#that’s what discourse taught me

[spark1edog]

the number of discourse-like posts i write and then draft immediately is insane

[transmaverique]

amab and afab, if they were used as shorthand for the actual full phrases that they signify, with emphasis on the "assigned" part, and an understanding that they are enforcements of normative (ie, dyadic and cisgender and binary) sex, would be like. really useful. but people took the terms and started using them as shorthand FOR normative sex instead of the ENFORCEMENT OF normative sex. so when other trans people (almost always dyadic trans people) ask for your agab they are almost always asking for your Original Genital Situation. your starting point, so to say. and the reason FOR asking is also almost always bc they are trying to also enforce a certain kind of normativity within queer spaces (which is stupid bc being queer is inherently non-normative but here we are). like, you cant be a lesbian if you're ftm, bc you ARE m, so if you ARE a lesbian, then that means you're lying about some aspect of your identity. does that make sense?

it is always always always incredibly.... i do not trust dyadic trans people that use cagab terms, even moreso than i do not trust dyadic trans people that just use agab terms. agab is also coopted intersex language, but the "coercive" part of cagab SPECIFICALLY refers to medical "intervention" of intersex characteristics, such as "corrective" surgeries and hrt. i am deeply fucking suspicious of any dyadic trans person that uses those terms exactly the same as described above, even moreso if they do so bc "all gender is coercive".

like. yeah. that's true. but you use these terms to erase and overtake intersex discussions on the medical abuse of intersex infants. and i cant help but wonder why you would feel the need to do that.

[misanthropemom]

Okay, totally seriously, is there someone I can talk to to try and understand why people are voting or have decided to vote for Donald Trump? Like voting FOR Trump, not not-voting for the other guy, but they have intentionally made an intellectual decision to vote for this particular candidate. His rallies are full of people, I assume they have brains and families, what about his platform made them decide to vote for him? I don't want to argue, I don't want to debate, I don't want to try to change anyone's mind, I just want to understand what the appeal is. I want to get out of my internet bubble.

[galaxostars]

Do you guys remember the first time you read/watched Harry Potter and thought Snape was responsible for everything only to be hit in the stomach when you found out alongside the characters it was Quirrell all along?

Do you remember reading about Sirius Black escaping jail and wanting to murder Harry and do you remember being ready to throw hands at him? And then do you remember that sinking feeling when you realized he’d been wrongfully imprisoned for twelve years and was painted as the guilty one when it was Peter all along?

Do you remember hearing about the death eater Regulus Black, following in Voldemorts’ footsteps only to be hit with the crushing truth later, that he’d betrayed him and died doing so and no one knew about it and you had, yet again, judged him too harshly?

Do you remember hating Draco and progressively coming to understand the circumstances that led him to that?

Do you remember loving Dumbledore and realizing suddenly how badly he wronged Harry?

Do you ever think about those moments, and how we all judged those characters and fell into the easy trap? Time and time again? How easy it was to gulp down one version and not realize how biased it was?

I feel like if there’s one thing those books taught me it was to never get along with one version of a story. You can’t hear one side and admit it’s the final truth. You can’t judge someone through one lens and not admit it’s skewed. You can’t erase circumstances. You can’t shut out the other side of a story because one is sufficient for you.

If you want to crucify someone for something they did, remember all those times you were ready to crucify Snape, Sirius, Regulus, Draco and so on.

I’m not against holding people accountable for their actions, but I don’t want to get that sinking feeling of guilt that I had with characters on real human beings. And it is inhuman to hold one thing against someone’s head forever—especially when you don’t know the whole story.

We all make mistakes, we all fuck up, and we also, all have our own truth. And we’re also all capable of empathy towards others. 🖤

God knows I hate jkr with a passion but fuck if I love the message that was spread through those arcs.

[arosnowflake]

I saw a post that reminded me of this which is why I'm talking about this out of the blue but whenever I see the 'do canonically male characters you headcanon as trans girls count as female characters' debate pops up I remember this one event from the Voltron fandom where an f/f ship week banned genderbending and people lost their SHIT about it, SPECIFICALLY because the mods were like 'we want people to actually focus on the female characters and not submit already popular m/m ships but genderbent'.

