#than a conservative white dude)

[nickbutnodick]

i havent been to the library in foreveeeerrrr (less than a month) im dying.... dyyyyiiiinnng.... neeeeedddd boooooookkkkkkssss.... (lives in a house thay contains more books than any other house on earth)

[king-sassy08]

Google search queer summer wedding outfits

[Skinny white lesbian in a suit saying 'my friend who is nb said I look good']

[Skinny white person w beard in a skirt]

[Skinny white person w nail polish]

[Token skinny black person in a suit]

Where are the fat people and where are the brown people and WHY is everyone in six layers for a summer wedding

[vagueiish]

oh my godddd, the college i go to has a fucking turning point usa chapter

[whereisthedamndaddymanual]

We can joke about 'lil pimples

But you can always be like, your interest in all that comes out of me. Corn for thanksgiving.

[kintatsujo]

I stg the reactions I keep seeing to the Dungeon Meshi "What else could you call the short-lived races" comic has me half ready to write a reading comprehension worksheet

Mithrun isn't being any more racist than any of the other characters in the short, and you could argue he's being the second least racist after the characters without speaking lines because he's not the one who was making fun of the idea of calling people what they'd prefer to be called

Dude literally got asked without context "what's another thing you could call the short-lived races" and said the quiet part everyone else was dancing around out loud because he doesn't have the capacity to be embarrassed about it; it doesn't actually have anything to do with how he actually sees tallmen, halfoots, etcetera.

Fleki especially is basically being your conservative coworker making fun of Juneteenth being a thing.

The reason all the other Canaries are shocked at Mithrun is entirely because they basically fucked around and found out that he doesn't have a filter the way they do anymore.

Anyway the point is, the comic is about a very specific phenomenon that white people do when they think no one in the room cares (and I assume privileged conservative types in other cultures do as well) it's not about specifically Mithrun being more racist than anyone else

(please note also literally fucking everyone in Dungeon Meshi has something they're casually racist about. Half the cast thinks Chilchuck is a baby. Kabru called demihumans "savages." This comic has a lot of social commentary dammit and the characters having bigotries they haven't examined is part of that.)

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for saying my family shows favoritism towards my baby cousin?

(This is copied from my Reddit drafts because my partner told me tumblr would be better for this and I trust them)

Okay this is a long one so I’m just gonna throw out fake names for everyone and everyone is white middle class Americans

I, Op, 20M, I’m a trans man not accepted by my family. This is relevant

Renee, 20F, my twin sister

Bea, 16F, my younger sister

Lee, 35F, my aunt on my father’s side

Lucas, 2M, my cousin, son of Lee

Suzie, 5F, my cousin, daughter of Lee

My father, 44M, the patriarch of our whole family

My mother, 45F

Grandpa, 76M, paternal grandpa, previous patriarch

Grandma, 74F, paternal grandma

So I’m sending this in on Christmas Day of 2023. For some context, I still live at home, but it’s more of a roommate situation now that I’m an adult. Renee lives on her out-of-state college campus but visits for holidays, and Bea is still a high schooler. Lee, her children, and her husband who isn’t relevant to this (I love my uncle, we just literally never talk) live across the country. My father is losing the battle with cancer and can’t travel, so we had two separate christmases this year, one with my immediate family and one with Lee. Grandma and Grandpa went to Lee’s, which was awesome for me because that meant I got to avoid them this year!

As the character list above states, I’m (one of) the oldest of the five grandkids with my cousins being born a lot later than me and my sisters. My family is a traditional WASP family and staunchly conservative with Aunt Lee actively being a cop right now while my parents and Grandpa served in the military. Growing up undeniably queer was hilarious, I know. But the family dynamic wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, my family did a good job of trying to hide the fact that Renee was the favorite child lol, but that was more on the basis of her having the same traditional values that they do until Aunt Lee had Suzie, then she obviously became the favorite. Fine by me, she’s an adorable girl and I love spoiling her. Also, ACAB does apply for Aunt Lee for being complacent in this system, it’s not just the most relevant part of the story besides explaining how she fits into the family dynamic

But then Lee had Lucas a few years later and the focus in the family shifted to him. At first, it was baby fever making everyone dote over him (and I’m guilty of this too) but after a while, I realized that the fever hasn’t died down. If we had family reunions, everyone would flock to Lucas and I would be the one watching Suzie. For a toddler, she’s a great conversationalist, but it was still sad to see all her aunts and uncles and cousins showering her baby brother with attention and not her. And then the comments started. That my father would only refer to Lucas as “my nephew” even when talking directly to Lee (unhinged to witness in person). That Grandpa was so happy to finally have a grandson (felt great). The lady-killer comments and guessing what profession he’s gonna go into based on how chubby of a baby he is (the money’s on Linebacker, little dude is built like a truck). Stuff like that

