#the personal is political

[isaacsapphire]

If “the personal is political” then no story can be apolitical. Even naive authors trying to simply write an unobjectionable story or authors of children’s picture-books encode whatever they think is unobjectionable and suitable introduction to the world for children, both of which are painfully political topics.

Dick and Jane famously are considered to demonstrate anti feminist gender roles. The original black and white Little Rascals television show, first season Sesame Street, and the newspaper strip Peanuts showed White children and Black children being friends and playing together, and all of them received negative responses from people who objected to that. They were all received as political.

A lot of older, original “apolitical, unobjectionable” media has not aged apolitically, as the Overton Window on gender and gender roles, crossdressing (was once a stock comedy gag), race relations (colonial times were once a common setting in unobjectionable children’s literature, but few escape some Problematic Black or Native American aspects), or childrearing (so much old kidlit about children receiving physical punishment). Good Night Moon is probably political, or will be seen as political once bowls of mush or hairbrushes become political.

I am absolutely not joking at all when I say that The Sixth Sense should be required as teaching material when you’re trying to get kids to learn about why color matters.

No, the red DOESN’T mean love or violence or passion, however the creators set it up so that in this particular work red means OH NO A SCARY GHOST IS HERE.

When I was in college (as a lit major) I ended up sitting down and talking to a returning student who was having trouble in one of our classes. He liked books, and he had GI bill money so he decided to be a lit major.

He was VERY confused about the “The Curtains Are Blue And It Means Something” approach to symbolism and I remember that he very seriously got out a notebook and a pen, sat down, and asked me “Okay so what to stars mean as a symbol?” 

And I was at a loss because of course I was! Stars-as-a-symbol can mean a thousand things and are heavily dependent on context. Are you reading a book about sea travel? Stars mean a map. Are you reading Maus? Stars represent faith and community and the way that the Nazis dehumanized Jewish people. Are you reading something by a romantic author who has a thing for the classics? Stars probably have something to do with heroism and destiny. Are you reading science fiction? Stars are probably just stars but if you’re reading Whipping Star by Frank Herbert they are literally people and our entire conception of stars is reexamined.

So one one the things that I think a lot of people are missing in their high school English classes is that whether the curtains are blue matters or not depends on the work.

The fact that Hamlet is wearing black is an important part of the story and the antagonist commenting on it it is almost the first thing that happens in the play.

What color dress is Lizzy wearing at the first dance in Pride & Prejudice? It doesn’t matter, the curtains are just blue.

And that’s one of those things that it takes a lot of time and a lot of exposure to different kinds of stories to learn and when you’re in high school you just don’t have that experience and your teachers are just now telling you for the first time “sometimes it matters why the curtains are blue” and I know you’re going “okay, sounds fake” but the goal is to get you to look at blue curtains and ask if they do matter, which is why they hand you books with big obvious examples of the kind of shit they’re talking about. You read A Tale of Two Cities because it’s full of binaries and line motifs and it’s the perfect thing to teach a fifteen year old how to look for a motif because there are a shitload of them. You read  The Scarlet Letter to look for color symbolism and to ferret out biblical allusions.

“The curtains are just blue” is just “yet another day has gone by and I haven’t needed algebra.” Most people aren’t going to need algebra in their day-to-day lives but it’s handy to know how to do a bit when you need it and it’s good to learn that the concept exists.

If you’re reading books just because they’re fun and you like them then that is cool and I’m glad you’re having a good time and you absolutely do not have to give a fuck about symbolism.

But I am going to laugh my ass off at you if you’re one of those folks who is like “the curtains are just blue it doesn’t matter” and then whines about why scifi and comics and cartoons and video games are all political these days. They were always political, you just couldn’t tell because the curtains were red.

(also because you were socialized to see certain things as apolitical and value neutral but if you’re going “WHY DO THEY PUT SERIOUS MORALS AND SHIT IN A KID’S SHOW, STEPHEN UNIVERSE IS FOR TEN YEAR OLDS IT’S NOT THAT DEEP, LOONEY TUNES WASN’T LIKE THIS” I’m afraid I’m going to have to refer you to all the actual war propaganda made by Disney and Warner Brothers.)

[typhlonectes]

[skyethel]

What does Judith Butler know about loading her son’s corpse in a cab? What does she know about the horror of turning a taxi into a hearse?

im so mad. i've been in mourning and a state of constant rage for palestine for the past few years, and these past weeks have been especially devastating. while im not palestinian myself, i have friends and family that are, and i cant help but be on edge about the things they cant afford to think about right now.

i read their 'thought piece'. its nothing new on that front, and thats why it makes me so mad. im really struggling to connect with the blind, white-american privilege of calling for non-violence in the face of a genocidal apartheid regime. the fucking gall of these so-called western intellectuals to preach how rampant anti-intellectualism has become just to turn around and buy into some colonial playbook of peace shit is hilarious. people i thought were with me on this, not only on palestinian liberation but on liberation full stop, have been a constant disappointment. i cut off so many ppl i called friends over the absolute lack of grace and empathy they handled this with. when are white western 'activists' going to stop treating us like timed bombs of irrationality?

this part in particular kept coming up and made me feel like i was going insane:

"When, however, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee issues a statement claiming that ‘the apartheid regime is the only one to blame’ for the deadly attacks by Hamas on Israeli targets, it makes an error. It is wrong to apportion responsibility in that way, and nothing should exonerate Hamas from responsibility for the hideous killings they have perpetrated...The necessity of separating an understanding of the pervasive and relentless violence of the Israeli state from any justification of violence is crucial if we are to consider what other ways there are to throw off colonial rule"

literally nobody is asking anyone to 'exonerate' hamas. hamas is a military organization fighting the US-backed israeli occupation with smuggled weapons that is active in 365 km² at best. hamas is not even in the orbit when it comes to comparisons to israel.

israel said it with its own mouth that hamas is a product of israeli occupation. this isnt a matter of opinion, right? or am i too far left to think that a brutal occupation will radicalize its victims? and they gave them the means to become a 'terrorist organization'? how are you claiming to care about palestinians if you don't bother unsubscribing from the very schools of thought that constructed the occupation in the first place?

some of you 'leftists' have been lying about what you've been reading because where are the frantz fanon quotes you like to throw around, huh? where's the malcolm x, the angela davis? where are your insta posts with chomsky's books?

holy shit WHAT OTHER WAYS?

keep our communities out of your mouth. we are not some thought experiment you can exercise your conscience on. we're watching an ethnic cleansing unfold, and instead of supporting palestinians so many of you are playing out your own little fantasies of the 'progressive' solidarity you fail to show. sometimes, you need to fucking stop and listen instead of consulting the higher morality police on whether you need to 'contextualize' your incompetence.