This was years ago obviously so standard 'my memory may be fuzzy' disclaimer, but while I believe part of the reasons the mods banned genderbending was bc they believed it to be transphobic (which you could actually argue against and is a stance I don't agree with), and ppl were using that as leverage to argue, but that's not what ppl were actually angry about. Also, I believe the event was run by antis, who had a 'no age gap ships' rule in place, and people were mad about that, but like. The only f/f ships at the time with even kind of an age gap were ones involving Pidge, (which, again, for the record, I never personally gave much of a shit about), and yeah I do believe those were banned and ppl were pissy about that, but most of the ppl arguing with the ship restrictions were doing so in combination with the genderbending restriction, bc what they were mad about wasn't actually about a major female character being banned from the f/f ship week for Ship Discourse Reasons.

What they were angry about was specifically being told their genderbent m/m ships didn't count because they did not, in fact, contain female characters. Arguments were made that, because it was genderbent, it was now f/f and should be allowed in the f/f ship week. The mods went no, those are still canon male characters and popular m/m ships, and we're trying to run a week about the female characters and f/f ships because they don't get enough attention. The mods were fending accusatory and argumentative asks for ages and told people to create their own f/f ship week if they didn't like how theirs was run, which. People did.

A counter f/f ship week was organized but with less restrictions, specifically the restriction on genderbending was lifted. Now, I never followed Ship Week B, because I don't care about shipping and I was there to see more attention given to the female characters, which allowing genderbent m/m content seemed pretty anathema to. But I did check in on it out of curiosity, and to no-one's surprise, Ship Week B contained very large amounts of mostly genderbent sheith, with some shiro/lance and lance/keith thrown in. Like, I'm sure there was also actual f/f content (I remember there being some Pidge/Allura specifically), but I remember very little of it.

And as I alluded to in the large Nuance Disclaimer paragraph: yes this was the Voltron fandom, yes the Disk Horse was involved and made everything far more explosive than it probably would've been otherwise, and also, if the mods hadn't explicitly put the genderbending restriction in the rules list they probably would've gotten maybe a few genderbent m/m submissions tops. It's pretty obvious that a large motivation for Ship Week B was spite, and as someone whose username is literally spitecentral on AO3, I can confirm there is no stronger motivation for fan content than spite. I don't actually think that genderbent m/m is such a major problem in f/f spaces that it needs to be explicitly banned to avoid having it overrun ship weeks.

But even taking all that into account, this whole thing was completely fucking bonkers. Regardless of your opinions on the mods' opinions on genderbending and the Disk Horse, asking ppl not to submit genderbent m/m content on account of it not containing canon female characters is completely reasonable, and the fact that people got mad enough about it to create a whole seperate f/f ship week SPECIFICALLY to allow genderbent m/m content is insane. All the f/f ship week asked was for people to pay attention to female characters for once, and people threw a fucking tantrum about it and not only point-blank refused, but created more content for the male characters out of spite.

So yeah that was kind of a formative fandom experience to me that taught me:

People will take any excuse possible to avoid paying attention to female characters.

People will make literally anything, up to and including female character-centric fandom events, about men.

And that's what I think about any time I see people get offended when others point out that headcanoning a canon male character as a trans girl isn't the same as engaging with female characters.

[onewomancitadel]

speechless

(to be totally fair this is an excerpt of a Tweet from 2020 so I have to assume she may have reversed her position after actually reading the book. I also think dogpiling on the Internet is not nice and stuff etc. etc. but she did post this with her full name and picture of herself attached... no idea why... you do that shit on Tumblr).