None of these comments were ever made about Suzie when she was born, and I really don’t want to admit that it’s because Lucas is a boy, but thats the only answer I can think of when trying to understand the favoritism. Lucas is showered in gifts and love and while I know newborns need that, Suzie received nowhere near this much attention. Lee’s husband doesn’t go to family functions because he works full time, but I heard Suzie mumble at Thanksgiving last month that she wanted to go home to daddy. It broke my fucking heart, so I called him and she got to FaceTime with my uncle until my phone died

At this point, I’m not even upset that the family ignores my obvious trans-ness as I’m over a year on T (paid for by myself too) in favor of my boy cousin. I’m upset that Suzie is getting left out of the fawning while she’s still super young and she could grow up resenting Lucas because of it.

Anyways, so this morning we opened gifts as an immediate family and I got to FaceTime my significant other as they unboxed their gift from me and we were having a good time until my dad FaceTimes Grandpa. Grandpa answers and Dad immediately asks how his nephew is. Lucas is pushed in front of the phone and all I can hear is asking about how Lucas is, is Lucas talking yet, is Lucas reading yet. I manage to squeeze my head in and ask about Suzie and Lee’s voice off camera says that “oh she’s fine, just snobbish.” Snobbish? A five year old?

And here’s where I’m probably the Asshole. Honestly, I’m looking between ESH and JAH here, but would perfectly understandable if tumblr decides YTA. My response to Lee’s comment was: “well maybe she wouldn’t be if everyone didn’t pick Lucas as the family favorite.”

My dad smacked me upside the head, Renee and Bea got really pissed off, and the FaceTime went quiet until it was cut off and Grandpa called back to talk to Dad privately. Bea called me an asshole and while my Mom got onto her for her language, Mom agreed that I was.

My dad came back from the phone and did the silent point towards his bedroom, y’all with shitty parents know the one. Because I’m twenty fucking years old and pay RENT here, I shook my head, grabbed my keys, and went to go hang out with my significant partner and work friends. We had a great time and I’m currently in the car with my significant other while typing this. I’m gonna spend the night at their place and go back in the morning to see how bad the damage is. My significant other says I was justified in what I said, but two of my work friends (one who’s a Cishet guy who grew up in a similar household and another who’s a new dad with his own son) say that what I said was uncalled for and rude. They explained that I had no right to weaponize Lucas and Suzie like that and I understand that. I’m just tired of Suzie being neglected and, selfishly I know, I’m tired of how my identity is ignored as well

So, tumblr, AITA?

TL;DR, My two year old cousin is the “only” grandson in the family. The family ignores my male identity and my baby cousin’s five year old sister to fawn over the two year old. Am I The Asshole for pointing this out point blank in front of the whole family on Christmas morning?

What are these acronyms?

[sepublic]

Given Luz’s arc in the Boiling Isles was about expecting fantasy only to encounter reality underneath, I find it fitting her villain follows a similar trajectory. We are introduced to the enigmatic Emperor Belos, a strange and mysterious villain wielding arcane magic. Many of us understandably speculated that he was some sort of lich or other type of demon, and in the end…

He’s just some guy; Just another bigoted human. Even with his human persona Philip Wittebane, he attempts to frame himself as some tragic character unfairly hurt by society…

But again, there’s the simpler truth; He’s just an immature jerk. That’s why he’s disliked. And it’s interesting, how instead of the romanticized, sympathetic, larger than life villain, we have one closer to reality, and accurate to the actual people in power that Belos is based off of; Entitled (wo)manchildren with delusions of grandeur. It’s fittingly mundane and literally what Luz struggled with back home.

Belos is every conservative politician who thinks he’s been deeply wronged by minorities, and blames them for “taking away” a loved one who clearly made their own choice and was happier for it, because self-perceived victimization provides a handy excuse for their banal actions. They say they’re maintaining the sanctity of society but really they just want to control their perfect little worlds, and have more than enough devil’s advocates. Think of guys like Elon Musk; Some mediocre white dude who thinks of himself as particularly exceptional and self-made, when really he just stood on the shoulders of others and stole, and throws a tantrum whenever he doesn’t get his way.

He’s the suburban middle-class white dude who’s bored and thinks shooting lions in Africa makes him a big man. He’s the sweet little brother who started watching a misogynistic streamer and is now a raging bigot who refuses to grow out of it, worshipping other mediocre white men. He’s a mundane bully with no greater reason than that it’s easier to hurt others and put them down to make himself feel taller by comparison; Not so much because he’s been hurt (if at all), but because he doesn’t care.

