#that you're just as bad as cishet people who generalize the entire community

[raviosprovidence]

"you don't use queer because you're so desperate to be normal!!!" if you had to partake in one conversation with me irl your bones would melt from how weird and cringe I am

[certified-bi]

Couple Things

Yes there are issues with vote counting, notably the fires which were all reported to happen before Nov. 5th, and issues with mail in ballots. Please check your status if you mailed in your vote and remind those around you to do the same.

That being said now is not the time for full blown conspiracies. If you add up all the legitimate cases of mail in ballots on hold, or going out late(Which the resistance to counting these is not a great sign), you wouldn't have 20 million ballots.

Please fact check everything that you see on your dash, which is a good practice in general. There are always people willing to feed on despair or anger to recruit the desperate. It'll become harder to separate these people from random blogs that are giving into the fearmongering the more people share unchecked rumors. Being vigilant is always important

I'm not saying a recount after all the votes are in(which they aren't so we don't have for sure totals rn) is a bad idea. I am saying that it is entirely realistic that voters who were willing to turn out for a middle of the road white man not showing up for a slightly more left black woman is unfortunately not a surprise and has everything to do with the Christianity backed racism and misogyny in this country as well as the cesspit most media orgs are.

Unfortunately this is only going to push democrats further right because yet again voters don't show up to support candidates like Harris despite the fact that she ran on a platform that did address the economy(despite people pretending she didn't) and was as progressive as a presidential candidate for a main party would be in current times. With that in mind we have to keep focusing on voting and supporting the candidate that aligns most with our values, who also has a chance of winning in future elections. This means voting down your ballot in every election and making realistic choices.

There's been a lot of finger pointing in the left which is just not helpful at best and destructive at worst. Mainly this seems to be online which isn't shocking so this is your reminder that unless someone proudly supports trump or was proud to not vote for Harris, to not start throwing stones at individuals in groups that veered right, because every group veered right. I'm already seeing so many "Men are all bad," and "X racial minority turned on us" and like let's be so real it was mostly cishet white people and young cishet men in online echo chambers.

What doesn't help things is equating trends and large groups with individuals and getting caught up in group think. Yes men who are followers of Andrew Tate are not your friend. At the same time queer men who will be hurt by this decision are not your enemy. Straight men who supported Harris are not your enemy. Men of color who have always been at risk of America's brand of racism are not your enemy. The women who supported Trump are not your friends. Bioessentialism isn't progressive and is just wrapping paper over conservative(transphobic and unscientific) values. When you hear statements that are intended to make you turn on your community, I'm begging y'all to take a second to actually unpack the implications.

If you could get pregnant and don't wish to be it's in your best interest to be careful with sex that could get you pregnant by using multiple forms of protection and having ideas of where to go and what to do if the worst happens in advance. The same to anyone who does want to have a child but worries about a risky pregnancy. If you're trans please be careful with any advice you find online about healthcare especially hormones. Make sure the advice is legal because the last thing we need is for you to get charged for following bogus advice or worse risking your health and safety with unsafe alternatives. Planned Parenthood can be a good place to start for both, A4TE and WPATH have pages on jumping off to find trans healthcare and WPATH has a search directory if you know the exact services you're looking for.

Things are going to be rough. Social Media including Tumblr feed off negativity and division. Be mindful and be safe. Create or join in person communities when possible and remember that at least 70 million people voted for Harris, given the west coast hasn't been fully counted, and that he's not going to have an easy go of things. Do what you need to survive. Support local charities and volunteer orgs and donate when you can. The only way out is through and we need you to make it through.

[thorne1435]

People criticize the online left for not having any farmers but like...as someone from a small rural community that's still being held up almost entirely by agricultural careers, I can't help but feel like they're being a little unreasonable.

You don't farm because you just feel the call, or anything, or at least that's not often how it goes out here. What happens is, when you're born into a family that has been farming for generations, they enlist your help in taking care of animals and crops, you learn how to farm effectively from them almost entirely, but additionally since most of the community that you're in is old farming families, all of the curriculum in the area has an "agri" substitute. Like, upperclassmen at my high school could take Financial Literacy, or if they were on the ag career pathway (which a lot of them were), they could take "Agribusiness" for that math credit.