[befuddled-calico-whump]

it's kind of sad getting back onto DeviantArt and seeing the flood of "AI Artists". When I used to frequent the site back in 2014? 2015? you'd see all levels of quality and experience on your feed, and you could tell that the majority of artists put time and effort and heart into everything they posted

Now, it's just muddled with ai. And don't get me wrong, the robots can churn out some cool stuff, but it's kinda frustrating, especially when you know some bot-wranglers don't tag it as AI, and you don't know what's a work of actual effort, and what's just an amalgamation of stolen art blended together by a prompt

[daz4i]

how and why is there discourse about whether or not certain queer identities exist/if people should be allowed(???) to use them. why is "people know their own identity better than you ever could, and they're the only one who get a say on what they are" such a tough concept to grasp

i think if you find yourself offended by the label someone uses (especially if they're a stranger) or think it invalidates your own, it's a good idea to look inside yourself and question why that may be. more often than not, it's a result of insecurity or uncertainty of your own identity (or many other things, but i won't make a whole list here). whatever reason it is, until you resolve it, you shouldn't take it out on people for having an identity you don't understand

many have said it before but it's worth saying over and over. infighting only helps our oppressors. conservatives don't care if you're a cis gay or a xenogender aegosexual aplatonic lesbian, they hate all of us either way. trying to fit in by going for people who are easier targets for them isn't gonna help you, it'll just alienate you from your own community, and you're never gonna please them. the momentary rush you get from hearing you're not like "one of /those/ gay people" is not worth it and is gonna do more harm in the long run, i assure you

also, it is important to me to say this, but having some less than nice kneejerk reaction caused by confusion about an identity you don't understand doesn't mean you're a bad person or anything. as long as you aren't mean to that person, and you take a second to think smth along the lines of "wait a minute, this isn't any of my business" after having said reaction, you're good 👍 a lot of reflexive reactions we have to things are ingrained into us simply by. well. living in a society 🤡 and you're not terrible for having those thoughts. it's your actions that matter, and your second thought (the "wait, why did i just think that?") is more defining of your actual character and morals than your reflex. i know that having thoughts like this, even tho they're unwanted, can very easily make one spiral, so it's important to me that whoever needs to hear this knows this doesn't make you a bad person 🙏 you're good, keep taking actions to be good, accept other people even if you don't understand them, and you're on the right track :)

[yooniesim]

you can tell i don't have the heart for this shit anymore bc I can't sleep

[bookwyrminspiration]

just saw someone say something ridiculous on the internet lads, thank fuck the block button exists <3

[thalassophobixodius]

help I keep looking on Pinterest to add spiritual or magical looking stuff to my DR board and I keep seeing very very toxic "christians" (wishing death upon others and trying to force them into your religion is the entire opposite of what christianity is supposed to be) telling the op to repent or spamming random passive aggressive bible quotes and like?? It's never on anything about shifting, it's never on anything that I could see a stereotypically toxic Christian getting mad at, it's literally just, little innocent gifs and word definitions?

(big rant/talk under cut)

How can you see a description of the word "sisu" and write a novel in the comments trying to convert op, how can you see a gif of an anime hand holding an orb and passive aggressively pretty much tell op they're going to hell by reminding them that your belief is that heaven and hell exists and doing anything you disagree with will send them to hell. How can you see a little cartoon gif and tell op to "repent", from WHAT, didn't in your beliefs God create everything? To you, God created nature and magic, to you God gave everyone the freedom to create art and animate, what do you mean people are going to hell for being free just as your god intended? You aren't truly Christian if you are like this, you are using religion as a disguise so that you can hurt and manipulate others; you are using a religion that isn't truly a belief system you tried to understand correctly and are morphing it into a Cult.

Religion isn't an excuse to go around blatantly trying to manipulate, guilt trip, gaslight, and invoke severe paranoia in random people. Do your knuckles drag when you walk? Did you forget about freedom of religion? Did you forget about freedom? I thought you said your God loved all his creation, and he told you to do the same and treat his creation with respect.

I've been friends/family with so many incredibly kind Christians, some made me somewhat uncomfortable unintentionally but most of the time I know it's just a slight trauma response, and I know they're my family and I know I'm accepted. Sometimes they can even feel more welcoming than anyone else! But that is, if they truly understand their religion . For what it's supposed to be teaching.

It's not all Christians, I know that as a fact; because that kind of stereotypical act ISN'T what Christianity is about! At all!

[enjolton]

I've been meaning to write all morning but all I can do is stress about how I'm gonna pay my bills when I have no money. So whatever you're thinking about Stalin, when he said "It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.", man was way too real.