He’s the bully who cheers for Dumbo because he lacks the self-awareness to realize he’s the villain onscreen. And people like that often don’t accept help, and sometimes they never needed it to begin with because their issues don’t come from a lack of compassion from others. You should try to understand others, but sometimes all you’ll find in some is banality. Belos isn’t some type of made up creature, at his core he’s the exact kind of person you’ll encounter in real life, hence his mundane parallel in Jacob Hopkins.

And this is all very fitting for Luz’s arc; Luz went to the Boiling Isles expecting some form of escapism, but in the end, the exact same problems she encountered at home followed her there. The same type of person that contributed to Luz being deemed deviant in the U.S. also plays a role in Luz feeling unwelcome in the Demon Realm; A Puritan white man, one of the progenitors for the founding fathers of America, and its evangelical culture.

The friends Luz meets, and the people she resolves conflicts with (some of whom do fulfill the sympathetic antagonist niche), are just like you and I. There’s no real difference between witches/demons and humans. What Luz learns in the Boiling Isles still applies to her human life; She didn’t succeed in running away, but actually unwittingly grew to handle it and meeting new people. She developed the self-awareness needed to avoid becoming like those who originally hurt her, and after helping so many others was allowed to realize she was also entitled to setting boundaries and prioritizing her own health.

Luz finding the isles is fundamentally no different than a person in real life moving somewhere else, and/or finding a community of other humans like them, with the presence of kids like Masha and their friends displaying how that applies in real life. Luz still learned how to deal with reality, she had it in herself all along. She didn’t ignore her problems in the Boiling Isles, she faced them there with support. The Demon Realm and Luz’s problems there aren’t all that different from her ‘real’ life, they’re just as real and that’s why they still matter and are good for Luz. It’s all one big metaphor in the sense that it’s equivalent and applicable, and Luz figured that out like the audience did; Her ‘escapism’ was just her life back home but with a different coat of paint, and that’s good.

[palmtreepalmtree]

This is honestly still so shocking to me. As a California lawyer, I feel like it's difficult to understate the impact of John Eastman's fall.

Before Trump, John Eastman was a fixture of the California legal community. He was the Dean of Chapman University's law school for years. He was regularly interviewed in local media to get the conservative legal viewpoint, and even though I almost always disagreed with his positions, his reasoning was usually cogent and thoughtful. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for fuck's sake (this is not a thing that stupid, sloppy, or thoughtless people can achieve or do--you can have bad and seriously wrong opinions, sure, but you can't be thoughtless).

I swear though, it sometimes feels like the entire conservative base has been captured by some kind of mania. He continues to insist that his prosecution is politically motivated. Even as his own witnesses collapsed on the lies he continues to peddle:

Testifying in Eastman’s defense was Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who has stated the election was stolen. But at the trial, Gableman admitted that his own 14-month inquiry into the election failed to prove that fraud cost Trump the election.

Another Eastman witness, John Yoo, a longtime friend and a Berkeley Law professor, testified that Joe Biden had won the White House “fair and square” and that Pence had “unassailable grounds” in refusing to reject electoral votes.

I mean, I guess at this point he just has to go all in on the lie. He allegedly says that his legal fees are going to cost him between $3 to $3.5 million and he's raised something like $500k for his legal defense.

But this doesn't sound like someone who is lying. It sounds like someone in a fucking cult:

[Eastman] said the bar trial was “extraordinary and unprecedented” but gave him a chance to present wider evidence of election fraud than had been previously aired. “It was eye-opening for a lot of people about the amount of illegality that we exposed during that trial,” Eastman said.

My dude, the Judge issued a 128 page ruling that found you guilty of 10 out of 11 counts of misconduct. Exactly what did you expose except your own ass?

Eastman portrays himself as a battling patriot who has been subjected to “false narratives and calumnies.” He said he is the victim of “lawfare,” an attempt to silence unpopular views with legal machinery.

“We are in a rather significant fight, and for whatever reason, I am the lead point of the spear in that fight, and I am taking it on, as I think my duty as a citizen requires,” he said. “We’ll do what it takes.”

My god, someone needs to fucking deprogram this guy.

Anyhow, this continues to be insane to me.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jack Jenkins at RNS:

(RNS) — A diverse group of Christians is throwing support behind Vice President Kamala Harris’ White House bid, organizing fundraisers and Zoom calls in hopes of helping catapult the Democrat to victory in November — and, they say, reclaiming their faith from Republicans in the process. Their efforts come on the heels of similar campaigns aimed at specific constituency groups, such as the recent “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom call that featured celebrities and grabbed headlines. John Pavlovitz, a liberal-leaning Christian author and activist, was on that call when he hatched the idea for a Christian-centric version and texted his friend Malynda Hale, a singer, actress and fellow activist. “We had a conversation about how, specifically on the Democratic side of the political spectrum, you don’t hear a lot of people talking about their faith,” Hale told Religion News Service in an interview. “We wanted people to know that there are progressive Christians, there are Christians on the Democratic, left-leaning side, so that they didn’t feel alone.”

