. It was far subtler in college, but you supposed that was because you’d seen him everyday; with both of you trekking through your hellish career aspirations, you couldn’t see each other as often as you had back in school. It was like that saying-- absence makes the heart grow fonder. 

You’d first met Jonathan in GSU’s large community library, after you dropped a book on his head. You were on one side of the bookshelf, he on the other, and you were trying to grab a book on a too-tall ledge. Instead of getting your measly grip on it, it went backwards and smacked Jonathan right in the rimless frames. It was a meet-cute, sort of, with you apologizing profusely, him brushing your worries off with that irritatingly charming smile of his, and then helping you with any books you needed (a clear advantage of his height) for the rest of the day. 

From there you became close friends. He always knew the right things to say, had various fascinating interests (half of them coinciding with your own), and was always, without fail nor doubt, an absolute darling. He never poked or prodded into information you didn’t want to tell him (at least not yet), constantly staying polite, respectful, eloquent, and patient. 

You knew now why and how your relationship had escalated like so: you suspected he’d been one of those “creeps” hanging around you, long before the library incident in your early college days. You first began adoring him for the most part because it felt like he understood you perfectly, unknowingly adhering to all your creature habits, liking all your hobbies, and knowing every word that could make you let your guard down like you’d been friends for years. It all made sense now-- he’d collected said information just from watching you for so long. 

Thus the “meet cute, sort of”; Jonathan had probably been planning the moment for months. Polite, respectful, eloquent, patient. 

Why you? Well, you didn’t know either. Getting psychological about this, you probably reminded him of a relative he adored - some Freudian aspect coming into play, y’know? But it all boiled down to one constant fact: he was obsessed with you. 

It should’ve scared you, and it probably would’ve, back in college, but it didn’t now. His type was a dime a dozen, incredibly hard to come by; the kind of guy who you know you can trust, rely on, know without a doubt he will never leave. 

Even if you and Jonathan were just friends, you suspected in his sweet, beautiful, sick and twisted mind he’d long since considered you his — and, similarly, since finding out his secret, you began thinking of him as yours. Perhaps not yours romantically, but more like you owned him. He was the ever-present lucky charm in your pocket, the one who reminded you that you’d been loved before so you’ll be loved again, your constant support. 

“How’re you feeling?” Jonathan’s worried voice crackled out of your beat-up phone, startling you back to reality. You were hiding in your car while on break, not keen on talking to any of your coworkers or bosses in the cafeteria, when you’d gotten a call from him. 

“A lot better, actually.” You said, taking a bite of your lunch and trying to sound relieved rather than giddy. “…He went on vacation.”

Jonathan hummed on the other end of the line. You could hear the grin in his tone, but he quickly coughed, smoothing out the cheerful jitters in his voice.  “Really? That’s rather… well-timed.”

You shrugged, as if Jonathan could see you, “Whether it’s about me, or not, I’m just… glad I don’t have to see him.”

“Know that I agree wholeheartedly– the thought of him being near you made my stomach turn.” He let out a sigh, like his nerves were finally relaxing, “How about you come over tonight? I can make us a nice dinner, you can stay over if you want-- I regret leaving you alone last night… you were terrified.”

You bit your lip. When it came to Jonathan actually getting, well, romantic, you hesitated. Did he really want you, or was it his obsession kicking in? You knew he loved who he thought you were: a frail girl he needed to protect, not knowing you’d been using him to your heart's content since you found out his dirty little secret.

You were running out of fingers on your hands to count how many people you’d directed him to… clean up. First it was little targets, like the barista at your usual coffee place who’d flirt and always take too long making your drink, causing several lates at work. More recently it was the landlord of your apartment, who’d raised the rent three times in one month; after she died, the ownership went to her absent-minded son who reset the prices to the original, more-than-comfortable regular rate. 

But… you supposed you could humor him. A reward of some sorts; an unknowing treat to your obedient, sweetheart guard dog. “I’ll stop by, then,” you responded delicately. “I… didn't want you to leave either, Jon,” you murmured, before quickly hanging up. 

Later, after work, you’re driving to Jonathan’s with a bottle of white wine. You did these kinds of things for eachother -- little gifts, you mean -- often. Yesterday, he visited your flat with pastries from a bakery you liked all the way down in Old Gotham. 

“Chardonnay,” Jonathan commented when you arrived, ushering you through the front door with a squeeze to the thigh and gently inspecting the bottle. “You know me so well.” 

“Dare I say the best,” you grinned, pressing a friendly peck to his cheek and handing him your evening coat before traversing into his house’s large kitchen, swiping a finger-dip into the various dishes he had laid out in the middle of cooking.

“At least don’t touch dessert,” he pouted, quickly hanging your coat in his entry closet and trailing behind you. But his expression still cracked into a loving smile when he saw you sneak your pinkie-finger into a chocolate custard. 

“Okay, okay, I’ll be patient,” you backed off with a cheeky smile, arms up in the air and opting to hoist yourself on an empty counter and watch him resume cooking. 

“How thoughtful of you,” he responded sarcastically.

It didn’t take him long at all to finish up, and your eyes were trained on his sinewy figure the whole way through; the careful way he cooked, the absolute attention to every detail. 

Sure, you could say that was because Jonathan was a detail-oriented person (because he was), but you also knew it was because he was nervous, fumbling to impress you-- you noticed these kinds of things a whole lot more after finding out. Like how he gave you his coat when you went out together late at night and it was cold, how he often kept you close with a hand to the small of your back, how intently he listened to your every word, like it was the last thing he’d ever hear. 

“Like what you see?” Jonathan joked when he was done, urging you to sit down across from him and handing you the chardonnay poured in one of his wine glasses. 

“M’just admiring your cooking skills,” you explained sweetly, taking the glass and sipping it mildly. 

Jonathan’s eyes crinkled, lips curling into a sheepish smile. He didn’t respond, but he didn’t have to: he radiated delight. You swore you could see pink dusting his high cheekbones, a feverish blush burning from his ears to his pale neck. 

From there, dinner went on with some friendly chatter, his skillful dishes, and several more glasses of chardonnay. Nothing ever got old with Jonathan-- he listened well and he spoke gently and he revered your every word; you felt important just by being near him, he was so devoted. 

By the end of the night, however, you were feeling rather light-headed- veering on the edge of unconsciousness: “I think I’ll - take you up on that offer, Jon…” you murmured, trailing off and getting up from your seat. It was odd, surely, how quickly a mere white wine had gotten you drunk, but then again you’d been housing a nearly-full glass every few minutes. You lost your drink count ages ago. 

Jonathan, ever the gentleman, stopped tidying up immediately. “Good judgment,” he nodded agreeably, coming to your aid and picking you up bridal style. Your head swam at the sudden movement, his feet swiftly heading down the hallway, but his gentle voice quickly aided the dizziness: “Don’t force yourself and don’t worry, just sleep…”

“M’sorry,” you whispered, holding him tightly by the lapel, more words on the tip of your tongue, but he just shushed you, “didn’t help.”

“That’s quite alright, my love,” he replied lowly, entering his bedroom. He pressed an uncharacteristic kiss to your forehead and let you down onto his cushy mattress, watching how quickly your eyes dropped. You were certainly feeling the effects of the glass he laced now-- and then you were out. 

Jonathan needed to have you now, under his protection, and he’d achieve that through any means necessary, be it liquid melatonin or anything else…

“You’ll have plenty of time to help later. You’re home now.”

iii.

“Sorry about… last night,” you said the next morning when you got up, rubbing your eyes sleepily and padding into Jonathan’s kitchen. 

You found him leaning against his marble countertops, gently sipping down a mug of black coffee within his calloused grip, and he raised a brow amusedly. “You said the same thing in your sleep.”

Your gaze darted away from his own at the sudden embarrasssment. “Nonetheless… thanks, Jon. I’ll be out of your hair immediately-- I’m actually rather late for work. I kept a dress here last time, right?”

He set down his mug with a dull clink, and in your rambling, he’d made his way right in front of you. “No need,” he murmured, to which you tilted your head in confusion. 

“I already called in for you. You’re not going to work today.” He explained, a thin smile coming up to his face, eyes gleaming.

You laughed awkwardly, suddenly feeling trapped at the way he took slow steps forward, making you backtrack into the wall. “What are -- Jonathan, what are you talking about?”

“I can’t, in good conscience, let you leave.” Jonathan insisted with a nod, expression knitted in a way you knew he thought he was doing the right thing. 

‘“Let me’ leave? Is- is this a joke? Because it’s… it’s not a funny one,” you stuttered, heart beginning to hammer in your chest at the way he looked down at you. It was like he was watching a wounded animal-- in a way, you felt like it… and Jonathan was clearly your predator. 

“It’s not a joke, dear. Gotham’s gotten too dangerous for you,” he informed you softly, hands coming up to hold your face lovingly. His steps stopped, and you felt it: he’d finally pinned you against the wall, and there was no escape. “That coworker of yours was the last straw. My heart aches at the thought of what he could’ve done to you.”

“I - that wasn’t…” You trailed off, cringing at the way he leaned in further, his hot breath fanning on your cheeks -- how helpless you were against his advances. 

You knew something was going to happen when Jonathan couldn’t just stay on the sidelines anymore, but you didn’t think it’d happen like this. You thought it might end with him professing his love to you, pleading and begging you to indulge him fully. That he’d fume and sob at rejection… that he’d let you go. 

But Jonathan was like a ticking time bomb: with every victim you gave him, moments were ticked off his clock. It seemed that your coworker was the last second… and that he’d had enough of his frail darling being surrounded left and right by threats to take care of. He knew it’d all be so much easier if he could keep you safe in one spot, a place only he could enter.

“That wasn’t what? My god, I knew I couldn’t leave you all alone like that anymore… you’re too sweet, too innocent to know what’s gone too far,” he shook his head pityingly, unaware how hypocritical his words were. 

“Jonathan,” you looked up at him, breath catching at the way his fingers dug into your neck, “what are -- what are you going to do to me?”

He let out a sharp laugh, “Do to you? Oh… no, my love, I won’t be doing anything to you… no, I’ll be keeping you safe.”

“Safe?” you repeated incredulously, “but what about - my life? My friends? My family? My job?”

He shushed you, not unlike he had done just the other night, or the night before that, “You don’t need to worry about any of those trivial things anymore. You have me. I’ll give you anything -- no, everything you want.”

Your lips parted and closed, unable to come up with a response that may cause him to realize the sheer insanity of what he was saying. He’d gone too far… had slipped too deep into the infatuation while you weren’t looking.

Then, Jonathan wrapped his arm around your shoulders, pressing your face into the crook of his neck and immediately invading your nostrils with the scent of his cologne. It had been nice, once, but now it sickened you: how quickly that scent made your head swirl and your stomach clench… how quickly Jonathan had went from a darling pet of yours to a terror of unimaginable size. 