[3kockeleda]

The Quiet Unraveling: Navigating Complacency, Consumerism, and the Search for Meaning in a Fractured World

Let’s begin with a confession: None of us are innocent here. We’re all tangled in the same messy web of contradictions—yearning for purpose while numbing ourselves with distractions, craving justice while clinging to comfort. This isn’t a condemnation; it’s an invitation to untangle the knots together. Because the truth is, the systems that suffocate us didn’t emerge in a vacuum. They grew from our collective fears, our exhaustion, and the very human desire to just make it through the day.

1. Complacency and Conformity: The Seduction of Safety

To understand complacency, we must first confront its seductive logic: Safety is not the absence of danger, but the illusion of control. We cling to routines, traditions, and systems not because we’re naive, but because the alternative—confronting the fragility of it all—feels paralyzing. Consider the factory worker clocking in for decades at a job that erodes their body, the student drowning in debt while chasing a degree they’re told will “guarantee stability,” or the parent who swallows their political disillusionment to avoid rocking the boat for their children. These aren’t failures of character; they’re rational responses to a world that punishes deviation.

Conformity is rarely about laziness—it’s about risk assessment. When the 2008 financial crisis wiped out pensions and homes, people didn’t suddenly rise up; they doubled down on “safe” choices. Why? Because rebellion is a luxury when you’re one missed paycheck from ruin. The gig economy epitomizes this: Workers accept exploitative conditions not because they lack ambition, but because algorithms dangle the carrot of “flexibility” while eroding labor rights. The message is clear: Play by the rules, or lose everything.

Even our language betrays this conditioning. We call nonconformists “idealists” or “radicals,” terms dripping with paternalism. Meanwhile, those who uphold the status quo are “practical” or “responsible.” This framing isn’t accidental—it’s cultural gaslighting. By equating compliance with maturity, systems ensure we police ourselves.

But safety is a mirage. For every person who “succeeds” by societal metrics, there are countless others crushed by the weight of unspoken compromises. Take the corporate ladder: Climbing it often demands silencing ethics (“Don’t ask about the offshore labor”), sacrificing health (“Sleep is for the weak”), and numbing creativity (“Follow the template”). We call this “success,” but it’s a pyrrhic victory—a life half-lived in exchange for a gold watch and a retirement plaque.

The toll isn’t just personal; it’s collective. Conformity sustains systems that harm us all. For example:

Environmental Collapse: We recycle dutifully while corporations lobby against climate policies, knowing our individual efforts are drops in an ocean of industrial waste.

Healthcare Inequity: Millions accept inadequate insurance plans because “that’s just how it is,” while pharmaceutical giants price-gouge life-saving medications.

Political Apathy: Voters settle for the “lesser evil” cycle after cycle, not because they’re apathetic, but because they’ve been conditioned to believe real change is impossible.

These aren’t signs of moral failure—they’re evidence of a rigged game. Systems thrive when we internalize their limitations as inevitabilities.

Breaking free doesn’t require grand gestures. It starts with questioning the stories we’ve been sold:

The Myth of Meritocracy: We’re told talent and grit guarantee success, yet study after study reveals wealth and connections matter most. Acknowledge this, and suddenly “laziness” looks more like exhaustion from running a race with no finish line.

The Cult of Busyness: Productivity culture equates self-worth with output. But what if we measured value in rest, creativity, or community care instead?

The Fear of “Otherness”: Conformity often masks a deeper fear—of being ostracized, of losing belonging. Yet some of history’s greatest shifts began with people who dared to be “weird”: LGBTQ+ activists, disability advocates, indigenous land defenders.

Resistance can be subtle:

A teacher who skirts standardized curricula to nurture critical thinking.

A nurse unionizing despite threats of retaliation.

A teenager rejecting hustle culture to prioritize mental health.

These acts aren’t glamorous, but they’re revolutionary because they reject the premise that this is all there is.

Complacency isn’t natural—it’s engineered. Consider:

Education Systems: Schools often prioritize obedience over curiosity, training students to memorize answers rather than ask questions.

Media Narratives: News cycles reduce complex issues to binaries (left vs. right, “woke” vs. “anti-woke”), discouraging nuance.

Corporate “Wellness”: Companies offer yoga classes and mindfulness apps to placate burnout—a Band-Aid on a bullet wound—while ignoring demands for living wages or humane hours.

To dismantle this, we must name the forces at play. For instance, the bystander effect—a psychological phenomenon where individuals are less likely to act in a crisis when others are present—explains why we tolerate societal rot. If everyone’s silent, we assume someone else will speak. But when one person steps forward, it cracks the illusion of consensus.

What if safety wasn’t about clinging to the familiar, but about building systems that actually protect us? Imagine:

Economic Safety: Universal healthcare, living wages, and affordable housing so survival isn’t a daily gamble.

Emotional Safety: Cultures that prioritize mental health over performative hustle.

Intellectual Safety: Spaces where questioning norms is encouraged, not punished.

This isn’t utopian—it’s pragmatic. Complacency persists because we’ve been convinced alternatives are unrealistic. But every workers’ rights law, environmental regulation, and social safety net began as a “radical” idea.