The result was Christians for Kamala, a part-fundraiser, part-virtual roundtable livestreamed event on Monday (Aug. 12). Featured speakers cited their faith as they praised liberal policies and personally endorsed Harris — who recently entered the presidential race after President Joe Biden bowed out — and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Over the course of the nearly three-hour event, the group raised more than $150,000 for the Harris campaign, a number that has climbed to just shy of $200,000 in the days since. “It’s been really difficult to keep up with the flood of comments and connections that have been coming in,” said Pavlovitz, who said the only formal help he received from the Harris campaign was in setting up a donation system for fundraising. A number of Christian groups — including evangelicals, a constituency key to former President Donald Trump’s base — have assembled similar calls in the lead up to next week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Most have had little to no assistance from the official Harris-Walz campaign, which, barely a month old, has yet to announced a dedicated faith outreach director. The emerging grassroots coalition vies not only to bolster Harris but also to push back on what organizers say is a false assumption that to be Christian is to be a Republican — or a supporter of former President Donald Trump.

[...] That diversity was on display during the Christians for Kamala call, which included a mix of faith leaders such as the Rev. Jacqui Lewis, of Middle Collegiate Church in New York City, and the Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., head of the nonprofit Hip Hop Caucus; activists like environmentalist Bill McKibben and LGBTQ+ rights advocate Charlotte Clymer; commentators such as CNN’s Van Jones; and politicians, including New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Texas State Rep. James Talarico. The speakers linked their support for specific policies, such as working to blunt the impacts of climate change or passing immigration reform, to their faith and Christian Scripture. Some rebuked conservative Christianity’s ties to the GOP, calling it a form of Christian nationalism. “My faith in Jesus leads me to reject Christian nationalism and commit myself to the project of a multiracial, multicultural democracy where we can all freely love God and fully love our neighbors,” said Talarico, a Presbyterian Church (USA) seminarian who has been vocal in his condemnation of Christian nationalism in his state. “That same faith leads me to support Vice President Harris to be the next president of the United States.”

Although a member of a mainline denomination, Talarico was also a speaker on a separate “Evangelicals for Harris” Zoom call assembled on Wednesday evening. Organized by Faith Voters, a 501(c)4 organization, the effort was geared toward conservative Christians who have disproportionately sided with Trump. The call struck a different tone than Christians for Kamala: some speakers noted they had never endorsed a candidate before, and at least one pastor suggested he was risking friendships and relationships with his congregation by participating.

[...] The calls add to a slate of organizing efforts launched in recent days aimed at specific religious groups. Nearly 500 faith leaders have signed on to a letter endorsing Harris, a “Latter-day Saints for Harris” call was convened last week and multiple separate calls have been organized for Jewish Americans — including one on Thursday that targeted Jewish women and featured singer Barbra Streisand. A separate “Catholics for Kamala” call, facilitated in part by the Harris campaign, was also slated for this week but organizers rescheduled it until after the Democratic National Convention, citing scheduling conflicts. According to Pavlovitz, his group is already partnering with others, such as Catholics for Kamala, Christian Democrats of America and Vote Common Good. What form their collaborations take remains to be seen, but Pavlovitz said he is hopeful for whatever comes next.

Christians fed up with the religious right’s monopolization of what it means to be a Christian rallied to support Kamala Harris on multiple recent calls, such as Christians For Harris and Evangelicals For Harris. Christians need to vote for the REAL Christian in the race, and that’s Harris (and not antichrist Trump). #HarrisWalz2024

[leohttbriar]

Someone brought an overhated character poll to my dash about Kai Winn and im literally so sad about the responses. I knew there were people who hated her but it's really baffling to me how maybe 10 people tops acknowledge her past and the reasonings behind her choices, they just see a space Karen.

oh dude, i'm sorry that sucks. and "sad" really is a simple but fairly complete word when it comes to the character of winn adami, huh.

like. i think a lot about how she's the most normal-looking woman on the show. she is also, simply, normal. she is faithful and political and appears and acts in ways far more familiar to us than most characters. even the fact of her alien-faith hardly serves to alienate, given that she is faithful in the way we might be--without true expectation of ever meeting the divine in this life. while kira can seem more like a fictional character when she speaks of the prophets, due to her proximity to them, winn sounds like the person accosting you on a street corner to talk about the rapture.