So, like, what I'm saying here is, based on my experience in the rural United States, if you want farmers in the commune, you have to start appealing to the relatively uneducated rural townsfolk who are farmers by lineage. All you can really do there is...get lucky. These are small towns. If you aren't a cishet white man, they probably won't trust you fully, no matter what you do. It's not as bad as people say it is, mind you, but that doesn't change the fact that a straight man (and certainly a white man) with a general progressive leaning would have an easier time getting a bunch of rural farmers to "see the light," as it were.

[theprideful]

I've been trying to ask this for some time actually, so here I go:

Is The Good Doctor good autistic representation? I'm afraid I might have used it when talking to my neurotypical parents about the different ''degrees'' of autism using dr. Shawn as an example when in reality he's a bad example. You're one of the only actually autistic people I can ask this to, even if it might seem a stupid question, but like... Is he good autistic representation?

Thanks for the attention anyways <3

(since this is about neurodivergence and a bit long, I'm going to bold and highlight some phrases here and there, because it makes it a little easier to read.)

so, is The Good Doctor good autism rep: in my opinion, no. are there autistic people like him in real life? absolutely. but is he a good, true reflection of what autism actually is? not really.

my problem with The Good Doctor is that it employs a lot of stereotypes, and whether or not they're "good" doesn't really change the fact that it enforces this really narrow idea of what autism is to allistics; white, cishet, nerdy male who is a genius savant and lacks social skills. autism is incredibly diverse and multifaceted, and anyone and everyone will experience it differently. so the fact that only stories like Shawn's are shown really limits our progress on combatting misinformation.

but it's not just that the show very heavily leans on stereotypes and lacks general creativity in portraying the neurotype, it's that it was really obvious how few- if any- actually autistic people were consulted. it feels like a production made for capitalizing on us without actually putting in the work to show us for who and what we really are. it honestly seems like they read a few articles online and watched "rain man" (which also has many of these same issues) and based their story off of that. it's hard to tell from a glance, but the more you look into it, the more you can see that it's just regurgitating the same narrative under a shinier lens and the guise of modernity and "wokeness." this specific story they decided to tell is quite unoriginal and reflects a very small percentage of us. that's not to say that none of us can relate or see ourselves in Shawn, but the most us can't - at least, not very often or consistently. (also, there is shown to be a strong link between autism and queerness, so it's strange that even in a time where psycho/neurological research and information is rising, the white cishet protagonist remains at the front and center of autism media.)

furthermore, some of the stereotypes and "traits" they used are not supported or even really experienced by the autistic community. for instance, his visualization of anatomical systems and functions in a hyper-realistic manner is not an autistic trait. sure, there are people on the spectrum with eidetic memories and incredibly vivid "inner-eyes", but again, only a small percentage of us have that, and it's not inherently an autistic trait. (Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds is another good example of this exact scenario.) this could, in theory, tie in with the trait of "detail-orientedness" that many of us experience. but it is likely a characteristic of an entirely different disorder or neurodivergency, which only furthers the idea that it was not researched in depth and the autism aspect was only meant to serve as a plot device to make him "interesting." i don't know about you, but i personally don't like the idea of only being allowed to exist as an autistic person if neurotypicals find me interesting or "plot-relevant."

as with the last statement, the same thing also applies to the "genius savant" stereotype. believe it or not, not many autistic people are actually savants in the quirky, brilliant way that hollywood likes to portray. we have our own skills, just like allistics. sometimes our autism "enhances" them or acts as an asset. but it's kind of a roll of the dice. the way i see it is, you can have red hair and be left-handed, but neither is an automatic, promised precursor for the other. you can be autistic and a good doctor or genius scientist, but one does not necessarily cause or even influence the other. again, in this story, it's not inherently an issue. but this narrative is pushed so much, all the time, that it's really starting to feel like it's the only way we'll be accepted. but also, it solidifies this concept of "two types of autistic people at 'opposite' ends of the spectrum," where Shawn is the "high-functioning genius" type. it's a really narrow definition and caricature of a really diverse group, and it limits the way we are perceived by allistics and neurotypicals.