[flyingwhalegirl]

you know I just read this book that was so clearly written by a straight man because it had a fantastic premise, a few really great characters, and a cool plot, but the way women were described and treated was so gross. so much objectification and every flat character is a straight woman and obsessed with their respective specific guy, I can't with straight men writing books.

this is not news. read books written by women, queer people, poc, etc, they're just better.

but the part that really struck me was that pre-transition I would have probably been fine with it. I might have been a little annoyed but I'd still have been able to separate the book from that aspect of its construction and enjoy it. I may even have given it a good review. And it hurts me to think that it took me having the experiences of living as a trans woman to understand and react fully to such a normalized portrayal of women. I wish I'd had that same empathy in my views before, but moreover I'm concerned that the empathy and concern for women and minorities that we're teaching to people, specifically men in positions of power, is inadequate. I worry that I was taught a shallow form of empathy only to look for blatant disregard of others' humanity, and not to read in depth and be able to put myself into a greater variety of experiences.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I know my experiences in my time as an upper middle class cishet-presenting white dude were not sufficient enough for me to care about misogyny to the degree required to do something about it or even have it take up residence in my mind, and I think as much as that's personal and I'm young and have an admittedly big ego, it's also a systemic failure somewhere that I wasn't able to grasp the experiences of those around me enough to care. really makes a person wonder how many privileged people are being taught to be selfish while operating under the understanding that they're being taught empathy and being told that they're supremely empathetic.

[bentothuglife]

This podcast series is probably the most shocking thing I've listened to all year and that's not hyperbole. (Full transcripts for each episode are also available at the link if you're not good with longform listening.)

[balkanradfem]

So I've found Alyssa Grenfell on youtube. She shares her experience of leaving mormonism, and the inner workings of the religion. I had very little ideas about what mormonism is, only that it's a high-control religion, very difficult to leave, and has people knocking on doors trying to get converts. I've been interested to find out more, and I ended up watching almost all of her content, and some of the information I've got from it opened my eyes on other feminist topics, and I believe is relevant to the current discourse!

So if you, like me, don't know how mormonism works, it started when a guy decided that he too could be a part of the bible; he wrote a bible part two: mormon, and proclaimed himself a prophet. Then he started a religion based on his writings, decided it was more important than the bible itself because he 'translated it from gold tablets god gave him', and started gaining followers by convincing people he's the prophet. Once he had managed to get a following, he soon started to sexually exploit the wives and daughters of these followers, to the point where he had 20-40 wives and had married 14yo children. Families allowed it to happen because he would promise them to be royalty in the afterlife. He eventually got into a lot of trouble for stealing and raping children so he was killed by an angry mob, but the religion continued.

The religion is same as christianity except more rules (no coffee, no alcohol, no smoking), eternal worship of the predator who wrote it, followers are pressured to follow the rules exactly, and, the vital part, the followers have to give 10% of their income to the church. They developed a culture where once every young mormon kid comes of age, they have to go on a 'mission', which means they're removed from their home, and have to spend 2 years (1,5 for women) living in a foreign area, knocking on doors, sharing the gospel, trying to convert people. The conversion rate is extremely low, but at that point kids have invested so much time, effort, energy and passion for the religion, they become devoted to it and start to feel alienated in the world that rejects their religion. And even with the low conversion rate, every new convert means another continuous source of income for the church. So it's very profitable to send out young adults to make these sales. The kids are told that if they don't complete their missions, they will not be able to marry, and marriage is presented as their only life purpose.

So how rich is the church at this point? 230 billion dollars. I've been shocked to hear this because I had no idea. Alyssa explained that the mormon church is as rich as Pepsi, they have more money than Disney and McDonalds. So you might be wondering, like I did, well what are they doing with all that money? I've been left to wonder this for a while, until I watched the video called 'Why are so many influencers mormon?', which explained it. I didn't even realize a lot of influencers were mormon. But, this video showed me something both disturbing, and eye opening.