that's the thing, though, isn't it. about the "karen" phenomenon in general. there is nothing uniquely bad about middle-aged white women--nothing that makes them uniquely ungovernable in social spheres in ways men aren't. in ways everyone isn't, in some way. (merely anecdotal evidence, but my own experience in the service industry made me far more wary of men in their 30s wearing patagonia vests over dress-shirts). winn adami is a normal sort of frustration to people. one they encounter in the day-to-day. the political conservative who stands outside of planned parenthood and tells girls not to throw away their everlasting souls. the pentecostal women speaking gibberish in church, gesturing to the heavens with their out-of-fashion french manicures, who brought a tater-tot hot dish with extra kraft cheese to the pot luck. the women with cross-walls. with like. so many crosses. the women with leathery tans on the aging skin of their arms and neck. the women who quietly walk into voting booths around the world and choose "safety" over anything else, whether or not that "safety" is real.

at least. that's who people think winn is. setting aside the fact that most people don't truly know the kinds of women listed above, that it's unlikely they've spared a single ounce of pity for women like that ever in their entire lives, winn is not exactly pitiable in this way. she is awash in power. she is intelligent. she thinks. she would stand in a voting booth and choose "safety" (whether or not it's real) but she's not the lady wearing a t-shirt that says trump could grab her pussy if he wanted. she's not one of the many blonde women on fox news. she's not even sandra day o'connor or any other female conservative intellectual. because she's a metaphor.

we don't know her real-world politics because she's a fictional character in a fictional universe leading a fictional world. we know she's a conservative because fights very very hard to maintain the status quo regarding her bajoran religion and its teachings. but we don't know how any of that can be truly allegorized to conservative policies in the real-world. the main tension being: conservatives in the real-world base a lot of truly evil policy on a made-up divine figure interpreted through thousands of made-up hermeneutics and it is materially all Not Real. in ds9, the prophets are actual beings who affect reality. winn's said and done things on the show that sound like something an annoying woman with a turquoise-cross around her neck would say at a utah city council meeting about creationism and "inappropriate books." she also says things that a woman would say at a protest against the racist and paternalistic policies of the british museum. all we know of her as a political figure is that she is conservative. and like, power-hungry and desperate, but those aren't essentially related. she wants to conserve. and that encompasses more than one thing.

which means that people, when they see her, simply aren't thinking. they react to a woman who looks as she does. who speaks like a politician. who makes decisions that are unfair. but, exactly as you said, the show grounds her. they give her a past. they richly flesh out so much about her. they have her acting too rationally sometimes for someone of her professed faith. they have her acting completely irrational as her gods reject her again and again. all while she clings to them with a faith that endured actual torture at the hands of violent imperialists who yet attack her planet and yet attack her and yet she has to speak with as the leader of bajor.

and it's hard to see (beyond the obvious) why this character receives so much vitriol when you have characters like garak and dukat and kira who all are considered charming and beloved in some way or another, while still being as complex as they are. (and i don't even think dukat is all that complex.) even sisko has some moments that, if i lived in his world, i would be somewhat repulsed by--like when jake begs him to let the prophets go and sisko embraces the cosmic over the request of his son. (again: the prophets are real though, so my "repulsion" is more a reaction against people i see as priests, who i find in the real world, as a rule, awful.)

so. it's definitely sad. because the level and kind of hate bestowed upon this character really does seem to be a symptom of a much larger issue: of course, misogyny.

also that people don't tend to think.

[copperbadge]

Hi Mr Starbuck! Some friends and I are moving in a few months and we're eyeing various places all over the US. Chicago came up as a relatively affordable big city (compared to LA and NYC) and I have to ask the resident Tumblr Chicagoan his opinion. As a resident who lives and works in the windy city, what's your big pros and cons of residing there (especially things you might not encounter as a tourist)? (also, how accurate is your "guide to chicago" still, since its been a few years!)

Well, I definitely have opinions!

The guide to Chicago is no longer accurate -- too many places have closed or moved, and the pandemic altered a lot (for example the Money Museum still exists but I'm not sure if it has regular hours even now). I should do a new one but like, I really don't get out much anymore so I can't talk about restaurants outside of a VERY local area, and I never could talk much about hotels, which just leaves points of interest mostly already covered by Atlas Obscura. :D At this point it'd just be kind of moot, others are doing it better than I am.

Chicago is inexpensive compared to New York or Los Angeles, but like, that's everywhere in America. Chicago is still a quite pricey city to live in, mainly because the taxes are so high -- 10.25% sales tax, for example, and my property taxes are also pretty steep. People joke about Taxachusetts, but I'm pretty sure Chicago at least has it beat (and 2/3 of the state's population lives in Chicago or the outlying suburbs). Housing is not at a premium in the way it is in NY and LA but depending on where you want to live and how far you want to commute it can still be very expensive. My housing was never less than half of my monthly income until I bought this place, and then ONLY because the job I'm in now came with a $10K/yr raise from my last one.