sorry for the long response, but in conclusion, no, it's not really good representation because it only shows one very small fraction of autism and is not entirely accurate.

one good thing i will say, though, is that I do appreciate the writers revealing his traumatic past. many autistic people experience trauma and develop PTSD, depression, and anxiety (and possibly obsessive compulsions) because of lack of understanding, so it was refreshing to see some actual multidimensional backstory that is realistic to autistic people. anyway, overall it could've been better rendered and I think if the writers weren't afraid of losing the cherished white cis-het male protagonist trope and dramatization of neurodivergence in a way that they actually stopped describing that disorder*, it could've been a lot more realistic and actually relatable/applicable to real life.

*"disorder" does not apply to all autistic people. it is a label that individuals can use to describe themselves.

if any other autistic people have any thoughts, feel free to share! i'd love to hear your opinions as well

[fungisteri]

I wanna develop a bit more from my previous post

My journey with gender & sexuality was mostly online because, even if I'm lucky that I don't live in a ragingly homophobic place, it was still a pretty fucking taboo topic ngl. And being online and coming from teachings based on gender roles and the gender binary, and I grew up in Instagram, which has absolutely godawful discourse presented in pretty images and infographics.

I fell head first into exclusionism because it was easier to understand. It felt reasonable: these are the normal sexualities, and these are the weird ones. These are the normal genders, non-binary is technically valid, but if you have specific non-binary labels you're just a fucking weirdo. The right way to be trans is to do so in a way in which cishet people can understand, which is by being as gender conforming as possible. However, being gay makes you inherently smarter than cishets because we know so many things they don't. But if you act in a way that's not palatable to cishets, you're making the entire community look bad and stealing resources. Aspecs are their own separate thing from the standard acronym (LGBT) so they're a constant topic of debate. Actually, every popular label that's not on the acronym is a popular topic of debate. These were pretty common talking points: us vs them. And, looking back, it feels painfully obvious how many exclusionists were very likely cisgender, or gender-conforming binary trans people.

I think that the main selling point of exclusionism is that it's easy. It's that you make universal rules about what's "valid" and what isn't.

I was lucky that my lgbt elders (who honestly were and still are open minded 20 year olds, lgbt adults are unheard of in my offline environment, and every informative talk on the lgbt community is given by cishets that inevitably spread misinformation) insisted on how silly exclusionism is, at the end of the day. Like, alright, they're an exclusionist. They're a gatekeeper. People still are who they say they are though. You genuinely cannot stop them with hateful speech, if anything, you just make them feel unsafe and keep quiet. But at the end of the day, they're still the same person, regardless of whether you understand them or not, regardless of whether you think their personal labels are valid or not. It took me years to understand this. But, thanks to their help, I was able to figure out I'm not only non-binary, but that being a non-binary lesbian is a thing, and that nobody can take it away from me. Which was a HUGE relief because exclusionists made me hate nb lesbians and nb folk in general, which unknowingly made me continue to repress my already extremely repressed transness. Not only that, being able to be open minded about my own identity made it so that I could be open minded about other people's identities as well. I went on to understand my aspec peers, my genderfluid peers, my genderless peers, my bisexual peers, my transmasc and transfem peers, my gay peers, my poly peers, and probably more.

Make no mistake, there's still types of identities I don't understand and actually refuse to approach, but at least I've learned that the way to interact with those people is to just stay away, and not to go up to their face to tell them they're existing wrong.

Speaking of which, there's another concept I came to understand that I think goes pretty unspoken of in online communities: personal definitions. Inevitably, everyone has personal definitions. I see this is mostly observed with the bisexual label, making it a topic of debate, and honestly... I feel like we'd save each other a lot of grief if we just agreed to disagree. After all, it's a mistake to debate on labels in a vacuum: identity labels have a lot of emotional load, and it's just... Unfair to act like there's none and treat it as a debate. This happens with every label, too.