Fuck, you thought, fuck, you’d been playing with fire this whole time-- you had been playing with fire while being naive and underestimating and wholly stupid. 

You’d completely underestimated the depth of his commitment; how Jonathan was the kind of man who loved one and only one, and that there was no letting go with him. That once he had his claws in your skin, there was nothing that could stop him. 

But then, you remembered your thoughts from just two days prior-- you had him whipped. It was like a lightbulb went off; you knew you could use that, use his mindless, adoring obsession to you…

“Jonathan,” you murmured under your breath, too quiet for him to hear as he hummed lovingly above you. “Jonathan,” you repeated, louder this time, pushing him away and startling him.

He blinked rapidly, fixing his glasses that had gone askew in your sudden movement. “What is it, my love?”

“You -- you love me, do you not?” you asked, swallowing the cowardly dryness in your throat.

Jonathan nodded vehemently, inching closer, desperate to have you in his arms again. “Nothing in the world could compete with my love for you. Nothing.”

You exhaled shakily, putting your hands out in a poor way of creating more distance between you two. “I - I love you, too. I love you.”

You saw Jonathan’s face light up at your sudden confession, saw how his demeanor changed from hesitant to beaming. “You love me?”

“Yes, yes, I do,” you insisted, panting as beads of sweat rolled down your back, “and I’m telling you… I won’t anymore, not if you keep me here. If you truly love me, you won’t trap me here.”

“It’s because I love you that I plan to keep you here,” he frowned, before grabbing you by the extended wrist, pulling you close and wrapping his arms around you in a deathgrip. 

“But you love me,” he repeated in amazement, pressing rough kisses along the side of your neck that had you whimpering, “so you’ll understand. God, how I’ve longed to hear those words leave your mouth.”

Jonathan had gotten tunnel vision at this point, barely registering your pleas, and when he began pawing at your clothes, apparently in some kind of delusion that your “confession” was a lustful one… you jumped ship. 

He thought your confession meant he had permission to have a taste of you, and while it made your knees buckle and your throat burn, if it meant he might finally fucking listen, let you convince him to let you leave… so fucking be it. 

The two of you then stumbled back down his hallway to the bedroom, tugging at each other’s garments while pressing hungry kisses on one another. You played along dutifully, trailing your hands along his back while tugging off his jacket, and other articles of clothing. 

Entering the bedroom at last, Jonathan gently pushed you down onto the springy bed, having long since undone you-- you were left in your lacy underwear from the night before: black bra, black stockings, lacy thong hidden beneath it. 

You wore thongs because they didn’t leave any panty lines under your thin pencil skirts, but you were quickly regretting the choice when Jonathan crawled onto the bed and roughly tugged down your stockings, surely leaving holes and runs in them, and let out a lecherous groan at the sight. 

“God, I love your body,” he purred, hands hungrily groping your thighs and throwing your ruined stockings off to the side. “Can’t believe how long I waited for this.”

You closed your legs on instinct shyly, but he just as quickly pried your legs apart, leaning in and pressing sweet kisses along the soft flesh. “Jonathan…” you whimpered, trying to act needy, like you wanted him so bad-- in reality, you wanted to get this over with. 

You reckoned if you let him fuck you, get him pussywhipped, you could promise you’d adore him wholeheartedly if he just fucking let you leave his house. You couldn’t deny how his ministrations made you feel, though; his plush lips brushing along your clothed cunt made tingles run up your spine, made your heart beat in a way that was anticipatory rather than terrified. 

“Let me take care of you,” he promised, slipping off your panties and leaving your lips bare. You would’ve hissed at the cold, but the noise died in your throat as you saw Jonathan ball up the lace and press it to his face, inhaling deeply. 

“Fuck, you smell so good,” Jonathan groaned, and you almost gagged. “Wonder how good you’ll taste…” With that, he pressed his face between your legs and began lapping up your wetness, and you felt a gleeful smile tug at his face. 

You gasped at the sudden action, bucking up into him on instinct. Your cheeks burned with shame, but you still choked on an unwarranted mewl when Jonathan’s tongue slipped inside your sticky hole and felt along your velvet walls. 

He couldn’t exactly speak, with his mouth trained artfully on your cunt, but he let out an unintelligible noise of approval. All of this made you nauseous, your insides twisting in disgust, but your body reacted the opposite, pussy pulsing and clenching around him. 

It was just -- fucking criminal how skillful he was with that long tongue of his, licking long stripes up and down, suckling on your clit, searching for the spongy spot in your cunt that he knew he couldn’t find without his cock, but wanted to make you squirm anyway. 

You felt that familiar pressure building within you, his tongue going down on you faster, making shameful squelching noises echo around the room. He was hitting every pressure point, something you hadn’t felt in… well, honestly, you weren’t sure you’d been eaten out like this ever… 

The thought you were enjoying this, that he might actually make you come made you queasy, and your hands tangled through his locks, pulling him away. “Want - want your… your cock,” you panted, shaking your head when he tried to bury himself in your sex again. 

Jonathan frowned, going from all fours to sitting on the backs of his heels. “Baby…” he said, hesitant. You knew he wanted to take his time, worship you, treat you lovingly, but you were getting confused… losing yourself to the pleasure, forgetting you were doing this to stop him from holding you captive, not because you actually wanted it. 

You pouted, and, to prove your point further, you pressed one of your feet onto his extremely noticeable bulge, fondling it softly. He nearly doubled over at the much needed friction to his neglected cock, and then Jonathan finally let go of all his inhibitions, giving into his primal needs. 

He quickly undid his belt buckle and fly, slipping out of his suit trousers. Your heart sank at the reveal of his size; the imprint of his cock looked extremely intimidating, and that was beneath his boxer shorts. 

It seemed your thoughts showed on your face, and he leaned down to press a kiss to your temple, leaving an embarrassing amount of your wetness on the skin. “It’s okay, my love,” he reassured, “your pretty pussy can take me.”

You nodded hesitantly, your teeth capturing your bottom lip and nipping at it nervously as you watched him completely undress… his cock wasn’t very thick, but boy, was it long, coloured a delicate pink hue that was pretty and aching, but you knew he wouldn’t be using it delicately at all. 

The way he looked at you, almost feral, eyes dragging over every curve and practically melting at how your hole gaped for him had you wanting to cover up, run away-- but you held still and forced yourself to brave through it. 

You only need to do this once, you repeat mentally, only once, and you can convince him to let you go. 

Jonathan didn’t waste any time touching himself or anything like that, he merely crawled atop of you and slotted himself between your shuddering lips. “So wet,” he grunted, slowly pushing his cockhead in. 

Despite his words, and the terrifyingly glaring feeling of your wetness, you still winced at the stretch; your back arched at the intrusion, your arms wrapping around his neck and digging your fingernails into his back just from the pain of his tip at your entrance. 

He slid the rest of the way in jiltedly, and you let out a pained gasp, then a helpless whimper, and finally, his name, your voice weak and raspy as he laid his weight on your torso, panting at how you soaked him. His unruly length was going deeper than you thought possible, and your mind went fuzzy with fear at how it’d feel when he actually started thrusting in and out. You could only pray he didn’t break you. 

“You did it, dear,” Jonathan announced proudly, pressing a kiss to your lips this time. You shuddered at the intimate gesture, but he didn’t seem to notice, and slowly pulled out, before slamming back in. 

You swore you saw stars, tears welling in your eyes at the rough action, and Jonathan placed his hands on your hips to soothe you by rubbing circles into the skin. “Full,” you choked out simply. 

Apparently, he thought that was praise, and he repeated the action, falling into a steady rhythm of slow but brutal thrusts. It had you gasping for air each time, the sting in your lower-half almost unbearable, but you suddenly felt yourself falling into a morally muddled, puzzling state of mind: he was practically torturing you with his length, but he was also whispering sweet nothings in your ear, gently massaging your rear. 

“You’re so -- fuck, thats a tight pussy -- beautiful,” he’d murmur, hanging his head low into the dip of your collarbone, “so beautiful.”

But, as you had to keep reminding yourself, you didn’t want this-- this was just the only way you’d escape. You didn’t want to be fucked by him, and most of all, you didn’t want him.

That train of thought was thrown out the window, however, when Jonathan’s hands suddenly hooked under your thighs and wrapped your legs around his waist. You were pulled further beneath him, and his cock went even deeper, punching up against the spongy spot in your pussy. 

You moaned; feverish, loud, wanton, and Jonathan drank it in fiendishly. From there, he knew where to thrust, pounding in and out of your cunt and hitting that spot everytime. The pain fell away into a sickly pleasure, your eyes rolling into the back of your head at how deliciously he was fucking you. 

“Jonathan!” You mewled, digging your heels into the small of his back. He was relentless, ruthlessly rutting his hips into yours and gripping your thighs so tight there’d be hand-shape sized bruises littering your body later. 

“You like that, darling?” he groaned proudly, pushing your hips further down his cock. “God, you love it, don’t you? I can feel you squeezing me…”

Your fucked out mind couldn’t discern between your lustful thoughts and your logical ones; you couldn’t help how you nodded, how you pleaded for more, despite the terror swimming in your gut -- despite how the sober part of yourself weeped. 

Then, it was like a tight rubber band around your stomach snapped; the pleasure that had been building in your gut burst, sending electric shocks of ecstasy running through your entire body. You saw white for a moment, your toes curling along his back as your thighs shook, your moan coming out terribly loud and sounding every bit his name. You didn’t mean to, of course, not again, but your mind filled in the gaps: Jonathan was fucking you, so Jonathan deserved the praise.

“Fuck!” Jonathan growled, “You came so hard… all because of this cock, all because of me.” Then, he began slamming his cock into your quivering hole quicker, desperately chasing his orgasm. 

It was only then in your foggy, post-high mind did you realize he’d never used a condom… you weren’t on anything, you hadn’t been for years, and the way Jonathan was fucking into you gave no indication he was stopping. The thought of him coming inside made your blood run cold; there’d be no escape, you’d be fucking finished— 

“Jon-- Jon, pull out,” you instructed weakly, trying to push him off you and watching how his focussed face tensed and tightened with the oncoming orgasm. 

“Sweetheart,” he panted with a frown, “what’re you talking about?”

“Please,” you whimpered helplessly, “just - just please pull out… don’t come inside, please!”

“I’m afraid not, my love,” He grunted, baring his teeth and hammering into you faster, “m’gonna paint your walls white… get you nice and pregnant, fuck, no-one’ll have to question who you belong to…”

“Don’t, no, no -- Jon, please,” you begged, struggling to get away from his assault on your cunt as he pressed his weight further onto you, pinning you down against the bed. 