Chicago does have great culture, great museums, great food, and it's a liberal island in a pretty conservative region. It is however quite segregated, so if you are any race other than white, living here can get a little more complicated than I've portrayed it as a white dude. There is significant crime and particularly gun crime, but it's generally confined to specific regions of the city. That said, even if you discount crime, the Chicago PD are corrupt as fuck and uninterested in being helpful, so if you are from a demographic the cops enjoy harassing, it will not be different here.

I do love the city, warts and all. I like the water, I like the people, I like the midwestern vibe. I'd find it very hard to leave, especially because I have a network of friends here, but also because I just plain like it and I know it really well. There is a very short list of cities I'd consider leaving Chicago for, and most of those would have to have a well-paying job waiting for me. But it did take me time to fall in love with it -- it took a few years before it felt like home.

It's a little difficult to get more specific without knowing more about your situation -- what you do for work, what your budget is like, what your goals are in leaving where you are. Do you prefer to drive most places? (Parking and traffic can both get dicey.) Can you tolerate taking public transit if driving is inconvenient? Is the industry in which you work something that has a lot of openings here? Do you want to live in an urban environment, and if so are you prepared to live in a likely somewhat shitty apartment to do so? If you prefer to live in a house, are you prepared for a long commute? What do you like to do for fun and is there a thriving culture for that here? What is it important to have access to -- museums, concerts, theater, sport? Where do you need to travel to regularly (ie, I go to Austin several times a year) and how do you prefer to travel there?

Anyway, yeah -- like, I love it but I have few illusions about it. If you want to chat further feel free to hit me up by email, happy to answer more specific questions!

[radgirl-spray]

Rant.

it always gives me whiplash when gringos call me or other latinas on radblog "Republican" and "nazis".

Because they are so sure they are making such the point about us being nazis and bringing conservative and apocalyptic takes on them because we don't want men in females spaces, and yet from our perspective, they are still thousands of people all across latam who simply dissapeared when the north american goverment decided to interfiere in latam's politics which lead to real, actual genocides based on politic stance. Specifically being leftist.

My country in particular had one of the most brutal dictatorships in latam. Over 40.000 people were killed, tortured or simply dissapeared just to prevent socialism, despite the socialist president at the time being chosen democatrically.

Now, women, mostly college students feminists at the time were systematically tortured. I'm not talking about internet persecution or some horrible missgender crime. I'm talking of whole brigades raping 14 to 21 year old girls. I'm talking of soldiers setting girls on fire. I'm talking about men open pregnant women to dispatch the baby. I'm talking about torture and murder.

Why? because they dared to talk about politics, because they dared to talk about contraceptives. About feminine issues. For being Left.

It was also a time where the wrong opinion could get you killed, could mean your children being killed. For being brown, for being indio, for being poor. Think of you neighbour accusing you of hearing certain music and your house being raded and your teenage children being taken to a camp to never be seen again. I'm not talking 100 years ago. I'm talking my parents and anyone who is 5 years older than me.

To this day we are extremely affraid of police and the military. The levels of poverty Latam has are hardly something people in first world countries have seen in a years, because the poverty itself has been caused for said countries and their progress. I'm talking whole neighbourhoods of houses made of cardboard while some first world country leaves a bunch of chemical wasteland just right up the corner where we live so they live better.

Two years ago there was a breakout in my country, it was quite famous. You know the first thing the police did?

They raped and hanged a girl on the street. In 2021.

And then comes some random USA/Canadian citizen and calls you "a republican" and "a nazi".

Did I mention after II world war many nazis escaped to latam and formed whole german colonies for either experimenting on humans or create pedophile nets and raping centers? the more you know.

But we are nazis, we are republicans. Despite the fact that that our indigenous people recognize women as adult human females, that indigenous women were hunted down and used historically to be bred by whites colonizers just like them. Despite the fact that most of us are mestizos, that color and class go hand in hand in latam, that we have a culture heavily based on religious intakes of what's women's place and that we shut up when the men talk, because that's macho culture. We are nazis and we are republicans, despite the fact that their fucking country killed thousands of us because we wanted to try left and to hope for something more than extreme poverty. Shit, we've even been called colonizer by some chicano who doesn't even speak spanish. I mean, what are the odds.

But the white men need to speak, the gringo has something to say, they need us to respect their pronouns and go along with their progress. So they packed their bullshit religion and ship it right down the frontera, and now we have to swallow too. Because we are latinas, we live in the backyard, right? what do we know about the experiences of american dudes in skirts.