It's rough. Labels are actually really personal most of the time, even if they're not yours- it's all a matter of personal perspective, which is based on personal experiences. And these label debates very often fall into using these personal experiences as arguments, as proof, when they're just that: personal experiences. All these debates, regardless of being presented as founded in logic and reasoning, are all emotionally loaded. And for what- to define who belongs and who doesn't in a community of people so large that it's practically impossible to truly agree in anything? What's the point?

So, not only do I stray from exclusionism, I no longer bother with lgbt discourse. I obviously respect those who do, because I will always do my best to show respect to other people, but if I were to give them advice... Don't bother, man. It is what it is. There's better things to do than proving someone online wrong. As soon as you stop talking to them, they may very well stop talking to you too, and who knows- maybe you'll live better off that way.

[fujoshimoley]

(keep in mind this post is not planned out and i am largely speaking from my thoughts)

i know people like to clown on white cishet men who explain that they're right-wing because they were told they were inherently evil or cruel or only capable of destruction or manipulation by everyone around them, and people mostly interpret that as "i learned white people did bad stuff in the past and this made me hate the WOKE left" when the truth is genuinely so much more harrowing.

being told you're inherently, irredeemably evil for reasons you didn't pick and can't change by the people around you that otherwise claim to champion "justice" and "humanity" for practically your entire life is genuinely traumatizing. being treated like an irredeemable boogeyman by people who don't even know you simply for how you were born is traumatizing. it doesn't matter if you have some sort of societal advantage or safety net. pain and trauma is subjective and shaped by perspective and experience, and i can guarantee that that this sort of experience hurts and it hurts bad.

like. i know there are lots of queer people who are former right-wingers, and i am willing to bet that a lot of them were right-wingers because until they realized they were queer, they were actively barred from even looking into queer spaces and demonized until they wanted nothing to do with it at all. and then they, like any normal person would do, simply joined up with people that accepted them. and then they changed, and those friends weren't so accepting anymore, and then suddenly the old community that scorned them for was accepting them with open arms.

and the reason why i know this pain so clearly is because. well. I'VE been dehumanized for things i can't control my entire life! I KNOW what that shit is like and it's horrific! I don't care if it's satisfying to give "them" "a taste of their own medicine", stop giving that pain to people! You're only making things worse!

i dont know how to say this but even if your dehumanization isn't systemically supported it can and will still traumatize people and fuck up their sense of self and there are people who absolutely will pounce on that opportunity that you have created and you will have no control over who those people are.

i dunno how to close this but i guess the message i want you, the audience, to take away from this is to stop generalizing people as evil just because of their body or blood. you don't know these people. you don't know their lives. their stories. you don't know their values, and you cannot make that judgement based on appearance alone.

i get that you're scared. i get that we're all scared. but i swear to god, you cannot fucking do this to anyone. from a humanist stance, it's unethical to prematurely judge someone as an enemy for something they cannot change about themselves, like their lineage or face. from a pragmatic stance, you are ensuring an enemy that could have otherwise become an ally. but by all means, leave that white boy alone.

i dunno if this is controversial but im gonna say this as a brown trans woman. i think now is absolutely 100% not the time (not like it ever WAS the time but ESPECIALLY not now) to be generalizing men (especially white cishet men) as inherently evil or right-wing and isolating all of them on principle. i cannot possibly further emphasize how vulnerable all of us are and i understand that when people are scared we will naturally want to shift into us vs. them to try and keep ourselves protected. but in so many ways that mentality only enforces a shallow illusion of safety and all it ultimately does is push out people who otherwise would have gladly stood by you because you were too afraid of them to treat them with respect

[ming-sik]

@xenodogz ok replying is getting unwieldy im gonna go by your arguments point by point:

we do fundamentally disagree, i think that if someone sees something about "discourse" it is in fact their responsibility to find out what the discourse actually is before posting a long wildly incorrect theory about it being unprompted prejudice. personally if i hear that someone's mad at me i do usually try to find out why before i form my opinion on the situation and i don't think that's too much to ask! if someone can't be bothered to form an informed opinion why bother forming an opinion at all?