But Jonathan wasn’t listening to you, not anymore. “Gon’ come, fuck, gon’ come,” he repeated, his thrusts stuttering, and you could only let out a grievous cry when you felt his cock twitch, hot spend spilling deep within you. 

Jonathan laid on top of you for a moment, pressing his forehead against your sweaty chest, before leaning back and pulling out of you. The painful stretch was reawakened, and your tears really came this time, large sobs exiting your mouth as you crumpled into a ball on the mattress. 

“Oh, my love,” he called your pet name with a furrowed brow, crawling closer to you, “what’s wrong? Was it too much? I know how delicate you can be…”

God, you could’ve screamed. He was still treating you like his little lamb… but you were beginning to feel that way, too; feeling like someone helpless he needed to protect. With the way you bunched up devastatedly beside him, it felt like Jonathan had fucking broken you, and then put you back together again with that doll image in mind. Not all the pieces fit the way he wanted them to, but Jonathan had time and brute force to fix all that…

“You -- you… I’m ruined,” you weeped, unable to explain properly with how terrified you felt, bringing your hands up to your face to shield yourself from him. 

Your plan had no future of fruition, not anymore… you’d fucked him so you could convince him you were trustful enough to leave and still be his, but you’d fallen into his trap; fucking him was the way he attached a ball and chain to your ankle.

His hand curled around your wrist roughly, pinning it to the bed and letting his other brush a tear from your eye.  “No, no, you’ll be the most gorgeous mother I know… your tits and your stomach all swollen like that? I won’t be able to keep my hands off you.”

Jonathan said that like you wanted him to be all over you, and it only made your cries wrack through your body harder. He then pulled you close to him, pressing your tear-stained face to his chest, letting you sob into him like he brought any comfort at all. 

You suddenly felt him press up to your entrance and your tears stopped momentarily, a fearful whine exiting your mouth instead. 

At your noise, he pet you gently, reassuringly, “Don’t worry… I’m just keeping us warm… keeping my come inside, my love.” With that, Jonathan slowly slid his length past your aching lips, until he was seated so deep within you his cockhead brushed up against your cervix.

His cream squelched within you and coated himself, feeling terribly slick and sticky between your thighs; you wanted to throw up there was such a large amount of it marking you from the inside.

“God, how d’you already feel brand new… need to do this more often….” he grunted the praise, and you felt shame colour you entirely.

But despite that shame and the terror swelling in your chest, the fact him within you was a surefire way none of his seed went anywhere but inside, his cock resting there did feel nice, like his rough fuck molded your pussy to fit him perfectly.

It was confusing… all of it very mind-boggling; how his actions petrified you while still making you feel nice and appreciated and loved… how his obsession was possessive and toxic but all at once delicate and thoughtful… how you felt yourself cry because he’d come inside you but was slowly succumbing to a sweet and comfortable sleep within his wiry arms. 

There was much time to make sense of your amalgamated terror and love later, however. Nine-months long, to be exact: you later woke up to Jomathan pummeling his leaking, hard cock back into you. All you did was whimper, keep limp as he used you-- there was no choice fighting back, not anymore; not since he’d fully marked you… impregnated you… made it so there was no way you were ever leaving him. 

[metamatar]

The existence of licensing does not apriori make practioners correct or useful. Like the epistemology of their practice matters way more. The BJP made Ayurveda a real degree that turns people into doctors as part of its fascist cultural nationalist project, general corruption to fatten up its ayurvedic donors and tbh a preference to kill poor people during COVID instead of investing in medical infrastructure. Ayurvedic epistemology is still Vedic Science is eternal because Brahmin Vedic practioners are blessed by the gods with magic insight. Read Meera Nanda.

[balrogballs]

Binged your beautiful writing yesterday after seeing the Eldarion post and I loooove your Maglor so much, but I was curious about your characterizing of Maedhros as a objectively good father especially in the modern AU, where Elrond says “would always find him under every starless sky” abt him not Maglor. Your kidnapfam is so nuanced otherwise, so Elrond being closer to Maedhros feels disjointed or unnatural. Idk, his trauma and actions =/= good parent. No hate, just question

NP I’ll answer in good faith!

Wondering what other fic you refer to since my other Maedhros narratives are set in Valinor and Elrond isn’t really the focus of either? Or are you just referring to the postcolonial one you quoted because in that case yeah the primary emotional thread there is between Maedhros and Elrond, so will answer with that in mind.

under the cut bc my flight got delayed and I used this ask as an excuse to write a whole ass essay so dont want to bore people.

Now you mention discomfort at this portrayal and a part of my intention to write Maedhros in such a way IS to cause discomfort. Now keeping in mind this is a historical AU set exclusively in the context of the British Empire, and the word “terrorist” as used here does not mean the same kind of mass violence as it does today, Elrond’s full sentence from the fragment you quoted is actually:

“His Baba the terrorist, who would always, always find him under every starless sky.”

Violence does not live in a vacuum. Violence and tenderness can and do exist hand in hand, especially when referring to Maedhros in this AU — the first chapter itself makes it clear that his act of “terrorism” was to blow off a policeman’s finger during mass police brutality.

That is why I thought it was important to show him as the more loving one in this fic, even though I’m aware that many fanworks put Maglor in that role — I wanted to unpack the legacy of that act and how it was labelled, which reverberates across decades and continents. Maedhros blew off a British policeman’s finger when they started shooting fleeing women. And the same Maedhros also found two British toddlers, the children of an official high up in the British Raj — and he and his brother took them in.

To quote Maedhros himself from one of my other (canonverse) fics:

"And so it is for cruelty and tenderness: the constant press of cruelty, seeking to erode away those moments with the boys, the tender little life we led. It may have ended in tragedy. I fear, though I don't know, that I may have succumbed to the wrong one. Still, tenderness endured, and as is ordinary in wars of attrition, it softened the edges of our cruelty, a patient defiance wearing down its edges. I am indeed cruel as you judge me, but less so than you think. Neither of us know which claimed victory at the end of the Age, cruelty or kindness. But know, boy, that I bear the marks of both."

I think the whole thing with kidnap fam is that every dynamic between them is entirely fanon — the text gives you close to nothing. So whether or not Maedhros is a “good” father is imo very subjective, because we know nothing other than the boys being taken in.

There are so many ways love can grow, equally many ways interpret its impact on a person. Some interpret him as being completely incapable of tenderness, some interpret it as little kindnesses sprouting from salted earth. And I personally interpret Maedhros here as a man who has a deep, all-encompassing love for his son, who when Elrond was young, knew without words that the child was afraid of the dark, so would quietly lay beside him on starless nights “until the lions and snakes all cowered under his thunderous heartbeat.” All the rest, his anger and resentment and crippling guilt, is foisted upon him by cruel circumstance.

I think that’s what I wanted to make clear. Maedhros in this AU is furious, hotheaded, traumatised, prone to violence against authority, is quite literally a flagellant. He is also Elrond’s Baba, “who would always, always find him under every starless sky”.

Hope this helps! Also honestly if you’re not cool or are uncomfortable with Maedhros being written in this way you genuinely don’t have to read it haha, because as I said above, his and Elrond’s relationship — in all its messiness, gaps, incoherencies — is the primary focal point across the story and is what connects all the disparate narratives together.

I love writing him as tender! I love writing a Maedhros whose innate and incredible capacity for love is constantly worn down by the world, yet still finds a way to exist.

[rivetgoth]

I am to this day so grateful for my intro to literary criticism professor for the way she taught the concept of critical theory and engaging with media when I was in my first year of college. She basically introduced some of the major forms of theory—feminist, queer/gender, race, historical, postcolonial, Marxist, etc—and made a big point of emphasizing that you can apply any form of criticism to any piece of media. Like, and this doesn’t sound novel to me now but at the time it was, she’d emphasize that a piece of work can have 0 women in it and still be engaged with through feminist theory (in fact to say such a thing sounds funny because OF COURSE a story with 0 women in it would warrant such interpretation!), a story with 0 queer/LGBT characters still warrants queer theory regarding how the norms of gender and sexuality are or aren’t upheld, ditto for race and how race and the powers and structures of white culture and supremacy do or don’t play out within a text that does not have any nonwhite characters, etc. And she’d give us these really free-form assignments where we’d read a text and then she’d just tell us to write like a page worth of any type of theory on it that we wanted. Not only did I love how autonomous this was and it inspired me to get creative and try to push more boundaries with how something could be engaged with (as like, a baby queer at the time I had a lot of fun mapping queer theory to whatever we read, and at a separate point I actually wrote an essay explicitly disagreeing with her interpretation on a reading and she loved that and gave me an A haha), but I think that introducing critical theory this way really helped me develop the mindset (and love) of engaging with any and all media beyond simply what’s being said on the page/screen/whatever—What isn’t being said, and what’s taken for granted, and the context in which it exists matters just as much.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Helen Pluckrose

Published: Jan 5, 2025

The problem of so-called “Grooming Gangs,” more properly understood as rape gangs is currently dominating mainstream media and social media. Because the gangs in question comprise of Muslim men, mostly of Pakistani origin, this is also, at root, a heated debate about immigration. The public discourse on this subject is largely a mess involving multiple biased political narratives and impeding any productive discussion of the subject. Unhelpful combatants in this battle of narratives include unambiguous racists and ethnonationalists, Critical Social Justice activists focusing on critical theories of race and postcolonialism, Muslims evading or deflecting from the issue, feminists determined to make the problem a universal one created by men, adherents to cults of personality surrounding Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson and liberals conflicted over their principles of individualism and the need to address statistical realities. This essay is therefore rather a long one!

Public discourse on this issue has largely centred around very poor arguments based on dubious political motivations. This is a big problem because the issue of rape gangs is a very serious one that merits very serious attention. Is it best addressed by a national investigation rather than local, specific ones? I don’t know whether a zoomed out or zoomed in focus is most likely to provide information to enable addressing the problem most effectively, because this is not my area of expertise. My inclination is to ask, “Why not both?”Subscribe

People are right to be both angry and worried about this and being so does not indicate racist or anti-Muslim sentiment. While the vast majority of Britons, including Muslims, abhor sexual violence especially against vulnerable girls, there are subcultures that do not abhor it. One prominent one that dehumanises women and girls and regards them as prey is to be found among Muslims of mostly Pakistani origin. Some of the victims of these gangs have been Pakistani Muslim girls and some non-Muslim South Asian girls but most of them have been white non-Muslim girls. These are men who have contempt for women and girls but particularly non-Muslims and see them as legitimate targets for sexual predation, form gangs around those beliefs and horrifically abuse the most vulnerable girls. Addressing the problem of religiously aggravated organised gang rape has been hindered by authorities' fear of being seen as racist or Islamophobic. This is unacceptable. People are right to be angry about it and demand evidence that real steps are being taken to acknowledge the problem to exist and be vigilantly pro-active to detect it, shut it down and enact harsh penalties on offenders.