Before I go into that, I have to point out how patriarchal and misogynistic this religion is. Women are not given any options except marriage, and it's presented as the only righteous way to live. They're groomed for marriage from a very young age, encouraged to start writing letters to their future husbands at the age of 9. They're taught cooking, sewing and childcare, and to coddle any males in the family. It's taken for granted that m*n won't respect women, to the point where male children are allowed to harass grown women and their families will not intervene or consider it a problem. Chastity and purity are promoted to the level where members of the religion are expected to wear special underwear at all times, which hides their entire torso, shoulders, and legs down to their knees, and their clothing is expected to cover this up completely. They're rejected by the religion if they dare to have sex before marriage, or drink alcohol or coffee, or in some cases, tea. The church has a history of allowing and promoting polygamy, in the sense that a male was allowed to have as many wives as he wanted; they've since stopped this, but refused to break up the existing marriages. They're also promoting anti gay and racist propaganda, which Alyssa observed in school where she'd been teaching; a gay kid almost ended his life due to extreme homophobia.

I know all of this is somewhat common in all areas of society, all religions, and all cultures, but in mormonism it seems to be written into the core of it.

So now, why are so many influencers mormon? I didn't even know they were. The influencers themselves are not promoting the fact that they're mormon, nor does it come up in viral discussions. Ballerina farm is mormon. Tradwives are mormon. Whataboutaub, Rachel Parcel, brooklynandbailey, tanner_mann, thebucketlistfamily, Taylor Frankie Paul, Sarah Beeston, Ruby Franke, these are all mormon. Most of the Utah-based influencers are mormon, and there's a bigger amount of successful and popular influencers from Utah, than from LA or NY.

For me it immediately explained why this viral content is like that. Why we're having such influx of highly patriarchal, anti-feminist, very dangerous and sexist content, put in front of the eyes of young women. Why it's being promoted as an ideal way of life. How are these women able to share this life as if they truly believed it was good and ideal. How could they think it's harmless? If they're using the internet to the extent that they're creating content, how would they not be exposed to any feminism at all? And they wouldn't because it's against their religion to engage with content like that, or with people talking about it. Because being raised in a high-control religion, they would truly believe their lives are the ideal. They would be presented with it as their only option, the only way of life possible for a woman.

It's heartbreaking because I can now understand why it was so easy to push Ballerina Farm to give up her entire life ambition to get married and carry children for a male she didn't even want to go out with, the pressure from the religion to do so would be immense, she would have been raised to see this as the only option, everything else in her life would be considered pointless. She wouldn't have an actual choice, she'd be groomed for this from the moment she was born. Mormons don't advertise 'looking for your soulmate', they only instruct women to marry a mormon male who completed his mission and make it work.

So how does the immensely rich mormon church play into this? I couldn't see it until Alyssa explained in a very detailed way how youtube content advertising works. I didn't know about this either, but here's the overview:

How much you get paid on youtube, instagram, tik-tok, or other online content platform, depends on what type of content it is, based on how much advertisers are willing to pay to put adverts on it. For instance, you get paid much more for finance content, because banks will pay premium prices to be advertised in a finance-related video. If you're making content on cooking, you get paid way less, because it's not such a lucrative field. If you're making content on christianity, you get similarly low price as for cooking, christian church is not that rich. But, if you're making content as a mormon, that's showcasing some aspect of a mormon life, even if you don't specifically say you're mormon, the price goes way up, to the point where it's as lucrative as finance. The mormon church is making sure that the mormon influencers are being paid premium prices for their content, because people who get massively interested in the influencers, eventually find out that it's the mormon life being advertised, and some of them consider taking on mormonism. Which gives church more converts, which means the church will earn more money. The content we're watching is one huge advert sponspored by mormon church, and we don't even know it.

Alyssa figured this out because her content falls under the keyword 'mormon', and her comments warned her that the church is advertising on her videos, even when she's making mormon-critical content. She then realized that she too was being paid a premium price for her views, just because they're mormon themed. She went on to discover that even just being an influencer in Utah will fetch a premium price, because most of mormons are based in Utah. For more detailed and comprehensive explanation on this, watch her video!

Advertising is not the only way the mormon church is spending their money, they've also built a shopping mall, and are basically spending their money by investing and gambling and everything any corporation does with their profits. It's making me mad, and also makes the members of the church mad when they discover where 10% of their income goes, because they're told it's being used for charity and community service, and not advertisments and building malls.