2. Consumerism and Distraction: The Double-Edged Comfort

Let’s be honest: We’ve all soothed ourselves with the dopamine hit of an online purchase or lost hours to the algorithmic abyss of TikTok. Consumerism isn’t some moral failing; it’s a rational response to alienation. Under late-stage capitalism, where work is precarious, communities are fractured, and futures feel foreclosed, consumption becomes a perverse form of therapy. That new pair of shoes isn’t just a product—it’s a fleeting antidote to existential dread. The problem isn’t that we crave comfort; it’s that the system offers no other language for healing.

Capitalism manufactures scarcity—not just of resources, but of meaning. It tells us we’re incomplete without the latest gadget, that self-worth is tied to productivity, and that connection can be bottled and sold as a “wellness retreat.” Consider:

Fast Fashion: We buy cheap clothes to fill voids, knowing they’re stitched by underpaid workers in sweatshops. The cycle isn’t ignorance; it’s despair dressed as distraction.

Planned Obsolescence: Phones die after two years, appliances break just past warranty—a deliberate design to keep us chasing replacements. We’re not consumers; we’re hostages.

Digital Escapism: Social media algorithms feed us rage and envy because conflict drives clicks. We doomscroll not because we’re addicted, but because the “real world” offers little refuge.

This isn’t a coincidence—it’s by design. Late-stage capitalism thrives on perpetual dissatisfaction. It can’t survive if we’re content, connected, or politically engaged. So it commodifies our loneliness, monetizes our anger, and sells us bandaids for bullet wounds.

Blaming individuals for overconsumption is like blaming a fish for drowning. The real issue isn’t personal excess; it’s a system that requires excess to function. Capitalism’s growth imperative demands we extract, produce, and discard at accelerating rates—even if it means burning the planet. Consider:

Advertising’s Psychological Warfare: Corporations spend billions to manipulate our insecurities, convincing us happiness is a product. Socialism asks: What if we redirected those resources to universal mental healthcare instead?

The Time Poverty Trap: Overworked, underpaid people have little energy to cook, create, or connect. No wonder we UberEats dinner and binge Netflix—we’re exhausted. Socialism argues for shorter workweeks and living wages so we can reclaim time for what matters.

The Myth of “Ethical Consumption”: Boycotts and reusable straws are Band-Aids on a hemorrhage. You can’t “vote with your dollar” when billionaires own the ballot box. Socialism rejects market-based solutions and demands systemic change: Why not dismantle the structures forcing us to choose between survival and ethics?

Consumerism isn’t just about stuff—it’s about stifling dissent. The more time we spend curating online personas or hunting discounts, the less we have to organize, dream, or demand better. Late capitalism turns us into micro-managers of our own oppression, too busy comparing Spotify Wrapped stats to notice our pensions evaporating.

But distraction also serves a darker purpose: It atomizes us. Social media replaces solidarity with individualism (“Here’s 10 self-care tips for surviving burnout!”), while gig apps pit workers against each other for scraps. The result? A fractured populace, too isolated to challenge the oligarchs hoarding wealth.

Socialism, in contrast, centers collective power. It asks: What if we redirected the energy spent on Black Friday stampedes toward housing cooperatives? What if viral trends promoted mutual aid instead of hyper-consumption? Movements like tenant unions, community land trusts, and worker-owned businesses offer blueprints—not just for surviving capitalism, but dismantling it.

Dismantling consumerism isn’t about austerity; it’s about abundance. Imagine:

Universal Basic Services: Free healthcare, education, transit, and housing. When survival isn’t tied to wages, consumption loses its coercive power.

Democratic Workplaces: Worker cooperatives where employees own profits and set hours. Imagine producing goods for utility, not shareholder profit—no planned obsolescence, no exploitative ads.

Cultural Shift: Public spaces that prioritize community over commerce—libraries, parks, free theaters. Art funded for expression, not clicks.

This isn’t a utopia. Spain’s Mondragon Corporation, a federation of worker co-ops, employs 80,000 people with equitable wages. Finland’s housing-first policy slashed homelessness by treating shelter as a right, not a commodity. These models prove that when people control resources, they prioritize sustainability over growth for growth’s sake.

The socialist project isn’t about depriving joy—it’s about redefining it. Late capitalism reduces human complexity to “consumer” or “laborer.” Socialism asks: What if we valued people as creators, caregivers, and collaborators?

This means:

Dismantling the Attention Economy: Tax predatory algorithms. Fund public media free from ads. Let creativity flourish without surveillance.

Embracing Degrowth: Prioritizing well-being over GDP. A four-day workweek isn’t radical—it’s a return to pre-industrial rhythms where life wasn’t monetized.

Cultivating Collective Joy: Block parties over shopping sprees. Skill-sharing networks over Amazon. Grief circles over retail therapy.

Consumerism is a symptom of a deeper sickness: a world that treats humans as inputs and outputs. Socialism, at its core, is about healing that rupture—not through moralizing, but through solidarity.

Yes, we’ll still crave comfort. But what if comfort looked like a community garden instead of a McMansion? Like guaranteed healthcare instead of a “retail therapy” splurge? Like knowing your labor benefits neighbors, not CEOs?

The path forward isn’t shame. It’s building systems where our needs are met, our time is our own, and our worth is untethered from what we buy. Dismantling capitalism isn’t about losing luxuries—it’s about gaining freedom.

After all, the most radical act of defiance isn’t burning a mall. It’s imagining a world where we no longer need one.

3. Social and Political Awareness: The Weight of Witnessing

To bear witness to history is to carry its ghosts. It demands we confront not only the brutality of oppression but also the fragility of progress. From the civil rights movement to LGBTQ+ liberation, every stride toward justice has been met with backlash, erasure, and revisionism. Yet within this tension lies a truth: Awareness is not passive—it is a battleground

Programs designed to teach racial history—like Holocaust education, slavery museums, or Indigenous truth commissions—are often hailed as societal reckonings. But too often, they sanitize the past to soothe the present. For example:

The U.S. Civil Rights Movement: School curricula reduce Dr. King to a pacifist caricature, scrubbing his critiques of capitalism and militarism. Meanwhile, figures like Malcolm X or the Black Panthers are framed as “radicals,” their demands for systemic change diluted into soundbites.