We can and must acknowledge this problem to exist and doing so does not require demonising all Muslims, all Pakistanis or all brown people and acting as though no other organised rape/paedophile gangs exist run by white non-Muslim men. Such collective demonisation is not only unjust to vast numbers of Pakistani men but undermines serious attempts to bring down the predatory subculture. However, diverting attention away from the phenomenon of religiously aggravated rape gangs which exist among Muslim Pakistanis to other organised sexual abuse and paedophile rings which are not motivated by the dehumanisation of non-Muslims also undermines such efforts. Such gangs need to be understood and addressed on their own terms with regard to specific motivations. For a man to commit such horrific crimes against vulnerable girls; for him to be able to maintain an erection in the face of a child’s pain, terror and violation requires a deeply twisted and dangerous psychology. He must be a psychopath indifferent to the suffering to others, a sexual sadist excited by the suffering of others, an individual with a deep hatred of women and girls or someone who has dehumanised certain women and girls seen as belonging to a despised outgroup.

Detecting and intervening on sexual offenders operating in groups requires distinguishing these motivations and tackling them specifically. We have seen numerous cases recently in which twisted individuals with a particular dangerous fetish have been enabled to find, inspire and conspire with each other to commit crimes using dark corners of the internet. We saw this in the case of Gisele Pelicot whose husband found his fellow rapists with a fetish for raping unconscious women on a forum called “Without her knowledge,” in the case of Abdulrizak Hirsi who ran a “Chikan” forum for those with a frotteurism fetish to inspire each other to rub their exposed penises on women in crowded spaces and share their accounts of having done so, and in the case of Gavin Plumb who conspired to abduct, rape and murder the TV presenter, Holly Willoughby, on a forum called “Abduct Lovers.” In the last case, this attempt was foiled by an undercover police officer who had been infiltrating such forums. This highlights the importance of specific, targeted interventions based on a knowledge of the motivations and modes of operation of certain subsets of offenders.

In the case of rape gangs run by Muslim men who have contempt or even hatred for non-Muslim women and girls and use this as justification for horrific sexual abuse and exploitation, this is a very specific motivation and it is clearly related to Islam. Survivors of the rape gangs have reported both racial and religious abuse being used to dehumanise them. While members of all Abrahamic religions could use their faith to justify sexual slavery, in practice, most of them do not and we do not see Christian or Jewish rape gangs targeting non-Christians or non-Jews. This is a hostile subculture existing within Muslim communities among predatory men who do not need the internet to find each other, but can detect others who are willing to engage in such abuse by the language of hostility and dehumanisation towards women and girls and especially towards non-Muslims. The people most able to detect men likely to engage in organised sexual exploitation and rape are other Muslims of this community, but there has not been a significant rate of reports of such concerns from within the community. Because Muslim Brits of Pakistani origin are immigrants or the children of immigrants, this naturally leads to arguments that the solution to this kind of rape gang is to be found in immigration policy which restricts or even bans Pakistani men or all Muslim men. This is a coherent argument but it sits badly with those who oppose collective blame of whole demographics and particularly those who know and are close to ethical, compassionate Muslims who would never condone, let alone engage in such vile abuse and are assets to the country.

We do need to be able to have calm, ethical, principled, data-driven, practical conversations about how to address this particular brand of organised sexual abuse specifically without people being afraid of being falsely accused of racism or anti-Muslim bigotry. We also need to be able to have these discussions and develop solutions without it descending into genuine racism and anti-Muslim bigotry or being derailed by endless whataboutism in relation to other organised gangs of sexual predators. We cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by narratives formed around cults of personality involving figures like Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson. Of particular difficulty and of most discomfort to those of us who are liberal individualists is addressing the issue without becoming tangled up in the conflict between the need to think statistically and the need not to evaluate individuals by statistics. There are certain groups who are getting in the way of this conversation.

Firstly, there are genuine racists and anti-Muslim bigots who combine their kernel of truth - that there is a dark and twisted subculture of religiously-motivated organised gang rape within Pakistani Muslim communities - with malevolent untruths about the inherent contaminating evil of brown and black people. They use the truth within their racist narrative to justify the untruths and accuse anybody objecting to the latter of denying the former and, indeed, being complicit in the former. These individuals really are far-right extremists who also typically target for abuse groups in society who, statistically, cause very few problems at all - Indians and Jews - and advocate ethnonationalism. So hateful, demonstrably false and unethical is their overall narrative that it leads misguided but well-intentioned people who oppose racism to minimise or even deny the truth about the existence of religiously-motivated rape gangs and “whatabout” the issue by pointing at data showing the majority of sexual exploiters to be white non-Muslims.

This ties into the second group who get in the way of effective action against the subculture of offenders who are Pakistani Muslims with specific religious and racial motivations for their abuse. These are not simply ethical opponents of racism who object to the demonisation of brown and black Brits but Critical Social Justice cultural relativists inspired by narratives stemming from critical theories of race and postcolonial theory. These individuals are hyperalert to any criticism of any subculture within any community that is not white. They regard this as an oppressive, white supremacist, imperialistic mindset which believes white, western cultures to be superior to other cultures and white people to be superior to everybody else. Despite being allegedly orientated towards social justice, they do not accept cultures which give women and racial, religious and sexual minorities equal rights and status to be better than cultures which do not. They regard any such claims and any focus on social problems within racial minority groups to be motivated by racism. This contributed to the culture which caused police to fail to investigate the Rotherham rape gangs for fears of being considered racist. These two groups feed into each other.

The third group which hinders the development of effective and ethical solutions to the problem of this kind of grooming gangs are Muslims who do not act on suspicions that others in their community are committing sexual offences for fear of dishonouring their community or being ostracised from it. The rate of reporting of sexual assault by Muslim girls is extremely low and leading Muslim women campaigners for the rights of women and girls believe this is because reporting this outside the community would bring shame and blame upon them. Similarly, Nazir Afzal, former Crown Prosecution Service’s lead on child sexual abuse, was addressing this issue over a decade ago with the Muslim community in Bradford. He reframed the issue of what is honourable and urged people who see an older man behaving suspiciously with young girls to report this to the police. He said,

We do have an issue with people of our ethnicity – it’s not the issue but an issue – and we have to take care of it, we have to deal with it. The solution comes from within. It comes from you. Don’t walk by. We’ve got to do something about this now, otherwise we won’t be in a position to hold our heads up.

The commitment of Muslims within communities where they are in a position to see suspicious and potentially predatory behaviour to reporting it would be a highly effective way of uncovering rape gangs early. Consistently shaming the perpetrators rather than their victims would provide a powerful social deterrent. Many Muslims object to the idea that they need to keep pointing out that child sexual exploitation is wrong for the same reason that they object to demands for them to condemn acts of Islamist terrorism. They believe that they should not be suspected of condoning either simply because they are Muslim in the first place. They have a point. Some of them insist that to speak of “Muslim grooming gangs” at all is Islamophobic. They do not have a point. Such gangs exist and people within a community where one is operating are in the best position to see signs of them and take action to protect the physical and mental wellbeing of children from them. Further, they should consider that being seen to take action in this way would be an effective way to reduce anti-Muslim sentiment. If this results in ostracism from a community, perhaps that is not a community they should wish to be a part of.

A forth group that can get in the way of addressing the specific problem of Muslim rape gangs are feminists, although any claims to this effect need to be qualified very carefully. While intersectional feminists can fall prey to cultural relativism that fails Muslim women in particular and women more generally, radical feminists with their focus on women as a sex class are not typically prone to this failing. They have, in fact, been at the forefront of bringing the problem to light despite accusations of racism for doing so. Therefore, they can become very annoyed when the credit for this is given to individuals like Tommy Robinson. However, some radical feminists are resistant to accepting that these particular organised rape gangs which target children are born of a deeply misogynist rape culture that exists among a subset of Muslims who despise non-Muslims. Instead, they try to make them part of the general problem with 'men' and a more universal misogyny and rape culture. I don’t think that men generally are misogynistic or in support of a rape culture, but misogynistic subcultures which are certainly exist and we can only tackle them by taking each one on its own terms, not by blanket blaming ‘men.’

That leads to the fifth group which is making this conversation more difficult and moving it away from the realm of material, measurable reality and into the realm of political narratives of good and evil. This is related to the cults of personality around Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson which present us with a nice, neat narrative about this whole issue being the fault of Labour and remedied by a change of government. This is despite Labour not being in power at the time the Rotherham scandal broke and public attention was brought to the issue and the previous Conservative government also having felt that local investigations into specific gangs were more effective. Much of the debate centres around the figure of Tommy Robinson and representations of him as a political prisoner jailed for criticising Islam, despite his convictions being for contempt of court and other petty crimes involving fraud. This reality has even been pointed out by senior politicians on the right including Nigel Farage who takes a hardline stance on immigration, particularly Muslim immigration.

I would suggest that we should be quite concerned about the extent to which Mr. Musk is able to influence public opinion on the UK government, especially when he calls for the US to impose sanctions on the UK for the imprisonment of Mr. Robinson. There was outrage and claims of ‘foreign interference’ from many American conservatives when Labour MPs announced their attention to travel to the US and campaign for Kamala Harris, but simply talking to people who consent to be talked to, whether it is Labour MPs supporting Harris or Farage joining Trump on his campaign trail does not interfere with another country’s policies. Attempts to use the economic power of the US to subvert judicial processes and get the King to dissolve parliament using economic pressure could certainly be considered as such, however. (Mr. Musk might not be aware that the last time a King Charles dissolved parliament by fiat, we beheaded him)

Meanwhile, Mr. Robinson cannot be above the law simply because he conveys a message that many are sympathetic to, including Mr Musk, at the same time as acting in contempt of court by repeating claims not found to be true under thorough investigation in civil court. There are, however, grounds to be concerned for his mental health if he does, indeed, spend nine months in solitary confinement. His supporters would do well to campaign against this. The claims of the justice system that he is isolated for his own safety due to the presence of Islamists who wish to do him harm in the prison are unsatisfactory. There must surely be prisoners who are not Islamists and do not present a risk to him with whom association can be arranged. Tommy Robinson is not a political prisoner. He is a reckless and reactive activist who tramples over laws which exist for good reason, risking causing a mistrial of gang rapists and defaming a child with claims he could not substantiate while committing various kinds of petty crime. He also founds, joins or supports organisations that include people who are unambiguously & visibly racist and expand their own ‘critiques’ way beyond Pakistani rape gangs into the demonisation of all brown Brits and often black ones too. His own rhetoric has been known to blame 'every single Muslim' for things like 7/7 and demonise whole groups of people and undermine serious efforts to talk about and address the phenomenon of Pakistani Muslim rape gangs. He has (rightly) not been prosecuted for any of that speech, though.