[actualadvocacybruh]

I was joking about the white boy taco thing but apparently it did trigger the fuck out of the conservative pundits

Literally ALL of them made videos or tweets comparing it to either black people and watermelons or just outright claiming it’s no different than when Nazis oppressed Jews

Fragile MFers can’t take a joke about white people even when it’s a white dude telling it

It was funny and I stand by it as a HWITE and will even give Kamala and Tim the pass personally to square this grand injustice….

[mariacallous]

Over the past few weeks, Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump have both made some huge plays to attract specific groups of men: young ones, in Trump’s case, and white ones, in Harris’.

Harris’ supporters have been hosting huge Zoom calls organizing “white dudes,” while Trump’s made appearances on a wide assortment of fratty podcasts and livestreams. The campaigns’ strategies with these voters are completely different, and they’re each creating their own vision for what masculinity could look like in their parties.

Let’s talk about it.

How Trump and Walz Are Redefining Masculinity

Before this week, Adin Ross, the 23-year-old streamer, had been known for playing NBA 2K, allegedly inadvertently tipping off authorities about accused rapist and human trafficker Andrew Tate’s plans to flee Romania, and getting kicked off Twitch for spewing slurs and hosting the white nationalist Nick Fuentes. This is certainly not the best résumé when applying to become a political commentator, but it was enough for Donald Trump to stream with him for more than an hour at his Mar-a-Lago home on Monday in what equated to a virtual campaign stop, complete with Ross apparently committing a campaign finance violation by gifting Trump with a gaudily-decorated Cybertruck.

The Ross stream is just the latest in a series of streams, podcasts, and TikTok appearances Trump has made with a specific subset of hypermasculine creators who cater to an audience of politically disaffected young men. Trump has long catered to this group, acknowledging their support across fringe parts of the internet in the run-up to his election as president in 2016. But this cycle, he’s engaging with them more directly—appearing, for example, at UFC events—in the apparent belief that this will help turn out younger voters.

The partisan gap between young men and women voters has nearly doubled over the past 25 years, with men growing increasingly more conservative, according to recent polls. With these numbers, you’d think Trump would have little to worry about with this demographic, but some experts suggest that despite this growing divide, the likelihood of young men between the ages of 18 and 29 actually going to the polls might be low.

“He’s trying to pull out base intensity. These young men often don't vote, especially the newcomers to the field,” says Rachel Kleinfeld, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Getting them to care enough to come vote—it's easier if it's something more emotional. All politics runs on emotion.”

She continued: “Most cultures have rites of passage to grow up. It's not an easy thing to do, and we don't in America. And we lost, for a generation, a lot of traditional role models … What we got in their place were these internet influencers and celebrities whom a lot of people aspire to be now.”

Democrats are attempting to create their own contrasting vision for masculinity in light of Trump embracing these creators. Last week, Mike Nellis, a Democratic digital strategist, helped organize the White Dudes for Harris organizing call, where dozens of white male politicians and celebrities spoke to thousands of their white male counterparts about voting for Harris. Throughout the call, many of the speakers—including Harris’ veep pick, Tim Walz—made the case for these same disaffected young men to abandon the Republican Party.

“I think that there are millions and millions of white dudes in this country who are sick and tired of MAGA politics and who reject Project 2025 and need a model and permission structure for something else, and so that’s what we’re doing with White Dudes for Harris,” says Nellis.

Nellis saw Harris’ decision to bring Walz onto her ticket as another play at attracting white male voters. “The guy's a father, and what would be like a ‘real man’ on paper. But here he is supporting and advocating for women's rights. He's campaigning for a woman of color for president. He's talking about ending gun violence,” says Nellis. “There are new models out there, and so I think that there's a fight over what it means to be a man.”

“We've had a cultural problem with young men for a number of years that is now becoming a political problem, and both parties are recognizing it,” says Kleinfeld.

Back in 2019, I profiled a YouTuber named Joey Salads who was running for a Staten Island House seat against Nicole Malliotakis. He never stood a chance at winning, but his Instagram model girlfriend, nice cars, and 10 million followers convinced him he had a shot. Salads admired Trump, seeing him as someone for whom the rules also did not apply in the pursuit of money and success.

4chan incels and hypermasculine YouTube pranksters had been viewing Trump as a role model even before the former president was elected. In 2024, those influencers and brainrotted forum posters have more influence than ever, and they’re paying it forward to the man who made it all possible.

“In a way, they’re kind of like post-incels, having overcome some of their inceldom with fame and followers but retaining the resentments and insecurities that get expressed in bizarre ways,” Jack Z. Bratich, a communications expert and professor at Rutgers University, tells me. “It’s possible Trump’s campaign is trying to extend their reach with these types, or else they are just seeking to increase the voting numbers of young men and happen to have stumbled upon this new mutation of online youth.”