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: While it exposed apartheid’s horrors, it prioritized forgiveness over reparations, leaving economic apartheid intact.

These programs risk becoming performative pedagogy, offering catharsis without accountability. True historical awareness isn’t about guilt—it’s about tracing the fingerprints of oppression to their source: Who still holds power? Who profits from forgetting?

The LGBTQ+ rights movement has always been rooted in trans and queer resistance—but you wouldn’t know it from mainstream narratives. Consider:

Stonewall (1969): Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman, and Sylvia Rivera, a Latina trans activist, were instrumental in the riots. Yet for decades, cisgender gay white men were centered in commemorations. Even today, states like Florida ban discussions of gender identity in schools, erasing trans contributions to history.

The AIDS Crisis: Trans activists like Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and organizations like ACT UP fought for healthcare and dignity while governments ignored the deaths of thousands. Their legacy is often reduced to a red ribbon, stripped of its radical fury.

Modern Backlash: Anti-trans laws weaponize historical amnesia, framing trans existence as a “new trend.” But trans people have always existed—from Indigenous Two-Spirit communities to 19th-century queer liberationists like Karl Heinrich Ulrichs.

There is no LGBTQ+ without the T and Q. To exclude trans and queer stories is to amputate the movement’s heart

History’s greatest leaps forward were born not from polite debate but from collective rage. Examples abound:

Stonewall Riots (1969): Sparked modern LGBTQ+ activism. The first Pride was a riot, not a parade.

Compton’s Cafeteria Riot (1966): Led by trans women and drag queens in San Francisco, predating Stonewall.

Black Lives Matter (2013–present): Global protests after George Floyd’s murder forced reckonings on policing, with Minneapolis pledging to dismantle its police department (though progress remains contested).

The Arab Spring (2010–2012): Toppled dictators but also revealed the cost of revolution—hope tempered by backlash.

Farmers’ Protests in India (2020–2021): Millions forced the repeal of corporate farming laws, proving people power can outmuscle neoliberalism.

ACT UP’s “Die-Ins” (1980s–90s): AIDS activists stormed the NIH and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, shaming institutions into action.

These movements weren’t “peaceful”—nor should they have been. Justice is rarely granted; it’s seized.

South Africa’s Anti-Apartheid Movement: International boycotts and domestic uprisings dismantled legal segregation—but economic apartheid persists.

Ireland’s Marriage Equality Referendum (2015): Grassroots campaigns, led by groups like Yes Equality, made Ireland the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote.

Argentina’s Gender Identity Law (2012): Trans activists won the world’s most progressive gender self-determination policy, including free healthcare.

Sudan’s 2019 Revolution: Women and queer youth frontlined protests that ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir, despite ongoing violence.

These movements share a thread: Those most marginalized—trans people, Black women, poor farmers—often lead the charge, only to be sidelined when victories are claimed.

The Fight Against Erasure: How to Honor (and Continue) the Work

Teach Intersectional History: Highlight figures like Bayard Rustin (a gay civil rights organizer) or Stormé DeLarverie (a Black lesbian who sparked Stonewall).

Fund Grassroots Archives: Support projects like the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria or the African American History Museum.

Amplify Living Histories: Listen to movements like Stop Cop City (Atlanta) or Youth v. Apocalypse (climate justice).

Reject Respectability Politics: Celebrate the “unruly” — the rioters, the occupiers, the ones who refuse to be palatable.

Awareness is not a museum exhibit—it’s a call to action. Every right we have—from marriage equality to voting access—was wrested from the jaws of power by those deemed “too loud,” “too angry,” or “too radical.” The backlash we see today—anti-trans laws, voter suppression, historical bans—is not a sign of defeat. It’s proof the powerful fear our memory.

So remember: When they erase trans pioneers from textbooks, teach them. When they whitewash slavery, revolt. When they criminalize protest, organize. The weight of witnessing is heavy, but it is also a weapon. Wield it.

4. Breaking Free: The Messy Work of Awakening

Awakening is not a sudden epiphany but a slow, grinding unfurling—a reckoning with the layers of denial, distraction, and dissonance that shroud our lives. It begins in the quiet moments when the scripts we’ve been handed—work, consume, repeat—start to fray at the edges, revealing the hollow core beneath. The weight of complacency, once a familiar burden, becomes intolerable. The distractions that once numbed us—the endless scroll, the curated personas, the ritualized consumption—now feel like ill-fitting costumes. This is the ache of awakening: the visceral understanding that the safety we’ve clung to is a mirage, and the world we’ve accepted is a gilded cage.

The journey is fraught with psychological landmines. Cognitive dissonance erupts as we confront the chasm between our values and our actions. We’ve been conditioned to equate conformity with survival, to mistake busyness for purpose, and to rationalize injustice as inevitability. To question these narratives is to invite a storm of existential anxiety—What if I’m wrong? What if I lose everything? The fear is primal. Our brains, wired for pattern recognition and predictability, revolt against the uncertainty of change. We cling to the devil we know, even when it devours us. This is the paradox of awakening: To break free, we must first sit in the discomfort of knowing we’ve been complicit, that our silence funded systems we despise, that our distractions were collaborators in our own erasure.

Yet this pain is not punishment—it’s alchemy. It’s the friction required to transmute guilt into accountability, passivity into action. Consider the suffocating grip of consumerism, where every purchase is a tiny rebellion against emptiness. We’ve been taught to medicate loneliness with products, to substitute material accumulation for meaning. But awakening demands we ask: What am I truly hungry for? The answer is rarely a thing. It’s connection—to ourselves, to others, to a world beyond the transactional. It’s the longing to create rather than consume, to belong rather than perform. This shift is seismic. It requires rewiring neural pathways forged by decades of capitalist conditioning, where self-worth is tied to productivity and joy is commodified.