Mr Robinson has, in the past, acknowledged this problem and taken steps to keep virulent, hateful ethnonationalists and neo-Nazis out of organisations he is involved in, left such organisations, worked with anti-extremism organisations and stressed that he wants to oppose Islamism, not Muslims. He would do well to do this more consistently in both his activism and rhetoric.

The sixth and final group who can impede productive conversation about this issue is, I am very much afraid, my own. Liberals. Those of us who oppose collective blame and advocate treating each person as an individual and who defend freedom of belief and speech. We are certainly not opposed to criticism of Islam and will defend people’s right to do so in the harshest terms, burn Qurans (which they own) and draw insulting cartoons of prophets without being either arrested or murdered. We do not shy away from pointing out that patriarchal, misogynistic, homophobic and antisemitic ideas are frequently inspired by Islam and are thoroughly illiberal. Generalise about Muslim people, though, and discriminate against those from Muslim backgrounds? This is not something we find ethically acceptable because Muslim people are not ideologies. They are human beings with a wide range of views and personalities. This is a little infographic I wrote on the subject nearly a decade ago.

How do liberals square our individualism and opposition to negative generalisations against whole demographics of people with the reality that people who come from much more socially & religiously conservative countries that have laws and social norms that do badly on women's rights, gay rights, freedom of belief & speech and the rights of religious minorities (especially Jews) are statistically more likely to be socially & religiously conservative & have views contrary to those which uphold women's rights, gay rights, freedom of belief & speech and the rights of religious minorities (especially Jews)? Liberals don't want to think about people statistically. We are ethically opposed to this and these are very sound ethics generally!

Our focus on always treating people as individuals can cause liberals some difficulty in acknowledging that people from cultures with deeply illiberal social norms are statistically likely to bring values which are not compatible with the values of a liberal society with them and some of them will be hostile to people who do not share their religion and some will be dangerous to women and girls. We are likely to point out that defenders of the rights of women and religious and sexual minorities exist everywhere and so do violent, intolerant misogynists. This is true but does not help us address the problem of specific illiberal religious communities being enabled to form their own subculture and from within it emerge a subset of violent misogynists who have contempt for and dehumanise non-Muslim women and girls.

For some, the solution to this appears to be to become illiberal ourselves and take on a highly socially conservative ethnonationalist or Christian nationalist mindset, but most people do not want to live in one of those anymore than we’d want to live in one run on Sharia Law. Liberalism is the feature of Western liberal democracies that distinguishes it from illiberal theocracies and totalitarian states and we’d like to keep it that way. Frying pans and fires come to mind.

Liberal conservatives are probably the group with the combination of philosophical underpinnings - the liberal tradition and the conservative tradition - best equipped to navigate this minefield. They are the conservatives whose drive to conserve includes the conservation of the liberal philosophical tradition. They tend to be unapologetic about welcoming to our country only people who have a deep and genuine respect for its liberal traditions and who want to integrate into it and become a full part of it, recognising themselves as part of a society to which they are loyal and in which they are invested. When people apply to join a country, they believe they should be required to demonstrate themselves to be a good fit with those liberal values and to be willing to be part of a nationwide community. Individualism is good, but this includes individual responsibility and working towards cultural cohesion is one of those responsibilities. This includes addressing problems within one’s own community when they endanger the safety of the broader community. Nazir Azfal spoke to this sense of responsibility using the concept of ‘good neighbours.’

Don’t walk by. My 15-year-old boy was playing snooker a few months back and noticed these young girls and these older men. Maybe he is more aware than he ought to be, but he came home and told dad, and dad told the police and the police acted on that information. This is what we should be doing – routinely, daily, all the time, everywhere. When you are suspicious, you act on that suspicion. People say to me: do you want us to grass every one up? Do you want whistleblowers? No! I want good neighbours. It could be your child, your friend’s child next. How are you going to make sure you share your suspicions and stand up for the society you are a part of?

I like this concept of “good neighbours.” This, I would suggest, is the mentality we need right now. This is the right way to have the necessary conversations and effectively address the problem of religiously-aggravated rape gangs that despise, dehumanise and brutally assault women and girls whose wellbeing everybody should be expected to care about.

We must reject and ignore the virulent racists who care only about what people look like or what religious background they have and nothing for what their values are or what kind of neighbours they are. We need to dismiss the culturally relativist posturings of the Critical Social Justice activists and reject their claim that any objection to deeply illiberal and even abusive cultural values is racist and imperialistic. We must expect British Muslims to respect and value non-Muslims and feel a bond of loyalty to them and to our country and report any suspicions of predatory behaviour to the police for the integrity of the Muslim community and wellbeing of the broader one. We should respect and thank the feminists who have been working on this problem for so long but urge any of them inclined to regard the problem as ‘men’ to recognise misogynistic and predatory subcultures for maximally effective and focused activism. We cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by foreign or local cults of personality spinning simplistic political narratives which do not align with reality. We must urge liberals to temper their pure individualism with a recognition of cultural difference and lean into the conservative aspect of liberalism which enables us to assertively defend both our liberal traditions and cultural cohesion.

The current mass of discourses on this topic create a tangled mess which is preventing us from doing anything productive to address the problem. The first step towards fixing that is to untangle ourselves.

==

Tommy Robinson is a distraction from the actual issue. He probably shouldn't be in solitary confinement for the entire duration of a multi-month sentence, but being right about one thing doesn't excuse everything else he's done.

And fixating on him doesn't help address the issue. Such as how this has been excused for so long, why activists masquerading as political representatives are still running interference for rapists, what will be done to remove these perpetrators from society, and what will be done to filter out the same kind of person in the future?

It's not a choice between Tommy Robinson (or Elon Musk) and Muslim rapists.

[vapourchild]

“Cherríe Moraga in Loving in the War Years (1983) explores the themes of identity when one never possessed the original language, never told the original story, never resided in the harmony of legitimate heterosexuality in the garden of culture, and so cannot base identity on a myth or a fall from innocence and right to natural names, mother’s or father’s….Malinche’s mastery of the conqueror’s language—a violation, an illegitimate production, that allows survival. Moraga’s language is not “whole”; it is self-consciously spliced, a chi - mera of English and Spanish, both conquerors’ languages. But it is this chimeric monster, without claim to an original language before violation, that crafts the erotic, competent, potent identities of women of color. (p. 56)

Our bodies, ourselves; bodies are maps of power and identity. Cyborgs are no exception. A cyborg body is not innocent; it was not born in a garden; it does not seek unitary identity and so generate antagonistic dualisms without end (or until the world ends); it takes irony for granted. One is too few, and two is only one possibility.” (p. 65)

—Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto (1985)

i found this passage striking when i first read it —so much so that i pasted it in my notes app and rediscovered it recently which is why this is currently being written, lol

i love this idea of a lack of origin or a post-origin (non-origin)? it’s a reversal of the Edenic myth of original innocence, where the reversal says instead that there is no Eden to begin with from which we then fall—it is precisely the Fall which PRECEDES and CREATES the Garden from which one falls. the wound comes first, then the unscathed original body is conceptualised in response to the wound. before the wound the uninjured body is simply there, unthought of in any terms of injury or wholeness. i think zizek said something like this in one of his lectures (the hegelian wound, like thats the hardest name ever).

i’m thinking of this in the context of singaporean postcoloniality. i know decolonial is the preferred term in academia now over postcolonial because post- implies an ending and after-the-ending-ness which doesn’t appropriately describe the continued legacy of colonialism in colonised countries. but i actually kind of like the word post-colonial precisely for that sense of pastness & perpetual afterness which i feel distinctly characterises the postcolonial experience. i don’t mean afterness in the sense of an ending, i mean afterness in itself, the concept whose very condition of possibility is its before (after all, afterness can only exist as a concept if it has a before). so instead of suggesting a clean break from coloniality after the last colonial powers withdrew, the word postcolonial to me suggests a perpetual reference to, and being conditioned by, coloniality. far from suggesting a state after the End of Colonialism, the word postcolonial more than anything suggests the continued hauntological recursion of colonialism in colonised countries. whatever state we are in now is always a post-, a post-script, to the original wound of colonisation. (i don’t want to be taken as overly fatalistic and saying that there’s no room for self-determination under the overbearing spectre of colonisation. all i mean is that to think that a total excision of the colonial past from the present has been achieved is naïve.)

anyway for those of us who have never seen or experienced a world before colonisation, those of us born always already fallen from innocence, this post-ness is particularly poignant. our condition and our identity always bears the chimeric cyborg marks of postcoloniality in the sense that we don’t have a unitary self. maybe i’m just speaking for myself here but i always experience a degree of anguish when i get laughed at by the auntie selling coffee when i butcher my kopi order, or when i remember the time i had to repeat “cold war” 7 times to the american guy at the flea market in new york because he couldn’t understand my non-rhotic accent—i feel unrooted, monstrously hybrid, neither here nor there, belonging nowhere; not angmoh enough to be fully angmoh, not asian enough to be fully asian. and even as i speak about coloniality i speak about it in English, the received language of the coloniser (see above quote) in the epistemic frameworks of coloniality (occident/orient dichotomy); that’s just what comes intuitively to me. even as i experience the anguish of yearning for a return to an origin, there is no prospect of return because the origin is non-historical, a-temporal; it’s not the actual precolonial past, it’s a postcolonial imagination of a precolonial past, already infected with the images and ideas of coloniality.

that’s why i found haraway’s manifesto so compelling in its affirmation of cyborg-being, i suppose because it is the only way of being i feel is open to me. and instead of eternally straining towards a phantasmic Eden, i can affirm my fallenness by rejecting the Biblical tendency to stress the superiority of originary unity and explore the discursive possibilities of postcolonial cyborg-being.

