#structural oppression

[bi-sapphics]

found this worthy read on twitter and had to share for a potential reference that bisexual people over here can look at too!!

[chrysalis-the-butterfly]

Everyone’s always like, “Oh, Icarus shouldn’t have flown too close to the Sun, that’s why his wings melted,” but no-one thinks to ask what kind of bozo would make the wings using wax in the first place.  

[reconstructwriter]

Recognize how White Supremacy Culture affects you - and drowns you!

[faithisland]

now that transmascs are the fun exclusionist target I get to see every twenty posts something like "disgusting how trans men come on here and act like women oppress men, misandry isn't real! what a victim complex, men amiright" knowing full well what OP actually means is that is that they have an unnuanced understanding of feminism and oppression and believe that the identity "man" somehow completely overrides oppression and never adds to it.

but I have no way to know if Trusted Mutual believes that or just didn't understand the dogwhistles ...

[frodo-a-gogo]

also final word on this probably- I *like* Joyce Messier a great deal as a character. I think she's cool and interesting. I find it fascinating that she tends to approach things very bluntly. the words she uses and the manner in which she analyzes things, this is sort of an instance of a character who knows exactly *what she is* and articulates it in a manner congruent with the writers of the game. she is, as she says wryly but honestly, "a bourgeois woman". i cant think of too many rich people who would without prompting and prodding, self identify with marxist social taxonomies in this way, even with a thin veil of ironic self deprecation. She's educated. she knows the words and the motivating logics of class analysis. and shes *cool*. harry picks that up. honesty is cool. bluntness is cool. cynicism is cool. she is quite open about her place in the world and how she conceives of it. unlike a lot of other powerful figures in the game, i dont think shes completely swallowed by self justifying rhetoric the way, say, sunday friend is. or she is up to a point. she knows about countercultural movements and she has affinities for them and is also aware that they inevitably are consumed by capital. (this, by the way, is kind of complex in that like. ok its a depressing reality but also i think if the de team was fully bought into that line of thinking, they would not make this game. it is telling that joyce of all people would critique cindy on the basis of capital subsuming revolutionary art. I dont think joyce is wrong per se, but i think she is drawn to that line of thinking because it is *very comforting for someone of her class position to dismiss the value and power of revolutionary art and critique of capital* just a thought) She's disgusting in that her power is not rightfully hers. her position is not rightfully hers. she is actively repressing and oppressing others in service of disgusting, semi-fascistic, hypercapitalist forces. shes enjoying the comforts and benefits that such a role allows her. shes disgusting shes frustrating shes profoundly arrogant (as her clash with evrart claire proves definitively). Her self satisfied idiocy is what allows her to play with fire and foolishly assume she cannot be burned. She's smart but her comfortable position puts the blinders on her and so she's also pretty fucking stupid. and shes also deeply deeply sad. I empathize. I pity her. She's so fucking sad. I don't think she is drawn to self medication and self destruction through constant pale exposure or all that rueful nostalgic rumination for no reason. She knows what she is to the world and she knows what she's doing and she's too cowardly and comfortable and self interested to change, but she's too self-aware to ignore it completely. I think she probably dislikes herself to some degree and i think its destroying her. Like most of the cast of the game, she's complex and deeply human. She's hateful, but I also think she is too well realized to hate, at least not for me.

[aronarchy]

Why we don’t like it when children hit us back

To all the children who have ever been told to “respect” someone that hated them.

March 21, 2023

Even those of us that are disturbed by the thought of how widespread corporal punishment still is in all ranks of society are uncomfortable at the idea of a child defending themself using violence against their oppressors and abusers. A child who hits back proves that the adults “were right all along,” that their violence was justified. Even as they would cheer an adult victim for defending themself fiercely.

Even those “child rights advocates” imagine the right child victim as one who takes it without ever stopping to love “its” owners. Tear-stained and afraid, the child is too innocent to be hit in a guilt-free manner. No one likes to imagine the Brat as Victim—the child who does, according to adultist logic, deserve being hit, because they follow their desires, because they walk the world with their head high, because they talk back, because they are loud, because they are unapologetically here, and resistant to being cast in the role of guest of a world that is just not made for them.

If we are against corporal punishment, the brat is our gotcha, the proof that it is actually not that much of an injustice. The brat unsettles us, so much that the “bad seed” is a stock character in horror, a genre that is much permeated by the adult gaze (defined as “the way children are viewed, represented and portrayed by adults; and finally society’s conception of children and the way this is perpetuated within institutions, and inherent in all interactions with children”), where the adult fear for the subversion of the structures that keep children under control is very much represented.

It might be very well true that the Brat has something unnatural and sinister about them in this world, as they are at constant war with everything that has ever been created, since everything that has been created has been built with the purpose of subjugating them. This is why it feels unnatural to watch a child hitting back instead of cowering. We feel like it’s not right. We feel like history is staring back at us, and all the horror we felt at any rebel and wayward child who has ever lived, we are feeling right now for that reject of the construct of “childhood innocence.” The child who hits back is at such clash with our construction of childhood because we defined violence in all of its forms as the province of the adult, especially the adult in authority.