The process mirrors the collective struggles etched into history. The civil rights activists who faced fire hoses and jail cells, the LGBTQ+ pioneers who rioted at Stonewall, the Black Lives Matter protestors who turned grief into global mobilization—they too grappled with the terror of rupture. Their awakenings were not pristine moments of clarity but messy, iterative acts of courage. They carried the weight of knowing their fight might outlive them, that progress could be reversed, that erasure was a constant threat. Yet they chose to disrupt the trance, to risk their safety for a future they might never see. Their legacy is a testament to the unbearable cost of staying asleep—and the transformative power of refusing to look away.

Awakening, then, is both personal and collective. It’s the recognition that our individual liberation is bound to the liberation of others. The systems that profit from our complacency—the same ones that erase trans voices, exploit workers, and plunder the planet—rely on our isolation. They thrive when we internalize shame, when we believe our smallness is inevitable. But solidarity cracks this illusion. When we join movements like the Fight for $15 or the resistance against anti-trans legislation, we tap into a lineage of defiance that stretches from the suffragettes to Standing Rock. We realize our power is not in perfection but in persistence—in showing up, flawed and furious, to chip away at the edifice of oppression.

The path is neither linear nor guaranteed. There will be days when the pull of the old life is seductive, when the news cycle’s horrors tempt us to retreat into numbness. Awakening is not purity; it’s resilience. It’s the queer teen who survives conversion therapy and becomes an advocate, the burned-out worker who organizes a union despite retaliation, the privileged ally who confronts their own complicity and redistributes resources. It’s the understanding that every small act of resistance—a difficult conversation, a boycott, a vote—is a thread in the tapestry of change.

And here, in the marrow of the struggle, lies the redemption: Awakening gifts us our humanity. The numbness that once shielded us from pain also barred us from joy. The distractions that anesthetized us stifled our creativity. The conformity that promised safety suffocated our authenticity. To break free is to reclaim the full spectrum of being—to feel rage and hope, grief and solidarity, not as weaknesses, but as proof of aliveness. It’s to trade the shallow comfort of the status quo for the messy, magnificent work of building something new.

The road is long, and the dawn may seem distant. But history whispers to us: Every riot, every strike, every act of defiance mattered. They shifted the axis of the possible. Your awakening, however stumbling, is part of that lineage. It’s worth the fight—not because victory is guaranteed, but because the alternative is a life half-lived. The cage door was never locked. It only felt that way. Step out. Breathe. Join the chorus of those who refuse to let the world sleepwalk into ruin. The cost is everything. The reward is a world remade.

5. A Path Forward: Gentleness as Rebellion — And the Question That Haunts Us All

In a world that equates strength with domination and progress with relentless grind, gentleness is an act of defiance. It’s a refusal to replicate the cruelty of systems that demand we harden ourselves to survive. Gentleness is not passivity; it’s the quiet, radical work of tending to the fractures—in ourselves, in each other, in the brittle scaffolding of a society teetering on collapse. It’s the factory worker who carves out time to mentor a younger colleague despite the assembly line’s unrelenting pace. It’s the student drowning in debt who still shows up to a climate strike. It’s the exhausted parent who, instead of scrolling, asks their child, “What hurts?” and truly listens. These acts seem small against the roar of injustice, but they are the antidote to the poison of isolation that late-stage capitalism brews.

Gentleness threads through every struggle we’ve named: It’s the complacent worker who risks vulnerability to unionize, knowing retaliation looms. It’s the consumer who opts out of Black Friday to repair a frayed friendship. It’s the activist who trades performative outrage for patient community-building. It’s the awakened soul who forgives their own complicity long enough to keep fighting. This is how we dismantle the myth that change requires heroes. It doesn’t. It requires humans—messy, tender, persistent—who refuse to let the world’s callousness become their own.

History’s loudest revolutions were born from gentleness disguised as ferocity. The Black Lives Matter marchers who handed out water and masks amid tear gas. The AIDS caregivers who held the dying when governments looked away. The LGBTQ+ elders who offered spare couches to queer kids cast out by families. These were not just acts of resistance; they were acts of love, a word too often sanitized into meaninglessness. Real love is inconvenient. It demands we redistribute resources, dismantle hierarchies, and prioritize care over growth. It means seeing the migrant detained at the border, the trans teen disowned by relatives, the overworked single parent, and whispering: “Your struggle is mine.”

But love alone is not enough. Gentleness must be coupled with the unflinching question that Martin Niemöller etched into history’s conscience:

First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Communist... Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out.

Today, the “they” is not a faceless regime but the logic of disposability that lurks in all of us. It’s the algorithms that dehumanize Palestinians as collateral, the lawmakers who erase trans lives from textbooks, the corporations that sacrifice Indigenous land for lithium mines. Every time we look away—because the news is too heavy, the guilt too sharp, the risk too great—we rehearse Niemöller’s lament.

So I leave you with this: When the algorithms scrub marginalized voices from platforms, when the laws criminalize protest, when the climate crisis swallows the Global South first—who will you fight for? And when the gears of greed and bigotry finally grind toward your door, who will be left to fight for you?

The answer lies in the gentleness we cultivate now. In the connections we nurture, the stories we preserve, the solidarity we practice before the storm arrives. Revolutions are not won in the streets alone. They’re won in the moments we choose tenderness over apathy, courage over comfort, and collective survival over solitary survival.

When they come for you—and they will—who will speak? Will it be anyone at all?

[not-your-asian-fantasy]

Dr Mehrub Moiz Awan 👈🏾 insta @unrelentlesslyyours

[lichen-thr0pe]

[leftistfeminista]

In an interview with filmmaker Helma Sanders in 1970, months before she went underground, she voiced some of her criticism of the separation of public and private that renders women apolitical in the traditional sense. In this interview, she speaks to the particular dilemma in which women—mothers—find themselves.