“post”-script (hehe): amanda lee koe’s performance lecture A Cyborg Island Manifesto (2022) is a really great reflection on cyborg postcoloniality too i was really lucky to get to see it live it was really epic

[nebulouscoffee]

Kira for the ask game, because I've sewn you mentioned liking her but haven't seen you talk about it much yet and would like to enable you

Yayy thank you!! (and I'm sorry I took so long to respond, it's been a very hectic week😅)

one aspect about them i love

Kira really embodies a lot of what I miss most about Star Trek tbh, which was the real desire to make the audience uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong; there is a lot about TOS, TNG and DS9 that didn't age well- but I still think an important goal they all shared was to take certain ideas and ideologies that might've seemed far-fetched to the audience of the time, and say- "why not?" Also, "Does this character's existence- and presence- make you uncomfortable? Well, maybe that's a YOU problem." And that's a goal which (imo) really faded over the years, because they grew more and more afraid of turning off the conservative audience. But not with Kira! Within minutes of her introduction, she offers a scathing shutdown of the "frontier" that Star Trek was quite literally built upon. She is literally a sympathetic "terrorist" MAIN character (rare enough), and furthermore a woman- and that too a "difficult" woman, who refuses to let herself be ignored or compromise her people's needs for the Starfleet crew's comfort (!!!), who is ANGRY and deeply religious and nationalistic and PROACTIVE and stomps around and shouts and cries and disagrees and wears her passion on her sleeve and is not at all afraid to make a nuisance of herself- and yet, still has numerous flaws and so many moments of self-doubt and raw vulnerability. What a fantastic character! This was 1993; I can think of so few TV women from that era who actively challenged the constructs (and men) around them so much. I love everything she represents

one aspect i wish more people understood about them

That her arc is more about learning to land upon nuance; not toning down her Bajoran-isms. Her patriotism and faith do occasionally steer her the wrong way, yes- but Kira's growth doesn't at all involve her renouncing either of those things! If anything, it's Sisko who ends up having to adjust to her perspectives. In general I'm always craving more nuanced discussions re DS9's postcolonial dynamics, too- Kira has such a range of interactions with Cardassians on the show, and numerous episodes ('Destiny', 'Life Support', 'Ties of Blood and Water', etc) show that she's genuinely invested in peace between their peoples; something I think often goes ignored. Yes, she's justifiably furious about everything they did to her home- but at the end of the day, what she wants is justice and reparations for Bajor and Bajorans; and if a small (understandable) part of her does want to see Cardassia crash and burn, she really doesn't act upon it

Also, she's funny! Remember when she told Dukat the baby was O'Brien's with no further explanation? Lmaoo what a troll

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character

That she only received a very basic education. She does mention finger painting and playing springball as a kid, but also- Kira grew up in a refugee camp and she joined the Shakaar cell at age 12; she probably missed out on the higher education even the average Bajoran of her generation received (which itself was likely Cardassian State-controlled). Idk, this is low key important to me because so many Star Trek characters are almost like- defined by their scientific and educational smarts, if that makes sense? It's refreshing to see a Trek character who doesn't quite make sense of herself or the world around her primarily through (Western) scientific constructs

Also, Kira absolutely has unexamined caste biases; she just never really learnt to recognise them because caste played such a minimal role in the Resistance- but most Bajorans are far more aware of caste dynamics than she typically is (I just do not buy that the D'jarra system completely went away in less than 60 years)

one character i love seeing them interact with

Ben Sisko! They have SUCH a fascinating dynamic, it's so complex and sweet and often quite trying and hurtful but still kept afloat on this deep, deep underlying mutual respect. Ben's position as the Emissary makes everything so wonderfully complicated, and watching Kira's frustrations at the fact that she actually believes in him morph into reassurance as he slowly transforms from being the Starfleet Outsider to truly being Of Bajor... ahhh it's so good. That scene where he invites her to a baseball game lives in my head rent free! (Also they high key make a fascinating ship imo, I am something of a post-canon Sisko/Kira/Kasidy truther)

one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more

I have multiple answers to this (Julian, Worf, Garak, Keiko, Ziyal, Cretak, Jake, Ezri, etc) but I'm gonna go with someone she actually interacts with quite a bit, because I just wanted mOArrr. Jadzia!

Yes, it was the 90s, so I'm glad they were at least allowed to be friends and not like, cattily pitted against each other. But I still craved more layers to their onscreen dynamic! I mean, Jadzia, the Starfleet "Science Officer" who openly dismisses Kira's religious beliefs on more than one occasion? Kira, the child soldier who finds most of Jadzia's pastimes and preoccupations frivolous and silly? It's so interesting that they keep spending time together despite such fundamental differences, and I would've loved a bigger exploration as to why! They deserved their own 'The Wire', basically. Much like the central two characters of that episode, the answer is that they actually have a LOT more in common than is apparent at first glance (fraught senses of identity, complicated relationships with their home worlds, a sense of loss regarding family) where they outwardly seem like polar opposites. And all of this is not even getting into the nonlinearity of Bajoran religion vs the lives of Dax... gosh, there was room for so much! They deserved a whole Big Sequence full of Monologues the actors could really sink their teeth into, they deserved for one of them to fly off on a dangerous quest to save the others' life- and you know what!! They deserved a little homoerotic hand-holding too!! But, I suppose that's what fanfiction is for😂

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character

She and Bashir definitely grow much closer after the show's end; whether he stays behind on DS9 or not :)

[grandhotelabyss]

Have you read much African literature (apart from Coetzee?)

I confess (if this is a topic requiring confessions) that it hasn't been an area of focus for me. I've one read novel each by Achebe (Things Fall Apart), Salih (Season of Migration to the North), and Gordimer (The Pickup). I've read Soyinka's most famous play, Death and the King's Horseman, his state-of-the-world Reith Lectures (Climate of Fear), and a handful of his other essays on art, culture, and politics. I read Okey Ndibe's Foreign Gods, Inc., and then went to hear the author speak down the street at the Soap Factory, when it still existed; he and his book are very funny. I've read (I even taught) Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow; my friend from South Africa, Maurits, now a professor at the University of the Western Cape, pressed it upon me in graduate school after I conceded I'd only read Gordimer and Coetzee. And Alan Paton. We read Cry, the Beloved Country in high school; I think it counted as the non-European selection in 12th-grade world literature. If the colonial diaspora in Africa counts, I've read Olive Schreiner (Woman and Labour) and Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook); if the postcolonial diaspora in America and Europe counts, I've read Chris Abani (The Virgin of Flames), Teju Cole (Open City), and Marguerite Abouet (Aya de Yopougon). To what continent of the mind does Cavafy's Alexandria belong? Perhaps neither to Africa nor to Europe, to no land at all, but to the Mediterranean Sea. Nevertheless, I have read Cavafy's Collected Poems. Some of Senghor's poetry, too, and his "Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century." Some of Ngũgĩ's polemics also, e.g., Decolonising the Mind, but not yet one of his novels: illustrating the geographic inequality still obtaining in what our Marxist friends call the "system" of world literature, I keep waiting for the call from Stockholm to impel me, though I do suspect the Swedes gave his prize away to his lesser-known exegete, Abdulrazak Gurnah. I want to read Gurnah's Paradise along with Ngũgĩ's Devil on the Cross. If only for a final reckoning with Marxism, I want to read Burger's Daughter by Gordimer. I know I have to read Bessie Head someday. Soyinka's seems a sensibility as bottomless as that of Joyce or Borges, so I know I have to go back to him, to all the plays and to The Interpreters and Aké and Art, Dialogue, and Outrage. I must return to Egypt—not to Cavafy's Alexandria next time, but to Mahfouz's Cairo, where I fear I've never been. Nuruddin Farah and I used to shop at the same grocery store, but I still need to read him. The to-read list goes on: Mia Couto, Christopher Okigbo, and especially Dambudzo Marechera, whose experimental and anarchic works I've only browsed, but whose cosmopolitan motto I admire: "If you are a writer for a specific nation or a specific race, then fuck you." And a book I should have read 20 years ago, 25 years ago—they should have just made us read it in Catholic school—which I still keep meaning to get to: the Confessions of St. Augustine.

[yungborzaya]

proof by contradiction

Binary logic is an important tool of Western thought. It is able to accommodate a wide range of power relationships, in which one side of the binary is dominant and the other is subject to repression. For example:

colonizer : colonzied man : woman good : evil

And so on. Much of postcolonial and feminist theory is devoted revealing the complexity of these simple power relationships, specifically how the terms are depend on one another to produce meaning. For colonizers to exist, there must be the colonized. However, colonial rule is undermined by the presence of the colonized. Edward Said writes in Culture and Imperialism that "nations are narrations," meaning that nation-states emerge from shared history and collective identity, and rely on the power belief to perpetuate their existence. Therefore, alternative histories and counter-narrative can threaten state power. Colonization, which we will just call "a practice of domination," is maintained by erasing and repressing the stories that threaten it, which means erasing evidence of its own existence.

However, the absence of something is only a shadow of its existence. Many postcolonial scholars use the concept of ghosts and haunting to describe the discrepancy between the wealth and power of colonizers, and the dislocation and disappearance of the colonized. Angie Merill writes that

"Hauntings require us to acknowledge how cities and academies are built upon disappearance [...] The ghost exists here with us because of violence, and haunting is the result."

How is haunting felt when we visit the Stedelijk museum, where Felix de Rooy takes center stage? What are we meant to think or feel? As Mendy pointed out, merely presenting two halves of the binary sign is nothing worth celebrating. Indigenous existence and co-presence is actually the starting point for conversations about the relationship between colonizer/colonized. Co-presence disrupts the binary status quo with tension, irony, and the sense of haunting. For an example local to the Northwest, Michelle M. Jacob's Yakima Rising describes how in 1989, children from the Yakima nation were invited to dance in celebration of Washington's 100 years of statehood. The interaction between the state that sought to destroy the Yakima nation, and the children who embody its future--what does it signify to the the audience? Irony, but also: celebration, disruption, survival & vitality. Haunting, and tension between what is there, and what could have been; all the futures that did not eventuate.

But what about the futures yet in store? Interpreting and re-interpreting these interactions help us create new, complex meanings that do not rely on old colonial logic. Bringing together the living and the dead, the dislocated, and the disappeared is an example of what Merill calls "co-presence through desire": that hauntings are not only about the interplay between absence and presence, but also answering the desire of the ghost. To reveal what must be revived and transformed.

[golvio]

“But I have to look up the lyrics! :C” Well, boo-hoo, you’d still have to do that if you were into Broadway or Death Metal! You’re not special!

Like…just look up a curated list by a critic whose opinions you generally trust if you aren’t sure where to start! Everyone’s probably gonna make fun of me for saying Anthony Fantano introduced me to a lot of the rap music I enjoy today, but the guy has an impressive knowledge of a wide variety of artists, and I like to give albums he recommends a try if his descriptions sound interesting. Look up reviews by experts who know their stuff and are passionate about the genre! Sooner or later their passion will infect you!

Or even just get curious about artists you’re already sorta familiar with! I started looking into Daveed Diggs’ larger body of work during the height of the Hamilton fad, and boy am I glad I did, because the stuff he’s done in clipping. blows everything LMM has ever wrote out of the water. The guy is a goddamn lyrical wizard, and the stuff he does is at once incredibly accessible to people new to rap but also incredibly high-concept with incredibly strong imagery. He’s done postcolonial sci-fi in Splendor And Misery, and he’s done supernatural and psychological horror in my two personal favorite albums of his, There Existed An Addiction to Blood and Visions of Bodies Being Burned.