Around 49 percent of young white men voted in the 2020 election, according to data from the Center for American Women and Politics. That’s a nine point increase from 2016.

[butch-reidentified]

What's living in Florida like as a lesbian? Most (liberal) people I talk to balk when I say I'm considering moving there because they all think it's populated exclusively by bigoted swamp creatures, but I don't want to listen to stereotapes from people who've never lived there. I know what the politics are like there, but what about day-to-day living/homophobia?

I tell people this CONSTANTLY but nobody seems to grasp it: while Florida has very red areas (every state does), especially rurally and in the panhandle (which shouldn't even be part of FL imho), all of the actual cities (like Tampa, St. Pete, Orlando, Miami, Fort Lauderdale) are very much blue and pretty fun to live in. they also all have LGBT+ (ofc the + is everywhere now) events and communities and parts of town etc. I love it here and have had practically zero issues being an extremely gnc lesbian here, except when I lived in Sarasota (red town with a lot of money - sucks ass) and got legally fired for being gay back in early 2020. that could've happened in a red town almost anywhere before it was illegal.

I've even had really fun, awesome experiences chatting (about what it's like to be a lesbian) with conservative white dudes in their gun store - more than once! actually if I'm being completely honest, I've had fewer sexist and homophobic experiences with conservative men in the past few years than with liberals. and yes, pretty much all the negative experiences with liberals were an obvious product of gender identity ideology. it's just so incredibly disappointing that I can reasonably expect a random conservative male I run into in the wild to be more normal about female homosexuality (including butchness!) than a liberal of either sex I run into in the wild. how the FUCK did that happen? I hate it here lmao

[sunnist4rs]

Blare White is super misogynistic… he also supports trump. You know the anti abortion, pro rape guy. I think you may be defining who you love/idolize and what you say you think based on who entertains you the most on social media/YouTube and your personal connections rather than really getting into WHY each view is right or wrong factually/ethically, and aiming to be consistent. To be clear I myself am a radfem and (within that) critical of gender ideology I am not trying to convince you to not criticize gender ideology or to not criticize specific trans identified people. Yes: some people Blaire white and that kind of guy opposes are also fucked up people who do harm. But the enemy of an enemy does not alone make a friend and I encourage you to look with a more critical eye at anyone aligned right wing and against women, whether they are novelties or famous on YouTube or whatever else or not

Among other things remember Blaire white is just a man who calls self woman but hates the other men who call themselves women. His critique of them is typically either copied (without him really understanding) from feminist women, or at other times basically rooted in him saying those other trans women are ugly or don’t pass or haven’t done [insert random shit] “Blaire” thinks makes him a real woman and these other trans women into pretenders. It’s just an egotistical man getting attention and money off of this while still claiming he’s a woman and doing so for sexist (“I pass as feminine so that makes me a woman” = sexist) reasons. This issue that is actually impacting women and girls (a category that doesn’t include him)

Thanks for sending me this ask (and being so civil about it). Before I joined the radfem community (and when I wrote my bio) I was pretty conservative but the more evidence of woman’s oppression I’ve seen, the more leftist I’ve become. This has left me feeling kind of lost because the people like Blair White who I used to turn to for comfort on bad days and to hear what I thought were reasonable political opinions no longer click with me. I don’t resonate with her (I’m gonna use she/her even though I’m he’s a dude because I do have that personal attachment right now so it just feels right) beliefs anymore but distancing myself from her feels wrong because she’s been a part of my life for a while, y’know.

I don’t watch YouTube much so I haven’t seen one of her videos since I became a radfem. But, I do remember how my old community used to act so Ik if I did watch another video of hers I’d be disgusted and disappointed by her behaviour (I almost want to avoid watching her at all so that I can keep pretending I align with her side- also I’m aware this is pretty parasocial, I’ll work on that). While I’ve become more aware of this I’ve continued to defend and preach how good her content is as a way of pretending I do still like her to myself. I knew I was doing this but I didn’t really think about it until now.

I’m pretty good at thinking critically about the media I consume, it’s just something I’ve always done when discovering something new to enjoy. But I think Ive developed a blind spot for people I previously loved as while I agreed with them in the past. Now however, me promoting their ideology is hypocritical at best. I’ve been practicing separatism (that’s not the word I want to use Ik it) more and more in my daily life. I now realise the next step I need to take is starting to distance myself from these people as they’re making me into someone I don’t want to be (hypocrites are one of my biggest red flags).

Thanks again for the ask as it’s genuinely helped me uncover a therapeutic break through lol. Whether or not that was your intent it’s definitely gonna help me be a better feminist and improve my life so thanks.