She acknowledges that children need a stable family, and that men have their wives to see to that, whereas a politically active woman does not have a wife to take care of her children, and thus is faced with a problem: From the point of view of the children’s needs, the family is necessary, indispensable as a stable place with stable human relationships. Of course, many things are easier if you’re a man, and you have a wife to look after the children. If you’re a woman, so that you don’t have a wife to do all that for you, then you have to do everything yourself—it’s terribly difficult.

She continues, “Thus the problem of all politically active women is— including my own—that they on the one hand do socially necessary work. But on the other hand they helplessly sit around with their children just as much as all the other women.” In addition to criticizing the oppressive effect that the separation of public and private exerts on women through their motherhood (you either have a private or a public life), she also points to the limitations of politics that discount the private realm, and she counters that view with the claim that political work detached from “private life” is in fact not sustainable: “One could say the central oppression of woman is that her private life as private life is contrasted to any political life. Whereas one could turn this around and say that where political work is unrelated to private life, it is not right, it cannot be seen through.”

[italianpawg]

"i'm apolitical" = 'my existence isn't politicized and i'm too stupid/selfish/privileged to bother caring about those that are'

[hexonthepeach]

truly posting tonight, just very very late. thanks everyone for being so understanding. i had some complicated threads to tie in and mentally have been reeling from irl including a mild virus, pmdd, and unfortunately watching my country and others enable fascism in a way that brings back to mind what i experienced personally post-9/11 (i know, i'm old) witnessing warmongering and state gaslighting in real time

while i don't use either of my tumblr accounts to post about anything topical or political (i have a main out there with much broader reach) i'm sure those who've read any of my silly little work would understand that the ongoing imperialist aggression and genocide in gaza are devastating and my heart is broken for those who have died and who are currently suffering. i encourage anyone who can to support those in need through whatever means available to them. a ceasefire and humanitarian aid and a free Palestine are the only way to mitigate harm, there is no violence which begets or justifies violence, and no one with the privilege to should ever turn a blind eye to recognizable horror

thanks again for reading my work but thank you more for any willingness to engage with the world in a way that chooses peace and loving-kindness at all turns. i hope you understand i am not sorry for letting it affect me or delay a post

[an-sceal]

I got a haircut the other day, which was awesome. I've spent the past 48 hours looking at a stranger in the mirror when I pass one. I don't ever have a firm picture or solid understanding of "that is me in my body" when I look at myself anyway, just a vaguely recognized set of individual features (my ear with the elf point, my nose that is either too big or okay depending on the day, but is always the same shape, my eyebrows that are psychotic, my tattoo that is art.) Now my hair is short but still too long, which I will fix when I get home.

Before the haircut I was having a third or fourth day of feeling like nothing I was doing with or for my body was sitting correctly. Nausea from meds that are supposed to help my autoimmune disease, and bloating from meds that are supposed to help my stomach deal with the meds that help the arthritis, and fatigue from... everything? Anything? Breathing? (Possibly breathing, because allergens, and thus inflammation triggers, are high.) Clothes and hair and posture and voice were all clashing in this thing that contains me but doesn't fit. And I have had this body for many decades now, minus a part here or there, so I am very used to not feeling at home in it. Not feeling like my body is any sort of representation of who I am, or even a reliably identifiable placeholder for the spaces marked "ME".

It took me over 40 years to figure out that I wasn't a failure as a girl, as a woman, as a "female", even after I knew there were options well beyond the two I'd been given, or the notion of others thought I understood. Part of that was down to assuming I wasn't *____* enough to count. I didn't know what, but I knew I didn't hate my body, so I couldn't be trans, or even not-a-woman in some other way. Sometimes I clung to that as a defense, firm in reminding myself that I didn't, so I wasn't. Sometimes it just was, existing, a fact like my body, which is obvious to everyone else but a mystery to me at the best of times. In my mind, even though I've rarely felt at peace or in sync with "woman", I'd never had a moment where I explicitly felt that I wasn't a woman, much less one where I hated the idea. How would I have hated something that people told me I was, when I literally need to rely on the vague shape of myself and the labels people I trust have given me just to find myself in a mirror?

I was pretty clear for a long time on how I'd never felt any sort of gender dysphoria. Quite the opposite-- the things I held on to, got familiar with like the extra bump of my ear or the round tip of my nose, were all times I'd felt the MOST grounded and at home in this alien ecosystem I keep my consciousness in. Times I felt GOOD about how my hair fell or my clothes sat or my insides settled into my outsides. No dysphoria for me, no, no! Euphoria!

And that’s true! I have felt gender euphoria, lots of it, and bodily euphoria as I have moments where I'm seated and perfect inside my little squishy home. It never occurred to me that those opposite times, when I would have given ANYTHING to step outside my horrible hovel of a skin prison, might be... not how everyone feels. I'm not talking about self-harm or suicidal ideation-- the escape only counts if the me I know and am is intact when I emerge. I'm talking days where every part of me I recognized felt so disconnected and WRONG in relation to who I believed my body made me that I couldn't find any response but intense anxiety and eventual dissociation to cope with it.

I am not drift-compatible with my own body.

[kuribayashisachi]

拙勉強メモ

野口良平『幕末的思考』第３部 第1章　③に著者様からお返事頂いてしまいました！

野口良平『幕末的思考』みすず書房 第3部「公私」 第１章　再び見いだされた感覚──第三のミッシングリンク1～4　③

の、福沢諭吉『痩我慢の説』のところ。

誰もが住みよい世の中をつくるのには、法（ルール）が必要。 なのだけど、「強い人たちも弱い者を搾取する自由を手放し、従いなさい！」という理屈の根本は何か。 ルソーと中江兆民は、それは強者だけが自由を謳歌する、「自然状態」がまずいからだ。と位置づけたのだけど、 福沢は「痩我慢の説」でこういっているそうだ。「公をつくるのは私情だ」と。