There’s so much poetry and storytelling in the work of certain artists, ranging from spoken word to multi-part lyrical epics. It’s influenced so much of American music over the past fifty years, and it all gets ignored because white people think rap is just the shallow hypermacho prepackaged stereotype of the genre that was marketed by MTV back in the ‘90s/2000s or an ignorable interlude in a pop song. Like when I finally got over myself and started giving folk and pre-9/11 or non-ethnonationalist country music a chance, it makes me really sad that people are closing themselves off from such wonderful music for such silly reasons.

A lot of you on here feel waaay too comfortable admitting that you don't and refuse to listen to rap music, and I'm not loving the incredibly reductive takes on rap because the kendrick/drake beef has it on some of yall's radar for the first time in your life.

I'm not going to sugar coat it-- for americans especially, if you consider music a significant interest of yours but still feel the need to search for acceptable reasons to keep yourself ignorant of black music, or think of rap as a monolith of hate and violence and not equally as diverse as any other genre, or can only name nonblack rappers… you should be embarrassed of that. And your embarrassment should not keep you from being active about exposing yourself to unfamiliar art and broadening what you listen to.

'I don't understand what they're saying/they rap too quickly' I'm surprised by how much I keep seeing this-- speed is not a stylistic trademark of most rap music, & clearer diction as a performer is much more necessary in rap than other genres?? Statistically rap has a lower bpm (here's an example of one person's study) average than other genres. (of course these aren't all-encompassing, but you can look into this yourself using sites like bpmdatabase.com.) Do you really feel overwhelmed by speed listening to Kendrick or Biggie or Nas or 2Pac, or have you never actually listened to their songs?

'I have to look up the lyrics'-- so what? is it a bad thing to take an extra few seconds to engage with an artist's work? If you listen to lyrical music, do you care when it's the artists you listen to? Why does the thoughtful art consumption everyone talks about not also apply to black art?

'there is too much violence and misogyny and commercialism' this is not unique to rap, or true of all rap music. Artists exist that talk about other things, the way they exist in all genres. There is an entire wikipedia page listing alternative hip hop musicians and rappers if you consider seeking it out too much labor. Click one!

'i find it unrelatable'-- who cares? Being unable to engage with art you don't find wholly relatable is a deeply childish and self centered way to exist. You get on here reblogging feel good navel-gazey posts about the shared human experience and caring for one another, but a rapper talking about living with violence or poverty is stretching the limits of what you can imagine or empathize with too much for you to care about it? You don't find that embarrassing to admit to?

You don't have to love rap, you don't have to incorporate it into what you listen to every day, but a lot of you need to be aware you're parroting reagan era anti-rap (& antiblack) pearl-clutching talking points, and it's a very ugly look. It isn't racist if your favorite genre isn't rap, but you need to do some serious self reflection if you consider it inherently less artistic, intelligent or positive than 'whiter' genres when you don't actually listen to it. I am looking at you, people into other counterculture genres-- it's crazy how much I see this from self-professed punks and metalheads especially lmfao. If expression, counterculture art, anti-censorship in music and the right for raw and unfiltered music to exist matters to you as much as you say you do, you should care about rap's relationship to censorship & fight for its legitimacy just as much as what you listen to.

[rymptkd-blog]

Guide Questions

1. Who is the writer of the essay? Describe her in two words. Answer: Laurel Fantauzzo; Filipino-American. Laurel is a writer of mixed heritage, exploring her identity and experiences as both Filipino and American. This dual perspective shapes her reflections on culture, privilege, and belonging. 2. What culture and tradition are being mentioned in the essay? Write three (3) of them. Answer: Respect for foreigners, economic disparity, family unity. The essay highlights the Filipino tendency to show respect and even favoritism towards foreigners or those perceived as wealthier. It also addresses the significant economic gap in the Philippines, and the strong sense of family unity, as seen in her interactions with relatives who warmly welcome her despite their different life circumstances. 3. There are two kinds of essays — formal and informal. What can you say about the essay you read; is it formal or informal? Can you tell why? Answer: Informal; it includes personal reflections and conversational language. The essay feels informal as it is written in a reflective, narrative style. Fantauzzo uses personal anecdotes and casual language to express her inner conflicts and observations, making it accessible and intimate for the reader. 4. Filipino culture and tradition are far different from other countries. Which of these culture and tradition do you think other foreign people would experience? Why do you think so? Answer: Hospitality; foreigners are often given special treatment, as shown when locals offered her extra service due to her appearance. Filipino hospitality is deeply rooted, often resulting in foreigners or balikbayans (Filipinos returning from abroad) receiving privileged treatment. This is evident when Fantauzzo describes locals going out of their way to serve her, a form of hospitality that may be surprising or even uncomfortable for foreigners unaccustomed to it. 5. What “Tagalog praise” does the writer find difficult to articulate? What does it imply? Answer: “Salamat po” (Thank you); it implies her struggle with fully embracing her Filipino heritage and the discomfort of receiving special treatment based on her appearance. Fantauzzo hesitates to say “Salamat po,” indicating her mixed feelings about receiving preferential treatment due to her “whiteness” or foreign appearance. This reluctance reflects her discomfort with the privileges she receives and highlights her struggle to reconcile her Filipino identity with the postcolonial dynamics that still exist in the Philippines.

[jhavelikes]

According to Raphael Lemkin, who first defined the term genocide, it... does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.[3] All modern colonial governments starting with the Spanish conquistadors in America could easily be accused of promoting such "cultural disintegration" or of causing "mental harm," and hence, perhaps, of genocide. Third, denial of the Ovaherero genocide is widespread in Germany and among descendents of colonial settlers in present-day Namibia. The absence of exact figures on the size of the Ovaherero population before 1904 and on the number killed in 1904 is emphasized by the specialists in genocide denial, despite the fact that the decisive criterion for genocide is intention, not the degree of success. The Germans clearly intended to exterminate their Ovaherero subjects, and this goal was approved at the highest levels of the German metropolitan government in Berlin. A final reason some Germans may be reluctant to acknowledge the character of the events of 1904 may be the desire not to be saddled with official responsibility for yet another case of genocide—especially one that some historians interpret as having laid part of the groundwork for the Nazi Holocaust. In Thomas Pynchon's novel V, Southwest Africa is described as setting the stage for Nazism, and in Gravity's Rainbow the Ovaherero resurface in Nazi Germany as the "Schwarzkommando" who worship a rocket program and are dressed in pieces "of old Wehrmacht and SS uniforms." This is of course entirely fictional, but it does gesture toward the widespread sense of continuity between "Southwest Africa" and Nazism, and toward Ovaherero survivors' adoption of many of the cultural attributes of their oppressors after 1904.

The First Genocide of the 20th Century and its Postcolonial Afterlives: Germany and the Namibian Ovaherero

[duxiaomin-blog]

Reinterpreting Chinoiserie from the Perspective of Cultural Hybridity Theory

Hybridity Theory was first proposed by postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha, one of the most influential cultural critics of the late 20th century. His research focuses on postcolonial theory, cultural identity, hybridity, and the concept of the “third space.”

In his book The Location of Culture, Bhabha elaborates on the theory of cultural hybridity. He introduces the concept of the “third space,” emphasizing that when different cultures meet, they form a new intermediary space. This space is a source of creativity and cultural innovation, and it serves as a site for the redefinition of identity, power, and cultural representation.

The “Third Space”

The Chinoiserie style emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries as Europe’s imagination and reinvention of Chinese and Eastern cultures. It was the result of the first global encounter between Western and Chinese art and culture, fully embodying the characteristics of cultural hybridity. Chinoiserie became a unique “third space” in European art and decoration. From the perspective of Hybridity Theory, the Chinoiserie style reflects that when different cultures interact and converge, they do not simply merge but rather recombine to create new cultural identities and forms of expression.

Design drawing for an armchair created for the 4th Duke of Beaufort, circa 1752–1754, England, drawn by John Linnell.

From the design drawing of a Chinoiserie armchair by John Linnell for the 4th Duke of Beaufort, housed in the V&A Museum, we can see that the piece incorporates lattice elements from Chinese gardens and architecture. However, its framework and materials remain distinctly Western in style. This design showcases a typical blend of Eastern and Western charm; it is neither a traditional Chinese style nor purely European. Instead, it forms a new, unclassifiable cultural expression through hybridity.

Resistance, Fusion, and Innovation

Through the blending of Eastern and Western elements, Chinoiserie not only created a new decorative style but also established a new aesthetic value system. This value system emphasizes diversity, ornamentation, and imagination, representing a breakthrough and innovation beyond a singular cultural tradition. In the process of cultural hybridity, Chinoiserie is not a mere imitation of Chinese art but a reinterpretation and re-creation of existing cultural symbols. This re-creation breaks traditional aesthetic norms, resulting in a completely new artistic style.

Jewelry Piece: ChuCui Palace “Dancing in Clouds” Necklace

For instance, the “Dancing in Clouds” necklace by ChuCui Palace, a pioneer in Chinoiserie jewelry, uses the classic Eastern element of the crane as its theme. However, it does not strictly adhere to the traditional Chinese totemic imagery but instead reinterprets and abstracts its characteristics. The innovation lies in distilling the crane’s neck into elongated, tension-filled lines, contrasting with the densely arranged tail feathers, creating a balance between minimalism and intricacy. The design creatively incorporates the essence of Chinese ink painting into the overall color scheme.

The piece combines Chinese elements and ink art with Western setting techniques and integrates the minimalist and abstract styles found in Western modern art. It merges the dynamic natural forms typical of Chinoiserie with the intricate details of traditional Eastern art, transcending cultural singularity. On the foundation of traditional Eastern aesthetics and within a more modern context, it creates a new aesthetic value. Its approach aligns with classic Hybridity Theory, making it a quintessential artwork that emphasizes cultural diversity, ornamentation, and imagination.

Cultural Projection and Psychological Imagination

Chinoiserie is not only a visual form of cultural hybridity but also a psychological self-projection. Europe’s understanding of Eastern culture often involved misunderstandings and fantasies, and the Chinoiserie style is the visual expression of these fantasies. It embodies Europe’s curiosity, longing, and exotic imagination of the East, serving as an externalization of cultural psychology.

Through the artistic reconstruction of the “Other” (the East), Chinoiserie reflects Europe’s process of self-identity confirmation. It is not merely an imagination of the Other but also an exploration and definition of European culture during the early stages of globalization.

Chinoiserie tapestry by John Vanderbank the Elder, a renowned British tapestry maker and weaver, housed in the V&A Museum.