For me this solves a mystery of how is it possible, in this day and age to have such influx of tradwives and influencers of 'traditional life', they're being sponsored by an organization making a profit off of it, making sure that anyone making this content is so well paid, they're able to live off of it, and keep creating more of it, and in the process of doing that, groom young women into their lifestyle.

Learning more about religions, specifically high-control religions, makes me realize just how much of it is happening all around us, but invisible, not naming what it is. It's similar to MLM's, the people inside are constantly trying to lure more people in, to make profit for those on the top, while the organization keeps changing names and hides their business structure in order to save their reputation. People can get influenced by it, and sucked in, without even knowing about it. Somehow most MLM's are also in Utah.

Mormon church also asked to no longer be called that, in order to stop being associated with the words like 'cult', which people have identified it as. Now they're working under more secretive names, and hidden business practices, so we wouldn't even know what we're being influenced by, and why is the content in front of us what it is.    

[tealvenetianmask]

Inevitable Social Class Take/Why Ghostfuckers Solidified My Need for Blitz to Be "Just an Imp"

There's been discourse since . . . before I ever watched Helluva Boss, on whether Blitz might be half or one quarter incubus, based on a family portrait where his mother, Tilla, looks unusually tall, and her horns lack the thin white stripes usually seen on female imp horns, making them look more like succubus horns. After Ghostfuckers, where Tilla appeared with the stripes on her horns, people are saying that the theory is unlikely. I say GOOD.

Now, let me solidify before I get into this that it's not that I think hybrid imps in Hell aren't also looked down on or treated like shit (look at Striker and the number Hell's society has done on him). It's that Blitz being an incubus hybrid would suggest that he has magical powers of a sort, and that takes away a bit from what I think is so awesome about him.

He has no powers. Only his skill, creativity, spontaneity, optimism, intelligence, and heart. What he does, and what he is at his core, utterly disproves Hell's prejudices about imps and their "purpose."

In the flashback to the time when Blitz and Millie met, Millie flat-out refuses to believe that Blitz works for himself. Because imps work for demons higher in Hell's hierarchy-- it's how the society works.

Blitz could so easily present himself as an exception here (special parentage or no), but instead he presents his worldview as an alternative to what he and Millie have both been taught. Essentially: I can do it. So WE can do it. SO LET'S CHANGE OUR WORLD.

Later, he gives Millie a pep talk that solidifies this worthiness idea.

The idea is really deeply ingrained . . . yikes. But Blitz will have none of it.

And that's what makes him special. Not that he's better than anyone else. The way that he can see beyond prescribed roles and defy society's expectations. And help others see themselves as worthy of doing this too!

Also. ALSO Blitz says he's as fuckable and business savy as any succubus. Which one COULD argue means he's similar to them or has some of their powers. OR it's essentially "I can do what they do without their powers hahaha FUCK LIMITATIONS." (The second is the more empowering option in my opinion.)

He's breaking down society's prejudices one imp assassin at a time! Would this be possible if Blitz were a hybrid and had special powers? Sure. But I definitely think it's more powerful FOR MILLIE without that. If Blitz can be this capable and confident, so can she.

Okay-- that brings us to the final confrontation with Rolando. This guy seems to really buy into Hell's typical attitude toward imps.

Thematically, he's throwing the typical prejudices at them and using his "higher demon" powers to intimidate and seemingly easily defeat them.x

But what defeats him?

Millie's confidence that Blitz inspired, that she believes at her very core, even if she still carries some insecurities.

And Blitz . . . well . . . thinking outside the box and dropping the vacuum cleaner ghostsucker thing in the pool.

Rolando gives Blitz a look like "nice display of confidence- you've got nothing."

And Blitz notices something he can use . . .

And frankly obliterates the guy.

So what's the antidote to the racism and social class issues in Hell? Well they'll probably be around for some time, just like the ones in our society. But they can be challenged for now by the gang just being their fantastic selves- Millie being strong and self-assured, and Blitz being innovative in the moment. And Loona and Moxxie doing SOMETHING when they come back into action. xD

And all of them believing that they're worthy.