このあたりが、私はちょっとわからず、「自然現象がまずいから」という考えでは不正解なのか……。と疑問だったのです。

すごく貴重なお返事を頂いてしまって、自分一人で見るにはもったいないので、ご許可を頂いて、ここにアップいたします。

◆　野口良平様からのお返事

・・・・・・・・（略）

自然状態のままだと弱肉強食が野放しにされてヤバいので社会契約を結ぶ。これが、ルソーと中江兆民が考えたことです。でもそのとき、すべての人がそれを「ヤバい」と気づけるわけではないのではと、二人は考えたわけです。

ルソーは、「立法者」と「市民宗教」を考えることで、その難問をクリアしようとして失敗しました。兆民は、その失敗に気づくことはできたのですが、その失敗を克服する明確な根拠を見出すことはできませんでした。

意外なことかもしれませんが、その根拠を見出したのが福沢だったのではないかというのが、私が出してみたた考えです。福沢は、弱肉強食は「ヤバい」と感じるものが、一個の「私」「私情」でしかないことに注目します。

ルソーは、「私」の大切さを痛いほど知っていましたが、私情というものが「公」をつくるだけの力をもつものだとまでは考えることができませんでした。言い換えれば、「私」というもののとらえかたがまだ浅く、「私」というものが経験のなかで広く、深いものに成長しうるものだとまでは考えることができなかったわけです。

「私」には公をつくる力がある。と同時に、どのような公にも回収しきれない固有の価値をもつ。こういうダイナミックな把握をなしえたのは、兆民よりも福沢だったのではないか。

一方、ひるがえってみれば、兆民自身、自分の思想にどこか足りないものがあるということに気づいていたふしもあります。国会議員をやめて再び野にくだったのち、いろいろな商売に手を出しては失敗し、辛酸をなめたのも、「公をつくるものとしての私」という考え方を試してみたかったのだ、と考えることも可能だと思われるのです。

今だったら、こういう説明も加えてみるかもしれませんね。そもそも、人間に私情というものがあるからこそ自然状態が生じた。と同時に、その自然状態を終わらせたいと思うのも、私情にほかならないのだと。「私情」には、それだけのふり幅が備わっているのではないか。

「私」には「公」をつくり、しかもその「公」のありようをチェックする力がそなわっている。福沢のこの考え方がなかったら、文学というものそれ自体の存在理由がなくなってしまうように、私には思えたのです。

＊＊＊

福沢に対しては、さまざまな批判が寄せられていることは承知しています。どんな言論にも、可食部と不可食部というものはあるでしょう。福沢の考え方についても、どこまでが可食部で、どこからが不可食なのかということが、過不足なく見極められる必要があるのではないでしょうか。

・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・

なるほどです。

なんとももったいなきご返信、ありがとうございます。

ルソーは、「私」の大切さはイヤと言うほど知っていたけど、「私」にそんな力があるとは気づいていなかった……。

そっかー。もしかしたらルソーは自分がすごい変人と知っていたので、そこまで「私」を大事にする自信がなかったのかなあ。

なんて、そんな奥ゆかしい人じゃないか。

そして、《どんな言論にも、可食部と不可食部というものはあるでしょう。福沢の考え方についても、どこまでが可食部で、どこからが不可食なのかということが、過不足なく見極められる必要が……》とのお話。 可食部と不可食部という言葉が、とても効き目があるなあ！ などとヨロコンデいたのですが、考えてみると、これは、もう少し強い「たしなめ」のお言葉ですね。

福沢のたくさんの言説の中から「醜業婦」発言に真っ先に注目して、福沢全体を否定してしまうのは、 りんごをもらってヘタに噛みつき「ぺっ、ぺっ、これ食べれない～」というのと同じじゃないですか、と。

◆　ウーマンリブの合い言葉「個人的なことは社会的なこと」について

頂いたお返事は、

（追記）「公をつくるものとしての私」という考え方は、The personal is political.という考え方を含みうるものだと、私は思います。ただ、ギリギリのところで、「私」には政治的な要素には還元できない性質が残されるように感じられます。福沢の「瘠我慢」は、The personal is both political and non-political.という考え方に近いのではなかという気がしますね。

「個人的なことは社会的なこと」というより「個人的なことは政治的なこと」ですね。

The personal is political.は、60年代にアメリカを席巻したフェミニズム第２波と反戦運動の合い言葉だったのですね。

私はそれを認識してないで、ウーマンリブのお姉さんたちが、世間から馬鹿にされながら「がんばろうね」「私たち自分勝手なわけじゃないよね。この苦しさは社会の問題だよね」と励まし合った、という感じの言葉だと思っていました。

どこかで耳に挟んでじーんとしたのです。

《「私」には政治的な要素には還元できない性質が残されるように感じられます。》

なるほど。

といって、野口さんのおしゃることが、自分にわかったのかどうか……そのうち、「あ」とおもうかもしれません。

野口さん、もったいなきお返事を、まことにまことにありがとうございます。

ｍ－－ｍ

[lesbeansoups]

I think we need to appreciate this part of Brennan Lee Mulligan's WIRED interview a lot more:

"The evangelical right in this country needs to manufacture outrage to hold onto its voting block. [The satanic panic about DnD] was arbitrary, as the targets of their outrage always are. Fight the power."

[i-3at-s0ap]

Elon Musk isn't a sociopath Trump isn't a narcissist Jeff Bezos isn't a psycho they are terrible racist bigoted assholes but I'm begging y'all to fucking give a shit about people with personality disorders. PLEASE.

[lazyscience]

I cannot stress enough to young leftists just getting into activism - DO LOCAL THINGS. OMG DO LOCAL THINGS. I'm not saying NOT to protest for larger causes, but the way a lot of people get discouraged and burn out is because they're trying to push for top-down change when there is no local structure to build from. Build your cred and organizing experience by helping your local library, your local LGBTQ+ youth organizations, your local Food Not Bombs/other homelessness advocacy, tiny conservancy orgs, literacy organizations, service outreach for underrepresented communities.