For example, the V&A Museum houses a Chinoiserie tapestry made by John Vanderbank the Elder, a renowned British tapestry maker and weaver. John Vanderbank was one of the key promoters of the Chinoiserie style. His tapestry designs feature a wealth of exotic patterns and figures, such as Chinese landscapes, Indian characters, and Japanese monks. The decorative content is often derived from secondary creations of Eastern illustrations and images rather than depicting authentic Chinese scenes. These works reflect Europe’s cultural projection of the East and serve as materialized fantasies. They are not merely everyday objects but also expressions of the psychological needs and identity of the upper class towards exotic cultures, representing an imaginative reconstruction of Eastern culture.

In conclusion, from the perspective of Hybridity Theory, the Chinoiserie style showcases the complexity and uniqueness of Eastern and Western cultures in their interactions, fusion, and redefinition. It is not merely a symbolic use of exotic cultures but also Europe’s early globalized artistic reconstruction of the “Other” and a confirmation of its self-identity. The distinctive charm of Chinoiserie lies in breaking traditional cultural boundaries, creating an aesthetic form that is neither entirely Eastern nor Western. It embodies a fascination, misinterpretation, and recreation of foreign cultures, reflecting the internal psychological projections and the ongoing exploration and innovation of one’s culture in cross-cultural exchanges. Chinoiserie is not just a historical art phenomenon but a vivid illustration of cultural interaction, fusion, and innovation in the globalization process, revealing the boundless creativity sparked by the collision of diverse cultures.

[communistkenobi]

sure thing! It’s a fairly mainstream “trans-inclusive” opinion that while sex is still biological (which is to say, binary, “real,” outside of social opinion, it exists in nature), gender is socially constructed. This frames being transgender as having a socially constructed gender that ‘conflicts with’ biological sex. This conforms to mainstream psychiatric models of transgenderism, which frames trans people as having an identity disorder or something psychologically wrong with us that makes us ‘want to have a gender that is different from our biological sex.’ It is a handy way of conceding that gender is social while still maintaining the belief that sex is a real biological thing. It is very common among doctors, cis allies, policy documents about trans inclusivity (the ones I’ve read, anyway), and is also a common opinion among trans people in my experience.

I really dislike this framing for several reasons - one is that it is in fact arguing that gender is biologically based by tying it to our ‘natural sex’ (if our gender ‘conflicts with’ our sex, then gender is still biologically based, and if the reason you want to change your gender is because of mental illness, then a desire to change one’s gender can only be gained through psychological abnormality). It also maintains sex as something that is real, unchanging, natural, and universal across space, time, and culture. It is none of those things -

sex can change (HRT, surgery, and so on changes our sex, in fact it’s called ‘sex reassignment surgery’ and HRT is comminly understood as initiating a ‘second puberty’),

sex is not binary - a belief that it is binary is what constructs the category of ‘intersex,’ ie people who don’t fit this supposed universal sex binary, and this construction produces medical violence against intersex people by positioning them as medically defective/abnormal,

sex is not ‘real’ in the sense that the category of ‘sex’ is a social construction that bundles a complex series of properties of the body (external genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, chromosomes, gametes, etc) together by claiming they always 100% coincide with each other and form a coherent whole (this is not true, ‘sex’ is a spectrum because sex refers to many, many things). You can read the work of Julia Serano, a trans biologist who has published many open access essays on this subject. I believe she recently published a piece critiquing the idea that gametes are binary

The process of assigning sex at birth does not even follow this supposed scientific fact properly, because we don’t run chromosome checks on infants, we don’t do ultrasounds on them to see what their internal organs look like, we don’t measure their hormone levels, and so on. Sex assignment at birth is a social process of doing a quick genital inspection of infants and then writing down their sex on birth records based on that inspection, and if those external genitals don’t conform to binary understandings of sex (eg the infant is intersex), these genitals are surgically altered to fit this binary model. I believe Adamson describes this in Beyond the Coloniality of Gender as preparing children for a life of ‘good heterosexual sex’ (this is a paraphrase, I don’t remember the exact quote)

Because sex is a socially constructed category, it is not universal, because social constructs are dependent on the social context they arise in. I’ve read a number of papers from postcolonial/decolonial scholars in particular critiquing this supposed universalism as a form of colonial domination (María Lugones’ Coloniality of Gender, Sally Engle Merry’s Colonial and Postcolonial Law, Boris Bertolt’s The Invention of Homophobia in Africa, Jenny Evang’s Is Gender Ideology Western Colonialism?, B Binaohan’s Decolonising Trans/Gender 101. These last two aren’t postcolonial works but they’re very instructive for understanding sex assignment as a deeply oppressive and non-scientific practice: Heath Fogg Davis’ Sex Classification Policies as Transgender Discrimination: An Intersectional Critique and Toby Beauchamp’s Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and US Surveillance Practices)

essentially, “sex is biological, gender is social” is a massive cop-out that still accepts the framing of binary sexual biological legitimacy, which is the foundational belief that produces transphobic violence and discrimination in society. I really like Judith Butler’s framing of it Bodies That Matter: if sex is this supposedly biological reality that can’t change, but our understanding of sex is only always in reference to our social interpretation and application of it in the world (eg gender), then sex is also socially constructed

we never should have let cis people get away with “sex is biological, gender is social”

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

John Cleese: Helen, I'm so, so happy to have you on this show. And the reason I'm happy is I can't get the woke people to come on and discuss it with me. We've asked over a dozen of them and they've basically refused. So, the way I want you to help me, Helen is that since they won't come on to answer the questions I'd like to ask, if I ask you those questions, will you give me the answers that they would normally give? Because you studied that, and you know how they think and why won't they discuss this with me?

Helen Pluckrose: So, you are coming here from a Marketplace of Ideas approach. The concept of debate, of bringing ideas together, comparing them, seeing which stand up best to critique, qualifying them, having them critique each other, is understood largely as a western white masculinist tradition.

Cleese: So, this is liberalism would you say?

Pluckrose: Yes, liberalism is very explicitly critiqued in what I would call "critical social justice," and most people call wokeness. Liberalism is the big enemy. This idea that if we get people together, we are then rational agents who can evaluate ideas, compare them and replace bad ideas with better ones, or as John Stewart Mill would say, "exchange error for truth."

This is, to the social justice activists, a western philosophy. It does not allow for the lived experience and the different knowledges of marginalized people.

Cleese: As I am a straight, white male, and an imperialist apparently...

Pluckrose: Yes, apparently.

Cleese: ... is that why they won't speak to me?

Pluckrose: It certainly is a big strike against you, yes. But even more than that, have you taken effort to educate yourself, do the work, uncover your own biases, dismantle your whiteness, detoxify your masculinity and decolonize your concepts of knowledge? Because if you have not done any of this, then you are not woke, you are not awake to the systems of power and privilege, you are still asleep and so there is no point in in speaking to you.

Cleese: Okay, but the whole thing sounds to me really quite authoritarian. Slightly like the medieval church. I mean they're very much saying what you can -- not just what you can say, but also really what you can think.

Pluckrose: It certainly is an authoritarian system. But if you truly believe that these systems of oppressive power absolutely exist and permeate everything, that they are perpetuated through language, they are doing harm to marginalized people every minute of every day, then the idea to control what people can say and what they can think and also to subject them to unconscious bias training to retrain their minds, does seem like a an effective way to achieve social justice.

Liberals like me and like you, presumably, will argue with this and say, no we need to argue about these bad ideas, we need to defeat these bad ideas by showing why they are bad. This doesn't work to the critical social justice people.

Cleese: Well one of the women who would not come on the show said that the very fact that we are having a discussion is the problem. I mean...

Pluckrose: Yeah, this this is particularly strong in the postcolonial, decolonial movement. You want to have a debate -- I don't know if you've seen the slogans, "my existence is not up for debate," that comes from the Trans Rights Movement -- if you want to debate...

Cleese: So, to disagree with them means that you're trying to disappear them completely.

Pluckrose: That's what it comes down to, yes. I mean, we saw Linda Sarsour also said, criticism of Islam, for example, is the denial of her right to exist. Now obviously, if Islam didn't exist, Linda still would, but the idea is that by criticizing any Identity or any belief system, you are not allowing people to exist as they are. But they just speak of existing, and even of genocide.

Cleese: I think an awful lot of people have no idea that that's what some aspects of woke are about, because they just say, well being woke is kind to people. And you know that's great.

Pluckrose: This idea that wokeness is about being nice, it is about just being aware of racism, sexism and homophobia and being opposed to it...

Cleese: Well, that's all totally sensible.

Pluckrose: Yes, but of course this is -- wokeness is not the only framework from which this can be done. Liberals also have been opposing racism for a very long time. Marxists oppose it on the grounds that it divides the working class. Conservatives generally oppose this as well, religious believers think that we are all the children of God.

This is what I have argued: any kind of policy needs to allow for people to come from different frameworks in opposing racism, sexism, homophobia or other bigotries. But the critical social justice movement does not accept that other frameworks do this.

Cleese: We mentioned cancel culture earlier. Do you want to add anything to that?

Pluckrose: Cancel culture is something that I've been dealing with for for quite a while. Because a lot of time people think of cancel culture as something that affects celebrities who are being hounded and perhaps not allowed to speak in one particular arena. And they say, "but you're still speaking, you haven't been canceled at all."

But if you look at who is actually being cancelled, the organization that I have worked with looks at blue and white collar workers who are being asked to undergo various kinds of training, are objecting to this training, and are being fired, suffering disciplinary action. Trade unions are very, very wary of even addressing the issue. So, cancel culture affects those who do not have a voice.

Cleese: That's very interesting. So it's the smaller people who suffer the worst, because they lose their jobs. Whereas people like you and me and JK Rowling and so forth, can speak out because they can't actually get us fired.

Pluckrose: This is why I would argue, from an admittedly biased leftwing point of view, that this cannot realistically be seen as a left-wing movement, when it arranges things so that only the independently wealthy can actually speak...

Cleese: That's funny.

Pluckrose: ... and when it supports corporations in putting, inflicting these kind of policies on workers. And then it stands with corporations against workers. This is very much against the whole ethos of the left. In the US, it's an $8 billion a year industry.

Cleese: What is?

Pluckrose: These kinds of trainings for employees.

Cleese: I'm fascinating by the way that corporations have -- they're just frightened of an economic boycott right?

Pluckrose: I am not sure how much a boycott would actually work. I mean, if we look at JK Rowling, her books are not failing to sell, are they? Even though there is such strong opinion. Such a small percentage of people actually adhere to these critical social justice ideas that I don't think a boycott can really work.

Cleese: Well, I'm hoping it doesn't because I'm thinking of the adaptation I'm doing of "Life of Brian."

Pluckrose: Are you going to be problematic again?

Cleese: I love that word!

==

I previously wrote about the whole "genocide" thing myself.