The adult has an explicit sanction by the state to do violence to the child, while the child has both a social and legal prohibition to even think of defending themself with their fists. Legislation such as “parent-child tort immunity” makes this clear. The adult’s designed place is as the one who hits, and has a right and even an encouragement to do so, the one who acts, as the person. The child’s designed place is as the one who gets hit, and has an obligation to accept that, as the one who suffers acts, as the object. When a child forcibly breaks out of their place, they are reversing the supposed “natural order” in a radical way.

This is why, for the youth liberationist, there should be nothing more beautiful to witness that the child who snaps. We have an unique horror for parricide, and a terrible indifference at the 450 children murdered every year by their parents in just the USA, without even mentioning all the indirect suicides caused by parental abuse. As a Psychology Today article about so-called “parricide” puts it:

Unlike adults who kill their parents, teenagers become parricide offenders when conditions in the home are intolerable but their alternatives are limited. Unlike adults, kids cannot simply leave. The law has made it a crime for young people to run away. Juveniles who commit parricide usually do consider running away, but many do not know any place where they can seek refuge. Those who do run are generally picked up and returned home, or go back on their own: Surviving on the streets is hardly a realistic alternative for youths with meager financial resources, limited education, and few skills.

By far, the severely abused child is the most frequently encountered type of offender. According to Paul Mones, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in defending adolescent parricide offenders, more than 90 percent have been abused by their parents. In-depth portraits of such youths have frequently shown that they killed because they could no longer tolerate conditions at home. These children were psychologically abused by one or both parents and often suffered physical, sexual, and verbal abuse as well—and witnessed it given to others in the household. They did not typically have histories of severe mental illness or of serious and extensive delinquent behavior. They were not criminally sophisticated. For them, the killings represented an act of desperation—the only way out of a family situation they could no longer endure.

- Heide, Why Kids Kill Parents, 1992.

Despite these being the most frequent conditions of “parricide,” it still brings unique disgust to think about it for most people. The sympathy extended to murdering parents is never extended even to the most desperate child, who chose to kill to not be killed. They chose to stop enduring silently, and that was their greatest crime; that is the crime of the child who hits back. Hell, children aren’t even supposed to talk back. They are not supposed to be anything but grateful for the miserable pieces of space that adults carve out in a world hostile to children for them to live following adult rules. It isn’t rare for children to notice the adult monopoly on violence and force when they interact with figures like teachers, and the way they use words like “respect.” In fact, this social dynamic has been noticed quite often:

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority” and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person” and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.

(https://soycrates.tumblr.com/post/115633137923/stimmyabby-sometimes-people-use-respect-to-mean)

But it has received almost no condemnation in the public eye. No voices have raised to contrast the adult monopoly on violence towards child bodies and child minds. No voices have raised to praise the child who hits back. Because they do deserve praise. Because the child who sets their foot down and says this belongs to me, even when it’s something like their own body that they are claiming, is committing one of the most serious crimes against adult society, who wants them dispossessed.

Sources:

“The Adult Gaze: a tool of control and oppression,” https://livingwithoutschool.com/2021/07/29/the-adult-gaze-a-tool-of-control-and-oppression

“Filicide,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filicide

[cringefailvox]

t4t chaggie. you agree. reblog

[archiveofmiksown]

hakita once said that v1 is not the main character of ultrakill and i've always found this idea so cool in the sense that we get to explore a narrative that absolutely does not give a shit about us. though our actions as v1 have large and devastating effects (cough gabriel cough) the character of v1 undergoes no changes. this isn't about us! we're simply going through the world with no clear intent to change it. shit just happens and we're there to be a bloody witness.

...that said, i find it infinitely more interesting that v2 plays a similarly insignificant role in the story. that v2 is another poor thing that the story doesn't give a shit about. it is one of two (so far) recurring bosses and what happens to it? it fucking DIES! except v2 gets development. except v2 has some clear intent when it seeks revenge. v2's arc is so similar to gabriel's except it is doomed by the narrative—sadder yet, it is abandoned by the narrative! v2 is living in a story that does not give a shit about it but it's somehow sadder to me....

[brother-emperors]

also to clarify, while I'm a Medici Hater, it's like. half a joke. I don't like them, but they're interesting, which is a more valuable metric than likability. I emphasize the Hater part because awhile back I called myself a Pazzi Apologist as a joke on twitter and all the Medici Stans™ decided to act like a bunch of condescending brats about it so I decided to make it my brand for fun and whimsy.

[philosophybits]

Unpolitical attempts to break out of the bourgeois family usually lead only to deeper entanglement in it, and it sometimes seems as if the fatal germ-cell of society, the family, were at the same time the nurturing germ-cell of uncompromising pursuit of another. With the family there passes away, while the system lasts, not only the most effective agency of the bourgeoisie, but also the resistance which, though repressing the individual, also strengthened, perhaps even produced him.

Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 2

[loudmound]

asking if there are any bloggers who talk about "transandrophobia" like it's a real thing who also aren't zionists is like asking if there are any terfs who aren't fascists.

[biblicalhorror]

Thinking about how Pete used to be a priest and Kevin's (unnamed) mom was a nun. The fact that Pete was clearly stripped of his title. And we don't hear anything about Kevin's mother beyond the fact that she's dead. Thinking about how Diane says that she thinks of Pete as her "creepy uncle" and hates him. Thinking about how Kevin being born was likely a huge scandal for Pete and his mother and led to him being kicked out of the church. Thinking about how Pete doesn't seem to have any remorse at all for the potential abuse of power that occurred which led to Kevin's conception. Thinking about how Pete was the one most likely to make jokes objectifying women with Kevin. Thinking about how Kevin was likely raised believing he was some sort of miracle or chosen one, destined for great things solely because acknowledgment of the shame surrounding the circumstances of his birth would require Pete admitting fault. Thinking about how normalized it must have been in his childhood to see women being talked down to, objectified, sexualized and made into nothing more than plot devices to powerful men. Thinking about the sense of entitlement he must have had baked into him, and the deep fear hiding underneath all of it that one day everyone is going to realize he's his father's biggest skeleton in the closet. Thinking about this show having one of the most nuanced and complex portrayals of the cycle of abuse and patriarchal violence that I've ever seen!!!

[greensaplinggrace]

"You can say 'all are welcome' but if wolves and sheep are both welcome you're only going to get wolves" is a quote that I think maybe end of season two alina needs to hear at some point tbh

[chryblossomjjk]

interesting how most of the people dropping moral think pieces on the lack of humanity following the attempted assassination of trump haven’t said a single fucking word about the current genocides happening…

[acertifiedmoron]

not to gotpost but my god they hated catelyn. like it was quite obvious they were not comfortable adapting a mother character who was emotionally abusive to one of the children in the household, and they either didn't have the time or didn't care enough to talk about the systemic prejudice bastards suffer in westeros and how that intersects with the disenfranchised status of noblewomen and the fundamental inequality of marriage, which obviously doesn't excuse catelyn's behaviour towards jon but gives you context to understand why she is like that. instead they framed it as an exclusively interpersonal conflict wherein catelyn was sort of made to look like the only one in the blasted continent who took issue with bastards and then this was turned into half of her personality which is how we got that incredible monologue about everything bad that has ever happened to the starks is because she 'couldn't love a motherless child'. now the really insidious thing about this is i'm certain the writers thought they were doing her character a favour, making her more likeable by having her expound on her flaws, because to them nothing was more discomfiting than a woman who would go to her grave completely unrepentant about being an inadequate mother, and i think this is also why they made her out to be so passive, constantly wanting to leave robb so she can return home to her youngest, because isn't that what a good, devoted mother would do? having littlefinger trick her into releasing jaime instead of it being a conscious and risky gamble because god forbid she exhibited any agency, even the agency to make mistakes in a tragedy. they turned her into a poor helpless woman who exists largely in the background for some audience sympathy, which is arguably the genre expectation her character is intentionally set up to fly in the face of in the books. because the northern war effort in books 1-3 was never robb's story, it was catelyn's. and they didn't get it. they didn't get it.

[lgbtlunaverse]

A group of misfits outside of society

So I saw this post the other day talking about how toga is never truly treated as "the girl one" in the league despite, after Magne died, being the only female member. And it got me thinking about how no matter how endearing the protective found family dynamics in fics are, she's never actually treated like the baby of the group either. After mustard is arrested in basically their first mission, she is the youngest member by several years and the only one who's still a teenager.

But if you look purely at the league's interactions, you wouldn't really be able to tell? No one tells her to stay home for dangerous missions, no one babies her, she's never dismissed based on still being a child either.

This becomes especially obvious in her friendship with twice. Twice is only like a year apart from aizawa in age, and toga is in the age range of a highschool sutdent, but if you compare the relationship the UA kids have with aizawa to the one toga has with twice, they could not possibly be more different.

Jin and Himiko are not a mentor-student dynamic. These are two people finding understanding in each other when they've never gotten it anywhere else. Jin looks out for her not because she's under his care, but because they're friends. And Himiko does exactly the same.

Objectively it's... obviously kind of a bad idea to let a 17 year old go out into life threatening battles without even the minimum protection the hero students are offered, but the league is a supervillain group. They're committing murder and doing domestic terrorism. None of these people should be here, this isnt't safe for any of them. What this highlight is just what the league is for all the people in it: a place away from society. Not just from stigma around their quirks or from hero-worship, but ALL societal norms. Including ideas about gender and mental illness and about what teenager should or shouldn't be doing. That's why it attracted people like Magne, Twice, and Himiko.