Publicize in meatspace how easy and friendly these things can be at a local level, how little effort they require to make a real difference in quality of life for marginalized people. That's what helps people to believe they can do harder, bigger things, stay patiently working with a cause instead of trying to do a moonshot with a bottle rocket and when it fails retreating into angry nihilist "when the revolution comes" rhetoric like magas yelling about the Rapture.

The way we teach about civil rights and change is deeply flawed in that it focuses on Significant Events and Great Men (and a few women) as if they're the important parts of social movements, rather than the culmination of years, decades of effort on the part of rank and file community organizations, flowing together like spilled mercury pooling to attract that final lightning strike.

want to make a difference you can see? go to the damn library. check out ALL the gay books. tell your friends to get on the waitlist for when you're done with them. write to your city council or county agency about how great it is. push for an ordinance to require people challenging library books or requiring LGBTQ+ content to be in age-restricted "adult" sections to actually live in the place they're harassing, because many of the people leading these crazy book ban campaigns are a very vocal minority don't even LIVE in their service area.

yesterday I went to a little meeting at my local queer community center and I was admiring their bookshelves and mentioned that I work at the public library and someone said "well I bet they don't have any [LGBTQ+ books] at our library" and I was like um. yes we do. we have tons of them. half of our employees are queer leftists so they said "oh well I bet they don't in [nearby rural county]" and I was like uh once again yes they absolutely do. gay people live and work there as well

so here's a quick reminder that if you don't think your local library has enough queer centered materials you should actually check before assuming, and if you're not satisfied with their collection you should submit a request for more such books. I don't know what the political landscape of libraries looks like outside the us rn, but within the us no matter where you are, I promise you there are employees at your library fighting for inclusion and intellectual freedom and they can't win without vocal public support

[gingersnapwolves]

So today I want to talk about puberty blockers for transgender kids, because despite being cisgender, this is a subject I’m actually well-versed in. Specifically, I want to talk about how far backwards things have gone.

This story starts almost 20 years ago, and it’s kind of long, but I think it’s important to give you the full history. At the time, I was working as an administrative assistant for a pediatric endocrinologist in a red state. Not a deep deep red state like Alabama, we had a little bit of a purple trend, but still very much red. (I don’t want to say the state at the risk of doxxing myself.) And I took a phone call from a woman who said, “My son is transgender. Does your doctor do hormone therapy?”

I said, “Good question! Let me find out.”

I went into the back and found the doctor playing Solitaire on his computer and said, “Do you do hormone therapy for transgender kids?” It had literally never come up before. He had opened his practice there in the early 2000s. This was roughly 2006, and the first time someone asked. Without looking up from his game of Solitaire, the doctor said, “I’ve never done it before, but I know how it works, so sure.”

I got back on the phone and told the mom, who was overjoyed, and scheduled an appointment for her son. He was the first transgender child we treated with puberty blockers. But not, by far, the first child we treated with puberty blockers, period. Because puberty blockers are used very commonly for children with precocious puberty (early-onset puberty). I would say about twenty percent of the kids our doctor treated were for precocious puberty and were on puberty blockers. They have been well studied and are widely used, safe, and effective.

Well. It turned out, the doctor I worked for was the only doctor in the state who was willing to do this. And word spread pretty fast in the tight-knit community of ‘parents of transgender children in a red state’. We started seeing more kids. A better drug came out. We saw some kids who were at the age where they were past puberty, and prescribed them estrogen or testosterone. Our doctor became, I’m fairly sure, a small folk hero to this community. 

Insurance coverage was a struggle. I remember copying articles and pages out of the Endocrine Society Manual to submit with prior authorization requests for the medications. Insurance coverage was a struggle for a lot of what we did, though. Growth hormone for kids with severe idiopathic short stature. Insulin pumps, which weren’t as common at the time, and then continuous glucose monitoring, when that came out. Insurance struggles were just part and parcel of the job.

I remember vividly when CVS Caremark, a pharmaceutical management company, changed their criteria and included gender dysphoria as a covered diagnosis for puberty blockers. I thought they had put the option on the questionnaire to trigger an automatic denial. But no - it triggered an approval. Medicaid started to cover it. I got so good at getting approvals with my by then tidy packet of articles and documentation that I actually had people in other states calling me to see what I was submitting (the pharmaceutical rep gave them my number because they wanted more people on their drug, which, shady, but sure. He did ask me if it was okay first).

And here’s the key point of this story:

At no point, during any of this, did it ever even occur to any of us that we might have to worry about whether or not what we were doing was legal.

It just never even came up. It was the medically recommended treatment so we did it. And seeing what’s happening in the UK and certain states in America is both terrifying and genuinely shocking to me, as someone who did this for almost fifteen years, without ever even wondering about the legality of it.

The doctor retired some years ago, at which point there were two other doctors in the state who were willing to prescribe the medications for transgender kids. I truly think that he would still be working if nobody else had been willing to take those kids on as patients. He was, by the way, a white cisgender heterosexual Boomer. I remember when he was introduced to the concept of ‘genderfluid’ because one of our patients on HRT wanted to go off. He said ‘that’s so interesting!’ and immediately went to Google to learn more about it. 

I watched these kids transform. I saw them come into the office the first time, sometimes anxious and uncertain, sometimes sullen and angry. I saw them come in the subsequent times, once they were on hormone therapy, how they gradually became happy and confident in themselves. I saw the smiles on their faces when I gave them a gender marker letter for the DMV. I heard them cheer when I called to tell them I’d gotten HRT approved by insurance and we were calling in a prescription. It was honestly amazing and I will always consider the work I did in that red state with those kids to be something I am incredibly proud of. I was honored to be a part of it.

When I see all this transgender backlash, it’s horrifying, because it was well on the way to become standard and accepted treatment. Insurances started to cover it. Other doctors were learning to prescribe it. And now … it’s fucking illegal? Like what the actual fuck. We have gone so far backwards that it makes me want to cry. I don’t know how to stop this slide. But I wrote this so people would understand exactly how steep the slide is.