you've continued to not respond to the original point of the original discussion: it was literally framed as a test. the reason the screenshot was provided on its own was to test whether or not the reader can recognize this specific red flag by picking up on context clues, which are available in the original post. people don't always have signs on their head that say "i'm going to emotionally exploit you" so it's important to at least be able to recognize that something is suspicious and question a potential partner to make sure you're not putting yourself in a vulnerable position and they're being honest with you. you and a lot of other people failed the test, which doesn't mean you're stupid, but doubling down and blaming the tester for not giving you the answer kinda is. also can you decide if people were just saying The Guy was maybe aromantic OR if nobody was defending him OR if he wasn't relevant at all OR if the situation seemed fine without the context. it kind of seems like whether The Guy was defensible/relevant or not hinges entirely on which option bolsters your individual points. also what do you MEAN the origin of the discourse wasn't relevant. what? of course it's relevant that people originally misinterpreted the situation to use cishet aro dudes as a shield for a misogynist!

"nobody was saying it was arophobic to be upset at the guy" yes they were that was, again, the origin of the discourse. like defending him by saying "well maybe he's just aro and wants to be exclusive fwb for STD safety" w/o mentioning the presenting romantic relationships are more serious and feeling entitled to exclusivity when hes not taking it seriously, and doubling down when the people who recognized the red flags were proven right, is using cishet aro guys as a shield for misogyny which is my sticking point.

how is it not hurting cishet aro guys to, again, be used as a gotcha for people complaining about misogynists? that was the original problem. cishet aro men were not originally being attacked, so by responding to criticism of misogyny with "leave cishet aro guys alone" anyone who came into the discussion without a strong familiarity with the differences between cishet aro guys and misogynists who use 'relationship' as code for 'respect' would get the impression that if That Guy "might be aromantic" that this is standard behavior for cishet aro guys, which i would say is much more damaging than people complaining about that first thing.

yeah i saw the other poll i mentioned it in my first post. as someone who was following the original discussion i maintain that it's extremely bad faith to characterize things as them attacking cishet aro men without the context "after people defended a misogynist because he might be cishet aro".

in general i'm concerned about the current state of discussion in the aro & ace communities due to the same things you're presenting as counterarguments. i dislike seeing the only things in the aro tag being banal positivity or people weighing in on conversations through a game of endless telephone. this climate makes us extremely vulnerable to bad actors who can frame harmful things as an attack on aro people under the knowledge that most people won't challenge that, and forms a loop where people are incentivized not to get better at theory, ultimately making the community a worse place to be in. if the aro community had a healthy discussion scene the original people misinterpreting the situation either would've passed the test because they'd be educated about this type of abuse from the aro position of people who have to deal with potential partners who think no relationship =/= no respect, or would've been in a mindset to re-evaluate when they turned out to have failed to pick up on the signs being discussed. instead a bunch of people willfully misinterpreted an unrelated thing and then the entire aro tag for a week was people furthering the game of telephone. there's a third option beyond "nuclear wasteland of unproductive arguments" and "uncritical refusal to engage with anything except positivity".

in conclusion,

honestly it's just frustrating. you have people finding misogynistic cishet dudes and defending their emotional neglect of their sexual partners because it superficially resembles aromanticism even when the men themselves do not identify as aromantic and are often neglecting their sexual partners specifically because they view a girlfriend as the only type of woman who deserves any type of effort and so if the chick they're fucking isn't their girlfriend they can treat her like dirt. and then when people are rightly like "hey fuck you for defending a misogynist" the same people who claimed the cishet guy who never at any point claimed to be aromantic was aromantic and therefore criticizing his misogyny is arophobia go into the aro tags to despair at how many people HATE aromantics so they can whip a bunch of bystanders into a frenzy because they've heard that people are discrediting aromanticism, and therefore are encouraged to read the original unrelated posts or people getting pissed at someone defending emotional abuse by calling it aromanticism in bad faith or not at all, and so you get a mountain of people theorizing that the attack on cishet aro men was manufactured by TERFs instead of people who think that girls who date guys deserve dudes who don't see them as a freelance contractor they can expect sex from without having to treat them with the bare minimum respect they feel a girlfriend is owed.